Fabius Bile

Told you.

"Unlike you, whelp, I once walked the same ground as your Idol. I breathed the same air as him. And I tell you this, without lie or artifice. He never wanted to become what you have made him! He did not wish to be your god-thing. He abhorred such ideals! The slavery of your crippled, blind Imperium would sicken him, if he had eyes to see it."

– Fabius Bile, telling it like it is to Rafen of the Blood Angels, Black Tide

"I was building another science, my science, wild science, robots and lasers and disembodied brains. A science that buzzed and glowed; it wanted to do things. It could get up and walk, fly, fight, sprout garish glowing creations in the remotest parts of the world, domes and towers and architectural fever dreams. And it was angry. It was mad science."

– Dr. Impossible - Soon I Will Be Invincible

Fabius Bile (Fabulous Bill or simply "Bob") is the mad scientist to end all mad scientists (since to the Haemonculi science comes second to pain). He's got a lab coat made of human skin and a pimpin' staff.

He is also absolutely fabulous BLAM! Heresy!!!.

He has the ability to hook up with a squad and pump them full of his pimp cane juice, making them get on board the Rape Train and head right for the front cabin. His pimp cane also causes Instant Death, though it counts as a regular weapon so anything with decent armor's likely to survive against him (very bad given that counting the CSM codex, six of the armies out right now are MEQ, with the Necrons also being close behind). Put him in with a squad of Berserkers or Possessed who scored themselves power weapons and stuff them in a Land Raider. It's time to rev the Fun Bus the fuck up and have yourselves a party.

(That said, he's still a pretty sick fuck.)

The Great Crusade

Before joining the ill-fated Terran part of the Emperor's Children, Fabius grew up in a wealthy family on Terra, apparently happily. One of his families retainers was a man who created intricate toys of chimerical monstrosities which delighted a young Fabius. He also taught baby Fabi how to alter white mice into performing tricks and theatrical routines, which always went wrong when they reverted to the bestial instincts and tore each other apart. Little Fabius got frustrated with this but the whole thing served as a preface to his later work. Never let it be said that creepy fuckery doesn't start young.

After being inducted into the legion, Fabius swiftly rose through the ranks and became the Chief Apothecary. Before Fulgrim was rediscovered, the legion was afflicted by a degenerative geneseed flaw known as the Blight - a progressive form of cancer that caused random tumors in both bones and organs. Fabius was tasked with finding a cure, lest the flaw wipe out the Emperor's Children to a man. He gradually became more morose as his work only led to failure (as well as prompting his future experimental streak). All the Terran marines of the Legion were susceptible to the disease and Fabius was forced to euthanize a lot of his friends and comrades, leading to him seeking solitude away from his battle-brothers.

It turns out that a cure was never actually found, and that reuniting with their Primarch on Chemos (really GW? You literally put the cancer marines on chemo? - The homeworld was named before the blight part of the fluff was fleshed out.) only served to provide fresh material for "untainted" Space Marines. All those who suffered the flaw were put to death in an attempt to prevent any infection from reaching the healthy brethren... Except for Fabius himself who was in a position to falsify his medical records. His prognosis was that he only had about a year to live, but had developed a process of temporarily rejuvenating himself using elixirs distilled from enzymes and proteins drawn from dead Astartes, and quite possibly including those who never even suffered the flaw either.

The Legion as a whole had a obsession with perfection as a general concept but Fabius' first forays into bodily experimentation came when the Legion assaulted Laeran, a world of reptilian creatures who were gene-engineered to perfectly carry out a specific task. Bewitched by the idea, Fabius eventually began to perform discrete experiments on trying to improve the gene-seed even before the Horus Heresy started. It didn't take long for Fulgrim to find out, but he gave Fabius his blessing as long as it didn't bring Imperial censure upon the Legion. Of course, once the Heresy was underway, prudence and discretion were thrown to the wind and Fabius' enhancements became in high demand amongst the Emperor's Children.

During the opening movements of the Isstvaan Massacre (taking place before the actual murder-party itself) Fabius ended up saving the life of Nathaniel Garro, who would eventually go on to alert the Imperium to the Heresy. In retrospect that would probably make Fabius a dead man walking otherwise.

