The TRUTH About Abaddon The Despoiler. | Warhammer 40K Lore

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time stamps
0:00 Intro
1:13 Raid Sponsor
2:44 The 13 Black Crusades.
5:55 The Problem Was 40k's Story Telling
9:08 Warhammer Retcons
12:01 The Black Crusades Were Victory's All Along
16:04 The Black Stone Pylons
19:01 Cadia's Destruction
22:05 What do The Authors Think About Abaddon
29:14 Closing Thoughts

*Warhammer 40,000 is an IP owned by Games Workshop. the opinions expressed in this video are solely that of weshammer and have no bearing on gamesworkshop. All artwork and music used are done so for educational purposes, and are owned by their respective creators. If you see your art work used and would like a credit, feel free to email me and I will get it added.

[weshammer]

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[Dustbinlid]

My favourite Abaddon moment is when they first find out that the Emporer is now considered a god, and they all just burst out laughing "The word bearer's were right"

[EdBurke]

My favorite Abaddon memes aren't about him being a failure but just about how his old metal minis arms kept falling off.

[Zivon]

Abaddon's best moment is still in the Siege of Terra novel "The Lost and the Damned." The traitor Primarchs are all having a meeting over hololith on the Vengeful Spirit. Angron is pacing back and forth and raging whenever he speaks, Fulgrim is flirting with anything that moves, Perturabo is grumbling about how he's carrying the heresy, Magnus is bored and barely paying attention, and Mortarion is nowhere to be found. Abaddon walks into all this nonsense, turns to a raging Angron and, showing off some serious brass balls, tells them to mute his mic.

[socalastarte]

I love Abaddon as a villain. His portrayal in 30K is fantastic as Horus’ most loyal and brutal Capt. Then in 4OK lore he is vocal about how Horus failed because he is weak. I love how in his mind HE is using Chaos and not the other way around, just like Horus thought. It’s pretty poetic.

[Bread-nxfo]

My favorite thing about Abaddon is that he's not just a mindless puppet like other chaos leaders, he is distrustful of the chaos gods and works towards his own goals. He's very much sane and very deadly.

[krankarvolund]

I mean the big advantage of Guilliman over Abaddon is that he's functionally a new character. Yeah, he existed in 30K and was obviously known in 40K, but fonctionally in the 40K timeline, he's a new character with an impressive backstory. There's not thirty years of lore to retcon and readapt to the new story, it's just "oh, he's alive now" and then you developp his motivations ^^

[Lumen_Obscurum]

I was a player back in the before times. My first codex was Chaos Space Marines 3rd edition, second codex. I devoured all the lore I could get my hands on in early 2000s Australia without having much money, and I always pointed out that Abaddon refused to submit to Chaos which lead to him getting the Mark of Chaos Ascendant. I've never thought he failed in his Black Crusades, and I recall the campaign you mentioned and how it fizzled. Almost as a reflection of the state of the galaxy, no power can take over because they're all trying to get through the door at once like that old Simpsons episode where Mr Burns has every disease and thus isn't dying from any.

Back on point, I think Abaddon understands Chaos in the same way an old-time experienced sailor understands the sea. They can use it, they can read it, but they can never trust it because it will always ebb and flow like the tides. He will never succumb to the Sea of Souls, but he has a certain love for it. Born of respect, healthy amounts of fear, and millennia of experience. He knows that Chaos is always there, but that he cannot master it, only master using it to further his goals. I wouldn't be surprised if what he tells the Ruinous Powers he wants and what he actually wants, are two very different things. He knows if he is promised what he wants, what he truly desires, it gives them a place to lever his mind open and consume his soul.

He has seen Primarchs, Astartes, and even men try to control chaos and fall to it. Or tell it what they truly want, and become consumed by it. He is a man who knows he cannot build his plans on a single great push, because the nature of Chaos is that it will desert his side at that moment. So he carefully builds his plans one step at a time, changing the status quo so when the Sea is calm again it has changed to be in a better spot. He's a man digging a grounded ship out with his bare hands, each time the tide comes in it shifts just a little more and erases most of his work, but the ship is slowly getting free. I think ultimately, his victory will be through the various Astartes champions of Chaos. Kharn, Ahriman, possibly even Lucius and Typhus. They are each the pinnacle of the Space Marine for each God, if he could get them to join the Black Legion and throw off the shackles of their Primarch's deity then perhaps they could join him as Chaos Ascendant. But, he knows until then he must treat them as all aspects of the Sea. They rise and fall with the Great Game, so none can be relied upon.

