Nuceria was once the planet where the World Eaters' Primarch Angron was discovered by the Emperor during the Great Crusade. In ancient days it was classified by the Imperium of Man as both a Civilised World and a technologically advanced world, though current Imperial historical records do not state its name. This is most likely a result of an Edict of Obliteration being carried out to remove any trace of the world that spawned the Daemon Primarch Angron. Following its scouring by the World Eaters during the Horus Heresy it is now a Dead World, wiped clean of all life.
History
Kept within the deepest dungeon on the Library Sanctus on Terra is a changed tome known as the Liber Malum, its bloodstained pages records the fate of those who have trod the path to damnation. To even mention its name is to risk madness. Many are the blasphemous heretics and tyrants whose names sully the pages with their treacheries, but foremost amongst these damned souls is the name Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters Space Marine Legion. Much of the legend of Angron is incomplete, and there is much that is not known or so shrouded in dark legend that the true facts are impossible to discern.
The Red Angel Descends
A very great deal about the finding of the Primarch Angron remains unknown to wider Imperial record. During the scattering of the Primarchs' gestation capsules from the Emperor of Mankind's gene-laboratories deep beneath the Himalayan Mountains, Angron was cast through the Warp to a "civilised" human world far from Terra. How Angron came to be separated from the Emperor so soon after his creation and the name of the planet he eventually came to call home is unknown. Indeed where this planet was or even if it still exists is uncertain. There is in fact evidence that this information, including the true name of the world he was found upon was known but was kept deliberately secret by command of the Emperor and those close to Him. That which is known is a dark tale of the Primarch's brutal upbringing, murderous violence, and Angron's revolt against his cruel masters.
After Angron came to be separated from the Emperor and Terra by the mysterious machinations of the Ruinous Powers he was deposited through the Warp on the world of Nuceria. Where this planet is located in the galaxy or if it even still exists is uncertain. Carpinus' Speculum Historiale speaks of Angron's world as technologically advanced (though it does not name it), ruled over by a caste of wealthy elite who lived in decadent opulence while the populace of their cities lived in abject poverty in the slums surrounded their walled palaces and villas. To distract the populace from their poverty, the oligarchic rulers of Nuceria held regular gladiatorial deathmatches in massive arenas, using cybernetically-enhanced gladiators who battled to satisfy the endless bloodlust of the oppressed people. It was on this world that the Primarch Angron was eventually discovered, though little else about the circumstances of how he came to be there remains known.
What is known is that Angron was discovered by a slaver who chanced upon the battered and bleeding figure of the young Primarch surrounded by scores of alien corpses, high in the northern Desh'elika Mountains. History does not record what species these aliens belonged to, but many Imperial scholars believe them to have been Eldar who attempted to kill the Primarch, due to some psychic foreknowledge of the plague upon the galaxy he would one day become. Angron had been badly wounded in the combat, but remained alive. Taken as a slave, the young boy was brought before the Reksium Throne of the powerful city-state of Desh'ea to the Palace Praxica, where he was sold to the ruling family Thal'kr. The youth's obvious potential as a gladiator was soon made apparent and he was bought by the largest and most popular arena in the capital. The young Primarch was given a name, Angron Thal'kyr, and nursed back to health. He then received the bio-neural cybernetic implants known to the savants of Nuceria as the Butcher's Nails. These were hammered into the Primarch's skull and surgically grafted to his cerebral cortex. Relic devices from the Dark Age of Technology, these cortical implants would boost a warrior's adrenaline, resulting in greater strength and aggression in battle. They bleached a warrior’s mind of all reason, all caution, all mortality’s instincts. The Nails rewarded rage with spurts of electrochemical pleasure, tingling synapses and deadening enjoyment of everything else. No better machine had ever been contrived. The cells below the massive arena were home to several thousand gladiators, all implanted with the Bucther's Nails, and Angron took his place amongst them.
