Better late than never. This is a thread fire discussing and dumping stuff from the Black Legion novel. This is a safe place, if you have irrational hatred for ADB or Chaos please stay out.
With that said, let us begin.
"Black Legion" thread
Cameron Campbell
Nathaniel Butler
Abaddon's relationship with the gods of Chaos :
>But I am convinced that they hate us. They laugh at our dreams. They mock our ambitions. They fight us to enslave us, knowing they need us. They crave champions for their causes, elevating us, offering more– always more– to achieve our goals, only to abandon us and destroy us when we act against their whims. This is more than simple malice. Malice is crude and practically instinctive, a thing even beasts can comprehend. No, this is spite, and spite requires consciousness, emotion, the capacity for bitterness and wrath.
>But they reserve their fiercest hatred for Abaddon. Oh, how they despise him. They hunger for him, fighting each other for the honour of attracting his ironclad soul into their clutches. The Pantheon hates him the way parasites or addicts resent that which sustains them. Without Abaddon, they have no hope of victory. If he would only choose one of them, if he would only commit his destiny to one of the Gods, it would bring the Great Game of Chaos to its final moves.
>But then Abaddon would lose. He fights not for the Pantheon, those creatures that hate how they need him, nor does he care about their Great Game. He fights for himself, for his own ambitions, and for the brothers at his side. He fights for the Legions cast aside by the Emperor. He cares about the Imperium we built with our blood, sweat, bolters and blades– and he wants it back. He cares about returning to the godling that gave us life and seeing the Emperor bleed for all His failures. He cares about brotherhood, the unity of the damned, the wrongs that were done to all of us.
>And therein lies the root of the Gods’ spite. They beseech him. They beg him. They betray him in spite and then crawl back in the hope that he will bow to them.
>But the power is ultimately Abaddon’s, and that is what the Gods can never forgive.
Angel Foster
>His greatest strength is also his deepest flaw. Because he will not bow to the Pantheon, they will forever betray him and work against his ultimate triumph. It is said that Abaddon’s destiny is an ouroboros, the serpent devouring its own tail, as the Pantheon chases a submission he will never give, and he chases a triumph that may never come.
>And so I tell you this, as true as I have ever been in my entire life: Abaddon’s entire existence is devoted to breaking the cycle. We, his brothers, are his instruments in forcing fate onto a new path.
Julian Clark
Abaddon's growth as a character and the effects of the Chaos Gods nagging :
>My brother and I stood in one of the spinal observational spires overlooking the dark vista of the Vengeful Spirit’s backbone battlements. Outside of battle, he was often to be found here. As time had passed, as our armies had grown, as the assaults to steal the Vengeful Spirit had increased in number and intensity, Abaddon became evermore a warlord of the Eye rather than the simple, blunt instrument he had been as First Captain of the Sons of Horus.
>And yet.
>And yet Ezekyle himself diminished in ways few eyes outside the Ezekarion seemed to see. The malady that struck him burned slow in his blood, eating at him month after month. He grew distracted, insular, listless. The life in his golden eyes never faded; rather it seethed and turned sour. He had begun to grow apart from those of us he had brought together.
>He led us, still. His lapses and distractions had not yet threatened to compromise his leadership, but the more feverish and gaunter he grew, the more uneasy some of us in the Ezekarion became.
>Soon enough, he stopped sleeping. Sleep is rarely a concern for the warriors of the Legiones Astartes. We are able to subsist on mere hours of such healing rest each week, and we are capable of long periods without it entirely, albeit with a strain upon our physiologies. Yet Ezekyle claimed he no longer sought the respite of slumber at all. Instead he was almost always here between battles, staring out into the teeming half-dark between the Eye’s occluded stars.
>Sometimes I could almost sense what tore at his thoughts. Something? Someone? A presence, voiceless but far from silent, existed somewhere out there in the deeper dark. It called to him. Or threatened him. Or cursed at him. I could not tell.
Cameron Martinez
>I could not tell if it was even real or simply some echo of his own aura, refracting across the infinite. To look into Ezekyle’s soul was always a matter of discomfort. He was but one man, alone and unbreakable, but his soul swirled with thousands of other voices forever pressing against his being. Was one of them stronger than the others? Was that what I was hearing?
>He had always refused to enlighten me, and nothing I could do ever pierced his aura. I wondered if he even heard the presences on a conscious level. He did not seem to. I confess that his distracted stoicism has always chilled me– the warp itself, the galaxy’s own reflection, cries for his attention and yet he resolutely ignores it.
>The pressures of such an existence must be beyond reason.
Anthony Powell
Abaddon fixes his own gear. Hates when others tinker with them.
>Abaddon wore his battleplate– once the dark wargear of the Justaerin, though in the unreliable timelessness since the destruction of Horus Reborn he had already made several modifications. Another aspect that set Abaddon apart from many of our brothers was his refusal to rely on armourcraft slaves. Abaddon refused to let anyone tend to the maintenance and modification of his black war-plate. The trophies that hung from his armour were all those he had hammered into place himself. The trinkets and charms were those he had carved or fashioned. The repaired patches and sections of reinforcement were each done by his own hand. A legionary has no choice but to let machines and thralls aid in his armouring, when the ceramite plates must be mounted and driven and drilled into place, but that was the limit of Abaddon’s tolerance.
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Talon is a weapon and little else for Abaddon :
>Horus had considered the Talon a symbol of his office as much as a tool of war. Abaddon considered it simply a weapon to be wielded, but he was not blind to the symbolism of wearing a trophy of that particular patricide.
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Abaddon is a bro :
>‘Report,’ he said. ‘Tell me everything. And get up, fool. You are no knight, and I am no king. We are brothers here.’
Jeremiah James
Just recently got the collector's edition to read for when I'm not painting my BL dudes this weekend, get hyped!
Ryder Williams
Abaddon and Khayon having a bro fight :
>‘Then tell me, Ezekyle. Tell me what lies in the warp’s cry. The Eye itself is shrieking your name. Unborn daemons drift around you in a halo of torment. What is out there? What calls to you?’
>I knew, the moment his eyes met mine, that I had overstepped. His mouth hardened into a thin line. He idly stroked two of the Talon’s blades together with a whetstone rasp.
>Nagual growled, sensing my unease across the symbiotic bond. You have angered him, the beast sent to me, forever simplistic in his emotions. His soul boils.
>Abaddon’s cold gaze drifted to the daemon. Because of the growl? Because he could sense what the creature was saying? An interesting possibility– unwelcome, but interesting.
>Silence, Nagual.
>‘That is your father speaking, sorcerer,’ said Abaddon. ‘You speak with the vanity that Magnus the Red bred into your bones– that sense of knowing more than anyone else, of knowing best. The arrogance of believing that you alone know what to do with wisdom. You see something you don’t understand and it blisters your mind because, in your arrogance, you are so certain that you alone can deal with it.’
>‘It is not that,’ I vowed. ‘I wish only for you to trust me, to trust all of us among the Ezekarion. We are your counsel and your bloodwards. We are the voices sworn to always speak the truth before you.’
>He rounded upon me, looking down with cold anger barely held back. ‘You are the only one that accuses me like this, Khayon. You are the only one that whispers your doubts and pours them into my ears. You are the only one that scratches at the walls of my mind and demands entrance, desperate to witness my every thought. The others trust me, but you alone do not. Not the proud and wise Iskandar Khayon. Why is that?’
Austin Thompson
Sucks that it doesn't contain art pieces like the first book, though.
