Characters / The Roboutian Heresy Forces Of Chaos

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Ruinous Powers

General

• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Along with We ARE Struggling Together, their Fatal Flaw. Too many times Chaos was turned on itself or fought with one another, leaving their plans ruined.
• Eldritch Abomination: These are being of ideas, thoughts, horrors and souls, each having a singular malevolent mind, yet connected to each other.
• Not So Invincible After All: What Emperor's death has done to them; they're killable now.

Khorne

Tzeentch

Nurgle

Slaanesh

The Prince of Pleasure, the Lord of Excess, She Who Thirsts.

• Adaptational Intelligence: Slaanesh has been far more active in one way or another than in canon, leading multiple ways of attack all over the galaxy for a variety of goals in ways that even her fellow gods haven't been able to match yet. It's a bit of a Subverted Trope since all of the attacks failed in one way or another, but it's a show of initiative atypical in the Gods of Chaos.
  • The first of this plans was a raid on the Black Library by Rafen the kinslayer and his forces, were it not for the White Seers, Ahriman and sabotage from the Changeling they would have taken all of the Library's knowledge for Slaanesh, who would have used it to become the greatest among the Chaos Gods.
  • Second, and perhaps greatest, of this attempts was the Angel War. While it could be argued that Sanguinius is an aspect of Slaanesh, and the Prince of Pleasure certainly provided all of the Warp power to make the invasion possible, to the point of leaving the Silver Palace half-empty. This attack in particular could have turned the Astronomicon into an unholy beacon of Slaanesh, and allowed She Who Thirsts to fully manifest in the materium.
  • Finally, there's a very specific attempt to assasinate Eisenhorn via one of the Blood Angels before he could become the Yellow King.
• Scars Are Forever: At the climax of the Angel War Slaanesh was attacked by Lorgar and Ephrael Stern while they both wielded the Sword That Was Promised. While she was able to dodge the attack and retreat from Sol she still was wounded, little more than a cut on her hand, but it explicitly destroyed the image of perfection she had forever.

Notable Daemons

General

The Yellow King (UNMARKED SPOILERS!)

A mysterious Chaos entity that led the Raven Guard into corruption, linked fundamentally to the horrific mutations of Warp and flesh they create. As revealed in "The Doom of Eisenhorn", it is, in fact, the God-Emperor - or to be more accurate, a Warp daemon/nascent god personifying everything the God-Emperor hated about himself, brought to horrific life by the understandable fear of xenos and heretics of him.

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• Adaptational Abomination: In canon, the Yellow King is revealed to be Constantin Valdor. While he is certainly a badass by his own, he doesn't hold a candle to the entity that the King is revealed to be at the end of "The Doom of Eisenhorn".
• Big Bad Ensemble: One of the most important Big Bad villains of the whole story together with Chaos Gods and other threats and menaces faced by the galaxy. He's responsible for kidnapping and corruption of the Primarchs and is implied to be an incarnation of Chaos itself, but is also hostile to the Ruinous Powers and other malignant factions and vice-versa due to contradictory endgames and natures.
• The Chessmaster: Of course, just like his inspirator. He managed to play everyone like a kazoo to fully manifest and incarnate in the Materium, making even Eisenhorn - the one most obsessed with stopping him - an Unwitting Pawn to that end.
• Curbstomp Battle: Once fully manifested, he pretty much defeated everyone present on Sancour who tried to stop or kill him (assuming they haven't committed suicide out of horror and despair of his existence) with almost callous ease. Even Malice and Kaldor Draigo were unable to prevent his advent, despite the former being a planet-sized Body Horror Eldritch Abomination and the latter being a Grey Knight Grandmaster who spent a practical eternity fighting it.
• Despair Event Horizon: Witnessing him drives in how much of his existence is owed to the Imperium itself, and causes those like Eisenhorn to realize how much they helped make him exist. Needless to say, he inflicts this. It becomes unsurprising as to why so many who found the truth about him destroyed their research and committed suicide afterwards.
• The Dreaded: Everyone in his presence completely freaked out upon his advent, both by his existence and for what he represented. Even Kaldor Draigo, a Grey Knight Grandmaster who had stalwartly fought countless horrors and spent a practical eternity fighting the Living World Malice, was filled with horror the moment he saw him and tried to kill him to no avail. Malice meanwhile haplessly screamed in one voice as the Yellow King headed up to claim Malice as his 'throne'.
• Eldritch Abomination: A daemon god which represents evil of Emperor and Imperium and heavily implied to be avatar of Chaos Undivided.
• Enemy Without: Of the Emperor - more specifically, a warp being born from his hypocritical and callous side.
• Evil Counterpart: As effectively the Shadow Archetype of the very existence of the Imperium, he very deliberately creates these, like the Cognitae in regards to the Inquisition.
• Evil Versus Evil: The Raven Guard, ironically, detest him - he is the personification of everything Corax hated and feared about his father.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's very polite to everyone he speaks, but he's still a monstrous daemon god from the Warp. He's responsible for scattering the Primarchs, corruption of Raven Guard, and manipulating Gregor Eisenhorn into becoming his avatar; he also mocks Eisenhorn in his sleep and tells him of his inability to prevent his ascent.
• God Is Evil: What he represents, per Word of God, being the personification of the Emperor's callous/tautological side and the Imperium's darkness.
• The Heartless: Is more or less the personification of all the Imperium's sins and especially those of the God-Emperor himself.
• Light Is Not Good: As the personification of everything wrong with the Imperial Cult, he has a crapton of fire and light imagery associated with him.
• Physical God: As powerful and cunning as it is, the Yellow King is still far below the Chaos Gods in terms of raw power. However, this also means that it can come fully into physical reality, when even the full effects of the Angel war were barely enough to bring Slaanesh in.
• Shadow Archetype: He is the personification of everything the Emperor hated and feared of himself. He pretty much recognizes himself as this trope:
  This is what I am. I am the Imperium's sins. I am the Shadow of the Emperor. And now that He has chosen death over divinity, I am all that is left, and all that was His is mine to claim.
• Start of Darkness: The Yellow King was born when the Emperor of Mankind, at the fall of the Tower of Babel (where evil sorceror-kings sacrificed thousands of noble geniuses trying to reverse-engineer Enuncia), had a Heel Realization and destroyed it rather than take and use the research for himself. While this led to the Emperor becoming a better person than he was in canon, it also left behind a seed in the Immaterium which fed upon the Imperium's oppressions and genocides for 10,000 years until it became the embodiment of the Emperor's and the Imperium's darkness.

The Cherubael

A very powerful daemon prince, currently bound by Gregor Eisenhorn.

• Go Mad from the Revelation: Eisenhorn used him to learn more about Yellow King. Whatever he learnt nearly broke even his mind.

Traitor Legions

I — Dark Angels

General

• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Invoked with the Broken Ones, Imperials captured by the Dark Angels who became so broken by their torments under the Dark Angels they are left hollow shells who would either betray each other and the Imperium if it meant avoiding further suffering, or driven mad and sent in battle as Cannon Fodder by the Dark Angels, where they charge the Imperials partly out of the desperate hope the Imperials can end their suffering.
  • Even those who managed to escape the Dark Angels are no longer trusted by the Imperium, as it is very conceivable even if they are not deliberately sent in as The Quisling for the Dark Angels, the fact they managed to escape at all could be all part of a complex scheme by the Dark Angels against Imperial forces, with the escapee being an Unwitting Pawn.
• Complexity Addiction; Between the amount of layers in their hierarchy, the fact that some operatives have secret orders from the Grandmasters (or Lion El'Jonson Himself), and the constant change of meaning in the titles of any given rank. Only the Alpha Legion can keep up with the constant changes.
• I Reject Your Reality: The entire legion suffers from this as a result of their wholehearted embrace of Tzeentch, as it means they don't have to face the truth that they had been played like a fiddle by the 'Architect of Fate', that they not only betrayed the Imperium and failed to avert the Bad Future that prompted their betrayal in the first place, but actually made it happen because of their actions. None embraced the lie more than Primarch Lion El'Jonson himself, to the point that he's frequently described as little more than a puppet of Tzeentch. Justified in that the Chaos God they embraced is basically an incarnation of Humanity's, if not all sapient life's capacity for self-deceit.
• Conflicting Loyalty: In canon, the Dark Angels both before and after the Heresy were afflicted with this trope from so many contradicting loyalties that they harbor, leading to no small number of complications. In the Roboutian Heresy, due to their fall and allegiance to Tzeentch, this was made deliberate by design and taken up to eleven, leading to unending scheming and backstabbing amongst themselves and their 'allies' in damnation even to their detriment. All Just as Planned for the 'Architect of Fate', of course.
• Manipulative Bastard: Due to their allegiance to Tzeentch, this is to be expected. Their tactics can be confusing at first sight, with the full consequences only being revealed centuries after the campaign’s end.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Under Azrael, the Dark Angels work together with the Space Wolves, led by Logan Grimnar, for the Siege of Terathalion. From the dialogue between Azrael and Grimnar, it's abundantly clear that they really don't like each other, with Azrael secretly having attempted to assassinate Grimnar multiple times, but their hatred of the Thousand Sons is outweighing their hatred for each other.
• Torture Technician: One of the tasks of the Interrogator-Chaplains is to have the imperial prisoners broken with torture, and then released back to the battlefield, either as infiltrators or with the purpose of damaging morale.

Primarch Lion El'Jonson

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• Anti-Villain: While no saint and seriously lacking Pet the Dog moments (especially since he fills the role similar to Lorgar in canon as the first Primarch to turn traitor), Lion also isn't exactly happy with it and is more aware than most of his brothers how much the Chaos Gods actually control them. This continuity's Lorgar saw there was enough good still in Lion that it was worth it to at least offer him redemption, in contrast to Sanguinius and Aeonid Thiel's own Kirk Summation of Roboute who are explicitly Beyond Redemption, though time will tell if Lion takes him up on the offer.
• Being Evil Sucks: Lion is aware what he has become and does seem to regret it very deep done (if only as a cruel play of Tzeentch), but he crossed Despair Event Horizon and believes he can't do anything but to serve Tzeentch.
• For Want Of A Nail: Kairos Fateweaver drove Lion'El Johnson mad through voices in his head, ultimately luring him to Tzeentch's side. This had the side effect of making Luther and his Fallen the Loyalists instead.
• Hero Killer: He'd killed Luther during the battle for Caliban.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: While rupturing the Webway allowed him to hunt Cypher personally, it also let Lorgar escape from the Chaos Gods and take the Sword that was Promised.
• Manipulative Bastard: He'd manipulated Leman Russ to trick him into allying with the traitors, then sacrificed Leman to ascend into Daemonhood.
• Orcus on His Throne: Lion El'Jonson hasn't left Cysgorog since the end of the Heresy.
• Wild Child: Just like his canon counterpart, he spent his first years of life alone in the forests of Caliban.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: The wound he got fighting Luther never fully healed even after Luther's demise.