The Heresy

After turning full traitor, Fabulous Vile became the go-to guy for any kind of enhancement, to the extent that there were not many Emperor's Children in the legion who had not been under his knives in some form or other. He was part of the inner cabal of legion figureheads who attempted to exorcise Fulgrim and even found the time to fiddle around with mixing geneseed together (something unheard of at the time), eventually leading to a certain fellow called Honsou. He toyed around with both the original anathame and the incomplete (and corrupted) Primarch genome data Omegon 'acquired' from the Raven Guard. It was during this time that he first started on his hobby of turning men, and women, and traitor Marines and loyalist Marines and basically anything that had the misfortune of coming into contact with him into horrifying inhuman monsters, something he refined considerably over the following millennia.

When Fulgrim was being mopey over the death of his once-BFF Ferrus Manus, it was Fabius that tried to clone the dead Primarch back to life so Fulgrim and him could be BFF again... Except even the clones of Ferrus refused to turn to Chaos and had to be killed by Fulgrim, to the latter's unending butthurt and rage. (He believed Fabius was producing flawed clones on purpose just to spite him, yet kept on ordering him to create more!). It was from this episode that he received his surname from a daemon ascended Fulgrim, who accused him of being "full of bile". Somehow, Chaos Gods know why, the name stuck.

At some point in the Heresy, Fabius did something unprecedented outside of the most twisted fan-fiction. He created a "daughter", from his own gene code, which he named Melusine. At the time, she was the pinnacle of his work on creating life but something in her making went horribly wrong and Fulgrim ordered her to be cast into the warp out of fear of what she might become. Let that sink in for a bit. Melusine then went on to wander the realm of Slaanesh, where she became demonic in the process. She would occasionally give vague warnings to Fabius in the future, holding some loyalty to her "father".

Post-Heresy

While the Emperor's Children became wholehearted devotees of Slaanesh, Fabius didn't turn into a hedonistic sense addict but rather rejected the Chaos Gods despite being aligned to Chaos, though he insists on constantly arguing that there are no 'gods' even to the chaos devoted. To Fabius, Chaos was but a tool; the means to an end. Still, at first he stuck with his Legion. Because the Emperor's Children weren't much involved in the actual siege of Emperor's Palace itself (they were too busy butchering civilians), they were in a strong position during the "Legion Wars" that raged in the Eye of Terror after the Heresy and could supply Fabius with what he needed.

Despite their relative strength, the legion itself was divided between following Fulgrim, Eidolon, and Lucius and soon earned the ire of all other Traitor Legions due to their nasty habit of raiding them for slaves. Nevertheless, the Emperor's Children had some successes, leading them to defeat the Sons of Horus and Fabius retrieving the Warmaster's body. Horus' body provided him with a wealth of information on top of what he'd gotten from Omegon and the body of Ferrus Manus, and he succeeded in creating a viable albeit diminished 'clone' of the Warmaster (Horus' soul being annihilated by Big.E prevented a complete resurrection). Emboldened, Fabius then attempted to create clones of all of the Primarchs and live up to his self-proclaimed title of 'Primogenitor'. He was well on his way to succeed, too, but then Abaddon arrived to fuck his shit up. Horus' clone was killed by Abaddon and Fabius' labs utterly ruined even though he managed to escape.

After the Legion stronghold of Harmony was destroyed by the nascent Black Legion and Fulgrim went AWOL (either doing drugs with his patron God/dess and/or having fun on his personal planet), Fabius was one of the few authority figures left capable of keeping things together. Many looked to the mad scientist to take command of what was left of the Emperor's Children Legion. Fabius, at that point completely estranged from them, refused. Command would only be a burden keeping him from his research. Eventually, the rest of the Emperor's Children drove Fabius out of the Legion, but by that point his skill in cloning meant that he had plenty of opportunities to gain new subjects for experimentation while providing clones for the remaining Chaos Space Marines to make recruits from. Fabius Bile became a free agent, obeying none but himself and his hunger for knowledge; staying alive and free by offering his services as an Apothecary.

