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A possibility that I would like to see explored for Angron is that, while as a demon prince he's one of the eponymous "Slaves to Darkness," he may feel more free as a demon prince than before, given that his transsubstantiation to demon removed the nails' ability to continue affecting him. Khorne did what the Emperor could not, and freed him.

I just see the matter as part of the overarching dilution of Khorne down to his base elements, and only his base elements, with no nuance or redeeming aspects that would make Khornate forces actually plausible. Perhaps a certain irony, since really a blood-mad berzerker with no real conscious thought it decidedly less evil than a being which has his rage on a tight leash and chooses when to weaponize it.

I haven’t read all the books (is that humanly possible) but from what I have read over many years I do think Angron has been given a really interesting back story but then from the point that the emperor kidnaps him and put him in charge of a legion I think his story is basically “He’s a psycho and woks for Khorne”. There has to be more going on with him.

I wonder if demon prince Angron can control the butchers nails to some extent, there will have to be an explanation of how they work as a coherent force, so maybe he can turn them off and by giving soldiers a break from them that’s why they stick with him.

In the Fabius Bile trilogy there is a WE apothecary that can turn off his own butchers nails so there is precedent

Daemon Angron doesn't have the Nails IIRC. Lorgar helps him transfigure as the Nails were killing Angron, it's another bit of the tragedy. To save Angrons "life", out of love for his brother Lorgar binds him in eternal servitude to one of the Pantheon.

The Nails aren't always at 100% btw. They constantly bite and gnaw away at the edge of an Astartes mind, grinding them down to give in. If an Astartes has a strong constitution or practices meditation then they will still feel the grinding of the Nails but it won't overtake them. It's just easier to give in most of the time.
Its a similar process to normal human anger and aggression, if you can find somewhere to calm down the rage mostly dissipates. But being an Astartes in a warzone usually means that isn't possible.

I would also like to point out the even prior to the Nails, the War Hounds (pre-Angron WE) were known for excessive slaughter and butchery. When they became the World Eaters, they just followed the natural process. They knew what they were and didn't really care, except for a small group who were opposed to the Nails and Angron, but they were massacred during the Crusade by Astartes loyal to Angron.

Hecaton wrote:
A possibility that I would like to see explored for Angron is that, while as a demon prince he's one of the eponymous "Slaves to Darkness," he may feel more free as a demon prince than before, given that his transsubstantiation to demon removed the nails' ability to continue affecting him. Khorne did what the Emperor could not, and freed him.

Nah, he's just as enslaved as ever. The bloodlust that the Nails gave him is replaced by the bloodlust that Khorne gave him.

Khârn walked forwards and let the darkness fold over him as Kargos swung the doors closed behind him. The first thing he heard was the dead whispering in the dark. The second thing was the beast’s breathing. Even his genhanced eyes couldn’t pierce the absolute lack of light. He walked slowly, drawing no weapon despite the temptation, listening to a daemon breathing in the black.

‘Khârn,’ said something unseen, from everywhere and nowhere. Whatever it was, it smelled of fresh graves and funeral pyres, and its teeth were wet.

‘Lord?’

Slow thunder answered. No, a laugh. A chuckle. ‘I am no one’s lord. I never was. Even less so now.’

Khârn swallowed, still edging through the dark. He heard the thing that had once been his gene-sire licking its maw.

‘I want something from you, Khârn.’

‘Name it.’

‘Hnnh. Take your axe. Take your brothers. Kill three hundred souls on the thrall decks.’

Khârn stared in the direction where he was sure the monster was at rest. ‘Why, sire? To what purpose?’

‘Three hundred of them. Take their skulls.’

Khârn heard the thing smile, heard the wet peeling of its fanged maw curling into a grin. Something huge, winged, and wreathed in the smoke of dead souls tried to move closer to him, and strained against the rune-etched chains that bound it. He saw its eyes burning in the dark, orbs of ember-fire, the colour of boiling blood. ‘Take their skulls, Khârn. Build me a throne.’

--Betrayer

That "build me a throne" at the end is probably one of the most wrenching lines delivered in all of the Horus Heresy novels. Angron is no king, he is literally wrapped in chains when he says this. Angron is as he always has been - a slave to endless rage, but with a new master in the form of the Blood God. But he has also become the thing he hated - a High Rider, ruling over his own gladiators who he mutliates as he was mutilated with the butchers nails, forcing them to fight for favor on behalf of Khorne. The one chance of freedom that Angron had was death, but that freedom was denied to him by all throughout his life, and now as a daemon it is denied to him forevermore through the immortality he was "blessed" with by Khorne as a Daemon Prince.

Yawning black before me, the steps descend into what has become Angron's dungeon cell. I take them slowly, one at a time, knocking aside the debris that litters them with the edge of my boot. The air is foul. I measure my breathing urging my hearts to slow.

