Exemplary Battles of the Age of Darkness (2023) EC Lore

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The Purging of the Invocastus Sector

The Pale Stars
As the Age of Darkness ground ever onwards, the fires of war would spread throughout the entire galaxy, consuming everything in their path. Armies and worlds were reduced to nothing more than ash, in many cases leaving no one alive to bear witness to the sacrifices made or the atrocities committed. During this time, each Legion employed unique formations to prosecute their own style of war, whether by choice or through necessity, making use of unconventional, often abhorrent, tactics and weapons. Many of these formations would be lost during the dark years following the Horus Heresy, their traditions wiped out and the last stockpiles of their weapons exhausted. Some, however, have been preserved in these records, that future generations may learn of the terrors unleashed upon the galaxy by the Emperor’s turncoat sons and the valiant heroes who stood against them.



In late 012.M31, augur beacons that had remained dormant in the cold abyss of the void space bordering the Pale Stars began to awaken. They were stirred from their slumber in a region rarely travelled and so far little troubled by the war by the passing of increasing numbers of ships bearing the code-idents of the IIIrd Legion and relayed the alarm to Salamanders forces garrisoned on Nocturne. Capitol ships were followed by a stretched convoy of numerous other craft all fleeing the ruins of their home world, Chemos, to seek refuge within that desolate and empty region. In response, the XVIIIth Legion mobilised what forces they could from the few warriors and Inductii that remained on Nocturne, intent on intercepting the Emperor’s Children before they were able to reorganise, rearm and establish a new domain from which they could strike with impunity at Imperial worlds across the southern sectors. One such Salamanders fleet, led by Praetor-commander Brant Hesioth, tracked the IIIrd Legion frigate Pernissus to the Invocastus system and closed in with haste, keen to deliver a swift death to the Traitors. The turbulent and irradiated rad-wake that railed behind the Traitor ship led Hesioth’s fleet into the high-orbit of Invocastus IV, a planet that once thrived on its mining prospects but a place where industrious activity had started to dwindle even prior to the outbreak of the Horus Heresy. Hesioth found the scuttled hulk of the Pernissus adrift amongst a flotilla of similarly abandoned frigates and cutters, all empty of their emergency escape pods and devoid of their crew, abandoned in a decaying orbit over the planet’s capital, the Amethryne City. Determined to eliminate the Emperor’s Children forces before they could consolidate into a substantial threat, the praetor-commander ordered his forces to make planetfall. Unbeknownst to the Loyalists, the IIIrd Legion had gone before them and their insidious whisperings had swayed the disenfranchised people of this isolated world, turning them against the Imperium to such a degree that the entire population would rise in rebellion against the forces of the Emperor. Anti-Imperial graffitih ad been daubed on the walls and the synth-velum pages of propaganda pamphlets littered the streets amongst the detritus of lives long forgotten by the ceaseless expansion of the Imperium. The men and women of the hab-city spilled from every doorway and filed from alleyways bearing all manner of weapons as, like the judgement of heaven itself, the heavy landers of the Salamanders Legion descended. Assault ramps hinged open and the first waves of Space Marines deployed into staging areas around the outskirts of the city. The brooding threat of the orderly and disciplined ranks of Legionary warriors, whose boltguns were levelled on the sea of bodies that rushed to meet them, enforced a no-man’s land between the two lines. Hesioth addressed the Amethryne people, his voice amplified through the vox-hailers of every landing craft. He appealed for the peaceful surrender by the Amethryne people, for them to lay down their arms and to reveal the whereabouts of the IIIrd Legion enclaves upon the planet. Privately, the praetor-commander harboured hopes that any mass uprising could be quelled without conflict, since his command had barely the numbers to commit to aminoris-level pacification action.

