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Asdrubael Vect

2022-08-15T14:54:12Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8:

[[File:Bild22.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Asdrubael Vect in all his bitch-getting glory.]]

[[Image:Blackholeinabox.jpg#file.png|thumb|right|And you thought Eldrad was a prick. [[Awesome|(This is canon, by the way.)]]]]

'''Asdrubael Vect''' is one of the biggest [[troll|trolls]] (save for [[Tzeentch]], [[Creed]], and [[Trazyn]]) to ever walk the [[Warhammer 40,000|40k]] universe. He is also a [[Dark Eldar|sick]] [[Honsou|fuck]].

Vect is the [[Archon_(Warhammer_40,000)|Supreme Lord]] of the [[Kabal of the Black Heart]], making him the de facto Presidente por Vida of the Drukhari and the Pimp Master General of [[Commorragh]]. He spends most of his time plotting how to troll people. Basically, he does it for the [[lulz]].

He's also one really old son of a bitch. Apparently older than a [[Slaanesh|FUCKING GOD]]! He gives [[Eldrad]] penis envy. That would likely put him as the oldest named character in franchise other than Big-E himself, and obviously the Necrons.

He also was a close combat monster on the tabletop, being one of the few characters who could reliably go toe to toe with [[Abaddon|Abaddon the Despoiler]] and win, something he shared with [[Mephiston]] and the [[Swarmlord]]. Entire armies suffered critical existence failure the moment he got within reach. I mean Jesus Fucking Christ. This was prior to his removal though, and he has not had actual statistics for a while now.

Despite being someone who would, conceivably, have done a lot in over ten-thousand years, fluff itself is rather sparse concerning Vect, except to mention him killing other Archons.

== Being one of the oldest pricks in history, predating even Eldrad ==
Asdrubael Vect is bigger than a [[Eldrad|dick]], he's a prick. He is constantly bringing things to an unprecedented level of dickishness allowing himself to steeple his fingers and cackle "[[Just As Planned]]!" while, [[Tankred|simultaneously having his cock sucked by his twin blonde lesbian sex slaves]]. Yeah, he's just that much of a boss.

In fact the only reason he managed to last this long is because no one has ever been able to out-prick him, at least until [[Yvraine]] threw his rulership into question and escaped all his attempts at retribution. And, considering Commorragh is a place where rape is considered as exciting a pastime as eating a ham sandwich, that's fucking saying SOMETHING. There have been numerous occasions where the various Archons of other Kabals have tried to assassinate him in order to gain lordship over all of Commorragh. So far Vect has managed to trump each of them in the most dickish ways possible. Just a small example: he planned for the invasion of Commorragh by three [[Space Marine]] chapters in order to [[Just_as_planned|kill off all of the remaining old Eldar Empire nobility]] in Commorragh, ensuring he would be unopposed and unbeatable in the Dark City. Vect also disposed of one of his rivals, Archon Qu, by getting Qu's daughter to betray him. Archon Qu was then flayed and his essence trapped in the flayed skin. Vect probably brings Qu's daughter down there so she can suck Vect off in front of her father and he can't do anything but watch. What a prick!

He is unnerved by [[Phoenix Lords]] though, or perhaps a better term would be envious. When [[Jain Zar]] met him to organize the release of a disgraced Archon, it became painfully clear to the first of the Howling Banshees that Asdrubael in his own way envied what he saw as the genuine immortality of the Phoenix Lords.

== Theme Song ==

Who lives in a city, inside the webway?

As-dru-bael Vect!

Who slaughters and tortures millions each day?

As-dru-bael Vect!

If bloodshed and mayhem be something ye wish

As-dru-bael Vect!

Then come to Commorragh and you'll be his bitch!

As-dru-bael Vect!

As-dru-bael Vect!

As-dru-bael Vect!

As-druuuuu-bael Veeeect!

''Horrifying laughter and screams''

==List of Asdrubael's greatest achievements==
*Captured a strike cruiser of the [[Salamanders]] in order to bait the Imperium into attacking Commorragh, and made sure to set things up so the fight'd drag out and lure his direct obstacles; the houses of the aristocracy, into fighting amongst themselves to claim this prize. The Imperial Navy and Salamanders strike force, including two more cruisers and a Battle Barge, that barged in afterwards, took the captured ship back and killed the nobles before retreating from the Dark Eldar's retaliation, ensuring Vect ruled unopposed, whilst also demonstrating how incredibly powerful Space Marines are. "[[Just As Planned]]!".
*Crashed a Space Hulk full of daemons into a fortress of the only Archon who came to really threaten him, turning his entire realm into a daemon-infested hellhole.
*Seduced a space marine Primarch (probably Space Wolves) into giving up strategically important secrets. No really, the word 'seduced' is explicitly used.
*Tricked a Dark Eldar Lord of a webway realm who refused his rule into opening a gift from him with a BLACK HOLE in it. Surprise!
*To elaborate on the daughter example above; Vect defeated Archon Qu, Lord of the Iron Thorn, by persuading Qu's daughter to betray him. Vect's Kabal didn't have the military might to guarantee victory (at the time maybe), so he got Qu's daughter to betray her father and deliver the realm into Vect's hands. [[Just As Planned|What Qu didn't know was that his daughter had become one of Vect's courtesans long before]].
*He also contributed part of his Kabal to the Eldar's joint effort from Iyanden and Biel-Tan to stop Hive Fleet Leviathan from annexing a part of Hive Fleet Kraken in the Valedor supplement. This happened because the Tyranids had somehow managed to enter the Webway and [[Troll|to taunt the Eldar of Iyanden about their necromancy]].
*Had his giant floating ziggurat show up in the middle of a Wych Cult arena game to fire at the stands and kill one of the spectators who had betrayed him, incidentally killing all the captured Imperial Guardsmen who the Wyches were supposed to fight forcing the show to be cancelled.
*When a whole bunch of Kabals rebelled against him, he faked his own death in the battle to see which of his forces would retreat to his headquarters and which would join the rebel army. Upon doing so, he unleashed the power of one of Commorragh's captive suns to completely annihilate the entire rebel army alongside every innocent bystander who lived in that part of the city (being Commorragh, innocent is used in the loosest sense of the word except maybe some of the Dark Eldar's captives).

==Dawn of War Soulstorm==
Believe or not, Vect is one of those important figures in 40k that made an appearance in video games like Abaddon. However, no one seems to care because he was overshadowed by other [[Indrick Boreale|hilariously]] [[Firaeveus Carron|bad]] [[Commander Or'es'Ka|things]] about this game, even his own idiot apprentice [[Archon Tahril|Tahril]] made more appearance than he did. The only screentime the big V gets is from taking his Dais out for a spin as the Dark Eldar Relic unit of glass cannon doom.

He is also encountered in the Dark Eldar Stronghold, where he ran away on his pimp ride full of hoes like a little bitch, swore to rape Tahril for his failure but got his ride shot down by your troops (Vect most likely didn't die, however. According to Tahril after seeing Vect crash, "If he had died, I should have taken his place."). Overall, the presentation for Vect in this game is rather disappointing, for the fact he never really made any awesome quote or any smart dickery like [[Sindri]] other than just chilling on his pimpmobile like a couch potato.

Granted this is all from before 5th edition's revamp, before that Vect had no traits or backstory other than the leader of the Dark Eldar.

== Dark Times Ahead? ==
Due to Games Workshop not giving Vect a new model (and ignoring his old one); as of the 7th edition Dark Eldar codex [[FAIL|Asdrubael Vect is no longer a playable character]]! Think of the implications; that'd be like cutting Marneus Calgar from the Ultramarines (not that Games Workshop would ever do that), removing the Phoenix Lords from Craftworld Eldar or taking [[Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka|Ghazghkull]] out of Ork armybooks. For now, he exists only in the fluff (which is thankfully unchanged). On a completely unrelated note, suck our balls GW.

During the ''Gathering Storm'' campaign in which a [[Yvraine|Herald of Ynnead]] is born, Vect isn't happy about this in the slightest, mostly because this triggers Khaine's gate to shatter and daemons to invade Commorragh. In the initial battle, Vect runs away like a bitch, pretty much in plain view of every important person in the city. Later on, he sends Urien Rakarth and the Haemonculi to hunt down Yvraine, but they flee in terror after it is discovered that the Yncarne can perma-kill them. Vect then sends his Kabal after her, but Yvraine has Harlequins help her keep one step ahead of Vect. He insinuates to his court and servants that the Dysjunction was [[just as planned]], but everyone knows that's BS (though Vect is still feared enough that no one calls him out on his obvious lie). By the end of the story Vect has failed to contain the threat, many of the Dark Eldar (including Lelith Hesperax) leave to go join the Ynnari, his entire court is pissed at him, and several Archons are talking about leading an overthrow, with the loudest being Lady Malys. Insult to injury, it is the Mandrakes, under [[Kheradruakh]], that finally manage to drive off the invading daemons with help from the Haemonculi, completely upstaging Vect. Needless to say, he is extremely upset about all his plans going up in flames because of a meddling [[Ynnead|god]].

== The Living Muse ==

Things reached their peak when the unthinkable happened; Vect was murdered. He, in an uncharacteristic move, had sent his Incubi bodyguards away to keep order. During this time Mandrakes, at the behest of an unknown employer, swarmed his inner sanctum and killed him. Some rumors said it was the Cursed Blade who ordered it - the Wych Cult had a reputation for treachery. Others said it was Lady Malys (Lady Malys had her Kabal keep their distance from Vect and his forces despite her calling for his overthrow, the lore is ambiguous as to whether she had a hand in it). At the same moment every failsafe against death the Haemonculi had for Vect was destroyed. All the Archons across Commorragh were stunned. Some were dismayed, others worried in paranoia that if Vect himself could die how safe were they? All were apprehensive of the future of Commorragh and planned their next move. The Harlequins of the Veiled Path held a funeral for Vect at the Cursed Blade's arena, and Urien Rakarth promised to openly show his newest creations. Many Archons and Kabals attended, either to gloat over Vect's death, out of "loyalty" or to see Urien Rakarth's performance...

BUT WAIT! At the height of Urien Rakarth's performance, the Harlequins released hallucinogenic gas. They turned on all the Archons who attended, slaughtering them with the help of the Cult of the Cursed Blade and Rakarth's creations. The blood and suffering radiated, and Asdrubael Vect returned to life, rejuvenated by the suffering in the arena. Vect's first move was to have every Archon that attended the funeral resurrected. The "loyal" ones were brought back as they were, while the disloyal ones were turned into Grotesques under Vect's control, or something like that.

Asdrubael Vect declared himself to be a living [[Dark Muses|Dark Muse]]. (Dark Muses were historical eldar of note, usually having performed a certain feat or mastering a specific skill to propel themselves to legendary status; somewhere between a renowned philosopher ala Confucius and the Dark Eldar equivalent of a Catholic Saint.) Some speculated Asdrubael would become a Dark Muse upon his final death, but none suspected he'd come back and declare himself to be a Living Muse, and for some reason [[derp|everyone seems to be taking this claim seriously.]] He moved quickly and re-solidified his hold on Commorragh, he knew that Lelith had gone with the Ynnari, but he claimed that it was part of his plan and said he'd allow it for now. Strangely, though he took actions against everyone who was disloyal (except Lady Malys who kept a prudent distance between Vect and herself since before he died), he took no action against the Mandrakes that killed him; this suggests either that it was [[Just as Planned]] on his part, or that even Vect fears the Mandrakes. It's also possible that he tried to make himself as a dark counterpart to Yvraine, an anti-Ynnead. Whatever the case, Vect is back in control of Commorragh and making plans, and first on his list is to destroy Yvraine. By which we mean engage in hardcore ballbusting sex with her. Too bad Big Bobby G tapped dat ass first and her bodyguard the Visarch wants the sloppy seconds, leaving Vect with the turgid thirds at best.

tl;dr Vect came back from the dead, and now everyone he hates better watch their backs.

== The Torturer's Tale ==
[https://www.thedarkcity.net/t2926-the-torturer-s-tale| If you needed proof of just what an utter prick Vect is....]



{{Template:Dark Eldar-Characters}}

Siege of Terra

2022-08-15T13:29:13Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8: /* Second Battle for the Lion's Gate and the Rise of the Emperor's Champion */

{{Stub}}
{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=Siege of Terra
|image=[[File:The-Siege-Of-Terra Angron.jpg|400px]]
|attacker= Traitor Legions
|defender= [[Imperium of Man]]
|commander1= [[Horus]], [[Angron]], [[Mortarion]], [[Angron]], [[Fulgrim]], [[Perturabo]], [[Magnus the Red]], Zardu Layak, Kelbor Hal
|commander2= The [[Emperor]], [[Sanguinius]], [[Rogal Dorn]], [[Jaghatai Khan]], [[Vulkan]], [[Malcador the Sigillite]], Constantine Valdor
|date=0014.M31
|scale=Planetary
|theatre=[[Horus Heresy]]
|strength1= [[Sons of Horus]], [[Death Guard]], [[World Eaters]], [[Emperor's Children]], [[Thousand Sons]], [[Iron Warriors]], [[Word Bearers]], [[Night Lords]], Traitor Army forces, [[Dark Mechanicum]], dozens of Traitor Knight houses, Traitor Titan legions, daemons
|strength2= [[Imperial Fists]], [[Blood Angels]], [[White Scars]], [[Adeptus Custodes]], [[Sisters of Silence]], [[Knights-Errant]], Imperial Army, Adeptus Arbites, dozens of Knight Houses, loyalist Titan Legions (Gryphonicus, Ignatum, Solaria, Atarus, Amaranth, Ordo Sinister)
|casualties1= Massive Heretic Astartes casualties, massive Traitor Army losses, massive Traitor Titan losses, massive Dark Mechanicum losses. Horus slain.
|casualties2= Massive military and civilian losses. Malcador the Sigillite slain. Sanguinius slain. Emperor mortally wounded and interred into Golden Throne.
|status= Pyrrhic Loyalist Victory
|outcome= Traitors driven from Terra and into the Eye of Terror. Death of Horus and crippling of the Emperor. Great Scouring Begins.
}}

{{topquote|[[Horus|He]] waits no longer. It begins now.|[[Sanguinius]] on the 13th of Secundus, 014.M31}}
The '''Siege of Terra''' was the end of the [[Horus Heresy]] in [[Warhammer 40,000]]. If the Horus Heresy can be considered the most important series of events in the 40k universe(*cough* [[War in Heaven]]), then the Siege of Terra itself could be considered the single most important event. It is also possibly the most fucking awesome event: brothers fighting brothers, Primarchs (read Sanguinius) soloing Titans and Greater Daemons, continent-spanning trench battles, the mighty guns of Titans blowing mountain-sized fortifications to shreds, Imperial Army soldiers leading charges against the traitorous forces even though they know it's suicide and [[Ollanius Pius]].

It was [[Horus]]'s big attempt to off his daddy and to be the true Emperor of the galaxy (for [[Chaos]] of course!). He brought a load of his traitor legions, millions of corrupt Imperial Army personnel and mutants, the part of the Mechanicus that had gone over to his side, and a whole load of daemons to boot. On his side, the [[Emperor]] had three legions, his [[Adeptus Custodes|Custodians]], and the loyal Imperial Army regiments of Terra and you know what? The Emperor went and won anyway (granted it was because the Emperor offed Horus before his legions could crack the Imperial palace but still, victory for the home team!).

==The Solar War==

Dorn began fortifying [[Terra]] immediately after getting word of the Heresy, knowing that it would always be Horus's eventual goal. Despite being removed from the larger battles of the Heresy, the Solar System was touched by the conflict, with Mars erupting into open rebellion and numerous sleeper agents and cults trying to destabilise the Throneworld. Despite this Dorn managed to do the best he could, turning Terra into the most heavily fortified system in the Imperium. He even managed to blunt part of the traitor advance at the Beta-Garmon cluster before getting ready for the final rumble they had known was coming.
[[File:Dorn-hh.jpg|300px|right]]
Terra was unique in that it had two artificial Mandeville points inside the Solar system itself, created during the Dark Age of Technology. Dorn fortified the likely approaches from the outer edge of the system and built up huge defenses around the two internal jump points. The traitors, however, were busy too: infiltrators and covert operatives sabotaged loyalist assets across the system. The Iron Warriors were the first Astartes into the breach, breaking the Warp on the First of Primus, 014.M31, using huge up-armoured Space Hulks as fireships to wear down the defenses before sending their main fleet through to engage the combined Fists and Scars fleets. The inner system conflict went on for a bit, with the loyalists managing to hold out enough to slow down the advance at least for a little while.

However, under Magnus's direction, the traitors turned the Shrine of Unity comet into a vast Warp gate that allowed Horus, Angron, and Fulgrim's fleets to jump right past most of the rings of defense Dorn had come up with. On the ''Phalanx'', Dorn was preoccupied with a daemon incursion and could do little to stop the huge fleets that were now mobbing for Terra. The Martian traitors, free from the blockade that had hemmed them in for years, joined up with Horus. The Solar War had been lost barely after it had begun. The rest of the loyalist fleets, knowing they could never hope to fight even a fraction of the vast traitor armada, regrouped on the edge of the system, along with the ''Phalanx'', waiting for the moment they could make an effective strike against Horus. There were early plans for the Emperor to be evacuated to the ''Phalanx'' and escape Terra, but these were made by people unaware of what Big-E was doing in the basement of the palace.

==The Siege Begins==
[[File:Map-2800x1983.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Map of the Siege.]]
{{topquote|'''Father! I have come for you!'''|[[Angron]] upon making planetfall, 15th of Quartus, 014.M31}}

Uncontested, most of the traitor armada held in orbit above the Palace, and on the Thirteenth of Secundus, began bombarding the Aegis, the vast shield network protecting the entire palace complex. Unlike regular void shields, the Aegis consisted of multiple overlapping layers of shields that individually regenerated as fast as they could be depleted by bombardment. On the ground, the Palace was protected by colossal networks of walls and bastions, static defenses, and vast numbers of Imperial Army units bolstered by hordes of press-ganged conscripts. Unknown to almost everyone, the Inner Palace was also protected by a psychic ward generated by the Emperor that would royally fuck up any daemon that set foot near it, daemon Primarchs included.

The rest of Terra wasn't so lucky. Barring a few isolated holdouts, the rest of the planet was virtually defenseless. It should be noted that if the goal was to destroy Terra wholesale, it could have been easily accomplished by Exterminatus-level weaponry. Perturabo, as the only non-Chaos-ified Primarch, insisted on doing exactly that and grew increasingly angry at what he saw as an irrational and wasteful goal. But Horus was insistent that the Emperor had to be slain in person, and so the Palace had to be reduced the old-fashioned way. In all fairness, one must also ask if Exterminatus was even possible when a being like the Emperor was on Terra, to say nothing of the void shields and defenses on Terra itself (with the answer depending on how much Ext-grade weaponry and warheads the Chaos forces could bring along). The daemon primarchs were kept in orbit, safe from the Emperor's wards, although this meant that Angron had to be imprisoned in the maze Perturabo had built to contain Vulkan to stop him from [[Leeroy Jenkins]]ing the whole thing as he had done at Istvaan III.

Hordes of mutants, beastmen, cultists, and traitor Army units were thrown at the conventional defenses. Entire wings of aircraft dueled above the Palace. Precision bombardments gradually weakened minute sections of the Aegis long enough for bombers to get through and destroy the projectors. The Dark Mechanicum landed siege camps at 8 points around the Palace, partly to surround it but also to act as the focus for a ritual that would enable the Warp to take a foothold on the surface of the Throneworld. The Dark Mechanicum also began building massive siege towers to get Traitor Legionaries on the Wall. The Astartes were held in reserve on both sides whilst their more conventional forces softened each other up. The Death Guard were the first traitor Astartes to land on Terra, with the Khan and the White Scars riding forth on jetbikes and aircraft to meet them and wreck the Dark Mechanicum's siege camps. The Night Lords were the first Astartes to breach the walls of the Palace, albeit in small numbers; this attack also cost them their ''de facto'' commander, Gendor Skraivok. Sanguinius himself descended to help the mortal forces, acting as force multiplier, decoy, and morale booster.

Unfortunately, by that point, enough bloodshed had occurred that the Emperor's wards were now reduced to just a few meters from the walls of the Palace, meaning daemons could now manifest on Terra. Horus responded by sending the World Eaters as the second wave, and this time Angron was leading the charge. Recognizing the outworks were about to be overrun, Sanguinius used an impending sally by the Legio Solaria to evacuate the surviving conscripts through the Helios Gate, while Legio Solaria destroyed the remaining siege tower. The loyalists had managed to repulse the first serious attempts on the Eternity Wall, but were now completely cut off from the rest of Terra, surrounded on all sides.

==The Lion's Gate Falls==
[[File:LatD-Map-3309x2420.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Map of the Lion's Gate Space Port.]]
While the Death Guard, Emperor's Children, and World Eaters each hammered away at a different section of the Palace walls, the traitors' first major effort at cracking the Palace itself was aimed at the Lion's Gate spaceport, the largest and tallest spaceport on Terra. It reached so high into the atmosphere that void craft could dock at its upper levels, meaning that the traitor forces could more easily shuttle in reinforcements and materiel if they captured it. Horus tasked the Iron Warriors with taking the Gate. In turn, Perturabo assigned Warsmith Kroeger to lead the assault under the logic that Dorn would be expecting Pert to command such an important offensive personally and wouldn't be expecting whatever plans Kroeger came up with. Dorn assigned Seneschal Fafnir Rann to lead the defense of the spaceport rather than First Captain Sigismund since he was still angry with Sigismund for listening to Euphrati Keeler instead of obeying his orders. Kroeger went straight for the throat, launching a massive combined-arms assault directly on the port with backup from the World Eaters and Emperor's Children, though the latter quickly got bored and left after taking a bunch of prisoners for [[Rape|unspecified purposes]]. Though the Imperial Fists held off the initial attack, Warsmith Forrix and a thousand Iron Warriors managed to infiltrate the Gate by using renegade Imperial Army units as literal meatshields. To aid the attack, the Dark Mechanicum inserted a technophagic virus into the spaceport's systems, and Zardu Layak, Abaddon, and Typhus performed a Nurglite ritual to infiltrate the [[Daemon Prince]] Cor'bax Utterblight behind the Emperor's psychic wards.

The Fists drove back several consecutive assaults from the Iron Warriors and World Eaters, but the technophage was screwing their sensors and comms all to hell and gone, seriously complicating efforts to coordinate the defense, and Forrix and his infiltrators were tying up troops that were desperately needed elsewhere. Rann finally called Dorn for backup and Dorn scraped up an additional three thousand Fists, which were literally all the troops he could spare at that point. Despite Rann's best efforts, the balance inevitably tipped in the traitors' favor. Dorn arrived on the scene just in time to order a general withdrawal from the spaceport to the inner defenses, though not before he killed Zardu Layak after a brief duel. With the Gate firmly in the traitor hands, Perturabo started unloading Titans and consolidating his position.

Meanwhile, Euphrati Keeler and the Custodian Amon Tauromachian had been tapped by Malcador to investigate strange apparitions occurring behind the Palace walls. They eventually deduced that this was a daemon exploiting the faith of Imperial cultists to manifest itself inside the Emperor's psychic defenses. One cult, in particular, called the Lightbearers, had been deceived into worshipping Nurgle instead of the Emperor. After Cor'bax used the Lightbearers to physically manifest himself inside the Palace, Amon, Euphrati, and Malcador teamed up to slay the daemon. When Amon suggested that they should purge the rest of the Emperor's worshippers to prevent another such incident, Malcador answered that he would continue to let them exist until the Emperor himself said otherwise, in the hopes that he could weaponize their faith against the Chaos gods.

==Battle at the Saturnine Wall==
[[File:Siege_of_Terra1.jpg|thumb|middle|500px|Just 0.000001% of 0.000001% of the Siege of Terra.]]
{{cleanup}}

With the Lion's Gate lost, Dorn was now under tremendous pressure as he continued to coordinate the defense in the face of the unrelenting traitor assaults. Nearly all the Traitor Legions were committed to the battle at this point, with the Death Guard, Iron Warriors, World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Emperor's Children, and Sons of Horus engaged in heavy fighting throughout the Palace's outer districts. Dorn could only muster his own legion, plus the Blood Angels and White Scars and their primarchs.

While taking a brief break in an abandoned garden, Dorn encountered Kyril Sindermann, who made an offhand comment about the Saturnine Wall trembling under the weight of the bombardment. From this, Dorn deduced that something was wrong with the defenses in that section and investigated. What he found was a potential catastrophe. The ceaseless bombardments from the traitor forces had caused the entire Imperial Palace and the tectonic plates on which it rested to shift by eight centimeters, opening a small but detectable fault line beneath the Saturnine Wall.

Certain that Perturabo would notice this fault and attempt to exploit it, Dorn began concocting a counterattack. Before laying out his plans, he called a council of war with Constantin Valdor and Malcador to explain to them his next move: he would have to start allowing parts of the Palace defenses to fall, as he simply no longer had the numbers or the materiel to hold everything. He identified four key parts of the defense that could not be allowed to fall to the enemy - the Colossi Gate, the Gorgon Bar, the Saturnine Wall, and the Eternity Wall spaceport - then chose the one he could most afford to lose based on his calculations, which was the spaceport. Though he would put on a show of defending it, Dorn knew that the port ultimately had to be sacrificed, even though it meant letting the traitor forces control both of the Palace's main spaceports. He assigned Sanguinius to hold the Gorgon Bar and Jaghatai Khan to hold the Colossi; he would personally oversee the defense of the Saturnine Wall and lay a trap in the hopes of bagging a significant enemy target, perhaps even Horus himself.

Perturabo had indeed spotted the weakness at the Saturnine Wall, though he had initially planned to use it only as a last-ditch ace in the hole. Abaddon convinced him to instead make it a focal point of the attack through a combination of flattery and unsubtle goading, suggesting that Perturabo's victory over Dorn would be tainted if it was won with the help of the Neverborn. Though the Lord of Iron nearly caved his face in for it, Abaddon won the argument and immediately set out to assemble a spear-tip strike. Secretly, he was also hoping to win a "clean" victory without resorting to the use of daemons and sorcery, as he believed that using the Warp to win a war was beneath his dignity as an Astartes.

The battles for the Colossi and the Gorgon Bar escalated in scale and intensity. The defenders at the Colossi Gate were plagued by legions of flies that seemed to manifest from nowhere, forcing them to wear bulky protective equipment that lessened their effectiveness. Sanguinius was suffering under the weight of his psychic visions, which were coming with increasing frequency and intensity; nevertheless, he continued to fight on the front lines, knowing that his mere appearance was heartening the defenders and raising their morale. At one point he [[Awesome|singlehandedly killed a Warlord Titan]], then stared down its three accompanying Warhounds until they turned tail and fled. At the Colossi, Jaghatai and the White Scars led a few massed jetbike charges into the ranks of the Death Guard, destroying their siege engines, killing their Neverborn reinforcements, inflicting casualties, and generally delaying the XIV Legion's inexorable advance. The Adeptus Custodes also engaged the Death Guard, with Constantin Valdor himself taking the field. Their Emperor-forged nature proved especially potent against the Warp-corrupted Marines of the XIV and their daemonic allies. Ahriman and the Thousand Sons attempted to literally melt the Colossi bastion with sorcery, only to be driven back by three White Scars Stormseers who channeled the captured weather underneath the Palace's void shielding into an immense lightning storm.

At the Saturnine Wall, Dorn had devised a simple but cunning trap. Its cellars and tunnels had been fortified and transformed into a series of Zones Mortalis, and he had assembled a five-hundred-man strong force of veteran Astartes, broken into seven kill teams led by [[Sigismund]], [[Nathaniel Garro]], Endryd Haar of the World Eaters, [[Garviel Loken]], Bel Sepatus of the Blood Angels, Helig Gallor of the Death Guard, and Maximus Thane of the Imperial Fists. He had also enlisted the technoarchaeologist Arkhan Land to help him mend the fault line; Land devised a quick-setting form of rockcrete which could be pumped into the fault to seal it permanently. Dorn didn't know who would be leading the assault, but he was hoping for Horus himself. Once cut off and isolated inside the Palace walls, even the Warmaster would be relatively easy prey. On the other side, Abaddon was able to convince Fulgrim to lend him the entire Emperor's Children Legion for the assault on the Saturnine and wrangled three companies of the Sons of Horus to form the spear-tip. The III Legion would [[DISTRACTION CARNIFEX|attack from the front as a diversion]], using three Donjon-class siege engines borrowed from the Dark Mechanicum, while Abaddon and his Astartes burrowed up from beneath with Termite assault drills.

[[Just as planned|They had walked straight into Dorn's trap]]. When the first Sons of Horus emerged from their assault drills, they were ambushed by Dorn's kill teams, who achieved total surprise. The assault force was ''DESTROYED IN DETAIL'', which is to say that of the hundreds of elite combatants committed to the attack (which included the famed Justaerin Terminators and Catulan Reavers of the 1st Company, all four members of the Mournival leading their respective companies, as well as two more veteran companies led by Tybalt Marr and Lev Goshen respectively) the number of survivors could literally be counted on one hand with fingers to spare. Garro decapitated Falkus Kibre of the Justaerin, while Loken killed Tybalt Marr, Horus Aximand, and Tormageddon. Just as the loyalists were starting to relax, Abaddon and a hundred Justaerin Terminators teleported into their midst, triggering a giant brawl. Abaddon went on a killing spree, but eventually absorbed a series of crippling blows from Bel Sepatus and Endryd Haar. Though he managed to kill them both, he wound up pinned under Haar's corpse, with Garro poised to deliver the killing stroke. Luckily for Abaddon, [[Plot Armor|he was teleported to safety at the last moment]], as the Chaos Gods had already chosen him to be the new Warmaster after the death of Horus. Arkhan Land began pumping hundreds of thousands of liters of his rockcrete formula into the fault. Though he was briefly interrupted by Horus Aximand, the plan went off without a hitch, and the fault was permanently sealed. Some of the remaining Sons of Horus had yet to emerge from their assault drills and became trapped in the rockcrete as it set, ensuring that they would be entombed beneath the Palace forever. Barring any future statements to the contrary, it appears that literally the only survivor of this deflated, wilted bit of tactical flailing, once laughably referred to as a spear-thrust, was the very [[Abaddon|armless failure]] that advocated so strongly for it. [[Fail|Oops]].

Aboveground, Fulgrim had unleashed a full-scale assault against the Saturnine Wall, leading off with the Donjon siege engines, which had been modified with immense sonic weapons similar to those of the Kakophoni. The engines seriously disrupted the defense at first, but the Imperial Fists and Army garrison were able to rally and funnel the III Legion into a chokepoint. Fulgrim got into a duel with Sigismund atop the Wall. Though the Templar was able to land a few hits, Fulgrim's daemonically enhanced strength and speed gave him the upper hand. Before he could kill Sigismund, Dorn intervened and proceeded to pummel Fulgrim badly enough that the Phoenician threw a tantrum and took his legion and went home, abandoning the Siege entirely and costing Team Horus one of its most significant force multipliers. Fulgrim left fifty-six of his best warriors behind in an attempt to kill Dorn, but he and Sigismund were able to defeat them all, including Eidolon and Von Kalda. The assault wound up costing the Emperor's Children no less than eighteen thousand Astartes, along with all three of the irreplaceable siege engines.

This great victory had been purchased with an equally great loss: the fall of the Eternity Wall spaceport. Despite the garrison's best efforts to hold the port, they were faced with the Chaos-fueled rage of Angron and the World Eaters. Angron issued a demand for the port's defenders to surrender and was met with a concentrated artillery barrage that literally atomized him, though being a daemon prince, he didn't stay down for long. He and his legion immediately assaulted and seized the spaceport, killing everyone present. Many heroes of the Imperium died unheralded deaths at the Eternity Wall, including Knight-Commander Jenetia Krole of the Silent Sisterhood, Prefect Warden Tsutomu of the Adeptus Custodes, High Primary Solar General Saul Niborran, and Captain Camba Diaz of the Imperial Fists (who died holding the line in one of the greatest displays of manliness in the universe). A lone Guardsman named Olly Piers died there also, defending a banner of the Emperor Ascendant against Angron's relentless charge, thus [[Ollanius Pius|establishing the foundation for one of the Imperium's most enduring myths]] after a considerable amount of embellishment at his dying request. Ironically, Piers was a distant descendant of Ollanius Persson.

In the aftermath of these battles, Dorn and Sanguinius took stock of where they stood. The Gorgon Bar had held and would continue to hold for two precious weeks more by Sanguinius' estimate. The repulse at the Saturnine Wall had cost the Traitor Legions dearly. Three hundred of the XVI Legion's elite troops and eighteen thousand Emperor's Children were dead, with Fulgrim and the rest of the III Legion having quit the field. Jaghatai Khan, having held the Colossi, was now preparing to retake the Lion's Gate. Better yet, Sanguinius' prescience had granted him a vision from within the depths of Angron's tortured mind: Nuceria had been destroyed - not merely razed as Angron and Lorgar had done during the Shadow Crusade, but obliterated by orbital bombardment. Dorn and Sanguinius both knew this could mean only one thing: Roboute Guilliman and Lion el'Jonson were on the way along with their legions.

Admiral Niora Su-Kassen, now in command of what remained of the loyalist naval assets in the Solar system, received indications of another fleet approaching from the outer edges of the system. She ordered the new arrivals to announce themselves, and was answered with a hail from Corswain of the Dark Angels: "We come to stand with Terra."

==Assault on the Mercury Wall and Recapture of the Astronomican==

With the repulse at Saturnine and the fall of the Eternity Wall spaceport, the Siege was entering a new phase. With both of the Imperial Palace's primary spaceports in their hands, the traitor forces began bringing in all their reserves and materiel stores, preparing to overwhelm the loyalists through sheer numbers. Perturabo was still directing the battle more or less singlehandedly at this time until he received a summons from Horus to attend him on the ''Vengeful Spirit''. When the Lord of Iron arrived in Horus' throne room, the Warmaster instructed him to abandon his current battle plan. Instead, he wanted to throw everything they had, including the Titan Legio Mortis, straight at the Mercury Wall, which represented the true beginning of the Imperial Palace. Perturabo demanded to know why Horus wanted to employ such a wasteful and apparently futile strategy, and Horus stated that it would work because he willed it so. Shortly thereafter, Horus sent his equerry to Perturabo with orders to disperse the Iron Warriors among the traitor forces. He followed up this humiliating order by informing Perturabo that Mortarion and the Death Guard would be taking over the IV Legion's positions. Infuriated, Perturabo denounced Horus' alliance with the Ruinous Powers and declared that this was no longer a war of Legions, but a war of foul and unnatural powers in which no true victory could be won. He then bitterly declared that Horus was exactly like the Emperor: both of them had manipulated Perturabo from the very beginning and forced him into a role he despised, that of the ruthless, calculating siege master. With that, he ordered the entire IV Legion to withdraw from the battlespace. Some of the traitor forces attempted to stop the Iron Warriors as they headed for the exits, but were unsuccessful.

Horus ordered the attack on the Mercury Wall to proceed, spearheaded by Legio Mortis. To counter the Death's Head, the loyalists deployed the Legio Ignatum and a few Titans from Legio Solaria, along with Knight banners from Houses Vyronii, Tyranus, Cadmus, and Konor. A representative of the Mechanicus attempted to convince Ignatum's Titan drivers to flee the battle, as his calculations had shown that defeat was inevitable, but the principes rejected his proposal and walked to war anyway. Also present were a number of other Titans from legions that had been decimated at Beta-Garmon, but many of them refused to join the battle, citing the Titandeath as their reason for remaining out of the fight. This lasted until the engagement between Mortis and Ignatum began, in a vast open space known as the Mercury-Exultant killzone. The traitors were revealed to be using Titans that had been destroyed at Beta-Garmon and elsewhere as cannon fodder; the wrecked Titans had been reanimated via sorcery and now teemed with blight and corruption. Ignatum smashed through these revenants, only to be confronted with the main strength of Legio Mortis. A desperate battle ensued, with dozens of god-engines being destroyed on both sides. Proscribed weapons such as warp and vortex missiles were employed freely, for this was now a battle of annihilation. Recognizing the import of the engagement, the Emperor communicated with a representative of the Ordo Sinister, the commanders of the dreaded Psi-Titans, and ordered him to join the battle. One of their prefects made himself known to Dorn, who agreed to deploy the four available Psi-Titans into the battle. He then took command personally at the Mercury Wall, bringing reinforcements with him. Ambassador Vethorel of the Adeptus Mechanicus approached the Titan crews who had refused to join the battle and showed them images of the reanimated Titans being used by the traitors. Galvanized by the desecration of their fellow god-engines, the Titan crews agreed to rejoin the fight. Vethorel proclaimed them to be a new Legio, the Legio Invigilata. Led by the former Grand Master of Legio Solaria, Invigilata joined Ignatum and the Psi-Titans on the front line. In spite of the loyalists' bravery, the main strength of Ignatum was destroyed by the superior numbers and firepower of Legio Mortis, combined with an orbital bombardment from the traitor fleet. The survivors attempted to rally and continue the fight, but Mortis had reached the Mercury Wall and began to tear it down.

During this battle, Corswain of the Dark Angels was conferring with Admiral Su-Kassen and other leaders of the Imperial fleet. Corswain had been expecting to find the rest of the I Legion already present at Terra and was dismayed to learn that he and the forces under his command were the only Dark Angels in the system. He had brought only ten thousand Astartes and two dozen ships with him, barely enough to make any kind of impact against the enemy forces in orbit. Unwilling to sit by and do nothing, Corswain announced that he intended to recapture the Astronomican, which had fallen into traitor hands and gone dark. Without it, the I and XIII Legions would be unable to reach the system and relieve Terra. Some of the Dark Angels in his fleet, having been subverted by Luther's separatist faction, wanted to assassinate Corswain to avoid being wasted on what they considered a pointless suicide mission. They were talked down by Librarian Vassago, who was a member of their faction but admired Corswain's bravery and nobility. Admiral Su-Kassen agreed to lend them the ''Imperator Somnium'', an immense battle carrier that had served as one of the Emperor's personal flagships, for their attack. The Dark Angels proceeded to use the ''Somnium'' as a sort of fireship. Concealing their own vessels under its tremendous bulk, they rode in with the huge flagship as it drew the fire of the entire traitor fleet, then split away and charged through to the Astronomican before the traitors realized what was happening. The ''Somnium'' died hard, taking many enemy ships with it and inflicting critical damage on the ''Conqueror'' and ''Terminus Est''. The Dark Angels successfully landed at the Astronomican and breached its defenses. They found that the mountain had been overrun by elements of the Emperor's Children and Vassukella, a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh. Despite sustaining heavy casualties, they were able to kill Vassukella and the corrupted Children, reclaiming the Astronomican for the Imperium. Corswain was nearly killed by the psychic backlash of the daemon's death, only to be saved by Vassago. The news that the Astronomican was once again in friendly hands provided a much-needed morale boost to the Imperial forces, though this was offset by the grim news from the Mercury Wall.

Subsidiary combat continued all along the Palace's defensive perimeter, though it was comparatively small in scale when measured against the annihilating fight taking place at the Mercury Wall. The loyalists were beginning to reach the limits of their mental, physical, and spiritual endurance, though some of them took confidence in a new credo: "He protects us as we protect Him." Even so, the loyalists' morale was being further eroded by the malign influence of the Warp. Those who were sensitive to its currents and eddies noted that its strength was waxing as the Siege ground on, working its way through the cracks in the Emperor's wards and battering down the mental defenses of the loyalist troops. Suicides, murders, and desertions spiked as exhausted and despairing soldiers and civilians sought to escape into a paradisaical dreamland. Unfortunately for them, this dreamland was a trap laid by the Emperor's Children to prey on the desperate and fearful. Thousands of unfortunate souls were lured to the Hatay-Antakya Hive, where the III Legion entrapped them in their dreams and "milked" them for their emotions. These activities were disrupted by the arrival of [[Ollanius Pius|Ollanius Persson]] and his band of refugees from Calth, who were seeking to rendezvous with John Grammaticus and his prototype Space Marine bodyguard Leetu. They in turn were aided in their escape by a mysterious woman calling herself "Actaea" and a legionary in scaled armor who identified himself as Alpharius. Together, this unlikely group of allies embarked on an unspecified mission involving the Emperor.

==Second Battle for the Lion's Gate and the Rise of the Emperor's Champion==

With the Mercury Wall breached, the Siege was reaching its endgame. The loyalist forces were being slowly shoved back into the innermost circles of the Palace defenses. Comms were unreliable at best, supplies were running low, and sheer exhaustion and hopelessness were grinding the defenders down. Angron and the World Eaters were loose inside the Palatine, with the Sons of Horus following behind. The Death Guard occupied the Lion's Gate spaceport, taking over after the IV Legion's abrupt departure from the battlespace. As their tainted presence began to warp the port into a twisted mirror of Barbarus, Mortarion established himself in one of its command centers, using his new daemonic powers to amplify the currents of the warp and blanket the Palace in a psychic miasma of despair. The effect was so potent that even Rogal Dorn's legendary resolve was cracking under the weight of Mortarion's malignant influence. He had bent all his prodigious intellect and unmatched engineering skill toward transforming Terra into the mightiest fortress the galaxy had ever seen, and it had not been enough. Without Guilliman and the Lion and their legions, they were doomed to inevitable defeat.

Jaghatai Khan, frustrated by the passivity of static defense, decided to launch a counterattack on the Lion's Gate. His reasoning was sound: should the Dark Angels and Ultramarines arrive to relieve Terra, they would need a place to dock their voidcraft. Moreover, the powerful anti-orbital batteries of the Gate could be turned against the traitor fleet. With his decision made, he quietly assembled the V Legion while his friend and Army liaison Ilya Ravallion scrounged up every functioning tank she could find to support the assault. The Khagan also recruited the Skye orbital plate to serve as a shield against the guns of the traitor fleet, knowing that they would bombard his forces as soon as they were visible. The gathered tanks were formed into a new unit, the First Terran Armoured, and sortied alongside the V Legion, deployed into three massive attack groups. They shouldered their way through the outer defenses easily enough, using the tanks to smash the Death Guard's armored spearheads and deploying Stormseers to wipe out any daemons that manifested themselves. The V Legion's usual tactics of speed and shock power served them well in this stage of the assault, but things became much harder when they reached the spaceport. The battle turned into an attritional slugging match, with two of the three attack groups bogging down almost immediately. Only the group led by the Khagan himself made any headway, tearing through the massed ranks of the XIV Legion and breaching the Gate itself. The fighting grew steadily more desperate; the mortal tank crews were being pushed to their limits and beyond by the nature of the fighting, which required them to remain sealed inside their tanks at all times lest they fall prey to chemical weapons or warp-borne plagues, and the White Scars were stymied by the unnatural resilience of their foes.

As the battle continued to rage throughout the port's lower levels, the Khan infiltrated Mortarion's command center and challenged his brother to a duel. They fought like madmen, with nothing held back, but Mortarion's unnatural strength gave him the edge. He wrecked Jaghatai's armor, broke his arms and ankles, and smashed his face into a pulp. The Khagan stood up, laughing off wounds that should have killed him, and attacked again. He taunted Mortarion relentlessly until the Death Lord became enraged enough to make a mistake. The Khan skewered him, only for Mortarion to recover and bury his scythe in the Warhawk's chest. [[Just as planned|Which was exactly what the Khan had wanted him to do.]] Jaghatai had allowed Mortarion to deliver a killing stroke so that he could deliver one in return. He beheaded his corrupted brother, banishing Mortarion to the Warp and unleashing a psychic shockwave that staggered and disoriented the Death Guard. In the aftermath, Jaghatai succumbed to his wounds, triggering a berserker frenzy in his sons that drove the bewildered Death Guard out of the spaceport. The Khagan was carried out of the spaceport on a Leman Russ, where he was met by Ilya Ravallion. She sensed a spark of life within his broken and ravaged body and immediately had him taken to Malcador, who set his adepts to the task of healing the primarch.

Within the walls of the Palace, chaos reigned. As walls fell and city blocks were blasted into ruin, hordes of civilian refugees and Imperial Army units fled toward the illusory safety of the innermost districts, with the World Eaters and Sons of Horus at their heels. Some garrisons made lonely last stands, hoping to tie down the traitors as long as possible, while others collapsed and were overrun. As Dorn faced the inevitable, he summoned First Captain Sigismund and gave him a simple order: "Hurt them." As Sigismund made for the battlefield, he was greeted by Khalid Hassan, who brought him the Black Sword, an ancient and potent relic weapon forged in Earth's pre-Unification era. Sigismund took up the blade and went out to fulfill his father's orders, sworn now to fight for the Imperium as it would become, not as it had been. He cut down hundreds of traitor champions in single combat. Rumors of the warrior known as the "Black Sword" or "the Emperor's Champion" began spreading across the Palace, heartening loyalists and demoralizing the traitors. Many on both sides sought him out, either to join him or to kill him. Sigismund finally encountered Kharn, who challenged him to a rematch. Sigismund's cold, impassive fighting style disturbed the World Eater, who furiously tried to provoke a reaction in the First Captain. Unshaken, Sigismund fought Kharn to a standstill and cut him down, but not before the World Eater saw the truth of things in a rare moment of lucidity: Sigismund was the herald of a new kind of Imperial warrior, of [[Black Templars|a legion of fanatical, stoic, single-minded zealots]] whose relentless fury and inability to countenance defeat would wreak untold misery on a galaxy already groaning under the weight of aeons of anguish.

Meanwhile, Euphrati Keeler, who was now loose and alone in the ruins, used Sigismund as the inspiration for a new kind of army. Rallying the masses of civilian refugees and Army stragglers, she forged them into a militia armed with tools, a few lasguns, and their faith in the Emperor and sent them forth to fight the Traitor Legions. Though a hundred of them might fall in exchange for one traitor, Keeler regarded it as a fair exchange, for there were hundreds of thousands more to take their place. Garviel Loken, upon finding Keeler, was dismayed by her harsher, more brutal mindset. She justified it to him by arguing that this was the kind of army the Imperium would need in the future: [[Imperial Guard|an army of millions, even billions of humans, united by their unwavering faith in the Emperor and their hatred for the alien, the mutant, and the traitor]].

==Duel of the Emperor and Horus==
[[file:Horus and his Daddy.jpeg|thumb|middle|400px|If you haven't seen this image yet, you must be new. Like, really fucking new.]]
Like with any truly epic event, the siege only ended with the most motherfuckingest duel in the entire 40k fluff: the Emperor of Mankind against Horus, the most favoured of the Primarchs and the living avatar of the Chaos Gods. If the Horus Heresy was the most important of a series of events, if the siege was the single most epic of those events, then the duel is the defining moment of the fluff and affected everything else that came after it.

During the duel, Horus had managed to mortally wound the Emperor (despite the Big E being a nigh-unkillable Perpetual) and would have finished him off, if not for the intervention of one Perpetual Guardsman (Oll Perrson/Ollanius Pius)/Imperial Fist/Custodian. He jumped in front of Horus as he was about to strike the final blow, and was killed. The Emperor, seeing how far his most favored son had fallen, decided "Fuck this" and OBLITERATED HORUS'S SOUL!

Although the Emperor managed to win and kill Horus, he was so badly wounded in the end he needed to be on 24/7 life support just to survive. So really when you come down to it, it was a draw; Chaos had been stopped then but only at an unthinkable cost to the Imperium.

==/tg/ Connection==
What, besides the fact that ''''' it's the most important event in the 40k universe?''''' Fine.

The Siege of Terra is also the theme for the [[Horus Heresy#The Board Game|Horus Heresy board game]], in which you reenact the Siege itself. There. Happy? (Not really.)

===The fa/tg/uy's explanation of the Siege Of Terra (for Dummies and BL Editors)===
[[File:Loyalists vs. Traitors.jpg|thumb|middle|700px|Some serious Daddy problems.]]
The main rule of warfare: As the number of combatants increases, the resemblance to complete uncontrolled insanity approaches infinity. And then you have to take into account the terrain...

Basically, you start with a planet that's been nuked, polluted, and generally lived in for a few hundred thousand years too long. Everyone on it is fighting everyone else, constantly. Your basic unit of land is the Bunker, Vault 101 style. There isn't any natural plant life left so all the oxygen is made in vats with the food. ''Luckily'' this means you can build anywhere that isn't intensely radioactive and hence fight over those areas. Get Mega-City-One, nuke it, and rebuild it a few times, and then you start to understand.

Then the Emperor comes along and manages against all odds to conquer the place. Suddenly everyone isn't killing and dying all the time, and a population boom happens. So Emps organized the largest set of public works since the first colony ships. He rebuilds huge areas of the planet and creates the Imperial Palace, the Astronomican, and a buttload more of cool shit besides. And what he gets is effectively one giant city, the second largest (after Commorragh) in the universe. "Huge" just doesn't do it justice as a description. Neither does "labyrinthine", "overpopulated", or "Gothic nightmare". And this New Terra was mostly just thrown over the original foundations of whatever was there like a pile of gold bricks onto a rat maze. There are bunkers and emplacements still around that date back to the War Against The Men of Iron and even before.

Then the Heresy came, and the Emperor says to Dorn "Fortify this fucking madhouse". So now everything that didn't have a gun emplacement before does now, everywhere. Dorn walled in half the doors and windows, put hundreds of AA batteries on every roof, filled entire rooms with concrete just for a bit of reinforcement, built hundreds of miles of trenches, redoubts, bastions, emplacements, and backup walls, conscripted half the population into the army (and half of ''that'' into the engineer corps), and generally panicked because all of this would only ever be necessary if the solar system's defenses (the best in the galaxy bar none) have failed.

Then Horus arrives in orbit. He's punched through the space defenses at massive cost, but the war in space is far from won, and the Palace is just a flat no-fly zone, so he can't just pick and choose landing areas. So he bombards everything his ships can reach, fills the sky with Drop Pods, and tries to march on it.

This is when Rule #1 kicks in and everything immediately gets megafucked for both sides. Ruined streets, trenches, and bunkers make navigating a nightmare, communications are somewhere between impossible and actively detrimental, drop pods and gunships are shot down immediately or land off-target, plans and backup plans fall apart in seconds, daemons run amok, and the Primarchs are either constantly trying to out-Tactical-Genius each other or are too in the thick of it to relay any commands, so no one has a fucking clue what's actually going on in the big picture. It's Stalingrad on a continental scale, but without even the merest hint of sanity and a thousand Space Marines charging into every breach. The inclusion of cackling daemons, rampaging renegade Guardsmen and abhumans, and bellowing daemon engines doesn't help the situation, nor does the fact that the guy ostensibly in charge of the Siege (Horus) is growing increasingly detached from reality.

So it takes roughly 10 minutes of this menial bullshit for a load of the Chaos forces to get bored and just decide "Fuck It, Let's Just Wreck The Place". So now everything makes even less sense: entire Legions are ignoring sensible objectives to go on the Chaos Marine equivalent of a bender. The Emperor's Children and the Night Lords rape, murder, and pillage the civilians of Terra so hard that even 10,000 years later they still live in fear at the memory, while the World Eaters are tearing around and hacking and slashing at anything they think might bleed. Only the Iron Warriors, the Death Guard, and the Sons of Horus are wholeheartedly tearing at the Palace, dedicated to rubbing it in Dorn's face like a bitch no matter what (and even then, the Iron Warriors would ultimately decide "fuck this" and leave). And to the horror of the loyalists, they're still succeeding. Brick by brick, the greatest military stronghold in the galaxy is falling.

Which sounds great for Chaos were it not for the simple fact it wasn't falling quickly enough. It was taking days to advance inches at massive cost, and Guilliman was en route with reinforcements, with Russ and the Lion and the remains of their Legions right behind him. If the siege wasn't ended before they got there, the traitors would likely lose. So Horus put all his cards on the table and lowered his battle barge's shields, goading the Emperor (who didn't know about the reinforcements - or maybe he did and was enacting a much greater scheme, see below) on board to hopefully kill him and force the defenders into a rout. Everything else is history.

The short story "The Board is Set" seemed to indicate that the Emperor and Malcador knew about the reinforcing loyalists from at least the beginning of the siege and were fully aware of the siege's outcome up to and including the Emperor's ascension to the Golden Throne, possibly even seeing the future all the way to the events of the Era Indomitus. It also seemed to imply that Horus lowering his shield may have been so he could teleport down and attack the Emperor, not realizing it was Malcador on the throne. Possibly the most epic level of Just As Planned.
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[[Category: Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]

Siege of Terra

2022-08-15T13:21:19Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8: /* Battle at the Saturnine Wall */

{{Stub}}
{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=Siege of Terra
|image=[[File:The-Siege-Of-Terra Angron.jpg|400px]]
|attacker= Traitor Legions
|defender= [[Imperium of Man]]
|commander1= [[Horus]], [[Angron]], [[Mortarion]], [[Angron]], [[Fulgrim]], [[Perturabo]], [[Magnus the Red]], Zardu Layak, Kelbor Hal
|commander2= The [[Emperor]], [[Sanguinius]], [[Rogal Dorn]], [[Jaghatai Khan]], [[Vulkan]], [[Malcador the Sigillite]], Constantine Valdor
|date=0014.M31
|scale=Planetary
|theatre=[[Horus Heresy]]
|strength1= [[Sons of Horus]], [[Death Guard]], [[World Eaters]], [[Emperor's Children]], [[Thousand Sons]], [[Iron Warriors]], [[Word Bearers]], [[Night Lords]], Traitor Army forces, [[Dark Mechanicum]], dozens of Traitor Knight houses, Traitor Titan legions, daemons
|strength2= [[Imperial Fists]], [[Blood Angels]], [[White Scars]], [[Adeptus Custodes]], [[Sisters of Silence]], [[Knights-Errant]], Imperial Army, Adeptus Arbites, dozens of Knight Houses, loyalist Titan Legions (Gryphonicus, Ignatum, Solaria, Atarus, Amaranth, Ordo Sinister)
|casualties1= Massive Heretic Astartes casualties, massive Traitor Army losses, massive Traitor Titan losses, massive Dark Mechanicum losses. Horus slain.
|casualties2= Massive military and civilian losses. Malcador the Sigillite slain. Sanguinius slain. Emperor mortally wounded and interred into Golden Throne.
|status= Pyrrhic Loyalist Victory
|outcome= Traitors driven from Terra and into the Eye of Terror. Death of Horus and crippling of the Emperor. Great Scouring Begins.
}}

{{topquote|[[Horus|He]] waits no longer. It begins now.|[[Sanguinius]] on the 13th of Secundus, 014.M31}}
The '''Siege of Terra''' was the end of the [[Horus Heresy]] in [[Warhammer 40,000]]. If the Horus Heresy can be considered the most important series of events in the 40k universe(*cough* [[War in Heaven]]), then the Siege of Terra itself could be considered the single most important event. It is also possibly the most fucking awesome event: brothers fighting brothers, Primarchs (read Sanguinius) soloing Titans and Greater Daemons, continent-spanning trench battles, the mighty guns of Titans blowing mountain-sized fortifications to shreds, Imperial Army soldiers leading charges against the traitorous forces even though they know it's suicide and [[Ollanius Pius]].

