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Abaddon

2023-05-26T20:50:27Z

2A02:1808:86:7148:E58C:28C5:307:D094:

{{Heresy}}
{{Fail}}
[[File:Abbadon.jpg|thumb|330px|right|[[Horus|Daddy]] issues does funny things to you. It can make you go emo, colouring your skin white and you clothes black, setting your hair up in a fucking topknot and waging a ten-thousand year war against [[Emperor|Granddaddy]]. You know, standard scene kid stuff. It may also result in the loss of arms.]]
{{topquote|...whether you hide in the heavens or on earth, I will bring you down from the spinning spheres; I will toss you in the air like a lion. I will leave no one alive in your realm; I will burn your city and your lands. If you wish to spare yourself and your family, listen to my advice with the ear of intelligence. If you do not, you will see what God has willed.|Hulagu Khan, to the Caliph of Baghdad}}
{{topquote|Some men just want to watch the world burn.|Alfred Pennyworth, The Dark Knight}}
{{topquote|1=Horus was weak, Horus was a fool. He had the galaxy in the palm of his hand, and let it slip away.|2=Abaddon, who would go on to fail conquering, in over 13 consecutive campaigns through the better part of ten thousand years, less than a quarter of what Horus did in around seven years.}}
{{topquote|I always knew he was '''a bad ‘un '''!|Rouboute Guilliman, Eighth Annual Primarchs’ Celebrity Revue and Roast Gala}}

The Hebrew term '''Abaddon''' (Hebrew: אֲבַדּוֹן‎‎, 'Ǎḇaddōn), and its Greek equivalent Apollyon (Greek: Ἀπολλύων, Apollyon), appears in the Bible as both a place of destruction and as the name of an angel of the abyss, but this article is about '''Ezekyle Abaddon''', also known as '''Abaddon the Despoiler''', '''The Dark King''', '''Easy-Kill''', '''Failbaddon the Harmless''', '''Aba-Dabba-Doo''', '''Abbaderpadon''', '''Disappointmaddon''', '''Failbaddon the (H)Armless''', '''Armless the Harmless''', '''Ablobloddon the Blubbering''', '''Oblomdon''', '''You again - really? Again?''', '''Crapaddon''', '''That Incompetent Fuckwit''', '''Horus' Little Failson''', and various assortment of different names, to the people of [[/tg/]], is [[Horus]]' successor as [[Chaos Lord|leader]] of the [[Black Legion]], [[Warmaster]] of [[Chaos]], and the most disappointing son in the history of children.

Like [[Khaine]], the canon ''states'' him to be the single greatest threat to the [[Imperium]] in the galaxy, probably tied with such malevolent forces as the [[Necrons]], [[Dark Eldar]], [[Tyranids]], [[Lorgar]], [[Perturabo]], [[Mortarion]], <s>the [[Fail|Imperium itself]]</s> {{BLAM}}, and [[Games Workshop]]. However, if you were to actually tally up his victories vs his defeats and compare that to other characters in the setting, he becomes a [[rage|raging]] cesspit of incompetence, which is now well known; he has launched thirteen consecutive [[Black Crusade]]s against the Imperium, most of which originally weren't aimed at taking Cadia and launching an assault on Terra. None of them (except the 13th one, and only partly) actually succeeded in getting what he wanted, and then he usually got chased away immediately after as if he was in a cartoon, then doing fuck all until next week's episode. As is well known, the [[Chaos Gods|Ruinous Powers]] don't tolerate failure from their servants, unless said servants have copious amounts of [[Plot Armor]], and Abby has that in spades.

It is worth mentioning that his 4++ invulnerable save derives from an ability called "Dark Destiny". This means that he literally has plot armor. The fluff explicitly stated that the Dark Gods will not allow him to die to explain his Eternal Warrior in older editions.

==Overview==
During the [[Great Crusade]], Ezekyle Abaddon was the First Captain of the Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus, and Horus Lupercal's right hand man (well, at least after his more balanced comrade Hastur Sejanus was murdered by a treacherous enemy). All the Cthonian recruits to the Luna Wolves were influenced by their origins among the criminal gangs, Abaddon more so than most. In 200 years as a Luna Wolf he demonstrated a street-fighter attitude and a desire for dominance, typically favoring the most violent option (he even had a straight-up row with Horus over whether or not to attack the Interex on first contact). Like most legionaries, he had a father/son relationship with his [[Primarch]], but Abaddon is noteworthy in that his devotion and loyalty to his Primarch was so great that it puts Lorgar's previous devotion to the Emperor to shame. At one point, he'd gotten every bone broken down one side of his torso and refuse Horus' suggestion that he take a breather (in a battle with Orks).

Turns out that his legendary daddy issues go right back to [[Cthonia]], when he killed his biological father in a disastrous coming-of-age ritual. In this, he was meant to kill the "oath-companions" who he had fought alongside since he was a boy. Abaddon refused the kingship he was offered, gutted his father and then went into an exile in which he killed everyone who remained in his old clan and many more besides. The Luna Wolves eventually found him after a battle which took out several whole gangs, and it was the promise of brotherhood that persuaded Abaddon to submit. He also retained his heritage more than any other Mournival officer, scratching gang-marks onto his armour (which worried Sejanus a little).

When Horus was wounded on Davin, Abaddon agreed to First Chaplain [[Erebus]]'s idea that they heal Horus at the Serpent Lodge. When Horus came back corrupted by Chaos, Abaddon didn't notice a thing and was corrupted along with his Primarch, gladly following him into the [[Horus Heresy]]; in fact he was the first Son of Horus to stand by this decision (well if anything, the change was more Horus moving closer to Abaddon's views than the other way round, particularly when it came to elevating the SMs above ordinary people). From there, Abaddon was at the forefront of many of the major events of the Horus Heresy, from the [[Drop Site Massacre|Isstvan massacres]] to the [[Siege of Terra]].

In the Solar War, Abaddon led a fleet against Luna itself, killing Jubal Khan en route (though Jubal nearly killed him posthumously with a Caestus Assault Ram). He and his warriors stormed the Selenar fortresses that the XVIth Legion earned their old name conquering, and secured them for the Warmaster. Though arguably his biggest struggle was resisting the temptation to dismember [[Zardu Layak]]. It was during the early stages of the Siege of Terra that Abaddon began losing faith in Horus, seeing his increasing disinterest in the materium and chaos fugues as a sign of weakness. For all respects and purposes, he took over the role of his Legion's master as it became obvious that Horus was no longer able to form a coherent plan of attack. Taking matters into his own claws, Abaddon attempted to convince Perturabo to accept an accelerated plan of attack that would make victory come faster, albeit without Horus's direct knowledge. It involved using the entirety of the Emperor's Children legion as a distraction whilst several elite Sons of Horus company's launched an underground assault on an apparently unprotected section of Saturnine Wall. Rogal Dorn however, had been canny enough to spot the gap and set a trap for whoever came knocking. Despite taking total casualties (and his plans for a quick assault ruined by multiple parties), Abaddon and his squads managed to kill almost everyone at the ambush sites, fighting balls out and going through every stage of grief back to front before being glad that this fight would end him. Just as he was about to be killed, he was teleported away by his transport, begging to be sent back to die with his brothers. According to Zardu Layak, he had already been chosen as Horus' successor as Warmaster by the Chaos Gods at this point and they had no intention of letting him die so soon.

[[Cowardice|He, however, wasn't with Horus during his duel with the Emperor, as he was busy keeping the rest of the Emperor's retinue under control while the two had their fight to the death.]] When Horus was killed by the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor]], Abaddon completely lost his shit and led a frenzied counter-attack against the loyalist remnants on the [[Vengeful Spirit|''Vengeful Spirit'']] to recover Horus' body, before promptly running away (knowing that the Space Wolves, Ultramarines and Dark Angels, probably with elements of the Shattered Legions and every other army that remained Loyal, were hurling burning promethium towards the Traitors).

During the [[Legion Wars|Slave Wars]], he basically wandered the Eye of Terror feeling sorry for himself/exploring. Not until [[Fabius Bile]] made a clone of Horus did he actually start caring; whereupon he became enraged and [[Battle of Harmony|launched an attack on the]] [[Emperor's Children]], destroying the clone and Horus's body. After this, Abaddon, utterly disillusioned with his mentor with what he perceived to be Horus' failure, declared himself the new Warmaster of Chaos and renamed the Sons of Horus the Black Legion, ordering them to paint their armour black and expunge the memory of the "failure" from their name (in a vain attempt to try and remove the stain of Abaddon's flight at Terra)... or so the Imperial histories claim. In truth, Abaddon considered the Sons of Horus long dead and conceived the Black Legion as a wholly new army, one that would take in every Traitor willing and able to fight for his cause. Their first battle was fought to prevent Fabius from trying to repeat the past.

Most other Traitor Legions didn't take his claim very well, and so he spent his first millennium-or-so [[Legion Wars|beating the shit out of other Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Primarchs until they all recognised him as a new Warmaster]]. Though this process wasn't completed until after the First Black Crusade, at which time he was still vying with Thagus Daravek for the right to lead the various armies of Chaos. And with a strength of all Legions behind him he started to launch his [[Black Crusade|Black Crusades]] against the Imperium...

== Abaddon's Plan ==
===V 1.0 "The Twelve Failed Crusades"===
Abaddon is clearly conceptualized as one bad motherfucker. He leads the [[Black Legion]], which remains the largest and most coherent Legions of Chaos (apart from the Word Bearers whom are space Isis and fight holding hands, the Iron Warriors who, while broken into warbands, are internally very well-organized, <s>and ''maaaaaybe'' the Alpha Legion</s> no such legion exists, please follow [[blam|this]] link instead...and the [[Death Guard]], who have somehow managed to grow to at least Heresy-era numbers, but will only fight at legion strength under their [[Mortarion|Death Daddy]]). He is the one that makes Imperial Commanders quake in their boots. He beats Draigo in one-on-one about 70% of the time. His minions even regularly sack Imperial worlds. So what happened?

[[Games Workshop]] and its inability to write worth shit happened.

Despite the fact that they wanted to make a dude who has the magnetic and indomitable personality that managed to get Chaos to get its shit together 13 times, and the fact he rewrote the book on evil after Horus went down, ''and'' the fact that he is the #1 threat to the Imperium at large, he's little more than a joke to the fanbase except for when he's in close combat (and even then, depending if the players modelled him with arms or not).

Instead of depicting him as a scheming and successful general, they chose to depict him as making ''thirteen separate attempts'' to march on Terra, each and every one supposedly stalling out in the same place. However this is far from the truth if you know anything about the objectives of each Black Crusade. This was quite evident in the Liber Chaotica, an old book most of you youngsters haven't even heard about. As a result of his 12 "failed" crusades, his reputation is a victim of the company that's trying to prop him up as a major threat.

However, the poor reputation of the Black Crusades is built on the community believing that they all have the same objective of reaching Terra and destroying the Imperium (despite this never having been the case even back in 3rd edition). The Black Crusades had clear cut goals in mind and had them all accomplished in each one ([[Sigismund|with some complications]]). Besides, even if the Black Crusades had this goal in mind, GW can hardly kill off the "main characters" of the setting, who have the most lore, the most units, and probably the most players.

A more adequate description is that he gets what he wants and then leaves. In this regard, he kind of serves all the chaos powers at once - his ambition and lust for power appeases [[Tzeentch]], the death toll the Crusades leave behind appease [[Khorne]], the sheer volume of slaves and plunder they take please [[Slaanesh]], and the destruction left in the wake of their crusades (which often end with virus bombings to cover their tracks) pleases the [[Nurgle|Plaguefather]] greatly.

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

===V 2.0 "The CrimsonPath"===
Apparently GW realized how thoroughly they fucked up their BBEG's reputation and made a massive rework/retcon of his plans and his crusades with the 6th edition CSM codex and subsequent Black Legion supplement.

Abaddon's new plan is something called [[Bloody Path|The Crimson Path]]. The idea is to zerg Cadia with enough daemons to destroy the Pylon network, and envelop the planet in the Warp. After Cadia, he intends to use the strategy to burn/slaughter/impress his girlfriend the whole way to Terra, by bringing the Warp to it. At the same time deploying minor warbands ahead to disorganize and plunder, [[Khorne|kill, maim, burn,]] and do <strike>bad</strike> totally sweet stuff to stir up the Warp. He is preparing for the next stage of the plan, when Cadia finally <strike>falls</strike> gets potted like an eight-ball in the wrong damn pocket. Game Over.

It wouldn't be so bad. Ya'know, a planet lost in the Warp is not so uncommon these days. The bad thing is that Cadia has the ONLY warp-restraining system in thousands of light years (the aforementioned [[Necron|Pylon system]]). Why is this bad? This is when the vanguard of Chaos lackeys mentioned previously enters stage right. With the Warp getting <strike>high</strike> turned into a nightmare shitstorm worse than any previous time in the last ten millennia, the Eye of Terror itself will expand at the hilariously snuffy pain of the already ravaged and raped planets. The CSM apparently NOW CAN resist warpstorms to a degree; thus making a scar where daemons will be a common sight, warp travel now more dangerous than ever. Abbadon and [[Traitor Legions|his brohams]] could advance without opposition along the "Crimson Path". Ah, and he plans to take the path directly to Terra, hoping that the Imperium, Eldar, Tau, Orks, Rak'gol, Perpetuals, Dark Eldar, Necrons and rival Chaos Space Marines *Cough* Alpha Legion *Cough* don't get their shit together. Not to mention the gods themselves, who are pretty OK with a status-quo, as a current [[Nurgle|rotten]], [[Slaanesh|decadent]], [[Tzeentch|backstabbing]], [[Khorne|warmongering]] Imperium fuels them with all the bad emotions they need.

To add to the above, now only the 13th of Abaddon's crusades has directly targeted Cadia. His first ever Black Crusade was to recover his fancy sword and cement his position as Warmaster. His fourth Black Crusade was directed against the Citadel of the Kromach on the planet El'Phanor, which was a success (and the gates of the Citadel were even broken by Abaddon himself). His sixth ended in the betrayal and elimination of the Sons of the Eye, another warband derived from the Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus that he viewed as a threat to his claim to be Horus' successor. His ninth was directed against Cancephalus, an Imperial naval base of strategic importance and hilarious name (which he not only destroyed, but bombed it with Cyclonic Torpedoes for good measure). The tenth was a strategic success, as he was able to assault [[Medusa]] with the help of [[Perturabo]] and the [[Iron Warriors]]; even though the [[Iron Hands]] were able to survive their siege, Abaddon and Perturabo learned a lot about [[Medusa]]'s defenses and left the Iron Hands at a fraction of their original strength. His twelfth might also be considered a victory, given that he managed to acquire two [[Blackstone Fortress]]es (though it's arguable if this was his objective all along, a win is a win, pick up the chips and leave the table). Only his thirteenth Black Crusade is him directly invading Cadia, contrary to popular opinion. While he has sent forces there before then, they were primarily intended to distract the Imperium while he could accomplish his real goals. What's interesting is that we probably should have seen this coming, as his title, "the Despoiler", literally means "looter". At the very least, it explains why he wants the [[Blood Ravens|Bloody Magpies]] dead so badly.

And of course there is the little question of "wait, wasn't Cadia targeted because it was the only reliable way out of the Eye of Terror? What gives?" So the retcon has gone and introduced a rather gaping plot hole as making everything but Cadia the target for the prior twelve crusades has called into question why Cadia is even special at all. One possible answer is that Abaddon had Cadia ''appear'' as a primary goal of each Black Crusade, so the Imperium would think of it as a major defensive point and fill it with the bajillions of soldiers that he needs as a sacrifice to fuel his Crimson Path plan. Also while waiting for his final crusade maintaining the stupidly expensive Cadian gate fortress-world network would bleed the Imperium off the much needed resources that could be used to defend against shit like Tyranids or WAAAAGH! Ghazghkull so as to weaken the Imperium even more.

It also retconned the reason Abaddon wanted to take Cadia. In the old fluff the Cadian Gate was one of the few places where a huge fleet could exit the Eye of Terror (and the ''only'' one where it could be done without [[Thousand Sons|top-grade sorcery]] or [[Word Bearers|direct divine intervention]]) without being scattered all over the place and hunted down by Imperial cordoning fleets one by one. This piece of fluff was already quite dubious, considering Abby ''did'' take the full might of the Black Fleet for his [[Battlefleet Gothic|12th Black Crusade]] that took place thousands of light years from Cadia. In the new fluff the Imperium still does (somehow) think Abaddon needs Cadia to get his fleet out of the Eye, but his new "actual" plan is not so much as to ''conquer'' Cadia but to ''destroy'' it since it houses a pylon system that stops the Eye of Terror from expanding no matter how much death and suffering he causes to disturb the Warp.

