Abaddon the Despoiler - Deadly Beginnings
Abaddon, known to the Imperium as Abaddon the Despoiler, was once named Ezekyle Abaddon. In the long ages since the Horus Heresy, he has taken many titles, Warmaster of the Imperium Nihilus, Warmaster of Chaos, names spoken with fear across the galaxy. He stands as the greatest mortal champion of Chaos Undivided, owing allegiance to no single god, yet wielding the favor and terror of all.
Opening
He is the undisputed master of the Black Legion, a vast host of Chaos Space Marines forged from the remnants of shattered Traitor Legions. Once, Abaddon served as First Captain of the Sons of Horus, the most trusted gene-son of Horus Lupercal, the Warmaster who brought the Imperium to the brink of annihilation. Rumors persist that Abaddon bears more than loyalty to Horus, that he may be his clone-progeny, a final legacy of the Arch-Traitor himself, though such claims remain unproven and deliberately obscured.
Welcome back to Liandrug, lore-lovers. Tonight, we walk into the days before the Heresy had a name... before the Imperium learned what it truly meant to be betrayed.
Because long before the Black Legion marched beneath a banner of midnight, there was only a boy from Cthonia, a world of tunnels, gangs, and blood-law, and a warrior who learned, early, that survival was never given... it was taken.
This is the beginning of Ezekyle Abaddon.Not as a Warmaster. Not as a legend. But as a son, born into violence, who would one day become the blade at Horus' right hand.
The Chronicle
Cthonia was not a world of palaces or noble banners.
It was a buried realm, worked down into the rock, where people lived in the dark and died in the dark, and the only law was the one you enforced with your own hands.
Ezekyle was born into that world as the first son of a gang warlord, raised among killers who called themselves kings. On Cthonia, there were rituals meant to harden boys into men. Coming-of-age trials where blood was expected, and weakness was punished.
One of those rituals went wrong. Disastrous. And in the wreckage of it, the tribe demanded its due. Ezekyle answered the way Cthonia taught him to answer everything. He faced his father in single combat... and killed him.
Not in secret. Not with poison. Not with a knife in the dark. But openly, with violence so direct that it left no room for mercy or regret. And when the moment passed, and the body cooled, Ezekyle did not inherit a throne. He inherited exile. Because even on Cthonia, some acts stain the air forever. So he walked away from his tribe and into the wastes, carrying nothing except a name that had already become dangerous.
Exile did not soften him. It sharpened him. Cthonia's outlands were not forgiving. The strong endured; the weak were erased. And Ezekyle endured. Not by begging, not by hiding, by becoming something that other predators learned to avoid.
He grew into a towering figure, massive in build, ferocious by nature. Stories traveled faster than men on Cthonia. They always did. And before long, Ezekyle was no longer just an exile... he was a legend. A warrior that other gangs measured themselves against. A name spoken with caution. A man who carried violence like a natural element, like storm or fire.
And it was that reputation, that raw and unmistakable power, that finally drew the eyes of something far greater than any Cthonian warlord. Because Cthonia had been claimed. Not by another gang. By a Legion.
The XVI Legion, the Luna Wolves, had taken Cthonia as their homeworld after the recovery of their primarch, Horus Lupercal. When the Legion came, they did not arrive like conquerors from a single nation. They arrived like a new category of existence.
Transhuman warriors in war-plate, moving with purpose, speaking with authority, and carrying themselves as if the galaxy already belonged to them. They were not looking for ordinary men. They were looking for material, bodies and minds that could survive transformation.
And Ezekyle Abaddon was exactly the kind of thing a Legion notices. So the Luna Wolves recruited him. They took the exile from the tunnels and the violence, and they put him into the machine that turned humans into Astartes. The change was not only physical. It was identity. Cthonia had made him dangerous. The Legion made him inevitable.
Abaddon did not remain unknown for long. On the training grounds, he distinguished himself with speed, brutality, and discipline that felt carved from stone. In combat, he fought like someone who had never been allowed a second chance.
