Index Astartes: Night Lords
Origins
When Konrad Curze, the Eighth Primarch, first landed on Nostramo, the world was covered in endless night. And though Curze's efforts at improving the situation would help to lift that suffocating blanket partially, Nostramo was not something to be perfected, as Macragge or Prospero; Nostramo was always a world to save.
Curze was not found by a family; he was forced to make a living for himself on the streets. He remembered the name originally given to him by the Emperor, and was referred to as such by the other homeless children in his section of the Hive; the young Primarch, however, quickly outstripped them in development. But with physical growth came mental comprehension - and with that came an understanding of the corrupt, even anarchic system of the planet.
Curze hated it.
He would say the hatred had come from before he could remember. Perhaps he was born with it. In any case, Curze's strength, agility, and intelligence allowed him to take on an alternate persona - the Night Haunter - who acted to kill criminals.
At first, the Night Haunter acted in punishment. With time and success, however, the Primarch became obsessed with a larger plan. He already had the mafia living in fear; why not entrench that? Those who broke the law would be killed. The Night Haunter was watching.
As Curze began his plan, underworld leaders began trying to get rid of Curze. None succeeded. The Night Haunter tracked the assassins and destroyed them, and then their bosses.
Nostramo was pressed - and Nostramo changed. Civilians took up arms. Former thieves and vandals hid in their homes and tried to reform for fear of punishment. One Night Haunter was not enough to police Nostramo, but enough to threaten all of it.
The government changed little. Indeed, there were periods when Night Haunter was actually labeled an outlaw. Curze ignored these claims, but as the crime rate dropped, he was forced to think of ruling the world he had saved.
Few opposed him in his grab for power. In many ways, he was the natural choice. And so it was - within three decades of Konrad Curze's arrival on Nostramo, he was its ruler.
Curze's biggest successes were in varied areas of public policy. In a quest to eliminate crime, the economy needed to be fixed. Trade was re-established with nearby worlds. The official system was a free market, though all companies were closely policed. The police was, in fact, the basis of the government. The police chief, the Great Sheriff, was also the heir to Konrad Curze, as the Primarch knew there was a need to provide for his inevitable departure.
Politically, of course, Nostramo became a unilateral dictatorship under Konrad Curze, the Night Haunter. The aforementioned tyrant always saw it as more of a responsibility than a right: he claimed that he simply did not trust anyone else with the post.
The citizens, of course, lived in fear - there were plenty of relative innocents tried and killed by the Curzian system. Still, the brutality kept order.
The Great Crusade
When the Emperor first stepped on the black ground of Nostramo, he had already sensed Konrad Curze's presence. Within a few hours, father and son had been reunited.
The meeting took place in the Night Haunter's throne room. Curze was surrounded by the blades of fallen foes. The Emperor lit up the obsidian chamber with his golden light, and Curze immediately recognized him for who he was.
The conversation that passed between the giants remains unknown, but Nostramo was pledged to the Imperium, though Curze would continue to spend more time on his homeworld than any of his brothers (and the Great Sheriff spent the rest).
Konrad Curze accepted his Legion, the Night Lords, and taught them in the Nostraman way. To keep the Imperium's peace and simultaneously expand it, Curze expanded the size of the VIII Legion: at its height, it numbered about 200 thousand Astartes. One might notice this violated the Emperor's recommendation on Legion size, but then Curze's policies were often at odds with the rest of the Imperium. When Jaghatai Khan visited Nostramo, he called it a "cold, oppressive nightmare". Many shared this opinion of the world and Primarch, notably Horus, who refused to fight alongside Curze, and Sanguinius. The feeling was mutual: Curze considered the Imperium to be unstable and many of his brothers to be mad.
The Emperor, however, was mostly on the Night Haunter's side. Towards the end of the Great Crusade, records suggest he planned to restructure Nostramo, but the Great Betrayal proved Curze was right.
