The Horus Heresy Book 6 - Retribution

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THE HoRus HERESY®·~

BOOK SIX ~

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RETRIBUTION .i.

ASuPPLEMENT FOR WARHAMMER 40,ooo '~-

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PRODUCED BYTHE FoRGE WoRLD Srumo

The Horus Heresy Book Six- Retribution © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2015. The Horus Heresy Book Six - Retribution,The Horus Heresy, GW, Games Workshop,
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Pnnred 111 Ch ma

CoNTENTs

THE WARS OF RrnuBlJITON

Age ofBetrayal ...................................................................................................... I2 Eye of th e Storrn ...................................................................................................S3

Upon theAnvilofWar .......:................................................... ... ......................... 33 Tooth and Claw .................................................................................................. I 03

The Xana Incursion ................................................................... .......................... ss The Scouring of the Nostramo Sector ........................................................ I 27

THE RErRIBlJITON CAMPAIGN .

Introduction ....................................................................................................... I so Legendary Missions ............................~.'........................................................... I62 '.

Behind Enemy Lines........................................................................................ Is I - Conclave of the Lost ................................................................................ I 62

- Against the Dark Tide.............................................................................. IS2 - Point of Desperation ................................................................................ I64

-Shadow War... ......................................................................... .. .. ................ IS4 - Between the Hammer and the Anvil.................................................. I 66

Vanguard Preliminary Mission ..................................................................... ISS - Slayer of Worlds .............................................................. .......................... I 6S

SHADow WARS IN THE AcE oF DARKNEss

Updated Rules for the Battles in the - Denial ................................................................................... .. ....................... IS2

Age of Darkness Warhammer 40,000 Expansion .................................... I72 - Suicide Mission .......................................................................................... IS 3

Battles in the Age of Darkness Shadow Wars Missions .........................I74 - Challenge ..................................................................................................... IS4

- H unter/ Hunted .. ....................................................................................... ISO - The Noose .................................................... ....................... .. ....................... ISS

- Bad Blood ..................................................................................................... ISI New Rites ofWar ........................ ....................................................................... IS6

THE SHATTERED LEGIONS
The Shattered Legions ..................................................................................... I99 Nathaniel Garro ................................................................................................. 20S
Age of Darkn ess Theme: Shattered Legions ............................................. 202 Tylos Rubio......................... .. ............................................................................... 2IO
Age of Darkness Theme: Army of Dark Compliance ............................. 206 Knight-Errant.. ................................................................................................... 2I2

BLACKSHIELDS
The Blackshields................................................................................................ 2IS Blackshield Reaver Lord ................................................................................. 224
Blackshield Specific Equipment................................................................... 222 The Nemean Reaver ............................. .. .......................................................... 226

Blackshield Marauder Squad .......................................................................... 22S

SPACE M ARINE LEGION CRUSADE ARMY LISI ADDITIONS I
Legion Praevian ................................................................................................. 232 Endryd Haar .................................................................................................... ... 246
Legion Delegatus.................................................................................... ........... 233 Autilon Skorr... ... .................. .. ............................................................................ 24S 1'£
Herald ................................................................................................................... 234 Gahlan Surlak ........ ............... .. ...................................................................... ...... 249
Leviathan Pattern Siege Dreadnough t Talon............................................ 236 Tybalt Marr.......................................................................................................... 2SO
Contemptor-Cortus Class Dreadnought Talon ........................................ 23S Sh adrak Meduson ............................................................................................. 2SI
Legiones Astartes Quad Launcher Support Battery ............................... 240 Cassian Dracos Reborn .................................................................................... 2S2
Legion Vindicator Siege Tank Squadron ................................................... 24I Niirik Dreygur .. .................... .. ............................................................................ 2S3
Legion Mastodon Heavy Assault Transport.............................................. 242 Kheron Ophion of the Kyroptera .... .. ...................... .......................... .......... 2S4

Xiaphus Jurr......................................................................................................... 2SS

N Ew LEGIONES AsrARTES SPECIAL RuLEs
The Blood Angels .............................................................................................. 2SS The White Scars ................................................................................................ 262

The Dark Angels ............................................ ..................................................... 266

M ECHANICUM ARMY LISI ADDITIONS
Anacharis Scoria ................................................................................................ 272 Ordin atus-Minoris Macro Engine ............................................................... 276
Arlatax Class Battle-automata Maniple ...................................................... 274 Mechan icum Cerastus Knight-Atrapos ...................................................... 27S
Macrocarid Explorator..................................................................................... 27S Cybertheurgy .. ................................................................................................... 2So

BArrus IN THE AcEOF DARKNESS CoRE M ISSIONS

Deployment Maps ........................................................................... .. ............... 2S4 - Shatter Strike .................................... .. ....................................................... 2SS

Battles in the Age of Darkness Missions ................................. .. ................. 2S6 - Dominion .................................................................................................... 2S9

- Blood Feud .................................................................................................. 2S6 - Tide of Carnage ......................................................................................... 290

- Onslaught........ ............................................................................................ 2S 7 - War of Lies .................................................................................................. 29I

I





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AGE OF BETRAYAL

It was 007.M31, and the Age of Darkness had Legiones Astartes Imperial Fists had assumed The task of recounting the triumphs and
descended upon the Imperium. command of the defences ofTerra, while tragedies of the Age of Darkness is one that
the Emperor appeared to have withdrawn can never be completed even should the
The veil of night had fallen and it would entirely to pursue a mission he could not Imperium stand for ten thousand years and
not be lifted within the lifetime of any confide even to his most trusted sons. The our Order swell in size to rival the armies of
condemned by the fates to live through it. Warmaster claimed world after world in humanity. Countless battles must therefore
At Isstvan III, Warmaster Horus had purged the northern Imperium, and other spheres, go unrecorded by posterity, so total was the
four entire Legions of those elements who systems and entire sectors across the galaxy destruction wrought by and upon both sides
could not be trusted to follow him and his declared for the Traitors' cause. Millions- when at last the end came. Where once the
Traitor brothers into rebellion against their strong armies reeled in disorder as desperate young Imperium had stood upon the cusp
father-Emperor. Soon after, the terrible pleas for aid went unheeded. A torrent of of an age of unity and prosperity, suddenly
extent of the betrayal was revealed at Isstvan orders flooded out from Terra with no notion it stood upon the very brink of the abyss.
V, where three more Legions demonstrated ofwhether the intended recipients would Between the outbreak of the Horus Heresy
their loyalty to Horus and three others were receive them, or ifthey had already been at the Isstvan system and the casting back of
all but annihilated. slain or turned to the Warmaster's cause. the Shadow Crusade from Ultramar, a period
Entire planetary populations fled across the of around three years, all-consuming war
As the fires of war caught, entire worlds stars, a migratory diaspora of refugees driven came to Calth, the Coronid Deeps, Baztel,
burned. The Imperial Fists were savaged at beyond sanity by the horrors unleashed by Anvillus, Paramar, Beta- Garmon,Tallarn
Phall, while the Ultramarines were betrayed the rapidly advancing Traitor armies. and a hundred other worlds, many of them
at Calth and their Five Hundred Worlds rendered to blackened wastes by the close of
plunged into a sea ofblood by the combined Thus it proved nigh-impossible for Terra the Age of Darkness.
war hosts of the Word Bearers and the World to mount a truly coordinated defence of
Eaters. Of the remaining Legions, little was its worlds and so sector after sector fell TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS
known of the fate of the Blood Angels, White to the Warmaster as he advanced upon
Scars and Dark Angels, for the artifice of the Terra. There was no single frontline that Warriors whose names had been carved in
Warmaster and his agents had ensured they could be held and no decisive salient that glory into a thousand triumphal memorials
were scattered far and wide by the time his could be mounted. Individual forces , from would come to be reviled by the multitudes,
treachery was revealed. For the first years of small companies to entire armies, threw their names turned into bywords for
the Horus Heresy, they were feared lost at themselves willingly into the crucible of war fratricide and atrocity. Warriors whose names
best, and turned at worst. in a desperate effort to stem the inexorable had never been known were at a stroke
tide. Never before had Mankind been propelled to such heights that they held
Between lsstvan in oo6.M31 and the casting divided by such conflict, and soon a thousand the fate of entire worlds in their hands. The
back of the Shadow Crusade in 009.M31, worlds and more were transformed into task of redacting the names and deeds of the
the Imperium knew anarchy, uncertainty blasted war zones across which millions former and enshrining those of the latter
and bloodshed on a scale never before of erstwhile brothers-in-arms, from the is one that has already begun, but which is
witnessed. Though still more destruction humblest militia conscript to the mightiest unlikely to be completed within the span of
warrior of the Legiones Astartes, clashed. mortal years.
before the end, this was a

~~l-COJD.f:W;ionand

GALAXY OF WAR Across the galaxy, independent Legiones Many operations were specifically targeted
Astartes forces varying in scale from sub- attacks against key enemy leaders or
For every world that burned in planet-wide company to battalion or chapter conducted individuals holding the balance of power, and
conflagration, innumerable smaller scale, countless high intensity operations. Many many of these amounted to little more than
but equally bitter wars were fought, often were surgical strikes against targets of vital callous murders and brutal assassinations.
far away from any war zone that might be strategic worth - at Grendel's World for Far-ranging Legiones Astartes kill teams
considered a front line. At the opening of example, a mixed force of around three or larger strike forces were capable of
the Horus Heresy, many of the Legions hundred Night Lords and Emperor's reaching and striking against targets more
had been operating as large bodies under Children Legionaries destroyed the conventional Legion forces could not
the direct command oftheir Primarch, but Astropathic relay station established there a engage, and so no commander or high
even then, many smaller contingents had decade earlier to serve the 78'hExpeditionary administrator was guaranteed safe from the
been seconded to service elsewhere. As the Fleet as it pressed into the regions beyond. executioner's axe. Though reliable accounts
Age of Darkness ground on, many of these Whether or not it was their intent, the of most such attacks are few and far between,
mighty hosts became fragmented and while destruction of the relay station caused all the assassination of the Magister-Militaris
individual Primarchs often remained in contact with the 78'hto be cut for many of Constantinium serves as something of
direct command of the core of their Legions, years. The fleet's high commander, Lord- an exception, as was no doubt intended
ever more sub-commands were despatched Captain Morrachi of the Legiones Astartes when it was conducted. Magister Karpath
across the galaxy in pursuit of either Traitor Blood Angels, did not therefore learn of the of Constantinium had declared the entire
or Loyalist goals. As the Ruinstorm cut yet outbreak ofthe Horus Heresy until after the Viridis sector for the Warmaster in mid
more regions offfrom the greater Imperium, event and was thus unable to intervene at a 007.M31 and expended prodigious resources
many such detachments were turned by vital juncture in history. to fortify his capital, claiming that its walls
circumstance into independent commands
in all but name, their leaders vested with
what amounted to total authority to conduct
their own wars in whatever manner they
deemed most appropriate.

would be built every bit as strong and tall
as those ofTerra and that no attacker would
ever penetrate them. The Magister-Militaris
was made a fool and a liar when within a year
a strike force of Dark Angels, White Scars
and Iron Warriors Legionaries conducted
a coups-de-grace operation which penetrated
straight into the heart of his massively
fortified palace. Karpath was executed
kneeling at the foot of his own throne

')

before his entire court in what could only
have been intended as an incontrovertible
message to all who would turn against Terra.
The presence of the Iron Warriors element
in this force however remains unresolved
and unexplainable, as do so many similar
accounts of the unseen wars of the Age
of Darkness.

UNHEEDED HEROES

Some Loyalist forces pledged themselves

to defend individual worlds against the

depredations of the Traitors, in particular

ifthey found themselves stranded by the

coming of the Ruinstorm and unable to

penetrate its depths. History can never make

a full accounting of the number of such

actions fought by stoic and self-sacrificing

Loyalists far from the main war zones;

indeed, only they and possibly those they

protected will ever know of the sacrifices

made. Recently surfaced is a rare account of

r such an action- the Defence ofNagathar,
· ~ where several scattered Legiones Astartes
forces sought refuge in a pocket of relative
calm against the suddenly tempestuous
Warp. Not all of these groups were loyal
t to Terra though, for one belonged to the
' Legiones Astartes Word Bearers and was
somehow able to navigate the surrounding
-)

warp routes and avoid the horrendous

calamities that had befallen so many other

vessels attempting to do so. Nagathar

itself remained untouched as the storms

swallowed nearby worlds, but the Word

Bearers sought to prey upon its scattered

settlements and enslave its peoples, and it

was only the efforts of the Loyalists of the

Imperial Fists and Dark Angels that saved

a million souls from being sacrificed by the

sons ofLorgar for an end that no sane man

would attempt to perceive.

Other Legiones Astartes ranged for
thousands of light years across the galaxy,
braving the perils of the storm-wracked Warp
in an effort to engage the enemy wherever
they were to be found. Of this type of action

! there exist far more examples than others,

.a but many are known to us only by hearsay

~U alone. The names ofsome of these groups
appear in accounts of battles the length

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n'1
and breadth of the galaxy, making it nigh- Lorgar 's invocation of the Ruinstonn had By oro.M 31, the Imperium that had been

I< impossible for historators to compile a true cut the galaxy asunder, and so most Legiones stood no more. The fires of the Horus Heresy
or complete accounting of their deeds. One Astartes forces not operating under the were consuming hundreds of systems in all-
~ name that is known however is Roscius, an personal command of their Prim arch were out war, while innumerable conflicts
Assault-Captain of the Legiones Astartes often required to act under their own burned in the darkness far beyond the
~ Ultramarines who had been assigned cognisance for extended periods, in many central war zones.
pathfinder duties ahead of the doom ed 933'd cases for the en tirety of th e Horus Heresy
·E

Expeditionary Fleet by his Primarch soon and long after. The Ruinstorm did not serve THE SHADow WARS oF THE AcE OF DARKNEss

after Roboute Guilliman assumed command only to stymie the coordination of far-flung Those who would look back upon the Age of

of the Legion-Assault-Captain Roscius is armies, but had a more unsettling effect Darkness and attempt to compile anything

not listed amongst those officers ordered to born of the dark powers underpinning resembling a coherent accounting of its

muster at the Calth Conjunction. the entire conflict. Even though it existed myriad wars, campaigns and battles know

primarily in the other-dimension of warp they are faced with an impossible task. For

Several months after the outset of the space, the Ruinstorm bled through into every central battle -Calth, Tallarn, Mars,

Shadow Crusade against Ultramar, Roscius' realspace in many regions, the raw stuff of Yarrant and Terra itself- there must have

assault company boarded and captured the Immaterium tainting the void itself with been a thousand smaller engagements.

a strike cruiser of the Legiones Astartes coiling :Etheric tendrils and kaleidoscopes Wherever a scribe might care to look,

Sons of H orus at Pluto!, a segmen tum away of unseen colours. From the surface of there they will discover some sign that

from Ultramar. Six weeks later, that cruiser many worlds, the stars appeared to have blood was shed upon the ground for the

ambushed and crippled a Death Guard heavy been swallowed by the void or the night Traitor or Loyalist cause. Over time, these

transport at Terrax out-system and a month skies were transformed into a canvas upon unhallowed battles reveal themselves to

after that conducted a lightning strike agains t which were rendered scenes from the hells us through the scattered and fragmented

a Traitor Mechan icum void fuelling station at of ancient superstitious texts. On the worst accounts of witnesses, survivors and in some

Yspotua. The cruiser does not appear in any afflicted worlds, nightmares made fles h small number of cases, participants. Savant-

extant historical archives for the next year, walked the lands, the veil berween reality historators refer to these many conflicts as

but resurfaces wh en it is reported to have and the Immaterium stretched beyond 'shadow wars'.

led a ragged flotilla of vessels again st Traitor breaking point and the infernal denizens

supply lines at Toreus, 3,000 light years away, first encountered by the Ultramarines The shadow wars were fought not by

where Assault-Captain Roscius commanded at Calth -named by some 'Daemons'- conventional Legiones Astartes fighting

a force of over 3,000 Legionaries drawn from spewing forth. Thus, in many cases, it was the units-companies, battalions and chapters,

as many as four different Legions. The last smaller, detached Legiones Astartes forces as part of a distinct and unbroken chain of

engagement where Roscius is known to have that first encountered such abominations command from Primarch all the way down

commanded was the Duthovan Blockade, as they fought far from the key war zones, to sergeant. Instead, they fough t entirely

conducted against Traitor forces stranded on prosecuting isolated wars against creatures apart from any structured authority or

Duthovan by the coming of the Ruinstonn, a that defied all sanity and had no place in the gran d strategy. There was no single template

battle few of either side survived. secular Imperium the Great Crusade had for these forces and they are referred to

founded upon the bedrock ofimperial Truth. in various accounts by a range of terms

including 'irregular', 'non-doctrinal' or

simply 'orphaned'.

