Index Astartes: Night Lords-Terror in the Shadows
"My sons once we were the horrors of the Imperium, we were the monsters that were unleashed from the shadows onto those foolish worlds that rebelled against the Emperor. Look at us now a corps of blood mad demons that hide in the shadows and prey on the weak we are not a legion we are not Astartes we are the punishment unto the galaxy and let us seize that change let us become the punishment that we were fated to be. Hail Horus! Death to the False Emperor! Slaughter his angels we are the demons of the shadows and let us unleash our wrath." Last words of Konrad Curze to his entire legion.
Origins
"I am the Night Haunter! I am the Beast that flays your men! I am the monster that takes your Children! I am the Daemon that you pray for protection from! Me no other and I have come for you and you alone." Konrad Curze to an unknown crime boss the message would be recorded and put on loop in an attempt to lessen crime.
"A single strike can kill their entire leadership and wipe out this monstrous syndicate that dominates Hive Quintus and this strike shall be undertaken." Konrad Curze to the corpses he kept as his advisor council.
The world that Konrad Curze would land upon was an ancient hive world called Nostramo shrouded in eternal night and the planet's surface was coated in Adamantium and blood. Nostramo had absolutely no law or authority on the entire planet with the only powers being found in the form of crime syndicates and gangs. The horrors on the world were similar to that of some of the more restrained worlds during the fall of the Eldar. With gangs randomly roaming the streets and massacring anyone in their way with the depraved acts that were committed disturbing to even some of the Drukhari that raided the world occasionally. Then the Night Haunter arrived and Nostramo died a screaming death.
Konrad's landing would punch through the adamantium layer of the planets crust and ended up landing in the heart of an ancient mine, the young Primarch would drag himself back to the surface coated with melting adamantium and his first sight was the murder of young woman as she was screaming for help the young Primarch made a choice and the choice was simple he grabbed a broken piece of metal and beat the murderer to death with single minded intensity. The woman had died before he was able to get there and as he stood there coated in molten adamantium and blood his philosophy crystallised he would protect the weak and bring peace and law to Nostramo. Then his first vision hit him, and he saw a world coated in the flayed skin of humans blue armoured superhumans torturing the population and him standing above it all coated in blood and guts.
Konrad would soon make a few makeshift weapons and began his campaign to end the bloodshed of Nostramo. His first act was to decapitate the leadership of a minor gang in the area that he had emerged from. He began by pick off the weaker members of the gang until the leadership was forced to gather to work out their response and then he struck. The leaders were found three days later flayed with their eyes plucked out and the ribs jutting out of their flesh. As the gang tried to work out what to do Konrad slaughtered the lot stacking their skulls in the centre of the room as a warning to one and all on Nostramo. After that he would continue his purge against every gang, he could find with the Night Haunter becoming a byword of fear and murder across the hive.
As the power of the gangs slaughtered began to rise the remaining forces in the hive gathered for a meeting on how to deal with the Night Haunter and as they bickered and threatened each other Konrad struck. The worst of them died last as they saw their fellows being slaughtered from the shadows until there was only a single warlord left the leader of the most powerful gang in Hive Quintus his torture would last for three weeks uninterrupted with his screams broadcast across the hive. As the civilians of the hive left their homes, they found in the heart of the city a throne of corpses and bone atop it sat Konrad Curze with a crown of thigh bones and radius's and Konrad declared himself the Night King of Nostramo. As the citizens of Hive Quintus knelt to their new overlord Nostramo was dragged closer to its final death.
Konrad would launch a war of conquest that was so brutal that the population of an entire hive was tortured to death for killing the emissary demanding their surrender. Konrad and his men would rampage across the planet bringing his attempts of peace and justice across Nostramo. Until only Hive Primus was left with the remaining gangs and syndicates forming a union to hold off the armies of the 'Night Kingdom' as it was known. The defenders had at their disposal four billion men, three hundred thousand tanks and over a million pieces of artillery the defenders would hold for three hours before the wall fell. Konrad had slipped into the defender's permitter and eliminated the families of the commanders at the same time he released gas canisters in the heart of the ventilation shafts. By the time that Hive Primus fell every street had the flayed corpse of a gang leader hanging in the centre of the thoroughfare. As Konrad stood atop the Hive and proclaimed his victory the First Torture of Nostramo began.
