Editing Angron (section)

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

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

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

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

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

Back on [[Terra]], the Big E summoned [[Arkhan Land]] to his labs, as he had some experience with devices like Butcher's Nails; Land had been the one to seal the Hexarchion Vaults on Mars, and had encountered more crudely built versions of the Nails there. As a mildly interesting sidenote, Land called the Butcher's Nails ''Cruciamen'', which is perhaps their Dark Age name. Anyway, the Emperor showed Angron to Land spread out with his skull hacked open & brain exposed on a surgery table, taking a good look at Angron's fucked-up skull and decided that he was a waste of time and effort, and arrived at the conclusion that even trying to remove them would likely kill him (reference "Betrayer"). The Mechanicus estimated that he wouldn't live long enough to see the end of the Great Crusade.

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

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

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

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

Aaand it gets worse. The Emperor then reveals a few moments later that Angron's limbic and insular lobes had been straight up removed and replaced with parts of the Nails. This essentially meant that Angron would not have been capable of feeling empathy or compassion, and it would have completely restructured his ability to link behaviors to outcomes (ie this behavior makes me feel good vs this behavior makes me feel bad). Even his sense of self awareness and IQ would have been affected, which would go far in explaining quite a lot of straight up retarded crap he would go on to do. So essentially the slave masters of Nuceria took away his compassion, his empathy, his emotional control, his intelligence, and his ability to learn or feel anything pleasant outside of aggression. Oh, and left him in constant agony whenever he wasn't angry. Scratch the Emperor being a dick for not removing the Nails, He was more of a dick for not just putting Angron down then and there (though the fact He refers to Angron only as "Twelfth" and "it" is shown the Emprah is not too hot on compassion, at least as far as Angron seems to be concerned). The most tragic part of it all was that apparently Angron was quite the bro-tier Primarch before the Nails were implanted. He even had the ability to empathically soothe the pain of others by taking it upon himself (almost certainly some latent psychic ability), and he very often did just that for his fellow slaves. So on top of everything else, the Nails completely destroyed Angron's personality, taking him from a potentially Vulkan level nice guy and lowering him to Perturabo levels of barbarity. To top it all off, the Nails had been designed for use on baseline humans. As a Primarch, Angron's brain was not only far more complex than that of an ordinary human, but had the capacity for wholescale regeneration. This would only cause him more problems however, as the damaged or missing parts of his brain attempted to regenerate around the Nails. It was believed that this process would eventually cause him to lose all ability to control himself, and that he would become little more than a rabid animal as some of his legionaries would later demonstrate. At that point, is was almost certain that he would manage to get himself killed in one way or another.
 
Considering that later during the Horus Heresy, '''Menes Kalliston''' of the [[Thousand Sons]] was fairly certain that their [[psyker]]-medics could figure out how to remove them from [[Khârn|a certain swell guy]], it is possible that the Emperor - being the most intelligent person in the [[Imperium]] and the most powerful psyker ever - ''<u>could</u>'' have achieved it if He put some resources into it (especially since at least one AdMech replaced everything, including his brain with machine parts); or it's equally likely the Thousand Son space marine was just stalling because he had an insane psycho-killer moments away from killing him breathing down his neck. It is however, far more likely that the Nails implanted into the World Eaters were not so difficult to remove as Angron's would have been. Entire vital parts of Angron's brain had been removed and replaced with the crude cybernetics of the Nails, whereas the World Eaters' Nails were knockoffs which were simply added on to their existing brain tissue. Because of Angron's brain being a half-cybernetic mess, both the Emperor and Arkhan believed that the Nails were, ironically, the only reason Angron was still alive. In fact, the Emperor admitted to Land that he ''could'' remove the Nails under normal circumstances. However, as previously stated, parts of Angron's mutilated brain had both been completely replaced by the Nails and had regenerated around the Nails. If they were removed, Angron's brain would almost certainly have simply ceased to function. Additionally, attempting to replace parts of a Primarch is almost certainly a borderline-impossible task, particularly if that part is a brain. The Primarchs were not just flesh and blood, but creatures of the warp incarnated by the Emperor's genecraft. Whatever the Emperor did to create them, He clearly could not just do it on a whim as He could with Custodes or Astartes. There were only ever 20 ([[Omegon|21]]) of them and even when two were erased from history mid-Crusade, they were not replaced. The Emperor also never seemed to consider the possibility of making more of them after the initial scattering when they were presumed dead, despite the massive blow that killing all 20 Primarchs would have dealt to his plans.

