Veteran Sergeant wrote:

I kinda wish they'd gone in a different direction with Angron, making him much more brooding, and sinister as a loyal primarch. If he made his transition to raving pyschopath after turning to Chaos (maybe he tunes up, or modifies the Nails in order to channel this new rage and power?), then you can understand why the Emperor let him stay in command of the Warhounds/World Eaters. As it is, you just assume that the Emperor lets this wacko stay because, well that was how it was written when there wasn't anything written about it, lol.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
This is the correct answer.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
You have to give some of the Black Library authors credit for trying to salvage him and give him motivations and a place in the universe

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Ultimately, it requires a huge suspension of disbelief that the Emperor put down two legions for some reason, but was fine with a raving, uncontrollable, psychopath with debilitating neural implants leading another one. [...] As it is, you just assume that the Emperor lets this wacko stay because, well that was how it was written when there wasn't anything written about it, lol.

 Pilau Rice wrote:
It's not like the Emperor didn't try to keep Angron in check, but there is only so much you can do when you are at one side of space and your psychotic son the other. It eventually would have gotten to the stage of Curze where the Emperor would have had no choice but to act, maybe doing the same and dispatching the assassins.

 Manchu wrote:
Also, the Butcher's Nails do not make Angron a HURRR-DURRR character. ADB portrays them as giving Angron a clarity of purpose that many of his brothers, loyalist and traitor, seem to utterly lack. Fans have blithely assumed that Angron has an overly-simplistic view of things (MAIM BURN KILL) but what if he's the one Primarch with the least delusions about what he and his brothers really are and what they were created to do.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Ultimately, it requires a huge suspension of disbelief that the Emperor put down two legions for some reason, but was fine with a raving, uncontrollable, psychopath with debilitating neural implants leading another one. [...] As it is, you just assume that the Emperor lets this wacko stay because, well that was how it was written when there wasn't anything written about it, lol.

"Uriah looked into the Emperor’s face as he spoke, now seeing past the glamours and the magnificence to the heart of an individual who had lived a thousand lives and walked the Earth for longer than could be imagined. He saw the ruthless ambition and the molten core of violence at the Emperor’s heart. In that instant, Uriah knew he wanted nothing to do with this man"

 Omegus wrote:

 Pilau Rice wrote:

 Stonerhino wrote:
e Wolves sacked Prospero and broke the Thousand Sons in a single day. Where as In Galaxy in Flames the Traitors took several days to do the same thing. With the same advantages; air, space and numerical (a Warlord Titan and Spire Guard are a wash with the Sisters and Custodes). Even Angron was repelled multiple times. Either the Space Wolves are better at killing astartes then the other Legions or the other Legions are just generally worse at it.

I would say the difference is the loyalist Legions on Istvaan knew that they were coming, they had time to build up and fortify whereas the Thousand Sons had not as much warning. Also there greatest asset, their use of the arcane, was denied them in a lot of cases. The Wolves also had Custodes with them as well. The Thousand Sons were one of the smaller Legions if I recall, they also only had mortal allies.

The Thousand Sons were deliberately kept in the dark about the Wolves' approach by their own Primarch. The invasion caught them completely unprepared, no psychic forewarning, no planetary defense systems, no nothing. One of the Wolves commented that the PDF seemed to be in their parade uniforms. On top of that, the Wolves were reinforced by Custodians and Sisters of Silence. And still, once the Thousand Sons organized and started striking back, they utterly obliterated the opposition. The tide only turned once more when three things happened:

1.) Russ barged in, knocking out/killing a lot of psykers with his psychic howl (iiirony).
2.) Wolves unleashed the Wulfen, mutated freakish versions of themselves (iiiiiirony).
3.) Tzeench pushed the flesh-change button, and a bunch of the strongest TS self-destruct.

 Manchu wrote:
Great point about slaughtering Xenos. The HH book from FW mentions that the World Eaters scoured an entire craftworld of life before flinging it into a sun. So ... yeah ...

But I will quibble with your comment about "why he was kept on board" as I don't think it was a matter of tolerance so much as necessity. Bligh opens his chapter on the World Eaters by calling them a "Necessary Evil" and "monsters long before the Heresy." While the Emperor did not himself drive the Butchers Nails into Angron's skull, I doubt he was very displeased upon finding Angron this way.

 Manchu wrote:

 Pilau Rice wrote:
It's not like the Emperor didn't try to keep Angron in check, but there is only so much you can do when you are at one side of space and your psychotic son the other. It eventually would have gotten to the stage of Curze where the Emperor would have had no choice but to act, maybe doing the same and dispatching the assassins.