The Knights-Errant
In the decades that have passed since the
culmination of the Horus Heresy and the
outset of the period now being referred
to as 'the Scouring', tacticae-savants have
identified a broad spectrum of categories
into which many irregular forces can be
placed. At one end of this spectrum is to
be found the body of warriors coined the
'Knights-Erranf. We know all but nothing
of this mysterious group, other than it was
form ed at the express order of Malcador the
Sigillite. The so-called 'C hosen ofMalcador'
included many individuals from a wide range
of backgrounds, but his Knights-Errant
were all Space Marines, and many of these
were the scions of the Traitor Primarchs

who had refused to follow their fathers into

treachery and chosen instead to renounce THE CRUSADER Hosr
their Legion and serve the Imperium directly

at its highest level. All cast off their Legion At the conclusion of the Unification Wars, the Legions stood upon the precipice of

heraldry and wore in its stead the gunmetal launching the Great Crusade, to depart the Sol System in a great many cases never to

grey ofbare ceramite. return. Before leaving at the head of the first great Expeditionary fleets, each of the

Legions mustered a party of Legionaries who would remain on Terra and stand as their

Little is now known of the highly secret representatives before the Terran Council in all matters in which the Legions held a stake.

missions the Knights-Errant undertook at In addition, they would serve as an honour guard to watch over Terra and all that the

the behest of the Regent ofTerra throughout Unification Wars had won Mankind. Perhaps most importantly, they would record the ''
the Age of Darkness, for many accounts names of those Legionaries who would lay down their lives conquering the great darkness

have been deliberately suppressed, events beyond the light of Sol, so that no sacrifice would ever be forgotten. In accepting this

have gone unrecorded at the time or reports honour, the Legionaries of the Crusader Host would be making an equally great sacrifice,

were simply lost in the conflagration that for they would partake in none of the glory their brothers would win and all their victories

descended upon Terra at the culmination would be won by proxy.

of the Warmaster's great betrayal. Certainly,

the Knights-Errant fought alone or in small When the Warmaster's betrayal was revealed at Isstvan III, the members of the Crusader

groups against key foes identified by the Host were as one incarcerated by the Praetorian ofTerra, the Primarch Rogal Dorn. If such

Sigillite and in some cases aligned their as Horus could turn, then who among the Host could be trusted? At length, Dorn was

interests with those of other Legion forces , satisfied that those of the Host drawn from his own Legion were sound in their loyalties

serving side by side with conventional and he ordered them freed. Of the remainder, each is a tale in its own right. Some escaped,

Legiones Astartes units when deemed their fates unknown. A small.number were freed on condition of their performing some

necessary. It is considered likely by some great and vital task, such as service in the ranks of the Knights-Errant. The ultimate fate of

historators of our Order that the Knights- many of the Crusader Host is bound up in the events of the climax of the Horus Heresy,

Errant may have played a key, albeit when total war came at last to Terra, but that is a tale best accounted when at last it is time

mysterious role in the unseen 'silent war' to do so.

that was waged between Malcador and the

Primarch Rogal Dorn, for both found their

interests frequently in opposition. As the organisation and their methods in order to behind enemy lines to make contact with

Solar War gripped humanity's birth system, remain functional in any way at all. In the allied forces. While many of these small

the interests of the Sigillite and the Primarch aftermath of the massacre, bloody, scattered forces were never heard from again and

frequently clashed and while face to face groups from all three Legions coalesced their fates go unrecorded, others determined

the two remained cordial, if often coldly so, across an entire sector of space, driven by to act on their own cognisance. Leaders of

behind the scenes their agents and servants the hunter-killer forces of the Sons of Horus vision and character melded disparate Legion

might very well have been murdering and the Emperor's Children, the latter taking elements into highly effective forces and

one another. Whether or not the Knights- especial delight in running the survivors to used them to prosecute the unseen shadow

Errant ever took up arms against Loyalist ground and forcing them to bear witness to wars that raged across the galaxy, often

forces is unknown, but it is certain that the totality of their defeat. Harried by their unknown to the masters of either side of the

they undertook missions that furthered the relentless foe, the last of these remnant forces civil war.

long term goals of the Regent of Terra at the turned at bay and fought back, following the

expense of those of the Praetorian ofTerra. example of Shadrak Meduson of the Iron And neither was the formation of these

Hands Sorrgol Clan. By sheer force of will, Shattered Legion forces unique to those loyal

The Shattered Legions Meduson forged disparate elements from to Terra. As the Age of Darkness progressed,

Another form of unconventional or irregular these three Legions into an unbreakable many more found themselves acting alone,

Legiones Astartes formations were the alloy, and for a time led a fierce-fought following the goals of their own leaders,

so-called 'Shattered Legions'-a retroactive campaign of vengeance against the Traitors and at times these goals differed from those

term applied to a broad range of forces that drew on and combined the unique skills of the chains of command that had once

and unlikely to have been used by the and experience of each element, and which bound them. With the ebb and flow of war,

warriors themselves. The Shattered Legions cost the Warmaster's war effort dearly. Traitor forces too became isolated and, given

forces were born of the fiery crucible of the nature of certain of their leaders, many

the Isstvan V Dropsite Massacre, where But it was not only the remnants of the three Traitor units determined to act entirely

the treachery of the second attack wave Legions that were betrayed at Isstvan V who according to their own drives and desires.

resulted in the nigh-total destruction of the fought in this manner. Across the entire Some resurrected ancient resentments

Raven Guard, Salamanders and Iron Hands. Imperium and beyond, Legion elements against erstwhile brethren now turned to

Initial reports claimed the cataclysmic cut offfrom their chains ofcommand were blood-foes and pursued vengeance for slights

news that three Primarchs had fallen and forced to adapt to circumstances or else of honour thought long forgotten. Others

that no more than seven Legionaries had perish in the all-consuming fires of war. became consumed by the forces they had

escaped the slaughter, although thankfully Some detached Loyalist forces were able to unleashed upon Isstvan V, shedding reason

these accounts were later proved false. break through the Traitors' lines and join the and honour and reaving across the stars as

Nonetheless, these three Legions ceased to mustering hosts of the Imperium. Others if to vindicate, or perhaps to forget, their

exist as coherent, operational military bodies however found themselves isolated deep treachery with the blood of all those they

and were forced to drastically adapt their within enemy-held territory and too far branded enemy.
't

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as such. Evoking martial tradition of ancient

times, a Blackshield was a warrior who had

THE H IDDEN HAND OF THE BLACKSHIELD entirely denounced his parent Legion, or in

The histories of the Age of Darkness present far more mysteries and enigmas than reliable some cases may never have known which

or complete accounts, and so entire armies ofhistorator-scribes labour to piece together Legion had in fact sired him. They often

something of the truth from uncounted fragments of hearsay. In the examination, many fought quite literally under a false banner, or

such fragments reveal still more perplexing or troubling elements. At the twinned gas one which bore no colour or badge at all so as

giants ofEuros, for example, ashen-skinned, black-eyed warriors bearing the eye of the to confuse or repudiate their allegiances

Warmaster upon otherwise featureless Mark VI battle plate, who could only have been or origins.

renegade sons of Corax, sent the vast macro-bastions plunging through the crust, in so

doing causing the fiery deaths of over twenty million colonists. Groups of Blackshields engaging in battle

against both sides of the H orus H eresy

At Gamma-Dvalin, a force of warriors, each one wearing armour of discordantly have been traced as early as the wa r for

mismatched heraldry and patterns torn from numerous dead fo es, breached the Vaults the Coronid Deeps, where a number of

ofYtterbia and plundered the forbidden stasis arsenals quantum-locked within. A month Legionaries clad in black-painted battle plate

later, the stolen n-dimensional weapons were unleashed upon the 38'h Company of the and bearing no iconography other than the

Sons of Horus Legion at lantana Minor, consuming both armies and tearing an entire Terran Aquila were reported as fighting

continent apart in the process. Fragmented pict-thief captures show several Blackshields for the Loyalist cause, but entirely separate

bereft of their helms, each of them bearing an identical Cthonian gang rune tattooed from the Loyalist chain of command . This

l across their scalp. force refused to respond to any attempts at
communication and is presumed to have
• been swallowed up in the anarchy that was
I~ A Blackshield force is known to have launched attacks against Sons of Horus and Death the Imperium's fighting withdrawal from the
"• Guard Legionaries at Taracanis, culminating in the boarding action against the Death Coronid Deeps.

Guard heavy cruiser Morbid Revelation and the spiking of its mighty nova cannon. The

extent of the damage was not discovered until the weapon was next fire d in anger, ten days

later, against the Mechanicum Explorator Barque Radiant Precept, resulting in the Revelation The phenomenon of the appearance of the

being crippled in the ensuing back-blast and its forced withdrawal from the war. many and varied Blackshield groups is but

one mystery among countless others that

At the Battle of the Ultinian Rings, Sons of H orus hunter-slayers under Tybalt Marr, surfaced during the H orus H eresy, and one

tracking down survivors fleeing Isstvan V, were ambushed by a Blackshields fo rce led that continues to vex the Lords ofTerra

by an individual later identified as the Raven Guard Strike-Centurion Morkan Sayle. In greatly, especially as the troubling matter

the ensuring battle, a sky-hive housing roo,ooo colonists was destabilised and brought of the status of the remaining Legiones

plummeting into the lyotropic crystal seas ofUltinia 7· Cen tu rion Morkan was presumed Astartes and the judgement of certain

dead in that operation, along with over half of his force, but contrary claims continue to splinter fac tions remains yet unresolved.

emerge even decades later. Many different types of Blackshield existed,

most defined by the circumstances of their

Each of these battles served in their own way to influence the course of the war not just formation. Some were Legionaries driven

at the local level, but at the strategic one. Even though the specifics of cause and effe ct beyond even the trans-human limits ge ne-

were hidden at the time and are only barely perceivable to us now, many of our Order now engineered into the Legiones As tartes and

believe that when considered as a whole, they amount to a significant contribution towards consumed by grief or insanity at the sheer

the ultimate ending of the war. scope of the Warmaster's betrayal. Many we re

so broken in mind and spirit, they no longer

recognised or acknowledged the mas tery of

At first, most Shattered Legion fo rces focused Massacre, albeit fought not between vast any lord and were determined to claim their

their actions on high-intensity attacks Legions grinding one another to bloody ruin, own destiny even as the Imperium tore itself

against strategic targets far behind enemy but mixed bands of warriors sworn to exact apart in bitter civil war.

lines, often with the military objective of retribution even at the cost of their own lives.

disrupting lines of communication, but with The shadow wars would be fought warrior One of the few defining factors common

the true goal of exacting bloody revenge on to warrior, the killing stroke delivered by across Blackshields groups was the fact

a hated foe too powerful to defeat in open the hand of the vengeful while staring the that all had renounced their heritage and

battle. Soon however, opposed Shattered vanquished in the eye and damning his soul none considered themselves as belonging

Legion forces encountered one another, to a hell none would have invoked mere or beholden in any way to their Primarch

and the result was inevitable. A second civil months earlier. or their erstwhile brethren. Most, though

war erupted between rival Shattered Legion not all, obscured their colours in some way,

groups, and whilst neither was in direct Blackshields some repainting their armour black, others

communication with their own side's high Perhaps the most extreme example of scouring it to bare metal. At least one group

command, inevitably both sides determined Legiones Astartes forces acting as irregular scorched their armour in a fire rite redolent

i! to destroy their foes at all costs and in so fighting units was to be found in the of certain feral world p}'rolatory-cults, during
doing serve the strategic interests of the phenomenon of the 'Blackshield'. Who first which they repudiated their heritage and

11 Traitors or the Loyalists. Though it went used the term or when is a matter of debate their heraldry, leaving their armour cinder
amongst our Order, but most doubt that the black. Others adopted entirely new heraldry
n largely unseen, this war was said to have been warriors in question described themselves of their own invention, either on a warrior-

W every bit as bitter and bloody as the Dropsite
t~i tk!~..,;,;;;;;;;z;;-;:;;;;;:;;;;.-;.;:~ ;z:;:;=;C"""'-"''-:J=e::.&...t;,-tT6,;;f;.;e ~"iE:._;;;;;.~~-e"" '%'"t.r a:;;;;£ ulufuF?bz:;;;;;;'"-..6ffi @-,...ww'-"~'-ert-...tum.wu.<'fU.m"?
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by-warrior basis or by a strong-willed leader Many years oflaborious investigation reveal One particular sub-type ofBlackshield is (l
imposing his vision on the entire band. Thus, that few Blackshield groups numbered known of almost entirely through hearsay
by the middle years of the Horus Heresy, more than a thousand or so warriors, and and myth, and our Order has struggled
Legiones Astartes forces bearing previously in terms of assets, they were often severely in vain to discover the full truth of their
unseen colours were witnessed fighting limited indeed. Most had access to some creation. These are the warriors who actively
across the entire galaxy. form of warship, either a Legion vessel or a turned against their own and raised their
lesser void craft captured during the course weapons to oppose their Primarch and their
As with the Shattered Legion forces, of their formation. Legiones Astartes escort erstwhile kin. None can say how many
Blackshields were encountered on both vessels and rapid strike cruisers provided such groups existed, but certainly rumours
sides of the war, and in many cases were a combination of assault vessel and base of abound ofLegiones Astartes rejecting their
fighting entirely for themselves. Some bore operations, being large enough to transport heritage and defacing once proudly-worn
the eagle ofTerra, while others wore the the group and what vehicles and landing Legion icons. Even clad in black, the origins
eye of the Warmaster, but others fought craft it possessed, and sufficiently potent of such warriors might be discerned by
entirely for their own causes. None were in battle to support assaults against lightly careful observation, for each of the Legions
part of any coherent chain of command and defended, outlying target worlds.The utilised its own artificer-wrought and often
while they might occasionally have been crews of such vessels were often bonded or highly idiosyncratic sub-patterns of Legiones
co-aligned with the strategic aims of one side indentured in some manner to their masters. Astartes battle plate that betrayed the origins
or the other, they never followed or sought Many were Legion serfs whose loyalties were of the bearer.
orders from outside forces or consciously simply transferred to their new lords,while
coordinated battle plans with them. Many others had willingly thrown in their lot These forces and many more, from the
bands of Blackshields were later declared by with the outcasts or been forced to do so by unseen Knights-Errant, the vengeful
edict of the Terran Council to be murderers cruel circumstance. Shattered Legion formations to the outcast
and pirates concerned only with claiming Blackshields, fought throughout the Age of
their own domains beyond the sight of Whatever their origins, Blackshield groups Darkness, sometimes adding their weight
Emperor or Warmaster, as was the case with were invariably led by individuals possessed to one side or the other, at other times
the so-called Company of the Sundered at of a fierce presence and the drive to forge pursuing their own inexplicable goals. As
Boras Minor. While some of these might their own destiny, and to sweep others along with so much of that anarchic era, little
have been attempting to rebuild something with them in their quest. Some, such as went recorded and many accounts that
of what Horus had destroyed, others were Nuhmarak, the so-called Crippled King of were committed to record were destroyed
concerned only with carving out their own the Void, were darkly brooding warrior-lords, in the flames of war consuming the entire
petty empires and enslaving those who were bitterly resentful of the fate that had befallen Imperium. The greater number of the battles
too weak to oppose them, as occurred at the galaxy. Others enthusiastically embraced of the shadow wars may never be known, but
the Truan Systems at the hands of the Nine their new existence and relished the chance their consequences will no doubt echo down
Blades. Some believed themselves to be to prey upon those weaker than themselves the ages unheeded by mortal men, the fates
continuing the work of the Great Crusade, and to take by force that which they of some of the greatest heroes and villainous
carving a swathe of blood and ash across the considered their rightful due, as was the case despots ever raised up from the hosts of
void in memory of a dream which had turned when the Umbral Hundred scoured twelve Mankind lost to the Age of Darkness.
to nightmare with the Warmaster's betrayal entire systems in the southern marches of
at Isstvan. the Chonma sector throughout orr.M31.

Between the breaking of the Ruinstorm AKINGDOM DIVIDED in small groups alongside other, similarly
across the galaxy in early 007.M31 and disposed forces also cut off from their
Roboute Guilliman's establishment of to track down and slay any Loyalists who Legion's chain of command.
Imperium Secundus in OIO.M31, civil war had escaped. It was a mission many an
erupted across the entire galaxy. While most Emperor's Children Legion praetor accepted IMPERIAL FISTS '
of the Legions, whether Traitor or Loyalist, and undertook with relish, and which many
operated as mighty armies led in person proved highly adept at prosecuting. The bulk of the Imperial Fists stood at
by their Primarch, every one of them had Terra with their Primarch, building Terra's
smaller forces detached to serve myriad roles IRON WARRIORS ' defences against the Warmaster's inevitable
across the Imperium. With the coming of the invasion. However, a great many had been
Ruinstorm, many of these detached forces After Isstvan V, the Primarch Perturabo lost or scattered on the tides of the Warp
were lost, cut off, isolated or simply never was tasked by Horus with a campaign of on the voyage to or from the Phall system
heard from again. In some cases, Crusade planetary assaults against key Loyalist and so fought alongside other similarly
detachments returning from the outer void fortress worlds, in particular those defending isolated Legiones Astartes forces. Others
to find the Imperium in flames had no way of the marches of the Segmentum Solar. By the had been deployed before the Horus Heresy
knowing the fate of their brethren, and were close of 009.M31 these were well underway, as garrison forces across vast swathes of
forced by circumstance to forge their own and while the Iron Warriors fleet remained the Imperium and as worlds fell to the
fates and to determine their own allegiance centred on its Primarch, detached siege Warmaster's 'Dark Empire', so those forces
in a galaxy of blood, war and chaos. forces operated across the Imperium. that could fought a fighting withdrawal.