Grand Master Azrael

• Ambiguously Evil: While Azrael himself is a puppet of Tzeentch in every way and exactly as much of a monster as that implies, it's significantly less clear if the personality buried under that control was a loyal follower as is claimed or an enemy of the Dark Gods forced into servitude. The fact his body started instinctually cutting down his own forces the moment said chains were strained to the breaking point by Magnus' repeated thwarting of Tzeentch's plans certainly indicates that, whoever Azrael really is, they aren't nearly as loyal to Chaos as the First Legion would have the galaxy believe.
• The Magnificent: Known as "the Lord of Lies".
• Multiple-Choice Past: Azrael's memories have been constantly modified by Tzeentch's will since the moment he became a Grand Master.
• Hero Killer: He murdered Khalida to allow the Black Crusade to enter into the fortress of Ahat-iakby.
• Unreliable Narrator: In scenes presented from his perspective he will regularly contradict himself as Tzeentch rewrites his memories and motives depending on the dark gods whims.
  Azrael carefully maintained a neutral face. He had already tried to have Logan killed three times since the rendezvous in deep space, sending daemons to slay him and making sure they could not be traced back to him... How foolish did the Old Wolf think he was ? They were here to destroy the Fifteenth Legion once and for all. This was far more important than any other plot – this was the will of Tzeentch himself written large upon the galaxy. To sabotage it was unthinkable. He would not turn on his allies until Magnus was dead and Terathalion destroyed – why, he had even held back from trying to have Logan removed during the trip, knowing that without the Old Wolf, the Space Wolves elements of their fleet would disperse.
• Villainous Breakdown: Sarthorael’s defeat and True Death at the hands of Magnus proved too much for his constantly-rewritten mind to justify or explain as a victory in their favour, resulting in him going into a screaming hysteria as the magic clouding his mind start tearing at his soul from the weight of too many contradictions, even as he kept fighting out of instincts.

Grand Master Belial, the Lord of Whispers

• Anti-Magic: Belial wields the Sword of Silence. This blade projects a field around him that nullifies psychic phenomena.
• The Magnificent: Known as "the Lord of Whispers".

Asmodai, the Lord of Redemption

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• Attack Its Weak Point: Has a unique talent in locating weak spots in the bodies, minds and souls of those in his tender mercies to break people most effectively by apply 'pressure' to them, as well as use the same weak spots tp push others still into heresy.
• Boom, Headshot!: Courtesy of Cypher with his plasma pistol.
• The Corrupter: Known and respected for his ability to corrupt and manipulate others into the worship of Tzeentch as much as his ability for torturing people.
• The Dragon: Is believed to be the second-in-command of Grand Master Azrael himself.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Never succeeded in 'redeeming' any of the nine Fallen he or others captured, but is convinced to be part of a trial to harden his resolve for capturing Cypher - which would eventually end in failure, along with his life.
• Large Ham: Asmodai all but practically chews the scenery in his appearances, especially when he finally confronts Cypher - who responded by blowing his head off.
• Undignified Death: After so long in service of the Lion and Tzeentch and so much time and effort trying to hunt down Lord of the Fallen, when he finally confronts his quarry, Asmodai had his head unceremoniously blown off by Cypher before he could even finish announcing himself.
  Asmodai: CYPHER! I am your judgment, sent by the Lion and Tzeentch! I am the Lord of Redemption! Asmo -
  [Gets headshot by plasma pistol]
  Cypher: I don't care who you are.
• The Unfettered: Completely without guilt or shame, having long ago reconciled with himself over his role as an Interrogator-Chaplain.
• Torture Technician: Is an Interrogator-Chaplain like in Canon, and stands out among them as being cruel and evil even by their standards.

V — White Scars

General

• Arch-Enemy: They wants to destroy Nostramo as revenge for destruction of their own homeworld, Chogoris. They also hate Alpha Legion (who participated in the same battle), but don't know what to target, so concentrates on Night Lords first and foremost.
• Badass Biker: As in canon, they are known for heavy use of jetbikes in their assaults — to the point that loyalists gradually stops using them precisely because they're so heavily associated with White Scars. Lack of infrastructure to build or maintain them, however, forced them to restrict those to only elite cadres. Some White Scars outright makes the pacts with daemons to merge with their bikes and gain even more power and speed.
• Expy: They essentially are Kurgan/Hung IN SPACE!
• Glory Hound: After Heresy, as if compensating for lack of acknowledging prior to it, they became obsessed with gaining infamy in the Imperium, enjoying the fear of their prey when they realise that they're about to be attacked by White Scars (of which White Scars readily informs them just before attack, to break their morale).
• It's All About Me: It's stated that one of the reasons for them losing the battle for Chogoris is their inability to unify even when facing common enemy and defending their own homeworld, resulting in some Khans being too busy salvaging to fight, shooting at each other due to not even bothering with teamwork, or outright running away. Had they tried to fight as the legion, they might have stand a chance, even against combined might of Night Lords and Alpha Legion.
• Necromancer: They practice resurrecting fallen Astartes (traitor and loyalists alike) as the undead minions. It's stated to be one of the few things capable of damaging moral even of the Space Marines, since they know that no amount of faith in the Emperor can protect them from such fate.
• Spare a Messenger: They usually spares some survivors of their attacks, specifically so they would spread the news and reinforce White Scars' horrible reputation.
• Tautological Templar: White Scars believe that anyone who lives under the aegis of the Imperium is guilty of cowardice, otherwise they would rebel. Thus, it's not that the White Scars are "enslaving" anyone, just "changing who the masters are."
• We ARE Struggling Together: They have tendency to lose the wars because of their habit of killing each other as part of their power struggle even in the middle of the battle.

Primarch Jaghatai Khan

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• Death by Adaptation: He was firstly possessed by a Greater Daemon, which essentially destroyed his soul, and then slain on Terra by Mortarion. In canon, Jaghatai survived the events of Heresy, and went missing in the Webway during conflict with Dark Eldar.
• Demonic Possession: On Chondrax, he was possessed by a Greater Daemon Khagan, which twisted his body into some abomination made of living shadows.
• For Want Of A Nail: Jaghatai Khan was found by the Palatine (who turned out to be a Chaos worshipper) instead of the tribes, exposing him to the corruption of Chaos early and allowing the Warp Storms at Chondrax to whisper into mind and corrupt his heart, and giving him a fundamental distrust of anyone who called themselves Emperor, causing him to become even more isolated than in canon.
• Killed Off for Real: While few knows about it, due to lack of witnesses, it's believed that he was slain on Terra by Mortarion — or, rather, what's remained of him, as his soul was all but destroyed by the daemon Khagan long before then. He was never seen since then.
• Make an Example of Them: When conquering Chogoris, standard practice was to murder everyone in the cities which resists and gather their skulls in huge piles.
• My God, What Have I Done? / Villainous BSoD: After turning traitor and killing his subordinates, especially Ilya Ravallion, he went mad with grief, and gave himself to the Warp, after which aforementioned possession occured.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Palatine thought that if he finds the child first and takes as his own, he would prevent the prophecy about that child eventually taking his life and destroying his empire. But him lying to Jaghatai about the truth of his discovery, and later further antagonising him and even outright trying to backstab, resulted in Jaghatai defecting to Talskar and later razing Palatine's empire and claiming his life.

VI — Space Wolves

General

• Arch-Enemy:
  • They still blame Thousand Sons for everything bad that happened to their legion.
  • They really hate Dark Angels, because they're directly responsible for the loss of their Primarch.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Post-Heresy, each Great Company is led by Wolf Prince, and consists of warbands led by Wolf Lords. Wolf Lord can challenge his superior Wolf Prince to a duel, and Wolf Prince can't decline; whoever wins, would lead the Great Company. Attempts to cheat by any means results in the winner being killed by the angry Space Wolves.
• Believing Their Own Lies: The Space Wolves as a whole since before the Heresy - their canonical denial that Rune Priests have anything to do with the Warp is amplified into believing that they are not even psykers (when in canon Rune Priests privately admit that one needs psychic potential to communicate with the spirit of Fenris in the first place), and after Fenris was destroyed, now they're divided evenly between Tautological Templars who believe that somehow Fenris still exists somehow within them, and those who have plummeted past the Despair Event Horizon and admit the truth - but in the same breath blame the Thousand Sons for their current state.
• Caught on Tape: Russ was shocked and enraged at Alpharius, whom he welcomed at Fenris with open arms, not only voted for the use of Psykers but also showed evidence that his Rune Priests are tapping powers from the Warp. This caused his argument come off as hypocritical that Mortarion (who was his only stauch ally in banning the Psykers) blames Russ more than Magnus (who had been silent on the duration of the Council) why their anti-Psyker camp lost. This caused a massive rift between the Space Wolves and the Alpha Legion afterwards.
• Even Evil Has Standards: They shows up of both sides of this trope:
  • Space Wolves have formal procedure of changing the leader of the Great Companies, explicitly to preserve what little order they have left and not collapse entirely. Amongst the other things, it's completely unacceptable to cheat in duels for the Wolf Prince position; whoever tries, gets torn apart even if they win, because everyone recognises how important it is for their survival.
  • The other Traitor Legions considers their rampant use of xenos technology and allies to be blasphemous, deserving only painful death as a punishment.
• Expy: Similar to the White Scars, they more or less become Norscans IN SPACE, with a heavy flavor towards Khorne.
• I Reject Your Reality: The Space Wolves still adamantly believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that there is a difference between the psychic abilities they call upon the World-Spirit of Fenris (which is long destroyed by this point), and psychic abilities used by the Loyalist Thousand Sons and other non-Fenrisians, which they arbitrarily classified as 'maleficarum'. One notable character who displays this trait is the Deluded Rune Priest - believing the Fifteenth Legion has 'hidden' the truth from the rest of the Space Wolves somehow with some curse, he is determined to find traces of the Fenris World-Spirit among the surviving Fenrisians, and is willing to go as far as to literally cut apart and flay the souls of as many of them as it takes if it means finding it.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: They never were very popular prior to the Heresy, and it didn't change a one bit after it, with even other Traitor Legions seeing them as outcasts. They're openly hostile with Dark Angels (for what they did to Leman Russ), while other legions sees them as fools, who were tricked firstly by the Emperor, and then by Lion El'Johnson, and despises their dedication to finding Russ, which they sees as foolish. When they do try to work alongside someone, both sides have to watch over their troops to prevent infighting.
• Never My Fault: They do acknowledge that they did the unforgivable and turned to evil, but puts the blame for that on everyone but themselves — Magnus, who "cursed" them in revenge for burning of Prospero, and who lied to Emperor; the Emperor, who lied to them and turned them on himself by his actions; the entirety of Mankind for "betraying" them and throwing away, for which it must be punished...
• Tautological Templar: The Space Wolves still believe themselves to be loyal to the Emperor, but that he was deceived by Magnus and his supporters into accepting maleficarum as a useful tool of the Legions. As a result, the Space Wolves embracing maleficarium to oppose the Thousand Sons is the fault of the Thousand Sons.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Under Logan Grimnar, the Space Wolves work together with the Dark Angels, led by Azrael, for the Siege of Terathalion. From the dialogue between Azrael and Grimnar, it's abundantly clear that they really don't like each other, with Azrael secretly having attempted to assassinate Grimnar multiple times, but their hatred of the Thousand Sons is outweighing their hatred for each other.
• Trauma Conga Line: Ever since Lion El'Johnson tricked Leman Russ into joining the rebellion, the things never goes well for the Sixth Legion. They followed the Lion, and lost their Primarch. They went to Terra, hoping that Russ would return to them for the final battle — and got decimated, because they refused to run until literally all hope got lost, still believing that their father would come to aid them. They retreated to Fenris, hoping to wait for Leman Russ to return, holding for more than a century — only to destroy their home by themselves when the enemy essentially conquered it, and dissolve into countless warbands.
• Undying Loyalty: Just before his disappearance, Leman Russ had promised that he would return to his sons when the "Wolftime" would come. The Space Wolves believed that he would reunite with them on Terra, and continued fighting even when the other traitors realised that things are going south and started fleeing. Only when they remained as literally the last ones to run, did Space Wolves realise that their father would not return, and fled — but for most of them, it was already too late. Even after that, they didn't lose hope and remained in Imperial space to hold on Fenris, believing that their Primarch would find them here — which they did for more than a century, until it was attacked by overwhelming joint forces of Thousand Sons and Sons of Horus, resulting in Bjorn nuking Fenris in attempt to take out as many foes as possible. Even that event didn't kill the faith in eventual return of Russ completely.
• We Have Reserves: During the Great Crusade, Space Wolves gained infamy amongst Imperial forces for complete disregard for their mortal allies' lives, to the point that those allies would rather wait for months and receive someone else than ask Space Wolves for help.

