The Roboutian Heresy

Marcus charged the daemon of the Changer of Ways, his sacred blade risen and ready to bit into the
abomination's flesh. The winged creature was covered in the fire of his battle-brothers' bolters, but what would
have rent even a Terminator Armor to shrapnel was barely enough to hold the daemon in place.

As the venerated Primarch had written in the Codex Astartes : the warp-born could only be truly defeated either
by the blade wielded by a champion of the Imperium, or the fire of their flamers. Other weapons were threat
only to the weakest of them, and mere hindrance to those such as the Duke of Change that had plunged the
entire system into civil war and now stood before him. Marcus was chosen champion of the Fifth Company of
the Heralds of Ultramar, and now, the foul beast before him would fall by his blade.

'You fool,' hissed the daemon as he closed in. 'You think you can defeat Chaos ? You are nothing, Marcus.'

The Space Marine kept on charging, ignoring the sudden discomfort filling him as the daemon spoke his name.

'You think yourself so pure, so high. You believe yourself to be above all others, to be the incarnation of all that
your dying Imperium value so highly. Such arrogance. You are no different from all those of your brethren that
now fight under the glorious banner of Chaos. Your blood is no purer than their was before they turned against
the lies of your Corpse-Emperor.'

The sword plunged in the daemon's chest. Despite the flow of energy caused by the wound, the Duke of
Change ignored it, focusing its unholy attention on Marcus himself. The Herald spat at the daemon's face,
watching the acid biting into its flesh with unnatural vapor.

'Your words are lies, powerless against the armor my faith, daemon. The Primarch Guilliman was the greatest
of all his kindred, and the one whose loyalty to the Emperor could never be shaken by the Ruinous Powers !'

'Is that what you believe ?'

As the Greater Daemon's physical form started to die, a storm of warp energy formed around it and its killer.
Marcus heard the alarmed cries of his brothers over the vox, but he didn't retreat, instead pushing his blade
even further within the daemon's breast.

'Then let me show you, Marcus of the Heralds of Ultramar.'

The strings of time began to unwind before Marcus' eyes. In the currents of the Warp, he saw the stars turn
back, the flow of History change as events unfolded in a different way ...

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.
 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.

AN : and here it is. The first of the Legions, twisted by the whims of fate.

First thing : thank to those who expressed their support for the idea of the Roboutian Heresy, and those who
said they enjoyed it in their review.

Second thing : to the one who told me this was bad canon ... is that supposed to be a joke ?

Third thing : I have a lot more respect for Games Workshop's authors, now. Ensuring that there weren't any
contradictions is already difficult, and I only have two documents to synchronize !

Fourth thing : the next Legion should be that of the Emperor's Children. Yes, I am not doing the Lost Primarchs.
Sorry.

Fifth thing : yes, I kept the character Zahariel. What ? He is the one I took my pseudo after ! I wasn't doing to
erase his part in the Heresy !

Sixth thing : yes, I didn't kill Russ. Yes, the creature he and Lion faced is of Necron origin. No, I am not saying
more. You will probably have to wait until the Space Wolves' turn, or perhaps a short story that will only be
written after all eighteen Legions have been depicted. MOUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !

Seventh thing : if you enjoyed it, please review ! If you saw incoherences with the previous entry that escaped
me, tell me ! If you have idea for the other Legions, tell me !
That's all for now.

Zahariel (the writer, not the Librarian Dark Angel) out.

 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.
 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.
 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 REDACTEDwhere 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 !'
 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.

 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. 'This 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]
The 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 (M40.5) : 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 !'
 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.

AN : and here they are. In midnight clad, shadows and saviors : the Night Lords.

Once again, this chapter surpasses all who came before in size ( and that's without what is below). Seriously, I
must try to refrain myself, or else there will be a great unbalance between the Legions (even worse than what
there already is). The Night Lords, however, are one of the most popular Traitor Legions, and they have a lot of
backstory in canon that I could exploit here. Also, I wanted to make Konrad Curze as much of an hero as he is
a monster in the Horus Heresy timeline. That takes construction, and that takes a lot of words. I read books
again and researched the web for details that coud be turned on their head, and I must say that I am quite
proud of the result.

It has often been said the Canon Curze is a grimdark version of Batman IN SPACE. I suppose that then this
version is a composite of Batman and Harvey Dent (pre Two-Faces) IN SPACE. I gave Curze a surrogate
mother because I really think that it's growing without any parental figure that twisted Canon Curze like that.
I could have gone with a father, but then I remembered that Canon Guilliman also has a foster mother of a sort,
and besides, a woman fitted better into the narrative.
As for the Eldar ... I needed something that would make Curze's vision of Mankind change significantly, as well
as that he had of himself. In Canon, he believes himself to be a creature of darkness, committing sin so that
others won't have to, and doomed to die at his father's hands (directly or not). The Eldar attack shows him that
there is more to humanity that animals that need to be herded through fear in order to rise above their primitive
instincts, while facing the Phoenix King and seeing Theresa die to save him teaches him that he is not a
monster, nor is his fate sealed (I am not certain that the scene with the coin is clear, so I will state here : this
represents how his fate as Night Haunter is being overwritten). My Curze also has a split personallity, as is
hinted in several official volumes, but here the King of the Night managed to beat down Night Haunter.

