Editing Abaddon (section)

==In Abbadon's Defense==
A more generous way of looking at it is that Abaddon is a strong leader, albeit one with flaws, and starting from a trickier point than Horus. In the Heresy, he was in charge of speartips (an elite assault force typically made of Terminators), and while he certainly advised Horus on larger scale wars, he typically left logistics to other members of the Mournival, and largely to Horus himself. Thus, while he is one of the best warriors of the Chaos Space Marines, and perhaps the most charismatic (we're given fluff about other Chaos Lords just going to see what he's like and end up spontaneously signing up to the Black Legion), he is [[Derp|not suited]] to the intricacies of [[Tzeentch|planning]] a large scale crusade. Horus himself failed to take over the Imperium, and he was said to be the greatest of the Primarchs; certainly the best warlord among them. He commanded the obedience of the Traitor Legions, whereas Abaddon must prove his authority by force <strike>of arms</strike> again and again. This is also backed by his own rules, he's a close combat monster but barely buffs his army (only his warlord trait really). At the same time, while the Imperium struggled to get their heads around the concept of Legions rebelling, allowing Horus to spring all sorts of nasty surprises on them, plus all the Chaotic tricks up his sleeve, in 40K they know Abaddon's overall goals and have taken a shit-ton of precautions against it.

And let's not forget that forces under Abaddon's command aren't the disciplined legions of old - with the exception of the Black Legion, his armies are full of batshit insane lunatics who would happily [[Death Guard|poison]], [[World Eaters|murder]], [[Sons of Malice|eat]], [[Thousand Sons|out-scheme]], and [[Emperor's Children|rape]] each other (In no particular order) at a slightest provocation and all believe that leadership belongs to whoever can take it from the guy currently in charge, and as so detailed strategic planning for these madmen have as much sense as a planning for an Ork WAAAGH! Think about it; do you have any idea how hard it would be to command several hundred thousand Marines -not to mention several million or even billion [[Lost and the Damned|renegades]] and [[Cultist-Chan|cultists]]- with their own agendas, dogmas, beliefs, and levels of discipline to work together in unison, let alone potentially trillions or more other mortal assets? Everyone in your army, especially those of rival gods, are gunning after each other's heads and probably even your own. Also, everyone seems to forget that with such a large army there is a practical bureaucracy to things, where superiors have a whole slew of underlings and those underlings might even have their own mobs of cackling maniacs to look after, and in the heat of battle shit gets hairy when a leader gets whacked. And there are the Chaos Gods themselves; [[Slaanesh|dicking]] over their rivals and their own forces at random times and giving their followers random "blessings", which may or may not be just [[Tzeentch|mutating horribly]], [[Khorne|the sudden urge to go nuts and collect skulls]], [[Nurgle|become a walking corpse]], [[Slaanesh|grow a dick and tits]], or becoming a Chaos Spa... a '''[[Chaos Spawn|Thing]].'''

It also seems that Abby is the only person in entire galaxy who figured how to properly use prophecies and future telling powers in military campaign planning. When your average Thousand Son sorcerer or Eldar Farseer searches through the waves of possible timelines, he usually seeks the answer to the question "How would I win?", while Abaddon orders his own diviners to ask "How would I lose?" and then use the intel they get to, well, avoid a crushing defeat. So far it seems to be paying off, seen as none of his Black Crusades inflicted any lasting damage on the Black Legion or the forces of Chaos as whole, while the Black Crusades run by other guys like [[Doombreed]] inflicted way more damage to the Imperium, but ended up taking as much or even more beating in return. To this end Abaddon puts much effort into collecting all sorts of [[Sorcerer|sorcerers]], mages, prophets, seers and diviners and actually runs the largest the most potent sorcerer cabal outside the [[Sortiarius|Planet of Sorcerers]] and uses it as his intelligence-gathering agency.

ADB has also noted that Abaddon is [[That Guy|not truly loyal]] to anyone other than himself, not even the Chaos Gods; if he ever does get to Terra and conquer the Imperium, he's likely to cut all ties with the Ruinous Powers and declare himself the new Emperor of Mankind. Naturally, the Chaos Gods don't want this to happen, so they make sure he's ''[[Just as Planned|just]]'' successful enough to accomplish most of his goals while ensuring that he's still reliant on Chaos to do so. After all, the last thing they want is their favourite champion deciding that he doesn't need to serve Chaos to get what he wants any longer. Given how Abaddon hates that Horus was willing to pay any price to get himself onto the Throne, it's highly likely that Abaddon won't make the same mistake and will just bide his time. It says something that he's avoided daemonhood or any powers that would tie him to any or all of the Chaos Gods. And that's the difference between him, Ahriman, Kharn, Erebus, and the others. Either they'd swear allegiance to one God or to Chaos Undivided for greater power, or they already did and therefore have different priorities.

What's more, Abaddon does actually respect his foes as shown in his duel with Sigismund. Sigismund managed to significantly wound Abaddon before Abaddon killed him. He kept the scar of the wound as a sign of respect to Sigismund and had his body safely returned to Terra. In the same vein, when [[Thalastian Jorus]] managed to pull a fast one on him on Mackan and severely wound him, he ordered his body and those of his Death Company to be [[awesome|left unspoiled, enthroned upon the remains of those Black Legionnaires they'd slaughtered]].

It's also worth pointing out that it's not like the other notable Chaos and Xeno leaders are much more successful than Abaddon, if it all. [[Angron]] is famous for two major wars with the Imperium, that he lost, and made no long term gains while losing the force he brought with him (and keep in mind that, until [[Guilliman|Bobby]] woke up, he was the ''only'' Daemon Primarch doing '''anything''' while the rest of his treacherous brothers sat on their hands). [[Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka]] lost the first war he launched against Armageddon, and abandoned the second one after getting bored. Despite all the threat Ghazghkull was supposed to pose, he hadn't actually won a war until he got to [[Octarius War|Octarius]] and even ''that'' victory was swiftly undone by the [[Tyranids]]. The list goes on, but due to the nature of the setting it's hard to find any enemy of the Imperium who has actually made long term strategic gains. In this context, Abaddon only looks like a failure because he was the only antagonistic force in 40k doing ''anything'' for over 21 years, or at least the one GW was shining the spotlight on so his screw-ups looked more pronounced.

So Abaddon is actually just [[Just as planned|playing the long game.]] Finally, he may even be aware of the fact that the Chaos Gods want to keep him dependent on them, so he could be trying to not actually win but spill enough blood to satiate them and continue this forever, guaranteeing his own existence in the face of the Warp.