It was [[Horus]]'s big attempt to off his daddy and to be the true Emperor of the galaxy (for [[Chaos]] of course!). He brought a load of his traitor legions, millions of corrupt Imperial Army personnel and mutants, the part of the Mechanicus that had gone over to his side, and a whole load of daemons to boot. On his side, the [[Emperor]] had three legions, his [[Adeptus Custodes|Custodians]], and the loyal Imperial Army regiments of Terra and you know what? The Emperor went and won anyway (granted it was because the Emperor offed Horus before his legions could crack the Imperial palace but still, victory for the home team!).

==The Solar War==

Dorn began fortifying [[Terra]] immediately after getting word of the Heresy, knowing that it would always be Horus's eventual goal. Despite being removed from the larger battles of the Heresy, the Solar System was touched by the conflict, with Mars erupting into open rebellion and numerous sleeper agents and cults trying to destabilise the Throneworld. Despite this Dorn managed to do the best he could, turning Terra into the most heavily fortified system in the Imperium. He even managed to blunt part of the traitor advance at the Beta-Garmon cluster before getting ready for the final rumble they had known was coming.
[[File:Dorn-hh.jpg|300px|right]]
Terra was unique in that it had two artificial Mandeville points inside the Solar system itself, created during the Dark Age of Technology. Dorn fortified the likely approaches from the outer edge of the system and built up huge defenses around the two internal jump points. The traitors, however, were busy too: infiltrators and covert operatives sabotaged loyalist assets across the system. The Iron Warriors were the first Astartes into the breach, breaking the Warp on the First of Primus, 014.M31, using huge up-armoured Space Hulks as fireships to wear down the defenses before sending their main fleet through to engage the combined Fists and Scars fleets. The inner system conflict went on for a bit, with the loyalists managing to hold out enough to slow down the advance at least for a little while.

However, under Magnus's direction, the traitors turned the Shrine of Unity comet into a vast Warp gate that allowed Horus, Angron, and Fulgrim's fleets to jump right past most of the rings of defense Dorn had come up with. On the ''Phalanx'', Dorn was preoccupied with a daemon incursion and could do little to stop the huge fleets that were now mobbing for Terra. The Martian traitors, free from the blockade that had hemmed them in for years, joined up with Horus. The Solar War had been lost barely after it had begun. The rest of the loyalist fleets, knowing they could never hope to fight even a fraction of the vast traitor armada, regrouped on the edge of the system, along with the ''Phalanx'', waiting for the moment they could make an effective strike against Horus. There were early plans for the Emperor to be evacuated to the ''Phalanx'' and escape Terra, but these were made by people unaware of what Big-E was doing in the basement of the palace.

==The Siege Begins==
[[File:Map-2800x1983.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Map of the Siege.]]
{{topquote|'''Father! I have come for you!'''|[[Angron]] upon making planetfall, 15th of Quartus, 014.M31}}

Uncontested, most of the traitor armada held in orbit above the Palace, and on the Thirteenth of Secundus, began bombarding the Aegis, the vast shield network protecting the entire palace complex. Unlike regular void shields, the Aegis consisted of multiple overlapping layers of shields that individually regenerated as fast as they could be depleted by bombardment. On the ground, the Palace was protected by colossal networks of walls and bastions, static defenses, and vast numbers of Imperial Army units bolstered by hordes of press-ganged conscripts. Unknown to almost everyone, the Inner Palace was also protected by a psychic ward generated by the Emperor that would royally fuck up any daemon that set foot near it, daemon Primarchs included.

The rest of Terra wasn't so lucky. Barring a few isolated holdouts, the rest of the planet was virtually defenseless. It should be noted that if the goal was to destroy Terra wholesale, it could have been easily accomplished by Exterminatus-level weaponry. Perturabo, as the only non-Chaos-ified Primarch, insisted on doing exactly that and grew increasingly angry at what he saw as an irrational and wasteful goal. But Horus was insistent that the Emperor had to be slain in person, and so the Palace had to be reduced the old-fashioned way. In all fairness, one must also ask if Exterminatus was even possible when a being like the Emperor was on Terra, to say nothing of the void shields and defenses on Terra itself (with the answer depending on how much Ext-grade weaponry and warheads the Chaos forces could bring along). The daemon primarchs were kept in orbit, safe from the Emperor's wards, although this meant that Angron had to be imprisoned in the maze Perturabo had built to contain Vulkan to stop him from [[Leeroy Jenkins]]ing the whole thing as he had done at Istvaan III.

Hordes of mutants, beastmen, cultists, and traitor Army units were thrown at the conventional defenses. Entire wings of aircraft dueled above the Palace. Precision bombardments gradually weakened minute sections of the Aegis long enough for bombers to get through and destroy the projectors. The Dark Mechanicum landed siege camps at 8 points around the Palace, partly to surround it but also to act as the focus for a ritual that would enable the Warp to take a foothold on the surface of the Throneworld. The Dark Mechanicum also began building massive siege towers to get Traitor Legionaries on the Wall. The Astartes were held in reserve on both sides whilst their more conventional forces softened each other up. The Death Guard were the first traitor Astartes to land on Terra, with the Khan and the White Scars riding forth on jetbikes and aircraft to meet them and wreck the Dark Mechanicum's siege camps. The Night Lords were the first Astartes to breach the walls of the Palace, albeit in small numbers; this attack also cost them their ''de facto'' commander, Gendor Skraivok. Sanguinius himself descended to help the mortal forces, acting as force multiplier, decoy, and morale booster.

Unfortunately, by that point, enough bloodshed had occurred that the Emperor's wards were now reduced to just a few meters from the walls of the Palace, meaning daemons could now manifest on Terra. Horus responded by sending the World Eaters as the second wave, and this time Angron was leading the charge. Recognizing the outworks were about to be overrun, Sanguinius used an impending sally by the Legio Solaria to evacuate the surviving conscripts through the Helios Gate, while Legio Solaria destroyed the remaining siege tower. The loyalists had managed to repulse the first serious attempts on the Eternity Wall, but were now completely cut off from the rest of Terra, surrounded on all sides.

==The Lion's Gate Falls==
[[File:LatD-Map-3309x2420.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Map of the Lion's Gate Space Port.]]
While the Death Guard, Emperor's Children, and World Eaters each hammered away at a different section of the Palace walls, the traitors' first major effort at cracking the Palace itself was aimed at the Lion's Gate spaceport, the largest and tallest spaceport on Terra. It reached so high into the atmosphere that void craft could dock at its upper levels, meaning that the traitor forces could more easily shuttle in reinforcements and materiel if they captured it. Horus tasked the Iron Warriors with taking the Gate. In turn, Perturabo assigned Warsmith Kroeger to lead the assault under the logic that Dorn would be expecting Pert to command such an important offensive personally and wouldn't be expecting whatever plans Kroeger came up with. Dorn assigned Seneschal Fafnir Rann to lead the defense of the spaceport rather than First Captain Sigismund since he was still angry with Sigismund for listening to Euphrati Keeler instead of obeying his orders. Kroeger went straight for the throat, launching a massive combined-arms assault directly on the port with backup from the World Eaters and Emperor's Children, though the latter quickly got bored and left after taking a bunch of prisoners for [[Rape|unspecified purposes]]. Though the Imperial Fists held off the initial attack, Warsmith Forrix and a thousand Iron Warriors managed to infiltrate the Gate by using renegade Imperial Army units as literal meatshields. To aid the attack, the Dark Mechanicum inserted a technophagic virus into the spaceport's systems, and Zardu Layak, Abaddon, and Typhus performed a Nurglite ritual to infiltrate the [[Daemon Prince]] Cor'bax Utterblight behind the Emperor's psychic wards.

The Fists drove back several consecutive assaults from the Iron Warriors and World Eaters, but the technophage was screwing their sensors and comms all to hell and gone, seriously complicating efforts to coordinate the defense, and Forrix and his infiltrators were tying up troops that were desperately needed elsewhere. Rann finally called Dorn for backup and Dorn scraped up an additional three thousand Fists, which were literally all the troops he could spare at that point. Despite Rann's best efforts, the balance inevitably tipped in the traitors' favor. Dorn arrived on the scene just in time to order a general withdrawal from the spaceport to the inner defenses, though not before he killed Zardu Layak after a brief duel. With the Gate firmly in the traitor hands, Perturabo started unloading Titans and consolidating his position.

Meanwhile, Euphrati Keeler and the Custodian Amon Tauromachian had been tapped by Malcador to investigate strange apparitions occurring behind the Palace walls. They eventually deduced that this was a daemon exploiting the faith of Imperial cultists to manifest itself inside the Emperor's psychic defenses. One cult, in particular, called the Lightbearers, had been deceived into worshipping Nurgle instead of the Emperor. After Cor'bax used the Lightbearers to physically manifest himself inside the Palace, Amon, Euphrati, and Malcador teamed up to slay the daemon. When Amon suggested that they should purge the rest of the Emperor's worshippers to prevent another such incident, Malcador answered that he would continue to let them exist until the Emperor himself said otherwise, in the hopes that he could weaponize their faith against the Chaos gods.

==Battle at the Saturnine Wall==
[[File:Siege_of_Terra1.jpg|thumb|middle|500px|Just 0.000001% of 0.000001% of the Siege of Terra.]]
{{cleanup}}

With the Lion's Gate lost, Dorn was now under tremendous pressure as he continued to coordinate the defense in the face of the unrelenting traitor assaults. Nearly all the Traitor Legions were committed to the battle at this point, with the Death Guard, Iron Warriors, World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Emperor's Children, and Sons of Horus engaged in heavy fighting throughout the Palace's outer districts. Dorn could only muster his own legion, plus the Blood Angels and White Scars and their primarchs.

While taking a brief break in an abandoned garden, Dorn encountered Kyril Sindermann, who made an offhand comment about the Saturnine Wall trembling under the weight of the bombardment. From this, Dorn deduced that something was wrong with the defenses in that section and investigated. What he found was a potential catastrophe. The ceaseless bombardments from the traitor forces had caused the entire Imperial Palace and the tectonic plates on which it rested to shift by eight centimeters, opening a small but detectable fault line beneath the Saturnine Wall.

Certain that Perturabo would notice this fault and attempt to exploit it, Dorn began concocting a counterattack. Before laying out his plans, he called a council of war with Constantin Valdor and Malcador to explain to them his next move: he would have to start allowing parts of the Palace defenses to fall, as he simply no longer had the numbers or the materiel to hold everything. He identified four key parts of the defense that could not be allowed to fall to the enemy - the Colossi Gate, the Gorgon Bar, the Saturnine Wall, and the Eternity Wall spaceport - then chose the one he could most afford to lose based on his calculations, which was the spaceport. Though he would put on a show of defending it, Dorn knew that the port ultimately had to be sacrificed, even though it meant letting the traitor forces control both of the Palace's main spaceports. He assigned Sanguinius to hold the Gorgon Bar and Jaghatai Khan to hold the Colossi; he would personally oversee the defense of the Saturnine Wall and lay a trap in the hopes of bagging a significant enemy target, perhaps even Horus himself.

Perturabo had indeed spotted the weakness at the Saturnine Wall, though he had initially planned to use it only as a last-ditch ace in the hole. Abaddon convinced him to instead make it a focal point of the attack through a combination of flattery and unsubtle goading, suggesting that Perturabo's victory over Dorn would be tainted if it was won with the help of the Neverborn. Though the Lord of Iron nearly caved his face in for it, Abaddon won the argument and immediately set out to assemble a spear-tip strike. Secretly, he was also hoping to win a "clean" victory without resorting to the use of daemons and sorcery, as he believed that using the Warp to win a war was beneath his dignity as an Astartes.

The battles for the Colossi and the Gorgon Bar escalated in scale and intensity. The defenders at the Colossi Gate were plagued by legions of flies that seemed to manifest from nowhere, forcing them to wear bulky protective equipment that lessened their effectiveness. Sanguinius was suffering under the weight of his psychic visions, which were coming with increasing frequency and intensity; nevertheless, he continued to fight on the front lines, knowing that his mere appearance was heartening the defenders and raising their morale. At one point he [[Awesome|singlehandedly killed a Warlord Titan]], then stared down its three accompanying Warhounds until they turned tail and fled. At the Colossi, Jaghatai and the White Scars led a few massed jetbike charges into the ranks of the Death Guard, destroying their siege engines, killing their Neverborn reinforcements, inflicting casualties, and generally delaying the XIV Legion's inexorable advance. The Adeptus Custodes also engaged the Death Guard, with Constantin Valdor himself taking the field. Their Emperor-forged nature proved especially potent against the Warp-corrupted Marines of the XIV and their daemonic allies. Ahriman and the Thousand Sons attempted to literally melt the Colossi bastion with sorcery, only to be driven back by three White Scars Stormseers who channeled the captured weather underneath the Palace's void shielding into an immense lightning storm.

At the Saturnine Wall, Dorn had devised a simple but cunning trap. Its cellars and tunnels had been fortified and transformed into a series of Zones Mortalis, and he had assembled a five-hundred-man strong force of veteran Astartes, broken into seven kill teams led by [[Sigismund]], [[Nathaniel Garro]], Endryd Haar of the World Eaters, [[Garviel Loken]], Bel Sepatus of the Blood Angels, Helig Gallor of the Death Guard, and Maximus Thane of the Imperial Fists. He had also enlisted the technoarchaeologist Arkhan Land to help him mend the fault line; Land devised a quick-setting form of rockcrete which could be pumped into the fault to seal it permanently. Dorn didn't know who would be leading the assault, but he was hoping for Horus himself. Once cut off and isolated inside the Palace walls, even the Warmaster would be relatively easy prey. On the other side, Abaddon was able to convince Fulgrim to lend him the entire Emperor's Children Legion for the assault on the Saturnine and wrangled three companies of the Sons of Horus to form the spear-tip. The III Legion would [[DISTRACTION CARNIFEX|attack from the front as a diversion]], using three Donjon-class siege engines borrowed from the Dark Mechanicum, while Abaddon and his Astartes burrowed up from beneath with Termite assault drills.

[[Just as planned|They had walked straight into Dorn's trap]]. When the first Sons of Horus emerged from their assault drills, they were ambushed by Dorn's kill teams, who achieved total surprise. The assault force was ''DESTROYED IN DETAIL'', which is to say that of the hundreds of elite combatants committed to the attack (which included the famed Justaerin Terminators and Catulan Reavers of the 1st Company, all four members of the Mournival leading their respective companies, as well as two more veteran companies led by Tybalt Marr and Lev Goshen respectively) the number of survivors could literally be counted on one hand with fingers to spare. Garro decapitated Falkus Kibre of the Justaerin, while Loken killed Tybalt Marr, Horus Aximand, and Tormageddon. Just as the loyalists were starting to relax, Abaddon and a hundred Justaerin Terminators teleported into their midst, triggering a giant brawl. Abaddon went on a killing spree, but eventually absorbed a series of crippling blows from Bel Sepatus and Endryd Haar. Though he managed to kill them both, he wound up pinned under Haar's corpse, with Garro poised to deliver the killing stroke. Luckily for Abaddon, [[Plot Armor|he was teleported to safety at the last moment]], as the Chaos Gods had already chosen him to be the new Warmaster after the death of Horus. Arkhan Land began pumping hundreds of thousands of liters of his rockcrete formula into the fault. Though he was briefly interrupted by Horus Aximand, the plan went off without a hitch, and the fault was permanently sealed. Some of the remaining Sons of Horus had yet to emerge from their assault drills and became trapped in the rockcrete as it set, ensuring that they would be entombed beneath the Palace forever. Barring any future statements to the contrary, it appears that literally the only survivor of this deflated, wilted bit of tactical flailing, once laughably referred to as a spear-thrust, was the very [[Abaddon|armless failure]] that advocated so strongly for it. [[Fail|Oops]].

Aboveground, Fulgrim had unleashed a full-scale assault against the Saturnine Wall, leading off with the Donjon siege engines, which had been modified with immense sonic weapons similar to those of the Kakophoni. The engines seriously disrupted the defense at first, but the Imperial Fists and Army garrison were able to rally and funnel the III Legion into a chokepoint. Fulgrim got into a duel with Sigismund atop the Wall. Though the Templar was able to land a few hits, Fulgrim's daemonically enhanced strength and speed gave him the upper hand. Before he could kill Sigismund, Dorn intervened and proceeded to pummel Fulgrim badly enough that the Phoenician threw a tantrum and took his legion and went home, abandoning the Siege entirely and costing Team Horus one of its most significant force multipliers. Fulgrim left fifty-six of his best warriors behind in an attempt to kill Dorn, but he and Sigismund were able to defeat them all, including Eidolon and Von Kalda. The assault wound up costing the Emperor's Children no less than eighteen thousand Astartes, along with all three of the irreplaceable siege engines.

This great victory had been purchased with an equally great loss: the fall of the Eternity Wall spaceport. Despite the garrison's best efforts to hold the port, they were faced with the Chaos-fueled rage of Angron and the World Eaters. Angron issued a demand for the port's defenders to surrender and was met with a concentrated artillery barrage that literally atomized him, though being a daemon prince, he didn't stay down for long. He and his legion immediately assaulted and seized the spaceport, killing everyone present. Many heroes of the Imperium died unheralded deaths at the Eternity Wall, including Knight-Commander Jenetia Krole of the Silent Sisterhood, Prefect Warden Tsutomu of the Adeptus Custodes, High Primary Solar General Saul Niborran, and Captain Camba Diaz of the Imperial Fists (who died holding the line in one of the greatest displays of manliness in the universe). A lone Guardsman named Olly Piers died there also, defending a banner of the Emperor Ascendant against Angron's relentless charge, thus [[Ollanius Pius|establishing the foundation for one of the Imperium's most enduring myths]] after a considerable amount of embellishment at his dying request. Ironically, Piers was a distant descendant of Ollanius Persson.

In the aftermath of these battles, Dorn and Sanguinius took stock of where they stood. The Gorgon Bar had held and would continue to hold for two precious weeks more by Sanguinius' estimate. The repulse at the Saturnine Wall had cost the Traitor Legions dearly. Three hundred of the XVI Legion's elite troops and eighteen thousand Emperor's Children were dead, with Fulgrim and the rest of the III Legion having quit the field. Jaghatai Khan, having held the Colossi, was now preparing to retake the Lion's Gate. Better yet, Sanguinius' prescience had granted him a vision from within the depths of Angron's tortured mind: Nuceria had been destroyed - not merely razed as Angron and Lorgar had done during the Shadow Crusade, but obliterated by orbital bombardment. Dorn and Sanguinius both knew this could mean only one thing: Roboute Guilliman and Lion el'Jonson were on the way along with their legions.

Admiral Niora Su-Kassen, now in command of what remained of the loyalist naval assets in the Solar system, received indications of another fleet approaching from the outer edges of the system. She ordered the new arrivals to announce themselves, and was answered with a hail from Corswain of the Dark Angels: "We come to stand with Terra."

==Assault on the Mercury Wall and Recapture of the Astronomican==

With the repulse at Saturnine and the fall of the Eternity Wall spaceport, the Siege was entering a new phase. With both of the Imperial Palace's primary spaceports in their hands, the traitor forces began bringing in all their reserves and materiel stores, preparing to overwhelm the loyalists through sheer numbers. Perturabo was still directing the battle more or less singlehandedly at this time until he received a summons from Horus to attend him on the ''Vengeful Spirit''. When the Lord of Iron arrived in Horus' throne room, the Warmaster instructed him to abandon his current battle plan. Instead, he wanted to throw everything they had, including the Titan Legio Mortis, straight at the Mercury Wall, which represented the true beginning of the Imperial Palace. Perturabo demanded to know why Horus wanted to employ such a wasteful and apparently futile strategy, and Horus stated that it would work because he willed it so. Shortly thereafter, Horus sent his equerry to Perturabo with orders to disperse the Iron Warriors among the traitor forces. He followed up this humiliating order by informing Perturabo that Mortarion and the Death Guard would be taking over the IV Legion's positions. Infuriated, Perturabo denounced Horus' alliance with the Ruinous Powers and declared that this was no longer a war of Legions, but a war of foul and unnatural powers in which no true victory could be won. He then bitterly declared that Horus was exactly like the Emperor: both of them had manipulated Perturabo from the very beginning and forced him into a role he despised, that of the ruthless, calculating siege master. With that, he ordered the entire IV Legion to withdraw from the battlespace. Some of the traitor forces attempted to stop the Iron Warriors as they headed for the exits, but were unsuccessful.

Horus ordered the attack on the Mercury Wall to proceed, spearheaded by Legio Mortis. To counter the Death's Head, the loyalists deployed the Legio Ignatum and a few Titans from Legio Solaria, along with Knight banners from Houses Vyronii, Tyranus, Cadmus, and Konor. A representative of the Mechanicus attempted to convince Ignatum's Titan drivers to flee the battle, as his calculations had shown that defeat was inevitable, but the principes rejected his proposal and walked to war anyway. Also present were a number of other Titans from legions that had been decimated at Beta-Garmon, but many of them refused to join the battle, citing the Titandeath as their reason for remaining out of the fight. This lasted until the engagement between Mortis and Ignatum began, in a vast open space known as the Mercury-Exultant killzone. The traitors were revealed to be using Titans that had been destroyed at Beta-Garmon and elsewhere as cannon fodder; the wrecked Titans had been reanimated via sorcery and now teemed with blight and corruption. Ignatum smashed through these revenants, only to be confronted with the main strength of Legio Mortis. A desperate battle ensued, with dozens of god-engines being destroyed on both sides. Proscribed weapons such as warp and vortex missiles were employed freely, for this was now a battle of annihilation. Recognizing the import of the engagement, the Emperor communicated with a representative of the Ordo Sinister, the commanders of the dreaded Psi-Titans, and ordered him to join the battle. One of their prefects made himself known to Dorn, who agreed to deploy the four available Psi-Titans into the battle. He then took command personally at the Mercury Wall, bringing reinforcements with him. Ambassador Vethorel of the Adeptus Mechanicus approached the Titan crews who had refused to join the battle and showed them images of the reanimated Titans being used by the traitors. Galvanized by the desecration of their fellow god-engines, the Titan crews agreed to rejoin the fight. Vethorel proclaimed them to be a new Legio, the Legio Invigilata. Led by the former Grand Master of Legio Solaria, Invigilata joined Ignatum and the Psi-Titans on the front line. In spite of the loyalists' bravery, the main strength of Ignatum was destroyed by the superior numbers and firepower of Legio Mortis, combined with an orbital bombardment from the traitor fleet. The survivors attempted to rally and continue the fight, but Mortis had reached the Mercury Wall and began to tear it down.

During this battle, Corswain of the Dark Angels was conferring with Admiral Su-Kassen and other leaders of the Imperial fleet. Corswain had been expecting to find the rest of the I Legion already present at Terra and was dismayed to learn that he and the forces under his command were the only Dark Angels in the system. He had brought only ten thousand Astartes and two dozen ships with him, barely enough to make any kind of impact against the enemy forces in orbit. Unwilling to sit by and do nothing, Corswain announced that he intended to recapture the Astronomican, which had fallen into traitor hands and gone dark. Without it, the I and XIII Legions would be unable to reach the system and relieve Terra. Some of the Dark Angels in his fleet, having been subverted by Luther's separatist faction, wanted to assassinate Corswain to avoid being wasted on what they considered a pointless suicide mission. They were talked down by Librarian Vassago, who was a member of their faction but admired Corswain's bravery and nobility. Admiral Su-Kassen agreed to lend them the ''Imperator Somnium'', an immense battle carrier that had served as one of the Emperor's personal flagships, for their attack. The Dark Angels proceeded to use the ''Somnium'' as a sort of fireship. Concealing their own vessels under its tremendous bulk, they rode in with the huge flagship as it drew the fire of the entire traitor fleet, then split away and charged through to the Astronomican before the traitors realized what was happening. The ''Somnium'' died hard, taking many enemy ships with it and inflicting critical damage on the ''Conqueror'' and ''Terminus Est''. The Dark Angels successfully landed at the Astronomican and breached its defenses. They found that the mountain had been overrun by elements of the Emperor's Children and Vassukella, a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh. Despite sustaining heavy casualties, they were able to kill Vassukella and the corrupted Children, reclaiming the Astronomican for the Imperium. Corswain was nearly killed by the psychic backlash of the daemon's death, only to be saved by Vassago. The news that the Astronomican was once again in friendly hands provided a much-needed morale boost to the Imperial forces, though this was offset by the grim news from the Mercury Wall.

Subsidiary combat continued all along the Palace's defensive perimeter, though it was comparatively small in scale when measured against the annihilating fight taking place at the Mercury Wall. The loyalists were beginning to reach the limits of their mental, physical, and spiritual endurance, though some of them took confidence in a new credo: "He protects us as we protect Him." Even so, the loyalists' morale was being further eroded by the malign influence of the Warp. Those who were sensitive to its currents and eddies noted that its strength was waxing as the Siege ground on, working its way through the cracks in the Emperor's wards and battering down the mental defenses of the loyalist troops. Suicides, murders, and desertions spiked as exhausted and despairing soldiers and civilians sought to escape into a paradisaical dreamland. Unfortunately for them, this dreamland was a trap laid by the Emperor's Children to prey on the desperate and fearful. Thousands of unfortunate souls were lured to the Hatay-Antakya Hive, where the III Legion entrapped them in their dreams and "milked" them for their emotions. These activities were disrupted by the arrival of [[Ollanius Pius|Ollanius Persson]] and his band of refugees from Calth, who were seeking to rendezvous with John Grammaticus and his prototype Space Marine bodyguard Leetu. They in turn were aided in their escape by a mysterious woman calling herself "Actaea" and a legionary in scaled armor who identified himself as Alpharius. Together, this unlikely group of allies embarked on an unspecified mission involving the Emperor.

==Second Battle for the Lion's Gate and the Rise of the Emperor's Champion==

With the Mercury Wall breached, the Siege was reaching its endgame. The loyalist forces were being slowly shoved back into the innermost circles of the Palace defenses. Comms were unreliable at best, supplies were running low, and sheer exhaustion and hopelessness were grinding the defenders down. Angron and the World Eaters were loose inside the Palatine, with the Sons of Horus following behind. The Death Guard occupied the Lion's Gate spaceport, taking over after the IV Legion's abrupt departure from the battlespace. As their tainted presence began to warp the port into a twisted mirror of Barbarus, Mortarion established himself in one of its command centers, using his new daemonic powers to amplify the currents of the warp and blanket the Palace in a psychic miasma of despair. The effect was so potent that even Rogal Dorn's legendary resolve was cracking under the weight of Mortarion's malignant influence. He had bent all his prodigious intellect and unmatched engineering skill toward transforming Terra into the mightiest fortress the galaxy had ever seen, and it had not been enough. Without Guilliman and the Lion and their legions, they were doomed to inevitable defeat.

Jaghatai Khan, frustrated by the passivity of static defense, decided to launch a counterattack on the Lion's Gate. His reasoning was sound: should the Dark Angels and Ultramarines arrive to relieve Terra, they would need a place to dock their voidcraft. Moreover, the powerful anti-orbital batteries of the Gate could be turned against the traitor fleet. With his decision made, he quietly assembled the V Legion while his friend and Army liaison Ilya Ravallion scrounged up every functioning tank she could find to support the assault. The Khagan also recruited the Skye orbital plate to serve as a shield against the guns of the traitor fleet, knowing that they would bombard his forces as soon as they were visible. The gathered tanks were formed into a new unit, the First Terran Armoured, and sortied alongside the V Legion, deployed into three massive attack groups. They shouldered their way through the outer defenses easily enough, using the tanks to smash the Death Guard's armored spearheads and deploying Stormseers to wipe out any daemons that manifested themselves. The V Legion's usual tactics of speed and shock power served them well in this stage of the assault, but things became much harder when they reached the spaceport. The battle turned into an attritional slugging match, with two of the three attack groups bogging down almost immediately. Only the group led by the Khagan himself made any headway, tearing through the massed ranks of the XIV Legion and breaching the Gate itself. The fighting grew steadily more desperate; the mortal tank crews were being pushed to their limits and beyond by the nature of the fighting, which required them to remain sealed inside their tanks at all times lest they fall prey to chemical weapons or warp-borne plagues, and the White Scars were stymied by the unnatural resilience of their foes.

As the battle continued to rage throughout the port's lower levels, the Khan infiltrated Mortarion's command center and challenged his brother to a duel. They fought like madmen, with nothing held back, but Mortarion's unnatural strength gave him the edge. He wrecked Jaghatai's armor, broke his arms and ankles, and smashed his face into a pulp. The Khagan stood up, laughing off wounds that should have killed him, and attacked again. He taunted Mortarion relentlessly until the Death Lord became enraged enough to make a mistake. The Khan skewered him, only for Mortarion to recover and bury his scythe in the Warhawk's chest. [[Just as planned|Which was exactly what the Khan had wanted him to do.]] Jaghatai had allowed Mortarion to deliver a killing stroke so that he could deliver one in return. He beheaded his corrupted brother, banishing Mortarion to the Warp and unleashing a psychic shockwave that staggered and disoriented the Death Guard. In the aftermath, Jaghatai succumbed to his wounds, triggering a berserker frenzy in his sons that drove the bewildered Death Guard out of the spaceport. The Khagan was carried out of the spaceport on a Leman Russ, where he was met by Ilya Ravallion. She sensed a spark of life within his broken and ravaged body and immediately had him taken to Malcador, who set his adepts to the task of healing the primarch.

Within the walls of the Palace, chaos reigned. As walls fell and city blocks were blasted into ruin, hordes of civilian refugees and Imperial Army units fled toward the illusory safety of the innermost districts, with the World Eaters and Sons of Horus at their heels. Some garrisons made lonely last stands, hoping to tie down the traitors as long as possible, while others collapsed and were overrun. As Dorn faced the inevitable, he summoned First Captain Sigismund and gave him a simple order: "Hurt them." As Sigismund made for the battlefield, he was greeted by Khalid Hassan, who brought him the Black Sword, an ancient and potent relic weapon forged in Earth's pre-Unification era. Sigismund took up the blade and went out to fulfill his father's orders, sworn now to fight for the Imperium as it would become, not as it had been. He slew dozens, perhaps hundreds of traitor champions in single combat. Rumors of the warrior known as the "Black Sword" or "the Emperor's Champion" began spreading across the Palace, heartening loyalists and demoralizing the traitors. Many on both sides sought him out, either to join him or to kill him. Sigismund finally encountered Kharn, who challenged him to a rematch. Sigismund's cold, impassive fighting style disturbed the World Eater, who furiously tried to provoke a reaction in the First Captain. Unshaken, Sigismund fought Kharn to a standstill and cut him down, but not before the World Eater saw the truth of things in a rare moment of lucidity: Sigismund was the herald of a new kind of Imperial warrior, of [[Black Templars|a legion of fanatical, stoic, single-minded zealots]] whose relentless fury and inability to countenance defeat would wreak untold misery on a galaxy already groaning under the weight of aeons of anguish.

Meanwhile, Euphrati Keeler, who was now loose and alone in the ruins, used Sigismund as the inspiration for a new kind of army. Rallying the masses of civilian refugees and Army stragglers, she forged them into a militia armed with tools, a few lasguns, and their faith in the Emperor and sent them forth to fight the Traitor Legions. Though a hundred of them might fall in exchange for one traitor, Keeler regarded it as a fair exchange, for there were hundreds of thousands more to take their place. Garviel Loken, upon finding Keeler, was dismayed by her harsher, more brutal mindset. She justified it to him by arguing that this was the kind of army the Imperium would need in the future: [[Imperial Guard|an army of millions, even billions of humans, united by their unwavering faith in the Emperor and their hatred for the alien, the mutant, and the traitor]].

==Duel of the Emperor and Horus==
[[file:Horus and his Daddy.jpeg|thumb|middle|400px|If you haven't seen this image yet, you must be new. Like, really fucking new.]]
Like with any truly epic event, the siege only ended with the most motherfuckingest duel in the entire 40k fluff: the Emperor of Mankind against Horus, the most favoured of the Primarchs and the living avatar of the Chaos Gods. If the Horus Heresy was the most important of a series of events, if the siege was the single most epic of those events, then the duel is the defining moment of the fluff and affected everything else that came after it.

During the duel, Horus had managed to mortally wound the Emperor (despite the Big E being a nigh-unkillable Perpetual) and would have finished him off, if not for the intervention of one Perpetual Guardsman (Oll Perrson/Ollanius Pius)/Imperial Fist/Custodian. He jumped in front of Horus as he was about to strike the final blow, and was killed. The Emperor, seeing how far his most favored son had fallen, decided "Fuck this" and OBLITERATED HORUS'S SOUL!

Although the Emperor managed to win and kill Horus, he was so badly wounded in the end he needed to be on 24/7 life support just to survive. So really when you come down to it, it was a draw; Chaos had been stopped then but only at an unthinkable cost to the Imperium.

==/tg/ Connection==
What, besides the fact that ''''' it's the most important event in the 40k universe?''''' Fine.

The Siege of Terra is also the theme for the [[Horus Heresy#The Board Game|Horus Heresy board game]], in which you reenact the Siege itself. There. Happy? (Not really.)

===The fa/tg/uy's explanation of the Siege Of Terra (for Dummies and BL Editors)===
[[File:Loyalists vs. Traitors.jpg|thumb|middle|700px|Some serious Daddy problems.]]
The main rule of warfare: As the number of combatants increases, the resemblance to complete uncontrolled insanity approaches infinity. And then you have to take into account the terrain...

Basically, you start with a planet that's been nuked, polluted, and generally lived in for a few hundred thousand years too long. Everyone on it is fighting everyone else, constantly. Your basic unit of land is the Bunker, Vault 101 style. There isn't any natural plant life left so all the oxygen is made in vats with the food. ''Luckily'' this means you can build anywhere that isn't intensely radioactive and hence fight over those areas. Get Mega-City-One, nuke it, and rebuild it a few times, and then you start to understand.

Then the Emperor comes along and manages against all odds to conquer the place. Suddenly everyone isn't killing and dying all the time, and a population boom happens. So Emps organized the largest set of public works since the first colony ships. He rebuilds huge areas of the planet and creates the Imperial Palace, the Astronomican, and a buttload more of cool shit besides. And what he gets is effectively one giant city, the second largest (after Commorragh) in the universe. "Huge" just doesn't do it justice as a description. Neither does "labyrinthine", "overpopulated", or "Gothic nightmare". And this New Terra was mostly just thrown over the original foundations of whatever was there like a pile of gold bricks onto a rat maze. There are bunkers and emplacements still around that date back to the War Against The Men of Iron and even before.

Then the Heresy came, and the Emperor says to Dorn "Fortify this fucking madhouse". So now everything that didn't have a gun emplacement before does now, everywhere. Dorn walled in half the doors and windows, put hundreds of AA batteries on every roof, filled entire rooms with concrete just for a bit of reinforcement, built hundreds of miles of trenches, redoubts, bastions, emplacements, and backup walls, conscripted half the population into the army (and half of ''that'' into the engineer corps), and generally panicked because all of this would only ever be necessary if the solar system's defenses (the best in the galaxy bar none) have failed.

Then Horus arrives in orbit. He's punched through the space defenses at massive cost, but the war in space is far from won, and the Palace is just a flat no-fly zone, so he can't just pick and choose landing areas. So he bombards everything his ships can reach, fills the sky with Drop Pods, and tries to march on it.

This is when Rule #1 kicks in and everything immediately gets megafucked for both sides. Ruined streets, trenches, and bunkers make navigating a nightmare, communications are somewhere between impossible and actively detrimental, drop pods and gunships are shot down immediately or land off-target, plans and backup plans fall apart in seconds, daemons run amok, and the Primarchs are either constantly trying to out-Tactical-Genius each other or are too in the thick of it to relay any commands, so no one has a fucking clue what's actually going on in the big picture. It's Stalingrad on a continental scale, but without even the merest hint of sanity and a thousand Space Marines charging into every breach. The inclusion of cackling daemons, rampaging renegade Guardsmen and abhumans, and bellowing daemon engines doesn't help the situation, nor does the fact that the guy ostensibly in charge of the Siege (Horus) is growing increasingly detached from reality.

So it takes roughly 10 minutes of this menial bullshit for a load of the Chaos forces to get bored and just decide "Fuck It, Let's Just Wreck The Place". So now everything makes even less sense: entire Legions are ignoring sensible objectives to go on the Chaos Marine equivalent of a bender. The Emperor's Children and the Night Lords rape, murder, and pillage the civilians of Terra so hard that even 10,000 years later they still live in fear at the memory, while the World Eaters are tearing around and hacking and slashing at anything they think might bleed. Only the Iron Warriors, the Death Guard, and the Sons of Horus are wholeheartedly tearing at the Palace, dedicated to rubbing it in Dorn's face like a bitch no matter what (and even then, the Iron Warriors would ultimately decide "fuck this" and leave). And to the horror of the loyalists, they're still succeeding. Brick by brick, the greatest military stronghold in the galaxy is falling.

Which sounds great for Chaos were it not for the simple fact it wasn't falling quickly enough. It was taking days to advance inches at massive cost, and Guilliman was en route with reinforcements, with Russ and the Lion and the remains of their Legions right behind him. If the siege wasn't ended before they got there, the traitors would likely lose. So Horus put all his cards on the table and lowered his battle barge's shields, goading the Emperor (who didn't know about the reinforcements - or maybe he did and was enacting a much greater scheme, see below) on board to hopefully kill him and force the defenders into a rout. Everything else is history.

The short story "The Board is Set" seemed to indicate that the Emperor and Malcador knew about the reinforcing loyalists from at least the beginning of the siege and were fully aware of the siege's outcome up to and including the Emperor's ascension to the Golden Throne, possibly even seeing the future all the way to the events of the Era Indomitus. It also seemed to imply that Horus lowering his shield may have been so he could teleport down and attack the Emperor, not realizing it was Malcador on the throne. Possibly the most epic level of Just As Planned.
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[[Category: Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]

Siege of Terra

2022-08-15T13:17:52Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8: /* Battle at the Saturnine Wall */

{{Stub}}
{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=Siege of Terra
|image=[[File:The-Siege-Of-Terra Angron.jpg|400px]]
|attacker= Traitor Legions
|defender= [[Imperium of Man]]
|commander1= [[Horus]], [[Angron]], [[Mortarion]], [[Angron]], [[Fulgrim]], [[Perturabo]], [[Magnus the Red]], Zardu Layak, Kelbor Hal
|commander2= The [[Emperor]], [[Sanguinius]], [[Rogal Dorn]], [[Jaghatai Khan]], [[Vulkan]], [[Malcador the Sigillite]], Constantine Valdor
|date=0014.M31
|scale=Planetary
|theatre=[[Horus Heresy]]
|strength1= [[Sons of Horus]], [[Death Guard]], [[World Eaters]], [[Emperor's Children]], [[Thousand Sons]], [[Iron Warriors]], [[Word Bearers]], [[Night Lords]], Traitor Army forces, [[Dark Mechanicum]], dozens of Traitor Knight houses, Traitor Titan legions, daemons
|strength2= [[Imperial Fists]], [[Blood Angels]], [[White Scars]], [[Adeptus Custodes]], [[Sisters of Silence]], [[Knights-Errant]], Imperial Army, Adeptus Arbites, dozens of Knight Houses, loyalist Titan Legions (Gryphonicus, Ignatum, Solaria, Atarus, Amaranth, Ordo Sinister)
|casualties1= Massive Heretic Astartes casualties, massive Traitor Army losses, massive Traitor Titan losses, massive Dark Mechanicum losses. Horus slain.
|casualties2= Massive military and civilian losses. Malcador the Sigillite slain. Sanguinius slain. Emperor mortally wounded and interred into Golden Throne.
|status= Pyrrhic Loyalist Victory
|outcome= Traitors driven from Terra and into the Eye of Terror. Death of Horus and crippling of the Emperor. Great Scouring Begins.
}}

{{topquote|[[Horus|He]] waits no longer. It begins now.|[[Sanguinius]] on the 13th of Secundus, 014.M31}}
The '''Siege of Terra''' was the end of the [[Horus Heresy]] in [[Warhammer 40,000]]. If the Horus Heresy can be considered the most important series of events in the 40k universe(*cough* [[War in Heaven]]), then the Siege of Terra itself could be considered the single most important event. It is also possibly the most fucking awesome event: brothers fighting brothers, Primarchs (read Sanguinius) soloing Titans and Greater Daemons, continent-spanning trench battles, the mighty guns of Titans blowing mountain-sized fortifications to shreds, Imperial Army soldiers leading charges against the traitorous forces even though they know it's suicide and [[Ollanius Pius]].

It was [[Horus]]'s big attempt to off his daddy and to be the true Emperor of the galaxy (for [[Chaos]] of course!). He brought a load of his traitor legions, millions of corrupt Imperial Army personnel and mutants, the part of the Mechanicus that had gone over to his side, and a whole load of daemons to boot. On his side, the [[Emperor]] had three legions, his [[Adeptus Custodes|Custodians]], and the loyal Imperial Army regiments of Terra and you know what? The Emperor went and won anyway (granted it was because the Emperor offed Horus before his legions could crack the Imperial palace but still, victory for the home team!).

==The Solar War==

Dorn began fortifying [[Terra]] immediately after getting word of the Heresy, knowing that it would always be Horus's eventual goal. Despite being removed from the larger battles of the Heresy, the Solar System was touched by the conflict, with Mars erupting into open rebellion and numerous sleeper agents and cults trying to destabilise the Throneworld. Despite this Dorn managed to do the best he could, turning Terra into the most heavily fortified system in the Imperium. He even managed to blunt part of the traitor advance at the Beta-Garmon cluster before getting ready for the final rumble they had known was coming.
[[File:Dorn-hh.jpg|300px|right]]
Terra was unique in that it had two artificial Mandeville points inside the Solar system itself, created during the Dark Age of Technology. Dorn fortified the likely approaches from the outer edge of the system and built up huge defenses around the two internal jump points. The traitors, however, were busy too: infiltrators and covert operatives sabotaged loyalist assets across the system. The Iron Warriors were the first Astartes into the breach, breaking the Warp on the First of Primus, 014.M31, using huge up-armoured Space Hulks as fireships to wear down the defenses before sending their main fleet through to engage the combined Fists and Scars fleets. The inner system conflict went on for a bit, with the loyalists managing to hold out enough to slow down the advance at least for a little while.

However, under Magnus's direction, the traitors turned the Shrine of Unity comet into a vast Warp gate that allowed Horus, Angron, and Fulgrim's fleets to jump right past most of the rings of defense Dorn had come up with. On the ''Phalanx'', Dorn was preoccupied with a daemon incursion and could do little to stop the huge fleets that were now mobbing for Terra. The Martian traitors, free from the blockade that had hemmed them in for years, joined up with Horus. The Solar War had been lost barely after it had begun. The rest of the loyalist fleets, knowing they could never hope to fight even a fraction of the vast traitor armada, regrouped on the edge of the system, along with the ''Phalanx'', waiting for the moment they could make an effective strike against Horus. There were early plans for the Emperor to be evacuated to the ''Phalanx'' and escape Terra, but these were made by people unaware of what Big-E was doing in the basement of the palace.

==The Siege Begins==
[[File:Map-2800x1983.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Map of the Siege.]]
{{topquote|'''Father! I have come for you!'''|[[Angron]] upon making planetfall, 15th of Quartus, 014.M31}}

Uncontested, most of the traitor armada held in orbit above the Palace, and on the Thirteenth of Secundus, began bombarding the Aegis, the vast shield network protecting the entire palace complex. Unlike regular void shields, the Aegis consisted of multiple overlapping layers of shields that individually regenerated as fast as they could be depleted by bombardment. On the ground, the Palace was protected by colossal networks of walls and bastions, static defenses, and vast numbers of Imperial Army units bolstered by hordes of press-ganged conscripts. Unknown to almost everyone, the Inner Palace was also protected by a psychic ward generated by the Emperor that would royally fuck up any daemon that set foot near it, daemon Primarchs included.

The rest of Terra wasn't so lucky. Barring a few isolated holdouts, the rest of the planet was virtually defenseless. It should be noted that if the goal was to destroy Terra wholesale, it could have been easily accomplished by Exterminatus-level weaponry. Perturabo, as the only non-Chaos-ified Primarch, insisted on doing exactly that and grew increasingly angry at what he saw as an irrational and wasteful goal. But Horus was insistent that the Emperor had to be slain in person, and so the Palace had to be reduced the old-fashioned way. In all fairness, one must also ask if Exterminatus was even possible when a being like the Emperor was on Terra, to say nothing of the void shields and defenses on Terra itself (with the answer depending on how much Ext-grade weaponry and warheads the Chaos forces could bring along). The daemon primarchs were kept in orbit, safe from the Emperor's wards, although this meant that Angron had to be imprisoned in the maze Perturabo had built to contain Vulkan to stop him from [[Leeroy Jenkins]]ing the whole thing as he had done at Istvaan III.

Hordes of mutants, beastmen, cultists, and traitor Army units were thrown at the conventional defenses. Entire wings of aircraft dueled above the Palace. Precision bombardments gradually weakened minute sections of the Aegis long enough for bombers to get through and destroy the projectors. The Dark Mechanicum landed siege camps at 8 points around the Palace, partly to surround it but also to act as the focus for a ritual that would enable the Warp to take a foothold on the surface of the Throneworld. The Dark Mechanicum also began building massive siege towers to get Traitor Legionaries on the Wall. The Astartes were held in reserve on both sides whilst their more conventional forces softened each other up. The Death Guard were the first traitor Astartes to land on Terra, with the Khan and the White Scars riding forth on jetbikes and aircraft to meet them and wreck the Dark Mechanicum's siege camps. The Night Lords were the first Astartes to breach the walls of the Palace, albeit in small numbers; this attack also cost them their ''de facto'' commander, Gendor Skraivok. Sanguinius himself descended to help the mortal forces, acting as force multiplier, decoy, and morale booster.

Unfortunately, by that point, enough bloodshed had occurred that the Emperor's wards were now reduced to just a few meters from the walls of the Palace, meaning daemons could now manifest on Terra. Horus responded by sending the World Eaters as the second wave, and this time Angron was leading the charge. Recognizing the outworks were about to be overrun, Sanguinius used an impending sally by the Legio Solaria to evacuate the surviving conscripts through the Helios Gate, while Legio Solaria destroyed the remaining siege tower. The loyalists had managed to repulse the first serious attempts on the Eternity Wall, but were now completely cut off from the rest of Terra, surrounded on all sides.

==The Lion's Gate Falls==
[[File:LatD-Map-3309x2420.jpg|500px|right|thumb|Map of the Lion's Gate Space Port.]]
While the Death Guard, Emperor's Children, and World Eaters each hammered away at a different section of the Palace walls, the traitors' first major effort at cracking the Palace itself was aimed at the Lion's Gate spaceport, the largest and tallest spaceport on Terra. It reached so high into the atmosphere that void craft could dock at its upper levels, meaning that the traitor forces could more easily shuttle in reinforcements and materiel if they captured it. Horus tasked the Iron Warriors with taking the Gate. In turn, Perturabo assigned Warsmith Kroeger to lead the assault under the logic that Dorn would be expecting Pert to command such an important offensive personally and wouldn't be expecting whatever plans Kroeger came up with. Dorn assigned Seneschal Fafnir Rann to lead the defense of the spaceport rather than First Captain Sigismund since he was still angry with Sigismund for listening to Euphrati Keeler instead of obeying his orders. Kroeger went straight for the throat, launching a massive combined-arms assault directly on the port with backup from the World Eaters and Emperor's Children, though the latter quickly got bored and left after taking a bunch of prisoners for [[Rape|unspecified purposes]]. Though the Imperial Fists held off the initial attack, Warsmith Forrix and a thousand Iron Warriors managed to infiltrate the Gate by using renegade Imperial Army units as literal meatshields. To aid the attack, the Dark Mechanicum inserted a technophagic virus into the spaceport's systems, and Zardu Layak, Abaddon, and Typhus performed a Nurglite ritual to infiltrate the [[Daemon Prince]] Cor'bax Utterblight behind the Emperor's psychic wards.

The Fists drove back several consecutive assaults from the Iron Warriors and World Eaters, but the technophage was screwing their sensors and comms all to hell and gone, seriously complicating efforts to coordinate the defense, and Forrix and his infiltrators were tying up troops that were desperately needed elsewhere. Rann finally called Dorn for backup and Dorn scraped up an additional three thousand Fists, which were literally all the troops he could spare at that point. Despite Rann's best efforts, the balance inevitably tipped in the traitors' favor. Dorn arrived on the scene just in time to order a general withdrawal from the spaceport to the inner defenses, though not before he killed Zardu Layak after a brief duel. With the Gate firmly in the traitor hands, Perturabo started unloading Titans and consolidating his position.

Meanwhile, Euphrati Keeler and the Custodian Amon Tauromachian had been tapped by Malcador to investigate strange apparitions occurring behind the Palace walls. They eventually deduced that this was a daemon exploiting the faith of Imperial cultists to manifest itself inside the Emperor's psychic defenses. One cult, in particular, called the Lightbearers, had been deceived into worshipping Nurgle instead of the Emperor. After Cor'bax used the Lightbearers to physically manifest himself inside the Palace, Amon, Euphrati, and Malcador teamed up to slay the daemon. When Amon suggested that they should purge the rest of the Emperor's worshippers to prevent another such incident, Malcador answered that he would continue to let them exist until the Emperor himself said otherwise, in the hopes that he could weaponize their faith against the Chaos gods.

==Battle at the Saturnine Wall==
[[File:Siege_of_Terra1.jpg|thumb|middle|500px|Just 0.000001% of 0.000001% of the Siege of Terra.]]
{{cleanup}}

With the Lion's Gate lost, Dorn was now under tremendous pressure as he continued to coordinate the defense in the face of the unrelenting traitor assaults. Nearly all the Traitor Legions were committed to the battle at this point, with the Death Guard, Iron Warriors, World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Emperor's Children, and Sons of Horus engaged in heavy fighting throughout the Palace's outer districts. Dorn could only muster his own legion, plus the Blood Angels and White Scars and their primarchs.

While taking a brief break in an abandoned garden, Dorn encountered Kyril Sindermann, who made an offhand comment about the Saturnine Wall trembling under the weight of the bombardment. From this, Dorn deduced that something was wrong with the defenses in that section and investigated. What he found was a potential catastrophe. The ceaseless bombardments from the traitor forces had caused the entire Imperial Palace and the tectonic plates on which it rested to shift by eight centimeters, opening a small but detectable fault line beneath the Saturnine Wall.

Certain that Perturabo would notice this fault and attempt to exploit it, Dorn began concocting a counterattack. Before laying out his plans, he called a council of war with Constantin Valdor and Malcador to explain to them his next move: he would have to start allowing parts of the Palace defenses to fall, as he simply no longer had the numbers or the materiel to hold everything. He identified four key parts of the defense that could not be allowed to fall to the enemy - the Colossi Gate, the Gorgon Bar, the Saturnine Wall, and the Eternity Wall spaceport - then chose the one he could most afford to lose based on his calculations, which was the spaceport. Though he would put on a show of defending it, Dorn knew that the port ultimately had to be sacrificed, even though it meant letting the traitor forces control both of the Palace's main spaceports. He assigned Sanguinius to hold the Gorgon Bar and Jaghatai Khan to hold the Colossi; he would personally oversee the defense of the Saturnine Wall and lay a trap in the hopes of bagging a significant enemy target, perhaps even Horus himself.

Perturabo had indeed spotted the weakness at the Saturnine Wall, though he had initially planned to use it only as a last-ditch ace in the hole. Abaddon convinced him to instead make it a focal point of the attack through a combination of flattery and unsubtle goading, suggesting that Perturabo's victory over Dorn would be tainted if it was won with the help of the Neverborn. Though the Lord of Iron nearly caved his face in for it, Abaddon won the argument and immediately set out to assemble a spear-tip strike. Secretly, he was also hoping to win a "clean" victory without resorting to the use of daemons and sorcery, as he believed that using the Warp to win a war was beneath his dignity as an Astartes.

The battles for the Colossi and the Gorgon Bar escalated in scale and intensity. The defenders at the Colossi Gate were plagued by legions of flies that seemed to manifest from nowhere, forcing them to wear bulky protective equipment that lessened their effectiveness. Sanguinius was suffering under the weight of his psychic visions, which were coming with increasing frequency and intensity; nevertheless, he continued to fight on the front lines, knowing that his mere appearance was heartening the defenders and raising their morale. At one point he [[Awesome|singlehandedly killed a Warlord Titan]], then stared down its three accompanying Warhounds until they turned tail and fled. At the Colossi, Jaghatai and the White Scars led a few massed jetbike charges into the ranks of the Death Guard, destroying their siege engines, killing their Neverborn reinforcements, inflicting casualties, and generally delaying the XIV Legion's inexorable advance. The Adeptus Custodes also engaged the Death Guard, with Constantin Valdor himself taking the field. Their Emperor-forged nature proved especially potent against the Warp-corrupted Marines of the XIV and their daemonic allies. Ahriman and the Thousand Sons attempted to literally melt the Colossi bastion with sorcery, only to be driven back by three White Scars Stormseers who channeled the captured weather underneath the Palace's void shielding into an immense lightning storm.

At the Saturnine Wall, Dorn had devised a simple but cunning trap. Its cellars and tunnels had been fortified and transformed into a series of Zones Mortalis, and he had assembled a five-hundred-man strong force of veteran Astartes, broken into seven kill teams led by [[Sigismund]], [[Nathaniel Garro]], Endryd Haar of the World Eaters, [[Garviel Loken]], Bel Sepatus of the Blood Angels, Helig Gallor of the Death Guard, and Maximus Thane of the Imperial Fists. He had also enlisted the technoarchaeologist Arkhan Land to help him mend the fault line; Land devised a quick-setting form of rockcrete which could be pumped into the fault to seal it permanently. Dorn didn't know who would be leading the assault, but he was hoping for Horus himself. Once cut off and isolated inside the Palace walls, even the Warmaster would be relatively easy prey. On the other side, Abaddon was able to convince Fulgrim to lend him the entire Emperor's Children Legion for the assault on the Saturnine and wrangled three companies of the Sons of Horus to form the spear-tip. The III Legion would [[DISTRACTION CARNIFEX|attack from the front as a diversion]], using three Donjon-class siege engines borrowed from the Dark Mechanicum, while Abaddon and his Astartes burrowed up from beneath with Termite assault drills.

[[Just as planned|They had walked straight into Dorn's trap]]. When the first Sons of Horus emerged from their assault drills, they were ambushed by Dorn's kill teams, who achieved total surprise. The assault force was ''DESTROYED IN DETAIL'', which is to say that of the hundreds of elite combatants committed to the attack (which included the famed Justaerin Terminators and Catulan Reavers of the 1st Company, all four members of the Mournival leading their respective companies, as well as two more veteran companies led by Tybalt Marr and Lev Goshen respectively) the number of survivors could literally be counted on one hand with fingers to spare. Garro decapitated Falkus Kibre of the Justaerin, while Loken killed Tybalt Marr, Horus Aximand, and Tormageddon. Just as the loyalists were starting to relax, Abaddon and a hundred Justaerin Terminators teleported into their midst, triggering a giant brawl. Abaddon went on a killing spree, but eventually absorbed a series of crippling blows from Bel Sepatus and Endryd Haar. Though he managed to kill them both, he wound up pinned under Haar's corpse, with Garro poised to deliver the killing stroke. Luckily for Abaddon, [[Plot Armor|he was teleported to safety at the last moment]], as the Chaos Gods had already chosen him to be the new Warmaster after the death of Horus. Arkhan Land began pumping hundreds of thousands of liters of his rockcrete formula into the fault. Though he was briefly interrupted by Horus Aximand, the plan went off without a hitch, and the fault was permanently sealed. Some of the remaining Sons of Horus had yet to emerge from their assault drills and became trapped in the rockcrete as it set, ensuring that they would be entombed beneath the Palace forever. Barring any future statements to the contrary, it appears that literally the only survivor of this deflated, wilted bit of tactical flailing, once laughably referred to as a spear-thrust, was the [[armless failure|Abaddon]] that advocated for it. [[Fail|Oops]].

Aboveground, Fulgrim had unleashed a full-scale assault against the Saturnine Wall, leading off with the Donjon siege engines, which had been modified with immense sonic weapons similar to those of the Kakophoni. The engines seriously disrupted the defense at first, but the Imperial Fists and Army garrison were able to rally and funnel the III Legion into a chokepoint. Fulgrim got into a duel with Sigismund atop the Wall. Though the Templar was able to land a few hits, Fulgrim's daemonically enhanced strength and speed gave him the upper hand. Before he could kill Sigismund, Dorn intervened and proceeded to pummel Fulgrim badly enough that the Phoenician threw a tantrum and took his legion and went home, abandoning the Siege entirely and costing Team Horus one of its most significant force multipliers. Fulgrim left fifty-six of his best warriors behind in an attempt to kill Dorn, but he and Sigismund were able to defeat them all, including Eidolon and Von Kalda. The assault wound up costing the Emperor's Children no less than eighteen thousand Astartes, along with all three of the irreplaceable siege engines.

This great victory had been purchased with an equally great loss: the fall of the Eternity Wall spaceport. Despite the garrison's best efforts to hold the port, they were faced with the Chaos-fueled rage of Angron and the World Eaters. Angron issued a demand for the port's defenders to surrender and was met with a concentrated artillery barrage that literally atomized him, though being a daemon prince, he didn't stay down for long. He and his legion immediately assaulted and seized the spaceport, killing everyone present. Many heroes of the Imperium died unheralded deaths at the Eternity Wall, including Knight-Commander Jenetia Krole of the Silent Sisterhood, Prefect Warden Tsutomu of the Adeptus Custodes, High Primary Solar General Saul Niborran, and Captain Camba Diaz of the Imperial Fists (who died holding the line in one of the greatest displays of manliness in the universe). A lone Guardsman named Olly Piers died there also, defending a banner of the Emperor Ascendant against Angron's relentless charge, thus [[Ollanius Pius|establishing the foundation for one of the Imperium's most enduring myths]] after a considerable amount of embellishment at his dying request. Ironically, Piers was a distant descendant of Ollanius Persson.

In the aftermath of these battles, Dorn and Sanguinius took stock of where they stood. The Gorgon Bar had held and would continue to hold for two precious weeks more by Sanguinius' estimate. The repulse at the Saturnine Wall had cost the Traitor Legions dearly. Three hundred of the XVI Legion's elite troops and eighteen thousand Emperor's Children were dead, with Fulgrim and the rest of the III Legion having quit the field. Jaghatai Khan, having held the Colossi, was now preparing to retake the Lion's Gate. Better yet, Sanguinius' prescience had granted him a vision from within the depths of Angron's tortured mind: Nuceria had been destroyed - not merely razed as Angron and Lorgar had done during the Shadow Crusade, but obliterated by orbital bombardment. Dorn and Sanguinius both knew this could mean only one thing: Roboute Guilliman and Lion el'Jonson were on the way along with their legions.

Admiral Niora Su-Kassen, now in command of what remained of the loyalist naval assets in the Solar system, received indications of another fleet approaching from the outer edges of the system. She ordered the new arrivals to announce themselves, and was answered with a hail from Corswain of the Dark Angels: "We come to stand with Terra."

==Assault on the Mercury Wall and Recapture of the Astronomican==

With the repulse at Saturnine and the fall of the Eternity Wall spaceport, the Siege was entering a new phase. With both of the Imperial Palace's primary spaceports in their hands, the traitor forces began bringing in all their reserves and materiel stores, preparing to overwhelm the loyalists through sheer numbers. Perturabo was still directing the battle more or less singlehandedly at this time until he received a summons from Horus to attend him on the ''Vengeful Spirit''. When the Lord of Iron arrived in Horus' throne room, the Warmaster instructed him to abandon his current battle plan. Instead, he wanted to throw everything they had, including the Titan Legio Mortis, straight at the Mercury Wall, which represented the true beginning of the Imperial Palace. Perturabo demanded to know why Horus wanted to employ such a wasteful and apparently futile strategy, and Horus stated that it would work because he willed it so. Shortly thereafter, Horus sent his equerry to Perturabo with orders to disperse the Iron Warriors among the traitor forces. He followed up this humiliating order by informing Perturabo that Mortarion and the Death Guard would be taking over the IV Legion's positions. Infuriated, Perturabo denounced Horus' alliance with the Ruinous Powers and declared that this was no longer a war of Legions, but a war of foul and unnatural powers in which no true victory could be won. He then bitterly declared that Horus was exactly like the Emperor: both of them had manipulated Perturabo from the very beginning and forced him into a role he despised, that of the ruthless, calculating siege master. With that, he ordered the entire IV Legion to withdraw from the battlespace. Some of the traitor forces attempted to stop the Iron Warriors as they headed for the exits, but were unsuccessful.

Horus ordered the attack on the Mercury Wall to proceed, spearheaded by Legio Mortis. To counter the Death's Head, the loyalists deployed the Legio Ignatum and a few Titans from Legio Solaria, along with Knight banners from Houses Vyronii, Tyranus, Cadmus, and Konor. A representative of the Mechanicus attempted to convince Ignatum's Titan drivers to flee the battle, as his calculations had shown that defeat was inevitable, but the principes rejected his proposal and walked to war anyway. Also present were a number of other Titans from legions that had been decimated at Beta-Garmon, but many of them refused to join the battle, citing the Titandeath as their reason for remaining out of the fight. This lasted until the engagement between Mortis and Ignatum began, in a vast open space known as the Mercury-Exultant killzone. The traitors were revealed to be using Titans that had been destroyed at Beta-Garmon and elsewhere as cannon fodder; the wrecked Titans had been reanimated via sorcery and now teemed with blight and corruption. Ignatum smashed through these revenants, only to be confronted with the main strength of Legio Mortis. A desperate battle ensued, with dozens of god-engines being destroyed on both sides. Proscribed weapons such as warp and vortex missiles were employed freely, for this was now a battle of annihilation. Recognizing the import of the engagement, the Emperor communicated with a representative of the Ordo Sinister, the commanders of the dreaded Psi-Titans, and ordered him to join the battle. One of their prefects made himself known to Dorn, who agreed to deploy the four available Psi-Titans into the battle. He then took command personally at the Mercury Wall, bringing reinforcements with him. Ambassador Vethorel of the Adeptus Mechanicus approached the Titan crews who had refused to join the battle and showed them images of the reanimated Titans being used by the traitors. Galvanized by the desecration of their fellow god-engines, the Titan crews agreed to rejoin the fight. Vethorel proclaimed them to be a new Legio, the Legio Invigilata. Led by the former Grand Master of Legio Solaria, Invigilata joined Ignatum and the Psi-Titans on the front line. In spite of the loyalists' bravery, the main strength of Ignatum was destroyed by the superior numbers and firepower of Legio Mortis, combined with an orbital bombardment from the traitor fleet. The survivors attempted to rally and continue the fight, but Mortis had reached the Mercury Wall and began to tear it down.

During this battle, Corswain of the Dark Angels was conferring with Admiral Su-Kassen and other leaders of the Imperial fleet. Corswain had been expecting to find the rest of the I Legion already present at Terra and was dismayed to learn that he and the forces under his command were the only Dark Angels in the system. He had brought only ten thousand Astartes and two dozen ships with him, barely enough to make any kind of impact against the enemy forces in orbit. Unwilling to sit by and do nothing, Corswain announced that he intended to recapture the Astronomican, which had fallen into traitor hands and gone dark. Without it, the I and XIII Legions would be unable to reach the system and relieve Terra. Some of the Dark Angels in his fleet, having been subverted by Luther's separatist faction, wanted to assassinate Corswain to avoid being wasted on what they considered a pointless suicide mission. They were talked down by Librarian Vassago, who was a member of their faction but admired Corswain's bravery and nobility. Admiral Su-Kassen agreed to lend them the ''Imperator Somnium'', an immense battle carrier that had served as one of the Emperor's personal flagships, for their attack. The Dark Angels proceeded to use the ''Somnium'' as a sort of fireship. Concealing their own vessels under its tremendous bulk, they rode in with the huge flagship as it drew the fire of the entire traitor fleet, then split away and charged through to the Astronomican before the traitors realized what was happening. The ''Somnium'' died hard, taking many enemy ships with it and inflicting critical damage on the ''Conqueror'' and ''Terminus Est''. The Dark Angels successfully landed at the Astronomican and breached its defenses. They found that the mountain had been overrun by elements of the Emperor's Children and Vassukella, a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh. Despite sustaining heavy casualties, they were able to kill Vassukella and the corrupted Children, reclaiming the Astronomican for the Imperium. Corswain was nearly killed by the psychic backlash of the daemon's death, only to be saved by Vassago. The news that the Astronomican was once again in friendly hands provided a much-needed morale boost to the Imperial forces, though this was offset by the grim news from the Mercury Wall.

Subsidiary combat continued all along the Palace's defensive perimeter, though it was comparatively small in scale when measured against the annihilating fight taking place at the Mercury Wall. The loyalists were beginning to reach the limits of their mental, physical, and spiritual endurance, though some of them took confidence in a new credo: "He protects us as we protect Him." Even so, the loyalists' morale was being further eroded by the malign influence of the Warp. Those who were sensitive to its currents and eddies noted that its strength was waxing as the Siege ground on, working its way through the cracks in the Emperor's wards and battering down the mental defenses of the loyalist troops. Suicides, murders, and desertions spiked as exhausted and despairing soldiers and civilians sought to escape into a paradisaical dreamland. Unfortunately for them, this dreamland was a trap laid by the Emperor's Children to prey on the desperate and fearful. Thousands of unfortunate souls were lured to the Hatay-Antakya Hive, where the III Legion entrapped them in their dreams and "milked" them for their emotions. These activities were disrupted by the arrival of [[Ollanius Pius|Ollanius Persson]] and his band of refugees from Calth, who were seeking to rendezvous with John Grammaticus and his prototype Space Marine bodyguard Leetu. They in turn were aided in their escape by a mysterious woman calling herself "Actaea" and a legionary in scaled armor who identified himself as Alpharius. Together, this unlikely group of allies embarked on an unspecified mission involving the Emperor.

==Second Battle for the Lion's Gate and the Rise of the Emperor's Champion==

With the Mercury Wall breached, the Siege was reaching its endgame. The loyalist forces were being slowly shoved back into the innermost circles of the Palace defenses. Comms were unreliable at best, supplies were running low, and sheer exhaustion and hopelessness were grinding the defenders down. Angron and the World Eaters were loose inside the Palatine, with the Sons of Horus following behind. The Death Guard occupied the Lion's Gate spaceport, taking over after the IV Legion's abrupt departure from the battlespace. As their tainted presence began to warp the port into a twisted mirror of Barbarus, Mortarion established himself in one of its command centers, using his new daemonic powers to amplify the currents of the warp and blanket the Palace in a psychic miasma of despair. The effect was so potent that even Rogal Dorn's legendary resolve was cracking under the weight of Mortarion's malignant influence. He had bent all his prodigious intellect and unmatched engineering skill toward transforming Terra into the mightiest fortress the galaxy had ever seen, and it had not been enough. Without Guilliman and the Lion and their legions, they were doomed to inevitable defeat.

Jaghatai Khan, frustrated by the passivity of static defense, decided to launch a counterattack on the Lion's Gate. His reasoning was sound: should the Dark Angels and Ultramarines arrive to relieve Terra, they would need a place to dock their voidcraft. Moreover, the powerful anti-orbital batteries of the Gate could be turned against the traitor fleet. With his decision made, he quietly assembled the V Legion while his friend and Army liaison Ilya Ravallion scrounged up every functioning tank she could find to support the assault. The Khagan also recruited the Skye orbital plate to serve as a shield against the guns of the traitor fleet, knowing that they would bombard his forces as soon as they were visible. The gathered tanks were formed into a new unit, the First Terran Armoured, and sortied alongside the V Legion, deployed into three massive attack groups. They shouldered their way through the outer defenses easily enough, using the tanks to smash the Death Guard's armored spearheads and deploying Stormseers to wipe out any daemons that manifested themselves. The V Legion's usual tactics of speed and shock power served them well in this stage of the assault, but things became much harder when they reached the spaceport. The battle turned into an attritional slugging match, with two of the three attack groups bogging down almost immediately. Only the group led by the Khagan himself made any headway, tearing through the massed ranks of the XIV Legion and breaching the Gate itself. The fighting grew steadily more desperate; the mortal tank crews were being pushed to their limits and beyond by the nature of the fighting, which required them to remain sealed inside their tanks at all times lest they fall prey to chemical weapons or warp-borne plagues, and the White Scars were stymied by the unnatural resilience of their foes.

As the battle continued to rage throughout the port's lower levels, the Khan infiltrated Mortarion's command center and challenged his brother to a duel. They fought like madmen, with nothing held back, but Mortarion's unnatural strength gave him the edge. He wrecked Jaghatai's armor, broke his arms and ankles, and smashed his face into a pulp. The Khagan stood up, laughing off wounds that should have killed him, and attacked again. He taunted Mortarion relentlessly until the Death Lord became enraged enough to make a mistake. The Khan skewered him, only for Mortarion to recover and bury his scythe in the Warhawk's chest. [[Just as planned|Which was exactly what the Khan had wanted him to do.]] Jaghatai had allowed Mortarion to deliver a killing stroke so that he could deliver one in return. He beheaded his corrupted brother, banishing Mortarion to the Warp and unleashing a psychic shockwave that staggered and disoriented the Death Guard. In the aftermath, Jaghatai succumbed to his wounds, triggering a berserker frenzy in his sons that drove the bewildered Death Guard out of the spaceport. The Khagan was carried out of the spaceport on a Leman Russ, where he was met by Ilya Ravallion. She sensed a spark of life within his broken and ravaged body and immediately had him taken to Malcador, who set his adepts to the task of healing the primarch.

Within the walls of the Palace, chaos reigned. As walls fell and city blocks were blasted into ruin, hordes of civilian refugees and Imperial Army units fled toward the illusory safety of the innermost districts, with the World Eaters and Sons of Horus at their heels. Some garrisons made lonely last stands, hoping to tie down the traitors as long as possible, while others collapsed and were overrun. As Dorn faced the inevitable, he summoned First Captain Sigismund and gave him a simple order: "Hurt them." As Sigismund made for the battlefield, he was greeted by Khalid Hassan, who brought him the Black Sword, an ancient and potent relic weapon forged in Earth's pre-Unification era. Sigismund took up the blade and went out to fulfill his father's orders, sworn now to fight for the Imperium as it would become, not as it had been. He slew dozens, perhaps hundreds of traitor champions in single combat. Rumors of the warrior known as the "Black Sword" or "the Emperor's Champion" began spreading across the Palace, heartening loyalists and demoralizing the traitors. Many on both sides sought him out, either to join him or to kill him. Sigismund finally encountered Kharn, who challenged him to a rematch. Sigismund's cold, impassive fighting style disturbed the World Eater, who furiously tried to provoke a reaction in the First Captain. Unshaken, Sigismund fought Kharn to a standstill and cut him down, but not before the World Eater saw the truth of things in a rare moment of lucidity: Sigismund was the herald of a new kind of Imperial warrior, of [[Black Templars|a legion of fanatical, stoic, single-minded zealots]] whose relentless fury and inability to countenance defeat would wreak untold misery on a galaxy already groaning under the weight of aeons of anguish.

Meanwhile, Euphrati Keeler, who was now loose and alone in the ruins, used Sigismund as the inspiration for a new kind of army. Rallying the masses of civilian refugees and Army stragglers, she forged them into a militia armed with tools, a few lasguns, and their faith in the Emperor and sent them forth to fight the Traitor Legions. Though a hundred of them might fall in exchange for one traitor, Keeler regarded it as a fair exchange, for there were hundreds of thousands more to take their place. Garviel Loken, upon finding Keeler, was dismayed by her harsher, more brutal mindset. She justified it to him by arguing that this was the kind of army the Imperium would need in the future: [[Imperial Guard|an army of millions, even billions of humans, united by their unwavering faith in the Emperor and their hatred for the alien, the mutant, and the traitor]].

==Duel of the Emperor and Horus==
[[file:Horus and his Daddy.jpeg|thumb|middle|400px|If you haven't seen this image yet, you must be new. Like, really fucking new.]]
Like with any truly epic event, the siege only ended with the most motherfuckingest duel in the entire 40k fluff: the Emperor of Mankind against Horus, the most favoured of the Primarchs and the living avatar of the Chaos Gods. If the Horus Heresy was the most important of a series of events, if the siege was the single most epic of those events, then the duel is the defining moment of the fluff and affected everything else that came after it.

During the duel, Horus had managed to mortally wound the Emperor (despite the Big E being a nigh-unkillable Perpetual) and would have finished him off, if not for the intervention of one Perpetual Guardsman (Oll Perrson/Ollanius Pius)/Imperial Fist/Custodian. He jumped in front of Horus as he was about to strike the final blow, and was killed. The Emperor, seeing how far his most favored son had fallen, decided "Fuck this" and OBLITERATED HORUS'S SOUL!

Although the Emperor managed to win and kill Horus, he was so badly wounded in the end he needed to be on 24/7 life support just to survive. So really when you come down to it, it was a draw; Chaos had been stopped then but only at an unthinkable cost to the Imperium.

==/tg/ Connection==
What, besides the fact that ''''' it's the most important event in the 40k universe?''''' Fine.

The Siege of Terra is also the theme for the [[Horus Heresy#The Board Game|Horus Heresy board game]], in which you reenact the Siege itself. There. Happy? (Not really.)

===The fa/tg/uy's explanation of the Siege Of Terra (for Dummies and BL Editors)===
[[File:Loyalists vs. Traitors.jpg|thumb|middle|700px|Some serious Daddy problems.]]
The main rule of warfare: As the number of combatants increases, the resemblance to complete uncontrolled insanity approaches infinity. And then you have to take into account the terrain...

Basically, you start with a planet that's been nuked, polluted, and generally lived in for a few hundred thousand years too long. Everyone on it is fighting everyone else, constantly. Your basic unit of land is the Bunker, Vault 101 style. There isn't any natural plant life left so all the oxygen is made in vats with the food. ''Luckily'' this means you can build anywhere that isn't intensely radioactive and hence fight over those areas. Get Mega-City-One, nuke it, and rebuild it a few times, and then you start to understand.

Then the Emperor comes along and manages against all odds to conquer the place. Suddenly everyone isn't killing and dying all the time, and a population boom happens. So Emps organized the largest set of public works since the first colony ships. He rebuilds huge areas of the planet and creates the Imperial Palace, the Astronomican, and a buttload more of cool shit besides. And what he gets is effectively one giant city, the second largest (after Commorragh) in the universe. "Huge" just doesn't do it justice as a description. Neither does "labyrinthine", "overpopulated", or "Gothic nightmare". And this New Terra was mostly just thrown over the original foundations of whatever was there like a pile of gold bricks onto a rat maze. There are bunkers and emplacements still around that date back to the War Against The Men of Iron and even before.

Then the Heresy came, and the Emperor says to Dorn "Fortify this fucking madhouse". So now everything that didn't have a gun emplacement before does now, everywhere. Dorn walled in half the doors and windows, put hundreds of AA batteries on every roof, filled entire rooms with concrete just for a bit of reinforcement, built hundreds of miles of trenches, redoubts, bastions, emplacements, and backup walls, conscripted half the population into the army (and half of ''that'' into the engineer corps), and generally panicked because all of this would only ever be necessary if the solar system's defenses (the best in the galaxy bar none) have failed.

Then Horus arrives in orbit. He's punched through the space defenses at massive cost, but the war in space is far from won, and the Palace is just a flat no-fly zone, so he can't just pick and choose landing areas. So he bombards everything his ships can reach, fills the sky with Drop Pods, and tries to march on it.

This is when Rule #1 kicks in and everything immediately gets megafucked for both sides. Ruined streets, trenches, and bunkers make navigating a nightmare, communications are somewhere between impossible and actively detrimental, drop pods and gunships are shot down immediately or land off-target, plans and backup plans fall apart in seconds, daemons run amok, and the Primarchs are either constantly trying to out-Tactical-Genius each other or are too in the thick of it to relay any commands, so no one has a fucking clue what's actually going on in the big picture. It's Stalingrad on a continental scale, but without even the merest hint of sanity and a thousand Space Marines charging into every breach. The inclusion of cackling daemons, rampaging renegade Guardsmen and abhumans, and bellowing daemon engines doesn't help the situation, nor does the fact that the guy ostensibly in charge of the Siege (Horus) is growing increasingly detached from reality.

So it takes roughly 10 minutes of this menial bullshit for a load of the Chaos forces to get bored and just decide "Fuck It, Let's Just Wreck The Place". So now everything makes even less sense: entire Legions are ignoring sensible objectives to go on the Chaos Marine equivalent of a bender. The Emperor's Children and the Night Lords rape, murder, and pillage the civilians of Terra so hard that even 10,000 years later they still live in fear at the memory, while the World Eaters are tearing around and hacking and slashing at anything they think might bleed. Only the Iron Warriors, the Death Guard, and the Sons of Horus are wholeheartedly tearing at the Palace, dedicated to rubbing it in Dorn's face like a bitch no matter what (and even then, the Iron Warriors would ultimately decide "fuck this" and leave). And to the horror of the loyalists, they're still succeeding. Brick by brick, the greatest military stronghold in the galaxy is falling.

Which sounds great for Chaos were it not for the simple fact it wasn't falling quickly enough. It was taking days to advance inches at massive cost, and Guilliman was en route with reinforcements, with Russ and the Lion and the remains of their Legions right behind him. If the siege wasn't ended before they got there, the traitors would likely lose. So Horus put all his cards on the table and lowered his battle barge's shields, goading the Emperor (who didn't know about the reinforcements - or maybe he did and was enacting a much greater scheme, see below) on board to hopefully kill him and force the defenders into a rout. Everything else is history.

The short story "The Board is Set" seemed to indicate that the Emperor and Malcador knew about the reinforcing loyalists from at least the beginning of the siege and were fully aware of the siege's outcome up to and including the Emperor's ascension to the Golden Throne, possibly even seeing the future all the way to the events of the Era Indomitus. It also seemed to imply that Horus lowering his shield may have been so he could teleport down and attack the Emperor, not realizing it was Malcador on the throne. Possibly the most epic level of Just As Planned.
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[[Category: Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]

Perturabo

2022-08-13T12:59:30Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8:

{{heresy}}
{{Awesome}}
[[File:Perturabo_Portrait.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Perturabo's default expression throughout the Great Crusade, that of a man learning his [[Leman Russ|dog]] shat on the carpet.]]
{{Topquote|Tell them ruin has come to their world, death, despair and red war..."<br>"Tell them their hopes and pride have come to nothing."<br>"Tell them their empty whispers fall upon deaf ears - their gods are dead, human logic has killed them."<br>"Tell them the [[Space Marines|Angels of Death]] have come."<br>"Tell them that nothing can save them now.|The Primarch himself}}
{{Topquote|No one becomes depraved all at once.|Juvenal, Satires}}

'''Perturabo''', also known as '''"The Hammer of [[Olympia]]"''','''"The Lord of Iron"''', '''Leonardo DaVinci in outer space''', '''"The Lord of Shit (according to [[Abaddon]])'''", '''Peter Turbo''', '''Whiny Bitch #1''' and the '''"[[TTS|Petulant Manchild]]"''' is the permanently perturbed [[Primarch]] of the [[Iron Warriors]] and one of the most technologically-inclined of the Primarchs. He can look at a machine, disassemble it, and reassemble it stronger than before in the time it takes [[Magnus]] to cast a spell or [[Angron]] to swing an axe. He was famously cold and distant, having a very hard time relating with people and preferring to work with machinery and pursue his dream of [[Roboute Guilliman|building a great civilization]]. This attitude was not improved during the [[Great Crusade]] for even though he wished to [[Rogal Dorn|build, protect, and be celebrated for it]], the Imperium would never let him do so; he and his men were tasked with being the Emperor's workhorse/meat grinder Legion because the Legion's famous determination, endurance, and unflinching nature made them best for the job. Over the course of the Great Crusade, Perturabo and his Iron Warriors became increasingly jaded, angry, and wrought with despair at the horrors of war they were expected to face, and were awarded little renown due to the inherently mundane, dangerous, and mechanistic nature of their work (and that's without mentioning their MASSIVE casualties). By the end of the Great Crusade, Perturabo and the Iron Warriors were not the same. Determination turned to stubbornness; endurance turned to numbness; and grit turned to hopeless despair. This combined with Pert and the Iron Warriors having [[Rogal Dorn|no]] [[Corvus Corax|hope]] [[Roboute Guilliman|of]] [[Fulgrim|renown]], [[Sanguinius|love]], [[Ferrus Manus|or]] [[Horus|respect]] from the Imperium, caused him to give up on his previous dreams of a greater future and turn against the Big-E. He is also ''heavily'' hinted to be on the spectrum; whether this means he is a super autist remains to be seen.

It is important to note however that Perturabo was more responsible for his fall into bitterness and cold spite than anyone, and that he blamed pretty much everyone other than himself for his choices. He claimed to hate that his foster father and the Emperor used his genius for nothing other than crafting tools of war. However, he chose to not build anything which brought him personal satisfaction or joy even in his off-hours, and dreamt up schematics for revolutionary structures and devices that were left to gather dust simply because he thought they wouldn't be appreciated quite enough. He became embittered by the horrendous casualties his Legion suffered during the Crusade, but it seemingly never dawned on him that tactics other than massive frontal assaults and danger-close artillery barrages existed. He complained to anyone who would listen about how he was always underestimated and unappreciated by his brothers but was unapproachable himself, and never realized that his brutal, mathematical and blood soaked approach to warfare made his brothers dislike working with him. And when all his flaws were ultimately pointed out by his sister Calliphone as the Iron Warriors butchered Olympia's population, he strangled her rather than reflecting on his massive martyr complex (though to be fair he cried about it afterwards...and learned absolutely nothing).

When Horus decided to throw his [[Horus Heresy|galaxy-shaking tantrum]], Perturabo already hated his brothers so much he LEAPT at the opportunity to dismantle the Imperial Palace that Dorn built. Unfortunately for him, things did [[Not as Planned|not go as planned,]] so he and his sons were booted back to the [[Eye of Terror]]. Despite currently being a [[Daemon Prince]] of Chaos Undivided, he and his legion don't really care for the [[Chaos Gods]] or their daemons, preferring to crush loyalist scum their own way: [[Land Raider|LOTS]] [[Typhon Heavy Siege Tank|OF]] [[Defiler|BIG]], [[Heldrake|SCARY]], [[Maulerfiend|FEROCIOUS]], [[Forgefiend|SHOOTY]] [[Vindicator|DEATHMACHINES]] [[Predator|OF]] [[Rhino|EVERY]] [[Helbrute|VARIETY]]!!! By the way, [[Ferrus Manus|we've never actually seen a picture of him]] as a Daemon Prince, though he is described as the ultimate [[Obliterator]]. Probably best we don't then. (Perty fanboys and lore purists alike hope against hope that this is [[retcon]]ned. Seems like GW's writers agree with the general consensus that Perturabo being a Daemon Prince is both stupid-- the Gods wouldn't give it to him-- and incredibly unsatisfying.) Unfortunately, the snippet from the limited edition of Halfbreed - Storm of Iron, all but confirms his daemonhood, although whether this means Perty is merely using Warpstuff to fill in the spiritual damage done by Fulgrim's ascension and is still ''technically'' a renegade, is still up in the air.

==Origins==
[[File:Past-Pert-Art.jpeg|300px|right|thumb|''"Not just yet. When Terra is ashes... ''then'' you have my permission to die."'']]
Perturabo's first memory is finding himself halfway up a cliff with no idea how or why he got there. All he knew was that he could see this [[Eye of Terror|great ugly spot]] in the sky that seemed to be watching him. Without any other information to go on he climbed the rest of the way and reached the top of the cliff where he found a squad of soldiers waiting to take the boy to their king. When asked of his origins, Perturabo found that [[Mary Sue|he could speak the language, knew his own name, was proficient in combat, could merely look upon objects and materials to know their constructive properties, had an instinctive mastery of mathematics and engineering, could determine people's character like a psychologist just by watching them, and could reason matters of logic and philosophy from the get-go.]]

This is what makes Perturabo different from all of his brothers; when each Primarch landed on their world, they spent their formative years being shaped by their experiences and exposure to learning. Where [[Fulgrim]] and [[Sanguinius]] were found as near-helpless babes and raised to appreciate the finer side of art and humanities, Perturabo [[Mary Sue|already knew about artifice and ethics]]. Where [[Lorgar]] and [[Magnus]] were taken in by scholars and practically consumed information until there was nothing left, Perturabo [[Mary Sue|already knew everything in the textbooks and didn't need to be taught]]. Where [[Vulkan]] was raised as the son of a blacksmith and learned craft through apprenticeship, Perturabo's literal first task upon being presented to his "father" was to [[Mary Sue|forge a ''perfect'' sword faster than any craftsman on the planet]]. Perturabo considered himself robbed of the sense of wonder he might have felt at looking on impressive works of art or learning how to do things the long way, if he did not already know how they were created and could critique them.

The only things Perturabo didn't know was what he was doing before he awoke on the cliffside, and why the sky was [[Eye of Terror|watching his every move]]. He was told that before his recollection started, there were tales of a boy descending from the mountains and killing monsters on his own, but Perturabo had no recollection of any of that. Naturally he would appear a bit jaded and suspicious. Why would he already have access to so much information but have no memory of his past? And why was he the only one who could see that DAMNED INTRUSIVE eye in the sky? This wouldn't be helped when his adoptive "father," Dammekos - Tyrant of Lochos, only saw the opportunity that Perturabo represented: rather than a son to raise or a brother to be admired, Perturabo was going to be used as a tool of war-- and he knew it. Or at least, that's what he THOUGHT he knew, and with an ego like his, who's gonna convince him otherwise?

The older fluff initially stated that the only lesson Olympia had to teach him was of his own superiority. The truth was actually more complicated than that. Dammekos certainly exploited his new "son" because as an Olympian, you used every advantage at your disposal to one-up your rivals: with all this inherent knowledge, strength and skill, Perturabo was used as a kind of [[Angron|prize fighter]], paraded against the Tyrant king's enemies, humiliating them with displays of superior artistry, rhetoric and if need be, combat. He beat everyone effortlessly, vehemently refuting their claims of [[Emperor|his divinity]] and thinking of them as ignorant fools, even going so far as to recite the story of [[Magnus|Plato's cave]] to demonstrate how wrong they were, though he did concede that he was created by no human artifice, just not gods. He also grew tired of being used endlessly for the pursuit of supremacy, reasoning that his skills could be put towards architecture and engineering to make a better life for all-- but instead he was used as a weapon and he resented it. He knew he was better than all of them, but due to the constant political backstabbery of the court, mixed with their [[Ecclesiarchy|retarded religion]], Perturabo was constantly bombarded by pestering Luddites and disbelieving idiots who did not believe what he was capable of, and had no way to properly demonstrate it thanks to the technological limitations of the world he was marooned on. He was also still an aloof and arrogant prick; the only person who tried to understand him was Calliphone, his foster sister.

Before he knew the full measure of what he was, Perturabo was a cultivated scholar and a gentle man of peace. He lived for the utopian ideal of peace, freedom and enlightenment for all mankind and he was all for [[Reasonable Marines|stopping conflicts through diplomacy if at all possible.]] His foster-father, in his eyes, was a tyrannical asshole who dismissed all of Perturabo's artful designs for theatres, museums, bridges as [[Fail|follies]] and kept expecting Perturabo to perform the function of weapon and take over the world for him (so his family life was a ''tad'' strained), though to be fair, Dammekos did genuinely try to include Perturabo in his family and raise him with Olympian values which mixed realpolitik and valuing family, as twisted as that was. Dammekos even allowed Perturabo to name himself at his coming-of-age ceremony, despite the fact that Perty choosing his name as opposed to that of traditional Olympian champions caused the hardline traditionalists to grow butthurt, prompting Dammekos to smooth things over. Perty did try his hand at art once by prodding and provoking his milder adoptive brother to have a contest of statues, but when his brother's soulful, expressive, nuanced work showed up his own [[Fulgrim|technically-perfect-but-emotionally-hollow]] piece, he promptly destroyed both statues in a bitchfit that would prove practically prophetic of his life's trajectory.

After [[Emperor|E-Money]] showed up on the East Side lookin' for his homeboys up in the 'hood, Perturabo had already taken over the planet for his other father and was ready to leave his petty little world in search for greater things. In joining the Imperium, he thought he was home.

Unfortunately for Perturabo, the Imperium was EXACTLY like Olympia: the Emperor had no real desire for a diplomat/artist/philosopher but only a general. Perturabo's real father was every bit the tyrannical asshole his other parent had been, only thinking to use Perturabo's skills in matters of war rather than construction and peace... only this "father" was shinier and kinda '''GOD'''like.

[[FAIL|Oh, but Perturabo had already figured out on the day of his first memory that gods couldn't exist and were not worthy of his devotion.]]

==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 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.

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 technical 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. 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 little of his forces 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.

What's also known about Perturabo is his rivalry with [[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." 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. 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 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.

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.

==Horus Heresy==
{{topquote|The Imperium is my father's folly. I try to believe in it because I want it to be true, just like I wanted my great buildings to be true, and the perfect societies that would use them to exist. But they cannot be. There is no such thing as perfection, humanity is too chaotic to accept true order.|Perturabo, after sacking Olympia. 000.M31 and passing blame for his own bad choices, as usual.}}

Perturabo joined Horus and the other Traitor Legions during the Horus Heresy when they promised him that he would be forgiven for his actions on Olympia in exchange for his loyalty. At first, he tried to get revenge on Dorn by annihilating his Retribution Fleet, but that didn't work out too well since bad intel left him expecting the fleet would be led by [[Sigismund]] where it was led by [[Alexis Polux]] instead. Then after licking his wounds (and becoming increasingly paranoid), he went on a joint operation with the Emperor's Children on the premise they'd go look for a superweapon or other Fulgrim had heard rumors of that would tip the balance in Horus' favor. Pert wasn't really impressed, but Fulgrim promised him he'd let Pert get the accolades for finding and using the thing, so he agreed. In the end, [[troll|he was nearly killed by Fulgrim]] when the latter tried to suck the life out of him to aid his ascension to [[Daemon Prince|Princedom]]. This didn't help with his paranoia, and the best part? He smashed Fulgrim's face [[rage|in anger]] when he realized he'd been trolled-- [[just as planned|which finally triggered Fulgrim's ascension]]. And so began Pert's long run of being dicked over by his supposed comrades. [[FAIL|AGAIN]].

[[File:Angron vs Perturabo.jpg|thumb|right|''The battle for 'Saltiest Primarch of M31' begins.'']]

Having gotten really tired of that shit, Perturabo returned to doing what he did best- losing thousands of his sons on battlefields across the galaxy, doing the necessary bleeding in order to keep Horus' invasion routes secure (mainly against the [[Ultramarines]]). Of course. And it got better: as his Iron Warriors ran low on resources to the point of ''literally having to count their remaining bolter rounds'' (A commander of the Iron Warriors had a grand total of [[Malal|11]]), Horus called. He wanted Perturabo to go pick up [[Angron]] and bring him to the muster at [[Ullanor]] so that the advance on Terra could begin. [[Gets shit done|And so he did.]]

And then he mentioned that, oh yeah, Angron is a Daemon Prince of Khorne now, so he's partly made out of literal [[RAGE]] and might need thwacking around the head to listen to Horus' orders.

In all seriousness, Perturabo's actions on Deluge are one of the few times we get to see him properly in action, and it is [[Awesome]]. No boring, spawn-camping siege. No swooping in after most of the walls are already demolished. He shows his greatest qualities as a general, scientist and fighter here, managing to hold back the World Eaters charge with only a few thousand of his own men (and their Tanks and Guns), diverting them into small pockets for a defeat in detail, and then trading blows with a Daemon Primarch long enough for the clinically dispassionate deaths of the World Eaters to weaken him before using his (heavily implied to be ''[[HERESY|newly invented]]'') 'exotic rounds' to blast him into literal pieces. He actually got some credit for himself, too; Horus named him as the marshal of his forces for the attack on Terra. Of course, Perturabo himself had a much more pressing reason to show up. As far as he was concerned, the final showdown between him and Dorn had begun.

It was time to [[Siege of Terra|siege]].

===Siege of Terra===

If there was any moment during the Horus Heresy that Perturabo could even remotely be called 'happy', it was at the beginning of the Siege. Him. Dorn. A fortress to take, and immense forces on both sides to be used as they saw fit. No more [[Fulgrim|tricks]], [[Tallarn|withdrawals]], or [[Battle of Phall|fake-outs]] to confuse the result. It would be their greatest contest, [[Wargame|the ultimate arbitration on who was ''really'' the greatest general]].

So of course it was when he had barely translated his fleet in-system that shit started to go sideways. Unsurprisingly, the seeming unity of the Traitor Legions had vanished alongside [[Alpharius]]. Thus when Perturabo arrived, it was alone- as it turned out, all of his brothers wanted to keep their forces nice and fresh for Terra itself, not wanting to bore themselves demolishing the various spaceborne defences of the Solar System. Perturabo spent both lives and material grinding down the outer defence stations, just in time for Horus, Angron and Fulgrim to directly jump their forces past the perimeter lines via warp-fuckery, [[Troll|rendering all his efforts redundant but content to let him waste his soldiers like an idiot.]]

And it only got worse from there.

At every turn his promised triumph, the shining vision Horus had dangled before him turned to ash. Instead of [[Emperor's Children|exemplary linebreakers]] he got [[Noise Marines|debauched hedonists]]. Instead of [[Thousand Sons|enlightened philosophers]] he got [[Chaos Sorcerer|arrogant douchebags]]. Instead of [[Death Guard|stubborn troopers]] he got [[Plague Marine|rotting hulks]], and instead of [[World Eaters|merciless breachers]] he got [[Khorne Berserkers|blood-mad idiots.]]

And as for the [[Sons of Horus|shock troops]], [[Word Bearers|the demagogues]], [[Alpha Legion|the spec ops]]? From them he got nothing at all, literally in the latter's case as the Alpha Legion had completely fucked off after massive losses at Pluto. In fact, Horus himself required very little time to prove just how much he didn't care about Perty's wishes despite having personally named him as commander. Perturabo held it in, and did his job- for what else was there for him, now? But any satisfaction he may have had from his contest with Dorn was gone. There was no glory in this, no clever stratagems or well-laid plans. He was watching the last crumbling pillar of a collapsed empire - [[grimdark|and worse, he could not even say he was fighting for a cause that was any better.]] Something had to give.

And give it did, when Horus went beyond even Perturabo's massive ability to ignore his mistakes and told him to forget the logic he had used to secure his loyalty. Perturabo flipped out, calling Horus a monster no better than the Emperor, pointing out that both had only ever used him to destroy and refusing to have any more to do with his schemes and pacts and submission to Chaos. In many ways it was as with his betrayal of the Emperor, save that he now knew there was no chance of redemption, no offer of forgiveness.

So he did what he could never do before. [[Awesome|He downed his tools, took his sons, and left]].

Well, there was ''one'' outstanding issue; his promised resolution of matters with Dorn. But Perturabo had a plan for that too- if he wasn't allowed to find and best Dorn, he'd get Dorn to come to him.

It was time for round two.

===Iron Cage Trolling===
[[File:DemonicFortress.png|thumb|right|[http://gunshowcomic.com/471 You come across a seemingly well-fortified daemonic fortress! Defences as far as the eye can see!]]]

And thus after leaving he performed one of the greatest acts of trolling in the entire fluff, called the "Eternal Fortress": a trap set for the [[Imperial Fists]] who wanted to take revenge on Perturabo, who claimed to be residing in the Central Keep of the Fortress. Surrounding the Fortress was a 20 kilometre killzone filled with mine fields, traps, bunkers, trenches, and every other kind of base defence imaginable in order to make the assault on the keep a very costly affair. This was intended to bleed the Imperial Fists dry before they reached the actual fortress. This was made more effective by the fact that the Imperial Fists' fleet was kept busy dealing with the Iron Warriors' fleet, preventing them from providing effective orbital support to Dorn's forces on the ground, isolating them all the more.

When the Imperial Fists DID manage to get to the keep after wading through twenty miles (or maybe kilometres) of killing ground and losing a great deal of their forces in the process, they found out the Central Keep was - *plot twist* - empty!

[[Trap|Except for the various inward-pointing guns aimed directly at the Imperial Fists, essentially trapping them inside the fortress in a veritable killzone]]. This caused Rogal Dorn to become a normal man after getting trolled: Sad, broken and filled with [[RAGE]]. The Fists proceeded to [[Rape|spend the next three weeks being shot, blown up, and generally curb-stomped with extreme prejudice]] until they were reduced to [[Grimdark|fighting armoured Iron Warriors with knives and using each others' corpses for cover]].

And then none other than the great heroes of the Imperium, *cough* [[Ultramarines|Ultrasmurfs]] *cough* showed up and saved their sorry arses, since Rawbutt Jellyman rightfully thought Dorn was taking his masochistic "I must punish myself and my legion for our failures!" bullshit too far and risking pissing away ''even more'' of the Imperium's already faltering strength in a functionally (near-) pointless gesture.

The Iron Warriors, realizing they couldn't beat both legions at the same time, decided to instead deny the Imperial Fists from recovering their fallen brothers' gene-seed by essentially ''nuking the entire fucking planet.'' 400 Battle-Brothers' corpses and/or geneseed were never recovered, dealing a great blow to the Fists' ability to replenish their numbers after the assault. Having obtained the [[gene-seed]] of hundreds of Imperial Fists and sacrificed it to the Chaos Gods, Perturabo was elevated to the position of Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided.

(One thing to note: not all the geneseed was sacrificed to the CG. Some of this gene-seed was used to create a few IF/IW half-breeds with a little [[Fabius Bile|Fabulous]] support, including the [[Honsou|evilest motherfucker of the 41st millennium]].)

Earlier fluff of this event (by loyalist corpsefuckers, clearly) claims that Perturabo hesitated to slay Rogal Dorn, because "Only through his self-sacrifice could he break the Emprah's Champion!". Since FW gave rules to both of them, we now know that Pert has nice chances against Dorn, if they both start on an even footing - which they very much weren't on Sebastus, given Pert spent weeks of the Iron Cage siege laughing at countless Fists being blasted by heavy ordnance, while Dorn spent them fighting 24/7 without rest and repair to his weapon/armour while watching his beloved sons being slaughtered by the hundreds in a totally unmanly and unfair way. And of course, let's not forget the much more preferable and easily available option to just shoot the fuck out of Dorn with some crazy big and powerful guns Pert had in abundance, since Dorn was already trapped in the crossfire without any cover [[Grimdark|but the corpses of his fallen sons]] - a few D-blasts in the face is enough to end any Primarch, save Horus and (psychic, not regular) Lorgar.

Furthermore, Perturabo would have known (or at least thought) that killing Dorn would have made him a martyr throughout the Imperium. He'd go down in history as the mighty Primarch who went down trying to take one of foul arch-traitors of Chaos down; nobody would question that and people would see Dorn as a hero who fought to the last. But bloody his sons, utterly humiliate him, and have him fail his sworn objective while leaving him alive to face the shame? Now Dorn is just a man who boasted big, got tactically outsmarted by his prey, and was utterly defeated for his troubles... a much bigger blow than simply pulling the trigger of his superweapon and ending it there.

To Perturabo's [[Rage|eternal frustration]] and in a positively ''grand'' moment of [[irony]] considering his motives, this actually caused Dorn and the Fists to become '''''even more famous and loved throughout the Imperium as everyone saw it as Dorn and his Imperial Fists cleansing themselves in the fires of war to be reborn anew.''''' Heck, it couldn't even be proof that he was a better siegemaster than Dorn, THE defining rivalry of his life; a better tactician who could easily play his foe like a fiddle and lead them into a [[Battle of Calth|masterfully crafted]] [[Drop Site Massacre|meatgrinder]], certainly, but not someone who could actually build or break fortifications better considering it was designed as a trap from the start.

So in a sense, the Iron Cage perfectly encapsulates Perturabo's entire life: [[grimdark|meticulous genius turned to remorseless slaughter, wasting his potential in a one-sided rivalry that warped and narrowed his perceptions, marred by his fundamental inability to comprehend or appreciate concepts like willing sacrifice and honour, with only a death toll as his bloody prize.]] [[Lulz|Perty just can't catch a break, can he?]]

We can only assume that the first Iron Warrior [[Derp|foolish]] enough to suggest that [[Rogal_Dorn#Who_is_Dorn.3F|Dorn and the Fists practically handed them the win]] because [[Imperial_Fists#What_it_means_to_be_an_Imperial_Fist|they wanted to go out as a Legion]] was [[BLAM|'volunteered']] to be converted into [[Obliterators|Obliterator]] ammunition, [[RIP AND TEAR|by hand]]. And the second [[Stupid|stupid]] enough to repeat the idea was the [[Daemonculaba|first 'lucky' test subject of new daemonic technologies]].

==Post Heresy==
While his brothers don't do all that much, Perturabo doesn't sit on his ass all day. In 400.M32, he single-handedly annihilated the [[Forge_World#A_few_Forge_Worlds_of_note:|forge world of Toil]] in eight days. With [[Nurgle]]'s help, he unleashed a machine-plague that transformed the planet's factories into walking monstrosities while causing [[Daemon Engine]]-spewing cables to burst out of the ground, making him the most deadly hacker to ever exist. He also helped [[Abaddon]] fuck up the [[Iron Hands]] during the 10th [[Black Crusade]] (possibly because he was sick of people getting the Iron Warriors and the Iron Hands mixed up all the time), making him the only Daemon Primarch known to have actually participated in a Black Crusade.

After the Great Rift appeared to fuck shit up, Perturabo led the Iron Warriors to besiege [[Segmentum#Segmentum_Obscurus|Segmentum Obscurus]] worlds as he had been planning and attacked the planet Dysactis in person. However, the [[Death Guard]] had the same idea too; what's more, they were led by [[Mortarion]]. As to be expected the two Primarchs had a grand old family reunion (a big fight). The duel lasted for seven hours before Mortarion managed to beat Perturabo and drive him off. Being the sour asshole he is, Perturabo detonated a series of explosives before he left.

In the limited edition of Halfbreed - Storm of Iron, we finally get a look at Perty's Daemon Prince form! He's... actually pretty normal looking - he even still wears his ''Logos'' battle armour, though it's now massive enough to resemble a fortified Dreadnought-like sarcophagus and looks disturbingly alive, possibly canonizing the fan speculation of him being a uber-Obliterator. Beside that, he looks a little decrepit, with the skin of his face appearing pale and outright necrotic in places; guess using Warpstuff to fix that hole in your soul thanks to [[Fulgrim|that overgrown peacock]] is pretty bad for your skin.

While the Great Crusade had already done a number on Perty's aging due to stress, there is a delicious [[irony]] to be found in how poor Peter Turbo is starting to look [[Emprah|exactly like his old dad.]] Someone, for the love of the Emprah's non-existent penis, please fetch the Lord of Iron 1,000 years worth of body lotion.

==Personality==
{{topquote|I am not a man, I am far more.|Perturabo}}
{{topquote|In those words is the poison that spoils your potential..., Let me tell you, my brother, you who affects to despise love so much yet must certainly crave it over all other things, you are the biggest fool I have ever met.|Calliphone, Perturabo's sister, before he killed her}}

The adage goes that the Primarchs are each a distilled fragment of the Emperor's own personality and each one could be boiled down to a single word. The word to describe Perturabo is spite. As in "if you even so much as connect your gaze to mine in a passing glance, I will press your face into a belt sander running at 10,000 RPM until my own hand disappears into the fog of blood and bone dust."

However, of all the Primarchs Pert is the most wildly inconsistent, with depictions of him varying between Black Library authors. His motives, values and behaviors change between books, constantly contradicting any attempt at a general encapsulation of character. The only consistent trait is a mercurial disposition and ever-ruling sense of resentment. As a result, he has been stuck with the moniker of being a raging autist, to the chagrin of Iron Warriors fans everywhere. Pert's defining character trait is more reflected in his own sons than himself, with such lovely examples including [[Honsou]], who is only ''half'' an Iron Warrior. Pert's emotional inconsistencies could easily be argued from a narrative position as a form of bipolar disorder, which would itself explain his spiteful attitude. Observe:

In "Crimson Fist", Perturabo was portrayed as a Saturday-morning villain who flips his shit when a flunky brings him bad news. His emotions range from [[Stupid Evil|"hand-wringing evil"]] to [[BBEG|"I'll get you next time"]]. Thanks, John French.

In the third Forge World Horus Heresy book "Extermination", Perturabo is a cold, resentful bastard who the moment he was reunited with his Legion had it decimated for not being the best, then wondered how his legion still wasn't as good as the Dark Angels, Ultramarines and Luna Wolves, [[Fail|and why no one liked him.]] As an aside the FW books are co-written by John French. The Forge World Imperial Armour Volume 13 Book also mentions a civil war between the Iron Warriors in M34 that, in-universe, is suspected to have been instigated by the Daemon Primarch Perturabo to weed out the weak amongst his scions. Some pieces of lore however, like the pre-Primarch IVth's Siege of [[Forge World|Incaladion]], hint at an underlying genetic quirk.

