Editing Perturabo (section)

==The Great Crusade==
[[File:Perturabo.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Resentment and hatred even Angron could learn from....[[Derp|also, Christ! Look at how tiny his head is...and all that empty space...]]]]

When they first met on the mountains of Olympia, the Emperor looked into Perturabo's mind and named him his '''Lord of Iron'''. He placed enough faith in Perturabo to expect him to do all of the unrelenting, indefatigable and thankless tasks, knowing full well the starry-eyed Perturabo was entirely sold on this whole "utopia" idea and would do ''anything'' to see it through. So if daddy needed a general, Perturabo was going to damn well give him a general, applying himself in the same clinical, detached and heartless manner that he always did. The utopian dream of the Imperium came first, all other "human" foibles came second.

Though while it's certainly easy to [[Angron|blame]] [[Mortarion|everything]] on E-Money, it's also possible that Perty stage-managed some of his own reputation. In essence, painting himself as "the hard man making hard choices and sacrifices for the greater good", because (like an [[Edgy|edgy]] teenager's first foray into [[World of Darkness]]) he thought that would make him DEEP and RESPECTED. Not necessarily a hard leap in logic; he was raised as a siegemaster in a ruthless culture, and was now part of a galaxy-spanning conquest that necessitated the spending of lives, with lots of rhetoric on the glory of sacrificing your lives for the Emprah. So why not play to his strengths? However, this idea would run into a major setback because, despite his undeniable intellect and mastery, Perturabo never really got that whole 'willing sacrifice' garbage, and tended to fixate on the end result over the means to get there. From his clearly superior perspective, why should he care about how willing the rank and file were to give their lives for the cause? They're ''soldiers''. [[Imperial Guard|They knew what they signed up for]]. Duty was something you did without complaint, and expecting praise for it was just [[Fulgrim|illogical vainglory]]...which is ironic considering how much validation and acclaim Pert craved for his every deed.

But the thing is, sacrifice is worth more [[Vulkan|when it is done willingly]] (otherwise it's coercion), and often [[Sanguinius|at the cost of something valuable]] (otherwise it's cheap), and you certainly [[Lion El'Jonson|never make others pay a price you would never pay yourself]], let alone in your place (otherwise it's hypocritical). And by that measure, Perturabo's approach could hardly be considered willing or valuable. Even when taking on jobs as a calculated move to gain 'respect' for being 'dutiful' (when he wasn't, admittedly, being handed shitty but vital assignments), he still did it resentfully while expecting you to bow at his feet for deigning to even fulfill your request. And as to the value of what he spent to achieve the greater goal, despite resenting how others looked down on his 'sons', he never actually showed that he valued them as anything other than tools and extensions of his will (even if he felt it); hard to convince others that you're giving up something precious when you're spending lives like an [[Video_Games|RPG player selling all the copper swords in their inventory]].

Compared to his brothers, Perturabo spent a surprisingly short period of time on Terra learning how the Imperium functioned and was put in command of his Legion within a year. After he was reunited with his Legion, he went full Tyrant himself. His ''first'' act as Commander was to familiarize himself with the history of his Legion; his ''second'' was to enact the ancient tradition of [[Exterminatus|Decimation]], where one in ten soldiers (determined by lottery) would be beaten to death by the other nine. Most of the other Primarchs declared that Perturabo was insane, but the Emperor let it slide as Perturabo's reasoning was: ''"[[What|Not that they had failed... instead they had not reached their potential.]]"'' Therefore it was not enough to be merely superior, but Perturabo decided that his legion should be supreme. [[Roboute Guilliman]] was particularly critical of this, as he had personally known several of the Iron Warriors selected to die and objected to what he viewed as their unnecessary deaths.

It's worth noting that decimation originally applied to serious offenses like mutiny, or a humiliating defeat, not just being subpar. However the Legion (without their Primarch) had just finished the disastrous liberation of Incaladion, a campaign where their own stubbornness and determination to slog through whatever the Crusade could throw at them and doing what other legions couldn't had backfired on them. Their plan unraveled but they continued anyway, throwing more and more bodies at the problem until it finally caved in. This lead to immense casualties in a single engagement - some 29,000 frontline units, including many veterans of the legion, and something like 2 million imperial army soldiers. It was deemed unnecessarily costly, and both damaged and shamed the Legion's largest expeditionary fleet. So a humiliating victory rather than a humiliating defeat led to Perturabo calling for decimation. The casualties from this campaign also meant that Perturabo only met about 35,000 of his sons (with about half that number again scattered around the galaxy), meaning the decimation casualties were about three and a half thousand. While this does put things a little bit in perspective and somewhat provides a justification for such punishment, it was still a needlessly brutal and [[Assholetep|asshole-ish]] move.

