Perturabo's "democratic inclinations"

[lokkorex]

Sulemain: i have a siren going off in the back of my head somewhere, that in the text in 'extermination' about perturabo it goes on about what might have happened on olympia if the emoeror hadn't shown up, and what perturabo might have done with the world once dammekos croaked.

 

Of course, this might just be something i've imagined.

[Terminus]

Until Molech, the rebellion was a purely political endeavor. Horus inner circle was privy to the warp as were the WB, but everyone bar Fulgrim had the intention of overthrowing an unjust regime.

Angel Exterminatus was an absolute crime against Perturabo. I will give credit to Mr. McNeil for his grand attempt to humanize the mind the most mentally inhuman primarchs, but Occam's Razor applies here, as it always does in the mindset of the Iron Lord. Simplicity is the key, expedience the goal. His is a mind entirely composed of mathematical equations, looking at the world around him in angles and percentages, statistics and numbers. Emotion is unwelcome, an unfactorable variable, but it's always there, the ghost that haunts his finely tuned thoughts. He buried his dreams and his heart on Olympia's ridges, and willingly cut all ties and dived into Hell, because his Father asked him to. He murdered millions, because his father asked him to. He broke empires, shattered armies, and his Legion bore the most grievous wounds and losses, because his father asked him to. And he ignored the implications of it all, because his Father asked him to.

Do you honestly believe none of this ground into his long lost humanity, the empty core of his being that he cut out, because his Father asked him to?

He is War-Broken. We're talking about God-Level traumatic mental disorder here. Perturabo can't control his emotions at times. He stares out at nothingness, and speaks to his past. One moment, he's unreachable, and the next he's ripping your head off because you brought him bad news. He can become utterly lost in fine details, both in crafting weaponry, and tearing down citadels. It calms him, returns his mind back the the emotionless numbers that represent hundreds of thousands of his sons dying. The further detached he became from reality, the further he tried to hide from the horror he was crafting, the worse his emotions got.

And Perturabo still buried that . He moved forward. He got the damn job done, and the next, and the next, with precise equations and algorithms.

Olympia was the line crossed. His mind broke, his heart broke, and he became the Monster he ran from his whole life.

Because his Father asked him to.

You two are both crazy, lol. Political endeavor? The Word Bearers were "rebelling against an unjust regime" only if you consider humanity's total subjugation by the Chaos Gods to be the proper and "just" order of things (I actually agree with this, but it's not politics, it's survival). Horus turned basically because he couldn't stand the thought of being forgotten, that old Greek Tragedy hubris thing and all. Kurze and Angron I wouldn't call part of the inner circle, they were the already borderline renegade brothers due to psychosis. Fulgrim's fall is hilarious throughout, from the poop painting to the insertion party with Eidolon and Fabius. For the regular Astartes, the rebellion basically tapped into their insecurities about a galaxy where there were no more worlds to raze or aliens to teabag, and frustrations about the Administratum and Remembrancers being increasingly all up in their business. The most poignant example of this for me was when Loken and his party crushed a bunch of humans when they were rushing Horus to the medbay. When the Remembrancers complained, Loken's reaction wasn't so much "Horus was injured, they should have gotten out of the way", which would be somewhat understandable, but rather incredulity that "mere mortals" had the temerity to complain about anything an Astartes might do, up to and including absentmindedly murdering a few. If you follow the Raven Guard short stories around their extraction from Istvaan, the Praetor guy held similarly contemptuous attitudes towards humans. And these are the "good guys" in the story. Rather than political, this was a racial schism, with the transhumans balking at the thought of being subservient to mortal meatbags. Fast forward 10,000 years, and the same issue frequently crops up, whether it's "bad guys" like Huron Blackheart, or "good guys" like Storm Giants and Space Wolves.

Perturabo in particular had no excuse, since he was born to many of the same privileges as Guilliman and didn't have the crippling psychological instability of Angron or Kurze. Oh boo hoo, my daddy made me do bad things and grind my sons down in endless sieges. This is the guy who killed 1/10th of his Legion because they weren't Ultramarines? The guy who spent any other resources allotted to him as freely as his Astartes? Corax told Horus to go stuff himself after the unnecessary blood bath at Gate 42 (that Perturabo goaded him into), why couldn't he? Because he was too stubborn to be seen refusing a difficult order? Well, then take pride in it like the Space Wolves, who also took horrendous casualties by taking on seemingly impossible tasks. Just stop crying about it. Yeah, maybe Perturabo was this misunderstood, tortured genius, who was more tactically astute than Guilliman, and more inventive than Ferrus, and a better craftsman than Vulkan and architect than Dorn. Or maybe he was just an :cuss.

[Sete]

Not everyone can be mary sues ;)

His flaws actually make for a believable character.

He is unstable. Paranoid. Thats pretty clear from the beginning of the A.E with the eye of terror always watching over him.

