The Roboutian Heresy - A Warhammer 40K alternate universe

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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 acclamed 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 return.However, 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 abandonned 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 mightest 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 auxilliaries, 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 labyrinthine depths 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 insigna 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 profondly 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 Leman Russ had cast his lot with Roboute, as only him would forgive Leman'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 guerrilla. 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 unconventionnal 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 Legionaries, 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 occurred 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 Spave 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 temporaly abandonned 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 removed, 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 inapprehensible, 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 advisers 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, narcissic 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 front lines 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 labyrinthic dephts, 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 dephts.

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 defenses 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 worshiped 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 theaters 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 worshiping 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 faillible, 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 xenos 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 distrusting 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 crueler 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 mightest 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 Tyranids, 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 internecine conflicts, 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.

Note: I am not the author of this work see thread header for details

 

[Woltaire]

nice to see this come over to SV hope it get some well deserved attention

 

[Balmung1]

New crosspost up and the third legion the emperor's children will be posted either today or tomorrow if possible

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 sizable 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 emprisoned 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 millennia.
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 incorruptible 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 defenses, 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, abandoning 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 exiles 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 reappeared 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 warranted, 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 prisoners 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 heraldry, 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 preferring 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 fearsome 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 cunning 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 allegedly forged from the fragments of the Lion Sword when Luther broke the weapon on Caliban. He has personally 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 Azrael, 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' defenses. 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 chessboard are just that : pieces, and if you fail to perform adequately 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-mindedness alien to any sane soul.

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

 

[Balmung1]

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 obedience 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, crept 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 thePride 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 millennia. 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 millennia, 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.

 

[Balmung1]

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 Prospero 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 around 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 craftsman 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.

 

[Balmung1]

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 asThe 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 among 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 !'

 

[StarMaker764]

Ah its been so long since I last saw Zahariel's work, brings back memories.

 

[Balmung1]

Ah its been so long since I last saw Zahariel's work, brings back memories.

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It's also still going with the Angel War being just finished and the battle for Cadia underway with CIPHIAS CAIN LIVING SAINT OF THE IMPERIUM.