Abaddon

He has no arms.

Or does he?

Ezekyle Abaddon, known as Abaddon the Despoiler to the people of Warhammer 40,000 and Failbaddon the Armless or Failbaddon the Harmless to the people of the fanbase, is Horus' successor as leader of the Black Legion and Warmaster of Chaos. He is renowned as the single greatest threat to the Imperium in the galaxy. This says more about the Imperium than Abaddon as his raging incompetence is now well known. He has launched thirteen consecutive Black Crusades against the Imperium, every one of which has failed miserably (by all we mean an overwhelming majority of 12/13); as is well known, the ruinous powers don't tolerate failure from their servants, which is why Failbaddon has been turned into a mindless chaos spawn rewarded with the mark of every Chaos god. Wait what?

Overview

Failabaddon failed his crusade for change

During the Great Crusade, Ezekyle Abaddon was the First Captain of the Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus, and Horus Lupercal's right hand man. Like most legionaries, he had a father/son relationship with his Primarch, but it extended further with Abaddon looking at Horus like a god. When Horus was wounded on Davin, Abaddon agreed to First Chaplain Erebus's idea that they heal Horus at the Serpent Lodge. When Horus came back corrupted by Chaos, Abaddon didn't notice a thing and was corrupted along with his Primarch, gladly following him into the Horus Heresy. When Horus was killed by the Emperor, Abaddon, panicking, ordered the Sons of Horus to retreat, earning the hatred of the other Traitor Legions.

After Fabius Bile made a clone of Horus, Abaddon became enraged and ordered the Sons to attack the Emperor's Children, destroying the clone and Horus's body. After this, Abaddon, suffering great hatred for his mentor, declared himself the new Warmaster of Chaos and renamed the Sons of Horus the Black Legion, ordering them to paint their armour black and expunge the memory of the "failure" from their name (in a vain attempt to try and remove the stain of Abaddon's flight at Terra).

Abaddon somewhat fulfills the role of your typical, Saturday-morning cartoon villain, like Dr. Robotnik from Sonic or Dr. Wily from Megaman: He comes up with some extremely diabolical plan to take over the galaxy/planet, but ends up getting foiled by the hero EVERY fucking time, the only difference is that this is has an obscene amount of grimdark to make his defeat somewhat awesome. Despite this however, the High Lords of Terra still fear Abaddon as he might unite all of the traitor legions in a single attack that would destroy all of the Imperium......but with his inability to get shit done correctly, Angron, Cypher, Ahzek Ahriman, and a half-a-dozen-or-so nameless Chaos Lords are more likely to get this done than Failbaddon. Even Bale gets more done, even though he's too busy shouting about METAL BOXES and our favourite sorceror.

A fan of Zoomjap it seems. And look where it got him, armless and failures galore!

He also has a model in the tabletop game. It eats everything in front of it in close combat faster than an obese guy would eat his McDonald's supersized meal.Oh goddammit. Though after you watch this model go down in a single round to a couple of trigger-happy Tau Broadsides, it won't be fun anymore. Fucking railguns. Even more embarrassing is when he somehow manages to get murdered by a Crisis Suit in close combat. Seriously. Or loses all of his wounds to an unlucky series of Invulnerable saves when facing down any competently-done Tzeentchian Chaos Lord, who kills Abaddon for about half his points cost, just as planned.

His 7th Black Crusade was technically a "success" because he set his goal very very low this time, he basically freaked out Cadia with the threat of a massive invasion but was actually no more than a couple of skirmish runs on certain cities. Ohh yeah and he massacred an unknown number of marines from the Blood Angels, but mostly it was to do with the fact he got an army of Khornate Berzerkers to fuck the Blood Angels over. Success is in quotes because even sending a whole crusade to target a single chapter is sad, especially when the chapter's still around at the end so yeah, it's still a failure by long-term accounts. The closest thing he can come to success is really just like those evil guys in cartoons who just laugh evilly and say "I have won!" even though all they've managed to do is take over Wyoming or become the mayor of CWCVille or something.

