The 40k Lorecast - Episode 19 - Abaddon pt 1 - The Origins and fall of Ezekyle.

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

On this episode we cover the origins of the most hated/wanted being in the entire 40k Universe. Follow as we talk though Abaddon's origins on Cthonia, followed by his rise through the Luna Wolves, up until his despondency after the failure of Horus' rebellion. Also some diatribes about his top knot. *** It has been brought to our attention that we incorrectly referred to Abaddon "the Destroyer" when it should have been the "Despoiler." Rather than use AI to correct the error and re-upload we have decided to just own our mistake and let the listeners hear us be wrong, and own it. Sorry our bad on that***PatreonMerchandiseDiscord Link:Our WebsiteRetro RecallOur Sponsors:* Check out BetterHelp: https://www.betterhelp.com* Check out Pebl: https://hellopebl.com* Check out Pebl: https://hipebl.ai* Check out Shopify: https://shopify.com/loreAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Welcome to the 40K LORCast. Welcome to 40K LORCats. It's me, John Barsati and Brad Chester. This guy. I'm going to do a little caveat before we start this cast. Today's cast is brought to you by upper respiratory infections. So if the audio in this gets a little choppy at some point, just know it was me cutting out Brad or myself hocking up a lung.

I'm going to throw my shout out now. Go. Because we have new listeners, like Pat Wiz, is after LVO just happened. And I gave out the cards, talked to people about LORCast. met one of my buddy shout at Sean, but my boy Padrock, Rocco, found the lore cast and said he really enjoyed

it and then said he's really sad because he's only getting it one or two episodes more because I will die of old age. Not like a physical problem, just because I'm old. Just because you're old. I mean, the sad part is you actually might be bordering on twice the age of some of the average players. It's wildly so.

But anyway, additionally, also, little announcement for everybody. if you go to www. The40KLorecast.com, we have a webpage now. So please go to it. Is that some links in there? It's going to be updated as we go through, but I had some free time over a weekend

and decided to make a webpage. Moving forward, we'll have a lot more content on it. We'll have a lot more links. We'll have things of the other content that I do between coaching and everything else. We'll edit the shit out of that because of pause. Brad and I were having a discussion

and we didn't want to have a weird link in our cast to 45 different things. So I figured we can just have the cast, link to one web page, and we can do all this stuff off that. So there you go. But anyway, to the actual subject matter at hand, we've discussed the heresy.

We've done the Imperium. We've even done a few Zenos. So there's only one thing we haven't covered so far. You know what we're going to cover? The first model I ever owned in 40K. Well, there we go. So we're going to dive into chaos. And if we're going to jump into chaos,

Why not do who might be, we actually were discussed this. I'm not sure if he's the second most, third most, fourth most influential figure in the entire 40K universe, but he's in that level. He's the antagonist for the story of 40K. You can't figure it out. And actually, actually, it says it the title of the cast. So I'm like, ooh, we're being mysterious, but you would have seen the word of Baden already. My bad. And we're going to flip coins either Avedon or Abadden the entire time.

Yeah, it's going to be whatever, whatever sounds coming in my mouth is going to be that one. Abadon. I will say it is technically Abadon. If you have phonetically, it is spelled Abadon, but enough people have said Abadon to me over the years that now it's just going to be that. Sometimes you got to go, the destroyer, the destroyer. I would say, when we talk about how important this character is to the universe, I list them as the third most influential member because I think the emperor and then Horace and then. He's the main storyline in the game. Yeah.

Abidon's Black Crusades have been a part of the game the whole time pretty much. I don't see any limitation. He is the continuation of the Horace heresy. What is now the long war? Well, yeah, that's a good point. He's the bridge. He is the bridge to that. But that's the base.

Horace Harriers is the basis of the game, period. Yeah. Sorry Zenos, but like, it just is. Yeah. It's not the Zenos. It is what the game is. based on effectively. And the rogue trader people are going to throw this out to me because the Horace

was not big in the beginning. But yeah, the modern game for the last 25, 30 years is effectively based on that. And he's the continuation of that. And most of the storyline that propels the game forward is based around him trying to do something and other people trying to stop what he's doing. Well, I think it's fair for us to say that. because we're both actually pretty heavy Zenos players, Warhammer 40K is actually largely space marine versus chaos.

The Zenos, and I think it's why the Zenos are more fun to play, but they are side characters in the story. Just being honest, it's what it's supposed to be. Yeah, but I played a lot of Skyrim and other things. You fallout, how often are you spent on the side quests? Sorry. That's true. Side quests are better, and I'll be, and I'm,

I'm unabashedly an orc fan, but I still think the love of Zeno's factions are more interesting, except for Tao. Abadden is kind of where I felt, Brett and I felt, would be the best way to jump into chaos. Because when you look at Abadden, the kind of the best way I think I would describe him is that

he has affected every single faction in the game, has in one way or another been affected by Abadden. Oh, they all hate him. They all want him dead. He is probably the most hated figure in the entire game. And to be honest, he's a noble dick. Before we go, I said this before we started recording today. We're going to get into a bunch of the story and his origin and everything else.

