I failed my father. I fear I also failed my brothers. I do not wish to fail my sons.
— Lion El'Jonson
The Lion: Son of the Forest is a novel set in the Warhammer 40K universe, written by Mike Brooks and released in 2023.
A man wakes up in the middle of a vast forest with no memory of his past. In short order, he learns he is Lion El'Jonson, one of the sons of the Emperor of Mankind, and he has been missing in action for ten thousand years, during which the galaxy has gone to hell — quite literally, as it has been torn in half by the Great Rift. Half the known world, including the part with the Lion in it, is cut off from Terra, and Chaos warbands roam the scattered, isolated star systems. The situation looks grim, but not all is lost — the Lion's sons, the space marines of the Dark Angels Legion, have been sent forward in time along with him, and many were scattered in the same region of space.
Unfortunately, those particular Dark Angels are Fallen, who opposed him back in the day, believing he betrayed them — just as he believes they betrayed him. Trust is thin on the ground, but if the Lion wants to protect humanity from the predations of pirates, warlords and worse, he'll have to bring his wayward sons together and convince them to work with him.
Tropes appearing within Lion: Son of the Forest include:
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Subverted. The form the Emperor takes in "Mirror Caliban" is a rather simple visual metaphor representative of his current state, that of a wounded ancient human king, but the Lion cannot see through it.
- Aborted Arc: Early in the book, the Lion and Zabriel stumble upon the Thousand Eyes experimenting on captured space marines, and Baelor's first two point-of-view chapters mention that Seraphax has been trying to forcibly trigger the Blood Angel's Red Thirst. As soon as the Thousand Eyes learn about the Lion's survival, this plot is abandoned as Seraphax changes his plans to account for the sudden appearance of a Primarch.
- Affably Evil: Baelor and Seraphax are both extremely polite to their brothers, even as they try to kill them.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: A one-sided, non-romantic version; the Lion spends no small portion of the book complaining about his brothers (particularly Russ and Guilliman), but by the end he admits to himself that he misses Russ and would love to speak with him again, and is overjoyed to hear that Guilliman has survived.
- Bash Brothers: The Fallen, especially those who have been hiding out together like Kai, Aphkar and Lohoc, quickly settle into this dynamic, joking together as they fight together.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: While Seraphax is undeniably the leader of the Thousand Eyes warband, Markog and Baelor share equal focus with him.
- Bodyguarding a Badass: The Lion Guard are a group of ordinary humans who follow the Lion around, calling themselves his honor guard. Him being a nine-foot-tall genetically-engineered superman, he does not exactly require their assistance, but he lets them stick around.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Despite being chased by the modern-day Dark Angels, many of the Fallen still stepped into the spotlight and protected the human planets they found themselves on when the Great Rift struck.
- Co-Dragons: Baelor and Markog are both Seraphax's top lieutenants, though Markog is perpetually envious of what he perceives as Baelor's higher status.
- Combat Pragmatist: Unlike the Thousand Eyes, who issue formal challenges and try to have individual duels, the Lion's Fallen absolutely fight dirty and do not much care for notions of honor and glory.
- Cool Sword: The power sword Fealty appears to the Lion in the forest at the moment where he most direly needs a weapon, is perfectly sized to fit his hand, and is very good at killing Chaos worshippers. It quickly becomes the Lion's favoured weapon.
- Combat Pragmatist: When the Risen fight Markog, he demands the strike against Zabriel he is owed per their agreement. The Risen not only ignore this to gang up on him, they outright mock him by pointing out that they hardly conquered the galaxy with honor.
- Covers Always Lie: The cover shows the Lion wielding both Fealty and the Emperor's Shield; in the book, he does not acquire the Shield until the penultimate chapter, and never takes it with him to battle.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Played with; to the outsiders, any fight the Lion takes part in ends like this, with the Lion moping the floor with the enemy. From his perspective, he finds them a lot more straining.