>He didn’t let me answer. He silenced me with a gesture and continued, ‘You stare at me with suspicion. And I will tell you why, sorcerer. It’s because you are afraid. Afraid that I will fail you as our fathers failed us. Afraid that after rediscovering brotherhood I will be deceived into abandoning it once more. Afraid that the madness that claimed Horus will seep into my skull and leave me the same preening, deluded husk he was towards the end of his rebellion.’
>said nothing. There was nothing to say. To deny even one of his words would be to insult both of us. He had spoken my thoughts as if he had read them from a parchment page.
>‘If you wish to speak to me, Khayon, speak from wisdom, temperance and trust. Speak from ignorance if you must. That, at least, is palatable. But do not speak from fear.’ He shook his head in something approaching disgust. That simple gesture shamed me far more than his accusations. ‘Sometimes, brother, I swear that you have forgotten how to hate. All that remains is suspicion and fear. I will have no cowards at my side.’
>I am no coward. I knifed the words into his mind, not by intention but by sheer force of belief. He tensed at their impact, and after a moment he smiled.
>‘Perhaps you aren’t.’ The ragged harshness left his voice. ‘You truly believe I need your aid, brother? That I am so fragile I will fall victim to the same delusions that ruined our fathers?’
>I dared a smile, though there was precious little joy in it. ‘It is more that I have a healthy loathing of the creatures that call themselves gods. The warp is alive around you, Ezekyle. I sense that, without a doubt.’
Carson Price
Fate one of the Sons of Horus commanders that refused to bend the knee :
>‘Negotiations,’ I admitted, ‘went poorly.’
>Abaddon seemed unsurprised. I suspected then, as I have suspected ever since, that he did not wish Korosan to stand with us at all, but appearances of fairness had to be maintained. He had sent me knowing Korosan would refuse me.
>His response was typically focused. ‘Kill them.’
>And so we did. We committed our burgeoning fleet to the skies above Korosan’s world, to rain fire upon nineteen thousand warriors, thralls, slaves and minions. Korosan himself was taken alive at the battle’s end. Abaddon gave him to the Aphotic Blade, who impaled and crucified him upon their battle standard. Servitors intravenously fed him the bodily waste of our Legion’s slaves to keep him alive. He survived for five miserable months.
>Such is the price of defiance.
Dylan Turner
In case anyone wondered what happened to Sanguinius' sword.
>Years before, Abaddon had given the first of his loyal brothers a gift– shards of silver from the broken blade that had once belonged to Sanguinius, the fallen primarch of the Blood Angels Legion. The shards were beyond price; flooded with agonisingly potent psychic resonance, fuelled by the wounds the blade had inflicted over the many decades and thrumming with the death-scream echo of the primarch who had been holding it when he was cut down and slaughtered.
>I used my shards in the forging of Sacramentum, the sword born to replace my lost Fenrisian axe, Saern. Lheor had arranged for his shards to be fashioned into the razored teeth of a new chainaxe, a weapon he had then lost within a span of mere months. For all I know it may still lie submerged in the choking swamps of the moon Narix, where we locked blades yet again with the Word Bearers.
>And with his shards, Telemachon had fashioned a new face. The faceplate of his helmet was blue-veined silver with eye-lenses of opal, lit crimson from within. When I looked at him, I saw the wasteland of Maeleum reflecting filthy and orange across his argent features.
Carson Davis
Why the Black Legion wear black :
>Black not simply to replace the colours that we had once worn, but to eclipse them. Black to acknowledge our shame. Black to symbolise freedom from the past, to declare our loyalty to none but ourselves.
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Where the Black Legion got their name :
>We did not call ourselves the Black Legion. That name came from those we faced across the fields of battle. It was a curse more than a rallying cry in those distant days. ‘Black Legion!’ they would howl in mockery, with all the disgust of calling us orphans, traitors, scum.
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Sons of Horus joiners are the most loyal within the Legion :
>It is no exaggeration to say that these Sons of Horus were among our most fervently loyal recruits. When I say that we are the Legion of the Long War, I speak of our rebirth and of our lord’s belief that blood and gene-line are irrelevant. What matters is the hate in a warrior’s heart and the skill with which he wields a blade. But I am also speaking of those last, lost souls. They were the ones who endured the final days of the XVI Legion, and they know, better than any other, what it is to cling too long to the echoes of the past.
Colton Brooks
Time in the Eye is all screwy :
>Sometimes my Inquisitorial hosts ask me to explain the unexplainable. Over the course of my captivity I have related the form and function of many aspects that define life in the Empire of the Eye. Within that realm where physical and corporeal laws go to die, temporal stability is another maddening casualty. Time exists only as a fractured idea, different for every one of us.
>I have fought beside warriors of the Legions for whom the Imperium itself is a distant memory, even to eidetic recollections. It doesn’t matter to them why the Long War began, nor even how it will end. They have been fighting it for an eternity. It is all they know.
>On the opposite side of the same coin, I have known warriors for whom Terra is scarcely a memory at all– the same adrenal rage that flowed in their veins during the Siege still beats through their bodies now. For some of them, chronologically speaking, it has been mere months or a handful of years since their exile began.
Jason Wilson
>As for myself, I have undertaken missions on my Legion’s behalf that took days to succeed, only to return to Abaddon and the Vengeful Spirit to learn that years had passed aboard our flagship. The reverse is also true. More than once I have waged war in the Black Legion’s name for years, even decades, only to find that practically no time has passed at all.
>But even this is seeking to define the undefinable. We are speaking of a concept that cannot be tamed with words.
>The truth is both simple and devastatingly complex. The truth is that most of us no longer care about time. It means nothing to us anymore. Marking the passage of days and months and years is almost impossible. We fight when we must fight. We kill when we must kill. We eat and drink to sustain ourselves. We sleep when our bodies force somnolence upon us. There is no routine, no harmonious schedule of order. We breathe and bleed and breathe and bleed. There is only existence, moment by moment. You are alive or you are dead.
>And that is the truth our Imperial counterparts most struggle to understand. When we lock blades with the Space Marines of loyal Chapters, and they pour scorn upon us for a bitterness that has lasted ten thousand years. When we have little idea which thin-blooded newborn conclave of hypno-indoctrinated soldiers is hurling itself against us with oaths the Emperor Himself would have found insane. The truth is that it is no ancient grudge rolling on through the cobwebs of old, old minds. Our hatred is still hot. Our wounds are still fresh. It has always been this way, and it shall always remain so. Time cannot dilute the venom that flows through our hearts, for time no longer exists.
Brayden Sanchez
>I could not tell you how many years have passed for me since I first set foot on a warp-touched world within the Eye. Sometimes it feels as though I was breathing Terran air only weeks ago. Sometimes I feel incalculably old, weighed down by the pressure of conflicting memories; things that feel as though they happened to other souls, in other lives.
>Time is a mortal conceit, a product of the material universe, and we are bound by no such laws.
Ryder Nguyen
How does the marine brain eating works :
>The gene-seed organ responsible for this gift is the omophagea– called, in the oldest scrolls, the Eighth Step of Supremacy, or ‘the Remembrancer’. It takes root within our bodies, attaching to the brain and nervous system through fusion to the spinal column and digestive tract. Though we are gene-forged to steal sustenance from almost any organic matter, even the flesh of our fallen enemies, it’s through the omophagea that we also devour our foe’s memories. Nerve clusters in our stomachs carry pulses from the digesting meat to our minds, which the post-human brain interprets as instinct and insight.
>A beast’s flesh transfers its awareness of its existence, of its surroundings, its struggles, its hungers and its dangers. You sense the nearness of its predators and the taste of its prey. A human’s eyes show a blighted palette of a thousand images over the course of the person’s life, including that soul’s very last sight.