"Father, I know you plan even now to change my world. Do not deny it; you cannot and you would not. You desire a beacon of light, a symbol of the new galaxy you are now creating.
"Yet I am dark, Nostramo is dark, and I would have us remain thus forevermore. For in a white galaxy, there is neither contrast nor standard. Darkness has its uses, Father, and you already have plenty of light."
-Konrad Curze
The Night Haunter had a deep respect for those of his brothers that he felt had the courage to do what they must, regardless of public opinion. Those included Mortarion and Angron.
The Night Lords took part in their own expeditions during the Great Crusade, rarely intersecting with those of other fleets, and brought terror to those worlds that opposed them. Worlds would surrender peacefully rather than face their conquest by the Night Haunter. Some planets, the Night Lords did conquer, such as the fiercely independent Jeuxas. There, the locals were systematically destroyed, every major city bombed into dust and the governments of rural provinces immobilized and crucified. Twice the system experienced rebellions, and twice they failed utterly: the second time, the citizenry - remembering the grisly fate of the first uprising's supporters - opposed the separatism.
Yet problems plagued the Night Lords. One was Curze's own psychic talent for foresight. This frequently caused fits of near-madness. The Night Haunter tended to see the darkest futures, and often he was unable to prevent it. The images were typically those of crime and betrayal. The Eighth Primarch was powerful enough to see through the veil that blanketed Lorgar's betrayal from the view of others, but the vision ended up coming too late and being too unclear to matter.
The second problem was that, in an effort to swell his Legion, Curze often inducted among its ranks criminals - both reformed and otherwise. As he stayed behind on Nostramo, the First Captain - a man named Jago "Sevatar" Sevatarion - began reporting unrest in the ranks. Worse, mutation had crept into the previously pure gene-seed.
In his visions, Curze saw the Imperium's dusk and blamed it on the weakness of compassionate Primarchs like Sanguinius. Thus he challenged the Angel to a great debate on the internal ordering of the Imperium. Sanguinius cursed Curze and claimed it would be the Eighth Primarch's ruthlessness that would drive the Imperium to ruin. The Night Haunter responded that Sanguinius' desire for peace would leave the Imperium defenseless.
When Curze returned to Nostramo, his visions had increased in frequency and power hundredfold. Head splitting, the tyrant temporarily gave his duties to Sevatar, giving orders to purge the Legion and the gene-seed. A number of Night Lords, led by Krieg Acerbus, fled to the Maelstrom; others were exterminated. One way or another, the Legion came perilously close to civil war, reduced to perhaps a hundred twenty thousand Astartes.
It was Talos Valcoran, an Apothecary, who discovered a way to stabilize the gene-seed. The mutation could not be exorcized, but its progress could be slowed. Nevertheless, the Night Lords were permanently damaged, and many brave battle-brothers were consumed by mutation.
Meanwhile, Curze's feverish nightmares had spread to the rest of the Legion. Talos was one of those who felt them the strongest; others, like Zso Sahaal, were relatively immune. Regardless, from all fleets the Night Lords rushed back to Nostramo to at least police the world.
It is a testament to how well the Night Haunter secured his home planet that even during this tumultous time, little sedition and nothing approaching rebellion broke out.
About a fifth of the pre-troubles Legion fled with Acerbus, and an equal part died in purges and skirmishes. A quarter of those still loyal fell due to mutation. Not one other Legion sent aid to the belaguered Eighth, though it should be said that Curze never asked for it.
At last, Sevatar began rebuilding. By now, he was effectively functioning as the Legion Master, as Curze was greatly reduced. The Night Lords numbered a hundred and fifty thousand again by the time of the treachery, but all of them felt great concern for their leader, who was at last seeing the full story of the Great Betrayal. Groaning, Konrad Curze could do little save to scream out what he was seeing - he could not understand it, for the flood was too great even for a Primarch's mind. Angron and Mortarion both visited their brother, and the Emperor himself came to Nostramo to psychically aid his son.
