No Legion fell so far, or so willingly, as the XII. The World Eaters were built for slaughter and little else, a brotherhood of warriors who had surrendered reason for rage, judgement for the joy of the kill, and who in the end could no longer tell the two apart. Even among the traitor Legions their descent was singular, for where others were seduced by ambition or ground down by grief, the World Eaters were simply and gladly consumed by the thing that had been done to their minds.
That thing was the Butcher's Nails, and it came from their primarch. Angron did not lead his Legion into madness so much as share his own, for the cortical implants that flooded his skull with pain and fury were carved, in time, into the heads of his sons as well. To wear the Nails was to feel calm as agony and violence as the only relief, to have one's own biology turned against every impulse but the impulse to kill. The World Eaters embraced it. They called it honesty.
Angron and Nuceria[edit]
Angron was found not as a king or a conqueror but as a slave, raised on the world of Nuceria to fight and die for the amusement of others in its gladiatorial pits. Into his skull his masters drove the Butcher's Nails, implants that maddened him with pain and rage, and he repaid them with rebellion, leading a doomed uprising of the enslaved that the Emperor found him amid, moments from a last stand alongside the only kin he had ever known. The Emperor took Angron and left his comrades to die. The primarch never forgave it, and the fury of that abandonment, layered atop the fury the Nails already gave him, would poison every year that followed.
The Butcher's Nails[edit]
There was no true doctrine to the World Eaters, only escalation. Under Angron they abandoned the disciplined tactics of the Great Crusade for the headlong charge and the close, ecstatic kill, until entire campaigns became little more than butchery given a target. The wider Legion followed its primarch into the Nails willingly, and each warrior so altered lost a little more of the man he had been, gaining in exchange a hunger no victory could sate. They were magnificent and appalling in equal measure, the finest killers the galaxy had yet produced, and among the least free.
The Red Road[edit]
When Horus rebelled, Angron needed no corruption of ambition to turn him; he needed only a war large enough to feed his rage. The World Eaters butchered their own loyalists at Isstvan III, bled their way across the galaxy in the Warmaster's name, and drew, with every massacre, nearer to the attention of a god who prized exactly what they were. Khorne, the Blood God, had no need to seduce the XII Legion. It had only to wait, and to let them keep killing, until the day the World Eaters' rage and the Blood God's hunger became one and the same, a Legion that had begun as slaves ending as the eternal, howling property of the God of Slaughter.
Units
Contemptor DreadnoughtHeavy Support · WalkerThe Butcher's Nails do not fall silent when the body fails: a World Eaters Contemptor wakes with its rage undimmed, an avalanche of murder kept dormant until loosed at the enemy.
DevourersTroops · InfantryThe ravening front line of the Legion, the Devourers strain against every order to hurl themselves at the enemy, a tide of red and bronze that eats its way across the battlefield.
Legion Assault SquadFast Attack · InfantryThe truest expression of a Legion built to close the distance, the Assault Squads scream down on jump packs with chainaxes spinning, aimed rather than manoeuvred at the enemy's heart.
Legion Destroyer SquadElites · InfantryGrim specialists in forbidden rad and phosphex weaponry, loosed to poison and burn when the Legion cared nothing for how an enemy died.
Legion Land Raider ProteusHeavy Support · VehicleAn armoured assault transport whose reinforced hull carried the World Eaters' most savage warriors through any fire into the close-quarter butchery they craved.
Legion PredatorHeavy Support · VehicleThe Legion's main battle tank, driven with the same headlong aggression as its infantry, racing forward to blast open the path for the waiting axes.
Legion Spartan Assault TankHeavy Support · VehicleA massive armoured hauler able to carry an entire Terminator squad into the teeth of the enemy, beloved of a Legion that lived to reach close quarters.
Legion Storm Eagle GunshipFlyer · VehicleA heavily armoured assault gunship the World Eaters valued above all else as the fastest road to hurl a full squad of berserkers into the heart of the enemy.
Legion Tactical SquadTroops · InfantryOnce a disciplined firing line, the Legion's Tactical Squads became a contradiction barely held together, bolters raised but every warrior straining toward the chainaxe.
Legion Tactical Support SquadTroops · InfantryRhino-borne specialists carrying flamers, meltaguns, or volkite to burn open a path for the Legion's close-assault companies.
Rampager SquadElites · InfantryClose-assault butchery distilled into one formation, Rampagers exist for the moment of impact, charging with chainaxe and blade to where the Butcher's Nails sing loudest.
Red ButchersElites · InfantryWarriors driven so far past reason by the Butcher's Nails that they must be chained between battles, the Red Butchers are living weapons loosed only at the enemy to kill until nothing remains.
Characters
AngronThe Red AngelThe slave-gladiator primarch of the Twelfth, maddened by the Butcher's Nails and betrayed by the Emperor who would not free him, Angron shared his torment with his sons and marched them toward Khorne.
DelvarusThe HeadtakerA boastful champion of the Triarii and a Nucerian gladiator to his core, Delvarus killed with relish and theatre, treating the battlefield as the fighting-pits writ vast.
KhârnThe BloodyOnce a voice of reason and Angron's equerry, Khârn took the Butcher's Nails in solidarity with his primarch, and watched the reasoning captain in him give way to the relentless killer beneath.
Discussion
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