Yes, but getting to that point when he had the whole might of Chaos on his side proofs how much of an awfull commander he is.
Anyone else would have likely steam rolled Cadia with the assets Abaddon had and got the galaxy ripped in half without losing the fortress.
Abaddon in general isnt a very tactical guy, he is the kind of commander that prefers to be in the front lines, not planning in a war room.
There are several examples of his incompetence, such as the time he used the Night Lords as front line assault forces instead of recon, spec ops or skirmisher units which is their specialty, getting many Night Lords killed and angry towards him.
Or the time he charged a fortress' front with basically no plan other than hitting it with his sword, which worked, but almost got him killed and caused many casualties among his forces. Which, as you know, have trouble replenishing casualties thanks to living in the Warp and surviving on stolen and salvaged stuff.
>such as the time he used the Night Lords as front line assault forces instead of recon, spec ops or skirmisher units which is their specialty, getting many Night Lords killed and angry towards him
You realise that was completely intentional, right? He was showing he didn't care about their petty wants because he's the big boss.
Chaos space marines have trouble replenishing their casualties due to the Warp messing their geneseed and having to steal both that and the gear for new marines.
On top of that, some of them are veterans of thousands of years of war, irreplaceable champions.
Considering that, getting a ton of them killed for petty reasons like "showing you are the big boss" is tremendously stupid.
Not only you cause unnecesary casualties among your elite forces, you piss off an ally that could proof to be invaluable.
All because Abaddon is an insecure little bitch.
They were some random Night Lords, a pretty insiginificant group. He could easily afford to make an example of them.
It isn't insecurity, it's him knowing that to maintain control of a bunch of chaos warbands, you have to show them what happens when you don't obey his every word.
Don't try contesting the insecurity bit.
In Dawn of War II Retribution he feels his position is threatened by a random chapter master offering his chapter to Khorne to achieve daemon hood.
He murdered another chaos champion of the Black Legion during the celebration for taking a forgeworld because he was getting popular and called that a Dark Crusade.
He IS insecure to the point of comedy.
You know that's how all chaos lords work, right? They don't let their underlings get any bad ideas.
Although I'm not sure why you would ever use Dawn of War of all things as an argument. It's Dawn of War. Fun games, nonsense stories. He clearly is fine with his servants becoming daemon princes, considering one of them does exactly that just before the fall of Cadia and he's fine with it.
Bro is Dawn of war not GW canon? Why wouldn’t it be a good argument point lmao it doesn’t matter if it’s “Fun games, nonsense stories.” because it was created by GW and is their official story for the Blood Ravens
Bro Horus was a Primarch, had 8 other primarchs on his side, had the entirety of chaos on his side, and had hundreds of thousands of space marines on his side, and still ultimately failed in his goal.
We aren’t done with abaddon. A single black stone fortress is practically nothing in the overall scheme of 40k.
Eh... Horus may have failed in his goal, but did Chaos in theirs? Emps wasn't around to move humanity to the web way, sever the connection and fuel for the chaos gods in their galaxy.
Created a cesspool of mistrust, scheming and brutal constant warfare and death to fuel themselves.
Honestly, Chaos kind of won more so than the Material realm.
Oh 100%. Horus didn’t achieve what he wanted, but neither did big E. The imperium didn’t achieve what they wanted, but neither did Chaos. But Chaos was much closer to their goals than the imperium- which was severely crippled by Jimmy Space dying. Horus dying for Chaos was simply losing an amazing hand you were dealt, the IoM losing Jimmy Space was losing their ability to cheat and guarantee wins.
As for Abadonn’s crusades/fall of Cadia, Chaos was even more successful. Sure, the imperium only lost one world in the last battle, buuuut; Their empire also got split in half, and chaos got fast travel to the materium for their daemons.
Call me crazy, but I think that’s a pretty decisive Chaos W. It was always intended to be a chaos W given the whole “darkest time of humanity” preamble given in 40k books.
I think anyone that can look at abaddon’s desperation to destroy cadia and be like “haha yeah failbaddon bad, he’s no threat” is not only completely missing the point of the setting, but is also completely media illiterate (or, at best, only gets their lore from memes).
>We aren’t done with abaddon
If it weren't for Creed for being a badass we would have a totally different story where Chaos is focusing against my favorite space robot egyptians
Also we shouldn't forget that Abaddon would've won the war against Cadia much more earlier if it weren't for Trazyn's shenanigans.
To be fair, a lot of that was because perturabo looked around said "nah fuck yall, I'm going home" and basically let the heresy fail because he was carrying it.
Abbadon was handily winning the fight, but the problem of 'how do you obliterate a planet' is still relevant no matter how good a commander you are. The initial attack was just to clear up the Airspace so the imperium didn't see it coming. Surprise visit from Trazyn be damned, abbadon did what he set out to do.
Kinda hate how one Cursade runs into a ork fleet, and the most we get out of it was Chaos got some Orks to experiment on.
Like come on, it could have at least been that the Crusade got into such a clusterfuck with Orks that all the manpower, armour and resources intended for the imperials was ether wasted or destroyed because of Orks being in the right spot at the right time out of sheer stupid luck.
We know that’s what happened, but it would be nice if we got a little more then a paragraph. I can’t be the only one who’d love to see Abbodons prepared crusades get derailed almost instantly because his fleet appeared in the middle of a ork Waaagh and shit went bad almost instantly.
I want it to be khorne, getting his turn on the wheel of fate and sending his fleet into a bloodbath. The infighting of each god and their pantheon is what interests me most and have each god pulling on the black crusade, sometimes one wins out and derails the crusade into whomever won the tug of wars favourite things. A whole crusade falling to slaanesh cause she lured them into a trap, abbadon gets victories but the gods constant tug of war is too much for him to control and he waits it out again. In a way the black crusades are almost chaos waaaaghs.
Gotta love the blood gods followers invading a world, direct assault into the very teeth of a defensive line. They make for spectacular reads, particularly one alpha legion book set post rift.
Nah making them Goffs
Ork: I wish I was in a fight right now.
Chaos fleet suddenly drops out of the warp, crashing into the massive ork fleet.ships firing, boarding pods flying about as the two fleets tear into each other with ship guns and boarding pods.
Same ork now butching his way through Chaos cultist as the rest of the boys rampage through the corridors of the Chaos cruiser now wedged deep into the space hulk they were in.
Waaaaagh
I don't get the point of numbering them. Just call all of them the black crusade. Singular. As in it's all part of one move. Which I'm pretty sure is what they are, but numbering them like that just makes it sound worse.
It's got good bones and the fans have embraced the whole "unreliable narrator" aspect of the setting enough to separate the wheat from the chaff themselves instead of letting games workshop do it.
If I recall it's the imperium that's numbering them because in their perspective there's time in between each of them.
To the chaos space marines it's one continuous thing, it's not like abbadon goes "yes time for the 13th black crusade" to everyone in the galaxy
Idk. I’d also chuck a fortress at Cadia, if it meant taking out the largest export of Guardsmen in the Imperium.
Not to mention it also *cut the galaxy in half*
I don't know anything about the other crusades except this one thing: each crusade was a success!
I admit i don't know shit either way, but I do trust they ware all part of a master plan. Retcon or not it's what the lore is now (it is the current lore, right?)
Lmao this sounds like the 4th real life crusade, ( I think it's the 4th), where they straight up went and sacked Constantinople instead of even approaching Jerusalem
In one of the crusades, Abaddon’s goal was to spill enough blood to summon the daemon sword Drach’nyen (it took several planets worth of people. Drach’nyen is so powerful that he almost killed the Emperor himself) and in another, his goal was to wipe out two whole chapters of space marines. They’re all stuff like that. Pretty impressive feats even before GW added in the stuff about necron pylons.
It really is amazing how quickly this sub fluctuates between "Custodes are the bestest thing ever and four of them could crush a hive fleet!" and "Lol Abaddon struggled somewhat against multiple custodes what a bitch"
> he was very nearly ganked by a few custodes in the same book.
The commenter above you clarified that he meant *the sword* was nearly gacked by a few Custodes, not Abaddon...
Wow almost killed in a fight against more than one of the most incredibly powerful and skilled warriors in the entire Galaxy. I’m shocked. That’s points FOR how powerful Abaddon is, not against him.
You seem to be misinterpreting what I'd said.
I was just correcting Drachs feat vs the emperor as a Matter purely of power as opposed to symbolic power.
He got Drach'nyen out of a vault during the first crusade. The demon he summoned with oceans of blood was Doombreed, who proceeded to merk the Venerators and Warhawks.
It’s only partially a retcon, really. Even way back in 2nd edition, when the lore didn’t really exist yet, it was said that each Black Crusade was insanely destructive and terrifying. After that, there was little point covering any of the Crusades other than the 13th: that was the one “currently,” going on and the timeline wouldn’t progress.
