The WORLD EATERS Legion in the HORUS HERESY | Legion XII: Origins & Lore

in warhammer 40 000 the world eaters are the bloodiest of the traitor legions warbands of ravening berserkers claiming skulls for the throne of corn but that wasn't always the case and the story of how the loyalist war hounds devolved into the traitor world eaters owes a lot to the way their broken battered primark angron was treated by an uncaring imperium [Music] hiya welcome back to heresy 101 we are in the 12th episode of this little series where i go through the law for each of warhammer's space marine legions particularly their origins in the grim days of the horus heresy i take a look at where they are at the start of the heresy and how they got there and then what happened to them during it so it's worth mentioning yet again that this video contains spoilers for literally anything heresy related at the end of the great crusade the world eaters were one of the most terrifying forces in the imperium's arsenal a brutal tool of conquest a huge and powerful legion so notorious for their bloody massacres that even mention of them was enough to force compliance on fearful systems but their slow fall towards madness had started long before with the discovery and subsequent treatment of their gene sire the primark angron and the legion's bleak desire to emulate him the history of the 12th legion like all the legion starts during the unification wars on terror their genesis initially seemed unremarkable they recruited from all over old earth with a preference for the most aggressive competitive recruits but that was far from uncommon amongst the early legions they fought in small numbers alongside the mortal armies of the imperium as shock troops famous for triumphing against much greater forces by sheer courage and fury but generally across not only the unification wars but also the conquest of the solar system the emperor held them in reserve close at hand and ready to be deployed in case of a sudden reversal of fortunes in battle or in the case of rebellion they quickly became known as the emperor's war hounds kept on a short leash and when they were deployed it was into some of the bloodiest battlefields on the asteroid colony of cerberus they were deployed when a rebellion against imperial rule was revealed to be led by rogue thunder warriors within five hours of the war hounds being deployed the colony was a charnel house with all resistance slaughtered individual thunder warriors laying amongst piles of astartes dead and the cleanup forces shocked by the brutality they witnessed the human commander of the forces arrayed to go in after them commented i do not doubt my emperor's wisdom in creating such a necessary evil as these fearful warriors nor do i doubt their effectiveness in battle it remains my fervent hope however that though i spend my life making war for the liberation of mankind that i never again see such inhuman butchery as i witnessed in the halls of cerberus as the crusade pushed outwards into the galaxy the warhound continued to serve as a mobile reserve dispatched alongside other legions like the iron hands or dark angels or alongside the mortal troops of the imperial army where they provided a furious front-line assault force assigned to take a specific objective or turn a war in the imperium's favor often with massive losses involved they had a reputation for being unpredictable and dangerous to fight alongside but this tendency towards bloody carnage was balanced by a particularly hard code of discipline and training within the legion's ranks in fact when the sixth legion finally saw service later in the crusade they were compared unfavorably to the warhounds with crusade command commenting on how the sixth lacked the discipline required to make them as effective as the twelfth but as the crusade ground on and the other legions located their primarks and reformed under them their role as an assault reserve became less needed crusade commands started grouping them into larger and larger forces directed against targets for whom annihilation was the only option these fleets including the famed bloody 13th expedition frequently included other formations that are proven particularly uncontrollable like the titan legio ordax or the newman gun clans and this grand muster of the legion would prove timely because in the far ultima segmentum the emperor had been observing the rise of their primark at the end of the unification wars on terror the 20 primarks the superhuman generals and genetic templates for the legions were scattered from the emperor's laboratory across the galaxy in a great catastrophe the capsule of the infant 12th primark came to rest on the world of new syria where he was found by slave masters from the city of deshaya marked for the gladiatorial pits of the city he was implanted with the ancient technology known as the butcher's nails a suite of psychosurgical enhancements that worm their way deep into the brain amplifying the anger and rage of the subject and slowly twisting the pleasure centers of the brain until nothing but violence could give relief from the pain they caused the primark grew up therefore in captivity and in agony rising to become angron the greatest gladiator of his age but eventually he led a grand revolt escaping the arena and leading a rampaging army across the world destroying the cities of the so-called high riders as they went his army were known as the eaters of cities and as they continued their campaign the forces of the high riders finally corralled them with five separate armies and grundsen cities refused to run and they prepared for their final battle a battle they were certain to lose but unknown to angron the emperor had already located his 12th primark upon confronting him and making an offer of a place at his side to the emperor's surprise he was refused and rejected angran had sworn to live and die with his followers and that was exactly what he intended to do the emperor however would not accept this and the night before the final onslaught forcibly teleported the enraged primark away from the slaughter that followed as the rebellious slaves were butchered to the last man and woman this was a deed for which angram would never forgive the emperor and a stain upon the primark's honor that would never fade but fester into a sole deep wound it's unrecorded what happened next the emperor attempted to fix his son to remove the nails but they were embedded too deep and so at some point the enraged primark was handed over to the warhounds of the 13th expedition and placed in command how he begrudgingly accepted that command is unknown but he was at first so furious that half the war hounds high command were wiped out attempting to reason with their new father only the captain of the eighth assault company cairne seemed to be able to get through and became his primark's equity and often de facto commander of the legion in all but name but once angram was there changes started to spread through the legion's culture to the legionnaires the mutilated bloody reeking wrathful figure that now stalked amongst them as their father became a kind of savage messiah a greater warrior than any had known and an exemplar of a brutal ideal of honor and combat that sang to their souls he imposed an almost tribal unity on them their training always brutal became even more so as deadly as any battlefield close combat drills replaced with the gladiatorial simplicity of the dueling circles and the legionnaires eventual fate in the malay of battle became such a certainty that a black rebellious humor came to define the legion in an attempt to emulate their father and with his support the legion's apothecaries constructed