S.W with seemengly impossible tasks? What?

Do you mean Prospero? Where they had 10k dudes to kill? Maybe they should have used helmets ;)

Blood Angels had a seemengly impossible task at signus.

Guilliman was comiting heresy by having his own little Empire. And as soon :cuss hit the fan, he basically hunkered down and didnt give a damn about the Emperor and Terra.

Don't praise the biggest hypocrites in the setting as an example.

Pert made a bad decision. He knew that. Paranoid as he was he thought he was going the way of his 2 lost brothers and made a decision.

[Calas Typhon]

Perturabo in particular had no excuse, since he was born to many of the same privileges as Guilliman and didn't have the crippling psychological instability of Angron or Kurze. Oh boo hoo, my daddy made me do bad things and grind my sons down in endless sieges. This is the guy who killed 1/10th of his Legion because they weren't Ultramarines? The guy who spent any other resources allotted to him as freely as his Astartes? Corax told Horus to go stuff himself after the unnecessary blood bath at Gate 42 (that Perturabo goaded him into), why couldn't he? Because he was too stubborn to be seen refusing a difficult order? Well, then take pride in it like the Space Wolves, who also took horrendous casualties by taking on seemingly impossible tasks. Just stop crying about it. Yeah, maybe Perturabo was this misunderstood, tortured genius, who was more tactically astute than Guilliman, and more inventive than Ferrus, and a better craftsman than Vulkan and architect than Dorn. Or maybe he was just an .

I think the point of his fall was, no matter how each Primarch was engineered, they are still human in nature.

I will not comment on the Decimation in this thread again as it has been discussed and my views have been shared, however grinding his sons down was not really the problem, the problem as I see it was that there was nothing that came from it. They were essentially being trashed with nothing in return, no glory, no thanks and any little they had was snatched away by their brother Legions. Whether they asked for glory or not is out of the question, two centuries with very little and doing the work for another Legion would wear down even the IVth. A lot of people could put the trashing of his men down as Perturabo unnecessarily throwing away Legionaries, but people forget that this is siege warfare, and attacking siege warfare for the most part, which was an absolute bloody mess, especially when it came to forlorn hopes and it naturally comes with losses of impact.

Perturabo could not tell the Emperor or Horus to go stuff themselves because he was so stubborn and because his mentality I am sure would not allow it. It goes against everything we know about him at the moment in time, He is Loyal to the word until he is ground down to dust by it, any order he is given, he will follow it. The Space Wolves took massive casualties in a battle, but at least they got something for it. The Iron Warriors do that every siege, every battle, perhaps they did take pride in it until the 10th, 30th or 100th time.

In the end, yes Perturabo did have an excuse to turn against the Emperor, more so than Mortarion, perhaps more so than Horus and Lorgar too.

[Iduddy]

A lot of Third Legion trashing going on here. The tragedy of the EC's fall comes from the Big E's failure to inform and educate the Primarchs and the legions about the nature of the Warp and Chaos. Without any warning or ability to recognize the threat of Warp-tainted items and cultures, the EC had no protection from corruption. The EC had no cause to go traitor. There was no underlining perceived slight or ill treatment by the Imperium and the Big E towards to the EC. Fulgrim was not Angron, Curze, or Logar, whom had to deal with the Emperor wronging them in various ways. Fulgrim was as loyal as Dorn, Gulliman, or Vulkan. However through ignorance to the threat of tainted cultures like the Laer, had allowed Chaos exploit the pride of the Third Legion. If it was not for the tainted Laer blade Fulgrim would not have joined Horus. Fulgrim and the Emperor's Children's fall came from the Emperor's own failure in providing the truth about the Warp.

[Wade Garrett]

The tragedy of the Third Legion is that they've been very, very ill used by the authors writing the Heresy, being portrayed as pompous dimwits even before the fall (Eidolon in Horus Rising, Fulgrim during the laer campaign in Fulgrim) and of course poor Lucius has been jobbed to every named Loyalist from here to Cadia.

[Calas Typhon]

The tragedy of the Third Legion is that they've been very, very ill used by the authors writing the Heresy, being portrayed as pompous dimwits even before the fall (Eidolon in Horus Rising, Fulgrim during the laer campaign in Fulgrim) and of course poor Lucius has been jobbed to every named Loyalist from here to Cadia.

 

The Emperor's Children during Horus Rising were well into the corruption and downward spiral at the time of Murder IIRC.

 

In my opinion, Fulgrim's tragedy was simply the fall and how stupid it came across in the writing.. It just did not come across as subtle manipulation at all which is what I would expect, rather than Fulgrim being utterly stupid and thinking what was going on was totally normal. Even with no clue on what Chaos was, its pretty clear that a sword in a middle of a temple within an orgy of xenos is a no go.