Know no fear. Show no fear. Show no pity, and no doubt. We have played this game many times before, the primarch and I, and I have tried to learn from every beating I received. The last step delivers me onto the triumphal hall's floor.

'Father?'

I freeze. The word, half-formed upon my lips and yet spoken aloud by another voice, brings me up short.

I scan the darkness in the chamber's recesses. The spaces between the skull piles. The vaulted reaches of the high ceiling. The only light comes from the anteroom at my back. I slowly, cautiously, risk another step forwards, and scattered shards of bone crackle beneath my tread. I cannot see my primarch, though at least l now know for certain that he is still here.

Half a legionary - the lower half - lies twisted on the flagstones like a discarded plaything, capped with a protruding kink of broken vertebrae. There are large teethmarks in the buckled ceramite of his war-plate. I see no point in questioning who he was, or where the rest of him might be.

Another step. Another. I carefully turn my back to the nearest wall, and let my vision adjust.

There.

Angron's eyes smoulder with their own infernal light, though far less so than the last time I stood before him in this place. Then, his inhuman gaze had been fierce, and fearsome, so that not one of us could long hold it. The murderous glare of the gods' most lethal creation.

But now the daemon prince watches me with something like… wariness?

He is crouched in the shadow of his throne - and such a thing is no small marvel for a being of his warp-gifted size and majesty.

No. Not crouched.

Cowering.

I cannot process what I am seeing. The Nails' ticking is an aneurysmal pulse in my ears, as well as my mind.

'Father?' he calls again. Gone is the bestial growl, the hoarse rumble of a throat no longer capable of screaming itself raw. I would say, rather, that he sounds more like himself again. His old self. His former self. The broken warrior he was, before… before his…

I do not know the correct term. I do not care to know it. This is beyond me, beyond any of us. We no longer trouble ourselves to wonder. His immense, clawed fingers slip from the side of the throne as he pulls further back into the gloom, edging away from me.

'Father… is it over?'

He has broken his chains again. I can see them trailing on the floor. No one has ever been able to imprison Angron. Not for long. And yet, he has not tried to leave.
I steady myself, of ering a cautious half-bow. To avert my eyes would be to invite death. I am staring down an unleashed monster.

'Sire, it is Kharn, of the Eighth Company.'

'Khorne…'

'Khârn, sire.'

Silence. Then,

'Grave-grub Kharn. Yes. Yes, I remember you.'

This is the most lucid he has been in many months. Do I dare to dream, dare to hope, dare to pray that this could be the beginning of something more? Perhaps even the salvation that Lord Aurelian claimed to have sought for him?

-- Prince of Blood

Does that sound like "freedom"? Not only is he a slave to Khorne, but he is a slave to his "sons" too. Heres some more

'How long do they live, when no one takes their skulls?'

I cannot recall the last time anyone exchanged this many words with him. I slowly, carefully lower myself to the floor, making sure to keep our eyes locked the entire time. I will answer any question, no matter how mundane, if it will hold him here in the moment for just a little while longer.

'Mortals are feeble things, sire. Without intervention, they will endure for less than a hundred years, and much of that is spent in pain. But Mistress Nisha Andrasta was somewhat older than that, and curiously frail-minded. It is possible that she would not allow herself to understand what your Legion is becoming.'

Angron grows very still for a creature capable of such unnatural and unpredictable rage.

'My Legion, ' he growls.

I do not respond. I regret having seated myself so close to him.

'What is it becoming, Kharn?'

The words gaoler and plaything leap unbidden to the forefront of my agitated mind, almost making me flinch. I have no reason to believe that the daemon prince can read my thoughts, but those two felt disloyal, and irreverent, nonetheless. I consider my response.

'We are following you, sire. We will follow you into eternity.'

'Why?'

'Because you are our father.'

The truth of this statement appears to confound him. He looks me up and down, then scrutinises his talons, his forearms, the tips of his folded wings, lingering just a moment longer than I would like upon the heavy iron manacles around his wrists. Then he shakes his head, rattling the dreadlock-cables that still frame those animal features. It is like watching a mindlocked servitor trying to comprehend the myriad hypocrisies of The Apocrypha Terra - a mind that once held the capacity to understand, now torn between the memory of what it was and the promise of what it could yet be.

'I am not your father, grave-grub. You are not like me. I should not be here.'

The words sting. They always have.

Slowly, Angron begins to rise out from behind the throne. He towers over me, the great sword dragging in his grip, his hunched shoulders pushing aside the empty lumen fixtures that hang overhead. I keep my voice level and measured.
'We have only ever wanted to please you, sire. My brothers and l, we—'

'I should not be here, ' the daemon rumbles again. His attention is drifting to the doors at the top of the steps. His eyes are growing fiercer.

and

There is an empty battered helm lying on the flagstones near my foot. It will serve.