According to Bligh, the Emperor reprimanded Angron by (1) forbidding his apothecaries to conduct the psycho-surgery that makes bezerkers and (2) sending him far from the civilized Imperium. Bligh basically says that Angron ignored the Emperor's command and delighted in his exile, which only further freed him from restraint. Just looking at this, one has to wonder how deeply committed the Emperor was to curbing Angron. It's a lot like Magnus, where the Emperor says "don't do X" and then let's you go about your merry way when you are completely and utterly known for doing X and in fact the Emperor even made you for the purpose of doing X. Unless the Emperor is a flat-out moron, it seems to me he must have been fomenting the Heresy himself.

 Pilau Rice wrote:
I think that maybe the Emperor knew that the Heresy was going to happen, but as he didn't know how it ended ...

 Pilau Rice wrote:
If he killed a Son every time one of them did bad he wouldn't have many left and I can't imagine those that were left would have stuck around very long lest they became another empty plinth in the Emperors Palace.

 Just Dave wrote:
Regarding the assault on Prospero, the Flesh Change wasn't entirely a bad thing for the Thousand Sons, as Chaos Spawn are powerful in themselves and would continue to fight the Space Wolves, possibly in a superior capacity to a Legionnaire. Also, whilst the possession of some powerful Thousand Sons by their tutelary/warp entity would destroy the Astartes, they also would go out with a bang as it were; unleashing immense power in their final moments.

 Pilau Rice wrote:
There seems to be a couple of things that the Emperor wasn't happy about and definitely censored Angron for something, the Ghenna Scouring according to the IA article.

 Pilau Rice wrote:



I think that maybe the Emperor knew that the Heresy was going to happen, but as he didn't know how it ended, wanted to ride it out to find out what was in store for him afterwards. Didn't turn out to be one of his better ideas.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
He remains a two-dimensional character

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Stonerhino wrote:
The Space Wolves sacked Prospero and broke the Thousand Sons in a single day. Where as In Galaxy in Flames the Traitors took several days to do the same thing. With the same advantages; air, space and numerical (a Warlord Titan and Spire Guard are a wash with the Sisters and Custodes). Even Angron was repelled multiple times. Either the Space Wolves are better at killing astartes then the other Legions or the other Legions are just generally worse at it.

Plus there's the whole widespread mutation incited by Tzeentch plaguing the Thousand Sons mid-battle thing. But that wasn't important, right?

Pilau Rice wrote:I would say the difference is the loyalist Legions on Istvaan knew that they were coming, they had time to build up and fortify whereas the Thousand Sons had not as much warning. Also there greatest asset, their use of the arcane, was denied them in a lot of cases. The Wolves also had Custodes with them as well. The Thousand Sons were one of the smaller Legions if I recall, they also only had mortal allies.

Phael Toron Captian of the 7th Fellowship at the battle for Prospero wrote:The perimeter of the Thousand Sons was holding, but that it would soon break was beyond question. No force in the galaxy could resist so furious an attack, so lethal a drive and a foe so utterly without mercy: No force but the Thousand Sons with the power of the Great Ocean at their command.

 Manchu wrote:
What part of rage is calculation? I think you're talking about two separate aspects of the Emperor's personality.

As I mentioned, Angron may very well see the "biggest picture" possible -- namely, that all the Primarchs, even in the midst of the Heresy, are slaves to larger forces. That's a pciture more calculating Primarchs like Guilliman and especially Jonson seem to have a lot of trouble seeing.

Also please stop trying to show how Angron is not as good as Russ at being Russ. Who cares?

 Stonerhino wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
What part of rage is calculation? I think you're talking about two separate aspects of the Emperor's personality.

As I mentioned, Angron may very well see the "biggest picture" possible -- namely, that all the Primarchs, even in the midst of the Heresy, are slaves to larger forces. That's a pciture more calculating Primarchs like Guilliman and especially Jonson seem to have a lot of trouble seeing.

Also please stop trying to show how Angron is not as good as Russ at being Russ. Who cares?

I'm not trying to show that Angron is not as good at being Russ as Russ is. I'm taking the Primarch who's main characteristic is closest to how Angron acts. That Primarch just happens to be Leman Russ. Sanguinious', own views on how simular their wars are fought support that line of thinking.

