Editing Perturabo (section)

==Horus Heresy==
{{topquote|The Imperium is my father's folly. I try to believe in it because I want it to be true, just like I wanted my great buildings to be true, and the perfect societies that would use them to exist. But they cannot be. There is no such thing as perfection, humanity is too chaotic to accept true order.|Perturabo, after sacking Olympia. 000.M31 and passing blame for his own bad choices, as usual.}}
{{Topquote|You are like a child, purposefully hiding in a dark corner, angry that no one gives him notice.|Calliphone, right before Perturabo strangled her for pointing it out}}

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

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

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

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

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

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

===Siege of Terra===
[[File:Perturabo during the siege.jpg|300px|thumb|left|FFS guys! get your shit together!]]
If there was any moment during the Horus Heresy that Perturabo could even remotely be called 'happy', it was at the beginning of the Siege. Him. Dorn. A fortress to take, and immense forces on both sides to be used as they saw fit. No more [[Fulgrim|tricks]], [[Tallarn|withdrawals]], or [[Battle of Phall|fake-outs]] to confuse the result. It would be their greatest contest, [[Wargame|the ultimate arbitration on who was ''really'' the greatest general]].

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

And it only got worse from there.

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

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

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

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

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

It was time for round two.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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