'Do you remember the red sands, sire?' I ask quickly. 'Do you remember the honour of the caedere remissum ? Do you remember what it signifies?'

Angron twitches. He peers at me once more, a blast of hot breath gusting from his snout.

I continue.

'When we found you, we did not know what you wanted of us. Not really. Nothing we did could earn your approval. The rulers of Nuceria, the high-riders, quickly made their peace with Guilliman after your rebellion was ended, and gladly joined with the empire of Ultramar. Though you would not allow us to return there, we thought to mark the sacrifice that you and the Desh'ean gladiators had unknowingly made for us. For the Imperium.'

I pluck the helmet up from the floor. The eye-lenses are broken, the grille dented inwards.

The primarch's expression is unreadable. But he has not killed me yet. That is something.

I turn the helmet over in my hands.

'Here - the twin-crests of the remissum, like bladed horns. When a warrior in the arena knew their mind was failing, when they had spilled too much blood and could no longer find pleasure in anything else, then they would wear them as a warning to their foes. The bout would be sanguis extremis . To the death. My brothers and I saw that it was a bold and noble thing to proclaim oneself beyond hope, sire. Beyond redemption.

'And so, as the War Hounds became World Eaters, many of your veteran companies adorned their helms in this fashion. We wanted you to know that we mourned with you, and that every battle we fought at your side would be to the death.'
'Not for you!' he growls. 'The mantle is not for you!'

'Then you remember enough to know that it did not end well, sire? We tried to learn of your past, and you killed us for it. We tried to celebrate the breaking of chains, and you killed us for it. We tried to teach you how the Imperium wages war, and instead you hammered the Butcher's Nails into our skulls so that we would eventually kill one another, and spare you the effort.'

Without warning, Angron lets out a roar of inhuman hatred and rage, a roar loud enough to rattle my armour plates, and sweeps the great blade around in a flashing arc. His throne of skulls, the throne we built at his command, is obliterated in a single heartsbeat.

Chipped teeth and fragments of bone rain down. I keep my eyes closed for as long as I dare - and that can only be a second or two. The daemon is breathing hard, less than a metre from my face. When he speaks, I can see the sharp, iron fangs glinting in his maw.

'If you wish to prove yourself to me, Kharn of the Legion, then you must follow this path to its end. We were all born to bleed, but the gods' favour is not given easily, or quickly. You must pay for it with blood and skulls. Blood enough to drown the stars, and skulls beyond number. The crusader will tell you as much.'

'You mean Lord Aurelian?'

Angron does not appear to recognise the name. I exhale slowly.

'As we feared they would, sire, the Word Bearers have left us. Our fleet now stands alone, deep within Ultima Segmentum.'

'Then why do you keep me here? Why do you keep me in the dark?'

'This is your flagship, sire. Your place is with us. We spill blood together, so that you may remain.'

He shudders, screwing his eyes shut and letting out a vile sound that could almost be a whimper. 'No. No. The Legion is not mine, not any more. The Blood God calls to me. He is calling me to his side, to… to…'
'Sire, l assure you, we are free to—'

'No!' he shrieks. 'Reality itself drags against these imperfect limbs! My strength is failing! I should be so much more, but you… you will not let…'

The primarch begins to claw at his own face.

'This is not freedom! It is slavery!'

I fall to my knees. It wounds my soul to see him suffer like this, and to know that we keep him here for our own selfish reasons. It is far more than slaughter for slaughter's sake. For our sins, we have shackled Angron to the material realm, as Lorgar urged us.

We simply do not wish to lose our father again.

I do not wish to lose him

But, if this loss of self is the price of immortality, then neither do I wish to follow in his footsteps. I do not wish to lose him, but I will not lose myself. The daemon prince rises to his full height, opening those leathery wings so wide that they almost touch the pillars on each side of the hall. The deck beneath his cloven hooves begins to shudder as otherworldly energies roil about us. He roars again, bringing dust from the arches above.

'I will have blood! Blood! Blood for the Blood God! Blood for my lord Khorne!'

 Gert wrote:
Again, that was the point. Angron hated the World Eaters, to the point where he just fully up and left at one point and they had to drag him back. Kharn wanted to know how they could get the respect of their father so Angron, being the unstable tortured man that he was, said if his sons wanted to understand and be closer to him, then they should get the Nails. And because the World Eaters were desperate, they did.
Angron only every wanted to die with his gladiators on Nuceria, something he was cheated of by the Emperor. His Legion reminded him of that slight so he took his anger out on them.