Interestingly, while mostly written to showcase Perturabo's ruthless and calculating nature, it also contrasts him against Guilliman quite neatly. Guilliman may have also been an organizational savant (also from a Greco-Roman culture...IN SPACE) who planned campaigns and battles meticulously, but he valued his sons and comrades keenly and wanted to avoid wasting lives in his strategies. Pert, by contrast, treated the Iron Warriors like bolter rounds, and only ever played the 'my poor sons I had to sacrifice' card when he was fishing for pity or admiration without actually doing anything to, you know, spare them from painful, meaningless deaths. As a somewhat intriguing aside, one of Perturabo's only non-war related constructions was a magnificent clocktower that he made for Guilliman. Guilliman quite appreciated the tower, and in fact liked it so much that he had it displayed in the center of Macragge's capital city. Whether this happened before or after Perturabo decimated his Legion is unknown, but the clocktower was never dismantled. Even after the Heresy, Guilliman kept it where it was and in one piece (current status in the 42nd millenium unknown).

His cold, mechanical restructuring of his legion can also be compared to many of his other brothers, as most of the Primarchs had a tendency to remake their forces to suit their preferences in culture and tactics. All said and done, Perturabo didn't actually fundamentally change the stubborn, dogged determination and technical expertise of the IVth Legion (unlike Vulkan and Guilliman, who DID take the stubborn, dogged determination of their men and tempered it with good judgement); he simply made it more ruthlessly efficient and enhanced it with his logistical and technological prowess, and arguably made it worse by fostering a culture of paranoia while micromanaging his troops to such a degree that many (though not all) of his officers were more worried about appearing indispensable than being independently competent. In essence, he took the ''easy'' way out by running the legion as if it was an Olympian war machine on a galactic scale, doing what came easily to him and fitting in some influence from his culture ([[Lulz|iron-ically]], in a manner similar to Ferrus Manus reforging the Xth Legion's hearty valor into a belligerent engine of war). By contrast, he had brothers who took the time to reforge their sons into more [[Blood Angels|noble]], [[White Scars|united]], [[Space Wolves|disciplined]], or [[Raven Guard|humanitarian]] legions, even though the process took time and effort. This makes his initial decimation of his Legion all the more retarded, as despite killing a tenth of his own men for suffering too many casualties through stubborn attrition, Perturabo [[derp|didn't fundamentally change anything about the way his men fought]]. Though to be fair, he wasn't the only one whose reorganizations weren't always for the better; veteran [[Word Bearers|Imperial Heralds]] hated being turned from fedora-tipping church burners into Lorgar's Space Bible study group, while the valiant [[Death Guard|Dusk Raiders]] were at odds with the toxic work environment of jockeying for Mortarion's favor. The Iron Hands had once gone out of their way to avoid collateral damage and casualties amongst their allies, but upon Ferrus Manus's arrival, his obsession with strength caused them to disregard civilians nearly as much as the Iron Warriors themselves. And of course, Angron sucked so hard at leading that the [[World Eaters|War Hounds]] turned themselves into frothing berserkers just to try and be closer to him (and they failed).

However, while his faults as a general and a father are significant, it's important to note that firstly, Perturabo's reputation wasn't all bad depending on who you asked (however small a minority they were), and secondly, those same faults of his [[/tg/ gets shit done|GOT SHIT DONE]]. His achievements, whether through ice-cold calculation or phenomenal logistical brilliance, are well-documented here, so even if he was unimaginative and brutal, he was undeniably effective. He considered his own friendship as something that was hard to earn but impossible to break, and even befriended Magnus while possibly earning the respect of the Lion, who was arguably just as exacting in his standards and tightfisted with his praise, but whom at least acknowledged the men of his legion as his sons, and that he loved as such (albeit typically only ever in private). And even though he never actually demonstrated his love for his sons in any way that mattered, the Iron Warriors (at least those that didn't fear or resent him) looked up to Pert as a slayer of monsters (starting with when he first took command and slew the Black Judges) and toppler of tyrants, a distant, godlike father figure they fought and died for just so that they might live up to his standards and maybe, just maybe, get a "Great job, champ" from him. They felt this way about their Primarch ''all the way up to the actual uprising of Olympia'' even through serving under his remorseless command for a large part of the Great Crusade.