Prospero Burns, does a good job of showing that at least some of how the Space Wolves act is in fact an act. They hide their "Calculatedness" behind the ferocity of their attacks, behavior and general combat doctrine. This is supported by Guilliman in Rule of Engagment by naming Russ one of the dauntless few and not the Khan (to unpredictable). Even though the White Scars show their own "Calculatedness" in Little Horus.

That calculatedness is missing with the World Eaters and Angron. Instead they reveal in their ability to beat their heads against a problem until something gives. To their credit it's usually the problem that breaks first.

That should not be used as a statement to lower the World Eaters. Just a statement that demonstraights their leadership's damaged psyche. Whereas every other Legion would seek to maximise its strengths Angron just seems to throw his Legion at the target. In an attempt to engage them to give the butcher's nails what they want.

Angron's, combat doctrine is never going to be how the authors add dimentions to him. I hope ADB puts a lot of focus into what's going on in Angrons mind when he is in full bezerker fury. It is in those dreams that we might be able to see what Angron might have been before becoming a slave to his rage. Playing up his desire for freedom and showing how low the implants have dragged him.

 Stonerhino wrote:

I'm taking the Primarch who's main characteristic is closest to how Angron acts. That Primarch just happens to be Russ.

So that’s some of what was at work when I started thinking about an Angron story. Because I remember a definite moment when I was reeling off some Heresy places and names to myself, thought of Angron’s name, and shrugged him off with a little half-smirk thinking “heh, yeah, one-note screaming psycho-zerker, nothing there”. And then I caught myself, and made myself go back and take another look at him, because as I’ve just been saying, that’s not true, is it? It’s never true. And in fact the second thought that I had was that the very fact of my initial reacion mean that bringing Angron to life was going to be that much more intriguing a challenge, and that much more of a satisfying achievement.

There were two thoughts that became focal points for my picture of Angron. One was the idea of heroism The idea of the “hero” as someone not only mighty but virtuous, a good person and role model, is actually a relatively modern way of thinking. People with more literary history than I can tell you when exactly the idea of virtue started being explicitly added in, but the point is that originally heroes were people who simply did mighty deeds, not necessarily good ones. A lot of modern tellings of Hercules talk about his fighting monsters and going on quests, but those tellings seem a little lighter on the bit where a lot of that monster-fighting was in penance for him massacring his wife and children in a drunken rage. I’ve always thought the best approach for chronicling the Emperor and his Primarchs was to make them heroic in that old, darker sense: these were beings of statures far beyond your or I, capable of world-building or world-shattering feats, beings whose virtues carried them to pinnacles far above normal humanity… and whose flaws ran devastatingly, inhumanly deep. When I was thinking about how he was going to react to being taken away from his army of escapees just before their last stand, the thought crystallised that Angron’s rage at this would be monstrous, but so would his grief, and recasting that whole story with Angron in mourning rather than in fury immediately opened up whole new ways for him to behave. Graham McNeill is a surveyor, he’ll tell you: when you’ve got that second observation point, that’s when you can start triangulating, get a proper fix on what you want to map.

It was actually correspondence with Graham that brought the second idea properly into focus, and that was the effect that the implants must have had on him. (Angron, not Graham.) This was something I’d initially speculated on on the Black Library forums, and I think it’s where Angron’s true tragedy lies. Angron had his brain re-engineered to both streamline his mind and soul into the same sorts of killing machines that his body already was; I suspect it was also to try and make him controllable, since even a young Primarch must have been a frightening prospect to try and keep prisoner by conventional means. The fact that his captors could construct such things in the first place points to a highly sophisticated techological base – this clearly wasn’t a world that reverted to utter savagery during the long galactic strife. But that machinery, sophisticated as it was, had been put not into a human but into a Primarch. Think of that for a minute: a Primarch. A creation so powerful and complex, drawing so deeply on so many strands of human knowledge, so intertwined with the Emperor’s own intellectual brilliance and creative drives, that probably only He Himself fully understood how they had been made and how they worked. Think of Rogal Dorn confessing that thinking on his own nature even frightens him, since he knows there is simply no precedent in human history for what he is. Think of the Luna Wolves’ apothecaries treating the wounded Horus and saying that even with all their experience with the augmented physiology of the Astartes, they’re still in the dark when they work on a Primarch, since he’s been built at a level so far above them.