Regardless however, Arkhan described the Emperor as being "inhumanly toneless" when speaking of Angron, and as being "passionlessly interested" in the surgical nightmare that Angron had become. Whether this is due to Him genuinely not caring or simply being too far beyond Arkhan for His attitude to be understood properly is up for debate. Rather strangely, the Emperor appeared to have been unusually callous when it came to Angron in particular, as even Primarchs like Konrad Curze, Perturabo and Mortarion were shown at least ''some'' level of love and interest from Him. However Angron, for whatever reason, was disregarded almost entirely. Regarding this anomaly, it is worth noting that Angron was the only Primarch who did not end up ruling his native planet. The other Primarchs either conquered theirs or used their charisma and intelligence to work their way up the hierarchy of whatever planet they landed on (or both). Angron failed to do either, and was on the verge of being slaughtered along with his army when the Emperor came for him. Perhaps this failure is why the Emperor seemed so uniquely disinterested in him. It is also entirely possible that the Emperor simply wrote Angron off after realizing that there was nothing he could feasibly do to help him. All the previously mentioned Primarchs were damaged goods in one way or another, but they were all at least physically and mentally functional, whereas Angron simply was not. Not only that, but he was the only Primarch to ''reject'' the Emperor's recruitment efforts outright. This seemingly did not please Big E overmuch, as after Angron had been teleported to the Emperor's flagship and killed the Custode, he said to the Emperor that he was now nothing but a ghost without his comrades. The Emperor simply responded that a ghost would suffice. Cold.

As it is, the Emperor was told that Angron would likely not see the the end of the crusade. At that point The Emperor probably decided "this is a sunk cost" and wrote Angron off. An so he did nothing to mitigate the effects, do nothing to change how much Angron hated him, and throw him into warzones after giving him a massive force and assumed that it would never come back to haunt him, after all Angron was going to be dead before the End of it, may as well get some use out of him. Could He have saved Angron? Perhaps, should he have the occasion to put his entire undivided attention to it. But with Him busy with the demands of the Imperium, powering the [[Astronomican]] and trying to get the Human Webway online the Emperor seemingly did not want to sink the extra time and resources into saving one of His Primarchs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On that note, Angron kicked off his contribution to the Heresy in a characteristically retarded fashion. When the firestorm on Isstvan died down, it became apparent that large numbers of Loyalists had survived. Said survivors immediately hit the vox-casters and began demanding answers/hurling insults up at the orbiting fleet, outraged and grief stricken that they had been betrayed by their own Primarchs. Horus disregarded this and prepared to initiate a second virus bombing. Angron however, was not quite so thick skinned. Hearing the howled insults of his own Loyalist World Eaters (which more than likely included some cutting one-liners and yo-dead-gladiator-crew jokes), Angron flew into a rage and deployed onto the planet his legion. When he learned of this, Horus was so furious that he seriously considered proceeding with the virus bombing regardless of Angron's presence planetside. However the Warmaster then took a few moments to collect himself and attempted to salvage what was supposed to have been a simple Exterminatus. In an adorable attempt to give the situation a silver lining, he reasoned that if he backed Angron's ground assault, his troops would get some experience fighting other Astartes. He also hoped that by giving Angron's landing his blessing, Angron would see that Horus was willing to give him freedoms that the Emperor had not. Finally, the World Eater's fleet elements were still present in orbit and manned, and killing their Primarch probably wouldn't have gone over too well with most of them. With about a third of each of the Traitor legions' Astartes having already remained loyal, Horus was in no position to have the remaining two thirds of the World Eaters turn against him. Sadly for Horus, Angron's decision ended up being one of the biggest mistakes of the heresy. Due to a number of unforced errors on the part of several Traitor commanders, and a mindblowing amount of grit on the part of the Loyalists, the Traitors ended up losing over half of their attacking force over a period of 3 months. To add insult to injury, Horus eventually decided that he was losing too many assets trying to break the Loyalists on the ground. Though the Loyalist commanders had mostly been killed by that point in the campaign, Horus had quite [[Dropsite Massacre|a number of other things that he needed to be getting on with]]. So he had Angron physically wrestled back up into orbit (as Angron wouldn't leave any other way), and used his fleet to glass the entire planet's surface.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, it would turn out that being an evil version of Guilliman would come in quite handy for Perturabo. For you see, Perturabo gave absolutely zero fucks about fighting fair. For instance, during the Drop Site Massacre when Vulkan had been screaming for Perturabo to face him in melee combat, Pert had chuckled a bit and then dropped a nuke on him. Perturabo had come to do a job, and as per usual, he was going to get it done. As such, he repeatedly insulted Angron as being a weak, pitiful slave who had sold his strength out of despair, and had become ''weaker'' as a result. Of course, Angron hadn't actually chosen to become a daemon at all, but Perturabo clearly either didn't know or didn't care. Perturabo then ordered his Iron Circle bots to surround Angron, who started lashing out against them. Their gigantic melee shields held strong even in the face of Angron's onslaught, and he succeeded only in tiring himself out. The lack of slaughter and rather bloodless combat (and possibly the insults) ultimately drained Angron of much of his power, and Perturabo and the Iron Circle started mercilessly blasting chunks out of him with what were heavily implied to be anti-Daemon rounds. The very first [[Obliterator]], Volk, then added a fusillade of his own to the mix. The assault of Perturabo, Volk, and the Iron Circle, combined with the Iron Warriors having denied the World Eaters their tithe of blood, weakened Angron to the point where he could no longer fight. Perturabo took the opportunity to mock Angron a bit more, and then waltzed over to him and unceremoniously knocked him out with a single blow from Forgebreaker. After this, he collected his recalcitrant brother and his legion and packed them up to head for Terra. (The fact Perturabo accomplished all this while sustaining minimal casualties shows how impressive his track-record during the Great Crusade could've been if he actually gave a damn.)

