No Matter How Well You Do, He'll Always Be Disappointed In You (Grimdark WIP)

Hello!

A very Grimdark Month has begun!

The majority of the Grimdark WIPs are not on Patreon anymore.  But community members can still access the latest WIPs as mentioned in previous posts.  Just to be thorough, community members will receive an email with the access information as well.

Please leave any comments/feedback/reactions on this post like you would normally do. Thanks!

So, Perturabo is one of those Primarchs I find really hard to pin down. My opinion tends to change based on which author is writing about him. 🤔 He's also described as 'mercurial' which goes some way in explaining his often bizarre decisions in the books. Although Perturabo has always been very bitter that Dorn got to be the Emperor's Praetorian and fortify Terra. 😅

Nevertheless the Lord of Iron is a very complex character and a lot of your attitude towards him will depend on how you interpret the clues in his background. So instead of trying to dissect his backstory, I'm just going straight to career highlights on what parts of his lore really sticks out for me. But I do recommend fans to check out his Primarch book which is often touted as the best one in terms character study and helps explain a lot of his extremes as a character.

Career Highlights:

• Perturabo has two abilities that stand out from his brothers. 1. He has an ability to look at a machine and instantly understand it's purpose and how it works. This makes him a genius even among his brothers and from a purely intellectual standpoint, he's probably the smartest. 2. He has an unsual bond to the Eye of Terror and is aware of where it is at all times. Even as a child, Perturabo could sense the Eye looking at him from afar. This contributed to his sense of paranoia growing up and only heightened his sense of isolation when he discovered none of his brothers had the same condition. He brought it up with Ferrus once and got the stink eye. Whoops. Oh, and on that topic Horus gave Ferrus' hammer Forgebreaker to Perturabo. Because when has Ferrus not had egg on his face?

• When Perturabo was first reunited with his Legion, he did a thorough review of the Great Crusade performance and decided they were subpar. So he ordered his Space Marines to undergo decimation: draw random lots and kill one in ten marines. Presumably this was to teach the Iron Warriors that lives don't matter only victory. Needless to say a lot of his brothers thought this was way too extreme. Guilliman actually said this was insane but nobody did anything about it.

• The Iron Warriors gained a reputation as siege experts and were often sent to the most grueling, thankless battlefronts where there was a lot of grind but little glory. They went through auxiliary troops at such a catastrophic rate, most Imperial Army regiments refused to serve with them. Towards the end of the Great Crusade, only the Penal Legions were sent to the Iron Warriors to be used as cannon fodder.

• So Perturabo might be famous as a siege specialist but he actually prefers to invent cool things and even made a miniature Titan. It actually moved and had working miniature lasers, how cool is that? 😄 During the Heresy, Perturabo smashed it into Fulgrim's face before giving his brother a savage beatdown because it's Fulgrim. It's a hilarious scene, but I wish Perturabo didn't sacrifice the tiny titan, that thing is worth way more than Fulgrim.

• During the Battle of Phall (which was going very poorly for the Iron Warriors), Perturabo was looking out a viewport (which he claimed was a structural flaw in any ship but had one anyways) when an Iron Warrior called Berossus arrived with some bad news. Basically Perurabo was banking his strategy on the fact that Sigismund would be commanding the Imperial Fists fleet. But it turns out it was another Captain called Alexis Polux who Perturabo probably didn't even know by name. The Lord of Iron was so pissed that he was getting his ass handed to him by a random Imperial Fists captain he smacked Berossus away and the force of impact ruptured most of his organs which forced him into a Dreadnought. So yeah, Perturabo literally crippled the messenger for his own miscalculation which many might call 'a tad extreme'. 😅 Nice callback to an previous book though.

• Siege of Terra: The main event! So after reading the series, it's clear that Perturabo was actually the main driving force behind most of the attack. No seriously, he probably played more of an important role than Horus who was high on warp dust for the majority of it. The rest of his brothers were too busy being insane, pursuing their own agendas or just plain useless (looking at you, Snake Boi). This was to be Perturabo's crowning achievement, the proof that his Iron Warriors were superior to the Imperial Fists. But then Horus did some Chaos shenanigans that seriously pissed Perturabo off as he felt that Chaos tainted his victory over Dorn. So he took his ball and left.

• Iron Cage: A rematch of the Siege of Terra and the most infamous event between the Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists. Perturabo basically put up a huge sign that said 'Come and get me loyalist dogs' and baited the Imperial Fists into a (pretty obvious) trap. Depending who you ask, this was either a crushing victory for the Iron Warriors or a necessary sacrifice for the Imperial Fists to split into Chapters. Either way, the Smurfs used their plot armor to break up the fight. The final result was the Iron Warriors killing a whole bunch of Dorn's sons and used their gene-seed as a sacrifice to fuel Perturabo's ascension to Daemonhood. No, this makes absolutely no sense at all (to me at least because Perturabo is famously disdainful of Chaos) and the author who gets to tackle this part of the Scouring is going to have their work cut out for them.

As a genius demigod, Perturabo has made sure his own wargear is the absolute pinnacle of destructive efficiency. Whatever weapon the Imperium has, you can bet the Lord of Iron has made a superior version of it and added it to his personal collection. So yeah, Iron Warior fans will be able to go nuts with ever possible permutation of ranged weaponry I can manage this month. His Terminator armor is a highly customized variant of his own design called the Logos. Apart from the standard teleportation module, the Lord of Iron has fitted all sorts of special systems and customized wargear that you can't find in any other suit.

The only thing scarier than grumpy Perturabo is happy Perturabo. Gah, what have I done? 😅

So for the next Huron Fal/Temeter diorama I have planned, I wanted to take an opportunity to try out some cool things with a Dreadnought. Everyone knows what a Contemptor looks like and the Death Guard variant is the most plain of all the Legions. So I'm not going to score many brownie points doing the same thing.

Instead, I wanted to take this month's winner as an opportunity to show a detailed interior of a Dreadnought, it's half dead occupant and all the life support systems sustaining the mangled remains of a Space Marine. Not only does this look pretty Grimdark, it opens option for me when I get to show all the battle damage Huron Fal had during the battle of Isstvan III. Plus you can make a modular variants to show some of the most badass loyalist Dreadnoughts in history like the patron saint himself. And I do mean loyalist Dreadnoughts only. The traitors scream like wimps when things get hot.

But I will give an option for a Contemptor shell or at least a version that will be far enough from the official one as possible.

More updates on the Dreadnought, and Ork Attack Moon coming next!

BTW, I've been getting a lot of detailed feedback from the community about my question! Thanks to everyone who took the time to give me detailed feedback, I really appreciate it! 👍 I'm still processing all the information this but I'll try to make some decisions by the end of the month. Thanks!

Oh, and to all the Grimdark fans, have fun playing Space Marine 2. I'm told it slaps real hard. 😄👍 Praise the Emperor for blessing this game! And to all the Smurf fans in the community: "We march for Maccrage! And we shall know no fear!"