But one of the biggest things about why I think he's a great character is because he has self-doubt. He's lost. He's won. He has flaws. He's not just this satirical mustache, twirling villain. Yeah. Yeah. He's like,

he's got real. And the thing is, is that he's right about a lot of shit. Yeah. He's a bad dude. Don't get, whoa, whoa, whoa,

whoa. We actually argued whether how evil versus not evil, and we'll get into more of this as we go on. And, but like, he has like real legit reasons sometimes. A lot of the books, I love when they have him talk about stuff.

And you're like, oh, shit, did he just make a wildly good point about what's going? going on right now? You're like, oh, you've got a point. You're not just killing people to kill people. You're, you have a reason. Sometimes you're doing, not sometimes, most of the time, you're doing terrible shit. Yeah, and I think it's important we talked about people like Angron. Angron was always angry, not the best naming mechanic on the part of GW. Angeron? Yeah, but you look at a lot of these people, a lot of the main characters, their entire story arc, there isn't much of an arc, basically a plateau. They

started being this one person, they became a bigger version of that person. Abadon's story arcs actually much more involved. He actually goes through, Abadon effectively earns his way to his current situation, to what Brad was saying. He has these epiphanies and these moments, and they affect him and they change him. And he still has things where he has to worry about, am I doing, even as the arch villain, he still has doubts about should I be accepting more chaos, gift, should I be doing this? And he's trying to stay true to him. And even though that staying true to him is staying true to a lot of evil shit, but man, he's very complex. And I think that's what makes him a great villain. He is. I was hoping to be able to put a record Ralph reference in here

of you are bad guy, but not bad guy. But not, he's a bad guy. He's like, he's a very bad person. The thing is, he was that from the beginning, though. He wasn't corrupted by He was just, well, buddy, let's just jump in. So let's dive into it. So that's a thing, enough teaser of the episode. Let's get into who Abadden actually is. So his first name is Ezekiel, because why not? I will, as always, talk a good amount of crap on some of the stuff that naming me how

GW uses throughout their events. But Abadden actually is from Scythonia, Cetonia? Cothonia. That makes it easier to say. So basically, you know, Barcelona. Yeah. Anyway, so he's from evil Barcelona. It's from Horace's Homeworld.

Yeah. And it was, as we've discussed before, a planet that kind of, the Dark Age of Strife ripped this planet to shreds. Oh, this planet got wrecked. Their planet was bad, bad. Because they effectively used everything to make weapons. Brad and I are going to actually, we've discussed one of our cast that we're going to pretty soon is we're going to go through the different types of worlds in the Imperium,

you know, and kind of what life is like on each of them. Spoiler, not great. Unless it starts with Paradise World, it's... Yeah, and even Paradise World, there's still some really bad jobs. Well, yeah, because you're in Paradise for people that have all of the stuff. Exactly. But Thetonia? Cothonia.

Cothonia? Yeah, Cothonia. This is fun. So, yeah, Cothonia was a actually, was a wonderful world full of natural resources that... That it was... That the men of iron stripped every last piece out of it and then left everyone there to figure it out. And I mean,

I was, as I'm trying to think of a good reference for what this is like, I mean, I'm going original Mad Max. Like, kind of actually. They took all the resources and left them.

The thing is, is what happened to there is that they left them with just enough resources that you have to kill everybody that has resources. Yeah. Yeah, enough that a few of you can survive,

but not all of you. Right. And so, yeah, one thing leads to another. And for those, who don't know the story of Horace, that is the world that Horace was raised on. He was raised in the world of warlords

who are just constantly killing each other. And to give Horace props, he immediately started retching shop. Oh, yeah, when Horace conquered, Horace became warlord quickly. Yeah, he was the warlord, with a speed. After Horace has left Cithonia, though,

he didn't, you know, we laughed, like we did the Dark Angels last time. So the lion, it comes up, on Caliban. He turns Calibat around. I'm going to get rid of all of the evil warp beasts. We're going to unify the planet. Horace just kind of pieced out. They were all like, all right, so we just go back, we're going back to the pile. Wait, yeah, he instantly leaves. He was like literally, I just, I'm supposed to rescue the princess from the castle and the emperor showed up as like, hey, we don't have time for this stuff.

Yeah, just leave the castle. We're on. We're out of here, man. Norris went, all right, I'm out. So Horace is left, and the world is right back where it started. There is, again, G.W. naming mechanics. Abadden has a father, and I guess they had to write a name really quickly, and they just went around their table and somebody, Abadden's dad, dad's name, go, and so when Tarkadden.

So his dad is Tarkadden. His dad's also a douche. Yeah, son of Bargaden. I mean, they were just going to go through, anyway, I'd be a dick, but. I mean, you're not wrong, but you can make fun of that dude's name because he sucks. Oh, yeah. Like a lot sucks.

Super warlord. He instantly is like, hey, we'll give you $3 to murder the rest of the people that are your best friends. And he's like, I would have done it for two. Yeah, Tarkadden is bad news. But he is one of the most powerful warlords in the entire planet. Yes, but he got there by, when they talk about him, he's the guy that you go to the meeting with and just assume he's instantly going to stab you. Yeah. And that's just what he was.

He was the bad guy. And the biggest thing is, is that Abidon, the, I'm just going to. I'm going to call him the Don so he can get you. The Don gets the same type of, and he's expected to. Well, yeah, because this is his dad, and his dad's like, this kid's going to be just like me. But Abadden didn't like it. He looked at the life his father had in the way that these people operated. And this is a really important piece about Abadon.