Undeterred by the show of Imperial force, the Amethryne militia enacted their defiance by unleashing an undisciplined barrage of lasbolts and frag-shot that were mostly deflected harmlessly by the ceramite plates of the Salamanders’ power armour. Hesioth’s force opened fire, sending mass reactive bolts into the oncoming crowd, blasting unarmoured bodies apart in a wet mist of atomised gore, but the intensity of the counter-attack was undiminished. The Salamanders stood resolute, the blast of their bolter fire a constant roar as each squad alternated between firing and reloading in drilled order. The missile launchers of scorpius artillery tanks and arquitor bombards rained explosive fragmentation missiles into the crowds in an effort to thin their numbers. Within minutes, the squadrons of fire raptors that had accompanied the landing assault reported critically depleted ammunition levels, having opened fire with their heavy bolter batteries and rotary cannon at the first instances of hostility and had sustained continuous fire on the riotous masses during that time. After several hours, sanctifier squads leading the Salamanders’ push into the city’s interior sectors reported extreme ammunition depletion, having used their rapid-firing weaponry in disciplined bursts to sweep through building interiors and clear streets as they advanced, tightening an inescapable cordon around their IIIrd Legion quarry. Hesioth’s delegate logisticians were forced to coordinate the orbital drop of supplemental munitions and distribute them to the troops that had pushed onwards into the city. Tirelessly, the militia fought on, climbing the heaps of their own dead to hurl themselves at the Salamanders’ guns and still the traitorous IIIrd Legion were yet to openly join the battle.



The Invocastus System



Due to its location in the Pale Stars, the Invocastus system lies far from the main warp conduits used to traverse the galaxy and as such was not used as a way-station or supply hub by the bulk of travellers in the manner of many other notable systems. In the time of the Great Crusade, however, industrious activity and planetary mining operations ensured the system’s tithes were sufficient to afford inclusion within the cartographies of Imperial space. The remote location combined with the protection provided by the Imperium ensured that the system enjoyed long periods of relative peace and on some of the inhabited planets, including Invocastus IV, the population thrived. Long-established cities expanded into vast metropolitan complexes where artistic creativity and education flourished in an age of plenty. Theatres and auditoriums hosted plays and philosophical seminars, museums and galleries sat at the hearts of communities where the people lived as equals in a harmonious society. This period of heightened civilisation was, however, finite and began to dwindle out as the Great Crusade stretched the boundaries of Imperial space. The value of the Invocastus system’s industrious output was effectively reduced as new frontiers were explored and other locations along the primary warp routes were uncovered. The academic and creative endeavours of the population were soon exceeded by mundane, ceaseless toil and political unrest erupted as the majority of the population worked to pay taxation levies implemented to sustain the heady lifestyles of the ruling castes. Over the course of generations, civil unrest grew, burgeoning and prosperous settlements descended into impoverished mass-dwellings and their inhabitants resorted to crime and corruption to survive. The wealth built over centuries of comfort and productivity was squandered in a fraction of the time it had taken to accumulate and the population rebelled to overthrow their governors. The once busy star ports that ringed the primary planets of the system fell into disuse and dilapidation, becoming harbours for criminal barons and self-appointed overlords that exerted control of the meagre remnants of a once bountiful age through fear and violence. Gangs territories were divided by hab-block sector codes, the most powerful groups holding influence upon entire districts, leveraging control over the limited availability of base resources such as water and nutri-supps and profiting from the distribution of more illicit commodities such as lho-sticks and narco-stimms. As time passed, these gangs accumulated arms and assimilated their rivals, often by force, dividing Invocastus into warring macro-clans. The coming of the IIIrd Legion, although diminished in strength by the destruction of their home world, Chemos, still represented the arrival of an overwhelmingly powerful force. However, it was not through the application of force that the Emperor’s Children garnered control of Invocastus though, instead they took advantage of there sentment of the Imperium that the people of Invocastus shared. With the promise of means to take revenge upon the empire that forgot them, Fulgrim and his Legion once again united the people of Invocastus with a shared purpose.

