The Flawless Host / The Shining Blades

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Warmaster Davroth and the Scourging of Makenna VII

The Sonic Dreadnought is a distinctive iteration of the Mk IV pattern, used by the descendents of the Emperor’s Children Traitor Legion as well as a number of associated renegade factions such as the Violators and the Flawless Host. The Emperor’s Children were the first Chaos Space Marines to draw upon the vile blessings of Slaanesh – the Prince of Excess – and the first to unlock the secrets of cacophonous and blasphemous sonic weaponry. Such weapons draw upon the raw power of the Warp, modulated by the psyche of the bearer, to unleash a deafening and discordant sonic assault that is as lethal to the foe as it is exultant to the user. Such weapons range in scale from the handheld sonic blaster to the siren carried by the Knight-class walker known as the Subjugator

498-601.M34 – The Sin of Pride
Over a dozen campaigns, the Adeptus Astartes Shining Blades Chapter wins a string of victories that ultimately become known as the Berillia Massacres. When the Chapter’s methods are questioned, they attack their erstwhile allies and the Red Scorpions Chapter appears unheralded to bring them to justice. Much blood is shed in the ensuing war and the Shining Blades Chapter’s true allegiance is revealed as they transform into the servants of the Chaos God Slaanesh. In an act of overweening pride, the Shining Blades declare themselves the ‘Flawless Host’, a sin of hubris for which the Red Scorpions vow to exact punishment

“Rejoice! For the stars shall fall from the sky as rain from the thunderhead, and the fires of their descent shall belie the truth. They are not stars, but the vessels of death incarnate, and with them rides your doom.”Mhallan Khor, Apostle-Exemplar of the Flawless Host

 

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Ordo Malleus Registum Infernus

Sealed Archive

Access Warning

++Archival Entry/Personal Testimony++++By the Hand of: Inquisitor Verily Wroth, Bearer of the Seal++++Pertinence: Flawless Host – Night Lords co-alignment/Void Strike/Mandragoran Reach Void Watch/Scouring of Euthenia XX++++Commit to Record: Awaiting Mission Group Retrieval++

In 309.M41, a warband of the renegade Flawless Host demonstrated a previously unsuspected expertise in conducting mass void assaults using large formations of Storm Eagle assault gunships. The attack was carried out against an isolated void garrison trailward of the Mandragoran Stars. The garrison’s Imperial Guard defenders were afforded less than an hour’s warning of the imminent attack. When the enemy gunships came into range of the garrison’s point defence weaponry, they were so expertly piloted that all but a handful completed their attack run, crippling the outer defences and capturing the primary void dock in short order. Once the renegade Space Marines had been set down, the Storm Eagles launched once more to conduct devastating hit and run attacks against key locations, crippling life-sustainors, power generatoria, augur and command decks in short order. The disembarked Flawless Host warriors then launched a relentless assault against the station’s primary storage chamber, sparing no effort to capture it and to carry away some unidentified item. Less than an hour after the boarding action had begun, the Storm Eagles peeled off their attack runs to embark the Chaos Space Marines and their mysterious prize, leaving behind chambers and passageways strewn with the rapidly cooling corpses of the defenders. Exactly what the Flawless Host was seeking, or what they took with them from the station’s vaults, was at first a mystery. It later transpired however that the renegades were seeking an ancient relic said once to have belonged to the Legiones Astartes Night Lords. This invaluable prize was subsequently rendered to the Traitor descendents of the Night Lords as payment for their aid in the Flawless Host’s attack upon the world of Euthenia XX in the Forsarr Sector. For three millennia, Euthenia XX was counted amongst the most productive agri-worlds in the Forsarr Sector.