I am aware that I may have made Curze's too good. That's because I am trying to make the Roboutian Heresy
a mirror of the Horus Heresy, with heroes becoming monsters and monsters becoming heroes, and the scale of
their evil in one must be as great as that of their good in the other. Well, except for Fabius Bile. That guy is a
monster no matter the timeline, and the Dark Gods have nothing to do with it (if The Talon of Horus is to be
believed, even them think that he goes too far).

Talos own mystery is a little present to myself in the future. If all goes as I have planned, I will write a chronicle
of the Times of Ending for the Roboutian Heresy after I have finished decribing every Legion, and through them
the current state of the galaxy (there will probably be a need for a few more info-dumps in order to set the
scene, but I will think of something). In order for this to work, I need to plant seeds in every Index Astartes,
preparing for the TImes of Ending. So, perhaps Talos will return at the head of a legion of ghosts. Perhaps it is
nothing more than a rumor, but the belief of the Legion and its serfs will make it real. Or perhaps it is only a
trick of Chaos, seeking to use the Soul Hunter's legend to drag the Eighth into the darkness it fights. Who know
? Right now, I sure as hell don't.

That's it for the Night Lords. Now, I have something I want to tell you, but first, here is a warning :

WARNING - SPOILER ALERT : THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS CLEAR SPOILERS FOR SEVERAL
VOLUMES OF THE HORUS HERESY, MOSTLY 'THE FIRST HERETIC', 'BETRAYER' AND 'AURELIAN' BY
AARON DEMBSKI BOWDEN, AS WELL AS POTENTIAL ONES FOR VARIOUS DETAILS CONCERNING
THE WORD BEARERS LEGION - PROCEED WITH ALL ADVISABLE CAUTION

I was re-reading the novel Betrayer recently, and decided to also read again The First Heretic and the short
audio drama Aurelian. As I finished the later, an unpleasant thought occured to me - a theory that both
fascinated and terrified me. It concerns Argel Tal's - the first Possessed Marine - ultimate fate. And I am going
to share it with you now, because there is no reason I should be the only one to suffer, and also because I
hope one of you can find a reason why I am wrong.

Those who have read Betrayer know all too well what it appeared to be : Argel Tal was betrayed by Erebus,
killed by a dagger forged from a fragment of the blade that laid down Horus on Davin. It was a poignant
moment, especially since Argel Tal - and us readers - had been led to believe that his fate was to die at Terra,
under the shadows of Sanguinius' wings. Not only was it what Raum, the daemon inside his soul, had told him,
it was also what Lorgar had seen when he walked the Eye of Terror with the daemon Ingethel. The death of
Argel Tal pushed Kharn a little further down the Eightfold Path, and Erebus believed that without Argel Tal's
kinship to hold him back, the Eight Captain of the World Eaters would become the Champion of the Blood God
that we know in the 41th Millenium.

Yet as I listened to Aurelian, I heard Lorgar describes, while he was shown a vision of the Siege of Terra, a
daemonic creature that Ingethel told him was Argel Tal. Previously, I had assumed that it was his possessed
form. But there is something that doesn't fit : the creature described by Lorgar's narrative is too huge for that.
When Argel Tal fights at Isstvan V or in the Shadow Crusade in Ultramar, he is taller than a Legionary, but not
by much. In the vision, he is tall enough that he tears an Imperial Fist in two and impales the upper half on one
of his horns to finish him. Possessed Marines are not supposed to be that huge. Only Daemon Princes are.
And that is what my theory is : Argel Tal's tale doesn't end with Erebus' blade.

There are several reasons that this idea took root in my mind. Firstly, a rule exists that Possessed cannot
become Daemon Princes, since they are already host to a Neverborn and therefore cannot become one of
them themselves. But in the final seconds before his death, Argel Tal wasnt' a Possessed. The first thing
Erebus' athame did was banish Raum back into the Warp. He was, once again, a normal Astartes.

Secondly, the vision. If Erebus actually killed Argel Tal, then the vision that was shown to Lorgar was wrong.
But this vision was inspired by the Gods, and Erebus, for all his arrogance and belief that he is the one shaping
the events of the Horus Heresy, is no more than their slave. Slaying Argel Tal for his perceived failures was
exactly what the Dark Gods wanted him to do. So it seems strange that the Dark Apostle's actions would result
in modifying a vision that corresponds to the Gods' plans reaching fruition. Instead, in this theory, Kharn is
closer to become the Betrayer, Lorgar is shown that he cannot defy the Gods' will despite his beliefs, and
Erebus is humbled by Kharn, which leads to him losing his temper in front of Horus bloody Lupercal in Fear to
Thread, which leads to his face being torn off (Gods how I love that scene), which leads to him planning
Vulkan's own fate. It's tortuous, overly complicated, and exactly the kind of thing that the Dark Gods are always
up to.