Then they should be extinct. The problem with the World Eaters is that they are very clearly and explicitly not an effective fighting force and take massive casualties, yet somehow manage to persist and even succeed despite this. It's bad writing to build up how much the Legion has degraded into a band of stupid berserkers only to shield them from the obvious consequences of it.

feth Guilliman and Perturabo, Angron is apparently the best logistician of the Primarchs, since his Legion gets massacred in every battle with attritional warfare only to always bounce back.


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 F.E.A.R. wrote:
"Nobody can 1v1 Angron", proceeds to get clapped by all of his brothers.

Angron has to my knowledge literally never been beaten one on one by another Primarch. He crushed Leman Russ in a duel, with Russ already being one of the upper tier Primarchs in melee combat. For all of Angron's faults he still legitimately is the best or nearly the best martial combatant of the Primarchs.

It's just that he's a terrible general so even while crushing Russ in single combat his troops were outmaneuvered and formed a kill circle around Angron and would have been able to execute him if that had been their intention, showing to Angron that, as strong as he is, his Legion had deteriorated so much as a fighting force that they were completely incapable of thinking beyond fighting the guy in front of them and as such were easily outperformed by a disciplined and well-trained army. Which is undercut by all the successes of the World Eaters but you know. Also not sure how Marines leveling their bolters against a Primarch in full armour is meant to be threatening considering the hilarious gak Angron survives in that novel alone but there's ADB's gakky writing for you.


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 F.E.A.R. wrote:

I want to like Angron like so many others people, but the Nails just don't let you like the guy and the WE. THEY LEAVE NO ROOM FOR CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.
"It's there so that they fall to Khorne" bruh the fall is forced and it's unlikable, Angron never had a choice, no free will, also the thing what makes him pathetic to his other brothers, is him a Primarch, literal demigod, getting the Nails stuffed in his brain by some gakkers on Nuceria. That just shows how pathetic he is. The others had it far worse than Angron on arrival but this guy just can't rebel.

Angron is a perfectly well-developed character. He just doesn't have room for much in the way of character progression. The obsession with having every character having character progression, even if that wouldn't fit the role the character is meant to fill in the story, is first year comp 1 college stuff. Hopefully you grow out of it.

Angron doesn't progress as a character because he doesn't need to. The tragedy of Angron is that, unlike arguably all of his brothers, he never really had any agency over his own path in lot. He'd either be forced into falling or die an undignified death from the Nails. The only real problem with Angron specifically is that the narrative on some level doesn't seem to ever acknowledge that Angron in fact has no agency and treats him like he does.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Then they should be extinct. The problem with the World Eaters is that they are very clearly and explicitly not an effective fighting force and take massive casualties, yet somehow manage to persist and even succeed despite this. It's bad writing to build up how much the Legion has degraded into a band of stupid berserkers only to shield them from the obvious consequences of it.

Gak Guilliman and Perturabo, Angron is apparently the best logistician of the Primarchs, since his Legion gets massacred in every battle with attritional warfare only to always bounce back.

The World Eaters recruited from every single planet they conquered. If there were male children they took them by the thousands and they were not as picky with their selection process. As well as this, during the Heresy the World Eaters Apothecary Gahlan Surlak, a student of Fabius Bile, made a huge vat-grown Legionary farm on the planet Bodt. The WE were also one of the largest Legions at the outbreak of the Heresy with around 150,000 Astartes.
Post-Heresy, they aren't a Legion anymore and recruitment mostly comes from more Astartes falling to Khorne and joining up with various Warbands.
As for their fighting force, they aren't insane berzerkers all the time. As I have pointed out multiple times now, the Nails are a grinding pain that Astartes can handle until they get into situations of anger or stress, like combat. If the Nails were 100% all the time the Legion wouldn't have escaped Terra but it did. Not every single World Eater is a frothing maniac all the time. You might want to read more than just the Khorne Berzerker unit description.
Do you also have a source for the WE getting massacred in every battle they fight?

 Void__Dragon wrote:

Then they should be extinct. The problem with the World Eaters is that they are very clearly and explicitly not an effective fighting force and take massive casualties, yet somehow manage to persist and even succeed despite this. It's bad writing to build up how much the Legion has degraded into a band of stupid berserkers only to shield them from the obvious consequences of it.

Its pretty clearly explained how the legion is able to continue functioning even as it degrades. Likewise, the narrative is very clear that at some point they cease to be an effective fighting force entirely and have degraded beyond the point that their mass inductions and non-Astartes servants can maintain even a sliver of efficacy or utility as anything other than random packs of frothing lunatics. The loss of Bodt and the Sarum Mechanicum/Crimson Priests who were managing the Legions logistics was a pretty big turning point in that regards and marked the "beginning of the end", and any utility they had as a fighting force until the end of the Heresy was basically the result of the other Traitor Legions shepherding them along and trying to manage as much of the legions logistics and capabilities as they could on their behalf. After the Heresy ends, well theres a reason why they are broken up into scattered warbands instead of an organized force, and its doubtful that most World Eaters at that point are actually World Eaters as opposed to a random collection of Khornate astartes.