In 701.M40 however, the Flawless Host and their Night Lords allies attacked without warning or even apparent reason and left behind them nothing but devastation. Such raids are far from uncommon, for even the most well-defended planet is largely alone in the void and when aid is called for, it may be many weeks away. What marked this particular attack out as unusual is that the renegades deployed several flights of Fire Raptors as well as Storm Eagles and other attack craft, but so far as investigations can determine, none set down upon the surface of the target world before, during or after the action. Instead, dozens of gunships strafed the dispersed agri-processing plants, bombing them to ruin before turning their guns on the agrarian settlements where the agri-world’s Ratling worker-serfs resided. The diminutive abhumans stood little chance against the massed Fire Raptors that poured death upon them from the burning skies, although the wreckage of a single gunship found much later on suggests that one unknown hero did manage to let loose an extremely lucky shot that slew the pilot and exacted some small measure of vengeance.

Investigations later determined that the Flawless Host’s intent in unleashing such slaughter was to punish the population of the region for what they considered the sin of mutation, continuing their pursuit for perfection even having themselves turned to the service of the Ruinous Powers. In procuring the aid of the Night Lords, the Flawless Host ensured their attack was carried out with the utmost effect, and they left several settlements untouched so that the survivors could spread tales of the atrocity far and wide. Such an attack fits the known demeanour of the Flawless Host well, for even before their fall they displayed an all consuming hatred of all forms of life – whether human, abhuman or xenos – that did not meet the exacting standards they themselves aspired to and embodied.

 

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The Liberation of Novaris
The newly chosen Chapter Master of the Silver Templars, Akilios Zanaris, leads his Chapter to the surface of Novaris, only to find that the populace have been enslaved by Heretic Astartes of the Flawless Host. The Silver Templars and the heretics engage in a short put fierce war, resulting in the deaths of a quarter of Novaris’ population. Eventually, Captain Ducas of the 1st Company defeats the Flawless Host’s' leader, Lyrius Soulslaver, in a éuel that lasts more than a day. With Soulslaver’s defeat, the battle for Novaris is soon won.

 

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Vigilus Ablaze

The Flawless Host, renegades so obsessed with their own excellence they were convinced they could do no wrong, were infamous even amongst their own kind. Having caught the scent of excess upon the aether, they made for Mortwald’s richest sites. They used the still valid access idents carried by their craft to bypass the layered defences and visit the most beautiful of Mortwald’s buildings unhindered, licking their lips in anticipation of the feasts to come. The glut of violence that followed was so disgusting in its obscenity it defies description. The rulers of Mortwald had been found guilty for the crime of imperfection – not for their excessive hoarding and sickeningly callous natures, but for not going far enough. The Flawless Host were glad to show Lord Deinos and his peers the meaning of true excess, summoning Daemonettes to aid them whenever a household guard regiment or rival cult moved against them. Each proud Mortwald spire soon burned from within, its rotten heart exposed for all to see.The outskirts of Mortwald – and the western parts of Oteck Hivesprawl that were also starved of resources – fared little better. The people of these regions had felt the injustice and greed of their ‘superiors’ most keenly. Whipped into a frenzy of indignation by the cult leaders that had inveigled their way into the continents’ outskirts, they mounted a gory revolution that saw the people turn against their rulers and take their heads. Soon enough, these mobs turned into blood cults – and from there into worshippers of the Dark Gods. Shorn of reason, convinced that their absent rulers were the true evil and that their only hope lay in defection, they followed the Chaos Space Marines into battle whenever the traitors launched a new assault.

