Perturabo

Perturabo is the Primarch of the Iron Warriors, one of the original twenty Space Marine Legions. He and his Legion sided with Chaos during the Horus Heresy and he has since been promoted to Daemon Prince status. He, like his Iron Warriors, had a natural affinity towards the intensive use of technology in combat and a cold, emotionless logic when dealing with others, but he lacked the strength of faith in either the Emperor or the Chaos Gods to whom he later swore his soul.

Childhood
When the Primarchs were scattered to the ends of the galaxy from the Emperor's gene-laboratory on Terra by the Chaos Powers, Perturabo landed on a planet named Olympia. He was discovered climbing the mountains below the Olympian city-state of Lochos. The city guards, having realised this was no ordinary child, brought him before Dammekos, the Tyrant of Lochos. Dammekos was intrigued by the child and brought him into his household and treated him as part of his family. Supposedly, Perturabo never truly trusted the Olympians and refused to return any affection given by Dammekos. Dammekos spent plenty of time with his new son, but never received any affection in return. Many Olympians saw Perturabo as a particularly cold and brooding child, though the fact that he was a genetically engineered superhuman who had been mysteriously thrown onto a far-off world with no idea of his origins or purpose was not conducive to the development of a trusting nature.

When the Emperor arrived on Olympia as part of the Great Crusade, Perturabo immediately submitted himself to the Emperor's mercy and ousted the Tyrant of Lochus as the greatest ruler on the world. Perturabo was also given command of the Iron Warriors Space Marine Legion which had been created from his own genome. Dammekos is said to have spent his remaining few years gathering forces to attempt to retake his power and overthrow Perturabo and the Imperium's rule. Dammekos failed in these efforts at rebellion, but created a current of anti-Imperial political unrest among the people of Olympia which would come to haunt Perturabo and his Iron Warriors later.

Great Crusade
After his submission to the Emperor, Perturabo led his Iron Warriors on a lightning crusade against the nearby planet of Justice Rock and its heretical Black Judges. The Iron Warriors went on to create citadels throughout the regions they fought in and conquered for the Imperium. Small numbers of Iron Warriors were left behind at these outposts to serve as Imperial garrisons, but Perturabo resented being forced to split his Legion, unlike the other Primarchs' forces. As time went on, the Iron Warriors found themselves stereotyped within the Imperium, even by other Space Marine Legions, as being the best Imperial force for sieges and garrison duty, but eventually the Iron Warriors were so worn out with the constant sieges and the slaughter that inevitably followed that they simply began to enjoy the killing they had to do when a besieged opponent refused to surrender. It might well have been the Warmaster Horus who kept the Legion in this role, allowing him to more easily sway the mind of Perturabo towards Chaos as the Iron Warriors' Primarch grew increasingly resentful of his Legion's assigned duties.

It is widely acclaimed in Imperial legend that Perturabo was greatly envious of Rogal Dorn, the Primarch of the Imperial Fists. Perturabo was annoyed by Dorn's constant reminders of the perfection of the defences created by the Imperial Fists for the Imperial Palace on Terra at the Emperor's command. The other Primarchs also kept Perturabo at an emotional distance. This coolness on their part might have been because of Perturabo's supreme command of his Legion's technology and siege tactics, far in advance of anything the other Primarchs were comfortable with or able to emulate. Perturabo is referred to as the 'comrade' who devised the best plan to avoid the defences of Overdogg Mashogg, an Ork Warboss under attack by Leman Russ, Primarch of the Space Wolves, and Jaghatai Khan, Primarch and Khan of the White Scars.