Now think about how Angron’s neural implants, designed to fit a normal human brain by a world that had never heard of Astartes or Primarchs, must have fitted him. I don’t care how good they were at psychosurgery (and I think they were pretty damned good), those implants are still going to work about as well as bodging a couple of old pram wheels onto a Formula 1 racer. Gone is any chance of a clean cut to take away the higher brain functions not devoted to combat: that Primarch-mind is going to want to grow and push outward, attain mastery, break out of its chains. To switch metaphors, it’s like trying to cram a lion into a cat-carrier: it’s not just not going to fit, it’s going to fight.

It’s a tribute to the psychosurgeons’ skill that they got as good a result as they did: implants that did more or less what they were supposed to and a Primarch who could still function. But long before the Emperor got anywhere near him those surgeons tore away any chance of Angron had of becoming what his brothers became. Let’s say it again, he was a Primarch. He had a mind built to be a peerless warrior, a brilliant commander, a consummate diplomat, a great lawmaker, a wise scholar, a magnificent artist, a magnificant scientist. Pick the Primarch whom you most admire in the sense of the noble hero, someone to admire and follow: the steadfast and princely Dorn, bold and fiery Russ, thoughtful Guilliman, patient and methodical Perturabo, glorious Fulgrim, mighty Horus. This is the company Angron was built to keep, and if those surgeons had never entered his skull that’s the manner of being that he would have been.

That must have been hell. To live with this constant, nagging knowledge of your own ripped-away potential, to feel this great intellect of yours ready to seize on new knowledge and experience, to feel your own abilities grow by leaps and bounds in ways your conscious mind has to struggle to keep up with… and then to feel it all fall to pieces as your implants send another blast of sizzling rage through your thoughts. To grasp strategy, leadership, everything, so quickly and intuitively, and then to have the insight slip through your fingers at the last moment because the choke-chain on your thoughts is dragging you back, not letting you think or learn. Following even the simplest train of thought through to its conclusion requires every scrap of your formidable willpower, simply to avoid veering off into blind rage. Even the boundaries between thought, action and memory are blurred.

(That point about thought and action turned into a big part of the portrayal, actually. I wanted to really emphasise Angron’s physicality: apart from actual battle scenes most of the depictions of the Primarchs I recalled from the books tended to be static, with them seated imperiously on thrones or looming over some hapless human. A good contrast seemed to be to have Angron almost constantly on the move, prowling about the room, circling Kharn, recalling his memories as much with physical actions as with words. I was trying for an ominous, animalistic air and it was cool to have several readers respond to that.)

The more thought I put into how I was going to shine a light into this story, the more I got fixated on that very first introduction of Angron to the Imperium, his abduction from his homeworld and his introduction to the XII Astartes. So much seemed to stem from that moment. So much about him was described as harking back to his brutal gladiatorial background, so the moment where that collided with his ascension to one of the greatest military elites the galaxy has ever seen – the Primarchs of the Human Imperium – had to have story potential. It’s also remarked in the early Heresy novels that Kharn, whom we meet already having taken the post of Angron’s equerry, is the only one who can calm the Primarch’s mountainous rages – that hinted at some sort of special bond between them, and I wondered how that had been forged. That started to bring together some interesting elements: the idea that although Angron might conceive a hatred for the Emperor, that his Astartes might earn his respect as warriors, and that their own loyalty to the Emperor might bring about second thoughts. It’s something Angron’s thoughts turn to in the story: if Kharn is a warrior of such puissance and will, and if the Emperor has commanded such loyalty from Kharn that he will stand unresisting and allow himself to be ripped to pieces rather than breach an order, then perhaps this Emperor might have might that Angron has not yet realised?

 rems01 wrote:
The new Heresy forgeworld supplement can shed some light on this i think.

The Warhounds are portrayed as brutal and relentless. They glory in combat and are dedicated to the task. They were not especially savage or barbaric however, merely ruthless.

 Manchu wrote:

 Stonerhino wrote:

I'm taking the Primarch who's main characteristic is closest to how Angron acts. That Primarch just happens to be Russ.

No, the two are actually nothing alike except in a very, very superficial sense--i.e., they're both wrongly stereotyped as unthinking brutes. Russ is much more like his sly brothers than they would care to imagine. Angron is not. He has no taste for deceit. Your argument boils down to using Russ as the measure of Angron and that doesn't show an understanding of either character.

Custodian Amon in Prospero Burns wrote:The Wolf King believes that he doesn't win battles by hidding secrets from his enemies. He believes he wins them by showing his enemies exaclty what they're up against and how miserably ther're going to lose.