It was a long session, but at last Curze was beginning to recover and the Emperor had departed to Terra, though even the Emperor's own psyche was damaged by those visions, leading to his difficulties on Terra. Then, Lorgar's emissaries arrived.
The Great Betrayal
The Word Bearers and Night Lords had always been distant at best. Nevertheless, when his cousins in the XVII Legion arrived, Sevatar granted them audience with Konrad Curze.
The Word Bearers spoke of the Emperor betraying Nostramo. They mentioned the plans to "lighten up" the planet and announced that the Emperor was about to bring its order collapsing in on itself. They claimed the Emperor was lost in an idealistic haze, unable to make the Imperium what it could be under Curze - under Chaos, which they presented as a panacea.
In that instant, Curze understood the truth of his visions.
The Night Haunter killed five of the emissaries with one stroke and proclaimed their treachery of the Emperor. Calling Sevatar to his side, he continued the attack. Of twenty-eight Astartes sent to turn Curze from his father, seven managed to escape, three of those severely wounded.
Curze immediately communicated the news to Terra. The Emperor was already there, and news of Lorgar's betrayal began to spread. Even as the Traitor Legions fought to kill their loyalists on Isstvan, Curze began planning the galaxywide war. Regrettably, his allies in the conflict would include primarily the enigmatic Alpharius and his rival Horus. The other loyal Primarchs and their Legiones were already converging on Terra.
The Night Lords, Alpha Legion and Luna Wolves took command of slowing down one of the traitors' fleets, namely that led by Lorgar. As Nostramo was quite distant from the fighting itself, only a small team - led by First Company Sergeant Zso Sahaal - came to defeat the traitors. Due to a strange series of errors, though, they ended up infiltrating the other fleet's ships.
Sahaal's team proceeded to not only destroy a few of the ships by detonating their engines and similar acts of sabotage, but also frighten the mortal and Astarte crew. The goal was to weaken and intimidate the First Fleet before they ever reached Terra, and for a long time the Night Lord strike force was successful, though some claim most of the acts attributed to them were actually carried out by the Alpha Legion masquerading as Night Lords. On the final approach, though, Perturabo discovered one of Sahaal's men.
The Khorneate Primarch's rage knew no bounds. The ships had, it turned out, suffered all of these problems due to spies! That, too, was blamed for all of the First Fleet's other issues, such as being relatively unsuccessful in conquering worlds on the way to Terra. Most of the fifty Astartes were found and executed, but Zso Sahaal and four others landed on the surface of Terra. There, they diligently aided in the defense of the Imperial Palace's walls. Though their overall impact was small, Zso Sahaal did manage to kill two White Scar Stormseers before being tortured to death by Jaghatai Khan.
"Is that all, Khan?
I know all these methods; I have used many of them. They cannot truly hurt me, only harm me. I will die, but then again there is no other way out of here.
I am only surprised at your torture's incompetence."
-Zso Sahaal
But Konrad Curze was not passively observing the Betrayal unfold from Nostramo. The disastrous betrayal worried him, but he noticed one of the Traitor Legions had apparently not joined the others in their quest to destroy Terra. Thus, he commanded a significant detachment of the Legion in a search for the Blood Angels.
Sevatar remained on Nostramo to keep order. Unfortunately, it was at this time that a group calling themselves the Ringing Sons decided to start an insurgency. Almost all of the leaders and members had arrived from offworld, and the organization was what would later become known as a Chaos Cult. Daemons and dark magics were summoned from the Warp, and the Night Lords found themselves under attack from their own world.
Luckily, not all was black. Though much diminished, Sevatar's portion of the Legion was plenty to put down the rebels. The citizens of Nostramo again took up arms in defense of their home's purity. The civil war started in the lower levels of the Hives, and for its majority the Eighth Legion fought there, in the belly of their planet, combating a horror that frightened even them and frightening it in turn.
The uprising had to combat not only angry civilians and Night Lords, but also the police. Organized better than ever, it would quite possibly have won the conflict even without Astarte help. Nevertheless, in newly constructed Octavus Hive, they could not prevent the entire city from collapsing into itself, burying the cultists in a pile of rubble. The daemons faced no such problems and thus eagerly burst out. In the ruins, Sevatar himself faced a Khorneate Bloodthirster. Even a mighty Space Marine like Sevatar was no match for the daemon, but he managed to hold it off for long enough that others surrounded the abomination and flooded its dark heart with bolter fire.
Sevatar lived, though his wounds forced him to be confined to a Dreadnought. The cultists, contrarily, were brought down soon after. By this time the new seers among the Night Lords had become able to use, and on rare occassions even control, their abilities. With their guidance, the last hiding places were destroyed and their attacks prevented. Nostramo returned to peace once more, and it would stay such for a long time.
Meanwhile, Curze searched for Sanguinius in vain. Nevertheless, he did find many unusual changes occuring in the Imperium. Largely unnoticed due to the massive catastrophe of the Betrayal, Chaos cults on multiple worlds had risen up and grabbed power. As time went on and traitor cities were leveled, the Eighth Primarch slowly understood how deep the rot had truly run within Imperial society. Fortunately, the cults were in many cases disorganized and weak. But sometimes, as on the Death World of Catachan, things were different. There, the jungles were crawling with mutated life, and the last human settlements were barely holding out against the menace. The Eighth Legion gave hope and victory to this failing world, inspiring a resistance whose spirit would spread - no other Legion so inspired the Imperial Army Retakers, the regiments which returned a galaxy in turmoil to Imperial control.
The Catachan walked up to Curze with a look of gratitude, but mild dissatisfaction, on his face.
"Primarch," he said, "we thank you for saving our planet and bid you a fond farewell."
"What troubles you now?"
"Not much. It is simply that many think we should have rescued Catachan ourselves, that it was a matter of honor..."
The Night Haunter smiled. "They are right. You should have been able to save yourselves. But you can yet be redeemed. Many other worlds need the Imperial Army's help. The war is not only a war between Astartes; it is a war between mortals as well. You are needed."
"And we will answer that need," the soldier said, new determination filling his features.
As the Betrayal ended, and news came from Earth of the Imperium's victory, however, Curze realized he would never catch the Fallen Angel like this. Gathering his warriors, he set course back for Nostramo, to recover before scouring a galaxy.
The Escape
After the Betrayal ended, the Night Lords regrouped. Many among them were sent out in small groups across the galaxy to aid the Imperial Army, Luna Wolves, and Alpha Legion in securing the Imperium.
Curze, however, soon swerved from this course of action. The Night Haunter had a vision of Sanguinius, and understanding at last the location of his brother, headed to the star of the Isstvan system.
The Eighth Primarch found the Ninth sifting through piles of bones, seemingly wavering. Yet when the Night Lords came, Sanguinius attempted a Warp jump. Fortitiously, few ships escaped, and the Blood Angel flagship - the Red Tear - was boarded by Curze himself.
Curze wanted only to talk to his brother, but by this time Sanguinius' mind had been poisoned against the Emperor. The two Primarchs met furious, each believing the other was responsible for the disaster that had befallen the Imperium. Moreover, Sanguinius refused to return to his homeworld and rejoin it. Instead, he wanted to strike out on his own, claiming the Imperium was now in a hopeless downward spiral.
From words the duel switched to fists, and then to swords.
The battle was short: the Angel was one of the best duelists among the Primarchs, and was able to greatly hurt Curze. At the last moment, however, he hesitated. This gave the Night Haunter time to get away, retreating to his own ships.
The Blood Angels might well have won the battle, but Sanguinius chose not to risk it. The Ninth Legion left the system.
The Night Lords wasted no time in informing Terra of Sanguinius' treachery. What they got back was Malcador's opinion as to how they should now function. In effect, the Sigilite copied some of the Emperor's ideas on brightening Nostramo, adding to that the viewpoint that Astartes should be involved in something other than war and the thought of centralizing the galaxy. Curze, in effect, responded that it was only due to the Astartes that there was a galaxy to centralize at all and that Malcador should keep his ideas to himself.