During the [[Siege of Terra]], he also had a pretty bitchin fight with Sanguinius which continued his losing streak. To be fair to him though, Sanguinius is Sanguinius, and Angron put up a very worthy fight. Most of the beginning consisted of Angron simply trying to catch Sanguinus, who had recently come off of fighting [[Ka'bandha]] and was already wounded and tired. Angron, who was not used to flying and was cumbersomely bulky (seriously his model's wings have biceps bigger than his arms do, and that's saying something), found he was not fast or maneuverable enough to land a hit on Sanguinius in the air. Sanguinius on the other hand was able to quickly flit in and out of Angron's reach to bloody him, but these attacks had a negligible effect on Angron. For instance, one of these engagements saw Sanguinius land a quick slash upon Angron's head which destroyed his eyes and a significant portion of his face. However Angron regenerated his injuries almost immediately, as the absurd amount of bloodshed occuring on Terra at the time provided a constant pool of energy to empower Angron. The two of them ended up crashing into the interior of a Warlord Titan's cockpit, and began a brawl in which Angron started slamming Sanguinius's head onto the floor. However, Sanguinius retaliated using his Infernus pistol, an incredibly silly one shot melta weapon which only exists as such because its in-game rules say it can only fire once. However stupid, the shot vaporized one of Angron's arms and drove him away from Sanguinius. Angron then had a flashback of Nuceria and his gladiator brothers and sisters, ruminating momentarily on how peaceful the night before the Emperor kidnapped him had been in spite of the Nails. This distraction allowed Sanguinius to impale Angron through the heart. To Sanguinius's surprise, Angron regenerated again and attempted to grab him. Sanguinius was too fast however, and withdrew his blade before Angron could get ahold of him. The two took to the air again but Angron was still not able to keep up with Sanguinius. After a short aerial chase, Sanguinius darted back into melee range and stabbed the Spear of Telesto through Angron's mouth and out the back of his head. With his brainstem pulped, Angron was momentarily unable to move and he crashed to the ground. He managed to regenerate enough to pull the Spear out, then completely healed right before Sanguinius engaged him on the ground. Unable to quickly overwhelm Angron in melee combat, Sanguinius took off again and as he did, Angron threw the Spear at him.

However, Sanguinius caught the Spear out of the air, [[meme|barrel rolled]] with it, and used the roll in conjunction with the Spear's momentum to throw it back at Angron. Despite Angron believing that he could catch the Spear in turn, it impaled him through the chest and pinned him to the ground. As Sanguinius flew off, Angron managed to get the Spear out once more but the wound healed more slowly than his previous injuries. Angron then came at last to the realization that fighting Sanguinius in the air was simply not working, and decided to change tack. As fate would have it, Sanguinius and Angron had landed for their melee bout in the midst of a group of battling Blood Angels and World Eaters, and Angron started slaughtering these Blood Angels in the hope of luring Sanguinius back. It quickly worked, and the two engaged on the ground once again. Initially they were evenly matched, but after a relatively short time, the already exhausted Sanguinius began to give ground. With Sanguinius essentially on his last legs and Angron only growing in power, both combatants realized that Sanguinius could not afford to let the fight drag on. Shortly thereafter, Angron decided to let Sanguinius stab him in order to get in close and grab his brother's throat. In the same motion, he also impaled Sanguinius through the gut with the Black Blade. Believing he had won, Angron mocked Sanguinius as he attempted to crush his adversary's throat. Unfortunately for Angron, Sanguinius had seemingly had the same idea of taking a wound to get in close, and the Angel grabbed the cables of the Butcher's Nails that were [[what|STILL]] somehow stuck in Angron's head, and even still functioning as they ever had. Angron tried everything he could to loosen Sanguinius's grip, but Sanguinius, fully Hulked out from the Red Thirst, started tearing the cables out of Angron's head. [[Not as Planned|The Nails being ripped out caused Angron so much pain that he actually begged Sanguinius to stop]], but Sanguinius's pity well was bone dry at that point in the duel. The Angel then proceeded to rip both the Nails and the brain in which they were embedded out of Angron's skull. This had the effect of killing Angron's physical incarnation and sending his soul back to the Warp. Khorne, as his champion died, laughed at the bloodshed from inside of Angron's own skull, caring as per usual not from whence the blood flowed so long as it did. By contrast, Angron's sons were a lot less philosophical than their patron, and so far from finding the matter amusing, went berserker(er) and started team-killing, which really just further ruined Horus' sublimely shitty day.