I struggle to comprehend how thats bad writing. Its perhaps bad perception/comprehension on the fanbase if they didn't take away the right information from the books (or more likely the memesphere that has developed and evolved around the books that has warped perception and understanding far and away from reality on countless issues), but the information is there.

Angron is a perfectly well-developed character. He just doesn't have room for much in the way of character progression. The obsession with having every character having character progression, even if that wouldn't fit the role the character is meant to fill in the story, is first year comp 1 college stuff. Hopefully you grow out of it.

Angrons character arc does have character development, but sometimes that character development is one of regression rather than progression, and thats what Angrons character goes through. I think this is why some people say that some authors write him poorly or that he's one dimensional, because the path his character develops one is not one that is commonly encountered and is taken to such extremes as to be incomprehensible unless you really put some effort into analyzing it. Anyway, point is that his character starts out as being angry but still often lucid and reasonable enough to process the events around him in a manner understandable to most. As it progresses though, that lucidity and reasonableness falls away and the anger, rage, hate, and emotional extremes become more and more prevalent, which might lead some to accuse the character of being flanderized/one-dimensional but... thats literally the point of development of his character. You would turn out the same way too if you had a half your brain removed and replaced with a device that exists only to make you incomprehensibly miserably angry as your brain and nervous system slowly rots away until your death. We won't mention the unilateral blink (common indicator of brain damage), the fact that he has to breathe through his mouth because of a persistent brain-bleed that has his naval cavity perpetually blocked with blood, the fact that his teeth were replaced by metallic blades, and all the other mutilations that collectively add up to pointing to someone who is decisively not in a headspace that would be generally regarded as "healthy" or "normal", let alone approachable or comprehensible to the typical person.

I think most people who are criticizing Angrons character are doing so because they either can't or won't wrap their minds around the idea that this is someone who has suffered so muc h physical, mental, and emotional traum so as to place their character to such an incomprehensibly extreme point on a spectrum of peronality and disorder, etc. that they are unrelatable to anything that anyone even remotely familiar to them. If you expect this character to think and behave as a normal human, than you have entirely missed the point, as the point of Angrons character is that he has been damaged to the point that he is no longer anything like a human being, beyond even the still relatively human behaviors and thinking of the other Primarchs.

The only real problem with Angron specifically is that the narrative on some level doesn't seem to ever acknowledge that Angron in fact has no agency and treats him like he does.

Disagreed, hard. I think the narrative is pretty clear that Angron has no agency and is not in control of his own path. Basically every major point of the narrative makes it pretty clear that Angron is someone elses slave and subject to the control of someone elses will. feth, I just posted several quotes about it.

The other characters in the story, on the other hand, never really seem to acknowledge the fact that Angron has no agency and generally treat him like he does, and that is part of the tragedy. Ultimately he is a hurt and lost abused puppy that needed a lot of medical and psychiatric help which he never received, instead he received scorn and disdain from his brothers (who for the most part were largely in the dark about his condition courtesy of Big E hiding the nature of the Nails from everyone, including Angron himself), and was used and discarded as a tool by his father, all of whom treated him as though he was of sound mind/judgement and in control of his own person, let alone the events transpiring around him. All of this was potentially avoidable if different decisions were made *for* him earlier on (the most obvious being that he was left to die on Nuceria - but there were other options there too).

chaos0xomega wrote:

Nah, he's just as enslaved as ever. The bloodlust that the Nails gave him is replaced by the bloodlust that Khorne gave him.

That's certainly a take, and we'll see how much of that Black Library characterization is carried forward. 10k years is enough time to change, even for a demon prince.


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chaos0xomega wrote:
Its pretty clearly explained how the legion is able to continue functioning even as it degrades. Likewise, the narrative is very clear that at some point they cease to be an effective fighting force entirely and have degraded beyond the point that their mass inductions and non-Astartes servants can maintain even a sliver of efficacy or utility as anything other than random packs of frothing lunatics. The loss of Bodt and the Sarum Mechanicum/Crimson Priests who were managing the Legions logistics was a pretty big turning point in that regards and marked the "beginning of the end", and any utility they had as a fighting force until the end of the Heresy was basically the result of the other Traitor Legions shepherding them along and trying to manage as much of the legions logistics and capabilities as they could on their behalf. After the Heresy ends, well theres a reason why they are broken up into scattered warbands instead of an organized force, and its doubtful that most World Eaters at that point are actually World Eaters as opposed to a random collection of Khornate astartes.

I struggle to comprehend how thats bad writing. Its perhaps bad perception/comprehension on the fanbase if they didn't take away the right information from the books (or more likely the memesphere that has developed and evolved around the books that has warped perception and understanding far and away from reality on countless issues), but the information is there.

