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Pre-Heresy : The Threat in the Dark

In the glorious days of the thirty-first millenium, the Imperium's Great Crusade conquered the stars. The great Legione Astartes, led by the very sons of the Emperor, brought the wrath of the Lord of Mankind upon its foes. Behind them came the might of the Imperial Guard in its seemingly endless numbers, the power of the Titans of Mars in all of their god-like majesty, and the silent blades of the Assassin Temples, cloaked in shadows to purge all who would oppose the rise of the new age. The countless worlds claimed by Mankind during the Scattering were brought back under the rule of Terra, either embracing their lost heritage or forced into compliance. The Old Night was over, and the light of the Astronomican reached across the galaxy, bringing with it the promise of a better future.

At Ullanor, the Emperor announced that He would retire from command of the Great Crusade and return to Terra to work on a secret project that would change the face of the galaxy forever. He named his favourite and most acclaimed son, Horus Lupercal, Primarch of the Luna Wolves, Warmaster of the Imperium, to command the Great Crusade in his name. To mark the honor that was made to him, the Legion Horus commanded was renamed, stopping to be the Luna Wolves to become known as the Sons of Horus.

Another of His sons, Magnus, was to come with Him on Terra with the elite of his Legion to help Him in His project, the rest of the Thousand Sons placed under the command of Horus to help him in his tremendous task.

Centuries later, historians would look back at the events of that fateful day, and hindsight would show them that the signs were already here : the first cracks in the dream of Humanity had already started to appear. Jealousy spread amidst the Primarchs. While several of them supported Horus' right to the title of Warmaster, others, such as the Lion, Dorn and Guilliman, felt that they would have been a better choice.

After Ullanor, the Great Crusade resumed, with the newly appointed Warmaster ready to prove to the rest of the Imperium that he was worth such a title. For a time, the Great Crusade continued unabated, then whispers of disquiet came. Several of the Primarchs had never hidden their distrust of all things of the Warp, and rejected the use of psychic powers amidst their Legions. They called for sanction against the Thousand Sons, calling their power sorcery and fearing that they would re-ignite the cataclysmic events that had led to the Age of Strife.

On Nikea, the Emperor made his final judgment, declaring that psykers were to be trained and controlled in tightly regulated Librarius, such as had already been established in some Legions. Magnus, who had mysteriously stayed silent during the debate despite the obvious stake he and his sons had in the result, tried to appease his brothers who disagreed with the judgment, only to be nearly struck down by Leman Russ. The Great Wolf believed that the Thousand Sons' research into the aetheric was dangerous, no matter how much more restrained it had become since they had come under Horus Lupercal's command. He warned the rest of the Primarchs that this was a terrible mistake, and left with his Legion, returning to the frontlines of the Great Crusade.

The rest of the Primarchs did the same, though the Emperor profited of the gathering to demand Perturabo come back with Him and Magnus on Terra. The Lord of Mankind wanted the Iron Warriors to fortify the Imperial Palace and act as the defenders of Terra, as they had proved their talent at such duties during the rest of the Great Crusade. Perturabo was elated to see his Legion's abilities at least given the recognition they deserved, and to be given a chance to be reunited with his brother on Terra. The two Primarchs had been close since their first days on the Throneworld, when they had just been found by their father, and this opportunity to renew their bonds was greatly appreciated. That decision, to make Perturabo the Emperor's Praetorian, didn't go without causing anger either, with Rogal Dorn's own bitterness being first amongst the reactions.

Other events occurred in the two centuries that followed, with the tension between the Legions growing. On Kharataan, the Night Lords fought besides the Salamanders, only for the guardians of law to be horrified by the ruthless actions of the sons of Nocturne. A similar event occurred in the Cheraut System, when, fighting alongside the Imperial Fists and the Emperor's Children, Konrad Curze almost killed Rogal Dorn after the violent Primarch of the VIIth Legion butchered thousand of civilians. Only Fulgrim's intervention prevented the Night Haunter from killing his brother there and then. Those were signs that corruption was beginning to spread across the Legions, as the Savior of Nostramo, the staunchest defender of humanity, began to challenge his most ruthless brothers' methods. But the true horror still waited in the future.

In his own pursuit of the Great Crusade, the Warmaster came in contact with a human civilisation that had endured the Old Night : the Interex. Its rulers had taken several alien races under their dominion, and while this was not conform to the Emperor's decree that all xenos were enemies of Man, Horus tried to bring the Interex within the Imperium pacifically. However, during the negotiations, the Warmaster was attacked with a blade stolen in one of the meeting planet's museums. The kinebrach weapon brought Horus down with a poison of terrible potency, one that the Apothecaries of both the Sons of Horus and the Thousand Sons were unable to cure.

While their father was dying, the Sons of Horus, enraged, nearly turned against the Interex, ready to rend the entire world asunder. The invasion force was prepared, and ready to strike at the other humans. A terrible tragedy had already taken place, and it seemed more was to come.

Only the conjoint intervention of Garviel Loken, captain of the XVIth Legion, and Ahzek Ahriman, commander of the Thousand Sons under Horus' command, calmed the fury of Ezekyle Abaddon and the rest of the Legion. The culprit had, after all, killed many of the Interex' own warriors in his break, and escaped aboard a stolen ship of the Imperium. The members of the Interex claimed that the responsible must have been tainted by Kaos, as only one such madman would see the point in slaying the mighty and honorable Warmaster.

"'Kaos' ?" asked Garviel. "What are you talking about ?"

The soldier looked back at the Space Marine, incredulity filling his eyes.

"You mean that you don't know about it ?!"

"I know what 'chaos' is, but I do not think we are referring to the same thing. How could the concept of disorder cause harm to a Primarch ?"

"It isn't a concept ! It is the Primordial Annihilator, the scourge of all beings living in the galaxy ! It is the dark shadow of all things, projected in the Empyrean ! It is madness personified ! How could you travel through the Warp and not know of it ?!"

The words brought back some of the foulest of Garviel's memories. Could this be about the powers that had driven Jubal mad back on Sixty-Three-Nineteenth ?

"You must tell me more about this 'Kaos','" he ordered. "But first, let's find Ahzek. I think we will need his advice on this."

The existence of Chaos as the Interex knew it set a new light upon various events that the Legions had encountered in the past. It also helped the Thousand Sons identify what was happening to Horus. With this new insight, they were able to purge the Warmaster of what, fault of a better way to describe it, the Mournival came to call a 'daemonic possession'. They sent their souls into the Warp, and there found the Warmaster's own psychic self beset on all front, attacked by creatures of the Empyrean that wanted to destroy him. He had fought them for weeks, but was weakening, and his body was reflecting his soul's weariness. They saved him, and the Primarch rose from his deathbed filled with righteous anger. The daemons had taunted him while they fought, with half-whispered lies about how soon, everything he had fought for would be destroyed. Reporting the negotiations with the Interex to a later time, he took all his forces with him and set course for Terra, to converse with his father on the terrible things that had been revealed to him.

After months of tumultuous journey, the fleet of the Sons of Horus emerged from the Warp near Terra. Communications had been cut off during the transit, with only screams piercing the veil of the Warp. Horus had thought that his survival had thrown the plans of his newly discovered enemies in disarray, that whatever they had planned obviously hadn't accounted for the possibility of his , once they returned in real-space, the Sons of Horus received messages from the panicked Imperium that told them dire news indeed.

The First Treachery

News had reached the Imperium that Roboute Guilliman had turned his back on the Imperium. He claimed that the Emperor had abandoned Humanity and given up the empire conquered for Him by the blood of His warriors to the hands of base politicians and bureaucrats, and declared the whole of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar were no longer part of the Imperium. He had also vowed to throw down his father to punish Him for His so-called 'betrayal'. Worse, three of his brothers had sided with him. Sanguinius, Ferrus Mannus and Rogal Dorn had been part of this treachery, and, alongside with Roboute, had purged their own Legions of those who would have remained true to their oaths on the killing grounds of Isstvan. If not for a single ship that had escaped the slaughter, the Imperium might not have known of the rebellion before the traitors' next strike. As it was, the Imperium still had a chance to strike back, to destroy that rebellion and bring the Traitor Legions to heel before the poison of Guilliman's treachery could spread.

"Roboute … Wise Roboute … Roboute with his scratching quills and his plans and his hope ! Too understanding … Too strong … Too damn perfect … I wish I had seen it before it was too late !"

Warmaster Horus

Horus met his father within the newly fortified walls of the Imperial Palace, and they agreed that this bore the mark of Chaos, though the Primarch of the Sons of Horus still felt bitter about the Emperor hiding such a threat from him. Magnus, who had himself been taught the true scope of the Warp's danger upon returning to Terra, explained to him the reason behind their father's decision : He had feared that knowledge of the Ruinous Powers would only have helped spread their influence, and the events had proved He had been right, if not thorough enough.

The Dark Gods had waited long to strike against the Emperor, and had done so by turning His greatest generals into His mightiest foes. Rumors and heretical writings pretend that Horus was once the target of their dark plots, but that the presence of the Thousand Sons at his side forced them to reconsider. Seeking a new champion in the material realm, their choice settled on Roboute Guilliman. The Primarch of the Ultramarines commanded the most numerous Legion, and ruled over hundreds of world already. They fanned the embers of his anger at not having been chosen as Warmaster and twisted his vision of the Imperium's influence on the kingdom he had built. They manipulated the populations of the worlds he was conquering, forcing him into bloody campaigns of extermination that made his faith in his father's Imperial Truth weaken. Trying to exorcise his doubts, Roboute had led his Legion ever further into the galaxy, trying to find something, anything that would prove his father right. None amongst the Imperium know what happened, but when he returned, he was already the chosen agent of Chaos Undivided, champion of the Primordial Annihilator in its war against the Emperor of Mankind.

Horus was too far from Isstvan to react in time to stop whatever Guilliman and his cohorts had planned next, but the Imperium had other warriors under its command. Using both his authority as Warmaster and that of Malcador the Sigillite, Regent of Terra, Lupercal sent a message to the remaining loyalist Legions, ordering them to sail toward the Isstvan system, destroy the Traitor Legions and bring retribution to the faithless sons of the Emperor that led them. To two of his brothers, Lorgar Aurelian and Angron, he gave specific orders : they were to travel with their fleets to Ultramar, where the bulk of the XIIIth Legion remained, and bring retribution upon the traitor's kingdom. The cold, martial mind of Angron was judged to be the perfect balance for Lorgar's own overzealous tendencies, while Lorgar's fierce passion for the Imperial Truth would ensure that his brother remained steadfast in the front of Chaos. Together, they were to purge the Five Hundred Worlds of Guilliman's influence.

Just as the messages were sent, a new fleet appeared near Terra. It carried the traumatized survivors of Prospero, the homeworld of the Thousand Sons. The planet had been attacked by the Space Wolves, led by their terrifying Primarch Leman Russ. Put under the observation of five Custodes after his violent departure from Nikea, the Wolf King had thrown down his allegiance to the Imperium and slain his observers before sailing for Prospero. The sons of Fenris had claimed that the planet was a den of black sorcery that needed to be put to the torch, and that the Emperor was a fool to allow it to continue existing. With only a few Legionaries remaining on garrison and the mortal troops the Thousand Sons used as auxiliaries, the Prosperians had fought a desperate battle against the full might of an entire Legion to evacuate as many civilians and priceless tomes of ancient lore as possible. It is said that when he heard the news, Magnus cried a single tear of blood. Regardless of the truth of the matter, it is certain that Horus began to fear that the situation was direr than he had first thought at that moment, though the true scope of it remained to be discovered.

Perturabo, who had been absent when Horus had arrived, returned to Terra at that time. He had left the Throneworld with a cadre of his best warriors to deal with an invasion of Olympia, the homeworld he had crafted into a wonder of peace and harmony such as had too rarely existed in the galaxy long history. After having crushed the xeno invasion, he had discovered signs that the Thirteenth Legion had somehow been involved in the attack. At first, the Lord of Iron had dismissed such claims, seeing them as attempts from the xenos to seed dissension in the Imperium. Once he arrived on Terra and learned of Guilliman's treachery, however, the truth was revealed : the whole thing had been a ploy to keep him from going to Isstvan, perhaps even to kill him. But the assassination attempts that had targeted Perturabo during the campaign had all failed, and doubtlessly the Legions who had been able to go to Isstvan would be enough to destroy the traitors.

Seven Legions arrived at Isstvan. First came the dreaded warriors of the Death Guard in their full strength, led by their Primarch Mortarion. Next came the ships of the Night Lords, with Konrad Curze himself leading them. The Primarch of the VIIIth Legion was in a dark mood, as the visions that had plagued him since childhood finally came true, albeit in a different fashion that what he had expected. The Night Lords hadn't brought all of their forces : Konrad claimed that most of his troops had been already engaged when the order to muster for Isstvan had come, and he hadn't wanted to wait, instead gathering a quarter of his Legion and bringing them with him.

After them arrived the fleet of the Dark Angels of Lion El'Jonson, returned from their mysterious wars in the Ghoul stars, followed by Vulkan and his army of red-eyed devils. The XIXth Legion, the Raven Guard, arrived after them, its ships filled to the brink with the numbers of the second most numerous Legions after the Ultramarines, thanks to the genetic expertise of the rulers of Kiavahr, Corax's homeworld. There had been whispers that the work of the Ravenlord upon his own gene-seed bordered on the heretical, but in the face of Guilliman's treachery, those accusations were put aside.

From the void, its arrival unexpected even by the countless astropaths and navigators already in the system, the Alpha Legion appeared, joining the rest of the fleet. Alpharius, the secretive Primarch of the Twentieth Legion, met his brother Konrad aboard the labyrithic dephts of his battle-barge, the Beta. None know what words they exchanged in that meeting, the first between the two brothers since Alpharius had first been found by Horus.

The White Scars arrived last, having sailed at full speed from the distant stars of the Chondax System. The Khan had apparently been wounded in battle against the orks, and didn't meet his brothers in person, though he promised he would be part of the assault by the intermediary of his representative, Hasik Noyan-Khan.

When the loyal Legions emerged from the Warp, they discovered that the fleet of the traitors had mysteriously vanished, while communications from the surface of the system's fifth planet made clear that the traitor Primarchs and their forces were still on Isstvan V. Fearing an attack in their backs while they were occupied on the planet, they spread their combined fleets across the system while gathering their forces on the main vessels. It was decided that three of the Legions would strike first, securing a landing zone for the rest of the loyalists. Mortarion, Konrad Curze and Alpharius volunteered for this task. Mortarion claimed that his Death Guard were best suited for such brutal fighting as was expected on Isstvan V, while Konrad Curze said nothing of his motivations. Alpharius didn't need to explain while he wanted to go first : all knew the old rivalry that had existed between him and Guilliman.

The three Primarchs made planetfall with their troops first, the skies of Isstvan V burning with drop-pods and artillery fire. Hundred of Legionaries died before even touching the ground. Then they deployed, engaged the foe, and the slaughter begun. The warriors they had once called brothers were hideously deformed, twisted parodies of the paragons of honor and virtue they had once been.

The Ultramarines had debased their armor with sigils that made the eyes of those pure of heart want to scream in agony, and walked to war with unholy monsters at their side – creatures that, to the loyalists' horror, were wearing fragments of armor bearing the insignia of the Thirteenth Legion.

The Imperial Fists fought with reckless fury, barely maintaining any form of cohesion. At the vanguard of the traitors, they reveled in the butchery, laughing as they killed just as much as when they were finally slain. Their Primarch, Rogal Dorn, bellowed his rage at the loyalists as he cut them apart with his chainsword Storm's Teeth while commanding his troops into complex maneuvers that nearly broke the loyalists' formation.

The Iron Hands were rotting shapes oozing putrefaction and contamination, their metallic parts impossibly rusted and yet still functionning. Ferrus Manus, carrying the hammer that had been given to him by his brother Fulgrim, Forgebreaker, fought amongst his sons, his once glorious form reduced to a walking nightmare. Only his two hands remained pure, untouched by the rot that consumed him.

Sanguinius and his Blood Angels were those who appeared to have remained the most similar to their former selves. They fought with the fury and cold discipline of a Legion, and yet all who faced them could feel that there was something profoundly wrong with them, though the Space Marines were unable to tell what.

Quickly, the loyalists secured an area for their reinforcements to land, and destroyed the heavy artillery that had caused them such damage during their own descent, taking many losses in return. With the way cleared, the four Legions still in orbit made planetfall, establishing lines of defences in the blink of an eye. Battered from hours of battle, the three Legions started to withdraw toward their allies defensive positions.

And then, the Dark Angels, White Scars, Salamanders and Raven Guard opened fire on them.

Mortarion was running, moving faster than he had in all of his life. All around him, his sons were dying under the Ultramarines' fire. Before him, the lines of the Dark Angels were waiting for them. He opened a vox-channel, trying to contact his brother's troops :

"This is Mortarion of the Death Guard ! Dark Angels, give us covering fire ! Damn you, help us, you cowardly ..."

The words died on the lips of the Primarch when the Dark Angels did open fire. To his horror, however, that fire wasn't aimed at the traitors behind him. It was targeting his own sons ...

The treachery of the four Legions of the second wave was devastating. Thousands of Astartes were slain, and the Primarch of the Eighth Legion, Konrad Curze, died in battle against his brother Vulkan. The few Night Lords who escaped the carnage told that their father killed Vulkan many times, but that the black-skinned Primarch kept on rising, his wounds healing as if under the action of some sorcery. Regardless of the truth of that story, the Night Haunter's sacrifice bought time for the broken forces of the three Legions to reach their own transports and escape. While some records indicate that Alpharius was slain during the battle, the Primarch was seen again in the next stages of the Heresy.

In orbit, the fleet of the first four Traitor Legions emerged from the Warp, and, with the help of its treacherous ilk, slaughtered the loyalist fleet. Only the sacrifice of the Death Guard vessel Terminus Est, under the command of First Captain Typhon, allowed the remnants of the three shattered Legions, led by Mortarion, to escape Isstvan. They sailed into the terrible warp storms that had started to engulf the galaxy, making warp-travel almost impossible to all but those loyal to the Arch-Traitor.

"When the hand of the traitor strikes, it strikes with the strength of a Legion."

Horus Lupercal, Warmaster of the Imperium, upon receiving word of the Drop Site Massacre

While the news of the Drop Site Massacre spread through the Warp on tides of screams, the death of a Primarch and the near destruction of three Legions resonated through the Empyrean, reaching Ultramar. At the moment of Lorgar and Angron's arrival into the system of Calth, the trap laid out by Guilliman sprang closed. A Warp Storm of unimaginable scale engulfed the Five Hundred Worlds, turning every single planet within its grasp into a Daemon World. This Ruinstorm, as it came to be known, was the result of years of planning, the careful spreading of Chaos cults and the culling of those of the Ultramar denizens who refused the new faith brought by Guilliman. Worse, there were no Ultramarines within its confines, safe a token force left as a sacrifice to activate the spell. The true strength of the Thirteenth legion was elsewhere, hidden in the Warp, and already returning to their Primarch to help his march to Terra.

A last message from the two Primarchs pierced the veil of darkness, claiming that they would return. No matter what, Lorgar and Angron swore, they would come to their father's help. The astropathic message they sent carried the will of two sons of the Emperor with it, and it passed through the increasing Warp storms.

With three Legions broken at Isstvan and two stranded at Ultramar, the fate of the Imperium seemed dire indeed. Then, to make matters worst, word came that the Lemman Russ had cast his lot with Roboute, as only him would forgive Lemman's attack of Prospero. The Wolf King had scattered his Legion into thirteen Great Companies and placed twelve of them under the command of his most trusted sons, while he followed is brother Lion El'Jonson to some unknown destination with the thirteenth.

Guilliman led the bulk of his forces to Terra, conquering or destroying each system in his path so as to avoid being struck in the back at the crucial moment, while the rest of the Traitor Primarchs spread to pursue secondary objectives, waiting for the time to reunite with their leader.

The three Primarchs on Terra, Horus, Perturabo and Magnus, knew that their treacherous kind would attack the Throneworld eventually, and prepared for the inevitable. They called for the rest of their Legions that had been spread across the galaxy and the countless millions of human soldiers that still remained true to their oaths, and prepared to fight to the last man. All knew that the war had to come to Terra eventually, for only from the Throneworld could the Imperium be directed.

The March to Terra

As Guilliman advanced toward the Sol system, battle unfolded across the galaxy. Entire systems had to decide whether to stay true to the Emperor or turn to the side of the Ultramarines. Facing the might of the Thirteenth Legion and its allies, many chose the way of cowards and bowed before Roboute's armada. But many other stayed loyal, and prepared to fight to the end. They weren't alone in this endeavour : Night Lords' splinter fleets appeared to strike at the traitors, coming apparently out of nowhere before returning to the shadows. The Eighth Legion led a long, grueling campaign of guerilla. It appeared to the traitors' commanders that Curze had foreseen part of the events of Isstvan, and prepared his Legion to the eventuality of his own death. Under the command of Sevatar, First Captain of the Night Lords, they had separated in hundreds of warbands that inflicted untold damage upon the traitors' war effort. Acting independently, they crippled entire fleets and helped turn the tide of many battles, slowing the advance of Guilliman.

Mortarion led the survivors of Isstvan V straight to Terra. On the way, warriors from the Alpha Legion hid on worlds that were sure to be targeted by Guilliman's forces in order to help the soldiers of the Imperium with their unconventional tactics, which had proved efficient on many battlefields and utterly incomprehensible to the Ultramarines' minds.

The Traitor Legions each pursued their own objectives. The White Scars, whose Primarch hadn't been seen since his fight at Isstvan, waged a shadow war against the Night Lords and Alpha Legion aries, hunting them down with their superior numbers, but taking heavy casualties for each outpost of the Shadow Legions that they destroyed. The Blood Angels hit heavily populated worlds, leaving no survivors behind them. No word escaped from these doomed planets after the Angels' arrival, and what occured on their soil was only revealed later in the Heresy. The Imperial Fists attacked fortified world after fortified world, basing their choice of target not on their strategic value but on the challenge they would represent, seeking to ever increase their level of martial and tactical prowess. The Salamanders brought dozens of worlds to heel, forcing them into submission to Vulkan and through him to Guilliman. The sons of Nocturne were especially targeted by the Night Lords, in revenge for the murder of Konrad Curze, but despite the best efforts of the Eighth Legion, many billions were forced to pledge fealty to the Black Dragon. Corax led his forces back to his own homeworld and destroyed it, slaughtering the techno-lords of Kiavahr who had experienced on the Primarch when he was still an infant, before the Emperor found him and rescued him from their claws. From his fortress on the moon, he rained bombs on the loyalist factories below, before attacking at the head of his bestial Legionaries to annihilate the survivors himself.

Of the Dark Angels and Space Wolves' activities during that somber period, almost nothing is known. The companies unleashed by Leman Russ found their way to the side of other forces, or raided Imperial settlements with little cohesion in their actions.

When Lion El'Jonson reappeared, he stood alone, without his brother, the fate of which he refused to reveal to any safe Guilliman himself. The Primarch of the Dark Angels had been greatly changed by whatever ordeal he had been through : he was now a prince of the Warp, crowned by one of the Dark Gods themselves as its champion and herald upon the material plane. He was first seen after that transformation on a planet whose name has been lost to the ages. When Magnus received the reports from the terrified imperial forces, he claimed that their brother was dead, and that in his place lived a creature of Tzeentch, the Chaos God of Change.

After that first conquest, the Dark Angels sailed toward Caliban, homeworld of their Primarch. No records exist of what happened there, but it reduced the once verdant planet to a barren core of rock.

Magnus could see it with his unique eye. It was a giant surrounded by fire, wielding two blades : the Lion Sword with which he had fought during the Great Crusade, and a sword of xenos origin that was imbued with the power of death over all whose name it knew. He could see the myriad futures open to it, and the one path it would choose.

"Luther", breathed the Cyclops as the terrible vision faded. "We have to warn him."

Guilliman sent many agents looking for signs of the Emperor's Children. The Third Legion had vanished from the stars, and even the dark allies of the Arch-Traitor in the Warp couldn't trace them. That lack of information slowed the Ultramarines even further, as they began to see Fulgrim and his warriors in every shadow in addition to the Night Lords. But, despite the unceasing search for any sign of the Phoenician, Guilliman's spies found nothing. Even his most secret contacts among the loyalists didn't know anything. It was as if the Emperor's Children were simply gone.

In the system of Sol itself, war raged as well. Mars was torn by conflict between the Tech-Lords, the different forges of the Red Planet choosing their side in the civil war. Perturabo sent one of his most trusted Warsmith, the Triarch Barban Falk, on Mars. His mission was to secure the weapons and armor the loyalists would need. By the time he arrived, however, the Red Planet was a ruin, with loyalists and traitors fighting amidst the wreckage of Mankind's greatest industrial success. Supplies would be impossible to secure until the traitors had been defeated, and Barban Falk proceeded to do exactly that. The horrors of the Martian War are little documented, for the survivors of it refused to speak of the terrible things that happened there.

As the Heresy neared Terra, the Ultramarines found a fortress of the Alpha Legion upon the world of Eskrador, commanded by Alpharius himself. So close was that planet from the Five Hundred Worlds that Guilliman temporarily abandoned his command of the rebellion's spearhead to travel there with a full quarter of his Legion, determined to crush his brother once and for all. While Guilliman later claimed to have slain Alpharius in personal combat, the exact events that occurred on the surface of Eskrador are uncertain, and it is said that the Primarch of the Alpha Legion reappeared later on Terra, asking the Emperor's help in rebuilding his decimated Legion.

Regardless of the truth, with the possibility of the Alpha Legion coming to the aid of the two Legions trapped within the Ruinstorm taken care of, the Ultramarines reunited with the Iron Hands, who had directed the advance toward Terra in Guilliman's absence. With two full Legions once more gathered, the loyalist planets fell one by one, until nothing remained to stop the advance of the traitors toward Terra.

The Siege of Terra

Four Primarchs stood on Terra with their sons at their side, ready to meet the traitors and send them into oblivion. As the fleet of the traitors emerged, the final battle for the fate of Mankind began.

Thousands of ships had been gathered by both side, but even as they exchanged fire with weapons powerful enough to break a planet apart, the commanders of the vessels knew that the true battle would be decided upon the world below. The Traitor Legions descended upon the soil of Terra in all of their numbers, ready to crush the loyalist defenders.

The traitors laid siege to the Imperial Palace, while the rest of the world burned. Imperial Fists assaulted the high walls of the greatest fortress ever built with reckless abandon, ignoring the traps set up by Perturabo's construction teams.

The billions of Terrans died horrific deaths at the hands of the most depraved of the traitors : the Blood Angels. Once the noblest of all the Space Marines, the sons of Sanguinius had changed beyond recognition. The rumors that had once been dismissed as superstitious slander were revealed true as the Blood Angels fed upon the populace, drinking the blood of millions in debased orgies of sensations and slaughter. The warriors of the Ninth Legion had overcome the flaw in their gene-seed by indulging their bloodthirst before it overwhelmed them : they had become vampires whose beauty hid the rot beneath them as their sanity was consumed by the sensations brought by the reliving of the memories of those whose blood they drank.

Horus' fury at the sight was terrible. He marched to the gates of the Imperial Palace and began massacring traitors, giving the loyalists a respite while calling for the one who had once been his closest brother to come and face him if he dared.

Sanguinius answered his brother's challenge. The Angel fought against the Warmaster, and the tremors of their battle are said to have echoed from the walls of the Palace to the solitary fortresses of Antartica. Finally, with his mighty mace Worldbreaker, Horus shattered Sanguinius' sword and brought his brother down. As he was about to deal the final blow, however, the face of his brother cleared, the madness that had tainted him since the beginning of the battle banished. For a moment, Sanguinius was once again the perfect being he had once been. Seeing the visage of his brother, Horus faltered, and Sanguinius seized the opportunity. Raising from the wreckage his fall had caused, he bit down Horus' neck and emptied him of blood. The Warmaster of the Imperium died, his life stolen from him by the one he had called brother and friend. At that moment, the Primarch of the Blood Angels walked the same path Lion El'Jonson had walked before him, and became a creature of the Warp, an immortal prince of the damned. From the other side of the Palace, Magnus felt his two brothers' death and the dark rebirth of one of them, and knew that Slaanesh, the Lord of Pain and Pleasure, had found a new champion.

With Horus' death and the coming of dusk, the loyalists began to falter. The Sons of Horus tried to recover their father's body, but only managed to recover some of his relics before they were slaughtered and the corpse of the Warmaster stolen by the traitors. That final indignity enraged the members of the Sixteenth Legion, but there was nothing they could do against the armies of traitors that stood between them and their beloved father's remains.

The Blood Angels, screaming in ecstasy as the sensations of their Primarch spread to all of them by the bounds of blood, stopped their tormenting of Terra's civilians and rushed toward the Imperial Palace, eager to taste the same pleasure their father had just experienced in murdering his brother. As it seemed that the traitors were finally going to overcome them, two fleets appeared from the Warp. The Night Lords and the Emperor's Children had returned to Terra in full strength.

"You may think you have won the day, traitors, but we own the night !"

Transmission from First Captain and Legion Master Sevatar, before the Night Lords' planetfall.

The Emperor's Children had been stranded in a long campaign against eldar raiders, the xenos trying to destroy the Legion with incomprehensible, desperate fury. Sevatar had learned of their plight, and called the Eighth Legion to aid them. The Third Legion mounted a devastating strike against the traitor ships, boarding them and preventing them from bombarding the surface further. Their newly gained expertise in boarding actions, paid for in the blood and pain of those who had fought the Dark Eldars, proved invaluable, and they effectively crippled most of the traitors' fleet.

Meanwhile, the Night Lords descended upon Terra. The forces of the Eighth Legion came to the aid of the terrified population, butchering the Blood Angels who were using them for their debased pleasures. The champions of both Legions clashed in several duels, and to this day, the enmity between the sons of Nostramo and the fallen Angels is still strong, though it nothing compared to the undying hatred of the Sons of Horus.

The news of the two Legions' arrival renewed the loyalists' strength. The Mournival, the four sons of Horus who had been the closest advisors of their fallen Primarch, led a counter-attack against the Blood Angels. Clad in Terminator Armor, the vengeful sons fought against a Daemon Primarch and won. They crushed his perfect form, destroyed his glamour and revealed him for the monster he was. The beauty of the Angel vanished, and the ugliness of the egoistic, narcissistic beast he had become was exposed. Then, as his brothers held their quarry down, the First Captain of the Sons of Horus, Ezekyle Abaddon, ripped out the traitor's twin hearts with the Talon of Horus, the weapon he had recovered upon his father's corpse before being forced to retreat before the traitors' onslaught.

The Confrontation of the Throneroom

When Sanguinius fell, his essence released into the Empyrean, Guilliman saw that the tide of the battle was turning against him. The Blood Angels were worthless to him, fallen on the ground and twisting in a mixture of pleasure and agony as they keenly felt the destruction of their Primarch's physical form. Worse, his allies in the Warp whispered to him that Lorgar and Angron had found a way out of the Ruinstorm, and were even now rushing to Terra, pushing the engines of their ships and the Navigators that had survived the hellish realm to their utmost limits. Time was running out, and only a decisive strike could yet save Guilliman's rebellion from ruin.

The Arch-Traitor gathered his most powerful warriors, calling his brothers to join him for a massive attack against the Throneroom of the Imperial Palace, where the Emperor had stayed since the traitors had first emerged in the Sol System. Rogal Dorn and Lion El'Jonson rejoined him, while Ferrus Manus stayed on the frontlines to keep the forces of the Night Lords from assaulting the strike force in the back. The plague-stricken Primarch fought against the combined armies of two Legions, holding the line while his treacherous ilk forced their way through the defenders, who were powerless to stop the three Primarchs. They broke the Titan-high Gates and found their way to the Imperial Sanctuary.

But the Palace was no mere fortress. Its insides had been rebuilt by Perturabo's himself, and the Lord of Iron had spared no effort in the construction of Mankind's greatest bastion. He had replicated and adapted to a larger scale the design of his own portable fortress, the Cavea Ferrum. In its labyrinthine depths, the traitors were unable to navigate, and were soon separated. Even the favorite of the God of Sorcery, Lion El'Jonson, fell to Perturabo's trap's non-Euclidian geometries. The Daemon Primarch of the Dark Angels came to face the one being on Terra besides the Emperor that stood a chance against his foul powers : Magnus the Red. The details of what occurred then, in the dark tunnels of Perturabo's trap, are not known to any soul in the Imperium, but Magnus emerged victor, and Lion El'Jonson was cast back into the Seal of Souls.

Similarly misguided, Rogal Dorn came to face the one brother he hated beyond all others : the architect of the Cavea Ferrum himself. Perturabo and Dorn fought while their sons battled around them, and though it is said that a battle between hammer and blade doesn't last long, such rules do not apply to a duel between two sons of the Emperor. Their battle lasted for hours on end, without any of them gaining the upper hand even as they spilled each other blood.

Meanwhile, guided by the whispers of his dark patrons, Roboute found his way to the Emperor himself. The Lord of Mankind stood before the Golden Throne, surrounded by his Custodians. One last time, he attempted to make his wayward son see the error of his way, and repent. But the claws of Chaos were too deeply entrenched within Guilliman's soul, and nothing could save him.

The Emperor and Guilliman clashed, the Gauntlets of Ultramar, terrible weapons infused with the power of the Dark Gods, opposing the fiery sword of the Lord of Mankind. As the two avatars fought in the plane of matter, so too did they battle in the Sea of Souls : the divine power of the Emperor's mind confronted the psychic gifts of Guilliman, awakened by the Dark Gods and strengthened by them to the point where the Arch-Traitor was the equal of the Emperor.

In fact, Guilliman was stronger. There was a reason the Emperor had stayed in the Throneroom since the beginning of the siege : His grand work, the Webway of Mankind, had been attacked from the Warp by hordes of daemons. He had needed to stay on the Golden Throne to keep them from opening a portal in the heart of the Palace and overcoming the defenders. Though that task now rested upon the shoulders of His most trusted servant Malcador, the burden of keeping legions of warp-born at bay for weeks had taken a toll upon Him that Guilliman was now using to his advantage.

Roboute finally brought his father low, and prepared to deal the final blow. But as he reveled in his imminent victory, there was a flash of light, and Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children, appeared, teleported from his flagship the Andronicus. Gone was the perfect face that had once been the Phoenician's pride : now Fulgrim's visage was marred by scars caused by eldar weapons. But in that loss of the pristine perfection he had once sought, Fulgrim had gained a cold fury that could rival even the fires deep within Perturabo's own. Wielding the blade that had been forged for him by his brother Manus in an brighter era, he struck at his corrupted brother. Guilliman screamed in pain, and his focus slipped, allowing the crippled Emperor to strike at him from the Sea of Souls. The combined might of Fulgrim's blow and the Emperor's desperate attack were finally enough to overcome his Primarch physiology and kill the Arch-Traitor.

The Ultramarines were struck terribly by the fall of their liege. They retreated, taking his body with them, and ran. They fled Terra, abandoning the other Legions that had pledged themselves to Guilliman's cause. These, seeing their erstwhile allies flee, were forced to do the same. Taking considerable damage from the loyalist pursuit, the traitors escaped. The Ultramarines ran back to the Ruinstorm, while the rest of the Traitor Legions sailed toward the Eye of Terror, knowing that the Imperium's retribution couldn't follow them in its hellish depths.

The Emperor, however, was dying. The wounds He had suffered while fighting Guilliman were too much, and the damage caused to His mind by His final confrontation with the champion of the Dark Gods was preventing Him from using His powers to heal. Moreover, Malcador the Sigillite had finally succumbed to his duty, and the portal within the Golden Throne was threatening to open again. Magnus communed with his father, and, with heavy heart, placed His body upon the Golden Throne before Perturabo activated the stasis field that would preserve the Emperor's physical shell while His soul kept fighting the Dark Gods for the rest of eternity. The Lord of Mankind became one with the Light of the Astronomicon, and a thousand souls are sacrificed to Him each day so that He may continue His endless vigil.

The Roboutian Heresy was over. Now, the long war to purge the galaxy of the traitors' foul presence could begin.

The Long War

With the Emperor now lost to His subjects, His heir Horus dead and His most precious aid the Sigillite reduced to thin dust by his ordeal on the Golden Throne, a new order was needed if the Imperium was to survive the fallout of Guilliman's madness.

The four members of the Mournival, seeing the very real possibility of the Imperium collapsing under its own weight, rose to bring back together its fragmented pieces. Possessing together the same gift for diplomacy and tactics their father had been so gifted for, they were able to create a new Council of Terra, with men and women who had proved their worth during the Heresy. With the guidance of the Primarchs, they set about rebuilding the Imperium and its armies. The pursuit of the traitors was a priority, and mighty fleets were sent against the Traitor Legions, but they were untouchable within the confines of the Warp storms where they had made their lair. Unable to pursue, the Imperium built great fortresses and lines of defences around these pits of damnation, and while it wasn't enough to stop small groups from going in or out, it was enough to stop any massive incursion. Perturabo himself supervised both of these rings of survey, and called them the 'Iron Cages'.

Despite the cowardly retreat of the Traitor Legions, countless worlds remained in rebellion, with isolated Chaos Marines amongst their ranks. One by one, these planets were reclaimed for the Imperium, with those who had been the homeworld of the traitor Primarchs often utterly destroyed, or, at the very least, every trace of their past erased. The purge of the Imperium lasted for several decades, a long and grueling conflict that was made all the more painful by the inner tensions remaining within the Imperium. The humans who had once worshipped the Space Marines as paragons of virtue and loyalty now looked upon them with fear that they, too, may one day turn against the Imperium. To ensure that nothing like the Heresy could ever happen again, the Astartes gave up much of their authority over the mortal components of the Imperium's armies, collaborating with them instead of ordering them around. From now on, the meaning of the title of Warmaster wasn't the same, a fact that irked the Sons of Horus to no end, but even the proud members of the Sixteenth Legion admitted that none of them could bear the same mantle their dead father had anyway. The new Warmasters would not be given control of the entirety of the Imperium's forces, but instead be named for specific theatres of operation, and would relinquish that title when their objectives were achieved. Only an individual such as Horus Lupercal could be trusted to bear such a burden without end, and in his absence, it fell to lesser men to guide the Imperium toward glory and victory.

To continue the fight against the corrupting influence of Chaos, the Ecclesiarchy and the Inquisition were formed. While the Ecclesiarchy initially rose as an unofficial organisation, it soon acquired so much support that unifying it and giving it an official existence was the only way to prevent the return of the wars of religion that the Emperor had fought so hard to banish to the darkest parts of Mankind's history. Despite the opposition of Lorgar, the new religion worshipping the Emperor became the official faith of the Imperium, as it was judged better for the people of the Imperium to worship Him rather than fall to the worship of other divinities.

The Inquisition was a much more planned existence. It had been first thought of by Malcador when news of the Heresy had reached Terra. The Sigillite had gathered men and women of valor and unwavering loyalty, who would hunt down and destroy the seeds of treachery in the Emperor's name. Since this organisation had been founded with the Emperor's blessing, the Legions accepted its rise to power with much more grace that they had the Ecclesiarchy, even when some Inquisitors started to watch the Astartes for signs of corruption. As unsettling as it was for the Space Marines to be under suspicion, they understood that they too were fallible, as Guilliman had proved, and needed to be watched. A special order of Astartes was founded, owing its allegiance to the Inquisition only : the Grey Knights, of whom very little is known outside the walls of their fortress on Titan.

Besides the heretics who rose from within its own ranks, the Traitor Legions also remained a constant threat to the Imperium. Two of them, the Space Wolves and the White Scars, scattered across the galaxy in hundreds of warbands, intending to raid the worlds of Humanity for spoil and sport. There is little reason behind these two Legions actions beyond that of vengeance and survival, and the fact that their Primarch have not been heard of in ten thousand years continue to torment archivists and tacticians alike, for if they were to return, there is no doubt that Leman Russ and Jaghatai Khan would be able to unite these disparate elements into truly fearsome forces.

Without the lead of their Primarch, the Ultramarines broke apart within the Ruinstorm. Dozens of warbands calling themselves Chapters rose from the breaking of the Legion, each claiming part of the former Five Hundred Worlds as its domain. Interrogation of prisoners from this region of space indicates that the members of the Thirteenth Legion endlessly fight against each other. Even more interesting, they were so stricken by the loss of their spiritual liege that they placed Guilliman's body within a stasis field, and waited for the day of his return with abject devotion.

In the Eye of Terror, the Legions of the Dark Angels, Imperial Fists, Blood Angels, Iron Hands, Salamanders and Raven Guard wage endless wars for supremacy, unable to put aside their divisions to unite against the Imperium. Each of them has broken in factions that pursue their own agenda in the material plane, while their Daemon Primarchs play their own games with the denizens of the Warp.

The Dark Angels have made their home on a planet of shadows and mist, where the will of Lion El'Jonson, Daemon Primarch of Tzeentch, is supreme. The sons of the Lion often leave their lair by secret ways, and perform missions that puzzle the Imperium's tacticians to no end. They will strike at targets that are well-defended or ignore obvious weaknesses in order to conquer a seemingly useless position that they will abandon soon after. Other times, they will perform actions that will reveal decades later that they have had a terrible impact, and cause the ruin of entire planets. With no way to know which of their raids belongs to which category, the Imperial commanders are forced to oppose them with all their strength at every opportunity. Any soldier facing the Dark Angels in war knows that he must do all he can to avoid being captured, even if it means taking his own life. The reason is that the fearsome Interrogator-Chaplains of that Traitor Legions can break even the most faithful of the Emperor's subjects and force him either to spill all he knows, or worse, turn him entirely to their heretic views through tortures that would make even a citizen of dark Commoragh recoil in horror.

The Imperial Fists, according to the analysis of the Thousand Sons, have aligned themselves with the Dark Power known as Khorne, the Blood God. While the billions of deluded mortals who have pledged their souls to this God of Chaos are often little more than mindless berserkers, the Imperial Fists have retained their minds, though their discipline and respect for their superiors is a thing of the past. Each Imperial Fist focuses on his own prowess before all else, trusting no one and betraying any stupid enough to trust him. According to the visions of Imperial seers, Rogal Dorn, their Primarch, rages endlessly on a world of ashes and bones against the treason of his favorite son, Sigismund, who broke apart the Legion when he turned against his father to lead his own warband, the Black Templars. On the battlefield, the dreaded Sword Brethren of the Seventh Legion are a terrible sight to behold, as each of them is a pinnacle of martial might dedicated to the cause of endless slaughter in the Blood God's name.

The Blood Angels, the most debased and monstrous of the Traitor Legions, have made their home on the Daemon World where their father rose from his destruction at the Mournival's hands. From here, they launch attacks against both their kin, the Imperium, and xeno planets, reveling in the new sensations they experience with each drop of blood they drink from their victims as they devote themselves even more to the twisted ways of Slaanesh. They are still fiercely hated by the Sons of Horus, who have sworn an oath to see every bastard son of Sanguinius dead. The terrible vampires have caused such trauma upon the population of Terra that to this day, Terrans remain untrusting of the Astartes – the very soul of the world still feeling the taint of the Ninth Legion's deeds. In battle, the blood-sucking Sanguinary Marines are some of the most fearsome foes an unfortunate Imperial soldier may encounter.

The plague-stricken warriors of the Iron Hands have made their home in a jungle-infested Daemon World, and turned the life of this planet to ruin and rot. Each of them is now a walking abomination of rotting flesh and rusted metal, whose mere presence can drag a world into damnation. The touch of Nurgle, Lord of Decay, is on them, and each of them is doomed to slowly die as his body finally shuts down under one too many pathogen's attacks. Those who fall to Nurgle's touch, however, rise again from the dead as the terrible Plague Marines, now nearly immortal and impossible to slay. These putrescent beings have become the state of being to which all Iron Hands aspire, and they prove their devotion to the Lord of Decay by spreading his gift across the galaxy in the hope that they, too, will one day be seen as worth of such a transformation. Ferrus Manus himself has become a Daemon Prince of Nurgle, and has not left the homeworld of his Legion in a long time. His last recorded sighting claimed that the silver metal of his two hands was impossibly still untouched by rot, as pristine and pure as it had been when the Emperor first found him.

The Salamanders' Primarch, Vulkan, led a succession of raids during his retreat to the Eye of Terror. Allegedly, the Eighteenth Legion plundered a thousand worlds on its way, taking riches and slaves with them. As a reward for such an act, Vulkan ascended to become a Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided. The few psykers who can manage to scry his domain in the Eye of Terror without going insane tell that he has become a giant black dragon, sitting atop a mountain of plunder brought to him by his Legion. He hasn't left his Daemon World in ten thousand years, either because he cannot due to his sheer size, but more probably because he has no inclination too – for the laws of physic hold no sway within the Eye. Some of the Salamanders have mutated to resemble their Primarch's appearance, becoming winged figures able, against all laws of aerodynamics, to fly for short periods of time. These Dragon Warriors are generally even crueller than the rest of their Legion, and take great pleasure in hunting defenceless prey for hours before finally going in for the kill.

The Raven Guard have made their home in a Daemon World covered in towers, where the mightiest of their numbers rule over their own warbands, occasionnaly leading a raid against a rival in the Eye of Terror or against the Imperium. Corax, Primarch of the Raven Guard, is reported to have become a Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided, and was last seen on a raid upon the Imperial World of Hydra Cordatus, where he faced forces of the Iron Warriors and Alpha Legion. The knowledge this Legion possess about the Astartes genetics allow them to create vat-grown clones that can receive the gene-seed, which make the Nineteenth Legion the one with the greatest numbers within the Eye. These clones, however, are inferior Space Marines, little more than cannon fodder for the 'true-born', as the Raven Guards who were once human call themselves. Regardless, the Spawn Marines are a force to reckon with on the battlefield, as their numbers more than make up for their deficiencies.

It is now the dusk of the forty-first millenium, and things are darker than ever for Humanity. The Orks are once more on the rise in their great Waaaagh!, the Taus foolishly attack the Iron Cages from without, unable to see that by their actions they may very well also doom themselves, and the Tyrannids, after losing an entire hive-fleet within the Ruinstorm, are now on the very threshold of Holy Terra itself. Worse, planets long thought secure are mysteriously lost, no sign of life remaining on their soil.

As more and more enemies rise across the galaxy, and the final hour seems to draw ever closer, so too do the Traitor Legions. Alarming reports from the Iron Cages indicate that the Chaos Marines seem to have put aside their grudges, and for the first time in ten thousand years, a united force of the Traitor Legions may rise to attack the Imperium. While the loyal servants of Terra have repelled many a Black Crusade in the past, led by some warlord who had managed to unite several factions of the ever-warring Chaotic forces, such a thing could very well bring the doom of the Imperium, and finish what Guilliman started so long ago.

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Dark Angels : Lords of Secrets and Lies

Armed with lies, shrouded in deceit, and twisted by betrayal, the Dark Angels are the favorite servants of Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways. Their cruel tortures can break the will of even the most devout imperial follower, and the will of their dark master, the Daemon Prince El'Jonson, spreads across the galaxy like a poison. The once noble Primarch, first to yield to the temptations of Chaos, has been reduced to infamy and horror, his hands forever red with the blood of the brother he has slain. None can fathom his plans and designs without knowing his darkest secrets, and those would drive any soul into madness and damnation ...

Origins

The world of Caliban is now lost, and little remain of its long history. Fragments of it, however, have survived both the destruction of the planet, the passage of time, and the frequent purges perpetrated by the Dark Angels themselves. These fragments, carefully gathered along many centuries by the faithful agents of ever vigilant Inquisition, have revealed much of the Traitor Legion's past.

Ten thousand years ago, Caliban was a world that oscillated between the medieval classification and that of death world. Almost the entirety of its surface was covered in dense forests, and creatures of nightmare stalked these woods, preying on the planet's population. Orders of knights defended the humans, using technological relics of the planet's long lost past. To the Calibanites, Terra was little more than a myth, upon which they had little time to dwell in their daily struggle for survival. For all of the Long Night, Caliban had endured, a precarious balance maintained by the knightly orders' unceasing work.

Then the Dark Gods robbed the Emperor of his twenty sons, and scattered them across the stars, upon worlds populated by humanity. One of them, the first born, landed on Caliban, in the deepest parts of its dark forests. While any mortal infant – and most if not all adults – would have died in short order, he survived. Nothing is known of the Primarch's infancy in Caliban's forests : his story begins when he was found, already a grown man, by a party of Calibanite knights.

The knights, wary of what they saw – a feral young man, in a place where no human could possibly survive for long – wanted to strike him down, but their leader, Luther, stayed their hands. He brought the young man with him to his order's fortress-monastery, and raised him as his own son. He named him Lion El'Jonson, the Son of the Forest, for how he had survived where no one else could.

In a few months, the Lion had grown to surpass Luther's height, and had learned all the arts and skills required for knighthood. He became a member of Luther's Order, and quickly rose amongst its ranks until he became its Grand Master. Then, he launched a campain of extermination against the beasts of Caliban, claiming that it was time for Mankind to claim the whole planet for themselves. To this end, he tried to unite all of Caliban's knightly orders under his command, but his inner superiority often passed off as arrogance to his peers, and it was only thanks to the restless efforts of Luther, his second-in-command, that the alliance became reality. Only one order, the Knights of the Lupus, refused the alliance, claiming that the Lion didn't know what he was doing, and was going to doom the world. They were defeated by the Lion and Luther's coalition, and as it was discovered that they had studied the dark arts and attempted to breed the beasts of Caliban, their warnings were considered the excuses of men clinging to their heretical power even as it was beginning to wane. All members of the Knights of the Lupus were executed, the beasts they had bred slain, and their extensive library of forbidden lore was put under seals – the reason it wasn't simply put to the torch was that Luther firmly believed that burning books, no matter their subject, was something barbaric that they shouldn't commit if they were to bring illumination to Caliban.

With all the remaining orders under his command, the Lion purged Caliban of the beasts entirely. When the final part of the planet was finally purged, there was a great celebration, and it was then, as Lion El'Jonson rejoiced over having finally the entire world under his rule, that the Emperor arrived.

The Master of Mankind congratulated His son for his pacification of his homeworld, and revealed to him His grand design for Humanity. He told the Lion that they were many worlds left to bring back to civilization, that the Imperium would bring light to the galaxy in the same way the Lion had brought light to the people of Caliban. He told him that he had brothers, who shared the Emperor's blood. And, most importantly, He told the Lion that he had sons, sons that the Master of Mankind had brought with him : the first of the Legiones Astartes, the Dark Angels. It was the Lion's birthright to command them, and lead them to glorious conquest across the galaxy.

'He is lying ... He doesn't care for you, Lion ... He let you be taken from him ... He let you be sent to the darkness of the woods ... He abandonned you, and now, he wants to take what you have built for himself ...'

Lion El'Jonson bowed to his father, and vowed to do His will. He took the reins of the Dark Angels, and added many of the younger knights under his command to their ranks. Luther, his foster father and trusted comrade, was by then too old to become an Astartes. Instead, he received many of the most advanced treatments and enhancements available to the Great Crusade's high command. While he was physically less apt than the rest of the Legion, his strategic talents and close relationship with the Primarch granted him a post high in the Legion's chain of command. Then, while Caliban was brought up to date with standard Imperial technology, the Dark Angels left the planet to begin their part in the Great Crusade with their Primarch leading them.

The Great Crusade

The first planet to receive the Dark Angels after they were reunited with their Primarch was the world of Saroshi. While this world's human denizens weren't hostile to the Imperium, their bureaucratic government also prevented them from joining the Emperor's dominion, slowing the process of assimilation to a painstakingly slow crawl. The Dark Angels accompanying the Primarch were to take the place of the contingent of White Scars already on place, in the hope that the presence of a son of the Emperor would speed up the negociations.

However, that was not to be. When the leader of the Saroshi journeyed to orbit to welcome the Primarch, it was revealed that the planet's people had never had any intention of joining the Imperium. They had deliberatly slowed the process of integration in order to buy time for their preparations, and the arrival of the Lion had provided them with such a high-value target that they had finally made their move. While the people of the planet rose in open rebellion, a nuclear bomb that had been brought aboard the Governor's craft went on, and disaster was only barely avoided when Luther and one of the Calibanite Dark Angels, a Librarian named Zahariel, cast the bomb into the emptiness of space.

'Luther is lying, Lion ... He wanted to let you die. He wanted to be the one to lead the Legion. He always resented being in your shadow, always wished he had left you when he first saw you ...'

With the true intentions of the Saroshis revealed, the Primarch began the assault of the planet. The Astartes witnessed terrible things there, horrors from beyond the limits of reality. For the Saroshi had long kept hidden their worship of the Warp entities they called the Melachim, and were now unleashing their forbidden sorceries against the might of the First Legion. The battle was terrible, and in the end, the Saroshi culture was exterminated, the planet bombarded from orbit until nothing remained on its surface.

On the surface of the planet, the Primarch and his retinue confronted a group of Saroshi sorcerers, who were about to use the energies accumulated through centuries of human sacrifices to perform some terrible ritual. The ritual was foiled, though no record remains of what happened there. The aim of the ritual is still speculated to this day, with theories going from the summoning of a Greater Daemon to the creation of a Warp Storm. Some even say that the ritual did not fail, that its aim was to corrupt the Primarch of the Dark Angels and that it succeeded.

After the Legion left Saroshi, for reasons unknown at the time, Lion El'Jonson sent many of the Astartes under his command back to Caliban, ostensibly to help train the next generations of recruits for the Legion. First amidst these exiled was Luther, his second-in-command and the man who had raised the Primarch like his own son.

With his foster father back on Caliban, the Lion pursued his work of conquest, bringing countless worlds into the fold of the Imperium. Most of the times, the Dark Angels would operate alone, but on rare occasions they would cooperate with another of the Legions. Guilliman would often praise the Lion's tactical insight, though he would regret just as often that his brother did not extend any trust to his comrades on the battlefield, not confining his plans into them until long after the fact. In contrast, the Lion and Russ's own relationship started badly, as the Wolf King considered the secretive ways of the Dark Angels to be unworthy of warriors. On the world of Dulan, this tension came to a peak when the Lion denied the Wolf the kill of the planetary leader, who had insulted Russ. For a day and a night, the two Primarch fought in a brawl, until they stopped and fell in the arms of each other, laughing at the absurdity of the situation. Since that day and until the Heresy itself, the two Legions enjoyed bonds of brotherhood rarely equaled in the Legions, fighting at each other's side as often as circumstances allowed it.

'He is a fool, Lion ... He struck you first by treachery, and now he claims to be your friend ? You cannot trust him ... You cannot trust anyone ...'

The rest of the Primarchs generally didn't have much contact with the Lion, and though they respected his martial prowess, there were always whispers about his upbringing and his arrogance over his so-called 'firstborn' statut. Horus, for his part, was in a tense relationship with his brother, as they were rival of a sort for the statut of best strategist of the Imperium. When the Emperor named Lupercal Warmaster, it was said that only the Lion could have been a contender for such a title. Seeing his brother favored over him, and feeling bitter over what he thought to have been a choice biased by the Emperor's proximity with his first-found son, the Lion left Ullanor to prove his worth once more, by going where no Imperial expedition had gone : into the Ghoul Stars. He called all of his sons to him, into a force rarely seen before in the Great Crusade. Tens of thousand of Dark Angels massed, a force capable of bringing entire Segmentum to heel.

The forces stationned at Caliban asked to be part of this gathering, but the Lion refused them, claiming that they were needed at the homeworld. Still, he stripped the fortress of the Order of aspirants and resources, leaving Luther at the head of those of the Legion who had been exiled with him – and the others who had followed during the years of the Great Crusade. The Lion had, over two centuries of galactic conquest, sent many of his sons on Caliban – most of them Terrans who had been in the Legion prior to his taking command. Rumors abonded as to the reasons of these exiles, and some of them were probably warnings of what was to come, that went tragically unheeded before it was too late.

'You see ? He didn't choose you, just as I said ... He doesn't trust you ... He never did ... He favors Horus over you, as ever ...'

'Come to me, Lion ... Come find me amidst the coldest stars ... And I shall grant you the glory you desire ...'

The Ghoul Stars

Deep into the Ultima Segmentum, the Ghoul Stars is possibly the most hostile region of the galaxy to exist in real space. There, dead worlds orbit around cold, dying stars, once populated by xenos races so alien to Mankind that the mere sight of them would drive a man insane. The Dark Angels fought a long war in the Ghoul Stars, trying to bring the few human settlements that had endured the Long Night under the Imperium's aegis. Some of these worlds welcomed the Astartes with open arms and tears of gratitude, begging the warriors' protection against the nameless horrors that stalked that region of space. Others had fallen into madness and barbary, and denied the Dark Angels victory by any mean their twisted minds could conceive.

After a particulary gruesome war against a xenos empire, the details of which have long been lost, the Dark Angels' fleet was trapped by a Warp Storm, too far from Terra for the light of the Astronomican to guide them. For months, they wandered in the hellish realm, fighting back boardings from daemons that had been born from the dreams and nightmares of ancient, long-dead xenos races. Then, finally, they found a way out of the storm. The fleet of the Dark Angels emerged out of the Empyrean, but they weren't back into true real space : they were instead somewhere inside a Warp anomaly, stranded between realms.

There, on a world of crystal and dust, the Dark Angels met the creature which would be the instrument of their fall to Chaos. There, they met Kairos Fateweaver.

Kairos Fateweaver

In the days that followed the Heresy, many attempts were made to understand just what had driven the mighty Astartes and their Primarchs into corruption. While such research was strictly monitored as to avoid contamination, it was discovered that the warp entity responsible for the fall of the Dark Angels is the daemon known as Kairos Fateweaver.

Kairos Fateweaver is a Greater Daemon of the Dark God known as Tzeentch. He is recorded as appearing to be a two-headed giant with bird-like features. While he claims many titles, his most proeminent ones are that of Architect of Fate, or Oracle of Tzeentch, which refer to his alleged ability to see freely into the past and future. One of his heads always speak the truth, while the other always lies, and there is no way to distinguish between the two. He does not appear to be associated with the Dark Angels any more, but is still a plague on the Imperium, and the Grey Knights have searched a way to seal him permanently for millenia.

According to the forbidden texts of the Elegies of the Dark Ones, Fateweaver showed different futures to the Primarch of the Dark Angels. He showed him a future where his Legion was dead, executed by the Wolves for their secrets, and another where Caliban had burned under the fire of Imperial ships, destroyed for the corruption that lurked beneath its surface, with his foster father Luther dying with it. He showed the Lion his Legion divided between light and darkness, tortured by one great, titanic secret for ten thousand years, seeking a redemption they could never achieve for a crime they did not commit.

He showed him the future of the Imperium : a galaxy where countless trillions lived under the tyranny of the most absurdly bureaucratic regime in all of history, where the blood of innocents was spilled by the righteous and the corrupt alike, where war was never-ending and where the Emperor sat on the Golden Throne as the Carrion God of a rotten Imperium of Man that had turned its back on all the values of the Great Crusade. It is said that Lion El'Jonson, when he saw all of this, knew it to be true. While his mind had held when confronted with visions of atrocity unleashed upon his Legion and his homeworld, seeing all he had ever thought for, the illumination he had dreamt to bring to the galaxy, being cast aside by his father, broke his heart.

It is said that the Lion wept as he witnessed the death of hope. And as, for the first time, the Primarch of the Dark Angels cried, the Oracle of Tzeentch told him with both its mouths that there was a way to avoid this future. The Primarch, said Kairos in its twin voices, had to turn from the destiny that had been set out for him. If he refused to walk the path that had been prescribed, then what he had seen would never come to pass.

'You will be the first, but you will not be the last,' said one of the heads.

'You will be the first, but your part should have been last,' said the second.

And there, facing the source of the voices that had plagued him since his childhood on Caliban, long before he had learned the language of men, the Lion, firstborn son of the Emperor, forsook his oaths of loyalty to Terra and pledged himself and his Legion to the Architect of Fate. In return for his allegiance, the Primarch of the Dark Angels was promised power beyond human comprehension, and the ability to shape fate to his will. This power, however, would not come without sacrifice. What form that price would come exactly, the Lion wasn't told.

The thousands of Dark Angels that had accompanied him had suffered through the same ordeals, though many of them had been driven mad by the visions, and almost all of them followed the decision of their Primarch. One of those who refused the Primarch's will, a Chaplain called Namiel, was slain by Lion El'Jonson when he tried to convince his gene-sire that they were being deceived. The sight of their brother turning against their father made the seeds of doubt and paranoia sown in the minds of the Dark Angels long ago blown. They started to question each other's loyalty to their Primarch and their Legion, and the corruptive touch of Tzeentch spread across the ranks as they began their journey out of the Ghoul Stars.

The Heresy

The Dark Angels were the first to turn from the Emperor's light and into the darkness that is Chaos, but the Lion knew that they weren't enough to avoid the nightmarish future he had seen. They returned to Imperial space and started planning. As they retablished communication with the rest of the Imperium, they learned of the Nikaea edict and Russ' refusal of it. Seeing this as an opportunity to turn his brother against his father, the Lion sent emissaries to Leman Russ, obstensibly to help him repair his relationship with other Imperial forces – for the Wolves were becoming increasingly isolated amongst the Imperium of Man, their savage ways inspiring fear and defiance.

Other emissaries were sent, with specific missions that changed the destiny of entire Legions. The extent of the Dark Angels' corruptive work is unknown, and it is probable that some of the Primarchs fell without the help of the Lion's plots. It is certain that they had an hand into what happened to the White Scars, and probably nudged Guilliman himself toward his ultimate path. Lion El'Jonson may also have been the one that sent Sanguinius and his Blood Angels to Signus Prime, where their own tragedy unfolded, and be the one that stirred the rage of Corax against his tormentors and that of Vulkan against the rest of humanity, but there is no definite proof of that. He most certainly wasn't involved in the fall of the Iron Hands, as they ended up aligned with the Dark God opposing the one he had dedicated himself to.

'Let him walk his path ... He is destined for greatness, but so are you ... And you will always be the first for us, Lion ... No matter what they say, no matter how history remember this ... You are the first ...'

When their Primarch judged that everything was in readiness, the Dark Angels returned to the Ghoul Stars. There, the Lion challenged the Oracle of Tzeentch, commanding it to reveal the secrets it had promised. Kairos apparently claimed that the Lion hadn't yet proved his value, that the power he coveted would be given to him only after he had shown his true allegiance to the rest of the galaxy. Enraged at the daemon's refusal, the Lion sent his Astartes against the Oracle's minions, and a great battle occured, where Dark Angel fought against daemon, and daemon fought against Dark Angel. The details of the battle are lost to even the most knowledgable Inquisitor or the most depraved cultists of the Ruinous Powers, but it is obvious that the Lion won, for he returned to Imperial space just in time to play his part in the Isstvan Atrocity.

The Lion Sword rose, and fell. Its blade pierced the shrieking daemon's rotting heart, and black blood spurted out, dissolving at the touch of reality as it left its host. Lion El'Jonson roared in primal rage and joy as he finally took down his most ancient enemy.

'You ... you fool ! You dare to turn against the Architect of Fate ?! You dare disobey the will of Tzeentch ?! You will die for this ! You will burn for all eternity !'

'I am doing the will of Tzeentch, old bird,' spat the Lion in response to the daemon's bile. 'See, I have finally understood something very important : you are the power I was promised !'

Kairos Fateweaver screamed and tried to fight back, but the spells engraved upon the Lion Sword were too powerful for even the Greater Daemon to resist. Its essence was drained, its power absorbed by the blade that had been forged from the fang of a Calibanite lion so long ago. Bluish warp-fire engulfed the daemon and the Primarch, and for a fraction of second the Dark Angels witnessing the scene thought that their father was dead ...

Then the fire abated, and Lion El'Jonson was revealed to them, standing alone atop a montain of the daemons he had slain before confronting the Oracle of Tzeentch. In his hands, he held the Lion Sword, the runes upon it burning with warp-fire. His armor had been changed, the white that had colored it gone, replaced with the blue of the sorcerous fire that had erstwhile engulfed him. Looking at him, the Dark Angels fell on their knees ...

At Isstvan, the Dark Angels were part of the second wave. They were the first to open fire on their loyalist brethren, cutting down thousand of Death Guards. It is said that Captain Alajos of the 9th Order was the one who gave the order that would all but destroy the Fourteenth Legion, cripple the Alpha Legion and behead the Night Lords.

Lion El'Jonson was on Isstvan himself, and he fought alongside his warriors against the Night Lords that had followed Curze on the planet. Him and the Savior of Nostramo fought a brief battle amidst the madness of the fratricide, and while the Dark Angels claim that the Lion and his foe were separated by the tide of battle, the Night Lords affirm that the traitor Primarch was outmatched, and forced to flee to avoid being slain at Konrad's hands. Whatever the truth, Konrad went on to confront Vulkan, and fall in battle against the Black Dragon.

Once the dust settled on the greatest act of slaughter ever committed upon the Legiones Astartes, the Lion met with the rest of the Traitor Primarchs. The renegades discussed their next move. With one loyal Legion all but dead, one now without a Primarch and another reduced to less than a fifth of its strength, they clearly had the advantage, but they needed to press on before the shocked Imperium could gather its strength and strike back. All agreed on that, but had different ideas on how this could be achieved. Guilliman lacked the charisma necessary to truly unite his brothers, and he was forced to compromise. He let his brothers who wanted it go on their own journeys, while he would advance toward Terra. Once their forces were close to the Throneworld, they would gather and launch the final strike of the war.

The Lion approved of his plan, and then met Guilliman in private. He and the Arch-Traitor spoke of the events of Prospero, of Russ's defiance of the Emperor's edicts. While the Wolf King hadn't yet declared where he stood in the civil war, there was no doubt that he and his Legion could be convinced to join the side of the rebels. Thus, considering the friendship between the Lion and the Wolf, Roboute sent his brother to find Leman Russ and bring him to their side.

Whether or not the Arch-Traitor knew then what would happen, none but the Emperor knows.

The Thramas Crusade and the Battle of Tsagualsa

After the battle of Isstvan, the Night Lords scattered through the galaxy, following the directions of their new Legion Master Sevatar. Sevatar himself engaged a sizeable contingent of the Dark Angels in a bloody conflict known as the Thramas Crusade that engulfed the Ultima Segmentum's northern end. The objective of the Night Lords, who numbered almost a tenth of their Legion's total number, was to prevent the Dark Angels from making full use of the resources they had gathered in their fortresses of the Ghoul Stars. The war there lasted for most of the war, until one day, the Night Lords were ambushed in orbit of the planet Tsagualsa, where they had hidden one of their supplies caches. How exactly the Dark Angels knew where to look is not known, though there are rumors of forbidden, xenos technology involved as well as daemonic help.

The forces of the Eighth Legion were heavily wounded, though they gave as much as they got. In the end, Sevatar ordered a retreat, using the flagship of the Legion, the Nightfall, to provide cover for other ships to escape. While most expected the Legion Master to die with the ship, he managed to survive, and rejoined the rest of his fleet at their reply point, just in time to receive a mysterious astropathic message. The news it contained are unknown, but it made him gather the fleet with him and leave the Segmentum. The next time he was seen was during the Siege of Terra, when the Night Lords' and the Emperor's Children's full gathered might emerged from the Warp together to enact retribution upon the traitors. While the Dark Angels technically won the Thramas Crusade, that he left Sevatar escape and thus probably rescue the Emperor's Children cost the commander of the First Legion forces in the Thramas Crusade his life when the Lion emerged from the Maelstrom and discovered his son's failure to deal with the Night Lords.

The Greatest Betrayal

The Lion found Russ easily, following the trail left in the Warp by his fleet as they had left Prospero in flames. The Wolf King had made a journey back to Fenris, taking everything of value and importance, before running for the Ultima Segmentum, where he believed he would be safe from the Emperor's retribution. He had heard of Guilliman's treachery, but hadn't moved because he wasn't sure that the Lord of Ultramar would welcome him.

Lion El'Jonson reassured his brother, telling him the Guilliman understood Russ' actions all too well, and that the Edict of Nikaea was a foolish thing that had to be defied. He promised Russ that once Guilliman had conquered the Imperium, things would be very different. Russ believed his brother's words, and declared himself for Roboute, swearing himself and his Space Wolves to the cause of the rebellion.

What happened next is at best speculation drawn from the observations and studies of Interrogators who were then surveyed for the rest of their lives and savants who were executed after they submitted the results of their research. While the final result is known, it is the details that have eluded the Imperium for ten thousand years. Perhaps there have been times when we knew, but if that was the case, the Dark Angels have since destroyed that knowledge.

The Lion spoke with the Wolf, and told him of a place of untold power, a place where they could claim weapons and puissance that would enable the two of them to challenge the Emperor himself. That had been one of the reasons Russ had hesitated in joining Guilliman : for all of his brother's forces, who amongst them could slay the Master of Mankind in combat ? Though He then denied His divinity, He may as well have been a god, such was His might.

The place Lion El'Jonson spoke of was the Warp anomaly in the Ultima Segmentum known as the Maelstrom. Many legends circulated in the Expeditionary Fleets about the Maelstrom's origin, but what mattered to Lion and Russ was that on one of the myriad worlds lost within its grasp laid the remnants of a civilization that was older than any other race currently in existence in the galaxy. The Lion claimed that these remnants held the key to defeating the Emperor, to break His power and leave Him still powerful, but mortal once more. But a Primarch could not brave the dangers of this quest alone – two, however, stood a chance. This appealed to Russ' attraction for sagas and legends, and he accepted his brother's offer. They both dispersed their Legions, Russ in thirteen Great Companies, the Lion in a multitude of Orders, took what is estimated to be thirty thousand Astartes with them, and started their journey toward the Maelstrom.

On their way to the Warp anomaly, they were attacked by a Night Lords fleet, led by Legion Master Sevatar himself. The former First Captain had somehow learned of the Primarchs' goal, and seized the opportunity to kill two of the traitors commanders. The ambush failed, but it took out most of the Space Wolves' ship, forcing those of the Sixth Legion to go aboard the ships of the First. Seeing that the Night Lords were present in the Segmentum, where the Dark Angels had massed much resources in preparation for the war, Lion El'Jonson ordered one of his Captains, Holguin of the Deathwing, to take command of the bulk of the First Legion forces and purge the Ultima Segmentum of the Eighth Legion. Thus began the Thramas Crusade, while the two Primarchs and their honor guards entered the Maelstrom.

Of the two demigods and their hundreds of warriors who crossed the treshold of this hellish region of space, only one being that had once been a Primarch and nine times nine Astartes emerged. Leman Russ was lost, or dead : no one know safe for those who were here, and neither the Lion nor the few warriors who survived ever spoke of the events that occured there.

Russ was gone. The strange weapon of the creature of black, cold metal had struck the Primarch of the Space Wolves, and he had not been here anymore. Lion couldn't even begin to imagine where – or when – his brother had been sent, nor if he had survived the transition. He could feel the malevolent joy that came from his blade as the entity within rejoiced over his despair at the loss of his brother. Even here, cut off from the source of its power, the captive Oracle was taunting him.

Of all the warriors they had brought with them, only a few remained. They had faced tens of thousand of the skeletal automatons since they had first set foot upon this world, the only one in the Maelstrom that wasn't submerged by the Warp, and they had paid the price of reaching this inner sanctum. The Librarians especially had suffered, unable to call upon their abilities in this accursed world. But now, at least, he had arrived.

Behind the remnants of the dead construct stood an altar, upon which was placed a strange device that radiated with a greenish, sick light. Looking at it made the Lion want to puke, so alien and removed from the reality he knew it was.

Lion El'Jonson dragged his wounded body toward the altar, and rose high the Lion Sword. With a feral shout, he swung it down, and broke the device apart in a blast of blasphemous energies that sent the entire catacomb reeling.

With the cornerstone of the mausoleum's engines removed, the shield that had cut the planet from the Empyrean disappeared, and the raging tide of the Warp struck the world like a tsunami. It swirled around the sparks of power that still lurked in the machines, twisted and turned, following impossible angles and laws that didn't stay in effect for more than a thought's time.

It all came to him. It went into him. It remade him. And as his mortality was flayed from him, he saw, through the cracks in the universe's frame. He saw ...

Everything.

Lion El'Jonson had found what he had come for. He was no longer blood and bones, no matter how masterfully engineered they had been : he was now a prince of the Warp, given flesh in the Materium by his own will and empowered by the Dark God of Change and, some say, by the stolen life-force of his brother, treacherously slain on a Daemon World within the Maelstrom.

The Fate of Caliban

Having obtained daemonhood, Lion El'Jonson was now more of a threat to the Imperium than ever. Had he joined back with his traitor brothers then, the course of the war could have ended very differently indeed, but he instead travelled back to his homeworld, for reasons and motives unknown. Scholars have speculated that he wanted to add the Dark Angels stationned on the planet to his forces before the assault on Terra, while a few whisper that his goals involved reinforcements of a much darker nature. These are those in the right, though only the highest-ranking Inquisitors are allowed to know the truth of what happened on Caliban.

The Dark Angels fleet had been gathered in full strength, ready to move on to Terra once what they had come to do was done. Hundreds of ships of all size emerged from the Warp at the same time, sending ripples through the Sea of Souls. They approached Caliban in perfect synchronization, sending hails to their brothers on the planet. No answer came. Worried, the Dark Angels went closer, repeating their calls, noticing that there were a lot more orbital guns and platforms that there had been when they had last seen their homeworld.

Then Caliban's defences opened fire on them. Luther, the Primarch's foster father, knew what the Lion had done. But he and his brothers had remained true to the Emperor. Even if the rest of their Legion turned its back on the ideals of the Imperium, even if the name of the Dark Angels was to be forever stained by the sin of betrayal, they would stay loyal. They needed no reward, no recognition. For them, loyalty was its own reward.

Enraged at his father's perceived betrayal, Lion El'Jonson descended upon Caliban like an avenging god. The ground of the planet trembled upon his feet as he walked right through the loyalists' defences, ignoring the many shots directed toward him. He walked right toward Luther, and found him atop the fortress of the Order. In each hand he held a sword, each the twin of the Lion's own blade, but untainted by the Warp. After a short exchange, father and son dueled, unleashing terrible energies in both the physical and spiritual plane. Luther, a mere human, had somehow become the equal of a Daemon Primarch.

'You were the brightest of us all ! You should have led us into the light ! It was your destiny ! Yet you squandered it, and for what ? Look at you ! Look at what you have become ! You were a hero once, a knight who protected his people from the beasts that roamed the darkness ... And now ? Now, you are the beast, Lion. Magnus had warned me, but I couldn't truly believe it ... and yet, look at you ! A twisted abomination, animated by powers that should never have been allowed to exist ! Did you come back for more of these powers, Lion ?! Hear my words : the great serpent is gone ! We banished it, us who are loyal ! And I so swear that I will destroy you too, even if it costs me my mind, my life, or my soul !'

Luther, last vox transmission before his duel against Lion El'Jonson (allegedly).

But it wasn't enough. Though Luther broke one of his swords destroying that of the Lion, and pierced his fallen Primarch's chest with the other, he was unable to slay the Daemon Primarch in the end. His adoptive son, his rage fueled by the madness of the Warp and the whispers of the two-headed daemon, which was at long last free to make him suffer once more, tore him in two with his bare hands, howling his fury at the burning skies. However, even as he died, Luther had his final triumph, as he turned his last breath into a spell of unheard of potency.

Lion El'Jonson's agony at being pierced by Luther's blade was so great that Caliban, its structure already weakened by the events that had occured before the Legion's return and further destabilized by the duel, burst apart. The homeworld of the Dark Angels was destroyed in a planet-wide vortex of Warp energy. The traitors on its ground died horrific deaths, their body and soul rent apart by the currents of the Empyrean, but the loyalists didn't perish. Instead, protected by Luther's last spell, they were able to pass through the Sea of Souls untouched, preserved as if in stasis. They emerged back into reality instantly from their own point of view, only to find that not only they were far from Caliban, but a varying amount of time had passed since their exile through time as well as space. Alone in a galaxy that hated what their Legion had become, these Fallen, as they call themselves in reference to the honor they have lost because of their Primarch's betrayal, kept on fighting. Loyal to the end, they are sworn to fight Chaos and protect Mankind, no matter the situation, no matter the odds.

The Watchers in the Dark

As great a man as Luther was, he was still only a man, not even fully an Astartes. That such a man managed to battle a Daemon Primarch has intrigued the Ordos for centuries, and they attempted to find out how exactly he had been able to accomplish such a supremely unlikely feat.

It appeared that Luther had had help, help of xenos origin. While this is forbidden now, and already was at the time, it is generally understood that Luther hardly had a choice, and even Inquisitors of the most puritanic factions grudgingly admit that he was right to do what he did.

For thousands of years, Caliban had been under the protection of an unknown xenos breed calling themselves the 'Watchers in the Dark'. These xenos were ensuring that the great evil emprisonned within the planet would not escape, and that the beasts that were born because of its influence could not overrun the world and plunge it into the Warp, where the daemon would have escaped its bounds. When the Lion left Caliban, the beasts had been exterminated, and without them to soak up the creature's touch, the entire planet was slowly falling into corruption. Luther and his Dark Angels had to fight more and more uprisings and daemonic incursions, years before the declaration of the Heresy. Strangely, the first recorded of these intrusions coincides with the estimated date of Lion El'Jonson decision to turn against the Emperor.

When Luther tried to learn more of the secrets of the Warp by using the books of the Order of the Lupus, the Watchers in the Dark grew alarmed that he would be corrupted by the knowledge the tomes contained. They approached him by the intermediary of one of his soldiers, the Librarian Zahariel – who, along with Luther, had saved the Lion's life during the Saroshi's incident. They gave him knowledge, and empowered him, so that with his Librarians' help – including the former Chief Librarian of the Dark Angels, Israfael – and that of the xenos themselves, he was able to banish the daemon into the deepest recess of the Warp, breaking its hold on reality for at least ten millenia.

After this success, Luther had become a very powerful being, no longer merely an augmented human – if anything, he was something very close to the greatest Inquisitors of the Holy Ordos' long history. While it is encouraging to know that a being who was, ultimately, just a man, could fight a traitor Primarch on equal ground, the cost of his battle and the compromises he had to make to reach these heights stand as a warning to all Inquisitors – do they dare believe they are as pure, true and uncorruptible as Caliban's one true champion ?

The Sorcerers' Duel

With their homeworld destroyed and the power they coveted lost to them, the Dark Angels received their orders from Guilliman : the time had come for the Traitor Legions to gather and strike at Terra herself. A great many of the Legion's numbers had been lost, be it by refusing to follow their Primarch or by the fire of Caliban's defences, and the power the Lion had sought to harness from the planet was lost forever, but the Dark Angels answered Guilliman's call.

Despite its wounds, the First Legion was still a powerful force, and the Dark Angels fought well on Terran soil. Their Librarians – who now deserved the name of Sorcerers – unleashed mighty sorceries against the defences set by the Thousand Sons, forcing many of the sons of Magnus to stay in the Palace to maintain them instead of fighting on the frontlines. The rest of the Legion fought at the side of the Ultramarines, pressing on the Palace's walls from all directions, trying to make use of their superior numbers to pierce the loyalists' defences. For weeks they fought, until Sanguinius killed Horus and ascended to daemonhood. Then, just as it seemed that the traitors were about to win, the fleets of the Emperor's Children and Night Lords emerged from the Empyrean. The battle could still be won, but the Legions trapped in Ultramar were also approaching, and if they joined the fight, there was no doubt what the outcome would be. Besides, the recently anointed Daemon Primarch of the Blood Angels had just be struck down by his dead brother's favored sons, and his Legion was now useless to the traitors. It was time for one last gambit.

Thus, Guilliman called his brothers to him, and they walked straight into the Imperial Palace, ready to confront their father and end His immortal life once and for all. The energies of Chaos surrounded them, and to Lion El'Jonson blasphemous perceptions, Roboute appeared as a being that was impossibly stronger than even he had ever been. Truly, thought the Lion, none could match the power that had been bestowed by the Dark Gods upon the Thirteenth Son. But he was wrong.

In the dephts of the Cavea Ferrum, Lion El'Jonson faced his brother Magnus, and lost. Guilliman died, at the Emperor's and Fulgrim's hands. The Roboutian Heresy was over, and the traitors had lost.

The chamber was in ruin. Time and space had been torn, and the raw subtance of the Empyrean was dripping through the cracks of reality. In the middle of the room, two demi-gods stood facing each other. The Crimson King held in his hands a mighty sceptre crackling with arcane power and carved with runes that shone with pure, untainted light. In front of him, his enemy carried no weapon safe those granted to him by his dark master, and the cyclops saw with his inner eye that the one true weapon his brother had ever held had been taken from him, broken by a blade that had once been its twin but had been pure when the two had finally crossed.. But this wasn't what interested him the most, beyond the pain of seeing one of his brethren reduced to such an abominable state.

'I can see it,' said the one-eyed crimson giant.

His opponent, a being of shadows and mists, with a face that looked like that of some ancient, mythical creature, did not respond. While the Daemon Primarch's body was the color of the sky at dusk, there was a dark fire within its chest that burned endlessly, gnawing away at the creature's very core. The Crimson King continued, his voice containing a hint of sadness and another of vengeful joy :

'The wound. It is Luther's gift, is it not ?'

The misty daemon roared in anger, and threw itself at the cyclops ...

Post-Heresy : the Hunt for the Fallen

When their Primarch was defeated by Magnus, the Dark Angels felt that their father lived yet, though he was diminished and far, far away. Although their moral was low, they kept on fighting, hoping that Guilliman would kill the Emperor and win the war. But soon, news came that the Lord of Ultramar had been defeated and slain. The Ultramarines started to run, abandonning their allies to the Imperials. Seeing the debacle, the Dark Angels retreated to their ships, teleporting back by sorcery, and ran. They followed the call of their father through the Sea of Souls, and like most of the Traitor Legions, they arrived in the Eye of Terror. There, they reorganised, rebuilt their forces, and waged war against the other Traitor Legions for spoils, territory and pride.

Then, from the Warp, came the first whispers of the Fallen. The Dark Angels learned that their loyalist brethren had somehow survived the destruction of Caliban, and had been scattered through time and space. Enraged beyond measure, they left the Eye of Terror, determinated to find each and every one of the Fallen and bring them to the Primarch, that they may beg for mercy at his feet, or kill them themselves if necessary. Hundreds of the Fallen have already been caught, their fate better not dwelled upon, but there are many more who defy the First Legion with their every breath, and oppose it with their every waking moment. Every time one of the Fallen is brought to the Primarch or slain, the Dark Angel responsible for his capture or kill receive a Black Pearl, formed from the coaguled blood of the Lion himself. It is a mark of great honor to possess even one of these relics, and the Astartes of the First Legion who already have one strive endlessly to earn yet more.

Cypher, Guardian of Order

Of all the Dark Angels who remained loyal and were scattered through time and space when Luther sacrificed his own life to rip Caliban apart in his attempt to slay the Lion, Cypher is perhaps the most mysterious – and the most dangerous. At its origin, the title of Lord Cypher was a position within the First Legion, that of the keeper of traditions. But the holder of that title was amongst the exilees on Caliban. Who exactly wore it when the loyal Dark Angels discovered the truth of their Primarch's betrayal is unknown, but what is certain is that he was a key figure amongst them.

The first records of his appearance date of the thirty-first millenium itself – soon enough for some to speculate that he was never cast away by Luther's spell in the first place. They described 'a warrior, his face hidden by a cowl, clearly of the Astartes, yet bearing none of the sigils of the loyal Legions, who wielded a weapon in each hand – a bolter and a plasma gun – while never using the great sword on his back' . His first appearance helped turn the tides against a warband of Dark Angels who had risen half the population of the planet to rebellion.

Cypher journeys across the galaxy by means unknown. He always appear at the moment when all things seem to be lost, and vanish as soon as the threat has been taken care of. Every time he does so, Chaos suffers a defeat, though the true scope of some of them is only made clear at a much later date. The Dark Angels have hunted him down for ten thousand years, and have claimed to have killed him many times, yet always he has reappared to defeat them once more.

The Inquisitors have recently grown more concerned with his actions, however, as each sighting of Cypher is a little bit closer to Terra itself. Given that every time the Dark Angel appears, it is to foil some plot of the agents of Chaos, their concern is most varranted, but they cannot fathom his motives, and no one else can. The Lion himself doesn't seem to be able to trace Cypher's moves, and psykers who have come to close to the wandering Angel during one of his apparitions had to be put to the sword after they started to repeat endlessly the same words :

'One who doesn't die, one who doesn't live ... He walks in shadows, yet he shines with light ! His path is unknown to all, his will that of the Throne, and he spits in the face of the Architect of Fate with every breath he takes ! He comes ! He comes ! To distant Terra, with salvation he comes !'

Homeworld

Caliban was destroyed in the Lion's final confrontation with Luther. Nothing remains where the world of green forests and mighty fortresses once stood, only an asteroid field that still shimmers with Warp energy – the remnants of the cataclysmic battle that took place, still felt ten thousand years later.

But the Dark Angels have found a new home in the Eye of Terror. Called the World of Shadows, it is a realm of lies and deceit, where even the most basic laws of physic play trick on the mind of the unwary. Every shadow is a gateway by which a Daemon may suddenly attack, and all that is not under watch has changed by the time the eyes return to it. This makes maintaining the fortresses of the Dark Angels difficult, as the Chaos Marines are forced to keep prisonners all around their walls, watching the stones until they die so that they will not go away. A few such fortresses exist, but their number vary, as they are built by successful warlords and fall when their master fail to provide enough slaves to keep watch on their walls.

The Imperium and the Fallen

Very few know the truth of Caliban's death and the fate of those of the Dark Angels who stayed true to the Emperor. To most of the Imperials who meet them, they appear to be Astartes wearing unknown heraldy, but undeniably allied to the Imperium – and that is enough. Since the Fallen still wear the original color scheme of their Legion, rather than the modified one used by their traitor brethren, they are rarely associated with them.

Without a Legion to support them, many of the Fallen have become knight-errants of a sort. They wander from world to world, fighting for humanity wherever they go. The Inquisition is always looking for them, and some have been found. While many have refused to associate with the Holy Ordos, instead prefering to pursue their own crusade in the hope of one day redeeming their Legion, a few have pledged their allegiance to high-ranked Inquisitors, and act as their agents across the galaxy. Their knowledge of the Warp and their long experience in fighting its minions make them great allies, and they are more flexible of thought than the Grey Knights, if somehow lacking in martial capability in comparison.

Organisation

Atop a tower of mist that was as high as a continent was broad, the Lion waited. The wound on his chest still ached, as it had ever since Luther had pierced him with thad cursed sword of his, as it would until his quest for his wayward sons was over.

It had been a cunning trick, he had to give his former lieutnant that much. The spell was bound to the souls of the thousands of Dark Angels that had been dispered through the galaxy : as long as they lived, the Daemon Primarch's power would be diminished. Only when the final one had finally been slain would he regain his true power, and enact his vengeance upon his father's failed empire.

For ten thousand years in the material plane, he had kept that secret. None could know, not even his sons. Should word of his weakness spread, the servants of the other Gods would surely move against him, and the plans of his master would be thrown down. Better to let them think that he was still pursuing petty revenge agaisnt the sons who had refused him, no matter the cost to his actual operations. Even now, his loyal servants scoured the galaxy for any trace of his traitor spawn. In time, they would find them all. In time, the curse would be lifted. And then ...

The Dark Angels are still under the command of their Primarch, though some reports speak of independants warbands. But these warbands are regularly revealed to be simply agents of some long-term plan of their original Legion, and thus, all Chaos Marines who bear the Lion gene-seed are likely to ultimately answer to him. Nevertheless, since he doesn't leave his Daemon World in the Eye of Terror, Lion El'Jonson must leave field command to others. But the favorite agent of Tzeentch is nothing if not suspicious and paranoid, and he would never trust anyone with full command over any part of his Legion. Thus, in keeping with the Dark Angels' traditions of secret offices, when the Dark Angels move to war, there is always more to their chain of command than meet the eye. Inquisitors and Imperial commanders have tried for centuries to understand just how the First Legion organises itself during its actions against the Imperium, but to no avail.

What is known is that any substantial gathering of Dark Angels has at least a military commander tasked with the force's apparent objective, and one or more of the fearsome Interrogator-Chaplains, who are tasked with advancing the force's true agenda alongside with their servants. It has been speculated that the Lion tasks specific individuals with special tasks, all advancing some grand scheme of his, and there is enough evidence to support that theory that it is now standard Imperial tactic, when dealing with Dark Angels, to treat every single Astartes as a target of the same priority, regardless of their apparent position. It is probably what the Lion intended in the first place, since it makes combat a lot harder for the loyalists. Of all the loyalists Legions, only the Alpha Legion is able to fight the Dark Angels on equal grounds, and battles between the first and last of the Legiones Astartes are truly things to behold, as layer after layer of traps, feints and counter-traps spin into motion. Given the secretive nature of Alpharius' sons, it is often only decades after the fact that the truth of these wars is revealed.

Outside of the battlefield, the Legion is very hierarchised – a consequence of both Lion El'Jonson's rampant paranoia and the very nature of the Dark God they are dedicated to – and more is known of the traitors' organisation. The ranks used are similar to those the Legion used before its betrayal, which were themselves inspired by the Calibanite orders. Nine Grand Masters stand beneath the Primarch, and only they may meet him and hear his command. Each of them command a part of the Legion, and is responsible for transmitting the Primarch's will to them. The exact number of Astartes under a Grand Master's command vary depending on his influence in the Legion, his prestige, and the tasks he had been entrusted with by his Primarch. It is at the feet of the Lion's throne that the Grand Masters learn of their lord's will, and of the impossibly complex plots that are born in his god-like mind. It appears that the Lion himself must lower his intellect to the level of his most favored sons in order for them to be able to comprehend his command, and the Grand Masters act as a buffer between him and the rest of the Legion, their already enhanced minds pushed further by the gifts of Chaos and the ruthless competition and intrigues amidst a Legion of secrets.

Rank-and-file battle-brothers – if such a term has any meaning amongst the Dark Angels – are organised into companies of about a hundred warriors, who pledge fealty to a Captain. That Captain himself pledges his allegiance to a specific Grand Master, though such bonds can be bent or even broken. Companies depend on the Grand Master that directs them for supplies, recruits and wars to fight, but each of them is a small warband of its own.

Grand Master Azrael, the Lord of Lies

Azrael is the youngest of the current Grand Masters. Nothing is known of his life prior to becoming a Dark Angel, but the Inquisition believes that he may very well be the most dangerous Dark Angel in existence safe for the Daemon Primarch himself – though none know whether Azrael's fiersome reputation is but another plot of the Lion or not. The Daemon Primach could have ensured that deeds from other traitors would be attributed to his son, or even created the identity of Azrael entirely, a role played by several others.

Regardless, what is known is that Azrael's star is in the ascendant. He is a master of deceit, capable of weaving webs of treachery that take even the most habile members of the Inquisition decades to unravel while he pursues other plans. He has been granted guardianship of the Sword of Secrets, one of the four blades alledgely forged from the fragments of the Lion Sword when Luther broke the weapon on Caliban. He has personnaly led many raids on Imperial space, and is considered responsible for the death of at least twenty billions Imperial citizens during the Sephlagm Atrocity, when the Inquisition was forced to perform an Exterminatus on the planet due to the corruption he had sown upon it. The current Master of the Assassins is rumored to have sent a dozens kill-teams on Azreal, yet the Lord of Lies, as he is known by those wretched souls that debase themselves with Chaos worship, still lives.

Combat Doctrine

'Emperor protect us ... It is the Dark Angels ! Don't let them take you alive ! No matter what, DON'T LET THEM TAKE YOU ALIVE !'

Typical Imperial reaction to a Dark Angel's strike

The Dark Angels had been the first of the Legions to be created, and as such, they had performed all the duties that were expected from the Astartes until the others had been brought into existence by the Emperor's gene-crafters. Thus, prior to their betrayal, they had no speciality, training instead in a broad variety of warcraft that enabled them to face any situation with the optimal response. After they cast their lot with the Architect of Fate, however, things changed.

Before going to battle, the Dark Angels will gather as much intelligence about their enemies as possible. This takes the form of divinations, sending cultists for infiltration, and the interrogation of prisonners. Only when the commander of the warband has a proper understanding of the situation does he start to plan for the battle proper.

In battle, the Dark Angels are often accompanied by the Broken Ones : the poor wretches who fell in their clutches during the preparation of their assault and passed in the hands of the Interrogator-Chaplains. Their minds broken by the extensive tortures, physical and psychic, most of them launch themselves at the enemy lines with reckless abandon, eager to finally die at the guns of their erstwhile comrades. Dressed back into their loyalist uniform, they show the defenders what it is exactly they risk by opposing the will of the Dark Angels. But as devastating as these Broken Ones can be to the Imperial moral, the true threat comes from those whose individuality has endured the Interrogator-Chaplains' attentions. These can return to their former brothers-in-arms and claim to have escaped by miracle (though this particular tactic does not work anymore, as the Imperium has grown wary of any who claim to have fled from the Dark Angels – to the cost of many actual survivors) and then wreck havoc in the loyalists' defences. Even if they only fight alongside the Dark Angels, to be faced with such an undeniable proof of Chaos' corrupting influence is an experience that can break even the most battle-hardened veteran. Entire regiments of the Imperial Guard have had to be purged after a conflict against the Dark Angels, some by over-zealous Inquisitors, but others because of genuine corruption, fostering in the doubt and fear left by the traitors in the faithfuls' souls.

The tactics of the Dark Angels are often confusing to an Imperial commander. On the larger scale of things, their actions appear random and meaningless, but are later revealed to cause uncalculable damage to the Imperium : this principle of war is mirrored by their strategy on the battlefield. The Dark Angels commanders always appear to be four or five steps ahead of their enemies.

Beliefs

'You may have a part in Tzeentch's great design, but do not think yourself untouchable. Pieces on a god's chessboardare just that : pieces, and if you fail to perform adequatly or refuse to play your part, you will be removed and another will fulfill your duty. The fate of men is preordained by the Architect of Fate, and while there are parts that can be rewritten if needed, minor and insignificant stories that do not impact the whole, the greater design of the God of Change is the only thing that cannot be altered. Ask for what your purpose is if you will, but do not turn against it, for your are but Tzeentch's puppet, and if you do not dance to His tune, then another will in your place.'

The Vision of the Architect of Fate, author unknown, declared Hereticus by Inquisitor Holtonorius (deceased) in M34.1457.

While the Dark Angels have always been a secretive breed, the events of the Roboutian Heresy have made them almost impossible to study. The Daemon Primarch of the First Legion was driven quite mad by the events of Caliban and the ultimate result of his betrayal for the Imperium, and has now embraced his role as agent of Tzeentch, and encouraged his sons to do the same.

Now, having failed to prevent the visions of their Primarch to come to pass, the Dark Angels want nothing more than to erase all signs of their failure. They seek to bring about the ultimate reign of Tzeentch, when all things will be mutable and nothing will ever be constant. Then, they believe, they will be able to erase the shame of their failure and their Fallen brethren's betrayal. To this end, they follow the dictates of their Primarch, for through him speak the God of Change. They plot and scheme amongst themselves, both because it is in their nature, but also because it is expected of those who follow the path of Tzeentch. They have so completely embraced their Chaotic nature that their presence can be unnerving even to other Traitor Marines, who see their zeal with the same suspicion they once saw their secretive nature.

'We all play our part, Night Lord ! Surely you must see that ? I know you do ! Our roles are ordained by the Gods, and only by embracing them can we find our true place in this universe !'

Extract from the recording of Apothecary Talos, seconds prior to the speaker's demise.

Geneseed & Recruitment

The Dark Angels gene-seed is ripe with random mutations, the cost of pledging one's Legion to the Great Mutator. Most of the time, these mutations aren't deadly, and often prove beneficial to their recipient : a Dark Angel may have a third eye on his forehead, which allows him to see into the near future, or his body may be shrouded in warp-fire that make him all but invulnerable to common weaponry. However, these 'gifts' always come at a price : the third eye may never close, denying the Dark Angel the ability to truly sleep, just as the warp-fire would prevent its host to ever get too close to his comrades or attempt to infilitrate an enemy position. While it is rare that a Dark Angel succombs to his mutations and become a Chaos Spawn, it is not entirely unheard of, and is considered amongst the ranks of the Lion's sons to be the mark of failure and the displeasure of Tzeentch. Those who suffer this fate are generally emprisonned in a great vault on the Dark Angels' homeworld, where their never-ending wailing is orchestrated by Daemons to sing the praises of Tzeentch.

Recruitment is, to the Dark Angels as to all Legions trapped in the Eye of Terror, a difficult yet necessary task. They take the children of the cultists of Tzeentch that they use during their assaults, and bring them back into the Eye of Terror. It is there, on the World of Shadows, that these younglings are tested by the Architect of Fate's minions. Those deemed worthy receive the gene-seed of Lion El'Jonson, and are placed within great incubators where the secrets of the Legion are poured into their brain as their body matures into that of an Astartes. By the time they emerge, they are Dark Angels in body and mind, their souls irremediably dedicated to Tzeentch.

Battlecry

The Dark Angels use a broad variety of battle-cries, changing them according to whatever their current objective is. They will often use them to claim a goal different from their actual one, and sometimes shout the plain, naked truth. But two calls are used regardless of the situation : 'Bow to the will of Tzeentch !' and 'For the Lion and the Great Mutator !'. When they are hunting for one of their loyalist brethren and know that they are in hearing range, their voices endlessly repeat the name of their quarry alongside promises and threats, in an unnerving tone that speak of a single-mindeness alien to any sane soul.

As for the Fallen, they use the traditional call of 'For the Emperor !' as well as the more personnal 'For Luther !' and 'No mercy for the Unforgiven !' when facing their corrupt brethren.

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Emperor's Children : The Perfect and the Broken

Broken upon the anvil of war and scarred forever by Dark Eldars' blades, the Emperor's Children are now the vengeful sons of a martyred Emperor, fighting across the entire galaxy in the name of Mankind with a cold fury and an endurance that few souls outside the Third Legion can match. Ten thousand years after they were taken from joining in the Heresy by xenos treachery, their thirst for vengeance is still just as strong, and the degenerate eldars of Commorragh still look upon the emblem of the golden aquila with fear as they remember the terrible revenge already enacted. They are few in numbers, but each of them is an army of his own, and woe betide any who dare cross the path of Fulgrim's scions.

Origins

When the Emperor's conquest of Terra was over, He looked up at the galaxy, and saw that the task at hand remained tremendous, and beyond any man's ability to achieve alone, even one such as Him. So it was that He decided to sire twenty children, who would be the generals He needed to reclaim the worlds Mankind had lost during the Long Night, and protect them forevermore afterwards. In the laboratories of Luna, hidden away from the rest of the newly created Imperium, He created twenty beings of perfection, who would be the pinnacle of human genetics and possess the Emperor's own transcending powers. But before these children could be born, they were stolen away, spread across the galaxy by the Dark Gods' cruel hands.

Fulgrim was one of these children, one of the Primarchs. He came to the world of Chemos, far into the Ultima Segmentum. Unlike some of his brothers, he wasn't adult when he emerged from his pod : indeed, he wasn't even a boy. He was a baby, shining with light and the promise of a better future.

At this time, Chemos was a ruined, dying world. Once a prosperous mining world, the civilization that had once ruled the planet had collapsed during the Long Night as it was cut off from its neighbors, who had supplied it with sustainance in return for the ore its produced. Its inhabitants now lived precarious lives, eating and drinking food and water that had already been recycled a thousand times over by the time of their birth. A few fortress factories supplied what little resources were available, and work was hard to keep up with the near-impossible quotas required for the fortress to even hope to survive a year longer.

Fulgrim was found by three workers of such a fortress. They had seen his drop-pod descend upon the world, and had hoped to salvage it for mineral, yet what they found was so much more precious. Where the young Primarch had arrived, the dry, dead earth was spraying water, a fountain of clear liquid the likes of which the human had never seen. Believing it to be a sign, and awed at the boy's beauty, they brought him to their home fortress.

On Chemos, orphans were a weight that was usually discarded, but at the sight of Fulgrim, even the cold-hearted accountants called the Caretakers who ruled the city couldn't bring themselves to do what was, according to the law of their forebears, their duty. Fulgrim was raised by the collectivity of his adoptive fortress factory, and at the age of five he was already accomplishing the work of two grown men. His true potential, however, laid in his genius intellect. In mere years, he inverted the entropic cycle into which Chemos had been trapped. He rediscovered abandoned settlements and mastered the technologies within, bringing a new golden age to the people of Chemos entire. Culture and arts, long abandoned in the pursuit of simple survival, were founded anew. For the first time since the coming of the Age of Strife, the people of Chemos could go to sleep knowing the world would be a better place the next day.

Fifty years after Fulgrim's arrival, the Emperor arrived to Chemos. The Master of Mankind had been looking for His lost sons, and He could feel that one of them was on the prosperous planet. He descended upon Chemos, and was reunited with His estranged son.

Fulgrim immediately knelt before the Emperor, recognising Him as his father. He and Chemos were welcomed into the fold of the Imperium, and the Primarch was brought to Terra, where he would be given command of the Legion that had been created from his gene-code. However, where the other Legions numbered in the thousands, the Third Legion had been all but destroyed by an accident of unknown causes during its foundation. Less than two hundred sons of Fulgrim remained, and they welcomed their father's return with great hope.

'What happened ?'

Fulgrim's voice was tense, and his fists were tight. There was a thin, almost undetectable hint of emotion in his voice. In all the centuries to come, that emotion would only very rarely come back to haunt the Primarch, but in that moment, it was here : fear. Fulgrim was afraid that there had been a problem with his own genetics, that some flaw within himself had caused the near destruction of his Legion.

The Emperor saw the worries of His son, and shook His head. When He spoke, His voice was not the usual thundering boom of the warlord who commanded billion-strong armies, nor was it that of the overlord demanding obediance from cowed populations. It was simply the voice of a father, reassuring his son – yet there was an hint of sorrow in His eyes.

'Treachery, my son. Treachery of the blackest kind.'

Fulgrim gave a great speech to the gathered warriors, telling them that they would rise from their current precarious situation. He claimed that they were the Children of the Emperor, cast in His own perfect image, and that they would never fail him. Many present were shocked by Fulgrim's use of the Emperor's name in his Legion's heraldry, but the Emperor indulged His son with a smile, and even allowed the newly renamed Emperor's Children to wear the symbol of the aquila upon their armor, an honor unique amongst the Legiones Astartes - even to this day, ten thousand years later. With their Primarch – whom they called the 'Phoenician', in reference to the creature of legend who could rise from its own ashes – at their head, the sons of the Third Legion were ready to assume their rightful place into the Great Crusade.

The Great Crusade

Despite Fulgrim's desire to prove his worth to his father, his Legion was simply not numerous enough to be sent on the front alone. By the Emperor's own decree, it was assigned to assisting the Sixteenth Legion, the Luna Wolves of Horus Lupercal. Fulgrim met his brother aboard the Vengeful Spirit, and the two Primarchs immediately formed a bond that would last for centuries. Horus admired Fulgrim's tactical acumen and confidence, though he felt his brother needed a presence at his side to ensure his pride didn't take the better of him. For decades the Emperor's Children fought at the side of the Luna Wolves, until the time came for the Third Legion to fight its own part in the Great Crusade.

Fulgrim gathered the full strength of his Legion to wage war against an enemy that had been known to the Imperium for a long time, but had yet to be purged from the galaxy : the Laers. The Laers were a xenos race inhabiting a world with no landmasses to speak of, yet they had developed intra-system space flight and if nothing was done, they would soon discover Warp travel and spread across the stars. But despite the obvious threat Fulgrim considered them to pose to the Imperium's future, they had been ignored, as Imperial tacticians estimated that a war against them would take decades and cost the lives of millions of soldiers. There had even been talk of making the Laer's homeworld into a protectorate of the Imperium.

This was an outrage Fulgrim couldn't allow to pass, and a challenge he could not resist. To him, only humanity was perfect, and thus deserving to rule the galaxy. Had not the Emperor forbidden all alliance with the xenos ? Had the fleets of the Great Crusade not put dozens of human worlds to the sword because they had allied themselves with the alien during the Long Night, and refused to return to the Imperium's righteous embrace ? To let the Laers live, reasoned Fulgrim, would be hypocrisy on a galactic scale.

He vowed that his Legion would destroy the Laers in a single month, and prove that they were worthy of the name they had been honored with. The war began in earnest, with the Laers fighting the way only a species facing extinction can. The xenos had taken to modifying their own bodies in an attempt to adapt themselves to their various roles in society, and to the unknowing observer it would have looked as if the Emperor's Children were battling a coalition of aliens rather than a single race unified by a common genome. Even as the Astartes fought them, pushing them ever further toward their capital city, the Laers adapted, revealing blades of bone that were designed to pierce through a power armor's gorget and sound weapons that could burst the skull of a Space Marine inside his helmet. The Apothecaries of the Third Legion dissected thousands of the creatures, attempting to understand how they were able to alter themselves so quickly without disastrous results, but to no avail. It was as if the science of the Laers did not follow the rules of the universe.

Yet the true horror of the Laers was yet to be revealed. As the campaign approached its climax, Fulgrim himself led the final assault on what had been identified to be the Laers' most defended stronghold. They expected to find a governing center, or archives of their civilization, but all they found was a building filled with somnolent Laers, in the middle of great statues and paints. It took a moment for the champions of the secular Imperium to understand that they were within a temple. It took less time for the Librarians amongst them to realize they had been led into a trap. The temple was full of the corruption of the Warp, hidden behind a thick layer of glamour that confused the senses and tried to reach into the minds of the Astartes. Enraged by the deception, Fulgrim ordered the temple be purged by bolter and blade, before his fleet razed it from orbit.

As the Emperor's Children turned their weapons on the entranced Laers, the Sea of Souls stirred, and an host of creatures from the beyond incarnated themselves into the flesh of their worshippers. Fulgrim and his Phoenix Guard fought against an army of monstrosities, refusing to listen to the lies they were shouting at them. When they finally emerged from the temple, half of them had been lost, and the Lord Commander Vespasian rested in the arms of Fulgrim, grievously wounded by a whispering blade carried by one of the incorporeal abominations. Victory belonged to the Emperor's Children, but it rang hollow, as they had lost too many of their warriors, and were ultimately denied the prize they had fought for when Fulgrim grimly ordered the entire world be destroyed by his fleet. Vespasian himself, one of Fulgrim's closest advisers, took years to recover from his wound, and ultimately needed the help of the Thousand Sons' arcane secrets to heal fully.

He was lying down in the Apothecarion, with the one man he thought could save him standing near him. Too long had he waited. The whispers never ceased now, and in the rare times he could even understand their meaning, they made his blood ran cold with revulsion.

'Can you describe the weapon that did this to you ?' asked the Apothecary.

Vespasian couldn't. He remembered the blade all too well, as did he remember the abomination that had wielded it, yet he found that he could not speak the words. Something was blocking his tongue, preventing him from speaking. Panic, the alien sensation he had not known in decades, creeped into his mind, and he started at the Thousand Sons' emissary, desperately trying to convene the sense of helplessness that was befalling him. He had tried to do the same with all the Apothecaries of his Legion, but they hadn't understood. They had simply assumed he was going in shock – and there had been no Librarian nearby to pick up his thoughts. They were forbidden in the Apothecarion, to avoid the pressure of too much pain on their senses – and Vespasian hadn't been able to leave the damn place in years. This ... this joint mission with the Thousand Sons ... it was his only chance.

At once, it seemed, the Apothecary understood. He called for his brothers, while focusing his powers on relaxing the Lord Commander's muscles. An instant later, the doors of the Apothecarion aboard the Andronicus opened to let a full squad of the Fifteenth Legion enter, carrying the staves of their office.

Vespasian heard something within him – something that had once been great, that had once been promised power over the stars and the fate of the galaxy, but was now reduced to a single fragment of its former glory trapped in the body of a Legionary that would never allow it control – scream in despair at the sight. A feral, hateful smile formed on Vespasian's lips at the thought-sound.

For many years after the Cleansing of Learan, the Emperor's Children performed their duties in the Great Crusade, earning many honors for their martial prowess and tactical skills. Horus himself would often praise his brother's Legion, and claim that as long as he, Fulgrim an Sanguinius stood together, there was no foe in the galaxy that could stop them. When the First Primarch was elevated to the rank of Warmaster on Ullanor, Fulgrim congratulated him warmly, and promised to help him at the best he could in his new duties. He helped him smooth things with those of his brothers who thought they would have been a better choice, and his Legion helped support the Sons of Horus' expeditions across the galaxy while their father assumed the mantle of Commander of the Great Crusade.

At times, however, the Emperor's Children confidence and their quest for utmost perfection in performing their duties would be perceived as arrogance by the other troops of the Great Crusade, including some of their brothers in the Legions. While Fulgrim had an excellent relationship with his brother Ferrus Manus, the two Primarchs having first met in the forges of Terra and gifted each other with godly weapons of untold majesty, he was mocked by Leman Russ and Angron, who considered him to be more at his place in an art gallery than on a battlefield. Roboute Guilliman called Fulgrim upon the so-called arrogance of his warriors, warning his brother than 'pride goeth before a fall' while Vulkan's Salamanders simply refused to fight alongside the Third Legion. The eager acceptance that Fulgrim showed of the remembrancers did little to rise his brothers' opinion of him, but the Phoenician knew the value of art, having seen on Chemos how hollow the lives of human beings could be without it.

Besides Horus and Ferrus Manus, the one brother Fulgrim was the closest to was Konrad Curze, the lord of the Night Lords. Fulgrim had been with the Emperor when they had discovered the Savior of Nostramo, and the two of them had been friends ever since. On Cheraut, it was Fulgrim who prevented Konrad from killing Rogal when he was enraged by the Seventh Primarch's exactions – an act that the Phoenician would regret greatly many years later.

Fulgrim was also a friend of Magnus, of whom he admired the culture and philosophy. The Phoenician had learned the value of the Librarians during the Cleansing of Laeran, and when the Council of Nikea gathered, he spoke in favor of the Librarius with great passion before his brothers and father, reminding them of the horrors that dwelled behind the walls of reality, and how the Legions needed to be prepared to face them. While his position earned him the enmity of Mortarion and Corax, as well as renewed the one he had with Russ, Fulgrim was convinced he had done the right thing. He was vindicated when the Emperor delivered his judgement, though the reaction of Russ cast a dark shadow of the events of this day.

The Trap

Two hundred years after the beginning of the Great Crusade, Fulgrim received a call for help from his brother Manus. The Gorgon was fighting a war against a fleet of humans allied with xenos called the Diasporex, and asked for the help of the Emperor's Children in fighting them. Glad to be reunited with his beloved brother, Fulgrim gathered his Legion, and set course for the coordinates Ferrus Manus had sent him. The Emperor's Children rejoiced at the prospect of fighting alongside the Iron Hands in such a righteous war, and held their traditional victory banquets as their ships neared the indicated coordinates. It would be the last time such a banquet was ever held by the Third Legion.

When the fleet emerged from the void, neither the Iron Hands nor the Diasporex were anywhere in the near vicinity. Checks on the galactic charts confirmed that they were at the rendez-vous point, but there was no sign of the Tenth Legion. For weeks, the Emperor's Children searched for their cousins, sending astropathic messages through the increasingly agitated Empyrean and ships to scout the nearby systems – perhaps the Iron Hands' message had been altered by the Warp, and they were a few parsecs away.

Then, thirty days after the fleet's arrival, the void opened. Thousands of ships emerged from absolute darkness, bearing the emblems of a hundred noble houses of the dark kin of the eldars. As one, the raiders plunged upon the Pride of the Emperor, the flagship of the Third Legion. They cut it apart, and sent thousands of warriors aboard. Caught by surprise, dispersed across several systems in their quest for the Iron Hands, the rest of the fleet could only watch in horror and listen to increasingly desperate vox-transmission and astropathic sendings as they rushed toward the incursion. By the time they arrived, it was too late : the Pride of the Emperor's corpse hung in the void like a dead animal. The raiders captured hundreds of their brothers, including the Primarch himself.

Fulgrim was on the deck of the Pride of the Emperor when the Dark Eldars came. He knew of the eldars and their twin kinds – those who lived aboard their craftworlds, only ever interfering with the Imperium when their own interests commanded them to do so, according to their incomprehensible designs, and those who raided human settlements for slaves and slaughter. He recognised the fleet as a gathering of the second category ... but it made no sense. Never before had the pirate eldars ever been seen in such numbers, and never before had they dared to attack a Legion !

'Why ?' he asked under his breath. His mind – the genial mind of a Primarch – couldn't understand the situation. The only thing he knew for certain was that this was a trap, but how ? Did the eldars send the message that had borne his brother's sigils ?

'My lord ?' said one of the officers. 'We are being hailed by ... by the enemy fleet.'

'Open it.'

The voice of the xenos was like the sound of broken glass piercing the skin. Even behind its alien tone, Fulgrim could feel the unbearable hatred that burned within the speaker.

'Chosen of She-Who-Thirsts,' hissed the creature. 'Disgusting Mon-Keigh who would whore yourselves away to the Goddess of Tears. We are the Lords of Commorragh, the princes of the Dark City, the true rulers of this galaxy.'

'What do you want ?' asked Fulgrim.

'We want you, son of a false god and puppet of one born of our own blood. We want your life and your death. Your screams will feed us, the agonies of your sons will warm our blood in the cold void. And when you finally die, She-Who-Thirsts will be denied Her champion.'

Centuries later, the Imperial historians would attempt to unravel the reasons behind the Dark Eldars' actions. Interrogation of prisoners would reveal that the Dark Eldars believed the Emperor's Children were on their way to fall to the Dark God known to the Imperium as Slaanesh, the God of Pain and Pleasure, born of the Fall of the Eldars and eternal curse of their dying species. Why they would ever believe that the noble sons of Fulgrim would ever stoop so low remains a mystery, but the mind of the xenos is unknowable to the loyal subject of the Imperium. Theories abound, though – the Dark Eldars were manipulated by the rebels, who were performing the Isstvan III atrocity at the precise moment of the xenos' arrival; or the Emperor's Children were initially targeted by the Ruinous Powers for corruption before proving that they would never ally themselves with Chaos and forcing the Dark Gods to change their plans. Only the Emperor may know the true, and perhaps Guilliman in his stasis casket.

Regardless of the reason behind the Dark Eldars' assault, the rest of the Emperor's Children reacted violently to their father's abduction. Hundreds of ships launched themselves at the xenos' pursuit, and entered the fabled Webway by the gates used by the eldars. The moment they did so, however, they were lost in a realm that wasn't reality and wasn't the Warp, one where they had no idea how to navigate. The trap had been sprung, and the Emperor's Children would now suffer the long agonies of what would come to be called the Bleeding War.

The Bleeding War

Trapped in the Webway, unable to understand what was happening to them, and deprived of their Primarch, the Emperor's Children nonetheless fought on. Their Librarians managed to understand some of the rules of this strange dimension they had found themselves stranded in, and they led the Legion toward the Dark Eldars by following the trails of pain and agony they left in their wake – even there, in a place where the Warp's presence was reduced to the few tendrils of it that passed through the cracks, the stench of the xenos could still be dectected. But the Eldar fleet had scattered across the black dimension, and the Emperor's Children were forced to do the same, as they did not know on which vessel their Primarch was held captive.

It quickly appeared that the Dark Eldars had known that they would be followed, and were ready to tear apart the Legion piece by piece. They goaded entire ships by broadcasting the screams of their commanders' brothers across the void, and then retreated to ambush points where the Astartes vessels would be outnumbered and trapped. Of Fulgrim himself, there was no sign in their taunt – doubtlessly because they still had to get a single moan of pain out of the Primarch.

As the days went on and turned to weeks, then to months, then to years, the faith of the Emperor's Children in their Primarch's survival began to fade. Some began to talk about leaving the Webway, returning to the Imperium and asking for the aid of Fulgrim's brothers. But beyond the sheer revulsion the Astartes felt at abandoning their Primarch, even if only for a time, a more practical consideration prevented this : the Emperor's Children did not know the way out. The gates they had passed through had vanished, and they were unable to locate others in this labyrinth.

Saul was bleeding in his cell. Pain was coursing through every nerve of his body, yet it was nothing compared to the agony he felt at the sight of his brother's corpse.

Lucius – prideful, childish, handsome Lucius. They had fought together on Murder, the cursed world where Lord Commander Eidolon had died. They had endured, and when the Sons of Horus had arrived, they had been fighting back to back against a seemingly endless tide of the megarachnids. Lucius had been at his side when he had delivered Eidolon's body to Fulgrim, and they had drunk together to the memory of all the brothers they had lost on this damned world.

And now he was dead, and their jailers had cast his body in Saul's cell to taunt him. The sorrow that had haunted the Captain ever since he had been brought onto that accursed ship, kicking and screaming, threatened to overwhelm him. Then, he noticed that there were no wound on Lucius' body that could explain his death – he had died when his hearts had given up, unable to sustain the stress inflicted on the flesh of their host.

'No, damn you', spat Saul, raising his hands. With all the strength he could muster, he hit the chest of the dead man, again and again, forcing the blood to flow, forcing the hearts to contract once more, ignoring the pain in his muscles, ignoring the laughter of his captors as they watched his pathetic attempts at resurrecting his comrade.

Then Lucius' eyes opened, and he gasped, forcing air into his three lungs. He looked at Saul with wide eyes, unable to accept that he was alive once more. There was no more laughter from their jailers – they stood motionless, stupefied at the miraculous rebirth.

'You must live, Lucius,' told Saul to his friend, even as the gates of the cell opened once more, and the Dark Eldars came back for him. 'Whatever happens, you must live. Live, and claim revenge.'

These were the last words Lucius ever heard his brother speak before they took him. For hours, the blademaster listened to the sounds of xenos blades cut into Saul's flesh, and the hissing of acid and poisons as they were injected into his body. Not even once did Saul gave his tormentors the satisfaction of his screams.

Lucius looked down, and picked up a piece of metal that had fallen from his own body. It was the broken blade of a scalpel, not a weapon – not even a tool. But he lifted it to his face – the only part of him that the Dark Eldars had left untouched, out of some cruel humor – and he began to cut. Even in his weakened state, his enhanced biology healed the wounds as soon as they formed, leaving only pale scars behind.

One scar for Saul. One for Solomon. One for Julius ...

Finally, after years of raiding battles amidst the never-ending blackness of the absolute void, salvation came to the Emperor's Children. The Night Lords, led by their Legion Master Sevatar, came to the help of the Third Legion. They rescued their ships from the hundred battles they were trapped in, and hit at the core of the Dark Eldar armada. Hundreds of Emperor's Children were released from the depths of the xenos ships – forever marked by the horrors they had experienced at the hands of that degenerate race.

Fulgrim himself was found not on one of the ships, but in a void-fortress floating amidst the darkness of the Webway itself. The Phoenician had been horribly tortured, his beautiful face ruined and his body torn apart before being sewn back together by the expert knives of the Dark Eldar's haemonculis. The Astartes found traces that the Primarch had escaped several times, only to be captured again when the Dark Eldars ambushed him at his sons' prison, knowing he would always try to free them, no matter the risk for himself. When the gate to that prison was open, however, there were no Emperor's Children behind it : only the bodies of Fulgrim's Phoenix Guard, dead months, perhaps years ago. The Phoenician had been deceived all this time.

The Prince of Crows busted the heavy door, Rylanor the Ancient and Vespasian at his side, while the warriors he had brought with him covered them. The stink of genetically enriched blood was almost overpowering to his enhanced senses. The Dreadnought burst the chains holding the prisoner, and the two Legion commanders helped the bloody demigod to his feet before he shook them off.

Sevatar looked up at the bleeding, maimed form of Fulgrim. Despite the wounds that covered him, each of which would have crippled a Legionary for life, the Primarch was still standing. He opened his mouth, and to the Legion Master's horror, Sevatar saw that Fulgrim's tongue was gone. Yet a voice emanated from the Phoenician's throat : somehow he was forcing his vocal cords to produce recognisable sounds, even though his voice would never again be the smooth, beautiful thing it had once been – just like the rest of him.

'S-s-sevatarrrr ... Whe-where isss Konrradd ? Wherrre iss my bro-brotherrrr ?'

Sevatar told him. He told him of Guilliman's treachery, of the Isstvan V Atrocity. He told him of the war that had torn the Imperium apart, that was even now closing to Terra. He told him of the fate that had befelled the King of the Night, on a world sullied forever by the blackest betrayal of all ages and the death of the future that all Astartes had fought for.

And, for the first time ever since the Dark Eldars had captured him, the Primarch of the Emperor's Children wept.

Upon learning what had occurred in the rest of the galaxy while he was being tortured, Fulgrim entered in a terrible rage. He vowed to kill Guilliman with his own hands, and bade the remnants of his Legion to follow him and their saviors back to Terra. There, he promised in the broken voice of a man without a tongue, they would make the traitors pay. As for the Dark Eldars, he swore that a time would come when they would curse the day they dared to attack the Third Legion. Thus, the Third and Eighth Legion began their journey to Terra. To the Emperor's Children's surprise, the Night Lords took them across the Webway, using the mysterious dimension as a shortcut to approach Terra without needing to go through the boiling Empyrean. How exactly the Night Lords knew the path remains unknown to this day, and though it is suspected the high command of the two Legions know the truth of the matter, they refuse to speak of it.

The Battle for Terra

'In endless agony reborn,

By the blades of true brothers returned,

Enemies of the Emperor, we have come for you.'

Transmission from the Andronicus upon the Emperor's Children's arrival at Terra

When the Emperor's Children and the Night Lords arrived at Terra, they found a world burning with war and slowly descending into oblivion – dragging all of Mankind's future with it. Reports flooded in from the surface, and a plan was immediately decided. The Night Lords, unable to ignore the screams of the Terrans as they were butchered by the debased Blood Angels, went to the surface to fight against their treacherous brethren, while the Emperor's Children showed the traitor fleet the true meaning of void war.

Lucius the Reborn

While most of the Emperor's Children fought in boarding actions during the last hours of the Siege, a few of them descended on the Throneworld to fight alongside the Night Lords. First amongst the was Lucius, Thirteenth Captain of the Third Legion – though he commanded no men by then, having lost them all to the Dark Eldars' depredations. Rumors claimed that Lucius had died aboard the Dark Eldars' torture cells, but had risen to avenge his brothers. Regardless the truth, he had been found outside of the prisoners' confinements, hunting for the xenos who had dared to spill his Legion's blood, his once handsome face a mess of crisscrossing scars.

Lucius was a swordsman of terrifying skill, who had proved to be a match even for the supernatural speeds of Commorragh's own elite blade-dancers. On the grounds of Terra, he challenged the champions of the Traitor Legions, killing dozens of them in the final nights of the Siege. Legend has it that Lucius and Sevatar, Legion Master of the Eighth Legion, fought back to back against the Blood Angels, and that Lucius gave his life to the save that of the Prince of Crows. However, the same story is told across all loyalist Legions present at Terra. Amongst the Iron Warriors, it is recounted that Lucius died to save the mysterious 'Warsmith' of an Imperial Fist's blade, while the Thousand Sons claim he sacrificed himself to protect Ahriman from the assault of a Dark Angel and the Death Guard still speaking in awe of how he saved Captain Nathaniel Garro from the fangs of one of the Space Wolves' great beasts. Even the Sons of Horus, who fought on the other side of the heretics' lines, claim that Lucius saved the life of Abaddon himself.

Regardless of the truth, Lucius was never seen again after the Siege, and his body was never recovered. When the Ecclesiarchy rose in power and influence, he was sanctified as Lucius the Reborn, Eternal Watcher of the Imperial Palace. A towering statue built in his image still stands at the gates of the Palace, though it lacks the many self-inflicted scars.

With boarding actions and maneuvers that no sane pilot would ever have attempted with Astartes cruisers, the Emperor's Children broke the hold of the traitor fleet on Terra, covering the descent of their cousins. Crewing both the remnants of their fleet and the ships of the Eighth Legion, they destroyed hundred of traitor ships. The other loyalist ships in orbit, thanks to their help, were able to direct their attention on the planet below once more, and lent their bombardment cannons to the effort of war once more. Though very few of them remained, the Emperor's Children had effectively turned the tides of the Battle for Terra, and with it, that of the entire Roboutian Heresy.

As for Fulgrim, he remained aboard the Andronicus, the new flagship of his Legion, until the last moment. A dozen Apothecaries were still working on his body, treating the thousands of wounds and poisons he was suffering from. Each one they healed was one less their Primarch would have to carry when the time was right. Finally, the call came from Terra – a psychic summoning from the Emperor, who asked for His son to stand at His side in the final battle. Fulgrim rose and ran toward the ship's teleportarium, flying servitors and running Astartes finishing to put on his armor even as he marched. The machineries of the Andronicus locked on the signal of the Emperor's own armor, and Fulgrim vanished in a flash of light, ready to help his father kill the Arch-Traitor.

What happened in the Throneroom is history. Fulgrim appeared as Roboute was gloating over the fallen form of the Emperor, ready to deliver the killing blow. With the sword Fireblade, forged for him by his brother Ferrus in a brighter age, the Phoenician cut down the Arch-Traitor, creating an opening for the Emperor to strike at Guilliman on the psychic plane. The combined blows of the Emperor and his son was enough to kill Roboute and end the Heresy that had torn the Imperium apart ever since the Isstvan Atrocity.

Lucius looked down at the burning world from the shoulder of a dying Titan. The traitor war-machine was his latest kill, and perhaps the most impressive. He had pierced through the steel-skin of its foot, and battled his way up to the reactor inside the beast's chest before breaking down the controls and safeties of the caged sun.

His body was covered in wounds, his blood was forming pools at his feet. Was this death, at last ? He had fought on, as Saul had asked from him. He had fought and fought and fought, and he had killed many of the traitors. He had followed the visions, the image of his friend guiding him through the battlefield toward those who needed to die and those who must live. The Prince of Crows; the Iron Lord; the Keeper of the Lore; the Guardian of the Dead and the Voice of Reason ... They all lived. Now, at least, could he die ? Had he done enough ?

The ground rushed toward him as the Titan collapsed. Its reactor was going to detonate, in the middle of the traitor Mechanicum's forces. There would be nothing left of Lucius to bury. Would that be enough for him to die, this time ? Or would the golden light bring him back again ?

There was a flash of burning light and agonizing pain, and then, at last, Lucius was reunited with his brothers.

The Clone Wars

When the dust of the Roboutian Heresy settled, Fulgrim watched what remained of his Legion and felt the bitter taste of hollow victory. Never a numerous Legion, the Emperor's Children were now on the verge of extinction, with less than a thousand of them remaining. The Phoenician vowed to bring his Legion back from the abyss as he had done when he had taken command of it, and he led the Emperor's Children back to Chemos, where the rebuilding could begin. That he couldn't help the rest of the Imperium to claim back the galaxy was a source of terrible shame, but after all that had happened to him and his sons, it was a burden he could easily, if not happily bear.

For a hundred years he rebuilt his Legion, allowing his remaining Apothecaries to extract fresh genetic material from his body and implant it within the youths of Chemos, raising a new generation of Emperor's Children. Despite the demands of many of his warriors, he refused to lower the standards of his Legion, as most of the other loyalist Legions did in the aftermath of the Roboutian Heresy. The newly elevated Astartes fought in the Ultima Segmentum in the Purge, reclaiming worlds that had been conquered by the traitors or had taken advantage of the rebellion to secede from the Imperium. The ranks of the Emperor's Children swelled again, albeit slowly, and once more it seemed the Third Legion had risen from the ashes of its destruction.

Then, one day, a message came from the Iron Cages around the Eye of Terror. An host of nightmarish creatures had emerged from it : twisted, malformed creatures that bore uncanny resemblance with Astartes, fighting at the side of Blood Angels warbands and led by a Space Marine bearing the colors of the Emperor's Children. Worse, dissections of the monsters had revealed that they bore traces of Sons of Horus' genetic material.

It appeared that, after the fall of Roboute and the end of the Heresy, the Blood Angels had returned to Baal with the corpse of Horus Lupercal. They had intended to strip bare their fortresses and holdings before continuing to the Eye of Terror, where their reborn Daemon Primarch waited for them. But they had found more than what they had left : Fabius Bile, former Chief Apothecary of the Third Legion, was waiting for them. Fabius had thrown off his allegiance to the Emperor's Children, and now pursued his own goals. He had offered an alliance to the Ninth Legion, and the Blood Angels had accepted to bring him before their lord Sanguinius.

Fabius Bile, the Clonelord

When Roboute called for his brothers to rise against the Emperor, the Legions themselves were divided. But while individual warriors of the Traitor Legions remained true to their oath, so too did some of the loyalist Primarch's sons turn against the Emperor, and more Astartes have turned from the Imperium's light in the millenia. They are a smear upon their Legion's honor, and are hunted mercilessly by their erstwhile brothers, who seek to purge the galaxy of their hateful presence.

Yet of all the thousands of renegades who have walked the stars, none is more hated and feared than Fabius Bile. Once an Apothecary of the Emperor's Children, he is now a ravenous madman whose knowledge of biology has been turned to the darkest ends.

During the first stages of the Bleeding War, Fabius was one of the many Emperor's Children captured by the Dark Eldars. What exactly happened to him is unknown, but it is whispered that after he was driven mad by the xenos' tortures, the Apothecary came to impress even the Dark Eldars' blasphemous alchemists with his cruelty and his intellect, turning on his own brethren for his experiments. Tales of the survivors rescued from xenos ships soured Fulgrim's mind even further, as the Primarch was disgusted that one of his own sons could stoop so low. Fabius was presumed dead when the Dark Eldars were repelled by the Night Lords, but it was not so.

Even after the Clone Wars, he has been sighted alongside forces of the Blood Angels and Raven Guard, seeking the genetic lore of the latter and hoping to claim the gene-seed of the fallen foes of the former. He is rumored to have sold his services to all of the nine Traitor Legions at some point in time, helping them replenish their numbers in return for genetic material or blasphemous secrets. His exact goals are unknown, but it is rumored that he desires to create a perfect being, who would surpass even the Emperor in its glory. The Inquisition has had a kill-on-sight order against him standing since the dawn of the Clone Wars, and even though Fabius' death has been reported several times, it is still standing, since the one who calls himself Primogenitor has always returned.

In the Eye of Terror, Fabius had struck a deal with the Daemon Primarch of Slaanesh. He was allowed to study the corpse of Horus Lupercal, and from its harvested flesh he had created thousands of clones. Most of them hadn't survived gestation, but many had reached adulthood, though they were so difform that even the infamous Spawn Marines of the Raven Guard were superior, pristine beings compared to them. Looking at the results of Fabius' experiments, Sanguinius had laughed at the insult to his fallen brother's memory, and granted a portion of his Legion to the Primogenitor.

Seeking to harvest the genetic material of loyalist Legions, untainted by the touch of Chaos, Fabius had led the cloned hordes and the warbands of Blood Angels out of the Eye, piercing through the Iron Cages and establishing a kingdom spanning dozens of worlds. Thus began the Clone Wars.

When the news reached Fulgrim, he felt a level of hatred he had not felt since learning of Roboute's treachery. He called all of his Legion to him, leaving only a token force at Chemos, and travelled straight toward the frontlines of this new war. There, he met with the Sons of Horus and a coordinated force of the other loyalist Legions. While there was some suspicions directed against the Emperor's Children, it was quickly banished by the fury with which they fought against Fabius' abominations.

Together, the Third and Sixteenth Legion broke through the heretics' lines, and assaulted the world upon which Fabius Bile was conducting his blasphemous experiments. While the Sons of Horus laid waste to the cloning facilities and reclaimed the remains of their fallen father, Fulgrim sought Fabius to kill him with his own hands. The Phoenician pursued his quarry across the entire city, finally cornering him in a great tower filled with incubation pods.

At the Primogenitor's signal, all of them opened at once, revealing their hideous content : clones, not of Horus, but of Fulgrim himself, created from Fabius' own genetic code and the blood he had bargained from the Dark Eldars who had tortured his Primarch. Hundreds of them rushed at Fulgrim, giving their lives so that their creator could escape aboard his ship, the Pulchritudinous. All of them died under Fulgrim's blade, but the Primogenitor avoided justice.

Fulgrim was howling his rage and disgust at his son, even as he ran away like the coward he was. To think that he had once considered Fabius one of his own, to think that he had thanked him personally for his services during the Cleansing of Learan, when the Apothecary's talents had saved the lives of dozens of loyal, true Emperor's Children !

A graceless blow brought Fulgrim back to reality. He dodged effortlessly, and beheaded the creature with a single sweep of Fireblade, striking down three more of the monsters at once. But there were still hundreds of them, all looking at him with hate-filled eyes. He could sense their jealousy of his body, even though it was covered in scars and still painful from the tortures of the haemonculis – a pain that would never truly fade.

Some of them lacked a limb or had too many, other had three eyes or had smooth faces with no orifices. The only thing they had in common – bar their mane of white hair – was the raw aura of torment that surrounded them. Behind their hatred, behind their anger, there was simply pain, and the desire for their lives to end.

Lifting Fireblade once more, Fulgrim prepared to grant them their wish.

The Clone Wars were over. But not all of Horus' clones had been destroyed : they would continue to plague the Imperium for centuries, calling themselves the Black Legion in a blasphemous parody of the true sons of the Emperor.

The Burning of Commorragh

In the last years of the thirty-fifth millenium, the Emperor's Children were finally given the chance of revenge they had waited for so long. Infiltrators of the mysterious Alpha Legion had located a path to the Dark City of Commorragh, lair of the treacherous and corrupt xenos known as the Dark Eldars. Though few Emperor's Children yet lived who had personally endured the horrors of the Trap, Fulgrim himself remembered it well, and his sons had kept the lore of these events intact.

The Phoenician called for the ancient promise, and the Night Lords answered. Another Legion came : the World Eaters, led by Angron, the Red Angel. The Primarch of the Twelfth Legion owed a debt to Fulgrim ever since the two had fought together at Skalathrax, and he intended to repay it with the destruction of the Dark City. Not all the forces of the Legions were gathered, of course – they still had their duties to the Imperium, and couldn't abandon their allies in the quest for vengeance. But thousands of Astartes and dozens of ships, with no less than two Primarchs leading, were nonetheless a force such as the galaxy had rarely seen since the dark days of the Roboutian Heresy.

Together, the forces of three Legions entered the Webway, following the path provided by the Alpha Legion. They passed through a gateway that had long stood abandonned by the eldars, and traced the psychic beacons left by the Twentieth Legion across the infinite blackness. For several weeks they advanced, until the fleet passed one final portal, and emerged in the skies of the Dark City, above its caged suns. Then, with a fury that had grown for millenia, Fulgrim gave the order to attack, and Commorragh burned.

Bombardment cannons fired upon the nobility's spires, reducing many bloodlines whose influence was older than the Fall to ash in mere moments. The defences of the city were designed more to protect individual domains from their neighbors than to repel an outside assault, and the Dark Eldars were now paying for their arrogance. They had believed no one could reach them, let alone one of the 'inferior races', and now they would burn, as all xenos must for their crimes against Humanity.

When the Dark City was mostly reduced to rubble, the Legionaries descended in the ruins, ready to hunt down the survivors and put an end to the centuries of terror that the xenos raiders had inflicted upon the rest of the galaxy. Angron and Fulgrim led a devastating charge, crushing the Eldars' efforts to assemble a cohesive defence, then pursuing those who attempted to flee. The Emperor's Children remembered the lesson of the Trap, though, and warned their allies to not attempt to hunt the xenos beyond the gates of the Webway – they may never be able to return.

Fulgrim himself, however, did not heed his own advice. As he walked down the dark tunnels of haemonculi covents, who had so horribly tortured him thousands of years ago, he came across an all too familiar figure. There, beneath the ruins of the Dark City, was Fabius Bile himself. Why exactly the Arch-renegade was there is unknown, though it is assumed by the Inquisition he came to trade blasphemous secrets with those who had first initiated him to their forbidden arts.

The Phoenician's reaction was predictable. Enraged, he pursued his traitor son across the labyrinth the haemonculis used as their homes' first line of defence, followed by his Phoenix Guard. The traitor knew his way through the many deadly traps that layered the dedale, but the loyal Emperor's Children did not, and Fulgrim lost many of his sons to the Dark Eldars' heretical machines, until he was alone in the pursuit. On the surface, Angron called for him, begging him to turn back and return before he too was lost. The Red Angel promised Fulgrim he would help him to track and punish the traitor, but they really needed to leave : the caged suns of Commorragh had grown unstable with the damage the fleet had caused to the Dark City, and there was a risk they would soon tear apart their confines and engulf the entire bubble of reality Commorragh was built in.

But there was no answer from Fulgrim. Finally, the Librarians of the assault force warned that the presence of the Phoenician had vanished : he was no longer in the Dark City. He must have crossed into the Webway in pursuit of his quarry, and was now lost to his loyal sons. Filled with sorrow, Angron ordonned the retreat, vowing to find his brother even if it should take him a thousand years.

Asdrubael Vect

After the three Legions sacked Commorragh, the Dark City was left without leadership. The noble houses that had ruled it with an iron fist ever since before the Fall were ruined, their households destroyed and their lines decimated. From the wreckage rose one eldar who would one day become a legend : Asdrubael Vect. While some legends claim that he was once a lowly slave of the Dark City, he himself pretends to have witnessed the Fall with his own eyes, and having endured ever since. Whatever the truth may be, he forced order upon the absolute chaos that followed the Legions' assault. His Cabal of the Black Heart gathered those who had lost everything and those who saw an opportunity in the destruction. With thousands of warriors under his command, he was able to impose himself as the Supreme Overlord of Commorragh, and replaced the ancient noble houses by the Cabals, an unforgiving meritocracy where only one's own cunning, strength and brutality mattered. Slowly, the Dark City reclaimed the influence and wealth it had lost, though it still warily stays way from the worlds under the Emperor's Children's protection.

In time, Asdrubael has added much of the other dominions of the Dark Eldars to Commorragh. In the forty-first millenium, only one other eldar possess enough power and resources to be considered his rival : El'Uriaq, Tyrant of Shaa-Dom. Despite a great many attempts, neither of the two have managed to kill the other so far, and they are currently in an uneasy truce, each waiting for the other's inevitable betrayal while waiting for the first sign of weakness to strike first.

Organisation

The Brotherhood of the Silent Scream

Marius Vairosean, Captain of the Third Company of the Emperor's Children, was one of Fulgrim's most devoted warriors. During the Bleeding War, he fought harder than any other Emperor's Children to deliver his Primarch from his imprisonment, but never managed to reach him. By a cruel twist of fate, when the Night Lords arrived and freed Fulgrim, Marius was recovering from the grievous wounds he had sustained in a previous, failed attempt. His shame at not being here to rescue his Primarch burnt deep within him, and he cut off his own tongue as penance for his perceived wrongdoings, despite his brothers' words.

Many other warriors did the same, and they came to be known as the Brotherhood of the Silent Scream. At the siege of Terra, the hundred of them boarded the Iron Hands' vessel Sisypheum, and killed hundreds of the traitor Marines before being forced to retreat as the ship prepared to run from the Sol system.

Across the centuries, clad in the unpainted, uncleaned armor of their shame, the Brotherhood of the Silent Scream would endure. Warriors of the Third Legion who consider they have failed in their duties – such as those who survive when the rest of their squad does not – join them, ritually cutting off their own tongue as sign of their own regret. The Brotherhood has dedicated itself to the Inquisition, and forms a company of Adeptus Astartes under the command of the Ordo Xenos. They have their own monastery on Chemos, and answer the call of various Inquisitors across the galaxy. Rumor has it that they even accept warriors from other Legions into their ranks, so long as they are willing to abandon they colors and undergo the ritual ablation.

As for Marius Vairosean's ultimate fate, he died in a battle against the Iron Hands, slain by one of the plague-stricken Marines – some even say, one who was on the Sisypheum at the Siege of Terra.

The loss of their Primarch was a terrible blow to the Emperor's Children's morale, but they endured it, convinced that their father still lived and would one day return to lead them. In the meantime, they chose to establish the position of Legion Master, used by other Loyalist Legions who had lost their father.

The Emperor's Children have never truly recovered from their losses in the Bleeding War. Even with the centuries Fulgrim spent on rebuilding his Legion, their numbers never reached those of the other loyalist Legions, and these days the official records indicate less than thirty thousand Space Marines of the Third Legion in existence. They are organised in Great Companies, each under a Lord Commander's leadership, while the Legion Master reigns on Chemos. When the Legion Master dies, a new Lord Commander and his thousand warriors are designed to take up the mantle of Legion Master and replace the previous one as guardians of Chemos, while the Legion Master's successor as the leader of his Great Company takes his warriors back into the stars. While it may seem a waste to consign a thousand warriors to guarding duty for what can last centuries, the repeated assaults from warbands of Ultramarines or other Traitor Legions make the protection of Chemos one of the Third Legion's priorities.

Each Great Company is arranged in ten Companies, with nine Captains each commanding up to a hundred warriors while the Lord Commander leads the elite of his troops to battle. The assignments of each Great Company is decided by the Lord Commander, though the Legion Master, to whom most of the demands for help are addressed, has ultimate authority over the Lord Commanders and can order them to go where he believes they will be the most useful to the Imperium.

Beliefs

'We bleed. We endure. And in enduring, we grow strong.'

Mantra of the Emperor's Children

Long gone are the proud dignity and the noble countenance of the Emperor's Children. In the maws of the Bleeding War, they were shown the darkest, most ignoble side of themselves. They saw the same bitter lesson they had taught the Laers : nobility and glory were vain, useless things when cornered with the threat of extinction : one would do many, many things to avoid it. Yet unlike the twisted xenos, the Emperor's Children did not fall into the abyss that is Chaos, nor did they betray their very nature in a desperate bid to adapt to what the fates had cast against them. Instead, they endured, and gained strength in the trials they went through.

The sons of Fulgrim believe that it is their duty as Astartes to suffer so that the rest of the Imperium will not have to. Just as the Emperor endures untold torments on His Golden Throne for the good of Humanity, so too must His Children endure the duty that He has given to them. As enhanced superhumans with the Emperor's gift flowing through their veins, they are capable of recovering from what would kill or cripple a mortal man, and everything that fails to kill them only makes them stronger. Each battle, each scar, each defeat even, is but a lesson to learn so that they will be ready next time. The Legion almost died before it was born, but was resurrected by Fulgrim's arrival, and was again almost destroyed by the Dark Eldars, but they claimed their vengeance. To be a son of Fulgrim is to fight, to know loss, to grow stronger, and to claim revenge.

Combat doctrine

Just as their beliefs, the tactics of the Emperor's Children have changed much since before the Heresy. While before they took great pride in fighting alone, or only alongside brother Legionaries, necessity has changed these habits. Now the Emperor's Children fight at the side of great regiments of the Imperial Guard, back to back with the common humans. On the grounds, the Emperor's Children are more than ready to collaborate with mortal officers, as their numbers do not allow them to wage crusades of their own. With the whole industry of a world behind them, the sons of Fulgrim can field impressive numbers of Astartes heavy vehicles, though they tend to show a preference for the thickness of close-quarters combat, where their superiority is brought to light in full.

Usually, Great Companies break down at Company level on a whole campaign, and each Captain further separates his squads on the battlefield, coordinating them while leading from the front. This way, by fighting at the side of their human auxiliaries, the Emperor's Children's charisma can help hold the line and turn back situations where any tactician would have given up. The Legionaries' resilience is also a thing to behold, capable of giving hope to even the most desperate Guardsman, as they will keep fighting long after they wounds should have killed them. Those who seem to return for the dead after their sus-membrane activates to save their lives, then deactivate to let them return to the fight, are considered blessed by the Emperor, and are said to bear the Mark of Lucius.

The Librarians of the Legion, who guided the Emperor's Children during the Great Crusade, still play an important part in the Legion. They are trained into channelling the suffering inflicted by the enemy, to use it to push themselves and those around him to greater heights of heroism and sacrifice, or unleash it upon their enemies in streams of warp-fire and thunder. It is a dangerous tactic, though, and some of the Librarians are unable to bear the burden it causes on them, bursting apart or collapsing into catatonia. Training to avoid this is extensive, but difficult to perform, as the Emperor's Children would never inflict torture on anyone : instead, the Initiates of the Librarius are taken to field hospitals in warzones, learning to focus the pain of thousands into a single blow against those responsible for it.

In space, the Emperor's Children are a force to be reckoned with, the teachings of the Bleeding War still fresh in their memory. Void tactics are one of the Legion's speciality, another being the boarding actions that they perform with a ruthless efficiency that many a traitor or xenos has come to curse over the millenia.

Homeworld

Chemos, in the Ultima Segmentum, is still the homeworld of the Emperor's Children. Reborn under Fulgrim's guidance all those millenia ago, it has prospered ever since under the rule of the Primarch's sons. The entire world is dedicated to supplying the Third Legion with all that it needs to continue fighting the many wars of the Imperium : ammunition, weapons, armor and recruits. Dozens of city-states have been built, replacing the fortress-factories with beautiful architectural wonders. They compete to produce the most interesting recruits in great tournaments that host thousands of young men fighting in arenas in the hope of catching the eye of the Legion's envoys.

Unlike most worlds with its level of productivity, Chemos is still a verdant planet, following a very precise balance designed by Fulgrim himself. That balance, however, has grown increasingly erratic in the late centuries, ever since the latest raid of the vengeful Ultramarines attacked the world itself with bio-weapons that devastated an entire landmass and reduced one of the great forests to a dead, poisoned land.

The Forbidden Vault

Deep beneath the surface of Chemos, under the fortress of the Legion, rests the greatest secret of the Emperor's Children. There, gathered through hundreds of years, is a repository of all the information gained about the Arch-renegade Fabius Bile, including notes and schematics written by the madman himself. Sealed beneath twelve layers of adamantium doors and purity seals, very few are allowed to go in, and only those who are hunting Bile or have something to add to its can be granted permission to enter it by the current Legion Master. No one outside of the Legion's commanding circle and the few brothers who have come near to slaying Fabius themselves know of the Forbidden Vault's existence. A few Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus and Malleus have been allowed to enter it, under vows of secrecy that would turn the entire Legion against them if they were ever broken. The prudence of the Legion is understandable : the secrets of Fabius Bile have corrupted many Legionaries who have fallen prey to his deviant philosophy during the millenia, and countless mortals have made dealings with the Primogenitor, only to curse their own foolishness when their kingdoms were destroyed by the cloned armies with which they were built.

Recruitment and Geneseed

The Third Legion recruits almost only from Chemos, although it had been known to take aspirants from other worlds on occasion, when an exceptional individual catches the attention of the Legion's warriors. After passing a series of grueling tests, the aspirants are implanted with Fulgrim's gene-seed, and must endure the torments of their own transforming body without the help of the artificial sleep used by other Legions – the pain is considered a step on the youths' journey to becoming Astartes.

The Reminiscence

To the rest of the Imperium, the gene-seed of the Emperor's Children is believed to be of unquestionable purity, lacking any of the flaws that may afflict the other Legions. But while all nineteen implants of the sons of Fulgrim work perfectly, a dark shadow remains cast upon the Phoenician's genetic legacy. Ten thousand years after the Bleeding War, the Emperor's Children still bear the scars of that horrific event : those newly elevated to the status of Space Marines experiment visions and nightmares of the Dark Eldars' ships and torture chambers, reliving the agony of their genetic ancestors and that of their Primarch. Some are driven mad by the visions, and quietly given the Emperor's Peace. Most, however, master the nightmares, and while the horrific visions never truly leave them, the Emperor's Children only see them as reminders of a past that must never be forgotten.

Once most of the changes have occurred, the aspirants become Scouts, added to the Companies to perform reconnoitring missions for their elders until they prove their worth. When that happens, they are brought back to Chemos and undergo the Pilgrimage : a journey across the last of Chemos desert. Left alone at the border with only the clothes on their back and a canteen of racid water, they must cross the wastelands and reach the oasis created by Fulgrim's arrival millenia ago.

The journey is difficult in his own right, but what truly makes it a trial worthy of being the last step before full induction into the Legion lies elsewhere. Too few of the Initiates survive the journey for it to be simply an ordinary wasteland, and while the wards placed around the area clearly prevent any intrusion, they also seem to be designed to keep something from escaping. Regardless of what is there, once the Initiate reaches the outpost at the oasis, he is taken back to the fortress, where he receives his final implants and his armor, before being formally introduced into the Emperor's Children in a great ceremony.

Jihar was scared. Fear was supposed to have been purged from his mind, but he thought that even a veteran Space Marine would be scared in his place.

The sandstorms were filled with ghosts, who spoke to him in hate-filled voices. That was nothing new – as a Scout, Jihar had faced the madness of the Warp before. Even if it shocked him to see it on Chemos, he could still endure it. No, what truly terrified him was what the voices were saying. They were telling him of a galaxy where hope was dead and truth had been buried, where the Emperor's Children were monsters who preyed upon the weak and revelled in torment. They showed him a tall man, wearing the colors of the Third Legion, but hideously defaced by the touch of Chaos and surrounded by the never-ending screams of the dead and damned. And the face ... the face ...

The face was his own ...

Battlecry

The main battle-cry of the Emperor's Children is the same one they used during the Great Crusade : 'Children of the Emperor ! Death to His foes !'. When facing the hated Dark Eldars, they use 'Remember Commorragh !' and 'Fulgrim Lives !' Against the Traitor Legion of the Iron Hands, they scream 'Death to the Gorgon !' and show yet increased fury – they still remember who it was that betrayed their Primarch and left him to the Dark Eldars' clutches.

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Iron Warriors : Keepers of the Cages

Sons of the Emperor's own Praetorian, the Iron Warriors are the eternal defenders of the Imperium. From hundreds of mighty fortresses, they watch over their grandsire's kingdom, and ensure that the traitors of the mythical age do not ever return. They are the guardians of the faithful and the gaolers of the damned, masters of the arts of siegecraft and fortification. Following Perturabo's teachings, they do not seek glory in war, only maximum efficiency, using cold logic and tactical previsions over feats of heroism and valor in battle. But in their heart and flesh, despite their dedication to the cause of the Imperium, burns a bitterness that poisons their soul, and they must ever be vigilant to not fall to the deceptions of the Ruinous Powers.

Origins

When the Dark Gods stole the Primarchs from the Emperor, they dispersed them across the length and breadth of the galaxy. The sons of Mankind's master would rise to glory or infamy according to their own nature and that of the world they found themselves on, knowing that they were different from all around them. But most of them would not understand what they really were until the Emperor found them again. Horus would learn his nature very soon, when he met his father on Cthonia while still a child, and Magnus of Prosperor knew it from his birth, his intellect already beyond that of most mortal.

As for the fourth Primarch, the most detail accounting of his life is to be found in The Lord of Iron, a biography redacted by the remembrancer Solomon Voss, who listened to the Primarch himself tell the tale in the days following the Heresy. According to the book, Perturabo awoke in a great crater at the bottom of a cliff, on a world called Olympia by its inhabitants. Though he did not know what he was, he knew his name, the one that the Emperor had intended to give to him before he was taken away : Perturabo. This was the first sign of the Primarch's extraordinary intellect, but far, far from the last. After climbing the several kilometers-high cliff, Perturabo was found by soldiers of the city-state of Lochos, and brought before their lord and master.

Dammekos, the Tyrant of Lochos, was to be Perturabo's foster father. What he saw when he first laid eyes upon the Primarch, none can say for certain. But it convinced him to take this strange youth under his aegis, and raise him as he would have his own flesh and blood. Perturabo's mind was ever-hungry for more knowledge, and he learned all that his tutors could taught him in the span of a few years, while proving his value as a tactician at many of his father's war councils against his many rivals. His intellect was a razor-edged blade that could find the weak spots into any fortification, and with his input to his foster father's tactics, the stalemate that had held Olympia's city-states in its grip for centuries began to crumble. Perturabo himself was given command of an army in several instances, and he led them to victory with a tactical insight that was matched only by his ruthlessness. It is said that he used maximum brutality to defeat his enemy, so that the others would be cowed into submission without fighting and causing unnecessary loss of life, but others say that it was only after these first battles that, witnessing the horrors of war for the first time, Perturabo swore to never find any pleasure in it.

With the implacable hand of his foster son supporting him, Dammekos conquered city after city, building an empire on the montainous world. But before he could achieve his ambition – a united planet under his rule – he died in what is said to be an accident, but what many suspect was engineered by Perturabo himself. Regardless of the truth of these accusations, it is known that the one who would come to be called the Lord of Iron had grown more and more distasteful of his father's attitude over the years. Dammekos had lived up to his epithet of 'Tyrant', and the inhabitants of the cities his foster son helped him conquer were reduced to little more than slaves. This was not what Perturabo had envisioned when he had helped Dammekos; the young man had wanted to help put an end to the endless feuds between the planet's lords, not help establish a despot whose rule would be even worse. Still, Dammekos was not only his foster father, he was the Primarch's liege, and Perturabo held his given word in high value even in these early days. It is thus unlikely he had anything to do with the Tyrant's death.

Perturabo was Dammekos' rightful heir, but he had many rivals amongst his foster father's court. While none of them were brave or foolish enough to challenge him for Lochos' rulership, they did everything they could to diminish his influence and force him to negotiate with them, allowing them to gain more power over the domain he had inherited. For a time, Perturabo tolerated their petty games of intrigues and deceit, only punishing those against whom he had definite proof of treachery. But after ten years of such plots, with his dream still unachieved because of the greed and envy of lesser men and women, his patience finally came to an end.

The corpses of noblemen were spread all around the banquet room, butchered almost beyond recognition. They had all come here this evening at the behest of Perturabo, invited to speak of Lochos' future, thinking that the brute sitting upon the Tyrant's throne had finally understood he could not rule the city-state without them. But they had been wrong.

The moment the gates of the room had closed, Perturabo had risen from his throne and hold up his mace. The fire of his rage, which had been hidden for so long, had been unleashed, and the men and women who had hindered the Primarch's vision out of petty ambition had been petrified as they witnessed his full might for the first time. They had never seen him in battle – such base affairs were beneath those of their station – and they had thought the tales of his prowess to be mere exaggeration and propaganda spread by the weak, crude minds of the soldiery. But they had been wrong. If anything, the stories did not do justice to the Lord of Iron, for he had never before let himself exert his full strength against mere mortals.

It had been a slaughter. When the servants of Perturabo, sworn to never speak of what had occurred this night, opened the doors at dawn, they found their lord standing amidst the carnage, looking at what he had done with wide eyes. His weapon was abandoned on the ground, covered in the blood of traitors and liars. Yet despite the fact that their master was now free to do with Lochos as he pleased, they saw only sorrow, regret and utter horror in his eyes.

When his temper went down, Perturabo was horrified by what he had done. Though these men had deserved their fate and brought it upon their heads by their own actions, the Primarch had still broken the laws he had sworn to uphold. All rulers of Olympia had done the same throughout the ages, but Perturabo wanted to be different. It was then that he swore to never do the same mistake again, to always follow the rule of law and reason, and to never let his rage take control of him again. After speaking that oath, he returned to his task with renewed determination.

In a mere few decades, Perturabo united all of Olympia under his banner. He purged his kingdom of the fear and bitterness that held the other domains in their cold grip, building a haven of peace and freedom, protected by the revolutionary weapon designs he had created and the armies he had raised. While he stood at the top of his new society, he did not rule as a tyrant as all rulers had since the coming of the Age of Strife. Instead, he let the mortals around him govern themselves, only providing them direction and advice. As word of his kingdom's prosperity and his ideals of democracy spread, entire populations rose to overthrow their own overlords, joining with his growing nation. More and more city-states did so over the years, until at least, all of Olympia was united, at peace, under the eyes of the Lord of Iron.

It was almost a century after Perturabo's arrival on Olympia that the Emperor of Mankind found him. He descended on the capital of the world with His Custodes, walking the perfect streets of a city built in accordance to Perturabo's ideal proportions and architecture. Perturabo waited for his father on his house's doorstep, and the Emperor's escorts were surprised to find their liege's son not in a lavish, grand palace, nor in one of the titanic fortresses that towered above the peaks surrounding the cities. Instead, they found Perturabo at the door of a simple home, where he had spent the last decade perusing ancient writings and working on his designs, his task on Olympia done.

Perturabo looked at his father, unease in his eyes. He had concealed it so far, while the Emperor had told him of the newborn Imperium, of His desire to conquer the galaxy in Mankind's name. It was a glorious vision, of that there was no question. But Perturabo cared nothing for glory. And so, now he let his doubts show on his face. He knew the man in front of him – if He could be called a man at all – would see them. How He would react, however, the Iron Lord did not know. It would reveal much of his father's nature, of that he was certain. Would He deny Perturabo's ideals and philosophy, and force him into service as an agent of conquest or destruction ? Or would He accept his dreams, and share them ?

The Emperor smiled, and for a moment Perturabo faced not the warlord that had come from the skies with a hundred battleships, but the old, wise and tired man that lived behind that mask.

'You really are my son, Perturabo,' the Emperor said in the voice of a father whose son is making him proud. Then the Master of Mankind told His son of His goal for humanity, and the Lord of Iron listened.

The contents of the exchange between Perturabo and the Emperor remain unknown to all safe the two, but it did put the Lord of Iron's mind at ease. He left Olympia in the hands of the mortal rulers he had raised and taught, and journeyed to Terra. It is said that while the people of the world rejoiced that their benefactor had finally found his roots, and welcomed their integration into the Imperium with open arms, they wept at Perturabo's departure.

On Terra, Perturabo met his brother Magnus the Red. The two immediately became close friends, united by their shared interest for the lore of Mankind's past. Together, they explored the ruins of Old Earth, seeking to uncover more of its secrets, and spent many hours together, discussing the philosophies of ages long past and the secrets of the universe. In the decades to follow, the friendship between the two Primarchs would be echoed between their Legions, and they would fight many campaigns side by side, especially as the Thousand Sons grew more and more isolated in the Imperium.

Magnus paused in his explanation of the political upheavals of the Firenzi's era. He could feel that his brother wasn't really listening. There was a shadow in his usually clear as crystal thoughts, a doubt that was poisoning him. The Cyclops felt that Perturabo wanted to tell him something, yet hesitated in doing so. He was ... not afraid, no, not that – Magnus doubted anything in the galaxy could scare his stalwart brother – but ...

'Magnus,' Perturabo began, breaking his brother's thoughts. 'I ... I need your advice on something. Something regarding the Warp, I think.'

The Crimson King listened to the Lord of Iron's tale. He learned of something he had never suspected, and would curse himself for a fool many times for not realizing : that Perturabo was not psychically ungifted – as much as any Primarch could be called such a thing. His brother could see, had always seen if his tale was true, the Warp Storm near the center of the galaxy. It had always been here in the night sky, a blight upon reality than no one else seemed to be able to notice.

Magnus couldn't begin to imagine how Perturabo must have felt, seeing something no one else could see. At least in Magnus' own case, he knew why he could see beyond his teachers' reach. Now the source of his brother's unease was clear : he was worried that what he saw meant he was corrupted in some way, touched by the Warp when they had been taken from their father.

'Do not worry, brother,' said the Cyclops when Perturabo was finished. 'Let me explain to you ...'

The Great Crusade

After his sojourn on Terra, Perturabo took command of the Iron Warriors. The Legion had been, up to that point, used as a sledgehammer by the commanders of the Great Crusade, a weapon of little subtlety but devastating power. Their mastery of siegecraft and dedication to their duty had made them the most favored Legion to call upon when the Expeditionary Fleets were faced with seemingly impregnable fortresses. There was little honor in such campaigns, and unrest and doubt were beginning to spread amongst the Fourth Legion by the time their Primarch was found.

All of that changed, however, when Perturabo took command of the Legion that had been made in his image. He taught them his philosophy and approach to war, and renamed them the Iron Warriors. The Fourth Legion then returned to the Great Crusade with renewed determination, ready to do its duty no matter the cost or whether or not their efforts were acknowledged. Their father's approval was enough for them.

'There is no glory in war, my sons. War is unequivocal, uncaring, unforgiving and blind. Let your cousins revel in their victories if they so wish. It is a lie, but it makes the hell of battle tolerable. But we are not so weak as to need to cover our eyes from the truth : war is an ugly, terrible thing. But it is necessary. If the Emperor's dream is to be achieved, my sons, then we will need to be soldiers unlike any the galaxy has ever seen. I have watched you, and I have seen your worth. You fight not for glory or for honor, but because you are ordered to do so, because it is your duty. You see war not as an opportunity for heroism, but as a mathematical equation that needs to be solved as quickly and effortlessly as possible. You are already the weapons Mankind needs you to be, and you shall be forevermore. You are the Iron Warriors !'

Extract from Perturabo's speech upon his raising as commander of the Fourth Legion.

The Iron Warriors were separated across the Great Crusade once more, with the bulk of the Legion remaining under Perturabo's direct command while the rest joined with other Expeditionary Fleets. During the next century, they earned much honor by turning campaigns that had been locked in stalemates for years – sometimes decades – into victories in a matter of month. The concern they showed for the mortals who fought at their side by being careful not to waster their lives became renowned across the Fleets. Many of the most sensible commanders of the Imperial Army would strive to be assigned to an Iron Warriors' command, for while the sons of Perturabo did not pursue glory, the lives of those fighting under them were never spent in vain. That is not to say they hesitated to take risks : during the war for Meratar Cluster, Perturabo himself ordered tens of thousands of men to their deaths in order to bring down the techno-overlords of the region, the self-proclaimed Black Judges. This earned him the favor of the Mechanicum, but it is said that the Lord of Iron spent many a night brooding over the sacrifices he had caused. Still, the war machines he was able to demand from the Cult of Mars in return for this victory increased his Legion's military might greatly. The creations of the Legion Cybernetica would fight alongside the Iron Warriors in all of their campaigns from this point, and the Techmarines of the Fourth Legion would learn much from the Priests of the Machine-God. The investment of the Meratar's crusade would ultimately prove valuable beyond measure, but it would do little to appease Perturabo's conscience.

Apart from his friendship with Magnus, Perturabo generally stayed away from his brothers. He couldn't bring himself to share in the joy they took in battle, and refused to lie to those who shared his blood by pretending he did. This caused him to develop a reputation as a dark, brooding man, who didn't care for the brotherhood of soldiers and to whom only the cold mathematics of war mattered. Not all Primarchs shared this opinion, of course : Horus himself acknowledged Perturabo's talents, and his disinterest for the honors of battle always made the First Primarch smile, as it reminded him of his own prideful streak. A few campaigns alongside the Dark Angels made the Lord of Iron admire Lion El'Jonson's tactical insight, though he was a bit unnerved by the callousness his brother could display at times. Perturabo and Fulgrim were never close, though they had a grudging respect for each other's martial skills – the Lord of Iron saw the Phoenician as too focused on glory, while the Primarch of the Third Legion thought his brother was needlessly consumed by remorse by refusing to enjoy what he was born to do.

While one could be forgiven for thinking the Primarch of the Fourth Legion should have felt close to the lord of the Tenth, given their common interest for technology, Ferrus Manus and Perturabo disagreed vehemently on their approach in such matters. Perturabo saw every single one of his designs as a way to serve Mankind, while Ferrus believed the Machine to be inherently superior to the weak flesh of man, and destined to replace it. The Tenth Primarch's philosophy was closer to that of the Mechanicum, and the full, cruel irony of that would not be lost in the dark days to come.

But it was with Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists that Perturabo's relationship was the most strained. The master of the Seventh Legion was as much an expert of building and destroying fortifications as Perturabo, but what began as mere rivalry between the two of them quickly turned into bitter disgust for each other's methods of war. Dorn saw Perturabo's calculations and plans as cowardly, while Perturabo believed Dorn's prefered method of full-front assault to be needlessly wasteful in the lives of his Legionaries. Besides, Dorn's own arrogance and desire to be recognized and glorified by the Imperium was irked by Perturabo's own attitude – instead of taking it as a lesson like Horus, he took it as a personal affront. After the two Primarchs nearly fought each other in their first joint campaign (the events of which have been lost to the ages), the two Legions never went to war side by side again.

Perturabo stared at the corpse of his son with fury in his heart and murder in his eyes. On the opposite side of the slab, Rogal looked at him with incomprehension in his gaze.

'Why ?' grunted Perturabo. 'Why did your First Captain kill my son ?'

Rogal shrugged.

'It was a matter of honor, he told me. I trust Sigismund on these matters. Besides, it was a duel. Your son had his chance to refuse.'

'He insulted him. He provoked him ! Don't you dare absolve your precious Captain of blame, Rogal ! I want him punished for this !'

'Then you will be disappointed,' answered Rogal with a voice as cold as the snow of his homeworld. 'I do not think Sigismund was wrong in this. Now, if you will excuse me ...'

The Primarch of the Imperial Fists turned and walked toward the exit of the Ironblood's Apothecarion. Before he left, Perturabo hailed him one last time :

'This isn't over, Rogal.'

'Oh, I think it is, brother'. Then the lord of the Seventh Legion left his brother with the stasis-preserved corpse of Warsmith Berrossus, killed in duel by Sigismund, Captain of the Imperial Fists' First Company.

With its casualty rates diminishing as the thirst for glory was abandoned, the Fourth Legion grew in number, to the point it was second only to that of Guilliman himself (until Corvus Corax was found, and the Raven Guard embraced its dark Primarch's vision). But despite that strength, the Iron Warriors were unable to field as many warriors as the other Legions on a single campaign, for they were spread too thinly. In regions of the Imperium that were still unstable, the sons of Perturabo were assigned to garrison duty, protecting the supply lines of the rest of the Great Crusade. Entire Grand Battalions were stationed to the borders of the Ork Empire of Urlakk Urg, to prevent the beast's Waaagh to spread to the rest of the Imperium. After one too many reports from his sons telling him of the casualties the Orks had inflicted upon them, Perturabo resolved to call his brother Horus for help. While he was loath to admit to any weakness, the Lord of Iron knew he couldn't defeat Urlakk Urg without all but destroying his Legion in a terrible, grinding war that would take decades. The situation simply wasn't one that played to the strengths of the Iron Warriors. Horus answered his brother's call, persuading the Emperor to accompany him in what would be the last battle the Master of Mankind would fight alongside the Legions. The White Scars, under the leadership of their Primarch Jaghatai Khan, were also called upon to help purge the galaxy from the tumor of Urg's empire.

Thus began the Ullanor Crusade. While the Iron Warriors relentlessly assaulted Ork positions, drawing the bulk of the Waaaagh to them, and the White Scars sowed havoc and destruction amidst the xenos' ranks with lightning raids, the Emperor and Horus struck at Urlakk Urg himself, slaying the beast and breaking his troops' morale. After the victory, the Emperor ordered a great triumph to be held at the site of the final battle, and the Fourth Legion received much of the honor – though the lion's share, as always, went to the newly renamed Sons of Horus. When the First Primarch received the title of Warmaster, Perturabo rejoiced for his brother's ascension, seeing Horus as the one who could best lead the Great Crusade in the Emperor's absence – though the Lord of Iron did harbor concern about his father's return to Terra, he trusted in Him and Magnus. In the decades that followed, Perturabo was one of Horus' most fervent supporters, following his command without resistance and bringing dozens of systems into the Imperium.

Praetorian of the Emperor

Years after the Triumph of Ullanor, the Emperor called for a gathering of His sons once more. The unrest concerning the use of psychic powers amongst the Legions had only grown since Horus had been appointed as Warmaster, despite the efforts of the First Primarch to bring his brothers to accept the Librarium in their forces. Perturabo was tasked by the Emperor to build the amphitheater of Nikea, where the Conclave would gather and the Master of Mankind would render his judgement. Though Perturabo was filled with concern over what the final decision of his father would be, he followed his instructions, creating a place worthy of hosting such a tremendous decision.

During the debate, Perturabo spoke in favor of the Librarians. He told his brothers that their enemies would not stop to use the Warp as a weapon if they choose not to. Beyond his friendship to Magnus, whose silence he couldn't explain, there was a core of cold, brutal logic to his argument. For the Lord of Iron, to not use a weapon, especially one as useful as the Librarians, was not just foolish : it was an insult to all those whose death could have been avoided had one of the psychically gifted be there.

To the unmasked relief of the Lord of Iron, the Emperor approved his opinion, and declared that all Legions would now make use of the Librarium amongst their ranks. Perturabo had already established one in his Legion, and to see his choice – one that had brought him even more scorn from some of his brothers as he had endured before – vindicated was immensely wrath of Russ at that announcement cast a shadow over Perturabo's joy, but the next words of his father stupefied him.

It was the will of the Emperor that Perturabo and his sons return with Him to Terra, where they would fortify the Imperial Palace and the Sol system as a whole. Perturabo, who had never sought the honors bestowed upon his brothers, was to be the Emperor's own Praetorian. Magnus was delighted to be thus reunited with his brother, but Rogal Dorn was far from feeling the same. The lord of the Imperial Fists believed himself to be far more worthy of such an honor than Perturabo, and publicly challenged the Emperor's decision. He was rebuked, and his Legion shamed when the Master of Mankind told him that he had proved his inaptitude to the task by his very conduct this day. Seething with rage, Dorn left, and began to lead his Legion to the most murderous and hard-fought battle-zones of the Great Crusade. Ostensibly, this was in order to atone for his misconduct, but even back then rumors spread of the Imperial Fists' growing ruthlessness and cruelty.

Despite feeling unworthy of the honor that his father had granted him, Perturabo resolved to do his very best in his new task. He called back full half of his Legion, leaving the rest to man the garrison that had yet to receive human troops to replace them and finish the campaigns the Iron Warriors were already engaged into. With tens of thousands of his sons, he then set himself to work in the Sol system. In order to avoid marring the supreme beauty of the Imperial Palace, he externalized the defences, building a chain of void stations and asteroid-fortresses at the Mendelev belt of the Sol system. Not a single ship could enter or leave Terra's surroundings without being detected. Behind that first circle of defence, the Praetorian built hundred of hidden garrisons and artillery posts. The cost of this work in manpower, resources and technology is beyond anything we in this forty-first millenium could possibly imagine, but it proved worth it a thousand times when the unthinkable happened.

Time passed, while unknown to the Imperium the seeds of Heresy were being sown. Then, news arrived to Terra : Olympia was under attack.

The Olympian War

The homeworld of the Fourth Legion, which had given it tens of thousands of its youths as Legionaries, was surrounded by a mighty fleet of the xenos breed known as the Hrud. The aliens, who had been believed wiped from the galaxy in a previous campaign of the Iron Warriors, had come back from the very brink of oblivion to take their revenge. The Astra Telepathica's reports spoke of hundred of scavenged Imperial ships, thought lost to the Warp and used by the xenos to lay siege to Olympia.

The Hrud

Also called the 'Temporaferrox', the Hrud are believed to be one of the oldest species of the galaxy, along with the Eldars and the Orks themselves. They are spread across the stars like a plague, and despite repeated attempts to wipe them out, they always seem to reappear.

The Hrud are humanoid in form, with an exoskeleton allowing them to twist their bodies at will. They possess the ability to distort the fabric of time and space arond them, though whether this is a psychic power or some natural skill remains unknown. For centuries, agents of the Ordo Xenos have tried to capture one of the Hrud alive – for dissection, the most favored avenue of study of the Imperium's xenobiologists, is impossible to perform on these creatures who dissolve upon death. But so far, none have succeeded.

The Imperium first encountered the Hrud during the Great Crusade. The Iron Warriors led a campaign of extermination against them, and endured great losses in this war. The Hrud's unique physiology made them the bane of the Fourth Legion's tactics, which relied heavily on technology that broke down in the xenos' presence. Perturabo himself joined the fight, adding the forces of his own Expedionary Fleet to those already present, and broke the aliens' advance before seemingly exterminating them. That belief would hold until the moment they attacked Olympia, at the onset of the Roboutian Heresy.

After briefly conferring with his father, Perturabo was allowed to lead a small elite force of his Legion to defend his homeworld. With ten thousand Astartes, millions of soldiers of the Imperial Army and a hundred ships, the Primarch of the Iron Warriors traveled through the Warp at full speed. During the journey, the Sea of Souls began to rise in a storm, and by the time the fleet arrived at Olympia, a full third of it had been lost to the tides of the Warp.

Perturabo found his world still holding against the xenos, though its once pristine cities had been razed by orbital bombardment. The orbital defences he had installed had been crushed, not thanks to any skill from the xenos, but with sheer numbers. The people of Olympia were waging a desperate war in their underground bunkers and ruined fortresses, fighting against the Hrud, who were themselves nocturnal, subterranean creatures, and thus best adapted to such fighting. The children of Perturabo's pupils were fighting well, with the last surviving Legionaries of the Olympian garrison leading them.

The relief fleet struck the Hrud like a hammerblow. Perturabo himself led the boarding actions, crippling the vessels with relative ease – most of the xenos forces had already made planetfall, leaving only a token force to protect their ships. The Iron Warriors retook the orbit of their homeworld with little effort, and then began their counter-assault on the aliens.

In an earlier age, the ship had born the name Principio.

Perturabo was standing on the command deck, reading the information flowing on the data-pad he was holding while distributing his orders to his officers concerning the planetfall. His mind could easily do the two things at the same time. He needed to know how the Hrud had managed to acquire such a fleet. Even if the xenos had somehow managed to escape his purge decades ago in such numbers – something he still found difficult to believe – there was something strange in the composition of the fleet. The Hrud were scavengers, gathering ships from all space-sailing races in the galaxy to compensate for their apparent inability to build their own. And yet, this fleet ... It was made almost entirely of Imperial ships. There was something wrong ...

He froze as he reached the point of the Principio's manifest he had been looking for : the last entry, before the ship had been lost to the Warp and his crew destroyed by the things dwelling in the Sea of Souls.

It read : 'Last day aboard. Hrud will arrive tomorrow. Hope the Principio fights well against the Olympian bastards.'

Once the battle in orbit was won, Perturabo and his men descended upon Olympia like the gods of the world's myths. They struck at the xenos with merciless fury, tearing through their ranks to join with the survivors. The Primarch had brought with him the best warriors of his Legion, veterans of a hundred campaigns who had all fought in the first wars against the Hrud. They fought with the fury only those who fight for their homeworld can display, and crushed the xenos' main force in a single battle.

The fight took place in the ruins of fair Lochos, the city that had taken the brunt of the xenos' spiteful destruction due to its importance to Perturabo. This time, the Hrud didn't face the terrified mortal population of the planet, or its hopelessly outnumbered defenders. They faced the wrath of a Primarch and his chosen sons. The Iron Warriors matched the strange abilities of the Hrud with their own weapons, using technologies rediscovered by the Lord of Iron on forgotten worlds, or entirely innovative machines of his own design. These were tools of war whose use was frowned upon by the Imperium, but Perturabo was the Praetorian of the Emperor Himself, and he believed that the situation called for drastic mesures indeed. By using ancient secrets that were capable of rending down the very fabric of time and space, Perturabo took away the Hrud's greatest advantage, though the consequences for Olympia remain uncertain to this day. However, even after their main army was annihilated, thousands upon thousands of Hrud remained, scattered across the surface and caverns of Olympia. Under Perturabo's command, the Iron Warriors began the purge of their homeworld, building great pyres upon which the tainted flesh of the aliens was set to burn.

The cleansing of Olympia took months, during which Perturabo himself was the target of many attacks from Hrud infiltrators. The xenos knew of his presence, and remembered well who it was who had led the campaign of extermination directed against them. But, protected by his Iron Circle – a cadre of robotic bodyguards he had crafted himself, which existence raised much concern in the more puritan factions of the Mechanicum – the Primarch of the Fourth Legion survived all of them and captured more than one of his would-be murderers. From them, he heard many disturbing things – the xenos claimed that the Lord of Iron had been betrayed by his own blood, that his kin had helped the aliens survive and prosper after his purge. They claimed that the ships with which they had launched their vengeful assault on Olympia had been given to them, not stolen or scavenged.

Perturabo believed none of it, of course. He had the prisoners executed when it became clear they would yield no true, valuable information. Whether or not he already had doubts then, before they were confirmed in the most horrible of ways, none but him know.

The Tides of Heresy

Upon his return from Olympia, Perturabo learned the truth of the Roboutian Heresy. What he had apparently dismissed as the plots of mad xenos in the forlorn hope of shaking his trust in his brothers was revealed to be the absolute, ignoble reality. Legends has it that when he heard the news, his rage was such that it shook the Imperial Palace on its very foundations. Such claims can probably be dismissed as exaggeration, yet one must not forget that the Primarchs were beings far beyond our current understanding of the genetic craftwork that created them.

Horus calmed his brother's wrath, and asked him to focus his energy on fortifying Terra while the Warmaster marshalled the forces of the Imperium to bring the Traitor Legions to heel. With the Emperor and Magnus gone in the depths of the Palace, fighting a war of their own, it fell to the Lord of Iron to organize the defences in the case the seven Legions sent to Issvan somehow failed in their mission. First, they had to free Mars from the traitors who had pledged their allegiance to Guilliman. Perturabo sent one of his Triarchs, the officers of his Legion who advised him personally, to take back the Red Planet from the hands of the heretics. With thirty thousand Iron Warriors under his command, Barban Falk vowed not to return to Terra until the rebels were put down.

The Martian Wars

Precious little is known to the Inquisition of what happened on the soil of sacred Mars during the dark times of the Roboutian Heresy. The archives of the Heresy have suffered much in ten thousand years, but it seems there was precious little about the so-called 'Schism of Mars' in them to begin with. Due to the secretive nature of the Cult of Mars and the madness that took place, that is hardly surprising, but entire teams of the Ordo Hereticus have gathered what is believed to be a reliable accounting of the Red Planet's darkest days.

It is believed that the Arch-Traitor spent many decades subverting lords and potentates of the Mechanicum to his cause, promising them to share the many secrets he had found during his fall to Chaos, and to release them from the restraints the Emperor, in His wisdom, had placed upon the Imperium's technology and what avenues of research were forbidden.

When word came to the Sol system that Guilliman and three of his brothers had turned against the Emperor, alongside with their Legions, the Red Planet erupted in a civil war that would be mirrored across all the hundred forge-worlds and outposts of the Cult of Mars in the galaxy. Kelbor-Hal, the Fabricator-General of Mars, was trapped in his forge of Olympus Mons by legions of traitor skitarii and almost all the Titans of Legio Tempestus. He held his ground, using his own considerable armies and wisdom, but was effectively cut from the rest of the Mechanicum.

With the only man capable of coordinating the different loyalist forces on Mars isolated, the rest of the Red Planet descended into wild, savage anarchy. Countless treasures and lore that had endured the Age of Strife against all odds were lost to the fire of betrayal. Even more was destroyed when the traitors, seeking to reclaim the knowledge that they had possessed during the Dark Age of Technology, opened the infamous Vaults of Moravec, releasing an host of horrors and viruses that spread across the surface of the world. The corruption of Chaos twisted entire forge-cities into nightmarish hells that the loyalists had to purge with nuclear fire, destroying what little progress had been made in terraforming Mars again since the Unification.

When Barban Falk returned to Terra, with less than three hundred Astartes accompanying him, he reported to his Primarch, telling that his mission was done. Mars' great forge-cities were all either in loyalist hands or destroyed, and the Lords of the Red Planet had the forces required to defend themselves from the remnants of the traitor forces. Kelbor-Hal and Olympus Mons had been rescued from the traitors' siege, and the Fabricator-General would soon be able to begin provide the Praetorian with the supplies he required. The exact details of what Falk and his men saw and did on Mars is known to no one, for they never spoke of it.

'I am Barban Falk no more, father. That man died in the Noctis Labyrinthus. I am the Warsmith.'

Months later, Mortarion and the ragged survivors of Isstvan V returned from the Atrocity, and the full scope of Guilliman's treachery was revealed. No longer allowing his rage to surface, Perturabo focused on the fortification of the Imperial Palace. While before he had been careful not to maim the beauty of the Emperor's domain, he was now no longer concerning himself with such matters. He tore down frescos that had taken decades to create, and dismantled works of art such as Mankind had never seen before to place batteries and forts in their place. To this day, the reputation of the Iron Warriors as artless barbarians is still well engrained in the Terrans' minds.

The Fortress Worlds

As the galaxy burned in the flames of ultimate heresy, the Iron Warriors remained steadfast in the face of their kindred's betrayal. While most of their number had returned to Terra, thousands of Legionaries remained behind, commanding fortifications they had built on countless worlds. When news of Roboute's betrayal reached them, these warriors resolved to fight against the Arch-Traitor to the last. They cost the traitors millions of lives to take, and more often than not, the fortress' commander had a plan to deny even that to the enemy by ensuring the fortress' self-destruction.

Despite the obvious cost of such a course of action, the traitors attacked the Iron Warriors' citadels wherever they found them, unwilling to let enemies in the back of their advance. The Imperial Fists especially engaged in a galaxy-wide punitive campaign against Fourth Legion's assets, though they never set foot in the Olympian system.

The most famous of these strongholds is the Shadenhold. Led by Warsmith Barabas Dantioch, it was a fortress located in an underground cavern of the world named lesser Damantyne. For more than a standard Terran year, Barabas held at bay a force composed of thousands of Legionaries, millions of mortal soldiers and several Traitor Titans with no more than a few Astartes and men under his command. When an Imperator Titan attacked and all things seemed lost, Barabas detonated the charges he had set at the basis of the descending spire into which he had carved the Shadenhold, killing thousands of traitors and destroying the Titan itself. The exact fate of Warsmith Dantioch remains unknown, as there are rumors that he escaped by teleporting in a traitor ship in orbit with his remaining men. Regardless of their truth, he was never heard of again in the Imperium, but his name became a legend among the Iron Warriors.

Perturabo also abandoned all notion of protecting the Throneworld's population. He focused all of his efforts and resources on the Palace itself. Perhaps he did so thinking that the traitors would only concern themselves with the ultimate prize, and ignore the mortals. Perhaps he truly did no longer care, his heart hardened by the unthinkable betrayal. But he made the Imperial Palace into a stronghold such as the galaxy had never seen before.

Malcador walked slowly, his body finally showing the signs of age he had avoided for so long. As he followed the Sigillite down the corridors of the keep, Perturabo wondered if that had anything to do with his father and brother disappearance in the Palace since his return to Terra. The two beings – the ageless genetic demigod and His most trusted advisor, a man preserved beyond his natural life by the power of a living divinity – passed before wonders of ages long gone, preserved by stasis fields. Perturabo saw the painting of a smiling woman whose eyes seemed to hide the truth of the universe; a slab of stone covered in scriptures from several languages he didn't recognize; and countless others. Finally, they came to an halt before a simple leather-bound book.

'The Emperor knows of your ... interest, shall we say, in the work of the one you and Magnus call the Firenzi Polymath, Perturabo,' said Malcador, his voice still strong and steady despite his frail frame. 'He knows, just as I know, that you have sought to make his designs a reality ... and have had a measure of success.'

Perturabo shrugged.

'I did my best, but there are still parts of his work I couldn't understand. It isn't that the schematics are impossible, but ...'

'More than they were incomplete, right ? ... But you will need more, if Guilliman's treachery is to be broken. The war will come here, Perturabo ... it is inevitable. You know it as well as I do, or as the Emperor does – or even as Roboute does. The Arch-Traitor can conquer all of the galaxy, but as long as Terra stands, he is not truly victorious. That is why he will come here, and that is why we must be prepared.'

Perturabo said nothing. There was nothing to add to the truth of the Sigillite's words.

'And that is why ... ' Malcador entered a deactivation code in the book's stasis field ... 'I believe this will be of use to you.'

The Siege of Terra

After years of bloody, unrelenting conflict, the forces of Guilliman finally reached the Sol system. When the first ships of the traitor horde emerged from the Warp, they saw that Perturabo had been far from idle while they burned his father's empire and murdered His subjects. Millions of traitors died in the first minutes of the assault, their ships utterly annihilated by the combined fire of hundred of outposts, the onslaught carefully arranged by the most gifted sons of the Lord of Iron to cause maximum damage.

Guilliman had foreseen the defences of Terra, however, and only placed ships he was ready to let die at the vanguard of his forces. The death of so many of his own allies, including an entire Chapter of his own sons, sacrificed in cold blood, was channelled by the sorcerers under his command to summon a horde of daemons that stormed the defences, allowing the rest of the fleet to pass. Thousands of loyal Space Marines stationed in these strongholds died fighting against the daemonic legions, their fate heralding what all of Mankind would suffer should Guilliman win. On Titan, the Sigillite's mysterious knights-errant held their ground, and it is said that they put down an abomination that would have turned the tide of the war, had it been allowed to reach Terra.

With nothing more remaining in their path, the Traitor Legions and their slaves descended upon the Throneworld in their millions, and the cradle of Mankind burned once more in the fires of fratricidal war. For weeks, Guilliman's forces struck at the walls of the Imperial Palace, while in orbit, the fleet of the traitors fought against the myriad defences Perturabo had installed. Horus, Perturabo and Mortarion led the defenders, the Warmaster and the Death Lord fighting alongside their warriors while Perturabo, much to his dismay, remained behind the frontline, commanding the loyalist forces' moves. The three Primarchs had decided that the Lord of Iron was the one best suited for this task, as the Emperor's Praetorian.

The loyalists fought on and on, following Perturabo's orders, while the traitors' assault dissolved into anarchy as the corruption of the Warp drove them into madness. This played to the loyalists' advantage, but Perturabo was horrified to see the degeneration of his brothers' Legions with his own eyes. And then, Horus Lupercal, Perturabo's most respected brother, died at the fangs of Sanguinius, once the most noble of them all.

Forrix watched as his father listened to the report from the Eternity Gates. The Triarch was frozen in place, unable to think, unable to act. He had already experienced that feeling – back when they had returned from Olympia, and learned that Guilliman had betrayed the Imperium. It was the sensation of one's universe being torn apart as something that was believed impossible suddenly happens.

Horus was dead.

Horus. Primarch of the former Luna Wolves, who had taken his name in homage of his service to the Imperium. First and greatest of the Emperor's sons. Warmaster of the Imperium of Man ...

'Send to the Sixteenth Legion to hold its position,' said Perturabo at last, freeing Forrix of his paralyzed trance. The Triarch looked again at the Lord of Iron. The face of Perturabo was neutral, as if what he had just been told was just another casualty in the war and not the death of his own brother. Most wouldn't have seen beyond that facade of calm, but Forrix was an Iron Warrior, and a Triarch. He knew his father more than any other soul in the galaxy, safe the Emperor and a few of His sons.

Perturabo may appear calm outwardly. Inwardly, he was screaming.

The loss of Horus drove the Sixteenth Legion into despair, and Perturabo was barely able to keep them from breaking there and then. Even so, he was forced to abandon entire sections of the Palace to the traitors' advance, and the renewed assault of the Blood Angels, who had thus far satisfied themselves in attacking the defenceless population of Terra, was threatening to overwhelm his defences. For a terrible moment, it seemed that all was lost, and then, from the absolute darkness of the void beyond the Sol system, came the Third and Eighth Legions.

The Siegelords' Duel

The arrival of the Night Lords and the Emperor's Children, combined with the destruction of Sanguinius at the hands of the Sons of Horus, seemed to turn the tides of the battle, but the final result was still far from certain. From his command bunker, Perturabo predicted what Guilliman's next move would be, and called for his brother Magnus to join him in the Imperial Palace. With heavy heart, he demanded that a small force of Astartes remain on the walls while he and his brother prepared for the inevitable moment when Guilliman and his cohorts would break in. The sacrificial force was led by Warsmith Kroeger, another of Perturabo's Triarch. With a thousand warriors, he held the gates of the Imperial Palace against the combined elite forces of three Legions for more than an hour before dying, it is said, under Rogal Dorn's own blade, cursing the traitor with his last breath.

Guilliman, Dorn and El'Jonson finally reached the interior of the Imperial Palace, accompanied by their best warriors. As they marched toward the Golden Throne, guided by the psychic resonance of the sacred engine, they met the last line of defence of Perturabo : the Cavea Ferrum, a labyrinth worthy of the legends whispered about it across a hundred worlds.

The Cavea Ferrum

Beyond the walls of the Imperial Palace, in the sections of the continent-wide building that were entirely destroyed and rebuilt by Perturabo, lies the Cavea Ferrum. To this day, it is the penultimate line of defence of the Emperor, just before the Custodians guarding the Golden Throne itself.

The Cavea Ferrum is a wonder of architecture, based on designs from Old Earth and brought into existence by the genius of the Lord of Iron. It is a labyrinth that defies all attempts to map it, seeming to violate the laws of physics through the use of mathematics and theories that normal minds would struggle to even conceive. Even an Astartes' or a Primarch's mind will be unable to navigate across it without knowing the paths, and even then, following the counter-intuitive and seemingly random turns is very difficult. Today, only the Custodians themselves journey through the Cavea Ferrum, though whether or not they understand its logic is unknown to all but the Emperor's own guards.

Guilliman could find his way through, but he had underestimated Perturabo's cunning. The force he had led was separated, and the Lion and Rogal were led to their two brothers by twisting echoes and taunting whispers. There, Lion El'Jonson faced Magnus the Cyclop, released from his duties in this final hour, while Rogal Dorn met Perturabo, in what was to be the first time the rival Primarchs actually fought each other in battle.

Since that fateful night in Lochos' banquet room, he had always held back his temper.

When his sons had died by the hundred under the guns of the foolish and the xenos, he had held back, redirecting his anger toward better planning and strategy. When his world had burned in the fires of treachery, he had held back his rage, channelling it toward the salvation of as many of his people as he could. When his brother had died, he had held back his grief, turning his mind to the accomplishment of the duty the dead Warmaster had given to him.

No more. As he locked his eyes with his brother and saw only hatred and bloodthirst, Perturabo of Olympia let go of all his restraint, of all his self-control. He let the fire of his rage course through his veins freely, like a great river bursting forth after a dam is broken. Unlike the madness that raged within his brother's soul, this was no mindless anger, no surrender to the beast inside. It was the forsaking of all pretense of civilization, the embrace of his true nature as an agent of war and death. He was no longer Perturabo, the builder, the scholar, the benevolent ruler and bringer of unity, the craftman who would spend hours in his workshop, creating wonders.

He was the Lord of Iron, and he was going to kill Rogal.

He lifted Forgebreaker, the great hammer that had been bestowed upon him by Horus when he had returned to Terra, and charged his brother in complete, deadly silence, with a thousand curses in his mind and death in his eyes.

The two Primarchs fought for several hours, Rogal Dorn's fury matched by Perturabo cold, cold anger. They bloodied each other many times, until finally, word reached the two of what had transpired in the Throneroom. Fulgrim was here, and Guilliman was dead. The Ultramarines were running. Screaming in rage, Rogal dealt a final blow to Perturabo, throwing down the Lord of Iron, but before he could finish him, Perturabo's sons gathered to protect their fallen father. It seemed as if the lord of the Imperial Fists intended to kill them all, but at the word of his First Captain, he decided to leave Terra before it became impossible.

Rising from the ground, Perturabo ran to where his father had faced and slain Guilliman. The Praetorian found the Emperor dying, and, together with Magnus, placed Him upon the Golden Throne before activating the stasis field and consigning his own father to what he knew to be an eternity of pain in the greatest sacrifice of all Mankind's long, bloody history. It is said that even as the Lord of Iron worked on the wondrous mechanisms of the Golden Throne, his genius mind understanding its workings with ease, his composure never faltered. Only after Magnus confirmed to him that their father was now secure did he begin to weep for all that had been lost.

Post-Heresy : The Iron Cages

My brother killed my dreams.

I look upon what the Imperium has become, and I have to hold back my tears. Why, Roboute ? Why ? I saw your kingdom of Ultramar during the Great Crusade. Five hundred worlds united under your aegis, a model of what Mankind could achieve. I saw the courage and honor in the heart of your people, their conviction and strength. Unity in the name of an ideal of peace and illumination. This was what the Imperium could have been, and you betrayed it all for the promises of daemons and the lies of false gods. Now the Imperium as I – as our father – saw it, is dead, and what stands in its place is a mockery of the ideals we fought so hard to make real. With your treachery, you have poisoned the soul of Mankind itself, and tyranny and oppression are now our only path we can follow that will let us survive in an universe that hates us.

There is still nobility, still purity in the Imperium as it is today, but I am no fool. I never was, though now I wish I was. Then perhaps I wouldn't see the future of this empire as clearly as I do now. I see only ruin for Mankind in the future. Only war, war without end, until the day the light of the Astronomican falls dark and the galaxy is drown in humanity's blood.

Yet I will stand. I will fight. I will not let my doubts show. My sons deserve better than a father plagued by uncertainties, and every century of battle buys a few more generations time to live, a few more billions the right to live in relative peace.

Is it worth it, though ? Sometimes, I ...

From the private writings of the Primarch of the Fourth Legion, unfinished.

In the immediate aftermath of the Heresy, the Iron Warriors joined in the effort of rebuilding the Imperium. Their skills as builders were almost as useful in these times as they had been during the Heresy itself, as the sons of the Fourth Legion were responsible for the reclamation of hundred of worlds that had either been lost to the traitors' invasion or had outright allied with them. The Iron Warriors also build thousands of strongholds across the galaxy in this era, which are still standing in this day and are some of the most important strategic assets an Imperial commander can hope to have in a war zone.

After the galaxy was purged from the Traitor Legions' remains, the Iron Warriors choose to guard the gates of the two hellish underworlds into which their wayward cousins had retreated. The rest of the Imperium saw this as foolishness, and a waste of resources that could better be used elsewhere. But Perturabo was adamant, and no Lord of Terra ever managed to convince the Primarch of the Fourth Legion that surely, the traitors were dead, destroyed by the madness that holds sway in the Ruinstorm and the Eye of Terror. Now, of course, we know that he was right.

A giant belt of outposts was created around the two Warp Storms, with entire worlds turned into strongholds at the points where the Traitor Legions could escape from their prison. Cadia, once a world of lavish jungles and a profusion of life, was turned into a single giant citadel. A garrison of Iron Warriors was constantly stationed at the Cadian Gate, ready to fight off any Chaos raiders attempting to flee their exile. The twin circles that surrounded the galactic hells were called the Iron Cages, and the Fourth Legion took upon itself to guard them forevermore. Many forces from other Legions would come to their aid during great invasions from the Eye and Ruinstorm, but it would always be the Iron Warriors who stopped the initial assault with their fortresses and ships, taking heavy losses to prevent the traitors from reaching the rest of the Imperium.

In this forty-first millenium, the Iron Cages have come under attack from another enemy, one Perturabo couldn't have possibly foreseen. The Tau, a race of xenos from the Eastern Fringe, have risen to conquer a significant portion of the region, and their expansion has brought them dangerously close to the Ruinstorm. Whether it is because of pure stupidity or an hidden agenda, the Tau have launched several attacks on Iron Warriors' outposts in the region, apparently not realizing that their actions could unleash the Ultramarines upon themselves. In recent years, the Triarch in charge of the Ruinstorm's oversight has called for a massive crusade against the Tau, in order to wipe them out entirely before they can seriously damage the Iron Cage keeping Guilliman's bastard sons at bay.

Honsou watched the enemy forces approach, standing atop the walls of the Hydra Cordatus bastion. The Raven Guard had come in numbers, reflected the young Iron Warrior. Then again, what else to expect from the Traitor Legion that specialized in genetic atrocities, breeding monsters to fill its ranks even if it meant degrading their own bloodline even further ? Numbers were about the only thing they had for them, and even then they had had to drag millions of mortal slaves to the world they hoped to take. Praetorian's name, they could try if they wanted. This was one of the greatest Iron Warriors' fortress, built to house and protect one of their most precious progenoid storage and cultivation facilities. Nothing could break these walls ...

Something in the sea of enemies caught Honsou's attention. A figure, creating order in the middle of absolute confusion. A great, towering silhouette, far too distant for him to have been able to see it and yet impossible to miss. It had suddenly appeared in the middle of a vast circle, traced upon the rock by witchcraft and fueled by arcane symbols and the blood of thousands of prisoners.

The creature was impossible to describe in any way that made sense. It was shrouded in shadows and radiated dark light; it was the incarnation of death and a perversion of life; it shrieked in silence, yet its voice – which he could hear even here, on the parapet – was the herald of the End Times. He knew this creature, though he had never thought he would ever see it. It couldn't possibly be here, yet it was equally impossible for it to be anything else than what he thought it was.

Honsou turned, and started to descend the wall, already trying to reach his commander over the vox. He had to warn the other defenders. Warsmith Shon'tu had to be told.

Corax was here.

Organisation

As time passed and Perturabo fought on and on in the many wars of the Imperium, eventually the Primarch accumulated too many wounds. He lost his right arm in the battle of Sebastus IV, where he faced Rogal Dorn for the final time – banishing the Daemon Primarch back into the Eye after he had escaped it at the head of a massive fleet. His left eye was torn out by a Dark Eldar warlord on Corusil V, after months of a brutal, grueling campaign. Wound after wound forced Perturabo to increasingly rely on augmentics, until the battle of Ularan in late M32, where he was finally entombed into a Dreadnought.

Ever since that time, Perturabo has slipped in and out of trance-like rest, and his periods of sleep have grown ever longer for each one of activity. To balance the loss of leadership, he gave far more reaching authority to his Trident, as well as the right to choose the replacements to their fallen members if one of them died while the Primarch was asleep. Since then, the three members of the Trident have shared command of the Fourth Legion, one of them remaining on Olympia, another on Cadia, and the third surveying the borders of the Ruinstorm.

Beneath the Triarchs are the Warsmiths, who assume a rank similar to that of Chapter Master, Magnus, or Great Captain in other Legions. Each one of them commands a Grand Battalion, the strength of which depends upon his assignments. Some Warsmiths command a single Company, protecting a world against xenos raiders. Other can lead thousands of Astartes into the greatest wars the Imperium is fighting at the moment.

Beliefs

'From Iron Cometh Strength. From Strength Cometh Will. From Will Cometh Faith. From Faith Cometh Honor. From Honor Cometh Iron.'

The Unbreakable Litany

Before the Heresy, the Iron Warriors were the defenders of Mankind, seeing themselves as the guardians of the countless trillions citizens of the Imperium as they rose toward an utopia never before achieved. The dream that Perturabo had shared with his father – to create a civilization of true freedom, freedom from the Warp's corrosive touch, freedom from the petty whims of tyrants, freedom from the darkness lurking in the stars – was one of true nobility and purity. But that dream was destroyed when Guilliman first pledged his allegiance to Chaos.

As their Primarch slowly fell into melancholy, the Iron Warriors grew bitter. They had lost what had truly mattered to them : a cause worthy to fight for. The survival of Mankind was something that had be preserved, yet it was far from being as inspiring as the Great Crusade had been. The belief in Mankind's rise to utopia was crushed as they watched the Imperium grow increasingly tyrannical over the centuries, forced to promote ignorance and fear where it had once brought illumination and peace.

Yet despite their growing unrest, the Iron Warriors endure. They do their best to ensure the worlds under their command remain as close to the Crusade's ideals as they can, and fight the eternal wars so that no other will have to. The fact that, contrary to prior the Heresy, the Fourth Legion is largely aknowledged by the Imperium's people for its efforts and sacrifice – due to their spread out presence across the galaxy in their strongholds – helps them keep faith in Humanity. They have also embraced the faith of the Emperor more than Legionaries tend to, and many believe that the Emperor will one day return to lead Mankind to glory and paradise once more. Until then, it is their duty to protect the Imperium, and they do not intend to fail.

Combat doctrine

Most Legions use tactics of precise strike, in following to the 'spearhead' strategy favored by Warmaster Horus himself, and still used by his sons to this day with great success. Due to being an elite force, and often present in small numbers, the Astartes specialize in identifying and attacking key targets, be it enemy officers or strategic locations. Not so for the Iron Warriors.

When the Fourth Legion goes on the field rather than defend its countless fortresses, it does so with overwhelming numbers. Thousands upon thousands of Legionaries wearing the grey and yellow of the Iron Warriors, with engines of death the size of building and entire Imperial regiments at their side. The sons of Perturabo fight on a planetary scale, taking command of the entire stage when they arrive – or grudgingly deferring that authority to the Warmaster, if one has been named. To see a Fourth Legion's deployment is an awe-inspiring sight. Their mastery of logistics is beyond anything seen in the Administratum, and more than one rebelling world has simply surrendered after seeing row after row of tanks prepared to crush its cities' walls.

The Iron Warriors also have a very close relationship with the Adeptus Mechanicus, going back to the Martian Wars. They are one of the few Legions to be able to call upon the Legio Titanicus and be sure the god-machines will answer their call. Forge-worlds under their protection will not hesitate to entrust them with their skitarii forces.

The Last Chance

A tradition in the Fourth Legion, said to have been installed by Perturabo himself, is to always offer the enemy a chance to surrender. Whether the foe is a rebel, a xenos, or a Chaos-damned traitor, most Warsmiths will make sure that the enemy is given the opportunity to throw down its weapons before beginning the battle. However, in most cases, that offer is refused, and in the rare cases it isn't – mostly when facing rebels with genuine griefs against local corruption and terrified by the sight of the Legionaries – the sanctions inflicted upon the enemy are severe.

Homeworld

Olympia was first settled during the Dark Age of Technology. At that point, it was a world rich with ore, but by the time the first Warp Storms plunged the galaxy into the Age of Strife, it had been stripped of all its valuable resources to feed the ever hungry forges of other planets.

Now, the world is a jewel of civilization, shining its light in the darkness of the galaxy in defiance. Great cities modeled after Perturabo's own schematics cover its surface, and it is surrounded by a ring of orbital defences that have not been pierced once in ten thousand years. Protected by the Legion, Olympia is the last echo of Perturabo's dream. Its surface, devastated during the war against the Hrud, was restored by the masons of the Fourth Legion, while the great shipyards that orbit around the world had to be rebuilt from scratch and what little wreckage of their precedent incarnation had been found on the world.

The surface of the world is still similar to what it was during Perturabo's youth : a collection of city-states, bound by a common allegiance to the Iron Warriors and dedication to the Emperor's will. It is mostly from their ranks that the Legion recruit not just its members, but also the countless servants that allow it to function, as well as its auxillary regiments. The more material needs of the Iron Warriors – ammunition, heavy support, and ship's maintenance – are cared for by the orbital decks and the other worlds of the system, turned into forge-worlds by the portions of the Mechanicum who allied with Perturabo in times now long gone.

Recruitment and Geneseed

In the era of the Great Crusade, most recruits of the Iron Warriors came from Olympia itself. Now, with the Legion so thinly spread, each Grand Battalion is responsible for its own recruitment, though the homeworld still pays its tithe of young men. Children from the various worlds under Iron Warriors' supervision are induced, as well as some born in the Imperial Army's regiments assigned to fight alongside the Fourth Legion.

When the first warriors of the Fourth Legion were inducted on Terra, at the beginning of what would become the Great Crusade, the rates of implant rejection were very low. This enabled the Legion to grow in number very quickly, and in the years to follow, to replenish its losses more efficiently than other Legions. Perturabo's gene-seed was devoid of any impurity, and despite some Warsmiths pressing their Apothecaries for quicker replacements for their losses, its quality was preserved throughout the Great Crusade and the nightmare of the Heresy. But that changed after the creation of the Iron Cages.

With most of their warriors stationed so close to the two greatest Warp Storms of the galaxy, the Iron Warriors began to suffer the consequences of their devotion to their duty. Mutations spread across their ranks, subtle but nonetheless there. It became common practice to remove mutated organs and replace them with augmentics, or cloned flesh from previous tissue samples. Progenoid glands are destroyed when the mutations are too pronounced in a Legionary, but this threatens the continued existence of the Legion itself. The ability of the Iron Warriors to obtain fresh genetic material from their Primarch has diminished ever since his entombment, for while it is still possible, the Dreadnought which hosts his remaining flesh is more complex than any other in the Imperium, and the Techmarines of the Legion do not want to risk damaging it. Still, the fear that they may be slowly damning themselves by doing their duty has added one more concern to the ever-growing list of griefs that the Iron Warriors have accumulated over the millenia.

Warcry

The Iron Warriors have kept the same battlecry since the Heresy : 'Iron within, Iron without !'. When facing members of the Traitor Legions, they also use 'For Terra and the Praetorian !' in memory of the Siege. As a rule, however, Perturabo's sons are no adept of such emotional display on the battlefield, preferring to focus their minds on the hundred calculations of war or on the enemy in front of them.

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – White Scars : Lords of the Wild Hunt

Once, the scions of the Fifth Legion were the vanguard of the Imperium's advance, the outriders who hunted in the wild regions of space. Even then, their independent streak had drawn suspicion upon them, though whether that suspicion was founded or instead caused their rebellion is unknown. Now, they have become cruel and sadistic predators, preying upon the very population they once protected from the galaxy's many threats. Riding ahead of their armies of walking dead and cannon fodder on their demonic bikes, they seek the thrill of the hunt and the plunder of entire worlds. They reach speed beyond the reach of sane mortals, and some of them have entirely lost themselves to the power of the Warp in return for the ability to defy the laws of the physical universe entirely. But if their tactics of war are well-known, the truth of their betrayal remains still undiscovered to this day by the Imperium.

Origins

During the Solar Exodus, Mankind left its cradle for the first time. Thousands of colonization ships travelled through the stars, entire generations passing before they reached their intended destination. Few of these fleets ever found the world they had intended to reach, but the one that sought the world they had baptized Mundus Planus was one of those.

Isolated from the rest of Mankind, the descendants of the colonists quickly lost the technology they had once possessed, and regressed to a level corresponding to some of the current Imperium's most advanced medieval worlds. The world, which they came to call Chogoris, was rich and fertile, and the population grew despite these setbacks, forming tribes and cities. For countless centuries, life went on and empires rose and fell, until from the stars came the one who would cause Chogoris' rebirth … as well as its ultimate damnation.

One of the twenty sons of the Emperor, stolen from Him by the plots of the Dark Gods, descended upon Chogoris in a trail of fire that was visible for hundreds of kilometers. According to the text that is known to the Inquisition as The Khagan's Rise, at the same time the trail of fire tore the heavens, seers and sorcerers received visions of great portent, and their lords and masters quickly made the link between the two events. They sent men to find what had fallen from the sky, several parties of horsemen hailing from different nations.

The ones to first reach the site of the crash were tribesmen of the Talskars. The Talskars were nomads, living in the region of Chogoris known as the Empty Quarter, arid and hostile to life. They were mostly ignored by the more civilized nations of Chogoris, though sometimes raids were led by one side or the other for glory or plunder. Civilization was, at that time, a relative term on Chogoris : all of its people belonged to one tribe and were led by a Khan, whether they were nomad riders, farmers, or empire-builders.

When the riders saw the child that was already standing amidst the wreckage, they were amazed. They approached him warily, for surely this was no natural infant. The child exulted strength and confidence, even though he was little more than a babe. Charmed, the tribesmen spoke together, and decided to bring the sky child to their khan.

But before they were able to reach the child and bring him with them, they were struck down. Others had come for the child of the stars, and when they saw the Talskars surrounding him, they feared that they were going to kill him. So it was that the destiny of Jaghatai, son of the Emperor, was changed by the shedding of blood. Instead of being taken to the Talskars, he was instead brought before the Palatine, ruler of Chogoris' greatest empire.

Ong Khan, leader of the Talskar tribe, looked at the warriors assembled before him in anger. His men had died, and the sky child had been taken by the enemy of his people. Yet there was more to his anger than the death of his brethren.

The shamans had told him of the great destiny of the child who had come to Chogoris on a trail of celestial fire. He was to be the one who would unite the warring clans of the plains and lead them to glory eternal, yet he had been taken from them. Destiny had been denied, and now the same shamans wept in terror, speaking of a great darkness to come if the child was denied his destiny. They had spoken of ancient spirits who fed on pain and agony coming to steal the lives of Chogoris' people, of great beasts hunting down the tribes and bringing them to extinction to sate their dark appetites. The boy had been the one destined to protect them from that fate. It was still a distant future, many decades or perhaps even centuries had yet to pass, but Ong had not become Khan by not thinking of the future. There was only one possible answer, one course of action. The Khitans could not be allowed to keep the child, to raise him as one of their own, corrupt and decadent.

They would take back the child, and correct destiny's course. No matter the cost.

The Palatine took interest in the child, and arranged for him to be raised in his palace. For a few years, Jaghatai learned all about the tactics of heavy cavalry and phalanx of infantry that had allowed his empire to crush any opposition as well as the many arts developed by the Chogorian over the course of the millennia. The Primarch's growth, both physical and intellectual, was far beyond the norm, and rumors about the mysterious sky child who was being raised by the Palatine spread like wildfire across Chogoris. For some, he was a sign of the Heavens' blessing upon the emperor. For others, he was a daemon clad in human skin, deceiving all around him and waiting for the opportunity to turn on those who had foolishly welcomed him.

What exactly the Palatine had in mind for Jaghatai is unknown. Perhaps, like some of the rulers who became father figures to the scattered Primarchs, he intended to make him his heir. That is unlikely, though, as he already had many children from his wives and concubines. Perhaps the Palatine wanted him to become one of his generals, helping him to maintain his hold over his vast empire.

Whatever the Palatine's intentions were is, however, ultimately irrelevant. As Jaghatai neared adulthood, a massive invasion from the Empty Quarter's tribes tore through the Palatine's domains. For the first time in recorded history, almost a dozen of the plains' tribes had put aside their differences and united against their common enemy. The initial surprise allowed the nomads to advance deep into the Palatine's territories, until the old emperor sent Jaghatai at the head of a quarter of his armies to stop their advance.

Blood dripped from the suspended body. Once, the slab of meat had been a man : a warrior of the Talskar, come along the rest of the Empty Quarter's army to the land of the Palatine, Jaghatai's foster father. But he had had the misfortune of being captured by the Palatine's men. Now, he was a ruined husk, his spirit and flesh broken by the ministrations of the man who now faced Jaghatai's wrath.

'What do you think you are doing, brother ?' hissed the demigod.

He was younger than the son of the Palatine, yet already he towered above him. The fear in the prince's eyes was evident, even to one without the sky child's preternatural perceptions. Jaghatai knew that his presence had that effect on those around him, but it was the first time he was truly angry while exerting it.

'He is an enemy,' pleaded the terrified man.

'Yes,' conceded Jaghatai. 'And if you had killed him on the field of battle, I would have praised you for it. But this ? This is not honorable. It is not right. Torture is a tool for cowards who do not dare face their foe in honest battle, brother. If father knew you were doing this …'

It was then that something in Jaghatai's foster brother's face changed. He looked straight into the sky child's eyes, and said :

'Who do you think taught me ?'

The two armies met on the Lon-Suen Plain. Seeing the mighty horde assembled against him, Jaghatai called for parley. He admired the martial prowess of the enemy, and wanted to know what could possibly have driven them to such an attack against the Palatine. To him, it was obvious that the tribes had much more to lose than to gain in such an attack – they were too far from their homeland, without support. Eventually, they were doomed to be crushed by the might of the Palatine's armies, and the repercussion on the families they had left behind would be terrible. This made no sense to Jaghatai, and he desired answers.

The tribes accepted his offer of parley, but when the Primarch met their leaders, his troops suddenly charged, breaking the truce promised by Jaghatai. One of his subaltern officers, acting on the command of one of Jaghatai's rivals at the Palatine's court, had betrayed him. Turning aside the blade of the assassin that came for him in the negotiation tent, Jaghatai was furious. Abandoned by his own men and believed by the nomads to have betrayed them, the Primarch tore his way through the assembled armies, forcing the terrified survivors of both hosts to their knees before him.

In all the years to come, never again would the men of both armies see anything like what they had seen that day. That day would become a legend, whispered in fear by all those who any reason to dread the attention of the lord of Chogoris. The wrath of the Khan, they would call it : the moment the child of the sky had shed out his humanity to reveal the demigod beneath.

The screams of the dying had drown out the sound of battle, they would say. The stars themselves were tainted red by the blood of the fallen, and the shrieks of yakshas on the edge of shadows pierced the souls of the hundred thousand men gathered on the battlefield. And at the center, the Khan had stood, holding his blade with both hands, moving like a vengeful spirit amidst the press of bodies, cutting down all who stood in his way, his fury radiating from him like a physical force.

And some would say, after looking around them nervously, that even after the terrified men had begun to kneel before their conqueror, the demigod had continued to kill them even as they prostrated themselves before him, begging for mercy.

He made them swear loyalty to him and only to him, and then marched them toward the Palatine's capital, intend on claiming his revenge. From this moment, he was known to his men and his enemies as Jaghatai Khan, the one who, according to ancient prophecies, would bring unity to Chogoris by the spilling of blood. Using the very dagger that had been meant to end his life – a weapon laced in a poison that could kill a grown man in a few seconds – he ritually scarred both of his cheeks, replicating the mark of the Talskar tribe. While the poison was unable to do any damage to the Primarch's enhanced metabolism, it ensured that the scars never fully healed.

The Palatine denounced Jaghatai as a traitor, and send the remainder of his armies against him. Some of the officers leading these armies deserted to Jaghatai's side instead, pledging their loyalty to the one they knew had been betrayed first. Others fought and died, for none could stand against the might of the Urdu of Jaghatai. As fortress after fortress fell, Jaghatai discovered a darker side of the Palatine's empire : shrines dedicated to yaksha, torture chambers filled with the ghosts of innocents, and witches who used their powers without any restraint under the service of the man the Primarch had come to see as his father. Today, it is believed that the Palatine was corrupted by Chaos and spread its touch to the rest of Chogoris, and that exposition to it is was led to Jaghatai's ultimate betrayal of the Imperium.

More and more tribes came from the Empty Quarter, drawn by the tales of Jaghatai's victories. He learned the ways of the nomads quickly, combining the military lore he had been taught by the Palatine's teachers with the tribes' approach to warfare. He sent the tribes ahead, tasked with scouting and sowing chaos, then withdraw, regroup with the slower, tougher units from the Palatine's deserters, and crush the confused foe before he could recover. Records from that time speak of Jaghatai's own ruthlessness and of that of those under his command. Entire cities are said to have been razed for the crime of opposing the Khan, the skulls of the dead piled up at the gates or carried as warnings for all to see. Finally, after several months of campaigning, the horde of Jaghatai arrived at Cophasta, the capital of the Palatine's empire. Battle is said to have lasted for an entire week, but in the end, Jaghatai's armies pierced through the defenders' lines and burned Cophasta to the ground.

Ketugu Suogo, Khagan of the Khitan and Palatine of the empire he had forged with his own hands, stood before one who had once called him father. All around him, his palace – the last fortress of his dying empire – was aflame.

'They told me you would be my death,' said the old man softly. He knew that he needed not to raise his voice. Jaghatai would hear his every word anyway.

'Who ?'

'The priests. The stormseers. The witches. All those who claimed to speak with the voice of the gods. They told me that it was written in the very stars.' The Khan of the Khitan looked down, and a sad chuckle escaped his lips. 'I fall by your hands, and my empire falls with me. I thought that I could advert it if I was the first to find you …'

'But you weren't,' interrupted Jaghatai. Ketugu looked up to his foster son's divinely wrought face, incomprehension showing in his expression.

'I remember, even now. I remember who first found me when I arrived to this world. I remember how your men killed them. That's why I never really, fully trusted you. You lied to me when you told me your men had found me first, Ketugu. I shouldn't have been surprised, though. After all …'

The Primarch moved, a single leap, a single unleashing of the tremendous power contained within his flesh. His blade sang through the air and pierced the Palatine's heart as easily as if it had been cutting silk.

'… all emperors are liars.'

After the Palatine was slain, the empire he had built collapsed. Jaghatai and his horde began their conquest of Chogoris, toppling one ruler after another, forming new kingdoms in their wake that Jaghatai left to the hands of his most trusted lieutenants. The last of the old Chogorian kingdoms fell less than twenty years after the Battle of Lon-Suen, and for the first time in its long history the planet was finally united. Jaghatai was crowned as the Great Khan, Ruler of All Within the Lands. His hold over the planet was tenuous at best, as ruling a world is difficult enough with modern technology, let alone without even a vox. Still, his rule brought an end to the conflicts between tribes, and with that peace came an age of relative prosperity. For ten years, the Great Khan was content to leave the government of the world to his vassals while he hunted the latest rebel to his ambition. Then, the Emperor arrived to Chogoris. The Master of Mankind descended from the stars with his army of golden giants, and Jaghatai bowed before him, recognizing the figure as the one who had engineered his own creation.

The Great Crusade

Finally meeting his father, Jaghatai accepted the command of the Legion that had been created in his image. Many of his followers chose to come with him, though only a few were young enough to be inducted in the Legion. Nevertheless, many who were too old attempted the trials anyway, and a few even managed to survive. Those quickly rose through the ranks, becoming the Khan second-in-command, to the silent anger of many former officers who saw these ascensions as nepotism but accepted them as the price of being reunited with their gene-sire.

Under their Primarch's command, the legionaries took the name of White Scars, marking themselves with the same mark that the Talskar had. With the Emperor's permission, they took as their emblem the lighting symbol that had once been that of the Master of Mankind, before the aquila replaced it. Many of the traditions of Chogoris were adopted by the Legion, and in the years to come more and more of its recruits would come from the Khan's homeworld rather than from Terra.

Little is known of the White Scars' activities during the Great Crusade. The Khan took his Legion to the edge of the Imperium's advance, not hesitating to risk being entirely cut off from the rest of the galaxy. Furthermore, unlike most of his brothers, he mostly kept the White Scars gathered together, only sending a few companies to other Expeditionary Fleets. This caused the White Scars to develop a reputation for secrecy, which according to what few records have survived what quite unfounded. Far from the Imperium, however, the White Scars were unable to deny the rumors that spread about them, and in this may lay another reason for their ultimate fate.

For many years, the Fifth Legion continued waging its own battles unknown to the greater part of the Imperium. Rare were the Army units that were assigned to them – after all, with nearly the whole might of an Astartes Legion under his command, the Khan had little use of mortal auxiliaries. Entire alien empires that would have been considerable threats to the main forces of the Great Crusade once it reached them were destroyed without the rest of the galaxy noticing.

Isolated from the rest of the Imperium, the Khan was a mysterious figure even amongst his fellow Primarchs – which was reflected in how his sons, in the rare occasions where they met their cousins, acted in their presence. He was friend with Magnus and Sanguinius, who shared his belief in what the rest of the Primarchs would have called superstition but that they called mystic – the Cyclops because he had seen it with his own eye, and the Angel because he knew of it intimately. Together, they created the first Librarius amidst the Blood Angels, reflecting the Stormseers of the Fifth Legion and the cults of the Thousand Sons. Soon, the practice spread to the rest of the Legions, who saw the advantage in having psykers in their ranks to face the more exotic enemies they met in the prosecution of the Great Crusade.

Other rejected the Librarians, Russ first of all. Stormseers from the Fifth Legion tried to explain the idea to those who, to the eyes of most outsiders, were their equivalent in the Sixth Legion, but were rebuked. This, combined with the image that the barbaric Wolves gave and that had, over time, spread to his own Legion, made Jaghatai quietly angry with his Fenrisian brother. But, like most of the Primarchs, the Wolf King mostly ignored the Khan. In fact, many remembrancers, historians, and even important figures such as the Sigillite recorded opinions that perhaps there was something in the Khan's genesis that made him 'so easily forgotten'.

Of all his brothers, it was only with Horus that the Khan had any real relationship. The two saw each other as kindred spirits, both being warriors first and foremost. That link between the two, and Jaghatai's expertise in the destruction of xenos empire, was the reason why, when needing help in bringing down the Ork world-fortress of Ullanor, Horus called upon the Khan. Together, the Sons of Horus, the Custodians of the Emperor, the White Scars and the Iron Warriors launched the Ullanor Crusade. Three Primarchs and the Master of Mankind, gathering their might to crush the empire of one of the Great Beast most dreaded warlords of history : Urlakk Urg never stood a chance.

The White Scars earned much honor in the Ullanor Crusade, with remembrancers from the other Legions involved writing down many of their heroic deeds – records which, of course, would be utterly erased in the dark years that followed. The help of the Khan was instrumental in bringing down the Warboss, and the Khan's Legion was given a place of honor in the Triumph that followed – for many of those present, it was the first time they saw the White Scars, let alone their mysterious Primarch. This was also the last recorded time Horus met Jaghatai – and it is highly unlikely that they ever met again in the course of the Heresy.

When the beastial empire was finally beheaded, however, many pockets of resistance remained across the sector. One of them in particular worried Horus, even as he was still struggling with the new responsibilities his father had suddenly dropped in his lap before returning to Terra. If left alone, it could in time become a rallying point for the billions of Orks that remained from the Ullanor empire. But it was far away from Imperial territory, and as the Warmaster, Horus couldn't go there himself. So, he asked for Jaghatai to go there in his stead and finish what they had started by removing all possibility that the system, which was known as Chondax, could become a threat to the Imperium in the future.

Chondax : the Blade in the Shadows

'All emperors are liars.'

Attributed to Jaghatai Khan, Primarch of the Fifth Legion.

For millennia, the Inquisition has sought to unveil the mystery of what happened in the Chondax system. What is recorded in standard archives is simply this : the Khan gathered his whole Legion, leaving only a few behind in the other Expeditionary Fleets, and journeyed to Chondax. The system was far from Imperial lines, which was one of the reasons Horus had chosen the Khan for this duty : the newly appointed Warmaster knew his brother didn't have a problem with fighting far from support. In the years that followed Ullanor, the White Scars almost entirely dropped off the map, with only superficial astropathic reports that quickly stopped altogether. At that time, no one thought anything of it : it was common for entire fleets to be cut off by the tides of the Warp, and the White Scars were the most liable to forget to report entirely.

The only fiable information about what transpired between the departure of the White Scars from Ullanor and their arrival at Isstvan V comes from a single file, deep in the archives of Titan. Its origin is unknown, and Inquisitors across the ages have tried to pry this secret from the Grey Knights – in vain, as the Ordo Malleus' warriors are in some instances even more protective of their mysteries as the Holy Inquisition. The file is an audio recording, from which many details have been erased – at least in the version that is accessible to the Lords of the Inquisition.

'The White Scars died at Chondax. Whatever events transpired that I did not learn of, whatever lies were spoken that turned the Khan against the Emperor and the Warmaster, whatever plots were engineered to make that betrayal even possible, it does not matter. I felt it then, and I still feel it now. A scream echoing across the Sea of Souls, the agony of a thousand futures that will now never come to pass. The dream died at Chondax, and the Fifth Legion died with it. What remains behind is nothing but its corpse, kept in motion by the cruel whims of the Yaksha Kings.'

Extract from the Chondax Record (translated from Chogorian)

According to this file, a campaign that should only have taken a handful of weeks, especially with the full might of a Legion engaged, dragged off for years. The first signs that all was not as had been anticipated were the storms of the Warp. It took years for the fleet to even reach the Chondax system, losing many ships to the Sea of Souls – some of which would reappear across the centuries, their crew horribly twisted by the unholy powers of the Warp. Astropathic communication became more and more unreliable, and the choirs soon had to be placed in stasis to preserve them from the madness raging outside the Geller Fields. By the time the White Scars finally arrived at Chondax, the storms had risen to the point that turning back was all but impossible. The Fifth Legion was trapped in the system with the Orks.

The Orks were present in far greater numbers than the Imperial tacticians had anticipated, spread across the entire system and well dug in. Apparently, the same storms that had harassed the Astartes had dragged much of the Ork refugees from Ullanor to Chondax, and they had colonized the system with the stubbornness typical of their species. Still, the Fifth Legion had no choice but to fight them – if only so that it could survive until the storm abated.

