Originally, Perturabo had not been especially interested in focusing on chess pieces, because he had no intention of building any real relationship with those brothers of his. At most, in the future, they would be little more than nodding acquaintances.
After all, he disliked politics, and he disliked competing with that pack of "giant babies" for the chance to perform in front of the Emperor—showing off, vying to see who could be Father's proudest son, staging some enormous melodrama of "I love Father, Father loves me."
Unfortunately, aside from Horus and Vulkan, how many of them were ever truly favored by the Emperor?
At the beginning, when the Primarchs were first being rediscovered, the Emperor had still had enough patience to spend time with them aboard the Imperial Dream, to show them a bit of care.
But the faster the Great Crusade advanced, the more of his humanity the Emperor seemed to lose. His focus gradually shifted toward the Webway, and even the days when he personally led campaigns became fewer and fewer.
By the middle of the Great Crusade, the Primarchs had begun to fully reveal their brilliance. The most eye-catching records belonged to Ferrus Manus and Guilliman, followed by the Lion and Horus.
Yet by then, apart from war councils and the occasional gathering, the Emperor hardly met with the Primarchs at all.
He only had a rough sense of how they were performing.
In his mind, Horus already occupied an irreplaceable role. The position of Warmaster had long since been decided.
So no matter how hard the other Primarchs tried, they would never truly earn the Emperor's attention.
They were merely useful tools.
Tools to be discarded once they had served their purpose.
And if those tools happened to develop thoughts they shouldn't have—then the day the Great Crusade ended and the Webway was completed would be the day of doom for the Primarchs and the Astartes alike, just as it had been for the Thunder Warriors after the Unification Wars.
Perturabo had no desire to involve himself in any of that.
But if the Emperor ever truly succeeded and then expected him to abandon everything he had achieved now—then that was simply impossible.
To be blunt:
Among the Primarchs as they currently were, none of them acknowledged their own Warp nature.
Which of them could really contend with him?
He wasn't going to fall to Chaos.
So what exactly could the Emperor do to him?
And if the Emperor insisted on forcing him into something—
Then fine. He'd rebel.
He'd shell Terra directly.
Perturabo felt not the slightest bit of affection for any world outside his own rule.
He had always possessed a deeply ingrained stereotype of the Warhammer universe. That inner distance, combined with the "base code" of his personality, left him completely uninterested in anything he did not personally control.
Save humanity?
That depended on which humans.
Who, exactly, was worth saving?
Was the Imperium worth saving?
Like hell it was.
If not for the Warp, the Emperor himself might well have destroyed the Imperium with his own hands.
A regime built on the ruthless exploitation of humanity in order to seize resources as quickly as possible—if the Emperor had truly had any other choice, if he had possessed the means to change it, he would never have created such a thing.
For someone who claimed to love humanity that much, what right did he even have to call himself the Emperor?
So it was better to remain quietly on Olympia, to avoid being dragged into the Imperium's vortex.
Perturabo disliked those vermin.
He disliked wrangling with those brothers of his even more.
The Emperor truly was no human being at all. Perturabo suspected that even if he never volunteered for those dreadful assignments, the Emperor would still exploit the Fourth Legion's high compatibility rate and dump endless burdens on him—turning him into a Great Crusade beast of burden—while Horus and the others went off to carve up the spoils of victory.
And afterward they would still try to manipulate him, feeding him lines like:
"It's all for humanity."
"Once the Great Crusade is over, things will be better."
"Humanity will remember your contribution."
But would humanity remember a damn thing?
Who among the common people would remember that?
What mattered to them was whether policy was stable, whether life was peaceful, whether they had enough to eat, whether they had enough to wear.
He'd do all the work, and they'd take the glory.
And afterward he was supposed to expect humanity to remember the Fourth Legion?
And if Horus still ended up rebelling, then he—the practical workhorse—would get manipulated from every direction, and likely be unwelcome on both sides.
So why should Perturabo go suffer through that?
What exactly was left in the Imperium worth saving?
If, on the other hand, Sanguinius had become Emperor, Malcador had served as Regent, Corax had become Inquisitor, Rogal Dorn had guarded Terra, Ferrus Manus had served as Warmaster, Guilliman had handled logistics and overall command, and Vulkan had overseen defense—
Now that would have been different.
A Warmaster should honestly go to war. What was all that talk of "balancing things" even supposed to mean?
If Guilliman and he himself just kept their heads down and focused on development, how could the Imperium possibly lose?
Chaos?