He didn't like the disloyalty. He needed it. He's always been, even still now. He does some chaosy shit now. But like for forever, his big thing was, I'm not a good guy, but I'm a loyal guy. Exactly. Here's my group of friends. If you do anything to them, I'm going to stab you in the head.

Also, we should probably point out the fact that he's a gorilla. Yeah. He is so big. We're going to get to that and say a little bit. But Abidon is not a small, frail man hiding in the bushes. Well, that's what I'm saying. Before he got any of the organs or got any. you, stuff, stuff. He was already, what's up, guys? I heard if someone was here to play the part of

the mountain, I've got it. I've got it. Yeah. His father brings Baden in and says, you know, you're going to take over for me, but before you can do that, you have to show me, you have to show fealty to me, not loyalty, but fealty. And you're going to show me fealty by killing all of your friends. And then I'll let you take over. And Abidon says, you know, so I'm going to keep flipping Abadden and Abadon the whole time just the trouble on us. What he then does instead is this, okay, cool, and then murders his father and his father's bodyguard. But also, like, instantly, yeah. Yeah, by hand.

His dad basically says this and he goes, yeah, you couldn't have said anything more wrong to me. Yeah. Also, he didn't like his dad in the first place. He's just like, you know what? I was probably going to kill you at some point in time. How about now? And he, it's a brutal scene, by the way, because he's like popping eyes out. Like he does this by hand.

Yeah. Which shows that he is. Again, of course, at this point, he just murdered the largest powerful warlord in the entire, you know, planet and all his bodyguards. So now we've got that John Wick moment of I have to, you know, go on the run. Actually, probably John Wick's made a good reference for what just happened there. True. Basically, yeah. Use a pencil.

Remember a 40K pencil is. Data slate. But what is? If only we had one. If only we had a dentist slate. Actually, by the time, this comes out, we will. Oh, no, we won't. Not yet.

Actually, if you guys haven't figured out, I'm recording this three days before I release it. He's on the run, and he's getting cornered, and the Luna wolves show up, and they grab them. They say, look, you're perfect for us. We want to recruit you. Well, on a side thing with this, to set the tone for what was going on, though,

the Luna wolves kind of didn't realize that Horace's home planet became a shit show. like eight seconds after he left. Yeah. So because they kind of got caught up in the, oh, yeah, a crusade. And then we have to go back and we'll pull recruits from Cothonia. And then they kind of came back and went,

dude, what are you guys been doing, son of God? I mean, first off, A-level recruits. I mean, absolute A-plus level recruits. We're going to get out of this. They rocked it out. It's a good planet. Yeah. There's several planets that on a side thing,

this is a great place to get people from. Yeah, this is, if you're trying to build super warriors, they'll just go and kill for the name of the emperor, you can do worse than Cathodian. Abedal was pretty all in on becoming a crude. He's like, so stay here in this god-awful shit show or make a difference across the galaxy. You had me at leave.

Yeah, you had me. One really cool story, part of this story here that I, But this is the story arc I like to want to do about Abadon is they asked him. You know, the literal asked him, why did you kill his, why did he kill his father? And his response was, I never wanted to be king. It's, that was his, that was his destiny for me. It's not mine. To me, a really important piece of the story because Abadon doesn't want to be a leader.

He's always been a reluctant. He's always been a reluctant leader. And he keeps ending up in it. And as we'll discuss from the next few casts, he's quite good at it, actually. No, but the thing is, is that from the beginning, everything, from the beginning, he's always the dude that takes care of business. Yep. It just, and because he's that guy that takes care of business, people keep giving him,

you should be in charge. He's like, I don't want to. He's like, well, we have to do this. And he's like, well, I guess I'll do it. Yeah, I guess I can go do it better than everybody else. Right. Obviously then they give him the gene therapies. it's fine.

You stay away from his top knot. No, I'm doing, we're doing a side dive into, I don't understand. Okay, look, for those who don't know, Avedon is always featured with a top knot. Now, the top knot. It's a power top knot. Yeah, it's a part of it. I, the samurai, I think what they were trying to do, in my opinion,

was they were going with a samurai-style top-knot, which is- It's like a foot tall. Yeah, the problem is the model, it's, the top-knot, taller than his skull. Okay? It looks like hot, hot garbage. And I hate it with a raging passion because it looks, the top knot looks awesome on a samurai or a Viking.

But every model I've ever seen of him in their original models, it's just this antenna sticking out of the top of the model's head with hair on it. And credit to you guys who've painted him, he looks beautiful. I've seen people do incredible things with this. still looks stupid. And it's this piece, and all I can think about is someone like,

ducking down and trying to sneak, like, you know, but they've got a two-foot haircut coming up the top of the head. Oh, I'm saying, that top knot is going to make so many four-ups saves on you. It does.

I mean, I'll appreciate it, but I'm just going with, God damn it, is it stupid looking? So there, what I talked about before, he started off as a big, he's not a,

he's a huge, man. Yeah. He's not a, he's not like, I'm slightly bigger than average. He's not, he's smaller than Primark, but not a lot smaller. Yeah, but he was hulking as a regular guy. And then he became a Marine and was big.

