Valentine's Day Special—Space Marine Legions: Loyalist Astartes and their Heretic Astartes Counterparts/Archenemies (At Least, What I've Managed to Theorize as Being as Such)

Blood Angels — Sons of Horus
The angelic Sanguinius' "Jesus" image to Horus Lupercal's demonic "Lucifer" image. Both were fearless, honourable legions who did what they did for the sake of humanity. Both were well beloved by everyone before the Heresy (FUCKING ANGRON LOVED THESE GUYS. And he liked Lorgar, too...), and their Primarchs were some of the greatest warriors and tacticians of their brothers, as well as most charismatic, and held dear with actual love by the Emperor - an emotion that he spared not much of an expense for his other tools children. Both had their doubts that clung to them throughout their lives, with Sanguinius fearing that the Emperor might casually dispose of his legion if he dubbed their "Red Thirst" genetic mutation to be too unstable, and Horus' suspicious beliefs in that the Emperor would casually discard him, his sons and his brothers once the fighting was all done. Sanguinius pulled through this doubt and rose high, but Horus fell to it, and he fell to it hard. During the Heresy, both men did things that shaped one into an image of humanity at its best, bravest, most beautiful and brightest, and the other of humanity at its worst, despondent, ugliest and darkest. Willingly following the path that he was told would end in his demise but the Imperium's survival, Sanguinius would indeed perish to Horus' Chaos-bloated might at the end of the Heresy, and Horus right after at the Emperor's own hands. After Sanguinius' death, a death so traumatic to the Blood Angels that it afflicted them with a genetic flaw in the form of the Black Rage, the Blood Angels would spend almost all of their culture centered around their beloved Primarch, his image, sacrifice and ideals (he even got his own holiday!), while the Sons of Horus/Black Legion would scrape away all endearment and association with Horus - the man they now perceive as a worthless failure. Sanguinius was always considered to be the greatest blend of the best attributes of the Emperor himself, while Horus was always Emps' favorite for more sentimental reasons, and a sign of the Big E's flaws.

Ultramarines — Word Bearers
Lorgar Aurelian looked the most like the Emperor physically, while Roboute Guilliman was perhaps the most staunchly devoted to the Emperor's ideals. Lorgar has a gilded tongue, a skill he used to bloodlessly convert entire worlds to the Imperium's cause by word alone in the years before the Horus Heresy, while Guilliman used his men to do so often militarily to defiant worlds and in some of the most effective manners, with the least amount of casualties possible on both sides. Roboute was a visionary without superstition, scarcely let his emotions get the better of him and was ever calm and cool in his personality and decision-making in spite of what was thrown at him (well, ninety-nine percent of the time, anyway). Lorgar was a man of fervent faith and humble aspirations who had the most human and down-to-earth soul of his brethren. Just as well, he wasn't simply an openly passionate man who strove to please and aid anyone who he could, but one whose emotions would swing around everywhere or else became dramatically overblown, culminating in a perceived sense of self-failure that would spur him down the deep end. They might have had these differences that defined them, but the discontent between Big Bobby G. and Lorgar started only when the Emperor ordered the Ultramarines to torch Khur as penance for Lorgar and his children failing to stop worshiping him as a god. This then turned into outright hatred at the Betrayal at Calth, where the Word Bearers enacted their bloody vengeance against their Ultramarine brothers. Both their Primarchs are great diplomats; Robot Gorillaman for his pragmatic and sensible, tolerant and controlled approaches, and Lorgar for his sheer charisma and goodhearted nature (before Erebus). Rowboat Girlyman was a strict follower of the Emperor's will and agreed with why he chose to ban religion, while Lorgar was a devout religious guy, even when Emps kept telling him to stop worshiping him. Repeatedly. Roboute "I punch traitors to death in near vacuum without a helmet for almost twelve hours" Guilliman had awesome, kickass adopted parents (his mother stood up to KONRAD FUCKING KURZE), while Lorgar's adopted dad, Kor Phaeron, kicked his ass a lot growing up, physically, verbally and mentally.

Imperial Fists — Iron Warriors
Rogal Dorn was a blunt, honest man who put his passion into whatever he worked on and would follow his orders no matter the task given by the Big E; he just happened to obtain or carry out the more glorious jobs and victories by virtue of luck and dependability. Ol' Perturabo was an equally hard worker who wanted to build things more than destroy; to impress his siblings, people and father with how much he always knew since the day he was born/as far back as he could remember (it doesn't help that he thought that this little skill jaded him and robbed him of a sense of wonder and awe in the world). When he was instead tasked with partaking in the Great Crusade, he tried to adapt his desires and strove for the more difficult assignments out of a yearning for glory and recognizing of his skills. For his efforts, no matter his sacrifices or successes (all achieved in a mathematical, mechanical, but no less effective and results-getting sort of manner), he always had his and his legion's names run through the dirt, blood and excrement of the ground more times than he could count, most often by the Fists in yellow. Naturally, this made one proud, superior and arrogantly certain of his own skills to a fault (as the Iron Cage incident shows good and well) and the other the living embodiment of being a resentful, bitter fuck of a man. The same differences apply to how each Primarch treated their men: the Imperial Fists were treated with a strict and disciplined, but no less genuine breed of love by Rogal, like a father and his sons, while the marines of the Iron Warriors were either always criticized and told to do better, or else treated like nothing more than simple tools by Pert from the get-go; you would never know if Pert was going to send your squad to act as the guys who would go in for the final victory push, or the meatshields and fodder for the front lines. Generally, this led to a lot of them became paranoid and cold, as well as the kinship between them becoming only skin-deep.