His 5th Black Crusade was also technically a success since it managed to wipe out 2 Space Marine chapters, but only with the help of Doombreed, the second angriest daemon entity in the universe. However all he managed to do was burn a city down, which isn't really that much of a feat since there isn't a Chaos Champion who hasn't burned some kind of major populace down either. However, the greatest victory he has even achieved, and the most competent action of his life was basically pointing Kharn in a direction and letting kill everything in his path.

He also enjoys calling Horus a weakling and a fool, which is ironic, because Horus actually came close to killing the Emprah and caused the biggest heresy in Imperial history, whereas Abaddon has barely managed to take Cadia, which is step one to getting any fleet of value out of the Eye of Terror.

To his credit, Abaddon is a hilariously destructive force on the tabletop - between his Daemon Sword, Combined Chaos Mark, and Talon of Horus rules, there are very few units in the TT game which can go toe-to-toe with Abaddon and hope to come out on top. Truthfully, most forces lack entire squads that can do much more than offer him more than a token resistance. He can be Tarpitted, but even this isn't guaranteed - his balls-out toughness and sheer volume of attacks if you roll well means he will mulch through formations in a turn or two at the most by himself. In terms of origins, Drachn'yen (his Daemon Sword) is an heir-apparent to Archaon's extremely bad-ass weapon, the Slayer of Kings. If Abaddon gets near something, that something is going to wind up raped in a matter of seconds. So, copy his statline into your homebrew Chaos Lord.

As a note of mockery, his full name is Ezekiel Abaddon. Oh, nice GW. Ezekiel, as in the Prophet Ezekyle, Abaddon as in that demon in the Bible. Ha. Ha.

There's an ongoing betting pool on which Chaos Lord or Sorcerer is finally going to have enough of Abaddon's shit and Sindri Abaddon so someone more-competent can take command. Given Abaddon's progress and number of failures, it's entirely possible he'll be turned into a Chaos Spawn and.. WAIT OH GO--GRABLAAWRASDAFGSFDH

Ahem, as the previous writer was saying.. and save every single stripe of Chaos the trouble of putting a few dozen Daemon weapon strikes into the douche. Most bets are on Eliphas the Inheritor, a revived Araghast the Pillager, a certain random Tzeentchian Lord, Dranon of the Word Bearers, or Huron Blackheart of the Red Corsairs.

Also, it is tacitly known that Doombreed > Abaddon. Mostly because he actually succeeded during a Black Crusade and wiped out 2 chapters completely, unlike Abaddon who couldn't even do one. Fitting, considering that Doombreed, being the most ancient Daemon Prince of Khorne, is stronger than all the Daemon Primarchs combined, and perhaps stronger than the Empra himself!! This would be true if the Emprah didn't banish Doombreed by simply telling him to fuck off and go back to the warp. <-- Word.

Miserable Failure? Or Greatest of Trolls?

Abaddon's Black Crusades generally fail due to the same reason - and it is always the same reason. When a Black Crusade gets going, Abaddon's forces bribe/coerce/intimidate other Chaos forces to accompany them, in a similar manner to an Ork WAAAAGH!! absorbing other Ork tribes as it gets going and building momentum. Many of the forces Abaddon winds up forcibly conscripting in this manner serve one purpose, and one purpose only - an expendable force of morons whilst Abaddon goes on to accomplish whatever the fuck his objective is. Once he's gotten what he's gone out for, he effectively SINDRIIIIIIIs his erstwhile allies and leaves them to rot whilst his forces make off with cargo holds full of slaves, loot, and whatever the fuck else Abaddon was headed out for. This is, again, similar to how Orks operate - as a WAAAAGH!! loses steam, little bits will break off from the main force to do its own shit. Abaddon uses these force castoffs in pretty much the exact same way, using them to keep his enemies busy whilst his forces float back to the Eye of Terror.

Whilst Huron Blackheart of the Red Corsairs uses similar tactics, there's a difference - Huron doesn't abandon his followers to die for no particular reason but the lulz, an advantage which has allowed Huron to garner something precious from his troops: loyalty. It is this reason (amongst others) that many believe that Abaddon's days are numbered if Huron ever gives enough of a shit to go give Abaddon a stern talking to.