After only a few months, Angron Thal'kyr had become a proud warrior of fearsome skill and an even stronger sense of honour. He killed hundreds of other gladiators, but those who fought well he always spared. Although Angron seemed to enjoy the life of a gladiator and the adulation of the Desh'ean crowds, he secretly resented his slavery, and was always plotting to escape. He proved to be a troublesome champion, prone to attempt escaping whenever he saw an occasion, but such efforts always failed. Within a few standard years Angron's fame had spread to every corner of his homeworld. Under his training, the gladiators of his arena soon became the greatest their world had ever seen and none could stand against them. Yet Angron also learned, following a final failed escape attempt, that he would never succeed alone. His unbending warrior's code and sheer combat skill had made him a well-respected leader amongst the other Desh'ean gladiators and when the largest death games ever held on Nuceria were announced, Angron planned his most daring escape attempt. For these new games, Angron was allowed to stage a vast combat that would involve every gladiator of his arena. As the Desh'ean crowd drowned out the sounds of battle, Angron's gladiators turned on their armed guards, butchering them and fighting their way to freedom. Against the guards armed with firearms, the gladiators' casualties were grievous, but nearly 2,000 survived to escape into the streets of Desh'ea, stealing what weapons and supplies they could before fleeing into the northern mountains where Angron had first been discovered. Over the next few years, the rulers of the world dispatched many armed forces to kill or recapture the rebel slaves, who soon named themselves the "Eaters of Cities," but all were destroyed in turn by Angron's leadership, martial skill and the cybernetically-enhanced fury of the gladiators.
But attrition and hunger slowly took their toll on the slaves and eventually only 1,000 men and women remained, half the size of the original force of escapees. On a mountain named Fedan Mhor, on a bleak spit of land known as Desh'elika Ridge, Angron and his forces were finally surrounded by no less than five large Nucerian armies. Not even the Primarch could stand against such sheer numbers, yet it was at this time that the Emperor of Mankind came to this world, drawn by the psychic emanations of his gene-son the Primarch. The Emperor had observed Angron secretly from orbit for many months and had watched with pride as he had led his freed slaves in battle against the forces of tyranny. The Emperor descended to the world's surface and after the shock of the august meeting had worn off on the Primarch, the Emperor offered Angron the leadership of the War Hounds XII Space Marine Legion, which had been created from Angron's own genetic material, and a place at his side in the Great Crusade. To the Emperor's disbelief, Angron refused, claiming that his place remained with his fellow slaves amongst the Eaters of Cities and he would die before deserting them. The Emperor retreated to His flagship, shocked at His son's refusal. Appraising the situation, the Emperor saw that for all of Angron's might as a Primarch and a leader, He would die in the coming battle. Losing one of His irreplaceable sons to the assault of rabble on a backwater planet soon to be brought into Imperial Compliance was simply unacceptable. Bringing His flagship into low orbit over the world, the Emperor teleported Angron away from the mountain of Fedan Mhor and the Battle of Desh'elika Ridge. Without their leader, the morale of the gladiators was destroyed and the next day they were slaughtered to the last man by the armies of the world's rulers. This was a deed for which Angron would never forgive the Emperor, and a stain upon the Primarch's honour that would never fade but fester into a soul-deep wound.
The exact records of the Emperor's intervention and Angron's acceptance of his new situation is a matter of shadowed rumour and conjecture, but what can be said with certainty is that Angron's first reaction to his new situation was rage. It was said with certainty that for some time any War Hound who came before him was met with a grisly death for their efforts. It is certain that at this time the Legion Master of the War Hounds, Ibram Ghreer, a respected general who had commanded the XII Legion for nearly three decades, disappeared without explanation from any record of the time and no explanation was given by his taciturn Legion for his absence. Apparently some sort of accommodation was reached and Angron swiftly took charge of his Legion. Angron renamed his Legion the World Eaters after he assumed command. Angron did this in part to honour the gladiator force he had led in rebellion on his homeworld whose warriors had been known as the "Eaters of Cities" for their wrath and violence. He chose the new name for his Legion when Dreagher, a Terran-born War Hounds Legionary who served as Captain of the Legion's 9th Company, promised Angron after meeting his Primarch for the first time that under his leadership the War Hounds would become, "...the eaters of worlds."