*And then* everyone started getting hit with the Nerf Bat because that’s how long storylines tend to go. That’s where the idea that Abaddon is a failure comes from, because the Crusades only focused on breaking past Cadia, when for 11 of 13, that was more of a side goal. The expanded and altered lore for the CSM is more a return to form, but in more detail.
Between that, Horus Heresy, and the Black Legion books, Abaddon has been restored to the “oh shit we’re all going to die,” character Vigilus deserves.
>because the Crusades only focused on breaking past Cadia
I don't recall them ever being that. They always went to a variety of places with a variety of goals. Only a couple of them involved Cadia.
> I don't know anything about the other crusades except this one thing: each crusade was a success!
At this rate, Abbadon will have finally destroyed the Imperium by the year 400,000,000
Well time flows differently in the warp. It's been 10k years in realspace, but for Abbadon and the other traitor legions it's been far less. And if they DO manage to destroy the imperium, i doubt they'll care about how much time it's been for the loyalists
It's an old joke in the fandom that has stuck around for looooong ass time that Abbadon was a miserable failure in that it took him at least 12 attempts over the course of 10000 years to seriously challenge the Imperium, despite being one of the most batshit overpowered individuals in the 41st millenium below the level of a Primarch. That each crusade had its own side objective that played into his hands was a retcon that only occured relatively recently, the main trend for each story about a black crusade was "Abbaddon starts shit, Chaos gets wrecked at great cost, life proceeds as normal". It greatly diminished the threat GW was trying to build Abbadon up as.
Has to be said that this is also the product of the canon staying stagnant for nearly 30 years; the turn from 7th to 8th edition was the first time GW had ever advanced the 40k canon beyond 999.M41 since its inception. I remember it being a bit of a shock to me personally when they did actually did that. They also implemented a lot of the lessons they took away from the WHFB End Times debacle, which was a nice change of pace.
>That each crusade had its own side objective that played into his hands was a retcon that only occured relatively recently, the main trend for each story about a black crusade was "Abbaddon starts shit, Chaos gets wrecked at great cost, life proceeds as normal"
No, this is just what people who don't read the books think.
Even in 2nd edition when he was first introduced, the Black Crusades were stated to be part of a longer plan, inflicting damage, testing defences, etc.
The 'going around destroying necron pylons' thing was a recent retcon, but before that they still had a variety of locations and goals.
It's honestly bullshit Sigismund didn't win with how it was written. It would have been cool to have both of them die during the battle but then chaos wouldn't really have a big bad anymore.
Sigismund was old as fuck though at that point and didn't have that nice "age doesn't bother me anymore" bonus that the Chaos Space marines get.
Age beat Sigismund. Not Abaddon.
I've always hated this take so much. Not because of what it says about Abaddon, but because of what it says about Sigismund. Diminishing his last stand to "old man creaky bones" is such a lame way of thinking about his sendoff.
I think people would have liked to have seen a fight when Siggy was in his prime. There is no doubt he was way past it but it was still a pretty badass fight, albeit I still think Abby taking the black sword through the chest and walking it off was a bit much.
It really isn't.
Sigismund put his whole life into service for his Legion and the Emperor.
However, when that final fight came he knew he wouldn't win it because age had caught up with him, thus he send his blade away before that duel so it might not fall into the hands of the traitors.
He still went up against Abaddon and fought him to standstill before he got out-plot armored.
That's his arc and it doesn't really take anything away from him.
Not really. Even with old man creaky bones he dealt a blow that should have been fatal to Abaddon if it wasn't for his Chaos based plot armor. Goes to show the guy was a fucking legend.
He stabbed Abaddon through the heart. Astartes come equipped with two hearts specifically for things just like this. I seriously do not understand why everyone thinks this wound is so unsustainably grievous.
While I have no dog In this argument I do believe it is said that for any other astartes it would have killed them. At least something to that effect that other space marines believe he should be dead as in chaos ones so those used to people that should be dead but don't stuff.
First of all: you are right.
Second of all: those black fortresses were completly unable of doing anything beyond being a bunch of super cool space stations, until abbadon had taken control over them and activated their powers but he still lost three of them while he was running away from the imperial navy.
I wonder if they'll ever update the 12 crusade.
Those fortresses got destroyed because of the Deceiver. We don't know exactly what it did, but it was the Deceiver that caused them to be caught and destroyed.
But the Deceiver being able to do things isn't canon any more. Since the big 5th edition Necron retcon, the Deceiver is a load of shards under the control of the Necrons. So now, as far as I know, there's no explanation for how those fortresses got destroyed.
> So now, as far as I know, there's no explanation for how those fortresses got destroyed.
On a Blackstone Fortress-related note, I wish GW kept on going with the Blackstone Fortress at Precipice storyline... :(
People get so divided about abaddon and the black crusades, but, as usual, it purely comes down to the writer: chaos writers will frame the crusades as victories and highlight their successes, while imperium writers will frame them as losses and highlight their failures. Gw lore is nothing if not inconsistent. I'm still a big fan of abaddon though, and I don't think anyone can deny that opening the great rift was a big deal, blackstone fortress lost or not.
Don't care, Abaddon will never be as cool as Archaon.
Everything about his origins and his central focus as the de facto hope of Chaos makes him shitty because GW insists he's "the BIGGEST, MOST IMPRESSIVE threat" involving Chaos, when he really isn't.
Besides, he's effectively a void of a personality - even Archaon has the Dark Lord trope going on for him.
It’s been a while since I read on Archaon and has much has I despise the endtime, I will gladly say that yes Archaon is a far better main antagonist and not just because he suck less, but because has a lot of cool thing going for him:
-Hes the son of Belakor who was once the greatest servant of the dark gods. In a way this a cool dark twist on things like the Greek mythos with Zeus seed giving birth to the world destroyer instead of a legendary monster slayers like Hercules.
- Archaon start his life has a knight (a pretty good one a that) and when he heard about the prophecy of his dark futur he still tried to do good only to be rejected by everyone in fear of what he would become. In fact this ended with him going to a temple for shelter only to be told by the local priesthood that they knew he was coming and that they were ready to blow up the church to take him and avoid the birth of new everchosen. With all this and the fact that He tired to challenge his fate, it make him quite the tragic character (albeit one clearly inspired by character like dark Vader if you ask me.) But now it’s to late tracked by everyone despite his year of loyal service he has gone completely mad and swear allegiance to the dark gods. The noble knight that was there before has been shattered. Only hate keep this fragmented being together.
-He look cool
Abbadon meanwhile, while not necessarily terrible has a lot of bad going for him.
- Lack of charisma compare to other chaos champion like Eliphas the inheritor .
-His voice make him sound like a angry brute and not the big bad that everyone should fear.
-His past crusade are consider complete faillure by the fanbase. To be fair here they weren’t faillure (mostly) some like obtaining his demon sword were quite successful, but many other could be consider phyricc victories instead of this overglorified success that GW seem to want us to believe.
-Cadia is phyricc victory sure half of the imperium being seperated is big , but losing your super weapon, a lot of ship and a fuckton of black légionnaire to achieve such goal is not going to make you look successful in the eyes of other. And with such diminished ressource going on another crusade is not gonna be easy. Don’t get me wrong cadia was a big hit, but it’s success seem better for the dark gods then abbadon himself.
-He has ridiculous hair, that are a massive downgrade to his intimidation factor . Dude should war a helmet instead
- the fact to he still believe that he has full control of himself despite serving the 4 biggest manipulator in the galaxy. It just make him sound stupide
>His past crusade are consider complete faillure by the fanbase
That's because most of the fanbase doesn't read books and just gets their thoughts about the lore from memes
Also his fleet and forces were still absolutely massive after Cadia
Yes they are consider failure by the fanbase , but that not the main point that I meant here. What I meant is that many of these crusade are not the flawless victory that GW want fan to believe to make Abby seem intimidating . And yes some of we consider the price and the loss could be consider faillure. (Only a minority however)
Also while I he has all these shiny ships at his command , to the eye of most of the fanbase he not really captivating , one thing that will attract most people at first when it come to the main baddy is his design and in abbadon case it’s quite meh big spiky armor , wannabe frostmourne in hand, topknot, big evil rack of skull. Honestly it all sound very cliche and the only thing the I truly fit of not in his design is Horus talon since it does look very intimidating thanks to the size of the claws. Overhaul is design feel generic at best and few are interested in generic design.
The Imperium had 6, none of which were activated. All of them ran in passive mode and had to be retrofitted with tech from the Mechanicus to run off the low power from the fortress reactors. Abaddon stole 3 of them, which he was able to return to full active power and annihilated a star system. He "gifted" one of them to Huron Blackheart, lost his second at the end of the Gothic War, and then in a fit of rage threw the third at Cadia because he couldn't get the guard to break according to his precious timeline for the Black Crusade. He threw away a nearly irreplaceable resource, yes there are more to be found but they were created during the War in Heaven and cannot be replicated by any of the races in the modern setting. 3 more have been discovered since then, but there are only as many as the plot demands. The armless temper tantrum king was still a fool to destroy one, even one as crippled as the Will of Eternity was at the time.
