If one were to rank the technological levels of the material universe, the Ancient Old Ones were undoubtedly the pinnacle. They mastered both the physical and the spiritual, possessed peerless talent, and more rarely, held a heart of compassion.
But now, the Old Ones are extinct, the Necrons sleep, the Aeldari brought a catastrophe upon themselves, and the Golden Age of Mankind was cut short by a mysterious rebellion. Everyone is currently clinging to life by a thread. Don't be fooled by the Emperor leading the Great Crusade as if he's invincible; once the Necrons fully awaken, the heavy iron fist of materialism will smash right into your face.
Thus, Perturabo's logic was simple: I just need to get the technology up to speed.
Since he currently lacked the capacity to manufacture warriors like the Astartes, he focused his concentration elsewhere—specifically, on weapons of mass destruction. Despite the shortage of promethium, nothing stopped him from constructing massive armaments.
Quake Cannons, Volcano Cannons, Lance arrays, Macro-cannon batteries...
Perturabo had already reverse-engineered these using the knowledge the Emperor had crammed into him during his creation. He had also developed and deployed heavy vehicles—Stormbirds, Thunderhawks, and massive main battle tanks—standardizing them across the Olympian military.
When he first fully processed the memories the Emperor forced upon him, Perturabo was actually quite lost. After crawling out of the gestation pod, he had grown to the size of a youth in less than three days. But how could a weak soul that had just transmigrated withstand the psychic weight of a demi-god?
The Primarch remained a Primarch, but his mind now held a set of memories that didn't belong to him and habits that were deeply rooted. Perturabo's instincts made him subconsciously resist these. However, being precocious from the start, his "staring match" with the Great Maelstrom had already left his mental state somewhat unstable.
He was, after all, still a child. Between the memory confusion and the psychic intrusion of the Warp, the fact that he could suppress those violent emotions was already an exceptional feat.
What truly allowed Perturabo to fully accept his memories and undergo a 180-degree internal transformation was a vivid lesson taught by a shepherd during his first year.
The man seemed honest. His sheep had been taken by a beast of Olympia. He appeared pitiable, truly; Perturabo could feel his heartbreaking despair and helplessness. He helped the shepherd, using his superhuman Primarch strength to slay the beast and return the sheep.
But at that moment, Perturabo became truly bewildered. The shepherd criticized him, asking why, if he had the power, he hadn't stepped in sooner. He demanded Perturabo hunt down more beasts—better yet, exterminate them all—so he wouldn't have to worry while grazing his flock.
The shepherd's face changed too quickly. That was the first time Perturabo's values were warped. Lacking a mentor or a reference point, he didn't know if his actions were right or wrong. His innate knowledge allowed him to easily see through people's weaknesses and thoughts, but this precocity also made him slow to understand the boundaries of emotion and ethics.
In that moment of confusion, the chaotic memories in his mind finally clicked into place. They were memories from a different time and space. Perturabo was stunned by the version of himself in those memories, and that frail soul began to merge with him unknowingly.
When the shepherd, standing on his moral high ground, tried to lecture Perturabo again—unaware of the power and wrongness of the benefactor before him—he became enraged when his words failed to land. A kind person often finds it troublesome to deal with a villain, as villains are experts at manipulating a simple, confused moral compass.
But Perturabo was different now. Having merged his soul and accepted his memories, he was no longer the scavenging youth. His body expanded again as he gripped the shepherd's neck. He watched the man's face turn red and purple from lack of oxygen, the expression shifting back to one of pitiable helplessness and terrified awe.
Perturabo disliked such people. Olympia had a problem; its people were flawed, and he wanted to change that. He crushed the shepherd's skull and climbed to the city-state of Lochos. Using the strength of a Primarch and a superhuman brain, it took him only three years to unify all of Olympia, crushing the skulls of many rulers along the way.
Conquest is easy for a Primarch; the difficulty lies in establishing a stable new order.
It wasn't actually that hard, but Perturabo wanted to build an "Ideal State"—a realm of logic and reason, filled with art and academic spirit, a "Utopia" that existed only in his mind. He wanted a nation that was prosperous, civilized, harmonious, equal, and just, where citizens were loyal and honest.
This was his ideal. It was originally even more noble, but Perturabo simply could not tolerate mistakes, nor could he tolerate anyone challenging his authority. That was his bottom line. His underlying code did not allow it. He liked to keep everything under his control; he loved efficiency and hated trial and error. Once a goal was set, he would implement the fastest solution he deemed correct.
In this process, no one could dictate to him. He disliked suggestions even if he knew his own idea might be flawed; he would never accept the advice of others. Only he could give orders; others were simply to listen and execute. Only when he spoke was it the time for ideas to be voiced.
This was not a good trait, but Perturabo found it difficult to overcome. Even after turning Olympia into a nation close to his ideal, he still hadn't changed this flaw, despite having suffered small losses because of it.
Still, being born with innate knowledge had its perks. The Great Maelstrom could no longer drive insane a Primarch who understood his essence and possessed a solid worldview. The sensitive, fragile, irritable, and suspicious Perturabo was a thing of the past. Now, like the Khan, he yearned for freedom and the sea of stars.
