Erebus

Meet the man more or less responsible for the crap place the Imperium became.

What a bastard.

Don't you want to punch his smug face?

Erebus is the most evil son of a bitch to ever grace the galaxy and was a Dark Apostle of the Word Bearers and one of Lorgar's trusted lieutenants. During a certain time, he became a devout servant of Chaos and co-conspired with Kor Phaeron in order to bring the downfall of the Imperium. Though, to Erebus' credit, whilst Kor Phaeron was able to corrupt his Primarch, it was he who was indirectly responsible for the Horus Heresy. For it was he who manipulated events so that the Interex were slaughtered instead of warning the Imperium against the dangers of Chaos, who stole the Anathame that led to the corruption of Horus, and he, along with Horus, masterminded the drop site massacre of Isstvan V. He continued to serve Horus as his spiritual advisor until his defeat in the hands of the Emperor.

Background

Despite being the main instigator of it, the Horus Heresy was hardly fun times for Erebus. After Lorgar's merry little crusade to turn Angron into a RAGE-fulled Daemon Primach, Kharn challenged Erebus to a duel after Erebus teamkilled Argel Tal MURDERED HIS LAST FRIEND. Erebus had the crap beaten out of him EVER LOVING SHIT BEATEN OUT OF HIM AS THE ENTIRE WORLD EATER LEGION LET OUT A COLLECTIVE "DAAAAAAAAAAAMN", but escaped death because he's a cowardly fuck.

After this misadventure, the slimy motherfucker tried to corrupt Sanguinius by setting a pack of demons on him. When this failed, he got pissy at Horus for throwing the whole plan into disarray. Horus took his reasonable complaints under consideration and, in an unparalleled act of restraint, skinned the devious arsehole's face off, cos he doesn't like being told what to do. Not that this matters however, because beauty is only skin deep and Erebus doesn't give a fuck about how he looks, so he just continued being an absolute badass.

Following this, Erebus decided that he had learnt nothing over the last few years and decided to dick over a Primarch less likely to rape him sideways - Vulkan. He achieved this by teamkilling a bunch of loyal followers executing a treacherous, incompetent bitch of an Apostle and making sure that John Grammaticus got away with a primarch killing weapon. Because doing exactly what Erebus wants you to do can only lead to good things. And he still has a bunch of plans going...

Erebus currently holds a position in Lorgar's Dark Council. He showed up in the 13th Black Crusade to sacrifice a million innocents to the gods of Chaos, and then, having apparently fulfilled his contract and knowing they were going to fail once more, took his warriors and got the hell out of there. He has shown notable distaste for Abaddon's status as Warmaster of Chaos, believing that a new Warmaster is needed. Which goes to show that just because you've spent ten thousand years chilling in the Eye of Terror doesn't mean that you forfeit common sense. Pity he can't do much about his own boss's capacity to lead. Which is diddly-damn fine by him, since he gets half a legion and no Primarch to cramp his style.

Also, even if you knew nothing about the Heresy, Chaos or the 40k setting generally and just got handed a copy of the first couple of books you'd still realize that Erebus is corrupting the living fuck out of everyone, via the venerable 'Rasputin Maneuver'. The fact that he spends all his time just chilling out with no-one else from his legion, constantly being complained about everyone loving him in the first books except the main character (poor Loken), pretty much proves that no-one else in the setting has even the vaguest ability to connect obviously connected facts. He's a slippery, creepy motherfucker and if anyone had an ounce of sense they'd have tossed him out of a fucking airlock the second they set eyes on him. He now spends his time playing games of just as planned with Kor Phaeron, usually by setting entire companies and fleets of Word Bearers against each other. For giggles, naturally.

At one point during the Horus Heresy, he made a (way too ambitious) attempt to assassinate The Emperor, by making use of a Blank merged with a demon. (Don't even ask.) Without Horus knowing, he sent the abomination to go and hunt for the Emperor's blood. The mission was of course doomed to fail, when he intercepted a strike force of Imperial Assassins, sent to kill Horus. They ended up killing each other, much to Erebus' frustation. Horus, in the end, found out and forbid the use of assasins as weapons to Erebus, considering them tools for cowards. We all know how well that ended up.

Because GW wants you to improve your culture, you should know that Erebus is the Latin name of the Greek god Erebos (meaning "darkness" in ancient Greek... seriously who the fuck would call a child this way?), who was the son of Chaos. And it quite suits him since he is a Chaos Space Marine, and the very first one to boot.

On the Tabletop

Erebus now has rules for your Word Bearers Space Marine Legion list. He has Zealot, Adamantium Will, Master of the Legion and Harbinger of Chaos which allows all Word Bearers to use Dark Channeling, which has your roll a D6 for every squad this is given to at the beginning of the game. On a 1-3 unit gains Zealot special rule, 4-5 gains +1 strength for the duration of the battle, and on a 6 the unit gains the Daemon special rule for the duration of the battle, but no longer counts as scoring (if it did before) and counts as being destroyed at the end of the game for the purposes of calculating victory points. He is also a Level 1 Psyker who can draw from Biomancy or Telepathy and counts as a Chapter Master, Diabolist, and Chaplain, freeing up your other HQ slots for whatever floats your boat.