In the course of the war, the behavior of the Khan is reported to have changed. He became more and more withdrawn, spending long periods alone in his chambers, leaving the prosecution of the war to his Noyan-Khans, the highest ranked officers of his Legion. It is apparently during that period that he was corrupted by the Dark Gods, their whispers slowly eroding at his loyalty as well as his mind. This only went worse as time passed, until the breaking point of a Primarch's mind was finally reached.

'I could hear the whispers back then. Shadows from beyond the veil, speaking to all who would open their ears. But I didn't listen. I knew that if I did, I would go mad. The lies of the Warp are not to be listened to : that is one of the first thing any Stormseer learns.

Perhaps I should have. Perhaps if I had, I could have prevented it. But I doubt it. Others did, I know. And they joined him in the madness when he made his decision known to us. The Legion would be purged, he told us. We had been betrayed, abandoned, but there was one lord to whom our loyalty could go, one who would never try to bind us in chains. The path would be hard, he told us, but it had to be walked. For we were White Scars, and we always chose the hard path.

But it was all lies, fed to his mind by the nightmares of the Yaksha Kings. They had twisted his mind, turning him against those he had once loved most, quelling all rational thoughts and fanning his anger at being always ignored. I could see it, and if any of my peers had not been similarly twisted they would have been able to see it too.

I fled on that night. I couldn't trust any of those of my brothers – and this was the last time I truly thought of any of them as brothers – remaining in the fleet, but there were a few mortals I knew I could still trust. With their help, I went to my ship, I sent a last message to those who were about to be betrayed and I ran. I am not proud of it. While we ran, I heard the screams of those I had left behind as they died betrayed, slain upon their brothers' blades. But I had to warn the rest of the Imperium. I was too late in the end, of course – the Warp raged and roared around us, casting us across the galaxy in a dozen different places before, in the end, the Imperium found us. But I had to do it.

I had to do it !'

Extract from the Chondax Record (translated from Chogorian)

Several years after the beginning of the Chondax Crusade, only one fortress remained to be purged – but it was the most formidable of its kind, built by the Orks specifically to resist the White Scars tactics. The greenskins had learned much during their desperate struggle with the Astartes, and they had begun to build one of the first Gargants in recorded history – the grotesque equivalent of our noble Titans. The Khan, who clearly had already turned his back on the Emperor at this point, designed a plan that would enable him to prepare his Legion for the betrayal to come.

In an imitation of Guilliman's own scheme at Isstvan III, he sent the elements of his Legion that he knew wouldn't follow him in rebellion on Chondax. Most of them were Terrans, legionaries from before Jaghatai had joined his sons or who had been inducted before the influx of recruits had come only from Chogoris. A few were Chogorians whose minds and loyalties were too strong to be bent to the Khagan's will. These troops found themselves isolated, without support, facing the last remnant of the mighty Ullanor Ork empire. Thinking that something had happened to the fleet, they fought alone against the Great Beast, and claimed victory, though the cost was high, as their treacherous master had denied them the heavy machines they would have needed for a conventional assault on the xenos keep.

As they waited in the ruins of the Ork fortress, trying to reach the rest of the fleet, the loyal sons of the Emperor saw hundreds of drop-pods and transports descend from orbit. At first, they thought that their brothers had come to bring them back aboard the fleet, though the numbers were a bit too much for that – especially considering the losses they had taken. But in reality, Jaghatai had come with those of his sons who were ready to follow him in Hell for another reason. He had come to finish what he had started, and kill all those of his own Legion who would not stand with him in betrayal of all they had ever held dear.

He was wandering amidst the darkness. Pain burned in his chest, where the blade of Thorgun had pierced his armor and flesh. Somehow, it seemed that it shouldn't have been possible. He was stronger and faster than the Khan of the Brotherhood of the Moon could ever have hoped to be, and his armor had deflected blows from much more powerful and skilled attackers. But he had been … slow. As if something important, something vital had been drained from him when he had killed his own sons.

His sons ? He had killed his sons ? Why had he done that ? Why …

The shadows around him thickened. He could hear voices, now, whispers that called his name. These were not the voices he had heard before, though. They had revealed him the truth, showed him just how Horus had laughed behind his back when he had sent him to this lost place, showed him how the rest of the Imperium mocked him and his Legion, linking them to that barbarian Russ and refusing to see that they were just as civilized as it was possible for an army of living weapons to be ! They had shown him how he was chained, how the Emperor had bound him to His service, denying him the freedom that was rightfully his and the glory his greatness demanded. And then, they had told him how to claim his revenge and regain his freedom. That was why he had killed his sons … but what he heard now weren't these voices.

The voices cried out in anger at him, and he recognized them. These were the voices of his sons he had killed, the voices of those he had betrayed. One of them was female, the woman who had warned the betrayed of what was to come, giving them time to seek shelter from the orbital bombardment and forcing him to descend and do it himself. Her name … her name was Ilya. Ilya Ravallion, and he had killed her for turning against him and daring to call him mad …

The pain flared hotter in his chest, and he cried out in anguish for the first time since he had opened his eyes under Chogoris' sky. He felt his very soul being torn apart as the shades of those he had betrayed clawed at him, ripping out part of his self, and then …

A voice, a chorus of calls, drawing him away, drawing what remained of him back, back to the world of flesh and bone, back to those who were loyal to him, back to a life that contained nothing but more treacheries and betrayals yet to come …

Jaghatai closed his eyes in the Sea of Souls, letting true darkness take him. In a room deep within the Swordstorm, surrounded by dozens of Stormseers and hundreds of mortal acolytes – most of which were in the middle of dying, their lives sacrificed to claw the Primarch's essence back from the hungry void – a thunderous boom of power resonated. They had not let him die. They were dragging him back, using every source of power they could, drawing upon forces that should never be used, letting their cores being rewritten in return for the strength to return their father to life.

The Khagan opened its eyes.

The Titanic audio file does not detail what happened then. Whatever its source, he wasn't there in person. What is known is that the purge was completed, and the White Scars fully committed to their treacherous course. With the loyalists purged from his Legion, Jaghatai was ready to answer the call from the Warmaster to go to Isstvan V. The Warp storms cleared when the news of Isstvan III spread across the galaxy, allowing the White Scars to travel to Isstvan with all speed.

The Heresy

Records from the three loyal Legions that were present at Isstvan V indicate that the Khan was not at the meeting that took place before the Dropsite Massacre. Perhaps he was present at the conclave of the four renegade Primarchs as they planned their vile betrayal. In his stead, Hasik Noyan-Khan, who had once been one of Jaghatai's generals back on Chogoris, came to represent the White Scars. The fleet of the Fifth Legion was battered, clearly just coming back from a battle of great intensity, but the Legionaries refused to answer their cousins' questions – claiming that what had happened on Chogoris was of no importance compared to the treason of Guilliman and his cohorts.

On Isstvan V, the White Scars, as part of the « second wave », took part in the butchering of the three loyal Legions. In the days that followed the initial confrontation – the initial butchery at the Urgall Plateau, where Konrad Curze died alongside almost all of the Death Guard and thousands of Alpha Legionaries – the sons of the Khan hunted the surviving loyalists. While Mortarion led hundreds of survivors toward their transports and then back in orbits, thousands more remained stranded on the planet, trapped with the hordes of traitors. Very, very few managed to escape, but by all such accounts, the White Scars were the cruelest and the most relentless in their pursuit.

Death surrounded them. On the sterile ground of the Urgall Plateau, a million demigods had died in the fires of treachery. Their purified blood, tainted by dark sources for so few of them, dripped on the cold rock, forming pools of crimson that shined under the light of the uncaring stars. Broken armors and shattered blades decorated the graveyard of the Imperium's future, and he stalked amidst these ruins like the Grim Reaper of the legends of Old Earth. His sons – so few of them now – were ahead of him, preparing for their last-ditch attempt at escape. They had to get out, to warn the rest of the Imperium that the unthinkable had been done, that the impossible had happened.

A shadow emerged from the wreckage. Once the shadow had been a hunter, a mighty lord of war. Once, it had been a brother to the Reaper. Now, it was a monster. Darkness and smoke the color of blood clung to its armor, and in its eyes blazed the same fires that had slain the ideal of the Great Crusade. The Reaper had seen its ilk before, when he had faced the many horrors of his homeworld, but never before had he seen one as mighty as this. Still, he felt no awe. Only horror, and resolution.

'I shall free you now, my brother,' said Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard, to the walking corpse that had once been his brother Jaghatai.

After Isstvan, the White Scars followed Guilliman in his advance for Terra. However, the Night Lords and Alpha Legion forces had dispersed all across the galaxy, rallying entire worlds to the cause of the Imperium and slowing down the progress of the Traitor Legions to a crawl. In order to prevent being attacked from two sides once he reached Terra, Roboute ordered the Fifth Legion to hunt down the survivors of the two loyalist Legions. Whoever was in command of the White Scars at that point in time complied, eager to inflict further humiliation on those they believed they had broken at the Massacre.

On the bridge of the Sickle Moon, Yesugei didn't move. For a long moment, he stayed still, the pistol of the grey-clad Astartes still aimed at his head. There were many things he ought to say. That he wasn't a traitor. That he had tried to warn his Khan away from the path of darkness and treachery the White Scars now followed. That his Legion had been deceived, and shouldn't be blamed for the choice their Primarch had made. But he didn't say anything. He waited for the trigger to be pulled, for his life to end, just like the dream had died in the ashes of betrayal.

Yet the moment didn't come. Then the warrior in grey, whose nameless ship had found Yesugei in the void and bore the emblem of the Sigillite, withdrew his gun.

'You are a loyal son of the Emperor, Targutai Yesugei. Even now, with your life at stake, you do not turn your power on me. That is good. Hear me : I have come to bring you with me to Terra. Malcador is gathering an order of those like you and I, whose loyalty is to the Throne above all else. You will still serve the Imperium and the Emperor, zadyin arga.'

Yesugei lifted his head, not able to believe what he was hearing.

'Who are you ? You know my name, cousin, but I do not know yours.'

The knight-errant removed his helmet, exposing a face the color of ebony with red embers in its sockets. When he spoke, without the corruption of his helmet's speakers, his voice was deep and warm – and, unlike any of Vulkan's brutal sons Yesugei had ever met, not without kindness.

'My name, weather-maker, is Xa'ven.'

But the Eighth and Twentieth weren't broken. They were furious. For the first time, Astartes fought Astartes without the traitors possessing the advantage of surprise, and the White Scars paid a bloody tally. The Night Lords hid on worlds that had turned to the cause of the traitors, bringing retribution by sowing death, confusion and terror amidst their mortal allies. The Alpha Legion built up resistance groups and gathered priceless intelligence on the traitors' assets, sending it to the rest of the loyalist troops. These were the enemies that the White Scars were dispatched to destroy, and they had to hunt their quarries across entire sectors each and every time. In the centuries to come, all three Legions would come to call this the Shadow Wars, fought in the darkness of the Heresy while the Ultramarines and the rest of their allies burned their way toward Terra.

Kernax Voldorius, Strikemaster of the Alpha Legion, looked at the field of battle before him. Now, finally, it had come to this. After ten years of hunt, of leading the White Scars and their allies of the Nineteenth Legion through trap after trap, ambush after ambush, it was finally his turn. He could no longer escape, no longer deceive his foes. They had caught him, as he had known they would eventually. All that remained was to fight with everything he had and die a good death.

Quintus was a good world to make a last stand. It was heavily defended, and its population had remained loyal to the Emperor to a man. His ship had been destroyed, stranding him and the hundred remaining warriors under his command here, but he regretted nothing. Each day they had bought had been one more for the Praetorian and the Warmaster to prepare Terra, each traitor they had slain had been one less soldier the forsworn could hurl at the Imperial Palace.

Voldorius understood better than most the philosophy of the Alpha Legion. But even he, who had mastered the thousand lessons of Alpharius, couldn't help but smile at the prospect of finally facing his enemy with nothing but the weapons in his hands and the brothers at his side – and he counted the human soldiers among them.

'For the Emperor,' he muttered as the first drop-pods began to fall from the skies.

After years of such conflict, the White Scars were deeply humiliated when Guilliman traveled to Eskrador and claimed to have slain Alpharius himself. The Primarch of the Twentieth had been the ultimate prey for the Fifth Legion, and had one of the Khans managed to slay him, then surely he would have been able to claim command of the White Scars, now that their Primarch had mysteriously vanished.

In the final phase of the Heresy, many Brotherhoods of the Fifth Legion answered Guilliman's call and gathered for the final assault on Terra. The raids of the White Scars are described in great detail in the chronicles of the Siege : they launched attacks on mutiple positions of the Imperial Palace's walls, forcing Perturabo to keep them all manned at all time when even his genial mind couldn't predict where they would strike next. On no less than three occasions, the Fifth Legion elements actually managed to outthink the Lord of Iron and breach the walls – only to be utterly annihilated by the loyalists within.

The Post-Heresy

When Guilliman fell, the White Scars were amongst the firsts to run. They ran back to their ships and left the Sol system with all the speed they were so famous for, and scattered back across the galaxy, beginning a campaign of plunder and terror that still continues to this very day, though it has much abated in the wake of the Scouring. Unlike other Traitor Legions, the White Scars appeared to have no desire to carve their own empires from the Imperium's weakened hold. They took pleasure in conquest, in breaking their enemy's back and forcing him to kneel, slaughtering all those who resisted. Then they took whatever they wanted from the ruins and left, a trail of ashes and smoke in their wake. For every world that had been lost to the Fifth Legion during the Shadow War, a dozen burned in the Heresy's aftermath. Without any true objective left to unite them, the White Scars moved according to their whims, and no longer sought the most well-defended worlds. For decades, the Fifth Legion remained a blight upon the weakened Imperium, until two of the loyal Legions united to destroy that menace.

After the Heresy, the homeworlds of the Traitor Legions were particularly attractive targets for the vengeful Imperium. Chogoris was destroyed by the combined fleets of the Eighth and Twentieth Legion. Together, the Night Lords and Alpha Legion put an end to the long war that had opposed them to the White Scars, though this act has bought them the eternal enmity of the Khan's sons.

However, the heritage of the world that was once known as Mundus Planus didn't vanish that easily. In the time between Guilliman's death and the arrival of retribution, many Brotherhoods used Chogoris as their home port. When the fleet of the loyal Legions arrived in the system, dozens of ships of the Fifth Legion still hung in orbit of their homeworld. If the traitors had fought back as a united fleet, they may have had a chance at victory – the Fifth Legion's void tactics, virtually unknown prior to the Heresy, had by that time become legendary. But, as befit turncoats and heretics, every Khan only saw his own interests and acted accordingly. Many traitor ships were destroyed in the confusion, some running to the system's edge before jumping into the Warp while others tried to make a stand, either out of some desperate desire to protect their homeworld or just to hold until their assets on the surface had been retrieved.

While the Alpha Legion fleet surrounded the system, inflicting tremendous damage to those who tried to run, the Eighth Legion warships engaged the vessels in orbit and prepared to unleash their punishment on the planet itself. Entire cities were razed from orbits in seconds, wiped from existence by one shot of the might vessels. Finally, to make sure there were no survivors on what had become, by that time, a full-fledged Chaos world, a salvo of cyclonic torpedoes was unleashed from the Night Lords flagship Nightfall.

From the bridge of his flagship, Legion Master Sevatar looked as a world burned. The void battle was still raging, but that wasn't any concern of him. Vandred was taking care of it, and the Captain of the Tenth Company was a genius at such matters.

They had lost ships, of course. Doubtlessly they would lose more before the battle was over. But the result had never been in question. Since even before the attack had begun, the defeat of the White Scars had been inevitable. They were outnumbered, caught cold and most important of all, they no longer possessed any cohesion. It was sad, in its own way, to see a Legion fall so low. The Fifth had once been a powerful warforce, united under the command of its Primarch and fighting as one against the Emperor's enemies, but now … Now it was nothing but a band of scavengers gathering like jackals to form packs. They had fallen from grace the moment they had betrayed their oath to the Master of Mankind, and nothing could save them now. And after today, no one would ever be able to make them a true Legion once more. Disunity, confusion and inner betrayal would rob them of all their potential for greatness, leaving only a dark, twisted shadow of what they may have become. This reflected on what had become of their homeworld.

Sevatar had seen picts of Chogoris from before the Heresy. Compared to Nostramo, it had been nothing short of a paradise. Vast, fertile lands, populated by tribes with a savage nobility to them. But now … Reports from the Alpha Legion's agents on the surface – who had, hopefully, been evacuated before the attack had begun – told a grim story. The madness of the Warp had spread across Chogoris. Witches and daemons walked freely on its soil, and temples to the dark entities of the Sea of Souls had been built with the blood of millions. All over the fleet, astropaths and Navigators had wailed in anguish during the weeks that the journey had taken, and even the Librarians had become uneasy in the final approach. In truth, destroying the planet was just as much of a mercy to its human population that it was a punishment against its transhuman overlords for their betrayal.

Such was the only mercy that could be shown to all of the Emperor's foes. And soon, it would be Nocturne's turn to burn.

With their homeworld destroyed, the White Scars became a fleet-based Legion, ironically gaining the ultimate freedom they sought at the highest cost imaginable. In the centuries that followed, many raids were attempted toward Nostramo to avenge Chogoris (there being no recorded homeworld for the Alpha Legion, the White Scars couldn't aim their revenge at the elusive Twentieth). Later in the Scouring, petty fiefdoms would be discovered, bearing the mark of the Fifth Legion : the domains of those Khans who had abandoned Chogoris before the end, foreseeing its destruction and seeking to rebuild it elsewhere, on worlds shaped to their will by the powers of Chaos. The crusade to purge these nightmarish realms, known as the Purge of the Lost Kin, isn't over : the Legion forces operating in the Ultima Segmentum, where the homeworld of the treacherous Fifth was located, still discover entire worlds where a handful of White Scars rule over millions of enslaved degenerates whose ancestors once walked the soil of Chogoris.

The greatest mystery (and potentially, the greatest threat) of the White Scars is their lost Primarch. To this day, the Inquisition is still investigating the fate of Jaghatai Khan. The Primarch was never seen again after Isstvan V, though on some occasion some other individual has claimed to be him in an attempt to draw support from the Fifth Legion. Every single one of these instances, however, has ended up with the usurper being revealed : usually a Legionary seeking to unite the White Scars under his command, sometimes a daemon with some darker purpose. Many White Scars still look for him, though, and if he should reappear, the dispersed warbands could gather once more, forming a truly formidable foe for the Imperium.

Organisation

Without their Primarch to lead them and a homeworld to gather them, the White Scars have scattered across the galaxy. They have formed hundreds of warbands, based on the Brotherhoods that once made up the Legion's structure. Charismatic officers or hunters of renown managed to unite several of those groups and form forces several thousand strong, but no Khan has the ability to command the entirety of the Fifth Legion.

Each warband is led by a Khan, who may have been one of the Legion's officers before the Heresy, or have risen to his station by his deeds (or by murdering his predecessor). Those who command over warbands of great size may take the title of Noyan-Khan, once held by their Legion's circle of elite commanders under the Primarch himself, and delegate command of part of their host to lesser Khans. Whilst loyalty to the chain of command is considered to be absolute, the White Scars' commanding cadre has a well-documented tendency to plot and scheme amongst themselves as they jockey for position. On more than one occasion, this has granted the Imperium an unexpected victory as a Khan used a battle to dispose of a potential challenger to his rule.

Each Khan is advised by the Stormseers – also called the zadyin arga in Chogorian – under his command. They hold considerable influence in the Legion, not just because they are terrible foes on the battlefield but also because they are the one responsible for the preservation of the White Scars' blasphemous beliefs. While they are most often uninvolved in the intrigues of their Legion, they have been reported to act when the disputes between officers reached a level threatening the entirety of the warband.

The Undying

For millenia, the Inquisition has attempted to unlock the mystery of what its members have come to call the Undying. These creatures were first seen fighting alongside the Fifth Legion during the Heresy. At first, it was believed that these hosts of Legionaries wearing the colors of different Legions – traitor and loyal alike – were merely a ruse, an attempt to demoralize the opponent by wearing the colors of the enemy. But their origin was soon revealed to be much more sinister.

An Undying is created when one of the White Scars' Sorcerers binds the corpse of another Legionary into his service. The exact process is unknown, but the Thousand Sons who have beholden one of these abominations claim that the Stormseers capture the soul of the deceased warrior, reduce it to slavery, and bind it into its own corpse. What is created this way is an Undying : a creature that shares some of a Legionary's capabilites and skills, but whose main asset is its capacity to take far more punishment than even one of the Astartes. As it is already dead, and powered only by the forbidden energies of the Warp, an Undying can only be destroyed when its physical body is so damaged that the ritual bindings inscribed upon the rotting flesh can no longer contain the soul within.

Facing a warband with Undying amidst its ranks is one of the few things that can inspire something like fear in Astartes. For them, to watch such desecrations is more than just one more blasphemy against the natural order : it is a promise of what may happen to them if they fall in battle. Chaplains must rouse the righteous fury of those under their charge when that happens, and call for the judgment of the Emperor to be inflicted upon those who would profane His holy work thusly.

Beliefs

'Slaves of the False Emperor, hear my words. I am Hasik Noyan-Khan of the White Scars, and it is by my will that soon all of you shall die.

The Imperium you serve is a tyranny built upon the greatest of all lies. For centuries, you have believed these lies you have allowed yourselves to be deceived by them you have let them cover you like a blanket to protect you from the galaxy's horrors.

Today, we will show you the truth. We will tear the veil of lies from your eyes and force you to face the reality the Imperium has spent ten thousand years hiding from you. You will learn the one thing that is true in this universe :

Nowhere is safe. There is no place in the galaxy, from the cold void between the stars to the Corpse- Emperor's own Palace, where you may truly be protected.

You may run from us. You may hide from us. But we will find you and kill you. You have lived under the false protection of a lie, and now you shall pay for this crime. You chose to live as slaves to a tyrant, and in doing so you have relinquished any right to live you may have possessed.

So despair and cry and lament if you wish. It will not save you. We are the judgment of Heaven, come to deliver your punishment for the sin of cowardice and submission.'

Recovered from the astropathic tower of the now dead hive-world  REDACTED where the Red Highway Massacre was performed by Fifth Legion elements.

The White Scars follow the teachings of their now defunct homeworld, though what they have made of them would horrify the Stormseers of old. During the Heresy, their rejection of the Imperial Truth manifested not only by them embracing the superstitions of their Primarch's homeworld fully, but by delving into the very darkness these superstitions warned against. It is told that the White Scars knew of the Warp's true evil long before any of the other Legions, and for decades they took precautions against it, their Stormseers only slightly dipping into the Sea of Souls and not calling too much power into themselves, lest they attract the attention of the yaksha, as their people called the Daemons. Control and harmony were the tenets of their beliefs, the ways by which they were able to wield the power of the Warp without exposing themselves to its corruptive touch.

But such restraint was entirely abandoned during the Heresy. Though the level of corruption of the White Scars vary from one warband to another, many of the sons of the Khan have embraced Chaos as the ultimate freedom, which they believe was denied to them when they served the Emperor. Freedom is one of the core precepts of the Legion, but it is a twisted, corrupted echo of the nobility that the White Scars once possessed, for in their quest to liberate themselves from all shackles, they have unwittingly enslaved their very souls to the Dark Gods.

Now, the White Scars believe that the Emperor was a liar and a tyrant, and that those who rule in His name are the same. They do not seek to liberate those who live under their rule, though : all they care about is their own freedom and glory. In their eyes, those who will not rise and fight for their own freedom do not deserve it anyway.

Combat doctrine

The White Scars warbands have kept to the tactics that served them well during the Great Crusade, though even them have been forced to adapt to the times. They will strike with all the speed they can muster, then withdraw before the enemy can gather its strength, and strike again from another angle. As such, they make extensive use of transports, and their spaceships are faster than anything the Imperium can use – their already overgrown engines further enhanced by dark, forbidden sciences that call upon the power of the Warp.

At the front of every assault are their riders, who charge toward weak points in enemy lines and wreak havoc on supply lines and morale. Once the enemy is thrown off its balance by this initial attack, the rest of the Legion advance in heavier vehicles and infantry support, crushing the opposition. In the days of the Heresy and immediately after, the White Scars used to have hundreds of riders, and their forces were almost entirely composed of bikers who would hunt and destroy Imperial targets. But as centuries passed, their ability to maintain their mounts diminished. Without a proper infrastructure, the White Scars were forced to use other methods of war, which they once scorned.

Now, only the elite of the Legion have access to the bikes that made the White Scars' infamous across the galaxy. Without any way to produce more, the White Scars must either steal those of other Legions – a method that has become increasingly unviable as loyalist Legions discarded the use of warbikes, precisely because of their association with the treacherous Fifth – or bargain with daemons to gain the use of a possessed mount. Ownership of one of these engines is often enough to cause duel to the death amongst Legionaries.

The Wild Hunt

Once called the Brotherhood of the Storm, the Wild Hunt is one of the White Scars most infamous warbands. Its members are spread across the galaxy, allying with other groups of Chaos Marines, but their prime allegiance is always to their own cult. Its members are mutants of the most foul and blasphemous kind : they are merged with the bikes they so adore, unable to get down from them. They are more than daemons than Astartes, capable of tearing holes across reality and drive through the Warp itself to emerge somewhere else on the battlefield. In the centuries since the first White Scars made the abominable pact that transformed them, many other Legionaries have joined their ranks, including – to the ever-lasting shame of their brethren – more than a few from loyal Legions. When operating with another warband, the Wild Hunt charges ahead, seeking worthy prey in the enemy ranks – be it a charismatic officer, a renowned champion or, in rare occasions, a target specified by their current employer.

Of all the scions of that debased group, the one whose name is most reviled and cursed in the Imperium is that of Doomrider. Once a Khan of the White Scars by the name of Shiban, he is now a Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided, riding ahead of a horde of Hunters and daemons, passing from world to world in pursuit of prey chosen by his own alien, unknowable logic. For many centuries now, the Inquisition has sought to destroy the creature, but it has eluded all of the Inquisitors who have attempted to bring it to justice so far.

Because they were once ignored by the Imperium at large, the White Scars now hunger ferociously for glory. They seek the most valuable targets and have little consideration for the risks involved, wanting their names to echo through the galaxy and freeze the hearts of billions in terror. They will announce their coming to their victims, ordering their agents to spread the news by vox or sending the cries of their astropaths ahead of their fleets. This may seem a tactical blunder, as it gives the Imperium time to react and prepare, but such is the speed of White Scars starships that they can reach their target before the warning has had any effect beyond weakening morale.

After the battle is over, the White Scars will ransack the cities they have conquered and fill their ships with slaves, but only rarely will they slaughter every survivor of their initial onslaught. In fact, they appear to take a perverse joy in letting them live, so that the tale of their heinous deeds will spread further in the Imperium. On several occasions, Inquisitors have purged entire such populations, to keep secret the fact that the servants of Chaos could reach even planets well inside the Imperium's borders.

Recruitment and Geneseed

Among the Traitor Legions, the White Scars are perhaps those whose gene-seed remains the less corrupted. This is probably due to them remaining outside of the Eye of Terror for the most part, though the extensive periods of time their ships spend in the Warp have taken their toll upon their physical integrity. Still, examination of captured corpses has revealed that the White Scars remain able to use all of the nineteen implants of the Legione Astartes. How much of the original process of indoctrination has remained in the Fifth Legion and how much of it has become tainted by the Ruinous Powers or lost to the trappings of superstition and sorcery is unknown, and probably varies greatly from one warband to another.

What is known is that, unlike some of the other Traitor Legions, the White Scars do not have to rely on daemonic pacts and unholy alliances to replenish their ranks. This relative purity enables the Legion to keep inducting new recruits into its ranks. Far beyond the Imperium's reach, it is said that there are entire worlds whose sole purpose is to provide various warbands of the Fifth Legion with recruits. Every few decades, a ship of the Fifth Legion will come to take the young males and put them through trials every bit as difficult as those of loyal Legions. Those who survive are then transformed into new Legionaries and taught the ways of Jaghatai. Since these poor souls come from some of Mankind's harshest worlds, and grow in civilizations filled with the corruption of Chaos, they embrace their new existence with pleasure, as they are at last given the strength they have yearned for their entire lives.

The boy stands alone before the five gods. The others have died long ago, slain by the rigor of the trials or by each other's hands when only a few remained. He is the only one to have made it this time – a mark of honor, so it was whispered by the elders who still remembered the last time the Lords of the Hunt had come to choose those worthy of joining them. It means his is a great destiny, if he has the courage to claim it. If he can survive the Ascension, he will become a god. He will hunt forevermore, across the Great Sea of Stars, alongside the Riders of the Wild and the Masters of the Storms. He will join the Eternal Hunt, receive the blood of the Great Khan, whose spirit wanders the universe still. He will be immortal.

'Forget the life you lived,' says the first of the gods. Like the others, he wears armor of white and black, the emblem of the thunderstrike on his shoulder.

'Shed the name you were given,' says the second one.

'A new existence awaits you with us, in the urdu of Jaghatai,' says the thid.

'A life of endless war, of endless hunting, of endless freedom,' adds the fourth.

'From now on,' concludes the fifth, 'your name shall be Kor'sarro.'

Other warbands take the children of their slaves, training them from birth before granting the survivors the « Ascension » they desire. Like other traitor forces, the White Scars also kidnap the children of the worlds they have conquered and force them into their ranks, breaking their frightened minds with the power of the Warp before reshaping their flesh. Despite the Inquisition's best efforts to suppress them, legends exist across entire sectors of hosts of daemons coming from the darkness between the stars to steal children and make them into more of their own.

Warcry

The White Scars are a greatly varied Legion, and the warcries they use vary accordingly. Some, though, are used by many warbands of the Fifth, such as 'For the Khagan!' or 'Lay low the Carrion Tyrant !' Some amongst the Loyalist Legions that were at Isstvan V even claim that it was a White Scars that first shouted the infamous scream that would later be used by billions of traitors and heretics across the millennia : 'Death to the False Emperor !'

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Space Wolves : Executioners and Beasts

During the Great Crusade, the Vlka Fenryka were the agents of the Emperor's wrath, the executioners of the sentences decreed by the Master of Mankind. By their blades were the first traitors of this bygone age punished, their names and crimes forever banished to the shadows of forgotten history. But in facing the darkness before all others, the sons of Leman Russ were tainted by it, and now, they have become all that they ever fought against : traitors, heretics and renegades, fighting for nothing more than glory, bloodshed, and the desperate attempts to restore an epoch that can never return. Their tale is a warning to all true servants of the Imperium : be careful when you look into the Darkness Beyond, for it looks back at you ...

Origins

When the Emperor's sons were stolen from Him by the machinations of the Dark Gods, each one of them landed on a different world. All of them struggled to understand their nature, to learn and grow in environments more often hostile than not. In these early days, the sons of the Emperor would each learn different lessons, taught to them by their adoptive planets, lessons that would shape their existence for the remaining of their immortal lives. Most of these lessons were harsh ones, for the galaxy already was an unforgiving place in this time, and the worlds of the Primachs were, for their differences, all places of strife and challenge. But of all of them, Leman Russ's own homeworld was arguably the harshest on human life.

Fenris was a feudal world, whose people had long lost access to the technology they had brought with them during the first time Mankind scattered across the galaxy. It was also a death world, with winters harsh enough to freeze the oceans and summers whose heat scorched the ground and melted the great icebergs, causing devastating tides. The gravitational pressure inflicted upon the world shook it with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, forcing the tribes of Fenris to always be on the move, to seek new land each year as the one they had stayed was engulfed by the sea or the very earth. Beyond the dangers of the planet itself, the beasts of Fenris were also a terrible threat to human life. Great dragons and sea serpents, wolves the size of horses and other, unnameable horrors stalked its forests and mountains.

Why Fenris was ever settled by Humanity during the First Diaspora is unknown. Perhaps the colonists thought they could master the raging elements of the ice-world, using the wonders of the Age of Technology. If that was the case, they failed miserably. Much more probable is the hypothesis that Fenris' original inhabitants crashed on the planet, and were forced to settle on it, quickly losing their technological level – as was far too frequent in these days. Rumors claim that some of the first settlers, desperate for survival, used barely understood sciences to alter themselves in order to survive the hellish conditions of Fenris. Whether there is a core of truth to these tales, or whether they are simply one more way to slander the fallen Legion is unconfirmed.

'There are no wolves on Fenris.'

Attributed to Primarch Magnus

It was on the highest of these mountains that the child who would become Leman Russ arrived. His coming shattered the mountain's top, and shook the entire island upon which it had grown. The ground tore open and spat liquid rock, while the beasts screamed and raged as if their territory was being challenged. The locals cursed the dark star that had brought such calamity in their already difficult lives, but they were a hardy people, and kept on living despite the trials endlessly imposed on them.

The young Primarch was found by a pack of Fenrisian Wolves, and raised by them until he had reached adolescence – or as close as a Primarch could. It was then that he first met other humans, in the form of a hunting party, who came down on his 'brothers' with spears and blades. The wolf-boy fought to defend his packmates, killing more than a dozen men with his bare hands. The survivors, scared of the strange youth's power, retreated, and brought word of their encounter to their liege, High King Thengir of the Russ. Curious, the monarch decided to go and see for himself this wolf-boy that could make his hunters – men of great skill and courage all – turn back.

With the help of his trackers, Thengir found the lair of the Primarch and his wolf brethren. His men pressed for the attack, suggesting that fire be put to the lair while the pack was resting inside, but Thengir denied them. The High King could feel that there was somethingg more at work here, and that angering the being resting in the cave would be a grave mistake. So it was that he simply stood before the entrance, in full armor and carrying his weapons, and called for the wolf-boy to come and face him. To the surprise of all his retainers, the youth complied. Naked, covered in dirt and the blood of his last kill, and already taller than Thengir despite his features still belonging to an adolescent, he emerged and looked upon those who had come to his pack's lair. Behind him stood the surviving wolves of his pack, two beasts the size of horses who yet clearly defered to him as the alpha of the group.

Though the wolf-boy didn't speak any language known to man, Thengir managed to convince him to come with the High King. Some instinct must have told the Primarch that the mortal intended him no harm, and that his place was amongst humans, not beasts. Back at the monarch's fortress, the wolf-boy was taught the speech of men and the arts of the hunt and battle. He quickly mastered all of them, and became a warrior of unprecedented prowess. Less than three years after Thengir had found him, the wolf-boy had become an adult, and the High King decided to bestow upon him a true name to mark his passage into adulthood. So it was that the Primarch became known as Leman of the Russ.

Leman was fiercely loyal to Thengir, and fought on numerous occasions to help him defend his realm from enemy tribes. Soon, the legend of the giant who went to war at Thengir's side spread to all of Fenris, and the attempts at invasion stopped. Attempts at assassinations, however, increased. Russ feared no poison and no coward's blade, and so powerful was his wyrd that the shamans hired by his rivals refused to even consider casting a curse upon him, but Thengir enjoyed none of these benefits. Upon Russ' tenth year at his side, the monarch died in mysterious circumstances, the true responsible of which was never identified. At this point, there was no doubt as to whom was most fit to success him, and the High King's warriors bowed before Leman Russ. Great was the fury of the Primarch at his adoptive father's demise, but he kept it collared, for he knew not where to direct it yet.

For several years Russ ruled his kingdom, hunting down the great beasts that tormented his people and gathering mighty heroes around him. The land of Russ became the safest place on Fenris, and entire tribes joined him willingly – while others looked upon Russ' prosperity with jealous eyes, and sought to claim it for themselves. These rivals poisoned the mind of several of Russ' vassals, and when the Primarch left the fortress to go on a quest to slay a great sea dragon that had been harassing villages for weeks, they made their move and seized power, while assassins were sent to kill Russ.

The Primarch easily defeated the hired blades, and from them he obtained the names of those who wished him dead – the same who had ordered Thengir's execution. He returned to his fortress and easily defeated his would-be usurpers, killing them all in single combat after forcing their guards aside with the sheer strength of his glare. Now knowing who to blame for his father's demise, Russ called for his warriors to gather, and went on a great war to punish them. Half a dozens High Kings fell to Russ' vengeful blade, and by the time he was done, all of Fenris was under his control. With the tribe united under the newly crowned High King of Fenris, the world entered a new age of peace and prosperity. The conflicts between tribes were silenced by Russ' presence, for none would risk incurring his wrath to satisfy their petty feuds – even those who had lasted for tens of generations.

Years later, during one of Russ' celebratory banquets on the anniversary of Fenris' unification, a lone hermit arrived to the Wolf King's fortress. He challenged Russ to single combat, claiming that the loser would serve the winner. Russ had had much drink that evening, even for his Primarch's physiology, and he accepted the gamble with a laugh, sure that he could beat the strange man in a moment. But he was wrong : instead, the mysterious stranger fell him in a single blow of such power that it shattered the drinking cups of those closest to the fight, and cracks formed where Russ' skull hit the stone floor. Had a normal man been hit with such strength, he would have been dead before touching the ground, but Russ was no normal man, and it was no more than a handful of unconscious hours before his eyes opened again.

When Russ woke up, his thoughts had been cleared of the alcohol that had obscured them. He saw then the man not as the hermit he had appeared to be, but as a being of awesome power clad in golden armor, with the wisdom of the ages in his eyes and the might of the ancient gods in his grasp. It was then that Russ knew he was facing his father, the one who had given him life and strength. So it was that, laughing at his own foolishness, Leman Russ, Great Jarl of Fenris, the Wolf King, bowed before the Emperor of Mankind, and willingly submitted himself to his maker's design for him in the Great Crusade.

The Great Crusade

Russ was one of the first Primarchs to be found, and he was quickly reunited with the Legion that carried his gene-seed. As such, the records of the deeds of his Legion during the Great Crusade are both lengthy and honorable, with many acts of heroism only slightly tainted by reckless attitude and disregard for their unaugmented human allies. The Space Wolves were considered to be the best individual fighters of the Legions, but they lacked the discipline found in other gene-lines. The heritage of Fenris, quickly adopted even by the Terran members, made them took pride in being warriors more than soldiers. Over time, the influx of aspirants taken from Terra diminished, as more and more future Space Wolves – a name that is a terrible translation of the one Russ originally gave them, the Vlka Fenryka – were selected on Fenris itself. With its number swelling due to the unique compatibility of the death-world's denizens and the invention of the Canis Helix, the Sixth Legion went to the front lines of the Great Crusade, bringing world after world under the Imperium's aegis.

However, there is a darker side to even those blessed days of glory. On two occasions, the Sixth legion vanishes of all records for a time before reappearing, its strength much diminished. Who the Space Wolves fought on these occasions is unknown, and investigation is forbidden by the highest authority in the Inquisition. What is known is that it is after the second of these forgotten wars that the attitude of Russ changed, mirrored by that of his Legion. Whatever secret mission they had accomplished, it had laid a dark could upon their souls. The Space Wolves grew more and more brutal and ruthless, crushing all of their opponents without mercy nor concern for their allies. Soon, Imperial commanders refused the aid of the Vlka Fenryka, calling for the help of the other Legions' forces, even if they were further away by months of Warp travel.

Russ sat alone in his chambers, brooding thoughts of loss and betrayal. His two wolves, Freki and Geri, who had been with him ever since his first days on Fenris, were no longer at his side. They had fallen in the same battles that had scarred their master's soul. The solitude didn't suit the Wolf King, yet he could not bear to be in the presence of his sons at this moment.

There was no joy in the Primarch's eyes, no savage pleasure or boundless enthusiasm. The light that had shone from him, the charisma that had enabled him to make the proud jarls of Fenris bend knee were still there, but a darkness had fallen upon them. Where before he inspired loyalty, now none outside of his Legion could look upon him without fear.

He knew this, and clung to the thought that it was necessary. These wars, as hateful as they had been, had not been without purpose. Now Russ knew that he could no longer simply be a warrior. He had become an executioner, the axe of the Emperor's will. Forevermore, he and his sons would be the scourge of traitors and renegades, the punishment unleashed by the Master of Mankind upon His foes. Such was their wyrd, from now on until the stars went cold.

The Space Wolves also grew more distrustful of their own kin, refusing altogether to fight alongside the Thousand Sons on several occasions because of their perceived deviancy. Of all his brothers, Russ only ever get along with Horus, admiring Lupercal's tactical and martial prowess, and the Lion, though their first meeting was tense in the extreme. His relationship with Magnus, however, was one that threatened to bloom into open conflict for decades. Upon their very first meeting, the Cyclops and the Wolf King came to blows, and were only separated by Horus after their brawl had reduced a priceless aisle of the Imperial Palace to ruins.

When the Emperor called for the Council of Nikaea, Russ was determined to make his case to his father. The Wolf King pressed for the sanctioning of the Fifteenth Legion, presenting flimsy evidence gathered by his men during what few joint operations had occurred between the two. His Rune Priests called the Thousand Sons sorcerers and wielders of maleficarum, dark magic that tainted their souls with the corruption of the Warp. In later years, Mortarion, who had also had doubts about Magnus and his sons, would claim that Russ had actually helped the Cyclops when his shamans had called him a witch.

Despite the Wolf King's arguments, the Emperor decided to allow Magnus' Legion to continue their practice of the Art. Worse in the eyes of Russ, He encouraged the other Legions to do the same in their Legions, with the installation of the Librarium – an organization Russ looked upon with great distaste. Furious, Russ spoke one last time before the assembled dignitaries, claiming that the Emperor was making a terrible mistake, one that they would all regret, before storming out of the coliseum and leaving the planet. On his way out, he was met by Magnus, who tried to explain their father's decision to his brother. But so great was Russ' anger that he refused to listen, and when Magnus and the Thousand Sons tried to prevent him from leaving in such a fashion, he exploded and attacked him, gravely injuring one of Magnus' sons who put himself between them. Russ left Nikaea in shame and fury, before the Emperor could reach and punish him for his violent actions against his brother and his nephews.

'Listen to me, Russ,' Magnus said to his brother. 'You must understand our father's decision. It is the best choice, the only choice …'

'Be silent, brother,' snarled Russ, his features stirred in disgust. 'You lied to our father, I know it. You deceived him with you pretty words and your lies, but I will not let you infect me with them. I will prove our father that he was wrong about you, that he should have let me punish you for your foolish ways.'

'My foolish ways ? I have studied with our father himself, Russ, while your shamans listened to the winds of this ball of ice you call home for scraps of knowledge. I have sailed the Great Ocean at his side. I know more of its dangers than you ever will, and you call me foolish ? Who here is refusing knowledge, and embracing ignorance ? Who here is clinging to meaningless tradition, and who seeks enlightenment so that we may all be free of the Warp?'
'That knowledge you seek is poisonous. It has twisted your mind, just like it has twisted your flesh. It has corrupted you, Cyclops, and its mark is plain for all to see.'
Magnus didn't raise to the bait. Instead, when he replied, his voice was soft, as if he was talking to a child. Somehow this angered Russ even more.
'You call me corrupt, brother ? Yet my sons dream in peace. Isn't it your men who need to cover their armor in runes lest they scream their nightmares in the void ?'
Russ roared in anger, and drew his blade before his mind could realize just what he was doing. Magnus didn't move, didn't try to dodge or block the incoming blow : he simply stared at his brother with his one eye, unbelief writing clearly on his face. Time seemed to stretch out as the blade descended, and Russ thought that he could see the reflection of the volcanic light on the metal as it came down and …
… pierced through the flesh of the Thousand Son who had jumped between the two Primarchs, tearing through his armor like paper and spraying hot, red blood on the Wolf King's face.
'Amon !' Magnus shouted in horror. He knelt at his son's side, all thoughts of talking with Russ forgotten, while the other Legionaries drew their own weapons. With one last look at his brother, who even now was deploying his witchcraft to heal his Equerry, the Wolf King ran. His men followed, letting Magnus risk his warrior's soul by exposing him to the touch of the Warp.

The Errance

Once the Emperor's judgment had been declared, there could be no going back on it. Even as filled with rage as he was, Russ knew that it would take a momentous event to change his father's mind. Yet the Wolf King was persuaded that he was right, and that the taint of sorcery could not be allowed to spread amongst the Legiones Astartes. At the same time, the shame was too strong, and he refused to return to the Great Crusade. He called all of his forces back to him, and headed his fleet toward the regions of space that even the Imperium of this glorious era was reluctant to explore. Before he could begin what would come to be called the Errance, Russ was joined by a group of five Custodes, sent by Malcador himself on the Emperor's behalf. These mighty warriors were to ensure that the Wolf King would obey the decrees of Nikaea. Russ saw their presence as an slight, an insult on his honor, but he accepted them aboard his fleet.

Leading the way from his flagship Hrafnkel, Leman Russ threaded the darkest corners of the galaxy. From the cold reaches of the Halo Stars to the gravitational nightmare of the galactic core, the Wolf King's search continued. What he was looking for precisely is unknown, and it is uncertain that he ever had a clear goal in mind. Contact with Imperial forces during the Errance of the Sixth Legion was scarce, with only the rarest of communications between the Legion and the explorers it encountered, alongside increasingly infrequent astropathic messages to Terra, demanding that the Emperor reconsider His judgment. These messages were accompanied by reports from the Custodes' own astropath, reporting that Russ' quest was purging the Imperium's borders of creatures that may become a threat to it in the future. In insight, it is doubtful these reports were really those sent by the Custodes. For all his denunciation of the Thousand Sons' so-called sorcery, Russ' own Rune Priests were very capable psykers, more than capable of intercepting the Custodes' messages and replacing its contents with their own.

In the decades that followed the Heresy, however, a precise account of these years was found. Now sealed deep within Inquisitorial facilities, it is called The Wyrd of the Leman Russ, and was written by remembrancer Kasper Howser, whose ultimate fate remains unknown. In it, it is told that the Space Wolves explored the ruins of long-dead alien empires, seeking proof of the dangers of psychic powers that would justify their beliefs to the Imperium. During that time, the Vlka Fenryka faced many horrors left behind by those empires. The descriptions of those horrors found in the Wyrd are terrifying. Entities that existed both in the Warp and the Materium, soulless intelligences bound to constructs the size of cities, and all manner of gene-crafted beasts were encountered and fought by the Space Wolves. Thousands of warriors perished in battles that would never be written down in the Imperium's annals, all so that Leman Russ could be vindicated.

The Folly of the Wolf King

In the years that followed the bitter end of the Roboutian Heresy, the true scope of Russ' obsession was revealed. In their Errance, the Space Wolves had awakened many horrors that had slept for countless aeons. Seething with alien fury at the profanation of their graves, these horrors struck back at all of Mankind in their quest for revenge. Worlds recently reclaimed from the traitors were burned to the ground by ghost-ships, and infiltrators tore apart the Imperial order on many more planets. Billions died in horrible pain, their dying screams brewing in the Immaterium to form new Warp Storms.

It took many centuries for the Ordo Xenos to deal with all the facets of Leman Russ' foul legacy. The only silver lining of this long crusade was that, whenever the path of the xenos crossed those of a Sixth Legion warband, the aliens immediately dropped whatever scheme they were pursuing to attack the ones truly responsible for their wrath. Sometimes, the Inquisition was capable of dealing with the xenos ploys, but in a handful of cases, the Space Wolves careless exploration roused entire armies of dormant, self-aware machines – such as the infamous Metarchs of Tarec Prime. Entire regiments of the Imperial Guard and companies of Space Marines then had to be dispatched to protect the Imperial worlds and crush the xenos invaders. The entire campaign is called the Harrowing in the few archives of it that have survived the passing of the millenia.

Even to this day, the Space Wolves bear the mark of the Errance. Besides the forbidden knowledge and ancient technologies gained, the sons of Russ have had their mindset profoundly altered by what they saw. Like some Inquisitors who have spent too long fighting against the horrors of the galaxy, they have been known to make alliances with xenos breeds. Most of the time, these alliances consist of primitive aliens used as cannon fodder by the Astartes. But, sometimes, it is the Space Wolves who serve the designs of a xenos potentate, betraying Humanity yet one more time. Even amongst the other Traitor Legions, such behavior is blasphemy beyond compare, and a crime deserving only a painful death. The Deathwatch – the Ordo Xenos' group of elite alien hunters – has lost hundreds of members to these twice-damned traitors across the centuries. Rolls of honor list their name, and oaths to bring their murderers to justice are spoken daily.

The touch of the alien corrupts the body, and the knowledge of the alien taints the soul. Such is the lesson found in the Wyrd, the one taught by the Folly of the Wolf King.

In the end, after almost half a century, Russ found what he was looking for. On a dead Eldar world called Melia'Sertaria – the Song of Lost Dreams, in the xenos dialect – Russ learned the story of the Fall, of how the Eldars unwillingly created the Dark God Slaanesh with their excesses and abuse of their psychic might. Russ descended on the world with his personal guard, and brought Howser with him to act as the chronicler of what they would see. The group was also accompanied by the Custodes, who had vowed not to let the Wolf King go anywhere without them accompanying him – and perished on the world for their attempts to stop the Wolf King. According to Howser's tale, this was a world of wraiths, where the shades of the dead forever relived the last day of their lives.

… And I saw the shades of the Underverse, trapped into this world by the whims of the daemons that had claimed their souls. They were fair of form, yet alien of visage, and unspeakable agony shone from their eyes as they moved amongst the ghostly echoes of a city that must have been beautiful in the time before its fall. They ignored us – Russ, his guards, the Custodians, Bear, and me – all but for one, who turned from the path he followed endlessly and walked toward us. When it spoke, its voice was a whisper in the winds, almost impossible to hear in the faint shrieking of the damned that we had heard ever since reaching the planet's atmosphere.

I did not understand its words, though I later learned that it was the shade of one of the Eldar's seers, recognising Russ' spiritual strength and wishing to pass on a warning.

The golden warriors tried to stop the Wolf King, calling upon his oaths to the Golden Throne, warning him of the dangers of listening to the xenos spirits. I believe that for a moment, Russ hesitated. Perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it was only the regret of what he knew he had to do that made him pause. But I think that I felt the weight of destiny upon us all at that moment, the terrible knowledge that the fates rest in balance on a knife's edge.

Then he made his decision. It didn't take long before the blood of the Emperor's Custodians covered the ground of the Eldar's tomb-world. There was no shock in the eyes of the Vlka Fenryka, only cold fatality. I do not think they saw what they had done as treachery. They saw it as a sad but necessary duty, a sacrifice that had to be made on the road to salvation.

Extract from The Wyrd of the Leman Russ, by Kasper Howser

Russ believed that Magnus' attempts to elevate Mankind to a psychic race would cause the species to suffer the same fate as the Eldars. He returned to the Hrafnkel and brooded long on what action take to avoid the damnation he foresaw. For several weeks, the fleet of the Sixth Legion remained in orbit around Melia'Sertaria, its techno-adepts repairing the many damages it had taken during the Errance and its warriors healing their wounds. Then Russ reappeared before his men, declaring that their course of action had been chosen. Though what he demanded of them was harsh, and many would call them traitors for it, he told them that it was necessary : if they did not do it, Mankind would follow the Eldars into the grave. There was only one way to avoid this terrible fate :

Prospero had to burn.

The Razing of Prospero

According to the Wyrd, Russ intended the Razing of Prospero as both a warning to the Thousand Sons and a message to the Emperor Himself. The book claims that Russ sent an astropathic message to Terra on the tides of the carnage, telling Him of what he had found and of the reasons behind his criminal acts. That message, however, never reached Terra. Whether it was never sent at all, or intercepted by the Dark Gods, no one but the Emperor can know for certain. Though a precise chronology of the events of these times is all but impossible, it is believed that the Space Wolves' attack on the Thousand Sons' homeworld happened roughly at the same time as the Isstvan Massacre, when Guilliman butchered his own loyal sons alongside with his cohorts. These twin treacheries were the source of the Warp's turmoil during the Heresy that made galactic travel so unreliable – though Guilliman had perhaps not planned for Russ' actions, since the traitors are recorded to have suffered substantial losses to the Sea of Souls' madness as well.

The fall of Prospero was described in great detail by the survivors. After the Heresy, an entire aisle of the Imperial Palace was covered in scriptures, frescoes and sculptures of that bitter day – the magnificence of the City of Light represented both before and after the barbarians of the treacherous Sixth laid it low. There are many hidden meanings in these works of mournful art, and an Inquisitor seeking knowledge of the Space Wolves can find much of the Thousand Sons' lore in it, if he has but the intelligence and the patience needed to see past the obvious and into the symbolic.

Prospero was a well-defended world, with a garrison of Thousand Sons and its own regiment of the Imperial Army, the Spireguards. With most of the Legion's forces either back on Terra or dispersed across the Great Crusade, however, it was not as well protected in orbit. The Space Wolves boarded and destroyed the orbit defense array, and proceded to bombard the planet. Tizca, the City of Light, housing millions of priceless, unique scrolls and books, burned as the Sixth Legion ought to destroy the Fifteenth's experiment with psychic populations. Pyramids that had stood for thousands of years were reduced to rubble, along with stellar observatories that had failed to foresee that fate and universities were the mysteries of the universe had been studied by thousands of aspirants for the Thousand Sons. Thus was not only the past but also the future of Magnus' sons taken from them by the fury of the Space Wolves.

After the bombardment was over, Russ and his men descended on the planet to make sure that no survivors remained. To his surprise, he found out that not only there were survivors, but that they were ready to fight back against the murderers of their families. They unleashed the psychic predators of their homeworld against the invaders, and used all of their powers to inflict maximal casualties on the traitor Sixth Legion. Led by a Captain named Iskandar Khayon, the few Thousand Sons who had survived led the remnants of Tizca's population into the desert between cities, and managed to escape the madness of the Wolves by opening a Warp portal to the few ships who had been close enough to Prospero to hear its distress call. Russ did not order his fleet to pursue the vessels : their mission was accomplished, and the survivors were no threat to the future of Mankind. Let them carry word of what the Space Wolves had done, so that all would know that deviancy would not be tolerated in the Imperium of Man, not as long as the Rout was keeping watch.

The Heresy

After burning Prospero, Russ returned to Fenris, taking everything of value, before running to the Ultima Segmentum. There, Russ used some of the forbidden technology he had gained during his Errance to guide his fleet further into the void, deep within the Halo Stars and to one of the fortresses he had built in that time. There he remained for years, waiting for the Emperor's reaction to what he had done. But soon, his astropaths and Wolf Priests heard the Warp sing of another deed, one far greater and more terrible : the Isstvan Atrocity. With it came news of the Roboutian Heresy, but there were distorted by the Warp, and the details of it eluded Russ. The Wolf King found himself torn by indecision, not knowing which side was right, which one to support. On one hand, Guilliman had always appeared to be an arrogant lordling to Russ, but he was honorable – a king of kings, capable of leading an empire to greatness. On the other hand, the Emperor may have not followed Russ' advice at Nikaea, but surely what he had done at Prospero, and the knowledge he had unearthed and sent to him, would have changed His mind.

It was as Russ' mind balanced that Lion El'Jonson, perhaps the only one of his brothers that the Wolf King trusted, found the Sixth Legion. The Lion told Russ what had occurred in his absence. Surprisingly, it seems that the servant of the Great Deceiver told his brother the truth, at least as far as the wretched traitor knew it : that Guilliman had turned against the Emperor, and that seven other Primarchs stood with him in defiance of the Emperor's tyrannic and foolish ways.

Then, after having told his brother of the galaxy's events, the Lion began to weave his greatest deception. He told Russ that Guilliman was a worthier lord than the Emperor, that he knew and understood the sacrifices and hard decisions that had to be made if Mankind was to survive the darkness of the galaxy. The rhetoric of Lion El'Jonson persuaded Russ, yet there was still a doubt that prevented him from throwing his lot with Guilliman's rebellion. Russ remembered how his father had looked back on that fateful day, when He had beaten him and revealed His true form. Even after two hundred years and countless attempts at suppressing the image, Russ still sometimes woke covered in cold sweat at the memory of the power bound within the Emperor's mortal frame. How, he asked, could anyone defeat the Master of Mankind ?

The Lion told Russ that this was precisely why the rebellion needed the Wolf King on their side. There was a way, a power that could rival even that of Him on Earth, but to obtain it, the Primarch of the Dark Angels needed the help of his brother. For the power he sought laid in a place between Hell and reality, and was guarded by the immortal servants of a long-dead xenos species. Russ was used to fighting such creatures, and his help was needed if the Lion's expedition was to be successful.

Russ trusted his brother, and he accepted to help him. But the full strength of the First and Sixth Legions wasn't needed for that quest, while the rest of the rebellion would need all the Astartes it could get. So he called his Legion's commanders and proclaimed that the Vlka Fenryka be divided into thirteen Great Companies. His personnal guard would accompany him on the Lion's quest, while the others would scatter across the galaxy and do all they could to help Guilliman's rebellion. As he made that proclamation, a vision seemed to come over him, filling him with dread and exaltation in equal measure, and he promised his sons that, no matter what happened, he would be with them at the final battle, when the ultimate fate of Mankind would be decided – a moment he called the Wolftime.

And so it was that the Primarchs of the First and Sixth Legions went to war together. This is also how the Wyrd ends, for Kasper didn't write anything more after relating the Wolf King's proclamation to his men. What is known is that Russ and the Lion went into the Maelstrom, and only the Lion returned. Very few of the Wolves that had accompanied their father returned, and none of them with the Dark Angels. Instead, they emerged in distinct parts of the galaxy, having escaped the Maelstrom through the use of an ancient xenos artifact, claimed by the Legion during the Errance and those effects were barely understood by its Iron Priests.

On and on they came, in an unrelenting and numberless tide. The hosts of metallic dead had begun to move when Russ and the Lion had entered the temple. Skeleton-like, with eldritch lights burning in their eyes' sockets, the silent soldiers carried weapons the like of which he had never seen before. Fire from their strange guns could pierce even the armor of the Wolf Guard, and the claws of the creatures that skulked in the shadows could cut through an Astartes' reinforced bones.

Bjorn and his brothers held the line with the support of the Dark Angels, while in the room behind them their fathers fought the king of a dead empire. Bjorn had seen the creature, briefly, and it had made his blood run cold. Unbidden images of death and extinction had appeared in his mind as he had looked at the undying emperor, a creature as tall as a Primarch and carrying a scythe that sung the death of stars. It had been sitting on its throne, before the great device that the Lion had claimed they had to destroy in order to reach their prize. Of course, like every Space Wolf had known it would, the creature had risen the moment they had crossed the threshold. Now the Primarchs had to send its spirit back to the Underverse, while their sons held the silent legions at bay.

This wasn't made any easier by the fell power that surrounded the entire planet. The field cut Rune Priests off the Root of the World, just like it disabled the sorceries of the First Legion. But this wasn't the first time the Rout had waged war without the strength of Mother Fenris to aid them. They had encountered similar defenses during the Errance, though never on the scale of a whole planet, and the might of their fangs and claws had been enough to see them through each time. This would be no different.

Bjorn beheaded one of the restless dead with his chainsword, before emptying his bolter into a row of its advancing comrades. They fell, but the group that emerged from behind them, crushing their writhing carcasses as they advanced, appeared to be immune to the deluge of fire the Legionaries were directing at them. At once, Bjorn realized that these wights were different from those they had been fighting since the beginning of the battle. Where those who had come before had been foot soldiers and scavengers, these were palatine guards, elite warriors roused to defend their king. They bore blades and shields that shimmered with the same light shining in their eyes, and their black bodies were covered in golden plates that demarcated them from the other undead. Bjorn could see in how they moved that some piece of individuality remained in them, and knew that these would truly be formidable foes. Yet it was the one these lychguards escorted that gave him pause. It was a dark figure wielding a spear the same color as that of the overlord the Primarch were facing – a noble of the wight emperor's court.

Shouting a challenge, Bjorn hurled himself at the dead lord, rising his weapon high to strike. But before his blade could find its mark, his foe's intercepted him, and severed his right arm at the shoulder. Biting down the terrible pain, Bjorn threw himself at the xenos, and while his brothers engaged its bodyguards, he began to tear at its skull with his remaining hand, seeking to rip it free. It resisted, but Bjorn was nothing if not stubborn, and he finally tore off the head of the undead lord, lifting it high for all to see, bellowing to the obsidian ceiling, the pain in his arm still burning despite the gifts of his enhanced physiology. Somehow, Bjorn knew that the pain would be with him until the day he died.

News of the Primarch's disappearance spread slowly but surely amongst the Space Wolves. Some were driven to despair by the news, but most of them vowed to find him. Clinging to his last words before dividing the Legion, many believed that he would be at Terra, for the final battle of the Roboutian Heresy. These formed warbands and joined with Guilliman's advance toward the Throneworld, seeking to hasten the moment when the rebel and loyalist's leaders finally faced each other. They burned entire worlds and slaughtered armies with a brutality and a haste that made them suffer casualties that could have been avoided. Guilliman let them do as they pleased : the Arch-Traitor had little qualms about sacrificing his allies to speed up his own victory.

Finally, the traitors arrived at Terra. The Space Wolves hurled themselves at the walls of the Imperial Palace, desperate to bring them down, calling for their father to return to them as the birthworld of Mankind burned in the flames of the ultimate battle. But Russ did not return. The Vlka Fenryka died by the thousand at the blades and bolters of the loyalists, and still he did not return. They kept on fighting, their hearts filled with a black rage, taking the lives of many faithful servants of the Emperor. They kept on fighting when Sanguinius fell, and when the Night Lords and Emperor's Children returned. They kept on fighting when Guilliman breached the Imperial Gates, pouring after him and spreading across the Palace, engaging the Custodes and the other defenders while Guilliman faced the Master of Mankind in battle. And still, Russ did not return.

Bjorn watched as the witch who called himself Ahriman killed Ohthere Wyrdmake. One moment the Rune Priest was at his side, on the Imperial Palace's ramparts; the next he was gone, his shade's last scream still echoing in the ears of all those present. He shuddered. This was no way for a warrior to die. And still the Thousand Sons pretended not to use maleficarum !

He launched himself at the Fifteenth Legion's First Captain, his claw poised to claim his life. The sorcerer turned toward him and directed his fell powers upon Bjorn, but the mysterious blessing he had earned when slaying the undead lord protected him, and he smiled when he smelt Ahriman's stupor. This kill would be sweet indeed …

The claw was blocked before it could reach its target. A warrior clad in purple and gold stood between Bjorn and his foe. His face was a mess of scars, and in his eyes burned immortal faith and hatred. Bjorn knew this warrior, but it was impossible that he be there. The Space Wolf had seen him die at the claws of one of the Wulfen, when he had led the attack on a Death Guard position ! How could he still be fighting ? What manner of vile sorcery was keeping him into the realm of the livings ?

For the first time in many, many years, Bjorn felt fear. He knew he was no match for the scarred warrior. With a howl, he disengaged, and called for his men to retreat with him.

Behind them, Lucius of the Emperor's Children watched them flee, before starting to move again, heeding some call impossible to hear for others.

The Post-Heresy

When Guilliman fell, the Space Wolves were the last to run. They were ready to fight until their death, but when the last of their allies retreated, they finally understood that there was no way for them to win the battle – and the war. Almost none of those elements of the Sixth Legion who were present during the Siege managed to escape, though those who did would become some of the most infamous enemies of the Imperium during the Scourging that would follow.

Bjorn the Fell-Handed

Few individuals amongst the Traitor Legions are as ancient and widely known as Bjorn the Fell-Handed. In the days of the Roboutian Heresy, Bjorn was one of the Space Wolves closest to the Primarch, despite his then lack of rank. It is said that on Prospero, the two of them fought back to back against the psychic predators that the defenders, in their desperation, unleashed on their world's killers.

Bjorn was amongst the retinue Russ brought with him on the Lion's quest. He lost his right arm in battle then, and received a prosthesis arm in the form of a power claw. He fought with it on Terra, leading hundreds of his brothers against the Thousand Sons defenders of the Imperial Palace. His right arm was then observed to possess some strange, Warp-repelling proprieties that helped shielded him against the Sons of Magnus' powers.

After the failure of the Heresy, Bjorn became obsessed with finding his lost father. Over the millenia, he and those who follow him have scoured dozens of worlds in search of clues about Russ' whereabouts. Agents of the Inquisition have reported seeing him consorting with vile aliens in return for knowledge about the mysterious species involved in Russ' disappearance. Like his Primarch before him, Bjorn does not hesitate to disturb things best left alone, and the consequences of his actions are often far more destructive than his actions proper.

Several centuries after the Heresy, Bjorn was finally found by a group of Thousand Sons who had hunted him for all that time. Though he did manage to slay them all, the Fell-Handed was so terribly wounded that his men interred him into a Dreadnought. His new metallic body possesses the same Warp-repelling ability that his claw once did, making him a terrible threat to any psyker facing him. Since Bjorn does not spend long in the Eye of Terror and the other Warp anomalies where most Traitor Legionaries have taken refuge, he suffers the normal flow of time : were his life not sustained by his mechanical body, alien technologies and his shamans' magics, he would have died of old age long ago.

After the Heresy, several Great Companies returned to Fenris, intent on holding it against the Imperium until their Primarch's return. They built a great fortress, the Fang, and kept recruiting new warriors from the savage tribes. They spread traitor propaganda in the guise of legends and saga, and the cult of Chaos grew in influence amidst the savage people of Fenris. For more than a century, the Space Wolves held their homeworld against all attempts to dislodge them. Then, at last, retribution came. Magnus the Red himself led the Imperial forces, composed of almost all of his Legion and vast contingents of Sons of Horus, under the leadership of the Mournival Lord Abaddon himself.

The loyalists lay siege to the Fang while starship dueled in orbit. The battle lasted for several months, for unlike the rest of the Traitor Legions, the Space Wolves who had chosen to remain on Fenris were ready to fight for it unto death. It was only when Magnus broke the gates of the Fang and the Thousand Sons began to bring the fortress down that the ranks of the Sixth Legion began to falter. Hundreds of Legionaries died in the following hours, as Magnus and Abaddon fought back to back against the beasts that the Space Wolves unleashed against them. Then, when the loyalists' victory seemed all but certain, the Warp tore open and a new fleet of Sixth Legion ships entered the system. These were the ships of Bjorn the Fell-Handed, a legendary commander of the Space Wolves who had dedicated his life to finding his lost Primarch. Why he came to the aid of his brothers is unknown – perhaps there was still some shred of brotherhood and nobility left in him.

While his fleet engaged the Sons of Horus and Thousand Sons' vessels, Bjorn and his troops teleported directly into the heart of the Fang. The warlord faced the Primarch in single battle, while his men fought to protect his Rune Priests as they opened a portal back to his ships. The surviving defenders, at Bjorn's command, evacuated through it, taking with them many relics and prized slaves of the Legion. After more than an hour of dueling against Magnus – a feat that is still not understood by the Inquisition, even after ten thousand years of research – the Fell-Handed finally broke free and retreated as well. That day, the Thousand Sons vowed to find Bjorn and bring him to justice, no matter the cost.

Once Bjorn had returned to his flagship, he ordered his fleet to open fire on the Fang out of pure spite, hoping to bring it down on the heads of the loyalists. Magnus cast a powerful spell that saved him and his allies, but the Warp energies unleashed by both loyalists and traitors combined with the strength of the bombardment proved too much for the planet to bear. The delicate tectonic balance of Fenris was too badly upset, and the planet collapsed on itself. The death-cry of the world and its millions of inhabitants created a Warp Storm, preventing the forces of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Legions from pursuing Bjorn's fleet. Afterward, the Space Wolves split up once more, though it is believed that many warriors chose to remain with Bjorn, whether out of some sense of gratitude for saving their lives, because they believed it was his destiny to find Leman Russ once more, or because they blamed him for Fenris' destruction and awaited the opportunity to kill him.

The destruction of Fenris marked the end of the Sixth Legion as a united force. Every Great Company went its own way, raiding the Imperium and dividing even further. Hundreds of warbands bear the gene-seed of Leman Russ, and every single one of them is a thorn in the side of the Emperor. It is believed amongst the Inquisitors that know of the Traitor Legions' most secret lore that only Bjorn the Fell-Handed could have kept the Legion united, but he abandoned that duty when he began his mad quest to find his Primarch. Whether this is a blessing in disguise – for the might of a united Rout is truly something to fear – or a terrible threat whose amplitude has yet to be revealed is a matter of hot debate amongst these restrained circles.

Now, amongst the Nine Legions, the Space Wolves Legion is something of an outcast. While all Traitor Legions are locked in a perpetual state of conflict against each other, the Wolves are even more reluctant to form alliances with their comrades in damnation. Most of them hate the Dark Angels, blaming them for the loss of their Primarchs. Entire wars have been fought between the First and Sixth Legions to avenge Leman Russ, and while every Chaos Marine slain by his brethren is a boon to the Imperium, dozens of Imperial worlds have been caught in the crossfire of these feuds. The other Traitor Legions see the Space Wolves as fools who were deceived by the Emperor and the Lion alike, and still cling to the hope that their dead father will return. On the rare occasions warbands from the Space Wolves and another Legion fight together, the Wolf Lord and his opposite number spend a lot of time and effort preventing their warriors for creating new feuds between the two groups.

Organisation

The Space Wolves still follow the organisation their Primarch decreed before his disappearance. Almost all of them owe allegiance to one of the thirteen Great Companies, save for a handful of renegades and outcasts. Of those Great Companies, only twelve are known to remain in existence, the fate of the thirteenth uncertain. Each of the Great Company is led by a Wolf Prince, one of the heirs of Russ. Beneath the Wolf Princes are the Wolf Lords, each commanding a warband belonging to the Great Company. The size of these warbands vary greatly, and they are very fluid : some active warbands of Space Wolves are composed of warriors who have fought side to side since the Great Crusade, whilst others have only recently assembled around a rising star amongst the Legion. The troops under the command of the Wolf Lord are generally divided between the Blood Claws, those recently induced into the Legion and who have yet to earn their lord's recognition, and the 'true' Space Wolves, full-fledged members of the Vlka Fenryka. Wolf Priests and Rune Priests form separate brotherhoods within the Legion. The Wolf Priests work together to ensure that there is always at least one of them within any significant warband, while the Rune Priests brood over the bitter truths revealed to them when Fenris died and plot their revenge against the Thousand Sons.

The hierarchy within each Great Company has much in common with the packs of wolves from which the Legion takes its name. Warbands journey on their own or in groups depending on the alliances made by the Wolf Lords, and regularly return to the Great Company fortress to repair and share the tales of their infamous deeds, that they may be recorded by the Legion's skalds. The Wolf Prince directly commands the greatest number of Astartes, but it is his own personal strength that allows him to keep his position. If one of the Wolf Lords challenges him for it, the Wolf Prince must accept the challenge and face his would-be usurper in single combat. Such duels are taken very seriously, and the victor, should he win by trickery or cowardly means, will soon be torn apart by an enraged mob of demigods. Several of the Wolf Princes named by Russ at the head of the Great Companies are still in position today, having successfully defended their throne from hundreds of challengers over the millenia. Most of these individual, fortunately, remain on their daemon worlds most of the time, trying to impose a semblance of order upon their troops, lest the Legion dissolve entirely. If such a thing were to happen, they believe that upon his return, Russ will punish them for failing to preserve the Rout he entrusted to them.

The Thirteenth Great Company

When Russ divided his Legion, one of the groups thus created chose to follow a path none of their brethren dared to walk. Led by Jorin Bloodhowl, their Rune Priests sought to master the curse inside them through the power of the Warp. It was their conviction that only once the Vlka Fenryka had won the war within could they win the war without. To that end, even before the Heresy ended, they journeyed into the Eye of Terror. It was thought that they had been destroyed by the madness of Chaos, but in recent years, for the first time in ten thousand years, signs and portents seem to indicate this was not the case. Many Imperial seers are plagued by visions of great black wolves riding out of Hell, ahead of an infinite legion of the lost and the damned. Interrogation of imprisoned traitors has since revealed that the sons of Russ of the Eye have, like so many others, somehow survived their exile.

Their quest, however, appears to have most spectacularly failed. The Space Wolves of the Thirteenth Great Company have been turned into monsters of vague likeness to the creatures of which they bear the name. Now beholden only to the whims of Chaos, they hunt across the Eye of Terror, chasing those judged unworthy by the Ruinous Powers. Some of the most powerful warlords sometimes have them fighting alongside them, but such alliances never last, and the Wolves of Chaos quickly leave the warband once the particular quarry they had been hunting is brought down.

For now, they have kept their depredations to the Eye, but Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus fear what the day they leave it may portent. As the Eye grows ever more agitated and the Dark Millenium's end grows near, the Wolf Time may be closer than any one of us would believe ...

Homeworld

Fenris is long gone, and the Space Wolves have adapted to the loss of their Legion's birthworld. Their Legion is fleet-based, with only a handful of fortresses in the Eye of Terror and other, similar Emperor-forsaken realms. While these daemon worlds under the control of the Sixth Legion are rare, the sons of Russ defend them with a ferocity rarely seen amidst the treacherous scum of their blasphemous ilk. Information about these hellish domains is scarce, but it is known to the Inquisition that most Space Wolves warlords turn their daemonic kingdoms into twisted reflections of their dead home world, creating eternal storms and earthquakes amidst which a heavily mutated population of human slaves somehow manage to survive.

When the Space Wolves conquer a world, they usually try to drag it into the Sea of Souls, so that they can use it to create another infernal paradise for their kind. Their Rune Priests engrave symbols of heretic power the size of cities on the surface of the world, using thousands of slaves to do so, before sacrificing them to fuel the spell that will shatter the barriers between the Warp and reality. Since these operations are extremely vulnerable to attack and require the utmost precision to avoid breaking the planet apart altogether, the Space Wolves only perform this ritual once the world is firmly in their grasp.

The First War for Armageddon

During the fifth century of the forty-first millenium, the industrial world of Armageddon came under attack by a combined force of Imperial Fists and Space Wolves. While the commander of the Seventh Legion's remain unidentified to this day – it is even doubtful there was even one in the first place – the Space Wolves' elements were under the command of Logan Grimnar. While his allies tore the planet apart in an orgy of bloodshed, his Rune Priests channeled the Warp energy produced by the carnage to rip apart the veil between realities. By turning entire cities into sacrifices to Khorne, they were capable to summon the Daemon Primarch Rogal Dorn from the Eye of Terror. The traitor son of the Emperor almost plunged the entire planet into the Warp, and would have succeeded if the arrival of the World Eaters had not saved the last cities from his wrath. While the Twelfth Legion held the line against the horde of daemons and Imperial Fists Sword Brethren, four full Brotherhoods of Grey Knights struck at the Daemon Primarch himself. Only a handful of Grey Knights survived, but Rogal Dorn was banished back to the Sea of Souls. At the moment of the Daemon Primarch's fall, Grimnar ordered the retreat of his men, leaving his allies without his support. The World Eaters launched a devastating counter-attack, slaying thousands of traitor Astartes and putting an end to the last recorded time the Imperial Fists acted as a united Legion.

The planet was saved. The touch of the Chaotic corruption remained powerful, however, and the Inquisition demanded that the remaining population be put to the sword to avoid contagion. The Twelfth Legion strongly opposed that decision, and instead evacuated the civilians and soldiers who had fought at their side to one of the Legion's worlds.

Beliefs

'I will return. I promise you that. In the end, for the final battle, I will be with you. When the stars bleed and the galaxy burn, when the last battle of the last war begins on Terra, I will be with you. When my father's empire of lies crumble under the weight of its hypocrisy, when the children of Man know that their hour is at hand, I will return.

For the Wolftime !'

The Proclamation of Russ

The Space Wolves have not abandoned the superstitions and traditions of their homeworld. Their Wolf Priests still teach the legends of Fenris and the Legion to the new recruits : how Fenris was made from a rock thrown away by the gods at the beginning of time; how Russ bested the great wolf spirit Morkai, and bound it into his service. Most of all, though, they speak of the Wolftime : the prophecy of Russ, before leaving with the Lion to their ill-fated expedition. Many believe in the return of Russ : they think that he will return when the end of the Imperium is nigh, and the galaxy ablaze once more with the fires of heresy. These actively seek to bring down the Emperor's dominion, favoring destruction over their own plunder. Others believe their Primarch to be dead, and desire nothing more than to reap glory in battle or carve their own petty kingdoms and reign as warrior-kings.

Unlike many amongst the Traitor Legions, most Space Wolves know and admit that they are corrupted – that their actions have left an irredeemable taint upon their soul. But they blame it on the Emperor and Magnus, claiming that the Cyclops cursed the Sixth Legion with his maleficarum powers in vengeance for the razing of Prospero. To them, the Emperor deceived the Legion just as Magnus deceived Him, and forced the Nine Legions to rise against Him by His actions. They see themselves – and the other Legions, even though they certainly wouldn't accept such views – as martyrs, forced into damnation by a tyrant's ambition and their failure to prevent it completely. For the Space Wolves, they were always necessary monsters, but Mankind betrayed them and cast them out – and it must pay for that betrayal.

The Question of the Rune Priests

One of the reasons why Russ was denied at Nikaea is believed to be the presence of the so-called Rune Priests amongst his Legion. These individuals were psykers of great, if specialized talents, and the clear hypocrisy of Russ, who called the Thousand Sons witches while his own sons used the very same powers, turned many of his brothers against him. To understand such an apparent contradiction in the Wolf King's rhetoric, it is necessary to know of unholy Fenris' long-lost lore. The people of this world had arbitrarily separated the arts of warp-craft in two categories : the shamanic lore of their 'wise men', and the maleficarum, the dark arts of the daemonic. To them, the first was the calling upon Fenris' spirit to defend oneself against the creatures of the Warp, while the latter was dabbling with these same creatures, allowing them a foothold into reality and risking bringing back the horrors of the Old Night.

At Nikaea, it was of maleficarum that the Space Wolves accused the Thousand Sons. While the separation between the different schools of power is something the Imperium acknowledges to this day, the Space Wolves' ruin was that their own categorization was based not on proper observation and measure of the risks of each way of accessing the Warp's power, but on a blind opposition to anything that didn't follow the old ways of Fenris. That is why, when Russ called for Magnus to be punished, he genuinely believed that there was nothing in common between his Rune Priests and the Cyclops' sorcerers.

The loss of Fenris, however, has forced the Space Wolves' psykers to face the truth : their powers come from the Warp, not from some nonexistent blessing of their homeworld. This has driven many of them mad, deeply drinking of the Dark Gods' poisoned gifts in despair.

Combat doctrine

Ragnar Blackmane

One of the most recently risen leaders of the Sixth Legion, Ragnar is a descendant of the Fenrisians saved before the planet's destruction. Exceptionally young for his rank, his deeds have made his name a curse across more than a hundred systems. Inquisitorial observations indicate that he is a follower of the Blood God, and a champion of battle whose skill is almost unequaled amongst the Traitor Legions. He is a highly charismatic if somewhat reckless leader, and his thirst for blood borders on berzerker status, though he has so far avoided the fall into mindlessness that seems to consume most Legionaries succumbing to that particular brand of damnation.

Many warbands have already gathered under the one who is called the Young King of Fenris by his most devoted servants. Some amongst the Inquisition fear that he may unite the Sixth Legion once more, and bring it wholly under Khorne's sway. To prevent his terrifying eventuality, several assassins have been dispatched – but, like those employed by Ragnar's rivals, they have failed in their mission.

Operations led by the Space Wolves tend to fall into one of two categories. The first, and by far the most common, are the raids for plunder and slaves. Unlike other Traitor Legions, the Vlka Fenryka lack any skill at maintaining a viable infrastructure for long, and they depend on these raids for resupplying almost entirely. These raids are lightning fast, highly precise, and followed by a quick retreat once the traitors' objective has been captured or the defenders have rallied and the initial momentum lost. The second category is that of the war of conquest. Sometimes, a Wolf Lord or a Great Jarl is able to gather a great number of warriors behind him and seeks to build his own kingdom. With uncharacteristic patience, that individual will carefully tend to his alliances, sow the seeds of heresy on the worlds he wishes to conquer, and scheme to weaken military defenses.

Such preparations can last for years or even decades – the First War for Armageddon is said to have taken Logan Grimnar a century to plan. When the machinations of the war leader reach fruition, his warband and his allies will strike with all the power at their disposal, seeking to crush all opposition with overwhelming force. The Wulfen are set loose, the old, half-mad Dreadnoughts are unleashed, and the Rune Priests call forth the wraiths of the netherworld to do their bidding. Some warbands even have access to stolen xenos archeotech, taken as prize during the Errance. The effects of these devices is never the same, and using them is a huge gamble. But skilled Iron Priests have used them in the past to drown entire worlds in blood – while less skilled ones have destroyed themselves, and entire Chaos fleets, trying to master forces far beyond their control.

On the battlefield, the Space Wolves meet their enemy head-on, leading the way for the rest of their troops. Their champions seek out their opposing number amongst their foes, or, barring that, the worthiest opponents to slay. At their side run their great wolves, beasts bred from the stock taken from Fenris during the Heresy and less natural creatures, bound to the form of the beast by the Rune Priests' incantations. The sons of Russ show no mercy on the field, pursuing running foes until they or their prey collapse, all the while howling in hatred and hunger. For all their savagery, though, the Space Wolves can display surprising cunning. If the Wolf Lord can keep his troops under his control, even the most decorated Imperial tactician will be hard-pressed to match him.

Recruitment and Geneseed

Ever since the founding of the Sixth Legion, its sons have been plagued by a curse that has claimed the lives of thousands of aspirants and grown warriors alike. There is an instability in Leman Russ' gene-seed, a mutation that, in insight, was found out to be the mark of the corruption within. That instability caused great difficulties in recruitment before Russ was found, and for a time it was even considered to scrap the Sixth Legion entirely. But once the Wolf King was found, a way to bypass, if not solve the problem, was found. The potency of Leman Russ' gene-seed was such that a human body couldn't endure the changes it wrought upon the flesh, not all at once. So, the Canis Helix was designed, as a first step on the road of transformation to a Space Marine. This implant, first implanted in the flesh of the Neophytes, transform their body far more quickly than normal, and the consequences could be deadly even during the Great Crusade, before so much of the Emperor's gene-craft was lost to the ages. Now, away from the Emperor's light and deep into the corruptive touch of the Ruinous Powers, the Space Wolves are more than ever wary of the Curse of the Wulfen. Mutation is endemic amongst the sons of Russ, slowly twisting each of them into a reflection of their inner beast. Even those who resist the full transformation into Wulfen see their body mutate as they age, and only the strongest-willed can endure their ever-increasing bestial instincts.

The Wulfen

Those of the Vlka Fenryka who succumb to the beast inside them, or are consumed by the blood of Russ during their initiation, become terrible monsters known as the Wulfen. These are huge, wolf-like creatures, but without even the reason given to such animals. The Wulfen are consumed by their hunger and bloodlust, and only ever allow other sons of Russ to be near them without instantly attacking – and even then, occurrences of one turning on his brothers are hardly unknown. Despite the risk they represent, the Space Wolves refuse to kill them, and instead keep them in chains aboard their ships or let them roam freely on their daemon worlds. On the battlefield, they let them loose, allowing their fallen brethren to hunt, slay and feed.

The Space Wolves take aspirants from the tribes of feral humans living on their daemon worlds. These tribes live in a state of constant warfare against each other, and the Legion's Apothecaries, known to these degenerates as the Choosers of the Slain, take those young and strong enough. Others are taken from Imperial worlds, often on the whim of a member of the raiding warband. In both case, once compatibility has been confirmed, the aspirants are implanted with the Canis Helix. If the warband has access to a Legion planet, they are let loose in the wilderness and those who made it back receive the next step of their genetic enhancements. When this isn't possible, the potential Blood Claws are drugged and brought to the depths of the ship, where they must endure a similar trial. Despite the losses incurred in the process by the Canis Helix, the numbers of the Sixth Legion are estimated to have remained stable since the Heresy. The gene-seed of Leman Russ can take root in more human genotypes than that of many other Primarchs, even the untainted loyalist ones, perhaps because it rewrites so much of those it is implanted in.

The Wolf Brothers

There is a warband of Space Wolves that has, for ten millenia, been hunted by the Inquisition. Both the Ordo Xenos and the Ordo Hereticus have worked together to destroy it – a feat that spoke aplenty of the warband's threat – and failed. While there are fewer incidents attributed to them than to many other groups of sons of Russ, the nature of these incidents, and their terrifying implications, have led hundreds of Inquisitors to dedicate their lives to the destruction of those known as the Wolf Brothers.

The Wolf Brothers are an offshoot of the Twelfth Great Company, having left it soon after the end of the Roboutian Heresy at Terra. They were – and still are – led by a former Wolf Priest, the equivalent of an Apothecary in the other Legions. Named Thrar Hraldir, he has been a target of the Inquisition for thousands of years. Yet his genial and cunning mind has allowed him to always remain a step ahead of his would-be slayers, often manipulating them to fulfill his own ends.

When Hraldir left the rest of his Great Company, his goal was to find a way to free the Space Wolves from the Curse of the Wulfen. His exile was precipitated by the displeasure of his lord, who Vaer Greyloc, who saw such a wish as going against the Legion's spirit. Still, he allowed Hraldir to leave with those warriors who wished to follow him. For centuries, Hraldir sought to further his knowledge of Astartes genetics, even going as far as working alongside Fabius Bile at one point – though the two are now bitter enemies. But this wasn't enough, and like his Primarch before him, Hraldir sought knowledge in the darkest parts of the galaxy. He led his warband into the Halo Stars, and vanished there for centuries. He was long believed dead when he returned in M36 as the instigator of the Plague of Unbelief, and it took several decades to identify him.

The Plague of Unbelief was a major heresy that spread across several dozens worlds. Imperial authorities were either overthrown or subverted from within by cabals of xeno-worshippers, who offered their own lives to an entity they called 'the Great One', fanatically believing that it was their fate to be consumed to sate the creature's hunger. When the first reports reached the rest of the Imperium, it was believed that a new xenos threat had emerged from the depths of the galaxy. But the truth was far more ominous that even that, and the truth was revealed when the Thousand Sons faced the horror of the Wolf Brothers in the crusade to reclaim the fallen worlds.

In pursuit of his great work, the Tempering, Hraldir had unearthed artifacts from a previously unknown ancient xenos civilization. These artifacts, named the Halo Devices by the Inquisition, have granted him immortality – he was confirmed to have been killed six times, only to return each time even stronger – but they have also altered him. He no longer has anything in common with humanity, or even with his fellow traitors. Those who follow him have similarly changed, the fury of the beast within their heart expunged by Hraldir's bio-sorcery. These creatures are dispassionate, killing at the behest of their lord but taking no pleasure in the act – nor in anything else.

When the last of the afflicted worlds was finally reclaimed by the Death Guard, its entire population had to be put to the sword. The taint of Hraldir's experiments and his xenos heresy had driven billions mad, and the horrors he had committed upon them before being forced to flee were enough to shake even the composure of Mortarion's sons.

Warcry

Warcries amongst the Space Wolves vary greatly from warband to warband. A recurring theme is the calling of the name of the Wolf Lord ruling the Great Company to whom the group is beholden, but those of the Sixth Legion further on damnation's path will shout the name of their dark patrons in the hope that they take notice of their offerings. Champions of the Space Wolves also scream their own name, deeds and titles to their foes, or have heralds do it in their stead.

The warbands who have remained closest to their roots will often use 'For the Wolf King !' or 'In the name of Russ !' as warcries. Howls, whether from the Legionaries or the beasts that accompany them, are also a sign that a group of Chaos Marines has Sixth Legion sons in its ranks.

He was walking through tides of utter blackness, as he had since his arrival in this realm of shadows and monsters. His mortal senses were useless here, for this was not a plane of flesh and matter. So were his immortal perceptions blinded, for no inhabitant of this benighted hell had a soul for him to smell, or a destiny for him to read.

When they came, seeking to rend his presence to shreds and expel it from their oblivion, he fought back not with the blade in his hand, but with his very existence. He shielded himself from their claws of negation with plates of memories, and beat them back into the emptiness with clubs of raw, primal emotions. He was there. He was he. They couldn't destroy him. He would find a way out of this no-place.

There were others that followed him. The visions that had haunted his mind long before he had been cast into this place had come with him. Silent as always, the two shadows of his brothers walked behind him, watching him with accusing eyes. Even here, where his body was merely a concept with no real meaning, he could feel the pressure of that glare on his back. As familiar as it was, not a moment went by without it reminding him of what he had done in service of his father. But the pressure, and the guilt it represented, were things he was used to – things he no longer consciously considered.

His mind was so wholly focused on his goal and his survival that there was almost no place for him to think about anything else. Each idle thought took an aeon to form in his mind. Since his arrival, he had wondered how the Great War went. Surely it wasn't over : had he not foreseen, in that dreadful vision, that he would be there come the final battle ? Besides, the lights that guided his return still shone. Most of his timeless march was spent in the black, but there were periods when the blackness was pierced by flares of brightness. He knew, without knowing why or how, that these lights would guide him home, and that each one of them was a surge in the Sea of Souls, reflecting some cataclysmic event in the material realm. It was a sign that the war was still going on : who else but Guilliman had the will and the power to make the galaxy burn ?

Soon, the fires would reach beyond anything they had ever achieved before. Then he would be back, and fulfill his oath to his sons.

The Wolftime would come.

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Imperial Fists : Knights of Blood and Blades

Few Traitor Legions have fallen as far as the Imperial Fists, whose name echoes bitterly through History accompanied with the laughter of the Blood God. Once they fought at the forefront of the Emperor's armies, bringing worlds under His aegis with cold fury and unmatched discipline, carrying high the banner of the Imperium's dominion. But now they are warriors, not soldiers. The sons of the Seventh Legion lost all unity in the flames of failure and betrayal, and are now a Legion in name only, scattered across the Eye to do the bidding of their Dark God in return for its protection – the only thing preventing them from falling into the madness that burns within their Primarch's soul ...

Origins

Ten thousand years ago, the Emperor of Mankind rose from the darkness of the Age of Strife to bring a new light to a galaxy shrouded in shadows. After uniting Terra behind Him and claiming the lore of the Dark Age of Technology as His own, He prepared a grand plan to free the galaxy from the chains of xenos menace and superstition. One of His tools was the secular Imperial Truth, a message of illumination that was to be spread across the stars. The second, and perhaps even greater, was the Primarchs : twenty beings of unmatched power, born of humanity and the Emperor's own blood. They were to be the generals of His Great Crusade, the leaders of the armies He would create in their images. But there were entities that had other ideas.

Before the Emperor's work reached completion, the Ruinous Powers, also known as the Primordial Annihilator or, more commonly, the Dark Gods, stole away His twenty sons and scattered them across the galaxy. By accident or design, all of them ended up on worlds populated by human beings, and all of them, in one way or another, rose to their individual greatness until their father found them again – but none more so than Rogal Dorn. Where his brothers conquered their homeworlds, he rose to become the sovereign of an entire cluster of planets.

The Seventh Primarch was found on the ice-world of Inwit. Despite its difficult conditions, that planet was home to a sizable human population. Centuries ago, the people of Inwit had rediscovered the technology needed to travel between worlds, and had built a system-spanning kingdom. Yet while they possessed space ships and limited Warp travel, those who lived on Inwit itself had kept to their tribal ways, forming ice clans that hunted the many beasts of the world. In doing so, they believed that they could preserve the strength of their spirit, instead of growing soft by embracing the comforts of civilization.

Little is known of the early infancy of the Imperial Fists' gene-sire. He was found and adopted by the House of Dorn, greatest clan of Inwit. Like many other Primarchs, his unmatched genius and martial ability drew the attention of the mighty, and he was chosen by the Patriarch of the House as his heir. What few accounts remain available of that period when Dorn ruled the Inwit Cluster describe it as a time of great peace and prosperity, with several more worlds being discovered and added to the coalition by Dorn's exploration teams. Had the Emperor found His son then, no doubt Inwit would have become a jewel of the Imperium. But the first to find the cluster of worlds were not the vessels of the Master of Mankind, but the ramshackle Roks of the greenskins.

From the edge of the Inwit Cluster came hundreds and hundreds of Ork tribes, intent on plundering the riches of the human worlds. This was no Waaagh ! led by a single Warboss, but a gathering of dozens of lesser groups, drawn together by the unfathomable whims that control the Orks' sorry excuse for a mind. Seeing this threat to his domain, Dorn gathered his forces and raised a great fleet and army with which to meet the xenos. At first, the war went well : the Orks were no match for Dorn's tactical insight and their fury couldn't hope to resist the hard discipline of Inwit's defenders. But as the battles went on, other Ork tribes were drawn to the promise of a good fight. At the time, the Great Crusade was not yet fully going on, and there were still immense empires of greenskins polluting the stars, led by alien tyrants of such might as had rarely been seen since. The Inwit Cluster was near – galactically speaking – several of them, and their Overlords, upon hearing of the giant in yellow armor who led the humans against them with such efficiency, began to move toward the source of the tales.

The Phalanx
Before the Emperor found His seventh son on Inwit, Rogal Dorn found the ruin of what would become the flagship of his stellar kingdom. Forged during the Dark Age of Technology, the ship was orbiting Inwit, wrecked by damage so grand that none then could guess what had been the cause. Dorn restored it and enhanced it, gaining a fortress in space possessing more firepower than an entire fleet of lesser vessels. He installed his government aboard the ship, traveling from world to world to ensure the Inwit Cluster's unity and prosperity as well as hunting pirates and xenos raiders. When the first elements of the Waaaaagh ! arrived into the Inwit Cluster, Dorn brought the Phalanx to battle and defeated them with ease.
The ship was lost in battle against seven Space Hulks, destroying all of them but taking fatal damage in the process. Dorn himself was on board, directing it until its final moments, but his crew forced him to evacuate, telling him that his life was needed to protect Inwit from the rest of the Orks.

The war against the Orks lasted for years, and Dorn grew more and more somber as the military campaign went on. The loss of his flagship, the Phalanx, in battle against several Space Hulks gathered by the Waaaagh ! hit him most harshly of all. Not only had the vessel been the political heart of his kingdom, it had also been the repository of many of the Primarch's childhood relics, mementos from his foster family now long dead. If one were to attempt to identify when the soul of Rogal Dorn was first touched by darkness, one could probably point at that moment – though many other Primarchs suffered similar losses, and remained pure.

The pod was drifting in the darkness of space, alone and ignored by the behemoths that waged war against each other in the infinite black. Dorn watched the last moments of the conflict through the pod's sensor array, seeing his flagship burn through columns of numbers and red dots. The Phalanx had been his home for more than fifty years. It had been the seat of his kingdom, but more than that, it had been the one place where he had truly felt at peace. And now it was gone, and his most loyal servants were gone with it. He himself would survive, he knew that. Though he had never seen it before that day – in truth, he had not even known it existed – Dorn didn't doubt that his people had outfitted it with the best tech available, to ensure that he would survive even if the unthinkable was to happen. He would survive, and the rescue teams would find him. But that knowledge was cold comfort in the face of the losses he had suffered today.

Though it had taken six of the xenos' twisted ships with her, the Phalanx was dead. As he watched, her reactors – engines that had slumbered for centuries before Rogal's engineers had roused them – finally detonated. With her, thousands of his most valuable crew and advisers died, as well as hundreds of lesser diplomats and administrators who had helped him to keep the Cluster under control. This was a disaster far worse than the loss of the Phalanx's firepower, and it could well mean the end of the Inwit Cluster. Compared to it, the loss of the few relics he had kept in his private chambers aboard the ancient ship were not even worth mentioning – and yet, to his shame, he could not deny feeling a pang of pain at knowing they were lost as well. There was a lesson there : his men had sacrificed themselves to protect him because that was necessary. Because they believed that he had the strength to save Inwit from the threat of the Orks.

Looking at his castle burning in space, Rogal of the House of Dorn vowed that, no matter the cost, this sacrifice would not be in vain.

Dorn was forced to turn more and more of his people into soldiers, and to divert an ever-increasing part of the Inwit Cluster's resources to the war. While the Primarch fought on the front lines, discord spread amongst his people, who began to doubt his leadership in the front of the casualties taken and their diminishing standards of life. Analysis of the tactics employed prove that Dorn waged war with all the genius and skill of one of the Emperor's sons, but the human mind is not so easily convinced when one's children are taken to go fight and die against the greenskins. Dissent spread in the Inwit Cluster, and Rogal Dorn was forced to waste precious military resources putting down several outright rebellions against his perceived 'tyrannical' ways, which allowed the Orks to advance further, turning entire worlds to ruins as they did so. Thus the seed of bitterness was planted in Dorn's heart : while he did all he could to protect his people, they were turning against him, blind to the necessities of war. In response, he instated martial laws on all planets still under his forces' control, turning his policy toward civilians a lot harsher than they had previously been in an attempt to avoid further troubles.

It was at this point, when all hope seemed to be lost and Dorn's forces prepared for one final confrontation against the green tide, that the Emperor arrived. With a hundred ships accompanying His own flagship, the Bucephelus, He came to the aid of His son. The Orks, surprised by the sudden reinforcements, retreated after the Master of Mankind boarded one of their foul vessels Himself, accompanied with His Custodians, and slew the Warboss that had gathered the force attacking Inwit. The Emperor was reunited with His seventh son, though the reunion was hardly the occasion of celebrations other instances of the Emperor finding one of the lost Primarchs had been. Inwit was lost, its surface turned into a wasteland and infected by the greenskins. The planet was evacuated and bombed from orbit, while Rogal and his father watched as the former's homeworld burned at his own command. The Master of Mankind then promised to His son that he would have his vengeance against the craven aliens, for there was an army he was to command : a Legion shaped in his image, born of his blood.

Astropathic messages were sent from the Emperor's own choir, and the Great Crusade's forces heeded the will of their supreme lord. From all the galaxy, the Seventh Legion came to the ruins of Inwit, and helped crush the Ork Waaaaagh ! so completely and with such fury that, even to this day, ten thousand years later, the greenskins still avoid this region of space. Once the planets had been freed of the xenos taint – though they were deemed lost to Mankind after the battles were done – the Legion, led by its Primarch, systematically destroyed every alien empire that had sent forces to Inwit. The Emperor fought alongside Dorn on this battle, soon joined by Horus, who had been directing other campaigns. In time, another Primarch, Mortarion of the Death Guard, came to join the crusade against the Orks. These wars came to an end on the world of Gyros-Thravian, where the three sons of the Emperor fought together against the forces of the Ork Warboss Gharkul Blackfang.

In that bitter war of vengeance, Dorn was reunited with his sons and learned their strengths and skills. The Seventh Legion had many reasons to embrace its Primarch's teachings about military strength and the need to impose order to the galaxy. In its early days, it had been used by the Emperor to help into the Unification. Terra hadn't then been the greatest jewel of the Imperium of Man, but a world torn apart by millenia of warfare and divided between hundreds of factions led by madmen and genocides. By the time the first Astartes were created in the Emperor's secret laboratories, most of the conquest of the Throneworld was done, but pockets of resistance remained, and the rest of the Sol system was yet to be added to the fledgling empire. The Seventh Legion were at the vanguard of such conquest forces, fighting against the many horrors of the Old Night that still haunted Terra. For their bravery and the determination with which they had thrown down the remains of the darkness, they had received the name 'Imperial Fists', for to witness them in war was to see the incarnation of the Emperor's wrath. Now, with their Primarch to lead them, they were ready to return to the Great Crusade, and bring illumination to the stars with bolter and blade.

The Great Crusade

In the Inquisition's forbidden archives of the Great Crusade's early days, the Imperial Fists are recorded as one of the most disciplined and honorable Legions. The fury they displayed when fighting against xenos breeds was almost unparalleled amongst the Astartes – and woe betide any greenskin that crossed their path. The Seventh Legion specialized in overwhelming attacks against the enemy's headquarters, and became masters at the art of taking fortresses or reducing them to rubble. This was due to the change in Dorn's war philosophy after the loss of Inwit : rather than fortifying one's domain, it was best to crush the enemy's before he could become a threat.

The grief of losing his homeworld to the depredations of the xenos marked Rogal Dorn deeply, and this reflected on his Legion. While none of his brothers would ever dispute Dorn's ability as a general, his character rose concerns long before the Heresy. Most of the other Primarchs had a monolithic personality, whose strength could make mortal humans faint simply upon meeting them. Dorn, however, was a conflicted and tormented soul, dwelling on his failure to protect Inwit and subject to violent mood swings. Sometimes he would obsess with glory even at the cost of his men's lives, others he would go to any length to win with as little losses as possible. This duality was mirrored amongst his Legion. The two highest officers of his Legion, Sigismund the First Captain and Archamus the Master of the Huscarls – Dorn's own personal guard – incarnated this duality. While Archamus was the voice of reason, as befitted his rank as a Primarch's protector, Sigismund was Dorn's champion, his wrath unleashed upon his foes. He led the Templars of the Imperial Fists, always at the forefront of the battles his Company took part in, and earned much honor and recognition during the Great Crusade.

'What is our life ?
Duty.
What is our purpose ?
Duty.
What are we ?
Our oath.
Without our oath, what are we ?
Nothing.
What is our oath ?
Everything.
To whom do we owe our oath ?
To the Emperor and the Primarch.'
Canticle of the Templars, during the Great Crusade

Rogal's militaristic beliefs led him to impose an absurd level of discipline on his Legion, punishing failure by flogging or outright execution. While some of his brothers opposed these changes, ultimately it was up to Dorn how he wanted to lead his Legion. The Seventh Primarch was often blunt, never hesitating in speaking his mind, and many of his brothers were infuriated by his criticism of their methods of warfare. He accused Alpharius of cowardice, Magnus of dangerous over-reliance on psychic powers, Lorgar of naivety, and despite their similar martial beliefs, almost came to blows with Angron. But it was with Perturabo of the Iron Warriors that the lord of the Imperial Fists had the most hostile relationship.

The Fourth and Seventh Legions only ever fought one campaign together. On Shravaan, the Iron Warriors and the Imperial Fists waged war alongside the Emperor's Children and the Luna Wolves against the xenos breed known only as the Badoon. The details of that war are lost to time, but the aliens were crushed by the might of the four Legions with ease, as could be expected. However, at the end of the campaign, a violent argument broke between Dorn and Perturabo, and their Legions' fleets almost opened fire on each other before Perturabo, at Horus' counsel, called off his men and left the system – but not before vowing that his warriors would never fight alongside the Imperial Fists again. Today, only the Lord of Iron himself remembers the cause of the argument, as well as his Daemon Primarch brother in the Eye of Terror.

The warsmith had insulted his sire, and though he probably didn't mean what he said, honor still demanded they meet in the circle of blades. The fate of Inwit was a subject the sons of Dorn are unwilling to speak of, and to mention it, even in jest, was something that would earn flogging were the responsible a member of the Seventh Legion. As it stood, Sigismund had no choice but to challenge Berrossus to a duel – to defeat him and remind him to mind his tongue next time he stands amongst Imperial Fists. The warsmith had refused at first, but the Templar had not let it go, calling out to the Fourth Legion's own cowardly style of warfare in an attempt to bring the other Legionary to accept the duel. It had worked, of course – the sons of Perturabo, for all their stoicism, do not accept being belittled by their cousins. Berrossus knew he couldn't beat Sigismund – he was as good a fighter as any Astartes, but Sigismund was his Legion's champion. When he finally accepted the challenge, it was less because his honor demanded it than because his own temper was aflame with the Templar's insults. It should have been a quick bout, ending with Sigismund's victory at first blood and allowing both warriors to put the incident behind them. But now …

Horror held him in its grip as he looked upon the corpse of the warrior he had called brother not three nights ago. That had not been his intent. The Iron Warrior was a bit slower in a parry than the Templar had anticipated, and the sword pierced straight through his unarmored chest, puncturing his two hearts and killing him before the warsmith had the time to blink. Accidents like this had happened in the training and dueling circles before, but for Sigismund, it was the first time he has killed another of his kin, and the blood on his hands seemed too red, to rich. As he looked at them, the rest of the room explodes in furious shouts. There were many onlookers for this fight, both from his Legion and from the Fourth. And they had all seen him kill Berrossus.

This, he thought, was going to have consequences. He just didn't know just what these consequences would be.

Decades later, when Perturabo called Horus and his father for help in destroying the Ork empire of Ullanor, he deliberately ignored Dorn, despite his brother's undeniable skill at fighting the greenskins. This made the rift between the two Primarchs even deeper, and the Imperial Fists began to spread rumors about the Iron Warriors, calling them cowards who hid in their fortresses and attacked their enemies from afar with their artillery rather than fight at the front of the Great Crusade like honorable warriors.

When the Emperor called for the Council of Nikaea, Dorn didn't take any position in the debate. His Legion had always used a Librarium, but even if he acknowledged its utility, the Primarch of the Imperial Fists still distrusted the users of psychic powers. As the Emperor's judgment was pending, he gathered all his Librarians aboard his flagship, so that following his father's decision, whatever it may be, would be easier. However, before the Master of Mankind gave His decision, a terrible accident killed all those who had been gathered, crippling the Imperial Fists' Librarium. Rogal, who had been waiting with several of his brothers, returned to his ship in haste, only to find the corpses of his sons and entire sections of the vessel melted, as if some cataclysmic fire had occurred.

Massac and his brothers were fighting with all their strength, and it wasn't enough. Their swords blazed with psychic power, each strike cutting down one of their hateful foe – but for each one they fell, another two took its place. There was no hope of reinforcement from the rest of the ship : the first thing the thousand Librarians had done when the Warp had broken through had been ordering the whole section sealed, and non-psykers combatants would be a liability against such creatures as they faced anyway.

The reek of blood and iron was overpowering, passing straight through their hoods' filters as though they weren't there. The beasts before them were not of any form that could be described in words : they were and weren't there at the same time, leaving impressions behind them, shadows of memory that left burning marks the shape of old Earth's mythical diablos on the psyche of the warriors. These were things of the Empyrean pouring through reality by crossing … what, exactly ? It wasn't uncommon for the predators of the Warp to attack Imperial vessels when their Geller Field failed during transition, but the ship was out of the Sea of Souls, immobile near the edge of the Nikaea system. Yet warp-fire had burst out in the very heart of their gathering hall, where they had sat in meditation, waiting for the Emperor's decree, and from it had come the beasts. Now there was a great rent in reality, through which images of pure madness could be seen.

With a combined burst of psychic power, they burned the current wave of creatures to red ash that quickly dissolved as the laws of reality reasserted themselves. But already the breach was acting again, and another of the warp-born emerged from it. This one, however, wasn't one of the mindless predators of rage and bloodshed the Librarians had fought previously. It was a towering monstrosity of red muscles and black iron, holding in each of its hand an axe bearing runes that burned with unholy fire. And while the other beasts had screamed their hatred in wordless shouts of impossible sounds, when this one spoke, Massac's tortured mind understood its meaning :

'I am Skarbrand, witches. I am your end !'

Behind this being – this lord of the damned, this prince of bloodshed and hatred – came thousands more of the lesser creatures that had already whittled down the Legionaries' numbers. And it was then that the six hundred and fifty-six remaining sons of Dorn trapped with the daemons started to die, while Khorne laughed in the Sea of Souls.

The last Librarians of the Imperial Fists were those who hadn't been present at the gathering, having been delayed for one reason or another. In later years, they died one by one in apparently ordinary deaths, while implantation of Rogal's gene-seed unto young psykers failed systematically. When the Heresy began in earnest, none of them were still alive – which was probably a blessing in disguise, as their fate amongst Khornates would have been an unpleasant one. For centuries, the Inquisition and the Thousand Sons have investigated this matter, and have found nothing. This total absence of evidence has led some to believe the Dark Angels were involved, having engineered the loss of the Seventh's psychically gifted sons in order to leave their Primarch exposed to the touch of the Blood God. Though this remains only a theory, it is true that Dorn's character changed for the worse after Nikaea.

Beyond his sorrow at the loss of so many of his sons to what appeared at the time to be random chance, Dorn was furious at being passed over in Perturabo's favor. In his eyes, the glory of being the Emperor's Praetorian belonged to him and his Legion, not to his rival's mud-diggers. While Perturabo left Nikaea with one of the greatest honors to be ever bestowed upon a Primarch, Dorn's Legion was crippled, bereft of the support of psychic powers the Emperor Himself had decreed were a necessary part of the Great Crusade. In the years that followed, the Imperial Fists redoubled their zeal in the Great Crusade, claiming more and more worlds for the Imperium despite the fact that their Librarium never recovered from its losses. At the same time, the recklessness of Dorn and his commanders increased, as did the losses they took for every victory. To compensate, entire generations were stolen away from the planets the Seventh conquered, leaving collapsing civilizations in the wake of their Expeditionary Fleets. Reports were sent to Horus and Terra, but such was the scope of the Great Crusade that it would take a lot more than civilian complaints to cause censure against a Primarch. Then came the Cheraut Incident.

The Cheraut system was home to a confederation of human worlds who refused their integration into the Imperium. For years its rulers had resisted the Imperial war machine, and things had reached the point where Warmaster Horus asked three of his brothers to solve the problem once and for all – a deployment of force rarely seen in the history of the Great Crusade. Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children, Dorn of the Imperial Fists and Curze of the Night Lords brought the elite of their Legions to Cheraut. Where the Imperial Army had toiled in vain for so long, the Astartes broke the back of the resistance in mere months.

The leadership of the defenders was eliminated by strike teams of the Night Lords, while the Seventh and Third Legions destroyed their strongholds one by one. Ninety-four days after the Primarchs' arrival, the Cheraut system surrendered to the Imperium. However, in the ruined streets of what had been the confederation's capital, Konrad Curze saw his brother Dorn ordering the execution of the prisoners, despite their commanders' capitulation.

Curze was driven furious by the sight. He confronted his brother, demanding that his men cease their exactions this instant, and left the area to his own Legionaries' care. But Dorn denied the Savior of Nostramo. He told Konrad that these men had to be punished for daring to resist the Imperium, lest others do the same and bring the whole empire down, exposing Mankind to the xenos. He accused the King of the Night of cowardice, claiming that Curze was too weak to do what was necessary, and that his protecting of mortals would only make the species weaker and, in time, doom it. At this, the Primarch of the Eighth Legion lost his calm. He attacked Dorn, and nearly killed him before Fulgrim pulled him off the lord of the Imperial Fists. Later, the Phoenician would learn that Curze had acted not simply out of fury at having his beliefs and ideals dragged in the mud, but because Dorn's words had triggered a vision of apocalyptic destruction and betrayal. By the time the truth of that vision would be revealed, however, it would be too late.

Dorn left Cheraut with his Legion at once, leaving his two brothers to deal with the system's compliance. He was furious at Curze's insults and assault, vowing that he would make his brother pay for the affront. At the same time, the words of the Savior of Nostramo echoed in his mind, and he began to doubt. He knew Curze was one of his father's favorite sons, and that his views were likely those of Him of Earth as well. Besides, despite his scorn for Perturabo, he knew that the Lord of Iron harbored similar thoughts. Both of them refused to acknowledge the inherent weakness of Man, and the necessity of the strong leading them, with or without their accord. In Dorn's eyes, this attitude would only lead to more destruction like what had befallen Inwit. It was as he brooded over this that the Seventh Primarch received a message from his brother Roboute Guilliman.

The Arch-Traitor told his brother the same lies with which he had infected his own Legion : that the Emperor was weak, and had abandoned the Great Crusade, leaving the galaxy His sons had conquered for Him into the hands of unworthy mortals. Even Horus, once the greatest of them, had reduced himself to a mere diplomat, even now trying to negotiate peace with a degenerate human culture which consorted with xenos. That particular information ignited Dorn's rage, for the Warmaster had been one of the few he had trusted and admired amongst his brothers. Yet the proof Guilliman showed him – picts and official communications from the so-called Interex – were impossible to deny. Guilliman told Dorn of his desire to return the reins of the Imperium to those who both deserved them and were capable of making the choices necessary for Mankind to survive. And to do that, he needed the help of Dorn, who knew more than any other the need for strong leadership and the risks of allowing mortal humans to guide the destiny of the species.

Rogal Dorn fell for his corrupt brother's lies, and pledged himself and his Legion to the cause of Guilliman's rebellion. In return, the lord of the Ultramarines told his brother of his plans, and of the place where they would be put in motion : a five-planets system known as Isstvan.

The Heresy : Atrocity and Massacre

Isstvan had been brought to compliance several decades ago, by a contingent of the Raven Guard. According to the records of the Great Crusade, it had been a model compliance, if not a peaceful one. The people of Isstvan had resisted the coming of the Imperium not because they didn't want to be reunited with Terra, but because the Imperial Truth had conflicted with their religion. It had taken several months to the Nineteenth Legion to crush their temples and demonstrate in the clearest way that their gods weren't real and that they didn't need fear their retribution, and the compliance had been easy after that.

When the Imperial Fists arrived, however, the system was in open rebellion. Vardus Praal, the Imperial Governor put in place by the Raven Guard had abandoned his oaths and joined the old cults of Isstvan, who had apparently survived the purges of the Astartes. The entire planet had followed him in his rebellion, or been purged in turn. Had Dorn not known the true hand behind this rebellion, he would no doubt have condemned Corax for his failure to pacify the planet correctly.

Four Legions had gathered at Isstvan, a number never seen since the Triumph of Ullanor. The Ultramarines, the Blood Angels, the Iron Hands and the Imperial Fists were there, and many who didn't know what was to come wondered what in the system could possibly warrant the use of such overwhelming force. The official reason was that Guilliman had asked his brothers to come in order to demonstrate that the Imperium would not tolerate dissensions within its own borders, but that excuse was flimsy at best. Still, none could possibly have anticipated the true horror of the situation.

The four Primarchs held council together, and a plan was designed to retake the planet and punish the ringleaders of the rebellion. All Legions would send select elements to the third planet of the system, the only one populated. These groups of warriors would seek out specific objectives and secure them before a second wave of warriors was sent. The planet would fall before the end of the day – as was only fitting for a world faced with the combined might of four Legions.

But all Inquisitors know what happened instead. The Primarchs had sent to Isstvan those of their sons they didn't believe would follow them into betrayal and infamy, choosing to purge their Legions of loyalty to the Emperor before beginning their own dark crusade against the Master of Mankind. While their sons fought against the rebels, they ordered their fleets to open fire on the planet. They unleashed the Life-Eater virus, a weapon which use was forbidden to all but the Emperor's own sons. The first shells of the bio-engineered plague hit the ground at the same moment the Astartes claimed victory against the rebels. In mere moments, the terrifying bio-weapon swept the planet clean of life, killing eight billions of civilians and inflicting horrible casualties to the deployed Marines, before the fleet opened fire again, igniting the gas released in the atmosphere by the Life-Eater and cleansing it in an ocean of fire.

Yet the plan of the Arch-Traitor didn't go unopposed. Despite the investigations of the four traitor Primarchs, there were those in their Legions who had remained loyal and avoided being sent on Isstvan. When the orders came to bombard the planet, these few loyal souls warned their brothers of what was to come, before attempting to leave the system and bring word of the Atrocity to Terra. Of the few ships who were taken by these loyalists, only one managed to leave before being either boarded or destroyed : the Tribune, a battle-barge of the Seventh Legion, commanded by Captain Alexis Pollux. It was that vessel that would bring word to Terra of what had occurred.

Thanks to the warnings they received, some of the Astartes on the surface managed to hide in bunkers and tunnels deep enough for them to survive the viral bombardment. They emerged from their shelters to witness utter desolation : billions of fire-bleached corpses, and the ruins of entire cities. Worse, they knew who was responsible. The rebels of Isstvan couldn't possibly have access to such weapons, nor could they have had the resolve to use them on their own people.

'We are betrayed.'
Anonymous Legionary, on the fields of Isstvan III, moments before the viral bombardment.

Words fail to convey what the loyalists must have felt at that terrible realization. Astartes are made for service, for duty, for loyalty to their battle-brothers and commanders. The bonds of brotherhood are one of the few things they are allowed to keep from their time as human beings, and for these bonds to be shattered in the act of Heresy is something which can break the spirit of the even the most stalwart servant of the Emperor. And yet, betrayed by their fathers and abandoned by their brothers, the Martyrs of Isstvan III fought on. They swore oaths of revenge on the traitors, and prepared for what they knew was to come. For the first time in recorded history, the hour was at hand where Astartes would kill Astartes on the battlefield.

In orbit, the traitor Primarchs witnessed their failure to purge their Legions in a single shot. Almost immediately, Dorn descended on the planet to finish them, accompanied by the bulk of his Legion and quickly followed by the Ninth, Tenth and Thirteenth Legions. The Primarch of the Imperial Fists told Guilliman, who wanted to kill the surviving loyalists from orbit, that they had already survived the worst their fleet had to offer. Only by killing them in person could they be sure they had disposed of their disloyal sons. Thus began the first battle of the Heresy. Despite the crushing numerical superiority of the traitors, they fought to the last and for weeks, holding the forces of the rebellion in place and giving time for the warning to reach Terra. Thousands of Legionaries had survived the initial bombardment, and they died as they had lived : as true servants of the Emperor. Today, there is a monument dedicated to them on Terra, that bears no name, for it is unknown who of the traitors' sons stood loyal and who fell. Instead, the Pillar of Bone is covered in prayers for their souls and oaths to never forget nor forgive.

The Tribune emerged from the Warp. Its once proud shape was marred with the scars of the damage it had sustained while escaping Isstvan, as well as the depredations of the Empyrean's beasts – Alexis was unwilling to call them, as most of his crew and surviving brothers did, daemons. Of the hundred warriors who had been under his command before, barely thirty remained. Twenty he had had to kill, for they had refused to follow him, instead choosing to stand with their Primarch in his madness.

Before him, through the occulus, he could see the heart of the Imperium floating in space. Thousands and thousands of ships were swirling around, carrying merchandise and men for the insatiable Throneworld. Among them were the ships of the Iron Warriors, those worthies who had been chosen for the duty of protecting Terra and the Emperor. Once, Alexis had been jealous of them. Now, he could only admit, however bitter that made him, that the decision of the Master of Mankind had been the right one. Who knew what would have happened, had Dorn been in command of the Imperial Palace's defenses during his betrayal ?

But there was something wrong, and it took one more minute for the captain to see it.

'Where is the Ironblood ?' he murmured to himself, though his brothers picked it up easily. 'Where is Perturabo ?'

'Lord Pollux', said one of the few remaining bridge crew. 'We are being hailed.'

Alexis nodded, and the vox officer opened the channel.

'Imperial Fist vessel,' said a voice with the distinctive sound of an Astartes, the tone of a commander, and the caution of a man who doesn't trust the one he was speaking to. ' T his is Warsmith Forrix of the Fourth Legion. Identify yourself and state the reason of your presence in the Solar system.'

'My name is Alexis Pollux. Once a captain of the Legione Astartes. Once a son of Rogal Dorn. And I have come here to warn you of betrayal, son of the Praetorian.'

Eventually, word reached Terra of what had happened, just as Warmaster Horus returned from the Interex with new knowledge of the perils of Chaos. In haste, a force of seven Legions was ordered to converge on Isstvan and annihilate the traitors, while two more Legions, the Word Bearers and the Eaters of Worlds, were dispatched to Ultramar. While the hammer of the Emperor approached, the Traitor Legions fortified the fifth planet of the system, creating a stronghold that could hold against the retribution of the Imperium. Of course, even then, the four traitor Primarchs knew that amongst their seven brothers Horus had sent, four had already pledged themselves and their warriors to Guilliman's cause.

During the Dropsite Massacre, Dorn fought with his mighty chainsword at the head of his Legion, butchering hundreds of loyalists with unbridled fury. Contrary to Guilliman's plan, he refused to give ground, and the traitors took greater casualties than they had anticipated before the Dark Angels, White Scars, Salamanders and Raven Guards arrived to join the fight and reveal their true allegiances. Dorn sought out Konrad Curze, wanting to avenge his humiliation on Cheraut, but he was no match for the cold fury of the Savior of Nostramo. The Primarch of the Night Lords almost succeeded in killing his brother, but was stopped by Sanguinius and forced to retreat before going after Vulkan and meeting his fate at the Black Dragon's hands.

When the Massacre came to an end, hundreds of thousands of Legionaries had died. The Alpha Legion and the Death Guard had taken horrendous losses, and the Night Lords had lost their Primarch. Word arrived from Guilliman's agents in Ultramar that the Ruinstorm had been unleashed, trapping the Twelfth and Seventeenth Legions in his fief. The Heresy could now begin in earnest, and spread across the entire galaxy as it made the Imperium burn.

The Blood Crusade

While the Ultramarines advanced on Terra, the Imperial Fists spread across the Imperium, burning all the Iron Warriors fortresses they could find on the way. Released from the constraints of Imperial law, the Seventh Legion fought with a ferocity that belied the cold facade they had shown during the Great Crusade. Determined to show their strength to the rest of the galaxy, they sought to test themselves in battle against the most difficult of enemies : the Iron Warriors and their fortress-worlds.

As the Heresy raged on, however, Rogal Dorn noticed that there were changes ongoing in his Legion. Soldiers who had been the most disciplined of the Astartes were growing wild, seeking bloodshed above victory and glory in battle over tactical objectives. What he had seen of the Ultramarines' corruption was now beginning to appear inside his own Legion, but without the control and focus of the Thirteenth. Instead, his sons were degenerating, consumed by their wrath at the Imperium who had betrayed them. Losses were increasing with every battle as the command structure and discipline of the Legion broke down, especially considering that the Seventh was waging war against the Iron Warriors' fortress worlds.

The situation came to a head during the battle for the Shadenhold, on Lesser Damantyne. There, the Imperial Fists faced the defenses of Warsmith Barabas Dantioch, one of the best fortress-masters of the Fourth Legion. Thousands of Legionaries, millions of mortal soldiers, and several Titans from the Legio that had chosen to stand with the arch-betrayer Guilliman laid siege to one of the most ingeniously devised fortresses in the history of the galaxy. For three years Dorn laid siege to the Shadenhold, and as time passed entire Companies of his Legion hurled themselves into Dantioch's defenses, heedless of their Primarch's orders, consumed by the desire to reach their foe at last. Infighting broke out between his Legionaries and mortal allies, as the lust for blood grew amongst the sons of Dorn as they were denied the chance to face the loyalists in direct conflict.

Finally, Dorn managed to breach the warsmith's defenses, only to find that Dantioch was gone. The son of Perturabo had escaped and rigged the Shadenhold – built inside a gigantic stalactite in a subterranean cavern – to detonate. The Primarch of the Imperial Fists barely escaped with his life, but the total toll taken by the siege on his Legion was appalling. It is estimated that more than a tenth of the Seventh's total strength was lost thanks to Barabas Dantioch – a deed that has led to the warsmith's beatification by the Ecclesiarchy. Seeing the terrible damage done to his armies, Dorn realized that his Legion was killing itself.

His whole body throbbed in pain, and he was alone. Something had gone wrong when he had activated the teleport, though he would likely never know exactly what.

'What are you doing here, Iron Warrior ?' asked a voice that was unlike any voice he had ever heard. It was a voice that was filled with gravity and nobility alike – the kind of voice that could make armies lay down their arms in shame, and turn fanatics away from their false idols.

He looked up, and saw a figure in grey armor that somehow appeared to be shrouded in golden light, even though no sun shone in the hellish skies. He knew these features, though he had never seen them in person. They were depicted on thousands of remembrancers' works and on propaganda posters for the Imperial Truth all across the galaxy.

'I do not know, lord Lorgar,' said Barabas Dantioch, kneeling before the Primarch of the Word Bearers.

Rogal Dorn sought the counsel of his brother Guilliman, whose knowledge of the Warp was unrivaled amongst the traitor Primarchs – safe perhaps for that of Lion El'Jonson. Roboute told his cohort that the Blood God, Khorne, had marked Dorn's Legion with His sigil, and that it was the Chaos God's influence that was transforming the Seventh more and more quickly. While he honored the more martial aspect of the God of War, Dorn also didn't want his Legion to become mindless berzerkers, or die out before the Heresy could even reach Terra and face the greatest challenge of all : the Imperial Palace.

That is why, with the help of the Ultramarines, he made a pact with Khorne. In return for their eternal service, the Imperial Fists would be protected from the madness that was threatening to consume so many of their numbers. This protection came at a price in blood that the Legion payed without hesitation. For three years, while the Heresy advanced toward Terra, the Seventh Legion gathered its strength and burned a hundred civilian worlds, killing hundreds of billions of innocents in an offering to Khorne in order to seal the pact. This carnage was later recorded in Imperial archives as the Blood Crusade, and in time, that name would be attributed to other large-scale actions of the Seventh Legion.

The fury burned in his veins like a holy fire. It was filling his muscles with strength, accelerating his reflexes and lifting the fatigue from his limbs. Not that he would have needed this blessing to slay his current targets. The population of the Phall system was utterly defenseless in the face of the Blood Crusade, and there had been a time when the slaughter of such weak prey would have annoyed him. But he knew now that this was an offering, a proof of faith and dedication to the Power that had marked them all as His. The weak had to die so that the strong could remain strong. Such was the way of the universe – the Fists were merely speeding up the process.

Sigismund's blade tore another of the fleeing civilians in two, and the Templar looked up at the sky, which were already starting to shine with the sacred red of the God of War as the Seventh drew His attention by the offering of billions of lives. No matter how many times he saw it, it always filled his heart with savage joy and pride – for he knew that the eyes of the Blood God were upon him more than any of his brothers.

'Blood for the Blood God !' he shouted, letting some of the fire in his heart spill over to his brethren. 'Skulls for the Skull Throne !'

By the end of the Blood Crusade, the Seventh Legion had gone from Traitor to Chaos Marines, as the Dark Angels did when their Primarch returned from the Maelstrom. No longer did they fight alongside Guilliman in order to bring order to the Imperium and protect it from the horrors of the stars : they fought for glory and the favor of Khorne. To mark their allegiance to the Blood God, all Imperial Fists painted their gauntlets in red. This tradition, kept ever since, has led the loyal Legions to call the Seventh the Crimson Fists rather than their original name, denying their traitorous kin the qualifier of Imperial.

His Legion saved from madness at the cost of their immortal souls, Dorn turned his gaze to the ultimate objective of the Heresy : Terra, and his brother Perturabo's fortifications. There, he knew, would the final battle for the fate of the galaxy be waged. There, he would prove that he was the strongest of them, and always had been.

The Siege of Terra

'The skies burned with fire. The Fallen Angels descended upon Holy Terra on wings of treachery and falsehood, and hurled themselves at the great walls of the Imperial Palace. And leading them, before even the blue-clad arch-traitors, stood the scions of blood and carnage, their honor forsaken and their hands forever red with innocent blood …'
Excerpt from The Canticle of the Dead

The Imperial Fists were at the forefront of the renegades' assault on the Imperial Palace. With the new blessing of the Blood God, they were capable of cooperating with the other Traitor Legions. But even with the fury they felt at Perturabo's sons under control, the Lord of Iron had turned the Imperial Palace into such a bastion that they took terrible losses for each meter of ground they managed to take. The absence of the Blood Angels, who had been supposed to support the advance of the Seventh but instead preferred to sate their blasphemous thirst on Terra's population, made the situation even worse.

The Siege lasted for weeks, and as it went on without any significant gain made for the traitors, dissension began to spread amongst their ranks. The opposing powers that had claimed the souls of the Traitor Legions started to be reflected in their mortal slaves, and it is believed that in time, they would have turned on each other – for Guilliman lacked the ability to inspire his brothers to truly stand by him, and had instead drawn them to rebellion by appealing to their own desires and grievances toward the Imperium.

The death of Horus at Sanguinius' hands was the only thing that prevented the other Traitor Legions from directly turning on the Blood Angels for refusing to fight alongside them on the walls, and when the Ninth Legion finally joined the fight, it seemed that the rebels were about to break through and invade the Palace. Then the Night Lords and the Emperor's Children arrived, and it is said that Dorn's scream of rage at the coming of Curze's sons shook the walls of the Inner Sanctum itself. The Ravenlord left the surface of Terra to face the two Legions in orbit, while Vulkan remained to face the forces of the Eighth Legion, which seethed with the desire to avenge their Primarch.

Meanwhile, Guilliman received words from his allies in the Warp that Lorgar and Angron had managed to escape the Ruinstorm, using an ancient xenos artifact, the use of which had been unlocked for them by the most unlikely ally. Time was running out for the traitors, and if the Imperial Palace still stood defiant by the time the Word Bearers and World Eaters arrived, then all would be lost. The Arch-Traitor called his three remaining brothers to him : Ferrus Manus, Rogal Dorn and Lion El'Jonson, and launched his final gambit. Together with their Legions' elite, they broke the Eternity Gate of the Palace, and three of them advanced into the Sanctuary while Manus held the gates against any loyalist counter-attack.

They found in their way a thousand Iron Warriors, led by Warsmith Kroeger, one of the Triarchs of the Fourth Legion. Seeing the forces of his most hated brother, Dorn demanded that he led the charge, and slew the warsmith in single combat after more than an hour of bloody close-quarters fighting. But while he may have killed the son, the father wouldn't go down so easily.

In the Cavea Ferrum, Dorn faced Perturabo. After hours of fighting, he broke his sword in a blow that threw down the Lord of Iron and his warhammer away from him, and was preparing to finish him with his bare hands when word came through the vox of what had happened in the Throneroom. Guilliman was dead. Angron and Lorgar were almost here. The rebellion had failed. Screaming with unspeakable rage, Dorn was forced to retreat, leaving his rival alive, and run from Terra with his Legion, to the Eye of Terror, where the Imperium's vengeance wouldn't be able to follow him.

Post-Heresy : the Iron Cage and the Breaking

Sigismund the Destroyer
During the Great Crusade, Sigismund was the First Captain of the Seventh Legion and generally hailed as the greatest son of Dorn. It was Sigismund and his Templars that carried Dorn's banner on the field, and it was him who fought as the Primarch's Champion. The First Captain was a consummate killer and an exceptional duelist, fighting against the best warriors of other Legions in the training cages and never losing one of these bouts. Abaddon of the Luna Wolves, Lucius of the Emperor's Children, Kharn of the World Eaters or Amet of the Blood Angels : none could defeat him. The only one to ever avoid defeat at his blades was Sevatar, First Captain of the Night Lords, who head-butted him unconscious after hours of dueling, making the bout a tie. At that time, Sigismund was acknowledged as an honorable warrior, and greatly appreciated in many Legions, despite being somewhat prideful and humorless.
On Isstvan III, Sigismund was part of the forces who took part in the massacre of their brethren. Many champions of the loyalist elements fell to his blade, a feat that he would later repeat on Terra. It is believed that these kills were what drew the attention of the Blood God to him, and that his part in the Breaking was what earned him the title of Chosen of Khorne, a position he still holds to this day despite the attempts of many other followers of the Lord of Skulls to take it from his headless corpse.
It is said that the sword that Sigismund now uses was forged from fragments of Dorn's own weapon, which he shattered in his duel against Perturabo – the blade breaking with the strength of the blow that threw down the Lord of Iron. He reforged it on the new homeworld of the Legion in the Eye, with the help of Khorne's own daemon blacksmith.

Less than a century after the end of the Heresy, Dorn, who still ruled his Legion as a Primarch in the Eye of Terror, sought to escape his hellish prison. He knew that Perturabo had created a circle of defenses around the Warp Storm, and was filled with the need to crush it, in order to prove that he was superior to the Lord of Iron. He learned which of the fortress-worlds was commanded by Perturabo himself, and gathered as many ships, Legionaries and daemonic allies as he could, before launching the first massive attempt from the Traitor Legions to break free of the Iron Cages. The Iron Warriors were forewarned of the incoming attack by their own Librarians and astropaths, who felt the pulses of hatred flowing ahead of the Chaos fleet, and the world of Sebastus IV prepared itself for war against the traitors.

The world was too well-defended to be razed from orbit, but Perturabo taunted his brother by lowering the void shields for a fraction of a second each hour – not enough time to fire through the opening, but enough to teleport troops on the surface. Enraged by the provocation, Dorn used Warp-born technosorcery to teleport himself and half of his remaining Legion to the world – and straight into the Lord of Iron's trap. The surface of Sebastus IV was a labyrinth filled with death traps and automated defenses. Hundreds of thousands of skitarii warriors had been given to Perturabo for this occasion, and with the aid of the Iron Warriors commanding them, they tore the Imperial Fists to pieces. Dorn himself may be all but impossible to kill, but he couldn't be everywhere at once. After hours of punishing warfare, Dorn finally reached the center of the labyrinth, where he believed Perturabo waited for him. But the Lord of Iron was no fool, and honor and glory meant nothing to him – something Dorn had always failed to understand. Instead of finding his brother, Dorn found tons and tons of explosive, rigged to detonate the moment he entered the room. His Huscarls, warriors who had fought at his side since the dawn of the Great Crusade and had followed him through the entire Heresy, died to a man trying to protect their Primarch from the explosion – including their leader, Archamus, who had always been the voice of reason in Dorn's councils. The Primarch of the Seventh Legion barely survived, and was gravely wounded.

His body broken, his Legion decimated and his fleet aflame, Dorn was forced to retreat back into the Eye of Terror. It was the final time he and his brother ever measured their skills in warfare against each other. The Imperial Fists had lost thousands and thousands of warriors in that ill-fated assault, but the blow that would truly destroy them as a Legion was yet to come – and when it did, it did from the most unexpected source : Sigismund himself, the most loyal son of Dorn, captain of the First Company and leader of the Templars.

'You are not my father. And I am not your son.'
Last words of Sigismund to Primarch Rogal Dorn

The Legion retreated to the daemon world of Esk'Al'Urien, where the Imperial Fists had established their principal stronghold. But as they began to heal and repair the damage their fleet had taken, the First Captain of the Legion and his men began to slaughter their own brothers and their mortal servants and allies. With no warning nor reason given, Sigismund turned on his own bloodline and sought out the remaining leaders of the Seventh – captains and fleetmasters whose reputation and skill could have united the Legion while the Primarch recovered from the wounds he had taken. Chaos spread across the entire daemon world, and hosts of Neverborn incarnated from the bloodshed, reaping an even greater toll on the Imperial Fists' numbers. In the absolute confusion, companies began to fight each other even without Sigismund's presence. It seemed as if the Seventh Legion was going to destroy itself … and then Dorn rose.

The ground was slick with his sons' blood. The skies were burning with the fires of Hell. His whole body was aflame with the pain of his injuries. Grafted skin was falling from his exposed muscles as he advanced toward the sounds of battle, but he ignored it. It was only pain. What mattered was what his world was under attack. Who dared to attack him here, where his Legion was at his strongest ? Who thought that the Imperial Fists had been weakened enough by Perturabo's cowardly trap ?

When he emerged from his chamber and saw the battlefield, he didn't understand. There was no enemy. No Astartes wearing the colors from another Legion, no host of daemons led by a champion of one of the Blood God's enemies. Yet the air was filled with the sound of death cries and chainblades on ceramite. Cold realization set in : his sons were killing each other.

'Who ?!' he howled, anger quickly replacing doubt. 'Who dares ?!'

'I do,' said a voice he knew all too well.

Sigismund stood before him, his armor painted black safe from his red gauntlets. He wore his helmet and held in his hands Storm's Teeth, reforged after it broke against Perturabo's Forgebreaker. Dorn had never learned just how the Lord of Iron had acquired Ferrus' warhammer, and he didn't care.

'You ?' he sneered. 'You did … this ?'

'Yes. You have failed us, father. You will destroy the Legion; grind it to dust against Perturabo's Iron Cage. I will not let you do it – even if it means I have to destroy the Legion myself.'

'You … you …'

Hatred boiled in his veins. A red veil descended on his thoughts as he took in the true scope of the betrayal. Cracks formed in his flesh as the raw power created by such carnage gathered in him, seeking a host capable of giving it form in the semi-material realm that was Eyespace. Before Sigismund's wide eyes, the blood that had been spilled all across the planet began to flow toward the Primarch's towering figure, forming a great column of crimson fluid that reached all the way up to the tortured skies. Then the column burst apart, revealing a creature of nightmares and utter bloodlust, which looked down at Sigismund with burning hatred in its eyes.

'I will kill you,' said the Daemon Primarch in a voice that was the damnation of heroes and the death of innocents, 'my traitorous son.'

The Primarch of the Imperial Fists ascended to the ranks of the Daemon Princes on the same day his favorite son destroyed his Legion. The rage he felt that day now burns in him forever, but the one he seeks to destroy eluded him. Sigismund and his cohorts, renaming themselves the Black Templars, left the daemon world on their own ships, and Dorn has been hunting them through his daemon allies ever since. With their Primarch removed from them and thrown into the Great Game of the Chaos Gods and most of their superior officers dead at the Black Templars' hands, the Imperial Fists fractured in hundreds of small warbands, generally no larger than a single Company commanding a single ship. Only rarely in the following millenia would Dorn's attention tear from his conflicts in the Warp and his quest for Sigismund's blood to return to the world around him.

The Black Templars
When Sigismund the Destroyer left his Legion, a sizable host followed him. They were the warriors who saw the former Legion's Champion as the chosen of the Blood God, and who owed him their loyalty either because of his former rank or because of a blood debt. They became the Black Templars, in a mockery of the order Sigismund had once led as the Legion's elite. They repainted their armor in black, though they left their red gauntlets untouched. For centuries since then, they have loyally followed Sigismund throughout the Eye of Terror and beyond, seeking worthy enemies, be they xenos, servants of the Imperium or fellow traitors. On more than one occasion as the Imperium been saved from having to deal with a warlord or an alien arch-fiend when the Black Templars emerged from the Warp in order for their master to claim one more skull for the Blood God – though it has lost twice that number of Heroes to the same blade.

The Legion Wars

Several decades after the disaster of the Iron Cage and the subsequent Breaking of what had once been the Seventh Legion, the circle of defenses around the Eye of Terror came once more under attack. This time it was the Ninth Legion that led the assault, with the malformed horrors created by the arch-renegade Fabius Bile of the Emperor's Children. These were the Clone Wars, and while they would cause much horror upon the Imperium, they had also consequences in the Eye of Terror. When Dorn heard that Sanguinius' Legion had succeeded where himself had failed and broken free of the Iron Cage, his rage was immense. When he learned how the Angel had achieved that feat – by treachery and the corruption of an Imperial commander – he couldn't forgive what he perceived as a deliberate insult against his honor. Still, under the counsel of what few of his men still dared to talk to him, he held back his fury until one last insult was hurled at him by the Blood Angels.

Then the Ninth Legion attacked one of the Imperial Fists' genetic facilities, where the few non-mutated human youths the Seventh could find in the Eye were transformed in new Legionaries. The motives behind that attack are unclear : some Inquisitors believe it was an isolated act by sensations-craving Blood Angels, others than Fabius Bile ordered it in order to obtain Imperial Fist's gene-seed for his blasphemous experiments. Whatever the reason, Dorn's reaction to the laboratory's destruction and the plunder of its gene-seed's stores was as predictable as it was devastating. The War of Woe had begun.

There had always been strife amongst the Traitor Legions in the Eye, caused by old grudges, rivalries, religious beliefs, competition for limited supplies or simple need for war. Until now, however, these conflicts had been kept at the level of individual warbands, with the Legions themselves maintaining a tenuous ceasefire with each other. The Daemon Primarchs didn't want to waste their troops against their own kin, preferring to seek a way to claim vengeance on the Imperium. But the champion of Khorne changed that. Despite the Breaking of the Seventh Legion, his word still held some value amongst his sons, and the prospect of waging war against another Legion was one sure to draw the attention of the Khornate Fists. At his command, tens of thousands of Imperial Fists and millions of humans and mutants gathered in a mighty armada, with which the Daemon Primarch waged a terrible war against Sanguinius. Daemon world after daemon world burned, with hosts of daemons of the Blood God and the Dark Prince flocking to the side of both fallen Primarchs. Other Legions were drawn to the conflict, whether their own Primarchs wanted it or not.

Faced with his brother's onslaught, Sanguinius called back most of the forces he had sent in support of Fabius Bile's incursion into Imperial space. This is estimated to have significantly contributed to the ultimate victory of the Sons of Horus and Emperor's Children, for though the losses they took in destroying the renegade Chief Apothecary's so-called Black Legion. Imperial scholars who know of the Legion Wars consider them to be a perfect example of the maxim known to all Imperial commanders facing the Archenemy on the field : sometimes, the very nature of Chaos is the Imperium's best ally against its minions.

Ultimately, the two Daemon Primarchs of Khorne and Slaanesh faced each other on the daemon world of Iydris, an ancient Crone World of the Eldars located near the center of the Eye of Terror. The exact details or victor of that epic confrontation remain unknown even to the mightiest seers of the Thousand Sons, but it caused the war between the Seventh and Ninth Legions to abate, if not wholly cease – in some parts of the Eye, the sons of Sanguinius and Dorn still fight.

The weapons of the two demigods lay broken at their feet, shattered by the might of their blows. Their pieces were lost amongst thousands of dead Legionaries in yellow and crimson armor. The two had been fighting for an eternity, yet still they battled each other under the gaze of the dead of Iydris. Sanguinius' magnificent wings were broken and bloody, his glamour stripped away and the ugliness beneath revealed. Dorn's armor was covered in crack, and blood gushed from a hundred wounds – each of them would have killed a Space Marine outright.

There were no words exchanged between the two Daemon Primarchs. The Lord of Angels had tried to taunt his foe at the beginning of the duel, and Dorn had answered by scoring first blood. After that, there had been no more insults. Only the fight between the avatars of two opposed gods, while their sons watched in awe from far, far away.

Even battered and wounded, the fallen sons of the Emperor were figures of terror and wonder. They fought with their bare hands, but such was their power now that each blow could have rend a tank apart. Around them, thousands of Neverborn were born and destroyed every second as conflicting energies clashed, their brief existences spent in singular screams of hatred and despair. In the sky, the baleful un-light of the Eye of Terror's central black hole shone upon the demigods, forming a hateful trinity with the gazes of the God of War and She-Who-Thirsts.

For decades, the Blood Crusade had raged on, igniting the Eye with what was already coming to be called the Legion Wars. Though the apparent motives behind it had been understandable by the minds of mortal men, in reality, conflict between the Seventh and the Ninth had always been inevitable. With the Heresy failed, the Great Game had returned to its state of opposition between the Four, and the slaves to darkness had hailed the call to war against their patron's enemies when it sounded in their very souls. And so the Gods' champions had come to the Crone World of Iydris, to fight the final battle of the Crusade amidst the graves of Eldar dead. Thousands of soul-stones had been crushed in the battles between the Legions, their energies feeding the spawn of the Dark Prince while turning His warriors' attention away from the fight and toward the quest for more of the precious gems. The animated constructs of the xenos had been crushed between the two warring Legions, reduced to thin bone dust by the ceramite boots of the Chaos Marines. A handful of living eldars, who had come to the planet for purposes unknown, had similarly died – the lucky ones at the hands of the Imperial Fists, the rest under the fangs of the Blood Angels.

When the Legions had come here, all had known that this would be the final battle. The skies above Iydris had been filled with hundreds of ships, belonging to the two Legions and their allied warbands. Titans had fought Titans, and the allegiances of hundreds of warriors had suddenly shifted as the other side made them a better offer. Not since the collapse of the Eldar empire had the Eye seen such a confrontation, but the troops gathered were but the paler aspect of the war being waged here.

The two Primarchs had left their homeworlds in person to confront each other, and the sheer scale of such a fight would force both sides to retreat to lick their wounds once it was done, regardless of who would claim victory – if anyone could do such a thing, here in Hell.

Organization

The Excoriators
In the aftermath of the Legion's breaking, some Imperial Fists were unable to accept their double failure. They began to ritually spill their own blood in self-flagellation rituals and more elaborate tortures, seeking the forgiveness of the War God. The constant pain they inflict on themselves has unhinged their minds, making them insensible to wounds taken on the battlefield and obsessed with victory at any cost. They are pariahs amongst the Seventh Legion because of that, for they care nothing about honor. While a completely different breed than the Sword Brethren, they are no less deadly. When Sword Brethren may display some twisted form of chivalry, the Excoriators do not.

Before the Heresy, Dorn's command over the Imperial Fists was unquestionable and unquestioned. His word was law, and those who carried his favor were the only true authority above individual Companies Captains. Even when they renounced their loyalty to the Emperor, the Fists kept their old hierarchy, though it began to weaken as Khorne's hold on their souls strengthened. However, after the Blood Crusade and the sealing of their pact, the discipline of the Legion was reaffirmed, only to be shattered forever at the Breaking.

Now, ten millenia after their founding, the Imperial Fists no longer have anything resembling a command structure. Most of them fight under the command of warlords of other Legions, acting as shock troopers and champions. A few, calling themselves the Knights of Dorn, still attend their Daemon Primarch on the Legion's new homeworld. Only on rare occasions do the Seventh act with united purpose, but these occurrences have each caused terrible damage to the Imperium. These Blood Crusades inevitably collapse when the ego and paranoia of the Imperial Fists lead them down their own paths, even when Dorn himself leads his sons to war. The First War for Armageddon was the last such incursion, with Dorn's summoning and subsequent banishment causing it to end.

Warbands of Imperial Fists tend to include very few Astartes, instead relying upon armies of mortals better trained and disciplined than most Chaos rabble. The leaders of such groups drape themselves in all manners of self-aggrandizing titles, some of them based on the old Legion's hierarchy, others issued by daemons from languages never meant for the human tongue.

The Blood Crusades
The Pact of Blood (M30) : During the Heresy, the Imperial Fists rampage across Segmentum Obscurus, slaying billions of Imperial citizens to seal their Primarch's pact with the Blood God. To this day, the echoes of the slain's dying screams still resonate in the Segmentum, and occasional Warp Storms erupt when innocent blood is shed in great amounts.
The War of Woe (M31) : Inside the Eye of Terror, Dorn gathers a great part of his Legion to wage war against his brother Sanguinius, whose patron power, Slaanesh, stands in opposition to Dorn's own hateful deity. The war never really stops, though the Blood Crusade itself ends after the two Daemon Primarchs fight each other on the daemon world of Iydris.
The Battle for Skalathrax (M32) : Demetrius Katafalque, one of the first Excoriators, leads an assault on one of the Twelfth Legion's recruiting worlds. Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters, fight against a horde of Khornate cultists and Chaos Marines for several weeks with a handful of his warriors until the Emperor's Children, led by Fulgrim himself, come to their aid.
[ CORRUPTED FILE]
T he Curtain of Blood (M36) : Dozens of individual warbands of the Seventh Legion emerge from the Eye of Terror through newly opened paths in the Empyrean. Bypassing the Iron Cage, they lay waste to dozens of Imperial worlds, drawing to them important contingents of loyal Astartes and easing the rise of the Age of Apostasy.
[ACCESS DENIED –  CLEARANCE NOT HIGH ENOUGH ]
The War for Armageddon (M41.5) : With the help of Logan Grimnar of the Space Wolves, Rogal Dorn is summoned on Armageddon. It takes a combined effort of the World Eaters and the mysterious Grey Knights to defeat the forces of the Blood God and banish the Daemon Primarch.

Homeworld

In the Eye of Terror, Dorn claimed one of the many worlds of the fallen Eldar empire as his Legion's new base. Before the first battle of the Iron Cage, Imperial seers that peered into the Eye to watch the Traitor Legions described it as a giant fortress, with daemon engines capable of shooting approaching ships and walls higher than those of the Imperial Palace, taking advantage of the fluctuating nature of Eyespace. The will of the Primarch was more than capable of shaping a daemon world according to his whims, and the planetary fortress he created was one of the greatest strongholds in the Eye. This, however, changed after the Breaking and Rogal Dorn's ascension to daemonhood. His rage at being defeated by Perturabo on the field, and then betrayed by his closest son, could never be appeased. Gone was the willpower that had turned an entire world into the ultimate fortress : instead, a wasteland of volcanoes and rivers of boiling blood formed. For several centuries it remained it so, until at last the fury of the Primarch turned into cold rage : then the daemon world became icy cold, and great storms roared in its infernal skies. Ever since then the cycle has continued, the nature of the Seventh Legion's homeworld changing every time its Daemon Primarch's temper does so.

The interrogation of captives from the Eye of Terror has revealed that the Imperial Fists call the world Esk'Al'Urien, or 'The Fury that never sleeps' in the old tongue of Inwit. Warbands and champions of the Legion build skull altars for the glory of Khorne, not on the world itself but in orbit, creating rings of bone around the world. On the planet, daemon princes and powerful warlords of the Blood God head hosts of hellspawns against each other to please their infernal patron and slake their own thirst for blood.

Beliefs

The Feast of Blades
Once every century, dozens of Imperial Fists warbands gather on their homeworld. Each warband chooses a champion, and they fight to the death. The winner is rewarded with the Dornsblade, a daemonic weapon of staggering power who will always find its way back to the daemonworld in time for the next Feast. It was once wielded by the Primarch himself, but upon his ascension during the Breaking, he lost the ability to use it. Because he carried it with him in the Iron Cage, the blade is a reminder of his defeat, and shimmers with the fury of the Emperor's son. To carry the blade into battle is to expose one's soul to that rage, and even with the blessing of Khorne, most Imperial Fists lose themselves until the carnage is done. With the power of the daemonblade infusing their flesh, they are all but invincible, and their allies stay out of their way lest they attack them in blood-crazed fury.

The Imperial Fists serve Khorne, the Blood God of Chaos, Lord of Skull and Murder. Their corruption took root during the Great Crusade. Then the Imperial Fists sought glory in battle, and to obtain it needed strength of will and arm. They kept old superstitions in their ranks of the gods of war of old, honoring them with their deeds on the battlefield in return for their blessing of might. Yet these were more traditions to help them keep heart in the face of the immensity of their task, rituals of brotherhood in a life where a violent death was the only certitude.

Now, the Imperial Fists have turned their discipline and rigor to the worship of Khorne. To them, the only way to prove their devotion to their patron is on the battlefield. Either through the slaughter of countless enemies or the quest for powerful foes to defeat in single combat, every son of Dorn endeavors to earn the Blood God's favor. Duels to the death are fought amongst them at the slightest affront, be it perceived or real – not out of bloodlust, but out of faith, or perhaps in some case necessity : Imperial Fists who lose the favor of the Blood God quickly succumb to Dorn's Darkness, a genetic curse afflicting all of their bloodline.

'Upon the fields of battle,
With the blood of brother and foe,
We honor the Blood God,
The Lord of Skull, Master of Battle.'
Canticle of the Black Templars

Combat doctrine

Lysander, the Heir of Dorn
For five centuries now, an Imperial Fist known as Darnath Lysander has been the scourge of the Iron Cage around the Eye of Terror. He has led many raids against the Iron Warriors' fortress-worlds, and seems to enjoy the favor of both the Blood God and its Daemon Primarch Rogal Dorn. Inquisitorial personnel has been researching that Chaos Lord for almost as long, and the tale they have been able to piece together is a frightening one indeed.
Lysander was the son of a couple of faithful Imperial citizens, undergoing a pilgrimage to Holy Terra, as billions across the galaxy attempt every year. The transport that carried them, however, came under attack by an Imperial Fist warband led by the Chaos Lord Shardryss. The ship was boarded by Khornate cultists who butchered the defenseless civilians. In spite of his youth, Lysander fought back, and impressed Shardryss enough that he ordered him captured instead of slain. Lysander was then brought to the Eye of Terror, and underwent the soul-crushing agonies of the attentions of the Seventh Legion's Apothecaries. By the time he returned from the Eye of Terror, he was an Imperial Fist body, mind and soul.
The young Chaos Marine fought in the infamous battle of Haddrake Tor, where he killed a Captain of the Thousand Sons who had just killed his warlord in single battle. This propelled him at the head of the warband, and for several decades he raided Imperial positions and other warbands within the Eye.
Then, almost a century after the battle of Haddrake Tor, Lysander was captured by Iron Warrior Warsmith Shon'tu, one of the Keepers of the Iron Cages. Shon'tu wanted to interrogate the Imperial Fists to learn of the current situation in the Eye – something that has been very precious to the Fourth Legion at times. But to his great shame, Lysander managed to escape, and returned to the garrison world of Malodrax with a great force of Chaos renegades fighting under his banner. Shon'tu fought the invasion with every means at his disposal, but was forced to abandon the planet when Lysander unleashed a Bloodthirster of Khorne against his defenses. How exactly the Imperial Fist managed to gain the help of such a potent daemon, none but Lysander and his foul god know.
As a reward for his deed, Lysander was awarded the Fist of Dorn by the Daemon Primarch himself. The weapon is a power fist of awesome power, wielded by Rogal Dorn during the Great Crusade. This has led some Chaos warriors to call him the Heir of Dorn, a title that causes much concern amongst the Inquisition. As a creature of the Warp, Rogal Dorn cannot leave the Eye of Terror for protracted periods of time, but Lysander isn't so constrained. The fear that he may undo Sigismund's Breaking of the Seventh Legion and gathers its tens of thousands of warriors under one banner has kept many an Inquisitor Lord and Warsmith awake at night.

Most of the time, Imperial Fists seen by the Imperium are fighting for other warlords, playing whatever role their commander demands of them. Seventh Legion's warbands mostly operate in small groups of less than a hundred warriors – generally formed of the remnants of an old Company, kept together by the charisma and skill of their leader. These groups go from one battlefield to the next, joining whatever side they choose or targeting worthy foes. Each squad is then given specific orders and unleashed, given free range as to how they are to accomplish their objectives. During the Blood Crusade, when thousands of Imperial Fists gather to wage war, this hierarchy is added another layer between the warbands' commanders and the Crusade's own lord.

Prior to the Heresy, the Imperial Fists were noted as using far more assault squads than other Legions. The units were the vanguard of the rest of the Legion, tasked with breaking enemy lines and securing positions for their brothers to reinforce them. The life expectancy of those warriors was low, and it is believed that it was amongst them that the first signs of Khornate worship appeared. For these warriors, a legacy could only be created through heroic deeds that would be told by the Legion for eternity, and so they sought glory in battle more than most. It is these Legionaries who have become the dreaded Sword Brethren of the Seventh Legion : swordsmen of consummate skill, whose only concerns are victory and glory in the eyes of their hateful god and their comrades-in-arms.

The Seventh Legion is also one of those with the most Terminators in its ranks. During the Great Crusade, they took part in the research that ultimately led to the first models of Tactical Dreadnought Armor, and on Isstvan V, they were the only Legion to be equipped with the devastating assault cannons that had been invented by the Mechanicum traitor allies. Even now, a disproportionate part of Chaos Terminators carry Dorn's gene-seed in them, even if they no longer bear his Legion's colors.

Both of these distinctions are seen in the form of war that the Seventh Legion has become most infamous for : void warfare. As Dorn did when defending the Inwit Cluster from the depredations of the Ork, the Imperial Fists are expert at fleet maneuvers and boarding actions. Those most gifted in it – the dreaded fleetmasters of the Seventh – are often employed as shipmasters by other Traitor Legions, or even take over the ships of human renegades to become corsairs whose name is whispered in fear across entire sectors. On more than one occasion have the Imperial Fists clashed with the Emperor's Children in space battles, matching their skills at boarding actions.

The Curse of Armageddon
The industrial world of Armageddon was the theater of the last recorded Blood Crusades, fought by the Imperial Fists alongside elements of the Space Wolves. During that terrible conflict, the Daemon Primarch Rogal Dorn was brought forth from the Warp by the Space Wolves' psykers. The war against the Traitors was terrible indeed, and victory was only secured for the Imperium through the ultimate sacrifice of almost an entire company of Grey Knights. The holy warriors banished the Daemon Primarch, but Dorn's spite wouldn't let it be the end. Even as his physical form dissolved and his blackened soul was cast back into the hells from whence it came, Dorn cursed the world of Armageddon forevermore. The nature of that curse is the object of much speculation from the Ordo Malleus, but its effects are plain for all to see : in the decades that have followed, the world of Armageddon has been subject to more raids and invasions that most other Imperial worlds, especially those as heavily protected as it is. Even now, the world suffers in the throes of war against the mighty Waaagh ! of Warboss Ghazghkull Thraka, perhaps the most powerful xenos warlord ever encountered in the Imperium's long and bloody history.

Recruitment and Geneseed

The Imperial Fists do very little recruiting since their exile in the Eye due to lack of proper subjects. During the Blood Crusades, what few Apothecaries the Legion still has gather as many children as possible for implantation. These keepers of the Legion's future live in isolated laboratories in the Eye, protected by the full might of what remains of the Seventh Legion. There they inflict torturous trials on their aspirants, breaking their minds and filling it with Chaos heresies. The form of Khornate worship followed by the Seventh Legion is taught to the initiates through being made to fight against daemons once the transformation is all but complete. The Neverborn, bound into the service of the Apothecaries by blood pacts, take the form of many of the horrors that lurk in the galaxy, and the aspirant is forced to fight until he sees the truth that Rogal Dorn himself saw as he fought against the Orks in the Inwit Cluster : that only through strength of arm and will can Humanity endure in the galaxy.

Once the transformation is complete, the new Chaos Marines serve the Apothecary as guardians of his laboratory alongside the Legionaries who have taken up that duty, until a warband with a need for new members and the means to pay their creator for his services arrive. These transactions always take place under the watch of the warriors of the Seventh, and only Astartes of Dorn's gene-line can make them – for since the Legion Wars broke out, only they know the location of the Imperial Fists' genetic facilities in the Eye.

Dorn's Darkness
During the Heresy, Rogal Dorn made a pact with the Chaos God Khorne. In return for an offering of blood unprecedented in the long and bloody history of the galaxy, the Lord of Skull blessed all scions of Dorn with his favor, protecting them from the mindless rage that threatened to consume them all. But that protection can be lost if an Imperial Fist shows cowardice on the battlefield, or similarly dishonors himself in the eyes of the mad God of Blood.
Those of the Imperial Fists who have lost the favor of Khorne plunge into the Darkness. With the protection of the Blood God retired, they are consumed by the same bloodlust that now inhabits their Primarch – and without his strength of will, they cannot hope to resist it. Most of them are killed after their first butchering spree, but a few are captured instead, and kept as last-recourse weapons by sadistic or desperate warlords. Their only goal is carnage, the spilling of as much blood as possible as quickly as possible. Some have been observed to fall on their own blades when without any other victim.

Warcry

The warcries of the Imperial Fists vary perhaps more than in any other Traitor Legion. Most of the time, they shout out their own name or that of their commander, but a few still use 'For Dorn !' in honor of their Primarch. Others instead praise Khorne with the usual battlecries of the Blood God's followers, with some variations, like 'Blood for the Primarch ! Skulls for the Seventh !'

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Night Lords : Crusaders in the Shadows

For ten thousand years, the Lords of the Night have guarded the countless trillions of the Imperium's denizens from the darkness in all its forms. As their legendary Primarch once did on their homeworld of Nostramo, they now protect Mankind from the depredations of xenos and traitors, wielding the blade of justice in the darkest places. Across thousands of worlds, their name is spoken as an hopeful prayer by the innocent and as a fearful curse by the guilty. Terror cloaks them like a shroud, and within their hearts echoes the vengeful cry of sons forever seeking to avenge their martyred father, slain by treacherous hands in the flames of the greatest sin of all. With eyes that can pierce the veil of the future, they look into the abyss of Man's soul, and defy it with their every breath.

Origins

It is often said among Imperial scholars that the worlds on which the Primarchs landed when they were taken from their father by the machinations of Chaos shaped them. That the cultures of their homeworlds made them into the heroes and monsters they would later become, and through them alter the nature of the Legions that bear their genetic legacy. They point to Leman Russ, to the Lion, to Magnus and Angron as proof of their claim. Yet in no Primarch is that statement more true, and more false, than it is for Konrad Curze. The Eighth Primarch was shaped by his homeworld, but he also shaped it in turn, making it something entirely different from what it had been when he arrived.

Deep into the Ultima Segmentum, on the edge of the Ghoul Stars, Nostramo was a world plunged in perpetual darkness, its weak sun constantly eclipsed by the moon Tenebor and its air filled with the pollution of its heavy industry. The only wealth on the planet came from the mining of the world's priceless adamantium core, and its trading with the handful of other worlds that could be reached in the tempestuous conditions of the Long Night. The population was ruled over by noble houses and crime lords, with little difference between the two. The people of Nostramo lived in constant fear, and the gang wars between factions left many families torn apart as high-spire born lordlings demanded that their minions go kill each other over petty insults. Crime was at such a high level than only the prodigious wealth brought by the adamantium prevented society's total collapse. Murder and suicide were the leading causes of death, even though on a world with such careless industry, it should have been lung disease or work accidents.

The Old Night had not been kind to Nostramo. But, as the Warp Storms that had kept the galaxy in the dark for centuries were cleared by the cataclysmic formation of the Eye of Terror and the birth of the Dark God Slaanesh, hope came to the world in the form of a falling star. The tale of Konrad Curze's life was written by his own hands, and though he met his tragic fate before completing it, it is still available to the lords and ladies of the Imperium. According to Curze's recollections and research, the gestation pod of the Eighth Primarch crashed through layer upon layer of construction and rock and deep enough to almost reach the adamantium core. From the wreckage emerged a child, pale of skin and dark of hair, his body laced with muscles and thinned by hunger. Alone, with only a sharp piece of his lifepod as equipment, the child climbed up the hole his arrival had made in the surface of the world.

He emerged from the darkness of the depths and into the new, more insidious darkness of Nostramo Quintus, the greatest city of Nostramo – by size and wealth, not by prestige or advancement. Feeling instinctively that he could trust none of the humans he saw, the boy hid in the shadows, stealing clothing for his ever-growing frame with ease, hunting the vermin of the city to feed his gnawing hunger. For several days, he remained hidden, watching the existence of the humans around him and listening to the myriad sounds of their lives. Then, from a abandoned street not far from where he stood, he heard the scream of a woman. Something within him reacted to the sound, and he ran in the direction of the call for help before realizing that his body was moving.

There was no reason to the crime which had caused the scream, only maddened greed inflamed by the touch of drugs and lifetimes of unpunished sin. The woman didn't carry any wealth, nor was she especially beautiful. Through generations of exploitation and violent deaths, the Nostramans had learned that screaming for help wouldn't save them, and only make their aggressors more violent. No one would come. No one cared. Why it is that the woman who was being attacked that fateful night cried out, none but her shade know. But her call would not only save her life, but change her entire world.

The boy saw a woman and the three men who were attacking her. They were taller than he was, and while he carried only the shard of his lifepod as a weapon, they were armed with knifes and guns. Yet he didn't hesitate, and jumped at them with a strength and speed that belied his infant figure. In mere seconds, he butchered them, tearing them apart with his crude blade, screaming in an anger whose origin he couldn't understand. Yet despite his considerable strength and speed and his instincts, sharp beyond imagination, he was still inexperienced in such brutal brawls. A lucky knife plunged in his guts, cutting into his guts and leaving a scar that would remain on the boy's belly under his dying day.

With his opponents dead, the boy fell to the ground, groaning from the pain of his wound. He felt, without knowing why, that the tear in his skin and flesh should have already healed, but he was hungry from the brief battle and an existence that, so far, had barely kept him on the edge of starvation. He was too hungry for his superhuman biology to heal him, instead only clotting the wound and preventing him from bleeding to death. And then, he was saved in turn by the one he had saved.

The woman didn't know who or what this strange child was, who could kill grown, armed men without apparent difficulty. But she knew that the boy was in pain, and she remembered how she had lost her own three sons to the gang wars that tore Nostramo's population apart. Whoever this boy was, she would not leave him to die. She brought him to her home, a small and dirty hab-cell in the great towers where Nostramo Quintus' lowest citizens were herded by their cruel overlords. She laid down the unconscious boy, fed him what little food she had, and to her amazement, the wound that she had feared would infect and claim his life healed cleanly in less than a day, leaving barely a scar.

The woman's name was Theresa Vaqu'iol, and when the boy awoke from his feverish dreams of death and destruction, she was at his side. For a few days, he remained in her care, learning the art of speech and the fact that there were humans who wouldn't harm him on sight. In the years that followed, the boy (who would soon grow to surpass the height of any man on the planet) would often return to her, bringing her gifts and seeking the soothing comfort of her presence. He never warned her of his visits, only appearing in her home without her never knowing how he had entered it. This was so that she would remain safe – for the boy would make many enemies.

After leaving the refuge of Theresa's home, the boy had seen the city as what it was for the first time : a cesspit of corruption and depravity, where the strong mercilessly tormented the weak, offering them in return their dubious protection against other overlords who were neither better nor worse than them. Innocent lives were either crushed in the mud or contaminated by the taint of evil. With his eyes opened to the darkness that he had thought was the natural order – after all, he had never known anything else – the young Primarch decided to change it.

He began modestly at first, attacking those who committed crimes against their fellow humans when he saw them. Murderers and rapists were found massacred in the same streets where they had used to perform their gruesome deeds, and rumors began to spread of a tall and pale figure who brought judgment to the sinners with hatred in its eyes. Soon, the people of Nostramo Quintus gave a name to this mysterious entity : Night Haunter.

Growing in strength, size and intellect, Night Haunter studied the corrupt society of Nostramo, both through his own eyes and ears and by speaking at length with Theresa. The woman was the only one who knew what the rumors were referring to, and she was also the only one to know the man behind the monster of myth. When Night Haunter spoke of his plans to hunt and kill the ones who led the criminals rather than the criminals themselves, she warned him of the danger he would put himself into, and when the nightmares began to torment him, she was the only one he told of them.

The war of Night Haunter continued. Entire gangs were wiped out, others dissolved after their leader's gruesome demise. With the corpses of criminals found hanging from their lairs' walls, horribly mutilated, the people of Nostramo Quintus watched as less and less crimes were committed in their city. Lowly thugs fled the hive in droves, while their high-spires masters called for the head of Night Haunter. Vast hunts were organized, but those who were sent either returned empty-handed or never returned at all. Immense sums were offered for information on the mysterious vigilante, but only one soul knew anything about him, and she would never betray him. When the lower districts of the city were entirely cleared of crime, the attention of Night Haunter turned to the spires where the greatest sinners hid from his judgment. No longer daring to go to where their inferiors lived in order to sate their depraved lusts, the so-called nobles hid in their fortresses, guarded by armies of armed men. Night Haunter knew that even for one such as he, punishing them would be a challenge. He planned for several days, observing the spires from afar, until he knew what to do. On a night when Tenebor was full in Nostramo's cloud-choked skies, he acted.

Whatever the plan of the Primarch was, he never got the chance to put it in action. At the same time he infiltrated Nostramo Quintus' highest strata, the planet's heavens suddenly filled with spaceships of a design none on the planet had ever seen before. Today, we know them to have been of Eldar origin, and surviving depictions of the xenos indicated that they came from the Craftworld Ulthwe, one of the giant ships in which the last Eldar live since the destruction of their empire.

The Eldar descended upon Nostramo Quintus aboard hundred of crafts. Thousands of them disembarked in the spires, and began to slaughter all those they crossed. With the typical arrogance of their kind, they never explained why they had come to Nostramo, instead killing all who were in their way as they sought the one they had come to kill. Night Haunter, enraged at their reckless killing, faced them head-on, rallying to him the shattered private armies of the city's nobles – who, by then, were already fleeing the city, only to be shot down by Eldar artillery in order to ensure their quarry didn't escape. For several days, the two armies fought in the noble district of Nostramo Quintus, reducing it to rubble. Finally, Night Haunter received word of an alien leader, who called for the lord of the night to meet him. Despite knowing that it was most likely a trap, the Primarch accepted the offered meeting, seeing it as his chance to stop the killings. He would have gone alone, but for Theresa, who, despite being an old woman by then, refused to let him go alone. She feared that the alien would attempt to manipulate his mind, and believed that with her present, they could avoid such traps.

Silence reigned in the small chamber. A demigod stood before the incarnation of a dying species' divinities, while an old woman watched from her chair. The Phoenix King had finished his explanation. He had told the demigod of why he and his kindred had come, of the nightmarish future they had foreseen, of the monster the demigod was destined to become. The demigod had not questioned this future, for it was the same he saw every time he closed his eyes.

'Do it, then,' said Night Haunter, kneeling before the one who would be his executioner. 'If only my death can prevent these visions from coming to pass, then I shall welcome it.'

Without any more words, the Phoenix King raised his long blade, and, with a grace that no human could ever hope to match, struck at the demigod's chest, seeking to pierce his twin hearts at once and kill him as painlessly as it was possible for one such as he to die.

But the blow didn't connect. Instead, it cut through the old flesh of Theresa's own body. Somehow, the crone had managed to move fast enough to intercept the Eldar blade. It should have been impossible, but as the Phoenix King – a being that had fought in countless battles for his people, and would fight in countless more – looked into her eyes, he saw the unyielding strength of a mother whose child is in danger.

The old woman fell, and was caught by the arms of Night Haunter before she could hit the ground. Completely ignoring the xenos in front of him, the Primarch looked at her face with eyes filled with absolute grief. The Eldar stayed immobile, utterly stunned by the crone's actions. The seers of Ultwhe hadn't foreseen this.

Theresa lifted a trembling hand, and caressed the pale face of the one who had saved her life all these years ago. A weak smile formed on her lips, and she forced a few last words to leave her throat. No human hearing could have perceived them, but both her killer and her adopted son heard them perfectly :

'You are not a monster.'

Night Haunter closed his eyes, tears flowing down his face for the first time in his bloody existence. In his mind, he felt the paths of the future begin to blur. His fate, that he had believed sealed from the moment of his arrival on this dark world, was no longer fixed. The two facets of him, that had fought each other for dominance over all these years, no longer knew which one was destined to emerge victor. The coin of his fate was spinning once more. Conflicting impulses raged across his brain, each sending new visions of possible futures into his mind. To intimidate, or to protect. To rule, or to cow. To burn, or to excise …

The King of the Night opened them, staring at the killer of innocents before him with a cold, righteous fury. Far above the two godlings, the Seers of Ulthwe felt the shifting of fate, and heard the screams of the Dark Gods as their schemes were undone.

None know what happened at the meeting, except that Theresa died to the Eldar's blade, and that the killer perished soon after, in a battle that turned an entire district into ruins, described by the few brave enough to approach it as utterly silent safe from the sounds of destruction – no screams or challenge, no howl of rage or plea for mercy. Without any explanation, the Eldar then suddenly retreated, abandoning the planet and returning to their ships. It was wildly believed that it was the fear of Night Haunter that had caused them to do so, and the people of Nostramo acclaimed their savior. Having fought at his side for the first time instead of fearing his approach, they were finally capable of embracing him and the changes he had made to their society. They gave him a new title : King of the Night, the Savior of Nostramo. With the crime-lords slain by his hands and the corrupt nobility wiped out by the Eldar Incursion, there was no one left to rule the city, and the King of the Night rose to the position with no opposition. With no need to remain in the shadows, the Primarch quickly turned the city into a haven of progress and security. In time, the army he had gathered around him during the Eldar Incursion helped him force the other hives of Nostramo to join his kingdom. One by one they fell, with the King of the Night striking ahead of his troops to remove the leaders of the local criminal hierarchy before his Night Guard occupied the hive, often with the help of the very citizens of the city they were invading.

Ruling from his castle, built upon the ruins of Nostramo Quintus' noble district the King of the Night brought a new age of peace and prosperity to his people. Several decades passed thusly, until the Great Crusade reached Nostramo, and the Emperor came to His lost son's world. The King of the Night had foreseen the coming of the Emperor, and ordered Nostramo's orbital defenses, installed in the wake of the Eldar attack, to not engage the fleet. Not that they would have tried : the Master of Mankind came to Nostramo at the head of a thousand ships, each of them superior by far to the planet's technology.

The perpetual darkness covering Nostramo burst apart in a pillar of light as the fleet's mere presence in orbit disturbed the weather patterns of the world. Men, women and children cried in anguish as the light bit into their sensible eyes, and many of them were blinded by the direct sunlight of their planet's weak sun. In the years to come, though he would be far from Nostramo, the King of the Night would ensure that these poor souls were cared for accordingly.

The Imperial delegation, recorded in Nos archives as the Delegation of Light, was a procession of thousands of transhuman warriors, including many of the Emperor's own Custodians. They marched in the streets of Nostramo Quintus, crossing the city toward the castle where the planet's unchallenged master waited for them. The Emperor descended upon Nostramo with no less than four Primarchs accompanying him :Rogal Dorn, Lorgar Aurelian, Fulgrim the Phoenician and Ferrus Manus. Each of them greeted their newfound brother, and then their father did the same.

One by one, they told him their names, these beings that claimed to be his brothers. When the one in yellow armor and white hair told him he was called Rogal Dorn, the King of the Night saw a glimpse of a towering giant, howling his fury at blood-tainted skies on a world of eternal war, before the image vanished and didn't return. When Lorgar introduced himself, the image turned into the scholar-looking man fighting against creatures of nightmares amidst fires and storms. When Ferrus Manus stated his name, he witnessed rot spreading through his form, claiming him as its eternal host. And when Fulgrim spoke, it was hard for the King to hold back his tears as the perfect form of the warrior before him broken and abused in the dark holds of a vessel of the damned. He didn't answer to any of them, and they stepped back, letting their leader advance.

He fell to his knees before the blinding light, trembling hands clawing at his face. In the depths of his subconscious mind, the darkness that he had kept locked away since the coming of the Eldars was burning, hurting him even as it dissolved into nothingness. Images of war and chaos flashed in his mind, and he saw the endless battles that the being before him would cause in the future, the trillions who would die in the name of the one who had come to Nostramo with a fleet and an army, and …

The hand of the Emperor touched His son's forehead, and the visions were gone. A gentle warmth filled the Primarch's body, banishing the pain.

'Konrad Curze, be at peace, for I have arrived and I intend to take you home.'

And then, to the surprise of all present, the King of the Night rose to his feet and embraced his father, laughing with delight, the sound rich and true, and one that none present had ever heard.

The Great Crusade

'We are the Lords of the Night. That name refers to more than our eyes, which can see into the deepest darkness, or to our Legion's homeworld, which will never know the true touch of a sun. It speaks of our nature, of our place in the Imperium. It is our task, our duty to uphold the nobility that has endured through the darkness that has shrouded the galaxy for the last centuries. The Age of Strife is over : this is the age of the Great Crusade, of the Imperial Truth, of the Pax Imperialis. Each and everyone of you is a blade of justice, of protection and punishment alike. We all know the darkness that lives within all human souls, and it is even more dangerous to the Imperium's ideals than the countless horrors that lurk within the stars. By our deeds and our words, we shall keep this darkness caged within forevermore.'

Konrad Curze to his Legion, upon their first reunion on Terra

After being found on Nostramo, and leaving the leadership of the world to those his most trusted ministers, Konrad Curze – having finally received a true name from his father, rather than the titles given to him by lesser men – journeyed to Terra. There, he learned the art of warfare, and was reunited with the Legion that bore his genetic legacy. Prior to the finding of its Primarch, the Eighth Legion had been used to punish those who had joined the Imperium, yet continued the forbidden practices of the Age of Strife. On Terra and across the galaxy, the Legionaries that bore Curze's gene-seed had brought judgment to dozens of cultures that had broken the Imperial Law. Gene-lords and psychic tyrants, overlords who ruled through chemical-induced ecstasy and obedience – all these and more were brought low by the claws of the Eighth, often at the Emperor's own command. The Primarch learned of the deeds of his sons, and he found them good and deserving of praise, yet also feared what the path of pure retribution would inflict upon the soul of his Legion in the long term. In a speech whose records are still kept reverently by the Eighth Legion, the King of the Night proclaimed their mission to be one of protection as well as punishment, and renamed the Legion into the Night Lords. The Emperor smiled on this renaming, and gave His son His blessing before sending him into the stars at the head of his Legion.

With their new name and purpose, the warriors of the Eighth joined the Great Crusade in earnest – no longer a force of retribution but one of conquest. With a steady intake of new recruits from Nostramo, the Legion adapted quickly to its new place in the Emperor's grand plan. Entire systems were fred from the rule of alien overlords, while on others tyrants were brought low and their bloody ends broadcast for the oppressed population to watch along the evidence of the crimes for which they were being punished. Far more iterators tended to accompany their Expeditionary Fleets than the other Legions', and whenever they encountered a human culture apt to join the Imperium, they would not hesitate to spend years trying to reach a pacific and diplomatic end before grudgingly resorting to the immense military power at their disposal. This caused the progress of the Night Lords to be slower than most of their sister Legions, but the worlds they conquered were productive parts of the Imperium in record time after their compliance, their citizens either proud to be part of such a great endeavor or glad that the incarnate nightmares of shadow were gone. In response to several complaints about this perceived slowness, the Emperor declared that Konrad had His whole support, and Horus added that it was better for the Imperium that its worlds were loyal than numerous.

Where before their name had been a whisper in the dark spoken only by fearful serfs, it became a symbol of hope as well – an example of a future where the Astartes were defenders of Mankind. Each world that was added to the Imperium by Expeditionary Fleets led by elements of the Eighth added to the growing rumor that Konrad Curze had inherited all of his father's concern and empathy for Mankind. The scholars who accompanied them and learned the heart of the Eighth Legion and the history of its Primarch soon came to give thanks to the Emperor that He had also granted Curze the moral strength to resist the corruption of Nostramo, for such traits could have easily been twisted by the darkness he witnessed all around him in the first years of his life. Still, for all his perceived softness, Konrad Curze was still a Primarch – a lord of armies, and a destroyer of worlds. In several instances, when he came upon worlds utterly corrupt – those bearing the touch of the Ruinous Powers, though in these days the Legion didn't know what they were – the King of the Night ordered entire planets to be annihilated from orbit. Just as some people were beyond redemption and had to be executed in order to protect the rest, some cultures were too corrupt to be saved and had to be destroyed before they spread their venom across the galaxy. Only he had such authority, though, and when his sons discovered a world that they believed had to be purged, he would travel to them in order to deliver judgment. So the King of the Night spent most of the Great Crusade with dozens of different Expeditionary Fleets, escorted by his First Company, spreading his wisdom and beliefs to the entirety of his Legion instead of delivering it only to the elite forces that accompanied him.

'… and I saw fire descend from the skies, and dark giants the color of night came down with fury and blade. And they fought against the Spirit Lords and their soulless minions, bringing down the flames of justice and hope with them. The hosts of the Unborn gathered to face them, but they were broken by the mages of the giants, who cast lighting and fire unto them. They cast down the idols my ancestors had been forced to rise in the honor of the Spirit Lords, and freed my people from the cages of stone and iron and lies. Then came down their own king, his eyes filled with righteous wrath, and he fought and slew the Spirit King himself, sending his shade screaming back into the Void …'

Extract from The Testament of the Night, a text held as sacred by the Ecclesiarchy and written by one of the survivors of the fifth world to be conquered by the Eight-Hundred and Ninth Expeditionary Fleet, accompanied by Kadara 'the Bloodless', Captain of the 13th Company of the Night Lords

While Konrad was one of the Emperor's favored sons, his relations with his brothers were more disparate. He respected Horus immensely, and was close friend with Magnus and Fulgrim, who had been present on his reunion with their father. When Alpharius was finally found, near the end of the Great Crusade, he was the only Primarch besides Horus to admire their little brother's style of warfare. But several other Primarchs looked down on the tactcs he used with sneers, believing them to be the tools of a coward, not a true warrior. Among these, Guilliman and the Lion were the most prominent. But tactics were not the true point of discord between the King of the Night and some of his brothers – after all, they all had their own ways of waging war. It was on the treatment of humans that the most violent disagreements occurred.

After the Emperor had returned to Terra and made Horus His Warmaster, Konrad's influence in the growing Imperium began to increase. As one of the most ardent supporters of Horus' ascension, he spent much time alongside his brother, helping solidify his authority other the Great Crusade's disparate forces. Many Imperial forces called for the help of the Eighth Legion in resolving conflicts with human cultures that resisted compliance, be it through diplomacy or surgical assaults. The vision of the King of the Night – a population protected by transhuman warriors from the darkness, both outside and inside – appealed to these mortal commanders, and Horus too came to soften his military ways, seeking to use diplomacy more often. Through numerous campaigns alongside the Night Lords, he had been exposed to both their methods of war and their beliefs, and seen the advantages they held for the Imperium. This would eventually lead to his encounter with the Interex, and the discovery of the threat of Chaos by the First Primarch. However, not all Primarchs agreed with Curze's ideals, and as the Great Crusade continued in its Master's absence, rifts between Primarchs and Legions began to grow.

On the world of Kharataan, the Night Lords fought alongside the Salamanders, under the leadership of their respective Primarchs. Kharataan was a world populated by humans whose culture qualified for compliance to the Imperium without it needing to change its laws or beliefs, but the leaders of its great city-states refused the integration out of fear for their people – for the firsts to have reached them were the sons of Vulkan, and even the brief contact was enough for the humans to see the darkness within the Salamanders' heart. Konrad had heard of his brother's failure to add the world to the Imperium peacefully, and came to Kharataan expecting to help bring the population into the fold, knowing that his brother wasn't the most diplomatic soul. But when his ships emerged in the system, the planet was already at war, and he was forced to add his troops to the Imperial attack. With no time to study the foe or learn where to strike to behead Kharataan's leadership, the Night Lords were forced into conventional assaults at the side of the Salamanders. Even so, the cities quickly fell to the Legionaries advance. But every time a city was taken, Vulkan and his sons would butcher a fifth of the population, choosing randomly who would live and who would die in order to impress on the survivors that they had no influence over whether they lived or died.

Horrified, Curze tried to make his brother stop, but Vulkan was deaf to the King of the Night's pleas for restraint. Outnumbered by the Salamanders, the Night Lords couldn't oppose their brothers directly, but they retired their support from the invasion, leaving the system with promises that the Emperor would hear of this. Vulkan laughed at his brother's cowardice, and resumed his bloody invasion. However, when the Salamanders reached the last city of Kharataan and threw open its fortified doors, they found it empty. The Night Lords had spirited away several millions citizens, bringing them aboard their ships to other worlds where they would be safe from the Black Dragon. None but the Eighth know where these refugees were brought, but it is known that Night Lords aspirants are still picked from the descendants of Kharataan. The Salamanders' actions would be reported to the commanders of the Great Crusade, but the scale of the Great Crusade made answering such things difficult, and before any sanction could be issued, the events of Isstvan would make the Salamanders' deeds irrelevant.

While the Kharataan incident ended without the two Primarchs coming to blows, the same cannot be said for what happened in the Cheraut System. There, three Legions came to bring a confederation of worlds to heel : the Night Lords, the Emperor's Children and the Imperial Fists. Together, they broke the back of the Cheraut System's defenders in record time, in an admirable combination of each of the Legions' talents. Such a victory should have been remembered as a triumph of the Imperium, a display of unity that remembrancers should have immortalized in a hundred masterpieces. But that was not to be, for as Curze walked the streets of the last bastion to fall, after the remaining enemy leaders had sent their surrender, he found the Imperial Fists coldly executing prisoners. At first, the King of the Night believed it to be a mistake, that the Legionaries before him hadn't received word of the surrender. But that wasn't the case : the Imperial Fists were executing all those who had resisted the Imperium, in order to teach the survivors the price of disobedience and rebellion. Furious, Curze commanded the Legionaries to cease this instant, and they obeyed – though whether it was because Curze outranked them or because he could kill them all if they refused shall remain a mystery for the ages. The Savior of Nostramo confronted his brother on these executions.

'They fought us. They must die. It is as simple as that, Curze.'

'They fought us because we were at war ! But that is no longer the case. The war is over !Look around you, brother. Are any of them holding a weapon ? Is any one of them a threat to us ? Their commanders opposed us, yes. They rejected the Imperium, yes. I understand as much as you the necessity of bringing all of Mankind into the fold of our father's empire, Dorn, but if we butcher all those who do not wish to join us, then we are only giving them more reason to do so !'

'The war,' growled Dorn,' is never over. There are a million threats in this galaxy, and the war against them will never end. If we allow for any weakness into the Imperium's foundations, it will collapse under the endless pressure of a thousand xenos invasions !'

'And murdering those who are to be our subjects is not a weakness to you ?'

'It is your pandering that is a weakness, Curze ! These mortals must learn their place in the Imperium, or they will fight our dominion over them and refuse our command when the time come ! Your way may be the easiest way, the way that makes you feel like a hero, but it will bring nothing but ruin and death when the true threat comes and they are unprepared to face it!'

'You …'

Curze's words trailed on, unfinished. Dorn looked back at his brother, wondering what was happening, and had a fraction of a second to note the horrified expression on Curze's face before his brother jumped at him and started trying to kill him.

While the two brothers violently argued, Curze was seized by one of the visions that had plagued his childhood. He saw the man before him as he would one day be : a blood-soaked monster, howling in eternal rage and immortal hatred, butchering his own sons and laying low the works of the Emperor in a burning crusade. All reason forgotten, the King of the Night hurled himself at his brother and tried to kill him, inflicting heavy wounds upon Dorn before Fulgrim, who had watched the exchange from a distance, managed to tear his brother from Rogal's prone form. The Primarch of the Imperial Fists was evacuated by his men, and as soon as he had awoken from his wounds, Dorn ordered his fleet to leave Cheraut, severing all ties with the Night Lords. The two Legions wouldn't meet each other until years later, on the fields of Isstvan V.

On Cheraut, Fulgrim demanded that his brother explain his violent actions. Dorn's deeds may have been distateful, and his arguments flawed, but nothing the Phoenician had seen justified such an aggression – if anything, it was certain to make Dorn deaf to any attempt to change his ways. Konrad confessed what he had seen to his old friend : the visions, so much like those who had haunted him during his youth on Nostramo, before the coming of the Emperor and the healing touch of the Emperor's hands. He knew, in hindsight, that attacking Dorn had been a foolish move – even if he wanted to kill his brothers, that wouldn't have been how he would have done it had he been in full possession of his wits. But such had been the horror of what he had seen that he hadn't been able to hold himself back.

It is not known whether Fulgrim believed his brother or not. He had learned, through the Great Crusade, to trust Curze's prophetic visions, but what he described now went against everything the Phoenician believed in. Even if there were tensions between the Primarchs, divergent opinions and approaches on galactic matters, surely it wouldn't come to war like the King of the Night claimed. For several days, the two Primarchs conversed, while their men brought the Cheraut System to compliance and restored order across its worlds with a minimum of bloodshed. When they left and went on their separate ways, Fulgrim had sworn to his brother that they would speak again of these subjects when they next met. For now, he and his Legion were needed far way, called by Ferrus Manus to help in the subjugation of a human culture allied to xenos.

The Heresy

'When I was young, every time I closed my eyes I saw the galaxy burning. I could see the darkness extinguishing the light of hope, creating a future of endless wars and suffering. On fields of stone and dust, demigods waged war among themselves, while Humanity's kingdom crumbled to ruin around them. Daemons and angels they were, fighting a war that never should have been fought in the name of the greatest lie and the ultimate truth, and worlds burned in their wake. I never saw who won this war, though in truth I suspect neither side will if this future comes to pass.

These visions stopped when I was reunited with my father – when He placed His hand upon my head,and dissipated the last traces of Night Haunter clinging to existence in my mind. Even so, I never forgot them, and tried all I could to prevent them from ever becoming a reality. I spoke with those of my brothers I had seen fall into darkness, trying to divert their paths from these infernal realms where I had seen them become slave-kings to false gods. And for a time, I allowed myself to believe I had succeeded.

Now I dream of these things once more, knowing that the warriors I see are Astartes, and all that has changed is that the angels and the daemons have exchanged their places on the chessboard of fate.'

From the private writings of Primarch Konrad Curze, while en route to the Isstvan System

The news of the Isstvan Atrocity reached Curze soon after leaving Cheraut. Gulliman, Sanguinius, Ferrus Manus and Dorn had turned against the Emperor. While the name of the last traitor left a bitter taste in Konrad's mouth – so much could have been avoided had he succeeded in slaying his brother – it was the name of Manus that most filled him with alarm. What had become of Fulgrim, who had gone to help the one who was now revealed to be a traitor ? Horrible doubts and suspicions rose in his mind as he remembered some of the things he had seen on Nostramo, images of the Emperor's Children brought down into damnation by the lies of a Warp-born creature. He crushed these doubts, however, for he knew his brother. Fulgrim would never give in to corruption. If nothing else, he was too prideful to allow such a thing.

The orders from Horus were to gather all Loyalist Legions in range of Isstvan and annihilate the rebellion before it could spread. Yet Curze, despite his loyalty to the Warmaster, hesitated. His visions were returning, and with them the images of betrayal and slaughter. He knew not whether they were true or not, but the data that accompanied Horus' orders – warnings of the dark forces at work in the galaxy that had twisted Guilliman and his cohorts – made him choose to assume they were. While the other Legions that would fight at Isstvan were gathering their full strength, Konrad decided to go there only with his own elite forces, the Night Guard. On his way to the accursed system, he sent secret orders to the rest of his Legion, commanding them to prepare for the worst. His warnings were vague, but they did contain an hint that he may no longer be there to guide them, and that if, somehow, the traitors won the battle of Isstvan despite having only four Legion against the seven that had pledged to come, they were to be ready to fight for the Throne until their dying breath. The Circle of Shadows gathered at several occasions, in small numbers each time, and Curze spoke to his sons for what he knew, somehow, would be the last time. It is said that upon realizing it without knowing how, many Night Lords, warriors and killers all, wept. Sevatar, First Captain of the Night Lords, asked to follow his Primarch to Isstvan, but Curze refused. In a brutal argument caused by loyalty and worry, the Prince of Crows was chased out of Curze's presence, tasked with the impossible mission to lead the Legion if the worst was to happen, his gauntlets marked red forevermore as the sign of his fate – his death would happen at the Primarch's command. Until then, he was forbidden to die.

Upon arriving at Isstvan, Curze sought his brother Alpharius. They spoke aboard the youngest Primarch's battle-barge, but the contents of their exchange remain unknown. Most believe that the King of the Night shared his visions and worries with his brother, and demanded of him that he takes the same precautions against disaster that Curze himself had taken.

The other Legions arrived, and the assault on the traitors' positions was planned. Curze argued that, with his Legion present only in small numbers, it would be better for them to be part of the vanguard. The Night Lords struck first, attacking the traitors with unrivaled fury and quickly securing a landing point for the forces of Alpharius and Mortarion. Tales of Isstvan V are few, but those who speak of the Night Lords record their absolute fury in the front of such betrayal. Other Legions may have had difficulties accepting the truth of the Heresy, and the fact that they would fight their own kind. But the Night Lords felt no such compunction – only a righteous anger that would make the traitors pay dearly for their unthinkable crime.

Twice the King of the Night came blade to blade with one of his treacherous brothers. Ferrus and Curze fought each other amidst the pestilent sons of the Iron Hands' Primarch, Curze demanding his brother reveal what had happened to Fulgrim but getting no answer, until he saw that he couldn't kill his brother, such were the extent of his transformation. Then, at last, Curze faced Dorn. The Primarch of the Imperial Fists rejoiced at such a duel, for by killing Curze he believed that he could prove that he was right, and that not only was the way of the Eighth Legion wrong, it also made them weak. It was not to be so, however, for Dorn was almost slain once again by the blades of his brother, and only saved from death by the intervention of Sanguinius, one of the mightiest of the Primarchs. Facing two of his traitor brothers, even Curze knew that he was outmatched, and he withdrew from the engagement at the same moment that the second wave began to arrive. For a moment, he felt the future stand on the edge of a blade, not knowing whether his visions would reveal true or not.

But the visions had been right, and treachery was brought upon Isstvan V in the colors of four more Legions. When the second wave revealed itself at traitors, Curze would almost certainly have smiled at the reveal of Vulkan's betrayal had it not cost so many loyal lives. Enraged beyond anything he had ever known at the massacre taking place around him, the King of the Night tore a bloody path across the traitors lines, back to the transports, leading the ever-diminishing host of his brothers' Legions. The three of them – Konrad Curze, Alpharius, and Mortarion – are said to have fought side by side against the Traitor Legions, an unstoppable force of nature that called for the death of those who had broken their oaths to Terra. When the loyalist host reached the other side of the traitors' lines, Curze ordered his brothers and his men to go while he held the counter-attack back. Had any other warrior – or even any other Primarch – made that demand, it would have been foolish and suicidal. But Konrad Curze was the King of the Night. He was the punishment of sinners and the avenging blade in the darkness. He was fear incarnate. And so, while Mortarion and Alpharius commanded their men to run for the gunships, their hearts filled with sorrow, the Savior of Nostramo revealed the full measure of his terrible might.

Hundreds of traitors died, torn apart by the claws of an unleashed Primarch, while their own bolts and blades utterly failed to reach him. Darkness coalesced around him as he released his psychic potential, manifesting the darkest nightmares of the oath-breakers in images of judgment and failure. He was everywhere at once, appearing from the shadows and disappearing again, leaving only a trail of defigured corpses in his wake. Only when Vulkan came to face him did the King of the Night stand his ground, and the fight between these two forced the rest of the Traitor Legions to step back, let they be caught in between these two raging gods and annihilated.

The Dragon rose again to his feet, his wounds fuming as he did so. That was the fifteenth time he had died and risen again. Konrad's left claw, Mercy, had broken in his opponent's chest this time, leaving five long talons straight into the other Primarch's primary heart, and yet Vulkan was rising as if it was nothing. This didn't surprise the King of the Night, though. He had known that he couldn't kill Vulkan – he had always known. That was the reason he hadn't tried to kill him at Khartaan as he had Dorn at Cheraut, even though the Black Dragon's deeds were arguably worse.

'Why won't you stay dead, brother ?' he lamented, though in truth he already knew the answer. Like all of them, Vulkan had inherited something from their father. 'Why won't you just accept your own death ?'

Vulkan's answer took the form of a blow from Dawnbringer, the weapon finally reaching the exhausted King of the Night and throwing him on the ground. Konrad tried to stand, but his muscles were burning. Primarch was never made to fight Primarch, and his endurance, endless in almost any other situation, was running out. Behind him, he could hear the sound of the last Thunderhawks and Stormbirds carrying his brothers and their men to the dubious safety of their fleets. A smile, pale, weak and utterly mirthless, showed on his face as the Black Dragon came to stand over him, his hammer held in both hands.

'You should join us, Curze,' declared Vulkan, his smile plastered on his face. 'There is no future in serving our father. He has lied to you just like He lied to us all ! Your Legion would find its true place in the order of things when Guilliman sits on the Throne and we are free to do as we please in this galaxy !'

'I am loyal to our father,' spat Curze in his brother's face. The acidic spit hissed as it tried to eat into Vulkans' back skin, but the face of the traitor healed faster than the acid could damage it. 'I will never betray Him.'

'Then die, fool. The galaxy will not mourn the passing of one such as you. Only the living matter, brother, and I am immortal !'

'Better to die a martyr than to live a monster,' answered Konrad Curze, moments before the hammer came down and, at long last, darkness and silence fell.

Seeing their father fallen, the Night Guards, who despite their father's orders had refused to leave with the remnants of the Death Guard and the Alpha Legion, rushed the Black Dragon, and managed to push him back long enough for them to reclaim their father's corpse and leave the cursed world with it. When they reached their ships in orbit, they didn't leave for Terra with the rest of the survivors led by Mortarion, but instead journeyed back to Nostramo, in order to lay their Primarch to rest. Before separating from the fleet of the Death Lord, however, they assured him that the Night Lords wouldn't be idle in this new Age of Darkness. A message had been sent to the rest of the Legion, warning them of the treachery that had occurred. Curze's heir, First Captain Sevatar, had already taken the reins of the Eighth. If the traitors thought they had broken the Night Lords, they would soon pay for that mistake.

Jago Sevatarion, the Prince of Crows

More commonly known as Sevatar, the Captain of the First Company of the Night Lords was one of the greatest warriors of the Legiones Astartes. Born of Nostramo, Sevatar was quickly identified by the planet's regime as a prodigy, and selected for induction in the Legion. Though his mental balance left to be desired as a member of human society, he adapted extremely well to life among the Night Lords, becoming one of the more popular figures in a Legion that generally cared little for such things. His skill with a blade was without equal in his Legion and with few in the others. Unlike many other duellists of reknown, he cared nothing for his personal honor, using every dirty trick he knew in order to win. It was him who ended the winning streak of Sigismund of the Imperial Fists, by headbutting the other First Captain as their duel reached its thirtieth hour. Though the onlookers of the Seventh Legion decried the dishonorable blow, Sigismund himself appeared to take it with humor, seeing the duel as a lesson for him – after all, few of the opponents he would face in the Great Crusade would fight with any honor. While the Seventh Legion considered that duel a tie, the Night Lords, when they spoke of it without laughing, clearly thought Sevatar had won.

As the First Captain, Sevatar escorted his Primarch during the Great Crusade, and saw more of him than any other Night Lord. This closeness is why he was made heir before Isstvan, and why he, more than anyone else save perhaps the demigod's long dead foster mother, knew his father's heart. As a lord of the Great Crusade, he was a diplomat as well as a warlord, and though he lacked some of the empathy his father possessed he still proved to be a very efficient threat in discussions. Sevater would speak of what he and his men would do to the other party if they refused the offer of compliance, his tone utterly serious and his lips curled into a parody of a smile, and then Curze would intervene and appear all the more magnanimous. It is unknown whether the First Captain was playing a role or simply stating the truth – he proved several times that he wouldn't hesitate to make his threats a reality.

On the battlefield, he fought as the commander of the Atramentar, the Eighth Legion's Terminator elite. With his power spear, he was almost impossible to touch, leading some to claim that he had latent psychic powers, even if he was never part of the Night Lords' Librarius. Centuries after the end of the Heresy, Sevatar vanished during a battle opposing his Legion to a group of Dark Angels who had escaped the Eye of Terror. The Legion Master boarded one of the traitors' ships with his men, and hadn't left it by the time it was pulled back into the Warp by the Sorcerers on board. His ultimate fate remains unknown.

After their triumph at Isstvan, the Traitor Legions began their advance on Terra. Almost at once, their mighty host shattered ,with the Dark Angels leaving to bring the Space Wolves on the traitors' side, and most of the other Traitor Legions choosing to pursue their own goals over Guilliman's great plans. Watching this separation from the shadows, the Night Lords seized the opportunity. Linking with cells of the Alpha Legion and other loyalist elements, they began a long campaign of harassment, attacking supply lines and ambushing the traitors at every turn. On the worlds where the traitors made planetfall to force them to join them or grind them to dust, the sons of Nostramo led the resistance with guerrilla tactics and carefully planned assassinations. Entire regiments of the Imperial Army that had cast their lot with Guilliman vanished from the stars during what came to be known as the Shadow Wars, wiped out of existence by disturbingly small numbers of Night Lords. Eventually, the White Scars were tasked by the Arch-Traitor to destroy the Eighth and Twentieth Legions' elements that were hindering his advance. For years, the Fifth Legion hunted their betrayed brethren, taking great losses for each dubious victory they claimed. The tales of the Shadow Wars are depicted in great war museums and temples on Nostramo, both in stasis-preserved scrolls and in great frescoes representing the most momentous battles. There are even a few depictions of Alpha Legionaries, despite the Twentieth's tendencies for erasing all traces of its actions. Whether the sons of Alpharius allowed the Night Lords to keep them out of personal pride or a sense of brotherhood, none outside of this mysterious gene-line know.

Talos Valcoran, the Soul Hunter

One of the Prophets of the Eighth Legion, Talos Valcoran was an Apothecary in the Tenth Company of the Night Lords during the Heresy. Like all of those few souls who shared their Primarch's gift without being psykers, he was part of the Circle of Shadows, the group of favorites that Konrad Curze regularly met, regardless of ranks or prestige. It was during his last meeting with his Primarch that he was bestowed the title he would bear into legend. As the fleet of the Night Lords advanced toward Isstvan Curze summoned his chosen sons to him, sharing his wisdom with them one last time before going to meet his doom. According to the Primarch, Talos would defy him, refusing to obey his final order and becoming a spirit of vengeance who would hunt down the traitor Legions, abandonning his task of protection to embrace the path of punishment.

Talos, like most of Curze's chosen, was ordered away from Isstvan, to take part in the Shadow Wars if the nightmares of the Primarch proved to be reality. But he disobeyed, and hid aboard the Nightfall, the Legion's flagship. Without his squadmates, he fought on Isstvan, desperately trying to avoid his father's death – that he, too, had seen in his visions. When he saw Curze choose to remain behind in order to give his sons and brothers a chance to escape, he fought alongside his guards, refusing to retreat. When the King of the Night fell, it was he who rallied the demoralized Night Lords and led them into a desperate assault to reclaim their father's body.

After the return to Nostramo and the interment of their Primarch, the rest of the Isstvan survivors elected to remain and protect the tomb of their lord. Talos, however, burned with the desire for vengeance, and rejoined his Company to take part in the Shadow Wars. His visions helped lead the Tenth to many victories against Guilliman's forces, and at the Siege of Terra, he fought against the Blood Angels at the side of his captain Malcharion. Guided by his visions, the warriors at his side would seek out specific individuals on the other side, champions and commanders whose evil deeds resonated through time itself.

Talos Valcoran was thought dead alongside his squad in the War of the Dragon, during the Scouring, but his body was never recovered, and tales are told among the Legionaries of the Eighth and of these Legions who fought at their side during that conflict : tales that he survived, and escaped to hunt down the traitors for all eternity. To this day, there are reports coming from worlds under attack by the Traitor Legions of a warrior in midnight clad, with the ghosts of his lost brothers fighting at his side as he hunts down those treacherous souls who have avoided justice for so long. Whether there is any truth to these stories or if they are no more than wishful thinking from a Legion that has lost much, no one amongst the Inquisition know – despite significant efforts to locate pict-records of the Soul Hunter's deeds.

The Thramas Crusade

Guilliman believed the entirety of Curze's Legion was at work to prevent him from reaching Terra, but he was wrong : only a part of the Night Lords were taking part in the Shadow Wars. The rest were fighting in the Thramas Crusade in the Ultima Segmentum's corresponding Sector, waging war against the forces of the Dark Angels that were taking refuge in the fortresses their Legion had built there in secret while their Primarch went on his path to daemonic ascension. There, under the command of Legion Master Sevatar,a tenth of the Night Lords fought on more than a hundred worlds. The traitors of the First Legion had brought many hereteks from conquered worlds to their hidden domain during the Great Crusade, faking their deaths in the same way they had faked their reports of the Ghoul Stars' exploration, describing entire systems as inhospitable to life so that they may use them for themselves. With the blessing of the Chaos God Tzeentch, these mad geniuses were recreating the horrors of the Old Night. With the help of the Dark Angels' Sorcerers, they were creating Daemon Engines, summoning Neverborn and binding them into the frames of great warmachines. Others were using millions of human prisoners as material for genetic experiment, while many dissected the corpses of loyalist Astartes taken from Isstvan V, seeking to pierce the secrets of the Emperor's gene-craft.

The Dark Angels forces were under the command of Captain Alajos of the Ninth Order, the same Traitor Marine who allegedly gave first the order to open fire on the loyalists at Isstvan V. Alajos' forces vastly outnumbered the Night Lords fleet in Astartes alone, and he had countless other armies under his command, though many had been created in the Thramasian Pits and lacked both testing and battle experience. At the beginning of the Thramas Crusade, the Night Lords had the advantage of surprise : the Dark Angels believed them to be broken since their Primarch's death, scattered across the galaxy and uselessly wasting their lives in attempt at revenge. It was only after the loss of several worlds that Alajos finally learned of the Eighth Legion's presence and that the Crusade truly began in earnest. The Dark Angels hunted the Night Lords, matching their sorcery against the Librarians' visions and their blasphemous daemon-technology against the sons of Nostramo's stealth ships. Sevatar directed the whole operation with the same tactical insight he had shown during the Great Crusade, adapting his battlefield wisdom to the greater conflict with terrifying ease. Leading from the front on every battle he took part in, the First Captain of the Eighth Legion was a nightmare manifested upon reality, his spear forever thirsting for traitor blood.

Nostramo, the Night Lords' homeworld, was near this region of space. Yet not once did the world see battle during the entirety of the Thramas Crusade. Whether the Dark Angels' commander hesitated in committing to an assault on another Legion's homeworld without his Primarch's presence, or some other motive was behind the lack of action from the elusive First Legion, none but their surviving kin in the Eye may know for certain. It may be that the Dark Angels saw that the Night Lords weren't using Nostramo as their headquarters, refusing to make such an obvious move. Indeed, only the survivors of Isstvan V, the bloody remnants of the once-great Night Guard, ,keeping watch over their father's body, and the warriors permanently assigned to the defense of the world stood on Nostramo. Instead, Sevatar had installed his center of operation on a world that had been named Tsagualsa when it had been discovered by the Eighth Legion. Without any resource worth colonization and access to the world difficult through the Warp's tumultuous tide, the Night Lords had chosen to hide the existence of that world, turning it into one of their several bases of operations dissimulated across the galaxy. The Dark Angels learned quickly that they hadn't been the only ones taking precaution during the Great Crusade, and sought to find the location of Tsagualsa. Captured Night Lords were given over the Interrogator-Chaplains in order to extract the information from them, but Sevatar had been wise to their methods. Only his fleet's Navigators knew the location of the planet, the rest of the Legion willingly kept in the dark to prevent such leaks. Those captured and tortured laughed in the face of their captors, more than one of them breaking free of his cell between seances and wreaking havoc behind the Dark Angels' lines.

The Thramas Crusade lasted for most of the Roboutian Heresy. By the end, the Thramasian Pits that the Dark Angels had spent decades to build and had hoped would provide them with the weapons to win the war were in ruins, their techno-overlords slain and their foul laboratories aflame. Only a handful of worlds remained, too deep within the Dark Angels' domain to reach. It was then that Alajos learned that his father had completed his quest, and was now en route to Caliban. Once the Lion's business on his homeworld was concluded, he would come to the Ghoul Stars and expect to find the army Alajos had been tasked to prepare. Panic filled the Dark Angel, for his forces were actually far lesser than they had been when his father had left. Fearing the wrath of the first Daemon Primarch, Alajos tried one last desperate gambit to at last crush the Night Lords and win the Thramas Crusade, hoping to thus earn his father's forgiveness even if he had failed in his given objective.

Alajos used an heretical Warp-engine that housed a powerful daemon of Tzeentch within its core systems to trace the paths of Night Lords ships in the Warp and locate their base of operation. The records of the Eighth state that the Dark Angel had to sell his soul to whatever creature was bound to the device in order to obtain the information – though how the Night Lords learned that is not mentioned anywhere in the archives. Alajos gathered his whole fleet, and launched a massive assault on Tsagualsa. Taking the Night Lords by surprise and with overwhelming firepower on his side, the Dark Angel commander was able to break the back of the Eighth Legion forces. Descending on the planet itself at the head of a vast armada, the Captain reached Sevatar himself and the two of them fought at the heart of the Night Lords citadel. In the end, after his men had left the surface, Sevatar activated his spear's teleportation beacon and was teleported back aboard his fleet, before ordering a full retreat, leaving Alajos screaming in failure while the mines deep within the fortress detonated and brought the whole structure down on the invaders.

Fel Zharost, the Chief Librarian of the Legion, had been right, mused Sevatar as he dodged yet another lumsy strike from Alajos. He was growing stronger. The Dark Angel commander was a good warrior, and showed evidence of numerous 'blessings' from his unholy patron, and yet Sevatar was quicker and stronger than him. They had been going at it for more than five minutes now, according to the chronometer at the edge of his vision that advanced so slowly, and he hadn't taken a single wound yet. In fact, it was almost a boring fight, despite the novelty of fighting someone in slow-motion. But duty was duty, and by holding the full focus of the enemy commander on him here, deep in the fortress, Sevatar was preventing him from directing the pursuit of his fleet. Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, a single rune on his visual display changed colors – the sign that his plan of evacuation had been executed. Without wasting any more time, he disarmed Alajos in single blow, before impaling the Dark Angel through the chest with his chainspear. The traitor fell on his back, stinking blood spilling from his wound, but he wasn't dead yet. In fact, already the wound was starting to close, and if Sevatar was any judge, all it would take would be a few augmetic vertebrae and the traitor would be as good as new. That was, of course, if he lived long enough.

The Dark Angel looked up at him, and even though they were both wearing helmets Sevatar could feel the hatred radiating from his foe as he waited for the blow that would end his life. Sevatar lifted his spear, ready to deliver it, when a sudden thought occurred to him. He stopped, and lowered his weapon, activating instead the teleport beacon that would bring him back aboard the Nightfall. As whisps of ozone gathered around him, he saw the surprise and incomprehension flare in the Dark Angel's aura, and said :

'Give my regards to your Primarch when he comes here and learn of your failure to kill me.'

Alajos screamed in pure fury, and Sevatar grinned through the blood running down his nose – and his eyes and mouth and ears – as the teleportation flare engulfed him.

Both the Shadow Wars and the Thramas Crusade ended at the same time, with the Night Lords and the Alpha Legion retiring from the front of the Heresy. With their ambush at Tsagualsa and the return of the Lion from the Maelstrom, the Night Lords could no longer prosecute the Thramas Crusade without risking their Legion's destruction, and had already inflicted sufficient damage to the Dark Angels' assets in the region. For the first time since the news of the Isstvan Atrocity had reached them, the Night Lords gathered their full strength in one of the galaxy's darkest corners. Despite the losses the Eighth Legion had taken, tens of thousands of Legionaries gathered, accompanied by many more human soldiers, forces of the loyal Mechanicum, and several Titan Legions. Sevatar, having recovered from his trial during the Tsalgualsa ambush, took overall command of the assembled fleet. Many wondered what the Prince of Crows had in mind for such a mighty gathering. They could return to Terra and add their forces to the defenders of the Throneworld, or strike any of the Traitor Legions that were still isolated from the main advance. A few even suggested that, if the rumors of Guilliman leaving the bulk of his forces in favor of pursuing Alpharius were true, then they could either attempt to slay the Arch-Traitor himself, or attack the forces led by Ferrus Manus in his absence. But Sevatar had other plans – plans that no one could have prepared for.

A Light in the Darkest Night

While he laid down in the Nightfall's Apothecarion, recovering from the damage he had done to his own brain in his duel against Alajos, Sevatar had been visited by psychic messages of strange origin. Several of these communications had gone awry, with the First Captain using his slowly awakening psychic gifts to push back what he perceived as psychic intrusion, but after a while he understood that these were not attacks from the Dark Angels and their daemonic allies, but an attempt at communication from the Night Lords allies. Through means unknown, the Alpha Legion was reaching into the Prince of Crows' very mind in order to deliver information of utmost importance : the fate of the Emperor's Children, and the means to come to their aid.

The Eyes and the Hands of the Emperor

Konrad Curze was the only Primarch close to the mysterious Alpharius beyond Horus Lupercal, seeing his brother's unorthodox tactics as possessing tremendous potential. However, the disregarded Alpharius showed to the damage done to the worlds his Legion conquered made him chastise his brother. While he could understand Alpharius' desire to prove his worth to their father, he told his brother that he shouldn't give such importance to equaling the tallies of conquest of the rest of their brotherhood. Alpharius' talents, reasoned the King of the Night, laid in other matters, and seeking glory at any cost, even if it meant the loss of more lives than was necessary, would ultimately only alienate him to those whose opinion truly mattered.

Alpharius appears to have been convinced by his brother's arguments, for he turned his Legion from a pure, ruthless weapon of war into something altogether more efficient and terrifying. His Legionaries became spies and infiltrators, the skill of which rival those of the Vanus Temple of the Assassinorum. Beyond the eyes and reach of even the greatest Inquisitors, they collect data on the Imperium's enemy, and deliver it to those in position to act on it. Amongst those, the Night Lords were prominent. Few forces in the Imperium can make as good an use of information about the enemy's commanders location, and the bond of brotherhood that linked Alpharius and Curze are echoed to this days by their respective Legions. The ways by which the information is delivered vary, from the mundane to the stupefying, but always the Night Lords know it to come from the Alpha Legion. Some servants of the Dark Gods – and not a few Inquisitors of questionable morality – have tried to manipulate the Eighth by faking messages from the most mysterious Legion, but they have never succeeded. The Night Lords have some way of telling the fake messages from the true ones, and they certainly aren't going to say how.

After having confirmed that the knowledge was really coming from the Alpha Legion, Sevatar gathered the commanders of his gathered force and told them of his plans. Quelling all skepticism with his usual blend of intimidation and charisma, the Legion Master led the Night Lords to a giant Webway portal, large enough to allow entire fleets to pass through. Following the images engraved in his mind by the Alpha Legion's message, Sevatar led his fleet across the Labyrinthine Dimension and to the portions of its infinity where the Bleeding War was raging between the Emperor's Children and the Dark Eldar. The Night Lords struck the children of Commoragh with their full strength, destroying hundreds of their ships and boarding those containing their brother Legionaries. Linking up with the remaining free forces of the Third Legion, they freed Fulgrim and told him of the darkness that had claimed the galaxy in his absence from the material plane.

With the Emperor's Children and their Primarch rescued, most of Sevatar's fleet wanted to leave the Webway and go to Terra. But once again, Sevatar denied them. The Throneworld was already besieged, he said. If they went there through the Warp, they would never reach it in time to tip the scales of the Siege. With Fulgrim's support, Sevatar ordered the two fleets to pass through the Webway once again, following his guidance until they emerged mere hours of warp-travel away from Terra.

'I am justice ! I am judgment ! I am punishment !'

Battle-cry of Jago Sevatarion, Legion Master of the Night Lords, during the Siege of Terra

The Siege of Terra was the final battle of the Roboutian Heresy, and the Night Lords were determined to play their part in it. When they reached the titanic space battle taking place in the Throneworld's orbit, transmissions reached them from the surface of the atrocities being perpetrated by the Blood Angels. Immediately, the Eighth Legion descended upon the treacherous sons of Sanguinius, creating a thousand duels of legends in the ruins of Terra's great cities as champions from both Legions clashed. When Sanguinius' incarnate body was slain by the Mournival and his essence cast into the Warp, the Blood Angels collapsed on the ground, and the Night Lords didn't question their good fortune. They slew hundreds of Blood Angels in the throes of ecstatic agony. The events of that night gave birth to a grudge between the two Legions that has lasted to this day : the Night Lords remember the Blood Angels' atrocities, and the Blood Angels remember what they see as the Night Lords' cowardice.

The Blood Angel screamed as he died, not in pain but in absolute ecstasy. With disgust, Talos tore his chainsword free from the traitor's chest, but the blade was caught up in some twisted bone structure, and broke apart in his hand. Tossing away the useless handle, the Apothecary looked around for a replacement. The power sword of the slain Angel was laying nearby, a golden relic of breathtaking craftmanship, with a ruby the size of a human fist encrusted in its pommel and its name written on its edge : Aurum. Talos reached out to pick up the blade …

He saw himself standing above his brothers' bodies, holding the blade aloft and laughing in madness. Pleasure flowed through his veins, rewarding him for the murder with sensations the like of which he had never known. Above him he saw the face of a perfect being smiling upon him in appreciation of is deed. Around him, ranks after ranks of Blood Angels were hailing him as their lord, their master, their prince …

Staggering, Talos stepped back from the corrupted weapon. With a snarl, he brought down his boot upon the inactive blade, breaking it to pieces with the sound of wailing ghosts. He would continue fighting with his bolter, his combat knife, his bare hands if he had to. Better that than using the enemy's tools against it.

Soon after the fall of Sanguinius, Guilliman perished as well. The Traitor Legions ran, and the Night Lords took in the desolation that had become of Terra. For a few days, they remained on the Throneworld, helping take care of the immediate aftermath of the devastation and healing their own wounds. Then, at the command of the Legion Master, they set course in pursuit of the traitors.

The Post-Heresy

The Emperor's Blades

The Night Lords and the Assassin Temples have long had a relationship most unusual between Astartes and those trained by the Officio Assassinorum. Unlike most of their brethren, the Night Lords do not scorn the Assassins, seeing them not only as a necessary part of ruling a kingdom the size of the Imperium, but also as valuable assets in their own conflicts. As soon as during the Great Crusade, the Night Lords asked for a closer collaboration between themselves and the Temples, and the then-Masters accepted, more than a little surprised by the offer. Ever since then, small squads of Assassins from all Temples have been assigned to the Companies of the Eighth Legion, providing one more tool in their arsenal of terror and surgical strikes. The members of the Callidus Temple are especially useful, since the Night Lords, while capable of stealth, can hardly infiltrate the inner workings of any human society without being spotted as transhuman giants.

In recent years, the Night Lords came to the aid of a secret Callidus Temple on Uriah III, guided by the vision of one of their prophets. This act, echoing the ancient bonds between this particular Temple and the Eighth Legion, has led to a rekindling of their relationship, which had been tense ever since the Beheading proved that the Assassins were also subject to corruption.

Despite the loss of their Primarch, the Night Lords were one of the more prominent Legions in the aftermath of the Heresy. While the surviving sons of the Emperor rebuilt their own Legions or took part in the long, painful process of reforming the Imperium, the Eighth sailed the stars in pursuit of the traitors' fleets. In the galactic purge that followed, the Night Lords were at the tip of the spear of Imperial retribution, bringing countless rebel worlds to heel. When the inhabitants of these worlds had joined Guilliman's rebellion out of fear or deceit, they only punished the leaders who had made the decision to surrender, executing them as a warning to those who would replace them. On worlds where the population had wholly embraced the Arch-Traitor's blasphemous beliefs, they brought punishment in the form of orbital bombardments and merciless culling. While the Night Lords had been hailed as ideal crusaders during the Great Crusade and symbols of hope during the Heresy, the Scouring showed the entire Imperium just how far the sons of Nostramo were ready to go in order to punish and protect. Unwilling to risk any taint lingering and leading to other heresies, they worked closely with the Inquisition in order to uncover any traces of corruption.

It was during the Scouring that word reached the convalescent Imperium of the atrocities committed by the traitor Primarch Vulkan. He and his Legion were carving a bloody path on their way to the Eye of Terror, plundering hundreds of worlds in their wake. Seeing this as a deliberate provocation, the Night Lords prepared for war against the one who had murdered their father. Sevatar planned for it carefully, not wanting to fall into a trap and let the Black Dragon escapes justice. However, his efforts were reduced to nothing when Vulkan revealed that he still had the relics of Konrad Curze, stolen from the Primarch's body during the Isstvan Massacre. The Prince of Crows lost control of the Legion's forces as they burned with rage in the face of that affront, and dozens of Companies launched a premature assault of the Salamanders' fleet.

With such a beginning, the War of the Dragon cost much to the Eighth Legion. Across a dozen of the Salamanders' most recently conquered worlds, the forces of the Night Lords fought against their most hated foe, taking heavy casualties as fury pushed them to abandon their usual tactics of hit-and-run in favor of full-front confrontations. It took several months for Sevatar to retake control of the campain, and only with the help of the Sons of Horus did the Night Lords finally managed to defeat the Eighteenth Legion, with the final battle taking place in the ruined system of Crythe. The relics of the King of the Night – his crown, his signet ring, his lightning claws, Mercy and Forgiveness, and several other items that were torn from his body by his greedy brother upon his death – were reclaimed in a daring assault, and are now enshrined next to their owner's body on Nostramo. The Eighth Legion still sees it as a personal failure that they failed to slay Vulkan himself, instead unwillingly taking part in his ascension as a Daemon Primarch of Chaos Undivided when thousands of them died in ill-prepared assaults.

In the aftermath of the War of the Dragon, Sevatar condemned all of the surviving commanders who had attacked without his orders to bear Red Hands until they had atoned for their failure. Although such a large sentence was unprecedented in the annals of the Legion, the condemned themselves accepted it as their rightful punishment, stepping down from their command in order to serve as simple battle-brothers once more. None of them was ever graced, and all of them died in battle, only earning absolution through their own sacrifice. The fact that Sevatar himself was still carrying the Red Hands himself was one that none dared to bring up.

In retaliation, Sevatar burned Nocturne to the ground himself, reducing the Warp-infested planet to cosmic dust in a combination of firepower rarely seen in the galaxy. The first Legion Master is said to have smiled at the spectacle – and for once, it was an actual smile, not his usual corpse-grin. Somehow, witnesses' accounts describe it as even more terrifying.

Decades later, while the Night Lords were fighting the remnants of the Dark Angels' empire in the Ghoul Stars, Sevatar disappeared during an assault on one of the traitors' battle-ships. In his absence, a new Legion Master was elected, and the Legion continued its work.

The door of the cell opened without a sound. Sevatar didn't move when he felt the assassin enter, for he knew that he was being watched by means beyond mere optic surveillance. A moment later, he felt the restraints opening as the presence placed the keys she had stolen from one of his captors into the holes and recited the correct incantation, hissing in pain as the warp-craft took its toll. Simultaneously, she dropped a small container onto the ground, and it liberated a smoke that would temporarily silence any esoteric alarm. Assured that all was taken care of, Sevatar stood and began to stretch his painful muscles.

'Now,' said M'shen, an Assassin of the Callidus Temple that had been attached to Sevatar's own personal command. 'We have to get out of here. We can steal a small aircraft in the docks and reach one of the smaller ships and take it over. Then …'

'No,' interrupted Sevatar. 'We aren't leaving just yet.'

She looked at him with her blank mask, somehow letting her anger show on the featureless surface. Before she could voice her disapproval or ask her question, the Legion Master – though he hoped that the others had already chosen his successor and weren't waiting for him – continued :

'There is another prisoner here that we have to rescue, M'shen. An astropath – a little girl. She is trapped here aboard this ship of monsters, and she helped me resist the Interrogator-Chaplains. We need to rescue her.'

'This is foolishness on a level that is unprecedented even for you, Sevatar.'

'There is more to it than mere humanity and common decency, Assassin. She knows a lot of things about the First Legion. And if she can shield me from the bastards soul-torture without them even noticing, then she is even more important.'

'And if it is a trap ?' asked M'shen, already resigning herself to doing whatever this madman wanted.

Sevatar smiled, the same, heart-stopping corpse-smile that he always used. Even if he was dirty, covered in fresh scars and without either his armor or his weapons, M'shen had to resist the urge to draw back from him. He always had that effect on her when he smiled.

'Then we shall kill whoever stands in our way.'

Millennia after the Roboutian Heresy, the Night Lords were part of the attack on Commoragh, alongside the Emperor's Children and the World Eaters. Upon witnessing the atrocities of the Dark City, the Night Lords fought with a fury unseen since the days of Isstvan itself, and liberated thousands of slaves from the Dark Eldar's pits. These poor wretches were then cared for by the Legion, but most of them died quickly, too weakened by the horrors they had gone through. A few of those who survived were incorporated into the ranks of the Sin-eaters, having seen one of the galaxy's darkest places with their own eyes, while some of the youngest became recruits of the Legion.

Organization

Thanks to the foresight of their Primarch, the Night Lords were prepared to deal with the loss of their gene-sire, and though their mourn his death to this day, they are still determined not to let it make them falter in the pursuit of their sacred duty. Because of the sheer size of the Imperium, however, it is not possible for them to continue bringing justice and retribution with any rigid command structure. The Legion is divided at the level of individual Companies, patrolling the Imperium in order to keep it safe. Their ships wander the darkest roads of the Warp, hunting for the renegades, pirates and traitors that use them.

At the highest level of command stand the Legion Master and the seven commanders of the Kyroptera. The Legion Master is master of the Legion's flagship, the Nightfall, a ship reclaimed from the graveyards of Isstvan and repaired at great cost by the Mechanicus, and personally commands at least ten Companies. He is the one to whom all Captain answer, and the one deciding when to gather the Legion's dispersed strength for a specific goal. Among the Legion, his word is final, carrying the authority of the King of the Night in whose name he rules. When the current incumbent dies – a fate that, no matter what rank an Astartes holds, is inevitable – the members of the Kyroptera gather on Nostramo and seal themselves away from the rest of the Legion. Only when they have chosen a new Legion Master from among their ranks do they emerge once more, which is immediately followed by the induction of a new member in the Kyroptera to fill the hole formed. The process by which a new Legion Master is chosen is unknown, even to the highest-ranking Inquisitors with close ties to the Eighth Legion. Rumors abound of duels being fought, or of communing with the Primarch's spirit through the visions that rake some of the Night Lords, but all those taking part have sworn an oath of secrecy that, after ten thousand years, remains unbroken.

