40K Lore: Kneel Before the Despoiler
Loremasters, today we delve deep into the dread leader of the Traitor Legionaries – arch heretic Ezekyle Abaddon.
Ezekyle Abaddon, more commonly known as Abaddon the Despoiler, is the Warmaster of Chaos, former First Captain and now absolute leader of the Black Legion, and rumoured to be the clone-progeny of Warmaster Horus. He is the most powerful Warmaster of all, successor to Horus, and blessed by all four of the Gods of Chaos. Despite being the Warmaster of Chaos Abaddon has refused giving himself fully over to the Ruinous Powers as the Daemon Primarchs have, as this would limit his existence beyond the Eye of Terror and push his ultimate vengeance against the Imperium beyond his grasp.
Originally the firstborn son of one of the most mighty of Cthonia’s gang warlords, Ezekyle killed his father in single combat after a disastrous Cthonian coming of age ritual. Though he lived in exile after that point, his massive build and natural ferocity saw him grow to be a legend amongst his people. Before long the vicious young warrior came to the attention of the Luna Wolves, and he was recruited into their brotherhood.
Pre-Heresy
During the Great Crusade, Ezekyle Abaddon rose to the prestigious post of First Captain. He loved and worshipped Horus as a father, and it was rumoured that Abaddon was one of the few “Sons of Horus,” those Space Marines who were created directly from Horus’s geneseed. Extremely proud and quick to anger, Abaddon’s martial record was unsurpassed by that of any other Luna Wolf. Bellicose by temperament, Abaddon was usually the most hawkish of the Warmaster’s advisors. During the final years of the Crusade, Abaddon disagreed, sometimes violently, with Horus’s decision to parley with the Interex, a human civilisation that allowed an alien species to co-exist with them.
During the Ullanor Crusade, Abaddon accompanied Horus and a detachment of Terminators from the First Company in a daring strike on the headquarters of the Ork Warboss Urlakk Urg. While the majority of the detachment held the entrance to the Warboss’s tower against hordes of greenskins, Horus confronted and slew the Warboss. As the greenskin hordes fled in terror, Horus found every one of the terminators had fallen except for Abaddon, barely alive and buried under a mountain of Ork bodies.
In addition to his position as First Captain, Abaddon was also one of the four members of the Mournival, a special advisory council to the Warmaster, since its inception. He took his position extremely seriously, but did enjoy sharing his sense of humour with his Mournival brothers. Abaddon eventually grew frustrated and angry at the Emperor’s supposed abandonment of the Space Marine Legions, feelings which swelled to the surface when Horus lay near to death on Davin. A member of the warrior-lodge within the Sons of Horus, he went along with Erebus‘s plan to take the Warmaster to the Serpent Lodge for healing, beginning Abaddon’s road to damnation.
The Horus Heresy
After Horus’s recovery, Abaddon grew ever more protective of his Primarch and his Legion’s reputation, to the point where he saw remembrancer criticism and Imperial investigation into Legion activities as threats and insults that could not be borne. He therefore sanctioned the murder of Ignace Karkasy and the blaming of Legion-caused civilian casualties upon Garviel Loken. This course of action was frustrated by the refusal of Tarik Torgaddon to accede to the plan, and the Mournival brotherhood was effectively broken as a result.
Abaddon’s thinking would prove to be in tune with that of his commander, who would eventually order not only the death of Karkasy but also that of Loken. Seemingly destined to be in lockstep with the Warmaster, when Horus came to the warrior-lodge of his Legion to sway them into following him onto what would prove to be the path of heresy, Abaddon was amongst the first to swear his unquestioning loyalty.
Abaddon was present at several of the major actions of the Horus Heresy. During the purging of the loyalist Legionaries at Isstvan III, Abaddon notably took to the field to attend the final meeting of what had once been the Mournival, at which he dueled with Garviel Loken. Though slightly wounded in the combat, Abaddon emerged the victor. Abaddon again dueled Loken on the Vengeful Spirit in the aftermath of the Battle of Molech after the Knights-Errant attempted to assassinate Horus. He later appeared at the forefront of battles at Yarant, and in the Siege of the Imperial Palace. During the final confrontation, Abaddon fought against Terminators of the Imperial Fists Legion aboard Horus’s battle-barge, the Vengeful Spirit, and thus was not present when Horus was defeated by the Emperor. Abaddon’s anguish at the death of his “father”, drove him completely mad. Before the Sons of Horus retreated, Abaddon led a vicious counterattack that reclaimed the Warmaster’s body, before leading the retreat into the Eye of Terror.
