I recommend starting with the 3rd Edition Rulebook and associated codexs, before skipping to the 6th edition codexs and then to the 9th Edition Rulebook and what of the codexs they've released so far because the Necron and Chaos codexs in 9th feature the buildup and fallout of the 13th Black Crusade.

Part of the problem is that by the time Horus Rising was written, it was part of a setting that had already existed with extensive storytelling within it for about 30 years. You're supposed to know who all the people in the story are already because they're major players in the history of the setting.

So you're just going to reduce him to a different completely incorrect set of stereotypes?

Nah, it's in things like his first proposal. When he's talking about how he loves Elizabeth despite not liking her and being unable to think of anything else, that's a woman's fantasy not an actual man.

I think that it is pointless to speculate on whether or not Darcy actually liked Elizabeth, because for all that Jane Austen is a brilliant satirist, she has no idea about how male attraction works and so none of the scenes which include Darcy have him come across as a real and functional man.

Not that any other women romance writer I have read is any better.

Shame on you for not realising that the naming of their albums was meaningful.

Like the lyrics to 'Rattlesnake'

Internal Consistency and the Suspension of Disbelief.

These are major issues within the fantasy writing sphere, because you're trying to get people to believe something that is inherently unbelievable. A large part of getting people to suspend disbelief over the fantastical things is ensuring that all the normal things behave in exactly the way that the responders to the artwork expect.

And people are not just randomly black. It's the result of evolutionary selection for specific traits over long periods of time. So if all the elves are black, well that's just black elves. If one elf is black, what's different about this one? Where's the rest of their family? What historical differences are there? If you don't at least acknowledge that (Like Shakespeare did in Othello) you've just put a crack in the suspension of disbelief.

That is of course putting aside the novel context, where JRR Tolkien explicitly described the elves as white. Not just a bit white, full on 'albino covered in white paint' white.