Three years after unification great golden ships broke through the eternal twilight of Nostramo and the Emperor came to Nostramo. Konrad stood waiting for him and proclaimed his allegiance to the Emperor and Imperium. The Emperor would reveal Konrad's purpose he was to be the Imperium wrath the punisher unleashed upon those that dared betray the Imperium. As the eighth legion marched out to meet their father, he granted them a title that he had been known as before he took on the title of Night Haunter, he declared them the Night Lords and they would haunt mankind.
The Great Crusade
"Flay them all! Slaughter their families and obliterate their culture! Leave nothing of them left!" Konrad Curze at the fall of Craftworld Ila-Manesh.
"I have seen endless fields of blood and skin where a minor mistake ends with death. The Night Lords came for my world and they will come for yours too." A mad beggar on the world of Jackson three years later the planet would rebel, and the Night Lords were unleashed.
The Night Lords would have few compliances or conquests with the majority of their actions being against rebels. Alongside their distaste of remembrancers they had the most brutal and bloody conflicts in the Imperium not something that could be easily used for propaganda instead the few recordings of their conquests were used against potentially rebellious worlds and often were successful. However, the Night Lords would have two major campaigns that was recorded and spread throughout the Imperium the Slaughter of Craftworld Ila-Manesh and the fall of Rhodes.
Craftworld Ila-Manesh was a minor Craftworld that was drifting through the western fringe of the expanding Imperium that was one of the few Craftworlds that were destroyed by the Imperium. After they raided a hive world under the garrison of the Night Lords legion Konrad Curze would declare that he would wipe the Craftworld from the galaxy. The Craftworld would call everything that they could to aid to them in their final stand, none would answer in time. Konrad brought 80'000 Astartes and a majority of the legionary fleet lead by the Glorina class battleship Nightfall. The battle began with the destruction of the defending fleet in a few hours. When the Craftworld was surrounded by the corpses of their defence fleets did the bombardment begin with wave upon wave of weapon fire tearing into Craftworld and then the landings began. The Craftworld had conscripted every Eldar that was able to fight unleashed their shard of Khaine and used the strongest weapons and weapon platforms that they had available onto the attackers. The causalities on both sides were atrocious with every Eldar that fell into the Night Lords hands being tortured in plain sight with their last act often being shattering their sprit stones. As the Eldar were driven back more and more extreme actions were taken with entire sections being vented to the void in a desperate attempt to hold off the enemy forces. No matter what the Eldar did the Night Lords ground inexorably on until the Infinity circuit itself was threatened by the Night Lords vanguard and all possible Eldar were being evacuated through the Webway gate and then Konrad Curze struck with his sadism and military prowess, he alongside his bodyguard known as the Atramentar led by one Jago Sevatarion. The Webway gate was captured in a single blow with corpses of the captured children and civilians unable to fight tortured to death and their corpses hung from the roof. Upon hearing this news, the defenders knew that they could not hold off the enemy anymore and that they had failed. The shard of Khaine took command and ordered one last charge to carve their name into the Night Lords heart. The counterattack began with the shard tearing apart a Dreadnought with his bare hands and casting the crippled Astartes upon the floor where he would be trampled to death. The Eldar fought bitterly and without remorse often detonating bombs or mines as they died to take any Night Lords Possible with them. The shard however would march to fight against Konrad Curze and their duel was legendary with each blow being enough to slay terminators in a single blow but eventually against all odds Konrad Curze won and as he stood atop the broken corpse of his enemy his legion became one of six to have killed a Craftworld alongside the Emperors Children, Space Wolves, Death Guard, Thousand Sons and the Salamanders.
The world of Rhodes was a young colony with only four years to its name before the Age of Strife came devastating the Industrial worlds options with the majority of the surface being used to produce lasguns and tanks. The world had been settled by groups form two worlds one from the world of Herts and the other from the world of Rozwi. At the height of the age of strife the two groups fell into a civil war that would last for three hundred years before the Herts emerged triumphant over the Rozwi and the State of Rhodes was declared across the planet and for the next two thousand years the Rozwi were oppressed beyond belief with barely any rights granted to them and the extent of the oppression extend into every crevasse possible while the ruling Herts class save for those in the military became debauched madmen ruling over factories were men died standing and stayed that way until the end of the shift. When the Imperium came upon them the ambassadors were sent to the factories and forced to work to their death when the Emperor heard of this, he declared that Rhodes would burn and thus sent in the Night Lords. The defenders were not expecting the strength of the Astartes and their sadism, the first major combat force of Rhodes to surrender a 10'000-man strong regiment was flayed alive and dropped onto the capital city. Following that the defenders steadied their souls and dug in and prepared to fight to the death and then the Rozwi revolts began and Rhodes fell, and the Night Lords gained one of their first positive propaganda reels.