An amusing 'anecdote' about Bile, that just shows how fabulous he is, is that (like his old pal Lucius), he got himself captured by the Dark Eldar at one point after the Heresy. Instead of pissing himself in fear at the thought of whatever awaited them like every other prisoner, he just frowned with annoyance at the setback and kept on experimenting. On his fellow prisoners. With whatever he had on hand. This unusual behaviour made another bunch of sick fucks raise an eyebrow in curiosity and they invited the 'mere mon-keigh' for a pleasant chat between academics. Although Bile was but a novice at cutting and reshaping things painfully compared to the haemonculi, his knowledge of the Warp allowed him to conclude a mutually beneficent pact with them. He concocted an elixir that allowed the haemonculi to craft and keep alive a mobile tower made of the flesh and bones of their still-living victims, giving them a base of operations that existed in constant agony and fed their shrivelled souls. In exchange, they let Fabius go unharmed after giving him a few pointers for his own research. Yup. Bile managed to be enough of a sick fuck that even a bunch of the most twisted Dark Eldar nodded in appreciation.

Present Day

Bile has kept himself busy since leaving the Emperor's Children behind. Most of his time is spent on the world of Urum, where he set up a loose organisation called the Consortium, a research facility / playground / artist's commune for other Chaos Apothecaries to practice their art in relative peace (and also partly addressing why there aren't many Apothecaries in the Traitor Legions any more). Despite having only very little time to live during the Heresy, he's survived through the millennia by cloning and jumping bodies on a regular basis, although the flaw in his geneseed will keep on being replicated and get progressively worse. He estimates that he'll only live for another few centuries, which he'll spend finding a cure and finishing his great work.

A major part of his "great work" is to create and perfect a new human race - the imaginatively named "New Men" - who would be superior to the Astartes and reclaim the galaxy from both chaos and xenos. The closest attempt he's made thus far are known as Glandhounds - men AND women who are far stronger and more intelligent than regular humans, have very strong pack instincts and use them to bring down much larger prey. Like Traitor Astartes Fabius doesn't like. Unlike other examples of master-race creators in fiction, he seems entirely unconcerned about being the ruler of the new race or even being around himself when it comes about. It doesn't sound like a bad idea in itself but it goes without saying that old humanity would not be permitted to coexist with his new race. It's partly why he allows Nurgulite apothecaries to join his Consortium, as their work on viruses and plagues would allow him to clear out old humanity before letting his New Men move in, all inoculated naturally.

It's hinted that he may have had something to do with the Obliterator virus (aka the turn-your-body-into-a-living-cannon virus) and there are rumors that he had a hand in screwing up the 21st Founding as well, although this hasn't been mentioned in canon past oblique references.

Bile isn't a fan of Chaos, mainly for its role in destroying what little cohesion the Emperor's Children had post-Heresy. He also sees its corrupting influence as running counter to his great work. He's also critical of the Emperor (beyond the usual traitor reasons) for stifling the growth of humanity as a psychic race. Fabius is oddly egalitarian for a mad scientist, complaining that the Emperor was foolish to only let geneseed work on men. Amusingly, he draws comparisons between himself and the Emperor as both are creatoers of new races who often insist on worshiping them as gods. Another thing about him is that due to his attitude towards the Chaos Gods and his focus on science, he is the only known Chaos Space Marine that has kept faithful to the tenets of the Imperial Truth, even though he is no longer faithful to the Imperium or the Emperor. He believes that what men call "Chaos Gods" are truly just mindless cosmic forces that are ascribed personalities by those driven insane by the Warp, and that Daemons are entities that, although seeming to be intelligent, ultimately lack self-awareness. He will even argue to daemons themselves that the gods are not real.

The sheer irony that Fabious Bile of all people is trying to save humanity from Chaos and aliens and to push humanity forward into a new state of power which would ensure mankind's survival and dominance is just...holy shit. So, doesn't that make him secretly a good guy? Just in "the ends justify the means" taken up way past eleven. More like past nine thousand with some of the nauseating stuff he's done.

He has an odd place in the very loose and volatile hierarchy of the Traitor Legions, being both incredibly unpopular (he is wanted dead by the Dark Council of the Word Bearers and Fulgrim himself, isn't exactly on good terms with Abaddon after his Horus-cloning shenanigans and portions of almost every other Traitor Legion would appreciate voicing their viewpoint on his work ethics tactfully) and highly in demand for his skills (his knowledge of geneseed has saved more than one Traitor Legion from going completely extinct on multiple occasions). In other words, he's the smug, insufferable old coot everyone hates, but the guy is just too damn useful and knowledgeable to be retired.