A DEADLY CARGO
The first stage of Calgar’s master plan involved the acquisition of all six of Deinos Agamemnus’ personal Deathstrike missiles. These had been collected with painstaking care by the Vigilant historium enthusiast over the last century and a half, and were safely kept in a gene-locked hangar vault. Lord Deinos had boasted on numerous occasions that two of his Deathstrike devices were fitted with much-feared Vortex warheads, and that should he so choose, he could rip apart a rival hive in a matter of hours, consigning the survivors to a living hell as they were dragged screaming into the empyrean. Calgar drafted a large and ornate parchment bearing the words of the Primarch Guilliman himself, and the vow that Vigilus would not fall. To this he added his own addenda, then signed with his full array of titles in his function as Regent of Ultramar, Heir Apparent of the Tetrarchy, and Chapter Master of the Ultramarines. He flew to Mortwald through blood-red skies in the Thunderhawk Gunship Eagle’s Fury to land with as much pomp and circumstance as he could muster. Lord Deinos, at that point taking refuge from the horrors that the Flawless Host had visited upon him and his fellows, was coaxed from his Proteus-class bunker by an appeal to his pride; after all, to have the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines request an audience would bolster his status immeasurably. Calgar presented the Primarch’s Writ to Deinos Agamemnus, and formally requested he turn over all six of the Deathstrikes for use in the war effort. Lord Deinos refused point blank. The gigantic missiles were not for firing, he said, but for display, and he had gone to great pains to keep them in mint condition. He would invoke every legal barrier and bureaucratic mechanism he could find to ensure the requisition fell flat.At this, Calgar’s temper snapped. He grabbed Lord Deinos by the arm and lifted him high. Ignoring the sound of breaking bones and noxious smell of fear that emanated from the fool’s gold-braided pantaloons, he asked again through gritted teeth. This time, Lord Deinos acquiesced, opening the gene-locked vaults and handing over the contents to Marneus Calgar. Within a matter of hours the vault was empty, and the Deathstrike missiles were sequestered in the holds of rugged transport craft.

 

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MORTWALD



It was at that point that the Renegade Chapter known as the Flawless Host breached Mortwald’s richest areas, taking sadistic pleasure in the ease with which they were able to overcome the household guard of each aristocratic dynasty. A slew of atrocities was to follow as the Flawless Host punished the rulers of Mortwald for the crime of being imperfect. At much the same time, the Iron Warriors launched a devastating assault on the trench lines that had held so long against the Ork menace of the Western Scrap City Cluster. Mortwald teetered on the brink of disaster. It was the Black Legion that finally pushed the false continent into a state of cataclysm. They had sent the Flawless Host to Mortwald not merely to indulge their taste for luxury, but also to shut down the automated defences that protected the war zone. The Flawless Host, having only relatively recently turned renegade from the Imperium, still utilised many of the same craft with which they had waged war in the name of the Emperor.

Though these ships were now gilded, bejewelled and painted in an eye-watering array of hues, they still possessed the Adeptus Astartes idents that allowed them to bypass the cogitators of the automated defence networks. Approaching the most well-defended areas of Mortwald, the Flawless Host systematically destroyed every anti-air asset that these spires could bring to bear against an aerial assault.Upon receiving word that the false continent’s defence batteries were taken care of, the Black Legion descended upon Mortwald by the thousand. The Terminator lord Thorosgar Bear-fist bypassed the Deinos Trench Network and the Imperial Fist line entirely, launching a devastating attack on the defenders of Electros Hive and Djodrolev Hivestar. Zhune Tzang, a skilled Master of Possession who had enjoyed Abaddon’s favour for several months, pushed his own assault into the Emerald Strain, while sending a contingent of Slaaneshi Daemons to invade Electros Hive alongside Bear-fist. The Black Legion commanders had picked the sites of their assaults well, for there were countless miles of civilian territory between them and the Space Marines that defended the outskirts. By the time the Necropolis Hawks and Imperial Fists had closed in, the streets of Mortwald were running with blood.

 

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THE SHATTERING OF THE SHIELDS

Though the Warmaster of Chaos charged the Iron Warriors with the destruction of Vigilus’ defence networks, they greeted the order with indifference, even scorn. The prosecution of sieges was their art, and they would practice it no matter the greater plan. Their first act was to attack an unremarkable fringe of each hivesprawl, aiming for those areas that were too poor or strategically insignificant to be well defended. Their Warpsmiths then polluted the Bastion force field networks that ran around them with a potent machine plague. Were it not for the semi-psychic nature of the Bastion fields, the plague would have struggled against the inbuilt fail-safes installed by the Adeptus Mechanicus, but there was a hostile sentience to the scrapcode entity that was introduced. With the force fields already glitching and damaged due to the coming of the Great Rift, the machine plague thrived – indeed, it multiplied – by feasting on the empyric component of each node. By leaping through psycho-electric fields from one generator to another, it spread with horrible rapidity. By the second stage of the War of Nightmares, a full two-thirds of the force field generators were functionally useless.The Imperial defenders were disastrously unprepared for this new development. On the outskirts of Mortwald, those armies that had left the trenches, relying on the Bastion networks to guard their flanks, found out the hard way that the shield generators had been compromised. Lord Deinos’ suspicions as to their efficacy had been confirmed, yet even his traditional defences were found wanting.