Whilst it can be argued that Abaddon's failures are just that - failures - especially when directly measured against the victories of the Thousand Sons during the Obscuras Purging or World Eaters' exploits during the Dominion of Fire - a more adequate description is that he got what he wants and then leaves. In this regard, he kind of serves all the chaos powers at once - his dicking over his allies appeases Tzeentch, the death toll these little raids of his cause appease Khorne, the sheer volume of slaves and plunder they take please Slaanesh, and the destruction left in the wake of their crusades (which often end with virus bombings to cover their tracks) pleases the Plaguefather greatly.

Though even the staunchest of Abaddon's defenders will point out he's overpriced and that the arms on his model break fucking constantly. And that he generally sucks at extreme long-term planning. Tzeentch must enjoy fucking him over.

Failure no more?

In a desperate attempt to restore Abaddon's long gone credibility, the latest edition of the 40K rule book descibes Abaddon's Black Crusades as "repeated blows to gradually weaken the Imperium as part of a greater plan" and "definitely not 13 separate failed attempts to march on Terra, you would be mad to think that".

Thus far their attempts to fix Abaddon's reputation have been met with about as much success as their attempts to fix his arms. (see below)

The "No Arms" meme

His plan from the very beginning

While the exact origin of why /tg/ continues to depict Abaddon without his arms is unclear, this is partly the story. It all started when some drawfag made a picture of Abaddon painting, being the failure that he is he depicted him without arms and so now he fails in the ability to paint.

The other explanation is that Creed stole them during his invasion of Cadia, probably while doing doughnuts around him in a Baneblade, or it was Just as planned.

Another explanation points to a certain dick, who actually fought Abaddon and defeated him (in a White Dwarf issue where Abaddon was trying to wipe out the Ulthwe Seer Council but was driven off, actually defeated/killed alongside his retinue by Eldrad and his council, but 'teleported to safety'), cutting off both of his arms in the process, which further points to Abaddon's incompetency and lack of arms.

But actually, it's mostly due to the fact that his model's arms are fragile and thusly tend to BREAK ALL THE TIME, FUCK.

Recently, the Abaddon model has been remodeled in Finecast, affixing his pauldrons to his torso and socketting the arms into them. In other words, GW may have actually solved Abaddon's arm problem. (Nope, the arms still fall off like no tomorrow until the glue dries, especially his Sword arm.)

And with his arm problem solved, Abaddon can go back to (trying to) destroy the Imperium

Appearance in Chaos Rising

Abaddon makes a brief cameo during any of the endings, who's about to torture Eliphas for his failure to kill the Blood Ravens. For a second, it would appear that he ACTUALLY had arms, but it was later revealed by the camera crew that another Chaos Terminator with a lightning claw was behind Abaddon to act as his arms.

Appearance in Retribution

Abaddon finally gets his big break in Dawn of War II: Retribution. He appears in the Chaos Campaign and serves no purpose than to screech about killing Kyras. The camera is conveniently positioned and several filters are employed in his portrait to avoid showcasing his lack of arms. This would explain why all he ever does is screech. At one point after Eliphas fails to dispatch of Kyras, Abaddon declares how he will make him suffer. Eliphas, no doubt unaware of his armlessness, bargains for mercy. Realizing that he can't do anything to him because he has no arms, he quickly lets Eliphas go under the guise that he wants to see him suffer.

Nurgle, Khorne, Slaanesh and Tzeentch all collectively went; 'Son, I am disappoint."

...But we all know better than that. And this is because, even with his retinues, Abaddon still could not kill off the Ulthwe Seer Council and a certain dick. Eliphas has, by this point, brutally murdered the entire Biel-Tan Seer Council with their Farseer by himself. Thus, we come to the obvious conclusion that Eliphas is probably the one who should be running the Black Legion. To be fair, /tg/ has had an ongoing betting pool on which of the Chaos Lords is going to be the first to up and try to SINDRIIIIII him, with the most common executioners listed being Ahriman of the Thousand Sons, Eliphas, and Huron Blackheart.

Abaddon's 14th Black Crusade

Too important; moved here.

See also

• Abbadon at the Therapist
• FAIL
• [1] In which, Abaddon becomes a god among men. And this is only the start!
• The entire Abadddon Quest archive, read on and laugh hard.
• true story of how Abaddon lost his arms.
• Failbaddon is no more ;_;