As with a lot of big characters from earlier editions, his portrayal in the fluff is pretty inconsistent, varying between cackling mad scientist, sadistic torturer for the giggles, stern extremist, goal-obsessed manipulator, and weirdly paternal visionary. One audio adaptation gives him a thetting lisp, which is bafflingly amusing when imagining a space marine, let alone one using sexual torture devices on a Primarch. Then again, he is jumping bodies a lot..

Since the introduction of the Primaris Marines he has become obsessed with getting his hands on them, so he can experiment and created his own "improved" versions of them.

In recent fluff it is notable that he successfully cloned and raised Fulgrim, acquired a cache of pure Gene-seed and had a nice, constructive exchange with Trazyn the Infinite. It seemed good ole Trollzyn wanted a genuine Primarch for his collection, and that Fabius could still be a perfectly reasonable man willing to barter despite the whole 'mad scientist' thing. It probably helped that Necrons can't be experimented upon any longer, though...

Attack of the Clones

Bile has a hard-on for cloning technology, and has a track record for making copies of himself and others. The latest fluff reveals that he is patterning and copying his mind over to fresh bodies and has done so hundreds of times over the years. The direct implication of this is that the original Bile probably died a long time ago and that there could even be more than one Bile going around the Galaxy. It also explains why he keeps cloning himself into his own Blight ravaged body - he would be more than capable of making a far better body but then he wouldn't be certain that the new body wouldn't effect his mind and go off and do something different, contrary to his great work.

His first attempt was actually to clone Ferrus Manus since Fulgrim was feeling a bit guilty and wanted a do-over on turning his brother to chaos, though Fulgrim would keep murdering the clones because they wouldn't take the hint and change sides. Predictably, Fulgrim blamed Fabius for this, claiming a "perfect" clone would have been willing to join the Traitors.

He later stole Horus' corpse and cloned it repeatedly, an act that pushed Abaddon out of his emo loser phase into becoming the scourge of the Imperium. Really though, Abaddon was just annoyed that Fabius has like four arms. He got round to attempting to clone every other primarch as well, but all but one turned out to be a failure. The one successful one was, to no ones great surprise, of Fulgrim and was genuinely an absolutely perfect and uncorrupted replica of the original. Fabius originally considered using him and a batch of pre heresy uncorrupted geneseed to make a new legion to protect his New Men whilst they colonised the galaxy but when he discovered that clone Fulgrim wanted to use them as lesser, expendable soldiers for galactic conquest he offered up the clone to Trazyn the Infinite's collection.

He's currently attempting to create a Clone of the EMPRAH. Using Sanguinius' blood. Let it never be said that Chaos is nothing if not ambitious. The Blood Angels managed to kill him and get the blood back, but he had already begun developing the clone at that point. And as it turns out, they didn't kill him due to the numerous clones of himself he has secreted throughout the galaxy. Mind you, it's not just a way for him to fuck with his enemies; he still hasn't figured out how to cure the Blight and needs to shunt his mind from one clone body to another to keep it from killing him. Also, keep in mind that if he doe succeed in cloning the Emperor a new body (because we all know Big.E. would hijack that for himself), it probably would end absolutely horribly for Chaos. Especially considering how things went with the Ferrus Manus clones. (Although this might be entirely intentional on Bile's part, given his hatred of Chaos.)

His Merry Mengele Brigade

Bile spends most of his time trolling around the galaxy with his crew of fellow chaos apothecaries and hangers-on aboard his own bio-hybrid Gladius Frigate Vesalius.

• Arrian Zorzi - former World Eater and Fabius' right hand man. Eerily calm for one of Angron's gene-sons, which he maintains via a combination of meditation, chemical treatments, and occasional murder sprees to let some pressure off. As with all World Eater apothecaries, he's an extremely good melee fighter.

• Honourable Tzimiskes Flay - A rare Iron Warrior apothecary and amateur Techmarine. Doesn't talk. Ever. Specializes in cybernetic enhancement and integrating biological components into robots.