The Shadow Crusade
During the opening days of the Horus Heresy, in the wake of the Battle of Calth, the Word Bearers Legion, led by the Primarch Lorgar, linked up with the World Eaters to launch a Shadow Crusade against the Realm of Ultramar's Five Hundred Worlds in an attempt to spread the massive Warp Storm known as the Ruinstorm that had been conjured by the Word Bearers at Calth across the Eastern Fringe. This would split the galaxy in half and deny needed reinforcements to the Loyalists as Horus drove onwards towards Terra in an attempt to overthrow the Emperor of Mankind. But Lorgar noticed that the mental stability of Angron, the Primarch of the World Eaters, was rapidily deteriorating because of the damage caused by the Butcher's Nails, the cortical implant that had been forced upon Angron by the slavemasters of his homeworld of Nuceria. With the savants of the Traitor Legions and the Dark Mechanicum unable to divine a way to either remove the implant without killing the Primarch or to prevent the escalating deterioration of Angron's mind, Lorgar suggested that the Word Bearers and the World Eaters return to Nuceria to gather knowledge about the implants and then raze the world to the ground.
The Purge of Nuceria
Coming home to Nuceria after a century, Angron visits the Desh'elika Mountains to mourn his lost brothers and sisters
When Angron returned to his homeworld, he learned that in the Terran century since the Emperor had rescued him unwillingly from certain death beside the rebel band of gladiators he had led, the Nucerian slavemasters had concoted a story that he had cowardly run away from the rebels' last stand at the Battle of Desh'elika and left them to be slaughtered alone. Enraged by the lies that had been told about him over the last century, Angron ordered his Legion to kill everyone in the city of Desh'ea, the masters of which had once claimed to own him. Then they were to kill everyone on the planet. At the height of the final battle against the last city on Nuceria, Lorgar was confronted by his wrathful brother Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines Legion, who had been chasing him and the XII Legion since the destruction of Calth. As the two Primarchs fought, Guilliman gravely wounded Lorgar and was about to deliver a killing stroke to his wretched brother. But Angron intervened, facing the Lord of Ultramar in single combat. As the two fought, Guilliman landed a glancing blow, his fist pounding across Angron's breastplate. One of the skulls of Angron's fallen kinsman that hung from the chain worn across his breastplate was partially shattered and scattered across the ground. Guilliman stepped back, his boot crushing a skull's remnants to powder. Angron saw it, and threw himself at his brother, his howl of wrath defying mortal origins, impossibly ripe in its anguish. Lorgar saw it, too. The moment Guilliman's boot broke the skull, he felt the Warp boil behind the veil.
The Bearer of the Word started chanting in a language never before spoken by any living being, his words in faultless harmony with Angron's cry of torment. Lorgar enacted his dark plan to save his brother's life, summoning the Ruinstorm to the world of Nuceria, tearing the sky open and unleashing a crimson torrent, formed from the ghosts of a hundred murdered worlds, raining blood. Lorgar focused his concentration on the triumphant form of his mutilated brother, calling for the Neverborn, the entities men called Daemons, to answer in kind. He locked Angron’s muscles, setting fire to the synapses in his brain. The first spasms wracked their way through Angron’s sinews, turning his blood to quicksilver, then to lava and at last to holy fire. His cries of thwarted rage were tainted by an agony beyond comprehension. His body started tearing itself apart, growing, rising. Perfecting, after a lifetime of broken torture. This was the moment of Angron's apotheosis into daemonhood.
The remaining World Eaters Librarians sensed the fey powers being summoned by Lorgar. In an attempt to halt the Urizen's dark plans, the 19 remaining Librarians harnessed their collective psychic powers to manifest a psychic entity known as the Communion, the gestalt consciousness of 19 psychic minds. In the midst of Lorgar's incantations, the Communion pulled the soul of the Primarch from his body. The two psychic entities confronted one another within the Warp, locked in a deadly contest of wills, each convinced that they were the one responsible for saving Angron. But ultimately, the Communion failed, for Lorgar was just as powerful in the Warp as he was in the material universe. After Angron's completed metamorphosis into a new Daemon Prince, the Daemon Primarch turned his attention to the Librarians. The Daemon Primarch's rage killed the remaining Libarians, each of them tasting a different doom. Angron killed the last of the Librarians, expunging his Legion of the mutant weakness that had plagued his gene-sons since his reunification with them a century earlier. The Librarius of the World Eaters, the last fragment of the War Hounds within the XII Legion, was no more. Now there would only be blood, an ocean of blood carried on a tide of eternal slaughter.
Sources
- Index Astartes IV, "Chosen of Khorne - The World Eaters Space Marine Legion," by Graham McNeill, pp. 36-37
- Butcher's Nails (Audio Drama) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden
- Betrayer (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden