Fabius Bile

Told you.

Dabulous Bile

"Unlike you, whelp, I once walked the same ground as your Idol. I breathed the same air as him. And I tell you this, without lie or artifice. He never wanted to become what you have made him! He did not wish to be your god-thing. He abhorred such ideals! The slavery of your crippled, blind Imperium would sicken him, if he had eyes to see it."

– Fabius Bile, telling it like it is to Rafen of the Blood Angels, Black Tide

"I was building another science, my science, wild science, robots and lasers and disembodied brains. A science that buzzed and glowed; it wanted to do things. It could get up and walk, fly, fight, sprout garish glowing creations in the remotest parts of the world, domes and towers and architectural fever dreams. And it was angry. It was mad science."

– Dr. Impossible - Soon I Will Be Invincible

Fabius Bile (Fabulous Bill, Mengele in SPESS, TF2 Medic, or simply "Bob") is the mad scientist to end all mad scientists (since to the Haemonculi science comes second to pain). He's got a lab coat made of human skin, a pimpin' staff, and thousands of certificates proclaiming him the Sickest Fuck in the universe. And by Sickest we mean both most Depraved and most Radical. Yes, he is an insane psychopathic psychopath.

But he is also absolutely fabulous.

He has the ability to hook up with a squad and pump them full of his pimp cane juice, making them get on board the Rape Train and head right for the front cabin. His pimp cane also causes Instant Death, though it counts as a regular weapon so anything with decent armor's likely to survive against him (very bad given that counting the CSM codex, six of the armies out right now are MEQ, with the Necrons also being close behind). Put him in with a squad of Berzerkers or Possessed who scored themselves power weapons and stuff them in a Land Raider. It's time to rev the Fun Bus the fuck up and have yourselves a party (Vengaboys soundtrack optional).

(That said, he's still a pretty sick fuck.)

He shows up in the expansion for inquisitor martyr (SPOILERS), where he sounds like he had throat-cancer (Which considering, in all likelihood, he probably does). Oh, and he got a new model for Psychic Awakening.

You know the absolute worst thing about him? He wants to evolve humanity so that humanity survives and overcomes the endless threats assailing it. Yes, this fucking sicko shit is on our side (or at least wants to keep his potential test subject population alive). It hurts my soul just to think about. Knowing this guy wants to help us survive and transcend human limits makes it very tempting to root for the Tyranids or something just to spite him. He wants to be responsible for saving humanity and he wants humanity to be perfected. Ironically like the Emperor wants.

The Great Crusade

Before joining the ill-fated Terran part of the Emperor's Children, Fabius grew up in a wealthy family on Terra, apparently happily. One of his family's retainers was a man who created intricate toys of chimerical monstrosities which delighted a young Fabius. He also taught baby Fabi how to alter white mice into performing tricks and theatrical routines, which always went wrong when they reverted to the bestial instincts and tore each other apart. Little Fabius got frustrated with this but the whole thing served as a preface to his later work. Never let it be said that creepy fuckery didn't start young.

After being inducted into the legion, Fabius swiftly rose through the ranks and became the Chief Apothecary. Before Fulgrim was rediscovered, the legion was afflicted by a degenerative gene-seed flaw known as the Blight - a progressive form of cancer that caused random tumors in both bones and organs. Fabius was tasked with finding a cure, lest the flaw wipe out the Emperor's Children to a man. He gradually became more morose as his work only led to failure (as well as prompting his future experimental streak). All the Terran marines of the Legion were susceptible to the disease and Fabius was forced to euthanize a lot of his friends and comrades, leading to him seeking solitude away from his battle-brothers. Matters were not helped by the last shipment of uncorrupted gene-seed randomly vanishing from the Luna gene-forges and the archived samples degenerating onsite - an incident Crusade command wrote off as a mystery for the ages but was either Trazyn or general warp dickery. We also now know that the Primaris Marines were created from uncorrupted Gene Seed of all the Legions, so it's possible Cawl got his sticky dendrites into the stores. Fabius, against all odds, rose to the challenge, albeit reluctantly.