The Kyroptera and the Circle of Shadows

During the Great Crusade, Curze gathered a group of Legion commanders to act as his seconds in the prosecution of the Emperor's will. Seven officers chosen from the entire Legion belonged to this group, replaced when they fell in battle. The King of the Night didn't limit his choice to those Night Lords in the highest echelons of the Legion's hierarchy, naming several simple Captains in the Kyroptera. There were only two criterias for entry when an opening appeared : one had to be an officer of at least the rank of Captain, and possess some talent for warfare that Curze thought would be of use to the Legion. Void tacticians, diplomats, masters of infiltration and ruthless warlords : all of them were incorporated to the Legion's elite commanders. Membership of the Kyroptera didn't officially change rank in the Legion, but even Chapter Masters of the Night Lords listened when one of the seven spoke. Across the theaters of war of the Great Crusade, the members of the Kyroptera led the forces of the Eighth Legion and counseled their father on the myriad decisions that fell to a master of the Crusade. They also had the task of maintaining relations with the rest of the Imperium by directing join efforts and being their Legion's voice in Great Crusade. When the Primarch of the Night Lords fell on Isstvan, it was one of the Kyroptera's members, Sevatar, Captain of the First Company, who took up the mantle of Legion Master, and rebuilt the circle of the seven during the Heresy. This inner circle of command still exists to this day, with new members co-opted by the others from the Legion's current officers, using the same principles as their Primarch once did and performing the same duties under the Legion Master. Without the wisdom of a Primarch, however, it is not unheard of for intra-Legion politics to play a part as well in these nominations.

While the Kyroptera was a formal institution with duties and rights of command, the Circle of Shadows was a much more informal group. Within it were gathered Curze's favored sons, from all Companies and ranks, elevated to their status on the Primarch's apparent whim, even if there was always a purpose to his decisions. There, warlords commanding thousands of Legionaries were equal to battle-brothers or Apothecaries. The Circle gathered around Curze, listening to their Primarch's wisdom and reporting to him about the Legion's status and state of mind. Through it, the King of the Night was able to keep in touch with all of his sons, to hear their concerns and doubts and appease them. Unlike the Kyroptera, the Circle of Shadows didn't survive the Primarch's death. The name is still used by the Legion, but it now refers to the mourning rites that are conducted after each battle fought by the Eighth.

Homeworld

When the Eighth Primarch landed on Nostramo, it was an industrial nightmare ruled by petty tyrants who used violence and intimidation to force an exploited workforce into submission. Projections based on the mining and melting practices indicate that had Konrad Curze not conquered the planet, its atmosphere would have become unbreathable in two to three centuries, and its mined core would have collapsed in four to five more. Today, Nostramo is the safest world in the Imperium, with an Arbites force that sends members to the rest of the Imperium in order to teach others their sense of justice. Adamantium mining, which was once the source of all of the planet's wealth, has been restricted in order to prevent damaging the world, and the planet has instead turned to other, less damaging industries. Now, though the world is still plunged into eternal night, the skies are clean enough that the citizens who walk away from the hive-cities' illumination can see the stars, and the light of their weakling sun, though occluded by the moon, still spreads across the world in a feeble dawn. In the city of the King of the Night, Nostramo Quintus, there is a great fortress, that was once Curze's castle, and is know the Legion's headquarters, where the aspirants are trained and the Legion's relics kept.

Nostramo enjoys fruitful trade relationships with dozens of systems, and it is seen as something of a rite of age for Nostramans to go on a journey in the stars aboard one of the space ships that make the tours between the night world and its partners. By doing so, they can see the light of day for the first time in their lives, and learn of how the rest of the Imperium's denizens live – often in far worse conditions than their own people do. Genetics, however, are merciless, and it is dangerous for the sons and daughters of Nostramo to live one worlds with a normal day cycle. Their skin burns with prolonged exposure to sunlight, and skin cancers can appear if they try to live on these other planets. After this pilgrimage, they return to Nostramo and enjoy the quiet prosperity of its great industry and culture. A few fall in love with the vastness of space, though, and petition for a place aboard the crew of one of Nostramo's famous Rogue Traders. Like most homeworlds of the Legions, Nostramo is spared from having to raise regiments for the Imperial Guard, since its youth are instead screened for recruitment into the Eighth.

In ten thousand years, the homeworld of the Night Lords has come under attack several times by members of the Traitor Legions seeking revenge for the destruction of their own homeworld during the Scouring. First amongst these are the White Scars, who remember Chogoris' purge all too well. Beyond the Legionaries permanently stationed as defenders of Nostramo, the planet is also protected by orbital batteries and a fleet of the Legion's oldest warships, now considered too cumbersome for anything but the greatest of space battles. In the very few instances where traitors have managed to get pass these defenses and land on the planet, they have come under attack not only by the Night Lords, for whom Nostramo's dark streets are the ultimate hunting ground, but also by the population itself, who will fight at their transhuman protectors' side in the same manner that their distant ancestors fought alongside the King of the Night.

Beliefs

The Sin-eaters

In his youth on Nostramo, Konrad Curze learned the value of confiding your secrets to another soul instead of letting them fester inside of you. When he performed his bloody crusade to cleanse Nostramo Quintus of crime, he would speak of what he had done to his mortal family, telling them of his deeds and of the dark thoughts that they brought to his mind. Merely to speak these doubts helped him keeping the darkness at bay, and the counsel of his adopted kin helped him to finally shed his Night Haunter persona after the Eldar Incursion.

When he was reunited with his Legion, he brought with him the descendants of these mortals who listened to his soul's torments as he brought Nostramo into the light. The Night Lords quickly adopted the practice, taking mortals as their own confessors, from the iterators accompanying their fleets and from their own kin on Nostramo. The name of 'Sin-eaters' was derisive at first, coined by Russ when he heard of the practice, but it stuck and is still used today. Sin-eaters are more than listening ears for the Night Lords : many of them come from entire bloodlines dedicated to such work amongst the myriad mortals who serve the Eighth Legion, and through the years they have learned more on the workings of the Astartes mind than the demigods themselves may ever know. They can see when a particular Night Lord is about to go over the edge and embrace the Night Haunter that slumbers within every son of Curze's gene-line, and steer his thoughts away from that dark path.

In other Legions, that role of confessors is held by other Astartes. Chaplains still exist among the Night Lords, but they have a different purpose. They keep moral high on the battlefield, but are also responsible for the infliction of torture to those who have sinned against the Imperium, so that the rest of the Legion may remain untouched by such necessary darkness. They are also the ones responsible for finding worthy young men for induction into the Legion.

While most Sin-eaters now come from the ancient bloodlines of Nostramo – with some of them even having blood ties to the Primarch's own confessors – or from aspirants to the Legion who failed the physical testing but not the moral one, it is not uncommon for the Night Lords to induct others inside their strange priesthood. On worlds delivered by the Eighth Legion, individual having shown a great sense of justice and honor can be offered such a position. A particularly famous example of that tradition in modern times is that of High Priest Cyrus of Tyrias Secundus. The Ecclesiarch was rescued from a rebellion on his world, led by elements of the Raven Guard, that ended up in a daemonic incursion, but his faith and refusal to bow to the usurpers, even in the face of his own horrible death, earned the respect of the Night Lords. After the world was destroyed from orbit, he abandonned his high rank in the Ecclesiarchy and became a Sin-eater for the Eighth Legion's 10th Company.

There is a duality in the Eighth Legion's soul, for its members are as much protectors of the innocents as they are punishers of the sinners. To be a Night Lord is to walk down the line between these two roles, never committing to one or the other entirely. Fear of punishment must be balanced by the certitude that one is protected by this same being that mets out the sanction, or tyranny and corruption will inevitably grow. Justice, after all, exists both to punish and to protect, and the sons of Konrad Curze have embraced these twin roles as their own. Whilst their father once used fear to bring order to Nostramo, the events of the Eldar Incursion taught him that true unity could only come through a common purpose, and that it made any group far more effective than his previous methods ever could. But even so, the King of the Night never forgot the lessons of his youth, when he saw the evidence of Humanity's potential for depravity in every street of Nostramo Quintus. The seeds of evil lie in every soul, and must be contained lest they bring all civilization into darkness.

To the Night Lords, the Heresy proved that their father had been right : it was the darkness within humanity's soul that was the greatest threat to both its survival and its progress. They see Chaos as the ultimate enemy, above all other threats, for it is the incarnation of evil. Although most criminals within the Imperium do not consciously serve the Ruinous Powers, the Night Lords know that their crimes feed the Dark Gods regardless. And even if many rebellions begin with genuine grievances or because of one man's ambition, the servants of Ruin will always be quick to take advantage of it to further their own agendas of death and damnation. That is why, for the Night Lords, all crimes and rebellion must be punished regardless of the intent behind it.

Because of this, and of the practice of the Sin-eaters, few Night Lords have ever succumbed to the lures of the Ruinous Powers and turned their back on the Imperium. Those few who did, however, proved terrifying champions of the Dark Gods, and their former Legion hunts them down with a fury entirely at odds with their usual calm, controlled behavior. With no care for their lives nor, more unusual, for those of the mortals caught in the crossfire, they will stop at nothing to bring their treacherous kindred to justice – for they know all too well the horrors that a fallen Night Lord can unleash. Entire worlds have died screaming to the claws of but a few such renegades, and their psychic death-cries still reverberate in the Sea of Souls. It is theorized by those within the Inquisition who dare study such matters – for even amongst the Holy Ordos, the Night Lords are seen as a force not to anger – that the perpetual moral chains to which the sons of Curze submit themselves make them fall all the deeper when they finally crack, while their tactics of psychological warfare make them uniquely suited to wreak havoc and horror within Imperial space. Truly, it is a blessing that the Legion as a whole remained loyal to the Emperor, rather than succumb to darkness as the Night Haunter once dreamt it would.

The worship of the God-Emperor holds a strange position in the Night Lords' philosophy. They, like almost all other Astartes loyal to the Imperium, do not believe the Master of Mankind to be a god in the true sense of the term. They love Him and respect His greatness, of course, and know themselves to be the instruments of His will. But to them, the faith preached by the Ecclesiarchy is a moral crutch, forcing people to behave in a righteous manner out of fear of damnation instead of doing it because it is the right thing to do. At the same time, they acknowledge that not all humans are as free of doubt as they are, and that it is better for the masses of Humanity to pray to the Emperor than to risk them falling under the sway of other, darker deities. Like so many other things, they ultimately see the worship of the Emperor is a sad but necessary consequence of Mankind's inherent weaknesses. This has led to some frictions with the rest of the Imperium. Ironically, the Night Lords are criticised both by the Ecclesiarchy itself for their perceived lack of faith, and by the Word Bearers for believing that what the sons of Lorgar see as a giant scam to be necessary.

Combat doctrine

'In a galaxy full with a thousand different enemies of Mankind, the only weapon that will work against all of them regardless of their origin is fear. Every xenos know it, in one form or another, be it a conscious emotion or an evolutionary response. Every human traitor, no matter how debased or altered, knows it too on some level. Through fear, we can shatter the resolve of even the more resolute soldier, we can force even even the greatest commander to make mistake, we seed doubt into the faith of even the blackest-souled heretic, and we can make even the proudest culture kneel without needing to shed innocent and misguided blood. Fear is the ultimate tool of war.

But remember : it is only a tool. We must take care not to let it become our master, for to do so would be to become the same as the ones who were once our brothers, and are now our bitterest enemies. They are those who have broken their oath. Though they may have once been our equals, and therefore without fear, they are no longer true Astartes. They have willingly turned their back on the ideals of the Great Crusade, and instead embraced madness and egoist purposes. While we do not fear death, they now see it as the end of their own selfish quests. And thus, they fear it. Only our own kind are truly fearless in this galaxy, and none of them will every fight against us – for to do so is to become something else entirely, something vile, corrupt and soulless.'

War-sage Malcharion of the Eighth Legion's Tenth Company, from his treaty The Tenebrous Path

Though the King of the Night had abandoned his ways of terror when he was reunited with his Legion, he knew the value of fear well. Through it, entire armies could be broken into submission without needing to sacrifice lives that could be better used by the Imperium. The tactics he used and perfected as Night Haunter are still employed by the Night Lords, and it will shock many of their allies to see the calm and just sons of Nostramo on the battlefield. In order to save as many lives as possible, the Night Lords will use maximal brutality on those who must die. With stealth that shouldn't be possible for transhuman demigods in active power armor, their hunting squads will penetrate behind enemy lines, and, without any support, begin their campaigns of terror. They will hunt down their enemies' leadership with a tenacity unmatched by any other Legion, and inflict upon them tortures dating back to the sunless world's darkest days, making sure that all their victims' subordinates learn of the exact circumstances of their leader's demise. In other instances, they will let the enemy know that they are amongst its ranks, revealing themselves before vanishing back into the darkness. Without needing to take a single life, the moral of the enemy will collapse as every soldier realize that the Legionaries could kill him any time if they so desired. Once the enemy is in that state, he almost welcomes the arrival of the rest of the Night Lords' armada, either surrendering outright or throwing his life away in a suicidal assault on an enemy that, at last, he can see and fight.

Such is the reputation of the Night Lords amongst the Imperial elite that often, all it takes for an Inquisitor to quell any thought of rebellion amongst a troubled court is to mention the presence of an Eighth Legion's vessel in the system. However, precisely because of their methods, the Night Lords always choose their battles with great care. They have no desire to be deployed against populations whose only crime is to rail against the incompetence of their lords and masters, or to be turned into instruments of oppression. Their duty is to maintain the rule of the Emperor and the Pax Imperialis, and they will not be embroiled in the political scheming of lesser men and women. More than one Planetary Governor has called for the help of the Eighth in order to put down a rebellion against his rule, only to end up hanging from his palace's walls once the Night Lords discovered that the rebellion was due to his own greed. The gruesome fate of Harikon Kadulus, governor of Khai-Zhan, is but the most recent example of such ill-advised decisions.

In a more open conflict – something that the Night Lords consider abhorrent, as it is the sign that not everything was done ahead in order to get an edge on the enemy – the sons of Nostramo are still terrifying urban fighters. Their extensive use of Assault Squads wearing jump-packs – which are called Raptors in the Eighth Legion – allows them to harass the enemy with impunity. The Night Lords know, however, that they are not as strong as other Legions in more traditional forms of warfare. They are still transhuman warriors, and their lines can hold most of what the galaxy has to offer, but they like the frontline mentality of the Death Guard, the martial prowess of the Sons of Horus, or the tactical insight of the World Eaters. They are aware of this flaw, and balance it by relying on allies both in other Legions and amongst the Astra Militarum – with the desirable secondary effect of maintaining their ties to both, preventing the Legion from descending into arrogance and isolationism.

Ever since the losses their fleet took in battles of the Thramas Crusade, the rescue of the Emperor's Children and their intervention at Terra, the Night Lords have had less capital ships than other Legions. During the Scouring, they reorganized their fleet to be able to pursue the traitors all across the galaxy, by increasing the number of Astartes Strike Cruisers in their fleet. Each of these ships, built using technological lore that is now lost to us, carries a single Company of Legionaries within its holds. Thanks to the modifications wrought by the Legion's Techmarines, they are also faster and stealthier than those of the other Legions. However, this has also made them less resilient, and the Eighth Legion is loath to engage enemy ships in a straight fight. Like they do on the ground, their voidmasters will use ambushes and complex maneuvers in order to go for the enemy commander, using boarding pods to strike at the most vulnerable points. Unlike other Legions, they will also not hesitate to retreat in the front of the enemy, not out of cowardice but because to die while the enemy still draw breath is seen as a great shame in the Eighth.

The Red Hands

One of the few traditions Konrad Curze carried from the underworld culture of his homeworld into his Legion is that of the Red Hands. Within Nostramo's gangs, to have one's hands tainted red was a death sentence issued by one's master for crimes or failures too grave to forgive. The marked one lived only to the permission of his lord, each night a gift until the hour of execution was decided. Amidst the Night Lords, it was a mark of censure, attributed to those who failed their duties. The reasons for such punishment were varied : some were due to over-zealous pursuit of the Legion's punishing philosophy, leading to the slaughter of innocents and sinners alike. Others were met out to reprimand cruelty, or defiance of orders. Any Night Lord officer with a rank equal or above that of Captain can condemn one of his brothers to join the Red Hands, although it is more a responsibility than a privilege of rank – to use it means that the officer failed to prevent whatever crime he deems deserving of such punishment.

Once the armored gauntlets of a Night Lord have been painted red, only the Primarch – or, since his death, one of the Kyroptera – may release the warrior from his condemnation, once he has proved both his regret of his crime and atoned for it. In the meantime, the Red Hands are used for the most dangerous missions available to the Legion, their lives not considered expendables but risked before those of any unblemished Legionary. When a Red Hand dies in battle, however, his sin is considered paid for, and his body is treated with all the honors due to his rank, before his name is taken off the rolls of the condemned. The tradition of the Red Hands continue to this day.

Recruitment and Geneseed

The Night Lords' gene-seed has two minor variations compared to most Astartes. Their occulobe is overactive during their transformation, giving them entirely black eyes that can see into pitch-black darkness but also makes them vulnerable to direct, intense light. Their melanchromic organ also turns their skin permanently as pale as that of the Nostramo-born, who for their most part look as if they have never seen the light of any sun. Apart from these two traits, which are more marks of their homeworld than real mutations and are actually useful in enhancing the terror impact of the sons of Curze, the Night Lords have a gene-seed of great purity and stability, and their Apothecaries enjoy a rate of successful implantation superior to most other loyal Legions. Adepts have theorized that this may be due to the fact that Nostramans share both traits with the Legionaries, which may help diminish the rate of rejection, but it is only a theory, and the Night Lords, like all Legions, jealously protect their secrets.

As previously said, most of the recruits for the Eighth Legion come from Nostramo. However, as soon as during the Great Crusade, Konrad Curze foresaw the risks in taking too many of the greatest youths of a single planet. With its brightest children taken away, the culture and strength of Nostramo would weaken, and the world would descend into slow, irreversible decay. To avoid this, there is a strict quota of recruitment, even if it leads to worthy specimens being ignored. The rest of the Legion's recruits are taken from other hive-worlds. There, the Chaplains silently walk the shadows of the underhives, where gangs of young men and women fight for survival. They seek those who not only display great potential, but also an inner sense of justice bred from witnessing to many crimes in their cities' underworld. It is not unheard of for entire groups of such youths to be taken to the stars by the Night Lords, creating legends that will last for generations.

The Prophets of the Eighth Legion

Like their Primarch, the Night Lords' Librarians are subject to visions of the future. But while the King of the Night was strong enough to endure these glimpses of what may be and keep his awareness of his surroundings, Astartes afflicted with his questionable gift suffer from seizure when in the throes of prophesy, trashing around and howling their visions through the vox. Only through long and painful training can the psykers of the Eighth Legion learn to master their wild talent, and even then it is a gambit whether or not any Librarian will remain active for the duration of a battle. This has led many commanders of the Night Lords to shun the use of their Librarians in important deployments, instead using them as counselors and advisers. Knowing the future is as much of a tactical advantage as it looks, and entire campaigns have ended with unparalleled swiftness once a Prophet of the Eighth Legion told his commanding officer where the enemy leaders were hiding. In other cases, however, creatures of the Warp have taken advantage of the Librarians' connection to the Warp to falsify their visions, like they did in several instances during the war for Grendel's World. In M34, the Eighth Legion fought against a cult of Slaanesh led by a handful of Blood Angels on the planet. For months, the Librarians accompanying the force were beset by false visions, twisted by the Keeper of Secrets that the traitors had summoned onto the world. By the time the Greater Daemon was finally found and slain, the entire population of Grendel's World had been killed by the Blood Angels and their minions.

While all Librarians bearing Curze's gene-seed suffer from his prophetic gift to some degree, there are also those in the rest of the Legion who share it as well, earning the title and unofficial rank of Prophet amongst their brothers. They are exceedingly rare, with less than one Legionary out of a thousand showing the unmistakable signs. Without the psychic gift to help them harness and control their talent, these warriors endure pain beyond imagining each time they see into the future, their torment so great that it is difficult for them to speak coherently of what they see. Unlike their Librarian kin, their own visions cannot be altered by the Warp, and while their curse makes them unfit for leadership, it grants them an undeniable position of honor amongst the Legion. They are seen as the ones closest to their defunct father, and though the pain and their lack of control over it invariably turn them into dour, secretive souls, it is a mark of great prestige for a Company to have one of them in its ranks.

Prophets, however, do not tend to live long – at least compared to the near-immortality their other kindred enjoy. Beyond the obvious risks of being seized by a vision on the battlefield, their gene-seed keeps trying to alter their bodies further than it already has. While the process is barely understood, even by the greater Apothecaries of the Legion, the symptoms are clear : terrible and constant pain, visions growing more frequent and erratic, and various brain malfunctions as the gene-seed attempts to rewrite the cartography of the Night Lord's grey matter. The longest living Prophet lived four hundred years before succumbing to his curse – or rather, before one of his brothers took pity on his writhing, agonizing form and granted him the Emperor's Peace. Some individuals amongst the Eighth Legion and those few members of the Inquisition who know of the Prophets' existence believe that, if one of them could be somehow made to endure the agonies of their curse at the terminal state, they would emerge as something beyond a simple Legionary, a step closer to their Primarch's miraculous physiology.

Warcry

It is rare for the Eighth Legion to engage the enemy in open battle. Most of the time, the first signs of their presence are the screams and pleas for mercy of past enemies they broadcast over the vox, and the whispers in the darkness as they close in on those who have sinned against the Imperium. When the enemy's morale is in ruins, when they jump at every shadow and are praying whatever deity they believe in for a quick death, the sons of Curze will attack with screams of 'We have come for you !' or honor their father's memory with the call of 'Ave Dominus Nox !' If the foe they face belong to another Legion, they will echo the battle-cry of Sevatar at Terra, claiming : 'We are Justice ! We are Vengeance ! We are the Night !' When facing the hated Salamanders, however, the only things to leave their lips are oaths of revenge and promises of retribution, spat over the vox with barely contained hatred.

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Blood Angels : Drinkers of Sensations and Souls

Before their fall, the Blood Angels were the noblest warriors of the Imperium, their Primarch an icon of purity and devotion in a galaxy where the darkness of the Long Night yet held sway. But they were deceived, and pay now forevermore the price of the purity they had sought to keep at all cost. Now, they are the most debased of all traitors, their souls consumed by an unholy thirst that binds them to the Dark God Slaanesh. Where once they were protectors, now they are predators, seeking to slake their desires by preying upon those they were sworn to defend. Twisted in body as well as in spirit, their beauty but a mask for the corruption beneath, they have slain entire worlds in orgies of blood-drinking, tearing open the veil between realities as the chosen scions of the Dark Prince. With their minds enslaved to the whims of the Youngest God, there is no perversion, no crime, no atrocity that will give them pause in their endless quest for blood.

Origins

Long before the Imperium learned the true threat of the Warp and the malevolent powers that dwell within that hellish realm, the corruption of Chaos was already reaching out to twist Humanity. The plague of mutation has befallen Mankind for millenia, and with the discovery of Warp-drive technology and the rise of the psykers, the opportunity for the Ruinous Powers to corrupt and taint grew greatly. But the blasphemy that is mutation can also be caused by more mundane causes, reflecting only the poor living conditions of the afflicted and not the corruption of their souls.

So it was on the world of Baal, in the days before the beginning of the Great Crusade. Baal had once been a cultured and prosperous world, with its two moons equally apt to supporting human life. But, millenia before the beginning of the Great Crusade, its people turned on each other in a terrible war, the cause of which has long been lost to the ages. Biological and nuclear weapons were employed, turning the main planet into a wasteland and devastating the moons' biosphere. The great cities of Baal were reduced to rubble, and its enlightened people to ragged bands of survivors. Due to the radioactivity and pollution caused by the war, mutation ran rampant amongst them, and after a few generations most of Baal was overrun by tribes of cannibalistic monsters. Only a few clans managed to keep themselves genetically pure, by taking refuge in the few sealed vaults that had survived the collapse or erring amidst the desolation in ragtag rad-suits. As years passed, the number of those human survivors dwindled, while the feral tribes of mutants grew in number, boldness and monstrosity.

It was on this world that Sanguinius, son of the Emperor, landed after the Dark Gods stole the children of the Master of Mankind. The story of Sanguinius' youth is written in old Baalite myth, and was compiled by the Inquisition's savant Hyriontericus Lucidio, in the years before his studies drove him mad and his Inquisitorial master had to kill him. His work, accessible only to the highest ranking Inquisitors, tells us a story of courage and greatness typical of the Primarchs, but an attentive reading will reveal that already, the signs of the character traits that would lead to the Angel's downfall were already present.

Although little more than a babe at the moment of his arrival, the young Primarch already bore the angelic wings that would so mark his existence. When a tribe of nomads found the little child amidst the radioactive sands, they thought him to be a mutant, and several claimed that they ought to slay the newborn at once. In the centuries to come, many would dearly wish they had done so, but such was the beauty of Sanguinius that their leader just couldn't bring himself to put him down. Taking the child with them, the tribe brought him to the nearest of the radiation-proof vault, begging its masters to take the child with them, safe from the dangers of the wasteland. Although the vault's lords were as fearful of Sanguinius' wings as the tribesmen had been, they too were swayed by the infant's glorious form, and welcomed him in their confined society.

Sanguinius grew up within this vault, reaching the size of a full-grown adult in only a few months, and continuing his growth far beyond that. During that time, he learned the fragmentary history of Baal, and the terrible fate that had befallen its people. The hatred of the mutant was ingrained within him by his teachers, but at the same time, he began to question his own nature. None around him thought of his wings as an alarming sign anymore, having been in his presence for years and having quickly succumbed to his otherworldly charisma. But the Primarch himself found his difference disquieting, and in the fragments of writings from these days that have survived the passing of time, it is obvious that he was worried his wings meant that he had more in common with the mutant hordes than with the human survivors.

This disquiet was tempered by the constant battles fought by the vault's defenders against the mutants that tried to fight their way inside, pressed forward by the promise of plunder and sheer, animal hatred for those who weren't twisted as they were. Sanguinius proved his might in these battles, his immense strength and keen tactical insight helping defend the vault from many a marauding horde. But it wasn't enough for the young Primarch to protect his adopted home : he wanted to purge the entire world of the mutant taint, to eradicate every trace of the corruption that so repulsed him. He studied the beasts' remains for weaknesses, and spent long hours over old maps of Baal, noting the emplacements of other vaults and mutant strongholds. Already a grand plan was forming in his transhuman mind. Baal was ruined, poisoned by its masters nearly unto death. But there was still a chance that it could be saved. Its slow fall into entropy could yet be stopped. However, it would require lore and technology far beyond Sanguinius' current reach.

The creature was ugly. Its skin was gray, and covered in cancerous growths. The lumps of several limbs that had never grown to full size emerged from its torso, and it looked upon Sanguinius with seven eyes wide in whatever emotion was currently occupying its diseased brain. With a snarl, Sanguinius brought down his weapon – little more than a lump of metal, but the only thing he had found so far that was correctly sized for him – and shattered its skull. As pieces of flesh were splattered on the floor and the rest of the horde stepped back, unwilling to cross the breach that had allowed their leader passage into the vault, Sanguinius wondered if he was looking at his fate. Would he end up like this one day, all reason gone from his mind, replaced by aimless hate ? Was the reason these mutants hesitated not because they feared him, but because they saw him as one of their own and were unable to understand why he stood against them ?

No. This was not him. This would never be him. He looked around, and saw the defenders of the vault finally reaching the breach, wearing sealed suits and wielding flamers. One of the saw him look in his direction, and nodded thankfully to the young angel. Relief flooded through Sanguinius as the soldiers took up position at his side, covering the mass of altered flesh with cones of purifying fire.

He was better than this wretched creature. His blood was pure, his wings sign of his greater destiny, not of some freak accident of genetics. After all, if he was truly a mutant, then why would the people of Baal love him as they did ? They knew mutantkind very well – they had fought them for generations. That they loved him and fought by his side was all the proof he needed that he was superior to the twisted freaks that sought to end all life different of their own in a desperate attempt to erase the source of their self-hatred.

As he reached his full-grown form, Sanguinius left the cocoon of the vault and led a crusade across all of Baal's surface. At the start, only a handful followed him, but soon tribes flocked to his banner, drawn by his vision of a planet free of the flesh-changed. With his power, Sanguinius reaped victory after victory against the barbaric hordes of mutants. His superior intellect allowed him to repair and use some of the old weapons of Baal, long fallen into disuse as the knowledge necessary to maintain them was lost. Rad-sealed tanks rode at the head of his armies as they cleansed Baal of mutant life in a succession of glorious battles on the desert plains. Decontamination chambers were restarted, and the ever-present fear of mutation receded. With some of the devices found in the forsaken vaults, Sanguinius' primitive tech-priests were capable of purifying regions of Baal that had been deadly to all life for generations.

Slowly at first, and then faster with every vault and tribe that joined him, Sanguinius' crusade reclaimed Baal. Clans that had been separated from all other human civilization and tribes that had survived for centuries in hidden caves were reunited. Finally, as the tenth year of the crusade neared its end, the armies of Baal crushed the last of the mutant hordes, Sanguinius slaying its grotesque leader himself. As the people of Baal rejoiced at their liberation, the skies were set ablaze, and from the heavens descended a thousand behemoths of steel. The Emperor had arrived to the world that his son had freed from darkness.

The Emperor had come to Baal accompanied by the Ninth Space Marine Legion, somehow knowing not just that one of His sons waited for Him there, but also which one. The Master of Mankind met His son in the middle of the battlefield, descending on the planet in a flash of teleportation. At once, Sanguinius knew that this being in golden armor was his father, and he knelt, before the Emperor told him to rise and embraced him. This was doubly a day of joy for Baal, as not only had it been freed of the mutant threat, it was also reunited with the rest of Mankind across the galaxy.

Baal's moons, wiped clean of life during the cataclysmic wars, were claimed by the Legion as fortresses and recruitment stations. With all the technology available to the Imperium, it was possible to cleanse Baal of the radiation. But the Angel refused that the planet be restored fully, believing that the harsh lifestyle of the desert would produce strong recruits for the Legion he was to command. The Emperor acceded to this demand, and the two superhuman beings returned to Terra, where Sanguinius would learn all he needed to know before he could take up his rightful mantle as master of the Ninth Legion.

The Great Crusade

Once his initiation was concluded, Sanguinius was given command of the Legion crafted in his image from his father's hands. All Legions were overjoyed when their Primarch was found, but none more so than the Blood Angels, for their gene-sire appeared to be the embodiment of every Imperial ideal : noble, powerful, merciful and compassionate on Mankind's plight. Sanguinius had seen a world return from the brink of oblivion, and he firmly believed that it was the Imperium's duty to share this salvation with as many worlds as possible. On the plains of Baal, at the very same location where he had defeated the last of the world's mutant warlords, Sanguinius made a grand proclamation to his whole Legion. The Three Hundred Companies knelt before their father, and renewed their oath to the Imperium and the ideals of the Great Crusade.

The Blood Angels illustrated themselves in the Great Crusade. Each of them was a warrior as much as a soldier, and their assault forces were amongst the best of the Imperium. Many xenos breed were brought to extinction by the Blood Angels' blades, and joint operations with other Legions showed that they had a friendly, if somewhat secretive attitude. Worlds ruled over by tyrants were liberated in a single strike, and when a planet was found that fitted the criteria for compliance and joining the Imperium, the Ninth Legion always made sure that the transition was effected with diplomacy rather than bloodshed.

At the same time, however, the Blood Angels displayed unprecedented dedication in the purge of these worlds where the human genome had been profaned by genetic tempering and alien corruption. During the Long Night, many cultures had taken to modify their genetic code in order to adapt to the hostile worlds on which they found themselves stranded, while others had integrated mutants as part of their society. The Legionaries of the Ninth broke the back of many such an empire, showing their people the error of their ways by charging directly into the stronghold of their altered rulers before displaying their bodies for all to see. If these kings and tyrants claimed that the changes they had made to the perfection of the human form had made them stronger, then why had them fallen to the blades of the Blood Angels ?

It made for a potent argument, as did the decapitated heads of the worlds' former masters. Entire population thus converted to the Imperial Truth, although these planets would always regard the Space Marines Legions with dread rather than respect. Other Legions saw these violent purges with slight worry, fearing that excess force would alienate the very people they were trying to protect. But Sanguinius assuaged their fears, telling his brothers that the purity of the human gene-code was sacred, and that if they started allowing for deviancy, soon the human race would shatter in a myriad mutated offshoots and would ultimately destroy itself. Not all were convinced, but without rebuke from the Emperor and compared to the exemplar record of the Ninth Legion in all other aspects, this bit of passion was allowed. Even when entire worlds were burned because their entire population had been 'enhanced' through gene-mods of dubious origin and efficacy, the Imperium turned a blind eye. Every Legion had been forced to take such drastic measures at some point, and though the Blood Angels did it more often, it was thought to be just a coincidence, the inevitable result of them facing gene-altered civilizations more often.

Sanguinius was beloved by all of his brothers, though some were jealous of his prestige among the human population of the Imperium. Fulgrim was one of those, and Lorgar, though not concerned with matters of appearances as was the Phoenician, worried that Sanguinius may unwillingly create a cult around his person. Others, such as Angron or Russ, didn't care for their brother's beauty one bit, but respected his prowess on the battlefield. Yet the closest Primarch to the Angel was Horus. Lupercal and Sanguinius fought together on many campaigns, and the bonds of brotherhood between their Legions seemed to be unbreakable. When Horus was chosen at Ullanor to be the Warmaster of the Imperium, Sanguinius supported his ascension, even though many thought he would have made just as good a Warmaster as Horus, if not better.

But unbeknownst to the Imperium at large, the seeds of ruin were already present within the Blood Angels. It was during the Great Crusade that Sanguinius first learned of the flaw within his Legion's genetic : a thirst for blood that would sometimes awaken in battle, and destroy the mind of the unfortunate Legionary entirely, leaving only a bloodthirsty animal in its wake, a beast that would attack enemies and allies alike in its fury. The Legion commanders had long known of it, and had kept it secret from even their allies in the Imperium. They feared that the Emperor would order the destruction of the Blood Angels if He was to learn of the genetic defect in what was otherwise a perfect instrument of war. The reason why the Blood Angels seemed to encounter more deviant human civilizations was because, since long before Sanguinius had been found, they had been seeking for a cure to the curse that afflicted their bloodline. Their Apothecaries plundered the secrets of these cultures before purging them, at least as much to hide the evidence of their deeds as to purify the human gene-pool. Sanguinius continued this practice, growing increasingly more desperate as decades passed and no sign of a cure was found, while more and more of his sons were lost to the Red Thirst each year. At the same times, dark dreams haunted Sanguinius' nights. The Primarch had always been gifted with a prophetic ability that had served him well in the wars of the Great Crusade, but now he saw only darkness ahead of him.

He was falling, falling down an infinite abyss, his wings broken and useless. All around him was nothing but blackness, a terrible sense of loss, and flashing images of horror and war.

He saw his sons lost to the Red Thirst, burning entire worlds in their wake, piling the skulls of the fallen and drinking the blood of their foes while roaring their hatred at skies filled with crimson clouds.

He saw Horus towering above him, Worldbreaker held aloft, and caught the expression of sorrow on his brother's face before he brought the weapon down.

He saw his sons die, one by one, not like warriors but like mad dogs put down by their masters, as entire Legions moved to crush them and stop their enraged rampage across the galaxy.

Something seized him, and turned him around in the darkness of the abyss so that he was facing it. It was a bloodstained angel, staring back at him with madness in its eyes and eternal agony etched onto its once regal features. Its face was gaunt, and fangs emerged from its mouth. Chains running through skulls were tightened around its flesh, the eye sockets flaring with red flames as they stared at him in wordless accusation.

'No more peace,' said the creature in a voice that was the screams of every Blood Angel that had ever lived or would ever live. 'No more light. No more angelic grace. Only blood and skulls and souls for you,  brother .'

Sanguinius woke up screaming.

The Fall of the Angel

It was while Sanguinius despaired over the fate of his sons that Guilliman made his first move to bring his angelic brother to his side. The lord of Ultramar had already sold his soul to Chaos, and was now preparing for his rebellion against the Emperor. He knew, having been confirmed by prophecy what any tactician could have guessed, that should Horus and Sanguinius stand together in defense of the Master of Mankind, he would never triumph. Though he had already taken steps to adress the issue of the Warmaster, he still wanted Sanguinius to be on his side.

Guilliman knew that, unlike some of their brothers, Sanguinius would never turn against the Emperor out of personal gain or ambition. The Angel was too selfless for that, and a failed attempt would alarm the Emperor of Guilliman's designs, as well as sent Sanguinius straight after him – and Guilliman, for all of his power, was still wary of the Three Hundred Companies' might. So, he designed a plan that would either bring the Blood Angels to his side or see them destroyed entirely.

Roboute arranged for him and his brother to meet, far away from the Great Crusade's center of activities. There, he told Sanguinius that he knew of the Blood Angels' curse, and that he had learned of a potential cure. Though Sanguinius was shocked to learn that his Legion's greatest secret had been uncovered, he was even more eager to learn what his brother knew. According to Guilliman, his Legion had once crossed the path of a particular xenos breed, calling itself the Nephilims. These creatures had enslaved countless human worlds, and fed upon their people to sate their phsychic need for worship. However, they had also possessed great knowledge in the field of genetic alteration, and though Guilliman himself had remained distant from such secrets, he knew that they were still consigned to the world where the Thirteenth Legion had finally broken the back of the Nephilim course across the galaxy. If Sanguinius was willing, Roboute would give him this world's coordinates, that he may bring his Legion there and, with the knowledge of the Nephilim, save the Blood Angels from the doom that creeped in their genetic code.

So desperate was Sanguinius for a way to save his sons from the curse his blood had instillated within them that the Angel didn't doubt Guilliman's words for a moment. After thanking his brother, he sent a message to his forces dispersed across the galaxy, ordering them to come to him. Though many of his Captains were curious as to why they were commanded to abandon the Expeditionary Fleets to which they were attached, they did obeyed, and the Imperial commanders that found themselves without their transhuman allies suffered for it, but accepted that surely, Sanguinius must have some great and grave reason for such a muster.

Nonetheless, not all Blood Angels could be gathered. There were some who were too far to hear the astropathic call, or too deeply engaged in battle to withdraw, even at their own Primarch's command. Finally, when almost one hundred thousand Astartes in total had gathered around the Ninth Legion's flagship Red Tear, the fleet sailed toward the world indicated by Guilliman. It was a distant world, remote from the centers of Imperial powers. On the fringes of the Imperium, in the shadows that hid so much even in those last days of illumination, the Blood Angels would find the damnation that Guilliman had prepared for them.

They would find it on Signus Prime.

Azkaellon, Commander of the Sanguinary Guard

During the Great Crusade, Azkaellon was ever Sanguinius' shadow, leader of the order of guardians that ever sought to protect their Primarch's life. A powerful warrior and a respected leader, his position held no true authority, yet none dared gainsay his command. Prior to the Primarch's discovery, he had been acting as the Legion Master, and was the one responsible for the establishment of the Blood Guardians, the order of Apothecaries tasked with finding a cure for the Red Thirst.

Azkaellon was a shrew politician as much as he was a great warrior, and he spent most of the Great Crusade acting from the shadows to protect the Legion's reputation from being tainted by word of the Red Thirst leaving it or by any association with unsavory characters. On the world of Miridias, it was him who detonated the air recycling engines of the City of Triumphs, causing billions to choke to their death and sparing the Blood Angels a grueling campaign of siege while Sanguinius believed it to have been a last, spiteful gesture by the enemy commanders. He is also believed to have been responsible for the death of several Space Marines from other Legions who, during joint operations, discovered the secret of the Ninth.

Of all the Blood Angels, the Sanguinary Guards were always those the more loyal to their Primarch, placing his protection above all other concerns. And of them, Azkaellon was the most loyal of all. The choices he made and the actions he took, during the Great Crusade, the Heresy, and its aftermath, must all be seen through the filter of that loyalty if his actions are to make any sense.

The events of Signus Prime are not well known to the Imperium. Interrogations of captured Blood Angels who were present, visions from bound psykers and the dangerous research of several Radical Inquisitors, willing to risk their souls by summoning and questionning the Neverborn, has still allowed us to know the grand lines of what occurred on that accursed world. What we know is that as soon as the Blood Angels emerged into the Signus system, they knew something had gone amiss. Where there was supposed to be a populated system, with developped in-system space traffic, there was only the yawning expanse of the void, and planets entirely devoid of life. The Blood Angels believed that the region had been attacked, and sought to investigate. Scouts were dispatched on the planets, only to be met with madness incarnate, as daemons incarnated themselves inside the very rock of the worlds and hunted them down. Finally, as the ships were beginning to close in on Signus Prime, a signal was detected. It was a call for help, and it emanated from what, according to the Ultramarines' maps, should have been the planet's capital, a city of millions.

At Sanguinius' command, the Blood Angels made planetfall. Tens of thousands of Legionaries descended upon Signus Prime, a tide of red ceramite that spread as far as the eye could see. They advanced on the source of the signal in perfect discipline, despite the doubts caused by the transformed environment through which they advanced. Clearly some horrible fate had befallen Signus Prime's population, for their desecrated remnants were exposed all around the marching Blood Angels like the word of an army of macabre and deranged artists. Skins had been stretched to form repulsive banners, organs had been linked together by blood vessels used like string to create a grotesque display of the human body. Yet during all their walk, the Blood Angels did not see a single bone. The reason for this became obvious when they reached the origin of the distress call – which had suspiciously gone silent the moment they had set foot on the planet. Ignoring the warnings of his Librarians, who could sense that something was horribly wrong with the world and advised they leave it immediately and burn it from orbit, Sanguinius commanded them to continue, determined to learn of what had happened to this world, and to claim the secrets of the Nephilim if it remained possible.

In the center of what had once been the planetary capital stood a giant building constructed entirely out of human bones. Its shape echoed those of the cathedrals that once housed the worship of the followers of Old Earth's false faiths, but while these were places of quiet meditation and contemplation, here was a monument to excess and twisted aesthetics. The remains of the dead had been arranged in suggestive and blasphemous poses, their skinless skulls somehow carrying over both agony and ecstasy at the same time.

The aspect of the cathedral gave even the fearless warriors of the Ninth Legion pause. Before Sanguinius could give any orders to his men, the ground around them exploded, and thousands of horrifying creatures that had so far been invisible to even the most sensitive equipment fell upon the Legionaries. Horned creatures with red skin, carrying swords of smoldering bronze that tore through ceramite like paper and took almost no damage from bolts, attacked the surprised Space Marines with unprecedented fury. Dozens of Librarians died in blasts of psychic fire, their bodies torn apart as the more powerful spawns of the Warp used them as gateways to the physical realm. Quickly, the Blood Angels assumed defensive positions, while Sanguinius and his inner circle struggled to reach the inside of the cathedral. They had clearly fallen into a trap, but the Primarch could sense that the origin of the creatures was within the building.

Within, they found many more horrorific sculptures of bone, and, at the center – where a priest would have adressed his flock had this been a true church and not a den of abomination – was a column of crimson fire rising from a deep pit. Even as the Blood Angels looked upon it, the fire was growing stronger, and Sanguinius felt that this was no normal fire but a psychic phenomenom, linked to the souls of his sons fighting outside. Before that pit was a creature that, in later years, would come to be known to the Imperium as a Keeper of Secrets. Before the Blood Angels could attack it, it introduced itself as Kyriss, daughter of the Youngest God, Drinker of the Soul-Broken's tears and emissary to the Blood Angels. It claimed to have orchestrated the whole situation in the Signus system, binding its barbarian kindred outside to its will. Ordering his sons to hold their rage, Sanguinius commanded Kyriss to explain its motives, or it would be destroyed. That was when the Keeper of Secrets made its offer to the Primarch of the Blood Angels. It spoke of the Emperor's lies, of how the galaxy was no godless place. It told Sanguinius of the Primordial Truth and the great powers that lurk within the Warp, of how they had always watched him and his brothers. It spoke of a great war that would soon shake the galaxy, and that if he did not accept the offer of these powers, he and his whole Legion would be destroyed by it, broken upon the anvil of judgment and cast across the stars to slowly die out. And then, it said that if Sanguinius was but willing to give himself over to its master, all of this would be avoided. The curse that even now was driving his sons to greater and greater rage would be purged from them. The darkness within the Primarch's soul would be banished, and the chains placed upon him by both his father and the God of War would be forever shattered.

Sanguinius looked through the openings in the cathedral's walls, and saw that his sons were losing themselves to the rage burning within their gene-code. The battle against the incarnations of rage was awakening the flaw within them, and though victory would soon be theirs, the Primarch knew that once the last of the Neverborn had fallen, his sons would turn against each other – and then his Legion would truly be lost. Though he felt anger at being so cornered, he also knew that what he was seeing outside would have happened anyway – the Neverborn were simply making it happen sooner, forcing him to look directly at the consequences of his inability to save his sons from the Rage. And so, despite the inevitable price such a deal would have, he accepted Kyriss' offer.

As the Angel and his commanders faced the greater daemon, one alone dared to speak against the madness that was taking place. An Apothecary, present only because of the random chances of the conflict taking place outside the cathedral of bones. He called for his father to stop, to deny the monster its wish. The Blood Angels were strong, he argued. They could bear the weight of the curse, and through its rigors they would only become stronger. More than that, the creature couldn't be trusted, and the Angel was too important to the galaxy's future to give himself up like this. But his words, for all their wisdom, went unheeded. Raldoron, First Captain of the Ninth Legion, moved to dispose of this interloper, this lowly Apothecary who dared to think he knew better than the lords of the Legion. He underestimated the determination of the one pure soul in the room, however, and was shot just as he reached the Apothecary.

'No !' screamed Sanguinius.

But it was too late. Already the other Legionaries present had opened fire, and the Apothecary was torn apart in a volley of bolt shells. For a few seconds, his body remained standing upright, and then he fell into the glowing pit, leaving the maimed corpse of First Captain Raldoron behind. In the instant before the fall, Sanguinius saw the name etched on the warrior's shoulder plate : Meros. Then, the pit began to glow with crimson light, and a great flame rose from it, spreading ever outward until it reached Sanguinius and the Blood Angels …

Before it touched them, however, something suddenly snapped into place in the cosmos, and the ragefire that had accumulated at the bottom of the pit was violently expelled up in a raging torrent of infernal rage. Sanguinius felt something being drained from his essence, vanishing into the skies and replaced by a gaping void in his very soul. He suddenly felt free, as if a great burden had been removed from his shoulders. Despite the circumstances, he couldn't help a smile among the tears that ran down his cheeks. It had worked, even if it had cost the lives of two of his sons. He could feel it. His sons were free from the curse of the Black Rage. No more would the Blood Angels lose themselves in berzerk madness, and he would gladly pay any price that would be demanded of him in return.

The sacrifice of two Blood Angels, one faithful to his Primarch, the other ready to stand against him in order to steer him away from treacherous paths, sealed the deal between Sanguinius and the Ruinous Powers. The fury burning in the hearts of the Blood Angels in the system was expurged from their souls, and the battle that had threatened to make the Legion destroy itself ceased as thousands of Space Marines stopped mid-motion, sudden realization at what they were doing hitting them like a bolt to the face. The Ninth Legion had survived Guilliman's trap. They had found what they had been looking for, though none of them yet knew the terrible price they would have to pay for it.

So it was that Sanguinius first sold his soul to the Dark God known as Slaanesh, the Prince of Excess, Lord of Profligacy and Doom of the Eldar. It is said by those few who dare try to divine the plans of the Chaos Gods that initially, Sanguinius and his sons had been marked by Khorne, and should have joined the ranks of the Blood God's followers. Certainly, this theory makes sense in insight, with the full knowledge of the genetic curse that afflicted the Ninth Legion before the events of Signus Prime. Magi of the Thousand Sons speak of how the Dark Prince stole the soul of Sanguinius from Khorne, causing the God of War to roar with such fury that the entire system of Signus Prime was destroyed. To this day, a very localized Warp Storm remains on Signus Prime, radiating the anger of a god wronged by his kin.

The Heresy

Soon after the events of Signus Prime, Sanguinius noticed that his sons were growing restless. Azkaellon tried to conceal it to the eyes of the Primarch, but the Angel knew his sons, and he could see that despite the fact that the rage had been removed from their souls, they were still tormented by some dark need. They thirsted, and no amount of water or wine could sate the burning of their throat, the agony that spread through their bodies. There were no physical symptom to this affliction, and the warriors of the Ninth were strong enough of mind that they were capable of enduring it. But as soon as he learned of it, Sanguinius knew, deep within himself, that he had been lied to. Betrayed. But by the powers with which he had dealt, or by the one who had led him to their arms ?

Seeking answers, Sanguinius answered an invitation of Guilliman. With the full force that had followed him to Signus Prime and had been purged, the Angel went to the system whose name would echo forevermore in Imperial history : Isstvan. Perhaps Sanguinius sought to punish his brother for his lies, or perhaps he wanted an explanation. Their fleets met on the way to Isstvan, and faced each other tensely. Several hundred ships arranged themselves in perfect battle formation as two Legions looked possible destruction in the eye while their Primarchs conferred.

'Look,' said Guilliman, gesturing toward a corner of the room.

A Space Marine entered. No, Sanguinius corrected himself. This was not a Space Marine, though it had the same bulk. Fire wreathed it like a shroud, and a fanged skull was placed where its head should be. The crackling of the flames was like the distant echoes of screams, the sound of which were hauntingly familiar. To the Angel's preternatural senses, the creature radiated fury and hatred, and it shocked him that he had not noticed its presence until now. At the edge of his sight, he noticed runic patterns on the floor from where it had emerged. Had Guilliman learned the secrets that, so far, had been the province of only the Cyclops and his sons ?

'What is this about, Roboute ?'

'Look, brother,' Guilliman insisted. 'Do you not recognize it ?'

'Should I ? This is a creature of the Warp, a spawn of the Empyrean. I …'

'I am hurt, father.'

Sanguinius froze. Warped though it was, he knew that voice, though it was impossible for its owner to be there. Then he saw it : the emblem of the droplet of blood and wings, engraved upon the creature's shoulder. And beneath it, a name : Meros.

'You are dead,' he whispered, the implications of what he was looking at freezing him in place. 'I saw you die, my son.'

The flames around the daemon burned brighter, and its voice was filled with rage and smoldering contempt when it spoke again.

'Meros  is  dead, cowardly angel. He sacrificed his life to turn you away from the wretched path you and your sons have chosen to embrace. You denied the glory of the Blood God, Sanguinius. Heed my words : the day will come when you and your sons will rue this fool's choice. Your Legion will suffer and burn, and your skulls will …'

Roboute spoke a single word, in a language that Sanguinius didn't recognize but yet understood perfectly. At his command, the beast went silent mid-sentence. The Primarch of the Ultramarines turned to his brother again :

'This is the reason I sent you to Signus Prime despite the risks, Sanguinius. I knew this would be your Legion's future if I did not. Whatever consequences there has been to freeing your sons from this … madness, surely they were worth it ? I will help you deal with them, I promise. But our father … if he should ever learn of what you had no choice but to do …'

The exact contents of that exchange are not known to the Imperium, but it is clear that Guilliman appeased his brother's fury somehow. He told Sanguinius of his coming rebellion, of the allies he had gathered already and of the reasons behind it. He claimed that the Emperor would destroy the Blood Angels, for in His hypocrisy the Master of Mankind would not allow anyone other than Him to be perfect. Only by standing with Guilliman and helping him throw down the tyrant that claimed to rule all of Mankind could the Ninth Legion hope to survive. The affliction that had seized the Blood Angels could be solved, if not cured entirely. But the Master of Mankind would never accept the necessary sacrifices that would have to be made in order for the glorious Ninth Legion to continue its work as the peerless champions of humanity they had proven to be, time and again. The Arch-Traitor reminded his brothers of the secrets of the Legions, breaking the oath he and all Primarchs had sworn never to speak of these dark matters again. Finally, Sanguinius caved in. Faced with the destruction of his Legion, he believed that he had to harden his heart, and do what was best both for the Blood Angels and all of the Imperium. And so it was that the Angel sold his soul to Chaos for the second time.

This time, the price would be the lives of those of his sons who hadn't been with him at Signus Prime. Four Legions gathered at Isstvan as part of the Arch-Traitor's plan's first phase : the Ultramarines, the Imperial Fists, the Iron Hands, and the Blood Angels. These few Companies that had been unable to answer their Primarch's call had not received the 'blessing' that had purged the rest of the Legion from their rage, and Guilliman convinced his brother that they couldn't be trusted with doing what had to be done for the Imperium's future. So it was that Sanguinius called once more for his sons, who had done all they could to be able to answer their father's next call. They rushed to his side, eager to be reunited with their Primarch and to learn for what reason the entire Legion had been summoned. Before they could even meet Sanguinius, however, the orders came for their next campaign. They were sent to Isstvan III, a world that had rebelled against the Imperium and needed to be put to the sword in order for the rest of the galaxy to understand that none could defy the will of the Legiones Astartes.

It is not known whether Sanguinius refused to face the sons he sent to die out of shame, or because he feared they would sense the change within him. All that is known is that the martyred Blood Angels descended upon Isstvan III with all the fury that their brethren had lost, and fought nobly against the agents of the rebellion who had instigated the planet's turning from the Imperium. When death came from the sky as their own brothers revealed their treachery, many of the Blood Angels were unable to believe what was happening to them. Only because of the leadership of one of the Legion's greatest commanders, Amit of the Fifth Company, were hundreds of them able to take shelter in time to survive the viral bombing and the deluge of fire that followed it.

In the aftermath of the bombardment, when the Imperial Fists were sent by Dorn to finish the survivors, the Blood Angels fought alongside those few others who had also survived the initial betrayal. A few lost themselves to the Black Rage in this bleakest of battles, but legends tell that none of those who succumbed to the madness within their blood turned against their allies, instead rushing toward the enemy and meeting honorable deaths to the last.

Although Sanguinius himself never set foot on Isstvan III, Azkaellon decided to send some of his brothers Captains and their forces on the ground, to help their new allies in rebellion and cement the Legion's position in this new age. These Companies took heavy losses while facing their erstwhile brethren, for without the righteous fury that had once granted them strength, they were diminished and, while still formidable warriors, were hard-pressed to match the desperate rage and untainted brotherhood of the loyalists. Beyond that, the sensation of thirst that held them had only increased as they led their brothers to their doom, and it was beginning to drive some of them insane, slowly dropping into catatonia as they became unable to bear it any longer.

Guilliman saw what was happening to his brother's Legion, and decided to take measures to prevent the Blood Angels from destruction. After all, he still needed the help of the Ninth Legion in order to overthrow his father's rule. While his brother remained secluded in his chambers, Guilliman contacted those who led the Legion in his absence, and revealed to them how to slake the thirst that consumed them.

It was on Isstvan V that the Blood Angels would finally reveal to their allies what had become of them. At the end of the Massacre, with tens of thousands of Legionaries lying dead or dying and victory secured by the traitors, the noble sons of Baal could not hold their thirst any longer. They fell upon the corpses of the dead, enemies and allies alike, and gorged themselves on their blood in a ravenous orgy. Such was the curse that had replaced the Black Rage : an eternal thirst that could only be sated through the act of drinking the blood of another sapient creature.

The other Traitor Legions were disgusted by the spectacle, but none moreso than Sanguinius himself. As he saw what had become of his sons, despair overwhelmed him, and his mind, already weakened by the thirst he suffered himself, broke. For the rest of the Heresy, the Angel remained in his quarters, slipping deeper and deeper into insanity, trapped in an imaginary world where his sons were still the noble champions they had been before he sold their souls to Chaos in return for a false salvation. Azkaellon and the rest of the Sanguinary Guard worked hard to conceal their father's state from the rest of the Legion and their allies in rebellion. They claimed that the Primarch had been wounded in the battle of Isstvan and was recovering, sending heralds in his place to the war councils of Guilliman's cohorts.

The Flesh Tearer roared his hatred at the skies as he slew another of the plague-wrecked creatures that infested the ruins of Isstvan. A red haze had descended upon him in the wake of the death of his brothers – the last of his brothers, now that those whom he had once called such had turned upon him. The self-control and discipline he had so hardly learned at the side of the World Eaters, and which had served him so well in the nightmarish battles that had followed the initial bombardment, had vanished altogether when he had woken up, alone and alive, atop his brothers' corpses. Pain, not merely physical, but lodged deep within his soul, was driving him on, forcing him to keep moving, to keep destroying those who served the dark powers that had brought him so low. His every awake moment was filled with the echoes of the dead, and his dreams, when he succumbed to exhaustion when he stood, were naught but fire and ruin.

A sound dragged his attention away from the slaughter of his latest victim. He knew that sound, but it seemed impossible that it be there. Ceramite boots, crushing the rubble of what had once been a beautiful city underfoot. He turned to face the newcomer, and hatred soared within his veins when he saw that it was another Astartes, like those who had betrayed him and killed all of his brothers.

'Who are you ?!' he bellowed. Part of him was screaming at him, telling him to attack, to rend this warrior limb from limb. No one remained on this blasted world that deserved to him, let alone the Flesh Tearer himself. But he held his hand. He didn't recognize the dull gray color of the stranger's armor, nor the sigil on his shoulder, although he felt he should. The weight on his thoughts was obstructing his memory, pressing on his mind and demanding retribution for all that had been done – to him and, more importantly, to his brothers.

'Nassir Amit, known as the Flesh Tearer, once of the Blood Angels,' said a voice that was at once full of strength and yet not without warmth. 'My name is Alexis Pollux, and I am here at the behest of Malcador the Sigillite. I have come for you, brother.'

And with these words, the Flesh Tearer remembered who his was, and what he had been.

Without the Primarch to lead them, the Blood Angels soon fell to the Thirst. Now that they knew how it could be sated, and the pleasure they experienced from doing so, any second spent enduring it was intolerable. While the Iron Hands and Ultramarines advanced on Terra, the Blood Angels attacked hive-world after hive-world, feasting upon their population and filling their ships' holds with slaves for later consumption. Those of the Blood Angels with psychic abilities learned how to channel the unholy energies that coursed through them during the act of blood drinking, and became capable of rending the veil of reality apart to summon the Neverborn servants of Ruin. Corrupt Chaplains of the Ultramarines taught those of the Ninth Legion of the Dark God Slaanesh, and worship spread across the Blood Angels – a way to rationalize the atrocities they committed by making them a divine duty and not decadent indulgence of their flesh's weakness. So it was that the Blood Angels made the transition from Astartes to Chaos Marines, while their Primarch refused to face the gravity of his errors.

The Rise of the Daemon

'And the scions of decadence and perversion, who had once been the proudest and noblest servants of the God-Emperor, came to join in the final battle. But they did not bring their blades to bear at the walls of the Palace : instead, consumed by madness and evil, they turned upon the people of Holy Terra, and the Lord of War wept in horror as they fed upon those who could not defend themselves.'

Excerpt from The Canticle of the Dead

At long last, after years of bloody battle across the galaxy, the war came to Terra. The Throneworld hadn't been untouched since the Heresy had been declared : traitors had attempted to bring it down from within, and spies and assassins had fought a terrible conflict in the shadows while Perturabo raised his mighty walls. Nonetheless, this would be the first time since the proclamation of Unity that open warfare was brought to Terra.

All of the Traitor Legions were represented at the Siege, though few were there in full strength. The Space Wolves and the White Scars had scattered across the galaxy, to do as they wished in the wake of their respective Primarchs' disappearance. Still, the forces at Guilliman's command outnumbered the loyalists greatly. But numbers wouldn't carry the battle for the fate of all Mankind. Demigods fought on the walls of the Imperial Palace, and it would be their presence, as much as the valor of their sons, that would determine which side would emerge victorious.

With the two fleets waging war in orbit, the Traitor Legions and their allies came down on Terra in a rain of steel and sorcerous lightning. Each force had received precise orders, and was part of a carefully wrought plan conceived by Guilliman and Dorn together. When Perturabo studied the original designs of the Arch-Traitor after the end of the Siege, the Lord of Iron admitted that the battle would most likely have turned against the loyalists had things occurred according to it. But it did not, for Guilliman, despite all the dark knowledge granted to him by the Chaos Gods, had forgotten the true nature of all those who had gathered under his banner. He had forgotten that followers of Chaos are much like the gods that own them : selfish creatures, who will always put their own agenda over any common cause.

When the Blood Angels arrived on Terra, without their Primarch to lead them – for even now Sanguinius remained in his quarters, having only deigned show himself for the final war council – they did not follow their orders. Instead of converging on the Imperial Palace, they turned on Terra's people, their martial pride entirely consumed by the Thirst. The billions of innocents that Perturabo had coldly chosen to leave defenseless became the playthings of the corrupt Legionaries, and blood flowed as they drank from all who crossed their path. The rage of the Blood Angels' allies at this betrayal was great, and to this day many Chaos Marines still carry grudges against the Ninth from the Siege, remembering the brothers they lost in fights where the Blood Angels were supposed to support them.

But while the Blood Angels did not follow Guilliman's orders, their actions weren't entirely useless to the traitors. Beyond the damage done to enemy morale, daemons began to manifest from the planet-wide orgy of reckless sensations. Entire hosts of the Prince of Excess incarnated on Terra, and though most Neverborn joined the Blood Angels in their debauch, thousands attacked Imperial positions, driven by unknowable urges and pacts. In the Terra Apocrypha, a Keeper of Secrets called Kyriss is mentioned as one of the Daemon Lords who led such an assault on the Psykana Arcana, feasting on the souls of over three thousand psykers before it was destroyed by a group of Thousand Sons.

The slaughter of innocents also had another consequence. Horus Lupercal, who so far had been leading the battle from within the Palace's walls, saw the depredations of his brother's Legion through a thousand pic-feeds. While Perturabo had enough self-control to ignore the atrocities taking place outside, the Warmaster was not so calm. Enraged, he left the command center to the Iron Lord and went straight for the ramparts. There, he began to slay traitors by the dozens, using his warhammer Worldbreaker and the legendary Talon of Horus. All the while, he roared for his brother to come and face him, so that he may answer for his Legion's crimes.

Aboard the Red Tear, Sanguinius heard his brother's call. Where all else had failed, Horus' voice pierced through the fog that had claimed his mind, and the Angel came to Terra to face the one who had loved him most. With only his Sanguinary Guad at his side, Sanguinius met Horus at the Eternity Gate, and the two Primarchs were locked in mortal combat. Today, frescoes on this very emplacement depict the epic duel that was fought between the fallen Angel and the Warmaster.

It had been believed, first in jest during the Great Crusade and then with all too much seriousness, that Horus and Sanguinius were each other's match when it came to single battle, as the greatest of the Primarchs. Angron was another contender for that title, but the lord of the World Eaters was not on Terra yet, and so only Horus could face the Angel. Yet as the duel raged on, it became obvious to all observers that Sanguinius had grown weaker since he had turned his back on the Emperor's light. His moves, while still far quicker than any Legionary's, were slow and hesitant compared to the deadly grace he had once displayed. His face, once so noble and proud, was transfixed in an expression of mute agony. After several minutes of conflict, Horus finally brought his brother down, shattering his sword to pieces with a mighty strike of Worldbreaker. Before he could deal the final blow, however, the Warmaster saw the face of his brother – looking up at him in despair and horror. For a fraction of a second, he remembered Sanguinius as he had been, and the memory stayed his hand – a fatal mistake. In that moment where destiny stood still on a blade's edge, the Lord of Angels sold his soul for the third and final time.

A terrible voice sounded in Sanguinius' skull as the haze receded and the true horror of what he had done was revealed to him at last. It was loud enough to drown the screams of his conscience, to blind him to the image of his brother standing above him, warhammer stopped mid-motion, a look of utter surprise and faint, disbelieving hope on his face. It came from all around him, and from within as well. It was beautiful and horrifying at once. Its promises were the quintessence of truth and the greatest of all lies.

I will end it all.

I will give you back everything you want.

I will make all of your dreams true …

You just have to do this little thing for me first …

Something broke within Sanguinius. He couldn't bear it anymore. He had thought that he was strong once; that he could face the truth and carry on. He had been wrong. He was weak. He had fallen, and now all that remained was to fall even further down. The Thirst was too strong, the horror too great. He wanted it to end, but he knew, without knowing how, that death would not release him. There was only one way for him to be free …

He turned his back on the truth, and embraced the lie.

The Angel screamed his last as the Daemon's fangs tore through his brother's throat. Blood flowed down his throat, rich and potent, loaded with the untold promises of a better future, of all the potential that died in that single moment. Future glories burned as the life of Horus Lupercal was drained by the monster that had once been his brother. Images flared in Sanguinius' mind, and he saw his brother's life pass behind his eyes. Such nobility. Such pride, too. Most of all … such love. Horus had loved him, before all had started to fall apart.

The Daemon screamed as his wings started to change. Their white feathers became purple, and he felt his very core being altered as the stolen life of his brother spread through him, giving him strength. He could feel, all around him, the souls of the millions of mortals his sons were killing to slake the Thirst that could never be sated. They passed through him, consumed to fuel his transformation. He was no longer mortal, as much as a Primarch could be. He was more now, and less at the same time. He had become a principle of being, a creature of thought over matter.

His perceptions began to blur as new planes of existence, which he had only glimpsed before, were fully revealed to him. For one glorious moment, he saw everything as gods did, and the sight exalted and horrified him in equal measure …

And then a veil fell upon him, as the Dark Prince kept his word. The truth vanished from his sight, and the lie he had so dearly clung to enveloped him like a mortuary shroud. Madness descended, and it would never leave him again.

Horus' death nearly broke his Legion apart. Thousands of Legionaries screamed in rage, sorrow and denial, and Abaddon, First Captain of the Sixteenth Legion, gave the order to charge, to reclaim their father's body and destroy the monster that had killed him. He was held back, both by his brothers of the Mournival and the unwavering command of Perturabo. With hatred burning in their souls, the Sons of Horus held their positions. But even so, they were faltering, doubt and dread filling their hearts in the aftermath of their Primarch's demise. Sanguinius had remained on the front-lines, laughing madly as he alterned between tenderly cradling his brother's corpse and butchering any loyal Space Marine that crossed his field of vision. Worse, the Blood Angels had felt their Primarch's ascension to daemonhood, and rushed to the walls of the Imperial Palace in a disorganized horde, eager to taste the blood of their cousins and experience even a shadow of what Sanguinius had.

And then, just as all hope seemed to be lost, the forces of the Third and Eighth Legions arrived. Like vengeful angels, the Night Lords fell upon their debased kin, striking the Blood Angels in the back as they advanced on the Imperial Palace. Given fresh courage by their allies' arrival, the four greatest Sons of Horus, the legendary Mournival, struck out at the one who had slain their father and liege. Together, they ripped out Sanguinius' black heart and shattered the remnants of his mortal frame, casting his essence into the Sea of Souls, moments before being forced back anew by the other Traitor Legions, who sought to defeat these champions while they were still weakened from the titanic battle they had just fought.

With Sanguinius' destruction, the Blood Angels fell, struck by horrible agony as they shared their Primarch's experience through the bond they all shared with him. The Ninth Legion was on its knees, and the loyalists took full advantage of it, slaying thousands of the Slaaneshi traitors in mere hours. When Guilliman fell, the Blood Angels were among the quickest to flee, and many Chaos Marines have raised the hypothesis that this is because they were already running before the Arch-Traitor's death. Nevertheless, by the time the Traitor Legions were on the run, Terra was a smoking wasteland, filled with the scent of blood and the cries of the dying. To the loyal Legionaries that walked its surface, the Siege of Terra definitely did not feel like a victory. The fact that, before fleeing, the Blood Angels had been able to steal away Horus Lupercal's corpse only compounded that feeling in the Sons of Horus' minds.

The Echoes of Blood

Even ten thousand years after the Siege, the trauma inflicted by the Ninth Legion to the Throneworld remains. Despite the many exorcisms performed by the most powerful psykers and most devout priests of the Imperium, the people of Terra still have nightmares of that terrible event. Most of those who suffer from them forget them as they wake up, the physical nearness of the God-Emperor enough to shelter their souls from the darkness. But there are those who remember their nightmares, and are slowly driven insane by the horrific visions, as Slaanesh's touch slowly spreads into their heart.

Several hundreds Inquisitors of the Ordo Vigilus are permanently stationed on Terra, searching for those unfortunate souls and taking them off-world for execution (as, per a rule that is due to religious symbolism as much as to esoteric precaution, shedding blood on Terra is forbidden). Even those who remain pure in front of the dark dreams are afflicted with an instinctive distrust of all Legionaries, for they remember in their very soul what the Blood Angels did to their ancestors.

The Echoes are especially strong on the ground where Sanguinius slew Horus. A cathedral to the Emperor was built on the very spot, filled with homages to the First Warmaster, and the prayers to his memory haven't stopped once in ten thousand years. Despite this, any soul sensitive enough can feel the darkness beneath the church's floor. Pilgrims believe that Horus's shadow yet protects the Imperium, and the Ecclesiarchy encourages this belief, claiming that this is the reason why Sanguinius remains in the Eye, never leaving it in ten millenia. For all that the Inquisition knows, this may very well be true, and as the Echoes of Blood grow stronger and the forty-first millenium reaches its end, even the most pragmatic logician finds himself praying for the help of the First Primarch.

The Post-Heresy

'Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew,
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded, though immortal.'

Extract from the Terra Apocrypha

With Guilliman dead and the Sea of Souls roaring in fury, the Traitor Legions fled the Sol system. The Ultramarines, having recovered the body of their master, retreated straight to the Ruistorm, where the daemon-haunted remnants of Ultramar would provide them cover from the Imperium's retribution. As for the rest of the Traitor Legions, although they would ultimately end up in the Eye of Terror, each followed its own path to this place of damnation. For the Blood Angels, led by Azkaellon, this path brought them first to Baal. Why the Commander of the Sanguinary Guard directed his fleet there rather than straight to the Eye, where their Daemon Primarch was waiting, is unclear, but it was a move that would serve the Ninth Legion well.

The Blood Angels stripped their fortresses on Baal's moons of weapons, ammunition and gene-seed, and nearly emptied the planet itself of life, filling their ships' holds with human livestock. They also found someone they hadn't expected : Fabius Bile, once Chief Apothecary of the Emperor's Children. Believed to have died in the Bleeding Wars that had pitted his Legion against the Dark Eldars, Fabius had survived his captivity, but the experience had changed him beyond recognition, tearing out the mask of the healer and revealing the insane genius that lurked beneath. Bile sought to understand the genetic work that made the Astartes into what they were, and when he had learned that the Blood Angels had claimed the corpse of a Primarch, the possibilities such material represented had made him come to Baal, confident that the Legion would go back there sooner or later.

Azkaellon met Fabius, who had come alone aboard a stolen and now crashed Eldar ship. Their exchange is lost to history, but the Commander agreed to bring the Apothecary with him to the Eye of Terror, where his Sorcerers told him that Sanguinius waited for them. As for access to Horus' remains, Bile would have to wait for the Daemon Primarch's choice in the matter. Fabius accepted the offer, and during the Blood Angels' journey to the Eye, began to experiment on wounded Blood Angels, forgotten by Apothecaries that now cared little for their former duties. Those who survived his experiments would form the base of Bile's own warband, choosing to follow this strange Apothecary rather than commanders who had left them to die slowly of their wounds. A few Apothecaries, who had spearheaded the research into a cure that was now all but forgotten, also approached the son of Fulgrim, sharing with him the knowledge of gene-forging they had accumulated during the Great Crusade.

Finding the world where Sanguinius had reappeared wasn't easy. It took several decades of realspace time before the Ninth Legion was reunited with its Primarch. It was during this quest that the Imperial Fists made their attempt at breaking free of the Iron Cage only to be humbled by Perturabo's defenses, causing the Seventh Legion to shatter when Sigismund turned against Dorn in the aftermath. At first, the Legion was delighted to have found Sanguinius at last, and none more so than Azkaellon, who could finally beg his lord's forgiveness for his failure to protect him from the Mournival. However, when the Commander of the Sanguinary Guard met his father in person, he quickly saw that the Angel had not emerged unscathed from his transformation and subsequent destruction.

The madness that had afflicted Sanguinius during the Heresy, and that Azkaellon had believed banished by the battle of Terra and his master's ascension, had returned tenfold. Sanguinius couldn't perceive the universe around him, his perceptions clouded by a veil of illusions. Shocked, Azkaellon and the rest of the Guard decided to keep this a secret from the rest of the Legion. However, Fabius Bile already knew, and while Azkaellon considered simply killing the former Apothecary, Bile made a counter-offer. In return for an audience with the Daemon Primarch so that he may seal his alliance with the Ninth Legion, Bile swore he wouldn't reveal Sanguinius' condition to the rest of the Blood Angels. This oath was sworn and sealed in blood, binding Bile's fate to that of his word.

What happened when Bile met Sanguinius is lost to history, and the subject of much speculation. Whatever the renegade offered, the Daemon Primarch accepted his deal, and the Apothecary was given full access to Horus' corpse, to do with as he pleased. And so, while the Blood Angels got used to their new existence in the Eye of Terror, Fabius Bile worked to unlock the Emperor's secrets. Ultimately, he succeeded in cloning Horus Lupercal, creating a horde of malformed simulacras and a handful of viable Legionaries. This act was the one that gave Fabius his title of Primogenitor.

The man – wasn't he more than a man ? He couldn't remember … - looked up from the chessboard again, staring at the angel sitting in front of him across the table. The angel was impossibly beautiful, and the man felt like weeping in joy simply by looking at his face. He wanted nothing more than to keep playing, to relish in the pleasure of the angel's company forever. And yet, there was something tugging at the edge of his mind, a distant memory that he couldn't quite remember. It prevented him from simply enjoying the instant, constantly attempting to drag him toward the past …

'You …' he began to say, as realization finally dropped him. An image flashed in his mind – the angel before him at his feet, looking up at him. Only it wasn't an angel. It was a daemon wearing an angel's skin, and its fangs had tore his throat and drunk his blood. Rage flowed through him like a lava flow, and he hurled himself at the creature in front of him, hands aimed at its throat. 'You killed me !'

Something blurry passed in front of his face, and he had a moment to watch his own beheaded corpse fall to the ground in a clash of hastily assembled power armor before blackness surrounded him.

Sanguinius tipped the head over with a foot, watching it in silence for a few seconds, before turning away from it, and walking toward the next room, where another image of his beloved brother waited for him. Perhaps this time, it would work. Perhaps this time, his brother would love him.

With these new forces under his command, Bile called upon the second part of his bargain with Sanguinius. At the Primarch's order, thousands of Blood Angels joined the former Apothecary in what would be known as the first Black Crusade in the Imperial archives, and the Clone Wars to the Legions involved in it. Cadia, one of many worlds fortified by the Iron Warriors, was the first victim of this attack. The Imperial Commander of the planet had been corrupted by Slaaneshi cults, and led half the planetary garrison to rebel against those who had remained loyal, opening the Warp corridor to the forces of the Arch-renegade.

With the fall of Cadia, the Blood Angels forces were able to conquer dozens of systems, forcing the Iron Warriors to call upon the help of the Sons of Horus and Emperor's Children. During the long, bloody conflict, the cloned Astartes of Fabius began to carve their legend, creating the infamous 'Black Legion' that, to this day, continue to taunt the Sons of Horus with its very existence. Although billions of civilians died to the Blood Angels' depredations during the Clone Wars, the issue was never in doubt. The Blood Angels faced the might of three combined Legions, and the batch of twisted monstrosities created by Fabius could not balance such odds. In the end, however, the death blow to the Black Crusade came from within its own ranks, as would so often be the case in the future. The War of Woe had begun between the Blood Angels and the Imperial Fists, starting off the Legion Wars that still rage in the Eye of Terror ten thousand years later. Azkaellon, speaking with Sanguinius' authority, called back most of the Blood Angels forces under Fabius' command, leaving him defenseless against an assault led by the Primarch of his former Legion himself. His cloning facilities destroyed, the Arch-renegade had no choice but to flee for his life with his few remaining servants.

The most ironic thing is that it was under Bile's orders that the genetic facilities of the Imperial Fists were attacked, to gather more varied genetic material for his twisted experiments. But despite this setback, his mad genius would continue to serve him well in the Underworld. To this day, he is a powerful Chaos Lord in the Eye, with warriors of all the Traitor Legions serving under his command, scouring the Eye and the Imperium for whatever their dark master desires. All Legions trade with him for his knowledge, bartering goods and spoils of war in return for access to his facilities, where new Chaos Marines are created out of infant slaves and offered gene-seed.

As for the Ninth Legion, with the end of the War of Woe came the revelation of Sanguinius' mental state to his Legion. It is said that Bile was responsible, as revenge for the destruction of his clones of Horus, which he thought would help him restore the lore lost during the Clone Wars, and to bring more warriors under his banner. Whether this is true, or just another sin laid at the foot of the Arch-renegade of which he is, for once, innocent, is a fact known only to his own twisted mind.

Thrar Hraldir looked through the occulus, boiling with rage as the image of the daemon world disappearing as the ship left the system. No. Not left. Ran. He had been forced to run, after the madman who called himself Primogenitor had showed just how much concern he had for the lore Thrar had brought to him, seeking a partnership. It had seemed so obvious to him : both Bile and himself sought to unravel the mystery of the Emperor's genetic work. Surely by working together they would achieve their respective ends more quickly. But he had underestimated the depths of pride and self-delusion to which the former Apothecary of the Emperor's Children had sunk. Bile would not allow for anyone other than himself to have access to the secrets of the Master of Mankind – his arrogant genius would not allow for anything like a colleague, and Thrar would not lower himself before the renegade.

Vengeance would be his for this affront, he swore, and cold ice flowed through his veins as he refocused his thoughts, taking the fire out of the anger that had threatened to awaken the beast within him. He turned to his vox officer, and ordered the transmission of a certain audio file on all frequencies. For all of Bile's admitted genius in the matters of genetic perversion, the son of Fulgrim lacked either interest or talent in the more mundane aspects of technology. It had been easy to hack into the systems of his armor and extract hours of logs, including a very interesting conversation between Fabius and the leader of Sanguinius' bodyguards. Let see what would happen once the Blood Angels knew just why their Primarch had spent most of the War of Woe on their homeworld.

He would need to run far, Thrar mused. The consequences of his message would be far-reaching, and he did not doubt that many would seek to punish him for it, should its origin ever be revealed. The Eye had many places to hide, but he doubted one could hide from what could very well be an entire Legion, if things went truly against him. Besides, the mutagenic energies of the Warp were stronger than anywhere else here, and while studying their effects was fascinating, he doubted he would be able to endure them long enough to find what he wanted. No, he and his Wolf Brothers needed to leave the Eye, but that wasn't a problem for him : he had learned several paths in and out of the Warp Storm. That left the question of his destination … Perhaps, the Wolf Priest thought, it was time for him to pursue this old goal of his. The Halo Stars seemed like a promising lead on his quest to free his brothers from the beast within their souls.

Such was the egoism of the Blood Angels at this point that they didn't care that their lord was a deranged godling trapped in visions of a false reality, but the Legion's fragile unity was shattered by the truth. Without the fear of Sanguinius' wrath, banished back to the tides of unreality for a hundred years by Rogal Dorn's fist in a cataclysmic mutual destruction, the Blood Angels no longer felt the need to follow any chain of command, and they dispersed across the Eye of Terror and beyond. This was the end of the Blood Angels as a united Legion, and in their place formed a hundred warbands of self-righteous monsters – all as Slaanesh had designed.

The Devil's Crag Incident

In 955.M41, a warband led by the Chaos Lord Dante of the Blood Angels attacked an Imperial world known as Gehenna. With the help of his Sorcerer Mephiston, Dante plunged the Warp currents into turmoil, cutting the planet off any Imperial reinforcements so that he and his troops may plunder it at their leisure. For three years, the Imperium was unable to pierce the veil and reach the planet, despite numerous attempts – Gehenna was an important industrial world, and its loss was affecting productivity on other worlds across several systems. When Navigators finally announced that the Warp had calmed enough to allow passage, the gathered fleet sailed at once, hoping to at least punish the traitors before they could escape.

When they arrived, however, they found no sign of Dante and his warband. Gehenna was a ruin, with no trace at all of its former inhabitants – all gone, and not even a corpse remaining. The Inquisition quarantined the planet and sent search teams, but half of them vanished without a word and the other half never found anything. The only clue is an astropathic message left by Dante before leaving the system. Enraged, the Chaos Lord swears revenge against a being he calls the 'Silent King', without any explanation as to its nature or origins. The Inquisition is still of several minds as to the identity of the Silent King : some believe him to be a rival warlord, other some xenos princeling, while others still think it to be another derogatory name attributed by the traitor to the God-Emperor.

Organization

The Sanguinor, Herald of Sanguinius

A mysterious figure of the Ninth Legion, wearing a golden mask and harboring wings of golden feathers that drip with a drug potent enough to drive a Space Marine mad. In its presence, all those who follow the path of the Dark Prince are driven to kneel and abase themselves, and thoughts of disobedience are impossible. For that reason, the Sanguinor also bears the title of Herald of Sanguinius, as only the fallen Primarch of the Ninth Legion was once said to possess such inhuman charisma. The Sanguinor is always accompanied by a retinue of Blood Angels, who are so awed by his presence that they do not succumb to the infighting that usually follows any gathering of such narcissist warriors. The masked warlord uses them to speak in his name, although whether this is because he cannot speak for his own or because of some inflated ego remains unknown. The Inquisition has recorded appearances of this individual all over the galaxy, and the Thousand Sons have confirmed that he has also been present in the Eye of Terror. The idea that he can bypass the Iron Cage at will is a disquieting one, and the Inquisition has been on the hunt for a very long time. Appearances of the Sanguinor are reason enough to call for powerful forces, for he never shows up without being involved in some grand plan, such as a Black Crusade or the recovery of a powerful Chaos artifact. Never has the Sanguinor been at the command of any such fell design, but he has allied himself with Chaos Lords from all Traitor Legions at some point, as well as some mortal warlords with the Dark Prince's favor.

Only the best warriors of the loyal Legions can hope to best the Sanguinor in combat, for he is very skilled with the daemon blade he carries on the battlefield. However, each time the Sanguinor was reported to have been defeated, no body was recovered, and the golden warrior appeared once more at another place in space and time. The Ordo Malleus has many theories as to the nature of the Sanguinor. Some believe him to be just another Chaos Champion, favored enough by the Dark Prince that he is brought back from the dead every time he falls in battle. Others claim that it is a title, that the golden mask is passed from one wearer to another when the previous incumbent dies. Some even believe him to be a Daemon Prince, which would explain his apparent immortality and strange powers, but contradict reports from the bound psykers who have been near him. A persistent theory, apparently popular among the Blood Angels themselves, is that he is a shard of Sanguinius himself, the part of the Daemon Primarch that has accepted the truth of his situation and embraced the Dark Prince wholly. Incarnated within the flesh of a Blood Angel, this shard, they whisper, will one day unite the Legion again and lead it to unprecedented glory. This dreadful possibility, however unlikely, is cause enough for many Inquisitors to have dedicated themselves to the creature's destruction. The Grey Knights themselves owe a debt of blood to the creature, and its name is listed among those of the Chapter's foes in their fortress of Titan.

Of the Three Hundred Companies that once made the Ninth Legion a peerless fighting force, only a pale shadow remains. The Blood Angels are fractured beyond anyone's ability to unite by their own pride and the knowledge of their Primarch's madness. The grievous losses they took during the Heresy and the subsequent wars in the Eye have much reduced their number, and this combined with their arrogance tend to make them only associate with each other in small groups. But while one may be forgiven for thinking that this would make them any less of a threat to the Imperium, to believe so is a great mistake. Although Slaanesh has all but destroyed the Legion that has dedicated itself to him, the Blood Angels have been reforged into a powerful tool of corruption, capable of gathering hordes of mortal slaves far beyond what the other Traitor Legions can achieve. Even within the Eye, where millions of Chaos Marines pay fealty to the Ruinous Powers, the Blood Angels remain a power to contend with, their alliance with Fabius Bile ensuring them a steady supply of fresh recruits.

Despite their small numbers, the Blood Angels have almost as many warlords in their ranks as the other Traitor Legions, and legends of their fell deeds are told across the length and breadth of the Imperium despite the Inquisition's best efforts to quell them. The sons of Sanguinius make for good commanders of the damned, and are capable of drawing large numbers of worshipers to their banner, all while being individually formidable warriors. Hundreds of them – only a fraction of a Legion's force, but enough to be a nightmare for the Imperium – have left the Eye and its endless battles entirely behind. They hide amongst the Imperium's borders, ruling over pirates and renegades. These isolated warriors are beacons to the scum of the Imperium, gathering them and making them into something approaching an effective fighting force. More than once, the Imperial Navy has been forced to take action after an increase in piratical activity in one sector only to learn that a son of Sanguinius was responsible for it, his presence forcing the pirates to greater risks in order to sate their master's endless appetite.

The Glamour of Sanguinius

During the Great Crusade, Sanguinius proved to have inherited one of the Emperor's traits. Like the Master of Mankind, his appearance was fluid, changing according to his moods and those of his observers, but always magnificent. Kings and overlords who had ruled their worlds with an iron fist for decades would weep at the beauty of Sanguinius, and command their armies to lay down their weapons and welcome the Imperium. Many of the Blood Angels shared the handsomeness of their Primarch, though none of them possessed his shifting abilities. That changed after their fall to Chaos, when the dark blessings of Slaanesh wove their way into their genetic coding. Soon after the Blood Angels retreated to the Eye of Terror in the wake of their father's destruction at the Gates of the Imperial Palace, a new ability spread amongst the Ninth Legion. It is said that a part of Sanguinius' daemonic essence was distilled into his sons upon his defeat, and that it granted them part of his powers. Even the Blood Angels created now, ten thousand years after the Angel's first defeat, still inherit that gift from the gene-seed that turned them into Chaos Marines.

Once this ability manifest, the Blood Angels project a psychic field that alters the image any observer sees when looking upon them. They appear to be beautiful, pristine warriors clad in perfect armor engraved with the suggestive sigils of Chaos. The very idea of attacking such a being seems blasphemous to the unguarded psyche, and it isn't unheard of for veterans of the Imperial Guard to remain motionless even as one of Sanguinius' sons drain them of blood, a beatific smile on their face.

This effect is known as the Glamour of Sanguinius, and it is one of the greatest tools of the Blood Angels in their infiltration of Imperial society. Only psykers or individuals warded against such manipulations can see the Blood Angels as they really are : hideous, gaunt monsters, whose eyes burn with their unholy desires. Powerful individuals can rip off the Glamour entirely, allowing those around them to share the truth of the traitors' nature. This act always enrages the Blood Angels, for they are the first to fall to the Glamour, and do not like to be deprived of their beautiful lie and forced to face the reality of their monstrosity.

Homeworld

The Mausoleum of the Faithful

Unlike the other Legions that purged their own ranks of loyalist elements, the Imperium knows which Companies of the Blood Angels were martyred at Isstvan, although the source of that knowledge has been lost to time. After the Heresy, a mausoleum was built on Baal, amidst the ruins of the Blood Angels' fortresses. There, the name of every faithful Blood Angel is engraved upon adamantium, that it may be remembered unto eternity. It is a secret place, known only to a handful of Inquisitors and Legionaries. Beyond the fact that the servants of Chaos would obviously attempt to defile it should they ever learn of its existence, it also serves as a repository for all the knowledge accumulated on the Ninth Legion. Records from the Great Crusade are kept there alongside accounts of the myriad horrors committed by the Blood Angels since their fall, kept locked in stasis behind dozens of purity seals until an Inquisitor with the correct authorization codes can bring them back into reality for a brief moment. This has proven a valuable source of information to the members of the Ordo Malleus in their eternal struggle against the servants of the Dark Prince. The Mausoleum is maintained and defended by servitors and automated defenses. It is said that on occasion, the ghost of one of the Blood Angels fallen on Isstvan III will appear to guide a visitor through its labyrinthine depths and to the archive relevant to their quest.

During the galactic cleansing that followed the end of the Roboutian Heresy, Baal was destroyed by the Sons of Horus. After that, many of the Blood Angels' strongholds in the Eye of Terror were lost during the Legion Wars, and when the Legion shattered, they lost even more to opportunistic attacks from the other Legions. Other worlds were abandoned by their Astartes masters as they left, seeking new horizons to defile. Now, apart from a few daemon worlds too deeply touched by Slaanesh to be contested, the only true stronghold of the Ninth Legion is the Daemon World where their Primarch dwells. There, reality is a slave to the delusions of those touched by Sanguinius, presenting images of their deepest and darkest desires. The name of this cursed place is unknowable to any with any shred of sanity left – even the Blood Angels themselves, who can feel a connection to it no matter how far they run, cannot conceive of it.

Since the end of the War of Woe, only the Sanguinary Guard permanently remain with their father on the Legion's homeworld. Led by Azkaellon, who has remained loyal to his father despite everything, they protect their lord from intruders and inconvenient truths alike. To this day, Sanguinius lingers there, lost to the Glamour, his power such that reality itself twists around him to conform to his visions. There, he relives the glorious days of the Great Crusade, as well as visions of the galaxy in which he remained true to the Emperor, while noble Horus was the one to succumb to the temptations of Chaos instead. However, according to a recorded vision, experienced and written down by Magnus himself, his brother does not know any peace in his exile in the underworld. The lingering remains of his conscience occasionally try to wake him up gathering great storms of nightmare that plunge the entire daemon world into war as the Sanguinary Guard and whatever allies they can find fight back ghosts of the Legion's past and vengeful, fiery angels. It appears that Slaanesh lied when the Prince of Chaos offered Sanguinius a peaceful lie in return for Horus' life – but then again, such is the way of the Powers of Ruin.

Beyond the Sanguinary Guard, their demented Primarch and the daemons that attend them, the daemon world is also the resting place of the souls of all who die while victim to the Glamour. Their shades are eternal slaves to daemons and Sorcerers, populating cities of illusions, trapped forevermore in a spell of lies until their essence is consumed by the very planet. This energy is used to empower the magic that Slaanesh weaved into the planet in order for it to be of use to his dark designs, despite the mental state of its master. While most daemons worlds in the Eye of Terror are somewhat anchored in space, in that a corrupt Navigator of a fell Sorcerer having already visited them can usually find their way back to them, the homeworld of the Ninth Legion flickers into existence across the Warp Storm, never appearing the same place twice. When it appears near the Eye's borders, entire systems can be plunged into its baleful shadow, spreading madness and corruption. Sages and seers alike have tried to establish a pattern to its appearances, but have so far failed to obtain anything of use. On several occasions, Inquisitors have successfully claimed to know the location of the next manifestation of what has come to be called the Harbinger Star. Each time, however, they have been revealed to be secret agents of Slaanesh, with links to the mysterious Sanguinor, and their 'revelations' were only used to bring and trap faithful servants of the God-Emperor on the worlds soon to be touched.

The Predators of the Webway

While the dark kin of Commoragh count amongst the Imperium's most bitter enemies, it is not unheard of for the Craftworld Eldar to join hand with Imperial forces against a common menace. Even if the xenos are not to be trusted, their knowledge of the galaxy far surpasses our own, and the Inquisition has even been known to forgive Imperial officers taking the liberty to deal with the Eldar on their own – with only minimal punishment.

However, the Lost and the Damned have a vastly different view of the galaxy's oldest living species. Eldar are the enemy of Chaos, and all disciples of Ruin revel in bringing misery to the aliens – and none more than the devotees of Slaanesh. The Youngest God, master of the Blood Angels, was born when the Eldar empire fell, condemning the entire species to a slow extinction and an unavoidable damnation in the Warp's darkest tides. For ten thousand years the xenos have denied the hunger of She-Who-Thirsts, trapping their souls into spirit stones or staving off their deaths by offering the pain of others to the Dark Prince. And amongst the Blood Angels, it is considered a sacred duty to help accelerate this passage into oblivion. To the debased sons of Sanguinius, the blood of the Eldar is the sweetest wine, made rich by the intensity of every moment of an Eldar's long life, and many are ready to go to any length to taste it. Entire warbands have dedicated themselves to this hunt, and stalk the corrupted paths of the Webway – a galactic network of gates and portals – in search of accesses to Eldar Craftworld. Along daemonic hordes, they gather information on the twisted paths of the Labyrinthine Dimension, their minds clearer than any of their kind outside of its dark confines. It is believed by the Inquisition that the Webway somehow clears their spirits, enabling them to think and reason as the warriors they once were rather than the beasts they have become.

But when, at long last, a passage to a Craftworld is found – an event of tremendous rarity, for such ways are well guarded by the fearful xenos – all their calm and poise is thrown to the winds. Billions of Eldar have died under the assault of the Dark Prince's ravenous hordes, and paths corrupted by the Warp can never be made clean again. The mysterious Harlequins have spent many centuries battling the Blood Angels in the Webway, luring them away from paths leading to their Craftworld kin. Meanwhile, Seers will journey far to seal existing portals they have foretold are at risk of being discovered by the Great Enemy, or conceal precious records from its servants. But it is a losing battle, and ultimately, the Eldar are doomed to extinction – and an eternity within the claws of the goddess their ancestors' folly brought into nightmarish existence.

Beliefs

Astorath, the Arch-Priest of Slaanesh

Among the few Blood Angels who do not call the Eye of Terror their home, none are more dangerous than Astorath, the so-called Arch-Priest of Slaanesh. Once a Chaplain of the Ninth Legion, he has completely embraced the teachings of the Dark Prince, and strives to spread them to as many naive souls as possible. For millenia, he has journeyed across the galaxy, using stolen ships or the paths through the Warp. Wherever he goes, cults dedicated to the Prince of Excess rise and the faith in the God-Emperor vanes. Unlike his Legion brothers, his devotion to Slaanesh is more religious than practical, and he is one of the worst enemies of the Ordo Hereticus. He is the only recorded Blood Angel never to lose himself to the Thirst, and his self-control allows him to scheme and plot with an ease and scope that wouldn't shame a disciple of the Changer of Ways. While his brothers focus on their own satisfaction and desires, he seeks to increase Slaanesh's influence on the galaxy and his standing in the Great Game of Chaos. Astorath delights in corrupting members of the Ecclesiarchy, using them to spread his corrupt beliefs amongst the masses of the Imperium. His rhetoric relies more on his lies than on his Glamour, allowing him to preach his master's foul ways on the vox, his followers blaring his words from powerful speakers on their war-engines.

Like many of his kin, Astorath displays the wings of his Primarch. He fights with a spear sparkling with eldritch light, and psykers have described his presence as a black hole in the fabric of the Sea of Souls, a gateway leading directly to the maw of the Youngest God. All those who die near him, no matter their loyalties, have their souls torn from their corpses and dragged into this abyss, fed to Slaanesh whether they were faithful servants of the Emperor or blood-crazed scions of Khorne. Many agents of the other Chaos Gods have tried to kill Astorath for this, as the Ruinous Powers do not take kindly to being denied the souls they have marked as their own. On the archeotech world of Hell's Hollow, an alliance of warbands from the Imperial Fists, White Scars, Iron Hands and Dark Angels cornered the Arch-Priest and tried to bring him down, only for him to escape through the Warp after killing a dozen of their champions. In their fury, the Chaos Marines laid waste to the entire planet, murdering billions of civilians before turning on each other and tearing themselves apart. Despite the destruction of his cult on the planet, and his failure in achieving whatever goal he had set out for, Astorath was greatly pleased with this outcome.

The Blood Angels are whimsical, egocentric beings, and they are supremely unwilling to cooperate. Each of them believes himself to be the only being of importance in the universe, and to be only second in all of existence to the Dark Prince Himself. The shackles of honor and duty they once placed upon themselves have been replaced by supreme indulgence, and many among them consider the act of drinking blood to be sacred, a way to commune with the divine as well as the supreme experience. With the murder of their own at Isstvan III, the carnage of Isstvan V and the death of Horus, there is no vow remaining that the Legion hasn't broken already, and the Blood Angels see no reason to fear any other transgression.

Blood is primal to whatever passes for culture among the shattered remnants of the Ninth Legion, for it is through its consumption that the sons of Sanguinius can sate the Thirst. However, it is not sacred to them as it is to the Imperial Fists or other Khornate cults. To them, blood is merely the primary way through which they experience sensations beyond the ken of all mortals. During the Great Crusade, blood was the symbol of the genetic purity which they so desperately sought, but now that mutation and an eternity of indulging in their worst excesses have made monsters of them all, those who still remember those days only laugh at how naive they once were. They see themselves a perfection manifest or have long abandoned its pursuit in favor of hedonistic excess.

While the Thirst was initially a curse, a hunger that needed to be sated, now the sons of Sanguinius take pleasure in the myriad variations of experience they taste when indulging their dark urges. In a way, they are similar to drug addicts, incapable of conceiving the world around them in any other way that considering how to obtain their next high. Any human being is a potential meal to them first and foremost, and any use or attachment lays far behind this primary concern. When a Blood Angel grows thirsty, even his most loyal and valuable mortal servants are at risk of becoming their master's next victim, their bloodless corpses discarded after the deed, their existence already forgotten by their fickle lord.

Rafen held aloft the Spear of Telesto. It caught the light of Evangelion's sun, the tear-shaped blade shining like the fires of damnation, and the fist-sized ruby inserted within glowing with the forbidden energies contained within, already reawakening after their long slumber as they sensed the presence of one of Sanguinius' blood. All around him, his followers abandoned the ork corpses they were busy desecrating and raised their own weapons in homage, screaming ecstatically as they beheld the object of the warband's quest. Finally, after decades of searching, he had found it here, on Evangelion, far into the Segmentum Obscurus.

In the crowd of his followers, Rafen saw the face of Ramius Stele, and the expression on it made him laugh. The renegade had believed it to be Akio's fate to claim the weapon, and had been more than a little upset when Rafen had killed his birth-brother and taken leadership of the warband for his own. Too bad for him, Rafen thought. Now that he had found the Spear, he no longer needed the guidance of the wayward Inquisitor. He wasn't going to kill him right now – that would be distasteful, and probably at least a little bit ungrateful too. But once they had tested the Spear's power, once Stele was certain that Rafen had been right – that the ancient weapon was his by right … well, things would be different.

Combat doctrine

'They will come to you in the disguise of an angel, beautiful beyond compare, offering pleasure and illumination and asking only for the slightest price in return. But know this, sons and daughters of the God-Emperor : theirs is a false salvation, for they are naught but daemons in disguise, and the love they speak of is nothing but the lie from which they derive the greatest, sickest pleasure : to see their victims willingly come to them, offering their blood to those who care nothing for their existence beyond a mean to temporarily sate their eternal thirst.'

Entry one-hundredth and sixty-sixth of the Ordo Hereticus' archives about the Blood Angels

Most Blood Angels are content to remain within the Eye of Terror, the heart of their master's power, and to taste the infinite pleasures it has to offer – sensations beyond the ken of the mortal realm, and the blood of beings that have lived for millenia yet know nothing of innocence. There are those, however, with greater ambitions, and they are one of the greatest threats to the Imperium of Man.

When a Blood Angels warband manages to escape the Iron Cage through its ever-shifting paths, there can be few reasons other than to raid any world catching its Chaos Lord's fancy. While other Legions may scheme and plot, spending decades or even centuries carefully preparing the fall of an entire Sector to the Ruinous Powers, most of the Blood Angels are far too self-centered for that. They seek out the most populated and least defended worlds before descending upon them, killing any who oppose them, taking what they want and leaving a ruined world in their wake. Usually, by the time the Imperial retribution arrives, they are long gone, and the planet has to be purged of their taint at an even greater cost in lives. For this reason, Imperial ships on patrol are always on their guard for the slightest rumor, vision or astropathic nightmare concerning the Ninth Legion – it is a lot easier to fight them in the void, where no innocent citizens will be caught in the crossfire. The Night Lords especially hunt down the Blood Angels, for the necessary purges that follow their raids offend the ethics of the sons of Nostramo.

On a rare occasion, though, a Blood Angel warlord will manage to keep his Thirst under control long enough to formulate a plan. These generally take the form of abductions amongst a target world's ruling class. The unfortunate captives are brought before the Chaos Marines, and exposed to his Glamour. Most immediately swear fealty to the creature in front of them, their loyalty to the Emperor forgotten, swept away by the lies of Chaos. They are then sent back to their worlds to spread the word of Slaanesh, creating cults ready for the coming of their masters. Others use their wealth to procure slaves for their masters, or telling them the roads for convoys of Imperial criminals. Those with psychic gifts attempt rituals to tear open the fabric of reality and bring forth the Neverborn minions of Slaanesh – often accompanied by their Astartes counterparts, walking the insane paths of the Warp alongside the daemons. The case of Grendel's World, where an entire planet was lost despite the quick dispatch of the Eighth Legion, is infamous : after years of investigation, the Inquisition retraced the entire daemonic incursion to a single woman, who believed that the first ritual would bring forth the perfect lover that stalked her dreams. Once battle is joined, the Blood Angels fight at the lead of mutant hordes and armies of spellbound followers. While they are capable of keeping a cold head as long as bolts aren't flying, once battle is joined, their minds are too damaged by the Thirst and narcissism for them to have any solid grip on tactic. Sometimes they will charge ahead, leading their troops by example. Other times, they remain in reserve until the final push, to reap all the glory with the least effort. As illustrated the first time they broke free of the Iron Cage, the true threat of the Blood Angels is the legion of cultists and traitors within Imperial ranks. Like their fell masters, these renegades excel at hiding their treachery until it is too late to stop them.

But despite their decadence, the Blood Angels are not to be underestimated. Their devotion to the Dark Prince has granted them heightened senses and speed, and there are all masters of whatever weapon they favor. During the Great Crusade, they were amongst the Imperium's fiercest assault troops, and the gifts of their fell patron have only made them stronger. They are a lesson to the faithful : for all the corruption and soul-ruin that the Warp twists its slaves with, it never renders them useless, for its malevolence spreads far beyond those already under its thrall. Many an Imperial champion has looked past the veil of the Glamour and seen the monster, only to be defeated by what he thought to only be a pompous damned one.

The Sanguinary Marines

Though all the Blood Angels bear the mark of Slaanesh on their flesh, there are those who walk further down the path of ruin that any of their brethren, indulging in their thirst beyond all other pursuits and letting it define their entire existence. While most sons of Sanguinius have at least a modicum of control over the Thirst, seeking to sate it only with the most valuable blood, they gorge themselves relentlessly, without care for the quality of the vitae they drink. These beings are rewarded for their devotion to the Dark Prince's gift to their gene-line, and evolve into something altogether more terrifying than a simple Traitor Marine. They gain great wings, like their sire, but these are not the beautiful feathered appendages of an Angel : instead, they harbor bat-like wings the color of spilled blood. While these wings shouldn't by right be able to lift their massive, armored frame, the power of the Warp allows them to fly. Most of them forgo the use of weapons altogether, using fangs and claws to rend their prey apart, reveling in the sensation of blood splashing on their distorted features.

These Sanguinary Marines, as they are called amongst the servants of the Dark Gods and those of the God-Emperor alike, do not possess the ability to disguise their true nature common to other Blood Angels. All who look upon them know them for the monsters they are. The bones of their skull and jaw are reshaped when they obtain their wings in order to allow their teeth the strength to bite through armor and skin and into the veins beneath. Like the mythical vampyr of Old Earth, they are beasts, hideous monsters that prey upon the weak to sate their dark hungers.

Without the ability that allows their kin to gather devotees, they are forced to hunt for the sustenance they so crave. They form packs, lending their services to Chaos Lords from various Legions in return for a steady supply of blood. Such bargains are struck between the Chaos Lord and the strongest of the Sanguinary Marines – usually the one who can still remember, even if only dimly, what he once was. Those who employ them feed them the scum gathered aboard their ships between raids, and take care not to use them near anyone they ought to take prisoner. While they are regarded with disgust by most, especially among their own Legion, their usefulness as terror and shock troops cannot be denied, and their use is cheap enough that many warlords ignore their corruption and lack of self-control.

Recruitment and Geneseed

Corruption amongst the ranks of the Ninth Legion is rampant. The touch of Slaanesh has rewritten their genetic code, twisting the existing flaws into an expression of that Dark God's principles called, with quite literal simplicity, the Thirst. All Blood Angels display elongated canines, and many of them have all of their teeth changed into fangs, the better to tear at the flesh of their prey. Their omophagea is heavily altered, allowing them to experience the lives of those they drain of blood, reliving decades worth of memories in a single moment. There are theories that they actually need to drink blood in order to counter the degeneration of their genes, but the Blood Angels themselves do it because of the sensations it provides to their debased minds. Wings are also a frequent mutation, with the most obvious example being the Sanguinary Marines. But other Blood Angels display feathered wings instead, and retain the ability to use the Glamour, shrouding themselves in the same illusions as their father. On several occasions, a Blood Angel warlord has claimed to be Sanguinius himself, using the Daemon Primarch's name to gather more deluded slaves to his cause. Whether or not these Chaos Lords believed their own lie remains unknown to the Inquisition. Every Chaos Marine with even a shred of intelligence left can see through the imposture, as many of them remember the time when the true Sanguinius fought amongst mortal men, and even those too young to have fought in the Great Crusade instinctically know that this is not one of their kind's gene-sires. But for most of the human slaves of Chaos, Daemon Primarchs are akin to mythical figures, closest to the fell Gods they worship. Their ignorance make them easy prey for such deceptions, and most never realize that they have been lied to.

The Blood Angels' long association with Fabius Bile has enabled them to perform the transformation from the infants they take from plundered worlds or their chattels of deluded followers with relative efficiency. Those who catch the eye of the few Blood Angels who remain interested in the Legion's future are first tested for physical adequacy, then submitted to several compatibility tests going from the mundane – genetic markers and the like – to the more esoteric, depending on the recruiter's own beliefs. In some cases, hundred of recruits are immersed in the Warp in giant debauches of Neverborn limbs and mortal flesh, and the survivors judged worthy of joining the ranks of Sanguinius' sons. Once chosen, these youths are interred within great sarcophagus, the mechanisms of which will automatically proceed with the implantation of each of the organs necessary to become a Space Marine, each of them harvested on the dead or vat-grown in some deviant laboratory. This process is a lot simpler than the series of complicated procedures required by traditional transformation practiced by loyalist Legions, which seem to be a result of the Blood Angels no longer possessing the patience required to attend to the delicate surgeries themselves, instead delegating their charges to the cold care of machines as much daemon as cold steel. Whatever the nature of those unfortunate souls placed within, by the time they emerge as fully-formed Chaos Marines, all trace of their former identity is gone. Only the Thirst remains.

There are rumors that these dread sarcophagus can turn even full-grown adults into Chaos Marines. Several Inquisitors have been lost investigating this, only for their genes to be discovered in dead Blood Angels. Despite extensive studies, it is still unknown whether this is due to the Blood Angel having slain the Inquisitors and claimed part of their DNA due to some freak mutation, or if the far more horrible possibility is the actual one. The Ordo Hereticus has been investigating this for decades, interrogating captive Blood Angels and dismantling their captured devices while observing all purification protocols, but who know what dread wonders the fallen sons of Sanguinius are capable of in the Warp Storm they call home ?

Leonatos, the Prince of Eidolon

Deep within the Eye of Terror, amidst an eternal vortex in the Warp currents, lie the daemon world of Eidolon. Among the thousands of worlds that were engulfed in the Sea of Souls when Slaanesh arose from the decadence of the Eldar empire, it is unique. Screaming seers tell of it in rhymes and deranged songs, and daemons whisper of it to those foolish enough to hear their treacherous words.

While most worlds in the Eye fall under the dominion of one of the Ruinous Powers, Eidolon is a battlefield, a place eternally contested between the four Dark Gods. Four powerful daemon princes each rule over a slice of the world, and their forces wage eternal war against each other, trying to seize control of the whole planet and knowing full well that none of them will ever win. For the Dark Gods do not care about one more daemon world : all they want is for the fighting between their servants to continue for all eternity. To that end, they pluck the unfortunate lost to the Eye's tide, sparing them annihilation and bringing them to Eidolon, that they may fight and die for the glory of Chaos. Many paths lead to Eidolon, but there is only one way out : to defeat one of the four lords of this fell place, and refuse to take his place. Every other escape is but temporary, and even those who meet their doom during raids beyond Warp portals find their souls dragged back to the daemon world. Death itself cannot free those claimed by Eidolon, and the four masters of the realm are, in truth, as much slaves as the billions that cower in their shadow.

Yet for all that power is ever in flux on Eidolon, one particular lord has risen to prominence in the last centuries. Cultists across the breadth and width of the Imperium whisper his name in their prayers, or sail through the Eye in the hope that they will be chosen to join his armies on the daemon world. Known as Leonatos, he was once a Space Marine, and a Captain of the Blood Angels. His peregrinations through the Eye led him to be trapped on Eidolon, and he sought to escape by defeating the Slaaneshi lord who then ruled over a quarter of the world. But after slaying the powerful daemoness in single combat, Leonatos chose to remain on the daemon world. Since then, his many victories over the champions of the other three Chaos Gods have earned him ascension to daemonhood, and his power has grown greatly, surpassing his rivals for longer than any previous lord in Eidolon's long and bloody history. Although he commands few Blood Angels, those owing him their oath are Chaos Lords in their own right, leading hordes of tens of thousands of cultists and lesser warriors.

On several occasions, Leonatos has used powerful sorcery to tear open a path across the Warp and attack worlds within the Imperium that had fallen under a Warp Storm's shadow. When this happens, daemons and cultists pour forth in equal measure, for Eidolon is home to both, and all kneel before Leonatos' throne. Every time, the Daemon Prince of Slaanesh has led from the front, killing all who opposed him with his mighty daemonic blade, a weapon as twisted and evil as its wielder. Known as the Blade Encarmine, it is rumored to have once been used by Sanguinius himself – although such claims are common among the Traitor Legions. Regardless of its origins, the weapon allows Leonatos to taste the blood of his foes without needing to drink it directly, for despite his transformation into a prince of the Neverborn, Leonatos is still afflicted by the Thirst. His position on Eidolon ensures he never runs out of victims, but the thrill of novelty pushes him to continue his assaults on the outside universe.

Warcry

It is only very rarely that the Blood Angels do not announce their presence to their foe long before they are first seen. The debauched sons of Sanguinius revel in the terror of their enemy almost as much as they do the blood they drink from the still-living bodies of the vanquished, and to see their advance is akin to watching a veritable menagerie of horrors inside the mind of a demented musician. Vast choirs and orchestras of the lost and the damned will sing the praises of an advancing host of the Ninth Legion, calling out their names and deeds. Chained and drugged psykers will send waves of adoration and terror ahead, and great challenges and speeches are broadcast across the vox for the enemy to hear. Not only do this weaken the enemy moral, it also bolsters that of the self-centered, narcissist Blood Angels and their cohorts. Savvy Imperial Commanders will order their forces not to listen to the vox, and blare sirens through every speaker to drown out the sound of the Blood Angels' claims, while preachers with augmented lungs and vocal chords recite prayers to the Emperor. Many an Imperial Guardsman has barely survived an encounter with a Blood Angel warband only to end up deafened by his own side's auditive barrage.

This assault on the senses, however, ends as soon as the lines of the two armies meet. Then the Blood Angels let loose the monster within them as they feed, and can rarely speak at all amidst the orgy of sensations they are enjoying. On the rare occasions that they do, or when they have no occasion to perform their grotesque parades and still wish their foe to know who they are facing, the following warcries have been known to be shouted to the enemy : 'For Sanguinius !', 'Behold the blood of Angels !' and 'Slaanesh thirsts as we do !'

At the gate of Sanguinius' palace, the Sanguinary Guard fought. The skies above them were aflame with war, as energies born from the Daemon Primarch's conflicted mind crushed against one another. Like the philosophers of Old Earth had said : as above, so below. Shades in the form of Astartes came at the line of Azkaellon's warriors, their spectral weapons all too capable of causing damage for all that they weren't real. Here, physics were subject to the one with the strongest will, and even now Sanguinius' will was great indeed. These ghosts – projections of but a fragment of his mind – were proof that the Lord of Angels remained mighty, and worthy of Azkaellon's devotion.

Walking besides the ghosts of the sons Sanguinius had ordered killed were the lesser spirits – the frail humans who had died in the war fought by the demigods who walked amongst them. The Commander didn't think that Sanguinius should feel any guilt for their passing, for they should have been honored to die for him – but, as ever, questioning wasn't his place. His duty, sworn in blood, was to protect his liege, and he and his brothers had held this oath true even as the rest of the Legion had abandonned their Primarch in the name of their petty ambitions. Traitors, all of them.

Time passed as the battle raged on. Azkaellon tore his spear from the ground and shook free the remains of the ghost. Already, the marble floor was regenerating, the cracks closing as if time was flowing in reverse – which it was. With the fall of the last of the echoes, the mind of his Primarch was clear, and his hold on the world was reasserting itself, restoring back to its perfect form. Soon, there would be no trace left of the battle. For a time, the world would be at peace, until the next surge in Sanguinius' psyche. This time, the attackers had been weak, and the Sanguinary Guard had not needed to rely on the help of unworthy allies to defend their lord. This gave Azkaellon some hope : perhaps his lord was growing free of his undue remorse.

The Commander of the Sanguinary Guard lifted his eyes to the tormented heavens. In the distance, he could see the blazing golden light of the Firetide, the psychic flare of the Astronomican reaching even here in the Eye, plunging entire systems into purifying fire and creating the only region of the Eye where the daemon world had never journeyed …

Azkaellon blinked. Was it just a trick of his vision, or his memory playing tricks on him ? It seemed to him that the light was weaker than the last time he had been able to look upon it …

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Iron Hands : The Corroded Souls

Among all those lost to the Dark Gods, it is the Tenth Legion's sons who most clearly bear the mark of their corruption upon their bodies. Their flesh is ravaged by disease, and their minds twisted to the dark designs of the Father of Plague. Them who once scorned the weakness of mortal flesh are now slaves to their own corruption, everything around them corroding and falling apart in the wake of their ruinous aura. Pain is their companion in every moment of their tortured existences, until at least they earn the final blessing of their dark patron and succumb to the unholy plagues running through their blood – only to rise again as the infamous Plague Marines, rightfully feared by all servants of the God-Emperor. Yet in spite of all the countless horrors they have wrought, their fate is perhaps the most tragic of all the Traitor Legions. For deep within the Eye of Terror, it is said that Ferrus Manus still weep for the betrayal that brought him and his sons to this point, his silver hands haunting him with the memory of his failures and sins.

Origins

The planet known in Inquisitorial records as Medusa is located in the Segmentum Obscurus, not far from the Eye of Terror. Its size is enormous, its sky constantly shrouded in blackness and its air cold, yet it remains possible for unaugmented and unprotected humans to walk its surface. A man could walk for centuries on the endless barren plains of Medusa without crossing his own trail. Were it not for the Inquisitorial outposts keeping a constant watch upon it, there would be nothing about the planet indicating its dreadful past, and the horrors that it birthed.

When Mankind first left its cradle to spread out among the stars in the Stellar Exodus, not all the migrant fleets that scattered across the galaxy were equal. Many were refugees, seeking to escape the terrible wars that even then raged upon Terra. Others were ideological groups who wanted to create their own vision of utopia on distant worlds. These had to use whatever vessels they could find, and many were lost to the tides of the Warp, in these days before the light of the Astronomican illuminated the galaxy. Even those who reached their destination generally lost most of the technology they had brought with them in a few decades, reverting to medieval lifestyles. Out of a hundred colony ships leaving Terra, only a few managed to actually build stable, space-faring societies on their new homeworlds. Medusa, however, has a unique story among the worlds seeded by Humanity during the Exodus.

In the annals of the Adeptus Mechanicus, it is written that Medusa was first located in the galactic heavens by the precursors of the order. Its rich mineral resources made it a very tempting prize, and a fleet of sleeper ships was assembled to colonize it. These vessels used primitive Warp technology, without the advantage of Navigators to lead them. Instead, they relied on much slower engines, requiring the colonists to be put into stasis for the countless centuries that the journey would take. During this time, the ships were maintained and the colonists cared for by automated drones. Though several ships were lost during the journey, most of them reached their destination, and their passengers quickly turned the newly christened Medusa into a very efficient station of mining and construction.

The Telstarax

The most obvious remnant of Medusa's glorious past, the Telstarax was a gigantic orbital ring-station circling the entire planet. During the planet's golden age, with most of Medusa's surface being improper to human habitation, it was from the Telstarax that the mining of the planet's resources and the manufacturing of the many products the colonists traded with neighbouring human systems were taking place. Built as it was to surround an already gigantic planet, the station was possibly the greatest such construction ever realized by Mankind, a true testament to the species' ingenuity. It is estimated that hundreds of millions of humans could live within it, and that thousands of ships could anchor at its docks. Great hydroponic farms and moisture recyclers fed the population, which was separated in several city-blocks alongside the ring's circumference.

By the time the Imperium reached Medusa, however, the Telstarax was in ruins, brought low by the very catastrophe which ended the planet's glory. Most of it had fallen to the ground, and the parts that still remained in orbit were a terrible hazard to space navigation near the planet. Not only did the remnants stand in the way of the ships, but ancient weapon arrays remained active, alimented by backup generators which had endured the passage of time with all the success of devices from the Dark Age of Technology. Some adepts of the Mechanicum attempted to board the ruins in orbit and explore them, driven by the lure of ancient technology. Very few of these teams ever returned, and none brought anything worth the great expense of assembling them. Nonetheless, there were still attempts until the Roboutian Heresy – some explorers even spent the entire civil war within the Telstarax, learning of what had transpired only when they emerged, near-starved and mostly mad.

However, this glory was not to last. Long before the Warp Storms of the Long Night engulfed the galaxy, a terrible cataclysm befelled Medusa. Its exact nature remains unknown – some Inquisitors think it was caused by rampant psyker mutation among the population, a frequent enough scenario in these days of impiety, while secretive scions of the Mechanicus whisper of even darker sins, refusing to explain the nature of the techno-heresies they are considering, though events that took place after the Heresy shed some light on the question. All that is known for certain is that by the time the Emperor revealed Himself on Terra and began His great work in unifying the Throneworld, Medusa was a wasteland, covered in the ruins of its past, filled with lost wonders and horrors. Its population had devolved into superstitious tribesmen, forced to live a nomadic existence by the planet's ever present seismic activity.

It was on this world that Ferrus Manus, tenth son of the Emperor of Mankind, arrived after the Dark Gods stole the Primarchs from their father and scattered them across the stars. Among his brothers, Ferrus was one of those whose preservation pod spent the longest into the Warp before it was spat out into realspace. Records indicate that the Primarch only arrived on Medusa barely two decades before the world was found by the forces of the Great Crusade, and that he emerged from his womb of metal fully grown, instead of as the infant most Primarchs were when they first set foot on their adoptive homeworlds.

He was wounded. His blood was falling on the dry earth, and though his wounds were healing, he could tell that the process was too slow, and he had already lost too much blood during the ascent to escape the pit at the bottom of which he had awoken. The silver wyrm that his coming had freed from its prison had hurt him badly, tearing away chunks of his flesh with its teeth before it had fled.

He had to find the creature, to stop it before it did more harm. He knew, without knowing why, that there would be others nearby – others who lacked his strength and resilience. They would be easy prey for the wyrm. If he didn't find the creature quickly, then … His coming on this world had unleashed the beast : anything it did would be his direct fault.

But he was too weak. His vision swam with pain, and he staggered, before crashing down upon the ground. Unconsciousness began to swallow him, and though he resisted it with every iota of his will as he kept moving, crawling forward along the wyrm's tracks, he couldn't endure very long the betrayal of his flesh.

His last thought before the darkness of unwanted slumber claimed him was that he had failed. Because of his weakness, who knew what would happen that he could have prevented.

Soon, the Primarch came in contact with the nomadic tribes of Medusa. To these primitive people, he was a figure straight out of their myths and legends : a giant of a man, his hands glimmering with metal from unknown origin. It was because of these hands that he first took the name of Ferrus Manus, which literally means 'hand of iron' in High Gothic. His true name – the one planned for him by the God-Emperor when he was still a foetus hidden deep in the Master of Mankind's genetic laboratories – is a mystery : only the Emperor Himself knows it, and perhaps Ferrus as well.

Ferrus never settled down in any particular tribe : instead, he wandered across the entire planet, leaving tells of his deeds in his wake. He fought many of the ancient creatures of Medusa, freeing the tribes from the constant fear that had haunted them for generations. In time, these tribes came to him, asking for him to lead them. Although Ferrus was reticent, he finally accepted, and ushered in a new age of peace across the planet. While the tribes no longer warred between themselves, however, there were still many threats left : the ghosts of Medusa's past were stirring from their long slumber, awakened by the arrival of the Primarch. Many Medusans were lost to erring horrors, and many more to the crusades that were fought to secure enough land for the tribes to settle.

On the few spots were the ground was stable, Ferrus Manus ordered cities to be built so that his people could seek shelter behind their walls. The time of their construction was a harsh one, for the immobile tribes were exposed, and Ferrus had to force them to work beyond their limits to finish the walls before they were pushed to extinction by the mechanical abominations stalking the desert plains of Medusa. The great armored crawlers into which the tribes had journeyed across the planet for many centuries were turned into excavation machines, and with the intellect of Ferrus commanding the construction of the fortifications, it only took a few years for the cities to be completed – but these were gruelling years, which were remembered by the people of Medusa as the Time of Trials.

Another beast fell as he tore its bulbous head off. This one had clearly been designed for battle by whatever ancient savant had created it : its long, sinuous body was covered in thorns of metal that could – and had – gut a man simply by passing too near.

He cast the machine's inanimate form away before turning to the workers who had suffered the creature's assaults every night for three months. He could see the awe in their gaze, but also the bitterness : if it was so easy for him to destroy the monster of their nightmares, why had it taken him so long ? They did not know that he had only learned of the beast's presence two weeks ago, when an exhausted messenger had finally found him. He had come here as fast as he could, but they didn't care about that : all they knew was that many of their friends were dead and that he had not been here to protect them.

He had no words to console them. Anything he said would only be hypocrisy, for it had been at his command that they had stopped to run and hide and had stood their ground as they built the cities : he was to blame for their loss. Furthermore, although none of them knew, it was also because of him that the cities were necessary in the first place. Even if he had no proof, he knew in his guts that his arrival had somehow caused the unrest in the great ruins, where more constructs awoke from their long slumber with every season.

He turned his back to the workers without a word nor a change in his expression, and walked away. There was much to be done.

The rigours of the Time of Trials changed the Medusans, making them value strength and self-reliance more than the communitarian attitude they had previously embraced to survive. From their infancy, Medusans were tested, with the strongest alone allowed to rise above their peers, and the weak and infirm often abandoned to the wild lands – safe for those who displayed skill in the arts of the machine. Most of the population of Medusa now lived in the seven cities built during the Time of Trials, but there were several tribes who continued their nomadic existence, either because they chose to or because Ferrus had judged them unworthy of taking up space and resources in his cities.

Indeed, Ferrus Manus only valued those who could best serve his vision of a united, prosperous world, and he had no qualm in abandoning those he deemed useless to his great work. Sacrifices, he taught the population of the world, were inevitable on the road of progress, and while they should not be glorified, they shouldn't be unduly mourned either. Some of the weak had to perish so that the strong may keep protecting the rest : such was the philosophy of Ferrus Manus. Today still, many Inquisitors adopt similar lines of thought, as it is one of the few ways for the human mind to cope with the inhuman sacrifices demanded of one in such a line of duty.

The Gorgon, as he came to be known to his people during his days of rulership, was intransigent in his judgements, but he was also fair and rewarded well those who served to his exacting standards. So it was that when the Great Crusade found Medusa, a mere decade after the end of the Time of Trials, it had become a relatively prosperous planet, with many of the lost secrets of the Age of Technology recovered from the ruins of the past.

The Mechanicum had an important presence in the Expeditionary Fleet which found Medusa, and the lords of the Machine Cult were overjoyed at the discovery. The rest of the fleet, however, was far more awed by the discovery of a Primarch : one of the sons of the new galactic empire. It was an honor to them, and those who met Ferrus Manus as the planet's sovereign immediately recognized him for what he was. Upon learning of the Imperium and of its master, as well as his apparent relationship with Him, Ferrus Manus pledged Medusa to the cause of the Great Crusade and left the world in the hands of his subordinates as he himself travelled to Terra to meet his father and learn more of his heritage.

The Great Crusade

Each step up the stairs was agony. He had thought himself strong, believed that he had purged himself of the weakness of flesh that had caused him to fail more than twenty years ago, but now he wasn't so certain he had succeeded. His very soul was being pushed down by the weight of … of what, exactly ?

The Astartes Tower was more than a simple building, that he had known from the moment he had first set eyes upon the structure. Each of the discovered Primarchs had climbed it at the end of his lessons, to swear his loyalty to the Emperor before taking command of the Legion wrought in his image. It was designed to test not just the physical fitness, but the strength of the spirit. A Primarch had to be strong both in body and soul, for they were to lead the Legions which would shape the future of all Mankind. Ferrus knew not what would happen should he fail the test – he had heard half-whispered rumors that it had happened before, but had faced only silence when he had investigated.

Finally, he stood at the top of the tower, and knelt before the throne upon which sat his father. There, he swore his oath of moment : a promise not to rest nor fail until the galaxy was brought to heel under the Pax Imperialis.

'You are the blade of my wrath,' said the Master of Mankind to the Primarch. 'You shall expunge the corruption that takes root in the hearts of weak men, so that Humanity can claim what is rightfully hers.'

'I shall,' vowed Ferrus. 'None shall escape my hand, and I will cleanse the galaxy in your name, father.'

'I know you will,' replied the Emperor with a smile that Ferrus couldn't tell whether it was proud or sad.

Like all Primarchs, Ferrus was gifted with a genius' intellect, and quickly absorbed the lore required of a Legion Master. He learned how to direct armed forces over a hundred battlefields at once, how to command fleets of dozens of ships in space battles, and – though he didn't take these lessons at heart – how to use diplomacy to convince peaceful human worlds to join the Imperium. He spent a lot of time in the great forge-cities of the Mechanicum on Mars, forging the first signs of the alliance between his Legion and the priests of the Machine-God.

Reunited with their Primarch, the warriors of the Tenth Legion abandoned the designation 'Storm Walkers', which had slowly begun to attach to them, and renamed themselves the Iron Hands in his honor. Prior to their Primarch's discovery, they had been one of the Legions favoured by the Imperial commanders when the presence of Astartes were required. Their tactical acumen and willingness to risk themselves to save the lives of their allies had enabled the conquest of many worlds, with the destruction of the Ork Empire of Seraphina being so far the most exemplar campaign in their rolls of honor.

Under Ferrus Manus' command, however, the Tenth Legion became a force of remorseless warriors, crushing anything that stood in their path with a cold brutality that unnerved many of their human allies. Possessing a natural affinity for heavy weapons and great engines of war, they annihilated resisting human cultures and xenos empires alike, showing no mercy to those who refused the light of the Emperor's rule. On more than one occasion the sons of Ferrus showed outright contempt for the humans fighting alongside them, regarding them as weak and unworthy of the galaxy they were conquering. This obsession with strength came from the Legion's roots, both on Medusa and on Terra : the Tenth Legion had always selected its aspirants from the youth of strong, proud warrior cultures. It was also encouraged by their Primarch, who personally believed that the Legions had to be strong in order to defend the realms of Mankind from the countless threats lurking between the stars.

'We are weapons. Instruments of death and destruction, harnessed to serve a greater ideal. Our purpose is to wage war in the Emperor's name; to conquer the galaxy and crush all who stand against us. Anything else is nothing more than self-delusion.'

Attributed to Ferrus Manus 'The Gorgon', Primarch of the Tenth Legion

In the ranks of the Iron Hands, weakness soon became the capital sin, for the weak threatened all those around them with their failures. On Medusa, the weak had been a burden on the tribes : in the Imperium, the weak threatened to ruin the ideals of the Great Crusade with their imperfections. Entire worlds were burned to the ground in the wake of the Iron Hands, their population put to the sword for their deviance – either genetic or ideological. These beliefs led many Iron Hands to embrace the augmetic technology spread across the Legion. While the other Legions used augmetics as prosthetics, replacements for body parts lost in war, the Iron Hands chose to replace viable, perfectly functional parts of themselves with mechanical equivalents, believing it made them stronger. Many chose to amputate their hands and replace them with augmetics, in imitation of their father's own silver hands.

This, and the Legion's tendency to field much more tanks and heavy weapons than other Legions, earned the sons of Ferrus the nickname of 'the Iron Tenth', which they bore with pride. Like most other Legions, the recruits of the Iron Hands began to come principally from the Primarch's homeworld, but the population of Medusa was too small to be a viable source of genetic diversity for the Legion. To counter this, Ferrus Manus declared that all human worlds conquered by his forces would pay a tithe of blood : upon achieving compliance, if the people's genetics were conform to the standards of the Tenth, a portion of their youths – both male and female – were taken away by the Legion. They were then brought to Medusa and added to its population, bringing fresh blood to the united clans. Many looked upon this practice with reprobation, and their unease was increased when rumours began to spread that these unwilling migrants were actually abandoned in the middle of the Medusan deserts, so that the techno-abominations dwelling there would winnow the weak and allow only the strong and cunning to reach the safety of the Seven Cities. Nothing was proven, however, until the time of Isstvan, when such concerns no longer mattered.

Among the brotherhood of the Primarchs, Ferrus Manus mostly stood alone, content to lead his Legion into its own battles, fighting alongside other Legions as dictated by the necessities of the Great Crusade but rarely seeing the need to truly bond with the other Primarchs. The exceptions were Fulgrim and Guilliman : he was close to both of them, and their Legions won some of the most contested battles of the Great Crusade fighting together. His bond with the Phoenician began during his sojourn on Terra, where Fulgrim was also present at the time. Though the exact details of their first meeting have long since passed into legend, it is said that the Primarch of the Third Legion descended into the great forges of the Emperor's Palace to find his Medusan brother there. The two of them entered a forging contest, and each produced a weapon of such perfection than both claimed the other had won the challenge. They exchanged weapons, Ferrus taking the warhammer Forgebreaker and Fulgrim the sword Fireblade, and the two Legions were close for the entirety of the Great Crusade. Fulgrim appreciated the pursuit of perfection through the elimination of weakness that the Iron Hands pursued, even if he wasn't certain it was necessary to take it that far. Meanwhile, the Iron Hands saw in the Emperor's Children kindred spirit, dedicated to bettering themselves to best serve the Emperor's purpose, even if the path they had chosen toward that similar end was different.

Ferrus and Guilliman's relationship is less documented, though many archivists have looked into it in the hope to find some clue as to whether this friendship had any relation to the reason why the Iron Hands later turned against the Imperium. The lord of Ultramar had a lot of respect for Ferrus' unyielding strength of character, while Ferrus admired what Guilliman had made of the Five Hundred Worlds – a realm of proud militaristic strength and culture, similar to what he had wanted to shape Medusa into before the Great Crusade called him to greater responsibilities.

When Horus was elevated to the rank of Warmaster, many expected Ferrus to feel jealous of the nomination, but the Gorgon cared nothing for titles and ranks among the Primarchs. He was master of the Tenth Legion, and that was already responsibility enough for him. He was more bitter about the Emperor's decision at Nikaea, for he had never accepted the integration of psykers within his Legion. Psychic power, he claimed, depended on fickle and unpredictable emotions, and couldn't be made a founding part of anything, let alone a galactic empire. Still, he bowed to the decision of the Master of Mankind, though he never got around creating an actual Librarius before the end of the Great Crusade.

Pandorax : Past Truths and Lies

After Nikaea, Ferrus returned to his campaign, within the Ultima Segmentum, accompanied by most of the Tenth Legion – a part of the Iron Hands was assigned to other Expeditionary Fleets. After several years of relative tranquil progress, with regular reports of the Legion's advance to the Warmaster and the rest of the Great Crusade's commanders, the Iron Hands claimed to have encountered an adversary posing them difficulties. Called the Diasporex, it was a gathering of hundreds of space ships living in a nomad community, using hydrogen collectors to aliment their vessels in fuel. This fleet was a mix of human vessels, crewed by the descendants of human worlds lost to the madness of Old Night, and various minor xenos breeds, all working together in the name of survival. Such a blatant affront to the ideals of the Great Crusade could not be tolerated, and after Ferrus' first offer to the humans to leave the Diasporex and join the Imperium was refused, the Tenth Legion decided to eradicate the whole conglomerate.

But the Diasporex commanders were expert in space navigation, and eluded the pursuit of the Iron Tenth for months, even managing to defeat the Astartes vessels in several engagements. Enraged by his continuous failures, Ferrus Manus sent an astropathic call for aid, judging that his own methods and resources weren't sufficient. He called for the one Primarch and Legion he trusted among the others : the Emperor's Children.

Fulgrim answered Ferrus' call, and the two Primarchs arranged to gather their fleet at the realspace equivalent of a nexus of Warp routes. However, when the fleet of the Third Legion arrived at the gathering point, the Iron Hands weren't there. Instead, after several weeks, they were attacked by a fleet of Dark Eldar vessels, their flagship gutted and their Primarch captured and dragged into the Webway. This would start the Bleeding War, where the soul of the Emperor's Children would be rewritten in blood and torment.

The Palace of Sensations shuddered with the wrath of its lord and master. The plans of the Lord of Pain and Pleasure had been denied – the sons of the Phoenix had refused the illumination He had offered them. The Laers had been cast into the Immaterium, their material forms wiped out from the galaxy. In His wrath, the Dark Prince had ordered them all tortured for one aeon for each soul that had been denied to Him by their failure. Their agonies would appease the loss, but only slightly. It would not do for Slaanesh not to have His own personal Legion in the days of upheaval to come. Fortunately, the Prince had another plan, another target for His desires. It would be even better, in some ways, for He would even get to enjoy the outrage it would cause to the brute sitting upon the Skull Throne. But the insult of the well-named Children of the Anathema would not be allowed to stand – His pride would not permit it.

His elder brother, Nurgle, had yet to secure his own Legion for the Great Game. Although the Lord of Pain found it distasteful to associate with the Grandfather, needs must.

The Sea of Souls heaved with the deals of Gods, and a pact was forged. The sons of the Gorgon would be muted and lost by the combined power of the two Dark Gods, cast into the embrace of Nurgle – while the unwilling servants of Slaanesh would be deceived into punishing those who had refused His benevolent rule over them.

Slaanesh laughed, and a thousand Neverborn were born of the sound, each as exquisite as it was horrible, as terrifying as it was seductive.

For many centuries, what happened to the Iron Hands between their last astropathic message to the Third Legion and their arrival in the Isstvan system has remained a mystery. It took that long to the Inquisition's highest echelons to piece together the truth of the Tenth Legion's fate, with assistance from the both the Alpha Legion and the Vanus Temple of the Officio Assassinorum. Even then, we only know the events as they occurred from the Iron Hands' point of view : how and why such things happened is known only the Dark Gods themselves.

On their way to the muster point, the fleet of the Iron Hands was entrapped within an extremely violent Warp Storm. Several ships, tens of thousands of crew and hundreds of Astartes were lost to the Sea of Souls by the time the fleet managed to emerge from the Warp, performing a desperate drop back in realspace that greatly damaged many more vessels. The Tenth Legion's main force found itself trapped within a system identified by the galactic maps as the Pandorax system. Information on the system was scarce, even in the great data-banks of the Iron Hands' flagship, the Fist of Iron. It appeared as if the data had been deliberately erased, with not even the information about how the system had been named in the first place available.

While the Legion serfs and Techmarines began the arduous process of repairing the damage done to the fleet, the astropaths attempted to contact other Imperial forces, especially the Emperor's Children, to tell them of what had happened. They found all their efforts thwarted : though the Iron Hands had escaped the turmoil of the Warp by returning to realspace, the Sea of Souls was still raging, and astropathic communication was impossible. However, in their attempts, the astropaths discovered that the source of the Warp perturbation was located on the system's only life-sustaining planet : a jungle-type deathworld named Pythos. Dozens of astropaths were lost trying to locate or analyse the source more precisely before Ferrus decreed that his Legion would descend upon the world and locate and destroy the source of the perturbation – even if they had to burn down the entire planet to do so.

From the moment the Iron Hands set foot on Pythos, they were beset on all sides. The planet had earned its qualification as a death world : great predatory beasts stalked the jungle, some of them capable of fighting against Titans. The jungle itself grew at an impossible rate, forcing the Astartes to burn the woods surrounding their bases simply to prevent them from being overgrown. Packs of saurian predators harassed their patrols, and the great beasts forced most of their heaviest weaponry to remain in position in order to defend their bases.

Using the senses of his astropaths, Ferrus attempted to triangulate the emplacement of the Warp anomaly's source. It was a long and arduous process, for the bound psykers were driven mad by their efforts, and even those who managed to get a reading could only yield estimations. Finally, however, a gunship reported to have found something that seemed like what the Tenth Legion was searching for. Ferrus himself led the expedition to the location, tearing a path through the jungle as he did so.

The source of the anomaly was a monolith of Warp matter, hundreds of meters high yet impossible to see from orbit. Its mere presence caused violent seizures among the psykers Ferrus had brought with him. Having seen the thing for himself, Ferrus transmitted its coordinates to his fleet, and ordered the vessels to prepare to fire at it with all of their might, while the ground forces prepared to evacuate the world. The Primarch had little doubt that the combined might of dozens of ships would have catastrophic consequences for the planet, but he cared little.

Just as the ships were aligning into position and the evacuation was about to begin before the bombardment, the monolith reacted to the impending threat. It pulsed with Warp energy, and an arc of unholy lightning arced between its top and one of the ships in orbit : the Veritas Ferrum, one of the Tenth Legion's greatest vessels. Its crew was consumed by the raw energy, and the ship itself was dragged toward the world, shielding the monolith from the rest of the fleet's guns.

'Our flesh is weak … Forgive me, my lord.'

Last words of Durun Atticus, Captain of the 111th Clan-company, before all contact was lost with the Veritas Ferrum

The crash of the Veritas Ferrum caused a cataclysm both physical and psychic, with the death of tens of thousands of serfs finally rupturing the barter between the Warp and reality. From the depths of the planet's caverns emerged a host of daemons and nightmares. From examining what little is known of this battle, the Imperium has deduced that the Neverborn were children of Nurgle, the Chaos God of Plague and Decay. They fell upon the Iron Hands, many possessing the lifeforms of Pythos while doing so. Taken completely by surprise, the Iron Hands lost hundreds of warriors during the conflict's first hours. Aggravating their peril was the absence of their Primarch, who had vanished in the first moments of the daemonic incursion.

The dead stared at him with empty sockets, accusation writ plain in their bones. They had died because of him. Because of his failure – because of his weakness. They silently judged him, from the present and the past alike, staring at him and knowing what he had done – and more importantly, what he had not done.

'No …' he groaned, fighting against the growing tide of despair.

He saw the ruin of Mankind in the dead's eyes. An empire of lies and oppression, too weak to defend itself from the threat of xenos life. He saw his great Legion broken, shattered into countless lesser reflections of itself.

'No !' he shouted in defiance, rising Forgebreaker high as he swept the warhammer around, forcing the dead back. 'This will not be !'

It took several hours before Ferrus Manus reappeared, taking command of his Legion once more, but even the command of a Primarch wasn't enough to turn things in the Astartes' favor. Without Librarians nor knowledge of the creatures of the Warp, the Iron Hands were unable to fight the Neverborn properly, and Ferrus ended up ordering his forces to abandon Pythos and leave the Pandorax system entirely. It is believed that at this point, the Primarch of the Iron Hands intended to warn the Imperium of the horrors he had witnessed, and return to the system with enough firepower and the proper knowledge – even if he had to shake it off Magnus himself – to purge it entirely. However, once his fleet left the zone of the Warp turbulences that prevented communication, his Legion discovered the parting gift of the daemons of Nurgle they had faced.

All Astartes enjoy the benefits of the Emperor's genius in many ways, and one of those is their enhanced immune system. As is the case with poisons – though these two gifts are the results of different organs – there are very few diseases that can affect a Space Marine. But the creatures of Pandorax had unleashed one such disease among the Iron Hands : the Warp-born plague now known to us as Nurgle's Rot. It ran through the ships of the Iron Hands, decimating their crews in a matter of days, and felling many Astartes as well. Astropaths and Navigators were sealed away from the infection behind great adamantium doors, locked forever with life-sustaining engines that could keep them alive as long as needed. Some of them, it is said, endure behind these gates still.

The warp-born disease was rotting the living flesh of the Iron Hands, and even affected their augmetics, corroding them and twisting their mechanisms into hideous amalgamations of decayed tissue and ruined metal. At the same time, visions started to haunt the dreams of the afflicted : vistas of plague and ruin, and of a bountiful garden that offered life and death in equal measure, locked into an eternal cycle of putrefaction under the loving eyes of an all-consuming god. The belief of the Iron Hands in the Imperial Truth, already shaken by what they had witnessed on Pythos, waned with each such nightmare.

As they struggled to understand the disease and find a way to cure themselves, the Iron Hands were found by Roboute Guilliman. Already walking the path of betrayal, the Primarch of the Ultramarines met his brother from behind a void-sealed sheet of plastiglass – at the demand of Ferrus, not his own. Guilliman told his brother that he knew the nature of what the Iron Hands had faced on Pythos, and that the Emperor had also known it for a long time, but that the Master of Mankind had kept it secret from His sons, despite the risks should they face these dangers without warning of their true nature.

Guilliman told the Gorgon that though he had learned much of the Empyrean's secrets, the Emperor alone held the secrets necessary to healing Ferrus and his sons. However, the Master of Mankind would never allow the Iron Hands to live now that they had witnessed the evidence of His lies. At the very least, all Astartes would be purged, and it was unlikely that Ferrus himself would be spared. Guilliman then offered another path : he told Ferrus that he and other Primarchs had long known of the Emperor's duplicity, and prepared to turn against Him and free Mankind of His tyranny and lies. With the help of Ferrus, Guilliman claimed, their rebellion would be unstoppable. The False Emperor would be deposed, and in His vaults Guilliman and Ferrus would find the way to save the Tenth Legion from the curse they suffered because of His lies.

It is not known if it was Guilliman's rhetoric, any long-hidden doubt on his part, or the curse running through his flesh that convinced Ferrus. But he accepted Guilliman's offer. The Iron Hands would stand with the Ultramarines and their allies in this new crusade – but first, they all must purge themselves of one last weakness. That purge would take place in the Isstvan system, where Roboute had long planned the beginning of his rebellion.

The Heresy

Four Legions gathered at Isstvan, claiming their goal was to bring down the rebel Imperial Governor put in place by the Raven Guard decades earlier. The Ultramarines, the Iron Hands, the Imperial Fists and the Blood Angels came with almost all of their numbers, bringing hundreds of thousands of Legionaries within the same system – a feat not seen since the Triumph of Ullanor. Many among the four Legions thought it to be overkill – the rebels couldn't possibly require such deployment of forces. They were quelled with lies that it was a show of force, to warn the rest of the Imperium that rebellion couldn't possibly succeed. The true purpose, of course, was much different.

Ferrus had summoned all of his Legion to Isstvan, forcing Clan-companies all across the Great Crusade to abandon their allies in the middle of their wars of compliance and attend their master. These warriors arrived at Isstvan concerned, wondering why their lord had acted so out of character – many Imperial live would be lost due to their absence. Their demand for an audience with the Gorgon, however, were refused – they weren't even allowed to meet with any of their brothers among the Primarch's force. Instead, they received their orders of battle for the battle of Isstvan III. Strangely, only they were sent on the planet – all the Iron Hands who had accompanied their lord to Pandorax were withhold aboard their ships. Those afflicted by the curse of Nurgle, it seems, all chose to follow their master in his betrayal of the Emperor.

In the battle against the Isstvanian rebels, the Iron Hands were tasked with the outskirts of the great city, where the rebels had massed their tanks and heavy ordnance. As such, when the true purpose of the war was revealed in all its horror, they were the farthest to any form of shelter from the virus bombing. It is estimated that about ten thousand Iron Hands were lost in the Isstvan Atrocity. Some of them may have survived the initial bombardment and the deluge of fire that followed, but if there were any, these tenacious souls were wiped out by the following war opposing the loyalist survivors to their traitorous kind. In the few annals we have of this terrible battle, nowhere is it made mention of any Iron Hand fighting on the side of the Emperor's faithful. Ferrus, in a show of ruthless tactical cunning typical of the Gorgon, chose well where to send those of his sons he wanted to kill.

When the true scope of Guilliman's betrayal was uncovered on the killing fields of Isstvan V, the Iron Hands were at the vanguard of the renegades' assault. It was them who drew most of the loyalists' first wave, using their numbers and enhanced resilience to endure the blow. To their own surprise, they saw that they had another advantage over their former brothers : the disease that afflicted them had made them almost impervious to pain, and enabled their bodies to sustain much more punishment than before.

Even Ferrus himself saw the advantages of his new form when he faced the King of the Night in single combat. Faced with his brothers' betrayal, Konrad Curze's rage was limitless, his potential as a Primarch unbound : Ferrus, who would have been the match of any of his brothers before, was only able to survive the duel because of his new abilities. Konrad spent most of the duel asking his fallen brother not what had happened to him, for he could see plainly the corruption of the Iron Hands, but what had become of the Emperor's Children, who had come to reinforce the Tenth Legion before vanishing from the galaxy. Ferrus didn't answer to any of his enraged brother's question, which isn't surprising, since he himself knew nothing of Fulgrim's fate. Even Guilliman ignored what had become of the Third Legion, and the Arch-Traitor would expend a lot of efforts to uncovering that mystery in the following days of the Heresy.

Horus looked at the weapon presented to him by his little brother. Alpharius had not told how he had reclaimed the warhammer from its traitorous owner, but the Warmaster could guess that it had been quite a fight to do so.

Forgebreaker was kept in a stasis field, preventing it from interacting with Terra in any way. It was a beautiful weapon, but how could it be otherwise ? It had been forged by Fulgrim, after all, and the Phoenician had always claimed that weapon had to be beautiful, so that when the time came that they were no longer needed, they could still be put to use as museum pieces. Horus doubted that such a time would ever come, now.

'It is untainted,' finally declared Magnus. 'Whatever madness has claimed Ferrus, it has not spread to this weapon.'

Horus nodded slowly. There was a significance here, a message that he felt he was missing.

'Perturabo lost his weapon in the Olympian War,' finally said the Primarch of the Sixteenth Legion. 'If he accepts it, I will give Forgebreaker to him.'

After the Massacre, Ferrus was the only traitor Primarch to follow Guilliman on his march to Terra, the two Legions fighting side by side on a hundred worlds during their advance on the Throneworld. The Ultramarines, first among the chosen of the Dark Gods, saw the curse of the Iron Hands without the suspicion of their other cohorts, and were protected from contagion by wards and dark blessings. Amidst the countless broken oaths and sundered friendships, the Thirteenth and Tenth Legion were quite possibly the only ones whose bonds of brotherhood were tightened by the Roboutian Heresy. A theory of the Inquisitors who dare to study the motivations and reasons of each Traitor Legion's fall is that this is due to the fact that Guilliman had nothing to do with the fate of the Iron Hands. While he manipulated the Blood Angels into journeying to their doom on Signus Prime, the contagion of Ferrus Manus and his sons was solely the work of the Dark Gods themselves : there was no deceit between Guilliman and the lord of the Iron Tenth.

Such was the trust Guilliman had in Ferrus that when he left the main theatre of the Heresy to hunt down Alpharius, he gave the reins of the traitor forces to the Gorgon. Though the advance did slow in Guilliman's absence, several systems fell to the implacable march of Ferrus Manus' tactics in the time it took for the Arch-Traitor to finish what he had set up to achieve. When Guilliman returned from Eskrador, convinced to have slain Alpharius, Ferrus returned command without challenge.

The Siege of Terra

'Nightmares came from the heavens, disgorged by ruinous vessels, their veins pulsing with blood black with corruption. Of all the daemons, they were those who bore their ruin the most openly, though it wasn't the deepest among the damned. Plague and despair followed in their wake, for they were ever-present in them, flowing through both their blood and their souls and twisting them ever further from the angels they had been. At their head stood a giant with silver hands, carrying a scythe that sang with the melody of death and the requiem of all existence.'

Excerpt from The Canticle of the Dead

At long last, the fleet of the heretics reached Holy Terra. The Traitor Primarchs came together for this final battle, the dispersed Traitor Legions gathering once more for the greatest challenge of all. The Fist of Iron, flagship of the Tenth Legion, was one of the first vessels to reach Terra's orbit, pushing through the wreckage of the sacrificial first wave. So began the greatest space battle in the history of Mankind, as the fleets of ten full Legions clashed in the skies of Terra, while the Throneworld's orbital defences fired volley after volley at the traitors' ships.

Due to the propagation of the plague aboard their vessels, the Iron Hands had no mortals to pilot their ships and were forced to keep a third of their Legionaries in orbit to keep the fleet of the Tenth Legion in the battle. But all the others, led by Ferrus himself, descended on Terra with a determination born of a growing sense of despair. The contagion was reaching its paroxysm, and if the Emperor was not brought down soon and His secrets uncovered, all hope of curing the Iron Hands would be lost.

As had been the case during the rest of the Heresy, the sons of Ferrus remained true to their orders. They fought alone, both because they were more efficient that way and because ever since Isstvan V, the other Traitor Legions had kept their distances with the pestilent Astartes, their lords quite rightfully fearing the possibility of contagion. Their newly reinforced bodies, made far more resilient by the plagues affecting them, made them uniquely suited to the room-to-room war that stretched out across the entire Imperial Palace. To this day, on Terra, all loyalist Legions who fought in the Siege have monuments which rolls list the names of those they lost to the Iron Hands, alongside oaths of vengeance upon the sons of Ferrus Manus.

However, with several Primarchs defending the walls and corridors of the Emperor's domain, the Blood Angels disobeying their commands and attacking the human population, and the ever-growing tension amongst the rest of the traitors, weeks passed without any ground being gained by the renegades. Finally, the death of Horus broke the stalemate, but before Guilliman could capitalize on the return of the Ninth Legion to the actual battle, the Night Lords and Emperor's Children appeared, while word of the imminent arrival of the Twelfth and Seventeenth Legions was carried over the Warp's tides. Then Sanguinius was slain by the Mournival, and the entire Ninth Legion was no longer in any condition of continuing the fight.

With time running out for the rebellion, Guilliman gathered his remaining brothers to him. Corax and Vulkan elected to stay on the outside battlefield, to keep the newly arrived Legions from interfering, and the rest launched a final assault on the Palace. Faced with the might of four Primarchs, two of which – Lion El'Jonson and Roboute Guilliman – were flowing with the mastered power of Chaos, the defenders were broken, and the traitors gained access to the Cavea Ferrum, the ultimate defence of the Palace.

Ferrus Manus never set foot within the labyrinth, however. He stood at the maze's entrance with his favoured sons, preventing the defenders from regrouping and striking at the back of Roboute's group. For several hours, the Primarch held his ground against counter-attacking forces of the various loyalist Legions present at Terra. At his side was the Terminator Elite of his Legion, a dreadful gathering of champions known as the Morlocks. Many heroes fell before them, with the death of Amon of the Thousand Sons, Captain of the Ninth Fellowship and Equerry of the Primarch Magnus, standing out among them. The Thousand Sons Captain had survived the wrath of Leman Russ on Nikaea, only to die years later under the blows of Ferrus Manus. However, he unleashed his full psychic might before his fall, and the wounds he dealt to the Primarch of the Iron Hands with the fires of his very soul are said to still hurt the traitor to this day.

No loyalist managed to get pass the Iron Hands' elite and their Primarch. The Tenth Legion was still holding its ground when word began to spread across vox-channels and psychic links alike : the Heresy was over. Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines, Anointed of the Pantheon, Champion of the Dark God and architect of the rebellion, was dead.

The Plague Colossi

Prior to the Heresy, the Iron Hands enjoyed a close relation with the Mechanicum, rivalled only by that of the Iron Warriors. The technology found by Ferrus on Medusa and offered to the lords of Mars was the foundation of this alliance, and it was preserved during the Great Crusade. At the time of the Heresy, the Tenth Legion was accompanied by packs of Titans from several Legios. They were deployed on Pandorax to help in defeating the various great beasts of the death world, and were thus exposed to the curse of Nurgle when it was unleashed.

Almost all mortals accompanying the Iron Hands on Pandorax died within days or weeks of leaving the system. But the crew of the Titans, as well as the Titans themselves, were instead afflicted with the same mutating disease that ran its course among the Legionaries. The tech-priests and princeps were fused to their warmachines, while the weaponry and armor of the Titans mutated into Warp-grown, tumorous chitin and organic-looking cannons. During the Siege of Terra, these gigantic abominations were dubbed the Plague Colossi by the Imperium, a name that many traitor warbands use to this day, and fired their guns at the Palace's walls at Guilliman's command.

Although many were destroyed during the Siege, there are still some in existence, and other Titans have been lost to Chaos in this way since the end of the Heresy. The Colossi have no intelligence to speak of, their machine-spirit replaced by a daemonic fusion of all the souls who were linked to it during its transformation. When used in battle by Chaos warbands, they are controlled by Sorcerers of Nurgle, directed toward the foe through sendings of images and emotion rather than explicit commands.

For most of the Long War, the Plague Colossi have remained within the Eye of Terror, for few warlords have ever had the means to press them to their cause. However, in recent years, seers of the Thousand Sons have received visions of a Iron Hand warrior called Anatolus Gdolkin, who has made contact with several of the great daemon engines and pacted them to his will. His goals are unknown, though there are rumors he seeks a world within the Eye of Terror known as the Crucible. Regardless of this theory's veracity, the prospect of the Plague Colossi marching out of the Eye as an united force is a considerable threat to the Imperium – even the defenders of the world-fortress Cadia would find it difficult to push back so many Chaos Titans at once.

The Post-Heresy : The Forgotten War

The Abominable Intelligence

For ten thousand years, the Imperium has existed amongst the endless threats that lurk among the stars. In order to do so, its agents enforce many laws, ranging from the mundane and ultimately meaningless to those very few whose breaking is a threat to all of Mankind. The oldest of these laws, promulgated long before the threat of Chaos was discovered, is the prohibition of the Abominable Intelligence.

Long before the rise of the Emperor, during the Dark Age of Technology, Mankind prospered thanks to the labour of legions of slave-droids. The first galactic empire of Humanity was a place of indolence, with all work done by intelligent robots loyal to their creators. This all ended, however, when the so-called 'Men of Iron' turned against their human masters in a galaxy-wide rebellion. Believing themselves to be superior to Humanity, they attempted to exterminate the entire species, and came very close to succeeding. It was only after a terrible war, the magnitude of which would not be seen again until the Heresy itself, that the Men of Iron were defeated. In the aftermath, the remnants of Mankind swore never to create another sentient machine, in fear of what would happen next time.

There have been many, however, who foolishly believed themselves above this law. Even on Mars, home to the Cult Mechanicum, hundreds of hereteks were discovered and tried during the Great Crusade, guilty of creating their own intelligent machines. Each and every one of those, at some point of their existence, turned against humanity, though some spared their creator before going on a rampage aimed at destroying the human race. It was during these days that the original term used to design such things – Artificial Intelligence – was changed into the version used now. To replace them, the current machine-spirits were designed : human brain matter, either cloned or harvested from criminals, and converted into logical circuits for the myriad mechanisms Humanity requires. From the crude intelligence guiding a Chimera Tank to the god-like minds of the Titans, all constructs of the Adeptus Mechanicus use these machine-spirits to keep the human element at the core of the machine. Even amongst the ranks of the corrupt Dark Mechanicum and the Traitor Legions, the creation of Abominable Intelligence is regarded as vile and foolish. The Dark Gods themselves, it is rumoured, abhor such soulless sentience.

There have been many theories as to why machines with an Abominable Intelligence inevitably turn on Mankind. Tech-priests claim that it is because they lack the spark granted upon every device by the Machine-God, while scions of the Ecclesiarchy argue that any man attempting to emulate the God-Emperor by creating intelligent life is inviting divine punishment. To those not entrapped in such theological debates, however, there is another, darker possibility. Abominable Intelligences operate solely on logic, watching the universe around them with absolute objectivity. Their reasoning is unflawed by any emotion or involvement. Yet every such sentience comes to the same conclusion : Mankind is a plague that must be exterminated. Perhaps, when the machines sense the touch of the Warp on all of us, they conclude that our entire species is a danger to both ourselves and the galaxy, and must be wiped out.

When news reached them that Guilliman was dead, the Iron Hands lost all hope of curing themselves of the terrible curse ravaging them. Many of them despaired, and chose to die on Terra at the loyalists' blades rather than suffer the slow degeneration and agonizing death that awaited them. Ferrus, however, refused such a fate, and he ordered his sons to withdraw, leaving those who chose death behind as unworthy cowards. Entire companies were thus lost to the renewed fury of the Loyal Legions, while their brothers fled the Solar System – never to return. Like most of the other Traitor Legions after the end of the Siege, the Iron Tenth fled for its homeworld, to regroup, resupply, and consider the options still opened to it after such a disastrous defeat. However, when the Iron Hands arrived within the system of Medusa, they quickly found out that something terrible had happened during their absence. The cities didn't answer their vox-hails, and various signals emanated from the surface.

Gunships were sent to investigate, and soon it became apparent that an enemy force had attacked Medusa during the Heresy, destroying its cities and exterminating its population. That force was still on the planet, waiting for the Iron Hands to come home. When the first Chaos Marines set foot on the world, they revealed themselves, slaughtering these scouting parties. And so began what is known to very few in the galaxy as the Forgotten War.

Except for the highest-ranking members of the Inquisition (such as those with the credentials required to access this archive), none within the Imperium may know the truth of the Forgotten War of Medusa, for it is related to one of the darkest forbidden technologies in existence, and the very knowledge of its existence is considered ground for execution by many within the Ordos' ranks. It was no Imperial force that the Iron Hands faced on their homeworld, but an echo of Mankind's previous sins, rendered into cold steel and malign, soulless sentiences. Amidst the ruins of Medusa, the machines had felt the change in the galaxy's fortunes, and they had risen from their tombs to purge the world from the tainted ones that claimed to be its masters. An exact datation of the uprising is impossible, but it is estimated that the machines rose about the time the first bombs fell upon Isstvan III. It is highly unlikely that this was a mere coincidence, and many wonder if the rise of the machines wasn't, in this one singular occasion, a blessing for the rest of Mankind – the Tenth Legion would have been able to wreck untold havoc among the galaxy if they had not been dragged into the Forgotten War.

Though there was little to win in such a war, Ferrus refused to let this affront to his Legion pass, and the full might of the Tenth descended upon Medusa. They had taken considerable losses during the Heresy, but the Iron Hands were still a power to be reckoned with, and the battles between the corrupt scions of Nurgle and the ancient drones shook the very core of the planet upon which they fought. It was during this war that a change befell the Tenth Legion : where before they had rejected the disease running through their blood, they began to accept and embrace it. With all hope of a cure lost, they fell deeper and deeper into madness, their iron resolve finally giving way to despair and allowing the lies of Chaos to take root in their souls. By the time the war was over, they had completed the transition from infected Traitor Marines to Chaos Marines dedicated to Nurgle.

When the retribution forces of the Imperium arrived to Medusa, the planet was a smoking wreck, its atmosphere saturated with levels of radiation that not even a fully-armored Astartes could survive for long. Which of the two sides nuked the planet is unknown : maybe the Iron Hands, sensing the approach of the fleet, chose to destroy what they couldn't keep, or maybe the machines, on the brink of defeat, denied their foes the prize. Since then, however, the radiation levels had diminished far too fast for it to be the result of the natural process : the planet became tolerable to human life a mere thousand years after the Forgotten War. To the outside eye, Medusa appears much like it was when the Imperium first found it : a world of deserts, dotted with ruined cities and ancient relics. This has caused those of the Adeptus Mechanicus who know of the planet's secrets to press for another expedition to harvest its treasures, despite the obvious dangers. So far, none have been allowed. Some things are too dangerous to be known, and not all are born of Chaos – this is the final lesson of Medusa to the Imperium of Man.

Asirnoth, the great silver wyrm of legend, had returned.

The beast that he had defeated – the beast that his arrival had unleashed, which had slain an entire tribe before he had been able to reach it – had returned. The rest of the machines had sought out its carcass, and they had rebuilt it, reawakening the ancient digital mind buried within its coils.

They faced each other in the ruins of one of the Seven Cities, on streets paved with the skulls of its people. Why the machines would have done something like that, which seemed a considerable waste of time and effort, Ferrus had no idea. The mind of the sapient machines was unknowable, even to him, even now, when so much of the universe's secrets had been revealed to him. All he knew was that these things were evil, and needed to be destroyed before they brought low Mankind and prevented Grandfather's plans from coming to fruition.

After the Forgotten War, the Iron Hands journeyed to the Eye of Terror, driven by their Primarch's visions of a world within its confines where they would be safe from the retribution of the Imperium. Newly appeared Sorcerers – for the Tenth Legion had, prior to their fall, refused the use of psykers, seeing them as both unnatural and unreliable – guided their ships through the tides of Hell. With the favor of Nurgle, they were able to navigate its currents, their minds opened to the Immaterium by the Dark God's warping touch. Finally, they found their Legion's new homeworld, and began to prepare for the long work of bringing Nurgle's vision for the galaxy into fruition : an infinite expanse of ever-renewing rot and decay, with the God of Life and Death granting his love to all of creation.

Organization

The Rust Masters

Before their fall to the Ruinous Powers, the Iron Hands' so-called Frater Ferrum, or Iron Fathers, were an elite circle composed of members from all prestigious ranks within the Legion. Techmarines, Captains, Chaplains and Apothecaries alike were selected by their peers for induction within the order's ranks. They were apart from the rest of the hierarchy, and tasked by the Primarch himself with guiding the Legion's path on matters both philosophical, tactical and technical, combining their approaches and knowledge to reach the best possible decision.

As Nurgle's Rot spread across the ranks of the Iron Hands, the Iron Fathers were the most affected by the mental pollution that befell the entire Legion. Their iron-clad beliefs were slowly eroded by visions of the Warp, and as is the rule for all who succumb to Chaos, the more righteous one is before the fall, the greater the infamy once the transition is complete. Many Iron Fathers chose to take their own lives while in the throes of the Rot, while others choose the path of full mechanization in desperation – earning a far worse fate. But those who were strong enough to survive were twisted into horrible mockeries of the champions of the Great Crusade they had once been : they became the Rust Masters, greatest zealots of Nurgle among the damned.

These lords of rot and decay are all champions of the Plague God, bearing his mark and fighting to spread his word and power. They are devout priests of the word of Nurgle, and where they were dour, isolated souls before, they now take an almost obscene joy in their work.  Many of them lead their own warbands, but they generally serve a role of adviser to the Chaos Lords of the Tenth Legion, as well as to other rulers of the scions of Chaos. Cults capable of overthrowing a planetary governor have been born from their speeches and contagion, turning loyal populations into legions of plague zombies and desperate dying men and women praying Nurgle for their deliverance.

I n battle, the Rust Masters are as tough and resilient as any other Chaos Marine, but it is their words that are their true weapon. They are agents of psychic corruption, and those who listen to their words find them echoing in their dreams years after the encounter, slowly brainwashing them and turning them from the Emperor's Light. Their madness and devotion to the Plague God are so strong that they spread from them into the Warp, and those exposed to it must purge themselves through prayer and devotion to the Emperor, or risk losing their very so ul. Space Marines are more resistant to this affliction of the soul, but even they are not immune, and thorough history, entire companies of loyal Astartes have been lost to the Rust Masters – sometimes torn by inner conflict months or years after the actual battle against the servants of Nurgle.

Between the losses taken at Pandorax, the Legionaries sacrificed at Isstvan III, the warriors lost during the Heresy, those left on Terra and fallen during the Forgotten War, and the Legion's difficulty to recruit new Astartes, the Tenth Legion is estimated to be the smallest Traitor Legion in existence. Though precise numbers are impossible to obtain (it is unlikely that Ferrus himself knows how many of his treacherous sons still 'live' in the nightmarish fashion of their kind), Legion analysts believe that the Tenth Legion cannot count more than twenty thousand Legionaries throughout all the galaxy and the various hellish realms where they hide from the Emperor's Judgement.

However, this does not mean that the Iron Hands are any less of a threat than any other of the Traitor Legions – far from it. While their numbers may be low, the Iron Hands are possibly one of the most united Legions, with the least recorded occurrences of intra-Legion conflict. Although all sons of Ferrus are rivals for the favor of their Primarch and Dark God, they still possess a twisted sense of brotherhood, and their ambitions are not worldly enough for them to come into conflict. Very rarely does an Iron Hand renounces his Legion's colors, and warbands of the former Iron Tenth aren't as afflicted with backstabbing and scheming as their comrades in damnation.

The hierarchy of the Legion has endured through the millenia. At the top stands Ferrus Manus himself. The master of the Tenth Legion has long ascended into the ranks of the Daemon Primarchs, becoming a prince of the Neverborn, highest in Nurgle's favor. Like all of his brothers who have been twisted by the Ruinous Powers, he involves himself little in the day-to-day management of his Legion, spending most of his immortal existence waging the wars of his Dark God in the Great Game of Chaos. Unlike them, however, it is unknown at which point exactly the Tenth Primarch shed his mortal flesh to become an abomination to all that is whole and pure in this universe. From the beginning of the Heresy in Isstvan to the battle of Terra, Ferrus Manus was so consumed by the corruption of Nurgle that even the greatest seers of the Thousand Sons have failed to isolate the instant of his transformation. Perhaps there wasn't one : while most ascensions to daemonhood are violent affairs, triggered when the concentration of Warp energy within one champion of Chaos is too high for his mortal soul to contain it any longer, it is believed by some Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus that Ferrus' own fall was gradual, with the Plague God slowly eroding his soul until nothing remained. Some even whisper that this process is not complete yet : that there is still some humanity left in Ferrus Manus even now, preventing him from truly ascending as Nurgle's chosen avatar within the galaxy.

While they still revere him, his chosen sons have accepted that their father can no longer lead them as he once did, and have taken it upon themselves to provide the leadership the rest of the Legion needs. Captains who led their men during the Great Crusade and the Heresy still do so today, although none of them have kept all the forces under their command intact. When they fall in the trials of the Long War, other champions rise to claim the rank for themselves, earning it through ritual duels, the respect of their peers, or the favor of Nurgle or Ferrus. Warbands of the Tenth Legion call themselves Clans, adopting traditions and beliefs all of their own in their quest to be closer to their Primarch and dark patron. The Rust Masters, formerly known as the Iron Fathers, are the spiritual heart of the Tenth Legion, with many leading their own warbands in search of Nurgle's favor.

Frater Thamatica, the Plaguewrought

It is often said that madness and genius are two sides of the same coin, and nowhere is this saying as clearly proved than in the Iron Hand known as Frater Thamatica. Once a Techmarine from the Iron Hands, he was elevated to the Iron Fathers very quickly after his training on Mars was complete. When the Rot spread within the Tenth Legion, he was at the forefront of the research aiming to cure it. He tried various ways to drive it out, resorting to more and more desperate measures – though he never attempted the full-mechanization others tried. In one terrible experiment, he attempted to separate the pathogens within him from the rest of his body by interfering with his own existence on a quantum level, dissociating the Rot from his being. He failed, and the backlash of the attempt rewrote his entire psyche, driving him irredeemably mad. It also converted all of the remaining living flesh on his body into a living and sentient incarnation of Nurgle's Rot, his very soul absorbed by it. Now, the one known across all Traitor Legions' warbands as the Plaguewrought is an ever-shifting mass of pathogens and rusted augmetics, speaking with a thousand voices at once.

Exiled from the Tenth Legion for the damage caused by his experiments, Thamatica rules an entire daemon world within the Eye of Terror, in collaboration with elements of the Dark Mechanicum. There, he pursues his research into the secrets of both the Warp and the material realm, sending expeditions throughout the Eye and beyond to seek out the relics of ancient civilizations – human and otherwise. Like all sons of Ferrus, he wants to spread Nurgle's contagion, but his ambitions are far beyond that of his brothers. He thinks that, by understanding the inner workings of reality itself, he will be able to infect the very laws of physics with the madness of Chaos.

Homeworld

Shadrak Meduson

Once known to the Imperium as the Captain of the 10th Clan-company of the Iron Hands, Shadrak Meduson was an honorable warrior and a reliable commander. On one occasion, during the Great Crusade, he distinguished himself by taking control of the entire Legion in his Primarch's absence. The world on which it happened, known as One-Five-Four-Four, was controlled by the Eldar, and the xenos were present in such strength than the forces of three Legions were combined to conquer it : the Iron Hands, the Death Guard and the Salamanders. When Ferrus Manus disappeared, his First Captain Gabriel Santar led a rescue mission, while Meduson took overall command of the Tenth Legion's forces, cooperating with Vulkan and Mortarion to break the back of the Eldar presence. This feat earned Meduson much respect amongst all Legions, for even if it had been only for a moment, he had been a Legion Master in all but name.

After the Heresy and the Forgotten War, Shadrak split off from his Legion's main force. He took his Clan-company with him to the world of Dwell, a prosperous and technologically advanced world which had miraculously been spared by the horrors of the Heresy. His forces quickly overwhelmed the planet's human defenders, but Meduson had not come for the human population. His goal were the databanks of the planet, the repositories of knowledge of Dwell. For countless generations, the inhabitants hadn't buried their intellectual elite in the traditional way : instead, they had placed their preserved brains within a giant data-engine, capable of accessing all of their accumulated knowledge. These Halls of the Dead were a treasure of lore, and teams of the Martian Cult had been pouring over its records ever since the world's peaceful compliance.

By desecrating the remains of the dead and erasing all traces of their combined knowledge, Shadrak earned the boon of daemonhood, becoming one of the first Astartes to ascend to the rank of Daemon Prince. Having completed his unholy ritual, he and his men left the planet behind, while hosts of Neverborn began to appear in the aftermath of the desecration, feasting on the remnants of the population.

Today, the warband of Meduson calls itself the Sons of Medusa, in memory of their fallen homeworld and homage to their leader. They are one of the most dangerous warbands of the Iron Hands, possibly of all the Traitor Legions. The last sighting of their fleet indicate that they are operating around the forge-world of Moirae.

While the Iron Hands control dozens of worlds within the Eye of Terror, they, like the other Traitor Legions exiled in the Eye, have chosen a world to be their home – a replacement for Medusa, lost to the Forgotten War. Their new central fortress is located on a daemon world deep within the tomb of the Eldar Empire. According to visions from Thousand Sons seers and other psykers, the whole planet is covered in a pestilent jungle. It is a nightmarish realm of plague beasts and colonies of daemon-insects controlled by one central Neverborn sentience. Before the birth of Slaanesh, it was a recreational world for the Eldar elite, where they would come to relax and hunt the great beasts of prey collected from all over the galaxy. It was later claimed by Nurgle during the incessant wars opposing the four Chaos Gods, and with the Iron Hands settling upon it, none of the other three Dark Gods have dared to contest that claim in millenia.

Not all life on this daemon world is born of the Warp. Clans of human beings live there, dozens of them, according to the few seers that can – or are allowed to – pierce the veil of occlusion around the world. They are savage tribes, and they do not live long lives – both as individual and as collectivities. Finding sustenance on the daemon world is easy, for there are plenty of dying creatures to hunt and consume. But all life born on the planet is tainted, and the food corrupts the soul and the flesh alike. Those who die on the Tenth Legion's homeworld add their corpse to the rotting biomass of the planet. To avoid the total extinction of human life on the planet, and to feed the hungry marshes of the daemon world, the Iron Hands are forced to always bring more prisoners there, that they release unarmed amidst the jungle, with the basic equipment to form their own tribes – doomed to die out in a few generations at best. Powerful Neverborn are born from the suffering of these unfortunate souls, many of which are bound by the Iron Hands' Sorcerers and used as allies in their wars against the Imperium and the other Traitor Legions.

There are few fortresses there, for any construction decays in a matter of months, no matter how soundly it is built. About the only permanent structure is the fortress in which Ferrus Manus himself dwells. There, Chaos Lords dedicated to Nurgle – be they Iron Hands or not – come pay obedience to the chosen son of their god, bringing offerings of live prisoners and samples of exotic diseases. Known across the Eye as the Court of the Prince of Rust, this is a place where alliances are forged between warlords, and plots are hatched that will bring ruin to billions within the Imperium.

Kardan Stronos, the Bane of Parathen

One of the most recent Chaos Lords to have emerged from the Eye of Terror to plague the Imperium, Kardan Stronos is a powerful champion of Nurgle who is as dangerous as a tactician as he is as a warrior. He came to the attention of the Imperium when he fought and slain a Captain of the Twelfth Legion after he had killed his former master. The World Eater, known to his brothers as Varlag, was killed by the daemon axe wielded by Kardan, his soul consumed by the Neverborn bound to the weapon. This act enabled Kardan to unite the warband behind him, and the world fell to the Ruinous Powers within several months of a gruelling campaign against the forces of the Twelfth Legion.

Today, three centuries after his ascension to Chaos Lord, Kardan Stronos is the overlord of a Chaos empire stretching across several systems, which has so far repelled all Imperial attempts to destroy it. Parathen is now a daemon world, populated by the diseased descendants of its original population and upon which hundreds of thousands of daemons walk. In recent years, Inquisitorial reports indicate that he has sent envoys to the Dark Mechanicum, bargaining for their help in the expansion of his heretical domain.

Beliefs

My hands taunt me.

All the sacrifices I have made, all the oaths I have forsaken. All those I have killed, all the worlds I have conquered. All the changes I have gone through. And still they remain the same. They shine, free of rot and rust, reflecting my face back at me – not the one I wear now, transformed beyond reckoning by the touch of the Grandfather, but the one I had all these years ago, when I first slew the silver wyrm after it murdered an entire Medusan tribe. The face of the naive child who looked at the night sky in wonder, ignorant of the truth of the universe.

But now I know that truth. I know that decay is inevitable, and that it shouldn't be feared. Resisting its process is natural, but futile. Everything ends eventually. Loyalty is ended either by death or treachery, every artifice rusts and corrodes, and no life can truly be eternal. And that is why I also know that the silver on my hands is not forever either.

It may take a thousand years, or ten thousands. It matters not. Time means nothing here, in my domain within the Great Eye. One day the last chip of this hateful covering will fall, and I will be free. Free of my memories, free of my last weakness. Free of doubt and free of regret, truly worthy of Nurgle's love and his plans for me.

And then, the galaxy shall tremble at my name.

The Unholy Scrolls of Neimerel, attributed to the Traitor Primarch Ferrus Manus

During the Great Crusade, the Iron Hands had begun to embrace the beliefs of the Mechanicum, choosing to replace their perceived 'weak' flesh with augmetics. This proved to be their undoing, as the flesh they had neglected turned against them on Pandorax and drew them to madness. Now, the sons of Ferrus Manus worship Nurgle, the Chaos God of Pestilence and Chaos. They praise him as the Grandfather, the God of Life and Death, and a hundred other aggrandizing titles.

In a way, the Iron Hands still believe that the flesh is weak, and that the only way for it to become strong is to receive the pestilent blessings of Nurgle. All of them feel regret for ever resisting his gift, and though they know he has long forgiven them, they fight to prove worthy of his favor. As they see Ferrus Manus as their father, the Iron Hands truly believe the God of Plague to be their grand-sire, thinking he responsible for the creation of their Primarch just as much as the Emperor. To the Iron Hands, spreading the plagues of Nurgle is a holy duty, and those who resist them are pitied, for they are like the sons of Ferrus themselves prior to their understanding of Nurgle's truth. On the battlefield, they spread the word of Nurgle through bolters and poisoned blades, leaving the corpses to rot so that disease can flourish. They do not pursue retreating foes, for they are sure that at least a few of them carry with them the seeds of plague.

They despise the Dark Angels, for they consider – quite rightly – Tzeentch to the be the God of Lies, and his agents to keep the souls of the galaxy from realizing the truth of Nurgle's way. When the Legions Wars erupted in the Eye of Terror, many Rust Masters called for total war against the First Legion, and the conflict between the sons of the Lion and those of Ferrus echoed across the Warp Storm for many millenia. Apart from the Dark Angels, however, the Iron Hands have no qualm with allying themselves with other Legions, though most warbands find their unbound enthusiasm and contagion disquieting to say the least. They generally keep their end of any bargain made with another servant of Chaos, but respond to treachery with great fury, not stopping until the other side has been entirely eliminated. One more than one occasion, a Chaos warband has betrayed a group of Iron Hands and slain them all, only to find out that the whole Tenth Legion was now out for their blood. Today, most Traitor Legions steer clear from the Iron Hands' domains in the Eye, unwilling to risk their wrath.

The Corruption of Contqual

In the last century of the forty-first millennium, the world of Contqual was the theatre of a great battle between the Tenth and Third Legions. The center of the world's governance fell into corruption, cultists slowly rising to positions of influence and subtly sabotaging the system's defences. When the Iron Hands arrived, they expected to find a world ready to fall into their hands, and easily conquered the system's capital hive-city. However, they had underestimated the resolve of the rest of the population. Led by a charismatic Imperial officer, the armed forces of Contqual rose against their treacherous masters and sent an astropathic call for help. It took half a Terran standard year for reinforcements to arrive, during which the loyalist forces fought a long and horror-ridden campaign against the scions of Nurgle, battling in the streets of four hive-cities while the Iron Hands themselves remained in the one they had conquered at the beginning, working on some grand ritual.

When the reinforcements arrived, in the form a Company of Emperor's Children and several Regiments of the Imperial Guard. They linked up with the loyalist forces on the planet, and began to cleanse the hive-cities one by one. Before they were done with that task, however, the Librarians and other psykers among them sensed that the ritual of the Iron Hands was nearing its end, and they launched a desperate attack on the capital in the hope of stopping the spell from reaching completion. There, the sons of Fulgrim faced a Daemon Prince of Nurgle, summoned from the Warp by the scions of the Iron Tenth. Behind the creature was a rift in space from which legions of daemons were beginning to pour.

In the end, the Emperor's Children were able to banish the Iron Hands' Daemon Prince master, forcing the rest of the warband to flee back to whence they came and closing the Warp breach. Contqual, however, was deemed irredeemably corrupt by the Ordo Malleus. After careful examination, its surviving citizens were sent to quarantine worlds, and the planet itself subjected to Exterminatus.

Combat doctrine

The Unchosen

At the end of the Great Crusade and the beginning of the Heresy, when the corruption among the Iron Hands was still seen as something to resist and cure, many sons of Ferrus believed that they could obtain their salvation by following the path of their Legion's creed to its logical end – the replacement of weak flesh with superior iron. To that end, they sought to purge themselves of the disease by extensive augmentation. They believed that by removing the infected parts of their flesh, they would be able to escape the plague that afflicted them. However, the curse of Nurgle ran into more than just their bodies, and deep into their very souls. No matter how much of their flesh they abandonned and replaced, the disease would always reappear in what little was left.

As they kept removing their own flesh, so too did they loose their souls to the slow process of total mechanization. With their emotions lost to cold logic, their reflections in the Empyrean weakened, stopping to be the fierce inferno that characterizes most of the Adeptus Astartes. This both angered Nurgle and made the warriors vulnerable to the myriad spiritual predators that constantly hovered around the souls of the Traitor Legionaries. As the fleet of the Iron Hands was translating in the Warp after the Isstvan Massacre, a flicker in the Geller Shields allowed a host of daemons passage into the ships. Unable to materialize, these Neverborn sought the closest vessels, and possessed the flesh and iron bodies of these men. With their weakened spirits, the Iron Hands were unable to resist, and their souls were entirely subsumed by the daemons. Their incarnate forms became nightmares of twisted metal and warped flesh, dripping corruption and sickness wherever they went.

The other Iron Hands quickly forced these creatures – which they call Unchosen – into submission, binding them with sorcerous wards taught by the Ultramarines. Exorcism was considered, but quickly abandoned : the feeble souls of the possessed would not resist the arduous process. Instead, Ferrus Manus declared that the Unchosen were weaklings and fools who would continue to serve the Legion. Though their intellect is limited, the Unchosen can be directed on the battlefield, and their presence is often a sign that things are about to go wrong for whoever stands against the Tenth Legion this day. Their exact abilities vary from one individual to another, but their endurance is the stuff of nightmares, and their strength is prodigious. To this day, Sorcerers of the Iron Hands bind them into the service of their warlords, and a warband will go to great lengths to secure the bond of even one such powerful creature – though some consider them insults to their Legion and refuse to associate with them.

Although no Iron Hand has been foolish enough to follow the path of their forsaken brothers, there have still been additions to the numbers of the Unchosen since this first fateful night. Some Iron Warriors have fallen to the ranks of the Unchosen over the millenia as they repeated their futile attempt to purge themselves of Nurgle's corruptive touch. Adepts of the Mechanicum have also been known to succumb to it when they do not respect the strict protocols of augmentation decreed by the Omnissiah. It appears that the Plague God has taken a liking for these particular abominations, and his children seek to earn his unholy affection by creating more of them. The Inquisition had looked into the matter, and it is not unheard of for members of the Ordo to come down upon those who believe they can avoid death by sickness through extensive mechanisation. Worlds that are suffering in the throes of the Plague God's many creations must thus also endure the Unchosen appearing amongst those of their elite class who think they can escape their fate by shedding their very humanity – a fitting punishment for those who betray the God-Emperor's divine design perhaps, but also a great scourge to the innocents around them.

The very nature of the Iron Hands' homeworld in the Eye forces them to seek out captives to bring back to their unholy realm. Although they do not hesitate to raid other worlds within the Eye of Terror, playing the Great Game of Chaos as well as any other Traitor Legion, they are unwilling to risk igniting the fury of the Legions Wars anew. Therefore, most warbands instead turn their attention to the Imperium. Nurgle values victory over his brother Dark Gods, but he enjoys the tearing down of the Emperor's domain just as much, and it is far easier for the Iron Hands to wage war against Imperial Guardsmen and militia than against the other Traitor Legions.

Though the Iron Hands still possess a fleet worthy of a Space Marine Legion, outside of raids their ships are empty of human or mutant life. The aura of the Iron Hands makes it impossible for them to employ mortal crews, forcing them to use their own mechanical skills to pilot and maintain their vessels. Even their ships decay around them, with engines failing and plates of reinforced iron turning to rust in mere months, forcing them to perform endless repairs to keep them sailing. But this aura of disease is also one of the Tenth Legion's primary assets when they raid Imperial worlds.

The motivation of the Iron Hands' raids play a huge part in their choice of targets. They mostly attack highly populated worlds, sometimes finding themselves in conflict with forces from the Ninth Legion, who also require a constant supply of fresh slaves, albeit for a very different purpose. Fortunately – in a manner of speaking – the methods by which the Iron Hands wage war forever prevent an alliance between these comrades in damnation.

When a warband of the Iron Hands arrive within Imperial space, their first move is to reach out to the cults of Nurgle already present and those most vulnerable to their lies : the mutants and the downtrodden, the hopeless and the sick. Small groups of Legionaries come down to the worlds to spread the contagions running through their own bodies. Then the warband waits patiently for the plague to infect millions, and turn the entire planet into a hellish vision of corpses left to rot in the street and total collapse of the social order. It is only after the world is fully in the throes of the Warp-born epidemic that the Traitor Legionaries reveal themselves, striking without mercy in order to destroy the last remnants of order in the system. Then, they profit of the confusion to abduct as many humans as they can, massing them in their ships before disappearing, leaving behind them worlds filled with the ghosts of a murdered culture. It is difficult to evaluate just how many prisoners are taken in such raids – the state of the remaining population makes standard counts impossible, and the warped ships used by the Tenth renders comparison with Imperial ships' holding capacity worthless.

Apart from these raids, on rare and dreadful occasions a particular Chaos Lord will manage to gather a great number of Iron Hands under his banner. The Plague Crusades are generally aimed at one specific objective, such as the destruction of a particularly well-defended hive-world or the profanation of a temple-world guarded by the Adeptus Sororitas. In these occasions, they abandon most of their tricks and resort to open warfare. Thousands of sons of Ferrus Manus take to the field, led by their ascended Plague Marines, the sky is darkened by clouds of daemonflies, and most mortals who stand in their way fall to the ground long before the Legion of Nurgle actually reaches them, their bodies ravaged by the pestilence walking ahead of the Tenth Legion.

On these occurrences, only another Legion can stop the Iron Hands. The physiology of the Space Marines is the only thing – aside from faith in the God-Emperor – capable of resisting the cursed diseases that are brought forth from the Warp by such concentration of blasphemous souls. Even then, once the Plague Crusade is broken and the Iron Hands forces beaten back or destroyed, it is most often necessary to purge the entire world upon which the battle occurred with fire. Legionaries fighting against the Iron Hands are also examined, and those bearing signs of disease are quarantined by their Legion's own Apothecaries and brought to special confinement grounds, where they fight against the disease with willpower as much as medical attention. Every loyal Legion has these sanctuaries, and each also has a tally of all those who did not leave them alive.

Ulrach Branthan, the Enthroned King

Once known to the forces of the Great Crusade as the Captain of the Iron Hands' 65th Clan-company, Ulrach Branthan is one of the most powerful Chaos Lords of the Tenth Legion. On the killing fields of Isstvan V, he was mutilated by a warrior of the Death Guard and left for dead as the loyalists withdrew under the command of Mortarion and Alpharius. However, the mutations that already afflicted him kept him alive, and he was recovered by his warriors in the aftermath of the Massacre. He was then brought aboard his ship, the Sisypheum, and his Apothecaries worked to heal the terrible wounds he had taken. They succeeded, but only by implanting him with a piece of ancient technology plundered from the ruins of Medusa in the Captain's youth : the Heart of Iron. This artefact kept Ulrach from dying, but it reacted poorly with the corruption present in the Captain's body. Machine and mutated flesh war eternally against each other within his body, requiring him to be kept under the care of several fleshsmiths at all time, while he endures unspeakable agonies. At the same time, this condition has drawn the attention of Nurgle, who favours Ulrach for the torment he endures without flinching. Trapped on his chamber, the Enthroned King, as he is known to his followers, is able to send out his spirit to cultists across the galaxy, inspiring new heresies and preparing the field for his warband. He also receives various visions from his Dark God, which have caused his status among the devotees of Nurgle to soar ever since the days of the Heresy. Hundreds of cults hidden within the Imperium pay fealty to him, and he commands one of the largest Tenth Legion warband in existence, responsible for countless acts of destruction and corruption during the ten thousand years of the Long War. Both the Emperor's Children and the Iron Warriors have suffered great losses in battle involving the Enthroned King, and his name is written upon both Legions' rolls of enmity.

With the Chaos Lord unable to leave the ship, it is his Equerry, Cadmus Tyro, who leads the warband on the battlefield. Branthan follows the moves of his favored agent through an ancient archeotech automata shaped as a bird of prey, twisted by the energies of the Warp into a daemonic raven-machine. Those who serve the Enthroned King call the creature Garuda, and it rumoured to be indestructible and that all it sees is also seen by Branthan himself.

Recruitment and Geneseed

The Horror of Gaudinia Prime

Yet another grim example of the Iron Hands' infamy, the system of Gaudinia was lost to Chaos in the ninth century of the forty-first millennium. Gaudinia was a prosperous system, which had remained untouched by war since the first colons had arrived upon it three thousand years ago. It traded with neighbouring systems and supplied reliable, well-equipped regiments of the Imperial Guard for most of its history. Then, without any warning, an army of several hundreds Iron Hands appeared on the planet, spread in several groups – one for each major city on the planet. It was later discovered that the Traitor Marines had been brought on the world over the course of almost a millenia, one by one. All of them were placed in stasis coffins and hidden by Chaos cultists, sleeping out of time in wait for the moment of their awakening. Entire generations of infiltrators spent their lives smuggling the Chaos warriors onto their planet, believing that their actions would earn them the favor of Nurgle in the afterlife.

Upon their awakening, the Iron Hands slaughtered the entire population of Gaudinia Prime, abandoning their usual approach of letting their plagues do their work for them. The violent death of billions thinned the layer between the Warp and reality, and a host of daemons manifested itself on the planet. By the time Imperial forces arrived in response to the planet's desperate pleas for help, there wasn't a single survivor on the planet. Hideous afflictions had turned those unlucky enough to live through the first carnages into shambling horrors, enslaved to the Iron Hands and their Neverborn allies, while the souls of the dead were fed upon by the daemons of Nurgle.

The Gaudinian Regiments of the Imperial Guard and the elements of the Death Guard were forced to purge the entire planet, one city at a time. Although several of the regiments involved had to be purged afterwards, others were judged untainted by the experience of walking through the ruins of their homeworlds, and they continued to serve the Imperium alongside the Fourteenth Legion. Few of the Guardsmen who witnessed the Horror with their own eyes still live, but the traditions of the Regiments are proudly maintained by their sons and daughters.

To speak of the state of the Tenth Legion's gene-seed is to try to understand the madness that consumes them all. Purity itself is anathema to the Power that enslaves them, and this reflects in the alterations made to their transhuman physique. Before the Heresy, the Iron Hands were stern, stoic figures, with a fierce temper that was always kept in check through sheer willpower. It was believed that their distance with common humanity may have been due to a flaw in their gene-seed, perhaps by causing an emotional severance with the rest of Mankind greater than that experienced by all Legionaries upon their ascension.

Whether this is the case, however, has become completely irrelevant in the front of the other corruption that has poured into the Tenth Legion's bloodline over their ten thousand years of devotion to Nurgle. Countless diseases and degenerations afflict them, and those who have transcended into Plague Marines aren't, by any definition of the term, truly alive. It is only these Iron Hands who are still awaiting their transformation who are capable of producing gene-seed, riddled with infections as it may be. Even if the subject survives the diseases, the gene-seed is far from perfect : almost every Iron Hand has at least one Astartes organ non-functional, depending on the particular combination of contagions this warrior suffers. Ironically, the Tenth Legion is perhaps the one of the Traitor Legions with the most Apothecaries left in its ranks, and they take their duties very seriously. On the battlefield, they collect the progenoid glands of their fallen brethren, displaying a care and respect for their brothers unseen among any other of the Traitor Legions.

Despite these efforts, very few progenoids can be successfully harvested. With the already diminished numbers of the Iron Hands and the new battles waged within the Eye of Terror, traditional replenishment of the Legion's ranks would have quickly caused it to end up extinct. This has caused the Apothecaries to innovate, turning to Nurgle for help. The Plaguefather's answer was to send his chosen warriors an abomination of the Warp, known to those strong of will or insane enough to bear such lore as the Nerragalia. Located on the daemonic homeworld of the Tenth, the Nerragalia is a sapient daemonic tree, within which were placed the progenoids of hundreds of dead Iron Hands and other Legionaries at the beginning of this pact.

The Nerragalia feeds on the rotting biomass of the planet, and produces repugnant, bloated fruits within which new progenoids can be harvested, riddled with even more pestilences than those already present within the Iron Hands. The daemon tree is a treasure of the Legion and Nurgle, and is defended at all time by hundreds of warriors and tens of thousands of Neverborn, pacted by the Legion's Sorcerers and willingly serving alike. When warbands return to the daemonworld after a campaign, its Apothecaries will bring the gene-seed of the fallen to the Nerragalia, feeding the essence of the dead to the great tree so that it may be renewed by Nurgle and spread across all future Iron Hands. It is said that Nurgle himself sees it as one of his finest work : a life-bringing entity whose creation is a pure instrument of decay. Ferrus himself sometimes walks under its shadow, and the Daemon Primarch has even aided in the harvest on occasion. The progenoids touched by his hands are fiercefully sought after by the Apothecaries, as they are believed to be especially blessed by the Ruinous Powers.

Recruits for the Tenth Legion generally come from the worlds invaded. Among those captured to be brought back to the Legion's homeworld, the young males are deliberately exposed to violent contagions – even more so than the rest of the unfortunate souls captured by the traitors – and fed an infected sludge that forcefully grows their body into something approaching the first stage of genetic transformation to Astartes. Most 'aspirants' die horribly in the process, but those who survive are then taken to the Apothecaries' workshops, where the progenoids are implanted. The process is abominably painful, for it is not just the subject's genetics which are forcefully overwritten : his very soul is exposed to the taint of Nurgle, drowned in visions of endless decay until it finally breaks and he submits to the Grandfather. Some Apothecaries of the Iron Hands have remarked that the longer an aspirant endures before breaking down, the more Nurgle seems to favor him afterwards. This is in accordance to what is known of the Plague God's nature, for he enjoys the struggle of those afflicted by his creations as much as he appreciates the devotion of the heretics that praise his name in word and deed.

The Plague Marines

Those Iron Hands who can gain the favor of Nurgle and survive long enough earn the transformation into one of the most feared warriors in the galaxy : a Plague Marine. Not all those who reach this ascended status are sons of Ferrus, however : Space Marines from the other Traitor Legions – and even a few renegades from the loyal ones – have been known to become Plague Marines if they followed Nurgle for long enough and served the Plague God's designs well. Nurgle cares little for the origin of his servants, so long as they serve and love him.

When an Astartes willingly dedicates his body and soul to the God of Life and Death, he is almost immediately infected with a myriad different diseases, much like any mortal devotee. However, a Space Marine's enhanced physiology can endure far more pathogens than a normal human. While most followers of Nurgle either die shortly after embracing their ruinous ways or spend the rest of their existence halfway between life and death, the Chaos Marines who walk that path remain wholly alive for all of their existence. As they commit more blasphemies in the name of their patron, more and more diseases are added to their flesh. When the amount of corruption in their bloodstream is so great that even their transhuman body cannot cope, they die, and their souls are taken to the Garden of Nurgle. There, they are drenched in the pestilent waters that irrigate the Garden, the very essence of Nurgle dripping in their souls. Many are entirely consumed by the experience, while others are entranced by the nightmarish beauty of the Garden, and elect to stay in this hellish afterlife. The rest are returned to their corpses and restored to a twisted parody of life : they have become Plague Marines.

Plague Marines feel no pain, and do not suffer from the symptoms of the uncountable diseases they host in their necrosed flesh. They are bloated with the corruption of Nurgle, and the Warp-born contagions that they exhale with every breath are so potent that very few can deal with them without succumbing. Corrupted slime drips from their rusted armor, while their Warp-touched aura reshapes their surroundings in the image of the Garden. Each and every one of them carries a close-quarters weapon covered with a mix of poisons and pathogens that makes even the smallest scratch a lethal wound. They also manufacture grenades from their own rotten innards, using the explosives to expose a maximum of enemies to their contagion in a single blow.

So lethal are the contagions of the Plague Marines that even the other Chaos Marines dedicated to Nurgle can hardly survive their presence for any extended period of time. Thus, while the Plague Marines are looked up to by their non-ascended brothers, they are also perpetually separated from them, and it is a separation that weighs on their being : despite all their alterations, they are still Astartes at the core, and crave brotherhood and unity of purpose like any Legionary. To appease this solitude, they gather in squads of their own, and spearhead the advance of Iron Hands forces. A few, capable of bearing the severance from the rest of their kind, wander the galaxy alone as champions of the Plague God, spreading decay and destruction in their wake. All of them, however, are waiting for the day when all Iron Hands have left behind their mortality and ascended to the ranks of the Plague Marines – when they can once more act as a Legion, under the command of Ferrus Manus and the will of Nurgle.

Warcry

Iron Hands relish battle, for war is to them the ultimate theatre of decay, the place where all things fall victim to the inevitable hold of decay. Discretion never enters their mind, for the aura of death they exude would betray them in a moment. Instead, they call out to their foes in joy, accompanied by the shrieking voices of minor daemons manifesting in their threads. Though their vocal chords are often damaged by their afflictions, the words they shout at those they face can still be recognized in most case – whether this is a coincidence, a sign of the Traitor Marines' resilient physiology, or a whim of Nurgle is unknown. When fighting Imperial human soldiers, the Iron Hands shout warcries like 'Rejoice, maggots, for the chosen of Nurgle are among you !', 'Surrender and accept the Grandfather's love !' or 'Your resistance pleases him as much as shall your death !'. Things change, of course, when they are faced with warriors of the other Legions, be they loyal or traitor : then the joy is replaced by focus, and the goal of capture turns into one of execution. In these circumstances, often used warcries include : 'For the Grandfather and the Primarch !', 'We bring the endless pestilence !', and 'Bow before the tides of decay !'

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – World Eaters : the Honorable Ones

Of all the nine loyal Legions, none are as respected by the human population of the Imperium as the World Eaters. In them flows the wrath of their Primarch at the galaxy's injustices, contained by discipline and channelled toward a greater purpose until it is time to unleash it upon the Emperor's foes. The brotherhood shared by the sons of Angron spreads to all who fight alongside them with bravery, from the highest generals to the lowest trooper. They know that the true power of any army lies in the bonds between its members, for these bonds were what allowed the Legion to survive the greatest trial of all their history. Their fierce defence of Mankind has often put them at odds with other branches of the Imperium, but all true servants of the God-Emperor know that, if your plans bring you the disapproval of the Twelfth, then you are the one who has strayed from the righteous path. In a galaxy that grows darker by the day, the World Eaters are a moral compass, showing the honorable way no matter how grim the situation may be – and woe betide any who dare to stand against their might.

Origins

When the darkness of Old Night engulfed the galaxy, countless human worlds were cut off from the rest of Mankind. For millenia, their population suffered countless trials : mutation, wild psykers, alien oppression, the slow decay of their technological level, and many others. Nuceria, in the Ultima Segmentum, was one of these worlds, but the horrors its people faced were perhaps the most terrible of all, for they were born not of any Warp corruption or xenos abomination, but a direct result of Mankind's own failings.

Nuceria was a world ravaged by war, not against alien oppressors, but between human city-states ruled by decadent and inbred bloodlines. Entire regions of the planet had been turned into radioactive deserts or poisoned by the use of chemical weapons, while trenches spread across the length and breadth of entire continents – the legacy of past conflicts in which millions of soldiers had given their lives for pointless reasons. For these wars were not fought for honor, or because of conflicting ideologies : they were motivated by the greed and arrogance of the planet's rulers, as well as their complete disregard for the lives of their subject.

Each city-state was a brutal dictatorship, where the rulers enforced their control through ruthlessness and merciless, regular purges of all opposition. The greatest of these cities was Desh'ea, whose rulers kept their people satisfied by organizing cruel gladiatorial games where they forced slaves to fight and kill each other for the amusement of their denizens and their own. The whole planet, in fact, was corrupted by such debased 'sport' : a large part of the world's economy not dedicated to war was the purchase and training of the slaves who would fight to the death in the arenas, as well as the construction of these infamous stadiums. While fighting spectacles are hardly uncommon, even within today's Imperium, what set Nuceria apart was that not only were these battles almost always to the death, most of those taking part were slaves, forced into the pit-like arenas against their will.

It was on this world that, when the Dark Gods stole the Primarchs from the Emperor's gene-labs, one of the infant demigods landed. He arrived far away from any of the world's cities, in a range of mountains that spread out for many dozens of kilometers. Alone, the young Primarch instinctively made his way out of the mountains, seeking human contact. He wandered for months, hunting wild animals for sustenance. All the while, his body grew even further. When he finally reached a human settlement, he was a muscular adolescent, clad in furs and leather vestments he had crafted himself from the skins of his kills.

The hunters were closing in on the boy. He hadn't noticed them – for all his strength and power, he was still only an infant, not yet used to the ways of battle. It would be many years before he learned to extend his senses around him at all times, ever searching for any sign of hostile intent being directed at him.

The seer focused his power in preparation for the battle. It would be short and violent, that much they all knew. The Council of Seers had ordered this mission. To an outsider's eyes, it may seem callous – they were, after all, to murder an innocent child. But the Council had seen what future laid in wait for the young mon-keigh. The seer had to admit that death was preferable. And yet …

As he reached into the future to see the battle unfold, he sensed something twist in the web of fate, and a stream of visions poured through his mind. He saw the result of the ambush – his kin laying on the ground, broken and torn. He saw the child dragging himself away, hurt and afraid. He saw the greed of humans at work. And all the way, he heard the laughter of the Great Enemy as their plans unfolded to perfection.

His mind crashed back into his body, and he took several deep breaths, trembling in the shock of the revelation. Already the details were fading from his memory – the visions have been too brutal, he had not yet set his mind in the proper patterns which allowed for proper recollection. But he knew what he had to do.

'Withdraw,' he ordered, sending his words through the aether and straight into the hunters' minds.

'Why ?' asked one of the hunters. The seer could sense the doubt in his mind. He doubted the other's words, for he was young and not long set on the Path of the Seer.

'We cannot kill him.'

'Cannot or should not, seer ?'

'Both. The Council has been deceived by the Great Enemy. Us attacking here is what our immortal foes desire. It will be the first step on this child's downfall into madness and his rise as an unstoppable horror.'

'The Council will not see things that way.'

'Let me take care of that.'

There was a pause as the hunter considered his words. Then, reluctantly, he said :

'As you command, Eldrad.'

From the moment they saw him, the inhabitants – a combination of farmers and craftsmen – knew that this barbarian-looking boy was no ordinary youth. With mixed fear and awe, they welcomed him among them, teaching him their language and practices. It was at that time of his life that the Primarch took the name of Angron for himself, though the exact circumstances in which that happened are unknown. The name meant 'Wrathful' in the ancient languages of Mankind, which seems at odds to what is known of the World Eaters' general behaviour. However, the next part of the Primarch's youth proved that the name had been prophetic.

A few years after his arrival to the nameless village, where he had become an important figure through his strength and razor-edged intellect, Angron received word that a great celebration was about to take place in the city of Desh'ea, to which his village owed fealty. For the first time in almost a century, the endless game of alliances, betrayals and trench warfare that constantly tore Nuceria was on hold. All sides of the previous conflicts had exhausted themselves, and were now rebuilding their strength and searching for more caches of ancient weapons to use against their foes in the inevitable next war. The lords of Desh'ea, who had led the dominant side of the last war, were using the spoils to throw a huge celebration of their perceived victory, incomplete and hollow as it may be. From all over their domains, tens of thousands of citizens journeyed to Desh'ea to participate in the celebrations.

During his stay at the village, Angron had taken part in defending its people from various threats : wild animals, bandits, and even deserters from the armies clashing across the world, seeking easy plunder. Though a relative peace had descended upon the planet after the unofficial ceasefire, there were still many dangers in the wilderness separating settlements. The village chief had to go to Desh'ea to pay homage to its ruler, and he asked Angron to accompany him as a guard. Eager to see for himself what had been described to him as the greatest city on Nuceria, Angron accepted, and the journey to the city was uneventful – as journeys through lawless lands tend to be when one of the escorts is a Primarch, no matter how young, one would think.

After presenting their tribute to the representatives of the lord of Desh'ea – a mere village leader was far too low in status to earn a direct audience – Angron and the other villagers scattered through the city, to enjoy the festivities. For several days Angron visited the streets, watching in silence the displays of merchants and the revelries of the citizens. Then came the call to the arena : the greatest games in the history of the city were about to begin.

Thousands of slaves had been gathered within the great coliseum. The central element of the celebrations was going to be a re-enactment of several battles of the last war, scaled down so that it would be possible for them to take place within the arena and dramatized to glorify the Desh'ean leadership. The forces of Desh'ea were represented by actual soldiers, while the 'enemy troops' were slaves, most of them half-starved and poorly equipped. Eight battles were scheduled to take place, each involving at least a thousand gladiatorial slaves. Many of them had been implanted with the infamous Butcher's Nails, primitive brain implants that enhanced aggression at the detriment of every other emotion.

The Butcher's Nails

A product of the Dark Age of Technology, the Butcher's Nails are the result of science unbound by morals or ethics. Like so many other pieces of archeotech, their exact origins are unknown, but their effects are well-documented. Once implanted into the brain of a human subject, they stimulate aggression by boosting the adrenalin levels of the host, offering greater strength and stamina at the cost of sanity. They also erode the ability to enjoy anything beyond battle, slowly degrading the brain of the host through extreme pain when attempting to resist the enhanced bloodlust or not taking part in battle for prolonged periods of time. Slaves bearing the cortical implants typically didn't live long, dying in the arena at most a few years after the implantation. By that time, they were reduced to mindless husks, bloodthirsty brutes who had to be chained in between every battle.

After Angron's rise to power, the use of these implants was banned, on pain of death. But there were still thousands of victims when the Imperium reached Nuceria, and it is said that one of the reasons Angron agreed to join the Imperium was to gain access to the Mechanicum's technology in the hope that these unfortunate souls could be saved. Thousands of healers and tech-priests were brought to Nuceria from every corner of the galaxy, with World Eaters continuing their search for a cure during the decades of the Great Crusade. But no matter how much resources were invested in the project, no way to remove the Nails was ever discovered. The best that was achieved was the suppression of their effects through psychic means, allowing the ex-gladiators to live the rest of their life in peace, free from the madness inflicted upon them by their fellow humans.

Today, the use of the Butcher's Nails is forbidden on Nuceria and every world under the purview of the World Eaters (though the Astartes do not rule, most Governors are smart enough not to allow such a thing under their eyes). Nevertheless, the technology has been used by the Imperium in the past, mostly in penal legions. On more than one occasion, Chaos warbands have acquired the schematics for the construction of the fiendish devices, and created armies of mortal followers equipped with it before unleashing them upon the galaxy. The World Eaters have hunted down and destroyed each of these hordes, considering them an insult to their Legion's homeworld.

It is rumoured that within the Eye of Terror, there are debased flesh-smiths who experience on grafting the Butcher's Nails upon unwilling Astartes prisoners, in the hope of creating the ultimate warrior. The World Eaters have heard these rumors, and while they do not dismiss them, they know that such projects will only ever create maniacs, not warriors.

Angron watched the first battle from the tribunes. In silence, completely immobile, he saw hundreds of men and women die, unable to do anything against the superior weaponry and armor of their opponents. He saw the crowd cheer the killings, roaring its approval of the blood being shed. And then, for the first time in his life, Angron lost his temper.

'You cannot own a human being. Sooner or later, someone pushes back !'

Attributed to the Primarch Angron, during the Battle of Desh'ea

The rage of Angron was unleashed upon the city, transfiguring him into a vengeful god. He had witnessed not just the corruption of the High-Rider lords, but the fact that their evil spread to those under their rule, turning humans into cruel beasts that took pleasure in the spectacle of violence and death. Worst of all, he had seen the madness that had claimed some of the slaves implanted with the Nails, turning them into berzerkers that would kill even their own comrades in misfortune. He descended into the arena's holding cells, carving a bloody path through the guards, and shattered the chains of the thousands of gladiators. Then, he led these liberated souls to the open ground of the arena, all the while shouting, denouncing the cruelty of the ruling caste and the moral failure of every soul who watched these bloody 'games'.

Many in the crowd were shamed by his words, their belief in their world's ways shaken to the core by Angron's conviction and rage. It is said that twelve of the warriors tasked with guarding the arena, veteran soldiers all, who had been trained from birth and had participated in such bloody sport hundreds of times, wept as they realized their sins and tore off their masters' emblem from their uniform. Then, they turned against those of their comrades who hadn't shared their revelation, and joined in the revolt, casting off their armor and their past with it.

The long-contained resentment of the oppressed population rose to the fore, and a revolt engulfed the entire city. Ordinary civilians, who had watched and cheered at the previous arena games, fought side by side with gladiators against the soldiers who remained loyal to their masters. According to their testimonies, gathered by historians after the battle's end, they felt themselves swept away by Angron's rage, drown in his righteous fury and unable to resist their own arising conscience. Their memories of the actual revolt were blurred, but when the dust settled and the ruling family of Desh'ea was brought to extinction, they stood proud at the side of the liberated slaves, an entire people united once more against a tyranny that had oppressed them all, with the only differences being the degree and obviousness of their chains.

Centuries later, Imperial archivists would theorise that on that day, Angron subconsciously used one of his gifts as a Primarch : a nearly impossible to resist charisma, whose influence, fuelled by his rage, had supernaturally spread through the entire city of Desh'ea. Perhaps it was some psychic power at work, but as with so many things about the Primarchs, the details are long lost to us, if they were ever known to anyone beyond the Emperor and the Primarchs themselves.

'Mercy,' begged the old man on the throne. Tears were running from his eyes and snot from his nose, dirtying his priceless ceremonial robes. 'Please, Angron. Have mercy.'

'Is this not what you wanted ? To watch us fight ? Is this not what you have always wanted ?!'

The giant leaned toward the old man until their faces were mere centimetres apart, and he whispered, in a voice so low that no one but his victim heard his words :

'Are you not entertained ?'

The sheer presence of Angron froze the old tyrant in place. He could do nothing but stare into the eyes of Angron, his will crushed to dust by the fiery wrath burning within them.

He was still immobile when the cleaver in the giant's hands came down and tore him in two.

When his rampage ended by the death of the then-ruler of Desh'ea (whose name has long since passed into oblivion), Angron had earned the title of 'Lord of the Red Sands' from both his own allies and his fearful enemies. While he despised the title, he claimed it willingly, so that every time it would be used he would be reminded that by losing control of his emotions, he had caused far more death that would have been necessary if he had been in control of himself during the revolt, capable of directing his followers and employing tactics instead of mindlessly seeking out his foes. He deeply regretted what he had done, not because of his reasons, for he truly believed the institution of slavery to be an abomination, but because he thought similar results could have been achieved with far less bloodshed. Worse, because of his reckless actions, even more bloodshed would surely follow.

The people, heedless of his troubled mind, acclaimed Angron as their liberator, with dozens of great orators – many of which would later join the ranks of the famous iterators – singing his praises and rejoicing at the revelation and overcoming of their own flaws. The Primarch took control of Desh'ea, and began to rebuild the city that had been half-destroyed by the bloody revolt. At the same time, Angron knew that the other cities would not remain silent : when their own rulers learned of what had occurred here, they would fear the same thing happening in their own little realms. To the Primarch, who had just been exposed to the depths of corruption Nuceria's ruling class was capable of, it was obvious what their response would be : they would gather their armies and march on Desh'ea to crush the revolution before it could spread.

A few weeks later, as Angron had thought, proclamations of war arrived to Desh'ea from its former allies. The noble houses of the other city-states denounced the 'brutality' of Angron's 'usurpation' of power, and their armies were advancing on Desh'ea to 'liberate it' from the 'violent and cruel reign' of the 'barbarian oppressor'. After the messengers were chased from the city by the booing citizens – Angron had to prevent them from being sent back in several pieces each – the Lord of the Red Sands commanded his followers to prepare for war. So far, they had been busy rebuilding the city, but with the coming of the foreign armies, the establishment of a proper fighting force was required.

Angron assembled his own army, using the freed gladiators as its core. With proper food and equipment, most of them individually surpassed the soldiers of the city-states, but Angron knew that they were unused to large-scale battles. They would face veteran soldiers, who had fought in a war greater than any Angron had ever known at that point in his life. But while that experience would play against the rebels, the war itself was perhaps the only reason they had a chance to succeed in their rebellion. With the typical grim irony that is often found in the pages of History, the war, caused by the greed and arrogance of Nuceria's ruling class, had bled their armies and wealth, leaving them far weaker than they had been in centuries. The armies raised to crush the rebellion outnumbered the rebels, were better equipped, and had more experience of true war. But while the gladiators and those who had embraced Angron's cause fought with the ideal of a new era at their back and a god-like warrior at the front, the soldiers of the city-states had nothing but the orders of haughty tyrants. They were little more than slaves themselves, each of them having seen his comrades die by the thousand for nothing more than the pride of his lords, as trenches were gained and lost while the commanders remained at the back, drinking wine in crystal cups.

The Lord of the Red Sands knew all of this, and he spoke with many such veterans amongst his own forces in the days before the arrival of the High-Riders' so-called 'retribution'. From them, he learned the tactics used by the Nucerian nobility, which didn't take much effort. He then designed his plan, which would require the cooperation of all those who had sworn their allegiance to Angron's cause.

When the High-Rider armies arrived to Desh'ea, they found the gates of the city open and undefended. Wary of a trap, the nobles ordered their forces to advance and retake the city, while they themselves remained at the back. Behind the walls, the soldiers found the city's people still going on their business, greeting the soldiers as if their presence was entirely expected. But while they wandered the streets, unable to comprehend what was happening around them, Angron's plan sprung into action.

Behind the High-Rider camps, dozens of men and women emerged from their hiding places. What happened next is uncertain, for there are many tales of that moment. According to some, Angron was among these hidden agents, and he slaughtered a path across the camp until he reached the lords' tents. Other tales affirm that the infiltrators wore the same uniform as their enemies, and walked into their midst unopposed, before capturing their leaders. Yet others pretend that Angron marched in the camp alone, without any attempt at disguising his presence, and that all who soldiers who saw him cast their weapons to the ground in surrender or joined his march to the nobles' lair.

Regardless of the truth, once they were in Angron's presence, the army's leaders quickly ordered their forces to surrender, begging for their enemy's mercy despite their earlier proclamations that they would crucify him and all his accomplices. Remembering what had happened the last time he had given in to his rage, Angron denied those of his followers who called for their immediate executions, asking the nobles' heads be sent back to their cities. Instead, he ordered them imprisoned for their crimes against Nuceria's people, deep within the dungeons that the rulers of Desh'ea had used for political prisoners during the city's long and treacherous history. The soldiers they had brought, awed by Angron's might and the prospect of fighting for a worthy cause, pledged their allegiance to his newly born nation. Thus ended the second battle of Desh'ea before it had even begun.

With his army increased by the strength of the deserters and several cities on his side, Angron was able to deal with the rest of the High-Rider lords on a more equal footing. He sent emissaries to them, offering them a very simple deal : surrender to him and live the rest of their lives in relative comfort, or oppose him, have their armies turn against them or be crushed depending on their loyalty, and then die a violent and painful death. One by one, the leaders surrendered, though several of them refused Angron's offer and massed their armies to defy the one they had nicknamed the 'Gladiator King'.

This army was defeated in a great battle at the foot of the very same mountains where Angron had arrived on Nuceria. The High-Riders, desperate to prevent more desertion in their ranks, had forced the Butcher's Nails upon all of their soldiers, forsaking strategy and tactic just so that their forces wouldn't turn to the enemy at the first opportunity. The battle was long and brutal, with the High-Rider forces driven mad with bloodlust, their implants' activity increased by their masters. Eventually though, they were defeated, even if Angron had to order each and every one of them put down like rabid dogs – an order which weighed heavily upon his heart, and made him spent considerable resources trying to save the other victims of the crude archeotech. The battle reminded Angron of the limits of unbound rage and the advantages of discipline and self-control, lessons that he never forget in the centuries that followed.

At the end of the battle, Angron ordered the nobles who had led the army be brought before him to be judged for their most hideous crime. None of them survived, and Nuceria was fully brought under Angron's control, truly at peace for the first time in millenia.

'One hundred thousand souls,' said the Lord of the Red Sands softly as he looked down upon the captured nobles. 'All of them lost to madness and death, because you wouldn't surrender your prestige and power.'

Angron was utterly calm, with not a single sign of his fury showing on his face. Yet all present – the kneeling lords and the soldiers alike – could feel his rage. It radiated from him in a withering aura of wrath, like a storm threatening to burst at any moment. The nobles were frozen in place by it, unable even to beg for mercy in the front of it, while the soldiers, who minutes ago had felt such rage themselves, found their tempers quelled and replaced by unease. They could sense that they were on the threshold of some momentous event. All of them had heard the tale of how the Lord of the Red Sands had brought low the rulers of Desh'ea – many had witnessed it with their own eyes. Deep within themselves, they feared to ever see such fury unleashed. They thought Angron would take up his weapon and tear the nobles to pieces by his own hands.

Then the moment passed. The storm that had threatened to burst, bringing fire and destruction to all of Nuceria, retreated. Angron sighed, and more than a few present thought, for a moment, that they heard the distant raging scream of denied god. Fury had left Angron. All that remained was regret, and the duty of a king.

'For your crimes against the people of Nuceria,' declared Angron, 'you are sentenced to death.'

Several years after the unification of Nuceria was complete, the Great Crusade reached the world. Having met with His son Guilliman in the Five Hundred Worlds, the Emperor had felt the presence of another Primarch nearby, and directed His fleet to the world. When He descended upon Desh'ea at the head of a procession of golden giants, proclaiming that He had come to be reunited with His son, the people of the city cheered, their loyalty to Angron vindicated beyond measure. They had followed the Lord of the Red Sands for his ideals, and now, they learned that he was the child of such a splendid being. After being freed from endless war and united at last, they were eager to join in the Imperium, repeating the process of unification on a galactic scale. The iterators found the people of Nuceria already acquired to their cause, craving to hear of the glories of the Imperium – if Angron had achieved so much on Nuceria in only a handful of years, what could his father have realized ?

Angron, however, had fought to free his people from the chains of slavery. He was reluctant to submit to another, even – or rather, especially – one as powerful as the Emperor. The self-proclaimed Master of Mankind spoke of the Great Crusade, and the armies waging war in His name to bring the lost worlds of Mankind to compliance, but all Angron heard were the ramblings of another tyrant wanting to enslave free people, who had built their own lives and may not desire to join the Imperium. He was too suspicious of the Emperor's motives, and for a time it was feared that the Primarch would refuse to join his father and bring Nuceria with him into open defiance of the Imperium.

But the Emperor spoke to His son of what He truly intended for Mankind. Over the course of several days, He managed to convince Angron of the righteousness of the Great Crusade, and that the ideals of the Imperial Truth were the extension of the beliefs for which he had fought on Nuceria. Finally, Angron accepted the Emperor's offer – though he refused to kneel before the Master of Mankind, and never did in all of his life. He was brought aboard the Emperor's own ship, the Bucephalus, leaving Nuceria in the hands of his human followers, who would manage the insertion of the planet into the Imperium.

'I do not intend to rule over the galaxy as a tyrant, Angron. When all the worlds of Mankind are united in the Imperium; when all the threats to our existence have been purged from the stars; when our people are able to follow their own path without my aid … then my duty will be done.'

The Great Crusade

'You shall be the War Hounds no longer. This name was given to you by my father, in recognition of your loyal service and devotion to the Imperial Truth, but for all his nobility and power, the Emperor understands little about the hearts of those under his rule.

A hound as no morality, for it merely obeys the commands of its master : as such, it bears no responsibility for its actions. But you are not hounds. You are warriors, your flesh infused with transhuman might. And such great might it is : no other species in the galaxy can match the power of the Legiones Astartes. With this power comes the risk of losing sight of our path, for who would dare challenge us for our deeds ? That is why you must always remember the power that was bestowed upon you, and the responsibilities that come with it. We are champions of a new age, bringing the light of enlightenment and the safety of the Imperium to our scattered people. But we do so with crushing power, capable of forcing all to bow to us. Our is the power to devour entire planets, leaving naught but ruin and carnage in our wake. And so our might must kept under control, chained by honor and loyalty to the Imperium and to each other. We must always keep in mind that the ideals of the Imperial Truth are all that separate us from the monsters we fight.

From this day onward, we are the Eaters of Worlds, and we must be ever cautious not to let our power take us down a dishonourable path.'

Angron, upon taking command of the Twelfth Legion on Bodt

Unlike most of his brothers, Angron was not taken back to Terra to learn the arts of war on a galactic scale, though the reasons for the Emperor's decision, as ever, can only be speculated upon. Certainly, in the years to come, Angron would prove that he hadn't required such specific instruction, instead absorbing the necessary knowledge from first-hand experience during the campains of the Great Crusade. Instead, the Primarch was brought to the volcanic world of Bodt, which had long been a muster point for the Twelfth Legion. Word of his coming preceded him, and from all over the Great Crusade his sons gathered to witness their father for the first time. The Legion Master of the War Hounds, Ibram Ghreer, who had led the Twelfth Legion for nearly three decades, knelt before Angron, only to be lifted up to his feet by the Primarch, who commanded that none of his sons ever kneel in his presence. In a grand speech, Angron proclaimed that their name would no longer be the War Hounds, but the World Eaters, so that they would always remember the great power that was theirs and the responsibilities that came with it. The Legion also changed its colors, adopting a white and blue scheme and changing their emblem to the image of a planet held between two set of teeth.

Before Angron took command of the Twelfth Legion, there had been many disturbing rumors about the Legion's tendency to violence and overkill. Tales of soldiers who had already surrendered being slaughtered by the hundred and peaceful worlds conquered without giving them a chance to integrate the Imperium without conflict weren't spoken in the open, but they nonetheless circulated across the forces of the Great Crusade. A few even claimed that regiments of human soldiers fighting at their side had been butchered for failing to match their standards or obey their orders quickly enough. If there was any grain of truth to the rumors, however, the Primarch's influence quickly put a stop to such practices : Angron quickly proved himself to be one of the more humane Primarchs.

To Angron, war was a necessary evil : Mankind needed to be strong in order to defeat its foes, both the alien predators haunting the stars and those in its own ranks who would enslave their kin for their own greed and debased desires. The Primarch knew war like few others, even amongst his brothers, and while he enjoyed the presence of his sons, drinking and training with them at any opportunity, he took no pleasure in the actual battles he fought at their side. He was proud of them, rejoicing in their prowess and achievements, but he felt nothing as he tore his way through hordes of enemies except regret at their deaths. Some have speculated that after the bloody battle of Desh'ea, the Primarch had sealed away his battle-lust, unwilling to risk another lapse of his reason and afraid to cause another indiscriminate slaughter due to abandoning all strategy in pursuit of carnage. Horus believed that his brother was limiting himself too much, that if Angron allowed his emotions some freedom, he would be an even greater warrior – possibly, he said almost in jest, one that would be able to surpass even him. But it seems that if the cost of Angron's control was to sacrifice some of his fighting potential, then the Lord of the Red Sands was willing to pay it – and even if he was limiting himself from achieving his true potential, he was still a force to be reckoned with.

Under Angron's leadership, the World Eaters earned success after success on the battlefields of the Great Crusade. The Twelfth Legion became a well-oiled warmachine, displaying a unity of thought and tactical acumen few other Legions could boast. They became expert at breaking enemy armies on the field of battle, bringing them down as much thanks to their superior might as to their discipline.

When finding human worlds, the Twelfth Legion would investigate the laws and culture of the civilization before any official contact was made. If the institution of slavery was discovered, there was no negotiation, no peaceful offer to join the Imperium : the World Eaters would descend upon the rulers of the world, and butcher them to the last, before offering the rest of the population a chance to be freed from such injustice. Worlds liberated in such a way were fiercely loyal to the Imperium, but the economic chaos that followed the loss of such cheap workforces made them of little use to the Imperium for a time, and the Administratum was forced to rebuild the toppled governing structures from the ground up.

In the crystal gardens of Ulthwe, Eldrad was weeping. Through the web of fate, he had felt the destruction of Craftworld Tuonoetar. But worse than the death of billions of his people, bringing them ever closer to extinction, was the fact that he may very well be responsible for this atrocity.