Primarch Leman Russ

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• Does Not Like Magic: The source of his conflict with Magnus is Leman's fundamental mistrust towards anything involving sorcery (he vehemently denies that Rune Priests are Warp users, too). When Emperor, unlike canon, does not ban the use of psychic powers, Leman Russ decides to "prove" him wrong. The end result is destruction of Prospero and damnation of the Space Wolves and Russ himself.
• For Want Of A Nail: In addition to some rather deep personal tragedies (especially the loss of his wolf-siblings), the Emperor's decision to allow psychic powers greatly angered Leman Russ, who became obsessed with proving to the Emperor that psychic powers were evil. This led him and his legion to obsessively search for xenos evidence to prove his point, destroy Prospero (a loyal world) of his own accord, break the Webway in an attempt to assassinate Magnus, and fully turn traitor through Lion El'Johnson's influence.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: He never came along with other Primarchs, save for Horus (whose battle prowess he respected), and Lion (with whom he got along after initial hostility). Comes Heresy, and Horus became his enemy, while Lion chose to manipulate and then outright sacrifice him.
• Guilt-Induced Nightmare: He keeps seeing visions of his two brothers — clearly the two Lost Primarchs — whom he'd punished on Emperor's orders (heavily implied that they were killed), who just follows him silently and stares accusingly. For thousands of years. Those visions followed him even into the Eldritch Location where he's currently trapped.
• The Paranoiac: Both he and Mortarion strongly disliked psychic powers, seeing them as dangerous. But if for Mortarion, it was natural distrust born out of his experience with evil sorcery on Barbarus, and he still respected Magnus for how he behaved during the Council of Nikaea (and later settled down their prior grudges), Leman Russ was doing more harm than good. In his paranoia, he saw the evil intentions where not even Mortarion claimed any, was so vocal about it that he sounded almost obsessed (which was major contribution to Magnus being supported over Mortarion), and, worst of all, was a hypocrite — everyone knew that Rune Priests were psykers, but Leman Russ stubbornly denied it. It would only go worse after his failure to "punish" Magnus, leading him to attack Prospero directly, in misguided belief that it would "help" the Imperium and Emperor.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Lion used him as a sacrifice to achieve daemonhood, and no one, not even him, knows for sure whether he survived and where — or when — he ended up. But Space Wolves' Index Astartes ends with paragraph from Russ' own PoV, revealing that he did, in fact, survive, fighting for survival in some Eldritch Location, and being determined to return to his sons when the Wolftime comes.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy:
  • Until Leman's overzealous rant about the evils of sorcery in general and Magnus and his Thousand Sons in particular, Mortarion had a good chance to convince the Emperor to ban usage of Librarians, due to making very solid and reasonable arguments against them. Instead, Russ only discredited their position, resulting in pro-Magnus decision at Nikaea.
  • After learning about origin of Slaanesh, Leman Russ became convinced that humanity is doomed unless it wipes out all the psykers and sorcerers. But his attempt to destroy Magnus instead ruins the only chance humanity had to stop using the Warp, ensuring that it would continue to rely on psykers to survive.
• Team Killer: Him attacking Prospero? It was done before he defected to Roboute: he saw it as attempt to "save" the Emperor from Magnus.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: On the dead Eldar world, he learned about origin of Slaanesh, and started fearing that if Magnus succeeds at elevating humans into psychic species, it would result in another similar catastrophe. His solution? Burn Prospero and kill Magnus.

VII — Imperial Fists

General

• Arch-Enemy: They hate the Blood Angels with passion due to the broader conflict between Khorne and Slaneesh.
• The Atoner: The Excoriators, created in the aftermath of the Breaking, believes that they have failed, and must atone for that — in battle, as well as through self-inflicted pain (to the point that they can't feel any other pain). They are pariahs amongst the other Imperial Fists, as they're devoid of honour and aims for victory at any cost.
• Blood Knight: Naturally, after pledging their allegiance to Khorne, they've became this. Rogal Dorn in particular is the most violent of them all, his moods constantly switching between explosive rage and icy fury.
• The Berserker: Knowing that he may lose his Legion to growing madness, Dorn had made a deal with Khorne to protect his sons from it — while still benefitting from the boons. For that, they paid in blood of billions innocent, slaughtered in the name of the Blood God, in what's now known as the Blood Crusade. The pact is still in power — for as long as they keeps pleasing Khorne; those who fails, succumbs to the Dorn's Darkness (the curse of their gene-seed) and becomes typical mindless berserkers.
• In-Series Nickname: Loyalists Legions calls them Crimson Fists (after their tradition to paint their gauntlets red), instead of their original name, as they no longer have anything to do with Imperium.
• Might Makes Right: Being dedicated to Khorne, martial strength and skill is the measure of all things in the Imperial Fist legion, and their recruits had this drilled into their heads during their initiation process. Disputes of leadership and slights are resolved by duels and little else, often to the death.
• Magically Inept Fighter: During the Council of Nikea, nearly all of their Librarians were killed by daemon Skarbrand (Dorn has gathered them together while waiting for decision, since it would be easier to act upon it when they're in the same place); the rest have died in subsequent years for seemingly ordinary reasons (now, Inquisition suspects Dark Angels). Since then, any and all attempts to implant gene-seed into psykers invariably results in death. This weakness (Librariums were just acknowledged as important tools, necessary for the Great Crusade's success) contributed to speeding up Dorn's downfall into darkness, as it clashed with his own intolerance to weakness and forced him to compensate for lack of magic with zeal, resulting in unneeded casualties on both sides.
• Shocking Defeat Legacy: Under Dorn, mentioning Inwit in any way became punishable by flogging. Anyone outside of the Legion who does that, would be challenged to a duel.
• Storming the Castle: Unlike canon, they chose to specialise on offence (by contrast, their main rivals, Iron Warriors, became defence specialists), particularly, attacks on the enemy HQ.
• You Have Failed Me: Under Dorn, standard punishment for any failure was flogging or outright execution. Many other Primarhs openly voiced their disgust over that.

Primarch Rogal Dorn

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• Arch-Enemy:
  • During the days of Great Crusade, amongst all enemies of Mankind, he had special hatred reserved for the Orks, as it's the Ork WAAAGH that destroyed Inwit.
  • He had a bitter rivalry with Perturabo even prior to Heresy, but during and especially after it, it turned into burning hatred.
• Became Their Own Antithesis: Before his downfall, Rogal Dorn was known for enforcing iron discipline and self-control. While Legion mostly preserved those ideals, the same can't be said about Rogal himself, who, under influence of Khorne, got consumed by rage and hatred.
• Deal with the Devil: He had made a deal with Khorne to protect his Legion from insanity and prevent them from turning berserkers — in return for spilling blood of billions of innocent in Khorne's name, as well as pledging Dorn's own soul to the Blood God.
• Doomed Hometown: Unlike most Traitor Primarchs, who had lost their homeworlds in the aftermath of Heresy, Dorn's history starts with it. Firstly, he'd lost his flagship, the Phalanx, fighting seven space hulks (even though he destroyed them), and with it, the last memory of his foster family, as well as what he grew to call home. Then, Inwit itself was nuked from orbit when it became hopelessly overrun by Orks — despite all efforts of Imperial reinforcements that just arrived to help. It's believed that it's when the first seed of darkness was planted into Primarch's heart.
• Fatal Flaw: With the destruction of Inwit deeply scarring Rogal Dorn's psyche and soul, all his worst traits are brought out. His unresolved rage over it and other slights and grudges later on became his biggest flaw, one which eventually dragged him and his soul to damnation. His bitterness over the perceived weakness of men and his notorious bluntness also combined with his rage to alienate him from not only his more humane brothers but also eventually others like his own father the Emperor himself.
• For Want Of A Nail: Large armies of Orks found Inwit before the Emperor did while Rogal Dorn was in command, ultimately resulting in the destruction of Inwit, an event which would haunt Rogal Dorn and bring out the worst aspects of his personality. It also made him abandon any attempts to use defensive strategy, in favour of destroying the enemy before it becomes a threat, essentially inverting his Legion's specialisation comparing to canon.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The narrator of the Imperial Fists' entry acknowledged that the traumatic losses Rogal Dorn experienced in Inwit's doomed war against invading Ork WAAAGHs may have most likely pushed the Imperial Fists Primarch down the path of treachery. But then the narrator pointed out that other Primarchs had endured similar horrific losses and remained loyal. Though his Start of Darkness is a significant contributor to his downfall, at the end of the day it was still Rogal Dorn's own decision to rebel and eventually join the forces of Chaos, and that alone made it inexcusable.
• Hobbes Was Right: During the war for the Inwit Cluster from the Orks attacking it, many of his Human subjects of the star empire he built revolted as the war dragged on and conscription requirements and living conditions worsened to intolerable levels, forcing him to waste resources harshly suppressing them at the expense of the war effort. This left him bitter over the perceived weaknesses and perfidiousness of men and made him believe the Humanity must be protected and led only by those strong in leadership and martial might, with or without their consent. This led to him clashing with his more humane brothers when they find offense in his excessively harsh measures (such as executing even soldiers and civilians who surrendered for resisting compliance), and the perceived weakness of the Emperor, the primarchs loyal to him and the Imperium at large in the face of a hostile galaxy was what allowed Guilliman to convince him to join his rebellion.

