Now that the fates have been revealed, I think I'm going to give my honest opinion and reaction to each of the choices we could have had, and the possible future we could have had, but didn't because we picked Severus and no one else.
Emperor's Children:
-The Demanding Strategist.
While all in the 3rd Legion strives for perfection, you've focused that drive into the your performance as an officer. Your quarters are full with treaties of tactics, intelligence reports and logistical inventories and you go over them obsessively. No victory is good enough for you, as you could have achieved compliance faster, with less casualties, or preserving more infrastructure. It what the Legion requires of you, and most importantly what you demand from yourself.
Eventual Fate: Stabbed in the back by one of his men during the assault on the Saturnine Wall.
Now that is a bit ironic but considering who this involved, and when it was, not very surprising. Honestly, I'm amazed that the guy just didn't decide to just leave his legion and hitch up with the iron 4th, when Fulgrim showed up to try and kill him in the Angel Exterminatus book. The guy would have fit in perfectly, and it would have made complete sense, if not for Fulgrim doing his apotheosis.
-Transhuman Chronicler
Some of your fellow captains look at you in amused contempt for what you do. "That's what Remembrancers are for", they tell you in prideful arrogance. Fools. Of what use are glories and accolades if they fade from memory? While the remembrancers do good work, their perspective lacks the nuance an Astartes can give, that you can give. With quill and vellum, you're determined to make your company and Legion deeds as the phoenix. Immortal.
Eventual Fate: Still active as a Chaos Lord.
Okay, this is unironically, Hilarious. A captain that wanted to be a chronicler, who was mocked by every single one of his brothers for trying to be a remembrancer, survived for over 10,000 years to become a still living Chaos warlord in the present day. Historians for the Win!
-Warrior-Musician.
Your greatest joy in life has always been music, whether from listening or performing it. Your grandmother in Chemos told you how Fulgrim brought it into your world, and you decided to join his legion in a childish but determined desire to thank him for it. That determination served you to achieve captaincy, and while the rigors of your position leave you with little time for yourself, you still make a point of playing for the brothers of your company, of sharing your passion and joy with them.
Eventual fate: Corrupted during the Maraviglia performance, slain at the hands of Solomon Demeter in the battle of Isstvan III.
Oh, damn thats actually kind of heart breaking for the poor guy. Huh, Im surprised this got handed to someone like Solomon and not Saul, but anyone remembering the loyalists besides people like Saul, or Loken is always nice.
Iron Warriors
-Witness of the Decimation
You remember the awe and wonder you felt when your Primarch first stood before you and how that feeling became horror when he ordered that one marine out of ten had to be executed by the other nine for "failing to perform up to his standard" Crassus was your friend and he did not resist as you caved in his skull. The Legion wasn't perfect before, but now any brotherhood your Legion once had is dead. You serve out of loyalty to the Imperium, but the Lord of Iron has lost any right he had of calling himself your father.
Eventual fate: He and his company remain loyal to the Emperor, eventually besieged and slain by another Warsmith.
Yep, this makes perfect damn sense. I imagine something like a brotherhood scene would have occured between him and his company after the events of Olympia went down, and everyone tried to process the events that went down, before he told them about Crassus and his death from Perturabo.
-Frustrated Architect:
Your mind is filled to the brim with designs for palaces, plazas, cities and statues. Yet in the few occasion where you can put your talents in architectural design to use is in order to build fortifications and kill boxes, and for the most part your duty consist in reducing wonders and beauty to bloody rubble with artillery shells. You have earned renown for your skill as a siege master, yet that reputation tastes like ashes. You´ll fight to the end in this Great Crusade, if only so that one day you are called upon to create instead of destroy.
Eventual Fate: Died fighting against the Ultramarine reinforcements in the Iron Cage.
The man was right in the end, just not in the way he thought he was. Shame about his artistic dreams though, but he probably still would've done all of the things he hated anyway, after the heresy kicked off.
-Political Animal:
The attention of Perturabo is a fickle thing, and as such you´ve made the utmost effort to avoid it. Your service record is a textbook example of unremarkable. Compliance at an appropriate rate and pace, casualties at acceptable levels and tranquil garrison duties. You could rise higher in the legion ranks, but you have seen what happen to people like Barabas Dantioch, favored sons one day and wretches below his attention the next. There is safety in anonymity and you´re going to remain comfortably in there.
Eventual Fate: Still active as a Warsmith
Finally! Someone that actually recognizes being unremarkable with a capricious lunatic as your leader is an actually smart thing to do. Looks like that remarkability wound up saving his life in more ways then one later on, even though that means he's also given up becoming a chaos lord, since that makes need to step out of the shadow and be well known by his legion, and extension his father.