===V 2.1 Gathering Storm: Electric Boogaloo ===
Starting early 2017 GW launched a new massive event about the Biggest, Blackest Crusade of all, starting with a Fall of Cadia in which (surprise) Abaddon fails to take over Cadia for the 13th time. Because he blows it up. By smashing it in two with the blown-up remains of one of his Blackstone Fortresses.

Later it was retconned that [[Just as planned|blowing up Cadia ''was'' his plan all along]], but he just needed to blow up all the ''other'' pylon-housing planets around the Eye before that. Destroying them was the true goal of most of his ''previous'' crusades (along with the other stuff noted above), and most of his activities, including early half-assed assaults on Cadia served to distract the Imperium and hide his true agenda. So in other words, [[Jojo's Bizarre Adventure|he was only ''pretending'' to be unsuccessful.]] Or so he tells himself - the retcons make it look like he still fucked around so long that it took him millenia to [[Exterminatus|blow up a planet]], something that happens any time an Inquisitor sneezes, whereas the previous reason for not destroying Cadia (gaining a fantastic fortress world and making it nearly impossible for the Imperium to take back so he'd have a base of operations, making it the evil counterpart to Terra) was a good enough reason for why he never tried firing one of a million ways of destroying a planet at it.

Anywho, as of the 13th Black Crusade Cadia was the last pylon-world (or the last Abaddon is aware of), and with its destruction the Eye of Terror has started to grow, allowing Chaos Fleets to leave the Eye en-masse pretty much anywhere. The end result was the creation of the [[Great Rift]], which has been fucking up the Imperium in horrible new ways. Of course, that also is not counting that the Necrons are rapidly waking and are fully capable of [[StarCraft#The_Protoss|constructing additional Pylons]]. They, unlike literally everyone else, have not lost any of their technological knowledge and capabilities and absolutely hate the Warp.

===V 2.2 Cicatrix Maledictum and Vigilus===
Now the [[Great Rift]] does not outright destroy the Imperium like the loss of Terra and Mars would, but the difference is akin to that of drowning in shit and merely being neck-deep in it. The "Northern" parts of the Imperium aka [[Age of the Dark Imperium|"Imperium Nihilus"]] are cut off from Terra and the [[Astronomican]], left at the mercy of Chaos with but two constantly contested corridors of stable space that loyalists can pass through; millions of worlds are lost in the depths of the Cicatrix as it spilled out; and random armies of daemons are invading realspace all over its borders. That being said it's not all (dark) sunshine and (chaos-infested) lollipops for Abby, either - the majority of his forces went all "Fuck yeah we won!" and left his crusade to pillage random undefended Imperial worlds, so Chaos forces are tugged in all directions, and with the collapse of his command structure, he cannot fully capitalize on the Imperium's weakened state.

Additionally, [[Roboute Guilliman]] came back swinging and more-or-less stabilized the Imperium Nihilus. So while Abaddon did give the Imperium a nasty wound, they still managed to hold on long enough to avoid bleeding to death. Plus now he has to contend with an actual honest-to-Emperor living loyalist [[Primarch]] directing the Imperium, so Abby's conquests are likely to devolve more and more into stalemates at this point. The [[War of Beasts]] is no exception despite things nearly looking like a victory for him until he's thwarted at the last minute. There are some highlights, he handily defeats [[Marneus Calgar]] in single combat in spite of the latter's Primaris enhancements, after getting knocked off his feet by an uppercut from the one of the others gauntlets (after getting his jaw cracked by Calgar's bare fist) and cleaving through Marneus's chest with Drach'Nyen, cleaving one of his hearts in the process and damaging the other enough to nearly kill him outright. Abaddon is prevented from finishing Calgar off as the ''Vengeful Spirit'' was on the brink of being destroyed by a scheme involving an Eldar stealth ship filled with Vortex Missiles. In his haste to retreat he [[derp|accidentally wipes out a full third of his own fleet, costing him the victory he almost had]], which allows the Imperials to slowly retake the planet. It seems like Abaddon has already begun work on his backup plan so even if Vigilus would not be captured he might still be able to take the Nachmund Gauntlet as reports speak of the dreaded Planet Killer reappearing.

In the latest development in Abaddon’s story to seize the gauntlet he apparently teamed up with an unaligned and unusually straightforward Chaos Daemon named [[Vashtorr]] who gave Abaddon enormous super ships called the [[Ark of Omen|Arks of Omen]] in exchange for Abaddon’s help. See Vashtorr was the guy in charge of the Forge of Souls aka the place where a daemon can become a [[Soul Grinder]], but apparently he was no longer was happy in being just an arms dealer for the Chaos Gods and wanted to become one himself. To do this he needed a certain piece of tech left by the [[Old Ones]] called the “dissonance engine” to serve as a key to reach and open a vault in the [[Webway]] full of powerful artifacts and knowledge behind from the [[War in Heaven]]. Unable to acquire these things on his own Vashtorr decided to forge a deal where he would give the Arks to Abaddon to keep and use to seize the Nachmund Gauntlet in exchange for Abaddon helping Vashtorr gather up the artifacts, a deal which Abaddon accepted. So over the course of a 5 book campaign the pair set to work and in the end actually managed to rebuild the engine…which as it turns out was actually just another name for the destroyed [[Dark Angel]] home world of [[Caliban (Warhammer 40,000)|Caliban]]…needless to say the Dark Angels were pissed upon finding and tried to stop this plan from happening only to fail miserably even with the aid of a returned [[Lion El'Jonson]]. In the end Abaddon and Vashtorr succeeded in rebuilding Caliban into a [[Daemon World]] called Wyrmwood and then used it to open a massive portal which allowed all the chaos aligned folks to escape, and leaving everyone else to pray that SOMEONE will be able to track down and stop Abaddon and Vashtorr before the latter can find and open that damn vault.

==In Abbadon's Defense==
A more generous way of looking at it is that Abaddon is a strong leader, albeit one with flaws, and starting from a trickier point than Horus. In the Heresy, he was in charge of speartips (an elite assault force typically made of Terminators), and while he certainly advised Horus on larger scale wars, he typically left logistics to other members of the Mournival, and largely to Horus himself. Thus, while he is one of the best warriors of the Chaos Space Marines, and perhaps the most charismatic (we're given fluff about other Chaos Lords just going to see what he's like and end up spontaneously signing up to the Black Legion), he is [[Derp|not suited]] to the intricacies of [[Tzeentch|planning]] a large scale crusade. Horus himself failed to take over the Imperium, and he was said to be the greatest of the Primarchs; certainly the best warlord among them. He commanded the obedience of the Traitor Legions, whereas Abaddon must prove his authority by force <strike>of arms</strike> again and again. This is also backed by his own rules, he's a close combat monster but barely buffs his army (only his warlord trait really). At the same time, while the Imperium struggled to get their heads around the concept of Legions rebelling, allowing Horus to spring all sorts of nasty surprises on them, plus all the Chaotic tricks up his sleeve, in 40K they know Abaddon's overall goals and have taken a shit-ton of precautions against it.

And let's not forget that forces under Abaddon's command aren't the disciplined legions of old - with the exception of the Black Legion, his armies are full of batshit insane lunatics who would happily [[Death Guard|poison]], [[World Eaters|murder]], [[Sons of Malice|eat]], [[Thousand Sons|out-scheme]], and [[Emperor's Children|rape]] each other (In no particular order) at a slightest provocation and all believe that leadership belongs to whoever can take it from the guy currently in charge, and as so detailed strategic planning for these madmen have as much sense as a planning for an Ork WAAAGH! Think about it; do you have any idea how hard it would be to command several hundred thousand Marines -not to mention several million or even billion [[Lost and the Damned|renegades]] and [[Cultist-Chan|cultists]]- with their own agendas, dogmas, beliefs, and levels of discipline to work together in unison, let alone potentially trillions or more other mortal assets? Everyone in your army, especially those of rival gods, are gunning after each other's heads and probably even your own. Also, everyone seems to forget that with such a large army there is a practical bureaucracy to things, where superiors have a whole slew of underlings and those underlings might even have their own mobs of cackling maniacs to look after, and in the heat of battle shit gets hairy when a leader gets whacked. And there are the Chaos Gods themselves; [[Slaanesh|dicking]] over their rivals and their own forces at random times and giving their followers random "blessings", which may or may not be just [[Tzeentch|mutating horribly]], [[Khorne|the sudden urge to go nuts and collect skulls]], [[Nurgle|become a walking corpse]], [[Slaanesh|grow a dick and tits]], or becoming a Chaos Spa... a '''[[Chaos Spawn|Thing]].'''

It also seems that Abby is the only person in entire galaxy who figured how to properly use prophecies and future telling powers in military campaign planning. When your average Thousand Son sorcerer or Eldar Farseer searches through the waves of possible timelines, he usually seeks the answer to the question "How would I win?", while Abaddon orders his own diviners to ask "How would I lose?" and then use the intel they get to, well, avoid a crushing defeat. So far it seems to be paying off, seen as none of his Black Crusades inflicted any lasting damage on the Black Legion or the forces of Chaos as whole, while the Black Crusades run by other guys like [[Doombreed]] inflicted way more damage to the Imperium, but ended up taking as much or even more beating in return. To this end Abaddon puts much effort into collecting all sorts of [[Sorcerer|sorcerers]], mages, prophets, seers and diviners and actually runs the largest the most potent sorcerer cabal outside the [[Sortiarius|Planet of Sorcerers]] and uses it as his intelligence-gathering agency.

ADB has also noted that Abaddon is [[That Guy|not truly loyal]] to anyone other than himself, not even the Chaos Gods; if he ever does get to Terra and conquer the Imperium, he's likely to cut all ties with the Ruinous Powers and declare himself the new Emperor of Mankind. Naturally, the Chaos Gods don't want this to happen, so they make sure he's ''[[Just as Planned|just]]'' successful enough to accomplish most of his goals while ensuring that he's still reliant on Chaos to do so. After all, the last thing they want is their favourite champion deciding that he doesn't need to serve Chaos to get what he wants any longer. Given how Abaddon hates that Horus was willing to pay any price to get himself onto the Throne, it's highly likely that Abaddon won't make the same mistake and will just bide his time. It says something that he's avoided daemonhood or any powers that would tie him to any or all of the Chaos Gods. And that's the difference between him, Ahriman, Kharn, Erebus, and the others. Either they'd swear allegiance to one God or to Chaos Undivided for greater power, or they already did and therefore have different priorities.

What's more, Abaddon does actually respect his foes as shown in his duel with Sigismund. Sigismund managed to significantly wound Abaddon before Abaddon killed him. He kept the scar of the wound as a sign of respect to Sigismund and had his body safely returned to Terra. In the same vein, when [[Thalastian Jorus]] managed to pull a fast one on him on Mackan and severely wound him, he ordered his body and those of his Death Company to be [[awesome|left unspoiled, enthroned upon the remains of those Black Legionnaires they'd slaughtered]].

It's also worth pointing out that it's not like the other notable Chaos and Xeno leaders are much more successful than Abaddon, if it all. [[Angron]] is famous for two major wars with the Imperium, that he lost, and made no long term gains while losing the force he brought with him (and keep in mind that, until [[Guilliman|Bobby]] woke up, he was the ''only'' Daemon Primarch doing '''anything''' while the rest of his treacherous brothers sat on their hands). [[Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka]] lost the first war he launched against Armageddon, and abandoned the second one after getting bored. Despite all the threat Ghazghkull was supposed to pose, he hadn't actually won a war until he got to [[Octarius War|Octarius]] and even ''that'' victory was swiftly undone by the [[Tyranids]]. The list goes on, but due to the nature of the setting it's hard to find any enemy of the Imperium who has actually made long term strategic gains. In this context, Abaddon only looks like a failure because he was the only antagonistic force in 40k doing ''anything'' for over 21 years, or at least the one GW was shining the spotlight on so his screw-ups looked more pronounced.

So Abaddon is actually just [[Just as planned|playing the long game.]] Finally, he may even be aware of the fact that the Chaos Gods want to keep him dependent on them, so he could be trying to not actually win but spill enough blood to satiate them and continue this forever, guaranteeing his own existence in the face of the Warp.

==The "No Arms" meme==
[[Image:Failaddon.jpg|thumb|left|He has no arms. [[Just as planned]].]]
While the exact origin of why /tg/ continues to depict Abaddon without his arms is unclear, these are some rumors; it may have started when some drawfag made a picture of Abaddon painting, being the failure that he is he depicted him without arms and so now he fails in the ability to paint. Another theory postulates that <s>someone</s> ''the Bri-ish'' left the "H" out of "harmless failure" and it stuck. Yet another is how someone posted a metal figure of Abaddon in some forum without his arms, complaining that his arms fall off/break very easily (which they do). Thus, the joke eventually caught on.

The other explanation is that [[Creed]] stole them during his invasion of [[Cadia]], probably while doing doughnuts around him in a [[Baneblade]], or it was [[Tzeentch|Just as planned]].
[[Image:1226670366859.jpg‎|thumb|right|Or does he?]]

For all we know, a certain [[Trazyn the Infinite|metal kleptomaniac]] nicked them from him when he was sleeping, having drawn a funny moustache on his face and left him a polite yet condescendingly trollish note and a bomb. Knowing him, Trazyn has put it in his gallery with Sebastian Thor's head and other shit in his "Body Parts of the Big and Fighty" gallery. Next up, [[Ferrus Manus]]'s hands.
Another explanation points to a certain [[Eldrad|dick]], who actually fought Abaddon and defeated him (in a White Dwarf issue where Abaddon was trying to wipe out the Ulthwe Seer Council but was driven off, actually defeated/killed alongside his retinue by Eldrad and his council, but 'teleported to safety'), cutting off both of his arms in the process, which further points to Abaddon's incompetency and lack of arms.

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

Abaddon was remodeled with the advent of Finecast, affixing his [[pauldrons]] to his torso and socketting the arms into them. In other words, GW may have actually solved Abaddon's arm problem. At least, that was the theory. In practice the arms still fall off like no tomorrow until the glue dries, especially his Sword arm. So all accomplished was ensure that Abaddon didn't have to go without his [[pauldrons]], even though he doesn't have arms. This being 40k, clearly meaning he had to choose and was left with the more essential out of two different options. The good news is that Finecast resin is soft enough for a pin vice and some wire to fix the problem entirely, but there's no pleasing some people.

In 2019 Abaddon finally received a glorious new plastic mini. And with his arm problem <s>solved</s> perpetuated, Abaddon can go back to (trying to) destroy the Imperium.

== On the Tabletop ==
[[File:Slaash!.jpg|right|300px|thumbnail|He has some badass moments too. Notice his sword is so awesome that it [[Katanas are Underpowered in d20|can cut a guy in half, and another guy into five seperate pieces with a single horizontal slash]]. How does that even work? Fucked if we know, but it's [[Awesome|awesome]]. And he's Primarch-sized, apparently someone ate his veggies.]]To his credit, Abaddon is a hilariously destructive force on the tabletop - between his Daemon Sword, Drachn'yen (which houses an extremely powerful Chaos Undivided daemon born from humanity's first act of murder), Combined Chaos Mark, and [[Talon of Horus]] rules, there are very few units in the TT game which can go toe-to-toe with Abaddon and hope to come out on top. Truthfully, most forces lack entire ''squads'' that can do much more than offer him more than a token resistance. He can be [[Tarpit|tarpitted]], but even this isn't guaranteed as his balls-out toughness and sheer volume of attacks (if you roll well) means he will mulch through formations by himself. If Abaddon gets near something, that something is going to wind up [[FATAL|raped]] in a matter of seconds. So, copy his statline into your homebrew Chaos Lord.

The actual rules for him get changed quite a bit between editions, typically regarding exactly what Drachn'yen actually does in combat. During 2nd edition, it was basically a titan close combat weapon, auto-wounding with instant death, no armor saves, and auto-penetrating vehicles regardless of their armor. He also had terminator armor in the days when it made a save on 2[[D6]], with <s>3+ save</s> 2+ save thanks to Khorne's blessing (the rules back then had weapons that could modify an armor save, so that wasn't as completely broken as it sounds), or he could use the Talon of Horus, which was still a strong weapon. 3rd edition watered him down heavily; he'd attack with the Talon of Horus and make a single attack with Drachn'yen. This attack could not be re-rolled in any way, but if it hit would cause an auto-wound with no armour save allowed, and if the enemy failed their invuln (or didn't have one) then whatever he hit would be immediately removed from play (vehicles still suffered just a penetrating hit). In 4th edition, it functioned like other Daemon Weapons, rolling a D6 and adding the number to his attacks, but no attacks if he rolled a 1 (assuming he charged, this could mean 11 attacks) and he took a wound with no armor save (still got his invul save though), and the sword made his attacks S8 with him able to re-roll any failed wounds due to the Talon of Horus. He was briefly [[nerf]]ed by the 6th edition changes to [[power weapon]]s that made his stuff AP3, but FAQ made them AP2. If a Chaos army didn't field a [[Daemon Prince]], then it usually fielded Abaddon or [[Kharn]].