Guy Haley's novel "Hammer of Olympia" portrays Perturabo as an idealistic but staggeringly narcissistic renaissance man, seeing himself alone worthy of bettering humanity and the courts of Olympia holding him back. Brooding and resentful, he is inward-looking and self-serving, even if he has convinced himself otherwise. He does a total 180 in the last 25-something pages of the book after smashing Olympia without hesitation.

[[Graham McNeill]] presents him in "Angel Exterminatus" as a vastly intelligent, very meticulous man who resented his legion's treatment at the Emperor's hands but refuses to consider himself a "traitor" as opposed to the Emperor's "Loyalists". He came to the conclusion of joining Horus' side logically but hates himself for it and resents the circumstances that "forced" him to make the decision. Pride, endurance and commitment to excellence are both the strengths that make his legion and the vices that guaranteed his damnation.

McNeill's Perturabo is shown to possess loads of teeth-grinding, under-the-surface, passive-aggressive, subtle rage, particularly where he buys hundreds of house-sized paintings of his own men and has them all burned. The painting in question that he had destroyed was one that showed a Legion Apothecary administering the Emperor's Mercy to an Iron Warrior in the mud and grimy fields of a conquered fortress. In the background of the painting there was an [[Imperial Fists|Imperial Fists flag]] waving over the fortress. This just shows that Perturabo possesses an all-consuming hatred for Dorn; in every waking moment he lives, breathes, and shits the thought that Dorn is somehow better than him. When put into context of his upbringing where he ''knew'' he was better than everyone else but had to constantly face the questions and doubts of lesser men while being unable to fulfill his potential, you can appreciate Perturabo's seething frustration being stuck on the fringes of the Great Crusade getting all of the shit jobs, while other brothers like [[Horus]] and Dorn get all the good jobs and hence the glory... until you remember that nobody forced or ordered him to do so, they simply ''asked'' him to because he was so skilled at it and he accepted in the hopes that being a doormat would get his Legion some glory and people to like him. Interestingly enough, this might be a genetic flaw rather than pure personality, as hinted by the Forge World black books. Also, according to some sources, [[Emperor|Big-E]] viewed Primarchs as tools to be used instead of normal human beings with free will, feelings and passions, so we can add Emperor's general retardation to the reasons of his fall as well.

As an extension of this, he's prone to premeditated acts of calculated destruction and cruelty to get one over on his brothers. One example: when Fulgrim fucked around one too many times on campaign, Pert invited Fulgrim into his inner sanctum to show him a clockwork [[Warhound Scout Titan]] only to smash Fulgrim's pretty face into the guts of the machine; that Warhound was intricate, made of dozens of hundreds of thousands of tiny parts, and fully functional complete with the ability to move and fire miniature laser cannons. He also had schematics of huge, wondrous buildings that he was the architect of, and a clockwork Phoenix that he spent over a century constructing by hand and even wrote the code of an AI from scratch for. It was a masterpiece in itself and Perturabo was willing to break his brother's face on it to make a point. A second example during the Great Crusade in the McNeill's novel "Magnus the Red" where he spends what must have been a long time painstakingly crafting a psychic sextant device at Magnus' request, only to smash it in front of Magnus because he knew exactly what it was for; for this Magnus outright called him cruel but Perturabo's response was that he needed to illustrate the Emperor's warning against delving too deep into the warp and simply ''saying'' as much wouldn't have done any good, [[Konrad Curze|so being cruel was the quickest option]] (surprisingly showing a great deal of loyalty and obedience to the Emperor in the process despite his attitude). Also, as Monarchia showed, the Emperor's methods were pretty similar to Perturabo's when it came to teaching people a lesson. Unsurprisingly, the results and peoples' reactions to their methods were similar as well.

Perturabo seems to [[Mortarion|look down on Chaos]] in general, rejecting the opportunity to become a daemon prince of Nurgle by slaying the Lunar Wolves turned Plague Marines who offered it to him. Then he mocked Daemon Prince Angron for ''somehow'' becoming weaker than he was as a mortal Primarch, even causing Angron to literally ''shrink'' as he continued shittalking him to his face, noting that Angron's strength didn't belong to him and was only as good as the wanton slaughter he wrought on a given planet and concluding with "You think I would let your kind wield your weapons against me? I have taken their measure" just before spamming a torrent of ammo in Angron's face followed by curbstomping him with [[Ferrus Manus|Forge Breaker]]. Funny how he became a Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided. Perhaps, given that Fulgrim literally stole part of his life force to become a Daemon Prince himself, the remainder of which was only getting weaker as noted upon by the aforementioned Nurgle Wolves, Pert's hand was forced under the caveat that he could retain some independence if he were dedicated to the Ruinous Powers as a whole rather than as an avatar of a single Chaos deity. If [[Malal]] were still a thing, Perturabo would've probably been slated to become his Daemon Prince instead, right after [[Konrad Curze]] and the 11th Primarch.

Simplicity is the key, expedience the goal. His is a mind entirely composed of mathematical equations, looking at the world around him in angles and percentages, statistics and numbers. Emotion is unwelcome, an unfactorable variable, but it's always there, the ghost that haunts his finely tuned thoughts; again in "Magnus the Red" by McNeill, his actions on the planet Morningstar would dispassionately leave millions of refugees to die simply because he could not afford to save them all-- all because they fell on the wrong side of his equation. He had even argued with his brother Magnus about the realities of war and the need to avoid sentimentality in decision-making. He would later admit to one of his commanders (Barban Falk, THE WARSMITH) that he is deeply affected by his emotions and was itching to find those responsible for his choices and punish them, later becoming exceptionally angry when he discovered that the planetary elite were responsible for the catastrophe; he labelled their treachery against the Emperor as utterly unforgivable (no doubt foreshadowing his own personal opinion about joining the Horus Heresy). He also admitted that he could not be ''seen'' to be emotional because he had a reputation to consider.

Perturabo was detached from his own men. He had his '''Trident''': a cadre of officers similar to Horus' own '''Mournival''', though he didn't like any of them and considered replacing them, which raises the question of why he even had them. You think the Lion had people problems? At least his men could appreciate his elegant brilliance along with his ruthlessness so that any losses were weighed against gains. Perturabo was a brute force machine: victory was a positive in his arithmetic of war, failure was negative, therefore to him, any cost was worth the price of winning. He illustrated this when he decimated his legion in the beginning days. His men took the lesson to heart but became hardened because of it. Officers felt disdain for the lives of their own men and scheming became rife within his legion, all scrambling for supremacy and the attentions of their masters to prove themselves worth keeping. Where other leaders might rule through [[Horus|force of personality]] or [[Konrad Curze|fear of reprisal]], Perturabo led through indifference, expecting the dream of the Imperium to speak for itself.

Even though he treats his men like tools at best and dogshit at less-than-best, he gets offended when the other legions show disrespect to their sacrifices, most notably Dorn's mocking "Perturabo throws men at walls" speech. He would say as much to his own sister before gutting her on the sole principle he was back to Olympia to genocide the planet for defying his orders to supply more men to be pushed through his meat grinder: "The Emperor uses me for the most thankless tasks, my men are thrown against the worst of horrors, given the most grueling roles, we are divided, our talents ignored, our might reduced to splitting rock, my Father ignores me, my men go unsung, our triumphs are unremembered, my brothers mock me as my men bleed, nobody cares." It wasn't until he killed Calliphone that he stopped to reflect on his own barbarism and started muttering to himself "The Emperor will never forgive us this, The Emperor cannot forgive us, ever." in his first ever sensation of shame. Once his men found him, they reported that other companies had gone AWOL and refused to kill anybody, to which he responded simply "Good."

Calliphone would herself note in her final moments that Perturabo's course of actions are significantly uncharacteristic (''pffft'') of the man she once knew: the artisan, the architect, the artist. And it's not until after the trauma of strangling his own sister to death does he have a sobering moment of clarity on what exactly he's become. It should be reiterated that Perturabo is the only person to have ever seen the Eye of Terror during his adolescence on Olympia, perhaps foreshadowing that his mind, brilliant though it may be, had been corrupted from the start by the Ruinous Powers. That much is not only plausible, probable even, but would explain just about everything from his spiteful, petty cruelty; irrational wanton slaughter of his own soldiers; his actions on the battlefield flowing contrary to his known strategic prowess; to his unpredictable mood swings and his constantly-changing personality. With the Ruinous Powers at the steering wheel of his mind, it would be little wonder why Perturabo was so self-destructive from start to finish, and wholly ironic when considering his remarks to Daemon Prince Angron.

Perturabo buried his dreams and his heart on Olympia's ridges, and then willingly cut all emotional ties and dove into Hell, all because he truly believed in his father's utopian dream of Imperium. He would do anything his father asked of him in order to achieve it. He murdered trillions, because his father asked him to. He broke empires, shattered armies, and his Legion bore the most grievous wounds and losses, because his father asked him to. And he ignored the implications of it all, because his Father asked him to. Do you honestly believe none of this ground into his long-lost humanity, the empty core of his being that he cut out because his Father asked him to?

He is war-broken. We're talking about God-Level post-traumatic mental disorder here. Perturabo can't control his emotions at times. He stares out at nothingness, and speaks to his past. One moment, he's unreachable, and the next he's ripping your head off because you brought him bad news. He can become utterly lost in fine details, both in crafting weaponry, and tearing down citadels. It calms him, returns his mind back to the emotionless numbers that represent hundreds of thousands of his sons dying. The further detached he became from reality, the further he tried to hide from the horror he was crafting, the worse his emotions got.

And Perturabo buried that shit. To admit the hurt and the fatigue would be to admit he was human, something imperfect; to acknowledge the dropping morale of his men would be to admit that they were weak when they should be strong. So he did the only thing his sensibilities would allow him to do: he moved forward. He got the job done, and the next, and the next and the one after that. He kept doing what his father asked from him, because that's what "Perturabo" would do, the Primarch who shouldered burdens without complaint, who did the jobs no one else wanted.

Olympia was the line crossed. His mind broke, his heart broke, and he became the monster he ran from his whole life.

Because his Father asked him to.

===Capabilities===

As mentioned earlier, Perturabo was born with the innate knowledge of pretty much all practical and metaphysical sciences, which pretty much sets him apart from all of his brothers in that he had no "real" childhood, no trial and error period of learning. On ''his first day'' he was debating (and dismissing) the nature of religion with his planet's wise men, and was master-crafting swords better than most smiths. You'd reckon being born knowing everything would stunt your emotional growth. Yes, other Primarchs like Angron, the Lion or Kurze got a pretty raw start but for better or worse they learned to adapt and rise to greatness (or infamy). Perturabo started off already being as good as he was going to get; though it would take time for his body to grow strong, his mind was already at its peak, and he had to spend decades on a shitty little backwater planet with no appreciable resources with which to build an empire the same way that [[Roboute Guilliman|Guilliman]] or [[Rogal Dorn|Dorn]] did, all the while having to slap down naysayers telling him that his fantasies of advanced engineering and space travel were impossible.

As to his mind, if a comparison could be made, then he was probably just as intelligent as Guilliman, if not more so due to the seeming wide range of his capabilities. (Guilliman was renowned neither as philosopher, smith or artisan). As a military strategist Perturabo could plan a campaign from start to finish in his mind using the arithmetic of war; where Guilliman could orchestrate a flawless battle plan from the command center, [[Video_Games|Perturabo would enact it himself by plugging straight into the data feeds and absorbing all the info at once, circumventing the chain of command and issuing orders directly to squads, taking direct control of gun turrets and mechanised units and plotting their firing trajectories, even taking over starship systems and running them himself.]]

Thus lies the problem: Perturabo is a general as much as [[Neckbeard|any player of Warhammer 40,000 is a "general"]]: he [[Stat block|sees the battlefield in terms of units with stat blocks]]; every soldier can be [[Warhammer 40,000|reduced to a number based on his armament or capability]] which would [[Powergamer|factor in to his arithmetic of war]]. Even Guilliman recognised the [[Dice | random nature]] of war and how small moments of heroism could change the flow of battle; other generals could trust their men to follow their orders to the best of their abilities and even exceed them from time to time and pull off something spectacular. On the other hand, in sincerely believing in his own superiority Perturabo would micromanage everything and instead remove the agency of his officers and men. His soldiers would never get their chance to succeed or fail on their own terms and were essentially reduced to minis on a tabletop. Which in turn would make his men paranoid, wondering if they would be thrown away into the grinder or be blamed for failure when they couldn't match Perturabo's expectations.

Additionally, one could make the argument that while he had a vast store of knowledge he knew how to use, Perturabo's other major flaw as a tactician was that he was unimaginative in anything other than his areas of expertise. Godlike with an artisan's inspiration when it came to matters of logistics, technology, siegecraft, and artillery, but too much of a stubborn and entitled martyr-manchild to [[Reasonable Marines|use different tactics as a situation demanded]], even when he was underestimated; it would seem that he refused to adapt because he was completely convinced of the logical superiority of his own methods, and to change them would be to suggest they were incorrect or inferior. This stubbornness might even be engineered into his particular gene-seed, as the sloppy victories his Legion achieved in the decades leading up to his rediscovery were on the whole spoiled by their refusal to change gears and try something different.

To be fair, he certainly wasn't the [[Leman Russ|only]] [[Konrad Curze|Primarch]] who was a [[Jaghatai Khan|one-trick-pony]], and many of those specialties were likely engineered into them by the Emperor, but his attitude certainly didn't help matters, whether he was calling Corax a coward for suggesting a feint, or dismissing ([[BLAM|or worse]]) his men for suggesting that a war of attrition might not be the best play. He may know how to crack an orbital defence that stymied three separate Legions, and how to dispassionately, surgically exploit killboxes to tear apart his opponents, but his tendency to dig in and throw men and big guns at the problem without paying heed to the input and suggestions of others made him ill-suited for [[White Scars|mobile]] and [[Raven Guard|asymmetrical]] warfare unless he had already engineered a means to keep them in place. There's even a scene in 'Path of Heaven' when Horus (swole from Chaos gains but still decidedly in his right mind as Warmaster) opines to Mortarion that Perturabo would be a poor choice to send after the Khan, believing that the Scars would run rings around his fortresses and artillery emplacements.

So ultimately, he was an ultra-competent specialist you could count on to perform his functions (but little else) to masterful effect no matter the cost, his crowning achievement likely being the fact that despite the degradation of so much of the Traitors' leadership and organization, Perturabo nearly-singlehandedly kept the siege running and the guns blasting on the logistical, strategic, and tactical levels. But he either couldn't or wouldn't change his methods even if he was ever wrong-footed, and his stubborn superiority-inferiority-martyr complex meant that he would never, EVER hear constructive feedback as anything other than a personal attack from an inferior mind. The main reason he was even functioning as a member of Team Horus was because, as mentioned, following orders and doing his duty were big things to him; without those, he likely would have been as much of a team player as Angron.

As an unwelcome revelation to the Mechanicum, Perturabo was quite capable of understanding binary machine code even when blurted out in its lightning fast audible form (something that would otherwise not be possible without some form of implants) to the point that tech priests unfamiliar with Perturabo would not actually believe it and be in for a shock when they attempted to use it in his presence (yet another example of Perturabo being underestimated).

Of all the Primarchs, Perturabo is the most misused of all. He was the only person in the Imperium of Man with his [[Jokaero|savant-esque technical expertise]]; he can read and write binary fluently by heart, he's a master mathematician and engineer, he programmed a new AI from scratch for a Warhound Scout Titan that he hand-built from the ground up, all things that the Mechanicum and greater Imperium are in dire need of constantly. Nobody, not [[Magnus]] nor [[Ferrus Manus]] or [[Belisarius Cawl]] could compare with his technical mastery, which remains unparalleled to the current millennium. Instead of assigning this literal Primarch-savant to research and development so nobody would have to waste time and energy kissing a machine spirit's ass for hours on end just to do ''something'', the Emperor saw fit to just throw Pert at walls.

All things considered, the only siege battle Perturabo should have ever fought would be a campaign on the bowels of Mars to purge it of all Archeotech bullshit like the Men of Iron, then emerge as a genuine hero and receive the accolades and recognition he would rightly deserve. Then put him to task on unfucking Mars' broken-ass atmosphere so the planet can flourish again, followed by putting him to task on creating STCs for brand new weaponry and AI to completely overwrite all the shitty machine spirits that have no place in holding the Imperium back from [[AWESOME|full-throttle badassery]]. Would it piss the Mechanicum off? Probably, but what right would they ''really'' have to complain about innovation after the Omnissiah's son just fixed two of their planet's worst problems? If anything, it would endear the populace of Mars to the Emperor more than ever and give Perturabo a purpose bigger than walking an army into a meat grinder over and over. [[grimderp|But you can't have a grimdark story without enormous potential being wasted fucking everywhere, now can you?]] [[Horus Heresy|To make an omelette, you gotta break eggs.]]

Unknown to anyone else, Perturabo had always possessed a strange connection to the Eye of Terror-- for some reason, he could sense it from anywhere in the galaxy, and he became convinced that it was constantly watching and judging his every action. The resulting inferiority (superiority) complex wasn't really helped by the fact that when he tried ask others if they could see the Eye, they assumed he was hallucinating. ''(Ironically, he was actually the one to give the Eye its current name-- before then, it was called [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_X-1 Cygnus X-1].)'' Considering he become one of those chosen by Chaos, he may have been right in feeling off at the Eye of Terror.

===Outside the box===
Oh, Perturabo enjoyed playing [[Warhammer 40000]], and no, we're not kidding; his legion's warrior lodge had a whole bunch of tables set up where they could all play scenarios against each other and see whose tactics and armies would win, proving that the [[Iron Warriors]] are [[Neckbeards]] (which would go a long way towards explaining why the IV Legion was so embittered). Perturabo himself owned an awesome perpetual-motion powered clockwork [[Warhound Scout Titan]] ''(I'd buy <s>one!</s> <s>three!!</s> ALL OF THEM!!!!!)'' which he facepalmed [[Fulgrim]] with (at the cost of the model) just to prove a point. [[Derp|What if he had a model of himself, then played with the model, but the model was made 30,000 years before him? Is there a GeeDubbs in 40k?]] [[what|Are we living in a board game to be made in the future?]] [[Derp|Would the]] [[Just as planned|events of 40k go as they where lorewise? Is Geedubbs Tzeentch? Is everyone under control of Tzeentch?]]

If you want to know, "Perturabo" is the name the nice lil' Perty chose for himself after reading some ancient texts predating the Age of Strife (or climbing out of his pod, depending on the story). Given GW's freaky love for kitchen pseudo Latin, we can assume it to be a deformation of the verb ''per'''d'''urabo'', meaning "I shall endure". Best predictive name ever if you consider the mountain of shit his bros and the Emprah threw on him before the Heresy... Or it could be a deformation of the verb '''perturbō''' meaning "I confuse, disturb, perturb, trouble, alarm". Or maybe both, making it a surprisingly good pun by GW standards. It's maybe also of note, that 'perdurabo' is the cult-name Aleister Crowley got when he entered the Golden Dawn-- no mere coincidence, I would assume!

Also noted that his name sounds fairly close to the Spanish word perturBaDo which is just 2 letters away and means "being disturbed", and applies amazingly well when you consider that this guy lived in permanent paranoia and was forced to watch the eye of terror almost from birth.

Or maybe said "Ancient texts" were some 40K material meaning he [[what|named himself after himself]].

==Tabletop==
{| class=wikitable
! || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Perturabo:''' || 8 || 6 || 7 || 6 || 6 || 5 || 4 || 10 || 2+/3++
|}

At 490 points when kitted out with [[Ferrus Manus|Forgebreaker]] he's the third most expensive Primarch after [[Horus]] and [[Magnus]]. But he's worth it.

[[Image:PerturaboPrimarchoftheIronWarriors03.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Fuck your Cerastus [[Emprah]] ! Buy another one, ya rich muthafucka! FUCK YOUR CERASTUS EMPRAH, FUCK YOUR CERASTUS! [[Chaos|DARKNESS! DARKNESS!]]]]
On his own merits, he's sort of what you'd get if you crossed the rules of Horus with Ferrus Manus.
Like Magnus, his armour is a veritable bag of tricks, although less killy overall since he has fewer attacks and the hammer is unwieldy. Though you can choose to hit things with his fists if you don't want to use/bring the hammer, in which case he strikes as hard as a plasma gun. Also rather than carrying an arsenal of ranged weapons he has practically every item of wargear attached, making him much more of a support character since he can teleport and then bring on other teleporting dudes around himself. Units cannot infiltrate around him and the unit he's with can use Interceptors on enemy units arriving by deep strike. Finally, his armor also lets you refrain from shooting to give a squad +1 BS ''(due to Cognis Signum)'' which depending on your play style may actually occur more than you realize, since his own gun is only 24" range. On top of that, all of his attacks benefit from Wrecker and Tank Hunters, so any mechanized list he's up against will be in for a world of pain.

For what he gives to everyone else, his whole army gains a bit more of a close combat focus by becoming Stubborn which makes them very difficult to shift and they also all gain Furious Assault when in the enemy deployment zone, though you may not necessarily have built your army to fully utilize this since Iron Warriors tend to have [[dakka|all the guns]]. He can also make all other terminators deep-striking via teleportation ''(including siege terminators)'' though he does not make them into troops like [[Horus]] does. Like Horus, he has a wrist mounted gun (with Rending, no less) and he also has an Orbital Strike, which is slightly less powerful compared to Horus' (and lacks the Lance rule), but compensates by being Ordnance D3 instead of Ordnance 1.

He also lets you bring him on turn 1 with his squad (6 iron circle anyone?) without the need to roll. Arguably not as good, however if you roll on the personal traits and get outflank, this could be Perty with 6 iron circle body guard arriving turn 1 via outflank, and unless the enemy has paid for 54 Sigismunds, you'll be sitting pretty - not to mention the 30 BS5 heavy bolter shots that have pinning and an orbital strike. This also works well as if you take a squad of tyrants in reserve, they can deep strike without scattering on turn 2 (provided you roll a 3+) and reign fire down with a hefty 10 (20 if you're a dick) blasts within the enemies deployment zone.
[[File:Pert's_Tormentor.PNG|thumb|left|The Tormentor]]
All this said, he's really expensive and has no reliable way to break tarpits. Furthermore, while Deep Striking Termies and Furious Charge in the enemy deployment zone are good, they don't really capitalize on the strong points of the Iron Warriors. It's possible to use The Ironfire to build a list that makes use of his rules, but it's annoying that he tries to force his sons to take on new roles instead of focusing on dakka.

In games of 3000+ points or more, he can spend 600 points to use his special Dedicated Transport, the [[Tormentor (Tank)|"Tormentor"]]- a buffed out Shadowsword with a void shield, a 15-model transport capacity, and a rear access point. It only has one set of sponsons, but with it's special rule '''Torment''' you won't care, since if you fire all your weapons at the same target, you get both Monster and Tank Hunter. Sadly can't fit the Iron Circle inside, but you can squeeze in Perty, 5 command squad terminators, and a terminator character, most likely a Forgelord.

===Perturabo VS other Primarchs:===
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
Primarch fighting, while fun to see, isn't a very competitive thing to do as it'll usually tie up both Primarchs for the entire game without either of them dying. With that in mind this section is about how Perturabo fares against other Primarchs Mathhammer wise. Please note that all the various abilities are taken into accounts when possible and the match-ups assume the Primarchs are the only ones involved in the fighting, so various abilities like Angron's "The Butcher's Nails" and Rampage do not provide any bonuses. In essence, the fights are supposed to happen in a "Vacuum" for simplicity, but notes are added to make things clearer in particular instances. Also all of the Primarch use their most powerful weapons (because why have a contest if you don't do your best?). So he is obviously armed with Forgebreaker. Also do note that Forgebreaker is an incredible weapon for Primarch vs Primarch duelling, giving him an edge against every other Primarch thanks to the combination of Strikedown, Concussive AND Blind, but the rules are only taken into account against Primarchs that he wouldn't be able to beat without, for (my) simplicity.
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Please note that Strikedown halving Initiative was 6E; by HH rulebook it no longer halves initiative, which changes certain outcomes (vs Fulgrim). Mathhammer by those who understand how would be appreciated.

* Perturabo VS Horus
**Horus hits 3 times (Talon), wounds 2.667 times, 0.889 after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.556 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Horus (Blinded) hits 2 times (Talon), wounds 1.778 times, 0.593 after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.256 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.556 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.222.
**Perturabo (with Horus Blinded) hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222, 0.741 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.407 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Well well well. So, finally a real challenger has appeared? This fight would actually seem to pend in favor of Perturabo! Then you remember that Horus negates any effect that would adversely modify his characteristic profile with a 3+. Either try again another time, Perty, or prey Horus gets unlucky as even one or two fails on Horus could mean a win for the hammer guy. Overall: winnable but needs a bit of luck on the blinds but he is one of only a handful of Primarchs who actually has a reasonable chance against Horus.

* Perturabo VS Angron
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 1.48 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.148.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.111 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.69 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.361 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Assuming that Angron doesn't get blinded, he wins. If he does get blinded after Perturabo wounds Angron (69% per round) odds are in Perturabo's favor.

* Perturabo vs Mortarion
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.555 wounds after saves and 0.222 wounds after IWND.
**Perturabo hits 2.666 times, wounds 2.222 times, 1.111 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.555 wounds at the start of the next turn
**Perturabo wins.

* Perturabo vs Fulgrim
**Fulgrim Round 1: hits 4.5 times, wounds 3 times, 1 wounds after saves and 0.667 wounds after IWND.
**Fulgrim Round 2 and thereafter: hits 3 times, wounds 2 times, 0.667 wounds after saves and 0.333 wounds after IWND.
**Fulgrim Blinded: hits 1.667 times, wounds 1.111 times, 0.37 times after saves and 0.037 after IWND
**Perturabo hits 2 times, wounds 1.667, 0.555 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.222 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo (with Fulgrim Blinded) hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222, 0.741 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.407 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Fulgrim surprisingly loses as after the first round he will be brought to I 4 (by Strikedown) and then Blinded and/or Concussed pretty much every round (actually 85% of the total rounds, if my calculations are correct, that is more than enough for Perturabo to destroy him).

* Perturabo vs Ferrus Manus
**Ferrus hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 0.694 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.361 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222, 0.74 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.407 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**In the mirror match Perturabo actually wins thanks to his WS, since even with one more attack Ferrus hits marginally less times.
**Note: without the hammer(s) Ferrus would defeat Perturabo, 'cause he would wound Perturabo on a 3+ (2+ with the Servo Harm) wounding 1.75 times, with Perturabo wounding him on 4+ and so wounding him 1.333. Guess old Perty could use Fulgrim's hammer better, in the end.

* Perturabo vs Konrad Curze
**Curze hits 3 times, wounds 2.25 times, 0.75 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo hits 2 times, wounds 1.667, 0.833 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Konrad loses as Perturabo does marginally more damage.
**Note: With Hit & Run Konrad would win, but the chance he is not concussed in the round he wants to escape are pretty slim, meaning that Perturabo has still the Edge in this fight.

* Perturabo VS Lorgar
**Lorgar hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 0.694 wounds after saves and 0.361 wounds after IWND.
**Perturabo Round 1: hits 2.37 times, wounds 1.865 times, 0.932 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.599 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo Round 2: hits 2.666 times, wounds 2.221 times, 1.11 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.777 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo wins.
**Note: as always, psychic powers not included. You know how it would end anyway...

* Perturabo VS Vulkan
**Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.555 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.222 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Vulkan (Blinded): hits 1.333 times, wounds 1.111 times, 0.37 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.037 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222, 0.741 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.185 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**As with Fulgrim, Perturabo wins only thanks to his Hammer (great weapon indeed). Without Forgebreaker, Perturabo gets ground down in a battle of attrition.

* Perturabo VS Alpharius
**Alpharius hits 2.92 times and wounds 1.701 times, 0.567 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.234 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222 times, 1.111 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo wins, somewhat unsurprisingly.

* Perturabo VS Rogal Dorn
**Dorn hits 2 times, wounds 1.5 times, 0.5 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.167 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo hits 2 times, wounds 1.333 times, 0.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo wins. Have at thee!

* Perturabo VS Corvus Corax
**Corvus hits 4 times (Scourge)/3 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 3 times (Scourge)/2.25 times (Shadow-walk), 1 wounds (Scourge)/0.75 wounds (Shadow-walk) after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.667/0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo hits 2.667 times/2 times, wounds 2.222 times/1.667 times, 1.481 wounds/1.111 after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.147/0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo wins.
**Note: Welcome to Corvus Corax's special hell, population: Perturabo. Strikedown, Concussive, and Blind near-negate Corax's usual
Hit and Run, and Perturabo himself is immune to Blind. If you try and have Corax take Perty on, you deserve every last horrifying moment of what happens to you.

* Perturabo VS Roboute Guilliman
**Guilliman Round 1/2: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.222 times, 0.74 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.407 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 3 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.963 times, 0.988 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.654 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo Round 1: hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222 times, 0.611 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.278.
**Perturabo Round 2 and thereafter: hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.833 times after saves, 0.417 for Armor of Reason and IWND will take that down to 0.083.
**Perturabo loses.
**Note: Guilliman is immune to Concussive, and even though Strikedown will assure that Blind goes on half of the time he still wins the fight, even if not as easily as the above statistic would imply.

* Perturabo VS Leman Russ
**Russ hits 4 times, wounds 3 times, 1 time after saves, plus 0.388 wounds from Sever Life for a whole 1.388 wounds and IWND will take that down to 1.05 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Russ (blinded) hits 2 times, wounds 1.5 times, 0.5 time after saves, plus 0.388 wounds from Sever Life for a whole 0.888 wounds and IWND will take that down to 0.555 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo Round 1: hits 1.333 times, wounds 1.111 times, 0.555 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.222.
**Perturabo Round 2 and thereafter: hits 0.666 times, wounds 0.555 times, 0.2775 times after saves and IWND will take that down to -0.055.
**Perturabo Round 2 and thereafter (with Russ blinded): hits 1.333 times, wounds 1.111 times, 0.555 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.222.
**Perturabo loses.
**Note : A first lucky hit with Forgebreaker and failed Blind rolls from Russ can help Perturabo last a bit longer, making him one of the toughest primarchs for Leman Russ to face. So like his matchup with Horus he stands a reasonable chance against Russ. Though this also doesn't take into account Russ's wolves backing him up, which would definitely swing it in the Wolf Boy's favour.

* Jaghatai VS Perturabo
**Jaghatai hits 4 times, wounds 2 times, 0.666 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.333
**Perturabo hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222, 0.74 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.407 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perty wins, but only just. Khan could try to hit-and-run, but Perty's concussive and blind should prevent that.

* Perturabo VS The Lion
**Perturabo hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times (Forgebreaker), 0.483 after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.25 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo (Lion Blinded): hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222 times, 0.861 after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.528 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Lion hits 2.5 (Wolf Blade)/3 (Lion Sword) times, wounds 2.43/2.5 times, 0.81/0.833 after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.477/0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Lion (4 wounds): hits 3/3.5 times, wounds 2.917 times, 0.972 after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.639 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Lion (2 wounds): hits 3.5/4 times, wounds 3.403/3.333 times, 1.134/1.111 after saves and IWND will take that to 0.801/0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Lion wins.

*Perturabo VS Sanguinius
**Perturabo hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times (Forgebreaker), 0.833 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Perturabo (with Sanguinius blinded) hits 2.667 times, wounds 2.222 times (Forgebreaker), 1.111 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Sanguinius Round 1: hits 4.667 times (Blade), wounds 4.148 times, 1.383 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.049 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Sanguinius on the charge: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.833 times (including HoW), 1.611 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.056 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Sanguinius Round 2+: hits 4 times, wounds 3.556 times, 1.185 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.852 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Sanguinius (blinded): hits 2 times, wounds 1.778 times, 0.593 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.259 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Sanguinius will lose depending if/when he fails blind checks, even on the charge. He needs to avoid being Blinded for 2-3 rounds (excluding the first) to win.

* TLDR version: Perturabo with Forgebreaker results in one of the strongest contenders among the Primarchs. The combination of rules in the Hammer make him extremely difficult for most of his brothers to deal with. It essentially requires another stat-altering Primarch or one with special anti-stat-altering rules to kill him; those being Horus, Guilliman, the Lion, and of course, Russ. Still, not bad at all, especially for a Primarch whose primary fluff schtick was not melee combat and who buffs his army so well.

</div></div>

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:Past-Pert.jpeg|
File:Past-Pert-Art.jpeg
File:Pert seethe.jpg|thumb|seething and coping
File:Pert shoot.png
Perturabo_trolling.PNG|[[/tg/ gets shit done|Just /tg/ getting shit done.]]
Syberfab_Perturab_underwear.png
File:Pert and Dorn.png|thumb|Oh Adornable
File:Pert deal with it.jpg|thumb|Dorn cant handle his swag
File:Pert joker.jpg|thumb|Why so serious
File:Pert_society.jpg|thumb|We live in an imperium

File:Pert smug.jpg|thumb|tfw Dorn gets iron caged
File:Pert acended.jpg|thumb|the look when you master Firenzii polymath
File:Pert dumb.jpg|thumb|to the whole of the Imperium
File:Pert angry.jpg|thumb|when he sees Dorn
File:Pert smile.jpg|thumb|Dorn got wacked, feels good
File:Pert yoda.png|thumb|Decimate Olympia I have, turn to Chaos, I now must
File:Pert mind.jpg|thumb|What is going on inside his head?
File:Pert autistic bitterness.jpg|thumb|Autism within, Retardation Without
File:Pert you.jpg|thumb|A sad truth
File:Pert victim complex.png|thumb|Always remember kids!
File:Pert superior.png
File:Pert fun.png|thumb|Oh boy! Siege of Terra time!
File:Pert coffe.jpg|thumb|Another day besieging Dorn's forts
File:Emperors_Forgotten.jpg|thumb|It wasn't that important.
File:pert%20draw.jpg
</gallery>
{{Primarchs}}
{{Daemons-Characters}}
[[Category:Chaos]]

Battle of Trisolian

2022-08-12T00:03:17Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8: /* The Battle */

{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=The Battle of Trisolian
|image=
|attacker= [[Space Wolves]]
|defender= [[Sons of Horus]]
|commander1= [[Leman Russ]]
[[Belisarius Cawl]]
|commander2= [[Horus]]
|date= ~011.M31
|scale=Void battle
|theatre= Horus Heresy
|strength1= ~40,000 Marines, near entirety of remaining Space Wolves legion.<br> Majority of fighting forces on a large loyalist Forge World.
|strength2= ~50 capital ships; [[Sons of Horus]] Legion; considerable elements of [[Word Bearers]], [[World Eaters]], [[Alpha Legion]], [[Night Lords]] & [[Iron Warriors]]; Mechanicum Traitors
|casualties1= Extremely High - Maximum ~25,000. Some companies reduced to 20%.<br> Unknown number of Mechanicum loyalists - presumably high, but a sizeable amount survived past the end of the war
|casualties2= Extremely High - Number unknown. Higher number & percentage than the Space Wolves, but with sufficient reserves to absorb the losses largely unphased
|status= Imperial retreat
|outcome= Space Wolves retreat to Yarant and prevented from returning to participate in the [[Siege of Terra|Siege]] in time.<br> Effectively ended the VIth as a "Legion".<br> Horus badly wounded/partly de-corrupted.<br> Leman Russ badly wounded and/or traumatized.
}}

The '''Battle of Trisolian''' was the ill-fated attempt by [[Leman Russ]] to kill [[Horus]] before the inevitable [[Siege of Terra]]. It also marks the earliest appearance of a young [[Belisarius Cawl]] who is a mere up-and-coming but still notoriously unconventional tech-adept by this stage.

==Background==
Throughout the Horus Heresy, the Space Wolves were at the forefront for many of the most vicious battles. Loud space viking appearances and antics notwithstanding, the VIth Legion and their primarch, [[Leman Russ]], always took their role as The Emperor's executioners very seriously, and so threw themselves into the thick of things quite often throughout the Heresy. Fights they evidently mostly won, but which inevitably took a toll on manpower and material. Additionally, for at least the first half of the war, contact could not even be established with the 3 most populous loyalist legions, the [[Blood Angels]], [[Dark Angels]], and [[Ultramarines]] as they were all trapped behind the Ruin Storm. So, with the other [[Salamanders|loyalist]] [[Raven Guard|legions]] [[Iron Hands|indisposed]], [[Imperial Fists|detained]], or [[White Scars|otherwise]] [[Custodes|occupied]], this resulted in the Space Wolves being engaged far more frequently than was ideal, without being rotated out of the front lines, and consequently, with no time to rest, receive repairs, or take on new recruits. By late in the war, the Wolves had lost around 25% of their forces at the [[Burning of Prospero|Prospero]], taken further maulings at the [[Battle of the Alaxxes Nebula]], coupled with further engagements at Vanaheim and Daverant, ultimately reducing their numbers down to around 40,000 marines (give or take), after having started the Heresy with approximately one 130,000. Following Alaxxes, the remnant returned to Terra to coordinate with the loyalist forces.

Leman Russ sponsored a stealth mission by the [[Knights-Errant]] on the Vengeful Spirit during the '''Battle of Molech''' in order to gauge any weaknesses in the traitor dispositions and report back on the state of Horus himself. However, the mission went sour when they were discovered, leading to the deaths of several of the Knights-Errant involved when the Warmaster decided to make examples of them; though they succeeded in planting tracking devices on the Vengeful Spirit, and those that survived the ill-fated engagement ultimately returned successfully to relay their findings.

At the behest of [[Malcador]], Constantine Valdor, and [[Rogal Dorn]] following the completion of the recon mission on the Vengeful Spirit, a war council was convened to take in new information and to determine the next course of action. [[Jaghatai Khan]] and Russ were already on-location, with [[Vulkan]] and [[Sanguinius]] now the newest arrivals (though the former arrived in secret, had remained in the basement ever since, and so wasn't invited). [[Rogal Dorn]] urged that all remaining forces maintain a defensive posture, but was appreciative that the [[Ultramarines]] and [[Dark Angels]] were assaulting the traitors' rear and providing relief to loyalist forces, allowing them to dictate the next few battles. Dorn declared that Terra was too confined a battlezone for the loyalist contingent of Titan Legions and so proposed a muster at '''Beta-Garmon''' and make a stand there in order to give time for [[Roboute Guilliman]] and [[Lion El'Jonson]], to crush the traitors in a pincer movement. The Battle of Beta-Garmon would itself become the site of one of the greatest battles in the entire Horus Heresy.

However, Leman Russ would not be swayed from his original plan and chose to depart from Terra for [[Fenris]] in order to scry a weakness in the superhuman upgrades that Horus gained at Molech. Upon arriving to Fenris, through the combined efforts of Russ and his best Rune Priests, Russ would enter the world spirit of Fenris to gain the knowledge he sought, and while this was hardly a risk-free endeavor, even for a primarch, it effectively meant that Russ was able to enter into a plane of the warp directly, without exposing himself to chaos. Russ was ultimately successful, and when he re-emerged back into the materium, he had determined that he would have to take the oft-maligned "Spear of Russ" with him; it's a good thing he did too, as it turns out that it's actually probably one of the most powerful pointy sticks in existence, being a gift personally made and given by [[Emperor|Daddy]].

==The Battle==
The battle itself took place over the loyalist [[Forge World]] of '''Trisolian A-4''', which had recently been captured by traitor forces following a surrender of Mechanicum forces. However, this was a surrender brought about entirely by the machinations and sabotage of a single ambitious individual (Cawl's boss), following the sudden and [[Just As Planned|somewhat suspicious death of her superior]]. The loyalists had actually been putting up a stiff fight, but were unwillingly prevented from continuing due to the interference of that individual. For their part, the Mechanicum forces on the forge world were by and large also exceedingly loyal to the Omnissiah and despised what the Warmaster and Kelbor Hal had done to their faction, and so had fought with a fire that even Cawl found surprising. This left an enormous reserve of seething, very well-equipped, capable warriors whom Cawl would eventually be able to free and unleash against the traitors.
[[File:Battle_of_Trisolian.jpg|280px|thumb|right|Russ really wanted Horus's wolf pelt. And honestly, who can blame him?]]
The Space Wolf fleet used the unique gravitational properties of the three stars of the Trisolian star system to approach with stealth and speed, using most of their ships as a distraction while Russ own flagship engaged the ''Vengeful Spirit'' directly, allowing him to board with thousands of marines.

Russ had already figured that the battle would result in a loss for his forces, but thankfully Cawl's considerable loyalist Mechanicum elements on the Forge World managed to overthrow the regime and revert the planet back to loyalist control, allowing it to lend a hand in the conflict. Not just some paltry offerings either. Remember, this is a FORGE WORLD, so it's up there with among the hardest of targets in the setting to hit, and probably only really second to the Necrons. It's further suggested that the forces garrisoning this forge world were particularly formidable. Some even survived well after the war, later coming to Cawl's defense, and vouching for him when the latter was suspected of being a traitor. When the loyalist Mechanicum forces came back online, they caught the traitors completely flatfootted and unleashed all kinds of hell. This also meant that the traitors were forced to split their efforts and fight on two fronts, rather than focusing on the Space Wolves.

Once aboard the flagship, Russ engaged Horus directly in an extremely savage duel and incredibly, [[awesome|managed to best Horus in single combat, scoring a debilitating wound with his spear and literally (not figuratively) bringing Horus to his knees]]. In addition to being the twin to Constantine Valdor's Apollonian spear, Russ' spear had been made by The Emperor himself, and so contained some of his power, and as everyone here knows, that power is anathema to Chaos, so when the Chaos-juicing Horus was wounded by it, the effect was even more destructive than it might otherwise have been. In point of fact, this power was so pronounced that when Russ began to further run him through, Horus was shown to be visibly terrified, not by Russ, the wound, or even the very real prospect of death at the hands of his brother, but of the spear's ethereal power coursing through him, obliterating the effects of his Chaos-juicing, and wrecking his [[meme|massive gains]]. Unfortunately however, Russ was then suddenly and without warning [[Plot Armor|beset by a rampaging plot device in the form of a narrative cliché]] which momentarily [[Bullshit|overcame his better judgment and stated goal]]. Thus, instead of immediately killing Horus like he should have done [that was '''precisely''' the primary mission objective remember] the wound gave Horus a brief moment of clarity, and so despite the sacrifices made of himself, his sons, and some of his closest advisors (like the death of his chief [[Rune Priest]], Kva), not to mention having heavily negatively impacted Dorn's defensive plans for the [[Siege of Terra|upcoming siege]] by leaving Terra, and that the [[Noblebright|single most powerful motivator for Russ had been that he wanted to protect his father]], now, with the Arch Traitor himself at his mercy, [[fail|Russ instead tried to plead with his brother to rejoin the Emperor's fold]]. [[Troll|Horus declined and then suckerpunched Russ]], starting a new duel. Tired from the last duel, emotionally devastated, and now caught unawares, Russ was on the backfoot; Horus was about to kill him, but was prevented from delivering the killing blow by a mob of dozens of Space Wolves who literally dogpiled him, allowing [[Bjorn]] to drag Russ from the battlefield and back to the Loyalist fleet where they began to disengage and retreat.

==Aftermath==
Already heavily depleted from all the military actions since Prospero, following Trisolian, the Space Wolves were mauled further still, with some companies even being reduced to just a fifth of their strength, and ultimately dropping the effective fighting force of the legion as a whole down to somewhere in the range of just 10 to 15 thousand marines, after having started the battle with around 40,000. While on its face that number of survivors may still sound a tad higher than expected, consider that A, this is all that they had to get them through the rest of the war and the subsequent [[Great_Scouring|Scouring]], and B, they would eventually form an [[Wolf Brothers|ill-fated Second Founding chapter]], also made largely of veterans of the Heresy. Or to put it another way, that means that the Space Wolves [[Grimdark|suffered something like 66% casualties to their entire legion in a single engagement]]. Under most circumstances, those are literally (not figuratively) ''war-ending'' casualty figures, so don't for a second think that they got off lightly. They most certainly did not.

With their Primarch unconscious from his injuries, the remaining Space Wolf commanders have to make a decision of whether to stay together and likely die, or disperse and play no further part in the Horus Heresy. Choosing to remain together to present a viable threat that the traitors would have to divert resources to deal with, they retreat to '''Yarant III''' to make a stand where they are hunted by [[Abaddon|Failbaddon]] but are eventually saved by [[Corax]] following his own gene-seed debacle. At this point, the Space Wolves had effectively ceased to exist as a Legion.

For his part, Horus was [[butthurt|NOT happy]] in the battle's aftermath. Far from gloating, he was sour over the considerable losses his own forces had incurred, but more than that, he was rattled that [[Not as Planned|Russ had bested him]]. Horus hadn't considered Russ his equal even before he fell to Chaos, yet now, even being infused with additional power from the Ruinous Powers, Russ had laid him low and legitimately could have killed him, had <s>the plot not suddenly intervened</s> Russ' feelings not gotten the better of him. Horus spent time ruminating on this, fully acknowledging it to himself and taking it all in, because he clearly did not like the implications of this. It was amidst these meditations that Horus then suddenly began to experience moments of visions, or perhaps glimpses of visions of his conscience, or something to that effect, berating him for betraying his father, becoming a pawn of the Ruinous Powers, and ultimately just doing what he knew to be wrong. It was this last that most unsettled Horus as it had never happened before, and try as he might, he couldn't simply dismiss it; unbeknownst to him at the time, the wound Russ had dealt him had impacted his spirit as much as his body, and the power of the Emperor's light had slowly started to counteract the baleful malaise of the chaos gods. However, it was not enough- Horus seemingly rejected the Chaos Gods, only to choose to continue his campaign with their help anyway. Flustered and annoyed, he then ordered a [[Abaddon|certain armless failure]] to lead a contingent of his forces to hunt down the remnants of the VIth and not return without Russ' head. [[Fail|Disappointmaddon then returned without Russ' head]]. Oh, and without most of the Astartes Horus had given him as well. Abaddon basically starting as he meant to go on.

Horus later fell into a coma at the aforementioned battle at Beta-Garmon as his wound reopened, and [[Lorgar]] attempted a coup. The Urizen believed that Horus' failure to submit to the gods' will while still accepting their gifts would lead them to withdraw their power [[Siege of Terra|when he needed it most]] and cause the war to be lost. A shard of Horus' soul that had been purified by the Spear of Russ would be fought over by the [[Chaos Gods]], requiring the sacrifice of Maloghurst in order to free him (by destroying said purified soul fragment) and Lorgar was expelled from the Warmaster's fleet after his coup failed, with Horus warning that he would kill Lorgar if he ever saw him again; most of the Word Bearers save a detachment led by Zardu Layak consequently departed with their Primarch in anticipation of Horus' defeat. From this point forwards, whatever was left of the old Horus simply ceased to exist. With the last possibility for his redemption denied, all that was left for the Warmaster was a rapid downward spiral into insanity as the power of the Dark Gods destroyed him from the inside out.

{{40k-Timeline}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]

Battle of Trisolian

2022-08-12T00:02:18Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8: /* The Battle */

{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=The Battle of Trisolian
|image=
|attacker= [[Space Wolves]]
|defender= [[Sons of Horus]]
|commander1= [[Leman Russ]]
[[Belisarius Cawl]]
|commander2= [[Horus]]
|date= ~011.M31
|scale=Void battle
|theatre= Horus Heresy
|strength1= ~40,000 Marines, near entirety of remaining Space Wolves legion.<br> Majority of fighting forces on a large loyalist Forge World.
|strength2= ~50 capital ships; [[Sons of Horus]] Legion; considerable elements of [[Word Bearers]], [[World Eaters]], [[Alpha Legion]], [[Night Lords]] & [[Iron Warriors]]; Mechanicum Traitors
|casualties1= Extremely High - Maximum ~25,000. Some companies reduced to 20%.<br> Unknown number of Mechanicum loyalists - presumably high, but a sizeable amount survived past the end of the war
|casualties2= Extremely High - Number unknown. Higher number & percentage than the Space Wolves, but with sufficient reserves to absorb the losses largely unphased
|status= Imperial retreat
|outcome= Space Wolves retreat to Yarant and prevented from returning to participate in the [[Siege of Terra|Siege]] in time.<br> Effectively ended the VIth as a "Legion".<br> Horus badly wounded/partly de-corrupted.<br> Leman Russ badly wounded and/or traumatized.
}}

The '''Battle of Trisolian''' was the ill-fated attempt by [[Leman Russ]] to kill [[Horus]] before the inevitable [[Siege of Terra]]. It also marks the earliest appearance of a young [[Belisarius Cawl]] who is a mere up-and-coming but still notoriously unconventional tech-adept by this stage.

==Background==
Throughout the Horus Heresy, the Space Wolves were at the forefront for many of the most vicious battles. Loud space viking appearances and antics notwithstanding, the VIth Legion and their primarch, [[Leman Russ]], always took their role as The Emperor's executioners very seriously, and so threw themselves into the thick of things quite often throughout the Heresy. Fights they evidently mostly won, but which inevitably took a toll on manpower and material. Additionally, for at least the first half of the war, contact could not even be established with the 3 most populous loyalist legions, the [[Blood Angels]], [[Dark Angels]], and [[Ultramarines]] as they were all trapped behind the Ruin Storm. So, with the other [[Salamanders|loyalist]] [[Raven Guard|legions]] [[Iron Hands|indisposed]], [[Imperial Fists|detained]], or [[White Scars|otherwise]] [[Custodes|occupied]], this resulted in the Space Wolves being engaged far more frequently than was ideal, without being rotated out of the front lines, and consequently, with no time to rest, receive repairs, or take on new recruits. By late in the war, the Wolves had lost around 25% of their forces at the [[Burning of Prospero|Prospero]], taken further maulings at the [[Battle of the Alaxxes Nebula]], coupled with further engagements at Vanaheim and Daverant, ultimately reducing their numbers down to around 40,000 marines (give or take), after having started the Heresy with approximately one 130,000. Following Alaxxes, the remnant returned to Terra to coordinate with the loyalist forces.

Leman Russ sponsored a stealth mission by the [[Knights-Errant]] on the Vengeful Spirit during the '''Battle of Molech''' in order to gauge any weaknesses in the traitor dispositions and report back on the state of Horus himself. However, the mission went sour when they were discovered, leading to the deaths of several of the Knights-Errant involved when the Warmaster decided to make examples of them; though they succeeded in planting tracking devices on the Vengeful Spirit, and those that survived the ill-fated engagement ultimately returned successfully to relay their findings.

At the behest of [[Malcador]], Constantine Valdor, and [[Rogal Dorn]] following the completion of the recon mission on the Vengeful Spirit, a war council was convened to take in new information and to determine the next course of action. [[Jaghatai Khan]] and Russ were already on-location, with [[Vulkan]] and [[Sanguinius]] now the newest arrivals (though the former arrived in secret, had remained in the basement ever since, and so wasn't invited). [[Rogal Dorn]] urged that all remaining forces maintain a defensive posture, but was appreciative that the [[Ultramarines]] and [[Dark Angels]] were assaulting the traitors' rear and providing relief to loyalist forces, allowing them to dictate the next few battles. Dorn declared that Terra was too confined a battlezone for the loyalist contingent of Titan Legions and so proposed a muster at '''Beta-Garmon''' and make a stand there in order to give time for [[Roboute Guilliman]] and [[Lion El'Jonson]], to crush the traitors in a pincer movement. The Battle of Beta-Garmon would itself become the site of one of the greatest battles in the entire Horus Heresy.

However, Leman Russ would not be swayed from his original plan and chose to depart from Terra for [[Fenris]] in order to scry a weakness in the superhuman upgrades that Horus gained at Molech. Upon arriving to Fenris, through the combined efforts of Russ and his best Rune Priests, Russ would enter the world spirit of Fenris to gain the knowledge he sought, and while this was hardly a risk-free endeavor, even for a primarch, it effectively meant that Russ was able to enter into a plane of the warp directly, without exposing himself to chaos. Russ was ultimately successful, and when he re-emerged back into the materium, he had determined that he would have to take the oft-maligned "Spear of Russ" with him; it's a good thing he did too, as it turns out that it's actually probably one of the most powerful pointy sticks in existence, being a gift personally made and given by [[Emperor|Daddy]].

==The Battle==
The battle itself took place over the loyalist [[Forge World]] of '''Trisolian A-4''', which had recently been captured by traitor forces following a surrender of Mechanicum forces. However, this was a surrender brought about entirely by the machinations and sabotage of a single ambitious individual (Cawl's boss), following the sudden and somewhat suspicious death of her superior. The loyalists had actually been putting up a stiff fight, but were unwillingly prevented from continuing due to the interference of that individual. For their part, the Mechanicum forces on the forge world were by and large also exceedingly loyal to the Omnissiah and despised what the Warmaster and Kelbor Hal had done to their faction, and so had fought with a fire that even Cawl found surprising. This left an enormous reserve of seething, very well-equipped, capable warriors whom Cawl would eventually be able to free and unleash against the traitors.
[[File:Battle_of_Trisolian.jpg|280px|thumb|right|Russ really wanted Horus's wolf pelt. And honestly, who can blame him?]]
The Space Wolf fleet used the unique gravitational properties of the three stars of the Trisolian star system to approach with stealth and speed, using most of their ships as a distraction while Russ own flagship engaged the ''Vengeful Spirit'' directly, allowing him to board with thousands of marines.