Entire cohorts ofhistorators and savants As they ground through Loyalist sectors, N IGHT LORDS
have attempted to piece together a coherent taking key bastion worlds as they advanced,
picture of the status and deployment of the the Iron Warriors assumed the role of brutal Throughout much of this period, the Night
major Legiones Astartes forces in this period. overlords, overseeing the consolidation of Lords were a highly splintered Legion, their
In all likelihood such a picture is impossible Traitor power on recently captured worlds. fleet having been ambushed by the Dark
to compose in entirety, and so our knowledge As such, they were often the target of attacks Angels at the height of the Thramas Crusade
must remain incomplete. by orphaned Legiones Astartes forces and and their Primarch grievously wounded at
became experts in countering such raids. the hand of his brother. Sevatar, First Captain
It\DARK ANGELS of the Legion, attempted to take control
fWHITE ScARS of the core of the Legion, but many of its
The bulk of the I" Legion was engaged individual companies and chapters rampaged
against the Night Lords for much of the Thanks to the machinations of the Traitor through the Ultima Segmentum, pursuing
period, and in the aftermath of the Lion's Alpha Legion, the bulk of the V'hLegion was their own dark missions of bloodshed among
victory over the Traitor Primarch at Tsagualsa embroiled in a long and bitter war against the stars. Not until the Legion was finally
despatched numerous strike forces across the the Orks at Chondax when the seeds of reunited with its Primarch were these forces
eastern galaxy to hunt down the splintered the Horus Heresy were being sown, and drawn together into a coherent whole, and
foe. Many did not return, pursuing their for quite some time the allegiance of their even then many remained in the darkness,
own missions across the Ultima Segmentum Primarch, Jaghatai Khan, was unknown. accustomed to the night they had made their
and beyond. Some of these detached forces Those operating further afield were ignorant own and unwilling to submit themselves to
encountered other similarly isolated or of their Primarch's intent and forced to higher command.
orphaned Legiones Astartes groups, finding determine their loyalties for themselves.
common cause with some and fighting The Primarch would later purge his Legion BLOOD ANGELS
others to the death, the Ruinstorm making of those who had declared for Horus, and
it impossible for them to return home or expel those who had come close to doing At the opening of the Horus Heresy, the fate
receive new orders. so. The latter were ordered to undertake a of the Blood Angels was unknown and this
nigh-suicidal campaign of infiltration and would remain the case until the Legion's
EMPEROR's CHILDREN assassination, numerous small forces of return in OIO.M31. The Blood Angels had
'Sagyar Mazan' let loose into the galaxy to act been ordered to muster at the Nartaba
As the Traitors advanced towards Terra, as autonomous death-seekers. System and from there to deploy to Signus
the bulk of the Illro Legion massed in a Prime to crush a major recidivist uprising.
single fleet about its flagship, the Pride of the ~SPACE W OLVES Several thousand Legionaries never arrived
Emperor, and for many months after Isstvan V there however, some serving as Lamentii
the Legion experienced a traumatic rebirth, The Space Wolves sustained heavy losses honour guardians watching over silent
falling from grace and becoming something in their battles against first the Thousand battlefields wherever the Legion had shed
other than it had been in the pursuit of its Sons Legion at Prospera and then the Alpha its blood while others simply never reached
newly awakened dark passions. Fulgrim Legion in the aftermath ofthat operation, Nartaba, their vessels cast far and wide
would at length regain control over his but remained a potent force largely held upon the tides of the Warp when the
wayward sons and lead them in a quest that in reserve to defend Terra for much of the Ruinstorm struck.
would see him attain a new and horrific early to middle period of the Horus Heresy.
mode of existence. The bulk of the remainder Earlier however Leman Russ had, for his It was only later that news of their survival
of the Emperor's Children had been ordered own reasons, despatched numerous small began to filter out and then only very slowly
detachments to keep watch on other Legions, thanks to the Ruinstorm. For a period of
and of these not all are accounted for and
some are likely to have acted either alone or

almost five years, many of those lost and alongside the Sons of Horus, and as such their fell wisdom in matters of the Abyss ''
scattered Blood Angels forces who survived most of the Legion remained close to and as such, they also had a presence in the
their mis-jumps to Nartaba had every reason and directly under the command oftheir Traitor forces assigned to hunt down and
to believe themselves orphans. Primarch. The Legion came into frequent eradicate Loyalist Shattered Legions. Such
conflict with various elements of the forces often took the form of a Word Bearers
tIRON HANDS Shattered Legions, in particular those of Chaplain or Diabolist, attended by a number
Shadrak Meduson whose forces operated of Legion squads, who would serve alongside
The most numerous of the Legions that were deep behind Traitor lines in an effort to other Traitor Legion forces, support their
betrayed at Isstvan V, the Iron Hands were disrupt their control of the Warmaster's operations and advise them in matters of
also the most affected for they lost their dark empire. Some accounts describe Death esoteric lore.
Primarch on the black sands of the Urgall Guard Legion units detached from the
Depression and with him all that made main force with the aim of enacting terrible ~SALAMANDERS
them the 'Iron Tenth'. The Legion fractured atrocities upon seemingly innocent target
into factions and many coalesced, along worlds in order to draw attacks by Loyalist The Salamanders suffered the most
with elements of other Legions, to form elements operating far behind the main grievously of the three Legions betrayed at
autonomous warfleets prosecuting their own lines, unprecedented levels of destruction Isstvan V, and for several years had every
wars against the Traitors. Many served in being unleashed simply to engage these reason to believe their Primarch was dead
the Shattered Legions of Shadrak Meduson, comparatively small, yet highly alongside that of the Iron Hands. Many of
some under Autek Morand others still disruptive forces. those who could fight clear of Isstvan V made
pursued their own campaigns of redemption their way back to Nocturne, while many
at such 'places of vengeance' as Gagia, --¢--THOUSAND SONS others threw in their lot with the Iron Hands
Sacrissan and Agromis, serving bloody justice and Raven Guard, and fought on in these
upon their erstwhile brothers. Throughout this period, the majority of mixed units for much of the Horus Heresy.
the Thousand Sons Legion was lost to the The fate of the Salamanders Primarch would
0W oRLD EATERS galaxy and their fate would not be known only be revealed much later and it would be
until sometime later. Nevertheless, rumours many generations before they were able to
The bulk of the World Eaters were fully lingered of smaller groups fighting across the mount conventional operations again.
committed to the Shadow Crusade far to the Imperium at locations as far-flung as Prism,
galactic east, yet the Legion was in possession Chbal, Logan's World and Yamnan, seemingly RAVEN GuARD •
of a number of fief worlds, not least among on both sides of the Loyalist/ Traitor divide Having survived the horrors of the Urgall
them the muster world on which Angron and frequently in the company of other Depression, the Primarch Corax began a
had assumed command of his Legion-Bodt. orphaned forces , including Blackshields program of rapid-induction of new recruits
Many were used as rapid induction and elements. None of these rumours have been, into his 'Raptor' companies in order to swiftly
indoctrination centres in order to fuel the nor in all likelihood can ever be confirmed. bolster his Legion's numbers, although
Legion's ceaseless hunger for new recruits. many of these proved unstable.The bulk of
It was Loyalist Shattered Legion forces that <f>SoNs oFH oRus the Legion then undertook a campaign to
first encountered these centres, and a long liberate worlds whose leaders had declared
shadow war was waged for control of them, The Legion of the Warmaster himself was for the Warmaster, but it is suspected that
the World Eaters leading forces of hideous, the main army of conquest throughout the several dozen smaller autonomous groups
rapid-grown inductii to hunt down and Traitor advance on Terra, but smaller forces remained active in the darkness, perhaps
slaughter their troublesome foe. were detached, often alongside elements following the 'nomad predation' mode
of the Emperor's Children, to hunt down of warfare.
uULTRAMARINES those broken and scattered Loyalists who
had escaped Isstvan V. Later on, the Legion ALPHA LEGION
The bulk of the Ultramarines Legion had would become the main target for numerous
mustered at Calth and for most of 007. Loyalist Shattered Legion attacks. It fell to The activities of the Alpha Legion
M31 and oo8.M31 were engaged in the Tybalt Marr, a captain of the Sons of Horus, throughout much of the Age of Darkness are
bitter war to repulse the so-called Shadow to combat these attacks and it was he who shrouded in mystery; though the Legion's
Crusade of the Primarchs Angron and first perceived that they were not random activities and operations may not always
Lorgar. Nevertheless, Legion detachments assaults but each part of an impossibly have been hidden, their objectives and
were stationed elsewhere, on lynchpin complex strategy to bleed the Warmaster's aims certainly were. After Chondax, certain
worlds such as Molech and serving in the Legion to a husk before it could reach its elements of the Alpha Legion appear to have
Conquestor fleets of Rogue Trader Militants. ultimate target- Terra. been tasked with hunting down Loyalist
There are likely to have been Ultramarines Shattered Legions, a task they proved
units that had not arrived at Calth when the w ORD BEARERS exceptionally adept at. Unlike Emperor's
Word Bearers' betrayal struck, and such units The bulk of the XVII'hLegion was engaged children hunter-killer forces tasked with
are likely to have operated as independent, alongside the World Eaters in the Shadow such missions,Alpha Legion hunters
autonomous forces until they re-established Crusade against the Five Hundred Worlds engaged in subtle and far-reaching espionage,
contact with their chain of command. ofUltramar, until their assault was cast back sowing disinformation and confusion among
in late oo8.M31. Numerous Word Bearers the Loyalists and in so doing significantly
nDEATH GuARD detachments served alongside other Traitor furthering the Traitor cause.
Legions however, often in order to impart
The bulk of the Death Guard Legion was
accompanying the main Traitor advance

RAVEN GuARD APoTHECARY

APOTHECARY KAYLAR NoRN

SHATTERED LEGION ArrAcK CELL 'Pu.rroNIAN SHoRE'

BATTLE OF AluuSAK

Apothecary Norn was once a member of the

4'h Battalion of the Raven Guard s'h Chapter, a

formation almost entirely wiped out by the Gal

'. Vorbak of the Word Bearers Legion at the Isstvan
V Dropsite Massacre. Norn was one of only a

few dozen Legionaries of his battalion to escape

the Urgall Depression that day, being evacuated

on board a massively over-loaded Thunderhawk

of the Iron Hands Legion to the xrn Legion

warship, the Ion-side. Norn would later represent

the Apothecarion of his Legion when scattered

elements of the Raven Guard, Iron Hands

and Salamanders gathered at Aeteria, and he

witnessed the death of the Iron Hands flagship,

the Crown of Flame, at Oqueth Minor at the hands

ofTybalt Marr's hunter-killer force of Sons of

Horus and Emperor's Children, swearing that day

to follow Shadrak Meduson into the very pits of

hell in order to bring the Traitors to justice.

Heraldry ofthe Apothecarion
Norn is depicted here bearing the full range of
specialist Apothecary's equipment, as he appeared
at the outset of the Battle ofArrisak, where he
served as the most senior Apothecary on board
the Raven Guard rapid strike cruiser, the Plutonian
Shore, the red stripe on his Mark VI battle helm
distinguishing him as a senior specialist. His
skills were to be put to the most arduous of tests
during that battle, when twenty entire decks of
the Plutonian Shore were caught in a ravening
plasma fire which consumed 300 Legionaries of

.. . four different Legions, and hideously wounded
soo more.

Raven Guard Legion Armourial Legion Apothecarion, Common Icon

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?"'t;;;_,..ft~ ufq{~'"";HI )t!¥1dlHUl .,UJ

!~IRoN WARRIORS HEAVY SuPPORT LEGIONARY .
LEGIONARY KRovoRN

BATilE GRouP 'KuRGHAN'

ScouRING oF THE WHEEL OF FIRE

Legionary Krovorn was once a member of the 14'h

Grand Company of the Legiones Astartes Iron

Warriors. Having been wounded almost unto

death at the Siege of the Schadenhold however,

he was removed from the line as punishment and

reassigned to a hunter-slayer force tasked with

scouring the Wheel of Fire region of Loyalists

thought to have fled there in the aftermath of

Traitor ambushes along the coreward edge of the

Hangman's Void. The Iron Warriors Primarch had

little concern whether or not the force returned,

and as a consequence it was constituted in a very

similar manner to the Loyalists it was to pursue,

acting in effect as a Traitor Shattered Legion.

Scars of Battle •~
Legionary Krovorn is depicted here as he
deployed to the hunter-killer operation, still >
clad in the Mark III Legiones Astartes battle
plate which, with deliberate symbolic intent,
still bore the damage sustained at the fall of the
Schadenhold. Of note are the jagged molecular
bonding studs embedded in the right shoulder
pauldron-the application of such ad-hoc armour
reinforcement became so prevalent on both sides
of the civil war that it was officially integrated
into the specifications of Mark Vand Mark VI
Legiones Astartes power armour and informally
retrofitted to many individual suits.

Variant Close Combat Modified Pauldron Iron Warriors Legion Armourial

with Olympia Device

}

"'4;;;;:;h- r»:;;;;, ~'""'""'1""'2<oc;.3'::U ~t:;;:;. 6r«i-- ...z"'G';ifi:<l-,too~u~.c. ;;_;t=e"'..e:~·"'~~ ;t+W.?UM;;;;:;U .~ W-:·'"""3!'7'"'~2<:c;;;_'i;.u""'""e;;;;7m.,--.....-,% ~·;r;;._,.."u"-

LEGIONARY NARVIK DRE'HAAN

BAAL AuxrLLIARY DEFENCE FoRcE,

l'H PROVISIONAL BATIALION,

UNDER THE CoMMAND OF CAPTAIN KAR'roR
Legionary Dre'Haan was one of three members
of his cadre to escape the massacre at Isstvan V,
managing to fight through the press ofTraitors

' ' and secure one of the few orbital transports to

survive the firestorm in the skies of that dead
world. The battered squadron ofImperial Army
cruisers that carried Dre'Haan and the scattered
remnants of his brethren arrived at Baal months
after that fateful battle.

The Blood Angels, much reduced in number
with the departure of Sanguinius and the bulk
of the Legion, were quick to press these ragged
stragglers into service against any Traitor
assault on Baal. In total the Seneschal of Baal
commissioned eight provisional battalions, a force
of almost 8,ooo Legiones Astartes warriors, for

the defence of Baal. The 7'h Battalion, of which

Legionary Dre'Haan was a member, was typical of
these formations, consisting of a mixed company
of Salamanders and Iron Hands cataphractii, a
line company of Salamanders infantry, a demi-
company of Raven Guard reconnaissance units
and a single company of Blood Angels assigned
as custodians.

Pictured here prior to one of several Traitor

probing assaults on Baal's defensive fortifications,

Legionary Dre'Haan bears the ornate heraldry

typical of his Legion, painstakingly repaired

and restored after the damage inflicted on his

.~ battle plate on the killing fields of Isstvan V The
Nocturnean symbols on his greaves mark his
' !'
expertise in both the forge and on the battlefield,
\

while the chest ornamentation marks his prowess

as a hunter of the fiery drakes that make their

home in Nocturne's many volcanic mountains.

Nocturnean Runic Cadre Symbols,
as used during the fighting on Isstvan V

SALAMANDERS TAcTICAL SuPPORT LEGIONARY .'

LEGIONARY DHA'LOK '.
SHATIERED LEGION ArrAcK CELL 'H Esroo'
AssAULT oN D wELL

Legionary Dha'lok was once a member of a
Tactical Support Squad belonging to the 17'h Line
Company, most of whom were slain by the Traitor
Alpha Legion at the Isstvan V Dropsite Massacre.
Dha'lok was one of only a score of warriors from
his company to escape the massacre; having been
rendered unconscious by the blast of a Traitor
Vindicator, he awoke in the bay of a Salamanders
Storm Eagle in time to take part in the capturing
of the Sons of Horus warship, the Grey Talon.
Rescuing scores of Loyalists before being forced
to break orbit, the boarders fled into the Warp,
though the battle to root out every last Traitor
onboard would grind on for many weeks. At
length the vessel, renamed Hesiod in honour of
one of Nocturne's great cities, would join the
fleet of Shadrak Meduson and take its place in his
vengeance-fuelled Shattered Legions.

Shattered Legions Wargear
Dha'lok maintained his role as a member of a
Tactical Support Squad, and although his favoured
weapon was the phaestos pattern flamer he had
carried into the breach at the Urgall Depression,
he was also adept in the use of melta and volkite
weaponry. Dha'lok is depicted here clad in a
hybrid suit of Legiones Astartes battle plate
later codified as Mark V power armour. Dha'lok
retained the helm and pauldrons of the Mark III
armour he had worn at Isstvan V, marking the suit
as a non-production class of Mark V

.t

Support Squad Designation Icon Variant •~

Salamanders Legion Armourial, Standard Usage ~

£

•~

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It IRON HANDS TACTICAL LEGIONARY

LEGIONARY M oRKARcH
SHATTERED LEGIONArrACK CELL
(FoRMERLY OF CLAN VURGAAN)
CAVOR SARTA INCURSION
Morkarch was a survivor of the Dropsite
Massacre, one of the few of Clan Vurgaan
to escape the Urgall Depression after being
outflanked by World Eaters and Death Guard
units. Morkarch linked up with a band of Raven
Guard survivors and was evacuated to orbit on
a XIX'h Legion Stormbird and carried from the
Isstvan System on the Iron Hands strike cruiser,

the Sisypheum.

In the months after the flight from Isstvan,
Morkarch fought in a mixed force of survivor
Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders,
each element united in bitter purpose as they
ranged the southern marches of the Segmentum
Obscurus hunting for Traitor pathfinder vessels
scouting ahead of the Warmaster's advance on
Terra. At length, the warriors of the Sisypheum
established contact with other groups of the so-
called Shattered Legions and coordinated their
efforts with them in a campaign of vengeance that
spanned half of the galaxy.

