Konrad Curze - Personality: There were two sides to Curze's personality: Konrad Curze, the great military strategist, ruthless and efficient and a righteous follower of the Emperor's will, and the Night Haunter, a bloody-handed, murderous vigilante, who fed on fear and dread, who savoured preying upon the weak.Curze's prescient visions were known to have granted him the terrible power to foresee the worst possible outcome to any given series of events. The mental strain of knowing such knowledge placed a terrible burden upon the primarch's shoulders, which grated upon his psyche, and over time caused his sanity to slowly deteriorate under the strain.In the novel "Blood Reaver," Ch. 14, pg. 79, it was also suggested that the Emperor's DNA, which was a part of every primarch's base genetic code, might not have proven entirely stable within Curze's genome, explaining why he was so mentally unstable by the time of his death, not to mention the corpse-like, monstrous appearance he had developed by the end of the Horus Heresy.In the anthology "Shadows of Treachery" in the short story "Prince of Crows," Ch. 6, pg. 167, it was confirmed that Konrad Curze hated his own Space Marine Legion. He mentioned to his First Captain Jago Sevatarion how he had spoken to Angron and Lorgar following the Isstvan III Atrocity, and was told of how they had purged their Legions, cleansing the untrustworthy Loyalist elements of the World Eaters and the Word Bearers.The sheer absurdity of this idea was laughable to the Night Haunter, for his brothers knew exactly when to stop the killing of the weak, the treacherous and the corrupt within their bloodlines. He had no idea where to begin culling the Night Lords' ranks. His sons were no longer cast in his image. Less than a solar decade after he had departed Nostramo that world had sent him nothing but filth to integrate into the VIIIth Legion as neophytes; the disgusting dregs of Humanity his own Apothecaries had infused with his genetic material and reforged into transhumans.The VIIIth Legion had become poisoned by their presence. The Legion was now composed of warriors who were murderers in the primarch's own image, yet devoid of his convictions and deep desire for justice. The Night Lords had become nothing more than killers and abusers, bleeding the weak for their own amusements because they enjoyed it as good sport. Fear became an end unto itself rather than the means to enforce a moral order, and its propagation was all the Night Lords desired as they fed upon it. The Night Haunter himself made this quite clear to Talos Valcoran:However, perhaps the most important aspect to understanding Curze's psyche was his upbringing in comparison to his brother primarchs. When the Emperor's sons were cast into the Warp and ended up in the distant reaches of the galaxy, from birth they were destined to grow into their own distinct personalities. While they owed loyalty and life to the same father, the primarchs could not have been more diverse in terms of intelligence, strategic acumen and beliefs, ranging from highly cultured individuals such as Fulgrim to the silent and stoic Vulkan.In only one other regard did many of the primarchs relate to one another; parental upbringing. Upon landing on foreign, Human-settled worlds the Emperor's creations were taken in by the local population, given food and shelter and made to grow strong. Even the volatile Angron found some parental input in the harsh slave masters he was forced to fight for on Nuceria. All primarchs found a mentor in the harsh worlds beyond Terra but one: Konrad Curze.From the second he landed on Nostramo, Curze was forced to fend for himself, relying on nothing but wits and savage brutality. Robbed of any Human feeling or affection by the endless darkness of his new homeworld, Konrad perfected his own twisted sense of justice, giving in to his bloodlust in the name of "peace." This solitude never escaped him and even after his rediscovery by his father, Curze was still an outcast and treated with suspicion by his brothers. He was viewed as distant even by his own gene-sons among the Night Lords.This constant loneliness was likely the defining cause of Curze's mental instability, constant depression and ultimate death as his inability to empathise and reach out to others made him easy prey for Horus' recruitment. His failure to express his inner demons only drove him further towards the edge and by the time he realised what a monster he had become, it was far too late.