In Perturabo's view:
Khorne was weak and cowardly, nothing more than a paper tiger.
Nurgle was fat as a pig, greedy for life, a monkey dressed in a crown.
Slaanesh preened and flaunted itself, all decadence and shamelessness.
Tzeentch was deaf and blind, a dried skeleton in a grave.
Only an Imperium like that would be worthy of Perturabo's protection.
Only such an Imperium would, from the very beginning, exist for the sake of letting humanity live well.
Of course, even that was not absolute.
That was only the ideal scenario.
Chaos would never want the Imperium to prosper, and unforeseen disasters could arise at any time.
But those were matters for the future.
Perturabo didn't care.
Because he had the power to protect his own domain.
Even the Four Gods—
No.
Even the Emperor himself—
Would not be allowed to interfere in the affairs of his territory.
---
Deep in the Warp, an enormous black factory was in operation.
Countless Chaos Undivided daemons had been forcibly imprisoned on the assembly lines of this vast and unknowable factory by a colossal machine-being the size of a mountain.
Day and night without rest, they worked mechanically, repeating the same assembly-line tasks over and over. Let them slack even a little, and they would be rewarded with something like a "five-hit lightning combo." From time to time there could even be heard a few curt words:
"Go work."
The daemons knew what that meant.
It meant the Lord of Iron had dragged in yet another batch of new "prisoner-slaves."
Countless mechanical arms extended from the demon factory itself, sweeping through the Warp and capturing Chaos Undivided daemons wherever they could find them.
Even daemons bearing the Eight-Pointed Star were not safe. So long as they appeared before the Lord of Iron, he dared to seize them without hesitation.
He had even captured hundreds of Greater Daemons and thrown them into the factory to labor on the assembly lines.
The entire factory had twenty-two levels, though no one knew how tall or vast it truly was.
All anyone knew was that it contained endless machinery and equipment, towering daemon overseers and researchers, and that unimaginably huge giant machine.
It resembled a colossal computer, with countless mechanical arms extending from its body and linking into the entire demon factory.
It was not a Greater Daemon of this place.
The factory had once belonged to it.
But now the Lord of Iron had seized it—transforming what had once been a daemon workshop into a true demon factory.
Nor had that giant machine originally possessed such immense power or computational capacity.
The Lord of Iron had upgraded it.
The price was eternal servitude.
It would never rise again.
Even its independent thought had become muddled and dim, until all that remained was process and operation.
As for the Greater Daemons beneath him, they supervised with utmost diligence, and from time to time administered "Warp lightning punishments" to underperforming daemon slaves—like some grotesque imitation of a thunder-wielding law enforcer.
Then, in the next instant, the daemons all felt their bodies shudder for no clear reason, and the movements of their hands became noticeably more efficient.
Perturabo had arrived.
His figure appeared within the factory: a five-meter-tall body clad in white daily wear.
Against the pitch-black factory and the ferocious-looking daemons, he shone like a little sun.
Fear and reverence appeared on the daemons' faces.
Their work sped up immediately.
Endless daemon engines and warships were being forged here, as were endless streams of blasphemous vehicles, weapons, and equipment.
Perturabo walked straight to the side of that giant machine.
The giant machine—normally incapable of expression—rarely showed the faintest trace of fear. It did not outwardly display it, but every daemon present could feel it clearly.
"Vashtorr," Perturabo said, "you've done well. Your efficiency has improved considerably."
"It is only my duty, Lord of Iron."
Such a towering being, yet it was currying favor with someone it might once have regarded as a mere "insect."
Perturabo was pleased.
It proved that he had not been wrong not to erase Vashtorr's will entirely back then.
Praise like this never grew old.
After comprehending his own essence, Perturabo's strength had surged dramatically. In a short span of time, he had acquired enough power within the Warp to stand on truly formidable footing.
The Warp was vast, yes—but the glaring, brilliant five-colored lights that hung there had always remained visible.
And now, among those lights, a new one had appeared:
Gray.
Chaos was, in truth, very curious about this newly arrived "brother" or "sister," and even rather welcoming.
But they simply couldn't find him.
Because he dragged his entire factory around the Warp, crashing from place to place.
The Warp was too vast.
Even Chaos could not move as freely as it pleased when facing an opponent on the same level. And with the Warp storms still raging in the aftermath of Slaanesh's birth, it was even harder for them to determine the exact location of this newly risen Lord of Iron.
And even if they did locate him—
So what?
Even when their Greater Daemons were captured, all they could do was make new ones. They couldn't even properly go looking for revenge.