Random Khornate Astartes are not World Eaters. So it is still an open question as to how they've persisted for so long.

Hecaton wrote:
Random Khornate Astartes are not World Eaters. So it is still an open question as to how they've persisted for so long.

The same way the rest of the Traitor Legions work. Those that were of the Legions take in new recruits through various means such as enlisting the services of someone like Fabius Bile or by adding other Warbands to their own through good old fashioned "I'm your boss now, any questions can be directed to the corpse of your old boss". The World Eaters don't really exist anymore anyway, like most of the Legions. They congregate for slaughter, do the slaughter, then generally slaughter each other until they get bored and leave.

 Gert wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
Random Khornate Astartes are not World Eaters. So it is still an open question as to how they've persisted for so long.

The same way the rest of the Traitor Legions work. Those that were of the Legions take in new recruits through various means such as enlisting the services of someone like Fabius Bile or by adding other Warbands to their own through good old fashioned "I'm your boss now, any questions can be directed to the corpse of your old boss". The World Eaters don't really exist anymore anyway, like most of the Legions. They congregate for slaughter, do the slaughter, then generally slaughter each other until they get bored and leave.

The World Eaters operate on a warband basis, you're right. But my point is that unless they have Angron's gene-seed, they aren't World Eaters.

 Gert wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
Random Khornate Astartes are not World Eaters. So it is still an open question as to how they've persisted for so long.

The same way the rest of the Traitor Legions work. Those that were of the Legions take in new recruits through various means such as enlisting the services of someone like Fabius Bile or by adding other Warbands to their own through good old fashioned "I'm your boss now, any questions can be directed to the corpse of your old boss". The World Eaters don't really exist anymore anyway, like most of the Legions. They congregate for slaughter, do the slaughter, then generally slaughter each other until they get bored and leave.

This.

But also, how do you define World Eaters? By gene-seed? Because a lot of the chaos marines in other legions don't carry the gene seed of their supposed primarchs either... In at least one instance Abaddon replenishes the ranks of the Black Legion with gene-seed harvested from the Emperors Children. Honsou is a hybrid of Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists geneseed, and likewise the Iron Warriors are known to steal geneseed from the Imperium (its literally a plot point in Storm if Iron or Iron Warrior, forget which) in order to produce new Iron Warriors - they obviously aren't stealing IW genestocks because the Imperium destroyed the majority of the traitor legions geneseeds, so they are clearly using loyalist geneseed to refill their ranks. The Death Guards geneseed is unusable due to Nurgles rot and the only way new Death Guard can be created is by using the gene seed of other chapters and legions, loyalist and traior alike. Night Lords steal loyalist geneseed in the Night Lords trilogy (major plot point in those books). World Eaters are likewise known to steal geneseed as well as pay Fabius Bile to produce new marines, as well as being described as recruiting marines from other chapters and legions (as do the Black Legion) - Zhufor the Impaler is a World Eater... but hes also formally a marine of the Storm Lords chapter until he was taken captive, drugged, tortured, operated on, and brainwashed into becoming a World Eater.

hell, the majority of Thousand Sons marines in the 41st millennium have no gene seed at all because, yknow, "all is dust". So if gene-seed is your metric for this then you have a problem as the majority of Death Guard are in fact basically random Nurgley Astartes and the majority of Thousand Sons are technically not Astartes at all.

So yeah, World Eaters in the 41st millennium basically *ARE* random Khornate Astartes, per the official fluff.

Hecaton wrote:
The World Eaters operate on a warband basis, you're right. But my point is that unless they have Angron's gene-seed, they aren't World Eaters.

That's very eugenics of you.

chaos0xomega wrote:
So yeah, World Eaters in the 41st millennium basically *ARE* random Khornate Astartes, per the official fluff.

I'd put dollars to donuts that this will be retconned, if it's mentioned, in the WE codex.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gert wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
The World Eaters operate on a warband basis, you're right. But my point is that unless they have Angron's gene-seed, they aren't World Eaters.

That's very eugenics of you.

It's 40k. Eugenics is the name of the game.

I don't see why it would be retconned, this is fairly recent/"active" fluff in general and consistent with the portrayal of 41st millennium chaos legions. It also fits with the World Eaters specifically, as they are no longer anything bearing any resemblance to a cohesive legion or an organized force and are rather explicitly a group of independent and uncoordinated warbands. There might be a warband that has found a way to keep themselves pure to Angrons geneseed... but theres also definitely one that doesn't care whos geneseed causes blood to spill, so long as it does spill.

Thanks for that! Fascinating stuff about characters and a legion I have read little about. Certainly a lot more nuanced and interesting than I had assumed!