The Iron Warriors, using their preferred vector of mechanised assault, drove home a series of attacks that blitzed through the trench networks with humbling ease. Scores of Iron Warriors kill teams had been despatched to Megaborealis early in the war, their aim to secure the mighty Tectonic Fragdrills there. These were brought to the trenches whenever a bunker network proved unbreachable, and used to create localised earthquakes that cracked fissures through shell-strewn ground and fortification alike. Into every split in the Imperial defence, the Iron Warriors pushed home another wedge attack that widened hairline breaches into yawning gaps. A fierce, grinding war began between the Space Marines of Dorn’s heritage and the traitors of Perturabo’s ancient order – in sheer violence, savagery and obstinate refusal to yield, it was reminiscent of the legendary Iron Cage. Ultimately, Captain Fane’s loyalist forces, having been battered by the Orks of the Western Scrap City Cluster and then attacked head-on by their most hated nemeses, had not the manpower to hold the line. The Imperial Fists were forced to withdraw to Hyperia, conceding Mortwald to the Iron Warriors and the Flawless Host.

THE FLAWLESS HOST
The Flawless Host saw the self important nobility of Mortwald much as a snake sees a warren of mice. They descended from their magnificent starships to parade amongst the preening aristocrats of that false continent, at first arriving with all the pomp of some neighbouring monarchy sent to dispense largesse. As soon as the first shot was fired upon them, they turned into furies, screeching their hatred as they slaughtered household guards and elite Militarum Tempestus escorts by the hundred. When the Iron Warriors finally drove their Imperial Fists nemeses from the trench lines and took control of the hives, they found only corpses in the richest zones. At the heart of each such region they encountered the Flawless Host, availing themselves of Mortwald’s finest rejuvenat clinics in an attempt to regain what they saw as the pinnacle of human beauty.

The Flawless Host invaded the high spires of Mortwald, using elite clearance data-ident codes from the time before they turned traitor to bypass the continent’s auto-defences. Together with a coordinated Black Legion assault, they caused untold havoc

As the streets ran red with blood, the veil between reality and the warp thinned to the point that it all but disappeared. In a burst of crimson light, the daemonic servants of Khorne stampeded through the shimmering portal that manifested there, the imposing figure of the head-hunting Daemon Skulltaker at the fore. They paid no mind to the station of those they killed during the ensuing slaughter; scar-skinned agri-peasants lay dying upon the corpses of the most well-dressed men on Vigilus. The south of Mortwald had fallen to the Daemons of Khorne, just as its trench lines fell to the forces of the Iron Warriors, and its inner sanctums to the Flawless Host. Though not one of these Chaos forces had coordinated with another, together they were able to destroy the most heavily defended area of Vigilus outside of Hyperia Hivesprawl.

 

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MORTWALD
Mortwald fell soon after Dontoria, assailed from within as well as without by the Chaos menace. The Cadian Shock Troops and Ventrillian Nobles stationed at the Deinos Trench Network and the Tzeller Line fought with honour and comportment, earning accolades from the Imperial Fists, Mortifactors and Fire Lords they fought alongside. The sparse but powerful forces of the Catachan Jungle Fighters, very much at home in the hydroponic jungles and fields of poisonous cacti, fought the Ork Kommandos that penetrated the trench networks to a standstill, and the Vigilant Creedsmen burned the spoor of the xenos from the rejuvenat districts with commendable thoroughness. For a while, Mortwald held. Yet as the upper echelons retreated into seclusion and the abandoned citizens turned to the most diabolical of patrons in order to seek revenge for their mistreatment, the scourge of Chaos began to take hold. The four-pronged assault – the Flawless Host on the citadels and palaces, the Black Legion upon sites of strategic import, the Daemons of Khorne fighting alongside revolutionaries in the streets, and the Iron Warriors siege-masters punching through the eastern trench lines – proved too much for even the Imperial Fists to counter. Captain Fane himself sent the missive to Marneus Calgar that the false continent was lost.

