Primarch Angron led a force of World Eaters to slaughter a part of his own Legion! Why did he do this and how did Horus react?
Via our friends over at Lexicanum
As the hour of the Horus Heresy grew near, Horus had little problem with corrupting the bitter and unhappy Angron. Horus was able to feed the flames of Angron’s discontent with the Emperor’s prior behaviour, reinforcing Angron’s perception that he had been betrayed, and that the Emperor was a moral weakling. When the Sons of Horus broke with the Emperor’s Imperium, Angron and the World Eaters were with him.
Angron and the World Eaters were first known to have worked to Lupercal’s ends during the war with the Auretian Technocracy, when Angron’s 203rd Expeditionary Fleet linked up with the 63rd of Horus. A war started under false pretences so that Horus could secure valuable STC machines with which to win the loyalty of the Mechanicum, the World Eaters worked in concert with the Sons of Horus to obliterate the Auretian civilisation.
When word of the rebellion on Isstvan III arrived, Angron was a member of Horus’ war council which determined that the imminent campaign of reconquest on the planet was the perfect opportunity to rid their legions of the personnel believed unlikely to turn against the Emperor.
A sizable grouping of World Eaters was attached to the forces deployed to crush the rebellion, and like all the other victorious warriors, they were betrayed by their fellows in orbit. The Conqueror, the World Eaters Legion flagship, was amongst the vessels which commenced a viral bombardment of the planet.
When it became clear that almost two-thirds of the deployed forces had survived the life-eater, Horus made plans to saturation bomb their positions from orbit. However, his stratagem was altered by the actions of Angron, who seemingly decided that the survivors of his legion should be cut down by his own hand.
Descending to the surface, with a full 50 companies of World Eaters at his back, Angron made straight for the largest concentration of his own betrayed troops and engaged them in close combat. Watching from orbit in outrage, Horus realised he had no choice but to commit his own ground forces in order to reinforce Angron’s move. Thus the Battle of Isstvan III was begun.
Angron and his second wave of World Eaters spent most of the battle combating and wiping out the World Eaters of the first wave, but were marshalled and brought in for the kill of the last loyalist bastion, after its walls were breached by Titan assault.
The final obliteration of the loyalists was to be by orbital bombardment, and Horus ordered his fellow primarchs Mortarion and Fulgrim to drag Angron from the field if he would not quit of his own accord; the World Eaters’ strength was to be conserved for the planned Battle of Isstvan V.
The Battle of Isstvan V, also known as the Drop Site Massacre, saw Angron and the World Eaters unleashed, their assault splitting the Raven Guard‘s line of communication from that of the Iron Hands. The World Eaters then turned their ire upon the Raven Guard, causing many casualties in the sable-clad legion. Indeed, the World Eaters seemed to focus on the Raven Guard as their targets even after the battle had been settled in the favour of the traitors.
As well as sending out hunter squads after the Raven Guard survivors trapped on the surface, the World Eaters were recorded to undertake a strange and barbaric practice, almost akin to a ritual; they decapitated and flensed the heads of the fallen, stacking them in ossuary-cairns.
The significance of this post-battle development would not be truly appreciated by observers of the legion until some time later, but the cairns were noted to have a bizarre and deleterious psychic effect on the Raven Guard marines hiding in the area. Angron himself remained upon Isstvan V, leading the force hunting the Raven Guard personally.
Eventually, after 98 days of cat-and-mouse hunting, the World Eaters were able to run the Raven Guard survivors down, launching themselves at their exhausted prey in what would surely be another, final massacre. This was not to be however, as the Raven Guard force – including their primarch, Corax – were rescued by a relief force of their own legion, in what some would come to refer to as a miracle.
Find out more about Angron and the World Eaters
About the Author: Zeb Barrett