Post-Heresy
Shortly after the Heresy, Abaddon abandoned the Legion; broken by the death of Horus and sick of war, he wandered alone into the Eye of Terror. Meanwhile, within the Eye itself, civil war soon broke out amongst the traitor Legions. Becoming embroiled in a war against the Emperor’s Children, the Sons of Horus’ fortress of Lupercalios on Maeleum was destroyed and the Emperor’s Children stole the corpse of Warmaster Horus himself. Eventually with the help of Fabius Bile, a number of clones of Horus were created, an act which disgusted the Sons of Horus. With the Sons of Horus in a desperate situation, warband leaders Falkus Kibre, Iskandar Khayon, and Lheorvine Ukris decided to seek out the Vengeful Spirit and Abaddon with it. With the help of the Word Bearers Sargon, they eventually found the Vengeful Spirit buried on the former Eldar world of Aas’ciaral in the Eleusinian Veil deep within the Eye of Terror. Inside they found Abaddon, who revealed he had dispatched Sargon to bring them to him. Abaddon had become reinvigorated at the news of the cloning of Horus, and was assembling forces to end the abomination.
Gathering allies around himself, Abaddon moved on the Canticle City on the Daemon World of Harmony. During the vicious battle that followed, Abaddon took up the Talon of Horus and boarded the Emperor’s Children Cruiser Fleshmarket which was commanded by Fabius Bile. Inside, they found horribly deformed mutated adolescent clones of all twenty Primarchs. After putting an end to these monstrosities, Abaddon and his forces next met the clone of Horus himself. After shattering Worldbreaker with the Talon of Horus, Abaddon impaled the clone of his gene-father. With his dying breath, Horus remembered Abaddon as his son, to which Abaddon replied he was not his son any longer.
Abaddon’s forces subsequently purged the Emperor’s Children from Harmony and proclaimed himself as the successor of Horus. He would begin a new war – a Long War. After his victory, Abaddon proceeded to purge the Black Legion of traitorous and self-serving elements, such as the Word Bearers champion Rynax the Unspoken, the Nurgle Chaos Lord Purgor the Putrescent, and the Slaaneshi Sorcerer Hexagalimere. Making a bloody examples of these Renegades, Abaddon was able to cement his hold on power over the Legion.
Now the unquestioned leader of the Sons of Horus, Abaddon eventually renamed them the Black Legion to expunge the name of Horus, who failed in his attempt to take over the Imperium. Studying what his predecessor had done, Abaddon realized that while he needed to court the Ruinous Powers as allies, he became determined to never become a thrall to their will as had been the case with Horus in the end. He eventually returned at the head of a diabolic horde which ravaged entire systems around the Eye of Terror before the Imperium could muster the strength to halt it. During this first Black Crusade, Abaddon made many bloody pacts with the infernal powers. In the crypts below the Tower of Silence on Uralan, Abaddon recovered the Daemon Sword Drach’nyen. With the howling daemon blade in his fist Abaddon became nigh unstoppable. Whole cities were burned in sacrifice to the ever-hungry daemons of Chaos, and entire armies were torn apart by gibbering Warp entities. Abaddon’s power swelled to inhuman proportions as the gods of Chaos rewarded him lavishly and he undertook acts of fiendish bravery which horrified those who stood against him. Abaddon continued to forcibly absorb old warbands of the Sons of Horus into his forces, most notably the Sons of the Eye. Many other exiled and damned members of the nine Traitor Legions were also allowed to join his ranks.
During the Gothic War Abaddon almost brought an entire sector to its knees. His fleets were augmented with a newly constructed flagship, known for good reason as the Planet Killer. Alongside this he somehow activated and gained control of the Blackstone Fortresses, mysterious constructions allegedly рre-dating the Imperium itself that combined to generate prodigious destructive firepower. Abaddon attacked while the sector was cut off from reinforcements by Warp storms and caused huge damage to the Imperial battlefleet, destroyed a number of planets and devastated many more. Only the intervention of the Eldar enabled Imperial forces to stop the Chaos fleet.
In his most recent assault, the 13th Black Crusade, Abaddon managed to gain a foothold in the Cadian Gate, planning to extend the Eye of Terror to encompass even Terra in a plan known as The Crimson Path. Abaddon’s forces were able to gain a foothold on Cadia to the point where only a single Imperial bastion, Kasr Kraf, remained. After the vicious Battle of the Elysion Fields, Kasr Kraf fell and Abaddon moved onto the last stage of his plan: destroying the Cadian Pylons. In the final battle beneath Cadia’s surface Abaddon personally clashed with a variety of foes including Saint Celestine, the Geminae Superia, Inquisitor Greyfax, Orven Highfell, and Ursarkar E. Creed for control of the Pylons. Abaddon bested them all and managed to defeat Celestine who had become depowered by the activation of Cadia’s pylons. However despite the loss of an arm, Creed distracted Abaddon long enough for Celestine to impale him from behind with her sword. Horribly wounded, Abaddon was forced to teleport back to the Vengeful Spirit.
But despite his wounds Abaddon was able to finish off Cadia by redirecting the debris of the Blackstone Fortress Will of Eternity into its surface. The impact destabilized the Pylons, and Cadia was sucked into the Warp. Despite the final destruction of Cadia, Abaddon became enraged when he learned from Zaraphiston that the Magos Belisarius Cawl had escaped with a relic of profound importance to Kalisus. Abaddon pursued Cawl and the remaining Imperial survivors to the world, but his prize was denied to him by the Eldar, who aided the Imperials and forced him to withdraw.
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