 

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THE DAEMON’S GRIP TIGHTENS
As the Ruinous Powers seduced more Chaos Space Marines into offering themselves as hosts for Daemons, the Possessed became firmly established among the Chaos warbands and Legions. Their depraved and loathsome acts grew to become frequent sights across the galaxy. The Possessed soon stood at the very front of each Chaos assault. With their Daemon-enhanced senses, they navigated the violent tides of the Immaterium, guiding Chaos fleets out into the mortal realm to embark upon reigns of terror. At the deformed hands of the Possessed, the structures and settlements of the Imperium suffered greatly, and their foul deeds have become infamous. During the events of the 5th Black Crusade, while the Imperial forces battled against Abaddon’s relentless assault, a Flawless Host warband led by squads of Possessed tormented the agri worlds of Galvan II and IV. Not only did they smash their way through Imperial defence emplacements – woefully undermanned as Abaddon’s forces kept reinforcements from reaching the beleaguered worlds – but they went on to massacre the populations of several cities in a horrifically violent fashion. They raided temples and sacred shrines, leaving with powerful artifacts requested of them by Abaddon. Not satisfied with their haul, before the Flawless Host exited the planet’s orbit, they destroyed its shipyards and major manufactorums, delivering a critical blow to the Imperium during a dark hour.

006.M40 - The Pyrocataclysm of Vilidad Prime
After broadcasting a terror message condemning the lack of beauty in the populace, the renegades of the Flawless Host invade the adamantium mines of Vilidad Prime. The 122nd Imeldan Destriers, a veteran Imperial Guard regiment assigned to monitor the tithe, make a valiant attempt to hold back the renegades. Modified nova charges are set by the Flawless Host throughout the adamantium mines and the population centres above them. Though the surviving Destriers fight the Chaos Space Marines every step of the way, the vast majority are slain in battle, their persecutors claiming the kills are‘ for the sin of mediocrity in the face of true beauty’ .Though the Destriers are reduced to their mortis threshold within the first three days of fighting, reports of strange Space Marines appearing in the mining districts crop up again and again, each time engaging the Flawless Host and driving them back. At first, the strikes are so sudden and brutally effective that the Destriers think they have a real chance of outlasting the renegades. When the Chaos Lord that calls himself the Visionary joins the fight, a hundred daemonic handmaidens at his side, the tide swings back again, for many of the Legion’s number are banished by the vorpal claws of the Slaaneshi daemons. Those Legionnaires that remain become searing columns of fire, fighting with a fury that makes them every bit as frightening as the renegade invaders. During what comes to beknown as the Pyrocataclysm, the fire of the Legionnaires proves able to burn even Daemon flesh, and the Slaaneshi entities are sent screaming back to their master’s realm. Though they commit a number of spiteful acts during their retreat, the Flawless Host flee back to their ships rather than risk disfigurement and defeat. During the fighting, a dozen new seams of adamantium are revealed by weapon blasts that scar the surface of Vilidad Prime. The nearby forge world of Lipitou Anville triples its production of war materiel, ensuring the majority of its labours benefit the Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes.