 

"Hey big boy, lets go down the strip club and snort some Orkfungus off the largest, thickest and bluest xenos dancer we can find"

[Wade Garrett]

To veer back towards the thread topic, Perturabo was a great believer in the democratic principle of "One man, one vote."

 

He was that man, he had that vote.

[Doctor Perils]

Sooooo... Democratic inclinations ?

 

I'm not sure, but I seem to remember some kind of dream society Perturabo imagines which is described in Angel Exterminatus, with magnificent architecture and great emphasis on learning and science, and possibly with a kind of public Forum (in the roman sense, ie an Agora in Greek) where Laws were discussed or somesuch. However, I don't think it is described either as a democracy, as Perturabo still imagines himself in charge; an "enlightened tyranny" might be more appropriate (again, tyrant in the ancient sense of the word, ie sole ruler, not a dictator)?

[Terminus]

Do you mean Prospero? Where they had 10k dudes to kill? Maybe they should have used helmets

All that "Executioners" nonsense was Russ basically deciding his Legion would be the one that would take on any task, no matter how difficult or impossible seeming, or how many casualties it would cause, because "WE ARE DE BEST! RARR!" He spends the entirety of Wolf King bemoaning his brash arrogance and how he spent way too many lives too freely, and now is left with not enough dudes to make a serious impact.

And yes, Prospero is one example where they got decimated even with Custodes and Sororitas back-up, and a bypassed space defense network, and a surprised PDF in parade uniforms, and a Primarch who didn't want to fight for most of the battle (and then almost being destroyed by the Alpha Legion in the aftermath).

A lot of Third Legion trashing going on here. The tragedy of the EC's fall

Im a big fan of the 3rd, and I'll be the first to tell you there is no element of tragedy to their fall. They were all prissy and proper and pompous before, and then were all like, yay drugs! They are the 40K equivalent of the repressed catholic school girl that goes to college and turns into a porn starlet.

[Sete]

I see your point now Terminus.

It was a task he brought up unto himself.

While pert was just following orders until he broke.

He was alone, paranoid, with a task he did not wish and yet he griended on with the dirt job.

All that he built was currupted. From the Nikea amphitheatre to his home planet.

He just wanted a peacefull life as you can see in his dream.

Great comparison on the EC tho. :D

[Fire Golem]

I think a lot of the 'unbelievable' falls of the Chaos primarchs are mostly down to the writing to be honest. Horus, Fulgrim, Perturabo... The ideas are fine in my opinion, but the writing makes them come across as too easy or unbelievable or whatever. I don't want to say it's bad writing because I still enjoy the books these occur in, but I feel the actual turning of the Primarchs could have been written better.

[Sete]

I just found it cheap that Horus was wounded by one of those fancy blades, and got currupted, and Guilliman just walks it off.

Now I dont know if it was the same type of blade or one had a special property over the other.

[Memento Of Prospero]

I just found it cheap that Horus was wounded by one of those fancy blades, and got currupted, and Guilliman just walks it off.

Now I dont know if it was the same type of blade or one had a special property over the other.

 

They indeed are not the same. The Blade that wounded Horus was a Nurgle poisoned blade, while Kor Phaeron just has a glorified prison shank - he did not want to kill he, he wanted to submit him.

[Fire Golem]

The one that wounded Horus was the original Anathame. I believe the one Kor used on Guilliman was an athame, a knife made from part of the Anathame.

[Sete]

Alrighty then :)

[Nehekhare]

Oh boo hoo, my daddy made me do bad things and grind my sons down in endless sieges. This is the guy who killed 1/10th of his Legion because they weren't Ultramarines?

Perturabo doesn't need an excuse, because he never broke. He applied the same universal principles to correcting the weakness of his legion as to correcting the weakness of his home planet. As he watched Olympia burn, he realized that the emperor's dream that he had come to believe in was naive and doomed to failure, thus he applied the same universal principle again to the walls of the imperial palace.

By the way, by the time of the decimation, the Ultramarines were way behind the IVth Legion. Perturabo ordered decimation because the Iron warriors weren't even further ahead and still prone to Guilliman's delusions of self-importance. Nothing like cold chance to show you how unimportant a single life is in a grimdark universe.

Ultramarines whished they were as good, that's why they copied every single tactic they could get hold of from the IVth, i.e. Tyrant siege Terminators or the codex Astartes articles about siege warfare and mind/machine interfaces in vehicle warfare (which was so good even the Xth didn't want it to be deleted since they used the same techniques).

Ultramarines...1 in 10 kids these days have no standarts...

[Knight of the Raven]

From my understanding, Perturabo didn't decimate his legion for not being Sons of Horus or Ultramarines, but for wasting their potential. This is the primarch who said "better to die having exhausted one's strength than to fail without ever reaching your limits," after all.