• Oleander Koh - Emperor's Children Apothecary and a former personal pupil of Fabius. Tries to scheme his way into getting Fabius to rejoin the full legion. Did this by trying to make deals with Harlequins, like a fool.

• Skalagrim Phar - Former Sons of Horus Apothecary and majorly unpopular in both the Consortium and Black Legion. Prefers doing surgery Cthonian style. With a chainaxe. Fabius keeps him around because he still has connections to the Black Legion and Abbadon.

• Khorag Sinj - Former Gravewarden and one of the very few Death Guard apothecaries. Is rather jolly and convivial for a Death Guard, let alone a traitor marine. Specializes in, obviously, plagues and diseases. Manages to do his work whilst in Cataphractii plate. Also has a pet beast of Nurgle called Pazuuz that he treats like a fucking labrador.

• Saqqara Ur-Damak Thresh - Word Bearer Diabolist. Not an apothecary or a member of Fabius's Consortium. Was the leader of a Dark Council sanctioned assassination party that tried to kill Fabius. Saqqara was the only survivor and Fabius forced him into service by lacing his body with hundreds of creatively nasty deathtraps that depend on Fabius to keep from going off. As such, he's used as an extremely reluctant occult expert and verbal sparring partner for Fabius.

• Savona - A mortal champion of Chaos and former planetary governor's daughter. Managed to rise high in the narcissistic ranks of the Emperor's Children, which is quite an achievement considering she started as a mere mortal. Wears adapted power armour and has hooves. She had a rough start with Fabius due to conflicted loyalties but now sticks with him because his line of work is a lot more interesting than anything else going on.

• Igori - Matriarch of Fabius's gland hounds and substitute daughter to him after Melusine fucked off into the Warp. He seems to have a genuine soft spot for her as she represents the first stages of his goals to help humanity survive the galaxy. She's tough as nails too, seeing as Gland Hounds operate on a pack mentality and Igori has defeated all challengers for at least a few centuries going.

Crunch

On one hand, Bile has good stats and wargear: Feel No Pain through his Chirurgeon, Strength 5, a weapon that causes instant death (Rod of Torment), five attacks, and a particularly nasty poisoned weapon in the Xyclos Needler. On the other hand, his Rod of Torment does not ignore armor saves (unlike, say, the MURDER SWORD), his Xyclos Needler has really bad AP and sub-par range, and perhaps most damning of all, no Invulnerable save, unlike literally every other Chaos Character in the codex. So... Sucks, Right? Not quite. The reason Fabius Bile is taken, ironically, isn't for Bile himself; it's for his Enhanced Warriors trait, which gives a unit of Chaos Space Marines +1 Strength and Fearless. An enhanced Khornate CSM unit (Mark + Icon) rolls out 4 S6 attacks per Marine on the charge while being scoring and Fearless. While he isn't stellar in a normal CSM army (he's not a fighter nor does he enhance more than one unit of CSM), he really shines as an allied HQ — if you want a reasonably cheap CC threat for your pansy blueberries, take him and a 10-strong unit of Khornate CSM with meltaguns that can threaten massed infantry with the number of attacks, massed tanks with meltaguns/carnage combo and monstrous creatures with that Instant Death stick. Know that a Disordered Charge (aka multi-charge) denies you your Rage, so plan accordingly. Note that he can enhance one CSM unit in your entire ARMY, so take him in an Auxiliary Detachment for your Traitor Legion, and buff one of their Legion CSM units. 20 Infiltratring S5 Fearless Alpha Legion CSM anyone?

8th Edition

The news of improved Astartes was just the news he needed to pop back up. He has a 3-shot needle pistol that always wounds things that aren't vehicles on a 2+, as well as his Rod of Torment which is now S:User AP-1 D3 damage (except when attacking vehicles, which it only does 1 damage to.) Though he still lacks any kind of invuln, he now automatically regenerates d3 wounds at the start of each turn, giving him a bit of staying power. And as always, he can enhance a single infantry unit; roll a dice for each model in the unit, 6s are mortal wounds. The survivors either gain +1 to Strength, Toughness, or Attacks. Keen-eyed Chaos Lords will note that this can no longer be exclusively done to Chaos Marines. Yes, you can enhance a 20-man Berzerker or Possessed squad. Have fun!