Sigismund the Destroyer

The champion of Dorn during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy, Sigismund was the first captain of the Imperial Fists and leader of the Templars, and widely considered the most skilled duelist in all eighteen Space Marine Legions. While he loyally followed his primarch into treachery and Khorne worship during the Heresy, for reasons which remain unclear to the Imperium at large, following the Heresy and the battle of the Iron Cage he would turn on his own legion and break it into pieces, before fleeing the wrath of his now Daemon Primarch as the head of the Black Templars warband. As the Destroyer, he is now the foremost mortal Champion of Khorne himself, a force of nature on the battlefield with his sword and fury.

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• Accidental Murder: His duel with Berrossus wasn't supposed to end in the latter being killed; Sigismund overestimated his ability to par the the blow which ended up piercing both his hearts at once, killing him. Sigismund didn't take it well; his strange reaction to seeing blood may also indicate early signs of corruption by the Blood God. Unfortunately, this incident further contributed to rivalry between Dorn and Perturabo, and Rogal Dorn's eventual damnation.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: After ten thousand years as Champion of Khorne, freeing the Seventh Legion from Guilliman's control and paving the way for both the Imperial Fists' reunification and an 'Age of Blood', Sigismund is rewarded with Daemon Princehood at "The Cadian Apocalypse Part II".
• The Chessmaster: As it turned out, everything he did as the Destroyer from the Breaking of the Imperial Fists, earning his Primarch's eternal ire, all the way to launching the greatest Black Crusade to date against Cadia with Bile's Black Legion and the Dark Angels was to break his Primarch and Legion free from Guilliman's control, after realising during and right after the Heresy the pact Dorn made with Khorne with Guilliman's help allowed him to pull a More than Mind Control on Dorn and allow him to manipulate the Seventh Legion as a tool.
• Back from the Dead: Though Dorn finally kills him during "The Cadian Apocalypse Part II", his act of starting the greatest Black Crusade to date, offering uncountable quantities of blood and skull throughout ten thousand years as the Champion of Khorne, freeing his Primarch and the Seventh Legion from Guilliman's secret More than Mind Control and paving the way for it to be reunited earned enough of Khorne's favour to allow him to be resurrected as a Daemon Prince like his Primarch. By his own admission, even he was honestly surprised at Khorne's generocity.
• The Dreaded: Sigismund the Destroyer is known and feared as the greatest champion of Khorne in the galaxy short of Daemon Primarch Rogal Dorn himself, and is shown as less an incredibly bloodthirsty and powerful warrior and more a bloody force of nature who could tear through all but the greatest imperial defences in existence like wet paper.
• The Fundamentalist: Instead of being a religious zealot for the Emperor in canon, Sigismund the Destroyer is one for Khorne in the RH-verse, keeping his canon counterpart's Ax-Crazy tendencies and taking it up to eleven. His introductory monologue for the second part of "The Cadian Apocalypse" offers an insight into his martial fanaticism and dedication to bloodshed.
• Hero Killer: During the Heresy, he was personally responsible for countless deaths of loyalists champions, including former brothers who remained loyal, and perished on Isstvan III.
• Laser-Guided Karma: How he was finally defeated in the penultimate chapter of "The Cadian Apocalypse": One of the last mortal opponents Sigismund killed as a Champion of Khorne inflicted a crack and minor wound on his armour and body, and died making a Dying Curse that retribution would one day come for him. This crack and wound was carried with him into his Daemon Prince form post-ascension and was spotted by the shade of Ibram Gaunt, allowing Ciaphas Cain (LIVING SAINT OF THE IMPERIUM!) to land a decisive blow with his chainsword in their duel.
• Red Baron: "The Destroyer", both for destroying the Seventh Legion as a united force but also for countless other feats of unbelievable bloodshed and carnage as the main Champion of Khorne.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Sigismund's breaking of the Imperial Fist legion unintentionally paved the way to Rogal Dorn's ascension to Daemon Princehood, due to Dorn's sheer rage at his betrayal. Given recent revelations, however, it may or may not been part of Sigismund's plan.
  • Sigismund's destruction of the Seventh Legion's pact with Khorne, while necessary to undo Guilliman's secret influence over Rogal and his legion, may have also removed the only real protection the Seventh Legion has from their genetic curse, Dorn's Darkness. Without it, the Imperial Fists may be doomed to be gradually reduced to uncontrollable berserkers and self-destruct like they nearly had in Roboutian Heresy after being marked by Khorne.
• The Reveal: The true reason for his Breaking of the Seventh Legion and countless other actions over ten thousand years as the Destroyer was far more than just bloodshed in the name of Khorne: Sigismund realised that Dorn's and the Imperial Fists' pact with Khorne, facilitated with Guilliman's help, allowed the Archtraitor to secretly pull the strings on Dorn and through Dorn the Imperial Fists, enslaving them to his will to be used as he sees fit. This pissed off Sigismund, who broke the Legion and turned his Genesire's ire upon him to deny Guilliman full control and effective utilisation of the legion, then made a pact with Khorne where he would spent ten thousand years plotting to bring about an 'Age of Blood' across the galaxy even as he slaughtered his way across it as the Champion of Khorne in exchange for Khorne breaking Guilliman's hold over his Primarch and the Seventh Legion.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Ciaphas Cain's opinion of what he really is deep down, seeing him as '"a demented child given power by a psychic abomination so that it can feed off [his] evil"' who know nothing of the true horrors of war, deluding himself like other Khorne worshippers with trappings of honour and incapable of empathising with the ordinary soldiers and civilians who didn't had his supersoldier enhancements and Khorne-given blessings. Ciaphas made this clear to Sigismund with a dressing down which began Sigismund's Villainous Breakdown during "The Cadian Apocalypse" arc.
• Villainous Breakdown: Despite having become a Daemon Prince of Khorne and had slaughtered virtually everyone and everything up until that point, he fell apart when he was faced by Commissar-Castellan Ciaphas Cain, who having by then became a Living Saint had the power to not only hold his own against him, but defeat him with a little help. By the end of their duel he was reduced to an undignified screaming mess as Ciaphas Cain butchered him with his chainsword before finally banishing him back into the Warp.
• What the Hell Are You?: Combined with This Cannot Be! when Ciaphas Cain finally defeated him.
• You Have Failed Me: On the receiving end by the end of "The Cadian Apocalypse" arc. If Daemon Primarch Rogal Dorn's words are any indication, Khorne was not pleased with Daemon Prince Sigismund after Ciaphas Cain (LIVING SAINT OF THE IMPERIUM!) defeated and banished him back into the Warp.

IX — Blood Angels

General

• Arch-Enemy: They really do not get along with Imperial Fists because of them being aligned with Slaanesh, who is utterly opposed to Khorne, and vice-versa.
• Glamour Failure: Blood Angels can suffer from this, which they don't like at all. A big example of this is the beginning of Ahzek Ahriman's confrontation with Rafen the Kinslayer, the leader of the attack on the Black Library. Ahriman briefly is lured by the angel's unholy beauty, but quickly remembers all of the atrocities committed by Sanguinius and the Blood Angels. This realization immediately destroys the Glamour, which reveals Rafen's hideous true form and sends him frothing with rage.
  • Ahzek Ahriman not only repeats but magnifies this feat a hundredfold by sacrificing his own life to destroy the Glamour of Sanguinius himself, causing him to be exposed as the monster that the truly is and transforming his army from an organized force into a chaotic mess of mutated and bloodthirsty savages.
• Humanoid Abomination: Thanks to glamours, all Blood Angels (excluding the Sanguinary Marines) appear as beautiful and charming as their Primarch, to the point where everyone would be completely distracted and weep at their beauty. However, if someone manages to tear off the glamours and reveal their' true selves as eldritch, horrific-looking monsters, they'll get mad.
• I'm a Humanitarian: They are obsessed with the Thirst, which drives them to consume the flesh and drink the blood of sapient creatures.
• Obviously Evil: Sanguinary Marines lacks ability to use Glamour, with ugliness of their faces matching ugliness of their souls; their wings are also creepy bat-like ones, rather than beautiful feathered ones some other Blood Angels possess. They're explicitly compared to vampires in-text. With such ugliness, they obviously can't use deception, so they relies on brute force; they often serves as mercenaries, accepting payment in blood.
  These Sanguinary Marines, as they are called amongst the servants of the Dark Gods and those of the God-Emperor alike, do not possess the ability to disguise their true nature common to other Blood Angels. All who look upon them know them for the monsters they are.
• Psycho Party Member: Even among Traitor Legions, they stand out. The Red Thirst runs rampant within its ranks and their Primarch has become so insane from his grief/regret-fueled delusions that he doesn't even realize they've turned traitor.
• Winged Humanoid: Some Blood Angels have wings, similar to those of Sanguinius. Sanguinary Marines have them, too, but instead of feathered wings, they have bat-like ones.