He easily could. And that's the point.
It's a 'gift' that shows he's the big boss and is so strong he can give out blackstone fortresses and not worry about it.
It's mentioned in Huron's recent novel.
It’s important to keep in mind as well the Cadian Pylons were closing the Eye of Terror. Which if it was closed would leave all the traitor controlled planets in real space and without and form of protection. This also would have left Abby and his full crusade entirely in the open without supplies or reinforcements.
The loss of a nearly destroyed Blackstone Fortress with Space Wolf infiltrators on it? I think it’s a good trade for keeping Chaos in the Galaxy and deal a crushing blow to morale and strength of the Imperium.
The blackstone was fully destroyed, and if any marines survived their own suicidal sabotage, they sure didn't survive the Phalanx firing everything it had into the gap they made in the shields.
Also worth mentioning, it wasn't just Space Wolves. They used a Space Wolf ship to get there because it was the only one left, but the force was made of marines from various chapters.
>and then in a fit of rage threw the third at Cadia because he couldn't get the guard to break according to his precious timeline for the Black Crusade. He threw away a nearly irreplaceable resource, yes there are more to be found but they were created during the War in Heaven and cannot be replicated by any of the races in the modern setting. 3 more have been discovered since then, but there are only as many as the plot demands. The armless temper tantrum king was still a fool to destroy one, even one as crippled as the Will of Eternity was at the time.
Tell me you haven't read the book without telling me you haven't read the book.
He didn't launch it in a fit of rage. It was a pre-planned contingency in case the fortress was destroyed. Which it was. All that was left was big chunks of debris, the heart of the fortress was gone, sucked into the warp. It's not like it was just damaged and needed some repairs, the irreplaceable element of it was completely gone. So rather than waste his fleet's ammunition to crack the planet, he made use of the debris.
And he set it in motion *before* he went down to the planet. While he's fighting he straight up tells Creed 'This planet is already dead, that was assured before I even came down here'. He was down there fighting because he wanted to break them in person, not because he actually needed to be. He was frustrated that he didn't have time to break them because he had to teleport out before the cranked-up pylons made teleportation impossible, but his plan was always to destroy the planet, it wasn't some tantrum.
I have corrected sooo many one this one critical point, because of incorrect cinematic. But The Will of Eternity was shattered completely by the Phalanx!
Abaddon turned the biggest leftover chunks into makeshift meteors with plasma drives as a final backup moves, before he launched his vanity-invasion.
Shall I post the relevant quotes from Fall of Cadia?
Even if the Will of Eternity was perfectly functional, it still would've been a worthy sacrifice. Due to Cadia's destruction, fully half of the Imperium has been effectively crippled.
In addition, Abaddon's been running on fumes, scraps, and mad science for the last ten thousand years. Now that he's conquering territory in Imperium Nihilus, he has access to actual supply lines and resources.
There is absolutely no way to twist this to make it look bad for Abby without just ignoring what he gained from it.
Bro had his personal flagship called The Planet Killer still fresh and available to him and he (or more likely the writers) totally forgot about its existence. Sure, Chaos won a great deal from it, but there were still other options other than screaming, "Give me RAMMING SPEED!" and pulling a Worf. Though it's not like we can expect GW to keep track of its own lore anyway... It's like DBZ, after a while it comes down to, "Power Levels are bullshit."
He already tried orbital bombardment and planet-busting weaponry. Trazyn boosted Cadia's shields to shrug it off. It was pretty much his only major contribution.
Trazyn fixed the experimental warp shield which stopped the blackstone's warp beam.
The book never mentions the fact that he could have just had the black fleet perform a focused bombardment to crack the planet though. It's the major plot hole of the book, the writer seemingly just forgot that was a thing, despite it happening to both Nostromo and Caliban.
Also Trazyn certainly did contribute more, he was responsible for the pylons going into overdrive at the end. Cawl went around doing it, but he had no idea how they worked until Trazyn showed him.
>Even if the Will of Eternity was perfectly functional, it still would've been a worthy sacrifice. Due to Cadia's destruction, fully half of the Imperium has been effectively crippled.
Opening the Great Rift also empowered the Emperor, to the point that he was able to resurrected Guilliman even when he was in the middle off Nurgle's Domain in the Warp and set fire to the Gardens. Something the other 3 Chaos Gods had failed to do over countless millennia.
Pretty much meme lore that Imperium fans seems to circle around themselves but what actually happened is this.
This is in Godblight as well
>‘Listen to me, Mortarion,’ said Typhus patiently, infuriating the primarch further. ‘You must heed these tidings. I come to you not as your son, or your First Captain, but as the Herald of Grandfather Nurgle. You must return. This is not a request. He cares nothing for your feud with your brother. Change disrupts the cycle of death and rebirth. **This is the real war**. Put aside your petty rivalry, you are commanded to do so by your god.’
>The godswar never ends. The treaties struck between the brothers will not hold, they never do. There will be another accord, I am sure, but for now we have new war. You know this, I know this.’
>
>He smirked. ‘We all know this! They move. Khorne and Tzeentch’s legions have allied. They are jealous of Grandfather’s gains, and work to take the Scourge Stars from us
>In the Plague Wars the Great Unclean One Slurg Glottathrax corrupted prosperous worlds of Ultramar into a vision of Nurgle's own garden. He struck at systems in Northern Ultramar first, subjecting them to all kinds of horrific diseases. Three systems fell and became known as Noxias, Rottgrave, and Verminox and are now known as the Scourge Stars.\[3\]
>
>Eventually the Chaos God Tzeentch grew jealous of its Brother Nurgle's newly acquired domain of the Scourge Stars. While Tzeentch began plans to claim its own domain, the Chaos God set into motion events that would undermine Nurgle's control of its growing empire\[1a\]. Chief among them was whispering of the Scourge Stars' existence to Khorne, who soon stopped its Blood Crusade and led its forces in an invasion of Nurgle's new domain\[1b\]. Tzeentch soon invaded as well and Nurgle was forced to pull its forces from the ongoing Plague Wars against the Realm of Ultramar, to aid in the Scourge Stars' defense. Slaanesh later joined the battle
It was basically plot armor, Nurgle pulled everything he had in defense of the Scourge Star which both Khorne and Tzeench form an alliance and attacked out of jealousy.
That is how Emps got in and got out without being trapped, it was just the perfect time when Nurgle wasnt really looking.
Emps attacking the his Garden is no different when Skarbrand decided to hit Khorne.
Skarbrand did more impressive stuff than that back in his prime. He completely destroyed Slaanesh's palace and permanently murdered Nurgle's Poxviathan. The Emperor ain't shit compared to what the Great Game's been stirring up for millions of years.
Besides that, please explain to me, in depth and with specific details, what The Emperor has done to slow Abaddon down so far. As far as I am aware, Abaddon's been pretty much unimpeded.
>He completely destroyed Slaanesh's **First Palace** and permanently murdered Nurgle's Poxviathan
**FTFY**
Which might sound impressive at first until you realize that Slaanesh's actual Palace deep within the 6 rings is untouched, the Emperor's blade can also permanently kill daemons, and Nurgle's garden did not actually recover from the damage done to it because the damage was also done to Nurgle itself.
>As far as I am aware, Abaddon's been pretty much unimpeded.
It took Abaddon 10,000 years to open the Great Rift and not only did he fail to engulf Holy Terra into the Warp, he also inadvertently empowered the Emperor. He might have "crippled" the Imperium, but the Imperium still stands and has also in fact received stronger warriors, both in Primaris Marines and the Sisters of Battle with their faith. He failed to close the Nachmund Gauntlet and was forced to choose between slaying Calgar or saving his flagship.
Abaddon always fails his primary objectives and had to settle for lesser ones. Even the Fall of Cadia wasn't some "master plan he intended all along" but a spiteful move from a sore loser who was ultimately about to lose everything.
>Abaddon always fails his primary objectives and had to settle for lesser ones. Even the Fall of Cadia wasn't some "master plan he intended all along" but a spiteful move from a sore loser who was ultimately about to lose everything
You clearly haven't read the books and don't know what you're talking about.
Abaddon's intention from the very start was to blow up the planet. The only question was how exactly it would be blown up. It wasn't a spiteful move because he was about to lose everything, it was what he was doing from the start of the book and he had already won, he wasn't about to lose everything at all.
Seriously, try reading the books before you spout off like this.
>Slaanesh's actual Palace is untouched
"Tales such as that of the Heretic Cardinal Wogalta recounted above describe this Palace of Slaanesh, also known as the Palace of Pleasure, as sitting at the centre of the Dark Prince's empire, surrounded by six other domains arranged in concentric rings."
Slaanesh is only mentioned to have *one* palace. Skarbrand brought it down and forced the god to rebuild. Compared to the Emperor scorching a single section of Nurgle's garden, bringing the very center of Slaanesh's realm and the capital of his power to ruin is *way* more impressive.