Even engineers and construction guys have dreams!
Perturabo now only wanted to do research and stabilize his ideal world. Being with Calliphone was enough. He didn't like war, whether in his current life or his previous one.
In his bones, Perturabo did not love fighting, nor did he care to prove himself to Terra every day. What he truly loved was solving problems—not the "Eureka" moments of romantic science, but the perfect engineering solutions that had clear goals and could be disassembled step-by-step into the smallest units.
To him, "slacking off" wasn't about lying flat and doing nothing; it was about being able to put his time and energy into the things he truly loved.
He loved design—designing a theoretically impregnable fortress, accounting for every firing blind spot, every millimeter of stress distribution, and the probability of every intrusion route, only to lock the blueprints in a cabinet. He didn't plan to actually build them, because building meant exposing flaws, inviting attacks, or dealing with bureaucrats questioning the budget. A perfect blueprint never has to face reality.
Sometimes, he enjoyed wasting time on meaningless things. He might spend days improving the leverage angle of a pair of pliers just to save 3% of effort. Not because it was useful, but because an "imperfect tool" was an insult to an engineer.
He would write new system firmware for his power armor to optimize startup speed, even if the 0.7 seconds saved would never be noticed—and even though he hadn't once worn that massive, exquisite, and deadly armor.
Then there was the pure mathematical and physical recreation—not the metaphysical "why does the universe exist" questions of theoretical physics, but the elegant, self-consistent things in applied mathematics: optimal ballistic algorithms, limit derivations in material mechanics, or the defensive performance functions of specific geometric shapes. He didn't need to publish or apply them; solving the mystery was the reward.
He loved this to death.
Of course, he had some eccentric hobbies. He had a strange patience for "broken" things. He would focus intently on repairing a decades-old machine tool, studying why the original designer used a counter-intuitive gear set in a specific spot. This wasn't nostalgia; it was deconstructing another engineer's problem-solving process. He would use different etching liquids to create a perfectly uniform matte texture on metal or cast geometric shapes whose edges formed a specific curve he had calculated.
He would use the finest craftsmanship to forge a ceremonial dagger that had no practical combat use but possessed perfect proportions, or cast a set of chess pieces from rare alloys that purely embodied mathematical symmetry.
He wouldn't admit he was making art. This hobby was destined to be secret and unacknowledged; a Primarch shouldn't be so "unprofessional." But Perturabo did it anyway. He purposely chose things others couldn't do to challenge himself. His chosen topics were specific, extremely niche, and seemingly unnecessary to outsiders, but he delighted in them.
He would research an alloy to reduce its density by 0.2% while maintaining strength. Not for mobility, but because "the extra counterweight was ugly." Or spend years iterating a coating formula, not for longevity, but because an "unsmooth peeling rate curve" kept him awake.
He would derive the closed-form solution for "maximum theoretical impact resistance with minimum material usage," realize reality couldn't achieve it, and lock the paper away. He designed a hinge that, after 100,000 cycles, had a wear amount that approached zero. No one needed it, but he couldn't stand "good enough" structures.
He might obsess over a pure math problem: given a projectile's mass and initial velocity, how to reduce the terminal trajectory's sensitivity to wind to the theoretical limit. This wasn't for better sniping; it was because "this integral form is asymmetrical" and it made his hands itch.
He would also write a scheduling algorithm to optimize fleet logistics efficiency by another 0.5%. Ferrus might use it, but he wouldn't, because he simply wanted to eliminate "redundancy" whenever he saw it. Or he would reconstruct a power armor OS, deleting tens of thousands of lines of redundant code just to make the startup chime smoother.
These studies he would never admit to, but he did them anyway. The common thread was that they didn't need to be used, recognized, or even known.
In truth, the current Perturabo was a lot like Ferrus Manus, but the difference was that Ferrus was a "closet" tech-geek who liked to show off despite his few words. Perturabo was different; he acted as if nothing had happened. These were things only he knew. Even Calliphone couldn't understand why he was so obsessed with these strange researches.
She knew he had a soft side; he liked to be praised and craved heartfelt admiration for his research and strength. She could see it.
But Perturabo was also like a child—or rather, he liked to "play devil's advocate." He liked being praised, but if someone actually did it, he would show nothing on the surface, even if he were cheering inside. He would only adopt an extremely serious attitude to demand better of himself and others. If someone else did something, he would belittle or mock it; but if everyone else stopped because it was too difficult, he was easily "lured" into taking the bait, striving to show off his absolute best to finish it.
Calliphone didn't understand this "awkward" personality, but she tolerated him as she always had, ever since she first saw him when her father adopted him.
For instance, right now, he was tinkering with an oversized, extra-long boltgun—his 56,789th piece of work. This was Perturabo's daily workshop: vast, spacious, filled with tools and works born of "whim" and "inspiration."
Even though Olympia's armory was full and the production lines produced so many weapons and vehicles that warehouses had to be built 6,000m underground to store them, this wasn't military duty. It wasn't a Primarch's responsibility, nor was it a "hobby" he could openly admit. He just had questions that couldn't be answered on a mass-production line.