 

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Across the Amethryne City the Salamanders forces advanced into the dense interior of the city, the mobility of their heavy armour was hampered and entire tank squadrons fell victim to ambushes within the narrow streets, while their aerial support was blocked by towering buildings and covered gantries. In the western hab-sectors, vicious building-to-building fighting had slowed the progress of Hesioth’s troops to a crawl. In the civitas sectors and hab-blocks, the militia forces were seemingly under the guidance of more adept commanders and adopted guerilla tactics to combat the Salamanders, collapsing walls and bringing down ceilings with breacher charges detonated as they were pursued deeper into the structures. Such actions served not only to physically crush the XVIIIth forces but also to divide and separate them with many left buried in rubble and dust in fractured groups. Here, cut off from the support of their Legion, they made easy targets for prowling squads of Emperor’s Children who relished in the opportunity to toy with their foe before cruelly eliminating them, one by one, within the ruined confines.



To the east, the militia line had been driven back into the cover of the manufactorum hangars that lined the primary transitway through the sector. Within these sectors the Salamanders had pushed furthest towards the Amethryne City’s core, but had paid the highest price to do so. The road itself was littered with the bloodied bodies of the recently killed and burning wrecks of ground cars, perforated by the heavy bolter rounds fired by the battery of rapier carriers that, thanks to their increased ammunition capacity, had been brought up to the frontline to support the advance into the city. Some of the fallen were Salamanders whose armour was pitted and split by the impact of countless small calibre rounds and torn away by the work of hundreds of bloodied hands. Others were clearly killed by other means, decapitated or punched clean through by high velocity nemesis bolter rounds – shots placed with the unmistakable precision of IIIrd Legion marksmen who were skilled enough to have evaded detection. This threat now stifled the momentum of the advance into the city core and left Hesioth’s troops vulnerable and with each passing hour, expending more of their ammunition reserves on wave after wave of militia attacks while drawing no closer to their true enemy.



The errors Hesioth had made became clear – he had assumed the Emperor’s Children, prideful as they were, would stand before his assault, if only to uphold their reputation as duellists and artisans of combat even in this age of darkness that had befallen the galaxy. The Traitors had failed to meet this expectation and Hesioth’s attacking force was instead being bled dry and worn down by the numberless thralls of an enemy that no longer maintained any veneer of honour or nobility. In response the praetor-commander knew that he must unleash some darker facet of his character and enact deeds that would damn him in the eyes of his Primarch .At his command, Hesioth’s Salamanders had already killed enemies beyond number in pursuit of the IIIrd Legion, but these were acts of warfare, with terms laid out and understood. Now though, he would have to step outside of these restraints in order to achieve his goal. Hesioth summoned his sub-command network on a cyphered vox-channel to assemble on his location and gave the order to capture enemy combatants for interrogation via corporal mortification, an order that was called into question by several members of his command. Despite this dissension, XVIIIth Legion seeker squads were tasked with incapacitating militia targets with wounding shots and for them to be extracted to the Salamanders’ dropsites. Such was the fervent devotion of the captives to them is guidance of the traitorous cause, over two-hundred individuals were subjected to extremis-level interrogation prior to their death before Hesioth was satisfied with the information he had extracted.