The Horus Heresy
Perturabo was leading his Iron Warriors on a campaign to cleanse the Hrud Warrens on the world of Gugann when he received news that his homeworld, Olympia, was in rebellion against the Imperium. Dammekos was long dead, but Olympian demagogues had brought the people together and risen in arms against the rule of the Emperor. The thought of being the only Primarch who could not control his own Legion's homeworld appalled Perturabo. The Warmaster Horus, already having given his allegiance to the Ruinous Powers, made the most of the opportunity by presenting Perturabo with a Power Hammer called Forgebreaker that had been the personal weapon of the Loyalist Primarch Ferrus Manus, who the Traitor Primarch Fulgrim had beheaded during the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V. The granting of this boon was the embodiment of a pact between the Warmaster and the Iron Warriors' Primarch, a gift from Horus to Perturabo. Perturabo purged Olympia city by city, overrunning the fortresses he had built and sparing no one who stood against him. By the time the massacre was over, five million Olympians had been killed and the rest put into vicious slavery to the Iron Warriors. Perturabo looked on in cold silence. After the pyres were burning to cleanse the world of the heaps of corpses, the Iron Warriors realized what they had done. They were no longer the saviours of the Imperium; they had been destroying the Hrud one moment and yet, in the next, they were committing genocide against their own people. Perturabo realized the Emperor could never forgive him for what he had done.

It was at this time that disturbing news of the outbreak of the Horus Heresy reached Olympia and new orders for the Iron Warriors came from Terra. Leman Russ and the Space Wolves had attacked Magnus the Red and his Thousand Sons Legion on their homeworld of Prospero at the direction of the Emperor. Horus had turned traitor with his Legion, the Sons of Horus, alongside some other Legions such as the Death Guard. The whole of the Imperium was on the brink of an outright civil war. The new orders from the Emperor were to join with six other Loyalist Space Marine Legions and then to face Horus and his Traitor Space Marine forces on the world of Istvaan V. The result of the following battle was that the Iron Warriors, Night Lords, Word Bearers and Alpha Legion all went over to Horus and almost completely destroyed the three remaining Loyalist Legions of the Imperial assault force at the infamous Drop Site Massacre on that world.

After that terrible battle, the Iron Warriors were let loose on the Imperium as full devotees of Chaos and Perturabo relished the opportunity to fight in a way that did not rely on massive sieges and grinding trench warfare. Because of their massive deployment throughout the galaxy, dozens of Iron Warriors Warsmiths (company commanders) took over Imperial planets and demanded tithes to support the Heresy. A large contingent of the Iron Warriors accompanied Perturabo to Terra where he supervised the bombardment and siege of the Emperor's Palace by the forces of Chaos. Perturabo took a perverse pleasure in tearing down the defences set up by Rogal Dorn and his hated Imperial Fists.

Post-Heresy
After fleeing Terra along with the other Chaos Space Marine Legions following Horus' death, Perturabo took the opportunity to take vengeance on the Imperial Fists with a trap on the world of Sebastus IV. The trap was known as the Eternal Fortress, a keep centred within twenty square miles of bunkers, towers, minefields, trenches, tank traps and redoubts. Upon hearing of this, Rogal Dorn publicly declared that he "would dig Perturabo out of his hole and bring him back to Terra in an iron cage".

Rogal Dorn expected an honourable battle, but this was not to be. Beginning by isolating the four Companies of the Imperial Fists that arrived to do battle from their orbital support, Perturabo began to carefully divide his enemy and destroy them piecemeal. Some Imperial Fists managed to penetrate the defences and reach the centre of the Eternal Fortress, only to find there was no central keep - simply an open space watched by yet more defenses. The fortress was a decoy of no real value, surrounded by twenty miles of killing ground. By the sixth day of the siege, Imperial Fists Space Marines were fighting individually, without support, using the bodies of their own battle brothers for cover.

The siege of the Eternal Fortress (later referred to in Imperial histories as the "Iron Cage Incident") lasted for a further three weeks. Relief came in the form of Roboute Guilliman and his Ultramarines, who drove off the Iron Warriors, but the siege left Rogal Dorn a broken man and rendered the Imperial Fists Chapter unable to fight for nineteen years. The gene-seed of over 400 Imperial Fists was sacrificed to the Dark Gods in the Iron Cage, and Perturabo was elevated to the rank of Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided by the rare acclamation of the Ruinous Powers.

Following this victory, the Iron Warriors fled to the Eye of Terror alongside their fellow Traitor Marines and secured a new Daemon World named Medrengard, crafting a terrible fortress world where his soldiers ruled in vast towers. Today, the Iron Warriors give their greatest loyalty to Peturabo for saving them from what they believe was an unwarranted sacrifice in the name of the False Emperor of Mankind. [[Category:P]]