World Eater:
-The Old Hound:
You should have stood with Mago and the others, including your previous captain, when they objected against the Nails. You really should have, even if you would have ended up sharing a grave with them. But you trusted Kharn and Gahlan Surlak and damned yourself for it. The brotherhood of the War Hounds is a shadow of what it was now, and one you struggle to retain with the pounding in the Nails. Still you do so, in order to remind you what you are fighting for.
Eventual Fater: Torn apart by Khârn the Betrayer during the battle of Isstvan III.
Damn, I really wished we got a proper loyalist War-Hound perspective during Isstvan 3, because this is just tragedy in the making that would be an excellent read. Also shows that Kharn was still the deadliest thing to fight in a battle, besides Angron showing up and ripping out your skull because it makes the pain go away.
-Gladiatorial Enthusiast:
Fighting is all that you are good for. As such, when the ship is traversing the Warp between battles and the Nails start itching, you descend to the pits, and challenge everyone that´s willing to accept it. There is a rush there that warfare doesn´t give you. Maybe it is the lack of armor, clashing pure strength against pure strength. Or maybe it is the excitement of your brothers as they watch you fight. Nevertheless you prefer it before actually commanding, and you would have renounced your captaincy if you could do so.
Eventual Fate: Perished fighting against the Ultramarines in Armatura.
Live like an animal, and you wind up dying like one as well. Still kinda sucks that happened, would have loved to see a miniature version of Kharn in this one. But I wonder, did he die fighting charging at a squad of marines with nothing but his axes of choice and his armour?
-Bitter Conscript:
You had a family and a world once. Then the World Eaters came and butchered them all when your leaders rejected Imperial rule. You tried to kill one of them in grief and hate but the bastard just laughed it up and grab you, saying that you "had guts." They made you into one of their own and then implanted those accursed Nails into your head, taking your mind away from you too. You hate them all and ever since you ascended to captaincy due to the extreme casualties, you´ve made an effort to get as much of them killed as possible. You have nothing else to live for, except hate and spite.
Eventual Fate: Died at the hand of Chapter Master Severus of the Mist Shrikes in the Siege of Creideamh.
For This one, I'm not shoched that their isn't much detail needed to expunge on the guy. A man was forced into becoming a monster, and likely tried to get everyone under his command killed, making his company being seen as a sign of punishment, and that someone wanted to see you dead, and he survived from his grit and sheer desire to see his legion die, that it wound up killing him in the end as well as his warband.
Death Guard:
-Warrior of Dusk:
You been in the XIVth since the very beginning, back when it was called the Dusk Raiders. The legion has changed radically since your Primarch renamed you, and while your not adverse to the changes, you are among the few terrans that doesn´t. That´s something that worries you, the divide between the Terran veterans and the Barbarusian recruits, far from the harmonius relation that occurs in other legions. You do have hop that it could be breached someday, but you hesitate between adapting the ways of the Primarchs homeworld or bring them around to the ways of Old Albia.
Eventual Fate: Couldn´t reach shelter in time during the initial bombardment in Istvaan III
Not surprised that I think every Terran veteran I think shows up for choices, always winds up staying loyal and getting killed in the end. Nor that it was a Terran, and not a Barbarusian instead. Shame he never was able to make it to safety before the bombs dropped.
-Repressed Psyker:
You´re a monster, an abomination. Your soul is open to the foulness of the Warp, in the same manner of the Witch-lords slain by your Primarch in it´s youth or the twisted witches of the Thousand Sons. You should probably end your miserable existence, but you still believe that you can do good despite your curse, and you won´t use your tainted "gifts". You haven´t told this to anyone, for it would result in the lost of your captaincy and a posting in a suicidal assignment, and that´s if your brothers don´t just kill you on the spot.
Eventual Fate: Still active as a Plague Sorcerer.
This, is something that might have saved him on a few occasions, but when Typhus pulled off his trick the hell for this man must have been particularly terrible before he succumbed to Nurgle's touch like everyone else. Still, I suppose learning to be careful with your presence can wind up keeping you alive, even on the battlefield of the 41st Millenia.
-Pinnacle of Endurance:
You should be dead or within a Dreadnought with the amount of damage you endured. Since you joined the Legion you´ve been shot by shootas and splinter rifles, cut and stab by fang, claw and blade, poisoned and set aflame. You´ve been deployed into more Zone Mortalis that you care to remember and the marines under your command regard you with respect, for you are the first into the fray and the last to retreat from the battlefield. Still, you´ll endure far more for the Primarch and the Imperium.
Eventual Fate: Killed during the Battle of Molech.
Huh, would have thought he would have stayed as a loyalist, but that's last statements for you. Though, I wonder, was it the Ultramarines that did him in, or was it the wildlife he had to fight through that wound up killing him on Molech?
Thousand Sons:
-Achaemenid Devotee:
They say Space Marines know no fear. But that is false, for you remember the sheer terror you and your legion felt before the d.iscovery of Magnus. The constant dread of your body shifting with energy, the knowledge that anyone could turn into a moaning mass of mutated flesh with you and your fellow biomancers unable to stop it. Your father saved you from it, and just for that you would slit your throat if he ordered him. You have wholeheartedly embraced his creed and you lead your company for the psychic ascent of Mankind.
Eventual Fate: Active as an Exalted Sorcerer.
Ah, here is the mini-Ahriman that I was hoping would show up. I'm surprised that he didn't become a Chaos spawn in either Prospero or the rituals later on in the timeline, but one's will to live is something to never be underestimated. Also makes me wonder if he's a disciple of Ahriman currently, or he's left him and is charting his own path to restoring his legion?
-Pyromaniac Prodigy:
Your psychic instructors in the pyramids of Tizca soon found your affinity and fascination with the pyromantic arts and singled you out for recruitment into the legion. You became a widely respected captain, until during a hard-fought compliance your powers cremated a library the Legion was trying to secure. You kept your command, but you fell out of favor within the Legion and your company became a dumping ground for outcast and failures. You regret your mistakes and are burning with passion in order to atone for your failure.
Eventual Fate: Joined the Black Legion after the Heresy, died during the 5th Black Crusade.
Huh, I think this is the only character that shows up that dies post heresy, that was thanks to other events that weren't us? Besides that, he probably became a raging flamethrower once Prospero went down, which likely saved his skin back then, before he just stayed alone on Sortiarius before Abaddon came into existence and gave the man renewed purpose in life after the tragedies of the heresy with his home.
-Reluctant Doubter.
It might be because you are one of the few non-Psykers captains in the Thousand Sons, but the disregard of the Edict of Nikea by your legion makes you uncomfortable. The expertise of your brothers and father in matters of the Great Ocean is unquestioned, but isn´t the Master of Mankind the greatest psyker alive? You don´t think the Warp is evil like those hypocrites of the Space Wolves of course, but you can´t help but think that there might be a reason for the Edict that your legion ignores.
Eventual Fate: Rubricae Bodyguard of the Achaemenid Devotee.
Yeah, this guy's fate was sealed the moment he was revealed as non-psychic in nature. Honestly, I'm surprised he made it so far as to make it to the Rubricare, though I love how his fate now ties into the fate of the Devotee. Reminds me the TS, are probably the most interconnected legion of all of the traitors, both because of their small numbers, but also their nature as the legion claimed by Tzeentch.
Sons of Horus
-Resentful Has-been.
You were among the Terran recruits of the legion and reached the captaincy quickly after a series of stunning campaigns. Your star was ascendant within the legion and then your career just...stalled. You´ve watched as promotions to the Mournival, the Praetors and even to Centurion were given to younger, less veteran marines and envy and anger fester inside you. You know that you have the skills, intellect and experience for the position, you just need a chance to prove your worth decisively. Just one chance.
Eventual Fate: Active as a Chaos Lord in the Black Legion
Turns out he was right in the end. He really was that good, he just needed a chance at showing his worth to Abaddon after the fall of Horus and he did. Also makes him the most dangerous foe we are probably going to have to fight (If something like this ever does occur with us like Sarvak ever occurs again.) if he decides to ever show up in the eastern Fringes where we live right now.
-True Son.
The face you see in the mirror is that of your Primarch, Horus Lupercal. Since your induction into the Legion you´ve been under the mentorship of your Company Captain, and when he fell in battle you were quickly confirmed to your position. You are young for your rank, but surely there must be something that both your previous captain and your previous superiors must have seen in you to trust you so greatly. You´ve heard the rumors that you´ve only been promoted thanks to your similarity to the Warmaster, but that is just baseless slander. Surely just slander.
Eventual Fate: Killed by Space Wolves during the battle of Trisolian.
Yeah, it might have actually have been because of favoritism my friend. Especially if you died from the Space Wolves on the Vengeful Spirit. The same one, where Horus beat Russ to within an inch of his life, and slaughtered over 32,000 Space Wolves in that fight. Does raise a question over how much the legion truly idolized Horus, and to such an extent that you breach the rule of rank just because he looks like dad.
-Brother in arms.