It turns out that a cure was never actually found, and that reuniting with their primarch on Chemos only served to provide fresh material for "untainted" Space Marines. All those who suffered the flaw were put to death in an attempt to prevent any infection from reaching the healthy brethren... Except for Fabius himself who was in a position to falsify his medical records. His prognosis was that he only had about a year to live, but had developed a process of temporarily rejuvenating himself using elixirs distilled from enzymes and proteins drawn from dead Astartes, and quite possibly including those who never even suffered the flaw either.

The Legion as a whole had an obsession with perfection as a general concept but Fabius' first forays into bodily experimentation came when the Legion assaulted Laeran, a world of reptilian creatures who were gene-engineered to perfectly carry out a specific task. Bewitched by the idea, Fabius eventually began to perform clandestine experiments on trying to improve the gene-seed even before the Horus Heresy started. It didn't take long for Fulgrim to find out, but he gave Fabius his blessing as long as it didn't bring Imperial censure upon the Legion. Of course, once the Heresy was underway, prudence and discretion were thrown to the wind and Fabius' enhancements became in high demand amongst the Emperor's Children.

During the opening movements of the Istvaan Massacre (taking place before the actual murder-party itself) Fabius ended up saving the life of Nathaniel Garro, who would eventually go on to alert the Imperium to the Heresy. In retrospect that would probably make Fabius a dead man walking otherwise.

The Heresy

After turning full traitor, Fabulous Vile became the go-to guy for any kind of enhancement, to the extent that there were not many Emperor's Children in the legion who had not been under his knives in some form or other. He was part of the inner cabal of legion figureheads who attempted to exorcise Fulgrim and even found the time to fiddle around with mixing gene-seed together (something unheard of at the time), eventually leading to a certain fellow called Honsou. He toyed around with both the original anathame and the incomplete (and corrupted) Primarch genome data Omegon 'acquired' from the Raven Guard. It was during this time that he first started on his hobby of turning men, and women, and traitor Marines and loyalist Marines and basically anything that had the misfortune of coming into contact with him into horrifying inhuman monsters, something he refined considerably over the following millennia.

A minor but notable turning point for Fabius was seeing Fulgrim's ascension to Daemon Prince. Unlike most of the Emperor's Children, Fabius was privately disturbed by it, thus planting the seeds for his eventual distrust of all things Chaotic.

When Fulgrim was being mopey over the death of his once-BFF Ferrus Manus, it was Fabius that tried to clone the dead Primarch back to life so Fulgrim and him could be BFF again... Except even the clones of Ferrus refused to turn to Chaos and had to be killed by Fulgrim, to the latter's unending butthurt and rage. (He believed Fabius was producing flawed clones on purpose just to spite him, yet kept on ordering him to create more!). It was from this episode that he received his surname from a daemon ascended Fulgrim, who accused him of being "full of bile". Somehow, Chaos Gods know why, the name stuck.

At some point in the Heresy, Fabius did something unprecedented outside of the most twisted fan-fiction. He created a "daughter", from his own gene code, which he named Melusine. At the time, she was the pinnacle of his work on creating life but something in her making went horribly wrong and Fulgrim ordered her to be cast into the warp out of fear of what she might become. Let that sink in for a bit. Melusine then went on to wander the realm of Slaanesh, where she became demonic in the process. She would occasionally give vague warnings to Fabius in the future, holding some loyalty to her "father".

Post-Heresy

While the Emperor's Children became wholehearted devotees of Slaanesh, Fabius didn't turn into a hedonistic sense addict but rather rejected the Chaos Gods despite being aligned to the traitor cause, which he insisted on constantly arguing that there were no 'gods' even to the Chaos devoted. To Fabius, Chaos was but a tool; the means to an end. Still, at first, he stuck with his Legion. Because the Emperor's Children weren't much involved in the actual siege of Emperor's Palace itself, bar a disastrous wall attack which ended in Rogal Dorn beating the ever-living shit out of both Fulgrim and some of his finest warriors (for the most part they were too busy butchering and presumably raping civilians), they were in a strong position during the "Legion Wars" that raged in the Eye of Terror after the Heresy and could supply Fabius with what he needed.

Despite their relative strength, the legion itself was divided between following Fulgrim, Eidolon, and Lucius and soon earned the ire of all other Traitor Legions due to their nasty habit of raiding them for slaves. Nevertheless, the Emperor's Children had some successes, leading them to defeat the Sons of Horus and Fabius retrieving the Warmaster's body. Horus' body provided him with a wealth of information on top of what he'd gotten from Omegon and the body of Ferrus Manus, and he succeeded in creating a viable albeit diminished 'clone' of the Warmaster (Horus' soul being annihilated by Big.E prevented a complete resurrection). Emboldened, Fabius then attempted to create clones of all of the Primarchs and live up to his self-proclaimed title of 'Primogenitor'. He was well on his way to succeed, too, if it weren’t for those rotten kids but then Abaddon arrived to fuck his shit up. Horus' clone was killed by Abaddon and Fabius' labs utterly ruined even though he managed to escape.

After the Legion stronghold of Harmony was destroyed by the nascent Black Legion and Fulgrim went AWOL (either doing drugs with his patron God/dess and/or having fun on his personal planet), Fabius was one of the few authority figures left capable of keeping things together. Many looked to the mad scientist to take command of what was left of the Emperor's Children Legion. Fabius, at that point completely estranged from them, refused. Command would only be a burden keeping him from his research. Eventually, the rest of the Emperor's Children drove Fabius out of the Legion, but by that point his skill in cloning meant that he had plenty of opportunities to gain new subjects for experimentation while providing clones for the remaining Chaos Space Marines to make recruits from. Fabius Bile became a free agent, obeying none but himself and his hunger for knowledge; staying alive and free by offering his services as an Apothecary.

The Great Work

After ditching the Emperor's Children after the party planet got smashed, Fabius commenced his "Great Work", his self styled New Men, a new human species that would be able to survive whatever xenos or Chaos based threat the galaxy could throw at them. Yes, you read that correctly. He's loyal to humanity and is simply willing to do literally anything to save humanity (or maybe to get the credit for saving humanity). Makes you almost want humanity to lose and die rather than owe him anything, eh? He set up the Consortium, a loose group / warband of Apothecaries and hangers on who helped advance his work considerably. This kept him busy for a few centuries, during which he began the process of transferring his consciousness / soul into fresh bodies. At this point, Fabius could only transfer into one body at a time and had to be in immediate proximity to the fresh body. The blight gradually kept getting worse, leading Fabius to try and delay its onset as much as possible so he could finish his work. Nevertheless, he succeeded in creating the first draft of the New Men, which he called Gland-hounds; pack orientated superhumans who were capable of taking down Astartes. He seeded the new species across many worlds, along with labs and caches of spare bodies in case he needed one.

A former pupil of Fabius', Oleander Koh, attempted to bring Fabius back into Legion politics once again, by cutting a deal with the Harlequins and prompting an attack on the craftworld of Lugganath. It was from this that Fabius developed a fascination with Eldar technology, the Webway, soul transference, and wraithbone, eventually gaining some mastery over them. He was informally reinstated back into the Emperor's Children after being strong-armed into it receiving a cache of pure gene-seed from the Great Crusade from Eidolon. This led him to an interesting encounter with Trazyn the Infinite, who appeared to quite like the insufferable old coot.

After trading an uncorrupted clone of Fulgrim for the gene-seed stash, Fabius's interest was piqued by the Dark Eldar. An amusing 'anecdote' about Bile, that just shows how fabulous he is, is that (like his old pal Lucius), he went on a sabbatical to the Webway, and deliberately got himself captured by the Dark Eldar. Instead of pissing himself in fear at the thought of whatever awaited them like every other prisoner, he just frowned with annoyance at the setback and kept on experimenting. On his fellow prisoners. With whatever he had on hand. This unusual behaviour made another bunch of sick fucks raise an eyebrow in curiosity and they invited the 'mere mon-keigh' for a pleasant chat between academics. The Thirteen Scars noted that although Bile was but a novice at cutting and reshaping things painfully compared to the haemonculi, his knowledge of the Warp and other sciences allowed him to conclude a mutually beneficial pact with them. He concocted an elixir that allowed the haemonculi to craft and keep alive a mobile tower made of the flesh and bones of their still-living victims, giving them a base of operations that existed in constant agony and fed their shriveled souls. In exchange, they let Fabius go unharmed after giving him a few pointers for his own research (plus, in true Dark Eldar fashion, they realized they would cause much more suffering by letting Fabius go about his business). Yup. Bile managed to be enough of a sick fuck that even a bunch of the most twisted Dark Eldar nodded in appreciation.

