The Lion: Son Of The Forest (Warhammer 40,000)

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Heroic Self-Deprecation: The Lion, surprisingly enough. He considers himself a failure to the Emperor, his brothers, and the Dark Angels; he ponders that it should've been him who died and one of his brothers who lived; he even believes he has declined as a fighter, although to anyone without his super-human reflexes, he appears as deadly as ever. Big Bad Duumvirate: While Seraphax is undeniably the leader of the Thousand Eyes warband, Markog and Baelor share equal focus with him. The Lion: Son of the Forest is a novel set in the Warhammer 40K universe, written by Mike Brooks and released in 2023. Bevedan was part of the group that opened fire on the Lion's forces on Caliban, starting the battle that saw the planet destroyed; he sacrifices himself to free the Lion from Seraphax's chains. BL fiction very rarely touches the long-standing 40k lore. Even the recent Dawn of Fire books are really just "here's stuff happening in the post-Rift galaxy". Mike Brooks' The Lion is an excellent example of how to move core pieces of lore forwards.

We Can Rule Together: At one point, Baelor extends to Zabriel the offer to join the Thousand Eyes; Zabriel, of course, immediately rejects him.If you never encountered a masculine man in your whole life and were tasked to write one... well... you would have Lion El'Johnson from this particular book. He is written like a self-hating man that oozes his, what leftists would call, "toxic masculinity". But, we see him start to tone police himself and other Space Marines in the novel like some sort of dude with mommy issues. Zabriel has to wait until nightfall to show the Lion the Great Rift and explain that it will stop him from trying to reach Terra. Random Transportation: How the Lion's forestwalking works for most of the book; even when he figures out how to willingly enter the forest, he still has no control over where he exits. It takes a lot of practice before he manages to master it. Faced with these strange times, the Lion can be certain of nothing and no-one, except for himself. But in a galaxy without the Emperor, without the Imperium, without his Legion, and without Caliban… who is he?

From then on out, time passes as Lion works to establish a group of safe systems within Imperium Nihilus - his protectorate. The Risen are spread out among the various human groups to lend their expertise to the effort. In the meanwhile, Lion enters the Forest again. This time, he does not find the Emperor, but he does follow the path to that strange building he'd seen the first time he was here. There, he fights a shapeshifting entity that takes form of each of his brothers, trying to break his spirit and his body alike. He triumps, and gains possession of the Emperor's Shield, which seems to be somehow tied to the psyker aegis the Emperor had cast over the palace during the Siege of Terra. Meaningful Rename: At the end of the book, the Lion renames the Fallen who chose to follow him to the Risen.When the Lion tries and fails to communicate with the king in the forest, the Watcher in the Dark tells him that he's not asking "the right question", and refuses to elaborate further. The Lion receives the Emperor's Shield during one of his vision trials in the Forest. As his various daemons come at him in the form of his Primarch bros, a kite shield emblazoned with an Eagle pops up, imparts upon him a Vision, of whom he feels the touch of the Emperor on his mind. His own sword comes to him as he accidentally warp-walks into Arthurian Legend. It's Power-Excalibur, err, Fealty. At the dawn of the Imperium of Man, there was no force more deadly nor more loyal to the Emperor than the Dark Angels, the first Legion of Space Marines. Led by their implacable and unstoppable Primarch and genefather, Lion El’Johnson, better known as the Lion, nothing was able to stop the Dark Angels as they crusaded from planet to planet dispensing the Emperor’s will. However, following the events of the Horus Heresy and the Lion’s inability to save the Emperor, the Dark Angels imploded from within. Treachery and years of resentment saw the Legion engage in a brutal and sudden civil war, which resulted in the destruction of the Dark Angel’s home world of Caliban, the scattering of the traitor Dark Angels throughout time and space as the Fallen, and the disappearance and apparent death of the Lion right when the galaxy needed him most.