- Deadpan Snarker: The Lion's humour, when it appears, tends to be rather dry.Shevana: My psykana gifts have been sanctioned by Terra itself. (...) Your presence is a boon and a blessing, Lord Lion, but to announce it may call new terror down upon us.
The Lion: Happily, my tactical abilities have been sanctioned by Terra itself. - Debut Queue: A significant portion of the book is devoted to the Lion going from place to place to pick up any Fallen he comes across to add them to his team, leading to a steady influx of characters.
- Distressed Dude: The Lion spends a significant portion of the book's climax trapped and in need of a rescue.
- Doomed Hometown:
- Seraphax burns down Camarth in retribution for Lion's actions.
- The Lion and the Fallen have been flung into the future because their homeworld of Caliban was blown to pieces by the battle between Lion's loyalists and the Fallen.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap: The Lion's forestwalking is apparently not powerful enough to bring him all the way to Terra. However, it does give him two full opportunities to meet the Emperor, but the Primarch couldn't recognize them for what they were.
- Empty Shell: Seraphax's plan is to turn the Lion into this, and then use his body to gain access to the Emperor so that he can kill him.
- Extra-Dimensional Shortcut: The eponymous forest in some manner of space between the Warp and the materium; it allows the Lion and the people he brings with him to travel from one planet to another without the need for a ship.
- Evil Gloating: Seraphax is more than happy to brag about his plan when he has the Lion on the ropes, as he wants to convince him about the righteousness of the whole venture.
- The Faceless: Lohoc never removes his helmet. His brothers treat that with some suspicion, but the Lion writes it off as just one of the many weird quirks the Fallen have picked up over the years.
- Feeling Their Age: The Lion notices after fighting that he's slower than he remembers and interrogates a surviving enemy about what curse they put on him. The bemused Chaos Marine, who just saw Lion kill a squad of Chaos Terminators in thirty seconds, tells him bluntly that there's no curse, he's just old. This is evidently relative as he still moves faster than Chaos Space Marines can even react. It also becomes apparent that this is more about the Lion shaking off his long slumber and getting used to fighting in realspace again.
- Flaming Hair: Seraphax's most notable trait is his hair (and half his face) being permanently on fire.
- Flashy Teleportation: The Lion's emergence from the forest is always accompanied by the forest briefly manifesting at his destination.
- Foil:
- Zabriel and Baelor are both devoted Number Twos to their respective masters, but Zabriel is initially distrustful of the Lion before coming to respect him, while Baelor is utterly devoted to Seraphax before betraying him at the very end.
- Discussed when the Lion muses on the differences between himself and his brother Roboute Guilliman; Guilliman always thinks about a dozen things at once, making him an excellent logistician and strategist, but crippling his capabilities in individual combat, while the Lion is always laser-focused on one thing, which makes him a deadly duellist, but harms his ability to go with the flow or consider the big picture.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Dark Angel Knight-Commander Kai's boastful and irreverent manner of speech chafes against the typical martial stoicism of his legion, and before the Breaking, he was unfavorably compared to pre-Horus Heresy members of the Emperor's Children. Kuziel, one of his fellow Fallen, outright tells Kai that he "would not have been sad if [he] had never come back out of the warp storm".
- From Nobody to Nightmare: When the Lion first hears Seraphax's voice, even his eidetic memory struggles to place him, eventually realizing that he used to be just one of the thousands of line soldiers within the Legion.
- The Ghost: The modern-day Dark Angels Chapter, descended from Lion's loyalists; they've been menacing the Fallen, trying to hunt them down and kill them to expunge a stain on the Legion's record, which informs the way many of the Fallen now behave. However, none of those Dark Angels ever appear on page.note
- Guns Akimbo: Zabriel's weapons are a pair of pistols he wields together to deadly effect.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Discussed and defied; as a Primarch, the Lion is a natural at almost anything he tries his hand at, but almost is the operative word here. He's unable to control his forestwalking until he puts time and effort into practice.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: Baelor turns on Seraphax at the last moment, helping the Lion break free. Unfortunately, while the Lion was willing to forgive and forget, Seraphax stabs Baelor with a corrupted blade before expiring, forcing the Lion to Mercy Kill him.