For 6th edition, Phil Kelly tried to actually get CSM players to include some variety in their units and changed the rules again. Drachn'yen is now a hell of a lot weaker, only +1S and AP2 with the Daemon Weapon rule (essentially a daemon power axe without unwieldy). For heavier targets, he uses the Talon of Horus, which is now a S8 lightning claw. He also has the Mark of Chaos Ascendant, which gives him all marks and allows him to benefit from all Icons, and has Hatred (Everything) if fielded in a Black Legion army (which you'll do of course.)

See [[Horus Vs Abaddon|here]] for some mathhammer on how he does against his own Primarch.

===8th edition===
Abby has always been a melee powerhouse, and 8th edition isn't an exception: WS2+ BS 2+ S5 T5 W8 A6 Ld10 2+ 4++, any weapon that successfully damages him has its damage halved (rounded ''up'', so he can still be chipped away to nothing by small arms (At least they HAVE arms). His weapons are basically the same as 6th and 7th ed but adjusted for the new rules; Drachnyen is S+1 AP -3 D flat 3 with the same Daemon Weapon bonuses as before, Talon of Horus is Sx2 AP -4. The Talon, and the Talon-mounted bolter all deal D3 damage. Whatever he gets his hands on will feel the pain.

What really makes him an attractive choice in 8th edition, though are his command auras: Black Legion units within 6 inches of him (which includes himself) re-roll failed to-hit rolls and any heretic astartes within 12 inches of him auto-succeed morale tests. Cherry on top, if he is the Warlord, he also becomes an Icon of Excess (DttFE triggers on 5+ instead of 6+) for all Black Legion units within 6 inches. It is the first time Abby has ever really done anything for his army, but ho boy does he do it well now!

On top of that, the Chaos Space Marine codex upgraded him by having him give two extra Command Points to your army if he's the Warlord, which ironically enough is identical to 8th Edition's interpretation of his arch-enemy Creed's infamous Tactical Genius rule as well as his Loyalist equivalent [[Marneus Calgar]]. Plus, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw9aZeejjA4 he's ''finally'' got a new model.] If his model base is any indication, he is as much fed up of Primaris lieutenants as some of us. Also now comes with an off-switch, for some reason. That should make things easier for team Emps!

===9th Edition===

'''Holy shit.''' Abaddon gets an immense power boost here.

{| class=wikitable
|- valign=top
! Name !! M !! WS !! BS !! S !! T !! W !! A !! Ld !! Sv !! Cost
|-
| Abaddon the Despoiler || 6" || 2+ || 2+ || 5 || 5 || 8 || 6 || 10 || 2+ || 220 pts.
|}

Already he has great stats, but here comes the kicker. His weapons are the Talon of Horus, which both shoots and swings, and his sword Drach'nyen. The Talon in shoota mode is a Rapid Fire bolt weapon that fires two shots up to 24" at S4, AP-1, for D3 damage each, and in choppa mode it can do anywhere from 1 to 6 swings at S10, AP-4, for D3 damage again. But the sword is the reason for the '''holy shit''' at the beginning of the section. Every time Abby fights ('''NOT''' for each attack, meaning the ability triggers no matter what if he attacked at least once with Drach'nyen) you roll a D6. On a 1, Abby eats a mortal wound and cannot fight anymore that phase. However, for any other result, you get to make that many additional attacks with Drach'nyen. Rolled a 4 and swung twice? You get a grand total of 6 swings with the sword. Drachnyen only hits for S6 at AP-3, but it's a flat 3 damage as opposed to the Talon's D3.
Now for his abilities: Like all Chaos Marines, Abaddon has '''Death to the False Emperor''', '''Bolter Discipline''', and '''Hateful Assault'''. But Abby has a few more. For one, because of '''The Warmaster''', you get a bonus 2 CP if he's your Warlord in a Battle-forged army. Next up is '''Dark Destiny.''' This one gives Abaddon a 4++ save, as well as ''halving all incoming damage.'' That [[Seraptek_Heavy_Construct|Seraptek]] wants to shoot you with its obliterators? Any shot you fail to save only does three damage, not six! '''Lord of the Black Legion''' allows you to reroll failed hits for any {{W40kKeyword|BLACK LEGION}} units within 6" of him, and any {{W40kKeyword|BLACK LEGION}} units within 12" of Abaddon auto-pass Morale tests. Finally, Abaddon can deepstrike himself. His Warlord trait? It's '''First amongst Traitors''', which causes DttFE to go off on a 5 or 6 while the unit is within 6" of him.

FUCK ALL THAT HE WAS REDONE AGAIN!

{| class=wikitable
|- valign=top
! Name !! M !! WS !! BS !! S !! T !! W !! A !! Ld !! Sv !! Cost
|-
| Abaddon the Despoiler || 6" || 2+ || 2+ || 6 || 6 || 9 || 8 || 11 || 2+ || 300 pts.
|}

While hefty at 300 pts., he's gonna break every bone in every body. Like always the claw has a ranged option. Now its 4 assault shots at S5 AP-1 D2. The melee options are easily distinguishable: the claw for enemies with one wound, Drach'nyen for everything else.
He's so loaded with perks, its unreal. 4++, can't lose more than 3W per phase, first wound per is nullified. So he's tanky af. He buffs his subordinates quite a lot. Black Legionaires (Core and Chars) can reroll all hits and wounds in 6". Through his 3 Warlord Traits he can generate even more Attacks and reroll charges.

==Appearances outside the tabletop==
===Dawn of War 2 : Chaos Rising===
Abaddon makes a brief cameo during any of the endings, where he's about to torture Eliphas for his failure to kill the Blood Ravens (Dark Crusade's after action reports for Chaos mentioned Abaddon having some unexplained beef with them that the Imperium can't make sense out of). For a second, it would appear that he ACTUALLY had arms, but it was later revealed by the camera crew that another Chaos Terminator with a lightning claw was behind Abaddon to act as his arms.

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

...But we all know better than that. And this is because, even with his retinue, Abaddon still could not kill off the Ulthwe Seer Council and a [[Eldrad|certain dick]]. Eliphas has, by this point, killed the entire Biel-Tan Seer Council with their Farseer by himself. Thus, we come to the obvious conclusion that Eliphas is probably the one who should be running the Black Legion. To be fair, /tg/ has had an ongoing betting pool on which of the Chaos Lords is going to be the first to up and try to [[Sindri Myr|SINDRIIIIII]] him, with the most common executioners listed being [[Ahzek Ahriman]] of the [[Thousand Sons]], [[Erebus]] and/or [[Kor Phaeron]] of the [[Word Bearers]], [[Eliphas the Inheritor]], and [[Huron Blackheart]]. Of course, since GW considers tectonic speed to be a blisteringly fast pace for setting progression, we'll likely never know.

===[[Battlefleet Gothic]]===
Rules for Abaddon were included in the ''Armada'' expansion for [[Battlefleet Gothic]], along with his flagship, (or rather, ex-flagship. He's probably built a new one since he [[FAIL|''somehow'' let the last one get destroyed]]) the '''Planet Killer'''. [[Crunch]]-wise, he's pretty good, and the planet killer is [[Exterminatus|excellent]]. However, there is the problem of him costing 195 points, which is [[Games_Workshop|overpriced]]. He gives his ship Ld10, one Ld test re-roll per turn for his fleet, and a bunch of special rules, including one that makes his ship more difficult to be crippled by hit-and-run attacks, like [[Horus|having your enemy teleporting into it when the shields are down]]. His ship [[rape|doubles]] its strength in boarding actions. Also he can become [[Angry_Marines|angry]] if his side fails a leadership check, [[Commissar|firing his own guns on the ship that failed it]], [[Khorne|which pleases Him]]. His ship has loads of [[dakka]] (though still not enough, obviously). It also has the [[Exterminatus|Armageddon Gun]], which has a special rule that lets it destroy planets as if the planet killer was an exterminator ship, only better. Also, [[Anal_Circumference|the Armageddon Gun, designed to destroy planets, can be fired on things as small as enemy ships]]. It cost 505 points, so fielding both Abaddon and his prized possession costs you 700 points, which is still less than ''one'' Blackstone Fortress, which ought to give some indication as to why he wanted to get those so much in the first place.

[[Fluff]]-wise, Abaddon's Twelfth Black Crusade involved [[Battlefleet_Gothic|him invading the Gothic sector]], capturing three out of six Blackstone Fortresses and firing their warp cannons at the same time in order to [[Exterminatus|destroy the entire Tarantis star]], [[Grimdark|killing pretty much everyone in the system]]. He then, in true Abaddon style, [[FAIL|managed to get his flagship blown up]] (by long-range torpedoes from imperial lunar-class cruisers), and then [[Not as Planned|lost the gothic war]]. He ran back to the Eye of Terror, built a new planet killer, and launched his Thirteenth black crusade.

The rest, as they say, is(n't) history.

==The Talon of Horus==
Also see [[awesome]]. Basically a book written by the biggest Abaddon fanboy of them all, [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden]]. Though the book is mostly about [[Iskandar Khayon]], a former Thousand Son who's really <s>[[Ygethmor]]</s> (except he wasn't, [[Just as Planned|there never was a Ygethmor]]). It has a lot of the Big Bad 'Un in it.

And Abbadon kills [[Horus]]...

Well, not the real Horus. You see [[Fabius Bile|Fabulous Bill]] decided to clone Horus's corpse after the Emperor's Children stole it from the Sons of Horus. Then Abaddon and his merry crew showed up and blew Fabius' base of Harmony to kingdom come with a [[Angry Marines|fucking ship used as a makeshift missile]]. They then board Fabius' ship and whoop ass until they eventually come across a lab containing the failed clones of all the Primarchs which they, of course, destroy. However after Fabius goes full drama queen, he brings out the fully formed clone of Horus. The clone proceeds to open a can of whoop ass of its own on the assembled Black Legion until finally Abaddon literally says "Enough!" and engages Horus in a badass father and son duel. In said duel, Horus swung his massive mace, the Worldbreaker, which Abaddon not only parried, but caught in the goddamn Talon. What's more, he shattered the fucking mace, known one of the most canonically overpowered weapons. At this point, Horus finally recognized Abaddon and said "Ezekyle. My son. My son."

Of course, rather then there being a tearful reunion between father and son, Abaddon, in typical Chaos fashion, rammed the Talon into Horus's chest and fired six shots into his body. Just before the clone of Horus died, Abaddon said one of the most badass phrases in 40k:

"I am not your son."

Yeah. In summary, in this book, the dude [[/tg/ gets shit done|actually gets shit done]].

== Assorted Trivia ==
As a note of mockery (''and a testament to GW's abhorrent and perpetual lack of imagination when it comes to naming things''), his full name is Ezekyle Abaddon... Get it? You see what GW did there? His first name is an Armenian contraction of Ezekiel, as in the Hebrew Prophet Ezekiel, and his last name is Abaddon, which was the ancient Canaanite word used for '''ruin''', '''perdition''' and '''destruction''' (''none of which seem to actually occur when Failbaddon and his Try-hard Marines are involved, but we digress''). Ha. Ha. ''Funny''... This can of course be mollified, and indeed made awesome, by assuming that Kharn, Huron Blackheart, Ahriman, and all the other competent chaos lords call him "Zeke", "Abby", or some variant there of to his face.

In the [[The Horus Heresy: Legions|Legions Card Game]] he has a Scottish accent for some reason. And it's hilarious.

A Fangless, Venom-less, non-silk producing arachnid in Australia is named after him (''Abaddon despoliator''). Fitting since even in the most dangerous continent, he is still fangless and of course, arachnids only have legs and no arms.

==The Despoiler's Plan.==
Some random short story, written by some [[Aaron Dembski-Bowden|random anonymous]], on a random day:

“Do your marines speak true captain? That the Despoiler is weak and pathetic?” When he heard the question, the captain of the Sons of Malice's tenth company started laughing. He turned to face the renegade that was following him. The warrior stopped; his pure black eyes, clashing with his white skin, unblinkingly looked at the renegade marine.

“Only a fool dismisses the Despoiler as a weakling. Only a fool would believe what the Warmaster wants him to believe.”

“What does he want us to believe?”

“For past millennia, he crusaded twelve times. Each time defeated, he returned to the eye, laughing, for the worshipers of the Emperor thought that they won. Each time he fell, he looked less of a threat; each time he fell, generals and chapter masters, captains and inquisitors, started dismissing him as a smaller threat than he is. But they are fools. The Despoiler's plans were never to win. If he wanted, he could have crushed Segmentum Pacificus, Solar and Tempestus during his first crusade, but he waited. Why? He knew that victory would be short lived, that six primarchs were still alive, that his forces weren’t fully replenished, that he could have crushed any army which tried to stop him, but he couldn’t control the massive territory. So he waited, gathering allies and weapons. Each of his crusades was just a fraction of the endless armies of the undivided and the four. But he waited, each crusade weakening the might of the Imperium, each crusade plunging the dagger deeper. But now the thirteenth has started. full legions are now moving - armies of such might that the Great Crusade would look pathetic in comparison. Where hundreds of marines roared in the name of Khorne charging the Emperor's dogs, now millions roar in bloodthirst.

Where tens of sorcerers invoked the name of Tzeench, casting arcane powers, now thousands walk, their power darkening the skies. Where small groups of Slaaneshi slaughtered, driven to ecstasy, now battalions march, their perversion driving mortal men insane. Where only few squads of Nurgle's plague sons walked, their diseases poisoning the air, now uncountable armies march, bringing endless death, as even the earth breaks under their feet. The Despoiler planned this; now is his time to strike. The Imperium besieged from all sides, each enemy requiring more than the entire might of what can be given. They cannot win this battle. The Despoiler has at least nine legions of Astartes - Black Legion, Word Bearers, Iron Warriors, World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Death Guard, Emperor's Children, Night Lords, Alpha Legion. And his ally Blackheart has his legion of Red Corsairs. For hundreds, if not thousands of years, these legions grew impossibly huge. Not caring about their purity, not having a tithe, they increased to tens of millions. Endlessly increasing armies of cultists and traitor guard march with them bringing endless destruction. Daemons rip into realspace with every death, bringing even more of it, slaughtering enemies easily and endlessly.

And now is the time of the end. The Imperium would have already fallen. Even the first assault was incredibly brutal. The only reason that the Imperium is still holding are the genius of a general that is leading the Cadian regiments, and Necron and Eldar support. Only with this, the Imperium endures, but even so the Despoiler advances. Nothing can and will stop him, that’s why we joined him, on this crusade. We will get our homeworld back from loyalist dogs. And then the Legion of Scelus will rise again.
And so you ask if the Despoiler is a fool? The fools are those, who didn’t hunt him down millennia ago. For he is the reason the Imperium shall fall.” The captain turned around and started walking, his steps the only sound echoing in the silent corridors.

==On his personality==
For a very long time, Abaddon's character has been in flux. You see, he has had the BBEG tag and all the related tropes ascribed to him over the years: being cruel, a bully, prone to outburst of rage when things don't go well, and all in all looking like your classic Saturday Morning cartoon villain. However, more recent fluff has tried to give more depth to his character.

Before his fall, the most important thing for Abaddon was loyalty, not to institutions or figures of authority, but to those who were at his side fighting. This quality is evident when you see how he reacted to the wounding of Horus, the man who had been fighting with for decades, more than the Emperor. Abaddon saw in Horus the true representation of the Imperium, that of a band of brothers fighting for survival against a hostile universe.

But then, Horus started his path downward. By the time of the Siege of Terra, it became obvious to Abaddon that Horus has become a deluded puppet of an uncaring power, exactly what he had claimed to be freeing everyone from when waging war against the Emperor. Ultimately the death of Horus proved to Abaddon that no soldier, no warrior, should ever put himself at the service of some so called higher power. In this sense Abaddon came to understand Chaos can never be allowed to reign over him. He would always be his own master, even if he bargained with the Ruinous Powers. But then, what is left for him?