Battle Scars
Morkarch is depicted as he deployed to his attack
cell's operation on the Mechanicum fie£ Cavor
Sarta, where he was slain by a previously unseen
machine abomination wrought in the captured
forge-fanes by Traitor Mechanicum. Morkarch
retained the Mark III power armour he had worn
at Isstvan V. The destroyed left arm was replaced

. by elements of Mark IV power armour, a feat
) that only Iron Hands Techmarines could achieve
given the underlying incompatibilities between
these two marks.

Iron Hands Legion Icon, Mid-Crusade Provenance Mechanicum forge-issue ident markings

•,~

IRoN WARRIORS CoNTEMPTOR DREADNOUGHT

ANCIENT KHRAGAN, 'KrNG-KrLLER1
U NIDENTIFIED I RON W ARRJORS ELEMENT, LOYALIST SHAITERED LEGIONS FORCE

CONSfANTINIUM I NCURSION

Ancient Khragan was once a member of the 14'h Grand Company of the IV'hLegion under Warsmith Dantioch. The 14th was heavily defeated in
battle against a massive Hrud migration, and when Dantioch blamed the migration on the actions of other Iron Warriors units in a neighbouring
war zone, he and many of the survivors were censured by their Primarch. Khragan was amongst those assumed to have been slain in that battle,
and so his appearance, along with several dozen other Iron Warriors also thought fallen, in a Shattered Legions attack force at Constantinium is a

mystery. It was by Khragan's hand that the Traitor Magister-Militaris of Constantinium was slain, earning him the epithet 'King-Killer'.
Ancient Khragan's Contemptor Dreadnought bears the hallmarks of the IV'hLegion's forge, its main body wrought according to the brutalist
sensibilities of the Iron Warriors, including additional armour plating and reinforcing bonding studs. The Dreadnought is equipped with the
multi-melta that Khragan used to burn through the Magister-Militaris' twenty metre-high, two metres-thick throne room doors, and the power

claw which he used to choke the life from the Traitor leader at the climax of the Constantinium Incursion.



568oo6.M3I: The lsstvan V ravaged and the involvement of the Ruinous three Forge Worlds ofThramas, thereby
Dropsite Massacre Powers in aid of the Traitor cause is first denying the Loyalists a major source of
With Terra warned of the Warmaster's widely manifest in open war, transfiguring war machines and materiel in the eastern
treachery at Isstvan III, eight entire Legions both of the Traitor Legions involved. Imperium. The murderous Night Lords
are ordered by Terra to crush the Traitors' succeed in destroying two of the region's
rebellion, but unbeknownst to the rest, 007-009.M3 I: The Manachean War Forge Worlds and wounding the third
Horus has already turned three of them · and the Dark Compliances grievously before going on to undertake a
and ensured the fourth is delayed. The first campaign of terror and bloodshed that leaves
wave makes planetfall but is betrayed by His treachery revealed at last, the Warmaster a trail of murdered worlds in the Night
the second wave, and in the bloodiest three begins his relentless advance on Terra, Haunter's wake.
·hours of war ever fo.ught by the Legiones forcing the Dark Compliance of countless
Astartes, three Legions are almost entirely regions across the northern Imperium to 007-0I7.M3I: The Underworld War
wiped out, one Primarch slain and two provide his forces with a resource base to Its surface ravaged by the slow death of the
others lost. fight what will now become a protracted Veridia star, the Battle for Calth between
and relentless war. Foremost among his trapped forces of those Ultramarines and
oo6.M3I: The First Battle of Paramar targets are the Manachean Commonwealth, Word Bearers still locked in a death-struggle
Alpha Legion forces allied with the Traitor the Coronid Deeps and their surrounding descends into the extensive arcologies.
Mechanicum ofTaghmata Satarael and regions, where a particularly savage campaign The Underworld War grinds on for ten
the Titans of the Legio Fureans mount a is conducted by the Sons of Horus and Death years before the last of the Traitors is finally
surprise attack on the strategically vital Guard which brings the economically vital hunted down and slain.
lynchpin system ofParamar before their true worlds of the Manachean Commonwealth to
allegiance becomes known to the defenders. fuel the Traitors' cause. This wider campaign oo8.M3 I: Blood among the Pale Stars
Paramar is a vital stepping stone to Terra, also places the fleet-anchorage of Port Maw A previously unidentified Blackshields
the location of a vast arms cache of the under the Warmaster's talon and sees the group of unknown provenance, calling
Great Crusade and a vital communications stubbornly Loyalist Forge Worlds of Lucius itself the Dark Brotherhood, carves out
hub. The Pharaeon ofParamar, its primary and Mezoa isolated and besieged, while the its own corsair empire on the edge of the
void station, is quickly taken, but a full Traitor-aligned Forge World of Cyclothrathe Pale Stars and begins a long war against an
planetary assault of Paramar V becomes begins to carve out its own pocket empire in Alpha Legion hunter-killer force tasked
necessary as Loyalist Mechanicum and the region. with crushing resistance to the Warmaster's
Legio Gryphonicus Titan forces, as well as Dark Compliance. This is but one of the
the unexpected intervention of a Loyalist 007.M3I: The Wolf and the Khan largest of an unknown number of 'splinter'
cadre of the Iron Warriors Legion, offers The White Scars learn of the Warmaster's Legiones Astartes reaver forces recorded in
the invaders strong resistance. The valiant heresy when they establish contact with the frontiers and war zones of the embattled
defence however is overwhelmed and Leman Russ in the aftermath of the Space Imperium during what becomes known as
Paramar falls to the Traitors, cutting off Wolves' destruction ofProspero. Faced with the Age of Darkness. While some such forces
much of the most stable transit routes to the the dilemma of aiding the weakened Space retain the livery of their Legions, but seem
northern Imperium. Wolves against a powerful force ofAlpha to operate without any direct connection to
Legion attackers, or returning to Terra as the chain of command of the L~yalists or
007.M3I: The Phall Engagement ordered by Rogal Dorn, Jaghatai Khan, the Traitors, other 'Blackshields' abandon
Having been cast far off course and stymied Primarch of the White Scars, chooses the their livery, bear false colours or invent new
by warp storms enroute to Issrvan V by higher duty and ultimately returns to Terra. liveries and identities of their own, some
the machinations of the Warmaster's dark operating as wanton marauders, others as
allies, the Imperial Fists are becalmed for 007.M3I: The Calth Conjunction nomadic survivors in hiding, while others
long months at the Phall System. Only by Mustering at Calth on orders issued by the carve out petty empires in a war-torn galaxy
maintaining a constant state of readiness Warmaster before Isstvan, the Ultramarines or fight their own private wars of vengeance.
and the genius of their commander is the and Word Bearers prepare for a campaign
fleet saved from utter destruction when the against the Orks of the Ghaslakh xeno- oo8.M3 I: The Destruction of Bodt
Traitor Iron Warriors attack. At the height of hold. The Ultramarines are unaware of the The World Eaters fief world and Legiones
the engagement, a message from Terra finally Word Bearers' true allegiance and utterly Astartes training ground on Bodt is attacked
breaks through the turbulent Warp, the unprepared for betrayal, and suffer horrific by Autek Mor of the Iron Hands and an
Primarch of the Imperial Fists ordering his losses. The Traitors' real objective is the allied independent Loyalist force. After a
fleet to return to Terra at once. murder of the Veridia star as an offering savage battle, Moris believed to have entered
to the Ruinous Powers that would bring the subterranean macro-vaults of the city of
007-008.M3I: The Shadow Crusade about the Ruinstorm, a warp tempest so Tredecimmia before scouring every trace of
The Word Bearers and World Eaters invade large, it would sever the galaxy in half life from the surface. Bodt's supply line of
the Five Hundred Worlds ofUltramar with and render all long-range Warp travel initiate recruits to the World Eaters Legion is
the aim of utterly destroying the domain of unpredictably dangerous, and trans-luminal permanently severed.
the Ultramarines and drawing Loyalist forces communication all but impossible. The Age
away from the Warmaster's advance on Terra. of Darkness begins. oo8.M3I: The Burning Grave of
During the conflict, which centres around Ohmn-Mat
the perfidious attack of the Word Bearers 007-009.M3I: The Thramas Crusade The Forge World ofOhmn-Mat in the
at the Calth Muster, scores of worlds are Horus orders the Traitor Primarch Konrad Ultima Segmentum falls into a state of civil
Curze of the Night Lords to neutralise the

war as its Synod of Magos are split in their launching three successive counter-assaults 009.M31: The Incident at Dwell
support for Loyalist and Traitor causes, in order to recapture the orbital hive stations' Having escaped death at Arissak, one of
drawing in contingents of the Sons of Horus vital altitudinal control grid, but each fails Shadrak Meduson's surviving Shattered
Dark Compliance forces and Iron Hands to achieve its goals and countless thousands Legion attack cells launches a daring
lsstvan survivors as the conflict escalates. of Loyalist lives are lost. The famed Space assassination attempt on Warmaster Horus at
In circumstances which remain unknown, Wolves grand cruiser, Helicon Spear, is Dwell. With his brother-Primarchs Fulgrim
the planet's atmosphere is somehow ignited, captured and becomes a prize of the and Mortarion at his side, Horus prevails, but
shrouding the world in fire. Secondary Iron Warriors Legion during the last, having had the true threat revealed to him
atomantic explosions ravage the surface as disastrous attempt. grants Tybalt Marr permission to take any
forge-fanes across the world succumb and action he deems appropriate to eradicate the
fuel the flames. Ohmn-Mat is destroyed and 009.M3 I: The Tsagualsa Incident so-called 'Shattered Legions'.
its fires still rage till the present. Forces of the Dark Angels Legion ambush
the Night Lords at Tsagualsa, inflicting 009.M3I: The Battle ofMolech
oo8.M3 I: Fall of Baztel III severe losses. Lion El'Jonson of the Dark Horus leads his Legion in the invasion of the
Space Wolves strike forces eradicate the Angels and the Night Haunter clash in direct fortress world ofMolech, where the Knight
entire 39'h Millennia! of the Emperor's contest of arms after a failed parley, and both House Devine turns against the Imperium
Children during the storming of the are so grievously wounded that their warriors and joins the invading force, betraying the
Vykstag Winter Palace as part of the Baztel are forced to drag them clear of each other defenders to their deaths. A force of the elite
Ill campaign for control of the Brozyn- before the matter can be settled. Knights-Errant, a secretly founded Order of
Primaris sector of the Segmentum Obscuras. Loyalist agents, are dispatched to Molech by
Leaderless, the Baztel secessionist rebellion 009.M3I: Xana Incursion Malcador the Sigillite to prepare the way for
succumbs to infighting and ultimately Intelligence reaches Terra that the renegade a direct assault by the Space Wolves against
genocidal civil war. While exiting the sector, Forge World ofXana on the western fringe the Warmaster's flagship. Having recently
elements of the Space Wolves strike force of the Imperium has reached an accord with won the full blessings of the Ruinous Powers,
clashes inconclusively with an unknown and the Traitor forces to supply the Warmaster's Horus is undefeatable and only a handful of
elusive Legiones Astartes force which bears armies with its vast output of arms and Knights-Errant escape to bring news of the
no recognisable heraldry. materiel. The bargain is to be sealed with his redoubled strength back to Terra.
the delivery by Xana of a number of newly
oo8.M3I: The Blight oflsessos created powerful Ordinatus class weapons 009.M3I: The Sangraal Campaign and
A series of void raids on the outskirts of the undergoing final field tests. In what is the Salvation Run
Isessos system in the Segmentum Pacificus effectively a suicide mission, a handpicked A hand-picked Imperial Fists assault force
by an Alpha Legion strike group leads to force ofLegiones Astartes, including despatched from Terra launches a daring raid
severe casualties, which are returned to the many Blackshields - in this case Space to capture the antidote to a slow-burning
colony habitats of the system's three agri- Marines who have chosen to remain loyal Exterminatus class viral weapon deployed
worlds for treatment. Several of the casualties despite their parent Legion's treachery- is against the Loyalist hold fast of Gramercie
are later found to have been infected with an despatched under great secrecy to destroy on the contested hive world of Herkaliaum.
unknown algal strain, harmless to humans the war machines and drive a wedge between After recovering the antidote stocks from
but lethal to plant life. Within the year, the Xana and the Traitors. the Traitor Mechanicum-Biologis gene-labs,
system's vast macro-output saturation fields the heavily outnumbered Imperial Fists
have been reduced to poisonous slime, 009-053.M31: The Carnage ofMorox then fight their way through massed Traitor
resulting in a sector-wide famine which In one of the largest confrontations of forces, running a deadly gauntlet through
causes the death of an estimated ninety Loyalist- and Traitor-aligned auxilia and the underhives of Herkaliaum to deliver the
billion Imperial citizens and the complete militia forces, in excess of three billion antidote to Loyalist medicae detachments,
political destabilisation of the region. battlefield fatalities are recorded as the death thus saving the population of the Gramercie
toll from a grinding war of attrition on the sub-hive. Viral overspill ravages the Traitor
oo8.M3I: The Dagonet Incident sector-capital world of Morox Excellus. The forces now unable to contain or cure the
The hidden clade-masters ofTerra dispatch Morox sector's civil war takes place in almost contagion in their own ranks, and within
their most potent assassins to the recently total isolation owing to turbulent warp weeks, Herkaliaum is liberated. The legend
fallen world of Dagonet in an attempt storm activity and lack of any real strategic of the 'Salvation Run' becomes a rallying cry
to strike down the Warmaster. They are significance to either side of the wider for Loyalist support in the sector, turning
unsuccessful, but from their failure Terra conflict, and is noted for the exponentially the Sangraal Campaign in the Loyalists'
learns much of the new and dreadful powers increasing levels of atrocity and rapid favour and cementing their hold on the
wielded by its foe . technological regression of the conflict. Segmentum Solar.

oo8-oo9.M3I: The Vannaheim Space Drop 009.M31: The Battle ofArissak 009.M3I: The Establishment of the
The Iron Warriors launch a daring Having pursued the numerous attack Imperium Secundus
void assault against the orbital hives of cells made up of Iron Hands, Salamanders With the Imperium severed in two halves,
Vannaheim , capturing the vital facilities and Raven Guard survivors ofisstvan V, isolated and ignorant of each other as a
after ten days of brutal fighting. A Loyalist Captain Tybalt Marr of the Sons of Horus result of the raging tumult of the Ruinstorm,
force in the nearby Segmentum Tempestus, finally brings them to battle, destroying the the light of the Astronomican is no longer
including isolated elements of the Space massed fleet ofShadrak Meduson's so-called visible from Ultramar and no word of the
Wolves Legion, is drawn into the conflict, 'Shattered Legion' force at Arissak. Emperor has been heard for several years.

