Editing Leman Russ (section)

==Burning of Prospero and the Horus Heresy==
When that bitch-ass [[Horus]] started whining and crying, Leman Russ and his Legion were on their way to Prospero to bring Magnus the Red to Terra for questioning. Horus intercepted the message and re-worded it to order Russ to destroy Magnus and his Thousand Sons, and interestingly Russ found when they arrived at Prospero he didn't want to do that. He decided to go against the orders he thought were legit, and instead detain him and his legion so that they could be transported to Terra (ironically doing exactly what his legit orders were by going against what he thought they were), but when Magnus refused to answer the phone and the Thousand Sons' calls were all being blocked by the Primarch (and by a Tzeentch Daemon in disguise) he became more and more annoyed, and eventually he was pissed off enough that he and the Space Wolves carried out a class-10 clusterfucking on Prospero (aided along a bit by Magnus himself lowering his planet's defenses because he wanted to atone for his wrongdoings in the dumbest fucking way possible). It should have ended with the glorious finale where Leman Russ himself lifted Magnus the Red over his shoulders and broke the sorcerer's back over his knee (rumour has it that Russ could be heard shouting “Ah yes. I was wondering what would break first: your spirit… or your body!”...turns out it was both at the same time!). But even so, the red bastard managed to utter one single word of power and escaped through the fucking ground. Russ was so enraged that he ordered the 13th company of Space Wolves to pursue the fleeing Thousand Sons through their pansy-ass portals.

This said, winning the Battle of Prospero left a bitter taste in Russ' mouth and complicated things for the Wolves in the long run. First of all, despite his reputation as the Emperor's Executioner, fighting Magnus took a serious toll on Russ. Rumour has it, that during the battle between those two demigods Magnus, by psychic means, laid his heart and mind bare to Russ, revealing that he knew not only every blow that was coming from his brother, but everything that he had come to know, accepting his failure and his fate, which was defeat. In the recently published Horus Heresy novel Wolfsbane Magnus' last words to Russ are finally revealed "You are a sword in the wrong hands. You have severed an innocent neck." In other words: Magnus was even aware that the wolves had been manipulated into wiping the Thousand Sons out, instead of detaining them and bringing them back to Terra (but not aware he wasn't actually innocent), and the idiot just let it happen instead of talking to Russ who wanted to ignore his orders and detain the Sons, in order to bring them back to Terra.

It will be interesting to see how GW tries to fill the logic gap regarding the hatred of Magnus towards the wolves now, considering he obviously *knew* that Russ had been manipulated into killing Magnus and the entirety of the Burning of Prospero is directly his fault. One easy way out would be the loss of the shard of Magnus that held his nobility which was absorbed by Ianus (first grandmaster of the Grey Knights, a former Thousand Son that was in the process of succumbing to the flesh change when this little "accident" occurred), but most fans would prefer a more convincing explanation. Seeing a hypergenius like Magnus hating the Space Wolves for destroying his legion - irrespective of the fact that he *knew* that they had been manipulated into doing so and the fact that he intentionally chose for his legion to be destroyed - makes less sense with Magnus' added layer of remorse and self-awareness. Then again, said hypergenius, even at his best and most complete, had a monumental know-it-all complex, a lot of pride in his life's work, and a long history of mutual scorn with Russ. That, plus the fact that Primarchs are not known for [[Konrad Curze|making]] [[Rogal Dorn|rational]] and [[Perturabo|empathic]] [[Angron|decisions]] [[Horus Heresy|with one another]], might help explain some of it.
[[File:Battle_of_Trisolian.jpg|280px|thumb|right|Only room for one wolf pelt wearing Primarch in this universe.]]
Either way, the events of Prospero shook the Wolf King deeply, but Russ decided to carry on and try to make the best of a real clusterfuck of a situation. (An Inquisitor once called it an "emo phase" in front of a Rune Priest, and was fed balls-first to a Thunderwolf.) Not long after that, the news of the Drop Site Massacre reached the Wolves; which was another blow for the Wolf King. In his own words, Russ felt he'd been "in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing", wasting his time and men fighting an eventually futile battle instead of standing with his brother Primarchs against the real threat. Just to make things worse, the [[Battle of the Alaxxes Nebula|Alpha Legion turned up to batter the Wolves]] and prevent them from heading to Terra and helping Big E. As the rotten cherry on top of an already really bad cake, the White Scars, who'd been bros with the Thousand Sons and had no idea why Russ had just decided to fuck them up royally seemingly out of the blue, weren't going to help them after Prospero. But the [[Dark Angels]] of all people aided the Wolves in fighting off the Alpha Legion, letting the Wolves damage their fleet to an impressive degree. A plus here was that [[Bjorn the Fell-Handed]] came to his attention, setting the young warrior on the path to ironclad badassness. This said, when he went to Yarant to fight the main Traitor advance, Russ was badly injured, entering a coma and giving Bjorn temporary command of the Legion. He bought Dorn and the Emperor more time.

One of the key reasons that the Wolves fared so badly against the Alpha legion fleet is that the Wolves, as a legion, had badly neglected their void combat abilities; they were pretty terrible when it came to ship to ship combat. The Wolves considered it to be a boring and ‘unmanly’ way of fighting; only weak and cowardly people would want to fight at such long ranges- the true warrior wants to be eye to eye with his opponent when he kills him. Their fleet was considered to be more of a glorified taxi service than a way of fighting the enemy, a means to get their warriors from one battlefield to the next, and not much more. They would come to regret such an attitude, and would seek to correct this gap in their combat abilities.