Only war. Abaddon is at core a warrior, a creature who thrives in conflict. He probably can't even contemplate himself in a situation where peace reigns. It eventually becomes evident in his title, the Warmaster: from laying low Marneus Calgar in a brawl, to planning and executing the grand strategy to unleash the Great Rift upon the Galaxy, this is where his heart and soul is. He doesn't really fight for the Chaos Gods, unlike, say Kharn, Typhus or Lucius. At best he deals with the Ruinous Powers, at worst he is the one calling the shots. Even while the Pantheon enjoys what devious plans he is going to pull next, Abaddon's main fight is against the Imperium. The very concept of warriors being used as pawns under the pretense of serving some higher power is just an opportunity for him to be what he is, a warrior-general who will always look for a challenge. He is the antithesis of Archaon, who was made a slave to the Dark Gods and loathes his destiny as the Everchosen, wishing for everything to be destroyed so he can be free.

But wait anon, why would Abaddon treat his own troops like cannon fodder and sacrifice them just like the Emperor and Horus did? This is a tricky question, and it really comes down to the fact as a warrior Abaddon will indeed always be willing to sacrifice others to achieve his goals. Does it make him a hypocrite? Perhaps to others, but for him it's a matter of giving his followers what they want: conflict, vengeance against Emps and his legacy, and the chance to achieve even greater power. The astartes who follow him will always have a choice, even if it means their deaths. Of course, that's the whole point of a warrior's existence. As for those who let themselves be taken by the Chaos Gods, well, even Horus was eventually slain by such folly. Let them glut in the powers of the Warp; they either will learn to master it or die consumed, undeserving of its power just like the Emperor and Horus. That's the line Abaddon will never cross.

All these traits become evident when you see some acts in the novels where he is featured as anything but a moronic bad guy. He inspires those he calls his brothers, to the point they are willing to die for his ideal; and he certainly has shown to honour those who have fought well enough. Although rare, these gestures are important to illustrate the character of Abaddon, the Warmaster of Chaos.

==See also==
*[[Abaddon at the Therapist]]
*[[Abaddon's 14th Black Crusade]]
*[[Black Crusade]]
*[[FAIL]]
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/15590031/] In which, Abaddon becomes a god among men. And this is only the start!
*[http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=Abaddon+Quest The entire Abaddon Quest archive, read on and laugh hard.]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I8FDCrFeUc&feature=player_embedded|The true story of how Abaddon lost his arms.]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB4Kb2A0o5A Abaddon's epic battle with Eldrad]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c4-uo9vOSE Failbaddon is no more ;_;]
*[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ7f-gK_yo0 Abaddon's lines in Retribution.]
*[[Thanquol]], who is basically how Abaddon would be portrayed as a Skaven lord if the writers were the denizens of /tg/ (And thanks to Chaos winning at The End Times can be considered more competent)

==Gallery==
<Gallery>
File:Abaddon Talon of Horus.jpg|One of the most Feared beings in the galaxy, Carrying the Talon of Horus, one of the most feared weapons in the galaxy. Or he would be if he didn't lose his arms all the time.
File:Rule 63 Ezekiel Abaddon.jpg|His [[rule 63]] version.
File:Remembrancer Sketch First Cpt. Abaddon2.png|Back when he was first captain.
File:Abaddon Heresy model.jpg|Pic taken as Abaddon arrived at his surprise birthday party.
File:Abaddon and some kittens by twopunch-d6kosgl.png|Everyone has hobbies... [[Rip and Tear|What's odd is the fact that the box has the World Eaters icon... Demonic kittens?]].
File:Drach'nyen Daemonsword.png|His powerful daemonsword, Drach'nyen.
File:Abaddon Despoiler updated.jpg|An updated take on the motherfuckerest motherfucker in the galaxy.
File:Abaddon's master plan.jpg|His plan from the very beginning.
File:The Warmaster Of Chaos.jpg|Recast from shame and shadow, reborn in black and gold
File:Failure of Chaos.jpg|No matter how awesome you look, you can't escape the truth Abby
</Gallery>

{{Template:Chaos-Marines}}

[[Category:FAIL]]
[[Category: Black Legion]]

Cypher

2023-05-26T20:38:10Z

2A02:1808:86:7148:E58C:28C5:307:D094:

[[File:2Cypher2.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Cypher, the Fallen Angel. Is rumored to have descended from <s>[[Video games|Desmond Miles]]</s> Clint Eastwood.]]
{{Topquote|Una salus victis, nullam sperare salutem. - The only safety for the conquered is to hope for no safety.|Aeneis, Publius Vergilius Maro}}
{{Topquote|Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.|Lillian Hellman}}

''HE'S COMING, HE'S COMING, HE'S COMING!''... <s>Yeah, Right.</s> He came. He's here.

'''Cypher''' is a pretty impressive Independent Character who [[Games Workshop]] neglected releasing rules for despite his model being available for fucking ever and being referenced every 12 seconds in Dark Angels fluff. He was originally notable for having a 4+ on 3D6 ''completely unmodifiable proof against everything'' bullshit saving throw on death that served no function but to prevent the other player getting the victory points for killing him since he was still removed even if he passed it. [[Troll|Thanks]], Second Ed Codex: [[Chaos]]! With the Dataslate from Digital Editions, nearly everyone can now field this bastard in their 6E army.

He's basically a [[Fallen Angels|Fallen]] [[Dark Angels|Dark Angel]] who dual-wields pistols - one [[Plasma]], one [[Bolter|Bolt]] (radlad), both master-crafted, and both possibly archaeotech - and wears a sweet bone white hoodie over his power armor (which is green and not black for some weird reason). Whenever he pops up on the Dark Angel radar, the Inner Circle loses its shit and dispatches the Deathwing and Ravenwing to bring the fucker in but they never can. [[Alpha Legion|They've claimed kills, but he always fucking shows up again]].

Cypher’s continued existence bears testimony to his seemingly mystical ability to avoid capture. Every time pursuers get close, he has shown an uncanny ability to escape. Down the ages, the Inner Circle of the Dark Angels have suggested that Cypher is under the protection of some higher power. The fact that his lifespan has continued since the days before the Horus Heresy speaks of unnatural powers at play, but then again Cypher was originally an inherited title, and it's possible that it still is.

==Who is he?==
{{Topquote|'''He weaves in and out of my vision- I see one who is many. I see they who will test the Unforgiven. In one Hand he carries hope, in the other despair. I speak of Cypher. He is coming closer all the time.'''|Luther, the Dark Oracle}}
{{Topquote|Cipher: a secret or disguised way of writing; a code. |Dictionary}}

Given the above citation, it is unlikely that GW ever wants to pull down their own pants. Cypher is as elusive as Robert Denby, a living urban legend who either has the patronage of a Chaos god to grant him immortality until he finishes his long mission, a title passed down among agents of the Fallen, a son of a bitch who sold us out to the Machines, or a bunch of random dudes pulling the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKCmyiljKo0 Spartacus Maneuver]. The issue of his identity becomes even more complicated when one considers that "Lord Cypher" was a title used by '''The Order''' of [[Caliban]] (and by extension, the Dark Angels) who was assigned to embody their traditions and customs and ensure that they would be adhered to at all times. It was specifically mentioned that the Lord Cypher was to completely abandon his old identity upon assuming his position and was given a cloak and hood to keep his appearance concealed at all times- given the nature of this role, it is possible that there has been more than one "Cypher" since the Horus Heresy, with each new one inheriting the equipment and personality of his predecessors.

===Knight of Lupus / Green Knight===
Thankfully we have more than just theories to go off, and something that ''is'' known for certain: his history with the Order of Lupus. If there has been more than one Cypher since the Horus Heresy, we know who the very first one was. Anyway, the Order of Lupus was a Calibanite Knight Order that was actually a [[Ordo Malleus|cult that studied and collected knowledge of Chaos]]. They were wiped out by Lion El'Jonson, save for a single survivor who was allowed to join the Order and later the Dark Angels and became The Lord Cypher, a rank of the Dark Angels. He is the person who introduced Luther to the "truths" of chaos, but kept Luther and the other Dark Angels on Caliban ignorant of the [[Horus Heresy]] at large that was going on around them.

Through Zahariel's eyes: ''"Where there had been an armour-clad warrior there stood a man garbed in a robe of bark and leaves, a tree given human form. More than a tree, a whole forest, his hair its spilling canopy, his muscles powered by the strength of millions of deep roots…"'' This may seem weird but it seems to be a reference to [[The Green Knight]] of Arthurian legends.

The Green Knight can appear as one of Arthur's greatest champions where he is often portrayed as an exorcist and one of the most powerful knights in Arthur's court, or he is transformed into the Green Knight in order to test Arthur's court. His major role in Arthurian literature includes being a judge and tester of knights, and as such the other characters see him as friendly but terrifying and somewhat mysterious. He was also a [[Brettonia|Brettonian]] rather obviously. Or as a reference to the green man, a vegetation being in medieval art; a recollection of a figure from Celtic mythology; a Christian symbol; or the Devil himself. very fitting for Caliban don't you think.

In any case, this Lupus-Cypher was "killed" ''(we see him fall, and the body removed by Zahariel's men)'' during the Fallen uprising, and the Librarian Zahariel took his place as Lord Cypher. The whole young Knight of Lupus thing might just be some kind of elaborate cover story though as when he was unmasked by Zahariel just before his death, Zahariel was able to recognize him as someone from his own past, he may not have even been a space marine given he was still able to feel fear, though he almost certainly was not human.

===Zahariel El'Zurias===
See also: [[Zahariel]]

One thing that is known for certain is that the Librarian Zahariel becomes the Lord Cypher during Luther's declaration of independence. So far he is the last known person to hold the role, since the fluff hasn't identified anyone else to occupy the role after him.

However, at this point Zahariel is consumed by the power of the '''Ouroboros''', essentially making him possessed and therefore a pawn of Chaos.

===Holguin - Voted-Lieutenant of the Deathwing===
At the end of “Angels of Caliban” Holguin has self-appointed task of looking after the broken Lion Sword and planned to reforge it and make it whole once again.

However, looks like Holguin did succeed in reforging the sword, because the Lion was once again in possession of it in the space between the Horus Heresy and the Scouring. After the fall of the Emperor, the Lion met his brother Russ in the Imperial palace, and resolved their grievances with each other thrown up on '''Dulan''', with both of them admitting their guilt over putting pride ahead of their duty by being away from Terra at the time of the final battle. The Lion Sword gets thrust through Russ's chest with the Wolf King not making any move to resist, but the Lion turns the blade aside without striking any organs and leaving his brother alive. Russ then believed that they finally understood one another after that and grew to respect and admire his brother ''(but not envy, never that)'', calling him the best of them all.

So unless Holguin took the sword, gave it to the Lion, then took it back ''again'' then he's not any more likely to become Cypher over any other officer of the legion.

Additionally, Holguin was put in command of the forces of the Dark Angels on [[Macragge]] after the Lion's imposition of martial law during [[Imperium Secundus]], so you'd think Guilliman would recognise him when he met Cypher in the 41st millennium, but instead only recognised the sword that Cypher carried.

===Corswain===

A potential candidate based on loose circumstantial evidence (which is par for the course for Cypher). Despite being the Lion's second-in-command during the Heresy and a famous champion of the legion, Corswain is essentially unaccounted for after the Fall of Caliban. The modern Dark Angels continue to venerate him as a hero of The First, but there is no actual indication that he died at Caliban, or that he continued to lead the chapter in some capacity after the Second Founding. His last known position was kicking Fallen ass in orbit when the legion finally made it home and found everything had gone to shit.

According to [[Luther]] himself, ''his'' Lord Cypher ([[Zahariel]]) was killed by Corswain at some point during the orbital battle, though when he mentioned this, Supreme Grand Master Morderan gave him a funny look, as if it did not fit with his understanding of events, potentially meaning that either Luther was incorrect or the Dark Angels record of events was incomplete. Its worth mentioning that Morderan seemingly blew his own brains out in Luther's cell after some kind of disastrous meeting with Cypher. It also may have been the [[Watchers in the Dark]] protecting Luther instead of a suicide, but either way, the encounter with Cypher clearly rattled Morderan beyond Astartes levels of self-control.

If this is the case, it's possible that Zahariel broke the Ouroboros' influence over him and passed the title and knowledge to Corswain, with Zahariel either dying or being shipped off to the Grey Knights to become Epimethius. Also considering that he had direct knowledge of [[Tuchulcha]] and Typhus' involvement with the Warp device, Corswain is pretty well placed to become Cypher and stop Typhus and Astelan further down the timeline.

Another circumstantial piece of evidence pointing towards Corswain comes in the novel ''Unforgiven'' where Cypher tells Azrael that he would have made a good Seneschal for the Lion; a role that Corswain himself was groomed for. Unless Cypher was giving false flattery, it means he was personally familiar with the Lion at the very least; which rules out nearly all of Luther's Fallen on Caliban ''(except for a small handful)'' as they never knew their Primarch.

Corswain as Cypher is also symbolically interesting. He was one of The Lion's most loyal sons, the first outside Loyalist to reach the Solar System during the Siege of Terra, and one of the few individuals the Fallen still regard with utter dread. It's been said that Cypher holds the key to redeeming the Fallen, but that forgiveness could easily be a double-edged sword. Neither the Lion nor the Emperor were known for their forgiving nature, and Corswain was called the Hound of Caliban for a reason. In short, him being Cypher could represent final, merciless absolution a long time in the making.

===Grey Knight Founder===
It seems that one of the Cyphers was originally destined to become one of [[Malcador]]s Knights Errant and one of the first grand masters of the [[Grey Knights]]. In the Pandorax novel Grand Master Epimethius of the original [[Grey Knights]] and one of the [[Fallen Angels]] is awoken after a ten thousand year sleep and is confronted by a [[Lord of Change]], who is confused at the [[Not as Planned|turn of events]] by expecting a different person and '''actually fears''' the consequences of the change in fate. Epimethius himself states '''[[Awesome|"someone switched places with me. That is now his path to walk"]]'''. Granted, they don't mention Cypher by name in that book but it does go great lengths in explaining Cypher's motivations in that he selflessly '''CHOSE''' to become fallen with the rest of his brethren and is attempting to rewrite his destiny for some unfathomable purpose.

It is not entirely known when Epimetheus was recruited from Caliban prior to the fall, although the Knights-Errant ''were'' on Caliban trying to figure out what [[Luther]] was plotting and found him in the middle of a downward spiral, but Cypher helped them escape, so the opportunity was there for him to get out or potentially send someone in his place.
Not to mention the fact that Epimetheus is an Alpha-Plus Psyker, so if he was a "proper" Fallen he could purge the Dark Angels if they even looked at him funny, and would probably make the entire Inner Circle collectively shit themselves right through their Termie buttplates if they knew about him.

===Time Traveler===
Another theory is that he is being cast through time in a similar manner to the [[Legion of the Damned]] appearing wherever and whenever he is needed. This is subtly hinted at several times in the fluff, first with the minor inconsistency of his [[C'Tan|phase knife]] which exists outside of the [[derp|space-time continuum]], so Cypher has it in some instances, but does not have it in other encounters. Secondly, he can fuck with the established timelines and somehow confuse [[Tzeentch|Lords of Change]] whose JOB it is to know the future ''(see above)'' and thirdly, Cypher/[[Zahariel]] is somehow connected to the [[Ouroboros]] which was concealed on [[Caliban]], which if you know your philosophy is the representation of time recycling itself eternally. So he could be time traveling, or waiting for eternity to swing back around to try things a little bit better each time round.
*According to certain Arthurian legends merlin’s wisdom and knowledge came about because he was ageing backwards through time and so already knew what was going to happen because he had already lived it. In a way Cypher could be playing the part of the Dark Angels version of the Eldar phoenix lords; traveling back through time in order to set up events in preparation for the final battle. Whatever the final plan might be according to the Lord of Change in the “Pandorax campaign” it is directly interfering with the great game of the ruinous powers; when it finds out that two of the players have somehow swapped destinies it is terrified about the implications.

===41st Millennium===
Unless the [[Watchers in the Dark]] can pull some resurrection shit or Lupus-Cypher is a [[Perpetual]] ''(or Cypher never actually "died")'' Because the Ouroboros plotline only gets resolved at the end of the 41st Millennium and we have no further candidates that we know of with any connection to the creature, and no evidence of anyone taking the mantle from him then is likely that Zahariel remains as Cypher through to the 41st Millennium.

During the talk between Azrael and Luther in “The Unforgiven” Luther mentions that his Cypher was slain by Corswain during the destruction of Caliban. Although given the situation at the end of the same book there may be more than one lord “Cypher” running around Caliban at that time.

Though with respect to the Grey Knight angle, it is possible that Zahariel passes the mantle on to someone else further down the line, allowing Zahariel to become Epimetheus whilst "Cypher" became the Fallen Angel we know so well. But the question remains: who?