Primarch Sanguinius

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• An Arm and a Leg: Inflicted this on both his brothers Omegon and Lorgar during the Battle of Lupercal Gate (the climax of the Angel War), cutting off an arm and a hand respectively.
• Beyond Redemption: Lorgar comes to this conclusion when he realizes that Sanguinius was faking his delusion - there's nothing, not even Lion's own ambivalence about his fate, that could lead him to reject Chaos. He doesn't even realize how far he's fallen.
• The Chessmaster: In his guise as the Sanguinor, Sanguinius had rallied multiple Blood Angels and Slaaneshi warbands, arranged several Keepers of Secrets and other daemons of Slaanesh to be on or to get to the Sol system, and persuaded Slaanesh to release the Laer from their afterlife punishment, to attack Holy Terra and the Sol System at the moment the Emperor made his 'Hail Mary' against Chaos, kickstarting the 'Angel War' while the Imperium is still reeling from the Emperor's death and giving Slaanesh a shot to either destroy the Imperium at its heart, or failing that cripple it.
  • The whole event served another purpose altogether involving Daemon Prince Sanguinius and Slaanesh' court whether it succeeds or fails - by sacrificing six Chaos Lords of Slaanesh, he completed a ritual that allowed Sanguinius to be summoned into realspace near Mercury.
• Cloudcuckoolander: After losing his sanity Sanguinius lives in an imaginary world where he never betrayed the Emperor. Subverted, it turns out he's Crazy Sane and perfectly rational when it comes to strategy.
• Crazy Sane: His true post-corruption personality. While utterly solipsistic and still somewhat delusional (he thinks he's the Emperor's heir and he will do anything to make that fantasy a reality), he is an extremely rational and cunning Manipulative Bastard and strategist.
• Deader than Dead: Thanks to the efforts Lucius the Reborn, Epharel Stern and Primarch Lorgar Aurelian, Daemon Primarch Sanguinius is not only dead, but his essence has been outright OBLITERATED, ensuring he will never come back.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Subverted compared to even Slaanesh, which became very important when the Emperor pulled his final 'Hail Mary' against Chaos. Being Human or Human-like once, Sanguinius and most likely the Sanguinor, despite their corruption, still retained some Humanity in them which allowed them to comprehend some of the Humans' actions. While the very inhuman natures of the Chaos Gods, including Slaanesh, as selfish and monstrous reality cancers meant they would not be able to see the Emperor's final gambit coming, Sanguinius could anticipate something like this due to whatever Humanity remaining within him. This drove him to arrange for the 'Angel War' to erupt in the Solar System the very moment the Emperor hit the bucket, so to take advantage of the chaos to either conquer Sol and destroy the Imperium of Man at its heart for Slaanesh while it was still reeling from the Emperor's death, or failing that cripple Imperium enough that it cannot take advantage of the Emperor's sacrifice when it fully comes into play, buying time for Slaanesh and the rest of the Chaos Gods can regroup and deal with it and its consequences.
  • However, while he is able to understand the Emperor's self-sacrifice and plan for it before anyone even considered it, he is incredibly bad at tempting others without using the glamour. He is too narcissistic to try and comprehend others, instead relying on basic assumptions of their history to offer what he considers to be good rewards.
• Evil Plan: His ultimate objective with the Angel War is to sit upon the now empty Golden Throne and become the new 'emperor' of Mankind following his father's death. This is a VERY bad thing as with the Golden Throne's connection to the Astronomicon, doing so would allow him to taint the Astronomicon's light with the corruption of his patron Slaanesh, exposing everyone everywhere to hir visage completely unprotected and unfiltered. This would corrupt all of Humanity across the galaxy to Slaaneshi worship and give Slaanesh the power-boost needed to win the Great Game over hir fellow Dark Gods and conquer/corrupt the galaxy, dooming Humanity and all other races.
• Face Death with Dignity: At the climatic battle of the Angel War, mortally-wounded and faced with his own imminent defeat and demise before Lorgar and Ephrael Stern wielding the Sword That Was Promised (which has the power to not only kill his corporeal form but also destroy his incorporeal essence, ensuring he would be Killed Off for Real), Daemon Primarch Sanguinius surprisingly did not break down as much as one would expect from a now irredeemably solipsistic monster, instead merely responding to it with bitter amusement and lamenting that his 'reign' would have been 'better' compared to all the other horrors the other Daemon Primarchs would bring about should they and/or their patrons win, right as they cut his head off.
• For Want Of A Nail: Rather than raising him as one of their own, the nomadic Baalite Human tribe which found Sanguinius instead gave him to a sealed vault shelter populated by pureblood Baalites in his youth, where he was raised to despise the mutant and deviant even more than in canon, which also planted a seed of doubt in his own purity considering his wings along with all other differences between him and other pureblood Humans. When the flaws of the Blood Angels started to afflict his Legion, he was even more obsessed in finding a cure for it out of fear of his Legion degenerating and that the Emperor would have him and his Legion purged for his deviancy. Ultimately, in his desperation, he would accept a pact with Slaanesh offered by the Keeper of Secrets Kyriss the Perverse at Signus Prime to free the Blood Angels of their flaws, damning them all.
• Hero Killer: He slew Horus during the Siege of Terra. This ended up psychologically breaking him, to the point where, like canon!Fulgrim, he would constantly clone Horus in the hope that he could have his beloved brother by his side. Unfortunately, since all of Horus's clones have the mental capacity to remember who killed the original, Sanguinius would kill him, and would repeat the process again, and again, and again...
  • During the Angel War it turns out that murdering Horus over and over again was the point - by doing it repeatedly, he was trying to remove the last elements of doubt from himself.
• I Reject Your Reality: Sanguinius started developing delusions to cope with killing his beloved brother Horus at the Gates of Eternity. After growing desperate enough to accept a bargain with Slaanesh to save the Blood Angels, only to have it backfire in the worst possible way, he became so delusional following his ascension as a Daemon Prince that he went completely insane, unable to face the horrible reality of what he had done, as well as what he and his legion became. The scene depicting the moment of his final downfall explicitly noted he embraced this trope when he took it, stating that he "turned his back on the truth, and embraced the lie". By the time of the Angel War, he's convinced himself he was always heir apparent to the God-Emperor, and feels that everything he's done was necessary to inherit the Throne.
• His Own Worst Enemy: Part of the reason for his fall was that because of his different upbringing, Sanguinius never found the strength to confront and conquer his own physical and character flaws like he did in Canon, having grown up too fearful and doubtful of his own imperfections to do so. This hidden pride and deep-seated insecurity gave Slaanesh an opening to corrupt him and his Legion, until it all but consumed him and turned him into a delusional, narcissistic monster by the time of the Angel War with all the nobility he once had gone.
• It's All About Me: While believed to have become completely delusional, Daemon Prince Sanguinius has in truth became a completely solipsistic narcissist who no longer gives a damn about anyone or anything but himself and his desires after becoming fully-corrupted by Slaanesh following his defeat by Daemon Prince Rogal Dorn at the War of Woe. To note, his Sanguinary Guard captain Azkaellon had devoted his entire existence following the Horus Heresy to him throughout his stay on his Daemon World in the Eye of Terror out of Undying Loyalty, yet when Azkaellon was mortally-wounded by the leader of the Grey Knights towards the climax of the Angel War, Sanguinius didn't even spare him a glance. Daemon Prince Sanguinius in fact didn't cared that his legion had degenerated into a splintered mob of hedonistic vampires and didn't even bother calling them to join him in his attack on Holy Terra at the Angel War.
• Killed Off for Real: At the climax of the Angel War, at the Battle of Lupercal Gate, Daemon Primarch Sanguinius was finally slain by the combined efforts of Ahzek Ahriman, Lucius the Reborn, and then Epharel Stern and Lorgar Aurelian together using the Sword That Was Promised, his essence obliterated so utterly that he will never come back.
• Obfuscating Insanity: Ever since Rogal banished him, he was fully corrupted by Slaanesh, and no longer needed to hide behind his delusions to remain rational - he just kept up his Cloudcuckoolander behavior for thousands of years because it allowed him to order around the Sanguinior without anyone interfering.
• Orcus on His Throne: Exploited. By pretending to be completely insane and insensate, Sanguinius was able to quietly plan for millennia by using the Sanguinior as a proxy, knowing nobody suspected the truth.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Unlike canon, he survived the Siege of Terra; him becoming a Daemon Prince allowed him to survive the damage inflicted on him, and merely being banished. His luck eventually run out, and he was slain permanently by Lorgar.
• Tragic Villain: He made a treaty with Slaanesh not for his personal gain, but to save his Legion. It cost the Blood Angels their humanity, and him his sanity. By the time of the Angel War, even the same compassion for his sons has been destroyed by Slaanesh.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Has an epic one when Ahriman pulls a gambit which destroys his Glamour, revealing the ugly monster he truly is/became for everyone as well as breaking his hold over his own forces. Sanguinius is left frothing in a narcissistic fury screaming about how he was going to make everyone on Terra suffer and die for this offence, before Epharel Stern and Lorgar Aurelian caught his attention.
  • Surprisingly subverted with his actual defeat and demise when Epharel and Lorgar manage to mortally wound him with the Sword That Was Promised. He merely faced his end with bitter amusement and remarked that his reign 'would had been better' than that of the other Daemon Primarchs.

The Sanguinor

• Humanoid Abomination: Even more so than the pure Sanguinor in canon, on account of the Sanguinor being a Daemonic being of Slaanesh.
• Made of Evil: One of the theories behind the Sanguinor is that he is a fragment of Sanguinius which is both sane and embraced his corruption fully.
• Pieces of God: Or rather, Daemon Prince. The Sanguinor is hypothesized by both the Inquisition and the Blood Angels to be one of Sanguinius' fragments, one which is both sane and wholly evil from fully embracing his now corrupted nature. They're more right than they know - he's actually an avatar of the completely rational Sanguinius, who was essentially used to do things the Daemon Primarch needed for his plans without letting his Obfuscating Insanity facade drop.

X — Iron Hands

General

• Affably Evil: As their god, Ferrus and his sons possess this trait, and treat each other and others quite kindly. They are still servants of Lord of Decay.
• All for Nothing: The Iron Hands' obsession with strength and technology ultimately made themselves even more vulnerable to becoming corruption by Nurgle. Their desperate quest to cure themselves of Nurgle's Rot - even to the point of joining the traitors' side - is also this as despite what they thought and what Guilliman had deceived them into believing, there is no cure for it except death and purification by fire.
• Better to Die than Be Killed:
  • When the Heresy ended in failure, many Iron Hands, filled with despair, chose to stay and die in battle, rather than escape and live with the prospect of rotting away, as now there's no way to cure the plague.
  • Some Iron Fathers chose to off themselves rather than submit to disease.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: They learned the hard way that Nurgle doesn't like cyborgs: the more of your body you replace with cybernetics, the weaker your presence in the Warp would be. The first ones who have tried to deal with Nurgle's Rot that way have become the Unchosen. That being said, Nurgle still loves those wretched monsters, and his followers are trying to please him by creating more — just not out of themselves.
• Cyborg: As in canon, they were obsessed with cybernetics before their fall to Chaos. Once they were affected with the Nurgle's Rot, the cybernetic parts started corroding. And those who have gone too far with replacing their body parts with augmentics learned the hard way that Nurgle doesn't like it.
• Evil Is Visceral: They have an army of Chaos Titans, nicknamed "Plague Colossi", which were affected by Nurgle's plagues, resulting in the crew merging with their machines, and the Titans themselves being partially covered by rotten organic (including cannons).
• Fatal Flaw: Their "flesh is weak" mindset contributed to their downfall; their lack of confidence in own strength, and distrust to "weak" flesh which must be enhanced made them vulnerable to Nurgle's corruption (and after fully embracing him, it was changed into "untainted flesh is weak"), with those who went too far with replacing flesh with bionics suffering even worse fate.
• Fate Worse than Death: Becoming the Unchosen; attempts to defeat Nurgle's diseases through cybernetisation would result in Nurgle sending daemons to possess you, turning you into Nigh-Invulnerable plague-ridden hulk, but permanently destroying your personality. The Iron Hands have learned to avoid obsession with cybernetics specifically because of the risks turning into ones, but the other Nurgle supporters (and occasionally mortals who gets infected with Nurgle's diseases without knowing it) occasionally still turns into Unchosen.
• I Gave My Word: They tend to maintain their end of bargain with other servants of Chaos, unless backstabbed first; if that happens, they strikes back hard.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • It's stated that their disdain for "weak flesh" contributed to their downfall, as, when it turned on them on Pandorax, they were too weak to resist.
  • Those who've tried to get rid of Nugle's Rot through augmentation only made things worse; it has weakened their soul, making it possible for Nurgle's daemons to possess them. They're called "the Unchosen", and, while everyone respects how useful they are on the battlefield, no one in the Legion is willing to repeat their fate.
• Robot War: Unlike the other homeworlds of the Traitor Legions, Medusa was destroyed not by Imperial forces seeking vengeance, but by the enemy that came from within — the uprising of the old machines, which slaughtered all human population of the planet. Feeling insulted, Ferrus Manus had sent his Legion to deal with them, resulting in the planet being devastated to the point that it became unsurvivable even for a fully armoured Astartes, and Legion suffering crippling casualties. Those few who're aware of this conflict, calls it "the Forgotten War".
• The Social Darwinist: Even prior to the Heresy, they were infamous for culling "weaklings" wherever they go, as well as abducting young people from recently conquered planets, only to dump them in the middle of nowhere on Medusa and force to reach the cities on their own: if you survive, you're worthy of adding your genes to the planet's gene pool, if not, then you deserve whatever comes to you. After the Heresy, they started abducting people to inhabit their new planet, dropping them without weapons and with basic gear in literally hellish conditions, so they would either die, or create the tribes and live for few generations.
• You Are Already Dead: They rarely pursue those who're fleeing from them, knowing that they're infected and would soon die and spread disease further.