And also, I don't, and then you don't know if this is a psychic thing or not. Abidon has always had a, which they quote on the books a lot, a menacing presence. Yeah. And you're like, is that a psychic power or are you just, a mean dude and people are like, maybe I shouldn't mess with that guy. Well, I mean, I think a lot of it is that Abadon is one of those people that we think menacing. Yeah, if he doesn't like you, he will kill you with his bare hands with little warning. You know, that's the thing, which is a little bit, we'll call that menacing.

I mean, quick to anger that leads to death is menacing. And in the modern version of the game, he's in super power armor. So that's always a nice fun one, too. But one thing, so Brian never discussed this before the cast, and we're going to dive into it now. Abandon has been retconned a few times because he's been around for 30 years of the game. I want to go into this real quick while we're saying it. Because, yes, he has been retcon. He's been retcon way less than you think because a lot of times the retconning isn't a retcon.

It's cleaning up a very small story that was referenced. Yeah. Because he's been around forever. So there's all these blurbs of things he's done. And then they piece them together. And so, yes, don't get me wrong. He's been Red God, like several times. But it's less than you think.

And let's dive into one of the ones that I think is more interesting. So there was a period of time where there was a question of whether Abadon was a clone of horse. And this was an earlier version of the game. but I do think we should touch on it, where the idea was, because I kind of like the idea, where the emperor lost all his prime marks. They get scattered all over the place.

Why wouldn't your first move be, I'll just clone him, I'll make another one. And my theory on that, because this has been retcon, so I can have any theory I want, is that's the beauty of it being retcon, is he tried it.

And the chaos gods went, yeah, no, I'm going to warp him the same place as the other one. We'll just keep stealing out. Which is why Abadden ends up on the same planet as Horace. Maybe they're just been just messing with him. But anyway, it is something I just want to reference for you people who were, you know, newer the game and someone might mention him being a clone. Yes, at one point he was.

Maybe, sort of. And then very much so not. Super not. Yeah. Extra super not. Exactly. Maybe little Horace, but not. Yeah, because also Little Horace is in the Legion.

They had a few of these and you'll know, you'll see. them pop up through the stories, but for the most part, yeah, no, everyone agrees that this has been removed. Yeah. Also, the Legion with the Most Names. Oh, is it really? Yeah, they were the Luna Wolves. They were Sons of Horace, now they're the Black Legion.

Oh, that's fair. Yeah. That's been the most named characters. I was like, oh, maybe. No, Ultramarites. Oh, yeah. By spades. Yeah, good point.

That's on me. We'll get to the Crusades now. Abidon is now next to Horace, and he's a huge fan of Horace, by the way. He meets Horace and is just like this dude rules. Well, this is a big thing. One, all of the sons of Primarks are literally psychically bound to them. So you're effectively magically forced to already hold him and thing. But that his thing already is loyalty.

Yep. And so he finds this is what I should be living. This is the thing. Yep. It's like, I will do what needs to be done. also to upkeep this, but also he's a big deal in keeping people, if you shit talk Horace, oh, not good things. Yeah, don't, don't do it.

Don't do it. And the thing is, he's lead by example, though. He becomes the first captain. He doesn't become the first captain because he's boys with Horace. The Don doesn't talk a lot. Yeah, he is incredible in combat. I mean, this was, so he actually ended up leading what's called the Justerrin. And the Justaren are a special subgroup of the Ludo Wolves that were...

It is literally the SEAL Team 6 of Space Marines. But it's different, though, because SEAL Team 6 kind of like comes out of the shadows. It hits you when you're not looking and blah, blah, blah, blah. That is not what he's doing. The Justeran go, where is the biggest, toughest part of the enemies? Oh, it's right over there. Cool. Me and my guys are going to go kill that guy.

I mean, the Justaren are so cool. because they really would just go right up the gut on an enemy defense, kill everything and just make a big hole. This is one of the reasons that Horace ended up becoming Warmaster. Besides the charisma thing is they were putting up sick numbers. Oh, just... And Abidon was one of the biggest reasons that they're dominating when they go places. He just runs through them.

And so he just rises a title of first captain because everyone went, yeah, yeah, he's the best war. It's one of these things we talk about a lot where this isn't Abidon's rise within the Luna Wolves was not contested by anybody. Like everyone was like, yeah, he's the best go. And it was just, yeah, he's incredible. Now, what ends up happening, though, is Horace, a cool thing about Horace is he was actually a very smart leader. And he just, he realized that you can't lead without advice. So he builds the Mornival. And the Mornival is,

the council equals. It is where everybody can speak. I mean, it's the War Lodge thing, but like, this is the one. The Mourneville, the Mournival is amazing because it also has

some of the greatest characters of 40K. Yeah. Because it has the Don, Tor Garadon, Little Horace, and my favorite character and literally all of 40K

in the novels. Yeah. Which is Loken. Garvey-Ole, yeah, forgot Logan. Yep. He's, because of the fact

that he is wildly the, the worst fighter out of all of those guys. Yeah. And just Indiana Joneses it through, what, seven books? Yeah. Yeah, he does well. But the Don is the, he's the closest advisor to Orson this,

because everybody has their say, and then they have to give the, well, what's the most efficient and ruthless thing to do? And then everybody looks at Abidon and goes, all right, we've all got our opinions. What do you think we should do? And he's like, no one's going to like my idea. But we're going to go do it the hard way. That's kind of what he did.