>The brain makes for the finest meal. It offers unparalleled insight from a gallery of stolen emotion and memory. You see another being’s memories as if they were your own: unreliable, often hazy, occasionally excruciatingly vivid. Their instincts overlay yours, your emotion and reason entwines with those of a life you never led.
>It takes discipline to suppress the narcotic qualities of this merging. The sensation can become an addiction all too easily, for it offers pleasure as well as power. In the Thousand Sons we had couched the act in ritual and solemnity– praising the warrior-scholar virtue of ‘knowing your enemy’, and quelling any guilty pleasure in the cannibalistic act.
Evan Smith
>Of course, such feasts of flesh are hardly uncommon when any warband emerges victorious over another– look even to the Imperium’s own record of supposedly loyal Chapters, especially those of the Blood Angels Legion’s genetic descent. Flesh Eaters. Blood Drinkers. How do bands of warriors earn such names, I wonder?
The effects are addictive to the marines. Is this a design flaw or a feature?
Zachary Ward
This is from the Wonderworker. Amazing short story.
Camden Sanchez
Abaddon is making a list of all the Sons of Horus to better hunt them down :
>‘Names,’ I said, interrupting their burgeoning disagreement. ‘Ezekyle is not only gathering gene-seed data, he is gathering names. The name of every Son of Horus entered into the Legion’s archives as confirmed dead.’
>This was typical of Abaddon’s precision. He was compiling an archive of who still lived, tallying the fallen and survivors alike. It was the best way of knowing what percentage of the remaining Legion was already sworn to us, sailing as part of our fleet. The rest would be hunted down, and recruited or killed.
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The Black Legion looted the meat chunks of Horus and are keeping aboard the VS
>The body this coffin had cradled was years gone, first hauled away like a hunter’s kill to be dissected on the unclean slabs of III Legion butcher-surgeons, then recovered by Abaddon and the very first of his Ezekarion after the destruction of Horus Reborn. What remained of the Warmaster’s corpse– the genetic plunder that was all Fabius Bile had left intact from the looted cadaver– was housed safely within the Apothecarion Apex aboard the Vengeful Spirit, stasis-sealed and guarded by a hundred of our Syntagma war robots, linked to the Anamnesis’ conscious control.
Brody Mitchell
CSM geneseed issue :
>You might think, ignorantly but not unfairly, that Horus’ genetic samples alone would be enough for us to engineer an endless supply of the nineteen biosynthetic organs necessary for implantation to create Space Marines from human boy-children. This is not so, no matter any individual Apothecary’s genius. The Emperor himself envisioned the process, which speaks to the intellect required to first bring it into being, and put it into effect with the immense technological impetus of the Throneworld and its unprecedented access to relics of the Dark Age.
>Even now in the Imperium, an Adeptus Astartes Chapter can be rendered slowly extinct by the theft of its gene-seed, despite its medicae-warriors possessing all the information and support necessary to re-engineer new progenoid glands and create new Space Marines. Indeed, such defilement is one of the Nine Legions’ preferred punishments; nothing drives a Chapter to such desperation, nor tars them with such shame, as the theft of their future.
>And as for the Legions themselves? Would we raid our thin-blooded cousins and descendants in the Imperium if we could render new gene-seed organs with ease? Would we slaughter each other over fragments of lore or tithe fortunes in service and materiel to the Mechanicum’s daemon-forges if we could simply engineer miracles without their priceless expertise? We bind daemons into our war machines to keep them functioning. We forge new amalgamated horrors of daemonic flesh and cold metal to replace technology we can no longer maintain.
Elijah Thomas
>Remember this, for context is precious in the comprehension of this tale. For all that we mock the Imperium in the way you make a virtue of small-minded ignorance, we too have lost so very much. Perhaps even more. Your masters have sealed knowledge away from you, incinerated it, or it has been lost through the natural passage of time. We, on the other hand, have watched it slip through our fingers even when we tried to keep it close.
Jack Lee
Abaddon's manage of inter-legion disputes :
>Luck had nothing to do with it. One of the ways Abaddon promoted unity was by overseeing disputes and duels between chieftains and warlords himself, rather than letting them slaughter each other out of his sight, according to their own whims. A subtle touch, but one of the many ways in which he sought to impose laws over our chaotic way of life. If nothing else, I admired his monarchical intentions.
Hudson Young
This scene is 10/10 in the audiobook version. The voice actor did an awesome job acting out the emotional breakdown of the legionaries over the news.
This the best delivered line in the audiobook
>‘The Word Bearers won.’ Telemachon was on his hands and knees in the dust, blood trickling from his unmoving silver mouth. He laughed and heaved and vomited and laughed, speaking between dragged breaths and violent convulsions. ‘The Word Bearers won. They eat dirt and drink shame. They chant prayers to the unwanted truth through bloodied lips. They lost everything. And yet they still won.’
Joshua Barnes
DRACH'FUCKING'NYEN :
>That sword. By the Shifting Many, how much of what we have done has its roots in the wielding of Abaddon’s sword? Oceans of Imperial blood have run beneath that blade’s edge. Rivers of our own have flowed because of it. We fought a crusade to claim it. We have spent an eternity slaughtering those that would take it for themselves.
>In Cthonian, the blade is called Usargh, or ‘Oblivion’. In Nagrakali, the blunt mongrel tongue of Lheor’s former Legion, it is Skaravaur, or ‘Crownrender’. In Tizcan Prosperine, the language of the city of my birth, it is Mal-Atar-Sei, ‘the Shard of Madness’. To Nefertari’s people it is Sorathair, ‘the Thorn in Reality’, a name spoken only as the blackest curse. These are all imperfect translations of the weapon’s true name, for the blade was forged in no mortal realm, nor was it fashioned by mortal hands.
>In the wordless, soul-borne language of the warp’s winds, within the eternal howling of the daemonic choirs, echoes the name Drach’nyen. This is no word as the human mind would understand it, for it is not an utterance but a concept. Within the eternal song of howling, weeping madness is the fate-spun promise of the Emperor’s death, of His Imperium carved clean of ignorance and false faith.
>That chorus, that concept roared into daemonic essence, is Drach’nyen. This is what our languages try and fail to distil into spoken words. Usargh, Skaravaur, Mal-Atar-Sei… They are all aspects of the same thing: Drach’nyen, the End of Empires, a creature with its genesis in the warp-threaded conviction that it exists only to kill humanity’s king.
Kevin Gray
>Would we raid our thin-blooded cousins and descendants
>descendants
Wtf
Jaxson Wilson
>That which you call Chaos, or the Ruinous Powers; that which we call the Pantheon– this essence, this energy, does not obey us. It is not an entity unilaterally supporting us, or a reliable weapon that serves our needs. It uses us. It elevates us, for the purposes of its own whims. It is a force of honesty, true, making us wear our sins on our armoured skin, but it is also the essence of absolute deception, shifting and warping whatever it wishes to pursue its own conflicting ends. It is the crashing, clashing energies of every memory, emotion and agony felt by every human since the dawn of time, with the same suffering of countless alien species flavouring the resultant matter.
>It can be used, but only if you are willing to be used in turn. It can be worshipped and begged, but only if you are willing to risk damnation along with ascension. It is a force flowing through the veins of reality, one that chooses us and marks us as its puppets as well as its champions. That cannot be stated enough.
>It is not on our side. Many of us spend our lives fighting it and resisting it far more often than beseeching it.
>Abaddon’s blade is one such aspect. As I hang here, chained and bound in the tender care of your Inquisition, though I crave to be back with my brothers and doing the Warmaster’s work, there is one comfort in my captivity: it is a blessed relief to be this far from Drach’nyen.
>I can still hear it whisper at the edge of my mind even with my powers stripped from me. But I can no longer hear it laughing. No longer does it seep into the core of my being, a distraction and an infection, a daemon only content when it is rending reality apart and leaving formless Chaos in its wake.