That was Perturabo's confidence.
He possessed enough power to stir up enormous upheaval in both the Warp and the material universe.
Even the Chaos Gods would have to pause and consider whether opposing him was worth the cost.
The demon factory could manufacture weapons and equipment without limit.
His malicious craft granted him unparalleled creative power—though only within the Warp.
The factory could infinitely replicate equipment.
Vashtorr could turn designs into physical objects in an instant.
In theory, Perturabo could build a legion capable of overwhelming the entire galaxy.
Even if the Necrons fully awakened, he was confident he could grind them down by sheer attrition.
But so what?
The Imperium's true threats were never limited to the Necrons.
Its dangers came from every direction.
Chaos was merely the largest of them.
The Tyranids and the Orks were equally enormous threats.
But Perturabo was not afraid of them.
Nor, truly, was the Emperor.
The reason such beings ran wild across the galaxy was simple: they were taking advantage of the fact that the Emperor did not dare to stand up anymore.
Perturabo, however, was not so constrained.
That, more than anything else, was the real reason Chaos and the xenos dared to squander themselves so freely across the galaxy.
The Imperium of the Great Crusade was no better.
Beautiful on the outside, rotten within.
Even without Chaos, the Imperium would one day fall into disorder all on its own.
Once the Webway project succeeded, the Emperor would cease to concern himself with humanity anyway.
So long as there was no external invasion and no Chaos corruption, humanity could tear itself apart until it no longer knew heaven from earth, and the Emperor still would not come forth.
Perturabo had no wish to concern himself with that either.
What he truly wished to govern were the territories he would one day conquer for himself.
He would not leave the Imperium.
But neither would he ever participate in the Imperium's wars.
He would provide his brothers with weapons, vehicles, and equipment—
But he would never allow his Legion to become entangled in their conflicts.
Of course he hoped to save humanity.
But only when the Imperium became worth saving would he be willing to do so.
Otherwise, he could simply pay a bit of tax depending on his mood.
And if any foolhardy mortals dared try to order him around—
Then he would make them understand exactly how the title Lord of Iron had been earned.
---
Yet just as Perturabo and Vashtorr were discussing improvements to the "factory," a burst of consciousness carrying fury and violence suddenly forced its way into communication.
Perturabo frowned slightly.
Some of the daemons of the Four Gods inside the demon factory had not yet been fully stripped of their gods' power. They could still locate the factory whenever they pleased. They might not be able to reach it, but opening a line of communication was no problem at all.
Perturabo had no desire to answer.
He had nothing worth saying to that berserk idiot.
Then the message came through anyway.
"Lord of Iron, I know you're listening. I'll give you 88 Bloodthirsters in exchange for ten batches of melee equipment. I want the best gear."
Khorne's voice, filled with bloodlust and rage, rang through the interior of the factory. Even through that stench of sulfur and gore in the sound itself, Perturabo could almost see Khorne seated upon his Brass Throne, feet resting upon endless piles of skulls.
Perturabo answered with a single word.
"Fuck off."
Khorne, who had been about to project more of his power into the connection, froze for a moment on his throne.
Then, from within his domain, there erupted the furious roar of the Blood God.
The Bloodthirsters and Bloodletters trembled in terror.
It seemed as though the Warp itself echoed with his howl.
From the Crystal Labyrinth came a burst of mocking laughter, accompanied by mutterings like "big idiot" and "all according to plan," leaving the Lords of Change somewhat confused.
From the Palace of Pleasure came another round of licentious laughter. Seeing an old rival humiliated had clearly lifted someone's mood.
Within the Garden, Grandfather still smiled kindly, while giant maggots and plagues dripped constantly from his mouth into the great cauldron of stew simmering below. The Great Unclean Ones and Nurglings drooled greedily at the sight.
But this particular brew was an offering Grandfather intended for the Goddess of Life, so this time they would not have the pleasure of tasting it.
---
Meanwhile, the Emperor—busy with the Webway—had his train of thought completely disrupted by Khorne's sudden bellowing.
"Did that idiot get humiliated again?"
That thought flashed through his mind.
At present, his strength was still not enough for him to know certain things occurring within the Warp.
He swiftly cast aside the distraction and immersed himself in the Webway once more.
This was the matter of paramount importance.
He had already decided that once the situation improved a bit more, he would gradually hand over authority, withdraw from the Great Crusade, and devote himself entirely to the Webway.
This, after all, was what a socially awkward researcher like him ought to be doing.