 

I'd have to reread Extermination to remember how exactly they wasted their potential though.

Mind you, he didn't do it out of the goodness of his heart. He was given tools he deemed faulty and set out to repair them. And it's not surprising the Iron Warriors accepted it; the World Eaters willingly mutilated their brains to feel closer to a primarch who didn't care whether they lived or died; so why would the Corpse Grinders mind?

[Calas Typhon]

From my understanding, Perturabo didn't decimate his legion for not being Sons of Horus or Ultramarines, but for wasting their potential. This is the primarch who said "better to die having exhausted one's strength than to fail without ever reaching your limits," after all.

 

I'd have to reread Extermination to remember how exactly they wasted their potential though.

 

Mind you, he didn't do it out of the goodness of his heart. He was given tools he deemed faulty and set out to repair them. And it's not surprising the Iron Warriors accepted it; the World Eaters willingly mutilated their brains to feel closer to a primarch who didn't care whether they lived or died; so why would the Corpse Grinders mind?

 

Pretty sure this was the cause too. I mentioned earlier about the Decimation and how I was not going to comment on it again, but people keep bringing up Perturabo Decimating the Legion because they were not Ultramarines and it keeps coming up over the years. Can anyone provide any quotes for this or references to this? It would be extremely helpful because I have found nothing about it at all.

 

Also I will say, they did not seem to mind, as they improved dramatically and seemed to worship him, especially when we move into the 40K setting.

[Wade Garrett]

I don't know if I would say the Decimation improved the Iron Warriors. Given that they ended up genociding their homeworld, turning on the Imperium, and were unable to take the Imperial Palace, necessitating Horus' desperation gambit of "1v1 me dad". :p

[Calas Typhon]

I don't know if I would say the Decimation improved the Iron Warriors. Given that they ended up genociding their homeworld, turning on the Imperium, and were unable to take the Imperial Palace, necessitating Horus' desperation gambit of "1v1 me dad".

Not really, on that front I agree, more on how they improved in their performance as a Legion and their improved standards to warfare under Perturabo.

It would be interesting to see how they would have ended if Horus did not drag the Imperium into civil war with the mental wearing that came over time.

[Knight of the Raven]

Here's the description of the decimation, from Extermination:

 

Having instituted a full review of the IVth Legion's war record, doctrines and practices and having compared those with the other Legions, Perturabo found his sons wanting and acted accordingly. His punishment was decimation.

For the Legion's failings all would suffer, all were guilty. As the edict of decimation would state, "War is unequivocal, uncaring, unforgiving and blind. Blind also will be the selection of those who will pay the blood price for the greater failure of your record".

 

(...)

 

Their sin was not that they had failed in the Great Crusade's service - for by no measure had this been the case, but instead that they had not reached their full potential. It was not enough for Perturabo that they were merely superior, their fault lay in that among the Legions they were not already supreme.

 

Perturabo demanded that his Legion would be a peerless engine of war

 

There was a fifteen pages long discussion on the subject when the book came out too.

[Wade Garrett]

Yeah, that description is why I despise the whole concept of the Decimation in the official fluff.

 

Although...I can't remember if it was Conn Eremon or Hyenidae that defended it to me once in a way that almost made sense, I forget the specifics but the gist of it was:

 

"So, my sons. Now you're all bitter, suspicious, living and dying at the whim of a spiteful force you cannot comprehend...I think at long last you're finally starting to understand me."

[Calas Typhon]

Here's the description of the decimation, from Extermination:

 

Having instituted a full review of the IVth Legion's war record, doctrines and practices and having compared those with the other Legions, Perturabo found his sons wanting and acted accordingly. His punishment was decimation.

 

For the Legion's failings all would suffer, all were guilty. As the edict of decimation would state, "War is unequivocal, uncaring, unforgiving and blind. Blind also will be the selection of those who will pay the blood price for the greater failure of your record".

 

(...)

 

Their sin was not that they had failed in the Great Crusade's service - for by no measure had this been the case, but instead that they had not reached their full potential. It was not enough for Perturabo that they were merely superior, their fault lay in that among the Legions they were not already supreme.

 

Perturabo demanded that his Legion would be a peerless engine of war

 

There was a fifteen pages long discussion on the subject when the book came out too.

 

Aye been through the thread and familiar with the quote. I was hoping for a direct quote towards it as it comes up any time Perturabo is discussed with Decimation on the topic.

[Brofist]

His flaws actually make for a believable character.

He applied the same universal principles always.

That's the crux of it for me. The way he's been written makes him not a believable character for me. I have to suspend lots of my disbelief to make him work. You can argue that the contradiction is intentional and that we're not supposed to understand this primarch... but this is fiction written for people to read so I doubt alienating readers was an intention.

 

That said, I still love the legion. Having a strange Primarch with some sort of disorder, intentional or not, just makes the whole experience more grim.