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

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

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

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

Strangely, as seen in the picture above, he also still has the Butcher's Nails stuck in his head. This should be completely impossible as Angron technically speaking doesn't have a body anymore (he's 100% warp energy now), and the Nails are technological in nature. He's also been blasted into paste on numerous occasions and forcibly dematerialized into the warp on a number of others, which means that the Nails seemingly regenerate along with the rest of him. The most likely explanation is that, as a daemon, he is at least partially shaped by the mortal perception of him, and the Nails are a big part of his story to anyone with high enough clearance to know his name. If that is true, then he actually is finally free of the Nails and the wires and bits poking out of his skull are just his way of making sure no one confuses him with [[Doombreed]] or something. Nope, turns out they are still present and still functional in the exact same way they were when Angron was flesh and blood. In fact, Sanguinius found out that these cables were a very viable weak point on the daemon primarch, as ripping them out caused such indescribable agony that might well have killed him were he still mortal. Agony so severe that it led him to ''beg'' the person he was trying to kill to stop.

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

Rather worryingly, he's proven to be practically impossible to banish as of the Age of the Dark Imperium- if he gets cast back into the Warp, he re-emerges exactly eight weeks, eight days, and eight hours later (Shouldn't this be two months, one week, 1 day and eight hours later? Or is GW completely devoid of math skills? Why point out the 8 weeks if you don’t the 8 days that add up to the 9th?), complete with eight Crimson Omens that strike terror into anyone unlucky enough to witness them. The Inquisition has no idea how he does it, but they think he might be supercharged by the Chaotic energies of the Great Rift. [[Internet_Troll|Coincidentally, since he can resurrect every turn on the tabletop, we finally have an estimate of how long each game turn actually takes in-universe.]]

Recently, Angron was given his own Arks of Omen campaign book. Unlike [[Fail|Abaddon, Morty, and the Tau]], he [[Gets shit done|gets shit done]]. Angron, a legion-strength World Eaters army, an Ark of Omen, a massive Khornate warfleet, and a metric fuckload of daemons invaded a planet called Malakbael. Malakbael was home to a newly discovered psychic beacon that the Imperium was using as a mini-Astronomican to guide fleets through the Imperium Nihilus. This being 40K, they were powering the thing by [[Grimdark|forcibly torturing psykers to death]]. This device, known as the Choral Engine, also had one tiny side effect: it attracted a lot of attention. Because of its strategic importance, it was being protected by Indomitus Fleet Quartus, the Inquisition, the Grey Knights, and a bunch of Space Marine chapters. Angron, who was suffering extreme fucking pain from the device, declared he would destroy it in the name of the Blood God. To call the invasion a massacre is a understatement. Angron fucking cut a bloody path through the Imperial forces. Not only did he destroy the leadership of the Imperial forces on Malakbael, his destruction of the Choral Engine and the massive spilling of blood triggered a mental backlash that affected the ENTIRE sector, causing people, among them Sisters of Battle and Primaris Marines, to lapse into madness and brutal infighting. Only the Custodes, Sisters of Silence, and Grey Knights were unaffected. The violence and bloodshed was so uncontrollable that the Imperium went "fuck it" and declared the entirety of [[Grimdark|Fleet Quartus to be condemned and damned as traitors despite the fact that most were still loyalists]]. Overall, Angron and the World Eaters absolutely devastated the Imperial forces. Highlights include Angron leading eight Bloodletters against a force of Imperial Knights and cutting Inquisitors and Grey Knight captains ''in half'' when they got in his way. After his widely-derided portrayal in ''Echoes of Eternity'', this is a badly needed return to form.

TLDR: Angron plunged an entire galactic sector into genocide, bloodshed, and madness because a 5G tower was giving him a migraine.

Later he would find out that ''another'' of his loyalist brothers had returned - this time [[Lion El'Jonson]] - and promptly went over to square up with him. They met on the reforged Caliban (now called Wyrmwood) as Vashtorr and Abaddon were finishing their plan to forge the Key. Angron was summoned by some cultists and promptly went ham on the Dark Angels and Blood Angels until the Lion turned up. Their brotherly reunion ended with the Lion bashing Angron's head in with the Emperor's Shield and banishing him back to the Warp again, after a furious duel. Angron's losing streak against Primarchs continues...