Primarch Ferrus Manus

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• All for Nothing: With the Heresy failing, he lost what he perceived as the only chance to save his Legion and himself (not knowing that the hope was false), and then even Medusa was destroyed, not by Imperium, but the enemy which Ferrus failed to defeat before.
• The Dragon: Ferrus Manus was Roboute Guilliman's right-hand man during the Heresy; at one point, he even remained in charge while Arch-Traitor was busy dealing with Alpha Legion elsewhere, without taking attempts to usurp power.
• For Want Of A Nail: Where most Primarchs had one, Ferrus had two.
  • Ferrus Manus failed to kill Asirnoth the first time they encountered each other, leading to a whole Human tribe being slaughtered and later more robotic monsters which haunt the wastelands of Medusa to be awakened to terrorize the Human inhabitants. While he managed to deal with them eventually, this plants a seed of doubt in Ferrus' mind over his flaws and weaknesses and led to him doubling down on his beliefs in strength, to the point of becoming as asinine about it as the Iron Hands in the modern day of the canon timeline. Despite this, he's unable to let go of his failure, which created a chink in his spiritual armour for malignant forces to exploit...
  • After his/her attempt to corrupt the Emperor's Children through the Laer failed, Slaanesh collaborated with Nurgle to bring Ferrus Manus and the Iron Hands to Nurgle and to lure the Dark Eldar to attacking Fulgrim (and indirectly claim vengeance for refusing Slaanesh's corruption). Their collaboration led to Ferrus Manus and his Iron Hands being exposed to Nurgle's Rot on the world of Pandorax, which being both spiritual as well as physical in nature managed to infect Ferrus due to the above-mentioned chink from his deep-seated doubt, followed by the rest of his legion. Desperation to cure the Warp-borne plague (which has no cure) made Ferrus susceptible to the persuasion and lies of the Arch-Traitor Roboute Guilliman, pushing Ferrus to join him in treachery.
• Frame-Up: Despite what's known in the Imperium, Ferrus did not backstab Fulgrim; both him failing to show up in rendezvous point, and Dark Eldar ambushing Emperor's Children and capturing Fulgrim were the deeds of Slaanesh and Nurgle, who briefly teamed up.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His disliking of psykers and refusal to create a Librarium bit him in the ass on Pandorax, as he and his Legion had no idea what they're facing and how to deal with it when attacked by Nugle daemons.
• Hold the Line: During the Siege of Terra, Ferrus Manus was tasked with guarding the gates to not let any loyalists inside the Palace while Guilliman, Lion and Rogal deals with the Emperor.
• Honor Before Reason: The Forgotten War; there was nothing to win from it, as Medusa was already wiped out clean, but Ferrus still chose to fight the machines, feeling insulted; the only thing he achieved was to make the planet uninhabitable, and lose even more of his warriors for no good reason.
• Mark of Shame: He wishes that the silver covering of his hands would fall off some day, so he would be able to forget what he was before his downfall, and fully embrace Nurgle, letting his past die.
• Spared by the Adaptation: Unlike canon, he survived the Heresy, as the event which led to his demise in canon here includes the other Primarchs.
• Tragic Villain: The reason why he joined the traitors? His Legion was infected with Nurgle's Rot, and Guilliman lied to him that the Emperor withholds the cure, and said that if the Emperor wins, he would dispose of them as they know too much about his lies to left alive. By the end of War of Angel, he briefly muses that he no longer has to ponder whether or not his father would forgive him, meaning he still feels regret.

XIII — Ultramarines

General

• Blind Obedience: The Isstvan purge ensured that Primarch Guilliman's authority went from unquestioned to absolute, his words not just authoritative but outright gospel. Deconstructed in that predictably this led to his Legion crippled and shattered with Roboute's seeming death at the end of the Heresy, with no one having the initiative or ability to unify the Legion into a capable unified fighting force.
• Evil Feels Good: Ultramarines often commit atrocities because it pleases them.
• Fallen Hero: Before the Heresy, they were paragons among Astartes. Now they are devout worshippers of the Dark Gods.
• Fatal Flaw: They commonly display lack of ability to think independently, instead always looking at their superiors, who, in turn, are not so much planning, as trying in interpret Codex Chaotica to find solutions, not always successfully. It was always an issue with their gene-seed, but it became worse after their downfall. Only strongest individuals can suppress this effect.
• It's Personal: Unlike the other traitor Legions, where Terran-born Space Marines mostly remained loyal, it wasn't the case with Ultramarines: many of those veterans were still able to remember their mortal families from which they were taken by force, and felt resentment. When Guilliman started his rebellion, they had personal reasons to support him.
• No True Scotsman: The Ultramarines view their Evocatii troops with utter contempt, seeing them as pale imitations of true Astartes and indeed also derogatively called them 'Palebloods'. This is due to the fact that Evoctii, being made for mass-production, only carry a small fraction of a true Astartes' physiology, often one or two organs, with the rest of them being substituted by various means from cybernetics to alien tissue to who knows what else.
• Religion of Evil: They're amongst most zealous worshippers of Chaos (specifically, Chaos Undivided; worshipping specific Dark God is considered a heresy amongst orthodox Ultramarines), and actively spread its teacher across the galaxy through creating numerous Chaos cults, with the Codex Chaotica (a self-updating book describing not just war tactics and strategies, but also all kinds of daemonic lore), written by Roboute Guilliman, as their most sacred text.

Primarch Roboute Guilliman, the Avenging Son/the Dark Master of Chaos/the Arch-Traitor

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• Arch-Enemy: Two following his Face–Heel Turn: The Emperor of Mankind, naturally, and Be'lakor, the Master of Shadows, who was responsible for his downfall in the first place.
• The Caligula: The Avenging Son's corruption by the Chaos gods and being trapped in an utterly-agonizing state between life and death for ten thousand years in stasis while his mind is fully exposed to the Warp, pretty much all but reduced Roboute Guilliman from the noble ruler he once was into a cruel, petty, scheming and insane tyrant. By the time he resurrected he is all or less driven wholly evil by all his corruption and torments.
• The Chessmaster: He orchestrated the fall of many primarchs, his heresy, return, and corruption of Etherials, which led to the breaking of Iron Cage.
• The Determinator: Lampshaded by Aeonid Thiel as the one trait which Roboute Guilliman kept both as the Avenging Son and the Dark Master of Chaos: No matter what torments, failures and adversities he faced, until he finishes what he started, Guilliman would never, ever give up.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Roboute Guilliman loved and missed his own murdered adoptive parents, even after he was corrupted by the Chaos Gods and became the Arch-Traitor. He had statues of them dotted all over important locations in Maccragge, and following the birth of the Ruinstorm and the Heresy had a whole bridge made from the manifested and solidified tormented souls of all the traitors and rebels responsible for their deaths made linking both the region of Illyrium and the mega-city of Macragge called the Bridge of Cold Torment, where they would suffer for all eternity or at least until it was destroyed in the Battle of Macragge to prevent Tyranids released by Marius Gage's Black Crusade from reaching Macragge proper. When his adoptive parents' souls were released from Be'lakor after he banished him following his resurrection, their presence and words were the only things which nearly make him break into emotions and consider a Heel–Face Turn, despite being driven far more insane and evil than he was even back in the Roboutian Heresy from ten thousand years of tormented stasis - Though sadly, even that is not enough in the end to turn him away from remaining the Arch-Traitor in the end.
• Eviler than Thou: Arguably, for Horus. While canon!Horus did choose to turn to Chaos, he was mortally wounded by Chaos blade and did after being lied about dark future and committed far less evil in order to corrupt Traitor Legions (plus, he never fully embraced Chaos and died rejecting it); here, Roboute did it decades before revealing himself as traitor, committed much more evil deeds and rejected his adopted parents' offer of redemption.
• For Want Of A Nail: Be'lakor stirred up war in Macragge that led to the deaths of the two people Guilliman considered as parental figures, and years later Guilliman furiously pursued Be'lakor into the Warp and exposed himself to the corruption of the Ruinous Powers.
• Manipulative Bastard:
  • He orchestrated the crisis which caused the Council of Nikaea to happen, hoping to exploit it to corrupt either Magnus or Leman Russ, depending on outcome. Lion El'Jonson finished what he started from there, convincing Leman to join the rebellion.
  • He convinced Ferrus Manus to join the rebellion by promising him (false) cure from Nurgle's Rot, and convincing him that the Emperor would not let him or his Legion live after what's happened.
  • He manipulated Sanguinius, tricking him to end up in the situation where he has to submit to the Chaos, or let his Legion perish.
  • All perils faced by White Scars in the Chondax system can be traced to him; he knew that Jaghatai Khan would break and submit to the Chaos.
• The Mole: He had set up the vast network of spies and infiltrators in the Imperium, so-called "Spineam Coronam" ("the Crown of Thorns"), which was trained directly by him, and which wasn't fully destroyed even ten thousands years after the Heresy, despite all efforts of the Inquisition.
• Never My Fault: Being Not Quite Dead, he is profoundly disappointed with how his Legion had degenerated in his absence following his Heresy, to the point he considered his secret mortal infiltrator agents to be superior to them. It never occurred to him that by purging his own Legion of anyone who can think for themselves at Isstvan (because they have enough brains to question his orders and therefore defy his betrayal against the Imperium), and after his internment into stasis ruthlessly manipulated the warbands into killing each other so he could consume their souls when they die to regenerate himself, he ensured they turn into the blindly-obedient fratricidal idiots they had been reduced to.
• Not Quite Dead: It's revealed that he in fact survived the last fight with the Emperor, but was put into stasis and had to slowly replenish his strength. He returned during the Battle of Macragge.
• Red Baron: He would carry canon!Horus's title as "the Arch-Traitor" this time, as well as taking the tittle of "Dark master of Chaos" from Be'lakor.
• Redemption Rejection: When the released spirits of his adoptive parents offered him a Last-Second Chance after his resurrection, telling him he could still break free from the Dark Gods and reclaim his destiny as the Avenging Son, Guilliman turned them down.
  "I know my destiny," said Roboute, his voice almost breaking with emotion. "And nothing will turn me away from it. Not even you."
• Surrounded by Idiots: His opinion of his own degenerated, blindly-obedient and fratricidal Legion post-Heresy, to the point he considers his own mortal infiltrator agents in the Imperium to be stronger and better than they are. Never mind the fact that he was the one who caused it in the first place.
• Villainous Breakdown: He is all but reduced to screaming in impotent fury upon learning Aeonid Thiel, the Lord of the Red-Marked had planted and detonated a Warp-bomb powerful enough to blow up Macragge while they were fighting and too distracted to notice at the climax of the Battle of Maccragge, not only taking away the first world Guilliman had conquered but also ruining all the plans and preparations he had been making for his return in the last ten thousand years and forcing him to run with his tails behind his legs.
• Where I Was Born and Razed: Unlike the other homeworlds of the Traitor Primarchs, Ultramar wasn't destroyed by Imperial forces seeking vengeance; it was destroyed by Guilliman himself, who offered his entire domain as a massive sacrifice to the Dark Gods, even before the Siege of Terra.
• Xanatos Gambit: Guilliman covertly provoked his brothers to denounce Magnus, knowing that no matter the outcome of the Council of Nikaea, he would benefit from it: either he gets Magnus himself, who would become vulnerable to persuasion, or he gets Leman Russ, who would not react kindly to "sorcery" being allowed. He also got himself on receiving end of this by Aeonid Thiel: either he as Marius would kill his father or Macragge would be blown, denying Roboute vast forces to prepare for his final war. The latter was what happened and that was Aeonid's true plan.