Standard years passed, few of them, before Ezekyle Abaddon had climbed through the ranks of the Luna Wolves, carving out a reputation that could not be ignored. And then came the rank that defined him:
First Captain. Newly created. Newly claimed. Given to him because the Legion had already learned a hard truth: Abaddon did not simply fight well. He made others fight better just by being there. He was the kind of warrior who could turn a formation into a spear. And the XVI, always at the front of the Great Crusade's advance, valued spears.
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As the Mechanicum forged new war-technology, Abaddon was gifted something made to accommodate more than function. A suit of custom Cataphractii Pattern Terminator Armour, crafted for his mighty stature.
He became a figure of heavy plate and unstoppable momentum, built like a fortress that walked. And as his legend grew, he ceased to be simply a captain. He became a model. The Legion shaped its elite around him.
Because within the Luna Wolves' 1st Company, there stood a brotherhood of Terminators known as the Justaerin, warriors clad in black, the killers sent where resistance needed to end quickly and completely. And Abaddon, towering among them, came to embody what they were meant to be. A weapon so refined it could define a doctrine.
The Great Crusade was still wearing its face of hope. World after world was brought to compliance. Human civilizations, lost, scattered, isolated by Warp storms, were rediscovered and drawn back into the Imperium's expanding reach.
At the front of it all stood Horus Lupercal. And at his side, again and again, stood Abaddon. They were first into battle. First into the breach. First to demand greatness from others.
Abaddon earned respect as both leader and fighter, waging war like the warrior-kings of old. And more than that, he earned a place close enough to Horus that it became part of his identity. Because serving Horus was not merely a command structure. It was devotion.
To witness a primarch in the flesh was to stand in the presence of something that felt like a demigod. And Abaddon was the first and most respected among those who stood close, a warrior who revered his primarch with a fierce, almost sacred loyalty.
Horus listened to counsel. He valued the voices of those who had bled beside him. Among the Luna Wolves, he trusted four officers above all. A council of warrior captains known as the Mournival.
At the beginnings of what would become the Heresy, it was formed of:
Ezekyle Abaddon
Tarik Torgaddon, Captain of the 2nd Company
Horus Aximand, "Little Horus," Captain of the 5th Company
Garviel Loken, Captain of the 10th Company
Loken's place among them was not born from politics. It was born from war.
After the battle for the world designated Sixty-Three Nineteen, Loken reached and slew an impostor "Emperor" who ruled the planet. Abaddon, watching it unfold, recommended Loken's elevation into the Mournival, replacing Hastur Sejanus, the 4th Company Captain who had been slain shortly before the battle.
That decision placed Abaddon in the role of more than executioner. It placed him as a builder of Horus' inner circle. The hand that shaped the Legion's future. As the Crusade pushed deeper across the stars, the XVI encountered more than armies.
They encountered threats that did not announce themselves with banners. Things that entered a Legion quietly, through belief, through pride, through hidden rituals. Abaddon was a member of the Legion's Warrior Lodge, a quiet order within the Luna Wolves, inspired by similar lodges found on the feral world of Davin.
In daylight, the Great Crusade looked like unity and purpose. But beneath it, lodges spread across Legions, secret gatherings, oaths, influence. Some men spoke of tradition. Some spoke of brotherhood.
And somewhere in the distance, far from Cthonia's tunnels and far from Terra's golden halls, something patient watched it all take root. Abaddon did not yet wear black. He did not yet carry the Talon. He did not yet speak of the Long War. But the shape of his fate was already forming around him.
A son of gang-kings turned into the foremost warrior of the XVI. The First Captain. The face of the Justaerin. The most loyal blade at Horus' right hand. And loyalty, in the age to come, would become the deadliest weapon of all.
Closing Words
Lore-lovers... this was only the beginning. In the next episode, we step onto Davin, into the moment where belief replaces doctrine, where desperation replaces reason, and where Horus' fate is opened like a wound.
So if you want Episode II, like, share, and subscribe, and join the Discord so we can build that cozy place where lore-lovers tear these stories apart together. Until next time... remember: the galaxy didn't fall all at once. It started with a son. And a father. And blood on Cthonia's stone.
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