However, despite being a friendly guest in Commoragh itself, the Thirteen Scars haemonculi quickly realised that Bile couldn't be allowed back into the Materium. Bile managed to escape by engineering a civil war between several aligned Kabals, leaving the Scars in a delicate position hoping that Bile wouldn't abuse (HA!) the knowledge he'd gained from them and praying that Vect didn't find out about their indulgent fuckup. Neither option was acceptable, and the Scars used the afflicted Kabals (and the knowledge of a captured Oleander Koh) to surgically strike at Fabius's hidden facilities and former colleagues. By this point, Bile was nearing the conclusion of his great work, and although he'd managed to partly stave off the blight from killing him, time was beginning to run out.

His attempts to fight back against the Scars failed hugely, and the Consortium largely broke apart and went off to do its own thing. Desperate to ensure his work would survive the coming storm, Fabius made a journey to the Pleasure Planet and made a deal with Fulgrim, finally allowing the Chaos Gods to influence his life, however grudgingly. He made his final stand with the last of his allies, giving his finalised New Men from across the galaxy time to evacuate to the Omega Redoubt, a section of the webway he'd discovered and fortified to continue the existence of his new race.

The Thirteen Scars attacked in force, even bringing the colossal Tower of Flesh headquarters that Fabius had helped them create. Before the final battle, he sent Abaddon one of his followers and a huge stash of uncorrupted gene-seed as a "sorry about the whole cloning your dad thing" present. Dawww.

Due to the double machinations of both Melusine and the Harlequins, Fabius ended up scoring a victory of sorts, although he subsequently appeared to die in the process, apparently for real. However, it turned out that his final innovation actually worked. Bile had managed to create a batch of resilient bodies with Wraithbone laced brains, that would be a mirror for his consciousness. In other words, he dramatically surpassed the Eldar's own Infinity Circuit. This removed the risk of the Blight, and allowed individual Fabius clones to operate at the same time, nominally orchestrated by the original (mentally) Fabius kept safe and hidden away. The individual Bile clones were largely left to their own devices and, combined with his Great Work being finished and the spiritual covenant made with Fulgrim and the Chaos Gods, started doing all the seriously hardcore space-Mengele shit that he would become famous for to the present day. What eventually happened to his New Men, his attempt to ensure human survival for the future, remains a mystery to this day. The best part for Fabius is that even if his clones end up turning independent, they still all have the same mind and goal, so it wouldn't matter.

On top of this, rebuilding his Consortium probably would be effortless for him. Especially since everyone involved with him knows refusing him would be a very bad idea. It is also highly unlikely that Fabius has decided his New Men are good enough. Or he's already set in motion a way for them to improve themselves. Perhaps they possess high intelligence and knowledge and are hopefully very well equipped, considering his loathing of stupidity and ignorance and that he intends for them to survive and spread under the Imperium's nose throughout the galaxy.

Present Day

Bile has kept himself busy since leaving the Emperor's Children behind. Most of his time is spent on the world of Urum, where he set up a loose organisation called the Consortium, a research facility / playground / artist's commune for other Chaos Apothecaries to practice their art in relative peace (and also partly addressing why there aren't many Apothecaries in the Traitor Legions any more). Despite having only very little time to live during the Heresy, he's survived through the millennia by cloning and jumping bodies on a regular basis, although the flaw in his gene-seed will keep on being replicated and get progressively worse. He estimates that he'll only live for another few centuries, which he'll spend finding a cure and finishing his great work.