As the world eaters will have had to recruit new marines over the last 10k years, do only the original WE from the HH have butchers nails? Or do they only get them if they rise to the rank of Beserker?

Stands to reason that there are still Apothecaries out there that can implant the Nails.

mrFickle wrote:
As the world eaters will have had to recruit new marines over the last 10k years, do only the original WE from the HH have butchers nails? Or do they only get them if they rise to the rank of Beserker?

I think in the 41st millennium the presence of Butchers Nails, rather than Angrons gene-seed, is what seems to define a World Eater. Then again, Abaddon has his own apothecaries hammering butchers nails into black legionnaire berserkers, so maybe not.

Hecaton wrote:
But my point is that unless they have Angron's gene-seed, they aren't World Eaters.

Is this a thing that's only true for World Eaters or are you just uninformed? Because we have tons of in-canon examples of that being patently un-true for other Legions, mixed line Iron Warriors and the vast majority of the Black Legion that attacked Macragge in Gathering Storm having been were created from the stolen storage repository of geneseed being two very prominent examples.

 Platuan4th wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
But my point is that unless they have Angron's gene-seed, they aren't World Eaters.

Is this a thing that's only true for World Eaters or are you just uninformed? Because we have tons of in-canon examples of that being patently un-true for other Legions, mixed line Iron Warriors and the vast majority of the Black Legion that attacked Macragge in Gathering Storm having been were created from the stolen storage repository of geneseed being two very prominent examples.

I gave the answer for that in one of my previous posts, same deal with the World Eaters, they don't necessarily carry Angrons gene-seed, thees a short story out there where a World Eaters warband steal loyalist geneseed to produce new marines for their group, as well as mentions that astartes from other chapters and legions join the World Eaters to serve Khorne. Zhufor the Impaler is a named example of a recruit from another chapter, as he was a Sergeant of the Storm Lords (i.e. Khans gene-seed) before being wounded and captured by a World Eaters warband, who then drugged, tortured, and performed some involuntary psycho-surgery on him and inserted the butchers nails, changed his name and armor, etc. He eventually rose through the ranks and became the leader of a world eaters warband himself.

Gert wrote:Stands to reason that there are still Apothecaries out there that can implant the Nails.

The old Index Astartes article on World Eaters explicitly talked about ‘berserker-surgeons’ who implanted the nails into new recruits.

chaos0xomega wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
As the world eaters will have had to recruit new marines over the last 10k years, do only the original WE from the HH have butchers nails? Or do they only get them if they rise to the rank of Beserker?

I think in the 41st millennium the presence of Butchers Nails, rather than Angrons gene-seed, is what seems to define a World Eater. Then again, Abaddon has his own apothecaries hammering butchers nails into black legionnaire berserkers, so maybe not.

Maybe a combination?

Get the nails implemented
Get a fetching blood-and-brass colour scheme
Join up with a warband that identifies as being World Eaters

And job’s a good ‘un, you’re now a World Eater.

Yep, that is more or less my present understanding of how it goes.

I’d add anyone who consumes an actual planet, but that’s more of a tyranid thing.

Anyone try putting butcher’s nails into a carnafex?

The traitor legions are definitely much looser with their geneseed than loyalists, simply because they just don't have access to much of their own. And they care more about results than any concept of genetic purity. It's more important how their recruits are raised and trained than whose bloodline they came from. Hence why they'll steal geneseed any time they can.

The Apothecaries report that removing the Butcher’s Nails from the lore would kill the lore. Sorry. You have to find a way to live with them.

Fabius is supplying new CSM to legions using EC gene seed. It’s about numbers and most of the CSM pretty much hate their primarch so aren’t fussy about where it comes from.

chaos0xomega wrote:

lolwut? The only primarch that even debatably had it worse than Angron was Konrad Curze (and maybe Alpharius depending on which version of events you believe). Most other Primarchs were taken in and raised by a loving family or a nurturing guardian/mentor and given every opportuntiy to succeed, if not then they at least found themselves in a position to succeed by virtue of being an environment that gave them access to the necessary resources and means to achieve greatness. Only Angron and Curze (leaving Alpharius own mysterious origins) were essentially put into a gakky situation - Curze had to raise himself on murder in a nightmarish and violent slum, but he at least had *freedom* and *agency* to make his own decisions and pursue his own path within the circumstances available to him. Angron was enslaved from basically the very get-go, tortured, mutilated, and broken, and forced to fight and kill against his will. The closest thing he had to a friend, mentor, or father figure was a fellow-gladiator who he was forced to kill. His attempts to rebel and seize control of the world - like his brothers would have - all ended in failure because, yknow, he was damaged and broken and without the necessary faculties and tools needed to do so. He was a failed primarch, not because he didn't live up to expectations, but because he was phyiscally incapable of doing so.