>It is said that the weapon is only a sword at all because Ezekyle wills it to take that shape. I can tell you this is true. It is not a sword. It is scarcely even a daemon.
Landon Flores
>Black Legion command structure and methodology :
>These meetings of the Legion’s commanders were the most visible efforts to bring order from disorder. We would speak of supply lines, resources, materiel, formations, crew numbers, targets, duties… In short, we would behave as if we were an organised fighting force, not a disparate conclave of warband leaders bound together in a realm that defied physics and military logistics. Every warrior would speak their piece, citing their relevant contributions. Abaddon, in turn, would hold court in relative silence. He knew the value of letting his subcommanders exercise their authority and– as with any army– feed on their various rivalries. Officers were driven not just to excel before Abaddon and earn his sparse praise, but to exceed the deeds and usefulness of their kindred’s warbands, impressing the Ezekarion and putting themselves in the running to serve the Legion’s highest commanders.
>Abaddon was cautious with his compliments, but one truth was always in evidence: those who quelled internal rivalry within their warbands, either by charisma, murder, or ritual challenges– those who could be trusted to fight reliably and not abandon battle plans at the whim of their own blood-greed or to heed the calls of the Gods– these were, without fail, the warriors who were most often rewarded. To them fell the positions of honour and glory within every assault, and the Ezekarion leaned most heavily upon them to secure victory. They became the backbone of the Black Legion.
Nolan Nelson
Reminder that Moriana the Black and Euphrati Keeler are too similar to not be related or the same character
>Both believe in the Emperor's divinity and were crucial to the cult's ascension
>Both are unparalleled seers
>Both were somewhat connected to Malcador, Moriana being an Inquisitor would make her an acquaintance of Malcador around the HH and Keeler was known amongst the Imperial Palace and the legions
Hunter Sanchez
These next paragraphs are written down specifically to respond to the meme bullshit surrounding Abaddon and the Black Legion :
>There are those among the Legions, and scribes of what few Imperial texts are permitted to exist, that suggest the entire crusade was fought purely so Abaddon could claim his blade. This is brazen falsehood. Hundreds of thousands of legionaries would spill from the opening Eye, with millions of mutants, humans and daemons in a tidal horde behind them. Most of them knew nothing of Drach’nyen then, and most know nothing of it now. They have their own lives to live, as pathetic and stunted as those existences may be.
>That false coin comes with another side, of course. There are those that believe we wished to surge forth and take Terra in the first breath of the war. Ignorance of this staggering scale is the rawest, rankest madness.
>The road to Terra is the most fortified, impossible series of battles imaginable. Wars are not fought in one engagement, but piecemeal: campaign after campaign, city by city, fleet by fleet, world by world. Even if we could bring our wrath to Terra in a single strike, what use would it be? The rest of the Imperium would remain unconquered, and would descend on Terra to cut our throats while we celebrated our temporary triumph.
>Horus Lupercal had half of the Imperium’s forces, and he still failed to take the Throneworld, deluded creature that he was. We have a fraction of a fraction of those galaxy-spanning warhosts. Horus began with– and lost with– more than we could ever muster. As the Imperium reeled in the wake of the rebellion, so did we. As it has struggled to recover all these millennia later, so have we.
Colton Sanders
Okay but where does the Deceiver enter in all of this?
Caleb Russell
>For all of the ways in which the Legions are stronger than we once were– with our daemon-engines and Neverborn allies and the myriad gifts of our spiteful Gods– there are twice as many ways in which we are weaker. Supply lines no longer exist, leaving our guns starved of shells and our warships hoarding diminished supplies of energy and resources. Few warbands can lay claim to the materiel of a Mechanicum cruiser or a forge world within the Eye, and those that can must fight endlessly to protect it from rivals. Slaves die or lose their minds to the warp as easily as they breathe. Whole fleets scatter to the warp’s winds, for Eyespace is far less stable than the material realm. Battleships die of thirst, fuel-dry and crippled in the dark void, to be forgotten or swallowed as part of a macro-agglomeration space hulk.
>Warbands fight amongst themselves over ammunition, territory, plunder, even clean water. Champions that aspire to replace their warlord masters fight duels or sink to betrayal in order to rise above their former stations. There is no true agriculture in the Eye, no harvest worlds supplying sustenance necessities; whole worlds and fleets survive on the flesh and bones of the unburied dead, or the warp-stained roots of alien plants, or the corpulent bodies of mutant livestock. Commanders and warband leaders, even of the same Legions, wage war against one another over matters of pride or power, or to win the all-too-brief favour and dangerous blessings of the erratic Gods.
>Worst of all, recruitment for the Nine Legions is a matter of hellish difficulty. We lack anything like the reliable resources we once had to sustain ourselves and maintain our genetic lines. I could not even begin to estimate the number of ‘bastard’ legionaries born after the Heresy, forged with gene-seed raided from Space Marine Chapters loyal to the Golden Throne.
Wyatt Johnson
>And all of this is before the long and difficult journey to actually escape the clutches of the Eye, which is, as I have stressed, our prison and our punishment for failure as much as our haven. The Eye’s edges are where the storm rages hardest. Ships seeking to leave are torn apart in those reaping tides. Do you not think we tried? There is no swifter way to lose warships than by hurling them towards the Great Eye’s edge.
Jose Myers
Abaddon is a diva to enities of the Warp :
>It is strange to think back to how he was then, before the Pantheon showered him with blessing after blessing. When he was just Ezekyle, my brother and my sworn lord, not Warmaster Abaddon, Chosen of the Gods. In time, I would scarcely be able to stand near him, forever bathed as he was in a rippling, replenishing saturation of soul-matter, with the warp itself forming a choir heralding his every move. He could not growl without even his closest warriors edging away, nor nod without thousands of daemons shrieking in acclamation.
>But not yet. I could see the silhouettes of unborn daemons seeking birth through his aura, feeding on his hatreds, and I could see the way the warp focused upon him as though he were a nexus, but such things happen to many souls of significance inside the Eye. I did not know then that I was witnessing a mere fraction of his future majesty.
----------------
Daemons of the Warp see the Talon as an object of worship for what it has done and what it will do :
>Abaddon fought with the Talon held back and low the whole time, knowing it had no place in a spar, knowing also that coming too close to the weapon savaged my psychic sense with its bloodied resonance. As much as I had adapted to weather the pressure of its closeness over the years, if I narrowed my eyes I could still see the mist of death-echoes that surrounded its curving claws. That haze of psychic potency attracted countless unformed daemon-things; these too I could see if I focused. They prayed to the weapon. They whispered lovingly to it, an inhuman murmur of praise for all that it was capable of doing in changing the paths of the future. They sang their shrieking, howling songs in gratitude for all that it had done in writing the pathways of the past. In so many ways, as fascinating and disgusting as it was, the Talon was a taste of what would come when Abaddon claimed Drach’nyen.
Ian Rogers
Abaddon chocking the shit out of Khayon
Leo Long
Abaddon when faced with the failure of his subordinates :
>‘I tried, Ezekyle.’ Blood spattered to the deck by Abaddon’s boots, spilled from Ashur-Kai’s cut tongue. The warp had wounded him even there. ‘I tried.’
>There had been times before this– and there would be more to come– when Abaddon punished failure by execution. Sometimes, I must admit, these acts were delivered out of unrestrained anger, but more often as acts of calculated and precise mercilessness. To set examples. To establish boundaries. To spread fear, as all tyrants and warlords and kings have done, since time began and the first men and women ruled their brothers and sisters.