Thirdly, there is of course the reason of why the Dark Gods would make Argel Tal into a Daemon Prince. He
hates them, after all. But he still serves them, and I would say that he served them very well indeed. He was
the first Possessed Marine (amongst others, okay, but still). He was the one who brought the Primordial Truth
to Lorgar. He has slain hundreds of Loyalist Marines, and several of the Emperor's Custodians. Before that, he
was the one who broke the Emperor's Geller Field in His genetic laboratory on Terra, allowing the Primarchs to
be scattered across the stars. He fought in the Shadow Crusade, leading the elite forces of the Word Bearers.
There are Daemon Princes who have achieved ascension with deeds of only a fragment of his' magnitude and
reach. Of course, there is the matter of which God made him into a Daemon Prince, but M'kar was also made
during that period, and he wasn't marked by any of the Gods, and obviously there are Lorgar and Perturabo as
well, so apparently the Dark Gods could work together during the Heresy on that point.

And the motive of the Pantheon ? Simple : make Argel Tal suffer. That's exactly the kind of thing that these
bastards would do. He will live on as a Prince of the Damned, while Cyrene, now one of the Perpetuals, will
never truly die and go to the Sea of Souls. Even if there is no romance between the two, that's still some high-
level drama here. He will see the Imperium become everything he fought to prevent. He will be part of the
forces that will slaughter billions of innocents for all eternity. He will know that he and his whole Legion were
deceived, and be unable to do anything about it. And, if the novels are any clue, he will damn good at it too.
Allowing him to incarnate again on Terra would give him one final chance to influence the galaxy in any
meaningful way, and that, too, will fail when he died again 'under the shadow of great wings'.

And the last and most damning reason : ADB can be cruel with his characters. I hope that I am wrong, because
honestly there is such a thing as too much grimdark. As it is in canon, Argel Tal died a miserable death, his fate
unwoven by a betrayer's blade. In this theory, it is even worse.

So. If you see any reason (that cannot be explained by the unique circumstances of the Heresy or the timeless
nature of the Warp), please PM me or leave them in your review. If someone can see a fault, I will share it with
the rest of my readers, that they too may be relieved. Otherwise, I will just have to hope that I am wrong, and
that ADB never reads this, lest it gives him ideas.
 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 Brothersneeded 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 …

AN : remember last chapter, when I said that I had to write smaller chapters or else the Legions would be
unbalanced ? How naive my past self seem now. Still, since the last chapter was also the one with the most
(re)views and apparently the favorite, it can't be a wrong way of doing things. Let's just hope that it wasn't just
because Konrad Curze is a long-time favorite of Warhammer 40000 fans.

Thanks for all the reviews for the last chapter ! To those asking for a specific Legion to be done : sorry, but you
will have to wait for its turn. And yes, it sucks for the Alpha Legion, but it also means that I will be able to wrap
everything together in their chapter, just in time for the eventual Time of Ending sequel.

There is just so much ... stuff to write about when you are doing something like the Roboutian Heresy. The
original universe is so rich that inspiration is really easy to find, and it's almost impossible for me to put
something aside and not write about it once I have an idea. While I am on the subject of 'inspiration', the quote
at the beginning of the Post-Heresy section is from Paradise Lost, by John Milton. The book is a classic
depicting the fall of Satan, so I just had to mention it somewhere (after all, the authors of the Horus Heresy do
that kind of thing all the time).

Anyway, the Blood Angels. Here they are, the noblest of all in canon, reduced to the lowest of traitors here. I
am not really happy with how I wrote their fall from grace, but then again, what you write is never quite as good
as what you imagined. Basically, while Fulgrim in canon fell because of his pride and the whispers of a daemon
sword that he should REALLY not have picked up (I mean, seriously, taking the sacred blade of a culture you
just exterminated ? I get that he was influenced by the Warp and not in his right mind, but still !), the same
wouldn't have worked for Sanguinius. It would also have been rather lazy of me. So, instead, Slaanesh get to
the Angel by his only weakness : his sons. The whole 'trapped in an hallucination' thing is because I just can't
imagine the Sanguinius of canon going the same way as Fulgrim, not giving a frak about his sons and only
pursuing his own interests. It also gives me a convenient excuse for the fact that the Daemon Primarch of
Slaanesh hasn't been doing anything for ten thousand years. See, in the canon, the Daemon Primarchs are
supposed to be lost to the Great Game, but recent works (like the very good Arhiman : Unchanged) have
introduced the notion that, perhaps, there are other reasons for their absence. In the Roboutian Heresy, I want
every daemon primarch to have a reason for remaining in the Eye. So far, Lion El'Jonson is weakened by
Luther's spell and need all the Fallen dead, Rogal Dorn is hunting for Sigismund, and Sanguinius is insane.
 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.

In 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
soul. 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 !'
 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.
 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 your 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

Many 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 despite 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 initial 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.

What 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.

In 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. It 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.

Gage 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 !
 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.

 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 Librarian. 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
Sixteenth 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.
 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.
 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.

 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.
 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.