A Word Bearers question...

[randian]

Guys I don't know where you're getting this but Storm of Iron wasn't about Perturabo it was just an unnamed warsmith.

Oops, wrong book. I was thinking of one of the Ultramarines novels, which also prominently feature the Iron Warriors. Admittedly the claims about Perturabo were made by a (Khorne?) daemon, who could have been lying even though he had no reason to at the time.

[Daeghrefn]

I think daemonic ascension is a hell of a lot more rare and difficult than "every CSM army can get two" would suggest.

 

That being said, I think most Word Bearers do not seem to ascend for the reason that they do not necessarily have the kind of ambition necessary to pull it off. I do not mean this as a smear against the legion; in fact, it is a form of compliment.

The Word Bearers command structure being relatively intact means that there is not much room for upward mobility outside of battlefield casualties. One does not simply grab some followers and head off to start their own little pocket empire, eventually becoming a mighty chaos warlord. The legion would hunt them down, as has been shown in at least one Black Library novel.

With that being established, I can not imagine a chaos marine ascending without being mighty enough that they had control of a significant portion of the overall Word Bearers forces. This basically restricts possible candidates to being a member of the Word Beares leading council; someone like Kor Phaeron, Erebus or Marduk. If one of them were to ascend it would be a fairly big deal, but the possibilty for it to happen without needing to be canon is present based on some members of this group being unnamed.