Hesioth returned from the rear echelons of his camp, his conscience stained by the deeds he had committed and his blackened mood discernible even through his helm. With a sombre determination he revealed that he would personally lead his chosen spearhead into the Periphos District of the city, a disused and near-forgotten region, wherein he had gained knowledge of a hidden entrance to the ancient Argo Causeway, an abandoned subterranean transitway that led to the Delphos Catacombs. Hesioth requisitioned supplies for his force, rapidly mobilised, and set out with renewed purpose. The remainder of the XVIIIth forces were ordered to contain the remaining militia forces and hold the ground they had gained within the city and await his further commands. Upon reaching the objective region, the information gleaned through Hesioth’s interrogative efforts proved to be true and the entrance to the Argo Causeway was located. Hesioth led his force into the oppressive gloom from the fore, their weapons scanning through overlapping sectors of the space ahead. Once underground, the causeway opened out to a wide concourse littered with abandoned cargo haulers and rusting metro carriages. The space overhead was criss-crossed by gantries and walkways that provided countless firing positions for ambushers. Hesioth commanded his warriors to moderate their wroth, maintain disciplined bounding movement and covering fire protocols as the Salamanders moved ever forward, catching brief glances
of the distinctive heraldry of the Emperor’s Children as the Traitors appeared to take snapshots, before once again dispersing into the maze of dilapidated structures. Here and there, discarded battle plate daubed in lurid pinks and purples littered the floor, much of it split and broken, not by shot or blade but as if it had been outgrown and shed. As the Salamanders progressed further, heaps of freshly flayed bones, anatomically similar to the human genus but even larger in scale and denser than those of Space Marines were found amongst mounds of bloody flesh and shredded skin. Waves of militia emerged from the passageways that branched away from the causeway. They threw themselves into the oncoming XVIIIth Legion troops, where dozens of them died to drag down just a single Salamanders warrior, a ratio of attrition the militia could sustain for longer than Hesioth’s troops could. Leviathan dreadnoughts moved to lead the Salamanders and shield the advancing column from the brunt of attacks with their ceramite mantles, reducing the advance to a stately pace. Emperor’s Children kakophoni squads struck where the tunnels widened at an intersection to unleash barrages of rippling psycho-sonic energy from their abhorrent weapons, to which the throaty roar of storm cannon arrays was the reply. The leading leviathans fell, consuming nearby warriors in atomantic fire as their slab armour was liquefied by the resonant waves of the kakophoni’s assault. From across the causeway, Salamanders sanctifier squads, formed from the veterans of the Legion and armed to conduct close assaults, returned fire, their rotor cannon forcing the Emperor’s Children back into the darkness where they advanced dauntlessly in pursuit.


Further on, gurneys and stretchers were found discarded in makeshift med-bays; upon them portions of surgically dissected bodies, rendered to slabs of bloody muscle and discarded in pools of congealing blood, still twitched. Clawed hands crudely stitched to sinuous limbs grasped instinctively at the Salamanders as they passed. For seventeen kilometres the spearhead continued their procession through this gallery of horrors, their numbers reduced by continuous attacks from Emperor’s Children and the thralls they had captivated with their deceitful manipulations, until they reached an antechamber, its walls lined with recently emptied amniotic tanks and the floor still slick with the fluids they had contained. Medicae slabs, some upturned and others smashed to fragments, littered the space, and surgeon’s blades and saws, dripping with fresh blood, were scattered around. At the far end of the antechamber, the grand golden doors to the Delphos Nexus stood before them.

 

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Hesioth led his troops through the doors, his sword drawn as his troops followed, switching their weapons from burst-mode to continuous fire, sensing that the time for conserving their limited supplies was over. The Salamanders had passed through just one of many entrances that lined the perimeter of the Delphos Nexus, a grand amphitheatre that offered no cover from weapons fire. Vox-codes were passed between the XVIIIth warriors as they adopted a defensive posture, warriors with heavy weapons moving to take position in the centre of their formation. As they did so, a swirling vortex grew in the centre of the amphitheatre, coalescing into a form of sickly-hued white, building to a starburst crescendo, searing the majestic silhouette of the Primarch of the IIIrd Legion into the retinas of all who beheld it. As the light faded, Fulgrim’s new aspect was revealed. As their master took to the battlefield, bipedal abominations prowled through the doors that lined the amphitheatre upon limbs that bulged with grotesque musculature, straining against the Emperor’s Children that pulled on the rattling chains of their shackles. Each beast was a unique patchwork of human flesh and muscle, stapled and stitched together to form a distended, swollen brute and goaded into an agonising murder-rage. These creatures, the results of macabre surgical experimentation and deviant genetic manipulation of IIIrd Legion Inductii, were the beings Fulgrim wished to observe in battle. His machinations had drawn the Salamanders to this place in order to test and refine his creations’ capabilities. Heeding Fulgrim’s will, the beasts let out resonant screams from their bio-augmented throat implants that reverberated