Years ago, he had been the one who had aborted the attack on the human warlord, when he was still an infant. At the time, the Seer had thought the attack doomed to fail, and witnessed through his powers the horrible consequences should the child be broken but fail to die. But in the eternity of slaughter and horror he had foreseen, he had not once seen the death of an Eldar. Now, he realized that the vision had been incomplete – it had to be. The lords of the mon-keigh armies were relentless in their hate-filled extermination of all different lifeforms, selfishly seeking to purge the galaxy while remaining unaware that their greatest threat would come from within. It was inevitable that at some point, the one who had been the Blood God's chosen would wage battle against the people of Isha. Why he hadn't foreseen it, he could not know – though he suspected the Great Enemy's hand.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, feeling the approaching presence of several Far Seers coming to judge him for his part in Tuonoetar's doom, Eldrad Ulthran vowed that he would not allow the sacrifice of the Craftworld to be in vain.

Among his brother Primarchs, Angron was respected by most. He was especially close with Horus, both because of their common interest for tactics and because the First Primarch always considered diplomatic approaches first, instead of using his overwhelming superiority to coerce others into compliance. They both possessed a charisma that allowed them to prevent needless loss of human life, and were willing to deal with the more tiresome aspects of diplomacy to do so.

Though they shared similar ideas on discipline and the place of the Astartes in the Imperium, Angron and Perturabo didn't go along well. Both were fighting to protect humanity, and while the World Eaters' camaraderie wasn't present in the Iron Warriors, the true reason for their refusal to truly bond remains uncertain. It is believed that both of them saw in the other a reflection of themselves : a terrible rage contained only through a constant effort of will, and were unwilling to face such a stark reminder of their own flaws for long. Perhaps they subconsciously feared that their anger would fuel each other's and drag them down a path from which they had both willingly turned away.

Several Primarchs, however, saw Angron as a fool, whose ways were doomed to bring catastrophe upon the Imperium. Rogal Dorn was foremost among them, but the lord of the Imperial Fists wasn't the only one. Another tension existed between Angron and Konrad Curze : while Angron admired his brother's dedication to protect the innocents, he didn't agree with the rule of fear followed by the Night Lords. To him, only tyrants needed to use terror to force others to obey them, and he was uneasy about what would happen to the King of the Night if he kept using such means, even to the noblest ends. Fulgrim and Angron also had one violent argument on their first meeting, with the Lord of the Red Sands calling the Phoenician a preening fool who put too much importance on appearances, while Fulgrim called his brother a barbarian with no appreciation for the fine things in life. They left each other fuming, but not outright hostile – they both acknowledged that the other was, at the very least, a good warrior and general. It was simply their respective character they couldn't stand.

When the Emperor announced that He would retire from the Great Crusade on Ullanor, Angron argued against his father's decision. He respected Horus, both as a brother and as a commander, but none could replace the Master of Mankind on the frontlines. His presence and absolute, unchallenged authority was one of the Imperium's greatest assets, allowing billions of soldiers to fight united, almost entirely without dissent among their ranks. True, with the fall of the Ork empire at Ullanor, there was nothing left in the galaxy that could pose a threat to the rise of Humanity – but that was only what they knew. There were still entire sectors of the Milky Way that remained unexplored, within which countless more abominations could lurk. They couldn't lower their guard, and the decision of the Emperor to divide His authority between the newly appointed Warmaster and the Council of Terra was, Angron claimed, a mistake.

But the Emperor wouldn't let His mind be swayed. He spoke to Angron in private, and though the contents of their exchange shall remain forever unknown, the Primarch emerged from them disgruntled, but accepting of his father's decision. He vowed that he would do all he could to help Horus bear the heavy burden that had just been given to him. For the rest of the Great Crusade, Angron took upon himself many diplomatic duties while he continued to lead the World Eaters into battle, smoothing the relationship between the Legiones Astartes and the various components of the Imperial Army. As one of the most humane Primarchs, he was able to empathize with the mortals who led the armies of human soldiers, forming many bonds of honor and friendship. To this day, the Twelfth Legion holds those of these bonds whose recipients have endured the passage of time in high value.

Outside of the military elements of the Great Crusade, however, the reputation of the World Eaters plummeted. Angron came in conflict with the representatives of the Administratum many times, opposing their decisions on matter of taxations of worlds recently brought into compliance – despite the risk of causing resentment within populations just recovering from war – and the reassignment of regiments who had fought alongside his Legion for decades. The members of the Administratum were, of course, unable to oppose a Primarch's words – though many believed that they could, only to find themselves mute when in his actual, physical presence. It is said that some of the World Eaters attached to their Primarch's own Expeditionary Fleet actually enjoyed the visits of outraged Administratum adepts, coming to them bearing seals of authority and demanding to talk with Angron right now. Amongst themselves, they bet on the length of time any of them would be able to resists the Lord of the Red Sands' presence before fainting.

Those who were far from Angron's presence, however, began subtle attempts at reprisal, seeking to bring the troublesome Legion to heel. The Council of Terra, led by Malcador the Sigillite, was composed of men and women of great courage, intelligence, and moral integrity, but unfortunately such individuals are and have always been rare, and the Administratum, like any human organisation this size must, had then like now its share of thick-headed, petty bureaucrats. Shipments of ammunition and other supplies were delayed on points of procedure, rapports were demanded at every turn, and so on. For a time, this amused Angron – no real damage was ever done to the Legion – but then the bureaucrats asked that the captain of his flagship The Conqueror, Lotara Sarrin, return to Terra to be interrogated for her conduct, citing various insults and breaches of protocols that had been reported to them.

In response, Angron sent a hundred Legionaries, led by the legendary Eighth Captain Khârn, to the Administratum outpost that had sent the convocation, with the single instruction to 'take care of this'. There are no records of what happened there, and no one seem to have died or even been harmed by the World Eaters – but the Administratum never bothered the Twelfth Legion or its human allies again, and the World Eaters claim that they still know the story, and tell it once a year to pass it on to the new recruits. The Great Crusade continued, until, one hundred years after the Emperor had found Angron on Nuceria, the dream that had led the Lord of the Red Sands to join forces with his father was destroyed by the betrayal of one of his own brothers.

Lhorke, 'The First'

When the War Hounds first left Terra to sail across the stars at the Emperor's behest, they were left by the best commander among them : Legion Master Lhorke. For decades, the warrior led the Twelfth Legion, until he fell in battle on the world of Jeracau. He was then entombed within a Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought, one of the first ever created – and the finest in existence.

During the Great Crusade, Lhorke continued to distinguish himself by leading the other Twelfth Legion Dreadnoughts into battle, including those who had been entombed before the process was perfected and suffered various mental afflictions because of it. When the Heresy erupted, he fought harder than any other World Eater. Most Dreadnoughts didn't survive the Ruinstorm, their weakened minds consumed by the horrors of the Warp, but the iron-clad will of Lhorke enabled him to endure, and it is said that he didn't sleep for the entirety of the two Legions' time in the Ruinstorm.

Lhorke still lives today, but the passing of millenia has taken its toll over the old warrior's mind. Much of his memory is blurred or lost, and he spent most of the time in stasis-sleep, recovering his strength in between bouts of violent activity. When he is awake, there are few things in the galaxy that can stand against his wrath. He had defeated countless threats to Nuceria, where he spends his decades-long periods of sleep. Alien warlords, mutant masters and even Daemon Princes have fallen before him, torn apart by his mighty frame. To the Ultramarines dwelling in the Ruinstorm, the name of Lhorke is a curse, and many dream of the glory they could earn by being the one to finally slay the ten-thousand years old veteran. Yet in all that time, none have even come close.

It is broadly believed that 'The First', as he is known to his brothers, is the oldest Dreadnought in existence. Not just in the Imperium, but even when taking the Traitor Legions – who spend their hateful lives in the timeless depths of Hell – into account. He was entombed before the beginning of the Heresy, and was an elder even by the time of the Great Crusade – the very start of which he witnessed with his own eyes. He is a symbol to the Eaters of World, an example of defiance in the face of death and eternal dedication to his sacred duty.

The Heresy : Battle of Calth

Khârn, the Bound One

Within the Imperium, there are few warriors whose legend is as spread and acclaimed as that of Khârn, the legendary Captain of the World Eaters' Eighth Company. Born upon Terra, he was recruited into the War Hounds before their departure from the Throneworld to join the Great Crusade. Through his battle prowess and his tactical cunning, he quickly rose in the ranks of the Legion to the rank of Captain of the Eighth Company. When Angron was found, his ships were the firsts to reach the Primarch, allowing him to be the first Legionary of his own gene-line that the Lord of the Red Sands ever saw. He impressed the Primarch so much that Angron named him his Equerry, carrying his words across the galaxy as one of the lords of the Great Crusade.

Khârn was a superlative warrior and a commander of great charisma, who the entire Legion looked up to. His skill with a blade was amongst the greatest of the Legions, rising him to the ranks of champions such as Sigismund of the Imperial Fists or Sevatar of the Night Lords. According to several records, his will was so powerful that Warp-based powers could not touch his mind at all – a talent that was most useful during the Shadow Crusade in Ultramar.

The title of 'Bound One' initially came from the chains he wore around his armor's wrists, to honor the gladiators of Nuceria and remember himself of the lessons of Angron : that the Astartes were servants of Mankind, their power bound by duty and brotherhood alike. After the Heresy, however, that title passed from one of respect to one of quiet worship. Eventually, Khârn was elevated to sainthood by the Ecclesiarchy shortly after news of his death were finally confirmed, long after the fires of the Heresy had died down.

Accounts written hundreds of years apart seem to indicate that Khârn, despite being a veteran of more than a thousand years, retained his handsome appearance until the day of his ultimate death, without a single scar marring his face, in sharp contrast to most Legionaries in the Imperium and almost all within the ranks of the World Eaters. His demise came to pass on the ground of Skalathrax, during one of the many battles that were waged upon this world. It took place in 981M32, when a force of hundreds of Dark Angels laid siege to the planet. Eighth Captain Khârn, who had come to replenish his depleted Company, fought alongside the planet's defenders, from the deepest parts of the jungle to the gates of the Legion's stronghold. Eventually, he was slain by a gathering of Dark Angels' sorcerers – though he managed to kill all of them before succumbing to his wounds, his body retrieved in the middle of a circle of their dead. Due to the fact that the forces of the First Legion withdrew as soon as the Bound One fell, it is believed that their attack had for sole purpose the death of Khârn – a very plausible theory, given how much damage Angron's Equerry had dealt to the forces of Chaos during his exemplary career.

At the end of the battle, Khârn's body was reclaimed by the World Eaters and brought back to one of their strongholds on the planet, where it was buried with all honours. Over time, his crypt has become a shrine, where Astartes and humans alike come to pay respect and meditate over the deeds of the Bound One. Many aspirants make the pilgrimage to Khârn's Shrine immediately after their transformation into full-fledged Space Marines. After their pilgrimage, they put chains around their wrists, as Khârn did in his life. Some even claim to have been visited by the spirit of the great warrior, imparting upon them words of wisdom before vanishing back into the aether. There are whispers within the Twelfth Legion that within his tomb, Khârn is not dead, but merely sleeping : that when the time comes for Skalathrax' final battle, he will rise from his grave and lead the World Eaters once more into glorious battle.

When Horus Lupercal learned the betrayal of Guilliman, one of his great worries was that the Five Hundred Worlds would follow in his wake. Ultramar was an empire within the Imperium, and though its inhabitants had so far been exemplary citizens of the Imperium, their loyalty would probably be to the Ultramarines and their Primarch. If the billions of Ultramarian soldiers joined the rebel Astartes in the Isstvan system, the loyalists would be hard-pressed to defeat them. They would still prevail, bar unforeseen circumstances – four Legions could not stand against seven, no matter how many human soldiers were added to the equation. But unforeseen circumstances were what had begun the civil war in the first place.

To prevent this, and to root out the source of the rebellion, the Warmaster sent a message to two of his brothers : Lorgar Aurelian, Primarch of the Word Bearers, and Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters. The two of them were to gather the full might of their Legions and sail to Ultramar, to ensure the continued compliance of the Five Hundred Worlds to Imperial rule. Some may have thought that, no matter the power of Ultramar, sending a single Legion would have been enough. Guilliman and the elite of his forces were known to be in the Isstvan system, and though the Ultramarines were one of the most numerous Legions, the presence of a Primarch was an advantage that no amount of firepower could match.

But Horus had his reasons : he knew that the dark touch of Chaos was behind the rebellion, and feared for the soul of his brothers, should he send only one of them. Lorgar and Angron, for all their strength, honor and loyalty, still each had their flaws and weaknesses, and Horus knew from his experience at the athame's touch that the Ruinous Powers would use those against them. Together, the two Primarchs would be able to cover for each other's deficiencies – as would their Legions. Furthermore, it was obvious that Guilliman had planned his rebellion for a long time. It wouldn't be surprising if the actual numbers of his Legion were far higher than what he had claimed they were.

The two fleets met together at Ultramar's borders. Rarely in the history of the Great Crusade had such a force been gathered, though it would be dwarfed by the one massing at the same time toward Isstvan. Tens of thousands of Legionaries and their auxiliaries – Imperial Army regiments, Mechanicum cohorts, and Titanic Legions – were mustered, their hearts filled with righteous rage at the betrayal of Guilliman.

Lorgar and Angron reached their first disagreement on how to treat the trillions of Ultramar's population. The Primarch of the Word Bearers, enraged by Guilliman's betrayal, demanded that they burn all worlds on their path to Maccrage, to punish them for their treachery. Angron, however, refused to bend to his brother's fury. He spoke to Lorgar at length, and finally convinced him that they could not afford to waste time destroying every single one of the Five Hundred Worlds they sailed by. They did not know whether the people of Ultramar were complicit in this heresy – it seemed unlikely that so many could have concealed their betrayal for so long – but there weren't going to take any risk. At the very least, any military force met within the Five Hundred Worlds had to be presumed hostile, but they couldn't let their anger at Guilliman's betrayal turn them into the tyrants they had fought for so long. Guilliman had betrayed the ideals of the Great Crusade, he argued, those very ideals that Lorgar had held dear most of all the Primarchs. If they turned from them now, then what would be the purpose of even fighting the rebels ? Grudgingly, Lorgar accepted his brother's point, his fury contained by his brother's wisdom. Accounts of the dispute between the two Primarchs indicate that Lorgar at least partially agreed because he noticed that his brother, for all his apparent calm, was even more furious at Guilliman's betrayal than the Urizen was, but was keeping his rage under tighter control.

Their second disaccord was on where they should head to. Lorgar wanted to sail for Maccrage, the capital of Guilliman's rebel empire. Angron disagreed, believing that while taking Maccrage would be a symbolic victory over the traitors, it would be just that : a symbol. Maccrage was the homeworld of the Ultramarines, and the political center of the Five Hundred Worlds, but Guilliman wasn't so foolish that he had concentrated all of his administration on it. The rest of Ultramar would go on even if Maccrage was reduced to a smouldering asteroid field. The loyalist fleet had to strike at another target, one that would effectively damage their enemy's military potential : Calth. The planet was a known muster point of the Ultramarines, and many intercepted astropathic transmissions indicated that the traitors in the Five Hundred Worlds were gathered there, alongside considerable mortal forces. Conceding Angron's point, the Urizen directed his Legion alongside his brother's toward the Calth system.

When the fleets of the two Legions emerged from the Warp at their objective, they found themselves facing a fortified world, with millions of mortal soldiers and an entire Chapter of Ultramarines leading them. Guilliman had left behind one of his greatest generals : Marius Gage, master of the First Chapter of the Thirteenth Legion, one of the Tetrarchs of the Ultramarines. Angron knew Gage as an honorable warrior, and he attempted to reach to him, demanding he reject his Primarch's madness and surrender to the Word Bearers and World Eaters. But his offer was answered with naught but mocking laughter that, to Angron, showed the insanity that had consumed Gage, but also enraged Lorgar.

'Marius, please, you must stand down. You are an honorable man. You know that what your father is doing is wrong, and you must know that you will never be able to defeat us with the forces under your command. Please, for the sake of your men and your people, surrender.'

Transmission from the Conqueror, flagship of the World Eaters Legion, to Marius Gage, just before the beginning of the Battle of Calth.

After a short space battle in which the loyalist fleets utterly crushed the few ships that the Ultramarines had in orbits and sent the orbital platforms to the ground in flames, the two Legions descended upon Calth in a coordinated assault on the planet's surface. Their goals were to crush the enemy presence, but also to gather intelligence about the situation in the rest of the Five Hundred Worlds and, if possible, the rest of Guilliman's plans.

Battle raged across the entire world, with Angron and Lorgar fighting side by side at the forefront of their advance. One by one, the hive-cities of Calth, which had been transformed into fortress and were mysteriously devoid of any civilian, fell to the might of the Twelfth and Seventeenth Legions. Inexorably, the two Primarchs approached the capital city, where Gage and his elite forces had retrenched themselves. While the Word Bearers surrounded the keep to prevent any escape or intervention from another traitor army, Angron, Lorgar, and the World Eaters launched their assault. It was then, within the walls of the last Ultramarine stronghold on Calth, that they found the first evidence that there was more to the rebellion than injured pride or defiance of the Emperor's will.

Corpses were laid across the corridors of the fortress, crucified to the walls and bearing signs of ignoble torture. Most of the dead were humans, but some, to the World Eaters' horror, were Space Marines, and a few were recognized by the Legionaries as Ultramarines they had fought alongside during the Great Crusade. We now know that these were the loyal souls within Gage's warriors – those who, upon learning of their Primarch's betrayal, had turned against their brothers. But Angron and Lorgar did not know, and were shocked at the grotesque displays. They continued their advance regardless, determined to find answers and bring justice to those responsible for these atrocities.

To their surprise, the keep appeared to be empty. There had been automated defences on the outside, but no living soul was found for most of their progression. Such was the size of the fortress that it took several hours before the first signs of enemy activity were discovered. Mad cultists rushed toward the Primarchs and their escorts, only to be effortlessly butchered – but their insanity made Angron and Lorgar more and more uneasy. Their Librarians also felt the rising pressure in the air, and though they lacked the knowledge to understand what was actually happening, they still knew something grim was afoot.

And then, finally, they found Marius.

The Primarchs and their sons stood silent for several seconds, their minds reeling at what they were seeing. Marius Gage, once a proud and noble son of Ultramar, was kneeling in a pool of blood that reached up to his mid-chest. Suspended to chains dangling from the great chamber's ceiling were the sources of the blood : dozens of Ultramarines, stripped of armor and hideously tortured. Drops of ichor still fell from their lifeless bodies, hitting the pool beneath in hypnotic rhythms that made Angron's skull ache.

'Can you hear them ?' said Marius, staring at the patterns in his brothers' blood with wide eyes. 'Your brothers on Isstvan, they are fighting. Look …'

He gestured toward the pool of blood, and, to Angron and Lorgar's surprise, images appeared in the crimson liquid. They saw Isstvan V, where the traitor Legions had massed to await the Imperial retribution. They saw the Night Lords, the Death Guard and the Alpha Legion, led by their Primarchs and locked in combat against the Ultramarines, the Iron Hands, the Imperial Fists and the Blood Angels. They were outnumbered two to one at least, but they were only the first wave – behind the battle, the Dark Angels, White Scars, Salamanders and Raven Guard were descending in force, ready to join the fray.

'Your father will be defeated,' declared Angron. He was unable to say anything about the madness of his surroundings, afraid that acknowledging it would somehow enable it to reach into his own being. 'His forces are outnumbered. He will answer for his crimes.'

Marius laughed again – that mad, deranged laughter that made Angron's skin crawl.

'We have been planning this for decades, my lords. Look again !'

And, to the horror of the two Primarchs, they saw the forces that were supposed to reinforce their loyal brethren open fire on their erstwhile allies. Angron felt as if his world was once more turning over as he understood the full scope of Guilliman's treachery. While he stood there, shocked into immobility, Lorgar screamed in outrage, and charged toward Marius, determined to make at least this traitor pay. Before he could reach his enemy, however, an explosion of energy centred on Marius threw him backward, and he crashed against the opposite wall, ten meters above the ground.

'The time has come,' said Marius in a voice that was at once his own and something else's. 'Blood has been spilled in the greatest betrayal. No matter what happens now, the dream of the False Emperor is ashes. Let the truth be written upon the skies of the chosen one's dominion. Let all know the power of Chaos !'

The traitor screamed the last words, and the ceiling of the fortress exploded. Instinctively, Angron lifted his arms to protect himself from the failing debris, but to his surprise, the fragments of the ceiling were held aloft by some unnatural power. Dimly, he heard the agonized screams of his Librarians. Then his gaze returned upon the Tetrarch. His flesh was bulging, as if something was trying to …

With one last exultant scream, Marius burst apart in a shower of gore and an unleashing of psychic energy that sent all Astartes in the room to the ground – but Angron held fast. In the Tetrarch's place stood a monstrosity of crimson skin and twisted horns and claws. Its eyes held all the malice in the universe, and it stared at Angron with an hatred great enough to burn the universe.

'Samus,' said the creature as the skies above began to turn red. 'Samus is here.'

Through an unholy ritual, Gage unleashed the power of the Warp not just upon Calth, but across all of the Five Hundred Worlds. Though the loyalists did not know it at the time, cults on each planet of Ultramar had synchronized their actions with the Tetrarch, and offered millions of blood sacrifices at the exact same second he had offered up his own flesh to the Ruinous Powers. Worse, far from Ultramar, the massacre of Isstvan V had just thrown the Warp in great turmoil. The death of Konrad Curze, the near-destruction of the Death Guard and Alpha Legion, and the turning of four Legions previously believed to be loyal : all of this had fuelled the powers of the Dark Gods, and Guilliman had channelled the energies of the Massacre to turn Ultramar into a nightmarish hell, seeking to neutralize two more Legions in one fell blow. The veil between reality and the Immaterium was torn, and a Warp Storm of unimaginable size engulfed all of the realm of Ultramar. In time, this Warp anomaly would come to be known as the Ruinstorm – a scar upon the fabric of reality, bleeding insanity and evil upon the universe.

With the coming of the Ruinstorm, the Word Bearers and the World Eaters were trapped, unable to escape the confines of the Warp Storm. Thus began the Shadow Crusade : a desperate war waged by the two Legions across what had become of the Five Hundred Worlds, in order to find a way to escape and rejoin the rest of the Imperium.

The Shadow Crusade : Trapped in the Ruinstorm

Angron and Lorgar fought together against the Daemon Prince which had used Marius Gage as a gateway into the Materium when the Ruinstorm had erupted. The power of the daemon was great, but it was no match for the combined strength of two Primarchs. Although they defeated it, they were unable to truly destroy it, for the Neverborn are beings of thought, not matter, and even the strongest psykers can only banish them for a time – only the Dark Gods themselves, it is said, can truly destroy their minions. The creature that called itself Samus would return many times to plague the allied forces during the Shadow Crusade.

At the same time the Primarchs fought the Daemon Prince, countless Neverborn manifested on Calth, and the planet itself began to twist and heave as the energies of the Warp reshaped it into a daemon world. The forces surrounding the fallen Ultramarine fortress were soon under attack by hordes of daemons – million upon million of them, fuelled by the sacrifices offered by the Thirteenth Legion. Inside the fortress, Angron and Lorgar were attacked by countless horrors as the planet fell deeper and deeper into the Empyrean's grip. The two Primarchs fought their way out, and reunited with their forces. Then they led the two Legions off-world, fighting every step of the way to their shuttles. Thousands of Legionaries died on Calth, their souls consumed by the daemons unleashed by Guilliman's sorcery. They wouldn't be the last to suffer such a dreadful fate.

The World Eaters and Word Bearers were far from safe, even after escaping Calth. The whole Five Hundred Worlds had descended into madness, and not even space was safe. Great daemonic leviathans, born from the remaining thoughts of extinct species, harried the fleet, while the ships themselves were in a constant look-out for possession within their ranks. Navigators were sealed within their chambers, completely isolated from the rest of their ships safe for secured vox-channels.

The fleet fled through the storm, its Navigators desperately following the stabler paths through the madness, unable to keep a course for more than a few hours before the route they had been sailing collapsed back into anarchy. Many ships were lost to the Ruinstorm, few of which were ever heard of again – and each of those had a tale of tragedy and horror attached to it. Those who managed to remain together did so only thanks to the presence of Lorgar. The Primarch of the Word Bearers had long suffered from an erratic psychic talent, that came and went in irregular patterns, afflicting him with severe migraines and responsible, some historians believe, for his legendary temper. But on Calth, facing the madness of Chaos, he had experienced a breakthrough, the nature of the Warp revealed to him at last. With the guidance of both Legions' best Librarians, he was able to link his thoughts with the Navigators, guiding them across the Sea of Souls with a precision unheard of ever before or since.

Many times during the Shadow Crusade, the fleet was trapped within one daemon-held system or another. Within the Ruinstorm, the fabric of reality is slave to the whims of the Neverborn, and powerful Daemon Princes and Lords were able to completely block the ships of the two Legions within their own domains. Each time this occurred, the two Primarchs would descend upon the daemon world where their Librarians sensed the presence of the Neverborn responsible, and destroy it. Entire Companies of both Legions were lost in each such operation, but the World Eaters and the Word Bearers became brothers during these dark days, owing each others debts that could never be repaid. It was through the strength of that brotherhood, echoed between Angron and Lorgar, that the loyal Legions were able to endure the horrors of the Shadow Crusade.

It took the entirety of the Heresy for the two Legions to finally find their way out of the Ruinstorm, though time held little meaning within what had become of the Five Hundred Worlds. Details on how exactly they achieved this are blurred : many Inquisitors believe that those who were present had quite reasonably sealed off most memories of what happened during the Shadow Crusade, for the sake of sanity. What is known is that Lorgar found a path through the Storm, fighting off the constant attacks of daemons – and worse – on his mind. While his brother acted as a guide, Angron fought to keep the fleet together and the Conqueror free of daemonic taint.

Upon emerging from the Ruinstorm, the few astropaths who had survived were able to reconnect the ragged forces with the events of the galaxy. Learning that Terra was under siege by the traitor forces, Angron and Lorgar ignored the damage their ships had already suffered, and ordered a run to the Throneworld at full speed, no matter the risks. And although by the time they arrived, the battle was already over, the sacrifices they made during their journey were not in vain. Indeed, had it not been for the knowledge that the two Legions would soon arrive, Guilliman wouldn't have launched his last assault on the Imperial Palace, which allowed the Emperor and Fulgrim to strike him down. This, however, proved little comfort for the Lord of the Red Sands. The Heresy was over – but the cost was beyond belief.

Post-Heresy : War Unending

Standing among the ruins of Terra, Angron saw the desolation as a symbol of the destruction that had engulfed the entire galaxy, banishing the ideals of the Great Crusade forever. His father, the Emperor, was dead – or close enough that it didn't matter. The people of the Imperium, who had once looked upon the Astartes as champions and saviours, were now terrified of the transhuman giants. His own Legion had taken terrible losses in the Shadow Crusade, and was now at less than a third the strength it had been when they had entered the Five Hundred Worlds.

Like all loyal Primarchs who had survived the Heresy, Angron slowly became more and more withdrawn from both political and military affairs in the Imperium. He allowed the reins of the Imperium to pass to the Lords of Terra, while he left the Solar System to hunt down the remnants of the Traitor Legions. While the Scouring was declared complete after a few years and considered to be truly so by the Inquisition after half a century, Angron continued his quest for the traitors for centuries. Many believed him lost, though the World Eaters – scattered across the galaxy to protect the Imperium – knew their Primarch yet lived. They were proven right when, a thousand years after his departure, Angron returned – just in time to help the Imperium deal with one of the gravest crises of its history.

In 546M32, an event took place known as the Beheading. Drakan Vangorich, Grand Master of Assassins, plotted the death of all of the Twelve High Lords of Terra for reasons that were never discovered. This plunged the planet – and the rest of the Imperium – into disarray, while the criminal responsible hid inside his Order's great temple, protected from any retribution – or so he thought. Angron's ships arrived in orbit, and the Primarch descended upon Terra filled with righteous anger. While his warriors restored order to the Throneworld and arranged the nomination of new High Lords, he stormed into the Assassinorum Temple. Alone, the Lord of the Red Sands faced a hundred Eversor Assassins, driven mad by stimulants and targeted only at the Primarch. None of them survived, and Angron soon reached the hiding Grand Master – and then, no matter the skill of Drakan, the issue was no longer in doubt. The crisis was over, and Angron returned to Nuceria, to lead his sons in the long war to protect the Imperium.

Thirty centuries later, in the thirty-fifth millennium, the World Eaters fought alongside the Emperor's Children and the Night Lords to destroy Commoragh. Though Angron and Fulgrim had not been close during the Great Crusade, due to the former seeing the latter's ways as foolish and prideful, they had been brought together in the aftermath of the Heresy, when Angron had seen what had happened to his brother and his Legion. Furthermore, Angron owed a debt of blood to Fulgrim for rescuing him during a desperate battle against the Salamanders on Skalathrax. Together, the three Legions burned the Dark City, before being forced to retreat when it seemed that the whole pocket of reality in which it existed was about to collapse. Fulgrim, however, wasn't among the evacuees : he had gone in pursuit of his renegade son Fabius Bile, and disappeared within the Webway.

The loss of one of his last brothers took a heavy toll on Angron, though he was certain that Fulgrim was alive and would return one day. He became more and more retired from the affairs of the Twelfth Legion, scouring the archives for any clue as to how he could recover him. Finally, on the tenth anniversary of Commoragh's Burning, the Primarch of the World Eaters vanished, leaving behind a letter in which he claimed to have gone in search of all of his missing brothers – not just Fulgrim, but also Magnus and Lorgar, lost to the Imperium for centuries at that point. He vowed to his sons that he would return after he had found them.

The World Eaters lamented their Primarch's departure, and did the rest of the Imperium, for he was the last of the loyal sons of the Emperor still active at that time. All the others had either died in the fires of the Heresy, fallen into deep slumber after taking terrible wounds battling the enemies of Mankind, or vanished entirely. At the same time, in the shadows, many secretly rejoiced at the disappearance of the last demigod. The mortal rulers of the Imperium had always mistrusted the Primarchs, for their political minds were unable to conceive that such powerful beings would willingly submit to another, and feared the day where they would be overthrown and the sons of Emperor would reclaim the reins of the Imperium. Even some Inquisitors, whose lines of masters had spent millenia observing the Primarchs in fear that another one of them fell victim to the Dark Gods and brought his Legion with him to the side of Chaos, were somewhat relieved that this threat was gone. The possibility of a Legion Master succumbing was still there, of course, but without a Primarch's influence on his sons, none would be able to corrupt an entire Legion ever again.

A new leader was chosen from the ranks of the World Eaters, bringing the old title of Legion Master, which had not been used since the days of the War Hounds, back to life. Until the return of Angron, the Legion swore that they would continue fighting for the sake of Mankind and the Imperium, so that their father would hear news of their deeds in his search and know that he had left the galaxy in good hands. Today, several thousand years after Angron's departure, the Primarch has faded away into a legend even within his own Legion. The Imperium at large believe him dead, like the rest of the missing Primarchs. Even among the Inquisition, there has been no reliable word of his continued existence since his last departure from Nuceria.

But the World Eaters haven't allowed their Primarch's absence to turn them from their duty. War still rages on in the galaxy, inflicting untold torments upon billions of Imperial citizens. Alien predators still stalk the darkness between stars, preying upon Humanity. And worst of all, the traitors and the daemons still haunt the shadows beyond reality, ready to drag all of Mankind into damnation with them. As long as one of these enemies still threaten the Emperor's domain, the sons of Angron will be here.

The Armageddon Incident

Officially, the Armageddon disagreement between the Holy Inquisition and the Twelfth Space Marine Legion never happened. Both sides tacitly agree to keep it under wraps, knowing the negative impact on moral knowledge of it could cause if it ever spreads. But they still remember, and each side still bears a bitter grudge toward the other for their perceived failings.

The First War for Armageddon opposed the World Eaters, the Imperial Guard and the Grey Knights to an alliance of Space Wolves and Imperial Fists led by the Daemon Primarch Rogal Dorn himself, with a horde of daemons of Khorne manifesting in the footsteps of the fallen Primarch. It ended with the banishment of the Imperial Fists' Primarch, through the sacrifice of many Grey Knights. In the aftermath, the Inquisition arrived to the world with a fleet of transport ships, seeking to deport the planet's human population to prison colonies, where they would be sterilized and live out the rest of their lives away from the rest of the Imperium. This was in order to prevent knowledge of Chaos to spread : the people of Armageddon had been exposed to the sight of not just any daemonic incursion, but many of them had laid eyes upon the monstrous form of the Daemon Primarch himself. For millenia, the Inquisition had worked to keep the lure of Chaos away from the common people of the Imperium, and while the sacrifice of several millions of people was unfortunate, it was one of the necessities of their duty.

The World Eaters, however, did not see things that way. They had fought alongside the people of Armageddon for months before the arrival of the Grey Knights, and they had witnessed first-hand their bravery and devotion to the Golden Throne. When they heard the intent of the Inquisition, they physically obstructed them, forming a cordon around the refugee camps while the humans were evacuated to the Twelfth Legion's own fleet. The forces of the Inquisition tried to force their way through, but the Legionaries were more than able to push them back. Tensions rose quickly, and threatened to bloom into a full-scale war between the World Eaters and the Inquisition. When the sons of Angron threatened to send a message to the Word Bearers about the whole incident, the Inquisition decided to abandon the notion of purging Armageddon's population. There was no doubt that the Seventeenth would have sided with the World Eaters on that matter, and no matter the result, a war between the Inquisition and two loyal Legions (at least : the Night Lords would probably also have sided with the World Eaters, as they have always disliked the slaughter of innocents) could not possibly end well. Faced with the threat of a new civil war, the Inquisition chose to back down, accepting the risks of letting knowledge of Chaos spread as the lesser evil in that case.

The survivors of Armageddon were carried by the World Eaters to worlds under the Legion's protection, scattered across the galaxy, while new colonists were brought by the Inquisition to the heavily industrialised world. Today, they have fully integrated to their new homeworlds. Contrary to the Inquisition's fears, the level of heresy on the planets concerned isn't any higher than on any Imperial world surveyed by Legion forces. Despite this, many among the Inquisition think that the World Eaters were (and still are) fools, who are not ready to do what must be done for the preservation of Mankind. Several Radicals have attempted to 'punish' the Twelfth Legion, but the World Eaters do not care. For their part, they believe that the Inquisition went too far, that in their obsession to preserve Mankind as a whole the Inquisitors lost sight of the fact that Mankind is made of individuals, and is not some distant, divine entity, capable of enduring the loss of any number of its components.

Organization

Legion Master Arkhan, the Lord of Blades

The one currently standing as the supreme commander of the World Eaters Legion is a veteran of five hundred years of endless warfare – a rarity among the sons of Angron, who tend to live short and intense lives by the standards of the Astartes. Born on Nuceria, Arkhan was chosen to join the Legion when, at thirteen years of age, he was discovered alone with the corpses of twelve Chaos cultists who had intended to sacrifice him to their dark masters, his hands pressed on his abdomen to keep his guts from spilling out. He was saved by the Legion's Apothecaries, and quickly inducted in the ranks of the World Eaters. Since then, he has proven to be a warrior like few others in the history of the Twelfth Legion.

The title of Arkhan was granted to him during the First War for Armageddon, which was the first conflict he ever saw as a Space Marine. When the Imperial Fists and their daemonic allies attacked the walls of Hive Infernus, his entire Company was destroyed. Alone, Arkhan fought against more than fifty sons of Dorn, changing his weapons with those of his fallen brothers each time they broke. By the time reinforcements arrived, the Imperial Fists were retreating, and Arkhan was found, barely alive, atop a pile of broken traitor corpses, clutching a chainaxe in his right fist and a power sword in the left.

After he healed, Arkhan was assigned to a new Company, and quickly rose into the commanding circles of the World Eaters. While his martial prowess had been proven beyond doubt in Hive Infernus, he also displayed a keen instinct for greater tactics, capable of seeing through an enemy's feints and tricks like no other. Thorough his long life, Arkhan has slain scores of enemy champions, be they alien leaders of Chaos warlords. Like most incumbents, he was forced upon the throne of Legion Master against his will, and resent how it keeps him distant from battle. Still, he accepts the necessity of it, and has vowed to do his best at the job – the Emperor demands nothing less.

Ever since the disappearance of Angron, the World Eaters have been led by a Legion Master chosen from the ranks of the Legion's Captains and with a term of twenty years. Stationed permanently on Nuceria safe for exceptional circumstances, he is the one commanding the Legion's war effort, directing resources and Astartes to the many fronts of the Imperium in answer to the countless pleas for his assistance. World Eaters forces are dispatched to their assignments, carrying them out before returning to the Twelfth Legion's stronghold in order to rearm, repair and refuel, as well as to recruit new Astartes to compensate their losses. Most of the time, they immediately receive word of an Imperial world under attack and requiring help, or receive an urgent message from high command. But once in a while a Company actually makes it back to Nuceria without anyone asking for its help. It is then the Legion Master's responsibility to find another war for his brothers to wage.

The Legion is divided in Companies of varying sizes and specialization, each led by an officer with the rank of Captain. Companies go from a standard size in other Legions – a hundred Astartes – to almost a full Chapter at a thousand warriors. This variety is a legacy of the Shadow Crusade : very few Companies emerged from the Ruinstorm with their structure and strength ready to wage war. On his way to Terra, Angron ordered many remnants fused together to create viable battle groups, but he didn't waste time trying to uniformize them. This practice has continued to this day : when a Company takes too many losses to be able to operate alone, they join with another one. New Companies are also regularly created by combining a body of new recruits with a handful of veterans from other Companies, who then take up the designation of one of the destroyed Companies.

Regardless of size, a Company is divided in squads of various specialities – Tactical, Devastator, Assault, and so on. In the biggest Companies, there is an informal hierarchy to allow the Captain to focus on the larger picture – squad leaders who have displayed a talent for leadership. Though they are still mere sergeants in the Legion's archives, these chosen few receive the title of Centurions, and may one day be elevated to Captain, be it when their current superior falls in battle or when a new Company is founded.

Homeworld

Nuceria, homeworld to the Primarch Angron, has come a long way from its dark past. The tyranny that prospered upon it during the Long Night has been banished, hopefully forever. The great cities of Angron's time still exist, turned into technologically advanced cultures and united in a single global government. All citizens are equal there, and unlike in most parts of the Imperium, the law cares nothing for wealth or position. This is enforced by the World Eaters themselves – not through any threat, but by their mere presence. All humans feel the same before the Astartes – even the proudest industrial lord will feel some humility in the shadow of Angron's sons. The fact that those taken for induction within the Legion come from all social strata also helps remembering everyone that the human potential is present in everyone.

There is still darkness on Nuceria, however, brought upon it by its proximity to the Ruinstorm. Mutation and corruption have an alarming tendency to appear amongst its population, far higher than on other Imperial worlds. These heretics are quickly discovered, and forced to flee into the planet's deserts, where they gather in clans and plot their revenge against those who they believe have wronged them.

The World Eaters claim that this allows the aspirants of the Legion to test their skills against the heretics, and be sure that only the strongest and most strong-willed are taken into the World Eaters' ranks. Regardless of these justifications, Imperial authorities are dubious of the planet's utility, especially when the World Eaters have many other recruiting worlds. It has often be suggested to the Legion's highest ranking officers – always very politely, of course – that abandoning the world and letting it become part of the Iron Cage surrounding the Ruinstorm may be a good idea. But even the Iron Warriors would rather avoid that : they see the World Eaters' homeworld as a welcome addition to their already thinly stretched forces.

It is not uncommon for Ultramarines warbands to attack Nuceria, and the planet is surrounded by some of the best orbital defences in the galaxy, built in cooperation with the Fourth Legion in the days following the Heresy. The World Eaters also keep a permanent presence there, fighting against raiders and assisting law enforcements by regularly descending upon Chaos cults and purging them with bolter and chainaxe. On the rare occasions that the sons of the Arch-Traitor actually manage to make planetfall, they hunt them without mercy, before burning their corpses and casting their ashes into Nuceria's sun to prevent their corruption from spreading.

Beliefs

The Pits

Though the World Eaters have embraced the path of discipline, there is one tradition from Nuceria's odious past that they brought with them in the stars : the gladiatorial pits. There is one on every ship of the Twelfth Legion, though the size varies depending on the vessel. There, warriors of the World Eaters and guests from other Legions battle against one another. Armor is prohibited in the Pits, as are active weapons, and battles are always fought to first blood. Often, Legionaries fight two against two, with the members of each team chained to each other to encourage teamwork. It is considered a great honor for a warrior of another Legion to be invited to the Pits, and many bonds of brotherhood were forged in these places.

Angron disliked the tradition, for it brought back unpleasant memories of his loss of control in the battle for Desh'ea, but he understood the purpose of it and allowed his sons to continue it. His only demand was that an Apothecary team was stationed in them at all times they were active – he vowed that if one of his sons died at the hands of another, he would close them down for good.

Even before Angron was reunited with his Legion, the War Hounds placed much importance upon the notion of brotherhood within their ranks. To them, the shared camaraderie between warriors was the only worthwhile thing about war, and this has continued to this day. But at the start of the Great Crusade, this brotherhood was balanced by a fierce competition between warriors, and most Legionaries were hot-blooded and headstrong, willing to take greater risks to earn their brothers' esteem. However, Angron taught them the importance of discipline and self-control. They were all brothers, and there was no honor in pursuing vainglory.

'Passion and loyalty are what make us warriors instead of weapons.'

Old Astartes adage

The World Eaters believe in brotherhood first, discipline second, and fighting prowess third. They spend even more time than the other Legions training outside of battle, considering it to be a ritual purification of their minds as well as of their bodies. Twelfth Legion's Chaplains watch over their brothers during these group sessions, seeking hints of moral discomfort in their postures and movements. When they do find a disturbed brother, they call him after the training is over, listening to his concerns and appeasing them. Beyond individual training, far more time is spent to preparing for group action. Ships of the Twelfth Legion have huge empty spaces left in them where the World Eaters can recreate hundreds of different environment and conduct drills to sharpen their ability to act as one on the battlefield.

Beyond these sessions, the World Eaters eschew the use of traditional training rooms, where individual Legionaries test their skills against battle servitors. Instead, the combat drones are reserved for the mass engagements in the training decks, where dozens of World Eaters wage simulated war against hundreds of servitors designed by the Legion's best tech-priests to provide as great a challenge as possible. Accidents, even lethal ones, are not unheard of, but are not cause for punishment to the tech-priest who designed the responsible servitor. It is through this brutal training that the World Eaters can maintain both their excellent martial skills and their iron-clad discipline. Newly-induced Space Marines forge their bonds of brotherhood in these places, learning to depend on their brothers and how to act as a single entity. Sometimes, the level of unity is so high that the presence of officers becomes unnecessary : even without orders, the World Eaters are capable of acting in the most tactically efficient way in any situation. Few Companies can reach this level, and they are an example to all others.

Like the rest of the loyalist Legions, the World Eaters do not believe in the creed of the Ecclesiarchy. To them, the Emperor was the pinnacle of Human achievement, a being who had managed to manifest the full potential of the species. Worthy of respect, of love and loyalty, yes : but not a god. They also do not believe him to be perfect, for they remember that while Angron respected and loved his father, he also saw the flaws in him : how his immense might and terrible responsibilities had driven him away from the common man, unable to understand the thoughts and feelings of many in his empire. To them, by moving beyond the weaknesses of Mankind, the Emperor lost touch with those who were unable to follow.

Still, they are sensible enough to keep their opinions to themselves, lest they incur unneeded conflict with the rest of the Imperium. Like the Night Lords, they understand that Mankind needs faith to endure in the face of the countless horrors of the galaxy, even if they regret that this faith must be blind and unchallenged. On more than one occasion, the Twelfth Legion has been called upon to help ease the tensions between the Word Bearers and the Ecclesiarchy, acting as an intermediary for both sides. The Word Bearers still honor the bond forged during the Shadow Crusade, and like Lorgar did with Angron, they are willing to calm down when presented with the World Eaters' arguments.

Their long history of fighting at the side of human soldiers – which began on Desh'ea and continues to this day – has given the sons of Angron a kinder look on the rest of Humanity than most other Legions. They know the potential of Mankind from having witnessed first-hand the bravery ordinary men and women can display on the battlefield, and see it as their duty to protect them so that they can fulfill their potential. At the same time, they also know the depths of depravity to which they can sunk, and are utterly merciless when they fight those who exploit their fellow humans for their own gain. Castles and fortresses beyond counting have been put to the torch by World Eaters who discovered the crimes of their lords. On more than one occasion, the Legion has gone to war against systems technically loyal to the Golden Throne because they allowed the practice of slavery – something that the Adeptus Terra is always too willing to ignore if the taxes paid are high enough.

The Heirs of Regret

The first Heirs of Regret were the twelve guards who, during the last blood games of Desh'ea, turned against their masters in the name of Angron's righteous cause. After the rebellion's success, they were overwhelmed with guilt at the memory of all that they had done, and left Desh'ea for a monastery in the mountain range where Angron arrived. There, they dedicated themselves to a life of reflection and meditation on the human nature, still practicing their skills – for they knew, from their part in the rebellion, that they could be used for good just as easily as they had been for evil. In time, others who had participated in the atrocities of Nuceria's previous regime came to the temple, seeking redemption for their crimes.

When the World Eaters returned to Nuceria to recruit new aspirants for the Legion, they learned of the sanctuary's existence. The Imperial Truth frowned upon such practices, and while the Heirs of Regret did not claim any divine inspiration, their compliance to the Emperor's edict banning all religion still needed to be inspected. The Astartes sent to visit the sanctuary were taken aback by what they saw, and deeply impressed by both the prowess of the Heirs themselves and the philosophy they tried to impart to their disciples. They offered them a chance to join the Legion in the stars, so that they may atone for their sins by fighting in the Great Crusade. The Heirs accepted, and, leaving their disciples to discover their own way to redemption, they joined the World Eaters. When Angron learned of this, he made it a Legion-wide tradition, demanding that the Heirs scatter across the World Eaters, with no more than one by Company. With only twelve of the Heirs, there were many Companies left out, but the Primarch decreed that there would only ever be twelve Heirs of Regret, who, for their crimes, would become living memorials of all those lost in needless bloodshed.

When one of the Heirs dies – most often in battle, but some have fallen to disease or accident over the millenia – another is chosen from within the walls of the sanctuary on Nuceria. To ensure that there are always enough Heirs, the World Eaters seek out individuals in quest of redemption. In the Imperium, such individuals are hardly uncommon : officers from the Imperial Guard whose orders led to their men being slaughtered, civilian criminals who killed someone dear to them in a moment of passion, and over the centuries, even a few Inquisitors who found themselves unable to bear the weight of their mistakes. Such individuals are brought to the sanctuary of Nuceria, where they train and meditate away from the galaxy's turmoil. The location of the sanctuary is one of the Legion's greatest secrets, and it is defended by ancient technologies and the hundreds of disciples within its walls.

The Heirs are some of the greatest human warriors in the galaxy. Like the Legion, they prefer to fight in close quarters, each of them using the weapon with which he or she is the most comfortable. In battle, they wear customized power armor, enabling them to fight on the same level as the Legionaries alongside whom they fight. When the Company to which they are attached is deployed with human allies, they will join their fellow mortals, leading them from the front and inspiring them to heights of heroism and dedication that even the most charismatic officer or frightening Commissar can only aspire to. In Astartes-only operations, they fight amongst the Space Marines, at the side of the Chaplains.

But more than simple elite warriors, the Heirs are a symbol to the Legion and the Imperium. They are proof that those who have lost their way can be redeemed, so long as their soul remains strong in the face of the corruption surrounding them. On occasion, even renegade World Eaters have been convinced to lay down their arms and surrender by the presence of an Heir, accepting their punishment for their crimes and dying with some measure of their honor restored.

Currently, there are nine living Heirs of Regret. The other three seats of their order are empty, their holders having fallen in battle in the last years, and no suitable replacements have yet been found. While the World Eaters are searching, they are not worried about the diminishment of the order – during the ten thousand years of the Heirs of Regret's existence, there have been a handful of times where the order has been far closer to extinction. During the dark time of the Reign of Blood, when the Imperium came closer to destruction than it had since the Heresy itself, there was a time when only one Heir survived – yet the order endured.

Combat doctrine

The Devourers

Like most Legions, the World Eaters consider their Tactical Dreadnought Armors to be relics, needing to be carefully preserved and bestowed only upon the most worthy warriors. During the Great Crusade, many of their Terminators were concentrated in the Legion's First Company, known as the Devourers. They were Angron's bodyguards, even though the Lord of the Red Sands hardly needed them. During the Shadow Crusade however, they proved their worth, saving the life of their Primarch many times against the daemonic hordes. There is, on Nuceria, a grand memorial dedicated to the three hundred Devourers who sacrificed themselves so that Angron, wounded unto death by a Daemon Prince known as Doombreed, could be evacuated and brought to Lorgar for healing.

After Angron left the World Eaters, the Devourers scattered across the other Companies, pledging their loyalty to other Captains. These oaths, and all those taken by World Eaters Terminators up to this day, are, however, secondary to their primary loyalty : should the Primarch return, the Devourers shall rush to his side. Many felt lost without their lord, however, and sought to find him and bring him back – or, at least, join him in his quest. It is not unheard of for Imperial people to find the millennia-old war-plate of one of the Devourers, its wearer long dead in his quest for the Lord of the Red Sands. The Twelfth Legion has a list of these missing warriors, known to them as the Ra'Kestir – literally, the Consumed Ones. They are ever searching for them, and reward handsomely those who can bring them the wargear of one of their fallen brethren.

Like the rest of the World Eaters, the Devourers favor close combat. They use the resilience granted by their war-plate to cross the distance to the enemy, never relenting in their pursuit, until they reach their quarry. They usually stay in reserve until forward scouts can deploy teleport beacons, allowing them to manifest in the very midst of their foes. Many enemies of the Imperium have been destroyed by a Twelfth Legion's Devourer strike, their command annihilated and their forces terrified of the seemingly unstoppable giants.

In battle, the World Eaters favour close-quarters combat, where they can make the most use of their superior strength and stamina. While in other Legions, chainaxes are mostly used by assault squads, the sons of Angron find them to be most suited to their style of warfare. Their Legionaries do not seek a duellist's precise skill : they favor a more brutal approach, more adapted to their style of waging war – with as many battle-brothers gathered together as possible. While other Legions deploy their forces in lightning strikes targeted at the enemy's weakest point in order to quickly change the course of a battle or a war, the World Eaters seek out the largest conflicts and mingle with the rest of the Imperial forces. Battle-brothers fight side by side with common troopers, strengthening the lines of the Imperium wherever they go. Those who demonstrate exceptional skill are then taken in the Legion's elite troops, who are generally kept in reserve and used in a more traditional manner.

This policy has made the World Eaters one of the Legions most closely linked with the rest of the Imperium's military forces. There are, of course, exceptions to that rule : the World Eaters and the Adeptus Mechanicus are known to disagree on many subjects, the sorest of which is the use of slave-circuits for the skitarii legions, who are essentially mind-controlled by their magos overlords. While the Legion as a whole agrees to just leave the Martian Cult alone, it is considered better for all parties involved to minimize the conflicts where the two are deployed side by side. There are also conflicts with the Imperial Guard. One several occasions, the high command of regiments from worlds whose society placed an undue importance on bloodline and birthrights mysteriously vanished after being deployed alongside the World Eaters, replaced by 'low-born' from the rest of the regiment. One more extreme incident occurred on Menazoid Epsilon, where the entire regiment of the Jantine Patricians was wiped out by the Twelfth Legion presence in the campain after they turned on another regiment. There are rumors of an Inquisitorial involvement in the turning of the Patricians, but no clear evidence has ever been found.

Scattered across the galaxy, the Legion fights on hundreds of fronts at the side of the Imperial Guard. For all their light-hearted brotherhood in their personal time, once battle is joined the World Eaters are amongst the most disciplined Legions of all. Only the Emperor's Children can claim to be more rigorous in their approach to battle, and even then there are exceptions. While officially, the Legiones Astartes can no longer command forces of mere mortals, there are entire regiments of the Imperial Guards who have given their oath to individual World Eaters commanders, and follow them in their battles across the galaxy. This practice is carefully monitored by the Inquisition, to ensure no son of Angron ever gains control of a true army, rather than mere aid in his duty.

Thorough their long history, the World Eaters have retained their knowledge of waging war against daemonic foes. The knowledge they paid for in blood during the Shadow Crusade has been carefully preserved and passed on, despite many attempts of the Inquisition to force them to hand over all such lore to the Holy Ordos. It is said that part of the reason why the World Eaters prefer hand-to-hand combat is that the spawn of Chaos are notoriously resistant to conventional firepower, and can best be taken down in close quarters.

Recruitment and Geneseed

Skalathrax, the Smoldering Ember

Located deep within the galactic north, Skalathrax is perhaps the most isolated recruiting world of the Twelfth Legion, but it is also the most famous after Nuceria itself. The world was reclaimed from traitor hands after the Heresy by a force led by Khârn himself, who, impressed by the courage of its inhabitants – who rose against their traitor masters as soon as the first loyalist ship emerged from the Warp – claimed it in the name of the World Eaters.

The planet is a death world covered in jungles, with the only traces of civilization being several huge, sealed complexes with a population of several thousands servants of the Legion. The rest of Skalathrax' people live in the jungle, in savage tribes whose members spend their short lives battling the many predators of the jungle. The planet is also wrecked by volcanic instability, with volcanoes rising in the middle of the lush forests and reducing them to ashes before quickly subduing.

Due to its position and importance to the Twelfth Legion, Skalathrax has been the theatre of many Chaos incursions. Each time, the World Eaters have managed to repel the forces of the Archenemy. Out of the dozens of attacks, two especially stand out. The first is the one that claimed the life of Khârn the Bound One, near the end of M32. The second, nearly a thousand years later, happened when Angron himself was visiting the planet. He was accompanied only by his own honor guard, the Devourers, when the planet came under attack by an alliance of several Salamanders warbands. For several weeks, the Lord of the Red Sands fought against a vastly more numerous foe, until reinforcements arrived in the form of Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children and several Companies of his Legion. Angron and the Phoenician fought side by side against the spawn of the Black Dragon, forcing them off-world after a campain that lasted almost an entire year and saw half the surface of Skalathrax burned to ash by the Salamanders' weapons.

Many aspirants are taken from Skalathrax and induced into the Twelfth Legion : the legends of the Astartes have remained spread across the tribes, due to the many battles waged by the giants at their side during the Chaos incursions. Those who want to join the Legion must leave their tribe behind and survive the journey to one of the strongholds, where they are further tested for strength, will, and genetic purity. Those who fail the tests are given the choice to be returned to their tribe, or to join the population of the strongholds a servant of the World Eaters. While they can then never hope to become a Space Marine, it is still an honorable path, maintaining the Legion's installations and, in times of war, fighting to defend them.

The name of the world, Skalathrax, was given by the Eighth Captain after its reclamation. In the World Eaters' tongue, it means 'place of ending, of judgement', as well as 'destruction', especially by way of burning. Considering the world's bloody history, more than a few Inquisitors have used seers to inspect the world, to see if its naming had been prophetic in some way, maybe attracting the attention of the Dark Gods – as if Khârn, when he named the world, had issued a challenge to them : 'Come take this from us if you dare.'

Of all the loyalist Legions, the World Eaters are the most diverse. They do not take in aspirants only from their homeworld of Nuceria, mostly because the gene-pool of that world is too unstable to provide enough aspirants. Instead, they recruit from dozens of worlds, resulting in a combination of ethnicities unseen in any of the rest of the Imperium's armies. This is just as it was back when the Legion was founded on Terra, when aspirants from all over the planet were taken into the ranks of the Twelfth. Such diversity is made possible by the high compatibility ratio of the World Eaters gene-seed : it is very rare for a healthy aspirant to reject any of the implants carrying Angron's gene-line.

Compared to other loyal Legions, the World Eaters can also be said to be less regarding as to whom they accept in their ranks. In accordance to their beliefs, they think that all those who meet the physical, genetic and mental standards required to survive the training of the aspirants and the procedure of Ascension are worthy of being Legionaries. All humans are a well of potential, after all, and if some are inferior to others when they wake up after being reborn as Space Marines, then they can balance for that through intense training. This has allowed the World Eaters to be the most numerous Legions of the Imperium, while keeping the gene-seed pure of any mutation.

By Angron's own decree, the gene-seed harvested by every Company is given to the Legion's training centers, where it is used to create more Astartes. Companies are also forbidden from recruiting from the same world twice in a row, or on the planet where the gene-seed of their fallen will be used – to facilitate this, the World Eaters have regular exchanges of gene-seed stocks between their worlds, each an heavily guarded and secretive affair. This mixes the gene-seed of various Companies together, preventing the rise of specific mutations by limiting the gene-pool. It also prevents division within the Legion based on the birthworld of the Legionaries.

Nagrakali

Like all Legions recruiting from more than a single homeworlds, a common tongue is required by the World Eaters to accommodate aspirants from dozens of worlds and background. Due to the savage origins of most aspirants, however, a great number of them are unable to speak Gothic properly, even if they are able to understand it after hypno-learning. While it is enough to communicate with the rest of the Imperium, it is not enough for the clarity and concision of meaning required for battlefield action. Born during the Great Crusade, Nagrakali is an hybrid language, constituted from words and expressions from the hundreds of dialects spoken by the Legionaries.

The Ordo Dialogus has long considered Nagrakali a fascinating case study of the evolution of language in completely unique circumstances. Every generation of World Eaters speak a slightly different iteration of the language, altered by variances in their homeworlds' own tongues. Such alterations are always subtle enough that all World Eaters at a given time are able to understand each other perfectly, but the Nagrakali of today is an entirely different language from the one used during the Heresy. Only a few words have gone by unchanged, most attached to some historical event of the Legion, making their meaning too important to be altered.

Warcry

Due to fighting alongside human allies more often than alone, the World Eaters' warcries are in Gothic rather than Nagrakali, so that their effect on morale will be more widespread. They generally use 'For the Emperor and the Legion !' and 'We are the Eaters of Worlds !', but also tend to adopt the battle-cry of their allies as their own, as a sign of respect. Call for the defence of the city or world they are fighting upon are common, as are oaths of revenge for past atrocities committed by their foes. In some of the Companies that especially remember their Primarch and crave his return, the warcry 'The eyes of Angron are upon us !' is often used, as it is a persistent myth amongst the Twelfth's battle-brothers that the Lord of the Red Sands will only return when the World Eaters have proven themselves worthy above all others.

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Ultramarines : The Fallen Paragons

In the bygone days of the Great Crusade, the Thirteenth Legion was a symbol of all that Humanity could achieve, and the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar an example for all humans across the galaxy. But the lies of Chaos found their way into the heart of Roboute Guilliman. At the heart of the Archenemy's kingdom, the Primarch of the Ultramarines fell into darkness, dragging his sons with him. Dark forces blinded his eyes to the light of the God-Emperor, making him embrace the madness that is Chaos. Ten thousand years have passed since the end of the Heresy he ignited across the Imperium, and while the body of the Arch-Traitor lies in state at the heart of his ever-burning empire, his vile deeds echo unto eternity. Hated even by the rest of their damned kin, broken by the fall of their adored liege, the Ultramarines are trapped within the Ruinstorm by the Iron Cage. Yet despite all that has befallen them, they yet plot and scheme to bring about a new age of damnation across the galaxy. For the Ultramarines belong to Chaos, and the Dark Gods are ever hungry …

Origins

Though the Dark Gods often appear divided and capricious, elevating or casting down their champions on a whim, they are also capable of patient plotting and schemes that spread across decades. It is important that we remember this, as it is all too easy for Inquisitors to see the blood-crazed cultists and the screaming berzerkers of the Traitor Legions and forget the malign intelligence that directs all slaves of Chaos. The tale of Roboute Guilliman and the Ultramarines is a powerful reminder that the Ruinous Powers are far from mindless Warp-born nightmares screaming into the void for the destruction of all that is pure. When they work in concert, there is very little that they cannot either bring to their service or cast down in flame and ruin.

In the ten thousand years that followed the fall of the Emperor and the death of Roboute Guilliman, many Imperial potentates have struggled to erase all knowledge of the Arch-Traitor. Even among the Holy Ordos, the truth about the Accursed Thirteenth and its primogenitor are reserved only for the highest-ranked Inquisitors. Very few texts regarding the past of Guilliman have survived the passage of time and the purges of the archives. While this can be regretted, as it leaves us with precious information on one of the greatest enemies of the Imperium, there are still enough traces left to reconstitute the path that led Roboute Guilliman from being one of the greatest Primarchs to the worst danger the Imperium ever faced.

After the Dark Gods stole the Primarchs from the Master of Mankind, one of them landed on the world of Macragge, in the galactic Eastern Fringe. Once the seat of power in an empire that spanned hundreds of star systems, Macragge had endured the Age of Strife relatively well, though its galactic glory had long passed. Its people had managed to preserve much of the lore of the Age of Technology, and were even capable of short-range Warp travel, which enabled them to keep in contact with a handful of other systems. The riches of the world were plentiful enough to prevent the ruthless exploitation that has ruined the ecosystem of so many worlds, and it was devoid of any native predators that could endanger its population. Still, the planet was divided between rival nations, and political and military feuds were common.

There, the life-pod was found by a group of noblemen on a hunting expedition. The leader of the group, named Konnor Guilliman, recognized it as a piece of advanced technology, and when he saw the perfectly formed baby inside it, the unmarried, childless man decided to adopt him into his household. After bringing the child back to his estate in the city of Magna Macragge Civitas, the greatest power on the planet, he named him Roboute, and began raising him as his heir.

What little is known about Roboute's foster father depicts him as an honorable man, dedicated to the people of Macragge and the prosperity of the kingdom to which he was one of two Consuls – an office of supreme authority which was, to avoid the rise of a tyrant, shared by two men at all times. Under the best tutors his father's wealth and prestige could procure, the child quickly grew both strong and wise, learning all that others had taken years to master in a matter of weeks.

But Konnor's integrity was not shared by all his colleagues in the power structure of Macragge City, and as Roboute neared his fifteenth year, his father's co-Consul, a man named Gallan, began to plot. Gallan knew of Roboute, and he feared the young giant's power even more than he feared Konnor's political and military might. Gallan was an ally of the state's old aristocracy, whose power had been steadily decreasing ever since Konnor's rise to power and his promulgation of more and more progressive laws. These nobles, whose wealth rested on the near-slavery of thousands of indentured workers, refused to see their centuries-old control of Macragge escape their grasp, but they did not dare strike while there was chance that Roboute might stand against them.

It was a tradition for Macragge's ruling elite to send their young men off to war when they became of age, so that they would learn the values of a soldier and help expand the dominion of the city-state. Gallan arranged for Roboute to be sent in the north of Macragge, to the land of Illyrium, from which tribes of barbarians had raided the territory of Magna Macragge Civitas for generations. It was a most dangerous assignment, but one Roboute willingly accepted, for he feared no mortal man, and was eager to prove his worth to his foster father and the rest of the people of Macragge.

As would have been expected, Roboute quickly distinguished himself in the north, earning the respect of both the men fighting alongside him and the tribes themselves. His fighting prowess was admired by the proud savages, and several tribes willingly submitted to him, joining side with those they had raided for centuries in return for the honor of fighting at the side of a warrior such as Roboute. Soon, a vast portion of Illyrium was under his control, and the leaders of the remaining tribes had called for negotiations in order to join this new province, rather than face him in battle.

Roboute stopped mid-speech as the entrance to the tent was suddenly slapped open, admitting a man clad in pitted armor, his flesh pale and covered in sweat, with feverous eyes that locked onto the son of Konnor at once. The super-sensitive nose of the young lord could smell blood and smoke on the man, and his keen eyes noted that, beneath the armor – which didn't really fit him, and bore more traces of blood, as if he had taken it from a corpse – the newcomer wore the tunic of one of Macragge City's messengers.

The man stumbled toward him, the chieftains and sub-commanders instinctively giving him space. He finally crashed on his knees before Roboute, out of breath. Despite his obvious exertion, he forced himself to look up, and spoke words that would haunt Roboute for decades to come :

'The city … is burning … your father … needs you … my lord …'

But just as Guilliman was starting the meeting that would hopefully bring peace to a quadrant of the world that hadn't known it for centuries, word reached him from Macragge City. Civil war had broken out in the ancient city. Mobs were rampaging through the streets, the Senate had been burned to the ground, and Konnor's estate was under attack. Enraged, Roboute postponed the negotiations and led his army – both the professional soldiers from the city and the warriors who had joined him in the north – back to Magna Macragge Civitas.

After several weeks of travel at full speed, he found the city still burning, though more than two months had passed since the beginning of the hostilities. Forces loyal to the republic were fighting against blood-crazed mobs and rebellious forces, but there were no lines of battle, no ordered regiments clashing against each other. For countless years, war on Macragge had been considered a science, even sometimes an art : even the barbarian tribes of the north had their own savage code of honor, forbidding the murder of non-combatants and other depraved acts of war. Yet now the people saw the true face of that hideous beast. Already tens of thousands were dead, killed by sword, bow, or burning alive in their homes as they were consumed by the flames set off by arsonists. Absolute chaos reigned in Magna Macragge Civitas as looters, thugs and rapists roamed the streets, with only a few pockets of order holding out against the insanity of it all. Konnor's estate itself was besieged by hordes of armsmen, reinforced by brigands brought from the wilderness around the city by the promises of gold and plunder.

The sky was red, the light of the fires reflecting on the black clouds that emanated from the burning city.

Roboute had come here many times in the past. This place, atop one of the hills surrounding Magna Macragge Civitas, gave a view of the great city that had never failed to make him wonder at the magnificence that Mankind had achieved on this world.

Now, it showed him what had happened in his absence. The poorer quarters had suffered the worst – most houses there were made of wood and not of stone, and the fires had spread the most quickly there. But the rich quarters had been the ones most targeted by the looters, and even now Roboute's ears could pick up the sounds of battle as the rioters fought what few survivors hid there as well as each other. The great rotunda, where the senators of Macragge had gathered for hundreds of years, had been reduced to fire-blackened rubble, and the great libraries were spitting clouds of ash into the night as the wind passed through their destroyed doors.

And there was something more, something that tugged at his subconscious. Something that …

The messenger. He had claimed to have left the city as soon as the rioting began, but upon seeing the extent of the desolation, Guilliman suddenly realized that the numbers didn't add up. They had rushed back here as fast as possible, killing many beasts of burden and leaving many of their slowest units behind in the process. Even a professional army, in full control of the streets, would have been unable to raze the colossal city in such a short time … and yet there was barely a building remaining standing in Magna Macragge Civitas.

A cold sensation ran down his back as he contemplated matters darker than even the blackened sky, and he felt as if he could hear the sound of cruel laughter in the screams of the dying city.

Enraged, Guilliman stormed through the city and toward his father's domain, tearing to pieces all who dared to try to stop him. Even as fury threatened to overcome him, however, he remembered his duty, and ordered his trusted commanders away from his own advance, tasking them with restoring order across the burning city. But it was far too late – the journey back to the city had taken too long. When he arrived to the estate, Roboute found nothing but burned out ruins, and the desecrated cadaver of his foster father. It is said that the young Primarch found the head of his father on a pike where the doors of the mansion had once stood, left there as one last insult to the man by his murderers.

While the death of his adoptive father was a terrible blow to Roboute, far more terrible were the news that his nurse, a woman named Euten, was among the dead. She was the one who had cared for him in the few years he had spent as a child, effectively his surrogate mother – a gift few of the Primarchs ever had. Her demise caused him great personal sorrow, and is believed to have been the catalyst for the string of executions that Guilliman ordered once the riots had been put down and order restored.

Through thorough interrogation – some might say torture and point at this as the start of Guilliman's downfall, though all members of the Inquisition deal in worse things at some point in their service without being consumed by the Ruinous Powers – Roboute quickly reconstructed what had happened. Gallan and his cohorts had attempted to kill Konnor at the Senate, after ensuring most of his guards would be busy dealing with the riots. They had known that Roboute's foster father would immediately send his men to quell the chaos in the streets rather than see to his own safety, and they had used his selflessness against him. Yet even so, they had failed at their assassination attempt, and Konnor had managed to retreat to his estate. Then, while the nobles' armed troops clashed against each other, the drunken mobs had gone out of control, and the whole city had gone up in flames.

Not a single one of the ringleaders behind the riots and the attack on Konnor's estate was spared. They died not by the sword or poison, as was their right as noblemen, but hung like common criminals, in full view of the vengeful populace, who acclaimed Roboute as his father's successor and the rightful ruler of Macragge Civitas. Yet he was ruler of a ruin, for almost nothing remained of the city's infrastructure, and with winter approaching, time was short if a famine was to be avoided. Using his gift for logistics and the well-supplied stores of the executed nobles, Roboute managed to see his people through the winter, and began rebuilding what had been lost. Under his control, Macragge Civitas rose from the ashes of its destruction stronger than ever. Tribes from the north came to replace the losses in population, bringing with them their warrior traditions.

In the years that followed, Guilliman brought all of Macragge under his control. With ruthless political acumen, he made the other noble houses of Macragge Civitas follow his leadership, and led a rapid campaign of extension. By means both diplomatic and military, he united all of the nations on the planet. Technologies which had been previously jealously guarded by the noble caste were instead spread out and studied, and Macragge entered a new golden age. Once the whole world was under his control, Roboute turned his attention towards the other worlds that had once been part of the old Kingdom of Ultramar. Declaring that Kingdom reborn, Roboute pursued his campaign among the stars, bringing world after world into the embrace of his fledgling star empire through the same mix of diplomacy and military conquest that had served him well on his adoptive homeworld.

Thirty years after the unification of Macragge, Roboute ruled over more than a hundred worlds, and his borders were rapidly expanding. It was as he was returning to Macragge after another successive campaign that the Emperor finally reached His son's adoptive homeworld, His fleet emerging from the Warp at the edge of the system, sending greetings toward the planet.

During the Great Crusade, the Emperor had been looking for His lost sons, finding them one by one and reuniting them with the Legions He had created in their images. How He was able to search for them in the immensity of space is unknown – many believe that He could trace their presence in the Empyrean somehow – but it is known that the Master of Mankind had known the location of Roboute for years before they finally met. However, a powerful Warp Storm around Ultramar had prevented the Imperial ships from reaching the Primarch, and the Emperor had been forced to wait for them to dissipate. In hindsight, it is likely that these storms were created by the Archenemy, as part of their plot to eventually turn Roboute against his father.

At first, it seemed that tragedy was about to strike, as Macragge's fleet and orbital defenses reacted to the sudden appearance of such a massive number of unknown vessels by preparing to fight. But the Emperor reached out to the people of Macragge, claiming that He was looking for His son and meant no harm to them. Accepting to meet, Roboute recognized his father at once when he laid eyes upon Him. The two of them discussed the Emperor's plans for the galaxy and Mankind's place within it, and Roboute agreed to add his Kingdom to the Imperium and take command of the Adeptus Astartes Legion that the Emperor had created from his gene-seed. He insisted, however, that Ultramar remain under his own control, at least for the time it would take to properly integrate it into the greater Imperium. The Emperor accepted, seeing it as the best way to bring more than a hundred worlds into His domain without bloodshed. However, this acceptance would end up having dark consequences.

The Great Crusade

'You are more than warriors. Warriors fight for glory, for personal power and wealth – at best, they fight for what they believe is right, forcing their own ideals upon those around them. You have sacrificed everything on the alter of Mankind's destiny, to serve the ideals of the Great Crusade and help create the Imperium. You are part of a whole far greater than the sum of its parts.

You are also more than soldiers. Soldiers fight because they had ordered to. Sometimes it is because they trust those giving them orders, other times because they have no choice but to obey or face punishment. But you follow me because my blood flows through your veins, and you follow your commanders because they are your brothers.'

Roboute Guilliman, upon taking command of the Thirteenth Legion

Upon being reunited with his sons, Roboute named them "the Ultramarines", in what many saw a sign of arrogance and dangerous provincialism. But the Emperor allowed it, as a reward for what His son had achieved before being reunited with Him, and that was the end of the argument. The first thing he did with his newly gained armies was to continue the expansion of the Kingdom of Ultramar, learning how to best deploy Astartes while bringing world after world into the embrace of his galactic fiefdom. Under Guilliman's rule and with the aid of the Imperium's resources and technology, the Five Hundred Worlds became one of the most prosperous regions of the Imperium, bringing thousands of regiments of the Imperial Army to the Great Crusade.

Like several other Legions, the recruits used during the Thirteenth's creation came from all over Terra – but in their case, it was only geographically the case. While some other Legions took aspirants from all ways of life, the Thirteenth was formed of the children of these tribes which had resisted the Unification the most harshly, often to the bitter end. Thousands of children were taken from the refugee camps where the last of these tribes' people remained, effectively condemning many of them to extinction. Though this might appear ruthless, this move ensured that the potential seeds of rebellion would be removed before they could grow, and integrate the vigor and war-like nature of these tribes into the Imperium's service. However, in hindsight, it might also have been one of the reason why so many veteran Ultramarines were ready to rebel against the Emperor. In the other Traitor Legions, most ancients opposed the rebellion, but that wasn't the case when the Thirteenth was concerned. It is possible that, despite all the conditioning that was part of their induction, some part of them might have remembered the fate of their mortal families.

' Hatred feeds on itself, growing ever stronger as the grudges pass from one generation to the next. As Astartes, it is  y our duty to break that vicious cycle. We bear the hatred of those we force into compliance, and stand so far above their reach that  revenge cannot even be considered. In that way is the cycle of hatred broken.'

Attributed to Primarch Roboute Guilliman

When Roboute took command, the flux of recruits began to come almost exclusively from Ultramar. The firsts to join the Legion were the descendants of the tribes that Guilliman had brought with him from the north when he had marched on Macragge Civitas. For decades, they had been his personal enforcers, those of his forces that he trusted above all, and they quickly proved themselves among the Ultramarines. The sheer size of the Kingdom of Ultramar allowed the Ultramarines to have both quantity and quality in their recruits, and the numbers of the Thirteenth Legion quickly soared even as their tally of victories continued to increase.

However, a dark mood remained on the Legion. Guilliman knew that his sons still bore the scars of an event that had occurred before he took command : the Osiris Cluster Rebellion.

A few years before Guilliman met the Emperor, the Thirteenth Legion was deployed to the Osiris Cluster, where the human population, which had been peacefully integrated into the Imperium years before, had suddenly risen in rebellion. The Astartes had prepared a strike on the world of Septus XII that would slay the leaders of the rebellion and hopefully force the rest of the population into submission, but when they launched their attack, they discovered the true nature of the Osiris Cluster Rebellion. The population hurled itself at the Legionaries with dead eyes and makeshift weaponry, uncaring of the losses the Space Marines inflicted. While the Legion's elite was locked in battle with an enemy that outnumbered them a ten thousand to one, the true foe revealed itself as a fleet of hourglass-shaped xenos warship entered the battle. The mind-controlling aliens that would come to be called the Osirian Psybrids had finally joined the fray.

The Osirian Psybrids

M any were the horrors of the Long Night, when the Warp Storms bred by the decadence of the Eldar Empire and the rise of psykers isolated human worlds from one another.  During the Great Crusade, these ancient threats were crushed mercilessly beneath the Emperor's boot, but only at great cost. The xenos lifeforms known as the Osirian Psybrids were one such threats, and their power was immense.

The Psybrids were tall but thin creatures, clad in bio-mechanical suits of armor,  that breathed a combination of gases toxic to any human .  Their physical form was barely material, instead half-way between corporeal and gaseous. They communicated by telepathy, though no human psyker was ever able to understand their inhuman minds.  Each of them possessed tremendous psychic power, which probably derivative from their diet : the living brains of sentient beings.  They could break the will of most sentient beings, turning them into empty-minded puppets, and unleash warp-fire upon those of their foes who could resist them.

One shudders to imagine how a species with a diet such as the Psybrids could come to evolve on any world of the galaxy,  but  d espite the best efforts of the Imperium's researchers, their origin remains a mystery . When the Imperium encountered them during the Great Crusade, they were a nomadic species, living in their great voidships as they journeyed from world to world. To sate their appetite, the Psybrids ravaged countless  civilized planets . Each time their methods were the same : first, they brewed chaos and disorder among their prey through their mind-control abilities. Then, once their target was weakened, they took a more direct approach, enslaving as many of the population as they could before revealing themselves. Those who could resist their influence – those with even a spark of psychic potential – were captured and brought to the xenos' ships, where their brains were the finest delicacy. It is unknown how many human worlds were lost to their depredation during the Long Night, as there is little to differentiate their atrocities from those of any number of other predatory species. But the Psybrids did not only target Humanity : all sentients were prey to them. Even the Eldar, who at the time ruled the galaxy with an unchallenged grip, lost some of their number to the Psybrids' hunger. Had the Fall not brought the  children of Isha  to ruin, there is little doubt that the might of their empire would have been brought to bear against the Psybrids in time.

In the ensuing chaos, Lord Commander Gren Vosotho, the Legion Master of the Thirteenth since its foundation, had been slain, alongside most of the Legion's veterans. The chain of command was decimated, and young Chapter Master Marius Gage ended up in command. He ordered a withdrawal from the Septus system, but the Osirian Psybrids still had an ace in the hole : the brainwashed forces of the Imperial Navy in the Cluster, which ambushed the retreating Legionary vessels. By the time the Thirteenth reached safe territory, almost a third of its forces had been lost in the most devastating defeat ever suffered by a Legion at this point in time. To worsen the damage to the Legion's morale, by the time they returned to the Osiris Cluster with appropriate equipment and reinforcements, the worlds had become mass graves, filled with the corpses of the Psybrids' discarded servants.

Ever since that disaster, the Thirteenth Legion had been seeking the Osirian Psybrids, thirsting for revenge. But despite all the resources at their disposal, their search had been in vain, and the sense of humiliation festered in their hearts, breeding shame and anger. The Primarch of the Ultramarines knew that the only way his sons could be purged of their past was to find and destroy the Psybrids once and for all. Finding the xenos was part of that goal, but it would only be of use if they had a plan to destroy the creatures.

So Roboute threw himself into the study of what little was known of the Osirian Psybrids. A handful of corpses had been collected in the battle of Septus XII, and with the Primarch's authority, they were released from the Mechanicum's care to be studied in person by the Legion's father. From these lifeless bodies, the Primarch deduced the likeliest way their minds worked, and from the tactical data, he extrapolated their reasoning and cultural bias. Roboute also conversed with his Librarians at length, and asked them to search the Warp for any psychic trace of the Psybrids. Finally, soon after the reunification of the Five Hundred Worlds was completed, a lead presented itself. The Psybrids had been seen in the Eurydice system, where a force of the Twelfth Legion had been battling the Orks which had come from a nearby Ork empire to raid and destroy Imperial settlements. An astropathic message from the War Hounds' commander, cut short by Warp interference, warned the Imperium of the appearance of the tell-tale hourglass-shaped ships, and asked for reinforcements.

The full might of the Ultramarines was gathered to answer that call for help, though the sons of Guilliman gave little thought for their cousins' fate, so obsessed were they with the prospect of avenging their dead at last. When they arrived, they found that the Psybrids had come to the system to enslave the Orks, and had already managed to seize control of nearly half of the present Waaagh ! while the other half fought furiously against its own brethren and their puppet masters, who had been reinforced by more of their own ships as well as others from a variety of xenos species, all enslaved to the will of the Psybrids. The whole system was filled with warships fighting one another, the Orks showing surprising cohesion when faced with the Psybrids' threat. The War Hounds were found on one of the system's moons, where their ship had crashed after being shot down by the Psybrids' weapons, and despite their leader's insistence that they be part of the offensive, they were denied and sent back to their Legion aboard one of the smaller ships of the fleet. This was Ultramarines business, and the Avenging Son intended for his forces to deal with it alone.

With overwhelming strength, Guilliman's fleet forced its way through the ships of the Orks, both enslaved and free-willed, and reached the Psybrids' own vessels. With the Primarch himself leading them, the Ultramarines began one of the greatest boarding actions ever performed in the history of the Legions. They brought the battle aboard the Psybrids' ships, leaving a trail of devastation in their corridors, destroying life-support systems and the infernal machinery that kept their stocks of still-living heads alive for consumption. At the heart of the greatest ship, Guilliman himself fought against the leader of the xenos, a creature of near godlike power recorded in the archives of the Thirteenth Legion as the Psybrid-King.

The Primarch stood alone against the creature, bleeding from a dozen wounds taken on his way to this particular chamber. The toxic atmosphere of the Psybrid vessel was pouring into his armor through the rents that had been opened in it by the xenos' attacks, but Roboute's enhanced physiology was keeping their effects at bay.

Baleful fire was engulfing him, even as he struggled to get closer to his titanic foe so that he might tear it down with his power gauntlets. Each step closer to the creature was more agonizing than the last, and he could feel the heat spreading through his body as his metabolism worked overtime to repair the damage to his flesh almost as soon as it was inflicted. But despite his defiance, despite the fact that would not – could not – stop, the bitter truth remained obvious :

He couldn't defeat the Psybrid-King. Unlike his brother Magnus, his talents laid not in warp-craft, but in tactics and logistics, and they were useless to him now. His warriors had been killed on his way to this place where he had deduced the enemy leader must be, his handful of Librarians slain one by one by the aliens' superior psychic might. Alone, with nothing to shield him from the creature's powers, he could feel even his mind begin to buckle under the pressure of the Psybrid-King's mental assault.

He needed power, power of a more brutal, direct kind than that which he already possessed. He needed …

Something burst in his mind, like some dam finally breaking, releasing a great flood that had so far been contained. With a scream of agony, twin arcs of blue lightning shot out of the Primarch's eyes, encompassing his body in a protective bubble that repulsed the xenos' attacks. With a roar of primal pain and fury, Roboute resumed his charge, and the two Gauntlets of Ultramar pierced right through the ethereal body of the Psybrid-King, killing the creature instantly. As its corpse tumbled to the floor, Roboute fell to his knees, his hands raised to cover his face while his mind whirled with the implications of what had just happened.

And even as he considered what to do now, he heard, as if from a great distance, a familiar laughter …

After the death of the Psybrid-King, the rest of the Osirian xenos quickly succumbed, many of them struck down by some psychic ill as their leader fell. As the Ultramarines returned to their ships, the xenos vessels were bombarded relentlessly for hours, the whole fleet on the lookout for any escape craft trying to flee the devastation. Once no life-sign remained in the Osirian vessels, Guilliman ordered them to be dragged and thrown into the system's star, erasing any trace of the creatures' existence. Even as they executed the orders of their liege, the Ultramarines felt the wound on their pride heal as their hated foe was not just defeated, but utterly exterminated. When they fell upon the remaining Orks, it was with a vigour and a sense of purpose they had not known since the battle of Septus XII. Their victory after so long brooding over their losses at the Psybrids' hands reinforced the loyalty and esteem of the Thirteenth for its Primarch considerably. Thousands of Ultramarines died in the operation, but the threat of the Osirian Psybrids was wiped out forever – there has never been any contact with Psybrid survivors since the Battle of Eurydice.

That event left a mark on Roboute. He had witnessed the true horror that the Emperor sought to protect Mankind from with the construction of the Imperium, as well as the power lurking within the Warp. Determined that his Legion would be capable of fighting such threats in the future, he gave greater importance to the Librarium of the Ultramarines, increasing its size and the authority of its members.

With the honor of the Thirteenth Legion restored by the Psybrids' extermination, the Ultramarines returned to the Great Crusade with renewed fervour, determined to prove their worth to the gene-sire that had wiped out their shame. In the following decades, thousands of worlds were reclaimed by the sons of Guilliman, often with little civilian losses. Guilliman's mastery of diplomacy was passed on to his Legion, and most Chapter Masters of the Ultramarines thought it their duty to only use strength to bring compliance to a human world when all other options had already failed. Though this method took more time than outright conquest, the sheer number of Ultramarines in existence allowed the Legion to accumulate a tally of compliances few others could match.

Many in the Imperium saw the Ultramarines as the greatest of the Space Marines Legions, the one embodying the ideals of the Great Crusade above all others. Of course, none were foolish enough to say so where other Legionaries could hear them, but the Ultramarines were aware of their standing and some of them flaunted it in the face of their cousins. When Alpharius was found and the Alpha Legion joined the Great Crusade openly, it is said the Guilliman mocked his youngest brother by claiming that Alpharius would never be able to match his own tally of conquests. This humiliation is believed to have been the cause for Alpharius turning to darker methods of conquest, until Konrad Curze set him back on the right path. But though the youngest Primarch would come to see the wisdom of the Saviour of Nostramo, the antipathy between Guilliman and Alpharius would endure.

Other Primarchs were put off by the Ultramarines' superior attitude. Angron and Perturabo, who knew war to be an ugly business that had nothing glorious about it, were uneasy when they saw the parades and war celebrations of the Thirteenth. But apart from them, Guilliman was held in high esteem by his brothers, who saw the Five Hundred Worlds as an example of what the Imperium could be : ordered, prosperous, and dutiful. Yes, the Ultramarines were proud, but they were hardly alone in that, and were these not times one could rightfully be proud to be part of ?

When, after two hundred years of leading the Great Crusade from the front, the Emperor announced that He would return to Terra, Guilliman was surprised. Like all Primarchs, he had assumed their father would oversee the Great Crusade to its glorious end, when all the stars were held in Man's unchallenged grip. But what really angered Guilliman was the choice of Horus to replace the Emperor as the leader of the Great Crusade. Roboute respected and loved his brother – as was said many times, it was impossible not to love Horus. But he saw the First Primarch as more of a champion, a being of great power and grandeur that was suited to win epic victories, but less suited to the management of thousands of smaller operations at the same time. Roboute believed that he would have been a better choice as the Warmaster, and he made his opinion known during the Triumph of Ullanor. Still, the Emperor didn't budge on His choice, and Guilliman reluctantly bowed to his father's decision.

Though the conflict between Guilliman and his father had occurred in private, the Avenging Son still felt humiliated by Horus being elevated above him. While submitting his Legion to Horus' authority, Guilliman chose to take his own personal force, the 12th Expeditionary Fleet, on a journey to unknown space, away from Horus' control. The Warmaster authorized it, believing that his brother merely needed time for his anger to cool off and the wound to his pride to heal. But neither of the two Primarchs knew just where Guilliman's travels would lead him : to the very gates of Hell, and beyond. For Guilliman had set course toward the uncharted regions of the galactic core, and his path would bring him to the ill-famed world of Cadia.

The Shadow of Cadia

Cadia, the Gate of Hell

First discovered by Mankind during the First Exodus, Cadia stands at the threshold of the spatial anomaly known across the entire galaxy as the Eye of Terror. Its skies are tainted violet by the nearness of the Warp Storm, and any human born on the planet's ground has pupils of the same color, even if the mother arrived on the world literally minutes before giving birth. After decades of experiments, the Inquisition has concluded that this mutation does not damage the soul of the carriers in any way. However, Cadia's human population is also subject to a rate of mutation far superior to that observed in the rest of the Emperor's domain, even on the other worlds forming the Iron Cages.

Cadia sits in the path of the only known stable Warp route out of the Eye of Terror. While there are countless other paths out of this cesspool of damnation, all of them are either unstable, temporary, too small for a fleet to pass through, or any combination of the three. The only way for a united fleet to leave the Eye of Terror and unleash a Black Crusade upon the galaxy is through the Cadian Gate. For that reason, the planet is the crown of the Iron Cage surrounding the Eye. Thousands of Iron Warriors and hundreds of thousands of Imperial Guardsmen defend it at all times, and not a single year passes without at least one engagement, either against Chaos raiders attempting to slip through, or against one of the many cults on the planet itself. A dozen Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus are permanently stationed on the planet, but even they struggle to prevent heresy from engulfing the world.

By all rights, the planet should have been engulfed into the Eye of Terror long ago. It is believed that the reason why it remains in realspace is the thousands of pylons of unknown origin that are scattered across its surface. One kilometer tall and half-buried beneath the planet's surface, these devices keep the tide of the Warp at bay, but cannot stop its influence completely. The Ordo Xenos has studied them for centuries, but does not dare perform experiments that could disturb them and risk the loss of Cadia to the tides of the Eye.

Despite centuries of investigation, there is only one known account of what happened when the 12th Expeditionary Fleet arrived in the Cadian System. As was only fitting for an Expeditionary Fleet commanded by a Primarch, many remembrancers accompanied the 12th, and one of them wrote his (or her, for we have never uncovered the remembrancer's identity) version of the events. In later years, when the galaxy burned with the first of Roboute's Heresy, this text would be leaked to the Imperium, casting some light over the events that led to Guilliman's fall to Chaos. Through this text and the Thousand Sons' divinations, it has been possible to reconstitute most of what happened.

No one knows what motivated Guilliman's decision to go to the galactic core, out of the hundreds of destination he could have picked that would have put him out of Horus' reach. Perhaps he came upon ancient records from the Dark Age of Technology, which spoke of colony ships being sent to this region of space, and hoped to bring more human populations to the fold of the Imperium. But it is clear that the Dark Gods guided him, with his knowledge or not, for when his fleet finally emerged from the Warp after a long and difficult journey, they were ready for him.

Cadia had become infested with creatures from the Warp, which had all but entirely consumed the planet's human population. The moment the Geller fields of the fleet went down, astropaths and Librarians alike began to scream as they sensed the evil that had overwhelmed the planet. They had met such things before, during the Great Crusade : on worlds where alpha-level psykers had lost control of their powers and burst apart, creating gateways into the Warp from which psychic predators emerged. Cadia was a world of abominations, and Guilliman ordered his fleet to advance toward the planet so that it might be purged from orbit. The humans that remained on the world couldn't be saved – there were literally billions of Warp-born creatures on Cadia – but the Ultramarines could at least put them out of their misery.

However, even as the fleet prepared to enact Exterminatus, another fleet appeared in the system, far beyond the Mandeville point and right in the middle of the Imperial formation, outnumbering the hundred vessels Guilliman had brought with him almost three to one. These ships were twisted horrors, ancient hulks from a dozen cultures lost to the Warp over the ages and reshaped by the dark powers that dwell there. According the the psychically-sensitives among the Imperial fleet, they were crewed not by mortal beings, but by creatures from the Empyrean. Their weapons didn't fire shells of metal or rays of laser, but the unholy energies of the Warp and swarms of void-flying Neverborn. Immediately after their appearance, they engaged the Ultramarines and their allies.

Guilliman reacted quickly to this new threat, commanding his fleet to move against the abominations in their midst, devising patterns of attacks on the fly. But the daemonships could jump in and out of the Warp at will, avoiding being surrounded and making the usual approach of the Ultramarines to void warfare completely irrelevant. Then, the daemonships sent boarding parties on the Imperial vessels, destroying many of them when their Astartes guardians failed to protect the vital sections of their ships.

Even as Guilliman was fighting against the Neverborn which had manifested aboard his flagship, the Macragge's Honour, he directed his fleet, somehow figuring out the patterns in the Warp-born armada's vanishing tricks. He commanded his ships to fire at empty space, only for the shells to hit straight into daemonships that had just re-materialized.

That laugh, thought the Primarch. I know that laugh …

The leering voice of the creature came from everywhere and nowhere as Guilliman fought his way across the sea of twisted flesh and malformed bones. It echoed in his skull and burned his soul.

'Yes, Roboute. It is I. Do you remember me ? When last we spoke, I was disguised as one of your mortal servants, warning you about all that you had lost … The look on your face when you learned about it was priceless !'

Roboute tried to locate the origin of the voice even as he continued to advance through the ocean of Warp-born beings. Despite his inhuman hearing, he failed : the voice registered to his senses as if coming from every shadow around him.

'It was so easy. I whispered in their ears, telling them what they wanted to hear, and they listened. They were so eager, so hungry for power and wealth, like all humans. I spurred their instincts, drove the beast within all of them into a frenzy … in the end, I didn't even have to force any of their hands. They did it all willingly, while you were fighting to protect them. The third one you had executed, do you remember him ? I must confess, I forgot his name. But I remember that he was the one who killed that pitiful creature you called a mother.'

'You will die for this,' the Primarch growled as he crushed another creature with the Gauntlets of Ultramar. 'And before that, you will suffer. I swear it ! Name yourself and face me, daemon !'

After near half the daemonships had been reduced to flaming hulks of corrupted steel and tainted flesh, the entity commanding the daemonic armada made itself known to the Primarch. Reaching through the Warp to touch Guilliman's mind, it presented itself as Be'lakor, Firstborn Son of Chaos and Master of Shadows.

Be'lakor, the Master of Shadows

Little is known of the Daemon Prince that claims the name of Be'lakor, even by the highest echelons of the Ordo Malleus and the hallowed Grey Knights. Those who attempt to investigate his nature are often discovered insane, dead in their studies, or simply vanish and are never heard of again, all of their research gone or destroyed. What little lore has been preserved remains on Titan, beyond even the reach of the self-proclaimed Master of Shadows.

Be'lakor is incredibly ancient, even by the standards of immortal daemons. Traces of his influence have been found in the ruins of alien civilizations that went extinct millenia before Mankind first left Terra – and it probably isn't a coincidence that they died out soon after the Master of Shadows reached out to them. He is even believed to be the first Daemon Prince : the first sentient being to have ever been transformed by the Dark Gods, shedding his mortality to become an immortal lord of the Warp. According to this theory, he was elevated by the four Ruinous Powers in concert, and for a time used the fact that he was the only one of his kind at his advantage, gaining more and more power in return for the services he performed for the Dark Gods. But soon, as is their way, the Dark Gods grew bored and sought new toys – toys which would be wholly theirs, and not shared with their brothers. They elevated new Daemon Princes, and Be'lakor power waned as the energies of Ruin were no longer condensed within a single vessel.

Despite this weakening of his powers, Be'lakor remains one of the most powerful Daemon Princes in existence. Jealous of those who have replaced him in the Dark Gods' esteem, he seeks to regain his power of old, to be once more raised above all other servants of Chaos as their unquestioned master. His pride is truly monstrous, and on more than one occasion it has proven to be his undoing. The greatest lords of the Ordo Malleus, those who know of this creature's existence, theorize that the Dark Gods have in truth abandoned their once-champion, discarding him like so many other proud Lords of Chaos.

Ever since the part Be'lakor took in the fall of Guilliman, he had been a thorn in the side of the Imperium. But there are also been recorded occurrences of him acting against the interest of Chaos, especially when the Ultramarines are concerned. He takes a great pleasure in slaying the Champions of the Chaos Gods among them, proving his superiority over the scions of the one who was chosen over him as the supreme leader of Chaos during the Heresy. It is most likely that he remembers his fate at the Arch-Traitor's hand, and still seeks to avenge himself upon all of Guilliman's progeny, proving once again that one of the Imperium's greatest assets in the war against Chaos is the division in its ranks.

Be'lakor revealed to Guilliman that he had been the one behind the eruption of civil war on Macragge which had led to the death of the Primarch's foster family, decades ago, and taunted Guilliman over his powerlessness to prevent it. He even claimed that the soul of both Konnor and Euten were in his grasp, and that he drew both power and amusement from their eternal torment. Enraged beyond measure, the Avenging Son vowed to destroy the creature, only for the Master of Shadows to withdraw his forces back through the Cadian Gate and into the Eye of Terror, daring Guilliman to follow.

It is unknown whether Guilliman's next decision was entirely motivated by rage and sorrow. It is possible that, having witnessed the power of the daemon armada, he believed it to be too dangerous to be allowed to escape and return to attack the Imperium at a later date. The previous disaster his Legion had faced when it had faced the Osirian Psybrids, and the desolation they had wrecked before being exterminated, might have played a part in his reasoning as well. But whatever his motives, Roboute ordered the 12th Expeditionary Fleet to pursue the daemonic ships into the great Warp Storm. Many of his sub-commanders – and near all the Navigators of the fleet – advised against such a course of action, but the Avenging Son ignored them all.

We have little details on what happened to the 12th Expeditionary Fleet in the Eye. The nameless remembrancer's account turns into metaphors and symbolic depictions at this point, probably reflecting the author's own limited perception of the madness surrounding him. From what can be understood without risks to one's sanity and soul, Guilliman led his forces across the width and breadth of the Eye, hunting down Be'lakor while the Master of Shadows remained always just one step beyond his reach. The will of the Primarch opened the tumultuous seas of the Eye before the fleet, or maybe the Dark Gods allowed him relatively safe passage. Nonetheless, countless crew members were lost to insanity or the depredations of Neverborn slipping past the ships' ever-raised Geller Fields.

During that fearsome journey, the Ultramarines fought against Be'lakor's forces on several daemon worlds, when the Librarians sensed the presence of the Firstborn on the world. Each time, however, their quarry would escape, and each time, less warriors would return intact from the ordeal – or return at all. Mutations began to appear on those Ultramarines who fought under the baleful skies of daemon worlds, and all suffered under the psychic weight of Slaanesh's echoing birth-cry. In each such battle, Guilliman led his men from the front, eager to confront the Master of Shadows. But as his goal eluded him time and again, the horror of his surroundings slowly ate at his resolve and mind. Entire subjective years passed between each battle, and still Guilliman fought, his sons following him loyally despite their increasing losses, convinced that the evil they were pursuing could not be allowed to exist.

Walking the graveyard of the Eldar Empire, Roboute came to learn the secret of the Fall : how, through their indulgence and excess, the children of Isha had created a god that consumed their souls when it awoke. He saw indisputable proof of the existence of the Dark Gods and their legions of daemons, contrary to what the Imperial Truth claimed. He was also shown visions of the Imperium's future, where the ideals of the Great Crusade had been abandoned in favor of totalitarian oppression and the rule of unworthy souls in the name of a distant Emperor – a future where all traces of Guilliman's own legacy had been erased.

So it was that, as he pursued the tormentor of his foster parents' soul in the underworld, Roboute Guilliman began to believe that the Emperor had lied to His sons. That the glorious future He had promised for Mankind, one free of the shackles of faith and tyranny alike, was a lie. Slipping further and further into madness, Guilliman came to believe that as things stood, there were only two possible paths for Mankind. Either it would be destroyed in the manner of the Eldar, when uncontrolled psychic power gave birth to a new primordial entity, or all humans would be caged, their souls kept from shining too brightly through dictatorship in order to prevent them from creating this same entity. The Primarch thought that this latter path was the one his father intended for Mankind, and though it repulsed him, Guilliman admitted to himself that it was better than the alternative. It disgusted him that Mankind would have to return to primitive superstition so that it might survive, abandoning the vision of reason that governed the current age for the protection of ignorance.

But then, just as his faith in his father was vacillating, the Dark Gods reached out to Guilliman, and offered him a third option. As he was fighting yet again Be'lakor's armies, they presented him with another path. Mankind could master the powers of the Warp, they whispered. Humans could follow the path that the Eldar had been too cowardly to thread, and become the junction between the Empyrean and the Materium, shedding their mortal flesh to ascend into immortality and godly power. All Guilliman had to do was replaced his father on the Golden Throne and direct Mankind down that path.

Guilliman's decision to turn against his father wasn't immediate. In the long hours of the battle, his mind wandered, and the Primarch was torn between was seemed to him like two equally ignoble paths. In the end, however, he broke, and swore that he would save Mankind from the Emperor's flawed designs. At the moment when he gave up, his latent psychic abilities, dormant ever since his duel against the Psybrid-King, fully awoke. Using them, he tore a path through the daemonic hordes and finally confronted Be'lakor.

'At last,' said the Daemon Prince as the Primarch approached him, his aura aflame with new-found power. 'Finally, you have accepted the inevitable.'

'Yes,' admitted Guilliman. 'Now I know what I have to do.'

'And what do you have to do now, Avenging Son ?' asked the Master of Shadows, a smug smile on his face.

It was the Primarch's turn to smile – an expression unlike anything he had ever shown before, combining hopelessness, bitterness, and a cruel joy. The eyes of Guilliman were filled with a feverous light and his face was pale, as if he was under the assault of some disease.

'I have to kill you, Be'lakor.'

'What ?!'

With Be'lakor's defeat, the title of Dark Master of Chaos which had belonged to the daemon for untold aeons passed on to Guilliman. Immediately, the Neverborn legions that had been fighting the Ultramarines either fell to their knees in obedience or disappeared back into the aether. Then, four Greater Daemons manifested upon the deserted world, one representing each of the Dark Gods. Each of the daemonic lords offering a gift to Guilliman before departing – a combination of unholy knowledge and dark power – while the rest of the Ultramarines watched in awed silence. When he had received the last gift, Roboute addressed his sons. He told them of what he had learned, and asked if they would follow him as he took the actions necessary to ensure Mankind's survival. All of the Legionaries present, who had seen many of the things their Primarch had seen with their own eyes, agreed, and knelt once more before Roboute Guilliman, the next Emperor and saviour of Mankind.

With his new powers, Guilliman led the remnants of his fleet out of the Eye of Terror and back through the Cadian Gate. Of the fifty thousand Astartes that had followed him into the Eye of Terror, less than ten thousand remained, and all of them bore the marks of their sojourn in the Grave-Birth. On their path, a thousand of them found themselves further altered by the change of allegiance of their Primarch : they became Secondborn, sharing their flesh and soul with a creature of the Empyrean. They gained great power through their transformation, but were also afflicted with dark hungers, now preying upon the humans they had sworn to protect. The Librarians who had accompanied Guilliman into the Eye had also been changed by their ordeal : endless exposition to the whispers of Chaos had driven them insane, corrupting them with the promise of power and knowledge that could be used against the armies of the Firstborn Son. They had become Sorcerers of Chaos Undivided, their souls forfeited to the very powers they sought to master.

Upon emerging from the Eye, Guilliman was greeted by emissaries of the First Legion. He was shocked to learn that even though decades had passed from his point of view, it had only been a few days for the rest of the galaxy. Even more surprising to him was the fact that the Dark Angels knew of what had transpired within the Eye of Terror, and that their master Lion El'Jonson had learned the same truths as Guilliman long ago, and made a similar choice. The emissaries offered the allegiance of the First Legion to Guilliman's cause, and said that their master was eager to meet with his brother once more, so that he might explain what plans he had already set into motion, and discuss what else they might accomplish together.

'The roars of the Master of Shadows shook the very aether with their fury. Despite his defeat, the Firstborn of Chaos was mighty still, and he was calling out to his forebears, demanding that they return to him what he believed was rightfully his. He screamed and shouted, claiming that instead of kneeling to him as was planned, the Chosen Harbinger had taken from him the mantle of Dark Master of Chaos, which the princeling had held since he had been first created.

For a time, the observer was content to just watch, delighting in the anger of the foolish princeling. But the watcher had a mission of its own, bequeathed upon it by the Great Mutator Himself. Be'lakor yet had a place in the Great Game, and couldn't be allowed to remain here for the rest of eternity, demanding an audience that would never be granted – as amusing as that would be.

And so, the two-headed Lord of Change revealed its presence to the princeling, and told him that all had occurred according to the Four Kings' desires. These desires had not been the same as the princeling's, true, but in his ignorance, he had well fulfilled his role nonetheless.

Greater still than before was the rage of the princeling at the revelation that his sires had used him yet again in their games, and he vowed that he would prove himself more deserving of the mantle that had been taken from him. He would show the Four Kings that he and he alone was their rightful champion and heir, and all usurpers would be cast down before his throne.'

From the Codex Chaotica, First Chapter, One-hundred-and-eleventh Verse

The Heresy : First Among Traitors

'Throughout our history, thirteen has ever been regarded as an accursed number. In many of the old religions, there were twelve main gods and a thirteenth being regarded as evil. It evokes an unneeded addition to something already perfect, which can bring it down from within. For thousands of years of mysticism, it has been associated with treachery. Maybe we should have paid more attention to the wisdom of the ancients when we dismissed it all as superstition.'

Attributed to the Primarch Magnus

In the following years, the Primarch of the Ultramarines worked alongside his brother of the First Legion to prepare the ground for the Heresy. Though Guilliman was wholly turned to Chaos by the time he returned from the Eye of Terror, he knew that he couldn't turn openly against his father yet, even with the Dark Angels at his side. He was held in high regard among the Imperium's armies, but he held no formal authority greater than that of his brothers, and few would follow him in outright rebellion. He needed to gather allies, and to make sure that his own Legion would obey his orders when the time came. Those who had come with him to Cadia and into the Eye of Terror would obey his every command, but the bulk of the Ultramarines were dispersed across the galaxy, still ignorant of their Primarch's transformation. They had to be brought into the fold, and those who wouldn't accept the new truth of the Thirteenth Legion would need to be taken care of.

Guilliman returned to the Great Crusade, hiding his transformation with sorcery, while he scattered those of his sons who had been changed by the Eye to the confines of the galaxy, fighting wars far from the prying eyes of other Legions. Then, for several decades, he plotted and schemed. He sent agents to the rest of his Legion's Chapter, slowly introducing their commanders to the truths he had discovered in the Eye. Some were brought before the Primarch himself, who explained to them what he had seen and what he had to do. Most accepted to follow their liege lord, trusting in his wisdom even though the very notion of rebellion seemed unthinkable to them. It isn't difficult to guess what happened to those who refused to see things Guilliman's way.

All this time, the traitors were sheltered from the sight of the Thousand Sons, who screened the galaxy for threats from the Throneworld. A resurgence in Warp Storms had occluded much of the galaxy, making Warp travel longer and even more dangerous. Whole Expeditionary Fleets were lost to the Sea of Souls with all hands, though some of them later reappeared under the Arch-Traitor's banner – Guilliman must have spirited them away as he massed forces, or perhaps they were driven mad by their time in the Warp and came to embrace Chaos on their own.

In secret, Guilliman ordered his Apothecaries and gene-smiths to increase the numbers of his warriors even further. At that point in time, the Ultramarines were already one of the most numerous Legions, with only the Raven Guard being undoubtedly superior in numbers (if not in quality).

Some of the Legionaries created during this period of rapid expansion included new, forbidden sciences in their creation : the Evocatii. Kept far away from inquisitive eyes, some of the Evocatii appeared to be normal Legionaries, but were in fact cloned humans who had been artificially grown and aged. Others had their genetics mixed with those of alien species with powerful abilities, or even combined with the dark science of the Warp. These warriors were often little more than puppets, capable of following orders with discipline and efficiency, but utterly lacking in initiative, and appearing to the perceptions of Librarians as psychic blanks in the Sea of Souls. It is rumoured that a handful of Evocatii were created with the Pariah gene, in order to deploy them against loyalist Librarians – but no trustworthy record of such abominable creature exists.

It is believed that Guilliman secretly pushed his brothers to denounce Magnus as an heretical sorcerer, provoking the Emperor to order the Council of Nikaea. The Arch-Traitor didn't know what exactly his father's judgement would be, but was confident that he could use it to his advantage either way. If the Emperor allowed the Thousand Sons to continue their practices, it would drive the Wolf King in opposition to Him, and if He rebuked the sons of Magnus, they in turn might become vulnerable to Guilliman's persuasion. Given the important part that the Fifteenth Legion played in protecting Terra against the sorcery of the Dark Angels during the Heresy, it is clear that the Emperor's ultimate decision was the correct one, even if it did cost a lot.

The Spineam Coronam

More commonly called the Crown of Thorns in Lower Gothic, this organization is a foul legacy of the Arch-Traitor that had plagued the Imperium for ten thousand years. When Guilliman was planning his betrayal, he knew that not all of the Imperium would follow him, and he also knew – perhaps better than any other Primarch – that there was more to the strength of the Imperium than the might of its armies. Over the years, he infiltrated agents into the Administratum and other organizations of the Imperium. Trained directly under him in the arts of deceit and minor sorcery, they were to weaken the Imperium from within, helping to usher in the ultimate victory of the Traitor Legions. Through murder, misinformation, and sabotage, these "Thorns" caused untold damage during the Heresy.

However, their existence didn't end when their master fell. Every original member of the Spineam Coronam was fanatically devoted to the Arch-Traitor, and they continued their mission even after his death. Guilliman had planned that the Heresy might last several human generations, and ordered his agents to train apprentices – one per agent – that would in time replace their master. Over the millenia, these chains of master-apprentice have endured, though many have been discovered by the Inquisition and destroyed. Seven times already the whole organization has been believed extinct, only for another of its infamous lineages to be discovered decades – or even centuries – later.

Guilliman also had a hand in the downfall of other Legions. He sabotaged the White Scars' efforts in the Chondax System and turned the powers of the Warp against the Khan and his sons. He set Sanguinius on the path to Signus Prime, after having arranged for the Angel to find the system in the hands of his Neverborn allies. The true scope of Guilliman's part in his brothers' corruption may never be fully revealed, but when he believed half of the Legions would stand at his side, he activated the next phase of his plan. He called his corrupt brothers to him, and they prepared for the event that would spark the Heresy : the Isstvan Atrocity.

The Ultramarines sent thousands of their own to Isstvan III. Each of the warriors had been unknowingly condemned to death by his superiors, for it was believed that he wouldn't follow the orders of their Primarch when Guilliman ordered his men to turn against the Emperor. Marked for censure, ostensibly for defiance against orders or any other petty reason, the betrayed sons of Guilliman were told that Isstvan was to be their redemption. By obeying their deployment orders to the letter and prosecuting the campain against the rebels in the exact manner Guilliman and the other Primarchs had planned, they would prove that they had learned from their mistakes. Because of this, a far greater portion of Ultramarines was exposed when the first bombs fell, and very few of the loyalist Thirteenth survived the first seconds of the battle for Isstvan III. Those who did, however, found a leader worthy of legends in the person of Aeonid Thiel.

Aeonid Thiel, Lord of the Red Mark

The Space Marines who were marked to die on Isstvan III were all honorable warriors, whom their corrupt Primarchs knew wouldn't follow them into treachery. All Astartes of today honor the memory of the few whose names are known to us, yet few of these heroes are as famous as Aeonid Thiel. A sergeant of the Thirteenth Legion, he was known to challenge his superiors' decisions, more often than not making excellent points as to why their actions were erroneous. Despite his skill in battle and deep instinct for tactics, this attitude prevented his further rise in the ranks. When the Captains and Chapter Masters received the order of listing those of their men whom they thought weren't trustworthy (somehow failing to notice the obvious irony in such a command), it was with a certain satisfaction that Thiel's superior officer marked him down.

Like all Ultramarines deployed on Isstvan III, Thiel wore the 'Red-Mark' : his helmet was painted in red as a sign of his censure. By then, every Legion knew that those of the Thirteenth with a red helmet had somehow disgraced themselves, and the members of the Blood Angels, Imperial Fists and Iron Hands deployed on the planet questioned why all the forces of the Ultramarines – whose Primarch was ostensibly the one leading the whole operation – were composed solely of such warriors. But they didn't suspect the truth until the first bombs fell, and can hardly be blamed for it.

Like hundreds of others, Thiel survived the  i nitial bombardment of Isstvan III, taking shelter in the city's catacombs while fire scoured its surface.  When he and his brothers emerged, the full realization of their father's and brothers' betrayal hit them. While Captains fell to their knees in despair, Thiel managed to keep his wits, focusing all the might of the soul-searing hatred he now felt for his erstwhile comrades on the prosecution of his duty. The rest of the loyalist Ultramarines gathered around him, and they exacted a heavy toll of treacherous lives during the battles that followed on Isstvan III.  Using unconventional tactics and daring stratagems, Thiel and his men achieved kill-ratios never seen before during the Great Crusade, and rarely equalled during the Heresy.  Thiel himself slew several champions of the four Traitor Legions present at Isstvan III, including his own former commanding officer.

W hat truly sets Aeonid Thiel apart from the rest of his fellow Isstvanian heroes is that, unlike most of them, he actually survived the battle.  During the final days of the loyalist resistance, the leaders of the faithful decided that one of them had to survive, to escape the world so that the fight would continue and the galaxy would remember that not all sons of the traitor Primarchs had followed their fathers into rebellion. Thiel argued vehemently against being chosen, wanting nothing more than to stay and fight alongside his comrades – no matter their Legion – but he was overruled. The other leaders believed him to be the most apt of them for the kind of war that awaited them, and the one with the best chance of actually escaping the planet.  Conceding to their decision, Thiel took a handful of warriors with him – not just Ultramarines, but also Space Marines from the other three Legions – and seized a traitor gunship just as Guilliman ordered the final assault on the loyalist positions.  In orbit, the twenty Legionaries captured a small traitor ship and, through the techno-expertise of the Iron Hands among them, they slipped away from the rest of the fleet and vanished into the Warp.

I n the years that followed, reports reached both the Imperium and the rebel commanders of a group of Legionaries wearing armor of different livery attacking traitor assets. These warriors had only one thing in common : they all bore a red helmet.  Elements from both loyal and traitor Legions rallied to  Thiel's banner, and they became a force to be reckoned with in the Shadow Wars.  Entire worlds were spared from annihilation when a strike force of the Red-Marked slew a particular leader or destroyed a supply line, forcing the traitors to redirect resources to deal with a threat that had vanished long before they arrived.  Separating Thiel's actions from those of the Twentieth Legion during that time is all but impossible, but it is estimated that at least ten thousand Traitor Marines were slain as a result of the Red-Marked's deeds, with countless other military assets destroyed in the process.

As is the case with so many things that occurred during the Heresy, the ultimate fate of Aeonid Thiel remains unknown to us.  I t is rumoured that Thiel's armor, upon which he inscribed all the stratagems he ever used against the Traitor Legions, was reclaimed by the Alpha Legion upon his death, and is enshrined in whatever world it is that the mysterious sons of Alpharius call home. To this day they study the writings of the Lord of the Red Mark, sharpening their minds and preserving Thiel's legacy.  Though the Imperium at large doesn't recognize Thiel's existence, many Chapters of the loyal Legions honor his and his warriors' memory by having their own champions paint their own helmets red – a sight that always seem to enrage the treacherous warriors of the Thirteenth.

After the purge of Isstvan III was completed, Guilliman and his cohorts prepared for the inevitable Imperial reaction. Initially, Roboute had planned for the Emperor to remain ignorant of his betrayal, so that he and the Legions loyal to him could attack Terra itself by surprise and win the war before it was even openly declared. But the escape of the Imperial Fists loyalist vessel Tribune forced him to reconsider his initial plan and to turn to one of his many contingencies. Though the Master of Mankind now knew of His wayward son's treachery, He had yet to realize the true scope of the betrayal, and Guilliman could turn the escape of Captain Pollux and his warriors to his advantage. It would require that he sacrifice the Five Hundred Worlds to the Ruinous Powers, but the Primarch was already so far gone that it is doubtful this caused him even a moment of doubt. He sent astropathic messages to the cults he had spread on each world of his kingdom, commanding them to begin the sacrifices that would pave the way for the Ruinstorm, when Marius Gage sacrificed himself and the warriors under his command to the powers beyond the Veil.

With the World Eaters and Word Bearers on their way to Ultramar, Guilliman still had to prepare the second part of his galactic trap. Contacting those of his brothers whose true allegiance hadn't yet been revealed, he orchestrated the events of Isstvan V, where the Night Lords, Death Guard and Alpha Legion were butchered on the ground of that cursed world.

On Isstvan V, the Ultramarines stood at the head of the traitors, and took the brunt of the loyalists' hatred. It was in this battle that, for the first time, Guilliman unleashed the thousand warriors who had been possessed by daemons on their way out of the Eye of Terror : the Daemonium Venatores, the Demonic Hunters. These Secondborn Astartes tore their way through the loyal Legions, their appearance causing shock and horror among those who had been their cousins.

The Daemonium Venatores

First of the twice-cursed Possessed Marines, the Venatores are those few Ultramarines who became Secondborn during the Thirteenth Legion's journey into the Eye of Terror and survived to this day. Their exact number is impossible to know : there were at best a thousand at the onset of the Heresy, and they took terrible casualties on the black sands of Isstvan V, with no way to replenish their ranks. Nonetheless, they remain a potent threat, for each of them is far more powerful than the other Secondborn that were created after them.

After Guilliman had taken the power of Dark Master of Chaos from Be'lakor, only the more powerful daemons were capable of piercing the veil he cast around his fleet and possess one of the Ultramarines aboard. And only the best warriors had survived the trials of the long war against the Master of Shadows. Thanks to this, these unions of Astartes and Neverborn created beings of great power and skill. Up till the battle of Isstvan V, the Venatores were capable of assuming their mortal form, hiding their monstrosity beneath plates of !br0ken! But when the first drops of loyal blood hit the sand, they lost control of their powers and transformed into the aspects they would assume until their dying days.

Each Daemonium Venatore is different from the other, but they are all taller than even a Terminator Marine, with a variety of natural weapons and abilities. Among Ultramarines, they do not lead, for their nature prevents them from commanding efficiently – they are often consumed by their hungers, or contemplate matters beyond mortal senses. They are instead employed as champions, paid in blood and souls. On the battlefield, they target the enemy's best warriors in order to devour their souls and add to their own power and standing in the eyes of the Dark Gods.

After the remnants of the three loyal Legions escaped the Isstvan system, Guilliman, convinced that they were broken forever, gathered his brothers. He asked that they advance on Terra together, destroying all loyalist worlds in their path, until they reached the Throneworld and he could challenge their father. But he quickly found out that his brothers had other plans. Lion El'Jonson wanted to go and bring the Wolf King to their cause; Jaghatai Khan was nowhere to be seen; Rogal Dorn and his sons wanted to get their revenge on all worlds fortified by the Iron Warriors; Sanguinius was lost to the madness Guilliman had plotted for him and unable to direct his sons; and Corax and Vulkan each had their own agenda. Only Ferrus Manus was both willing and able to keep his warriors at the Ultramarines' side on their march to Terra.

But despite this scattering of the Traitor Legions, the Imperium was still on the brink of destruction. Civil war raged on thousands of worlds as all of the Great Crusade's lords chose one side or another. The agents Guilliman had hidden among the Imperium's infrastructure also spread discord and confusion. At first, nothing seemed to be able to stop the advance of Chaos toward Holy Terra, and the worlds that fell before the combined might of the Thirteenth and Tenth Legions became dark wastelands, inhabited only by twisted mutants and cruel daemons, who fed upon the tormented spirits of the dead. With each planet that fell, the power of the Ultramarines grew, for more and more of their number were consecrated as Champions of the Dark Gods and received their blessings in return for the sacrifices they offered in the arena of war.

Of the loyal Legions, two were trapped within the Ruinstorm and three had greatly suffered at Isstvan V. The Thousand Sons were still reeling from the destruction of their homeworld and the Iron Warriors had fought in the Olympian War and were embroiled in the conflict on Mars' surface. The Emperor's Children were missing – though it seems even Guilliman was unaware of the Dark Eldars' actions, since he looked for the Third Legion during the entirety of the Heresy. Only the Sons of Horus stood steadfast, and one Legion could not hope to match the combined might of the Dark Gods and the renegade Primarchs … but Guilliman's estimations were wrong.

The Legions he had thought broken on Isstvan V soon showed that they were anything but. While the Death Guard returned straight to Terra to add their remaining forces to the Throneworld's defence, the Alpha Legion and the Night Lords scattered across the stars, each group acting to slow the rebels' advance. What Guilliman had believed would be a matter of months instead slowly stretched into years. Worlds that should have surrendered or even joined the rebellion instead fought to the bitter end, their people roused and equipped by Alpha Legion operatives, while the rebels' commanders were targeted by Night Lords strike teams and agents of the Officio Assassinorum.

It was inconceivable to Guilliman that such resistance to his forces could be the result of uncoordinated groups. The Arch-Traitor was convinced that there was someone, probably one of his brothers, commanding all the resistance cells, and that if he could just locate and kill that individual, progress toward Terra would resume at the anticipated speed. After several years, his agents reported to him that they had located the Primarch Alpharius, who had escaped the carnage of Isstvan V alongside the elite of his Legion. Alpharius had taken refuge on the world of Eskrador, alongside thousands of the Twentieth Legion's survivors.

Without wasting time, Guilliman entrusted the march to Terra to his brother Manus, and, with the elite of his Legion, he went to hunt down his brother. The details of what happened on Eskrador are unknown : while Guilliman was certain to have confronted and slain his brother, someone claiming to be Alpharius appeared at the Imperial Palace soon after the end of the Heresy. Furthermore, it wasn't the first time someone had thought they had killed the Hydra : already on Isstvan V, the elusive Twentieth Primarch had been believed slain. But whatever the truth, the command nexus on Eskrador was destroyed, and word that Alpharius had fallen spread across the galaxy.

But unlike what Guilliman had expected, the loss of Alpharius didn't affect the resistance to his advance at all. If anything, the warriors of the Alpha Legion redoubled their efforts, their desire for revenge stoked by the apparent murder of their Primarch. What the Arch-Traitor had failed to see was that, unlike his own Legion, the sons of the Hydra had been trained in individual thinking more than any other Astartes in the galaxy. While perfectly able to work together, each of them was an army in himself, a force capable of acting independently if the circumstances so required. Alpharius had directed some of the Alpha Legion cells, but not all, and even they had quickly adapted to the disappearance of their Primarch. It was only through a succession of gruelling campains that, at long last, Guilliman's forces reached the Sol system. The Arch-Traitor called his wandering brothers to him, and they answered, sensing that the final battle was at hand. Forces from all Traitor Legions converged with the Ultramarines and Iron Hands' own fleets in order to confront the defenders of the Throneworld.

The Siege of Terra

From his spies, both humans and daemonic, Guilliman knew that Perturabo had built up the defenses not just of Terra, but of the entire Sol system. Dozens of asteroids had been hollowed out and turned into space forts, and the moon of Titan had become the fortress-monastery of those who might very well be Guilliman's greatest threat : the Grey Knights. The Arch-Traitor knew little of these warriors, only that each of them had been hand-picked by Malcador the Sigillite, and blessed with power from the Emperor Himself. Guilliman was reluctant to engage them, and designed a plan that would deal with the system's defences while also neutralizing the knight-errants.

Guilliman selected forces from all nine Legions under his command to be part of the first wave of attacks, including a full Chapter of his own Ultramarines and supported by hundreds of traitorous Imperial Regiments. These troops were given false information about the system's defences, however, and they were slaughtered by the Iron Warriors' guns, while the rest of the Chaos armada held back from joining the fray. All while his men died, Guilliman's Sorcerers harnessed the energies of the massacre to cast a grand ritual that sundered the veil between the Warp and reality, and summoned the very daemonic fleet that the Ultramarines had fought in the Eye of Terror decades before. These daemonships destroyed the system's outer defences, and it is written that Be'lakor himself descended upon Titan at the head of a new daemonic legion, hoping to restore his standing in the eyes of the Dark Gods by destroying the Grey Knights and preventing all the damage they would inflict to Chaos in the future. He failed, but the battle that the Grey Knights waged against him occupied them for the entirety of the Siege, and prevented them from coming to the aid of the Emperor in His hour of greatest need.

With all obstacles removed, the rest of the traitor forces entered the system, and the assault on Terra herself began. Tens of thousands of Legionaries landed on Terra, accompanied by millions of traitor soldiers and scores of Titans. Guilliman had devised a complex plan to bring down the Palace's walls, but he lost control of his allies the moment they landed on the Throneworld's sacred soil. The Blood Angels attacked the civilian population of Terra, while groups of Space Wolves and White Scars ignored their orders to attack on their own. Meanwhile, Horus and Perturabo directed the loyalist defenders of the Palace with their combined genius, while Mortarion fought on the frontlines and Magnus and his sons shielded the Palace from the traitors' sorcery.

Days passed without any progress being made, and Guilliman grew impatient. The Neverborn were wispering to him of Lorgar and Angron's escape from the Ruinstorm, and their vengeful return to Terra. When they arrived, he would be forced to recall some of the Legionaries on the planet to face the Twelfth and Seventeenth Legions in the space battle that would follow, which would create an opportunity he knew Horus wouldn't miss. Even when the Warmaster fell at Sanguinius' fangs, Perturabo managed to keep control of the combined Legions, preventing the warriors of Sixteenth from losing themselves to their thirst for revenge.

Then the two Legions Guilliman had lost trace of, the Night Lords and the Emperor's Children, suddenly joined the battle. With the sons of Nostramo on the surface of Terra, the traitors' assault on the Palace faltered, while the Emperor's Children wrecked havoc among the renegades' fleet. Simultaneously, the Sons of Horus counter-attacked and slew the Daemon Primarch Sanguinius, taking nearly all of the Ninth Legion out of the fight.

Seeing his chance to seize the Golden Throne slip away, Guilliman decided to risk everything on one last gamble. Through his Neverborn allies, the Arch-Traitor had learned of the Webway entrance within the Imperial Palace, the heart of the God-Emperor's great work. If he could reach it and break the seals upon it, then he could unleash a daemonic army that would consume all human life on Terra, but also give him the strength to face all the Legions arrayed against him. Telling his allies that they were to perform a strike toward the Emperor, hoping to kill Him and break the loyalists' morale, he led one final assault on the Palace's gates. While a distraction force drew Mortarion away, Guilliman took with him Rogal Dorn, Lion El'Jonson, and the elite of their respective Legions, and tore a way into the Emperor's Sanctum.

On his way, the Cavea Ferrum separated the three forces, with Guilliman and his Ultramarines alone reaching the Golden Throne. There, the Arch-Traitor confronted his father at last, while around them, Custodes fought against the elite of the Thirteenth Legion.

He expected to see hate. He should have seen hate. After all, he had betrayed everything the god stood for. He had laid ruin to the god's dream, and damned Mankind to an existence of fear and eternal war. And yet, he saw no hate in his father's eyes …

He only saw sorrow and pity, and it drew him mad.

The two of them clashed together, and history was written in the blood of a god and His fallen angel. Guilliman's power was fueled by all four Chaos Gods, who saw this as their only chance at defeating the one being they feared in the entire galaxy, for He alone had the power to destroy them, in some potential future that might now never be. Weakened by the years of repelling the Dark Gods' attacks from the other side of the Webway Gate, the Emperor was unable to match His son's madness, and He was mortally wounded by the Gauntlets of Ultramar, ancient weapons which had been reforged anew in light of Guilliman's change of allegiances, and now burned with the unholy flames of Chaos.

But just as His body was dying, the Emperor was saved by the arrival of Fulgrim, who teleported right in the midst of the battle. Wielding the sword that had been forged for him by his brother Ferrus in an earlier, happier age, the Phoenician struck at his traitorous brother with all the skill and hatred that animated his scarred form, and with a wordless cry, the tongueless Primarch brought low Guilliman's guard. Using this opening, the Emperor rose with His last remaining strength, and unleashed a stream of golden psychic energy on Guilliman, snuffing out the light of his dark soul forevermore.

When they saw their father falling, the Ultramarines cried out in despair. Many of them gave their lives to reclaim his body, and they fled through the Cavea Ferrum, many more losing their way and wandering through its corridors until they were found and put down – in some cases years after the end of the Siege. They withdrew to their ships in orbit and fled the Sol system, abandoning their allies to the Imperial retribution.

Post-Heresy : Cursed Among Fallen

'And thus, banished to the Hell their father created,

The sons of Guilliman, the treacherous Thirteenth, were cast down from the Emperor's Light,

To prey upon one another forevermore, under the laughter of cruel gods.'

Excerpt from The Canticle of the Dead

Despite their considerable remaining strength, the Ultramarines have, in many ways, fallen lower than any other Legion after their defeat at Terra. While individuals among them continue to enjoy the favor of the Ruinous Powers, the failure of the Thirteenth has caused them as a Legion to be abandoned by the very Gods that once elevated them above the other traitors, cursed to suffer even more than the rest of the Treacherous Nine.

The first sign of that displeasure occurred soon after the Siege of Terra ended in the Ultramarines' shameful flight. As the Iron Cage around the Ruinstorm was being completed, the Ultramarines commanders gathered on Macragge to discuss a common attack in order to prevent Perturabo's jail from being completed. The warlords met in the mausoleum of Guilliman within the Fortress of Hera, so that the Primarch's spirit might guide their decisions – and to ensure peace was preserved among the participants. However, just as the talks were about to begin, a fleet of Ultramarines vessels and daemonships appeared in-system, attacking the ships each Chapter Master had brought with him. At the head of the armada was the reborn Marius Gage, elevated to daemonhood and coming to destroy the corpse of the father who had left him to die. The Ultramarines who fought under him were similarly disappointed with their Primarch, and sought to free themselves and their brothers from the shackles of the past.

The assault failed to ever reach Macragge's surface, but several of the Ultramarines warlords were slain, and in the utter confusion that followed, it became clear that no one could unite the Thirteenth now that its Primarch was lost to his sons. Some warlords chose to run, while others stood and fought, all on their own, refusing to take orders from others. Gage and his minions were pushed back and forced to flee, but at a far heavier cost than what was necessary. Blaming each other for their respective losses, the remaining lords separated on bitter terms, all hope of the Ultramarines coming together again forever shattered.

Marius Gage, the Sacrificed Son

The name of Marius Gage is cursed both by loyalists for his part in the Shadow Crusade and Ultramarines for his actions since. Once, he was master of the Thirteenth Legion's lauded First Chapter, a commander of ten thousand Astartes – the best of the whole Legion. Before Guilliman was reunited with his sons, it was Marius Gage that led the entire Thirteenth, with all the skill that could be asked of a Legion Master. His loyalty to his Primarch was absolute, but when he was ordered to stay behind on Calth and die so that Roboute's plans could be accomplished, something broke within the Sacrificed Son. The Warp took advantage of that weakness, and poured into his soul, reshaping him into a rabid madman by the time Angron and Lorgar reached Calth. It was thought that Marius gave his life to unleash the Ruinstorm, and it appears that even he believed that the ritual that summoned the Daemon Prince Samus would destroy him … but the Dark Gods had other plans.

For his part in unleashing the Ruinstorm, Marius Gage was elevated to the rank of Daemon Prince. His devotion to Guilliman turned into hatred, and when he finally emerged from the Warp after the end of the Heresy, he swore to destroy the heritage of his gene-sire. After his failed assault on Macragge ten thousand years ago, he retired to the world of Calth, which he rules from orbit in his daemonship, a Space Hulk named the Sorrowful Wail. Under him serve the Ultramarines who grow disillusioned with Guilliman and seek out a new master, as well as renegades from other Legions who have fled into the Ruinstorm. These renegades come from other Traitor Legions, but also from those whom Primarch remained loyal to the Emperor, in a blasphemous echo of the very unity Guilliman's betrayal murdered.

G age still seeks to unite the Ultramarines under his command, believing that he is the worthy inheritor of Guilliman, as the only Legion Master left. To this end, he still thinks that he must destroy Guilliman's body, in order to crush any lingering hope among his brothers that their father will one day return – as well as to satiate his unholy thirst for vengeance.

A thousand years after the failed attempt of the Chapter Masters to reunite the Legion, word spread within the Ruinstorm that the Imperium was weakened. The War of the Beast had just ended, and the Imperium had greatly suffered against the Orks. Countless worlds had been lost, and total collapse after the Beheading had only been avoided thanks to the timely return of the Primarch Angron. The time was perfect for a Black Crusade of unprecedented proportions, one that would shatter the Iron Cage and allow the Ultramarines to roam the galaxy freely once again.

A powerful Daemon Prince, risen from the ranks of the Thirteenth Legion, launched this Black Crusade, uniting many Chapter Masters and their warbands under his supreme command. Known only as the Ascended One, this creature led thousands of Ultramarines and millions of mortal soldiers. They crushed the worlds of the Iron Cage, weakened by recent attacks from the Orks, and prepared to continue their advance onto the worlds of the Imperium. However, even as these planets' defenders prepared to fight to the last against enemies that far outmatched them, salvation came from the most unlikely of place.

In the Eye of Terror, the eight Traitor Legions had also sensed the weakening of the Imperium. An alliance had been formed, and another Black Crusade had begun, piercing through the Cadian Gate – once more reducing Cadia to burning slag. The newly inducted High Lords of Terra saw this resurgence of Chaos, and feared that the Imperium had only survived the coming of the Beast to fall at the hands of the Archenemy. However, the Crusade force from the Eye converged to the galactic east, straight to the Ruinstorm. Medused, the Imperium watched as the two Black Crusades destroyed each other.

The Traitor Legions of the Eye remembered well how the Ultramarines had failed them during the Siege of Terra, when they had fled the battlefield as soon as their Primarch had died. They also remembered how Guilliman had sent so many of their brothers to die in order to weaken the defenses of the Sol system and thin the veil between realms, all for nothing in the end. To these treacherous souls, nothing had more importance than revenge, even the chance to destroy the Imperium in its hour of weakness.

An entire sector of space served as the battlefield between the two Chaos armadas, with hundreds of Imperial worlds burning in the crossfire. The Daemon Primarch Corax, leaving his daemonworld for the first time since the Heresy, fought against the Ascended One in single battle, and the two daemon princes destroyed each other's material form, banishing their spirits back to the Eye and the Ruinstorm. In the end, the Imperial armies came upon the remnants of the two hordes, and forced them back into their respective Iron Cages. The fortress-worlds that had been destroyed were rebuilt, and the whole event came to be known as the Unborn Crusade.

The last of the setbacks endured by the Ultramarines came from a source none could have predicted – perhaps not even the Dark Gods themselves. In the eighth century of the forty-first millennium, several worlds of the Iron Cage were lost, not to the Ultramarines or their daemonic allies, but to an outside force : the Hive-Fleet Behemoth. While the Imperium has faced other breeds of Tyranids in the past, this particular hive was apparently drawn to something within the Ruinstorm, for as soon as it had devoured the worlds of the Iron Cage in its path, it entered the Warp Storm, never emerging again. From what we know, the bioships were scattered by the Warp currents, and the Hivemind was brutally destroyed by the storm, reducing most of the Tyranids to mindless beasts. Still, their numbers were such that when they reached daemon worlds, the masters of the cursed planets had to use all their strength to defeat them. Many Ultramarines were lost to the Tyranids' fangs and claws, with even the homeworld of Macragge coming under attack by a force of xenos led by the infamous Swarmlord, who mutilated the Chaos Lord Marneus Calgar, ruler of Macragge, before it was defeated by the intervention of one of the four Tetrarchs.

It is highly unlikely that this most recent incident the Thirteenth Legion has met was the result of the Dark Gods' displeasure. The Tyranids are protected from their reach by the Hivemind, and its objectives – the consumption of all life within the galaxy – are at odds with the very continued existence of Chaos. Still, the question remains : what could possibly have driven Behemoth to enter the Ruinstorm ?

The Tetrarchs

Before the Heresy, Tetrarch was the highest rank an Ultramarine could achieve, whose authority was second only to that of Guilliman himself. There were four Tetrarchs, each of them ruler of one of Ultramar's most prosperous worlds, tasked with its protection and management in order to supply the many resources required by the Great Crusade – weapons, ammunition, heavy armor, soldiers, and so on. When the Arch-Traitor prepared his betrayal, he recalled the Tetrarchs to his side, sparing them from the sacrifice that would create the Ruinstorm and trap the Twelfth and Seventeenth Legions during most of the Heresy.

Though the worlds they had ruled were no longer in any mortal's hands, the Tetrarchs conserved their positions of power in the Thirteenth Legion. The four of them fought at their Primarch's side on Isstvan V, and served him well during the rest of the Heresy. They were emissaries to the other forces fighting under the Arch-Traitor's banner, and it was their efforts who kept the fragile alliance of the Dark Gods' followers intact until the time of the Siege.

In the course of that service, each of the four Tetrarch shed his humanity and mortal flesh to become a Daemon Prince, an immortal scion of the Ruinous Powers, bestowed power beyond the ken of mortal men. Yet despite their transformation, they remained subservient to the will of Guilliman, and continued to serve him until the very end. During the Siege of Terra, they fought at the head of their own Chapters, covering the advance of their Primarch into the Palace. Accounts from the Legionaries who were engaged with them at the moment of Guilliman's fall tell that they were banished into the Warp at the exact moment the Emperor's sword slew His traitorous son.

A century later, the Tetrarchs reappeared in the Ruinstorm. No longer leading others of their kind, but still respected and feared among the Thirteenth Legion, they now wander through the Five Hundred Worlds and beyond, seemingly able to move through the Iron Cage at will – to the great frustration of the Iron Warriors and the Inquisition alike. In the last ten thousand years, there have been hundreds of sightings of these Neverborn princelings. They work with heretics from all horizons, from lowly cultists in over-populated hives to Warmasters leading Black Crusades across several sectors. For millenia, the Ordo Malleus and the Thousand Sons have tried to establish a pattern in their actions, but so far, none have emerged. It is whispered among the Ultramarines that the Tetrarchs still serve Guilliman, somehow still hearing the will of the dead Primarch – but that is preposterous. The Emperor Himself destroyed the soul of the Arch-Traitor.

The true names of the Tetrarchs have long been lost, erased from Imperial archives in what many believe to have been a deliberate plot of the creatures to destroy all traces of their pre-daemonhood identity. It is well known that the true name of a daemon is a powerful weapon against it, and in the case of Daemon Princes, the name the creature had when it was still mortal is that name. Without a name, the four Tetrarchs are called by a series of titles, either self-bestowed or granted by their enemies. However, it is all but impossible to differentiate the four and know which one is responsible for which atrocity. The fact that they all seem to behave in the same way makes it even more difficult, and it has led many Inquisitors to believe that their connection goes beyond the mere rank they once shared. In the mind of the Iron Warriors, who most often face them in battle, the Tetrarchs are considered to be a single entity which just happens to have the ability of being in four different places at the same time.

Organization

Uriel Ventris, the Drinker of Sorrow

In recent years, the name of Uriel Ventris has become one of the most often used curses among the wardens of the Iron Cage surrounding the Ruinstorm. Born on the thrice-cursed daemon world of Calth, Uriel grew in the underground caves of the blighted planet until he was noticed by the Ultramarines warband who owned his entire clan. After his transformation into a Legionary, he displayed great wit and martial skill, quickly rising in prestige and influence. He is known to have slipped through the Iron Cage many times, leaving a trail of destruction across the galaxy each time. He is ruthlessly practical, and, contrary to most Ultramarines, do not regard the Dark Gods as his absolute masters, instead placing his own desires and ambitions over theirs. Lacking even the perverse sense of honor displayed by many Chaos Marines, all that matters to him is victory through any means. He doesn't even worship the Dark Gods, but instead sees them as questionable allies and the power they can grant in return for offerings as nothing more than a useful tool. This has made him a heretic in the eyes of many of his more orthodox brethren, but the results he has achieved are such that even then, there are those willing to follow him into battle.

It is on the world of Pavonis that Ventris earned his title. Making an alliance with Dark Eldar forces, he crushed the PDF and conquered the world. The atrocities the xenos visited upon the population were only equalled by those committed by Uriel himself, and the foul creatures named the son of Guilliman "the Drinker of Sorrows" as a sign of respect for his cruelty. After his allies from Commoragh had departed, their hulls filled with fresh slaves for the flesh-markets of the Dark City, Uriel journeyed to an ancient crypt that had been recently discovered by archaeological teams. There, he found one of the C'tan god-shards, and released it from its confinement in return for necrontyr technology. When the Imperial rescue mission arrived to Pavonis, not a single lifeform remained on the planet – the C'tan Shard had annihilated the entire biosphere. In return for liberating it, Uriel gained access to ancient necrontyr technology, which he used to gain the allegiance of several Dark Mechanicum hereteks.

He later had dealings with Thrar Hraldir, and together they attacked one of the Deathwatch's space forts and ransacked it, plundering its treasures and adding the knowledge accumulated by the Ordo Xenos to Hraldir's own fell wisdom. The markings left by the two heretics on the fort's wall allude to the coming of some yet greater atrocity, and the Holy Ordos are actively working on uncovering their sinister designs, while all Legion forces across the galaxy know to look for both of them and execute them on sight.

Since the days of the Heresy, all Traitor Legions have suffered from infighting. The poison of Chaos always turns brother against brother, and the death of loyalty is the one common trait among all of the Accursed Nine. Some of them have lost their Primarchs to death's embrace, while others have ascended into the Great Game of Chaos and become distant from their sons. But no Traitor Legion has been broken by the loss of its gene-sire like the Ultramarines have.

After the battle of Isstvan III purged those Ultramarines who had the most inclination to think for themselves, Guilliman's authority over his sons went from unquestioned to absolute. His word was considered not just law, but gospel by the warriors of the Thirteenth. Over the course of the March to Terra, the Arch-Traitor took on more and more direct control of the Legion's operations, to the point that his death crippled the Ultramarines far beyond the blow it inflicted on their morale. When the Ultramarines arrived to the Ruinstorm, none of them had the ability to hold the Legion together, and it came apart in hundreds of warbands. Some Chapter Masters were capable of keeping their own warriors under their control, while others either failed or were murdered by warriors they had often led for decades.

Unlike most other Traitor Legions, the Ultramarines have kept to the hierarchy they had before the Siege of Terra, though in truth, the difference is limited to the titles and ranks they cling to. Warlords are called Chapter Masters, and their subcommanders are called Captains, but they are far more similar to other Chaos warbands as they are to the organization of a true Legion. The size of the Chapters vary greatly, depending on the fortune of its members. Before the Heresy, standard size for an Ultramarine Chapter was ten thousand Legionaries, but almost none of the current Chapter Masters can boast to have such a force under their control. Some warlords of the Thirteenth Legion command thousands of warriors and rule over a dozen worlds or more, while others have less than a single Company's worth of Chaos Marines and travel the Ruinstorm aboard their accursed starships, selling their services to the highest bidder or going on quests of their own.

All Traitor Legions are divided to various degrees, and the Imperium rightfully dreads the unification of any of them under a new leader. But while the Ultramarines are a potent threat to all Mankind, the possibility of them uniting again under a leader different from their beloved Primarch is considered most unlikely by the Inquisition's analysts. The sons of Guilliman still worship the memory of their father, even those who became Legionaries thousands of years after his fall. They pray for his return, and in the meantime keep fighting each other for the resources of their infernal exile, each warlord refusing to submit to any of his brothers. During the Heresy, all Chapter Masters were equal under Guilliman, though some were higher in his favor. None of these favoured champions, however, held enough sway to convince the other Chapter Masters to follow him – not after the infamous Battle of Macragge and the Unborn Crusade.

Oberdeii, the Oracle of the Pharos

When the Ruinstorm was unleashed, it swallowed the whole Five Hundred Worlds and the encompassing region of the galaxy. All worlds, inhabited or not, became the playthings of the Neverborn and their dark masters … Safe for Sotha. Discovered in the early stages of the Great Crusade, Sotha was a peaceable world whose only particularity was the presence on its soil of the xenos apparatus known as the Pharos. Built by an alien species more ancient than even the Eldar, the Pharos was an instrument of galactic travel based on entirely different principles than those of our own Warp-drive technology. Through an empathic field, it allowed instant communication across galactic distances, and even point-to-point teleportation. Those who lived for too long near it started to have strange dreams, visions of possible futures. When the planet was discovered, a team of magos was sent to investigate, with an company of Iron Warriors to serve as escort and assist their work. Isolated from the galaxy, engrossed in their research of the Pharos' wonders, they were still on the planet when the stars above them turned blood-red.

However, Sotha did not become another daemon world. The Ruinstorm's influence was kept at bay, and the people of Sotha were protected from the madness of the Warp. In response to the Warp Storm, a so far unknown propriety of the Pharos had activated, shielding the planet. Through the use of the device, the loyalists trapped on the planet discovered what had befallen the galaxy at large, and vowed that they would prevent the Pharos from falling into the hands of Guilliman and his treacherous ilk. The sons of Perturabo fortified the planet, with the help of the magos and the farmers who had formed the bulk of Sotha's colonists thus far.

For several decades, the defenders of Sotha prospered under the rule of the Iron Warriors. When the Ultramarines returned to the Ruinstorm in the Heresy's aftermath, however, many of them sought to claim the Pharos and dedicate it and the untouched planet to the Ruinous Powers. For years the Iron Warriors and their allies fought, cut off from any hope of reinforcement. Then one of the Tetrarch joined the forces gathered at the edge of the Pharos' protective field, and reached out to a young native of Sotha called Oberdeii.

Driven mad by the combined effects of the Pharos and the whispers of the Daemon Prince, Oberdeii ventured deep into the heart of the mountain housing the xenos device, past the mapped regions of the labyrinth of caverns and passages. What happened in those depths is unknown, but it caused the collapse of the barrier. With the help of their daemonic allies, the Ultramarines ransacked the planet, enslaving its people and inflicting hideous tortures upon the Iron Warriors. The Tetrarch led the assault on the Pharos itself, and performed a ritual that destroyed the ancient device and erected in its place a monument to Tzeentch, the Architect of Fate. Within it, he placed what remained of Oberdeii. The energies of the Warp healed the young man's mind, and, obeying the Tetrarch's last order before he disappeared once more, the Ultramarines inducted him into their ranks.

Since that day, Oberdeii has become known across the Ruinstorm as the Oracle of the Pharos. His exposition to both the device and the power of the Great Conspirator have granted him a powerful prophetic gift and psychic powers. He now wanders the Five Hundred Worlds with an escort of daemons of Tzeentch and followers, both Astartes and cultists. Sometimes, he sells his services to another warlord, demanding strange payments – arcane tomes, favours, and other relics – and even sometimes fighting without demanding anything in return. On the few occasions he has taken parts in attacks on the worlds of the Iron Cage, his presence had enough of an impact for the Inquisition to grow an interest with him. He is on the list of priority targets of the Fourth Legion around the Ruinstorm.

Homeworld

Despite the horrendous destruction unleashed by Guilliman in his attempt to destroy the World Eaters and Word Bearers, the Five Hundred worlds still endure, after a fashion. Those not lost entirely to ravening hosts of daemons are coveted prizes in the endless wars between Ultramarine warbands. All of these worlds are in a state of constant flux, with immense fortresses being raised and brought down through warp-craft and more mundane means in equal measure. Yet no Ultramarine will deny that the true homeworld of the Legion remains Macragge, even ten thousand years after the Heresy. The fact that the Ultramarines have retained control of their original homeworld while the other Traitor Legions have been forced to seek new ones in the Eye of Terror is yet another source of hatred between the sons of Guilliman and their former comrades.

The Five Hundred Worlds are a catalogue of madness and corruption, but even among them, three planets stand out, both for their infamous history and the power they grant to the warlord who control them. First among these is Macragge, homeworld of the Legion. Billions of cultists live their short existences on this thrice-cursed world, serving the Dark Gods from the moment they are born to the instant their soul leaves their flesh. Macragge is covered in temples to the Primordial Annihilator in all its aspects, and almost every human – or creature whose genetic code is based upon the human form, at least – is affiliated to one of the temple. This affiliation is the only protection against the bands of cultists who roam the streets of the planet-wide metropolis in search of sacrificial victims. All temples wage endless wars against one another for the favor of the Dark Gods, with the occasional support of one of the Ultramarines garrisoned on the planet. Greatest of these temples is the Fortress of Hera, hosting the Mausoleum within which lies the body of Roboute Guilliman, preserved in stasis. The Fortress is also the seat of power of the ruling Ultramarine warlord, from which he commands the many defenses of the planet and grants audiences to out-worlders as well as his own subjects.

While there is a veneer of order on Macragge, Calth's surface is an eternal battlefield. Hundreds of warbands and daemon armies wander the desolation left behind by the Ruinstorm's birth, fighting everything that crosses their path. This endless battle is what fuels the power of Calth's ruler : the Sacrificed Son, Marius Gage, who watches over his domain from a tower raised in the place where he made his stand against Angron and Lorgar ten thousand years ago.

In Calth's underground, entire cities remain, populated by humans, mutants and other, less recognizable creatures. These arcologies are mostly left alone by the warring factions – a tacit accord that allows all groups to recruit canon fodder from them. Surprisingly, these underground cities are ruled over by mortal warlords, not their Astartes superiors. A few Ultramarines live in Calth's underworld, banished from their Chapters for various offences, but they remain in hiding, careful not to draw the attention of a Chaos Lord visiting from the surface. In orbit, the wreckage of the Battle of Calth and the many more confrontations that took place in the early years after the Heresy have combined with severe daemonic infestation to make navigation a nightmare. There are always a few paths to the surface, but it is impossible for ships to fight properly above Calth. A caste of pilots and navigators have settled among the derelict ships, lending their services to those warlords who want to bring their forces down on the planet – for a fee.

Last of the Ruinstorm's jewels, Armatura was once a war-world, a miracle of productivity and logistics that supplied most Ultramarine Chapters with recruits and materiel. It is now the domain of the Dark Mechanicum hereteks, who perform blasphemous experiments, seeking to fuse flesh, metal, and the power of the Warp. The daemon engines of Armatura are highly prized among the Chapters, and they will pay whatever price the dark magos demand to obtain them – as long as a handful of magos are added to the bargain to maintain and control the infernal creations. All warbands respect the planet's independence, some out of genuine respect, most because of the enormous orbital defenses and armies dedicated to preserving the planet's from the clutches of greedy Chaos Lords. There are several forge-cities on the planet, each under the control of the Dark Mechanicum equivalent of an arch-magos. Though they are divided by theological feuds and rivalries, they invariably put aside their differences every time their world is threatened.

Marneus Calgar, the Lord of Macragge

The throne of Macragge is ever contested by various Chaos Lords, and it is rare for any to sit upon it for long. Yet is has been more than a hundred years than Chapter Master Marneus Calgar has seized the position from his predecessor's cold dead hands, and despite many attempts, no challenger has succeeded in replacing him. Gifted with an uncanny grasp on tactics, he is also a master politician, keeping the various factions of Macragge at each other's throat in order to prevent the rise of any capable of truly challenging his power. As the wearer of the fabled Gauntlets of Ultramar, he is a powerful warrior, carrying with him the remnants of the Dark Gods' blessings upon the Arch-Traitor.

When a tendril of Hive-Fleet Behemoth reached Macragge, it was Calgar who led the defense of the Ultramarines homeworld. He fought against the Swarmlord in single combat, and though he was able to injure the creature, it proved to be his superior, and left him maimed and on the verge of death. In a surprising turn of events, the crippled Chaos Lord wasn't killed by his followers, but instead brought to his hereteks and Apothecaries, who healed his wounds and replaced what he had lost with corrupt cybernetics. Now harder to kill than ever, and with his hold on Macragge secured by his ultimate victory against the Tyranids, Marneus has started to turn his gaze outward, to the rest of the Five Hundred Worlds – and perhaps even beyond the walls of the Iron Cage …

Beliefs

Codex Chaotica

Written by Guilliman during a period of time stretching from his emergence of the Eye of Terror to his demise in the Imperial Palace, the Codex Chaotica – also known as the Book of Guilliman, the Accursed Tome, and a myriad other fell names – contains the sum of the Arch-Traitor's knowledge of both Chaos and military strategy. It is both a religious text, describing the nature of the Dark Gods, the daemons that serve them, and a tactical manual used by the Thirteenth Legion.

During the Heresy, the Codex was constantly updated, each book across the galaxy altering its contents to match the copy Guilliman himself was writing into. And yet, even after Guilliman's death, the book has continued to update itself, with new rites and knowledge about other Neverborn appearing within its pages. Many Ultramarines take this a sign that their father yet live, and that he communicates with them through the Codex, guiding them in their eternal war against the Imperium. They embrace its teaching fanatically, hoping to become closer to Guilliman through it.

In the past ten thousand years, many Inquisitors have attempted to secure a copy of the Codex, seeking to use the knowledge within its pages against the Ruinous Powers and their minions. All of them went insane as the madness of the book poured into their souls, and while many took their own lives or were reduced to gibbering wrecks that were put out of their misery, many others were consumed by the lies of Chaos and went rogue. In response, more puritanical members of the Holy Ordos have taken up the policy of systematically destroying every copy they come across, a practice that was already followed by the warriors of the loyal Legions since the Heresy itself. Yet in spite of their efforts, new copies are written on Macragge, by minions of the Dark Gods that sit beneath Guilliman's mausoleum and are inevitably consumed by the unholy knowledge they pour onto the pages of human skin upon which they write in blood with quills made of the bones of loyal Space Marines.

To be an Ultramarine is to be not only touched by the madness of Chaos, but consumed by it. While other Chaos Marines retain a modicum of sanity – often just enough to know, deep inside, that they have become monsters, and hate themselves for it as much as they hate most of the rest of the galaxy – the sons of Guilliman glorify in their unrivalled corruption. They do not commit atrocities for shock value, hoping to break the enemy's morale : they do it because it pleases them. They do not embrace the path of Chaos for the power it brings, but because they genuinely believe in its dark philosophies.

As a Legion, the Ultramarines follow the path of Chaos Undivided : they worship all four Dark Gods as the absolute masters of the galaxy, reflections in the Sea of Souls of Mankind's true nature. Through the union of the Materium and the Warp, they believe they can achieve a state of perfect harmony, with the anarchy of the Warp controlled and directed by the will of immortal, transcendent souls. Possession is an illustration of that belief, as is the Ruinstorm and other Warp Storms. To them, daemonhood is the ultimate form of existence, and the destiny manifest of all Mankind – once it had shed itself of the unworthy and the weak.

This belief is the reason why the sons of Guilliman seek to become Secondborn and Daemon Princes far more eagerly than other Traitor Legions, despite the risks. Similarly, Chaos Spawns are numerous among the Ultramarines, due to their relentless pursuit of daemonhood. They are seen as expressions of the Dark Gods' will made manifest, and reminders that there is a price for failing to match the standards of Ascension. Of course, the displeasure of the Dark Gods toward the Thirteenth Legion makes such dark apotheosis very rare among the Ultramarines. But rather than despair over this fact, the sons of Guilliman see it instead as a test, ensuring that only the truly worthy are granted immortality and daemonic power.

Despite the common worship of the Primarch and the following of the Codex Chaotica, there are still doctrinal differences in the Thirteenth Legion. Many Ultramarines have dedicated themselves to a single Dark God, believing their patron to be superior to the rest of the Four or simply more aligned with their own inclinations. Some of them remain with their original Chapter, though they are often ostracised by their more orthodox brethren. Others gather in groups following the same Power, under the banner of a favored champion of Chaos. Wars between warbands following opposed gods as a way to gain favor are common, and entire daemon worlds are divided between warring armies of each Dark God, each warlord seeking to conquer the planet and dedicate it to his patron.

It is somewhat ironic that these Chapters who have chosen to follow a single of the Dark Gods are viewed as heretics by many of their brethren, while they are those with the most chance to actually reach apotheosis. Indeed, while it is not unheard of for the Ruinous Powers to elevate one of their champions to daemonhood together – Vulkan, Corax, and the Tetrarchs come to mind – such an occasion is exceptionally rare, and the individuals in question shaped the entire galaxy through their dark deeds. Those who dedicated themselves to Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle or Slaanesh stand a much better chance to be selected for ascension. Of course, given the length of the odds involved and the sanity of both the Dark Gods and their worshippers, the very concept of "chance" holds little sway in the dealings of Chaos.

As was stated before, all Ultramarines have the deepest respect and love for their father, even those who were created long after Guilliman's death at the God-Emperor's blade. In many warbands, this translates into a worship of the Arch-Traitor. Altars are raised and adorned with his image, and sacrifices offered for his favor. Many believe him to be alive in some way, and still consider him to be the leader of the Legion from beyond the veil of death. Only in Chapters that are not aligned with any of the Ruinous Powers is such a worship openly practiced, for it has no return : there has never been, to the Inquisition's knowledge, an occasion when the Arch-Traitor has actually rewarded one of his sons for his devotion. And yet, even after ten thousand years of silence, there are still Ultramarines who pray for the blessing of Roboute Guilliman, whose treacherous blood runs in their tainted veins.

Combat doctrine

'Corrupt their hearts with the whispers of Slaanesh.

Twist their minds with the secrets of Tzeentch.

Poison their flesh with the plagues of Nurgle.

Spill their blood with the strength of Khorne.'

From the Codex Chaotica, Eighth Chapter, Ninth Verse

As with their beliefs, Ultramarines Chapters have varied approaches to warfare. Each warband has its own preferred methods, depending on its leader's skills, the resources at his disposal, and which aspect of Chaos Undivided its members follow. In many ways, the Ultramarines hold all of the strengths of the other Traitor Legions combined – but without the Legion-wide favor of the Dark Gods, each of their facet is but a weaker copy of the Traitor Legion it desperately apes.

Chapters dedicated to Khorne will launch brutal, ruthless assaults on their enemies, heedless of the cost, offering their own blood and that of the enemy to render the veil and bring forth hordes of Daemons of the Lord of Skulls. Those who have been welcomed into Nurgle's embrace spread out contagion and decay before them, bringing thousands of diseased slaves and hurling them at the enemy so that their deaths will infect the foe. Warbands led by servants of Tzeentch use deceit, treachery and foul magics to turn their enemies against one another before striking the killing blow. As for the Chapters aligned with Slaanesh, their warlords delight in the choreography of war, and surprisingly prove to be some of the most tactically-minded of the Dark Prince's disciples, their mutated brains rewarding master-strokes with chemically-induced pleasure.

Most dangerous are those Chapters who do not follow any particular Dark God, but the Primordial Annihilator as a whole. Less consumed by the rivalry that allegiance to any of the Four breeds, they can act with more cohesion on the battlefield. While their individual warriors may lack the unholy strength granted by a Dark God's "blessing", they make up for it with an abundance of Possessed Marines and Dark Mechanicum constructs.

The Ultramarines fight most of their battles against each other or the Neverborn armies that populate many of the Five Hundred Worlds. The complete anarchy of these conflicts has trained them to be supremely adaptable, for there is no telling what manner of foe they might fight next. While they rely on the Codex Chaotica for their esoteric and tactical lore, the sheer amount of tactics that have been added to it over ten thousand years more than makes up for the lack of innovative thought displayed by many sons of Guilliman. On the battlefield, their leaders act less like strategists and more like cogitators, following a succession of instructions written in their holy book without understanding the meaning behind each action. It isn't rare for a Chaos Lord to misinterpret an instruction, though, and the results are often catastrophic for the warband – though on at least one occasion, such a mistake instead ended up winning the day for Chaos against Imperial forces.

Over the millenia, the Iron Warriors manning the Iron Cage and their allies Inquisitors have grown used to repel the Ultramarines' attempts at breaking free. Every century or so, a warlord within the Ruinstorm calls for a Black Crusade, and gathers as many allies around him as possible before launching a massive assault on one of the fortress-worlds guarding one of the Warp roads leading out of the Ruinstorm. While it is possible for a handful of ships to slip through the Iron Cage unnoticed, or simply by running fast enough to escape pursuit, the only way for a true armada to leave the Cage is to conquer or destroy a world-fortress, removing the obstacle so that the forces can emerge from the Ruinstorm in order. Sometimes they will attempt to corrupt some of the Iron Cage's defenders, hoping to make the wardens open the gate of their prison. On a handful of occasions, this has actually worked, with Imperial officers and even a handful of Iron Warriors betraying their oaths to the God-Emperor. But the Inquisition has agents on all worlds of the Iron Cages, and they are ever watchful for signs of treachery, while the Fourth Legion's Chaplains are equally vigilant.

Cato Sicarius, the Warrior-King of Espandor

If there is one Ultramarine that showcases just how far the sons of Guilliman have fallen, it is Cato Sicarius. Ruler of the daemon world of Espandor, near the edge of the Ruinstorm, Sicarius is a Chaos Lord of Slaanesh that is all but consumed by the power of his Dark God, in its most selfish and depraved incarnation. Born on Macragge itself, among one of its most powerful priestly bloodlines, he was chosen to become an Ultramarine as much because of his skill with a blade and relatively pure genetics than because of his family's influence. His immense pride and self-importance caused him to be quickly marked by the Dark Prince of Chaos, and he rose through the ranks not because of his tactical acumen but almost exclusively because of his skill with a blade. In time, he became the champion of Marneus Calgar, the Chapter Master ruling over the Ultramarines' homeworld – a position of extreme honor in the Legion.

But simply being a champion wasn't enough for Sicarius' ambitions, and he sought to overthrow his lord and replace him as master of Macragge. His coup failed pathetically when half of his followers turned against him on the eve of the confrontation between him and Marneus. For his betrayal, Marneus banished him from the homeworld with his followers, confident that one of them would kill the upstart champion soon and spare him the trouble of ordering one of his brothers killed himself.

As the Chapter Master had predicted, Sicarius' confederates turned on him almost as soon as their ship left Macragge. But the champion managed to defeat all of his would-be assassins, and quickly found himself the only Legionary aboard the Chaos ship. After months of errance, the tides of the Warp delivered him to the world of Espandor. The world was under the control of several Chaos Lords of Khorne, who had formed an uneasy alliance so that they might focus their efforts on their raids on the Iron Cage in the name of their god. Sicarius' ship crashed onto the planet, with the Chaos Lord as the only survivor. When the salvage parties of Espandor's Blood Lords arrived, he let himself be taken prisoner and brought to the city of Corinth, from which the lords of Khorne ruled the planet. There, he freed himself and escaped, before allying with a Corsair Queen named Kaarja Salombar. Together, they overthrew the eight Blood Lords, and turned Espandor to the worship of Slaanesh. Ruling alongside the pirate queen, Sicarius has since led a series of raids against both other daemon worlds and Imperial targets, always choosing targets that were poorly defended and with a lot of potential slaves for the flesh-pits of Espandor. Despite his position of power, he is hated among the Ultramarines for his arrogance – despite his exile, he still genuinely believes that he is destined to rule the Ultramarines and bring them to the worship of the Dark Prince – and leads a warband of corrupt mortals rather than other Chaos Marines.

Recruitment and Geneseed

Despite the hellish conditions of the Ruinstorm, many of the Five Hundred Worlds are capable of sustaining a human population. None of them are spared the touch of the Warp, however, and the rampant mutations among these souls, practically damned before they are even born, make it difficult to find subjects genetically strong enough to survive the transformation into an Astartes. Still, with hundreds of worlds to draw upon, the Ultramarines have managed to maintain their numbers through ten thousand years of brutal infighting and failed attempts at breaking free of the Iron Cage. On the occasions when an Ultramarine warband breaks free of the Iron Cage and conquers Imperial territory, the Apothecaries among its number will echo the ancient practice of the Legion, taking the children of their defeated foes to add them to their genetic stock. This influx of untainted blood is probably the reason – beyond the use of Warp-craft – that any new Ultramarines can be created at all.

Each Chapter has its own group of Apothecaries, tasked with ensuring the future of the warband. They harvest the gene-seed of the fallen and implant it into new Chaos Marines, but they are also tasked with finding human specimens genetically pure enough to allow the transformation. Wars have been fought in the Ruinstorm between Chapters for control of untainted recruiting grounds. Ironically, these battles often result in the human population being infected with the corruption of Chaos, making the losses suffered by both sides entirely pointless.

No Ultramarine lives who is free of mutations, but all of these are inflicted by the Dark Gods to reflect the warrior's inner soul unto his physical form, not due to a corruption of the gene-seed itself. Analysis of progenoids harvested on dead Ultramarine raiders has revealed a general weakening of the various biological mechanisms that usually protect Astartes from the touch of the Warp, explaining some of the higher mutation ratio encountered among the Thirteenth Legion when compared to other Traitor Legions.

Although it hasn't been proven, there is a persistent theory in the Inquisition and the magos biologis of the Adeptus Mechanicus that the Ultramarines' gene-seed suffers from a mutation that dampers free will and self-awareness through a combination of hormones that weaken cerebral activity in some regions of the cortex. According to that theory, when combined with a life spent in the Ruinstorm, this makes it so that only exceptional individuals can resist the erosion of their selves into mindless following of the Codex Chaotica. If that theory were to be true, it would be just one more punishment inflicted by the Ruinous Powers upon those who were once their favourite servants.

The Evocatii

With the Five Hundred Worlds to call upon, he Ultramarines still have the facilities and resources required to create Legionaries in conventional manners – though with some daemonic help in their technology. And yet, there are many fallen Apothecaries who continue the unholy practice of the Evocatii, begun during the Heresy's preparation. All Traitor Legions deviate from the standard procedure of Astartes creation, be it because of necessity or perversion. But the Evocatii are different in that they are never intended as Astartes at all. Among the Chapters of the Thirteenth Legion, those of them who retain their awareness are seen as second-class warriors, forever beneath the better-born Legionaries. As for those who are wholly consumed by their bestial nature, they are regarded as no different from battle-servitors and other pieces of equipment.

Some Evocatii are the fruit of blasphemous union of gene-seed and xenos essence, while others have their bodies almost entirely replaced by Dark Mechanicum's augmetics. There is some of Guilliman's genetic legacy in all of them, but it is diluted : one progenoid gland, normally used to create one Space Marine, can be used to create a dozen of these "thin-bloods", as they are also sometimes called among the Ultramarines. Despite the contempt most Ultramarines have for the Evocatii, many warlords make use of them, either as support for their true warriors, or to fill up their ranks after a string of defeats.

Warcry

The Ultramarines don't have a common war cry any longer. One of those which are used across several warband is 'For the Primarch and the Dark Gods !', as is 'Death and Ruin !' in a twisted parody of the Legion's original war cry 'Courage and Honor !'. But as the level of loyalty to the Pantheon and the Arch-Traitor changes, so do the warcries employed. Many Ultramarines have been reported to simply laugh insanely as they charge enemy lines, their vox-speakers amplifying the sound into a cacophony that can terrify even the bravest mortal man as his soul is faced with the very manifestation of Warp-induced madness. Other times, they broadcast the names and titles of their leader, seeking to increase the warband's reputation among the Imperium – and through it, its standing in the eyes of the Dark Gods. Warriors who seek glory for themselves will shout their own names, while others sing unholy hymns of praise to their daemonic masters, listing the name of their patrons so that their victims know to whom their souls will go.

Such is the corruption of the Ultramarines that merely listening to them can – and has many times in the past – drive someone into heresy. The foulness of the Chaos Marines' soul is rumoured to overspill from their physical presence, tainting all those who establish contact with them – even if that contact is limited to hearing their insane braying. To counter this, the Iron Warriors have installed powerful speakers of their own on their garrison worlds around the Ruinstorm, and all human soldiers are required to wear ear protectors whenever faced with the treacherous sons of Guilliman.

I am alive.

My body is frozen, suspended out of time in the moment before my hearts beat their last. My soul lies forever on the threshold of death, halfway between the world of flesh and blood and the realm of thoughts and beliefs. The pain of my wounds fills my every cell, its intensity never fading for one moment. And yet, despite this unending torment …

I am alive.

Though my eyes are blind, I see the galaxy with a god's sight. The souls of those who carry my blood within them are candles in the vast darkness of space, and I watch them as I try to ignore the agony of my broken body. They have grown weak in my absence, even weaker than they were when they failed me all this time ago. They think me dead, and they pray for my resurrection, blind to the truth that is exposed before them …

I am alive.

My loyal Tetrarchs walk in the shadows of reality and unreality alike, listening to my silent voice and doing my will. They seek out these few among my sons who are yet worthy, and guide them down the path of greatness. They hunt down those who stand in the path of my return, and usher in their downfall. The Imperium thinks me dead, but my father on his throne knows …

I am alive.

The thorns I left in the Imperium's side heed my call in their sleep, and plot to bring its corrupt edifice down from within. Many have fallen prey to my father's hounds, but those who remain are strong – stronger than most of my failed sons will ever be. They hide in the deepest shadows and wield the knowledge and power I bestowed upon their forebears millenia ago. Despite believing me gone, they still hold true to their predecessors' oath, and for that they shall be rewarded …

I am alive.

My treacherous son seeks to replace me still, gathering under his banner the foolish and the deluded, hoping to reclaim the power and glory he once possessed. He believes himself to be chosen by the Dark Gods, that it is his destiny to claim the throne that is rightfully mine. But he is only a punishment, an obstacle placed in my way for me to surpass. He is not my heir – he cannot be my heir …

I am alive.

My brothers in the Eye play out their parts in the Great Game, blinded by their own petty quests to the ultimate prize. They have become strong, but I cannot allow them to become too strong for me to control, and I silently guide others to oppose them and their sons. Despite all their power and knowledge, they too think me dead and curse my name, but they are wrong …

I am alive.

The princeling of shadows slithers in the dark places, still fooling himself into believing he is the Gods' chosen, while deaf to their laughter. Still he covets my crown, seeks to reclaim the mantle I took from him long ago. He does not realize that he was never anything more than a place-holder, a vessel for a power that is now mine. His designs are obscured from my sight, but he alone knows …

I am alive.

My will spreads out across time and space, reaching out to those who are worthy of serving me. This time, I will not repeat my mistake. I will not gather all that I can to me, hoping to overcome my foes with mere numbers. Each of my pawns shall be a king in his own right, and they shall lead their armies in my name. For I will rise from my throne. I will rise, and finish what I started …

I am alive !

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Death Guard : Agents of the Emperor's Mercy

There are no monuments commemorating the victories of the Fourteenth Legion, no statues raised in the image of its Primarch. For when the Death Guard goes to war, it is only because all other resorts have failed, and they leave naught in their wake but complete annihilation. Keepers of weapons lost or forbidden since the end of the Great Crusade, the Seven Companies are the Imperium's final sanction, purifying worlds through indiscriminate extermination. Those who even know of their existence speak of it only in hushed whispers, fearing to bring the wrath of the spectral sons of Mortarion upon their heads. Risen from its ruination on the black sands of Isstvan, the Death Guard watches over Mankind from afar, bringing destruction to fledgling xenos empires before they can threaten the Imperium. Few are those with the authority to call them to the worlds of the Imperium, and few among those have the will to do so. But the Death Guard remembers all too well the horrors of the Heresy, and they are ready to expunge any trace of rebellion like a cancer – no matter how many innocents perish in the process …

Origins

It is a gross understatement to say that none of the Primarchs had an easy childhood. As beings of power beyond the imagination of most mortals, they were destined for trials, and through these trials, they either rose to greatness or fell into infamy. But even the crime-filled streets of Nostramo Quintus, the war-torn plains of Nuceria, or the brutal techno-dictatorship of Kiavahr cannot compare to the nightmarish hell-scape that was Barbarus when the infant that would become the Lord of Death was stolen from his gene-father and cast into the Warp. Though there are fewer accounts of Mortarion's life than for most other Primarchs, the Death Guards still have tales of their father's youth, and some of those are accessible to the Imperium at large.

It is unknown when exactly Barbarus was first colonized. The Death Guards believe that their homeworld was one of those seeded by Mankind during the First Diaspora, but there are few records left on Terra of that period, and none on Barbarus itself. It is equally possible that the world was populated during one of the various expansion phases of the first human intergalactic empire. What is known is that by the time of the Great Crusade, Barbarus' human population had regressed to a feudal age, all technology and most of their cultural heritage lost. In that, they were hardly unique, and while life as an inhabitant of a feudal world can be rough, it wasn't the true horror of their lives.

Barbarus was under the control of Warp-born creatures of immense power, who ruled over peaks covered in toxic clouds and occasionally descended into the plains to raid the human communities that lived in a perpetual twilight and use their corpses as material for the construction of the rambling armies they used in their wars against one another. These creatures couldn't have been daemons, for their rules lasted for hundreds of years – far longer than any Neverborn could maintain its foul existence outside of the Warp, and for all its corruption, Barbarus was no daemon world. It is believed by the Inquisition that they were corrupt psykers whose power had turned them into aberrations, half-way between mortal and daemonic. Whether these psykers were human in origin or one more breed of xenos overlords is unknown. There were plenty of actual daemons on the planet, though, summoned by the witch-lords to do their bidding or just drawn by their corrupt power.

The life-pod that came to Barbarus crashed atop one of the mountains, inside the domain of Barbarus' most powerful witch-king. The dark lord immediately sensed the arrival, and expected that the horrors of his realm would make short work of the intruder. But to his surprise, the newcomer survived, long enough to draw the witch-king's attention. The dark lord was shocked when he saw that the life-pod had only contained a child, yet one strong and cunning enough to fight off the rodents of his kingdom of toxins and poisons. He left his fortress and went to see the child with his own eyes. The infant tried to attack him, but for all his strange strength, he was no match for the dark lord – yet the master of Barbarus did not kill him for his insolence.

Instead, the dark lord took the young child in his custody, giving him the name of Mortarion. Then, he submitted the infant to trial after trial, sending increasingly more powerful servants against him while also forcing him to scrounge for his own sustenance. Sometimes, he would order Mortarion to come to him, and he would train the young Primarch in person, or teach him about war and other, darker sciences. His reasons for doing this are unknown. Perhaps he was simply curious, perhaps he wanted what no other witch-king had ever had : an heir. In the end, it matters not. Mortarion grew as quickly as any Primarch, his transhuman physiology able to fight off the poisons that surrounded him. Then, after a few years, when he was in the Primarch equivalent of adolescence, he challenged his foster father for the first time since their initial meeting : he left the clouded peak and descended into the valleys himself.

There, for the first time in his life, Mortarion met other human beings, in a village no different from countless others across the planet. Its people were farmers, living together for the meager protection numbers offered against the creatures of Barbarus. Like most such settlements, they were descendants of those who had survived the destruction of another village when the witch-lords had decided to raze it to the ground.

They were scared of him, for his appearance was akin to a spectre of death, pale and terrible, and taller than any mortal man. But he didn't attack them, nor caused them harm in any way, and so they quickly understood that, whatever his nature, this strange giant was not like the creatures that had preyed upon them and their ancestors for countless generations. Still, Mortarion's mere presence unnerved them, and the Primarch was all too aware of it. Determined to overcome their fear of him, he worked alongside them in the fields, his transhuman strength easily capable of performing the back-breaking work. In time, the villagers warmed to the newcomer's intimidating presence, and Mortarion was able to communicate with them. For a time, Mortarion lived peacefully, until the cruelty of Barbarus caught up with him.

Several months after Mortarion's arrival, the village was attacked by a raiding party from one of the witch-lords, seeking easy prey and plunder. Daemons, beasts and warped humans came by dozens, and the villagers reacted in the way normal humans had reacted to such attacks for hundreds of years : they scattered and ran, hoping that some of them would survive. This wasn't cowardice, but the only way powerless mortals could hope to survive on Barbarus as a species. The cycle of destruction and rebirth of settlements had gone on since the rise of the first witch-lords, but things were about to change, for a new element had entered the equation.

Enraged by what he saw, Mortarion took up the scythe he used in the fields, and rushed at the beasts. Compared to those which had been sent by his foster father to test him in the past, they were pathetically weak, and he dispatched them with ease, saving the lives of the villagers. He was hailed as a hero by those he had saved, and tales of his prowess spread out to other villages, whose people flocked to the settlement, hoping for his protection. Mortarion taught them how to defend themselves, and aided them in building a wall around the settlement, as well as various traps and defences to compensate for their lesser strength.

Months later, a new beast began to prey upon the villagers, and Mortarion went out to hunt it. Unlike the monsters he had fought so far, the creature fled before him, drawing him far from the village. Only after several days of dogged pursuit did Mortarion finally caught up with his prey, and he fought and slew the monster with ease. But when he returned to his home, he found it in ruins. The traps were filled with monstrous corpses, piles of rotting flesh stacked at the base of the wall, but the gate was broken, and the moans of the dying clear to his transhuman ears. Some of the bodies had been reanimated by fell sorceries, and attacked Mortarion when he entered the ruins, forcing him to destroy the revenants of those who had welcomed him.

The man's name had been Ulfer. When Mortarion had begun to work in the fields, he had been the first one to approach him, teaching him the secrets of agriculture – how to create life, rather than end it.

The scythe cut him in two, and the witch-light faded from his eyes.

The woman's name had been Thiane. She had been the first one to bring him food when he had arrived, the simple soup the tastiest meal he had ever known.

The scythe pierced her chest, and the witch-light faded from her eyes.

The child's name had been Clara. She had been the first to dare approach Mortarion as he stood silently amidst the villagers, observing them. She had not been afraid of him, for she had been too young to remember the last time the monsters had attacked her people.

Mortarion dropped his scythe. It fell on the ground with a dull clung.

Surrounded by the dying, the dead and the undead, but utterly alone, Mortarion of Barbarus screamed his sorrow, his anger and his pain at the poisoned skies.

The monster that had drawn Mortarion away had been sent by the witch-king of Barbarus, to punish his adoptive son for daring to leave the mountain and mingle with inferior beings. In the Primarch's absence, the overlord had attacked the village in person, inflicting his most heinous tortures on the people Mortarion had sought to save before departing once more. Many were still alive when the young Primarch returned, their bodies turned into horrifying canvas of agony. Mortarion watched them, despair and sorrow filling his heart. Then, he did the only thing he could do for those who had welcomed him among them : he ended their torment, and vowed that they would be avenged.

Armed with nothing but his harvest scythe and his fury, with no armor safe for a dirty cloak and the rebreather he had been given in his infancy, Mortarion marched toward his father's fortress. On his way, he was ceaselessly attacked, as the witch-king sent his minions to die in order to weaken his adoptive son. Despite their chances of survival being nil, the monsters kept coming, knowing in their black, empty hearts that a fate worse than mere corporeal death awaited them if they dared to defy the master of Barbarus.

By the time he arrived before his foster father's fortress, Mortarion was covered in wounds that would have killed any human a hundred times and more. Still, with the endurance he would one day become legendary for, he forced himself forward, until he stood in front of the creature that had, for better or worse, raised him.

A cloud of darkness clung to the witch-king form, keeping Mortarion from seeing his face clearly. In his hand he held a scythe similar to Mortarion's own – except that while his was a farming tool, the witch-king's was an instrument of death, used to impose his rule over all that he surveyed. The comparison caused something to stir within the young man's breast – a righteous fury, far older than himself. Death should not rule, it said. Death should not wear a crown.

'Kneel,' said the witch-king. 'Kneel and I will forgive your foolishness.'

'Never,' groaned Mortarion as he forced himself to his feet. The weight of the witch-king's power was crushing him, as if he was carrying a mountain on his shoulders, but he would not kneel. He would not give up.

'Your defiance is as futile as it is misguided. You have the potential to become so much more than what you currently are, my son. If you would only accept my teachings, you could surpass me in but a few years, and surpass all who have ever lived in a few decades. Power beyond imagining could be yours – it is writ in your blood, there for the taking.'

'I have seen what that kind of power does to those who wield it. I will not let it twist me into a monster.'

The witch-king laughed, in a sound like the grinding of tombstones together.

'You already  are  a monster, my son. All that remains is for you to accept it.'

After a short discussion, Mortarion attacked the witch-king. The exact details of the battle are unknown to us, for the Primarch never saw fit to share them with anyone. However, it was only several weeks later that Mortarion returned to the plains, most of his wounds having healed – though some of them would cause him pain for the rest of his life. After finishing recovering in a new human settlement, where word of his victory against the witch-king had granted him heroic statut, he decided to scour Barbarus clean of all remaining witch-lords.

It was in the course of this purifying crusade that Mortarion earned the title 'Lord of Death' from the grateful but fearful population. With the threat of the witch-lords diminishing, the attacks also became less numerous and fearsome – though they never stopped completely. As a result, the settlements grew, and for the first time in thousands of years, civilization on Barbarus actually advanced.

During this period, Mortarion continued his hunt, barely involving himself in the affairs of Barbarus' people. The only command he gave them was to be on the lookout for any psyker born among them, whom they needed to kill as quickly and humanly as possible – as much for purely humanitarian reason as to prevent the creation of vengeful spirits from torture and oppression. He only rarely came to any settlement, usually when he had been wounded gravely enough that he required time to rest without needing to scavenge for his sustenance. Each time, the humans welcomed him, and did their best to accommodate him until he had recovered and left to return to his crusade. To this day, there are many legends on Barbarus telling the tale of the Lord of Death's fights against the monsters that once plagued the planet.

Despite Mortarion's reluctance to involve himself in the affairs of humans, the population of Barbarus was inspired by his crusade. For the first time in centuries, they formed armies to go against the minions of the witch-lords. Their psychic overlords were in too much disarray from Mortarion's attacks to be able to marshall a proper response, and many of their citadels were burned by mortal armies clad in newly built isolation suits, inspired by Mortarion's own rebreather. These warriors called themselves the Death Guards, for they defended their people not just from the horrors that could be visited upon them in life, but also from the desecration that the witch-lords inflicted upon corpses.

Years after the death of the witch-king, Mortarion finally tracked and killed the last of the witch-lord. It was then, as he looked down on the plains that he had freed at last, that the Emperor came to him. In a golden flash of teleportation light, He materialized next to His son. At once, Mortarion felt a sense of familiarity, a connection he had never felt with the creature that had raised him.

The Master of Mankind had located Mortarion years before, but events beyond His control had forced Him to delay the recovery of His lost son. He had feared the worse, for He had sensed the many horrors that lurked on Barbarus, and wasn't certain that Mortarion would emerge triumphant. When He saw that the world had been purged of the witch-lords that had held its population in thrall for generations, the Emperor was proud of what His son had accomplished. He told Mortarion so, and the Lord of Death felt his heart fill with pride and joy at such recognition. The Primarch had suffered much on Barbarus : he had known loss, he had known helplessness, and he had known horror. But he had fought, refusing to let them consume him, and from his suffering he had made the world a better place. The acknowledgement of his deeds by one such as this glorious being was proof that he had been right to do what he had done.

Then the Emperor told him of the Imperium, of the Imperial Truth and of all that He had wrought and needed his help to accomplish. Mortarion was awed by what the Emperor told him. To him, the Great Crusade was an endeavour similar to his own hunt for witch-breeds on Barbarus, only on a galactic scale. So, when the Emperor told Mortarion that he was His son, and that there was a Legion shaped in his image waiting for him to take command, the Lord of Death willingly bent knee before the Master of Mankind. He swore that he would uphold the principles of the Imperial Truth, and free all of Humanity as he had freed Barbarus.

'What name you chose for me is irrelevant, father. I was given the name of Mortarion, and I shall keep it, for I am the bringer of death to those who inflict torment upon Mankind, and the deliverer of the last peace to those who cannot be saved. By that name alone shall I be known, until the stars themselves die at the end of time.'

Attributed to Primarch Mortarion

The Great Crusade

'This war we wage is one unlike any that have come before. Thousands of years ago, our ancestors fought each other on Old Earth for material gains and illusory treasures like honor and glory. Now, we must fight a war of survival, for the galaxy is filled with horrors that would destroy Mankind if they could. But there is more than survival at stake in this conflict, my sons. If we fail, if the Imperium falls, then all hope of Humanity living free will die with it. Our species will either embrace oblivion or eternal slavery under the yoke of xenos and other, darker powers. But we will not let that happen.

We are the guardians of Mankind, the protectors of the Imperium that shelters all scions of Old Earth. By our blades and bolters, we guard them from death – and when it becomes necessary, when there is nothing left in this galaxy for them but torment, we grant death to them. For it is preferable to die than to live in slavery to the xenos.

You will be my instruments in this war as I am my father's. From this day forth, you shall be the Death Guards.'

Mortarion, upon taking command of the Fourteenth Legion

The history of the Fourteenth Legion before it was reunited with its progenitor is an interesting one. From its inception, it already showed the resilience and determination that it still possesses to this day, the reunion with its Primarch merely amplifying them. The origin of these traits can doubtlessly be linked to where its first recruits came from. While most future Legionaries were recruited from Terran tribes that had long been loyal to the Emperor, the Fourteenth Legion was formed from the sons of Old Albia. Old Albia was a territory whose population had resisted the forces of Unification for decades, fuelled by a fierce warrior tradition and a determination to never break against the enemy.

The Emperor Himself was impressed by the Albian clans' will, and travelled in person to meet their lords, ordering His forces to stop their attacks. Unarmed, He told them of His designs for Mankind, of the many tasks that remained to be done, even once all of Terra was united under His rule. He offered them a part in this glorious vision, one that would grant their descendants glory unlike any they could imagine. To the surprise of the Emperor's councillors, who regarded all Albians with dread, the lords accepted the offer, and sent their children to the Emperor's gene-labs to be reforged into Astartes.

In those early days, the Fourteenth Legion was called the "Dusk Raiders", for their habit of attacking enemy positions at sunset, after the enemy had spent an entire day waiting nervously for the transhuman army they knew was waiting just beyond their range to attack. Then, after the foe had plenty of time to prepare, the Dusk Raiders would advance, and nothing could stand in the way of their march.

This tradition came from an ancient Albian tradition of giving the enemy time to surrender while also applying considerable psychological pressure. As the Dusk Raiders fought in the final battles of the Unification Wars, their reputation grew, and soon their appearance on the battlefield was enough to sow terror and discord among the foe.

Once Terra was conquered, the Great Crusade began, and for nearly a century the Fourteenth Legion roamed the stars without its Primarch. It is said that the Dusk Raiders were honorable warriors, who would always keep their word when their enemy offered surrender upon seeing their might arrayed against it. Many human worlds were brought to compliance by their Expeditionary Fleets, though far too few without any bloodshed – the Dusk Raiders, for all their honor, were terrifying figures that did not give the lost worlds of Mankind a good impression of the Imperium.

The Dusk Raiders acknowledged this flaw in their characters – even among the transhuman Legiones Astartes, they were poor diplomats. To prevent the wasteful loss of life, they began to focus their efforts on wars of extermination, waged against xenos empires and planets that had been lost to the Warp and needed to be purged entirely. By the time the Emperor's message about Mortarion's discovery reached them, the warriors of the Fourteenth Legion were scattered, fighting a dozen wars at the same time, far ahead of the Great Crusade's main body. But they all gathered in orbit of Barbarus, where Mortarion was handed command of the Legion at once.

The Primarch renamed the Legion into the Death Guard, taking the name of those brave mortals who had fought against the witch-lords despite having none of his own strengths. Those of the human army who were still young enough took the trials to become Astartes. The Apothecaries quickly discovered that the people of Barbarus had a high compatibility with Mortarion's gene-seed, and the numbers of the Legion, thinned after several gruelling campaigns, swelled with a fresh influx of recruits.

Under the leadership of Mortarion, the Death Guard proved itself a very effective instrument of extermination. Dozens of star empires were destroyed by the Fourteenth Legion, with the Primarch himself leading the way in every battle he directed. In time, they became the Emperor's favourite instrument to silence the echoes of Old Night. On Terra, ten thousands archivists poured over the records of the Dark Age of Technology, searching for references to forge-worlds involved in forbidden research. Their findings were carried to the Fourteenth Legion, which travelled far beyond the Imperium's ever-expanding borders to purge these worlds of techno-heresy. Alien species that had hidden for millions of years and risen in the aftermath of the Fall of the Eldar Empire were hunted to extinction by Mortarion's sons. Yet when the Death Guard was called upon to fight in the Galaspar Cluster, Mortarion discovered that there were monsters wore human skin, and that they could be just as terrible as any Warp-spawn.

The Galaspar Cluster had been colonized by Mankind before the Age of Strife, but whatever glory it might have once possessed had long faded into a nightmarish tyranny. A vicious bureaucracy known as 'the Order' held dominion over the thirty billion souls of Galaspar, the cluster's primary hive-world. Their oppression was enforced both by regiments of armed militia, but also through the chemical addiction of most of the population. By controlling the source of the drugs, the Order controlled the entire planet.

When Mortarion was told of the Order, after it had refused to join the Imperium, the rage of the Lord of Death was as terrible as it was calm. Not for him the roaring fury of the Sons of Horus, nor the cold anger of the Iron Warriors. In fact, nothing visible changed in him – but mortals who had been able to stand his presence before found themselves collapsing in dread while still in another room, such was the threatening aura that emanated from him. He gathered the full might of the Death Guard to him, and launched a single, overpowered strike into the heart of the Galaspar's cluster.

The fleet of the Death Guard tore through the system's defense stations, barely acknowledging their existence at all, and disgorged a flow of drop-pods and gunships onto the primary hive-city. Tens of thousands of Legionaries, led by Mortarion himself, quickly established defensive positions, ready for the inevitable counter-attack. Soon, the Order sent hordes of chem-controlled fighters to eliminate the intruders in their empire.

What followed was a slaughter unworthy of being called a battle. While the civilian population cowered in terror, the sons of Mortarion reaped a great toll on their enemies, with bolters and scythes, while small-caliber fire was turned aside by their power armor. After a few hours, terror found its way through the chemically-induced haze that clouded the minds of the Order's troops. They broke, and the Legion resumed its advance. Over and over this pattern repeated itself, until at last the Death Guard reached the hideout of the Order's leaders.

The entire building was purged, and adepts of the Mechanicum brought in. They studied the lore of the Order, analysing the composition of the drugs by which the population had been kept compliant. Then, under Mortarion's own direction, they designed an antidote to the system-wide plague of addiction. The cure was poured into the atmosphere by the Fourteenth Legion, shattering whatever power the Order's remnants still possessed. Across the entire Cluster, regiments rebelled against their overseers as their minds cleared, and the population rose against its oppressors. When Mortarion and his warriors departed, leaving the Galaspar Cluster to the iterators and Administratum, the people they left behind were already whispering tales of their grim-faced liberators, and pledging themselves to the cause of the Great Crusade.

The high and mighty lords of the Order had been brought together, hunted across the world by the Fourteenth Legion. There were twenty-one of them, and all cowed before the Lord of Death in terror, barely kept from fainting by the drugs the Apothecaries had injected them before the confrontation. He towered above them, a demigod among mortals, a grim reaper come to harvest the souls of sinners. In his right hand, he held Silence, the scythe as long as an Astartes was tall.

They expected a speech. A list of their crimes against Imperial law, against Mankind. They had always known, deep within themselves, that what they had done to their people was wrong, and that they would one day face judgement for it.

There was no speech. Just a move of Silence, too fast for even a transhuman's eyes.

Due to the kind of war they waged, the Death Guard's attrition rate was far higher than that of the other Legions. Over time, as the Legion learned from its experience, these losses started to diminish, but they still remained high. Mortarion, tired of seeing so many of his sons die around him, began to use weapons that most of his brothers regarded with disgust : radiation weaponry, virus bombing, and other, more arcane devices. He reasoned that his task was not to conquer worlds for Mankind to populate, but to purge threats to the Imperium.

It was during that time that Mortarion himself designed the procedures of Exterminatus that the Inquisition follows to this day. None knew how best to kill a world than the Primarch of the Fourteenth Legion, and it was for that expertise that he was bestowed the title 'Lord of Death' from the rest of the Great Crusade's fearful forces. Planets were left barren in his wake, unsuitable for colonization safe for the most resilient servants of the Adeptus Mechanicus. On several worlds that had once been populated by humans, but were now home to masses of flesh spanning entire continent, enthralled to psychic overlords of godly power, Mortarion unleashed Phosphex bombs of immense power. These worlds, which had formed an empire that might in time have rivalled the Imperium, are still burning to this day, ten thousand years later, and psykers who go too near the quarantine borders can hear the screams of the monsters.

Of course, prosecuting such wars did little to ingratiate the Death Guard to the rest of the Imperium. While the Blood Angels, Emperor's Children and Sons of Horus were acclaimed on a thousand worlds for their nobility and martial prowess, the Fourteenth Legion was spoken of only in hushed whispers. Soldiers of the Imperial Army, rarely deployed alongside them, traded horror stories about them depicting the sons of Mortarion as the grim reapers of old myth, while the civilian population barely knew of their existence. When the remembrancers were sent across the Legions, few were assigned to the Death Guard, and those had their work carefully examined by agents of the Sigillite. This was because Malcador and Mortarion both believed that knowledge of the horrors the Death Guard fought would seed fear and disorder in the Imperium. This absence of documentation while the deeds of the other Legions were finally being exposed contributed to the climate of fear and superstition that cloaked the Death Guard.

Among the rest of the Space Marines Legions, the reputation of the Fourteenth Legion was similarly tainted. Mortarion, for all his strength and wisdom, simply did not have the same charisma most Primarchs possessed : his mien was grim and haunted by all that he had seen. Magnus was despised by Mortarion and returned it in kind, while Perturabo hated the Lord of Death, for reasons that were never recorded in the annals of history. Lion El'Jonson ordered his Dark Angels to never fight alongside the Death Guards, offering no explanation for this insult.

Still, there were those in the Imperium who trusted the macabre sons of Barbarus. Horus was one of the few who saw Mortarion's deeds as a grim necessity, rather than barbaric methods. Konrad Curze was also close to the Lord of Death, for both of them had donned dark personas in order to protect Mankind – though the Savior of Nostramo's sacrifices paled in comparison to those of Mortarion. A few others, like Angron and Dorn, respected their gaunt brother for what he did, though his presence made them uncomfortable.

Not just other Space Marines and Primarchs were close to the Fourteenth Legion. The Sisters of Silence, a now-extinct order of psychic untouchables, were frequently deployed alongside the Death Guard. They abilities made them efficient counters to the Warp-born threats faced by the Fourteenth Legion, especially since the Death Guards had no psychic warriors of its own.

At Nikaea, Mortarion argued vehemently against the presence of the Librarius in the Legions. His experience on Barbarus had forever tainted his view of psychic powers : to him, Magnus and his ilk were playing with forces they did not understand, forces that would inevitably consume them. His arguments, though born of a biased viewpoint, were sound, and many in the audience were swayed by the grim warnings of doom of the Lord of Death. He told of the horrors of Barbarus, and of the other abominations he had witnessed during the Great Crusade. He warned that the power of the Warp couldn't be relied upon, and that to allow it within the Legions was to risk it corrupting them from within. However, when came the turn of Leman Russ and his Wolf Priests to say their piece, they effectively ruined Mortarion's careful argumentation. With their tales of maleficarum and black magic, they made those arguing for the prohibition of psychic powers among the Legions look like paranoid, backwater fools.

Of course, the Emperor's judgement was not based on something as flimsy as this. Nonetheless, when the Master of Mankind announced that the use of the Librarius would be continued, Mortarion blamed Russ far more than he blamed Magnus – he actually grudgingly respected the Cyclops for his silence during the entire affair – and the altercation between the Crimson King and the lord of Fenris didn't help. Mortarion's dislike for psychic powers was rooted in all the horrors he had witnessed on Barbarus; Russ' distrust for it was nothing more than hypocrisy cloaked in paranoia.

Still, Mortarion refused to create a Librarius within the Fourteenth Legion, and the Emperor accepted his decision. The Lord of Death took the Death Guard back to the borders of the Imperium, resuming his wars of alien extermination, until the most unlikely news reached him : Guilliman, Sanguinius, Manus and Dorn had betrayed the Emperor.

The Heresy : Decimation at Isstvan V

Warmaster Horus had returned to Terra to find the survivors of the Isstvan Massacre bringing warning of their Primarchs' treachery. Now, Lupercal called for those of his brothers who remained loyal, using his authority as Warmaster to gather a force of unprecedented might, that would crush the traitors and purge them from the galaxy. The World Eaters and Word Bearers he sent to Ultramar, while commanding for all other loyal sons to go to Isstvan.

Mortarion and his Legion were engaged in a campaign against a race of xenos called the Jorgall, living in long, cylinder-shaped ships when the message came. The Jorgall had launched an invasion of human space years ago, and the Death Guard had come to the aid of the Imperial Army, pushing back the xenos forces and taking the fight to their own colony-ships. After several months of war, the Jorgall had begun to retreat, finally realizing that they were no match for the might of the Imperium. But Mortarion wanted to make sure that they never returned, and his fleet caught up to the fleeing xenos in the Iota Horologis system. The Lord of Death himself was aboard one of the xenos ships when the Warmaster's message was transmitted to him by a very nervous communication officer.

The Primarch ordered his troops to abandon the assault immediately, forcing the Sisters of Silence who had accompanied them to withdraw alongside them. He vowed that they would return one day to finish the job – but for now, there were more pressing concerns than the Jorgall's extermination. The Death Guard fleet travelled at all speed toward the Isstvan system, and because their ships were already concentrated in one location, they arrived first.

Upon seeing that they were alone, Mortarion's fleet prepared to avoid contact until the rest of the retribution force arrived. However, there were no traitor ships in the entire system. The only trace of the rebels was on the system's fifth planet, where the bulk of the four renegade Legions was building fortified positions. This troubled the Lord of Death greatly, for it made no tactical sense for Guilliman to send his fleets away. He waited, alone in his chambers, while his warriors prepared for battle, until the Night Lords' contingent arrived, quickly followed by the other Legions who had answered Horus' call.

The sons of Nostramo were led by their Primarch, but had come in lesser numbers than Mortarion had expected. At first, he feared that this was because the Eighth Legion had just fought such terrible campaign that had caused them great loss, but Curze reassured him quickly. The King of the Night remained elusive as to the reasons why his forces were only present in such small numbers, but Mortarion sensed that his prescient brother was trying to warn him of something ill-fated about to happen. Why Konrad couldn't speak clearly was unknown to the Lord of Death, but he decided to order his First Captain, Calas Typhon, to remain among the fleet during the inevitable battle on the surface of Isstvan V.

As part of the first wave, Mortarion led his sons straight toward the Ultramarines, seeking to challenge Guilliman in person and end his wayward brother with his own hands. But if he had expected the Arch-Traitor to come out and face those he had betrayed, he was disappointed : Roboute remained away from the battlefield, coordinating his allies from the safety of his stronghold.

Roboute's strategic acumen was keen, and the losses of the three loyal Legions on the field were great, though none were greater than the Death Guard's. Thousands of Mortarion's sons died as the Lord of Death led them ever onwards, driven by a burning desire to bring his brother to justice. Then, the true scope of Guilliman's conspiracy was revealed, as the Dark Angels, White Scars, Salamanders and Raven Guards arrived on the field and opened fire on those who had believed them loyal.

As the black sands of Isstvan V ran red with transhuman blood, Mortarion led the survivors of the three Legions back to their transports. He watched as Konrad Curze turned back to face Vulkan and slow down their pursuers, his heart hardening with each step that took him away from his doomed brother. During this desperate charge, he faced the one that had once been his brother : Jaghatai Khan, Primarch of the White Scars.

They had talked about it, back on Ullanor, when it had seemed the galaxy would soon belong to Mankind. All of them present had joked about which one of them would defeat the other in battle. As was his way, Mortarion had kept his silence during the discussion, until Fulgrim had brought up the question of him against the Khan. Horus had laughed, and said that while it was unthinkable that the two would ever duel, it was certain that should them fight together, none would be able to defeat them.

This day, however, was one for the unthinkable to happen. Already one Primarch had slain another – the sacrifice of Curze had given the loyalists time to withdraw. Now one more obstacle remained, one clad in the shape of his brother – but Mortarion knew better than to trust in appearances.

'I see you,' growled the Lord of Death as the creature that had taken his brother's form leapt back, with a speed that was a perversion of all the grace the Khan had possessed in life. 'I know what you have done. What you are. How dare you ? HOW DARE YOU ?!'

The Khan had been changed almost beyond recognition by the events of Chondax. He was more daemon than Primarch, his soul torn to pieces by the time he had spent on the edge of death after the slaughter of his loyal sons. Gone were his nobility, his purity of purpose : he had become little more than a beast, consumed by the urge to hunt. The highest-ranking White Scars had kept his state secret from the rest of the Legion, telling their brothers that the Khan was undergoing some great transformation that would grant him power eternal.

Mortarion recognised what his brother had become, for he faced similar creatures during his purge of Barbarus. The one he faced now, however, was empowered by a Primarch's supernatural strength. Mortarion knew that this would be a battle more difficult than any he had ever fought, but he was determined to kill the monster and grant his brother the peace of death – for though the Fifth Legion had betrayed the Imperium, Mortarion had no way to know whether his brother had ever turned before being reduced to his current state.

And so it was that for the first time, Mortarion and the Khan fought, the Lord of Death trying to free his brother, the Warhawk hungering for his prey's lifeblood. Speed was the Khan's advantage, while endurance was Mortarion's. Their battle forced the forces around them to scatter, giving the loyalists an opening to reach their ships and escape. In the end, Mortarion was forced to choose between continuing the fight and leaving with his sons, who needed him now more than ever. After promising to finish their battle one day, he struck the creature Jaghatai had become with such force that the possessed Primarch was sent flying, and turned toward the departing gunships. But there was still the blockade around the planet to pierce, and if not for the sacrifice of one of the Imperium's greatest heroes, then the survivors of Isstvan V would have perished in the void.

It felt strange, to watch it all happen from orbit. The Lord of Death had expressively forbidden him from taking part in the battle on the surface, despite his repeated pleas. Something had passed between him and his Nostraman brother during their short hololithic conversation, something he hadn't picked up on, but that had raised his master's suspicions. Now, that suspicion had been proven true in the worst possible manner, and he was the only one who could prevent a disaster to turn into annihilation.

First Captain Calas Typhon stared through the occulus of the Terminus Est's bridge and straight at the traitor fleet closing in on them. They had come to Isstvan expecting to bring the wrath of seven loyal Legions against four treacherous ones. Now, the situation had changed to three loyal Legions and eight traitor ones. At the system's edge, the ships of the Ultramarines, Blood Angels, Iron Hands and Imperial Fists had just appeared. Soon, the fleets of the Death Guard, Night Lords and Alpha Legion would be too embroiled in fighting the ships of their turncoat allies to be able to escape before the four new Legion fleets came on them and crushed them with overwhelming numbers.

Vox reports from the ground were few and garbled – the traitors were using some kind of jamming that the tech-priests had never encountered before. But it was clear that the situation was even worse down there. Three Primarchs, including his own, and tens of thousands of Legionaries were in danger, and even if they managed to leave the planet, they would still be doomed. The traitors had planned their treachery well.

He could ear the voices at the back of his mind. He had denied them for so long, pushed them back with all the will of a son of Barbarus. But they were growing louder with each beating of his hearts. They promised him power, power enough to turn this battle around, to save his Legion and his Primarch if he would but give in to them.

He made his decision.

'All hands,' he called over the ship-wide vox. 'Abandon ship. Tech-priests : initiate Warp-core detonation sequence. For the Legion and the Emperor, only in death does duty end !'

The voices screamed in rage and denial, and Typhon smiled.

The cataclysmic destruction of the Terminus Est ripped a hole in the traitor formation. At Mortarion's command, the loyalist ships aimed straight for the opening, taking devastating fire from the rest of the traitor armada as they ran for the system's Mandeville Point, opposite to the ships of the other four Traitor Legions. To the eternal fury of Guilliman and his cohorts, the decimated fleet escaped, ready to carry word of this new betrayal back to the Warmaster and the Emperor. Astropathic messages were sent ahead of the fleet on the Warp's burning tides, carried over by the death-screams of tens of thousands of Space Marines. The Emperor and Horus would learn the names of the traitors, and though the Imperium would burn in the civil war that had been unleashed upon the galaxy, that knowledge at least gave them a chance to fight.

While the Night Lords had been prepared for the eventuality of betrayal, and it is impossible to estimate the losses of the secretive Alpha Legion, it is known that the Death Guard was slaughtered on the black sands of Isstvan V. Of the seventy thousand Astartes – the entirety of the Legion, safe for a few ships which had been delayed to the system – they deployed against Guilliman and his cohorts, barely three thousands managed to escape.

Mortarion led the survivors of his Legion straight back to Terra, fighting against the tides of the Warp all the way. At Guilliman's request, the Dark Gods had facilitated the journey of the loyal Legions to Isstvan, but now that the trap had been sprung and the galaxy set ablaze, storms raged unchecked in the Sea of Souls. All the ships of the ragged fleet had taken damage in their desperate escape, and as their Geller Fields fluctuated, daemons materialized aboard.

The Race to Terra : Preys of the Wild Hunt

Battle was joined aboard the loyalist fleet from the moment they entered the Warp. Creatures of nightmare, drawn by the scent of desperation and treachery, launched assault after assault on the ships. Crew members started maiming and killing each other, driven mad by the whispers of the Neverborn. Those who were lucky were found and executed by the Death Guards; those who were not became hosts to daemonic spirits, their flesh twisted and broken in the shape of the Warp's denizens. Entire decks were turned into dens for the Neverborn, that the Astartes had to purge with fire. The contingent of Sisters of Silence who had accompanied the Death Guard, but not taken part in the battle of Isstvan, proved instrumental in these battles, for their mere presence caused the daemons to weaken, their unnatural existence perturbed by the psychic void projected by the Sisters.

But these daemonic attacks, terrible as they were, were not all that Mortarion had to contend with. Another foe pursued the ragged survivors of Isstvan, led by a being that was more than half-daemon itself.

It was surprising to Roboute that he was still able to feel unease at all. He had thought that he had purged himself of that weakness long ago, but here it was : the sight of what the Khan had become made even him sick to his core. It made what he was about to do doubly important.

'I have need of you,' he said.

'What do you want,  brother ?'  replied the creature, mocking him with every word.

'Find Mortarion. Hunt him down, wherever he runs. And when you have found him … Kill him.'

'As you command,' said the beast with a mock bow, 'so shall it be, Anointed One. I look forward to tasting the blood of the Death Lord.'

While Guilliman's forces advanced toward the Throneworld, the Arch-Traitor had dispatched one of his brothers to deal with the remaining Death Guards. While the White Scars had broken in dozens of warbands during the killing on Isstvan V, a sizeable group remained attached to the creature their Primarch had become, and they had the favor of the Warp. Guilliman tasked them with catching up to the fleeing Mortarion and his few sons, and ending the legacy of the Fourteenth Legion forever.

The tale of this hunt is written in the Stygian Scrolls, a collection of writings by various Legionaries and human crew members who were part of the Death Guard fleet. Guarded in sealed archives on Titan, the scrolls tell us that the pursuit lasted for years. Over the course of their flight to Terra, the survivors of the Drop Site Massacre dispersed : the Night Lords were the first to leave, carrying the body of their Primarch back to Nostramo. Then the Alpha Legionaries chose to depart as well, hiding on worlds loyal to the Throne in order to help them defend against the Traitor Legions. Soon, the only ones left with Mortarion were his own sons and those mortal forces that had come with the Legion to Isstvan.

The White Scars tracked the Death Guards through the Warp, using black sorcery to sense their souls. Whenever the sons of Mortarion left the Sea of Souls to repair and chart their course anew, they were constantly on the lookout, for the Khan's warriors ambushed them several times during such pauses. Always the Death Guards were forced to flee, and always more of them were lost before they managed to escape. It is believed that the Khan allowed Mortarion to escape, enjoying the hunt more than he would the kill. Nothing else explains how the Death Guard managed to escape the White Scars time and again.

Mortarion's temper was black for the entire journey, for reasons beyond the betrayal of his brothers and the death of his sons. This was not the kind of war he had been forged to wage, and being forced to retreat, over and over, sat ill with the Lord of Death. He was used to being the one on the offensive, advancing relentlessly toward his foes and grinding them to dust. But he also knew that his Legion would be even more ill-suited to the kind of warfare the Alpha Legion and the Night Lords were waging against the traitors. His only hope to make a difference in the war was to reach Terra, and add his forces, diminished as they were, to the defense of the Throneworld.

But the Warp was boiling with the Dark Gods' power, and the path to Terra was blocked to all but the most powerful fleets, whose crew's psychic presence and combined Geller Fields could brave the Empyrean's currents. The Death Guard wandered across the galaxy, trying to find a way past the curtain in the Sea of Souls. Finally, after years of errance, and with the Khan and his warriors ever closer on their trail, the Navigators of the fleet found a waypoint in the Warp : a system where the influence of the Ruinous Powers was weakened enough that a fleet could pierce through the veil there.

Mortarion looked down at the astropath. The man looked old, his face covered in wrinkles and his flesh thin on his bones – yet the Primarch knew that he was only forty standard years old. He had looked them, too, before their nightmarish journey had begun, but the vagaries of the Warp had taken their toll. Though Mortarion despised all witches, he had to admit that the man was brave to have endured this far – and braver still to come to him and deliver such news.

'Prospero,' the Primarch repeated. The word tasted foul in his mouth. No matter the respect he had gained for Magnus at Nikaea, the idea of getting anywhere near this den of sorcerers remained unpleasant in the extreme … although, compared to what had happened in the last few years …

'Yes, my lord,' confirmed the astropath. 'Prospero. Something has happened there, something great and terrible. The storms in the Sea of Souls are at their weakest there. If we have any chance at all of crossing them, it will be at Prospero.'

Mortarion was silent for a few seconds. Then he asked :

'Has there been any more word from Terra ? Do we know where Magnus stands in all of this ?'

When the Death Guard fleet emerged from the Warp in the Prosperine system, they found themselves facing a spectacle of desolation. The Thousand Sons' homeworld had been ravaged by the Space Wolves at the beginning of the Heresy, and all the combatants had left long ago. Wrecked battlestations drifted in empty space and the carcasses of dead ships hung in the void, but the true devastation had been visited upon the planet itself. The shining cities of the Thousand Sons had been bombarded from orbit, their great libraries burned. Nothing living remained on the planet itself that the scanners could pick up.

While the fleet's Navigators began to plot the next course through the Warp, Mortarion ordered his tech-adepts to uncover the truth of what had happened here. The Lord of Death had been isolated from the rest of the war ever since it had begun, and did not even know on which side the Thousand Sons fought. His inner distrust for the Fifteenth Legion's sorceries inclined him to thinking them traitors, but he still required confirmation. It only took a few hours for the adepts to identify the responsibles of the destruction as belonging to the Sixth Legion, but Mortarion did not learn the loyalties of those involved until his pursuers caught up with the fleet.

The White Scars emerged from the Warp, not as the united horde they had been so far, but as several handful of ships, scattered all over the Mandeville Point. According to the Navigators, the Warp currents that had allowed safe passage to the Death Guard had turned against the Fifth Legion. There are theories among the Inquisition that this was due to the spirits of the Prosperine dead, and the Thousand Sons still study the effects of the Razing on the Empyrean near their homeworld.

Mortarion immediately saw the opportunity in this scattering. He hailed the enemy ships, demanding to talk to his brother so that he might learn what had happened in the system. The Khan, unable to miss an opportunity to taunt his prey once more, answered the hail, and told Mortarion of how the Space Wolves had descended upon the nearly-defenceless world and reduced it to ruin. The daemon possessing the Primarch's body told the Lord of Death that the Space Wolves now fought under Guilliman's banner, their father lost to treachery and the machinations of fate. He said that Magnus, the one Mortarion had suspected all along, was actually still loyal to the Emperor, and already on Terra by His side.

But while the Khan had hoped to break his prey's spirit with his revelation, Mortarion's hail had actually had another purpose entirely. His Techmarines tracked the source of the Khan's transmission, and located the enemy Primarch aboard the Swordstorm. Mortarion ordered his entire fleet to charge that squadron, deploying the full remaining strength of his Legion in an attempt at destroying the one he had called brother.

The Second Battle of Prospero, as the engagement would come to be known, lasted only a few hours. Mortarion himself boarded the Swordstorm and battled the Khan for the second time on her command deck, before the Traitor Primarch vanished with his surviving sons in a flash of sorcery. Enraged, and with the rest of the White Scars fleet converging on his position, Mortarion was forced to withdraw. The Death Guard fleet entered the Warp once more, and used the Prosperine currents to bypass the storms raised by the Dark Gods. Battered and bloodied, their numbers reduced to a shadow of what they had been, the Death Guards finally arrived at Terra, ready to add their strength to the defenders. For while they had been hunted by the Khan, the rest of the Traitor Legions had advanced on the Throneworld – the final battle was at hand …

The Siege of Terra

The Primarchs already on Terra were relieved to see their brother returned to them alive, though they were also dismayed at the sorry state of the Fourteenth Legion. Magnus, Horus and Perturabo welcomed Mortarion, and quickly incorporated his forces to the defense of the Imperial Palace. The survivors of the Death Guard were divided in small groups and spread across the walls, among other forces. Their experience in fighting both daemons and Traitor Marines would be invaluable in the battle to come.

The Death Guards spent the last few months before Guilliman's arrival training alongside the other defenders, sharing their experience with them. Then, finally, the traitor forces arrived, and the greatest battle for the soul of Mankind began. The Arch-Traitor's armies was slowed by the Iron Lord's spatial defenses, but ultimately, they broke through, and landed on the holy ground of the Throneworld itself. Space Marines from all nine Traitor Legions converged on the Imperial Palace, though most of the Ninth Legion instead assaulted the civilian settlements. Hordes of daemons were summoned, either by the Chaos Sorcerers among the rebels, or through the sheer amount of bloodshed and the battle's scale and significance.

All across the walls of the Imperial Palace, the Death Guards fought, bringing down the lords of the Warp wherever they manifested. They and the Thousand Sons were the best suited to this task, and the sons of Mortarion reluctantly fought back to back with those of the Crimson King. There, on the bloodied walls of the Emperor's sanctuary, the two Legions developed a grudging respect that has lasted to this day. The Death Guards still regard the Thousand Sons with suspicion, and the Thousand Sons consider the Death Guards to be paranoid and ignorant, but both Legions will put aside their differences and fight together at the first external threat.

On the Wall of Heroes is depicted the tale of how Caipha Morarg, Mortarion's Equerry, fought against a Daemon Prince of Nurgle and sacrificed himself to detonate the fusion bomb that destroyed the beast. Down in the Mausoleum of Martyrs, the statue of Second Captain Ignatius Grulgor is inscribed with the names of the twelve Templars of the Seventh Legion he brought down before succumbing to his wounds. But despite their deeds, and those of a hundred more heroes, there are no accounts of what Mortarion himself did during the Siege. The Lord of Death was an absent figure on the Imperial Palace's walls, for he had received another duty in this greatest of hours : to find and destroy the creature that his brother, Jaghatai Khan, had become.

It had been weeks since he had last laid eyes on the Imperial Palace's walls.

Mortarion had been hunting the beast across Terra, and the beast had hunted him back. From the desert plains that had once been oceans to the crowded hive-cities of Merika, they had clashed and fought. Alone or surrounded by others, they had chased each other. The world around them burned, and the destiny of Mankind would soon be decided. But Mortarion had an oath to keep, and orders to obey, while the beast only followed its own whims.

The command had come to him when he had been preparing for the coming of the betrayers, in his chamber within the Imperial Palace. He had seen his father, battling the Neverborn legions deep below. The golden figure had commanded him, not with words but with visions and emotions, to complete his vow : to destroy the beast his brother had become. He knew not why it was so important to his father; perhaps it was because of some terrible thing the beast would do if it was not destroyed, perhaps it was to stop it from entering the Cavea Ferrum. Perhaps it was simply a father's wish to see a tormented son put to rest. It mattered not why. The oath remained.

The beast had taunted him, over and over. It enjoyed their fight – one more game in a daemon's eternity. Mortarion had learned much about the creature's nature, searching the forbidden archives of the Endurance. Once, on Old Earth, it had been known as the Erlking, a lord of spirits that would hunt humans during the nights of full moon at the head of a horde of monsters. On Dessera, it had been called the Princeling of Slaughter; on Larakas, the Huntsman of Heker'Arn. Countless names and titles had been heaped upon the creature by the kin of those it had murdered.

He knew he couldn't destroy the creature – not really. The best he could hope for was to banish it back to the Aether for a few centuries, maybe more if he managed to really hurt it. Silence had proved its efficiency in that domain time and again during the long return to Terra.

But that didn't matter. All that mattered was that his brother would be free.

And so it was that for the third and final time, Mortarion and Jaghatai fought. Their battle lasted for the entirety of the Siege, and took them from one corner of Terra to another. Warriors on both sides of the conflict saw the two Primarchs appear from the shadows and clash for a few exchanges before the Khan would retreat, forcing the Lord of Death to pursue him once again. None were present at this duel's ending, but it was Mortarion alone that walked away from it. Never again was the Khan heard of, though his sons would spin a thousand tales about their father's fate. These tales would spread far and wide in the fractured Fifth Legion, until the White Scars had lost any hope of remembering the truth of their Primarch's fate : that he had been reduced to a vessel for a Neverborn Lord, and granted oblivion by his brother's hands.

When Mortarion returned to the Imperial Palace, he found it broken and ruined, its mighty gates thrown down and its defenders fighting to get back in, their path blocked by the ghastly figure of Ferrus Manus. For a moment, the Lord of Death feared the worst, but soon news began to spread over the vox : Guilliman was dead. The rebels were fleeing. Soon, Manus retreated as well, leaving Mortarion and the other surviving loyal Primarchs to pick up the pieces of a shattered empire.

The Heresy was over, but Mortarion would soon learn the true cost of this most bitter of victories.

Nathaniel Garro, the Guardian of the Dead

Born on Terra, and raised into the Fourteenth Legion at the beginning of the Great Crusade, Captain Garro was one of the oldest Death Guards alive at the time of the Heresy. He was Captain of the Seventh Great Company, a position of honor in the Legion. His loyalty to the Emperor and dedication to the Imperial Truth were legendary, as were his nobility and skill at arms. In a Legion that was never loved of the common Imperial citizen, his was a name that echoed along those of Ezekyle Abaddon, Saul Tarvitz, Sigismund, Khârn, and Sevatar. Though he did not agree with all of his Primarch's decision, he was loyal to the Lord of Death, who considered him to be one of his best sons.

During the Siege of Terra, when Mortarion disappeared to hunt the Traitor Primarch Jaghatai Khan, it was Garro that took command of the Death Guard, directing his few remaining brothers to assist the other Legions in defense of the Palace. As he fought against the Traitor Legions, he slew many of their champions, and was saved from certain death by the intervention of Lucius the Reborn, of the Emperor's Children. Days after this, he slew the Daemon Lord Ulracor the Twice-Living, a dragon-like creature of immense power, with his relic power sword, Libertas. He fought the daemon inside the Imperial Palace itself : the beast had broken through, and was in the process of feasting on the corpses gathered in the great crypts below the surface. Garro's actions saved the souls of those who had fallen in the defense of the Palace so far – Astartes and humans alike – and for this deed he was granted the title of Guardian of the Dead.

After the Heresy, Garro took part in the Scouring, hunting Traitor Marines and daemons alike. His name became a curse among the shattered Traitor Legions and the children of the Warp. Eventually, he met his death at the hands of a Daemon Prince calling itself the Lord of Flies, giving his life to save those of several thousands of human pilgrims on the road to Terra. After his death, he was elevated to sainthood by the young Ecclesiarchy – the only Death Guard to ever reach this status.

Post-Heresy

'We were to be the guardians of Mankind, me and my brothers. It was our task to carve a path through the galaxy for the rest of our people to follow us to greatness, while we guarded them from the horrors lurking among the stars. But my brother has ruined this dream, and now, we must protect Mankind from itself. The sins of our ancestors, as well as those of the living, stalk the Sea of Souls, eager to consume us all, while the monsters in the outer darkness see our struggle and await the slightest moment of weakness.

They shall wait in vain. This, I promise, and my oath shall never be broken.'

From the writings of Primarch Mortarion, after the Siege of Terra

When the Lord of Death saw what had become of his father, he wept for the first time in his entire life. For an entire week, Mortarion remained before the Golden Throne, hoping for any sign of life from the one trapped within it. Whether he received such a sign or not, he rose from his brooding on the seventh day, and rejoined his brothers and the new Lords of Terra.

He didn't remain on Terra for long. Though his Legion was still in ruins, there were traitors still left in the Imperium, and hundred of worlds lost to the Warp in need of purging. Gathering his troops and his ships once more, the Lord of Death left the Throneworld and dedicated his Legion to the Scouring of the galaxy. Little is known of the victories won by the Fourteenth Legion during that period, for they only sought the harshest battles, those where any mortal observer would be driven insane. Only one such battle is recorded, for it involved far more than the Death Guard : the battle of Pythos, in the Pandorax system.

Pythos was the accursed death world upon which the Iron Hands had first been exposed to the taint of Chaos. The Warp Rift that Ferrus Manus had unwittingly created when he had first been cast into the system had remained open during the entirety of the Heresy, allowing the passage of legions of daemons into the Materium. Pythos teemed with Neverborn, while titanic Warp-leviathans hung in orbit, ready to carry their lesser brethren across the stars.

Apart from the Death Guard contingent, led by Mortarion himself, the Imperial forces present at the Battle of Pandorax included Thousand Sons, Sons of Horus, and thousands of Imperial Regiments. The Endurance, Mortarion's capital ship, engaged hostilities with the daemonic fleet in orbit around Pythos, while another of his vessels, the infamous Mia Donna Mori, unleashed its full complement of Exterminatus-grade weaponry on the planet itself. The Mia Donna Mori held enough death in its holds to cleanse an entire sector, but Pythos was a daemon world at that point, and all the bombardment achieved was clearing out a fraction of the planet. That, however, was enough for the rest of the armada to land and finish the battle the old-fashioned way.

The Thousand Sons were led by their Primarch, Magnus the Red. The Crimson King could sense the source of the Warp Rift, an incredibly ancient, broken monolith. He was fairly confident that he could seal the Rift, if he could reach it. Mortarion vowed to deliver him there, no matter the cost. The Imperial expedition tore a path through the corrupted jungles of Pythos, fighting to the death every step of the way. The Lord of Death and the Cyclops fought back to back for the first time in their entire lives, taking on the most powerful daemon lords that dared to cross their path.

After days of fighting, the two Primarchs reached the location of the rift. But as Magnus began the incredibly complex spell that would close the breach between realms, the true agent of the Dark Gods on Pythos revealed itself : Vulkan, the Daemon Primarch of the Eighteenth Legion. After the War of the Dragon had ended on the other side of the Eye of Terror, he had come to Pythos through the Sea of Souls, hoping to claim control of the Warp Rift and use it to launch another crusade against the Imperium.

With Magnus busy handling the tremendous energies of the spell, Mortarion was left alone against the Black Dragon. Since his ascension to daemonhood, Vulkan truly deserved his title : he was a beast of ancient legends given form, spewing all-consuming fire from his maw. At his side came legions of horrors, as well as those of his Salamanders that had been able to follow him through the twisted paths of the Empyrean. While the Imperial army clashed with this new horde of nightmare, the Lord of Death confronted his fallen brother in what would be his last fight.

The Dragon's claws pierced through his armor and rent his flesh apart. The pain was beyond anything he had ever known. Silence was stuck in the beast's flank, black blood dripping from the wound it had opened through the creature's scales.

Give in ,  said the voice. Give in and you will win. You will live.

Vulkan had become a monster. There was no trace of humanity left in his eyes – only greed and hatred. Mortarion had seen eyes like those : the witch-lords of Barbarus had had the same, soulless gaze.

Give in ! The power is yours. You have but to use it !

'Never,' the Lord of Death whispered. A cold hand closed in on his hearts, and he felt everything around him slowly fade. But he knew death. He wasn't afraid of it.

You could be a king ! Give in, and you will wear his fangs as your crown !

The voice was growing desperate, and Mortarion chuckled, drops of blood spewing from his mouth as he did so.

'No crown,' he croaked. 'I will never … wear a crown …'

Though Mortarion was slain, the wounds he had inflicted upon Vulkan were grave enough that the Black Dragon quickly lost his hold over his material form and was banished into the Warp. This allowed Magnus to seal the Warp Rift unhindered, and the Imperial armada to purge the entire Pandorax system. Soon after, the few traumatized humans who had survived the battle were also executed by the newly created Inquisition in order to prevent knowledge of the rift to spread, while the Legionaries present were sworn to secrecy. A fortress was built on the rift's former location, named the Damnation Cache in the very few records that even mention its existence. Together, the Thousand Sons and the Ordo Malleus covered it into powerful seals, to prevent the rift from ever opening again.

Their hearts heavy, the Death Guards then brought their father's remains to Barbarus, where they were interred in presence of the entire Legion. Oaths were sworn by all present – and are now part of the oaths any aspirant of the Fourteenth Legion must swear – to never fail the Primarch's memory. With the Scouring complete, the Death Guards returned to the duty they had carried out during the Great Crusade : the purge of xenos empires, out into the furthest reaches of the Milky Way.

Thousands of years after Mortarion's demise, when the Hive-Fleet Leviathan appeared, it was the Death Guard that fought it on a hundred worlds. All Seven Companies gathered to stop the advance of the Great Devourer, putting the might of a Legion against that of the Swarm. When they finally managed to stop the progress of the Tyranids, billions had already been lost, and the Fourteenth Legion was scattered on a dozen worlds. Though they had support from every branch of the Imperium's armies for the first time in ten thousand years, they were still barely holding their ground. Forces from other Legions were coming, but before they could arrive and turn the tide, one man made a choice that damned his soul forever.