>But he is not without forgiveness. He knows when a defeat was unavoidable. That distant day, as our armada sat becalmed in the seas of madness, he barely even looked down at Ashur-Kai before resting a hand on the other warrior’s pauldron and lifting the sorcerer to his feet.
>‘You cannot fight fate, brother. But you did well to try.’
>That choice of words rekindled life in the sorcerer’s red eyes. Shame, yes, but life as well– something dangerously close to hope. ‘Is that what you believe this was?’ he asked Abaddon. ‘Fate?’
Henry Bell
Also who was Promius?
Nathan Butler
Ahriman has no face :
>You know, as my gracious hosts, that my arm was restored between that day long ago and my captivity now. The changes wrought upon my flesh are visible as I stand here before you in this cell, shackled and blinded. My arm regrew– perhaps regenerated would be a fairer term– though it reformed in a far changed state than it had been before its loss.
>It was my first mutation, and far from my last. Ahriman’s Rubric banished mutation from the Thousand Sons, but only among those whom had little in the way of psychic talent, and only by destroying their physical forms. The rest of us are as prone to the warp’s whims and our own sins as any other being dwelling inside the Eye. If you believe my former brother Ahzek is entirely unchanged beneath his Eye-touched armour, you are as dangerously naïve as he was when he unmade our Legion.
>Ahriman believes he is perfectly unaltered. Did you know that? Yet I have seen the void that screams where his face used to be.
Joshua Ortiz
The Arabic guy. What was his name? Khalid.
Christian Long
>More about Drach'nyen :
>‘I see a sword forged in a sunset,’ he had told us in a strained tone. ‘I see a star dying, and its ash used to fuel the engines of a great throne of gold. I see the first murder, where brother kills brother, where the rage of the slayer and the agony of the slain becomes a tempest behind the veil.’
>He had spoken like this for some time. I did not mock him for such poesies. I did not laugh at them; I dreaded them. Never had I witnessed him so close to breaking apart. Seeing Abaddon murmur of his haunted dreams in a prophecy-soaked whisper was one of the most unnerving sights I have ever seen. His golden eyes glazed over with cataracts of distracted madness, as though someone or something had reached into his brain to puppeteer his fanged mouth to speak on its behalf.
>The warp promised him this unimaginable prize in a ceaseless song, and yet he had no way of knowing what this treasure truly was. Whatever it was, its presence was a clarion call throughout the empyrean’s tides. It inhaled hope and exhaled promise.
>‘Is it a daemon?’ Lheor had asked, as awed and uneasy as the rest of us. ‘How can you trust such an offer?’
>‘I don’t need to trust it,’ Abaddon snapped back from his polluted reverie. ‘I need only to master it.’
>‘It will be yours,’ Moriana promised him. ‘From the moment you claim it until you wear the Emperor’s crown upon your brow, it will be your companion and your weapon.’
>Few of us were convinced. Amurael spoke for us.
>‘For this,’ he said, ‘you would fight a war?’
>‘The war is sacrosanct,’ Abaddon replied. ‘And it is ours, not mine. We will return to the Imperium and bring fire to those deluded souls who fight beneath the False Emperor’s banners. This is vindicta. This is why we wear the black. Whatever else waits outside the Eye, I will kill or claim as the need arises.’
Jaxon Collins
>We knew so little about Drach’nyen then. I think back to our ignorance in those nights with a sense of something akin to purity. For all the strength Abaddon’s blade has granted to us down the centuries, and for all of the victories reaped with its screaming edge, it remains a cancer threatening to blacken my brother’s heart. I believe none of its whispers. None at all.
Now what does a throne of gold powered by the ashes of a dead sun have to do with the First Murder?
Colton Long
Oh weird. Where you get that from?
Hunter Mitchell
The Sigillite. Do your homework.
Jeremiah Hernandez
Abaddon's ruthlessness :
>I want you to remember this moment, my Imperial hosts, when I speak of Abaddon in the future. When I speak of the ways in which he excels militarily, or shows the gifts of truly charismatic leaders. I want you remember the pact he made with the Ghosts of the Warp, and the way he gestured with the Talon’s scythe blades, indicating Ashur-Kai. My former mentor. One of the Black Legion’s founders. One of Abaddon’s own irreplaceable Ezekarion. The void-guide for the flagship of the fleet.
>Remember this, as a display of the depths of Abaddon’s ruthlessness. Some of you may see it as a virtue. Others as a failing. I cannot speak for you. But I want you to remember it, for it is part of who he is.
>Ezekyle met Ashur-Kai’s eyes, just for a moment. It was all that passed between them as a farewell.
>‘Take him.’
Dominic Harris
The state of the traitor's ships :
>And if we were low on ammunition, if our armour plating was cracked, repaired and cracked again, the truth is that our fleets were in even worse shape. We had been beaten in the Heresy, we had been beaten into exile in the Scouring, and while the Imperium licked its wounds in the aftermath of our disappearance, we had spent that era waging war against one another.
>For every vessel enhanced by mutation, another was cursed by it; for every cruiser sailing with admirable repairs or an undamaged hull, another was a shell of its former glory. Within Eyespace, our ships were subject to the erosion of the warp’s touch, accelerating natural degradation, and reliable opportunities to dry-dock and repair a capital ship were staggeringly scarce. In the Eye, especially in that era, a functioning, stable shipyard was practically the stuff of dreams. They were always the highest priority for destruction if another warband wished to grind a rival into dust.
>For a time, the newborn Black Legion had claimed and defended Niobia Halo– the shipyard and forge moon belonging to Ceraxia and Valicar. That custodianship had ended when Thagus Daravek led a warhost of Word Bearers and Death Guard to annihilate our docks and plunder the riches we had acquired. The installation was lost in the resulting battle. Afterwards, both Valicar and Ceraxia joined the Ezekarion as fleetmaster and armsmistress respectively.
Lucas Gomez
>It is for these same reasons that you see our individual warriors equipped with ancient and unreliable patterns of weaponry, or reduced to using inefficient, outdated wargear. For all the strength that mutation and hatred bestow, erosion, decay and the eternal civil war between the Nine Legions takes more than its share.
>We are mighty, but it is a tenuous might. Just as that day, when we outnumbered Sigismund’s armada, our advantage was fragile. We did not have the luxury of carelessness. A great deal of our fleet’s strength was concentrated in the killing power and endurance of the Vengeful Spirit and the other largest ships that once sailed at the vanguard of the Great Crusade. Most were changed significantly by their time in the Eye, and I knew their machine-spirit cores would be as disorientated by their return to real space as any truly living being.
Dominic Sanchez
I posted the Sigismund fight excerpts in an older thread. If you want to read it go here
Daniel White
>hatred for ADB
>irrational
Hudson Campbell
user, I don't like ADB anymore either, but this is their thread. Let them have it.
Joshua Rodriguez
I was tempted to post this but is right, let them have their thread.
Evan Hill
>I sensed the spillage of souls into the warp. I sensed the outburst of panicked, confused, blood-maddened, death-drunk spirits of the violently slain, tumbling into the realm behind reality. I sensed the wet laughter of gorging daemons. I sensed the ebb and flow of the empyrean’s winds, blowing harder behind the veil, fuelled by the glut of freed souls. I sensed death after death after death– those who did not know they were dead; those that fought uselessly as they fell into the waiting, gaping maws; those that cried wordless defiance as they were torn apart by daemonic claws. I sensed the daemons that would be born in the aftermath of this battle. I sensed how they loved us for this slaughter, and how they hated us for its mortal limits– for no matter the slaughter we perpetrated, it was never enough, never enough.
>I sensed it all. It was beautiful. Hatefully beautiful.