through the floor and bounded towards their prey. In response the Salamanders opened fire, roaring blasts of rotor cannon fire punctuated by the steady thump of bolt shells detonating inside the bodies of their targets, filling the amphitheatre with the cacophony of war. The first of the abominations fell as they charged the defensive circle of the Salamanders, their flesh shredded and torn by focused fire but more pressed forward, their minds so saturated with pain they no longer had the capacity to register injury. The aberrant monsters tore into Hesioth’s warriors, pitching their dismembered bodies in high arcs before moving to their next target. The Salamanders drove them back with gouts of chemical fire but even as the air burned within the beasts’ lungs they still fought with unnatural fury, each dragging down a score of XVIIIth Legion warriors before they finally expired. Seemingly satisfied by what he had witnessed, Fulgrim descended into the melee. The leviathan Br’athan was the first of the Salamanders to open fire on him, directing a salvo of storm cannon rounds at the Daemon Primarch of the IIIrd Legion. Salamanders support squads opened fire with their combi-flamers, jetting burning promethium as Fulgrim jinked aside to avoid the shots. The Phoenician lowered his left wing as a shield before deftly flicking the bladed tip of his tail in a whip-crack arc that eviscerated ranks of warriors. With cannon fire proving ineffective, the leviathan charged across the distance to close with the Daemon as the sergeants of nearby sanctifier squads commanded their veterans to focus their firepower without relent, as the Loyalists attempted to overwhelm the corrupted Primarch, however his reflexes had been




elevated to supernatural levels alongside his physical form. Each wound inflicted upon his body knit together anew in the space of a heart beat as he moved with astonishing speed and power. Fulgrim thrust his spear with his lower, left arm impaling his attackers with impunity. With his other limbs he slashed vicious cuts into the exposed joints of a dreadnought, crippling it limb-by-limb until it was left paralysed, its sensor arrays desperately scanning in limited arcs to find where the inevitable killing blow would come from. Fulgrim however did not deign to deliver death and instead left the interred warrior to witness the slaughter of his brothers, helpless to intervene as a hurricane of carnage swirled around him. Hesioth witnessed Fulgrim’s contempt for the XVIIIth Legion’s warriors as he bisected and dismembered with surgical precision. Knowing his own skill was no match and hoping only to stall the Daemon’s rampage and spare the lives of his stricken brethren for if but a moment, Hesioth charged at the Primarch, his blade held high. As the praetor-commander bounded in great strides, Fulgrim turned about, spreading all of his arms wide as if to welcome him. The praetor’s blow was true and found its intended target – the centre of Fulgrim’s chest where the heart of an ordinary should have been – but even asthe sword’s power field-wreathed point pieced gilded armour, Hesioth knew that his otherwise perfect strike was not enough to kill the thing Fulgrim had become. Asthe great sword sank into Fulgrim’s flesh, the momentum of the charge burying it to the hilt, he threw his head back exhaling with something between ecstasy and agony at once. Inside his helm, Hesioth’s eyes widened as Fulgrim’s viciously barbed tail smashed into his spine and burst out