A major part of his "great work" is to create and perfect a new human race - the imaginatively named "New Men" - who would be superior to the Astartes and reclaim the galaxy from both chaos and xenos. The closest attempt he's made thus far are known as Glandhounds - men AND women who are far stronger and more intelligent than regular humans, violently xenophobic towards anything that's not Fabius or another Glandhound, have very strong pack instincts and use them to bring down much larger prey, like Traitor Astartes Fabius doesn't like. Unlike other examples of master-race creators in fiction, he seems entirely unconcerned about being the ruler of the new race or even being around himself when it comes about. It doesn't sound like a bad idea in itself but it goes without saying that old humanity - or anyone else for that matter - is not permitted to coexist with his new race. It's partly why he allows Nurgulite apothecaries to join his Consortium, as their work on viruses and plagues would allow him to clear out old humanity before letting his New Men move in, all inoculated naturally.

It's hinted that he may have had something to do with the Obliterator virus (aka the turn-your-body-into-a-living-cannon virus) and there are rumors that he had a hand in screwing up the 21st Founding as well, although this hasn't been mentioned in canon past oblique references.

Bile isn't a fan of Chaos, mainly for its role in destroying what little cohesion the Emperor's Children had post-Heresy. He also sees its corrupting influence as running counter to his great work. He's also critical of the Emperor (beyond the usual traitor reasons) for stifling the growth of humanity as a psychic race. Fabius is oddly egalitarian for a mad scientist, complaining that the Emperor was foolish to only let gene-seed work on men. Amusingly, he draws comparisons between himself and the Emperor as both are creators of new races who often insist on worshiping them as gods. Another thing about him is that due to his attitude towards the Chaos Gods and his focus on science, he is the only known Chaos Space Marine that has kept faithful to the tenets of the Imperial Truth, even though he is no longer faithful to the Imperium or the Emperor. He believes that what men call "Chaos Gods" are truly just mindless cosmic forces that are ascribed personalities by those driven insane by the Warp, and that Daemons are entities that, although seeming to be intelligent, ultimately lack self-awareness. He will even argue to daemons themselves that the gods are not real.

The sheer irony that Fabius Bile of all people is trying to save humanity from Chaos and aliens and to push humanity forward into a new state of power that would ensure mankind's survival and dominance is just...holy shit. So, doesn't that make him secretly a good guy? Just in "the ends justify the means" taken up way past eleven. More like past nine thousand with some of the nauseating stuff he's done.

He has an odd place in the very loose and volatile hierarchy of the Traitor Legions, being both incredibly unpopular (he is wanted dead by the Dark Council of the Word Bearers and Fulgrim himself, isn't exactly on good terms with Abaddon after his Horus-cloning shenanigans and portions of almost every other Traitor Legion would appreciate voicing their viewpoint on his work ethics tactfully) and highly in demand for his skills (his knowledge of gene-seed has saved more than one Traitor Legion from going completely extinct on multiple occasions). In other words, he's the smug, insufferable old coot everyone hates, but the guy is just too damn useful and knowledgeable to be retired.

As with a lot of big characters from earlier editions, his portrayal in the fluff is pretty inconsistent, varying between cackling mad scientist, sadistic torturer for the giggles, stern extremist, goal-obsessed manipulator, and weirdly paternal visionary. One audio adaptation gives him a thetting lisp, which is bafflingly amusing when imagining a space marine, let alone one using sexual torture devices on a Primarch. Then again, he is jumping bodies a lot...

Since the introduction of the Primaris Marines he has become obsessed with getting his hands on them, so he can experiment and created his own "improved" versions of them as well as cloning Guilliman.

In recent fluff it is notable that he successfully cloned and raised Fulgrim, acquired a cache of pure Gene-seed and had a nice, constructive exchange with Trazyn the Infinite. It seemed good ole Trollzyn wanted a genuine Primarch for his collection, and that Fabius could still be a perfectly reasonable man willing to barter despite the whole 'mad scientist' thing. It probably helped that Necrons can't be experimented upon any longer, though...