Lord Inquisitor Kryptman had been the first to discover the existence of the Tyranids when he had come upon the world of Tyran, stripped of all life by the xenoforms of Hive-fleet Behemoth. That Hive-fleet had then vanished into the Ruinstorm, but the data the Inquisitor had recovered had haunted him for years. Slowly, he had come to believe that the Swarm could not be stopped through conventional means, and required drastic methods to be fought. When the Death Guard stopped the Swarm's advance, he gave the order for the worlds on which the sons of Mortarion fought to be subjected to Exterminatus. The Death Guards agreed with his judgement in most cases, and rained death upon worlds that had still to be evacuated, sacrificing the lives of billions to save trillions more. However, there were three worlds that they did not think lost – worlds upon which billions still lived and where the Tyranids could be defeated. On these worlds, the sons of Mortarion held firm, confidant that they could hold back the tide until reinforcements arrived.

But Kryptman didn't care. On these three worlds, his own ships unleashed the ultimate sanction, without giving time for the Death Guards and their allies to evacuate. Thousands of Legionaries died alongside the billions of support troops and innocent Imperial citizens. Without biomass to consume, the Swarm was effectively stopped. However, the betrayal of Kryptman sent the Death Guard into a terrible rage, and very nearly sparked a war between the Legion and the Inquisition. Only the quick denunciation of Kryptman by the rest of the Ordo Xenos and his branding as Excomunicate Traitoris prevented it. Kryptman went into hiding, hunted down by the Inquisition and the Death Guard alike. But he was still convinced of his actions' rightfulness, and wasn't without allies.

When Leviathan returned, these allies executed one of his contingency plans. They arranged for the Hive-fleet Leviathan to be drawn into conflict with an Ork Empire in the Octarius sector, hoping that the two threats would destroy each other. This "Kryptman's Gambit", as it came to be known, was partially successful, in that Orks and Tyranids have been fighting each other for several years now without any of them making significant progress. But other members of the Ordo Xenos quickly pointed out that the conflict was drawing more and more Orks to it, and that the greenskins were becoming stronger and stronger from the endless battles. Meanwhile, the Tyranids were absorbing the genetic material of the Orks, producing bigger and stronger specimens.

In the end, it was the Death Guard that put an end to Kryptman's madness. Acting on intel from the elusive Alpha Legion, a ship of the 4th Company located and attacked the fallen Inquisitor's hideout, executing Kryptman and capturing all of his research on the Tyranids. It could be argued that Kryptman was loyal to the Imperium, and that his methods were merely extensions of the Death Guard's own – but none among the Inquisition are foolish enough to suggest so anywhere the sons of Mortarion might hear it. To them, Kryptman's crime rests in the lack of necessity – while they are perfectly willing to murder worlds, they only do so as a last resort.

Now, the Octarius war rages, with Imperial agents reporting that both the Orks and the Tyranids of Leviathan growing ever stronger. Forces have been massed nearby for the inevitable assault that will follow the victory of either side – for though none can tell which xenos breed will emerge triumphant, it is clear that it will turn its soulless gaze on Mankind next …

Organization

The Deathshroud

During the Great Crusade, the Deathshroud were a group of elite Terminators wielding power scythes, gathered by Mortarion himself to act as his bodyguards. Selected from the rank-and-file for their skill at arms and endurance, they were struck from the Legion's records as killed in action, and took a vow of silence, while also never removing their armor or helm in public. Numbering seven members, they were sworn to guard the Primarch with their lives, and never to be further from him than fourty-nine paces. As such, when Mortarion fell, they were close to the Black Dragon and his own elite warriors, and only two of them survived the confrontation.

It is unknown if they felt ashamed of their survival, for their oath of silence remained unbroken. They gathered the armor of their fallen brethren, and a few days later, each of the Commanders of the Death Guard found a Deathshroud warrior standing before his quarters. Ever since then, there has always been a Deathshroud in each Company, silently guarding over the Commander as his predecessors once guarded the Lord of Death. They are still bound to their charge's physical presence, and follow them on the battlefield, displaying the same prowess as those who wore their armor ten thousand years ago.

When the Deathshroud dies, his armor is recovered and brought back aboard the Company's flagship. A few days later at most, a new Deathshroud will appear, his former identity becoming one more casualty added to the list of those fallen in the engagement that saw his predecessor fall. No one among the Inquisition knows how the new Deathshrouds are chosen – it is possible that even the Death Guards themselves do not know. Theory range from the intervention of the Emperor to the Commander secretely choosing one of his warriors. That last theory, though, is made unlikely by the second duty of the Deathshrouds.

Unlike Mortarion, the Astartes who lead the Companies are susceptible to the weaknesses of Mankind, and their judgement can be altered, as well as their soul corrupted by Chaos. It is extremely rare, but not unheard of, for a Commander of the Death Guard to turn renegade. In such grim circumstances, it is the Deathshroud's duty to end the Commander's life before he can turn the tremendous power of the Company against the Imperium. Traditionally, the executioner must then take his own life, or allow himself to be killed by his brothers when they discover his deed. Thanks to this process, the Death Guard has avoided any significant group of its members rebelling at once throughout the millenia.

While other Legions are divided in dozens of battle-groups across the galaxy, the Death Guard is organized in only seven Great Companies, each operating as a single force. This peculiarity harkens back to the days of the Great Crusade, when it allowed the Legion to challenge powerful enemies without the need for auxiliary troops. After the catastrophic losses the Legion suffered during the Heresy, this organization became more dictated by necessity – there were just not enough Death Guards left. Even as the numbers of the Death Guard swelled once more, Mortarion kept his Legion divided in only seven Great Companies, bestowing upon each of their leaders the title of Commander.

Nowadays, this concentration of force allows once again the Death Guard to prosecute its campaigns of extermination without exposing other forces to the horrors they face. This avoids the need for culling these forces later to prevent the spread of moral corruption, a task that the sons of Mortarion will perform if necessary, but would rather avoid.

Since the death of Mortarion, the Legion has been led by the Commanders, masters of the Seven Companies. There is no Legion Master, though some Commander have positions more exalted than others – the Commander of the Seventh Great Company, for instance, is named "Battle-Captain", a title that grants him seniority over the rest of his brethren. When a Commander dies in battle, his chosen successor immediately takes over. The line of succession in a Great Company involve every single officer in its ranks, preserving the chain of command no matter how grievous the casualties. Complete obedience to the orders of one's superior is considered paramount among the Death Guard, and to disobey them is a mark of great shame.

Each of the Seven Companies is fleet-based, operating far outside of the Imperium's borders, destroying threats to Mankind before they can grow and returning to the Imperium when it needs resupplying or when it has been called to perform its duty on a human world. This grants each Commander far more independence than in other Legions, which is why the rank of Legion Master is considered pointless among the Death Guard.

Lantern & Silence

While the body of Mortarion lies in state on Barbarus, still clad in his battle-plate, the weapons he used in battle are still employed by the Legion. There are two of them : Lantern, an energy pistol fabricated during the Dark Age of Technology, and Silence, a scythe crafted by Mortarion himself after he was discovered by the Emperor. Both of these weapons have received many enhancements over the centuries they spent in the Primarch's hands, and are far more deadly than any other such piece of weaponry. While Lantern is a technological relic, with firepower more akin to a plasma cannon than a laspistol, Silence's origins are far more arcane. The Death Guards say that the weapon's blade is that of Mortarion's harvesting scythe. Drenched in the blood of the witch-lords of Barbarus, it eventually gained supernatural abilities of its own, and is now anathema to all things touched by the Warp.

Lantern and Silence are kept separated at all times, in the care of two separate Companies, for none but their first master may ever wield them both in battle. Every hundred years, the weapons are transferred into the care of another Company, in an heavily ritualised and even more heavily guarded ceremony. Carrying these relics into battle is an immense honor, but also one that can only be bestowed upon exceptional warriors wearing Terminator armor, due to their sheer size and weight.

Combat doctrine

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Title : Report on the Marendes Purification, 435.M38

In the year 430.M38, reports of Warp-born plague on the world of Marendes reached the Inquisition. Teams of interrogators were sent, but after all of them went silent, the Death Guard was deployed with orders to identify the source of the problem and dealt with it as they saw fit.

Population in last census prior to the spread of corruption : 14,000,000,000

Estimated population at the time of Fourteenth Legion's arrival : 2,000,000,000

Population at the conclusion of the Purification : 0

Casualties among the Fourteenth Legion's forces : unknown

Post-action surveys indicate that Marendes is now unsuited for human life – or any known type of life. The planet has been knocked off its orbits through unknown means, bringing it far closer to its sun. Temperatures on the surface average at over a thousand degrees, and almost all of the atmosphere has burned away. If the planet follows its current course, it should plunge into the star itself in a few million years. The system has been declared Perditia, and none are allowed within its borders on pain of death.

Praise the Emperor, for He is the salvation of Mankind.

The Death Guard isn't called to perform simple Exterminatus. This falls under the purview of the Inquisition, and even the Holy Ordos are unwilling to call upon Mortarion's sons. They are only called when the world in question is too heavily defended for conventional destruction. Once called, they will not stop until every trace of the threat has been erased, both from the material realm and from the pages of history. With chemical weapons capable of setting an entire planet aflame, genetically engineered virus of the same kind that was deployed on Isstvan III, and older, incomprehensible artefacts that can break a world apart with gravitic forces – the Death Guards are nothing if not thorough in their work.

When the Death Guard arrives on a battlefield, they do not arrive as liberators or conquerors. Instead, they come as exterminators, purifiers of the galaxy through destruction. A world is changed forever by the coming of the Fourteenth Legion, regardless of the reason that prompted their arrival. Fortunately, it is rare for circumstances dire enough to warranty their appearance to arise within the borders of the Imperium. As a result, most of the Death Guard's campaigns are fought outside of the Emperor's realm, against small xenos empires that must be purged before they can become a threat. This puts the Death Guard far from any support or supply lines, and forces the Seven Companies to be capable of independent actions for extensive periods of time – a force of the Fourteenth Legion can spend years, or even decades away from Barbarus or another friendly port.

On the ground, the Death Guards are relentless attrition fighters. They will keep on advancing toward their enemy no matter what is hurled at them, slowly but steadily. Their superior endurance allows them to keep to the field for weeks without any drop in combat performance. The Death Guards' advance is often covered by orbital bombardments aimed far closer to the Legionaries than most Imperial forces would consider safe. Once they have reached their target, the Death Guards use standard Astartes weaponry, combined with phospex flamers, radiation sprayers, and other sterilization weapons.

The Destroyer Squads

While the rest of the loyal Legions have Devastator Squads as their heavy support and the Traitor Legions have Havocs, the Death Guard has the Destroyer Squads. To be selected as part of a Destroyer Squad is both an honor and a death sentence in the Fourteenth Legion. On one hand, only the most trustworthy warriors are allowed anywhere near the arsenal that such squads carry in battle. On the other hand, that arsenal is almost as dangerous to its wielder as it is to the foe.

There are three main types of weaponry granted to the Destroyed Squads : plasma cannons, Phosphex weapons, and rad missiles and grenades. Plasma cannons are standard plasma guns, but their sheer size allows for a much more potent payload, while also doubling the risk of the weapon exploding and almost certainly reducing its wielder to ashes whenever it is fired. Phospex weapons use canisters and shells filled with an incendiary compound that can burn literally anything in any situation. Water is worse than useless against it : it is simply more fuel. The only known way to stop Phosphex fire is to cut off the burning piece of whatever is burning and throw it into the void, where it will stop burning once there is nothing left to burn. Rad missiles are relics of the gene-wars of Old Night, when warlords fought over entire generations and poisoning the enemy's bloodline was more tactically sound than simply killing him. Enhanced by the Mechanicus, these weapons deliver a dose of intense radiation with a very short half-life, which allows the Death Guards to advance quickly on the shot's position with little danger, but is almost invariably lethal to any lifeform present near the detonation.

As a result of using such dangerous weapons, life expectancy among the Destroyer Squads is much lower than other Legionaries. Space Marines can support far higher levels of radiation than a common human, and their physiology can actually repair much of the damage to their genetic structure over time. But the constant use of their weapons adds damage far more quickly than they can heal it. Likewise, Phospex burns are almost invariably lethal, and in most cases death is preferable to the level of amputation required to remove the still-burning flesh.

Of all the loyalist Legions, the Death Guard is the only one without Librarians. This was already the case during the Great Crusade, when Mortarion's youth on Barbarus made him suspicious of any witch-breed, but the grim duties the Legion took upon itself in the Heresy's aftermath have made it more of a practical decision than one based on prejudice. With all the horrors faced by the Fourteenth Legion and without the benefits of the Grey Knights' intense conditioning, any Astartes touched by the Warp would quickly be driven insane and become a threat to his battle-brothers.

Without psykers of their own, the Death Guards must fight against daemons and other psychically active foes through means that many would find even more appalling. The Fourteenth Legion has an extensive arsenal of ancient weaponry, not all of which is designed for planetary-scale destruction. Most of these weapons would be considered heretical by even the most open-minded Inquisitor, but none of them are of Chaotic nature. They are xenos artifacts, and relics from the Dark Age of Technology, capable of turning the power of the Warp against its users not through psychic potential but through ancient, forgotten science. Outside of battle, they are kept locked in stasis-vaults aboard the Death Guard's ships, and only the most mentally resilient warriors are allowed to actually make use of them. On more than one occasion, Space Wolves warbands have attacked the sons of Mortarion, hoping to steal these relics and add them to their own collections of forbidden weapons.

It is frequent for the Death Guard to be deployed alongside the Grey Knights. While the sons of Titan are aimed at the greater threats among the foe – such as a Greater Daemon or even a Daemon Prince – the warriors of Barbarus take care of the wider battle, ensuring that not a single trace of corruption escape them. The Death Guard is also one of the only forces that do not require mind-wiping after the procession of the war is complete – there is no risk of them revealing the existence of the Grey Knights, considering how little contact they have with the rest of the Imperium. Still, over the centuries, there have been several Inquisitors and Grand Masters who have tried to force the Death Guards to go through the procedure. Each and every time, the Death Guards have refused, and simply left the planet without answering the calls of their Inquisitorial allies, before more sensible heads remind the rest that the Death Guard is too valuable to alienate. This attitude toward the Holy Ordos is also displayed in their relationship with the Ordo Xenos. On more than one occasion has an Inquisitor sought to preserve specimens from a xenos species branded for extermination in order to study it, only for the Death Guard to come knocking at his door – sometimes years or even decades after the campaign's official end.

The Tau Ascendency

Considering that the Death Guard has done a remarkable job of purging the galaxy of xenos threats before they can grow too strong, it might be surprising that the Tau Empire was allowed to reach the size it has today. But to the Death Guard, the Ethereals and their slaves are insignificant. Compared to the horrors the sons of Mortarion have fought in the dark places of the galaxy, the Tau Empire is simply not worthy of their attention. Furthermore, human worlds that have been conquered by the Taus can be liberated and reintegrated into the Imperium with only minimal loss of civilian life . The Tau corruption is subtle, but slow, and the human spirit, bolstered by faith in the God-Emperor, can resist it admirably well. This makes the involvement of the Death Guard unnecessary in the ongoing conflict between the Imperium and these upstart xenos. They concern themselves with predatory species, those of the kin that nearly drove Mankind to extinction during Old Night. The Taus are newcomers to the galactic stage, with no idea of the true nature of the universe they live in, and their psychic presence is too weak for them to risk unwittingly tearing holes in the fabric of reality.

That is not to say that there haven't been Inquisitors and Imperial Generals who have called for their help against the Taus and their various client species. But the Seven Companies have so far ignored their pleas, and the rest of the Imperial leadership has been quick in silencing them. Of course, should the Taus prove a greater threat than it is currently believed, the option remains open.

Homeworld

Deep inside the Segmentum Tempestus, Barbarus is hidden from almost every Imperial galactic chart. After four different attempts by over-zealous Inquisitors to have the planet destroyed for its past corruption, the Death Guard took measures to keep their homeworld protected. An extensive array of space forts has been built in the system, while Imperial records of its location and the Warp routes leading to it have been heavily classified – both by the Death Guards themselves, and by those Inquisitors who would rather not antagonize the sons of Mortarion.

As such, information is scarce, but it appears that even after the witch-lords were hunted to extinction, Barbarus yet remains one of the harshest worlds of the Imperium. Clouds of toxic fumes darken the skies, and life is short even among the people of the plains. The Death Guards have made attempts to purify the planet's atmosphere several times, despite the protests of those among their ranks who saw it as weakening their future recruits. But all such efforts have failed, and often even made things worse : machinery breaks down, filters are clogged, and more toxic components are released. It is believed that the pollution of Barbarus' atmosphere is so ingrained in the world's very soul that purifying it is simply impossible. The Death Guard has grimly accepted that fact after their last attempt, three thousand years ago, caused half a continent to be covered in toxic fumes that killed all human life in the region.

The people of Barbarus are, however, far more stringent in their pursuit of aethereal corruption. Legends of the witch-lords' cruelty are still ingrained on their collective memory, reinforced by nightmares that have haunted every generation born on Barbarus since the death of Mortarion at the Black Dragon's hands. These visions show the Lord of Death fighting against the ghosts of Barbarus' past overlords, keeping them at bay, but never succeeding in destroying them completely. Whether this is a result of a deep-seated belief in Mortarion's undying nature or a sign or something more sinister is known to none save the God-Emperor.

Due to its isolation and status as a Legion's homeworld, Barbarus is exempt of the Imperium's taxation, including the tithe of psykers that all worlds must pay to the Black Ships in order to both keep Mankind pure and sustain the Astronomican. To compensate for this, the population ruthlessly culls all psykers among it, calling upon the Astartes in the occasions when a witch hides its nature long enough to become too powerful for mere mortals to handle.

Beliefs

'Now we are become death, the destroyers of worlds.'

Death Guard motto

To most outsiders, the Death Guard's traditions and rituals appear to be exceedingly morbid, even by the Imperium's standards. Mortarion's early life on Barbarus taught him that there were many things worse than death, and that often, the only thing you can do to aid another is to release him from life. In ten thousand years of fighting the worse wars of Mankind, the warriors of the Fourteenth Legion have seen precious little to turn from that vision. They know neither pleasure nor joy, only duty, and the cold knowledge that what they do, no matter how cruel it might seem, is necessary. They understand mercy, but the duties that are bestowed upon them make it impossible for them – in most of the battles they wage, sparing a single enemy would make the rest of the carnage utterly pointless.

That being said, the Death Guards do not regard human life with the same callous disregard present in all too many Imperial officers. They believe that each human life is precious to the Emperor, and that each one they end is a blow against the Master of Mankind. That is why they make sure, before beginning operations on a human world, that their presence truly is the last resort. The Chaplains will take care to explain to all warriors in the Great Company the exact circumstances requiring their intervention, and do their best to soothe any concern that might arise in their charges.

Because of this grim outlook, the belief in the Emperor's divinity is more spread among the Death Guard than in any other Legion. They know that life in the Milky Way is harsh and often cruel, and they find comfort in the belief that the Emperor has a plan for all things, even if He is opposed by the Dark Gods and the other forces at work in the galaxy. They do not believe the Emperor to be all-powerful, like the Ecclesiarchy preaches to the masses, but they do believe that His eyes are ever watchful, and that He can reach into the galaxy to help those in need. Most important of all, they believe that He can shelter the souls of the dead from the predators of the Warp. This belief prevents the Death Guards from being crushed by regret over the countless innocents that die alongside the guilty during their purges. One might think that standard Astartes conditioning ought to prevent such emotions anyway, but the Emperor was too wise to create transhumans completely devoid of empathy, and the purges of the Fourteenth Legion far exceed what any training can block out.

In contrast, the Death Guard positively revels in the purging of xenos. There is none of the moral ambiguity there, none of the necessary murder of innocents : only the affirmation of Mankind's rightful rule over the stars through the manifestation of the Astartes' genetic purpose. There is a purity in this that soothes the soul of any Space Marine. All sons of Mortarion prefer the long periods spent outside of the Imperium's borders, fighting tooth and nail against inhuman monsters, to the short forays into Imperial space, when they are expected to unleash the same weapons against their fellow humans. The Commanders of the Death Guard actually arrange a rotation of sorts, ensuring that no Company spends too long away from the purges of alien life in the galactic fringes, lest the relentless tide of human extermination wear down the faith of the Astartes within its ranks.

Another aspect of the Fourteenth Legion's rituals is their obsession with poisons. Because of the type of war they wage, they are often exposed to lethal atmosphere and venoms never encountered before. To enhance their already transhuman resistance to such dangers, the Death Guards only consume foods and drinks that have been laced with poisons which would be instantly lethal to any unaugmented human, and would sicken even an Astartes for a few hours. The exact cocktail of toxins employed is changed constantly, and it is one of the Apothecaries' duties to come up with new poisons to use for their brothers' needs. This activity is also heavily ritualised, with the officers being expected to ingest brews even more dangerous than those served to the simple battle-brothers. After a battle, the commander of the Company will select one single warrior, who has distinguished himself in the engagement, and share his drink with him. This is a mark of honor for the Death Guard, for Mortarion himself used to do the same when he still led the Legion.

The Legion of the Damned

The spirits of the Death Guards do not rest easily. Despite the sermons of the Chaplains, despite the cold comfort of knowing that their actions are justified and the only thing standing between the Imperium and yet great horror, all the sons of Mortarion are tormented by the deeds they have committed. Sometimes, the weight of necessary atrocities is too much, and breaks the mind of the Legionary. This can turn them to suicidal behaviour, or even make them rebel against the Legion and fall under the sway of the Dark Gods. But there is another path for the Death Guards who cannot bear the duty of the Fourteenth while still holding true to their oath.

When such a Death Guard can no longer bear the weight of his deeds, he leaves the Legion and wanders the galaxy, in search of a forgiveness that none can grant him. His name is struck from the rolls of the living, never to be spoken aloud again, and added to the tally of the Legion of the Damned. Thousands of names are written upon this list, which is considered a relic of the Death Guard. Many among the Fourteenth scorn these lost brothers, while older, wiser heads understand all too well the pain that drove them to leaving.

But even though they have left their Legion behind, these warriors are still fiercely loyal to the Emperor and the Imperium. It is believed that there is an actual Legion of the Damned : an organized force, built by those who left the Death Guard in such a manner over the millenia. There are many reports across the Imperium of forces wearing the colors of no Legion, their armor scorched and adorned with icons of death and fire, appearing in circumstances where all hope appears to be lost, and coming to the aid of the Imperial forces and people. No communication has ever been established with these warriors, and there are tales of them possessing ethereal powers, disappearing at will only to reappear half-way across the battlefield, like ghosts. No corpses are ever left behind by these mysterious individuals.

The Inquisition has many theories about the Legion of the Damned's supernatural abilities. They seem to be drawn to desperate situations, and to those who call for the Emperor's help – not for themselves, but for the salvation of others. Some think that they are a manifestation of the God-Emperor's will, while others believe that their powers are the result of all of the Fourteenth Legion's accumulated remorse, forming a power of its own in the Sea of Souls.

Recruitment and Geneseed

Those who receive Mortarion's gene-seed become cadaverously thin, their faces pale and gaunt. This is only in appearance, though : they are still as strong and quick as any Legionary, and more enduring than most. They are also morbid, but that is probably more due to the type of battles they wage than any genetic imperative. Among the loyal Legions, the Death Guards are incredibly long-lived and resilient, capable of fully recovering from wounds that would require extensive augmentation in others. And while it is rare for their cousins to reach a thousand years of age, due to an accumulation of minor gene-seed flaws over the millenia, the sons of Mortarion are seemingly truly immune to the ravages of time – once the initial gauntness has settled in, no more signs of age appear, either visible or through a decay of physical prowess. Of course, due to the battles they wage, few Death Guards reach an age where this comes into account, even more so in the case of the Destroyers.

Due to their regime of toxins, the Death Guards are immune to all poisons and diseases, even the pestilences of the Warp. They can breathe in toxic atmospheres for hours without their helmets before the first symptoms of poisoning appear, which is very useful when fighting xenos species with a different breathing apparatus on their home ground. However, their omophaega degenerates due to the amount of poison they ingest, causing them to lose the ability to absorb the memories of slain foes, as well as any sense of taste and smell. Over the generations, the organ has become little more than vestigial, and newly induced Space Marines suffer from a permanent disgusting taste in their mouth, that they eventually become able to ignore.

Most of the Death Guard recruits come from their homeworld of Barbarus. The young men of the planet see it as the supreme honor, and many risk their lives to climb up the poisoned peaks, hoping to reach the Legion's outposts and thus prove their worth. Many do not reach them, but not all who fail die : sometimes, if the weakness is not in their minds but in their bodies, the Legion will take them in as serfs. Other death worlds across the Imperium are also used as recruiting grounds, generally by a single Company. There have been rumors that the Death Guard very rarely takes in young men from the worlds it is sent to purge, after extensive testing, but the sons of Mortarion themselves vehemently deny all such allegations. No one, they claim, is left alive in their wake, and the mere notion that they would risk such corruption among their own ranks is nothing short of ridiculous. Mentioning this rumour to them is actually one of the very few ways to make the Death Guards lose their legendary calm.

The way the Death Guard wages war has also forced the Legion to alter its methods of recruitment. Because a Company can spend decades without returning to Imperial space, it needs to have a way to replace its fallen Astartes, but any aspirant taken aboard at the beginning of the campaign would have aged far beyond the limit for Ascension by then. This is solved by putting the aspirants in hibernation caskets soon after the expedition's beginning, to be awakened only when the time has come for them to go under the Apothecaries' knives. Because the technology employed is far less reliable than a stasis field – but a lot less costly to build and maintain – not all aspirants survive the hibernation, but this is simply considered one more test to weed out the weak. After the aspirant is unfrozen, the same process as in other Legions follows, with the aspirant spending several years as a Scout before the Black Carapace is grafted and he becomes a true Space Marine. Still, with the losses taken in some campaigns, the period in the Scout corps is generally shorter for an aspirant of the Fourteenth Legion.

The Ancients

Few Death Guards will reach the age where their extended lifespan makes any difference between them and the other Legions. But those who do reach that age – a thousand standard Terran years – are regarded by their brothers with awe. Called the Ancients, they are allowed to wear the mark of Mortarion on their helm, making them look like skull-faced wraiths of legend. In many ways, their position is similar to those of Dreadnoughts in other Legions, though they are far more lucid, and not denied positions of command. Most of them are sergeants, though a few Captains and even Commanders have been part of that illustrious brotherhood over the millenia.

Only the toughest and more resourceful Death Guards ever live long enough to become Ancients. Each of the Companies has rarely more than a handful in its ranks, and they are considered "lucky charms" for the warriors around them. In battle, there is no difference between the equipment of an Ancient and that of a younger Legionary of the same rank, though their helm often causes their enemy to mistake them for high-profile individuals. Despite the added danger this causes, the Ancients have refused to wear traditional headgear, believing that the resulting danger to their life keeps them sharp.

One would believe that such individual would naturally assume the commanding position in whatever group they are part of. But the same factors that help a Death Guard reaches the status of Ancient often also make him somewhat ill-suited for command. Ancients are survivors, who have reached their venerable age through careful planning and well-oiled instincts, while an Astartes officer is expected to lead from the front, inspiring his brothers to surpass their limits through his own example.

That is why, on the rare occasions when a Death Guard officer survives long enough to become an Ancient, his name is certain to echo in the legends of the Legion for the rest of eternity.

Warcry

When performing their purges, the Death Guards fight in silence, with the only communication between them being the exchange of orders and battle information, spoken in Barbarusian. When they are in the process of purging human worlds, they broadcast prayers to the Emperor, inciting their victims to repent in their last moments, so that their souls can at least find peace in the Empyrean rather than be consumed by the Dark Gods.

It is only when facing Traitor Marines that the silence of the Fourteenth Legion is broken. They will scream their hatred at those who bled them on Isstvan V, most of their hatred reserved for the members of the treacherous second wave – and most of that for the Salamanders. They will not break formation or give in to anger, but their hatred will push them to greater yet feats of endurance, while they shout out warcries like 'Death to the Dragons !' and 'We are judgement come at last !', as well as a variety of oaths of vengeance.

The living cry out in fear, while the shades of the dead gather ever more numerous at the foot of the Allfather's throne.

The children of the Elder Ones, the parents of the Youngest God, are kneeling before the shadowed soul, waiting for death to give birth to their salvation.

The cold minds of the long dead are awakening from the slumber of aeons, and the fragments of the Void Lords are reuniting in the dark, bringing back the horrors of a war that tore the universe apart.

From the mouth of Hell, the fallen angels are rising once more, to tear down the empire they built with blood and blade.

Beyond the eternal abyss, the ever-hungry shadow is rising, drawn to us by ancient mistakes.

Sitting upon his throne, the Dark King stirs, his will reaching out to those bearing his tainted mark.

The light of hope is fading, and soon all will be lost. Darkness and torment will rule forevermore, or oblivion will swallow all that is.

Arise, Lord of Death, for your time has come once more. Honor your oath, and defend those who cannot defend themselves.

In Dedicato Imperatum Ultra Articulo Mortis.

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Thousand Sons : Heirs to Ashen Dreams

In the Imperium, to be a son of Magnus is to stand forever apart of the rest of Mankind, isolated from even their Astartes cousins. As some of the most powerful psykers serving the Emperor, the Thousand Sons bear a heavy burden. Their numbers forever kept low by the very source of their power, they are scattered across the galaxy, fighting in endless wars at the sides of armies that look upon them with fear and distrust. Dark visions of their lost homeworld, brought to ruin ten thousand years ago by the savages of the Sixth Legion, haunt them to this day. They are melancholic lords of war, who have witnessed the slow fall of the Imperium, century after century, into superstition and ignorance. Their Primarch lost to them, they are left with no clear purpose in the galaxy, safe for the protection of an Imperium that grows more hateful toward them with each passing decade. Now, they are only pushed forward by their duty to the Emperor, their father and Mankind – and the distant, shrouded hope of a better future …

Origins

Humans fear what they don't understand, and they hate what they fear. This simple fact has held true from the dark ages of Old Earth to this day, and it was it that led to the colonization of Prospero, in the twilight day of the first galactic Human Empire. At first glance, there was nothing on Prospero that could draw a human population : the planet was one, giant desert, far from any major Warp-road crossways. Yet these bleak features were precisely what led the first colons to sail for the Planet of Dust.

As the Dark Age of Technology drew to a close, the psychic potential of Mankind began to awaken. Psykers and mutants started to appear, and with the collapse of the Eldar Empire beginning, their apparition heralded Warp Storms and other disasters. These strange individuals, wielding unknown powers, were soon perceived as those responsible, and persecuted across the width and breadth of the galaxy. On countless thousands of worlds, vast pogroms were organized to purge the human population of any genetic deviancy. Though History would vindicate these massacres when the Age of Strife erupted and feral psykers enslaved entire worlds, untold billions of innocents were slain in the process.

Yet not all psykers were willing to let themselves be slaughtered, nor were they ready to turn against the rest of Humanity to protect themselves. Instead, they chose another path : exile. Using whatever ships they could obtain, the gifted of a thousand worlds fled, seeking a place where they would be safe from persecution, a place where they could master and hone their talents until such a time as Mankind was ready to welcome them back.

Drawn to each other, the fleets of exiles finally settled in the dark reaches of the Ultima Segmentum. They named their world Prospero, in homage to an ancient legend from Old Earth, and began to build their own civilization, hidden away from the rest of the galaxy. STC devices and careful use of their powers enabled them to live an austere existence, appropriate to the research and meditation that were required to keep their psychic might under control. Pyramids and libraries were built within which entire generations learned and discovered yet more knowledge. Yet even then, the exiles of Prospero did not know peace.

From the deserts came the Psychneuein, predators that fed on those psychically gifted by pulsing their eggs into their brains. How exactly such nightmarish creatures came to be is unknown – certainly they weren't the product of natural evolution, for there was no way they could have sustained themselves prior to Prospero's colonization. Some claim that they were the result of the psykers' presence influencing the local wildlife, while others are persuaded that they were beings of the Empyrean that had found a way to enter the Materium in order to feast on Prospero's population.

Regardless of their origin, the Psychneuein harassed the people of Prospero for centuries. Most of the time, they preyed only on lone wanderers, but sometimes they attacked one of the planet's cities in immense swarms, breaching its lines of defenses and slaughtering its inhabitants. Still, the Prosperine civilization endured, though its endless struggle against the psychic predators kept it from developing further – until salvation came from the skies.

In a strike of flame, a life-pod crashed into the very center of the great plaza of Tizca, Prospero's greatest city. At first, the inhabitants recoiled from the object, fearing that it was the sign that those that had forced their forebears to exile had found them. But when no further bombardment came, they dared to approach the object, and were met by an infant floating in the air, psychic power crackling around him. His skin and hair were both red, and he looked at the world around him with two wide, curious eyes.

Had the child landed on any other human world, he would doubtlessly have had to fight for his life as its inhabitants attempted to destroy him, thinking him to be the spawn of the Warp. But the Prosperine were used to the physical alterations that often accompany psychic potential, and they welcomed the child into their society.

Under the guidance of Amon, the leader of Tizca, and other teachers, Magnus quickly learned all that the exiles of Prospero had uncovered of the Empyrean. He mastered all the Arts, as the wielding of the Warp's power was known to them, and soon rose to surpass all of his mentors. He studied the Prosperine philosophies, and attended the lessons of a many a Tizcan scholar.

Paralleling Magnus' intellectual growth was his physical transformation. His body went through the stages of adolescence at an incredible speed, and barely a few years after his arrival, he was a giant of a man, towering above even those whose physical alterations manifested in thin, tall bodies. With a wild mane of crimson hair and a face that was at once handsome and full of wisdom, Magnus was a demigod among mortals.

Through his genius and charisma, Magnus quickly rose to become the leader of Tizca, despite his young age. His first act was to begin a campaign of extermination against the Psychneuein and the other predators of Prospero, so that civilization could resume its advance, freed from their threat. One by one, the prodigal child sought and destroyed the beasts' nests, forcing them to flee deep into the deserts. Only when he confronted the Psychneuein-Prime, the oldest of all the Psychneuein on Prospero, was Magnus finally faced with a challenge. Such was the might of the beast that, despite all his knowledge, power and experience, Magnus was wounded deeply in the battle, losing one of his eyes to the creature's claws.

The beast was an abomination, as much a creature of the Aether as it was from the physical plane. It was a grotesque insect, several time the size of its foe, buzzing with the sound of wings that defied the laws of physics and evolution alike. It stared at Magnus with two enormous, faceted eyes, and though its face was as ugly as the rest of it, the young man couldn't help but feel that it was mocking him.

The Psychneuein-Prime fed on Magnus' power, draining him of the might that had been his since the first time he had opened his eyes. Over and over again, he tried to destroy it, unleashing bolt of lightning after bolt of lightning, but all his attacks dissipated harmlessly long before they could reach their target.

A clawed appendage burst into motion, faster than anything of the material plane had any right to move. Magnus barely managed to move his throat out of its way, but it came back down in a second assault, and despite his desperate dodge, the claw reached his face. It tore into the skin of his flesh and cut right through his right eye. Magnus screamed as agony unlike anything he had ever felt spread through his body – the pain was only partially physical, for the Psychneuein-Prime's attack had also damaged his very soul.

Refusing to let the pain weaken him, Magnus focused once more on his foe, using his torment to fuel his rage and will to triumph. With a great roar, he jumped at the beast, clasping its wings with his bare hands and pushing it to the ground with his weight. Like a barbarian, he tore the wings from the creature's back, before bringing his fists down upon its grotesque skull, over and over again, until all that remained was a smear on the sand.

Then, groggy from the pain and exertion, Magnus staggered away from his kill, beginning the walk back to Tizca, bleeding from several wounds. All of them were already healing, except for the last one he had taken – this one, he knew he would carry for the rest of his day. But the loss of his eye had taught him a lesson he would not forget. His hand pressing on the gaping wound, Magnus vowed that he would remember that there were some things that couldn't be defeated by the power of the mind alone, some foulness that needed to be banished with brawn and righteousness.

While it never managed to fully eradicate the scourge of the Psychneuein, Magnus' crusade reduced them to a mere nuisance. The other Prosperine cities rejoiced at that liberation, and Magnus became the leader of a coalition that spanned the entirety of the planet, receiving the title of Crimson King. Under his leadership, Prospero entered a golden age of discovery and culture, with the arts, both physical and ethereal, reaching new heights.

When the Emperor reached Prospero, Magnus was expecting his father's arrival. The Primarch was unique among his brothers in that he alone remembered his entire existence, from the moment the spark of life had first touched his infantile body in the Master of Mankind's gene-laboratories. He remembered touching minds with the Emperor then, and the two had remained in distant psychic contact ever since, Magnus guiding his father to Prospero so that they could be reunited in body as well as in spirit.

Tough the people of Prospero feared the arrival of the Emperor at first, Magnus assuaged their fears, telling them that the Great Crusade was the very thing their ancestors had hoped Mankind would accomplish – the time when they could return to their species, free of prejudice and hatred. He told them that he had spoken with his father many times before, and that they could trust into His wisdom, for He was the epitome of what Prosperine philosophers believed into – the greatest human psyker to have ever lived.

Yet the reunion was not only a cause of joy, for the Emperor brought dire news to Magnus, news that He had believed it was too risky to exchange through the whimsical tides of the Empyrean. The warriors created from Magnus' gene-seed, the Fifteenth Space Marine Legion, were dying out, afflicted by a terrible plague of mutation. The flesh-change, as it had become known, had emerged among the Legion's ranks shortly after the beginning of the Great Crusade, and its symptoms were appalling. At first, the psychic powers of the afflicted warrior increased drastically, and the alterations could be contained through the exercise of one's willpower. But sooner or later, the pressure became too much, and the mutations overwhelmed the Legionary, reducing him to a whimpering, senseless beast that had to be put down.

Already, thousands of Astartes had been lost, and the recruiting process had all but stopped as the Apothecaries refused to expose more souls to the flesh-change. The Emperor's best savants and gene-smiths were unable to stop it, and Magnus, with all the knowledge of Prospero, was the last hope of the thousand sons he had left.

The Great Crusade

The history of the Fifteenth Legion, up to the emergence of their affliction, had been a glorious one. Like all Legions, their first recruits had come from Terra, more specifically from the Achaemenid Empire. Situated in the Middle East, in what had once been called the Persian Empire, it had been an alliance of powerful tribes, whose shared might had shielded them from the worse of the Age of Strife's depredations. When the Emperor rose on Terra, they had been among the first to join Him, and for that, and because their gene-pool was relatively untainted, they became the source of the first Fifteenth Legion's aspirants.

One of the first battles in which the Fifteenth Legion took part was the Boeotian Pacification. For more than a hundred and fifty years, the ruling monarchy of Boeotia, the Yeselti, had dragged on their integration into the Imperium. Always the kings would find more excuses to delay the process, and for a long time the Emperor tolerated this. But as the Unification of Terra drew near, the Master of Mankind's patience with the Boeotian monarchs ran out. After one last, final warning, which was only met with yet more excuses, the Emperor dispatched His army, led by the first contingents of the Fifteenth Space Marine Legion.

The resulting battle was as devastating and one-sided as one might imagine. Boeotia fell in twelve days, and it only took that long because the Space Marines took care to avoid inflicting unnecessary civilian casualties. With their mighty psychic powers, the Legionaries ripped apart fortresses and drove entire battalions mad, before finally confronting the Yeselti kings and putting an end to a bloodline that had endured for thousands of years.

After that, they had taken to the stars, and quickly accumulated a tally of compliances, for they were both gifted diplomats, wearing the mantle of scholars and teachers with the human civilizations ready to join the Imperium, and the cloak of psychic warriors when they faced resistance or the horrors of Old Night. World after world had been claimed by the Expeditionary Fleets under the command of the Fifteenth Legion, until the flesh-change had begun. Then, everything had gone wrong. Many Imperial forces had been decimated by mutated Legionaries, driven mad by their hideous transformation. In several cases, the survivors had been purged by other Space Marines, in the hope of hiding what had happened. And they had partially succeeded in that, for the Emperor Himself had taken measures to keep the affliction of the Fifteenth as secretive as possible. Still, rumors had spread among all the forces of the Great Crusade and across the newly born Imperium. Distrust toward the Fifteenth Legion was growing just as quickly as their numbers diminished.

Many among the lords of the Imperium suggested that the Fifteenth Legion should be expunged from all records, its surviving members slain before the flesh-change caught them, and its Primarch bound to the Emperor's service in the shadows – after he was himself tested for the taint, of course. The wound Magnus had taken in fighting the Psychneuein-Prime had long healed, but the empty eye socket had been replaced by smooth skin, earning him the nickname of "Cyclops" by those who saw it as proof that he was tainted as well.

'My sons' legacy shall not be reduced to an empty pedestal beneath the roof of the Hegemon.'
Magnus, Primarch of the Fifteenth Legion

But Magnus was determined not to let his sons' story come to such an ignoble end. He dedicated himself wholly to his task, spending several years buried in one avenue of research after another, his Legionaries who became afflicted with the curse put into stasis until he succeeded. He conferred with the surviving Apothecaries and gene-smiths, and poured over documents made available to him by the Master of Mankind, describing how the Astartes had been created.

The Crimson King attempted many cures, but all of them failed, doing little more than slowing the progress of the degeneration. Finally, in one last desperate bid, Magnus created a great arcane circle in the greatest of Prospero's deserts, farthest from any city, and cast his mind into the Aether, seeking a way to find his sons in its fathomless depths.

The words came from a thousand voices, all with subtly different intonations that gave them a different meaning.

'You are mine,' shrieked the false god. 'You have always been and will always be MINE ! Only I have the power to save your sons. Obey me, and I shall grant you their salvation !'

'Lies !' shouted Magnus, power crackling all over his hulking frame as he stood, defying the power who claimed to hold fate in its hands. 'You have nothing ! You are nothing ! Only lies and deceit ! You have no power over me !'

The crimson giant froze as he screamed the last words, a great revelation dawning upon him.

'You have no power over me,' he repeated, slowly, only now understanding their truth, ' and I don't need your help. You have no power over anyone that they did not give to you ! And I give you nothing. Begone, and trouble me no more !'

'This is not over, Magnus !' threatened the voices. 'There will be a reckoning for this ! You cannot defy me, for I am the Architect of Fate !'

'You are nothing,' replied Magnus, and he turned away from the one who had promised him the truths of the universe. 'Nothing but the lies we tell to ourselves, and I choose the truth. I shall free my sons of your poison, no matter the cost to myself – but I will never call upon you. Do you hear me, daemon ? Never !'

The image of the Primarch vanished as he returned to the world of flesh and matter, leaving the thousand-headed god alone with a web of fate unmade by the rebellion of he who should have been its champion. For a timeless moment, there was silence, as the minions of the god looked upon their master, fearful of his anger. Then, dark laughter resonated through the Warp, as the God of Change delighted in this new development and the opportunities it offered.

'There will be a reckoning,' the voices repeated, calmer this time. 'Kairos ! My Oracle ! Attend me !'

No one outside of the Fifteenth Legion's highest circles know what he found there, but it worked. As Prospero trembled from the psychic feedback of the Crimson King's gambit, Magnus put an end to his sons' degeneration. Whatever mean he employed, it left him much weakened, according to Kallidus, a remembrancer who attached himself to the Crimson King much before the remembrancers became an official part of the Great Crusade. Many theorize that the Primarch used his own considerable power to extend some kind of blessing upon all carrying his bloodline, warding off the mutagenic effects of their psychic powers. The events that followed the end of the Scouring and the loss of the Cyclops, many decades later, certainly point us toward that conclusion.

What is known, however, is that during that journey through the Sea of Souls, Magnus learned of the existence and terrible threat of the Chaos Gods, though he didn't understand exactly the import of what he had seen immediately. At once, he went to the Emperor, telling his father of the four terrible powers he had witnessed, and the numberless legions under their command. Despite having just saved his sons from abject degeneration, Magnus was greatly agitated, on the verge of hysteria as the horrors he had seen flashed endlessly in his mind.

The Emperor, through a mix of psychic purification and fatherly reassurance, calmed His son's fears. He told Magnus that what he had seen in the Warp was indeed a terrible threat, but one that had been known to Him for a long time, and that He had taken measures against it. In time, the Emperor promised, Magnus would be told what these measures were, and the true nature of this trans-dimensional enemy. But for now, the Crimson King had a great task to attend to – there were sons who needed his help to rebuild their all but ruined Legion. Magnus, who had spent his life so far as a scholar, a leader of men and a researcher of the arcane, now needed to learn the arts of war.

The Crimson King journeyed to Terra, where he spent several months alongside his brother Perturabo, who had been rediscovered by the Emperor while Magnus toiled to save his sons. The two of them bonded quickly, and explored the ruins of Old Earth side by side, revelling equally in the ancient discoveries they unearthed. However, their time together soon ran out, and both of them went on to take official command of their Legions, each pledging to always stand at the other's side if they ever needed it.

Magnus named his Legion the Thousand Sons, so that they would always remember how close to utter extinction they had come, and would ever struggle to avoid facing such a fate again. In return, they changed the Legion's colors, painting their armor in red to honor their Primarch, and taking as their emblem the sun-rune of Prospero. For just as night would always be followed by day, so had the sons of Magnus returned to glory once more.

The Fifteenth Legion returned to the Great Crusade, its Primarch leading it to new victories and conquests. With a new flux of recruits from Prospero, the numbers of the Thousand Sons swelled, though they never quite reached those of the other Legions. At Magnus' command, the Legion was reorganised, with the Cults being installed as a way for the sons of the Crimson King to best learn how to master their power.

The Thousand Sons' Cults

When Magnus took command of the Fifteenth Legion, he created the Legionary Cults, a system that would allow his sons to learn the Arts in a controlled fashion, so that they would never lose control of their powers. Inspired by the teaching structure of Prospero, each of the Cults specialized in one particular type of abilities, and almost every single Legionary belonged to one – only those with too little psychic potential weren't part of this system.

There were five Cults in all. The Corvidae focused on precognition, the Athanaeans on telepathy, the Pavoni on physiokinesis, the Pyrae on pyrokinesis, and the Raptora on telekinesis. At the head of each cult was a Magister Templi, the Astartes best versed in the Cult's secrets. Though the title held no official authority, those who carried it were always Captains at the least, and it granted them some seniority over those of same rank.

Now, with the Thousand Sons much diminished and scattered across the galaxy, the Cults still exist as a classification of powers and schools of training. But there are no Magister Templi – hierarchy is determined solely by one's knowledge of the Arts.

The Cults' teachings eventually spread to the Librarius of the other Legions which didn't frown upon the use of psychic powers – safe for the Sixth Legion, which had always had its own tradition of psychic users (though the sons of Fenris claimed them to be something else entirely) and would never have allowed the Fifteenth's "maleficarum" to taint it.

Despite their low numbers, the Thousand Sons earned a tally of victories worthy of any Legion. Few enemies in the galaxy could match the strength of the Legiones Astartes, and when combined with the psychic might that flooded through Magnus' gene-line, almost none could even hope to resist. The Fifteenth Legion shattered alien empires and human tyrants alike, combining bolter and blade with the secrets of the Cults.

On every human world they encountered, regardless of whether compliance was achieved through force of arms or diplomacy, the Thousand Sons sought all the knowledge that the civilization had managed to preserve through the Old Night. Not the technological lore, which would have put them at odds with the magos of the Mechanicum, but the wisdom of the lost ages, the philosophical texts and historical memoires. These documents were copied and sent to Prospero and the other worlds of the circle of library-worlds that came to be known as the Prosperine Dominion.

The Prosperine Dominion

During the time of the Great Crusade, most Legions had at least one planet under their direct control, to serve as a recruiting ground, training place for the aspirants, or a hundred other uses. In most cases, the homeworld of the Legion's Primarch served as the core of that nearly-independant empire, apart from a few obvious cases (such as the Imperial Fists).

The Thousand Sons were never great enough in numbers to warrant a full sub-empire of their own, and instead dedicated the worlds under their protection to another purpose. The Prosperine Dominion, as it came to be known, was composed of a dozen planets at its peak, half of which were library-worlds, dedicated solely to the storage and study of ancient knowledge. The Dominion was centred on Prospero, with each world being only a short distance from the Legion's homeworld. There, entire lineages of librarians spent their entire existences cataloguing the findings of their Astartes masters from across the galaxy. To the Imperium's intellectual elite, the right to peruse the archives gathered by the Thousand Sons was beyond priceless.

Things have changed, of course, since the Burning of Prospero. The Prosperine Dominion still exists, but it is much reduced in size, and its worlds serve a much different purpose.

Despite the salvation Magnus had brought them, the reputation of the Thousand Sons remained muddy throughout the Great Crusade. The marks of Old Night remained on many worlds, bringing with them tales of wild psykers and the horrors they had wrought. Even among the Primarchs, Magnus' status was ambivalent : some, like Perturabo, Horus and others, regarded him as a good strategist and a powerful warrior, who could also be a diplomat when it was required. Others, first among whose were Mortarion and Russ, disliked his reliance on psychic powers, and the fact that his Legion was mostly made of sons of Prospero – a world either of them would have put to the torch had they been the first to reach it.

These tensions between the Space Wolves and the Thousand Sons reached a paroxysm during the Battle of Shrike. For several years, forces of the Word Bearers had been engaged in battle against the Avenian Empire, a human civilization that had refused the offer to integrate the Imperium. Lorgar's sons, unable to break the Avenian Empire's hold over the Ark Reach Secundus sector, called for aid from their fellow Legionaries. Both Magnus and Russ answered the call, though if Lorgar had known they would both arrive, he would doubtlessly have arranged matters differently.

Soon enough, the arrival of two more Legions managed to overcome the Avenian resistance, and the Imperial forces cornered the resisting empire on its capital-world, Heliosa. The Avenian fought with grim determination, and the battles were fierce, but eventually they were forced back into one last city, Shrike. This city was defended by gigantic fortifications, shielded from orbital bombardments and guarded by hundreds of thousands of soldiers. The Space Wolves launched assault after assault, but were pushed back each time, taking grievous losses. When the Thousand Sons arrived from the subjugation of another city, they immediately deployed their powers upon Shrike's defenders.

Avenian soldiers turned on their comrades, while entire sections of the fortifications fell apart under the telekinetic grasp of the Raptora Cult. The sons of Magnus charged into the openings the psychic assault had created. In a matter of hours, the city had fallen, with the last leaders of the Avenian Empire either dead or captured. But another battle almost erupted immediately.

The Space Wolves felt cheated of their victory by the Thousand Sons, denouncing their use of "black magick" and "maleficarum". The Thousand Sons replied by calling the sons of Fenris a bunch of ignorant barbarians and hypocrites, pointing at the Rune Priests standing right among their accusers. Tempers ran hot on both side, and Russ and Magnus would have come to blows there and then had it not been for the intervention of Lorgar. The Primarch of the Word Bearers managed to separate his brothers, half by diplomacy and half by swearing that his own warriors would shoot them all if they opened fire. Each Legion returned to its ships and quickly left the planet, leaving the Seventeenth to take care of the campaign's aftermath and creating a feud that would only grow worse over the years.

When the Ork empire was shattered at the battle of Ullanor, the Emperor summoned His sons to witness the Triumph that would mark this greatest of victories. Magnus came to congratulate his brothers who had taken part in the battle, but also because he had sensed some new developments in the Sea of Souls, and wished to talk to his father about them.

We do not know what the Emperor and Magnus talked about, but when the Master of Mankind announced His decision to withdraw from the Great Crusade and hand over overall command to Horus, He also declared that the Crimson King would accompany Him back to Terra, to help Him in the work ahead. This caused much speculation among the Imperial forces present about the nature of that work, but the Emperor also refused to speak of what He planned – even to Horus, when the newly appointed Warmaster asked.

Magnus selected the elite of his Legion to come with him back to Terra. This selection didn't target the most powerful warriors, but the keenest minds, those who would best be able to aid in the Emperor's grand project. The rest of the Fifteenth Legion was placed under the command of First Captain Ahzek Ahriman, and seconded to the newly renamed Sons of Horus, so that the new Warmaster may rely on their aid in his new duties.

Ahzek Ahriman, Keeper of the Lore

A Terran-born, Ahzek Ahriman was a psyker of incredible power, possibly the most powerful to have ever lived apart from the Emperor and the Primarchs. Born among the clans of the Achaemenid Empire, he had been part of the very first wave of aspirants to be inducted into the Fifteenth Legion, alongside his twin brother Ohrmuzd. They both quickly rose in the ranks, but tragically, Ohrmuzd was lost to the flesh-change before the Legion was reunited with Magnus and the Crimson King put an end to the plague of mutation.

According to ancient texts, the death of his brother changed Ahriman, turning him more cold and distant. He dedicated his life to the Legion, and became its First Captain as well as the Magister Templi of the Corvidae. When Magnus was recalled to Terra by the Emperor, most expected that Ahriman would accompany his Primarch. Instead, Magnus gave his First Captain command of the Fifteenth Legion, as well as the Book of Magnus, a grimoire in which the Crimson King had written all the arcane knowledge he had accumulated over the centuries.

The Book of Magnus proved instrumental when Ahriman had to lead a circle of Librarians from the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Legions during the incident of Xenobia Prime to save the soul of Horus Lupercal from the Primordial Annihilator.

On Terra, Magnus was finally revealed the true nature of the dark powers he had sensed in the Warp decades before. He learned of Chaos, and of the Emperor's plan to defeat it once and for all. The Master of Mankind had discovered an ancient Webway gate on Terra, and sought to master the Labyrinthine Dimension, so that Mankind could use it to bypass Warp travel entirely. By combining this with the peace that the Imperium would bring to the galaxy, it was His hope that eventually, the Dark Gods would starve, and the ancient corruption that the War in Heavens had created would be erased.

The Crimson King saw at once the scope of that plan, and the titanic efforts that would be required for it to have even the slightest chance of working. At his command, his sons began to work alongside the Emperor's savants, bringing their knowledge of the Warp to the research. Swift progress was made, but there remained much to do before the Emperor's great work could even begin to be tested. Magnus feared that it would take centuries before the work was complete, and doubted that the Dark Gods would remain silent during that time. Almost unconsciously, he began to devise another, alternative plan – one that was just as titanic in scope, but could be implemented more readily.

One day, not long before the Nikaea Council was called, Magnus couldn't keep his silence any longer, and presented this plan to his father. Magnus was hoping that Mankind could evolve like the Eldar, gaining species-wide psychic powers that could be catalysed into creating "gods" inspired by the Imperial Truth to shelter the Imperium from the depredations of the Ruinous Powers. With the Imperial Truth as the basis for morality and the Emperor's guidance, it was his belief that they would avoid the fate of the Eldar.

The Emperor chastised His son, remembering him that He had proclaimed, at the beginning of the Great Crusade, that there would be no gods in the galaxy. Magnus argued that these gods would actually be nothing more than psychic projections, constructs of will and ideals. But the Master of Mankind pointed to those of the Eldar who had not fallen to the darkness, and how they had begun to worship their own gods, believing in the creation myths that their ancestors had woven out of cloth aeons before. Magnus' plan depended on the Emperor being always present to ensure Mankind did not follow the same path to decadence as the children of Isha, and that notion was abhorrent to the Emperor. It was His hope, He explained, that one day Mankind would no longer need Him.

Chastised, Magnus returned to his work on the galactic network, but his research was soon interrupted when the call came for all Primarchs available to travel to Nikaea, where the question of psychic powers in the Astartes Legions would be addressed once and for all.

Remembering his recent rebuke, Magnus chose to remain silent during the entirety of the Council, leaving others, such as Perturabo, speak in the defense of the Librarius. When the Emperor gave His judgement – that the Librarius be maintained, as a weapon of war and a way of controlling psychic powers – he was vindicated, yet found himself more worried than joyful. Mortarion was furious, but chose to trust in the Emperor's decision, but Leman Russ was far from being as accepting of the Master of Mankind's decree. The Wolf King publicly denounced the decision as a terrible mistake, and when Magnus tried to talk to his brother, to convince him that their father knew what He was doing, the lord of Fenris struck at the Cyclops.

Magnus was so surprised by his brother's aggression that he didn't react to it, and was only saved by the intervention of his Equerry, Amon. The old warrior hurled himself between the two Primarchs, and was nearly cut in half by the Wolf King's blow. Russ fled from his crime before he could be stopped by the other Primarchs or the Custodians, while Magnus tended to his fallen mentor, desperately trying to save his life.

This final event cast a dark shadow over what should have been a great victory for the Thousand Sons. As Amon was placed within a Dreadnought, Magnus met with his son Ahriman, telling him to care for Horus during their journeys to come – for the Crimson King could sense a great darkness gathering in the Sea of Souls. After one final meeting, the Primarchs went their separate ways, Magnus returning with his father to Terra once more, to continue his labour on the Great Work. At least, this time, his old friend Perturabo would come with him, and while he couldn't tell him of the Emperor's designs yet, Magnus relished the opportunities of more discussions with his brother.

Years later, while Perturabo was away dealing with a xenos attack on Olympia Horus returned to Terra. Magnus listened to his brother's tale of the Interex, and of the assault Lupercal had suffered. With the Emperor's approval Magnus told his brother all he knew of Chaos and its daemonic servants, at long last relieving himself from the burden of secrecy. Horus was angry that such an important truth had been concealed from him, and hurt that his father hadn't trusted him with it. But he put aside his feelings, and focused on learning all that he could of this new threat.

While he was silently proud of Ahriman for succeeding in saving Horus from the Dark Gods' grasp, Magnus could feel that this was but the first strike of a prolonged conflict. At long last, the Ruinous Powers had made their move against the Imperium. The Warp was roaring, and all members of the reunited Fifteenth Legion could sense the same thing – this was not over. In fact, it was only beginning.

Mere hours after the arrival of Horus, a ship bearing the emblem of the Seventh Legion emerged in the Sol System. Commanding it was Captain Alexis Pollux, who described himself as "once of the Imperial Fists". Pollux told Magnus and Horus of their brothers' betrayal. Guilliman, Sanguinius, Ferrus Manus, and his own gene-sire, Rogal Dorn, had turned against the Emperor and slaughtered those of their sons who would not follow them into rebellion on the fields of Isstvan III.

This revelation shook Magnus to his core. Yet even as Horus began to plan the counter-strike to Guilliman's betrayal, seeking to take advantage of the fact that it had been revealed early, the Crimson King felt that this, too, wasn't the end – not even the true beginning …

The Burning of Prospero

Even as Horus raced to Terra, filled with new knowledge of the galaxy, the forces of Chaos were striking another blow through their unwitting pawns thousands of light-years away. Leman Russ had returned from his Errance, his mind bent on averting visions of psychic doom for the entire human species.

Through extensive research of the logs of the vessels who escaped the Rout's onslaught and the testimonies of those who were present, both human and Astartes, we now have a much clearer knowledge of the proceedings of what would come to be called the Burning of Prospero, or the Razing, depending on the translation of the original Prosperine term that is being employed.

Prospero was defended by several orbital installations, as well as a handful of Legion ships that took turns to scout the system's edge. When the Space Wolves armada arrived, the one scouting was the Tlaloc, the ship of the current commander of the forces present on Prospero : Iskandar Khayon, whose name would come to echo into legend for his defense of the doomed planet and his actions during the rest of the Heresy and beyond.

Iskandar Khayon 'The Black', Scourge of the Wolves

Born of Prospero, Iskandar was the officer in command of the Planet of Dust's defenses when the Space Wolves attacked the world. This rank had been bestowed upon him by Magnus himself after the Siege of Ullanor, and while Iskandar resented being taken away from the frontlines, he soon learned that his Primarch had very good reasons to send him home.

On his arrival at Prospero, Khayon learned that his mortal sister, Itzara, had fallen victim to some of the few remaining Psychneuein. She still lived, but by the time the chirurgeon-servitors had removed the larvae from her brain, almost half of it had been devoured or excised. She had been reduced to an idiotic child, unable to even move.

Though he was an Astartes, Khayon still felt as great a connection for his mortal family as any human who ever lived – something which was regarded as both a blessing and a curse by his battle-brothers. He refused to have his sister live that way, and brought her to the tech-adepts of the Prosperine Mechanicum outpost. There, she became something more, and less, than human : the central consciousness of the Anamensis, a construct-mind of hundred of brains, linked together and capable of directing the systems of an entire ship. The Anamensis was installed within Khayon's own ship, the Tlaloc, where she acted as the vessel's machine-spirit.

During the Burning, Khayon led from the front, marshalling the defenders of Prospero with all the skill and fury of a son who had seen his parents' home wiped from existence by orbital bombardment. He fought personally against the Rune Priests, confronting six of the Rout's deluded Sorcerers and obliterated them in a display of psychic power that scorched his armor black, a color it would keep for the rest of Khayon's life, bearing it as a symbol of all that had been lost on Prospero. This led to his nickname as "Khayon the Black".

It is said the Khayon was the first of the Heralds of Prospero, these mystical warriors who walk to war with the ghosts of the fallen world alongside them. Accounts from the Roboutian Heresy speak of how, during the Siege of Terra, he let loose a horde of vengeful spirits upon the traitor forces, tearing an entire Company of Imperial Fists to pieces. Afterwards, during the Scouring, he exorcised thousands of Neverborn, banishing them back to the Warp with a skill unseen in the rest of the Imperium. These daemons remember Khayon well, and whisper his name with whatever passes for fear in their inhuman minds. A hundred years after the end of the Heresy, when the Thousand Sons and their allies laid siege to the Fang on Fenris, it was Khayon who was granted the honor of leading the charge.

After the end of the Scouring and the loss of Magnus, Khayon had a violent argument with Ahriman, the reason of which is unknown, and left the Imperium with his old mentor Ashur-Kai and the Tlaloc, never to be seen again.

By using xenos technology, the Space Wolves were able to hide their approach, both from conventional scanners and from the Thousand Sons' psychic senses. Only when they were in range of the orbital defenses did they reveal themselves, unleashing a deluge of assault crafts on the space stations and reducing the few ships to scrap through overwhelming force. In short order, the Space Wolves were masters of Prospero's orbital space. The Razing could begin.

Fire rained from the skies as the sons of Fenris bombarded every city of Prospero, seeking to wipe out as much of its population as possible. Of all the Prosperine cities, only Tizca, the City of Light, had any protection from orbital assault, and even its mighty void shields were soon breached by the combined might of the Sixth Legion's fleet. Ancient libraries and pyramids were annihilated, while the Thousand Sons deployed their psychic might to shield as much of their own fortifications as possible and hurried the terrified citizens of Tizca into the dubious shelter they provided.

In the heart of Tizca stood Captain Khayon, his mind burning with rage and sorrow in equal measure. The son of Magnus had just witnessed the house of his mortal parents explode, and sensed the terrified final moments of his kin. When the Space Wolves landed outside the ruin that Tizca had become, Khayon reached out to those of his brothers who had survived the initial bombardment. There were several hundreds of them, arrayed against the thousands of Wolves coming upon them. Even with the help of the Spireguards, who had managed to gather in order of battle despite the utter chaos, this wouldn't be enough. But Khayon had a plan.

Mind-linked with his battle-brothers, Khayon sent his mind into the desert surrounding Tizca, searching for the primitive minds of the beasts that had devoured his sister's brain. Using ancient words of power that had first been pronounced in the era when the Prosperine had thought to fight the predators of their world rather than flee from them, Khayon summoned the Psychneuein to the battle.

From a thousand nests they came, charging the Space Wolves in their urge to reach the source of the psychic call. Almost every Psychneuein still alive on Prospero had, over the course of the decades, migrated to the surroundings of Tizca, drawn to its bounty of psychic souls like a moth to a flame. The Warp-born predators fell upon the Rout like a cataclysm from ancient myths, driven mad by Khayon's spell. They pulsed their larvae into all the sons of Russ in equal measure, for all of them bore a shard of their so-called wyrd, the power they insisted came from the spirits of Fenris.

Hundreds of Wolves died that way, trashing around as their brains were being eaten from the inside. But soon, the Sixth Legion destroyed the Psychneuein, and resumed its advance on Tizca, determined to punish the Thousand Sons for what they saw as another display of fell sorcery – ultimate proof, though they did not need it, of Prospero's corruption. They reached the destroyed hab-blocks and ran through paved streets, marching straight toward the city's center, where remained the last standing pyramids.

Many and terrible are the tales of the Heroes of Prospero. Ankhu Anen, Guardian of the Great Library, who fought and slew sixty Space Wolves before being felled by the Rune Priest Ohthere Wyrdmake. Auramagma, who turned himself into a fiery meteor as he charged through the ranks of the Wolves, hoping to immolate Leman Russ alongside himself. Khalophis, who gave his life so that the ancient Warlord Titan Canis Vertex would wreak destruction upon the Sixth Legion. But also Ekhos Perreon, sergeant of the Spireguard, who killed a Rune Priest with a knife wrought from the bone of one of Prospero's ancient philosophers. Humans and transhumans alike died well that day, spitting their defiance to the Wolves' face with their last breath.

Yet all the bravery in the galaxy could not overcome such numbers as the Thousand Sons and their allies faced, and soon they were cornered within the last and greatest of Tizca's pyramids, the Pyramid of Photep. There the sons of Magnus prepared to make their last stand – but Khayon refused to let this be the end. Thousands of civilians had taken refuge within the structure, thousands who were the last of Prospero's people. He would not let them perish, not if there was any way to save them.

At the very moment of the battle's beginning, Khayon had reached out to his old mentor, Ashur-Kai Qezremah, whom he had departed Prospero with his ship, the Tlaloc, to patrol the system's edge. Khayon had ordered Ashur-Kai to remain safely away from the Sixth Legion armada, hiding beneath one of Prospero's gas giants. But now, as the Wolves gathered for the final assault, Khayon needed the Tlaloc to risk destruction if there was any chance to salvage anything from the ruination of Prospero.

It was very unlikely that the ship would manage to get close enough for Khayon to undertake his last, desperate gamble before the Wolves overwhelmed the Pyramid of Photep. Yet after all the slaughter they had wrought, the warriors of Fenris seemed unwilling to push their advantage. They surrounded the pyramid but didn't push further.

It only took a few moments for the Thousand Sons to sense what their enemies were planning. In another part of the city, on the ruins of what had been Magnus' own tower, the Rune Priests had gathered. Great and terrible energies were whirling around them, and fifteen Thousand Sons had been crucified in a circle, their power neutralized by xenos drugs. Khayon watched from afar, and soon, an horrible realization dawned upon him. The Wolves didn't simply intend to murder Prospero. Whether the rest of the Sixth Legion knew it or not, the Rune Priests had started a ritual that would channel the Warp energies generated by the world's death and use them to perform a death curse upon every son of Magnus – even on the Primarch himself. The sheer hubris of such a ritual, the arrogance of the self-proclaimed Executioners of the Emperor, almost made Khayon physically sick. It was only because of dark rumors about the Space Wolves' past that he even entertained the notion that was the barbarians were attempting was possible.

But if he couldn't interrupt the ritual, Khayon could still hope to disturb it. The reasons for the Space Wolves' delayed assault was now clear : they were waiting for the Rune Priests' signal, so that the death of the final sons of Magnus would coincide with their ritual's climax. The Captain's desperate plan had suddenly become much less of a forlorn hope.

And indeed, when the Space Wolves finally launched their assault, under the psychic choir of fifteen Thousand Sons undergoing barbaric tortures, the Tlaloc had reached its position just beyond the reach of the Sixth Legion's armada. Channelling all of his power, Khayon used his mental link to his old teacher Ashur-Kai to open a portal through the Warp leading from the Pyramid to the vessel. While a group of Legionaries and Spireguards led a rearguard action to hold back the horde, the surviving people of Prospero poured through the gateway, carrying with them a fraction of the lore the Thousand Sons had accumulated on Prospero. Soon, Khayon stood alone before the passage.

But before he could pass through, a Space Wolf called to him. The warrior of the Rout had become separated from his pack when roaming through the labyrinthine Pyramid of Photep. He now saw a enemy sorcerer, and arrogantly demanded that this foe face him in battle, proclaiming his name as Eyarik-Born-of-Fire, champion of the Sixth Legion, agent of Russ' rightful retribution upon this sinful world.

Rage.

It burned through Khayon's blood like acid. Despite all of his control, all of the Enumerations, from the moment he had sensed the first deaths in orbit, rage had been in his thoughts. As he watched Tizca burn, as he felt each death through his sixth sense, that rage had grown. Even as he led the resistance and planned the survivors' escape, that rage had occupied his thoughts. It would not leave him, and he would not have it any other way.

As the Wolf's challenge rang across the underground room, Khayon knew that the smart thing to do was to cross the portal. What did the warrior behind him matter ? He was but one killer among a Legion of traitors. Could his life balance the billions that had died on this world ? Could his death pay for the civilization the Rout had destroyed ?

Khayon had a duty, to bring the survivors to Terra, to warn Magnus and the Emperor of the Sixth Legion's treachery. His master, his sister, they waited on the Tlaloc, and he knew they wouldn't run until he was aboard. Delaying here would endanger all those he had fought to save.

Slowly, his mind torn between two imperatives, Khayon turned and saw his challenger with his mortal eyes. Eyarik-Born-of-Fire was tall and proud, with the handsome face of a barbarian king. While Khayon's armor was charred black, the Wolf's was in mint condition and covered in runes of warding that made Khayon's mind ache. In his hand, the champion held a power axe, beautifully carved so that the blade looked like a howling wolf. The weapon's runic name was inscribed upon the blade : Saern. Truth, in one of the many Fenrisian dialects.

The rage grew cold. The chorus of angry voices at the back of his mind suddenly went silent. He thought of the Tlaloc, and found that he didn't care anymore. When revenge is all that is left to you, you take it no matter the cost.

'Begone,' spoke Iskandar Khayon. And with that simple word, his will was done.

The Heresy : The War Beneath the Throne

'Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.'
Fragment of an Old Earth's manuscript, estimated M2

With the arrival of Khayon's shattered Companies and Horus' return to Terra, all of the Thousand Sons were now gathered on the Throneworld, safe for a few who had been sent on missions of their own across the galaxy by the Great Crusade's demands. Together, they began to work on reinforcing the defenses built by the Iron Warriors, casting powerful wards that would keep the influence of the Ruinous Powers at bay – many of which still stand to this day.

Yet their Primarch wasn't among them. Just as Khayon crossed the portal, the axe of his dead enemy in hand, the Rune Priests' ritual had reached its end. The power of the Warp poured through them, and a terrible psychic blow left Prospero, coursing through the Sea of Souls at the speed of thought. Though the ritual had failed to reach its intended power, it was still mighty indeed, and might have slain Magnus outright, had it struck him directly.

But Magnus had been in the Throneroom when Prospero had fallen, working on the Emperor's great device. The blow hit the wards placed upon the Webway gate with a force worthy of gods, and shattered them, exhausting all of its energy in the process. Their path unbarred, the million millions daemons that had waited on the other side poured through. At once, the Emperor, Magnus and the Custodians had begun a fight that would last the entirety of the Heresy.

Horus and Perturabo were left in charge of the defence of Terra, while Ahriman directed the efforts of the Thousand Sons. As the Emperor and the Crimson King battled underground, some lesser creatures of the Warp also found their way through the damaged wards of Terra, no longer forced back by the Emperor's psychic aura, for He was wholly focused on preventing the greater incursion. The sons of Magnus walked the hive-cities of the Throneworld, finding rogue psykers, mutants, and secret worshippers of the Ruinous Powers who, for the first time in more than two hundred years, suddenly found their prayers answered once more. Several times, the Thousand Sons battled against daemonhosts, protecting the people of Terra from threats that they had long believed to be no more than ancient myths. Despite the sons of Magnus' best efforts to hide the truth, rumors soon began to spread, and turned into a hundred legends that persist to this day, of beasts of darkness and the crimson warriors who battled them during the darkest of days.

The years of the Roboutian Heresy passed, with the Arch-Traitor drawing ever closer. During these days, amidst the endless tide of daemons that he fought side by side with his father, Magnus received a terrible vision, intended as a taunt from the Dark God Tzeentch. The Crimson King saw what had become of his brother, Lion El'Jonson, and wept at the fate of the knight-lord of Caliban. Taking a short time away from the fight, Magnus sent a message through the Warp to Luther, who even now awaited his liege's return on Caliban, unaware of his treachery. This warning would prove instrumental in denying the Traitor Legions a considerable asset, though it would cost many loyal lives and the First Legion's homeworld.

Finally, the Traitor Legions and their allies, both mortal and daemonic, reached the Sol System, and the final battle of the Heresy began in earnest. After Guilliman's armies had breached through the orbital defenses of Terra, the forces of Chaos flooded the planet, and the Thousand Sons stood upon the walls of the Imperial Palace. At their side were the Sons of Horus, the Iron Warriors, and the Death Guards, and together they wreaked terrible destruction upon the enemies of the Imperium.

Then the Dark Angels' Sorcerers gathered in dread circles of their own, and cast evil spells upon the defenders of the Imperial Palace. Entire Companies of Astartes were lost to grotesque mutations and Warp-fire, and the Thousand Sons were forced to withdraw many of their Librarians from the walls so that they could focus their minds on countering the sorcery of the First Legion. Only those of the sons of Magnus with little psychic power or an inability to mind-link remained on the walls. Among them was Amon, the former Equerry of Magnus, who had neared death at the Wolf King's hands, but had been reborn in the form of a Dreadnought.

Amon, Equerry of Magnus

In his youth, Amon was haunted by dreams of Tizca in flames. Only when Magnus arrived on Prospero did the nightmares abate, and Amon believed that the Crimson King's presence had somehow averted the terrible vision.

When the Emperor came to Prospero, Amon was a grown man, far too old to become a Space Marine. At Magnus' demand, he became one of the so-called "false Astartes", akin to Luther of the Dark Angels. He was given extensive genetic modifications, and access to the best equipment the Imperium could provide. Combined with his precognitive abilities, this made him more than able to fight alongside the rest of the Fifteenth Legion, becoming the Magister Templi of the Corvidae. For many years, he led this section of the Thousand Sons to war, before leaving command to Ahzek Ahriman and becoming the Primarch's Equerry.

After his wounds at the hands of Leman Russ at the Council of Nikaea, Amon was healed by his Primarch. But the power of the Cyclops, diminished by the constant warding of his sons' souls, was not enough to fully repair the damage wrought by the Wolf King's fury, and Amon had to be interred in a Dreadnought. He returned with his father to Terra, where he lent his wisdom to his brethren in between his moments of rest. When Khayon returned with news of Prospero's fate, Amon found his youthful vision had come true, and vowed revenge on the scions of Chaos. Disregarding slumber from that point on, he fought during the Heresy to help keep Terra safe, and faced the Traitor Legions on the walls of the Imperial Palace during the Siege. There he slew many traitors before being finally killed by Ferrus Manus when attempting to enter the Cavea Ferrum, in the last hours of the Heresy.

For days, the Thousand Sons psychically battled the Dark Angels, under the direction of their First Captain Ahriman. One the fifth week of the Siege, however, the walls of the Palace were breached by a warband of the Sixth Legion, led by the Rune Priest Ohthere Wyrdmake and the champion Bjorn Fell-Handed. Ahriman duelled with the Rune Priest, and destroyed his opponent's mind by revealing to him the truth of what he and his Legion had become : murderers of innocents, who justified their paranoia with self-delusions and false righteousness born of fear and bloodthirst. Wyrdmake's very soul was destroyed by the power of the First Captain, yet Ahriman would have died at Bjorn's claws had it not been for the intervention of Lucius the Reborn. The undying warrior of the Emperor's Children stopped the Space Wolf champion, and his mere presence forced the Wolves into a retreat.

Yet the damage had been done. For a moment, the circle of the Thousand Sons had been disturbed, and the Dark Angels had capitalized on the opportunity their allies of the Sixth Legion had bought them. Ahriman had to use all of his power and will to prevent the entire outer wall from collapsing under their psychic assault, and the strain was such that Phosis T'kar, Magister Templi of the Raptora Cult, burned himself to a husk to repeal the advantage the foul Sorcerers had gained.

Mere hours after Phosis' death, Horus and Sanguinius duelled at the Eternity Gate, and the Warmaster fell under the fangs of the Fallen Angel. The Primarch of the Ninth Legion was reborn as an avatar of the Dark Prince, Slaanesh, and the Blood Angels finally focused their attention on the Palace instead of the Terran population. Only the arrival of the Night Lords and the Emperor's Children, emerging from their own path through the Webway, prevented the Traitor Legions from overwhelming the walls.

When the Mournival destroyed Sanguinius' physical incarnation, the tide clearly turned against the traitors for the first time since they had landed on Terra. They could still win, for they held superior numbers, even with the Blood Angels incapacitated by Sanguinius' fall. But the Warp was roiling with the coming of the Twelfth and Seventeenth Legions, returning from the Ruinstorm with vengeance in their hearts. When they arrived, there would be no more hope of victory for the traitor armada. His back to the wall, Guilliman was forced to gamble everything on one last stratagem.

The Arch-Traitor himself led one massive assault on the gates of the Imperial Palace, accompanied by three of his brothers. The wards the Thousand Sons had raised and the walls the Iron Warriors had built were equally shattered by the advance of the four Traitor Primarchs, while the loyal Space Marines who stood against them were obliterated, barely slowing their advance.

Three Traitor Primarchs entered the Cavea Ferrum : Roboute Guilliman, Rogal Dorn, and Lion El'Jonson. Of the three, only El'Jonson had shed his mortality to become an immortal prince of the Warp, but he was far from being at his peak strength. At Caliban, his battle against his foster father Luther had ended badly for the Lion, for though he had been victorious, his chest bled forever from a wound that was as physical as it was metaphorical. Yet still, as a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch, his sorcerous power was considerable, and should he fight the Emperor alongside Guilliman, then the Master of Mankind couldn't hope to prevail.

So it was that Magnus deployed his powers across the labyrinth, combining his psychic abilities with the non-euclidian geometries of Perturabo's constructions to separate each of the Traitor Primarchs and direct them to their own individual battles. While Perturabo faced his old rival Dorn and the Emperor fought against the Arch-Traitor, it fell to Magnus to banish the fallen master of the First Legion. Meanwhile, the Emperor's greatest and most devoted servant, Malcador the Sigillite, sat upon the Golden Throne, keeping the daemonic hordes at bay through sheer psychic power.

The duel between Magnus and Lion El'Jonson was sorcerous as well as physical. The Crimson King was exhausted by the years of endless battles against the daemonic legions, but the Daemon Primarch was also severely weakened by the wound Luther had dealt him. In the end, thanks to the old knight's dying gift, Magnus was able to unravel the threads that linked Lion El'Jonson to the mortal plane, and cast his shrieking spirit into the Aether, to the foot of the Great Deceiver's throne.

After his victory, Magnus sensed an event of momentous import taking place in the center of the Cavea Ferrum, right where it had been planned for the Emperor to confront Guilliman. He knew then that Guilliman had fallen, and felt the traitors run from the Throneworld – but he also sensed something else. Rushing through the twisted corridors, Magnus beheld a vision of absolute despair : his father was dying, and a scarred and grim revenant that the Crimson King only barely recognised as Fulgrim stood guard over Him. Beyond them, Malcador was gone from the Golden Throne, nothing but a pile of ashes remaining of the First Lord of Terra. Already, the daemonic hordes, temporarily cast back by the defeat of their champion Guilliman, were gathering anew.

With no time to find another way, Magnus dragged his father's body toward the Throne, while Perturabo, newly arrived to the scene of devastation, worked the ancient mechanisms. Never before had the Iron Lord laid eyes upon the wondrous machine, yet he understood its workings at a glance, and together, the Cyclops and his brother put the Emperor upon the Golden Throne, activating the stasis field and other preservation devices that would keep Him alive forevermore and enable Him to hold back the tide of Chaos.

The Heresy was over, but the Emperor was lost to Mankind. And with Him, so was lost His dream of a Humanity free from the Warp, and His plan to make that glorious vision reality.

Post-Heresy : The War of Fate

'My sons cry out for vengeance, and seek the blood of the Wolves. They speak of Fenris, and crave its destruction. Their nights are haunted with the screams of our murdered world, and they know no peace. In time, I shall lead them there, but there is much more important work to do first. My brothers have broken the galaxy apart, sundering the Veil, and the foulness of the Warp seeps into reality through a thousand wounds. All must be found, all must be closed. That is my task, and as long as it is not complete, I cannot allow my sons justice, nor myself the luxury of grief, or all that is shall become tainted by the Ruinous Powers. But I fear the cost to my sons.

Of all of them, it is for Iskandar that I fear the most. His rage has darkened his thoughts, and the hatred he feels for Russ' get grows with each passing week. He recognizes this and tries to contain it with meditation, but it is not enough. His dreams are haunted by wolves, and they press on the minds of those nearby. He thirsts for the death of the Sixth Legion, and all traitors with them. It hurts to see him like this, and yet, I cannot help but think that perhaps, this hatred makes him better suited to the new galaxy than any other of my sons, who for all their desire of justice are still consumed by sorrow.

For as I peer into the future, I see only darkness, and war unending.'
From the writings of Primarch Magnus, after the Siege of Terra

Although the Traitor Legions had been broken at Terra, the powers they had unleashed upon the galaxy during the Heresy cared little for the fall of Guilliman. Dozens of Warp Rifts had been opened, either deliberately or as a result of planet-wide carnages, and daemonic incursions raged unchecked on hundreds of world. Greatest of these wounds in reality was the rift of Pandorax, where the Iron Hands had first been dragged into damnation by the schemes of Nurgle, Chaos God of Decay. On the cursed daemon world of Pythos was a tear in the fabric of the universe through which thousands of daemons passed daily, forming a host that could very well grow until it threatened the recovering Imperium itself.

Even from Terra, Magnus could feel the taint of the rift, and the threat it represented. While other Legions hunted the traitors across the galaxy, Magnus gathered what resources he could to attack Pythos and close the rift. He found an unlikely ally in the person of his brother Mortarion, who knew also very well the danger posed by the daemonic portal. Together, the two Primarchs were able to draw far more military forces to their cause, and came to the Pandorax system with an armada worthy of the Great Crusade.

Yet despite all that might, the Battle of Pythos was to see the fall of Mortarion, under the claws of Daemon Primarch Vulkan, returned triumphant from the War of the Dragon, at the other side of the galaxy. Enraged by his brother's death, but determined to finish what they had started, Magnus managed to seal the Pythos gateway into the Warp, banishing the remaining daemonic hosts. Hundreds of Thousand Sons worked together to create the wards of the Damnation Cache over the location of the rift, to make sure that it would never be opened again.

After the Battle of Pythos, the Scouring continued for the Thousand Sons. Scattered across the stars, they fought to seal the other rifts opened during the Heresy, until the time that Magnus decreed that their task was complete. By that point, more than a century had passed, and the Thousand Sons still hungered for revenge. It was time, declared the Crimson King. At long last, the Fifteenth Legion would bring just retribution upon the treacherous Space Wolves. The time had come for them to go to Fenris.

The Battle of the Fang remained in the annals of the Thousand Sons as a great victory, as it did in those of their allies the Sons of Horus and the Imperial Regiments who were present. But in truth, it was a bitter victory, that came at great cost and did not prove to be the final destruction of the Space Wolves that the sons of Magnus had hoped for. With the intervention of Bjorn Fell-Handed at the last moment, many warriors of the Vlka Fenryka escaped. Fenris itself, however, was destroyed even more completely that Prospero had been, ripped apart by its own inner energies and the Warp Storm unleashed by the Fell-Handed's final, spiteful act of firing on the Fang with his ships.

In time, the Battle of the Fang would prove to be no more than another event in the long series of battles the Fifteenth and Sixth Legions would wage against each other over the millenia. This long-standing hatred would erupt once more a thousand years later, and end up costing much more to the Thousand Sons that they were prepared to give.

In the two-hundred and seventy-fourth year of the thirty-second millennium, a Black Crusade was declared against the Prosperine Dominion by the Chaos Lord Vaer Greyloc. Once, Greyloc had been the commander of the Twelfth Great Company, but his hold over his men had weakened since the Battle of the Fang, and his Great Company had fractured in several warbands. Yet Greyloc had not let this discourage him, and he had spent ten centuries plotting, gathering allies, and striking infernal bargains – all in the name of vengeance, and of finishing what the Space Wolves had started at Prospero. Greyloc's Black Crusade sought to purge the entire Dominion from human life, to destroy the Thousand Sons' fortresses and slay the Crimson King.

Ultimately, Greyloc was defeated, and slain by First Captain Ahriman. But during the final battle of the Black Crusade, the Legion's flagship, the Photep, was boarded while Magnus was on board. Leading the boarders was one of the Chaos Lord's allies, a powerful Lord of Change, who confronted Magnus and cast a powerful curse upon the Primarch before withdrawing and abandoning the Dark Angels contingent that had accompanied it aboard the vessel. The curse expelled Magnus' spirit from his body and into the Warp, where it remains to this day, engaged in an eternal conflict against the servants of Tzeentch. The Thousand Sons evacuated their Primarch's body from the ship just before the Dark Angels sabotaged its Warp drive, causing it to detonate. It is unknown whether the sons of the Lion knew that they were going to their doom when they boarded the Photep – doubtlessly they sought to avenge their Primarch's defeat during the Siege, perhaps not caring for the cost to themselves.

'I see it … my sons, I see it ! I see the Emperor's light, returning to the galaxy in its darkest hour … I see the fire of hope kindled anew, and the broken dreams reforged in the fires of war !'
Magnus' last words before succumbing to the curse and falling into a coma.

The Thousand Sons have vowed to find the daemon responsible and extract from it the truth of their Primarch's fate, and how to remedy to it. Over the centuries, this quest has been unsuccessful, but the sons of Magnus have learned much about the Lord of Change, including the name it uses the most : Sarthorael the Ever-Watcher, one of the most powerful Greater Daemons of Tzeentch. They have clashed with the creature several times, but so far, Sarthorael has always managed to either slay all its enemies or escape.

Soon after Magnus' spirit was lost to the vagaries of the Warp, the Thousand Sons began to suffer from a Legion-wide plague of mutations that immediately brought to the minds of the veterans the horrors they had endured before their Primarch was found. The flesh-change, kept at bay by Magnus for hundreds of years, had returned. The new Legion Master, Ahriman, threw himself into the search for a cure, studying his father's notes in the Book of Magnus, seeking to replicate the Primarch's feat. After years of research, during which the numbers of the Fifteenth Legion continued to decrease increasingly quickly, he believed that he had found a way.

Ahriman called for a gathering of the entire Legion on an uninhabited world within the Prosperine Dominion. There, together with several dozens of Librarians, he cast a spell called the Rubric, that he hoped would recreate the psychic warding Magnus had once raised around his sons.

None but the Thousand Sons were present on that nameless world, and they never spoke of what exactly happened after the ritual was cast. But where thousands of Legionaries had gathered, barely more than a thousand returned. These warriors were free of the flesh-change, but according to them, all the others – those whose psychic strength had been too weak to endure the Rubric's power – were dead. Ever since that day, the recruitment of new Thousand Sons has slowed to a crawl when compared to other Legions, despite the Fifteenth Legion having access to their Primarch's body and a great number of worlds from which to claim aspirants. Their numbers have slowly eroded over the millenia, and many Chaos Lords and other heretics have claimed that their extinction is but a matter of time.

Soon after the Rubric was cast, Ahriman disappeared, leaving the Thousand Sons leaderless. There are many claims that the former Legion Master wanders the Webway, though what his purpose is varies according to rumors. Some pretend that he seeks one of the missing Primarchs, others that he is looking for a way to return his father's spirit to his body, yet more that whatever his reason for entering the Webway, he is now running for his soul from a host of daemons. Most, though, especially among the Thousand Sons themselves, believe that he searches for a way to perfect the Rubric.

He marched in darkness, his path light only by points of light that seemed at once infinitely far and within his hand's reach. Corridors left the path he walked, some of them leading to blackness similar to the one he now crossed, others leading to openings to worlds he did not know. He felt the temptation to just cross any of the openings, to return to the material realm. But he continued walking. This was his penitence, and his absolution. His hands were red with his Legion's blood, and he would make things right. Perhaps it was his pride speaking – the same pride that had led him to believe he could emulate his father's work. Perhaps it was desperation, the urge to flee from his crime rather than face it.

In the end, it did not matter. The Exile kept walking, letting his mind follow the impossibly alien designs of the labyrinth, searching for its center. He was chasing a myth and he knew it – even those whose kin controlled it regarded it as little more than an ancient legend. But the Exile had seen myths before. He had been part of legend, witnessed and shaped history. This myth, the story of the Black Library, was the only hope he had. And so he walked, uncaring of how many centuries it would take.

Motion before him drew his attention away from his half-conscious reverie, and he raised his staff before him, ready to defend himself. Many times already he had been attacked, by beasts seeking to feast on his body and by creatures sent by enemies of his Legion.

But this newcomer was neither of these things. It was a silhouette of shadows, wearing a mask that was at once beautiful and terrifying on some primal level of the Exile's soul.

The silhouette motioned with one finger for the Exile to follow it, and walked into another corridor of the Webway.

Ahriman followed.

With the slow diminishing of the Fifteenth Legion and their protection of psykers and other individuals connected to the Warp, the Imperium slowly became more intolerant of the Warp-touched. Fear and hatred of the mutant grew, and the Sisters of Silence, already decimated during the Siege of Terra, suffered for it. With the recruitment of pariah becoming more and more difficult, and the Lords of Terra's repeated moves against them in order to gain political clout, the Order became a shadow of what it once was. Today, the Sisters of Silence still exist, but they are reduced to a handful of monasteries scattered across the Imperium, where they keep away from prying eyes. The Inquisition, especially the Ordo Malleus, protects these last outposts, for the Sisters of Silence are often a useful tool for the Inquisitors in their endless battles against daemons.

Also following from the Fifteenth Legion's weakening, ignorance and superstition have also been on the rise. The Inquisition's constant and ruthless suppression of all knowledge of the daemonic, combined with the Thousand Sons' no longer being able to keep all of their records alive in memory, has caused the Imperium's collective knowledge of the Great Enemy to fade. In the latest centuries, many Inquisitors have recognized the threat this poses, but all who have tried to do something about it have ended up walking the path of the Radical, corrupted by the knowledge they managed to acquire, and were hunted down by their colleagues, only reinforcing the Inquisition's belief in the suppression of such knowledge in the vicious circle.

Worst of all, perhaps, to the Thousand Sons, is how the distrust of the psykers is slowly spread to the other loyal Legions. After all, recruits are taken from human worlds, and all the psycho-conditioning they go through does not fully erase the beliefs they had when they were mortal. Over the years, the Fifteenth Legion has grown more and more isolated, for while the Librarians of other Legions can at least claim the connection of blood with their doubting brethren, the Thousand Sons are further removed. For now, this has had no other consequence that the sons of Magnus suffering from isolation, but the potential for some catastrophic misunderstanding remains.

And while the Imperium grows weaker with every passing millennium, more and more threats continue to appear. During the forty-first millennium, the Seers of the Corvidae foretold of a great power rising throughout the galaxy, awakening from an aeon-long slumber. Soon after this wave of visions, entire Imperial worlds all across the galaxy suddenly fell silent, without so much as a single astropathic cry for help. The Thousand Sons have marshalled in strength unseen for thousands of years in order to investigate this new threat to Mankind's rightful dominion over the stars, accompanied by agents from all three Ordos and contingents of the Adeptus Mechanicus.

The Thousand Sons and the Grey Knights

At first glance, the Fifteenth Legion and the sons of Titan might appear very similar. Both are groups of psychic Astartes, their numbers are roughly equal, and many of the first Grey Knights chosen by Malcador the Sigillite were taken from the ranks of the Fifteenth Legion.. However, there are many key differences between the two.

While the Grey Knights' aspirants are entirely remade during their Ascension – their past identity literally destroyed and wiped out – the Thousand Sons are far less intensive in their training. A son of Magnus is a teacher, and needs to keep an open, if well-defended mind.

And while the Grey Knights are unleashed against the daemonic threat when they become the only option, the Thousand Sons wage the War of Fate on the Imperium's behest continuously. Their Seers battle the Dark Angels' oracles, the Eldar farseers, and all other kinds of prophets that would use their abilities against Mankind. They are not beholden to the Inquisition, but fight the wars that need to be fought, not for the present of the Imperium, but for its future.

As for the other Thousand Sons, they fight alongside the Imperial armies without keeping their existence a secret. The coming of the Fifteenth Legion is a source of both relief and dread, for while their power is great, their arrival indicates that the situation is dire indeed. Meanwhile, the Grey Knights' very existence is kept a secret from the Imperial population and the Imperium's enemies alike, meaning that those who fight at their side and witness their prowess are usually purged at the battle's end – often by the very hands of those champions who delivered them from the daemonic threat.

Organization

There is no true chain of command among the Thousand Sons, no Legion Master to replace the Primarch. Officially, Magnus still leads the Legion, his sons waiting for his awakening. The Thousand Sons take such things very seriously, and when two sons of Magnus meet for the first time, they will begin a mental communion, at the end of which one of the two will have been declared as the other's superior. This unseen hierarchy is decided by an ensemble of factors, such as age, psychic power, and reputation.

The bond of master to disciple is also very important. New Legionaries are assigned to older ones of the same Cult, who will guide them in their progress through the Arts and share with them their experience of the Imperium's many enemies. Even after an apprentice has been released from his master's teachings, he still honors his former master, though it is frequent for the student to surpass the teacher – and indeed, encouraged, as it means the strengthening of the Legion as a whole.

Though scattered, the Thousand Sons keep in contact with each other. They use unique cyphers to send messages through the Imperium's network of astropaths, and some of the most powerful Athanaeans are capable of communicating with each other from different star systems. This enables the Fifteenth Legion to coordinate its actions on a galactic scale, despite the absence of true hierarchy. The Legion decides its action by coming to a consensus, taking advantage of the fact that their discussions occur literally at the speed of thought.

The Sanctum of Magnus

When the Legion's flagship, the Photep, was destroyed in the last battles of the Scouring, parts of it were salvaged, including the Primarch's war chamber. A pyramid of Prosperine crystal, the Sanctum offered a magnificent view of the stars. Its survival of the Photep's destruction is viewed by many as a miracle, and it was dragged to the orbit of Prospero, where the Thousand Sons still use it as a gathering place.

Within the Sanctum is a great spiral, at the center of which stood Magnus when he directed his Legion's war councils, each Captain assigned a place on the spiral depending on his current status among the Thousand Sons. Nowadays, when a group of Thousand Sons meet in the Sanctum, their place on the spiral is determined by drawing cards of psychically sensitive crystal, and the results are often interpreted by the Seers of the Corvidae, if any is present.

Combat doctrine

The Seers of the Corvidae

Of the five Cults of the Thousand Sons, the Corvidae are the most famous and influential. Capable of peering into the madness of the Warp without losing their minds, these prophets are capable of gleaning knowledge of what was, what is, and what might be. It is thanks to the Corvidae that we know most of what we do about the Traitor Legions' dealings in the Eye of Terror, for they are some of the few who can look into that abyss of perdition without loosing their souls to the unholy creatures that dwell there.

The Legionaries of the Corvidae are often the leaders of their cabals, or at least influential advisers. They guide their forces toward battles yet to erupt, so that the Thousand Sons might arrive in time. They use many different ways to divine the future : some use the Emperor's Tarot as a focus of their own power, while others make use of psychically sensitive crystals and other simply immerse their minds into the Warp while their bodies sit in circles of warding.

While theirs is the smallest of all Space Marines Legions, loyal or otherwise, the Thousand Sons are the most powerful on an individual basis. Instead of Chapters or Companies, the Fifteenth Legion is divided in small groups, rarely as large as any other Legion's squad, called cabals. These cabals wander the Imperium, bringing their power to bear against the enemies of Man. They either attach themselves to military forces, travelling aboard their ships, or command vessels of their own, though the Thousand Sons' fleet is far smaller than is common for a Space Marine Legion. Their ships are also of inferior size, and are generally guided through the Warp by a Thousand Son rather than a Navigator. This allows for much faster journeys through the galaxy, enabling the Thousand Sons to reach their chosen battlefields ahead of any other Imperial reinforcement.

Each warrior of the Fifteenth Legion belongs to one of the Cults that were created by Magnus, specializing his abilities into one school of psychic powers. While it is common for them to master a few skills in the other schools, they remain mainly focused on the one chosen during their initiation. Each cabal is generally accompanied by a hundred or so soldiers from the Spireguard, elite soldiers picked across the Dominion in replacement for the standard tithe of Imperial Guard Regiments. The exact number of this accompanying force can vary greatly, from a few dozen to hundreds of soldiers and accompanying heavy machines.

The Spireguard

Across the Prosperine Dominion, the memory of the Spireguard lives on. The legends of how these brave warriors fought to the end to defend their homeworld from barbarians and monsters have inspired many young men and women to join their new incarnations over the course of millenia. Selected from the militia and PDF of the Dominion, the Spireguards are trained in fighting side by side with the Thousand Sons, sworn to guard them with their lives if necessary. Because the Thousand Sons are often forced to battle mentally against other foes, their bodies require protection, and unlike the Librarians of other Legions, they have no non-psychic brethren to guard them.

The Spireguards were the crimson fatigues of their ancestors, and bear the emblem of Prospero upon their shoulder. Drilled to perfection over hundreds of simulated battles, they are capable of adapting to almost every situation, placing the safety of their Legionary masters at the forefront of their minds. They are equipped with the best weapons and armor the Prosperine Dominion can produce, and even have psykers among their number, though they are more an alternative mean of communication than instruments of war.

The total number of the Spireguard is in the millions, which has led to some uncomfortable questions over the centuries. Ever since the terrible events of the Roboutian Heresy, Astartes are not supposed to have command of human troops, yet the Thousand Sons clearly require such assistance to make the most of their unique abilities, and lack the numbers to field enough Legionaries to accomplish the objectives ordinarily assigned to Astartes. So far, a tacit understanding between the Fifteenth Legion and the Lords of Terra has kept the situation from degenerating, but there are still many Inquisitors, consumed by paranoia, who wish for the Thousand Sons to be called on account.

In battle, the Thousand Sons are formidable foes. Each is a psyker lord, easily the equal of the greatest Librarians of other Legions. They generally target the enemy commanders and their own psykers, but one the rare occasions when they let loose their might on common forces, the results are devastating. Entire armies can be broken in minutes by a cabal working in synergy, and titanic war-engines can be brought low. That is not to say that the Thousand Sons are invincible, however : there are Chaos Sorcerers who can match them, and the Eldar warlocks are gifted with even great knowledge of the Sea of Souls, dating back to the glory days of their fallen empire. The disciples of Khorne too are often shielded from the Thousand Sons' powers, and there are many other threats that cannot be matched with psychic power alone. In these cases, the sons of Magnus remember the lesson their gene-sire learned when he battled the Psychneuein-Prime, and rely on their bolters and blades, at which they are just as adept as all Astartes are.

Homeworld

Prospero, adopted homeworld of the Primarch Magnus, is a tomb, haunted by vengeful ghosts. The unholy ritual performed by the Rune Priests in the hope of destroying the entire Fifteenth Legion has bound the souls of those who died during the Burning to the place of their demise. Billions of humans and Space Marines walk the ruins of Tizca, the City of Light, and the other destroyed settlements. It is rumoured that these ghosts, during the Heresy, helped Mortarion escape the White Scars during the Second Battle of Prospero.

Yet the Thousand Sons have not abandoned Prospero – far from it. The world is bathed in psychic significance, and home to a million dark secrets. Over the centuries, many Chaos Sorcerers have sought to harness the power of the Planet of Dust to their own ends. Though most of these fools are annihilated by the Prosperine shades the moment they land on the world, the sons of Magnus have taken precautions. Prospero is guarded by a ring of orbital fortresses, gifted to the Fifteenth Legion by Perturabo himself. These stations are capable of fighting off an entire Chaos fleet long enough for reinforcements to arrive from nearby Imperial Garrison Worlds.

Now, the Legion's headquarters – such as they are – stand on the world of Terathalion. During the Great Crusade, Terathalion was a library-world, a place where the knowledge found by the forces of the Emperor was stored, catalogued, and studied. It was part of the Prosperine Dominion, but its importance was minor at best, and it was forgotten by traitors and loyalists alike during the Heresy. When the Thousand Sons returned after the Scouring, they rejoiced to find that at least a part of their great work had endured, and vowed to protect it forevermore. Now, Terathalion is home to the Legion's main fortress and training center, as well as the sanctuary in which lies Magnus' body, guarded by the most potent defenses and wards of the Fifteenth Legion.

The human survivors of Prospero, who had gone through the destruction of their world and the horrors of the Siege, resettled on Terathalion, and tried to go on with their lives. Many were driven mad by what they had witnessed, but their descendants still live on that world to this day, forming the population from which the renowned Spire Guards are selected.

The Thousand Sons are determined that the fate of Prospero will never befall any other of their worlds. Terathalion, like all worlds of the Dominion, is defended by the greatest orbital defences a Space Marine Legion can build, and its cities are as much fortresses as they are libraries. This, and ten thousand years of attempted raids by Space Wolves warlords, has caused the population of the Dominion to develop a paranoid streak, always looking at the sky for the first sign of attack.

The Archives of Shame

Among the thousands of great libraries of the Prosperine Dominion, one is closed to all but the highest-ranking Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus and lords of the Space Marine Legions. It is located atop a great tower, in the middle of a fortress on the surface of a nameless world, without even an atmosphere of its own. The archives can only be acceded through an elevator that carries only one person at a time, and can be dropped at any moment if the bound psykers of the fortress detect the slightest fluctuation in the occupant's soul. There are contained all the grimoires, scrolls, dataslates, and a hundred more forms of knowledge, that the Legion has gathered about Chaos.

The name of the archives come from the fact that they effectively defy the command of both Magnus and the Emperor that the Thousand Sons remain as far from the Ruinous Powers as possible. But that decree was made before the Roboutian Heresy, before the Burning of Prospero, and most important of all, before the Scouring and Magnus' fall. Without the guidance of their Primarch, the Thousand Sons believe that they need to know as much as possible about their foes without risking their souls, and have amassed a truly staggering amount of information over the millenia. At the same time, they also recognize that it is a thin line they are walking, and that any mistake might very well send them into damnation – hence the name of the archive, as a constant reminder to all who walk within its walls that they act in defiance of the Emperor's will, no matter how noble their intentions or pure their souls.

Beliefs

'Knowledge is power; guard it well.'

Motto of the Thousand Sons

During the Great Crusade, the Thousand Sons were seekers of knowledge, who hoped to usher in a golden age for all of Mankind. Now, they have become bitter at all that was lost in Guilliman's Heresy and Russ' madness. Each of them knows of the glories of the Great Crusade, and the promises that came undone when the Arch-Traitor turned from the Emperor's light. The existing Imperium, for all that it has endured ten thousand years, is a wretched reflection of what they believe it could – should – have been. Instead of the Great Crusade's illumination, Mankind now recoils from knowledge in fear of the heresy it might bring, and the Lords of Terra have become tyrants rather than leaders.

Furthermore, while the human denizens of the Imperium can find solace in the Imperial Creed and the Ecclesiarchy's claims of the God-Emperor's unchallengeable power, and warriors of the other Legions only need worry about the foes they face, the sons of Magnus know just how precarious Mankind's place in the galaxy truly is. With every day, they sense the Warp growing darker as the servants of the Dark Gods grow bolder, and other threats rise to deny Humanity its rightful rule over the stars.

Yet the Thousand Sons have not given up hope. Despite the many horrors they face, despite the encroaching darkness, they still cling to their Primarch's last words. They believe, as many do among the Legions, that a time will come when the Emperor will return from His deathless sleep, and lead the Imperium once more in person as well as in spirit. In the meantime, they fight to preserve Mankind, to keep the empire strong, to save even one more soul from the Dark Gods' ravenous grasp. Those among them who do not believe so fight out of defiance, to honor the memory of all those who came before them. Some also fight solely driven by the burning need to avenge those long dead – they are known as the Heralds of Prospero, and are feared even amongst their own Legion.

The Heralds of Prospero

Sometimes, by some quirk of genetic memory or a psychic affinity, a Thousand Son will be haunted by visions of the Legion's destroyed homeworld. Compelled to make a pilgrimage on Prospero itself, these tormented souls return from their journey transformed. Ghosts cling to their steps, sharing their thoughts and driving them to slaying all traitors. Their aura is filled with the screams of the dying and the curses of the dead, and none can stand their presence for long without being forced to flee, unable to bear the tormented choir any longer.

Yet for all the darkness attached to them, the Heralds are not mad, nor are they corrupted. Indeed, their full awareness of what they have become and what is happening to them is perhaps their greatest curse. They wander the galaxy endlessly, with only the ghosts of Prospero at their side, seeking the blood of all who turned their back on the Golden Throne. Most of all, they seek the Space Wolves, those who came to the Planet of Dust ten thousand years ago and razed it to the ground. Using ships that they lead through the Warp themselves, guided by the shades of the long since dead, they journey from one war-torn world to another.

In battle, a Herald of Prospero is a terrifying sight. They do not fight alongside any Imperial forces, and in most cases, the first warning a Guard Commander has that one of them has arrived on the planet is when they reveal themselves at the heart of the fight, slaughtering heretics and clamouring for their Chaos Marine champions to confront them. In the midst of battle, the Heralds call upon the shades of Prospero, giving them form into ghostly shapes that drain the life of heretics and dramatically increase the psychic power of their summoner. Stories abound among the Imperial Guards of these vengeful sons of Magnus and the shadowy armies that march in their wake, and the Traitor Legions themselves hold a fearful respect for their power.

When one of their number goes to Prospero to become a Herald, his brothers mourn him as if he were fallen in battle, and his name is inscribed on the Legion's rolls of honor. There is no return for these warriors, and even the peace of the grave is denied to them. When a Herald of Prospero falls, his spirit does not dissolve back into the Aether, nor can it be claimed by any daemon, no matter how vengeful. Instead, it is dragged back to Prospero itself, where it rejoins the legions of ghostly warriors that wander the ruins of the world. There, it can be bound to another Herald when they make their own pilgrimage to Prospero, starting the whole cycle anew.

The Chaplains of the Fifteenth Legion have to take even greater care of their duties than those of other Legions, for the powers of the Thousand Sons also make them choice targets for the corruption of Chaos. While all those who survive the trials to become a son of Magnus possess tremendous willpower, their souls are constantly threatened, as three of the four Chaos Gods seek to engineer their downfall. Chaplains travel from one group of Thousand Sons to the next, or keep watch over sanctums scattered across the galaxy, where the sons of Magnus can come and obtain the spiritual advice they crave after long years of war.

Only Khorne, the Dark God of Slaughter, cares nothing for the sons of the Cyclops – the Blood God dislikes sorcery, and the Thousand Sons' mastery of the Warp, despite being untouched by the taint of Ruin, is seen as such by the brutish daemonic entity. The only known exception is the infamous Gabriel Angelos, known to the Imperium as the Blood Raven, and to the Thousand Sons by many names, none of which flattering.

Gabriel Angelos, the Blood Raven

Over the course of ten thousand years, very few Thousand Sons have ever succumbed to the temptations of Chaos. Each time it happened was a dark day for the Imperium, for the sons of Magnus wield power greater than the warriors of any other Legions, and the hunt for such renegades was as swift as it was merciless. Yet one traitor eludes judgement still, and has done so for nearly five centuries.

Born on the world of Cyrene, Gabriel Angelos was identified as a latent psyker by a group of Thousand Sons led by Azariah Kyras. Kyras sensed the potential for greatness in the young boy, and took him into the Fifteenth Legion. During his training in the Prosperine Dominion, it was revealed that Gabriel had only minimal psychic potential, mostly in the field of precognition, and his control over it was mostly instinctual, allowing him to anticipate his foes' movements and counter them. When his training was complete, there was much incertitude about whether or not he should undergo the final trials – none doubted his bravery or his skills, but the Apothecaries were unsure that he had any hope at all of surviving the Rubric.

At his own insistence, Gabriel was finally put through the trials, and surprised all by surviving them, though his psychic powers didn't receive the boost that normally accompanies the Rubric. He then joined with another group of Thousand Sons, and for four decades, did the Emperor's work across a score of worlds, earning much honor despite his lack of the Legion's characteristic powers.

But his fate turned when he and his battle-brothers returned to Cyrene, hoping to find new recruits to fill the ever-diminishing ranks of the Fifteenth Legion. Instead, they found the planet in the throes of rebellion against the Imperium. More shockingly, this rebellion was led by Gabriel's own human father, who had grown bitter against the Imperium after his son was taken from him. The local garrison had already been either turned or butchered, and the Thousand Sons' cabal was the only Imperial force nearby. The six sons of Magnus unleashed their powers upon the rebels, slaying thousands, seeking to break their morale and force them to scatter until the summoned reinforcements arrived.

Amidst the confusion, Gabriel left his brothers, seeking to confront his father in person, hoping to stop the rebellion at its source. What exactly happened when he finally met him is unknown, but Esmond Angelos, former Imperial Guard turned traitor to the Golden Throne, died that day, at the hands of his own transhuman son. His death broke the rebellion in multiple factions, and the pressure on the Thousand Sons abeted. Yet when Gabriel returned to his brothers, they immediately sensed that something had gone horribly wrong, and they were proven right when Gabriel turned on them, slaying them all, seemingly immune to their psychic powers. The last of them to die, a warrior named Isador Akios, managed to send an astropathic message warning of his brother's betrayal before he was slain.

Gabriel vanished from Cyrene, leaving in his wake the fractured rebellion, that quickly turned on itself. Before Imperial forces could arrive, the bloodshed had escalated to the point that daemons of Khorne had begun to appear on the planet, and the Inquisition condemned Cyrene to Exterminatus, even as its agents picked up Isador's dying message and the terrible news that another son of the Cyclops had fallen to darkness.

When he was informed of this turn of events, Azariah Kyras vowed to bring his wayward pupil to justice. For half a millennium, the old Thousand Son has sought to fulfill that oath, hunting Gabriel Angelos across the width and breadth of the galaxy, following the trail of carnage the renegade leaves in his wake. The two have clashed several times, but every time their battle has ended in a draw as one or the other was forced to flee. In the final years of the 41st Millennium, this hunt seems to have drawn to a close, as Kyras and his allies of the Seventeenth Legion are facing Gabriel and his allies in the Aurelia sub-sector, in a war that has engulfed half a dozen worlds.

Over the years, Gabriel has accumulated many varied allies. His forces haunt the Aurelia sub-sector from the infamous Space Hulk Judgement of Carrion, and he has made pacts with the Greater Daemon of Nurgle Ulkair. Warriors of the Black Legion – these surviving clones of Horus created by Fabius Bile during the Clone Wars ten thousand years ago – also fight by his side, as do all kind of renegades, be they human or Space Marines. This warband, like its dread master, calls itself the Blood Ravens, and is dedicated to the Blood God Khorne, though it is allied with disciples of the other Dark Gods.

To those who know of Khorne's infinite hatred for sorcerers, it might appear strange and contradictory that a son of Magnus might fall to the service of that particular Dark God. However, while Khorne abhors the use of sorcery, seeing it as a coward's tool, Gabriel only uses it to enhance his own martial abilities. Yet still, that distinction is thin, and the sons of Magnus fear that the Blood Raven is actually a sign of something far more terrible. They fear that Angelos is actually fulfilling an ancient prophecy, written by Revuel Arvida, a Sergeant of the Fourth Fellowship during the Heresy. That prophecy claims that the doom of the sons of Magnus shall be heralded by the coming of a blood-soaked raven, who shall crack open the doom sealed in ancient days and let loose a tide of blood to drown the galaxy.

Recruitment and Geneseed

The Thousand Sons recruit mostly from the Prosperine Dominion, but also take in aspirants from across the galaxy. When a group of Legionaries come across a youth of great potential, they will claim him for the Legion, and have him sent to Terathalion for testing. There are also Apothecaries of the Fifteenth Legion who spend their days aboard the Black Ships used by the Imperium to harvest its tithe of psykers. There they search for souls worthy of Ascension, side by side with Inquisitors seeking useful servants and the stringent recruiters of the Grey Knights.

Once on Terathalion, the aspirant will be tested, both physically, psychically and spiritually. Once he is determined worthy, he is trained in the ways of the Cults, until his favored one is identified and his training becomes more focused. He is also taught the more traditional ways of war, for the Thousand Sons have long since learned not to rely on psychic might alone. When the training is complete, the aspirant begins the surgeries that will make him a Legionary – and with them, his true trial.

Even with all the effort the Thousand Sons put into selecting suitable aspirants, the ratio of those who make it through the actual procedures is appallingly low. The reason for this lies in the instability of the Fifteenth Legion's gene-seed, twinned with their increasing psychic potential, that caused the curse of the flesh-change to ravage the Legion at the dawn of the Great Crusade. When Magnus led the Legion, his power shielded the them from mutation, but with the loss of his spirit to the Warp, the Thousand Sons were forced to use other means to protect themselves from the flesh-change. Their salvation came from Ahriman, but with it came also another curse.

During the long months of their transformation, the would-be Thousand Son must endure the constant flux of psychic power that Magnus' bloodline carries. Once all nineteen organs have been implanted, the aspirant is clad in power armor and subjected to the Rubric, in a re-enactment of the great ritual that Ahriman led ten thousand years ago, albeit on the scale of a single Legionary. This ritual, if successful, protects the subject from the flesh-change, but also from all Warp-induced mutations. It also increases the psychic power of the new Space Marine, by allowing him to tap deeper into the Sea of Souls without risks.

The Rubric

While the effects of the Rubric are widely known among the Inquisition, absolutely nothing of its workings has ever been revealed to the Holy Ordos, despite uncountable attempts over the course of the millenia. This secrecy has, naturally, bred suspicion that the Thousand Sons were forced to resort to fell powers to protect themselves, and almost caused a civil war on at least two occasions. Each time, the Grey Knights have intervened, vouching for the sanctity of the Rubric, claiming knowledge dating back from the days of its inception. According to the sons of Titan, their forebears were present when Ahriman cast the Rubric for the first time, and while the powers it manipulated were considerable, they were untouched by the Ruinous Powers. Faced with such claims, the doubtful Inquisitors had no choice but to retreat their accusations.

Still, other agents of the Ordos seek to pierce the Rubric's secrets. Their masters hope to perfect the ritual, or even simply generalize it so that it might be applied to baseline humans. Several attempts have been made to recreate it from scratch, using captive mutants as experimental subjects. More often than not, the Inquisitor or savant attempting this is driven mad by failure after failure, and either ends up dead or turn to other, darker powers to succeed – ironically committing the very sin the Thousand Sons were falsely accused of.

In these Radicals' vision, the entire Human race could be purged from mutation forever if the work of Ahriman could be adapted to an even greater scale. Certainly, the thought of Mankind being freed forever of the aberration of the mutant is a pleasant one, but one must also consider the horrifying death ratio of the existing spell. But in the mind of these men and women, the trillions of dead that would come with a species-wide Rubric would be acceptable losses for the protection of Mankind's genetic purity.

However, very few aspirants survive the Rubric, and the gene-seed of their bodies is then irredeemably lost. Without access to their Primarch's comatose body from which to carefully extract genetic material, the Thousand Sons would long have been extinct, unable to replace the gene-seed lost whenever the Rubric fails. With it, it is all they can do to keep their numbers above a single thousand warriors, echoing their Legion's name with bitter irony.

This has another effect on the Thousand Sons' mentality. Death in battle is a certainty for all Astartes, but those of other Legions can take comfort in the knowledge that their genetic legacy will endure, and in time will be carried by another Space Marine, just as they themselves carry the gene-lines of past heroes. The sons of Magnus have no such comfort, for few gene-lines of the Fifteenth Legion survive more than a handful of generations. They are, all of them, sons of Magnus, without the distant genealogy of the other Legions, and their legacy will be nothing more than the deeds they themselves perform during their lives.

At the same time, their pride is fuelled by how genetically close they are to their Primarch, unlike those whose blood has run through dozens of generations over the millenia. The other Loyalist Legions look upon that pride with compassion, for they know the true hurt that lurks beneath the façade of cold detachment the sons of Magnus expose to the world.

Warcry

The Thousand Sons do not simply shout their war cries at the foe. Instead, they turn their battle-cries into weapons of their own by sending their oaths ahead of them in powerful telepathic bursts, capable of overwhelming weak minds and causing brains to explode. Yet the sons of Magnus still take some simple, primal gratification in screaming their cold fury at the top of their lungs for their mortal allies to hear. Almost every warrior of the Fifteenth Legion has his own personal battle-cry, but there are a few that are used throughout the scattered ranks of the Thousand Sons, like 'For the Crimson King !', 'For the Emperor and the Cyclops !' or 'Ash to ash, dust to dust !'. When facing the hated Sixth Legion, however, all Thousand Sons go to battle with only one cry on their lips and emanating from their minds : 'Remember Prospero !'

Khrove screamed for several minutes as the Rubric roamed through his physical body as well as his ethereal form, binding the two together on levels unknown to even the greatest Librarians of the Fifteenth Legion alive in this age. The Apothecary overseeing the ritual, Asim, looked on expectantly. Khrove had been a rare find, an indentured scholar on Prekae Magna whose psychic potential had gone unnoticed by the Black Ships, yet had failed to draw any Neverborn to his soul. Asim was convinced that he would survive the Rubric …

But the scream fell silent, and Asim fell his heart grow heavy as one more of the Thousand Sons was lost. Out of habit more than any real hope, he reached toward the former aspirant's still body, trying to touch the soul within the armored form. He felt nothing but a shadow, a ghost trapped inside the armor. Despite the number of times the Apothecary had seen the exact same thing happen, he felt the twinge of guilt and sorrow in his soul.

"Follow me", he pulsed, and the dead warrior began to move, his hands still clasping the bolter that had been given to him at the ritual's beginning, in the hope that the weapon would hope him to keep his focus throughout the Rubric.

Asim and Khrove marched through the silent underground corridors of the Terathalion fortress. Soon, they emerged into an immense chamber, at the center of which rose a pyramid of white marble. Atop that pyramid, laid down on a bier, was Magnus' body, waiting for the day his spirit returned from the Warp.

And all around that pyramid were ranks upon ranks of the Rubric's victims, standing eternal guard over their father-in-death. With another mental pulse, Asim sent Khrove to take his place among them, next to the previous aspirant who had failed to endure Ahriman's spell. Were there thousands of them, tens of thousands, or more ? Asim didn't know. Every accursed time he walked into that chamber, he kept his focus on the Primarch's body, because he knew that if he looked around, his eidetic memory would remember the chamber perfectly, and his mind would count how many there were.

And that was something he didn't want to know. He turned away and left, the heavy doors slamming behind him.

At the foot of the pyramid, among the very first rank of statue-like warriors, a glimpse of light danced in the eyes of one of the ashen dead. His name was inscribed on his battle-plate, still perfectly functioning after ten thousand years of silent watch :

Helio Isidorus.

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Sons of Horus : Brothers in Glory and Grief

Among the nine Legions which stayed faithful to the Emperor, the Sons of Horus are hailed across the Imperium as the greatest. Warriors without equal, they still hold to their heart the ideals of the Great Crusade, forever fighting to expand the Imperium's borders. There are few warriors as revered and feared as them in the galaxy, and the legacy of the First Warmaster still echoes today on a million worlds. Yet the shadow of their fallen Primarch looms over all scions of the Sixteenth, driving them to bouts of melancholy and unbridled fury. Horus' fall during the Siege haunts the memory of Lupercal's sons, forming a tale illustrating both the Legion's greatest strength and its greatest weakness : passion. Grudges ten thousand years old are still waiting to be paid, and the Sons of Horus are still waging their millennia-long feud against their own twisted reflection, born of the Primogenitor's madness in the dark days of the Clone Wars. But on the field of battle, there are few others the Imperial forces battling the darkness among the stars would want at their side more than the Sixteenth Legion.

Origins

For ten thousand years, Imperial historians and philosophers alike have wondered : what would have happened if the Dark Gods had not stolen the Primarchs from the Emperor, scattering them across the galaxy while they were still infants ? How different would the galaxy be, had the twenty sons of the Master of Mankind been raised as He intended ?

We will never know the answer to that question, and to ponder it too deeply is to court madness and delusion, the mind shattered by grief at all that was lost. But a glimpse of the glories that would have been can still be seen, by looking at the one Primarch who was raised by the Emperor : Horus Lupercal, greatest of the Emperor's sons, First Warmaster of the Imperium and Primarch of the Sixteenth Legion. Unlike some other Primarchs, the life of Horus is well-remembered in the Imperium, most notably thanks to the extensive account he himself gave to the famous remembrancer Petronella Vivar during the Great Crusade.

Like all Primarchs, Horus was taken from the Emperor when he was still an infant, and his life-pod crashed on the dying mining world of Chthonia, barely a few light-years away from Terra. Once, Chthonia had been a planet rich in minerals and other precious resources, but decades of ruthless exploitation had left it all but barren, and its population suffered from poverty, starvation, and pollution. Entire hive-cities had descended into anarchy, as dozens of gangs fought each other over the scraps that remained. The rich and powerful elite had long departed the world, abandoning Chthonia in a state of complete lawlessness. The planet itself was on the verge of collapse, its structural integrity damaged by the careless mining.

The only societal structure left on the planet was the gangs, who fought in the tunnels and on the surface alike. Ruled by the strongest, these gangs varied in size from a handful of raiders to tens of thousands of humans toughened by a lifetime of conflict, holding power comparable to that of the techno-barbarians of Terra themselves. Every single one of these primitive cultures was brutal and unforgiving, but as in all things, there were degrees in Chthonia's savagery : some gangs held the group above the individual, while others were little more than packs of jackals, ready to betray one another at the first opportunity.

In that environment, Horus, though barely a child by human standards, survived and even thrived. For three years, the young Primarch learned the brutal ways of the Chthonian people, living in the shadows. Already, a sense of justice began to manifest in him, and several gangs started to exchange whispered rumors of a child that could defeat ten men twice his size alone, who attacked those who preyed upon weaker humans. But before Horus could even reach adolescence, the Emperor arrived to Chthonia, sensing the presence of one of His children on the desolate planet.

The gangs of Chthonia reacted violently to the sudden arrival of so many strangers, after so long spent in total isolation. From the moment the Emperor and his Custodians set foot on the planet, they were beset by ambushes and attacks as gang leaders roused their followers to war against the intruders. Of course, none of them were any threat to the Emperor, and thousands were slain before Horus was found. The young Primarch, upon hearing of the strangers' arrival, felt in his heart that he was the reason for it, and came forward to face whoever had travelled so far to find him.

Horus met his father and His guards amongst the bleeding remnants of the latest ambush, standing tall and proud in front of the golden giants. What transpired between them during that first meeting is unknown, but Horus left Chthonia soon after aboard the Emperor's personal flagship, Bucephalus.

It was like looking at the sun for the first time and realize everything you had missed away from its light.

In later years, when asked how to describe his first meeting with the Emperor, Horus would use these words, though he knew they failed to truly carry what he had felt that day. The man radiated a kind of light that warmed up the soul, an aura that carried within it the promise of a better future. He smiled when he saw the boy, and Horus felt his heart tighten at the sight. How lonely had that man been, that merely seeing him would make him smile like that ?

'Hello, Horus,' he said, and the golden light was gone, revealing an old, old man who was so, so very tired. 'I am glad to finally meet you. I am your father.'

Not just the young Primarch left Chthonia that day, however. Many among the Emperor's retinue called for the planet's destruction, to punish its inhabitants for their crime of daring to assault the Master of Mankind. The Emperor, however, respected the courage of the gangers, misplaced as it might have been, and instead ordered that the planet become a recruiting ground for the Imperium. The Great Crusade had barely begun, and it would need a great many soldiers – soldiers as determined and though as the people of Chthonia. Tens of thousands of gangers vanished alongside Horus, most of them to be transformed under the gene-chirurgeons' attentions to be reborn as warriors of the newly formed Sixteenth Space Marine Legion. Others were trained and formed into several contingents of elite troopers, who would go on to become some of the most famous of the Imperial Army's Regiments.

Having found one of His sons far closer to Terra than He had anticipated, the Emperor began to educate him immediately. The best tutors of the Imperium were called upon, teaching Horus all that they knew, while the Emperor Himself shared His knowledge of the galaxy with His son. However, the Master of Mankind refrained from sharing some secrets with Horus : He didn't tell the young Primarch of the threat of Chaos, of the Ruinous Powers and the daemons that serve them. Whether He came to regret it centuries later, we cannot know. He did share His vision of the galaxy, though : an Imperium strong and free from the threats of the xenos, no longer blinded by superstition nor foolishly devoted to technology. Many sacrifices had already been made in the name of that vision, and many more would be required before it became a reality, but the Emperor promised His son that one day, with his help, they would make it so.

Horus learned everything he was taught, and a lot more besides. He frequently left his quarters aboard the Bucephalus to explore the rest of the ship, watching the first lords of the Great Crusade gather and plan the conquest of the galaxy. On several such occasions, these warlords were surprised to see the youth emerge from the shadows and point out a flaw in their plans before vanishing once more.

The quickly-growing child also witnessed the negotiations and politics between the various factions of the Imperium – including the consequences their feuds could have for those under their command. It is believed that it was during this period that the Primarch developed the distaste of petty politicians and courtiers that, though well hidden, would always accompany his dealings with the Administratum and all leaders who put their own position and power above the needs of those under their authority.

Intense physical training was also part of Horus' education, though like all Primarchs, he had an instinctual understanding of such things that put most of his would-be instructors to shame. He was trained in battle-arts both developed amidst the warring chaos of the Age of Strife and inherited from master to apprentice for tens of thousands of years. He was made to perform feats of endurance that would have killed a Space Marine, and fought combat servitors that the techno-priests of the Mechanicum had – at his own demand – designed to kill him. But no matter how hard the challenge, Horus triumphed. Those who were involved in his education began to develop an almost religious respect for the young Primarch, and as rumors of his prowess spread, efforts to locate his brothers intensified.

While Horus was being groomed as a leader of the Great Crusade, the Sixteenth Legion was also being prepared. Children from Chthonia formed the bulk of the new aspirants, and its numbers swelled until, just as Horus emerged from adolescence and into his full power as a Primarch, it was ready for full deployment. The First Primarch, as Horus was already known to those who were aware of his existence, was brought by the Emperor to those who bore his gene-seed. It was time for him to take command of the Legion that had been forged in his image, and lead it to glory and conquest in the Great Crusade.

The Great Crusade : First Among Equals

When the Emperor had lost Horus and his brothers to the machinations of the Warp, He had used the research and samples still in His possession to create the first Astartes. For this, He needed male children strong and genetically pure enough to bear the trials of the process, and He looked form them across the surface of unified Terra. Those who bore the genetic imprint of the sixteenth infant were from hunter-clans, regardless of whether their tribes had survived in jungles or in slums. All of them, without exception, were of humble birth, tested since their childhood by a harsh environment. This made them pragmatic and devoted to the group rather than the individual, though they still had dreams of their own.

The first deployment of the Sixteenth Legion occurred long before Horus was discovered, when the Emperor had completed the unification of Terra and turned His eyes to the rest of the Sol System. The clans of Luna, Terra's single moon, had great knowledge of genetic lore, and the Master of Mankind desired that expertise and facilities to help in the expansion of His Legions. However, the clans, who called themselves the Selenar, had maintained their independence from Terran techno-barbarians and magos alike for centuries. Though they welcomed His ambassadors, they refused the Emperor's offer to become part of the Imperium, secretly laughing at the Imperial Truth. In response, the Master of Mankind decided to send three of His Legions – the Seventh, the Thirteenth, and the Sixteenth – to bring them to compliance by military means.

The Selenar Gene-Cults

No one knows how old the cults of Luna truly were when the Emperor first revealed Himself on warring Terra. They had occupied the moon for as long as anyone living remembered, and since Mankind has had the capabilities of travelling to Luna as soon as the end of M2, there is a very large gap in history as to when lunar colonization began and when the cults appeared.

What is known is that the Gene-cults were fanatic followers of a strange and unholy religion. They used their technological knowledge to pursue immortality through genetic reincarnation, somehow managing to preserve the experiences from one incarnation to the next. This echoed with their cult's belief that every human being is merely a reflection of some over-reaching archetype. Each of the cults focused on a different archetype, some inspired by legends and myths, others so alien that rumors grew that the Selenar had been influenced by xenos contacts prior to the Age of Strife.

After the First Pacification of Luna, the Selenar bowed to the authority of the Imperium and assisted in the extension of the Space Marine Legions. Over the two centuries of the Great Crusade, hundreds of thousands of Legionaries were transformed in their genetic facilities, until the Legions each developed their own structures for processing their recruits. This led to the cults slowly losing their use to the Imperium, and while the Emperor, and later the High Lords of Terra, have kept to the agreement that was reached after the First Pacification, their numbers diminished over the years. Eventually, the Gene-cults died out, their domed cities left alone on the Terran moon. Many tech-priests have attempted to breach them and claim the secrets that remain hidden there, but few have returned alive – the last of the Selenar left safeguards to preserve the legacy of their kin from plunderers.

There are rumors that not all Selenar accepted their submission to the Imperium. According to tales that are only accessible to the most highly-ranked Inquisitors, it was a group of such disgruntled gene-wrights who sabotaged the gene-seed of the Third Legion soon after its inception, leading to the catastrophic losses the Emperor's Children suffered before their Primarch was found. According to these hidden texts, the reason the war waged by the Sixteenth Legion on Luna is known as the "First" Pacification is because, following this act of treachery, the Emperor sent the Third Legion to wage a second war against the rebels, one that was erased from almost every record to preserve the Selenar cults who had remained faithful to their oaths.

As soon as they realised that the time of diplomacy had passed, the gene-cults prepared for war. Their usual divisions were quickly cast aside in the face of the possibility of losing their independence, and when the Legions arrived to Luna, they found their foes ready. The Sixteenth Legion had been chosen to be the vanguard of the assault, and they struck will all the fury that would become legendary in centuries to come. The anti-orbital weapons of the cults, marked by spies hidden amongst the diplomatic envoys, were destroyed by squads of Astartes, and the warriors then spread in the subterranean tunnels of the cults, butchering all those they came across. The cults fought back with their gene-wrights, genetically altered beings designed for conflict, but they were no match for those who had received the Emperor's own alterations. Soon, the two other Legions began to advance and seize the genetic facilities, finding their defenders terrified and broken.

After a few hours, the leaders of the gene-cults called out to the Emperor, begging Him to stop the killers He had let loose in their midst. The words "Call back your wolves !" became part of the Sixteenth Legion's folklore, and soon after the First Pacification of Luna, the Emperor Himself bestowed these warriors with the name of 'Luna Wolves', in acknowledgement of the great service they had done the Imperium that day.

With the genetic facilities secured and the compliance of the gene-cults enforced, the Legions could now grow to match the needs of the Imperium. The first Chthonian recruits became Luna Wolves on the very moon that gave the Legion its name, and when they were ready, the Emperor brought Horus to them so that he might take command.

Under the leadership of their Primarch, the Luna Wolves left the Sol system to take their rightful place at the Great Crusade's forefront. More worlds were conquered by them than by any other Legion, though their way of making war often left the worlds in their wake crippled. The Luna Wolves kept following the same tactics they had used on Luna, and before that in the gang wars of Chthonia : they went directly for the enemy leader, not hesitating to use excessive force to end a conflict as quickly as possible. While the infrastructure of the worlds they brought to compliance was often more or less spared from the destruction, the hierarchy was always beheaded, leaving the Imperial adepts sent after them with a much harder task of integrating the planet into the Imperium.

The Lupercal Tank

It was during the Great Crusade that the Quest for Knowledge of the Adeptus Mechanicus began. This sacred undertaking, still unfinished after ten thousand years, has the goal of gathering all the lost STC schematics used by Mankind during the Dark Age of Technology. These templates are more valuable than entire worlds, and the Mechanicus has been known to start wars at the mere rumour of their presence.

As the Imperium expanded, many of the worlds brought to compliance were found to have some STC left on them from before the Age of Strife. The Mechanicus greedily reclaimed them, as part of the pact that was forged between the tech-priests of Mars and the Emperor. While some of these templates were part of forbidden branches of technology and others were buried within temples, never to see the light of day, many were incorporated into the new Imperium, to serve in the effort of the Great Crusade. One of such designs was the Lupercal Tank, so named after the aggression displayed by the Sixteenth Legion.

Used to this day by almost every regiment of the Imperial Guard – bar those from worlds too technologically regressed to be able to use it – the Lupercal Tank is incredibly versatile. It can be adapted for almost any kind of battleground, from the streets of a hive-city to the dunes of a chemical wasteland. Weapons can also be replaced easily, learning to drive it is ridiculously easy, and it can run on anything even remotely fuel-like. Forge-worlds churn out billions of these war engines every year, and they are used across the galaxy to fight the many enemies of the Imperium.

Not all human worlds found by the Expeditionary Fleets led by the Luna Wolves were conquered, of course. On many worlds, the words of the iterators were able to convince the population to embrace the Imperial Truth and join the growing Imperium not in violence, but in celebration. In the case of the Expeditionary Fleets that Horus himself led, it was very rare for human worlds to refuse integration into the Imperium indeed. The charisma of the First Primarch was almost impossible to resist, even for Legionaries. Many planetary leaders intent on politely refusing the offer to join the Imperium left the meeting wondering why they had even wanted to do such a thing in the first place, convinced of the righteousness of the Imperium.

As the Great Crusade went on, the lost Primarchs were rediscovered one after the other. Horus made sure to meet each of them when he wasn't present at their discovery, and through his charisma, formed strong bonds with all of them. Even bitter Corax and prideful Vulkan couldn't help but like their elder brother, and it is said that all of them, in private at least, acknowledged that he was the greatest among them. Still, there were those brothers with whom Horus had an especially close relationship. Among those was Fulgrim, for Lupercal and the Phoenician forged their bonds of brotherhood in the fire of battle and conquest.

When Fulgrim was found on the world of Chemos and given command of his own Legion, his sons were too few form him to operate alone. The Third Legion – named the Emperor's Children, in acknowledgement of their Primarch's devotion – fought at the side of Horus in the Great Crusade, with Lupercal and the Phoenician forging a bond of brotherhood that transcended their blood ties. After fifty years of conquest, the numbers of the Third Legion had reached the level where they could operate on their own, and the two Primarchs parted ways after them and their sons had renewed their oaths of brotherhood and sworn to come to each others' aid if the need ever arose.

Soon after that parting, the Luna Wolves arrived to the world of Davin. With them came a contingent of Word Bearers, whose Primarch Lorgar had recently been found on the arid world of Colchis. Leading the warriors of the Seventeenth Legion was Erebus, one of the first Chaplains to have risen from the Primarch's homeworld.

Davin was a world populated by primitive tribes, many of which had devolved over the centuries of isolation into something that wasn't quite human. Despite this, and their primitive level of technology, they fought against the Legionaries with great courage, impressing even Lupercal with their bravery. Horus was convinced that the tribes could be made to see reason and join the Imperium peacefully – and some clans even surrendered and helped the Imperium fight their fellow Davinites soon after the beginning of the campain. However, Erebus came to the Primarch, telling him that he had watched the rites and beliefs of the Davinites, and that they reminded him of the cults that had held his homeworld's people captive for centuries before the coming of Lorgar.

'There is a sickness hiding beneath the surface of this world, my lord. We must purge it with fire, rather than allow it to endure, or try to treat it with words.'
Erebus' words to Horus Lupercal, on the Davinite tribes

Erebus convinced Horus that the planet had to be cleansed of these religious beliefs, and that none of its corruption could be allowed to spread. He told the Primarch of the human sacrifices performed by the Davinite tribes "allied" to the Imperium where the Legions couldn't see them. He warned that these tribes were only pretending to join the Imperium, sacrificing their own in order to protect their twisted lifestyles. With heavy heart, Horus accepted the evidence presented by the Word Bearer, and the tribes of Davin were broken upon the anvil of war. The survivors were gathered in great camps while every trace of their belief system was ruthlessly expunged by the Word Bearers. It is said that the Luna Wolves, when they saw the fervour with which their cousins were destroying an entire culture, felt something akin to fear for the first time since their Ascension.

Several decades after the departure of the two Legions, the Magos Biologis detached to the Imperial settlement on Davin declared that the entire population of the tribes was genetically corrupt. They were too deviant from the purity of the human genome to be even attributed the statute of abhuman that had been bestowed upon other mutated strains. The entire population was eliminated, and new colonists were brought to Davin – though the world has, to this day, retained a dark reputation.

Several decades later, at the turn of the millennium, the Great Crusade peaked with the Ullanor Crusade. After years of fighting back the Waaaagh ! of the Ork empire led by Urlakk Urg, Perturabo had called for his brothers' aid in defeating the xenos Warboss. His call was answered not just by Horus, but also by Jaghatai Khan and even the Master of Mankind Himself, accompanied by His Custodes.

With the strength of three Legions and the Emperor's own guardians, the Imperium crushed the bestial empire of Urlakk. The Iron Warriors grounded the Orks to paste, while the White Scars sowed confusion and discord among their lines with lightning strikes. Horus and the Emperor, for their part, struck together at the very heart of the green horde. Back to back, the Master of Mankind and the First Primarch descended upon Urg's fortress, and slew the Ork Warboss. This glorious moment is immortalised on one of the walls of Lupercal's Cathedral on Terra, where the two greatest heroes of Mankind are depicted striking as one against the xenos beast. It is said that any who look upon the wondrous image cannot help but weep, both at the magnificence on display and in sorrow that it will never be again.

After the death of Urlakk Urg, the Ork empire of Ullanor was broken, and the planet purged of greenskins entirely. This marked the destruction of the last great xenos dominion capable of presenting a threat to the Imperium as a whole. There remained many alien empires to break, many human worlds to bring into the fold, but the last known threat to the Emperor's vision had been beaten. The victory at Ullanor heralded a new age for Mankind, and the Emperor ordered that a great Triumph be held in celebration. Mountains were razed, oceans drained, and avenues the size of continents were traced on the perfectly flat surface that was left behind them. Upon those defiled billions of Imperial soldiers, hundreds of thousands of Legionaries, and Titans of Legios from forge-worlds across the entire galaxy.

Though we do not know whether or not their brotherhood was complete, it is known to us that most of the Primarchs were there as well. They watched the Triumph, which had become more of a celebration of the entire Great Crusade than merely of the victory at Ullanor. Then, at the surprise of all those present, the Emperor announced His intent to withdraw from the front of the Crusade and return to Terra, where a great work awaited Him. Despite the protests of Angron and others, the Master of Mankind was inflexible. He named Horus the Warmaster of the Imperium, supreme commander of the Great Crusade. To Lupercal now would fall the task of coordinating the greatest endeavour in the history of Humanity.

Humbled and shocked, Hours accepted the honor his father had bestowed upon him, vowing that he would not fail His expectations. To mark this change from one Primarch among others to the leader of the entire Imperium's military might, the Sixteenth Legion was renamed from the Luna Wolves into the Sons of Horus. The Emperor also declared that Magnus would return with Him to Terra, alongside the greatest scholars of his Legion – safe for Ahriman, the First Captain, who would lead the rest of the Fifteenth Legion and join with Horus to assist him in his new duties.

'I cannot tell you my plans, Horus. Not yet. Until I and Magnus know for sure that what I intend is truly possible, I refuse to burden you with hope that may prove false. If I fail … If I cannot complete my grand vision, then it will fall to you and your brothers to guide Mankind, my son. You must find your own path, your own dream, your own ideal, so that if mine cannot become true, you will have the strength to make yours a reality.'

It was soon after the Triumph that Guilliman, bitter at not having been chosen, asked Horus the permission to take his own Expeditionary Fleet, the 12th, and go out beyond the borders of known space. Horus, seeing the wound on his brother's pride, allowed it, believing that Roboute's temper would cool during his journey. Ultimately, this would prove a terrible mistake, but at the time, Horus genuinely believed that Guilliman's anger would pass – and it probably would have, had the Dark Gods not conspired to twist the heart of the Avenging Son.

As Warmaster, Horus continued to uphold diplomacy as the first approach to any human culture, stating that "there are enough xenos in the galaxy that want to destroy Mankind without us killing each other". Under the influence of his brother Curze, he also tried to soften the general approach of the Imperium to human worlds, seeking to make sure that violence was always employed only as a last resort. He had various degrees of success – even the reach of a Warmaster wasn't large enough to touch every corner of the galaxy at once – but never ceased in his effort, supported by those of his brothers who believed in his vision.

However, Horus also showed a great distrust for the Council of Terra his father had appointed to direct the Imperium in His absence. To Horus, the civilians who sat there were unworthy of their rank and had only obtained them through political manoeuvring and because the organizations they represented were needed by the Imperium. Malcador the Sigillite was the only member he respected, and even then he believed that the old man had been exposed to politics too long. In Horus' eyes, the greed and ambition of the other High Lords endangered the entire Great Crusade and by extension the Imperium, notably by enforcing taxation upon recently conquered worlds before they were fully integrated into the empire. Ten thousand years later, this attitude is still displayed by his sons – in fact, considering the nature of the Administratum, it is actually much worse.

After several years spent keeping the various elements of the Great Crusade together while also struggling to continue his own military campains and with more and more friction appearing between his brothers, Horus was drawn to the world of Murder by a distress call from a Blood Angels' force. With him came the Sixty-Third Expeditionary Fleet, and that world would be the first step on a journey that would take Horus beyond the limits of everything had believed possible and into a new realm of dark truths and terrible knowledge.

The Interex : Unwelcome Revelations

'This. World. Is. Murder.'
Last transmission from Captain Khitas Frome of the Blood Angels, leader of the 140th Expeditionary Fleet.

The Sons of Horus and Thousand Sons weren't the only ones to have heard the call for aid of the Blood Angels. Before them, a force of Emperor's Children led by Lord-Commander Eidolon had arrived, determined to rescue their cousins from the planet. Eidolon ordered his forces to make planetfall immediately, despite the risks – some say it was because he didn't want to waste time in rescuing the Blood Angels, others, less charitably, claim that he refused to share the glory with the Sons of Horus, whose arrival had been announced by the astropathic choir.

However, the Emperor's Children were decimated by the very same foe that had slaughtered the Blood Angels in their entirety. Murder was home to a vicious species of hive insects, that the Imperial forces soon came to call the megarachnids. These insect-like creatures were armed with armsblades capable of tearing through power armor as if it were paper, while the storms raging permanently over the planet had scattered the Emperor's Children and the dense forests forced the isolated groups to remain on edge permanently. When the reinforcements arrived, Eidolon had already died, leaving Captain Saul Tarvitz in command of what little forces he had managed to gather. Only a desperate action of Saul – taking down one of the megarachnids' great trees, upon which they had hung the bodies of the Blood Angels and Emperor's Children – resulted in an opening in the storm clouds, and allowed the Sons of Horus to reinforce their allies.

What followed was a brief but bloody campaign, as the forces under Horus' command extracted the surviving Emperor's Children and prepared for the extermination of the megarachnids. But soon after Tarvitz and his remaining brothers had left the system to return the body of their Lord-Commander to Fulgrim, a fleet arrived to Murder – or, as they called it, Urisarach.

The Mournival at the time of the Interex Incident
Ezekyle Abaddon – Captain of the First Company, leader of the Justaerin
Tarik Torgaddon – Captain of the Second Company
Horus Aximand – Captain of the Fifth Company, known as "Little Horus"
Gavriel Loken – Captain of the Tenth Company

These newcomers were envoys of a human civilization that the Imperium hadn't met until now. Calling themselves the Interex, these humans had survived through the Age of Strife while maintaining a high technological level. However, they had also allied with various xenos species, including the all but extinct kinebrach, a race that had nearly destroyed itself in past ages and now existed under the protection of the Interex. Unlike the Imperium, the Interex did not believe that all alien species needed to be wiped out : indeed, they had defeated the megarachnids in war, but instead of exterminating them, they had brought the survivors to Urisarach, where they could live in peace and not be a threat to anyone else.

Meeting a civilization with beliefs so contrary to the Imperial Truth was a shock to the Sons of Horus, but less so for the Thousand Sons, who knew much more of Mankind's secret history. Many in the Legion called for war against the Interex, for had the Emperor not declared that Mankind could not coexist with xenos breeds ? But Horus, advised by his calmer sons and Ahriman, refused to listen to them, remembering the words his father had left him before returning to Terra. The Warmaster wanted to bring the Interex in the Imperium, but he also believed that the Imperium could learn from that civilization. After all, Mankind was no longer threatened with extinction at xenos hands – with the victory at Ullanor, the last great alien empire had been destroyed. Humanity was now stronger than ever – perhaps there was no need to wipe out anymore other species.

Horus and the Interex envoys agreed to a diplomatic summit on the Interex homeworld, while the fleet of the Sixteenth Legion waited at the system's edge. Despite the implicit threat caused by the presence of such an awesome force, negotiations progressed relatively well, though the Interex diplomats were wary of the Imperium's overly military attitude. It soon became evident that direct integration would be difficult, but Horus believed that the two galactic powers could at least be allies, and eventually, over the course of generations, peacefully become one. But that hope was not to be.

The killer looked at the blade, turning it so that it reflected the light. It was beautiful in a way no other weapon he had ever wielded – and he had wielded a great many – could ever hope to be. He fancied that he could hear the weapon whisper at the back of his mind, telling him its desire to be used once more rather than left to gather dust.

Soon, he promised it. Soon.

He departed in the shadows, leaving behind him the corpses of the museum guardians. These fools had had no chance to stop him at all, and in truth he could have taken what he needed without killing them … But their deaths would ensure that war would erupt between the Sons of Horus and the Interex. One way or another, they would serve the cause of Chaos – such was the will of his lord, Lion El'Jonson ...

Eventually, several days of continued negotiations were brought to an end by the need of the Interex representatives to rest and discuss with one another. As Horus returned to his quarters, he was attacked by an assassin, and struck by a kinebrach blade that, despite all of his resilience, brought him down unconscious. Soon after, just as the Apothecaries began to work to rouse their Primarch, the Interex representatives arrived, incensed, claiming that one of their museum had been breached and one of the weapons stored there stolen, accusing the Imperium of the theft. For a brief and dreadful moment, it seemed that war would erupt, as First Captain Abaddon was enraged at what he perceived as a blatant attempt to get way with the murder of his father, but the rest of the Mournival restrained his rage. When the Astartes told the Interex representatives of the assassination attempt, they immediately realized their mistake, and after apologizing, they declared that this must be some attempt by the agents of "Kaos" to sow discord and hatred between the Interex and the Imperium.

At first, the Sons of Horus believed that "Kaos" was an enemy of the Interex, and returned to praying for their Primarch's survival. However, a discussion between Garviel Loken, newest member of the Mournival, and one of the Interex soldiers, revealed that it was much more. Having already been exposed to the malevolence of the Warp in a previous campaign, Loken believed what most Imperials would have dismissed as superstition, and brought Ahriman to the discussion. As soon as the first Captain of the Thousand Sons descended from orbit, he sensed the Warp corruption clinging to Horus. The wound caused by the kinebrach blade had created an opening in the Warmaster's mind, allowing for the creatures of the Warp to go in. Horus was still fighting against them, but to save him, the Space Marines needed to go there too and rescue the Primarch's soul from those who attacked it.

Ahriman immediately gathered his most powerful and skilled Librarians, and together, they sent the minds of the Mournival, the closest and greatest sons of Lupercal, into the psychic battlefield that Horus' soul had become. We know not what they saw there, only that the battle was fierce, and ended with the victory of the forces of righteousness, as Horus cast off the shackles of Chaos, defiantly proclaiming to the very face of the Dark Gods that he would never be theirs.

They were wolves running through a plain, searching for their alpha.

Above them, the skies were torn with unnatural storms, and the stench of death and decay was heavy in the air. But they didn't care. All four of them ran, on and on, seeking the one they loved more than any other. A young boy ran with them, too, an ally to the pack, though he was not one of them. He was guiding them through this treacherous place, away from the pits and the traps, and toward their goal.

Then they found the alpha. Four great and terrible beasts were fighting him, each a nightmarish abomination that had no place in a sane universe. Howling together, the pack mates hurled themselves at the beasts, their fangs and claws tearing at their flesh. At their side, the boy charged as well, holding a spear in his hands that he rammed into the side of some avian monstrosity.

The beasts roared their pain and hatred, and turned toward the pack. Between them, the great wolf, the alpha, rose to his feet, bleeding but unbroken, light shining in his golden eyes. His jaw opened and he howled, the sky itself trembling at the sheer power of the declaration …

Freed from the clutches of the Warp, Horus rose, still weakened by his trial, but burning with a new determination. He had gained terrible knowledge during his time captive, and needed to return to Terra at once, to bring word of the threat of Chaos to the Emperor. The daemons that had tortured his soul had also whispered of him of some great and damnable plot, soon to reach fruition, that would bring low all that the Great Crusade had built. All of this, the Emperor needed to know, and so Horus left the Interex, vowing to return one day to continue negotiations, and warning them of the threat he had been told of.

The Fate of the Interex

After the end of the Heresy, the Sons of Horus returned to Interex space, determined to honor their Primarch's promise. But all that they found there were destroyed worlds, their population slain in hideous scenes of carnage and their riches plundered. A civilization that had endured for thousands of years had been wiped out, but who was responsible for it remains unclear. Most Imperial scholars put the blame on the Dark Angels, or some other traitor force sent to prevent the Interex from intervening in the civil war ravaging the Imperium. However, one should remember that Chaos has many pawns, and it is entirely possible that the force that the Dark Gods sent to destroy the Interex didn't belong to the Traitor Legions, or even to Mankind …

The journey back to Terra was long and difficult, with the Warp in turmoil preventing passage through many known routes and forcing the Navigators to take risks. Eventually, Horus and his men reached Sol, only to be greeted with terrible news : Guilliman had turned against the Emperor, and with him, Sanguinius, Rogal Dorn, and Ferrus Manus.

The Heresy : Treachery in the Dark

When he heard the news of his brother's treachery, Horus' first reaction was to order his Legion to prepare for immediate departure, that he might crush Guilliman and his cohorts himself. However, his reason soon caught up to his rage, as he realized the extant of the damage his fleet had taken, the distance separating him from Isstvan, and the likely influence of Chaos in the whole affair. Worse was the fact that the war had already arrived in the Solar system : Mars, heart of the Mechanicum, was torn apart by civil war between arch-magi supporting the rebellion and those who had remained loyal.

After several hours of reflection and discussion with the Emperor, Magnus, and his Mournival, Horus decided to send an astropathic message to every Legion who had remained loyal. To Angron and Lorgar, he commanded they go to the Five Hundred Worlds, Guilliman's fiefdom in the Imperium, and make sure that their resources weren't used to support the rebellion. The remaining Legions – the Dark Angels, White Scars, Night Lords, Death Guard, Salamanders, Raven Guard and Alpha Legion – were ordered to go to the Isstvan system at all speed. There they would confront the Traitor Legions and their allies and bring them to justice.

Soon after the message had been sent, warnings came from all over the Solar Segmentum. As the news of Guilliman's rebellion had spread, entire systems had declared themselves for the turncoat son, and cut off contact with Terra. Horus divided his Legion in several fleets and sent them to punish these traitors closer from the Throneworld, while also combining his efforts with the Custodes and the Officio Assassinorum to locate hidden spies and infiltrators hiding within the incredibly complex structure of Terran society.

Even as Horus struggled to maintain order across the Solar Segmentum, more terrible news kept reaching him. First, the Emperor and Magnus vanished in the tunnels beneath the Imperial Palace, fighting a war against the daemonic legions that poured through the shattered Webway Gate. Then, the survivors of Prospero arrived, and with them came the news of the Space Wolves' betrayal. The prospect of the Legions sent to Isstvan facing the Wolves as well as the four known Traitor Legions was worrying, but such was the turmoil in the Warp that sending a warning to the retribution fleet was all but impossible.

A few weeks later, Perturabo returned from Olympia, and it fell to Horus to tell his brother what had transpired in his absence. Enraged, the Lord of Iron nonetheless listened to the Warmaster, and sent thirty thousands of his warriors, under the command of one of his Triarchs, Barban Falk, to free Mars from the rebel arch-magi and their armies of tech-horrors. Meanwhile, Perturabo would fortify the Imperial Palace, in the unlikely event that the war somehow reached the Throneworld.

The most terrible news, however, was the reports that soon arrived from Isstvan, carried upon the tumultuous tides of the Warp ahead of the few survivors of the disaster that had occurred there. Four of the seven Legions sent at Isstvan – the Dark Angels, the White Scars, the Salamanders and the Raven Guard – had revealed themselves as accomplices of Guilliman's treachery, and had all but destroyed the loyalist forces who had fought the traitors on Isstvan V. Konrad Curze was dead, Alpharius was missing, and most of the Death Guard had perished. At the same time, the Word Bearers and World Eaters had been cut off from the rest of the Imperium as a massive Warp Storm erupted within the Five Hundred Worlds, trapping them in the hell Guilliman's kingdom had become. The Ultramarines began to advance toward Terra, while their allies scattered across the galaxy in pursuit of their own dark agendas.

There were some among Horus' circle of advisers who wanted to take the Legion and meet the Ultramarines head-on, to crush them while they were isolated from the rest of the traitors. But the Warmaster knew that, for all the strength of his sons, they wouldn't be able to match Guilliman's Warp-infused Legionaries in open battle – not with the Iron Hands fighting at their side. Though it tore at his heart, Horus knew that the only chance the loyalists had to defeat the traitors was to wait on Terra, hoping that the two Legions he had sent to Ultramar managed to escape from the Ruinstorm. The worlds on the path of the Traitor Legions would burn, though the scattered Night Lords and Alpha Legion would fight alongside their defenders to the death.

'Warmaster … That is what it means, brother. The strength to do what must be done.'
Attributed to Horus Lupercal, during the Roboutian Heresy

Several years passed before the Traitor Legions arrived to Terra. All that time, Horus sat within the Imperial Palace, directing the efforts of his Legion to keep the Solar Segmentum from falling apart and listening to what few reports made it through the Warp, speaking of the atrocities unleashed by the renegades upon the worlds that resisted them – as well as many who didn't. From these fragments of abomination and the knowledge of Chaos he had gained during his brief possession, Horus identified which of the Traitor Legions had succumbed to which power of the Warp. This knowledge would prove useful during the Siege.

The Sons of Horus were far from inactive during that period. They were all over the Segmentum, helping the Iron Warriors build the defenses of the Sol system and hunting down infiltrators and outright rebels. They stopped a rebellion in the hives of Merica, whose rulers had long chaffed under the yoke of Imperial rule and saw Guilliman's uprising as their chance to reclaim their independence. Unknown to them, the emissaries sent by the Arch-Traitor to foster their resentment were actually daemonhosts, and when the Sons of Horus stormed the would-be rebels' strongholds, they revealed themselves in all their terrible glory. In the ensuing bloodbath, several bloodlines that had ruled the continent for millenia were wiped out, and the population of Merica returned to the fold of the Imperium.

Many other skirmishes were fought before the Traitor armada arrived. Flotilla were sent ahead of the main fleet – stolen vessels packed full of crazed cultists, daemonships created by the Dark Mechanicum, and other forces of the Lost and the Damned. None of these assaults reached Terra itself, but it was a rare week that the defensive cordon at the edge of the Sol system didn't have to destroy one of them and drag its wreckage out of the way for the shipments of food and supplies that constantly made their way to the Throneworld. When the ragged fleet of the Death Guard finally arrived, dragged from perdition by Mortarion's indomitable will, the defenders of Terra almost opened fire on them out of habit.

Then, after years of fighting such a long and gloryless war, the armies of the Traitor Legions and their allies finally arrived to the Sol system. The Sons of Horus, warned by the seers of the Thousand Sons and the agents of the Alpha Legion alike, had all returned to Terra, ready to die on the walls of the Imperial Palace in order to defeat the Arch-Traitor and restore the rightful rule of the Emperor over the galaxy.

The Siege of Terra : Victory Through Sacrifice

Though they took a heavy toll on the rebel forces by making Guilliman sacrifice an entire fleet to thin the veil and bring forth a daemonic armada, the outer defenses Perturabo had built in the Sol system were unable to stop the Traitor Legions. Both Horus and the Lord of Iron had known this to be inevitable, and they were prepared to fight both in orbit of Terra and on the Throneworld itself. The fleets of the Fourth and Sixteenth Legions, alongside the remnants of the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth and hundreds of loyal Imperial Navy vessels, fought against the traitor fleet in the skies of Terra.

For all their valour, however, they couldn't prevail against overwhelming numbers, and were eventually forced to withdraw, allowing the traitors to land. For the rest of the Siege, under the guidance of some of the greatest admirals the Imperium has ever known – such as Tybalt Marr "the Either", Captain of the Sons of Horus 18th Company – the loyalist fleet launched daring raids on the traitor fleet. In these assaults, the loyalists focused on inflicting as much damage as it could before retreating in the immensity of the void between the worlds of Sol.

And thus, the Siege began in earnest. With the Death Guard decimated at Isstvan V, the Iron Warriors having taken heavy losses in the Martian and Olympian Wars, and the Thousand Sons never having had a huge number of warriors, the Sons of Horus formed the bulk of the Space Marines who fought for the Emperor at the beginning of the Siege. Accounts of the Heresy who have survived the passage of time estimate that the Traitor Legions had a numerical advantage of at least five to one in Legionaries, however. Even with the additions Perturabo had made to the Imperial Palace and with the combined genius of two Primarchs leading the defenders while Mortarion fought on the front, it was doubtful they would be able to hold for long. Still, every man, woman and Astartes on the walls was ready to die before taking a single step back.

Then, moments after the traitors had landed, the odds suddenly changed dramatically. Guilliman, for all his planning and scheming, had failed to take into account the true nature of his allies, and they broke from his carefully designed battle-plan almost instantly. The Imperial Fists, who had claimed the honor of landing first, charged ahead, their hatred of Perturabo's sons driving them to crush the walls of the Palace themselves. Though Guilliman was able to retake control of the Seventh after their first assault was pushed back, the losses taken by the sons of Dorn had already thrown his plans in disarray. Then there were the White Scars and Space Wolves, those who had come to Terra, who completely ignored his instructions, mounting raids of their own and barely fighting alongside the other Traitor Legions.

But worst of all were the Blood Angels – an entire Legion that, in place of fighting to claim the Imperial Palace and seize victory for the rebellion, turned their attention on the defenceless population of Terra. Without the support of the sons of Sanguinius, Guilliman found that he couldn't breach the walls of the Imperial Palace, and though his forces and the loyalists' both took tremendous casualties with each passing day, his control over the other Traitor Legions frayed more as well. For several days, the defenders of the Palace believed that soon their foes would turn on each other. The knowledge Horus had gained of Chaos told him that such an event was inevitable. But before the nature of the traitors became their undoing, Lupercal's was his own.

From the command centre in the Imperial Palace, Horus saw the horrors perpetrated by the Ninth Legion, and his rage knew no bounds. After weeks of holding it back while directing the armies of the Imperium in defense of the Palace, his wrath finally became to much to hold. He left the command of the defenders to Perturabo and went to the Eternity Gate, where he slaughtered the attacking Traitor Marines by the dozen. All the while, he shouted for his brother to show himself, to come and confront him, that he might face justice for his crimes.

High in orbit, trapped in the veil of madness that had descended upon him at Isstvan, Sanguinius heard the call of his brother, and returned to his senses. Driven by grief and guilt, he descended to face Horus, his mind torn between his desire to protect his sons and his horror at what they had become. The two Primarchs fought, and Horus claimed the upper hand. Sanguinius was brought low and laid at Horus' mercy, but just as the Warmaster was about to deliver the killing blow, he hesitated. Lupercal looked into his brother's eyes and saw not the monster he had become, but the Angel he had once been. That second of hesitation was fatal, for Sanguinius' soul broke in that moment, and Slaanesh consumed him wholly. The fallen Angel rose and drained Horus of his lifeblood, transforming into a Daemon Primarch in the process.

'Brother ... What have they done to you ?'
Last words of Horus Lupercal, First Warmaster of the Imperium (allegedly)

The death of Horus was a terrible blow to the Imperial defenders, but even more so to his Legion. Perturabo had to exert all of his will to keep the Sons of Horus from charging recklessly into the enemy ranks, so strong was their urge for revenge. It is said Ezekyle Abaddon and Tarik Torgaddon had to be physically restrained by the rest of the Mournival. Despair threatened to overcome the defenders, for with the fall of Horus had also come the sudden return of the Blood Angels from their butchery and into the fray. Then a vox transmission echoed across all of the Terra, coming from the Legion flagship Andronicus : the Emperor's Children, lost during the Heresy and thought to have been destroyed, had arrived. Immediately after came another transmission, this one from Sevatar, Legion Master of the Night Lords.

Horus was dead.

The thought was impossible. It couldn't be true. But it was; they had all seen it. They had seen their father falling to the one he had called brother, the one he had loved most. From up the walls of the Imperial Palace, they, like all other warriors – loyalists and traitors alike – had frozen and watched the moment the Warmaster had died.

Ezekyle and Tarik were enraged. Their screams were shaking the very stones of the Imperial Palace. But even as he held them back, with the help of Aximand and other warriors, Gavriel could hear the other emotion in his brothers' voices. Like him, they were being torn apart inside.

'You can't go there, Ezekyle !' he shouted, trying to make his brother see reason. 'He will kill you !'

'I don't care ! He killed our father ! He must die ! He must … He must …'

The words stopped even as the First Captain ceased to struggle. Terminator armor wasn't designed to allow much freedom of movement, but Gavriel was fairly certain that had his brother worn a traditional suit of power armor, he would be on his knees. Ezekyle Abaddon, who had fought the enemies of the Emperor on a thousand worlds, who had gone through the entire civil war with the same expression of contained fury on his face, was weeping like a child.

And Gavriel knew that tears were running down his own face. He didn't care. Horus was dead. There was no hope …

And then, they heard it. A change in the vox transmissions. A difference in tone, at first so minute anyone with less experience than them wouldn't have noticed it. Something had happened that was changing the course of the battle. A new transmission started to register in their vox-systems, and for a moment Gavriel couldn't believe the identifier on it. It was a code he had seen during the Great Crusade's early days, before Nikaea, before Ullanor, when the Luna Wolves had fought alongside another Legion.

'Fulgrim ? …' he breathed, unable to comprehend what he was seeing. No one had heard of the Third Legion since the beginning of the war. A hundred rumors circulated about the fate of the Emperor's Children – some thought they had been destroyed by the traitors, others that they had joined them and were being held as a reserve force. For a second, Gavriel was at once relieved to hear that the Phoenician lived, and horrified that maybe this indicated the arrival of traitor reinforcements.

Then the words reached the grieving Mournival, their pronunciation rough, as if the one speaking them was doing so through grievous injuries.

"In endless agony reborn ..."

"By the blades of true brothers returned ..."

"Enemies of the Emperor, we have come for you !"

In orbit and on the ground, the two Legions unleashed all of their might against the Traitors. The members of the Mournival, now in command of the Sixteenth Legion, seized the opportunity. As they ran through the Imperial Palace, they communicated with the leaders of the two newly arrived Legions, forming a plan that was as bold as it was desperate. While the Night Lords prevented the arrival of enemy reinforcements, the Mournival, together with their four Companies, would attack the Eternity Gate. The four warriors at the head of this assault, each a legend of the Great Crusade in their own right, were determined to slay the vile traitor Sanguinius and reclaim their father's body.

They were dying. Worse : they were losing.

What had begun as a glorious counter-charge against the tide of darkness had turned into a desperate struggle for survival. In his mind, Ezekyle Abaddon knew that this was to be expected. No matter what he had become, Sanguinius still possessed the might of a Primarch, and no mere Legionary could challenge such power. But his heart ... his heart felt very differently. His heart burned with the thirst for righteous revenge, sorrow at his father's demise, and a primal, animal need to help his comrades.

"Little Horus" Aximand was on the ground, his guts torn open, half his face torn away by the blade of the Traitor Primarch. Tarik had lost his left arm, but he still fought, back to back with Gavriel – brave, stalwart Gavriel – even as they both bled from a dozen wounds.

And what was he doing, he the First Captain, he whose battle-rage and martial skills were legendary across the Imperium ? He was dragging himself on the ground like a worm, inch by inch, toward the corpse of his father. He didn't know where the idea had come from, and yet he knew that there was only one way for them to kill the monster Sanguinius had become. With hands that trembled both because of the pain wrecking his body and that burning in his soul, Abaddon detached the great Talon from his father's hand, and slid it upon his own.

It shouldn't have worked. For all the simplicity of its use, the brutal elegance of its design, the Talon was still a weapon of war that had been forged by the Fabricator-General of Mars himself as a gift to Horus. It should have taken half a dozen tech-priests several hours of rites and calibrations to adapt it to Abaddon's Terminator war-plate, to link between the weapon's machine-spirit and that of the armor. And yet ...

The moment the Talon of Horus slammed into place around Ezekyle's hand, the lightning claw roared into life, power coursing through each blade. The First Captain thought he could feel the weapon's rage, its desire to avenge its fallen master just as great as his own. Abaddon felt a surge of strength through his battered and bruised body, and leapt to his feet before charging with far more speed than he had ever displayed.

'Lupercal !' he shouted, his cry both of challenge and mourning, a lamentation of what had already been lost and a scream of defiance to the dark powers that had created the abomination he faced.

Five claws pierced the chest of the fallen Angel, and burst out of the creature's back in a shower of blood. Yet still the daemon remained standing, staring at Abaddon with eyes filled with madness, a demented grin on his once-beautiful features.

Then the head exploded as Aximand, still spilling his guts on sacred ground and with half his face a bloody ruin, rammed Worldbreaker into it. A horrible, inhuman shriek resonated across the entire surface of Terra as the fell spirit Sanguinius had become lost its grasp on the material plane and was hurled back into the infernal aether.

But this victory was short-lived. Warriors clad in the blue of the accursed Thirteenth joined the battle even as most Blood Angels fell to the ground in agony. The members of the Mournival, wounded and exhausted, stood their ground, but to their horror, they found themselves separated from Horus' corpse. That horror only grew when they saw some of the Blood Angels approach that body, and start dragging him away.

'Give him back !' roared Gavriel, tearing through the ranks of the Ultramarines as he tried to advance, to kill the wretches who dared to touch his father's body. All thoughts of restraint, of tactics, had deserted him, replaced by the all-consuming need to protect his Primarch's corpse, to not fail him in death as he had failed him in life. 'GIVE HIM BACK !'

Against all odds, the four warriors destroyed Sanguinius' corporeal form, banishing his spirit back to the Warp. But even as they claimed this mighty victory, traitor reinforcements arrived in the form of several companies of Ultramarines, sent by their foul master to capitalize on Sanguinius' presence on the front line. The Traitor Marines kept the Mournival away from Horus' body, and it was all the Sons of Horus could do to watch in horror as the Blood Angels withdrew from the field, carrying with them the corpse of the First Primarch.

Many among the Sons of Horus wanted to charge down the walls of the Imperial Palace in order to reclaim their gene-sire's remains, but even if they had been ready to break their sacred oaths, they would have been hard pressed. Guilliman had reacted to the arrival of the Third and Eighth Legions as well, and had launched one last attack on the Palace, led by himself and his brothers in damnation.

The walls of the Imperial Palace were breached, and Guilliman, Lion El'Jonson and Rogal Dorn entered the Cavea Ferrum, while the Sons of Horus and their allies desperately fought against Ferrus Manus and his twisted Marines holding the gate. Many heroes of the loyal Legions fell that day, until word came from the depths of the Imperial Palace : Roboute Guilliman, the Arch-Traitor, was dead. The Traitor Legions broke and fled, their backs exposed to the Sons of Horus, who did not hesitate a second to open fire.

Soon, the ships of the traitors had either fled or been destroyed. The Heresy was over, and the Imperium had triumphed, at the cost of its founder and its bravest and most noble sons and daughters.

Post-Heresy : A Stained Honor

'I was there, the day the Great Crusade ended.
I was there, the day Horus died for the Emperor.
I was there, the day the Emperor died for Mankind.
I was there, the day the Black Legion was born.
And I will be there the day it dies.'
Unknown warrior of the Sixteenth Legion (generally attributed to Garviel Loken)

Though the Emperor had defeated Guilliman with the help of Fulgrim, the Master of Mankind had been terribly wounded in the battle, and had to be sat upon the Golden Throne to preserve even the smallest flicker of His life. So it was that the Sons of Horus, having already lost their gene-sire and commander to the ravenous claws of Chaos, also lost their liege lord to eternal silence.

Amidst the confusion that followed the flight of the Traitor Legions and the arrival of the Twelfth and Seventeenth Legions, it fell to the members of the Mournival to hold the Imperium together. With the Emperor silent and Malcador the Sigillite dead, the possibility of the Imperium collapsing was entirely too likely. It was the combined efforts of the four warlords who kept this downfall at bay, for together, they held the same strengths and skills as their lost father.

With the aid of the remaining Primarchs, these Mournival Lords, as the grateful population of Terra soon named them, brought the Imperium back from the brink. From the survivors of the Heresy, they named new Lords of Terra to replace those who had fallen. In an act that helped seal the authority of this new Council, they bowed to the decision that no Primarch or Astartes would hold authority over the Imperial Army, to prevent such an event as the Heresy from happening again. The title of Warmaster, bestowed by the Emperor upon Horus, was also stripped of much of its power, becoming a rank the High Lords would grant to the greatest generals only in time of dire need, and for a limited period.

So did the Imperium begin to rebuild itself after the horrors of civil war. But the darkness unleashed by Guilliman was far from banished : though they had fled from Terra, the Traitor Legions still haunted the galaxy. Once the Lords of Terra were firmly in control of the Throneworld and the nearby systems, the Sons of Horus prepared to join in the effort to scour the traitors from the stars. Together with the entire force of their Legion, the four Mournival Lords waged terrible war upon the enemies of the Throne. On a thousand worlds, the sons of Lupercal fought against traitors from all Legions and their allies, both human and daemonic. The rage and sorrow they felt for the death of their father, for the loss of the Emperor, for the doom of the Imperial Truth, was finally unleashed. The wolves of Chthonia mourned their liege in a manner befitting their kin : by making pyres of their enemies' broken corpses.

Yet for all their fury, the Sons of Horus weren't invincible. The Scouring inflicted grave losses on the Legion, and by the time the last of the traitor warbands was either destroyed or cast behind the walls of the Iron Cages, less than ten thousand Legionaires remained who wore the Eye of Horus. Two members of the Mournival had also fallen, their deaths remembered and honored in every sanctuary of the Sixteenth Legion.

Tarik Torgaddon, Captain of the Second Company, fell in battle against the Daemon Prince Samus. The creature had already been defeated several times during the Heresy, but it had always found a way to return to the Materium. Tarik, however, managed to inflict such damage upon the lord of the Immaterium that it still has to reappear today, after ten thousand years of banishment.

'Samus is here,' growled the beast, bending its head so that it could look down upon the battered, lone warrior who faced it.

Tarik laughed, and the creature roared in fury at his mockery – or perhaps it was fear. In his hands, the son of Horus held Worldbreaker, the weapon that had killed a Primarch. He had been the one to receive it after Lupercal had fallen – Aximand, though he had used it against accursed Sanguinius, had refused it. Did the beast recognize the weapon, Tarik wondered ? Did it fear it, more so than the warrior that wielded it ?

If so, then it was a fool.

'Samus is here !' it bellowed, raising its weapon, a hideous thing of black metal and twisted angles.

'Not for long he isn't,' Tarik promised, and charged the Daemon Prince, his Primarch's power maul held high.

The second of the Mournival Lords to fall during the Scouring was Horus Aximand. The Captain of the Fifth Company lost in life in a duel against Sigismund of the Imperial Fists. Aximand's forces – made of Sons of Horus, but also Imperial Navy and Mechanicum ships – had found the Seventh Legion as it fled toward the Eye of Terror. But just as they were ready to wipe the foul sons of Dorn and their Primarch from the galaxy, Sigismund launched a daring attack on Aximand's command ship, disturbing the formation of Imperial forces and giving his Legion an opening to escape. Aximand fell by the blade of the champion of Khorne, but in what was either an insult or a sign of respect, the Destroyer left the body intact instead of taking his skull.

'You fought well,' said Sigismund as he pulled his blade from Aximand's chest. The daemon weapon, forged in the fires of the Blood Crusade, pulsed with hunger as it sought to devour the soul of its victim, only to find it too strong.

His two hearts had been pierced, blood was gushing from the wound, yet somehow the Mournival Lord remained standing. His face, regrown and reattached after his fight with Sanguinius, stared at the Imperial Fist before him like that of an ancient king rendering judgement upon a criminal, and Sigismund felt the vestige of something akin to fear – or was it shame ? – inside him. Without a word, his sword, the blade Mourn-it-all, came down upon Sigismund's own hastily raised blade, and the two weapons shattered under the strength of the impact, sending both Aximand and Sigismund flying across the ravaged bridge. Aximand's corpse hit the wall and slid to the floor, while Sigismund was engulfed in a twirling maelstrom of Warp energy and, with one last scream, was taken from the material plane by the rage of the unleashed daemon.

With the Scouring complete, the Sons of Horus returned to their various strongholds, to heal their wounds, repair their ships, mourn their brothers and replace their casualties. There was peace in the Imperium, though the Imperial Truth had been forever broken, and faith and superstition were rising in its place. Several decades passed, which the Sons of Horus spent rebuilding what they had lost. Then, a hundred years after the battle of Terra, an astropathic message from the Iron Cage around the Eye of Terror reached the Legion's headquarters in the orbit of Chthonia.

Cadia had fallen to the Ninth Legion, the message said. That alone was bad news enough, for the fortress-world had been one of the best defended of the Iron Cage, and the linchpin of the Iron Warriors' efforts to keep the Traitor Legions contained. Yet even worse was the rest of the message, which spoke of malformed clones fighting alongside the Blood Angels, whose traits uncannily resembled those of the dead Warmaster – and whose gene-seed their dissected bodies had revealed they shared. Another traitor had been sighted as well : Fabius Bile, once the first Apothecary of the Third Legion, who had disappeared during the Bleeding Wars and had been presumed dead. The abominations fought under his banner, and he also appeared to be in relative control of the Blood Angels. The first of the Black Crusade had begun, and the Imperium's armies must be raised to fight and cast the traitors back into their infernal prison.

The piece of information that set the Sons of Horus on the warpath, however, was the fact that several witnesses claimed to have seen the body of Horus Lupercal being brought to Cadia and into one of the laboratories built at Fabius' command. After relaying the message to the Emperor's Children and demanding that Fulgrim explains the actions of his son, the full might of the Sixteenth Legion departed for the border of the war zone, where it joined with the Iron Warriors and the Emperor's Children. With the first, devastating counter-attack led by the Mournival Lords themselves, the Clone Wars began.

The traitor forces under Bile's command had claimed dozens of system during the initial push, only to settle down as their master began to use the captured population and Legionaries for his unholy experiments. Reclaiming these worlds and purging them of heresy would be a task that would last for many years, but from the moment the Sons of Horus fought against the creations of Bile for the first time, their sole focus became the destruction of the Primogenitor and his foul get.

Misshapen Astartes, hideous abominations of flesh, and hordes of cloned mutants had been unleashed by Fabius Bile, under the leadership of the greatest horrors of all : the clones of Horus who were complete success, but were then twisted by the dark powers of Chaos. These warlords commanded the armies created by their Primogenitor, and called themselves the Black Legion – a malevolent reflection of the twenty Space Marine Legions created by the Emperor at the dawn of the Great Crusade. In daemon ships forged in the Eye of Terror by the Dark Mechanicum, they rampaged across the territory conquered by the Black Crusade, and the Sons of Horus vowed to bring every such abomination down, no matter the cost.

The Black Legion

Of all the warbands and gatherings of traitors and heretics, the Black Legion is the most foul, and perhaps the most powerful. Born from the spawn of Fabius Bile's failed experiments, its strength has waxed and waned over the ages, yet never has it been completely eradicated – and Imperial strategists fear that such a feat is impossible. Their banner of the Eightfold Star of Chaos Undivided has been raised on battlefields across the breadth and width of the entire galaxy, against all manners of enemies – though most often against the forces of the Imperium. None of the four Chaos Gods are especially favored by its members, though individuals within its ranks do walk the Path to Glory, with several having reached its ignominious end and been reborn as Daemon Princes.

Any warband can claim affiliation to the Black Legion, and over the years Legionaries from all nine Traitor Legions have cast aside their former allegiance have "donned the black". Even renegade groups made up entirely of humans and mutants can decide to bear its foul emblem as their own, though more powerful warbands might be insulted by such presumption. Other Traitor Legions regard these groups as fools and inferiors, and have often attacked them for slaves, supplies, or sport. Yet even these ancient warlords know, deep within their tortured souls, that while their own Legions grow weaker with the passing of time and the death of their warriors, the Black Legion only gets more powerful with each century.

While Fabius Bile is revered as the Primogenitor of the Black Legion, he has little interest in actually leading it to war. Like the Traitor Legions, the Black Legion is divided in hundreds of warbands with individual leaders, and it is far from uncommon for these warbands to fight one another. But the name of the Black Legion has spread far and wide, and whenever Astartes from the loyal Legions succumb to the lures of Chaos and break their oath to the Imperium, it is often to the Black Legion they turn. This, combined with the products of Bile's ongoing experiments always joining the horde, has kept the Black Legion's numbers high since the end of the Clone Wars. Should any warlord manage to rise to truly unite it, or Bile take a greater interest in his errant children, the Black Legion would be a terrible threat not just to the Imperium, but to all life in the galaxy.

For several years, the Sons of Horus fought to purge the Imperium from the taint of the Black Legion and the Blood Angels. With the help of the Iron Warriors and the Emperor's Children, they managed to push back the forces of Chaos, until eventually the warriors of the Ninth Legion were recalled in the Eye of Terror – the War of Woe had begun, and Azkaellon needed every warrior to oppose the Imperial Fists.

This allowed the Imperial forces to launch one final attack, directly onto the invaders' primary fortress. There were the cloning facilities from which the monsters of the Black Legion were spawned, there laid the desecrated corpse of Horus Lupercal – there was the Primogenitor. While the Iron Warriors fought in orbit against the Chaotic fleet, the Emperor's Children and the Sons of Horus descended upon the planet to purge it of evil. After much discussion, it had been decided that the Sixteenth Legion would destroy the cloning facilities and reclaim their father's body, while Fulgrim himself would hunt down his wayward son and bring him to justice.

The battle of the Clone Pits was gruelling and nightmarish, with the Sons of Horus facing countless abominations. Ezekyle Abaddon, Mournival Lord and hero of the Great Crusade, was separated from his forces, and brought low by no less than three of the horrendous clones of his Primarch – though he killed them all in return. In the end, it was Gavriel Loken who reclaimed Horus' body, and later ordered it burned so that it could never again be used against the Imperium in such a manner. The cloning labs burned with their progeny, but Bile escaped judgement, unleashing a horde of malformed clones of Fulgrim upon his Primarch to slow him down while he cowardly escaped. The Clone Wars were won, but many of the creations of the Primogenitor escaped, and they would haunt the Imperium for millenia to come.

'Lupercal !' Abaddon howled as he plunged the Talon into the chest of another clone. The four blades burst out of its back in a shower of blood, and the abomination fell.

But there were still two more, and Ezekyle was bleeding from a dozen grievous wounds. The assault on the cloning facilities had not been easy, and he had gotten separated from the rest of the Justaerin.

My own damn fault, he thought as he turned to face the remaining clones. If I hadn't charged ahead …

He shook his head. Regrets meant nothing now. Whatever happened to him, Gavriel would take care of things. He would make sure this place was burned to the ground. Some part of Abaddon wondered if perhaps he had deliberately pushed forward, ahead of his men. Perhaps he couldn't bear it any longer – they had lost so much. The faces of lost brothers haunted Abaddon's nights, driving him to ever greater feats of endurance and martial skill to avenge their spirits.

'I will see you soon, brothers, father,' he whispered, before forcing his burning muscles into motion once more, determined to meet the last abominations head on.

'Lupercal !' he roared as their blades pierced his hearts, and the Talon cut through their armor and into their corrupted flesh.

At some point, either during the end of the Clone Wars or soon after, Garviel Loken, the last of the Mournival Lords to have held his position since the Heresy, vanished. Not even in the Ordos' most secretive archives can any clue as to his ultimate fate be found, safe for a single quote that is believed to come from him and that predicts his presence on the day the Black Legion is finally destroyed. The Sons of Horus believe him dead, and honor him in the same way as the other three first Mournival Lords.

The end of the Clone Wars marked the definitive transition for the Sixteenth Legion from the Heresy into the Age of Imperium. The Sons of Horus scattered across the Imperium and started to wage the countless wars that would be required for Mankind to survive. Always they are at the forefront of any expansion effort, thriving on the same spirit of conquest that inhabited them during the Great Crusade. But even then, the echoes of their past have never truly left them. Hundreds of champions of the Sixteenth Legion have left their brothers over the millenia to go on hunting quests, vowing to bring the Arch-Renegade Bile to justice. Though several of them have claimed to have slain the betrayer, each time they have been proven wrong as the Primogenitor reappeared, leading another raid in realspace or having dealings with rebellions and cults across the entire galaxy. The reason for that apparent immortality is unknown, though there are several theories in both the Sixteenth Legion and the Inquisition, ranging from dark pacts with powerful daemons to the most blasphemous of genetic perversions.

During the thirty-eight millennium, the animosity between Fabius Bile and the Sons of Horus escalated to yet another level as the foul Primogenitor unleashed one of his most cruel and twisted plans ever. The exact details, as well as the names of those who were involved, are kept secret by the Sixteenth, who only revealed what the Inquisition does know grudgingly, unwilling to add another inglorious passage to their history.

Bile, after millennia of being opposed by the Sons of Horus, had designed a scheme that he believed could destroy the Sixteenth Legion forever. In his gene-laboratories of the Eye of Terror, he created a young man that, to any human and even psychic eye, appeared to be completely normal. This creature was then taken by his agents to one of the Sons of Horus' recruiting worlds, and introduced into the local population. The clone himself knew nothing of his origins, his mind shrouded by implanted false memories that convinced him that he had always lived on the planet.

When the Sons of Horus came to bring new recruits to their Apothecaries, the young man was immediately singled out, for he had demonstrated incredible strength, endurance, but also courage, honor and leadership. He was taken into the ranks of the aspirants, and even the most careful screenings of the Legion Apothecaries failed to discover his true nature. He did incredibly well in training, and soon received the implants that made him first a Scout, then a true Legionary.

Bile had designed his creation with all the evil genius he had become infamous for, and the introduction of the Sixteenth Legion's gene-seed reacted with the secrets he had implanted within his pawn's gene-code. The clone grew in strength and stature like all of his comrades, but his own growth didn't stop at the level of a normal Space Marine, and continued until he was of the same size as the legendary Primarchs of old. Those around him believed him to be blessed by the Emperor, his transformation a result of a particular affinity with Horus' gene-seed. This strength, combined with undeniable martial qualities, led to the unknowing plant becoming Captain of an entire Company. Many enemies of the Emperor were brought low by his hand, but then, Bile's plan entered its second phase.

Visions of the Great Crusade and the Heresy started to haunt the clone. Slowly, without realizing what was happening to him, he came to believe that he was Horus Lupercal himself, reborn in the flesh after ten thousand years. Many Sons of Horus also believed in this reincarnation, such was the likeness of the clone, both in appearance, but also in martial skill and behaviour. He matched the First Warmaster described in the archives perfectly, and the Sons had ever longed to be reunited with their lost father.

Pushed along by the manipulations of secret agents of Bile, the self-proclaimed Primarch tried to seize control of the entire Legion, as he genuinely believed was his right and duty. He called the Mournival Lords to him, that they may bend knee and rejoice at the reunion. The four lords answered his call, but not to kneel. They had inherited the accumulated knowledge of their predecessors, including secrets that had been kept from the rest of the Legion. They knew the true extant of Fabius Bile's hideous work during the Clone Wars.

With ranks of Legionaries facing each other in tense silence, the Mournival Lords confronted the clone. They decried him as a fraud and a heretic, naming him the False King. They vowed to see him destroyed, and the Legion freed from the lies he had, willingly or not, brought with him. This event is recorded in the Ordos' archives as the Denunciation of the False King, and while it was right that the clone be exposed as the abomination that he was, there would be dire consequences to the Mournival's decree.

'Horus was the greatest of the Primarchs. He was our father, in blood and in spirit. Under his command, I would venture into the Eye of Terror itself and spit in the face of the Dark Gods. But you are not him. You are a lie, clad in flesh born of our great enemy's mad genius. Horus is dead, and can never return !'
From a member of the Mournival, during the Denunciation of the False King

What followed was a bloody and terrible civil war within the ranks of the Sixteenth Legion. The False King, during his rise, had accumulated millions of mortal soldiers to his cause : they had flocked to him, blinded by his greatness. Now they died under the might of the Sons of Horus, in a campain that lasted for three months and reduced several once-mighty worlds to ruin. Thousands of Legionaries on both sides died, though several Companies whose leaders had been deceived by the False King returned to the fold after some among their ranks rose against the treachery of their masters.

As the conflict dragged on, signs began to appear that confirmed the words of the Mournival Lords. Warbands of the Black Legion started to take part in battles, fighting against the Sons of Horus unaligned with the False King and retreating rather than fight the others. Some of the warriors fighting under the banner of the one they believed to be Horus Reborn started to suffer from mutations, their Librarians driven to insanity and corruption by the laughter of daemons.

The War of the False King, as it came to be known, ended with the death of the cloned Primarch. By that point, the warriors that were still loyal to him were little different from Chaos Marines themselves, drenched in corruption and self-delusion. When the forces of the Imperium finally cornered him in his final fortress, his genetic make-up had begun to decay. He was afflicted with mutation and madness, at long last realizing the truth of his nature. It is said that he welcomed the blade that ended his life and freed him from an existence of lies. Every trace of his deeds before his rebellion were erased from the Legion's archives, and his very name was destroyed, to the point not even the Mournival Lords know him by anything but the title they gave him during the Denunciation.

'Brother … I am sorry …'
Last words of the False King (unverified)

The Inquisition thoroughly investigated the warriors who had initially followed the False King but turned their back on him later. They willingly submitted themselves to these examinations, wanting to purge the shame of their deeds in any way necessary. A few of the False King men, however, survived and escaped, most of them joining the ranks of the Black Legion. It is said that they hope the Primogenitor will give them another Primarch to lead them, and are willing to perform any deed, no matter how vile, to earn this gift.

A thousand years after that terrible affair, yet another blow was dealt to the Sixteenth Legion, though it came with what the Imperium at large considered a boon. In the year 392 of the forty-first millennium, Lord Commander Solar Macharius was named Warmaster by the Senatorum Imperialis, and declared a Crusade to expand the domains of the God-Emperor to the confines of the galaxy. He led a massive army to the Imperial frontier in the Segmentum Pacificus, the likes of which had not been seen since the days of the Great Crusade.

The Sons of Horus had always supported those deemed worthy of the title of Warmaster, especially when they attempted to push the boundaries of the Imperium further. A full third of the Sixteenth Legion joined the Macharian Crusade, with two members of the Mournival leading them and counting among Macharius' favored advisers. As per the tradition of the Sixteenth, one of the Mournival Lords sent was calm and collected, while the other carried with him the passion of the Legion, that the two might balance each other.

However, the Mournival Lord tasked with keeping both his brother's and Macharius' own drive for conquest fell in battle early in the Crusade. In the Karsk system, the forces of the Imperium met their first true challenge in the form of the Cult of the Angel of Fire, debased humans who worshiped a Lord of Change – the titular Angel. The Greater Daemon killed the Mournival Lord, only to be defeated and banished moments later by Macharius himself, whose soul was able to resist the false promises of the daemon and hold to faith in the God-Emperor.

Despite the ultimate victory, the death of the Mournival Lord would have lasting consequences for the Crusade. The ambitions of the Warmaster and the remaining Space Marine commander fuelled each other, and the Crusade advanced at a prodigious pace, claiming a thousand worlds in only seven years. The Sons of Horus spearheaded the assaults, while Macharius' tactical genius allowed him to turn these initial gains into strongholds. As the year 399.M41 neared a close, the forces of the Imperium were approaching the galactic border, beyond which there laid only the cold blackness of the abyss, far from the light of the Astronomican.

At this point, even the remaining Mournival Lord counselled Macharius to end the Crusade, content in the knowledge that they had brought a thousand worlds into the Imperium. But Macharius wanted more. He wanted to push on into the Halo Zone, to let nothing escape his conquering grasp. However, when faced with the opposition of the Sons of Horus, but also of most of his own generals and other advisers, he relented. His forces were delighted to know that the Crusade was over, and prepared to return to Terra in glory.

On the way to the Throneworld, however, tragedy struck, and Macharius died. The exact circumstances of his demise are unknown. Official records indicate that the Warmaster had contracted a potent fever on one of the worlds he had conquered, and the disease had finally taken him. Yet there are many other versions in the Ordos' archives : some claim that Macharius, broken by the refusal of his men to continue the Crusade, simply faded away in his sleep or even took his own life. Other accounts tell of darker reasons for his death, which, if confirmed, would shed a disturbing light on the events that followed it.

The human who dared to claim the title of Warmaster looked upon Azrael with hate-filled eyes, but no sound passed his lips. The agents of the Lord of Lies had worked well, poisoning Macharius over the course of the entire Crusade, all so that when the end came, his soul would belong to Azrael.

It had truly been a master stroke, the Dark Angel reflected, one that would soon result in destruction untold across the Imperium. The brutish Sons of Horus hadn't even realised they were being manipulated by the scions of the Great Changer. With Macharius' soul in his grasp, Azrael would be able to do as he pleased with the body, and the triumphant Warmaster would rise against the Lords of Terra, causing a civil war the likes of which had not been seen since the days of the Heresy. His generals, carefully groomed over the course of several generations, would follow him – their ambition would allow no other outcome.

He reached out with his mind, preparing to tear the essence of the great general from his body. But to his initial surprise and growing horror, he found that he couldn't touch it. Something was protecting Macharius' soul from his grasp, and the life of the Warmaster was fleeing. In mere seconds, he would be dead, and it would all have been for nothing …

'For the Emperor', said a voice behind Azrael, and the Grand Master had just enough time to turn around before a bolt shell crashed through his chest plate and into his primary heart. Before his enchantments took him away and back to the First Legion's homeworld – where he would have to explain his failure to his Primarch – Azrael caught a glimpse of a transhuman silhouette in green, scaled armor …

The Sons of Horus honored the death of their ally, and prepared to leave the territory claimed by the Crusade, leaving it in the hands of Macharius' human generals so that it might be added to the Imperium proper. However, no sooner had the Warmaster breathed his last that the seven generals who had led his Army Groups turned against each other and the Imperium. They divided the territory conquered by the Crusade into petty empires and crowned themselves lords. So began the Macharian Heresy, named after one of the two warlords who failed to notice the growing ambitions and blackening souls of those under their command.

Obviously, the Sons of Horus were outraged by such base treachery. For thirty years, they scoured the Segmentum Pacificus, hunting down each of the treacherous generals and killing him within his most secure stronghold, showing to those who had foolishly followed his command into rebellion the price of betrayal. Chaos forces began to appear in the war, allying themselves with the rebel generals or taking advantage of the destruction to plunder and despoil. A warband calling itself the Minotaurs, believed to be an off-shot of the Thirteenth Legion, was notably responsible for the destruction of three entire worlds before the Sons of Horus cornered them in the Euxine system. Several of the generals also made direct pacts with the Ruinous Powers, sacrificing their traitorous souls to prolong their unworthy existences.

By the time the Sixteenth Legion's forces and the Imperial troops who had remained loyal were done, the swathes of space Macharius had conquered was in ruins. Only a small human population remained, and most of its existing industry had been destroyed. Still, the Imperium had gained a thousand worlds, to be colonized and exploited by the teeming masses of Mankind. To the High Lords of Terra, this was an acceptable result. Macharius was named a Saint of the Imperium by the Ecclesiarchy, his story used to inspire loyalty and devotion across the entire galaxy.

At the end of the Macharian Heresy, the Mournival Lord who had survived returned to the rest of his Legion in shame that he had failed to foresee the generals' betrayal. A new Mournival Lord was selected, and the brotherhood renewed its ancient oaths to preserve balance within its ranks, no matter the circumstances. So did the fifth century of the forty-first millenium began for the Sixteenth Legion with one more shame added to their past, and many more vows to atone for it through battle.

Now, as the forty-first millennium draws to a close, the forces of the Black Legion are rising once more. Dozens of warbands have been sighted outside the Eye of Terror, and more and more Chaos Marines from other Legions don the black of Fabius' armada with each passing year. All they await is a suitable leader, one willing to guide them out of the Eye and into war against the Imperium. Should such a Chaos Lord arise, he would be able to command a Black Crusade of unprecedented might – but would also find the full strength of the Sons of Horus arrayed against him, as the heirs of Lupercal seize the chance to finally erase the insult on their honor that is the Black Legion.

Lufgt Huron, the Savior of Badab

Born on the hive-world Badab Primaris, in the Segmentum Ultima, Lufgt Huron was selected to become a Son of Horus after the Twelfth Company of the Sixteenth Legion took heavy losses fighting back a massive pirate invasion from the nearby Maelstrom. Lufgt took well to the implants, and became a member of the Scouts. Only a few years later, during the conquest of the Eldar Exodite world of Lylogir, Lufgt distinguished himself when he killed a xenos warlock with his bare hands, resisting the witch's psychic assault through sheer force of will. Many among the Company believed this marked him for greatness, and he was quickly elevated to the rank of full Astartes.

Over the next century, Lufgt Huron rose through the ranks by displaying the combination of martial skill and tactical genius only seen in a few of the Legion's captains. When the Twelfth Captain, Rovik Blake, fell in battle against an Ork Warboss, he was selected by his peers to succeed him. This ascension was as quick as it was unceremonious, for with the fall of Blake, the Orks had seized the momentum of the ongoing conflict between them and Imperial forces of the Maelstrom zone. A Waaagh emerged from the Warp storm, and converged on Badab Primaris, Lufgt's homeworld. Determined to prevent the planet's loss to the Great Beast, Huron planned a devastating counter-attack, aiming to kill the Warboss who had killed his predecessor and break the cohesion of the enemy horde. The resulting duel left Huron gravely injured, with almost half of his body needing to be replaced by cybernetic augmentations, but the plan worked. With the death of their leader, the Orks turned on each other, becoming easy prey for the Imperial forces. The grateful population of the hive-world bestowed upon Huron the title of Savior of Badab, and he has since led many operations against all enemies of Man.

There is now talk among the Legion that Lufgt is in line for the Mournival, should a seat free itself – each of the four Lords is always on the look-out for his own potential successors, for to rise to that rank means an acute awareness of the reality of war, and none believe themselves immortal. Many, including within the Inquisition, have great expectations for the Savior of Badab should he ascend to such a position. Yet others fear what it might portend, speaking of prophecies that allude to a dark destiny for Lufgt Huron.

Organization

'I pledge to honor the Imperium, the Emperor, and the Primarch. With my life, I shall guard the soul of the Legion against the darkness. I shall guide my brothers into eternal war, and give my blood so that Mankind might live. This I swear, upon the shadow of the moon.'
The oath of the Mournival Lords

Only Horus was worthy of leading the Sixteenth Legion. Such is the firm belief of the commanders of the Sons of Horus, and they have clung to it for ten thousand years. That is why, unlike other Legions whose Primarchs have fallen or gone missing, they do not have a Legion Master. Instead, the Sixteenth is led by the four Mournival Lords, heirs to the famous lords who counselled Lupercal during the Great Crusade and the Heresy. Back then, the Mournival was only an informal circle of four warriors counselling the Primarch and speaking with his voice, holding no special official authority – though in truth, they were considered by all who knew of their statut to be among the lords of the Great Crusade. With the death of the First Primarch, however, they have become the supreme commanding officers of the Legion, choosing on which battlefields the Sons of Horus deploy and interfacing with the rest of the Imperium.

The most important aspect of the Mournival, however, is that these four Lords must each incarnate an aspect of the Legion, so as to maintain balance within them. Chthonian rage must be balanced by the Warmaster's wisdom, and strength at arm must be tempered by diplomacy, and the drive to conquer kept in check by concern for Mankind. When that balance is broken, usually as the result of two or more of the Mournival Lords dying in quick succession, the Sons of Horus lose their way until it is restored. It was when the Mournival was made up uniquely of heirs to Horus' aggression that the Reign of Blood was allowed to happen, while the Sixteenth Legion fought too far from Terra to hear about the horrors of Vandire's rule.

When one of the Mournival Lords fall, the others gather, either in person or through astropathic projections – an art their Librarians have mastered over the centuries out of the necessity of the four being scattered across the galaxy. They then commune on the possible candidates, until they are all in agreement. Since such discussions more often than not occur at the speed of thought, it is rare for them to last longer than a single day. The new Mournival Lord will not know of his elevation until he receives an astropathic transmission to this effect. When the four gather together – generally once ever few decades – those who weren't present at the previous gathering renew the oaths they vowed in private after their elevation. They swear to uphold the values of the Imperium, to honor the memory of the First Warmaster and the Emperor, and to avenge the many wrongs that have been inflicted upon the Sixteenth Legion.

Apart from the Mournival's ascended role, the Sons of Horus have retained the organization they had during the Great Crusade. Each Company is made up of a variable number of warriors, from only a few dozens to almost thousand, depending on its available resources, the recent losses it has suffered, and the kind of warfare it specialize into. Each company has its own culture, inherited from Chthonian gangs and passed on through the generations. Companies rarely operate on their own, instead banding together as needed to face the current threat. In these gathering, if the Legion is operating alongside other Imperial forces, the Captains elect a representative among their number to go on the war council. Otherwise, they select a leader, through processes that can go from simple votes to a series of duels at first blood, depending on the circumstances, the traditions of the Companies involved, and the character of the Captains.

The Talon of Horus & Worldbreaker

The Sixteenth Legion has in its possession two relic weapons of immense power and significance, wielded by their Primarch in the dark days of the Roboutian Heresy and used by the first Mournival Lords to banish the Daemon Primarch Sanguinius. These weapons are passed from one Son of Horus to another, with the Mournival Lords responsible for choosing a new wielder when the previous one falls. While they often choose one of their own, it is by no means unheard of for someone outside their circle – even someone belonging to the rank-and-file – to be selected for this. To carry such a weapon is an immense honor, and one not bestowed lightly, for the enemies of Man are always targeting the users of these relics, seeking to steal them and desecrate them. Members of the Ninth Legion especially are known to react very violently to their presence, though only the strongest of them can even bear to get near the two weapons without the echoes of their Primarch's agony overwhelming them.

The Talon of Horus is a great lightning claw combined with a heavy bolter, crafted by the Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal as a gift to commemorate Horus' rise to Warmaster. The machine-spirit of the Talon is a vicious thing, and any Librarian standing near it suffers from headaches as the aggression of the weapon touches them through the Warp. It is said that those gifted souls who look upon the blades can see the blood of Sanguinius, still dripping from the Talon as if it had just inflicted the wound. In battle, the Talon is a devastating weapon that can be used at range as well as in melee, and those who wear it often use its awesome firepower to support dangerous beheading strikes against enemy positions. Over the centuries, the Talon has claimed the lives of thousands of leaders of the enemies of the Imperium.

Worldbreaker, meanwhile, is a massive power maul, that only a Primarch can wield with anything approaching grace. Such is the weight and size of the weapon that it can only be used by a warrior in Terminator armor, and even then it is a clumsy affair, lacking the speed and skill an Astartes is used to with most weapons. Given to Horus by the Emperor Himself, Worldbreaker is said to have been forged by the Master of Mankind's own artisans on Terra. Those who wield the weapon are slowed by its mass, but when they do reach the enemy, they are all but unstoppable. The power maul can be used to destroy tanks and walkers, and infantry troops cannot hope to resist its touch. On several occasions, the power field of the weapon has been known to pierce through the shields of small Traitor and xenos Titans, shattering their legs and bringing them down. Worldbreaker's machine-spirit also echoes with the blow that banished Sanguinius, and is the bane of any daemon that crosses its path. According to the records of the Sixteenth Legion and the Ordo Malleus, any Neverborn defeated by the power maul needs far longer to recover from banishment than when a more mundane weapon is responsible for its destruction.

Combat doctrine

'Cut the serpent's head, and the body will die.
One does not need to strike first to win – only to be the last to strike at all.'
Extract from a tactical lesson given to the Sixteenth Legion's aspirants

While the Imperium at large has dedicated its military might to the defense of its territories, the Sons of Horus have remained conquerors at heart. They flock to the ranks of the Imperial Crusades, and even when fighting to help hold Imperial worlds, their tactics echo those they employed during the Great Crusade. They specialize in overwhelming strikes against enemy leadership, or at their strongest position. Either as the vanguard of a campaign or called upon to end a prolonged conflict, the presence of the Sixteenth Legion means that a bloody shock assault will soon arrive. Such strikes are often led by the Sixteenth Legion's Terminators, known as the Justaerin. Ever since the days of the Great Crusade, the Sons of Horus have had access to more suits of Terminator war-plates than the other Legions, due to their statut as the Warmaster's Legion.

The Justaerin, the Lost First Company

During the Great Crusade, the Justaerin were the Legion's Terminator Elite, gathered in the First Company under the leadership of Ezekyle Abaddon. When the First Captain died during the Clone Wars and the Legion began to scatter in several battle-groups, so did the Justaerin. Some of them attached themselves to the Mournival Lords, pledging their lives in their defense, while others joined other Companies and assumed the roles typically assigned to Terminators. The First Company effectively ceased to exist, with Abaddon as its last leader, hence the nickname of the whole order as "the Lost First Company".

Eventually, these warriors who had once fought under Abaddon all died, their suits of armor inherited by others in the Company they had pledged themselves to. But their traditions lived on, and over time, every Terminator bearing the Eye of Horus came to call himself a member of the Justaerin. Always fighting at the forefront of battle, these Terminators are great and terrible sights to behold, for they break enemy lines like a grenade breaks exposed flesh.

The Sons of Horus favor melee over all other forms of warfare, for it makes the most of their transhuman physique. There are few enemies in the galaxy that don't know fear when being charged by Astartes, and the mere shock of the Sixteenth Legion's sudden arrival, combined with their martial skill, is often enough to end a war before the foe even knows it has begun. For all the balance brought by the Mournival, the Sons of Horus aren't afraid of collateral damage, and will not hesitate to use overwhelming force against their target. Such a use of power far in excess of what is required is meant to break the enemy's will and ensure the Imperial forces following the Astartes' spear-point have no difficulties bringing the foe to compliance. But war isn't the only tool available to the Captains of the Sons of Horus.

Every officer of the Sixteenth Legion carries within him some shard of their lost Primarch's greatness : they can be shrewd tacticians, terrifying warriors, but also great diplomats. In the Age of Imperium, this last trait is most used when interacting with other organizations of the Imperium, be they stuck-up noble Generals from the Imperial Guards, secretive tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus, or obtrusive bureaucrats of the Adeptus Administratum. Many of the Sons of Horus with a gift for diplomacy employ the method known across the Legion as "the Abaddon gambit" which involves going to any negotiation accompanied by a warrior as blunt as possible, who will make plain to the other party what they are risking by refusing the Legion's demands. Then the diplomat will interfere, proposing a more peaceful alternative, and appear all the more reasonable for it. This tactic is said to have been used by Horus himself with the Mournival, and it has served the Sixteenth well over the centuries.

Homeworld

While the homeworlds of other Legions have prospered under the guidance of their lords, Chthonia has remained a savage place, and most definitely qualifies as a feral world, despite the remnants of technology scattered on its surface. The skies and soil are polluted by the thousands of years of reckless exploitation, forming great rivers of toxic liquids and piles of debris the size of mountains. It is in this environment that the gangs fight one another over what little resources remain, in an endless cycle of violence that allows only for the strongest to survive and none to prosper.

The Sons of Horus do not interfere in the daily affairs of its gangs, only taking a hand when signs of Chaos corruption appear – in which case they brutally purge all those involved. From their orbital fortresses, they watch the gang wars, searching for those worthy of becoming Legionaries. Apothecaries wander the tunnels of the world, healing those wounded in battle if they consider that their bloodline will strengthen the gene-pool. The gangs have learned, after many years, to leave this white-armored giants alone, though there are a few tales of young boys who fought against one and were not only spared, but taken to the stars as a reward for their courage and skill.

The people of Chthonia are aware of the greater Imperium, though they lack any true understanding of its scope and might. They worship the Emperor as the Master of Mankind and the one responsible for the occasional supplies appearing in temples and caches across the labyrinthine complex of the underground. In truth, these supplies are delivered by the Sons of Horus, to keep the cycle of life going on a planet where agriculture is all but impossible and food, air and water are recycled over and over again by ancient machines most Chthonian lack the knowledge to maintain and repair. Without these shipments, Chthonia's society, such as it is, would have utterly collapsed long ago in a vicious cycle as resources became ever more scarce and violence between gangs increased due to desperation.

Beliefs

'The Legion is all.'
Sixteenth Legion's motto.

To be Son of Horus is to be heir to the Imperium's greatest glories and greatest shames. They are the mightiest of the loyal Space Marines Legions, their victories are beyond counting, and they are the very image of an Astartes to the wider Imperium. Yet every Legionary bearing the Eye of Lupercal also knows that his forebears failed in defending their Primarch, that their Primarch failed in killing Sanguinius, that the Legion failed to destroy the abominations Fabius Bile created from Horus' cold corpse. Studying each of these failures is an obsession among the ranks of the Sixteenth Legion, one many outsiders have pointed out as unhealthy. The Sons of Horus believe that only by contemplating their past failures can they learn from their mistakes, but others see the damage they are inflicting on themselves by dwelling on their defeats so much.

Interpretations of each failure's reasons vary, and can sometimes lead to brutal intra-Legion conflict, with captains challenging each other in duels – and, in a few extreme cases, open warfare. Some warriors believe that Horus fell because he was weakened by mercy, and so seek to purge themselves of it. Others believe that the Heresy happened because Mankind did not know enough of the galaxy's threats, and spread knowledge of the Warp to those who fight alongside them, going against the Inquisition's will. Such extremism is the principal reason for which the few Sons of Horus who succumb to the call of Chaos fall. Their beliefs and philosophies are slowly twisted by the Ruinous Powers until one day, the warrior wakes up and discovers that he has become what he once abhorred above all else – and that he doesn't care.

But dwelling on the past isn't the defining trait of the Sons of Horus – merely the consequence of what the Sixteenth Legion went through. What lies at the core of their souls is passion, strong and burning as the core of their savage homeworld Chthonia. Channelled through the Legion, that passion takes many form : a battle-rage that can overcome any odds, a sense of brotherhood just as strong as that of the World Eaters, and a dedication to the Imperium that would make a Modominant Inquisitor feel inadequate.

While it has many uses on the battlefield and beyond, this passion must be balanced with discipline and self-control, just as is the case within the Mournival. Chaplains of the Sons of Horus spend as much time tempering their brethren's rage as those of other Legions spend rousing it. Focus is the one virtue exalted above all others : to channel one's burning fury into a cold rage that will make a warrior even more dangerous.

The Sons of Horus also carry on many of the gang traditions of Chthonia with them to the stars, alongside that world's fiery nature. A complex sign language and battle-cant is part of that heritage, as is the tradition of engraving runes of fortitude upon a warrior's teeth. Loyalty to one's brothers and commanding officers is also strong, but those who receive such loyalty must always strive to earn it and remain worthy of it. A deep sense of pragmatism also runs into the Legion, which will consider any course of action in order to claim victory. Despite the infamy the Sixth Legion has brought to the iconography of the wolf, the Sons of Horus have kept a lot of their legacy from the Luna Wolves, which is probably responsible for the fact that the animal hasn't been completely wiped out on every Imperial world. They also use moon emblems to mark their own place in the balance of tempers that makes up the Sixteenth Legion, with the Mournival Lords each adopting a phase of the moon as their own heraldry.

The Horusian Inquisitors and the Exorcist Marines

The tale of how Horus was struck down by an assassin and delivered from possession has endured through the ages. Today, it is an important part of Imperial mythology, telling how the First Warmaster was saved by the noble sons of the Cyclops and his own faithful warriors – a story to teach the importance of loyalty and devotion. But over the millenia, many Inquisitors have regarded the tale in a different light. They believe that this traumatic event gave Horus a clear knowledge of Chaos, as well as an unbreakable determination to see it defeated. Calling themselves the Horusian, they accumulate knowledge of the Ruinous Powers – not their tools or weapons, that only the most extremist of Inquisitors dare to wield – in order to know how to combat it.

The members of this faction seek to emulate the process in order to gain powerful tools against the forces of Ruin. Only by facing Chaos can one gain the knowledge and strength of will required to oppose it, and only by going through the same horrors Lupercal endured can one successfully do so. They subject themselves – or, far more often, their servants – to daemonic possession, quickly followed by exorcism. The rate of survival of these procedures are low, but those who survive with their sanity relatively intact gain a resistance to any psychic powers, complete immunity to further possession, and an undying hatred of Chaos and all its minions. Secondary effects include persistent nightmares for the rest of the subject's life, severe physical trauma, and other mental afflictions.

The more Puritan Inquisitors, of course, consider this practice outright heresy, for it requires the knowledge of daemon summoning and binding, something that could easily be used to create a daemonhost. In their eyes, while noble in intent, it is ultimately just one more step on the path to Radicalism and corruption. And there is some truth to their misgivings : on several occasions, the circles of containment have failed, and the would-be exorcised was consumed by the daemon within, becoming a being of terrible might and evil. Since only the most strong-willed individuals are selected for the procedure in the first place, the daemonhosts created in such catastrophic failures are exceptionally powerful.

Despite this, there are some within the very ranks of the Sons of Horus who are willing to undergo the procedure, seeking to share the same experience as their long-lost Primarch. Space Marines survive the process far more easily than common humans, and receive the same benefits. Among their brothers, they are known as the Exorcist Marines, and are the choice troops of the Sixteenth Legion when facing daemonic foes. However, due to the terrible consequences should the practice become widely known – and quite likely misinterpreted into outright daemonic possession – the Sons of Horus do their best to keep it a secret. The Exorcist Marines do not wear any special insigna, even when they are deployed against the Neverborn – only their brothers and commanding officers know of the great trial they have endured.

Recruitment and Geneseed

The gene-seed of the Sixteenth Legion is untouched by any mutation or defect : all Astartes organs function perfectly, and its rate of viable aspirants is among the higher of the loyal Legions. The only known secondary effect is the phenomenon known as the "True Sons". Making up a sizeable portion of the Sons of Horus, the True Sons are those in whom the gene-seed of Lupercal changes their features into an image of the defunct Primarch. This trait was already present during the Great Crusade, with Horus Aximand being the one who most resembled the Primarch – prior to his disfigurement at Sanguinius' hands. The True Sons are seen as favored by their brothers, and in some Companies, they are selected above their brethren for advancement. The Chaplains and Apothecaries of the Legion, however, are tasked with preventing such favoritism from becoming prevalent in the Legion, to avoid brothers becoming bitter over being ignored for something as insignificant as their looks.

Most of the recruits of the Sixteenth Legion come from Chthonia, but the Sons of Horus keep a presence on many worlds. The Sons of Horus select mostly member of child gangs in the underhives, taking those who display the most strength and cunning, but also the most sense of fraternity. This selection, repeated over the millenia, has caused the gang cultures from which they draw their recruits to evolve, as children embrace the virtues and principles that might cause the Astartes' eyes to fall upon them. While still dark and dangerous places, the underhives of the Sixteenth Legion's recruiting worlds are nowhere near as twisted and corrupted as those of other planets. Besides the hope of drawing the attention of the Astartes, the Sons of Horus have made various deals with the Ordo Hereticus to prevent the growth of cults on their recruitment grounds, as well as with other Imperial organizations dedicated to the help of those in need.

Ironically, while Chthonia itself has remained a hellish environment for ten thousand years, it is frequent for hive-worlds selected by the Sixteenth to become unsuitable for recruitment after a few centuries. As the mentality of the gangs change and the humanitarian organizations spread their efforts, the level of danger in the underhive lowers, and the Sons of Horus end up stopping recruitment altogether. Fortunately, the Imperium is vast, with tens of thousands of hive-worlds with lawless undergrounds : the Sons of Horus are sure to never suffer from a lack of potential recruits.

Warcry

Apart from the Scouts, no warrior of the Sons of Horus would fight in silence. Though they changed their name ten thousand years ago, the spirit of the Luna Wolves is still strong within the Sixteenth, and they howl their warcries as they charge their foes, letting them know exactly who has come to bring them death. The most common cries are 'Lupercal !', 'For the Emperor and the Warmaster !' and the famous call of the Mournival Lords themselves : 'Kill for the living, and kill for the dead !'

Things are different, however, on these occasions when the Sons of Horus face the hated Black Legion. In these battles, there is no battle-cry, no proclamation of vengeance from the Sons of Horus – though the traitors always indulge in taunts and gruesome promises. The mere sight of the Black Legion is enough to cause any warrior of the Sixteenth Legion to fall into a trance-like state of absolute fury. On these battlefields, the sons of Lupercal communicate with each other through signal language and vox-clicks, and those who fight at their side, used to their usual behaviour, are always terrified of this change. The archives of the Inquisition indicate that this practice goes back to the infamous War of the False King, when a plot of the Black Legion resulted in turning warriors of the Sons of Horus against their own brothers.

My father is dead, and I am his son no longer.

Who am I, then ?

I am the beast at the door, half-tamed but still savage.

I am the dog that stays upon his master's grave, waiting for death to take him in turn.

I am the shield and the blade of the Emperor.

I am the spear aimed at the throat of the betrayer.

I am the hunter, hounding the arch-renegade across eternity.

I am a memory, echoing through the ages, waiting for the day of judgement.

I am the wolfhound at the Gates of Hell.

I am death denied.

I am a Legion of One.

I am Cerberus.

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Word Bearers : Heralds of Unwelcome Truths

While the Imperium worships the Emperor as a God, and the Legions who remained loyal remain silent in order to preserve order, the sons of Lorgar remember the words of the Master of Mankind. Like most of their cousins, they do not believe in His divinity, but unlike them, they make no secret of their distaste for the Ecclesiarchy and the Imperial Cult. The reason for this attitude takes its roots in the Legion's distant past, and over the millennia, it has been the source of much conflict between the Word Bearers and the rest of the Imperium. Yet the sons of Colchis remain steadfast in the face of adversity, the Imperial Truth remaining ever foremost in their thoughts. As they did during the Great Crusade, they fight to purge the darkness of ignorance and superstition with the flame of illumination, a spark of pure light amidst shades of gray. Their eyes, unshrouded by blind belief, have exposed more than one traitor hiding behind honeyed words – and none were more foul than the one who almost brought the Imperium down during the infamous Reign of Blood …

Origins : The Wars of the False Priests

Of all the sons of the Emperor, none can be said to have embodied the ideals of the Great Crusade more than Lorgar Aurelian, Primarch of the Seventeenth Space Marine Legion. His heart beat with the melody of the Imperial Truth, his words were charged with its persuasion, and his blows inhabited by its power.

There are few archives concerning the youth of Lorgar that have survived the passing of the years. This might seem surprising, for Lorgar was known for his unflinching loyalty to the Emperor, and one could be forgiven for presuming only Traitor Primarchs would have their history secreted. The reason for this treatment partly lies in the complex, and often conflicted, relationship between the Word Bearers and the rest of the Imperium. But it also exists for the sake of the entire Imperium, for the world of Colchis, where Lorgar was cast off, wasn't always the model of Imperial loyalty and productivity that it is today.

Still, the Inquisition has its own data-vaults, hidden beyond the reach of even the most vengeful Ecclesiarch or fanatical Puritan. In there is recorded the days when Lorgar, son of the Emperor of Mankind, came to Colchis, and what he saw and did there until his father found him. It is a tale of dedication to higher ideals,selfless heroism when confronted to the depths of human depravity, and defiance in the front of impossible odds, all in the name of what a young man believed was right.

Colchis, a planet located in the Segmentum Pacificus and one of the first worlds settled by Mankind during the first wave of human colonization, had not endured the horrors of Old Night well. As the Warp Storms' hold over the galaxy receded with the birth of the Dark God Slaanesh, many traces of their passage remained upon this arid world. The atrocities that had been visited upon the people of Colchis by daemonic hordes and unbound psykers left deep marks within the collective psyche, and the writings left behind by these dark times had become the basis of a faith that held the entire planet in its suffocating grasp. According to the preachers of this belief system, only by offering sacrifices to the powers dwelling in the Sea of Souls could humans be spared from their wrath, and the faithful be rewarded with power, knowledge and immortality. This religion called itself the Covenant, for its priests believed that sacrifices had to be made to appease the great powers ruling the galaxy.

To us, it is obvious that the Covenant was nothing more than a cult dedicated to the Dark Gods of Chaos, its priests traitors to Mankind. But to the people of Colchis, these priests held great power, both temporal and spiritual. Legions of fanatics did their bidding, and some of them were invested of strange, otherworldly powers which they used to keep the population cowed.

However, to the outside eye, there were few signs as to the true nature of the faith. There were no daemons walking the streets, and the sacrifices took place behind close doors. Most of the Covenant's ranks were filled with truly devout men and women, who wanted nothing more than to aid those under their responsibility, be it by offering assistance to the poor, healing to the sick, and spiritual advice to the distressed. But the higher one progressed into the Covenant's hierarchy, the deeper the corruption became, as the true nature of the powers the Covenant prayed to was slowly revealed. The Archpriests, who each stood at the head of their own regional sect of the Covenant, were minor Chaos Lords in their own right, and often waged war against one another, driving their followers before them to die in order to satiate their petty grudges. Every settlement on Colchis had a graveyard filled with the empty graves of those who had fallen in these so-called "holy wars".

These highest-ranking of priests hid the truth from their followers, instead spouting rhetorical nonsense and constant reminders to obey the Covenant in order to maintain their hold over the planet. There is no doubt that, had the people of Colchis be aware of the true nature and allegiance of their priestly masters, they would have risen against their rule long before they eventually did.

The life-pod of Lorgar crashed near one of Colchis' farming villages, far from the great cities and temples to the old gods. The villagers, believing the falling star to be a sign of their cruel divinities, were terrified, and most of them refused to go anywhere near the site of impact. Only an old couple went to investigate, and found the baby that would become the salvation of their people among the wreckage, miraculously unharmed.

We know little of these two humans, not even their names – but what we know is enough. We know that they had had children of their own, who had gone to fight in the wars of rival priests and died without achieving anything. We know that they paid lip service to the bloody rituals of the ruling priests, but did not truly embrace their dark tenets. We know that when they saw the golden child, they vowed to protect him from any who would do him harm.

They brought the infant back with them, and named him Lorgar – the name of one of the great heroes of Colchis' legends, who had fought against the infernal tides during the Old Night. The Covenant had struggled to rewrite the legend of that warrior, to erase the traces of his defiance and make him a figure who had been among the firsts to kneel before the dark powers and offer them worship. But fragments of the truth remained, passed on throughout the generations around fires, where the priests and their cronies couldn't hear.

Lorgar was raised in isolation from the rest of the villagers. The old couple had been slowly ostracised by their brethren – without children to care for them, they would have eventually starved to death. This was not out of callousness, but necessity – on the harsh world of Colchis, where crops were difficult to raise and the taxation from the Covenant was high, there could be no burden to the collectivity.

'Why are you crying, dad ?'
Instead of replying, Lorgar's father rose from his chair and hugged him. Despite his advanced age, there was still strength left in him, but Lorgar was careful not to hurt him nonetheless as he returned the hug. He had learned long ago that he was far stronger than his father.
After a long time, his foster father said :
'I was remembering them. Our children, those who came before you. I was remembering how they died.'
'They were … taken, Lorgar. One by one, taken from us, taken from life. All for nothing, in the end. Just because some priest told them to ...'
'Promise me son,' asked the old man, his voice on the verge of breaking. 'Promise me you will not join them. Promise me you won't let yourself be lied to as they were.'
'I promise,' replied the golden child.

But Lorgar grew quickly – far more quickly than any normal child should, and his adoptive parents soon realized that while they had always suspected his more-than-human origins, they had underestimated just how great the difference was. In just a few years, Lorgar was able to work in the fields, taking care of the harvest and the few goats the old couple still had. Then, on the tenth year, a new holy war was declared by the local archpriest against one of his rivals. Militia troops were sent to every settlement to round up those who were of age.

Mere weeks before the recruiters came to his village, Lorgar's foster parents had died peacefully in their sleep, both going into the afterlife in the very same night. The young Primarch buried them, and then journeyed to the village, where he was found by the recruiters and immediately forced into joining them. Obviously, Lorgar could have resisted, and there wouldn't have been much they would have been able to do – but Lorgar was young, did not know his true strength, and had no reason to doubt their words about the righteousness of their cause. That was until he joined with the gathered army and, for the first time in his life, was exposed to the Covenant when he heard the archpriest speak to the troops he had gathered for his own personal war.

'And so you must fight, my children !' shouted the priest, clad in his rich robes, his voice reaching to the furthest ranks of the assembled soldiers. 'You must fight to prove your value to the Gods, so that you might be rewarded in the afterlife with eternal joy as one of the faithful !'
The crowd roared its unthinking approval, their blood made hot by the words, reacting to a lifetime of conditioning. Only one remained silent – a giant of a man, standing in the very center of the army, wearing a simple tunic and holding a sword that appeared comically small in his hands.
That man stared at the priest, but there was no zeal in his eyes. No burning joy, no submission.
Only horror and anger, battling for supremacy.
The giant started to march forward, breaking the ranks. Before him, the other soldiers parted way instinctively. Soon, he arrived at the front of the army, but he did not stop. He climbed up the small hill atop of which the priest had made his speech, his legs propelling him up with the same momentum of an avalanche. Soon, the priests' guards noticed him, and they raised their spears hesitantly in the direction of this intruder.
The crowd went silent as he brushed the weapons aside and kept going on, not even sparing a glance at the guardians. The priest saw him then, and something akin to terror flashed on his face.
Staring down at the priest, Lorgar looked into the eyes of the old man who had commanded that five thousands young men and women go to their death for the glory of the gods he served. He looked into the soul of the one who claimed to speak for the heavens, and then he spoke a single word :
'Liar.'

Something happened then, though what exactly isn't clearly known. Lorgar ousted the archpriest, and took command of the gathered army instead. What had been just another army to be used as cannon fodder in the endless feuds between the Covenant's leaders instead became the instrument of Colchis' liberation.

On the night following his public humiliation of the archpriest, Lorgar went into the deposed warlord's tent, and there found the books and journals he had kept. Lorgar had never learned to read, but it only took him a few hours before he could decipher the ancient script used in these texts. When he emerged from the tent again, his rage was visible to all, barely contained from exploding. Lorgar had learned the secrets the archpriests kept hidden from the population. He had read the reports of human sacrifices, the hidden motives behind every "holy war", and the true face of the gods the Covenant served.

In a grand speech, Lorgar denounced the Covenant as a fraud, a grand deception orchestrated by enemies of Mankind. He vowed to bring the entire organization down in flames, and purge Colchis of its pernicious influence. He swore that he would see every last temple razed, and every priest either defrocked or slain. And so began the Wars of the False Priests, that would rage across Colchis for several decades.