One of the horrific facts of the 40K universe is the fate of souls. Souls of normal folks either dissolve into the Warp which is said to feel like being burned alive into nothingness, or be devoured by daemons of the Warp and become their eternally tormented playthings.
Places of war and mass death attract masses of daemons who swim around in the warp like piranhas shredding the souls of the combatants as they die in their thousands.
Your guardsmen, your marines, your Ork Boyz, etc they are all daemon chow in the end.
Brody Jenkins
The fat faggot Ahriman tutored in A Thousand Sons.
Adrian Young
Abaddon's job is harder than Horus's was
>Some hatreds cannot be overcome. The Nine Legions, subject to the whims of the Gods that stir fate around us, have always been their own worst enemies. When Abaddon’s name is spoken in awe, much of that hateful and jealous reverence is because he does what no other warlord can do: he unites the Nine Legions, even if only briefly, and leads them to war. Horus had half of the Imperium loyally on his side: organised, unified, strong. Abaddon has to piece together the armies of the damned from the depths of hell, where they have spent eternity drowning in their own madness and despising each other as enemies.
Jonathan Phillips
> Get a sweet new sword
> Lose it within months
total kek
Jeremiah Morris
Abaddon is identical to Horus in every way except his eyes and smile :
>As he floated in the tank, naked of armour and dressed only in a plethora of old scars, that age-old suspicion resurfaced amidst my thoughts. He had always been huge for one of our kind, and had always possessed his primarch’s features, in the way many of the former Sons of Horus tended to do. It was common knowledge even during the Great Crusade that no Space Marine took after their primarch as obviously as Ezekyle Abaddon took after the Warmaster.
>But seeing him stripped of battleplate and pretension alike, the similarity between dead father and living son was nothing short of revelatory. I finally gave voice to a question many had considered, yet none had dared ask.
>‘Are you Horus?’
>His golden eyes glinted with amusement. He dragged in a slow breath through his rebreather.
>‘I am Ezekyle Abaddon,’ he said through the medicae tank’s speakers.
>‘That is not what I meant.’ I shook my head and gestured to him: this immense figure in the suspension tank, with slabs of muscle over muscle and a demigod-like stature that had led to this legend being whispered throughout the Nine Legions, a legend that would one day be whispered across the galaxy. ‘Are you Horus? Are you his clone? His… son?’
>He laughed, the sound wet and tinny over the speakers. ‘What do you believe, Khayon? Do you think I am?’
>I saw no reason to lie. ‘Yes.’
>This delighted him. I was not sure why.
>‘And if I were, brother– if I were merely Horus remade, recrafted, with a twist in my gene-code here and an alteration there, would it change anything?’
>I had to think about that. I looked into his eyes but saw no answers there, only amusement.
>‘Perhaps. Perhaps you have always been a genetic twin of your primarch. Or perhaps Ezekyle Abaddon was slain in his pilgrimage across the Eye, and you are one of Fabius’ creations in his place. How am I to know?’
Samuel Reyes
>This, too, delighted him.
>‘So yet again we come back to trust, my brother.’
>‘So it seems.’
>‘Let me ask you this, Khayon. What does it matter? Clones, sons, fathers… Let the herd whisper whatever truths they choose. Our eyes are set on worthier goals. We look to the future, not the past.’
>I acceded with a nod, knowing that there was no answer to be had here. Knowing, ultimately, that he was right. It did not matter.
If Abaddon ever gets a new model, then it should be as huge or bigger than Girlyman's model.
Noah Martin
The last bit.
>We were free. Free of our prison, sailing at the vanguard of a colossal invasion of Imperial space.
>Our escape plunged the entirety of the Segmentum Obscurus into war. The conflict that raged for decades– that which you call the First Black Crusade– would eat at our resources as much as it replenished them, stealing as many gains from us as it granted.
>You know of the purges and sterilisations and recolonisations that followed the war, seeking to sear our existence from the minds of the Imperial faithful. We have forever been the Imperium’s dirty little secret, a truth never more pronounced than when the Adeptus Terra moves upon its own citizens, forcing them to forget we ever existed.
>And there is so much yet to tell of the First Black Crusade, with its years of protracted war against the increasing tides of Imperial resistance.
>There are those among the Legions that regard the devastating conflict as an unmitigated victory, and there are those that see nothing but harrowing loss in the defeats they sustained.
>The truth, as ever, is in the grey that exists between the black and the white. We did not call it a crusade. To us, it was the opening campaign of the Long War, and even that suggests a level of organisation that could scarcely exist. There was no overall conflict to judge. It broke down into a hundred wars between individual fleets and warbands rampaging their way through the segmentum. Warlords from the Nine Legions sought their own glory; champions shed blood and raided slaves and offered sacrifices in the myriad names of the Pantheon they either willingly served or courted for favour.
Austin Myers
"Black Crusade" is a term invented by the Imperium. The Black Legion did not call when they were doing crusading. The "first Black Crusade" was just hundreds of warbands going to different direction, after Khayon scattered them during the sandwiching between Black Templar and Daravek fleet. While the fighting was going on and Cadia burned for the first time, Abaddon and his crew sailed towards Urlan the resting place of Drach'nyen.
Book 3 will focus on the adventure Khayon and Abaddon will have in the Tower of Silence where Abaddon will claim the Sword of the First Murder and begin the final downfall of mankind. It can'y come any sooner.
Easton Walker
>>The truth, as ever, is in the grey that exists between the black and the white.
Khayon's worst sin is being a centrist faggot.
Easton Bailey
Do you have the right between Sigismund and Abby? I read a teaser in the first book but haven't read that one yet.
Aiden Cook
see
Jonathan Hughes
Book was good and didn't really fanwank anyone. The Imperium are a sort of antagonist and are very much threatening.
Also turning the Warp Ghosts from just another chaos warband into CSM Legion of the Damned was cool
Brayden Thomas
I don't really see how anyone could have a big problem with this book, it avoids all the stuff the ADB people tend to complain about:
-No fanwanking of Chaos
-Abaddon is portrayed as tough and threatening but isn't a mary sue, suffers multiple defeats and setbacks
-No retcons
-Imperium isn't stupid/inept and are threatening adversaries
The only things I can see bothering Veeky Forums that they usually bitch about is some Chaos Space Marines having a sense of comradely/honor instead of being pure evil psychos (though those exist as well). Also are some female characters though they're either slaves or minor side people
Dylan Martin
>if you have irrational hatred for ADB or Chaos please stay out.
what about rational hatred
Cooper Hernandez
I'm gonna choose to take that as unreliable narrator because holy fuck the wanking.
Jackson Scott
It's just ADB's words from Khayon's mouth.
Nathan White
You forgot the new Drach'nyen lore.
Ethan Gomez
>Also turning the Warp Ghosts from just another chaos warband into CSM Legion of the Damned was cool
This was establesh in the FW books already.
Lucas Cox
>Ahriman has no face
No Khayon THINKS Ahriman has no face. Thats the problem with BL fluff everyone takes it at face value.
Matthew Carter
You are so punny but Khayon is certain. He had seen the emptiness that is Ahriman's face.
>Yet I have seen the void that screams where his face used to be.
Aiden Hughes
XD. But my point stands, Thats just what Khayon thinks. Its not shown that Ahriman has no face, were just told that. Of course its not unlikely that Ahriman has a mutation, however in other novels he's not shown with that specific one. In fact I seem to remember his face being described as a shifting visage much like Magnus'.
Aiden Thomas
what new lore? I didnt find anything new, unless you never read master of mankind
Joshua Nguyen
Probably referring to offshoot CSM's from the original Legions.
Aaron Hill
>Without Abaddon, they have no hope of victory
>Chaos is inevitably destined to win no matter what happens (including a Vindicare exploding Abaddon's stupidly exposed head)
Carnac really needs to pick one.