As of Psychic Awakening, it seems Bile has earned the ire of the Death Guard by "borrowing" a sacred relic of theirs, getting chased around the Scourge Stars as a result. Abandoning his renegade allies to Nurgle's forces, Bile took off with his prize to the Cadian Gate with Typhus hot at his heels, his nefarious purposes a mystery for now.

At the Cadian Gate, Bile encounters the Shriven, a renegade chapter who were on the run from the Adeptus Custodes. Seeing this as an opportunity to get rid of his Death Guard problem (and for more experiments), he allies with them. He augments them to become stronger, but essentially turned them into drug addicts. Picking a few chosen Shriven, he alters them into something called a Terata (A fucked up mix of Khorne Berserkers and Flayed Ones). With these new experiments, he decides on picking fights with the Death Guard and Custodes and has a good time with it. Even managing to capture a single Custodes and several Sisters of Silence. All of it culminates in a three-way battle that even has the Officio Assassinorum involved. Bile escapes mid-battle, leaving everyone to deal with each other. Bile is on a tight schedule after all, and his work couldn't be delayed any further.

Attack of the Clones

Look at that Strut!!

Bile has a hard-on for cloning technology, and has a track record for making copies of himself and others. The latest fluff reveals that he is patterning and copying his mind over to fresh bodies and has done so hundreds of times over the years. The direct implication of this is that the original Bile probably died a long time ago and that there could even be more than one Bile going around the Galaxy. It also explains why he keeps cloning himself into his own Blight ravaged body - he would be more than capable of making a far better body but then he wouldn't be certain that the new body wouldn't affect his mind and go off and do something different, contrary to his great work.

His first attempt was actually to clone Ferrus Manus since Fulgrim was feeling a bit guilty and wanted a do-over on turning his brother to Chaos, though Fulgrim would keep murdering the clones because they wouldn't take the hint and change sides. Predictably, Fulgrim blamed Fabius for this, claiming a "perfect" clone would have been willing to join the Traitors.

He later stole Horus' corpse and cloned it repeatedly, an act that pushed Abaddon out of his emo loser phase into becoming the scourge of the Imperium. Really though, Abaddon was just annoyed that Fabius has like four arms. He got round to attempting to clone every other primarch as well, but all but two turned out to be a failure. Both successful one's were, to no ones great surprise, of Fulgrim and was genuinely an absolutely perfect and uncorrupted replica of the original. Lucius killed one whilst it was still an infant and Fabius himself found one he'd made centuries before on Harmony. He originally considered using that one and a batch of pre heresy uncorrupted gene-seed to make a new legion to protect his New Men whilst they colonised the galaxy but when he discovered that clone Fulgrim wanted to use them as lesser, expendable soldiers for galactic conquest he offered up the clone to Trazyn the Infinite's collection in disgust. Daddy issues aren't just an Abaddon only trait, it seems...

He's currently attempting to create a Clone of the EMPRAH. Using Sanguinius' blood. Let it never be said that Chaos is nothing if not ambitious. The Blood Angels managed to kill him and get the blood back, but he had already begun developing the clone at that point. And as it turns out, they didn't kill him due to the numerous clones of himself he has secreted throughout the galaxy. Mind you, it's not just a way for him to fuck with his enemies; he still hasn't figured out how to cure the Blight and needs to shunt his mind from one clone body to another to keep it from killing him. Also, keep in mind that if he does succeed in cloning the Emperor a new body (because we all know Big.E. would hijack that for himself), it probably would end absolutely horribly for Chaos. Especially considering how things went with the Ferrus Manus clones. (Although this might be entirely intentional on Bile's part, given his hatred of Chaos.)

After his "death" on Belial VII, he was able to keep at least a dozen clones going at the same time, allowing each one to largely do their own thing. The central consciousness is kept safe in a wraithbone vault on a hidden world.

However, this is also complicated by the fact the real Fabius was involved in War of the Spider where he played a 4D chess game against the Death Guard, The Talons of the Emperor, The Offico Assassinorum, and his own forces. He captured some sisters of silence and a single Custode for funny experiments.

