An Angry Pacifist

 'The secret of whether the enemy can possible win may be the darkest secret of all,' Gavalon said, his sonorous voice becoming even more distant and ruminative.

'Darker than the secret hidden by the Golden Throne itself. Everything we know and believe, of course, tells us that the Imperium cannot possibly win in the end. In the fullness of time, the only possible victory is that of Chaos. In the fullness of time, the only possible fate for humankind is extinction. And yet the Imperium fights on - and who knows what petty victories they might win in the meantime, or what the true value of those petty victories might be? We who are proud to be dwellers in Gulzacandra and followers of the Changer of the Ways might say, and might even believe, that we are the heroes of the eternal struggle - but we know in our hearts that it is not true, and that the Imperium has the monopoly on heroism.

We fight out of choice, driven by pride and lust and fury, and everything we do hastens our own end and the end of our species. They fight for duty, driven only by faith. They know that they cannot win, but they fight on, determined to survive for another hour, another year, another century... even though they know that they cannot survive forever. It is they, not us , who maintain the game and make it worth the playing, it is they not us , who are the game.

The ultimate triumph of Chaos, which lies so far in the future as to be of little concern to short-lived creatures such as you an I, is absolutely certain. The ruination and destruction of all mankind is but a tiny part of that culmination.

The Imperial forces have nothing to fight for but a trivial postponement, and yet they fight. They have made their emperor a god, and are surely right to do so, for if anyone less than a god could ever deserve to become one, what other kind of man could it be than an emperor? The imperial forces are the heroes, because they gave nothing to win but a momentary eyeblink in the hour of eternity, for the sake of which they have sacrificed every freedom, every thought, every hope and every pleasure. They will never know how grateful my Divine Master and those like him must be for all their sacrifices, or what the true value of their petty victories must be.'

Plague Marine for a Black Crusade campaign. Born on a feudal planet where they worshiped Nurgle as Mother Matagot, a deity of parasites, got taken as a youngling to be made into a member of the Death Guard. Both a warrior and a doctor, the mutated wings are those of his pet giant mosquito, which got fused to him by his deity as a reward.

And like I'm not even an Abaddon fan, I am not invested in the Black Legion, but that take is maddening enough to make me say something.

One is a Primarch, so he automatically holds authority over Astartes and comes with a built in loyal legion. He has established respect from his tenure as Warmaster. He has significantly more resources, as the Traitor Legions had only ditched the Imperium a few years prior. He's fully backed by Chaos Undivided, they imbue him with their power.

Abaddon is a Traitor Astartes in a sea of Traitor Astartes all scrabbling for power, he has no innate authority. He's had to earn and maintain respect and loyalty from his followers, his position as Warmaster is a far more tenuous and merit based thing. He is centuries deep into this shit, he's running a ragtag flotilla of pirates who have to scavenge for replacement armor. He did not walk away from the Imperium 5mins ago with a whole legion of fresh working Titans in his back pocket like Horus.

And, on top of all of that, he is refusing the patronage of the Chaos Gods; they are not imbuing him with their power, in fact they're terrorizing him in an attempt to wear out his self-control. He's functioning on zero sleep, his brain is eating itself, and still he holds out because he saw what happened to Horus.

So all of that considered, Abaddon's doing pretty fucking good, dude. He has far more shit working against him and yet he has some major W's on his scorecard. He literally split the galaxy in half with the Great Rift, give him a fucking break.

EDIT: also it hasn't been 10k years from Abaddon's perspective, he largely resides in the Eye of Terror where time is weird as shit. From his POV, it's been a few hundred years since the heresy.

Like with Talos and First Claw, it felt like only 200 years had passed. There's no set Eye Time vs Immaterium Time vs Materium Time ratio, so Abaddon could have been fucking around for anywhere between...probably 200-800 years since the Heresy? That means he's averaging a war every 15-60 years. If that doesn't seem particularly impressive, remember that it took Lorgar and co. 40yrs to set up the bones of the Horus Heresy.

Abaddons doing that shit over and over, practically back to back in Astartes years, holding out as an insurgent against a vast empire. Abaddon is the Viet Cong vs the US whereas the power disparity for the Horus Heresy was more akin to the South vs North in the US Civil War.

I think its pretty good!

I am tempted to make more lighthouses eventually, based off real ones I've been to. I have been to dozens.

Augustine Lighthouse. You can

tell from the red top.

This sick bleach shirt I made. Something to showcase my undying love for prehistoric cave art.