After he escaped from the Alpha legion Russ limped back to Terra with what remained of his legion were he stayed for a few months doing repair’s and restocking. Despite his brothers asking him to remain so he could fight beside them when Horus finally arrived, Russ told them to fuck off, as he had no intention of staying on Terra. Russ took up the spear he hated so much and went on a suicidal mission, aimed at Horus himself. The Wolves made great progress until Russ stood before Horus himself. The two brothers fought and Russ was able to wound Horus with the spear, but didn’t follow through (the spear would have some interesting effects on Horus, but eventually would be the thing that would course Horus to fully embrace Chaos completely). Horus shrugged off the wound initially and preceded to beat Russ into the ground, if not for his wolves sacrificing themselves to allow his marines to drag him away he would have died. It was then that the wolves realized that their success in getting to Horus had been a trap, Horus had allowed them to get to him, but now the trap was sprung and the Sons of Horus swarmed the Wolves. By the time the wolves had carried Russ to his ship and escaped, the legion had been devastated. He had done exactly what he had accused Angron of doing, being so focused on fighting Horus that he had walked straight into a trap that had himself and his marines greatly outnumbered and surrounded- his tunnel vision had led his legion to destruction, like a lamb to slaughter.

Corax would discover his heavily wounded brother, on the brink of death, and would nurse him back to health. The Lion would encounter his brothers on his path of destruction of the traitors territories. The Lion would question what Corax had been doing all this time, but Russ would defend the Raven lord by explaining that Corax had saved his life. Russ and what remained of his legion would join the Lion on his campaign, but Corax did not, providing what forces he could.

Both Russ and the Lion would eventually arrive at Terra for the final climax, charging into the traitor forces and driving them back, but they would be to late to save the Emperor.

From a story perspective Russ’s personal journey through out the Heresy is a good one; he starts out during the Great Crusade and early Heresy as a brash, hot head that charged straight ahead, with a reckless confidence that was frankly unearned (his actions seen to have mostly made a bad situation worse); believing that he had the right to tell his fellow Primarchs what to do. He was quick to anger and had an itchy trigger finger- all to quick to throw his weight around, and although not stupid he had, by his own admittance, bought into his own hype; he had worn the guise of the ignorant savage for so long, that it had become apart of him. His pride and blind confidence made him an easy target for Horus to manipulate- it had been so easy to use Russ’s own self-image as the Emperor’s chosen weapon against him. The Heresy might as well have been Horus taking all of Russ’s faults and forming them into a fist, which he then preceded to punch Russ repeatedly in the face. By the end of the Heresy Russ had seen first hand the cost of his failings, he had been beaten down and humbled, he had failed, but at the end he emerged wiser then before. He and his legion would no longer be the blunt weapon that they were before, no longer a weapon to be thrown blindly at the enemy without question, no the wolves would reforge themselves a new identity, as heroes that the common citizens of the Imperium could look to for hope and protection (they might eventually go a bit overboard with the whole wolf thing and lack of personal hygiene, but you can’t get everything right).

Oh and Empy totally gave him a spear after most of the Terran members of his original legion died fighting various gribbly xenos. Including Tyranids. Yup. Said spear was tossed into a certain Daemon Primarchs single eye, thereby preventing him from manifesting in reality AND resurrecting his legion. Russ totally hated this spear btw. At one point Russ tried to hit a moon orbiting some planet (he was drunk, don't judge) and the spear was lost for months [[troll|but since it had been a gift from Big.E the Wolves did spend said months searching for it]]. In the novel "Wolfsbane" and the short story "Two Metaphysical Blades," it's revealed he was secretly fearful of the spear and purposefully avoided using it while claiming he was a short range fighter that preferred swords and axes; "forgetting" it at conferences before people brought it back. He later uses it and became fond of it as a weapon after a trip into the Warp revealed its intended purpose in parallel with his role. Later he uses said spear to [[Battle of Trisolian|fight]] chaos-empowered Horus, after another try to get rid of it. He manages to stop the Warmaster with it, but then he acts like a fucking idiot, instead of just killing Horus and ending the rebellion then and there, he tries to reach out to Horus' good side and gets fucked up because of it.

Funny thing, that spear. It's actually the twin of another spear, the Apollonian Spear, wielded by the commander of the Custodes, Constantin Valdor. Russ's spear is known by many names, including Gungnir (the spear of Odin), simply the Spear of Russ, and others. But, this spear and its twin were both crafted by Big E and infused with parts of His psychic insight, so before any of those other names it was called the Dionysian spear. Now, this is a bit of a deep cut on GWs part, but the Apollonian and Dionysian actually refers to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (feeling lost yet?), who was in turn writing about the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. In Nietzsche's philosophy, the Apollonian is representative of everything bright and individual, meaning life and the person living it, as well as order and stability. The Dionysian, however, is representative of the primordial state from which all things originally emerge, the CHAOTIC nothingness from which the individual Apollonian springs forth. So, bringing it back to 40k, the Apollonian spear of Constantin Valdor can impart the memories of the person it kills to its wielder, capturing that individual and orderly moment. When inquired by Valdor, the Emperor intended it to be a tool to make Valdor understand his foes and as a check to keeping from getting too arrogant. What does Russ's spear, the Dionysian spear do? Well, we really don't know, but if the novel Wolfsbane is anything to go by, it seems that at least a couple people believe it's the weapon best suited for killing a Primarch. As seen with how the spear stabbed Russ and showed him how horrifying the truth of the Primarchs' origins were and how it erased all the corruption temporarily from Horus' mind, it's certainly a potent and terrifying weapon. And since the Primarchs are essentially the Emperor's Own Daemonkin, it stands to reason that the Dionysian Spear was designed by the Emperor to destroy the soul of the Primarchs and return them to the primal Chaos from which they originated. This in turn gives with Russ's word of being the Emperor's "executioner".