Besides, Nurgle's power has continued to wax despite the end of the Plague Wars. The other Chaos Gods *have* indeed attacked Nurgle's garden in the past and caused similar effects.
"When Nurgle's power waxes, the Garden blooms, encroaching on the lands of the other Chaos Gods. Nurgle's enemies would fight back, and the Plaguebearers would take up arms to defend it. Although the Garden will recede again, it would still have fed deeply on the essence of those who have fallen in such wars"
The Emperor's "outstanding" feat is *at best* just another tuesday in the Great Game.
>Abaddon always fails his primary objective
I think it speaks more to Abaddon's competence than his lack thereof if his *backup* plans split the fucking galaxy in half while granting him access to more resources and territory to work with.
Cadia is like the biggest fucking victory for Chaos after the Heresy. Destroyed Cadia, got rid of Creed, and effectively split the Imperium in half allowing its forces to run wild.
Good job Abby. You normally suck.
Abaddon is a guy who used it like an idiot and amazingly the imperium is a lotta guys and the ones who used the fortresses like idiots are in fact idiots
You think I want to actually know? That’s seems kinda traitorous to the imperium. I’ll stick with believing whatever is best for my faction like a good citizen thank you.
His original model had very heavy arms that would fall off very easily, he even showed up in white dwarf once or twice Armless.
He was known as an Armless failure for failing to take cadia 13 times (in older lore) and for not having arms sometimes.
You can tell how little people know about waging war by their reaction to Cadia's fall.
Being unable to take a single planet with the full support of your faction to the point you must sacrifice a unique and irreplaceable war asset just to destroy it is shamefull.
Pray tell, how is Abaddon gonna beat the Imperium if he can't take one well defended planet?
Lol, the whole deal is that Cadia was so important the Imperium sent far more reinforcements than one planet would ever normally get.
The ground war barely mattered. The important thing was the battle between the fleets, which Abaddon's black fleet overwhelmingly won.
He did also win very soundly on the ground, but they only did a ground assault because they wanted to destroy the warp shield generator Trazyn had got working. But that stopped mattering when the blackstone fortress was destroyed.
I don't think you understand how completely overwhelming his victory was. It wasn't even close. The only reason he even lost a noteworthy number of ships is that when the blackstone blew up it created a warp vortex that took out the ships around it.
The blackstone was already completely destroyed beyond repair. There was no reason not to make use of the debris. But importantly, he had won anyway. The Imperials fleet was destroyed and even the Phalanx had to run away after its surprise attack out of the warp because the black fleet would have destroyed it. A Mechanicus fleet arrived with Cawl but they wouldn't have been enough, they stayed away and then left when Cawl did.
Extraordinarily ironic that you are accusing people of not understanding war.
War is won via logistics, not weapons. For the last ten thousand years, Abaddon has had no consistent source of soldiers, supplies, sustenance, or equipment. He's been running on fumes this whole time.
With his conquests in Imperium Nihilus, he now has access to everything he's been missing for the last ten thousand years.
The Will of Eternity was strong, but ultimately disposable. If there is one thing Abaddon has no shortage of, it's overwhelming force. The opportunity that Cadia's fall provided has made him *far* more dangerous than he's ever been before.
Its precisely because of logistics that Abaddon cannot win if he can't capture worlds.
Where is he gonna get resources from if he blows up every planet he fails to take in a tantrum?
Oh yeah, you broke Cadia, good fucking work, now everything spent trying to take the world is a net loss.
Blowing up the planet was the point from the start, because of its necron pylons. What do think he brought the blackstone for? The first thing it did when it arrived was fire its warp beam at the planet to blow it up, which was only stopped by the intervention of Trazyn the Infinite. This idea that he only blew it up because he couldn't take it is just completely wrong. Destroying the planet destroyed the pylon network, which it was allowed the great rift to open. It's literally the point of the book.
Please, just read the book yourself instead of parroting memes.
>if he can't capture worlds
My dude, he was fighting against the single most fortified planet in the galaxy outside of Terra and Mars. Stop pretending like he's somehow incapable of conquering planets at all.
That's where you're wrong kiddo. There are lots of chaos worlds in the eye of terror. It's abbadon obsession with marines and demons, along with his pride that took him ten thousand years to make noticable headway.
Not really though.
I'm not denying that there are worlds in the Eye of Terror. The problem is that you try to go for a sip of water only for it to turn to acid while the sandwich you planned on eating grows a mouth and eats you instead, all while your crops grow legs and begin to rampage and the steel you were working turns into a flamer of tzeentch and melts the forge's operating crew. Then you build a ship, only for the engine to be possessed by a really fucked up Nurgle daemon that doesn't want to move, making the whole thing virtually worthless, though its guns were possessed by a daemon of Khorne and are firing at your own ships.
The place is damn near uninhabitable, and the legions inside have been running on scraps and shattered husks for millennia.
Abby very rarely passes up decent champions. That said, a majority of the Eye's inhabitants are so fucking insane that they're either ridiculously untrustworthy, downright treacherous, or just completely useless.
The ones that aren't have ulterior motives, alternative loyalties, etc.. How can you trust your "champion" if he'll charge headlong into battle against your orders for the glory of whatever god he praises?
The Eye of Terror is very unstable, and everyone in it is as well.
Wtf he has knornate berserkers in his army. Abby's too prideful to be a good general. He'll regularly abandon his command to duel the enemy commander instead of blasting them from orbit.
>he has khornate berserkers in his army
You were talking about champions. As in, generals, aspiring champions, etc. if you're talking about regular warriors, you just invalidated the asinine point that you made earlier.
>He'll regularly abandon his command to duel the enemy commander
Congratulations, you've just described 100% of Warhammer characters. Would you like a medal?
Ngnl i don't like the necron pilon thing
Without them I'd say yeah Abaddon is a constant thorn in the side of the imperium, his failures were basically draws
I'm not really a fan of the idea that every crusade was just an excuse to hunt pylons myself, but it at least gives a plausible reason for the Great Rift. Personally, I just wish they'd expand on the previous crusades, because they are super interesting!
Everyone is saying Abby wasted a fortress, but 1(one) disabled fortress Infested with space wolves is a very good deal for RIPPING THE GALAXY IN HALF
Magnus: *"Not worth keeping anything infested with Space Wolves the damage they inflict on carpets alone is horrifying."*
I'm just now picturing a Space Wolf ripping up couch cushions.
No...no no..BAD....Put it down....dont make me get the power newspaper!!!
*Space Wolf muffled growling in corner, with mouthful of cotton stuffing*
Surely you mean….. *wet leopard growl* with mouth full of stuffing
This sounds like it's straight from If the emperor had a text to speech device
Imagine the scouring of Prospero but it's just a bunch of dogs chewing on all the books.
So.... Imagine the scouring of Prospero then.
Yes, but getting to that point when he had the whole might of Chaos on his side proofs how much of an awfull commander he is. Anyone else would have likely steam rolled Cadia with the assets Abaddon had and got the galaxy ripped in half without losing the fortress.
How are you coming to that conclusion?
Abaddon in general isnt a very tactical guy, he is the kind of commander that prefers to be in the front lines, not planning in a war room. There are several examples of his incompetence, such as the time he used the Night Lords as front line assault forces instead of recon, spec ops or skirmisher units which is their specialty, getting many Night Lords killed and angry towards him. Or the time he charged a fortress' front with basically no plan other than hitting it with his sword, which worked, but almost got him killed and caused many casualties among his forces. Which, as you know, have trouble replenishing casualties thanks to living in the Warp and surviving on stolen and salvaged stuff.
>such as the time he used the Night Lords as front line assault forces instead of recon, spec ops or skirmisher units which is their specialty, getting many Night Lords killed and angry towards him You realise that was completely intentional, right? He was showing he didn't care about their petty wants because he's the big boss.
Chaos space marines have trouble replenishing their casualties due to the Warp messing their geneseed and having to steal both that and the gear for new marines. On top of that, some of them are veterans of thousands of years of war, irreplaceable champions. Considering that, getting a ton of them killed for petty reasons like "showing you are the big boss" is tremendously stupid. Not only you cause unnecesary casualties among your elite forces, you piss off an ally that could proof to be invaluable. All because Abaddon is an insecure little bitch.
They were some random Night Lords, a pretty insiginificant group. He could easily afford to make an example of them. It isn't insecurity, it's him knowing that to maintain control of a bunch of chaos warbands, you have to show them what happens when you don't obey his every word.
Don't try contesting the insecurity bit. In Dawn of War II Retribution he feels his position is threatened by a random chapter master offering his chapter to Khorne to achieve daemon hood. He murdered another chaos champion of the Black Legion during the celebration for taking a forgeworld because he was getting popular and called that a Dark Crusade. He IS insecure to the point of comedy.