At the time of the Crusade, Perturabo was a busy boy building citadels and forts on the planets that he had conquered, leaving always a small garrison behind. In the end it became a stereotype that the Iron Warriors had the best army for sieges. He was also kept far away by the other Primarchs, mainly because Perturabo had so much badass technology they did not possess and also because Big E wasn't too keen on having him ramble on about all this "democracy and peace" garbage. Perturabo had a big hard-on for Leonardo Da Vinci and spent much time searching the ruins of Old Earth for copies of his surviving journals, gathering his hidden papers and learning of the works he pursued in private. If the Emprah had named Perturabo his Praetorian and given him at least a share of the job fortifying the Imperial Palace, the Lord of Iron would've been a far happier camper.

One of Perturabo's most well known characteristics is his his hatred for [[Rogal Dorn]]. Their quarrels were equivalent to the typical sibling rivalry: while Dorn was [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Daddy's]] Golden boy, Perturabo served as the incredibly jealous brother who just wants to tear his brother limb from limb. Another reason why he was jealous of Dorn was due to Perturabo considering himself an architect and builder but left to destroy everything instead while Dorn did what Perturabo wanted to be doing. The most iconic incident occurred when Fulgrim asked Dorn if he could build a fortress that Perturabo couldn't crack; Dorn answered "Yes" and Perturabo threw a fit and left. Dorn also said this of Perturabo, "Perturabo throws men at walls. If the Araakites (opponents of that campaign) so much as thought a wall he would pelt it with our legionaries as if there were no other way." This strained relationship was far, far worse on Perturabo's end than on Dorn's. Dorn apparently thought, for the majority of the Crusade, that his rivalry with Perturabo was a friendly one, whereas Perturabo just straight up despised Dorn. Dorn and Perturabo were both completely retarded when it came to social matters however. As such, Dorn seemingly just didn't catch on to the fact that Perturabo hated him so much, and Perturabo never actually confronted Dorn about it at any point.

Perturabo also had an inferiority complex and was frustrated by the limited opportunities he and his Legion got to prove themselves-- as creatives they actually relished garrison duty, trying to build the cleverest and most impenetrable strongholds. When they went on campaign, they almost always ended up besieging the toughest fortresses opposing the Imperium and vented their frustration by massacring the defenders. This also tipped Perturabo into ganging up with Horus on his brothers; at the battle of Gate 44, he accused [[Corvus Corax]] of cowardice for not wanting to march his men into a meatgrinder assault. Considering Perturabo had a hard-on for following orders without question, even if it meant death, one can see why he bitched at Corax. Unsurprisingly, this put Corvus (and probably Russ) off working with him for good, which pissed Perturabo off even more. As far as he was concerned, hurt feelings was no reason for not functioning as a proper soldier, brothers or not. Corvus, Russ, and some other Primarchs strongly leaned towards caring more about personal relations than stone-cold professionalism.

Because of this, Perturabo never got any recognition from the civilization he served for decades. Even the likes of Corvus and the Khan (aaaaaaall the way out in the periphery) found it easier to gain a reputation as heroes because they got chances to perform their deeds out in the open in front of their fellow Legions and the Imperial Army (well, you didn't see Corvus do anything, but you suddenly realized that the hostile world wasn't hostile any more, and there were still inhabitants to integrate into the Imperium). The likes of [[Angron]] and [[Mortarion]] might not have been seen as heroes, but their feats of arms were sure as shit witnessed. Even Konrad Curze at least got credit for being an absurdly effective terror weapon; anyone who so much as heard ''rumor'' of the Night Lords approaching would be begging for mercy before the VIIIth even arrived in-system. If anyone saw the Iron Warriors doing anything it was either camping on an enemy's doorstep for weeks on end while sending Army units to "identify the least defended spots" or butchering the locals after kicking the door down. All this made poor old Pert more and more frustrated. In fact, quite possibly the only brother who got less recognition for his deeds than Perturabo was ''Alpharius'', and that's because he deliberately made it so.

In a foreshadow of the Imperium's future stupidity, Perturabo never tried doing things the Imperial Fist way of directing the Legion's might against a weak point in enemy defenses to swiftly smash through and win (this is, in fact, how the Imperial Fists got their name and a large part of how they were able to Crusade so quickly and successfully). All the same, '''despite chastising his Legion for throwing men at walls when meeting them''', he refused to alter his Legion's ways and kept on throwing more men at more walls. And after having refused to take advice from his brothers, he sure as shit wouldn't take any from his sons.