The Fall of The Night Lords
"Do you remember Nostramo? Do you remember the endless slaughter the eternal crime and the ancient night? Nostramo is dead now and mankind is all the better for that." Jago Sevatarion to Zso Sahaal before the battle of Krieg at the height of the screaming road.
"I am the Night Haunter; I am the punisher of man; I am the one who slaughters the failures of humanity and you have failed me Nostramo. I attempted to bring law and order to this broken world yet when I left you regressed and thus I as High judge declare that you have failed me and sentence you to death." Konrad Curze upon the Exterminatus of Nostramo.
The Night Lords would have no particular incident that would push them over the edge to heresy they would have a long decline in standards as Nostramo collapsed once more back into lawlessness and anarchy with the remnants of the gangs and new gangs arose from the ashes of Konrad's authoritarian state. The Night Lords would ignore this and often recruited the younger gang members into the legion transforming them from a legion of just if harsh enforcers into nought but bloodthirsty sadistic maniacs that terrorised their way across the galaxy for no reason other than thy could. This sickened Konrad to the core, yet he refused to act against his sons claiming that his visons had told him that this would be the case and it was not yet time to act.
When the news of Davin reached Konrad, he declared that the time of ending had come he would call the entire Night Lords legion to Nostramo and began the trial of Nostramo. The trial began with Konrad declaring that his legion had failed him and the Imperium, that they had betrayed all of their values and spat upon their oaths. He then declared that soon the Glorious Revolution would take place and their sins would be cast into the ashes of history as they would be the punishment onto mankind. As the legion recoiled the final declaration was made Nostramo would burn as penance for its citizens sins. The Nightfall would send a short Vox message and then opened fire with a pair of cyclonic torpedos and then the rest of the fleet joined in the adamantium layer covering the planet's surface shattered and the unstable tectonics of the world shattered entire continents became volcanoes, Hive Secundus was slowed by a tectonic rift that drowned the impact sites of the torpedos as they clawed their way through the planet to the core. They detonated and the world broke and at long last Nostramo died and the Night Lords fell into debauchery and slaughter.
The Horusian Heresy
"Didn't you kill my brother?" Konrad Curze to Leman Russ
"We were not a legion we were a group of madmen unleashed upon the galaxy. When our father died, we failed what do you expect from those that killed their own homeworld." Jago Sevatarion to Horus at Terra.
During the Horusian Heresy the Night Lords would mostly ravage the southern stretch of the Imperium from Tallarn to Krieg in a long winding rampage that would become known as the Flayed Devastation a series of worlds where the Night Lords unleashed their full wrath upon mankind every world that they conquered went through weeks or even months in some cases of unimaginable torture with the few Slaaneshi cults in the legion exploding with membership. The two largest battles that the legion fought in were the Battle of Krieg where their Primarch fell to Leman Russ and their participation in the Terran campaign as shattered warbands.
The battle of Krieg would be a deciding factor in the Night Lords history with the death of their Primarch and the destruction of large parts of their legion they would never be able to return to their full power and the reign of terror over the galaxy would be broken. To the Space Wolves it was just another Legion they had to put down. The battle would begin with the obliteration of the Glorina class battleship Nightfall that served as the flagship of the Eighth legion the damage that would be sustained by the Nightfall was catastrophic with entire compartments opened to the void until on the third salvo the spine of the ship broke and death of the Night Lords began. The landing would tear trough the enemy forces killing thousands of Astartes. While Leman Russ hunted his brother, he would find Konrad Curze terrorising the citizens of a hive already having flayed one tenth of the population. The duel would begin with a blow from behind by Russ slicing across Konrad's back, the duel would end quickly as Leman was the greatest of all of his brothers at fighting and he would kill Konrad and tear the pauldron from his left shoulder as a symbol of his victory.
Following the death of their Primarch the Night Lords would collapse most would head to the Terran campaign or the other campaigns across the Imperium. The largest force would fight on Terra most notably fighting once more in the ruins of the city of Vhnori where the defenders would end up destroying the remains of the city rather than let it fall to the Night Lord's a second time. The annihilation of Vhnori would eliminate a large portion of the eighth legion on Terra and the remaining forces would be sent to pacify the rebellious ruins of Mercia where they would often lose entire squads in battle against the guerrilla warfare utilised by the rebels across the continent.