[s..l]

I think Abaddon can be 'rehabilitated' if we just let ADB do his thing. The black legion books are great, and in general he's a pretty good chaos writer.

[davidk]

Abaddon is a fantastic character, but he suffers from what I call "the arch-enemy syndrome": the writer wants to use the arch-enemy as often as possible, as the character is so epic, but given that the penultimate goal of the writer is to keep the story going (so as to milk the cash cow) for as long as humanly possible without a final resolution, the arch-enemy must repeatedly fail, thus giving rise to the sentiment that the arch-enemy is an incompetent, bumbling boob. I don't blame the underlying character Abaddon for fans bestowing upon him the "Fail-baddon" moniker; rather, I blame GW for over-using Abaddon, which inevitably means that he must repeatedly fail in order to maintain the existence of the Emperor and the Imperium intact and by extension keep the GW money-train chugging down the tracks. In contrast, Huron Blackheart is most likely viewed by many fans as being more "successful" than Abaddon, but I argue that this is mainly due to the fact that Huron is more of a peripheral bad guy rather than the arch-enemy; so Huron appears much less often, and his goals are more limited (not the overthrow of the entire Imperium), and therefore, he can be allowed to succeed more often.

[zold]

I think it’s also worth noting that even in the vague original codex descriptions, it makes it clear that each time Cadia got closer to breaking. The implication was always that cadia was always being worn down to be broken by Abaddon

[Skull-Render]

my favourite moment was when abaddon met with iskander and his rubric marines, they seemed to show their individuality again as if abaddons presence weakened the rubric spell and showed the men who they once were even if it was for a moment. clearly abaddon is special somehow.

please do a video like this on ahriman. It would be a lot of work with so many books and sources but he like abaddon does not want to be a pawn of the chaos gods and is trying to fight fate itself.

[ninjahammers]

I loved Abby in saturnine. Running around, dueling, asking why he's even there. Barely making it out alive. I know he kinda had some plot armor to survive but I loved that human side of Abby examining himself

[SandmanofTerra]

Thank you so much for this video. It breaks my heart to see all the hate Abaddon gets!

[lawrencekassab]

For a noob like myself, I appreciate all the hard work you put into all your videos you make. All the work you do in finding all the lore and consolidating it into articulate easy to listen and enjoy in 30-60 minute videos that probably took weeks to complete help bring the universe of 40k into a much more cohesive understanding and appreciation to all the writers and artists who make this miserable, depressing and grim world so fun to explore.

[GankbotShuk]

I feel that if they had him win more significant and apparent victories prior to the 13th crusade it would be different. But it kinda does seem like the sneaky stuff either was made to save face, or was not stressed and brought to the forefront enough, which results in what seems to be a 'Big Bad' that always loses. And you can only hear "Next time Gadget! Next time!" so many times before you can't take it seriously anymore.

TL;DR his 13th Black Crusade victory came too late to keep him threatening, by then it was a consolation prize. But the foundation is there, they just really need to go hard at it to make him imposing again.

[OneReallyGrumpyJill]

Classic GW moment: his crusades being secret victories wasn't a retcon, GW just failed to communicate the clues.

[godforothchannel]

Kind of funny that, for me, that all big monologue you gave about Abbandon near the end, fit Warhammer AoS’s Archaon better…
He is a Man who became A Demi-god or even a God of Chaos by his cheer willpower and determination to destroy Sigmar and is constantly doing a balancing act to never be claimed by any of the Chaos Gods…

I think Abbandon may have worked better if he was « A Villain » … not « THE Villain » of 40k…

[DeadGothicRed]

You can also look at it from the angle that aside from actual story telling from a books perspective or even abbadon himself, that the reason he seems so inferior is because of the Inquisition Ordo that removes key info and makes things contradict and redundant in Imperium and Inquisition records.

[chrisbach]

Technically, all of Chaos was retconned to be successful. From what my friends (who have been into Warhammer longer than I have) told me, Games Workshop likes to hold official tournaments to help determine the direction of the story, with the “Gathering Storm” event representing the 13th Black Crusade. The problem is that the Chaos factions were completely decimated in these games, meaning that Cadia should have technically not only mounted a successful defense but also a successful invasion into the Eye of Terror. But because this is not what they wanted, Games Workshop ignored these results and made it so that Chaos won an absolute victory.

But this is another issue entirely.