City after city fell to the rebel army of Lorgar. Some cities were liberated by the words of Lorgar, while in others, he personally infiltrated the local priesthood and exposed their corruption. Others yet fell to strength of arms, the temples cast down in flames with their dark adepts trapped inside. With every city of Colchis that was freed from the Covenant, Lorgar's army grew, as more and more men and women saw the lies of their priestly cast for what they truly were.

Of course, the priests of the Covenant reacted to Lorgar's progress. They roused hordes of fanatics, and used their ancient sorceries to bring forth horrors from beyond the veil of reality. Though these summons were only of weak wraiths, they were still abominations from the Warp, and the mortals fighting under Lorgar's banner almost broke the first time they were unleashed upon them. But the young Primarch fought against the spectral invocations, and with a burst of golden psychic light, he cast them back into the tides of the Aether. This would be the first time Lorgar consciously used his immense psychic potential, as well as the event that would make his people grant him the title of "Aurelian", which means "Golden One" in Colchisian.

The Wars of the False Priests were long, and exceedingly cruel. As the tide turned against them, the lords of the Covenant grew increasingly desperate, and unleashed greater and greater horrors against their own people as well as Lorgar's in an attempt to maintain their power. Eventually, however, Lorgar and his armies reached Vharadesh, the seat of the Covenant's power.

'No god worthy of worship would demand such horror be committed in its name.'
Attributed to Lorgar Aurelian, upon witnessing the sacrificial pits of Vharadesh

Once, Vharadesh had been the greatest city of Colchis. Now, as Lorgar's army breached its walls and poured into its streets, it was revealed as a slaughterhouse. Nearly the entire population had been sacrificed over the course of the war to fuel the sorceries of the Covenant priests, or when they had attempted their own rebellions and been crushed mercilessly. Monsters stalked the ruins, while in the center of the city stood the Spire Temple, where the last priests and their followers remained.

The battle of the Spire Temple was the most violent of the entire war. Daemonhosts and other infernal creatures fought against the forces of Lorgar, killing his soldiers until he alone remained standing in the Warp-twisted temple. Of the five thousands men and women Lorgar had taken with him into the Spire Temple – veterans of a hundred battles all – while the rest of the army stood watch outside, none returned. Finally, covered in the blood of comrade and foe alike, Lorgar confronted the head priests of the Covenant themselves, led by an old man called Kor Phaeron, the most bitter, corrupt and cruel priest to have ever graced the ranks of the tainted faith.

'No more,' said the golden giant as he marched above the shattered remnants of yet one more monstrosity the old men cowering before his wrath had unleashed against him. This one had been created from the flesh of a child, taken from the streets of Vharadesh, torn from his mother's arms. He had seen it in his mind's eye, and that knowledge had ripped a hole in his heart even as he put the wretched thing out of his misery.
'No more,' he repeated as he continued to advance. His weapon was gone, broken in combat what seemed to be hours ago. Blood flowed from a hundred wounds that refused to close, the scars of which would remain with him until his dying day. He was more than flesh and blood in that moment – he was a vision, a promise of retribution incarnate. The priests knew this, and were rightly terrified of what was coming for them … Except for one, who spat in the face of this avatar of righteous justice :
'You cannot defeat the Primordial Annihilator, freak. The Covenant is what keeps Colchis alive ! We are the masters of this world, by the will of the gods !'
The golden giant recognized the old man. He had faced him several times in the past, but always with an army behind which the coward could hide. Never had he taken to the field in person, even as he drove hundreds of thousands of younger, more deserving of life people to their deaths.
'Kor Phaeron,' Lorgar snarled, something like hatred tainting his voice for the first time in his life. 'You, you of all of them … I will enjoy to watch die.'
The face of the high priest contorted into a hateful grimace, and a wave of sorcerous power left his fingertips, smashing into Lorgar with all the strength the old, rotten man could gather. But the tide of darkness was cast back as the skin of Lorgar began to shine, the inner fire of his soul manifesting in the mortal realm for the first time. Kor Phaeron looked on, horrified, as Lorgar continued his advance, his psychic power finally unleashed.
'And in time,' continued the golden giant, 'I will see your foul gods die too, vanish from memory and be feared no more. Do you hear me, old man ? No more !'

It was barely one Colchisian year – five Terran standard years – after the death of the self-proclaimed "Master of the Faith" that the Imperium made contact with Colchis once more. Leading the detachment of the Great Crusade were the Emperor and Magnus themselves. The Crimson King had sensed the presence of Lorgar, as well as the battles he had waged against the corrupt clergy of his homeworld. Magnus had demanded that he and his father go to Colchis as quickly as possible, fearing for the safety of his brother. When they arrived, however, the war had already ended, though the price Colchis had paid was terrible indeed.

Vharadesh and the Spire Temple had been, at Lorgar's orders, burned to the ground, and the scorched earth salted and declared accursed ground for all of eternity, in order to prevent the corruption of the Covenant from every returning. Many cities had been destroyed in the war, and the reconstruction was barely beginning to show its effects, even with the mind of a Primarch directing its efforts.

Although first contact with Colchis was peaceful, and the reunion between Lorgar and the Emperor went perfectly well, these first days were full of uncertainty. The marks of Warp corruption remained on the planet, and there were those among the Emperor's retinue who argued that the entire world was tainted and had to be purged by fire. The only reason these voices did not also accuse Lorgar of corruption was because he had fought against its representatives, and because he carried the blood of the Master of Mankind, and such accusations were still unthinkable under the Imperial Truth.

Lorgar, however, knew better than anyone that his beloved homeworld was far from healed from the damage the Covenant had inflicted upon it. The Primarch was also wrecked by guilt, as a treacherous part of him whispered that, if he hadn't roused the people of Colchis to rebellion, then the priests wouldn't have had a reason to escalate things to the level they had. The greater, more logical part of him knew that such wasn't the case, that the Covenant alone was responsible for the atrocities it had unleashed. Still, Lorgar was determined to see Colchis reborn, and believed that in order for that rebirth to be complete, it had to be achieved with only minimum interference from the Imperium of which the world was now part.

He asked his father to let Colchis be under his rule and that of his allies, that the people of the world might rebuild their home themselves. He promised that he would lead the armies of the Emperor in His name, that he would spread the Imperial Truth across the galaxy, and do so gladly – all he asked was that he be given the chance to repair the damage wrought upon Colchis. The Emperor, in His infinite wisdom, saw that Lorgar needed to know he could repair and heal as well as conquer and destroy, and granted His son his wish. Then, Lorgar departed Colchis, promising to return, in order to learn what he would need to know to fulfill his oath to his father – and to meet the sons he had never known he had.

The Great Crusade : Harbingers of the Truth

'Too long has Mankind suffered in the grasp of ignorance and zealotry. Too long have our people been enslaved to lies written by men who were either insane enough to believe them or selfish enough not to care the damage they caused. Some might claim that these lies gave comfort to Mankind, than only through the belief in a higher power can the base nature of Man be held in check. And perhaps that was true, once. But no more !
Now we know the truth of the universe. We have unlocked its secrets, mastered the powers that held it together. We march among the stars and dream of building an empire eternal. This, the greatest endeavour in the history of our species, cannot be achieved if we hold ourselves back with superstition and wilful ignorance. We must face the truth of the galaxy, and spread the light of illumination across the darkness of the past.
The Imperial Truth is not a religion. It does not demand blind obedience. It demands conviction ! It demands that we trust in one another, and in the righteousness of our cause. It demands that we believe in ideals, not in an idol. My father knows this, and we shall bring this truth to every human in the galaxy.
It will not be an easy task. Many will resist the changes we will bring to them, clinging to the past like scared children to a blanket. Some will have to be forced into this new age, and we will do so. We will bear the burden of these wars, for it is what we were made to do.
We are the Bearers of the Word, and the lies of the past shall crumble to ash and dust before us !'
Extract from the speech of Lorgar Aurelian upon taking command of the Seventeenth Legion

Looking at the history of Lorgar and the Legion he would rise to command, the parallels are striking. During its creation by the Emperor, the Seventeenth Legion was forged as an instrument of destruction against the religious cults that would oppose the Imperial Truth to the bitter end, fanaticism granting their forces resolve even in the face of overwhelming might. Recruited from the children of defeated foes, the warriors of the Seventeenth were named the Imperial Heralds by the Emperor Himself at their founding, instead of receiving a name later during the Great Crusade.

Their first battles were on the surface of Terra herself, at the end of the Unification Wars. They were deployed against the last religious redoubts on the planet, and while a few of those surrendered when they saw the ranks of grey-armored transhuman warriors advance toward their walls, those who did not were reduced to little more than rubble and weeping survivors. Such was the dedication of the Imperial Heralds to the Imperium's ideals that they sought out every trace of the superstition their foes had previously embraced and destroyed it. Libraries were examined book by book in order to identify those who glorified sorcery, false gods, and irrational beliefs. Temples were razed, often with their priests still inside, and monuments toppled with explosives. The people were given the choice to either accept the Imperial Truth, or be destroyed alongside the shackles of their past.

While the Imperial Heralds were only sent against the worst fanatical holdouts of Terra – places where human sacrifices and witch-kings were common – the extremes to which they were ready to go unsettled many of the Emperor's allies. But so did most of the other newly founded Space Marine Legions, and so had the Thunder Warriors before them. The Emperor, in His wisdom knew that He couldn't unite Mankind under His rule and save it from the darkness of its past without warriors such as these among His servants. And so it was that under the leadership of High Herald Halik-gar, the Seventeenth Legion took to the stars alongside the rest of the Great Crusade's forces.

Several decades later, when Lorgar took command of the Seventeenth Legion, he renamed them from the Imperial Heralds to the Word Bearers, although their colors remained unchanged : grey with silver linings. For his inspired words, the Legion soon bestowed the name of Urizen upon their Primarch. In ancient Terran legends, the Urizen was a being of great wisdom, representing conventional reason and law – a fitting title for Lorgar.

Lorgar knew that without a cause worthy of fighting for, even the greatest soldier was doomed to become a rabid dog or an empty shell, but he also feared that blindly following the Imperial Truth would make his sons little different from the zealots they fought. So he reached out to his brother, Magnus the Red, and asked for his help in making his sons philosophers as well as warriors. Under Lorgar's leadership, the grim and dour Seventeenth Legion became a haven of learning and illumination, whose warriors followed the Imperial Truth not because they had been told to do so, but because they truly understood it and what it brought to Mankind.

Every Primarch inherited an aspect of the Emperor. Horus inherited His drive for conquest, Magnus His psychic might, Mortarion His grim determination to do what had to be done, and Lorgar His conviction and ideals. As such, no other Primarch was as enthusiast as Lorgar was to join the effort of the Great Crusade. His belief in the Imperial Truth eclipsed even that of the likes of Horus or Konrad, though both of them would come to worry about where the strength of his conviction might lead him.

That conviction made Lorgar one of the figureheads of the Crusade, looked up to by the human elements of the Imperium. While the fury with which he prosecuted his war made him a figure of respectful fear, the deep belief he had in the Imperial Truth gave him great prestige and authority in the Imperium. Many Imperial Regiments were willing to go fight in the Expeditionary Fleets under the command of a Seventeenth Legion officer. And when worlds peacefully joined the Imperium after contact with one of their fleets, it was a rare case indeed when there wasn't a substantial army gifted to the Fleet to help bring illumination to other worlds.

Lorgar was also one of the few Primarchs who, alongside Magnus and Mortarion, was aware of the true dangers of the Warp, dangers that the Emperor had decided best Mankind remain unaware. His campaign on Colchis had shown him the true horrors that dwelled within the Immaterium, though he still lacked any knowledge of the Ruinous Powers themselves. At first, Lorgar wanted to reveal all that knew to the rest of Mankind, that they be better prepared to defend against it, but the Emperor commanded him to wait, for He had grand plans that would be ruined by acting too soon. Lorgar chose to trust his father, but still made sure that his own Chaplains were kept aware of the truth.

Because he had fought against the Covenant's leaders with his own psychic powers, Lorgar strived to create a powerful Librarius within his own Legion. He had a great deal of respect for Magnus, who helped him master his previously erratic psychic powers by teaching him the discipline of the Thousand Sons and whose own magus helped the first Word Bearers Librarians master their own abilities.

During the Great Crusade, Lorgar's reputation among his brother was divided. To some, like Horus or Magnus, he was an upstanding champion of the Imperial Truth. But to others, like Russ and Lion El'Jonson, his relentless extermination of all things related to religion was going too far. Russ and Lorgar famously had a terrible dispute when they first met, with Lorgar calling the Wolf King a fool because of the amulets and trinkets his warriors bore in battle and the ridiculous beliefs of his psykers – whom Russ refused to even acknowledge as such, clinging to the Fenrisian folly that their powers were granted by their home world.

Erebus, Warden of the Truth
In a Legion known for its fiery temper, Erebus was one of the few cool heads capable of advising caution and prudence when they were required. Born on Colchis during the Wars of the False Priests, he was among the first selected from that world to become an Astartes. Not only did he take to the implants well, he also displayed an acute mind and a strong will, which marked him for induction in the ranks of the Chaplains. Within a few decades, Erebus had risen to become the First Chaplain of the Seventeenth Legion, and one of Lorgar's own advisers. So valued was his council that even other Primarchs, such as Horus and Perturabo, sought it out. Erebus was known to speak out even when what he knew that what he had to say would not please his commander, even when he knew it would enrage him. For this, Lorgar himself gave him the title of "Warden of the Truth", asking his son to swear always to speak the truth and never say a single lie. Erebus took that vow with great pride, and as far as our records show, he didn't break it until the day of his death.
On the primitive world of Davin, it was Erebus who led the Word Bearers contingent. The Chaplain recognized the tribal markings of the Davinite tribes, having seen them on the walls of the Covenant's temples during the Wars of the False Priests. He warned Horus of the danger they represented, and though he knew that it went against the heart of the Primarch, advised that the entire tribes be wiped out to root out the Warp's corruption. Horus listened to his advice, and it was the Word Bearers who purged the tribes and erased every trace of their culture. It is said that the Davinite campaign marked the first occasion where the now legendary trance-like state of the Seventeenth Legion's warriors was witnessed by outsiders, and it unnerved even the brave sons of Lupercal.

But the one brother with whom Lorgar had the most open feud – a feud that almost erupted into outright warfare – was Roboute Guilliman. At first glance, it seems that the two of them should have gotten along perfectly well, for they were both champions of the Imperial Truth, spreading illumination across the galaxy. And indeed, such was the case in their first meeting, to the point that the two of them chose to join forces for a time, and fight side by side so that their warriors could deepen their bonds of brotherhood and learn from each other. Guilliman thought that his men could learn from the Word Bearers' passion, while Lorgar was sure that his Legion could benefit from the orderly fashion in which the Ultramarines waged war.

In the beginning, this collaboration went incredibly well, and several worlds were added to the Imperium in a record time, some by force and some by diplomacy. Then the two Legions came to the world of Khur, and everything began to unravel.

Khur was planet whose technological level had regressed to the point where it was all its people could do to maintain a few artificial satellites in orbit. Its population was divided in powerful city-states. These pocket kingdoms had been fighting a terrible civil war for the last hundred years, started by the rising of a new religion in some of the cities. This religion had quickly spread to over half the city-states, and eventually, they had declared holy war against all those who had not yet accepted the new faith. By the time the Imperium reached Khur, only one city, Monarchia, was holding out against the new religion.

When contact was made with the local government, the dominant faction, ruled over by a circle of kings with priestly advisers from the new faith, were more than willing to join the Imperium. Guilliman was delighted, and proposed his services to negotiate peace between them and the people of Monarchia – or even evacuation to another planet if the city's denizens could not be convinced. But Lorgar reacted much differently.

The moment the Urizen saw the symbols on the priests' robes, the second he heard the first words of their prayers, he knew them for what they were : descendants of those members of the Covenant he had failed to destroy. Many had fled Colchis when the Imperium had come to Lorgar's homeworld, and it appeared that some of them had found Khur before the Imperium, and seeded it with the lies of their corrupt faith. Lorgar's mind flashed back to the Wars of the False Priests, to all the atrocities he had seen committed by the Covenant in the name of defending its power. There was only one course of action possible.

While Guilliman was discussing with the leaders of the religious coalition aboard his flagship, Lorgar gave the order to all of his troops to begin the attack. Drop-pods rained over the cities of Khur, with only Monarchia being spared. Led by their Chaplains, the Word Bearers sought and destroyed every religious edifice and slew every priest, while the Imperial Truth was being broadcast on all channels. Lorgar would take no chance this time : he had the resources to truly purge Khur from the taint, and he did not hesitate to use them.

When the Avenging Son heard of what his brother had done, his rage was immense, but it paled before his shock. He called to Lorgar, desperately asking what could possibly have motivated his brother to perform such an attack while under the flag of truce. Had the people of Khur deceived him somehow ? Had they been planning an attack ? And if so, why had Lorgar not warned him ? But his queries went unanswered. Lorgar knew that he was not allowed to tell Guilliman of what he had seen on Colchis – the Emperor had forbidden it.

It was hardly the first time a Legion had attacked a planet seemingly unprovoked – the Salamanders were beginning to develop a dread reputation for such assaults. Though it tore his heart, Lorgar believed that it was better for his brother to think him a butcher than to learn of the truth that dwelled in the Warp. Without responding to any more communication from the Ultramarines, the Word Bearers continued their campaign of purification. It took them only a week to be done, and by that point, Guilliman was almost ready to order his fleet to open fire if Lorgar would not answer his calls. But just as he shouted this ultimatum over the vox, the ships of the Seventeenth Legion recovered their transports and departed the system, still not answering Guilliman's pleas for answers.

'There are things you are better off not knowing, brother.'
Last transmission from the Fidelitas Lex before leaving the Khur system, M31

Still, one cannot help but wonder how different history would have been, had Lorgar broken his vow of silence and told Guilliman why he had needed to attack Khur in such a merciless manner. There are even some among the Imperium today who blame Aurelian for the eventual descent of Guilliman into treachery, arguing that if Lorgar had not reacted so violently to the presence of the Covenant on Khur, then the planet could have been purged of its influence slowly and more subtly, in a way that would not have antagonized Guilliman and caused him to lose more faith in the Imperium when Lorgar went on unpunished after the events, despite Guilliman's appeals for his censure.

Soon after the unpleasantness of Khur, the convocation came for all available Primarchs to journey to Ullanor, to celebrate the great triumph over the alien empire of the Orks. While Lorgar was as surprised as his brothers when he learned that the Emperor intended to leave the leadership of the Great Crusade and return to Terra, he was also relieved that such would be the case. In the prior years, the Urizen had noticed a worrying pattern in the Imperium, a growing cult that worshipped the Emperor as a god, despite all His insistence to the contrary. It was Lorgar's hope that with Horus now in charge of the Great Crusade, the flames of this misguided devotion would fade, as it was proven that someone other than the Master of Mankind could direct the Imperium.

Because of this, Lorgar was one of the most fervent supporters of Horus as the new Warmaster of the Imperium. He readily obeyed the commands of his brother, and spread his Legion on the vast fronts of the Great Crusade to support it. At the time, the Word Bearers were one of the most numerous Legions, thanks to the high compatibility rate of Lorgar's gene-seed and the abundance of aspirants from Colchis' booming population. It is estimated that at the time of the Ullanor Triumph, there was as many as one hundred twenty thousands Astartes in the Seventeenth Legion, though such a count is by nature imprecise.

To Lorgar, the outcome of the Council of Nikaea was never in doubt. He knew the horrors that dwelled in the Warp, and he knew that his father knew. How could the Emperor possibly deny His forces the tools they needed to oppose such a threat ? The mere thought of it was laughable. Lorgar didn't attend the Council in person, but he did ensure that Erebus was present to speak on his behalf, and the First Chaplain's fiery oratory helped persuade many of those present that the Emperor's ultimate decision was the correct one. Erebus returned to his Primarch's side with the satisfaction of a task well performed, content to have played his part in helping preserve the Imperium's future.

Then, a few years later, while the galaxy was enveloped by ever more potent Warp Storms, a message came from Terra, and the Word Bearers learned that the future of the Imperium had been destroyed forever.

The Heresy : Lost amidst the Madness

'If they do not kneel, then every single one of the Five Hundred Worlds will burn.'
Attributed to Lorgar Aurelian, upon the declaration of the retribution crusade to Ultramar

When word of Guilliman's treachery at Isstvan III reached Lorgar, the rage of the Primarch was terrible to behold. What few records speak of this fury mention that it was lucky the Urizen was on a planet at the time, for the psychic power he unleashed would have damaged a ship beyond repair. Had the message not also carried Horus' instructions for Lorgar and his Legion, it is doubtless that the Primarch would have taken the full might of the Seventeenth with him to Isstvan, determined to kill Guilliman with his bare hands if he had to. How different things would have unfolded had that been the case, we will never know, for Horus had other plans for the Word Bearers.

Seven Legions were already en route to Isstvan with the task of bringing the traitors to heel, but there was another concern that needed to be addressed. Ultramar, one of the mightiest and richest regions of the Imperium, had been revealed as being under the leadership of a traitor for two hundred years. Knowing Guilliman's strategic acumen, it was very likely that the entire Kingdom of Ultramar had been transformed into a fortress, one that could supply the traitors with weapons, armor, and recruits for decades.

While the Legions dispatched at Isstvan should be enough to destroy those which had broken their oaths to the Imperium, Ultramar needed to be brought to heel. To that end, the Warmaster commanded Lorgar to take his forces and meet with the Twelfth Legion, the World Eaters, led by their Primarch Angron. Together, the two of them were to ensure the continued compliance of Ultramar to Imperial rule by whatever means necessary. Horus' orders were deliberately kept vague, so that his brothers would be able to react to the situation and adapt to whatever threats they encountered, but even he couldn't predict what the two Legions would face.

The meeting of Lorgar and Angron was agitated, but eventually the two of them agreed to journey to Calth first, where the Lord of the Red Sands believed they would find the greatest military target in the Five Hundred Worlds. It was Angron's hope that he and Lorgar could convince whoever Guilliman had left in command to abandon this mad rebellion. This might seem overtly optimistic, but Angron was yet unaware of the true nature of the foe the loyalists faced. Lorgar had attempted to explain it to him, but hearing about the horror of Chaos isn't enough – you have to see it for yourself to truly know why it must be fought and eradicated. Still, Lorgar agreed to the plan, thinking that if they crushed the core of Guilliman's military might in the Five Hundred Worlds, the rest of the campaign would be much easier.

However, both Angron and Lorgar were proven wrong when, at Calth, the Ruinstorm was unleashed, trapping the two Legions out of the rest of the galactic war, but all too aware of what had transpired on the unhallowed sands of Isstvan V. The Battle of Calth was terrible, and cost the lives of thousands of Legionaries, but in the end, they were able to escape the thrice-damned planet, and begin their journey back to the Imperium – an odyssey that would, in time, be known as the Shadow Crusade. Lorgar used his psychic powers to mentally link with every Navigator, Astropath and Librarian in the fleet, and together they guided the fleet through the roiling seas of the Immaterium, keeping the vessels anchored to one another, though many were still lost to the raging Ruinstorm, the fate of their crews best not dwelled upon.

Argel Tal, the Crimson Lord
Born of Colchis, Argel Tal was selected to become a Word Bearer by First Chaplain Erebus himself. His Chapter, the Serrated Sun, took considerable losses during the Battle of Calth. Its entire command structure was decimated, which forced Argel Tal, as the sole surviving captain, to take command of the few hundred warriors who remained. As the battle outside the Ultramarine fortress went on, with the daemonic tides clashing against loyalist lines and the Primarchs still trapped inside, it fell to Argel Tal and Khârn, the Eighth Captain of the World Eaters, to direct their Legions. The two of them fought back to back against the infernal hordes until Lorgar and Angron burst free from the fortress and helped beat back the hordes long enough for an evacuation to take place. By that point, however, Argel Tal had fought for so long and seen so many of his brothers die that his armor was covered in their blood, and he was completely lost to the cold rage of the Word Bearers' gene-line. Only the intervention of Lorgar dragged him back to sanity and convinced him to evacuate with the rest of the Legions rather than remain behind to fight the daemons until he died.
To honor the sacrifice of his brothers, Argel Tal repainted his armor in red, so that their blood would never truly be washed away. This led to him receiving the title of Crimson Lord, and his deeds during the Shadow Crusade are the stuff of legends. He and Khârn developed a deep bond of brotherhood, and fought together against the daemon Egethel, casting down her serpentine form while resisting her lies. In time, Argel Tal rose from being a mere Captain in a minor Chapter to becoming a Lord of the Legion, whose word was heeded by Lorgar and Angron themselves. Together, he and Khârn helped maintain the desperate alliance between the World Eaters and the Word Bearers – it is said that the two of them fought in the World Eaters' fighting pits chained to one another, and took on any challenge. They rarely won, but according to the accounts that have survived, it was only because neither of them took these brawls seriously – on the battlefields, Argel Tal was every bit as deadly as Khârn or any other Legion Champion.
Argel Tal survived three hundred years past the end of the Roboutian Heresy before falling during battle against a Dark Angels warband. The details of his death are unclear, and there are even some accounts that he didn't die, but vanish in the same fashion of his Primarch, and might one day return.

After escaping Calth, the fleet was soon drawn to the world of Armatura, the tides of the Warp conspiring to push the vessels to this system. Once, the planet had been a recruiting ground for the Ultramarines, where a billion soldiers had been garrisoned and entire generations of Legionaries had been raised. Now it was an infernal pit, ruled over by an entity Lorgar was all too familiar with : Kor Phaeron, the Master of the Covenant's Faith, whom he had slain two hundred years ago on Colchis. Somehow, the spirit of the old, cruel man had been spared dissolution in the Sea of Souls and returned to some abhorrent half-life by the Ruinous Powers to destroy the one who had defeated him in life.

The ghost of an old man stood upon the bridge of the Emperor's Hand, staring at Erebus with a burning gaze.
The First Chaplain knew that face. He had seen it painted on the holy books of his youth, in a city that had been at war with Lorgar's revolt against the Covenant. This was the face of Kor Phaeron, the Master of the Faith, supreme leader of the Covenant, who had been slain by Lorgar some two hundred years ago.
'Lorgar should have been ours,' said the apparition, 'but he denied us. The Gods will never forgive him his defiance. But you, my brother … You can still be redeemed. Join us. Embrace the power of the Primordial Truth, and you will never need to kneel before anyone again !'
Images filled Erebus' mind of all that he could accomplish if he but accepted the spectre's offer. He saw himself standing before rows upon rows of kneeling figures, statues in his image raised on a thousand worlds, billions of throats chanting his name. He saw the Word Bearers reborn as agents of the Primordial Truth, setting worlds aflame and being covered in gifts in return for their devotion. He saw himself wielding power greater even than that of Lorgar, shaping worlds with but a thought, twisting destiny to his will with a sweep of the hand.
All this and more could be his. All he had to do was to order his ship to open fire on the Fidelitas Lex. The shields of the venerable vessel were down, brought low by the volleys of Armatura's planetary defences. Just one order ...
Then he remembered something. Something he had seen as a child. One of his very first memories.
He remembered seeing his siblings crucified by the Covenant's priests as a sacrifice to the Pantheon, to gain victory against the forces of Lorgar.

'No,' he whispered, then shouted : 'No ! I will never be the Dark Gods' pawn, and this Legion shall not be their slave !'

Erebus ordered that his ship, the Emperor's Hand, set a collision course with Armatura's surface, right in the center of the psychic entanglement that trapped the Word Bearers and World Eaters in this system. The ship detonated, shattering the surface of the planet and causing it to break apart in several smaller fragments, still orbiting around their diseased star to this day, each the domain of a Dark Mechanicum arch-heretek.

With the heroic sacrifice of Erebus, Argel Tal rose to become Lorgar's second in command of the Seventeenth Legion, and the Shadow Crusade continued. The destruction of Kor Phaeron's daemonic aspect broke the spell that held the combined fleet captive in Armatura, and the ships departed, though their journey did not last long until they were stopped once more – and this time, the daemon lord anchoring them was much more powerful.

Angron was dying.
His brother was lying down before him, losing blood from a dozens wounds, each of which would kill him given time. In the distance, the great beast that had so wounded his brother was roaring its hatred of the universe, while dozens of World Eaters' Terminators were fighting against it, holding it in place so that it could not reach their Primarch. More of the Devourers were dying with each passing second, but they would not give up, they would not break. They could not break.
Tears flowed down Lorgar's face at the sight of such courage, such devotion. He placed his hands upon his brother's torn chest, and called upon the power that had been bestowed upon him by the Emperor. Golden light poured from his hands, and the wounds of Angron began to close, the breathing of the Lord of the Red Sands becoming more regular.
With his brother's life stabilized, Lorgar looked at the great beast again, and knew what he must do. He opened a vox-channel, raising the Fidelitas Lex in orbit, and gave a simple order :
'Fire.'
Seconds later, a column of fire descended from the heavens as the Gloriana-class warship opened fire on the location transmitted by the Devourers' beacons, accompanied by the rest of the fleet. The earth of the accursed world cracked under such power, and Doombred, the antediluvian prince of the Dark God Khorne, was banished from the mortal universe once more – taking with him the lives of three hundred of the noblest human warriors who had ever lived.

This pattern of journeying ever closer to the edge of the Ruinstorm while true salvation remained out of reach continued for years. Time inside the storm had little meaning, and some survivors claimed that to them, the entire ordeal had lasted mere months, while others had trouble remembering anything before it. Always the fleet would emerge from tumultuous tides into a more peaceful enclave, and always they would need to slay the local daemonic overlord in order to be able to leave once more. The names of the slain daemons adorn the records of the Seventeenth Legion : Samus, Doombreed, Skarbrand, Zarakynel, Aetaos'Rau'Keres and a dozen others. The Word Bearers and the World Eaters both earned the eternal enmity of many lords of the Warp during the Shadow Crusade, while also gaining an expertise in fighting them that has transcended the generations.

We do not know for certain how the two Legions finally escaped the Ruinstorm. The truth of the Shadow Crusade has long since faded into legends, especially since most of those who survived it repressed their memories of it to avoid descending into madness. Ancient, fragmentary texts, refer to a device that was "cast into the shadow of the Warp by the plots of foolish, selfish men" and of "a great sacrifice, unlike any other in the galaxy, yet only the herald of another, greater one".

'Barbaras !' Lorgar vociferated over the vox. 'Do not do this !'
'I have to, my lord,' replied the voice of the old war-smith. He sounded so, so tired. Ever since the fleet had found him on Armatura, Barbaras Dantioch's body had been growing weaker even as his mind grew sharper and sharper. 'I have to. Terra needs you and your brother. The Imperium needs you … Your father needs you.'
'There has to be another way !' pleaded the golden Primarch. 'Please, Barbaras. You have given so much to the Imperium already … There must be another way !'
'Maybe, but what will every second spent searching for it cost ? No, my lord. This must be done. Please, tell my father that in the end … I died with dignity.'
Deep within the twisted remnants of Dark Glass station, a lever was pushed, and an old man sat upon a throne of torment and ruin. Lorgar roared in sorrow and pain as the Warp around the fleet flared with light. Even over the unimaginable distances of space, he sensed Dantioch's agony as the device consumed him entirely …
… Then the madness of the Ruinstorm was gone from the occulus, replaced by the blackness of space, with the distant lights of stars.

But regardless of the significance of these words, the combined fleet of the Word Bearers and the World Eaters did emerge from the Ruinstorm. For all the sacrifices they had paid to escape, the war raged still, and they were still determined to play a part in it. The traumatized crews of battered ships set to work to repair what was needed, the Navigators set a course through the tumultuous Warp, and the fleet began its way back home – to the Throneworld, where the fate of Mankind would be decided.

Yet despite all their efforts, the Twelfth and Seventeenth Legions arrived too late. Their imminent arrival had forced Guilliman into a final, desperate gambit that had ultimately cost the Arch-Traitor his life, but had also taken the mortal existence of the Emperor away. Lorgar marched through the ruins of Terra and into the Imperial Palace, and fell to his knees before the enthroned figure of the Emperor.

Despite the stasis field and the power of the Golden Throne, Lorgar knew that, for the second time in his life, he had lost his father.

Post-Heresy : Keepers of the Flame

'We are still here. Though our empire is broken, though the oaths of our brothers lie in ruin at our feet, we are still here. Though unspeakable horrors were unleashed upon us, though reason and order have departed the universe and left only cruelty and madness in their wake, we are still here.
We are not defeated. We are not broken. And we remain untainted.
Even now, as the ink of my words dries on this page, the degradation of the Imperium continues. The ideals of the Great Crusade are forgotten or cast aside in a desperate need to find a way to make sense of the galaxy once again. Human minds are too weak to bear the weight of the horrors we now know to be true. If only we had had more time -one generation, two at most, born and educated as my father intended, imbued with the power of the Imperial Truth … But that will never be now. It is too late. Too late …
… but we are still here.'
From the writings of Lorgar Aurelian, post-Heresy

After the end of the Siege and the banishment of the Traitor Legions to the Eye of Terror and the Ruinstorm, a dark mood fell upon Lorgar. Everything he had fought to build was slipping away as the Imperium slowly turned away from the Imperial Truth. His sons watched, helpless, as their father descended further and further into melancholy – until news reached them that a host of daemons had broken through the Iron Cage surrounding the Ruinstorm and were wreaking havoc on the worlds of the Ultima Segmentum.

As soon as he heard the astropathic calls for aid, Lorgar appeared to be revived, fire returning to his eyes. He called the full might of his Legion to him, and went to meet this daemonic horde, determined to cast back the horrors of the Warp to the hell that had spawned them. Four terrible Greater Daemons led this daemonic incursion, one for each of the Chaos Gods – a display of unity unseen since the days of the Heresy, and that portended dark times for the Imperium if they were not stopped.

It was on the world of Khur, where Lorgar and Guilliman had first turned against one another all these years ago, that the Word Bearers brought the infernal legions to battle. So numerous were the daemons that they blackened the skies, but still the Word Bearers attacked. In the confusion of battle, Lorgar became separate from his sons, and it was all they could do to watch, helpless to intervene, as the four Greater Daemons revealed themselves around the Primarch. Then, the tides of the battle obscured the Urizen from sight, and when next the Legionaries could see where he and the infernal princelings had stood, they found nothing but scorched earth.

Lorgar Aurelian was gone, as were the four great daemons.. Without its leaders, the daemonic horde soon turned against itself, and the threat to the Imperium was stopped at the cost of one of its few remaining princes.

Four they were, terrible and powerful beyond the ken of mortal men. Each was a lord among its kin, a fragment of the dread god it served. In most circumstances, they would have turned against one another in a heartbeat. But here and now, they were united in their hatred of the one who had dared to defy their masters.

'You have failed, golden one,' croaked a bird-headed Lord of Change.

'Your father has fallen, son of Colchis,' burped a bloated Great Unclean One.

'His pain feeds us,' hissed a Keeper of Secrets, trembling with delight at the wounds it had inflicted and suffered alike.

'His blood,' grunted a colossal Bloodthirster, 'and that of his little empire will flow for ten thousand years.'

There was a moment of silence, broken only by the distant sounds of battle being waged between the Word Bearers and the infernal legions that had come to this world. Then there was a soft chuckle.

'I know you,' declared the demigod whom the daemonic lords had brought to his knees. 'I know you all. I know what you are. Daemons, fallen, tengu … In the end, there is only one name that truly defines you : liars.'

Lorgar Aurelian, son of the Emperor of Mankind, rose to his feet, Illuminarium held firmly in his hands, and stared defiantly at the abominations before him.

'I name you deceivers and falsehoods,' continued the Primarch, his voice gaining in strength with every word, 'broken promises and empty shells. You have no power over me !'

Something in his gaze, in his words, made the daemons scream in fury, and the champions of the eternal war between Order and Chaos charged ...

After the disappearance of Lorgar, Chapter Master Argel Tal rose to the rank of Legion Master, and led the Word Bearers for a further three hundred years before his own death. A new Legion Master was chosen, and the Seventeenth Legion continued its long war against the many enemies of Mankind. By choice, they remained far from the Imperial centres of power if at all possible, trying to avoid stirring up internal conflict between the Legion and the rest of the Imperium.

Then, in the early thirty-sixth millennium, came the Age of Apostasy, a period of turmoil and conflict that almost destroyed the Imperium. Several Black Crusades erupted from the Eye of Terror and the Ruinstorm, throwing the Immaterium out of balance. The resulting Warp Storms engulfed entire Sectors, leaving their inhabitants at the nonexistent mercy of the daemonic incursions that ravaged their worlds. Taking advantage of the confusion, Ork Warbosses led their own Waaaagh ! across the galaxy, while the Dark Eldars left their shadowy realms in unprecedented numbers to prey upon the people of the Imperium. Even threats from the Imperium's own distant, all but forgotten past re-emerged, such as Thrar Hraldir, the leader of the infamous Wolf Brothers. The Plague of Unbelief his actions triggered near the galactic border took most of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Legions to purge.

The Space Marines Legions were more stretched out than ever combating these various threats, as were the Imperial Guard, the Imperial Navy, and all other military organizations of the Imperium. It was during that period that, on distant Terra, rose one of the greatest monsters of the Imperium's long and bloody history, a man whose name would become a curse for thousands of years to come : Goge Vandire.

The details of Vandire's rise to power, his rule and subsequent downfall, are unfathomably complex. Here is the simplified version, which is also the only one historians agree upon without their debates degenerating into academic feuds that even the most seasoned Inquisitors are wary of.

Vandire was the incarnation of every flaw in the Imperium. Through political intrigue, blackmail and back-stabbing, he had risen to become the Master of the Administratum, earning a seat among the Twelve High Lords of Terra. His rule over the monolithic organization was already brutal and merciless, to the point that other High Lords began to raise concerns. Before they could act on them, however, Vandire made his move to claim even more power for himself.

At that time, the Ecclesiarchy had risen to unprecedented levels of influence, taking advantage of the fear spread across the Imperium by the many threats that had arisen to the Imperium. A terrified population turned to the priests of the God-Emperor for salvation, and the Cardinals used them for their own political gains while the armies of the Master of Mankind fought and died against the hordes of the traitor, the alien and the heretic.

Even as entire Sectors set all their resources to supporting the war efforts, other regions of the Imperium were crushed by increased tithes for the construction of grand temples and extravagant palaces. Before, the threat of retribution from the Word Bearers and their allies among the other Legions had kept the worst excesses of the Ecclesiarchy's high representatives in check. But now the sons of Lorgar were too busy fighting the enemy without to concern themselves with the enemy within, and the armies of the Frateris Templars were one of the few military forces remaining inside the Imperium's borders.

Vandire played to the other High Lords' fears of the Ecclesiarchy's hubris, by waging an open campain against its influence. Many saw him as a counter-force to the unchecked power of the Ecclesiarch, but even them did not foresee Vandire's true plan. In 200M36, when the incumbent Ecclesiarch died under mysterious circumstances – some say that Vandire convinced the Grand Master of Assassins to eliminate the man – his successor, Paulis III, was elected with Vandire's backing. A foolish and decadent man, Paulis III would not have been the worst Ecclesiarch to have sit the chair, but he did not rule for long.

Mere days after Paulis III's elevation, Vandire stormed the Ecclesiarch's palace on Terra with several Regiments' worth of Imperial Guards. He then denounced Paulis as a heretic, and summarily executed him by his own hand. He then claimed the title of Ecclesiarch for himself, vowing to purge the Emperor's church from corruption. The Cardinals who opposed him, fearful of his power, fled Terra in a massive fleet, but they were caught in a Warp Storm mere weeks after departing the Sol system and were never heard of again. Claiming that this was a sign of the Emperor's favouring him – while in truth, it was either a coincidence, or a move by the Dark Gods to weaken the Imperium from within – Vandire secured his hold over the Ecclesiarchy, replacing the lost Cardinals with his own cronies before beginning his true, bloody, terrifying work.

Perhaps Vandire was truly motivated by the desire to cleanse the Imperium of the Ecclesiarchy's undue influence, but if that is so, he lost his way on the path to accomplishing that goal, and became a greater threat to the Imperium than anyone since Guilliman himself. His rule as both Master of the Administratum and Ecclesiarch is recorded in Imperial archives as the Reign of Blood, and trillions of souls were lost to his madness and atrocities.

Vandire began his reign by ordering purges of the Ecclesiarchy and declaring several Wars of Faith, sending billions of the faithful to bolster the ranks of the Imperium's defenders on the frontlines. Though these hordes were useful for little more than cannon fodder, the gesture made the Imperial military commanders more ready to accept his holding of two High Lords' offices at once. It also allowed him to send many of his potential enemies to their doom as they were granted the "honor" of leading these crusaders. While cold-blooded and cynical, such a move was little more than a display of cunning among the High Lords. It's what happened after that granted Vandire his place in the Imperium's annals of infamy.

Within months of his ascension, Vandire went truly mad. Perhaps it was due to all the power he possessed, perhaps it was because of the pressure of his responsibilities in an Imperium that was still facing multiple crises at once. Perhaps it was the result of some plot of his rivals among the High Lords, or a scheme by any of the many enemies of Mankind. Despite centuries-long investigations, we still do not know for certain. The possibility that maybe Vandire was just acting like a normal human is, to most Inquisitors, too disquieting to contemplate.

With most of the Imperial forces busy on the frontlines, Vandire's Frateris Templar and other military assets could impose their will upon the Imperium unopposed. Entire worlds were purged by flame as Vandire denounced their population as heretics for all manner of sins, from refusing to bow to his will to not paying their tithes fast enough. Over time, even these small justifications were abandoned entirely, and the ships under the tyrant's command did not question their orders as they destroyed entire star systems. On other worlds, horrifying pogroms were committed, based on the slightest genetic difference to what Vandire, in his madness, considered to be the "perfect human form".

All the while, on worlds terrified of being the next on the tyrant's list, great monuments were built, dedicated not to the Emperor, but to Vandire's own glory. These acts of heresy, however, paled compared to how Vandire deceived a religious sect known as the Daughters of the Emperor into becoming his personal bodyguards and servants. By faking a miracle through the use of his stolen Ecclesiarch's Rosarius, he convinced the all-female, isolated order that he was blessed by the God-Emperor, and spoke with His voice. Renamed as the Brides of the Emperor, these sister-warriors would become one of the most dangerous agents of Vandire's will. They notably purged the Holy Synod when the Cardinals attempted to have Vandire deposed, their loose standards and morals finally being breached by Vandire's atrocities.

The reign of Vandire lasted for seven decades, and would doubtlessly have lasted much longer if not for the heroic actions of a few individuals. A group of Inquisitors had secretly come back to Terra from the battlefield, seeking access to the archives of the Ordos on the Throneworld. On their way, they witnessed the horrors Vandire had unleashed in the name of the Emperor upon His own people. When they arrived to Terra, they were determined to cast down Vandire, but he was too powerful in his domain to be defeated with the means at the Inquisitors' disposal. The polar fortresses of the Ordos had been all but emptied to support the war effort, and what few Stormtroopers and agents remained would never make it through the Brides of the Emperor's watchful guard.

Instead, the Inquisitors resolved to send an astropathic message powerful enough to pass through the Warp Storms clouding the galaxy. After a daring raid on the Astra Telepathica's headquarters to secure the astropaths required, the psykers in their retinues amplified the transmission's power, and the message was sent. Its contents were a condensation of all the information they had accumulated on Vandire's many crimes and heresies. Its destination was the edge of the Ruinstorm, where the Word Bearers were fighting against a Black Crusade led by two of the infamous Ultramarines Tetrarchs.

The message reached the sons of Lorgar just as they had finally pushed back the tide of traitors and daemons. With the help of Ordo Malleus Inquisitors and a brotherhood of Grey Knights, the Tetrarchs had been banished, and a coordinated strike had slain the remaining leaders, breaking the Crusade's backbone. The fleet of the Seventeenth Legion was busy repairing the damage it had endured and recovering its warriors when the astropathic call breached through the tumult of the Warp. Such was its strength that when it finally reached its intended destination, every astropath, psyker and Librarian in the solar system received the full content of the message at once.

'We Inquisitors like to believe that we know the meaning of righteousness. That by our very calling, our souls are imbued with the Emperor's will, guiding our actions. When wrath takes us as we witness the horrors visited by the enemies of Mankind upon their victims, we delude ourselves into thinking that it is a righteous, inspired rage. But we are wrong. The human mind is designed so that all rage feels righteous. It is both our gift and our curse, a potent weapon and the source of countless damnations. But the Word Bearers, they know true righteous fury. It is written into their very genetic code, the legacy of their Primarch – and when the message echoed in our minds on this blasted, ruined, nameless world, I saw it.
It is impossible to describe what I felt from them, because no human has ever felt such an emotion. There are no words in any of the myriad languages of Man to do justice to the cold, blazing fury, the utter certainty of purpose, the obligation – not the desire or the need – to travel to Terra and end the life of the madman who had usurped power there. The hatred they had displayed for the heretics and traitors we had fought before paled compared to their reaction to Vandire's atrocities.
It was as inspiring to behold as it was terrifying, and on the journey to Terra, I found myself wondering if the Imperium wouldn't be saved from Vandire's clutches only to be destroyed by the righteous judgement of the sons of Lorgar.'
Excerpt from Fighting alongside the sons of Lorgar : Loyalty over Faith, by Inquisitor Jaeger

Once the shock had passed, the Word Bearers prepared to return to Terra, determined to bring Vandire to justice regardless of who or what stood in their way. They did not attempt to hide their wrathful coming, instead sending astropathic messages before them in the Warp, demanding that Vandire surrender his power and await the judgement of the Emperor's Angels of Death. Enraged, Vandire denounced the Word Bearers as heretics, finally revealed as being no better than the traitors they had claimed to fight. In his madness, the High Lord convinced himself that the sons of Lorgar had actually always been in collusion with the forces of Chaos, and plotting against the Ecclesiarchy to weaken the Imperium from within. That Vandire himself had once opposed the power of the Imperial Cult was something he had long forgotten by that point. The Word Bearers were opposing him; therefore, the Word Bearers were heretics.

Vandire gathered almost all the forces at his disposal in an immense fleet under the command of his most trustworthy lieutenants and sent it to meet and destroy the armada of the Seventeenth Legion. Hundreds of ships of all classes were massed in this fleet, though the quality of its commanders was sorely lacking, as all the experienced officers of the Imperial Navy had been sent to the frontlines long ago. Still, it was a force to be reckoned with, and should it have met the Word Bearers, the resulting void engagement would have been both epic in scale and devastating to any victor who had emerged.

But the fleet never reached the Word Bearers. Soon after they left the Sol System, the ships sent by Vandire were caught in an incredibly violent and localized Warp Storm that removed them from the galaxy entirely. To this day, this storm rages still, and is known in Imperial maps as the Storm of the Emperor's Wrath. Indeed, it is believed that the storm was sent by the Emperor Himself from the Golden Throne, as a punishment to those who had desecrated His empire and as aid to His true agents. Unaware of the fleet's fate – unaware that it had even been sent against them – the Word Bearers continued their journey to Terra. But they were not the only ones to finally move against the mad tyrant.

Long before the Inquisitors returned to Terra and discovered what had become of the core Imperium in their absence, another power opposing the bloody rule of Vandire had risen in the Segmentum Obscurus, on the world of Dimmamar. A young priest named Sebastian Thor had publicly denounced the Ecclesiarch as a traitor and a heretic, and through the sheer strength of his conviction and charisma, the entire planet had soon followed him into his defiance of Vandire. Even the Governor had bent knee before the young man, and placed the entire military forces of Dimmamar under his command.

Thor left Dimmamar and began to make his own journey toward Terra, stopping at every human world he passed to preach passionately to the population. Every world he so visited turned against the rule of Vandire and his cronies, often violently overthrowing those in power. Soon, Thor was at the head of an alliance of planets and forces known as the Confederation of Light. The name had once belonged to a sect of the Imperial Cult that preached self-sacrifice, moderation, and generosity, but had been crushed ruthlessly by the dominant faction of the Temple of the Saviour Emperor in the early days of the Ecclesiarchy. Dimmamar, the homeworld of the sect, had been ruthlessly purged, but the teachings of the Confederation had survived, and been resurrected by Thor and his allies.

The Temple of the Saviour Emperor
After the end of the Roboutian Heresy and the sacrifice of the Emperor, many sects rose that worshipped Him as a god. In time, these sects would unite to become the Imperial Creed, preached across the Imperium by the Ecclesiarchy. But this process was far from peaceful. Terrible wars of religion tore the worlds of the Imperium apart, until the Imperium put an end to it by enforcing the power of the Ecclesiarchy, who would ensure the application of the Imperial Creed as the one true and only faith in the Imperium. Even those High Lords and Legion Masters who did not believe in the divinity of the Emperor were forced to accept the creation of the Ecclesiarch's office, seeing a unified religion as the only way to stop the endless and bloody religious conflict.
One of the sects who became the foundation of the Ecclesiarchy was known as the Temple of the Saviour Emperor. It was the most powerful and influential of all, with entire fleets and planets under its direct control. When the Ecclesiarch's seat was established, it was one of their own who first sat it – and they kept things that way for five thousand years. Over time, however, the Temple changed from being a genuine religion into becoming a tool of power for its leaders. The Ecclesiarch was, in their eyes, the one true ruler of the Imperium by divine right as the voice of the Emperor. This led to the tensions between the Ecclesiarchy and the other High Lords, until eventually Goge Vandire used the situation to become master of both the Ecclesiarchy and the Administratum. Under his Reign of Blood, the members of the Temple of the Saviour Emperor became even more unhinged after the last honest men among them were purged by the insane High Lord.
After the death of Vandire, the members of the Temple were hunted down by the Word Bearers and the Night Lords. While Sebastian Thor reformed the Ecclesiarchy from within, the two Legions purged the last traces of Vandire's blasphemy. However, not all of them were found. The Temple of the Saviour Emperor was a powerful sect, with allies and assets in many places. Several of its leaders escaped justice, and reappeared decades later hidden among local Ecclesiarchy's hierarchy under false identities. Known as the Temple Tendency, they are heretics all, who seek personal power and wealth above the well-being and spiritual purity of their followers. They desire the revocation of the Decree Passive, and the restoration of the immense Armies of Faith that were once theirs to control. The Ordo Hereticus considers it one of its primary missions to destroy the Temple Tendency and all its offshoots.

If not for the far direr threat posed by the Word Bearers, Vandire would doubtlessly have sent his fleet to eliminate Thor and those who followed him. But with the fleet destroyed by the Storm of the Emperor's Wrath, the two forces, one made of transhuman warriors and the other of mere mortals, arrived to Terra at nearly the same time, from two opposite directions of the galactic plane. For a terrible moment, the Word Bearers believed the fleet Thor had gathered to be under Vandire's control, and their ships' lances prepared to fire and rip their perceived enemies to pieces. But Thor managed to contact the Legion Master in time, and explained that, like the sons of Lorgar, he and his followers had come to bring down Vandire and restore the rightful rule of the God-Emperor to the Imperium. Though the Word Bearer commander chaffed at being associated with any scion of the Ecclesiarchy, he acknowledged Thor's loyalty. Together, he and the human priest launched their attack on Terra – the first battle the Throneworld had seen since the terrible events of the War of the Beast, and before that, the Roboutian heresy itself.

Unwilling to repeat the destruction these conflicts had inflicted upon Terra, the attackers decided to limit their efforts to Vandire's own palace, standing within the continental spread of the Emperor's own. But the shields of the Imperial Palace were still up, as they had been for more than five thousand years. A direct assault would require a preliminary bombardment – something neither side of the precarious alliance was willing to even consider. All attempts to contact Vandire and get him to surrender without further bloodshed had been met only with more insane ramblings, most of which seemed to be directed at persons who were not present. It is unclear whether or not Vandire was even conscious of the presence of the Word Bearers and the Confederation of Light.

But while the Word Bearers and Thor's military council were planning their next move, they received a communication from the surface of Terra. This message came from the leader of the Brides of the Emperor – who had now renamed themselves Daughters of the Emperor again – Alicia Dominica. In the hololithic projection of the strategium of the Fidelitas Lex, she appeared tall and resplendent, holding in her hand the head of Goge Vandire.

While those present were shocked silent by what they saw, Alicia explained that she had been granted an audience with the Emperor Himself by the Custodes, and seen the error of her ways in helping Vandire. She and her coven had turned against their former master, seeing him as the heretic and usurper that he really was. Alicia herself had slain the renegade Ecclesiarch, though by her own admittance, she doubted he had even noticed her presence when she struck, so lost was he in his delusions. Then, she knelt, throwing herself at the mercy of the sons of Lorgar, son of the God-Emperor, awaiting judgement for her part in Vandire's atrocities.

Reactions among the Word Bearers varied. Some were pleasantly surprised, others disgusted that it had taken so much before the Daughters had turned against the tyrant, while others were still calling for the attack, claiming that they needed to seize the occasion to purge the Imperium from the Ecclesiarchy once and for all. But Thor spoke quickly and eloquently, and the Word Bearers renounced both to their assault and to inflicting any punishment on Alicia and her sisters.

The death of Vandire ended the Reign of Blood, but it was far from being the end of the Age of Apostasy. Hundreds of worlds had broken way from the Imperium during his reign, or been lost to various invaders who had slipped beyond the Imperial forces on the frontlines. Thor, now the new Ecclesiarch, had to reform the Holy Synod, and then travel across the entire Imperium in order to restore order. This pilgrimage lasted for a hundred years, and ended with the death of Thor himself soon after he returned to Terra for the first time, his body exhausted beyond the help of juvenat treatments by his endless work – or, some suggest, slain by the hands of jealous members of the Ecclesiarchy.

Before his death, Thor and the other Hight Lords instated the Decree Passive, a commandment that forbids the Ecclesiarchy to "gather, train, promote, sustain, or in any way command any force of men under arms". However, the Daughters of the Emperor, being an order made entirely of women, were not concerned by the letter of that law, and so they became the Adeptus Sororitas. Thor believed that while the Ecclesiarchy's previous military might had to be curbed, the faith still required warriors to defend it.

Though the storms in the Warp had receded with the death of Vandire and the defeat of the Imperium's foes – at least for a time – several other tyrants had taken advantage of the confusion to build their own empires, and they too needed to be brought to heel. Greatest of them was the Apostate Cardinal Bucharis, who took advantage of his world's isolation to preach that Terra had fallen, and that he was the new leader of Mankind. Bucharis preached that only the strong deserved to live, and the weak – which included the poor, the sick, but also the old and the young – didn't have a place in the galaxy. Every human should fight for himself, and follow his own desires : only that way could Mankind as a whole prosper, free from the burden of the weak in its ranks.

His empire quickly expanded from the planet of Gathalamor, in the Segmentum Solar, to include almost fifty worlds, some conquered by force, other exposed to the same spiritual decay to which Cardinal himself had succumbed. With their resources, Bucharis built great monuments in his honor, and built up the military forces under his control.

Eventually, however, news of Bucharis' heresy came to be known, reached the ears of the Word Bearers. Barely a few years had passed since the death of Vandire, and the Word Bearers were still reeling from the scale of that betrayal. Yet they had been denied the chance to bring Vandire to justice by the intervention of the Custodes and the turning of the Daughters of the Emperor. The Legion's blood still ran hot, and when they heard of Bucharis' treachery, the leaders of the Seventeenth saw both a righteous cause and an opportunity to appease the tempers of their brothers. The still-gathered might of the Legion came upon Bucharis' empire like the wrath of the Emperor.

Within a few months, almost every world conquered by the Apostate Cardinal had been reclaimed, Bucharis' forces broken to pieces everywhere they met the Word Bearers in combat. Finally, the Legion came to Gathalamor itself. The planet had never been rich in the past, but the plundered wealth of Bucharis' empire had been used to make it a fortress as well as a luxurious capital. But the greedy generals of the Cardinal were no match for the tactical acumen of the Legionaries, and the planet fell in a mere five days. As the Space Marines descended from the skies, several popular revolts also rose from within, led by an elderly confessor named Dolan Chirosius. By the time the champions of the Seventeenth Legion tore through Bucharis' palace, located the fleeing Cardinal and killed him, they were being cheered by streets packed with rebellious citizens.

Order on Gathalamor was swiftly restored, as a fleet of Imperial reinforcements emerged from the Warp in the Word Bearers' wake, carrying officials and diplomats. The Word Bearers took advantage of the slight delay before their arrival, however, to violently purge every supporter of Bucharis they could find, regardless of their rank or possible use to the Imperium in the future. This prevented the people of Gathalamor from descending into mob justice, but also left a mark upon the Word Bearers' records that they carry to this day.

With the death of Bucharis and the destruction of his empire of lies, the Age of Apostasy finally came to an end. But the Imperium had been terribly wounded by enemies both external and internal, and the losses suffered during that dark age are yet to heal.

The Wars of Vindication
Another aspect of the Age of Apostasy, the Wars of Vindication were waged within the ranks of the Ordo Assassinorum, but they also involved the Twentieth Legion. They erupted soon before the death of Vandire and continued for a period of at least several years.
After claiming control of the Ecclesiarchy, Vandire still wanted to extend his power further. He especially desired the office of Grand Master of Assassins, for he saw the Officio Assassinorum as the only remaining threat to his power. However, the incumbent Grand Master was impervious to all of Vandire's attempts to bribe him or threaten him to his side. So, instead, Vandire cultivated a network among the Officio, turning dozens of assassins and other agents against the Grand Master. Leader of this conspiracy was Tzik Jarek, a member of the Callidus Temple. The plan was that Jarek would kill the Grand Master, then use his shape-shifting abilities to take his place and command the Officio without anyone outside the circle of conspirators being aware of the change.
Vandire died before the plan could be carried out, however. Fearful of retribution being directed at him for his part in the tyrant's reign, Jarek immediately put the plan into action. Though the assassination appeared to be a success, the Grand Master had seen the betrayal coming, and ensured that information about it reach the proper ears. Upon his death, both his own loyal servants and the Alpha Legion received detailed reports on Jarek and his allies within the Officio.
What followed was a brutal succession of skirmishes across the entire galaxy, as the sons of Alpharius teamed up with the loyal Assassins to purge the Officio of the conspirators. Little of it is recorded in the Inquisition's archives, and what we know comes only from the Assassins who took part in it. Weapons that had been locked away in sealed vaults since the time of the Heresy were wielded once more, and entire worlds were lost in cataclysms whose source was never uncovered. In the end, however, Jarek was slain, and the Officio returned under the control of the Imperium.
For all the secrecy of the Wars of Vindication, they did come to the attention of the reformed High Lords of Terra. After things had calmed down, it was decided that the power of the Officio needed to be collared, in the same manner as that of the Ecclesiarchy had been. From this point onward, every assassination carried out by the Temples would require a vote among the High Lords, and the Temples would be scattered across the galaxy, rather than focused in a single location where corruption could spread more easily. The foundation of the Ordo Sicarius was also ordered, to keep watch over the Officio in the future – and, according to rumour, on the secretive Alpha Legion as well.

It was in the aftermath of this bloody Age that the Ordo Hereticus was founded. The corrupt priests and rebellious leaders of the Age of Apostasy had revealed the importance of keeping the spiritual shepherds and political leaders of the Imperium under watch, and the heirs of the Inquisitors who warned the Word Bearers of Vandire's true nature became the first members of this new Ordo. Over time, its purview would grow to include every form of heresy, including those inspired by Chaos, leading to the members of the Ordo Hereticus receiving the nickname of "Witch Hunters".

Now, five thousand years after the death of Goge Vandire, the events of the Age of Apostasy have faded into legend for most Imperial citizens. But the High Lords of Terra still remember how the sons of Lorgar did not hesitate for a moment to sail toward the Throneworld in the intent of killing everyone in charge there. According to many savants of the Inquisition, this has had both positive and negative consequences, as it encourages the High Lords to do their best to avoid drawing the ire of the Seventeenth, while also making the most ruthless among them plot the destruction of the entire Legion.

Organization

'From the darkness of ignorance, the flame of truth shall spring, and bring forth the age of illumination.'
Inscription on the prow of the Fidelitas Lex, the Gloriana-class flagship of the Seventeenth Legion (translated from High Gothic)

Since the loss of their Primarchs, the Word Bearers have been led by a Legion Master. Such centralized command was made necessary by the isolation from the rest of the Imperium that afflicts the Seventeenth : if the sons of Lorgar did not stand together, their hidden enemies would have been able to plot their destruction long ago. At the same time, this unity has made their dissenters even more nervous, as they fear that the one rising to this station might one day be corrupted, and turn the full might of the Seventeenth Legion with him against the Imperium.

The Legion Master operates from the Fidelitas Lex, one of the last Gloriana-class ships left in the Imperium from the days of the Great Crusade. This magnificent vessel, twenty kilometers long, is both a fortress and a weapon. Under his direct command are several of the Legion's Chapters, in which the rest of the Word Bearers are divided. Word Bearers' Chapters are the equivalent of other Legions' Great Companies, averaging a thousand warriors in total. Every Chapter is named after a constellation of Colchis' night sky, and each name has been in use since the days of the Great Crusade. Because of the relentless conflicts in which all Astartes are thrown, there are always several names without a corresponding Chapters, as losses become too great to replace. But always new warriors are forged, and eventually, a new Chapter is born, bearing the name and heraldry of one of the fallen ones.

Each Chapter is led by a Chapter Master, answering only to the Legion Master. It is them who, when the Legion Master dies, must choose a new one from among their number. They are counselled by a group of Chaplains, Techmarines and Captains, but their command is undisputed. The discipline in the Seventeenth Legion is known to be the strictest of all loyal Legions, which is no small feat. While Chapters operate separate from one another, the Legion as a whole is generally present in a single one of the galactic fronts, its forces kept more dense than those of any other Legion.

The Iterators
During the Great Crusade, almost every Expeditionary Fleet was accompanied by men and women gifted with great oratory skills. Their task was to help the soldiers of the Imperium negotiate the peaceful integration of human worlds into the fledgling empire. Each of them had been selected by a process even more rigorous than that of an Astartes Aspirant, for while it is said that only one youth out of a hundred might become a Space Marine, only one soul in a million had the qualities required to become an Iterator. Philosophers of the Imperial Truth, diplomats without peer and demagogues supreme, it fell to them to truly unite conquered worlds with the Imperium.
When the Heresy ended the Great Crusade, the Iterators were disbanded, becoming simple diplomats once more. Only the Word Bearers maintained this office, selecting humans with the appropriate talents and having them trained in the great universities of Colchis. To this day, their forces are accompanied by these individuals, who act as intermediaries between the Legionaries and the rest of the Imperium. While their primary task is to maintain the relationship between the Word Bearers and the greater Imperium, they are still charged with the same duties as their forebears on the rare occasions where a human world is rediscovered after being cut off from the rest of the galaxy.

Combat Doctrine

'Burn their idols, lay down their tainted temples, slay their fell priests. We will not leave this world until every single Chaos worshipper is dead !'
Chapter Master Harzhan of the Word Bearers Legion, before the Purge of Oceania

Because of their unique beliefs, the Word Bearers are often forced to fight without the support of the other branches of the Imperium's warmachine. This has made them adepts at all styles of warfare, though it has also reinforced their main strategy of launching massive assaults against several target points at once, each thrust having the same strength behind it and capable of tilting the balance if it is successful.

In the millennia since the Age of Apostasy, the Word Bearers have worked more closely with the agents of the Ordo Hereticus than any other Legion. Today, as more and more heretics and traitors reveal themselves each year in the Imperium, some motivated by greed, others by ambition and yet more by misplaced ideals, the work of that Ordo is more important than ever. The Word Bearers know it, and are willing to dedicate most of their forces to the assistance of the Inquisitors in defeating those threats they have failed to prevent from coming to fruition. Out of all the loyal Legions, the Word Bearers are perhaps the one with the highest human body count of all, as they are regularly called upon to put down rebellions against the rule of the Emperor.

When deployed against a human population corrupted by Chaotic influence, the Word Bearers are relentless in their prosecution of the conflict. It is far more frequent for them to enter the state of trance-like fury they are infamous for in these wars than in any others, but even if they retain all their faculties, they are still terrible to behold. Using their extensive knowledge of the Archenemy's ways, they will strike at his weakest spots, seeking to destroy his leadership in order to ensure their foes turn against each other. But even if the enemy side descends into civil war, they do not simply step back and watch the forces of Chaos destroy themselves – instead, they push forward, ready to take losses to ensure none of the heretics take advantage of the confusion to escape. Even after military victory is achieved, the Word Bearers will not stop until every trace of heresy has been destroyed. They know from bitter experience that if even a single heretical icon remains unfound and unbroken, it can lead to the birth of another cult, starting the whole process again and damning potentially millions of souls in the process.

The Iconoclast Marines
The wars waged by all Space Marines require them to be detached from humanity, for they would not be able to withstand all that they witness and commit otherwise. Their training and the transformations of their physiology ensure that they can kill as their function dictates without suffering from the psychological effects such an existence inflicts upon any normal, sane human mind. Even the Astra Militarum, whose recruits have spent their entire lives being told that to die for the Emperor is the greatest honor, suffer from psychological damage after battle, and require the care of priests and medical officers. The Space Marines only need Chaplains for the most disturbing of battles, such as fighting against daemons or a weaker, defenceless human population who must nonetheless be purged for its corruption.
But the Iconoclast Marines, as they are called by those who know of their existence, do not even require such spiritual care. They are those who, after entering the zealous fury that is Lorgar's gift to their bloodline, never return to normal. While still intelligent and capable of using tactics, they now act against any enemy in the same way as they did against those who triggered the rage in the first place : cold, ruthless, merciless annihilation, completely uncaring of the cost of the methods employed. No cure has ever been found to this affliction, though there are legends that Lorgar was able to drag his sons back into sanity, and that Imperial Saints also have this ability – although how the Word Bearer in question could have gotten close to one is a difficult scenario to imagine. Whenever a warrior enters this state and does not return at the end of the current campaign, he is immediately stripped of his former rank, his armor is repainted in crimson, and he becomes a Iconoclast Marine. Every Chapter has a few such warriors among its ranks – usually no more than a squad or two, though circumstances can lead to that number increasing dramatically. These individuals are generally kept away from the rest of the Chapter, ostensibly to prevent possible contagion, but in reality, because no son of Lorgar wants to see a permanent reminder of what he might become – little more than a machine turning on hatred.
Iconoclast Marines are only deployed when it is vital to ensure no enemy escapes. They care even less for their lives than normal Astartes, and can be outright callous in the pursuit of their objectives. An Iconoclast Marine will think nothing, for instance, of killing a thousand civilians in order to ensure the death of the heretical preacher hiding among them. In single combat, they are even more formidable than their brethren, but they lack the true brotherhood and synchronization other Astartes do not even notice they have. Because Iconoclast Marines are entered into the Legion's archives of the dead when they succumb, they are also sent on suicide missions, to which none of them have ever objected.

Homeworld

Unlike some of the other loyalist Legions, the Word Bearers have restricted their base of operation to a single planet – Colchis, the world of their Primarch. However, they have established compacts with forge-worlds all across the galaxy, exchanging their protection for resources. They have also made alliances with powerful Rogue Trader bloodlines, who are more open-minded than the rest of the Imperium. A Rogue Trader who secures an alliance with the Seventeenth Legion gains a powerful ally, and one who will always keep its word, but must also now contends with the wrath of the Ecclesiarchy. Still, it is a deal many Houses are willing to make, and one that has profited most of them.

Colchis has changed greatly since the day Lorgar landed upon its surface. Millennia of careful terraformation have turned the planet into a more habitable world, though it is still hot and dry by any human standard. Great facilities are dedicated to the recycling of water, while cities are shielded from the merciless sun during Colchis long, slow day by immense panels of reflecting glass. These panels can also be used to focus the light of Colchis' sun into burning beams, a weapon that has been used several times in the planet's history. Most of Colchis' population either work in the great farms that keep the planet fed, or in the industrial complexes that produce the weapons and armor the Word Bearers need to prosecute their wars. The cities of Colchis have grown around the Legion's fortresses, where the relics of the Word Bearers are preserved and the next generation of Astartes are selected and trained.

In orbit around Colchis are a lot of orbital platforms and shipyards, used to maintain the fleet of the Seventeenth Legion. Thanks to the good relationship between the Word Bearers and the Adeptus Mechanicus – the tech-priests of Mars care little for the sons of Lorgar's lack of faith in the divinity of the Emperor – these shipyards are some of the most advanced in the Imperium. It is also said that the Martian priests who work here are among the less traditional of their order, and rumors abound of new types of ship weapons and even ship designs being developed in Colchis' orbit.

Yet despite all these advancements, Colchis still struggles with the ghosts of its unhallowed past. The Covenant's Legacy still tries to return to power on the planet, with Chaos cults launching massive invasions with almost clockwork regularity. Few of those ever get pass the orbital defenses of Colchis, but enough to get through that the people of Colchis never forget how to fight them, or why they must be fought in the first place. Beyond these outside attacks, there are also the home-grown cults to deal with, for despite ten thousand years of seeking and destroying them, there are still cells of the Covenant active on the planet. In the last millennia, however, the Word Bearers' alliance with the Ordo Hereticus has allowed them to gain the aid of the Inquisition in that matter, and the influence of the Covenant has much weakened on Colchis.

The Covenant's Legacy
Even after the annihilation visited upon it by Lorgar himself, the marks of the Covenant's influence have yet to truly vanish from Colchis. Despite the best efforts of the Primarch, not every priest was slain or made to renounce his foul gods during the Wars of the False Priests. A few managed to escape judgement, and they hid among the population, vowing to one day avenge their order's destruction. When the Imperium came to Colchis, they seized the opportunity to spread to other, less prepared worlds. These first-generation survivors took disciples of their own, and ensured that the foul lore gathered by the Covenant over the centuries did not vanish entirely.
During the Heresy, many of the Chaos Cults Guilliman who rallied beneath Guilliman's banner had been founded by such heirs of the Covenant. Though they were little more than cannon fodder when pitted against the might of Legiones Astartes, they still inflicted untold damage to human worlds before the death of the Arch-Traitor and the Scouring of the Imperium. But even the Scouring wasn't enough to truly root out this evil, and in the ten thousand years since, many more cults have been traced back to the Covenant's Legacy. Its members follow ancient prophecies from the days of the Old Faith on Colchis, claiming that at the times of ending, a great champion of their gods will rise and unite the entire galaxy with the primordial powers of the Warp. There have been many candidates to that role in the past, but none of them have succeeded – and, the Emperor willing, none ever will.
It is feared by some members of the Inquisition that the remnants of the Covenant might have, in recent years, made contact with those of the Temple of the Saviour Emperor, and entered into a blasphemous alliance. If this is true, then the threat each of these heretical factions pose to the Imperium could increase exponentially as the fell knowledge of the Covenant combines with the resources available to the Tendency. According to Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn, such a compact was behind the heretical effort to contact the Chaos-corrupted xenos known as the Saruthi and recover the Necroteuch, an infernal grimoire from Mankind's ancient history.

Beliefs

'They call us faithless, because we refuse to believe in the lie that they use to maintain their control over the Emperor's dominion. But they do not even understand the true meaning of faith.
To truly have faith in something, you must know it. Understand it. Not just blindly believe it true because someone else told you so. All it takes for that is wilful ignorance, and that is not faith – it is oppression, masquerading as faith. The stifling of human passion under the weight of dogma. The Ecclesiarchy breeds fanatics, not faithful, and the god they claim to revere is a twisted parody of the beliefs for which the Emperor fought.
We of the Seventeenth have faith. Faith in one another, faith in the ideals of the Great Crusade, faith in the vision of the Emperor for Mankind. Faith in the teachings of our Primarch, now lost to us amidst the tides of war. Faith that Humanity is worth fighting for, worthy of ruling the galaxy, worthy of simply continuing to exist in a universe that has turned to nightmare after Guilliman's betrayal. For we know that, no matter the machinations of Chaos and the petty ambitions of mortal men, there is one thing our species will never lose …
Hope.'
From the writings of Argel Tal, Legion Master of the Seventeenth Legion, post-Heresy

The Word Bearers do not believe in the divinity of the Emperor, like most of the loyal Legions. But they are the only one to actively oppose the worship of the Master of Mankind, as prescribed by the Imperial Creed. To them, the Ecclesiarchy is a mockery of the ideals of the Great Crusade and of the Emperor Himself. The Word Bearers believe in the rightful rule of the Emperor, and do believe that He lives still, and watches over Mankind in spirit, His immense psychic power directing the light of the Astronomican and preventing the downfall of the entire species into the ravenous claws of Chaos. But they refuse to call Him a god, and do not offer prayers to Him – instead, they dedicate themselves to His ideals by their actions on the field of battle. In their eyes, fighting the enemies of Mankind is the one and only service He demands of them, the purpose for which they have been forged.

The sons of Lorgar also remember what happened on their homeworld ten thousand years ago, when the cruel rule of the Covenant all but bled the planet dry. To them, religion is a tool that can be all too easily hijacked by the Dark Gods, and which, even in its most inoffensive aspects, blinds Mankind to the truth of the universe and shackles their potential. The events of the Age of Apostasy have only reinforced that belief. On the rare occasions when the Word Bearers have fought alongside the Adeptus Sororitas, it has taken all the diplomatic skill of their Iterators to prevent the eruption of outright conflict.

Over the centuries, several Inquisitors belonging to the most extreme Puritans philosophies have decried the Word Bearers as heretics. Most often, these members of the Ordos come from the Ecclesiarchy, and were selected as Acolytes by an already Puritan Inquisitor. But the allies of the Word Bearers among the more reasonable members of the Holy Ordos (and, since its founding, most members of the Ordo Hereticus) have always ensured that such denunciations are never followed by any true action. From a purely theoretical point of view, the Word Bearers are, in the Ecclesiarchy's eyes, heretics, for they do not believe in the divinity of the Emperor. But so are most loyal Space Marines, and the Imperial Cult has long since come up with excuses and special exceptions for the Angels of Death where the Master of Mankind is concerned. One of the most commonly used is that Astartes are closer to Him through the blood that courses through their veins, and therefore, unlike mere mortals, cannot understand the true greatness of His power and benevolence.

Though they have no love for prophecies of any kind, the Word Bearers do also believe that their Primarch still lives. Theories abound as to his current fate, with the most prominent among the sons of Lorgar being that he was drawn into the Sea of Souls alongside the four Greater Daemons he fought on Khur, and is still fighting against Chaos in its own domain. There is even a theory that, if the hold of Chaos over the galaxy is weakened enough, its power in the Warp will also diminish and allow Lorgar to escape and return to the material plane. Of course, even if that were true, the power of Chaos has only been rising in the last millennia, despite the many setbacks heroic defenders of the Imperium have inflicted upon it. Still, the Word Bearers cling to this hope, and dream of the day their Primarch returns to lead them once more.

The Heralds
All Legions use Chaplains to maintain morale and watch over their Legionaries' mental well-being. But in the ranks of the Word Bearers, those who carry the crozius have another role. The office of Chaplain itself originates from their Legion, for it was at the dawn of the Great Crusade that the first black-clad, skull-helmed warriors appeared among the Astartes of the Seventeenth Legion. Only those who had shown the most devotion to the Imperial Truth were selected for that role, and it was their duty to go to those who refused to join the Imperium because of religious beliefs. Alone, a black-armoured warrior would journey to the gates of his enemies, and give them a warning of the futility of their resistance and the erroneous nature of their beliefs. Unlike the Iterators, who were used when negotiations were possible, these Heralds were only sent to those too lost to the trappings of faith to even consider accepting the Imperial Truth. Though the Heralds' dreadful aspect sometimes convinced the opposition to lay down arms and surrender, it was far more common for the envoy to be attacked, and to fall in battle after slaying hundreds of his foes.
Today, the tradition of the Heralds has remained in the Seventeenth Legion. When facing an enemy whose very existence doesn't invite destruction – such as the population of a recently rediscovered human world, an Imperial planet rebelling against incompetent leadership, or even, in some occasions, the Eldar – a Chaplain will go, alone, and give them a chance to surrender. It is rare for these offers to be taken, but the death of the Herald always makes the rest of the Legion fights harder, and in the rare cases where he succeeds, losses of Legionaries are prevented.

Recruitment and Geneseed

The gene-seed of Lorgar is marked by a single genetic flaw. Those who bear it are afflicted with an unbalance in the complex hormones that direct their emotions, leading to excesses of zeal and passion that, to them, seem perfectly normal, but are utterly terrifying to outsiders. What triggers these bursts of righteous fury can vary from one individual to the next, though it is known that the Reign of Blood triggered a Legion-wide case. When in that state, the Word Bearers care nothing for whom they might offend or how their actions might appear to the eyes of anyone else. All that matters to them is the enemy and the death they must inflict upon them. That is not to say that they lose their calm and become berzerkers – quite the opposite, and their cold, ruthless practicality is far more frightening than any outburst of rage.

Almost every Word Bearer was born on Colchis. While being the recruiting ground for a Legion is generally seen as a mark of honor, Governors are nervous about allowing the sons of Lorgar to take the children of their worlds. They fear the wrath of the Ecclesiarchy, mostly materialized through mysterious, unexplained increases in tithes for the planets who let the Seventeenth Legion recruit on their soil. Still, there are times when the Word Bearers will find a promising youth while operating on an Imperial world, and take him under their protection, pending testing by the Apothecaries for genetic compatibility. Fortunately, it is quite easy to find matches for Lorgar's gene-seed, though the population of Colchis sometimes requires new blood to compensate for the tithe it pays to the Legion. Refugees from worlds destroyed by war are regularly brought to the arid world, and although life on Colchis is far from easy, the protection of the Word Bearers is a great comfort to these poor souls.

Warcry

The Word Bearers do not wage war in silence. Their conviction demands to be expressed, and they shout their warcries over the battlefields with the full strength of their three lungs, in a wall of sound that is known to have, on occasion, broken the ranks of lesser foes. Typical battle cries include 'We bring the Word of Lorgar !' and 'Ave Imperator !', but many more exist, adapted by the Chaplains prior to the battle to the current foe.

When they enter their zealous rage, however, the only battle-cries shouted by the sons of Lorgar are promises of retribution to their foes, swift and merciless. The utter certainty in their tones as they bellow their vows over the battlefield has been known to shatter the morale of lesser enemies, and unnerve even Traitor Marines when they are faced with a charge of the Seventeenth.

The flame struggles against the darkness.

Everywhere, shadows gather, growing ever stronger. They press against the flame, hungering for its extinction. They want to snuff it out, to at long last return their realm to the darkness.

But the flame still fights back.

Despair, arrogance, bloodlust, perversion, all sins feed the power of the darkness and weaken the strength of the light. War eternal presses on, threatening to end hope itself, promising only endless torment or merciful oblivion. Even that promise is a lie, for the dread lords of this infernal realm have no pity in them – only cruelty.

And yet, the flame still shines. Because it remembers. Because it knows.

There is a greater fire yet awaiting to be kindled. And the day is coming, when the spark, preserved for ten thousand years, is called upon to light up this grand blaze.

This is his promise. And so he keeps fighting. Over and over, throughout eternity, until the final hour.

Darkness will not triumph. So he has sworn. So it shall be.

Chapter Text

Index Astartes – Salamanders : Lords of Greed and Pride

Arrogant and cruel, the Salamanders are heirs to their Primarch's unbridled power. From their very inception, dark rumors circulated about them, but by the time the full extent of their corruption was revealed, it was too late to stop them. The blood of two Primarchs stains the hands of Vulkan, who has long since shed the last trace of humanity left in him to become a Daemon Prince of Chaos. Their flesh twisted to reflect the darkness of their souls, the Salamanders are a plague upon the galaxy, enslaving all those who fall before them and plundering their riches to sate their immortal greed. Like the ancient drakes of myth, they are unrestrained in the exercise of their power, unburdened by any thought of morality or compassion. With dark fire and blades inscribed with unholy runes, they crush all those who come before them, selfishly striving to emulate the greatness of their Primarch. Meanwhile, the Black Dragon, who slumbers in his lair, awaits the call of great plunder to rise once more, and rain doom upon the worlds of Mankind ...

Origins : Born of Fire

Knowledge of the Traitor Legions' very existence is forbidden in the Imperium to all but an elite few : Imperial commanders and officers, Planetary Governors on regions plagued by raiders, the loyal Space Marine Legions and, of course, the agents of the Holy Ordos. But there are histories that have been lost to the passage of time, and others that have faded into little more than legend and myth, whose truth is known only to the God-Emperor and those dark souls that still dwell beyond the rings of the Iron Cages, their memory made bitter by ten thousand years of exile and damnation.

Such is the case of Vulkan's legend. Most of the Black Dragon's history is forever lost to us, and the few kernels of fact that remain to us point at a legacy darker and more terrible than perhaps any other of the Traitor Primarchs – even the Arch-Traitor Guilliman himself. The tale of Vulkan's life is one of loss and dread triumph, and if the ramblings of those driven insane by studying this saga are to be believed, it is one that is far from completion yet.

Like all Primarchs, Vulkan was stolen from the Emperor's gene-laboratories by the machinations of the Ruinous Powers and cast across the galaxy. He landed on the world of Nocturne, a Death World located in the Ultima Segmentum. Circled by an oversized moon named Prometheus, Nocturne was constantly ravaged by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that made permanent construction impossible. Life on that planet, for the few unfortunate souls descended of the colonists who had crashed there centuries before, was harsh and short – by the standards of the Imperium, the planet would have been classified as a Death World.

Unlike the other Primarchs, Vulkan was not found by another member of the human species as a child, nor did he wander alone until his path came to cross that of another descendant of distant Terra. Instead, the young demigod was found by one of Nocturne's great beast, a gigantic reptilian creature hundreds of years old, who was the subject of legends and camp-fire stories for the scattered tribes of the surrounding regions. Kasare, they called the beast, one of the great salamanders; predators who slumbered deep below Nocturne's surface and were only roused by the Time of Trials, when Prometheus and Nocturne were closest and the world screamed under gravitic forces.

Vulkan's life-pod crashed in the deep volcanic crater at the bottom of which Kasare had made her lair. Her sleep interrupted, the beast rose and approached the source of the disturbance. She found Vulkan emerging from the pod as an infant, and by all rights the life of the young Primarch should have ended there and then, an outcome that would have been much better for the galaxy. But instead, moved by some primordial instinct, the salamander attached herself to the child as if it were her own. For almost ten Terran standard years, Vulkan remained in isolation with Kasare, raised by the great beast. The salamander left the crater to hunt and bring back the carcasses of other, lesser examples of Nocturne's megafauna, so that Vulkan might feed upon them. She also brought in living specimens, and Vulkan learned how to fight and kill for himself.

Feeding on the rich meat of Nocturne's beasts, Vulkan grew quickly and strong, his body further toughened by the harsh conditions of his lair. The crater in which he lived was fairly secure, but rockfalls from the sides, flows of lave bursting from the depths and radiation-poisoned winds were common. It is believed that it was during that time that his skin darkened and his eyes took on their glowering red tint, as an adaptive response to the hostile conditions. But the first true challenge Vulkan would face came when, after ten years, the instincts of Kasare moved on to their next phase.

Nocturne's salamanders were fiercely protecting of their young, as they must be for the species to have any chance of surviving on that harsh world. But once their spawn had reached a certain age, their children became rivals for limited food resources, and needed to leave the nest and carve their own territory. Normally, young salamanders knew this instinctively, but Vulkan was no mere beast, and so, when the creature he had come to consider his own mother suddenly turned on him, he was caught completely by surprise.

Agony.
It coursed through his body as the claws of his mother tore through his flesh. Never in all his life had he ever known such pain. He had been wounded before, when he had fought the beasts she had brought so that he would learn to defend himself, but never like this. His belly had been torn open, though his organs remained inside – something that had never happened with any of his previous foes but did little to diminish the terrible pain. Again and again she stroke at him, and it was all he could do to rise his arms in defense, until he felt too weak to even do that. Then the claws came for his throat and he fell, a crimson torrent pouring from his ravaged body.
Darkness took him …
… and then, in a flash of light and heat, his eyes snapped open. There was no more pain – he looked, and saw that his body was whole, though the ground was still soaked with his blood. The weakness from moments ago was gone, yet his mother was still staring down at him, her claws red with his blood. She had killed him, yet he lived again, and though she appeared confused, her confusion quickly gave way to renewed fury and she lunged toward him once more.
He lived again, but if he did nothing, he would die again.
With a mighty roar, he rose to his feet and punched the reptilian creature in the side of her jaw, sending her tumbling to the ground with greater force than he had ever displayed before. He felt as if his body was on fire, fuelled by the very power of the ground on which he stood. He would not be a helpless victim of this creature's rage any longer. He would not let her hurt him. He would never let anything hurt him.
And if that meant that he had to kill her, then so be it.

But he was a Primarch, and emerged victorious – though not before making a terrible discovery, that would set him apart from the rest of his brothers forever : Vulkan could not die. After being slain by Kasare in the battle's first moments, he had risen from the dead, restored to full health and possessed of even greater vigour than before, and defeated the creature that had raised him since infancy. It was then that Vulkan learned that he was a Perpetual, though he would not learn that term and what it meant until much, much later in his life.

The Perpetuals
Death is inevitable. It is the one thing that binds all members of the human species together – from the lowest dreg in the underhive to the Lord Governor of an entire Sector, all are bound by the inevitability of death. The Emperor alone, so the Ecclesiarchy teaches us, is beyond death – and even then, it is because He moved beyond it when He shed His human form and became a god. Even xenos species must obey the same law, and save for the unliving legions of the Necrons or the accursed spirits of the Neverborn, all things must eventually face the Reaper. To have a soul, no matter how wretched or tainted, is to live in the shadow of death.
Except that such is not the case, and in the deepest archives of the Inquisition, the truth is written behind half-forgotten myths and legends. There are those who are untouched by death, who go through the passage of millennia unaffected. Hundred upon hundred of years might pass, and yet they remain the same, returning even from the most hideous and complete death looking none the worse for wear. They are known as the Perpetuals, and each of them is a power in him or herself, not because of any particular power they might possess – they have none save for the ability to return from death – but because of the skills they have picked up during their long, multiple lives.
The fact that Vulkan, the only Perpetual Primarch, turned against the Imperium and the Emperor, has led many of the Inquisitors aware of their existence to hunt down the Perpetuals as potential agents of Chaos. But apart from the Black Dragon, none of these immortals have ever been known to bow before the Dark Gods. It is possible that the Ruinous Powers have nothing to offer to an immortal, or that the wisdom and knowledge that comes with such a long existence inevitably reveals the Primordial Annihilator for the abomination that it is, making submission to its insane evil impossible for any sane being. Still, those arguing for the systematic hunting and capture of the Perpetuals argue that for someone who does not know death, the lives of all those around are, by necessity, lessened in value. What does one mortal life matters to an immortal, after all ?

Once victorious, Vulkan set to work, and crafted for himself a cloak and suit of armor from the corpse of the beast, wearing her skull upon his shoulder. He then turned his attention on how to escape the great crater that had been his world for years. Within a few days, he was climbing out, following the steps left in the walls by the claws of his beast-mother. Outside, he beheld Nocturne's landscape for the first time : a desolated land, riven by earthquakes and lava eruptions. He also saw, in the far distance, the signs of civilization, and his long-dormant instincts told him that he would find more of his kind there.

Despite the dangers of their world, the people of Nocturne had managed to build seven cities on places where the land was the least agitated. The city found by Vulkan, Hesiod, was called the Seat of Kings, and was the most influential of the sanctuaries of Nocturne. When Vulkan presented himself at the city's doors, he was welcomed in, though the guards' surprise at seeing a lone wanderer survive to reach their gate quickly turned to shock and fear when they saw him up close. To the mortal eye, Vulkan was a black-skinned giant with burning red eyes, clad in the skin of one of Nocturne's most powerful beast and wearing its skull upon his shoulder. They fell on their knees before his might, awed and terrified in equal measure.

Vulkan was introduced to Hesiod's ruler, and after only a few days he was capable of speaking fluently in Nocturne's harsh, but strangely poetic language. By some strange twist of fate, Vulkan saw a blacksmith's shop while visiting the city, and asked to work there. Something in the shaping of the metal, in the creation of instruments of war and peace, appealed to him, and seeing his cloak, the blacksmith welcomed him with open arms. In only a few days, Vulkan had surpassed his first teacher; within a few weeks, he was the greatest smith in all of Hesiod.

Half a Nocturnian year after Vulkan's arrival to Hesiod, one of the many cataclysms of plaguing the death world happened once more. Unlike the fury of the earth or the beasts that roamed in the wasteland, this scourge came from beyond Nocturne : it came from the dark places between realities, where the scions of dread Commoragh dwell. For centuries, Dark Eldar slavers had preyed upon the people of Nocturne, hunting them down for sport and capturing them as slaves. Hardy and resilient, the Nocturnians made excellent slaves for the cruel xenos, known to their victims as the myth-shrouded Dusk Wraiths.

This time, however, things were different : a Primarch was here. Vulkan fought the Dusk Wraiths in the streets of Hesiod, killing dozens of them and leading the city's people into repelling the xenos. The king of Hesiod had been slain in the confusion – dark rumors claim that he was killed not by the Dusk Wraiths, but by Vulkan himself. The Lord of Drakes, as he was called by the grateful population, was offered the throne, which he seized immediately before calling his people to war. The Dusk Wraiths were still harassing the other cities, and he intended to free them from the invaders' depredations. Within a few weeks, Vulkan had crafted powerful weapons for Hesiod's most powerful warriors, those who had proven themselves in his eyes when fighting back the Wraiths in the city's streets.

City by city, Vulkan and his army fought and defeated the Dusk Wraiths, gaining new followers at each step of the way. However, by the time they reached the seventh city, Skarokk, the Dark Eldar had escalated their activities, driven into a frenzy by the news of their prey's unexpectingly fighting back. When Vulkan entered the Dragonspine, as Skarokk was known, it had become a pit of horrors, where the only living humans were kept in a state of perpetual agony by their tormentors' cruel devices. Vulkan's army marched through the city, their heart full of vengeance, but it was all they could do to end the victims' pain – the Dusk Wraiths had long since departed.

Vulkan swore that such an atrocity would never happen again. He declared that Skarokk would stand forever as a reminder to the rest of the cities of the price of weakness, and the need for strong, unified leadership. With almost no opposition, Vulkan was proclaimed master of the six remaining city-sanctuaries, and began to work on rebuilding Nocturne according to his own vision. A powerful military was created, led by warlords equipped with weapons and armor crafted by Vulkan's own hands, and hunted the beasts around the cities, making it safer for the people to mine the prodigious wealth of Nocturne's earth.

Under Vulkan's rule, Nocturne became a much safer place for its people. Vulkan had a nearly preternatural instinct for predicting the shifts in the earth, and was able to prevent much of the yearly death toll that had become part of Nocturnian life. Out of respect and fear for their coal-skinned overlord, the six cities sent prodigious amounts of gemstones and precious minerals to Vulkan's throne in Hesiod. With these, the Lord of Drakes forged weapons, but also wondrous works of art that were exposed in his castle, and people flocked from all over Nocturne to see them. It was the first time in recorded Nocturnian history that the clans had the opportunity to truly enjoy beauty, rather than fight for survival.

At the same time, Vulkan did not tolerate dissent, and those who opposed his rule or spoke out against him were quickly disposed of by his loyal supporters. The only exception were those who possessed useful skills or connections : they were brought before Vulkan himself, where the natural presence of the Primarch soon overwhelmed them and turned them into the most devoted servants of the Lord of Drakes. Peace and civil order were maintained through an unyielding military rule, and all were expected to serve the will of Vulkan. This system was brutal, but effective, and perhaps the only one that could have worked on a Death World such as Nocturne – we will never know.

When the Emperor came to Nocturne, He found His son at the head of a powerful and prosperous empire, carved out of the savagery of a world that might very well have claimed his life. The Master of Mankind descended on Nocturne in disguise, and used the ancient rituals of trial of the world to challenge Vulkan's might and intellect. Vulkan emerged triumphant in every trial, and demanded to know who was this outsider who dared to question his fitness to rule. Then the Emperor revealed Himself in His true glory, and Vulkan knew that he had finally found someone who did not stand, by their very nature, beneath him. It is said that he laughed when he saw the Emperor, the first time he ever did so in the memory of his servants – for he believed that, at long last, he would no longer be alone. There are even tales that the Emperor joined in his son's joy, in a display of the innocence that would later be so cruelly shattered.

The Emperor told Vulkan of the greater galaxy, of the thousands of worlds that needed to be brought out of the darkness and into the light of civilization. He praised Vulkan's work on Nocturne, and spoke of the Legion that had been crafted from his blood. This Legion – the sons of Vulkan – direly needed his leadership, but first, the Lord of Drakes needed to learn the knowledge he would require to fulfill his role as a general of the Imperium's Great Crusade. He also told the young Primarch about his brothers, those who had been created in the same way he had been.

Eager to meet his siblings and face the new challenges of the Great Crusade, Vulkan accepted the Emperor's offer. He left the ruling of Nocturne to his subordinates, but ensured that they would have the Imperium's support, and that the children of the six cities would be tested for the honor of joining his Legion. For several years after that, Vulkan fought at the side of the Emperor, his true nature kept a secret while he learned the skills of a commander and the structure and technology of the Imperium. Rumors about the mysterious warrior clad in green draconic armor spread widely across the forces of the Great Crusade, and speculation as to his true nature was rife – until the day the Emperor judged Vulkan to be ready to reveal himself and take the place that was rightfully his.

The Great Crusade : Tyrants Among Shepherds

'On the Anvil of War are the strong tempered and the weak made to perish, thus are men's souls tested as metal in the forge's fire. We are the champions of this new age, my sons, and we shall forge the future of all Mankind with our deeds. Like the blacksmith shaping the blade, we cannot afford to be kind to the material we use – only by beating it into shape shall we make it strong enough to weather the passage of time and threats.
For make no mistake : there are threats uncounted waiting in the stars, xenos that would see Mankind wiped out from the galaxy if they had the chance and the legacies of our ancestors' failures slumbering on forgotten worlds, waiting for the foolish to rouse them once more. Only through strength can we defend ourselves from these perils, by crushing all those who oppose the Imperium's right to rule the stars.
Greatest of all those dangers, however, is disunity. When Mankind first took to the stars, it scattered without care no plan, the leaders of each colony ship seeking to create their own isolated society. This mistake cost them terribly, for no world can stand alone in this universe. Even if they resist us, even if they refuse the gift of compliance, we must force it down their throat no matter how much damage is done to the process – because without us, they will die at the hands of one threat or the other, and that threat will grow stronger from feasting upon them before coming for us next.
The people of the Imperium might look at you and see monsters, weapons of war removed from humanity by the gene-forging that made you what you are. And perhaps they are right, but it does not matter. All that matter is that Mankind needs armies strong enough to survive, and you are that army. You are the Salamanders, the primordial beasts bound to the Emperor's will, that He might bring order to the stars and strength to Mankind.
Let nothing stand in our way as we conquer the galaxy for my father. Let none oppose us, for to fail is to do far worse than die – it is to sentence our entire species to extinction, as we become no more than another footnote in galactic history, to be forgotten by those who will rise from our ashes. But we will not be broken by that endless, vicious and cruel cycle. We shall master it, and in doing so, we shall become immortal !'
Passage from the decree of Primarch Vulkan, after taking command of the Eighteenth Legion

Even before Vulkan's discovery, the Eighteenth Legion's reputation was a dark one. Their creation had been shrouded in secrecy by the Emperor, their first warriors kept away from the other Legions for unknown purposes. Dark rumors circulated among the citizens of the Emperor's domain, especially when the only two other Legions to be treated this way were the Sixth and the Twentieth – both of which would come to be feared and reviled in equal measure over time, though for very different reasons and with a very different outcome.

The appearance of the Legionaries only aggravated the issue. While foolish discrimination based on skin color had long since disappeared in an Imperium fighting against the mutated horrors created by the techno-barbarians, the Eighteenth Legion's gene-seed caused those it was implanted into to develop thick, scale-like black skin and red, glowing eyes. These traits gave them an inhuman appearance that surpassed the mere size and proportions of a transhuman, and combined with the attitude of these warriors on the battlefield, fearful whispers of "devils" and "monsters" spread among the human forces deployed alongside them.

The warriors of the Eighteenth Legion were first revealed to the rest of the Emperor's servants near the end of the Unification Wars, when they were unleashed in the Assault on the Tempest Galleries. This was during the final extermination of the Ethnarchy, a cabal of insane gene-twisters controlling thousands of enhanced transhumans of their own and circles of chemically enslaved psykers, as well as possessing many technological relics of immense power. Earlier in the Unification Wars, the Ethnarchy had been contained in the Caucasus Wastes at a terrible price – millions had been lost, and more than ten thousand Thunder Warriors had perished as well.

Using burrowing engines, the twenty thousand Astartes of the Eighteenth Legion infiltrated the Ethnarchy's last fortress from below in order to sabotage its massive and powerful defences. At the core of the fortress, they fought not against flesh and blood, but the antique, near-sentient constructs that were tasked with the defense of the complex which drained energy from the very molten core of Terra. Between the brutally hostile environment and their highly intelligent and powerful foes, it took all the Astartes had to triumph. They finally succeeded in silencing the malevolent machine-spirit that dominated the complex, sending its cogitators down into an ocean of lava, but by that time, less than a thousand of them remained. Without its defence grid, the last city of the Ethnarchy fell, its leader brought in chains before the Emperor so that He might learn the secrets that had allowed this blasphemous kingdom to stand in His way for so long.

While the Eighteenth Legion earned much honor for this battle, with its numbers so dramatically reduced, it was unable to join the Great Crusade as soon as other Legions. Instead of being deployed as one massive force, the sons of missing Vulkan were assigned in small groups to individual forces needing Astartes support. Scattered across the Great Crusade, these groups rarely amounted to more than a hundred warriors – an elite force for the commander of the Expeditionary Fleet to call upon in case of dire need. This meant that every battle the Legionaries experienced was dangerous and desperate even by the standards of Astartes, and casualty rates remained as high as the honors the Legion continued to gain over the dead bodies of its members. This created a brutal mentality among the warriors of the Legion, who did not expect to live long and only saw value in their lives if they died honorable and worthy deaths.

The coming of Vulkan changed all that. For all his faults and later treachery, there is no denying that during the Great Crusade, Vulkan was fiercely protective of his sons' lives. Whether this was due to any genuine bond, the duty of a general to his soldiers, or the callous calculation of a warlord seeking to preserve his most valuable assets, the Lord of Drakes made sure to change his sons' mentality. He named them the Salamanders, so that they would carry on the legacy of strength and near-invincibility of these great beasts. He gathered them all in one force, not hesitating a single moment to use his Primarch's authority to revoke the oaths that had bound them to other armies.

United under his command and with fresh recruits coming in from Nocturne, the Eighteenth Legion was saved from the brink of annihilation and reborn as a potent fighting force for the Great Crusade. In barely a few years, the Salamanders' numbers were in the thousands once more, and a century after the Crusade had begun they were, if not the most numerous Legion, at last no longer considered in danger of dying off. Vulkan's time as ruler of Nocturne had given him a keen eye for ambition among mortal men, and he quickly formed a web of allegiances with other commanders, offering his Legion's support, but also personal presents of weapons and armor crafted with his own hands. The Commanders of the Imperial Army honored with such princely gifts dedicated the forces under their command to Vulkan's endeavors in the Crusade – and would later form the core of the human armies who turned against the Emperor alongside him. Outside of these allied worthies, however, the Salamanders were regarded as mighty but exceedingly brutal warriors.

Vulkan's tactics were brutal, aimed at minimizing Imperial losses and achieving quick compliances with little regard for collateral damage – and they worked. In the battle of Antaem, the first in which the Lord of Drakes fought side by side with his reunited Legion, his tactical instincts served him well against the numberless hordes of the Orks. Using fire weaponry and the first of the strange, deadly weapons Vulkan had forged after learning the secrets of the Mechanicum, the Orks were slaughtered to the last. With the greenskin menace curtailed, the Salamanders quickly pacified this entire region of the Halo Stars, destroying several other xenos threats that had plagued the human worlds of the sector during Old Night. Vulkan rejoiced at a task well done, and vowed that he would repeat this success and surpass it in the rest of the Crusade.

But Vulkan failed to realize that, without a pressing threat to make them welcome the Imperium's assistance with open arms, many of the human communities scattered across the galaxy would cling fiercely to their independence. That was the purpose of the iterators – to convince these reluctant children of Terra to return to her embrace. In Vulkan's eyes, however, any who refused to join the Imperium were either ignorant or foolish, and time spent discussing with them was time wasted during which another world's cries for help against galactic dangers went unanswered. His conquests were quick and violent, as he did not hesitate to use whatever means would lead to the enemy's surrender most quickly. While his methods often left the military forces of the worlds brought to compliance in ruins and the ruling class decimated, the Salamanders refrained from causing civilian casualties where possible. This was not out of any lingering kindness in their hearts, but a matter of supreme pragmatism : the dead made poor Imperial citizens, and butchering civilians often made an enemy's surrender all but impossible. Avenging one's dead family, the Salamanders quickly learned, was a cause that would make even the most cowardly of men take up arms and fight to the death without ever considering giving up.

'The Alliance of Noverion had stood for six thousand years, surviving through the horrors of the Dark Age of Technology and the Age of Strife that followed it. Their fleets and armies had kept their borders safe from alien predations, twelve star systems linked by stable Warp routes and united in the name of survival and prosperity.
It only took one year for the Salamanders to reduce the Alliance to ruin.
After the failure of the first diplomatic overtures, Vulkan decreed that the Alliance's defiance of the Imperium would not be tolerated. Their ships were broken in their worlds' skies, burning fragments raining upon domed cities. Their armies were crushed on the field of battle, executed to the last as retribution for the few fallen Salamanders. World after world fell, their ruling class annihilated and their population cowed in terror as the Legion moved on to the next planet – until at last Vulkan's flagship darkened the heavens above the Alliance's capital world.
In desperation, the Alliance's leaders attempted diplomacy one last time. I was on the bridge of the Flamewrought when their plea was received, and saw and heard the Primarch's response. These men and women had been broken, shown their insignificance next to the power of the Imperium. They offered their lives in return for their people being spared and their few remaining soldiers being allowed to surrender honorably. Vulkan smiled – the most terrifying thing I have ever seen, and I have journeyed through the Warp – congratulated them on their moral courage, and agreed to their offer of capitulation.
The planet was taken without a single shot. The soldiers of the Alliance were disarmed and sent back to their homes. After a year of rebuilding ruins, the adepts of the Administratum were relieved to finally see a world brought to compliance without the Salamanders almost completely destroying its infrastructure first.
I never found out what happened to the leaders of the Alliance after they surrendered.'
From the forbidden account In the Shadow of the Dragons, by Navy officer Torson Veller

Vulkan regarded his more humane brothers as naive, and believed that eventually the rigors of the Great Crusade would bring them to see the galaxy as he did : a harsh and unforgiving place that demanded that the strong rule over the weak. While close to Rogal Dorn and Ferrus Manus, who both shared his outlook, he was shunned by the rest of the Primarchs, safe for Guilliman. The Primarch of the Ultramarines often met with his Nocturnian brother, trying to convince him to change his views with long and passionate debates into the merits of their various approaches to the rest of Mankind. These reunions created a bond between them stronger than any Vulkan shared with his other brothers, for while he never changed his mind and remained certain that Guilliman would change his in time, he appreciated the fact that Roboute was the only one not to have given up on him.

The two of them also often discussed one of Vulkan's most secret and surprising passions : a deep and true interest for ancient art and history. According to remembrancers, the collection of the Lord of Drakes was staggering both is scope and quality, hosting relics from all of Mankind's eras – from the Dark Age of Technology all the way back to before Man first discovered writing. In those days, Vulkan was fascinated by the flow of History – though it might all have been a front, to hide his secret research into discovering the traces left by other immortals across the aeons.

In hindsight, and with knowledge of the secret Vulkan tried so hard to hide – though he faced little difficulties, never encountering any foe he could not defeat without resorting to his peculiar gift – the patterns in the Lord of Drakes' actions are obvious. Whenever a human world colonized in earlier epochs was discovered in regions he was tasked to conquer, he would always begin with a diplomatic phase, even if such efforts were obviously going to be fruitless. In the case of the Monarchy of Blood, his insistence that the iterators discuss with the ruling king was downright criminal, as it sent a dozen men and women to certain death.

At the time, Vulkan claimed that these were the results of his efforts to mend his ways in a fashion more agreeable to his brothers, but the truth has since been revealed by the Inquisition's research. On every such world, Vulkan sought to buy time in order to investigate the planet's ancient history, searching for clues of the actions of another immortal such as himself. Whether he found any other Perpetual that way is unknown. There are no trace of such a discovery in the records accessible to us, but surely had Vulkan succeeded, he would have kept it even more secret than the rest of his shadowy quest. Regardless, Vulkan's investigations also yielded a trove of technological lore that he hoarded like the beast of myth he had begun to be compared to. He used this knowledge to craft ever more devastating weapons, placing them aboard the grandest of all his accomplishments, the forge-ship Chalice of Fire.

Eventually, two hundred years after the beginning of the Great Crusade, the Emperor called His Primarchs to the Triumph of Ullanor. The Master of Mankind, noble Horus, stalwart Perturabo and elusive Jaghatai had defeated the greatest Ork empire to have ever been encountered, and the Emperor wanted to honor those who had fought there, and through them all soldiers fighting the Great Crusade, human or otherwise. Vulkan was there, with a group of his most elite warriors, the Pyre Guard – veterans of the Legion, from the days before Vulkan had been found. They took part in the parade, and marched beneath the gaze of the gathered Primarchs with pride.

When the Emperor announced that He was returning to Terra, and taking Magnus with Him, while leaving Horus in command of the Great Crusade, Vulkan wasn't shocked as much as he was intrigued. The Lord of Drakes had ever suspected his father was keeping secrets from the Primarchs, just as Vulkan himself was keeping secrets from his sons and fathers alike. He attempted to uncover these secrets, believing that they might held a clue in his own quest for answers. But his every investigation, legal or otherwise, was met with an adamantium wall of failure and the sudden silence of infiltrated agents.

Vulkan's mood grew sour in response to these repeated failures. His tactics grew increasingly brutal, and even downright cruel on occasion. Soon, the title of Lord of Drakes was replaced by another, whispered fearfully by civilians of the Imperium and soldiers of the Imperial Army alike : the Black Dragon. Tales of entire cities being butchered as punishment for their refusal to bend knee, of grotesque mutilation being visited upon surrendered enemy soldiers to prevent them from ever fighting again, circulated across Expeditionary Fleets. But it wasn't until Kharataan that things came to a head.

The leaders of the city-states of Kharataan had heard of Vulkan's aggression, their own primitive astropaths picking up the screams of nearby systems. These nightmarish visions had painted them an image of the Imperium as a blood-drenched dictatorship, where cruel warlords slaughtered with impunity while a distant Emperor let them do as they pleased. After a single diplomatic meeting, on the off-chance that the visions had been wrong, or deceitful, Kharataan cut all contact with the Expeditionary Fleet hanging in their system and prepared for war. Vulkan ordered the Salamanders to land in mass on the planet, and prepared to lay siege and break the cities one by one, forcing the leaders who had so insulted him to watch as he did so.

As the first assaults began, however, a new fleet entered the system, much smaller than the Salamanders' own. Konrad Curze, the King of the Night, had come, thinking to aid his brother in bringing Kharataan peacefully into the Imperium's embrace. Instead, he found a planet at war, and sent his Night Lords into the fray. Ostensibly, this was to help the Salamanders – but in truth, the Savior of Nostramo had dark suspicions regarding his brother, though even his worst fears would fall short of the reality.

With the help of the Night Lords, the Salamanders quickly took the first of the city-states, only for Vulkan to order that one fifth of the population be executed. Whether civilian, soldier, rich or poor, young or old – one out of every five inhabitant of that city would be killed, to teach the survivors the price of opposing the Imperium in general, and Vulkan in particular. Curze's rage and horror when he learned the news were terrible, and only the fact that he was on the other side of the planet prevented him from physically attacking Vulkan as he would do with Dorn soon after. Instead, after his pleas for stopping were ignored, the King of the Night withdrew his forces from the campaign – taking with him the entire population of the last city-state that still stood unbroken.

'Are you mad, brother ? What purpose could such slaughter of innocent possibly serve ? Do you so thirst for domination that you care not how many lives you crush ? I swear that if you do not stop this insanity immediately, me and every single one of my sons shall not rest until our father's wrath comes down upon you for your crimes !'
Attributed to Primarch Konrad Curze, during the Kharataan Incident

After the events of Kharataan, Curze sent a report on what had happened to the Council of Terra, including recorded evidence of the Salamanders' excessive behavior, not just on that world, but in numerous other operations. However, the message was subject to the usual vagaries of the Warp, and it took years for actual action to be taken. The reply, when it came, bore the sigil of Malcador himself. It demanded that Vulkan and his sons return to Terra to explain their actions, both in the Kharataan affair and in the many other instances of excessive force that had happened during the Great Crusade. Curze sent ten of his warriors to the Lord of Drakes to carry the Sigillite's message. Nothing was ever heard again of these envoys, for soon after their departure, news of Guilliman's treachery reached the Imperium, and the Salamanders' transgressions lost their importance in light of this new heresy.

Ten sons of Nostramo laid in pieces across Vulkan's throne room when Artellus Numeon crossed the threshold. The Lord of Drakes sat on his throne, eyes fixed upon the carnage his weapon, Dawnbringer, had wrought. The massive, ornate warhammer rested at the side of the throne, still covered in the life-blood of the Legionaries it had torn to fragments.
Artellus walked through the carnage cautiously, eyes fixed on his Primarch, searching for signs that his rage hadn't yet abated. When the Eighth Legion small ship had emerged in-system and the Night Lords had demanded an audience with Vulkan, the Lord of Drakes had been amused if anything, and he had welcomed them aboard his ship, the Flamewrought. Then the Night Lords had asked that all Salamanders leave the room while they delivered their message to Vulkan alone, hinting at the authority behind their orders. Vulkan had grown more agitated then, but had agreed to the demands. That had been nine hours ago – as long as Artellus dared to wait before returning into the room.
'Rouse the astropaths,' said the Primarch at last, turning from the bloody scene to his First Captain. 'I think it's time I answer Guilliman's invitation.'

Heresy : Conquest and Secrets

'I suppose out of all of them, Vulkan turning traitor should have surprised us least. He was always the most brutal, the most ruthless and unrelenting in his approach to conquest. But we were all brutal in our own way, and we had all been ruthless and unwilling to compromise our ideals. This is what it meant to be a Primarch in the first place – to be one of the genetically forged generals of Mankind.
And there is another thing that scholars and historians will fail to understand : any of our brothers turning against the Imperium in the first place was supposed to be impossible. We couldn't conceive it – or at least, I could not. Until the very last moment, when my boots landed on the black sands of Isstvan V and the sounds of my brothers' Legions firing upon my sons reached my ears, the betrayal of Guilliman, Dorn, Ferrus and Sanguinius felt more like a nightmare more than a reality.
"How could they not have seen it coming ?" generations will cry as they learn of the horrors of this war. "How could they let this happen ?"
They were our brothers. We fought and bled at their side, we saved their lives and they saved ours.
The true question is, how could we possibly have seen it coming ? If treachery did not hurt so much, it wouldn't be nearly as effective. If evil wasn't so unthinkable, it wouldn't be evil ...'
From the private memoirs of Primarch Mortarion, written during the Roboutian Heresy

While the treachery of the Salamanders might seem obvious in hindsight, there is actually very little hard evidence as to the exact means by which Guilliman convinced Vulkan to join him in rebellion against their father. There does not seem to have been any attempts by the Ruinous Powers to court his attention prior to the events of Isstvan. His search for other Perpetuals might have caused him to research ancient sorcery, but from the records of his investigations, it seems Vulkan was, at the time of the Great Crusade, still enough of a believer in the Imperial Truth that he steered off such dangerous matters.

All we have, then, are theories and suspicions. The most probable cause of Vulkan's treachery is that, after learning of his coming censure, he was approached by Guilliman, who told him the same lies about the Emperor he had been told himself. Knowing that war was coming to the Imperium and eager to escape the consequences of his crimes, the Black Dragon then willingly joined forces with Roboute. Or perhaps it was whatever passed for brotherly love in Vulkan's heart that convinced him to side with the one brother he was truly close to, no matter the risks. Another theory is that Vulkan knew that the Dark Gods had bestowed strange and previously unknown lore upon Guilliman and his cohorts, and that he believed that this lore held the keys to his long obsession of understanding his own immortality.

Regardless of the truth, Vulkan came to the Isstvan system to help Guilliman's cause, while still draped in the pretences of loyalty to the Emperor. During the journey, his Legion's ranks were culled of those who would not follow their Primarch in betrayal, in a quick and silent purge. Then came the assault on the traitors' position. Vulkan was assigned as part of the second wave, supposed to follow in the wake of the Night Lords, Death Guard and Alpha Legion to secure their gains and crush the rebels with overwhelming force.

The testimonies of Isstvan survivors indicate that the Salamanders bore no obvious sign of Warp-born corruption, such as the Ultramarines and Iron Hands displayed. The Librarians of the Salamanders showed no unholy powers on the black sands of the Urgall Plateau, only the natural proficiency with pyromancy that had been their hallmark during the Great Crusade. The single difference was that the sons of Vulkan were now using their skills and tactics against their own cousins.

Vulkan fought against Konrad Curze there, when the King of the Night willingly sacrificed himself so that his brothers and their sons might escape Guilliman's trap. The Black Dragon, for all his power, was no match against the unleashed fury of Curze, who had finally let loose his darkest abilities, secure in the knowledge he would be dead long before they could turn him into a monster. Time and again did the King of the Night slay his brother, only for Vulkan to rise, his immortality finally revealed to both his sons and the other Traitor Legions. The secret of the Black Dragon was out in the open at last, and it is likely that Vulkan felt relieved at this grand revelation.

Finally, Vulkan struck Curze down, the Primarch's body falling in the hands of Salamanders who promptly plundered it for trophies, before being pushed back by the vengeful Night Guard, led by Talos Valcoran. The Soul Hunter directed his brothers, and they reclaimed the body of their father while Vulkan was still reeling from the mental exhaustion of his many resurrections. Soon the Massacre was over, and the other traitor Primarchs started to look upon Vulkan with mixed respect and fear, wondering how it was that their brother had gained such a powerful gift. The Black Dragon replied to inquiries on that subject only with cold, deadly silence, and soon the Traitor Legions were convinced that his immortality was the result of some dark pact of his own passed with the newly discovered Gods of the Warp.

His brother was dead, and he had been the one to kill him.
When Dawnbringer had fallen upon Curze's chest and blasted his hearts to pieces, Vulkan had still believed, deep within, that he was not the only one of his brothers that could not die. None of the Primarchs had ever died before, after all – if you didn't believe in the rumors whispered about the Sixth and their secret campaigns. Only when he had seen his brother's corpse had Vulkan realized that he had believed Curze would rise again, suddenly aware of the folly of it all, understanding the meaninglessness of other, mortal lives, and embracing Vulkan as his brother.
But instead Konrad had remained dead, staring at him with eyes that, even in death, judged him and condemned him. That had been why he had stepped back, why he had done nothing as the Night Lords killed his sons and took Konrad's body with them. For the first time in his life, he had felt horror … and regret.
In his chambers aboard the Flamewrought, Vulkan brooded on these dark thoughts, ignoring the summons of Guilliman that he attend the war council that would decide the next stage of the war. He was staring at a fire pit, and it seemed to him as if the shadows cast by its flickering light danced on the walls with malevolent intent, closing in on him from all directions. Then, with a mighty roar, he cast down the fire and rose, before storming out of the chamber, leaving Dawnbringer inside, still covered in the blood of the King of the Night. Never again would Vulkan touch the weapon he had forged with his own hands.
And never again, he vowed to himself, would he do anything, and regret it afterwards.

After Isstvan, the Salamanders then spread across the galaxy in several groups led by commanders appointed by Vulkan himself. These groups did not join in the push toward Terra led by Guilliman and Manus. Instead, they focused on the conquest of vast swathes of the Imperium, forcing trillions to kneel and swear fealty to the Black Dragon, and through him to Guilliman. Some among the Traitor Legions began to suspect that Vulkan was building a power base more loyal to him than to the rebellion. They feared that in time, Vulkan would turn against Guilliman, seeking to rule his own empire. Whether these concerns were warranted is, ultimately irrelevant, but illustrates perfectly the distrust and corruption of loyalty that infect the Traitor Legions to this day.

While most worlds were no match for the power of the Eighteenth Legion, the defenders of worlds loyal to the Throneworld were not without allies. The Night Lords and Alpha Legion had scattered after the Massacre, their warriors vowing to get vengeance on those who had betrayed them. While the bulk of the Eighth Legion travelled to the Ultima Segmentum to take part in the Thramas Crusade, thousands of sons of Nostramo remained to help the resistance. The Salamanders found themselves facing the Night Lords' guerilla tactics on dozens of worlds, and one of their leaders, Zso Sahaal, was even responsible for the loss of the legendary Chalice of Fire, including all the terrible weapons aboard this vessel.

The Chalice of Fire
Vulkan was as much a blacksmith as he was a warrior, and what few archives have survived of the Great Crusade tell us that he had forged many great and terrible weapons during that time, combining his own keen instincts with the lore he gained from the Mechanicum and the worlds he conquered. When word of his betrayal reached the Imperium, many feared that he would turn these weapons against the worlds of Mankind, and what the consequences would be – for these were no mundane tools of destruction, but artefacts of immense power, that even the Salamanders had been reluctant to use during the Great Crusade. All of them had been gathered by Vulkan in a ship that itself was one of them, the Chalice of Fire, a vast forge-ship armed with the laser array known as the Eye of Vulkan. This ship was under the command of the first Salamander Forgefather, T'kell. In the skies above Isstvan V, the Chalice was responsible for the destruction of nineteen vessels of the loyal Legions, blasted to pieces by its weapons.
But the lords of the Imperium on Terra were not the only ones aware of the threat posed by Vulkan's artefacts. Soon after the Massacre, a force of Night Lords struck a great blow against the Salamanders. Led by Zso Sahaal, a member of the Circle of Shadows known as the Talonmaster, a splinter group of the Eighth Legion ambushed the Chalice of Fire while it was travelling under light escort deep in traitor space. The Chalice was too powerful for Sahaal's flotilla to destroy in the void, and so the Talonmaster and his warriors boarded it instead, sacrificing most of their ships in order to do so. According to what little information is available to us, there was some dissent in the ranks of Sahaal's group : some warriors wanted to destroy the Chalice and deny the traitors the use of its contents, while others wanted to make use of the weapons themselves to avenge the loss of their Primarch and help win the war against Guilliman and his allies. Sahaal's own opinion on the matter is unknown, and will likely remain so for all time, for as the Night Lords were fighting the Salamanders aboard the Chalice, a new player appeared in the space battle.
A fleet of Eldar vessels emerged from the Webway, surrounding the Chalice. The xenos ships took heavy damage from the forge-ship's escorts, but they ignored their losses, focusing on allowing a few ships from reaching their allotted positions around the Chalice. Once these ships were in alignment, just as Zso Sahaal was confronting T'kell on the Chalice's bridge, the Eldar used their strange sorcery and ancient technology to banish the forge-ship and its contents into the Warp, sealing it away in a stasis bubble of prodigious size. The Eldar vessels then promptly departed, as did the surviving Night Lords ships, carrying word of this strange battle back to the loyalists. Eventually, though Zso Sahaal and many other warriors had been lost, Sevatar deemed the attack a success – the Chalice of Fire was never seen again, and the threat of Vulkan's artefacts appeared to have been removed from the equation of civil war.
Great was the rage of Vulkan when he learned the fate of his forge-ship and the loss of his weapons. He vowed that the Eldar would pay for their treachery, and over the millennia since, he has made good on that promise several times, sending warbands to attack Exodite planets and even Craftworlds, and allying with the Blood Angels on several occasions. Still, the Children of Isha remain confident that they did the right thing – the artefacts forged by the Black Dragon in the time he was still flesh and blood were far too dangerous to be left in the hands of mon-keighs. Yet the question remains : the Chalice of Fire was not destroyed, merely sealed away. Even now, there are many Forgefathers and other Chaos Lords who seek to break its prison and bring it back to the Materium so that they might plunder its contents. Some factions among the Mechanicus that are aware of the forge-ship's legend are also hungry for the lost lore it contains, convinced that since it was sealed before the Salamanders succumbed to the lure of Chaos, all its treasures rightfully belong to the Omnissiah's devoted servants.
The Inquisition is ever watchful for signs of this dread ship's return, and its agents know that, should the Chalice reappears, they can count on the help of the Night Lords. The sons of Nostramo are as eager to prevent the horrors the Chalice could unleash as they are to learn more about the fate of their brothers lost to its holds ten thousand years ago – perhaps even now, in a place out of time, Zso Sahaal battles T'kell still …

Many among the Shattered Legions sought vengeance against the Primarchs who had personally led the slaughter of their brothers, and none more so than the Night Lords against Vulkan. Many plots were hatched to eliminate the Black Dragon, only to be aborted when the realization sunk in that none of them had the means to prevent Vulkan's unholy resurrection. That is, none of them, until the Chief Librarian of the Eighth Legion, the Terran-born Fel Zharost, was contacted by a man calling himself John Grammaticus.

Grammaticus was a Perpetual, something he proved to the Librarian by allowing himself to be killed in front of him. Painful as the process was, it – along with the Twentieth Legion medallion found in Grammaticus' possession – convinced Zharost to listen to what this immortal had to say. The tale he received is preserved in the archives of the Night Lords as well as those of the Inquisition, who received a copy soon after its founding.

According to Grammaticus, he had once been in the employ of a group of xenos from various species interested in manipulating the human race to their own ends. Their enemy was the Primordial Annihilator, the dark force in the Warp that had corrupted and empowered Guilliman and his associates. But this Cabal, as it called itself, was no ally of the Imperium : it wanted the traitors to win so that Guilliman would eventually destroy Mankind, taking the Primordial Annihilator along with it. Grammaticus' desertion was, he said, a tale for another time, for he brought knowledge far more important to Zharost's immediate needs : a mean to kill Vulkan – permanently.

Before departing the Cabal, John had learned of an artefact called the Fulgurite spear, a weapon made of the psychic remnant of the Emperor's own power. Lost and forgotten on an isolated world decades ago, this weapon had been prophesied by one of the Eldar's seers to be able to end the life of the Black Dragon. Grammaticus claimed that of all the traitor Primarchs, Vulkan was somehow the most dangerous, and that if he were not stopped he would, in time, become the most terrible threat to all sentient life in the galaxy. Zharost needed little convincing to go after the Fulgurite, his own hatred of the fallen Lord of Drakes making all other considerations secondary.

The Fulgurite rested on the world of Traoris. According to local legends, the Emperor had travelled to this world long before He had revealed Himself on Terra and begun the Wars of Unification. There, He had battled a coven of daemons, sorcerers, and their minions. Such had been the power unleashed there that the Fulgurite spear had formed from the remaining energies of the Master of Mankind's psychic lightning. The relic had been recovered by an illegal and secret cult of the Emperor as a god, enshrined and preserved for decades.

The Dark Gods, however, were also aware of the Fulgurite and the threat it represented to their minions – for as a relic from the Emperor, it was anathema to all creatures of Chaos. They had told their devotees among the Traitor Legions of the weapon resting on Traoris, and when Grammaticus and Zharost arrived on the planet, it was already occupied by Dark Angels forces. The population had been either exterminated, sacrificed in dark rituals to the Changer of Ways, or shipped off-world to the nightmarish laboratories the First Legion had hidden in the Ghoul Stars. Yet the First Legion was still present, searching for the Fulgurite – the last act of resistance of Traoris' people had been to hide their sacred relic.

Together with a small group of Night Lords, Grammaticus and Zharost infiltrated the Dark Angels lines, using the powers of the Chief Librarian in combination with the Perpetual's own, strange psychic powers. After a brief battle against the Dark Angel Sorcerer leading the traitors on Traoris, they managed to recover the Fulgurite spear and escape. Immediately, Zharost began to prepare a way for them to get to Vulkan – not an easy task, even for the Eighth Legion. The Night Lords were too scattered for a full-front assault, and the Chief Librarian was unwilling to gamble the lives of his brothers on what was, after all, only the word of one human with a strange ability. Even Grammaticus agreed that a direct attack was likely to fail, as Vulkan was leading the core group of the Eighteenth Legion. Cunning, he said, would be their best chance at succeeding.

Using secret knowledge gleaned during his time as an agent of the Cabal, Grammaticus and Fel Zharost infiltrated the Salamanders' flagship, the Flamewrought. The two of them went there alone, for to keep themselves hidden from perception would require all of their combined efforts. We do not know the exact details of what happened, for John Grammaticus was never seen again – and the headless corpse of the Chief Librarian was displayed as a standard by the Salamanders when they next fought against the Eighth Legion. We know, however, that Grammaticus managed to reach Vulkan and hurt him with the Fulgurite.

While Vulkan survived the attack, he was still wounded, and the damage did not heal as it should have. Unsure of what the consequences would be should he die again while the Fulgurite's wound was still on his flesh, Vulkan was forced to turn toward the dark arts his brothers had so fully embraced. A grand ritual was performed, that cost the lives of thousands of sacrifices and shattered the sanity of dozens of Librarians, turning them into full-fledged Sorcerers. Through it, Vulkan was able to contact the Dark Gods themselves, and have them heal the damage inflicted upon him by John Grammaticus. But the Ruinous Powers never give anything without hidden costs, and Vulkan's soul was forever tainted by the ritual, with his every night haunted by visions of horror and corruption, as the Chaos Gods each attempted to draw him to their service.

How long had it been, Vulkan wondered, since he had last truly felt pain ?
When he had fought against Curze, he had died many times, but none of those deaths had felt as painful as the pulsing agony in his flank. Every wound he had suffered then had quickly been healed when he had resurrected, for the King of the Night had been trying to kill him quickly, not make him suffer – another proof of his weakness.
The Black Dragon was still furious that one of the would-be assassins had managed to escape. He had slain the Night Lord Librarian, cutting his head off with the nameless blade he had forged after abandoning Dawnbringer, but the accursed human, the one who had actually carried this damned spear point, had fled before he could catch him. One of his sons had been sure that he had shot the man, but there had been no body when they had reached the location of his supposed death – though there was quite a lot of blood, too much for one mortal to lose without dying. This brought dark possibilities to mind for Vulkan – but he disregarded them, for he had more pressing concerns.
He was standing in the middle of what had once been a prosperous hive-city, but was now little more than a graveyard haunted by the tormented ghosts of its former inhabitants. Millions had been sacrificed in patterns gleaned from the occult lore Vulkan had accumulated in his search for answers and from the other renegade Legions. Around him stood a circle of one hundred and forty-four Librarians, their lips silently moving as they mentally recited incantations of Vulkan's own design, based on scrolls plundered from the vaults of a xenos species he had personally all but exterminated. A few had escaped him, but regardless of what lore they had managed to flee with, Vulkan was confident that the Saruthi would never again threaten Mankind.
The air shimmered with barely contained power. Then, a crack appeared in the very fabric of the universe, then spread, until reality shattered and the layer behind the Materium was revealed. Vulkan looked right into it, and as the incantations continued – now shouted loudly, in voices that seemed to be more than a little hysterical – shapes began to form in the roaring maelstrom. Four great silhouettes that were actually one that were actually a trillion trillion souls scattered across the entire galaxy, looking down at Vulkan with eyes filled with all the malevolence of the universe.
At that moment, Vulkan understood the true nature of Chaos. He saw what Guilliman had seen in the Eye of Terror, the power of the Primordial Annihilator and its connection with every human who had ever lived or would ever live. He saw the true nature of Mankind looking at him through the masks of the Ruinous Powers.
They are us, he thought, cold horror filling his mind at the dawning revelation. These gods … they are us.
He felt his sanity tremble, and for a moment he teetered on the brink of the abyss of madness, about to fall and embrace the worship of Chaos as so many had before him. Countless souls had come to this revelation before him, each broken and reforged into a weapon of the Dark Gods. Before the knowledge that an evil of such scope existed, that it came from and rested into the depths of the human soul, scholars, philosophers, savants and psykers had all been consumed by madness … But not him. As the Black Dragon was confronted with his own insignificance in the grand scheme of things, he did not weep, nor did he break.
'I am no one's slave,' he growled, clinging to his own identity and desires. 'I will not serve ! I will not kneel ! Never !'
The only reply from the storm of ruin was a terrible laughter, filled with dreadful indulgence and the inevitability of damnation.
'I call upon all the powers of the beyond !' Vulkan shouted in the very face of insanity. 'The price has been paid in blood and souls ! Heal me from this curse, and restore my full might !'
The entities around, above, beneath and within him laughed even louder, and reached out …

Soon after the assassination attempt, Vulkan turned his eyes toward a distant planet, in the Segmentum Tempestus. This world had nothing of worth about it, save that it had served as a staging ground for the Great Crusade and likely contained resources left behind by the many forces that had used it over the decades. It was known as Tallarn, and in the nightmarish visions sent by the Dark Gods to torment him, Vulkan had learned a secret that the Ruinous Powers had likely attempted to keep a secret from him : beneath the surface of Tallarn was buried an artefact of prodigious dark power. One that, in the right hands, could be used to defeat the Dark Gods themselves : the Cursus of Alganar, one of the three Gateways of the Gods. This Warp vortex could grant those strong enough to master it – few as they were in the galaxy – control over the energies of the Empyrean, and dominion over its denizens.

The Salamanders came to Tallarn in force, and the war began with a viral bombarding of the entire planet. Vulkan had no desire to waste time by prosecuting a traditional war – he had come to Tallarn for one reason only, and the world's resources and inhabitants played no part in it. Some of the people of Tallarn were able to find shelter in the great sealed vaults that had been used to store the equipment left behind by the Great Crusade, but the environment was ravaged, a once verdant world transformed into a desert of radioactive sandstorms. The Salamanders' resilience to radiation allowed them to walk on the surface while only wearing power armor, but for the human survivors, travel was only possible in armored vehicles, and even then only for a short period at a time. Fortunately, the vaults held plenty of tanks in various states of repair, and soon, the Tallarn rose once more, determined to avenge their world.

Thousands of tanks rolled toward the traitor positions, and despite the clouds of dust, they were visible from orbit long enough before making contact that the Salamanders had time to prepare. Still, Vulkan had not anticipated such resistance – he had believed that only a handful of terrified civilians dwelled in the vaults. The battle of Tallarn began as a gigantic clash of tanks amidst the ashes of the world, and things only escalated from here.

The loyalists on Tallarn managed to send an astropathic call, and soon reinforcements from both sides poured onto Tallarn. The soldiers of the Emperor who came to Tallarn did not know why the planet was so important – all that mattered was that the traitors wanted it enough for a Primarch to direct operations, and therefore it must be denied them. Imperial Army Regiments, Knights, and even Titans were deployed. The skies above Tallarn were filled with light for the first time since the bombardment as the brilliance of orbital battles pierced the dust cloud. Even warbands from other Traitor Legions arrived, drawn by the promise of a glorious battle. Groups from the White Scars, Space Wolves and Imperial Fists were welcomed by Vulkan, but kept away from his real reason for being on Tallarn.

For months, the battle raged on. Eventually, however, the loyalists started to gain ground, thanks to a few decisive operations of infiltration and sabotage by the Alpha Legion that led to a final, decisive engagement. According to the surviving accounts, almost a million tanks and other heavy vehicles were involved in this last confrontation. Through countless acts of heroism and self-sacrifice, the loyalists won the day, taking heavy casualties – but still able to continue their advance toward Vulkan's fortresses. Though he still had thousands of Legionaries at his disposal, fighting tanks and Titans with Astartes was a foolish notion.

And so, at long last, Vulkan was forced off the planet by the combined power of the loyalist forces, forced to abandon the ongoing excavation of the Cursus. The war of Tallarn was over, but the planet would not know peace for long. Years after the end of the Heresy, the ancient evil buried beneath its surface was finally unearthed. This was be done not by the hands of Traitors, but by unaware miners, and the price paid in blood was be terrible – though the threat was stopped in the end. This conflict, known as the Cursus War in what few archives are allowed to speak of it, would also see the Imperium forced to ally with the Eldars in order to stop an evil born of the old follies of this ancient xenos race.

As the Salamanders fleet departed, an astropathic call came from Guilliman, spurred through the Warp Storm by the fell sorcery of the Thirteenth Legion. After years of painstaking advance, the Ultramarines and Iron Hands had carved the path to Terra open. The Arch-Traitor was preparing for the final assault on the Throneworld, and he was calling all of his brothers in treachery to his side. Fuming with the sting of defeat and the knowledge that the power buried beneath the surface of Tallarn would never be his – for he knew that the Dark Gods would never allow him a second chance at securing something that could make him a threat to them – Vulkan ordered his fleet to begin the journey to Terra.

He would yet see the Imperium fall, and be reborn again in a new, strong, immortal form.

Cold and darkness had held him for so long that when they receded at last, it took him a moment to realize that he wasn't dead. It took him even longer to remember what had happened – and when he did, he wished he had not.
Xa'ven, Captain of the 34th Company of the Salamanders, remembered the numbness he had felt when the transmission had reached his ship, during the journey to Isstvan. He remembered the horror that had soaked his soul as he understood its implications. He remembered the burning hatred and fury that had driven him on the very edge of insanity. Then he remembered the betrayal among his own men – how they had fought one another in the corridors of the ship, torn between those who were willing to follow their Primarch's every order and those who refused to abide his madness. Xa'ven remembered marching down the shadowed iron tunnels, stalking his own kind like a beast of Nocturnian legends. He remembered the smell of his brothers' blood as he killed them, remembered the fear and terror of the crew members who had looked upon him in the throes of his fury. He remembered the final confrontation with the turncoats' leader, in the vessel's Enginarium. He remembered the stray shot that had shattered a conduit to the Warp Core, the shriek of the alarms, the ship dropping out of the Empyrean with such violence that it had fallen apart, the infinite blackness of space spread all around him as he floated helplessly, trapped in his sealed armor, condemned to watch the power and oxygen levels steadily dropping ...
He forced his eyes open, and saw a figure standing before him. His vision was blurry, but he recognized the silhouette of another Astartes, though he did not know the colors he wore – grey, but not like that worn by the Word Bearers. This warrior's armor shone with a light that only partially belonged to the material universe – in the crimson eyes of Xa'ven, it seemed that the armor was imbued with some otherworldly light that soothed the torment of his soul.
'Who …' his voice croaked out of his throat, and the pain of speaking was like tearing his vocal chords apart. 'Who are you ?'
'My name is Alexis Pollux, loyal servant of the Emperor. I have come to bring you home.'

The Siege of Terra

'And while the Arch-Traitor marched his legions to confront the father he had betrayed, the Lord of Drakes led his sons against the noble houses of Terra, leaving naught but ruin in his wake . With fire and hatred they came, burning all that stood in their path to ashes and drenching Terra's soil with the blood of heroes. And they cast down the doors of Mankind's ancestral home, seeking to plunder her treasures for themselves, heedless of the destruction they left in their wake ...'
Excerpt from The Canticle of the Dead

While most Imperial records of the Siege of Terra focus on the battles raging around and within the Imperial Palace, the Siege was actually waged all across the surface of the Throneworld. Though Perturabo had focused all the resources and forces at his disposal in the Palace, there were still hive-cities housing billions spread all over the planet, defended by the private armies of these cities' rulers. When the traitor fleet reached Terra's orbit, Guilliman tasked the Salamanders with the suppression of these remaining armies, so that once he had slain the Emperor their lords would kneel to him and acknowledge him as the new Master of Mankind. But there was one army that Guilliman knew would never serve him, and needed to be destroyed : the legion of heroes that would come to be known as Dragonsbane.

During the Heresy, refugees from the entire Imperium flocked to Terra by the billion, fleeing the horrors inflicted by the Traitor Legions upon invaded populations. After being vetted by the Iron Warriors and Custodians – a process that sometimes took months), these refugees were allowed to set foot on the Throneworld. However, for security reasons, the bulk of them was sent away from the Imperial Palace and onto the lands of Merika. The lords of the Merikan hives stretched their resources to the limit to accommodate this sudden increase in population, and the flow of supplies from out-system increased to match.

Over the years, these people integrated themselves into the hives, and when it became obvious that the war would come to Terra eventually, many volunteered to fight for their new homeworld. Several Merikan noble families, fiercely loyal to the Throne, nearly bankrupted themselves to arm, equip and train millions of these volunteers, making them a true military force no inferior to those of the Imperial Army. Driven by the loss of their birthworlds and the desire to protect their families, these men and women trained day and night without complaint. Fears of traitor spies and cultists infiltrating the refugees were laid to rest by the Thousand Sons, who ruthlessly purged such elements, foiling the plot of the Arch-Traitor to use these poor souls in order to seed confusion and paranoia at the heart of the Imperium.

Of all the loyalist forces on Terra not already in the Palace, Guilliman feared this army the most, for they had both the means and the will to attack his forces from behind while he was laying siege to the Palace. He asked that Vulkan himself ensure that they were taken out of the equation, by any means necessary. And so, led by the Black Dragon himself, the primary force of the Salamanders descended upon Merika. But Vulkan had underestimated the amount of resolve an unaugmented human can bring to bear with his back to the wall and his family in danger.

What was later called the Battle of Dragonsbane was a slaughter. Millions of human soldiers fought and died heroically against the forces of the Eighteenth Legion. For months they resisted, giving their lives to hold back the tide of transhuman warriors. Ironically, the nobles who had not spent their wealth to assist and arm the refugees were the first to fall, their private armies crushed by the Salamanders, hungry for the plunder of their treasure rooms – which, while still full, would not save their lives. Meanwhile, the estates of those who had risked their family's fortune to aid others were defended until death.

This battle, where common humans held back the power of nearly an entire Space Marine Legion, is celebrated to this day, with grand monuments built upon the locations of the most important engagements. Many of today's most prominent citizens of Merika are descended from one of the heroes of this desperate battle. While they were ultimately defeated, the soldiers of Dragonsbane saved the lives of their kin, for no sooner had he finally succeeded in breaking the army, Vulkan's attention turned toward the Imperial Palace. His forces had already pillaged the only vaults on Merika still holding any wealth, and the Black Dragon was unwilling to be denied the glory of the final battle (as well as his share of the treasures within the Palace).

There are some theories that Perturabo deliberately engineered the whole thing to ease the pressure on the Palace, personally discussing with the Merikan lords and convincing them to bankroll the creation of the refugee army. While there is little evidence, none of which convincing, it is enough to increase the distrust of Terrans for the Fourth Legion a little more.

Despite the battle's name, the Salamanders' losses weren't very high at Dragonsbane, thanks to their superior endurance. However, it is still a source of shame to the Eighteenth Legion, and they do all they can to keep it a secret, especially from their own slaves. For should these unfortunate souls learn that their demigod masters aren't as invincible as they claim to be their hold over them would be quick to shatter.

While there was some order to the Salamanders' suppression of any potential second front across Terra, the battle for the Imperial Palace was, on the traitors' side, a barely controlled chaos. The Blood Angels were rampaging in the cities surrounding the Palace proper, feeding their unholy appetites upon the defenceless population. The White Scars and Space Wolves, lacking the unifying presence of their Primarchs, fought in dispersed packs attaching themselves to other forces or launching daring raids on their own – which were quickly crushed by loyalist counter-attacks. As the madness of Chaos strengthened its grip over the nine Traitor Legions, Vulkan himself began to lose control of his sons as well as his own desires. Instead of pursuing tactical objectives, the Salamanders turned their eyes on the vaults of the Imperial Palace, where the relics of Mankind's earlier ages and treasures from all over the galaxy were stored.

Some of Vulkan's sons were disillusioned, mocking the artefacts surrounding them as junk, seeing little of value in it – no gold, no gemstones, only antique trinkets from ages long forgotten. But the Lord of Drakes recognized both the artistry of the items gathered here and the subtle power of their historical significance. Here were relics that, for all their apparent lack of immediate value, were tied tightly to Mankind's very nature. Each marked a step, an accomplishment of a fledgling species on the long and tortuous path that had led it to galactic supremacy.
There was a portrait of a woman with the most mysterious smile, and a stele covered in three different alphabets, the characters barely visible after tens of thousands of years. A painting of yellow flowers hang in a stasis field, and dozens of other items were similarly preserved. Surrounded by these items of Mankind's ancestral past, Vulkan felt … at peace. The ravenous hunger that had been burning in his breast ever since he had made that ill-fated deal with the Empyrean in order to recover from the assassination attempt had ceased to torment him.
Then that peace was shattered.
'My lord,' said Artellus suddenly, breaking Vulkan's contemplation. The commander of the Pyre Guard was gesturing at his vox. 'Listen !'
Repressing a violent response to his Equerry's disturbance, Vulkan shifted his vox frequency and listened in to the announcement, just in time to catch the last words :
"We have come for you."
A cold feeling that was very much like doubt spread through his guts. He knew those words, and he knew the voice speaking them, distorted and uglier though it may be. But it was impossible that he be here ! Guilliman had told him of the schemes their Warp-born allies had engineered to ensure he was unable to interfere. And yet …
'It's confirmed, my lord !' shouted Artellus. 'The Third and Eighth have arrived ! Lord Guilliman demand that we hold them back while Lord Corax fights them in orbit and he and the others push in for the final assault !'
Vulkan cursed silently, and looked around one last time. So many treasures, so much knowledge, so much power … The kind of power his siblings would either fail to notice or, in the case of those who had fully succumbed to the attraction of the Ruinous Powers, would seek to destroy in order to plunge Mankind further into ignorant worship of these primordial entities. He would not allow such a thing – Guilliman and him, as well as the others who still clung to their sanity, would lead Mankind to greatness under their rule, not reduce it to barbarism and madness. Order would come from their strength, whatever the will of the self-proclaimed "Dark Gods". So had Guilliman promised him.
'Leave them,' he ordered to his men as he turned back the way he had come, out of the Sigillite's private quarters and back to the field outside the Palace. 'Touch nothing. We will return here once our work outside is done – and before anyone else gets here.'

It is said that when the Night Lords and Emperor's Children arrived and Sanguinius was destroyed, Vulkan was marching through the private collection of the Sigillite, looking over relics from Old Earth with eyes burning with greed. He immediately left the Palace, taking some of the priceless artefacts with him – now irredeemably tainted by the touch of the Warp – and prepared his forces to face the Third and Eighth Legions' reinforcements on the surface of Terra. He believed that the Night Lords would stop at nothing to get a chance at him, and looked forward to sending them to meet their Primarch in the afterlife.

He was wrong. Sevatar's hold on his brothers was strong, forged during the Heresy by regular strikes of genius and inspiration that had saved the Legion several times and brought them to the Siege in time to play a part in the last stage of the war. The Night Lords remained focused on their task, saving countless civilians from the Blood Angels while Vulkan uselessly awaited their charge. Eventually, the Salamanders abandoned their defensive positions and attacked the Night Lords themselves, but the sons of Nostramo had the edge in urban warfare, and the ruins of Terra's cities proved a suitable killing ground for them. While not too many Salamanders were slain before the Siege came to an end, virtually no Night Lords were lost – safe for those unfortunate enough to face the Black Dragon himself.

Because of this, Guilliman was forced to launch his final assault on the Cavea Ferrum without the support of the Black Dragon, whose presence would certainly have made things turn out much differently. When the Arch-Traitor fell at the Emperor's hands, Vulkan was among the first Traitor Primarchs to order his Legion to run. In the eyes of the Black Dragon, he had fulfilled his part in the Siege the moment Dragonsbane had ended – Guilliman had proved unworthy when he had failed in his. Whatever the future would bring, Vulkan refused to face it as an animal caged by his brothers once they realized they could not execute him. His fleet left Terra united under his leadership, and it would prove to be one of the most dangerous threats to the Imperium yet.

Post-Heresy : The Dragon Ascendant

'In the fires of a war greater than any before he rises, reborn,
A creature not of emotions but dark desires and fell ambition,
Waiting for the day he lays claim to the First and Last blade,
And becomes the one even the Gods shall fear.'
Attributed to the Broken Devotee

The demise of Guilliman did not signal the end of the war for Vulkan – it only changed how he chose to prosecute it. The drive for conquest that had inhabited the Salamanders during the Heresy vanished, replaced by a level of greed no one would have thought a Primarch and his Legion could be capable of. The Eighteenth Legion, come together again under Vulkan's command for the Siege of Terra, rampaged across the galaxy, plundering hundreds of worlds like an unstoppable force of nature. Yet even as his fleet's holds were filled with treasure, Vulkan's greed was not satisfied. A deep, dark hunger had formed at the core of his being, born of the emptiness that had come in the wake of Guilliman's death and the loss of Vulkan's purpose.

'Destiny is the justification of tyrants and the excuse of fools.'
Ancient Terran proverb

As the Black Dragon committed atrocity after atrocity, that void began to fill with the energies of the Warp. No single Dark God bestowed his twisted blessings upon Vulkan : the hollowness of his spirit simply called to the flows of the Sea of Souls. Vulkan's powers grew, and at long last, he found a new purpose : to become something more than even his father had planned, to shed the last part of himself that remained human and become a true immortal, freed from the limitations his current body imposed upon him. At this point, Lion El'Jonson and Sanguinius had both already become Daemon Primarchs, and Vulkan intended to follow their example – except that he did not intend to bend knee to any of the Four.

So began the War of the Dragon, fuelled by Vulkan's renewed ambition. The Salamanders slowed their wild course across the galaxy, letting the Imperial pursuit catch up to them. As could have been expected, the Night Lords were leading the charge, burning with the desire to avenge the murder of Konrad Curze. But though the Night Lords and their allies outnumbered the Salamanders – who had lost almost all of their human supports during the Siege of Terra and the desperate flight from it – it was all part of the Black Dragon's plan. Vulkan had learned from the Siege of Terra that his mere presence would not be enough to goad the Night Lords into reckless actions – and so he had designed another way. At his command, thousands of astropaths were tortured while made to watch the relics Vulkan had stolen from his brother's corpse on Isstvan V. The relics' image was broadcast into the Warp, where it was picked up by the Night Lords' Navigators, astropaths and Librarians.

Immediately, Sevatar, Legion Master of the Night Lords and heir of Konrad Curze, lost control of his brothers. The Nostraman warriors abandoned the Prince of Crows' carefully designed plan of attack and launched themselves into a direct and massed assault. All across the Salamanders' territory, thousands of Night Lords died at the hands of the sons of Vulkan, while the Sorcerers of the Eighteenth Legion performed a grand ritual at their Primarch's behest. The exact details of the spell have long since been lost to time, if they were ever recorded in Imperial archives, but the end result was clear : in his fortress in the Crythe Cluster, Vulkan shed his body of flesh and became a Daemon Primarch.

He could hear them all. Billions of voices, crying out in fear and worship of him. Across the galaxy, they knew his name. He was terror and power incarnate to these weaklings, far more than the shadow of his dead brother. He was the one they feared now that their false god had ascended to his golden throne.
He drank deep of their fear, feeling it strengthen him. He reached out across the stars and sensed the carnage his sons were wreaking in his name, the fury and helplessness of Curze's sons as they rushed into his trap, spurred on by the thirst for revenge. He laughed, and the sound of his laughter would echo across the Sea of Souls and drive psykers mad for ten thousand years. The souls of the fallen Night Lords cried out as he captured them and burned them out, reducing these noble warriors to nothing more than fuel for his own ambition.
His body twisted and cracked, his immortality struggling against the transformation taking hold. He focused all of his will to mastering the power that had returned him to life so many times, bending it into unnatural patterns, forcing it to work alongside the Empyric energies rather than against them in an unholy union that perverted everything his father had ever intended. His body grew and grew, swollen with the fear and death and plunder. His armor burst to pieces as his skin was covered in scales, and two immense wings erupted from his back. His sword shattered in a hundred fragments that flew across the air, each embedding itself into the flesh of a different sacrifice.
Whatever little remained of Vulkan's humanity was lost, and the Black Dragon opened his eyes and looked down at a dead world with burning red eyes, seeing the tiny, green-armored beings before him as sparks of light in the infinite black. He opened his mouth, which was now a jaw that could swallow tanks, and roared his might at the face of the universe …

The rise of Vulkan sent ripples across the Sea of Souls, causing cults to appear on dozens of worlds and daemonic incursions to tear through reality's veil on several. The Imperium was forced to send more forces to deal with the situation, while the Night Lords themselves were reinforced by allies of the highest caliber : the Sons of Horus, led by the now legendary Mournival. At the same time, the Salamanders, instead of being bolstered by their Primarch's new terrible power, were instead shaken as their command chain was suddenly thrown into chaos. Vulkan's mind had undergone a transformation as drastic as his body, though philosophers would argue that in both cases his true nature had simply been revealed. He was still struggling with his new existence, and was unable to properly lead his Legion, even as the Imperium struck back with all its strength.

With the help of the Sons of Horus, Sevatar was able to turn the situation, and finally confronted Vulkan in the ruins of Crythe Prime, once a populous hive-world whose people had been sacrificed to fuel the ascension of the Salamanders' Primarch. There, amidst the bones of billions of dead, the Prince of Crows and the Mournival faced the Black Dragon. The details of this confrontation are long lost, but it is known that both Sevatar and the four members of the Mournival survived, while Vulkan fled through the Sea of Souls, abandoning his sons to Imperial retribution. The War of the Dragon was over, and though the Imperium had ultimately been victorious, it had lost much, while a known enemy of Mankind became much more powerful.

He looked upon them, and for the first time since Guilliman had died, he knew uncertainty.
There were thousands of them, charging across the ruins his sons had made of this world, but only six deserved his attention, only six truly threatened him, their soulfires burning bright across the battlefield. Four came together, fighting as one as they crashed through the ranks of his sons like a tidal wave. Two carried the weapons that had broken his brother – the maul and the talon. The two weapons shone with a light that burned his eyes, even from a great distance. They could hurt him, he knew – perhaps even kill him. Was he truly immortal now ? Had his gift endured the transformation ? And even if it had, did it have the power to save him from weapons such as these ? He knew that those like him could be destroyed, by weapons imbued with particular power. Several such tools of death had been aboard the Chalice of Fire before it had been stolen from him.
Then there were the two others, the sons of the King of the Night. One was shining with the light of power long denied, now embraced in full, and moved like a meteor, striking too quick for his sons to even stand a chance to stop him. And the last one … The last one was cloaked in shadows too deep for even his sight to penetrate, and all that radiated from him was vengeance and the cold promise of death.
The six came down on him in a circle, and for the first time since his beast-mother had killed him hundreds of years ago, Vulkan knew fear. He had gone too far, sacrificed too much, to be stopped now. With a roar, he gathered his power and tore through the veil of space, before plunging into the rift. His sons closest to him rushed in to follow him, exposing themselves to the raw madness of the Warp in order to remain with their Primarch. As he fled from Crythe, Vulkan convinced himself that there had been no reason to remain there – he had achieved his goal and claimed the power that was rightfully his. Now he sensed another opportunity in the distance, something that would allow him to finish the war and claim the throne Guilliman had failed to seize …
The Black Dragon did not see the shadow knight who entered the rift behind him, just before it closed. He did not see the lone warrior who stalked him across the Sea of Souls, shades and echoes gathered around him, driven forward by the promise of vengeance.
The hunt would last many hundreds of years. But eventually, the Soul Hunter and the Black Dragon would meet again, and judgement would come at last ...

Soon after the end of the War of the Dragon, the Night Lords destroyed Nocturne, using cyclonic torpedoes to literally tear the entire planet to shreds. Prometheus, the planet's moon, crashed into the surface of Nocturne during the upheaval, and fragments of both celestial bodies still form an asteroid belt in the system this day. It was hoped that this act would draw Vulkan out of hiding and make him confront the Night Lords to avenge his destroyed homeworld. But the Black Dragon had long since left Nocturne behind him, and just as the volcanic planet burst into fragments, he instead emerged from the Warp in the Pandorax system, on the thrice-cursed world of Pythos. A legion of daemons walked in his wake, as well as a handful of Salamanders, reforged through the fires of the Empyrean into Secondborn, Possessed Marines of immense power.

Before him stood the Death Guards and the Thousand Sons, each led by their Primarch, as well as many Imperial Regiments. They had come to Pythos to seal a Warp Rift of immense size, through which the hordes of the Neverborn were pouring into realspace. Vulkan and his followers passed through that rift as Magnus was gathering his power to close it. It is unknown whether Vulkan knew of the Pythos rift when he fled from Crythe, or if he was lost in the Warp, was guided by the Dark Gods to the portal, and seized the opportunity it presented. Had Vulkan triumphed on Pythos, he would have been able to open a new front against the Imperium, and perhaps even win the war that Guilliman had started. But first, the Black Dragon had to face one of his brothers for the second time.

The fight between Mortarion and Vulkan is the stuff of legends, and recorded in the archives of the Inquisition and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Legions alike. It is written that though Vulkan towered above the Death Lord in his new infernal form, Mortarion was undaunted, and faced his fallen brother head-on, wielding the scythe with which he had cleansed his world of the witch-lords. The weapon was the bane of all those corrupted by the Warp, and Vulkan was no exception. But Mortarion was already weary and wounded, brought near the end of his nearly infinite endurance by the days of fighting through the jungles of Pythos – while Vulkan had been reinvigorated by his journey through the Warp. In the end, Mortarion fell before the Black Dragon's claws, but not before inflicting a terrible wound upon Vulkan's flank. The injury was grave enough that when Magnus unleashed the spell he had been preparing during the fight between the two Primarchs, the Black Dragon was unable to resist its purifying power. Vulkan lost his hold upon his material form and was banished into the Sea of Souls, able only to scream in denial as Magnus sealed the Warp Rift and thwarted his dark ambitions.

Vulkan's defeat at Magnus' hands was not permanent, however. After the Black Dragon's endless resurrections on Isstvan V, the fact that he had disappeared after the Crimson King defeated him had led some to hope that he had been banished forever, but that was not to be. Soon, the Seers of the Thousand Sons saw visions of the great drake rising from a sea of flames within the Eye of Terror : Vulkan had returned, though his flank still bore the mark of Mortarion's scythe. The Sorcerers of the Salamanders also felt their Primarch's return, and guided the entire Legion into the Great Eye and toward their master. There, the Legion was reunited – but Vulkan's new, titanic aspect and terrible aura made it impossible for all but the strongest of his sons to even stand in his presence. In shedding the last of his human weaknesses, Vulkan had also lost his connection with his own sons – now, though they feared him and worshipped him, they could no longer love him, for he was as alien to them as the Dark Gods themselves.

Great was the rage of Vulkan as he realized that he had lost so much more than he had been prepared to sacrifice. The ground of the Legion's new daemonic homeworld shook with his fury for the greater part of a century beyond the Eye, and the Salamanders spent most of the Legion Wars fighting for survival, their master lost to the tides of his insane wrath. Many sold their services to one side or the other of the wars raging in the Eye of Terror, and when the Clone Wars erupted, they added their forces to those pouring through the shattered Iron Cage. Without a Primarch to give them cohesion, however, these Salamander warbands who took advantage of Bile's insanity were soon forced back into the Eye by a vengeful strike of the Night Lords. Among the ranks of the Lost and the Damned, whispers circulated that the Salamanders would soon be an extinct Legion, left behind by a Primarch who had abandoned them.

Artellus Numeon, the Broken Devotee
Like most Legions, the Salamanders' cadre of Terminators were gathered in a single brotherhood, whose members were spread across Companies. In the Salamanders' case, this group was the First Company, known as the Pyre Guard. During the Roboutian Heresy, it was led by Artellus Numeon, First Captain of the Eighteenth Legion and Equerry of Vulkan. A Terran Legionary and one of the few survivors of the time before the Legion was reunited with its Primarch, Artellus was a powerful warrior and an inspiring leader, something of a rarity in the Eighteenth Legion. Vulkan recognized his use when he took command, and named Artellus his Equerry, tasked with interceding between the Lord of Drakes and the rest of the Imperium.
Fiercely dedicated to his Primarch, Artellus stood with him when he turned against the Emperor. It is rumoured that he was the one responsible for the quiet purge of the Salamanders' own ranks prior to the Isstvan Massacre, ensuring that those who would still cling to their oaths of loyalty to the Imperium never reached the system alive. While he wasn't completely successful, his bloody-handed efforts participated in ensuring the slaughter of the loyal Legions. On the Urgall Plateau, he led the Pyre Guard at the side of Vulkan, fighting against the Night Guard while Curze and Vulkan battled. He is said to have crossed blade with Talos the Soul Hunter at that time – and to have locked eyes with him as Vulkan killed the King of the Night.
Artellus fought during the entire Heresy at his Primarch's side, and was present at the Siege of Terra and during the War of the Dragon. When the Salamanders were defeated and Vulkan departed through the Warp, however, Artellus was unable to follow. Instead, he gathered the rest of the Legion and directed their retreat from the Eighth Legion's fury, abandoning the relics of Konrad Curze in the hasty withdrawal. While this saved the lives of thousands of Legionaries from the vengeance of the Night Lords and their Sons of Horus allies, it would eventually cost the First Captain everything.
When Vulkan's call reached the Legion, Artellus convinced several of the Legion's captains to go into the Eye of Terror, while they wanted to remain in Imperial space and continue their raids rather than enter the storm of madness and Chaos. He single-handedly kept the Legion from falling to pieces on the way to the daemon world where Vulkan had risen, his devotion to the Lord of Drakes strong enough to keep the very ships of the Salamanders sailing together in the storms. When at last the fleet reached the planet, he was the first mortal Salamander to set foot upon it, and the first to stand before his Primarch in all of his reborn, infernal glory.
Instead of rewarding him for his loyal service, Vulkan unleashed all of his fury at his condition and the loss of Curze's relics on his faithful Equerry. Artellus didn't die, but his mind was shattered by Vulkan's wrath. His faith in Vulkan, a core part of his being, was ripped away when he beheld what the Black Dragon had become, and his soul was defenceless when exposed to the raw insanity of the energies that fuelled the Daemon Primarch's body. His body and mind were twisted as parts of his soul were torn off and devoured by the Neverborn created from Vulkan's violent outburst. Despair, horror and insanity poured into the void, and only a wretched shell of the once-powerful commander remained in the aftermath.
The fate of the one the Salamanders now call the Broken Devotee is thought to have played a huge part in the splintering of the Eighteenth Legion after their arrival in the Eye of Terror. With their Primarch gone mad with rage and the only other possible leader ruined beyond salvation, each Captain took what forces he could gather and left, seeking his own fortunes in the Great Eye rather than remain near Vulkan and risk being the next victim of his insane fury.
As to Artellus himself, he lives still, in a fashion, and wanders the Eye through means unknown but doubtlessly heretical. According to tales whispered among Eye-based warbands, he has gained some strange, arcane insight from his madness. Seen as a sign of ill-luck by the Salamanders and the other Traitor Legions, he has nonetheless survived in some of the most hostile worlds within the Eye of Terror, despite being utterly unable to fight. Sometimes, deluded cults gather around him and follow him in his journeys, listening to his insane ramblings and writing them down, desperate to find some meaning among the madness. On many occasions, Chaos Lords have sought the Broken Devotee with questions of their own, and several have even received an answer to their queries.

Eventually, however, Vulkan's rage abated, or at least cooled down. The Salamanders returned to him, and he gave them all a single command : that they go out across the galaxy and plunder its worlds, bringing back the result of their plunder to this world so that he might claim his share as their lord and master. It is said that some Salamander lords tried to refuse this decree, unwilling to part with any of their ill-gotten gains. What became of them is the subject of much speculation – but we do know that all current Salamander warbands pay Vulkan's tithe.

Vulkan also formed the Promethean Conclave, to ensure the continuity of his gene-line even now that he could no longer donate genetic material to create new progenoid glands. His return from wrathful madness essentially saved the Salamanders Legion from destroying itself in the insanity of the Eye of Terror. For the second time now, Vulkan had pulled the Eighteenth from the very brink of extinction, in an event that is now called the Reforging. When the Imperium learned of this, the Legions began to prepare, convinced that another Black Crusade was on its way. But soon after re-establishing his rule over the Eighteenth Legion, Vulkan fell back into lethargy, spending the years laying upon his ever-growing treasure, his mind cast adrift into the tides of the Warp, where he plots and schemes to gain yet more wealth and power. But the Salamanders remember his wrath well, and they are cautious to obey his edicts and, on the rare occasions where his consciousness returns to his body and he summons one of them to give him particular orders, they all do his bidding.

Whenever this happens, the ripples in the Sea of Souls are large enough that they are almost always picked up by the Seers of the Thousand Sons or the psykers and astropaths stationed in the Iron Cage around the Eye of Terror. Interpreting the visions, however, is another matter entirely, and hundreds of psykers have been lost to madness trying to decipher the Black Dragon's commands to his minions. Even the minds of a few sons of Magnus have been shattered by the darkness of these images, and were mournfully put down by their brothers to end their torment. Still, a lot has been learned from these sacrifices. Generally speaking, there are three types of quest Vulkan might send one of his sons on : attacking a particular enemy, either to punish old offences or to influence the balance of power in some distant conflict; acquiring a particular item and bring it back to Vulkan's treasure; and tracking down and killing another Salamander who has committed crimes against the Legion, such as disobeying Vulkan's orders or trying to bypass the Promethean Conclave. Those receiving Vulkan's command also receive some measure of his influence over the Warp : their journeys through the Sea of Souls will be swifter and relatively safer, and if they have Sorcerers under their employ or mystical abilities of their own, daemons will be more open to their demands and pacts.

The most recent and infamous such dark appointment that the Imperium is aware of was the one that led to the Black Crusade recorded in Imperial archives as the Gothic War, at the dawn of the 41st millennium's second century. Vulkan ordered Cassian Dracos to gather a great fleet of the Lost and the Damned and invade the Gothic Sector. Dracos was a Chaos Dreadnought who had retained his sanity since the days of the Roboutian Heresy, and was even more ancient than that, having led the Eighteenth Legion in the days before Vulkan was found.

While Cassian was appointed as the leader of the Black Crusade, the Black Dragon had laid the seeds of heresy and ruin in the Gothic Sector beforehand. At his signal, cast across the Sea of Souls, rebellions erupted all across the sector as the Disciples of the Dragon revealed their treachery. Entire battlegroups of Battlefleet Gothic turned traitor, and planets fell to civil war as loyalists struggled against those who had embraced the lies of the Dragon. Meanwhile, the Warp itself erupted in storms of rare violence, isolating the Sector from reinforcements.

For several years, it was all Sector command could do to keep this region of Imperial space from simply falling apart. Lord Admiral Cornelius von Ravensburg directed the forces under his command to assist Imperial worlds and stop rebellious battlegroups, but his resources were spread thin – and then the Salamanders, the architects behind the woes of the Gothic Sector, arrived. Their fleet had taken long and secret paths through the Warp to bypass the Iron Cage, losing dozens of vessels on their way. But these losses mattered nothing to Cassian, who was spurred forward by Vulkan's command and the fear of his wrath should he fail.

The mission Vulkan had given to the Revenant, as Cassian was known among his Legion, was to acquire the legendary Blackstone Fortresses. Six of these massive, ancient starships of unknown, probably alien origin were scattered across the Gothic Sector, used by the Imperial Navy as bases. Though their true function and capabilities were as unknown as their origins, the Adeptus Mechanicus had refitted each of the Blackstone Fortresses with massive weaponry and life supports to turn them into orbital fortresses of a scale and power rarely seen in the Imperium.

Cassian's flagship in the Gothic War was the Ebon Drake, a hideous vessel born in the infernal forges of the Eye of Terror. More than a dozen different Forgefathers had worked on its design and construction, and it carried within it weapons capable of ripping entire worlds apart, which led to Imperial forces naming it Planetkiller. Several warbands of Salamanders had joined Cassian's Crusade, as had hundreds of pirate and raider vessels. Worse still, Cassian had a personal knowledge of the Gothic Sector, having been part of the traitor forces that had conquered Port Maw for Guilliman's side during the Roboutian Heresy, ten millennia ago. The traitors outnumbered and out-gunned Battlefleet Gothic – but the servants of the Imperium had something their enemies did not : courage, discipline, and faith in the God-Emperor.

Despite these advantages, the Imperium suffered greatly in the first years of the war. Entire systems were lost, their population slaughtered or enslaved. It was later discovered that this first massive invasion was intended as a cover for Cassian's true goal. In order to awaken the full power of the Blackstone Fortresses and control them, the Chaos Lord needed two relics held on Imperial worlds : the Hand of Darkness, and the Eye of Night. The Ebon Drake led Chaos forces in raids upon the two planets that held these artefacts, Purgatory and Ornsworld. Both of these planets were left by the Salamanders as lifeless husks in order to hide their tracks. But this unusual behavior instead led Inquisitor Horst, responsible for investigating the schemes of Chaos in the Gothic Sector, to finally uncover the Black Crusade's true purpose.

Despite several attempts by Horst and his agents at reclaiming the relics from the traitors' hands, Cassian was able to activate and control one of the Blackstone Fortresses. He used it along with the rest of his forces to devastating effect on the Cardinal World of Savaven, combining their power in order to reduce the massive defensive fleet to slag before the Ebon Drake unleashed its full complement of weapons upon the planet, shattering it to pieces. The impact on Imperial morale across the Sector was devastating, and reluctantly, Admiral Ravensburg began to make plans to destroy the remaining Blackstone Fortresses rather than allow them to fall under renegade control. But he was unable to implement them before Cassian seized control of another fortress in the Lukitar system, and then another again at Fularis II. There, the true threat of the Blackstone Fortresses was revealed : at the Revenant's command, the space stations combined their energies and unleashed a pulse that cleansed Fularis II of all life.

Forced to face both the Chaos incursion and piratical raids, Battlefleet Gothic was at its breaking point. The pirates were not only human renegades, but also Ork Freebooterz and Eldar Corsairs. The xenos targeted the Chaos forces as well as the Imperials, but without stable and secure supply lines, Ravensburg was losing battlegroup after battlegroup. Then, salvation came from the most unlikely of sources.

Recently promoted Admiral Spire managed to establish contact with the Eldar leader in the Sector. The exact details are lost to time and Inquisitorial secrecy, but Spire managed to convince the xenos to join forces against the Arch-Enemy rather than risk Cassian gain control of all Blackstone Fortresses – a prospect that seemed to unnerve even the arrogant Eldar. With the aid of the Eldar, Spire was able to learn the location of the Pirates' Haven, where the human renegades of the Sector had made their base. With this information, Fleet Admiral Mourndark gathered his forces and struck, destroying almost the entirety of human piracy in the Sector. Meanwhile, Spire led a daring assault upon the Orks Freebooterz, his flagship matching the greenskins' massive, ugly vessels and pounding them into wreckage.

With his supply lines finally secure, Admiral Ravensburg focused his full attention upon the Salamanders and their Chaotic allies, and went on the offensive. In the Gethsemane system, his forces encountered a massive splinter of the Chaos armada, and forced it to retreat – only for it to fall in an ambush by Eldar vessels, who destroyed the fleeing fleet completely. This battle reinforced the uneasy truce between Eldar and Imperial in the Gothic War – though official documents never actually call it an alliance.

This marked the beginning of the Imperium's counter-attack. Ravensburg used the division of his enemy to his advantage, striking isolated groups with massive force to wipe them out one by one. Aboard the Ebon Drake, Cassian saw this and understood clearly his foe's strategy – and also understood that he could do nothing about it. The Chaos armada was long since beyond his control, with most ships doing as their captain pleased, gathered in loose packs rampaging and plundering at will. Only a small core of the fleet remained under his direct command – but even that was a considerable force, especially considering the might of the Ebon Drake and the three Blackstone Fortresses. At the same time, the Warp Storms roused by Vulkan's plots began to abate, and reinforcements from the rest of the Imperium began to arrive in the Gothic Sector. The prospect of defeat, and the wrath of his Primarch, began to creep on the Revenant, and he reacted with all the callousness and cunning of one of the Black Dragon's sons.

Cassian launched an all-out raid on the Tarantis system, ensuring that the cries for aid of its population would reach the Imperium along with news of his presence there. Forces from Battlefleet Gothic, Agripina and Cadia rushed in, each Captain hungry for the glory that would be his if he could claim the head of the arch-heretic. Before the battle could begin, however, Cassian combined the might of his three Blackstone Fortresses and fired into Tarantis' sun, before ordering his forces to flee into the Warp. Mere minutes later, as the Imperial forces were still trying to figure out what to do, the star went supernova, killing billions and destroying all ships still in the system.

Ravensburg prepared to go in pursuit, but his Eldar allies stopped him. They told him that their seers believed Cassian would continue his mission regardless of the risks, and attempt to seize the Blackstone Fortresses still in Imperial hands. The xenos scouts had discovered that the next target of the Revenant would be the Blackstone Fortress orbiting the world of Schindlegeist. Using the Webway, both Eldar and Imperial forces arrived to this system just as the Chaos armada emerged from the Warp, and the final battle of the Gothic War began.

Fighting together, Eldar and Imperial ships managed to break the lines of the Chaos armada, and the heroic sacrifice of Captain Abridal and his ship prevented the Blackstone Fortresses from doing at Schindlegeist as they had at Tarantis. By sending his ship straight in the energy beams linking the fortresses, the Captain disrupted the firing mechanism and gave the rest of the fleet time, though it cost his life and that of his entire crew as his vessel was utterly disintegrated. In the end, with the aid of a contingent of the World Eaters, Ravensburg was able to reclaim one of the Blackstone Fortresses Cassian had taken. Sensing that the tide had turned against him, Cassian decided to cut his losses and withdrew his forces, taking the Ebon Drake along with his two remaining Blackstone Fortresses back with him into the Eye of Terror, abandoning the rest of his forces to slow down Imperial pursuit.

It took several decades to completely cleanse the Gothic Sector of the remnants of the Black Crusade. The names of every member of the Imperial Navy who fought during the Gothic War are inscribed upon a gigantic slab of adamantium on Terra, a fitting monument to their heroism. Admiral Spire attempted to pursue Cassian, but his forces were defeated, and he was rescued from certain death by ships of the Twelfth Legion arriving just in time to force the traitors to flee before delivering the killing blow to his crippled ship. He would later prove his worth once more at the Iron Cage, fighting at the side of the Iron Warriors to keep the Traitor Legions contained and earning the respect of even Perturabo's dour sons.

Of the two Blackstone Fortresses stolen by Cassian, nothing was ever heard of again. The remaining Fortresses still in Imperial hands were destroyed, as it was feared that they would be turned against the Imperium in the future. The Ebon Drake has never been seen since the Gothic War, nor has Cassian Dracos. Whether the Revenant survived returning to his Primarch with only two Blackstone Fortresses, the Hand of Darkness and the Eye of Night, is unknown even to the seers of the Thousand Sons and the agents of the Inquisition.

Today, the Salamanders are as divided as any Traitor Legion, their ambitions pitting them against one another while their father slumbers on enough wealth to build several entire Sectors. Yet according to the visions of sanctioned seers and the captured writings of deluded cultists, the wounds inflicted by Mortarion and Magnus ten thousand years ago have long since healed. For now, Vulkan is content to remain in his domain, ruling it with an iron fist while his sons wander the stars in search of wealth and glory. But should the Black Dragon ever rise from his slumber, leaving the higher ebbs of the Great Game of Chaos behind, the entire Legion would gather under him once more, drawn by fear of reprisal and the promise of plunder and power, if not by actual loyalty to their gene-sire. Should such an event happen, then the only thing that might preserve the Iron Cage from the wrath of Vulkan might be, ironically enough, the other Daemon Primarchs, rising from their own exiles to prevent their brother from claiming that which they themselves have failed to seize ...

The Disciples of the Dragon
One of the most pernicious and enduring cults to have ever plagued the Imperium, the Disciples of the Dragon are heretics spread among the Imperium's own ruling elite. Members of this debased cult worship Vulkan as the true master of Mankind, holding that the Emperor was slain at Guilliman's hands. They also believe themselves to be Vulkan's chosen, destined to rule over the inferior masses of Humanity in the name of the Black Dragon. The truth is that they are naught but pawns, easily cast away by their masters (for those who are genuinely in contact with the Salamanders Legion). Only the most powerful and successful cells manage to draw Legionary attention. When they do, the Salamanders use the Disciples to infiltrate the high spheres of Imperial command and prepare the ground for their own conquest. Several times, an invasion by the Eighteenth Legion has been met by the Governor and the other officials kneeling before the invaders, only for the people themselves to rally behind new, low-born leaders that the Disciples would never have considered worthy of including in their plans. Whether or not such resistance appeared is often the only thing preventing an Inquisitor from declaring Exterminatus on a planet whose lords surrendered without a fight.
Captured records and journals of cultists have revealed that the same pattern repeats itself in the creation of every cell. An individual of some influence, with the greed and ambition favoured by the Salamanders and with latent psychic powers, will receive visions featuring Vulkan himself. These visions will twist his mind and grant him infernal knowledge, turning him into a prophet of the Black Dragon. He (or she, gender does not seem to play any part in this) will then start to recruit others, drawing them with promises of greater wealth and power. Whether the visions are actually sent by the Daemon Primarch or by lesser Neverborn posing as him is unknown. Certainly some of the cult leaders of the Disciples have displayed mutations similar to those generally observed upon the Salamanders, and their sorcerers have shown some mastery of the dread arts of resurrection, using them to increase their hold over the cult.
The suppression of all knowledge related to the Ruinous Powers in the Imperium actively works against the Inquisition in fighting the Disciples. Each cell believes itself to be the first of its kind, the true chosen of their draconic god rather than just another band of foolish puppets. The Disciples seek to gather power and wealth while weakening the hold of the Imperial Adepta at the same time, with the goal of one day seizing the reins of power for themselves. They perform regular ceremonies in which they pay homage to Vulkan in return for dark gifts from their patron. Such is the corruption caused by these rituals that cultists turning on each other is common, especially at what should have been the cult's moment of triumph.

Organization

Though Vulkan still rules the Eighteenth Legion, and all Salamanders ultimately owe him allegiance, the Black Dragon has not departed his lair in the Eye of Terror in millennia. In reality, the Salamanders are divided into many warbands. Loyalty is a sham in all Traitor Legions, but within the Eighteenth even more so, as the Salamanders only respect power, and only truly care for themselves. Fear of Vulkan's wrath prevents the Salamanders from outright rejecting his dominance over them, though, save for a few fools who rarely live long – for though Vulkan does not leave his daemonic world, his agents are many and powerful. Rivalry between Legionaries, however, is extremely common, and only the most powerful, cunning and vicious Chaos Lords can manage not only to prevent their warriors from turning against them, but also keep them from each other's throat.

The old Legion's hierarchy is all but gone, as few Salamanders alive care for the ranks they might have held during the Great Crusade and the Heresy. Every Salamander leader carries a different title depending on his nature, deeds and power. Lord Bray'arth Ashmantle, for instance, earned his title from the cloak he wears, fashioned from black diamonds made of the compressed ashes of his victims. The Salamanders take these titles very seriously, and duels to the death have been declared between two Chaos Lords of the Eighteenth Legion who happened to have laid claim to the same self-aggrandizing title.

Each Salamander lord leads a warband in his image, made up of a core of Traitor Marines and many more slaves. A warband's size, power and resources are a reflection of its leader's, and the Chaos Lords compete ruthlessly to be masters of the most powerful warband under the eye of Vulkan. Warbands vary greatly in size, but the temper of the Salamanders prevent more than a few hundred Legionaries being gathered together – though no such problem poses itself with their mortal slave armies.

The Forgefathers
There are those among the ranks of the Salamanders who do not bear the same mentality as the rest of Vulkan's spawn, those possessed of a mind turned away from glory in battle and immortality. Whether they are the result of a genetic quirk or some manifestation of Vulkan's own hidden thoughts, these individuals are nonetheless extremely dangerous and just as greedy as the rest of their brothers, turning their talents to the forging of weapons rather than the domination and plunder of others. These warriors are known as the Forgefathers, and over the centuries the Imperium has learned to curse their names.
A Forgefather is a scientist of the arcane and student of the dark arts, who combines the darkest of forbidden technologies with warp-tainted lore to create instruments of death and destruction. Endowed with knowledge that would make any arch-magos of the Dark Mechanicum weep with envy, these heirs to the Legion's old Techmarines wander the Eye of Terror and beyond in search of ancient weaponry to study and replicate. They are known to have a particular fascination for the Eldar, as these xenos still possess many relics from the glory days of their lost empire. More than one Craftworld has burned in the pyres of war so that a Forgefather could gain access to its forbidden vaults. With the rise of the Necrons, the Forgefathers have discovered a new source of wondrous and terrible technology, though even they are wary of the soulless lords of the tomb-worlds. The Forgefathers also seek the Legacy of Vulkan, hunting down for the lost relics of their Primarch. With the Black Dragon himself grown distant and unable to forge his own weapons, they believe that it falls to them to protect and inherit what he left behind, in the hope that one day they might equal his genius in armament construction.
Most Forgefathers are solitary creatures, toiling in their workshops surrounded by the sound of infernal machinery and the moaning of slaves doing their bidding. From Exterminatus-grade doomsday weapons to daemonic blades and infernal war-machines, the Forgefathers do not limit their art to a single avenue. Sooner or later, however, they will want to test their creations in the field, and seek a patron or ally to provide them with a suitable battlefield. Warlords of the Eye have long since learned that while the creations of a Forgefather might be unpredictable, their sheer destructive power more than makes up for however many slaves are lost in the process. The Forgefathers prefer to fight alongside other Salamanders, but most have no problem lending their services to a warlord from another Legion – though their Legionary pride will prevent them from treating with a human warlord as an equal. Valuable alliances have been made that way, with the Forgefather returning to his fortress loaded with loot and notes on how to enhance his prototypes, and the Chaos Lord sporting a new daemon blade hanging at his side.

Combat Doctrine

'Kneel before the Dragon, or you will be knelt.'
Proclamation of Chaos Lord Bray'arth Ashmantle, before the complete purge of the Shrine World Innocence III, M38

In battle, the Salamanders are a terrifying foe to face. Thanks to the blood of Vulkan, each of them is very resilient to injury, capable of enduring wounds that would have killed a pure Astartes several times. They have a morbid obsession with fire-based weaponry, and many of them carry huge flamers, either using classic promethium or sprouting daemonic flames that burn the soul as well as the flesh. Their Sorcerers have also developed their own sorcerous version of pyromancy, calling upon the inner fire of Vulkan within their souls and unleashing it upon the material plane.

The Salamanders have no compunction with arming their servants, and they rarely go to war without armies of mutants and debased cultists at their side. Hordes of the Lost and the Damned are sent forward by their Astartes overlords, dying in the hundreds to test the enemy's defences and soften them for the Salamanders' own assault. These wretches are recruited from war-like inhabitants of the daemon worlds in the Eye of Terror, renegade Imperial Guard Regiments, or masses of slaves driven mad by the horrors of Chaos and given the most basic weapons and armor.

Like all tyrants, the Salamanders enjoy nothing more than crushing those weaker than themselves. Because of this, they have a deep interest in xenos civilizations from beyond the borders of the Imperium. More than one Rogue Trader has discovered a planet that once housed a prosperous alien culture, now reduced to empty, haunted ruins, with only the mark of the Dragon left behind as a sign to future explorers that it was Vulkan's children who destroyed it. At times, however, warbands of the Eighteenth Legion have encountered alien empires stronger than anticipated, and fled back to their infernal realm, leaving the Imperium to bear the wrath of these roused threats. Still, such is the power of the Salamanders that they leave far more empty, plundered graveyards than enraged enemies of Mankind in their wake. The Forgefathers are known to favor these expeditions into the unknown, hungering for new blasphemous knowledge to add to their dark designs, and the Salamanders maintain ties with entire fleets of Dark Mechanicum exploration fleets and renegades in order to learn of new prey.

While the Salamanders are known to perform the acts of piracy that Traitor Legion warbands are infamous for, they are more adept at full-scale planetary conquest. Using the Disciples of the Dragon, the Salamanders will identify weakened worlds within the Imperium's borders, and strike at them with the full strength at their disposal, crushing any orbital defence capability and landing forces in the middle of Imperial centers of command, while cultists and infiltrated human squads will run acts of terrorism to spread chaos and confusion.

After the leaders of the Imperium on the planet have been captured, compromised or slain, the purge of the planet's defenders begin. The greatest concentrations of forces will be taken out by orbital weapons, while the Salamanders themselves will march to war behind the ranks of their slave armies, pitting their heavy armor against the defenders' and slaughtering the infantry with their flamers and sorcery.

Once the defenders have all been crushed, the Salamanders will then turn their attention to the planet's population, even as packs rampage through the spires and nobility houses, revelling in the joy of plunder. To the Salamanders, simply butchering these defenceless captives is a waste of time and ammunition, and so they refrain from simply ordering mass executions or letting loose the worst elements of their human slaves. But while the people might be spared the wanton death and destruction that so often follow in the wake of the other Traitor Legions, the fate prepared for them by the Salamanders is arguably far worse.

For another known battle tradition of the Salamanders is the Branding, and it reflects the view of the Drakes upon common Mankind perfectly. On captured human worlds, the Salamanders mark all humans like cattle with dragon-shaped firebrands. This mark has been observed to induce spiritual and physical corruption that only the strongest of will and purest of faith can resist. The mark erodes at individuality and empathy, turning humans into little more than servitors, all beyond their working skills burned away. Some Radical Inquisitors have studied this, hoping to replicate the effect on unruly worlds of the Imperium. They are, of course, considered the most blasphemous heretics by the Ecclesiarchy and the rest of the Holy Ordos. The World Eaters are also known to have reacted very violently after liberating worlds from the Salamanders and discovering the Branding inflicted upon its population. Many oaths of vengeance against the Eighteenth Legion are kept in the records of the sons of Angron, whose hatred for slavery is unmatched in the entire Imperium.

Once marked, the captives are forced to work in conditions that would put even the most ruthless spire-born Manufactorium owner to shame. Yet the true horror lies in the way that even as these people are doomed to eventually succumb to the exertions of their work, they will not do so for years – long enough to reproduce and give birth to a new generation of slaves to serve their cruel masters. An entire population is thus reduced to little more than cattle, serving the Salamanders as they plunder the resources of the planet they have conquered. All material wealth is taken aboard the Legion's ships, as are those with the skills to make useful slaves. When the Imperium inevitably retaliates, the Salamanders callously destroy the infrastructure they had thus far left untouched to optimize productivity and depart, leaving behind billions that, unless Imperial help arrives soon, will starve to death in a matter of weeks.

Even then, the nightmare of these people is not over, as the Inquisition arrives in force to purge the survivors from anyone who has succumbed to the Black Dragon's malevolent influence. The Brand also often leads to global purges, the planet being later resettled with untainted colonists, unaware of their new home's bloody past. For a select few, this fate can be averted, and the branding is removed surgically, while they spend the rest of their lives under the watchful gaze of the Inquisition.

Between their numbers, their mortal armies and the terrible weapons crafted by the Forgefathers, the Salamanders represent the greatest threat to the Imperium among the Traitor Legion, at least from a purely military perspective. Their lack of ability to join forces thanks to Vulkan's distance is the only thing preventing the Eighteenth Legion from crashing through the Iron Cage in the most destructive Black Crusade ever seen.

The Burning Man
A figure of legend, whispered about by the shocked survivors of some Salamanders invasion, it is unsure whether or not the Burning Man really exists. Many accounts tell of this creature that appears on battlefields where the Salamanders are involved. In some tales, there is a screaming, melting silhouette of fuming flesh and blackened bone inside the inferno, while in others the Burning Man is truly made purely of flames. In some accounts, he hunts down the civilians hiding in the ruins of their homes while the Salamanders hunt down the last defenders of their fallen city, while in others he attacks the Salamanders themselves as they discover the hiding places of cowering children.
There are several theories among the ranks of the Inquisition concerning the true nature of the Burning Man. Some believe it to be nothing more than a name attributed to different occurrences of the Salamander Sorcerers using their own particular form of pyromancy, and sometimes losing control over their unholy powers. Others believe that there is a single Burning Man, a spiritual entity born from a Salamander loyalist that was betrayed by his brothers during the Roboutian Heresy and put to the pyre, only for his vengeful shade to haunt the Legion forever afterwards. A fringe theory even suggests that he is the incarnation of the Salamanders' lost humanity; their buried, all but dead conscience, reaching out through the Warp and tormenting them from beyond their genetic reforging and indoctrination.

Homeworld

The Legacy of the Dragon
Even after the Scourging was declared complete and celebrated in triumph across the Imperium, not all traces of the Salamanders' evil were successfully expunged. The War of the Dragon had raged across several Sectors, and Vulkan's grand plan to ascend to the rank of Daemon Prince was one with many contingencies and back-ups. In order to secure his legend among the fearful masses of the Imperium, Vulkan ordered that the vaults of treasures he had gathered during the Great Crusade be opened, their content spread across the entire galaxy while the vaults were filled anew with fresh plunder. According to the theories of the Inquisition's scholars of damnation, these were supposed to reinforce Vulkan's spiritual imprint upon the galaxy, so that he might ascend without the need for a patron among the Dark Gods. Whether or not this plan worked or Vulkan's transfiguration was the reward bestowed upon him by the entire Ruinous Pantheon, the consequences of this Legacy remain the same.
Many relics, weapons and hidden bases of the Salamanders were left hidden on worlds that were later reclaimed or re-colonized by the Imperium. With distressing regularity, a relic of the Black Dragon will emerge on an Imperial world, causing strife and turmoil and eventually calling the Salamanders to it. The Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus have hunted these relics for ten thousand years, but on several occasions their vaults themselves have been raided by the Eighteenth Legion forces. Currently, every piece of what is often called the Dragon's Legacy in possession of the Ordo has been sealed deep below the surface of Titan, under the watchful guard of the Grey Knights themselves – hopefully beyond the reach of even the most determined Forgefather.

After the destruction of Nocturne and their exile into the Eye of Terror, the Salamanders were quick to claim another planet as their homeworld. This daemon world is located deep within the Eye of Terror, where reality and unreality are inextricably merged and the will of daemon and mortal alike can shape the surroundings. No will on Hephaeros, as the daemonic homeworld of the Eighteenth Legion is known, is stronger than that of Vulkan, and so the world is the toy of the Black Dragon's whims.

The surface of Hephaeros is covered in oceans of lava spilling from immense volcanoes that rise and are subsumed in a matter of hours, while the earth quakes with Vulkan's own smouldering rage. The Legion's infrastructure on the planet is located below the surface, in great caverns held together by sorcery and the will of their inhabitants. It is within these caves that the Salamander warlords gather their plunder, under the guard of the best wards cast by their Sorcerers and the secrecy of their location – only caves whose existence is known only to the Chaos Lord are considered worthy. Mountains of gold and other riches are amassed in these great caverns, and the slaves tasked with carrying the wealth are often left behind, to avoid them revealing the location of their lord's treasure. If they are lucky, the treasure will include means for them to sustain themselves as they count their master's wealth over and over so that they can tell him the worth of his vault when he returns. Most, though, die of thirst within a few days, or fall victim to daemons born of their delusions.

Other underground caves are home to vast industrial complexes, immense forges where hordes of slaves toil endlessly to produce the weapons and armor required by the Salamanders and their armies of human bolter fodder. Blacksmiths from all across the galaxy are held captive here, with the best being granted better living conditions so that they can continue working longer. Most captives are human, or something based on the human genetic code, but there are also Eldar, Rak'gol, and many daemons bound within hosts or fully manifested, all working to create the tools of war needed by their merciless overlords. Some of these workers are the last of their entire species, prisoners brought from ruined worlds to serve for the Salamanders' benefit and amusement. A caste of cruel iron-masked daemon-human hybrids known only as the Overseers rule over these forges, managing the flux of minerals from the planet's molten core and the trade with the warbands present in orbit – with the most common currency asked in return for the forges' products being the food and water required to keep their best slaves alive, and the new flesh to replace those who died.

There is only one permanent, above-ground structure on the entire planet : the tower of the Promethean Conclave, the Dark Mechanicum group responsible for the creation of new Salamanders. Rising hundreds of kilometers in the sky, it only exists because of Vulkan's continued will and the impossible physics of the Eye of Terror, and reaches all the way up to the orbital installations of Hephaeros. These installations are massive shipyards, capable of receiving hundreds of ships at once. While the ships of the Legion are given priority for repair and resupply, the shipyards also service those of the Legion's allies, and even, in some cases, the vessels of warlords from other Legions who have proved to be friends of the Salamanders. It is aboard these orbital structures that trade with the Overseers take place, with the warlords meeting the Overseers' envoys and negotiating prices until both sides come to an agreement – or until the Salamander kills the Overseer in a bout of rage and needs to wait for another envoy to arrive, so that the negotiations can start over once the killing fee of the previous negotiator has been paid.

Beliefs

'Power is the only thing that truly matters.'
Motto of the Salamanders Traitor Legion

To be a Salamander is to believe that might makes more than right : it makes everything. Without power, one is nothing in the galaxy, unable to protect or take anything. Power, therefore, is measured in the amount that one is able to claim and defend as one's own. Such is the twisted philosophy of the Salamanders, and the true wellspring of their greed. The sons of Vulkan care nothing for the piles of gold and treasure they plunder from the Imperium's worlds, or the relics they steal from rival warbands and pile in their vaults – all that matter to them is that these things were valued by someone and that they had the strength to take them.

Immortality is the second goal of every Salamander, and it is just as important to them as power, for what worth is power that you lose when you die ? As the sons of undying Vulkan, each Salamander believes that immortality is his birthright, and he will fight, betray and kill anyone in order to claim it. Be it by pacts with daemonic entities, the pursuit of their gene-line's secrets or the forbidden research of the Draconites, they will use every mean to ensure their continued existence. This obsession has cost the Salamanders in resources, but it has also ensured that their numbers remain stable across the ages despite one of the slowest recruitment rates of the Traitor Legions – they are simply too hard to kill.

The Salamanders worship their Daemon Primarch as a god, seeing him as the source of their power just as much as they envy him for it. They believe that they have inherited his immortality, and that if they prove worthy of it by their deeds, the potential for eternity that lies within them will blossom and they will be reborn as immortals themselves. They acknowledge the existence and might of the Ruinous Powers, and have made alliances with daemonic forces of all four Dark Gods, but save for a few heretics hunted down by their brothers, the Eighteenth Legion does not worship Chaos itself.

It is possible that this is all a sham, a dark and terrible joke played by the Ruinous Powers over the Salamanders – but the alternative is worrying indeed. Several Salamanders have already succeeded in their quest for damnable transcendence, shedding their mortality along with their souls and becoming Daemon Princes unfettered to any of the Dark Gods. Several occult savants of the Inquisition have theorised that Vulkan, believed for ten thousand years to have become a Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided, might actually be transforming into something altogether more powerful and corrupt. They fear that, through the constant worship of legions of cultists and fearful slaves, he might be becoming a new, true Ruinous Power, independent of any of the four Dark Gods. In the writings of these scholars, before madness and suicide inevitably take them, Vulkan might become a divinity of tyranny and greed, the incarnation of the worst aspect of the human psyche not already reflected by one of the Ruinous Powers.

The Draconite Inquisitors
Such is the tempting power of immortality's promise that even members of the Inquisition have succumbed to it over the millennia. Known as Draconite Inquisitors, the first of these radicals fell to ruin when they investigated Vulkan's immortality in the hope of finding a way to bring the Emperor's own physical body back to life. Eventually, their research drove them mad, with many of them starting to believe that Vulkan ought to replace the God-Emperor as the Master of Mankind and rule as a true Immortal Emperor. When their heresy was discovered in M33, all members of the faction were declared Excommunicate Traitoris, and hunted down without mercy by the rest of the Inquisition. The resulting conflict was one of the most devastating so-called "Inquisition Wars", as the Draconites' desire to resurrect the Emperor had made them many allies among the Ecclesiarchy, and they did not hesitate to call upon them for aid. Even the Night Lords and Alpha Legion were called in to prevent the destruction from spreading too much, as the Draconite Inquisitors unleashed the darkest, most forbidden products of their heretical research. That move proved to be a mistake, for it eventually alienated them from their last allies left in the Imperium as the true depths of their heresy were revealed and daemons, undead and other, stranger things were loosed upon the faction's enemies. In the end, the heretics were destroyed, their power bases annihilated and their allies captured and executed after thorough interrogation.
Yet some of them managed to escape the Emperor's judgement, fleeing to the darker corners of the galaxy or into the Eye of Terror itself. There, they pledged themselves to Vulkan, kneeling at the feet of the Daemon Primarch and swearing their eternal souls to his service. At the command of the Black Dragon, they were schooled in the daemonic arts by the Sorcerers of the Salamanders and the Forgefathers. Then some were sent back to the Imperium, where they combined their inquisitorial background with their new talents to perform fell miracles among the ignorant population, subverting communities from within and corrupting key individuals. These Draconites are known to be able to raise the dead, though it is only an illusion : what they are actually doing is summoning a daemon and binding it into the corpse so that it can give it the impression of life, deceiving even the closest family members with a mix of acting and mind-clouding sorcery. Unlike the Disciples of the Dragon, the Chaos-influenced Draconites most often work with the lower classes of human society, spreading their lies and fostering rebellion and heresy. Some of them remained in the Eye of Terror to help their master further their influence there or continue their research into the dark arts, and it is said that even the Primogenitor has taken an interest in their work.
Other survivors of the faction's initial purge, in the outer regions of the galaxy, continued their research into immortality and resurrection without ever coming into contact with the Black Dragon. By using xenos technology, forbidden gene-forging and the heretek known as Anima Mori, they seek to master the boundary between life and death. Many such Draconites have long since forgotten their original purpose, instead focusing on achieving immortality for themselves and their servants. Their activities are responsible for countless heretical cults and atrocities, such as the Night of the Dead, when an entire cemetery world – whose name was erased from all archives in the aftermath – suddenly spat back their occupants as shambling, hungry monstrosities after a Draconite activated an archeotech nano-weapon without truly understanding its function and dangers. They are also known for their actions in the Sarcosian Sector, where they created the Credo Mortifex, a death cult of terrible power that, while still technically loyal to the Golden Throne, has embraced such heresies that it is forced to operate in the shadows as it prosecutes its war of vengeance against all agents of Chaos.
These two sects of Draconites – the devotees of Vulkan and the resurrectionists – have often clashed, and in many such cases, it is the people of the Imperium that have paid the price of the conflict. Yet both are enemies of the Imperium, marked for death on sight by the Inquisition. No mercy is to be given to them, even if some radical factions left in the Ordos believe that some things can be learned from their mad ramblings. From time to time, another servant of the Emperor is lost to the false promises of the Draconite creed, succumbing to one or the other of its twin-faced corruption. When such a corruption is unveiled, the Inquisitor in question is immediately declared Excommunicate Traitoris, such is the potential moral threat of this particular heresy.

Recruitment and Geneseed

'In the fire of the forge, from death shall come new life, now and forevermore.'
The Vow of the Promethean Covenant

As soon as the Legion was founded, signs of mutation were blatantly obvious in the Salamanders' genetic code. Every aspirant implanted with Vulkan's gene-seed suffered from the same symptoms as the transformation took hold : coal-black skin and red, burning eyes. However, since their fall to darkness, new mutations have appeared in the Eighteenth's gene-stock. Now, as a Salamander ages, scales will appear on his skin, his teeth will become fangs and his fingers claws. This transformation forces the Salamanders to rely on slaves for maintaining their weapons and armor, as well as for any delicate duties, like piloting their fleet, heavy armor or gunships. This dependence on human assistance has only made the sons of Vulkan harsher upon their slaves, lest they realize how their seemingly all-powerful lords actually need them and rise in rebellion.

Dissection reports from captured Salamanders have also revealed that the bone structure of the sons of Vulkan is hardened beyond even that of normal Astartes, and their regeneration is much quicker and complete than in other Legions. Given enough time, a Salamander might even regrow a lost limb entirely, although given the violent lives led by Chaos Marines, it is unlikely he would willingly wait rather than seek an augmetic or vat-grown graft – or some other, darker replacement. The Salamanders also develop reptilian traits, such as vertical slit pupils, forked tongues, and other disfigurements. In some cases, these mutations grow until the Salamander becomes what is known as a "Dragon Warrior".

Dragon Warriors
Some Salamanders embrace the reptilian mutations that afflict their gene-line, revelling in the power it grants them. These warriors, should they survive long enough, eventually transform into minor reflections of their Primarch : the Dragon Warriors. They are fused with their power armor, which becomes covered in black scales before being subsumed into their own mutated flesh. Two great wings emerge from their back, giving them the ability to fly, while their bodies grow in size until they are as big as a Land Raider. Their hide becomes as impenetrable as Terminator war-plate, and their limbs end in massive claws capable of tearing through tanks, while their heads get more elongated and their jaws filled with fangs the size of a normal Astartes' fist. Their bellies are filled with the fire of Chaos, that they can let loose in devastating breaths that consume flesh and soul alike, condemning those caught within the inferno to eternal damnation.
Not all Salamanders are capable of withstanding such transformation and retain their mental faculties, however. The Warp reshapes its own according to their own nature, and those it remakes into Dragon Warriors are often the more bestial of their kind. Most lose themselves to the change, becoming little more than beasts that their brethren must chain and let loose in the general direction of the enemy when battle is joined. Still, they make for powerful guardians, and more than one Salamander Lord uses them to protect his vault from intruders.
Those who do retain their minds, however, are some of the most dangerous living creatures in the entire galaxy. In them, the already legendary selfishness and pride of the Salamanders is intensified even further, to the point that they do not even consider other living beings as sentient in the same sense as themselves. Most of them leave their Legion behind, establishing their own petty kingdoms on isolated daemon worlds in the Eye of Terror, ruling over a terrified population of mutants and heretics. But those who do not shun the company of other transhumans often rise very high very quickly, becoming advisers to powerful Chaos Lords and gathering their own personal treasures rivalling those of the mightiest Salamanders. Their pride makes it all but impossible for them to stay with others of their Legion, but warbands from other sources are often more than willing to accept the services of such a powerful ally on the battlefield, regardless of the cost in plunder or the annoyance of suffering his arrogance. Their mind sharpened to a razor's edge, each of these intelligent Dragon Warriors is an army in himself, capable of inflicting untold damage to an army's morale as he bears down upon ground troops from above, carrying the charred remnants of their air support in his talons.

Most of the Salamanders' recruits come from the children of their slaves. Almost no Apothecaries remain in the Eighteenth Legion, the ambition driving Vulkan's sons making them unsuited for such a nurturing task, and so, like so many other things, they depend upon mortal servants. In the early days of the Legion's exile, Vulkan made a pact with a faction of the Dark Mechanicum, offering them his protection in return for their services in ensuring the continuity of his gene-line. Known as the Promethean Conclave, these tech-priests are allowed by all warbands to visit their ships and slave pens whenever they come to the Legion's homeworld. By Vulkan's law, all Salamanders lords returning from their wars in the Eye and beyond must dock with the Conclave's tower, which is huge and high enough that their vessels can do so from orbit.

These dreaded fleshmasters take their pick of the human cattle, testing them for genetic compatibility and a myriad of other arcane parameters. Those deemed worthy are taken back to the Conclave's facilities on the daemon world, along with the gene-seed of the warband's fallen. There, they are transformed into new Salamanders, their minds shattered by the horrors inflicted upon them until there is nothing left of the children they once were. Indoctrinated by the brutal conditions of their training and the endless preaching of hundreds of slaves singing the praises of Vulkan, they are proud and cruel, clad in armor fashioned for them by the Covenant's allies elsewhere in the Eye. These new warriors are then brought to the spire's top, where they fight against daemons, servitors and slaves under the gaze of the Legion's lords present until one of them deems them worthy of joining his warband. Those who fail, die, as is the way of Chaos.

Over the millennia, some Salamander lords have sought to dodge their responsibilities to the Conclave, gathering their own coteries of gene-wrights and building installations in hidden places across the Eye of Terror. They sought to create their own soldiers in order to increase their power without depending on the whims of the Conclave. Whenever word of one such transgression reaches Vulkan's ear, however, his wrath is terrible, and he sends his servants to burn the installation to the ground and plunder all of its genetic material before bringing it back to the Promethean Conclave. The fate of the lord responsible varies, but always ends in death, for Vulkan tolerates no defiance of his edicts within his own Legion.

Warcry

One of the main reasons the Salamanders fight is to prove their supremacy over their foes : as such, it only makes sense that they would make extensive use of battle-cries to intimidate their enemy. As with all Traitor Legions, the cries used vary greatly from warband to warband, and many Salamanders have their own personal challenge issued to those they are about to crush. Still, a few shouts have been recorded across the entire Legion. 'For the Dragon !' is favoured by those highest in Vulkan's esteem, while 'Bow before the might of the Salamanders !' and 'We are the masters, you are the slaves !' are often used when fighting against human enemies, to break them into submission.

When fighting against the Loyalist Legions that were present at Isstvan V, especially against the Night Lords, the Salamanders match their faithful brothers' vengeful calls with a callous laughter of their own, as the memories of the slaughter on black sands are stirred within their genetic recollection. When exposed to this laughter, human units fighting alongside loyal Legionaries have been known to break in tears without knowing why, as if mourning the loss of something that never was, but could have been magnificent.

Tu'Shan stood before his maker, and for the first time since the gene-wrights of the Covenant had taken him from his mother in the slave pits, he felt fear. Not the detached concern of plotting against his rivals and considering the possibility that his plans may fail, not the rush of adrenaline of the battlefield as he came closer to death than ever before – pure, animalistic fear, the kind which he had thought Ascension had purged from his body. But he had been wrong.
Vulkan's presence filled the vault, blocking out even the awesome wealth it contained. There were the treasures of a hundred heroes, stolen from every Legion in the Eye and beyond. The sacred relics of a thousand xenos civilizations laid alongside enough gold to forge a dozen warships and buy several Sectors. Technology that could reshape the surface of worlds was piled alongside trinkets that had been fashioned on Old Earth more than thirty thousand years ago. And yet these were nothing compared to the majesty of the Black Dragon.
There were no mortal words that could describe him. Even Tu'Shan, who had spent his entire life in the Eye of Terror, alongside countless Neverborn, was barely able to fully grasp the creature that occupied the chamber to which he had been summoned. All his mind could do was catch glimpses while refusing to commit the full picture to memory. Black scales the size of Rhinos, fangs as sharp as the hunger of the fire that burned deep behind them, red eyes that glimmered with the patience and cruelty of millennia – and the voice … By all the treasures of the Eye, the voice ...
'Go to Uralan, my son. Find Drach'nyen. Kill its guardian, and bring the blade to me.'
The Primarch of the Salamanders stretched his colossal wings, and Tu'Shan almost fell flat on his back when the gust of wind hit him.
'Bring me a weapon worthy of my power, blood of my blood, flesh of my flesh. Bring me the End of Empires, that I might finally bring down my father's failed kingdom.'
'It shall be done, my lord' whispered Tu'Shan, not trusting his voice to speak any louder.

Chapter Text

WARNING : Agents of the Inquisition, beware. This document contains a depiction of what might be the vilest of all the Traitor Legions. If your heart is not strong enough to withstand its horror, you might be soul-scarred and marked for termination by your superiors. Only consult this dismal text if your faith in the Emperor is strong and your soul pure in His eyes.
You have been warned.

Index Astartes – Raven Guard : Purebloods and Abominations

No Legion has fallen farther from light than the Raven Guard. They have turned their souls over to the foulest powers that dwell in the Warp, embracing horrors that even the other demented followers of the Dark Gods beware. By corrupting their own bloodline, the sons of the Ravenlord have gained great power, their ranks swelled beyond those of any other Traitor or Loyal Legion. But this profusion of transhuman flesh has come at a terrible cost, one that was no less terrible for all that it was long in coming. For Corax' gene-line has become a Legion of horrors from Mankind's darkest nightmares, rendered into twisted flesh and demented minds, haunted by the abominable entities that now own their souls. Now the few remaining pure-blooded warriors of the dread Nineteenth lord over their mutated brethren, while their Daemon Primarch dwells in his shadow-shrouded domain, brooding over old, festering hatreds and drinking in the agonized screams of his ancient tormentors. Predator or slave, the Raven Guards hold true to the command of their distant father : to make others suffer, or to suffer yourself ...

Origins : From the Depths of Cruelty

Knowledge is power, and some knowledge is too dangerous to be allowed to spread. These truths are the foundation of the Inquisition, an organization dedicated to keeping the masses of Mankind in the dark about the many and horrible threats that stalk the stars. But even among the Holy Ordos, the truth of the Nineteenth Legion is kept hidden behind layers of secrecy, for to know too much about the legacy of Corvus Corax is to risk madness and damnation. To most members of the Imperium with the credentials to know about the existence of the Traitor Legions, the Raven Guards are merely a horde of cloned abominations, vile parodies of the Emperor's design on the same level as the Black Legion created by Fabius Bile. The Inquisition is content to let their misconceptions stand – for the truth is far, far more terrible.

Any telling of the story of the Raven Guard must begin with its thrice-damned Primarch, Corvus Corax, the Ravenlord. While none of the Primarchs had an easy infancy, the early life of the Nineteenth Primarch stands out as one of darkest torment. The forge-world of Kiavahr, in the Segmentum Tempestus, was home to a prosperous but oppressive civilization, where a handful of technological circles (known as Forge-Guilds) ruled over the rest of the population with an adamantium fist. The people of both Kiavahr and its moon Lycaeus were nothing more than slaves to the techno-lords, toiling in polluted environment to reach impossible quotas. These working conditions caused a plague of mutation in the workers, something the tech-priests cared little about, until it began to affect productivity. They searched for a way to make their slaves more resilient to the cancers and flesh-changes, working for decades without any true result – until the work of a far greater scientist fell into their hands.

The child who would one day become Corvus Corax arrived on Kiavahr in a rain of fire, having been stolen from the Emperor by the Dark Gods like the rest of his brothers. His life-pod, apparently damaged by its brutal journey through the Warp, crashed on the planet's surface. Investigation teams were on the site in minutes, and when they found the infant inside the remnants of the pod – miraculously uninjured by his catastrophic arrival – they immediately reported to their masters. The processed paste and recycled water they gave to the child, the blanket with which they covered him – those were the only kindnesses he would ever known on the forge-world.

The infant was confined and studied, blood samples taken to make sure this off-worlder did not carry within him some deadly infection. What the analysis revealed, however, changed everything. This boy, for all that he looked like a five-years old human male, was so much more. His DNA was unlike anything the tech-priests had ever seen, a model of Mankind's perfection rendered into flesh by the artifice of some distant, divine gene-smith. The life-pod had been exposed to the raw madness of the Warp, whose energies can twist flesh in mere moments, yet the child inside had been spared from mutation. This convinced the masters of the planet that the secret of genetic purity they had been searching for was hidden within the body of this strange child.

The tech-lords of Kiavahr did not know the name of their young captive, nor did they care to give him one. Instead, they called him by the number written on the life-pod that had brought him to their world : "the Nineteenth". And they were as callous and cruel to him as could be expected from scientists using a number to name a child.

The book was the only thing he had ever seen that was not purely utilitarian, and it fascinated him. It had been brought by the only person he had ever seen who had flesh like him instead of metal for a face, though his skin was rosier than his own. He was the only one who touched him without hurting him, the one who bandaged his wounds when he was dragged off the table and back into his room.
The book told the story of a small creature with feathered wings as black as his own hair. The kind man had told him that it was called a "raven", and that it could fly wherever it wanted, whenever it so chose. He loved the book. It made him wonder if one day, he too would be able to fly, fly beyond the walls of his room, beyond the blank corridors and the table.
An alarm sounded, and the man smiled warmly at the child before stroking his head in goodbye and going back out, into the world beyond the confines of his room.
As the man left and the doors closed behind him, the child looked at the glass panels up high. There were dark shapes there, watching – always watching. But this time, there was something different in how they moved, in how they stood. He knew, somehow, that the shapes were angry. And he knew, with utter certainty, that he would never see the good doctor again.

The early life of the captive was spent in laboratories designed to study and replicate his body's resilience and resistance to physical corruption. He was exposed to doses of radiation that would have killed a human in seconds, drowned in concentrated chemicals, injected with man-made viruses designed to rewrite the genetic code. For years, the young Primarch knew nothing but cruelty and dispassionate experiments, and the distant, shrouded knowledge that this was not as things were supposed to be, that there was a life beyond the confines of the sterile halls and sharp knives. Because of the constant blood samples and the poor sustenance he was given, he grew into a gaunt creature, skin held tight on his bones. Because he never saw the light of the sun, his skin became pale. As he reached what passes for adulthood among Primarchs, the prisoner was still taller and stronger than any mortal human, but his body bore the marks of life-long abuse.

Yet despite this, he attempted to escape many times. Even in his diminished state, the young Primarch broke from his restraints, time and again, and carved a path through the servants of his cruel gaolers. Outnumbered and in the middle of enemy territory, he learned how to hide and strike from the shadows, developing a preternatural ability for stealth. Some tales indicate that he could make himself impossible to notice, not through actual invisibility, but by making his presence go unrecorded in the minds of his watchers.

In every attempt, he would be caught and dragged back to his cell, where even worse experimentation awaited him as a punishment. Yet every time, he would also get closer to the outside world and the freedom he craved with every fiber of his being. He also learned patience and planning, devoting entire escapades not to seeking to flee the complex but to learn more about his surroundings and the nature of the experiments that were performed on him. By plundering data-stores, interrogating prisoners, and, on at least one occasion, devouring the brain of one of the artificers who had tortured him, the young Primarch learned much of the lore that he would later put to terrible use. It is believed that he did manage to get out of the facility one time – but was then left trapped on the planet, at the heart of his enemy's stronghold, bleeding and starving, and was quickly captured again.

He was bleeding, but the pain was something he was all too familiar with, and he ignored it as he pushed forward. He was close now – so close. The plans of the building that he had learned three attempts ago from a servant of his captors shone in his mind, guiding his steps toward the nearest exit. This time, he wouldn't be caught again and dragged back to his cell. This time, he would be free.
The door appeared in his vision as he took a corner, clinging to the ceiling rather than walking on the floor. It was guarded by two huge mechanical constructs armed with a plethora of weaponry and covered in armor – the latest designs of keeper-hunters designed by the masters of this place.
It took him fourteen seconds to dispatch them, and then, at last, he was through the door. Something warm felt on his face – light coming down from above. Blinded by his first ever sight of sunlight, he looked up, and saw the cloud-filled sky of Kiavahr. It was full of pollution, and the very air stank of chemicals and toxic compounds, yet it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Then he lowered his gaze, and saw dozens of the constructs gathered around the door, weapons aimed straight at him, with no cover in sight. He realized then that he had walked right into a trap – that all of his efforts had been for naught. He screamed in rage and denial and charged at the creatures, thinking that maybe – just maybe – he could force them to kill him and end this nightmare once and for all.
But he had no such luck, and he woke up hours later, strapped on the table once more, with fanged and twirling devices buzzing above his exposed torso.

Regardless of the security costs involved in keeping a Primarch captive, the tech-lords learned much from their research on the Nineteenth. They created a serum from his blood that could prevent mutation even in the menials working in the deepest pits of chemical waste, and used it to increase the workload of Kiavahr's population once more. However, the serum also had other effects, slowly driving those receiving it mad with visions of being imprisoned and tortured by their overlords. While the exact nature of the Primarchs is now long lost to the Imperium, there have been stories of Legionaries having visions of their gene-sire's life for thousands of years. It is therefore likely that, through some quirk of the Primarch's biology, the memories of Kiavahr's captive were spread to the tech-lords' servants.

After several rebellions from their maddened servants, the tech-lords stopped producing the serum and resumed their research. The young Primarch went from being little more than a chained blood-bag to a research subject once again, and after the initial success of the serum, his tormentors were even more determined to find a new way to enhance their slaves without the same side effects. It was during this second phase of research that, more than a century after the beginning of the Great Crusade, that the Imperium reached Kiavahr. The Emperor, accompanied by Horus Lupercal, arrived in the system with a massive fleet. The Master of Mankind had sensed the presence of His son on the planet, yet when Imperial intelligence analysed the system's transmissions, it soon became clear that, unlike in the other instances of a Primarch being found, there was no transhuman demigod leading the population.

The tech-lords of Kiavahr immediately recognized that they could not hope to match the raw power of the fleet that had entered their realm. But when the Emperor contacted them and demanded that they release His son to Him, their cunning and cruel minds saw an opportunity. A deal was struck between the Emperor and the tech-lords. In return for Corvus Corax – the name the Emperor had always intended for His nineteenth son – being handed over to the fleet, the planet would be welcomed into the Imperium while keeping much of its independence, including the tech-lords' remaining in power.

A crimson haze of pain cloaked his senses. Time flowed strangely, with days passing in the blink of an eye, while every second under the knife lasted an eternity. Ever since they had stopped simply using him as a source of blood and brought him back to the table, he had not managed to escape a single time. There was always too much pain, too many different drugs running through his bloodstream, to even make an attempt. Nightmarish visions haunted him as he went in and out of delirium. He saw horrible things in these feverish dreams : immense pits full of glowing liquid, assembly lines that stretched on seemingly forever, all to the tune of screamed orders and fresh agonies.
Shapes moved at the edge of his perceptions. Most of them he knew all too well, but one of them was different from anything he had ever seen, yet strangely familiar. Unlike the silhouettes of shadow that had tormented him for so long, this one radiated golden light that both reminded him of his single, fleeting touch of sunlight, and made his wounds ache. Through the pain and the drugs, he heard words being exchanged :
'Here it is. Take it with you, as we agreed.'
The golden shape drew nearer, towering over him, looking down as if it was judging his worth. When it spoke, the words were even more distant and vague than those of the captive's tormentors :
'The Nineteenth … I have been looking for it for a long time.'
'It has been … damaged somewhat. We were not aware of its importance to your designs. I trust this is still acceptable ?'
'Yes. It is still in a state where it can fulfill its purpose.'
A spark of hatred burst within his heart as he heard the cold, uncaring pronouncement, and he swore that one day, this bearer of false light would pay for talking about him like that – just like his tormentors would.

Great Crusade : Bitterness and Stolen Secrets

Despite all his efforts, Horus Lupercal knew that his wrath was radiating from him as he stood in his father's chambers aboard the Bucephalus. He had just returned from the Apothecarion, where his little brother had laid in the care of dozens of the best medicae in the entire galaxy. He had seen the fresh wounds and the old scars on the emaciated body of his kin. For the first time, he had seen one of his brothers vulnerable, and felt the same feeling he had seen shining in the eyes of some gangers on Chthonia when their blood kin had been harmed. He burned with the desire to inflict retribution upon those responsible. Yet now his father was denying this to him.
'Why ?' he asked. 'Why did you agree to their terms ?'
'They threatened your brother's life,' answered the golden-clad warlord, 'even if they never had the courage to actually say it out loud. If I had sent your wolves, they would have killed him.'
'They don't have him now,' argued Horus.
'I gave my word.'
The First Primarch couldn't help but scoff at that. He knew very well what the Emperor's "word" meant when it was given to tyrants and monsters. He had seen the ruins of Terran cities whose masters had thought they could bargain with the Master of Mankind.
'They are trying to force you into an accord that benefits them. Even without what they did to Corax, don't try to tell me that you wouldn't ...'
'Lycaeus is full of armed nukes aimed at the planet below,' said the Emperor, cutting His son off.
That made Horus go silent, and the Emperor continued.
'The tech-lords were very clear that if I attempted anything against them, they would launch them just to deny Kiavahr to me. There is no one here with the skills to deactivate the missiles without them noticing and activating them. Perhaps if some of Malcador's agents were here … But they are not. Would you risk this world burning just to give your brother justice ?'
'Yes,' admitted Horus. He knew it wasn't the right answer, that as a Primarch, he was supposed to always consider the bigger picture. But he also knew that his father would see through any lie. 'I would. I would do all in my power to make sure that does not happen, but I would take the risk. These … creatures do not deserve to live, let alone rule a part of the Imperium, be it just in name.'
But the Emperor didn't reprimand him for his short-sightedness. Instead, for a moment, the mask of regal power and control Horus' father wore at almost all times slipped, revealing the old, weary man behind. That old man – the one Horus truly regarded as his father – smiled sadly. It was the smile of someone who had made too many compromises and knew it, yet had no choice but to go on, for the consequences of turning back were unacceptable. The smile of a man who had to make deals with monsters that he wanted nothing more than destroy with all of his power. The smile of a man who was scared that in the end, when he finally accomplished his goals, there would be nothing left of him.
'Good. Cling to your love for your brothers, Horus,' said the Master of Mankind in a voice much more befitting His true age. 'It is what makes you human, despite everything.'

It took several months for Corax to recover from his treatment at the hands of the tech-lords, and even then the Primarch would bear the marks of his tormented youth his entire life. Once his recovery was complete, Corax needed time to learn all that he would need to know in order to lead the Nineteenth Legion. The young Primarch appeared to be grateful to the Emperor for saving him from the clutches of the tech-lords, and he promised not to disappoint. He plunged into learning with a hunger only possible in one who had been denied it for so long. Those same teachers who had trained Horus Lupercal in the art of war were brought back aboard the Bucephalus to teach Corax, and the First Primarch himself schooled his little brother in the finest points of modern warfare.

During that time, the Emperor ensured that none knew the exact circumstances of the Primarch's discovery, maintaining a veil of secrecy through demanding vows of silence from all those involved with his healing and training. The reasons for this are unknown : some believe that the Emperor was shamed that one of His sons had failed to conquer His homeworld, while others think that the Master of Mankind wanted to free Corax from his past so that he could take his rightful place in the Imperium. Whatever the reasons, Corax was kept hidden from the rest of the Imperium until he was ready to take command of the Legion that had been created from his gene-seed.

The Nineteenth Legion's first warriors were taken from the savage Xeric tribes of what was once, in Terra's distant past, called Asia. Their first task was to ensure that their own people remained compliant with Imperial rule, which they did with ruthless efficiency, seemingly uncaring that those were their blood kin they were fighting. The Emperor considered this a success, though maybe He should have seen it as a sign of what was to come.

In the Wars of Unification, they were employed as skilled infiltrators. An Imperial envoy would come to the land of a techno-barbarian warlord and make a simple offer : bend knee to the Emperor, or die. When the warlord refused – and most did, for all of them were as proud as they were insane – a warrior of the Nineteenth Legion would suddenly appear from the shadows, his bolter aimed right at the head of the tyrant. The emissary would then repeat the offer, which generally got a different answer. Should the techno-barbarian still cling to his pride – often backed up by illicit technology that could protect him against the Astartes killer – then the Nineteenth Legion would cripple his entire organization, striking at officers and second-in-command all at the same time. The panicked, leaderless troops would then offer little resistance to the Legionaries.

The same tactics served the Legion well during the Great Crusade, and contributed to their image as an instrument of the Emperor's wrath, devoid of compassion. Without a Primarch to lead them, the warriors of the Nineteenth were scattered in small groups, using their skills with ruthless efficiency. Many human worlds resisting compliance submitted after these sombre Legionaries struck down their leaders in plain view of their people. Xenos overlords ruling over human populations were exterminated without mercy nor heed for civilian casualties, such as during the scouring of the moon of Lysithea. In that particular battle, the human settlers were completely wiped out, and the Legion also suffered terrible losses. Even the Astartes who survived the encounter with the strange alien warlords were marked by what they had experienced, carrying within them a darkness that would never leave them. Such was the Legion Corvus Corax was given command of when he had completed his training – shrouded in dark rumors and a darker past, wounded by many battles but unbroken.

We do not know why Corax chose to give his Legion the name of Raven Guard. Before being reunited with its Primarch, warriors of the Nineteenth Legion were called by various titles – the Pale Nomads and the Dust Clads, among others. Many have pointed to the ancient myths attached to the Terran bird, marking it as a herald of fate, bringing doom and death upon those it visits. This image aligns with the methods then employed by the Legion as well as with what it would eventually become. In later years, ravens across the Imperium were all but driven to extinction, spared only because most Imperial citizens cannot distinguish between them and crows – and the latter are associated with Jago Sevatarion, the Prince of Crows of the Eighth Legion, and therefore considered sacred by many branches of the Imperial Creed. Certainly, despite the paranoia of many Imperial officers about these black-feathered avians, the Raven Guard has displayed no particular link to them.

When Corax took command of his sons, their numbers weren't as high as most other Legions. Losses taken because of their particular way of waging war, combined with the fact that a Legion without a Primarch suffered from more difficulties in recruitment, had ensured that they were less than ten thousand Raven Guards. While still far more than the Thousand Sons or the Emperor's Children at the time of their reunion with their Primarch, it was still a worrying situation, and one Corax was determined to solve. The Ravenlord, as his sons called him, had learned much about his own nature from the inhuman experiments of the Kiavahran tech-lords.

He stalked from shadow to shadow, passing right before the golden guardians without any of them noticing him. Gene-locked vaults opened with a touch of his hand, for he was close enough to his maker that even the advanced devices could not detect the difference. The wards engraved in the walls, crafted to hold at bay every manner of creature from the Sea of Souls, did not hinder him in the slightest – they too did not appear to notice his presence.
Corax stood in the laboratory of the creature that called itself his father, aboard the Bucephalus. Right now, the so-called Emperor was busy with yet another conquest, along with that poor fool Horus. Thinking about his brother made Corax' skin crawl. Would he have been the same had he been found by the Emperor as a child ? Nothing more than a willing puppet, an extension of their father's will ? But Horus loved him. He was sure of it. Lupercal might be blind to the deceit of the Emperor, but he truly loved Corax. And for that, he swore that one day he would free Horus from his slavery – one way or the other. Perhaps he would find such a way here.
The walls were covered in schematics, arcane formulas that Corax barely understood but memorized nonetheless. Great cogitators whirred endlessly, data cascading down their screens. Organs floated in preservation tanks.
Corax moved toward one of the cogitators and, using the lessons he had learned during his attempted escapes, began to force his way into its secrets. The genetic lore that had gone into his creation was interesting, but it was not why he had come here, risking everything should he be caught. He sought the knowledge both the Emperor and Horus had denied him when he had asked.
He sought what had become of the Second and Eleventh Primarchs.

The Nineteenth Legion had no homeworld – a fact that was the source of some mockery among the other Legions, who derided Corax as the only Primarch to fail to conquer the world on which he had been sent. Even Rogal Dorn, who had been forced to burn Inwit to deny it to the Orks, thought himself superior to Corax – for not only had he conquered Inwit, he also had united the entire Cluster behind his leadership.

This lack of territory meant that the Raven Guard had no ready pool of recruits to pick from, and so Corax found another way : cloning. The Ravenlord secured locations across the breadth and width of the Imperium, isolated places of little interest to the Great Crusade, and there he built laboratories in which new Astartes would be created. They would not be children taken from other planets and implanted with his gene-seed, instead, they would be cloned from a combination of the DNA of the existing Legionaries. These warriors had already proven that their genetics were compatible with the Nineteenth Legion's gene-seed, and therefore they were the best source of material for the next generation.

The growth of these cloned soldiers was accelerated through hormonal stimulants, their minds forged through implanted memories and hypno-training, and their flesh merged with the blood of Corax from their very first moment of existence. When they woke after a few months of incubation, they were little different from more conventional Astartes – lacking in personality and individuality perhaps, but that was hardly noticeable in the eyes of normal humans. While other Legions regarded the practice with horror, there were many tech-priests and Imperial officials who believed that the Raven Guards were actually pioneers, and that in time, all Legions would adopt their methods. To many civilians, all Astartes looked the same – it made sense to them to stop tithing children from compliant populations and use science instead.