Titus, the Wrath of Khorne

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• Ax-Crazy: Like many who have embraced Khorne and unlike his more composed HH-verse counterpart, he is this, often screaming at the top of his lungs slaughtering all in his way. This is explained in part as due to having his mind unhinged by the torturous experimentations conducted on him by the Ultramarines even as he is being made one of them, leading to him developing an all-consuming wrath and hatred which is directed to the entirety of the Thirteenth legion.
• Anti-Magic: In a Shout-Out to Captain Titus' own inexplicable Warp-resistance in the Space Marine videogame, Titus, the Wrath of Khorne's status as a champion of Khorne among the Ultramarines is attributed to be responsible for his resistance to the touch of the Warp in this verse.
• Blood Knight: He is marked by Khorne, making him inevitably this.
• Boomerang Bigot: Despite being an Ultramarine, he hated the entire legion with a burning passion, wishing to destroy it all for all the pains and tortures he went through when he was made into one. This went to the point that learning Marius Gage, the Sacrificed Son was in fact none other than the Ultramarine loyalist renegade Aeonid Thiel in disguise, far from stunning him or making him reconsider his loyalties, only reinforced his decision to kill his fellow Ultramarines.
• Defiant to the End: Titus suffered a mortal blow courtesy of the Slaanesh-worshipping Ultramarine Chaos Lord Cato Sicarius in the Final Battle Black Crusade against Macragge, but rather than dying immediately, he spun around - ripping Cato's own sword out of his hands in the process - and still impaled, eviscerated Cato Sicarius from shoulder to hip with his chainsword before falling to the ground dead. Cato only survived it by virtue of having assimilated the powers of a Keeper of Secrets earlier in the Black Crusade.
• Expy: A Mirror Universe counterpart of Captain Titus of the Ultramarines Second Company from the Space Marine videogame.
• Killed Off for Real: The Wrath of Khorne died fighting the other three Chaos Lords/champions who accompanied the Sacrificed Son in his Black Crusade against Macragge, preventing them from attacking Marius Gage - then revealed to be actually Aeonid Thiel in disguise - when commanded to do so by a resurrected Roboute Guilliman whilst they were dominated by the Primarch's will. Potentially subverted in the future since it had been noted by readers that he actually had the upper-hand throughout the whole fight and by all considerations could had kept fighting and killed them all - which would had won him great favour from Khorne - but the Slaanesh-worshipping Cato Sicarius manages to stab him In the Back while he was distracted fighting Uriel Ventress, and Cato only survived being eviscerated by Titus before he died thanks to the power of a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh he assimilated - all of which would had REALLY pissed off Khrone, leading to some wondering if it might be enough for Khorne to make an exception and bring him Back from the Dead to settle the score in the future.
• Immune to Mind Control: Titus' fury and hatred for the Ultramarines, combined with the boons he received from Khorne, was such that during the climax of the Black Crusade against Macragge, he manages to break free from a resurrected Roboute Guilliman's control over his psyche, allowing to him to take on the other three Ultramarine Chaos Lords/champions whose will had been dominated by the Arch-Traitor before they could move to attack Aeonid Thiel.

XVIII — Salamanders

General

• Despotism Justifies the Means: Salamanders are obsessed with obtaining power over lives of other sentient beings and will do everything to hold it.
• Dragons Are Demonic: They play this completely straight as their motif. Whereas canon!Salamanders embody the Delightful Dragon trope, RH!Salamanders embody dragons as greedy, violent and domineering creatures of evil.
• Evil Laugh: A very callous and terrifying one.
• Evil Overlord: Unlike canon!Salamanders, these guys are cruel and tyrannical Super Soldiers who rule over their minions through strength and brutality.
• Greed: Most Salamanders hold the acquisition of treasures as their highest priority besides immortality. This tendency comes from Vulkan, who only felt at peace when he owned artifacts of great value as symbols or treasures. To the Salamanders, plundering and hoarding wealth is an expression of power as it means they have the strength to take what others find valuable and then hold it from others who might take it from them in turn.
• Humanoid Abomination: Dragon Warriors, being Warp-mutated Draconic Humanoids.
• Immortality Seeker: All of them, like their Primarch, seek to become undying immortals so they could rule forever over their treasures and slaves. You can't keep your stuff when you're dead, after all.
• Jerkass: The entire Legion, but Vulkan takes the cake. Nearly every Salamander is a remorseless sociopath obsessed with plunder and domination who revel in their superiority over those weaker than they are, and none of them would hesitate to turn on their brothers if it suits them. Some of them like the Dragon Warriors take this to the point they don't even see Humans or even their fellow Salamanders as sapient on the same level as they are.
• The Juggernaut: The Legion's modus operandi. While few in number, each individual Salamander are comparatively tougher and stronger individually than even their fallen brethren in other Chaos Space Marine legions thanks to their mutated physiologies and mastercrafted armour, and as unified forces in warbands backed by millions of slave-soldiers and armed with powerful (and even borderline/actual-doomsday) weapons of their own design and make, they are a formidable, implacable force on the battlefield which could overpower many opponents through sheer strength and durability.
• Kick the Dog: Salamanders, when capturing a human planet, turn its population into mindless slaves via the Branding Ritual and force them to work in hellish conditions. Then, when the Imperium tries to take back the planet, Salamanders sabotage all the remaining infrastructure and escape, leaving countless slaves to die from starvation.
• Might Makes Right: As the entry itself noted, the Salamanders believe might doesn't just make right, it makes EVERYTHING, and one is nothing without power in the galaxy. Even their infamous greed and pursuit of immortality has their origins in their obsession with power: they don't actually care about all the treasure in their hoards beyond the fact that someone else valued them and they have the strength to take AND keep them, and they all seek to become immortal like their Primarch as they would lose all their power if they die.
  Salamander Motto: Power is the only thing that matters.
• Necromancer: Like the White Scars, the Salamanders' pursuit of immortality had driven them to pursue means to revive and control the dead, finding or developing several ways to do so. This is rooted in Vulkan and his sons' greed: they don't even want death to keep the servants and subjects they dominate and own from escaping them.
  • The Cult of the Dragon - mortal worshippers of Vulkan across the galaxy - who manages to contact Vulkan and the Salamanders often given dark blessings in the form of the ability to seemingly resurrect the dead, in order to bamboozle the masses into believing in their greatness or cow them into submission. Emphasis on 'seemingly' - many of their feats are little more than having daemons possess the corpses of the dead and pretend to be their original selves to fool their loved ones only so long as it is necessary to keep up with the ruse.
  • The Draconite Inquisitors are a heretical faction of the Inquisition who became corrupted by the desire to attain the powers of immortality and/or resurrection in emulation of the Perpetual Vulkan. Many of them became this trope either in service of Vulkan or following their own twisted ambitions and goals.
• Ultimate Blacksmith: Many of the Salamanders followed their Daemon Primarch in becoming master blacksmiths, forging all manner of weapons, tools and artifacts to further their causes of conquest, domination and plunder across the galaxy, from trinklets which could hollow out those forced to wear them into obedient, mindless 'Pactwraiths' to weapons like daemon-possessed blades, soul-burning flamers, artillery pieces firing shells embued with the terror of all who ever perished from artillery strikes reflected to the warp, and even ,according to the Salamander's Legion Annex, a planet-sized superweapon with the power to devastate entire star systems which they plan to use one day to spear-head their ultimate conquest of the galaxy.
  • The Forgefathers, former tech-marines of the Salamanders, are members of the Legion whose interest went into forging rather than conquest, keeping to themselves in their workshops and lairs with their slaves and servants designing and making weapons and artifacts of such quality and capabilities they are said to make even members of the Dark Mechanicum envious. They often only go out to field-test their finished products, attaching themselves to Salamander or other Legions' warbands to do so, or lead expeditions of their own sacking whole worlds and civilizations in seeking out knowledge and lore with which they could plunder to enhance their work.
• We Have Reserves: Being utterly callous to their slaves, they don't hesitate sending millions of them to die to their enemies' guns just to weaken them enough for their own assault.