What was the point of all this endless killing and conquest?
The Emperor had already decided: once the royal road was complete, he would retire immediately.
After that, humanity could do whatever it liked.
He wouldn't be serving them anymore.
But for now, the Great Crusade still had to continue.
At present, only Horus and Alpharius had returned.
As for the rest of his sons, he still couldn't find a single one of them.
And they were, after all, the finest tools he had designed for the Great Crusade.
Originally, there had been no need for him to personally handle everything.
The Great Crusade could have been entrusted entirely to them—the Primarchs leading the Astartes Legions through the later stages of the Unification Wars and into the Crusade itself—while he devoted himself fully to the Webway in peace.
But things hadn't turned out that way.
All because of that madwoman Erda—and the damned Chaos!
Every time the Emperor thought of it, irritation flared within him. How had he not realized back then that Erda could be so… sentimentally foolish?
When they had played those "games" together on Terra in the past, she hadn't seemed this soft-hearted at all.
But what was done was done.
No matter how angry he felt, it was useless now.
So the Emperor had no choice but to personally take to the field for the Great Crusade.
Fortunately, Alpharius had practically fallen right at the gates of the Imperial Palace, and Horus had been recovered on Cthonia.
Now the First-Found Son remained at his side, learning from him.
The Emperor had never been a father.
He had no examples to follow, no manuals to guide him.
He did not know how to be a good father.
So he gave Horus everything he could—lavishing him with affection without restraint.
And that, in turn, made Horus… somewhat strange.
He hid it well.
No one noticed.
It was a secret that could never be revealed to the world—a darkness buried deep within his heart, something that absolutely must never be known.
Perturabo paid no attention to Khorne.
When the critical phase of the Webway project arrived in the future, and the Great Crusade was nearing its end, he would directly wage war against the Four Gods to buy the Emperor some time.
That alone would already be more than generous.
Whether the Webway ultimately succeeded or not would depend entirely on whether the Emperor truly had the capability.
Primarchs had been created to serve the Great Crusade and humanity.
That had been the Emperor's original intention.
But very few Primarchs truly understood that.
What they actually desired was their father's approval.
The ones who truly grasped this were Guilliman and Horus.
Unfortunately, Horus did not care.
And Guilliman was too idealistic.
Fulgrim's pride and obsession with perfection filled him with vanity and arrogance—though in the early Crusade, he had indeed been the Imperium's shining façade, a proud phoenix.
Sanguinius and Vulkan did not consciously realize these truths, but they were inherently kind, willing to sacrifice themselves for ordinary people.
Corax was different.
He genuinely wanted people to live better lives.
But his capabilities fell short.
He couldn't achieve that vision.
Guilliman, in many ways, represented what Corax wished he could be.
As for the rest—
One by one, without exception, they were indifferent to mortals.
Cold.
Dismissive.
At best, someone like the Khan might intervene occasionally—but no more than that.
For a greater cause, they would die without hesitation.
For the Emperor, they would give everything.
But for mere mortals?
They could abandon everything and wander the galaxy without a second thought.
And the more extreme among them—no one could predict what they might do.
Compared to them, Perturabo was somewhat better.
He was a dictator.
A capable dictator.
And not a cruel one.
So Olympia, under his rule, was doing quite well.
He liked it this way.
The Warp's demon factory was the same—completely under his sole control.
No one pointed fingers.
No one interfered.
And he could make whatever changes he deemed necessary.
He liked that sense of absolute authority.
Watching tasks he assigned being carried out in an orderly, highly efficient manner filled him with deep satisfaction—both mentally and physically.
There were occasional delays.
Occasional errors.
But those weren't serious issues.
After all, he was no longer the Perturabo from his memories.
At worst, he had only punished a few individuals by turning them into servitors or mining slaves.
As for daemons?
Daemons were perfect.
They didn't die.
Perturabo had prepared an enormous number of engines—things that were constantly in need of daemons.
The engines could be produced endlessly.
And so could daemons.
He could have as many as he wanted.
Where else had all those Greater Daemons under his command come from?
Simply by expending a bit of his own power to create or capture them.
If one wasn't useful, he replaced it.
If a lesser worker performed well, promoting it into a Greater Daemon was as simple as a thought.
He had established strict criteria for the daemons under his command:
Meet the standards—and ascension would be granted.
The feeling was… peculiar.
Perturabo didn't quite know how to describe it.
Holding absolute power over life and death.
Yet what he truly enjoyed was control and efficiency.