One of his clones appears in Inquisitor - Prophecy, the Expansion DLC of Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr. It is revealed that he played a part in the creation of the "Alpha Pariah" (an artificially created Pariah with the ability to permanently destroy Daemons). He appears in an early mission with the intent of taking back the Alpha Pariah for his nefarious purposes. He is briefly fought before fleeing. He serves as the final boss of the DLC, where he briefly transforms into a Cha....Unnameable beast before he is at last slain. Notably, his hated reputation amongst the Traitor Astartes is shown, as the Plague Marines he hired to defend him intend to kill him the first chance they get.

Crunch

His assistant prefers to be called Eye-Gore

On one hand, Bile has good stats and wargear: Feel No Pain through his Chirurgeon, Strength 5, a weapon that causes instant death (Rod of Torment), five attacks, and a particularly nasty poisoned weapon in the Xyclos Needler. On the other hand, his Rod of Torment does not ignore armor saves (unlike, say, the MURDER SWORD), his Xyclos Needler has really bad AP and sub-par range, and perhaps most damning of all, no Invulnerable save, unlike literally every other Chaos Character in the codex. So... Sucks, Right? Not quite. The reason Fabius Bile is taken, ironically, isn't for Bile himself; it's for his Enhanced Warriors trait, which gives a unit of Chaos Space Marines +1 Strength and Fearless. An enhanced Khornate CSM unit (Mark + Icon) rolls out 4 S6 attacks per Marine on the charge while being scoring and Fearless. While he isn't stellar in a normal CSM army (he's not a fighter nor does he enhance more than one unit of CSM), he really shines as an allied HQ — if you want a reasonably cheap CC threat for your pansy blueberries, take him and a 10-strong unit of Khornate CSM with meltaguns that can threaten massed infantry with the number of attacks, massed tanks with meltaguns/carnage combo and monstrous creatures with that Instant Death stick. Know that a Disordered Charge (aka multi-charge) denies you your Rage, so plan accordingly.

Note that he can enhance one CSM unit in your entire ARMY, so take him in an Auxiliary Detachment for your Traitor Legion, and buff one of their Legion CSM units. 20 Infiltrating S5 Fearless Alpha Legion CSM anyone?

8th Edition

The news of improved Astartes was just the news he needed to pop back up. He has a 3-shot needle pistol that always wounds things that aren't vehicles on a 2+, as well as his Rod of Torment which is now S:+1 AP-1 D3 damage (except when attacking vehicles, which it only does 1 damage to.) Though he still lacks any kind of invuln, he now automatically regenerates d3 wounds at the start of each turn, giving him a bit of staying power. And as always, he can enhance a single infantry unit; roll a die and on a 1 one model dies. The survivors either gain +1 to Strength, Toughness, or Attacks. Keen-eyed Chaos Lords will note that this can no longer be exclusively done to Chaos Marines. Yes, you can enhance a 20-man Berzerker or Possessed squad. Have fun!

He got a brand-new model to celebrate the release of Psychic Awakening: War of the Spider, a tale where he decides to walk to the blasted wreckage of Cadia, pursued by the Death Guard for stealing one of their sacred artifacts. Though most of his rules are the same, he does now include a secondary model for a special hunchback assistant. When he rolls to augment his unit, the assistant can help influence the roll by +/- 1. This means you can always guarantee a +1 toughness to INFANTRY.

In addition to all of this, Psychic Awakening brought us a new chaos space marine sub-faction. This sub-faction was first known as Agents of Bile, but is actually called the Creations of Bile. In order to play this detachment, you must have Fabius as your Warlord. Taking Creations of Bile gives several massive perks. For one, all your army gets +1 to movement and STRENGTH. This means you can have 20 man Strength 6 Berzerkers, S5 Possessed and S5 Chaos Marines. This also includes Terminators, Bikes, and the Elite Infantry choices for Chaos Space Marines like Plague Marines, Rubric Marines, Noise Marines, and Khornate Berzekers. This also means that Fabius Bile's faction has made Plague Marines and Noise Marines better than playing them with their God-Align Traitor Legions. Combine with decenet relics and stupidly powerful stratagems, in the end it was one of the strongest armies at the end of 8th edition. Their is a plan to keep them around so we will see how they are in 9th edition.