Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-6078851-20150114163201/@comment-6078851-20150125170755

abaddon is not that smart. he's an astartes so his mind will function at a higher degree than regular folks, but compared to other astartes he's maybe 'quite bright'. and to echo sanguiniuslives - experience doesn't equel intelligence. a very good example of abaddon not being particularly smart is the simple fact that he thinks he's a better general than horus: horus who was one of the best generals in human history.

the things that make horus so adept at violence and so feared is not abaddon himself: it's his armour, his marks of chaos, and his sword. now obviously, if he and huron went at each other fully geared up huron probably wouldn't last long at all. but if huron was to get similar boosts, or if abaddon was stripped of his boosts, then they would be fairly evenly matched. abaddon 'aint all that without his perks, and in a fair fight huron would most likely take him.

abaddon may have technically achieved more, in terms of volume, than huron, but that's because he's been around for 10,000 years. yet what huron has achieved in a mere century (i didn't actually realise he was that young) is testament to him being far smarter than horus, and a better general.

on a different note: i read on another thread that something like 90+% of astartes are white and this got me thinking. when it comes to genetics the pigmentation of caucasian skin is a recessive trait - black, indian, asian etc, when reproducing with a caucasian will have a child that isn't white. and given that in the real world right now caucasian is the least numerous of our species' colours (and in time, with enough reproduction, it should come about that white will receed from our race), then i'm wondering, why is 90+% of astartes white? the only things i can think of to answer this is: 1) sometime in our future and 40k's very distant past, there must be a series of genocides, or maybe a plague which whites were immune to, reducing the numbers of every colour of people, except white, to either a fraction or entirely wiping out. or 2) emps is/was a massive racist (and given his view on alien life i find this quite easy to believe) and a white supremecist :P