If Abaddon is absolute essential to a Chaos victory, he's very much mortal so obviously they are beatable. If he isn't the Chaos Gods have no reason to not just turn him into a spawn for being uppity.
Connor Brown
>"I wanna use and then double cross the Chaos Gods to claim absolute rule of the galaxy for myself!"
>"Better cram my 'Legion' full of men who worship daemons, men who are possessed by daemons, and men who literally *are* daemons!"
Five seconds after a hypothetical timeline in which Abaddon gets anywhere close to accomplishing any of this:
youtube.com
What a moron.
Chase Rodriguez
You really should learn to read the CSM codex and stop putting words in people's mouths. A unifying person like Abaddon and his former rival emerge every 10K years. If Abaddon falls, then Chaos would divide itself allowing the mortal races to rebuild and prosper for an age until a new champion arises. The Emperor in MoM says it clearly when pointed that even if Horus was defeated the fall of mankind will not be averted. It might take 100 years or 10K, humanity will fall because Chaos will learn from its mistake and raise a champion that's smarter and more powerful than Horus . And so on and so forth.
For that reason, the Chaos Gods are protecting Abaddon and gave him Drach'nyen which carries their mandate and the promise of the Emperor's death. They are placing all their bets on Abaddon and what the Chaos Gods desire will come to pass.
>Vindicare
>c.M31 THE HORUS HERESY
>After the Warmaster Horus’ treachery is revealed, an early incarnation of the Officio Assassinorum sends four operatives, one from each of the major temples, to hunt down and destroy the traitor Primarch. All four are found wanting, for Horus is powerful beyond the reach of mortal men, and his destiny lies elsewhere.
>999.M41 THE FOE UNTOUCHABLE
>Within the Eye of Terror, a Black Crusade of unprecedented size musters to break open the Cadian Gate. Rumours abound that its supreme warlord is empowered by the Gods of Chaos, and that whilst he enjoys their favour, cannot be laid low by mortal weaponry. The agents of the Officio Assassinorum are dispatched en masse to slay the Warmaster Abaddon and his most favoured lieutenants before they breach realspace. One by one they reach a succession of grisly ends, and still Abaddon remains at large.
Matthew Perez
Dude, see The Black Legion marines are mostly more loyal to Abaddon and the vindicta than they are devoted to the Chaos Gods.
It was shown in Fall of Cadia that the activation of the Pylons and the draining of the powers of Chaos from the Black Legion marines did nothing but encourage them to fight harder. They saw the dying of the Emperor's light as vindication for their Long War and gave no care for the favor of the Chaos Gods disappearing.
Jayden Kelly
It's funny because in the actual Chaos codex it says nothing like that, it even explcitly says Abaddon has been grinding his fruitlessly trying to break out of the Cadian system for a solid hundred year while everyone else just up and ditched him.
>As they dispersed, though, their strength around the Cadian Sector – as well as in and around the Eye of Terror itself – thinned. Many warbands of Traitor Legionaries and renegades, some in direct disregard of the Despoiler’s orders, used the opportunity to bypass the defenders of the Gate entirely and launch their attacks on more vulnerable worlds elsewhere in the galaxy.
>This has left huge numbers of Imperial defenders deployed around Cadia awaiting a coordinated Chaos second wave that may never come. There are whispers in Imperial Sector Command of the possibility of retaliatory strikes, of claiming back some territory lost in the recent war, and even of reclaiming the ruins of Cadia herself.
>Poised around the Eye sits a force of Space Marines rivalling that of the Legions of old, entire Knight Households, and of course, the orphans of Cadia themselves – more than 200 regiments of Astra Militarum shock troops eager for vengeance.
>Cadia may have broken; the Guard, have not.
warhammer-community.com
LMAO his Black Crusade just fucking ran out of steam because it turns out literally no one cares about or listens to him.
Austin Morris
Some warbands disobeyed. That's the nature of Chaos.
And yes, it does and the Imperium is throwing everything it has at him to stall his advance but the 13th Black Crusade is on going. If Cadian defenders lose a second time, then if you read the CSM you know that this is the end of the Imperium.
Logan Davis
Obviously the literal Khorne daemon commander of his fleet is more loyal to some idiot in a topknot than the god who literally owns his soul. Also, from the CSM codex his "Legion" is literally just a bunch of taped-together warbands held in check exclusively by terror:
>Even so, there is no denying that the Black Legion remains an alliance of traitors; the warlords therein are constantly scheming against their rivals, vying for prominence and glory, and undermining their contenders’ achievements, even when they are not openly battling amongst themselves. Only their collective fear of the Despoiler forces them to suffer cooperation – fear and the chilling memory of the fates of those who have crossed him.
John Edwards
The second wave hasn't even shown up because they aren't there. They deserted. The Imperial defenders aren't even fighting, they're just sitting there.
Nathan Sanchez
>If Cadian defenders lose a second time, then if you read the CSM you know that this is the end of the Imperium.
>Implying pathetic Black Legion marinelets can do anything but whimper and die against chads
Lol. Even Fabius Bile recognizes that Guilliman's latest get are vastly superior to anything in Abaddon's arsenal.
>One Hour
Oliver Wood
Daemon Princes have rebelled against their patrons before and forged their own paths.
And see Why do you do this to me? Do I have to link every green text in this thread to you? What's not been linked is the fact that Khayon and Lyras caused a civil war in the Black Legion which Abaddon had to step up to shutdown.
And that's all beside the point. The Black Legion belong to Abaddon, not the gods.
David Bell
Promius is Lemuel Gaumon, Ahriman's human apprentice. Outright stated in The Crimson King
Juan Clark
I disagree, In Shroud of Night, the Unsung fight Primaris marines. Other than being slighty harder to kill, they were like any other marines to the Alpha Legionaries.
Also Grey Knights according to the codex remain the superior breed of marines. Khayon wiped the floor of 5 of them at once while receiving minor injuries.
That's old news. It has been 100 years later, they are struck in a deadlock.
Christopher Harris
Ahriman having a magically shifting featureless face apart from his eyes was introduced in Atlas Infernal. Khayon's melodramatic wording is him throwing shade like a little bitch like he does everytime he mentions Ahriman.
Also remember that all of these books are Khayon telling a story, I wouldn't believe everything he says at facevalue at all.
Asher Diaz
>Daemon Princes have rebelled against their patrons before and forged their own paths.
Literally an eternity of slavery, they do what they're damn well told:
>Yet for all this they are slaves as surely as any who follow the Gods of Chaos, for with immortality comes an eternity of servitude.
-Khorne Daemonkin
>Yet a Daemon Prince is just as much a tool of the Dark Gods as his mortal followers. If anything, he becomes even more of an extension of his master’s will. Daemons cannot
truly be killed, only banished back to the warp for a time – one who ascends to daemonhood can look forward to an eternity of servitude
at his patron’s behest. Even death is no respite.
-Codex CSM
There's literally no way out.
Jacob Cook
>AHRIMAN, STOP THIS MADNESS!
Robert Ortiz
>I disagree, In Shroud of Night, the Unsung fight Primaris marines. Other than being slighty harder to kill, they were like any other marines to the Alpha Legionaries.
Funny how the exalted Black Legion didn't seem to think so, to the point that a band of lunatic berzerkers just up and fled.
Xavier Morgan
There are examples of rebellious daemon princes. One of them being Be'lakor.
Daemons are slaves in that they cannot behave in any way other than what Chaos Gods programmed them with but still they can disobey and strike against the Chaos Gods that birthed them. Skarbrand the Exile is one example. The fugitive Slaanesh daemon Clarion who escaped Slaanesh's displeasure and is hiding in real space in the stolen form of a little girl.