crude versions of the butcher's nails and more and more of the legion opted for the surgery until only the oldest of the warhounds and the remnants of the legion's librarians were without them but the rest of the legion no longer saw themselves as warhounds anyway they were angron's new legion the eaters of worlds when the 12th legion rejoined the crusade they quickly forged an even more troubling reputation than they had before every campaign the world eaters conducted was fought to the death whole populations butchered and their worlds left barren and lifeless whether they were zenos empires or humans who just resisted compliance in fact their reputation became so dark that even the mention of them could make non-compliance systems surrender wholesale though it was brutal their record was efficient but eventually the tales of atrocities and murders proved too much even for crusade command and many of angron's brother primarks grew wary of him or of serving alongside him german of the ultramarines in particular deplored his methods but angron had a dark and casual charisma and wasn't without his supporters horus considered them a great asset to the crusade an efficient tool of war and when controversy grew in high command after the gehenna massacre where the world eaters butchered an entire planet's population in a single night the emperor perhaps too late in the day asked horus to work closely with the misguided 12th legion and to watch over and mentor their primark so when horus began his descent into rebellion there was already one bitter and wrathful brother close at hand dissatisfied with the imperium as angron would later remark to lugar let history mark my words well for i care nothing about who sits proud on the throne of terror when the last day dawns horus is a fine commander but that's the limit of my admiration for that arrogant preening bastard i joined his rebellion because i can tolerate him easier than i can endure the abomination that names himself master of mankind you want the truth of my life and death i am angron the eater of worlds and i'm already dead i died over a hundred years ago in the mountains north of the sea that enslaved me at the start of the heresy the world eaters were extremely well supplied and supported numbering around 150 000 legionnaires with a fleet of at least 60 capital ships and support from the mechanicus of sarum and the ember wolves titan legion though about a quarter of this number would be sacrificed on the killing fields of ispan 3 as the legion purged its ranks of any remaining loyalists the 12th legion's initial organization had been based like all the legions around the principia bellicosa with a bias towards close assault and tactical infantry formations and angron had little interest in directly changing this but under his rule the world eaters shifted even further in that direction they preferred sudden aggressive drop pod assaults from orbit with mass close combat equipped squads going in first backed up by a second wave of heavy armor and support squads even through this they maintained and utilized every tool of war in the legion's arsenal from artillery to armoured assault but these were considered a means to an end they were all just ways for the legion to deliver its assault squads into the heart of the enemy and end them and all legionnaires even support troops exhibited a preference for hand-hand combat often carrying all sorts of secondary malay weapons like combat blades or chain bayonets angron also refined the use of the chain axe which gained such a reputation in battle with the world eaters the other legions started to adopt it their attrition rates were always incredibly high so the legion had a highly efficient recruitment and implantation process drawing from a huge range of worlds by the end of the crusade period the use of the primarch genetic material to speed up the process and the implantation of the butcher's nails to heighten the recruit's aggression was almost standard practice helped by the fact that the later legion tended to operate as one homogenous army the modified nails though were unstable technology and instances of implant degradation and the resulting homicidal frenzy were not uncommon with many of these legionnaires grouped into suicide squads or the berserker assault units known as rampager squads the rank structure of the legion was simple and direct with trial by combat and effective method of advancement for a legionnaire if they survived there were few other formations within the legion the devourers were nominally the primark's bodyguards though really they were mostly ignored by him and the red butcher's terminators or the kaidurai assault squads were more practical uses for legionnaires lost to the nails than an organizational body during the heresy this structure was to break down even further when the legion purged itself of loyalists on isfan angron insisted on deploying to the surface against the orders of the war master and they were some of the last to remain before the virus bombs fell they fought in the urgal depression during the drop site massacre on isfam five but as angrom became less and less stable and the nails wormed their way further and further into his brain the legion and its primark were assigned to support his brother lorgaar and the word bearers on their shadow crusade through the ultramar sector it was then that logar located the world of new syria once again and angron learned of his legacy that the stories about him weren't of a glorious gladiator but one of betrayal how angron left his comrades to die to the high riders lances enraged upon hearing this angron's armies were deployed against the cities of new syria a final time butchering the inhabitants until they were caught up by pursuing ultramarines forces led by german himself chasing the word bearers since the battle of calth on the same killing fields where the eaters of cities died the three primarks fought and lorgaar's long plan to save his brother from the nails came to fruition he offered up the 12th legion and their primark to the chaos god corn and angron was the first of the primarks to achieve immortality as a demon prince after this the 12th primark became uncontrollable during the siege of terror he insisted on leading the charge and had to be restrained aboard the nightlord's flagship the nightfall until the psychic barriers that protected the palace could be brought down when the legion finally committed themselves enforced their primark at their head it was to lead the charge against the eternity gate and the world eaters continued their slaughter long after horus had been cast down by the emperor and the heresy effectively ended they were the last of the traitor legions to leave terror and that's the 12th legion always fractious and bloody their excesses were held in check by draconian discipline and a privileged place at the side of the emperor until late in the crusade and with the emperor racing against time their broken battered primark was placed in command into a position he never wanted anyway and when the legionnaires of the 12th denied any remaining chance of honor or glory sought to emulate him they quickly devolved into the mindless berserkers we're familiar with from 40k thanks for watching [Music] okay so if you'd like more of these videos then there'll be another one coming up in a little box there on the right and if you'd like to occasionally get videos early or just support the channel there's a patreon link in the thing below see ya [Music] [Music]

Channel: Arbitor Ian

Views: 97,788

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Id: aHCsC47Ixws

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 23 2022