==What he's up to==
[[File:Cypher.png|400px|thumb|right|Heh... nothin' personal... kid]]

His actual allegiance is a mystery- he's been just as likely to fight Chaos as he is to assist it and there have been multiple incidents where he showed up to save an otherwise doomed Imperial force or even turn on the very cults he helped create. (He even managed to steal the identity of an Inquisitor at one point without anyone noticing until he had long since gotten away with it.) His intentions regarding the Dark Angels are equally bipolar; for every time the Dark Angels have been led astray by him, there's another time where Cypher's trail just happens to lead to the capture of one of the other Fallen or even the discovery of a new recruiting world. Some members of the Inner Circle even theorize that he may be an emissary sent by the Emperor himself to test the Dark Angels' resolve (which is supported by several of Cypher's own statements, [[Troll|including a message he sent to Azrael]]).

Either way, he is slowly heading in the direction of Holy Terra, a bizarre mission that has the Dark Angels worried as hell. He may even want a word with the God-Emperor. "OH SHIT HE'S GONNA TATTLE ON US!"

In truth it's believed that he has the [[Lion El'Jonson|Lion]]'s sword, and that he intends to return it to the Emperor, ergo earning his/their absolution. Or maybe he's going to assassinate the [[Emperor]]. Or maybe both somehow considering the whole [[Perpetual]] thing, which to the best of everyone's knowledge tells us that if the Emperor kicked the bucket then he'll just reincarnate and finally get off the throne and get back to business. ...Or Cypher could be betting on [[Vulkan]]'s ''Talisman of Seven Hammers'' acting as a dead-mans switch for the Throne and causing Terra to explode in a fiery inferno the moment it ceases to function, possibly also resulting in the entire human race becoming unprotected warp gates for daemons and enveloping the entire galaxy in a warp storm that makes the Eye of Terror look like an anthill.... Cypher just might be the bearer of the end times. Who knows? Either way, the Dark Angels want him dead before they can find out.

During [[Abaddon]]'s [[Black Crusade|13th successive failure]], he had the balls to walk onto his capital ship, talk shit, and shoot the only friends Abaddon made in ten thousand years. This happened when Abaddon blinked. As in, closed his eyes and when they opened, corpses. Then he walked out again. [[Awesome|Clint Eastwood]] ain't got shit on this motherfucker. Thus it is now a known fact that Abaddon also fails at blinking.

Also, he is sometimes depicted with green armour even though pre-Heresy Dark Angel armour was black. The Dark Angels who rejected [[Luther]] painted their armour green during the Heresy, and were fighting him before the [[Lion El'Jonson|Lion]] ever showed up on [[Caliban]] (this is evidenced by Merir Astellan, who hated both El'Jonson and Luther alike and kept his armor black). ''The Unforgiven'' confirms that Cypher changes colour scheme whenever he needs to. His armour is black during that book, but Belial notices that there are still traces of green paint on it (presumably left over from when he [[Alpha Legion|played loyalist dress-up]] during the attack on Piscina in ''Angels of Darkness''). That would at least explain why he shows up all over the place, dressed exactly like a Dark Angel, rustling their collective jimmies.

In one instance in the [[Ophidium Gulf Crusade|fluff]] he was being pursued by the combined efforts of a single Black Templar vessel and a Dark Angel fleet. Even though the Black Templar single-handedly managed to apprehend Cypher because they get shit done, the Dark Angel fleet threatens to destroy the Black Templar ship if they won't hand over their prisoner. Begrudgingly, the Templar ship hands over Cypher, starts to send a short message to their High Marshal and then "mysteriously disappears without a trace". Likely {{Blam|++THEY GOT LOST IN THE WARP++}}. The smug Dark Angels then proceed to fly back home, thinking mission accomplished until they arrive and find the cell containing Cypher to be empty. Poof motherfuckers.

===More Recently===
According to [[Gav Thorpe]]'s latest novel, Cypher tracked down a Ravenwing squad, killed an enemy Fallen, willingly threw down his pistols, and demanded to meet with the Inner Circle. There followed a series of events where Cypher reveals that [[The Rock]] has secretly been host to the '''Tuchulcha''' Engine for all this time, and it is part of a triumvirate of entities that, when brought together, can cross the bridge of time, the other two being the '''Ouroboros''' buried within the core of Caliban (and later remains in Caliban's ruins) and a third device/entity held by [[Typhus]]. Cypher's involvement in bringing the three together is accompanied by unusual behaviours from the [[Watchers in the Dark]], which serve to convince the Dark Angels of Cypher's importance, if not his sincerity. When they are brought into proximity in the Caliban system, they open a rift which appears to stretch back in time to Caliban's destruction, to the interest of multiple factions: [[Azrael]] skeptically but hopefully wishes to use the rift to prevent the catastrophe, while [[Fallen Angels|Astelan]] thinks to help his rebels win, while Typhus thinks merely to use time travel to cause [[Chaos|carnage]] in the name of his [[Nurgle|dark master]]. Cypher, as we'll get to in a second, seems to want the overall picture to stay the same.
*On an amusing sidenote: Cypher seems to actually like and think rather highly of Azrael, saying that he would have made a fine seneschal for [[Lion El'Johnson|the Lion]].
*It's actually revealed that this is not the first time that Cypher has been a prisoner on the Rock. He has over the last 10,000 years presented himself many times as a prisoner and each time he has walked free. The shocking thing is that he has never actually escaped, rather each time the current Supreme Grand Master has "let him go". Of course, this is kept all very hush, hush or Asmodai would literally explode in anger.

When shit hits the fan, it appears that the enemies are closer to the rift than the Dark Angels; [[Ezekiel]] is the one who convinces Azrael to destroy the rift, since the Fall of the Lion was simply meant to be, and who-knows-what could happen if their enemies traveled through, or brought something back forward in time. However, in the aftermath, there is the implication that destroying the rift in the 41st millennium may have been the [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_paradox causal factor] in the event which broke apart the planet of Caliban and which initially scattered the Fallen across time [[Just as Planned|in the first place]]. Cypher escaped into the time-rift, adding yet more evidence to the theory that he is traveling back through history trying to change events, but his entire motivation for bringing the Dark Angels back to the ruins of Caliban (and therefore uniting the three pieces and destroying 30k Caliban) [[Just as Planned|remains uncertain]].

====Gathering Storm====
Cypher somehow shows up again later at the close of the 41st Millennium, presumably either traveling back forward through time or by waiting 10,000 years ''(which considering what we already know is actually quite plausible)''. This time, he shows up on [[Macragge]], at around the same time [[Roboute Guilliman]] is miraculously resurrected. While the "Terran Crusade" is making their way back to Terra, they are set upon by the [[Red Corsairs]], and Guilliman is imprisoned by [[Kairos Fateweaver]] on a '''Blackstone Fortress'''. Cypher is brought to the fortress by Harlequins and pointed in the direction of Guilliman's cell, offering to save the Terran Crusade from the Red Corsairs and guide them away, on the condition that Guilliman takes Cypher and the Fallen to Terra and to the Imperial Throne, ''for undisclosed reasons''. Guilliman promises to do so, but swears that if Cypher is up to any trickery or deceit he will regret it. Cypher then guides the crusade through the webway, while being pursued by the forces of the [[Thousand Sons]], eventually getting to Luna, where Guilliman has a showdown with his brother [[Magnus]]

However, when they eventually get to Terra, Guilliman recognises the sword on Cypher's back, and has no intention of letting him anywhere near the throne room. He double crosses Cypher, and orders him arrested by the Custodians, who put him in a prison that no-one has escaped from in thousands of years; naturally, Cypher escapes within the space of a paragraph, and is currently at large on Terra.

After his miraculous escape, Cypher is apparently being chased by (or more likely leading) a force of the Adeptus Custodes. You know you've made it big when the guardians of the Emperor of Mankind himself have been tasked with catching you; although it's unlikely that they are heading towards a happy ending, as they themselves are being unknowingly shadowed by an, as of yet unidentified force of ships.

==List of Cypher's Achievements / Troll-List==
[[File:Tumblr nj9ccyYe4p1u19hiso1 500.jpg|250px|thumb|right|]]
*'''Circa M31''' Cypher presents himself at the Rock to the Dark Angels and their twelve successors, explaining that Fallen Angels are going to be [[Doctor Who|dropping out of time]] and spilling the beans. So they form ''the Unforgiven'' to keep the secret under wraps.
*'''632.M32''' Destroyed/''Disappeared'' a Dark Angels successor chapter (the Lions Sable) and a Dark Angels Supreme Grand Master, then returned the Lion Helm & Sword of Secrets to the Dark Angels
*'''822.M33''' Once again, gave back the Lion Helm & Sword of Secrets after the Dark Angels lost them to Orks.
*'''997.M33''' Corrupted the Angels of Redemption's recruiting world for some reason (more than likely exposed corruption, but since the planet paid its taxes on time, no one cared). At some point Cypher also guides the Dark Angels to the [[Feral World]] of [[Conan the Barbarian|Kimmeria]], where [[Azrael]] is from.
*'''M34-M35''' Was on the [[High Lords of Terra|Ur Council]] during the [[Nova Terra Interregnum]] and '''RULED HALF THE IMPERIUM.'''
*'''624.M36''' Fought the [[C'Tan]] Deceiver '''IN THE WARP'''. The paradox of that shit caused his phase knife to exist outside of the space-time continuum and so he has it, but doesn't have it. [[Derp|Cypher broke physics]].
*'''665.M38''' Impersonated an [[Inquisitor]] and deleted the Imperial records about himself and the Dark Angels.
*'''200-500.M39''' <s>Hangs out with the [[Alpha Legion]]</s> NOTHING HAPPENED, A PERSON WHO DOES NOT EXIST DOES NOT ASSOCIATE WITH PEOPLE WHO DO NOT EXIST
*'''518.M39''' Betrays <s>the [[Alpha Legion]]</s> PEOPLE WHO DO NOT EXIST and the Dark Angels ''incidentally'' reclaim a hundred planets from them while hunting for Cypher. The [[High Lords of Terra]] give them a whole bunch of medals which they wear with [[Rage|pride]].
*'''Late M39''' Kills the Grand Master of the Interrogator Chaplains, Belagor, delivering this bad ass line ''"Luckily for you I do not equate justice with torture so I promise you this will be swift."''
*'''976.M41''' Single-handedly saves a planet from Chaos, leaves one loyalist survivor who becomes Cypher's fall guy when the Dark Angels come checking.
*'''989.M41''' Pisses off [[Lugft Huron]] and the [[Red Corsairs]] swear to kill him. ''Get in the queue guys''.
*'''997.M41''' The [[High Lords of Terra]] get worried about broadcasts from the "Voice of the Emperor" and send '''SEVERAL''' members of the [[Officio Assassinorum]] to deal with it. ''None return.''
*'''998.M41''' [[Ophidium Gulf Crusade|Ophidium Gulf Incident]]
*'''999.M41''' Gets into a fight with [[Belial]] of the [[Dark Angels]] who is the chapter's greatest warrior. [[Just As Planned|Belial's weapons fail]].
*'''[[13th Black Crusade|Late M41]]''' Cypher attempts to kill an [[Inquisitor]] who is close to figuring out the secret of the [[Fallen Angels]], the [[Ravenwing]] spoil the kill, potentially [[Not as Planned|causing themselves problems]] later.
*'''The aftermath of [[13th Black Crusade]]''' While the "Voice of the Emperor" has caused a lot of uprisings, it becomes clear that the Cadian sector is now more faithful and prepared than it has ever been (much to Abaddon's irritation). The [[Dark Angels]] discover the source of the broadcasts was the ruins of [[Caliban|Old Caliban]] and switch it off.
*'''999.M41 (again)''' Rescues [[Roboute Guilliman]] from the [[Red Corsairs]] and leads the Terran Crusade to Luna. But gets arrested on Guilliman's order when they reach Terra and placed in an impervious Custodes prison that has never had a break out. [[Troll|Cypher then breaks out in the following sentence.]] HE AND THE FALLEN WERE SEEN BY EVERYONE IN THE IMPERIUM WALKING IN A PARADE ON TERRA WITH GUILLIMAN. How the Dark Angels plan to cover this one up is a mystery for the ages.
*'''M42(?)''' ''(Some years after the battle of [[Naaman|Koth Ridge]])'' Cypher presents himself to the Dark Angels and precipitates a sequence of events whereby it is implied that the Dark Angels of the future are [[Just as Planned|involved with the destruction of Caliban.]]

==The Lion Sword==
There is no item more mysterious than Cypher’s sword – for it has never been seen unsheathed. Even in the press of close combat, Cypher has never yet been observed to wield the blade. Both psykers and auspex readouts report strange feedback that seems to emanate from the sword within the scabbard, as if it were the source of some barely veiled power. Varying legends have arisen over this never-drawn weapon, claiming it to be the Lion’s Sword once borne by the Dark Angels Primarch. The fact that [[Roboute Guilliman]] recognized the sword gives further credence to this theory, as it would have had to have been used during the Great Crusade for him to know, and that it shouldn't belong to Cypher.

During the events of “The Unforgiven” Asmodai attempted to remove the Sword from Cypher. As soon as he made contact with the blade his mind was assaulted by visions of the destruction of Caliban from a first-person point of view, even experiencing the final moments of the person he was viewing the events through. The feelings of hurt and betrayal were so intense that even someone as mad and as zealous as Asmodai was overwhelmed. Asmodai decided that it would be better to allow Cypher to keep the sword and made every effort to never come in contact with the blade again.

During the “Gathering Storm part 3” Cypher accompanied Guilliman to Terra but was refused entrance to the throne room. Guilliman might not recognise who Cypher was but he did recognise the blade Cypher carried on his back, the sight of which made him shudder with dread and there was no way he was allowing that near his father.

Obviously Guilliman has some idea of what it could do, and was either protecting the Emperor by ordering Cypher arrested ''(bearing in mind that the Golden Throne is already protected by the [[Companion]]s, psychic wards and Mechanicum safeguards, not to mention the consciousness of the Emperor himself)'' or because he worries of any future implications surrounding the Dark Angels "Forgiveness".

After the release of the Lions' character model for "The Horus Heresy"-gameline, the part of the mystery which sword it is can be counted as cleared: The model of the Primarch of the First has options for both the Lion Sword and the Wolf Blade used after Guilliman snapped the original weapon of his brother. The Lion Sword is modelled with the exact same crossguard as is the blade Cypher lugs around. Its possible, that the backstrapped one of Cypher is shorter than the one on the Lion himself, but if one assumes, that the blade is either still in pieces or was reforged (it actually has a slight resemblance of Narsil/Anduril from the LotR Jackson films)then it would make sense, that the ornate new scabbard Cypher uses for it is a little shorter than the original weapon, which has a rather utilitarian looking scabbard on the Forge World model.

==Necromunda: Hired Gun==
[[File:Cypher bounty.png|300px|thumb|right|What were the Dark Angels thinking when they posted this?]]
A small easter egg shows someone named [[REDACTED]] (high chance being the [[Dark Angels]]) offered an entire planet for Cypher's capture.

Interestingly, the bounty reward planet named '''Tregrom''' was named after a ship owned by a rogue trader named '''Tregor''' from the [[Space Hulk: Deathwing]], which just so happened to be rediscovered by the Dark Angels as a space hulk in the same game.

==6th (and 7th) Edition==
His Dataslate comes with some insane(AWESOME) changes and were updated along with the limited edition of the 7E Dark Angels codex.

For one, he can be a non-FOC HQ (But never Warlord) for a [[Sisters of Battle]] (eh?), [[Blood Angels]], [[Grey Knights]] (Meaning that [[Kaldor Draigo]]'s even more of a dick than [[Azrael]] thought), [[Imperial Guard]], [[Chaos Space Marines]], [[Space Wolves]] (How?)(Because an Enemy of an Enemy is a friend), Vanilla Marines and [[Inquisition]] (WOT)(Read the fluff, the fucker was an Inquisitor at one stage) army. I mean seriously, how would even HALF of these armies accept this bastard as an ally?(master of disguise) And the kicker is that he'll cost -1 Ld on your real warlord. He can't join a Dark Angels army, and if he's up against Dark Angels, every model with the Deathwing rule gains Hatred (Everyone).

As an Independent Character, he gets ATSKNF, Fleet, Hit & Run, frag & krak grenades and Infiltrate. His sword also gives him Eternal Warrior and Shrouded. Also note that he has '''BS 10'''. ''THE SHIT, GEEDUBS''.

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"
! || Pts || WS || BS || S || T || W || I || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Cypher:''' || 190 || 7 || '''10''' || 4 || 4 || 3 || 8 || 3 || 10 || 3+
|} 

Also, that old rule about his daring escape is around again with three modes if Dark Angels are on the field:
* If a Dark Angel is within D6" when he goes down, he's worth 3 flippin' Victory Points for being caught alive.
* If anyone else is within D6" when he goes down, he awards no extra Victory Points for his capture. If there's both a Dark Angel and another dude around when he drops, it becomes a random roll who gets him.
* If nobody's around D6" when he goes down, he'll just leg it and nobody wins a Victory Point.
* If Cypher's still alive at the end of a game, his side wins d3 extra Victory Points.

If no Dark Angels are on the field then Cypher does not award his kill/victory point unless an enemy is within D6" of him when his last wound is lost or he is otherwise removed from the field.

His guns manage to gain some major use, as his plasma pistol ignores Gets Hot! and they allow him to overwatch at full BS. He can also shoot both pistols twice or shoot them once each before or after running. In assault, he'll also make half his attacks (rounding up) at S4 AP5 (using his bolt pistol) and the rest at S7 AP2 (using his plasma pistol), which usually means 2 plasma shots and 2-3 bolt pistol shots as he have 3 base attacks, +1 for two pistols and +1 on the charge, meaning that anything without 3+ wounds and solid invuln in challenge with him is pretty much dead. Note, that this happens on initiative '''eight'''.

He also can bring up to 3 Chosen of Chaos squads with himself, to represent his Fallen subordinates/puppets. Those Chosen does not take any slots, have ATSKNF and Infiltrate and can use Cypher's Ld if he's around at the cost of being unable to take any Chaos-y upgrades, like marks or icons, as well as no dedicated transports.

So, looking back, we can summarize the following: 
1- he's awesome 
2- he's the dark angel equivalent to my little pony on /tg/ 
3- his rules are cool, do the fluff justice, and will make DA player you face lose. Their. Mind. [[Just as planned]]. 

== 8th edition ==

{| border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" align="left"
! || Pts || M || WS || BS || S || T || W || A || Ld || Sv
|-
| '''Cypher:''' || 80 || 7" || 2+ || 2+ || 4 || 4 || 5 || 4 || 9 || 3+
|} 

In the new edition his bolt pistol is range 16", strength 4, AP-1 and 1 damage whilst his plasma pistol is range 12", strength 8, AP -3 and damage 2 (notice how it gets overcharge statline for free with no overheat risk). Pretty damn good considering he can shoot even if he has retreated or advanced due to his 'Blazing Weapons' rule. He also has Frag and Krak grenades. His two other powers are 'Mysterious Protection' which grants him a 4+ invulnerable save and the ability to 'not be slain' on a 2+ once he loses all wounds; he is still removed from play but he does not count towards victory points. He also has 'Lord Cypher' which grants re-roll of 1's for every '''Fallen''' within 6". All this for 110 points less than last edition too!

==Gallery==
<Gallery>
File:Baaaadass.jpeg|You will never find a better artwork for him than this... For now at least. Also, possibly the only official illustration that has him wearing appropriately pre-Heresy armour.
File:Cool Cypher.jpg|Another cool art piece of him.
File:Cypher old art.jpg|Possibly the first-ever artwork of him.
File:Cypher artwork.png|The dude has a skull fetish, you'd think he wants to be a chaplain.
File:Cypherwallpaper.jpg
File:Cypher's Bolt Pistol.png|His bolt pistol... No idea why it changes details with every artwork though...
File:Old Cypher model.png|Cypher's old model.
File:Cypher new model.jpg|Sexy new 7th Edition model, with true-scale Lion Sword!
File:Cypheria, the Fallen-1.png|Something's off about this model... I like it though.
</Gallery>

{{Template:Chaos-Marines}}
{{Template:Fallen-Angels}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Chaos]][[Category:Space Marines]][[Category:Dark Angels]][[Category:Fallen Angels]]

Eidolon

2023-05-26T20:34:48Z

2A02:1808:86:7148:E58C:28C5:307:D094:

{{Heresy}}
[[File:Eidolon Post Bile.jpg|175px|thumb|right|After getting his head stitched back on.]]
{{Topquote|Wait... Didn't you die?|[[Lucius]]}}
{{Topquote|I got better.|Eidolon}}

Lord Commander Eididdly doo (AKA Lord Commander Primus Eidolon, Lord commander Fuckface, that twat who lost his head, and a lesson on why you don't back talk Daemon Posessed [[Fulgrim]]) is the most prominent Lord Commander (called a [[Chapter Master]] in other legions) in the [[Emperor's Children]] [[First Founding|Space Marine Legion.]] A massive, egotistical asshole even before the legion's fall to [[chaos]] (much like his Primarch), which led to him getting a [[Ferrus Manus]] makeover courtesy of his daddy. Until [[Fabius Bile|Bill]] glued his head back on and installed a microphone into his mouth, <s>making him the first [[Noise Marine]]</s>. Actually the first Noise Marines were Marius Vairosean and his Kakophoni, who actually used sonic weapons way before [[FAIL|Faildolon]] got his fancy throat mic, although he was implanted with Laer vocal chords by dear Fabius beforehand, allowing him to attack by screaming.

==Great Crusade==
Eidolon started his career in the Legiones Astartes as a battle-brother of the III legion when it was first founded on [[Holy Terra]]. Eidolon was one of the lucky survivors of the [[Nurgle|Space cancer]] that blighted the nascent third legion in its infancy. By the time the third legion had been united with their primarch, Eidolon had been a company captain, and the [[That Guy|serious issues]] he had, only started to emerge.

He was really, really, really obsessed with his primarch, and looked to him like a father figure in the creepiest way possible. As such, he was eventually promoted to Lord Commander, and became the second in command of the entire legion.

===Battle of [[Murder]]===
The battle of Murder against the [[Megarachnids]] was one of the most brutal campaigns of the Great Crusade (though not as much as the Rangdan Xenocides.) The [[Blood Angels]] space marine legion arrived on the world to colonize it, only to get their shit pushed in by the Megarachnid natives. They called for reinforcements, which the Emperor's Children under Eidolon's command answered. Despite being in an advantageous position to attack, Eidolon made so many egotistical mistakes that his force got their shit pushed in too, needing the help of the [[Black Legion|Luna Wolves]] to rescue them. After the battle ended, [[Tarik Torgaddon]] famously called Eidolon out for being an egotistical asshole who nearly cost the [[Imperium]] victory infront of his men. While Eidolon backed down that day, he would [[Butthurt|never forget the insult.]]

==[[Horus Heresy]]==
[[File:Lord Commander Eidolon.jpg|thumb|right|400px|Before he got a [[viking]] crew cut.]]
After the cleansing of Laeran, Eidolon was one of the members of the Emperor's Children who had fallen to [[Chaos|Chaotic Corruption]] alongside their primarch. At the time, command of the Legion's many companies was split between himself and his friend/rival, Lord Commander Vespasian, however Fulgrim's analysis of his legion in preparation for the [[Battle of Isstvan III|betrayal at Isstvan III]] concluded that the men under Vespasian's command, amongst them the surprisingly bro-tier Saul Tarvitz were more likely to be loyal to the [[Emperor]] as opposed to Warmaster [[Horus]]. So, after a failed attempt to corrupt Vespasian by the daemon imprisoned in the painting of Fulgrim himself his own primarch murdered Vespasian in cold blood as - according to the daemon in the painting - there was "nothing to corrupt" in Vespasian, upon which Fulgrim went on and sent the companies under his command and other Emperor's Children loyal to the Emperor to the surface to get virus bombed. However Saul Tarvitz managed to switch places with his battle-buddy, Venerable Rylanor the [[Dreadnought]] so he could spy on the battle plan, found out what was going to happen, flew down in a thunderhawk to warn everyone, rallied the defenders, and kept the traitors occupied for a few months so that [[Knights-Errant|Nathaniel Garro]] could make it to [[Terra]]. <s>Ultimately though, it was for naught, as every legionaire (except for Garviel Loken, Crysos Morturg and Rylanor) met their ultimate end on the blood-soaked soil of Istvaan III.</s> Saul Tarvitz knew they couldn't be saved and just wanted to waste Horus' time while Garro sped to warn the Imperium.

After the first bout of Fabulous Bill augmentations and the dropsite massacre, Eidolon died. While en-route to some backwards [[Adeptus Mechanicus|mechanicum]] crystal mining world, Eidolon questioned his primarch as to why they were heading to this shitty world of no strategic or material value instead of Terra. Fulgrim who didn’t want to spoil his [[Slaanesh|fabulous]] plan to build a [[derp|“City of mirrors”]] out of said crystals to the rest of the legion, couldn’t come up with a quick enough counter-quip, so he cut the Eidolon's head off and mixed the blood with his wine. Brutal. This change of behavior managed to convince Lucius and Bile that something was wrong with their Primarch, and started [[FATAL|taking steps]] to exorcise the daemon (spoiler: Fulgrim already exorcised it with his own strength of will, he was just turning into a coked up sociopath).

Later on, Fulgrim changed his mind and had Fabius glue Eidolon's head back on; the decapitating cut was so perfect that he was able to be revived soon afterwards. However, this did leave him with some side effects, as he was stuck in a constant state of pain and pleasure from that point forward. He was also left with several tics and an awkward gait, which led Fulgrim to order that Eidolon should stay behind him until he could walk more gracefully.

Later, Fulgrim would lead [[Perturabo]] and both of their Legions to the [[Crone World]] of Iydris to look for an Eldar artifact called the Angel Exterminatus. It turns out it was a ploy, and Fulgrim needed Pert as a sacrifice in a ritual on himself, conducted by Eidolon since he died and came back. Since Fulgrim knew more than he was letting on the whole time, and was much smarter than the mere fucked up hedonist he was pretending to be, it's possible Fulgrim planned the whole thing out before he killed Eidolon. What a [[Eldrad|dick]].

After that, Eidolon became the central leader of the largest contingent of Emperor's Children still vaguely concerned with the materium during the heresy. Despite Fulgrim's disdain of his resurrected form, he became one of the greatest threats to both [[Shadrak Meduson]]'s Shattered Legion guerrillas and the Great Khan's wild riders, as well as a big leveraging force for Chaos-Juiced Horus to throw Mortarion's way. It didn't end up mattering, as Lorgar ended up forcing fugly-four-arm Fulgrim to bring all his troops to him at Ullanor, but he still got shit done.

During the Siege of Terra, Eidolon would convince Fulgrim (with the rest of the legion) to attack the Saturnine Wall along with Abaddon, the rest of the Mournival and a sizeable portion of the [[Sons of Horus]] and Iron Warriors. Needless to say, this was a massive [[fail]]. Fulgrim got beaten up by [[Rogal Dorn]]. Eidolon then battled Dorn and Sigismund with 55 other Emperors Children elite. Eventually [[Sigismund]] was able to best the lord commander, cutting him open and kicking him off the wall 1300 meters up, presumedly killing him.

Following the Horus Heresy and the [[Legion Wars]], he went on to lead the Phoenix Conclave warband of the Emperor's Children, reestablishing the Legion's old/orbitally wasted stronghold on Harmony for his own use, albeit for ceremonial occasions. He's not been a slouch either, as he was able to coerce both Lucius and Fabius Bile to his own ends. Oh and there's the uncomfortable realisation, mainly on un-corrupted Fabulous's part, that Eidolon had been very slowly changing since his first death, and has been metamorphosing into something profoundly alien and horrible. Fabius wanted nothing to do with him; that should be warning enough.

In this way, he marks the in-between point between Slaanesh's two other mortal champions; a sense-freak obsessed enough to make Slaanesh raise a labial flap in curiosity, but still goal focused enough to turn any other foolish fuck inside out whilst committing acts of base genocide as means of gauging reluctant potential test groups.

Choose your poison, really.

{{Chaos-Marines}}
[[Category:Space Marines]][[Category:Emperor's Children]]

Erebus

2023-05-26T20:32:17Z

2A02:1808:86:7148:E58C:28C5:307:D094:

{{heresy}}
{{awesome}}
{{sick|The fucking asshole that ruined everything for humanity forever.}}
[[File:Erebus0001.jpg|thumb|right|Don't you want to punch his smug face? No, wait, you should want to [[Exterminatus]] it '''MULTIPLE TIMES OVER'''. And '''then''' let loose a [[Death Company]] or two on it.]]
{{topquote|Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.|Matthew 7:15}}
{{topquote|And what’s he then that says I play the villain? When this advice is free I give and honest?|Iago in Othello, William Shakespeare}}
{{topquote|'''FUCK EREBUS!'''|The fifth most popular phrase in 40K, right after HERESY, Blood for the Blood God, For The Emperor!, and WAAAAAAGHH!}}
'''What a bastard. No, seriously, this guy is the Heretic of ''ALL'' HERETICS. If you don't hate him yet, just wait, you'll be screaming curses at his face by the time we're done...seldom has there been a more reprehensible dick-biscuit.'''

'''Erebus''' (also known as '''Space Judas''') is the most evil son of a bitch to ever (dis)grace the galaxy (which is really saying something because the Warhammer universe is full of disgusting dicks like [[Honsou]], [[Fabius Bile]], [[Typhus]], [[Herman von Strab]], and [[Lucius]], and that's without getting into the [[Aza'Gorod|many]], [[Mephet'ran|many]], [[Asdrubael Vect|''many'']], [[Illuminor Szeras|non-human]] [[Urien Rakarth|examples]]) and is a [[Dark Apostle]] of the [[Word Bearers]] and one of [[Lorgar]]'s trusted lieutenants. During a certain time, he became a devout servant of [[Chaos]] and co-conspired with [[Kor Phaeron]] in order to bring about the downfall of the Imperium. Though, to Erebus' credit, whilst Kor Phaeron was able to corrupt his Primarch, it was he who was indirectly responsible for the [[Horus Heresy]]. For it was he who manipulated events so that the [[Interex]] were slaughtered instead of warning the Imperium against the dangers of Chaos, who stole the Anathame that led to the corruption of [[Horus]], and he, along with Horus, who masterminded the Drop Site Massacre of Isstvan V. He continued to serve Horus as his spiritual advisor until his defeat at the hands of the Emperor. And did we mention he's a total bastard? Think of a smug jackass, then make him a master manipulator, multiply that by 10, and you're STILL not close enough. How about indirectly killing <strike>millions billions trillions quadrillions</strike> uncountable numbers of people? The death toll isn't just being increased by forces of Chaos either - without the Heresy, the [[Noblebright]] [[BrightHammer40k|Imperium]] would have kicked the shit out of all the xenos who were not active before 40,000, and by the way humanity is now in existential danger. Don't forget supercharging the power and influence of all the Chaos gods. We mentioned his responsibility in starting [[Horus Heresy|that fun time]], did we not? Seriously, this guy's bastardly douchebaggery ''CANNOT '''EVER''' BE OVERSTATED''. '''IT IS NOT HUMANLY POSSIBLE TO'''. Thankfully as the Heresy keeps on going this slimy, hateful dickblister is getting his SHIT PUSHED IN.

==Background==
[[Image:Dark Chaplain Erebus.jpg|thumb|left|250px|BREAKING NEWS: LOCAL MAN RUINS FUCKING EVERYTHING.]]
Even if you knew nothing about the Heresy, Chaos or the 40k setting generally and just got handed a copy of the first couple of books you'd easily realize that Erebus is corrupting the living fuck out of everyone, via the venerable 'Rasputin Maneuver'. The fact that he spends all his time just chilling out with no-one else from his Legion, just hanging around where the action happens and <s>constantly being complained about</s> everyone loving him in the first books except the main character (poor [[Garviel Loken|Loken]]) and those two remembrancers (people should really listen to those guys more). This pretty much proves that no-one else in the setting has even the vaguest ability to connect obviously connected facts. He's a slippery, creepy motherfucker and if anyone had an ounce of sense they'd have tossed him out of a fucking airlock the second they set eyes on him.

Despite being the main instigator of it, the Horus Heresy was hardly fun times for Erebus. First of all he nearly gets sacrificed to the Dark Gods himself in order to make Horus see the "truth", which pisses him off. Then, when he gets back to Davin, the priestess who almost killed him tells him that everything was [[just as planned]] and doesn't resist when he turns on her, ruining his petty revenge. Then he gets to Calth to summon a lot of daemons... only to have to teleport (or rather use a ritual to enter the Warp and exit it at another point) away before some orbital bombardment blows his sorry ass to kingdom come.

After '''that''' he rejoins his Primarch for a time, and finishing Lorgar's merry little crusade to turn Angron into a RAGE-filled Daemon Primach, he stabbed [[Argel Tal]], who was the best and coolest Word Bearer to ever exist, in the back. Because he was ''too humane, despite being daemonically possesed''. [[derp|Okay...]] Lorgar wasn't happy with that, since Argel Tal had been the one closest to his vision for humanity (and also because he thought Erebus trusted his visions too much), so he told [[Khârn]] what happened. So the next time Erebus was chillin' out amongst the World Eaters, fighting a couple of duels to first blood for the fun, Kharn stepped into the arena and challenged him. ''Sanguis Extremis'', or battle to death, because Erebus <s>teamkilled [[Argel Tal]]</s> MURDERED HIS LAST FRIEND. Erebus, who'd never seen any of this in his visions, was taken completely by surprise and had the <s>crap beaten out of him</s> EVER LOVING SHIT BEATEN OUT OF HIM AS THE ENTIRE WORLD EATERS LEGION LET OUT A COLLECTIVE [http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hw2WqvbDt5g"DAAAAAAAAAAAMN!"] He was completely, utterly taken apart by a furious Khârn, losing one hand and almost his life but he escaped death by teleporting away just before the deathblow landed because he's a cowardly fuck.

After this misadventure, the slimy motherfucker decided he better put half the galaxy's distance between him and the World Eaters, so he went back to hang out with Horus. He tried to corrupt Sanguinius by setting up a trap for him where a couple of Greater Daemons (Ka'Bandha and Kyriss the Perverse) teamed up to murderfuck the hell out of a whole planetary system and use the power from said sacrifice to exacerbate the [[Red Thirst]] and [[Black Rage]] in the Blood Angels (by the time of the Heresy, it only happened extremely infrequently, and Erebus only knew about it thanks to Horus witnessing Sanguinius having to put down one of his Legionnaires). The whole plan was to engineer things so the whole Legion succumbed and then offer Sanguinius to free them from the flaw forever... if only he'd join Chaos' side. This endeavor notably failed because [[Apothecary]] [[Meros]] sacrificed himself instead of Sanguinius to absorb the Black Rage, and also because Horus had given orders to Ka'Bandha to actually kill the Angel. So when Erebus learned [[not as planned|his masterful plan had been ruined]], he got [[butthurt|pissy]] at Horus for throwing the whole plan into disarray. Horus took his "reasonable" complaints under careful consideration and, in an unparalleled act of restraint, only skinned the devious arsehole's face off (instead of ultra-killing him on the spot like everyone else present, [[lulz|even his fellow Word Bearers]], expected), 'cos he's Motherfucking Horus and he doesn't like being told what to do by slimy little scheming fuckers. Funny thing is, Lorgar straight up told the slimy fuck that he had more chance winning the Annual Astartes Bolters for Beauty Pageant than corrupting The Angel before he even tried. But being the arrogant daemon-fucker he is, he didn’t listen and lost his face meat for it.

Not that it really mattered, however, because beauty is only skin deep and Erebus doesn't give a fuck about how he looks (and he picked up the trick to use Warp energy to regenerate from his Primarch), so he just continued being an absolute ass. Following this, Erebus decided that he had learnt nothing over the last few years and decided to try to dick over a Primarch even more likely to ruin his shit - Vulkan. He achieved this by <s>teamkilling a bunch of loyal followers</s> executing <s>a</s> yet another treacherous and incompetent bitch of an Apostle who wanted to take his place ([[fail|because, yes, there's something of a "become Caliph in the place of the Caliph" contest going on amongst the Dark Apostles]]) and making sure that John Grammaticus got away with a Primarch killing weapon. Johnny took the fulgurite ([[wat|a mote of the Emperor's psychic lightning given physical form; nothing less!]]) to Macragge in order to use it on Vulkan, [[Just as planned|because doing exactly what Erebus wants you to do can only lead to good things]]... [[Not as planned|Or not, since Grammaticus ended up using it on himself]] thanks to the intervention of [[Eldrad|an even bigger dick]]. But it doesn't matter, since Erebus still has a bunch of other convoluted plans going on all at once! (You might wonder, but no, he doesn't serve [[Tzeentch]] exclusively.)

At one point during the Horus Heresy, he made a (way too ambitious) attempt to assassinate The Emperor, by making use of a [[Blank]] merged with a demon. ([[What|Don't even ask.]]) Without Horus knowing, he sent the abomination to go and hunt for the Emperor's blood. The mission was of course doomed to [[fail]], when he intercepted a strike force of Imperial Assassins, sent to kill Horus. They ended up killing each other, much to Erebus' frustration. Horus, in the end, found out and forbid the use of assassins as weapons to Erebus, considering them tools for cowards. [[Siege of Terra|We all know how well that ended up]].

He also collaborated with [[Typhus|Calas Typhon]] in corrupting [[Mortarion]], giving him evidence in order to frame the [[Death Guard]]'s [[Navigator]]s as being agents of [[Malcador the Sigillite]], allowing Typhon to get away with massacring them so he could lead the legion into [[Nurgle]]'s trap. He also attempted to assassinate Malcador by implanting a Manchurian Candidate style trigger into Tylos Rubio, but that failed. It seems this guy's plans only actually work when they involve corrupting a Primarch (Uh, not always *cough* Sanguinius *cough*).

Unknown to virtually everyone, Erebus was on Terra during the Siege, although nowhere near the big party itself. He went to visit the skubmother herself, Erda, whom he called grandmother. Weird-vibes aside, he fanboyed over her a bit and tried to offer her a position in the new world. She declined and shaded the living fuck out of him for being farcically jumped up on his own theatrics, even calling him a vaudeville reject (possibly the only good thing she has done). He sicced 4 greater deamons on her, which she defeated but was left mortally wounded. Erebus then killed her. Maybe. It's kinda vague.

He now spends his time playing games of chess with Kor Phaeron, with entire companies and fleets of Word Bearers as the pieces. For giggles, naturally. Erebus currently holds a position in Lorgar's Dark Council. He showed up in the 13th [[Black Crusade]] to sacrifice a million innocents to the gods of Chaos, and then, having apparently fulfilled his contract and knowing they were going to [[fail]] once more, took his warriors and got the hell out of there. He has shown notable distaste for [[Abaddon]]'s status as Warmaster of Chaos, believing that a new Warmaster is needed. Which goes to show that just because you've spent ten thousand years chilling in the [[Eye of Terror]] doesn't mean that you forfeit common sense. Pity he can't do much about his own boss's capacity to lead. '''Which is diddly-damn fine by him, since he gets half a legion and no Primarch to cramp his style.'''

Rumours abound that Lorgar is back at the head of the Word Bearers these days, and exactly what he thinks about how good/bad Erebus and Kor Phaeron did while he was being butthurt about Horus kicking his arse remains to be seen.

Because GW wants you to improve your culture, you should know that Erebus is the Latin name of the Greek god Erebos, meaning "darkness" in ancient Greek... seriously who the fuck would name a child this way? (Some Colchisian yokel who never even heard of Greek, That's who!) Erebos was one of the first beings to emerge out of Chaos, and it quite suits him since he '''is''' a [[Chaos Space Marines|Chaos Space Marine]], and the very first one to boot.

Also, according to "Child of Chaos", Erebus isn't even his real name. When he was a lad on Colchis there was a nice well respected religious boy who went under that name, so Erebus killed him and stole his identity to snag a position in the cushy and lucrative priest caste of the planet, proving that there was never a time Erebus wasn't a total asshole.

==On the Tabletop==
Erebus now has rules for your Word Bearers Space Marine Legion list. He has Zealot, Adamantium Will, Master of the Legion and Harbinger of Chaos which allows all Word Bearers to use Dark Channeling, which has you roll a D6 for every squad this is given to at the beginning of the game. On a 1-3 unit gains Zealot special rule, 4-5 gains +1 strength for the duration of the battle, and on a 6 the unit gains the Daemon special rule for the duration of the battle, but no longer counts as scoring (if it did before) and counts as being destroyed at the end of the game for the purposes of calculating victory points. He is also a Level 1 Psyker who can draw from Biomancy or Telepathy and counts as a Master of the Legion, Diabolist, and Chaplain, freeing up your other HQ slots for whatever floats your boat.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:WHA-ChaosSchoolbus.jpg|Leaked concept art of Erebus' surprise appearance in [[Warhammer Adventures]].
File:Erebus Heresy Model.jpg|Hey kids, you wanna worship chaos?
File:Ecf.jpg|Completely deserved, too.
</gallery>
{{Template:Chaos-Marines}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Chaos]][[Category:Space Marines]][[Category:Word Bearers]]

Fabius Bile

2023-05-26T20:30:23Z

2A02:1808:86:7148:E58C:28C5:307:D094:

{{heresy}}
{{Sick|Lost his medical license a ''long'' time ago for doing some fucked up shit.}}
[[image:FabulousBile.jpg|thumb|right| Told you.]]
[[File:Fabulous Bile.jpg|thumb|Dabulous Bile]]
{{topquote|Unlike you, whelp, I once walked the same ground as your Idol. I breathed the same air as him. And I tell you this, without lie or artifice. He never wanted to become what you have made him! He did not wish to be your god-thing. He abhorred such ideals! The slavery of your crippled, blind Imperium would sicken him, if he had eyes to see it.|Fabius Bile, telling it like it is to Rafen of the Blood Angels, Black Tide}}
{{topquote|I was building another science, my science, wild science, robots and lasers and disembodied brains. A science that buzzed and glowed; it wanted to do things. It could get up and walk, fly, fight, sprout garish glowing creations in the remotest parts of the world, domes and towers and architectural fever dreams. And it was angry. It was mad science.|Dr. Impossible - Soon I Will Be Invincible}}

'''Fabius Bile''' (aka Fabulous Bill, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele Mengele] in SPESS, [[Team Fortress 2|TF2]] Medic, nicer Dr. House, or simply "[[TTS|Bob]]") is the mad scientist to end all mad scientists (since to the [[Haemonculi]] science comes second to pain). He's got a lab coat made of human skin, a pimpin' staff, and thousands of certificates proclaiming him the Sickest Fuck in the universe. And by Sickest we mean both most Depraved and most Radical. Yes, he is an insane psychopathic psychopath.

But he is also absolutely fabulous.

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

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

He shows up in the expansion for Inquisitor Martyr, where he sounds like he had throat-cancer (Which considering, in all likelihood, he probably does). Oh, and he got a new model for [[Psychic Awakening]].

You know the absolute worst thing about him? He wants to evolve humanity so that humanity survives and overcomes the endless threats assailing it. Yes, this fucking sicko shit is on our side (or at least wants to keep his potential test subject population alive). It hurts my soul just to think about. Knowing this guy wants to help us survive and transcend human limits makes it very tempting to root for the Tyranids or something just to spite him. He wants to be responsible for saving humanity and he wants humanity to be perfected. Ironically like the Emperor wants.

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

After being inducted into the legion, Fabius swiftly rose through the ranks and became the [[Apothecary|Chief Apothecary]]. Before [[Fulgrim]] was rediscovered, the legion was afflicted by a degenerative gene-seed flaw known as the Blight - a progressive form of [[cancer]] that caused random tumors in both bones and organs. Fabius was tasked with finding a cure, lest the flaw wipe out the Emperor's Children to a man. He gradually became more morose as his work only led to failure (as well as prompting his future experimental streak). All the Terran marines of the Legion were susceptible to the disease and Fabius [[Grimdark|was forced to euthanize a lot of his friends and comrades]], leading to him seeking solitude away from his battle-brothers. Matters were not helped by the last shipment of uncorrupted gene-seed randomly vanishing from the [[Luna]] gene-forges and the archived samples degenerating onsite - an incident Crusade command wrote off as a mystery for the ages but was actually both [[Trazyn]] and general warp dickery. We also now know that the [[Primaris Marines]] were created from uncorrupted Gene Seed of all the Legions, so it's possible [[Cawl]] got his sticky dendrites into the stores. Fabius, against all odds, rose to the challenge, albeit reluctantly.

It turns out that a cure was ''never'' actually found, and that reuniting with their [[primarch]] on [[Chemos]] only served to provide fresh material for "untainted" [[Space Marines]]. All those who suffered the flaw were put to death in an attempt to prevent any infection from reaching the healthy brethren... Except for Fabius himself who was in a position to falsify his medical records. His prognosis was that he only had about a year to live, but had developed a process of temporarily rejuvenating himself using elixirs distilled from enzymes and proteins drawn from [[Grimdark|dead Astartes]], and quite possibly including those who never even suffered the flaw either.

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

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

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

A minor but notable turning point for Fabius was seeing Fulgrim's ascension to [[Daemon Prince]]. Unlike most of the Emperor's Children, Fabius was privately disturbed by it, thus planting the seeds for his eventual distrust of all things Chaotic.

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

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

==Post-Heresy==
While the Emperor's Children became wholehearted devotees of [[Slaanesh]], Fabius didn't turn into a hedonistic sense addict but rather rejected the [[Chaos Gods]] despite being aligned to the traitor cause, which he insisted on constantly arguing that there were no 'gods' even to the Chaos devoted. To Fabius, Chaos was but a tool; the means to an end. Still, at first, he stuck with his Legion. Because the Emperor's Children weren't much involved in the actual siege of Emperor's Palace itself, bar a disastrous wall attack which ended in [[Rogal Dorn]] [[Awesome|beating the ever-living shit out of both Fulgrim and some of his finest warriors]] [[Grimdark|(for the most part they were too busy butchering and presumably raping civilians)]], they were in a strong position during the "Legion Wars" that raged in the Eye of Terror after the Heresy and could supply Fabius with what he needed.

Despite their relative strength, the legion itself was divided between following Fulgrim, [[Eidolon]], and [[Lucius]] and soon earned the ire of all other Traitor Legions due to their nasty habit of raiding them for slaves. Nevertheless, the Emperor's Children had some successes, leading them to defeat the [[Sons of Horus]] and Fabius retrieving the Warmaster's body. Horus' body provided him with a wealth of information on top of what he'd gotten from Omegon and the body of Ferrus Manus, and he succeeded in creating a viable albeit diminished 'clone' of the Warmaster (Horus' soul being annihilated by Big.E prevented a complete resurrection). Emboldened, Fabius then attempted to create clones of all of the Primarchs and live up to his self-proclaimed title of 'Primogenitor'. He was well on his way to succeed, too, <s>if it weren’t for those rotten kids</s> but then [[Abaddon]] arrived to fuck his shit up. Horus' clone was killed by Abaddon and Fabius' labs utterly ruined even though he managed to escape.

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

==The Great Work==
[[image:FabiusBileModel.png|right|thumb|Old Model]]
After ditching the Emperor's Children after the party planet got smashed, Fabius commenced his "Great Work", his self styled New Men, a new human species that would be able to survive whatever xenos or Chaos based threat the galaxy could throw at them. Yes, you read that correctly. He's loyal to humanity and is simply willing to do literally anything to save humanity (or maybe to get the credit for saving humanity). Makes you almost want humanity to lose and die rather than owe him anything, eh? He set up [[The Consortium (Warhammer 40,000)|the Consortium]], a loose group/warband of Apothecaries and hangers on who helped advance his work considerably. This kept him busy for a few centuries, during which he began the process of transferring his consciousness/soul into fresh bodies. At this point, Fabius could only transfer into one body at a time and had to be in immediate proximity to the fresh body. The blight gradually kept getting worse, leading Fabius to try and delay its onset as much as possible so he could finish his work. Nevertheless, he succeeded in creating the first draft of the New Men, which he called Gland-hounds; pack orientated superhumans who were capable of taking down Astartes. He seeded the new species across many worlds, along with labs and caches of spare bodies in case he needed one.

A former pupil of Fabius', Oleander Koh, attempted to bring Fabius back into Legion politics once again, by cutting a deal with the [[Harlequins]] and prompting an attack on the [[craftworld]] of Lugganath. It was from this that Fabius developed a fascination with [[Eldar]] technology, the [[Webway]], [[Spirit stone|soul transference]], and [[wraithbone]], eventually gaining some mastery over them. He was informally reinstated back into the Emperor's Children after being strong-armed into it receiving a cache of pure gene-seed from the [[Great Crusade]] from Eidolon. This led him to an interesting encounter with [[Trazyn the Infinite]], who appeared to quite like the [[Assholetep|insufferable old coot]].

After trading an uncorrupted clone of Fulgrim for the gene-seed stash, Fabius's interest was piqued by the [[Dark Eldar]]. An amusing 'anecdote' about Bile, that just shows how fabulous he is, is that (like his old pal Lucius), he went on a sabbatical to the Webway, and deliberately got himself captured by the Dark Eldar. Instead of pissing himself in fear at the thought of whatever awaited them like every other prisoner, he just frowned with annoyance at the setback and kept on experimenting. On his fellow prisoners. With whatever he had on hand. This unusual behaviour made [[Haemonculus|another bunch of sick fucks]] raise an eyebrow in curiosity and they invited the 'mere mon-keigh' for a pleasant chat between academics. The Thirteen Scars noted that although Bile was but a novice at cutting and reshaping things painfully compared to the haemonculi, his knowledge of the Warp and other sciences allowed him to conclude a mutually beneficial pact with them. He concocted an elixir that allowed the haemonculi to [[grimdark|craft and keep alive a mobile tower made of the flesh and bones of their still-living victims]], giving them a base of operations that existed in constant agony and fed their shriveled souls. In exchange, they let Fabius go unharmed after giving him a few pointers for his own research (plus, in true Dark Eldar fashion, they realized they would cause much more suffering by letting Fabius go about his business). Yup. [[Wat|Bile managed to be enough of a sick fuck that even a bunch of the most twisted Dark Eldar nodded in appreciation.]]

However, despite being a friendly guest in [[Commoragh]] itself, the Thirteen Scars haemonculi quickly realised that Bile couldn't be allowed back into the Materium. Bile managed to escape by engineering a civil war between several aligned Kabals, leaving the Scars in a delicate position hoping that Bile wouldn't abuse (HA!) the knowledge he'd gained from them and praying that [[Asdrubael Vect|Vect]] didn't find out about their indulgent fuckup. Neither option was acceptable, and the Scars used the afflicted [[Kabal]]s (and the knowledge of a captured Oleander Koh) to surgically strike at Fabius's hidden facilities and former colleagues. By this point, Bile was nearing the conclusion of his great work, and although he'd managed to partly stave off the blight from killing him, time was beginning to run out.

His attempts to fight back against the Scars failed hugely, and the Consortium largely broke apart and went off to do its own thing. Desperate to ensure his work would survive the coming storm, Fabius made a journey to the Pleasure Planet and made a deal with Fulgrim, finally allowing the [[Chaos Gods]] to influence his life, however grudgingly. He made his final stand with the last of his allies, giving his finalised New Men from across the galaxy time to evacuate to the Omega Redoubt, a section of the webway he'd discovered and fortified to continue the existence of his new race.

The Thirteen Scars attacked in force, even bringing the colossal Tower of Flesh headquarters that Fabius had helped them create. Before the final battle, he sent [[Abaddon]] one of his followers and a huge stash of uncorrupted gene-seed as a "sorry about the whole cloning your dad thing" present. [[Dawww]].

Due to the double machinations of both Melusine and the Harlequins, Fabius ended up scoring a victory of sorts, although he subsequently appeared to die in the process, apparently for real. However, it turned out that his final innovation actually worked. Bile had managed to create a batch of resilient bodies with Wraithbone laced brains, that would be a mirror for his consciousness. In other words, ''he dramatically surpassed the Eldar's own Infinity Circuit.'' This removed the risk of the Blight, and allowed individual Fabius clones to operate at the same time, nominally orchestrated by the original (mentally) Fabius kept safe and hidden away. The individual Bile clones were largely left to their own devices and, combined with his Great Work being finished and the spiritual covenant made with Fulgrim and the Chaos Gods, started doing all the seriously hardcore space-Mengele shit that he would become famous for to the present day. What eventually happened to his New Men, his attempt to ensure human survival for the future, remains a mystery to this day. The best part for Fabius is that even if his clones end up turning independent, they still all have the same mind and goal, so it wouldn't matter. As for why each clone seems to be indentical down to the wargear, power armour can be readily modified, human skin trenchcoats are easy enough to make, deamon's can be readily exploited and turned into pain rods like Torment, and the original Chirugeon had already figured out how to reproduce itself in an in-universe moment of WAT even for Fabius.

On top of this, rebuilding his Consortium probably would be effortless for him. Especially since everyone involved with him knows refusing him would be a very bad idea. It is also highly unlikely that Fabius has decided his New Men are good enough. Or he's already set in motion a way for them to improve themselves. Perhaps they possess high intelligence and knowledge and are hopefully very well equipped, considering his loathing of stupidity and ignorance and that he intends for them to survive and spread under the Imperium's nose throughout the galaxy.

Oh yeah, and he might be a minor Chaos God now. When he was with the Haemonculi, they dissected him in an attempt to find the cause of the Blight, only to discover that it was incurable because it was actually a warp-based affliction. They speculated that because of how long he survived with it, the Blight itself was mutating into some kind of extradimensional being that will emerge out of his body like a butterfly leaving its chrysalis. In addition, a Word Bearers diabolist working for him notes that due to all the mutants he created worshipping him as the god Pater Mutatis, Fabius Bile is beginning to leave a mark in the Warp. And somehow, despite it being confirmed that he died for real at the Battle of Belial IV (with the kill-switches he implanted inside Saqarra going off), the "original Bile" as of the present day is now some kind of [[God-Emperor of Mankind|undead being spending most of his time in a life-support capsule]], implying that he somehow resurrected. The whole deal is kinda ambiguous.

==Present Day==
Bile has kept himself busy since leaving the Emperor's Children behind. Most of his time is spent on the world of Urum, where he set up a loose organisation called [[The Consortium (Warhammer 40,000)|the Consortium]], a research facility/playground/artist's commune for other Chaos Apothecaries to practice their art in relative peace (and also partly addressing why there aren't many Apothecaries in the Traitor Legions any more). Despite having only very little time to live during the Heresy, he's survived through the millennia by cloning and jumping bodies on a regular basis, although the flaw in his gene-seed will keep on being replicated and get progressively worse. He estimates that he'll only live for another few centuries, which he'll spend finding a cure and finishing his great work.

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

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

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

The sheer irony that Fabius Bile of all people is trying to save humanity from Chaos and aliens and to push humanity forward into a new state of power that would ensure mankind's survival and dominance is just...holy shit. So, doesn't that make him secretly a good guy? Nope. For one, he's the posterchild of eugenics. Even with a "the ends justify the means" perspective, his idea of saving humanity involves making gene-enhanced humans and [[/pol/|killing off those "Untermensch" non-enhanced humans]]. He also genuinely enjoys making others suffer, and is prone to betraying and lying to people.

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

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

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

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

As of [[Psychic Awakening]], it seems Bile has earned the [[Rage|ire]] of the [[Death Guard]] by [[Blood Ravens|"borrowing"]] a sacred relic of theirs, getting chased around the [[Scourge Stars]] as a result. Abandoning his renegade allies to [[Nurgle]]'s forces, Bile took off with his prize to the [[Cadia|Cadian Gate]] with [[Typhus]] hot at his heels, his nefarious purposes a mystery for now.

At the Cadian Gate, Bile encounters the [[Brazen Drakes|Shriven]], a renegade chapter who were on the run from the [[Adeptus Custodes]]. Seeing this as an opportunity to get rid of his Death Guard problem (and for more experiments), he allies with them. He augments them to become stronger, but essentially turned them into [[drug]] addicts. Picking a few chosen Shriven, he alters them into something called a Terata (A fucked up mix of Khorne Berserkers and [[Flayed Ones]]). With these new experiments, he decides on picking fights with the Death Guard and Custodes and has a good time with it. Even managing to capture a single [[Custodes]] and several [[Sisters of Silence]]. All of it culminates in a three-way battle that even has the [[Officio Assassinorum]] involved. Bile escapes mid-battle, leaving everyone to deal with each other. Bile is on a tight schedule after all, and his work couldn't be delayed any further.

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

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

He later stole [[Horus]]' corpse and cloned it repeatedly, an act that pushed [[Abaddon]] out of his emo loser phase into becoming the scourge of the Imperium. Really though, Abaddon was just annoyed that Fabius has like four arms. He got around to attempting to clone every other Primarch as well, but all but two turned out to be a failure. Both successful one's were, to no ones great surprise, of Fulgrim and was genuinely an absolutely perfect and uncorrupted replica of the original. Lucius killed one whilst it was still an infant and Fabius himself found one he'd made centuries before on Harmony. He originally considered using that one and a batch of pre-Heresy uncorrupted gene-seed to make a new legion to protect his New Men whilst they colonized the galaxy but when he discovered that clone Fulgrim wanted to use them as lesser, expendable soldiers for galactic conquest as a way of repenting for his original self's fall to Chaos he offered up the clone to [[Trazyn the Infinite]]'s collection in disgust. Daddy issues aren't just an Abaddon only trait, it seems...

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

After his "death" on Belial VII, he was able to keep at least a dozen clones going at the same time, allowing each one to largely do their own thing. The central consciousness is kept safe in a [[wraithbone]] vault on a hidden world.

However, this is also complicated by the fact the real Fabius was involved in War of the Spider where he played a 4D chess game against [[Troll|the Death Guard, The Talons of the Emperor, The Offico Assassinorum, and his own forces.]] He captured some Sisters of Silence and a single Custodes for funny experiments.

One of his clones appears in '''Inquisitor - Prophecy''', the Expansion DLC of [[Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr]]. It is revealed that he allied with Uther Tiberius and aided in creating the "Alpha Pariah"; an artificially created [[Blank|Pariah]] with the ability to permanently destroy [[Daemon]]s and absorb their power to become stronger and use powerful psyker abilities. It is prophecised that she would become the "Anathema Ultima" and enter the Warp, then ''consume the Chaos Gods'' and become the '''Fifth and final God of Chaos''' before cleansing it and ruling the purified Warp as a "God-Empress of Mankind"(serious, that's the line) while the Emperor rules in the Materium. He appears in an early mission with the intent of taking back the Alpha Pariah and give her to his New Men so they can assimilate the Chaos Gods and rule(what a great dad). He is briefly fought before fleeing. He serves as the final boss of the DLC, where he briefly transforms into a [[Chaos Spawn|Cha....Unnameable beast]] before he is at last slain. Notably, his hated reputation amongst the Traitor Astartes is shown, as the [[Plague Marines]] he hired to defend him intend to kill him the first chance they get.

Though considering he did eventually swear loyalty to Chaos all of his cloning experiments now serve the Chaos Gods and are a direct threat to the Imperium.

==Crunch==
[[File:99120102113 CSMFabiusBileLead.webp|thumb|His assistant prefers to be called Eye-Gore]]
On one hand, Bile has good stats and wargear: Feel No Pain through his Chirurgeon, Strength 5, a weapon that causes instant death (Rod of Torment), five attacks, and a particularly nasty poisoned weapon in the [[Xyclos Needler]]. On the other hand, his Rod of Torment does not ignore armor saves (unlike, say, the MURDER SWORD), his [[Xyclos Needler]] has really bad AP and sub-par range, and perhaps most damning of all, no Invulnerable save, unlike literally every other Chaos Character in the codex. So... Sucks, Right? Not quite. The reason Fabius Bile is taken, ironically, isn't for Bile himself; it's for his Enhanced Warriors trait, which gives a unit of Chaos Space Marines +1 Strength and Fearless. An enhanced [[Khorne|Khornate]] CSM unit (Mark + Icon) rolls out 4 S6 attacks per Marine on the charge while being scoring and Fearless. While he isn't stellar in a normal CSM army (he's not a fighter nor does he enhance more than one unit of CSM), he really shines as an allied HQ — if you want a reasonably cheap CC threat for your pansy blueberries, take him and a 10-strong unit of Khornate CSM with [[meltagun]]s that can threaten massed infantry with the number of attacks, massed tanks with meltaguns/carnage combo and monstrous creatures with that Instant Death stick. Know that a Disordered Charge (aka multi-charge) denies you your Rage, so plan accordingly.

Note that he can enhance one CSM unit in your entire ARMY, so take him in an Auxiliary Detachment for your Traitor Legion, and buff one of their Legion CSM units. 20 Infiltrating S5 Fearless [[Alpha Legion]] CSM anyone?

===8th Edition===

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

He got a brand-new model to celebrate the release of [[Psychic Awakening]]: War of the Spider, a tale where he decides to walk to the blasted wreckage of [[Cadia]], pursued by the [[Death Guard]] for stealing one of their sacred artifacts. Though most of his rules are the same, he does now include a secondary model for a special hunchback assistant. When he rolls to augment his unit, the assistant can help influence the roll by +/- 1. This means you can always guarantee a +1 toughness to INFANTRY.

In addition to all of this, [[Psychic Awakening]] brought us a new Chaos Space Marine sub-faction. This sub-faction was first known as Agents of Bile, but is actually called the Creations of Bile. In order to play this detachment, you must have Fabius as your Warlord. Taking Creations of Bile gives several massive perks. For one, all your army gets +1 to movement and STRENGTH. This means you can have [[Rape|20-man S6 Berzerkers, S5 Possessed and S5 Chaos Marines.]] This also includes Terminators, Bikes, and the Elite Infantry choices for Chaos Space Marines like Plague Marines, Rubric Marines, Noise Marines, and Khornate Berzekers. This also means that Fabius Bile's faction has made [[Derp|Plague Marines and Noise Marines better than playing them with their God-Align Traitor Legions.]] Combined with decent relics and stupidly powerful stratagems, in the end it was one of the strongest armies at the end of 8th edition. There is a plan to keep them around, so we will see how they are in 9th Edition.

{{Chaos-Marines}}
[[Category: Emperor's Children]][[Category:Awesome]]

Haarken Worldclaimer

2023-05-26T20:23:49Z

2A02:1808:86:7148:E58C:28C5:307:D094:

[[File:Haarken-Worldclaimer art.jpg|400px|thumb|right|"Boo loyalist"]]
{{Topquote|Howling winds keep screaming round, And the rain comes pouring down, Doors are locked and bolted now, As the thing crawls into town|Night Crawler, Judas Priest}}
'''Haarken Worldclaimer''' is a [[Black Legion]] [[Chaos Raptor]] [[Chaos Lord|Lord]]. He was first introduced during the [[War of Beasts]] leading a [[Black Legion]] probing force of [[Heldrake]]s, [[Chaos Raptor]]s, and [[Warp Talons]] to the upper spires of the hivesprawls of [[Vigilus]]. He proclaimed to the Imperial defenders that the world would fall to his forces in 80 days, and that [[Abaddon the Despoiler]] himself would come to claim the world.

Despite his initial setback, he has since returned with a massive fleet to wreak havoc across the Nachmund Gauntlet.

==Overview==
Called the "Herald of the Apocalypse" and "Proclamator of Abaddon's Reign", Haarken commands a vanguard of the [[Black Legion]] known as the Raptor hosts. When [[Abaddon]] plans to invade a world, Haarken is sent ahead to announce the arrival of the Warmaster and spread fear and panic among the population and military personnel as a planet crippled by terror, is easier to conquer. And while it may seem counter intuitive to announce to a planet that a massive army is coming to invade it, an army that makes it's presence known long before it attacks can create a sense of doubt in the defenders or out right cause mass panic in the right circumstances.

Haarken continues to launch attacks and terror raids, even after Abaddon arrives helping drive home a sense of fear in the defenders and also because he gets the jollies from it. A scholar and collector of occult artifacts, he has read the '''Grimoire Nostromo''' of [[Konrad Curze]], the '''Book of [[Magnus the Red|Magnus]]''', and the '''Clotted Scrolls''' of [[Angron]] ([[what|that maniac actually wrote something?!]]), which means while he's nuttier than a fruitcake on Sanguinala, he is also well versed in terror tactics and how to abuse the warp in his favour.

It is not known if Haarken was part of the [[Night Lords]], but it's likely as many of the 8th Legion have joined or sworn loyalty to the Black Legion over the millennia, and Haarken uses fear in battle as much as they do as well as taking pleasure in making people piss themselves in fear, with him broadcasting terrifying messages and sounds through his own custom vox array. In battle, he strikes at supply chains and defensive positions surrounded by dozens of [[Chaos Raptors]] while he wields the legendary '''Helspear'''.

==Tabletop==
Haarken is a bit of an odd duck, abilities-wise. He has a buff that works for any [[Chaos Raptor]], allowing them to re-roll any hits in melee. [[Derp|Which he can't use on his own weapon, as it counts as a ranged]] attack. Which is useful, but doesn't affect Warp Talons who would really benefit from this, and as mentioned before he only re-rolls melee attacks so is not great when it come to a squad of Raptors using Melta or Plasma guns as dedicated Vehicle or TEQ killers.

His weapons are a bit odd as well as the '''Helspear''', While statistically okay, it essentially acts as his ''only'' ranged attack (he has no gun, not even a pistol!), and what's worse, due to how its description is worded, [[Fail|he can't even use it in melee]], with his only melee option being a single Lighting claw. So you have a Lord who re-rolls melee attacks for a unit that is better suited at shooting, has a single shooting attack he can't re-roll and while he isn't awful, can't really be trusted to carry fights like [[Kharn]] or [[Typhus]]. Welp.

==Gallery==
<Gallery>
File:Worldclaimer.jpg|His miniature
</Gallery>
{{Chaos-Marines}}

[[Category:Black Legion]]