He disliked politics.
He disliked war.
He disliked senseless slaughter.
And yet—
Everything he needed to do required all three.
Still, it was better than letting them fall under the Imperium.
At least under his rule, people would not suffer as they did in the Imperium.
But if you expected him to rule like Guilliman?
That was out of the question.
There was no such thing as equality or freedom in his domain.
At first, some people—perhaps too well-fed, too comfortably clothed—had even developed a kind of nihilism.
They dared to demand equality and freedom from him.
They even dared to rebel.
If Perturabo tolerated such insolence, he would hardly deserve the title of Primarch—let alone Lord of Iron.
For these "unruly citizens," he did not execute them.
Instead, he turned them into mining servitors—
But left their frontal lobes intact.
Left their memories untouched.
Forced-command protocols ensured they would suffer eternally.
And death?
Death didn't save them.
Their souls had already been marked in the Warp.
The moment they died, they would report straight to the demon factory.
Back to work.
And when the torment became unbearable, they would be forcibly stuffed into daemon engines or specially modified hell-beasts.
Not a single ounce of their value would be wasted.
---
The daemon factory roared endlessly.
Oppression.
Exploitation.
But daemons did not tire.
Nor did they die.
Black smoke poured from countless pipes, contributing greatly to the "warming" of the Warp.
The already dark Warp grew even darker.
The "blood and tears" of endless daemons told a tale of suffering.
But no daemon cared.
Because they all avoided this place like the plague.
In a short time, the title Lord of Iron had spread throughout the Warp.
A ruthless slave master had no interest in speaking of benevolence with daemons.
The demon factory continued to move, capturing daemons everywhere.
Though already vast, capable of containing an unimaginable number of entities, this was merely its physical manifestation.
A domain was not so limited.
The realms of the Four Gods—the Emperor's domain as well—could contain all daemons in the Warp if necessary.
Because such domains were, in essence, infinitely vast.
Their visible form merely reflected the nature of their master.
Back when Perturabo had quietly ascended, Vashtorr, driven by his hunger for power, had approached to investigate.
The result?
He—and his entire workshop—had been swallowed whole.
The workshop became a factory.
And he himself became its greatest "pillar."
---
It was still early.
Perturabo was in no hurry.
Whether he returned to the Imperium or not made little difference to him.
These quiet, peaceful days—
He wished he could live them forever.
In the Warhammer universe, being able to enjoy even a few days of peace was already something to cherish in secret.
To do what he liked—
Wasn't that enough?
Why torment himself?
In the future, even wanting peace might become impossible.
Sometimes, when he felt particularly bored, he would even bring his hobbies into the Warp.
After all, he had both the power and the authority to back himself up.
What did he have to fear?
"If I can create weapons capable of destroying everything at any time… then what's the rush?"
And so, at times, he would simply stop.
He would imprison a portion of Vashtorr's consciousness inside a data cage, forcing it to repeatedly calculate:
How many threads should a perfect bolt have?
All just to enjoy that sense of absolute control.
He might also capture slave-daemons to construct perfectly sealed fortress bastions—then trap those daemons inside and fuse them into the structure itself.
He had already built many such fortresses.
Each time he wished, countless daemons would simply vanish—absorbed by the Lord of Iron.
And once absorbed, they were truly gone.
Just like that detestable "Cursed One."
They were all beings of the Warp—yet somehow that one could wear human skin and roam the material universe freely, striking mercilessly at his fellow Warp "kin" without the slightest restraint.
Even the Chaos Gods weren't that excessive!
To dissolve daemons outright—what kind of monstrous behavior was that?!
Damn it…
It was infuriating.
And deeply enviable.
Every daemon envied it.
Even the Chaos Gods envied it.
If even they felt that way, how could lesser beings not?
Who wouldn't want to walk freely in the material universe?
Every daemon in the Warp knew—
The Warp itself was sustained by the material universe.
---
Perturabo and the Emperor's actions were widely condemned.
But what could the daemons do?
Nothing.
All they could do was endure.
Retaliate?
That was a joke.
Perturabo greatly enjoyed watching daemons struggle, howl, and curse him.
That twisted, malevolent expression brought him immense satisfaction.
---
801.M30 — Warp Daemon Factory
Perturabo reclined in a chair, neural cables processing the data transmitted by Vashtorr.
He felt utterly at ease.
Life was this good.
As expected—
"Slacking off" was the true way to live.
While processing vast streams of data, Perturabo thought to himself:
Yes… this is the life.