JO

Guilliman declares the foundation of the of the Veiled Region on the southern galactic on.M31: The Malagant Conflict
'Imperium Secundus' as a means of continuing fringe. The survivors on board, comprising a With the surviving Loyalist enclaves
the fight against the Traitors and securing mixture of Loyalist Legions, have spent the apparently crippled by the Warmaster's
the Emperor's great work. When the Blood time in self-imposed suspended animation onslaught, those Death Guard elements
Angels arrive at Ultramar having escaped and awake to find themselves utterly cut assigned to the garrison of Barbarus
Signus, Guilliman pronounces Sanguinius offfrom information or support. Fired on spearhead an assault into the southern
as the rightful heir to the Emperor. [Extract by Imperial patrol vessels whose captains reaches of the Imperium. The grim warriors
sanctioned for data purge] have sided with the Traitors, this 'Shattered ofBarbarus made the vast industrial hives
Legion' force boards the patrol vessels and of Malagant their prime target, a world
oxo-oxs.M31: The Solar War conquers their attackers. Effecting repairs made valuable for the strategic worth of its
The Battle for the Sol System, long from the captured ships, they begin a further manufactoria, and to crush the defiance of
threatened, begins as infiltration forces two-year odyssey of battle to return them the surrounding sectors, many of whom
and probing raids from without, and to the Segmentum Solar and finally Terra, looked to the determined Loyalist leaders
Mechanicum attacks and attempted break- where they will ultimately fight in the void ofMalagant for leadership. Yet where
outs from besieged Traitor Mars test the battles against the Traitor onslaught in the the Death Guard had expected to crush
defences of the Throneworld of humanity. closing days of the war. the Malagantine auxilia in short order,
Conflict within the system is not concluded they found themselves mired in cunning
until the eventual lifting of the Siege of oxo-o12.M31: The Death ofTallarn ambushes and punishing counter-attacks led
Terra. {See Extrapolation Addenda CVX- Tallarn, an Imperial muster world of almost by Legiones Astartes bearing the sable mark
CVXVIII -Classified Amaranth-Gold) unparalleled size and importance, comes of the Raven Guard. Lacking the numbers
under direct attack by the Iron Warriors to meet the Traitors head-on, the sons of
010.M3 1: The Scouring of Gilden's Star Legion. Here the Traitors unleash a virus Corax plied their deadly skills as skirmishers
Scattered elements of the Blood Angels bombardment that renders the surface of the and assassins upon their erstwhile brothers;
Legion fight a long and bloody campaign verdant world ofTallarn to poisoned slime trapping them on a world they could not
against Word Bearers forces near the galactic and the air unbreathable. The invasion that afford to abandon, battling a foe they could
core on the borders of Imperium Secundus follows develops into the largest armoured not pin down and crush. For three years,
that culminates in the near-total destruction battle of the Imperium's history, a war little more than a company of Raven Guard
of both armies. During the campaign, the fought under the most hellish conditions occupied an augmented chapter of Barbarus'
Blood Angels prove merciless in scouring imaginable. As the war grinds on, it draws in finest, until 014.M31 when the Death Guard
worlds which have embraced the daemonic Loyalist and Traitor forces from hundreds retreated in the face of approaching Loyalist
teaching of the 'dark apostles' of the Word of worlds across the entire Segmentum reinforcements from Inwit.
Bearers, putting all seven colonised worlds of Tempestus before its cataclysmic conclusion.
Gilden's Star to the sword in one particularly 013.M31: A Return To Honour
notable instance. oro.M31 The Dispute of Iron Begins Arcaes Odenathus, a Captain-praetor of
Across border sectors of the Segmentum the Ultramarines ro'h Chapter, rallies the
010.M31: The Battle ofNyrcon Tempestus and Segmentum Pacificus are scattered survivors of his own brethren
Under the direction of Rogal Dorn, a located numerous lesser Forge Worlds and those other Loyalists fighting across
Loyalist battlegroup led by elements of the known collectively as the Belt of Iron. Since the Dominion of Storms in the galactic
Salamanders Legion, and supported by thirty the sundering of the Imperium, many of north-east and leads them to Honourum.
regiments of the Imperialis Auxilia and a their number have declared for the Traitor Unexpected and unlooked for, this Loyalist
strike force of Legio Astorum Titans, engage cause at the engineering of the Fabricator- assault strikes the Word Bearers garrison
an Emperor's Children millennia! assigned general of Mars, while others have remained like a thunderbolt. Three weeks of desperate
to garrison the Beta-Garmon System on loyal to Terra or in some cases sought to fighting ensues, and as all the Word
the edge of the Segmentum Solar. The remain alooffrom the conflict as much as Bearers' urgent requests for reinforcements
Emperor's Children contingent is surprised possible. Strife and tentative conflict between are ignored by the Warmaster, focussed
at Nyrcon City on Beta-Garmon II and after these once-aligned worlds erupts finally into now on his push toward Terra, the sons
a hard-fought battle, the Emperor's Children full scale war in oro.M31, which pitches the of Lorgar resort to the most heinous of
forces along with their Legio Mortis allies at Mars-aligned Forge Worlds of Incunabula, tactics. Daemons, warp-tainted infiltrators
Beta- Garmon III are driven out, placing the Urdesh, Valia-Maximal and Kalibrax against and terrors of the wars of Old Night are
system into Loyalist hands and triggering the forces of Loyalist Forge Worlds Graia, unleashed, with both sides driven on past
within the year the first of an escalating Arl'yeth and Atar-Median, while Arachnis mortal endurance by hatred. When the last
series ofTraitor counter-attacks with the goal and Jerulas Station both fall into the anarchy Traitor finally fell, there was nothing left of
of retaking Beta-Garmon as a stepping stone of civil war. The resulting conflict, that later the grand cities of Honourum but blasted
for an eventual attack on Terra. Ultimately, becomes known as the Dispute of Iron, sees ruins; ruins whose very substance was so
these will only serve as a prelude to the far the forge lords, their armies and allied Titan contaminated by the fel powers and terrible
greater conflict in the system to come. Legions and Knight Households turn on weapons unleashed that they would blight
each other in protracted warfare, with scores Honourum longer than the memory of the
010-12.M3I: Fate of the Sabalis Liberatus of human-inhabited worlds in the region wars which spawned them.
The Saba lis Libcratus, a Raven Guard Legion suffering as they become the battlegrounds
battlecruiser lost in the Warp since escaping upon which they fight. ++End Readout Precis++ 23,754
the void battle over Isstvan V, finally breaks additional entries ofthis document able
into realspace near Galaspar on the borders to view at current clearance status++

Jl



AFLAWED HEART errant Blood Angels whose craft had Victory for the Loyalists at Fortress Stranivar
evaded the pursuing forces of Horus, held was but a temporary reprieve, with the planet
The storm of war came unbidden and the world, refusing to retreat in the face falling to a renewed assault by the Sons of
unexpected to the northern expanses of of overwhelming assault having sworn Horus Legion less than a year later, but its
the Imperium during the opening ofthe inviolable oaths to secure it in the Emperor's consequences would yet haunt the Traitors.
seventh year of the 31" Millennium, at the name. It fell to the amassed might of the Iron For in the disuniry of the vast host lay the
very outset of the wars that would later be Warriors, Death Guard and Alpha Legion to only hope of victory for the scattered and
known as the Horus Heresy. Spreading from cast down the Loyalists' fortifications and outnumbered forces of the Emperor. Not
the ruined worlds of the Issrvan System like claim the defiant world for the Warmaster, only was it a strategy that was used time and
a task that was to reveal the deeply graven again to blunt the Warmaster's assaults as
1 a dark stain across the face of the Emperor's flaws in Horus' host. news of the Loyalists' few victories spread
throughout the beleaguered Imperium,but
' once-vast realm, the Legions sworn to the Where the Loyalist Legions stood shoulder as each battle was fought, the rifts between
to shoulder as brothers, united by their the Traitor warlords and their followers grew
Traitor Warmaster took system after system, defiance of the Traitor Warmaster, each of ever wider and more volatile.
wielding lies, threats and cruel violence the Legions sworn to Horus fought only
with equal abandon. Even as those who for themselves. Each of the three waged a Devils from the Outer Dark
remained loyal struggled to comprehend the separate campaign, making little attempt to While hope flickered dimly along the front
conflict that had taken form around them, share resources or intelligence, and placing lines of the war for the Imperium, many of
the Traitors secured for themselves a dark the blame for their failures on their rivals. the Emperor's strongest supporters were still
realm in the far galactic north. Yet, even in In particular, the Iron Warriors contingent, uncertain of the events occurring in the far
its birthing throes, Horus' empire showed its the II4'h Grand Battalion, was ill-used by reaches of His wide dominion. On distant
flaws, for those of his brothers he had turned its allies. Time and time again the Alpha Nocturne, where Vulkan had left Nom us
to his cause and named as warlords and Legion companies allowed them to attack Rhy'tan as Keeper of the Legion fortress of
satraps of his new conquests quickly fell to unsupported into the guns of the dug-in Prometheus, there had been no news since
bickering at the slightest setback, ever-keen Loyalists while using the confusion to mount the departure of the Primarch and the bulk of
to place themselves above their brethren. their own spoiling attacks on high prioriry the Legion to Issrvan V almost a full standard
targets, claiming all the glory and ignoring year before. All that had reached the ears of
Of the early failures of Horus' great hosts, the cost in lives paid by Perturabo's sons. the Lord Chaplain were disturbing rumours
one of the most notable is the Siege of During the climactic battle of the campaign, of a dark empire in the galactic north and of
Epsilon-Stranivar IX, known to the armies at the Siege ofVharna where the Traitor host the fall ofPrimarchs, but no hint as to who
of the Great Crusade as Fortress Stranivar, broke on the Loyalists' lines, the II4'h Grand had fallen and who stood victorious.
a conflict that features prominently in Battalion was effectively abandoned by both
several Legions' battle honours. Found at the the Alpha Legion and the Death Guard. Left With only the untested neophyte battalions
very edges of the Coronid Deeps, Fortress to act as a sacrificial rearguard, of the 6,ooo and a few thousand instructors in his
Stranivar had at one point served as a Iron Warriors who took to the field, less than charge, Lord Chaplain Rhy'tan had little
forward staging point for the Great Crusade, a third would leave alive and the highest means to mount a second great expedition
and now stood as the last redoubt for ranked officer who remained to them, Narik to investigate the fate of his lord, for to do
broken Imperial battalions retreating from Dreygur of the Apolakron, swore that one so would leave Nocturne unprotected and
battlegrounds across the galactic north, the day his fallen brothers would be avenged. violate the last orders he had received from
last Loyalist stronghold on Horus' flanks . A Vulkan. Yet such a matter could not be
small Imperial Fists garrison, augmented by simply ignored; without proper intelligence
companies of the Raven Guard, Salamanders, he was at equal risk of failing in his dury as
Iron Hands and even a contingent of Keeper and protector of the Salamanders
Legion's home world.
As the hosts of the Warmaster first marched on the Imperium, they sought to conquer
those regions of the Northern Fringes that sat close by lssrvan, seeking to create a dark Where he could not dispatch a grand fle et
empire from which Horus could fuel the campaign to assault the walls of the Imperial to discover the fate of his lord and brothers,
Palace on Terra itself Absolute control of this area of space was vital to his plans, for Rhy'tan would send a single ship. The
without a stable industrial base and strong lines of supply for his Legions, any campaign protorype assault cruiser Ebon Drake was
intended to seize the vast Imperium of Mankind by force was doomed to failure . By the the first of a new breed of Legiones Astartes
end of the wars to seize those sectors that adjoined lssrvan, there were but three main void craft, designed and constructed by the
holdouts of Loyalist troops: the Forge World of Mezoa, Agathon and those worlds held in peerless artisans of the XVIII'h Legion to
fealry to that ancient realm, and the old Great Crusade way-station of Stranivar. complement the tactical preferences of her
post-human masters, rather than a simple
Both Mezoa and Agathon, although they yet resisted conquest, were wholly surrounded refit of some ancient mark ofbattleship. Lean
and effectively neutralised; Stranivar, however, formed a nexus point of several key stable and deadly, the Ebon Drake would seek out
warp-canals leading throughout the sector and beyond. As long as it remained in Loyalist the truth for Rhy'tan as well as any hastily
hands, it could potentially form a fortified beachhead for any counter-invasion of the assembled battle squadron, and should
Coronid Deeps by forces mustered from further within the Imperium. Thus it was of no his worst fears prove true, would perhaps
surprise that Horus set his generals to the reduction of Stranivar by storm, seeking to gain be better suited.to evade whatever ill had
control of this strategic position for his own assault into the Imperium. befallen Vulkan and his brothers.

4ir.J .J.tlYI'JHe.. •"" t/)...t'<IU ~l(...t,...fllu(:t-1/v' &&;;;;; :?!'"~

Rhy'tan himself could not depart Nocturne, ·~(!:.t
and he had few seasoned warriors to spare, so

instead he assigned from among the ranks of

the Salamanders chaplains an officer of the During the years of the Great Crusade, and indeed for much of the long wars of the l

utmost potential, although perhaps lacking Scouring that were to follow the Horus Heresy, the vast majority of the fleets of the

in the centuries of battlefield knowledge Legiones Astartes were ancient warships that had once served the Terran void navies

possessed by Rhy'tan and some of the older or were the product of the vast shipyards ofJupiter and Neptune. These craft were

veterans. As crew for the Ebon Drake, he undeniably powerful, bearing vast batteries of ancient and terrible weaponry and sheathed

assigned a core of thirty veterans of the in nigh-impregnable armour, but they were ill-suited to the many strategic challenges

Firedrakes, warriors whose steadfast courage faced by the Emperor's elite.

and determination would inspire the raw

recruits who would make up the bulk of The Ebon Drake was the first of a new breed of warship, her plans laid down by Vulkan

the crew. Of those battalions of Neophytes himself in the last years of the Great Crusade. These cruisers were no lumbering

currently in training on Nocturne, Rhy'tan behemoths, but lean hunters created to bring swift death to the foes of Mankind, to blast

selected a full company of those most craft asunder and purge strongholds. Fitted with extensive flight decks built to house the

recently promoted to the station of Legiones newer Thunderhawk gunships as well as the older Stormbird classes of dropcraft, and

Astartes, carefully choosing representatives massive batteries of bombardment cannon, they would allow the Great Crusade to

from amongst all the domains of Nocturne proceed apace.

and those off-world domains of the XVIII'h

Legion, for he believed this mission must However, with the coming of Horus' civil war, such plans fell by the wayside and only a

represent the will and strength of his few prototype craft were ev~r constructed by the various Legions that Vulkan had gifted

entire Legion. his designs to. It was not until 019.M31 that such designs were revisited and modified to

arm and equip the warriors of the Second Founding.

Xiaphas Jurr, taken as part of the XVIII'h

Legion's tithe of the world of Proximal and

now named commander of the Ebon Drake, known to us in detail, from ships' logs or above Sulis, routing the secessionist Solar

took to his mission with all the fervour information recovered from other sources, Auxilia regiment set as sentinels aboard

of his ancient Proximan forebears, that while many remain but partial references it. The vengeful Salamanders crippled the

superstitious breed ofMankind that had once whose full details may never be known. complex gravity engine that held the bastion

dubbed the XVIII'h Legion the 'Devils from transfixed in orbit and left the station to

the Outer Dark'. Seeing in his commission a From what information is available it is descend in fiery destruction upon the golden

task as much a matter of deeply held belief in agreed that the first emergence of the Ebon palace-city of the system lords. When the

his Primarch as one of strategic significance, Drake was at Sulis, where the system lords Ebon Drake withdrew from the system, she

Chaplain-Lieutenant Jurr gave his fledgling had barred entry to all vessels in response left behind a world that could offer no threat

crew no respite, departing the safe enclave to the rumours of war and civil strife, and to the Imperium, little knowing that this

of space around Nocturne immediately and enforced their isolation with a ring of heavily would later see it fall without a struggle into

setting a punishing regime of combat drills fortified gun platforms. Bearing messages the hands of the Warmaster.

to prepare those under his command for of support from Nocturne and its Keeper,

the unknown. For with the rising tumult Chaplain-Lieutenant Jurr approached only After Sulis, the information used to chart

that suffused the a'!theric seas of the Warp, to be met by insult and weapons fire . Sulis the movements of the Ebon Drake becomes

steering a direct course to Isstvan was no longer accepted the Emperor as its more unreliable. Fragmentary log entries

impossible, a feat beyond the talents of their master and neither would it bow to this new recovered from the wreck of the Ebon Drake,

Navigator. Instead they would be forced to Warmaster. Such secessionist sentiment was discovered years later during the Scouring,

travel by a more circuitous route, translating far from uncommon during the chaos of the mention the unexplained disappearance

from the Warp periodically to affirm their Horus Heresy, but Jurr and the Salamanders of three Legiones Astartes crewman at the

bearings and to gather information, and of Nocturne had as yet little information 'Oasis of Nightmares' and a violent encounter

leaving them vulnerable to any as yet on the current state of the galaxy and found with an unknown xenos craft of crystalline

unknown foe they might encounter. such an affront to the spirit of the Great composition that left the Ebon Drake adrift

Crusade unbearable. for several days without power, but provide
few concrete details. Likewise, the annals
THE EMm Vom

Much of the voyage is now lost to us, In a three day battle, the Ebon Drake scoured of the portmaster ofValthrudnir, a newly

unrecorded by the crew of the Ebon Drake the system of its orbital defence platforms, Compliant world near the galactic core,

and impossible to track in the wake of the and harried the wallowing squadrons of mention the sighting of'a craft marked

destruction wrought in the civil war that interdiction barges. The cumbersome with the sigil of a great black dragon crewed by

engulfed the Emperor's domain. However, system defence craft, though heavily void-devils', yet such sightings can rarely be

a comprehensive search of the augur logs armed, could not match the Ebon Drake's directly tied to the Ebon Drake.

of the uncounted millions of navigation speed and proved easy prey for her guns

beacons and astropathic relay stations that and the righteous anger ofthe boarding Of these varied partial accounts, perhaps the

dot the Imperium allows us to trace some parties, led by Chaplain-Lieutenant Jurr. In most interesting is from the chronicles of

of the route of the Ebon Drake, whose long the climactic battle ofthe short and bitter the IV'h Legion, the Iron Warriors. The grand l
journey led her across paths rarely trod by campaign, Jurr and his warriors fought their cruiser Grim Paragon, one of several craft

stellar travellers. Some few encounters are way through the primary orbital bastion left as sentinels over Olympia, was heavily •