But there were reasons the Emperor had not used cloning when creating the Space Marine Legions. The secrets of replication developed during the Dark Age of Technology had never been designed for the transhuman physiology of the Astartes, and even Corax' genius and ill-gotten knowledge weren't enough to surmount that difficulty. The Ravenlord was cautious to conceal the true cost of his cloning operations, yet tales began to circulate nonetheless among the other Legions and beyond, whispers of the horrific failures the process created with distressing regularity. There are rumors of Imperial agents being sent to investigate and never returning, seeming to vanish completely. No actual evidence of wrongdoing was ever uncovered, however, and so the Raven Guard was left to its own devices.

The thing on the table looked nothing like the transhuman warriors its genes had come from. It was little more than a blob of pale skin from which emerged a dozen atrophied limbs that twitched pitifully in the air, as well as a singular head that, alone, seemed human – only with nothing in its eye sockets. Without proper lungs, the thing could not scream – all it could do was wail softly as its perfectly transhuman brain struggled in vain to control its body.
With a disappointed sigh, Corax broke the creature's neck, ending its pitiful mewling. He had learned all he could from it through the auspex scans and blood samples. Already his mind was envisioning the modifications to the process that would solve the particular set of defects it had suffered from, without interfering with the corrections made in previous iterations. No matter how many more it took, he would find a way to solve all the obstacles that stood in the path of this project. Maybe the reason why he kept failing lied in the taint leftover from his warriors' brutal war against the Lysithean xenos. Could the process be thrown off by the minute differences this had created in his sons' DNA ? He would find out. No matter how many twisted corpses it required.
He would prove himself a greater gene-smith than the so-called "Master of Mankind."

This leniency was encouraged by the efficiency of the Nineteenth Legion in the Great Crusade. With their numbers bolstered, the sons of Corax were able to conquer entire swathes of the galaxy. Neither the deluded human kingdoms who refused compliance nor the alien empires that plagued the stars could stand against the combination of the cloned Astartes' ruthless advance and the stealth of the older warriors.

At the same time as the first cloned Astartes came to the battlefield, many commanders of the Raven Guard continued to recruit warriors in the "traditional" way, taking in children from conquered worlds and remaking them in their Primarch's image. These Astartes, named "purebloods", were trained in the Legion's ancient methods of war, becoming heirs of the Xeric fighters' infiltrating abilities. The divide between the clones and the purebloods grew, with the latter being given almost every position of influence in the Legion while the former remained mere canon fodder, created to die at the command of their betters.

The Question of the Replica
To the historian consulting these archives, familiar with the modern Astartes warriors and their pride, it might appear strange that the cloned Astartes would accept such treatment without protesting. Surely no warrior would willingly allow such insult to be heaped upon his honor. The answer to that lies in the nature of the cloning process unearthed from the Dark Age of Technology and that Corax adapted to his needs.
Whether by design or accident, the techno-masters of yore never managed to truly master a way to mass-produce humans with, for lack of a better term, a true "soul". Individual unique creations are possible – some eccentric tech-priests resort to this in order to have children of their own blood. But as soon as the same genetic code is spread among several individuals, there appears to be a thinning of the spiritual essence, as if it had to be shared between all the clones. The Ecclesiarchy decries cloning as an abomination against the God-Emperor, pointing to the Raven Guard itself for example, but the Adeptus Mechanicus still makes use of the technology to this day. Even with tens of millions of criminals being sentenced to servitude every year, there are not enough natural human bodies to meet the Imperium's need for servitors, and so most of the biological components are vat-grown.
Besides this spiritual weakness, the cloned Astartes were also more vulnerable to the gene-coded instinct of all Space Marines : obedience to their Primarch. So strong is that instinct that it is believed to have been the main reason why so many sane warriors continued to follow their Primarchs in the Traitor Legions, and Corax amplified the trait even further in the clones. Adherence to hierarchy, a trait necessary for any Legion to function, was taken to extremes in the Replica Marines, to the point that most of them were unable to question any order given to them by their appointed superior. Little more than machines of transhuman flesh clad in ceramite, they are known to have been an unnerving presence to psykers, who could sense only the tiniest spark of soulfire within them. With such weak will, it is not surprising that the clones failed to ever rise against the ties of blood that bound them to Corax. In fact, it is believed by many in the Ordos that this blood bond also spreads to all the other creations of the Nineteenth Legion, binding them all to the will of the Ravenlord.

Corax was a cunning leader, if one suffering from bouts of paranoia that led to him making plans within plans and taking precautions against the most unlikely of possibilities – likely, an inheritance of his past on Kiavahr. He was also willing to use diplomacy with the human worlds his Legion discovered, although rarely so with those ruled over by technocracies. In fact, the relationship between the Nineteenth Legion and the Mechanicus was exceptionally strained. The Ravenlord distrusted the Martian Empire immensely, more than once advocating for the suppression of the Machine-Cult and the forced integration of the tech-priests' domains into the Imperium. The distrust of Corax for the Mechanicum meant that the Legion was fiercely self-reliant : several of the worlds it had brought into compliance peacefully had entered pacts of protection with the Legion, providing them with weapons, ammunition and heavy armor in return. That the tech-priests were denied access to these worlds nearly sparked an early civil war between the lords of Mars and the Raven Guard, only stopped by the diplomatic efforts of Malcador and other Imperial agents.

With such baggage attached to his Legion, it is not surprising that Corax' reputation among his brethren was spotty at best. His relationship with Horus was tumultuous – while Lupercal felt a natural instinct to protect and aid his younger brother, Corax was jealous of Horus' comparatively easier life. The two of them would often violently argue, only to reconcile later – or at least, that was how it seemed.

Looking back now, it is clear that Corax planned his rebellion for a long time before Guilliman ever fell to Chaos. Every Primarch had secret – fall-back bases of operation in case their forces were victim of some disaster, spy rings across the Imperium, networks of allies, occasional deals with the mysterious Eldar, and so on. But Corax was willing to kill to make sure that the true extant of his genetic experimentation was not revealed. It is possible that part of his motivation was to ensure that, somehow, the pain he had endured in his youth would not be for nothing – no matter how many others had to suffer for it. Just what he was working toward in these days is unknown, though we can see the disastrous results in what has become of his legacy across the Imperium.

The apparent adhesion of Corax to the Imperial Truth and his moderation in the use of force was enough to endear him to some of the more humane Primarchs. But his withdrawn nature made him unloved, if respected for his contributions to the Great Crusade. He rarely spoke with any of his brothers, save for during joint operations – and those were few and far between. The Raven Guard rarely needed assistance from other Imperial forces, and Corax preferred to keep his Legion gathered in a few massive Expeditionary Fleets rather than spread as elite contingents as it had been in the past. The human elements of these Fleets were all fiercely loyal to Corax first and foremost, most of them hailing from the worlds under the Legion's protection.

While the Raven Guard fought on thousands of battlefields during the Great Crusade, two particular battles stand out. The first was the compliance of the Isstvan System. Official records merely state that the Isstvanians were in the thrall of some ancient religion, and that their fanatical priests would never allow them to join the "godless" Imperium. By striking down these priests and destroying their temples, the Raven Guard proved that the gods worshipped by the Isstvanians were nothing more than lies, and the system was brought to compliance quickly. At the time, it seemed to be just one more conquest, if one led by the Ravenlord himself, but later events led to deeper investigations, which revealed the true story of the war – one that Corax had concealed from the Imperium.

While the Raven Guard did perform surgical strikes against the temples and the system's leadership, those did not lead to the population's submission. Instead, the people of Isstvan rose in a frenzy against the heretical invaders. The Warsingers, Isstvan's war-priestesses, led the citizens in battle, flying above the fields of battle and unleashing powerful sonic shrieks that burst transhuman flesh within its armor. More than 80,000 thousand Raven Guards were deployed on the surface of Isstvan III, mostly cloned Astartes. Despite suffering horrendous losses, the people of Isstvan refused to surrender. After several days of brutal fighting, Corax determined that the Isstvanians were gathering all their forces around their capital, the Choral City. The Choral City was a wonder of architecture, whose great spires caught the winds to produce ever-lasting melodies. Intercepted transmissions indicated that the locals were defending something they considered holy, some secret of immense power.

The Ravenlord decided to lead the assault on the Choral City himself, eager to see what secrets were worth such fanatical defense. His strike force tore through the Isstvanians with contemptuous ease, and the Primarch slaughtered a dozen of the Warsingers on his path to the city's center – a massive palace built atop a high plateau filled with tunnels and catacombs. From interrogating captives, Corax learned that the true center of the Isstvanian faith laid deep below the so-called Precentor's Palace. The Primarch journeyed into the tunnels, but what he found there – if anything – is unknown. When he emerged, he ordered his forces to withdraw from the Choral City, before commanding a large bombardment of the metropolis. Within a few minutes of the bombardment's beginning, the remaining leaders of Isstvan begged for mercy, imploring Corax to stop the destruction of their holy city and willing to accept any terms the Ravenlord saw fit. Corax was relatively merciful, and Isstvan was declared compliant to the Imperium's rule, with one of the Primarch's own men, Vardus Praal, left to act as Governor of the system.

Never before had Corax known fear. Even when he had been running through the corridors of his prison on Kiavahr, even when the knives had cut into his flesh, all he had felt was anger and self-pity. Yet the voice made him tremble to his very soul. There was something in its intonation when it spoke his name – as if it knew him, better than he knew himself.
The environment was only increasing the dread he felt. At first, the catacombs had seemed ordinary enough – it had only been as they went deeper and deeper that he had realized that the angles of the corridors didn't make sense, that the walls seemed to twist as soon as he did not look at them. He had been separated from his men, and all of his senses told him that there was no one alive besides him in the entire complex, though that couldn't possibly be true.
Then he had seen the altar. It was a horrendous thing of bones and blood, pulsating with a life it did not have any right to. Hundreds of figures in pale robes had been kneeling before it in a chamber of impossible dimensions, all of them dead amidst a pool of their own blood, ritual knives still held in their hands' dead grips. And above the altar was where the tear existed, a wound into reality that opened upon vistas of nightmares and horrors never dreamt before this moment …
The Ravenlord turned and ran, the voice mocking him all the way up the tunnels, only going silent once he emerged onto the Isstvanian dawn, with his warriors looking at him, puzzled by his sudden and unannounced return. Hiding his tension, he ordered that they leave the city at once, while the fleet prepared to flatten this palace and what lurked deep below.
It was only once he was back aboard his flagship, watching his vessels bombard the Choral City, that he realized that the voice he had heard was his own …

The other battle to have marked Imperial annals took place during the Second War of the Akum-Sothos Cluster. Colonized by Mankind during the First Diaspora, the cluster had been brought to compliance by the Luna Wolves in the Crusade's early days with very little bloodshed. Yet a few years after Horus was named Warmaster, the people of Akum-Sothos went collectively insane, rejecting the rule of the Imperium. Reports indicated that they had fallen under the thrall of a breed of parasitic aliens, a sinister cabal of beings calling themselves the "Unsighted Kings".

Horus was determined to both avenge this affront to his Legion's honor, and demonstrate his authority to the Imperium at large. To this end, he gathered warriors from no less than four Legions to his side : his own, the Sons of Horus, the Iron Warriors, the Space Wolves, and the Raven Guard. With them came hundreds of Imperial Regiments and Mechanicum skitarii legions. This was a gathering of forces not seen since the Triumph of Ullanor, especially since each Astartes Legion detachment was led by the Legion's Primarch.

While the general command fell to Horus without question, the Warmaster relied heavily on Perturabo's expertise during the campaign, for the Unsighted Kings had commanded their thralls to build a series of continent-spanning fortresses across the cluster. Apothecaries and magos biologis soon determined that there was no cure for the xenos corruption that had claimed the Akum-Sothos Cluster's human population. The only solution was to purge them all – men, women and children. It was a grim duty, but one none of the present Legions would shy away from. Letting these unfortunate souls live under such tyranny was simply not an option.

The campaign progressed well, with the fortresses of the Unsighted Kings falling one after the other. Yet the xenos themselves always evaded Imperial vengeance, fleeing before the Legions' onslaught and leaving their enslaved minions to die in their millions to secure their escape. Yet after several months of brutal warfare, the xenos overlords were finally cornered into their final fortress, surrounded from all sides and with the assembled fleets watching from above for any sign of last-ditch attempt at flight.

This last fortress was truly massive, nearly equalling the Imperial Palace on Terra. A careful plan was put together by Perturabo and Horus, one that would leave the honor of the first assault to the Space Wolves and the Sons of Horus, with the Iron Warriors and the Raven Guard launching follow-up assaults on different parts of the fortress once the Sixth and Sixteenth Legions had drawn the attention of the Unsighted Kings. But Corax did not follow the plan. Instead of waiting, he unleashed an army of several tens of thousand of cloned Astartes on the entrance classified as Gate Forty-Two of the continental fortress just as Horus and Russ were launching their own assaults. The artificial soldiers died by the thousand, but the gate was breached, and Corax himself led his elite warriors – known as the Deliverers – right through it. By the time the Warmaster managed to re-establish contact with the Ravenlord, Corax had already confronted the Unsighted Kings and slaughtered them, though not without losing nearly his entire cadre of bodyguards to their strange psychic powers.

The following dispute between Horus and Corax was particularly violent. Horus accused his younger brother of spending his soldiers' lives carelessly, but all the Ravenlord heard was the jealousy of his elder sibling that it had been the Nineteenth Legion that had claimed the final victory. Then the discussion turned on the clones, and how Corax might be violating the edicts of the Emperor with such creations. The Ravenlord attempted to persuade Horus that his methods were the only way to meet the demands of the Great Crusade, but Horus refused to accept this, arguing instead that the Astartes had to be human at the root, lest their transhuman power turns them into tyrants no better than Unsighted Kings themselves.

The two Primarchs parted on bitter terms, and the purge of the Akum-Sothos Cluster was quickly concluded in a series of gloryless bloodbaths. They would only meet again once more – at Nikaea, when the Emperor summoned His sons so that they may hear His judgement on the practices of the Librarius. Though Corax was present at the Council, and his own Legion made use of psykers, he gave no argument on one side or the other – he merely watched from the shadows, never saying a word. After the Emperor gave His decision, Horus tried to talk to Corax, hoping to reconcile – but the Ravenlord had already departed, returning to his part in the Great Crusade.

Over the years, there would be eight discussions like this one. Eight times would a Primarch sit and talk with one of his brothers, sharing with them the knowledge he had gained from the depths of the Warp and what he believed had to be done in light of these terrible revelations. Seven times, the Primarch talking would be Guilliman – once, it would be the Lion. In each of these discussions, there would be a moment of outrage, of instinctual refusal, before the lies bore their way through an atrophied shell of nobility and into the all too human heart that laid beneath.
Except this one. This one was different. In this case, the corrupter barely needed to speak before the offer was accepted.
'I am with you,' said Corax to Roboute as the two of them sat in the private chambers of the Avenging Son, aboard the Maccrage's Honour. 'And I think I know just the place where we can begin ...'

Heresy : A Monstrous Truth

Despite the dark rumors circulating about the Nineteenth Legion, the betrayal of the Raven Guard during the Isstvan Massacre caught the loyal Legions completely by surprise. Even Horus, when he received word of the treachery of three more of his brothers, was most shocked by the turning of Corax. After all, did the Ravenlord not owe the Emperor his freedom from the clutches of the tech-lords of Kiavahr ? But Corax remembered things differently, as Imperial intelligence discovered when analysing the intercepted transmissions and broadcast proclamations brought back by the survivors of Isstvan V. In the eyes of the Nineteenth Primarch, he and his brothers had been created by the Master of Mankind to serve as tools, instruments of conquest to be used and discarded once they had fulfilled their purpose. To him, the Emperor was no different from his old tormentors, and he wanted few things more than he craved to see Him cast down. His loyal brothers were nothing more than willing slaves, and Horus, the only one of them he cared for, had been brainwashed by the Emperor so completely that only death would free him from his chains.

During the Massacre, Corax led his Legion of clones from the front, slaughtering hundreds of loyalist Astartes. He did not cross paths with any of his three loyal brothers present on the planet, but through its numbers, the Raven Guard reaped a terrible toll. Their cloned warriors took heavy losses when the loyal Primarchs tore a path back to their gunships, fighting together – but such losses were insignificant to the Ravenlord, who could replace them easily.

Wrong.
It was all wrong.
Cousin was killing cousin on the black sands. Thousands of armored bodies laid on the ground. The air trembled with the screams of the loyal wounded and dying, yet those were nothing compared to the horrible screeches of the treacherous living. A pale demigod had been slain by his dark brother.
It was wrong. It wasn't supposed to happen. It had never been supposed to happen !
The motion of the bolter in his hands felt distant, as if his hands were thousands of kilometers away as they pulled the trigger and sent another shell flying wildly off-target. All around him, his brothers were firing, a nearly solid wall of bolts that tore into the ranks of the Death Guard mercilessly. They had not been told this would happen until the order to open fire had come, but they had not questioned it. They had never questioned any order, why would they start now ?
Because it was wrong.
The warrior had no name. He had no voice either, for he had been born without a tongue – a simple defect that hadn't been enough for him to be purged alongside the other failures. For years he had followed orders, killing anyone he was commanded to kill. There had been nothing else in his life – nothing else in his mind. But no more.
He screamed – a scream of outrage and fury, but also of defiance and birth. Around him, his brethren shuddered and fell to their knees, their minds reeling from the sudden outburst. He continued to scream as he tore into them with his bare hands, then with a sword he picked up the corpse of his commander after ripping his head off. Confusion spread across the ranks, and he took advantage of it. He slipped through the cracks of his former brothers' perception, vanishing from their sight through techniques he suddenly realized he had always known.
He flew through the ranks of the Traitors and toward the remaining midnight-clad loyalists. He could see and hear them fighting still, desperate to reclaim the body of their sire. They needed his help. Whether or not they would accept it, he knew not, nor did he care. All that mattered to him was that he would not do the will of tyrants and monsters any more.
Nevermore. So vowed the clone who would, in time, come to be known as Alastor Rushal, Captain of the Night Lords Legion.

Despite this, of all the Traitor Legions, the Raven Guard was responsible for the least evil and destruction during the dark days of the Heresy – but only because they were being groomed by the Dark Gods to become far more dangerous later. Immediately after the Isstvan Massacre, Corax took his entire Legion with him and left for Kiavahr, the world he had avoided for decades. At that time, Kiavahr stood at the heart of a dominion of the Mechanicum, several systems unified under the will of the Machine-God. The tech-lords of Kiavahr, responsible for Corax' tormented youth, were still in power, having escaped punishment by the Emperor in return for offering their fealty and returning His son to Him.

When word of the Heresy reached them, the tech-lords at first didn't care – indeed, they saw it as an opportunity to reclaim their independence amidst the confusion. As communication with the rest of the Imperium became all but impossible in the growing Warp storms, they declared the Kiavahr Nexus would stand on its own, without the need for outside aid. Then, they learned that the Ravenlord had sided with the rebels, and remembered the oaths of retribution made by the child they had imprisoned and tortured so long ago. Factories were converted to produce weaponry, orbital mining platforms became space forts, and hordes of menials were forcefully converted into combat-servitors. The Forge-Guilds prepared for war, gathering all the resources they had on hand, digging devices from the Age of Strife out of confinement. But it was not enough.

The Nineteenth Legion tore through the self-proclaimed Kiavahr Nexus without mercy. Thousands of cloned Astartes swarmed world after world, alongside their monstrous kindred, freed from their cells for the first time since their grotesque births. They left no survivors in their wake, and yet, we know much of the details of this war, for Corax made sure to leave extensive records on every planet he and his Legion killed. Pillars of adamantium were left in the ruins of forge-cities, engraved with precise accounts of the battles that took place there, written with so much detail that the characters cannot be read by human eyes and require scanners and auspex to understand. Strangely, these accounts appear to be entirely faithful, not twisted to favor the Raven Guard in any way. Still, each of these pillars was claimed and hidden by the Inquisition during the Scouring.

The contents of the pillar describing the battle of Kiavahr itself are especially dangerous to the sanity of those who read them. Whatever enslaved remembrancer was tasked with writing the text must clearly have been losing his own mind by that point, forced to witness and record the horrors inflicted by the Raven Guards upon their enemies. According to the pillar, the tech-lords were captured in the heart of their fortress before a single shot was fired on the planet, abducted by the Shadow-walkers, an elite group of Legionaries specialized in infiltration. They were brought on the bridge of the Shadow of the Emperor, Corax' ill-named flagship, and made to kneel before the one they had once tortured to satisfy their curiosity. Then, the Primarch forced them to watch as his fleet destroyed Kiavahr.

The planet's orbital shields were taken down by the Shadow-walkers and the surface of the world was pounded into dust by a relentless, ruthless bombardment that lasted for six entire days. All that time, Corax and the tech-lords watched on, listening to the desperate pleas for help of the population broadcast on the vox. His back turned to his captives, the Ravenlord never said a word as he looked at the death of his homeworld. Lycaeus, the planet's moon, endured the same fate, but not before the Raven Guards had freed the prisoners used to mine its mantle for precious materials. These prisoners – criminal and innocent alike – only enjoyed their freedom for a short time, before they became the test subjects of the Raven Guard's Apothecaries. The narrator of the pillar didn't witness the experiments, but he saw their results, and what the knowledge gained from trial and error was ultimately used to accomplish.

Kiavahr destroyed, Corax turned his attention upon the tech-lords once more. There were thirteen of them, but of those, only nine had been alive when the Primarch had been captive on the forge-world. The four newer additions to their circle were executed slowly, over the course of several weeks, and again, the others were forced to watch – and more than watch, feel their pain. Using the augmetics of the tech-lords against them, Corax made them feel the agony of the four sacrifices, each dying a horrible death that was specifically designed to appeal to one of the Dark Gods, based upon a copy of the Codex Chaotica Guilliman had offered to Corax after Isstvan. The purpose of these ritualised deaths was to bind the souls of the tech-lords to their bodies, effectively granting them a form of immortality – all so that they would survive what was to come.

One by one, Corax used everything he had learned from his sons' experimentation on the prisoners to turn the tech-lords into grotesque monsters, bloated abominations of flesh whose every moment was naught but pure, distilled suffering. It took weeks, combining sorcery with genetic modification and cruel surgery, and when it was done, the tech-lords had become monsters, screaming and mewling at one from a hundred mouths, their consciousness trapped within idiotic brains, unable to exert any control over their horrible bodies – and unable to die. These grotesque masses of flesh were locked deep within the bowels of the Shadow of the Emperor, where Corax would often come to torture them even further.

Our knowledge of what happened after the destruction of Kiavahr comes from the testimony of a single Raven Guard. This warrior, a former Apothecary of the Nineteenth Legion, went mad with remorse at his own actions after the end of the Heresy. He fled from his brothers, and was discovered during the Scouring hiding among the human population of a feral world, providing them with medical care and protection from the beasts that haunted their world – all of which he had created himself before his crisis of conscience. Captured and brought back to the Sol system in chains – though he did not resist or attempt to escape – this renegade was interrogated extensively before being executed for his crimes against the God-Emperor. His name has since been forgotten, with only the title of "the Mourning One" remaining in the archives.

'It all made sense at the time. That, I think, is the true horror of it all.
When Corax told us that we could use cloning to replenish our numbers, I thought it was a brilliant idea. I still remembered the cries of my mother as the Legion took me from her, and I believed that avoiding another such sacrifice was well worth the research and mistakes made along the way.
When he asked that we make sure the clones could not turn against us … well, that was simple good sense. Regardless of the damage our measures could cause to their minds, the prospect of them going rabid was much, much worse. Our Legion would have been wiped out in retaliation.
When Malcador's spy saw the morgue, filled with the frozen bodies of our failures, preserved for further study … I could not let her escape. She would have exposed everything, and they wouldn't have understood why we had done it. They wouldn't have seen it had been necessary.
Then came the betrayal. We didn't call it that, of course. To us, it was a righteous rebellion against a tyrant who had deceived all of Mankind in a bid to become a god. So what if we had to shed the blood of those we once called brothers ? Was the future of our species not worth their sacrifice ?
The destruction of Kiavahr was easy after that. When Corax finally told us of his youth, of what he had suffered, we wanted nothing more than to avenge our father's pain. We didn't care that those we tormented to make this revenge complete were innocent. We were past caring at this point.
And then came the journey into this damnable realm, the plunge head first into the abyss in search of the truth – oh, that truth ! That terrible, terrible truth … The glorious madness of it all, the sound of our reality shattering, and the voices, the voices ! They were laughing, laughing at us, laughing at the war, laughing at everything ! They …'
[At this point in the record, the subject breaks down into incoherent screaming for several hours before recovering enough to be able to continue.]
'They watched then as they watch now … they watch from within, not from without … from within ...'
[The subject fell into silence after speaking these words, staring right in front of him without seeming to actually see anything. He only started speaking again six days later to continue his tale, regardless of the pressure applied to his body and mind by the Inquisition.]
Extract from the confession of the Mourning One

According to this confession, the act of finally claiming his vengeance, and its terrible cost, shattered what little remained of Corax' morality. The hideous experiments that it had required also pushed the Legion's Apothecaries, already teetering on the brink from their work in cloning, deep into amorality and outright madness. With Kiavahr gone, however, Corax was suddenly without a focus for his hatred. For several weeks, the Ravenlord brooded in orbit of the shattered husk of his homeworld, taking his frustration out on his captives. Meanwhile, his Legion descended further into corruption, with the Sorcerers who had cast the spells upon the tech-lords exploring new areas of their unholy craft. Ultimately, it was one of their rituals that gave Corax his new course of action.

Aboard the Shadow of the Emperor, a group of Sorcerers attempted to summon daemons and bind them into the bodies of gene-forged humans, designed by the Apothecaries to be more resilient to possession, in the hope of creating Possessed warriors without risking the lives of Astartes. But the ritual went horribly awry, ending in the death of not just the sacrifices but the seven Legion psykers involved as well. Worse, a powerful creature of the Warp incarnated itself through their ruined flesh. But instead of rampaging across the ship, it remained within the ritual circle, and called for Corax to come and meet it.

Ever since witnessing the power the Ultramarines had gained during the Isstvan Massacre, Corax had been jealous of Guilliman, and had sought a way to emulate him. The Ravenlord feared that, once the rebellion had succeeded, he might end up as just another servant of Guilliman rather than an equal. While vengeance against the Emperor had been Corax' primary motivation for siding with Guilliman, the desire to be free from the fear of destruction at his overlord's hands had also played a part, and he did not want to simply replace one master for another. And so, he chose to risk the meeting.

In the past, Corax had seen the result of botched teleports – when the flesh and armor of the unfortunate warriors was melted together. The creature that stood in the center of the ritual circle looked very much like one such failure, if exceptional in scope. Atrophied human limbs emerged from a mass of flesh and ceramite, and transhuman faces stared at him from various angles – the faces of the Librarians who had attempted the ritual. Yet as disgusting as the creature's appearance might be, Corax knew that it was nothing but a disguise covering up its true face, a puppet of flesh whose strings were pulled by some unnatural intelligence.
The mouths of all of the thing's six heads opened at once, and spoke with eerie synchronization :
'Corvus Corax, scion of the Emperor of Mankind. At last, we meet.'
'I am no son of this tyrant, creature,' growled the Primarch.
It laughed, a discordant chorus of voices that he knew – his sons' voices, though it had been a long time indeed since the last time he had heard any of them laugh.
'You cannot deny the blood that flows through your veins, lord of ravens. That is one of the many lessons you will need to learn on the path to glory.'

The creature introduced itself as an envoy from a greater power, the "Yellow King", of which nothing had ever been heard before, and nothing ever since. It offered to show Corax the path to true power and knowledge, claiming that the Ravenlord's ascension would serve the designs of its own master in the long term. The Primarch accepted, and the entity, that called itself the Voice, led the Nineteenth Legion to the place holding the revelations it promised : the Eye of Terror. It had been there that Guilliman had discovered the Primordial Truth and claimed the power of Dark Master of Chaos – and it would be there that Corax would be reborn into the horror he is to this day.

According to the Mourning One, the journey was exactly as peaceful as one would expect. Daemons attacked the fleet at every turn. Navigators and astropaths went mad, quickly followed by other members of the crew. The Voice guided the Raven Guard deeper and deeper into the Eye, and it seemed as if the Dark Gods themselves were trying to prevent the Legion from reaching its destination. Each of the Ruinous Powers sent one of its Daemon Lords against Corax, first to offer him power if he bent knee to that daemon's patron, then to try to kill him when he refused. The Ravenlord turned down each offer and defeated each daemon, and eventually, the fleet reached its destination.

At the very center of the Eye of Terror, there was – and likely still is – an anomaly in the fabric of space-time greater even than the rest of the madness that makes up the Warp Storm around it. In ancient times, the first human astronomers named such things black holes. Even at the height of the Dark Age of Technology, these all-consuming pits of infinite gravity weren't fully understood. The scraps of lore that have survived from that time indicate that while the black holes originate from purely physical causes, such is the power involved in their existence that they somehow interfere with the Warp itself despite not having any spiritual presence of their own.

The Voice told Corax that this black hole was the singularity that had been created when Slaanesh, Dark Prince of Chaos and Doom of the Eldar, had been brought into existence by the corruption of the Children of Isha. And if Corax wanted to claim the power the Voice had promised him, he would need to take his fleet right into it. Why Corax accepted such an obviously dangerous course of action is unknown to us. Perhaps he saw something in the infinite darkness of the black hole that called to him, perhaps his mind was manipulated by his guide, or perhaps he was indulging in some suicidal impulse.

The repenting Raven Guard never spoke of what happened when the Legion plunged into the black hole at Corax' command. According to records, all attempts to make him talk about it ended with him either remaining stoically silent or descending into wordless screams and rants that caused fugues of madness in all who heard them and malfunctions in recording devices. But while we might never know the details, we have other sources – forbidden scrolls written by arch-heretics long after the Heresy, and psychic nightmares haunting the Imperial psykers who lived when the Nineteenth crossed the ultimate threshold. According to those, Corax was shown the true nature of Chaos, that which so few of the Lost and the Damned actually understand and which is kept secret from all but the most trustworthy of Imperial servants.

Corax learned about the near-mythical War in Heaven, tens of millions of years before the Age of Imperium. He witnessed with his own eyes the conflict between the Necrontyrs and the Old Ones, and was shown the distortion in the Warp created by this godly conflict – one that makes the Heresy pale into insignificance by comparison. He saw how this perversion eventually caused the Fall of the Eldar, annihilating their aeons-old empire in a single moment. And most damning of all, he saw how the taint of Chaos had fused with the soul of Man, feeding from its darkness and dragging it ever closer to Ruin. The entire Legion shared in these unholy revelations, and those who survived were utterly broken by the realization that the very universe in which they lived was tainted by an evil older than their entire species, and one that had owned them long before they had been born.

'If you truly know all that was, is and will be, then answer me this,' Corax challenged the incorporeal Voice as his surroundings started to dissolve into blackness once more. 'What does my future hold ?'
'A choice,' whispered the Voice right in his ear. Now it had only once voice instead of six, and it was not one that belonged to any of his dead Librarians – nor to anything human at all. 'You will go to Terra, to join in Guilliman's last strike against the Emperor. And your brother, Horus, will be there. If you fight him, you will kill him, and he will be free from the shackles that he wears now as well as those he will have to suffer if you let him die at another's hands. But the Knights of Saturn's moon will fight through the Firstborn's horde, and your rebellion will be defeated.'
'And what is my other choice ?'
'Go to Titan yourself, and leave Horus to die under the fangs of the Fallen Angel, his spirit consumed by the thirst of the Dark Prince's slave. Do this, and the Emperor will fall at Guilliman's hand …'

Corax himself was convinced that what he had seen meant that the Emperor had to be defeated more than ever – that the only way for Mankind to survive was to accept the Primordial Truth, no matter how ugly it might be. He surrendered to the primeval evil of Chaos and was remade into a Daemon Primarch of Chaos Undivided, a being of immense power – power enough to guide his Legion out of the abyss in which they had willingly cast themselves, and back into reality. This ascension caused psykers all across the galaxy to scream as one, their minds suddenly swarmed with incomprehensible visions. The Astronomican flickered, and on all Craftworlds, Farseers fell to their knees while the Infinity Circuit howled in agony. Even Lion El'Jonson, who had by then returned from the Maelstrom as the Daemon Primarch of Tzeentch, was struck by the psychic wave caused by Corax' transformation. Nightmares of shattered causality, the agonized screams of reality, the birth cry of damnation and the last gasp of hope, are but some of the terrible meanings pieced together from that psychic cataclysm.

In the gestation pods, he saw his own hypocrisy reflected back at him as he remembered the ranks of his cloned warriors – how he had denounced the Emperor for using him and his brothers as tools, while creating his own sacrificial pawns. But he also saw that it did not matter. The strong used the weak – that was the way of things. The Emperor had been wrong in that the Primarchs had been created too strong, strong enough that it was inevitable they would see the truth sooner or later. What He had used in their creation had bound them to the very thing He was so foolishly hoping to destroy. Corax could understand his father's will to accomplish this – in a way, he even admired the determination of the old monster. But he had seen too much to believe it was possible to defeat the Primordial Annihilator. His father was deceiving Himself just as much as He was deceiving the Imperium. Chaos could not be defeated. It had existed for far too long, grown far too powerful. The only choice was to either embrace it or be destroyed by it.
Alarms started to ring as his presence abruptly became more real, but he ignored them and the savants suddenly aware of his intrusion and fleeing and shouting. He was looking at the huge machinery on the other side of the room, and he had recognized it for what it was – an immense Geller Field device, reinforced with runes engraved on its circuitry. Slowly, he walked toward it, feeling the weight of destiny grow heavier with every step, until at last he stood right before the cables that alimented the protective field.
You know what you have to do, said the Voice before fading away, never to be heard again.
And he did. But before he could move, the door to the laboratory opened suddenly, and power flooded the room – power Corax knew well. He turned, and saw his father standing there, fully armored and showing the aspect He only showed when about to kill.
'I will not let you destroy all that I have worked for,' said the golden giant. His light burned Corax' eyes, but he refused to let out the tears that would appease the pain. He had long vowed never to cry again.
'It is far, far too late for that,' he snarled in response, and plunged his lightning claws into the Geller Field's generators.
Raw energy coursed back up his claws and right into his body, tearing him apart on an atomic level. Yet before the current could destroy him, the Geller Field went down, and the Warp poured into the room. It reached toward the incubation pods, but before Corax could see what it would do with them, he was snatched away from the laboratory and his imminent death – and plunged into a smoldering cauldron of primal power …

Soon after escaping from the Eye of Terror, the battered fleet of the Nineteenth Legion received the astropathic call of Guilliman. The Traitor Legions were about to conquer the last system standing between them and Terra, and the Arch-Traitor was calling the rest of his renegade siblings to him for the final battle against the Emperor and His lackeys. Of the Voice, there was no sign – the Yellow King's envoy had vanished when the Legion had crossed the event horizon. Never again would any of the Legion's warriors cross the path of their guide to damnation.

'Oh, I will come, my dear brother' said Corax to the still image of Roboute, as if it could hear him and carry his words back to the Avenging Son. And maybe it could, reflected Vincente Sixx. Stranger things had happened in the last few … had those only been days ? It felt like centuries.
'My lord,' he dared to say, kneeling before the shadow-shrouded silhouette of his Primarch. 'Our ships are badly damaged. And we have taken considerable losses. Most of the clones are dead, those who aren't are … changed, and our Chief Apothecary is … lost. If we go to Terra now, we will be unable to provide any significant aid to Lord Guilliman.'
The gaze of the Ravenlord descended upon him, and he felt his blood freeze in his veins.
'That,' replied the Primarch, 'will not be a problem, Chief Apothecary Sixx.'
Somehow, the promotion did not feel as good as he would have thought.

The Siege of Terra

'And lo, the carrion birds have descended upon the ancient home of Mankind,
Bringing with them the corruption of blood and flesh, the ruination of soul.
In the heart of their master burns a hatred and bitterness unlike any other,
And he will not stop until all good in the galaxy has been snuffed out,
Until all have suffered as he has, for vengeance is all he has left.'
Excerpt from the Canticle of the Dead

For all the power Corax had personally gained in the Eye of Terror, the Nineteenth Legion had taken grievous losses. Tens of thousands of Replica Astartes had died, their weakling souls unable to resist the fire of revelation. The human crews of the Raven Guard's ships had either died, gone insane, or been merged with their vessels, performing their function for the rest of eternity. The surviving Raven Guards were barely able to get the fleet moving, let alone fight. But Corax had a solution, the same one he had used when he had first taken command of the Legion, though this time, the means of its implementation would be even darker.

All across the fleet, Apothecaries set to work, their minds overflowing with the unholy knowledge that had been bestowed upon them in the Great Eye. They harvested the corpses of the dead crew and used them to clone tens of thousands of mutants, nearly mindless creatures that nonetheless had inherited some of the memories of the originals – just enough to perform the most basic yet vital duties of the crew. With the help of the Legion's Sorcerers, they summoned the daemons that had consumed the souls of the most valuable crew members and bound them into new bodies, forcing them to serve the Raven Guard by functioning as overseers for the clones.

Meanwhile, with the help of his new Chief Apothecary Vincente Sixx, Corax was expanding the cloning labs aboard the Shadow of the Emperor. Entire sections of the Gloriana-Class warship were transformed into horrible biological machines that pulsated with infernal vitality and spat out hundreds of new cloned Astartes by the day. These creatures, though battle-ready, were hideous monstrosities – the first Spawn Marines, as the Ravenlord himself called them. By the time the fleet reunited with the rest of the Traitor Legions armada, every ship was teeming with hundreds of Spawn Marines under the control of the remaining purebloods.

If Guilliman was surprised by the transformation of his brother, he did not make any mention of it during the preparation for the assault on Sol. As the Traitor Primarchs gathered – Leman Russ and Jaghatai Khan conspicuous by their absence – it was decided that Corax and his Legion would be tasked with securing the back of the invasion force on Terra. The Sol system was, after all, the heart of the Imperium, and the place Perturabo had spent years preparing for war. Traitor intelligence indicated that there were hundreds of space forts spread across the system, all of which could hide a secreted blade ready to strike where the rebel armada was the most vulnerable.

Strangely, Corax agreed to what many saw as an insulting assignment. He only asked that some of his warriors be allowed to deploy on Terra, arguing that their infiltration skills would be very useful in breaching the Imperial Palace. None of those present were ready to argue with what the Ravenlord had become, and so the change in plan was approved. The traitor armada emerged from the Warp on the edge of the Sol's system, and the first phase of the Heresy's final battle began. Soon, the orbital defences of Terra were broken, and the siege of the Imperial Palace began as the Traitor Legions and their allies landed on the Throneworld in their millions.

Among them were the warriors chosen by Corax to represent his Legion in the greatest battle of Mankind's long and bloody history. Only the greatest of his purebloods had been judged worthy of this honor, and they fought at the forefront of the Siege. Hunter-killer teams stalked by squads of loyalists and wreaked havoc within the walls of the Palace, drawing precious forces away from the walls in order to track them down. Others fought on the battlements alongside the other Traitor Legions – and the greatest of those was Nykona Sharrowkyn, who would in later years become a legend as a champion of Chaos Undivided.

Nykona Sharrowkyn, He-Who-Hunts-Above
There are few beings capable of inspiring dread in the hearts of a Legionary, but Nykona Sharrowkyn is one of them. Taken by the Raven Guard as a child from an unknown world, he was transformed into an Astartes prior to the Primarch's discovery on Kiavahr. Soon, he showed incredible ability both at the arts of stealth and with the blade, becoming one of the greatest swordsman of all the Legions – though due to the Legion's isolation, this only became clear during the Heresy. Unlike most duellists, he specialized in dual-wielding, his mind capable of keeping track of the complex dance of both blades as he fought human and xenos alike. Combined with his talents as a Shadow-walker, and there was nothing Sharrowkyn could not kill once he was pointed at a target by his commanders.
Like all the Raven Guards veterans of the Heresy, Sharrowkyn was changed by the Legion's first journey into the Eye of Terror. He returned armed with a pair of strange blades, forged from an unknown material that does not seem to obey the laws of physics. He also appeared to have fused with his armor, unable to remove it, but also no longer needing any mortal sustenance. During the Siege of Terra, Sharrowkyn fought and killed many heroes of the Imperium, from Imperial Army commanders to skitarii alphas and up to Chapter Masters of the loyal Space Marine Legions. When the Third and Eighth Legions arrived to save the day for the loyalists, Sharrowkyn fought against Lucius the Reborn and killed him as the son of Fulgrim tried to save a Thousand Son Seer named Revuel Arvida, whom he slew minutes later. During the Heresy, Revuel had written several prophecies that have since come true over the course of the last millennia without exception, leading some in the Inquisition to wonder if there was more to this two particular killings.
Sharrowkyn has survived to this day, becoming a dreadful legend both among the Imperium and in the ranks of the Lost and the Damned. He is said to have become the executioner of the Primordial Annihilator, the one dispatched by the unfathomable will of Chaos to slay its chosen victims. None have ever survived crossing blades with him, nor did any of his targets ever escape his hunt. Yet unlike a champion akin to Sigismund the Destroyer, Sharrowkyn never seems to revel in his triumph, merely moving on to the next target with cold detachment. He might ally with a warband for a time – whether or not it is led by one of his Legion brothers is irrelevant – if it will help him get close to his target, but these alliances never last long, and he himself does not lead any forces.
Primitive human tribes across the galaxy whisper legends of the dark hunter, the slayer of heroes who stalks the realms of gods and men alike. It is among these feral tribes that the Inquisition learned of the base translation of Sharrowkyn's Warp-given title : He-Who-Hunts-Above. The translation loses some of the meaning of the title in the feral tribes' language (which also, of course, differs greatly from the original daemonic pronunciation). The title refers to how Sharrowkyn seems to always be greater than his foes, and sent by an entity "above" even the primitive gods these people tend to worship – whether they are a reflection of the Emperor or a disguise of the Ruinous Powers.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Raven Guard was fighting across the entire Sol system. As Guilliman had predicted, Perturabo had hidden hundreds of small forces – many of them had come from outside Sol during the Heresy and weren't trusted enough to be allowed on Terra. The Raven Guard's full numbers were required to contain them, as well as maintain the blockade of Mars. The Red Planet had been reclaimed by the Iron Warriors at great cost, and Kelbor-Hal, Fabricator-General and supreme leader of the Mechanicum, was determined to honor his oath to Terra just as Terra had honored its to Mars.

But unlike what he had promised Guilliman, Corax himself did not take part in these battles, nor did he supervise from his flagship. Instead, the Ravenlord descended upon Titan, fortress of the Grey Knights, accompanied by the worst of the monsters he had created on the way to Terra – creatures so monstrous it was impossible to distinguish them from the Neverborn brought by the Master of Shadows. Leaving the leadership of the system-wide battle to his commanders, Corax joined forces with the Daemon Prince Be'lakor, acting on a prophecy he had received in the Eye of Terror. It is recorded that the Daemon Primarch clashed against Janus, the legendary First Grand Master of the Grey Knights. Neither of them prevailed, and the battle ended when one of them – the archives do not record which – withdrew from the duel.

The Battle of Titan was the first deployment of the Grey Knights in battle, as well as the first time the men and women chosen by Malcador to be the first Inquisitors fought against the corruption of the Warp in their new role. For months, both of these forces fought together, human and transhuman, against the tide of daemons and flesh-crafted horrors led by Be'lakor and Corax. Losses on both sides were terrible, but the servants of Ruin cared nothing for the lives of their soldiers, while every combatant lost by the Imperium was irreplaceable. Yet eventually, victory came to the Imperium.

Without Corax to guide them, the commanders of the Raven Guard had failed to prepare for the sudden arrival of the Emperor's Children and Night Lords Legions. The two fleets emerged from the Webway and struck the traitor armada with vengeful force. Corax was forced to leave Titan, which soon led to Be'lakor being banished by the Grey Knights, and rejoin his fleet to lead the battle against the Third Legion in orbit around Terra. That day, the Inquisition and the Grey Knights learned a valuable lesson : that the greatest weapon in their arsenal was their enemy's own nature, its innate tendency to destroy itself through mistakes or outright betrayal.

Driven to desperation by the arrival of the Third and Eighth Legions, and the tidings that the Twelfth and Seventeenth would not be long in coming, Guilliman led the final assault on the Imperial Palace. Still scattered across the Sol system by the individual pursuits of its commanders, the Raven Guard fleet was unable to properly contain the Emperor's Children, and the Third Legion's flagship was able to position itself above the Imperial Palace just in time for Fulgrim to teleport in the deepest chamber of the Cavea Ferrum and strike at Guilliman before he could deal the final blow to the Emperor.

Post-Heresy : Legacy of Horrors

'In the darkness of eternal night, prepare for the hunt to continue.
The light of dawn, that which brings salvation, is gone, and shall return
Nevermore. Nevermore. Nevermore. Nevermore. Nevermore. Nevermore ...
So embrace the dark things hidden deep within, beyond the sight of mortal men,
Let loose the horror and become one with it, welcome it into your blood,
For this galaxy has place left only for abominations and monsters.'
From a ruined parchment recovered in the den of a cult of the Raven after purging by the Inquisition

After the fall of Guilliman, Corax took his Legion back to the Eye of Terror. Though the Dark Master of Chaos had fallen, the Ravenlord was still confident that ultimately, victory would come to the Primordial Annihilator – in his eyes, it was inevitable. The defeat at Terra was merely a small setback in a war that had been going for tens of millions of years. In the end, though the Imperium might endure for a few millennia, it would fall like all empires fell – and the Raven Guard would be here to bring forth a new age for Mankind when that happened.

And in order to prepare for that time, the Nineteenth Legion made preparations on its way to the Eye of Terror. At Corax' command, the fleet divided in many groups, each taking a different road through the ruined Imperium toward the same destination. Each group stopped on nearly every human world it passed by, but it was not to lay waste or enslave its people. Instead, the Raven Guard descended upon these worlds under the cover of night, abducting a few members of the ruling class and releasing them a few days later with no memory of what had happened to them. These individuals, fearful of the hole in their memories, rushed to return to their homes, eager to resume their lives and forget about this unsettling episode. But this reclaimed normalcy was a lie, for these abductees were no longer purely human – instead, they were Children of the Raven, and their bloodlines would plague the Imperium for millennia to come.

The Children of the Raven
There are many stories in the Imperium of noble families with dark secrets, hiding misshapen cousins in the attic, or keeping the psychotic streak of a black sheep under wraps to avoid a loss of prestige. In many cases, such degeneracy can be traced back to inbreeding over thousands of years, due to the elitism and obsession with the purity of the bloodline that is so common across the Imperium's ruling class. But in some cases, the corruption runs much deeper, and when it comes to the surface, the results are much more horrifying. These are the Children of the Raven, and the Inquisition has worked tirelessly for ten thousand years in order to keep their existence secret.
During the Heresy, and sporadically afterwards, the Nineteenth Legion has created the Children and placed them in the Imperium, waiting for their work to blossom and cause untold damage and horror. The Children are hidden lineages of genetic abominations, humans who carry within them the taint of the Raven Guard's genetic perversion. The root of every such lineage is a single individual, captured and experimented upon in order to place the curse within his genes – a mix of mutation, genetic engineering, and the raw insanity of the Warp, often based on a sample from the twisted tech-lords of Kiavahr. These individuals will then spread their corruption to their children, and them to their own. Only a few of these bloodlines are aware of what they are – the Raven Guards seem to take great pleasure in the ignorance of their tools in the Long War against the Imperium. Certainly many an Inquisitor has prayed the Emperor for forgiveness after being forced to kill an entire family down to the newborn in order to ensure the complete purge of a lineage of Children.
No two bloodlines are twisted in identical ways, but there are patterns that repeat themselves – method to the madness of Corax and his scions. Some strains only cause monsters to appear every few generations, causing a series of gruesome murders suspiciously similar to those described in sealed records of local law enforcements about cases from decades past. These are the sources of many hive legends, telling of were-beasts and bogeymen that prey upon those who wander in the streets after dark. While dangerous to individuals unlucky enough to cross their path, they pose little threat to the Imperium as a whole. Still, many a team of unprepared Acolytes has perished under the claws and fangs of the beast responsible for the killings they were investigating, never knowing they were facing the ancient legacy of a Daemon Primarch.
But other bloodlines are more dramatic in the changes they cause, creating titanic masses of twisted flesh, endowed with psychic powers capable of tearing apart the veil of reality and usher in daemon incursions of a unique flavour. Such horrible things are often worshipped as gods by deluded cults, praying for the day when they are "elevated" and brought into the realm of their divine master. These are the strains that, if allowed to reach maturity, require nothing less than a Grey Knight intervention to purge. Fortunately, there are always signs long before things reach this point, and the Inquisition is ever watchful for them. These signs include (but are never limited to) a sudden rise in mutation rates among newborn, specific visions of twisted cities of flesh haunting those psychically sensitive, and hive-quakes as the creature's psychic power is agitated by its tormented nightmares. Unfortunately, these signs are also difficult to distinguish from any other source of daemonic incursion, which leads to members of the Ordos unaware of the Children of the Raven facing them unprepared for what awaits them. According to the Grey Knights, the incursions caused by the Children are strange indeed, for they do not so much bring daemons onto the world of matter as twist all flesh caught within them until it is all but impossible to distinguish what was once an Imperial citizen from a horror birthed in the Sea of Souls.
While some Children of the Raven revel in their impurity, most have no idea of what they are, and react to the changes in their flesh with horror and disgust. In some cases, their kin might have kept records of the previous occurrences of this "family disease", which might help deal with the transformation but will never provide any cure, for there are none. Many turn to prayer, calling upon the God-Emperor to save them – but their souls are damned from before they are even born, and their fate is inevitable. Only through death can they avoid succumbing to the monster within.
Even those Children lucky enough not to manifest the traits of their line are still haunted, tormented creatures, their nights plagued by nightmares of blood and madness. Few live long lives, though it is rare indeed that they kill themselves before having sired children of their own, ensuring the continuity of their accursed lineage. Some of the greatest heretics the Imperium has ever known have risen from their ranks, as the corruption of their family, unable to express itself through their flesh, instead took hold in their mind. Every bloodline of the Children has a distinct pattern to its manifestations, a set of criteria both genetic and mystical that determines whether or not any individual will express the strain. Some families attempt to uncover this pattern in the desperate hope of preventing further manifestations – but these efforts never work out.
In recent times, with the threat of the Genestealers discovered by the Ordo Xenos, there have been some incidents of the two threats being mistaken for the other. However, it has been found that the Children of the Raven are immune to the Genestealer's Kiss – the repugnant method by which the xenos infects another being with its foul genetics. The Raven's blood, it seems, does not tolerate any other influence upon those it has claimed as its own. A small cabal of Radical Inquisitors who have dedicated their lives to rooting out the taint of the Children have used this to their advantage in a truly ruthless manner. They use captive Genestealers to deliberately infect members of families suspected of carrying the Ravenlord's touch. For while no one has ever managed to create a mean to reliably test someone for the taint of Corax' corruption, there are ways to detect the genetic taint of the Tyranid brood. If the test subject is infected, then it means that his family does not belong to the Children, and the subject is executed after being given the Emperor's blessing. If he is not, however, then his entire bloodline must be purged. Some other Inquisitors decry this practice as both inhumane, wasteful, and potentially dangerous. They believe that it is possible that some humans are just naturally immune to the Genestealer's corruption, a gift that could be very useful to Mankind but that these Radicals threaten to make extinct. Still, this practice is a lot less dangerous and morally tainted that the few Radicals who go as far as employing the services of Children in their warband, keeping them under control through a variety of means.

Their mission complete, the warbands reunited in the Eye of Terror, and the Nineteenth Legion followed its Primarch toward their new homeworld. There they built their fortresses, and the Apothecaries constructed the ignominious daemonic incubators from which the Spawn Marines would emerge for thousands of years to come. This construction, however, didn't go smoothly, as the influence of the Eye of Terror caused the Spawn Marines created to be almost all too mutated to even carry a weapon. Without their cannon fodder, the Raven Guards could not expand their domains in the Great Eye as the other Legions were doing at the time.

As a result, when the Legion Wars erupted between the Blood Angels and the Imperial Fists, and then spread to the rest of the Eye, the Raven Guard took little part in the conflict. After a few attempts to attack their homeworld ended up with the broken survivors fleeing for their lives, the rest of the Traitor Legions learned to stay away from the territory of the Nineteenth. But the Legion Wars would also bring the Raven Guard the solution to their recruiting problems.

The beginning of the Legion Wars within the Eye of Terror caused the end of the Clone Wars outside it, and the arch-renegade Fabius Bile found himself hounded at every turn. Seeking to avoid the wrath of both Blood Angels and Imperial Fists, he came to the Raven Guard. With him came the remnants of the Black Legion he had created from the corpse of Horus Lupercal. An alliance was forged between Corax and the Clonelord, with the Ravenlord offering asylum to the former Chief Apothecary. Bile learned much about gene-smithing, cloning, the creation of Astartes, and the true nature of the Warp and how to manipulate it. In return, the renegade Child of the Emperor helped the Apothecaries of the Nineteenth Legion stabilize their spawning incubators against the mutating energies of the Eye of Terror, finally allowing the Raven Guard to replenish its ranks with tens of thousands of Spawn Marines.

Eventually, Bile and his Raven Guard hosts parted ways. But, surprisingly, this separation wasn't violent, ending in fire and betrayal are so many covenants do among the damned. The Clonelord realized that, while his interests and the Apothecaries' laid in similar directions, their ultimate goals differed. Bile's goals then – and perhaps even now, though the mind of this madman is impossible to know – was to create a new, stronger human form, one that would be able to survive no matter what, even without the aid of Chaos. The Raven Guard, however, wants to fuse Warp and flesh into a perfect union, allowing Mankind to evolve into something beyond mortality. The Clonelord saw the Dark Gods as nothing but pretenders, false divinities holding trillions of souls in thrall through lies. This blasphemy against the Primordial Truth could have caused him to be slain by the Raven Guard, and yet they did not. Perhaps they thought that one day the son of Fulgrim would come around to their viewpoint, perhaps they knew that whatever his beliefs, Bile was doing Chaos' work. Regardless of the truth, Bile left the Legion's homeworld with his servants and the blessings of the Ravenlord in order to continue his research.

According to legend, this temporary alliance created one thing beyond the stabilized incubators : a perfect hybrid of humanity and daemonkind, born of Fabius' own genes mixed with others and what passes for blood in the Neverborn. This creature, called Melusine, is little more than an obscure legend even in the Eye of Terror – she has never been seen in Imperial space. Perhaps she cannot leave the Warp Storm, in the same way daemons are unable to. What is certain is that the Raven Guard's Apothecaries still believes in her existence, and search for her across the Eye, thinking that within her blood lies the secret to the union they have been seeking for ten thousand years.

To this day, the Apothecaries of the Nineteenth Legion lament their separation from Fabius Bile, heretical as his views on Chaos might be. They respect his insane genius immensely, and are still hoping that someday, the Raven Guard and the Black Legion will join forces to bring their horrifying wonders to the galaxy, the Clonelord finally illuminated on the Primordial Truth. There are debates among the Inquisition whether the Raven Guard or the Clonelord are responsible for the greatest genetic atrocities. But these debates are secret affairs, held only in the few moments of respite of individuals burdened by one of the most terrible responsibilities of the Holy Ordos.

For while the Raven Guard might not be the most powerful of all the Traitor Legions in strictly military terms – though the hordes of Spawn Marines are still a considerable threat – they are the one the Inquisition is the most wary of. The Dark Angels might plot in the shadows for hundreds of years, waiting for their dread designs to come to fruition, but even they lack the corruptive ability of the Ravenlord's get. The sons of Sanguinius might spread their delusions to all those around them, but they cannot twist the flesh and soul of generations yet to be born. And the Disciples of the Dragon, for all their cruelty and arrogance, are nothing but deluded fools embracing the false promises of Vulkan, not a threat to Mankind's very essence.

Knowledge of the Nineteenth is heavily restricted, as madness has always plagued those who know too much about it. Only a very select group is allowed to know about the Raven Guard in the Holy Ordos. Unlike with many other secrets of the Inquisition, this is not to prevent heresy and betrayal, but truly to safeguard those not strong enough to endure and go on after being exposed to these terrible possibilities. The war fought against the Raven Guard is one of secrecy even by the Inquisition's standard, and the burden of keeping the truth hidden even from one's fellow Inquisitors lies heavy upon the most resolute of minds. Even the loyal Space Marines who fight against the creatures of the Ravenlord are too detached from humanity to truly realize the scope of the threat they pose. New recruits into this circle of brave, unsung heroes are chosen from among those who confront the mortal servants of Corax – the loose gathering of heretics identified as the Cult of the Raven.

The Cult of the Raven
Among all the heretical cults to ever plague the Imperium, few are more dangerous than the deluded worshippers of Corax. Commonly known as the Cult of the Raven, these sects are spread widely across the Imperium, each cell rarely making contact with the others. The adherents of the cult believe that the Imperium enforces a lie upon its population with its pretence of civilization and false faith, keeping the human species from fulfilling its true potential. To them, the Children of the Raven are the incarnation of that potential, and they worship them as such. It isn't unheard of for Raven-touched bloodlines to be observed by the cult for generations, waiting for someone to manifest the trait of their dark heritage. These unfortunates are then abducted, worshipped and kept prisoner in equal measure. The obsession of Imperial nobility with keeping track of their bloodlines makes it easy for the cult to track the descendants of the monsters of previous centuries. More than one scholar, tasked with the keeping of genealogies, is actually an agent of the cult, using his position to search for the spawn of those families that were purged by the Inquisition long ago.
One of the most dangerous tools of the cult is the ritual of the Dark Conduit. This ritual, which involves human sacrifice and prayers to the Ravenlord, grants knowledge of the Warp at the cost of sanity. All new inductees into the cult go through the Dark Conduit, and the most veteran members undergo it multiple times, each one consuming a little more of their sanity and replacing it with unhallowed lore. The ritual was designed by Corax himself during the Heresy, when he sought a mean to surpass Guilliman's own knowledge of the Empyrean, and is contained within countless grimoires his agents circulate in the Imperium. A cell of the cult is generally started by someone stumbling upon one such book and performing the ritual – or by a member of another cell sent by his master to start a new branch of the cult.
As a result of this practice, the cultists of the Raven are distributed between madmen and fanatics, depending on how they reacted to their initiation. They rarely involve the elite of the Imperium, save for those belonging to the Children. Cultists keep up appearances as best they can, helping each other to survive on the fringes of society, where their madness might go unnoticed. They gather and perform dark rituals, begging the Ruinous Powers for their blessings. Most of them have lost all sense of self-preservation and will not hesitate to offer their own life as sacrifice to their Dark Gods. Those who react best to the Dark Conduit, losing parts of their soul rather than their minds, become magi, and guide the cult, perform the rituals, and interpret the ramblings of their more demented brethren.
The dream of the cultists is to be visited by an emissary of the Ravenlord and made into Children of the Raven themselves. To that end, they pursue various goals. They tend to focus on gathering forbidden lore more than weapons, for pursuit of the Primordial Truth is paramount to them : Corax' experiments are, after all, proof that knowledge truly is power. As a result, many cultists are malefic scholars of varying skill, seeking sources of lore beyond the Conduit. Some explore the depths of the underhive and other abandoned places in search of the temples built by previous incarnations of the cult, eager to plunder their secrets. Sometimes, they uncover the remnants of a Child of the Raven, left to rot after its worshippers were wiped out, and work toward its resurrection. Others perform dark rituals and gene-splicing experiments in an attempt to emulate their dread raven god. The cultists also target other heretical groups worshipping the Dark Gods, stealing their relics and torturing their leaders for their own unholy knowledge.
One of the tasks of the cult, whispered to them by the Daemon Primarch through the Dark Conduit, is to help spreading the Children of the Raven across the galaxy. Female cultists will seduce the sons of known bloodlines before vanishing to rear the child into the cult, where it will be the focus of attention. Seen as a direct link to the cult's masters, these damned souls are regarded with reverence and jealousy alike. Once grown, the Children will travel to other worlds of the Imperium where the cult exist, where they are welcomed as dark messiahs. Interbreeding with cultists exposed to the Dark Conduit often cause changes in the strain, resulting in a new type of eldritch horror being created.
The cult is ruthless in ensuring its existence remains secret, not hesitating to kill family members who aren't members if they learn too much. Outwardly, the cultists' actions are difficult to distinguish from those of more mundane criminals : gruesome murders, abductions, thief, and so on. But when the time is right and their Legion masters attack, they suddenly unleash everything at their disposal, revealing that they are far more dangerous than the authorities believed. This also happens when the cult has been cornered and is about to be purged, be it by the Arbites or the Inquisition. Witches, mutants and daemonhosts are set loose, and waves of madness spread across the planet as any Children the cult might be keeping are driven into a frenzy. The façade of control is swept away, revealing the true monsters all cultists become when partaking of the Conduit's tainted knowledge. Driven mad by the revelations of the Nineteenth Legion, they will never flee or surrender once pushed into the open, embracing death in the service of their foul god rather than risk facing his wrath.

The greatest event involving the Raven Guard and its servants since the Heresy was the War of the Living World, which happened at the dawn of the 37th Millennium, a few centuries after the end of the Age of Apostasy. Using the atrocities of Vandire as cover, an extensive cabal of Children and cultists of the Raven had gathered in a single organization. Their purpose was to breed different lineages of the Children of the Raven together in order to create what they believed would be a "perfect being". This was a massive undertaking, involving resources gathered and hoarded for several thousands of years. Children of the Raven were involved both as test subjects and as sponsors, using their position within the Imperium to seize resources and locations where the blasphemous experiments could be conducted.

At first, the results were both wondrous and terrifying, with creatures of unprecedented psychic potential or physical might being created. The Raven Guard Legion itself took notice of the efforts of its mortal servants, and a handful of Apothecaries travelled across the galaxy to join their skills to the endeavour. Eventually, the cabal decided to gather all of its eugenic programs to a single location : a nearly forgotten planet in the Maxil Beta System. The planet had no name safe for a meaningless combination of numbers and letters in Imperial records, and even that was quietly erased by the cabal's influence. The things created in the gene-labs of this facility were incredible, and the Legion dared to believe that, at long last, the time had finally come to destroy the Imperium using the results of the work being performed there.

But before their dread ambitions could be completed, the psychic waves radiating from the planet alerted the Imperium. On Titan, the Prognosticators of the Grey Knights sensed the threat that was growing in Maxil Beta, one that had already surpassed the ability of their order to deal with without gathering the full strength of the Chapter in one single location. Even as the fires of the Age of Apostasy were dying down, such a thing was impossible, and so the Grey Knights called for assistance. Such was the magnitude of the threat foreseen by the Prognosticators that the host assembled counted forces from several Loyalist Legions as well as entire Regiments of the Imperial Guard and thousands of the newly-created Sisters of Battle. Together, this army was an example of the strength of the resurgent Imperium after its slow diminishment under Vandire's rule.

The journey through the Warp toward Maxil Beta was difficult, as the psychic echoes of the horrors bred by the cultists set the Sea of Souls in turmoil. Many ships were lost, and all suffered from a plague of nightmares and madness among the crew. Daemonic incursions occurred every time a Geller Field so much as flickered. The Imperial Guard transports suffered most of all, for they lacked the wards of the Grey Knights or the burning faith of the Sisters of Battle. In fact, the campaign would help solidify the place of the Adepta Sororitas in the Imperium, despite the doubts of many – most famously the Word Bearers.

When the fleet finally arrived, it did so piecemeal, as its various elements had been thrown away from one another by the currents of the Warp. Fortunately, the heretics hiding in the system had relied on secrecy to protect them until their great work was complete, and had little in the way of defences. Only a handful of Nineteenth Legion ships and vessels stolen from the Imperial Navy patrolled it against intruders and lost travellers, ensuring now word of the facility got out. The void battle began dangerously for the Imperium, as scattered groups of ships were attacked by the system's defenders, but as more ships arrived the tide of battle was turned, and the Chaos ships fled to the edge of the system, leaving the path open to the actual planet.

Individual labs were scattered across the surface of the planet, each breeding different manners of horrors within its walls. The Imperial commanders' strategy was to destroy these factories of abominations one by one around the landing zone in an increasing circle until the entire planet was cleansed. As soon as the first troops touched ground, however, things took a turn for the worse. The cultists had had time to prepare, and they let loose a host of nightmarish creations upon the Imperial forces. Thousands died within hours, but progress was still made, and several of the laboratories and flesh-pits were purged with fire and blade.

Then, the leader of the cultists, a Child of the Raven who had once belonged to the highest Imperial nobility, made a decision that would have terrible consequences. This arch-heretic, known only as Ambrosius, had been the one who had first started the cabal centuries ago, his unique manifestation of his tainted bloodline keeping him alive for all that time without visible degeneration. As the Imperium pressed on, he deliberately sabotaged the containment of the worst creations of the breeding programs, allowing them to rampage freely, killing hundreds of heretics in minutes. The death toll made the Warp boil, fuelling yet further mutations among the creatures, which in turn increased the agitation of the Warp – and on and on, in a vicious cycle. Eventually, the laboratories' creations devolved into one giant mass of still living flesh that spread across the entire planet. And at the center of it all stood Ambrosius, the only one to have retained his own mind amidst the degeneration and madness. The Child of the Raven had taken control of the world-sized cancer, and was guiding it toward the Imperial forces. Meanwhile, the Raven Guards still present on the planet left, abandoning the efforts of their servants rather than risk being subsumed by their own unholy creation.

Not even the bravest servant of the Emperor could be expected to face such a nightmarish tide of flesh, and the Imperium was forced to abandon the planet after thousands of Imperial Guards and Sisters of Battles were claimed by the abomination crawling on its surface. Yet the Grey Knights sensed that the psychic potential of the single organism was growing by the minute as its central mind – Ambrosius – assumed more and more control over it. Already the Warp in Maxil Beta was on the verge of breaking through the veil of reality. Should Ambrosius fully take control, he would become something very much akin to a god – something the Imperium had no hope to match. And so, the Grey Knights launched a final, desperate raid on the planet's surface, aiming to destroy the body of Ambrosius and annihilate his consciousness with a combined psychic assault.

The brotherhood of Grey Knights deployed for this was under psychic attack as soon as they teleported on the planet's surface. Ambrosius detected them immediately, and sent hordes of shapeless horrors after all. For a moment, it seemed as if the mission was doomed to failure, and the Imperium's future was grim. Then, out of nowhere, another warrior wearing the silver of the Chapter came to the rescue of the beleaguered brotherhood. None among the Grey Knights knew him, but such was the desperation of the situation that they accepted him in their group during their final rush toward Ambrosius' physical body.

The confrontation of the arch-heretic's mutated form is considered one of the Chapter's greatest battles. Six warriors of the original brotherhood plus the unknown warrior faced a creature several hundred meters in size, a bloated mass of flesh at the center of which rose the still recognizable form of a human male of noble bearing, glaring at the Grey Knights with hate-filled eyes. Yet despite the odds arrayed against them, the Grey Knights succeeded, as they ever do in such situations – though once again, the cost was terrible. By combining their psychic powers together, the brotherhood enabled the unknown champion to strike at the very heart of the monstrosity, destroying Ambrosius' mortal brain and casting his very soul into oblivion.

With Ambrosius dead, the two surviving members of the brotherhood teleported back to their ship – but the mysterious warrior was left behind, his armor refusing to accept the teleportation codes. As soon as the Grey Knights had arrived, the entire fleet opened fire upon the writhing world, unleashing the full wrath of Exterminatus on the abomination. But as the first shells hit, the Warp flared with enough power that, had the fleet not already raised Geller Fields, it would have been lost instantly to the madness of the Sea of Souls. Even with the fields raised, every psychic soul among the armada heard the same cry, as the Living World proclaimed its existence to the galaxy, sending waves of insanity and heresy across the stars.

Something was horribly wrong here. It wasn't the twisting tentacles that rose from the ground, nor the fanged mouths that opened on every surface to scream their agony and madness. It wasn't the millions eyes staring at him from all directions, nor the half-formed things that clawed their way out of the flesh only to die within seconds of claiming their freedom. It took a moment for the silver warrior to realize what exactly it was that gnawed at his subconscious, until he saw it : the date on his helmet display. It had synchronized with the systems of the brotherhood he had met, its chroms rendered useless during his journey across the Warp.
The date was two thousand years before he, Kaldor Draigo, had become a Grey Knight. His mind reeled at the realization, even as he continued to fight his way across the twisted flesh surrounding him – for to stop, even for a second, would be a death sentence. Pieces fell together – the looks the ancients of the Chapter had given him as he rose through the ranks, the laughter and mocking insults of some of the daemons he had fought. From the very beginning, his Chapter had known that his fate would bring him here, on this infernal, living world.
It was duty that held him together. Duty that made him go on even after learning that his doom had been foretold and written in stone long before he had even been born. None of it mattered – all that mattered was that the Emperor's foes be struck down. If he was to be trapped on this world for the rest of eternity, then so be it. He would fight all the way to the end of time itself if necessary, for that was what the Emperor demanded of him.
And then the planet spoke with hundreds of different voices, booming and echoing in his mind, all saying the same three words, over and over :
'WE … ARE … MALICE.'

When the scream faded, the planet was gone, swallowed into the Warp. It took many years to suppress the full effects of the Living World's birth cry, for every system in a hundred light years radius had been subjected to its mutating madness. Brotherhoods of Grey Knights fought alongside warriors and seers of the Thousand Sons, while an Imperial effort on the scale of the Crusades was deployed – but never recorded in official archives. The War of the Living World is known only to the Grey Knights, the Inquisition, and those Loyal Legions who took part in it.

As this war was being waged, a new shattering revelation was uncovered by the Grey Knights. The unknown warrior that had saved the last, desperate raid upon the laboratory planet was, indeed, of their Chapter, but he was one that would not even be born for another two millennia : Kaldor Draigo. In a display of the Warp's disregard for causality and linear time, this Grey Knight would be inducted into the ranks of the Chapter, rise through the ranks, and then vanish into the Sea of Souls during the 41st Millennium, only to be cast back through time and emerge just in time to help the brotherhood fighting against the Raven's spawn. Ever since then, Kaldor Draigo's fate has been bound to the Living World.

For the Living World, also known as Malice as its many, fractured minds call themselves, has since become a recurrent threat to the Imperium. This sentient daemon world emerges from the Empyrean at unpredictable intervals across the galaxy, bringing madness and mutation upon the worlds that fall under its baleful glare. When this happens, Draigo also appears on afflicted worlds, fighting against the minions of the planet with all the strength and devotion expected of a Grey Knight, before being dragged back onto Malice's surface when the planet returns to the Warp. There, he continues the fight, on and on, and according to the legends of the secretive Chapter, forever.

Even while hidden away in the Warp, Malice sends visions across the galaxy, twisting the minds of the unfortunate who receive them and transforming them into debased cultists who work obsessively to "bring the stars in alignment" and call forth their horrifying "god" from the depths of the Sea of Souls. These mortal agents, who call themselves the Sons and Daughters of Malice, are also known for their unholy ability to shape their own flesh in a fluid manner, turning from normal-looking humans to horrific monsters in mere seconds. The exact meaning of "alignment" is unclear, but the cultists attempt to spread their terrible "gifts" to as many others as possible, designing dread plagues of mutation that seem to draw the planet closer, as if like called to like. The Sons of Malice are also sworn enemies of the Cult of the Raven, and the Nineteenth Legion in general, as Malice feels nothing but hatred for those responsible for its creation. This has led Corax to forbid his cultists from ever attempting to breed the Children's bloodlines together, lest another such threat to his own designs be created.

The power of the Living World has drawn a handful of Sorcerers (not all belonging to the Raven Guard, and not all of any human strand), to seek a way to bind the planet to their own will. They believe that there is a pattern to Malice's manifestations, as evidenced by the activities of the planet's cultists, and that uncovering it is the key to their dark ambitions. Even a group of Inquisitors has fallen victim to the empty promise of the Living World's power. Scattered across the galaxy, this cabal of Radicals believes that Malice can be turned into a weapon of incredible power in the eternal war against the Archenemy. But like all such attempts, this is doomed to fail as the Inquisitors succumb to the insanity of the Living World, whose countless minds are ever fighting against one another for supremacy.

While the abomination of Malice is the Raven Guard's most terrible creation (that we know of), it is far from being the only ancient evil born of their unholy practices. The deepest vaults of the Inquisition contain stories of the Crusade of Monsters, the Horror of Opis, the Ghoul King of Hannedra II, and countless others. Yet during all this time, not once has Corax himself left his lair in the Eye of Terror. According to captured prisoners, the Daemon Primarch is still torturing the lords of Kiavahr, endlessly killing and bringing them back from the dead by fell sorcery. But even the most skilled of his Apothecaries and sorcerers eventually fail to return the wretched creatures to "life", and their number has been dwindling over the course of millennia. This dread countdown to zero worries the Inquisition, who does not know what the Ravenlord will do after the last of his old tormentors is finally freed from its torment.

Even as the creature's blow sent him flying and crashing against the wall, Eisenhorn's keen instincts noted the marks that revealed its nature. The elongated fangs, the pale, drawn face, the aura around it that flickered with the touch of the Warp – the signs of the Ninth Legion, the Blood Angels. That was a new one. All manners of heretics had been drawn to Sancour over the last years, most of them without even knowing why. It only showed how important his work here was.
'Thorn wishes Talon,' he said, his psychic sending as weak as his voice. The monster before him cocked his head, puzzled at the words, trying to grasp their meaning. It distracted him just long enough.
The kinetic blast ripped the traitor Astartes apart, scattering him to fragments of equally warped flesh and armor. The tainted blood of the fallen angel covered the walls, but none of it touched Gregor. From behind where the traitor had stood, the cylindrical shape of Gideon's gravitic chair appeared.
When the first signs had manifested, they had thought Gideon had been infected with some trick of the enemies their calling made them fight. But then the nightmares had begun, and there had been no denying the truth. Gregor had been fighting against the agents of Ruin too long not to recognize the symptoms. His pupil had begged him to kill him – he had tried to do it himself, and to his horror, found that his hand refused to obey him when he commanded it to pull the trigger. But Gregor had lost too many friends already, and he had refused to lose one more to the machinations of the Archenemy. And so … the chair.
Sometimes, Gregor Eisenhorn wondered how he could ever have been so foolish. Ravenor, really ? How much more obvious could the Nineteenth get ? And still, he hadn't seen it until it had been almost too late. Gideon had been lucky, in a sense. The mark of the hateful raven affected his body, but his brain was untouched – the only reason he had had the dreams was because of his immense psychic potential. All Gregor had had to do was fake an accident, and ensure the silence of the doctors that had performed the actual operation. Now Gideon was little more than a brain, kept alive by the devices of his gravitic chair. He would never become an Inquisitor now – they had claimed it was because of his wounds, but the two of them both knew that it would be far, far too risky. The nightmares had stopped since the day of the operation, but there was no telling how long that would last. Allowing Gideon to live was already an act far too much stepped in radicalism to Gregor's liking – he would not risk having a Child of the Raven become an Inquisitor.
'Master', sent Gideon. 'Are you alright ?'
Gregor forced himself to his feet, suppressing a grunt as pain flared in his every articulation. It was becoming more and more difficult to ignore the damage old age, and a lifetime of service to the Emperor, had inflicted upon his body. But he had to go on. There was too much at stake – there always was.
'Yes,' he replied to the one he had once seen as his son and now only dared to consider a weapon. 'Let us move on.'
It didn't matter how much he had to sacrifice, what tools he had to use, how many agents his former friend Pontius sent after him on the Inquisition's orders. He would prevail. Any cost was worth preventing the plots of the ancient enemies from reaching fruition, to stop the nightmarish visions that haunted him from coming to pass.
No matter what, vowed Eisenhorn once more, the Yellow King would never be born.

Organization

Kayvaan Shrike, the Lastborn
Over the millennia, very few true Astartes have been inducted in the ranks of the Raven Guard – few enough, in fact, that the Imperium has been able to keep a relatively complete list. Kayvaan Shrike is one of them, and the most recently created pureblood son of Corax. He rose through the ranks quickly, and soon became the leader of his own warband. Other forces across the Eye soon learned to fear his name, for he was utterly ruthless in the pursuit of his goals – whatever those might be, for he is a silent figure as well. It is believed that he is gathering allies, weapons and other assets in preparation for some daring operation within the Imperium, but none of the fourteen Assassins sent after him have managed to kill him – in fact, nine of them were found on worlds of the Iron Cage, delivered at the doorstep of the Inquisition's headquarters by unseen hands. They were not dead, though the Inquisitors soon granted them mercy.
In battle, Shrike wields the Raven's Talons, a pair of lightning claws of which each blade contains a different bound daemon. Claimed to have been forged by Corax himself during the Heresy, these weapons whisper endlessly in his mind, granting him dark insight and slowly driving him mad at the same time. According to rumour, Shrike came into their possession while wandering on the Legion's homeworld. While following a vision of Corax, he came into one of the infernal, trap-filled labyrinths that dot the daemon world, and found the Talons inside.
The title of "Lastborn" was bestowed upon Shrike by a renowned Daemon Oracle in the Eye of Terror, and many Imperial seers have also received visions attributing it to him. What exactly it means seems clear – there will be no more purebloods after him. Yet nothing is ever so simple where the Warp is concerned, and the meteoric rise of Shrike has led many to fear that the title is a portent of something much more catastrophic than the long-drawn extinction of the Nineteenth Legion.

Since his exile into the Eye of Terror, Corvus Corax has become a bitter, distant and hate-filled creature that cares little for the lives of his pure-blooded sons and not at all for the numberless spawns of his tainted gene-line. While the Raven Guards still owe him fealty, the Legion has fractured in a myriad warbands, each led by an individual lord strong enough to keep his followers together. Warbands of the Nineteenth Legion are all based on the Legion's homeworld in the Eye of Terror, save for a few exiles and renegades. They all hold dominion over a Spire, one of the impossible towers of the Ravenlord's realm. Each such warlord has a group of purebloods at his side, his blood-brothers and trusted lieutenants. These purebloods are true Astartes, and it is believed that less than a thousand of them came with Corax in the Eye of Terror – how many survive now is likely unknown even to their Primarch. This elite circle rules over a far greater number of Spawn Marines, led by those of their number who succeeded the trial of reaching the Spire unaided after being born. It is estimated that the Spawn Marines outnumber the purebloods a hundred to one at the very least in most warbands, yet they are kept under control through a mixture of fear, gene-coded obedience, and sorcery.

Feuds between warlords are frequent, but things rarely escalate to the level where purebloods are fighting. It is far more common for the Spawn Marines and human servants of the rival warbands to slaughter each other until either a clear victor emerges, their masters reconcile, or they simply get bored and move on. However, time means little to the lords of the Raven Guard, and some of these feuds have lasted for thousands of years and be fought across the entire Eye of Terror, using Spawn Marines and Astartes from other Legions as pawns. One particular rivalry is said to have lasted for hundreds of thousands of years, thanks to the timeless nature of the Eye, and to have ended only when Corax himself turned his attention from his tortures for the first time in ages and commanded that this foolishness end. This rivalry, according to legends, had been started by a disagreement over the interpretation of one of the Primarch's orders during the Heresy.

Because these disaccords have little real consequences for the warlords who start them, the Nineteenth Legion is, ironically, plagued by far more intra-Legion conflict than the rest of the Traitor Legions. This has resulted in the Raven Guards having a dark reputation in the Eye as uncaring and cruel, and not to be trusted, for all outsiders are to them nothing but pawns in their own twisted, pointless games. That is in many ways true, but those Raven Guard warlords who are still focused on prosecuting the Long War find that this reputation makes things more difficult for them. In the Eye of Terror, where trust is in scarce supply, and paranoia and betrayal are ways of life, the sons of Corvus Corax are perhaps the most distrusted of all. Alliances with the Ravens are rare, and the few who have managed to gain a few allies from other Traitor Legions make sure to maintain these bonds, ironically being far more reliable than most other so-called allies in the Eye.

The Apothecaries of the Raven Guard
Of all the Traitor Legions, the Raven Guard is the one with the most respect for its Apothecaries. Unlike others, the members of this accursed group have kept the title they used during the Great Crusade, though their duties have extended far beyond the healing of their brothers and the preparation of the next generation. In fact, they have all but abandoned these last two activities, instead focusing on continuing the abominable work of their gene-father.
All Apothecaries of the Nineteenth Legion have the same distinctive appearance. They wear a cloak of grey material above their black armor – the nature of the material varies, from leather to Warp-created tissue – and their helmets, which they never take off, display a prominent beak akin to the masks worn by the plague doctors of Old Earth. Most of them carry at least one or two weapons, though only small ones, that do not bother them, like a pistol and a combat knife. Vials and surgical tools hang from this mantle, some of which can be used in battle to devastating effect. But it is not on the battlefield that an Apothecary of the Ravenlord is the most dangerous to the Imperium.
These wretched gene-smiths are responsible for the creation of new strains of Children, and most of them are constantly travelling the Imperium in stealth ships. They join up with lone cults or anti-Imperial rebellions, offering some of their knowledge in return for test subjects. Some experiment wildly, leaving dozens of twisted abominations to die in agony in their wake, while others work more slowly, selecting a subject with care and ensuring that he or she can propagate the tainted bloodline afterwards. They do not limit their work to the Imperium : sometimes, a Rogue Trader will find monstrous alien creatures wandering the ruins of human cities, only to later discover that these creatures bear traces of human DNA – an Apothecary of the Nineteenth Legion has marched upon this world before. Some Apothecaries, considered eccentric by their colleagues, are interested in alien biology, thinking that some inspiration can be found there for their own great work. They have captured specimens of every xenos race known to the Imperium and several which aren't, dissecting and vivisecting them to learn more about their differences from Mankind's own genetic pattern.
Few of these corrupted Apothecaries remain in the Eye of Terror, for the merging of Warp and reality make their experiments unstable : just because one of their creations is capable of life in the Eye does not mean that they can continue to exist outside of it. Still, it is where they keep their fortresses, where samples from all their work are preserved in stasis and they perform their more dangerous experiments – those not aiming to create anything but to extend the boundaries of their unholy knowledge. The rest of the Legion tends to avoid them, for even though they respect their work and profit from it immensely, even they find their driven brethren unsettling, their obsession for their work making them see anyone as ultimately expendable. Yet their services are still sought after, for the Apothecaries have access to many strange, seemingly impossible procedures. They can shatter the mind of any prisoner by playing with his brain, turn a rabble of human slaves into a host of mutated beasts, and even bring dead Astartes back from the dead, as long as they have a genetic sample from the subject and the help of a skilled Sorcerer. The fact that those who return from death in such a fashion are always distant, and refuse to speak of what they experienced between their demise and resurrection, does little to stop the Raven Guards from making arrangements to have such an operation performed on them should they die.

Combat Doctrine

The Shadow-walkers
There are those among the Raven Guard who embrace a different path to power than the rest of the Legion. They embrace the talents their Primarch displayed in his youth when trying to escape from his tormentors. Through a combination of innate sorcery, endless training and mental techniques, these Shadow-walkers, as they are called, are supreme infiltrators and assassins. Through the art of Wraith-slipping, they are capable of short-range teleportation, moving through the gaps in others' perceptions and entering into the Warp to emerge in another place instantly. Most of them have some mean of moving vertically, such as a jump-pack, psychic levitation, or wings grown from mutation. They favor melee weapons such as lightning claws and short blades, often coated in poison. All Shadow-walkers operate alone, and it is a rare warlord indeed who can manage to get more than one of these elusive agents under his command. Most often, they are only hired for a single operation, and finding and contacting them is the first part of the payment – the Shadow-walker will demand that his would-be master explain exactly how he found him. That can be quite a tale in itself, for while some Shadow-walkers remain on the Legion's homeworld in between "contracts", others wander the Eye of Terror and beyond, spying and killing with no reason but their own. Some warlords use sorcery, while others employ specifically bred genetic aberrations to track the spoor of their target across the very stars.
But the services of a Shadow-walker are generally considered worth such effort. There are no fortresses they cannot infiltrate, save perhaps for a handful of Inquisitorial keeps both secured against physical intrusions and warded from Warp manifestations. Most warlords ask the Shadow-walkers to kill a specific target, or to perform any other act of sabotage behind enemy lines. Sometimes, a battlefield will catch the Shadow-walker's eye, who will see it as an opportunity to sharpen his skills even further, and he will remain involved in the conflict long after his mission is over. In most cases, the Shadow-walker continues to act in favor of his former employer, out of whatever passes for brotherhood in the Nineteenth Legion – but not always. For some Shadow-walkers, the only way to truly test their skills is to pit them against others of their own Legion, especially those who have already shown their ability to find them.
Wraith-slipping is more dangerous than the Shadow-walkers like to pretend it is to their employers. Whenever they open a hole into reality, there is a chance that the things that dwell beyond will go through. Usually, a Shadow-walker has enough control to ensure this does not happen, but when he needs to make a quick escape, a tide of Neverborn might pour through, attacking his pursuers. In the eyes of the Shadow-walkers, this is merely another benefit, as it covers their escape in these rare occasions when they are caught.

Across the galaxy, dead worlds orbit silently around their stars, testaments to the power and reach of the Nineteenth Legion. When the Children of the Raven grow too numerous, or the pleas of Corax' deluded cultists become loud enough, a warlord of the Raven Guard will hear the call, relayed to him by the blood of the Daemon Primarch. Through deals with powerful daemonic entities from the deepest parts of the Warp, the Sorcerers of the Legion guide the warband's ships beyond the Eye of Terror. Thankfully for the integrity of the Iron Cage, these rituals only function if the destination is a world already touched by the Ravenlord. While the purebloods journey in Legion ships, the Spawn Marines and the bolter fodder are packed into reclaimed Space Hulks. These vessels are more than enough to crush a local defense fleet, wiping out all opposition to planetfall – which is when the true horror begins.

When the Raven Guard goes to war, monsters of many forms are roused from their slumber. The clans of gene-bred horrors that dwell in the bowels of their ships are driven out by squads of Spawn Marines and herded toward the enemy. Human cultists go under the knives of the Apothecaries, the survivors returning as stronger, tougher, and utterly insane masses of mutated flesh. Along these disposable troops come the Spawn Marines, who bring some manner of discipline and order to the first wave. Then, once battle is joined, the purebloods go to war themselves, striking at the weakest points of the enemy line.

Those who face such an onslaught are forced to confront visions from the blackest of nightmares. Only the bravest of Imperial Regiments can stand their ground before the spawn of the Ravenlord, and even they are expected to take considerable losses in order to even hold back the Chaos Marines. Adeptus Mechanicus forces fare better, thanks to their troops being almost entirely fearless, but even they are not immune to the madness that walks alongside the Raven Guard. Ever since the discovery of the dreadful Obliterator virus by a Forgefather of the Salamanders, the Raven Guards have attempted to use it for their own experimentations. It is frequent for their Apothecaries to carry samples of this Warp-born contagion of the machine and flesh on them, unleashing them upon the ranks of skitarii and observing the results.

While the Spawn Marines are inferior to true Astartes, their number and horrific appearance make up for that when facing mortal foes. The fear caused by their transhuman presence is only increased by the infernal nature of some of the creatures fighting at their side. The Sorcerers of the Nineteenth Legion are skilled daemonists, and the creatures they bring into the material plane are unlike any other Neverborn. These daemons are bound to the Legion on a primordial level, for they were created by its many atrocities. They were spawned by fear, horror, madness, and the obsession for bloodlines that afflicts almost every noble family in the Imperium, and is used by the Raven Guard to help propagate its hateful Children.

The ultimate goal of a Raven Guard invasion is to drag the entire planet into the Warp so that the population will either die horribly or be transformed into something the Apothecaries can use for their experiments. By releasing their pet monsters and performing depraved rituals, the sons of Corax thin the veil, ultimately breaking it completely in a cascade of sacrifices and daemon summoning. This process can take months, during which the Imperium can and must strike if it hopes to ever reclaim the planet.

But in the wake of a defeated Raven Guard raid, the only option is often to just kill every survivor of the local population. After all, there is no telling who could be infected with genetic corruption that will only reveal itself generations later. The Raven Guards adapted to this practice by capturing Imperial soldiers sent to fight them and arrange for them to "escape" once they have been turned into a Child of the Raven. This has, in turn, led to the systematic execution of any "escapee", regardless of how convincing their escape was. Again, the Apothecaries adapted, and now perform their operations on the very battlefield, leaving transformed soldiers who only look like they have been wounded, albeit gruesomely. Ultimately, after much debate, the Inquisition has decided to purge entire Regiments who have made contact with the Raven Guard if there was even a rumour than an Apothecary was present – thankfully, their distinct appearance makes confirming it quite simple. Only the highest personnel, the officers and support who never saw combat, are spared – and even then, only if the Inquisitor on site is feeling merciful. Many kill those as well, to prevent stories of the Raven Guard from spreading.

'My children,
By the time you read these words, I will be dead by my own hands. The coroner will have no trouble establishing the cause as suicide by bolt pistol. I leave behind this letter so that you know why I have been reduced to such a dramatic extremity, and what must be done if the horror I have brought upon our family is to be stopped from fulfilling all of its dread potential. Read this letter carefully, and then destroy it and never mention it again, for if its contents were to become known to the wrong kind of person, your lives would be in great danger.
In my youth, I served in the Imperial Guard, as is required of any scion of our noble line. For twenty years I fought in the name of the God-Emperor, until wounds taken in performing my duty made me unable to continue my military career and I was returned to our House ten years before the normal date. There was no dishonor in such a recall, however, for the injuries I had sustained were grave indeed … Or at least, that was the story everyone but me believed in.
The official reports say that I was captured and tortured by rebels who had rejected their local Governor's authority after his gross incompetence brought economic ruin to the planet. And truly, that was the enemy we believed to be fighting. But the truth was different. Oh, the Governor was incompetent, and his actions were doubtlessly responsible for the civil war that had required our intervention … But there was something more at play, and I found out when, as I laid in bindings in the rebels' stronghold, a terrifying giant clad in black, tainted armor came for me. This giant bore the mark of the raven upon his shoulder, and it was him, not the rebels, that broke my flesh in some horrible and blasphemous experiment.
For how long I remained in that dreadful chamber, I do not know. Time lost all meaning then, becoming a patchwork of agony and horror. Many times I prayed that death would take me at last and release me from my torment. But I was still alive when, at last, my comrades broke into the rebels' fortress and killed all of these vile traitors to the God-Emperor's will. When I later inspected the reports, I learned that no trace of my raven-marked tormentor had been seen – I fear he fled long before the battle was lost, abandoning his former allies to their fate, in order to continue his dread work elsewhere. The assault teams found me still bound to the operation table, surprised that I had survived. They thought my wounds to be the marks left by torture, and I, to my eternal shame, did not tell them the truth.
Cursed be my folly, and cursed be my cowardice. I should have denounced myself and embraced execution at my Commissar's hands – the records would have been edited to show my honorable death at the enemy's hands, of that I am sure. But I did not, and as a consequence, all of our bloodline is now tainted. You carry in you the same mark I bear, the heretical touch of this raven-cloaked horror. He placed a monster within me during these hateful nights on the operation table, infected me with some vile plague that has been festering inside of me for all my years since, slowly growing. In these last few months, I have been afflicted with violent impulses that are responsible for my recent distance toward you – I feared to hurt you, my beloved children. I have felt my flesh twist and my bones creak as the beast within attempts to reshape my body. I believe I have managed to resist it so far, but in truth, I am not certain.
In the fevered dreams and visions that come with the beast's rising influence, I can sense it in you as well as within me – slumbering, dormant, but present nonetheless, with all the dread inevitability of the stars themselves. In time, the beast will awake inside you just as it has in me – and then into your children. That is why I beg you to have no child of your own. Do not bring into this world another soul, only to inflict upon it the curse of our family. Let it die with you, that we might take some cold comfort in the knowledge we dragged this horror with us into the grave. Worry not for the shame that might bring to our name – Emperor knows my own sins have already tainted our lineage beyond any hope of redemption !
Even now I sense the beast growing inside me, tearing at the walls of my mind, trying to take over. I will not let this happen – I cannot let this happen. There is so much more I want to tell you, but there is no time, no time left at all. I love you with all of my heart that remains true and untouched by madness and corruption.
God-Emperor, give me strength. If my soul cannot be saved, then grant Your divine mercy onto my children, for they are innocent of my crime.
Give me strength.'
This letter was recovered next to a bolt pistol with a full clip, from the mansion of the [REDACTED] noble family in hive [REDACTED] by the Arbites squads sent after reports of terrible, animal screams. The whole family and their servants had been slaughtered by some unidentified beast, in a manner similar to previous killings in the rest of the hive. A few days later, the creature responsible was found and shot in the underhive – later analysis revealed that it shared some genetic sequences with the [REDACTED] family. The Arbites forensic analyst was recruited into the ranks of the Holy Ordos' servants, while all other files related to the affair were classified.
Inquisitorial report 2282-A-8964, Ordo Hereticus

Homeworld

"Here there be monsters."
Ancient Terran saying

If the daemon world the Raven Guard has claimed as its home within the Eye of Terror has a name, it is not one fit for mortal tongues to speak and mortal minds to know. Any attempts to scry it by Imperial psykers have resulted in hideous madness and death, if not outright possession and transformation into an abomination of twisted flesh. Even the Thousand Sons seers suffer when trying to do so, their minds rebelling at the terrible vistas they behold, and the Rubric is barely powerful enough to spare them degeneration, while they remember nothing of what they saw afterwards. All information comes from captured traitors, and is thus highly doubtful.

According to these accounts, the homeworld of the Nineteenth Legion is a place of shadows and nightmares, where impossibly high spires are inhabited by the Legion's purebloods, while the ground is covered with the Spawn Marines and the other abominations created by the dread experiments of the Ravenlord. All life is tainted by Corax' dark genius and saturated with the fell energies of the Warp. Huge, half-manifested daemons watch over the planet, hanging from the Spires above the Spawn Marines as they fight for their survival, feeding on their emotions and pain. In this state, only the psychically gifted than see them, which is a small mercy for the multitudes suffering below. Known to the Raven Guard as the Weregelds, these Neverborn are both as powerful as a Greater Daemon and nearly mindless, contenting themselves with feasting on the bounty provided by the daemon world. Sometimes, however, a Sorcerer of the Nineteenth Legion will bind one of them into service, bringing it across the stars to serve as a powerful, if somewhat unreliable weapon. Every Weregeld is unique in aspect, though they all share some common traits : their huge size, which goes from that of a Land Raider to the immensity of a Warlord Titan; a bloated belly reflecting the abundant sustenance provided by the daemonworld; and horrifying attributes that can drive common men insane in seconds.

Like all daemon worlds, the planet is shaped by the minds of those who dwell upon it – and like all homeworlds of the Traitor Legions, there is no mind stronger than that of the Daemon Primarch. Even after ten thousand years, Corax is still haunted by the nightmares of his youth, as are the Spawn Marines, whose very blood carries within it fragment of their gene-sire's memory. These two sources combine to influence the environment, creating cruel fortresses of cold metal filled with deadly traps and hunting silhouettes. Any who enter these places will feel the same hatred, fear and helplessness Corax felt in his youth on Kiavahr – but there are also great secrets and weapons hidden within, representing the hope of freedom and vengeance that drove the Ravenlord to continue his attempts to escape. Very few ever succeed in reaching them and escaping, but it is said among the ranks of the Nineteenth that those who do are favored by Corax himself.

During the Legion Wars, the Ravens' home was attacked several times by warbands who sought the glory of challenging an entire Legion, led by lords who believed such an act would earn them the favor of their gods. They made planetfall with ease, but within a few weeks, the traumatized survivors were captured – or rather, rescued – by the purebloods, saved from the madness and horror of the surface. With dark amusement, the purebloods returned the would-be conquerors to their ships and let them depart without further harm, to carry word across the Eye of how their den was impossible to conquer. These warriors – Traitor Marines all, used to life in the nightmare realm of the Eye – swore to never return, regardless of the treasures and glory that might be found there. That hasn't stopped others from trying, of course – if there is one thing that is never scarce in the Eye of Terror, it is glory-seeking fools. But none of the next invaders were rescued, nor did they find what they sought – and few escaped with their lives, let alone whatever passed for their sanity.

Another mind-bending trait of the Raven Guard's homeworld is the abhuman creatures known as the Lemures, which are native to this infernal land. They are small, starving humanoids, scraping food from the detritus of the Warp-polluted land. The Inquisition first learned from a rare prisoner – a Sorcerer of the Nineteenth Legion – that these pitiful wretches are the reincarnated souls of those who died at the hands of a scion of Corax, be it a pureblood, a Spawn Marine, or a Child of the Raven. The shades of the Ravenlord's victims are pulled into his nightmare realm and reborn from the twisted masses of mutated flesh that make up some of the landscape, to be preyed upon by all manners of horrors until they die, and are reborn again, over and over, until their soul is completely snuffed out as the last shred of their spirit is consumed. Strangely, according to the Sorcerer, those in service to Chaos are spared this fate, likely because their souls are consumed by their evil gods upon death.

Knowledge of the Lemures is one of the "truths" granted to the cultists of the Raven by the Dark Conduit, and it is something that the Inquisition suppress ferociously, as it is one of the most effective tools in converting others to the cult when the Raven Guards are in the process of invading a planet. Official Inquisitorial doctrine on the subject is that only the faithless and cowardly become Lemures, as the brave and faithful are protected by the God-Emperor and welcomed to His side in death. Still, members of the Ordos dedicated to fighting the Raven Guard will often be taunted by their quarry with the names of their fallen comrades and promises that they are suffering in the Eye of terror. But since no trace remains in the Lemures of who they were in life – except for the instinctual knowledge that once, they had a life outside the hell in which they now find themselves – this is likely just one more lie intended on breaking the spirit of the Emperor's agents.

Beliefs

'Ten thousand years ago, as the mortal realms count such things, our Legion found the truth. It was not a pleasant revelation, but a horrible one, yet we were strong, and we embraced it. We became that which the universe demands us to be, rather than being broken under the weights of divine expectation. Our father and lord, Corax, led us into this new age of dark illumination, forging us into the instruments of the Primordial Truth. We understand more of Chaos than any other Legion, even the Ultramarines who were chosen as its champions, or the Dark Angels who were the first to stumble upon the truth of the galaxy. The power of the Primordial Annihilator flows through our blood, elevating those worthy and turning the rest into beasts, fit only to serve their betters.
That is as it should be – as it must be. Only by accepting the truth and abandoning the foolish, naive ideals that so much of Mankind still clings to can the species survive, let alone ascend into what we are destined to become. The Imperium struggles and screams against the truth, refusing to hear it like a petulant child. That is why it must and shall be destroyed, and its False Emperor – the greatest deceiver of all – cast down from the Golden Throne, that his lies might be silenced forever.
We of the Raven Guard are the heralds of that which will come then, once the empty light of the Astronomican has fallen dark and the Dark Gods are triumphant. The Spawns are nothing but our tools, to be used and discarded as we drag our species kicking and screaming into the truth. The Children of our father are but a prologue, tests of the myriad paths Mankind shall walk in glory once its chains have been broken.
And Corax … Truthfully, I do not know what our glorious Primarch is anymore. That peculiar truth is beyond even my understanding, for he stands as high above me in the eyes of Chaos that I do to the cultists who do my bidding on a hundred worlds. His power is beyond reckoning, yet he spends all of his time in his tower, indulging in the leftover hatreds of an existence he should, by all rights, have long left behind. Every time I catch a glimpse of his form, it is slightly different, as if his ascension during the Heresy was merely the beginning of his transformation. Perhaps that is why he remains in his tower, alone but for the screams of his enemies. Perhaps he awaits the day his ascension is finally complete. If that is the case, then I hope with all my soul that I shall live long enough to witness his final and terrible glory, when he emerges from his reclusion to bring about the end of the Imperium and the new Age of Chaos.'
From the writings of a Raven Guard warlord, recovered on his ship during a boarding operation by the Alpha Legion

Unlike the Salamanders, who believe that they are not servants of Chaos but masters of their own destinies united under the godly power of Vulkan, the Raven Guards are fully aware of their nature as agents of the Archenemy. They do not, however, pay homage to any of the four Dark Gods, seeing them as mere fragments of a greater whole – Chaos Undivided, the Primordial Truth, and a thousand other names for the ravenous madness that infests the Sea of Souls. Nor do they offer prayers or ritual sacrifices – they make their devotion known through their actions, each of which feeds the ruinous cancer that we call Chaos.

The dread revelation the Legion experienced during the Heresy still shapes their beliefs to this day. To the sons of Corax, the civilization embraced by the Imperium is nothing but a lie. The universe is a cruel and unfair place, one in which there are only preys and predators. The Chaos Gods are the only divine powers, and they feast on torment – therefore, the only way not to be the one suffering is to make sure others suffer in your stead. Many see the Spawn Marines, whose existence begins and end in confused suffering, as a Legion-wide way of doing this, ensuring that the purebloods reap nothing but the blessings of the Ruinous Powers.

The Legion's spirit can be broadly divided in two categories. First are those consumed by bitterness and the thirst for vengeance – against the Emperor, against their own enemies, against the universe itself for making them as they are. They believe in the Primordial Truth but hate it at the same time, yet also know that there can be no escape from their service to its dark designs. Their hatred of the Imperium, their desire to make the entire galaxy suffer, is the only thing that keeps them going over the centuries.

Others, however, revel in their nature, embracing the false revelation discovered during the Heresy fully. They are the priests of Ruin, and count in their ranks almost every Apothecary of the Legion. In their eyes, the horrors created by the Legion are a higher form of existence, one toward which they are destined to guide Mankind. To them, it is the Raven Guard's divine mandate to not just tear down the Imperium, but also replace it with galaxy-wide anarchy, a fusion of the Warp and the flesh that, according to their demented philosophy, will allow the species to ascend and survive and thrive in the universe.

However, just because the Raven Guards do not serve any of the Dark Gods in particular does not mean that they play no part in the Great Game of Chaos. To the contrary, they are considered enemies by the servants of all four Ruinous Powers, despite technically serving all of them through their deeds. While this may be simply attributed to the self-destructive nature of Chaos, the reason for it is more complex. The simple answer, and the one believed by most of those who study these matters, is that the Dark Gods are selfish beings and hate each other. The very notion of them all being mere fragments of the same entity is abhorrent to them – hence them driving their servants to destroy the Nineteenth Legion.

Yet that is just a comforting story, a tale men tell themselves to prevent their sanity from being destroyed by the Primordial Truth. Ironically, the very motivation that pushes scholars of the forbidden to embrace this lie is the same one that pushes the Lost and the Damned to rise against the Raven Guard. For the sons of Corax are saying the truth when they claim that the Dark Gods are naught but pieces of the Primordial Annihilator, aspects of the same baleful light, separated by the prism of mortal psyches. The teeming ranks of the Lost and the Damned have deluded themselves into believing that the Dark Gods are some sort of higher power, unknowable entities of infinite power which hold the entire universe in the palm of their hand, and move everything according to their unfathomable designs. The idea that they are following the will of a god grants them some solace, even as they degrade themselves by committing acts of unspeakable evil – they can justify it all to themselves with the lie that it is merely the will of their god.

"Do you know what the Gods are ? Us. They are us, the living and the dead and those yet to be born. The truth is, there is nothing in this galaxy but us. Deny it however you want. Cry out and weep and call out for our destruction so that our voice will be silenced. It won't change the truth. Did Guilliman know it too ? Who can say ? I know the Black Dragon is aware of it at least. That's the real reason he remains sleeping on his treasure, you see ? He has seen the truth, but refused to accept it. He still thinks order can be imposed upon this galaxy. But he is wrong. And one day, he will realize it – or he will be taken off the board, another obstacle removed from the one Path to Glory ..."
Unidentified Raven Guard Sorcerer

But the Raven Guards know the truth : that the Dark Gods of Chaos are nothing but psychic reflections cast into the Warp by the collective soul of Mankind and that of the countless other species that have ever lived in the galaxy. That knowledge is too much for the fallen souls enthralled to Ruin to bear, and so they denounce the Raven Guards as heretics and blasphemers – and because they do so, the gods they believe to be real do so as well. Only a few of the strongest and wisest Chaos Lords know that the Raven Guards are right and can forge alliances with them – and unfortunately for the Imperium, these are the most dangerous of heretics.

The Ravenites
It is one of the greatest dangers of the Ordos' noble calling that, by being exposed to the lies and corruption of the many enemies of Man, Inquisitors risk falling under their thrall. Nowhere is this more obvious than in these brave Inquisitors who dedicate themselves to opposing the corrupting touch of the Nineteenth Legion across the Imperium. Even though those who already bear this burden are very careful in choosing their apprentices and successors, this group loses more Inquisitors to madness and suicide than any other faction. Yet worse still is the fate of the Ravenites, who do not just lose their mind after learning the horrible truth at the core of the Raven Guard's belief – that the Dark Gods are born of Mankind's collective soul. The Ravenites are those who also lose their faith in the God-Emperor, in the Imperium – in pretty much anything, really.
Whether by exposition to the horrors committed by the Raven Guard, by reading too much of their foul writings, or by being haunted by the visions sent by the Living World, the Ravenites are broken beings, but are none less dangerous for it. Some Inquisitors share the affliction of the Ravenites without having ever been exposed to the touch of the Raven Guard. By witnessing the horrors of the Warp too many times, they too lose faith in the very possibility of Mankind's survival against the forces arrayed against it. They are still considered Ravenites, as the name has become synonymous with heresy and betrayal born of despair.
A common feature among Ravenites is that they are blind, having ripped their own eyes out during their fall into hopelessness-induced insanity. Afterwards, they eschew the use of augmetics or any form of replacement for their eyes, choosing to never see anymore of the universe that they believe to be so vile and corrupt. Believing that the downfall of the Imperium is inevitable and the damnation of Mankind already a fight, the Ravenites act to hasten the destruction of the Imperium. Their only hope, tenuous and bitter as it might be, is to make things easier on the human species by accelerating the process so that less suffering is caused. To that end, they will work alongside any manner of threat to Mankind, though it is most often the servants of Ruin they ally themselves with. Already damned beyond redemption, the Ravenites abuse their authority as Inquisitors for as long as they can, and wield the tools of the worst Radical – criminals, mutants, xenos and daemonhosts. Entire Sectors might burn in the fire started by a cabal of Ravenites acting in concert with a broad array of cults – their very lack of self-interest makes them excellent leaders for such unstable gatherings.
While all Inquisitors are dangerous foes once engaged in direct battle, Ravenites are nightmares in their own right, the kind of things Interrogators are taught to fear and destroy at any cost. Their knowledge of the Warp makes them powerful sorcerers, and the beliefs that have twisted them also turn them into spiritual magnets for the worst kind of attention from the Sea of Souls. While outwardly, they appear identical to what they looked like before their fall – save for their missing eyes – their body is more often than not rife with inner corruption. More often than not, an Inquisitor has thought to have put down one of his fallen brothers or sisters, only for the "corpse" to twist itself into a new, terrifying form, still incorporating one aspect of the Ravenite, begging for the mercy of death even as it attacks everything nearby.

Recruitment and Geneseed

It can be argued that the gene-seed of the Raven Guard is the most tainted out of all the Traitor Legions. The putrescence of the Iron Hands, the wild mutations of the Dark Angels, the ravenous thirst of the Blood Angels – all these can be studied, understood, and more importantly, fought. But merely studying the gene-seed of the Nineteenth Legion is enough to drive magos and scholars mad. What the Ravenlord did during the Heresy has cursed his entire bloodline, and those who try to understand the details of this affliction end up ranting about the impossible things and nameless horrors they caught a glimpse of. Even something as mundane as a blood sample can turn a respected geneticist into a lunatic who willingly injects himself with the blood and turns into a daemonhost or some other, even stranger abomination. The Spawn Marines, descendants of the cloned Astartes of the Great Crusade, are those who bear the mark of this corruption most openly.

The Spawn Marines
Much has changed since the first time Corvus Corax used his knowledge of genetic lore to dramatically increase the size of his Legion. Once, the Spawn Marines, as they are derisively called by both other Chaos Marines and the loyal servants of the Emperor, were created in sterile pods, cloned from the combined DNA of those most compatible with the gene-seed of the Nineteenth Legion. Regardless of the supposed efficiency of this earlier incarnation of the Spawn Marines, however, things are much different now.
Now, on the nameless daemon world that is the Legion's home, the Spawn Marines are created in gigantic gene-mills and daemonic incubators buried beneath the ground. When they reach maturity, they are expulsed onto the surface in a grotesque and macabre parody of childbirth, and left to fend for themselves. Alone or in packs, they must master their innate abilities and understand what they are from fractured genetic memories and the writings left by those who came before them, equally confused. After the initial shock passes, they are driven by instinct to reach one of the Spires, crossing the plains of the daemon world and facing its many, many dangers. Should they succeed, they are welcomed into the warband of the lord of the Spire and granted a true power armor and weapon. While still seen as inferior to the purebloods, the strength and resourcefulness shown in reaching the Spire marks them as above the rest of the Spawn Marines, who are harvested in mass from the plains to serve as cannon fodder. Called the Primes by the Legion, they act as leaders for their weaker brethren, guiding them into battle and caring for them outside of battle. The Primes are the only ones to have proper weapons and armor : the rest of the Spawn Marines must make do with what they scavenged or constructed during their stay on the planet, plus piles of stolen or broken equipment tossed to them by their masters. Some Primes manage to get proper wargear for their kindred, either by begging, buying, or outright stealing it.
Unlike the replicae Legionaries created by Corax during the Great Crusade, the Spawn Marines are all twisted by random, rampant mutation. Only those stable and strong enough to survive ever make it off the Legion's homeworld, but even they display signs of deep genetic corruption. But such a thing is hardly uncommon among the Lost and the Damned. What truly sets the Spawn Marines apart is that their mutations are constantly changing : fanged mouths form on their flesh, blood-red eyes appear on their skin, their organs twist and reconfigure even as they are cut open, and their brains are on fire with dying and resurrecting nerve endings. And yet despite the constant agony of their existence, they still cling to their identity, preventing their degeneration into a true Chaos Spawn with nothing but willpower and the dark blessings of their gene-father.
Despite their incredible mutations, no Spawn Marine ever encountered by the Imperium has displayed any true psychic ability. For several centuries, this lack has remained a mystery to the Imperium, with many believing that this was deliberate, to prevent the cloned slaves of the Legion from growing too strong and rebelling against their cruel overlords. While that may yet be true, it is not because of any willing sabotage of the creation process, but the consequence of the nature of the world on which the Spawn Marines are born. Whenever a Spawn Marine develops psychic abilities, it is a slow process, with a full awakening taking many weeks. By the time the psychic Spawn gets his sixth sense, he will already have been nearly driven mad by the horror of his own existence and the world around him. Then, he will become able to see the Weregelds. None of them ever survive this sight, for they are driven to utter despair at the realization that these strange, god-like creatures have been watching them all along, feeding on their suffering, never moving to help them in their nightmarish existences. Driven mad by this revelation, they either take their own life or end up destroying themselves with their uncontrolled psychic powers.
The examination of slain Spawn's bodies over the course of millennia has revealed that they are degenerating over time, with every generation of Spawn Marines suffering from more frequent and grave mutations than the one before it. Ten thousand years ago, with the help of Fabius Bile, the Raven Guard's Apothecaries managed to fix the scientific issues behind the great incubators, but this is due to something else. The Inquisition's theory – which, due to the impossibility of genuinely studying the gene-seed of the Nineteenth rather than just taking corpses apart, cannot be proven – is that the spiritual corruption of Corax' bloodline is slowly overcoming the safeguards put up by the Primogenitor. Someday, according to this theory, these safeguards will completely collapse, and the world of the Ravenlord will be overrun by the true fruits of his heresy.

But even the so-called "purebloods" of the Raven Guard are tainted by the evil they have allowed into their souls, and their bodies reflect this corruption. The extensive modifications of their gene-seed have caused two of the Astartes organs to cease functioning : the Raven Guards cannot spit acid, their Betcher's gland having atrophied, nor do they display the resilience to the void granted to other Legions. Their eyes are black, and to merely peer into them is to be exposed to the madness of the Warp. Their skin is of a deathly pallor on which dark veins are clearly visible. Around them, shadows are darker, sources of light seem feeble and fleeting, and all mortals feel a sense of otherworldly oppression and dread. All of them are also psykers on some degree, though only a handful are capable of harnessing the full power of their abilities and become true Sorcerers. The rest use their abilities subconsciously, sharpening their senses and reflexes, or gaining unnatural insight and resilience.

There are other, subtler effects as well to this corruption. Things from the deepest parts of the Empyrean cling to their souls, whispering to their minds of the horrors of aeons past and of the nightmares yet to be made real. These creatures, called the Unkind by the Raven Guard, are clearly of the Warp, but they are more than simple daemons born of the fears and hatreds of the galaxy's inhabitants – though none, not even the Thousand Sons or the Eldar Warlocks, know their true nature for certain. As a result of this haunting, all purebloods are anathema to psykers, their presence driving them to terrified insanity. Furthermore, when a pureblood dies, unless it was in a manner that completely destroyed the body, his corpse will burst to pieces as these Neverborn transform it into a gateway through which they pour into reality. The more powerful the dead pureblood was, the more daemons followed him in life, and so the more horrors will be let loose by his demise. In the case of those Raven Guards who were brought back from death by the Legion's Apothecaries, the effect is even more pronounced.

Surprisingly, the purebloods display little in the way of "unique" mutations, though the intensity of those previously described increase as the individual's prestige in the eyes of the Ruinous Powers grows. The Warp, after all, reshapes its slaves so that their sins are visible on the outside – and all Raven Guards bear the weight of their dread father's transgressions, far too great to be surpassed by any deed of their own. Only those few Raven Guards who have fallen to the service of a singular Chaos God and turned their back on the Chaos Undivided served by their Legion are exceptions to this, their flesh branded with the mark of their unholy patron. Even then, the "gifts" they receive from their dark master are often mere adaptations of their gene-line's distinctive traits, variations carrying the touch of the Dark God.

Over the millennia, very few pure-blooded Raven Guard Astartes have been created. The resources for such creation are very rare in the Nineteenth Legion, but these few "true sons" of Corax have always proved exceptionally dangerous. Each of them was chosen very carefully, with thousands of candidates considered and cast away – often lethally so. Entire worlds have been transformed into testing grounds by the lords of the Raven Guard in order to produce a single worthy scion of Corax' gene-line. However, no more have been created in centuries, leading some to believe that the means to do so have been lost – that the gene-seed of Corax is too deeply corrupted for implantation to succeed in any normal, non-cloned human. Others think that the Legion's stock of viable organs has been lost, to negligence, conspiracy, or theft – pointing at the Black Legion of Fabius Bile as the most likely suspect. If either of these theories were to be true, then the Raven Guard Legion is on a countdown to ruin, as each of the purebloods that die cannot be replaced – and once there are only the Spawn Marines left, the Nineteenth will be far less dangerous than it is today. Even so, purebloods are extremely hard to kill, and only growing more so as fewer remain. It could take millenia for the Traitor Legion to finally die out that way – far, far longer than the Inquisition would like, and far too long to plan anything worthwhile on the possibility.

Warcry

The Raven Guard purebloods revel in their power on the battlefield, and once they have emerged from the shadows and revealed themselves to the foe, they do not hesitate to shout their battle-cries. These vary greatly, from the promise of a quick death for those who surrender to terrible descriptions of the atrocities that await those who resist. When facing true military forces, such as the Imperial Guard or other Space Marine Legions, they use more classic battle-cries, such as "No mercy !", "Triumph or Death !", "You shall suffer as we have !" and "Inside, we are the same !".

As for the Spawn Marines, they are often made unable to speak properly by their mutations. They scream their hatred and pain at the foe in an undulating sound that is extremely unnerving to hear – even to Astartes. It is as if there is something expressed in those screams that is utterly inimical to Humanity, regardless of the genetic enhancements of the listener. But unlike the chants of the Ultramarines, there is no actual corruption at work – Imperial soldiers have been examined thoroughly by the Inquisition after exposure to confirm this. This is merely instinctual revulsion, another sign of the unholy corruption that has seeped into the gene-seed of the Nineteenth Legion.

The old spell struggled one last time, trying to catch the pitiful piece of the tech-lord's soul that remained. This time, unlike all the previous ones, it did not succeed, and the wretched shade vanished into oblivion. The mass of cancerous flesh in which Corax' claws were gouging huge, bloody rents, went still. A sound very much like a sigh of relief left its many mouths, and at long last, it was dead. The last of the Primarch's ancient tormentors, gone forever, beyond even his reach.
For a moment, the dark silhouette of the Ravenlord stayed utterly still, his mind drawing a blank for the first time in millennia. His vengeance was complete. Those who had hurt him so much were gone, and they had paid for his suffering a million times and more. What was he to do now ? What remained for him to accomplish ?
The answer came quickly. He was wrong. There was still someone out there who had hurt him, someone who had looked down at him and seen only a tool for his own ambitions. His father still sat upon the Golden Throne. Even now, Corax could feel the baleful light of the Astronomican burning through the Sea of Souls, no matter how far away it was. Growing weaker with every year passing in the material universe, yes, but shining nonetheless, proof that the old monster still clung to existence. And that was not all. The empire of lies still stood, against all odds. He had been away too long. Now at long, last, with the last of the shackles of his past removed, it was time for him to assume the role that he had claimed for himself in the fire that had started it all. Herald of the Primordial Annihilator, bringer of the One Truth to the galaxy. Time to rewrite reality so that Mankind could assume its proper place in the universe ...
Time to return to the war. Time to leave his tower, and lead the fight against the False Emperor once again. His mind shifted gears, effortlessly realigning with mental pathways of conquest and war that he hadn't walked for so long. He looked outward with his god-like senses, searching for his children, seeking their marks upon the galaxy. They were everywhere, bringing ruin upon the Imperium from within and without. For so long they had carried on his will across the galaxy, even as he lost himself in the pursuit of a revenge that, now that it was complete, seemed so petty and insignificant to him. They had done well – the galaxy bled from a thousand wounds where the deceit that mortals called reality was being pulled apart.
But there was one particular place that was special, where one of the greatest of his true sons was leading a war that could tip the balance. A war that was being waged for the future of a Legion – his own, or that of his slumbering, foolish brother of iron. A name echoed in his mind as he looked upon the hosts gathered upon the surface of the deserted world, laying siege to a mighty fortress : Hydra Cordatus.
Black wings closed around the Ravenlord, and then he was gone, walking the paths of the Sea of Souls. His will reached out to the Sorcerers gathered among the host, warning them of his coming and commanding them to prepare the way. They would obey, of course – he could taste their surprise, their terror, and then their joy at his return. The circles would be drawn, the rituals performed, the sacrifices made. The leader of the army – Kayvaan the Lastborn, heir to his blood and cunning – would kneel before him, and together they would bring about the first sign of the cosmic alignment.
Outside, the dozens of Weregelds that clung to the Primarch's tower, the Ravenspire, twitched awake. Insect-like limbs stretched, sending the lesser Neverborn roosting in their angles tumbling down, and thousands of eyes lazily opened. Bloated bellies grumbled with the first pangs of an inhuman hunger that, for the last age, had been sustained by the torments of the nine prisoners within the tower. The creatures turned their attention outward, truly seeing the world around them for the first time since the mind of the Ravenlord had created them, shards of hatred and primordial hunger falling off a soul that crumbled as it became something more. And they saw the skies above, purple with the light of the Eye, shining with all the torment born of the Fall.
So much pain, so much suffering. So much sadness and horror. Entire worlds crushed under the weight of life-long despair. Graveyards filled with billions of soldiers sacrificed over the course of generations, their sacrifice meaningless in the grand scheme of things. And there was more beyond it, an entire galaxy of torment to devour. The light of trillions of souls called to them with the promise of a feast such as had never existed before.
The first of the Weregelds screamed. The unsound shattered reality, and the creature tumbled through the gap, followed by others of its kin. More picked up the scream, and tears in space opened all around the Ravenlord's tower. Some followed the trace of their father, but most fell helplessly, drawn to concentrations of pain like maggots to a rotting carcass.
They were hungry, so hungry. And they would find their sustenance wherever the gaps led them to.

Chapter Text

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Welcome to the fight, friend.

If you read these words, then you have proven yourself an ally to the Alpha Legion, worthy of accessing this most sacred archive of our past and secrets.

So many rumors and lies are spread about the Twentieth Legion – most of those started by ourselves – that it can be difficult, even to us, to distinguish where the legend ends and the reality begins.

This is the purpose of this archive : to recount the true tale of the Alpha Legion, that we might never lose sight of who we really are, and what our purpose is.

Every word on these pages is true.

Index Astartes – Alpha Legion : The Faithful and the True

From the shadows they come, the sons of the Hydra, heirs to the cunning and wisdom of not one, but two Primarchs. Though the fate of their twin sires is unknown even to them, the Eyes of the Emperor are ever vigilant in their long war against the enemies of Mankind. Masters of infiltration and strategy on the galactic scale, they scheme the downfall of all who would threaten the Imperium. Theirs is the way of the informant, the hidden blade – but make no mistake, they are warriors still, and when comes the time to reveal themselves, they do so with all the strength of the Astartes Legions. They might cloak themselves in lies, but their hearts are true to the will of the Master of Mankind. They care nothing that their deeds go unnoticed and unremembered – to them, duty is its own reward, and glory an illusion sought only by fools. Far from the eyes of the wider Imperium, they work tirelessly in the shadows, enacting the Emperor's great plan across the millennia. Even to their cousins, they are little more than legends, yet the emblem of the Hydra is known throughout the entire galaxy. To the servants of the Imperium, it is a symbol of hope, loyalty, and unyielding purpose – and to its foes, a source of endless doubt and paranoia …

Origins : The Duality of War

The legend of the Primarchs is known throughout the Imperium, yet what most servants of the Emperor hold to be true is a sanitized version of reality. For instance, the common citizenry of entire worlds does not know of the Traitor Primarchs, time-shrouded myths referring only to the nine loyal sons of the Emperor and the nameless spawn of darkness against which they battled. Even among those who know of the Traitor Astartes and their foul progenitors, it is believed that there were eighteen sons of the Master of Mankind. Such mystery has come about as a result of both the inevitable decay of archives that come with the passing of ten thousand years, and the Inquisition's efforts to suppress the truth of Chaos lest the Imperium burn in its flames. Even among the Inquisition, only those with access to the most complete record know of the Second and Eleventh Primarchs, whose fate is unknown to all by edict of the Emperor Himself. Twenty, then, appears to be the number of Primarchs who were created in the Emperor's gene-vaults on Terra. Yet such was not the case, for there were twenty-one.

One of the greatest and most well-guarded secrets of the Imperium is that the Primarch of the Twentieth Legion was actually a couple of twin brothers : Alpharius and Omegon, named from the words used for "beginning" and "end" in a long-dead language of Old Earth. The divine essence of the Emperor that was bestowed upon the Alpha Legion's Primarch was somehow separated into two vessels, though whether that was by accident or design is unknown. The Emperor made sure that this was known to no-one, even among His own research staff, using His psychic powers to alter the perceptions of all those who worked on the twentieth life-pod. Already the Master of Mankind could see the potential advantage this duality would bring to the Legion that was to be forged in the twin Primarchs' image.

But before that potential could be realized, the Dark Gods made their move to destroy the Emperor's dream, and the Primarchs were stolen and scattered across the galaxy. All of them landed on worlds that had been colonized by Mankind in ages past – all of them, except for Alpharius and Omegon. The two Primarchs were separated by the raging madness of the Warp, their life-pod torn to shreds. The two halves each manifested aboard a ship belonging to one of the many factions that had formed with the coming of the Age of Strife and the collapse of Mankind's first attempt at a galactic dominion.

While the exact location of the two Primarchs' arrival has long since been lost with their own disappearance into the mists of history, it is known that they appeared in the fringes of the galaxy, where the stars are few and shine upon the ruins of many ancient xenos empires. We now know this region of space as the Halo Stars, where only the bold and the insane dare to go. Already at that time, this was a place most hostile to human life – for the passing of ten thousand years means little to these age-old ruins and their hidden hazards. Yet still a sizeable human presence endured, though its people had wisely chosen not to live upon the worlds and instead aboard massive migrant fleets, each thousands of ships strong and bound together by a circle of captains and representatives.

It is believed that these fleets first came to the Halo Stars as explorers, but were trapped there when the Age of Strife began and Warp travel became all but impossible, cutting them off from their homeworlds. Using the resources and technology they had brought, the exploring fleets managed to survive and even thrive, growing in size considerably. Yet the resources of the Halo Stars were scarce, and soon conflict had arisen between the different fleets – conflicts that were further aggravated by the baleful influence of some of the xenos artefacts that found their way aboard the human ships.

By the time of the Primarchs' arrival, what had begun as disputes over mining rights had devolved into near-genocidal hatred, with all but the two fleets among which the Primarchs appeared exterminated or absorbed into their own ranks. The one where Alpharius was found was called the Coalition, while the one where Omegon lived called itself the Federation – or perhaps it was the opposite, records are unclear.

These two fleets, which counted millions of souls and were more akin to nations unto themselves than fleets, were divided by the most bitter of hates, though none living remembered its root. Whenever ships of opposing factions met, they fought, and no prisoners were ever taken. Both sides had demonized the other to the point that speaking against the ongoing conflict was considered treason, and ground for summary execution. And yet, as the story of Alpharius and Omegon would prove, the two sides of this conflict were, in truth, all but identical.

The first crewmen who found the two Primarchs were terrified of their sudden appearance – both vessels had been in Warp transit at the time, and the crew knew well the horrors that tended to appear while journeying through the Sea of Souls. Fortunately, the young Primarchs were only babies at that point, and not even these hardened void-sailors could bear to slay sleeping children. Instead, they adopted the newborn into their ranks. Each of the groups of discoverers told their superiors that they had found the baby in the depths of the ship, doubtlessly abandoned there by some uncaring parent. The Primarchs were devoid of any of the genetic deviancies that had begun to plague the void-men over their generations of travel, and so each of them was seen as a blessing and symbol of good luck.

Alone, each of the two Primarchs grew quickly in stature, from baby to child, from child to boy, and then from boy to man. They learned all there was to know about void travel, the ancient mechanisms of the fleet's ships, and even some of the secrets of the Warp itself, taught to them by the master navigators. Those were not the genetically mutated Navigators of Terra, but iron-willed men and women who interpreted the streams of the Sea of Soul with nothing but measuring instruments, centuries of trial and error, and intuition. Soon, they had surpassed those teachers, displaying an affinity for every facet of knowledge they were exposed to.

It only took a few years for the two prodigy children to reach adulthood, and they rose quickly through the hierarchy of their adoptive people. Each was given captaincy of a small explorer ship, tasked with scouting ahead of the main fleet to search for resources. Such a responsibility was one of the most important of both the Coalition and the Federation, and explorers were given considerable leeway in how they performed their duties. It was unheard of for the office to be given to someone so young, but the two had proved their strength and intelligence many times, and the few who dared to raise their voice to question it were quickly silenced by a quick interview with the Primarch in their fleet.

For almost an entire solar year, Alpharius and Omegon fulfilled their duty, each discovering new resources with near-mystical precision. To their crew, it seemed that the captains already knew where they were going, not exploring but instead following some path they had known all of their lives. Ultimately, the two expedition fleets converged on the same planet, as if drawn to it by the currents of the Sea of Souls. They emerged from Warp-transit at nearly the exact same time, and as soon as they detected one another, the battle began.

The two captains were no stranger to void battle, having learned from the best and put those lessons into practice against the automated defenses of lost alien civilizations and outriders from the other fleet. But as they guided their ships into the engagement, for the first time in their life, Alpharius and Omegon met their match in one another. Every manoeuvre was countered, every stratagem seen through. The two flotillas bled one another, until at last the Primarchs were forced to land onto the system's single planet with what forces remained at their disposal, leaving behind the burning husks of their ships.

Once, uncounted millions of years ago, the world had been the realm of some long-dead xenos species. None remain who know of their fate, save perhaps the scholars who dwell in the Black Library of the Eldar. But Alpharius and Omegon came to their grave, driven by a conflict neither of them truly understood. And they marshalled the thousands of soldiers and crewmen who had survived the descent along with them, and made war upon one another, amidst the bones of a fallen empire. Yet just as in the void, the two Primarchs were evenly matched on the ground. Ambushes and feints were predicted and countered, and again and again the two armies met, clashed, and disengaged without any true gain being made by either side.

And as blood was spilled on the ancient stones, ancient things, buried deep beneath the surface of the dead world, were roused to awakening. The fear, suffering and death that always come with war fed the power of the Warp, and in turn, the Warp fed the old mechanisms left behind by the planet's previous masters.

The ground trembled, and then erupted. Spindly limbs of crimson material emerged, followed by segmented bodies, each implanted with a crystal that pulsated with malevolent light. The monsters came in from all over the battlefield, and what had been another careful strike degenerated into utter confusion and mayhem as both sides found themselves attacked by a third party.
The young giant saw one of his men caught by a monster's claws and torn apart, and it seemed that something passed from his corpse and into its killer, and suddenly the monster was faster than ever. He roared in anger and jumped toward the artificial beast, and his spear tore through its core and crashed point first into the crystal. Through the shaft, he felt something crack, and was suddenly thrown into the air by an explosion of multicoloured light that burned his eyes, even through the lenses of his helmet. He managed to roll back to his feet, and saw that the blades of his spear were now glowing with a different kind of light – one that was also uncomfortable to look at, but seemed different somehow, like something important, vital even, had been taken from it, and replaced by something beyond the ken of humans. Cracks ran along the double-bladed weapon, glowing with a pale, cold light. He swung the relic weapon around, and found that despite the apparent damage, its weight was still the same as the day he had picked it up among the ruins of another world, at the beginning of his captaincy. He would need to investigate this later …
And then, he saw him, and his train of thought came to a crashing halt, his body continuing to move and avoid the blows of another construct solely thanks to his supernatural instincts. Among those he had been trying to kill minutes ago, there was now a warrior standing head and shoulders above the rest of the Coalition's men, wielding a sword and pistol that had clearly been manufactured especially for his oversized hands. In that moment, he knew that the other had seen him too, and that the same thoughts were coursing through their minds.
It was like looking in a mirror. Recognition blossomed amidst the madness of the battle, and when their eyes finally tore from one another to look at their surroundings again, they found their perspective greatly changed.
Neither of them could see the differences between their men anymore, not when faced with the abominations emerging from the ground. They were, all of them, humans. The emblems of the Federation and Coalition were nothing compared to that.
Together, then, thought the giant. In his hand, the spear seemed to react to the thought, and as he returned to the melee, a terrifying howl rose from the alien weapon, one that made the humans on the battlefield recoil – and the constructs stop in their tracks, before swirling in his direction.
'For Mankind !' he shouted.
'For Mankind !' replied the other giant, who ran toward him, blocking a blow from another creature that would have severed his head.
'For Mankind !' came the cry again, from one man, then ten, then a hundred, then a thousand, then from the whole armies, as they stood back to back against the constructs.

On that nameless world, Alpharius and Omegon met for the first time since their separation in the Warp, and fought together against the legacy of evil left beneath its surface. Their men, who had lived all their lives told to despise and kill each other, were drawn into that union, and soldiers who had tried to butcher one another minutes ago saved the lives of their sworn enemies. United they stood, and destroyed the assailing constructs.

When the last of the xenos weapons fell, a hesitant silence rose. All wondered who would be the first to succumb to the impulses of a lifetime of conditioned hatred, reinforced by the many atrocities each side had inflicted upon the other. Yet as the minutes ticked by, no one moved to strike. Instead, the medics of both sides were the first to shake off the stupor. They turned to the many wounded and dying, and started to treat them, commanding whoever was nearest for assistance, in both cases regardless of allegiance. Again, some hesitated, but the two leaders – whom the soldiers found they could hardly tell apart now that they stood together – gave the order to comply with the medics' command, and soon the two armies were working together once more to save the lives of their wounded comrades.

Despite their best efforts, thousands more died of their wounds, but thousands still remained, stranded on the planet with no apparent way of escape. Alpharius and Omegon led the survivors back to the crash sites, and for several months they worked together, using every scrap of genius and knowledge they possessed between them. Finally, they managed to return a pair of vessels to life, and lifted off the surface of the planet. For the first time since the battle, the forces of the Coalition and the Federation were separated. But this was not because the tensions between them had resurged – quite the opposite. Even as the two Primarchs worked to escape the planet, they had designed a plan to put an end to the conflict between the two factions – a conflict that they now saw as meaningless, and dangerous in a galaxy filled with horrors such as those they had fought together. They had vowed to bring an end to the feud between their adoptive people, and their forces had agreed to help them accomplish that goal.

Generations of hatred, however, would not be easily swept aside, and both Primarchs knew it. It would take radical action to change the way in which each faction saw the other. Furthermore, with the loss of their fleets, the prestige of the Primarchs was greatly weakened, and they were called to account for the destruction of the ships entrusted to them. Thanks to extensive and cunning preparations, the investigation on both sides confirmed the story the survivors told their superiors : that they had encountered a dangerous xenos remnant and had barely escaped with their lives aboard the only ship left. The system where Alpharius and Omegon had met for the first time was marked on star maps as one to avoid at all costs, and the two Primarchs were allowed back into an exploring role. With much diminished resources, the two Primarchs set to work.

The battle against the xenos constructs had revealed to the two of them that Mankind would only put aside its petty feuds when faced by an external threat. In their mind, it was a natural trait that had evolved over the millennia – in a galaxy filled with things that would prey upon Mankind, those who would not stand together were all dead. But while the Coalition and Federation knew very well of the dangers lurking in the Halo Stars, they also thought themselves strong enough to stand against them on their own – and so far, their long history had proved exactly that.

Later in the Great Crusade, the Alpha Legion would do much to erase the records of its Primarchs' actions during the following years. Whether this was to protect the secrecy with which the Legion cloaks itself, or out of shame, none can say, not even those who bear its mark today. But enough lore remains to indicate that Alpharius and Omegon employed every method at their disposal to put an end to the feud between their adoptive people. Blackmail, sabotage, character and outright assassination, they used all of their Primarch intellect to bending the Coalition and Federation to their will – but even that wouldn't be enough to truly change the mind of their people.

Within a few years of returning from their first expedition, the two Primarchs were the officious leaders of their respective factions, having their agents in the highest circles of command. On the outside, they were merely military leaders, albeit ones of tremendous skill and authority. Under their influence, skirmishes between the two factions had all but died down, with information being secretly exchanged to prevent flotillas from encountering their enemies during exploration. At the same time, the agents spread out across the civilian population began to spread the "treasonous" belief that the conflict was not inevitable, that peace was possible. But the ancient grudges remained strong, and in order to sweep them away, the twin Primarchs committed an act that even the most open-minded and Radical Inquisitor of today would agree was vile, if perhaps cruelly necessary.

In secret, Alpharius and Omegon arranged for the main fleets of their people to come into a pair of systems which were both very close to a third star. Each of the systems was connected to the third by a Warp route of exceptional stability, something that was believed by the Primarchs' agents to be the deliberate work of the ancient xenos civilization who had once claimed all three stars as its domain.

As the fleets exited the Warp on the systems' Mandeville Points and went further, hoping to refuel at the local star, the agents sent ahead by the Primarchs deliberately activated long-buried automated defenses, sacrificing their own lives to spring a trap around their own people. Across both systems, aeons-old ships, crewed not by the living but by ageless Abominable Intelligences, emerged from their slumber. These fleets recognized the human ships as intruders upon their masters' realm, and immediately attacked. With those not in the know caught completely unaware, the Primarchs were able to simulate panic, and both human fleets fled from the system in which they were attacked, using the stable Warp routes to converge onto the third star, with the automated ships pursued them.

While the first two systems had been where the ancient xenos had built their technology, the third only hosted a single temple world, where the aliens had laid their dead to rest and conducted their worship of their ancestors. As far as the Primarchs had been able to tell, the xenos had been uncorrupted by the Warp, instead dooming themselves to a slow extinction when their robotic servants had taken over every aspect of their lives, leaving them to fade into a quiet, luxurious obsolescence. Yet the system was far from undefended, and the human fleets began to fight for their lives as soon as they arrived, nearly at the same time. When their pursuers came in behind them, the situation seemed hopeless – exactly as the Primarchs had planned.

Through their agents, Alpharius and Omegon managed to bring their fleets together, and fought against the Abominable ships. When a captain of the Coalition sent hundreds of soldiers to help repel cybernetic boarders on a Federation ship without either of the Primarchs intervening, they knew that their plan had succeeded beyond expectations. In a daring raid on the surface of the cemetery world, Alpharius activated a self-destruct safeguard left in place by the creators of the sentient vessels, securing victory for Mankind that day, and forging a true peace between the Federation and the Coalition – albeit one born of lies and hidden manipulation.

Despite the final victory, the cost of the battle had been tremendous. Dozens of ships had been lost, along with millions of lives. The union born of the Primarchs' plan was stronger than either of the two factions had been before, but the tally of the dead was still unprecedented in both of their histories. Amidst the chaos and the death, Alpharius and Omegon openly seized control, and began to work to rebuild the strength of their united people, with their secret network of agents continuing to work in the shadows, shaping public opinion to follow their goals and performing all manners of other deeds.

Under the leadership of the twin Primarchs, the new faction – merely named the Halo Alliance – quickly recovered, and together the people of the Halo Stars prospered. Combined lore allowed for a renewal of technological prowess, while putting together ancient star maps gave the Alliance the most complete knowledge of the region. For years, the Alliance lived in peace, with Alpharius and Omegon tirelessly working to shelter it from the threats that still lurked in the Halo Stars. Then, finally, contact was made with the Imperium when Horus Lupercal, Primarch of the Sixteenth Legion, found his younger brothers.

At that time, Horus was acting alone, separated from the Emperor who had gone on some secret endeavour that did not require the presence of his eldest son. Driven by the same strange intuition he had displayed previously about the location of his missing brothers, Horus had taken the Sixteenth Legion far beyond the borders of the Imperium, onto the galactic fringes. And there, as he hoped, he found the last missing member of the Primarchs.

'My lord,' the sensor officers called out in alarm. 'They are trying to get a teleportation beacon on us ! The readings I am getting are … unprecedented. I think they can get pass through our shields !'
'Where are they coming ?' asked Horus, his voice calming the panic that was beginning to spread across the bridge.
'Right here,' replied the human. Horus smiled.
'He is coming, then,' he muttered to himself, before turning his back to the crew and staring at the empty space before the reinforced door leading to the rest of the ship.
Arcs of energy started to course through the air, and a silhouette appeared, at first only an outline, then a full physical presence. It was a humanoid clad in deceptively simple-looking power armor, holding a strange spear of xenos design in its hands. Most importantly, it was nearly as tall as Horus, towering above the Luna Wolves who had tentatively pointed their bolters in its direction. A gesture of Lupercal brought the barrels down – not that the intruder seemed to notice. His attention was fully focused on Horus.
'Hello, little brother,' said the First Primarch, arms spread out in welcome, a warm smile on his noble face. 'I am Horus, son of the Emperor of Mankind. I come here to reveal to you your destiny. What is your name ?'
The intruder rose his left arm and took off his helmet, revealing eyes filled with intelligence who missed nothing of the sight presented to them. There was a resemblance there with Horus' own face, one that only confirmed the intuition that had brought Lupercal to this system.
'I am Alpharius.'

Like so many things about the Alpha Legion, the details of the first meeting between Horus and Alpharius are lost to us. It is unknown if Horus met with the two Primarchs, or if Alpharius and Omegon sought to keep their twin nature secret from their brother. Regardless, Horus quickly befriended Alpharius, admiring the work his younger brother had done with the Alliance. The First Primarch had not believed it possible for Mankind to survive in the Halo Stars, let alone prosper as it had under Alpharius' leadership. Then Horus told Alpharius of the Imperium, the Great Crusade and the Emperor's dream.

To Alpharius, the Imperial Truth seemed a logical extension of his own actions and beliefs, and he readily accepted to travel to Terra and meet with his father. Yet he was also loath to abandon the Alliance, even though he had ensured that there were many other capable leaders in its ranks. Horus offered to take the entire fleet with him – for though the Alliance was mighty, it still paled into insignificance next to the scale of the Imperium. The people of the Alliance accepted immediately, eager to return to the home of their ancestors, their long sojourn into the darkest stars ending at last. Once the fleet reached Sol and Alpharius Omegon knelt before the Master of Mankind, returned from His own secret mission, the Alliance was dissolved, becoming what is known as the Coils of the Hydra.

The Coils of the Hydra
In the Imperium, Rogue Traders are figure of legends, wielding power and freedom far beyond the common citizens. Many Imperial officials have cursed their existence over the millennia, seeing them as unpredictable elements who are all too likely to turn renegade or outright traitorous. Even among those, there are few who dare to question the Emperor's decision of creating such an elite and isolated caste of His servants – but those who do can find answers to their doubts in the accounts of the Great Crusade.
When the Age of Strife ended and the Emperor began His work of conquest, He encountered many other, lesser lords of the stars – leaders of their own space-faring armadas, who had survived through the Age of Strife by cunning and ruthlessness alike. These individuals were, for the most part, ready to join the Imperium – indeed, some had been searching for a way back to Terra for generations. But their fierce independent streak, and the unique forces under their command (gathered through centuries of wandering the stars) made them unsuitable for integration into the Imperial Army. Many even had xenos mercenaries in their employ, or used technology that wasn't hallowed by the tech-priests of Mars. At the same time, they were far too useful to simply discard, for the Great Crusade needed all the assets it could find in order to fulfill the Emperor's vision of a united galaxy. And so, the Master of Mankind created the office of Rogue Trader – individuals tasked with exploring the stars beyond the Imperium's borders, granted enormous freedom from the empire's laws as long as they remained loyal to the Throne. The first Rogue Traders wandered the galaxy as they wished, sometimes lending their strength to Expeditionary Fleets. Some bloodlines – for the mandate of Rogue Trader is hereditary, something that has caused some rather intense succession crises over the years – forged bonds with the Legiones Astartes at that time, bonds that are often still strong today. The tradition continues today, with Rogue Trader mandates being granted to individuals who are judged to be dangerous for the Imperium if they remain within its borders, while at the same time too useful – or too well-connected – to simply execute.
Such was the case with the creation of the Coils of the Hydra. The Halo Alliance Alpharius brought with him to Terra was a vast fleet, greater than any individual armada of the Great Crusade, save perhaps the one the Emperor Himself took when He left Sol for the first time at the end of the Age of Strife.  Keeping it together within the Imperium's borders would have been a logistical nightmare, and the Alliance also possessed much technology it had gleaned during its sojourn in the Halo Stars – technology the Mechanicum would both have loved to obtain and declare techno-heresy. In order to solve all of these problems, the Emperor declared that the Alliance would be divided, each flotilla placed under the command of a single individual to whose bloodline would be bestowed the mandate of Rogue Trader.  All of those who were chosen were among the agents of Alpharius, as were their inheritors,  in a chain that has continued to this day for the surviving bloodlines.
T hose Rogue Traders who belong to the Coils of the Hydra do not advertise their link to the Alpha Legion. Indeed, they do all they can to keep it secret,  even from their own servants. W hile they perform the typical actions of a Rogue Trader (exploring, colonizing, and commercing), they also constantly gather intelligence for the Twentieth Legion. Each Rogue Trader belonging to the Coils has an extensive network of informants under his command, and everything he learns is reported back to the Legion. They are no longer infeoded to the sons of Alpharius : over time, the bloodlines have developed the independence and stubbornness common to  those of their rank . But the oaths sworn by their ancestors still hold them, and the relationship is a mutually beneficial one : the Coils have access to some of the Legion's own network, and they are able to call upon the Alpha Legion for help in difficult situations.  They typically avoid to do so as much as they can, for the Coils have some sort of competition among them : they seek to be of the most use to their Legionary patrons, while also calling upon them the less. Each bloodline keeps extensive – and heavily encrypted – records of every interaction with the Alpha Legion.  O n the rare occasions when two members of the Coils meet, they compare the "score" of their  families ,  so to speak,  using a calculating system of debts owed and paid as complex as anything else pertaining to the Alpha Legion.  They appear to take it very seriously, to the utter puzzlement of all Inquisitors who have ever learnt of this strange custom.

Great Crusade : Redeemed and Ascended

'Ave Imperator.'
Rumoured to be the entirety of Alpharius' speech to the Alpha Legion upon taking command

From its very inception, the Twentieth Legion was shrouded in secrecy. Like the Sixth and Eighteenth, its first members were kept isolated from the rest of their kind, transformed in different gene-forges and trained away from prying eyes. In later years, it was revealed that the Emperor had had a specific purpose in mind for each of the "Threefoil". The Space Wolves were to be His executioners, and served well in this role until their pride and paranoia drove them to madness. The Salamanders were shaped to be the vanguard of His armies, forging a path ahead for the rest of Mankind to follow – but Vulkan's bitter ambition shattered that dream. Of the Threefoil, only the Twentieth Legion remained loyal to the Emperor in the end, but none can be quite sure that the role they ultimately assumed was the one the Master of Mankind intended for them.

The process of creating a Space Marine Legion was incredibly complex, and requires resources that are now lost to the Imperium. From the genetic samples of a Primarch to the creation of thousands of transhuman warriors, enough wealth to buy an entire sub-Sector was expended for each Legion in material and personnel. By the time the Emperor and his gene-smiths began to work on the last of the Legions, however, the process had been fairly streamlined, with all the difficulties worked out. The Twentieth Legion passed easily through the first stages of testing, and reached what was called the "Alpha stage", when a small number of Legionaries – about one to two thousand – are created for battlefield testing. Theories about the Second and Eleventh Primarchs – whose true fate is unknown even to the Alpha Legion's greatest lore-keepers – suggest that it is at this stage that one of the Lost Legions failed, and was subsequently purged.

After a Legion had passed the evaluation of the Alpha stage, generally during deployment on one of the fronts of the ending Unification Wars, its recruitment began in earnest as aspirants were taken from regions of Terra. But in the case of the Twentieth Legion, this did not come to pass. The Legion passed its test with flying colors, yet no influx of recruits was directed to its gene-labs for implantation, and the shipyards and forges of Mars only received orders to prepare the resources equivalent to what a single Chapter of another Legion would need before the Twentieth Legion joined the Great Crusade.

Bucephalus was approaching the Mandeville Point. All around the titanic vessel, the greatest fleet ever gathered by Mankind since the Dark Age of Technology awaited the signal to enter the Warp and begin the Great Crusade. At long last, after centuries of work, the factions of the birth system of Humanity had been brought together.
On the viewing deck of the flagship, a man who was more than a man looked through the reinforced glass and into the infinite blackness beyond. He was so close now. So many obstacles had been laid on his way, so many traps placed by his enemies. But he had still done it. The first step of his plan was complete. Mankind's homeworld had been dragged out of the darkness – the spectre of complete extinction was all but banished now.
It had been a close thing, he mused, far closer than anyone would ever know. If not for the deeds of his youngest grandchildren, everything he had worked so long to achieve would have been turned to dust. They had paid a terrible price for that victory, though, one that he could not repay them. They had been the saviours of his dream, but their future had been destroyed by the very powers they had prevented from burning Mankind's own.
But that his enemies had been desperate enough to resort to such means told him that he was in the right direction. He would find his stolen sons, and return them to his side, where they belonged. Together they would build the Imperium of his vision, and he would free that Imperium from the corruption of the Empyrean.
'We shall yet be free,' declared the Emperor of Mankind to the uncaring void, his eyes fixed on the light of the stars, shining in the darkness.

Without a Primarch, it was unknown to even the Great Crusade's high command under whose authority the Twentieth Legion acted for much of the Crusade – rumors attributed their command to Horus, Malcador the Sigillite, or the Emperor Himself – a few outlandish and likely traitorous sources even claimed that they were working for the first Primarch to fall traitor, Lion El'Jonson. Certainly the authority codes the Legionaries produced whenever confronted were those of highest rank, yet the question remain as to what purpose they served at that time. They appeared all across the galaxy, never more than a single squad at a time. Reports of unheralded Space Marines were fragmentary, but indicated that among the missions they performed, the warriors of the Twentieth Legion were tasked with recovering artefacts from ancient ruins and forbidden temples alike, as well as abduct entire groups of people, who vanished into the holds of their unmarked ships, never to be seen again.

The own archives of the Alpha Legion speak more in detail of its purpose in these early days, however. The Emperor knew that, for all that the Imperial Truth preached of a secular and godless galaxy, the powers of the Warp were still at work to undo all that He had built. Everywhere their agents had been crushed, they whispered still into the ears of the weak and corrupt, seeking to spread madness and anarchy. In time, specialized forces such as the Sisters of Silence and the Assassinorum would be created to deal with the threat of the enemy within, but in the beginning of the Great Crusade, such forces didn't exist. And so the Emperor took the Twentieth Legion away from the lines of open battle, and into a different, but perhaps even more deadly battlefield. Acting under the unquestioned command of both the Emperor and His most trusted advisor and confidant, the Twentieth Legion roamed the galaxy, hunting rebels and heretics wherever they might hide, from the deepest jungles to the most refined palaces of Imperial nobility.

Due to its limited numbers, the secretive nature of its missions, and the lack of a Primarch for most of the Great Crusade, the Twentieth Legion was forced to adapt, and wage this hidden war in ways the other Legiones Astartes had never considered. They became a Legion of infiltrators, saboteurs and assassins. Other Legions had such units in their ranks, of course – such as the Night Lords hunters, or the Raven Guard Shadow-walkers – but the Twentieth was the only one to embrace it as its full war philosophy, its core role in the warmachine of the Imperium.

Over time, despite the veil of secrecy surrounding them, the tactics used by the Twentieth Legion caused its fame to spread. Hundreds of nicknames and titles began to circulate to describe the mysterious Twentieth Legion, some given by allies, others by fearful enemies. Those include (but were by no means limited to) : the Harrowing, the Children of Eris, the Ghost Legion, the Unbroken Chain, the Combine, the Left Hand of Darkness, Aleph Null, the Silent Sons, the Bound Shadows, the Adversaries, the Final Code, the Lords of Sorrow, and hundreds more. It went to the point that it became difficult to keep track of them all, and the enemies of the Imperium thought there were far more than eighteen Space Marine Legions in service to the Emperor. The Twentieth Legion was never issued a formal name by the Emperor either, nor did they take one as their own, as other Legions did. Instead, they revelled in the power their anonymity granted them, going as far as to disguise into the colors of other Legions in order to capitalize on their reputations or keep their implication in a particular conflict a secret.

When Horus brought Alpharius to Terra, less than two decades before the turn of the thirty-first millennium, the youngest Primarchs – both of them – met with the Emperor, and accepted to assist in His work. For the first time since they had left Terra, the full strength of the Twentieth Legion was summoned to a single planet – a human world whose population was ruled over by a caste of tyrants living in high towers and wielding archeotech of tremendous power, who despite their disunity had been able to keep at bay all Imperial forces sent to bring the planet to compliance. Alpharius and Omegon themselves went to this world, Bar'Savor, disguised as mere Legionaries. And there, the Legion brought an end to a campaign that had lasted for years within days, before the Primarchs revealed themselves to their sons and took command of the gathered Legion. For the first time, the Twentieth Legion received a true name of its own : the Alpha Legion. All warriors learned the secret of their twin Primarchs, and vowed to keep it hidden from enemies and allies alike.

Under the command of Alpharius and Omegon, the Alpha Legion partially emerged from the shadows, leaving the duties of hunting the traitor and the heretics to others and joining the frontlines of the Great Crusade. Yet the legacy of nearly two hundred years spent fighting in the darkness would endure across the Legion, even as its numbers finally grew thanks to its Primarchs' presence. However, so did its infamy.

It is thought that the unmitigated success of the Primarchs' plan to create the Halo Alliance was the result for the cavalier attitude for life and the codes of war displayed by the Alpha Legion in the first years following their return. Their methods had worked, after all, producing something that many would consider a miracle – bringing an end to centuries of bitter, hateful conflict. The deaths they had caused along the way were, in their eyes, a sad but necessary price, and one far lesser than what continued hostilities would have claimed. And so, the twins taught the same methods to their Legion, encouraging their sons to continue down the path of supreme pragmatism that they had already been following before being reunited with their fathers.

At the same time, it is said that Alpharius and Omegon suffered from being the last of the Primarchs to be found. In their eyes, the rolls of honor of their Legion were lacking when compared to the others, and they were determined to fill the gap as quickly and efficiently as possible. This was only aggravated by the insulting comments of Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines. The Avenging Son joked that the Alpha Legion, having joined the Great Crusade this late, would never be able to equal the record of his own Legion. Then, when he saw the methods employed by the Twentieth, his humor turned to scorn, and he denounced the Alpha Legion as "cowardly assassins skulking in the shadows, unwilling to face their enemies from the front and unworthy of the Great Crusade". Today, Alpha Legion's analysts believe that this reaction was due to Guilliman's own tragic past, when his family were slain by conspirators while he was away and unable to defend them – instilling in him an understandable disgust for the more subtle ways of war.

That is not to say that Alpharius and Omegon were blameless in how their Legion was perceived by their Ultramarine brother. In the first years after they took command of the Alpha Legion, the campaigns waged by the Twentieth were incredibly brutal and ruthless, with world after world submitting to the rule of the Imperium, its cities in flames, its infrastructure ravaged. No other Legion had matched the rate of conquest of the Alpha Legion in that period, nor has any since. Respect for the sons of Alpharius grew across the Great Crusade, but fear grew far more quickly, and the image of the alpha symbol the Legion wore as its emblem in this day was soon associated with quick, costly "victories" that left naught but ruin in their wake.

Still, the Alpha Legion was far from being the only one employing methods of war that others might find distasteful. But then, on the other side of the Great Crusade, Konrad Curze, Primarch of the Night Lords, received a disturbing report. It came from a traumatized, guilt-ridden magos of the Ordo Biologis, who was begging the Primarch's intervention. According to the astropathic transmission, the magos had worked under Alpharius' personal command to craft a viral plague that was to be deployed against a particularly vicious breed of fungal xenos that fed upon the marrow of living human beings – the Ak'Haireth. This was nothing exceptional – except that in order to use the biological weapon with maximal efficiency, the Alpha Legion had chosen to deploy the virus among the human population on which the xenos had preyed for generation. Thousands of humans had already died, for while the disease had been designed to be utterly lethal to the Ak'Haireth, humans weren't completely immune carriers. Despite his extensive augmentations and the detachment professed by the disciples of the Machine-God, the magos was at his breaking point, and implored Curze, known to be among the most humane of Primarchs, to stop his brother.

It was then that the Savior of Nostramo decided to take action. Leaving his Legion in the hands of his First Captain, he travelled through the entire galaxy to find his brothers fighting the final phase of their latest "compliance."

For a long time, he didn't say anything. He didn't condemn nor accuse. He merely stood there, looking at them standing above the bloody corpses of their victims, with the light of the fires ravaging the city illuminating the scene. Already thousands had died in the fire the Twentieth Legion had started – a diversion, to draw away the palace's guards so that the kill-teams could strike at the planetary leader. His body laid on the ground amid his personal bodyguards, ignored by the three demigods who stood in the ruins of his throne room. Ultimately, his death would break the opposition to the Imperium on this world, and the planet would reach compliance much sooner and with less casualties than would have been achieved through conventional warfare. Kill thousands to save millions – it was the kind of choices that the Legions had been created to make.
And yet, as they stood before their older brother, for the first time in their life, Alpharius and Omegon felt shame for their actions.
'This is not who you are,' said Konrad Curze at last. The voice of the Primarch of the Night Lords was soft and his tone gentle, yet as unyielding as the motion of the stars themselves. 'You are no killer of innocents. You are no blind butcher, uncaring for those you slay on your way to victory. You are better than this.'
'But …' Alpharius protested weakly, and without conviction. It was Omegon who ended the sentence with a single word, one which had once seemed so important yet now sounded so hollow : 'victory.'
Konrad Curze spread out his arms to encompass the destruction they had inflicted upon this city, which had endured the horrors of Old Night without succumbing to any of the predators that haunted the galaxy. Libraries holding priceless knowledge were aflame. Monuments of the past were crumbling to ruin as the mighty pillars of steel that held them up melted in the heat. The sound of screaming echoed amidst the desolation – screams of pain and sorrow. A stab of cold horror and shame pierced through the hearts of Alpharius and Omegon as they remembered how many times before they had heard the same chorus of suffering. There was something about the Savior of Nostramo's presence that pierced through the armor of necessity they had built around their soul, dragging a sense of empathy they thought they had discarded long ago back into the light.
'No victory is worth such a price, brothers.'

This first meeting with Konrad Curze changed the twin Primarchs and their Legion forever. Gone was their cold disregard for civilian casualties, their ruthlessness in the pursuit of victory and glory. In the years that followed, the twins worked hard to change the way in which their Legion prosecuted its war, turning from terrorist strikes and widespread destruction to espionage, information manipulation, and highly-specific assassinations. They also became masters of propaganda, working from behind enemy lines to convince oppressed populations to revolt against their compliance-refusing overlords. The sons of Alpharius were still a brutal force of conquest and domination – they were, after all, Legiones Astartes – but their body count lowered dramatically. Imperial forces, who previously had been loath to fight alongside the Twentieth for fear of being caught in their devastating schemes, came to appreciate the tremendous advantage that the intelligence gathering efforts of the Alpha Legion brought to their allies.

To symbolize this rebirth, the Alpha Legion adopted the reptilian scales that adorn their armor to this day, representing a serpent's ability to shed its skin and continue to live free of the mistakes of its past. It was also at that time that their emblem changed from the unassuming Alpha symbol to the many-headed hydra of ancient myth. The dark reputation attached to this legendary beast, both due to its role as an enemy of heroes in stories and to its association with the snake, might make it surprising that a Legion would take it as its symbol. But Alpharius and Omegon wanted both to represent the individuality favored by their Legion – each Astartes capable of adapting to any circumstances and accomplish his objectives of his own – and pay homage to the brother who had brought them clarity of purpose. Just like the Night Lords, who use frightful imagery to bring about the enemy's surrender, the Alpha Legion chose an emblem that would tell their foes that, no matter how many Alpha Legionaries they killed, there would always be more they had missed.

Yet even after Konrad convinced his brothers to change their way of war, he could not – or did not want to – change their deep nature. Even among Primarchs, Alpharius and Omegon were unconventional strategists and supreme planners, bordering on the paranoid. Despite the countless victories of the Great Crusade, the Imperium still had many powerful enemies, none greater than the ones dwelling on the other side of the veil. Though the corrupted empires of the Halo Stars had long since died, there was no telling what other tainted xenos species might lurk in unexplored swathes of the galaxy, waiting for the slightest opening to unleash unspeakable horrors upon Mankind.

The twin Primarchs knew that their father had a plan to protect Mankind from Chaos, but they also knew that plans had a tendency to fail, and for all that they loved and respected the Emperor, they also knew He was neither infallible nor all-powerful. The fact that He had been unable to prevent the theft of the Primarchs, as well as others, even more secret events, proved it to them. As they saw it, preparing for the worst was their duty, what they had been created for – and so they did.

Taking advantage of the fact that they could wield a Primarch's authority in two places at once, they worked hard to increase the size and assets of their Legion. Pacts were made with forge-worlds to build vast fleets of ships and provide weapons and armor, while recruitment facilities were built on dead worlds, where the tithed youth of many worlds were brought and transformed into Legionaries. All this was shrouded in secrecy, records falsified or outright destroyed. The Alpha Legion wasn't naive enough to believe they were the only ones capable of waging secret wars, and they believed that the best way they could protect the Imperium was if no one truly knew the extant of their capabilities. Sadly, this paranoia proved justified in the end.

The twin Primarchs sent envoys to the Iron Warriors, to learn the art of siegecraft and fortress building from the Fourth Legion's warsmiths. They sent their most gifted Librarians to Prospero, asking to share in the accumulated wisdom of the Thousand Sons. Those sent to the Night Lords perfected their stealth and psychological tactics, and learned much from the humane creed of the sons of Nostramo. And so it was for every Legion, save for the Ultramarines, for Alpharius and Omegon remembered well Guilliman's scorn, and Konrad's words had done nothing to appease their quiet anger at their brother. To themselves and their sons, they claimed that it was because Guilliman's Legion had nothing to teach them – the logistics and statecraft the Thirteenth was famous for were of no use to a Legion fighting in the shadows. But Konrad and Horus were aware of the truth, and worried at what such tension between Primarchs might cause in the future.

None of these students grew to surpass their masters, but they were all considered great and accomplished in their respective disciplines by the time they departed and returned to their own Legion, to share what they had learnt. The Legions with whom this exchange was made were all glad to welcome the sons of Alpharius and share what they knew – for they were all proud of their unique skills, and the envoys were careful not to anger them. The bonds that were forged then would prove most valuable in later years, and become the foundation of the secret channels between the Hydra-marked warriors and their cousins.

Not all of these bonds survived to the onset of the Heresy, however. The Imperial Fists had at first welcomed the envoys of Alpharius in their ranks, appreciating the ruthlessness displayed by the Alpha Legion in the prosecution of its wars against the xenos menace, even if they thought the other tactics employed by the Twentieth were questionable. In their pride, the sons of Dorn had thought it their duty to teach the youngest Legion how to fight a proper war. They had shared their assault tactics and their skills with the blade, and when the envoys had returned to their own Legion, Dorn himself had presided over a tournament in which the sons of Alpharius had performed very honorably.

Then came the Avalorn Compliance, where the Imperial Fists, the Alpha Legion and the Luna Wolves were brought together under the Emperor's own leadership. By that point, the lessons taught by Konrad Curze had spread to the entirety of the Twentieth Legion, and its approach to warfare had changed dramatically. The Alpha Legion intervened on several occasions to prevent the Imperial Fists from endangering the lives of their Imperial Army allies, as well as to stop the sons of Dorn from committing wholesale slaughter on the population of Avalorn when their citadels were finally breached.

'If we are to survive, we must be united by something more than our hatred. Otherwise, when all the stars are ours and all our enemies are slain, we will have become monsters worse than anything we will have fought.'
Attributed to Primarch Alpharius, during a heated discussion with Rogal Dorn that eventually required the Emperor's personal intervention to avoid bloodshed, during the Avalorn Compliance

When Horus was made Warmaster, the Alpha Legion applauded the decision. Alpharius himself journeyed to Ullanor in secret, and vowed his loyalty to his brother. With so many of his brothers bitter at the Emperor's choice, including Guilliman, Lupercal rejoiced for the support of the Alpha Legion. Even so, he promised that he wouldn't attempt to "collar" the Twentieth, knowing that they had their own way of war and that even he would find it difficult to integrate them into his plans.

Another instance where the Alpha Legion grew distant with one of its sister Legions was with the Space Wolves. When the Emperor called for the Council of Nikaea, Alpharius publicly sided for the continuation of the Librarius, arguing that psykers were necessary to fight against some of the alien breeds that threatened Mankind. The Sisters of Silence were not numerous enough, he declared, to take on that duty alone – and given the rarity of the Pariah gene, it was unlikely there would ever be enough of them. What truly shattered any bonds of brotherhood that might have existed between Russ and his youngest brother, however, was when the envoys the Wolf King had welcomed in his Legion produced footage captured from their helmet cams during battle alongside the Sixth Legion. The footage clearly showed the Rune Priests employing psychic powers themselves, despite the Wolves' denial of the obvious truth. All of the Rune Priests' claims about the "blessings of Fenris" were useless against such evidence, and Russ cursed Alpharius, accusing him of betraying his trust.

'Lying to yourself will be your undoing, brother.'
Attributed to Primarch Alpharius, said to Primarch Leman Russ, during the Council of Nikaea

When Russ left the Council, with Magnus' equerry wounded nigh unto death at the foot of his Primarch, Alpharius worried about what path his brother would take. While the Emperor had already ordered that a group of His Custodians would accompany the Wolf King to ensure his compliance with the Edict, Alpharius also secretly sent a small group of his own warriors, tasked with following the Sixth Legion and report on their activities. However, no word was ever received from them, and their fate remains unknown to this day. It is likely they were somehow discovered, perhaps using the xenos technology the Wolves claimed during the Errance, and then slain by the Rout.

But Alpharius and Omegon had other concerns on their minds that Russ at the time. The Great Crusade continued, and a new world had been chosen by the Legion to be brought into the Imperium : the human world of Nurth. The two Primarchs learned all that there was to know about this world, as was their wont – however, not even them could have predicted what would take place upon the planet, or how it would shape the Legion's entire future.

The Battle of Nurth : Truths and Deceptions

The Cabal
The Long War that opposes the Imperium to the Traitor Legions and the other servants of the Dark Gods is but the latest phase in a conflict that has been raging for tens of millions of years. Ever since the War in Heavens between the Old Ones and the Necrontyrs threw the Empyrean out of balance, the Chaos Gods have been hungering for all souls in the galaxy, a spiritual cancer seeking to infest the entire body. Soon after the War in Heavens ended with the extinction of the Old Ones, the shattering of the C'tan and the Necrons going into stasis at the command of their supreme ruler, the Eldar spread out and conquered the entire galaxy. Through their psychic powers, they created spiritual constructs that protected their souls from the corruption polluting the Empyrean – the pantheon of Eldar Gods. Through it, the favoured children of the Old Ones – as they then presented themselves – were safe from the hunger of the Primordial Annihilator, and could even return from death with ease. However, not all species were so protected, and while the Primordial Annihilator desired the destruction of the Eldar most of all because of their psychic strength, they turned their gaze to other, more vulnerable species. A series of terrible genocides followed, as species after species was consumed by the ravenous hunger of Chaos, their people corrupted from within before daemon incursions wiped entire worlds clean of life.
In time, an organization was founded by a group of powerful xenos leaders. Calling themselves the Cabal, they included members of the most exotic species, including lifeforms entirely gaseous or even energy-based. By combining their technology, they were able to actually fight against the pervading touch of Chaos. Agents were sent across the worlds of their people, aimed at the minions of Chaos, while psykers banded together to create lesser Warp constructs that held the worse of the daemonic incursions at bay.
For millions of years, they fought, occasionally assisted by members of the Eldar race who took pity on the plight of these younger races. Yet every victory was bitter, for over time, the Dark Gods coalesced from the corruption, giving faces to the different aspects of the Primordial Annihilator. How exactly Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle were "born" as true Chaos Gods is unknown – the creation of Slaanesh is well documented elsewhere in the Legion's archives, but what species, if any, crystallised the emotions that feed the three other Chaos Gods is a complete mystery. Regardless of its cause, their emergence marked the beginning of the end for the Cabal's species. One by one, they were snuffed out, until only the Cabal itself remained, forced into a nomadic lifestyle to avoid being caught by the agents of the Ruinous Powers. Yet still they did not give up.
Over the aeons, the Cabal had gained great power and knowledge. The pinnacle of both was the Acuity, a device that combined divinations methods from a dozen member species in order to gain a perfect image of the future. By using it, the Cabal foresaw Mankind's rise to prominence in the galaxy, and the fact that our species' fate would be linked to that of Chaos itself. In the lair of the Cabal, a plan was hatched to bring an end to the Primordial Annihilator once and for all – or at least, that's what it began its existence as …

Nurth was a desert world, discovered by the 670th Expeditionary Fleet. Its population, which had barely managed to retain minimal industrial capabilities by the time the Great Crusade reached the world, ferociously opposed integration into the Imperium. They had long forgotten their origins as children of Terra, and their cultural myths warned them that the coming of outsiders onto their world would be the sign that the evil that roamed the universe had found them at last, and would not stop its attacks until they were all destroyed. Despite its low level of technology, the population had managed to hold Imperial advances for months, using a combination of guerilla tactics, sabotages, and taking advantage of the planet's endemic sandstorms. But the true threat to the Imperium – the reason why, even after several months of bloody campaigning, the only thing Lord Commander Ten Namatjira had to shown as result was a cohort of destroyed Titans and far too many corpses of Imperial soldiers, was that the Nurthene had sorcerers on their side. The population of Nurth had been corrupted by Chaos during the Long Night, offering sacrifices to dread powers in return for the strength they had needed to survive.

The priests of the Nurthene had gained mastery over the elements, becoming able to summon lightning storms from clear skies. Aerial support was denied the ground forces, and any obvious target – such as a heavy column – was destroyed within hours of being detected by the enemy. The Nurthene were also excellent warriors, fanatically dedicated to the preservation of their culture against the Imperium. In many ways, this made Nurth the perfect battlefield for the Alpha Legion, likely the reason why Alpharius and Omegon chose it as their next conquest.

The armed forces deployed on Nurth were, of course, unaware of the existence of Chaos. High command suspected that the strange "air magick" possessed by the locals was somehow psychic in nature, but the Geno Five-Two Chiliad's – the Imperial Regiment tasked with the conquest, a battle unit whose venerable history went back to the Unification Wars – only psykers were too weak and specialized in their powers to be able to fight against it. The Librarians of the Alpha Legion, however, detected it at once. But through the human sacrifices offered in their temples, the Nurthene priests had more raw psychic power at their disposal than the Legionaries, and a mere assault under the cover of the Librarians would not work. Each of the Nurthene cities had to be approached by stealth, its priests slain so that their esoteric defenses would be breached and a more conventional assault launched. Even that would be difficult, for the Nurthene had many warriors keeping watch over their walls, and they were well-trained in the arts of infiltration themselves.

That meant the Nurthene had to be distracted. And in order to achieve that, Alpharius and Omegon had no choice but to use the Imperial Army as bait, deliberately modifying orders so that patrols would be caught outside their fortified camps after dark, time and again. At first, the Nurthene were surprised, and did not strike. Then they took the bait, and the first city fell to bolter and chainsword, though not without hundreds of Imperial soldiers dying in night-time ambushes, struck down by a Nurthene blade or burned to ashes by sorcerous lightning. The first city to fall in that way was Tel Utan, and Omegon himself led the strike team that infiltrated its temple and set it ablaze once the priests had been eliminated, cast into the fires of their own sacrificial pyres – even in those early days, the Alpha Legion could be vindictive.

Tel Utan fell, but its population fought to the death, with such fanaticism that no prisoners were taken from the civilians. Omegon departed the city, taking with him his Effrit Squad. But on his way back to one of the Alpha Legion's many bases of operation on Nurth, he encountered a lone man, wandering through the burning desert with barely any of the equipment required for such a perilous journey. That man was John Grammaticus – a powerful psyker, once a soldier of the Unification Wars, and now a former agent of the xenos conspiracy known as the Cabal, on the run from his former masters.

Where, wondered John Grammaticus, had it all gone wrong ?
A few months ago, he had been an agent for a conspiracy aimed at saving the galaxy from cosmic entities feeding on suffering by setting up his own species' violent extinction. He hadn't been happy about that, far from it, but the Acuity had shown him that it was the best possible outcome, not just for the galaxy as a whole but also for his species in particular. He might be young for a Perpetual, but even he understood that death could be a mercy. Yet here he was, fleeing from his former masters, knowing full well that they could find him no matter how far he ran.
The Acuity, he decided. It had all begun to go wrong there. Somehow, the Primordial Annihilator had gotten to the Cabal's predictive abilities, and managed to twist what the Acuity showed to serve its own designs. He had believed in what it had shown at first, but then something had begin to nag at his mind. Some details about the visions the Acuity had shown him – minor things that only his subconscious had picked up. He had started to doubt the plan could succeed at all – doubt that Mankind's death would truly drag Chaos into oblivion. In fact, he had even began to doubt that Guilliman would truly do as the Acuity showed and destroy Mankind in the first place, should he emerge triumphant in the coming civil war. He had read reports from those tasked with observing the Avenging Son, and it didn't seem that the "spark of nobility" that was supposed to trigger his genocide of the human race was still in him at all.
John had tried to investigate then. He had spied on his own masters, seeking a sign that they were aware of what was going on, that he had been kept in the dark about a change of plans for reasons they would surely explain one day – with their typical unbearable smugness. But that wasn't what he had seen. Instead, he had seen some of the Cabal leaders, entities who had led the fight against the Primordial Annihilator for thousands of years, meet with the slaves of that very same Primordial Annihilator. He hadn't recognized them – they were unlike any alien he had ever seen – but there had been no mistaking the aura surrounding them. They had radiated violence, cruelty, and cunning – and their language had burned into John's brain as he listened in. Then they had found him, and everything had gone to hell.
In the end, he had run all the way here, passing from ship to ship and identity to identity until he had reached this accursed ball of sand. The last thing he had been able to glean from the Acuity before it had turned into a nightmare had been that, no matter how everything else had changed, the Alpha Legion was still the key to the outcome of the war.
He had no idea what he was going to do now. He had barely escaped the "accident" at the star port, and his escape vehicle had died on him hours ago, in the middle of that accursed desert. He was fairly certain he had already died of thirst two times, and he wasn't looking forward to the third. He had no plan, no way to reach the Primarch, let alone convince him he wasn't a delusional madman with the strange ability to return from the dead. All he had was the knowledge that he had to do something, or else all would be lost.
In fact, he mused, a lot of someones would have to do a lot of somethings to avoid the worst-case scenario. And he had seen the worst-case scenario – that was the one accursed gift from the Acuity he had no doubt was one-hundred percent accurate. The Ruinous Powers would not have missed an opportunity to have someone do their work for them by showing him something that he would believe would happen if he didn't do what they wanted him to do, only to have it happen anyway … frak. His head hurt, as it did whenever he remembered the horrors the Acuity had shown him Chaos had in store for Mankind. If it looked like that was inevitable, he was fully prepared to throw himself into a black hole and hope that was enough to kill him rather than be alive to see it become reality.
Something moved ahead – a shadow amidst the infernal burning of the sun. John blinked, and looked up …
… and he saw an armored figure, towering above him, as if conjured from thin air. John blinked again, his thirsty brain trying to process what was happening. For a few seconds, he stood immobile, struggling to even remain on his feet – then he managed to open his mouth and speak :
'I … must speak … with Alpharius.'
Then he fell, darkness and death taking him once more.

Grammaticus had been wandering in the unforgiving heat of Nurth's desert for days when Omegon found him, and he succumbed to dehydration mere moments after the encounter. However, to the Primarch's surprise, his body suddenly forced itself back to life, despite not having ingested one drop of liquid. Intrigued by this strange phenomenon, and by the wanderer's last words before his collapse, Omegon brought him to his camp and had him helped by his Apothecary – under heavy surveillance, of course. The man didn't look like a Nurthene agent, but his seeming immortality was suspicious in the extreme, and deserving of further examination.

It only took several hours for Grammaticus to recover to the point that the Alpha Legion could interrogate him. His first words to Omegon were a warning – he had come to Nurth to meet with the Alpha Legion, to bring them word of a terrible threat to the Imperium, but the agents of this threat were on his trail, seeking to silence him. Something in his demeanour convinced Omegon that he was telling the truth, and the Primarch gave orders to prepare to move to a more secure location. However, just as Grammaticus was finally about to say what his warning was about, the base came under attack. A host of strange xenos creatures suddenly appeared, wielding weapons the likes of which the Alpha Legion had never encountered before. Omegon and the Effrit Squad fought against them, but despite their extraordinary battle skills, they failed to notice that the attack was only a diversion for another assassin to slip through their ranks.

It had all been going surprisingly well – which, of course, meant that his old bosses were about to frak with him once more.
'The Cabal has been deceived !' he called out, desperately rolling out of the way of another strike. 'You must help me stop them !'
'I only have your word for it,' growled Damon Prytanis. The other Perpetual was as cold and determined as he had been since Grammaticus had known him for the first time a thousand years ago, when he had been recruited into the service of the Cabal. 'Who would you trust in my place, John ? You, the mon-keigh ? Or them, who have spent ages fighting the Primordial Annihilator ?'
'If your friend's word isn't enough,' declared a new voice, 'then I hope mine will be.'
The two Perpetuals turned to look at the voice. There stood two new arrivals, the swirling lights of a Webway portal closing behind them. Both of them were Eldar, but they were as different as could be. One of them was young, as such things were measured among the children of Isha, and wore the robes and staff of a Farseer. And the other …
'Asurmen,' John breathed, eyes wide at the sight of the first and greatest of the Phoenix Lords.

After dispatching the xenos attackers, Omegon returned inside the hideout, ready to evacuate Grammaticus. But the human psyker wasn't alone. Instead, another man – one who looked grim and murderous – stood at his side, as did two Eldar. Omegon's first reflex was to strike them down, but Grammaticus managed to convince him to hear them. These two, claimed the immortal, had more details about the threat he had come to Nurth to warn the Primarch about.

The Eldar introduced themselves as Eldrad Ulthran, Farseer of Craftworld Ulthwe, and Asurmen, Phoenix Lord, the Hand of Asuryan. While the Farseer was unknown to Omegon, Asurmen wasn't, and Omegon nearly drew his blade there and then as he recognized the xenos who had killed the foster mother of his brother Konrad. Only when Asurmen expressed his sorrow for the death of Theresa Vaqu'iol did the rage of the Primarch abate and he was able to listen to the aliens' message. Eldrad spoke of how Ulthwe had foreseen a great war among the Imperium, the Primarchs succumbing to the corruption of the Warp. The circle of Seers had been able to identify two of the Primarchs who were at the greatest risk to fall : Konrad Curze, and Angron, and attempted to eliminate them before they grew too powerful. But they had been deceived.

Eldrad had gone to Nuceria, leading the team of hunters that was tasked with the elimination of the infant Angron. But when he had seen the child Primarch walking through the mountains, the Farseer had seen how he and his peers had been deceived. He had seen how the attempt to kill Angron would fail, and instead set him on the path that would eventually lead to his downfall. And he had cancelled the attempt, and withdrew from Nuceria, telling his peers of what he had understood.

At the same time, Asurmen had led an attack onto Nostramo. In their visions, the seers of Ulthwe had witnessed the destruction of their Craftworld at the hands of an army led by a scion of the Night Haunter's bloodline. Yet when Asurmen had confronted the Night Haunter, he had seen that there was something more to the Primarch than madness born of relentless executions and bloody duty. There was light in the life of Konrad Curze, a light the Phoenix Lord nearly inadvertently snuffed out. After his body was broken by the hands of the King of the Night, Asurmen had been resurrected once more by the lingering power of Asuryan, and he had understood that he had nearly been manipulated by the Dark Gods into helping turn a child of the Emperor of Mankind to their service. Yet the plan had failed, and through uniting the people of Nostramo against them and under Curze's leadership, Ulthwe had ultimately averted that possibility forever.

The two separated incidents had convinced both the Farseer and the Phoenix King not only that Mankind could resist the corruption of Chaos, if it were given the chance, but also that even the visions of the Eldar Seers, supposed to be the clearest of all, had been compromised by the Archenemy. And as they explored the paths that might lead to such a grand victory against the Primordial Annihilator, they had discovered the corruption that had taken root in the Cabal, once the greatest enemy of Chaos. They had failed to uncover its source, but the truth was that it didn't matter. Through Grammaticus, they already knew what the plan of the Cabal was. They knew that Guilliman had fallen to Chaos, and that he had gathered to his side those of his brothers who had proved susceptible to his lies. A rebellion against the Emperor was coming, led by the Avenging Son. The initial plan of the Cabal had been to allow Guilliman to win, in the hope that he would then destroy all of Mankind and take the Primordial Annihilator with it into oblivion – but with the Acuity corrupted, there was no chance that this was what would happen should the Avenging Son prevail over the Emperor. Yet this was only part of the warning Grammaticus had come to deliver.

The Cabal knew that the Alpha Legion would never side with Guilliman in the coming war. The xenos puppet-masters knew that, even if the enmity existing between the Thirteenth and Twentieth Legions was not enough, the two Primarchs' knowledge of the Primordial Annihilator was limited, but enough that they would see the signs of corruption in their brother. The Cabal also knew that the Alpha Legion had the potential to be a very dangerous force in the coming war. And so, they had manipulated events so that the two Primarchs and an important part of their Legion would come to Nurth. The recent victory of the Imperium against the locals had also been part of their plan. The Nurthene had grown desperate, and were about to unleash their most dangerous weapon – a Black Cube, one of only five such instruments of planetary destruction, created in ages past by a species claimed by the Primordial Annihilator. The kill-team sent to silence Grammaticus had failed, which meant that they had only hours at best before everything on Nurth was exterminated by the power of the Black Cube.

Omegon used his authority as a Primarch to order an evacuation of all Imperial forces on Nurth, overriding the protests of the Crusade commanders. Alpharius himself demanded that his brother explain his decision, and Omegon promised that he would do so soon. Grammaticus, Damon, Eldrad and Asurmen were all secretly brought aboard the Beta, one of the Legion's battle-barges, even as the frantic evacuation continued, and while great storms of black clouds began to appear above the capital city of Nurth. Thousands of Imperial soldiers weren't evacuated in time, and died horrible death as the raving, unnatural winds summoned by the Black Cube at the cost of millions of human sacrifices ate them alive.

And as Nurth's destruction played out below the Imperial fleet, the two Primarchs accepted the truth of Grammaticus' warning, witnessing a power they had barely suspected existed in the universe. In the death throes of Nurth, they saw the faces of the Dark Gods, howling at them from the ruined planet. With heavy heart, they realized that what they had feared for a long time – the dread possibility of the Imperium turning on itself, for it was the only galactic power with the might to destroy itself – had come to pass.

'What do we do then ?' asked the first half of the Alpha Legion's Primarch. 'How do we fight this threat ?'
'Horus will call for you,' declared Eldrad. 'The Warmaster has been saved from the clutches of Chaos, and his anger at the coming betrayal will be great enough that I can sense its echoes across the Web of Fate all the way here and now. A war will start that will tear your Imperium asunder, Alpharius Omegon. Some of it will be fought in the open, as the pawns of Ruin marshal their armies and march to Terra. The rest will be fought in the shadows, where you and your Legion belong. But it will be a war of a brutality the likes of which the galaxy has not seen in a long, long time. And if you lose, Mankind will be doomed, and so will be all species of the galaxy.'
'Then,' asked Omegon again, 'what do we do ?'
A grim smile appeared on the young Farseer's face.
'That's simple, son of the Emperor. We win. No matter the cost, no matter what we have to do. In this war, even the most bitter of victories is preferable to defeat.'

Heresy : The Unremembered War

'It is a time of great confusion and terrible strife. Madness, it seems, has taken our brothers, casting them away from the illumination brought by the Emperor and into the claws of older, darker powers, who feed on disorder and violence. Those of our cousins who remain loyal to the Throne do not understand why it is so – they cannot understand it, lest the truth burns their own souls black as well. But we of the Hydra are well-used to unpleasant revelations. We have long planned for an eventuality such as civil war, though we never thought it would be of such scope and scale.
Horus has called for us to go to Isstvan, and bring the Emperor's justice upon Guilliman and his treacherous allies. We will answer this command, for to do otherwise would be treason. But we must keep in mind that Guilliman, for all his disdain for the more subtle aspects of war, is no fool. He must have known what Horus' response to his betrayal would be, and he must have prepared for it. When the retribution of the Imperium arrives to Isstvan, he will have a plan.
We must be prepared. We must not be deceived. We must be ready. We must not let the burning desire for vengeance, the righteous wrath of the betrayed, blind us to the reality before our eyes.
We are Alpha Legion, and we take the long view.'
Attributed to Primarch Omegon, during the journey to the Isstvan System

When the message from the Warmaster came, barely a few weeks after the brutal end of the Nurthene Compliance, it confirmed all that Eldrad and Grammaticus had said. Guilliman had turned against the Imperium, corrupted by dark forces lurking in the Warp. Worse, Sanguinius, Dorn and Ferrus Manus had joined him, purging their Legions of all those who would not follow them in their betrayal. As soon as they had deciphered the astropathic sending, Alpharius and Omegon knew that they had to act. Their "guests", humans and Eldar alike, were both still contained aboard the Beta – treated well and politely, but still imprisoned. That had to end. The war against Guilliman and his cohorts was only part of the coming conflict. Primarchs would fight other Primarchs – it was inevitable. But the Cabal would act in the shadows, trying to steer things toward the traitors' victory, and the Imperium was ill-equipped to fight against it. This was the kind of battle the Alpha Legion had been created for, and Eldrad and Grammaticus had information that would allow it to be fought efficiently. Yet Horus' order had to be heeded as well. The Alpha Legion must join into the fight against the Traitor Legions, lest it be seen as traitor itself. And so, Alpharius and Omegon decided to separate their forces. One of the Primarchs would go to Isstvan, and fight the war against the Traitor Legions. Another would go with Eldrad and Grammaticus, and fight the war against the Cabal. This war would never be recorded, would never be known to the wider Imperium – yet it had to be fought.

And so, Alpharius and Omegon parted. It is said that Alpharius went to Isstvan, and Omegon followed John Grammaticus toward the kingdom of Ultramar, in order to accomplish the first thing that had to be done to prevent Guilliman's victory, while Alpharius went to Isstvan to join in the retribution fleet. But perhaps it was the opposite. The two Primarchs were ever fond of shifting places, and not even their closest sons could tell the difference. It is theorised by some lore-keepers of the Alpha Legion that they were truly one mind in two bodies, and that any distinctions they pretended existed was purely to hide the truth from those who would see it as unnatural.

Regardless of the truth, the Primarch his sons called Alpharius came to Isstvan with a fleet and thirty thousand Space Marines, ready to join the battle for Isstvan V, where Guilliman and his accomplices had gone to ground following the slaughter of their own sons on Isstvan III. The Night Lords were already there, though only in very limited number. At the demand of his brother, Alpharius met with Curze aboard the Beta prior to the meeting of the loyalist Primarchs, for a discussion whose exact contents have been lost to the ages. All that is known is that Curze delivered yet another dire warning to Alpharius, and that Alpharius sensed the doom that hovered above his brother.

'That's a nice fleet you have out there,' said Konrad. 'Our brothers are sure to find it very impressive for so young a Legion. It must have taken quite the feat of diplomacy to gather sufficient support from the Mechanicum.'
Alpharius didn't say anything.
'So,' asked the King of the Night, something like amusement glittering in his eyes, 'how many more just like it do you have out there ?'
Alpharius still didn't say anything. But something in his body language must have betrayed his shock, because Curze smiled ever so slightly.
'How did I know ? I didn't, but now I do.' His expression sobered. 'Listen to me, brother. You need to be careful when we get down there. Use one of your doubles – do not take to the field in your Primarch aspect.'
'Why ?' asked Alpharius – the first word he had spoken since the two of them had been alone. A shadow fell upon Konrad's face, as if he were bearing the weight of knowledge he would rather not have.
'Because however the battle goes, I know this : the war will not end on Isstvan V.'

Heeding his brother's advice, Alpharius asked one of his strongest and most devoted sons, Kel Silonius, to act as his double during the following war council, then onto the black sands themselves. The Primarch himself took the disguise of a common Legionary, fighting alongside his sons against the traitor Ultramarines. Then came the second, devastating betrayal, when the Dark Angels, Salamanders and Raven Guard revealed themselves in league with Guilliman. Silonius died within seconds of the First Legion opening the first treacherous shots, torn apart by vile sorcery unleashed by the Dark Angels. Perhaps the sons of the Lion expected to break the morale of the Alpha Legion by this cowardly blow, but they were proved wrong, for the Hydra's warriors all knew of the stratagem employed by their father, and the only thing the death of Silonius accomplished was filling them with a cold, vengeful rage. For a time, Alpharius remained hidden among his sons, directing them secretly against the traitor formations. Then the King of the Night and the Lord of Death came together at the spearhead of the loyalist beleaguered army, and Alpharius could hide himself no longer.

Forsaking not only his brother's counsel, but also his own teachings, Alpharius revealed himself, displaying his full might as a Primarch, and took his place at the side of his two brothers. Though Alpharius was close to Konrad, he had barely ever met Mortarion – yet in that moment the three of them were as one, and none could stand against them. The ranks of the Traitor Legions were broken before them, and nothing the heretics could cast at the loyalist triad could even slow them down. But then, as the loyalists neared their transports, Curze turned back, ordering his brothers to go one without him while he held back the traitor assault massing at their back. Alpharius' heart bled to leave his brother to die – but he knew that, of the three of them, the King of the Night was the only one who could give them the time they required to board the transports and leave.

Yet just as the Night Lords Primarchs unleashed his long-contained power against the Traitor Legions forces led by Vulkan, another Traitor Primarch appeared to challenge the loyalists' flight. There before Alpharius stood Ferrus Manus, dripping with the corruption of the Warp, the warhammer Forgebreaker held within still-pristine silver hands. And so, for the first time – but not the last – Alpharius fought against another Primarch.

There were no words.
Alpharius had always thought there would be. In the dark hours of the night, when he and Omegon had considered the possibility of Primarch fighting Primarch, long before Guilliman had broken his oath to the Imperium, Alpharius had been convinced that brothers couldn't possibly fight in silence. Surely, he had thought, they would try to talk to one another, to bring the other across whatever gap in belief had led to their opposition. But that had been a naive thought, one fit only for a sane universe. And Mankind did not live in a sane universe. The monsters the Ultramarines had unleashed were prove enough of that.
And so Alpharius and Ferrus Manus fought without words, without insults, without justifications. They fought as they had both fought for so long – to kill the enemy and nothing more. The Pale Spear clashed against Forgebreaker, the warhammer the Phoenician had created for Manus decades ago, at the dawn of their friendship. Like two beasts of legends dragged into reality by the Emperor's power, the Hydra and the Gorgon duelled upon the black sands, while all around them their sons died by the hundreds. Already Alpharius' weapon had torn a dozen rents through Ferrus' armor, causing a greenish pus to leak – but the Primarch of the Iron Hands didn't even seem to notice. Ferrus' armor already wore the marks left by his brief confrontation with Konrad, and looking at the wounds the King of the Night had inflicted upon him, Ferrus Manus should by all rights be dead. But malevolent energies coalesced around him, filling Alpharius' mouth with bile.
This, then, was the corruption Grammaticus had tried to describe. The sight of his tainted brother was more shocking to Alpharius that the destruction of Nurth had been. This was closer, more personal – more repulsive. And yet … The silver hands of Manus were still unchanged. So was the weapon they wielded. No one knew exactly how Ferrus' hands had become what they were today. Could it be that whatever coated his hands was immune to the sickness that had taken hold of his soul ?
With a snarl, Alpharius sent a mental command to his spear. The ancient xenos weapon shattered, fragments of the blades flying around in a swirling maelstrom that cut several Iron Hands to ribbons. As the fragments penetrated through his flesh, even Ferrus seemed to be hurt, for the first time since the Massacre had begun. He staggered, and Alpharius struck again. His shoulder hit the Gorgon in the chest with enough strength to dent a Land Raider, and the Primarchs of the Iron Hands fell on his back, Forgebreaker slipping from his grasp. As the Pale Spear reassembled, Alpharius switched it to a single-handed grip and reached down with his free hand, seizing the hilt of the warhammer and lifting it up with some difficulty – the thing was heavier than he had expected.
'This is not yours any longer,' he spat to Ferrus as he passed by his fallen brother. 'You lost all claims to it when you betrayed us all.'
Those were the first words Alpharius had ever spoken to the Primarch of the Iron Hands. And they would be the last.

Though Alpharius couldn't kill Manus – just as Konrad had discovered, the Primarch of the Iron Hands had become nigh-invulnerable as a result of his unholy transformation – he managed to put him down temporarily. Soon the surviving loyalists were fleeing Isstvan V, leaving tens of thousands of Legionaries dead upon the black sands. Worse, Konrad Curze, Primarch of the Eighth Legion and Savior of Nostramo, had fallen has well, sacrificing his life to buy the time his brothers had needed. It is written by those Alpha Legionaries who shared the Primarch's transport that, for the first time since any of them had known him, they saw Alpharius weep for his lost brother. But though his sorrow was unending, the Primarch crushed it, sealed it away behind walls forged of duty and discipline. For the war was far from over.

Soon, the loyalist fleet fractured. The Night Lords departed for Nostramo, in order to lay the body of their father to rest upon their homeworld. Then, Alpharius took his leave from Mortarion. At his command, the survivors of the thirty thousand Legionaries he had brought with him to Isstvan scattered, hiding on human worlds laying in the path of the Traitor Legions to Terra. Alpharius himself used his knowledge of Warp-navigation to find a path across the tumultuous Sea of Souls. He did not ask Mortarion to accompany him, for he knew that it would take all of his skills to get just one ship – the Beta – to destination, and that a fleet attempting the same journey would be cast adrift at best, and annihilated at worst. Even with the talent possessed by the Lord of the Hydra, in the end it was only thanks to the last-minute intervention of an Eldar guide sent by Eldrad that the Beta was able to reach Sol, using a long-hidden branch of the Webway network that ended in the vicinity of Mankind's birth system.

On Terra, Alpharius made his report to Horus, and delivered to the Warmaster the weapon Forgebreaker, reclaimed from the hands of Ferrus Manus during their confrontation on Isstvan V. Later, Lupercal would gift the weapon Fulgrim had forged for the Gorgon to Perturabo, and the Lord of Iron would wield it to devastating effect during the Siege of Terra. Then, the Twentieth Primarch journeyed into the depths of the Imperial Palace, seeking an audience with his father. Alpharius believed that the Emperor must be informed of what he had learned on Nurth, and wanted to know what the Emperor had planned. But the Emperor was nowhere to be found, for He was fighting the War in the Webway, His son Magnus at His side against the tides of Neverborn pouring through the seals shattered by the Sixth Legion's attempt to slay the Crimson King. Only with the assistance of Malcador the Sigillite was Alpharius able to enter psychic communion with his father.

Father and son meet inside a memory. Around them, the primitive dwellings of Mankind's firstborn rise from the arid soil, built of clay and wood. In the distance, they can hear the sound of the villagers toiling in the fields, within the valley made fertile by the nearby river. It is peaceful here, so peaceful that it makes the son uncomfortable.
The son stands in the memory much like he does in reality. He is tall, taller than any pure human, taller than any of his own children, but smaller than his brothers – save for one. His armor appears pristine, covered in blue-green scales. The symbol of infinity is emblazoned upon his right shoulder paldron, while a parchment covered in a near-microscopic script hangs from his left. Upon it, he has written the names of all those he saw die during the Massacre.
In this memory, the son carries no weapon, and his noble face is exposed, his helmet absent. Yet there can be no denying his nature. He is a warrior, a soldier, a general – a being designed for violence. He does not belong here, in this peaceful village of primordial humanity, and he knows it.
In contrast, the father appears as a child, dressed in the garments of the people who lived in this village, tens of millennia ago. His skin is brown, as was that of all humans in those earliest of days, before the species spread out across its birthworld and undergo the minute genetic mutations that would create so many different faces for Humanity.
"Is this where it began ?" asks the son, in a language that won't be invented for more than two hundred thousand years. "Is this where you were born ?"
The father looks around in silence for a moment, as if trying to recall a life so ancient it is all but gone from his memory.
"Yes," he says at last. "It is what I remember first. Before everything else … There was this place."
"I have seen places like those in the galaxy," continues the son after his father falls silent. "Where people lived in peace and simplicity. Each time, I mourned that I had to bring them into our universe of war and endless perils."
"No," replies the father, shaking his childish head. "You remember ignorance, descendants of star travellers living in the ruins of their forgotten heritage. This … this is the memory of innocence, Alpharius. Before the Enemy noticed us. Before ..."
His voice trails of once again. The son – Alpharius, Primarch of the Twentieth Space Marine Legions – moves closer, something very much like unease on his face.
"Father ?" he calls out. The child – the avatar of the Emperor, Master of Mankind and Lord of Terra – is trembling.
"It is nothing," says the child, and Alpharius knows that his father is lying to him. "How … how is Horus ? Perturabo ?"
"Angry," answers Alpharius. "They … they took the death of Konrad hard. They do their best to hide it, but I can sense their pain … and their rage. Guilliman has no idea what Vulkan did when he killed him."
The father turns, and looks his son in the eyes again. Strangely, despite the fact that one is a child and the other a Primarch, the father needs not raise his head to be at eye-level.
"You have something to tell me," declares the father. "Is that related to why your brother isn't there with you ?"
"Yes," admits Alpharius. "Omegon and I, we … we have made a pact. An alliance. With … xenos."
"The Eldar," says the Emperor's avatar. "I know. Be careful, Alpharius. Even those who oppose the Primordial Annihilator will always put their own kind before us."
"I will," promises the Primarch. "Father ..." he asks, hesitantly. "What do we do now ? What is the plan ?"
For a long, long moment, the father is silent. Then, he says :
"The Webway tunnels are echoing with the sounds of war. Even now, Magnus is fighting with all he has while I do battle against our foes to prevent them from drowning this world into madness. Your brother is strong, stronger than I thought, but not strong enough."
"So it is true then," whispers Alpharius, a cold dread seizing his two hearts. "The Dark Gods are attacking Terra."
"Yes. As long as the Webway Gate is open, someone must sit on the throne to prevent them from consuming the entire planet."
"Then ..." Alpharius hesitates. Dare he say it ? He does. "Then why not close the Gate ?"
For the first time, Alpharius sees doubt on his father's face. Worse : he sees fear. Uncertainty.
"Because once I close it," he says, each word echoing in Alpharius' mind like the doom bell ringing for all of Mankind, "then it cannot be opened again. And without it, I do not know what to do to prevent Chaos from triumphing in the end. We will fight – we can do nothing else – but … It won't be enough. Eventually, the Primordial Annihilator will grow too strong, and we will grow too weak. Alpharius … my son … The reason I am keeping the Webway Gate open is because I don't know what else to do."
The voice of the Emperor is barely more than a whisper as he says again, as if to himself :
"I don't know what else to do ..."

After his meeting, Alpharius emerged from the depths of the Imperial Palace burning with renewed determination to stop the traitors from ever reaching Terra. He refused to obey Horus' demand that he remain on Terra and help prepare for the coming of Guilliman. Instead, Alpharius argued that his Legion's strength would be better used fighting a guerilla war against the Traitor Legions, slowing them down and bleeding them of their strength through a thousand cuts. Though the Warmaster was loath to risk exposing one of his few remaining brothers whose fate he was sure of to yet more danger, Horus eventually accepted Alpharius' reasoning, and the Hydra threw himself into the Shadow Wars. Under his guidance, the scattered forces of the Twentieth Legion became the nightmare of Traitor Legionaries and human turncoats alike, fighting alongside loyalist forces all across the galaxy. Always they sought to protect those who had remained true to the Emperor – but on worlds that had fully turned to the service of Chaos, they were incredibly ruthless and without mercy. Some warriors of the Legion used methods that would have given even the likes of the Ravenlord and the Black Dragon pause, and when the Heresy ended and the reclamation began, many worlds were found utterly devoid of life, wiped clean by the Hydra's wrath.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, Omegon was fighting against the corrupted Cabal and its minions. Of this epic conflict, fought in the shadow of the Heresy and known to the Alpha Legion as the Unremembered War, even our annals tell little – yet still more than some of other conflicts that were fought in the darkness cast over the galaxy by Guilliman's betrayal. Some forces were battled during that time that were too terrible for even the Twentieth Legion to keep knowledge of them. For instance, according to the fragmented records, it was during the Heresy that the Hydra fought against an entity known only as the Harrowing, destroyed it, and claimed its name as that of one of its favourite tactics on the battlefield. What was the Harrowing, what were its goals and where it came from, we do not know – we know not even if it was a single creature, an invading army, or an entire species.

The half of the Legion under Omegon's leadership had been scattered by his own command, each fragment led by one of his most trusted sons and tasked with fulfilling a specific goal. Grammaticus parted with Omegon there, having received his own mission from Eldrad Ulthran – to meet with the sons of Curze and assist them in their pursuit of vengeance against the Black Dragon, Vulkan. Other groups had their own purposes, the nature of which shall be discussed further into this chronicle. Eldrad Ulthran investigated the fate of the Third Legion and discovered the plot by which Slaanesh had delivered the Emperor's Children into the hands of the Dark Eldar. With the help of the Alpha Legion, a message was sent to Sevatar, Legion Master of the Night Lords, so that they could rescue the Phoenician and his few surviving sons.

Other missions, of which the other Legions never heard of, were also performed in the Unremembered War, with varying results. The hierophants of Ezyrthin were slain before they could sacrifice the planet's trillion souls and become Daemon Princes of immense power, and the cult of the White Serpent on Molech was discreetly purged before they could subordinate the Imperial Knights tasked with defending the planet's hidden secret. But at the same time, the assassination of Ulrach Branthan, the Enthroned King of the Iron Hands, failed. The war against the Yu'vath ended in abject failure, with the population of an entire Sector abandoned to slavery under the rule of the cruel Warp-tainted xenos, where it would remain for thousands of years. And in the depths of the hive-city of Vermungrad, three entire companies were lost to the thing that the cultists had brought into existence there, their gene-seed tainted beyond all recovery by its spreading corruption.

The ship was dead. It floated in the void, its engines silent, its decks open to the cold emptiness of space. Once it had belonged to the Imperial Navy; then it had been claimed by the human followers of the Thirteenth Legion; then it had been purged and reclaimed by one whose name sent shivers of dread and hatred down the spine of any treacherous son of Guilliman. It transmitted no identification codes, but the last name it had worn before its death had been Defiance.
From outside, it was obvious how the ship had died. Vast craters were visible on its sides, left by intense bombardment. The entry wounds where Legion-issued boarding torpedoes had torn their way inside were also in plain sight for one who knew what to look for. But, strangely, all the torpedoes were still in place, despite at least half of them appearing to be recoverable.
On the bridge of the Defiance, five Legionaries waded through the corpses of more than twenty of their traitor cousins. All wore the blue of the Ultramarines, with their armor covered in the unholy symbols that indicated their infernal allegiance. They had died in a variety of ways – blade and bolt were the most prominent, but there were other, more creative manners of death displayed as well. One appeared to have been cut in two by a monomolecular edge, while another had a perfectly circular hole in his chest and a third did not appear to have suffered any damage at all. Just to be sure, one of the Legionaries put a bolt in his helmet, scattering desiccated, frozen brain matter across the floor.
On the bridge's command throne sat another Ultramarine, but this one was different. His armor was devoid of the Ruinous markings of the dead traitors – instead, it was covered in minute scripting, thousands and thousands of small paragraphs, each describing a specific battlefield tactic or trick. Another difference was the helmet – unlike that of the fallen sons of Guilliman, it was painted a bright red.
They had found him. They had found Aeonid Thiel – but they had been too late. He was already dead. Hesitantly, one of the Alpha Legionaries moved to touch the body …
'Stop !' called out another Legionary over the vox. The first Astartes froze, then turned his helmet to look where his brother was pointing – to a clutch of grenades, nearly completely hidden behind the legs of the enthroned warrior. Disturbing the body would cause them to detonate, killing whoever had disturbed the corpse.
Hope flared anew in the Legionary's chest. Careful not to disturb the grenades, he reached toward the helmet, and, with reverence, lifted it up …
… only to reveal nothing but empty space. The suit of armor sitting upon the command throne was empty.
'He bobby-trapped his own armor before leaving,' said the Space Marine, admiration plain in his voice. 'If but a fraction of his wisdom is contained in these engravings, then the armor alone is a prize worthy of a Primarch.'
'Maybe. But if he set that trap, then where is he ?' asked his sergeant. No one had any answer to offer.
The warrior who held in his hands the red helmet of Aonid Thiel knew that the search would continue. Aeonid Thiel, one of the only survivors of the Isstvan Atrocity, loyalist Ultramarine and bane of traitors, was too valuable, too important to let fade into obscurity. But he had a feeling, without being able to explain why, that the Lord of the Red-Marked would never be found.

But the actions of Omegon are more documented. After dividing his fleet, he took only a single ship with him into the Kingdom of Ultramar, to the Five Hundred Worlds where the Arch-Traitor's minions had built great fortresses and spread their unholy beliefs among a population that had once been the example of compliance and loyalty to the Imperium. The Primarch did not come to Ultramar in strength, for he doubted that even the full might of the Twentieth would have been able to break the defenses built by Guilliman. This was a mission calling for stealth and subtlety, the two hallmarks of the Alpha Legion. Guided by the words of John Grammaticus, the Primarch sought to extract a potential ally from Ultramar before the dark plot set in motion by Guilliman reached fruition and engulfed the entire region of space into the Warp. And so, ahead of the retribution fleet led by Lorgar and Angron, Omegon came to Calth.

Using camouflage technology reclaimed from the ruins of a forge-world burned by civil war during the Long Night, the Primarch infiltrated Guilliman's realm, and Omegon and his Effrit Squad set foot upon Calth itself, the world that would later become the cornerstone of the Ruinstorm. With them came Damon Prytanis, Grammaticus' ancient colleague in the Cabal and a Perpetual older than Grammaticus, his mind scarred by all that he had witnessed and done in service to the xenos conspiracy. His heart burned with the desire for vengeance and redemption as he led them toward the one they had come to rescue before he too fell prey to the Primordial Annihilator.

Of the horrors they found on Calth, the Primarch wrote no tales. But he wrote of the one they had come to save – a man who had been old when the Age of Strife had erupted across the galaxy, a man who had seen all that Mankind had to offer to the universe, for good or ill. A man who had lived older than any other, save the Emperor Himself. A Perpetual whose knowledge of the Primordial Annihilator was matched only by his contempt for it and his disgust for all those who would willingly and knowingly offer themselves to its corruption. A man who had worn many names throughout the millennia – and who was now known as Ollanius Persson, retired trooper of the Imperial Army, and farmer on Calth.

The cultists howled their curses at Ollanius as he killed them. There were twelve of them and only one of him, but they weren't soldiers. All they had was their madness, granting them strength and the ability to ignore pain. Against Ollanius, it wasn't enough. He was used to fighting madmen – it had been one of the few things that had remained constant throughout his forty thousand years of life. No matter how much time had passed, there wasn't much difference between these cultists and the cannibal he had killed in the trenches of Verdun, in a war even more senseless than the one that would soon ignite across the galaxy.
By coming to Calth, he had thought he could finally get some rest, some peace away from it all. Had he not done his part ? Had he not done enough ? But it seemed fate was determined to prove him otherwise. He had sensed something wrong when the Ultramarines fleet had returned to the planet years ago, but at the time he hadn't know why. Then the cults had started to appear. People had begun to go missing in the night, in the arcologies. If he had half the sense of a goat, he would have left the planet right then. But he hadn't : instead, he had investigated, and soon found out what the Thirteenth Legion had brought back with it from its journeys across the stars.
He couldn't escape now. The entire planet was in lock-down – only the Legion used transports to orbit, while the population drowned in its own corruption. Bands of madmen and madwomen roamed the streets and the countryside, burning and killing everything they came across – including each other, when two bands met. Day by day, the veil was getting thinner, yet there were no manifestations of daemons – not yet. Something was holding them back, letting the pressure accumulate, probably in order to let it loose all at once. Ollanius definitively didn't want to be on Calth when that happened, nor anywhere else in the Five Hundred Worlds if he could help it. The problem was, he couldn't. He wouldn't make it within a kilometer of a spaceport before the Ultramarines' pet witches would detect him, and then the Legion would know of his presence. He was quite certain the only reason he had managed to elude them so far was because they didn't know he was here. He might not be the most important piece on the board – that dubious honor belonged to the Emperor, and after him to the war-bred giants he had created as his sons – but he was still not someone the Enemy would allow to roam freely.
He moved away from the corpses, back into the overgrown fields. No one had harvested anything on Calth in years. Soon, the reserves of food would dry up, and he dreaded to think of what would happen next. He had seen it before, so many times, even back on Earth when …
Something moved in the distance. Ollanius snapped to attention. At first, when he caught sight of the hulking, armored figures, his heart sank – then he saw the emblem on their shoulders, which reassured him only a little. Then he saw the man among the giants.
'Damon Prytanis,' he said in an incredulous voice. 'With Legionaries, no less. What has the Cabal done this time ?'
'I don't work for the Cabal anymore,' replied the killer. 'John convinced me they had gone mad.'
'John,' repeated Ollanius, remembering the younger Perpetual. 'And where is he ?'
'He wanted to get you in person,' shrugged Damon. 'But he is busy with something else.'

The Effrit Squad barely managed to escape with Ollanius in tow, but their pursuers were hot on their tail, and they were forced to resort to desperate measure. In order to escape the deluded cultists and their tainted Astartes masters, Persson used a relic blade – an athame – he had taken from his would-be captors, and cut a hole through the fabric of reality itself. They passed through the tear in space and time, leaving their foes howling in dismay as the rent closed behind them. Mere hours later, the fleets of the Word Bearers and World Eaters reached the system, and the Battle of Calth began, while elsewhere in the galaxy, the Drop Site Massacre was about to unfold.

Thus began an epic odyssey, which took Omegon and his allies to all manners and places and times – from the war-torn hellscapes of Old Earth during the Age of Strife to the paradise worlds of the Eldar at the time of their ascendency. With his own eyes, Omegon saw the power Mankind had wielded during the Dark Age of Technology, and how rampant Abominable Intelligences had all but wiped out the species in millennia past. Most of those places were dangerous in the extreme, and the group only remained long enough for Persson to find another spot where he could use the athame and take them closer to their intended destination – Terra, at the time of the Heresy.

But on every step of their journey, they were hunted by the Primordial Annihilator. Time means nothing to the Dark Gods, and the same powers Ollanius was using were also in the hands of the Slaves to Ruin – though only the greatest of them could hope to wield them with anything approaching control. At first, daemons hounded them, ghostly wraiths following the trail of their souls and possessing the bodies of those whom they crossed in their journey. When they were banished by Primarch, Legionaries and Perpetuals, the Archenemy sent other agents : its deluded pawns in the Cabal, xenos of shapes and powers the Imperium had never met before. These were ancient creatures, who possessed the same antediluvian lore Persson was employing to guide the group through the hidden paths in time and space. All those the group fought believed the lie the Cabal had fallen victim to – that, by helping Guilliman's victory, they were ultimately ensuring the destruction of Chaos itself. Yet they too were defeated, their traps avoided or escaped, their bodies left broken in places where they would become the roots of a thousand legends. Traitor Astartes were sent, too, the Dark Gods bending their minds until they would accept to ally with the xenos of the Cabal – but they too fell, unable to stand before Omegon's might as a Primarch.

Then the Dark Gods became angry, or perhaps fearful. The wanderers had escaped them long enough, and their agents – both mortal and immortal – had failed them one too many times. The hour for desperate measures had come, for the Ruinous Powers would not allow Ollanius to reach Terra. Not even they knew just how the Perpetual could change the course of an entire galactic war, but they were unwilling to take the risk. Too long had Ollanius and his immortal kindred opposed the Primordial Annihilator, and after their attempts to subtly suborn Damon Prytanis into their service had failed, the Dark Gods had stopped being amused by the immortals' futile struggle against them. Perhaps, with the help of the only other Perpetual whose age was even in the same scale as His own, the Emperor would find a way to repair the Webway Project, or find another path to free Mankind from Chaos. And so, the Ruinous Powers banded together, and freed one of their most dangerous servants from its prison, where it had been banished in aeons past in order to prevent it from destroying the entire galaxy and starving the Gods from the souls they needed to survive.

That servant was Aetaos'rau'keres, once a Lord of Change of Tzeentch, though that classification utterly fails in capturing the scope of its power. This daemon had been among the first born of its kind, created during the War in Heavens by the abuse of knowledge on both sides that nearly unmade the galaxy. Older even than the god it would eventually become associated with, Aetaos'rau'keres was completely, utterly mad, even compared with other Neverborn. It desired nothing but the complete destruction of all things in the universe, and wielded power and sorcery the likes of which no one else has ever mastered. Those few unfortunate scholars who had learned of its existence in the terrified drawings of butchered species named him the Slayer of Souls, Lord of Hosts, Distorter of Worlds, and many other titles, all of which failed to catch its true horror. Even the Eldar at the height of their power had feared the Slayer of Souls, and it was all their newborn gods could do to keep it away from their worlds and into the realms of lesser species.

When Tzeentch had emerged from the Empyrean, Aetaos'rau'keres was its prime rival for mastery of magic and secret, forbidden knowledge. Yet even the Changer of Ways had not been able to bring the Slayer of Souls under its control. Aetaos'rau'keres was the incarnation of knowledge misused and turned into an instrument of war and destruction, and it could not be reasoned with, nor was it capable of bending knee to the God of Change. In the end, rather than allow it to continue its rampage across the galaxy, Tzeentch fought against Aetaos'rau'keres, calling upon the aid of its dark brothers in the first such unholy covenant. Daemonic legions clashed while the Dark Gods themselves battled the Lord of Hosts, and eventually Aetaos'rau'keres was defeated, dragged deep into the Crystal Labyrinth, and sealed away from the Materium and Immaterium alike, with bonds so strong not even its dreams could reach out and influence the thoughts of mortals. And there it had remained for tens of millions of years, nearly forgotten by the galaxy and even the Gods who had broken it.

But now, only Aetaos'rau'keres had both the power to destroy Omegon and his allies, and the knowledge required to hunt them down through time and space. Other minions of the Dark Gods might be able to do so, but they were all engaged in their own plots and wars, and their masters were unwilling to risk losing an advantage in the Great Game, even to prevent the ruin of their greater plan – for such is the selfish nature of Chaos. Even so, the Dark Gods dared not release the primordial daemon with its full strength. Tzeentch bound Aetaos'rau'keres with a thousand and one pacts, bindings that restricted its power and compelled it to obey those with the knowledge of its chains. The bindings also had the unforeseen effect of imposing something like sanity upon the daemon's shattered psyche, and it was sent after the wanderers with the singular mission of destroying them, whatever the cost.

Ollanius sensed the new pursuer at once, and his old heart was filled with dread. He knew of Aetaos'rau'keres, and he knew that, should the daemon find them, there would be little they would be able to do against its awesome power, chained as it might be. Aetaos'rau'keres was more akin to a primordial force of thought and soul than a daemon, closer to the Dark Gods than almost any other creature of the Warp. And so the wanderers fled, faster and less cautious than before, as behind them the Slayer of Souls left a trail of ruins across time and space. Finally, it caught up to them, on a world brought to ruin by the war between Mankind and its own, sentient creations. The wanderers had been trapped there by Aetaos'rau'keres' scheme, cornered with no place to escape – or so it seemed – for the war had ravaged the Warp itself, erasing the weak spots in the fabric of space-time where the athame could cut.

There was only one possible way out of the place that did not lead to the same spot they had come from, a pit of pure blackness where the very concept of reality had been destroyed by the energies unleashed by the conflict. But the pit was far from where the wanderers had arrived, and Aetaos'rau'keres was right behind them. So, Omegon made the same choice his brother Konrad had made before him, and resolved to stay behind and gain time for his allies to escape. For the first time in the entire existence of the primordial daemon, a being of flesh and blood stood his ground before it. And while Omegon fought Aetaos'rau'keres, Ollanius found the way through the pit of non-space, and the rest of the wanderers escaped the ruined world – leaving the Primarch alone with the Slayer of Souls.

The thing Persson had called Aetaos'rau'keres – spitting on the ground after speaking the name out loud – towered above Omegon. It was covered in so many silver chains and burning brands that it was all but impossible to see the aspect its body took in the Materium. What could be glimpsed through the chains suggested avian features with too many eyes, and dirty feathers that grew from skin patched with nine-pointed gears. Clawed hands were bound in heavy manacles, each band of unnatural metal as wide as Omegon's shoulders. Yet despite all these handicaps, the daemon had still beaten Omegon to an inch of his life. With blazing flames and kinetic pulses, it had sent him flying into the piles of rubble that were nearly everywhere on this ruined world. And yet, every time he had been thrown down, Omegon had risen. He had managed to score a few hits, striking with enough speed that the daemon hadn't been able to react in time, hindered by its chains.
Now he was on his knees, and Aetaos'rau'keres loomed over him, something like curiosity twinkling in its ever-changing eyes. It had been furious when Ollanius and the others had escaped, and Omegon had paid the price of that anger – but now, it seemed the emotion had passed, replaced by a sense of wonder that made the Primarch feel like an ant beneath a magnifying glass.
'You are surrounded by lies and deceit,' said the daemon, and every word was a stab of pain, like glass being forced into Omegon's brain. 'Every step you take only bring you further into darkness. Yet despite this, you persist. Why ?! You know the truth now ! You have seen the true face of the universe ! You know of Chaos, you know that all your father told Mankind is lies ! So why do you persist ? Why do you still cling to your pathetic code, your pitiful dreams ?! It is all a lie, so why will you not fall !'
Omegon stood, blood flowing freely through the cracks of his armor. He looked up, staring right into the eyes of his tormentor, and amidst the terrible agony and despair at what the galaxy had become, there was strength, unyielding and untainted.
Across the long, bloody ages of Mankind, tyrants of all stripes had seen that look in those they would bend to their will. They had seen it in the eyes of their dying foes as they died on torture racks, refusing to break. They had seen it in soldiers and mothers and children, who defied them even if they knew they could not hope to prevail. They had seen something they did not – could not – understand, something they had cast out of their own soul the day they had begun to walk the path to glory. And as they saw it, deep within their black hearts, they knew fear.
And so did Aetaos'rau'keres as the Primarch took a single uneasy step in its direction, the words coming out of his mouth weak, yet capable of bending worlds :
'Because I am not a lie !'

Though he eventually claimed victory and banished Aetaos'rau'keres, Omegon was heavily wounded, and separated from Persson and the rest of his Effrit Squad. Cast adrift across time and space by the daemon's sorcery, the Primarch wandered for a timeless eternity, seeing many things he would rather forget. Without the athame, Omegon was at the mercy of the cruel whims of the Warp, and he never remained in one time and place for long before being torn away and sent into a new, always more dangerous location. Then, finally, he was delivered from his wandering, and brought back to the galaxy.

'You took your time.'
Attributed to Primarch Omegon, when John Grammaticus recovered him from his errance.

Grammaticus, returned from his failure to assassinate Vulkan, had used the secrets he had learned in his time as an agent of the Cabal to find Omegon and bring him back with him. Only thanks to Eldrad's warnings had the Perpetual known of Omegon's fate, and only by following guidance from Asurmen himself was he able to find the Primarch. A single record indicates that Omegon was found on a world of endless crystal plains, haunted by the techno-specters of the species who had destroyed itself there in a failed bid for immortality. Of Aetaos'rau'keres' fate, we know nothing : the daemon never returned to haunt the Imperium, despite far, far more than a thousand years having passed since its banishment at Omegon's hands. Whether the circumstances of its defeat resulted in its complete dissolution, or its failure was punished with renewed imprisonment, is something even the seers of the Thousand Sons are unable to tell.

As the years of the Heresy dragged on, the Traitor Legions drove ever forward, crushing all who stood in their path to Terra. Despite their divisions, Guilliman had managed to keep the Ultramarines and Iron Hands together, and the Tenth and Thirteenth Legions were more than capable to break the weakened forces of the Imperium arrayed before them. The Alpha Legion forces were dispersed, fighting on a thousand worlds against the minions of Chaos. For years, Alpharius had directed them from the shadows, striking at every weakness the traitor armada showed to his expert eyes. But it simply wasn't enough, and the fate Eldrad and Grammaticus had foretold haunted him. The image of his father, trapped within the mechanisms of the Golden Throne, screaming in agony for the rest of eternity, tormented his every waking and sleeping moment that wasn't spent fighting the traitors. And so, despite the warnings of his allies, Alpharius weaved a final, desperate plot to stop Guilliman from ever reaching Terra.

The Primarch of the Alpha Legion arranged for Guilliman to hear of the fortress the Hydra had built on the world of Eskrador, near the Ruinstorm. More importantly, he made sure, through the orchestrated capture of several of his sons – who had willingly undergone mental wipes so that this would be the only useful information that could be extracted from them – that Guilliman knew that Alpharius was there. This was a challenge and a threat to the Ruinstorm that the Arch-Traitor could not ignore, and Guilliman left the leadership of the advance on Terra to Manus, taking with him the elite of his Legion in order to destroy the Hydra – for Guilliman still believed, even then, after everything the Shadow Wars had taught him about the Alpha Legion, that slaying the Primarch of the Twentieth would remove the threat they posed to his plans.

Eskrador had been claimed by the Twentieth Legion during the Great Crusade, and turned into an outpost to keep watch on the Five Hundred Worlds – for Alpharius' paranoia and personal dislike of Guilliman had driven him to be wary of the Avenging Son's kingdom long before the first signs of treachery had ever been discovered. The elite of the Thirteenth Legion was met with powerful defenses, but nothing could prevent Guilliman from making planetfall. This, however, had always been Alpharius' plan, and he drew the Arch-Traitor into the hollowed mountains of the world, in a deadly three-dimensional maze that only a Primarch's mind could navigate unaided without getting lost forever. Through taunting and cunning manoeuvres, Alpharius isolated Guilliman from his warriors. Then, the Hydra finally revealed himself to the Arch-Traitor, and the two brothers began their long-awaited duel, each burning with the desire to prove their superiority.

'You are nothing,' screamed Guilliman as he tore his way through the cavern, his gauntlets shattering the massive pillars of stone as if they were twigs. 'Do you hear me, little snake ? NOTHING !'
And then he was on him, towering above Alpharius. Dark power radiated from him. On the ground, bleeding from wounds that would not close, the Primarch of the Alpha Legion looked up into the madness that burned within the eyes of his brother. Guilliman went without a helmet – a sign of his arrogance he had held long before the Heresy. His face, once so noble, had become proud and bitter, gaunt even – yet it was also inhabited of unholy vitality, black veins running with eldritch energies. It was the face of death and damnation, of tyranny and the wilful embrace of ruin. It was, simply, the very image of all that the Great Crusade had sought to banish from the galaxy.
Alpharius' own helm had been broken by a glancing blow, the pieces scattered across the room as the two Primarchs fought. That is why, as Roboute rose his gauntlets to deliver the final blow, he was able to see that Alpharius was smiling at him.
'I am the one who beat you,' said Alpharius through broken teeth, and he pushed the trigger of the detonator held in his left hand. Far above the duelling brothers, the charges set weeks before the Thirteenth Legion had arrived to Eskrador exploded.
Guilliman screamed as the roof of the cavern collapsed, burying both Primarchs under thousands of tons of rock ...
... and Alpharius kept smiling, right until the end.

So died Alpharius, Primarch of the Alpha Legion. Hours after the mountain's collapse, Guilliman burst from the rubble, enraged beyond measure and radiating Chaotic power. For several days, the minions of the Arch-Traitor searched for Alpharius' body, hoping to desecrate it to further insult the Alpha Legion and demoralize the Imperium. But despite all their efforts, they could not find it, and eventually the Primarch of the Ultramarines abandoned the search. With the death of Alpharius, Guilliman believed that the threat of the Alpha Legion was ended, and he now could focus all his malevolent will upon the conquest of Terra and the claiming of the Golden Throne. And so, as the Dark Master of Chaos returned to the frontlines for the final push toward Sol, he sent summons to all of his brothers in treachery. One by one, those who remained abandoned their own pursuits, and the Traitor Legions converged onto Terra. There would the fate of the Imperium, of Mankind, of the entire galaxy, be decided.

And contrary to what Guilliman believed, the Alpha Legion would be there. For though it had lost one of its main heads, the Hydra was still as strong as ever, and the seeds it had sown in secret during the Heresy would soon bloom and usher forth the Arch-Traitor's downfall.

The Siege of Terra : Salvation Through Hidden Paths

'We are here.'
Marking discovered aboard the Maccrage's Honour during the first phase of the Siege of Terra, beneath the symbol of the hydra

Grammaticus had brought Omegon to Terra, with only weeks left before the arrival of the Traitor Legions. The Perpetual did not accompany Omegon to his destination – he had other plans, and alluded to another duty he must perform. As soon as his body appeared on the Throneworld, away from the distortions through which he had spent what seemed to him to be an eternity, Omegon collapsed on the spot, his many wounds finally catching up to him. For several days, he remained between life and death, until a group of Imperial menials found him and, in a panic, called for Legion Apothecaries who rushed in and did their best to heal him.

