Editing Angron (section)

===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.