Nine Falls: The Traitor Primarchs

Perturabo is not seduced by a whisper in a temple. For years he breaks fortresses without a triumph, sees Dorn on the cover, slaughters rebellious Olympia and concludes that the Father is just such a shareholder in ingratitude. Horus offers a real siege, one that will be recorded. Tallarn and the Siege spoil that record; Iydris humiliates the body; the departure from the walls is the logic of disgust and of an order, not of a daemon: the daemonic princedom of the IV will come later and differently from Angron’s.

Curze is harsher still: he claims to have seen the end from the cradle and merely plays honestly the role of monster that the Imperium and Nostramo assigned him. The assault on Dorn at Cheraut, Thramas, the torture of Vulkan are not a fall but an escalation of method. The VIII does not serve the Four as a church; canon holds them as terror for the sake of terror and loot.

On the map the IV is sieges and side meat-grinders (Phall, Tallarn, the walls). The VIII is the eastern haze of Thramas and Curze’s personal absence from the assault on the Palace. If you draw nine arrows onto Terra, you will lie about Curze and almost lie about the later Perturabo. Not all traitors want the throne room: some want their work finally to be seen, others want the nightmare to coincide with the vision.

Angron did not choose the Imperium: the Father took him from the arena, leaving the gladiators to die. The Butcher’s Nails shut out the world, and the XII Legion is infected with the same cage. Lorgar “saves” him on Nuceria by an ascension to Khorne — a gift equal to another set of nails. After Nuceria Angron is not the commander of the Shadow Crusade but its weather.

Mortarion chooses differently and still comes to the cage: hatred of tyrants and psykers, the Barbarus poison, Nikaea as a rare agreement with the Imperium, then Horus as liberator from his sorcerer Father. Typhon leads the fleet into the warp, Nurgle bestows a deathlessness that Mortarion did not ask for the way believers ask. “The Buried Dagger” is the canon of this last cage.

In the Siege the XIV is plague, not the philosophy of freedom: a plague landing on Terra. On the map the XII is Ultramar, then the walls as meat. Both liberated slaves end as slaves of the gods they despised. This is not the irony of a moralising author but the structure of the canon: Chaos sells the antidote in the currency in which the victim is already paying. Rage to Khorne, survival to Nurgle.

Magnus breaks the Webway to warn the Father about Horus, and becomes a heretic by way of salvation. Prospero burns out (004.M31), Tzeentch saves the remnant, and from then on the XV is not a Legion in the old sense. In the Siege Magnus strikes at the Palace and the Webway as a creditor collecting a debt presented to him in 004 — and is defeated by Vulkan in the Webway. This is a fall that canon allows to be read as tragedy for longer than the fall of Fulgrim.

Alpharius and Omegon are the only pair about whom the atlas is obliged to write “disputed” on every line. “Legion”, “Praetorian of Dorn” and “Head of the Hydra” do not agree: the Cabal, the killing of one twin by Dorn, the possibility that part of the XX fights for the Imperium inside the treason. In the atlas the XX’s side is marked as disputed — and yet it is among the traitors, because on the drop site it shot in the back.

On the map the XV after Prospero has almost no army arrows; the XX has arrows that cannot be trusted as a declaration of side. If you need a simple list of nine villains, you are no longer in this atlas. If you need the staff view, these are nine different holes in the loyal system, papered over with a single name, Horus’s, until 014.M31.

The difference between the falls does not abolish the headquarters. The warrior lodges, the title of Warmaster, Isstvan as a purge and as a cauldron, the common rear of the Dark Mechanicum — that is the glue. Horus does not unify his brothers’ souls; he unifies the schedule. As long as the schedule holds, nine holes work as one army.

When the schedule falls apart — Lorgar banished, Perturabo leaving, Fulgrim useless, Curze personally absent, Magnus waging his own war against the Father, the hydra doing its own thing — the Siege turns into a court of the gods plus the XVI. That is exactly why the finale is a duel of Father and son, not nine primarchs in a throne room. On the map this shows as a narrowing: from eleven Legion numbers on Isstvan V to a handful at the Eternity Gate.

The article does not demand that you love the traitors. It demands that you not give them a single biography. Compare the dossiers: specialisation before the Heresy often explains the entry of Chaos better than the name of a god. A siege genius — the grievance of the record. Perfection — Slaanesh. Psychic ability — Tzeentch. Survival — Nurgle. Rage — Khorne. Terror was already there. The hydra — always. The priest — first. The Warmaster — the key. Nine, not one.