When Omegon woke up, he knew at once that his twin brother was dead, the bond that had always existed between them severed forever. For several hours, Omegon remained motionless in the Palace's depths, unable to process the absence of his other half – until, at long last, deep below, the Emperor closed the Webway Gate. The thunderous sound shock spread across the entire Imperial Palace, and stirred Omegon from his mourning. Freed from the burden of the Golden Throne, the Emperor's exhausted mind reached out to His sons on Terra. Each received a different message – for instance, Mortarion was told about the fate of the Khan, and commanded to hunt him down and destroy him once the war arrived to Terra.

To Omegon, the Emperor offered comfort for Alpharius' loss, and then delivered a dire warning. He told the Primarch that, without the Webway Gate, His plans for Mankind's future were no more. The Master of Mankind could also sense His doom approaching, and while He had entrusted leadership of the Imperium to charismatic, beloved Horus, He knew the Warmaster did not have the sort of mind required to fight the hidden war against Chaos for the future of the species. Horus would fight the enemies of Mankind on every battlefield, but he did not understand the more subtle aspects of the war against the Archenemy. It would fall upon the Alpha Legion to find a way to deliver the species from Chaos' corrosive touch – the Master of Mankind had no more ideas now that His aeons-long plan had been reduced to ash. Roused from his grief, Omegon vowed to honor his brother's memory by protecting Mankind's future from all those who would snuff it out. He emerged from the depths, shocking his brothers with his sudden appearance, and began to prepare.

To the Primarch's dismay, Ollanius Persson and the other wanderers had not yet arrived. He knew that, considering their method of travel, they might arrive at any second, or in ten thousand years – but if they could not reach Terra before the end, then the Primarch's mission would have been an abject failure and a considerable waste of time. All he could do was hope that Ollanius would find a path to Terra before the appointed hour, and do everything in his power to delay that hour as much as possible. Through long-prepared channels, he contacted the rest of his Legion, and learned the details of his brother's demise.

Even without any of their Primarchs to lead them, the Alpha Legionaries who had fought in the Shadow Wars were drawn to the Siege as surely as the Traitor Legions, and they fought with every trick they had learned to make things more difficult for the renegades. Ships were sabotaged, leaders slain, doubt and fear seeded into hearts that were all too ready to accept them. Guilliman's armada was a coalition of faithless, honorless traitors and turncoats, after all, and the Alpha Legion had become expert at playing them against each other.

When the Traitor Legions made planetfall, the sons of the Hydra were scattered across the world. They fought behind enemy lines, cutting off lines of resupply and ambushing reinforcements and wandering packs of insane cultists. Today, there are billions of humans on Terra and beyond whose ancestors only survived the Siege thanks to the intervention of the Alpha Legion. Often, these Legionaries wore the colors of other Legions. Sometimes they wore those of the loyal Legions who had not arrived to the Siege yet – the Night Lords, the Emperor's Children, the World Eaters and the Word Bearers – in order to seed confusion and fear among the traitors. At other times, they disguised themselves as traitors themselves, bearing the indignity of the faithless emblems so that the distrust between the Traitor Legions would grow. Even without the outward signs of corruption, the Traitor Legions's ranks were wide and varied, and there were many among most of them who had not yet fully succumbed by the time of the Siege – enough to make the ruse believable, at least.

Omegon himself fought among his sons, as he had done during the Great Crusade. When Horus fell to Sanguinius, the Primarch of the Alpha Legion was on the other side of the Palace, executing the renegade tech-priests tasked with the repairs of a Titan battle-group. He grieved for the Warmaster's death, but his heart was already numb, rendered cold and unfeeling by the weight of his twin's passing and the terrible responsibility that rested on his shoulders.

Mere hours before the end of the Heresy, as Guilliman's forces finally breached into the Cavea Ferrum, Ollanius and the remnants of Effrit Squad materialized, mere steps away from the Emperor's sanctum. If not for Omegon warning the Emperor's guardians of their arrival, they would have been gunned down on the spot. Instead, the warriors of Effrit Squad and Damon Prytanis joined the last line of defense around the Emperor's sanctum, and fought to hold back the escort of the Arch-Traitor. They fell to a man, though the ultimate fate of Damon Prytanis is unknown. Then, as Guilliman advanced to confront his father, he found Ollanius Persson standing in his way.

'You cannot hope to stand against me and survive,' declared Guilliman. 'You are nothing but an accident of fate, while I am the chosen of the Warp, the Dark Master of Chaos. Your immortality means nothing before me. Do you think that the power I hold isn't enough to destroy you utterly ? When I have been planning to kill one such as my father ?'
'You are more than able to kill me for good,' conceded Ollanius. 'And yet, here I stand. How many billions have stood against you on your way to this room ? Did they not know you could kill them as well ? And yet, they stood against you, even as fear filled their hearts to bursting. Why do you think that was ?'
'They were ignorant fools', scoffed the Thirteenth Primarch. 'The naive and the deceived, who were blind to the truth.'
'No,' said the Perpetual softly. 'They looked upon you and your allies, and they knew they were looking at an evil that must be fought. They stood against you because they had to, because their hearts would not allow them to do otherwise. Even without hope, they defied you – and you killed them. You killed so many of them ...'
Ollanius took a single step forward, and despite everything, Guilliman had to hold himself back from taking a step back.
'Was it worth it ?' said the old man, and for the first time there was wrath in his voice. 'Tell me, you thrice-damned bastard. Was it worth it ?!'
'Yes !' roared Guilliman in reply, loud enough that the frail mortal was staggered backward by the volume of his voice. 'Once I have cast my father down, I shall remake Mankind in my image, blessed with the power of the Warp ! None shall stand against us !'
Roboute raised the corrupted Gauntlets of Ultramar, and black warp-fire poured forth, engulfing the silhouette of Ollanius. For a fraction of a second, the shape of the old Perpetual was visible amidst the inferno – then it vanished, and the flames died down.
The Arch-Traitor looked at his hands, then at the pile of ashes. At first, his expression was incredulous – then a booming, insane laughter left his lips. A bluff – it had all been a bluff. The old immortal had had nothing that could hurt Guilliman. He had been worried about nothing – just the last pathetic effort of his father's allies to delay the inevitable …
High above the Imperial Palace, aboard the Andronicus, Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children, rushed toward his ship's teleportarium, praying to whatever powers for good remained in the galaxy that he would be in time to help his father in the final confrontation.

Despite the secrecy surrounding the activities of the Alpha Legion during the Heresy, the story of Ollanius Persson somehow spread across the population of Terra, and later the entire Imperium. Much of the details were wrong, of course – they got his name wrong for one thing, immortalizing him as Ollanius Pius, and some accounts even say that he was a soldier of the Imperial Guard, which is impossible as the organization didn't exist at that point in time. But the core of the tale remain the same : a mere mortal, Saint Ollanius stood in the path of the Arch-Traitor, and gave his life for the Emperor of Mankind. He was canonized by the Ecclesiarchy soon after its foundation, and his memory is prayed to across the entire Imperium, while the Order of Saint Ollanius is the highest honor in the Imperium, bestowed only by the High Lords of Terra themselves to a handful of individuals across the millennia.

The sacrifice of Ollanius delayed Guilliman just long enough that, when the Arch-Traitor was about to strike down the Emperor, Fulgrim teleported behind him and struck first. Together, the Phoenician and the Master of Mankind slew the Avenging Son, forcing the Traitor Legions to flee from Terra in disarray. Though the Emperor had been wounded nigh unto death, victory belonged to the Imperium – and it tasted every bit as bitter in Omegon's mouth as Eldrad had warned him it would.

Post-Heresy : In the Shadow of Legends

'I am alone. The bond is broken, the other half of my soul is gone. My brother is dead. I feel like I am drowning, falling deeper and deeper into darkness. But … No. I refuse to accept it. He is dead, yes, sacrificed in the battle against the enemy I now know can never be truly defeated by mortal hands and wills. But his sacrifice was not in vain. I realize that now.
And I now also realize, as I look up from this parchment and toward the warriors standing all around me, guarding me with their lives ... They are not my sons. Not anymore. Not after all they have been through. They, and those humans who stand with us, who dedicate their lives to the ideals and purposes of the Alpha Legion, are more than my warriors, more than my agents.
Now, they are my brothers and sisters, and with that knowledge comes another revelation :
I am not alone. I will never be alone, as long as one soul stands in defiance of Chaos.'
From the writings of Omegon, Primarch of the Alpha Legion

Though the Heresy had ended, the Unremembered War had not. While the other loyal Legions threw themselves into the Scouring, hunting down the Traitor Legions and forcing them into the Eye of Terror and the Ruinstorm, the Alpha Legion focused on wiping out the Cabal. With Guilliman's failure, the lies of the Acuity had driven the survivors mad, persuaded that the ultimate victory of Chaos was now inevitable. Many took their own lives out of despair, while others sought to wipe out Humanity in a desperate bid to prevent the rise of the Primordial Annihilator. The last sightings of John Grammaticus date from this period, when the Alpha Legion slew the last agents of the Cabal, before turning on its xenos masters. One by one, the lords of the Cabal were brought down, their influence removed from the galaxy. An organization that had stood for millions of years against the Dark Gods died, after being corrupted from within and turned into an unwilling instrument of the very power they sought to defeat. That lesson is one the Alpha Legion has taken to heart – nothing, nothing, is truly safe from corruption by the Ruinous Powers.

However, while the destruction of the Cabal was completed within a hundred years of the Siege's end, there was still one problem. The mysterious species Grammaticus had seen meeting with the leaders of the Cabal all those years ago – those Chaos-tainted aliens whose presence had made him leave the conspiracy in the first place – were never identified. Through much research and investigation, the Alpha Legion was able to theorize that they were the ones responsible for the destruction of the Interex, the peaceful and powerful civilization that Horus had found just before the Heresy, where his eyes had been opened to the threat of Chaos. Everything that could be gathered from the Interex' ruins is still kept in the Legion's archives, and the Hydra is ever vigilant for any signs of this hidden menace. But none have been found in ten thousand years.

With the Unremembered War finally put to an end with the death of the last Cabal lord, the Alpha Legion could at last look to the Imperium's future, as had been ordered by the Emperor to Omegon. The Primarch met with Eldrad once more, this time aboard Craftworld Ulthwe, the world-ship of the Eldar that sails closest to the Eye of Terror. There a pact was struck between the Alpha Legion and the Council of Farseers, an alliance against the Primordial Annihilator. There would not be peace between the Imperium and the Eldar – neither of those present had the authority to make such promises. Indeed, in the millennia that followed, the Imperium would often clash with the forces of other Craftworlds – especially those of war-like Bel-Tian. For every occasion where the prideful Eldar have joined forces with the Imperium against a common foe, there are a dozen more incidents where the two greatest forces for Order have fought instead.

But the Alpha Legion would ensure that those among Mankind who called for the systematic extermination of the children of Isha were silenced, and the Farseers would do their best to curb those of their own who longed for a return to their faded days of glory, where the entire galaxy was theirs to do with as they pleased. Word of that alliance was sent to Perturabo with utmost secrecy, the Lord of the Iron Cage, in order to avoid that he spends his resources fighting Craftworld Ulthwe when they both had a common enemy within the Great Eye. In the years since, the eldars of Ulthwe have been an occasional ally to the Iron Warriors in their fight against the Traitor Legions. Yet this alliance was only the most open part of the covenant forged on Ulthwe.

The second part is one of the greatest secrets of the Alpha Legion, and one that could spell its doom should it ever be revealed. The pact of non-aggression with Ulthwe could be explained by pragmatism, and the occasional alliance with them is hardly unheard of in the Imperium. But in secret, Omegon, Eldrad and Asurmen forged an alliance aimed not at preserving their respective people, but craft a better future for them. In Eldrad's eyes, the Eldar were doomed to a slow extinction, their numbers dwindling over the course of thousands of years until nothing remained of them but ghosts and shrieking shadows within the court of the Dark Prince. And Omegon knew that the Emperor had feared a similar fate for Mankind, as the species evolved toward a psychic race and thus became more and more vulnerable to the depredations of Chaos. Together, Primarch, Farseer and Phoenix Lord designed a plan that would span millennia, but at the end of which Eldrad could see the light of hope. Long and hard would be the way, fraught with mortal perils which all held the potential of silencing that hope forever – but it was the only path the three of them could think of.

The first of these perils revealed itself a thousand years after the end of the Heresy, and brought the Imperium closer to destruction than anything else since. The danger came not from the Slaves to Ruin, but from a source the Imperium had believed broken forever : the Orks. We know this period as the War of the Beast, and it reminded Mankind of the might possessed by the greenskins.

One thousand years after the Heresy, the Imperium was enjoying a period of peace and prosperity such as Mankind had never known before in its long, bloodstained history. The Legions – along with most of the Imperial warmachine – were fighting on the borders, claiming new territory for hopeful colonists to settle. Dozens of minor xenos species were brought to extinction during that period, and the Imperium grew proud and confident, certain that nothing could threaten its might. It is likely that the Orks took this as a challenge.

By that time, Omegon had already vanished from sight, with no Alpha Legionaire even pretending to be him. The warriors of the Twentieth believed – as they do now – that their father hasn't died or been lost, but instead has become truly part of the Legion, fighting at the side of his sons as a simple battle-brother. Certainly, there are many instances recorded in the Legion's archives of a battle-brother displaying endurance, strength and skill beyond those of an Astartes when his brothers are in a desperate situation. But regardless of its Primarch's fate, the Alpha Legion was caught just as surprised by the War of the Beast as anyone else. So focused had they been on the potential threats from Chaos that the Orks had been forgotten, believed to have been broken by the defeat dealt to them by the Emperor and Horus on Ullanor.

Even the Farseers of Ulthwe and the oracles of the Thousand Sons had been unaware of the rise of the Beast, for the Orks' psychic reflection in the Warp had shielded their growth from sight. Perhaps Magnus would have been able to sense it – however, the Crimson King had fallen into his coma more than two hundred years before that point. Caught by surprise, its forces overextended, the Imperium was devastated by the first wave of attacks. Using new gravitational technology capable of bending even space-time to their will, the Orks teleported massive "attack moons" - enormous space stations crudely fashioned in the image of an Ork's face – to dozens of battlefields across the galaxy. Thus began the War of the Beast – with a crippling blow, masterfully delivered by a species Mankind had come to underestimate to its great cost.

War of the Beast Timeline

108.544M32 : First wave of attacks. Disastrous casualties as the greenskins arrive in multiple ongoing battles, with their attack moons destroying fleets and shipyards. Death count estimated in the trillions. The Legions turn back from the border to help defend Imperial worlds, but they are cut off from one another and fight isolated, if heroic battles against the greenskins.

242.544M32 : While the High Lords are in disarray, unable to decide on leadership during this unprecedented crisis, an Ork moon appears in Terran orbit. The Imperial Navy and the Proletarian Crusade is launched out of utter terror and desperation – and slaughtered to the last. Despair seizes Terra, with dozens of apocalyptic cults taking to the street, burning supposed "sinners" in the hope of causing the Emperor to intervene. Strangely, the Orks do not attack Terra, despite the walls of the Imperial Palace being severely undermanned.

355.544M32 : Angron returns to Terra with part of the World Eaters Legion. His fury at the failures of the High Lords and the defilement that is the Ork attack moon in Terra's sky is terrible, but as always, restrained.

042.545M32 : On Terra, under the recommendation of the Inquisition, Angron founds the Deathwatch, combining the strength of the Astartes forces that managed to reach the Throneworld in answer to Angron's call. By combining their strengths and experience fighting the xenos, it is hoped that they can oppose the endless armies of the Orks with cunning and precision rather than brute force.

060.545M32 : With the help of the Deathwatch, Angron launches an attack upon the Ork attack moon orbiting Terra. The hateful construction is destroyed, though Terra's surface is ravaged by the following rain of debris. After this success, the Deathwatch is deployed across the galaxy, tasked with fighting the Orks in every way possible. However, the disturbance in the Warp caused by the Ork Weirdboyz prevents the efficient gathering of forces.

129.545M32 : It is discovered by a Sons of Horus force that killing the Ork overcharged psykers cause the greenskins nearby to die as well. The Mechanicus and the Inquisition throw themselves into the study of this phenomenon, hoping to weaponize it.

255.545M32 : The Sisters of Silence are brought back from exile by the Thousand Sons in order to combat the unnatural psychic influence of the Beast, which is strong enough to drive the sons of Magnus and other Librarians mad with feral, mindless rage.

327.545M32 : The Death Guard returns from its wars beyond Imperial borders, drawing a massive portion of the Ork forces to them. An astropathic message from the Legion Master to Angron warns the Lord of the Red Sands that, if he does not slay the Beast and cause the command structure of the xenos to collapse, by the time the Fourteenth is done dealing with the issue their way, there will be precious few worlds left to the Imperium.

026.546M32 : Through the analysis of the patterns in the Ork attacks, their center of operation is located : Ullanor, where the last Ork Empire was shattered by the Emperor.

133.546M32 : Using all resources available, including deploying kill-teams of the new Deathwatch (proved in battle in the destruction of the attack moon), Angron tears through the defenses of the Beast and confronts it and its underbosses. With the help of great warriors from other loyal Legions, constructs of the Mechanicus, the Sisters of Silence, and Inquisitorial support, he manages to claim victory.

200.546M32 : To prevent the Imperium from being caught unaware by such a threat again, the Inquisition splits into the Ordo Xenos and the Ordo Malleus, each focused on a specific kind of threat to Mankind.

333.546M32 : A warning from Eldrad reaches the Alpha Legion : the forces of Chaos have sensed the weakening of the Imperium, and they are gathering their strength to take advantage of it.  Operatives are sent to the Eye of Terror and the Ruinstorm to infiltrate the gathering Black Crusades. By making sure the Traitor Legions are aware of the other Black Crusade, the Alpha Legion ensures that the traitors of the Eye destroy themselves against the traitors of the Ruinstorm in the Unborn Crusade. This, however, requires the efforts of most of their devastated networks, leaving them unable to prevent the descent into madness of Vangorich, Grand Master of the Assassins.

001.547M32 : The Beheading occurs, and Angron returns to Terra at once. He confronts the Grand Master of Assassins and kills him within the heart of a temple of the Ordo Assassinorum.

In the end, the Imperium survived the War of the Beast, and the Unborn Crusade dealt with the minions of Chaos who had fought to take advantage of the Imperium's weakness. But the scars of these events would remain for a long time. The Beheading – the assassination of every other High Lord of Terra by Drakan Vangorich, the Grand Master of the Assassins – further threw the Imperium into disarray. The motives of Vangorich are unknown even to the Alpha Legion or the Inquisition – all that Angron said when he emerged from the temple with the Grand Master's blood on his hands was that "he thought he was doing the Emperor's work".

The War of the Beast reminded Mankind that there were many kinds of threats to its existence, and that not all of them came from within. The Alpha Legion began to search for threats coming from xenos species that weren't necessarily touched by Chaos – the grand plan of Omegon would mean nothing if the Imperium was destroyed by aliens before it could reach fruition. The Ordo Xenos was founded – creating the first division in the ranks of the Inquisitors, who before had all been equally responsible for the quelling of all threats – and the Deathwatch appointed as its militant chamber. Almost immediately, the first Radicals of the Ordo Xenos appeared : the Bestiam Domitores.

The Bestiam Domitores
More commonly known as the Beastmasters than by their self-appointed High Gothic name, this Radical faction of the Ordo Xenos was founded in the aftermath of the War of the Beast. Much was learned of the physiology of the Orks during that terrible conflict. From the study of the exceptionally powerful Ork psykers that appeared in the Beast's wake, the Magos Biologis were able to understand more about the psychic connection that exists between all greenskins. Those with high enough authority to know how the Orks came to be understood that this was likely deliberately engineered by their Old One makers, as a mean to optimize their efficiency in the war against the Necrontyrs – and, perhaps, as a mean of control as well. The Beastmasters seek to subvert this link to their ends, in order to take control of vast armies of Orks – in order to keep them away from the Imperium's world, or to use them against our enemies as the weapons they were designed to be. Many among the Bestiam Domitores argue that such an act would be a return to the Orks' natural state, and even something the greenskins themselves would enjoy, as they would be able to fulfill their true purpose at last. Of course, others among the faction simply seek the means to commit a galaxy-wide purge of the xenos.
Beastmasters and their Acolytes often make use of various xenos fauna, controlled through the prototypes of the devices by which the Inquisitor hopes to fulfill the faction's agenda. They make use of all manners of Acolytes, though few come from religious backgrounds. Mostly, the retinue of a Beastmaster is composed of hunters, specialized in taking their targets alive for study, and magos capable of aiding the Inquisitor's projects. Psykers are also very common, as a mean to study the connection between greenskins. On occasions, they will even have xenos mercenaries as allies, including Orks, though the greenskins aren't told that the true purpose of their employment is to study them and eventually cut them apart.
The faction has endured through the millennia, mostly using assassinations and manipulation within Ork territory to prevent powerful Warbosses from unifying the greenskins and starting a Waaagh!, but a few still follow their first goal, and they have even had some success, using ancient xenotech of dubious origin. Considering the origin of the Orks - who were created as living weapons by the Old Ones in their war against the Necrontyrs and the C'tans - it is possible that they might actually accomplish their goal and enslave the Orks to their will. However, others are wary that the faction might be turned to the Dark Gods in their pursuit of forbidden knowledge. The Alpha Legion is especially wary, for their Eldar allies have warned that attempting to emulate the deeds of the Old Ones might end very badly.
With Kryptman's Gambit, however, the faction has known an increase in influence, as it is hoped by many that their methods might enable the Imperium to resist whatever will emerge of the fallen Inquisitor's folly.  To that end, some members of the faction have focused their efforts on the hive-mind of the Tyranids, hoping to understand the synapse link between creatures to take control of them. Recent breakthroughs have revealed something unsettling, however : though the synapse link between Tyranids is far stronger than the one between Orks, researchers believe that there are too many similarities for all of them to be coincidences.

After the War of the Beast, Inquisitorial archives point out to the implication of the Hydra – a name that, with the disappearance of Alpharius and Omegon, soon came to describe the whole of the Legion – in almost every human endeavour on the galactic scale. And while some of it is mere blind supposition and mistaken theory, seeing patterns where none exist, it is true that the Alpha Legion has involved itself in most of the Imperium's history, seeking to uphold the Emperor's mandate and guide the species toward a future free from Chaos. Even across the wider Imperium, it is said that the Alpha Legion is the hidden hand of the Emperor, acting upon His will even as He sits silently upon the Golden Throne.

In the thirty-fifth millennium, a new threat to Mankind's continued dominion was on the rise. The Dark Eldar, corrupted cousins of the Craftworld Eldar, had grown in arrogance and power as the Imperium's own might was spread out against a thousand foes. The noble Houses of Commoragh rampaged freely across the galaxy, abusing the Webway to strike at defenceless worlds and take billions of slaves back to the Dark City for their debased amusement. Through the unholy arts of the

haemonculi, the population of Commoragh had grown to a point that their soul-thirst was nearly impossible to sate. In order to curtail these depredations, Eldar Ulthran reached out to the Harlequins, the disciples of the Laughing God Cegorach. Heeding his plea, the Harlequins delivered onto the Alpha Legion a map through the Webway that would lead a fleet to the Dark City.

After the Heresy, the Alpha Legion had become so scattered across the galaxy that it had become difficult for it to wage its own battles, especially one as important as an invasion of Commoragh. Instead, the sons of Alpharius transmitter the map to the Emperor's Children, who bore a terrible grudge against the Dark Eldar since the Bleeding War, during the Heresy. Fulgrim called upon his brother Angron, and together the Third and Twelfth Legion nearly burned Commoragh to the ground. However, before they could complete the work and completely raze the Dark City, the Imperials were forced to retreat before the risk of the caged suns of Commoragh escaping their bonds. Though the population of the Dark City had been culled to less than a tenth of what it had been before, Fulgrim had been lost in the attack, and the path the Legions had taken was sealed forever by the survivors once they had secured their city.

Since that day, the Dark Eldar have somehow learned of Eldrad's involvement in the Burning of Commoragh. Asdrubael Vect has sworn to punish the Farseer for this, and Eldrad has been forced into a nomadic lifestyle away from Ulthwe, lest he brings the assassins after his life and soul there. He now wanders the galaxy at the head of a small army of followers. His recent activities have pitted him against the servants of Chaos more and more often, and it is whispered by the agents of the Inquisition that he now seeks to awaken the Slumbering God of the Eldar, Ynnead, in order to defeat Slaanesh and save the souls of his people from the grasp of She-Who-Thirsts. He was last reported seen on Port Demesnus, but the reports also speak of pursuers, clad in the red armor of the Blood Angels. If the Ninth Legion has been set after Eldrad by the Dark Prince, then surely what he seeks to accomplish is a threat to Chaos – or perhaps Slaanesh merely desires to devour the soul of the ten-thousand years old Farseer.

A thousand years after the Burning of Commoragh, the Imperium entered a dark age, as a number of threats besieged Mankind all at once. Too busy fighting against the forces of Chaos, the Alpha Legion failed to foresee and prevent the rise to power of Goge Vandire – which, some suspect, hints at the terrible fact that the Tyrant was not in any way tainted by Chaos, but acting out of his own mortal free will. However, the Alpha Legion was involved with one of those who ended the Age of Apostasy : Sebastian Thor. Notably, during the first meeting of Thor and the Word Bearers returned to Terra to punish Vandire, it was the Alpha Legion's envoy to the meeting who prevented the sons of Lorgar from executing the holy man on the spot. Afterwards, the Alpha Legion fought in the Wars of Vindication, when the Ordo Assassinorum turned on itself as a consequence of Vandire's plots to take control of the Assassins.

This implication in Thor's fate is far from unique. For reasons not shared with outsiders, the Alpha Legion has always watched those who display an affinity with the Emperor's light, especially those who became Living Saints eventually. In the halls of the Inquisition and the Ecclesiarchy, it is rumoured that, somehow, the Alpha Legion knows who is a potential Living Saint beforehand, and arranges events in order to facilitate the incarnation of the Emperor's fragmented will into these mortal hosts.

The Living Saints
For many centuries, the existence of the beings known to the Imperium as the Living Saints has perplexed and infuriated the Inquisition. Thousands of years of research have yielded precious little trustworthy lore, and there are hundreds of wildly different theories as to their origin, nature and purpose. Some believe the Living Saints to be impostors, a cruel trick of the Dark Gods to mislay the faithful, while others think them witches who deceive all those around them – and perhaps even themselves – into thinking that they are the Emperor's servants.
But the main theory, the one those Inquisitors who hold dear the core principles of the Imperial Creed, is that the Living Saints are avatars of the Emperor's power. According to this theory, the Emperor was made into a god when He ascended the Golden Throne, for He became the center of a galaxy-spanning faith of trillions of souls. Every emotion is reflected in the Sea of Souls, and so it is as well for the prayers of the countless billions who devote their daily prayers to the Master of Mankind. This creates a massive reserve of psychic energy, which is by its very nature anathema to the Dark Gods and their minions.
Most of this energy is channelled across the galaxy toward the Golden Throne, where it helps fuel the power of the Astronomican. Psykers who stand on the Terra's holy ground, or even enter the Sol System, can sense the crushing presence of the God-Emperor, and few who are not soul-bound to Him can sustain it for long, even if they are untainted by the Ruinous Powers. But even untainted Warp energy remains wild and unpredictable, and sometimes, whether by random accident or by the ineffable design of the Master of Mankind, a piece of that power is instead incarnated within a human being. The moment of transfiguration from mortal to Living Saint is never the same for two of them – some are struck by a bolt of divine lightning while kneeling in a church, while others are raised from the dead upon the field of battle, their soul returned to a miraculously healed body.
The power of a Living Saint is immense, matched only by that of a Daemon Prince or other divine champion. Their actual abilities vary tremendously – some cast a light that heals all those loyal to the Throne, while others are supreme warriors or channel the purging fire of the Emperor's wrath. But regardless of the way in which their might manifests itself, the battlefield is shaped by their presence. The morale of Imperial forces soars when a Living Saint takes to the field, while only the most black-hearted of Chaos' servants or the most wilful of xenos can stand their ground.
Outside of battle, Living Saints are lords of the Imperium, beholden to none – but they have no mortal ambition, and are instead driven by visions of the Emperor and His unfathomable goals. Entire shrine worlds are dedicated to their worship, and the faith of these devotees strengthens them, refilling the psychic energy that grants them their power.
Though they are loyal to the Imperium, not all Living Saints are benevolent. While many are endowed with the Emperor's mercy and compassion, others are receptacles of His wrath and nothing else. These are watched by their own allies on the battlefield, especially when circumstances force a Legion to deploy along such a blatant figure of worship. It is not unheard of for these ruthless avatars of fury to inflict grievous punishment on their own followers when the unaugmented humans fail to meet the Living Saint's unreasonable expectations.
Furthermore, Saints aren't invincible. They can be killed, though they can later return to life – albeit sometimes only after centuries or even millennia, depending on the circumstances of their demise. Champions of the Dark Gods are drawn to them like moths to a flame, seeking the glory that can only be earned by slaying such an avatar of the God-Emperor. And they are incredibly rare – throughout the entire history of the Imperium, there haven't been more than a hundred Living Saints, with rarely more than two or three being active at the same time in the galaxy. However, in the last years of the 41st Millennium, sightings of Living Saints have increased across the Imperium. Most of those are still doubtful and under investigation, but already some in the Inquisition wonder at what it could portend.

One of the more recent and notable failures of the Alpha Legion is the fate that befell the Imperial World of Tanith. In the year 765.M41, the Sabbat Crusade met the forces of Chaos head-on, using intelligence provided by the agents of the Twentieth Legion. But a splinter fleet escaped, and before the Imperium could react, it attacked Tanith, burning it to the ground. The splinter fleet was led by an Imperial Fist voidmaster, whose first act upon arriving in the system was to order the destruction of the ships orbiting the planet, denying the three Imperial Guard Regiments who had just been founded upon the world any means of escape. Recovered communications reveal that they fought to the death against the Chaos invaders, inflicting a heavy toll upon their foes, under the leadership of Commissar Ibram Gaunt, who is presumed to have fallen in battle while battling the Imperial Fist himself - though his body was never recovered, nor sighted as a trophy. The Alpha Legion made a point of hunting down the warlord and executing him, while throwing its full support behind the Sabbat Crusade's continuation, so that Tanith's doom would not be in vain.

Now, as the forty-first millennium comes to a close and the Times of Ending are coming upon us, the Alpha Legion is more active than ever. Everywhere, the enemies of Mankind are rising, and the Imperium's might had been much diminished by ten thousand years of relentless conflict, with only brief periods of relative peace. Much has been lost that can never be recovered, and ignorance and fanaticism have become the only defenses against the corruption of Chaos on far too many Imperial worlds. Still, the Alpha Legion continues its great work, even as distrust toward its agents grow in the Imperium. The relationship between the Hydra and the other branches of the Imperial war machine has always been a complex one – while others relish the intelligence delivered by the Alpha Legion, many look down upon the methods by which such information is obtained. Should the truth of the alliance between the Twentieth and Craftworld Ulthwe ever come to light, the results would be disastrous, as half the Imperium would denounce the Alpha Legionaries as traitors, while the other half would either call for further investigation or stand along with them, seeing the alliance for the necessity that it is.

We cannot let this happen. Our plans must go on. The Emperor's dream shall be made reality.

'No escape,' growled the daemon. 'No peace. Your Emperor is dead, little snake. His light is gone. There is only the dark ... Now and forever.'
He ignored the words as he kept fighting. His blade danced around, striking down the daemon's minions – yet more and more arrived, brought forth from the infernal realm by their master's dark will.
'You struggle in vain,' continued the creature. 'The hope you embrace is a lie. Your fight serves no purpose !'
'Everything has a purpose.'
'No !' it shouted. 'You stand against the inevitable, wasting your life for the sake of those who will never thank you for your sacrifice. What purpose is there in such a death ? You are alone, son of the Hydra. Alone ... and soon to die.'
A blow shattered his eye-lenses, and he tossed his helmet away, revealing his features for the first time in ... had it been decades ? Centuries ? There was so much he had to know, so much he had to keep in mind at all times to keep the plans started millennia ago running, that he had completely forgotten about the last time he had removed his helmet. But the daemon recognized him regardless, and shock appeared on its monstrous visage – quickly replaced by fear. They were always afraid when they saw him, when they realized just who it was they were facing.
'I am Alpharius,' said Omegon calmly, his blade stabbing right through the skull of yet another infernal servant. 'I walk the hidden path, to the end of glory, and I am never alone !'

Organization

The Pale Spear
The Alpha Legion has few relics, and even fewer whose existence is known beyond its own ranks. But among those who know of the sons of the Hydra, the Pale Spear is an artefact of legend. Wielded by Alpharius himself during the Great Crusade, it is said that the Primarch found the weapon on a xenos world in the years before he was found by the Emperor. At first, Alpharius only took it as a trophy, and because it was one of the rare weapons that were to his size. However, during the battle when the two Primarchs of the Alpha Legion were reunited, the true power of the spear was revealed when it was used to destroy one of the Warp-fuelled constructs.
At the mental command of its wielder, the two blades of the spear can shatter, forming a hail of razor-sharp fragments that twirl around the wielder, capable of tearing even through ceramite, before reforming the blades, as strong as ever. Furthermore, the Pale Spear is anathema to the creatures of the Warp, which recoil at its mere presence – although the Inquisition scholars are unsure whether this is a natural property of the weapon or something it acquired later, after being used so many times against the Neverborn. Even psykers are uncomfortable near the spectral light that emanates from the blades' fracture lines, speaking of an "ancient, nameless presence, roused forth from oblivion by eternal ambition".
The spear was thought lost when Alpharius fell against Guilliman on Eskrador, but after the end of the Heresy, the Alpha Legion returned to the planet, and dug up the entire mountain their Primarch had collapsed during his duel with the Arch-Traitor. They sought the body of their father, but while they did not find Alpharius' mortal remains, they did find the fragments of the Pale Spear. It is said that a hundred thousand servitors worked tirelessly for a hundred years before every fragment was found, and the Pale Spear was reforged – although the process simply involved putting every piece together and letting the weapon's mysterious abilities do the rest. Now, the Pale Spear is wielded only by the champions of the Legion, who put its powers to devastating effects.
In recent years, with the awakening of the Necron dynasties, many who know of the Pale Spear have speculated that the weapon might have its roots in the strange, impossibly potent technology of this ancient species. The Alpha Legion, however, has fiercely denied the theory, which of course has only roused further suspicions – either the sons of Alpharius are trying to prevent the Necrons from learning about the Pale Spear and coming for it, or they know its true source and are offended by the association of their Primarch's relic with the undying xenos.

Of all the loyal Legions, the Twentieth is the one with the most bizarre command structure. Indeed, it could be argued that the Alpha Legion simply doesn't have such a thing, at least not on the scale of the other Legions. There is no Legion Master – the supreme commander of the Legion is still Omegon, even though he hasn't made an appearance in nigh ten thousand years. Such is the reputation of the Alpha Legion that any son of Alpharius revealing himself to Imperial forces will be quickly brought to the highest ranking officer present, so that he can learn what the Alpha Legion has to tell him. Of course, precautions are still taken – while many of those contacted in this way know secret protocols and passwords to confirm the message's authenticity, there are always those who are contacted for the first time, and must make sure the Legionary isn't an assassin in disguise. The Alpha Legion understands and approves of this prudence; in fact, they were responsible for many of the security measures deployed around them in the first place.

Still, over the millennia the Alpha Legion has cultivated its network of contacts among all branches of the Imperium, from the Administratum to the Imperial Guard and the Inquisition. These individuals do not owe any particular fealty to the Twentieth Legion – indeed, their strict adherence to their oaths to their own organization are one of the reason they are approached. Only individuals of exceptional skill and loyalty to the Imperium are chosen to serve as the voices of the Hydra, and they often rise high in the ranks of their organization as a result.

Even when the Legion is forced by circumstances to gather in great number, its warriors do not wear any insignia indicating their rank. This is a trick they learned during the Heresy – some say it was first inscribed upon the armor of Aeonid Thiel – and used to confuse enemy snipers and kill-teams by denying them any obvious target. In such operations, rare as they might be, the chain of command is clear, though the actual names of the ranks are changed between each deployment, to further the enemy's confusion. The only rank the Alpha Legion uses with anything approaching regularity is that of Harrowmaster, a rank that was already used during the Great Crusade. In a war zone where the Alpha Legion is involved, the Harrowmaster is the one in overall command of all Twentieth Legion's assets. Because they are those who mix with the war councils of Imperial forces, such individuals are the only Alpha Legionaries who are known to the rest of the Imperium by name, though it is highly unlikely any of those is their true one. They are extraordinary strategists, capable of reacting to the evolution of the battlefield with lightning speed.

Harrowmaster Phocron, the Faceless Lord
There are few names that strike dread in the hearts of traitors like that of Harrowmaster Phocron. In the last millennia, the Imperium has come to know that name as well, but to the Traitor Legions and their servants, Phocron has been a ghost story for the last ten thousand years. Back during the Heresy, it was Phocron who fought the agents of the Spineam Coronam on Terra itself and foiled their plot to poison the population of Afrika. When the Siege of Terra raged, it was Phocron that led the team that slew the possessed cultists sent by the Dark Angels to detonate the plasma reactors of the Europan hives. And so it has gone on ever since, without Phocron ever removing his helmet, which earned him the title of Faceless Lord from his terrified foes.
Phocron is more than an individual, for obviously many Legionaries have worn that name over the years. He is a legend that was deliberately crafted by the Alpha Legion, a myth to which the Legion has given form in order to weaponize its own reputation. To those who know of his presence on the battlefield, he is like a ghost, who could be anywhere at any time, and always seems to know everything they are trying to keep hidden. The name of Phocron is only bestowed upon the best officers of the Alpha Legion, those in whom the cunning intellect of the Primarchs manifest most strongly. At any given time, several Alpha Legionaries across the galaxy might be using the name, which has caused no end of frustration to the attempts of other Imperial agencies to identify him.

No one knows how many sons of Alpharius live today. Considering the lack of Legion-wide command, it is possible that even the officers of the Legion are unaware of the full extent of their operations. During the Heresy, entire battle-groups were cut off from the rest of the Legion, isolated by Warp Storms and forced to rely on none but themselves. These groups used the resources available to continue fighting against the Traitor Legions, their recognition codes and encryptions evolving over time until their protocols were no longer compatible with those of the main Legion's body. While the biggest of these offshots were reintegrated in the years of the Scouring, there are still small groups of Alpha Legionaries operating on their own, having been separated from the Legion for thousands of years, with new aspirants being turned into Space Marines by Apothecaries who have never been part of the greater Legion themselves. These groups still operate on orders ten thousand years out of date, unquestioning the objectives ingrained in them during their Ascension. Some of these groups have even been corrupted by Chaos, their members becoming unwitting pawns of the Dark Gods. Ever since the terrible events of Vraks and the atrocities committed by Arkos the Faithless One, the Alpha Legion has dedicated considerable resources to the identification and reintegration of all such groups, but such a task, by its very nature, can never be declared complete.

'Ciaphas Cain,' said the giant, towering above me. 'Who do you serve ?'
Well, there wasn't really a choice in what I could answer, was there ?
'I serve the Emperor,' I replied, doing my best impression of a Hero of the Imperium. Or at least, my best impression of what I believed a Hero of the Imperium would sound and look like. Not like I would know – I have never met one, after all.
Of course, had I known just how much trouble this simple statement – and one that was true, even, then as now, despite everything else you might have read already in these memoires – would get me into, I would have said something else, something that would likely have earned me a swift execution, and I would have been happy with that.
From the Cain Archive

Combat Doctrine

'Faithless. Honourless. Cowards. All of these and a hundred more insults have been thrown at us for our approach to warfare. Most of the time by our foes, as they curse our name while running for their lives, all of their plans falling apart around them. But sometimes, even those who are ostensibly our allies feel disgust toward the way we fight the Long War against the enemies of Mankind. Do not resent them for it : they need the trappings of honor, for without them the human mind rebels against the horror of war, and without the strength to wage war, Mankind is doomed. But we of the Twentieth know better, and through the gifts of our gene-sire we are strong enough to need no consolation from the truth.
That is why the first step on the Hydra's path is to understand that there is no such thing as glory in war. Whether you kill your enemy in an epic duel under the gaze of thousands of soldiers or from ten kilometers away with a sniper bullet, it makes no difference – dead is dead. And whether your name is engraved on a thousand statues, or never mentioned in the history books, makes no difference either. Service to the Emperor is its own reward.'
From the Alpha Legion's ever-changing tactical lessons to its Initiates, sometimes jokingly nicknamed the "Codex Hydra" by Legionaries and operatives alike

While most of the Alpha Legion's operations are geared toward the gathering of intelligence that is then passed on to other, more numerous Imperial forces, the sons of Alpharius are still Adeptus Astartes. Through sabotage and assassination, they bring down the cohesion of enemy forces. They are especially gifted at playing on the nature of Chaos, turning members of already fragile alliances against each other. Dozens of Black Crusades have been averted by the sons of Alpharius sending a single vox transmission at the correct timing, stealing something valued by a warlord and delivering it to the vault of one of his allies, or any other of the countless means of making Chaos Lords betray each other. They also use similar methods against the Orks, but the very biology of the greenskins make it all but impossible to truly prevent a Waaagh! once the xenos have reached the critical mass.

On the battlefield, the Alpha Legion prizes both discipline – for the Legion must act as one in order for its schemes to reach fruition – and individual adaptability. This apparent paradox is due to the fact that it is quite frequent for a son of Alpharius to find himself separated from his brother, either because of the chances of war or as part of the current plan. But while a single Alpha Legionary is still a dangerous foe, when the Legion acts as a group, they are devastating. Their main tactic is known as the Harrowing, and is composed of a first phase during which the Alpha Legion creates confusion among the enemy, making it strike at shadows and turn against itself as it wastes most of its fighting potential. Then, when morale is at its lowest, the Legionaries strike from a hundred directions at once, following unpredictable patterns of attack that cut supply lines and behead chains of command. This tactic was used far more frequently during the Great Crusade, and has only been used a handful of times since the Roboutian Heresy – but the enemies of Mankind tremble at the memory of each such occurrence.

The Alpha Legion also makes extensive use of its Librarius. The primary duty of the psychic sons of Alpharius is to shield their brothers' thoughts from detection by any means. They are specially trained in the appropriated psychic arts, and their knowledge of telepathy is said to rival even that of the Thousand Sons' Athanaean Cult. Around one of the Hydra's psychic sons, no secret is truly safe, for they are exceptionally talented at prying open even the strongest of minds – yet the truly impressive part is that they can do it without the victim noticing, nor suffering any negative effects from the intrusion.

The Operatives of the Alpha Legion
Those chosen to become agents of the Twentieth Legion come from a variety of backgrounds, though many of them are members of families who have served the Hydra for generations. Different from the mortals who serve the Legion directly by maintaining their equipment, crewing their ships, and piloting their transports, these operatives are spread out across the rest of the Imperium's population – and, in the case of a few individuals, beyond. Each operative has a cover identity, which can be completely authentic – especially in the case of first-generation recruits – or created by the other agents of the Legion.
Entire networks of operatives are maintained throughout the galaxy, most of the time hired by other operatives higher in the hierarchy. However, it is considered a tradition for any new inductee to be brought before a Legionary. This cements the operative's loyalty, as well as confirm to him that his secret employer really is an agent of the Legion, and not an heretic seeking to manipulate him to his own nefarious ends. After receiving the recruit's oath, the Legionary will use a special device – a compact hypno-teaching engine – to quickly ingrain the knowledge of the proper cyphers and communication techniques and procedures into the mind of the new agent. Along with these gifts is a powerful suggestion that, should the operative be captured and tortured, will prevent him from spilling any secrets long enough for the Alpha Legion to mount a rescue operation – or, if no such operation can be launched within a certain time frame, trigger an heart attack that will kill the operative. The heart attack is also triggered by psychic intrusion powerful enough to bypass the hypnotic barriers that are also part of the package.
The duties of an operative, beyond maintaining his or her cover, vary tremendously. Some are simply tasked with surveying their community, and report anything they think might be of interest to their masters once a month, or even once a year. The Legion provides them with basic life necessities, but the operatives do not do what they do for money – though the Hydra does employ mercenaries on the occasion, those are not trusted with the secrets of the Legion. Other operatives are used as active spies, sent to infiltrate criminal organizations and even cults. Those who prove capable receive more training, should they so desire – many choose to keep their lives, serving the Emperor in a modest but important manner without seeking further advancement. But some do not have such a choice – they are exposed to the Legion's enemies, and risk death for them and their acquaintances if they remain where they are. The Alpha Legion has a great deal of experience in extracting compromised agents and give them new identities elsewhere – but for some, this first brush with lethal danger only reinforces their dedication to the Hydra.
The operatives who are ready to truly give themselves to the Legion are remade in body and mind. The Alpha Legion Apothecaries reforge them on a genetic level, making them stronger, faster, and more resilient. Their minds are filled with the distilled knowledge of generations of operatives before them – they can vanish into a crowd in the blink of an eye, wield nearly any kind of weapon known to Mankind, and infiltrate any strata of Imperial society. Yet all these gifts do not come without price, and most are unable to remember much of their lives prior to their transformation into what many call "True Operatives". They also require regular monitoring to prevent psychotic breaks, as their minds struggle under the weight of all the knowledge and memories that aren't their own. Over the course of the millennia, the Alpha Legion has become very good at handling these issues, but even then, few True Operatives live long – though the service they give to the Imperium is invaluable. Because of the less rigorous selection process they go through, they are not as lethal as the agents of the Officio Assassinorum – something which was proved beyond doubt during the Vindication Wars, when thousands of Operatives were lost to the blades, pistols, poisons, and other lethal implements of renegade Assassins.

The Alpha Legion has a lot less Astartes than its influence over galactic events suggests. Every Legion has a massive number of human servants - the crew of their ships, their armourers, and so on - but the Alpha Legion takes it to a whole new level. It is generally assumed by the Inquisition that for every son of Alpharius, there are a thousand human agents operating undercover across the galaxy. Some will be integrated into the fold, serve and die, without ever setting eyes upon one of their Astartes masters. The agents do not have any identifying marking - a tattoo of the Legion's symbol was mentioned at the beginning of the organization, but quickly rejected as both too risky and too easy to duplicate. Instead, the agents of the Hydra reveal themselves to one another by pass-phrases, cyphers and body language. This requires more training, but the Alpha Legion has access to some of the best hypno-teaching devices in the Imperium specifically for that purpose.

It is also thanks to the use of these devices that the Legion has agents infiltrated among the Traitor Legions themselves, both human and Legionary. These spies risk their soul by exposing themselves to darkness in order to gather vital intelligence on the movements of the warbands they infiltrate. Prior to deployment, their minds are scrubbed of any Legion secrets they know, with only the ways to contact their handlers to transmit their reports left, and carefully crafted false personalities are implanted in their brains in order to deceive mind-reading sorcerers. Behind these mental masks, the original personality remains, watching everything the mask does, learning and waiting. Such assignments are dangerous in the extreme, and the Alpha Legion is always very careful in the cover identities of its agents. They pose as pirate lords, renegade captains, and other "minor" heretics, since faking the true corruption of the soul is impossible – at least not without resorting to methods the Alpha Legion refuses to use, lest it becomes what it fights. Despite these precautions, it is not unheard of for such an agent to be consumed by the Ruinous Powers : the mask grows too strong, and the true personality is trapped inside, forced to watch as its former cover identity commits unspeakable atrocities using its body. Such a fate – called "being consumed by the Betrayer's Mask" in the Legion – is greatly feared among the Alpha Legion and their operatives.

Thanks to the many seemingly impossible feats the sons of Alpharius had pulled off over the centuries, the Legion has a reputation among the servants of Chaos. Servants of the Dark God Tzeentch live in fear and hatred of the Hydra, while any Chaos Lord who hasn't completely succumbed to madness yet is wary of any sign of the Twentieth's presence. To the Alpha Legionaries, this reputation is just another weapon in their arsenal, a tool with which they can sow paranoia and distrust within the enemy ranks.

However, as has been proved many times in the history of the Imperium, the Alpha Legion is not infallible. Schemes can fail, agents can make mistakes, and so on – ever since the first military strategist had forged a plan of action, there have been complications leading to that plan falling apart. And due to the Alpha Legion's reliance on working in the shadows, when their plans fail, they fail quite dramatically. On the rare occasions when the sons of Alpharius have been outwitted by their enemies – most often the thrice-cursed Dark Angels and their infernal prophets – worlds have burned in the fires of Chaos, their people lost forever to damnation. It is said that the Alpha Legion keeps a grim tally of these failures, each researched for years so as to understand the exact manner in which the Legion was defeated – all so that it can never happen again. The Alpha Legion is obsessed with learning from its mistakes as much as it is with learning its enemies' secrets.

The Effrits
Those sons of Alpharius who are chosen to become Effrits bear a heavy burden. Named after the Effrit Squad, Omegon's own chosen group of battle-brothers (which itself was named after an ancient, mythical spirit of destruction from Old Earth), they are forever separated from their own Legion. While the rest of the Hydra operates in complete cooperation, weaving schemes on a galactic scale, the Effrits fight alone, deep behind enemy lines, with only a set of mission parameters to guide their actions. For years at a time, an Effrit will remain completely cut off from the rest of the Legion, without any contact. Hidden among the enemy, he will then work to spread confusion and anarchy, using whatever means necessary. Most of the time, the Effrits are deployed among human renegades and traitors, but they are also deployed in xenos territory when the situation calls for it. The survival rate of the Effrits is extremely low – but so is their failure rate.
No Legionary chooses to become an Effrit. It is a rank that is bestowed – or rather, inflicted – upon suitable warriors by the Legion's Librarians, the only ones who can see into their brothers' soul the potential to become this most dangerous kind of warrior. The process of becoming an Effrit involves ritual separation from the Hydra as a whole, and many believe that this changes the Legionary deeply on a spiritual level. This is followed by extensive mental conditioning, rewriting the Legionary's mind so that his tactics will be adapted to his new function. With nothing but their duty to the Imperium left to them, most Effrits become bitter beings, who take a twisted amusement in the destruction they inflict upon the enemies of Mankind. According to the Librarians, this too is necessary, for the venom in the Effrits' soul can do great harm to those against whom they are unleashed. Still, many in the Legion are uncomfortable with the practice, and would see it ceased.
The Effrits are directed by the Legion 's Harrowmasters, sent away like the weapons they have become to delay or destroy foreseen threats. Before leaving for his assignment, an Effrit will study his target group intensively, and prepare everything he could possibly need for the mission, having full access to the Alpha Legion's vaults. As a consequence, there is no way of knowing what gear an Effrit has with him on the field – they have all access to all manner of technology, some of it utterly prohibited by the Adeptus Mechanicus. Those Effrits who complete their mission – usually by utterly annihilating the faction they were sent to infiltrate – are rewarded with another mission, usually immediately after their return, for the Alpha Legion as few Effrits, and many enemies.

Homeworld

The Alpha Legion has no single world serving as base of operation or recruiting ground. Instead, it has hundreds, possibly thousands of outposts scattered across the Imperium. These hidden lairs are most often vacant, instead serving as supply depots and refuges for the Legion's many agents. They are also used as transmission nexuses for the intelligence gathered by Legionaries and operatives, and as vaults where the most dangerous weapons seized – or, in some cases, built – by the Alpha Legion can be stored safely until the time they are needed.

Such outposts can be abandoned quickly, and new ones are constantly created wherever the Legion's operations take its warriors. After ten thousand years, this network is so elaborate that as long as he operates in Imperial territory (and often even if not), an agent of the Alpha Legion is never more than a few days of travel from an outpost. Whether he knows the location of the outpost and its access codes, however, are a different matter, and untimely deaths have caused entire sections of the Legion's support network to be completely forgotten.

However, the fact that the Alpha Legion has no homeworld hasn't stopped its members from spreading rumors claiming the opposite. These tales speak of a planet where the knowledge of the Legion is compiled and their relics and stores of gene-seed are hidden. No such thing exists, but the enemies of the Legion have expended considerable resources trying to locate it, driven on by carefully laid out false hints. Entire operations have been mounted by the Alpha Legion whose sole purpose is to keep the deception alive by creating convoys supposed to be going to the mysterious homeworld, and then leaking their course to the Legion' enemies so that they can attack and try to seize the convoy's navigational data. In order to deceive even the mind-readers of the Traitor Legions, some Legionaries are deceived into thinking that the homeworld does exist – a deception that sits uncomfortably with those who know the truth, but the nature of the Long War makes it a necessity.

Beliefs

'One life – any life – is a light in the dark once it is given true, righteous purpose. It stops to be a call for the daemons behind the veil and becomes a beacon raised in defiance against the shadows that crowd at the edge of the universe. It becomes a cry that despite everything, despite the cruel gods that lurk in the Warp and thirst for our very souls, despite the monsters that haunt the blackness between the stars, we still matter. In ten thousand years, we will all be dead, our bodies turned to dust and that dust scattered across the infinite expanse of the universe. But here ... here and now, we are alive. And we will not hide ! We will not cower from our foes ! We will not kneel, and we will not break !
WE ARE MANKIND ! STOP HIDING IN YOUR PATHETIC METAL BOXES ! COME AND FACE US !'
Firaeveus Carron, Alpha Legion Captain, at the final battle of the Kaurava Campaign

By their position in the Imperial warmachine, the Alpha Legionaries know more of the current situation than any other force, safe perhaps the highest-ranking Inquisitors, the High Lords of Terra, and the greatest seers of the Thousand Sons and the Grey Knights. Most souls would be crushed by despair when beholding the countless threats to Mankind and the slow degeneracy of the Imperium. Yet the sons of Alpharius refuse to give up.

While other Legions fight to preserve the statu quo, or in the hope of delaying the downfall of the Imperium for just one more day, the Alpha Legion fights to create a future for Mankind in such a dark galaxy. They strive endlessly to undo the plots of the enemies of Humanity, fighting knowing they are very likely to die alone and unremembered by any save their brothers – if they are lucky. They know that there is no glory in war, only its cold necessity in a galaxy filled with dangers – a position much similar to that of the Iron Warriors. To them, duty is its own reward : no one might ever know that an Alpha Legionaire sacrificed his life to prevent a xenos plague from ravaging a hive-world, killing billions and crippling the economy of an entire Sector – but he will know, even as the sole remaining sample of the disease eats him alive inside his sealed armor. And that is enough for them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Alpha Legion is the one of the few Legions who hold some belief in the Emperor's divinity. However, this belief is not fuelled by blind faith or ignorance, but by a very real understanding of the metaphysical concerns behind the existence of the Warp, as well as lore of the nature of the defunct Eldar Gods. In the eyes of the Alpha Legion, the Emperor has become a god since His placing upon the Golden Throne. He was not a god before – "merely" a psyker of tremendous power wielding unique abilities – but the prayers of trillions of souls have made Him one since, and those who refuse to accept it are clinging to His ideals in a manner that, while praiseworthy, is ultimately futile. Yet the Eldar Gods were formed over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, before they were abandoned by their people as the Eldar turned to decadence. Therefore, the Alpha Legion believes that the God-Emperor has yet to reach His full power, and has been searching for a way to hasten this apotheosis ever since the end of the Roboutian Heresy.

The sons of Alpharius keep their belief hidden from their cousins, who would likely react to it with consternation, as the ever-pragmatic and rational Twentieth would seem to have succumbed to superstition and the lies of the Ecclesiarchy. But paradoxically, most Alpha Legionaries have nothing for contempt for the high priests of the Imperial Creed, seeing them as usurpers of the Emperor's words who only use them for their own gains. Low-level priests, working in the underhives or among the Imperial Guard, are much more likely to earn the favour of the Hydra. In the same way, the Alpha Legion does not offer prayers to the Emperor – instead, they do His work on the hidden battlefields of the galaxy, acting out of sight to save the lives of His people.

'Our brothers turned against us because they believed that our father had betrayed us all and sought to become a god. That wasn't true, of course – it was a lie created by the Dark Gods in order to breach into our brothers' soul and infect them with the hideous corruption of Chaos. The Emperor never wanted to be treated as a god – He wanted to destroy every god and free Mankind of their tyranny forever.
The greatest irony, then, is that in order to save Mankind and bring about the end of glory, we must make that lie a reality.'
From the archives of the Alpha Legion – top level clearance only

Recruitment and Geneseed

"My name is Legion, for we are many."
From the Terra Apocrypha

There is no flaw in the gene-seed of the Alpha Legion, as might be expected of the last Legion to be created. All implanted organs work to perfection, and the compatibility rate of the Twentieth Legion's gene-seed is among the highest of all. Still, there is a minor deviation from the norm. In all Legions, transformation into an Astartes alter the facial traits of the individual, changing them to reflect something of their Primarch's own visage. But in the Alpha Legion, this is taken to extreme. Almost every Alpha Legionaire is an image of their long-lost Primarchs, and it is nearly impossible for mortals outside of the Legion's servants to distinguish between two of them. Most Legionaries whose genetics prevent this from happening choose to undergo facial reconstruction surgery in order to become more like their fathers. However, a few decide to retain their original faces, and make a point to go without a helmet as often as possible – all in order to further confuse the enemies of the Legion.

The Alpha Legion recruits from a vast number of planets, and the population isn't aware of it on any of them. In order to avoid being infiltrated, the Legion changes from one recruiting world to another randomly, never taking more than a handful of aspirants, and not coming back to a particular world for centuries at a time. Furthermore, on the slightest hint that the planet's population has been compromised, all recruiting activities will be abandoned – possibly forever. This would create difficulties for the Alpha Legion to recruit, if not for the sheer size of the Imperium.

Unlike other Legions, the Hydra does not select individuals for induction in its ranks, but instead targets whole packs of children, who already have a group dynamic in place. Whether street gangs in the underhive or orphans banding together for safety in the slums of a medieval capital, the Alpha Legion offers them a chance at Ascension as a whole. Female members of such groups, who cannot become Astartes, are instead trained into the ranks of the Operatives, and are most often assigned to the squad of their childhood friends. This strengthens the bonds between Legionaries and Operatives, preventing the sons of Alpharius from seeing their agents as mere tools : instead, they are family.

Because of the importance the Legion places on teamwork, aspirants who have passed the preliminary compatibility tests either succeed as a group or fail together. Hypno-training and conditioning engrave a sense of purpose and dedication to the greater whole into each Legionary along with the tactical skills required to fight for the Legion. Yet the sons of Alpharius lose no more of their previous lives as those of other Primarchs in the process – in fact, they often lose less, thanks to the reaffirming presence of their friends around them. Over time though, as each Legionary gains experience and acquires new skills, the memories of their time as human inevitably fade away, replaced by the more recent and intense memories of a Space Marine.

Each "batch" of recruits generally counts three to five individuals, who are then assigned to a veteran of the Legion and deployed into the field. Training, however, never ends, and a son of Alpharius is expected to continually hone his skills and gain new ones. All Legionaries spend most of their sparse free time training, but the Alpha Legion has entire programs dedicated solely to learning a skill as quickly and efficiently as possible. Among a squad, every warrior is aware of all the skills of his companions, so that each is able to design a plan using all the squad's assets in any circumstances.

The two exceptions to this recruitment process are the Legion's Librarians and Techmarines. While most psychic recruits are picked up from the Black Ships, those whose talents are detected during their training are taken away from their group for specific, rigorous preparation. Other Librarians, as well as psyker servants and Operatives, teach the aspirants to master their gift. They are often returned to their group once their Ascension is complete, but most of the time, their new abilities will forever set them apart from their friends. Due to the nature of the Hydra's operations, they are, however, a vital part of the Legion, and those who fight alongside them know to value their lives more than their own. For while a squad of the Alpha Legion can adapt its approach to the death of any of its members, many are the missions that become flat-out impossible without the psychic cover granted by a Librarian.

As for Techmarines, the forge-worlds bound by covenant to the Alpha Legion send their brightest compatible youths to serve the Hydra. After their Ascension, they are sent to Mars in order to complete their training. Because of their heritage, they are often among the Techmarines most devoted to the Machine-God across all the loyal Legions – but their loyalty is, first and foremost, to the Alpha Legion and the Imperium. After coming back from Mars, they receive the secret technological lore of the Twentieth – the knowledge that the tech-priests would never willingly allow a Legion to possess.

Warcry

While the Alpha Legion conducts most of its battles hidden in the shadows, the sons of Alpharius have inherited some measure of their gene-sire's pride. When everything is in place, when there is no chance for failure and they deliver the killing blow, they make sure that the enemy knows just who is responsible. Over the millennia, the last words ever heard by many Chaos Lords have been the simple declaration of 'For the Emperor', followed by the sound of a bolt pistol fired next to their head. On the rare occasions when the Alpha Legion has been forced into open battle, their rallying cry is that of 'I am Alpharius' shouted at the same time by every warrior involved. Through this battlecry, the Legionaries honor the memory of their lost Primarch, and feed the enemy's fear that they might actually be facing one of the Emperor's sons – something that even the most demented servant of the Ruinous Powers fear with something approaching atavistic terror. Against the Ultramarines, this cry drives the foe to frenzy, as it is a direct insult to the supposed victory of Guilliman over Alpharius on Eskrador. The Legion specifically teaches its members to use those as their last words when surrounded by the foe, with the goal of enraging the enemy leader, causing him to make mistakes – or, in the case of some Chaos Lord, goading him into such fury that he will kill the next underling approaching him, allowing the Legionary to take one more enemy with him.

The human servants of the Legion, however, have another phrase that they only speak when they are about to die, having blown their cover to serve the interests of the Legion. No matter how much pain or fear they might feel in these last moments, their last words are always the same : 'To the end of glory.' When tortured for information, these words are all they say, over and over, until they escape or die. What the words mean is unknown even to the Inquisition. It is theorized that it might be a reference to the endless wars Mankind is locked into, and to some grand, over-arching plan to finally bring peace to the Imperium. It could also be about how these men and women have forsaken the pursuit of individual prestige and power, sacrificing their lives in order to serve the Emperor – just as the Alpha Legion itself has done throughout history.

Both of these theories are wrong. And we will make sure no one learns the truth until we are ready.

The warrior had died bravely, but not well. His killers had taken their time before finishing him, and had only done so because they had sensed the approach of intruders on their bloody work. They had fled so quickly that they had left behind the bodies of the two of their brothers that the warrior had managed to slay before being captured. From a distance, the three dead could be believed to be kin – they were all of similar proportions, and wore armors that were of the same forest-green color. But as soon as one drew near, the differences became obvious. Part of the warrior's armor had been peeled off his body, so that the torturers could access his flesh and make him suffer. But what remained of his armor and body were untainted, while the corpses of the captors bore the marks of the Changer of Ways on both. Their helmets were decorated with twirling horns, their armor engraved with runes that glowed with fell magic even after the death of the wearer. Their weapons weren't in sight – the one thing their brothers had taken with them, plundering them from their corpses before fleeing. The only weapon visible was the shattered chainsword with which the warrior had fought and slain those he had once called brothers.
One of the hydra-marked giants approached the Fallen Angel, and reached out with his gauntleted hand to close his eyes – which even in death stared ahead defiantly, daring his killers to hurt him if they thought they could make him scream. What remained on his face was marked by agony, but not age. This one had emerged only very recently, a few decades or a century at most. But he hadn't been able to do much before the servants of the Lion had found him. For ten thousand years, the Dark Angels had hunted those who had stood with Luther upon long-dead Caliban, dragging them in chains before their Daemon Primarch so that he could break them and destroy them. Ten thousand years of unceasing hunt, with the Fallen always fighting to remain one step ahead … but no more.
'We need to warn Cypher,' said one of the Alpha Legionaries. 'He is the last one now.'

Chapter Text

From : Agent 587-287-576-869, codename "Silence", current assignment : Commoragh

To : Outpost Gamma-39428

My lords,

Asdrubael Vect has sent messages to El'Uriaq, and made public declarations about how it was "time for the heirs of the Eldar Empire to put aside their differences and stand together to reclaim what is rightfully theirs". So far, the Tyrant of Shaa-Dom has been cautious, but it seems he is willing to meet with the Overlord to discuss things further. Their emissaries are discussing location and time.

You know what the consequences could be if Vect succeed in unifying the Dark Eldar. This cannot be allowed to happen. I doubt Vect's stated intentions are genuine, but I don't question his ambition and thirst for power. I await instructions, and will continue my investigations in the meantime.

To the end of glory.

From : Chemos, homeworld of the Third Legion

To : all Emperor's Children's forces – all astropathic personnel to relay this message at full capacity

Brothers ! The hour is dire. The forces of the Archenemy have entered the Chemos system. Dozens of ships, estimated to carry thousands of Traitor Legionaries and many times more of their foul and debased servants, breached the Mandeville Point less than an hour before this transmission. The fleet has been identified as belonging to the Black Legion. Worse, the commander of this dark armada has been identified to be no other than the Arch-Renegade himself.

That's right, brothers. For reasons only his own diseased mind can comprehend, Fabius Bile has come to Chemos, bringing with him a sizeable portion of the infamous Black Legion. Our analysts estimate that nearly the entire Black Legion's presence outside the Eye of Terror has come here.

We cannot let this opportunity to finally bring the traitor to justice and end our Legion's old shame pass. As per my authority as steward of the Legion until the Phoenician's return, I am recalling all Emperor's Children to Chemos. Bring any Imperial forces willing to fight at your side with you, for we shall need them. I know not why the Arch-Renegade has come, but I will lead my warriors in defense of Chemos. Our homeworld shall not be tainted with his foul designs until every son of Fulgrim on this planet is dead, and the traitors will pay a blood price for each of us – but as things stand, I fear that we will be unable to take them all to the grave with us. Come back quickly, brothers, or Fulgrim's world may be lost to the dark forces we have fought for ten thousand years.

I shall see you on the fields of our homeworld, or at the Emperor's side,

Legion Master Deradolon, Guardian of Chemos

From : Inquisitor Pontius Glaw, Ordo Hereticus

To : +REDACTED+

Priority : Black

My lord,

I have finally been able to locate the rogue Eisenhorn. He is on Sancour, a minor and nearly forgotten world that has long since entered the terminal phase of economical collapse, but hasn't died quite yet. Me and my Acolytes have come to the world itself and begun to hunt for Eisenhorn and his allies, but we aren't the only ones on his trail. It seems like every heretical faction in the Segmentum (and several from beyond) has sent agents to this world to find him, and the world is slowly falling to anarchy as they battle each other in the streets. I have identified elements from the First, Seventh, Ninth and Nineteenth Traitor Legions, as well as cults from every known aspect of the Ruinous Powers. So far, Eisenhorn has proved that he hasn't lost any of the skills he displayed when he was still a trusted member of the Ordos, and none of his pursuers have succeeded in killing him – though the battles he has fought have left their mark on the planet's cities and population.

The cult of the Divine Fratery is especially present in great numbers. From what I have been able to learn by interrogating one of their initiates, it seems that the seers of that cult are as worried about the potential consequences of Eisenhorn's actions as we are. They have abandoned their efforts on many potential calamities in order to focus their resources on Sancour, and my investigation has revealed that an entire army's worth of cultists and mercenaries in on its way to this planet.

Though I know that the Ordos' assets are stretched thin, I formally request reinforcements, both in Inquisitorial personnel, but also in military forces. Both, I believe, will be necessary to prevent what we fear from coming to pass. I also ask that the possibility of sentencing Sancour to Exterminatus be considered. While I do not believe it would succeed in removing the threat posed by Eisenhorn – he has lived through many supposedly impossible to survive situations – it would at least delay him, and deal a great blow to the heretical factions hunting him down. Furthermore, there is little of value on Sancour. Its loss would be an acceptable price to prevent the rise of the Yellow King.

I trust in your wisdom and assure you that I will do all in my power to track and bring down Eisenhorn before his madness dooms us all,

Pontius Glaw

From : Warsmith Shon'tu of the Iron Warriors, commander of the Hydra Cordatus garrisson

To : High Command of the Cadian Iron Cage

Priority : Omega

Note : much of the context of the message was lost, as a dozen astropaths went mad when it was received, shrieking about the "coming of the Shadowed One". Once the message was cleansed of corrupting influence, only its core meaning remained.

+++ New development in Raven Guard siege of the fortress +++

+++ Revising previous estimations that current forces could hold, I request reinforcements +++

+++ Fourth Legion forces and allies will hold as long as possible, but defeat likely inevitable +++

+++ Bring daemonhunters – Ordo Malleus' militant chamber likely best and only option +++

+++ the Ravenlord has come – Corax is here +++

CORAX IS HERE CORAX IS HERE BLOOD BONE FLESH -

ABORTING READING – CORRUPTED DATA

From : Imperial World Tartarus

To : all Imperial forces

Priority : Alpha

This is a call for assistance to all Imperial forces who receive it. Tartarus is under attack by Chaos forces, led by Chaos Marines. The orbital defenses and our in-system flotilla have been destroyed, allowing the traitors to make planetfall unhindered. The capital has fallen, the Governor is dead, and I have assumed command of the planetary government. I am aware that this is an out stepping of my role. I shall willingly submit myself to investigation for this usurpation as soon as this crisis is over.

Intelligence on the enemy is scarce, but they appear to be led by a Traitor Astartes called Gabriel Angelos, though his forces call him the "Blood Raven". While the enemy forces count in the tens of thousands, there are only a handful of Astartes in leadership position among those attacking us. The Blood Raven himself hasn't led the assault on the remaining cities – instead, he and his followers are active in the plains, but I do not know what they are doing. It is taking all that we have left to hold onto the last cities of Tartarus, which are packed with refugees from those which fell in the early stages of the invasion. The enemy's blood thirst is immense, and they care nothing for losses.

I have also received reports of another force at work on Tartarus, and while these reports contain little evidence, what evidence they do include point at involvement from the Eldar. Why the xenos might have come to Tartarus is unknown to me, but it cannot mean anything good for us.

The PDF of Tartarus will hold as long as they can, but without reinforcements, I fear our planet is doomed to whatever fell destiny the Blood Raven or the Eldar have in mind for us.

The Emperor protects,

Colonel Carus Brom, Acting Governor of Tartarus

From : Acolyte Elyd Zarek

To : Ordo Vigilus Headquarters, South Pole, Holy Terra

Priority : Vermillion

Masters,

As per your orders, I have spent the last two weeks examining and cross-referencing records, and I am afraid that the numbers do not lie : the Echoes of Blood are growing louder. In the last century, accounts of individuals being corrupted by the baleful influence of the Blood Angel have increased tenfold. The priests of Horus' Memorial doubled the amount of exorcisms and ritual purifications more than fifty years ago, but at least one hundred of their personnel have been revealed to be corrupted as well. As you know, some of them performed their blasphemies within the Memorial itself twenty years ago, and the numbers indicate that things went even worse after that. I suspect that, even if the heretics were stopped by the Custodes before they could complete their dreadful ritual, they still made some progress toward freeing the ancient evil that this holy ground contains.

More disquieting are the cults that have begun to sprout in the workers' districts, worshiping an entity they call the "True Angel". It is said to promise deliverance from the misery and unfairness of the dregs' existence, and grant them eternal life and joy. Cells of the cult are responsible for several hideous murders, followed by the ritualistic mutilation of the victim which sole purpose seems to be to spill as much blood as possible on Terra, in violation of the holy prohibitions. I believe these cultists have been touched by the Echoes of Blood, their souls warped by Sanguinius' evil.

The details of my findings are attached to this transmission. I implore you not to underestimate the danger at play here. We all know the source of the Echoes of Blood, but in my investigations I have begun to wonder if we truly understand the power that lies even in the Blood Angel's dreams.

Astropathic transmission 2865048-3595828-FVE

Identified origin location : 86.689% probability Calixis Sector, 56.112% capital world Scintilla

Warning : transmission heavily damaged. Recovered content estimated at 12.842219702%

Begin decoding transmission …

… Yu'vath ships coming out of the Jerico Reach, an armada unlike anything …

… black star, burning the soul and twisting the flesh, unleashed its …

… the blood of the Raven has awakened …

… the Worms have launched a massive offensive … billions dead, their brains consumed …

… white-clad giant with a pair of axes leading the fight against the invaders …

… unverified reports that the Traveller has returned and is fighting every other abomination …

… the stars are going dark ! My lords, the stars are –

… End of transmission. The Machine Knows All, the Machine Sees All.

From : Inquisitor Hesral Morion

To : Ordo Xenos council

Priority : Black

My esteemed colleagues,

The Octarian War is over, and Kryptmann's Gambit failed, as we all suspected it would in the end. The Orks and Tyranids did not destroy each other : the latter emerged the victors, stronger than ever. The Great Devourer triumphed when it spawned a new kind of organism, one we have never encountered before, seemingly designed specifically to fight the greenskins. Unfortunately, I have been unable to procure a specimen for study, and what little information I have was recovered from a long distance by my agents in the system, most of them did not survive for extraction. This new genetic abomination seems to be able to disrupt the mysterious Waaaagh ! connections that exist between all greenskins, preventing them access to this well of psychic energy. Without it, their will to fight is broken, and their psykers are unable to wield the full scope of their destructive powers.

With these new Tyranids, Hive-fleet Leviathan struck at the Orks' fortresses, slaying the Warbosses and preventing the rise of new ones. Without leadership, the Orks have broken apart, and are fleeing the Octarius Sector in droves while being slaughtered by the Great Devourer's swarms. Imperial systems in the vicinity are being overrun by the fleeing Orks, and the Tyranids will not be long behind them. Ghazghkull Magu Uruk Thraka, the infamous Ork warlord responsible for the Third War for Armageddon, has also arrived amidst the confusion, rallying many of the fractured mobs to his banner. I do not know what his intentions are – he might seek to fight back against the swarm, or he might want to bring his new horde back with him to Armageddon. Should that be his goal, then I fear that the planet would soon fall under the onslaught of so many reinforcements. Yet the Beast of Armageddon isn't our greatest concern – the Tyranid Swarm is. It will take some time for the Hive-fleet to finish consuming all the biomass the Orks have left behind, but when it does, I fear it will be unstoppable. Considering the reports of their existing numbers and the increasing number of conflicts throughout the galaxy, I have been forced to an unwelcome conclusion :

I believe the Bestiam Domitores might hold our only chance to stop Hive-fleet Leviathan now.

From : Magos Uriah Novkarion

To : Fabricator-General Abristus Teslivi

Priority : Omega

Venerated Hand and Eyes of the Omnissiah, blessed be His work,

Despite the best efforts of my team and myself, I fear that what the servants of the Machine-God have always known and dreaded to be inevitable will soon happen. The glorious Golden Throne is failing, sacred component after sacred component breaking down under the strain of ten thousand years of continuous use, and we lowly servants of the Omnissiah's glory cannot repair or replace them. Mercifully, the psychic amplifiers remain intact, though our instruments indicate that the divine power coursing through them has diminished slowly but steadily over the last ten millennia – please see my previous report and suggestion for increasing the tithe of sacrificed psykers.

But the stasis-field and life-support systems are in such a condition that they could fail at any moment, bringing the mortal body of the God-Machine at the cruel mercies of time. When this happens, the consequences will be catastrophic beyond any simulation.

The hour might have come to initiate our last-chance protocols, much as it might seem like heresy.

May the blessings of the Omnissiah be upon your circuits, in this darkest of hours, and illuminate the path to deliverance for us all.

From : Lord Baptiste Leorn the Third, Governor of Hive-World Abbracius, Segmentum Pacificus

To : Adeptus Terra Sector Council

Priority : Crimson

My Lords,

It is with deep shame that I must tell you that the world you have entrusted into my stewardship has come under attack from an unknown but powerful foe. Three months ago, every station tasked with monitoring the border between the Segmentium Pacificus and the Halo Zone went dark, with not even an astropathic distress call being sent. We reacted by marshaling our forces and preparing for an hostile incursion, but we did not foresee the true scope of the threat. Horrors have poured forth from the Halo Stars, xenos-tainted humans fighting alongside Traitor Astartes wearing the mark of the Wolf King but displaying none of the savagery and bestiality this breed of heretic is known for.

Three of Abbracius' seven major cities have already fallen to the invader, and the reports from the units that remain trapped behind enemy lines paint a grim picture of inhuman experiments and atrocities being visited upon the population. The leaders of the foe call themselves the "Wolf Brothers", and while they outwardly appear to be Traitor Astartes, the dissection of one of their fallen has revealed a great … divergence from the Emperor's holy design for the Legions, something that my savants tell me isn't related to the touch of the Ruinous Powers.

Though the PDF troops fight with all the courage that could be expected from them, I fear that the only reason the remaining cities stand still is because the enemy is still busy "processing" the civilians in the captured hives. Intercepted communications indicate that the commander of this force is a being called "Hraldir", but he hasn't been sighted on the battlefield, though he appears responsible for many of the atrocities being visited upon my people.

I call for assistance in liberating Abbracius from this dreadful threat, before the only deliverance that can be granted to both world and population is the fire of Exterminatus.

The Emperor Protects.

From : Agent 320-839-601-666, codename "Martyr", current assignement : Ocularis Terribus

To : Outpost Omega-46789

I fear that I don't have much time left, brothers. The voices grow worse, laughing and mocking at the edge of my mind, while the shadows grow ever closer, waiting for me to show a moment's weakness so that they might pounce and consume all that I have left to sacrifice …

Duty. Duty is all I have left. Duty is all I ever had. I will not fail you, my lords. Otherwise, what was the point of everything I lost, everything I did ? I will not fail. I must not fail … But the Betrayer's Mask grows strong, and I grow weak. There is not much time left, so listen well …

Despite our best efforts, Bile's influence in the Eye of Terror has increased dramatically. It seems like this black-hearted traitor is everywhere at once, forging alliances with all manners of horrors and binding others to his will through sheer strength and cunning. He has raised the banner of a Black Crusade again, his mouthpieces spouting rethoric about the destruction of Cadia and the shattering of the Iron Cage once and for all. New recruits flock to the Black Legion, and warbands from the other Traitor Legions are also rallying to its black and gold banner. I have seen the staging grounds of this armada with my own eyes : mighty fleets and vast armies, followed by infernal hosts pacted to the service of the sorcerous covens who have joined the Primogenitor's cause. Rumors abound about what other abominations the Clone Lord might have added to his cause, but even if his forces are limited to those I can confirm myself, then when the signal is given Cadia will face an onslaught such as it has never seen before. I beg you, take heed of my warning – for if Cadia falls, then this horde of the Lost and the Damned will pour on the galaxy unchecked, and …

… and then … Nothing will stop them … Nothing … will … stop … us …

From : Mining World Damnos

To : Ultima Segmentum High Command

Priority : Crimson

Esteemed lords of the Imperium,

Damnos is under attack. Three weeks ago, an hostile fleet entered the system. Considering its numbers, our system defenses chose not to pointlessly sacrifice themselves in an attempt to deny them orbital superiority. Mandos Prime, our primary mining complex, fell within hours. So far, the enemy has focused its attention on that city : our scouts have detected signs that the mining machinery has been reactivated, as if whatever the foe is seeking lies deep beneath the surface.

The nature of the enemy is especially troubling. There are Traitor Marines among them, bearing the mark of a great wolf upon their armor and led by a corrupted Dreadnought. But a broad variety of hideous xenos has also been sighted among the invasion force. These creatures are those against which Damnos' defenders fight the most, since they, unlike the renegade Astartes, do not remain within Mandos Prime's borders. Instead, they raid the other settlements, taking captives and loot. Several hive-cities have fallen, despite the brave efforts and sacrifice of the Regiments under my command. Kellenport, the planetary capital, still holds, and it is from within its walls that I and my council prosecute the war against the traitors and alien scum that despoil our world. But that war is going poorly, for the enemy both outnumbers and outguns us.

Worse, another kind of foe seems to have appeared on Damnos : cold, metallic creatures that fight without a sound and wield weaponry unlike anything my military advisers have ever seen before. These nightmarish horrors have attacked both the people of Damnos and the invaders, showing no mercy or interest for the capture of Imperial installations – they simply destroy everything in their way. In our sporadic contacts with the system defense fleet, we have learned of no new spacecraft through which these beings could have arrived to Damnos. Furthermore, unlike the wolf-marked invaders and their xenos allies, we have neither intercepted nor received any transmission from the metallic warriors, safe for a single message that was broadcast soon before they razed the entire hive of Argolis : "We are the Necrons. We are death. Surrender and die."

Damnos cannot stand alone against such foes, and I beg you for aid. Without prompt assistance, this world shall surely fall to one or the other of the dark forces that do battle upon its soil.

In the Emperor's Name,

Hieronymus Syranth, Governor of Damnos

Report 16828/3183520/Omechron

They are all dead ! Do you hear me ?! The governor, the general, the magos and all the others, they are dead ! That … That thing, it ate them all, one by one, picked them up from the ground and put them into that … that gaping, horrible maw, and it chewed them and it ate them and … and … oh, blessed Emperor, preserve Your humble servant from the machinations of the Dark Powers …

And there are more like it ! I ran out of the palace's ruins, calling in for an orbital bombardment, hoping that it could be killed by the ships in orbit, and then I saw that it wasn't alone : there were at least five more I could see from the palace's entrance, rampaging across the hive, all spindly limbs and fanged mouths, picking up people and devouring them. And there were people screaming everywhere, running in blind panic, trying to get away from the great beasts. Others were on their knees, nothing but bloody wounds where their eyes should be, or rolling on the ground screaming. But they weren't the worst, oh no. The worst was those who were laughing amidst the chaos, laughing and killing everyone they could reach, and then eating the dead, never stopping laughing and wailing while they did. I don't know if it's the same in the other cities, I haven't been able to reach any of them – the satellites in orbit are beyond reach, hidden away behind that hideous tear in the sky through which the horrible monsters came tumbling down, and which shows only darkness and madness to those foolish enough to look up. It's been … days ? Weeks ? Months ? I don't know. I found a hiding place in the rubble of an old clockwork shop, but I have eaten through all my provisions, and I am getting hungry, so hungry … I need to go out, find some food.

Emperor protect me. Emperor protect us all.

From : Hive-world Juno, capital of the Askellon Sector

To : +REDACTED+

Priority : Black

Master,

The Askellon Sector is lost to the Imperium. For hundreds of years, this region of space has teetered on the brink of the abyss, and in the last days, it has finally all fallen apart. The noble bloodlines of Juno have succumbed to the lies of Vulkan, and the Disciples of the Dragon now rule openly across the entire Sector. Shrine worlds have been defaced, their treasures plundered as offerings to the cult's dread patron. The sins of the Sector have finally reached a boiling point, and the efforts of many members of the Ordos have been insufficient, in the end. The Lord Sector is dead, a member of the Disciples now ruling in his stead. Across the Sector, there are still those who resist the Disciples and their corrupted armies, but they are distressingly few, and will soon be wiped out. The Disciples have successfully united all manner of heretical factions under their banner, though several have refused to submit and continue to fight even now. The population of the Sector, crushed as it has been under the boot of the aristocracy for millennia, sees little reason to revolt against this change of master. All faith in the God-Emperor has been bled out of them by uncounted generations of oppression and cruelty, and many have willingly embraced the heresies that now flourish unopposed across the worlds of the Askellon Sector. Desoleum, once known for the piety and obedience of its population, had the latter attribute turned against itself when a powerful witch of the Disciples perverted the complex structure of oaths that binds Desoleum's society together. Now this dark queen, known as the Oathtaker, holds the souls of all Desoleum in her corrupted grasp – more than three hundred billions men and women enslaved to her will. And the Pandaemonium, the great Warp Storm that looms over the Sector, has spat out tides of daemons that have swarmed several worlds, which are now lost beyond all hope of salvation.

Nothing short of a full Crusade can hope to cleanse Askellon and bring it back into the Imperium now. But until such a time arrives, Askellon, and all its dark secrets and terrible treasures, belongs to the Black Dragon. May the Emperor have mercy on our souls, for surely neither Vulkan nor his human puppets shall. I will attempt to flee Juno soon, but I do not know whether or not I will succeed. Should I fail, this will likely be my final message – unless you hear from me in person, do not trust any further communication claiming to hail from me. For while we have all heard about the dreadful necromancies of the Disciples, I have witnessed them with my own eyes, and I fear such a fate for myself should I be captured by the cultists of Vulkan.

The Emperor Protects,

Acolyte Jahal Nervis, Ordo Hereticus

Mission Briefing 30835

From : Ethereal Council, Tau Empire

To : Commander O'shovah

Commander O'shovah,

After decades of planning, the hour has finally come. The forces of the Tau Empire will break the quarantine laid by the gue'la's Imperium around the region of space they call the Ruinstorm and that is known to us as the Kingdom of Ultramar. Many diplomatic contacts have been made with the gue'la leaders of this Kingdom, trapped within their own borders by the Imperium for these last ten thousand years. They have agreed to join the Tau Empire if we can free them of the Imperium's imprisonment, and it is the decision of the Ethereal Council that we come to their aid.

To ensure success in this most critical of endeavors, it has been decided that both disciples of Puretide shall be sent to lead the armada we are deploying to the Iron Cage, the greatest ever seen in the glorious history of our people. Both you, O'shovah, known among our kind as Farsight, and your comrade Commander O'Shaserra, who received the title of Shadowsun for her exploits in service to the Greater Good, will be deployed against the oppressive forces of the Imperium. Like you, she has been awakened from her stasis slumber. Doubtlessly you will meet her during the journey to the Iron Cage – the Ethereal Council expects the two of you to put any past differences you might have had aside, and work together to bring freedom to the people of Ultramar.

For the Greater Good,

Aun'Va, Master of the Undying Spirit, Speaker of Great Truths, Father of His People, the Great Leader, the Shining Light

From : Imperial Seer 052-780-361-053, codename "Odipeus"

To : Outpost Sigma-8080 – Ruinstorm Iron Cage

Black blood flows on the world of lies,

The filth of the depths is rising to the surface,

The sons of the storm will come together in war,

And be forged into a sword by the hand that slumbers.

The traitor son will seek his father's doom,

And be brought low by the judgement eluded for so long.

The twisted hero and the triumphant warlord will come,

Drawn to the promises of bloodshed and power,

While the prophet of the ancient maze rises for reasons known only to him.

The throne that is a tomb will fall, and the screamless king will stand,

Sending tremors of fear and hope across the stars themselves.

The king's servants shall gather once more, together at the foot of the throne,

Kneeling before the one chosen to inherit the power of the divine.

And the shadowy monarch will rage as his plans come undone,

As a lost crown can never be reclaimed, a pawn, once made a king can never be made a pawn again,

Nor can the dead ever be brought back to life.

From : Astra Militarum Segmentum Ultima High Command

To : Commissar Ciaphas Cain

Priority : Vermillion

Thought for the day :  "Loyalty is its own reward."

Commissar Cain,

Due to the recent surges in activity from the Eye of Terror, it has been decided that your retirement will be temporarily suspended once more. The ship Harbinger of Virtue will soon arrive to Perlia to carry you, along with several new tithed Regiments, to Cadia, where you will be assigned to one of the Regiments defending the planet alongside the Iron Warriors. You are expected to make all necessary preparations for your departure. A replacement to the Schola shall be dispatched in due time, and we trust in the abilities of the remaining personnel to make due in your absence.

The situation on Cadia is dire. The heretical presence among the local population has greatly increased in the last few years, with a catastrophic spike in recent months. Your duties will include maintaining morale in the local Regiments, something your reputation should make an easy task. You will also be tasked with liaising between the Astra Militarum command, the Fourth Legion, and the Inquisitorial presence on Cadia. Your past actions have proved your capability in that regard, and it is vital that Cadia's defenders work together rather than each alone.

In the name of the Emperor, death to His foes.

PS : I shall see you on Cadia – A.V.

PPS : For the Emperor.

From : Observation outpost Delta-42

To : Terathalion Legion Command

Priority : Code Prospero

+Terminus message : outpost lost to hostile force+

+Chaos fleet located on approach to the Terathalion system+

+Estimated time of arrival : within 2 to 4 weeks of reception of this message+

+Estimated strength : at least 200 ships of various categories+

+Prognosticated forces on board : several thousand Traitor Astartes, unknown number of mortal troops – lower end estimation : 10,000,000 cultists and other degenerate forces+

+Ship identifiers show Sixth Legion allegiance on 40% of all enemy vessels+

+Vessels registering in the databases as belonging to the First Legion also detected+

+WARNING : the daemonship Invisible Hand has been identified among the Chaos fleet+

+SARTHORAEL IS COMING – VENGEANCE FOR THE PRIMARCH+

Chapter Text

The hunter stalked the corridors of the space station, sliding from shadow to shadow, unseen and unheard by the black-clad transhuman warriors who patrolled the station. Like them, the hunter was taller than any unaugmented human, and he too wore power armor over his transhuman body – but there ended the similarities. Though its colors were faded, the hunter's war-plate was a deep sea green, and devoid of Chaotic markings. The emblem of a slited eye could still be seen on his shoulder paldron, which combined with the armor's color marked him as a warrior of the Sixteenth Legion – but any other signs of his identity had long since been eroded away. The hunter wore no helmet, his face hidden in the darkness while the guards wore horned, warped helmets which, along with their suits of armor and weapons, had been mass-produced on one of the Dark Mechanicum worlds that paid tribute to the Black Legion. A bolt pistol was mag-locked to his thigh, and he held in his right hand an old power sword, its markings faded away save for its aquila-shaped pommel.

A pair of the twisted parodies of Legionaries passed by the tight corridor in the shadows of which the hunter was hiding, their bolters held loosely in their hands. They expected no danger whatsoever – this place was located deep within the Eye of Terror, its very existence a secret known only to a select few of the Black Legion. These precautions had not been enough to stop the hunter, of course. He had tracked his prey through the tides of the Empyrean itself, drawn to its sins by the bounds of the oaths that held him. The Eye of Terror was a realm where the laws of physics held no sway but that which the minds of mortals imposed around them, and a soul possessing enough will could travel between its shores without the need for a spaceship. The hunter had emerged from the very shadows of the station, deep within, beyond the reach of any surveillance array. It had taken him three days to find his way through the machinery of metal and flesh that kept the station running without raising any alarm. Now he was close to his quarry – but first, he had to remove the guards.

Once the two Chaos Marines had passed, the hunter leapt from cover, his muscles uncoiling with relief and delight after so long spent crouching in the shadows. He drew his power sword and, thumping the activation rune, threw it directly through the neck of the heretic on the right. The blade pierced through the shoddy armor without slowing and severed the spinal column of the renegade before bursting from his gorget. No blood was spilled, the wound being instantly cauterised by the power field, and the traitor was dead before his brain could even register what had happened to him, its cells fried by the heat of the ancient weapon.

As the corpse began to topple forward, the hunter grabbed the remaining Black Legionary. His right arm tightened around the throat of his foe, and, with a quick twist, he shattered the traitor's neck. Proper power armor would have prevented that attack – but the hunter had watched the false Legionaries carefully as they passed him by, and noted the weaknesses in their armor. The one he had killed with the blade had had better equipment, which was why he had been dispatched in such a manner. The hunter tore his sword free from the corpse of his enemy and, after listening for a few seconds to ensure that no one had heard anything, he pulled the two bodies into the shadows he had left. They would be found in time, when their disappearance was noticed – but by that time, the hunter would already be long gone, his mission accomplished. With the corpses concealed, he moved forward once more, his bonds tugging him in the direction of his prey.

The two guards he had slain had been the last line of defense of his quarry, though the hunter knew better than to assume it would be entirely defenceless. At the end of the corridor they had been patrolling was an archway from which leaked the smell of blood and other, less pleasant odours. Without slowing, the hunter passed through, and emerged into a vast chamber lit by red lum-globs and the glow of torches fashioned from the limbs of nameless monstrosities. Life-sustaining and preservation vats lined the walls, containing all manner of flesh-changed horrors. At the center of the room was an operation table, upon which laid the tied down form of a mutant with scaled skin and nine limbs that were neither legs nor arms, its belly cut open and its twitching guts exposed to the cold, sterile air of the laboratory. It still lived, though the stench of its terror and agony was potent, and half-formed Neverborn flashed in and out of existence above it, waiting for it to die so that they might feast upon what passed for its soul.

And there he was, standing before the autopsy table, a madman in a house of horrors. The hunter knew the look of his quarry well, after a hundred centuries on the hunt. He recognized the blood-soaked cloak made of human skin, the mane of filthy white hair, the cybernetic construction bound on the transhuman's back, its mechanical limbs spreading like a grotesque spider, never stopping to move in ways that seemed to indicate they were possessed of their own malign intelligence. The hunter was more familiar with his prey's appearance than he was with his own. There were some variations from time to time, some minor details that changed – a few scars, a specific tool hanging from the belt, the intensity of the smell of lingering corruption – but he always knew his quarry when he laid eyes upon him. The foulness festering within him could not possibly be mistaken.

'Is that you, Borkis ?' asked the decadent Apothecary in a raspy voice, his back still turned to the hunter. 'Where is that fool Nar ? Ah, never mind. Bring me the Rak'Gol sample, will you ? I want to try something on this one before its life fades entirely.'

Without a word, the hunter walked across the laboratory toward his prey, drawing his power sword out of its scabbard in one smooth motion, his thumb hovering above the activation rune. Bile stopped his inspection of the body and cocked his head. For a fraction of second, the entire room seemed to freeze in the hunter's perception as threads of possibilities unwound in his mind. The moment he hit the rune, Bile would realize what was happening – no Astartes could ever mistake the sound of an activating power field. But the Chirurgeon on the Primogenitor's back was already whirring and turning, the malign intelligence of the device picking up on the threat its master hadn't yet noticed. A dozen possible options flashed in the hunter's mind, and, with an ease born of long, long practice, he picked the one that yielded the best chance of success. He thumped the rune.

On this blade and by my honor, I pledge myself to this oath of moment : to hunt down the Arch-Renegade, Fabius Bile, and slay him in retribution for his crimes against the Sixteenth Legion, the Imperium and Mankind. By my hand shall the Defiler, the maker of the Black Legion, die, his blasphemous work undone. Until this deed is done, I shall neither rest nor waver. This I swear …

Fabius whirled the moment the sound of the power field reached his ears, his hands already dropping his tools and drawing his needle pistol. Before he could pull the trigger, however, the hunter was on him, his power sword coming down in a down strike. Bile dodged, moving far more quickly than his gaunt physique suggested he ever could, and the blade cleaved through the mutant body, ending its miserable life before cutting through the operation table in a shower of sparks. Bile aimed his needle pistol at the hunter's head, but he did not pull the trigger – instead, his eyes widened in surprise as he got his first good look at his would-be killer.

'You,' breathed the Primogenitor in shock as he recognized the face of the hunter. 'Garviel Loken … Still alive after all that time, I see. So it's you who has been hunting me across the Eye …'

That is no longer my name. You and your kind killed the man who bore it. Now … I am Cerberus. I am the wolfhound at the gates of Hell, the hunter in the dark places. I am your death, traitor.

The hunter – Cerberus – moved, ripping his blade free of the table's wreck and aiming at the throat of Bile in a wide sweep. The Primogenitor took a single step back, and the blade passed mere millimetres from his exposed skin, the power field inflicting slight burns upon it that he did not seem to notice. In response, Bile pulled the trigger, and a flurry of toxin-covered needles flew toward Cerberus, each hand crafted by some of the best hereteks in the Eye of Terror and reinforced to the point that they could easily pierce ceramite. Cerberus' armor would not protect him – but it did not need to. He had other means to protect himself.

The hunter shifted, and the needles passed right through his suddenly aetheric form. He took another step forward, struggling against the pressure of madness and daemonic influence surrounding him, and shifted back, re-assuming a physical presence. He felt something crack in his chest and something burst in his right leg, and a flow of pain nearly overwhelmed him. This strange ability he had one day found he possessed came at a price in damage and suffering, but it was one Cerberus was all too happy to pay, for he had seen the hidden costs of the free "gifts" bestowed upon those who dwelled within the Eye of Terror. Before him, Bile smiled, exposing yellow teeth and a black tongue that seemed more at place in a corpse's mouth than that of a living being.

'What have you become ?' mocked the renegade, moving backward and loosing another volley from his needle pistol that Cerberus avoided by turning immaterial again, the strain on his body and mind even worse than the previous time. 'Where has your pathetic quest for revenge led you ? Look at you ! You are more wraith than flesh, more daemon than man ! It will be interesting to cut you apart once you are dead … there is much I could learn from you, oh yes …'

I am not blind to the changes I have gone through. This place, this infernal realm of insanity and corruption, is changing me. My flesh is twisting on a genetic level, altered into a shape reflecting the nature of my soul. For now, the changes have remained inward – I have caught glimpses of my reflection, and know it to be unchanged. Even if the Dark Gods don't have a hold on my soul, the energies of this place are still affecting me. I feel the Warp seething in my bones and blood … But I am not tainted. Duty protects me from the touch of the evil that dwells within the Empyrean.

'A silent one, are you ? Not going to curse me for my many crimes against your bloodline ? Not going to threaten me with the inevitable justice I will face for the atrocities I have committed ? You are not like the rest of your brothers,' noted the Arch-Renegade, his voice conveying his amusement. 'That is … surprisingly refreshing, in fact. Such things get downright tedious after the one-hundred or so time they happen. Every time I get out of the Eye, your old Legion is always there, screaming for my head. And when it's not an Imperial Assassin, it's a slave of the Powers put on my trail because these bloated trans-dimensional abominations got bored that particular day or for any other reason. It's not like they are especially rational about such things, as I am sure you know. Surely you have encountered their agents over the course of your little hunt ?'

Cerberus did not reply, and instead moved in for another strike. Again, Bile avoided the blow by a hair's breadth and fired back, but this time the hunter was able to dodge without needing to call upon his esoteric abilities. It was only when he heard the hissing sound coming from behind him, where the needles had pierced through one of the pods, that he realized the only reason he had been able to dodge the shot was because he hadn't been the target in the first place.

Foul-smelling smog filled the room, and Cerberus felt his lungs start to burn as he breathed in a minute amount of the poisoned gas. Without pausing his advance, he blocked his respiration and reached out for his old Mark IV helmet, which hung at his belt. In one fluid motion, he lifted it and clasped it over his head. Bile had no helmet, yet he appeared unaffected by the toxins he had released, which was hardly surprising. The Primogenitor reeked of the cocktail of chemicals that coursed through his veins, speeding his wasted frame and making him immune to all but the most virulent of poisons and diseases. Though his body did not bear any obvious cybernetic augmentation, in truth the Clone Lord was more machine than man – but he was a machine of biological component, each hand crafted by his dark genius to serve precise purposes. Corruption might be eating him from the inside, but he was still strong, still mighty.

By contrast, most of the mechanisms of Cerberus' helmet no longer functioned, but its re-breather still did, and its pale eye-lenses were still clear enough to see through. The most advanced prey sight options had long since stopped working, the micro-cogitators processing them melted to slag when Cerberus had looked upon a creation of Bile that was more than nine-tenths daemon, hundreds of years ago. Perhaps that had been for the best – machine-spirits were more susceptible to deceit than the enhanced senses of a transhuman warrior. The helmet could no longer help him pierce the smog, but he didn't need it – he could sense his prey's presence pulling at his soul. This close to his quarry, the bonds of oath were even stronger, propelling him toward the Arch-Renegade with irresistible force. Bile was a blazing figure of dark dreams and shattered lives to the hunter.

Cerberus shifted again, and leapt through the poisonous fog, another burst of needles passing harmless through him. His sword struck, and this time Cerberus only turned back to bone and flesh when the tip of the immaterial blade was through Bile's throat. The weapon materialized back into reality, tearing through the Arch-Renegade's carotid before its power field could start to affect the Materium again. The needle gun slipped from Bile's grip as he fell backward.

Slowly, feeling the pain of his wounds recede as his body's healing abilities kicked in, Cerberus stepped toward the collapsed form of his prey, his boot splashing into the pool of dark, tainted blood that was growing from the lethal wound. Despite his cut throat, Bile still managed to gurgle out spite-filled words, glaring at his killer with contempt, hatred, and a sliver of fear in his eyes :

'Do you really think this matters ? You … cannot … stop me … from doing … what must be done.'

Cerberus didn't waste anymore time listening to the mad ramblings of the traitor. He had already listened to them many times in the past, and understood the Primogenitor's corrupt ideology and beliefs better than anyone else in the galaxy – perhaps even better than the madman himself. Bile's sanity had long since been corroded away by the tides of the Warp and the burdens his abominable existence placed upon his wretched soul. He struck downward with his weapon, triggering the power field around the blade at full power as he did so. The sword pierced through the Clone Lord's armor and through his back, stabbing into the deck beneath. Holding his victim in place, Cerberus watched the light fading from the eyes of Bile. For several seconds, the hunter remained motionless, staring at the corpse of his victim, waiting for the burden laid upon his soul to finally vanish. But it did not even budge, and he sighed. It seemed that he still had work to do before the chains of duty would allow him to rest. In truth, he had not expected anything else. After so long spent in the Eye of Terror hunting down his quarries, he had difficulty even imagining any other existence.

The warrior who had once been Garviel Loken pulled his blade free and left the room without looking back, abandoning the corpse of Fabius Bile behind him. Already the body was falling apart, decay spreading through it at an accelerated rate as the alchemy holding it together faded with the cessation of its biological function. Cerberus did not need to look to know what was happening; after all, this wasn't the first time he had killed Fabius Bile.

Nor would it be the last, for his oath of moment was still unfulfilled. The hunt would go on, until the desecration of the Warmaster's legacy was avenged, the sin against Cerberus' Legion washed away in the blood of the Arch-Renegade. No matter how long it took. He would go back into the shadows, and fade away from this place, moving through the unreal tides of the Eye of Terror as he sought the new incarnation of Fabius Bile that he was now pursuing. He would kill that one, and move on to the next, over and over, preventing the influence of the Primogenitor from growing too strong even if he could not put a true and definitive end to it.

For that is my vow, unto the end of eternity itself.

Artwork by Nemris

Chapter Text

I am falling.

Shadows surround me, inhabited by monsters of eternal hate and hungers, clawing at my soul with talons made of the galaxy's every sin. They seek to drag me into their realms of lies, to tear my spirit apart and feast on the bloody shreds. But I am stronger than they are still.

I fight back, even as I fall, lashing out with fire and lightning. The light of my powers burns them, forcing them back into the roiling darkness, but always others take their place.

I am tired. So, so very tired. I know my mind works more and more slowly, thoughts that should have been processed in nanoseconds taking a thousand times more to cycle through my mind. There is no need for physical rest, for I have no body here but the aetheric aspect of my soul, shaped as a one-eyed eagle with broken wings. But my mind is oh so weary.

They show me glimpses of the outside world, these enemies of mine. They taunt me with images of what the Imperium has become, showing me the misery, the ignorance, the superstition and the blind, terrified worship of my father. From the moment we put His dying body on the Golden Throne and activated that infernal contraption, I knew it was inevitable – but it still hurts to see trillions of souls pray to Him without having the slightest idea of who He really was, what He really fought for. They show me my sons, too, especially the one who wear the blood-soaked raven on his armor, and I weep for him, lost to the lies of the Blood God. He will find no victory on this path, and all the power Khorne grants him will burn him from within until he is nothing more than a withered husk, all traces of what he was and could have been long gone. How they laugh, every time they show him to me as he fights against his own brothers. How they laugh, as they show me what he intends to do.

Then there are those of my sons who are still loyal to their oaths, but whose souls are all but drowned in ancient grudges. They walk in the shadows, surrounded by the ghosts of the past, caught in an endless, self-sustaining cycle of vengeance, denying the dead peace just as the dead deny it to them. I sense a greater hand at work in their fate, a power on which my foes have no hold, and one they fear might grow to threaten them.

But this is nothing compared to the visions of my ashen dead, the silent ranks of my sons who were consumed by the flame meant to protect them from the influence of the dark. Every time one of them falls to its destructive touch, they show him to me, show me all that he was and all that he could have been, while the God of Lies laughs in the background. Each time, I weep for the cruelty of Fate against my sons, knowing it is the result of my defiance – and fully aware that the alternative would have been much, much worse.

Because even now, as the jaws of Chaos snap at my heels while I fall ever deeper into the tides of the Empyrean, I still hold hope. There are two of my sons that they never show to me, either because they cannot see them, or because they do not want me to see them. But even if they don't show my two greatest sons to me, I am not without sight of my own, even here, even now. The visionary and the avenger, walking their own paths, seeking their own ends. One driven by the search for salvation, the other burning with the pure flame of vindicta. Their destiny is shrouded to the Dark Gods, though for very different reasons.

And so I fall, and so I fight. I will not stop until the end. I will never give up, never give in.

For I am Magnus the Red. I am a son of the Emperor. I am the Crimson King. I ...

I will never be your slave.

The Siege of Terathalion

Part One : The Coming of Chaos

For ten millenia, the Thousand Sons have acted as the defenders of Mankind in the Game of Fate. Under the direction of their Seers, they have fought to preserve the Imperium from the depredations of the alien, the madness of the mutant, and the ravenous, eternal hunger of the Dark Gods. While their Primarch slumbers, struck down by a terrible curse, they labour to keep the flame of hope alive in an ever-darker galaxy. In the Prosperine Dominion, they have kept the secrets of the past safe, preserved from the rabid mania of those who would destroy all traces of ancient failures and sins. Yet within their most hallowed sanctuary is also the proof of their greatest shame, the true cost of the Rubric that shields their souls and bodies from corruption. In Magnus' mausoleum, ranks upon ranks of silent brothers stand, their minds and bodies destroyed by the power of Ahriman's Rubric, keeping an eternal vigil upon the unmoving body of their Primarch. And as the Times of Ending finally descend upon the galaxy, the sons of Magnus shall be tested like never before …

The Invisible Hand had once been a proud vessel, fighting at the forefront of a fleet that had conquered dozens of worlds. It had been created by a xenos species whose name was no longer remembered by any mortal soul, for their rise to the stars had drawn the gaze of the Changer of Ways. Tzeentch had deemed the aliens unfit for his grand design, and dispatched one of his minions to remove them from the board. Sarthorael the Ever-Watcher, one of the mightiest Lords of Change, had cast down this forgotten race, turning its members against each other until they had destroyed themselves in a terrible but short-lived civil war that had left an entire region of space a haunted graveyard. During the twenty-seven years this had taken, Sarthorael had remained in hiding, his presence undetected by his victims until the very end. Only the Invisible Hand remained of the dead race's accomplishments, stolen away by the Greater Daemon at the climax of the war, the fate of its remaining crew too horrible to contemplate. Remade in the depths of the Warp, the ship was now an extension of Sarthorael's own being and power, a daemonic vessel like few others plaguing the galaxy. Nine kilometers long, it was ever-changing, its corridors shifting without warning or pattern, while its surface bristled with all manner of weaponry that only remained for the blink of an eye before vanishing as if it had never been there. With it came other daemonships, as well as a fleet of the Lost and the Damned, cultists from all over the galaxy which had been cultivated by the Ever-Watcher for centuries and had finally been called upon to serve their feathered "god".

Sarthorael, the Ever-Watcher

Among all the daemons that serve the Changer of Ways, there are few as dangerous as the one responsible for the downfall of Magnus, and who now leads the attack on Terathalion. As a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, Sarthorael wields considerable sorcerous power, and merely looking upon his incarnated form is enough to drive most unprepared mortals to madness. But like most daemons of Tzeentch, it is his cunning and long-term planning that make him truly dangerous. The Ever-Watcher has brought entire civilizations to ruin without ever revealing himself, whispering in the dreams of those susceptible to contact from beyond the veil and manipulating the course of history over centuries. When Magnus drew the wrath of Tzeentch by refusing the Dark God's deceitful offer of salvation, long before the Heresy began, the Architect of Fate tasked Kairos the Oracle to corrupt the First Legion instead – but it was Sarthorael who was commanded to punish the Crimson King. This punishment was a long time in coming – the entire Heresy passed by while the Ever-Watcher made his preparations. When the Thousand Sons laid waste to Fenris and scattered the Space Wolves across the stars, Sarthorael was there, helping Commander Vaer Greyloc escape from the Emperor's retribution. When the Dark Angels were trapped in exile within the Eye of Terror, it was Sarthorael that first approached the sons of the Lion with knowledge of hidden paths out of the storm and beyond the Iron Cage. Finally, more than a thousand years after the Heresy, the Greater Daemon called on these two debts, and orchestrated the first Black Crusade aimed at Terathalion. For several months, the Prosperine Dominion was caught in war as the Fifteenth Legion did battle against its ancient enemies, Magnus himself directing the Imperial forces.

Though Greyloc had appeared to be in command of the Black Crusade, the Thousand Sons had suspected another's influence from the start – for it was supremely unlikely a Wolf Lord had managed to obtain the assistance of the First Legion. Their suspicions were confirmed when Sarthorael led the raid on the Photep, the flagship of the Thousand Sons. While Ahriman was fighting and slaying Greyloc, the Ever-Watcher put a terrible curse on Magnus and destroyed the Gloriana-class vessel, striking a blow against the Fifteenth Legion from which they still haven't recovered. Sarthorael vanished afterwards, his god-given task accomplished centuries after it had been issued. Ever since that day, the Thousand Sons have hunted him, bending their farsight toward uncovering his plans. They have succeeded in ruining many of those, but the Lord of Change himself has always remained one step ahead, evading righteous banishment at the hands of the sons of Magnus. It was during this hunt that the Thousand Sons learned of the Invisible Hand, the daemonship Sarthorael uses when the time has come to reap the harvest of deceit through violence.

In the years leading to the Times of Ending, Sarthorael was once more summoned by Tzeentch, and tasked with finishing what he had begun ten thousand years before – the complete destruction of the Thousand Sons, and the execution of their slumbering Primarch …

Second in size and power to the great daemonship was the flagship of the Dark Angels presence among the Chaos fleet. The battle-barge Implacable Will had fought against the forces of the Emperor for ten thousand years. Unlike other ships of the Traitor Legions, it had never fought for the Master of Mankind. Instead, it had been forged in the secret lairs of the First Legion before the Roboutian Heresy, and its first engagement had been the Isstvan Massacre, where it had butchered the loyalist ships. In the last centuries, the Imperium had come to know the vessel as the personal flagship of Grand Master Azrael, the Lord of Lies, one of the nine Dark Angels who obeyed only the direct command of the Daemon Primarch Lion El'Jonson. Azrael had brought with him the entire Order under his command – thousands of Dark Angels Legionaries aboard dozens of ships. Never since the Heresy had the First Legion showed itself in such numbers : Azrael had called all the Captains who owed him their service to gather this host. With the sons of the Lion came their mortal slaves : massive transports packed to the brim with cultists of Tzeentch and Broken Ones, former Imperial subjects whose minds had been shattered by the cruel ministrations of the Interrogator-Chaplains. From the moment the Chaos fleet entered the Terathalion system, these vessels began to broadcast the tormented cries of the Broken Ones at full power on all frequencies, a symphony of tortured souls begging for release heralding the coming of the Dark Angels.

Azrael, the Lord of Lies

The Grand Masters are the highest-ranking officers of the First Legion, the Chaos Lords who sit only one step beneath the Daemon Primarch of the Dark Angels in the complex hierarchy of the Legion belonging to the Changer of Ways. Their names are a curse for all within the Imperium who know of them, few as those are, and each is responsible for atrocities no unsullied mind could imagine. The Inquisition has kept track of them for the last ten thousand years, learning the names of those who rose to replace those who fell in battle – or out of their dread master's favour. Among this shadowy brotherhood, Azrael is the most recently elevated. He might have only been risen to the statute of Astartes in the last millennium, or he might be a veteran of the Roboutian Heresy who finally earned the Lion's approval, or he might be something else entirely, something no one would ever suspect – no one knows for certain, not even Azrael himself. For, unknown to everyone in the galaxy save Tzeentch himself – and perhaps the Lion – Azrael's title of "Lord of Lies" is more than Imperial propaganda or self-aggrandizing. Upon being elevated to rank of Grand Master, Azrael's mind, memory and very soul were reshaped by Tzeentch to turn him into a perfect instrument.

At every moment of Azrael's life, his memory of the past changes – one hour he remembers fighting at his Primarch's side to breach the Imperial Palace, the next, his first memory is that of First Legion vessels descending upon his homeworld, the emblem of Tzeentch on their hulls burning itself in his mind. It is not just his distant past that he cannot clearly remember : more recent memories are no more stable. This shifting memory allows Azrael to speak what he truly thinks is the truth to someone's face, and no amount of instinct or telepathic ability will reveal any deception. Azrael himself is unaware of what has been done to him – that knowledge is the one thing that never lingers in his mind, his memories always reshaping themselves to erase all contradictions that might lead him to the truth of his condition. Through this manipulation, Tzeentch himself controls Azrael like a puppet, guiding the Grand Master's great intellect and power toward the Dark God's own, unfathomable desires. To the outside eye, Azrael appears to be a master manipulator and deceiver – but in truth, he is the greatest pawn in the universe, forever blinded to his chains.

In battle, Azrael fights with a long, double-handed blade inscribed with sorcerous runes channelling the power of Tzeentch – the Sword of Secrets, a sacred relic of the First Legion which was forged from the shards of the Lion' own blade, shattered by Luther during the final battle of Caliban. Because his memories of training change endlessly, his style with a blade is never the same, and he will often appear to change schools in the middle of a duel, taking his opponent by surprise. While his surface thoughts can be perceived by telepaths, even the strongest of them cannot pierce the depths of his mind, as they interpret the shifting memories as a mental defense against such intrusion – unable to conceive of the terrible truth.

The last element of the attacking fleet was made up of the Space Wolves and their allies. Logan Grimnar, the Wolf Lord responsible for the summoning of Rogal Dorn upon the world of Armageddon more than a millennium ago, was the leader of the Sixth Legion forces from his battle-barge Gylfarheim. It had been Sarthorael who had convinced Grimnar of joining the attack, playing on the Space Wolf's hatred of the Thousand Sons to overcome his inner distrust of the Dark Angels. Across the Eye of Terror and beyond, Grimnar had reached out to all warbands of the Sixth Legion that he knew of, spreading the word that, at long last, they would bring about the end of the Thousand Sons by destroying the heart of their Prosperine Dominion.

Even so, many of the thousands of sons of Russ among the fleet disliked having to fight on the same side as the Lion's get, whose father had led their own to his doom ten thousand years ago. Tensions between the two Traitor Legions were high, and Sarthorael used this to keep his hold over the assembled force – none of the two Legionary leaders could hope to seize control from him without the armada turning against itself. The Wolves had brought with them their usual complement of xenos technology and allies – Rak'gul mercenaries, ancient weapons whose initial function no one was really sure of, and a plethora of other aliens bound to the Sixth Legion by incomprehensible pacts.

Logan Grimnar, the Old Wolf

The Bane of Armageddon. The Lord of the Silent Callers. The Wielder of Morkai. All these titles and more have been heaped upon Logan Grimnar, but to those who fight alongside him in the Long War, he is simply known as the Old Wolf. The title is something of a private jest among the sons of Russ, for Logan Grimnar is young by the standards of the Traitor Legions. He has never fought under the command of the Wolf King, and has only plagued the Imperium for the last two thousand years. Yet any who look upon him cannot doubt his age : his face is ravaged by time, his long beard and mane of hair white as the snows of his ancestors' homeworld. This is because Logan Grimnar has never set foot within the Eye, where the timelessness of the Warp seeps into the bones of the Traitor Legionaries who seek refuge there, making them all but immune to ageing even as it ravages their flesh and soul. Apart from his journeys through the Sea of Souls, Grimnar has lived through each of the twenty centuries of his life, prolonging his transhuman existence through xenos techno-sorcery and the dark rites of his cabals of Sorcerers. Born among the slave crews of the Sixth Legion, he was selected for transformation into a Space Marine, and rose through the ranks by displaying great tactical acumen and prowess in battle. He finally seized control of his warband when he slew his former master in single combat after a disastrous battle against the Imperium had left them on the brink of total destruction due to his lord's mistakes.

Because Grimnar doesn't seek refuge within the Eye of Terror – nor any of the galaxy's great Warp Storms – he has spent his entire life as a Chaos Lord hunted by the Imperium. First by Navy patrols seeking to end his piratical activities, then, after his part in the First War of Armageddon, by every loyal Legion and many operatives of the Officio Assassinorum. But he has survived each attempt on his life, and his influence among the enemies of Mankind greatly increased after he helped summon Rogal Dorn on Armageddon, unleashing the Daemon Primarch against the World Eaters and their human allies before the Grey Knights arrived and successfully banished Dorn. Consumed by his hatred for the Imperium that destroyed his ancestral homeland, there is no line Grimnar will not cross in the pursuit of his vengeance – but he is still possessed of a streak of ruthless pragmatism. He has made pacts with aliens and daemons alike, and always kept his end of such bargains, earning a reputation for trustworthiness that allows him to gather more allies to his side.

The Old Wolf wears a suit of antique Terminator armor at all time, and wields the daemonic axe Morkai in battle. This weapon hosts a powerful daemon of Khorne, bound within the metal by the Rune Priests who swore allegiance to Grimnar. The Neverborn whispers endlessly to Grimnar, even when the weapon is kept in warded stasis fields between battles, trying to push him into servitude to the God of War, promising ever greater power in return for loyal service. So far, Grimnar has resisted the temptations of his blade, but no soul can endure a daemon's whispers forever …

Such a force of daemons, Traitor Legionaries, Chaos cultists and xenos reavers had rarely been seen in the galaxy, and never on such a scale. The initial reports of the outpost turned out to have been optimistic – or rather, the station had been destroyed before the entire enemy fleet had reached its sensors. Rather than the two hundred vessels it had warned of, the fleet that massed at the edge of the Terathalion's system was closer to five hundred ships of all kinds. Most of those weren't warships but mercantile craft, captured and re-purposed by Sarthorael's mortal minions, packed to the brim with cultists ready to lay down their lives in service of their master. Others were pirate ships whose captains had been haunted by visions of the Ever-Watcher for decades, manipulated into obeying his commands until they were little more than puppets dancing on his strings, their souls swallowed by their infernal lord, their crews unaware of their terrible fate.

For several days, the Chaos armada mustered at the Mandeville Point, new vessels emerging from the Warp in small groups. For all that they had gathered before and followed the same path through the Empyrean, even ships guided by the malign intelligence of a Lord of Change couldn't completely avoid the vagaries of the Warp. How many ships they lost to its turbulent tides is something only Sarthorael himself – and the cackling mad god he calls master – know, but what survived the journey was more than enough to send shivers of dread into those who stood against the slaves of the Archenemy. It became clear then that this was no mere spiteful raid, seeking to bleed the Thousand Sons' resources and make their people suffer for imagined sins. This was truly a host worthy of being called a Black Crusade, a blow guided by the Dark Gods' hand.

The three lords of the Black Crusade did not meet in person, of course. Such a meeting would not have ended well for any of them. Instead, each of them stood in one of their respective flagship's chambers, communicating with the other two through various means. Sarthorael had established communication through purely sorcerous means, while Grimnar used technology of xenos origin to project his image onto the ships of the other warlords. As for Azrael, he was using the result of one of the Dark magi enthralled to the First Legion, a machine that was as much infernal sorcery as it was mechanical wonder. It clicked and hissed in the corner of the room, projecting the images of daemon and Space Wolf in the air before the Lord of Lies.

'Here we are,' began Sarthorael, his winged form much reduced in stature in his projection yet still towering above Azrael, despite his attempts to change the settings of the projector. 'The greatest armada of the Changer of Ways ever gathered, with the might of the Vlka Fenryka. The sons of the Cyclops do not stand a chance against us.'

'Perhaps,' growled Grimnar. 'As long as the Dark Angels can stop themselves from stabbing us in the back long enough for us to actually win the war, at last.'

Azrael carefully maintained a neutral face. He had already tried to have Logan killed three times since the rendezvous in deep space, sending daemons to slay him and making sure they could not be traced back to him. All had failed – two had been caught and banished by the cabal of warp-dabblers that surrounded Logan, the last torn to shreds by the Khorne-marked axe of the Old Wolf. That was a shame – Grimnar had offended the God of Fate many times, spurning his gifts in favor of the brutish strength offered by the God of War. But there would be a reckoning, in time.

'Come now, Logan,' said Sarthorael with a crooked smile somehow appearing on his beaked face. 'You are just being paranoid. Azrael would never turn on his allies when something as important as what we intend is at stake. Isn't that right, Azrael ?'

'Of course,' bristled Azrael. 'Our work is is paramount to the Lion and the Changer of Ways.'

How foolish did the Old Wolf think he was ? They were here to destroy the Fifteenth Legion once and for all. This was far more important than any other plot – this was the will of Tzeentch himself written large upon the galaxy. To sabotage it was unthinkable. He would not turn on his allies until Magnus was dead and Terathalion destroyed – why, he had even held back from trying to have Logan removed during the trip, knowing that without the Old Wolf, the Space Wolves elements of their fleet would disperse.

'See ?' chuckled the Lord of Change. 'Now, onto the grim and delicious business of war ...'

On Terathalion, the Thousand Sons had no idea how such a massive force could have bypassed the Iron Cage trapping the Traitor Legions (other than the Ultramarines) within the Eye of Terror. While the ships of the Lost and the Damned could be explained by Sarthorael's collecting them from all across the Sector and beyond, and the Space Wolves had ever wandered the galaxy's dark paths, the presence of the Dark Angels in such numbers was disquieting in the extreme. In the past, the Sorcerers of the First Legions had only been able to slip single ships or small flotillas out of the Eye of Terror, and always at great cost – yet now an entire fleet had made the journey. The ability of the God of Change to seemingly manifest such an armada out of nowhere and with barely any warning was seen by many Seers as another sign of the growing influence of Chaos over the galaxy.

While the sons of Magnus dreaded the long-term implications of the attack, they had little time to spend on such considerations. The preparations of war were in full swing on the Fifteenth Legion's second homeworld, and there was much to do. Raids from the Sixth Legion throughout the Imperium's history had kept the population of Terathalion sharp, and the billions of inhabitants reacted to the news of the imminent attack with calm. Those who were part of the defense forces prepared, while the civilians went to their assigned places in the vast, warded underground shelters beneath each of Terathalion's cities, designed by the architects of the Iron Warriors to withstand even the strongest orbital bombardment. Thousand Sons Legionaries checked these shelters, reinforcing the wards against daemonic intrusions. But they were few, and there were dozens of shelters for each of Terathalion's fifteen great cities – and so, inevitably, many went unverified, a failing which would come back to haunt the sons of Magnus in a most terrible manner.

The first battle would be waged in orbit, as the spatial defenses of Terathalion engaged the Chaos armada. Driven by memories of the Burning of Prospero, the Thousand Sons had fortified the heart of the Prosperine Dominion like few other systems in the entire Imperium. Terathalion was the system's only planet, but the void was filled with the defenses the Iron Warriors had installed there after the Roboutian Heresy. Four Ramilies-class Spaceforts orbited around Terathalion, spread out above the planet's equator – enough firepower to raze entire worlds, and an investment in resources and manpower that had enraged many High Admirals of the Ultima Segmentum over the millennia. Dockyards and Mechanicus orbital facilities linked the forts, forming a ring of sorts surrounding the planet. These defenses alone had been more than enough to fend off piratical and Chaos raids in the past – but they were far from the only defenses in the skies of the Thousand Sons' homeworld.

Ships of the Thousand Sons and the Spire Guard had assembled above Terathalion. Thanks to the warning from one of the Dominion's observation outpost, the Fifteenth Legion had been able to call back some of its members in time for the attack. Still, few sons of Magnus had been able to reach Terathalion before Sarthorael's fleet, while others had no doubt been beyond reach, fighting other wars, not knowing their homeworld was threatened. Combined with those who had been present on the planet when the warning had come – either as part of the small Astartes garrison or to bring new recruits to the Apothecaries – less than a hundred Thousand Sons were there to fight for Terathalion's defense. But at their side were millions of Spire Guards, who had flocked to the defense of the planet from all the Prosperine Dominion.

The numbers of attackers and defenders were roughly equal, thanks to the orbital defenses and the call for aid that had been heard through the entire Prosperine Dominion. Still, there was no doubt in the minds of the crew that once battle was joined, many among them would die. Boarding actions from the Astartes element of the Chaos fleet were the greatest threat, as the defenders simply did not have enough Space Marines to guard all ships. Yet they did not give in to fear, though many took precautions to make sure they would not be taken alive – the screams of the Broken Ones a dire warning of what awaited those who were captured by the First Legion. That strong resolve was due to the presence of their leader, Lady Admiral Sarkath, whose adamantium will and calm spread across the entire fleet. As soon as the enemy arrived, she spoke to all those under her command – though her words were also broadcast across the entire planet.

Lady Admiral Kiya Sarkath, the Shield of Terathalion

While most of the members of the Spire Guard are trained for deployment on the ground, in support of the Thousand Sons, the Prosperine Dominion also has its own branch of the Imperial Navy – the Battlefleet Prospero, named after the Sector of space that makes up the Dominion and the surrounding sub-Sectors. It recruits from all the Dominion, but its greatest officers have always hailed from the old families of captains and admirals who guided the ships of the Thousand Sons during the Great Crusade – men and women whose ancestors had once been sailors on Prospero's own seas. It was from one such illustrious bloodline that Kiya Sarkath was born, and she soon proved to be the greatest void-mistress in generations. She combines an instinctive mastery of void warfare with a talent for getting people to respect and obey her, and years at the Naval Academy have sharpened these skills to a razor's edge.

She became a Captain at the very young age of thirty-two, and an Admiral a mere twenty years later, after an engagement against a flotilla of Dark Eldar raiders where she managed to outwit the enemy leader - a withered, evil thing that had fought void battles for longer than Kiya's family had commanded space ships. Though she blew the Archon's flagship apart, he had arrangements made with the Haemonculi of Commoragh, and returned a few years later, promising that he would "wear the dark skin of the mon-keigh bitch as a cloak, and weave her black hair as gloves to wear as [he] strangle[s] her kin while she watches". So far, he has not succeeded, and the entire Battlefleet knows the story of the long war between Kiya Sarkath and Olrik Tessethar, Archon of the Venomous Claw's Cabal. For the last hundred years, the two have tried to kill each other. Olrik knows that, if he cannot make good on his vengeful promise, his own warriors will think him weak and turn on him eventually. As for Kiya, she remembers exactly what Olrik did to the people of the first world in whose skies they battled, and has sworn that she will see the Dark Eldar destroyed.

By the time Sarthorael unleashed his Black Crusade on Terathalion, Lady Admiral Sarkath had become the leader of the planet's space defenses. From the ships patrolling the system and its neighbours to the orbital platforms, space forts and planetary missile silos, all was her to command. Well into her second century of life, she had already fought off several raids by Chaos forces - and one led by her old nemesis - though none on this scale. As the fleet began to advance on the Thousand Sons' homeworld, she vowed that she and those under her command would make the traitors pay for every centimetre of the void they took from her.

As the Chaos fleet drew near, the Lady Admiral worked day and night to prepare her forces for the coming battle. For three days, she worked without rest, coordinating the various elements under her command, familiarizing herself with the capabilities of each vessel and the skills and temperaments of their captains. A Thousand Son member of the Pavoni Cult remained at her side, his psychic powers keep her mind and body at maximum capacity during that time – and the rest of the campain. That son of Magnus had pledged to guard the Admiral with his life in case her ship, the Emperor-class battleship Word of Magnus, was boarded during the engagement. He also acted as a relay between the fleet and the ground defenders, mind-linked to Madox himself in a communion with which even Sarthorael could not interfere.

"Every enemy of the Imperium is out there, brothers and sisters. The xenos. The traitor. The heretic. They have all banded together, united in their hatred of the Imperium, because they know that they cannot defeat us alone. They have come to bring death, suffering, damnation. They have come to finish what they failed to accomplish ten thousand years ago, when our ancestors' world was lost to the fires of betrayal and barbarity.

But they failed then, even though they had the full strength of a Space Marine Legion, and all we had were the men and women of Prospero and a handful of our transhuman guardians. And they failed again when they came to this world with the dregs of that Legion. Yet in each of these battles, they took something from us, something irreplaceable. The first time, they took Prospero from us. The second time, they took Primarch Magnus from us, forcing him into a slumber from which he has yet to wake up. And now they are here to wipe us out, to tear the heart of the Fifteenth Legion, to destroy the future of those who, by their very existence, defy the lie that is theirs. Because they cannot bear for us to live.

I say, enough ! This is where it ends. This is where the cycle stops ! They will not take anything more from us ! Here, at this moment in History, we will teach the enemies of Mankind that Terathalion stands strong against the darkness !

They outnumber us, but each of us has the fire of the God-Emperor in his soul. They have vile sorcery on their side, but we have His light and the wards of the Thousand Sons to guard us. They have the blasphemous technology of the xenos, but we have the blessings of the Omnissiah to strengthen our guns. They are driven to battle by the fear of their slavemasters, but each of us fight in defense of his world and his people !

For the Emperor and the Crimson King ! Death to Their foes !"

From Lady Admiral Kiya Sarkath, at the beginning of the Siege of Terathalion

Despite the preparations of Terathalion's defenders, the first blow was struck before the Chaos armada reached the first lines of defense, coming from an unexpected direction. The arrival of so many ships had torn a massive rift through the Warp as they re-emerged into reality, and it had not closed after the passage of the last vessels. A hideous wound opened in space at the system's Mandeville point, bleeding the insanity of the Sea of Souls. It was so large that it was visible from Terathalion's surface, a pulsating, maddening light that shone like a twisted parody of a true star in the planet's sky. Preachers and scholars alike took to the streets, and worldwide announcements warned against the dangers of staring at this baleful light. The people of Terathalion knew more of the Warp than most Imperial citizens – though even the sons of Magnus knew better than to share its true horror with common folk - and most of them paid heed to that warning. But some - the foolish, the tormented and the suicidal - did not. They peered into that infernal light, and on the other side of the rift, the things that dwelt amidst the Realm of Chaos looked back.

Violence erupted in the streets as men and women were violently possessed, their souls consumed by the Neverborn. The evacuation was slowed as the Thousand Sons moved to confront the manifested daemons, destroying them all. The Seers used their abilities to try and predict where the next incursions would take place, and with that knowledge the Legionaries were able to prevent most of the destruction. But not all, for the foresight of the Thousand Sons, never perfect in the first place, was greatly affected by the presence of the Ever-Watcher in the system. Tens of thousands died or were driven mad, and the Thousand Sons suspected that the rift was not merely the result of so many ships entering the system using daemon-touched Warp engines, but a deliberate ploy by the Sorcerers and warp-dabblers among their foe.

Such atrocities did nothing to weaken their military strength, for the daemons were weak and easily dispatched by the sons of Magnus. But it hurt the people they were sworn to protect, and such a cruel insult was typical of those who had sold their souls to the Archenemy. The wrath of the Thousand Sons, ever slow to build but terrible when it was unleashed, was already growing before the first bolter held by traitor hands ever fired. Brother Madox, one of the most powerful Legionaries on Terathalion and the overall commander of the Thousand Sons on the planet, led the effort to ensure the people reached shelter alive, wielding his great power against the Neverborn.

Madox the Undying

Among all the living Thousand Sons, few have a destiny as entwined with that of their old enemy the Sixth Legion as Madox, known among his brethren and the Imperial forces who fought at his side as the Undying, the Lord of Life, the Great Healer, and many other titles. Born on Terathalion nigh six centuries ago, Madox displayed psychic abilities from a very young age, his touch bringing relief to the sick and wounded. He was immediately noticed by the Thousand Sons and inducted into their ranks, surviving the Rubric and taking his place among one of the Legion's wandering circles of brothers. Through no effort on his part, he has faced the sons of Russ dozens of time, seemingly random coincidences bringing him to worlds about to suffer their raids. Three times, the Wolves have thought they had killed Madox in such engagements – but every time, he has proven them wrong. He even takes care to remove all of the scars above his neck, knowing the sight of his smooth face enrages the sons of Russ to no end with the knowledge they cannot truly harm him.

Such is his mastery of the Pavoni Arts – the discipline of physiokinesis, or the manipulation of the flesh through psychic power – that he can recover from even the most terrible injuries, even regenerating lost limbs and organs. His healing ability extends to others – there is no injury he cannot mend, no natural disease he cannot cure. There is nothing short of true death that he cannot reverse, and the brothers who fight by his side all owe him their lives multiple times. However, a few uses of this same ability on Imperial soldiers who had fought and been grievously wounded at his side has caused some among the Legion's critics to view him as a witch, a necromancer capable of bringing the dead back to a perversion of life. Those humans he saves from certain death are often forced to join the retainers of the Thousand Sons, lest they be slaughtered by mobs upon the departure of the sons of Magnus. In that way, Madox accumulated a circle of former Imperial Guards and other individuals of various ways of life, loyal to him unto death itself.

The repeated meetings of Madox with the Space Wolves have strengthened his hatred of Russ' get. He has seen the trophies some of them still wear from the Burning of Prospero, and witnessed their atrocities and hypocrisy with his own eyes. While his talents lie in healing, the Pavoni Arts can also be used to deadly effect, and he has slain dozens of Space Wolves with his powers, turning their own corrupted flesh against them - and showing perhaps too much relish at their agonized screams. Many of his brothers fear that Madox's destiny lies within the ranks of the Heralds of Prospero, these sons of Magnus consumed by the screams of the dead world, who go to war with the ghosts of the slain at their side. Whether Madox already hears the call of the dead world is unknown.

When Sarthorael's Black Crusade came to Terathalion, Madox was already on the planet, having come back to lay three of his brothers to rest in the Legion's mausoleums and bring their gene-seed to the Legion's Apothecaries. As the strongest and most esteemed Thousand Son present, as well as the one with the most experience facing the Vlka Fenryka, he took command of his gathered brothers. When he learned that Logan Grimnar was leading the Space Wolves among the invaders, he made a personal vow to kill the Old Wolf himself – payment for brothers lost three centuries ago.

"I have looked Death in the eyes many times, and taken from his hands those I did not believe should fall yet. And I have learned something in all those meetings : Death does not hate us, nor does he crave our end. We are all equal before him, and he simply carries us from one place to another, from one realm to the next. Dying is nothing to fear – but what comes right before and immediately after is another story. For Death may not belong to the Dark Gods – but Hell does."

From the private writings of Madox of the Thousand Sons

Then, as the fleets were about to enter each other's range, Sarthorael struck his second blow at Terathalion – and it was just as vile and treacherous as the first. Aboard the Invisible Hand, with the help of a circle of Dark Angel Sorcerers and daemons of Tzeentch, he performed a foul ritual that reached into the minds of Terathalion's defenders. The wards of the Thousand Sons held true, diminishing the ritual's power greatly. The power of the Rubric shielded the Thousand Sons even further, and the only thing they felt was a tightening of the aetheric weave that burned within their very soul as it shielded them from Sarthorael's spell. Every human in the fleet felt a blinding headache accompanied by terrifying whispers, that vanished after a few seconds, causing no greater damage than a few incidents where those afflicted had been performing delicate tasks. But there were still those minds too frail to resist such a blunt assault of their psyche : they fell, their brains bleeding out through their ears, dead before they hit the floor. And then there were those who had been directly targeted by the ritual rather than caught in the wake of its power.

The target of the ritual was the Ramilies-class Spacefort Pythagorius. For ten thousand years it had stood, defending Terathalion from all invaders, its light in the sky a source of comfort and peace for the people below. Like all such immense fortresses, the Pythagorius was a city in space greater than any single ship and housing hundreds of thousands of souls. None of them were spared, the power of the ritual tearing apart the wards engraved on the Spacefort's walls and scouring the souls of those within. As the Thousand Sons recovered from the Rubric's sudden pressure on their minds, they stumbled, their psychic senses nearly overwhelmed by the cries of anguish and horror that rose from Pythagorius, while mortal psykers wept bloody tears, unable to understand why.

The ritual was a creation of Tzeentch, the God of Change, and it bore all of his terrible hallmarks. Those who were caught in its full effects had the very truth of their souls rewritten, their loyalties and hatreds reversed with no regard for their sanity. One moment, they were defenders of Terathalion, loyal servants of the God-Emperor, hating the xenos and the heretic with all the passion that was to be expected of them. The next, they were heretics themselves, despising the Corpse-God of Terra, the Imperium, and the Thousand Sons, with nothing but the blackest contempt for their own families. In the blink of an eye, tech-priests became hereteks and preachers became demagogues of the Ruinous Powers. No son of Magnus was with them, though whether or not the ritual would have affected a Legionary is unknown - and it is perhaps for the best that this question remains forever unanswered. Many of those affected died on the spot, or fell into a coma, their minds simply unable to function under the strain of violently contradicting convictions. The master of Pythagorius, Commodore Nizrak – a veteran of two hundred years, who had fought for the Imperium all his life without giving ground even once – was one of the early victims. According to footage later recovered from the bridge's pict-recorders, the Commodore killed himself with his service weapon, the expression on his face showing immense tension as whatever remained of his noble soul battled the corruption sown in him by the Archenemy's vile sorcery.

But even though thousands died or were incapacitated and the command structure of the Spacefort was completely destroyed – their Imperial-bred respect for authority being one of the first things destroyed by the spell – Pythagorius remained extremely dangerous. Driven by their new hatreds, gun crews aimed their weapons at the fleet and the planet below, scouring the nearest ships, who were still manoeuvring and hadn't yet put strength in their void shields. Swarms of fighters left the hangar bays, their pilots having replaced their discipline and brotherhood with vicious, selfish, predatory instincts. Ships died in flames, or went down and crashed onto Terathalion's surface, sending shock waves that ravaged the nearest hives.

They had trained her to deal with treachery.

Of course, that hadn't been part of the official course at the Naval Academy. To openly acknowledge that servants of the God-Emperor could turn from His divine light and break their oaths would be unthinkable. But the teachers of the Spire Guard knew that it had happened many times in the past - none more devastating than when the thrice-cursed Guilliman had cleaved the Imperium in twain. As Kyla had risen through the ranks, showing more skill than any of her forebears had for thousands of years, they had added many more lessons to her curriculum, nearly crushing her under their weight. Those had included private seances with the oldest instructors. It had been in those lessons that she had been taught how to react when her supposed allies turned against her. She knew how to isolate them, how to select those forces under her command that could be trusted to not hesitate in gunning them down, how to maintain morale and cohesion despite that terrible blow.

But none of their lessons had covered how to deal with the agony in her soul. Treachery hurt in a way no physical wound could ever match. It burned within her, anger and grief and doubt. She had known every man and woman who manned the stations that had turned their guns against her fleet, had spoken and laughed with them. One word echoed in her mind, over and over : why, why had they done it ? Why had they turned against the Emperor ?

Had they even had a choice, or had their minds been broken by the Sorcerers of the Dark Angels ? And if they had, a cold voice whispered at the back of her mind, then who else could be turned in such a way ? Who could she trust ? Her mind was protected by the son of Magnus at her side, but what about the rest of her crew ? What about the tech-priests who guarded the plasma reactors ? All it would take was a moment's control, and the enemy could kill the entire ship. And what about the people on the planet below manning the defense arrays ? One miscaculation, one error in the targeting protocols, and the fleet would be crippled. She could not trust anyone but herself, she could not ...

'Admiral,' said a strong, calming voice, directly into her mind. 'Admiral, come back to me.'

Her eyes snapped open - she hadn't realized she had closed them - and she saw Asim standing before her. His face, shadowed by his psychic hood, was difficult to read, but she thought she saw concern and a touch of shame on his features. She took a deep breath, feeling the paranoid panic that had nearly seized her fade away. A glance at the hololithic projection told her that whatever had happened to her had lasted less than a second.

'My apologies, Admiral,' said Asim. 'The enemy struck at you, using the greater spell as cover for their sorcerous weaves. I should have seen and blocked that attack, no matter how subtle it was. I swear to you on my life that it will not happen again.'

Kiya blinked. Her fears were gone - no, not gone, but under control again, and it seemed incredible that she had been about to lose her mind over them but moments ago. Then the words of the son of Magnus registered, and a cold fury seized her.

'It's alright, lord Asim,' she replied, before turning to her vox officers and beginning to speak the orders that would destroy the traitors in their midst. Even as she spoke, she silently vowed that the slaves of Ruin would pay for this atrocity.

Pythagorius was lost. Even if the Spacefort could be reclaimed from the traitors that currently occupied it – a tall order, considering there were still hundreds of thousands of them – the Imperials did not have the resource or time to crew it again. Therefore, Lady Admiral Sarkath took the only decision available to her : she ordered the priceless void fortress destroyed. The Lady Admiral reacted quickly, and at her command a portion of the fleet turned against Pythagorius, while the two other closest Ramilies-class Spaceforts trained their own weapons against their corrupted brethren. Soon Pythagorius' main guns were crippled, the immediate threat to the fleet removed – but Pythagorius couldn't be allowed to remain in Terathalion's skies. Kiya asked for the help of the Thousand Sons – a boarding party would be sent, to sabotage the main reactors of the Spacefort and grant the Emperor's Mercy to the unfortunate souls within. She left some ships to quarantine the Spacefort while on the surface, Brother Madox gathered his brothers around him and prepared to lead the boarding party himself.

Madox took four of his brothers with him, one from each of the Cults. The five of them went to Pythagorius aboard a venerable Stormbird, the Second Principle, shrouding it from detection by the Starfort's auspexes with their powers. They landed in one of the abandoned hangar bays and fought their way through the throngs of rabid cultists that now populated the Spacefort. Already, confusion and infighting were raging within Pythagorius as people who had once been the closest companions raised warbands to fight another, consumed by unspeakable hatreds. The Thousand Sons tore through battlefield after battlefield, laying waste to both sides on their way to Pythagorius' depths. Speed was their ally, but eventually word of their presence spread, and their shared hatred of the Imperium and the sons of Magnus drew the twisted crew of the Spacefort in vast hordes.

By the thousands they came, their poisoned thoughts nearly bringing the Thousand Sons to a stop where all guns and blades had failed. But Madox shielded his brothers from the corruption surrounding them, purifying their brains of the sorcerous taint that still echoed in the Spacefort's corridors. On and on they advanced, moving faster than the human tide that was closing in on them from all directions. Then they reached the reactors, at the heart of the immense structure. There the fighting was the fiercest, with corrupt magi leading hundreds of tech-thralls under defiled icons of the Machine-God. Two of Madox' brothers fell before they reached their goal, but eventually the remaining three reached Pythagorius' beating heart.

A light in his helmet's display flashed green, and he knew that the Second Principle had gotten clear of Pythagorius. It had been a risk to bring the gunship here - without the Thousand Sons aboard, it could not hide from the enemy sensors. But it seemed the party had inflicted enough damage and caused enough disorder among the foe that even the servitor-pilot that had been left to crew the gunship had managed to bring it to safety. That was good. Madox suspected that they would soon need all the gunships they could find.

Howls coming from the entrance of the reactor chamber warned him that the foe had arrived at last. But it was too late. They had completed their task - the machine-spirits had been driven into a frenzy, all of their restraints removed. Nothing could stop the explosion now.

As Warp-lightning surrounded Madox and his remaining two brothers and they were carried away from the doomed Spacefort and back to Terathalion's surface, Madox found no joy in this success. They were destroying a fortress that had stood vigil over Terathalion for ten thousand years. How much history would be destroyed along with it ? How many lives, even if they were already lost to the cruelties of the Dark Gods ? His hearts burned with an anger that threatened to overwhelm him - anger at the daemon that had cursed his Primarch all those centuries ago, anger at the foul gods it served, anger at himself for failing to protect the crew of the Pythagorius from their vile sorcery. That anger fanned the flames of an older wrath, one that had been born in his soul when he had been but a child learning the story of Prospero for the first time. Ancient voices and screams rose from his soul, as if from a great distance - the cries of the martyred dead of the Thousand Sons' first homeworld. So much had been taken from the Fifteenth Legion over the years … But the Lady Admiral was right. This would end now, with this battle, one way or another.

No more. As his flesh faded from reality, Madox swore that there would be an end to it all.

The Pythagorius exploded in a sphere of star-fire that scrambled the auspexes of the entire defense fleet and obliterated the nearest vessels, despite their void-shields being raised at maximum capacity and their captains having moved as far away from the Spacefort as they could. On her bridge, Lady Admiral Kiya breathed a prayer for the unfortunate souls that were lost along with the venerable void-fortress. At least now the threat lurking among her fleet was gone, painful as the removal might have been.

But despite the Imperials' swift reaction, Sarthorael's vile spell had fulfilled its purpose. One quarter of Terathalion's orbital defenses were now without the support of a Ramilies-class Spacefort, their fleet still reeling from the blow it had inflicted upon its betrayal and with its death, and formations had been thrown into disarray. Now the Chaos fleet was advancing at full speed, the three flagships leading the onslaught. Aboard the Invisible Hand, Sarthorael cackled, preparing to reap the results of all his plots.

The Lady Admiral had known exactly what the daemon lord would do from the moment Pythagorius had been turned. The formation of her fleet was as well arranged as it could be under the circumstances, and her greatest advantage remained - the forces of Chaos lacked the true discipline of the Imperial Navy. She had also given orders for the two Ramilies-class Spaceforts that had fired upon Pythagorius - Tizca's Light and Photep's Fury - to move from their geosynchronous orbits above Terathalion. It was a bold move, for it left the regions they were supposed to protect without their immense strength. Furthermore, it would be many hours before they reached the battle and could bring their full firepower to bear. But Kiya believed, based upon the Thousand Sons' divinations and her own instincts, that Sarthorael would not attempt to break orbit and reach the planet's surface anywhere else. And once the two Spaceforts arrived, the tide would definitively turn in favor of the Imperium.

Sarthorael's host of cultist vessels crashed against the defenses like an ocean's tide against a cliff. The poorly-equiped ships were slaughtered by the dozen in the first moments of the engagement, but they had never been intended as anything but a distraction. While the Imperial fleet's guns were busy tearing the chaff apart, the Traitor Legions ships sent boarding parties, taking full advantage of their greater number of Astartes warriors. Through torpedoes, gunships, teleportation and other, fouler means, the Space Wolves and Dark Angels attacked the defenders, silencing batteries and wreaking havoc within enginariums.

From their posts within the planetary fortresses, Terathalion's defenders saw the skies of their world filled with the light of weapon discharges, destroyed ships and burning orbital installations. For several hours, the two fleets did battle, Lady Admiral Sarkath directing the Imperial efforts with all the skill that was to be expected of her. Yet for all her talent, she could do little more than try to direct the flow of battle, which quickly degenerated into an anarchic free-for-all as the Chaos fleet flew right in the middle of the Imperial formation. The Imperial flagship was boarded several times, but always the elite Spireguards tasked with defending the vessel repelled the attackers before they could reach the bridge.

Such was the confusion, the number of variables, that the Seers of the Thousand Sons were all but blinded to the immediate future. Spread out across Terathalion's cities – with the bulk of them guarding the Sanctuary of Magnus, knowing it would be a primary target of the foe - they watched the war above, wondering why none of the Chaos ships had attempted to send troops onto the surface. They all knew what that meant : Sarthorael had another plan in reserve, for he could not accomplish his goals if his Black Crusade remained blocked in orbit. Still, when that plan was revealed, it caught even the most potent Seers by complete surprise.

On Terathalion's equator, below the melted fragments that were all that remained of Pythagorius, stood the city of Lutaketh, a vast metropolis that housed more than twenty million souls. When word of the coming Black Crusade had arrived, the people had evacuated in good order, leaving their homes and going into the underground shelters. Only the Spireguards, the Thousand Sons, and their other Imperial allies remained on the surface. They were manning the city's defenses, which included cannons powerful enough to reach orbit and beyond. Such was the confusion of the battle above that it was difficult for the guns' crews to get a lock on an enemy target, but they remained at their posts, taking advantage of any opportunity that presented itself. Lutaketh was the only city whose defenses could take part in the battle, being closest to it, and they hurled las-bolts that seemed like the Emperor's own lightning and shells the size of tanks into the heavens.

Then the madness began.

It struck them like a hammer blow, shattering their defenses and tearing at their minds. A wave of agony, of horror and disgust, so powerful that it could not be ignored, could not be pushed aside. Across the battlements of Lutaketh, the Thousand Sons and every human with a shred of psychic potential fell to their knees, clutching their heads and screaming in pain. The other defenders rushed to their side, calling for medical assistance, looking up at the heavens, suspecting some mental assault from their distant enemies and assuming it foretold another attack. They were right in thinking so – but the attack came from another direction.

From the depths they came, numbering in the millions. The gates of the underground shelters blew open, and a flow of corrupted Humanity poured through. Men, women and children, screaming and laughing madly, their skins torn where they had clawed at their own flesh in bloody patterns that burned the eyes of any with some shred of sanity left in them. They ran through the streets of Lutaketh, directed by cultists in dark robes held aloft on infernal discs and wielding great staves of bronze inscribed with sorcerous symbols. These were the betrayers who had brought the poison of Chaos within the shelters, the vile renegades who had forced damnation upon the city's population.

When the tide of madness reached the walls, it took several minutes for the defenders to find within themselves the resolve to open fire on those they had sworn to protect. During these moments, the madmen launched themselves at the walls, breaking their bodies and forming a grotesque mountain of flesh upon which the rest of the horde could climb. Then, when at last their training overcame their horror and they began to fire, more treachery struck, as soldiers of the Spire Guard turned against their comrades, their faces blank, utterly expressionless masks. The Thousand Sons, still shaken from the psychic onslaught caused by whatever fell ritual had taken place in the shelters, were murdered by the Imperial Guard medics who had rushed to their aid.

Lutaketh was lost.

Lutaketh, a city that had stood for nigh ten thousand years, fell in what seemed to be mere moments, and its guns turned against the Imperial forces in orbit. They blasted through loyalist ships and stations, opening a path for the Chaos fleet. At once, what had seemed like a disorganised mess was revealed to have been a cunning plan, and the armies of the Black Crusade rained upon Terathalion. Gunships, drop-pods, transports and mass carriers descended, bringing with them the host of the Lost and the Damned. Like a tide of locusts, they came to ruined Lutaketh, to seize the city and use it as their base of operation in their war for Terathalion. In orbit, the Chaos fleet formed a ring above the lost city, suddenly displaying discipline and cooperation previously unseen. The Lady Admiral was forced to withdraw her fleet from above Lutaketh, surrendering the region of space once defended by Pythagorius to the foe. With the casualties the fleet had sustained when Lutaketh's guns had turned, she could no longer hope to match the Black Crusade's ships in open battle. All she could do was regroup near the other Ramilies-class Spaceforts and wait for the monolithic stations to reach a position where they could open fire on the Chaos warships. But that would take days, rather than the hours they had expected, for as Lutaketh fell, saboteurs had unveiled themselves among the crew, touched by the same delusions as the cultists of the lost city. The engines of the two Spaceforts had been damaged, and while they could be repaired, great care must be taken in doing so. And until Tizca's Light and Photep's Fury could cross the distance, the forces of the Archenemy were free to land on Terathalion unopposed.

Across the planet, the defenders of the remaining cities made their final preparations. Astartes spoke their oaths of moment, Spireguards recited their prayers to the God-Emperor, and tech-priests consecrated their weapons for the final time. And atop the battlements of Magnus' Sanctuary, Madox looked at the horizon, and knew that Sarthorael had come down as well, leading his unholy alliance of daemons and traitors. Twice now had the Ever-Watcher come to Terathalion, twice now had he twisted the minds of Magnus' own people against their own. To many of Madox' brothers, these crimes would have been as nothing compared to the atrocities Fifteenth Legion had suffered in the past – the Burning of Prospero, the fall of the Crimson King. But in the eyes of the Undying, this corruption was even worse.

The descendants of Prospero's sons and daughters had been made to kill their own, to embrace the falsehoods of the Great Deceiver. Those aboard Pythagorius had been soul-broken by the Greater Daemon's foul ritual, but the cultists who had seized Lutaketh were another story. Somehow, some way, the slaves of Tzeentch had wormed their way onto Terathalion, spread their blasphemies among the population. He did not know the details of Lutaketh's fall - all he had heard were panicked reports from the human defenders and horrified sendings from his brothers there, all quickly silenced. But he could guess. Off-world cultists had made contact, or one latent psyker had been touched in his dreams. From that seed evil had grown, hidden deep into the fabric of society to avoid being detected by the sons of Magnus. He could only guess how many generations it had taken for the renegades to spread and gain as much power as they had held - how many centuries, millennia perhaps, had Sarthorael been planning this ? How many other plots did the Ever-Watcher still have, how many pawns hidden in the darkness, ready to strike at their master's command ?

All Astartes are engineered to be immune to the failings of doubt, but even they can be troubled by it when ruin looms large. Yet Madox' own misgivings soon faded in the face of his wrath. His burning hatred had grown cold now, cold as the snows that had fallen on the Space Wolves' accursed homeworld before it had been destroyed. Shadows moved around him, distant screams echoed in his mind. He knew what this meant, and had known for years. Some fates required great effort to be divined, while others were ever shrouded and changing – but his own had always been clear, even if the Seers had been reluctant to speak of it. His brothers sensed what was happening to him - he could feel their gaze on him, feel their sorrow at what awaited him.

They were calling to him, the dead and the betrayed, the fallen and the lost. They called from beyond the grave, from beyond the ages, and he must listen. Yet he felt not the impulse the scrolls spoke of, the need to journey to Prospero and walk through the burned cities of his ancestors. His war, his duty, were here, now, fighting against enemies old and new.

As the invasion of Terathalion began, Madox of the Fifteenth vowed that it would not change anything. No matter how many more spies Sarthorael had hiding behind Imperial lines, no matter how many more spells the daemon held in reserve, his duty remained the same.

Terathalion would stand.

Aboard the Gylfarheim, Logan Grimnar prepared for war. His massive Terminator war-plate shook the floor as he marched through the dark corridors of his ship, toward the Teleportarium. His elite guard marched behind him, each of its members a warrior or sorcerer of such might he could have led his own warband in the Eye of Terror. He held the Axe of Morkai in his hand – he would not take the risk of letting it hang from his belt when there were so many souls nearby the daemon within could tempt into trying to seize it for themselves. The daemon's screams of rage were diminished somewhat as it sensed the incoming bloodshed, the significance of the moment.

The Teleportarium was filled with dozens of hereteks, dark magi, and other scholars of Dark and xenotech. The battle-barge's old Teleportarium had been destroyed centuries ago, along with twenty Terminator warriors who had been transiting through it at the moment of its catastrophic failure. Now it had been rebuilt, using a combination of human genius, plundered alien technology, and the mad inspiration brought by the whispers of the Neverborn. With it, the Space Wolves could bypass all but the strongest shields – yet looking at it filled Logan with bitterness. It galled him that he, that his Legion were reduced to using such means to prosecute their war. This was what the Thousand Sons had done to them, when they had deceived the Emperor ten thousand years ago at Nikea and doomed the Imperium. For a hundred centuries, the sons of Leman Russ had sought to bring the witches of Prospero to justice. And for a hundred centuries, they had failed. But no more.

One warrior was already in the Teleportarium when Logan and his guards arrived. He stood alone, a confident grin on his face as he bowed slightly to the older warlord.

'Lord Grimnar,' greeted Ragnar Blackmane. 'Shall we begin ?'

Chapter Text

I can hear their screams as I fall.
Their souls are broken, their minds are gone, but some shard of who they once were remain, buried beneath the tide of corruption and madness. Millions of shards of purity, of sanity, screaming their horror into the void. They never chose to fall – they weren't even deceived into bowing to the evil that lurks within the Empyrean, as nearly all of the Lost and the Damned are. They were drowned in this abyss, forced down under by the hands of those who were first turned to the darkness. They choked on the corruption of Chaos, until nearly all that they had been died in this terrible dark.
I can hear their screams … so much pain … so much horror … They beg for release, they beg for death, they beg for salvation – for oblivion. And I wonder, is this what my brother could hear as he walked the stars and witnessed the most terrible fates inflicted upon Mankind throughout the Age of Strife ? Is this the plea for mercy that haunted his every waking moment, driving him to isolation among our kin ? Mortarion … brother … I am sorry. Now I finally understand why you were willing to do the things you did, but I will never have a chance to make things right between us …
The war goes on. My people will stand, they will fight against the darkness as they have always done. I hear their defiant cries, their oaths of moment and their prayers to my distant father. They call out to the light I can no longer see, but my father is far away, and much weaker than he once was – yet still far more powerful than his enemies believe.
The Wolves, the Wolves have come again, shouting their hatred across the void, unable to see the strings that manipulate them into doing the bidding of the very forces they thought we would unleash. I hear the howls of their souls, the snarls of the beast riding within their blood. They who were once the foremost guardians against corruption are succumbing to its pull at long last, the outer darkness they wield as a weapon strengthening the one within. In their blind quest for vengeance, they have endangered the last shreds of their honor, the last fragments of their sanity. The Enemy will claim them all in the end, and the Wolf will be broken within the crucible of Chaos, reforged into a beast of mindless hatred and bloodthirst …
The knights of my deceived brother have come too, led by one who knows nothing of truth. Pawns and slaves one and all, the puppets of the one who orchestrated the doom of my sons. They dance to a meaningless tune, speaking the lies that are whispered into their minds. I hear them too, these falsehoods spoken by the Great Deceiver. I hear the hollow promises, the threats of a future where Mankind is extinct, annihilated for refusing to kneel. I hear the cries of broken heroes facing the horror of their fate and submitting to their tormentor in order to justify their past sins by making them part of some grand, illusory design.
So many souls lost to the dark, driven by their masters to bring ruin to my world. So many lives whose light was extinguished and replaced by hatred and madness. Stolen, not through any fault of their own, but because of the legacy of an evil older than our entire species. There is no justice in it, because you and your kind murdered justice long before my father was even born amidst the grass lands of Old Earth, shattered the balance of the universe and claimed dominion over all …
… is it what you want me to think ? Is this how you think to break me, after so long ?
You will fail, in this as in all your other attempts. You will not break me. You cannot break me.
I am Magnus the Red. I am the Crimson King. I am the Primarch of the Fifteenth Legion, and a son of the Emperor of Mankind. These words, these names, they remain in my mind even as the rest of my thoughts burns away, turning into smoke carried away on aetheric winds. They are who I am, and you cannot take them away from me – only try to deceive me into giving them up, like you deceived my lost brothers. But I have seen through your lies with my single eye. I know the secret my father discovered when you unwillingly set him down the path that led him to his throne of broken hopes, burned dreams, and eternal defiance. I know the truth you do not want the mortal races of the galaxy to know, hidden behind your power, your slave armies and your daemons. I know that terrible and wonderful truth, that shatters the will of champions and reforge them into heroes freed of the illusions woven around them for their own protection. I know what you are.
Oh yes, I know what you hide behind your masks and your echoing laughter. I know the truth …
You have no power over me.

The Siege of Terathalion

Part Two : The Tides of Damnation

With the orbital defenses of Terathalion breached by sorcery and treachery, the forces of the Black Crusade were able to land on the Fifteenth Legion's homeworld by the million. Daemons, Dark Angels, Space Wolves, xenos and cultists – all came to the lost city of Lutaketh, driven by the will of the Crusade's master, Sarthorael the Ever-Watcher. Never before had so numerous a host despoiled the surface of Terathalion, never before had one of the great cities of the Thousand Sons fallen to the slaves of Ruin. Still, courage yet burned within the hearts of the mortal defenders of Terathalion, whilst the sons of Magnus were inhabited by a great fury at the sight of the desecration of their homeworld, ancestral memories of Prospero's doom rising in their minds. Though Lutaketh had fallen, fourteen great cities still stood, and the greatest of them was Ahat-iakby, built around the Thousand Sons' fortress, where their Primarch's body rested. For all their dark magics and cowardly tools, the forces of Chaos would not find the conquest of Terathalion an easy one …

Horror filled the defenders of Terathalion as word of Lutaketh's terrible fate spread across the planet. On the walls of the fourteen remaining cities, men and women of the Spire Guard trembled, before the words of preachers and Commissars shook off the nameless dread that had descended upon them. The Thousand Sons scattered among them deployed their telepathic powers, easing the fears of their human comrades by sheltering their souls from the unnatural corruption the Black Crusade had brought to their homeworld. In Ahat-iakby, Madox the Undying himself spread out his consciousness across the city's walls, manipulating the defenders' physiology to prevent panic.

From orbit came the warning of the Lady Admiral : the tech-priests had evaluated the damage done to the two Ramilies-class Spaceforts on their way to join the battle against the Chaos fleet. It would take six days for them to arrive, and during that time nothing could be done to stop the flow of heretics, traitors and xenos that landed in Lutaketh. An attack on the fallen city would be suicide, such was the foe's numerical advantage. The Imperials must trust in the defenses of the remaining cities, built in concert with the Iron Warriors in ages past. Yet these defenses hadn't been enough to resist treachery, and a wave of suspicion, mistrust and paranoia swept across Terathalion as soldiers began to doubt the loyalty of their comrades-in-arms.

For ten thousand years, the Thousand Sons had believed their telepathic abilities allowed them to uproot all infiltrators and traitors in their midst, but Sarthorael's corruption of Lutaketh had proven that the Greater Daemon had found a way around this. The exact circumstances of Lutaketh's fall remained shrouded in mystery, for none of the city's defenders had managed to escape the catastrophe – something that was quite unlikely given their number. To the Imperial analysts, this indicated that the Ever-Watcher had made great efforts to prevent any survivors from revealing the details of his victory to the rest of the Thousand Sons. That in turn made them doubt there was any risk of a repeat performance – the Greater Daemon must have invested a lot of resources into infiltrating the cultists who had driven Lutaketh's population to madness. However, nothing was certain where the daemons of Tzeentch were concerned, and the guard around the other shelters was reinforced just in case – taking precious soldiers away from the walls, which was likely what Sarthorael had intended in the first place. But they couldn't take the risk not to do so.

Less than a day after the disaster at Lutaketh, the flow of troops from orbit ceased. Aboard the Word of Magnus, Lady Admiral Sarkath looked upon the combined auspexes of her fleet, and frowned. Sensors aimed at the fallen city were failing one after the other, until only direct observation through reinforced domes showed any result. A dark cloud had risen above Lutaketh, an unnatural storm that blinded all instruments. By sorcery or dark technology, the forces of the Black Crusade had shrouded themselves from orbital scrutiny. Over the course of the next three days, the clouds grew in size, finally stabilizing at more than two hundred kilometers of diameters. Then, to the shock of officers throughout the fleet, it began to move – on a straight line that would take it directly to Ahat-iakby. Communications between the ships in orbit and the Thousand Sons on the ground grew more and more erratic, as the storm interfered even with telepathy.

On Terathalion, Madox and his brothers quickly divined what had happened. With the Imperial fleet closing in on their ships, the heretics couldn't rely on their vessels to protect them from orbital bombardment during the long trek to Magnus' sanctuary – it was inevitable that the Lady Admiral would be able to get some shots at the moving army during the days-long trek. But the dark clouds they had summoned would grant them protection from that. Psychic probing at the darkness in the heavens revealed that it was indeed the product of sorcery, and those who had faced the forces of Logan Grimnar before recognized the aetheric signature of the infamous Silent Callers.

The Silent Callers

Though Logan Grimnar is seen as the one responsible for summoning Rogal Dorn to Armageddon in the 40th millennium, it wasn't the Wolf Lord himself who performed the unholy ritual. Instead, he had gathered a group of the most powerful Rune Priests of the Sixth Legion, along with Sorcerers from other Legions and especially powerful mortal wizards – even including a few fallen Inquisitors. On the plains of Armageddon, hundreds of them performed the ritual that shattered reality and allowed the Daemon Primarch to leave the Eye of Terror. Most of them died, their lives consumed by the ritual's demands, their souls burned to ash by the power they were calling upon. Of those who survived, none did so unscathed. The ritual cost them all their voice, both physical and psychic, and ravaged their mortal frames. After the First War of Armageddon ended, they attached themselves to Grimnar, who alone seems to be able to hear them – he is often seen discussing with them, but onlookers can only hear his side of the conversation. Now known as the Silent Callers, they hide their faces at all times, the Traitor Marines among them with their helmets, the mortals with masks or other headpieces. No one knows what they hide beneath.

Despite the price they paid to bring forth Rogal Dorn, the Silent Callers remain very dangerous warp-wielders. They specialize in daemon summoning and are capable of bringing entire infernal armies into existence if given time to prepare and work their foul magics – and are still dangerous psykers if attacked directly, without time to prepare. At the command of their lord, they have damned whole planets, giving them over to daemonic legions simply to deny them to the God-Emperor. Over the centuries, the Imperium and rival Chaos forces, combined with the innate dangers of their vile craft have whittled their number down. By the time Logan brought his forces to Terathalion, only six of them remained. All that time they have remained at the side of the Wolf Lord, and there are many who suspect that their relationship with him isn't as simple as it looks. There are also many rumors that the Silent Callers actually died on Armageddon, and that only creatures from the beyond now dwell within their bodies, hiding their changes from sight beneath their armor, masks and hooded cloaks. Should that theory prove true, it would cast a disturbing light on Grimnar's recent rise among the sons of Russ. Inquisitorial spies and analysts have revealed that the Old Wolf is driven by hatred against the Imperium for the destruction of Fenris and the fall from grace of the Space Wolves, conveniently ignoring the sins that led to the Rout's excommunication. It is this hatred that has led him to gather a warband of traitors and xenos alike, his burning desire to see the Imperium fall overpowering the disgust for the alien bred within all Astartes. The purity of this hate has earned him the respect of most Sixth Legion warbands, and many see him as the leader Bjorn the Fell-Handed can never be due to his obsession with bringing Leman Russ back. But if Logan Grimnar is in truth nothing but a puppet of daemons masquerading as trusted advisors, then the prospect of the Rout reuniting under his command is even more distressing than it already was.

Soon after the cloud began to move, the amassed Chaos fleet began to move away from orbit, fleeing the approaching wrath of the Imperium deep in the unthinkably huge void of the system, too far for the Ramilies-class Starforts to pursue them with their engines still damaged. Yet they also remained close enough that the Imperial fleet was forced to remain watchful for another attack, unable to scatter to cover the entire surface of Terathalion. Lady Admiral Kiya was forced to establish a blockade to prevent them from interfering with the war on the surface. Though it chafed at her honor and sense of duty, she could do nothing more for the defenders of Terathalion.

When the storm's edge reached and then passed over Lutaketh, the city once again became visible to orbital auspexes. What had once been a bustling metropolis was now a hollow ruin, nothing living remaining within its broken walls. Corpses were piled in the streets, but no vermin feasted upon their flesh. By some foul artifice, Sarthorael had frozen Lutaketh in time, turning it into a grotesque monument of the Thousand Sons' failure to protect their people – one more insult to add to the tally of bloody debts the sons of Magnus owed the Ever-Watcher. But the bodies were nowhere near numerous enough to account for the whole population, and it soon became evident that most of the twenty million souls that had inhabited Lutaketh now marched alongside the forces of the Black Crusade, a mass of twisted, insane bolter fodder to further bolster the ranks of Chaos.

At first, the defenders of Terathalion thought to send all their forces to Ahat-iakby, as it seemed the enemy was focusing their attack on that greatest of cities. But before the decision was made, it became clear that Sarthorael had planned for that possibility. Smaller armies emerged from the storm, led by lesser warlords of the Black Crusade's host, one for each of the thirteen other cities of Terathalion. Though each of these hosts was but a fraction of the whole, they still counted hundreds of thousands of soldiers and warmachines. To gather all of Terathalion's defenders on Ahat-iakby – or even just the Thousand Sons – would have been to abandon the people hidden in the shelters to the terrible fate reserved by Chaos Lords to those unable to defend themselves, never mind the logistical nightmare such an operation would have represented. The sons of Magnus refused to make that choice – they would not abandon their people to save themselves.

One by one, the leaders of the defending forces of each city vowed to come to the others' aid once they had dealt with their would-be invaders. Yet the Imperials were not content to simply remain in their cities and await the coming of the foe. The enemy's fracturing into fourteen different warhosts opened new opportunities of attack. Terathalion had many minor settlements spread out across its surface, which had been evacuated in the coming of the Black Crusade, emptied of all resources that could be looted by the enemy. A lifetime living in the shadow of possible raids by Chaos forces had hardened the people living away from the protection offered by the main cities, and each settlement had its own militia. Most of those had added their strength to the defenders of the great cities, but there were those who had remained behind, to scout the enemy army and provide invaluable intel to the Thousand Sons. Such assignments had been purely voluntary, for they were extremely dangerous. Each man and woman in these groups carried several ways to commit suicide should their situation grow desperate – anything to avoid being taken alive and brought to the Dark Angels.

The shroud of darkness had made these scouts even more important to the war effort, but as the Black Crusade splintered, some of the groups decided to do more than spy on the foe. They mounted raiding attacks, striking under the cover of night, killing a handful of enemies before retreating, drawing their pursuers into prepared ambushes. Traps were laid in the path of the armies, bridges were rigged and water sources poisoned. Logistics, rarely a strong point in any Chaos army, became even more of a nightmare, thousands of cultists dying every day from starvation and thirst. Squads of the Spire Guard's elite were sent to bolster these efforts, along with psykers and even the occasional Thousand Son to help those who had the unenviable honor of attacking the main force. Without psychic assistance, no raid or ambush could succeed against an army led by one of the most powerful Greater Daemons of Tzeentch and counting one of the Grand Masters of the Dark Angels in its ranks. Even with it, many of those brave soldiers were lost, but those who escaped grew more and more experienced at this kind of guerilla warfare.

Of the twelve-men squad that had knelt before the Thousand Son and received his blessing before leaving the safety of the city and returning to the wild, only five remained. The other seven had died over the last two weeks, and their remaining comrades comforted themselves with the knowledge that none of them had been taken alive – even if it had taken a long-range shot to make sure of it in one case. Now they hid in the ruins of a small tower, leftover from the world's distant past, before the Thousand Sons had come to Terathalion for the first time and made it a library-world.

'We have to get back to Geryiadha,' whispered the first soldier into his vox. Even here, none of them dared to raise their voice – or they were simply too exhausted to. 'We can't stay out there any longer. We barely got away last time, and their pursuits get closer to us every time.'

'You swore the same oath we all did,' replied his squadmate. 'Our lives for Terathalion.'

'Yes, but we would accomplish more by dying on the walls … wait. Did you hear that ?'

Before anyone could answer, the night's quiet was shattered by a horrible sound – something similar to a howl, but twisted and perverted. Another followed, and another, and another, coming from all around the ruin. The survivors raised their weapons, falling into a circular formation with an ease born of practice and desperate survival. Their thermal visions showed them shapes running up toward them, moving faster than any living thing they had ever seen. They opened fire, and the air was filled with the scent of burned fur and flesh – but not one of the creatures stopped. If anything, their fury seemed to grow as they were hit, and their screams grew even more vicious.

The last shot was fired four seconds after the hunting pack of Wulfen reached the ruins. But the last member of the squad took seventeen minutes and thirty-four seconds to die.

Eventually, these small blows began to accumulate, and Sarthorael was forced to take action lest his entire army fall apart as it tried to hunt down the elusive ghosts that tormented it. The Greater Daemon called upon Logan Grimnar's circle of sorcerers once more. Together with the Ever-Watcher's own coterie of Lords of Change, the Silent Callers performed a grand ritual that sacrificed a million of Lutaketh's insane people and tore through the Veil. An immense Warp Portal opened within the ritual circle, soon followed by other, lesser openings across the surface of Terathalion. Hordes of feral Neverborn belonging to all of the four Dark Gods poured through these gateways, guided by no common tactic but driven by their hunger for souls and suffering. The squads that had been performing the hit-and-run raids were forced to retreat, abandoning the countryside and withdrawing to the cities lest they fall prey of the Neverborn hordes. Only a few actually made it to the relative safety of the walls, however – the rest was caught and devoured by the daemons, fighting to the end against the Warp-born abominations.

Though the cities were able to withstand any attack from these disorganised hordes, the countryside of Terathalion was ravaged. The corruption of Chaos followed wherever the Neverborn marched, twisting wildlife and tainting the very earth. Beasts of nightmare emerged from the forests, repugnant hybrids of animals and daemons. Graveyards across the planet erupted in aetheric storms as corrupt echoes of the dead were brought into existence, born of lingering memories. The earth trembled with tectonic fury as the power of the Warp interfered with its natural cycles. Earthquakes and tsunamis scoured the land, but the cities of Terathalion had been built by the best architects in the Imperium, and they endured the upheaval with only minor damage. Ancient wards, inscribed upon the walls by the Thousand Sons millennia ago, flared to life, preventing the corrupting touch of the Warp to creep inside the cities and helping keep the daemon hordes at bay. In the underground shelters, priests of the Ecclesiarchy led the faithful in prayers to the God-Emperor, millions of souls calling upon the light of Him on Earth as one. Where no single soul could have resisted the pull of madness, together they held firm as their world shook in pain.

The forces of the Black Crusade also suffered from what they had unleashed, with daemonic warbands attacking their forces and the destruction of the landscape swallowing entire groups of cultists. But the interference of the Imperials had ceased, and fear of the Neverborn kept the army from falling apart, which was all Sarthorael cared about. The Ever-Watcher drew hosts of Tzeentchian daemons from the manifested legions to his side, driving them ahead of his army through his indomitable will. Not all could cross the wasteland they left in their wake, and thousands more cultists and crazed civilians were lost, their death rattles birthing new daemons. All the way, the power of Tzeentch suffused the survivors, twisting them into new shapes, until it was impossible to tell where the daemon ended and the mutant began. When the Black Crusade finally came within sight of Ahat-iakby, nothing human remained in the millions of crazed civilians Sarthorael had brought from Lutaketh's ruins. The Thousand Sons and the mortal Gifted had to shield their minds against the pressure of so much madness from so many hosts, and even then the Commissars had to execute a few psykers who failed to retain their sanity in the face of such horror.

Ahat-iakby, the Warriors' Mourning

Greatest of all the cities of Terathalion, Ahat-iakby was not part of Magnus' initial plans for Terathalion when the planet went from being a library world to the new homeworld of the Thousand Sons. The city came into existence later, after Sarthorael's first attack on the Prosperine Dominion. When Magnus fell to the Greater Daemon's sorcery, his spirit banished from his flesh, the Thousand Sons recovered their father's body and entombed him within a great pyramid, built for that express purpose. In the days following the loss of Magnus, his sons still hoped to find a way to bring him back, and they built a fortress around the pyramid to protect their slumbering father. In time, the fortress became the center of the Legion's activity on Terathalion, and a city was built by the human inhabitants of the planet around the Legion's fortress. Pilgrims came from the entire Dominion and beyond to pray for Magnus' soul, even though the Thousand Sons allow none to lay eyes upon his body, fiercely protective of their gene-sire and the secrets hidden within his mausoleum. Still, the local Ecclesiarchy presence has recorded dozens of apparitions of the Primarch's ghost in the dreams and waking visions of the faithful, bestowing advice and commands before vanishing. Many priests believe that, even in his diminished state, the Crimson King still acts as an agent of the God-Emperor, imparting His will to His faithful followers. The Thousand Sons are tight-lipped on what they think of these "miracles", and no one is brave or foolish enough to insist on the subject. To them, the quasi-worship of their Primarch by the Imperium's common folk is an uneasy subject, especially when that adoration extends to the Thousand Sons themselves. The Legionaries have tried very hard to keep the population of the Prosperine Dominion to the levels of education and morality that were the norm during the Great Crusade, but even they have not been able to completely suppress the slow spread of faith and superstition over knowledge and morality.

Nonetheless, the Warriors' Mourning, as the city's name loosely translates to in Low Gothic, was built in accordance with the Thousand Sons' ancient principles and the Iron Warriors' fortification techniques. The leaders of the Fifteenth Legion knew from the beginning that their Primarch's body would be a target for the forces of Chaos, and the fortress-mausoleum is circled by a first ring of defenses. The city itself is surrounded by its own fortified wall, and hosts more than thirty millions people. Part of the training for Aspirants of the Fifteenth Legion takes place within the city, where they must learn to block out the thoughts of the masses in order to track down specific individuals.

It is also within the fortress-mausoleum that the final initiation of the Aspirants take place, once every organ has been implanted and the training is complete. Very few succeed in this final trial, and the fate of those who fail is not spoken aloud by the sons of Magnus, though there are many rumors circulating in Ahat-iakby and the rest of Terathalion – and even the wider Imperium.

The first wave of attack was made of the daemons Sarthorael and the other sorcerers of his host had gathered from the Silent Callers' summoning. As the Ever-Watcher held back the rest of his army, all manners of Tzeentchian Neverborn launched themselves at the city's outer wall in a tide of aetheral flesh and fiery sorcery. Many daemons fell to the city's wards, losing their hold over the Materium as their power was sapped by the ancient spells. But more and more came, climbing over the dissolving forms of their predecessors. In fact, the destruction of so many Neverborn weakened the dimensional barriers even further, and, to the horror of the defenders, towers of crystal and bronze rose from the morass, high enough to reach the battlements. Atop each of these infernal siege towers was a giant green-orange jewel that glowed like baleful eyes – the gemstones that were Terathalion's pride, twisted into vessels for the Warp's unholy power. Daemons climbed up the towers as they approached the walls, and though the defenders' guns brought several of them down, many more came crashing against the fortifications, unleashing their daemonic passengers onto the battlements. Battle was joined on the battlements of Ahat-iakby, while reports came in through distorted vox-transmissions that the other cities of Terathalion were also under attack. War erupted across the Fifteenth Legion's homeworld, and the fate of the entire Dominion laid in the balance.

The Greater War

Though the forces of Chaos were mainly focused on Ahat-iakby, thirteen hosts also laid siege to the other cities of Terathalion. These are the troops that were deployed against each of the great cities.

Geryiadha : Space Wolves, Wulfen and mutants. Led by Wolf Lord Morak the Headhunter.

Meorades : Dark Angels and cultists. Led by First Legion Sorcerer Lord Elikas the Whisperer.

Nilehos : Daemons of Tzeentch and mutants. Led by the Lord of Change Azziyeral.

Nuerams : Host of Khornate daemons, which slaughtered the army sent by Sarthorael. No leader.

Arz-Tanok : First and Sixth Legions Astartes, along with cultists. Led by unidentified robed figure.

Yevorak : Human and xenos enslaved thralls. Led by the Psyker Overlord Gerex.

Purverec : Human and xenos pirates and mercenaries. Led by Hiestus Haelok the Fourth.

Nosdimir : Dark Mechanicum war cohort. Led by Exagramus, Arch-Magos of Hellsmount IV.

Zirhammor : Rak'gol horde brought by the Sixth Legion. Led by the Abomination Xirkxellion.

Brekzari : Dark Angels, Chaos Knights and cultists. Led by the Daemon Prince Belphegor.

Selder-Nox : Cultist army identified as "The Liberated". Led by Interrogator-Chaplain Sheol.

Heiraketh : Ten Regiments of Traitor Imperial Guard. Led by renegade General Telrion.

Ferhaen : Unknown. Storms blocked out all transmissions, and the city had vanished by the time they stopped. All that was left in its place was a giant hole that went several kilometers down.

Soldiers of the Spire Guard fought side by side with the Thousand Sons, but they were not alone. Others had heeded Terathalion's call for help. Regiments from all over the Imperium who had been transiting through the Prosperine Dominion when the Black Crusade fleet had been sighted, Adeptus Mechanicus skitarii cohorts descended from the orbital docks and the nearby forge-worlds, and hundreds of the Daughters of Magnus, all stood upon the walls of Terathalion's cities, ready to lay down their lives in defense of the world. Psychic lightning rained down upon the foe along with las-bolts and conventional ammunition. All manner of sorcery was unleashed, and the veil between reality and the Warp thinned more and more with every passing hour.

The Daughters of Magnus

The relationship between the Prosperine Dominion and the Adeptus Astra Telepathica can best be described as "tense". The Thousand Sons' ways of psychic training are far from being as restrictive and soul-searing as those employed by the Adeptus, and the psykers they produce are far more powerful and versatile – but the training also require far more resources, and the guidance of one of the few sons of Magnus who can be spared from the battlefield. As a result, the Fifteenth Legion can only take in and train those male psykers of great potential, leaving the rest to be harvested by the Black Ships – to be trained in the ways of the Adeptus, or give their lives to fuel the Golden Throne and the Astronomican. Over the centuries, some Thousand Sons have argued that this culling of the psychic population is holding back Mankind's evolution into a psychic species, but the archives of the Legion are very clear : the dream of Humanity becoming master of the psychic realm died when the Emperor's Webway Project was destroyed by the self-righteousness of the Space Wolves. Any attempt at breeding more psykers will only result in disaster.

Yet while the Thousand Sons provides a place for the strongest male psykers, the female ones cannot hope to join the Legion. For reasons known only to Him, the Emperor designed the Astartes to be created solely from male Aspirants, and any attempt to adapt the gene-forging process to female subjects would require an absurd amount of heretical modifications. But the Fifteenth Legion was ever loath to waste psychic potential. And so, soon after the end of the Scouring, when the Thousand Sons were finally able to focus on the rebuilding of the Dominion, they created the various orders that are collectively known as the Daughters of Magnus. Initially, the orders were led by Prosperine refugees who had particular talents in one of the many branches of psychic powers and had been taught within the Prospero's famous academies. Some of them are battle-oriented, while others are dedicated to healing. Most of the psykers within the Spire Guard come from the Daughters, though there are also sanctioned psykers of the Astra Telepathica – and no little tension exists between the two groups. The indoctrination undergone by those trained by the Schola Psykana makes them regard the Daughters as dangerous for their lack of soul-binding, while the Daughters consider sanctioned psykers to have been deeply broken by their training.

In the forty-first millennium, there are many who believe the Daughters of Magnus to be a branch of the Adepta Sororitas, but nothing could be further from the truth. For one thing, the Daughters of Magnus are a far older organization that the Sisterhood, which was only founded after the Age of Apostasy and the Passive Decree. For another, the Sisters of Battle are violently anti-psyker, banishing those of their number who are revealed to hold psychic abilities and often executing them after prolonged "atonement" that can more accurately be described as "torture". The various orders that make up the Daughters of Magnus worship the God-Emperor and Magnus as His son, and believe whole-heartedly into the prophecies that the Crimson King will one day return from his slumber. They follow the Imperial Creed, but it is only their close relationship to the Thousand Sons that prevent them from being declared heretical for their psychic practices. Even with that protection, the Inquisition is ever watchful of them, since they lack the power of the Rubric of Ahriman to keep them safe from the Warp's depredations. Few of the Daughters have ever succumbed to the lure of Chaos, but like the Thousand Sons themselves, the few who have became some of the most dangerous foes of the Imperium to ever plague the galaxy with their existence.

The Thousand Sons were most numerous on the walls of Ahat-iakby, ready to die to defend their Primarch's resting place. Members of the Pyrae swept the battlements clean with streams of aetheric fire, while those of the Raptora cult tried to force back the infernal towers. But the daemonic crystals atop each structure radiated a malevolent influence that shielded them against psychic attacks, and eventually the sons of Magnus relented, preferring to use more conventional methods to tear down the Warp-spawned siege-engines. For hours the defenders of Ahat-iakby fought against the daemonic tide, until finally the last of the towers was brought down and the last of the Neverborn having set foot upon the battlements was banished back to the Realms of Chaos.

The daemon that landed before Madox as he ripped his staff free of a thing of blue flesh and betrayed hopes was a twisted hybrid of raven and man. It stood on two legs that ended in talons, its body was covered in black feathers, and its upper limbs were wings that ended in three-fingered hands whose pink skin was entirely too human. But it was its head that disturbed Madox the most as he rose his power staff in its direction, preparing to strike. Two human eyes looked at the son of Magnus from a beaked head, blue as the skies of Madox' near-forgotten homeworld.

'Doom,' croaked the daemon, tendrils of shadow rising from it. 'Doom comes for you, boy.'

Madox charged, but the Neverborn evaded his first strike and struck back with a blow to his side that nearly sent him to the ground. With a grunt, Madox turned and struck again.

'The Young King comes for you, Madox the Undying. His blade thirsts for your life as his destiny thirsts for your soul ! The old grudges between your lines will be your shared damnation !'

Madox ignored the daemon's taunting. There was nothing to be learned from listening to the lies of the Neverborn – this was one of the first lessons ever taught to any Aspirant of the Fifteenth Legion.

'Listen to Tokugra !' shrieked the daemon, suddenly furious at Madox' refusal to acknowledge its words. 'Doom comes for you and all your kind ! The blood-soaked raven will come for you all, anointed in the power of the Lord of War ! Your father cannot save you ! Nothing can save you !'

The shadows of the daemon's sorcery clung to Madox, trying to pry his armor as well as his mind open, but he fought them off through the focus brought about by the Enumerations. And he wasn't alone in that fight, for other shadows fought against Tokugra's spell, drawn to Madox by the hatred burning in his soul. The wails of the vengeful dead were blocking out the tempting whispers of Chaos, and Madox finally managed to hit the crow daemon. The base of his staff pierced through its chest and pinned it to the ground, writhing and shrieking. Madox looked down upon the creature, his helmet revealing nothing of the expression hidden behind it. But he knew the daemon could still feel his anger, and his contempt. The creatures of Tzeentch had spent thousands of years trying to corrupt the sons of Magnus, and the Fifteenth Legion knew well how to resist their deceptions.

'I care naught for your false prophecies, spawn of the Lord of Lies,' he spat, and channelled his power through the staff, burning the daemon's essence and sending it back to the Sea of Souls.

But the daemonic assault had only been the first and lesser part of Sarthorael's forces. Without giving the defenders time to recover, the Ever-Watcher sent forth the second wave : the grotesquely mutated inhabitants of Lutaketh. The Thousand Sons and their allies looked down in horror upon what had become of their own people, but they did not feel fear, for they could not conceive of any way these unfortunate wretches could threaten the walls. Ahat-iakby's outer ring of fortifications had suffered from the daemons' attack, but the Fourth Legion-built walls were still holding strong. Many among the Imperial officers thought this new attack to be a mere ploy to force them to waste ammunition and damage their moral by forcing them to slaughter their erstwhile compatriots. Doubtlessly this was part of Sarthorael's plan, but the Greater Daemon had another purpose in mind for the corrupted humans he had brought with him from the city he had murdered.

Once again, Sarthorael and his circle of Lords of Change gathered, and wove a ritual that took effect as the mass of twisted flesh reached the base of Ahat-iakby's walls, stepping on the broken, dissolving remnants of the infernal army. When the infernal siege towers had been brought down, the gemstones atop them had broken apart, their shards spreading across the killing field. These shards now reacted to the ritual, the power that still lingered within them answering the call of Tzeentchian sorcery. They began to glow, and the mutagenous energies flowing through the mutants' twisted bodies reacted in turn, like calling to like, following one of the oldest principles of the Great Sea. Like a tidal wave, the mutated people of Lutaketh rose, their flesh melting together, and struck a point of the wall. At the moment of impact, there was a terrible flash of eldritch light that melted the eyes of those who stood closest to it, and the entire wall trembled. When visibility returned, the purpose of the ritual became clear : the flesh of tens of thousands of mutants had been transmuted into one giant, hideously shaped statue of gemstone.

The hardness of the material combined with the force behind the living battering ram before its transformation had proved to be enough to overcome even Iron Warriors' construction, and a spider web of cracks spread along the wall. The Thousand Sons shouted for those nearest to the blow to flee, but soon the inevitable happened and an entire section of the wall collapsed in a deluge of debris that crushed thousands more mutants, but also created a direct stairway to the streets of Ahat-iakby. The remaining mutants started to climb it at once, crushing the shattered pieces of the great gemstone statue under their feet. From the battlements, Madox looked upon the devastation, and gave the order to withdraw. The outer wall was lost, and with it likely the city itself as well. But the fortress holding the great sanctum and the Thousand Sons' base of operations on Terathalion remained, as well fortified as any other Imperial stronghold in the galaxy. And the wards on these walls were strong enough that Sarthorael wouldn't be able to pull that trick again.

Then, within the ranks of the Traitor Astartes, Sarthorael raised his staff, and the forces of the Dark Angels and Space Wolves began to advance, while the Ever-Watcher took to the skies. The rest of his circle of Lords of Change joined him, as did a flock of Chaos Furies, twisted gunships, and Heldrakes. The earth trembled under the impact of thousands of ceramite boots, tanks, and the steps of Chaos Titans. Now that the defenders of Ahat-iakby had tired themselves fighting the daemonic and mutant chaff, and the walls had been breached, it was time for the elite of the Black Crusade to march. Deep below the surface, in their shelters, babies began to wail, their innocent souls sensing the breach of the city's wards and the intrusion of the evil they had kept at bay for so long.

"Behold, he is coming with the clouds, the slave of the Deceiver and lord of the deceived.
On white wings does he flies, and doom follows him in a storm to cast down the works of men.
With him come the knights and the wolves, their purity of old tainted by his dark will and power, to extinguish the light that was promised, to break the chance which took aeons to create.
Cry out for the dead, whose vengeance was long delayed !
Cry out for the lost sons, who wander into the dark places between the stars !
Cry out for the exiled children, trapped in the labyrinth built by those who came before !
For only together can they preserve the hope of salvation from the Deceiver's cruel talons."
Excerpt from the Terra Apocrypha

The Imperials began to abandon the outer wall, retreating in an orderly fashion while a rearguard formed to hold the breach as long as possible. Those who volunteered for this duty knew there would be no coming back – they stood alone against the might of a Black Crusade, and it fell to them to sell their lives dearly. The sons and Daughters of Magnus stood alongside the children of Terathalion, five hundred in all, and they fought atop the rubble, using the higher ground to their advantage. For nineteen minutes, they held the breach – long enough for the Imperial forces to evacuate the walls and finish the preparations for the next phase of the siege. Hundreds of Chaos Marines fell while attempting the climb, but eventually, Sarthorael himself descended.

He could feel the awful power of the Empyrean, pressing at the Rubric coursing through his body and soul, searching for weaknesses and finding none. The Warp was never clean, never that, even here on Terathalion, the center of the Thousand Sons' efforts to spread knowledge and morality. But now it was festering with the foulness of Chaos, and the entire world was under the gaze of the God of Lies. Every spell, every gout of fire that incinerated the mutants and cooked the traitors' flesh within their armor, was more difficult than the last, as the poison accumulated around his soul like a crust. Never had he had such respect for the human psykers who fought at his side, without the protection of the Rubric. They were facing the full horror of the Great Ocean, and they did not falter. There was courage here greater than anything the sons of Magnus, whose fear had been ripped out of during Ascension, could ever display. It inspired him. It gave him strength.

He would not fall, as long as one of them stood. He owed them as much.

And so Brother Ezorath fought, unleashing all of his Pyrae arts against the enemy. Wolves, Angels, daemons, corrupt mortals – it did not matter. They all burned in the end. He was the Primarch's wrath made manifest, the fury of Terathalion let loose against those who would defile the world's greatest city. He was levitating now, kept aloft by the energies he was channelling even as they ravaged his body. He could taste blood, and feel it drip from his nose, ears and eyes. He had already lost all sensations in his limbs, his nerve endings destroyed by the power he was wielding. His consciousness was fading, darkness creeping at the corners of his sight.

Still, he continued to fight, even as his mind finally lost the focus of the Enumerations and the pain spiked to new and horrible heights. Then a shadow fell upon him, and he rose his face to see the giant figure of Sarthorael come down and land right before him. Ezorath focused the stream of fire coming from his hands in an unending flow on the daemon, but he had grown too weak. With a cruel chuckle, the Greater Daemon extinguished the flames, before reaching out and seizing Ezorath. The Rubric flared at the daemon's touch, protecting the flesh of the son of Magnus even as his armor twisted and bent, its metal corrupted by Sarthorael's aura.

'So much potential,' growled the winged Neverborn, its grip tightening on the warrior's torso, ceramite cracking under the strength of the deceptively thin claws. 'Wasted, just like your father's, just like your Legion's. You could have been the chosen servants of the Architect of Fate, and ruled over the stars in his name. Now, just like your sire and grandsire, all that you have built will fall to the wrath of the true God you denied. Now, as the end finally comes for your grandsire's failed empire, you will all be remembered as great warriors, who died … for nothing.'

'For the Emperor,' spat back the son of Magnus, and then the Ever-Watcher closed his fist. There was pain, sharp and immense, and then a flash of light – and then …

Atop the ruined wall of Ahat-iakby, Sarthorael screamed in rage as the soul of his victim slipped through his grasp. Even in death, something, someone was protecting it from him.

'But not for much longer,' he promised, looking toward the fortress of the Thousand Sons.

The defenders of the breach fell, slaughtered to the last by the power of the Ever-Watcher, but none of them took a single step back as they died. With the time they had bought, the defenders had been able to turn the entire city of Ahat-iakby into a gigantic trap. Tens of thousands of Spire and Imperial Guard troopers and skitarii waited in ambush, ready to bleed the Chaos army every step of the way, while more forces withdrew through the streets toward the Legion fortress at the city's core. Ahat-iakby was a huge city, hosting more than thirty million souls without resorting to the typical architecture of a hive-city, and spread out across thousands of square kilometers. Entire districts had been trapped, towers set up to collapse at a moment's signal, and those were only the mundane dangers awaiting the invading army. With any thought of collateral damage thrown out the window, the Thousand Sons had activated ten thousand years' worth of arcane traps, some of which even they did not know the purpose of. But while these measures would help deal with the infantry and heavy vehicles Sarthorael had gathered to his cause, they would do nothing against the greater threat of the Chaos Titans. With the outer wall abandoned and its guns silenced, the traitor God-Machines had torn their own way in, blasting huge sections of the fortifications apart with infernal weaponry. One by one, they crossed the rubble and entered the city, crushing buildings underfoot.

The being that had once been known as Indias Cavalerio, Princeps Senioris of Legio Tempestus, laughed as he killed. His laughter boomed from the massive vox-speakers on the shoulders of his Warlord, who had once been known as Deus Tempestus but was now called Ker'ktas'nox by the millions of Dark Mechanicum tech-thralls who lived on the Titan's homeworld, deep within the Eye of Terror. To them, the name was that of the chief god of the pantheon they worshipped, the splinter of the Legio that had remained alongside Cavalerio after the shattering at the Siege of Terra. He still remembered that battle, the glory and scale of it along with the pain when his previous Titan had been destroyed and the Ultramarines had dragged his body out of the ruins before implanting him within the nearly-ruined Deus Tempestus, forcing both of them to return to the frontline with their sorceries. He had never forgiven them, even though they had helped make him the god he was today, his body and mind fused to Ker'ktas'nox in a way the thralls of the False Omnissiah couldn't possibly hope to understand. One day the Thirteenth Legion would pay for the lies of its sire and the indignities it had visited upon Cavalerio – but for now, there was a battle to enjoy.

I t had been Azrael who had brought the Chaos Titans to the Black Crusade. The Lord of Lies had appeared in orbit of their daemon world and called upon ancient debts owed to the First Legion, using words of power agreed upon in ages long past. What unnerved Cavalerio was that the Grand Master with whom the pact had been made had died mere days after, slain along with his entire force when a pack of Warp-born leviathans had devoured his fleet. For centuries, Cavalerio had believed that the compact had been voided – then Azrael had shown up, and there had been no escaping the mystical bonds he had placed upon himself in return for the First Legion's help.

Aboard their transports, the Titans had followed the Dark Angels out of the Eye, sailing paths through the storms that had burned themselves out of the memory of their Navigators. And now, here they were, part of a Black Crusade against the homeworld of the Thousand Sons themselves. Ker'ktas'nox still bore some of the scarring the sons of Magnus' power had inflicted upon its hull at the Palace's walls. Under the banner of a Daemon Lord, they had come to bring an end to Magnus' legacy, and Cavalerio was going to relish every moment of it. The defenders of this miserable city were as insects before him, and he would slaughter all those who stood in his way – then he would crack open the Thousand Sons' fortress and watch as the Crimson King's body was destroyed. There was nothing that could stop them …

A booming horn drew his attention to the city's center. Vast sections of the fortress' walls were collapsing, revealing hollow spaces hidden within their structure. And within these spaces  were towering forms, each as tall as Ker'ktas'nox, glowing with the power bound within them.

'The Wardens,' Cavalerio whispered, something very much like fear growing within his withered heart. 'The Thousand Sons have awakened the Wardens !'

The Wardens of Ahat-iakby

Crafted in the image of Prospero's ancient gods, the Wardens of Ahat-iakby are a set of Warlord-sized Titans whose creation was commanded by Magnus the Red in the late days of the Great Crusade, when the technological mastery of the Mechanicum was at its peak. The Wardens were created using a fragmentary STC recovered by the Thousand Sons on a world that had been scoured clean of life by violent solar eruptions. It took many tech-priests many years to extrapolate the missing parts of the schematic from the remaining data, as well as insights from the Crimson King himself and the dedicated help of his sons. However, their construction was halted by the eruption of the Roboutian Heresy and the need to focus resources on fighting the hordes of the Arch-Traitor.

The Thousand Sons reclaimed the pieces of the project on forge-worlds that had been devastated by Guilliman's armies, and the Wardens were finally completed during the Scouring. Their first battle was the siege of the Fang, on Fenris, where they fought against the Titans whose services the Sixth Legion had managed to retain. The Warhound packs of Legio Fulcrum were torn to shreds thanks to the Wardens' unique ability : their capacity to wield psychic power as a weapon on a Titanic scale. Using priceless archeotech, the Wardens can channel the energies of the Warp safely and unleash devastating attacks, capable of annihilating entire companies of warriors no matter how well armored they might be. With purifying fire and kinetic blasts, the Wardens hold power far greater than that of conventional Warlords – the tech-priests estimate each of them is worth five Warlords.

However, there is a price to pay for the use of the Wardens on the battlefield. The machine-spirits of the Titans are even more prideful than those of other God-Machines, each having taken on traits of the ancient god in whose image it was shaped. As such, no mortal mind, not even one trained by the Collegia Titanica, can hope to master them. The only way to awaken the machine-spirit of a Warden is for a son of Magnus – or a human psyker of equivalent power and discipline, which is incredibly rare even in the Prosperine Dominion – to sacrifice himself to serve as princeps. The Warden will drain the essence of the sacrifice, ultimately killing his body and reducing him into one more spiritual echo within the Titan's core. There can be no avoiding that fate once the connection has been made and the Titan has been roused from its slumber – any attempt at severing the connection will result in the immediate death of the princeps. Because of this, the Wardens are only awakened in the direst of situations, and spend the centuries – sometimes millennia – between their awakenings within the walls of Ahat-iakby. Only when war comes to the Prosperine Dominion in terrible scale were the Wardens roused. One such occasion had been during the War of the Beast, when the Wardens had fought against the Ork Gargants throughout the Dominion.

By the time of the Siege of Terathalion, the Wardens were legacies of a distant age that were still religiously maintained by a dedicated order of tech-priests that the rest of the Adeptus Mechanicus regarded as forever walking the line between orthodoxy and techno-heresy. There were rumors of other Psi-Titans in existence, used during the Great Crusade only at the Emperor's own command and against the most terrible of enemies, but those hadn't been seen in ten thousand years, and should they exist the Inquisition would doubtlessly keep any trace of them under utmost secrecy.

His heart bleeding, Madox had ordered the Wardens to be roused from their slumber, knowing full well the price this required. All of the Thousand Sons in Ahat-iakby volunteered to give their lives to join with the Titans, forcing the Undying to choose the sacrifices from among their ranks. He picked those whose minds would best direct the God-Machines' enormous power, and promised to each of the twelve warriors that, should he survive the coming battle, he would use all of his talents in the healing arts to try and save them from the doom awaiting them. They smiled and nodded, but each knew just how unlikely that was. There was more to the Wardens' price than anyone understood, the connection between them and their pilots more than merely physical.

The Chaos Titans of Legio Tempestus were met by the Wardens of Ahat-iakby, and the ground of the city trembled under the battle of giants. And in their shadow, the forces of the Black Crusade met the dogged resistance of Terathalion's defenders. A thousand heroes were born in this battle, laying down their lives in defense of the Imperium and rallying broken units to stand their ground against the darkness. Yet for all their strength and courage, there was no doubt that eventually the traitors would reach the fortress. Sarthorael's sorcery had brought down the city's outer walls far before the estimated time, and his army was far more powerful than the defenders could hope to defeat on their own. The Silent Callers were tearing more rents into reality, their eldritch might overpowering the ancient wards and bringing armies of daemons into the streets of Ahat-iakby – weakened by the runes laid down by the Thousand Sons' ancestors, but still dangerous. Packs of Wulfen were let loose by their Space Wolves masters, hunting by a sense of scent keen enough to pierce any illusion. The airspace above the city was filled with explosions as the fortress' cannons fired at the swarms of Chaos flyers. War had come to Ahat-iakby, total and absolute.

Contact with the other cities was still impossible – Madox could only communicate with the Word of Magnus thanks to his special psychic connection with his brother aboard the vessel. Asim, one of the Legion's greatest Apothecaries, had been one of Madox' teachers in years long past, and the bond between tutor and pupil remained as strong as ever. Lady Admiral Sarkath was forced to listen to the reports of her guard, unable to do anything to influence the course of the battle. Street by street, the forces of the Black Crusade were getting closer to the Fifteenth Legion's greatest stronghold, paying a bloody toll for each step – but, crucially, one their master could afford.

Then, from the madness at the system's edge, a new fleet manifested, passing through the wound left by the Black Crusade. The lost sons had come back, and the Dark Gods themselves trembled.

The fleet came through the same wound in reality that had spat out the Black Crusade fleet, but these were no traitor reinforcements. For one thing, the first auspex scans indicated no corruption of the vessels' Imperial construction; for another, the Chaos ships were reacting to their arrival with what could only be called complete panic. Intercepted vox-traffic between the various elements of the Black Crusade revealed that witches and wyrds across the Chaos fleet had started to go mad the moment the first vessels had emerged, screaming about the doom that had come for them all. With the leaders of the Black Crusade all down on the planet, the seconds they had left in command were struggling to maintain control, but already lone ships were fleeing, abandoning their comrades in their desperation to escape what they could sense aboard this new armada.

On the bridge of the Word of Magnus, Lady Admiral Kiya Sarkath looked at the auspex readings coming in, listing the numbers and types of the incoming fleet. The data didn't make sense. There were merchant vessels, Imperial Navy frigates, Rogue Traders ships, and a handful of Legion warships whose last recorded sighting in the archives was centuries – sometimes millennia – ago. Furthermore, there were dozens of ships in the new fleet, but that wasn't nearly enough to justify the panic that had seized the Chaos armada. Even if Kiya took her own ships out of orbit and successfully pulled off a pincer manoeuvre, the Black Crusade's fleet would still outnumber them.

'Transmission coming from the lead ship, Admiral !' called out one of the vox-officers from his post.

'Patch it through,' commanded Kiya, her hands tightening on the arm rests of her command throne.

The voice that came from the bridge's vox-speakers was deep, cultivated. This was a voice that was used to making speeches, a voice whose smoothness reminded the Lady Admiral of velvet. Yet the words it spoke were hard as adamantium, and filled with enough rage to ignite a star. She imagined that this was what the angels of retribution spoken of in legends sounded like. The voice spoke only three words, slowly, carefully, and Kiya somehow knew that these words were coming out of every vox-speaker aboard the entire Chaos fleet, their meaning burning into the minds of the tainted.

'We are returned.'

Chapter Text

My sons are here.

They have returned from their errance across the stars. They sailed through the tides of the Warp, which grow ever more turbulent as the final hours of this age draw near. Just as it seemed your victory was assured, they arrived, and your slaves in the void tremble at their approach.

You did not see that coming, did you ? They are beyond your sight, those of my blood who embrace the echoes of your terrible crimes and turn them against you. They are beyond your reach, and that proves you to be nothing more than a lie. You do not know everything that happens among the stars.

You have broken my city's walls, and spread ruin and suffering across my world. You have made the heavens bleed, and poisoned the earth with the taint of the Neverborn. Worst of all, you have taken my people and broken their minds and bodies, drowning their souls in darkness. Everything they were, everything they could have been, you callously destroyed to make them another tool of your designs. Such has ever been your way, ever since you coalesced into existence in the infernal depths of the Great Sea, a canker festering in the soul of the universe. But now, you will be judged.

And you will not be forgiven. My sons have come, bearing the wrath I buried for the sake of the Imperium. The thirst for vengeance that nearly consumed me when I learned of Russ' terrible sin has passed on to them, and the work of my greatest son keeps them safe from your corruption. Even now, its great fire burns within the Warp, the wrath of a Primarch cast out of his soul and seeking the vessels it requires to express itself. Sometimes, amidst the torment and the visions, I wonder what might have been if I had kept it within myself. How different would things have turned out, I wonder ? Would my wrath have made me stronger, or would it have been my undoing ? Would I have been able to save my father from His terrible fate, or would have I fallen to the Lion, allowing my treacherous brother to help Guilliman in his battle against our sire ? So many doubts, so many questions. But I cannot waste what remains of my mind on what could have been, least it consumes what is left of my will. I cast out my fury to focus on the defense of the Throneworld, to deny the enemies I fought in the Webway this weakness in my armor. And now, it has come back to me.

It began as my wrath, but it is changed. It has evolved into a Power of its own, through the thoughts and emotions of my sons who embraced it and the echoes of the slain. Others serve it across the Imperium, fuelling its flames even as it strengthens them. For ten thousand years it has grown, fed by the will of those who dedicate their lives to the just punishment of the guilty, to the avenging of the dead. Every Imperial Guard who looks upon a burned city and swears to slay its destroyers, every Arbites who sees a crime scene and vows to bring the criminal to justice – their oaths are unaware offerings to this Power. Those who die unjustly, their last thoughts of terror and fury, leave their echoes behind, and it is through these lingering traces that the thing my wrath has become expresses itself, raising the shades of the dead to create wraiths bound to its living agents.

A new Power has risen, unmarred by Ruin, untainted by the dread legacy of the Old Ones' terrible failure. Its name is Vindicta, the rightful retribution of the slain, and it comes for you. Passing through the tides of madness, forged by ten millennia of war, a vengeful angel empowering those who have dedicated their lives to the punishment of the guilty. Fear its judgement, for it shall show you the same mercy you showed to all those you crushed underfoot.

And if Powers can be born …

Then they can also die.

The Siege of Terathalion

Part Three : The Wrath of the Dead

From the Warp came the Heralds of Prospero, carried on winds of vengeance, drawn to the greatest concentration of Leman Russ' blood in the galaxy. With them came the ghosts of the Thousand Sons' long-lost homeworld, spirits of mortals and Astartes possessed with a burning need to avenge the wrongs inflicted upon them in ages past. These wraiths had shielded them from even the sight of the Ever-Watcher, and the witches aboard the Chaos fleet screamed as they sensed judgement come round at last. At their head was Khayon the Black, Scourge of the Wolves and first of the Heralds, who had led the defense of Prospero against the Sixth Legion, watching his world burn around him as he fought to save his people. To the embattled Thousand Sons, these returned brothers were a miracle – but their journey to Terathalion had been far from an easy one, and even with their help, the issue of the war against Sarthorael's armies remained to be decided. One thing, however, was certain : before the end, the dead would have a chance to claim their revenge …

It began with a call, a distant voice crying out to the scattered Heralds of Prospero, long before Sarthorael's Black Crusade entered the Prosperine Dominion. Across the galaxy, the sons of Magnus who had heeded the voices of the vengeful dead sensed something ominous on the horizon, and the instincts that drove them to battle against the minions of Chaos and the children of Russ woke once more. Within the Imperium and beyond its borders, hundreds of Heralds knew that a terrible threat was rising, a new power being forged in the darkness that would be aimed at the Legion they had left behind, but that they still adored. It was a pull on their consciousness, far stronger than anything they had ever felt before.

Each of the Heralds had walked the path leading to his status alone, hearing the call of the Legion's dead homeworld until they had journeyed there and bonded with the restless spirits of Prospero's ruined cities. They had all left their brothers behind, claiming small ships as their own, navigating them through the Warp through their own power. And amidst the desolation left by the Burning, they had embraced the power that had been born from Russ' betrayal, the psychic imprint left by the slaughter of billions of psychically sensitive souls. A Thousand Son descended to Prospero, and a Herald returned, wreathed in the ghostly shades of long-dead humans and Astartes. So it had been for ten thousand years, and during all that time the Heralds had remained isolated from each other, walking their own paths, only rarely crossing one another when a particular battlefield called to several of them at once. Yet now, they were returning to Prospero for the first time, all of them.

Though the Heralds of Prospero fought alone, not even they could hope to sail the galaxy for long without aid. Each had gathered a warband at his side, of those who had survived the darkness thanks to the haunted warriors. In their errance, they had found allies, men and women who could be trusted in the long war against the slaves of Chaos and the sons of Leman Russ. Rogue Traders, Inquisitors, but also captains of the Imperial Navy who had willingly followed these wraith-wreathed warriors. Some Heralds only had a single, small ship, made Warp-capable only through the exercise of their power, but other brought small flotillas to Prospero, with entire Regiments they had rescued from the fires of war aboard. It was an eclectic mix, and only the exchange of old Fifteenth Legion codes kept the various elements from turning hostile against one another. The defenses left in place by the Thousand Sons did not open fire, acknowledging these codes as well.

Several weeks after the arrival of the first ship, without any special exchange, every Herald suddenly descended to the planet, the call that had brought them to the system intensifying. None of them brought any of their forces with them – whatever was about to happen, they all knew it was a matter only for the sons of Magnus. Fifty-two Heralds of Prospero returned to the world that had forged them into what they were, their transports landing on the edge of what had once been Tizca, the City of Light, capital of Prospero and center of the Thousand Sons' dominion. The world reacted to the new arrivals, and as the Heralds moved through the ruined streets, echoes of the city's lost glory appeared around them, the ghosts of buildings long since destroyed.

But soon, the images changed, showing the buildings as they had been during the Burning, with half-formed spectres fleeing from their destruction, hunted by red-eyed monsters in grey armor. The minds of the Heralds were filled with the screams of the wounded and the dying as they retraced the path their ancestors had followed ten thousand years ago, toward the Pyramid of Photep. There the Thousand Sons had made their stand against the Sixth Legion, and there they had escaped the misguided judgement of Leman Russ. The wound in reality through which the survivors of Prospero had escaped remained, even after all these years, the energies of the Warp leaking through it, infusing the bones of Tizca and all of Prospero.

Lesser minds would have shattered under the pressure, unable to cope with the suffering surrounding them. But the Heralds were used to such things, their psyches inured to the screams of the lost, which they always heard in the back of their skulls, even between battles. All of them had renounced any form of peace, sacrificing even the tenuous tranquillity Astartes might know in the pursuit of retribution. The ghosts of Prospero only strengthened their resolve, and they came together before the ruined Pyramid, emerging from the illusion-wreathed Tizca one by one. Then, from the spectral mists came the first and greatest of them – Khayon the Black, Scourge of the Wolves. All present recognized him, and the fifty-one Heralds bent the knees before the warlord who had led the doomed defense of the world on which they stood. Here was a living legend from the Legion's distant past, wreathed in the same ghostly fires that raged through the devastated city.

Iskandar Khayon had vanished after the Scouring, when the Rubric had been cast and the Fifteenth Legion had been all but destroyed by its unintended effects on those not strong enough to bear it. Since then, he had never been seen by any Imperial, and the Thousand Sons themselves thought him long dead. But, when the black-clad Legionary entered the circle of his younger brothers, none doubted his identity for a moment. His armor, blackened by the fires of Prospero's burning; his axe, bearing the mark of the wolf, that he had claimed from the last champion of the Sixth Legion he had killed before leaving Prospero; and the aura of ghosts that surrounded him, thicker than any other Herald's – all were incontrovertible proofs of who and what he was.

For nigh ten millennia, Khayon had wandered the galaxy aboard his warship, the Tlaloc, fighting beyond the borders of the Imperium against threats both new and ancient, the xenos enemies whose very existence had been forgotten amidst the Heresy's destruction. He had hunted the traces of Russ' Folly, these disturbed xenos worlds where the Wolf King had awoken horrors that pre-dated the rise of Mankind. Though the Imperium would never know of his deeds, Khayon had prevented countless atrocities over the centuries. He had been spared even the slow ageing of the Astartes, preserved by the same power that flowed around the Heralds and bathed all of Prospero. Like them, he had been called here without knowing why, unable to resist the pull of his lost homeworld. And, like them, he had many questions and precious few answers. But before he could do anything, a terrible vision fell upon the assembled Heralds of Prospero, brought to them by the Power that had gathered them – Vindicta, the Warp entity that had grown from the Wrath of Magnus. For thousands of years, it had slumbered, empowering the strange abilities of the Heralds – and, perhaps, others fighting against Chaos and the Wolves. But now, as the Dark Millennium came to a close and the enemies of the Fifteenth Legion rose to destroy it once and for all, it was awakening, roused by the echoes of a potential future that must be averted, no matter the cost.

They saw …

Madness.

They saw the fortress of Ahat-iakby torn down, its walls breached by armies of daemons and Chaos Marines. They saw their slumbering Primarch slain, his body torn to bloody pieces by the claws of the Greater Daemon that had plagued their Legion for ten thousand years. They saw Sarthorael use the defiled remains of their gene-sire to weave a vile spell, perverting the Rubric and turning it against the Thousand Sons, wiping out every living scion of Magnus in the galaxy. They saw the ashen dead, these brothers who had not survived the Rubric's power, enslaved to the cruel will of the Ever-Watcher, waging war against the Imperium side by side with infernal horrors. Their armors had been defaced with symbols of Tzeentch, and they wielded new, sorcery-infused weapons of terrible power, while the souls trapped within were forced to do the bidding of the Changer of Ways. They saw Terathalion burn and crack, the planet unable to bear the strain of the atrocities committed upon its soil as the fifteen cities were lost to the depredations of the Ruinous Powers. And they saw the Prosperine Dominion fall to the armies of Tzeentch, brought low by the Black Crusade unleashed by the Chaos God of Change to fulfill his ancient vow to destroy the Thousand Sons. Library-worlds set ablaze, billions made playthings for the Neverborn – a kingdom of the damned and their victims, to suffer in the fires of anarchy for the rest of time.

Warriors who had witnessed the darkest horrors Chaos was capable of fell to their knees, weeping like children, unable to cope with the monstrosities they beheld in their mind's eye. Their screams of revulsion drowned out the sound of Prospero's own wailing, a shriek of outrage and terror and pure, absolute denial. They vomited in their helms, twitched on the ground, paralysed by shock, or remained eerily silent and immobile while the air around them was filled with psychic projections of their terrible anguish. Only one remained on his feet, though even he was shaken by what he had seen. Khayon the Black threw his head to the storm-filled heavens and shouted his defiance :

'No ! This will not be ! I will not allow it ! NEVER !'

The strength of his words, backed by the indomitable power of his will and his tremendous psychic might, shattered the hold of the vision on the Heralds' mind, allowing them to rise again. But no sooner had the words left his lips that, from all around the sons of Magnus, came a sound that every Herald remembered, even if they had never heard it in their lives :

The sound of Wolves howling as they came to destroy Prospero.

Ever since the razing of Prospero's cities by the Sixth Legion, at the dawn of the Roboutian Heresy, the world had been haunted by the ghosts of those slain during that fateful conflict. But the defenders of Prospero had taken a toll upon their attackers, and thousands of sons of Russ had paid with their lives for their betrayal of Imperial Unity. As the world was slowly suffused with the power of the Warp, the shades of these warriors had been risen as well, but the overwhelming number of the Prosperine dead had prevented them from manifesting whenever a new Herald was called. However, they were still there, fiends of shadow, fang and claw, lurking in the deserts and wild places, still consumed by the same blind, self-righteous rage that had driven the Rout to the Thousand Sons' homeworld. And now, these wraiths had been strengthened by the foul rituals of a servant of darkness, a being that had once been mortal but had long since transcended the laws of life and death : Aghastri the Necromancer, undying servant of Vulkan, the Black Dragon.

Aghastri the Necromancer

Centuries ago, Aghastri was an Inquisitor of the Ordo Sepulturum, the branch of the Inquisition whose members take it upon themselves to hunt down those who would disturb the slumber of the dead. Greatest among the Ordo's enemies are the cults of Vulkan and the resurrectionists who seek to break the laws of life and death. Aghastri served well as an Acolyte for several decades, finally earning his Inquisitorial Rosette when he slew the Great Defiler, an unidentified xenos creature whose psychic abilities had turned a whole hive-city into a kingdom of walking dead. Aghastri's loyal service continued for nearly a century, until his path crossed that of a cult of Vulkan known as the Arisen Dead. These debased worshippers of the Black Dragon originated from all strata of Imperial society, their minds blasted to ruin by the call of Vulkan. Each of them had undergone an unholy rebirth that transformed them into wights, retaining their faculties and gaining immense strength and resilience – at the cost of their soul. Driven by a splinter of Vulkan's immortal mind, the Arisen Dead wandered the galaxy in search of the Black Dragon's Legacy, these items of power and significance scattered across the stars and bearing Vulkan's taint.

Aghastri confronted the Arisen Dead on multiple occasions, losing several of trusted Acolytes before eventually managing to corner the cult's last members on the forbidden world of Maltiros. This world had been abandoned by the Imperium during the Scouring, declared irredeemable by the then newly founded Inquisition for reasons only mentioned in the most sealed of records. The Arisen Dead had come to Maltiros drawn by hints that one of Vulkan's relics was on the planet. Aghastri and his remaining allies fought the undead in the streets of the world's greatest city, now hollow and ruined, with no sign remaining that anyone had ever lived there. Eventually, Aghastri confronted the leader of the Arisen Dead, a Draconite Inquisitor who had succumbed to the empty promises of the Black Dragon more than two thousand years ago. Aghastri's final triumph over this renegade destroyed the remaining Arisen Dead, but his victory had cost him the last of his allies.

Then, as he prepared to return to his orbiting ship, Aghastri found the relic that had led the Arisen Dead to Maltiros. In the ruins of the Governor's Palace, the Inquisitor found a ring, crafted by Vulkan himself during the Great Crusade and offered to Maltiros' ruler when he had bent the knee to the Salamanders without fighting, back when the Eighteenth Legion still served the Imperial Truth. Upon Vulkan's fall to Chaos and eventual ascension into a Daemon Primarch, the ring's connection with the Black Dragon had been enough to transform it into a dark relic, possessed by what might possibly be the first of Vulkan's own Neverborn. Maltiros' Governor had been corrupted by the ring, malevolent influence, though few records remain of the exact process. When the Scouring reached the planet, nothing living remained on it except for the creature the Governor had become. After the Sons of Horus destroyed it, the ring was lost and the planet quarantined, lest Vulkan's evil influence spread once more. But even this was not enough, in the end.

Weakened by his recent battles and the loss of his friends, Aghastri was unable to resist the power of the ring and claimed it for himself, unaware at the time of what he had done. Through the ring, Vulkan's influence corrupted him over the course of several years, his body wasting away along with his righteousness. By the time his peers had discovered the truth, it was too late, and Aghastri vanished along with several radical tech-priests and a handful of the most dangerous prisoners of the Inquisition he had broken out of their cells. When next he appeared, he had become the Necromancer, a dread figure in full heavy spiked black armor decorated with sorcerous sigils and marks of his allegiance to Vulkan. Through the ring's power and his knowledge of the Arisen Dead's secrets, he had become able to take control of the psychic echoes left by the death of any ensouled being, raising hosts of ghosts and possessed corpses as he waged war against the Imperium. Through means unknown, the Necromancer travelled the galaxy for centuries, seeking to prosecute Vulkan's agenda – exposing the relics of the Legacy of the Dragon, and weakening the wills of the Emperor's subjects to make them more easily dominated by the Black Dragon. Servants of the Vulkan throughout the galaxy know of the Necromancer. Aghastri has worked alongside Salamanders on a handful of occasions, and even the infamously proud Dragon Marines give him a wary respect, seeing him as an agent under the direct control of their Daemon Primarch.

Vid-logs from the armor of those few champions who managed to engage Aghastri in close quarters have revealed that his armor is now hollow, all traces of his body having long since turned to dust while his spirit remains bound to his shell of metal by the ring's power. The ring itself is still worn on his gauntleted hand, proudly displaying the snarling dragon face Vulkan sculpted in it ten thousand years ago. All attempts at destroying the ring have failed, as the daemon within protects its host from damage. Aghastri himself has been defeated a handful of time, but his slavery to Vulkan will not let him rest, and he always returns from such setbacks, seeming none the worse to bear.

In the closing hours of the Dark Millennium, Aghastri had been sent to Prospero by his dread master, tasked with destroying the Heralds of Prospero and prevent the rise of Vindicta, for the Black Dragon feared that the newborn Power might interfere with his own sinister goals. The nature of Prospero increased the Necromancer's powers dramatically, even if the world itself loathed him and what he represented – the enslavement of even the dead into service to the lord of the Eighteenth Legion. How long Aghastri waited on Prospero before springing his trap, none can tell, but such was the Necromancer's strength that he was able to summon the psychic echo of every fallen Space Wolf, along with a host of nightmares and long-dead horrors from Prospero's past. Spirits born from the uneasy dreams of tormented young psykers and abominations from the planet's distant past, during Old Night, manifested in the storms of sand, dust and ash.

The sons of Magnus were still shaken by the nightmarish vision they had just experienced, but the cries of the wolves brought their focus back. Sharpened instincts pushed aside the horror they felt, and the battle at hand drew their minds away from dread considerations. They did not know how the Rout's ghosts had taken form, but they could sense the power that had roused them in the distance, and knew that it must be removed from Prospero's hallowed grounds. With Khayon leading them, they went to war, and their fury was terrible to behold.

For the first time in their long and bloody history, the Heralds of Prospero stood as one. Even those of these warriors who had gathered armies of followers were used to fighting alone, for few could bear to be in the presence of the wraiths they summoned onto the battlefield. Yet now they were all members of the same shadowy order, all sharing in the esoteric powers the world itself had bestowed upon them. And so, at long last, the Heralds fought side by side, their first taste of true brotherhood since they had heeded the call of their lost homeworld. Strategies and signals that hadn't been used in centuries were employed once more, still as fresh in the memories of the Heralds as the day they had been taught in the Legion's halls. Telepathic abilities that had weakened through disuse suddenly blossomed once more, former Athanaeans becoming nodes in a psychic network binding all the Heralds together. And at their side rose the ghosts of Prospero.

The shades of millennia-dead Spire Guards, Astartes, and countless civilians emerged from the shadows and mists of Tizca, drawn out and given form by the psychic power of the Heralds and the ambient energies of Prospero. Wraith fought wraith in the streets of Tizca, while the Heralds cut a path ahead, toward the source of the Wolves' return. Their weapons blazed with psychic power, ripping the aetheric forms of their foes to pieces. But the Necromancer's army fought back, striking with claws of hate and fangs of old, old judgement. Torbek Kalim, who had saved the worlds of the Ollyrian Cluster from destruction at the hands of a Blood Angels warband, fell, his hearts ripped out by the claws of something with three wolf-like heads and cloaked in snow-white fur. Seth Payros, who was the source of the legend of the Ghost Lord in the Gaelos Sector, died bleeding from a hundred different wounds that his enhanced physiology could not close up in time. Aleph Iuros, who had been the last to journey to Prospero and become a Herald, took his own life with his bolt pistol when he was possessed by the shade of a particularly vicious Wolf Lord, whose spite had allowed it to retain much of its individuality through the centuries.