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damaged after an encounter with a vessel of Adapted from the ancient Proximan arts of divination and augury, the ritual known
unidentified class bearing the markings of amongst some sects of the Promethean Cult as 'Reading the Dragon-bones' was frowned upon
the Salamanders that approached Olympia by Vulkan himself, though never purged from its doctrines. Involving the inscribing of
seeking word of the battle at Issrvan. questions in archaic Nocturnean upon the bones of a Salamander drake and casting them
into the heart of the forge, the patterns of discolouration etched upon the bones by the
At Anvilus, mighty bastion of the flames would foreshadow their resolution. Known in the ancient Nocturnean dialects of
Mechanicum and foremost ofthe Great the northern polar regions as the Drakken-Asca, the 'Dragon's Ash Ritual', it is a practice that
Crusade's storehouses of arms and armour, skirts the very edges ofimperial doctrine.
they found that the embers of discontent had
burst into open civil war berween factions Xiaphas Jurr was a known practitioner of the art, as were other members of the Igniax, as
of the Machine God's followers. Where the the Salamanders' order of Chaplains was known, and is thought to have relied extensively
Ebon Drake came searching for resupply on the ritual during the Ebon Drake's mission to the Issrvan System. Indeed as that mission
and repairs, they found only strife and war, continued, records from various officers and ship's logs indicate that the Chaplain-
the tech-adepts of that most mighty forge- Lieutenant become more and more obsessed with the Drakken-Asca ritual as well as other
fane having bent all of their arcane skills more obscure Proximan auguries as the ship neared Issrvan. This has been linked in other
to the utter annihilation of their brethren, histories to his origin on Proximal, but is perhaps more telling of the grim despondency
with little care for the fate of unfortunate and malaise that fell upon so many Legionaries in the wake of Horus' betrayal and the
bystanders. For those uninitiated into disappearance of three of the Emperor's once immortal Primarchs.
the mysteries of the Machine Cult, it was
impossible to divine where either side For the Sake of the Dead lost, with no few surrogate tombs under
stood in the wider galactic war, or to easily The next verifiable data on the Ebon Drake construction at Baal in honour of those
places her at Baal, the throneworld of the broken souls surrendered to the ranks of
i. communicate their own affiliation, and Blood Angels. The sons of Sanguinius had the dead.
the Ebon Drake quickly became a target for not been included in the fleet sent to seek
' both factions. redress from Horus after he was declared a Some few of their own brethren the
traitor to the Imperium; in fact the majority company of the Ebon Drakefound within
' of the IX'h Legion had been marshalled and the fortresses of Baal, readying themselves
dispatched to Signus Prime on the far rim of to stand alongside the Blood Angels should
Narrowly avoiding becoming embroiled in the galaxy some years before on the orders Horus dare to strike at Sanguinius' home
the titanic void duels berween seemingly of Horus himself. Their own Primarch , world. Chief among them Praetor-Captain
identical forces ofMechanicum siege- Sanguinius, would himself be counted Kar'Tor, once numbered amongst the
monitors; the vessel was bombarded by vox among the missing until his fate was revealed most valiant of Nocturne's sons and heir-
broadcasts of incoherent machine code, some in the later years of the Horus H eresy. All designate to the Protectorate ofTh emis, City
interrogative missives from interchangeable that remained to greet Xiaphas Jurr on Baal of Warlords, a warrior for whom Xiaphas
steel-faced magos and others insidious code- was a small garrison of the IX'h Legion, under Jurr held an abiding respect. However, the
djinn intended to subvert the systems of the the command of the veteran Legionary horrors of the battle at Issrvan V had left
Ebon Drake, leaving her helpless. Were it not Warden Arkhad. Kar'Tor broken of spirit, and when Chaplain-
for the unique engineering of the prototype Lieutenant Jurr petitioned for able-bodied
vessel, such an assault would surely have The Ebon Drake limped into orbit around Salamanders to join the crew of the Ebon
succeeded; instead it merely served to cause the fortress world of the IX'h Legion, where Drake in her mission, Kar'Tor grew wroth,
confusion aboard the Ebon Drake as several her crew were able to secure space at an forbidding any from joining the ship.
non-essential systems suffered cascade orbital dock for desperately needed repair
failures . Diverting all available power to the and resupply. Playing host to a multitude of Despite Kar'Tor's rash orders and the grim
Ebon Drake's over-sized drive core, battered Imperial companies falling back sense of doom that had enveloped many of
from battlefields along the northern edge of those now preparing to meet their end at
1' Chaplain-Lieutenant Jurr set upon a course the Imperium, Baal did not feel abandoned Baal, thirty-eight Salamanders joined the
as did their own home world of Nocturne, Ebon Drake's crew, a group that had escaped
out-system, evading plasma carronade yet even bustling with activity and a veritable Issrvan V aboard the Thunderhawk Ohidoran.
barrages from the Mechanicum monitors host ofLegiones Astartes from different These warriors of Nocturne brought with
while his warriors fought to cleanse the Legions, it carried the same despondent air. them seventeen battered but unbroken
vessel of the frenzied murder-servitors which Raven Guard, led by a Legionary named
had boarded the Ebon Drake during her Baal granted Xiaphas Jurr his first chance Kirhane whose fresh wounds were evidence
momentary incapacitation. to glean some hint of the tragedy at Issrvan, of the fury he had witnessed at Issrvan, and
but even those few who had survived that a trio of hulking Iron Hands cataphractii, all
By the time the Ebon Drake had reached a battle could offer him little but fragmented sworn to rejoin their own missing lords or
safe distance, where the translation back to and vague recollections. None could speak of die in the attempt.
the dubious safety of warp space could be the final fate of any of the fallen Primarchs,
attempted, she had sustained serious damage and many mourned their gene-fathers as
to her outer hull as well as to numerous

1 internal systems. Worse still, the casualties
sustained in this, the latest of many battles
the ship's company had faced, left them
dangerously short on uninjured warriors.
Without refit and an influx of new fighters ,
the Ebon Drake would have little hope of
completing her mission.

Kar'Tor was not to be the only obstacle to Isstvan System, where the damage sustained Then on the third day, directed by the now I
their quest; Warden Arkhad, the Seneschal of in their passage forced them to make an feverish half-dreams ofXiaphas Jurr who had
Baal, while happy to welcome the Ebon Drake emergency translation at the system's edge. not rested since their departure from Baal, I~
and her company to his world, was less keen the Ebon Drake's sensors detected an anomaly ~·
to see a fully armed Legiones Astartes cruiser Bursting forth from the bowels of the Warp, buried beneath a glass plain that marked the
abandon its defences for what he saw as a the Ebon Drake translated into realspace Traitors' use of atomics to finish the massacre a
suicide mission. Unwilling to acknowledge prepared for battle, all gun batteries armed -an object ofunknown composition and of
the importance ofJurr's mission or the and manned, and every warrior of the significant mass- broadcasting an almost '.
validiry of his orders, it was only the threat Legiones Astartes aboard sworn to death undetectable signal in an exotic wavelength
of the Ebon Drake's bombardment cannon before any surrender to the forces of the known to certain strata of the Salamanders'
turned on his defences that eventually arch-Traitor. Yet, where they had expected to command echelons. Lacking any heavy
persuaded Warden Arkhad to allow them to find the marshalled fleets of the Warmaster machinery suited to delicate excavations,
pass through the orbital defence grid. "For and worlds remade as a monumental and vile the post-human crew of the Ebon Drake tore
the sake of the dead you have damned all those shrine to his treachery, they found only the open the fused ground with their bare hands
who now stand in the Emperor'sname. Do not cold remains of a battle long since fought and combat blades, working without pause
return to Baa!;for you stand no less as traitors and forgotten. and in ominous silence for another day to
than those who now march under Horus' banner," unearth the hidden signal and its origin.
were Arkhad's bitter parting words as the In the gulf of space berween the planets Once uncovered, it took the combined might
Ebon Drake left orbit of Baal. Silent in the face of the Isstvan System floated the hulks of of the three Iron Hands cataphractii to heft it
of Arkhad's denouncement, the crew of the those void craft of Legions, both Loyalist and from the clutches ofisstvan V's hungry maw,
Ebon Drake pondered the truth of his words Traitor, that were too damaged by combat to where it had lain for over a standard year, and
as they translated once more into the Warp, be easily salvaged, and on the .cold surface bring it once more into the light of day.
passing ever closer to Issrvan, to the heart of of Isstvan V were only crude pits filled with
the treachery that had befallen the Imperium the slain, all serviceable wargear long since Though fused by unimaginable heat, scoured
and the final truth of their Primarch's fate. stripped from their bodies. No vast armada and blackened by atomic fire and abandoned
waited on which they could vent their to rot beneath the surface of a dead world,
H E DOES NOT WALK AMONG THE DEAD anger in valiant suicide and no grand palace what they tore from the dark heart ofisstvan
had been raised to mark Horus' dominion V was still unmistakably the sarcophagus of
From the grim fortress of Baal, the Ebon over the world that was now the grave of a Legion Mark IV Dreadnought, all its limbs
Drakepassed through the ever more Primarchs as a target for their wrathful pride. but the stump of its right arm shorn away
turbulent currents of the Warp, directed to To those who have read the histories of the by the violence of its final battle. The ornate
the distant star ofisstvan by her Navigator's Horus Heresy, the actions of Horus amid the heraldry worked into what remained of the
deft hand and unfailing guidance. After fringes of the Imperium, conquering and hull proclaimed the identiry of the machine
leaving Baal, Xiaphas Jurr's journals indicate looting those worlds that remained loyal to to the Salamanders present: Cassian Dracos,
that he had thought to emerge once more the Emperor, are no doubt well known, but the last mortal man to hold the title Master
at Port Maw, the Imperial navy's greatest to the crew of the Ebon Drake they brought of the XVIII'h Legion, and the shattered
anchorage along the Northern Fringe. only more questions, none ofwhich could be readouts of his sarcophagus proclaimed
However, in the wake of the incident at Baal, readily answered. that he yet lived. There, on the barren grey
the Chaplain-Lieutenant decided to avoid surface ofisstvan V, surrounded by the
further contact with the defenders of the The Ebon Drake achieved high orbit over unburied dead and the shattered wreckage
Imperium, unknowingly avoiding translating Isstvan V without incident, her crew more of his Legion, Xiaphas Jurr, with trembling
into the midst of the Warmaster's fleet as it resentful of the absence of the enemy than hands, connected the sarcophagus to an
lay at anchor in the newly conquered docks relieved, as few among them could deny the external vox unit and the haunting, hypnotic
of Port Maw. sense of grim foreboding that their journey's voice of a man rwice dead rumbled forth
end conjured within them. Despite the lack over the assembled warriors ofthree
Instead, the Ebon Drake held fast to her of opposition, it was some hours before any orphaned Legions.
course towards Isstvan, braving the whirling dropcraft left the Ebon Drake'shangar bays,
;etheric vortex that scholars in these latter for the sight of the lifeless, brutalised orb left 'You come seeking our father, but he is not here.
days believe was somehow summoned in the wake of the Dropsite Massacre robbed
to form a cage around the northern-most all present of the flicker of hope that they I searched for him on the field of battle until
systems of the Imperium, seeking not to might yet find the missing Primarchs alive. they struck me down with a sword offlame that
bar passage but rather to contain something For three days they scoured the surface of the scorched the very heavens, and yet I did not die.
within its boundaries. Neither Navigator nor blasted planet; heavily-armed search parties
Astropath could pierce the veil this storm roaming the dust plains almost at random, I searched for him in the endless vaults of the dead
cast over the Isstvan System, yet the oaths while in orbit Xiaphas Jurr cast augury where the crushing blackness tore at my very soul,
sworn by her crew and the omens cast by after augury as he swept the Ebon Drake's and yet I endured.
Chaplain-Lieutenant Jurr in the flames of his sensors across the world in endless sweep-
votive forge forced the Ebon Drake onward configurations. All they found was ruin, I was tested once more in fire and in darkness,
despite the danger posed by such a voyage. wreckage and the silent corpses of the dead; and passed again through the crucible, and I tell
Straining the protective geller field that no sign did they ever find of the missing you this:
protected them from the insaniry of;etheric Primarchs Vulkan, Ferrus Manus and Corvus
space, the Ebon Drake punched through the Corax, either living or dead. Vu!kan does not walk among the dead!'
maelstrom and into the calm at its centre, the

The Warmaster's Rage their rightful master. H ere the assembled deemed more strategically efficient to simply
Even as Cassian Dracos rose from the depths fleets of those Legions loyal to the Warmaster isolate it while the surrounding systems
of Isstvan V, bringing some measure of hope were refitted and repaired for the coming were dominated and a secure base for H orus'
to the beleaguered Loyalists, the annals of war, appropriating those resources once inevitable onslaught on the Imperial core
the Horus Heresy were to grant them no intended to supply the vast fleets of the was established. Now, as the vas t hosts of the
reprieve from the Warmaster's relentless Great Crusade. Warmaster readied them selves for the push
onslaught. The records ofthose scholars and on Terra, all potential weaknesses in their
archivists in the service of the Warmaster, Here the most recent of the Warmaster's rear areas were to be eradicated so that all
later captured by servants of the Emperor, proclamations had arrived, an order to assets could be devoted to the battle for those
speak of a vast armada assembling at Port destroy the defiant Forge World ofMezoa: an systems at the core of Imperial space.
Maw, but a relatively short distance from order so widely promulgated to the officers
Isstvan. Port Maw, conquered by the forces of his host that several illumin ated copies of The conquest ofMezoa, however strategically
of the Warmaster shortly after the outbreak the manuscript exist to this day, preserved in important, would only be bough t at a high
of Mankind's civil war, was now the centre the Imperial Archives ofTerra. Two previous cost in lives and materiel, and few of the
of a huge war machine gearing up for the attempts to invade and conquer the Loyalist commanders gathered at Port Maw were
conquest of all those dominions of the outpost had been turned back by the warlike eager to so weaken their forces at such an
Emperor that refused to accept Horus as magos of Mezoa, and at the time it had been early juncture in the war. Yet the order

conveyed by the Warmaster's emissary could overall command of it. Ambitious even Composed of a dozen capital class warships,
not be ignored, and so a quiet war erupted in the wake of the failure at Stranivar and including a pair offearsome Mangone!
within the confines of Port Maw, a war well aware of the enmity borne for him by class bombardment cruisers, 9,000 Legiones
fought with lies, veiled threats and no few most of the command elements ofthe II4'b Astartes, three full Taghmata from the Forge
fatal confrontations as the various officers Grand Battalion, Consul-Delegatus Skorr World ofM'Pandex and zo,ooo auxiliary
sought to see the mission assigned to their used his authority as commander of the task troops, the Mezoa task force was one of
rivals. Recently returned to Port Maw after force and its fleet to appropriate the lion's the largest battlegroups Horus assigned
the disastrous failure at Fortress Stranivar, share of the available resources for his own to independent command outside of his
and lacking either influential patrons or a Legion, leaving the Iron Warriors elements, brother Primarchs listed in the chronicles
united officer cadre, it eventually fell to the commanded by Narik Dreygur, little chance of the early years of the Horus Heresy.
II4'h Grand Battalion of the Iron Warriors to recover from the losses of the Stranivar More than that, victory in this campaign
and the 78'h Chapter of the Alpha Legion to campaign. With the bulk of the Iron would have garnered the favour of Horus
prosecute the Mezoan campaign. Warriors and their volatile lord, Perturabo, for its commanding officer, a commodity
far distant and the other Legion commanders that would have become invaluable had
Autilon Skorr of the Alpha Legion, as the uninterested in the plight of a failed officer, the Warmaster completed his conquest.
highest ranking officer amongst the units Dreygur and his men had no option but to Departing in good order the fleet entered
assigned to the campaign, was placed in make what repairs they could. the Warp, assured by the Davinite priests
assigned to their contingent of Navigators
that the passage would be swift and sure, and
cleared of all storms. Within a few short days
of the arrival of the Ebon Drake at Mezoa, the
Traitor fleet would be in a position to begin
the assault.

U NTO THE CRUCIBLE OF W AR .
With the recovery of Cassian Dracos, new
hope awoke in those who had come to ~.
Isstvan. Once again they moved with the
purpose and easy camaraderie of warrior-
brothers rather than the grim brooding of
previous days. Even those of the Iron Hands
and Raven Guard who accompanied them,
for whom Dracos could offer no words of
prophecy, were heartened by the thought
that where one Primarch had survived so
might others. Few among the company
doubted the words of Cassian Dracos for
even a moment, such was the awe inspired
by the history of his deeds and the near-
impossible means of his survival. He was

installed upon the Ebon Drake with all haste,
where his Vulkan-forged shell began to
slowly restore his systems without outside
aid, a tech-miracle that served only to bolster
his growing legend.

Despite his long, unsleeping entombment

beneath Isstvan, Dracos refused all offers

of a return to the slumber that most

Dreadnoughts, especially one of his age,

craved. Though clearly changed in aspect

by his ordeal and often lost to extended

periods of near-incoherent prognostication

and memories of his centuries of battle, he

quickly came to exert a palpable influence

over the company of the Ebon Drake. Many

of the ship's company came to him to receive

wisdom and prophecy, both from amongst

the Salamanders and those of their brother

Legions that were present. In the few short

days the Ebon Drake spent in orbit oflsstvan

V after the recovery of Dracos, the Legiones
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Astartes aboard swiftly began to display a ~~~~c~=~====;C::if··IM<'lf."~t+ ~·e
new form of heraldry, myriad devotional

icons applied with the care of dedicated The Prophecies of the Flames

craftsmen in honour of the venerable The initial words and later pron ouncements of Cassian Dracos were record ed both by the

Dreadnought, and a new title is noted in Ebon Drake'svox system and in the person al logs of many of the crew, and later assembled

many log entries, applied to those who by the h and ofXiaph as Jurr into the tom e now referred to as 'The Propheciesof the Flames'.

