Tears for Heretics

[Daemon Prince Marbas]

What lore moments involving Chaos Space Marines made you cry? Out of respect for others I do ask that you put spoiler tags if it involves a character death or major plot point.

[Relentless]

When the Horus Heresy failed

[gaurdian31]

The 3.5 codex for tears of joy and then every codex after for tears of despair.

[Azekai]

Maybe I am not the overly emotional sort, but I have never been brought to tears by a warhammer book... unless you count that time Draigo carved his former chapter master's name on the Daemon Primarch Mortarion's heart. Rolled my eyes so hard they started watering.

[MadEdric]

When Angron is kidnapped by the Emperor and forced to watch his armies die.

[Doom Herald]

Maybe the closest involves Argel-tal and his realtionships with Khârn and Lorgar. That whole situation was screwed, Erebus is a PoS, lol. Argel-tal is just tragic in general.

 

Another point that contests with the prior is the death of Uzas in the Night Lords trilogy. This is minor spoilers, but I think that saying a secondary character dies at some point in the course of the 40k universe is just a given. Curze's interaction with The Emperor in the Konrad Curze novel is up there too.

 

A mention also needs to go to Fulgrim repeatedly trying to convert Ferrus Manus and constantly failing.

 

 

All together, I think a good CSM character is often more human than their loyalist counterparts and seeing that more human aspect makes the tragic events that are normally just a given in the grimdark actually feel tragic. Loyalist stuff, atleast what I've read, often feels more like "only in death does duty end" repeated constantly, which contextually works, but feels less human and by extension makes things feel less tragic.

[Doom Herald]

When Angron is kidnapped by the Emperor and forced to watch his armies die.

 

That's a good one too. Thinking on it, I think the moments that stand out as most tragic are from ADB's novels. That guy is one Hell of a writer.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

The end of Praetorian of Dorn.

[WrathOfTheLion]

When Monarchia burned and we had to decide to do what we had to do.

Here we are now.

[Gederas]

The end of Void Stalker, before it's Epilogue. Especially, as Doom Herald mentioned above, Uzas' end. Just.... Damn

[Lucerne]

"All I ever wanted was the truth."

 

"Lorgar! He'll kill you!"

[Bat33.1]

Argel-tal, Erebus and especially the part where Khârn narrowly fails to kill Erebus.

[MegaVolt87]

Malcharion the war sage from the NL trilogy aka dreadnaught dad. "Are ya winning Talos?"   He was the best character there IMO. 

[Doom Herald]

Malcharion the war sage from the NL trilogy aka dreadnaught dad. "Are ya winning Talos?" He was the best character there IMO.

"...I lost my Bolter..."

"Take mine, I won't be needing it."

Edited October 26, 2020 by Doom Herald

[Snazzy]

The Saturnine assault is pretty tragic, to me.  We spent several books getting to know Horus Aximand, Tybalt Marr and the evil deeds of the Catulan Reavers, just to see them all massacred in one coup de main.

[Goreshed]

When Perturabo sat in the ashes of Olympia and realized what he had done and what his legion had done. That one spark of hope that there were some legionaries who fought back against the wrongness of it all but seeing what he had created.

[Reskin]

I cried tears of rejoicing when the Horus Heresy failed... *snicker*

[Xenith]

Yea, the end of Void Stalker for sure.

 

Otherwise, the travesty of the 4th ed GavDex. 

[Azekai]

I cried tears of rejoicing when the Horus Heresy failed... *snicker*

Failed? No, I am pretty sure the entire purpose of the heresy was to plunge the galaxy into unending war and/or kill Sanguinius.

[Llagos_Tyrant]

Can't say anything in warhammer has made me cry but there were a couple moments that hit me in the feels.

• Perturabo in the ruins of Olympia realizing what he'd done, and
  actually being glad that some of his Iron Warriors had defied him and resisted his orders or even turn on the other Iron Warriors. Really hit me as showing just how ashamed he was over it, considering his history of treatment of the IVth legion.
  
   
• Abaddon in Saturnine
  when he gets out of the Saturnine gambit, only to be distraught at how that fighting was all he wanted, and it was the pinnacle of his life - and being utterly broken that he was robbed of that death. I've always thought that warhammer 40k and the Horus Heresy has a lot of echoes of ancient Greek and Roman epics, and this in particular felt like it was a moment out of the Iliad.
  
   
• Argel Tal and Erebus
  when Erebus cuts him down. Was so glad when Khârn just straight up ruined Erebus.
  
   
• I remember Ferrox's end in Storm of Iron leaving an impact.
  I believe it was just shortly before his death that he regained some of his motivation and came out of his emotionally catatonic state, only to be annihilated by a titan, if I remember correctly.

[Snazzy]

The novel Fulgrim bored me to tears. Does that count?

[Special Officer Doofy]

 

 

I cried tears of rejoicing when the Horus Heresy failed... *snicker*

Failed? No, I am pretty sure the entire purpose of the heresy was to plunge the galaxy into unending war and/or kill Sanguinius.

Right. Pretty sure it was a success in the chaos gods eyes. Took the emperor out of commission, killed two loyalist primarchs, divided the empire, kept technology from advancing and caused more eternal strife. Not like they had feelings for Horus or the humans that worshipped them.

[jgascoine011]

Didnt really bring me to tears, but the best moment for me was angron vs girlyman.

The speach angron gives is perfect, he doesnt really care anymore, just wants to destroy as much as possible before he is destroyed himself.

Then girlyman counters with, "you are still a slave".

[MegaVolt87]

Didnt really bring me to tears, but the best moment for me was angron vs girlyman.

The speach angron gives is perfect, he doesnt really care anymore, just wants to destroy as much as possible before he is destroyed himself.

Then girlyman counters with, "you are still a slave".

Angorn got to choose his new master and bondage, that's a big difference.

[jgascoine011]

 

Didnt really bring me to tears, but the best moment for me was angron vs girlyman.

The speach angron gives is perfect, he doesnt really care anymore, just wants to destroy as much as possible before he is destroyed himself.

Then girlyman counters with, "you are still a slave".

Angorn got to choose his new master and bondage, that's a big difference.

Yess, that’s what I mean

Although I don’t think he cared about Horus, in that speech it came across to me as he was fighting for himself against the emperor.

It was a speech that really gave both sides to the story. The emperor was a dick, and the imperium was corrupt and useless...but the alternative was not much better (and worse once chaos started to show itself)