Angron had a rough start, he killed an Eldar squad right after landing and immediately getting enslaved by the slavers, but it's not even comparable to Mortarion who landed on a planet who had AIDS and his dad was a necromancer, or Leman who got raised by Wolves. Angron was forced to fight in the Gladiator arena and quickly rose to fame and also found a father figure to guide him. He tried to escape a number of times and each time he got his ass kicked, that just shows how bad he was. Corax had a similar upbringing and he didn't get captured, Conrad and even crushed into its planet's crust and, crawled his way through lava and then he hide from all the rapists and murderers and he still became king of Nostramo. After letting himself getting the Nails by force to kill his daddy figure, Angron deserves everything that's happened to him. Every other Primarch would've gotten away from Angron situation, but this guy can't escape and some subhumans plant the nails in his brain.

Everybody points out that the Emperor was bad towards Angron, yes I know that. The Emperor was a dick towards some of his sons and was good to others. It shows how much of a Meme lord he is.

The WE had it better before Angron, they were the only legion who negatively benefited after their reunion with their Primarch. They also inherited the only Primarch who couldn't conquer his planet.

 Void__Dragon wrote:


Angron has to my knowledge literally never been beaten one on one by another Primarch. He crushed Leman Russ in a duel, with Russ already being one of the upper tier Primarchs in melee combat. For all of Angron's faults he still legitimately is the best or nearly the best martial combatant of the Primarchs.

It's just that he's a terrible general so even while crushing Russ in single combat his troops were outmaneuvered and formed a kill circle around Angron and would have been able to execute him if that had been their intention, showing to Angron that, as strong as he is, his Legion had deteriorated so much as a fighting force that they were completely incapable of thinking beyond fighting the guy in front of them and as such were easily outperformed by a disciplined and well-trained army. Which is undercut by all the successes of the World Eaters but you know. Also not sure how Marines leveling their bolters against a Primarch in full armour is meant to be threatening considering the hilarious gak Angron survives in that novel alone but there's ADB's gakky writing for you.

Angron knocked Leman on his ass, however Leman baited Angron into a kill zone. He was surrounded by guns that would blow him to shreds in seconds. Despite the WE fury in combat and wining in kill count, they had no strategies and Angron was at Lemans mercy. Leman should've done what should have been done before, press the "eliminate" button but he just couldn't bring himself to kills brother and retreated. After this Angron thought he won against Leman and the SW. In the book Betrayer, the conversation between Lorgar and Angron is proof is what Lorgar says to Angron, that he is pathetic and how Leman stomped his ass during the battle because how briliant he was, while Angron insists he won because they killed more SW. It shows how little the WE cared for Angron as the majority of them didn't notice he was in danger and the many that did, didn't care.

No - they're a core staple of the fluff for the World Eaters and Angron

Don't cancel butchers nails

 F.E.A.R. wrote:
Angron had a rough start, he killed an Eldar squad right after landing and immediately getting enslaved by the slavers, but it's not even comparable to Mortarion who landed on a planet who had AIDS and his dad was a necromancer, or Leman who got raised by Wolves. Angron was forced to fight in the Gladiator arena and quickly rose to fame and also found a father figure to guide him. He tried to escape a number of times and each time he got his ass kicked, that just shows how bad he was. Corax had a similar upbringing and he didn't get captured, Conrad and even crushed into its planet's crust and, crawled his way through lava and then he hide from all the rapists and murderers and he still became king of Nostramo. After letting himself getting the Nails by force to kill his daddy figure, Angron deserves everything that's happened to him. Every other Primarch would've gotten away from Angron situation, but this guy can't escape and some subhumans plant the nails in his brain.

Corax wasn't a pit slave, he was hidden when discovered by a slave on Lycaeus (now Deliverance) and was specifically trained in stealth and insurgent warfare as well as philosophy and politics. Corax

Curze was never found by anyone. He landed and was on his own for his entire early life. He only became Nostramo's ruler after he brutally murdered thousands of people and created a culture of obedience through fear. There wasn't an organised resistance against Curze because everyone was too scared of him, he was more than a person he was a monster.

Angron got captured while unconscious and was made a gladiator with no opportunity to learn to be anything but a fighter.
Do you maybe want to actually read the background before you make statements?

The WE had it better before Angron, they were the only legion who negatively benefited after their reunion with their Primarch. They also inherited the only Primarch who couldn't conquer his planet.

Yeah, that was the point. Angron's entire character is poison to his sons because his life was utter garbage both before and after the Emperor found him. The point of Angron is someone who has tragedy in their past and instead of being able to deal with it, they lash out at everyone else. Angron never got any real help because he suited the Emperor's purpose, up until a point. He was the rabid dog on a short leash who would be let off to commit insane violence to prevent long-lasting wars of conquest.