It is a paradox how, within a span of only fifty years, Cypher’s deeds could result in the slaying of the evil and corrupt Warlord Favian the Golden of the Flawless Host, as well as the stout and loyal Bartholomew Loxlor, Supreme Grand Master of the Angels of Absolution. The Imperium had sent fleets, armies and assassins to end the rule of Overfiend Tyrannex, Scourge of the Drakeburn Sector, and all efforts failed with lives in the hundreds of thousands lost. Yet Cypher alone was able to locate the Overfiend’s fortress, penetrate its defences and gun the miscreant down – instantaneously freeing billions from Tyrannex’s unnatural subjugations. Cypher’s trail weaves in and out of the Dark Angels’ path, and he crosses it with deliberation. After slaying the Overfiend Tyrannex, riddling him with holes and leaving behind bolt shell fragments and unique plasma burns that are the signature of Cypher’s bolt and plasma pistols, he had the nerve to plant a Dark Angels homing device. Within a matter of hours, the Rock was near enough and Deathwing Terminators teleported into the Overfiend’s throne room. Yet of Cypher, there was no trace.

 

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He watched as another of his ministers was brought before the horned monster. The judge in power armour grabbed the man by the throat and lifted him from the ground. ‘Do you have value? You do not have perfection, but can you conceive of that state?’ The minister’s feet danced for purchase in the air. ‘No, lord,’ he gasped. ‘Next to you, what could–’The judge, who was called Mindarus, interrupted by bringing up his other hand and punching through the man’s skull. ‘Disappointing,’ he said. ‘His underlings are obviously no better, if they have left him in such ignorance. Kill them all.’

But now the monsters had come, and they confronted Bellasun, who fancied himself an epicure of some knowledge, with the perfection of excess. They called themselves the Flawless Host. Their armour was the black of night, the violet of deep luxury, and, most disturbing of all, a pale pink that recalled both the infants of the privileged and the exposed muscle of the mutilated. They had demanded the capitulation of Sendennis. Bellasun had faith in the Emperor, but felt that His protection was too remote. He had opened all doors to the monsters, and now flawless horror was ravaging Sendennis.

The Flawless Host, scattered around the hall, opened fire. The thousands of prisoners panicked. They stampeded, and took many of the shells intended for the loyalist Space Marines. Soft mortals exploded. Blood was rain and spray and mist, and it filled the air. The loyalists answered the traitors in kind. They aimed higher. Civilians who stayed low were unharmed. But others, beyond reason, tried to escape the crush by climbing over the marble benches. Some of them fell back, their bodies shredded, coating their fellow prisoners with vitae. The loyalists’ fire was limited, intended to do no more than hamper and enrage. It worked. As the squad closed with the traitor captain, the rest of the Flawless Host rushed forward. Bellasun dropped to the ground. He scrabbled to the nearest pew and tried to tuck himself underneath. He had grown too wide, and so curled against the stone, whimpering as the two forces came together around him. He had believed himself a connoisseur of sensation. He had been a fool. Before him now was sensation in absolute form. The Flawless Host fought with perverse grace. They revelled in each telling blow. The loyalists killed with brutal frenzy. They smashed their foes to the ground with power fists and gutted them with chainswords. There was no art to their war, only a carnivore’s savaging of prey. There was very little left of each traitor that fell. The floor of the hall was awash with death. The monsters of excess tore each other apart. The hunger for perfection wrestled with the hunger for the kill. The greater rage of the grey predators triumphed. They reduced the traitors to ruined armour and shards of bone. When the last of the chain-blade growls faded, the air was humid with slaughter.

 