·• sat in attendance on Dracos: the Disciples of This tome becam e the core of the creed promulgated by Chaplain-lieutenant Jurr and
the Flames. was adopted by th e so called Disciples of the Flames, the band of legiones Astartes wh o

followed h im during the Horus Heresy. Jurr himself adopts the title 'Prophet of Fire' in later

It was not just the human crew who fell iterations of the tome, penned in the darkest days of Mankind's civil war.

under the strange charism a of the twice-

dead Dreadnought: the servitors and Th ough deemed both seditious and of extrem e moral danger during the Scouring, some

simple automata that perform ed m any few copies still remain in the sealed libraries ofTerra and were made available to the author

of the sh ip's more mundan e functions during th e penning of this history. These documents, and the many person al n otation s

became unreliable in his presen ce. Many recorded by Xiaphas Jurr and others of the crew of the Ebon Drake, have been most

of the service-autom ata h ad to be forcibly helpful in reconstructing both the events of that tim e and the mental state of man y of

removed from the ch amber wh ere h e rested those involved.

after developin g anomalous routin es in

their neural-cortexes, while a number of

h igh -grade servitors detached themselves

from duty in the Armorium to operate as by the sigils of the Iron Warriors and Alpha attempt th e man oeuvre, only three rose once

attendants to the Dreadn ought, seemingly legion striving to gain local space superiority aga in fro m the Forge World. W ith the re treat

without orders. No explanation for these over a rag· tag fleet of craft bearing insignia of th e loyalist arm ada, there was n o fo rce

events is recorded in any official log retrieved ranging from marred l egion icons and left to stop th e wallowing troop barges and

from the Ebon Drake, in deed, it seems Imperial navy m arkings, to the eternal flam e h eavy cruisers of Horus' host as they took up

unlikely that any real attemp t was made symbol of M ezoa itself station over M ezoa and began to sweep its

by the crew to fully investigate skies clear of defence platfo rms and killsats.

the phenomenon. As void craft of both sides fought and died, Th e fin al invasion ofM ezoa h ad begun.

t!' Th ose com mand logs recovered in later the titanic explosions that marked their Exposed and Measured
. ~• years sh ow that wh en the Ebon Drake passing lighting up the void like miniature Even as th e bombardment cruisers and troop
departed Isstvan V, it was Cassian Dracos, suns and shaking the Ebon Drake with their tran sports of th e Alpha l egion and Iron
blast-waves, the crew of the lone Salamanders

the Dragon Revenant, who commanded cruiser strove to m ake sen se of the jumbled Warriors moved into position h igh above

her course and that of those who now web of identification signals broadcast by the M ezoa, Cassian Dracos, some m easure of

followed h im . With th eir original mission, combatants. Several ten se seconds passed m obility restored to h is Dreadnought sh ell

lord Keeper Rhy'Tan's charge to investigate as the ship's command crew established by the arcan e self-repair system s Vulkan

Isstvan V, n ow complete, many of the crew's friend and foe , a period of time that left them h ad invested it with, led his Disciples of th e

company expected a triumphant return vulnerable to any number of deadly strikes. Flam es into the central forge-fan e of M ezoa.

to Nocturne, yet Dracos would not allow It was only the confusion sowed amongst Th ere, th e twice-dead mas ter of the XVIII'h

such a course to be plotted. Instead the the enemy by the Ebon Drake'ssudden arrival l egion m et with th e Nom -regents of M ezoa,

inscrutable Dreadnough t, still little more that forestalled their immediate destruction. a triad of ancient m agos-s isters so interlinked

than a semi-coherent metal shell, insisted With the en emy m arked , the Ebon Drake let by complex n eural interface technology

they set course for th e Forge World ofMezoa, loose its weapons batteries, manoeuvring to that th ey formed a single intelligen ce which

and few among the crew voiced objection. join the loyalist fleet that stood sentinel over directed the vast fi efd om of Mezoa. Th eir

The Ebon Drake tran slated once again to Mezoa, a fleet that was at a serious numerical m eeting is immortalised in the data-arch ives

the tempestuous seas of the Warp only a disadvantage to their fo e. of Mezoa, the fire-blackened and battered

few short days after the retrieval of Cassian sh ell of the Dragon Revenant confro nting

Dracos, never to return to the silent grave The battle above Mezoa continued to rage the em aciated forms of the N om -regents,

that the Isstvan System h ad become. for nine long hours, both sides locked in each of the three suspended spider-like in

bloody stalemate as the Traitor admirals the complex web of technology that linked

However, the situation at M ezoa was far spent the lives of their ships to grind down them to thralls across Mezoa, and fl anked

more grim than they had anticipated. Th e their opponents. Hampered by the fractured by a cohort of towering Domitar-automata.

m ighty Forge World, a glowing ember nature of their fleet, with the various Yet at Dracos' approach the emotionless war

encircled by a dense ring of orbital station s detachments of craft answering only to their machines fell back in h alting steps, and even

and ordnance satellites, was besieged by a own lords and no other, the loyalists were the stern trio of venerable tech-magi seemed

Traitor armada intent on stopping any craft eventually forced to abandon orbital space taken aback.

from approaching or leaving the beleaguered around M ezoa, pulling back to the outer

loyalist fortress . Emerging at the very plan ets to regroup. Some few ships am ongst There the ancient Terran warlord spoke

outermost edges of the Mezoan System , the the fleet, inclu ding the Ebon Drake, risked of his visions, of the trials he had endured

~ij Ebon Drake broke from the depths of warp crippling fire to close with M ezoa one last as he lay entombed withm the dark heart
time and release flights of dropcraft, an d of Isstvan V and of his search for Vulkan;
\ space into the heart of a chaotic void battle, of the h alf dozen l egion and n avy craft to a tale of woe and sacrifice that echoed the
with squadrons of heavy cruisers m arked
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schismatic creed honoured by the magos of a true beachhead. Those few drop ships that The Flam e Eternal 1ft
Mezoa. This simple similarity of belief seems made it to the ash-choked surface ofMezoa
a slim basis for the accord that followed, with were quickly decimated by cohorts ofvicious The Forge World ofMezoa has long ~ll
Cassian Dracos feted as a living avatar of the Vorax battle-automata, the few survivors been home to an exotic variant of
Machine God by the dour tech-adepts of scattered into the hellish interior ofMezoa
Mezoa, granted high station in the Taghmata where none are known to have survived. the Cult of the Machine God, in part (
formed for its defence and marked as a sign due to the reluctance of the Lucien
of impending victory. Later, scholars have Having correctly anticipated that the Forge to participate in its founding. ij.~
wondered at the sudden acceptance Dracos Mezoan adepts could not maintain a constant Commanded by the Emperor to '
met with the diverse groups he encountered, bombardment without compromising the
some even positing that Issrvan's position at tectonic stability of their own world,Autilon establish an outpost to supply the ever
the heart of one of the greatest warp storms Skorr dispatched the 114'h Grand Battalion
ever encountered may have had an effect on as the core of the second wave. Grounding expanding Great Crusade with heavy
the entombed Dreadnought more significant amid the corpses and blackened wreckage of
than previously thought. the first wave, Dreygur and the grim veterans ordnance and other essential supplies,
of the Iron Warriors, having weathered the
Attended by the most skilled of Mezoa's more conventional anti-aircraft fire with the orthodox magisters of Lucius seized
forge wrights, Cassian Dracos withdrew to minimal losses, were informed by Autilon
the hidden depths ofMezoa, there to receive Skorr of the Alpha Legion that any attempts the opportunity to rid themselves of
the benedictions of the Machine God and to evacuate the planet's surface would be
be restored to his former glory. With the met by the guns of the fleet. With no option a growing aberrant sect within their
dropcraft of the Traitor forces blackening the but victory, the Iron Warriors and those
sky with their numbers even as their lord auxiliaries landed alongside them met the ranks. These schismatics were to be
retired, Xiaphas Jurr led the Disciples of the onrushing Loyalist counter-attack, quickly
Flames as they joined the warriors who stood converting their drop ships into makeshift found in the remote Forge World of
ready to defend Mezoa. With them were the bastions. The battlefield lit by erupting
cybernetic monsters and towering automata magma-geysers and blanketed by Mezoa's Mezoa, where their obscure creed
of the Taghmata Mezoa, all veterans of ever-present ash clouds, the Iron Warriors
centuries of xenos raids, as well as the fought with a ferocity that equalled any of evolved under the pressure of constant
891" Lethe Cohort of the Solar Auxilia, Angron's berserker Legionaries, demanding a
and forty-eight Imperial Fists Legionaries steep price in lives for each of them who fell. war and intermixed with the quixotic
whose flight from the fighting on Manachea In the climactic battle of the first day, Narik
had left them stranded at Mezoa. In total, Dreygur fought and slew Valtus Moran, a beliefs of the nearby Knight House of
some 12,000 men-under-arms and took champion of the Imperial Fists, who had
up positions to repel the coming storm, reached Mezoa, the battle-automata under Hermetika. Over the years of their semi-
including a great mass of combat-automata, his command tearing apart his corpse as the
soul-shorn adsecularis auxilia and Knights of Loyalist forces quit the field . exile from the other great Forges of the
House Hermetika.
The Iron Warriors had paid in the lives of Mechanicum, this creed became the
of the earliest stages of the third invasion their brethren to secure a safe landing zone
of defiant Mezoa, the greatest wealth of for the remainder of the Traitor armada, Path of the Flame Eternal.
information comes from the war chronicles and soon the ash plains at the edges of the
ofNarik Dreygur, de-facto commander of great forge-fanes ofMezoa were awash in automata cohorts, while the Alpha Legion
the Iron Warriors 114'h Grand Battalion. the footsoldiers of the Warmaster. Sokar operated as headhunters and raiders, taking
The first wave of the invasion was a vast class stormbirds, among the largest craft advantage of the distraction provided by
throng of drop ships carrying thousands that could be safely landed on the fragile the massed assaults of their fellows to strike
upon thousands of pact-conscripts from surface ofMezoa, were used to project an at vulnerable command installations and
Moab and turncoat Imperial Army troopers, interconnected canopy of void shields isolated command units.
all considered eminently expendable by above the vast encampment, a shield that
Autilon Skorr and the other commanders was regularly tested by the ground-shaking The Loyalist forces did not sit idle while
of the Traitor armada. These fallen souls impact of slabs oflava-coated bedrock. With Autilon Skorr prosecuted his assault. While
were met not by the blast of defence cannon both sides firmly entrenched, the Traitor the heavy infantry of the Lethe Solar Auxilia
or flights of slaved Mechanicum drone- forces used their advantage in numbers to units and Mechanicum siege-automata held
interceptors, but by the wrath ofMezoa itself, press the attack on Mezoa's forge-fanes and the walls ofMezoa's spired forge-fanes, the
as the great subduction furnaces sunk into their artillery trains, attempting to reduce Disciples of the Flames, operating in demi-
the planet's volatile mantle were used to the walls and fortifications to rubble from companies of fifry men and reinforced by
hurl vast projectiles of magma and bedrock afar, while Autilon Skorr drove his massed the remaining Imperial Fists, engaged in a
skyward. Against such weapons the Traitor auxilia into the breaches to force a hole in the series of spoiling attacks. As these assault
dropcraft had no protection, and casualties defences. The Iron Warriors were committed forces sallied forth from the protection of the
were devastating, indeed the tactical purpose wherever the enemy seemed strongest, heavily fortified defences, the tech-adepts of
of this first wave seems to have been more suffering mounting casualties to blunt the Mezoa collapsed entire regions of the planet's
to provoke just such an attack as to establish ferocious assault of the Mezoan magos' crust, burying sections of the enemy's lines
in tidal waves of magma and allowing the
Legiones Astartes to engage isolated pockets
of the foe. Elsewhere, suicide cohorts of
automata and adsecularis drew detachments
of the Traitor host out into the open where
the tech-magi could obliterate friend and foe
alike with blasts of magma.

As with all things, the Mechanicum adepts
ofMezoa kept detailed records of the
fallen, both allied and enemy, the resulting
equations informing all of their strategies,
and despite the small victories that had been
claimed against the Traitor horde, the cold
logic of war did not favour Mezoa.

AN 0Arn FULFILLED fighting ground on, the Iron Warriors were and fratricidal fury, while the Skitarii and
eventually brought to a halt, bogged down thallax cohorts found themselves cut off
For nine days Autilon Skorr directed the amongst the outer defences ofTerrial-os and from all external direction. Traitor units
Traitor host in an unrelenting siege of the surrounded by Loyalist units in a murderous surged forwards to attack all across the war
spired halls ofMezoa. Bombardment cruisers crossfire. Dreygur ordered his warriors to zone, and only at Tertial-os, where the Solar
in high orbit rained down kinetic cluster set up makeshift defences and dig in in Auxilia and the Disciples of the Flames held
munitions, and the Mezoan tech-priests the Loyalist positions they had captured, the Iron Warriors in a grim crossfire, was the
responded with the white-hot blood of his automata cohorts moving to counter- enemy kept in check. It seemed that the end
Mezoa itself, launching chunks of the mantle attack wherever the Loyalists threatened had arrived for Mezoa.
skyward and filling the air with fragments to overwhelm the thinning Iron Warriors
of burning rock. The already torturous lines. Encoded vox-signals, later retrieved It was at this moment that Dracos returned to
landscape ofMezoa buckled,venting and deciphered by the mages of Mezoa, were the fray, emerging from the fabrication vaults
scalding clouds ofash and steam that scoured transmitted to the Alpha Legion, calling restored to his former splendour by the arts
entire battlefields clean, and tides of magma on them to begin the second wave of the ofMezoa's forge wrights. Yet rather than
that engulfed armoured columns. Autilon assault, but no answer was ever received by lend his strength against Autilon Skorr and
Skorr brought hell to Mezoa. the embattled Iron Warriors who could not the Alpha Legion warriors ransacking the
survive without support.
From the fortified walls of the Mezoan
forge-fanes, Xiaphas Jurr and the remaining Autilon Skorr and his Alpha Legion
Disciples of the Flames bore witness to the headhunter cohorts were already beginning
slow reduction of the Forge World's defences. their own attack on the main spindle-spires
With no hope of reinforcement, isolated as of the Mezoan forge. With the majority of
Mezoa was by the expansion of Horus' dark the Loyalist forces drawn away to engage
empire, there seemed little hope of victory. the Iron Warriors' assault, and the Alpha
Despite this, it was quickly made obvious Legion units still relatively intact, having
that regardless of the inescapable logic of been spared the brunt of the fighting, the
their defeat, the defenders ofMezoa had no Alpha Legion infiltrators were quickly able to
intention ofsurrendering.The Nom-regents annihilate the depleted automata maniples in
had decreed that until the last automata fell, their path and mount a direct assault on the
the battle for Mezoa would not end. Each central chambers of the Mezoan forge-fane,
Traitor attack was met by stubborn resistance, endangering the Nom-regents themselves.
and while defeat might be inevitable, it
would not be swift in arriving, a fact that All that stood in their path were a few dozen
would ill-please the Warmaster. This truth Domitar class battle-automata, and though
was not unknown to Autilon Skorr who, like fearsome engines of war, they could not last
most of the ambitious Legion officers that against the sheer numbers ofAlpha Legion
had thrown in their lot with the Warmaster, troops now loose within the defences.
was eager to join the assault on Terra. Rather There were also some fifty of the Disciples
than wait for the eventual fall of Mezoa, of the Flames present within the central
Autilon Skorr intended to bring the Forge halls as an honour guard to Cassian Dracos,
World to its knees with a single strike, whose battered form was still sealed within
hoping that the swift fall of the Loyalist the fabrication vaults, but these warriors
Forge World would secure him a return had received strict orders from Dracos to
to the favour ofboth Horus and his own guard the vaults, sparing no men for the
inscrutable Primarch. battle raging but a short distance from
them. Disobeying these orders, some few
The remains of the Iron Warriors II4'h Grand of the Disciples, led by the Raven Guard
Battalion were committed en masse to a Kirhane, did join the defence of the Nom-
frontal assault on the defences ofTertial-os, regent, holding the great spoked portals of
one ofthe key defence bastions on the the chambers as a horde of multi-limbed
outskirts of the main forge spire. The attack servitors struggled to evacuate the Norn-
went ahead despite the protests of Consul regents. Yet despite their efforts, Autilon
Dreygur of the Iron Warriors, who only Skorr himself and a score of his personal
agreed to lead his men at the assurance of guard were able to penetrate the hall,
Autilon Skorr that the Alpha Legion would bringing down one of the great Nom-regents
support the assault. The Iron Warriors struck with lascutters and meltaguns.
the defences ofTertial-o5 like a hammer
blow, waves of heavy infantry advancing With the death ofone ofthe triad of ancient
under heavy fire unflinchingly despite the tech-magos that exerted complete control
casualties inflicted upon them. The assault over Mezoa, utter chaos was loosed among
quickly drew in defending units from across the defenders. Battle-automata either lapsed
the battle zone, as Loyalist commanders into catatonic collapse or flew into berserk
reinforced the weakening defences. As the

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central spires ofMezoa, he led those of the calling on the enemy commander to show The private journals of Consul Dreygur do
Disciples of the Flames who remained at his himsel£ Dracos passed through the ranks not speak of the incident; in fact after that
side towards Tertial-os and the Iron Warriors. of the Iron Warriors' bound automata, the day he made no more private recordings and
As the ancient Dreadnought charged forth, machines refusing all orders to engage eschewed all company save that of Dracos
those automata he passed were pulled along and his automata. What is known is that as
in his wake, shaken from whatever feedback- him, and confronted Narik Dreygur, who the two met, they exchanged some few words
induced mania had seized their cortex and and Dreygur turned to address his men,
slaved to the indomitable will of the Iron stood tall upon the fortifications. What speaking but a few words:
Dragon. With flames erupting all across the passed between the two is largely unknown,
spires ofMezoa, Cassian Dracos reached however The Prophecies of the Flames records 'Brothers, once more an oath to us stands broken.
the shell-scarred battlefield ofTertial-o5 at that 'Wheresoever is found the craft of the forge , The Alpha Legion has abandoned us once again.
the head of nearly r,ooo battle-automata. the avatar of our lord Vulkan has power, even in Now we shall show that we do not renege on our
Yet rather than leading a charge into the the works of the enemy, even in the flesh of the vows. The dead of Stranivar and Mezoa both call
remaining Iron Warriors, now entrenched enemy where it has felt the touch of the forge. So he for vengeance, and we shall grant it to them.'
in a formidable makeshift fortress of broken turned foe to the cause of righteousness.'
rockcrete and iron, he approached alone,

That which Remains Skorr, one arm smashed after an encounter Skorr and his Alpha Legion warriors had
With victory within his grasp, Autilon Skorr with Xiaphas Jurr during the retreat from caused severe damage during their battles
found himselftrapped at the centre ofthe the forge-fanes ofMezoa. While the Traitors at the forge's heart, leaving it incapable of
Mezoan forge spires. At his back were the retained orbital superiority, high speed easily replacing the losses sustained during
battle-automata and auxilia cohorts of the passes and raids by Loyalist squadrons, and the fighting. Worse yet, one of the three
Mezoan priesthood, now returning to the blazing chunks of the planet itself launched governing tech-priests, the Norn-regents,
control of their overlords, and to his fore an from below, soon forced them to retreat to had been slain during the fighting, causing
onrushing horde of automata and Loyalist the outer planets, and then from the system much strife amongst the various Mezoan
Legiones Astartes warriors, with the remains entirely. Cassian Dracos was hailed by some orders as they struggled to re-adjust.
of the Iron Warriors that had once fought as the saviour of Mezoa and mistrusted by While Mezoa would remain free from the
under his command at their head. His rear others for both the strange orders issued Warmaster's control, it would be unable to
areas and landing zones were under direct during the siege and his unseemly influence provide any substantial assistance to other
assault by Solar Auxilia armoured columns, over automata and certain sects of the Loyalist enclaves for the duration of the
and in space above Mezoa, the Loyalist Mechanicum's priesthood itself. He was conflict. It did, however, remain a thorn in
squadrons had emerged from hiding amongst to lead a number of bloody raids against the side of the Traitor efforts to push on the
the moons of the outer planets to strike at the neighbouring systems now under the control Imperium's core, providing a safe haven for
Traitors' cruisers, now dispersed in optimal of the Warmaster, raids which would spread various independent companies of Legiones
bombardment positions, and unprepared for the influence of the cult ofpersonality that Astartes, most operating under the aegis of
any attack. sprang up around him in the wake of the the Disciples of the Flames. While many in
victory at Mezoa. Narik Dreygur was to the Divisio Militaris at the time of the Horus
The Battle for Mezoa was lost. Skorr's daring become a close confidant of the Iron Dragon, Heresy discounted the effectiveness of such
gamble had failed and now threatened to see rarely seen except in his presence, a silent companies, the exploits of the Disciples
him defeated in detail by the Loyalist forces. and brooding warrior who would serve as of the Flames and other notable groups
Within the space of a few hours, most of the Cassian Dracos' right hand throughout the were perhaps key in preserving a number
Traitor forces on Mezoa were destroyed, the wars of the Horus Heresy. of Loyalist strongholds and delaying the
automata of Mezoa showing no mercy to Warmaster's inevitable strike at Terra and the
the defeated. Less than 3,000 of the enemy Yet even though the invasion had failed, heart of the Imperium.
escaped to return to the cruisers waiting the damage to Mezoa was great. Autilon
above, including a badly wounded Autilon

Narik Dreygur,
The Gravewalker

i.,

'!