Dude, I can give you the same exact situation happening to the Primaris in their own marine codex.
>Not all was triumph and glory, however. The crusade came to many worlds that were beyond salvation. Where there was no hope, Guilliman sought instead to bring vengeance. There could be no saving the hive world of Bhundar from the bubonic taint that covered it, but once cauterised with cleansing fire, the warp disease spread no further. The Daemonic rituals held atop the mouldering ruins of the cardinal world Gloriphia was not just halted but annihilated, and there the daemonic ichor ran in rivers. Not all could be avenged, however. The initial combat drop into Secundus Terra suffered ambushes and catastrophic malfunctions, having been lured into a terrible trap by the Alpha Legion. Although it pained him to do so, Guilliman made the difficult decision to pull back, skirting the whole Primagenesis System, as he could not afford to become bogged down in a long war of attrition.
And Hounds of Abaddon are a Khornate warband but they are not on the deep end of it.
Michael Torres
>Khayon wiped the floor of 5 of them at once while receiving minor injuries
Says Khayon, in chains, to the Inquisition. He also claims to have personally beaten up a Primarch. His claims are not very plausible.
The truly hilarious part, though, is that even if you're dumb enough to just believe what a snake-tongued heretic witch tells you it only makes Abaddon look like even more of an idiot than usual for sending this guy to his utterly pointless death delivering an obvious message no one will hear or care about. Right before he suddenly found himself with a massive Primarch (cucked by Guilliman and Mortarion both).
>"Abaddon says to tell the Emperor we're gonna come to kill him."
>"No shit? We always thought the whole 'Death to the False Emperor' thing meant you were here for tea and cookies."
Caleb Lewis
>And Hounds of Abaddon are a Khornate warband but they are not on the deep end of it.
They're literally bombarding their own position from orbit as they charge like a pack of lunatics in Fall of Cadia.
>Up the bloody ground the Hounds surged, trampling the dead of both sides, heedless of the defenders’ fire. Their war-cry was a booming bellow, more like the growl of a beast than the speech of men. Blood! Blood! Blood! Macro-cannon shells burst amongst the formation, hurling broken bodies down the hills of corpses. Still the Hounds came on. Blood! Blood! Blood! Creed bellowed orders from atop the barbican, and the approach blazed brilliant with las-fire. Still the Hounds came on. Blood! Blood! Blood! By prearranged signal, a new bombardment began. The vessels of the Black Fleet pounded the approach to the Kriegan Gates, uncaring of their dark brothers’ lives. Tortured skyshields flared and died. Defenders were snatched into the abyss, or cast from their shattered strongholds. Traitors perished too, slain by the capricious fury of their own warships,but still the Hounds came on.
Seem like paragons of rational stability.
Blake Sullivan
>Says Khayon, in chains, to the Inquisition. He also claims to have personally beaten up a Primarch.
They can go verify his account because one of the Grey Knights survived and he became a Grand Master of the GK's third company who would become Khayon's loyalist nemesis hunting him wherever he went.
And Khayon being there is a matter of speculation in the series. Clearly something is going on but the most simple explanations is Abaddon wanted him gone because the Khayon and Moriana sitution or becaus Khayon is too brokenhearted at what happened to Abaddon.
Oliver Phillips
>Skarbrand the Exile is one example. The fugitive Slaanesh daemon Clarion who escaped Slaanesh's displeasure and is hiding in real space in the stolen form of a little girl.
Bloodthirster and Keeper of Secrets respectively, neither daemon princes. And Be'lakor is literally described as an unwitting puppet bouncing from god to god in his own dataslate and too dumb to realize it.
Dominic Hughes
In the Red Path series it's noted that the Hounds of Abaddon weren't as insane as Kharn's warband. They weren't berserkers but Khornate normal marines. So there is enough rationality in their heads not to die needlessly.
Aiden Wood
>And Be'lakor is literally described as an unwitting puppet bouncing from god to god in his own dataslate and too dumb to realize it.
And the dataslate begins with talking about how uncontrollable he is for the gods. They can whisper to him and manipulate him but they cannot order him around directly.
>Bloodthirster and Keeper of Secrets respectively, neither daemon princes.
Daemons are daemons. The chains between a Greater Daemon and his god are tighter than between a daemon prince and his god.
Jason Ortiz
>They can go verify his account because one of the Grey Knights survived and he became a Grand Master of the GK's third company who would become Khayon's loyalist nemesis hunting him wherever he went.
Strangely no testimony to this alleged incident has been presented outside of his own words. Nor any of this random chump dueling Magnus into submission. Abaddon could really use someone like that, the chumps he sent to off Guilliman crumpled like tinfoil.
>And Khayon being there is a matter of speculation in the series
He says he's there to deliver a message, and it's not like he's going to be doing anything else before his agonizing demise.
>Clearly something is going on but the most simple explanations is Abaddon wanted him gone because the Khayon and Moriana sitution
>"I have an utterly loyal Primarch-tier sorcerer. It's the eve of my latest Big Plan."
>"Better send him of to spill intelligence and die because lol, politics"
There's Armless' famed strategic genius showing itself.
>becaus Khayon is too brokenhearted at what happened to Abaddon.
>"Muh feefees!"
LOL and I thought Curze was a melodramtic faggot.
Jonathan Campbell
>So there is enough rationality in their heads not to die needlessly.
It's funny because it's the opposite of that:
>By prearranged signal, a new bombardment began. The vessels of the Black Fleet pounded the approach to the Kriegan Gates, uncaring of their dark brothers’ lives. Tortured skyshields flared and died. Defenders were snatched into the abyss, or cast from their shattered strongholds. Traitors perished too, slain by the capricious fury of their own warships,but still the Hounds came on.
>They weren't berserkers but Khornate normal marines
Please stop the obvious lying:
>After the World Eaters Legion disbanded during the fighting on Skalathrax, most Berzerkers formed separate warbands, and many bastardised practices of lobotomisation spread to other Chaos Space Marine forces with them. Abaddon, in particular, has recruited a number of highly skilled Berzerker-surgeons to his cause, and only the Black Legion is even close to the World Eaters in their perfection of this barbaric procedure.
Pic very much related.
>"Th-they're not Khorne Berzerkers, just g-guys who dress and act exactly like them!"
Camden Hill
>Strangely no testimony to this alleged incident has been presented outside of his own words.
They can just call the Grey Knights to verify that truth about that incident. When he mentioned Moriana the inquisition dug their records to know who she was. The Inquisition isn't just listening in the background.
>Nor any of this random chump dueling Magnus into submission. Abaddon could really use someone like that, the chumps he sent to off Guilliman crumpled like tinfoil.
Abaddon needs him on Terra. It should be noted that Khayon is an assassin more than he is a commander. So implications are bad.
>He says he's there to deliver a message,
You spent minutes disbelieving everything and now you want to believe just this?
>>"Better send him of to spill intelligence and die because lol, politics"
What he is saying is ancient history that won't save the Imperium from the Crimson Path. He says this in book 1.
And Abaddon has the primarchs on his side now. Khayon can now rest. No more suffering for him.
>LOL and I thought Curze was a melodramtic faggot.
You understand nothing about brotherhood.
Also from the text above, Khayon is glad to be as far as posible from Drach'nyen.
Jason Baker
>It's funny because it's the opposite of that:
They weren't dying needlessly. They were working towards an objective.
>Please stop the obvious lying:
I ain't and this doesn't say Hounds of Abaddon. Simply that Abaddon has zerkers in his armies.
And I can post a picture of Hounds of Abaddon that look like a normal CSM.
Aaron Morris
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