The Scouring
"Love what you've done with the place nice uses of the flayed skin we left lying around here." Jago Sevatarion to Jaghatai Khan at Tallarn.
"Praise Slaanesh." Krieg Acerbus leader of the Warband of Exquisite Torment the largest Night Lords warband and second largest Slaaneshi warband.
Following Horus's death, the Night Lords already fractured into loosely aligned warbands completely dissolved into warbands ranging from a few squads in size to entire chapters. They would flee into the many successor states of Horus's revolt the largest concentration fled to the Eye of Terror but the Imperium Secundus, Kingdom of New Caliban and The Holy Chaos State of the Ghoul Stars all have groups of Night Lords in auxiliary roles for when they attack the Imperium.
The Forty-First Millennium
"No man commands the Night Lords." Zso Sahaal
'The Night Lords are the scum of the traitor's madmen who have no hope to remerge as a legion they are a broken force nothing but mad wolves prowling alone when once their pack dominated the plains." Bjorn the Fell handed on the Night Lords.
The Night Lords are a fractured force of warbands scattered across the galaxy fighting under all three of the claimant's banners. Yet recently the ruins of Ila-Manesh have been hosting meetings of the greater warbands while disturbing reports come from the Heirs of Nostramo warband that a strange shadow like creature has been ravaging their enemies in battle leaving flayed corpses where once stood the warbands foes. As the Dark Millennium ends the Night Lords reach out to carve their names into humanities hearts.
Organization
"Ave Dominus Nox!" Battle cry of the Night Lords legion and successors.
"Terror in the shadows! We're the Terror of the shadows not the feking Terror in the Shadows." Warlord Talos Valcoran 'the Souleater' of the Terror of the Shadows warband.
The Night Lords legion shattered following the heresy and is divided into hundreds of warbands that serve often themselves or the chaos god their founder pledged them too. The majority of the legion serve either Chaos Undivided or act as mercenaries for the claimants while the remainder serve one of the chaos gods the largest cult is the cult of Slaanesh that can be seen in that they not only hold the allegiance of the largest Night Lords warband but the entire cult in the legion is unified in that warband. The second largest cult is the cult of Khorne with the most powerful warband being the Host of Glorious Slaughter. The cults of Tzeentch and Nurgle are both very small with the entire Nurglite faction of the Night Lords serving Roboute Guilliman while the servants of Tzeentch are often seen serving the Kingdom of New Caliban or the Black Legion. One of the most powerful of the unaligned warbands is the Heirs of Nostramo a warband that is still loyal to Konrad Curze.
Primarch
"My brother was a rabid beast that only saw the horrors mankind is capable of never the beauty and glory that man can create the only punishment he knew was that of death and torture if he had known peace or kindness may haps he would of become the paragon of justice and hope for the Imperium father made him to be." The opening line of the Chapter on Konrad Curze in the Historical work The Primarchs: Heirs of the Emperor by Magnus the Red.
"Konrad was a monster the worst of us all he did not do it out of loyalty to Horus bitterness towards the Allfather he did it because he wanted to feel better about himself and his twisted visions." Leman Russ on Konrad Curze.
Konrad Curze was the cruellest of all the Primarchs with his tactics often being focused on savagery and terrorising the enemies into surrender or routing from the bloodthirsty madmen that made up the Night Lords. His gaunt pale face became the symbol of the Imperium's wrath and when he fell the symbol of unrepenting horror.
Homeworld
"Nostramo was terrible dark, horrific people and absolutely monstrous food." Fulgrim on Nostramo.
"I miss Nostramo sometimes it was bloody and brutal covered in madmen who did whatever they wanted no wonder we failed." Talos Valcoran on Nostramo.
Nostramo was one of the harshest of the original legion Homeworlds with constant violence and barley any agriculture. The gang culture has survived and is ingrained into the new recruits as they are trained with internal division between the gangs' successors in the legion with the gangs often forming the squads within the legion.
Gene-Seed
"So, they become very pale and their eyes turn black that doesn't seem that bad, on the surface their minds have gone insane with paranoia and sadism." Azheck Ahriman on the Night Lords gene-seed.
"Have you seen the Slaaneshi marines they are ridiculously mutated most have tails and I've seen some with snake heads." Talos Valcoran on the Slaaneshi Night Lords mutation.
The Night Lords gene-seed is surprisingly pure for Chaos legions with the legion all unanimously having pale skin and black eyes. Those who swear allegiance to a singular Chaos Gods are heavily mutated with the Slaaneshi forces being the most effected.