But he was always successful. This council of war captains, their role was to make the Luna wolves the most successful. And Abidon was one of those. When we did a cast before talking about space brains, Brad Brunson made a great point in space. A regular space marine is not just a combat.

He also can absorb data and can analyze data. And Abidon's maybe one of the better ones at that in the entire game. Like, again, bordering on Primark level when he was to a regular space marine. You know, he's clever, could see holes, and new to exploit them. 100%. And the thing is, is that he started that early on. You see it even if you read the, again, always read the Horacea. Yeah.

The novels, but when you look at that and the worry, even when they're getting down the path of chaos, he knows what's going on but doesn't know what's going on at the same time. He sees a lot of insight to that, and I think he's just okay with it because, again, from the early on, what's his deal? Loyalty. He felt that he got betrayed. Well, yeah, let's actually, let's just jump into the Horacee, pre-heresy, Ulanor. Huge orc battle. Yeah. One of the biggest work battles. I mean, besides the War of the Beast, it was the orc battle.

People are going to yell at me for Armageddon, but yes. Armageddon, it's different, though. I'm talking with his story. If there's pre-heresy, this is it. This is the moment. As we discussed on the orc episode at Olinor, the Emperor and Horace, and a number of the primarks actually had to fight their way through it. Horace lands with First Company, which is a Baden's company,

and their goal is kill the war boss. Horace gets to the war boss and actually does kill. him and afterwards comes back to find the entirety of first company terminators are dead barring a pile of dead orcs that starts wiggling and abadden comes out the bottom of it he uh he did some stuff yeah he killed so many orcs that they actually fell on top of him and he was buried by them this is abidon's ability to fight slash uh he's a bad dude yeah he's just tough. But he's also, the thing is is, again, he's willing to keep

going, because he was supposedly dead like five times during that time. Oh, yeah. Abadden actually almost dies throughout most of the heresy, and then that theme continues, I think, through most of modern 40K. We'll be right back after a quick break. When did they killed him off?

Never happening. Not, no. Yeah, just never. No, bad, John. No, bad. Such a bad writing. But one of the things is, is that during this time, and it's very, I don't think it's played up enough in the game, is that the Don was leading spy networks from the beginning,

and that gets played down a lot in the game itself, and the Konex stuff. But Avedon was literally had a pretty vast network of spies all over the place, amongst regular human space brains, everything. He just, he was brokering knowledge, basically. Well, because I think a lot of things, he doesn't trust. He's loyal, but he, but he doesn't trust because he comes from a planet wherever I'm back.

I mean, his father. I'm sorry, he's going to bail on that one. I'm like, yeah, like, I think there's a couple reasons that he doesn't trust. I'm like, so we're not going to talk about the dad thing? I go, I feel that that's like probably a good. Probably number one. If you were in therapy right now, we'd probably go right to that one. So tell me more about your father.

Yeah, he tried to. have me murder all my friends and everyone he knows he murdered. I feel like that might be a cause of your sadness. Yeah, maybe. It might be. But yeah, but let's jump into the heresy. Obviously, we've covered the heresy a good amount, but let's kind of focus a bit more on what Abidon's role was throughout the heresy.

And I think starting with the Warrior Lodges. Starting with the Warrior Lodges, and he was already, the Don was all in on Horace, okay? whatever, if Horace decided we were doing bad shit or good shit, he was equally behind him. Also, he was real willing to murder you if you said something that was bad about Horace or just disagreed with Horace, to be honest. Like when they started going chaos, he was like, who finally, I get to do exactly what I wanted to do before I usually had to talk to people. Now I'm just going to straight stab them in the head. But, yeah, I mean, Avedon got a little bit rough during heresy.

But the Don was in charge of getting more information for Horace for who's going to turn to me, who's not. And Horace, again, was brilliant. But he needed, you know, it helps to have. He wouldn't know this. I mean, Horace knew the Istvon 3 had to be done. I mean, Istavon 3 and Istavon 5 are very different. Estabon 5 was him neutering his enemy's army effectively. Istphan 3 was him culling his own forces.

And that is impossible without Abadon. Yes, he had to literally go, these are the people that are going to go, here's the maybes, here's the nose. And he had his fingers on the pulse of the run-of-the-mill, son of war. Effectively, every single soldier on Istvon 3 was on Abidon's list. Yeah, this one goes down there. So that's how he starts it.

Once it kicks off, though, he doesn't. He does not slow down very much. No, he, once it becomes we are splitting, he has, he effectively takes the press out back and has them shot. Well, anybody that says a bad word about it, because he is ruthless, but also pragmatic about it. And he says, I don't want. anybody that could rabble rouse.

Yep. Because one of the big things, they just lost a huge part of their legion. That's so he didn't want to, his, one of the reasons was it wasn't just that he wanted to kill somebody because he didn't like him the last time he got coffee. He was like, I don't need these guys giving any doubt or anything. Like, let's just nip this in the bud. And because he's ruthless, he's a, he's a pragmatist, but ruthless in his pragmatism. And, well, these guys will probably be fine, but they might not.