Space Wolves — Thousand Sons
The Space Wolves and Thousand Sons were supremely powerful fighters in their own ways: Space Wolves preferred to get close and dirty, while the Thousand Sons used the refined might of psykers and sorcery to get the job done from a distance. The Space Wolves were a raw fighting force who hated psykers with a raging passion, while unwittingly (or perhaps ignorantly) remaining unaware that their "Rune Priests" were psykers who channeled the warp and communed with warp entities. They were folk who were quick and vicious in denouncing and purging what they saw as vile and harmful mutation, while they themselves were of mutant heritage and were wracked by the furry wulfen curse. The Thousand Sons, on the other hand, embraced their psyker and mutant heritage and used their powers to become an enlightened, forward-thinking people, while also enduring a debilitating mutant curse much like the Wolves. However, while the Space Wolves were a bit too ignorant in their mindset, the Thousand Sons were a bit too curious in theirs; that curiosity led to Magnus and his Sons being played by Tzeentch LIKE A DAMN FIDDLE, and that ignorance led Leman Russ and his Wolves to unquestioningly burn Prospero at the orders of the treacherous Horus after he changed the Emperor's orders to simply arrest their Primarch to kill. Now one has turned traitor, the other is constantly being tormented by said traitors as vengeance for destroying their world, accomplishments, and aiding in their damnation, and both are fully, and truly, hateful arch-foes to one another.

Raven Guard — Night Lords
Birds and bats who specialize in jump infantry and striking from the shadows. Haters and deposers of despots, though one would eventually become one in the end. The Awesome Emo and the Edgelord Supreme. Corvus was simply able to persist past the despair and misery that kept coming at him like a series of freight trains from early to late in his life and still came out with his mind, compassion and valour intact (if exceptionally dented), while Konrad was broken and, in a somewhat literal sense, batshit insane from the very start (thanks in the most part to being carried to a near-lightless planet of self-serving psychopaths, having to raise himself in the gutters and sewers among the refuse and corpses, and his unstable psychic powers of foresight and whatnot that kept showing him graphic visions of the Heresy, his death, and what is now the grim darkness that is modern-day Warhammer 40k every time he so much as sneezed). One used stealthy hit and run tactics to quickly tear down the enemy command structure, the other used stealthy terror tactics to demoralize and crush them without mercy. Corvus Corax is a guy with quotes almost entirely based around Edgar Allen Poe's works vs. Konrad Curze being what would happen if you put Batman, the Punisher, Moon Knight, and that weird kid with the greasy black hair who always sits in the back of the class in a blender set to purée.

Iron Hands — Emperor's Children
Pre-Heresy, both legions were close in personality and relation to one another; save for the Iron Hands focusing more on functionality over beauty while the Emperor's Children preferred to look good as opposed to settling solely on practicality, they were both artisans of sorts who would revel in the pride given from their unique works, and were uniquely refined in their mindsets. Post-Heresy, one now feels that human emotion and flesh is pure weakness and thus strives to rid themselves of it through machinery and mechanical augmentation, while the other indulges their human senses of flesh and mind to sickening degrees. Both their Primarchs were the bestest of friends, 'til one removed the other's head because a MAGIC SWORD sword told him to (it seemed like a good idea at the time). Ferrus Manus is dead and now a spooky ghosty given form by the Emperor's will (I think, given that one appearance of a guy in the Webway resembling a hammer-wielding, silver-armed giant man), and Fulgrim is alive and a weird snake daemon living on a planet of pleasure, doing jack all.

Dark Angels — Alpha Legion
The first legion (I), and the last legion (XX). Both were, and still are, incredibly distant and secretive. One is loyalist but had half of their number turn traitor during the Heresy LOYALIST, AND ALWAYS WILL BE, while the other is traitorous but just might have a fair percentage in their ranks that are secretly closeted loyalists ++DATA EXPUNGED++

Salamanders — Death Guard
Both Legions are made up of tough, hardy men who can dish out the damage as much as they can take it in. Both their Primarchs grew up on hostile worlds, one beset by smoke and volcanic activity and the other filled to brimming with toxic gas and other assorted substances to the extreme. Vulkan is one of the most friendly, humble and humane chaps you'll ever meet among the Primarchs who would design weapons for the Imperium and discard/destroy the ones of needlessly cruel design or of devastating potential that humanity could not be trusted with, or didn't really need as of then (aside from flamers, but who could get rid of those?). On the other side, Morty was a distant, cold, aloof, and a bit hypocritical of a character who scarcely forgave a slight and drilled his men with a sort of (dis)passion; also, he wouldn't hesitate to virus-bomb your position with the most heinous chemical weapons imaginable, so long as his super-humanly tough troops could survived walking through it.

White Scars — World Eaters
The main thing that defines and separates these two legions is how their culture revolves around a primitive form of fighting and killing, if modernized through the wonders of future tech, and the ways they go about it. Jaghatai Khan and the White Scars' heritage comes from his world's ancestral traditions to form and participate in hunts for honour, glory and righteous vengeance, while the World Eaters (specifically Angron himself) emerged from a dirty, paltry, tight-knit band of slaves and gladiators whose only purpose in life was to fight and die for the amusement of the higher-ups; unlike the Scars, they just like killing, maiming, and burning things out of rage and for the sake of killing, maiming, and burning. The White Scars will swing their blades at a worthy challenge without hesitation and maybe with glee, but they are ever wise, noble and composed, if in a manner somewhat alien to their brother legions. Thanks to the Butcher's Nails embedded in their brains, the World Eaters will just get somehow more ripshit pissed and throw their fucking axe at you if you keep trying to get out of their way and will then go on to beat you to death with their bare goddamn hands, screaming profanity the whole way through. Also, they both like collecting skulls.

Comments

[Crystal Static]

How can you talk about heretic astartes without mentioning the Furry Marines?

They're Extra Heretical.