through his sternum, impaling him like a carcass hung for butchery. The Daemon beat its wings to bear them both aloft, the praetor-commander speared by Fulgrim’s tail that looped beneath him and through his body. For several moments, the pair rose into the air, Hesioth alive only due to his enhanced physiology. Below them, Emperor’s Children Legionaries flooded into the arena, gunning down the surviving Salamanders mercilessly. Hesioth, defeated and sensing his own imminent death, blink-clicked a flickering holo-sigil on his helm’s display and transmitted a pre-recorded order to his flagship; he had failed – the extraction of the XVIIIth Legion and the bombardment of the Amethryne City should commence immediately. With the last of his strength, Hesioth lifted his head to look upon the thing that Fulgrim had become, the Daemon met his gaze and the corner of his mouth curled in a knowing smile, before swinging his sword in an arc of gore, sending Hesioth’s head spinning from his body. Across every district of the Amethryne City, XVIIIth warriors, that had already begun to enact extraction protocols, and militia fighters alike were bathed in the blinding light of a supernova explosion as a shockwave erupted from the Delphos Nexus, flattening the fractured and crumbling buildings in its path. A column of light rose from the depths and speared into the high atmosphere, atop it a single point of star-burst light burned for a brief moment, before the city was enveloped by the clouds of a rolling dust storm. In that moment the orbiting Salamanders fleet suffered complete system outages, their augurs momentarily blinded and their motive drives cutting out. As their systems once again flickered into life several minutes later, the drifting hulk of the Pernissus, that had hung in orbit alongside them, was gone.

 

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The Bloodied Path

The purgation fleets of the Salamanders Legion sought Fulgrim’s sons within the Pale Stars and found their force sharboured within the Invocastus system where they would find a graveyard of abandoned void craft locked in the orbit of the system’s capital world. Here they would make planetfall, intent on cornering the stranded Emperor’s Children and allowing them no means of escaping the wrath of the XVIIIth. Impetuously the Salamanders chased their quarry into the Amethryne City but were beset by seemingly endless hordes of frenzied and fearless militia forces that stood in their path, and were drawn into the ancient subterranean causeways that lay beneath the ruined structures of the once-grand settlement. Only when the Salamanders were bloodied and wearied by the weight of the acts of violence they had been forced to commit was the true nature of the IIIrd Legion unleashed.

The War for the Pale Stars

In 012.M31, as the Horus Heresy drew towards its inevitable and bloody conclusion, the Emperor’s Children began to conquer the Pale Stars. This offensive would draw the Salamanders from their fortress on nearby Nocturne to oppose them, sparking a new front in the Horus Heresy. At the remote world of Invocastus IV, the Salamanders would discover the true reason for the Emperor’s Children’s new onslaught, and become embroiled in a battle with the daemonically reborn Fulgrim. Though they fought with the skill and tenacity expected of the sons of Vulkan, the unleashed fury of a corrupted Primarch would prove too much for the Salamanders to survive.


The Bloodied Path

Guided by information extracted from captives, Hesioth and his troops battled along 17 kilometres of the Argo Causeway, running a gauntlet of constant, harrying ambushes from the Emperor’s Children and suicidal attacks by their enthralled cultists. Only the determination and strength of will of the XVIIIth Legion gave them momentum enough to forge on, into the unknown.



Daemon Primarchs

Through the power of the gods of Chaos the Traitor Primarchs were elevated beyond even the prodigious levels they previously existed at, their traits exaggerated both for the better and for the worse. Their martial strengths were enhanced to beyond that of mortal comprehension and, in contrast, so were they riven by their flaws, magnified by the lens of corruption. The pursuit of betterment became narcissistic obsession, resilience became recalcitrance and valour became an all-encompassing fury that dulled the other senses. Eventually, as each of them was gradually consumed by the new powers they were imbued with, they lost the virtues by which they once lived, becoming parodies of themselves, counterpoints to their creation.

Terrifying corruptions of the Emperor’s finest generals, Daemon Primarchs are creations of fel power and icons of the dark influence of Chaos. Once, they led the Space Marine Legions and fought for the future of humanity, now they are a blight upon the galaxy, living embodiments of the sins of the Great Crusade.

Fulgrim Transfigured
The Phoenician Deified, Avatar of Perfection

Fulgrim’s desire for perfection in all things left his mind open to doubt, the seeds of which were nurtured by the malevolent spirit that inhabited the Blade of the Laer and his own hubris. Since his apotheosis to daemon hood in the ancient xenos citadel deep beneath the crone world of Lydris, Fulgrim has been able to shift his appearance between amore humanoid guise and a monstrous form gifted by his new patron. With a serpentine lower half, vast wings and a pair of additional arms, Fulgrim’s new body elevated an already deadly warrior to even greater heights, closer to the perfection he so craved

Warlord: Avatar of Perfection- As Fulgrim grew ever greater in his patron’s regard, his focus became ever less on his Legion, and towards the attainment of personal glory, seeking out any whose martial prowess approached his own and humbling them.