The Night Lords who had chased Sanguinius returned to policing the galaxy at large, and for some time matters were quiet. Towards the end of his life, Malcador began insisting that Curze integrate his Legion into Imperial society. Not long before, though, Curze found out that Mortarion - his closest friend among the loyalist Primarchs - had died fighting Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists. This led him to despair, and if anything the VIII has become only more secluded.
As the remnants of the Betrayal petered out and the Traitor Legions retreated to the Eye of Terror, Konrad Curze recalled all Night Lords to Nostramo. A hundred and twenty thousand remained- one of the stronger post-Betrayal Legiones. Back on their sunless homeworld, the Night Haunter proclaimed that fear required mystery, and that threfore the Eighth Legion would remain a shadowed group working to protect the Imperium and terrify its enemies.
No one objected. No one would have even without the Primarch's charisma. After all, this was the mission they had been created for.
The Long War
The Night Lords remain a Legion apart. Unlike the Space Wolves, which often operate outside Imperial norms due to their special status, the Night Lords have stayed relatively typical in their actions; their isolation and artificial mystery, however, have made other Imperial institutions doubt them quite often, and this feeling is mutual.
These doubts have only increased since the events of M33. The Night Lords had to deal with an increase in the frequency and severity of their visions, which reached the point of killing the seers. After an investigation, Konrad Curze found a solution to this doom, and soon after left to regions unknown with Sevatar. Whatever he did, it worked: the visions stopped completely.
"Where are you going?" Sevatar asked.
The Night Haunter sighed. "The visions. I have deduced their cause: my psychic imprint is causing them, and even my death would not fix them."
"Then what?"
"I must leave," the Primarch said, "depart until I am truly needed. In the End Times, I will come again. I will travel there directly; the machine allowing this is part of the Golden Throne and can be activated only once."
"Take me with you."
For an instant or two, Curze looked at Sevatar's uncertain posture and hopeful mind, contemplating the fact that Sevatar was not the Great Sheriff anymore, but could still serve as a symbol of unity. Then, he came to a decision.
"Very well."
The leadership of the Legion passed to Captain Naraka 'the Bloodless', who stayed Legion Master for over a millennium; he met his end in late M34, in the Grendel's World Wars.
Grendel's World was an isolated planet in the galactic east. It bore little greater significance, but when it reported being under attack by a massive force of White Scars, Naraka saw the chance to wipe out a lot of heretics at once. Thus, he personally led about twenty thousand Astartes to the planet.
The conflict was a long one; both sides played a psychological game, using the civilians of Grendel's World and surrounding worlds as their pieces. Eventually, the White Scars' patience broke, and they attacked first in the caverns below the surface of Tkeral V. From there, fighting broke out on all fronts. Grendel's World had to be evacuated, and Naraka was killed in protecting the civilians; by then, though, the White Scars were surrounded and pushed onto the empty surface of Grendel's World. Then, the planet was destroyed.
There have been more battles since, of course. On the world of Krieg, the planet's governor turned to the worship of Chaos. On the verge of defeat, the Imperial defenders launched a barrage of missiles, leaving the surface of Krieg a wasteland. It was in this wasteland that the Night Lords and Dorn Fists clashed. The Eighth was victorious, though not without the help of Krieg's humans; indeed, these impressed the then-Legion Master so much that Krieg, like a few others outside Nostramo, became a Night Lord recruiting world.
Over the years, the Night Lords have made it their mission to make the Chaos Legions fear the Imperium, as well as policing it in general when disorder grows too great for the Arbites to control. Of course, this has required much sacrifice. Constant fighting has prevented the Eighth from significantly increasing their size; it has stayed stable at about a hundred and sixty thousand Marines, despite constant recruitment. Worse, there is not a single member of the Legion who still draws breath that witnessed the Betrayal, or even the two millennia immediately following it (except for Konrad Curze and Sevatar, wherever they are). This activity epitomizes the paradox of the Night Lords; they are both defensive and offensive, both defenders of Imperial Worlds and- if needed- their exterminators, both saviors and brutal dictators.