They might not. So why take the risk? Yeah. Once the heresy kicks off, this role for Abidon actually expands. Now he needs to start figuring out which planets are going to be loyal, which supply lines are going to be loyal, which rogue traders are going to be loyal. This becomes his next big step because Brad Buss saying, we don't talk about enough in the codex about some of the features that Abadon had.

But this was maybe his greatest contribution to the Horace heresy, barring the very end, where he actually made it so the heresy could continue. He was the one spreading soes of doubt within worlds. Like, is the emperor right? Is Horace right? This was all Abidon. 100%. And the thing is that he was in charge of, not even in charge of, he just took it upon himself.

Yeah. To nip anything in the bud. because, as we know, as they got deeper and deeper in, Horace was starting to lose himself to chaos, and Avedon didn't really know what to do about that, but he knew that he wasn't going to let anybody else do anything down Horace. Yeah, and this is kind of the beginning of Abidon's rise. And I like pointing out, as we said earlier,

a lot of Abidon's rise was reluctant. He was like, when you read the stories, especially the stories during the Horace heresy, it is constant backstabbing, power grabbing. I mean, Luther, Ezekiel. I mean, there's so many of these people throughout the stories of where they see any chance for them to move themselves up and they get it. Abadon never wanted that. No, well, he's also got, he's biting into an ass-flavored lemon as we continue on.

Yeah. Because the person in his life, Horace, is doing, starting to be everything. that he doesn't like. Yeah. And so let's go into kind of what's happened with Horace's a quick refresher. Brad's buddy, Lehman, Russ. Woo! Went on a crusade down the middle of Horace's ship,

stabbed Horace with his spear, and then pieced out. Pretty much. Basically the story. But the spear ended up wounding Horace so badly that he had to make a new deal. with the chaos. Which is the third. He's now acquiesced a chaos several times, actually. This is, it's the third big deal, but he's done.

He's done a few others. Yeah, because he wanted knowledge power to continue on. And each time that this happens, Abadon's like pretty pissy because the whole thing is is that the emperor betrayed us. This is why we're doing this in the first place. and now he feels that the entirety of this is, what are you doing, man? Like, this is not what we're supposed to be doing.

Well, it's this whole thing of, Abandon was all in on Horace's original thing, where the emperor betrayed us, we conquered the galaxy, he then handed our success over to somebody else. They also think he's trying to achieve Godhood. Yeah. And what ends up happening is,

now you're watching Horace kind of go down the same path. not really a reason for it. But where this becomes, but this is kind of what, Abadon's an interesting vote here, though. Horace, as he's effectively in a coma, you know, because the chaos guys are eating his soul. My hands the reins over to Abidon.

Let's put Abidon in charge. And Abidon just does what Horace wanted done. So he's, this is that whole that loyalty thing again, where he went, all right, well, I don't agree with what you're trying to do. I don't like what you're trying to do. but you're in charge. So I'm going to make sure we get it, we get it done.

Which they do. Which they do. And so those of you who haven't read the books, effectively, most of the campaign through soul is Abadon at the help, not Horace. Yeah, because, well,

Horace doesn't even know where he is half the time now, because he's in and out of being possessed by all four gods. And I mean, to the point where Luna, Maybe one of the most important victories in the siege of terror was Abidon. He was the one that actually went in there leading his just Aaron. Well, he was going door to door.

Yeah. Like literally selling murder. Yeah. I mean, one little funny story here is that I do like this Norris heresy is Abadon leads an attack on the gene labs on Luna and actually does seize them and gets so they, have the ability to make, you know, new, new legions, but because they lose the horacee, this is just a useless piece of information for them in technology because they have to go back to the eye of terror. However, not everything Abidon did was successful. No, he's, that's why, again, I like him as a character, because he's not, I'll throw this

out for Zoobes, he's not a Mary Sue, which is what he calls all the primars. Yeah, it's not wrong. Well, because he's failed a lot. He succeeded a lot, but he makes bad choices. He makes great choices. Attacking the ye old gate, which shall not be named, which did not go well. He fell. He fell for Dorn's trap.

He in that door. But it was a wildly obvious trap. He also got worn like, hey, man, this is for sure a trap. Well, that's why I look about the story is Abadden seized the crack under the Saturnine gate. says, look, there's a weak spot there. And Petrable goes, it's not a weak spot. Dorn did it on purpose. It's literally a giant X.

Totally waiting for you there. There's a piano on a rope hanging over it. Like, don't do this. And Abidon just says, screw you, you're wrong. I'm going to go do this because I'm this good at it. I think he just doesn't care. I think at this point in time, until right now in the siege of Terra, everything's been going pretty damn well.

That's fair. So I think he was just like, hey, man, I'm in Fuego. I've been draining threes for the last half. What could happen? You're like, well, this could happen. Everyone could die. So that's what happens. They just don't know.

From those of you who didn't listen to the episode, they jumped down. It is a perfect trap where basically they teleport in. So they teleport in everyone around. They're surrounded by guns that shoot them. It's not, it's one of the, those things, like, not even like take a, not even red shirt on Star Trek level of death. Like, it's just an instant.

And no. Now, Abedan does survive it. He teleports down. Everyone gets shot and he teleports back out. So he doesn't die there, but he kind of now has to shut the F up. Yeah. Going forward, that's from a planning stage standpoint. He's like, whoopsie.