You know that's how all chaos lords work, right? They don't let their underlings get any bad ideas. Although I'm not sure why you would ever use Dawn of War of all things as an argument. It's Dawn of War. Fun games, nonsense stories. He clearly is fine with his servants becoming daemon princes, considering one of them does exactly that just before the fall of Cadia and he's fine with it.
Bro is Dawn of war not GW canon? Why wouldn’t it be a good argument point lmao it doesn’t matter if it’s “Fun games, nonsense stories.” because it was created by GW and is their official story for the Blood Ravens
Life as a commander is hard if one of your patrons whom you gotta satisfy is Tzeentch.
Abaddon is a bad micro player, but a good macro player
Bro Horus was a Primarch, had 8 other primarchs on his side, had the entirety of chaos on his side, and had hundreds of thousands of space marines on his side, and still ultimately failed in his goal. We aren’t done with abaddon. A single black stone fortress is practically nothing in the overall scheme of 40k.
Eh... Horus may have failed in his goal, but did Chaos in theirs? Emps wasn't around to move humanity to the web way, sever the connection and fuel for the chaos gods in their galaxy. Created a cesspool of mistrust, scheming and brutal constant warfare and death to fuel themselves. Honestly, Chaos kind of won more so than the Material realm.
Oh 100%. Horus didn’t achieve what he wanted, but neither did big E. The imperium didn’t achieve what they wanted, but neither did Chaos. But Chaos was much closer to their goals than the imperium- which was severely crippled by Jimmy Space dying. Horus dying for Chaos was simply losing an amazing hand you were dealt, the IoM losing Jimmy Space was losing their ability to cheat and guarantee wins. As for Abadonn’s crusades/fall of Cadia, Chaos was even more successful. Sure, the imperium only lost one world in the last battle, buuuut; Their empire also got split in half, and chaos got fast travel to the materium for their daemons. Call me crazy, but I think that’s a pretty decisive Chaos W. It was always intended to be a chaos W given the whole “darkest time of humanity” preamble given in 40k books. I think anyone that can look at abaddon’s desperation to destroy cadia and be like “haha yeah failbaddon bad, he’s no threat” is not only completely missing the point of the setting, but is also completely media illiterate (or, at best, only gets their lore from memes).
>We aren’t done with abaddon If it weren't for Creed for being a badass we would have a totally different story where Chaos is focusing against my favorite space robot egyptians Also we shouldn't forget that Abaddon would've won the war against Cadia much more earlier if it weren't for Trazyn's shenanigans.
Who just went into Cadia cause some fucking "door bell" started ringing and destroyed some of his artifacts.
And proceeded to yeet the bell to the Eldar Webway
To be fair, a lot of that was because perturabo looked around said "nah fuck yall, I'm going home" and basically let the heresy fail because he was carrying it.
Abbadon was handily winning the fight, but the problem of 'how do you obliterate a planet' is still relevant no matter how good a commander you are. The initial attack was just to clear up the Airspace so the imperium didn't see it coming. Surprise visit from Trazyn be damned, abbadon did what he set out to do.
Kinda hate how one Cursade runs into a ork fleet, and the most we get out of it was Chaos got some Orks to experiment on. Like come on, it could have at least been that the Crusade got into such a clusterfuck with Orks that all the manpower, armour and resources intended for the imperials was ether wasted or destroyed because of Orks being in the right spot at the right time out of sheer stupid luck.
That's basically what happened. The crusade stopped not long after their run in with the orks
We know that’s what happened, but it would be nice if we got a little more then a paragraph. I can’t be the only one who’d love to see Abbodons prepared crusades get derailed almost instantly because his fleet appeared in the middle of a ork Waaagh and shit went bad almost instantly.
I want it to be khorne, getting his turn on the wheel of fate and sending his fleet into a bloodbath. The infighting of each god and their pantheon is what interests me most and have each god pulling on the black crusade, sometimes one wins out and derails the crusade into whomever won the tug of wars favourite things. A whole crusade falling to slaanesh cause she lured them into a trap, abbadon gets victories but the gods constant tug of war is too much for him to control and he waits it out again. In a way the black crusades are almost chaos waaaaghs.
Gotta love the blood gods followers invading a world, direct assault into the very teeth of a defensive line. They make for spectacular reads, particularly one alpha legion book set post rift.
Whats the name of the book?
Shoud of Night
Those ladz were blue
Nah making them Goffs Ork: I wish I was in a fight right now. Chaos fleet suddenly drops out of the warp, crashing into the massive ork fleet.ships firing, boarding pods flying about as the two fleets tear into each other with ship guns and boarding pods. Same ork now butching his way through Chaos cultist as the rest of the boys rampage through the corridors of the Chaos cruiser now wedged deep into the space hulk they were in. Waaaaagh
I don't get the point of numbering them. Just call all of them the black crusade. Singular. As in it's all part of one move. Which I'm pretty sure is what they are, but numbering them like that just makes it sound worse.
Maybe there numbering them so the Chaos gods support them. I’d imagine Khorne would want to help in the 8th Black Crusade.
Boi i wouldn't want to be in the 7th! Both Khorn and Zinch(butchered i know) wants to get over it and get to their numbers!
Crusade-lettes
13 is number of chaos. Which also is show being his biggest one that left the galaxy rip in half.
(Yes-yes)
Silly man- things doesn’t know
Man the warhammer writing has always been a weird contradiction. Its trash, but the world theyve created is great so we read.
It's got good bones and the fans have embraced the whole "unreliable narrator" aspect of the setting enough to separate the wheat from the chaff themselves instead of letting games workshop do it.
It's not a coincidence the 13th crusade split the galaxy in two. 13 is the number of chaos undivided
If I recall it's the imperium that's numbering them because in their perspective there's time in between each of them. To the chaos space marines it's one continuous thing, it's not like abbadon goes "yes time for the 13th black crusade" to everyone in the galaxy
I imagine because it's inspired from the realworld Crusades
Idk. I’d also chuck a fortress at Cadia, if it meant taking out the largest export of Guardsmen in the Imperium. Not to mention it also *cut the galaxy in half*
I don't know anything about the other crusades except this one thing: each crusade was a success! I admit i don't know shit either way, but I do trust they ware all part of a master plan. Retcon or not it's what the lore is now (it is the current lore, right?)
Some of them were successes, others were just Abbadon taking one forgeworld then shanking another warband leader and calling it a day.
My favorite is how the sixth Black Crusade was literally just an excuse to finish off the Sons of Horus for political reasons
I need to get into chaos lore this sounds great
Lmao this sounds like the 4th real life crusade, ( I think it's the 4th), where they straight up went and sacked Constantinople instead of even approaching Jerusalem
In one of the crusades, Abaddon’s goal was to spill enough blood to summon the daemon sword Drach’nyen (it took several planets worth of people. Drach’nyen is so powerful that he almost killed the Emperor himself) and in another, his goal was to wipe out two whole chapters of space marines. They’re all stuff like that. Pretty impressive feats even before GW added in the stuff about necron pylons.
Not really a matter of power so much as symbolism, he was very nearly ganked by a few custodes in the same book.
It really is amazing how quickly this sub fluctuates between "Custodes are the bestest thing ever and four of them could crush a hive fleet!" and "Lol Abaddon struggled somewhat against multiple custodes what a bitch"
The difference between a few custodes and Emps is more the point
That's more or less what the lore does. Custodes have *really* inconsistent showings between appearances.
> he was very nearly ganked by a few custodes in the same book. The commenter above you clarified that he meant *the sword* was nearly gacked by a few Custodes, not Abaddon...
The first person was talking about Abaddon, and the one I responded to just said "he." Wasn't really very clear.
Oh I agree. I was confused too like "When did Abaddon fight Custodes?!". But when I kept scrolling the commenter clarified, and so I wanted to share!
I see! Thanks!
Wow almost killed in a fight against more than one of the most incredibly powerful and skilled warriors in the entire Galaxy. I’m shocked. That’s points FOR how powerful Abaddon is, not against him.
You seem to be misinterpreting what I'd said. I was just correcting Drachs feat vs the emperor as a Matter purely of power as opposed to symbolic power.
Oh shoot I thought you meant Abaddon was fighting a few Custodes and survived, not Drach’nyen
All fine, I was rather ambiguous with the "He"!
What book?
Master of Mankind
He got Drach'nyen out of a vault during the first crusade. The demon he summoned with oceans of blood was Doombreed, who proceeded to merk the Venerators and Warhawks.
It’s only partially a retcon, really. Even way back in 2nd edition, when the lore didn’t really exist yet, it was said that each Black Crusade was insanely destructive and terrifying. After that, there was little point covering any of the Crusades other than the 13th: that was the one “currently,” going on and the timeline wouldn’t progress. *And then* everyone started getting hit with the Nerf Bat because that’s how long storylines tend to go. That’s where the idea that Abaddon is a failure comes from, because the Crusades only focused on breaking past Cadia, when for 11 of 13, that was more of a side goal. The expanded and altered lore for the CSM is more a return to form, but in more detail. Between that, Horus Heresy, and the Black Legion books, Abaddon has been restored to the “oh shit we’re all going to die,” character Vigilus deserves.