Primarch Vulkan, the Black Dragon

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• Ambition Is Evil: The reason of his fall to Chaos. Vulkan wanted to get as much power as possible and be invincible.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Post-Heresy, Vulkan engineered a vast ritual and conflict to ascend and become a Daemon Primarch of Chaos Undivided, taking the form of a demonic black dragon.
• Discard and Draw: Unintentional - as it turns out Perpetuality don't mix well with Daemonic ascension, and his mantle rejected him when he became a Daemon Primarch, leaving him only as immortal as any Daemon Prince or Dark God.
• Dragons Are Demonic: His current form as a Daemon Primarch (and possibly nascent Dark God) is an enormous black dragon so huge and menacing in proportions and presence that his scales alone are the size of Space Marine Rhinos, and own gene-sons can barely look and comprehend him without going mad.
• Faux Affably Evil: Vulkan acted like that before the Heresy.
• For Want Of A Nail: Instead of being found by humans when he landed in Nocturne, Vulkan was found by a salamander who raised him only to attack him when he grew older, which emotionally scarred him forever and led to him and his legion being one of the cruelest and most brutal, instead of one of the compassionate.
• Godhood Seeker: Vulkan wants to become the Chaos God of Greed and Tyranny, and it might be possible that the Black Dragon has already achieved this goal.
• Hero Killer: He slew Konrad Curze and Mortarion.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He overall lost a lot more than he gained over the course of the Roboutian Heresy and its aftermath, a fact which led to him raging for a century after his banishment on Pythos.
  • Among his biggest loss was his 'Mantle of Perpetuality' in his ascension to a Daemon Primarch of Chaos Undivided, which rejected him and ended up falling upon Lucius the Reborn, making him a Perpetual. This means that despite his ascension to Daemonhood and even nascent godhood, Vulkan may now be killable, especially after the Emperor of Mankind's Heroic Sacrifice.
• It's All About Me: He's probably the biggest egoist among all Primarchs, and counts his personal gain and advancement as the most important thing in the universe.
• Mortality Phobia: One of Vulkan’s reasons for his goal of eventual godhood is a fear of eventual death, even as a Daemon prince. He has had this fear since the attempt on his life by John Gramaticus during the Heresy.
• My God, What Have I Done?: The only time he ever regretted anything was when he killed his own brother, Konrad Curze during the Dropsite Massacre. He genuinely thought that he was going to regenerate and get back up again like he was (and thus come around to his way of thinking), and was quietly horrified when Konrad didn't. He simply resolved to never do anything that he would regret.
• Never Be Hurt Again: His entire motivation, he wants to amass as much power as possible because he was burned and killed by his adoptive mother, Nocturne Salamander. At any cost.
• Raised by Wolves: Once he landed on Nocturne, he was adopted and raised by a Salamander. However, because Salamanders do not maintain any emotional connection to their young once these grow up and consider their adult offspring to be simply more competitions and threats, his "mother" attacked and killed him once he grew too old; this was largely responsible for a lot of his emotional issues.
• Red Baron: Known as "the Black Dragon" for his dark skin and his ruthless cruelty.
• Scary Black Man: He didn't get the nickname "the Black Dragon" without any proper reason.
• Start of Darkness: Vulkan's For Want Of A Nail is when he was found not by the native Humans of Nocturne, but by a Nocturne Salamander, which adopted and raised him. While this might not sound like a bad thing on paper, Vulkan does not possess a Nocturne Salamander's natural instinct to get out of their parent's den when they mature to go their own way, after which their parents would instinctively treat them as a threat to them and their next children. The trauma that followed after Vulkan got mauled and burnt to death by his own adoptive beast-mother — and his resurrection afterwards — went a long way in turning him into a sociopathic, domineering, conquering tyrant he is in the RH-verse instead of the compassionate, protective champion of Humanity he was in canon.

XIX — Raven Guard

General

• Body Horror: The Raven Guard frequently dabbles in this, as a result of their fleshcrafting obsession. This is particularly pronounced in their Spawn Marines, mass-manufactured clone Space Marines with utterly warped features.
• Dark Is Evil: They're the only legion to currently wear full black armor, and they are the most sinister among all the Legiones Astartes.
• The Dreaded: The other traitor legions regard members of the Raven Guard with suspicion and mistrust, and even daemons treat them with some degree of caution. Even Dark Eldar are wary of them!
• Evilutionary Biologist: Their apothecaries, who manage to disgust even Fabius Bile.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Whatever it was that drove the Raven Guard off the deep end.
• Humanoid Abomination: All Chaos Space Marines from the Raven Guard are either living conduits of Warp energy (purebloods) or misshapen clones (Spawn Marines). Even by Chaos standards!
• Outside-Context Problem: The Unkind are from the warp, but their nature is different from the rest of the Daemons and they're only related to the Raven Guard.
• Send in the Clones: After entering the Emperor's laboratories on the Bucephalus, Corax started the practice of cloning to acquire recruits for the legion. While the original clones were created in clean and careful conditions, the Spawn Marines created during and after the Heresy are far from the originals in terms of quality.

Primarch Corvus Corax, the Ravenlord

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• Fatal Flaw: His cynicism and paranoia; despite the fact he knew full well that the tech-lords were the kind to despise compassion and would not have respected anyone who showed it, he instantly assumed that the God-Emperor's apparent callousness was his true face and not a ruse, despite the, well, everything else about his warmer relationship with his sons.
• For Want Of A Nail: Instead of being raised by the prisoners of Kiavahr, Corvus Corax was handed over to the Tech-lords to be tortured and experimented on, which played a huge role in his corruption. It also didn't help that when the Emperor arrived to recover him, he had to hide any emotional attachment to Corax and instead pretend that his interest in him is purely that of an amoral scientist wanting to recover his creation simply because he had a use for them, even to the point of referring to Corax as "it"... and poor Corax was conscious enough to hear that, leading him to draw the worst possible conclusions about the Emperor.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: From the prisoner of tech-lords of Kiavahr to a Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: His travels to the center of the Eye of Terror destroyed whatever remained of Corax's sanity. He can also cause this on others with his mere presence.
• Irony: The Primarch whose fall was never trusting the God-Emperor due to his apparent callousness was led into corruption by the Enemy Without of the God-Emperor, personifying that same callousness.
• Invisibility: One of his innate psychic powers, like in canon.
• Omnicidal Maniac: Corax wants to unite the Materium and the Immaterium and turn humans into perfect hybrids of flesh and Warp. Needless to say, his goal means destruction for anyone who doesn't agree with him.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Corax would later inflict an extremely cruel fate on the same tech-lords who tortured and experimented on him since childhood, by binding their souls to their bodies, destroying their brains, and torturing them until his sorcery could no longer resurrect them. While it may have been horrible if done to anyone else, the tech-lords deserved what came to them.

Other Astartes Forces

Black Legion

Fabius Bile

• Adaptational Badass: In this timeline he is the undisputed master of the Black Legion, able to have astartes of all breeds vying for his approval. To further show just how far he goes in this regard: He is the mastermind behind both a black crusade against Chemos that culminated with the destruction of his legion, has the reanimated corpse of Horus Lupercal as his top henchman, and is the leading force behind the Black Crusade that is assaulting Cadia on 999.M4.
• Body Horror: His experiments, as in canon.
• Crippling Overspecialization: While he’s one of the few individuals in the entire galaxy able to understand the Emperor’s gene-forging skills, his abilities in other fields are far from the same level. This comes back to bite him in the ass after he betrays Thrar Hraldir, who managed to hack his armour and was the one who exposed the insanity of Daemon-Primarch Sanguinius and his deal with Bile, causing the Blood Angels to fracture as a legion and ending the alliance between Bile and the legion.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Averted. His Memory Gambit plan to escape the influence of the Dark Gods depended on him understanding his own moral limits and weaknesses well enough to trick himself into a sincere Heroic Sacrifice. The Fabius who planned it was right on the money.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Kills himself to protect Melusine, his genetically engineered daughter. Not that it lasts, but thanks to a Memory Gambit, he sincerely thought it would be his last act at the time, and is proud of himself for keeping to that moral limit and strength.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Fabius Bile finds the Raven Guard’s Apothecaries to be utterly disgusting.
• Hive Mind: The original Fabius Bile is dead, but he preserved his consciousness through clones of himself that share thoughts when close together.
• The Magnificent: Known as "the Clonelord".
• Send in the Clones: Just like his canon counterpart, his speciality is cloning and gene-forging. This version also takes it up to eleven with the Black Legion, that in this time is composed of a significant numbers of warbands derived from clones and modified astartes.
• Xanatos Gambit: His plan for the fall of Chemos. By putting a copy of his mind in a clone of Fulgrim, he ensures that either Fulgrim comes and Fabius has something to match him, or he doesn’t come, proving to Fabius that he’s dead.

The Lost and the Damned

General

The Death Korps of Krieg

A corrupted army/horde of hateful and bloodthirsty soldiers from the destroyed war world of Krieg, the Death Korps are one of the L&D forces Sigismund the Destroyer had cultivated over ten thousand years for his ultimate blood crusade against the Imperium and the galaxy.

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• Badass Normal: Take everything great about the Death Korps of Krieg in canon, give them to these Khornate Kriegers, and you will have a good idea as to how dangerous they are in the RH-verse. Jurten's vengeful Blood Crusade against the Imperium after conquering Krieg managed to ravage over fifty star systems and took no less than three Space Marine legions and billions of Imperial Guardsmen to finally put down, and even then not completely. Even Khorne and Sigismund the Destroyer was impressed by them, and the Kriegers are among the very few the latter shows even a modicum of respect in their dealings.
• Fallen Hero: Colonel Jurten in this timeline, all because of an administrative screw-up.
• For Want Of A Nail: An administrative error led to Colonel Jurten receiving no notification from the Imperium at large that a fleet capable of breaking through the rebelling Krieg world's orbital defences would be forthcoming nor instructions to use any means necessary to fight back. As a result, rather than doing it almost immediately to even the odds, Jurten and the Imperial loyalists held out conventionally for many years in increasingly grim and desperate odds and circumstances before finally resorting to atomic warfare. Witnessing the sheer devastation he wrought upon Krieg in the name of the silent God Emperor emotionally broke the by then spiritually and physically exhausted colonel, allowing the Dark Gods to reach into his soul in his moment of abject horror, doubt and vulnerability. Believing the Emperor and the Imperium abandoned Jurten and Krieg to their fate, Jurten went mad and embraced Khorne, followed by his subordinates and followers, and after finally winning the war on Krieg hijacked Imperial vessels to go on a vengeful rampage across the galaxy, nuking world after world and slaughtering uncounted millions with his mass-produced Krieg korpsmen before his Blood Crusade was finally stopped and pushed back to Krieg with the combined might of no less than three Space Marine legions and billions of Imperial Guardsmen. However, the sheer carnage they wrought would lead to them being spirited away by Khorne before the Death Guards could exterminate them all, depositing them into a space hulk where they would rebuild their strength and form a tenous alliance with Sigismund and his Black Templars warband.
• War Is Hell: Like their loyalist counterparts from canon, the Death Korps of Krieg represents the sheer dehumanisation of industrial warfare which Khorne also embodies. Everything already horrible about them - being legions of faceless mass-produced soldiers obeying their orders without fear or conscience, killing without hesitation or mercy, living and dying bleak existences as disposable weapons of galactic war and genocide - are ramped up. Some in the Imperium believe the Kriegers are what await Humanity-at-large should Khorne corrupt the species.

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