He basically goes back to the Vangel Spirit. And this is when all the shit went down. So this is a weird thing because the Don, who will argue later, I think was evil from the beginning. You do not. But he did not want Horace to lose, but he also didn't want corrupted Horace. So I think he was very torn about what he was. Oh, yeah, that was the thing. He wanted the original Horace to win.

And anything that they were doing that was kind of on. those lines he was fully supportive of, but he did not like the version of Horace that he was left with. Because I don't know if we did enough justice. We talked about it. Horace was so corrupted. His physical form had changed. I mean, it wasn't, he wasn't, like, like, kind of like plagued Marines, like in that

level where it's like, he was, oh, something's. Yeah, his form was changed, but he's also in and out of, he's talking in multiple voices. You know what I mean? Because he's projecting. And when the Don goes back to the ventral spirit, he is bent out of shape. Not only did he just fail at stuff, but shit's going down and he knows it's going down.

So, yeah, Don's back to the eventual spirit. He just, when does he realize that the shields are down? I mean, he figured that instant with something. He knows exactly what's going to go down. Because Horace basically let the shields on and went, bring your weak shit at Burr. And Avedon is like, what are you doing?

And also kind of knows that this might go terrible. And he still doesn't want Horace to die. And this is one of my favorite parts of the book is he then just beelines for the bridge. And the vengeful spirit at this point is not great. It's not a great place. Again, if you've seen Event Horizon, it is that times about 7,000. So Abadden just decides anything. Anything between him and Horace that is even mediocre in his way is dying while he's at full

speed. He makes a full, he decides going straight would be the best option. And it's a cool part of the book. He's literally carving up demons. You know, there's some random loyalists in there. There's other traitors. It doesn't matter. I am going to fight by Horace's side against the emperor, and no one is stopping me do

that. And much like the Rogel Dorn for the emperor, he does not get there in time. And he is, I think this is when he gets broken out of his spell because he goes from the most possible love for Horace to, I don't even know, hate, just disdain and disgust at what happened. And that's when he rips off the talent of Horace. and takes his body. Well, he takes the ship. He takes the ship. But I'm saying, but he takes...

The body's on the ship. But he had to make away with that because you still had Primarks hang out. He picked up the body and carried it to the bridge and then get dused out and it turned this ship. Immediately. Yeah. But it's at this point that I think the spell was broken.

He felt that Horace had betrayed him, or at least betrayed their cause, I think. Yeah. And this becomes really the start of Abidon being the, the war master, like the, the Abidon. And this is the beginning because he goes on a vision quest. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But like, I really think that this is the point that we were, he was the follower,

the right-hand main of Horace. And then he became not even just disillusioned. He just took such a 180 on it. Let's take the time with that because, yeah, this is, this is the inflection point. He breaks. the story is very quick at this point. The Sons of Horace just all bail, and they go back to the eye of terror

because that's where you go if you need to escape the Imperium. And they're being attacked the whole way because they are, remember, if you're going to rank out all of the traitor legions that you want dead if you're the Imperium, the Ors's Legion is number one,

two, three, maybe through 11. It's also the guy that was leading the rest of the forces is there. So they're running at, full speed being just... And they are also being completely separated, too. They're making a wild dash,

and it's not a fallback retreat. This is a full run. They're going back there. Some of the other, like, Trader Legions took a bit of a walkabout in the way there. They were like, oh, we'll stop off with this planet, pick up some slaves, we'll go to this planet, burn it for no reason.

No. Sons of Horace were gone. Yep. And it's a big deal on this because, and I think it's this, one of the reasons that they lost so much, because the Don's not even trying to fight at this point in time. He's just trying to get the hell away.

And I think deal with what the hell is going on. Because, again, you're right. He was just straight broken at this point in time because everything that he thought was right and perfect and everything, even though that they were the bad guys, they were doing the right thing. Yeah. But the guy that told you about this became everything that you didn't.

like. Well, and it's a compounding effect that we've also discussed on prior episodes. When your Primark dies, it wrecks you. So you get this double hit of the Primark has died, which, you know, set the blood angels off, really launched the red thirst and the blood angels. The iron hands became almost an unfit fighting force for a while. Ferris Magnus got his dome cut off. Yeah. It's just, it all does it. So Horace, we, we, because it's just like, it's literally, it's literally, it cares about the Luna wolves. But the fact of the matter is, yeah, when the Wins of the Suns of Horace, when Horace died, it also hit all of them. It's psychic backlash. And you've got that going on while you're being attacked.

It all just starts to fall apart. So they eventually get all the way back to the eye of terror. And now they've got a bigger problem. They've got a leadership void. And it is not filled because Abidon Cartman's it and says, screw you guys. He takes the ship. And just like basically pulls the bus up, kicks everyone off the bus. It just drives away.

It drives away. Yeah. Like where are you going? He's like nowhere. I don't care. Peace out. So I just thought this was hilarious. So he literally gets out there with a vengeful spirit.

Let's everyone off apparently at some stop and then just takes the vengeful spirit. Oh, also this is another reason why the Don's a bad dude. The Don takes off all his armor. Yeah. He gets out of his Terminator armor and is wearing a two-enital. and he just rolls through the eye of terror, contemplating life. Just wandering through. For a while.