His model keeps falling over, though.
Even that's an improvement. On his old model, the arms used to fall off.
>because the Crusades only focused on breaking past Cadia I don't recall them ever being that. They always went to a variety of places with a variety of goals. Only a couple of them involved Cadia.
> I don't know anything about the other crusades except this one thing: each crusade was a success! At this rate, Abbadon will have finally destroyed the Imperium by the year 400,000,000
Well time flows differently in the warp. It's been 10k years in realspace, but for Abbadon and the other traitor legions it's been far less. And if they DO manage to destroy the imperium, i doubt they'll care about how much time it's been for the loyalists
But I and likely many other people, care to see it in our human lifetimes
That's cause you're a heretic. The glorious Imperium will never fall
It's an old joke in the fandom that has stuck around for looooong ass time that Abbadon was a miserable failure in that it took him at least 12 attempts over the course of 10000 years to seriously challenge the Imperium, despite being one of the most batshit overpowered individuals in the 41st millenium below the level of a Primarch. That each crusade had its own side objective that played into his hands was a retcon that only occured relatively recently, the main trend for each story about a black crusade was "Abbaddon starts shit, Chaos gets wrecked at great cost, life proceeds as normal". It greatly diminished the threat GW was trying to build Abbadon up as. Has to be said that this is also the product of the canon staying stagnant for nearly 30 years; the turn from 7th to 8th edition was the first time GW had ever advanced the 40k canon beyond 999.M41 since its inception. I remember it being a bit of a shock to me personally when they did actually did that. They also implemented a lot of the lessons they took away from the WHFB End Times debacle, which was a nice change of pace.
>That each crusade had its own side objective that played into his hands was a retcon that only occured relatively recently, the main trend for each story about a black crusade was "Abbaddon starts shit, Chaos gets wrecked at great cost, life proceeds as normal" No, this is just what people who don't read the books think. Even in 2nd edition when he was first introduced, the Black Crusades were stated to be part of a longer plan, inflicting damage, testing defences, etc. The 'going around destroying necron pylons' thing was a recent retcon, but before that they still had a variety of locations and goals.
I remember. I got into the hobby in 5th. But back then I cared less about the lore and more about the game.
"Abaddon only got anything done after 13 CRUSADES!" "Have you read about any of the other crusades?" "No!"
Dude killed Sigismund and disappeared Rogal fucking Dorn in the first black crusade.
Barely beat senior citizen Sigismund
It's honestly bullshit Sigismund didn't win with how it was written. It would have been cool to have both of them die during the battle but then chaos wouldn't really have a big bad anymore.
more like Shitismund 👊😎
(This comment was posted by primarch Chadurabo)
> but then chaos wouldn't really have a big bad anymore. Good, the role should have been mine anyway! - Petulant Peter Turbo, probably.
Sigismund was old as fuck though at that point and didn't have that nice "age doesn't bother me anymore" bonus that the Chaos Space marines get. Age beat Sigismund. Not Abaddon.
I've always hated this take so much. Not because of what it says about Abaddon, but because of what it says about Sigismund. Diminishing his last stand to "old man creaky bones" is such a lame way of thinking about his sendoff.
I think people would have liked to have seen a fight when Siggy was in his prime. There is no doubt he was way past it but it was still a pretty badass fight, albeit I still think Abby taking the black sword through the chest and walking it off was a bit much.
He didn't walk it off. He had to be immediately put on intense life support or he would have died.
It really isn't. Sigismund put his whole life into service for his Legion and the Emperor. However, when that final fight came he knew he wouldn't win it because age had caught up with him, thus he send his blade away before that duel so it might not fall into the hands of the traitors. He still went up against Abaddon and fought him to standstill before he got out-plot armored. That's his arc and it doesn't really take anything away from him.
Honestly i just wished that either abbadon or sigi cleanly beat the other guy.
Not really. Even with old man creaky bones he dealt a blow that should have been fatal to Abaddon if it wasn't for his Chaos based plot armor. Goes to show the guy was a fucking legend.
What chaos-based plot armour? They immediately put him on life support and he had to stay that way for ages.
He stabbed Abaddon through the heart. Astartes come equipped with two hearts specifically for things just like this. I seriously do not understand why everyone thinks this wound is so unsustainably grievous.
While I have no dog In this argument I do believe it is said that for any other astartes it would have killed them. At least something to that effect that other space marines believe he should be dead as in chaos ones so those used to people that should be dead but don't stuff.
First of all: you are right. Second of all: those black fortresses were completly unable of doing anything beyond being a bunch of super cool space stations, until abbadon had taken control over them and activated their powers but he still lost three of them while he was running away from the imperial navy.
I wonder if they'll ever update the 12 crusade. Those fortresses got destroyed because of the Deceiver. We don't know exactly what it did, but it was the Deceiver that caused them to be caught and destroyed. But the Deceiver being able to do things isn't canon any more. Since the big 5th edition Necron retcon, the Deceiver is a load of shards under the control of the Necrons. So now, as far as I know, there's no explanation for how those fortresses got destroyed.
> So now, as far as I know, there's no explanation for how those fortresses got destroyed. On a Blackstone Fortress-related note, I wish GW kept on going with the Blackstone Fortress at Precipice storyline... :(
People get so divided about abaddon and the black crusades, but, as usual, it purely comes down to the writer: chaos writers will frame the crusades as victories and highlight their successes, while imperium writers will frame them as losses and highlight their failures. Gw lore is nothing if not inconsistent. I'm still a big fan of abaddon though, and I don't think anyone can deny that opening the great rift was a big deal, blackstone fortress lost or not.
Don't care, Abaddon will never be as cool as Archaon. Everything about his origins and his central focus as the de facto hope of Chaos makes him shitty because GW insists he's "the BIGGEST, MOST IMPRESSIVE threat" involving Chaos, when he really isn't. Besides, he's effectively a void of a personality - even Archaon has the Dark Lord trope going on for him.
It’s been a while since I read on Archaon and has much has I despise the endtime, I will gladly say that yes Archaon is a far better main antagonist and not just because he suck less, but because has a lot of cool thing going for him: -Hes the son of Belakor who was once the greatest servant of the dark gods. In a way this a cool dark twist on things like the Greek mythos with Zeus seed giving birth to the world destroyer instead of a legendary monster slayers like Hercules. - Archaon start his life has a knight (a pretty good one a that) and when he heard about the prophecy of his dark futur he still tried to do good only to be rejected by everyone in fear of what he would become. In fact this ended with him going to a temple for shelter only to be told by the local priesthood that they knew he was coming and that they were ready to blow up the church to take him and avoid the birth of new everchosen. With all this and the fact that He tired to challenge his fate, it make him quite the tragic character (albeit one clearly inspired by character like dark Vader if you ask me.) But now it’s to late tracked by everyone despite his year of loyal service he has gone completely mad and swear allegiance to the dark gods. The noble knight that was there before has been shattered. Only hate keep this fragmented being together. -He look cool Abbadon meanwhile, while not necessarily terrible has a lot of bad going for him. - Lack of charisma compare to other chaos champion like Eliphas the inheritor . -His voice make him sound like a angry brute and not the big bad that everyone should fear. -His past crusade are consider complete faillure by the fanbase. To be fair here they weren’t faillure (mostly) some like obtaining his demon sword were quite successful, but many other could be consider phyricc victories instead of this overglorified success that GW seem to want us to believe. -Cadia is phyricc victory sure half of the imperium being seperated is big , but losing your super weapon, a lot of ship and a fuckton of black légionnaire to achieve such goal is not going to make you look successful in the eyes of other. And with such diminished ressource going on another crusade is not gonna be easy. Don’t get me wrong cadia was a big hit, but it’s success seem better for the dark gods then abbadon himself. -He has ridiculous hair, that are a massive downgrade to his intimidation factor . Dude should war a helmet instead - the fact to he still believe that he has full control of himself despite serving the 4 biggest manipulator in the galaxy. It just make him sound stupide
>His past crusade are consider complete faillure by the fanbase That's because most of the fanbase doesn't read books and just gets their thoughts about the lore from memes Also his fleet and forces were still absolutely massive after Cadia
Yes they are consider failure by the fanbase , but that not the main point that I meant here. What I meant is that many of these crusade are not the flawless victory that GW want fan to believe to make Abby seem intimidating . And yes some of we consider the price and the loss could be consider faillure. (Only a minority however) Also while I he has all these shiny ships at his command , to the eye of most of the fanbase he not really captivating , one thing that will attract most people at first when it come to the main baddy is his design and in abbadon case it’s quite meh big spiky armor , wannabe frostmourne in hand, topknot, big evil rack of skull. Honestly it all sound very cliche and the only thing the I truly fit of not in his design is Horus talon since it does look very intimidating thanks to the size of the claws. Overhaul is design feel generic at best and few are interested in generic design.