- 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.
- Hero of Another Story: Commander Dante, last seen in Darkness in the Blood trying to hold his section of Imperium Nihilus against the tyranids, appears in the epilogue to investigate the rumours of the Lion's return.
- Human Resources: The Thousand Eyes have butchered the entire population of Sable and turned their bones and blood into devices for Seraphax's ritual.
- Identity Amnesia: When the Lion first wakes up, he does not remember who he is or what has happened to him; memories come back to him only when Zabriel opens fire on him. Even so, he still does not recall how he found himself in the forest.
- In-Series Nickname: Zabriel and some of the other Fallen have taken to calling the Dark Angels hunting them their "little brothers".
- Internal Reveal: There are aspects of the setting that the Warhammer 40K audience will be familiar with, but which are new to the characters.
- 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.
- Bevedan is the one to explain to Zabriel that on Caliban, the Fallen forces were the ones to open fire and initiate the battle that destroyed their homeworld.
- It's not until the end of the book that the Lion learns that Roboute Guilliman is not only alive, but leading the Imperium.
- Just Ignore It: The Lion deals with the Ecclesiarchy, the all-encompassing church of the Imperium, by ignoring their existence and refusing to meet with them.
- Locked Out of the Loop:
- The Fallen the Lion meets, with one exception, were not high enough in the chain of command to know what exactly happened on Caliban; for them, the first sign of the battle were Lion's ships raining fire on them, which is why they have such hard time trusting him right now.
- The Lion and his Fallen are out of the loop on the state of the galaxy at large, with the Lion spending most of the book confident he is the last Primarch alive and concerned that the Emperor himself may be dead. It's not until the epilogue that he meets someone who can bring him up to speed.
- Lower-Deck Episode: Despite the involvement of a Primarch, the book is fairly low-key, dealing with a local Chaos warband of the sort that are dime a dozen in the galaxy, rather than handling Imperial politics, the extragalactic Tyranid invasion, or the ongoing Arks of Omen storyline.
- Meaningful Rename: At the end of the book, the Lion renames the Fallen who chose to follow him to the Risen.
- Mercy Kill: The Lion does it a few times.
- When raiding the Thousand Eyes fort on Camarth, the Lion and Zabriel find imprisoned Blood Angels who've been driven insane by the warband's ministrations. With no way to help them, the Lion kills them all.
- At the end of the book, he beheads Baelor to spare him a long, painful death from of Seraphax's poison.
- Mr. Exposition: Zabriel finds himself serving in this capacity to the Lion, as he has been in the galaxy for four centuries, while the Lion has only just emerged from the past.
- Not So Above It All: Due to spotting inconsistencies in its disguises (ex. Magnus punching too hard) and being skeptical by default, the Lion recognizes the shapeshifting Warp entity as the deadly, living test that it is. However, even knowing it's an impersonator, he relishes the chance to trounce Alpharius as he never got to do so while the smaller Primarch was still alive, and when it transforms into Konrad Curze, he takes the opportunity to have one final venomous conversation with the "Night Haunter", talking to him as if the creature was the real thing.
- Number Two: Zabriel gets roped into becoming the Lion's right-hand man as the first Fallen to be recruited to the cause.
- Oddly Common Rarity: In a galaxy of several million inhabited worlds, finding even one Fallen should be nigh-on impossible — and indeed, the loyalist Dark Angels have spent thousands of years trying to seek them out — yet the Lion manages to stumble across no less than twenty in short order. It's implied that the Power Incontinence he suffers from with his forestwalking might have something to do with it.
- Older and Wiser: The Lion, when last seen in Horus Heresy books, was prideful, cold and uncompromising. The state of the galaxy in the forty-second millennium makes him acutely aware of his own failings, and he works to be more understanding and forgiving.