I'm guessing ADB's blog??? wrote:That must have been hell. To live with this constant, nagging knowledge of your own ripped-away potential, to feel this great intellect of yours ready to seize on new knowledge and experience, to feel your own abilities grow by leaps and bounds in ways your conscious mind has to struggle to keep up with… and then to feel it all fall to pieces as your implants send another blast of sizzling rage through your thoughts. To grasp strategy, leadership, everything, so quickly and intuitively, and then to have the insight slip through your fingers at the last moment because the choke-chain on your thoughts is dragging you back, not letting you think or learn. Following even the simplest train of thought through to its conclusion requires every scrap of your formidable willpower, simply to avoid veering off into blind rage. Even the boundaries between thought, action and memory are blurred.

 Manchu wrote:
Before Angron is found, the War Hounds were notorious enough to earn this comment from a grizzled Imperial commander: "it remains my fervent hope ... that I never again see such inhuman butchery ..."

 Manchu wrote:

 Pilau Rice wrote:
It's not like the Emperor didn't try to keep Angron in check, but there is only so much you can do when you are at one side of space and your psychotic son the other. It eventually would have gotten to the stage of Curze where the Emperor would have had no choice but to act, maybe doing the same and dispatching the assassins.

According to Bligh, the Emperor reprimanded Angron by (1) forbidding his apothecaries to conduct the psycho-surgery that makes bezerkers and (2) sending him far from the civilized Imperium. Bligh basically says that Angron ignored the Emperor's command and delighted in his exile, which only further freed him from restraint. Just looking at this, one has to wonder how deeply committed the Emperor was to curbing Angron. It's a lot like Magnus, where the Emperor says "don't do X" and then let's you go about your merry way when you are completely and utterly known for doing X and in fact the Emperor even made you for the purpose of doing X. Unless the Emperor is a flat-out moron, it seems to me he must have been fomenting the Heresy himself.

 Manchu wrote:

 Pilau Rice wrote:
If he killed a Son every time one of them did bad he wouldn't have many left and I can't imagine those that were left would have stuck around very long lest they became another empty plinth in the Emperors Palace.

I would like to see an Iron Hands HH novel, where the Emperor chastises Ferrus (or Vulkan or even Dorn) and Ferrus (or whoever) actually takes it to heart (unlike Angron, Magnus, and Lorgar). Actually, does something like that already exist?

 Manchu wrote:
The fluff is very, very good -- you can tell Bligh has spent a lot of time with Index Astartes.

 Manchu wrote:

 Pilau Rice wrote:
There seems to be a couple of things that the Emperor wasn't happy about and definitely censored Angron for something, the Ghenna Scouring according to the IA article.

Which reminds me, I also wanted to respond to this. According to Bligh (again, he's read his IA), it was in the wake of the Ghenna Scouring that the Emperor called Angron in, forbade psycho-surgery, and sent him off. What do you mean by "a couple of things" though?

 Zweischneid wrote:
I think it would be prudent to just keep in mind that things were developed back-to-front.

First, they had Khorne Berzerkers for Chaos Space Marines. They were the "angry" assault-type in the mix.

Than the build an evil Space Marines legions around it, the World Eaters, which is made up of those. And they made its leader a particularly angry Daemon Prince called Angron.

Than they figured that, if they're a Traitor Legion now, they must've been a loyalist legion once.

Than the made them angry pre-heresy, both Legion and Primarch, to tell a credible story why the went Khorne.

Than they started adding details, first in "present day 40K", about implants and all.

Than they started to weave those details in backwards through the Legions history and up to the Primarch background

 Just Dave wrote:
[On the idea of what Horus offered him:] "Freedom from holding back. Freedom from restrain. Freedom from guilt and orders. But freedom was not without its drawbacks. The primarchs and their warriors needed strucutre, needed purpose to focus their martial instincts. Without the guiding hand, once provided by the Emperor, now manipulated by Horus, the Legions were nothing more than a bolter without an eye to aim it."[/i]

 DarthMarko wrote:
And here is what future Horus/Amon tells Hawser

Spoiler:

‘I am clearing the board for the game to come,’ he said. ‘I am setting it out the way I want it. Two key obstacles to my ambitions are the Sons of Prospero and the Wolves of Fenris. The former is the only Legion that has lorecraft enough to hinder me magically; the latter is the only Legion dangerous enough to represent a genuine military threat. The Emperor’s sorcerers and the Emperor’s executioners. I have no wish to store up a fight with either for my future, so I have invested time and energy arranging events to turn them upon each other.’

So Horus knew very well what is barbarian facade unlike WE (who were always WE)....

 Manchu wrote:
Angron alone of the Primarchs was enslaved.