Meanwhile, behind him, the Legion is completely falling apart. They're also getting picked off by the other legions. We'll be there. We'll go out in next episode. So what's going to happen is the chaos gods are coming in. I mean, this is, remember, as if you look at all the legions, Horace's Legion had no chaos deity. So they're just kind of up for grabs, for lack of a better, saying it.

So every member of the Legion who's wandering through the eye of terror, looking for leadership or whatever, is just having chaos, gods go, well, I'll be your friend. And or murdering them. Yeah, it's more the second. There's a lot of murder going on. And so Abadden's gone, and they have to figure this stuff up. But let's spend just, sort of getting near the end of the episode,

I want to spend a little bit more time here talking about Abadden and kind of where he was and where we are. So Abadden was just a warrior who loved loyalty. In fact, kind of like the lion. Well, he was kind of like a lot. I mean, kind of, but he was always. I think more violent. I would say, we can disagree on this, I still think that Don was always a, Don started out lawful evil, and I think he became neutral evil because his loyalty always got betrayed to him.

All of it. Think about it, though. From dad, second dad. Yeah. And you're, you're. That's why I think he started off more around chaotic, neutral, lawful, neutral. And it up lawful evil, but by choice. I'll give you that.

I'll give you that, the thing, too. because he, you got to think he has three father figures. You have his actual dad. Yeah. And then you have the emperor and Horace. And all of them to him betrayed him horribly, like base level betrayed. They didn't steal $10 from his wallet. No.

They betrayed his core beliefs. You know, dad tried to kill him. Everyone else basically said, hey, these are the things that are most important to you. Cool. I'm going to do the opposite. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to betray your loyalty. I'm going to betray your trust.

And I'm going to become things that you never want. I'm going to become things you spent most of your life fighting against. Right. They become the antithesis of this. He just thinks Horace is now just weakness. He's like, what is even happening? And now I just went into the immaterial. I went into the warp.

The difference is wandering the warp. And I mean, he's a walkabout. He's a walkabout again with no armor. Well, he's a walkabout. he does have the vengeful spirit. Yes. And then I know, but like, he's, he's in the point where he just doesn't care what happens.

Because he doesn't know what to do, to be honest with you. Again, he is a broken, immortal man. That's actually, wow, I hadn't thought, but you just made a point there. It never occurred to me. He's been a follower. The entire, his entire life. Correct? He's never been a true leader.

Even when he was leading the sons of Horace against the emperor, he was, he was still doing four horse. So he's never been in a position of, I guess I'll just do what I want to do. Yeah, and he doesn't know what he wants to do because he's, again, just been trifective betrayed. Yeah. On a galactic scale.

It's tough to be more betrayed than he thinks he's betrayed right now. I mean, that's a big deal. You know, I felt betrayed. I set the galaxy on fire because I was so mad about this betrayal and then the guy that I followed to do this betrayed me again. And now I'm also sitting into

oh yeah, did I just travel into magic world? Well, evil magic world. Evil magic world. It's not imagination from South Park. Exactly. It's no bueno and I'll just try to figure out, oh, cool, apparently thoughts exist and become reality.

Sweet. I'll deal with that as we go. That's some new information that I have. That's a fun one. So I think we're going to break there because the next piece we're going to get into is going to be the reemergence of Abidon and what I would call his rise to... The rise of the Don. The rise of Abadon. Because the goal here was kind of to tell you guys where he came from and how he, that would

all kind of fell apart. But as he played the game, obviously he came back up. So the next episode, we're going to dive pretty heavily into how Abadon became the head of the Black Legion and the beginning of the Long War. Yeah, it's actually impressively badass. With that, though, we did want to talk about some books that you guys can read. So Brad actually compiled a list because he's prepared. I do. And we've got Soul Hunter, which is the first book of the Nightlord's trilogy. It's fantastic. The Black Legion series, Talent of Horace and the Black Legion, they do POVs of the Don on that. That's cool. I think.

think it's really could. Pandorax, the Red Path. Weirdly enough, Fabius Biles' book has a lot of interactions with Abidon. Yeah, we're getting to that in a bit. They weren't big fans of each other. And one of the biggest things I would have everybody go into is the Codex Supplements, specifically if you can get, if you've been a 40K person for a long time, or you can go into the old bookstores, the sixth edition, Black Legion Codex Supplement, has a wild

amount of great stories in it. Yeah, that's actually something that I do want to encourage people to do is read the older codexes. The black library is great, but it's really come on more recently, I think, from a source as 40K has grown, before we had black library, we had codexes. And actually, the credit to the GW, they had some extremely good writing that went into that. I mean, like your fifth edition, sixth edition, fourth edition edition codexes, there's some really

cool stuff in there because that was how you learned the game. You would get a new codex and that was all you could know about the game until the next one came out. So they were, you know, obviously it's where your data sheets were. They were broken as all hell, but that's a side note. But the stories were really, really great. So I cannot encourage you people enough to read codexes. But with that, we'll see you guys next week for part two of our Abidon coverage. Probably is going to be a part three, potentially at part four. I'm hoping to keep it at part three. We'll see.

But... Marks a moment. Yeah, that's why. It's because the problem is he's in every series.