Towards the end of the Age of Strife, the Emperor crafted 20 magical clone babies that he called Primarchs. The forces of Chaos didn’t like the Emperor very much, so they kidnapped his magical clone babies and threw them randomly all over the galaxy, and the Emperor had all kinds of adventures finding them again. This thread is about the tenth magical clone baby the Emperor recovered – Sanguinius, Primarch of the 9th Legion.

Sanguinius landed on the post-apocalyptic world of Baal. The people there worshiped a pair of gods – a golden angel and an angel as dark as the void – so when Sanguinius landed on Baal, the folks there considered it a big deal.

For you see, young Sanguinius was a filthy mutant, someone who took the sacred form of humanity and by his sins, warped it into something grotesque and abominable, fit only for scorn and persecution. Ha, just kidding. The Imperials are just as much hypocrites as any other culture. Because Sang was hot and looked like a god, everyone loved him. He led the normies of Baal in destroying all the ugly mutants of a planet that already had less than 125,000 surviving people.

When The Emperor arrived on Baal, Sanguinius (who was a Psyker as well as a mutant) knew that the weird, giant Turkish man in golden power armor was his father, and asked him, “What would you do if I said no to your offer?” The Emperor dodged the question but promised not to involve any of “The Pure” (Sanguinius’ term for the normies of Baal) in the Emperor’s galactic-colonial shenanigans. Sanguinius didn’t press further.

Everyone loved Sanguinius when he was introduced to the rest of his brothers. He was sweet and pretty and didn’t force any of them to confront any of their unexamined prejudices. But because he was so beloved, it painted a big target on his back when Horus had his little Chaos Incident. During the Siege of Terra, Sanguinius confronted his brother Horus, trying to talk him down before their father showed up. Horus laughed in his face and killed him.

Because everyone loves a pretty boy, Imperial myth says that Sanguinius managed to strike a blow on his brother, creating a chink in his armor that allowed the Emperor to strike Horus down in the end. The Golden Angel of Baal has almost as many shrines and temples across the galaxy in his honor as his father does. In a bit of delicious ironing, all of Sanguinius’ space marines have a genetic abnormality that causes them to crave the blood of the living. Sanguinius hid this defect from the rest of his family, and never got around to mentioning it before he died, so there are thousands of superhuman vampires in state-of-the-art combat armor flitting around the galaxy, with no one the wiser.

Enjoy your Day Thread, Avocados.