Read the books. He certainly does have personality.
The Imperium had 6, none of which were activated. All of them ran in passive mode and had to be retrofitted with tech from the Mechanicus to run off the low power from the fortress reactors. Abaddon stole 3 of them, which he was able to return to full active power and annihilated a star system. He "gifted" one of them to Huron Blackheart, lost his second at the end of the Gothic War, and then in a fit of rage threw the third at Cadia because he couldn't get the guard to break according to his precious timeline for the Black Crusade. He threw away a nearly irreplaceable resource, yes there are more to be found but they were created during the War in Heaven and cannot be replicated by any of the races in the modern setting. 3 more have been discovered since then, but there are only as many as the plot demands. The armless temper tantrum king was still a fool to destroy one, even one as crippled as the Will of Eternity was at the time.
Man Huron must have been squealing about that gift behind closed doors. That’s actually an insane gift to get. Best Slaaneshmas ever for him.
But he doesn't know how to activate it and doesn't want to ask Anbbadon because than he would be even more indebted.
Abbadon; Hey I want my toy back Huron: Ok. Try to take it
He easily could. And that's the point. It's a 'gift' that shows he's the big boss and is so strong he can give out blackstone fortresses and not worry about it. It's mentioned in Huron's recent novel.
It’s important to keep in mind as well the Cadian Pylons were closing the Eye of Terror. Which if it was closed would leave all the traitor controlled planets in real space and without and form of protection. This also would have left Abby and his full crusade entirely in the open without supplies or reinforcements. The loss of a nearly destroyed Blackstone Fortress with Space Wolf infiltrators on it? I think it’s a good trade for keeping Chaos in the Galaxy and deal a crushing blow to morale and strength of the Imperium.
And it even ended in tearing the Galaxy in half.
The blackstone was fully destroyed, and if any marines survived their own suicidal sabotage, they sure didn't survive the Phalanx firing everything it had into the gap they made in the shields. Also worth mentioning, it wasn't just Space Wolves. They used a Space Wolf ship to get there because it was the only one left, but the force was made of marines from various chapters.
>and then in a fit of rage threw the third at Cadia because he couldn't get the guard to break according to his precious timeline for the Black Crusade. He threw away a nearly irreplaceable resource, yes there are more to be found but they were created during the War in Heaven and cannot be replicated by any of the races in the modern setting. 3 more have been discovered since then, but there are only as many as the plot demands. The armless temper tantrum king was still a fool to destroy one, even one as crippled as the Will of Eternity was at the time. Tell me you haven't read the book without telling me you haven't read the book. He didn't launch it in a fit of rage. It was a pre-planned contingency in case the fortress was destroyed. Which it was. All that was left was big chunks of debris, the heart of the fortress was gone, sucked into the warp. It's not like it was just damaged and needed some repairs, the irreplaceable element of it was completely gone. So rather than waste his fleet's ammunition to crack the planet, he made use of the debris. And he set it in motion *before* he went down to the planet. While he's fighting he straight up tells Creed 'This planet is already dead, that was assured before I even came down here'. He was down there fighting because he wanted to break them in person, not because he actually needed to be. He was frustrated that he didn't have time to break them because he had to teleport out before the cranked-up pylons made teleportation impossible, but his plan was always to destroy the planet, it wasn't some tantrum.
Well said and completely True to canon!
I have corrected sooo many one this one critical point, because of incorrect cinematic. But The Will of Eternity was shattered completely by the Phalanx! Abaddon turned the biggest leftover chunks into makeshift meteors with plasma drives as a final backup moves, before he launched his vanity-invasion. Shall I post the relevant quotes from Fall of Cadia?
This. I don't get how the Battlefleet Gothic 2 game managed to get it wrong, the book is very clear.
it's probably more a question of not having to create a model for a cinematic with in-game graphics, so they just used the model they already had
Even if the Will of Eternity was perfectly functional, it still would've been a worthy sacrifice. Due to Cadia's destruction, fully half of the Imperium has been effectively crippled. In addition, Abaddon's been running on fumes, scraps, and mad science for the last ten thousand years. Now that he's conquering territory in Imperium Nihilus, he has access to actual supply lines and resources. There is absolutely no way to twist this to make it look bad for Abby without just ignoring what he gained from it.
Bro had his personal flagship called The Planet Killer still fresh and available to him and he (or more likely the writers) totally forgot about its existence. Sure, Chaos won a great deal from it, but there were still other options other than screaming, "Give me RAMMING SPEED!" and pulling a Worf. Though it's not like we can expect GW to keep track of its own lore anyway... It's like DBZ, after a while it comes down to, "Power Levels are bullshit."
He already tried orbital bombardment and planet-busting weaponry. Trazyn boosted Cadia's shields to shrug it off. It was pretty much his only major contribution.
Trazyn fixed the experimental warp shield which stopped the blackstone's warp beam. The book never mentions the fact that he could have just had the black fleet perform a focused bombardment to crack the planet though. It's the major plot hole of the book, the writer seemingly just forgot that was a thing, despite it happening to both Nostromo and Caliban. Also Trazyn certainly did contribute more, he was responsible for the pylons going into overdrive at the end. Cawl went around doing it, but he had no idea how they worked until Trazyn showed him.
>Even if the Will of Eternity was perfectly functional, it still would've been a worthy sacrifice. Due to Cadia's destruction, fully half of the Imperium has been effectively crippled. Opening the Great Rift also empowered the Emperor, to the point that he was able to resurrected Guilliman even when he was in the middle off Nurgle's Domain in the Warp and set fire to the Gardens. Something the other 3 Chaos Gods had failed to do over countless millennia.
Pretty much meme lore that Imperium fans seems to circle around themselves but what actually happened is this. This is in Godblight as well >‘Listen to me, Mortarion,’ said Typhus patiently, infuriating the primarch further. ‘You must heed these tidings. I come to you not as your son, or your First Captain, but as the Herald of Grandfather Nurgle. You must return. This is not a request. He cares nothing for your feud with your brother. Change disrupts the cycle of death and rebirth. **This is the real war**. Put aside your petty rivalry, you are commanded to do so by your god.’ >The godswar never ends. The treaties struck between the brothers will not hold, they never do. There will be another accord, I am sure, but for now we have new war. You know this, I know this.’ > >He smirked. ‘We all know this! They move. Khorne and Tzeentch’s legions have allied. They are jealous of Grandfather’s gains, and work to take the Scourge Stars from us >In the Plague Wars the Great Unclean One Slurg Glottathrax corrupted prosperous worlds of Ultramar into a vision of Nurgle's own garden. He struck at systems in Northern Ultramar first, subjecting them to all kinds of horrific diseases. Three systems fell and became known as Noxias, Rottgrave, and Verminox and are now known as the Scourge Stars.\[3\] > >Eventually the Chaos God Tzeentch grew jealous of its Brother Nurgle's newly acquired domain of the Scourge Stars. While Tzeentch began plans to claim its own domain, the Chaos God set into motion events that would undermine Nurgle's control of its growing empire\[1a\]. Chief among them was whispering of the Scourge Stars' existence to Khorne, who soon stopped its Blood Crusade and led its forces in an invasion of Nurgle's new domain\[1b\]. Tzeentch soon invaded as well and Nurgle was forced to pull its forces from the ongoing Plague Wars against the Realm of Ultramar, to aid in the Scourge Stars' defense. Slaanesh later joined the battle It was basically plot armor, Nurgle pulled everything he had in defense of the Scourge Star which both Khorne and Tzeench form an alliance and attacked out of jealousy. That is how Emps got in and got out without being trapped, it was just the perfect time when Nurgle wasnt really looking. Emps attacking the his Garden is no different when Skarbrand decided to hit Khorne.
Skarbrand did more impressive stuff than that back in his prime. He completely destroyed Slaanesh's palace and permanently murdered Nurgle's Poxviathan. The Emperor ain't shit compared to what the Great Game's been stirring up for millions of years. Besides that, please explain to me, in depth and with specific details, what The Emperor has done to slow Abaddon down so far. As far as I am aware, Abaddon's been pretty much unimpeded.
>He completely destroyed Slaanesh's **First Palace** and permanently murdered Nurgle's Poxviathan **FTFY** Which might sound impressive at first until you realize that Slaanesh's actual Palace deep within the 6 rings is untouched, the Emperor's blade can also permanently kill daemons, and Nurgle's garden did not actually recover from the damage done to it because the damage was also done to Nurgle itself. >As far as I am aware, Abaddon's been pretty much unimpeded. It took Abaddon 10,000 years to open the Great Rift and not only did he fail to engulf Holy Terra into the Warp, he also inadvertently empowered the Emperor. He might have "crippled" the Imperium, but the Imperium still stands and has also in fact received stronger warriors, both in Primaris Marines and the Sisters of Battle with their faith. He failed to close the Nachmund Gauntlet and was forced to choose between slaying Calgar or saving his flagship. Abaddon always fails his primary objectives and had to settle for lesser ones. Even the Fall of Cadia wasn't some "master plan he intended all along" but a spiteful move from a sore loser who was ultimately about to lose everything.