Serpentine Daemonform- In the wake of his physical being becoming a vessel for the powers of the Warp, Fulgrim’s form became nigh indestructible. Despite his virtual immortality, Fulgrim’s monstrous pride often ensured that should a foe threaten to best him, he would dramatically leave the battlefield, denying them the satisfaction of besting him in combat.

Blades of the Phoenician- No recorded sightings of Fulgrim in the later years of the Horus Heresy appear to agree on how many blades the fallen Primarch carried or the form they took. What all agreed on however was that they parted armour with ease.

Scion of Corruption- By the time of Fulgrim’s apotheosis, the full debased nature of his Legion was well known to both friend and foe alike.

Resplendent Wings- Fulgrim’s altered form descended from tortured skies on delicate wings. Though fragile in appearance, when punctured by bullet or blade, they rapidly reknit, remaining perfect and unblemished.

LEGIONES HERETICUS

Over the course of the Horus Heresy, many of the proud Space Marine Legions gave themselves over to corruption, selling their souls for promises of power. Though the Legions varied in terms of their engagement with the fel lords of the Warp, it cannot be denied that the boons granted to them proved valuable in this conflict.



Fallen From Grace
With Fulgrim assuming his immortal form, many of his personal retinue found their role redundant. Many relinquished some or all of their ceremonial wargear, instead taking up other roles within the Legion, while the remainder instead sought to prove their worth anew in the eyes of their brethren and and their beloved Primarch.

The changes wrought by the favours of the Dark Gods were not restricted to those that actively sought them, indeed each Legion that sided with the Warmaster was corrupted to some degree and departed from the ideals established at their founding. Most often this was manifested as predilection to the extremes, both upon the field of battle and off it. For the IIIrd, Fulgrim forged a path of arrogance and contempt for all things, down which his sons willingly followed. By the later stage of the Horus Heresy, the Emperor’s Children were blinded to the reality of what they had become and willingly embraced the corrupting influences of their new patron.

Corrupted Rite of War: Brotherhood of the Phoenix-
In the days before the Horus Heresy, the Brotherhood of the Phoenix was a fraternity of officers from the Emperor’s Children, akin to the warrior lodges found in other Legions, albeit with a significantly more elitist approach to membership. In the years after the Legion’s fall, this became a haven for the most ambitious and deadly warriors, clamouring around their Primarch, each seeking his attention and favour.

Corrupted Rite of War: Children of the Maraviglia-
In the latter years of the Horus Heresy, Fulgrim rarely took to the field at the head of his forces. Instead he preferred to linger, pursuing his own interests until such a point as his arrival would provide the maximum dramatic effect. Fulgrim’s forces would surge across the battlefield, seeking to prepare it for his grand entrance, before he would appear, often in a burst of cloying perfumed fog or an explosion of iridescent razor-sharp petals, ensuring all eyes were drawn to him as he turned the tide of battle and reaped the acclaim and adoration of his mortal followers.

 

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THE ARMOURY of INDULGENCE

Debased Augments
Experimentation by the Legion’s Apothecarion continued unabated throughout the Horus Heresy, with little need for secrecy once the shackles of the Emperor had been thrown off. During this time, forbidden lore and ever-more bizarre chemical concoctions were mixed with the now-routine surgical augmentations and xenos technology to create truly disturbing results.

Phoenix Pattern Power Weapons
A mark of honour during the Great Crusade, by the latter years of the Horus Heresy these weapons were as often taken as trophies as they were rewards of prestige. Some were claimed in duels while others were retained by those warriors who had left the Phoenix Guard. Regardless of how they were earned, they still remained a true artist’s blade.