Yet through all of this, the Night Lords' loyalty has never been questioned. For they live on a world saved on police, and policemen without loyalty are merely criminals.
Organization
The Night Lords are divided into forty Great Companies, each numbering about four thousand Astartes. The captains of these have complete power.
After the betrayal of Krieg Acerbus, the Night Lords have placed considerable safeguards into place to prevent a similar turning. Each Great Company has about a hundred Astartes as secret police, answering only to the Captain. These, concurrently with their other duties, search for corruption within the Great Company. Some call this practice paranoid, but not a single Great Company has forgone it.
Other specialists are less consistent. Apothecaries are universally acknowledged as important - after all, without Talos's aid in the days leading up to the Betrayal the Legion might have degenerated into oblivion - but their role varies. In most Great Companies, the approximately 200 Apothecaries play no role other than fighting and assisting the wounded. The 24th and 25th Great Companies have their Apothecaries also play the role of Techmarines, with about 400 of these in each. The 10th Great Company, the original home of Talos, has a particularly large quantity of Apothecaries, one of which is always the Captain.
Techmarines are viewed as dangerous for their split loyalties by a number of Great Companies, and though they are needed everywhere, often their numbers are small. Librarians, of course, are known to be even more dangerous. Psykers inducted into the Night Lords tend to rarely go into combat; instead, their skills are typically used on a larger scale to facilitate planetary invasions. For this reason, the Night Lords utilize the second-largest amount of high-level psykers out of all Loyalist Legions, up to Alpha-level legend Creun Abewy. Of course, safeguards are always in place, and in the multiple cases when a Night Lords Librarian did go rogue surprisingly few planets have been destroyed. Nevertheless, ten of the Great Companies refuse to accept Librarians into their ranks.
The Night Lords have no Chaplains.
The entire Legion is headed by a Legion Master, chosen from the captains. He remains leader of his Company while simultaneously heading the Legion, and remains a Captain even if he resigns the higher post. This has happened on multiple occasions, and is considered to be shameful, but occassionally necessary: not everyone can head the Legion.
Dreadnoughts are not very common among the Night Lords, but those members that do survive in the eternal shell are spread out among the Companies. A taboo preventing specialists from becoming Dreadnoughts exists, linked to the general distrust.
Combat Doctrine
The goal of any Night Lord operation is not only to win, but to intimidate the enemy into never fighting the Imperium again. Thus, when the Night Lords seek to conquer a world, their first action is invariably to spread fear and uncertainty through the defenders. This may take the form of capturing and using communication centers, using psykers to spread induced panic, or simply toppling important monuments. The goal of this first stage is to demoralize any defenders and create chaos.
Next, the Night Lords will drop. Often, the most important locations will be taken first, though sometimes seemingly random points will serve as beachheads. What is needed is a successful beginning, one that will intimidate the enemy as the war begins.
Finally, the attackers destroy the demoralized defenders. Here, the combination of fear caused artificially and fear caused through defeat can cause a rebellious world to quickly surrender, or xenos to flee. If there is no immediate concession (and sometimes even if there is), the Eighth is anything but merciful to the losers.
In defending a world, the Night Lords remain the masters of morale. The Dark Legion will attack communication first of all, occasionally attacking even ships in orbit using hidden reserves. If the enemy does land, the Night Lords do their best to isolate individual groups and mess with the overall strategy.
Whether attacking or defending, in battle the Night Lords know the value of the air. Jumping Assault Marines and Thunderhawks above make sure that, no matter the disposition, the Dark Legion has the high ground. Of course, plenty of bolters are also used. Devastators are slightly less common that usual, and Scouts more (despite the latter role being limited to Astartes that had not yet received their Black Carapace). Tanks are used only occasionally, and troop carriers even less: the Night Lords do not fully trust the Mechanicum, for whatever reason.