Calliphone didn't understand technology, so she couldn't comprehend it. Why did the standard boltgun recoil spring design—used for three thousand years—have an asymmetrical peak output curve? Couldn't the makers see that the extra vibration at the seventh millisecond would wear the locking lugs? Or did they see it and just think it was "good enough"?
Why did every Forge World copy the same blueprint for power sword field emitters? Was that layout really optimal, or was it just a sketch a ten-thousand-year-old engineer drew that was copied without thought for forty centuries?
No one cared. The Emperor didn't care, Mars didn't care, and his brothers fought fine with mass-produced gear. But Perturabo cared. In his mind, these things could be more perfect, cheaper, more efficient, more durable, more lethal...
Yet, even during the Great Crusade, no one on Mars could perfect this tech, the Emperor didn't notice, and Ferrus ignored such "small matters." But Perturabo was determined to break the mold. He wanted to show them that this could be changed!
His definition of "usable" was different. Normal weapon designers pursued reliability, economy, and adaptability—making a gun perform at an 80/100 level in ten thousand harsh conditions. Perturabo didn't accept an 80. He didn't want "it works most of the time"; he wanted every movement to have a unique, inevitable, derived reason.
He succeeded. Every boltgun and power sword on his production line now worked better than the models used by the Imperium in his memory.
What he was doing now was just a small personal hobby. He liked guns; he had made between eight hundred and a thousand boltguns, each a masterpiece among masterpieces, possessing enough power to threaten even a Primarch.
Perturabo fitted the receiver and tested the locking mechanism, racking the bolt a few times. The sound was clean—metal on metal, the kind of "how it should be" clean. No extra vibration, no play; every clearance was between three to five micrometers, just enough for an oil film to form without any wobbling.
Hanging the satisfying boltgun on the "Boltgun Wall," he walked to another workbench. A boltgun was a tool, a remote, replaceable mechanical system. His optimizations were a pursuit of limits within an existing category.
But this time, it wasn't a tool. It was a Primarch's symbol, a declaration of melee, a product of pushing an engineer's precision toward a warrior's bloodthirst. Perturabo was never a pure warrior; he was colder than Ferrus and more somber than Dorn, pouring an amount of emotion into weapons that he was unskilled at handling and loath to admit.
Thus, forging melee weapons was different from boltguns. He didn't know what he wanted to create. War hammers, greatswords, halberds, greataxes, broadswords—he had forged them all. In this area, he was actually inferior to Ferrus and Fulgrim, let alone Vulkan. His talent didn't lie here.
But he did it anyway, out of pure interest. He liked starting from a blank, hammering it repeatedly to remove impurities, and finally forging the shape and etching the patterns.
He had researched a theoretical problem: if a specific frequency of alternating stress was applied to a single crystal, the lattice dislocations would begin directional movement, manifesting macroscopically as self-sharpening of the edge. Theoretically, a sword "played" at the right frequency would automatically repair micro-nicks with every swing, keeping the edge sharp at the lattice level forever.
No one had ever made a physical object. The calculation of the resonance frequency was extremely sensitive, and the requirements for material purity, crystal orientation, and even ambient temperature were pathological—an "ideal case" relegated to advanced material science textbook exercises.
In Perturabo's memory, there was no record of such a weapon. But he knew that during the Golden Age, humans might have made them; the Aeldari likely had them at their peak, and the Necrons certainly have them now.
Perturabo succeeded. He developed this weapon.
He wasn't sure if this was the "self-sharpening blade" of theory. He had no way to test it; testing required swinging the sword at an enemy, and he wasn't ready to give it to anyone, nor even ready to admit he had finished it. He only knew that late one night, when he finished the final edge-honing and wiped the blade clean, the edge reflected an incredibly thin, uniform line of light—so thin he almost thought it was an illusion.
That longsword was now hanging in the center of the "Greatsword Wall," unremarkable and dim in luster.
Now, he had chosen a piece of material, but he just left it on the workbench. He suddenly didn't want to forge weapons.
"What's wrong? Aren't you continuing?" Calliphone asked.
"No."
"What did you think of?"
Perturabo looked at her. Even with his size compressed to over two meters, she was still petite, and he had to look down to speak to her.
"I want to build models."
"This?" Calliphone took the metal model from her waist—it was a near 1:1 scale replica of her. Perturabo's manual and artistic skills were undeniable; the model was so lifelike she couldn't put it down.
"Yes."
"What do you want to make this time? Your armor or those little people?"
"You," Perturabo said, looking into his sister's bright eyes.
"But you've already made so many models of me. I almost don't have enough room. Every time I go out, I have to struggle with which one to bring with me."
"It's still too few." Perturabo shook his head.
In his collection room, there were many pieces, but there were three people whose true likeness he could never capture to his satisfaction. One was himself, one was his sister, and the last was the Emperor.
"It's quite a lot already." Calliphone held her model; she liked these "miniature figures" he made for her.
"It's not enough. When I can find better materials in the future, I will definitely build even better pieces for you."
"Alright, then."