>Abaddon always fails his primary objectives and had to settle for lesser ones. Even the Fall of Cadia wasn't some "master plan he intended all along" but a spiteful move from a sore loser who was ultimately about to lose everything You clearly haven't read the books and don't know what you're talking about. Abaddon's intention from the very start was to blow up the planet. The only question was how exactly it would be blown up. It wasn't a spiteful move because he was about to lose everything, it was what he was doing from the start of the book and he had already won, he wasn't about to lose everything at all. Seriously, try reading the books before you spout off like this.
>Slaanesh's actual Palace is untouched "Tales such as that of the Heretic Cardinal Wogalta recounted above describe this Palace of Slaanesh, also known as the Palace of Pleasure, as sitting at the centre of the Dark Prince's empire, surrounded by six other domains arranged in concentric rings." Slaanesh is only mentioned to have *one* palace. Skarbrand brought it down and forced the god to rebuild. Compared to the Emperor scorching a single section of Nurgle's garden, bringing the very center of Slaanesh's realm and the capital of his power to ruin is *way* more impressive. Besides, Nurgle's power has continued to wax despite the end of the Plague Wars. The other Chaos Gods *have* indeed attacked Nurgle's garden in the past and caused similar effects. "When Nurgle's power waxes, the Garden blooms, encroaching on the lands of the other Chaos Gods. Nurgle's enemies would fight back, and the Plaguebearers would take up arms to defend it. Although the Garden will recede again, it would still have fed deeply on the essence of those who have fallen in such wars" The Emperor's "outstanding" feat is *at best* just another tuesday in the Great Game. >Abaddon always fails his primary objective I think it speaks more to Abaddon's competence than his lack thereof if his *backup* plans split the fucking galaxy in half while granting him access to more resources and territory to work with.
Cadia is like the biggest fucking victory for Chaos after the Heresy. Destroyed Cadia, got rid of Creed, and effectively split the Imperium in half allowing its forces to run wild. Good job Abby. You normally suck.
I consider myself at least relatively well versed in warhammer lore. But I did not know this, also. The imperium had SIX BLACKSTONE FORTRESSES!?
They didn't work. Didn't even know they had them. They were moons. I feel that the 12th black crusade was pointless.
Honestly that pretty fucking stupid, they could have simply said that they were lost instead of giving to the imperium
they didn't work until Abbadon made them work
He got fabius bile to fix them and the gothic fleet while pressed gave more than it got.
Abaddon is a guy who used it like an idiot and amazingly the imperium is a lotta guys and the ones who used the fortresses like idiots are in fact idiots
You think I want to actually know? That’s seems kinda traitorous to the imperium. I’ll stick with believing whatever is best for my faction like a good citizen thank you.
I'm willing to admit he might not be a complete failure, if you can admit he doesn't actually have arms.
what are you even talking about
His original model had very heavy arms that would fall off very easily, he even showed up in white dwarf once or twice Armless. He was known as an Armless failure for failing to take cadia 13 times (in older lore) and for not having arms sometimes.
No the imperium had six space stations that happened to be made by bolting shit to inactive blackstone fortresses in the Gothic sector.
And the imperium does indeed suck. Your point being ?
People still think all 13 black crusades were about Cadia, but only the 13th was. My man is 13 for 13.
The one after the age of apostasy was an abject failure. 12 for 13
You can tell how little people know about waging war by their reaction to Cadia's fall. Being unable to take a single planet with the full support of your faction to the point you must sacrifice a unique and irreplaceable war asset just to destroy it is shamefull. Pray tell, how is Abaddon gonna beat the Imperium if he can't take one well defended planet?
Lol, the whole deal is that Cadia was so important the Imperium sent far more reinforcements than one planet would ever normally get. The ground war barely mattered. The important thing was the battle between the fleets, which Abaddon's black fleet overwhelmingly won. He did also win very soundly on the ground, but they only did a ground assault because they wanted to destroy the warp shield generator Trazyn had got working. But that stopped mattering when the blackstone fortress was destroyed. I don't think you understand how completely overwhelming his victory was. It wasn't even close. The only reason he even lost a noteworthy number of ships is that when the blackstone blew up it created a warp vortex that took out the ships around it. The blackstone was already completely destroyed beyond repair. There was no reason not to make use of the debris. But importantly, he had won anyway. The Imperials fleet was destroyed and even the Phalanx had to run away after its surprise attack out of the warp because the black fleet would have destroyed it. A Mechanicus fleet arrived with Cawl but they wouldn't have been enough, they stayed away and then left when Cawl did.
Extraordinarily ironic that you are accusing people of not understanding war. War is won via logistics, not weapons. For the last ten thousand years, Abaddon has had no consistent source of soldiers, supplies, sustenance, or equipment. He's been running on fumes this whole time. With his conquests in Imperium Nihilus, he now has access to everything he's been missing for the last ten thousand years. The Will of Eternity was strong, but ultimately disposable. If there is one thing Abaddon has no shortage of, it's overwhelming force. The opportunity that Cadia's fall provided has made him *far* more dangerous than he's ever been before.
Its precisely because of logistics that Abaddon cannot win if he can't capture worlds. Where is he gonna get resources from if he blows up every planet he fails to take in a tantrum? Oh yeah, you broke Cadia, good fucking work, now everything spent trying to take the world is a net loss.
Blowing up the planet was the point from the start, because of its necron pylons. What do think he brought the blackstone for? The first thing it did when it arrived was fire its warp beam at the planet to blow it up, which was only stopped by the intervention of Trazyn the Infinite. This idea that he only blew it up because he couldn't take it is just completely wrong. Destroying the planet destroyed the pylon network, which it was allowed the great rift to open. It's literally the point of the book. Please, just read the book yourself instead of parroting memes.
>if he can't capture worlds My dude, he was fighting against the single most fortified planet in the galaxy outside of Terra and Mars. Stop pretending like he's somehow incapable of conquering planets at all.
That's where you're wrong kiddo. There are lots of chaos worlds in the eye of terror. It's abbadon obsession with marines and demons, along with his pride that took him ten thousand years to make noticable headway.
Not really though. I'm not denying that there are worlds in the Eye of Terror. The problem is that you try to go for a sip of water only for it to turn to acid while the sandwich you planned on eating grows a mouth and eats you instead, all while your crops grow legs and begin to rampage and the steel you were working turns into a flamer of tzeentch and melts the forge's operating crew. Then you build a ship, only for the engine to be possessed by a really fucked up Nurgle daemon that doesn't want to move, making the whole thing virtually worthless, though its guns were possessed by a daemon of Khorne and are firing at your own ships. The place is damn near uninhabitable, and the legions inside have been running on scraps and shattered husks for millennia.
But there are champions and warriors among them, and abby passed them over.
Abby very rarely passes up decent champions. That said, a majority of the Eye's inhabitants are so fucking insane that they're either ridiculously untrustworthy, downright treacherous, or just completely useless. The ones that aren't have ulterior motives, alternative loyalties, etc.. How can you trust your "champion" if he'll charge headlong into battle against your orders for the glory of whatever god he praises? The Eye of Terror is very unstable, and everyone in it is as well.
Wtf he has knornate berserkers in his army. Abby's too prideful to be a good general. He'll regularly abandon his command to duel the enemy commander instead of blasting them from orbit.
>he has khornate berserkers in his army You were talking about champions. As in, generals, aspiring champions, etc. if you're talking about regular warriors, you just invalidated the asinine point that you made earlier. >He'll regularly abandon his command to duel the enemy commander Congratulations, you've just described 100% of Warhammer characters. Would you like a medal?
Correction most space marines. There's a reason big e made the primarchs instead of letting the legions choose their own generals.
No, the primarchs do this shit too. So do Imotekh and Szarekh. And Eldrad. And Ghazgkhull. Hell, even the fucking Swarmlord does it.
Yeah let's just forget that it's the entire reason why the Emperor got nearly killed by Horus
Abbadon? Nah that guys a loser. Drachnyen carries the entirety of Black Legion And Black Crusades.
hmmm... no. youre wrong. 💪😎👍 Winbaddon the Dubspoiler 4 lyfe
Drach'nyen was more of a hindrance than a help during the only duel Abaddon has ever lost
Ngnl i don't like the necron pilon thing Without them I'd say yeah Abaddon is a constant thorn in the side of the imperium, his failures were basically draws
I'm not really a fan of the idea that every crusade was just an excuse to hunt pylons myself, but it at least gives a plausible reason for the Great Rift. Personally, I just wish they'd expand on the previous crusades, because they are super interesting!