Russ had already figured that the battle would result in a loss for his forces, but thankfully Cawl's considerable loyalist Mechanicum elements on the Forge World managed to overthrow the regime and revert the planet back to loyalist control, allowing it to lend a hand in the conflict. Not just some paltry offerings either. Remember, this is a FORGE WORLD, so it's up there with among the hardest of targets in the setting to hit, and probably only really second to the Necrons. It's further suggested that the forces garrisoning this forge world were particularly formidable. Some even survived well after the war, later coming to Cawl's defense, and vouching for him when the latter was suspected of being a traitor. When the loyalist Mechanicum forces came back online, they caught the traitors completely flatfootted and unleashed all kinds of hell. This also meant that the traitors were forced to split their efforts and fight on two fronts, rather than focusing on the Space Wolves.

Once aboard the flagship, Russ engaged Horus directly in an extremely savage duel and incredibly, [[awesome|managed to best Horus in single combat, scoring a debilitating wound with his spear and literally (not figuratively) bringing Horus to his knees]]. In addition to being the twin to Constantine Valdor's Apollonian spear, Russ' spear had been made by The Emperor himself, and so contained some of his power, and as everyone here knows, that power is anathema to Chaos, so when the Chaos-juicing Horus was wounded by it, the effect was even more destructive than it might otherwise have been. In point of fact, this power was so pronounced that when Russ began to further run him through, Horus was shown to be visibly terrified, not by Russ, the wound, or even the very real prospect of death at the hands of his brother, but of the spear's ethereal power coursing through him, obliterating the effects of his Chaos-juicing, and wrecking his [[meme|massive gains]]. Unfortunately however, Russ was then suddenly and without warning [[Plot Armor|beset by a rampaging plot device in the form of a narrative cliché]] which momentarily [[Bullshit|overcame his better judgment and stated goal]]. Thus, instead of immediately killing Horus like he should have done [that was '''precisely''' the primary mission objective remember] the wound gave Horus a brief moment of clarity, and so despite the sacrifices made of himself, his sons, and some of his closest advisors (like the death of his chief [[Rune Priest]], Kva), not to mention having heavily negatively impacted Dorn's defensive plans for the [[Siege of Terra|upcoming siege]] by leaving Terra, and that the [[Noblebright|single most powerful motivator for Russ had been that he wanted to protect his father]], now, with the Arch Traitor himself at his mercy, [[fail|Russ instead tried to plead with his brother to rejoin the Emperor's fold]]. [[Troll|Horus declined and then suckerpunched Russ]], starting a new duel. Tired from the last duel, emotionally devastated, and now caught unawares, Russ was on the backfoot; Horus was about to kill him, but was prevented from delivering the killing blow by a mob of dozens of Space Wolves who literally dogpiled him, allowing [[Bjorn]] to drag Russ from the battlefield and back to the Loyalist fleet where they began to disengage and retreat.

==Aftermath==
Already heavily depleted from all the military actions since Prospero, following Trisolian, the Space Wolves were mauled further still, with some companies even being reduced to just a fifth of their strength, and ultimately dropping the effective fighting force of the legion as a whole down to somewhere in the range of just 10 to 15 thousand marines, after having started the battle with around 40,000. While on its face that number of survivors may still sound a tad higher than expected, consider that A, this is all that they had to get them through the rest of the war and the subsequent [[Great_Scouring|Scouring]], and B, they would eventually form an [[Wolf Brothers|ill-fated Second Founding chapter]], also made largely of veterans of the Heresy. Or to put it another way, that means that the Space Wolves [[Grimdark|suffered something like 66% casualties to their entire legion in a single engagement]]. Under most circumstances, those are literally (not figuratively) ''war-ending'' casualty figures, so don't for a second think that they got off lightly. They most certainly did not.

With their Primarch unconscious from his injuries, the remaining Space Wolf commanders have to make a decision of whether to stay together and likely die, or disperse and play no further part in the Horus Heresy. Choosing to remain together to present a viable threat that the traitors would have to divert resources to deal with, they retreat to '''Yarant III''' to make a stand where they are hunted by [[Abaddon|Failbaddon]] but are eventually saved by [[Corax]] following his own gene-seed debacle. At this point, the Space Wolves had effectively ceased to exist as a Legion.

For his part, Horus was [[butthurt|NOT happy]] in the battle's aftermath. Far from gloating, he was sour over the considerable losses his own forces had incurred, but more than that, he was rattled that [[Not as Planned|Russ had bested him]]. Horus hadn't considered Russ his equal even before he fell to Chaos, yet now, even being infused with additional power from the Ruinous Powers, Russ had laid him low and legitimately could have killed him, had <s>the plot not suddenly intervened</s> Russ' feelings not gotten the better of him. Horus spent time ruminating on this, fully acknowledging it to himself and taking it all in, because he clearly did not like the implications of this. It was amidst these meditations that Horus then suddenly began to experience moments of visions, or perhaps glimpses of visions of his conscience, or something to that effect, berating him for betraying his father, becoming a pawn of the Ruinous Powers, and ultimately just doing what he knew to be wrong. It was this last that most unsettled Horus as it had never happened before, and try as he might, he couldn't simply dismiss it; unbeknownst to him at the time, the wound Russ had dealt him had impacted his spirit as much as his body, and the power of the Emperor's light had slowly started to counteract the baleful malaise of the chaos gods. However, it was not enough- Horus seemingly rejected the Chaos Gods, only to choose to continue his campaign with their help anyway. Flustered and annoyed, he then ordered a [[Abaddon|certain armless failure]] to lead a contingent of his forces to hunt down the remnants of the VIth and not return without Russ' head. [[Fail|Disappointmaddon then returned without Russ' head]]. Oh, and without most of the Astartes Horus had given him as well. Abaddon basically starting as he meant to go on.

Horus later fell into a coma at the aforementioned battle at Beta-Garmon as his wound reopened, and [[Lorgar]] attempted a coup. The Urizen believed that Horus' failure to submit to the gods' will while still accepting their gifts would lead them to withdraw their power [[Siege of Terra|when he needed it most]] and cause the war to be lost. A shard of Horus' soul that had been purified by the Spear of Russ would be fought over by the [[Chaos Gods]], requiring the sacrifice of Maloghurst in order to free him (by destroying said purified soul fragment) and Lorgar was expelled from the Warmaster's fleet after his coup failed, with Horus warning that he would kill Lorgar if he ever saw him again; most of the Word Bearers save a detachment led by Zardu Layak consequently departed with their Primarch in anticipation of Horus' defeat. From this point forwards, whatever was left of the old Horus simply ceased to exist. With the last possibility for his redemption denied, all that was left for the Warmaster was a rapid downward spiral into insanity as the power of the Dark Gods destroyed him from the inside out.

{{40k-Timeline}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]

Battle of Trisolian

2022-08-12T00:00:37Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8: /* Background */

{{Infobox 40k Campaign
|title=The Battle of Trisolian
|image=
|attacker= [[Space Wolves]]
|defender= [[Sons of Horus]]
|commander1= [[Leman Russ]]
[[Belisarius Cawl]]
|commander2= [[Horus]]
|date= ~011.M31
|scale=Void battle
|theatre= Horus Heresy
|strength1= ~40,000 Marines, near entirety of remaining Space Wolves legion.<br> Majority of fighting forces on a large loyalist Forge World.
|strength2= ~50 capital ships; [[Sons of Horus]] Legion; considerable elements of [[Word Bearers]], [[World Eaters]], [[Alpha Legion]], [[Night Lords]] & [[Iron Warriors]]; Mechanicum Traitors
|casualties1= Extremely High - Maximum ~25,000. Some companies reduced to 20%.<br> Unknown number of Mechanicum loyalists - presumably high, but a sizeable amount survived past the end of the war
|casualties2= Extremely High - Number unknown. Higher number & percentage than the Space Wolves, but with sufficient reserves to absorb the losses largely unphased
|status= Imperial retreat
|outcome= Space Wolves retreat to Yarant and prevented from returning to participate in the [[Siege of Terra|Siege]] in time.<br> Effectively ended the VIth as a "Legion".<br> Horus badly wounded/partly de-corrupted.<br> Leman Russ badly wounded and/or traumatized.
}}

The '''Battle of Trisolian''' was the ill-fated attempt by [[Leman Russ]] to kill [[Horus]] before the inevitable [[Siege of Terra]]. It also marks the earliest appearance of a young [[Belisarius Cawl]] who is a mere up-and-coming but still notoriously unconventional tech-adept by this stage.

==Background==
Throughout the Horus Heresy, the Space Wolves were at the forefront for many of the most vicious battles. Loud space viking appearances and antics notwithstanding, the VIth Legion and their primarch, [[Leman Russ]], always took their role as The Emperor's executioners very seriously, and so threw themselves into the thick of things quite often throughout the Heresy. Fights they evidently mostly won, but which inevitably took a toll on manpower and material. Additionally, for at least the first half of the war, contact could not even be established with the 3 most populous loyalist legions, the [[Blood Angels]], [[Dark Angels]], and [[Ultramarines]] as they were all trapped behind the Ruin Storm. So, with the other [[Salamanders|loyalist]] [[Raven Guard|legions]] [[Iron Hands|indisposed]], [[Imperial Fists|detained]], or [[White Scars|otherwise]] [[Custodes|occupied]], this resulted in the Space Wolves being engaged far more frequently than was ideal, without being rotated out of the front lines, and consequently, with no time to rest, receive repairs, or take on new recruits. By late in the war, the Wolves had lost around 25% of their forces at the [[Burning of Prospero|Prospero]], taken further maulings at the [[Battle of the Alaxxes Nebula]], coupled with further engagements at Vanaheim and Daverant, ultimately reducing their numbers down to around 40,000 marines (give or take), after having started the Heresy with approximately one 130,000. Following Alaxxes, the remnant returned to Terra to coordinate with the loyalist forces.

Leman Russ sponsored a stealth mission by the [[Knights-Errant]] on the Vengeful Spirit during the '''Battle of Molech''' in order to gauge any weaknesses in the traitor dispositions and report back on the state of Horus himself. However, the mission went sour when they were discovered, leading to the deaths of several of the Knights-Errant involved when the Warmaster decided to make examples of them; though they succeeded in planting tracking devices on the Vengeful Spirit, and those that survived the ill-fated engagement ultimately returned successfully to relay their findings.

At the behest of [[Malcador]], Constantine Valdor, and [[Rogal Dorn]] following the completion of the recon mission on the Vengeful Spirit, a war council was convened to take in new information and to determine the next course of action. [[Jaghatai Khan]] and Russ were already on-location, with [[Vulkan]] and [[Sanguinius]] now the newest arrivals (though the former arrived in secret, had remained in the basement ever since, and so wasn't invited). [[Rogal Dorn]] urged that all remaining forces maintain a defensive posture, but was appreciative that the [[Ultramarines]] and [[Dark Angels]] were assaulting the traitors' rear and providing relief to loyalist forces, allowing them to dictate the next few battles. Dorn declared that Terra was too confined a battlezone for the loyalist contingent of Titan Legions and so proposed a muster at '''Beta-Garmon''' and make a stand there in order to give time for [[Roboute Guilliman]] and [[Lion El'Jonson]], to crush the traitors in a pincer movement. The Battle of Beta-Garmon would itself become the site of one of the greatest battles in the entire Horus Heresy.

However, Leman Russ would not be swayed from his original plan and chose to depart from Terra for [[Fenris]] in order to scry a weakness in the superhuman upgrades that Horus gained at Molech. Upon arriving to Fenris, through the combined efforts of Russ and his best Rune Priests, Russ would enter the world spirit of Fenris to gain the knowledge he sought, and while this was hardly a risk-free endeavor, even for a primarch, it effectively meant that Russ was able to enter into a plane of the warp directly, without exposing himself to chaos. Russ was ultimately successful, and when he re-emerged back into the materium, he had determined that he would have to take the oft-maligned "Spear of Russ" with him; it's a good thing he did too, as it turns out that it's actually probably one of the most powerful pointy sticks in existence, being a gift personally made and given by [[Emperor|Daddy]].

==The Battle==
The battle itself took place over the loyalist [[Forge World]] of '''Trisolian A-4''', which had recently been captured by traitor forces following a surrender of Mechanicum forces. However, this was a surrender brought about entirely by the machinations and sabotage of a single ambitious individual (Cawl's boss), following the sudden and somewhat suspicious death of her superior. The loyalists had actually been putting up a stiff fight, but were unwillingly prevented from continuing due to the interference of that individual. For their part, the Mechanicum forces on the forge world were by and large also exceedingly loyal to the Omnissiah and despised what the Warmaster and Kelbor Hal had done to their faction, and so had fought with a fire that even Cawl found surprising. This left an enormous reserve of seething, very well-equipped, capable warriors whom Cawl would eventually be able to free and unleash against the traitors.
[[File:Battle_of_Trisolian.jpg|280px|thumb|right|Russ really wanted Horus's wolf pelt. And honestly, who can blame him?]]
The Space Wolf fleet used the unique gravitational properties of the three stars of the Trisolian star system to approach with stealth and speed, using most of their ships as a distraction while Russ own flagship engaged the ''Vengeful Spirit'' directly, allowing him to board with thousands of marines.

Russ had already figured that the battle would result in a loss for his forces, but thankfully Cawl's considerable loyalist Mechanicum elements on the Forge World managed to overthrow the regime and revert the planet back to loyalist control, allowing it to lend a hand in the conflict. Not just some paltry offerings either. Remember, this is a FORGE WORLD, so it's up there with among the hardest of targets in the setting to hit, and probably only really second to the Necrons. It's further suggested that the forces garrisoning this forge world were particularly formidable. Some even survived well after the war, later coming to Cawl's defense, and vouching for him when the latter was suspected of being a traitor. When the loyalist Mechanicum forces came back online, they caught the traitors completely flatfootted and unleashed all kinds of hell. This also meant that the traitors were forced to split their efforts and fight on two fronts, rather than focusing on the Space Wolves.

Once aboard the flagship, Russ engaged Horus directly in an extremely savage duel and incredibly, [[awesome|managed to best Horus in single combat, scoring a debilitating wound with his spear and literally (not figuratively) bringing Horus to his knees]]. In addition to being the twin to Constantine Valdor's Apollonian spear, Russ' spear had been made by The Emperor himself, and so contained some of his power, and as everyone here knows, that power is anathema to Chaos, so when the Chaos-juicing Horus was wounded by it, the effect was even more destructive than it might otherwise have been. In point of fact, this power was so pronounced that when Russ began to further run him through, Horus was shown to be visibly terrified, not by Russ, the wound, or even the very real prospect of death at the hands of his brother, but of the spear's ethereal power coursing through him, obliterating the effects of his chaos-juicing, and wrecking his [[meme|massive gains]]. Unfortunately however, Russ was then suddenly and without warning [[Plot Armor|beset by a rampaging plot device in the form of a narrative cliché]] which momentarily [[Bullshit|overcame his better judgment and stated goal]]. Thus, instead of immediately killing Horus like he should have done [that was '''precisely''' the primary mission objective remember] the wound gave Horus a brief moment of clarity, and so despite the sacrifices made of himself, his sons, and some of his closest advisors (like the death of his chief [[Rune Priest]], Kva), not to mention having heavily negatively impacted Dorn's defensive plans for the [[Siege of Terra|upcoming siege]] by leaving Terra, and that the [[Noblebright|single most powerful motivator for Russ had been that he wanted to protect his father]], now, with the Arch Traitor himself at his mercy, [[fail|Russ instead tried to plead with his brother to rejoin the Emperor's fold]]. [[Troll|Horus declined and then suckerpunched Russ]], starting a new duel. Tired from the last duel, emotionally devastated, and now caught unawares, Russ was on the backfoot; Horus was about to kill him, but was prevented from delivering the killing blow by a mob of dozens of Space Wolves who literally dogpiled him, allowing [[Bjorn]] to drag Russ from the battlefield and back to the Loyalist fleet where they began to disengage and retreat.

==Aftermath==
Already heavily depleted from all the military actions since Prospero, following Trisolian, the Space Wolves were mauled further still, with some companies even being reduced to just a fifth of their strength, and ultimately dropping the effective fighting force of the legion as a whole down to somewhere in the range of just 10 to 15 thousand marines, after having started the battle with around 40,000. While on its face that number of survivors may still sound a tad higher than expected, consider that A, this is all that they had to get them through the rest of the war and the subsequent [[Great_Scouring|Scouring]], and B, they would eventually form an [[Wolf Brothers|ill-fated Second Founding chapter]], also made largely of veterans of the Heresy. Or to put it another way, that means that the Space Wolves [[Grimdark|suffered something like 66% casualties to their entire legion in a single engagement]]. Under most circumstances, those are literally (not figuratively) ''war-ending'' casualty figures, so don't for a second think that they got off lightly. They most certainly did not.

With their Primarch unconscious from his injuries, the remaining Space Wolf commanders have to make a decision of whether to stay together and likely die, or disperse and play no further part in the Horus Heresy. Choosing to remain together to present a viable threat that the traitors would have to divert resources to deal with, they retreat to '''Yarant III''' to make a stand where they are hunted by [[Abaddon|Failbaddon]] but are eventually saved by [[Corax]] following his own gene-seed debacle. At this point, the Space Wolves had effectively ceased to exist as a Legion.

For his part, Horus was [[butthurt|NOT happy]] in the battle's aftermath. Far from gloating, he was sour over the considerable losses his own forces had incurred, but more than that, he was rattled that [[Not as Planned|Russ had bested him]]. Horus hadn't considered Russ his equal even before he fell to Chaos, yet now, even being infused with additional power from the Ruinous Powers, Russ had laid him low and legitimately could have killed him, had <s>the plot not suddenly intervened</s> Russ' feelings not gotten the better of him. Horus spent time ruminating on this, fully acknowledging it to himself and taking it all in, because he clearly did not like the implications of this. It was amidst these meditations that Horus then suddenly began to experience moments of visions, or perhaps glimpses of visions of his conscience, or something to that effect, berating him for betraying his father, becoming a pawn of the Ruinous Powers, and ultimately just doing what he knew to be wrong. It was this last that most unsettled Horus as it had never happened before, and try as he might, he couldn't simply dismiss it; unbeknownst to him at the time, the wound Russ had dealt him had impacted his spirit as much as his body, and the power of the Emperor's light had slowly started to counteract the baleful malaise of the chaos gods. However, it was not enough- Horus seemingly rejected the Chaos Gods, only to choose to continue his campaign with their help anyway. Flustered and annoyed, he then ordered a [[Abaddon|certain armless failure]] to lead a contingent of his forces to hunt down the remnants of the VIth and not return without Russ' head. [[Fail|Disappointmaddon then returned without Russ' head]]. Oh, and without most of the Astartes Horus had given him as well. Abaddon basically starting as he meant to go on.

Horus later fell into a coma at the aforementioned battle at Beta-Garmon as his wound reopened, and [[Lorgar]] attempted a coup. The Urizen believed that Horus' failure to submit to the gods' will while still accepting their gifts would lead them to withdraw their power [[Siege of Terra|when he needed it most]] and cause the war to be lost. A shard of Horus' soul that had been purified by the Spear of Russ would be fought over by the [[Chaos Gods]], requiring the sacrifice of Maloghurst in order to free him (by destroying said purified soul fragment) and Lorgar was expelled from the Warmaster's fleet after his coup failed, with Horus warning that he would kill Lorgar if he ever saw him again; most of the Word Bearers save a detachment led by Zardu Layak consequently departed with their Primarch in anticipation of Horus' defeat. From this point forwards, whatever was left of the old Horus simply ceased to exist. With the last possibility for his redemption denied, all that was left for the Warmaster was a rapid downward spiral into insanity as the power of the Dark Gods destroyed him from the inside out.

{{40k-Timeline}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000 Battles]]

Drachenfels

2022-08-10T10:29:27Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8:

[[Image:Drachenfels.JPG|right|thumb|400px|The single most evil being in any Warhammer universe.]]

A character and subject of books written in the ye olde days of WHFB, by [[Jack Yeovil]], more widely known as the film critic/horror buff Kim Newman. A daemonologist and necromancer said to nearly rival all but [[Nagash]] in terms of power, he was motivated by his cruel sadistic indulgences rather than plans of enslaving the world in undeath, and considered the chaos gods he sometimes courted as below him, cheating them many times. Imagine if you mixed the classic mustache and goatee depiction of Satan in a business suit with Dracula and threw him in the [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]] universe. Or picture an asexual Vandal Savage in the Warhammer universe. Bam, that's '''Drachenfels'''.

Thanks to End Times, Vermintide and Total War Warhammer, Drachy has gone through a renaissance in popularity, likely due to the cult popularity of the Genevieve books and nostalgia for old WHFRP.

==The Legend==

A long time ago (15,000 years to be exact) before the arrival of the [[Old Ones]] to the world, there lived a tribe of neanderthal-esque pseudohumans by a river during the ice age of the world. Drachenfels was among their number, and after becoming sick in his old age he was left out in the wilderness to die. He feigned death by exposure, and when one of his tribe came close he somehow (unknown even to himself) managed to kill the man and absorb his life energy (keep in mind this is before [[Chaos]] entered the world or Necromancy was invented).

[[Image:Castle Drachenfels.jpeg|right|thumb|200px|Casa De Drachenfels.]]
He used his newfound power to continue living. His body still rotted though, and he took to forming a new body out of the remains of his victims to continue looking human. The faces he likes the most are preserved with magic, and he wears them to go amongst the mortal races of the world in disguise.

At some point, he used magic to build a fortress named after himself in the [[Old World]]. From here, he launched attack after attack at the races of the mortal world using all the armies of Destruction, as each submitted to him as a superior being. After the collapse of the [[Warp Gates]], he traveled to the Warp and looked upon the [[Chaos Gods]]. As powerful as they were, he declared them to be his subordinates and demanded tributes of [[Daemon]] forces periodically afterward. They obliged each time, and Drach in a show of (mocking) gratitude, created some shrines to them and [[Khaine]] in his new castle though he made sure his throne "looked down" at their depictions since he still considered himself superior [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|because even a dead, rotting carcass of an archaic human was far superior to some retarded barely sentient tulpas.]]

Drachenfels has never pursued specific goals. Each time he attacks the outside world, he does so merely out of boredom or to satiate sadistic indulgences. He has no desire to prove he is the most powerful being in the world because he believes he has already proven it and enjoys the process of tormenting and breaking the free-willed over making them his unthinking slaves. He usually takes plenty of captives which he tortures or otherwise "plays with" in abominable ways before consuming their souls and using their flesh to keep himself spry. Since he tends to completely destroy anything he attacks, the only recorded incidents involving him in history are times that he was beaten, his servants were captured, or for some reason he chose to spare the conquered.

There has been some speculation (based on his speaking their language according to the 1st edition RPG and the fact he could have been in Tylos given his immortality) that Drach was the wizard who created the [[Skaven]] and doomed the city of Kavsar, but this is just an unconfirmed theory at this time. The first time he undeniably ventured forth to ravage the Old World was just after [[Sigmar]] had united the tribes that would be the [[Empire]]. Before Sigmar could celebrate the founding of his new nation, the land fell under attack from an army of [[Orcs & Goblins|greenskins]] led by Drachenfels. Drachenfels was rallying in support of his ally [[Nagash]] but was defeated and the greenskins driven back to his castle. Although Sigmar believed he had dealt true death to the vampire/necromancer/devil/whatever, Drachenfels regenerated his body from nothing after 1000 years.

The next time he appeared, he marched his forces of Daemons and [[Vampire Counts|Undead]] through [[Wood Elves (Warhammer)|Athel Loren]] and attacked a [[Bretonnia]]n province called Parravon. Once there, he defeated the guard of the city to the last, then demanded the wealth of the province in tribute. After receiving it he executed the nobility of the region, then returned to his castle with his army. Among those killed was the father of [[Genevieve Sandrine du Pointe du Lac Dieudonné]] (quite a name, eh?) who would become a vampire shortly later and travel the world.

Some time later during the Age of the Three Emperors, Drachenfels went unarmed to the Empire and announced he'd reformed and would be an ally from that point onward. He put on an elaborate PR campaign of using the wealth from Parravon to pay reparations to the victims that had escaped his castle and pled for forgiveness at the graves of those whose bodies had been recovered. After the dimwitted public accepted that he'd turned good, Drachenfels invited the entire court of the Elected Emperor Carolus II and his wife Irina, along with some Bretonnian nobility, to a feast at his castle. There, while dressed in rags and wearing a simple tin face mask, he served them an elaborate feast of wine and food laced with paralyzing poison. Once the nobles were incapacitated he had the nobles' children tortured to death within earshot of them and mocked them by slowly and nonchalantly eating food in front of them before leaving the paralyzed nobles to starve to death while a constant feast was brought out and served in front of them. [[Edgy|What the actual ''fuck'']].

Centuries later Oswald von Konigswald, the son of the Elector Count of Ostland and relative to one of the feast’s victims, decided to seek revenge. He hired the now-adult (and kung fu master) Genevieve (who had become a bar wench in Altdorf) along with a few other no-name adventurers (a dwarven warrior with a grudge, a brigand leader lured with the hope of a pardon, and an insane assassin woman) to travel with him to Castle Drachenfels and put the monster down for good. Oswald managed to deal the killing blow to Drachenfels and his death destroyed the Undead and Daemons in his service. The greenskins fled the fortress, and anything that remained was killed. The fortress itself was left intact but abandoned.

Years later, Oswald bought Castle Drachenfels and hired a great playwright to direct a production within it of Oswald's heroic defeat of Drachenfels. The most important individuals in the Empire attended, as well as the newly crowned [[Karl Franz]] and his son Luitpold II. The production was hindered by many spooky incidents, not the least of which was the eccentric behavior of the actors and the death of all of Oswald’s old battle buddies save Genevieve. As you probably already guessed, all this creepiness heralded Drachenfels returning to life during the play and slaughtering a fair number of the audience and cast.

* Spoiler: See what people didn't know was that Oswald was [[That Guy]], secretly a bitter, power-hungry pussy. After shitting himself when it was just him and Drachenfels (the others having been wounded and/or rendered unconscious), Drachenfels took one look at the whimpering weenie and decided to spare him both for the lulz and as part of a scheme. Oswald would "kill" Drachenfels (but really only destroy his physical form) while Drachenfels would sacrifice a lot of his servants to sell the act and then lay low until it was time for his revival. At that point, Oswald would stage a play about his defeat of Drach, gather all the big shots in the Empire together to see the performance, and then Drach would resurrect via a ritual involving the body parts of his former enemies and the possession of a willing mortal servant in the form of the actor playing him. [[Just As Planned| Then Oswald and a revived Drach intended to kill Karl Franz and take over the Empire together with Drach being the power behind the throne]].

Unfortunately for Drach and his patsy, Genevieve and the director of the play, her mortal lover Detlef Sierck, proved to be far harder to kill than expected [[Not As Planned|which threw a wrench in the works.]] In the end Genevieve went full vampire blood rage on Drach’s ass and wounded him enough that Detlef (now blessed and buffed up by Sigmar) was able to deal a killing blow to Drachenfels (again) before moving on to kill Oswald. Although this incident is described as having killed Drachenfels once and for all, everyone who has killed him has thought the exact same thing. It also didn’t stop him from seeking revenge on his killers even indirectly as later on one of his creations (a sentient magical body-snatching mask called the Animus) would possess some folks and seek the Vampire and her lover out in an attempt to kill them. Though it failed in its ultimate task it did manage to break up Detlef and Genevieve’s relationship for a time through its actions so it wasn’t a total loss. Regardless, after all this craziness Castle Drachenfels was finally razed to the ground on Franz's command, only for it to be found mysteriously intact again during The End Times (in fact it was a map in Vermintide).

Other than the above, the castle itself hasn't been seen by a living being in ages, as no sane creature would travel there.

==Canon?==
Because the books Drachenfels appeared in were released at the turn of the 90s and the entire setting has been retconned a million times since, Drachenfels conversations within the Warhammer Fantasy community (and on /tg/ especially) tend to garner a fair amount of [[Skub|civilized discussion]]. If these books weren't half as popular as they are, Black Library wouldn't periodically reprint them despite them being so very out of date. It's easier to summarize arguments by category.

'''Drachenfels relies on retconned information.'''
* '''Pro'''
Old Ones in current canon actually created humanity in its current state, so not only is it impossible for him to have preceded them, but there never were neanderthals. Any humans reaching that state have devolved either through Chaos or Necromantic exposure.
* '''Con'''
Many (new) Black Library books continue to reference things from the story, and his castle is still shown on maps in modern army books as well as heraldry books. In addition, the Drachenfels/Genevieve books were kept in print long after the information in them became noncanon, due to their popularity and being regarded as well written. In addition, the Old Ones did not create mankind; they are stated in the 8e Lizardmen book to have uplifted and altered preexisting races/animals (eg; how they made the Saurus). The Old Ones could have done the latter, and then moved their experimented humans batch to pre-Nehekara, as Drachenfels is essentially Warhammer Vandal Savage.

'''Drachenfels was replaced by [[Nagash]]'''
* '''Pro'''
Nagash indeed has taken the role of Drachenfels as a mortal undead tied into the backstory of the Empire who is a threat to every single faction in the game. It helps that Nagash was always credited with the invention of the widespread version of necromancy while Drachenfels wasn't.
* '''Con'''
That's like saying [[Malekith]] and [[Mannfred von Carstein|Mannfred]] are noncanon because Nagash fulfills the role of big non-Chaos baddie. Also Drachenfels was never credited with inventing Necromancy as a school of magic, just prolonging his own lifespan. Drachenfels can be considered the Vandal Savage to Nagash's General Zod.

'''"He declared the Chaos Gods to be his subordinates, and demanded tribute of Daemon forces periodically afterwards. They hastily obliged each time."? That's fucking stupid.'''

* '''Pro'''
Yeah, that's a pretty glaring example of being a Villain Sue. They should at least explain what he is/how he works to the fanbase.

* '''Con'''
That doesn't make it noncanon. In addition, making the Chaos Gods win simply by virtue of the fact they're Chaos Gods is part of the argument that Games Workshop tends to Mary Sue the entire Chaos faction. There's no reason there can't be an evil force stronger than them - hell, [[Malal]] was an official thing back then too. Also, the idea that Drachenfels is better than the Chaos Gods could only be true in the eyes of Drachenfels himself given his arrogance. Considering it was just after the Warp Gates collapsed and we have no knowledge as to how powerful the chaos gods were at that time, they may have ruled the warp already but that doesn't automatically mean that they were as powerful as we know them to be by the End Times. Also, the Chaos Gods are basically just daemons who are considered gods by virtue of being the most powerful of their kind, and we know from other examples that daemons are vulnerable to having their true names spoken. Given his age, it's not unreasonable that Drachenfels could have learned the gods' true names right after they first formed and then used the knowledge to compel them.

==On the Tabletop==

As Drachenfels only ever existed in one book series and one [[Warhammer Fantasy]] RPG book, he's unlikely to ever get a miniature. Due to his transformative nature however you could easily make something look like him using another mini. As for how to field him? [[Daemon]]s army. [[Vampire Counts]] army. [[Orcs & Goblins]] army. Hell, ally all three together in a 3 on 3 match. All that matters is that you put Drachenfels somewhere on the table, and after you lose you laugh about seeing the other player soon, then tell him a week later Drachenfels came back and ate the souls of his children.

==The End Times==
In the game [[The End Times: Vermintide]], Castle Drachenfels was added as an expansion. Apparently it was either not destroyed or magically reformed, and was invaded by [[Skaven]] who were both channeling its magic into portals to summon [[Daemon|Daemons]] and searching the castle for cursed magic relics. The heroes put down the [[Skaven]], although nothing of note was found within. Disturbingly, the Poisoned Feast is still set up...

[[Vermintide 2|In the second game]], the castle was taken once again. This time it was taken by a former Nurgle sorcerer lord of the Rotblood tribe, Nurgoth the Eternal, who now lead the Rotblood tribe and the remaining Skaven after the Ubersliek 5 disabled the Rotblood's leadership and fucked over Clan Fester. The stinky boy had made the Castle his base of operation, where he conducted a ritual that would allow him to acquire the power of a demon from the castle and also made him go insane courtesy of the glimpses he got at the realm of Chaos (though on the plus side looking into the warp gave him foresight of some sort). Kidnapping villagers for his ritual did not go unanswered however, for the Ubersliek 5 noticed this and give Nurgoth a beating so bad that he explodes. With Nurgoth's death, Castle Drachehfels is once again empty, but now with trails of disgusting demon buboes left over from Nurgoth's work, especially the rotten tunnel of pus and shit the shit lord himself left behind after his explosive death.

Despite the fact that Drach by this point is a thrall of Nagash as the Nameless, a portion of his consciousness still haunts the castle, whispering doubt in the minds of the heroes...

Both games of [[Vermintide]] have the castle's wall decorated mostly in [[John Blanche]] artwork, a 4th wall break if you want to take it that way (or not). For you see, the second game features a painter living in the same keep with the Ubersliek 5 named Catrinne of Aldenstein, who had drawn paintings that were references to various real life Warhammer artworks, including [[John Blanche|Blanche's]]. So either Blanche exists in the Warhammer world or various gifted artists in the setting have [[Psyker|foresight]] that allows them to witness various images of scenery out of the blue.

With the impending release of [[The End Times]], Drachenfels gets added back into the setting as a "[[Mortarch]]" of [[Nagash]], though so far he's only referred to as "The Nameless". Indeed, his whole reason for siding with Nagash is to try and recover his identity because he's forgotten who he is thanks to the whole divine hammer to the skull and earlier botched resurrection. He's described as a bodiless spirit that specializes in possessing and controlling large groups of people at a time and also a huge dick who likes to screw people over for his petty whims - one day he decides he wants banners of flayed skin, so his victims start skinning each other, the next day he makes them rip out their bones to make totems because he's bored with the skin banners.

Nagash, who knew what the Nameless was, desired to keep it a thrall clueless as to its identity as Drachenfel's power to dominate the minds of mortals so quickly and en masse is a power he envies; what's more, Drach was the only other mortal capable of rivaling him.

In fact, the petty dickery of the Nameless actually screws him and [[Vlad von Carstein]] over because it disrupts their takeover so much that it makes [[Balthasar Gelt]] come to see why <s>things are acting odd in the area they've conquered</s> the guards in the area weren't reporting in. Though Gelt joins them later due to this, so everything ended up working out fine.

At some point afterwards before the end of the world, Drachy decides that the big bonedaddy doesn't have his interests in mind and eventually just breaks off to do his own thing. He manages to control an entire village and personally possess [[Luthor Huss]], the Sigmarite Warrior-Priest extraordinaire. By this point, Drach decides to throw his lot in with the winning side (that is [[Chaos]]) and is in league with the corpse of [[Isabella von Carstein]]. However, he runs into Vlad and Vlad manages to wake up Huss and then the Witch Hunter's power of PURE SIGMARITE FAITH burns the bodiless Mortarch to oblivion. And thus was the end of Drachenfels' return. For the time at least ...

So this pretty much confirms Drachenfels as canon.

By extension, Genevieve is now full canon too. Which by extension makes this the best article ever written as we now have confirmation of [[Sigmar]] possessing someone to skull fuck a bad guy with a Warhammer.

==[[Total War: WARHAMMER]]==
Drachenfels is referenced in several random events in the game. He's active and up to his old shenanigans, but since the world is dealing with every faction getting active at once he's more of a footnote and doesn't even merit a rogue faction. His castle was added as a cosmetic feature on the map near [[Athel Loren]] (on the wrong side of the mountains, as some fans have noted) but isn't involved in any gameplay. He's unlikely to be added as an official character to the game either, since multi-race armies were not a thing available to players in Game 1, and he'd be a powerful bullshit thorn in the side of the [[Night Goblins]], [[Belegar Ironhammer]], and [[Wood Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|WElfs]]. Arkhan is able to use all Tomb Kings and some Vampire Counts units though, so a Drachenfels expansion is theoretically possible. The Total Warhammer II Patch consists of the updated Heinrich Kemmler starting position, and the addition of the Bloodlines mechanic; the Liche Master arrives at Castle Drachenfels. TWWH3 allows you to field units from other factions with revamps to the Alliance mechanic, and rogue armies spawn all the time with mixed armies that are nods to old fluff.

Drachenfels himself does get a somewhat more direct reference in [[Cylostra Direfin]]'s epilogue which mentions her receiving an envoy of The Nameless, who seeks an alliance with her against Brettonia. The fact that this reference is both more direct and more prominent than the others has prompted speculation that The Nameless may be making an appearance in the third game.

[[Category: Warhammer Fantasy]] [[Category: Vampire Counts]] [[Category:The Empire]]

Angron

2022-08-02T13:47:18Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8: /* Horus Heresy */

{{heresy}}
{{Cleanup}}
[[File:AngronArtPortrait.jpg|400px|right|thumb|Rare portrait of Angron. Strangely looking like he is holding in a giant fart.]]
{{Topquote|I-I am going to be a storm-a flame-<br>I need to fight whole armies alone;<br>I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms;<br>I feel too strong to war with mortals-<br>[[Rip and tear|BRING ME GIANTS]]!|Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac}}
{{Topquote|I was born in blood, raised in darkness and I shall die free!|Angron, to the Nucerian High Riders and their armies}}
{{Topquote|‘I think... when one has been angry for a very long time one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable, like... like old leather. And finally... it becomes so familiar that one can't ever remember feeling any other way.’|Captain Jean-Luc Picard, on a man who hated because he would not let himself grieve}}

His name is Angron (A.K.A. '''The Red Angel''', '''The Slave of Nuceria''', '''Lord of the Red Sands''', '''The Eater of Worlds''', '''The Gladiator King''', '''The Prince of Blood''', '''Broken One''' if you're Argel Tal, '''Angry Ron''', '''40Kratos''', '''Shithead''' if you're sergeant Gharte, '''the walking abortion''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLYiL_jYPPw if you are Majorkill] '''That Goddamn Retard''' if you're [[Leman Russ]]). Cmon, do we really have to spell it out? While his name <s>may be</s> is clearly a play on the word "Anger", it is possible that his name is based on the Greek word ''Agrion'' which means "Wild" or even ''Agron'', the Gallic word for "slaughter" (Which pretty much suits him considering he's the angriest, wildest, mother-fucking mother fucker in a long and extensive history of bipedal mother fuckers). Also, if you spell his name backwards it's Norgna, which has to count for something. Apparently the inspiration for his name was a corruption of the nickname a bouncer in Nottingham has: Angry Ron.
What we're trying to say is, Angron just might be the angriest and the most talented in manly face-to-face fighting son of a bitch in the galaxy. In fact, one time he was so angry about being angry all the time, that the part of him that made him angry exploded in his head, rendering him permanently angry (and also sexually impotent, but don't let him know that). And then there was that time he was kidnapped by the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emprah]], which didn't help his temper much, and gave him an excuse to fucking RAGE at his dad by joining up with [[Khorne]], Warhammer's God of Battle, War and [[Rage|RAAAAAAAAAAGE]]! Angron just so happens to be [[Primarch]] of the [[World eaters|World Eaters]] and [[Kharn|that swell guy]].

His revered exploits include slaughtering the entire population of a planet within a night; killing an entire contingent of Eldar warriors led by a Farseer when he was only a child; and leading a gladiator rebellion against their slavers and slaughtering 25 other armies sent against them, non-stop, until a huge one made up of seven armies came and fucked their shit up against a dirty rock <del>proving that a seven nation army could hold him back</del>. The Emperor saved him from dying there (but left all his buddies to die), which was a tremendous blow to his martial pride and among other things, eventually led him to [[Rage|RAAAAAAAAAAGE]] furiously against the Emperor, believing him a coward devoid of honor. Angron went on to become one of the first Primarchs to side with Horus during the heresy, and was turned into a monstrous, frothing demon-prince by his brother Lorgar. Eventually, Angron joined up with KHORNE, the aforementioned God of War, Murder, Killing, Bloodshed, Weeping Buttholes, Battle and [[Rage|RAAAAAAAAAAGE]].

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNkRBowsAmI Here is the theme song of this glorious bastard.]

==History==
===Early Life===
[[File:Past-Angron-art.jpg|300px|right|thumb|You'd be pissed off too if your dad didn't let you avenge your dog.]]
Angron has good reason to be ever-so-slightly miffed: his early life was one big bowl of shit after another. First he crash-landed on his new home [[Nuceria|world]] (because Khorne didn't give him a soft landing) and had a good chunk of his head torn off in the crash, after which he got jumped by the aforementioned Eldar, then (tired from the killing and the massive brain trauma --keep in mind he was like 6 hours old) got captured and sold into slavery by people with near-Imperial level technology before making him fight as a gladiator for their entertainment. He also appears to have been either the least intelligent of his brothers, or else that head injury he took while crashing did a number on his intellect. For Angron attempted to escape from his captors numerous times even before his implantation with the Nails but somehow was recaptured each time. Remember, these guys were just baseline humans with no outstanding tech aside from a few odds and ends like the Nails. Also keep in mind that more than a few of these attempts occurred when he was fully mature, and thus should have been leagues beyond what even a Custodes would be capable of in terms of physical and mental prowess. The fact that he somehow managed to ''fail'' in repeatedly attempting to escape from a bunch of normal humans is actually far more unbelievable than if he had succeeded.

A later retcon revealed he was a decent guy who loved his fellow gladiators, but after an incident where he refused to kill his adoptive father in the arenas, his masters proceeded to replace part of his brain with ARCHAEOTECH SHIT (originally this happened before he fully grew up) that drove him so mad that he murdered his dad regardless, cueing a massive bout of despair. The stuff they stuck in his head would later be called ''"The Butcher's Nails"'', and, though never fully understood (even after the Emprah's best techs took a look), they constantly applied pain to his brain and made it so the only time he could feel anything resembling happiness was while murdering shit. It should also be noted that they go from excruciating to normal, and ''do not'' [[Slaanesh|deal with the pleasure centers of the brain.]] In other words, this pertains to actual negative reinforcement in classical conditioning.

After years of being a slave, fighting through the gladiator pits and becoming the best of them, Angron eventually set up and led a rebellion, fighting to free his brother and sister gladiators. This would make him 40k's answer to Spartacus, the same way Curze is 40k Batman. He and the gladiators terrorized the planet's population for a while, burning down cities and generally making a mess of things. However, due undoubtedly in no small part to the Nails (and the high probability that Angron was a bit of an idiot anyway), he didn't attack the Nucerian ruling classes with anything approaching a coherent strategy. There was seemingly no plan, only wanton destruction. As a result, the rulers of the various parts of the planet sent their militaries to gang up on Angron's comparatively ragtag group of about 2000 and after a few years, Angron's force had been reduced to half and was surrounded by at least seven full scale armies. So he and his buddies were completely screwed, making Angron the only Primarch who failed to conquer his home planet, something that his Legion would end up being more than a little embarrassed by.

Around that time, the Emperor showed up, and hashed out a deal with the local planetary government in order to expedite Angron's capture and win over the planet without any further bloodshed, because there was no point in the Emperor helping his son win a (totally justified) war against a population that had already submitted to compliance. Of course, this deal required the Emperor to take Angron away from the only people who weren't shitty to him and leaving them all to die; but Big E didn't give a rat's ass about those fuckers (and they were all summarily executed, as you would expect in a slave rebellion). Naturally, he didn't tell Angron any of this, because <s>he couldn't give less of a shit</s> [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden]] wanted to make the Emperor look like an ass again. Daddy issues don't make for bad writing by themselves, but said good writing is harder to write without nuance and depth. Of course, the Emperor could have saved them all or simply kill the local slavers who were, despite compliance, flying in the face of the law of the Great Crusade, give Angron the planet as a recruiting world and take the slaves to his ship to be made into a loyal ass-wrecking rapetrain of AWESOME alongside all the Terran legionnaires. Buuuut we need our dose of our [[Edgy]] [[Grimdark]] here, right?

So long story short, the Emperor told Angron he was coming along on the Great Crusade, Angron told him that he would rather die alongside his fellow gladiators, and the Emperor beamed him up onto his ship and left all the other gladiators to die. On the ship, Angron completely lost his shit and started attacking everything around him, managing to kill one of the Custodes before Big E force gripped him into submission and basically told him to get over himself(AD-B, seriously fuck you). After this, Angron was apparently taken back to Terra to be examined by the Emperor and his best tech adepts in the hope of finding a way to fix Angron's mutilated brain.

Back on [[Terra]], the Big E summoned [[Arkhan Land]] to his labs and showed Angron spread out with his skull hacked open & brain exposed on a surgery table, taking a good look at Angron's fucked-up skull and decided that he was a waste of time and effort, and arrived at the conclusion that even trying to remove them would likely kill him (reference "Betrayer"). The Mechanicus estimated that he wouldn't live long enough to see the end of the Great Crusade.

It is during this procedure that it is revealed just how completely the Nails destroyed Angron, and how thoroughly tortured he would be for the rest of his existence. According to the Emperor in conversation with Arkhan;

<blockquote>''"With the alterations made to the limbic lobe and insular cortex, the surgeons have impaired the Twelfth’s ability to regulate any emotion at all. Furthermore, they have rethreaded its capacity to take pleasure in anything but the sensation of anger. They are the only chemicals and electrical signals that flow freely through, and from, its brain. All else is either dulled to nothingness or rewired to inspire a supreme degree of agony. It is a testament to the durability of my primarch project that the Twelfth has managed to survive this long.

''"His own emotions cause him pain?"''

''"No, Arkhan. Everything. Everything causes it pain. Thinking. Feeling. Breathing. The only respite it has is in the rewired neurological pleasure it receives from the chemicals of anger and aggression."''</blockquote>

Aaand it gets worse. The Emperor then reveals a few moments later that Angron's limbic and insular lobes had been straight up removed and replaced with parts of the Nails. This essentially meant that Angron would not have been capable of feeling empathy or compassion, and it would have completely restructured his ability to link behaviors to outcomes (ie this behavior makes me feel good vs this behavior makes me feel bad). Even his sense of self awareness and IQ would have been affected, which would go far in explaining quite a lot of straight up retarded crap he would go on to do. So essentially the slave masters of Nuceria took away his compassion, his empathy, his emotional control, his intelligence, and his ability to learn or feel anything pleasant outside of aggression. Oh, and left him in constant agony whenever he wasn't angry. Scratch the Emperor being a dick for not removing the Nails, He was more of a dick for not just putting Angron down then and there (though the fact He refers to Angron only as "Twelfth" and "it" is shown the Emprah is not too hot on compassion, at least as far as Angron seems to be concerned). The most tragic part of it all was that apparently Angron was quite the bro-tier Primarch before the Nails were implanted. He even had the ability to empathically soothe the pain of others by taking it upon himself (almost certainly some latent psychic ability), and he very often did just that for his fellow slaves. So on top of everything else, the Nails completely destroyed Angron's personality, taking him from a potentially Vulkan level nice guy and lowering him to Perturabo levels of barbarity. To top it all off, the Nails had been designed for use on baseline humans. As a Primarch, Angron's brain was not only far more complex than that of an ordinary human, but had the capacity for wholescale regeneration. This would only cause him more problems however, as the damaged or missing parts of his brain attempted to regenerate around the Nails. It was believed that this process would eventually cause him to lose all ability to control himself, and that he would become little more than a rabid animal as some of his legionaries would later demonstrate. At that point, is was almost certain that he would manage to get himself killed in one way or another.

Considering that later during the Horus Heresy, '''Menes Kalliston''' of the [[Thousand Sons]] was fairly certain that their [[psyker]]-medics could figure out how to remove them from [[Khârn|a certain swell guy]], it is possible that the Emperor - being the most intelligent person in the [[Imperium]] and the most powerful psyker ever - ''<u>could</u>'' have achieved it if He put some resources into it (especially since at least one AdMech replaced everything, including his brain with machine parts); or it's equally likely the Thousand Son space marine was just stalling because he had an insane psycho-killer moments away from killing him breathing down his neck. It is however, far more likely that the Nails implanted into the World Eaters were not so difficult to remove as Angron's would have been. Entire vital parts of Angron's brain had been removed and replaced with the crude cybernetics of the Nails, whereas the World Eaters' Nails were knockoffs which were simply added on to their existing brain tissue. Because of Angron's brain being a half-cybernetic mess, both the Emperor and Arkhan believed that the Nails were, ironically, the only reason Angron was still alive. If they were removed, Angron's brain would likely have simply ceased to function. Additionally, attempting to replace parts of a Primarch is almost certainly a borderline-impossible task, particularly if that part is a brain. The Primarchs were not just flesh and blood, but creatures of the warp incarnated by the Emperor's genecraft. Whatever the Emperor did to create them, He clearly could not just do it on a whim as He could with Custodes or Astartes. There were only ever 20 ([[Omegon|21]]) of them and even when two were erased from history mid-Crusade, they were not replaced. The Emperor also never seemed to consider the possibility of making more of them after the initial scattering when they were presumed dead, despite the massive blow that killing all 20 Primarchs would have dealt to his plans.

Regardless however, Arkhan described the Emperor as being "inhumanly toneless" when speaking of Angron, and as being "passionlessly interested" in the surgical nightmare that Angron had become. Whether this is due to Him genuinely not caring or simply being too far beyond Arkhan for His attitude to be understood properly is up for debate. Rather strangely, the Emperor appeared to have been unusually callous when it came to Angron in particular, as even Primarchs like Konrad Curze, Perturabo and Mortarion were shown at least ''some'' level of love and interest from Him. However Angron, for whatever reason, was disregarded almost entirely. Regarding this anomaly, it is worth noting that Angron was the only Primarch who did not end up ruling his native planet. The other Primarchs either conquered theirs or used their charisma and intelligence to work their way up the hierarchy of whatever planet they landed on (or both). Angron failed to do either, and was on the verge of being slaughtered along with his army when the Emperor came for him. Perhaps this failure is why the Emperor seemed so uniquely disinterested in him.

As it is, the Emperor was told that Angron would likely not see the the end of the crusade, and thus took the dumbest option available to Him: do nothing to mitigate the effects, do nothing to change how much Angron hated him, and throw him into warzones after giving him a massive force and assume that it would never come back to haunt him. Could He have saved Angron? Perhaps, should he have the occasion to put his entire undivided attention to it. But with Him busy with the demands of the Imperium, powering the [[Astronomican]] and trying to get the Human Webway online the Emperor seemingly did not want to sink the extra time and resources into saving one of His Primarchs.

===Great Crusade===
[[File:Preheresy-world-eaters.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Angron back when the Great Crusade was still a thing. Along with [[Kharn|that swell guy]] on his right and [[Lotara Sarrin|the angriest, most heterosexual woman in existence]] on his left.]]
{{Topquote|You kept that mule Kor Phaeron. Russ kept his kin-friends. The Lion kept Luther. Humans - brothers and foster fathers - saved and raised into Legion ranks. But not me. Not Angron, no. Did the Emperor teleport his gold-wrapped Custodians down to help me and my army? No. Did he free the War Hounds and order them to battle, fight alongside me? No. Did he save my brothers and sisters the way he spared the Lion’s closest kin? No, no, and no. No mercy for Angron. Angron the Oathbreaker. Angron the Betrayer.| Angron explains his anger towards the Emperor to Lorgar, during one of his more calm moments.}}

Either way, when Angron was introduced to his legion he was inconsolable. He ended up hacking apart the legion captains until Khârn (who was actually much further down the list of command, having risen up the ladder thanks to several of his superiors' untimely ends) managed to talk some sense into his father. Though bearing in mind the Emperor had already let [[Perturabo]] dispassionately decimate 10% of an ''entire legion'', Angron killing some captains in an emotional meltdown is small potatoes.

Anyway, [[Kharn]] successfully talks some sense into him, and Angron renamed his legion ''World Eaters'', a name you might recognize translates to ''fucking savage'' in the common tongue. Angron's old army of gladiators whom he'd led to freedom and been denied death alongside them was known as "the eaters of cities" on [[Nuceria]]. So, as Dreagher, a Terran-born War Hounds legionary who served as Captain of the Legion's 9th Company, described it: ''from then on, they would no longer be the War Hounds, but Angron's "eaters of worlds"''.

Angron then replicated the Butcher's Nails technology on his legionaries, despite the Empy's warnings and how much he hated the source of the Nails, his old masters - <s> which adds a little hypocritical spice to his complaints about how the Nails ruined his life, given that he did the same thing to other people for no fucking reason when given the chance. Perhaps Angron wanted his sons to feel the same pain he experienced since he would never be able to remove the goddamn thing from his brain and it pissed him off that his own flesh and blood did not suffer as he did.</s> More likely he was desperately trying to emulate his blood brothers and sisters in the pits since they were the only ones to give a shit (plus Lorgar). Even in spite of being the first legionary to GIT SOME, [[Kharn|that swell guy]] became Angron's 'cool headed' equerry. Ironic.

The Nails also negatively interacted with psykers, killing Librarians who tried to get them installed (blowing holes in spaceships and taking down entire squads of space marines in the process as their altered brain chemistry made it impossible for them to control their abilities anymore). Also merely being near a psyker made other Legionaries feel... ''uncomfortable'' (described as ''ticking'' by Kharn). Angron personally took this to eleven, hating psykers for the additional pain they brought - with the strange exception of Lorgar & the Emperor, who seemed not to trigger that effect. Still, the whole Butcher's Nails thing is actually quite tragic (could the fact that even being psykers caused pain to everyone implanted with the nails indicate that they were not just archeotech, but technology corrupted by Khorne who hates psykers? And even the daemon primarch still has them implanted...all the implications). In "Betrayer" Argel Tal asks Kharn why the World Eaters allowed themselves to be mutilated so, to which Kharn replies that they thought it would bring them closer to their father. Argel Tal continues asking if it worked, and Kharn sadly mutters to himself "no, it didn't". So, before Erebus made sure that Kharn would become the RAAAAAAGE train we know in 40k by killing Argel Tal (in the same novel), because - as Erebus put it - his damned humanity would have spared Kharn this fate (because becoming a berzerk psychopathic killer is so much more awesome than staying sane) he appears to be regretting this decision - at least at this point.
[[File:World Eaters.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Angron and his World Eaters, pre-heresy and pre-[[daemon prince]] in a rare state of tranquility standing on top of [[grimdark|a pile made of snow and dead bodies]]. It's hard to calm down when there's nails in your brain.]]