- Only Sane Man: Of the Thousand Eyes warband, Baelor is the only one who has not given himself over to Chaos powers; in fact, Seraphax values him in the capacity as the one sane man who can keep Seraphax from spiralling too badly.
- One-Winged Angel: Seraphax transforms into a giant demonic form when it becomes obvious he cannot win otherwise.
- Power Incontinence: The Lion initially cannot control his forestwalking, stepping in and out of the forest seemingly at random, with effects ranging from beneficial (getting his Cool Sword) to disastrous (getting stranded on a different planet with no way back). He ends up eventually mastering the talent with practice.
- Prequel: To Arks of Omen: The Lion, explaining how the Lion was able to play a part in that book.
- 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.
- Red Baron:
- Lohoc is known as The Red Whisper
- Borz is often referred to as One-Eye
- Redemption Equals Death: Twice, even.
- Baelor turns on Seraphax at the last moment, literally stabbing him in the back to stop him from killing the Lion, but is stabbed in turn and expires after getting Lion's forgiveness.
- 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.
- Reestablishing Character Moment: It becomes clear that the Lion is changing his attitude when he starts to acknowledge his own failures and then forgives Zabriel after he swears he has always been loyal to the Emperor and humanity. Jonson even swears too when the Fallen demands from him to do so, admitting to himself he would have no reason to refuse to answer him except his own stubborness and pride, and that he has seen how that can end tearing a galaxy apart.
- Riddle for the Ages: Plentiful.
- The circumstances of the Lion's return are shrouded in mystery; it's never revealed why he woke up when and where he did, or how he aquired his ability to forestwalk.
- Though the Lion does speculate on it, the exact nature of the forest, and its connection to Caliban, remain a mystery.
- 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.
- Lohoc's insistence on never showing his face is called out as strange multiple times, but the book ultimately ends without explaining it.
- Run the Gauntlet: At the end of the book, the Lion faces a shapeshifter that takes the form of each of his brothers in succession, forcing the Lion to fight them all one by one.
- Shapeshifter: The Lion encounters one in the forest; it takes the form of each of his brothers in turn, forcing the Lion to fight them.
- Shout-Out: The Chaos champion Markog plays out Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with Zabriel. He also ends up getting his limbs chopped off in the order of left arm, right arm and legs just like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- Sole Survivor: The members of the Lion Guard wind up being this for Camarth.
- Space Pirates: Borz and his small group of Fallen took up the life of piracy after they returned to the linear time, though he insists he always prioritized hunting Chaos ships over civillians, and he and his group eagerly abandon their criminal pursuits and join the Lion's forces when given the chance.
- Spell My Name with a "The": When not referred to as "Lord Lion" or "Lion El'Jonson", he's always called the Lion by the narration, regardless of the point of view character.
- Stop Worshipping Me: Defied. The Lion is initially put off by the (new to him) Emperor- and Primarch-centric faith the Imperium now practices, but eventually decides that if the humans want to pray to someone, better it be him that Chaos, and passively allows their worship.
- Survivor Guilt: Though underplayed, the Lion has shades of this.Why should I have been the one to survive? Out of all of us, why should it have been me?
- We Can Rule Together: At one point, Baelor extends to Zabriel the offer to join the Thousand Eyes; Zabriel, of course, immediately rejects him.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The Lion Guard are last heard of when their homeworld of Camarth is wrecked; while they are known to have survived, they're never mentioned again after that point.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The book is filled to brim with Arthurian Legend references, with the Lion playing King Arthur, many of his Fallen (such as Kai, Guain, Borz, and Galad) being named after the Knights of the Round Table, and the plot centering about the Lion's wayward son using magic to try and kill him. And then there is the literal "Fisher King" who the Lion is told "he did not ask the correct question" at the beginning. The plot even briefly veers into recreating the legend of the Green Knight, although funnily enough, it's Zabriel rather than Guain who plays the role of Gawain.