IRON WARRIORS DEREDEO pATTERN DREADNOUGHT

ANciENT 0RGOL
VANGUARD EcHELON, II4ru GRAND BATIALION

BATILE OF M EZOA, TERTIAL-05 BREAKOUT

Long known amongst the Iron Warriors of the oft-maligned II4'h Grand Battalion as a consummate survivor and one of the few among the
Legion's early ranks given to independent action and a mastery of reconnaissance actions, Sor Orgol walked untouched from the fires of the
Great Crusade and passed through the Legion's trial at Perturabo's hands and at Isstvan, only to fall at Fortress Stranivar, his seeker detachment
abandoned by the Alpha Legion elements placed in support. Interred in the armoured shell of a Deredeo pattern Dreadnought, Orgol became
a sentinel at the back of his battle-brothers, obsessing over operational deployments and the possibility of betrayal, his twinned hellfire plasma
cannon ready to support both advance and retreat. On Mezoa, when the Gravewalker called the II4'h to deliver on his oath of vengeance against

the Alpha Legion, Orgol was at the forefront of the charge.

r t~~. .-1.... ...,,.rrJrf#-~ ktl.~ -1/f.A(u/n' ITIW; ',ulv l.. tfflr_1.../(;.... ~l~tl'k< ~dur. }mdu~_...., .......;;.-T:/I:f'Vei!:ifJ:::. tf'•leillb f«7Wf:"'3•"-~-;;;· lu.wiutv:':.?.:t.:':~i1u.u~.3$:v!:"!'~c~·~~dfiv~~-~'~c~f":?*!~"-:'?N!~M:~=;!.2;.,a~•:~=!_·:~! ~.~~-~-c ~~ ~-~".."\~'i!!::,fE:=;;:§::~2"~"':u;ie::.•=~n ""~"'="':~:-~'2!~:E~

J RAVEN GuARD REcoN LEGIONARY

VETERAN LEGIONARY ALEcKTo KIRHANE

FIRST REcoN DETACHMENT, i" CHAmR

CoMPANY OF THE EBoN DRAKE

Hundreds of thousands of Loyalist Legiones

j Astartes fell upon the killing fields of Isstvan

• and three Primarchs were presumed dead at

the hands of their brothers. In the midst of
such unimaginable death and destruction,
barely a handful ofloyal warriors escaped, and
none who endured the terrible events of those
black days was unmarked by the tragedy. Of his

entire chapter, the 7'\ known informally as the

'Stormcrows', only Kirhane and a dozen others
survived. Kirhane is pictured here in the early
stages of the battle, before a Traitor autocannon
tore off his left leg below the knee and consigned
him to watch the treacherous end of that battle
from a medicae encampment.

Kirhane left Isstvan Vat the controls of the
Salamanders Thunderhawk Ohidoran, the original
crew having disembarked to die with their
brothers on the battlefield and allow the walking
wounded to escape. The Ohidoran then found
refuge aboard the cruiser Warlock as it fought free
of the orbital battle.

Caught in the swirling realm of the Warp, the
Warlock and its passengers were consigned to a
long and tteacherous odyssey as they sought a
bastion of those still loyal. After seven months of
voyaging on the malicious tides of the Warp, the
Warlock finally came to rest at Baal, finding at last
a world where loyal servants of the Emperor still

1 held true to their vows. Yet, though it provided

' refuge from Horus' onslaught, it granted the
survivors of Isstvan no succour.

Ceramite bonding stud reinforcement

;ulu 11

IRON WARRIORS TACTICAL LEGIONARY

LEGIONARY KERTHELON

3RD SHocK AssAULT DETACHMENT,

II 4'" GRAND BATTALION
BATilE OF M EZOA
Newly inducted into the Grand Battalion shortly
before the beginning of the Mezoa campaign as
one of the few replacement warriors granted the
mauled formation, Legionary Thelon did not
suffer through the betrayals heaped upon his new
brothers by the Alpha Legion. He and those few
others that were seconded to the unit remained
staunchly loyal both to their Primarch and the
Warmaster, held in thrall by the rushed hypno-
indoctrination of their training and shunned by
much of the I 14'h for it.

In the grim, fire-scoured landing zones and the
long siege of Mezoa's forge spires, Ker Thelon
and his brothers saw their baptism of fire; part
of a growing breed ofLegiones Astartes whose
sole experience of war was the brutal attrition of
Legionary against Legionary. Surviving where
many others fell, Legionary Thelon soon acquired
an impressive tally of kills, and by the time of
Autilon Skorr's last push on the forge-fanes of
Mezoa, he had risen to the rank of senior sergeant
among the 3'd Shock Assault Detachment and was
a vocal rival ofNarik Dreygur.

With the events of the final climactic battle of
that campaign, Legionary Thelon and many of his
confederates disappeared from the roster of the
II4'h Grand Company. No record of their fall in
the final battle exists, nor any official mention of
sanction against them by either Narik Dreygur
or the Loyalist Legiones Astartes that he chose to
side with.

.(

Standardised Line Infantry Markings for the II4th Grand Battalion IV'h Legion Insignia, No Deviation from Standard Patterns

DISCIPLE OF THE FLAMES

LEGIONARY SoH'REK SHAAN
HoNOUR GuARD oF XiAPHAS JuRR,
PROPHET OF THE FLAME
CoMPANY oF THE EBoN DRAKE

In the wake of the revelations bestowed upon the
company of the Ebon Drake at Isstvan V by Cassian
Dracos, a stark change overcame its complement
ofLegiones Astartes. Many began to adopt the
obscure divinatory practice of their commander
Xiaphas Jurr's home world of Proximal, affixing
the resulting charms to their armour, while others
covered the original heraldry of their armour
with devotional scenes depicting the Primarch or
Cassian Dracos, who many consider his avatar.

Legionary Shaan is typical of the Legiones
Astartes who arrived at Mezoa, and much
changed in appearance from the spartan
Salamanders heraldry he wore at the outset of the
Ebon Drake'svoyage. Much of his original drab
green armour has been obscured by patterns of
black ash and fire, along with ritual images of
the Dragon Revenant and Vulkan. Suspended on
chains across his armour are engraved bones and
fragments of the armour of the fallen from
Isstvan V, each an omen of events yet to pass,
cast in the presence of the Iron Dragon himself.
Suspended from his pauldrons are pages from the
writings ofXiaphas Jurr, the so-called Propheciesof
the Flame, some affixed with the seal of the Forge
World ofMezoa.

As with many of the Disciples of the Flames, the
final fate of Soh'rek Shaan is unknown outside
of the inner ranks of the secretive clades of the
Terran Archivists, and the tales of his exploits

'' under the banner of the Dragon Revenant have

been cleansed even from the records of the
Salamanders themselves.

XVIII'h Legion Insignia. Note the subtle corruption
wrought by the influence of Cassian Dracos.

ANCIENT NEHALEN, 'THE lNTERirus'

PERSONAL BoDYGUARD CADRE oF A uruoN SKoRR

BATilE FOR M EZOA

Renowned among the Alpha Legion for his exploits as a member of the Legion's Destroyer cadre in days long since passed, Nehalen earned
for himself the title 'Interitus' for his brutal methods-the fear of his deployment to a war zone a more potent deterrent than a full company of
lesser warriors. Following a cataclysmic encounter with the Fra'al, Nehalen was confined to the metal shell of a Contemptor class Dreadnought,
a transition that barred him from the infiltration missions that had once been his speciality and kindled in him a cold fury and appetite for open
slaughter that exceeded his fellows. On Mezoa he served as Autilon Skorr's bodyguard and enforcer, delivering many of the suicidal edicts of the
Alpha Legion commander to the Iron Warriors under his command. He was to meet his final end in combat with Cassian Dracos, the Dragon

Revenant finally ending his cruel existence in a brawl that levelled an entire sub-section of the Mezoan forge-fane.

THE GIFT OF MEZOA

Established as a way station for the strongholds, these found new purpose. In found themselves replete with the finest
Great Crusade and the ever-expanding defiance of ancient treaties,which put strict ofMezoa's creations-chief among them
armies of the Emperor's attempt to reunite limits on both who might receive the fruits several newly finished super-heavy tanks that
the worlds of the galaxy under his rule, ofMezoa's labour and the quantity of arms had previously been intended for the IX'h
Mezoa had ever been dedicated to the which might be made available, the Nom- Legion and a number ofcommand Rhino
construction of war machines for the regents of Mezoa granted gifts of tanks and variants whose design had only been recently
Legiones Astartes and many other branches weapons to those bands of the Legiones approved for production. These weapons of
of the Imperial armies. Under the watchful Astartes willing to carry the war to Horus, war were quickly adorned with the herald ry
eyes of the Tech-adepts of the Eternal Flame, both on the surface of Mezoa and across the of the Dragon Revenant and his followers
uncounted armoured vehicles were produced sector. Many of those who had escaped the and prepared for war, in many cases proving
for the Emperor's finest warriors, yet with the wrath of the Warmaster chose to accept these vital to the defence ofMezoa in the battles
advent of the Horus Heresy, all supply routes gifts and make their stand on the worlds that followed. In particular, the glaive pattern
to those enclaves known to have remained around Mezoa, now with the tools to exact a super-heavy tank designated Dragon Eternal
loyal were cut off. Left with no means to high price in blood from the Traitors, but of was responsible for the defence ofMezoa's
disburse these armaments, the artificers of all those present, it was the company of the Septum Gateway for four hours, after an
Mezoa placed them into the vast storage Ebon Drake who received the prize of Alpha Legion diversionary attack drew off
vaults beneath their forge-fanes to await the Mezoa's output. the other defending elements. Even in death
day when their anger would be unleashed the tank did not abandon its purpose, the
against the Traitors. Where they had arrived at Mezoa few in crew manoeuvring the vehicle so that its
number and equipped with little beyond hulk blocked all access to the gate following
With the arrival of Cassian Dracos and the their boltguns and man-portable heavy its final explosive end.
Ebon Drake, alongside other fleeing stragglers weaponry, the Disciples of the Flame now
from Isstvan and other fallen Loyalist

Damocles Command Rhino, 'Guiding Light':This vehicle was taken by Xiaphas Jurr to act as his
personal transport and command vehicle during the Battle for Mezoa. Adorned in the traditional colour
scheme of the Salamanders' Igniax order and bearing the results of the divinatory arts that obsessed the

Proximan recru it, it was a common sight at the forefront of Loyalist counter-strikes on Mezoa.

Glaive super-heavy tank, 'Dragon Eternal':
Among the heaviest of the defensive assets
deployed by the defenders ofMezoa, fighting

as they did on a world whose fragile crust could
not bear the weight of war Titans, the Dragon

Eternal was the lynchpin of many Loyalist actions
during the fighting. Accounting for forty-eight
vehicle kills and an uncounted toll of the Traitor
infantry before its destruction, the vehicle's hulk
was later reclaimed by the Mezoan priesthood,
who pledged to rebuild and restore it, that it
might fight eternally in Mezoa's defence. Over
the course of the Horus Heresy, the tank was to
be rebuilt eight times, and in these latter days it
stands as a monument of the wars in the primary
forge of Mezoa.

ALPHA LEGION DECAPITATION SQUADRONS

The vast host assembled by Autilon Skorr composed of Sicaran Venator tank destroyers, gun platforms and three squadrons of Alpha
for the assault on Mezoa consisted in the Vindicators and massed Rapier batteries. Legion outriders acting as spotters and
main of expendable militia forces and the These squadrons were held as reserves, to defensive skirmishers. Three full compan ies
massed heavy infantry of the Iron Warriors be deployed where diversionary strikes by of the Iron Warriors II4'hGrand Battalion
II4'h Grand Battalion. The unique narure of other, more expendable, formations had and the Ekficax Taghmata of M'Pandex were
the planet ofMezoa limited the deployment drawn out one of the defenders' key asse ts thrown against the defenders to draw out
of heavy assets, and made the use ofTitans and eliminate them before withdrawing once the target, nearly 6oo lives expended in
impossible; leaving Skorr with few methods again. By mean s of this strategy, a number a futile attack to spare the Alpha Legion
of eliminating the heavy fortifications of precious Loyalist super-h eavy tanks and excessive losses.
and super-heavy tanks and automata the Knights of the Hermetika met their ends for
defenders had assembled. The use of orbital the use of a scant handful of Alpha Legion The Dragon Etema ! made a quick appearance,
bombardment had to be limited, lest it fully assets, although the losses among supporting anchoring the Loyalist defensive line, but
collapse the crust of the volatile world and elements of the Traitor auxiliary and Iron Alpha Legion commanders held their
deny him a viable landing zone, or worse, Warriors were far more grievous. ground until the attacking units were forced
destroy the factory and storage vaults of to withdraw, drawing the super-heavy tank
the forge-fanes themselves, and air support BATILEGROUP 'D RAGONSLAYER1 out of its optimal defensive position. There
was limited by the heavy ash storms that they struck in full force, a barrage of heavy
commonly swept through the upper Of particular note is the Decapitation weapons fire from an ambush sufficient to
atmosphere of Mezoa. squadron assembled for the destruction of mortally wound even a mighry Glaive pattern
the Salamanders super-heavy tank Dragon tank, yet its defiant crew were still able to
To counteract this potential deficiency in Etema!, designated as a primary objective for withdraw. The Alpha Legion commanders
his forces, Skorr stripped the various heavy the Alpha Legion commanders due to both then issued orders for a second wave assault
anti-armour vehicles and weapons from the its potent firepower as well as its importance to cover their advance, delivering a second
separate Alpha Legion companies under to the morale of the defenders. Battlegroup volley at the wo unded behemoth that left it
his command and assembled them into 'Dragonslayer' was composed of four Sicaran as a burning hulk.
specialised 'decapitation' squadrons, mostly Venators, three Vindicators bearing laser
destroyer arrays, twelve Rapier self-propelled

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Vindicator Assault Tank: Eschewing the more indiscriminate firepower of the demohsher cannon, most
of the Vindicators employed by the Alpha Legion carry laser destroyer arrays, a weapon capable of the
pinpoint destruction of enemy armour. The crews of these vehicles are often masters of ambush tactics,

specialising in camouflage and concealment, allowing their victims little opportunity to evade their strikes
until it is too late. The example shown here is in parade colours, a scheme rarely retained in the field, and

was one of the vehicles attached to Battlegroup Dragonslayer.

Sicaran Venator Tank Destroyer, 'Hydra's Fangs': These temperamental vehicles were in short supply
in many Legions, where the extensive and demanding maintenance routine required to keep them fully
operational left them out of favour with more practically minded Legions. Among the Alpha Legion they were
prized for their devastating first-strike capabihty and many of their crews were specially trained to keep their
vehicles in peak condition. The Hydra's Fangs accounted for three Hermetika Knights over the campaign , all
struck from ambush at near point-blank range, the shock pulse of the Venator's main weapon serving to 'stun'

the electrical systems of the Knight long enough for the Sicaran Venator to deliver the coup-de-grace.