The Legion's preeminent [[Warsmith]], [[Barabas Dantioch]], having seen half his Grand Company lost in a campaign against the Hrud and himself crippled and prematurely aged by the xenos' entropic powers, questioned the Primarch's choices during the campaign. Suddenly Dantioch was not Perturabo's favored son anymore and was left to rot on permanent garrison duty as a result. Ironically, this meant that the disgraced Warsmith was now busy building a unique fortress and generally enjoying his life-- exactly the kind of work Perturabo wanted to be doing. In the Hrud campaign Perturabo refused to retreat even as the Iron Warriors were '''LOSING HORRIBLY.''' Dantioch's lieutenant even advised retreating over holding a position that was impossible to hold. When Dantioch's aged frame bowed in failure before Pert, the primarch thought Dantioch was weak for failing; meanwhile Dantioch spoke only that they should have retreated, that even their victories were making the Hrud fight harder. The only thing that saved the Iron Warriors was a supply ship from Olympia with news.

At this point, it could be easily argued that Perturabo was deliberately acting terrible at Crusading because he just hated doing it and was hoping Emps or [[Malcador]] would notice how much he was putting on a struggle to get shit accomplished and assign him to anything else. After all, for all of his over the top Mary Sue shit, there's legitimately no reason that a mathematical and philosophical savant, let alone a ''Primarch'', should ever have trouble with field tactics. The Hrud problem could've been solved with a simple orbital bombardment but Pert insisted instead that his legion push themselves into the meat grinder on the ground only to end up accomplishing nothing in the end anyway. Pair that with the unprecedented squash match he had with Dorn in the Iron Cage and it seems like he's only as incompetent at combat as he's motivated to be. On that note, while Perturabo did get the bulk of his men killed over and over and over and... over, again, his logistical skill was such that this was never actually a problem for the Legion's combat effectiveness. In an incredibly grimdark example of "if it ain't broke don't fix it", Perturabo was known to regularly lose up to 90% of an attacking force in any given action. However, he would so quickly and effectively have his entire Legion restocked, resupplied, and reinforced for the next campaign that it was as if the previous losses hadn't even occurred. Since his soldiers were performing their jobs, if there was no tactical or strategic reason to change his way of making war, why bother? The answer of course is that he was getting all of his men killed, but since that seemingly never really entered his calculations in an oddly autistic sort of way, change never came. It was a bit like his men were, say, [[Age of Darkness-Warhammer 30k/2.0 Tactics/General Tactics|tabletop models]], and one does not mourn when such models are removed from play. So long as one wins, it does not matter how much of one's army was destroyed. So with regard to something like the Hrud, it may very well have simply been Pert coldly knowing that the attrition of the conflict would ultimately favor him, rather than incompetence or spite.

Worse, the rest of his brothers treated him like shit and called him a stupid hick (except [[Sanguinius]], best of men; [[Magnus the Red|Magnus]], who appreciated Perturabo's scholarly side; [[Horus]], who gets along with everyone; and [[Lorgar]] who was not in a position to despise anyone). He and his legions never got credit for their work, and even when they did it was in a half-assed kind of way. That fight with Corax above ''also'' saw him cracking an orbital defense that had withstood assaults by three different Legions, historians [[troll|recorded him as "a nameless comrade-at-arms that calculated the most efficient attack vector."]] He held it all in for a long, long time, until, after a grueling three-part campaign in which the Iron Warriors, Blood Angels, and Imperial Fists all ganged up on a Fortress World, Rogal Dorn was given a medal while Perturabo was given nothing, and a master artist showed him a masterwork painting depicting the battle, in which the Imperial Fists won a heroic victory while the Iron Warriors were '''literally''' ground face-first into the mud (then again, looking at Pert's favorite tactics, it's probably accurate). In truth, it showed a IV Legion apothecary giving a stricken warrior the Emperor's Peace with an Imperial Fists flag in the background, but there was only one way Pert could interpret it. Perturabo actually bought that painting, then ''[[rage|burned it, stamped on it and pissed on it]]'', and then when Dorn went to the artist to commission a second one, the painter wisely refused for fear of the same happening to him. And that painting, as they say, was the straw that broke the camel's back.

''Weeeell'', strictly speaking that wasn't the ''final'' straw.

That came when Olympia rose up against Imperial rule. With a little egging on from [[Word Bearers]] Chaplains sent by [[Lorgar]] to manipulate them into heresy, the Iron Warriors crushed the uprisings in a time-honored way: kill them all and let Big E sort them out! It wasn't quite Curze destroying Nostromo, but it was still pretty damn genocidal and tipped Perturabo over the edge, especially when he murdered Calliphone in a fit of rage after she pointed out that his flaws and refusal to listen to others led to his homeworld's rebellion. And when [[Horus]] came to him telling him it wasn't that bad because ultimately might makes right, Pert turned his back on the Imperium without much second thought.