If there is something you took to the stars when you left your gang behind in Cthonia, is that there is strength in numbers. That is, in a simplifed manner, the purpose of the Great Crusade and is a lesson you constantly applied during the course of your career, from battle-brother to Captain, for your celebrate with your men every victory and mourn every casualty. You might lack the renown and glory of other officers, but you don´t care, for brotherhood is your first and only priority.
Eventual Fate: Perished during the last bombardment in Isstvan III
Damn, this man fought with his brothers for months on end, after being betrayed by his Father and legion, and it was the last damn bombard meant that killed him in the end. At least he never lived long enough to see what happened to the rest of family after this, I don't think his hearts could have taken the grief otherwise.
Word Bearers
-Uncaring Herald:
You attend the chaplains sermons, you chant the psalms and you preach the Word of Lorgar. In truth you don´t believe in any of it. You remember back before his discovery when the legion would kill anyone who would say the same things you now proclaim to everyone. Faith was never a great concern to you, and the only reason you bother playing along with the charade is that you suspect you would suffer a "friendly-fire accident" if your revealed how little you care. Your doing your purpose and that's what matters to you.
Eventual fate: Killed by Raven Guard during the Dropsite Massacre.
Now that makes me wonder, did he ever reengage his Atheism when Lorgar came and corrupted the legion, or did he always hold to his belief of Atheism until the Massacre took off? Also raises the question of if his death, wasn't just a complicated suicide after he finds out the truth about demons and Gods, and all that his legion now serves.
-Zealous Preacher.
There is solace in faith, in the certainty that divine purpose gives, and that certainty is something that you take joy in spreading. Destroying the false prophets and temples of the unbelievers is all well and good, but it is the conversion of the populace to the Emperors divinity that truly fulfills you. Your fervour as you preach the Word of Lorgar is unmatched and many amidst your men have joked that you missed your true calling as a chaplain. That may be so, but you prefer thinking that you ar using your talents to their fullest extent, as both the Urizen and the God-Emperor intent.
Eventual Fate: Assasinated in Sicarius during a Dark Council power struggle.
And this is why, Being a Dark Apostle sucks. Because even if you follow with everything that you thought right for your entire Career, it only takes someone like Erebus or Kor Phaeron, to come right in and fuck you over because you cared about preaching rather then power itself.
-Inquisitive Theologian:
Most of your brothers limit themselves to study and reflect upon the Lectitio Divinitatus, but you have the need to do more. For that purpose you have taken upon yourself the task of writing your own book. Not to replace your Primarchs writing's, perish the thought, but to add to them, in your own humble way. You've spoken to the Chaplains, the rest of your brothers, the Legion serfs and even priests of false religions, searching for more insights. Some of your brothers have accused you of hubris and self-aggrandizement, but all you want is the truth.
Eventual Fate: Active as the coryphaus of his old Chaplain
Now, as I said before this is Hilarious. He realized that trying to become theological was a death trap thanks to the power struggles in the Dark Council, and instead decided to keep his head low and just keep on surviving as a minor captain with his favorite chaplain to talk too while staying out of the eyes of the leaders of the legion.
Bonus: Fate of the Night Lords backgrounds if you hadn't chose them:
Huh, I thought the other one's didn't exist, but color me wrong.
-Severus (Terran Survivor)= Turned against his Legion during the Dropsite Massacre, sacrificed himself to help a Squad of Salamanders escape.
Yep, this checks out for Severus. I imagine nobody would have told him about the change in plan, because nobody gave a shit about the man or anyone but themselves and maybe Konrad at this point. He probably would have found out when Sevetar gave the order to slaughter the Salamanders on Isstvan V, which would have led to him decidng to die as a loyalist and try to save some souls to escape the massacre that was already being carried out across the battlefield by that point. Nice seeing that his death would have led to something meaningful happen, instead of "Shock, Outrage, Telling his Boss he's evil, and getting Killed because he went to his boss and said he was Evil."
-Malzover (True Believer)= Killed by Dark Angel during the early stages of the Thramas Crusade.
Hm, kinda surprised that Malzover would have died. I always thought of the three options, he would have had the most chance to survive and live on to fight into the year the forty-first Milliana. Ah well, sad to see him go, but that's sometimes how it is.
-Noble son= Active as a Chaos Lord.
Oh, Now that is Bullshit. At least Malzover had a reason for being able to live and fight on for another reason. This prick doesn't even have that. Welp, Now I know who I want to kill first of these 9 remaining Traitors. Especially, since he's got his own warband that might allow our Chapter to bond together as we beat the ever living shit out of some members of our former family that still survived.
Also raises the question, but how Likely are we from having to encounter or having to deal with any of these survivng characters from meeting with us, and how dangerous each of them are now, compared to when they were before the outbreak of the heresy,
@ThunderOwl?