Homeworld
The Night Lords' home world, Nostramo, was a crime-ridden wasteland when the Night Haunter came. Curze cleaned up the anarchy, centralizing the planet under his control. Ever since, the Legion Master simultaneously has complete dominion over Nostramo. The Great Sheriff, meanwhile, is an Astarte captain and the default successor of the Legion Master (though others often end up as Legion Master).
One aspect of Nostramo that the Night Lords have never fixed is its darkness. Clouds of pollution orbit the planet, and even in summer it is blatantly dark. This atmosphere has led to Nostramans more suited to recruitment into the Legion, and thus encouraged.
"Install streetlights? Yes, true, every other civilized world of the Imperium has them. But Nostramo is not every other world.
"We do not simply live in the darkness. We are the darkness. Malcador himself did not convince us to change our ways; why would you think you are any different?"
-Legion Master Malcharion
The VIII's fortress-monastery is the Police Headquarters, and within it the Night Haunter's Throne Room. Until Curze returns, that chamber is kept only as a relic; nevertheless, the Headquarters are constantly being used and improved. There are no more defenses, save in space, where several battle-stations patrol the skies, and except for the Grim Fortresses - bleak towers rising from the center of each Hive and meant to protect them from inside more than outside.
But through the millennia, Nostramo has remained loyal. The Eighth has taken care to remember its roots.
Beliefs
The Night Lords believe the Imperial Truth, though their particular interpretation of it is occassionally unusual. The true uniqueness in their thoughts, though, lies in politics. The belief in a centralized government and in one person having dictatorial powers is taken to extremes, and the primary maxim of the Eighth is that a ruler should be feared, for the only thing worse than a bad ruler is an unstable ruler. After all, a world of constant coups and revolutions cannot be happy.
Thus, the Night Lords are usually perfectly willing to let civilians die for the "greater good". This should not be interpreted as them being, in their own eyes at least, evil - merely ruthless. Unlike the Space Wolves, however, they emphasize the value of civilians, if more on a population than an individual level. They fight for the Imperium, not merely against its foes - and that distinction is foremost for them, even if that fact is not always appreciated by those they protect.
Gene-seed
The Night Lords' gene-seed has been severely damaged by the loss in standards in the time leading up to the Great Betrayal. Even now, mutations are more common than in any other Loyalist Legion. Before the Night Haunter left wherever, visions of the future were also common; these have since ceased.
Battle-cry
"For Nostramo!"
999.M41
Eleventh Captain Variel of the Night Lords stared at the screens, and despite everything, felt no fear - only despair.
The Legion's losses had become unsustainable a long time ago, that much was known. But they kept up the facade of strength, because - because the weak were not feared. Order would collapse, and the essential function of the Night Lords would go unfulfilled. So they had recruited as much as they could, and standards - well, standards collapsed.
Except that this was worse. His own gene-seed was pure enough, and the same was, all things considered, true for of the Legion, compared to the ancient history of the Betrayal. But what had been won in body had been lost in mind.
It had been an accident, probably, at first; but there were benefits to this sort of psychosurgery, even if it left much of the Eighth Legion emotionless. So it went on, until it was reason being sacrificed and not emotion. And all of it kept secret, even (especially) from the Alpha Legion. It was a downward spiral of the sort that should have been obvious long ago. How many others, besides him, in the entire Legion had kept their full faculties?
Most had admittedly retained at least some. Even for one such as him, it was only becoming obvious now. The Alpha Legion was faster, and soon leading inquiries. And then, suddenly, shots fired on cousins. Their authors had been killed, and the Legion Master was assuring Alpharius that this whole mess was an isolated incident.
And Variel was terrified, because no matter whether Alpharius believed that or not, he knew his Legion was on the edge of treachery, and disorder.