Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

=== Dorn and Perturabo's Awesome Bromance ===

At a meeting of several of the primarchs, Perturabo outlined a complicated, grandiose plan for constructing some defense, and Fulgrim calls it out as being terrible and says that even Dorn could bring the plan crashing down. Just like in canon, Perty demands to know if Dorn thinks the same way and Dorn bluntly says "Yes". But unlike canon, Perturabo says two words that completely change the future relationship of the primarchs.

“Show me.”

Perturabo obviously planned to use this opportunity to make a fool out of Dorn, castigating him for daring to question his tactical genius, but Dorn says “I would do X to Y, Z to A, and the whole defense plan would come crumbling down”, and Perty realizes…he’s right. Perty thinks for a moment and then tries to one-up Dorn by saying “But what if I were to do X”. Dorn replies “then I would do this…”. And so one of the angriest friendships in the history of the Imperium was born. Dorn and Perty would play wargames against one another, each using the opportunity to continually refine their strategies. Perty knew logistics and Dorn (to some degree) knew men. Together, the two of them created defenses so formidable that Terra had not seen their like since the days of Babylon. Of course, given the nature of M31, even these defenses could not always hold.

In particular, the two primarchs would play chess against each other, but one kept getting the upper hand through out-of-the-box means. Exactly who always won depends on who you ask, the Imperial Fists and their descendants claim it was Dorn, whereas the Iron Warriors and their descendants claim it was Perturabo. Before the Siege of Terra, a messenger from the Iron Warriors came to Dorn, saying that Perturabo had formulated a message prior to his incapacitation to give to Dorn in the event he could not be present for the siege of their homeworld, which both primarchs had known was inevitable. It was a single chess piece. Dorn knew what it meant.

What differentiates Dorn and Perty is that Dorn wasn't fucked in the head bar a slight case of masochism. Perty was an insane manchild who had all the charisma of damp turd. He could design a better fortress than Dorn. Dorn was better at manning defenses and getting other people to man them because he was bluff old soldier with a blunt sort of charisma despite often being socially offensive or insensitive.

Dorn instinctively saw a Fortress as something to hold out in and protect assets inside. Perty saw a Fortress as something to tempt the other side into attacking by using the assets as bait then using the fortress as a meat grinder.

Dorn had standards and a sense of fair play and chivalry. Perty would kick you in the balls and once you on the floor stamp on your neck despite your pleas of surrender.

Dorn would fight a heroic stand to the last man and the last round. Perty would order a sensible and ordered retreat to regroup and make a counter attack. Dorn saw his assets as people and noble warriors. Perty saw them as numbers and a means to an end/victory.

For all that, once you put them together they made up for each others weaknesses. They also got along surprisingly well because Dorn didn't try to hide his disgust at Perty's methods. Perty wasn't good at dealing with people and their unspoken social interactions. Dorn always spoke what was on his mind. Perty enjoyed being around Dorn because he was one of the few people Perty was 100% sure wasn't either fucking with him or looking down on him. Angry voices Perty can deal with. People not saying what they are saying less so.

To everyone else Dorn's lack of any tact was annoying as fuck. To Perty it was most welcome. When Perty would suggest a cold and callous course of action like letting a bunch of civvies die and deploy the troops at a more important installation the rest of the room would use phrases like "I don't think that's a very humane thing to do" or "that might alienate us and make things difficult in the long term". Dorn would more likely say "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Perty was hellishly competent at his job and had an inhuman work ethic. he also didn't hold anyone to standards he had not already reached. Dorn respected that greatly. Perty was still a little salty over the fact that his father passed him over for his lack of diplomatic ability, which fed into his obsession with building the perfect fortress so that he'll finally be recognized as simply good enough. Dorn sat on the opposite end of the scale, assuming that the mere promotion of Perturabo to Primarch is already all the answer he'd ever need.

''"Although I find you insufferable at times, it cannot be avoided - if you were not one of the finest military minds in the Imperium, you would not be among us."''<br>
-Dorn, to Perturabo