During the Great Crusade, the World Eaters were known as the Imperium's butcher force. Their arrival or even just the threat of their arrival in a system was enough to make non-compliant Imperial worlds surrender, lest they be completely and utterly be butchered by the Red Angel and his sons - which only made it easier for the World Eaters to butcher them. They were typically unleashed in situations where the Imperium really didn't care about collateral damage. For where the Space Wolves and Dark Angels, the other two extermination legions of the Imperium, could be controlled, the World Eaters simply could not be. Angron ordered his sons to complete every single conquest and compliance action in thirty-one hours, since he and his gladiator army had once destroyed an entire city on Nuceria in the same span of time. When and if they failed, he mocked them for being inadequate and ordered them to [[Perturabo|decimate themselves]], it apparently not having occurred to him that it's a little harder to take down an entire planet than it is one city, even if you are a Space Marine legion (remember, not the brightest of his brothers). Things were getting so bad that some of the World Eaters' senior officers were considering going to the Emperor for help, at least until the Nails became a thing and they stopped caring about anything beyond RIP AND TEAR. One of them even talked back to Angron on the subject, which caused him to RAEG the fuck out and start killing his own sons again until some of the Librarians knocked him out.

He also had a run in with [[Leman Russ]] at some point, just after the XII Legion started getting their brains Nailed. Russ came to Angron after having heard reports that the World Eaters were increasingly just bathing in blood, instead of bringing worlds to compliance. Angron wasn't as brain-damaged as he would be later, so he asked if Russ had come on order of the Emperor. Russ grudgingly had to admit he wasn't; this wasn't an execution ordered by the Emperor (yet) and he privately didn't want it to become one in the future. So he went on saying that implanting Angron's legionaries with the Nails had to stop and that they'd be brought to Terra so a way of removing them could be devised (so he basically told Angron to sort his shit out and stop mutilating his sons). But we all know how good Russ is with people and generally <s>just liked throwing his weight around</s>. In more seriousness, this is one of the cases where Russ really, genuinely wanted to help one of his brothers, having had his own bouts with [[rage|irresistible murderous intent]] to deal with. Additionally, it is heavily implied that the two missing Primarchs met their end at Russ's hands on orders from the Emperor. Russ was not a fan of his role as being the Emperor's personal Judge Dredd as would later be demonstrated by the fact that he pleaded Lorgar's case (of all people) to the Emperor when He was considering 86ing the Word Bearers. Russ's approach sadly [[fail|wasn't well thought out]]. Though to be fair Angron wasn't exactly diplomatic either, telling Russ that the Nails were the only thing that kept him going, that the EMPRA was just another slaver (and that bringing "compliance" to worlds was just a way of candycoating enslaving worlds which merely had wished to be left alone), and that without the Nails he might go to Big.E and chop "the slaving bastard's" head off. Ironically enough Angron had a solid point with the former argument, but the very suggestion of turning against Emps basically made Russ [[rage|lose what remained of his cool on the spot]] with the result one would expect.
[[File:Angron, lord of the locker room.jpg|thumb|right|A Remembrancer's sketch of the duel between Angron and Leman Russ.]]

There was a brief skirmish between the two Legions (an event which would come to be known as the "Night of the Wolf") where Angron fought Leman Russ in personal combat. [[Rape|He made him his personal bitch]] until he was outmaneuvered by the Space Wolves troops and surrounded, isolated from his World Eaters who were just like their father putting up one hell of a fight and hurt on the Wolves but being slowly separated and isolated from each other. Russ then tried to make his point a second time; that Angron's berserker rage made him and his Legion lose sight of the larger tactical and strategic objectives and that Russ had deliberately lured him into a position where he could be gunned down with a snap of Russ fingers. Angron refused to acknowledge his losing position since he was the one holding the weapon at his brother's throat and that killing EVERYONE should be the only objective anyway. Russ might be very well holding the proverbial gun to his temple, but it was only worth anything if he was willing to pull the trigger. Which at that point Russ wasn't, so Angron completely ignored him. Yet, surprisingly, Angron did not press his attack either and both Primarchs separated and went their own way. But, as time would show, the nails had a degrading effect on Angron's ability to hold back and remain coherent, so maybe that's your answer right there.

Angron was certain of his victory that day and didn't give the incident any more thought, the Nails stayed with him and his Legion. In the end, though, Leman Russ was right: Angron's failure to learn and control his murderous rage would be amply demonstrated and only become worse with time. At the tail end of the Great Crusade when he butchered a whole city which had just surrendered, on Isstvan III when he sabotaged Horus' clean [[Exterminatus]] by going down to rip the loyalists apart personally, and on Nuceria where he ordered every living being killed. But what’s truly sad is that Lorgar actually did seemingly succeed where Russ had failed in teaching the lesson of the Night of the Wolf years later. Weirdly, he did this by simply telling Angron in no uncertain terms that Russ had won and why, and for whatever reason Angron's previous retardation dawned on him this time. In the case of Lorgar's explanation, not being in the middle of a fight to the death (at least as far as Agron was concerned) probably helped with regard to Angron's perceptiveness (fewer MURDERMURDERKILLKILL impulses from the Nails). Additionally, on their way to Nuceria during Angron’s last weeks as a human, he actually seemed to be trying to open himself up a little more to his legion by joining them in watching pit fights and hanging out with them during feasts, all of which was rendered too little too late by what went down when they reached their destination.

===Horus Heresy===
[[File:Daemon-Angron HHST.png|400px|thumb|right|Angron during the [[Siege of Terra]], about to give the defenders a very bad day]]
When Horus decided to rebel, Angron was one of the initial Primarchs to join him, along with Fulgrim and Mortarion. Why is not particularly hard to guess; he already hated the Emperor's guts like practically no other Primarch (with the possible exception of Curze, though even he managed to come to terms before his death with his father), and considered the Crusade to be little better than a galaxy-spanning slavery endeavor. How this concern jives with him being one of the Crusade's most prominent butchers is somewhat strange but his brain probably resembled a scrambled egg more than anything else at this point.

On that note, Angron kicked off his contribution to the Heresy in a characteristically retarded fashion. When the firestorm on Isstvan died down, it became apparent that large numbers of Loyalists had survived. Said survivors immediately hit the vox-casters and began demanding answers/hurling insults up at the orbiting fleet, outraged and grief stricken that they had been betrayed by their own Primarchs. Horus disregarded this and prepared to initiate a second virus bombing. Angron however, was not quite so thick skinned. Hearing the howled insults of his own Loyalist World Eaters (which more than likely included some cutting one-liners and yo-dead-gladiator-crew jokes), Angron flew into a rage and deployed onto the planet his legion. When he learned of this, Horus was so furious that he seriously considered proceeding with the virus bombing regardless of Angron's presence planetside. However the Warmaster then took a few moments to collect himself and attempted to salvage the situation. If he backed Angron's ground assault, his troops would get some experience fighting other Astartes, and Angron would see that Horus was willing to give him freedoms that the Emperor had not. Sadly for Horus, Angron's decision ended up being one of the biggest mistakes of the heresy, as the Traitors ended up losing nearly half of their attacking force over a period of 3 months. To add insult to injury, Horus eventually decided that he was losing too many assets trying to break the Loyalists on the ground. So he had Angron physically wrestled back up into orbit (as Angron wouldn't leave any other way), and used his fleet to simply glass the entire planet's surface.

Angron was much more handy on Isstvan V, wreaking all sorts of carnage in the [[Dropsite Massacre]]. Ironically his presence there hardly mattered considering how thoroughly boned the Loyalists had been to begin with, but having one more supremely capable beat-stick to hit one's foes with is always nice. When Horus and the other Traitor Primarchs departed, Angron stayed behind to hunt down the surviving Raven Guard who'd escaped with Corax. Despite the Raven Guard's supreme sneakiness, they eventually ran out of places to run and hide, and Angron was only hours away from finding and butchering the lot of them. Fortunately for the beleaguered birds, a group of Raven Guard reserves rocked up from Deliverance and managed to rescue Corax and most of his men, leaving Angron behind and even more beside himself with fury than usual.

Lorgar then roped Angron into his Shadow Crusade, systematically butchering worlds across Ultramar to invoke the Ruinstorm. Initially, this was a campaign with mixed success: the two Legions nearly fought in the void before an Eldar fleet tried to destroy Angron, and the World Eaters wiped out several worlds which Lorgar had wanted to skip. The Word Bearers were nearly driven to despair by the World Eaters' degradation, and Lorgar began to worry that Angron couldn't see how he was degenerating - and there was only one way that could end. Still, Lorgar wanted to save Angron, although in his case "save" meant "transfigure into a daemon Primarch without asking". Angron was, according to Horus and Lorgar, the only Primarch besides Horus himself that could potentially be able to successfully take on Sanguinius in full rage mode (though Russ and The Lion would probably give them a run for their money if fighting to kill), which at that point was basically the only use Horus had for him. To do that, Lorgar led Angron back to his shitty home planet [[Nuceria]]. There, Angron returned to the site of his followers' final battle, now little more than an open-air graveyard filled with the bones of his compatriots. This caused Angron to fall into a deep depression, which only lasted until he had the misfortune to be told he had fled that final battle. Needless to say, hearing this caused him to go completely berserk, and he ordered his legion to slaughter every fucking thing on the planet faster than an [[Exterminatus|inquisitorial cyclonic torpedo bombardment]].

The arrival of Guilliman's forces delayed its inevitable doom for a little while, and Angron had an epic showdown with [[Roboute Guilliman]] when he helped [[Lorgar]] in fighting big boy blue. Guilliman called Angron out to which the Red Angel replied as follows:

<blockquote>''"What would you know of struggle, Perfect Son? When have you fought against the mutilation of your mind? When have you had to do anything more than tally compliances and polish your armour?" [...] "The people of your world named you Great One. The people of mine called me Slave. Which one of us landed on a paradise of civilization to be raised by a foster father, Roboute? Which one of us was given armies to lead after training in the halls of the Macraggian high-riders? Which one of us inherited a strong, cultured kingdom? And which one of us had to rise up against a kingdom with nothing but a horde of starving slaves? Which one of us was a child enslaved on a world of monsters, with his brain cut up by carving knives? Listen to your blue-clad wretches yelling of courage and honour, courage and honour, courage and honour. Do you even know the meaning of those words? Courage is fighting the kingdom which enslaves you, no matter that their armies outnumber yours by ten-thousand to one. You know nothing of courage. Honour is resisting a tyrant when all others suckle and grow fat on the hypocrisy he feeds them. You know nothing of honour."''</blockquote>

Guilliman ended up getting beaten so badly he had to crawl away on hands and knees (though to be fair to him he put up one hell of a fight, especially considering that half his face was missing), but not before throwing back a pretty scathing retort of his own:

<blockquote>''"You’re still a slave, Angron. Enslaved by your past, blind to the future. Too hateful to learn. Too spiteful to prosper."''</blockquote>

The irony is Angron was right all along about Emperor being a dick, as Roboute realized on Terra ten thousand years later. But in all seriousness, both of them had a point. True, Guilliman had it comparatively easy and could have turned out massively different had his life not been so cushy. But Angron's rage over ''his'' admittedly-shitty life, worsened by his unwillingness to move on from the loss of his old comrades or accept his Legion as being his new family and compounded further still by not even trying to rise above his upbringing, had consumed his soul and didn't exactly let him off the hook for turning his entire legion into murder machines despite constantly blaming the Butcher's Nails for ruining his life.

Additionally, Angron of all people attempting to lecture anyone about the concept of honor is hypocrisy of the highest form. Even Konrad Curze, arguably the most terrifyingly barbaric Primarch, had a logical reason behind his brutality before he completely lost his mind. Angron never had a reason for killing, and he never needed one. He spilt blood just for the sake of it, annihilating entire planetary systems simply for the lulz. Whatever honor Angron once might have had, he had tossed it aside long ago in the name of satiating his hatred. At the time of his confrontation with Guilliman, he was little more than a rabid dog; his brains in the final stages of degradation via the Nails. He was essentially already a Khorne devotee in all but name and aspect; the sick daemon form he would soon receive was just an aesthetic cherry on top.

What made it worse was that the Nails themselves, as it turned out, could actually be overcome. As demonstrated by Arrian Zorzi, a renegade WE Apothecary who threw his lot in with [[Fabius Bile]] and eventually became his 2nd in command of [[The Consortium (Warhammer 40,000|The Consortium]], and who likes (evil) gardening: a highly disciplined mind could control the aggression of the Nails. Which meant that, in yet another tragic twist of irony, Angron might have been able to save himself if he had simply not given over so completely to despair and spite. On the other hand, the cruder copy implanted in World Eaters legionnaires might be easier to overcome than the genuine article, and Zorzi is (so far) a unique case.

Furthermore, during their duel Guilliman shattered one of the skulls of Angron's rebel followers that he had carried with him (and whom he had promised to die alongside with... until the EMPRA abducted him. Angron himself said to Lorgar in "Betrayer" that he died on Nuceria), which obviously drove Angron to an entire new level of despair, allowing for Lorgar to capitalize on that emotion to fuel Angron's ascension into a daemon primarch. There were even 19 World Eater librarians, that had tried to prevent their primarch's ascension forming a gestalt warhound, pulling Angron's soul from one end, while Lorgar as well as some daemons pulled at it from the other, like children fighting over a doll. In the end, Lorgar - being the more powerful psyker - defeated the Librarians, and turned Angron into the Daemon Primarch we all know and love; his first act upon ascension was to immediately slaughter the Librarians. Guilliman ended up suffering a grievous wound, but escaped the planet, which was rendered devoid of all life by the World Eaters, and had its records erased by the Imperium of Man.

It should also be noted that one or two battles beforehand a Warhound Scout Titan tried to step on Lorgar after the Aurelian had taken two discharges of the the titan's main plasma weapon and was badly hurt (to the point of almost being mortally wounded) in the process. Angron stepped in to save his brother, catching the titan's foot and setting a new world record in squat weightlifting, keeping the titans weight suspended above himself through his sheer strength and RAGE, enabling Lorgar - who was almost dead at this point - to escape (meanwhile Ferrus Manus could punch THROUGH REAVERS and doubtless would have found this adorable). And this was after digging his way up through 200+ feet of solid debris, after being warned by WE Librarians he had been digging 'downwards', and with Lorgar teleporting from orbit to help excavating the XIIth Primarch (while Lorgar simultaneously destroyed several Ultramarine Thunderhawks with telekinetically hurled building debris which Angron had been buried under). Of course, after this the relationship between the two primarchs became pretty remarkable, and Lorgar ended up repaying the favor by arranging for Angron's ascension to daemonhood during their fight with Guilliman. At first Lorgar thought that Guilliman was ruining the "song" and finally understood that Guilliman had never hated or looked down on him until the Heresy (and the destruction of Calth) - actually distracting Lorgar for a moment as he realized that he had misunderstood his brother all along - At the end though, when Guilliman was about to gain the upper hand Angron emerged and engaged the XIII Primarch. At this very moment (topped off by Guilliman stepping on one of the aforementioned skulls) the "song" fell back in tune, and Lorgar could finish the incantation.

After this, the World Eaters ''somehow'' managed to get Angron back aboard his flagship, but were at a bit of a loss as to what to do with him afterwards. Obviously having a blood crazed Daemon Primarch living in one's basement was not exactly ideal even for the World Eaters. So initially they attempted to restrain Angron, but there was literally nothing they could do to keep him contained. Any cell block or restraining device they used on him he simply turned to scrap the instant it started annoying him. And yet, Angron never once actually attempted to leave the part of the ship in which he'd made his lair. He had developed crippling bipolar tendencies, and where his manic phase embodied the champion of raw murder we all know and love, his depressive phase was so utterly ''dead inside'' it makes [[Isha]] look cheery in comparison. He spent most of his free time cowering in a corner, calling out for the Emperor or just crying himself to sleep. This only made the World Eaters ''more'' terrified of him, as he could rampage through the ship at a moment's notice and they wouldn't be able to stop him. Only Kharn was able (or willing) to talk to Angron, and even Kharn knew he was risking death each time he did so; it would literally only depend on whether or not he caught Angron in a bad mood.

Kharn's conversations with Angron revealed yet another sad development for the Primarch, which was that becoming a daemon had caused him to develop a sort of dementia. He had to be verbally prodded by Kharn to remember certain places, people, and events, and Kharn was not always successful in doing so. Even his past as a gladiator or his adoptive father were hit-or-miss in terms of whether or not he could recall them. His entire sense of self had become lost to Khorne, and he swung from sapient being to bloodthirsty beast with seemingly no control over who he was as any given moment. He also became completely dependent on bloodshed to maintain his link to the mortal realm, and could only last a few weeks without planetary scale butchery to keep him tethered. As such, the World Eaters were forced to divert into any populated system they could find as they travelled towards Terra just to keep Angron in the material plane. He was also the only Daemon Primarch who, in yet another grim irony, never got any say in becoming a daemon- even [[Magnus the Red]] did not ascend before first rejecting the Emperor's offer of forgiveness. So he went from being a slave to the Nucerians, to being a slave to the Emperor, to being a slave to Khorne, forced to fight for all three without ever having any choice and now he could not even rebel. He's basically 40k's Butt-Monkey at this point. Angron's transformation into a Daemon also caused the World Eaters to develop an unmatched hatred for the Word Bearers for so thoroughly destroying their gene-father. Kharn in particular was furious about this in his comparatively lucid moments, as being the only person who Angron wouldn't immediately kill gave him front row seat to witness the completely broken, miserable monster Angron had ultimately become.

Shortly thereafter, Horus sent Perturabo to go collect Angron and his now completely degenerated legion for use at the Siege of Terra. As stated previously, the World Eaters had needed to stop every time they found a populated system in order to shed the blood necessary to keep Angron in the material realm. But they were getting too sidetracked in doing so, and Horus hadn't been able to talk them into hurrying up. Upon confronting the World Eaters, the Iron Warriors absolutely wrecked their maniacal brothers, ironically by doing the same sort of thing that the Space Wolves had so many years ago during the Night of the Wolf. Instead of allowing the World Eaters to engage them in close combat, the Iron Warriors initially shot only the daemons amongst the World Eaters, and then largely attempted to trap or disable the World Eaters where possible. The point was both to deny them combat, and thus power, and obviously to round them up for the Siege. Angron himself confronted Perturabo, and as with their respective legionnaires, Pert shoved Angron's shit in by simply having a brain. After getting blasted into pasta sauce by a group of Iron Warriors, Angron jumped into melee with Perturabo and heavily damaged his armor. Perturabo got in a decent counter-hit or two, but even with Forgebreaker in hand, he was ultimately no match for Angron in melee combat.

However, Perturabo had one weapon that Angron did not; the power of spiteful mockery (seems to be something of a weakness amongst the Daemon Primarchs; Mortarion got the same treatment later from the Khan, and Fulgrim from Rylanor). He repeatedly insulted Angron as being a weak, pitiful slave who had sold his strength out of despair, and had become ''weaker'' as a result. Of course, Angron hadn't actually chosen to become a daemon at all, but Perturabo clearly either didn't know or didn't care. The lack of slaughter (and possibly the insults) drained Angron of much of his power, allowing Perturabo and the Iron Circle to start shooting the shit out of him with (heavily implied to be) anti-Daemon rounds. The very first [[Obliterator]], Volk, then added a fusillade of his own to the mix. The assault of Perturabo and Volk, combined with the Iron Warriors having denied the World Eaters their tithe of blood, weakened Angron to the point where he could no longer fight. Perturabo took the opportunity to mock Angron a bit more, and then waltzed over to him and unceremoniously knocked him out with a single blow from Forgebreaker. After this, he collected his recalcitrant brother and his legion and packed them up to head for Terra. (The fact Perturabo accomplished all this while sustaining minimal casualties shows how impressive his track-record during the Great Crusade could've been if he actually gave a damn.)

===41st Millennium===
[[Image:Angrondemon.jpg|300px|thumb|Even in daemonhood, they ''still'' can't get the Nails out. Fucking Archeotech was built to ''last''!]]
Angron has done far more shit than all the other Daemon Primarchs put together. Instead of [[Fulgrim|sitting around being a painting on some Chaos God's wall]], [[Mortarion|sitting around while being a rotting fatass and feeling sorry for themselves]], [[Magnus the Red|sitting around and yelling just as planned anytime anything happens]], [[Lorgar|sitting around and preaching constantly]], [[Horus|being]] [[Alpharius|(Maybe)]] [[Konrad Curze|dead]], or [[Primarch#Two Missing Primarchs|being missing]]; Angron actually gets shit done and boy howdy when he [[rage|rages]] his way out of the eye of terror he makes sure that everyone knows about it...by tearing ''everything'' that gets in his way a new one until he finally gets thrown back into the warp by drowning in a quadrillion metric fucktons of [[Imperial Guard|Imperial Guardsmen]], [[Planetary Defense Force | Planetary Defense Force soldiers]], [[Space Marines|Spehss Mehreens]], [[Witch Hunters]], [[Sisters of Battle|Bolter Bitches]], [[Titan|Titans]], [[Stormtrooper|Inquisitorial Stormtroopers]], [[Daemonhunters]], and [[Grey Knights]], but to be fair, everyone kind of does that when the Imperium <strike>finishes the paperwork needed to</strike> retaliates.

This was of course before The Gathering Storm, whereupon Magnus personally attacked [[Fenris]] and laid waste to much of the planet and destroyed a lot of gene-seed, proving that [[Tzeentch]] can get shit done too. Then in 8th edition Mortarion waged [[Plague Wars]] against [[Ultramar]] and established the [[Scourge Stars]] systems in M42. Also it should be noted that Fulgrim has been free of that painting for a while now, but otherwise he still fits in the above category.

He also slaughtered his way throughout Imperial Space for over a century with 50,000 World Eater [[Khorne Berzerkers|Berzerker]]s and destroyed/maimed/killed/burned/broke the backs of/split open/fucked 70 sectors. However, in a subsequent Imperial offensive, Angron was banished to the warp and his men routed. This strike force comprised 2 Titan Legions, ''only'' 4 full Spess Mehreen chapters and over 30 Imperial Guard regiments to do that, so it's suffice to say that the counterattack put up quite a fight against the superior force. But to be fair, Angron's force was only comprised of close combat heavy infantry without ranged support or artillery.

Later on, he showed up with an even bigger force to attack Armageddon. The Imperium responded in kind, sending in one hundred [[Grey Knights|Grey Knight Terminators]], and all but ten of them died fighting Angron and his Bloodthirster posse(and only because their prodigy Librarian Hyperion managed to shatter his sword, and he STILL managed to murder their leader with just his bare fists). He is armed with a really huge fucking chainaxe that's taller than him with chainswords for the chainteeth of the chainaxe. He's also got a storm bolter, but we wouldn't be surprised if that fired chainswords as well. Fittingly enough, it was called 'Godtearer'.

Strangely, as seen in the picture above, he also still has the Butchers Nails stuck in his head. This should be completely impossible as Angron technically speaking doesn't have a body anymore (he's 100% warp energy now), and the Nails are technological in nature. He's also been blasted into paste on numerous occasions and forcibly dematerialized into the warp on a number of others, which means that the Nails seemingly regenerate along with the rest of him. The most likely explanation is that, as a daemon, he is at least partially shaped by the mortal perception of him, and the Nails are a big part of his story to anyone with high enough clearance to know his name. If that is true, then he actually is finally free of the Nails and the wires and bits poking out of his skull are just his way of making sure no one confuses him with [[Doombreed]] or something.

He also wrote something called the '''Clotted Scrolls''' somewhere along the line, though precisely what wisdom he wrote (probably in blood) in there is unknown (maybe methods on how to [[rip and tear]] more effectively?).

==In video games==

Unfortunately, he has appeared in only one of the official games, which greatly displeases [[Khorne]]. However, in the Ultimate Apocalypse mod for [[Dawn of War]], he takes the place of the Chaos Daemons' "game-ending win button" unit - and he's a walking rapetrain that can [[Awesome|obliterate buildings with a single hit, take out Titans in three, make himself invincible, and summon a retinue of Bloodthirsters]]. He can also be almost unkillable by exploiting a bug which lets him instantly refill his morale, which gives him disturbingly fast health regeneration. Too bad you'll almost never use him. He costs so many relic points in an army that consumes them like candy that, if you can spare the points and time to conjure him, chances are you're already winning so badly you don't actually need him. Seriously, for the same number of points it takes to conjure Angron you could just build 5-6 Helldrakes or an equal amount of Bloodthirsters, and keep in mind Chaos Daemons need the same resource for anything greater than lesser Daemons. If you're not spending them on other units you need ''right now'' then you can just overwhelm them with what you already have. Essentially the definition of "awesome but impractical", but sweet jesus is it truly awesome to watch.

Angron shows up in the Horus Heresy:Legions card game, being one of the best warlords, and in keeping with his character he has to attack every turn.

==On the tabletop==

===Horus Heresy===
====1E====
{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Angron:''' || 400 || 9 || 5 || 7 || 6 || 5 || 7 || 6 || 10 || 3+/4++
|}
[[File:Angaron.jpg|300px|right|thumb|WHY IS HE BEATING UP HIS OWN LEGION said everyone on Istvaan III. Proof that Angron was actually a Loyalist Primarch. Don't believe the Chaos lies!]]
Obviously one of the strongest Primarchs in the game when it comes to close combat, aside from his stats Angron has a 3+ armor (weak for a demigod), 4+ invulnerable, FNP (the full rule since the 02/11/2019 errata) the Primarch rule and Hatred, so he gets to re-roll to-hit rolls on the first turn of any combat, while also having Armourbane and dealing Instant Death on to wound roll of 6, in case S8-9 doesn't instagib anything right away. Thanks to the Butcher's Nails he will gain 1 bonus attack (up to 10) for every Independent Character or Infantry unit he kills/destroys in close combat (But he must be the one to give the fatal blow/remove the last model to pick up this bonus) and he can also challenge as many times as there are Independent Characters and units in combat with him thanks to the Red Sands rule, assuring he will at least pick up some extra attacks during the course of the game.

The obvious downsides are that, aside from butchering things in melee, Angron cannot do anything: he doesn't buff his army in any way aside 12" aura of Fearless, while other Primarchs bestow significant buffs to their armies, and of course he is one of the (if not THE) most fragile of the Primarchs, having only 5 wounds and 3+/4++. Having FNP 5+ doesn't fully compensate against mass fire but makes him actually more resilient than most of his brothers against AP2 attacks. So all in all he's much like Kharn on steroids: you reach melee - you're king, you get your transport blown up and then get kited across the table - you're fucked. The other problem he shares with Kharn is that he tends to annihilate anything he charges in one phase either through sweeping advance or just by killing everyone outright, which leaves him vulnerable to enemy fire afterwards.

Honestly, he's not worth it. Between his fragility, low mobility, and lack of army bonuses, he's a tricky Primarch to use. Unfortunate considering his badass fluff.

====2E====
{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || M || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Angron:''' || 450 || 8 || 8 || 5 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 10 || 2+/4++
|}

While he's taken a few hits statwise, Angron remains just as indescribably angry in the new HH, especially now that he has a proper 2+/4++ save like the other primarchs. on top of everything the Primarch rule provides, he also gets Hatred (Everything), Rampage (2) and Furious Charge (2) so his charges can be even more devastating. With both Gorefather and Gorechild being AP2 with Shred, Armorbane and Murderous Strike (3+), he can reduce plenty into paste. The Butcher's Nails rule got changed to now provide extra attacks on EVERY turn now, meaning that every turn he's on the field he becomes even more dangerous, especially when he's into all these challenges thanks to the Red Sands rule.

But as before, killing is all he can do. His Warlord Trait gives everyone Feel No Pain (6+), which is only okay, and Adamantium Mind (3+), which will only see limited use considering how few psykers are on the field. The most helpful part of this is the free reaction you can take at any phase each turn. He also has rather limited defense, as despite his 2+/4++ save, he will always be hit in melee as if he has a WS of 3, which is particularly devastating when against a praetor with a power axe.

===40k===
====Older Editions====
{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Angron:''' || 500 || 10 || 6 || 7 || 6 || 5 || 6 || 6 || 10 || 3+/4++
|}

He had stats from an old issue of [[White Dwarf]], and though they might seem disappointing, especially in comparison to his Primarch form (it's barely an upgrade), his stats alone don't tell you everything.

For starters, he has additional rules such as Furious Charge (to make him S8), he has Iron Hide (keeping his power armour save), the Roar of Hate rule to reduce the Leadership of enemies by 1, and his Daemon rule made his Invuln as strong as when he relied on armour. The real boost to him however is the fact that he's a Flying Monstrous Creature now (although in the edition he came out it just gave him 12" movement instead), effectively keeping his Armourbane and AP2, and it fixes his movement issue.

The real boost to his old self is his weapon, Angron's Black Blade, and with it in hand it's no wonder Gorefather and Gorechild became hand-me-downs. This is a Master-crafted weapon that gives all of his attacks the Instant Death rule. All this combined he makes [[Abaddon]] the Despoiler and [[Mephiston]] look like total pussies, but you have to get him a bodyguard of at least 2-12 [[Bloodthirster|bloodthirsters]], which effectively racks up his point cost to over 1300 at the least, but there's nothing in the game that survive a charge from him and his bodyguards.

====9th Edition====
[[File:AngronDaemonPrimarch.jpg|300px|right|thumb|WHAT THE WARP DO YOU MEAN GUILLIMAN'S ALIVE?!]]

It's happening people: the galaxy's angriest man is at long last getting a proper model of his Daemon Primarch form and rules in the upcoming World Eaters codex, and he hasn't skipped wing day once since the 31st Millennia. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD, BOYS AND GIRLS!

==Angron VS other Primarchs:==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
Primarch fighting, while fun to see, isn't a very competitive thing to do as it'll usually tie up both Primarchs for the entire game without either of them dying (But with Angron this is less likely as you're going to die or kill fast!), with that in mind this section is about how Angron fares against other Primarchs Mathhammer wise. Please note that all the various abilities are taken into accounts when possible and the match-ups assume the Primarchs are the only ones involved in the fighting, so various abilities like Angron's "The Butcher's Nails" and Rampage do not provide any bonuses. The fights are supposed to be in a vacuum for simplicity (So no Furious Charge for our hero...), but notes are added to make things clearer in particular instances. Also all of the Primarchs use their most powerful weapons (because why have a contest if you don't do your best?)
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

* Angron VS Horus
**Horus turn 1 & 2: hits 3 times, wounds 2.667 times, 0.888 after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.555 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Horus (with Angron wounded twice): hits 3.999 times, wounds 3.555 times, causes 1.185 wounds after saves & FNP, taken to 0.851 with IWND at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 1.48 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.148.
**Angron Wounded: hits 3 times, wounds 1.999 times, 0.666 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Despite a good showing in the first round; when factoring in Disabling Strike the whole thing becomes academic; Horus overtakes Angron in damage capacity after one wound (<2 turns) and quickly beats Angron to a pulp as Angron continues to flail feebly.

* Angron vs Fulgrim
**Fulgrim hits 3.5 times, wounds 2.333 times (2.722 times if his warlord trait is Child of Terra), 1.166 (1.361) times after saves, 0.971 (1.134) after Feel No Pain (remember that half of the attacks that wound cause Instant Death) and IWND will take that down to 0.638 (0.801) wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 1.48 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.148.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.111 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**A really close fight: Angron does marginally more damage if Fulgrim doesn't chose Child of Terra as his Warlord Trait. With Child of Terra it becomes a battle of attrition that Angron will eventually lose. If Angron gets blinded at any point due to Fulgrim's Gilded Panoply it puts him at a disadvantage he likely wont recover from.

* Angron VS Ferrus
**Ferrus hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 0.694 times after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.361 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.185 after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.852.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 0.889 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.556 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Thanks to his upgraded Feel No Pain, Angron can tank more than Ferrus can, resulting in a win.

* Angron VS Konrad Curze
**Curze hits 3 times, wounds 2.25 times, 0.750 wounds after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 2.222 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.889.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron easily wins, doing a lot more damage and receiving less in turn.
**Note: Curze can Hit & Run, but by doing so he would only gain one more attack, while allowing Angron to reset his Hatred, thus actually making himself die even faster. However he would be a much better fight: Konrad on the Charge would do 2.625 wounds (0.875 with ID) which become 1.168, plus 0.1389 for HoW and 0,359 for the Widowmakers, for a total of 1,666 wounds, or 1.333 after IWND. This, thanks to the -1 wound of Angron, actually means that they would kill each other on the fifth assault, at the same initiative step. Provided that Konrad always succeed in his escape, that is.

* Angron VS Vulkan
**Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 wounds after saves (ID Negates FNP) and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.185 after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.63.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 0.889 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Vulkan wins. If Angron has the first turn of combat, Vulkan's legendary endurance nearly fails him by the 8th combat, possibly resulting in an Angron win (5.741). However Vulkan is as likely to kill him in the 7th combat (4.833), and if not has a 83.3% chance of Concussing to swing first for 5.333 wounds in the 8th combat.

* Angron vs Mortarion
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 times after saves (no FNP due to Instant Death) and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.777 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.222.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 1.333 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion loses. Despite having the same reroll on IWND and doing the same damage per turn as Vulkan; even with one extra wound Mortarion's poorer save allows Angron to take him down more quickly.

* Angron VS Lorgar
**Lorgar hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 0.694 after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that to 0.361 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 4 times, wounds 3.111 times, 1.555 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.222.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron wins pretty easily.
**Note: against Lorgar Transfigured with Precognition Lorgar wins (Not as easily as the old version, but is still a monster).

*Angron VS Perturabo
**Perturabo hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.555 wounds after saves and FNP, then IWND will take that down to 0.222 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 1.48 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.148.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.111 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron wins.
**Note: in the turn after Perturabo actually wounds Angron (69% per round) he will most probably be blinded and then hammered to death. So if he can't kill him before that he is actually dead meat.

* Angron VS Alpharius
**Alpharius hits 2.917 times, wounds 1.7 times, 0.85 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.517 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 2.222 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.889.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**As with Vulkan, Angron can't use FNP in this fight due to the Pale Spear's Instant Death, but he still easily takes the win.

* Angron VS Rogal Dorn
**Dorn hits 2 times, wounds 1.5 times, 0.499 wounds after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.167 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Dorn (Sundering Blow) hits once, wounds 0.972 times, 0.486 wounds after saves (No FNP due to Instant Death), taken to 0.152 at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.777 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.444.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 2.667 times, 1.333 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**This is probably Angron's easiest fight.
**Note: Sundering Blow cancels out Feel No Pain so it was worth calculating. Turns out it makes no difference here; Dorn has too few attacks to make a difference either way.

* Angron VS Corvus Corax
**Corvus hits 4 times (Scourge)/3 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 3 times (Scourge)/2.25 times (Shadow-walk), 0.999 wounds (Scourge)/0.750 wounds (Shadow-walk) after saves and FNP and IWND will take that down to 0.666/0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333/4.5 times, wounds 4.444/3.75 times, 2.963/2.5 after saves, and IWND take it down to 2.63/2.167.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4/3 times, wounds 3.333/2.5 times, 2.222/1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.889/1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron wins really easily as Corax is simply too frail for him.
**Note: differently from Curze, Corax would actually have the edge on the charge thanks to his Sire of the Raven Guard rule and his Hammer of Wrath/dual Archeotech Pistols. Also in a turn in which blind goes off he could have the advantage of Shadow-walk and scourge at the same times (plus more, 'cause he would hit on 3s). A tough fight, but more on his style and it could make him win in extremis.

* Angron VS Roboute Guilliman
**Angron Round 1: Angron has Hatred, so on the first turn he will hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 2.222 after saves, 1.972 after Armour of Reason re-roll and IWND take it down to 1.639.
**Angron Round 2: Angron hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves, 1.417 after re-roll and IWND will take that down to 1.084 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 3 and thereafter: Angron hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times, 1.25 after saves and 1 after re-roll. Then IWND take it down to 0.667.
**Guilliman Round 1/2/3: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.222 times, 0.741 times after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.407 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 4 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.963 times, 0.987 times after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.654 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Unsurprisingly, Guilliman loses this fight.

*Angron vs Magnus
**Angron first round: hits 4.5 times, wounds 3.75 times and 1.875 after saves which IWND will take down to 1.542 at the start of next turn
**Angron second round: hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times and 1.25 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.917 at the start of next turn
**Magnus: hits twice, wounds 1.667 times, reducing to 0.557 after saves & FNP. Then IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
**Magnus (using Force): hits twice, wounds 1.667, reduces to 0.834 after saves. IWND brings this to 0.5 at the start of the next turn.
**Psychic powers normally don't get included in the PvP breakdowns, but Magnus is the only one with a Force Weapon so it was worth mentioning. Either way you look at it, Magnus loses this one pretty badly. Things would obviously be different if other powers were included.
**As with psychic powers in general in 30k, this fight is really swingy based on what powers Magnus takes. If he can roll Iron arm and Warp speed with a power left to generate then he could take Prescience to actually gain a decent chance of winning. At the same time he could also have a tough time in power generation and get squished.

*Angron VS Leman Russ
**Angron Round 1: Angron has Hatred and is hitting on a 5+, so he hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.778 times, invul save brings it down to 1.389 and IWND brings it to 1.056 wounds.
**Angron Round 2 and on: Angron is hitting on 5s, so hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, saves brings it down to .833 and IWND brings it 0.5
**Leman hits Angron 3.214 times, wounds 2.678 times, save brings it down to 1.339, FNP brings it 0.892 and IWND brings it down 0.559
**As expected Angron loses this fight. Angron puts up a reasonable fight but the wolf king is just much for him.
**TLDR: Without the Sword of Balelight, the fight is very close. Sword of Balelight is pretty busted.

* Angron VS Jaghatai
**Jaghatai (on Bike) hits 4 times, wounds 2 times, 1 wounds after saves and FNP will take that down to 0.666 and IWND will take that down to 0.333
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.185 wounds after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.852 at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 0.888 wounds after saves, IWND will take that down to 0.556 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angrons wins, and if Jaghatai uses hit-and-run he'll get destroyed even faster.

* Angron vs Sanguinius
**Sanguinius charging: hits 4 times (3.5 times with Blade Encarmine), wounds 3.999 times (double wounds taken into account) (3.111 with Encarmine), becomes 1.999 (1.037 with Encarmine & FNP) after saves
***Sanguinius Hammer of Wrath: 1 autohit, wounds 0.833 times, becomes 0.277 after saves and FNP.
***Total combined damage on charge 2.276 (1.314), taken to 1.944 (0.981) next turn with IWND
**Sanguinius thereafter: hits 3.5 times (3 times with Blade Encarmine), wounds 2.333 times (double wounds taken into account)(2.666 with Encarmine), taken to 1.166 after saves (0.888 with Encarmine + FNP), taken to 0.8333 (0.555) next turn with IWND
**Angron Round 1: hits 4.5 times, wounds 3.75 times, becomes 1.875 after saves (0.938 if Sanguinius charged). IWND takes it to 1.54 (0.604) next turn
**Angron thereafter: hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times, becomes 1.25 after saves and IWND takes it to 0.917 next turn
***There is a lot going on with this fight depending on what Sanguinius is doing. With the Spear of Telesto, from a standing start or if Angron charges there is a mutual kill by about the fifth bout of combat. If Sanguinius can get the charge he wins.
***With the Blade Encarmine there is a close mutual kill if Sanguinius charges, but Angron wins from a standing start or if he charges. Feel No Pain really makes the difference.

* TLDR version: Despite being mocked for ''only'' having 3+/4++ in saves and fewer wounds than everyone but Lorgar (or Corax on a bad day), Angron is surprisingly resilient thanks to his FNP(5+). He will outpace most opponents thanks to his high number of attacks and good WS, so those who can't match his output turn-for-turn can only hope to outlast him. Angron is pretty vulnerable to Strikedown, Concussive, Blind, and basically any rule which reduces his ability to hit things ''(eg: Horus & Russ)'', all of which will severely cripple his overall damage potential. Keep in mind, as mentioned above, this is without any benefits from his The Butcher's Nails rule. With his attacks maxed out he can destroy almost any other Primarch (even Lorgar with Precognition, though it is damn close) with the exception of a few like Russ and...yeah, you guessed it right: Horus! Although he will surely put a dent even in the Warmaster.

In case you're wondering, Angron's mortal form defeats his Daemon form, mainly because his Daemon form was made before IWND became a thing.
</div></div>

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:Past-Angron.jpg| Doomguy called he wants his training uniform back, and he wants your head with it.
File:Angron.jpg|Can [[Anime|Vegeta]] say what his power level is?
File:Angron Butchers Nails.jpg|Angron before Daemonhood. The only real difference is a lack of wings.
File:Aerion's Angron.jpg|Angron portrayed in his natural state: PISSED THE FUCK OFF ABOUT EVERYTHING!
File:Angron by alexboca-d7930i6.jpg|Angron just generally being a boss (and looking absolutely goddamn awesome while doing so). And you call the epic ness that he wears "3+" greatly displeases khorne and teh emprah
File:angron_is_for_angry_by_sunradio-d6oferw.jpg|Daemon Primarch Angron at the final battle of the First war of Armageddon.
File:Happy angron.jpg|Angron can be happy too...
</gallery>

==See Also==
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKPVNaKvODw&t=0s| They hit him with a truck!]

{{Primarchs}}
{{Daemons-Characters}}

[[category:Chaos]]

Angron

2022-08-02T13:43:43Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8: /* Horus Heresy */

{{heresy}}
{{Cleanup}}
[[File:AngronArtPortrait.jpg|400px|right|thumb|Rare portrait of Angron. Strangely looking like he is holding in a giant fart.]]
{{Topquote|I-I am going to be a storm-a flame-<br>I need to fight whole armies alone;<br>I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms;<br>I feel too strong to war with mortals-<br>[[Rip and tear|BRING ME GIANTS]]!|Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac}}
{{Topquote|I was born in blood, raised in darkness and I shall die free!|Angron, to the Nucerian High Riders and their armies}}
{{Topquote|‘I think... when one has been angry for a very long time one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable, like... like old leather. And finally... it becomes so familiar that one can't ever remember feeling any other way.’|Captain Jean-Luc Picard, on a man who hated because he would not let himself grieve}}

His name is Angron (A.K.A. '''The Red Angel''', '''The Slave of Nuceria''', '''Lord of the Red Sands''', '''The Eater of Worlds''', '''The Gladiator King''', '''The Prince of Blood''', '''Broken One''' if you're Argel Tal, '''Angry Ron''', '''40Kratos''', '''Shithead''' if you're sergeant Gharte, '''the walking abortion''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLYiL_jYPPw if you are Majorkill] '''That Goddamn Retard''' if you're [[Leman Russ]]). Cmon, do we really have to spell it out? While his name <s>may be</s> is clearly a play on the word "Anger", it is possible that his name is based on the Greek word ''Agrion'' which means "Wild" or even ''Agron'', the Gallic word for "slaughter" (Which pretty much suits him considering he's the angriest, wildest, mother-fucking mother fucker in a long and extensive history of bipedal mother fuckers). Also, if you spell his name backwards it's Norgna, which has to count for something. Apparently the inspiration for his name was a corruption of the nickname a bouncer in Nottingham has: Angry Ron.
What we're trying to say is, Angron just might be the angriest and the most talented in manly face-to-face fighting son of a bitch in the galaxy. In fact, one time he was so angry about being angry all the time, that the part of him that made him angry exploded in his head, rendering him permanently angry (and also sexually impotent, but don't let him know that). And then there was that time he was kidnapped by the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emprah]], which didn't help his temper much, and gave him an excuse to fucking RAGE at his dad by joining up with [[Khorne]], Warhammer's God of Battle, War and [[Rage|RAAAAAAAAAAGE]]! Angron just so happens to be [[Primarch]] of the [[World eaters|World Eaters]] and [[Kharn|that swell guy]].

His revered exploits include slaughtering the entire population of a planet within a night; killing an entire contingent of Eldar warriors led by a Farseer when he was only a child; and leading a gladiator rebellion against their slavers and slaughtering 25 other armies sent against them, non-stop, until a huge one made up of seven armies came and fucked their shit up against a dirty rock <del>proving that a seven nation army could hold him back</del>. The Emperor saved him from dying there (but left all his buddies to die), which was a tremendous blow to his martial pride and among other things, eventually led him to [[Rage|RAAAAAAAAAAGE]] furiously against the Emperor, believing him a coward devoid of honor. Angron went on to become one of the first Primarchs to side with Horus during the heresy, and was turned into a monstrous, frothing demon-prince by his brother Lorgar. Eventually, Angron joined up with KHORNE, the aforementioned God of War, Murder, Killing, Bloodshed, Weeping Buttholes, Battle and [[Rage|RAAAAAAAAAAGE]].

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNkRBowsAmI Here is the theme song of this glorious bastard.]

==History==
===Early Life===
[[File:Past-Angron-art.jpg|300px|right|thumb|You'd be pissed off too if your dad didn't let you avenge your dog.]]
Angron has good reason to be ever-so-slightly miffed: his early life was one big bowl of shit after another. First he crash-landed on his new home [[Nuceria|world]] (because Khorne didn't give him a soft landing) and had a good chunk of his head torn off in the crash, after which he got jumped by the aforementioned Eldar, then (tired from the killing and the massive brain trauma --keep in mind he was like 6 hours old) got captured and sold into slavery by people with near-Imperial level technology before making him fight as a gladiator for their entertainment. He also appears to have been either the least intelligent of his brothers, or else that head injury he took while crashing did a number on his intellect. For Angron attempted to escape from his captors numerous times even before his implantation with the Nails but somehow was recaptured each time. Remember, these guys were just baseline humans with no outstanding tech aside from a few odds and ends like the Nails. Also keep in mind that more than a few of these attempts occurred when he was fully mature, and thus should have been leagues beyond what even a Custodes would be capable of in terms of physical and mental prowess. The fact that he somehow managed to ''fail'' in repeatedly attempting to escape from a bunch of normal humans is actually far more unbelievable than if he had succeeded.

A later retcon revealed he was a decent guy who loved his fellow gladiators, but after an incident where he refused to kill his adoptive father in the arenas, his masters proceeded to replace part of his brain with ARCHAEOTECH SHIT (originally this happened before he fully grew up) that drove him so mad that he murdered his dad regardless, cueing a massive bout of despair. The stuff they stuck in his head would later be called ''"The Butcher's Nails"'', and, though never fully understood (even after the Emprah's best techs took a look), they constantly applied pain to his brain and made it so the only time he could feel anything resembling happiness was while murdering shit. It should also be noted that they go from excruciating to normal, and ''do not'' [[Slaanesh|deal with the pleasure centers of the brain.]] In other words, this pertains to actual negative reinforcement in classical conditioning.

After years of being a slave, fighting through the gladiator pits and becoming the best of them, Angron eventually set up and led a rebellion, fighting to free his brother and sister gladiators. This would make him 40k's answer to Spartacus, the same way Curze is 40k Batman. He and the gladiators terrorized the planet's population for a while, burning down cities and generally making a mess of things. However, due undoubtedly in no small part to the Nails (and the high probability that Angron was a bit of an idiot anyway), he didn't attack the Nucerian ruling classes with anything approaching a coherent strategy. There was seemingly no plan, only wanton destruction. As a result, the rulers of the various parts of the planet sent their militaries to gang up on Angron's comparatively ragtag group of about 2000 and after a few years, Angron's force had been reduced to half and was surrounded by at least seven full scale armies. So he and his buddies were completely screwed, making Angron the only Primarch who failed to conquer his home planet, something that his Legion would end up being more than a little embarrassed by.

Around that time, the Emperor showed up, and hashed out a deal with the local planetary government in order to expedite Angron's capture and win over the planet without any further bloodshed, because there was no point in the Emperor helping his son win a (totally justified) war against a population that had already submitted to compliance. Of course, this deal required the Emperor to take Angron away from the only people who weren't shitty to him and leaving them all to die; but Big E didn't give a rat's ass about those fuckers (and they were all summarily executed, as you would expect in a slave rebellion). Naturally, he didn't tell Angron any of this, because <s>he couldn't give less of a shit</s> [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden]] wanted to make the Emperor look like an ass again. Daddy issues don't make for bad writing by themselves, but said good writing is harder to write without nuance and depth. Of course, the Emperor could have saved them all or simply kill the local slavers who were, despite compliance, flying in the face of the law of the Great Crusade, give Angron the planet as a recruiting world and take the slaves to his ship to be made into a loyal ass-wrecking rapetrain of AWESOME alongside all the Terran legionnaires. Buuuut we need our dose of our [[Edgy]] [[Grimdark]] here, right?

So long story short, the Emperor told Angron he was coming along on the Great Crusade, Angron told him that he would rather die alongside his fellow gladiators, and the Emperor beamed him up onto his ship and left all the other gladiators to die. On the ship, Angron completely lost his shit and started attacking everything around him, managing to kill one of the Custodes before Big E force gripped him into submission and basically told him to get over himself(AD-B, seriously fuck you). After this, Angron was apparently taken back to Terra to be examined by the Emperor and his best tech adepts in the hope of finding a way to fix Angron's mutilated brain.

Back on [[Terra]], the Big E summoned [[Arkhan Land]] to his labs and showed Angron spread out with his skull hacked open & brain exposed on a surgery table, taking a good look at Angron's fucked-up skull and decided that he was a waste of time and effort, and arrived at the conclusion that even trying to remove them would likely kill him (reference "Betrayer"). The Mechanicus estimated that he wouldn't live long enough to see the end of the Great Crusade.

It is during this procedure that it is revealed just how completely the Nails destroyed Angron, and how thoroughly tortured he would be for the rest of his existence. According to the Emperor in conversation with Arkhan;

<blockquote>''"With the alterations made to the limbic lobe and insular cortex, the surgeons have impaired the Twelfth’s ability to regulate any emotion at all. Furthermore, they have rethreaded its capacity to take pleasure in anything but the sensation of anger. They are the only chemicals and electrical signals that flow freely through, and from, its brain. All else is either dulled to nothingness or rewired to inspire a supreme degree of agony. It is a testament to the durability of my primarch project that the Twelfth has managed to survive this long.

''"His own emotions cause him pain?"''

''"No, Arkhan. Everything. Everything causes it pain. Thinking. Feeling. Breathing. The only respite it has is in the rewired neurological pleasure it receives from the chemicals of anger and aggression."''</blockquote>

Aaand it gets worse. The Emperor then reveals a few moments later that Angron's limbic and insular lobes had been straight up removed and replaced with parts of the Nails. This essentially meant that Angron would not have been capable of feeling empathy or compassion, and it would have completely restructured his ability to link behaviors to outcomes (ie this behavior makes me feel good vs this behavior makes me feel bad). Even his sense of self awareness and IQ would have been affected, which would go far in explaining quite a lot of straight up retarded crap he would go on to do. So essentially the slave masters of Nuceria took away his compassion, his empathy, his emotional control, his intelligence, and his ability to learn or feel anything pleasant outside of aggression. Oh, and left him in constant agony whenever he wasn't angry. Scratch the Emperor being a dick for not removing the Nails, He was more of a dick for not just putting Angron down then and there (though the fact He refers to Angron only as "Twelfth" and "it" is shown the Emprah is not too hot on compassion, at least as far as Angron seems to be concerned). The most tragic part of it all was that apparently Angron was quite the bro-tier Primarch before the Nails were implanted. He even had the ability to empathically soothe the pain of others by taking it upon himself (almost certainly some latent psychic ability), and he very often did just that for his fellow slaves. So on top of everything else, the Nails completely destroyed Angron's personality, taking him from a potentially Vulkan level nice guy and lowering him to Perturabo levels of barbarity. To top it all off, the Nails had been designed for use on baseline humans. As a Primarch, Angron's brain was not only far more complex than that of an ordinary human, but had the capacity for wholescale regeneration. This would only cause him more problems however, as the damaged or missing parts of his brain attempted to regenerate around the Nails. It was believed that this process would eventually cause him to lose all ability to control himself, and that he would become little more than a rabid animal as some of his legionaries would later demonstrate. At that point, is was almost certain that he would manage to get himself killed in one way or another.

Considering that later during the Horus Heresy, '''Menes Kalliston''' of the [[Thousand Sons]] was fairly certain that their [[psyker]]-medics could figure out how to remove them from [[Khârn|a certain swell guy]], it is possible that the Emperor - being the most intelligent person in the [[Imperium]] and the most powerful psyker ever - ''<u>could</u>'' have achieved it if He put some resources into it (especially since at least one AdMech replaced everything, including his brain with machine parts); or it's equally likely the Thousand Son space marine was just stalling because he had an insane psycho-killer moments away from killing him breathing down his neck. It is however, far more likely that the Nails implanted into the World Eaters were not so difficult to remove as Angron's would have been. Entire vital parts of Angron's brain had been removed and replaced with the crude cybernetics of the Nails, whereas the World Eaters' Nails were knockoffs which were simply added on to their existing brain tissue. Because of Angron's brain being a half-cybernetic mess, both the Emperor and Arkhan believed that the Nails were, ironically, the only reason Angron was still alive. If they were removed, Angron's brain would likely have simply ceased to function. Additionally, attempting to replace parts of a Primarch is almost certainly a borderline-impossible task, particularly if that part is a brain. The Primarchs were not just flesh and blood, but creatures of the warp incarnated by the Emperor's genecraft. Whatever the Emperor did to create them, He clearly could not just do it on a whim as He could with Custodes or Astartes. There were only ever 20 ([[Omegon|21]]) of them and even when two were erased from history mid-Crusade, they were not replaced. The Emperor also never seemed to consider the possibility of making more of them after the initial scattering when they were presumed dead, despite the massive blow that killing all 20 Primarchs would have dealt to his plans.