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‘I want to tell you of the last war.’ If he turned his eyes to the right, Uhle would be able to see his grandson. He kept his gaze on the stars. ‘There was a great heresy then. It was brought to Laudamus by Traitor Space Marines. They believed themselves to be possessors of perfect truth and perfect judgement. They walked in armour whose violet flames appeared to consume the pink of martyred flesh. ’‘The Flawless Host,’ Harn said. ‘You are listening. Good.’‘I know what you want to say. ’‘Maybe you know, but you don’t understand. Not yet. ’‘Go on then. ’‘The Traitors were convincing. They crushed all resistance. Within days of their arrival, Laudamus was theirs. I remember the weeping of my parents. They had fought, and they had lost. They were among the lucky few to survive the slaughter. They were also among the few who remained faithful to the Emperor. The heresy of the Flawless Host was a plague. Our people were weak. They burned in the fever of defeat, and the victors infected their souls with their false truth. It took very little time before our world echoed with the praise of the Traitors. Then the purges began. Mobs of heretics sought out those who clung the Imperial Creed. To please their corrupt masters, they hauled the faithful out of their homes and burned them in the squares. ’‘You were so young, then,’ Harn interrupted. ‘How can you trust your memory? ’Uhle almost closed his eyes, then. He wanted to retreat into his personal dark, to turn away from the unblinking judgement of the stars, and away from the wounds of the past. ‘Human flesh on fire. A thousand victims piled up in a single pyre. The screams. That smell, that sight and that sound do not fade with time. My parents hid with me in the sewers. I saw the world through the grates of gutter drains. The Traitors and their heresy had possession of Laudamus. But then the sky wept blood. ’He paused. The memory of that sight made him smile through the cold. ‘They came down in tears of iron,’ Uhle said. ‘The Blood Angels. I saw the streaks in the night. I heard the thunder of their landings outside

‘We followed the thunder,’ he said. ‘The stones over our heads shook. Dust covered us. And in this great square was where the Blood Angels confronted the Flawless Host. ‘Look around you, Harn. Do you see how far the nearest hab block is? The square was not as large then. The conflict razed entire blocks. They were never rebuilt. This ground is sacred now. It is here that the Flawless Host’s heresy was shattered. The Blood Angels tanks sent purging fire over great masses of heretics, and now there were new pyres here, and my lungs were filled with the holy stench of burning sacrilege. The Traitors thought to trap the Blood Angels in street-to-street battles. They did not expect the Blood Angels to flatten any building that blocked their path, to utterly destroy great swaths of the city. Think about this. Understand the meaning of cost. Thousands died. In every hab. Thousands. Crushed by collapsing rockcrete, burned to death by flaming promethium, blown apart by cannon shells. The slaughter I witnessed in the square paled in comparison. The streets ran with blood. I saw it stream from the destroyed buildings. The Blood Angels were merciless. They were the embodiment of annihilation. They had the right to be. Anyone living in those habs had chosen the Traitors over the Emperor, and this was their judgement.

‘After the war, when the heretical dead lay in mounds ten metres high, and the Flawless Host had been driven from Laudamus, I saw Gamigin again. The Blood Angels marched from Sempiternus, their standards high, and the sergeant more stern and calm than the stone he so resembled. But it is the rage I remember most clearly.‘Harn, you cannot imagine that wrath and the terror and agony it wrought. ’A few of the stars began to move and Uhle smiled. Now he lowered his eyes. He looked at the man who had been his grandson, but who had carved the ritualistic runes into his face and chest and wore filthy robes of a cultist. The man who had willingly thrown his lot in with the returned Flawless Host. The man who had plunged a twisted blade into his gut. The cold was taking Uhle down, but he had held it at bay long enough. He had lived to know retribution was coming. ‘You cannot imagine the wrath,’ he said again. ‘But by the Throne, you will know it. ’The stars were falling. The drop pods scarred the night. Once more, the sky was weeping blood.

 

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Rypax Raptor cult was a multifaceted riot of Legions, renegades and traitors of all kinds. Fulgrim’s sons flew down beside Night Lords, Word Bearers and Iron Warriors, their original Legion colours perverted in garish excess or cast aside altogether in favour of the warband’s. Their ranks were swelled with Raptors of the Flawless Host, Violators and Angels of Ecstasy renegades. Even fallen Space Marines of the White Scars and Brazen Claws Chapters were among their number, their oaths to the Imperium forsaken as they embraced Slaanesh and became members of the Rypax cult.

 

[Korra]

I wish there was a full novel about this chapter, they look so cool!

 

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[Unicronicorn]

View attachment 590

I so desperately wish GW would do more stuff like this. Not only just exploring and expanding on the various warbands, but actually showing off more paint schemes and chapter art. We got shown only THREE other warband paint schemes in the new codex. Kinda pathetic