Regardless however, Arkhan described the Emperor as being "inhumanly toneless" when speaking of Angron, and as being "passionlessly interested" in the surgical nightmare that Angron had become. Whether this is due to Him genuinely not caring or simply being too far beyond Arkhan for His attitude to be understood properly is up for debate. Rather strangely, the Emperor appeared to have been unusually callous when it came to Angron in particular, as even Primarchs like Konrad Curze, Perturabo and Mortarion were shown at least ''some'' level of love and interest from Him. However Angron, for whatever reason, was disregarded almost entirely. Regarding this anomaly, it is worth noting that Angron was the only Primarch who did not end up ruling his native planet. The other Primarchs either conquered theirs or used their charisma and intelligence to work their way up the hierarchy of whatever planet they landed on (or both). Angron failed to do either, and was on the verge of being slaughtered along with his army when the Emperor came for him. Perhaps this failure is why the Emperor seemed so uniquely disinterested in him.

As it is, the Emperor was told that Angron would likely not see the the end of the crusade, and thus took the dumbest option available to Him: do nothing to mitigate the effects, do nothing to change how much Angron hated him, and throw him into warzones after giving him a massive force and assume that it would never come back to haunt him. Could He have saved Angron? Perhaps, should he have the occasion to put his entire undivided attention to it. But with Him busy with the demands of the Imperium, powering the [[Astronomican]] and trying to get the Human Webway online the Emperor seemingly did not want to sink the extra time and resources into saving one of His Primarchs.

===Great Crusade===
[[File:Preheresy-world-eaters.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Angron back when the Great Crusade was still a thing. Along with [[Kharn|that swell guy]] on his right and [[Lotara Sarrin|the angriest, most heterosexual woman in existence]] on his left.]]
{{Topquote|You kept that mule Kor Phaeron. Russ kept his kin-friends. The Lion kept Luther. Humans - brothers and foster fathers - saved and raised into Legion ranks. But not me. Not Angron, no. Did the Emperor teleport his gold-wrapped Custodians down to help me and my army? No. Did he free the War Hounds and order them to battle, fight alongside me? No. Did he save my brothers and sisters the way he spared the Lion’s closest kin? No, no, and no. No mercy for Angron. Angron the Oathbreaker. Angron the Betrayer.| Angron explains his anger towards the Emperor to Lorgar, during one of his more calm moments.}}

Either way, when Angron was introduced to his legion he was inconsolable. He ended up hacking apart the legion captains until Khârn (who was actually much further down the list of command, having risen up the ladder thanks to several of his superiors' untimely ends) managed to talk some sense into his father. Though bearing in mind the Emperor had already let [[Perturabo]] dispassionately decimate 10% of an ''entire legion'', Angron killing some captains in an emotional meltdown is small potatoes.

Anyway, [[Kharn]] successfully talks some sense into him, and Angron renamed his legion ''World Eaters'', a name you might recognize translates to ''fucking savage'' in the common tongue. Angron's old army of gladiators whom he'd led to freedom and been denied death alongside them was known as "the eaters of cities" on [[Nuceria]]. So, as Dreagher, a Terran-born War Hounds legionary who served as Captain of the Legion's 9th Company, described it: ''from then on, they would no longer be the War Hounds, but Angron's "eaters of worlds"''.

Angron then replicated the Butcher's Nails technology on his legionaries, despite the Empy's warnings and how much he hated the source of the Nails, his old masters - <s> which adds a little hypocritical spice to his complaints about how the Nails ruined his life, given that he did the same thing to other people for no fucking reason when given the chance. Perhaps Angron wanted his sons to feel the same pain he experienced since he would never be able to remove the goddamn thing from his brain and it pissed him off that his own flesh and blood did not suffer as he did.</s> More likely he was desperately trying to emulate his blood brothers and sisters in the pits since they were the only ones to give a shit (plus Lorgar). Even in spite of being the first legionary to GIT SOME, [[Kharn|that swell guy]] became Angron's 'cool headed' equerry. Ironic.

The Nails also negatively interacted with psykers, killing Librarians who tried to get them installed (blowing holes in spaceships and taking down entire squads of space marines in the process as their altered brain chemistry made it impossible for them to control their abilities anymore). Also merely being near a psyker made other Legionaries feel... ''uncomfortable'' (described as ''ticking'' by Kharn). Angron personally took this to eleven, hating psykers for the additional pain they brought - with the strange exception of Lorgar & the Emperor, who seemed not to trigger that effect. Still, the whole Butcher's Nails thing is actually quite tragic (could the fact that even being psykers caused pain to everyone implanted with the nails indicate that they were not just archeotech, but technology corrupted by Khorne who hates psykers? And even the daemon primarch still has them implanted...all the implications). In "Betrayer" Argel Tal asks Kharn why the World Eaters allowed themselves to be mutilated so, to which Kharn replies that they thought it would bring them closer to their father. Argel Tal continues asking if it worked, and Kharn sadly mutters to himself "no, it didn't". So, before Erebus made sure that Kharn would become the RAAAAAAGE train we know in 40k by killing Argel Tal (in the same novel), because - as Erebus put it - his damned humanity would have spared Kharn this fate (because becoming a berzerk psychopathic killer is so much more awesome than staying sane) he appears to be regretting this decision - at least at this point.
[[File:World Eaters.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Angron and his World Eaters, pre-heresy and pre-[[daemon prince]] in a rare state of tranquility standing on top of [[grimdark|a pile made of snow and dead bodies]]. It's hard to calm down when there's nails in your brain.]]

During the Great Crusade, the World Eaters were known as the Imperium's butcher force. Their arrival or even just the threat of their arrival in a system was enough to make non-compliant Imperial worlds surrender, lest they be completely and utterly be butchered by the Red Angel and his sons - which only made it easier for the World Eaters to butcher them. They were typically unleashed in situations where the Imperium really didn't care about collateral damage. For where the Space Wolves and Dark Angels, the other two extermination legions of the Imperium, could be controlled, the World Eaters simply could not be. Angron ordered his sons to complete every single conquest and compliance action in thirty-one hours, since he and his gladiator army had once destroyed an entire city on Nuceria in the same span of time. When and if they failed, he mocked them for being inadequate and ordered them to [[Perturabo|decimate themselves]], it apparently not having occurred to him that it's a little harder to take down an entire planet than it is one city, even if you are a Space Marine legion (remember, not the brightest of his brothers). Things were getting so bad that some of the World Eaters' senior officers were considering going to the Emperor for help, at least until the Nails became a thing and they stopped caring about anything beyond RIP AND TEAR. One of them even talked back to Angron on the subject, which caused him to RAEG the fuck out and start killing his own sons again until some of the Librarians knocked him out.

He also had a run in with [[Leman Russ]] at some point, just after the XII Legion started getting their brains Nailed. Russ came to Angron after having heard reports that the World Eaters were increasingly just bathing in blood, instead of bringing worlds to compliance. Angron wasn't as brain-damaged as he would be later, so he asked if Russ had come on order of the Emperor. Russ grudgingly had to admit he wasn't; this wasn't an execution ordered by the Emperor (yet) and he privately didn't want it to become one in the future. So he went on saying that implanting Angron's legionaries with the Nails had to stop and that they'd be brought to Terra so a way of removing them could be devised (so he basically told Angron to sort his shit out and stop mutilating his sons). But we all know how good Russ is with people and generally <s>just liked throwing his weight around</s>. In more seriousness, this is one of the cases where Russ really, genuinely wanted to help one of his brothers, having had his own bouts with [[rage|irresistible murderous intent]] to deal with. Additionally, it is heavily implied that the two missing Primarchs met their end at Russ's hands on orders from the Emperor. Russ was not a fan of his role as being the Emperor's personal Judge Dredd as would later be demonstrated by the fact that he pleaded Lorgar's case (of all people) to the Emperor when He was considering 86ing the Word Bearers. Russ's approach sadly [[fail|wasn't well thought out]]. Though to be fair Angron wasn't exactly diplomatic either, telling Russ that the Nails were the only thing that kept him going, that the EMPRA was just another slaver (and that bringing "compliance" to worlds was just a way of candycoating enslaving worlds which merely had wished to be left alone), and that without the Nails he might go to Big.E and chop "the slaving bastard's" head off. Ironically enough Angron had a solid point with the former argument, but the very suggestion of turning against Emps basically made Russ [[rage|lose what remained of his cool on the spot]] with the result one would expect.
[[File:Angron, lord of the locker room.jpg|thumb|right|A Remembrancer's sketch of the duel between Angron and Leman Russ.]]

There was a brief skirmish between the two Legions (an event which would come to be known as the "Night of the Wolf") where Angron fought Leman Russ in personal combat. [[Rape|He made him his personal bitch]] until he was outmaneuvered by the Space Wolves troops and surrounded, isolated from his World Eaters who were just like their father putting up one hell of a fight and hurt on the Wolves but being slowly separated and isolated from each other. Russ then tried to make his point a second time; that Angron's berserker rage made him and his Legion lose sight of the larger tactical and strategic objectives and that Russ had deliberately lured him into a position where he could be gunned down with a snap of Russ fingers. Angron refused to acknowledge his losing position since he was the one holding the weapon at his brother's throat and that killing EVERYONE should be the only objective anyway. Russ might be very well holding the proverbial gun to his temple, but it was only worth anything if he was willing to pull the trigger. Which at that point Russ wasn't, so Angron completely ignored him. Yet, surprisingly, Angron did not press his attack either and both Primarchs separated and went their own way. But, as time would show, the nails had a degrading effect on Angron's ability to hold back and remain coherent, so maybe that's your answer right there.

Angron was certain of his victory that day and didn't give the incident any more thought, the Nails stayed with him and his Legion. In the end, though, Leman Russ was right: Angron's failure to learn and control his murderous rage would be amply demonstrated and only become worse with time. At the tail end of the Great Crusade when he butchered a whole city which had just surrendered, on Isstvan III when he sabotaged Horus' clean [[Exterminatus]] by going down to rip the loyalists apart personally, and on Nuceria where he ordered every living being killed. But what’s truly sad is that Lorgar actually did seemingly succeed where Russ had failed in teaching the lesson of the Night of the Wolf years later. Weirdly, he did this by simply telling Angron in no uncertain terms that Russ had won and why, and for whatever reason Angron's previous retardation dawned on him this time. In the case of Lorgar's explanation, not being in the middle of a fight to the death (at least as far as Agron was concerned) probably helped with regard to Angron's perceptiveness (fewer MURDERMURDERKILLKILL impulses from the Nails). Additionally, on their way to Nuceria during Angron’s last weeks as a human, he actually seemed to be trying to open himself up a little more to his legion by joining them in watching pit fights and hanging out with them during feasts, all of which was rendered too little too late by what went down when they reached their destination.

===Horus Heresy===
[[File:Daemon-Angron HHST.png|400px|thumb|right|Angron during the [[Siege of Terra]], about to give the defenders a very bad day]]
When Horus decided to rebel, Angron was one of the initial Primarchs to join him, along with Fulgrim and Mortarion. Why is not particularly hard to guess; he already hated the Emperor's guts like practically no other Primarch (with the possible exception of Curze, though even he managed to come to terms before his death with his father), and considered the Crusade to be little better than a galaxy-spanning slavery endeavor. How this concern jives with him being one of the Crusade's most prominent butchers is somewhat strange but his brain probably resembled a scrambled egg more than anything else at this point.

On that note, Angron kicked off his contribution to the Heresy in a characteristically retarded fashion. When the firestorm on Isstvan died down, it became apparent that large numbers of Loyalists had survived. Said survivors immediately hit the vox-casters and began demanding answers/hurling insults up at the orbiting fleet, outraged and grief stricken that they had been betrayed by their own Primarchs. Horus disregarded this and prepared to initiate a second virus bombing. Angron however, was not quite so thick skinned. Hearing the howled insults of his own Loyalist World Eaters (which more than likely included some cutting one-liners and yo-dead-gladiator-crew jokes), Angron flew into a rage and deployed onto the planet his legion. When he learned of this, Horus was so furious that he seriously considered proceeding with the virus bombing regardless of Angron's presence planetside. However the Warmaster then took a few moments to collect himself and attempted to salvage the situation. If he backed Angron's ground assault, his troops would get some experience fighting other Astartes, and Angron would see that Horus was willing to give him freedoms that the Emperor had not. Sadly for Horus, Angron's decision ended up being one of the biggest mistakes of the heresy, as the Traitors ended up losing nearly half of their attacking force over a period of 3 months. To add insult to injury, Horus eventually decided that he was losing too many assets trying to break the Loyalists on the ground. So he had Angron physically wrestled back up into orbit (as Angron wouldn't leave any other way), and used his fleet to simply glass the entire planet's surface.

Angron was much more handy on Isstvan V, wreaking all sorts of carnage in the [[Dropsite Massacre]]. Ironically his presence there hardly mattered considering how thoroughly boned the Loyalists had been to begin with, but having one more supremely capable beat-stick to hit one's foes with is always nice. When Horus and the other Traitor Primarchs departed, Angron stayed behind to hunt down the surviving Raven Guard who'd escaped with Corax. Despite the Raven Guard's supreme sneakiness, they eventually ran out of places to run and hide, and Angron was only hours away from finding and butchering the lot of them. Fortunately for the beleaguered birds, a group of Raven Guard reserves rocked up from Deliverance and managed to rescue Corax and most of his men, leaving Angron behind and even more beside himself with fury than usual.

Lorgar then roped Angron into his Shadow Crusade, systematically butchering worlds across Ultramar to invoke the Ruinstorm. Initially, this was a campaign with mixed success: the two Legions nearly fought in the void before an Eldar fleet tried to destroy Angron, and the World Eaters wiped out several worlds which Lorgar had wanted to skip. The Word Bearers were nearly driven to despair by the World Eaters' degradation, and Lorgar began to worry that Angron couldn't see how he was degenerating - and there was only one way that could end. Still, Lorgar wanted to save Angron, although in his case "save" meant "transfigure into a daemon Primarch without asking". Angron was, according to Horus and Lorgar, the only Primarch besides Horus himself that could potentially be able to successfully take on Sanguinius in full rage mode (though Russ and The Lion would probably give them a run for their money if fighting to kill), which at that point was basically the only use Horus had for him. To do that, Lorgar led Angron back to his shitty home planet [[Nuceria]]. There, Angron returned to the site of his followers' final battle, now little more than an open-air graveyard filled with the bones of his compatriots. This caused Angron to fall into a deep depression, which only lasted until he had the misfortune to be told he had fled that final battle. Needless to say, hearing this caused him to go completely berserk, and he ordered his legion to slaughter every fucking thing on the planet faster than an [[Exterminatus|inquisitorial cyclonic torpedo bombardment]].

The arrival of Guilliman's forces delayed its inevitable doom for a little while, and Angron had an epic showdown with [[Roboute Guilliman]] when he helped [[Lorgar]] in fighting big boy blue. Guilliman called Angron out to which the Red Angel replied as follows:

<blockquote>''"What would you know of struggle, Perfect Son? When have you fought against the mutilation of your mind? When have you had to do anything more than tally compliances and polish your armour?" [...] "The people of your world named you Great One. The people of mine called me Slave. Which one of us landed on a paradise of civilization to be raised by a foster father, Roboute? Which one of us was given armies to lead after training in the halls of the Macraggian high-riders? Which one of us inherited a strong, cultured kingdom? And which one of us had to rise up against a kingdom with nothing but a horde of starving slaves? Which one of us was a child enslaved on a world of monsters, with his brain cut up by carving knives? Listen to your blue-clad wretches yelling of courage and honour, courage and honour, courage and honour. Do you even know the meaning of those words? Courage is fighting the kingdom which enslaves you, no matter that their armies outnumber yours by ten-thousand to one. You know nothing of courage. Honour is resisting a tyrant when all others suckle and grow fat on the hypocrisy he feeds them. You know nothing of honour."''</blockquote>

Guilliman ended up getting beaten so badly he had to crawl away on hands and knees (though to be fair to him he put up one hell of a fight, especially considering that half his face was missing), but not before throwing back a retort of his own:

<blockquote>''"You’re still a slave, Angron. Enslaved by your past, blind to the future. Too hateful to learn. Too spiteful to prosper."''</blockquote>

The irony is Angron was right all along about Emperor being a dick, as Roboute realized on Terra ten thousand years later. But in all seriousness, both of them had a point. True, Guilliman had it comparatively easy and could have turned out massively different had his life not been so cushy. But Angron's rage over ''his'' admittedly-shitty life, worsened by his unwillingness to move on from the loss of his old comrades or accept his Legion as being his new family and compounded further still by not even trying to rise above his upbringing, had consumed his soul and didn't exactly let him off the hook for turning his entire legion into murder machines despite constantly blaming the Butcher's Nails for ruining his life.

Additionally, Angron of all people attempting to lecture anyone about the concept of honor is hypocrisy of the highest form. Even Konrad Curze, arguably the most terrifyingly barbaric Primarch, had a logical reason behind his brutality before he completely lost his mind. Angron never had a reason for killing, and he never needed one. He spilt blood just for the sake of it, annihilating entire planetary systems simply for the lulz. Whatever honor Angron once might have had, he had tossed it aside long ago in the name of satiating his hatred. At the time of his confrontation with Guilliman, he was little more than a rabid dog; his brains in the final stages of degradation via the Nails. He was essentially already a Khorne devotee in all but name and aspect; the sick daemon form he would soon receive was just an aesthetic cherry on top.

What made it worse was that the Nails themselves, as it turned out, could actually be overcome. As demonstrated by Arrian Zorzi, a renegade WE Apothecary who threw his lot in with [[Fabius Bile]] and eventually became his 2nd in command of [[The Consortium (Warhammer 40,000|The Consortium]], and who likes (evil) gardening: a highly disciplined mind could control the aggression of the Nails. Which meant that, in yet another tragic twist of irony, Angron might have been able to save himself if he had simply not given over so completely to despair and spite. On the other hand, the cruder copy implanted in World Eaters legionnaires might be easier to overcome than the genuine article, and Zorzi is (so far) a unique case.

Furthermore, during their duel Guilliman shattered one of the skulls of Angron's rebel followers that he had carried with him (and whom he had promised to die alongside with... until the EMPRA abducted him. Angron himself said to Lorgar in "Betrayer" that he died on Nuceria), which obviously drove Angron to an entire new level of despair, allowing for Lorgar to capitalize on that emotion to fuel Angron's ascension into a daemon primarch. There were even 19 World Eater librarians, that had tried to prevent their primarch's ascension forming a gestalt warhound, pulling Angron's soul from one end, while Lorgar as well as some daemons pulled at it from the other, like children fighting over a doll. In the end, Lorgar - being the more powerful psyker - defeated the Librarians, and turned Angron into the Daemon Primarch we all know and love; his first act upon ascension was to immediately slaughter the Librarians. Guilliman ended up suffering a grievous wound, but escaped the planet, which was rendered devoid of all life by the World Eaters, and had its records erased by the Imperium of Man.

It should also be noted that one or two battles beforehand a Warhound Scout Titan tried to step on Lorgar after the Aurelian had taken two discharges of the the titan's main plasma weapon and was badly hurt (to the point of almost being mortally wounded) in the process. Angron stepped in to save his brother, catching the titan's foot and setting a new world record in squat weightlifting, keeping the titans weight suspended above himself through his sheer strength and RAGE, enabling Lorgar - who was almost dead at this point - to escape (meanwhile Ferrus Manus could punch THROUGH REAVERS and doubtless would have found this adorable). And this was after digging his way up through 200+ feet of solid debris, after being warned by WE Librarians he had been digging 'downwards', and with Lorgar teleporting from orbit to help excavating the XIIth Primarch (while Lorgar simultaneously destroyed several Ultramarine Thunderhawks with telekinetically hurled building debris which Angron had been buried under). Of course, after this the relationship between the two primarchs became pretty remarkable, and Lorgar ended up repaying the favor by arranging for Angron's ascension to daemonhood during their fight with Guilliman. At first Lorgar thought that Guilliman was ruining the "song" and finally understood that Guilliman had never hated or looked down on him until the Heresy (and the destruction of Calth) - actually distracting Lorgar for a moment as he realized that he had misunderstood his brother all along - At the end though, when Guilliman was about to gain the upper hand Angron emerged and engaged the XIII Primarch. At this very moment (topped off by Guilliman stepping on one of the aforementioned skulls) the "song" fell back in tune, and Lorgar could finish the incantation.

After this, the World Eaters ''somehow'' managed to get Angron back aboard his flagship, but were at a bit of a loss as to what to do with him afterwards. Obviously having a blood crazed Daemon Primarch living in one's basement was not exactly ideal even for the World Eaters. So initially they attempted to restrain Angron, but there was literally nothing they could do to keep him contained. Any cell block or restraining device they used on him he simply turned to scrap the instant it started annoying him. And yet, Angron never once actually attempted to leave the part of the ship in which he'd made his lair. He had developed crippling bipolar tendencies, and where his manic phase embodied the champion of raw murder we all know and love, his depressive phase was so utterly ''dead inside'' it makes [[Isha]] look cheery in comparison. He spent most of his free time cowering in a corner, calling out for the Emperor or just crying himself to sleep. This only made the World Eaters ''more'' terrified of him, as he could rampage through the ship at a moment's notice and they wouldn't be able to stop him. Only Kharn was able (or willing) to talk to Angron, and even Kharn knew he was risking death each time he did so; it would literally only depend on whether or not he caught Angron in a bad mood.

Kharn's conversations with Angron revealed yet another sad development for the Primarch, which was that becoming a daemon had caused him to develop a sort of dementia. He had to be verbally prodded by Kharn to remember certain places, people, and events, and Kharn was not always successful in doing so. Even his past as a gladiator or his adoptive father were hit-or-miss in terms of whether or not he could recall them. His entire sense of self had become lost to Khorne, and he swung from sapient being to bloodthirsty beast with seemingly no control over who he was as any given moment. He also became completely dependent on bloodshed to maintain his link to the mortal realm, and could only last a few weeks without planetary scale butchery to keep him tethered. As such, the World Eaters were forced to divert into any populated system they could find as they travelled towards Terra just to keep Angron in the material plane. He was also the only Daemon Primarch who, in yet another grim irony, never got any say in becoming a daemon- even [[Magnus the Red]] did not ascend before first rejecting the Emperor's offer of forgiveness. So he went from being a slave to the Nucerians, to being a slave to the Emperor, to being a slave to Khorne, forced to fight for all three without ever having any choice and now he could not even rebel. He's basically 40k's Butt-Monkey at this point. Angron's transformation into a Daemon also caused the World Eaters to develop an unmatched hatred for the Word Bearers for so thoroughly destroying their gene-father. Kharn in particular was furious about this in his comparatively lucid moments, as being the only person who Angron wouldn't immediately kill gave him front row seat to witness the completely broken, miserable monster Angron had ultimately become.

Shortly thereafter, Horus sent Perturabo to go collect Angron and his now completely degenerated legion for use at the Siege of Terra. As stated previously, the World Eaters had needed to stop every time they found a populated system in order to shed the blood necessary to keep Angron in the material realm. But they were getting too sidetracked in doing so, and Horus hadn't been able to talk them into hurrying up. Upon confronting the World Eaters, the Iron Warriors absolutely wrecked their maniacal brothers, ironically by doing the same sort of thing that the Space Wolves had so many years ago during the Night of the Wolf. Instead of allowing the World Eaters to engage them in close combat, the Iron Warriors initially shot only the daemons amongst the World Eaters, and then largely attempted to trap or disable the World Eaters where possible. The point was both to deny them combat, and thus power, and obviously to round them up for the Siege. Angron himself confronted Perturabo, and as with their respective legionnaires, Pert shoved Angron's shit in by simply having a brain. After getting blasted into pasta sauce by a group of Iron Warriors, Angron jumped into melee with Perturabo and heavily damaged his armor. Perturabo got in a decent counter-hit or two, but even with Forgebreaker in hand, he was ultimately no match for Angron in melee combat.

However, Perturabo had one weapon that Angron did not; the power of spiteful mockery (seems to be something of a weakness amongst the Daemon Primarchs; Mortarion got the same treatment later from the Khan, and Fulgrim from Rylanor). He repeatedly insulted Angron as being a weak, pitiful slave who had sold his strength out of despair, and had become ''weaker'' as a result. Of course, Angron hadn't actually chosen to become a daemon at all, but Perturabo clearly either didn't know or didn't care. The lack of slaughter (and possibly the insults) drained Angron of much of his power, allowing Perturabo and the Iron Circle to start shooting the shit out of him with (heavily implied to be) anti-Daemon rounds. The very first [[Obliterator]], Volk, then added a fusillade of his own to the mix. The assault of Perturabo and Volk, combined with the Iron Warriors having denied the World Eaters their tithe of blood, weakened Angron to the point where he could no longer fight. Perturabo took the opportunity to mock Angron a bit more, and then waltzed over to him and unceremoniously knocked him out with a single blow from Forgebreaker. After this, he collected his recalcitrant brother and his legion and packed them up to head for Terra. (The fact Perturabo accomplished all this while sustaining minimal casualties shows how impressive his track-record during the Great Crusade could've been if he actually gave a damn.)

===41st Millennium===
[[Image:Angrondemon.jpg|300px|thumb|Even in daemonhood, they ''still'' can't get the Nails out. Fucking Archeotech was built to ''last''!]]
Angron has done far more shit than all the other Daemon Primarchs put together. Instead of [[Fulgrim|sitting around being a painting on some Chaos God's wall]], [[Mortarion|sitting around while being a rotting fatass and feeling sorry for themselves]], [[Magnus the Red|sitting around and yelling just as planned anytime anything happens]], [[Lorgar|sitting around and preaching constantly]], [[Horus|being]] [[Alpharius|(Maybe)]] [[Konrad Curze|dead]], or [[Primarch#Two Missing Primarchs|being missing]]; Angron actually gets shit done and boy howdy when he [[rage|rages]] his way out of the eye of terror he makes sure that everyone knows about it...by tearing ''everything'' that gets in his way a new one until he finally gets thrown back into the warp by drowning in a quadrillion metric fucktons of [[Imperial Guard|Imperial Guardsmen]], [[Planetary Defense Force | Planetary Defense Force soldiers]], [[Space Marines|Spehss Mehreens]], [[Witch Hunters]], [[Sisters of Battle|Bolter Bitches]], [[Titan|Titans]], [[Stormtrooper|Inquisitorial Stormtroopers]], [[Daemonhunters]], and [[Grey Knights]], but to be fair, everyone kind of does that when the Imperium <strike>finishes the paperwork needed to</strike> retaliates.

This was of course before The Gathering Storm, whereupon Magnus personally attacked [[Fenris]] and laid waste to much of the planet and destroyed a lot of gene-seed, proving that [[Tzeentch]] can get shit done too. Then in 8th edition Mortarion waged [[Plague Wars]] against [[Ultramar]] and established the [[Scourge Stars]] systems in M42. Also it should be noted that Fulgrim has been free of that painting for a while now, but otherwise he still fits in the above category.

He also slaughtered his way throughout Imperial Space for over a century with 50,000 World Eater [[Khorne Berzerkers|Berzerker]]s and destroyed/maimed/killed/burned/broke the backs of/split open/fucked 70 sectors. However, in a subsequent Imperial offensive, Angron was banished to the warp and his men routed. This strike force comprised 2 Titan Legions, ''only'' 4 full Spess Mehreen chapters and over 30 Imperial Guard regiments to do that, so it's suffice to say that the counterattack put up quite a fight against the superior force. But to be fair, Angron's force was only comprised of close combat heavy infantry without ranged support or artillery.

Later on, he showed up with an even bigger force to attack Armageddon. The Imperium responded in kind, sending in one hundred [[Grey Knights|Grey Knight Terminators]], and all but ten of them died fighting Angron and his Bloodthirster posse(and only because their prodigy Librarian Hyperion managed to shatter his sword, and he STILL managed to murder their leader with just his bare fists). He is armed with a really huge fucking chainaxe that's taller than him with chainswords for the chainteeth of the chainaxe. He's also got a storm bolter, but we wouldn't be surprised if that fired chainswords as well. Fittingly enough, it was called 'Godtearer'.

Strangely, as seen in the picture above, he also still has the Butchers Nails stuck in his head. This should be completely impossible as Angron technically speaking doesn't have a body anymore (he's 100% warp energy now), and the Nails are technological in nature. He's also been blasted into paste on numerous occasions and forcibly dematerialized into the warp on a number of others, which means that the Nails seemingly regenerate along with the rest of him. The most likely explanation is that, as a daemon, he is at least partially shaped by the mortal perception of him, and the Nails are a big part of his story to anyone with high enough clearance to know his name. If that is true, then he actually is finally free of the Nails and the wires and bits poking out of his skull are just his way of making sure no one confuses him with [[Doombreed]] or something.

He also wrote something called the '''Clotted Scrolls''' somewhere along the line, though precisely what wisdom he wrote (probably in blood) in there is unknown (maybe methods on how to [[rip and tear]] more effectively?).

==In video games==

Unfortunately, he has appeared in only one of the official games, which greatly displeases [[Khorne]]. However, in the Ultimate Apocalypse mod for [[Dawn of War]], he takes the place of the Chaos Daemons' "game-ending win button" unit - and he's a walking rapetrain that can [[Awesome|obliterate buildings with a single hit, take out Titans in three, make himself invincible, and summon a retinue of Bloodthirsters]]. He can also be almost unkillable by exploiting a bug which lets him instantly refill his morale, which gives him disturbingly fast health regeneration. Too bad you'll almost never use him. He costs so many relic points in an army that consumes them like candy that, if you can spare the points and time to conjure him, chances are you're already winning so badly you don't actually need him. Seriously, for the same number of points it takes to conjure Angron you could just build 5-6 Helldrakes or an equal amount of Bloodthirsters, and keep in mind Chaos Daemons need the same resource for anything greater than lesser Daemons. If you're not spending them on other units you need ''right now'' then you can just overwhelm them with what you already have. Essentially the definition of "awesome but impractical", but sweet jesus is it truly awesome to watch.

Angron shows up in the Horus Heresy:Legions card game, being one of the best warlords, and in keeping with his character he has to attack every turn.

==On the tabletop==

===Horus Heresy===
====1E====
{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Angron:''' || 400 || 9 || 5 || 7 || 6 || 5 || 7 || 6 || 10 || 3+/4++
|}
[[File:Angaron.jpg|300px|right|thumb|WHY IS HE BEATING UP HIS OWN LEGION said everyone on Istvaan III. Proof that Angron was actually a Loyalist Primarch. Don't believe the Chaos lies!]]
Obviously one of the strongest Primarchs in the game when it comes to close combat, aside from his stats Angron has a 3+ armor (weak for a demigod), 4+ invulnerable, FNP (the full rule since the 02/11/2019 errata) the Primarch rule and Hatred, so he gets to re-roll to-hit rolls on the first turn of any combat, while also having Armourbane and dealing Instant Death on to wound roll of 6, in case S8-9 doesn't instagib anything right away. Thanks to the Butcher's Nails he will gain 1 bonus attack (up to 10) for every Independent Character or Infantry unit he kills/destroys in close combat (But he must be the one to give the fatal blow/remove the last model to pick up this bonus) and he can also challenge as many times as there are Independent Characters and units in combat with him thanks to the Red Sands rule, assuring he will at least pick up some extra attacks during the course of the game.

The obvious downsides are that, aside from butchering things in melee, Angron cannot do anything: he doesn't buff his army in any way aside 12" aura of Fearless, while other Primarchs bestow significant buffs to their armies, and of course he is one of the (if not THE) most fragile of the Primarchs, having only 5 wounds and 3+/4++. Having FNP 5+ doesn't fully compensate against mass fire but makes him actually more resilient than most of his brothers against AP2 attacks. So all in all he's much like Kharn on steroids: you reach melee - you're king, you get your transport blown up and then get kited across the table - you're fucked. The other problem he shares with Kharn is that he tends to annihilate anything he charges in one phase either through sweeping advance or just by killing everyone outright, which leaves him vulnerable to enemy fire afterwards.

Honestly, he's not worth it. Between his fragility, low mobility, and lack of army bonuses, he's a tricky Primarch to use. Unfortunate considering his badass fluff.

====2E====
{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || M || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Angron:''' || 450 || 8 || 8 || 5 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 10 || 2+/4++
|}

While he's taken a few hits statwise, Angron remains just as indescribably angry in the new HH, especially now that he has a proper 2+/4++ save like the other primarchs. on top of everything the Primarch rule provides, he also gets Hatred (Everything), Rampage (2) and Furious Charge (2) so his charges can be even more devastating. With both Gorefather and Gorechild being AP2 with Shred, Armorbane and Murderous Strike (3+), he can reduce plenty into paste. The Butcher's Nails rule got changed to now provide extra attacks on EVERY turn now, meaning that every turn he's on the field he becomes even more dangerous, especially when he's into all these challenges thanks to the Red Sands rule.

But as before, killing is all he can do. His Warlord Trait gives everyone Feel No Pain (6+), which is only okay, and Adamantium Mind (3+), which will only see limited use considering how few psykers are on the field. The most helpful part of this is the free reaction you can take at any phase each turn. He also has rather limited defense, as despite his 2+/4++ save, he will always be hit in melee as if he has a WS of 3, which is particularly devastating when against a praetor with a power axe.

===40k===
====Older Editions====
{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Angron:''' || 500 || 10 || 6 || 7 || 6 || 5 || 6 || 6 || 10 || 3+/4++
|}

He had stats from an old issue of [[White Dwarf]], and though they might seem disappointing, especially in comparison to his Primarch form (it's barely an upgrade), his stats alone don't tell you everything.

For starters, he has additional rules such as Furious Charge (to make him S8), he has Iron Hide (keeping his power armour save), the Roar of Hate rule to reduce the Leadership of enemies by 1, and his Daemon rule made his Invuln as strong as when he relied on armour. The real boost to him however is the fact that he's a Flying Monstrous Creature now (although in the edition he came out it just gave him 12" movement instead), effectively keeping his Armourbane and AP2, and it fixes his movement issue.

The real boost to his old self is his weapon, Angron's Black Blade, and with it in hand it's no wonder Gorefather and Gorechild became hand-me-downs. This is a Master-crafted weapon that gives all of his attacks the Instant Death rule. All this combined he makes [[Abaddon]] the Despoiler and [[Mephiston]] look like total pussies, but you have to get him a bodyguard of at least 2-12 [[Bloodthirster|bloodthirsters]], which effectively racks up his point cost to over 1300 at the least, but there's nothing in the game that survive a charge from him and his bodyguards.

====9th Edition====
[[File:AngronDaemonPrimarch.jpg|300px|right|thumb|WHAT THE WARP DO YOU MEAN GUILLIMAN'S ALIVE?!]]

It's happening people: the galaxy's angriest man is at long last getting a proper model of his Daemon Primarch form and rules in the upcoming World Eaters codex, and he hasn't skipped wing day once since the 31st Millennia. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD, BOYS AND GIRLS!

==Angron VS other Primarchs:==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
Primarch fighting, while fun to see, isn't a very competitive thing to do as it'll usually tie up both Primarchs for the entire game without either of them dying (But with Angron this is less likely as you're going to die or kill fast!), with that in mind this section is about how Angron fares against other Primarchs Mathhammer wise. Please note that all the various abilities are taken into accounts when possible and the match-ups assume the Primarchs are the only ones involved in the fighting, so various abilities like Angron's "The Butcher's Nails" and Rampage do not provide any bonuses. The fights are supposed to be in a vacuum for simplicity (So no Furious Charge for our hero...), but notes are added to make things clearer in particular instances. Also all of the Primarchs use their most powerful weapons (because why have a contest if you don't do your best?)
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

* Angron VS Horus
**Horus turn 1 & 2: hits 3 times, wounds 2.667 times, 0.888 after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.555 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Horus (with Angron wounded twice): hits 3.999 times, wounds 3.555 times, causes 1.185 wounds after saves & FNP, taken to 0.851 with IWND at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 1.48 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.148.
**Angron Wounded: hits 3 times, wounds 1.999 times, 0.666 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Despite a good showing in the first round; when factoring in Disabling Strike the whole thing becomes academic; Horus overtakes Angron in damage capacity after one wound (<2 turns) and quickly beats Angron to a pulp as Angron continues to flail feebly.

* Angron vs Fulgrim
**Fulgrim hits 3.5 times, wounds 2.333 times (2.722 times if his warlord trait is Child of Terra), 1.166 (1.361) times after saves, 0.971 (1.134) after Feel No Pain (remember that half of the attacks that wound cause Instant Death) and IWND will take that down to 0.638 (0.801) wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 1.48 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.148.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.111 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**A really close fight: Angron does marginally more damage if Fulgrim doesn't chose Child of Terra as his Warlord Trait. With Child of Terra it becomes a battle of attrition that Angron will eventually lose. If Angron gets blinded at any point due to Fulgrim's Gilded Panoply it puts him at a disadvantage he likely wont recover from.

* Angron VS Ferrus
**Ferrus hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 0.694 times after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.361 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.185 after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.852.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 0.889 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.556 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Thanks to his upgraded Feel No Pain, Angron can tank more than Ferrus can, resulting in a win.

* Angron VS Konrad Curze
**Curze hits 3 times, wounds 2.25 times, 0.750 wounds after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 2.222 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.889.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron easily wins, doing a lot more damage and receiving less in turn.
**Note: Curze can Hit & Run, but by doing so he would only gain one more attack, while allowing Angron to reset his Hatred, thus actually making himself die even faster. However he would be a much better fight: Konrad on the Charge would do 2.625 wounds (0.875 with ID) which become 1.168, plus 0.1389 for HoW and 0,359 for the Widowmakers, for a total of 1,666 wounds, or 1.333 after IWND. This, thanks to the -1 wound of Angron, actually means that they would kill each other on the fifth assault, at the same initiative step. Provided that Konrad always succeed in his escape, that is.

* Angron VS Vulkan
**Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 wounds after saves (ID Negates FNP) and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.185 after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.63.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 0.889 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Vulkan wins. If Angron has the first turn of combat, Vulkan's legendary endurance nearly fails him by the 8th combat, possibly resulting in an Angron win (5.741). However Vulkan is as likely to kill him in the 7th combat (4.833), and if not has a 83.3% chance of Concussing to swing first for 5.333 wounds in the 8th combat.

* Angron vs Mortarion
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 times after saves (no FNP due to Instant Death) and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.777 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.222.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 1.333 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion loses. Despite having the same reroll on IWND and doing the same damage per turn as Vulkan; even with one extra wound Mortarion's poorer save allows Angron to take him down more quickly.

* Angron VS Lorgar
**Lorgar hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 0.694 after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that to 0.361 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 4 times, wounds 3.111 times, 1.555 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.222.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron wins pretty easily.
**Note: against Lorgar Transfigured with Precognition Lorgar wins (Not as easily as the old version, but is still a monster).

*Angron VS Perturabo
**Perturabo hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.555 wounds after saves and FNP, then IWND will take that down to 0.222 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 1.48 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.148.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.111 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron wins.
**Note: in the turn after Perturabo actually wounds Angron (69% per round) he will most probably be blinded and then hammered to death. So if he can't kill him before that he is actually dead meat.

* Angron VS Alpharius
**Alpharius hits 2.917 times, wounds 1.7 times, 0.85 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.517 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 2.222 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.889.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**As with Vulkan, Angron can't use FNP in this fight due to the Pale Spear's Instant Death, but he still easily takes the win.

* Angron VS Rogal Dorn
**Dorn hits 2 times, wounds 1.5 times, 0.499 wounds after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.167 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Dorn (Sundering Blow) hits once, wounds 0.972 times, 0.486 wounds after saves (No FNP due to Instant Death), taken to 0.152 at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.777 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.444.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 2.667 times, 1.333 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**This is probably Angron's easiest fight.
**Note: Sundering Blow cancels out Feel No Pain so it was worth calculating. Turns out it makes no difference here; Dorn has too few attacks to make a difference either way.

* Angron VS Corvus Corax
**Corvus hits 4 times (Scourge)/3 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 3 times (Scourge)/2.25 times (Shadow-walk), 0.999 wounds (Scourge)/0.750 wounds (Shadow-walk) after saves and FNP and IWND will take that down to 0.666/0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333/4.5 times, wounds 4.444/3.75 times, 2.963/2.5 after saves, and IWND take it down to 2.63/2.167.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4/3 times, wounds 3.333/2.5 times, 2.222/1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.889/1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron wins really easily as Corax is simply too frail for him.
**Note: differently from Curze, Corax would actually have the edge on the charge thanks to his Sire of the Raven Guard rule and his Hammer of Wrath/dual Archeotech Pistols. Also in a turn in which blind goes off he could have the advantage of Shadow-walk and scourge at the same times (plus more, 'cause he would hit on 3s). A tough fight, but more on his style and it could make him win in extremis.

* Angron VS Roboute Guilliman
**Angron Round 1: Angron has Hatred, so on the first turn he will hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 2.222 after saves, 1.972 after Armour of Reason re-roll and IWND take it down to 1.639.
**Angron Round 2: Angron hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves, 1.417 after re-roll and IWND will take that down to 1.084 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 3 and thereafter: Angron hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times, 1.25 after saves and 1 after re-roll. Then IWND take it down to 0.667.
**Guilliman Round 1/2/3: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.222 times, 0.741 times after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.407 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 4 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.963 times, 0.987 times after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.654 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Unsurprisingly, Guilliman loses this fight.

*Angron vs Magnus
**Angron first round: hits 4.5 times, wounds 3.75 times and 1.875 after saves which IWND will take down to 1.542 at the start of next turn
**Angron second round: hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times and 1.25 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.917 at the start of next turn
**Magnus: hits twice, wounds 1.667 times, reducing to 0.557 after saves & FNP. Then IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
**Magnus (using Force): hits twice, wounds 1.667, reduces to 0.834 after saves. IWND brings this to 0.5 at the start of the next turn.
**Psychic powers normally don't get included in the PvP breakdowns, but Magnus is the only one with a Force Weapon so it was worth mentioning. Either way you look at it, Magnus loses this one pretty badly. Things would obviously be different if other powers were included.
**As with psychic powers in general in 30k, this fight is really swingy based on what powers Magnus takes. If he can roll Iron arm and Warp speed with a power left to generate then he could take Prescience to actually gain a decent chance of winning. At the same time he could also have a tough time in power generation and get squished.

*Angron VS Leman Russ
**Angron Round 1: Angron has Hatred and is hitting on a 5+, so he hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.778 times, invul save brings it down to 1.389 and IWND brings it to 1.056 wounds.
**Angron Round 2 and on: Angron is hitting on 5s, so hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, saves brings it down to .833 and IWND brings it 0.5
**Leman hits Angron 3.214 times, wounds 2.678 times, save brings it down to 1.339, FNP brings it 0.892 and IWND brings it down 0.559
**As expected Angron loses this fight. Angron puts up a reasonable fight but the wolf king is just much for him.
**TLDR: Without the Sword of Balelight, the fight is very close. Sword of Balelight is pretty busted.

* Angron VS Jaghatai
**Jaghatai (on Bike) hits 4 times, wounds 2 times, 1 wounds after saves and FNP will take that down to 0.666 and IWND will take that down to 0.333
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.185 wounds after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.852 at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 0.888 wounds after saves, IWND will take that down to 0.556 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angrons wins, and if Jaghatai uses hit-and-run he'll get destroyed even faster.

* Angron vs Sanguinius
**Sanguinius charging: hits 4 times (3.5 times with Blade Encarmine), wounds 3.999 times (double wounds taken into account) (3.111 with Encarmine), becomes 1.999 (1.037 with Encarmine & FNP) after saves
***Sanguinius Hammer of Wrath: 1 autohit, wounds 0.833 times, becomes 0.277 after saves and FNP.
***Total combined damage on charge 2.276 (1.314), taken to 1.944 (0.981) next turn with IWND
**Sanguinius thereafter: hits 3.5 times (3 times with Blade Encarmine), wounds 2.333 times (double wounds taken into account)(2.666 with Encarmine), taken to 1.166 after saves (0.888 with Encarmine + FNP), taken to 0.8333 (0.555) next turn with IWND
**Angron Round 1: hits 4.5 times, wounds 3.75 times, becomes 1.875 after saves (0.938 if Sanguinius charged). IWND takes it to 1.54 (0.604) next turn
**Angron thereafter: hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times, becomes 1.25 after saves and IWND takes it to 0.917 next turn
***There is a lot going on with this fight depending on what Sanguinius is doing. With the Spear of Telesto, from a standing start or if Angron charges there is a mutual kill by about the fifth bout of combat. If Sanguinius can get the charge he wins.
***With the Blade Encarmine there is a close mutual kill if Sanguinius charges, but Angron wins from a standing start or if he charges. Feel No Pain really makes the difference.

* TLDR version: Despite being mocked for ''only'' having 3+/4++ in saves and fewer wounds than everyone but Lorgar (or Corax on a bad day), Angron is surprisingly resilient thanks to his FNP(5+). He will outpace most opponents thanks to his high number of attacks and good WS, so those who can't match his output turn-for-turn can only hope to outlast him. Angron is pretty vulnerable to Strikedown, Concussive, Blind, and basically any rule which reduces his ability to hit things ''(eg: Horus & Russ)'', all of which will severely cripple his overall damage potential. Keep in mind, as mentioned above, this is without any benefits from his The Butcher's Nails rule. With his attacks maxed out he can destroy almost any other Primarch (even Lorgar with Precognition, though it is damn close) with the exception of a few like Russ and...yeah, you guessed it right: Horus! Although he will surely put a dent even in the Warmaster.

In case you're wondering, Angron's mortal form defeats his Daemon form, mainly because his Daemon form was made before IWND became a thing.
</div></div>

==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:Past-Angron.jpg| Doomguy called he wants his training uniform back, and he wants your head with it.
File:Angron.jpg|Can [[Anime|Vegeta]] say what his power level is?
File:Angron Butchers Nails.jpg|Angron before Daemonhood. The only real difference is a lack of wings.
File:Aerion's Angron.jpg|Angron portrayed in his natural state: PISSED THE FUCK OFF ABOUT EVERYTHING!
File:Angron by alexboca-d7930i6.jpg|Angron just generally being a boss (and looking absolutely goddamn awesome while doing so). And you call the epic ness that he wears "3+" greatly displeases khorne and teh emprah
File:angron_is_for_angry_by_sunradio-d6oferw.jpg|Daemon Primarch Angron at the final battle of the First war of Armageddon.
File:Happy angron.jpg|Angron can be happy too...
</gallery>

==See Also==
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKPVNaKvODw&t=0s| They hit him with a truck!]

{{Primarchs}}
{{Daemons-Characters}}

[[category:Chaos]]

Angron

2022-08-02T13:32:55Z

2603:8001:6901:2586:C417:50F8:72D8:5DA8: /* Horus Heresy */

{{heresy}}
{{Cleanup}}
[[File:AngronArtPortrait.jpg|400px|right|thumb|Rare portrait of Angron. Strangely looking like he is holding in a giant fart.]]
{{Topquote|I-I am going to be a storm-a flame-<br>I need to fight whole armies alone;<br>I have ten hearts; I have a hundred arms;<br>I feel too strong to war with mortals-<br>[[Rip and tear|BRING ME GIANTS]]!|Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac}}
{{Topquote|I was born in blood, raised in darkness and I shall die free!|Angron, to the Nucerian High Riders and their armies}}
{{Topquote|‘I think... when one has been angry for a very long time one gets used to it. And it becomes comfortable, like... like old leather. And finally... it becomes so familiar that one can't ever remember feeling any other way.’|Captain Jean-Luc Picard, on a man who hated because he would not let himself grieve}}

His name is Angron (A.K.A. '''The Red Angel''', '''The Slave of Nuceria''', '''Lord of the Red Sands''', '''The Eater of Worlds''', '''The Gladiator King''', '''The Prince of Blood''', '''Broken One''' if you're Argel Tal, '''Angry Ron''', '''40Kratos''', '''Shithead''' if you're sergeant Gharte, '''the walking abortion''' [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLYiL_jYPPw if you are Majorkill] '''That Goddamn Retard''' if you're [[Leman Russ]]). Cmon, do we really have to spell it out? While his name <s>may be</s> is clearly a play on the word "Anger", it is possible that his name is based on the Greek word ''Agrion'' which means "Wild" or even ''Agron'', the Gallic word for "slaughter" (Which pretty much suits him considering he's the angriest, wildest, mother-fucking mother fucker in a long and extensive history of bipedal mother fuckers). Also, if you spell his name backwards it's Norgna, which has to count for something. Apparently the inspiration for his name was a corruption of the nickname a bouncer in Nottingham has: Angry Ron.
What we're trying to say is, Angron just might be the angriest and the most talented in manly face-to-face fighting son of a bitch in the galaxy. In fact, one time he was so angry about being angry all the time, that the part of him that made him angry exploded in his head, rendering him permanently angry (and also sexually impotent, but don't let him know that). And then there was that time he was kidnapped by the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emprah]], which didn't help his temper much, and gave him an excuse to fucking RAGE at his dad by joining up with [[Khorne]], Warhammer's God of Battle, War and [[Rage|RAAAAAAAAAAGE]]! Angron just so happens to be [[Primarch]] of the [[World eaters|World Eaters]] and [[Kharn|that swell guy]].

His revered exploits include slaughtering the entire population of a planet within a night; killing an entire contingent of Eldar warriors led by a Farseer when he was only a child; and leading a gladiator rebellion against their slavers and slaughtering 25 other armies sent against them, non-stop, until a huge one made up of seven armies came and fucked their shit up against a dirty rock <del>proving that a seven nation army could hold him back</del>. The Emperor saved him from dying there (but left all his buddies to die), which was a tremendous blow to his martial pride and among other things, eventually led him to [[Rage|RAAAAAAAAAAGE]] furiously against the Emperor, believing him a coward devoid of honor. Angron went on to become one of the first Primarchs to side with Horus during the heresy, and was turned into a monstrous, frothing demon-prince by his brother Lorgar. Eventually, Angron joined up with KHORNE, the aforementioned God of War, Murder, Killing, Bloodshed, Weeping Buttholes, Battle and [[Rage|RAAAAAAAAAAGE]].

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNkRBowsAmI Here is the theme song of this glorious bastard.]

==History==
===Early Life===
[[File:Past-Angron-art.jpg|300px|right|thumb|You'd be pissed off too if your dad didn't let you avenge your dog.]]
Angron has good reason to be ever-so-slightly miffed: his early life was one big bowl of shit after another. First he crash-landed on his new home [[Nuceria|world]] (because Khorne didn't give him a soft landing) and had a good chunk of his head torn off in the crash, after which he got jumped by the aforementioned Eldar, then (tired from the killing and the massive brain trauma --keep in mind he was like 6 hours old) got captured and sold into slavery by people with near-Imperial level technology before making him fight as a gladiator for their entertainment. He also appears to have been either the least intelligent of his brothers, or else that head injury he took while crashing did a number on his intellect. For Angron attempted to escape from his captors numerous times even before his implantation with the Nails but somehow was recaptured each time. Remember, these guys were just baseline humans with no outstanding tech aside from a few odds and ends like the Nails. Also keep in mind that more than a few of these attempts occurred when he was fully mature, and thus should have been leagues beyond what even a Custodes would be capable of in terms of physical and mental prowess. The fact that he somehow managed to ''fail'' in repeatedly attempting to escape from a bunch of normal humans is actually far more unbelievable than if he had succeeded.

A later retcon revealed he was a decent guy who loved his fellow gladiators, but after an incident where he refused to kill his adoptive father in the arenas, his masters proceeded to replace part of his brain with ARCHAEOTECH SHIT (originally this happened before he fully grew up) that drove him so mad that he murdered his dad regardless, cueing a massive bout of despair. The stuff they stuck in his head would later be called ''"The Butcher's Nails"'', and, though never fully understood (even after the Emprah's best techs took a look), they constantly applied pain to his brain and made it so the only time he could feel anything resembling happiness was while murdering shit. It should also be noted that they go from excruciating to normal, and ''do not'' [[Slaanesh|deal with the pleasure centers of the brain.]] In other words, this pertains to actual negative reinforcement in classical conditioning.

After years of being a slave, fighting through the gladiator pits and becoming the best of them, Angron eventually set up and led a rebellion, fighting to free his brother and sister gladiators. This would make him 40k's answer to Spartacus, the same way Curze is 40k Batman. He and the gladiators terrorized the planet's population for a while, burning down cities and generally making a mess of things. However, due undoubtedly in no small part to the Nails (and the high probability that Angron was a bit of an idiot anyway), he didn't attack the Nucerian ruling classes with anything approaching a coherent strategy. There was seemingly no plan, only wanton destruction. As a result, the rulers of the various parts of the planet sent their militaries to gang up on Angron's comparatively ragtag group of about 2000 and after a few years, Angron's force had been reduced to half and was surrounded by at least seven full scale armies. So he and his buddies were completely screwed, making Angron the only Primarch who failed to conquer his home planet, something that his Legion would end up being more than a little embarrassed by.

Around that time, the Emperor showed up, and hashed out a deal with the local planetary government in order to expedite Angron's capture and win over the planet without any further bloodshed, because there was no point in the Emperor helping his son win a (totally justified) war against a population that had already submitted to compliance. Of course, this deal required the Emperor to take Angron away from the only people who weren't shitty to him and leaving them all to die; but Big E didn't give a rat's ass about those fuckers (and they were all summarily executed, as you would expect in a slave rebellion). Naturally, he didn't tell Angron any of this, because <s>he couldn't give less of a shit</s> [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden]] wanted to make the Emperor look like an ass again. Daddy issues don't make for bad writing by themselves, but said good writing is harder to write without nuance and depth. Of course, the Emperor could have saved them all or simply kill the local slavers who were, despite compliance, flying in the face of the law of the Great Crusade, give Angron the planet as a recruiting world and take the slaves to his ship to be made into a loyal ass-wrecking rapetrain of AWESOME alongside all the Terran legionnaires. Buuuut we need our dose of our [[Edgy]] [[Grimdark]] here, right?

So long story short, the Emperor told Angron he was coming along on the Great Crusade, Angron told him that he would rather die alongside his fellow gladiators, and the Emperor beamed him up onto his ship and left all the other gladiators to die. On the ship, Angron completely lost his shit and started attacking everything around him, managing to kill one of the Custodes before Big E force gripped him into submission and basically told him to get over himself(AD-B, seriously fuck you). After this, Angron was apparently taken back to Terra to be examined by the Emperor and his best tech adepts in the hope of finding a way to fix Angron's mutilated brain.

Back on [[Terra]], the Big E summoned [[Arkhan Land]] to his labs and showed Angron spread out with his skull hacked open & brain exposed on a surgery table, taking a good look at Angron's fucked-up skull and decided that he was a waste of time and effort, and arrived at the conclusion that even trying to remove them would likely kill him (reference "Betrayer"). The Mechanicus estimated that he wouldn't live long enough to see the end of the Great Crusade.

It is during this procedure that it is revealed just how completely the Nails destroyed Angron, and how thoroughly tortured he would be for the rest of his existence. According to the Emperor in conversation with Arkhan;

<blockquote>''"With the alterations made to the limbic lobe and insular cortex, the surgeons have impaired the Twelfth’s ability to regulate any emotion at all. Furthermore, they have rethreaded its capacity to take pleasure in anything but the sensation of anger. They are the only chemicals and electrical signals that flow freely through, and from, its brain. All else is either dulled to nothingness or rewired to inspire a supreme degree of agony. It is a testament to the durability of my primarch project that the Twelfth has managed to survive this long.

''"His own emotions cause him pain?"''

''"No, Arkhan. Everything. Everything causes it pain. Thinking. Feeling. Breathing. The only respite it has is in the rewired neurological pleasure it receives from the chemicals of anger and aggression."''</blockquote>

Aaand it gets worse. The Emperor then reveals a few moments later that Angron's limbic and insular lobes had been straight up removed and replaced with parts of the Nails. This essentially meant that Angron would not have been capable of feeling empathy or compassion, and it would have completely restructured his ability to link behaviors to outcomes (ie this behavior makes me feel good vs this behavior makes me feel bad). Even his sense of self awareness and IQ would have been affected, which would go far in explaining quite a lot of straight up retarded crap he would go on to do. So essentially the slave masters of Nuceria took away his compassion, his empathy, his emotional control, his intelligence, and his ability to learn or feel anything pleasant outside of aggression. Oh, and left him in constant agony whenever he wasn't angry. Scratch the Emperor being a dick for not removing the Nails, He was more of a dick for not just putting Angron down then and there (though the fact He refers to Angron only as "Twelfth" and "it" is shown the Emprah is not too hot on compassion, at least as far as Angron seems to be concerned). The most tragic part of it all was that apparently Angron was quite the bro-tier Primarch before the Nails were implanted. He even had the ability to empathically soothe the pain of others by taking it upon himself (almost certainly some latent psychic ability), and he very often did just that for his fellow slaves. So on top of everything else, the Nails completely destroyed Angron's personality, taking him from a potentially Vulkan level nice guy and lowering him to Perturabo levels of barbarity. To top it all off, the Nails had been designed for use on baseline humans. As a Primarch, Angron's brain was not only far more complex than that of an ordinary human, but had the capacity for wholescale regeneration. This would only cause him more problems however, as the damaged or missing parts of his brain attempted to regenerate around the Nails. It was believed that this process would eventually cause him to lose all ability to control himself, and that he would become little more than a rabid animal as some of his legionaries would later demonstrate. At that point, is was almost certain that he would manage to get himself killed in one way or another.

Considering that later during the Horus Heresy, '''Menes Kalliston''' of the [[Thousand Sons]] was fairly certain that their [[psyker]]-medics could figure out how to remove them from [[Khârn|a certain swell guy]], it is possible that the Emperor - being the most intelligent person in the [[Imperium]] and the most powerful psyker ever - ''<u>could</u>'' have achieved it if He put some resources into it (especially since at least one AdMech replaced everything, including his brain with machine parts); or it's equally likely the Thousand Son space marine was just stalling because he had an insane psycho-killer moments away from killing him breathing down his neck. It is however, far more likely that the Nails implanted into the World Eaters were not so difficult to remove as Angron's would have been. Entire vital parts of Angron's brain had been removed and replaced with the crude cybernetics of the Nails, whereas the World Eaters' Nails were knockoffs which were simply added on to their existing brain tissue. Because of Angron's brain being a half-cybernetic mess, both the Emperor and Arkhan believed that the Nails were, ironically, the only reason Angron was still alive. If they were removed, Angron's brain would likely have simply ceased to function. Additionally, attempting to replace parts of a Primarch is almost certainly a borderline-impossible task, particularly if that part is a brain. The Primarchs were not just flesh and blood, but creatures of the warp incarnated by the Emperor's genecraft. Whatever the Emperor did to create them, He clearly could not just do it on a whim as He could with Custodes or Astartes. There were only ever 20 ([[Omegon|21]]) of them and even when two were erased from history mid-Crusade, they were not replaced. The Emperor also never seemed to consider the possibility of making more of them after the initial scattering when they were presumed dead, despite the massive blow that killing all 20 Primarchs would have dealt to his plans.

Regardless however, Arkhan described the Emperor as being "inhumanly toneless" when speaking of Angron, and as being "passionlessly interested" in the surgical nightmare that Angron had become. Whether this is due to Him genuinely not caring or simply being too far beyond Arkhan for His attitude to be understood properly is up for debate. Rather strangely, the Emperor appeared to have been unusually callous when it came to Angron in particular, as even Primarchs like Konrad Curze, Perturabo and Mortarion were shown at least ''some'' level of love and interest from Him. However Angron, for whatever reason, was disregarded almost entirely. Regarding this anomaly, it is worth noting that Angron was the only Primarch who did not end up ruling his native planet. The other Primarchs either conquered theirs or used their charisma and intelligence to work their way up the hierarchy of whatever planet they landed on (or both). Angron failed to do either, and was on the verge of being slaughtered along with his army when the Emperor came for him. Perhaps this failure is why the Emperor seemed so uniquely disinterested in him.

As it is, the Emperor was told that Angron would likely not see the the end of the crusade, and thus took the dumbest option available to Him: do nothing to mitigate the effects, do nothing to change how much Angron hated him, and throw him into warzones after giving him a massive force and assume that it would never come back to haunt him. Could He have saved Angron? Perhaps, should he have the occasion to put his entire undivided attention to it. But with Him busy with the demands of the Imperium, powering the [[Astronomican]] and trying to get the Human Webway online the Emperor seemingly did not want to sink the extra time and resources into saving one of His Primarchs.

===Great Crusade===
[[File:Preheresy-world-eaters.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Angron back when the Great Crusade was still a thing. Along with [[Kharn|that swell guy]] on his right and [[Lotara Sarrin|the angriest, most heterosexual woman in existence]] on his left.]]
{{Topquote|You kept that mule Kor Phaeron. Russ kept his kin-friends. The Lion kept Luther. Humans - brothers and foster fathers - saved and raised into Legion ranks. But not me. Not Angron, no. Did the Emperor teleport his gold-wrapped Custodians down to help me and my army? No. Did he free the War Hounds and order them to battle, fight alongside me? No. Did he save my brothers and sisters the way he spared the Lion’s closest kin? No, no, and no. No mercy for Angron. Angron the Oathbreaker. Angron the Betrayer.| Angron explains his anger towards the Emperor to Lorgar, during one of his more calm moments.}}

Either way, when Angron was introduced to his legion he was inconsolable. He ended up hacking apart the legion captains until Khârn (who was actually much further down the list of command, having risen up the ladder thanks to several of his superiors' untimely ends) managed to talk some sense into his father. Though bearing in mind the Emperor had already let [[Perturabo]] dispassionately decimate 10% of an ''entire legion'', Angron killing some captains in an emotional meltdown is small potatoes.

Anyway, [[Kharn]] successfully talks some sense into him, and Angron renamed his legion ''World Eaters'', a name you might recognize translates to ''fucking savage'' in the common tongue. Angron's old army of gladiators whom he'd led to freedom and been denied death alongside them was known as "the eaters of cities" on [[Nuceria]]. So, as Dreagher, a Terran-born War Hounds legionary who served as Captain of the Legion's 9th Company, described it: ''from then on, they would no longer be the War Hounds, but Angron's "eaters of worlds"''.

Angron then replicated the Butcher's Nails technology on his legionaries, despite the Empy's warnings and how much he hated the source of the Nails, his old masters - <s> which adds a little hypocritical spice to his complaints about how the Nails ruined his life, given that he did the same thing to other people for no fucking reason when given the chance. Perhaps Angron wanted his sons to feel the same pain he experienced since he would never be able to remove the goddamn thing from his brain and it pissed him off that his own flesh and blood did not suffer as he did.</s> More likely he was desperately trying to emulate his blood brothers and sisters in the pits since they were the only ones to give a shit (plus Lorgar). Even in spite of being the first legionary to GIT SOME, [[Kharn|that swell guy]] became Angron's 'cool headed' equerry. Ironic.

The Nails also negatively interacted with psykers, killing Librarians who tried to get them installed (blowing holes in spaceships and taking down entire squads of space marines in the process as their altered brain chemistry made it impossible for them to control their abilities anymore). Also merely being near a psyker made other Legionaries feel... ''uncomfortable'' (described as ''ticking'' by Kharn). Angron personally took this to eleven, hating psykers for the additional pain they brought - with the strange exception of Lorgar & the Emperor, who seemed not to trigger that effect. Still, the whole Butcher's Nails thing is actually quite tragic (could the fact that even being psykers caused pain to everyone implanted with the nails indicate that they were not just archeotech, but technology corrupted by Khorne who hates psykers? And even the daemon primarch still has them implanted...all the implications). In "Betrayer" Argel Tal asks Kharn why the World Eaters allowed themselves to be mutilated so, to which Kharn replies that they thought it would bring them closer to their father. Argel Tal continues asking if it worked, and Kharn sadly mutters to himself "no, it didn't". So, before Erebus made sure that Kharn would become the RAAAAAAGE train we know in 40k by killing Argel Tal (in the same novel), because - as Erebus put it - his damned humanity would have spared Kharn this fate (because becoming a berzerk psychopathic killer is so much more awesome than staying sane) he appears to be regretting this decision - at least at this point.
[[File:World Eaters.jpg|400px|thumb|right|Angron and his World Eaters, pre-heresy and pre-[[daemon prince]] in a rare state of tranquility standing on top of [[grimdark|a pile made of snow and dead bodies]]. It's hard to calm down when there's nails in your brain.]]

During the Great Crusade, the World Eaters were known as the Imperium's butcher force. Their arrival or even just the threat of their arrival in a system was enough to make non-compliant Imperial worlds surrender, lest they be completely and utterly be butchered by the Red Angel and his sons - which only made it easier for the World Eaters to butcher them. They were typically unleashed in situations where the Imperium really didn't care about collateral damage. For where the Space Wolves and Dark Angels, the other two extermination legions of the Imperium, could be controlled, the World Eaters simply could not be. Angron ordered his sons to complete every single conquest and compliance action in thirty-one hours, since he and his gladiator army had once destroyed an entire city on Nuceria in the same span of time. When and if they failed, he mocked them for being inadequate and ordered them to [[Perturabo|decimate themselves]], it apparently not having occurred to him that it's a little harder to take down an entire planet than it is one city, even if you are a Space Marine legion (remember, not the brightest of his brothers). Things were getting so bad that some of the World Eaters' senior officers were considering going to the Emperor for help, at least until the Nails became a thing and they stopped caring about anything beyond RIP AND TEAR. One of them even talked back to Angron on the subject, which caused him to RAEG the fuck out and start killing his own sons again until some of the Librarians knocked him out.

He also had a run in with [[Leman Russ]] at some point, just after the XII Legion started getting their brains Nailed. Russ came to Angron after having heard reports that the World Eaters were increasingly just bathing in blood, instead of bringing worlds to compliance. Angron wasn't as brain-damaged as he would be later, so he asked if Russ had come on order of the Emperor. Russ grudgingly had to admit he wasn't; this wasn't an execution ordered by the Emperor (yet) and he privately didn't want it to become one in the future. So he went on saying that implanting Angron's legionaries with the Nails had to stop and that they'd be brought to Terra so a way of removing them could be devised (so he basically told Angron to sort his shit out and stop mutilating his sons). But we all know how good Russ is with people and generally <s>just liked throwing his weight around</s>. In more seriousness, this is one of the cases where Russ really, genuinely wanted to help one of his brothers, having had his own bouts with [[rage|irresistible murderous intent]] to deal with. Additionally, it is heavily implied that the two missing Primarchs met their end at Russ's hands on orders from the Emperor. Russ was not a fan of his role as being the Emperor's personal Judge Dredd as would later be demonstrated by the fact that he pleaded Lorgar's case (of all people) to the Emperor when He was considering 86ing the Word Bearers. Russ's approach sadly [[fail|wasn't well thought out]]. Though to be fair Angron wasn't exactly diplomatic either, telling Russ that the Nails were the only thing that kept him going, that the EMPRA was just another slaver (and that bringing "compliance" to worlds was just a way of candycoating enslaving worlds which merely had wished to be left alone), and that without the Nails he might go to Big.E and chop "the slaving bastard's" head off. Ironically enough Angron had a solid point with the former argument, but the very suggestion of turning against Emps basically made Russ [[rage|lose what remained of his cool on the spot]] with the result one would expect.
[[File:Angron, lord of the locker room.jpg|thumb|right|A Remembrancer's sketch of the duel between Angron and Leman Russ.]]

There was a brief skirmish between the two Legions (an event which would come to be known as the "Night of the Wolf") where Angron fought Leman Russ in personal combat. [[Rape|He made him his personal bitch]] until he was outmaneuvered by the Space Wolves troops and surrounded, isolated from his World Eaters who were just like their father putting up one hell of a fight and hurt on the Wolves but being slowly separated and isolated from each other. Russ then tried to make his point a second time; that Angron's berserker rage made him and his Legion lose sight of the larger tactical and strategic objectives and that Russ had deliberately lured him into a position where he could be gunned down with a snap of Russ fingers. Angron refused to acknowledge his losing position since he was the one holding the weapon at his brother's throat and that killing EVERYONE should be the only objective anyway. Russ might be very well holding the proverbial gun to his temple, but it was only worth anything if he was willing to pull the trigger. Which at that point Russ wasn't, so Angron completely ignored him. Yet, surprisingly, Angron did not press his attack either and both Primarchs separated and went their own way. But, as time would show, the nails had a degrading effect on Angron's ability to hold back and remain coherent, so maybe that's your answer right there.

Angron was certain of his victory that day and didn't give the incident any more thought, the Nails stayed with him and his Legion. In the end, though, Leman Russ was right: Angron's failure to learn and control his murderous rage would be amply demonstrated and only become worse with time. At the tail end of the Great Crusade when he butchered a whole city which had just surrendered, on Isstvan III when he sabotaged Horus' clean [[Exterminatus]] by going down to rip the loyalists apart personally, and on Nuceria where he ordered every living being killed. But what’s truly sad is that Lorgar actually did seemingly succeed where Russ had failed in teaching the lesson of the Night of the Wolf years later. Weirdly, he did this by simply telling Angron in no uncertain terms that Russ had won and why, and for whatever reason Angron's previous retardation dawned on him this time. In the case of Lorgar's explanation, not being in the middle of a fight to the death (at least as far as Agron was concerned) probably helped with regard to Angron's perceptiveness (fewer MURDERMURDERKILLKILL impulses from the Nails). Additionally, on their way to Nuceria during Angron’s last weeks as a human, he actually seemed to be trying to open himself up a little more to his legion by joining them in watching pit fights and hanging out with them during feasts, all of which was rendered too little too late by what went down when they reached their destination.

===Horus Heresy===
[[File:Daemon-Angron HHST.png|400px|thumb|right|Angron during the [[Siege of Terra]], about to give the defenders a very bad day]]
When Horus decided to rebel, Angron was one of the initial Primarchs to join him, along with Fulgrim and Mortarion. Why is not particularly hard to guess; he already hated the Emperor's guts like practically no other Primarch (with the possible exception of Curze, though even he managed to come to terms before his death with his father), and considered the Crusade to be little better than a galaxy-spanning slavery endeavor. How this concern jives with him being one of the Crusade's most prominent butchers is somewhat strange but his brain probably resembled a scrambled egg more than anything else at this point.

On that note, Angron kicked off his contribution to the Heresy in a characteristically retarded fashion. When the firestorm on Isstvan died down, it became apparent that large numbers of Loyalists had survived. Said survivors immediately hit the vox-casters and began demanding answers/hurling insults up at the orbiting fleet, outraged and grief stricken that they had been betrayed by their own Primarchs. Horus disregarded this and prepared to initiate a second virus bombing. Angron however, was not quite so thick skinned. Hearing the howled insults of his own Loyalist World Eaters (which more than likely included some cutting one-liners and yo-dead-gladiator-crew jokes), Angron flew into a rage and deployed onto the planet his legion. When he learned of this, Horus was so furious that he seriously considered proceeding with the virus bombing regardless of Angron's presence planetside. However the Warmaster then took a few moments to collect himself and attempted to salvage the situation. If he backed Angron's ground assault, his troops would get some experience fighting other Astartes, and Angron would see that Horus was willing to give him freedoms that the Emperor had not. Sadly for Horus, Angron's decision ended up being one of the biggest mistakes of the heresy, as the Traitors ended up losing nearly half of their attacking force over a period of 3 months. To add insult to injury, Horus eventually decided that he was losing too many assets trying to break the Loyalists on the ground. So he had Angron physically wrestled back up into orbit (as Angron wouldn't leave any other way), and used his fleet to simply glass the entire planet's surface.

Angron was much more handy on Isstvan V, wreaking all sorts of carnage in the [[Dropsite Massacre]]. Ironically his presence there hardly mattered considering how thoroughly boned the Loyalists had been to begin with, but having one more supremely capable beat-stick to hit one's foes with is always nice. When Horus and the other Traitor Primarchs departed, Angron stayed behind to hunt down the surviving Raven Guard who'd escaped with Corax. Despite the Raven Guard's supreme sneakiness, they eventually ran out of places to run and hide, and Angron was only hours away from finding and butchering the lot of them. Fortunately for the beleaguered birds, a group of Raven Guard reserves rocked up from Deliverance and managed to rescue Corax and most of his men, leaving Angron behind and even more beside himself with fury than usual.

Lorgar then roped Angron into his Shadow Crusade, systematically butchering worlds across Ultramar to invoke the Ruinstorm. Initially, this was a campaign with mixed success: the two Legions nearly fought in the void before an Eldar fleet tried to destroy Angron, and the World Eaters wiped out several worlds which Lorgar had wanted to skip. The Word Bearers were nearly driven to despair by the World Eaters' degradation, and Lorgar began to worry that Angron couldn't see how he was degenerating - and there was only one way that could end. Still, Lorgar wanted to save Angron, although in his case "save" meant "transfigure into a daemon Primarch without asking". Angron was, according to Horus and Lorgar, the only Primarch beside Horus himself that would be able to successfully take on Sanguinius in full rage mode (which at that point was basically the only use Horus had for him). To do that, Lorgar led Angron back to his shitty home planet [[Nuceria]]. There, Angron returned to the site of his followers' final battle, now little more than an open-air graveyard filled with the bones of his compatriots. This caused Angron to fall into a deep depression, which only lasted until he had the misfortune to be told he had fled that final battle. Needless to say, hearing this caused him to go completely berserk, and he ordered his legion to slaughter every fucking thing on the planet faster than an [[Exterminatus|inquisitorial cyclonic torpedo bombardment]].

The arrival of Guilliman's forces delayed its inevitable doom for a little while, and Angron had an epic showdown with [[Roboute Guilliman]] when he helped [[Lorgar]] in fighting big boy blue. Guilliman called Angron out to which the Red Angel replied as follows:

<blockquote>''"What would you know of struggle, Perfect Son? When have you fought against the mutilation of your mind? When have you had to do anything more than tally compliances and polish your armour?" [...] "The people of your world named you Great One. The people of mine called me Slave. Which one of us landed on a paradise of civilization to be raised by a foster father, Roboute? Which one of us was given armies to lead after training in the halls of the Macraggian high-riders? Which one of us inherited a strong, cultured kingdom? And which one of us had to rise up against a kingdom with nothing but a horde of starving slaves? Which one of us was a child enslaved on a world of monsters, with his brain cut up by carving knives? Listen to your blue-clad wretches yelling of courage and honour, courage and honour, courage and honour. Do you even know the meaning of those words? Courage is fighting the kingdom which enslaves you, no matter that their armies outnumber yours by ten-thousand to one. You know nothing of courage. Honour is resisting a tyrant when all others suckle and grow fat on the hypocrisy he feeds them. You know nothing of honour."''</blockquote>

Guilliman ended up getting beaten so badly he had to crawl away on hands and knees (though to be fair to him he put up one hell of a fight, especially considering that half his face was missing), but not before throwing back a retort of his own:

<blockquote>''"You’re still a slave, Angron. Enslaved by your past, blind to the future. Too hateful to learn. Too spiteful to prosper."''</blockquote>

The irony is Angron was right all along about Emperor being a dick, as Roboute realized on Terra ten thousand years later. But in all seriousness, both of them had a point. True, Guilliman had it comparatively easy and could have turned out massively different had his life not been so cushy. But Angron's rage over ''his'' admittedly-shitty life, worsened by his unwillingness to move on from the loss of his old comrades or accept his Legion as being his new family and compounded further still by not even trying to rise above his upbringing, had consumed his soul and didn't exactly let him off the hook for turning his entire legion into murder machines despite constantly blaming the Butcher's Nails for ruining his life.

Additionally, Angron of all people attempting to lecture anyone about the concept of honor is hypocrisy of the highest form. Even Konrad Curze, arguably the most terrifyingly barbaric Primarch, had a logical reason behind his brutality before he completely lost his mind. Angron never had a reason for killing, and he never needed one. He spilt blood just for the sake of it, annihilating entire planetary systems simply for the lulz. Whatever honor Angron once might have had, he had tossed it aside long ago in the name of satiating his hatred. At the time of his confrontation with Guilliman, he was little more than a rabid dog; his brains in the final stages of degradation via the Nails. He was essentially already a Khorne devotee in all but name and aspect; the sick daemon form he would soon receive was just an aesthetic cherry on top.

What made it worse was that the Nails themselves, as it turned out, could actually be overcome. As demonstrated by Arrian Zorzi, a renegade WE Apothecary who threw his lot in with [[Fabius Bile]] and eventually became his 2nd in command of [[The Consortium (Warhammer 40,000|The Consortium]], and who likes (evil) gardening: a highly disciplined mind could control the aggression of the Nails. Which meant that, in yet another tragic twist of irony, Angron might have been able to save himself if he had simply not given over so completely to despair and spite. On the other hand, the cruder copy implanted in World Eaters legionnaires might be easier to overcome than the genuine article, and Zorzi is (so far) a unique case.

Furthermore, during their duel Guilliman shattered one of the skulls of Angron's rebel followers that he had carried with him (and whom he had promised to die alongside with... until the EMPRA abducted him. Angron himself said to Lorgar in "Betrayer" that he died on Nuceria), which obviously drove Angron to an entire new level of despair, allowing for Lorgar to capitalize on that emotion to fuel Angron's ascension into a daemon primarch. There were even 19 World Eater librarians, that had tried to prevent their primarch's ascension forming a gestalt warhound, pulling Angron's soul from one end, while Lorgar as well as some daemons pulled at it from the other, like children fighting over a doll. In the end, Lorgar - being the more powerful psyker - defeated the Librarians, and turned Angron into the Daemon Primarch we all know and love; his first act upon ascension was to immediately slaughter the Librarians. Guilliman ended up suffering a grievous wound, but escaped the planet, which was rendered devoid of all life by the World Eaters, and had its records erased by the Imperium of Man.

It should also be noted that one or two battles beforehand a Warhound Scout Titan tried to step on Lorgar after the Aurelian had taken two discharges of the the titan's main plasma weapon and was badly hurt (to the point of almost being mortally wounded) in the process. Angron stepped in to save his brother, catching the titan's foot and setting a new world record in squat weightlifting, keeping the titans weight suspended above himself through his sheer strength and RAGE, enabling Lorgar - who was almost dead at this point - to escape (meanwhile Ferrus Manus could punch THROUGH REAVERS and doubtless would have found this adorable). And this was after digging his way up through 200+ feet of solid debris, after being warned by WE Librarians he had been digging 'downwards', and with Lorgar teleporting from orbit to help excavating the XIIth Primarch (while Lorgar simultaneously destroyed several Ultramarine Thunderhawks with telekinetically hurled building debris which Angron had been buried under). Of course, after this the relationship between the two primarchs became pretty remarkable, and Lorgar ended up repaying the favor by arranging for Angron's ascension to daemonhood during their fight with Guilliman. At first Lorgar thought that Guilliman was ruining the "song" and finally understood that Guilliman had never hated or looked down on him until the Heresy (and the destruction of Calth) - actually distracting Lorgar for a moment as he realized that he had misunderstood his brother all along - At the end though, when Guilliman was about to gain the upper hand Angron emerged and engaged the XIII Primarch. At this very moment (topped off by Guilliman stepping on one of the aforementioned skulls) the "song" fell back in tune, and Lorgar could finish the incantation.

After this, the World Eaters ''somehow'' managed to get Angron back aboard his flagship, but were at a bit of a loss as to what to do with him afterwards. Obviously having a blood crazed Daemon Primarch living in one's basement was not exactly ideal even for the World Eaters. So initially they attempted to restrain Angron, but there was literally nothing they could do to keep him contained. Any cell block or restraining device they used on him he simply turned to scrap the instant it started annoying him. And yet, Angron never once actually attempted to leave the part of the ship in which he'd made his lair. He had developed crippling bipolar tendencies, and where his manic phase embodied the champion of raw murder we all know and love, his depressive phase was so utterly ''dead inside'' it makes [[Isha]] look cheery in comparison. He spent most of his free time cowering in a corner, calling out for the Emperor or just crying himself to sleep. This only made the World Eaters ''more'' terrified of him, as he could rampage through the ship at a moment's notice and they wouldn't be able to stop him. Only Kharn was able (or willing) to talk to Angron, and even Kharn knew he was risking death each time he did so; it would literally only depend on whether or not he caught Angron in a bad mood.

Kharn's conversations with Angron revealed yet another sad development for the Primarch, which was that becoming a daemon had caused him to develop a sort of dementia. He had to be verbally prodded by Kharn to remember certain places, people, and events, and Kharn was not always successful in doing so. Even his past as a gladiator or his adoptive father were hit-or-miss in terms of whether or not he could recall them. His entire sense of self had become lost to Khorne, and he swung from sapient being to bloodthirsty beast with seemingly no control over who he was as any given moment. He also became completely dependent on bloodshed to maintain his link to the mortal realm, and could only last a few weeks without planetary scale butchery to keep him tethered. As such, the World Eaters were forced to divert into any populated system they could find as they travelled towards Terra just to keep Angron in the material plane. He was also the only Daemon Primarch who, in yet another grim irony, never got any say in becoming a daemon- even [[Magnus the Red]] did not ascend before first rejecting the Emperor's offer of forgiveness. So he went from being a slave to the Nucerians, to being a slave to the Emperor, to being a slave to Khorne, forced to fight for all three without ever having any choice and now he could not even rebel. He's basically 40k's Butt-Monkey at this point. Angron's transformation into a Daemon also caused the World Eaters to develop an unmatched hatred for the Word Bearers for so thoroughly destroying their gene-father. Kharn in particular was furious about this in his comparatively lucid moments, as being the only person who Angron wouldn't immediately kill gave him front row seat to witness the completely broken, miserable monster Angron had ultimately become.

Shortly thereafter, Horus sent Perturabo to go collect Angron and his now completely degenerated legion for use at the Siege of Terra. As stated previously, the World Eaters had needed to stop every time they found a populated system in order to shed the blood necessary to keep Angron in the material realm. But they were getting too sidetracked in doing so, and Horus hadn't been able to talk them into hurrying up. Upon confronting the World Eaters, the Iron Warriors absolutely wrecked their maniacal brothers, ironically by doing the same sort of thing that the Space Wolves had so many years ago during the Night of the Wolf. Instead of allowing the World Eaters to engage them in close combat, the Iron Warriors initially shot only the daemons amongst the World Eaters, and then largely attempted to trap or disable the World Eaters where possible. The point was both to deny them combat, and thus power, and obviously to round them up for the Siege. Angron himself confronted Perturabo, and as with their respective legionnaires, Pert shoved Angron's shit in by simply having a brain. After getting blasted into pasta sauce by a group of Iron Warriors, Angron jumped into melee with Perturabo and heavily damaged his armor. Perturabo got in a decent counter-hit or two, but even with Forgebreaker in hand, he was ultimately no match for Angron in melee combat.

However, Perturabo had one weapon that Angron did not; the power of spiteful mockery (seems to be something of a weakness amongst the Daemon Primarchs; Mortarion got the same treatment later from the Khan, and Fulgrim from Rylanor). He repeatedly insulted Angron as being a weak, pitiful slave who had sold his strength out of despair, and had become ''weaker'' as a result. Of course, Angron hadn't actually chosen to become a daemon at all, but Perturabo clearly either didn't know or didn't care. The lack of slaughter (and possibly the insults) drained Angron of much of his power, allowing Perturabo and the Iron Circle to start shooting the shit out of him with (heavily implied to be) anti-Daemon rounds. The very first [[Obliterator]], Volk, then added a fusillade of his own to the mix. The assault of Perturabo and Volk, combined with the Iron Warriors having denied the World Eaters their tithe of blood, weakened Angron to the point where he could no longer fight. Perturabo took the opportunity to mock Angron a bit more, and then waltzed over to him and unceremoniously knocked him out with a single blow from Forgebreaker. After this, he collected his recalcitrant brother and his legion and packed them up to head for Terra. (The fact Perturabo accomplished all this while sustaining minimal casualties shows how impressive his track-record during the Great Crusade could've been if he actually gave a damn.)

===41st Millennium===
[[Image:Angrondemon.jpg|300px|thumb|Even in daemonhood, they ''still'' can't get the Nails out. Fucking Archeotech was built to ''last''!]]
Angron has done far more shit than all the other Daemon Primarchs put together. Instead of [[Fulgrim|sitting around being a painting on some Chaos God's wall]], [[Mortarion|sitting around while being a rotting fatass and feeling sorry for themselves]], [[Magnus the Red|sitting around and yelling just as planned anytime anything happens]], [[Lorgar|sitting around and preaching constantly]], [[Horus|being]] [[Alpharius|(Maybe)]] [[Konrad Curze|dead]], or [[Primarch#Two Missing Primarchs|being missing]]; Angron actually gets shit done and boy howdy when he [[rage|rages]] his way out of the eye of terror he makes sure that everyone knows about it...by tearing ''everything'' that gets in his way a new one until he finally gets thrown back into the warp by drowning in a quadrillion metric fucktons of [[Imperial Guard|Imperial Guardsmen]], [[Planetary Defense Force | Planetary Defense Force soldiers]], [[Space Marines|Spehss Mehreens]], [[Witch Hunters]], [[Sisters of Battle|Bolter Bitches]], [[Titan|Titans]], [[Stormtrooper|Inquisitorial Stormtroopers]], [[Daemonhunters]], and [[Grey Knights]], but to be fair, everyone kind of does that when the Imperium <strike>finishes the paperwork needed to</strike> retaliates.

This was of course before The Gathering Storm, whereupon Magnus personally attacked [[Fenris]] and laid waste to much of the planet and destroyed a lot of gene-seed, proving that [[Tzeentch]] can get shit done too. Then in 8th edition Mortarion waged [[Plague Wars]] against [[Ultramar]] and established the [[Scourge Stars]] systems in M42. Also it should be noted that Fulgrim has been free of that painting for a while now, but otherwise he still fits in the above category.

He also slaughtered his way throughout Imperial Space for over a century with 50,000 World Eater [[Khorne Berzerkers|Berzerker]]s and destroyed/maimed/killed/burned/broke the backs of/split open/fucked 70 sectors. However, in a subsequent Imperial offensive, Angron was banished to the warp and his men routed. This strike force comprised 2 Titan Legions, ''only'' 4 full Spess Mehreen chapters and over 30 Imperial Guard regiments to do that, so it's suffice to say that the counterattack put up quite a fight against the superior force. But to be fair, Angron's force was only comprised of close combat heavy infantry without ranged support or artillery.

Later on, he showed up with an even bigger force to attack Armageddon. The Imperium responded in kind, sending in one hundred [[Grey Knights|Grey Knight Terminators]], and all but ten of them died fighting Angron and his Bloodthirster posse(and only because their prodigy Librarian Hyperion managed to shatter his sword, and he STILL managed to murder their leader with just his bare fists). He is armed with a really huge fucking chainaxe that's taller than him with chainswords for the chainteeth of the chainaxe. He's also got a storm bolter, but we wouldn't be surprised if that fired chainswords as well. Fittingly enough, it was called 'Godtearer'.

Strangely, as seen in the picture above, he also still has the Butchers Nails stuck in his head. This should be completely impossible as Angron technically speaking doesn't have a body anymore (he's 100% warp energy now), and the Nails are technological in nature. He's also been blasted into paste on numerous occasions and forcibly dematerialized into the warp on a number of others, which means that the Nails seemingly regenerate along with the rest of him. The most likely explanation is that, as a daemon, he is at least partially shaped by the mortal perception of him, and the Nails are a big part of his story to anyone with high enough clearance to know his name. If that is true, then he actually is finally free of the Nails and the wires and bits poking out of his skull are just his way of making sure no one confuses him with [[Doombreed]] or something.

He also wrote something called the '''Clotted Scrolls''' somewhere along the line, though precisely what wisdom he wrote (probably in blood) in there is unknown (maybe methods on how to [[rip and tear]] more effectively?).

==In video games==

Unfortunately, he has appeared in only one of the official games, which greatly displeases [[Khorne]]. However, in the Ultimate Apocalypse mod for [[Dawn of War]], he takes the place of the Chaos Daemons' "game-ending win button" unit - and he's a walking rapetrain that can [[Awesome|obliterate buildings with a single hit, take out Titans in three, make himself invincible, and summon a retinue of Bloodthirsters]]. He can also be almost unkillable by exploiting a bug which lets him instantly refill his morale, which gives him disturbingly fast health regeneration. Too bad you'll almost never use him. He costs so many relic points in an army that consumes them like candy that, if you can spare the points and time to conjure him, chances are you're already winning so badly you don't actually need him. Seriously, for the same number of points it takes to conjure Angron you could just build 5-6 Helldrakes or an equal amount of Bloodthirsters, and keep in mind Chaos Daemons need the same resource for anything greater than lesser Daemons. If you're not spending them on other units you need ''right now'' then you can just overwhelm them with what you already have. Essentially the definition of "awesome but impractical", but sweet jesus is it truly awesome to watch.

Angron shows up in the Horus Heresy:Legions card game, being one of the best warlords, and in keeping with his character he has to attack every turn.

==On the tabletop==

===Horus Heresy===
====1E====
{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Angron:''' || 400 || 9 || 5 || 7 || 6 || 5 || 7 || 6 || 10 || 3+/4++
|}
[[File:Angaron.jpg|300px|right|thumb|WHY IS HE BEATING UP HIS OWN LEGION said everyone on Istvaan III. Proof that Angron was actually a Loyalist Primarch. Don't believe the Chaos lies!]]
Obviously one of the strongest Primarchs in the game when it comes to close combat, aside from his stats Angron has a 3+ armor (weak for a demigod), 4+ invulnerable, FNP (the full rule since the 02/11/2019 errata) the Primarch rule and Hatred, so he gets to re-roll to-hit rolls on the first turn of any combat, while also having Armourbane and dealing Instant Death on to wound roll of 6, in case S8-9 doesn't instagib anything right away. Thanks to the Butcher's Nails he will gain 1 bonus attack (up to 10) for every Independent Character or Infantry unit he kills/destroys in close combat (But he must be the one to give the fatal blow/remove the last model to pick up this bonus) and he can also challenge as many times as there are Independent Characters and units in combat with him thanks to the Red Sands rule, assuring he will at least pick up some extra attacks during the course of the game.

The obvious downsides are that, aside from butchering things in melee, Angron cannot do anything: he doesn't buff his army in any way aside 12" aura of Fearless, while other Primarchs bestow significant buffs to their armies, and of course he is one of the (if not THE) most fragile of the Primarchs, having only 5 wounds and 3+/4++. Having FNP 5+ doesn't fully compensate against mass fire but makes him actually more resilient than most of his brothers against AP2 attacks. So all in all he's much like Kharn on steroids: you reach melee - you're king, you get your transport blown up and then get kited across the table - you're fucked. The other problem he shares with Kharn is that he tends to annihilate anything he charges in one phase either through sweeping advance or just by killing everyone outright, which leaves him vulnerable to enemy fire afterwards.

Honestly, he's not worth it. Between his fragility, low mobility, and lack of army bonuses, he's a tricky Primarch to use. Unfortunate considering his badass fluff.

====2E====
{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || M || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Angron:''' || 450 || 8 || 8 || 5 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 6 || 10 || 2+/4++
|}

While he's taken a few hits statwise, Angron remains just as indescribably angry in the new HH, especially now that he has a proper 2+/4++ save like the other primarchs. on top of everything the Primarch rule provides, he also gets Hatred (Everything), Rampage (2) and Furious Charge (2) so his charges can be even more devastating. With both Gorefather and Gorechild being AP2 with Shred, Armorbane and Murderous Strike (3+), he can reduce plenty into paste. The Butcher's Nails rule got changed to now provide extra attacks on EVERY turn now, meaning that every turn he's on the field he becomes even more dangerous, especially when he's into all these challenges thanks to the Red Sands rule.

But as before, killing is all he can do. His Warlord Trait gives everyone Feel No Pain (6+), which is only okay, and Adamantium Mind (3+), which will only see limited use considering how few psykers are on the field. The most helpful part of this is the free reaction you can take at any phase each turn. He also has rather limited defense, as despite his 2+/4++ save, he will always be hit in melee as if he has a WS of 3, which is particularly devastating when against a praetor with a power axe.

===40k===
====Older Editions====
{| class=wikitable
! || Pts || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Angron:''' || 500 || 10 || 6 || 7 || 6 || 5 || 6 || 6 || 10 || 3+/4++
|}

He had stats from an old issue of [[White Dwarf]], and though they might seem disappointing, especially in comparison to his Primarch form (it's barely an upgrade), his stats alone don't tell you everything.

For starters, he has additional rules such as Furious Charge (to make him S8), he has Iron Hide (keeping his power armour save), the Roar of Hate rule to reduce the Leadership of enemies by 1, and his Daemon rule made his Invuln as strong as when he relied on armour. The real boost to him however is the fact that he's a Flying Monstrous Creature now (although in the edition he came out it just gave him 12" movement instead), effectively keeping his Armourbane and AP2, and it fixes his movement issue.

The real boost to his old self is his weapon, Angron's Black Blade, and with it in hand it's no wonder Gorefather and Gorechild became hand-me-downs. This is a Master-crafted weapon that gives all of his attacks the Instant Death rule. All this combined he makes [[Abaddon]] the Despoiler and [[Mephiston]] look like total pussies, but you have to get him a bodyguard of at least 2-12 [[Bloodthirster|bloodthirsters]], which effectively racks up his point cost to over 1300 at the least, but there's nothing in the game that survive a charge from him and his bodyguards.

====9th Edition====
[[File:AngronDaemonPrimarch.jpg|300px|right|thumb|WHAT THE WARP DO YOU MEAN GUILLIMAN'S ALIVE?!]]

It's happening people: the galaxy's angriest man is at long last getting a proper model of his Daemon Primarch form and rules in the upcoming World Eaters codex, and he hasn't skipped wing day once since the 31st Millennia. BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD, BOYS AND GIRLS!

==Angron VS other Primarchs:==
<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">
Primarch fighting, while fun to see, isn't a very competitive thing to do as it'll usually tie up both Primarchs for the entire game without either of them dying (But with Angron this is less likely as you're going to die or kill fast!), with that in mind this section is about how Angron fares against other Primarchs Mathhammer wise. Please note that all the various abilities are taken into accounts when possible and the match-ups assume the Primarchs are the only ones involved in the fighting, so various abilities like Angron's "The Butcher's Nails" and Rampage do not provide any bonuses. The fights are supposed to be in a vacuum for simplicity (So no Furious Charge for our hero...), but notes are added to make things clearer in particular instances. Also all of the Primarchs use their most powerful weapons (because why have a contest if you don't do your best?)
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

* Angron VS Horus
**Horus turn 1 & 2: hits 3 times, wounds 2.667 times, 0.888 after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.555 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Horus (with Angron wounded twice): hits 3.999 times, wounds 3.555 times, causes 1.185 wounds after saves & FNP, taken to 0.851 with IWND at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 1.48 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.148.
**Angron Wounded: hits 3 times, wounds 1.999 times, 0.666 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Despite a good showing in the first round; when factoring in Disabling Strike the whole thing becomes academic; Horus overtakes Angron in damage capacity after one wound (<2 turns) and quickly beats Angron to a pulp as Angron continues to flail feebly.

* Angron vs Fulgrim
**Fulgrim hits 3.5 times, wounds 2.333 times (2.722 times if his warlord trait is Child of Terra), 1.166 (1.361) times after saves, 0.971 (1.134) after Feel No Pain (remember that half of the attacks that wound cause Instant Death) and IWND will take that down to 0.638 (0.801) wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 1.48 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.148.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.111 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**A really close fight: Angron does marginally more damage if Fulgrim doesn't chose Child of Terra as his Warlord Trait. With Child of Terra it becomes a battle of attrition that Angron will eventually lose. If Angron gets blinded at any point due to Fulgrim's Gilded Panoply it puts him at a disadvantage he likely wont recover from.

* Angron VS Ferrus
**Ferrus hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 0.694 times after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.361 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.185 after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.852.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 0.889 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.556 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Thanks to his upgraded Feel No Pain, Angron can tank more than Ferrus can, resulting in a win.

* Angron VS Konrad Curze
**Curze hits 3 times, wounds 2.25 times, 0.750 wounds after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 2.222 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.889.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron easily wins, doing a lot more damage and receiving less in turn.
**Note: Curze can Hit & Run, but by doing so he would only gain one more attack, while allowing Angron to reset his Hatred, thus actually making himself die even faster. However he would be a much better fight: Konrad on the Charge would do 2.625 wounds (0.875 with ID) which become 1.168, plus 0.1389 for HoW and 0,359 for the Widowmakers, for a total of 1,666 wounds, or 1.333 after IWND. This, thanks to the -1 wound of Angron, actually means that they would kill each other on the fifth assault, at the same initiative step. Provided that Konrad always succeed in his escape, that is.

* Angron VS Vulkan
**Vulkan hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 wounds after saves (ID Negates FNP) and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.185 after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.63.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 0.889 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Vulkan wins. If Angron has the first turn of combat, Vulkan's legendary endurance nearly fails him by the 8th combat, possibly resulting in an Angron win (5.741). However Vulkan is as likely to kill him in the 7th combat (4.833), and if not has a 83.3% chance of Concussing to swing first for 5.333 wounds in the 8th combat.

* Angron vs Mortarion
**Mortarion hits 2.5 times, wounds 1.666 times, 0.833 times after saves (no FNP due to Instant Death) and IWND will take that down to 0.5 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.777 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.222.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 1.333 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Mortarion loses. Despite having the same reroll on IWND and doing the same damage per turn as Vulkan; even with one extra wound Mortarion's poorer save allows Angron to take him down more quickly.

* Angron VS Lorgar
**Lorgar hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.083 times, 0.694 after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that to 0.361 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 4 times, wounds 3.111 times, 1.555 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.222.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron wins pretty easily.
**Note: against Lorgar Transfigured with Precognition Lorgar wins (Not as easily as the old version, but is still a monster).

*Angron VS Perturabo
**Perturabo hits 2 times, wounds 1.667 times, 0.555 wounds after saves and FNP, then IWND will take that down to 0.222 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 1.48 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.148.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.111 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.778 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron wins.
**Note: in the turn after Perturabo actually wounds Angron (69% per round) he will most probably be blinded and then hammered to death. So if he can't kill him before that he is actually dead meat.

* Angron VS Alpharius
**Alpharius hits 2.917 times, wounds 1.7 times, 0.85 wounds after saves and IWND will take that down to 0.517 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 2.222 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.889.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**As with Vulkan, Angron can't use FNP in this fight due to the Pale Spear's Instant Death, but he still easily takes the win.

* Angron VS Rogal Dorn
**Dorn hits 2 times, wounds 1.5 times, 0.499 wounds after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.167 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Dorn (Sundering Blow) hits once, wounds 0.972 times, 0.486 wounds after saves (No FNP due to Instant Death), taken to 0.152 at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.777 after saves, and IWND take it down to 1.444.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4 times, wounds 2.667 times, 1.333 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**This is probably Angron's easiest fight.
**Note: Sundering Blow cancels out Feel No Pain so it was worth calculating. Turns out it makes no difference here; Dorn has too few attacks to make a difference either way.

* Angron VS Corvus Corax
**Corvus hits 4 times (Scourge)/3 times (Shadow-walk), wounds 3 times (Scourge)/2.25 times (Shadow-walk), 0.999 wounds (Scourge)/0.750 wounds (Shadow-walk) after saves and FNP and IWND will take that down to 0.666/0.417 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333/4.5 times, wounds 4.444/3.75 times, 2.963/2.5 after saves, and IWND take it down to 2.63/2.167.
**Angron Round 2 and thereafter: hits 4/3 times, wounds 3.333/2.5 times, 2.222/1.667 times after saves and IWND will take that down to 1.889/1.333 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron wins really easily as Corax is simply too frail for him.
**Note: differently from Curze, Corax would actually have the edge on the charge thanks to his Sire of the Raven Guard rule and his Hammer of Wrath/dual Archeotech Pistols. Also in a turn in which blind goes off he could have the advantage of Shadow-walk and scourge at the same times (plus more, 'cause he would hit on 3s). A tough fight, but more on his style and it could make him win in extremis.

* Angron VS Roboute Guilliman
**Angron Round 1: Angron has Hatred, so on the first turn he will hits 5.333 times, wounds 4.444 times, 2.222 after saves, 1.972 after Armour of Reason re-roll and IWND take it down to 1.639.
**Angron Round 2: Angron hits 4 times, wounds 3.333 times, 1.667 times after saves, 1.417 after re-roll and IWND will take that down to 1.084 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 3 and thereafter: Angron hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times, 1.25 after saves and 1 after re-roll. Then IWND take it down to 0.667.
**Guilliman Round 1/2/3: hits 2.5 times, wounds 2.222 times, 0.741 times after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.407 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Guilliman Round 4 and thereafter: hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.963 times, 0.987 times after saves and FNP, and IWND will take that down to 0.654 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Unsurprisingly, Guilliman loses this fight.

*Angron vs Magnus
**Angron first round: hits 4.5 times, wounds 3.75 times and 1.875 after saves which IWND will take down to 1.542 at the start of next turn
**Angron second round: hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times and 1.25 after saves which IWND will take down to 0.917 at the start of next turn
**Magnus: hits twice, wounds 1.667 times, reducing to 0.557 after saves & FNP. Then IWND will take down to 0.222 at the start of next turn
**Magnus (using Force): hits twice, wounds 1.667, reduces to 0.834 after saves. IWND brings this to 0.5 at the start of the next turn.
**Psychic powers normally don't get included in the PvP breakdowns, but Magnus is the only one with a Force Weapon so it was worth mentioning. Either way you look at it, Magnus loses this one pretty badly. Things would obviously be different if other powers were included.
**As with psychic powers in general in 30k, this fight is really swingy based on what powers Magnus takes. If he can roll Iron arm and Warp speed with a power left to generate then he could take Prescience to actually gain a decent chance of winning. At the same time he could also have a tough time in power generation and get squished.

*Angron VS Leman Russ
**Angron Round 1: Angron has Hatred and is hitting on a 5+, so he hits 3.333 times, wounds 2.778 times, invul save brings it down to 1.389 and IWND brings it to 1.056 wounds.
**Angron Round 2 and on: Angron is hitting on 5s, so hits 2 times, wounds 1.666 times, saves brings it down to .833 and IWND brings it 0.5
**Leman hits Angron 3.214 times, wounds 2.678 times, save brings it down to 1.339, FNP brings it 0.892 and IWND brings it down 0.559
**As expected Angron loses this fight. Angron puts up a reasonable fight but the wolf king is just much for him.
**TLDR: Without the Sword of Balelight, the fight is very close. Sword of Balelight is pretty busted.

* Angron VS Jaghatai
**Jaghatai (on Bike) hits 4 times, wounds 2 times, 1 wounds after saves and FNP will take that down to 0.666 and IWND will take that down to 0.333
**Angron Round 1: hits 5.333 times, wounds 3.555 times, 1.185 wounds after saves, and IWND take it down to 0.852 at the start of the next turn.
**Angron Round 2: hits 4 times, wounds 2.666 times, 0.888 wounds after saves, IWND will take that down to 0.556 wounds at the start of the next turn.
**Angrons wins, and if Jaghatai uses hit-and-run he'll get destroyed even faster.

* Angron vs Sanguinius
**Sanguinius charging: hits 4 times (3.5 times with Blade Encarmine), wounds 3.999 times (double wounds taken into account) (3.111 with Encarmine), becomes 1.999 (1.037 with Encarmine & FNP) after saves
***Sanguinius Hammer of Wrath: 1 autohit, wounds 0.833 times, becomes 0.277 after saves and FNP.
***Total combined damage on charge 2.276 (1.314), taken to 1.944 (0.981) next turn with IWND
**Sanguinius thereafter: hits 3.5 times (3 times with Blade Encarmine), wounds 2.333 times (double wounds taken into account)(2.666 with Encarmine), taken to 1.166 after saves (0.888 with Encarmine + FNP), taken to 0.8333 (0.555) next turn with IWND
**Angron Round 1: hits 4.5 times, wounds 3.75 times, becomes 1.875 after saves (0.938 if Sanguinius charged). IWND takes it to 1.54 (0.604) next turn
**Angron thereafter: hits 3 times, wounds 2.5 times, becomes 1.25 after saves and IWND takes it to 0.917 next turn
***There is a lot going on with this fight depending on what Sanguinius is doing. With the Spear of Telesto, from a standing start or if Angron charges there is a mutual kill by about the fifth bout of combat. If Sanguinius can get the charge he wins.
***With the Blade Encarmine there is a close mutual kill if Sanguinius charges, but Angron wins from a standing start or if he charges. Feel No Pain really makes the difference.

* TLDR version: Despite being mocked for ''only'' having 3+/4++ in saves and fewer wounds than everyone but Lorgar (or Corax on a bad day), Angron is surprisingly resilient thanks to his FNP(5+). He will outpace most opponents thanks to his high number of attacks and good WS, so those who can't match his output turn-for-turn can only hope to outlast him. Angron is pretty vulnerable to Strikedown, Concussive, Blind, and basically any rule which reduces his ability to hit things ''(eg: Horus & Russ)'', all of which will severely cripple his overall damage potential. Keep in mind, as mentioned above, this is without any benefits from his The Butcher's Nails rule. With his attacks maxed out he can destroy almost any other Primarch (even Lorgar with Precognition, though it is damn close) with the exception of a few like Russ and...yeah, you guessed it right: Horus! Although he will surely put a dent even in the Warmaster.

In case you're wondering, Angron's mortal form defeats his Daemon form, mainly because his Daemon form was made before IWND became a thing.
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==Gallery==
<gallery>
File:Past-Angron.jpg| Doomguy called he wants his training uniform back, and he wants your head with it.
File:Angron.jpg|Can [[Anime|Vegeta]] say what his power level is?
File:Angron Butchers Nails.jpg|Angron before Daemonhood. The only real difference is a lack of wings.
File:Aerion's Angron.jpg|Angron portrayed in his natural state: PISSED THE FUCK OFF ABOUT EVERYTHING!
File:Angron by alexboca-d7930i6.jpg|Angron just generally being a boss (and looking absolutely goddamn awesome while doing so). And you call the epic ness that he wears "3+" greatly displeases khorne and teh emprah
File:angron_is_for_angry_by_sunradio-d6oferw.jpg|Daemon Primarch Angron at the final battle of the First war of Armageddon.
File:Happy angron.jpg|Angron can be happy too...
</gallery>

==See Also==
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKPVNaKvODw&t=0s| They hit him with a truck!]

{{Primarchs}}
{{Daemons-Characters}}

[[category:Chaos]]