AN : Sorry for the double posting. I realized too late the document was missing its first paragraph, which would have made the rest of the chapter ... confusing, to say the least. Enjoy !
While the Legion Wars raged inside the Eye of Terror, history continued beyond its borders. On Caliban, Lion El'Jonson found his own foster father Luther leading a rebellion against the Imperium, along with all of the Dark Angels who had been left to guard the First Legion's homeworld. In the ensuing confrontation, the planet itself was destroyed, and Luther's followers were scattered by the Warp energies unleashed. The Fallen who had been fighting planetside were separated and cast across time and space, while those who had been manning the ships in defence of Luther's vision found themselves thrown deep into the Empyrean, emerging from the madness of the Realms of Chaos only to find themselves in the Eye of Terror.
These ships, and the thousands of Legionaries aboard them, did not arrive in a unified manner. Many were destroyed not long after their arrival, or had their crew driven mad by the unrelenting horror of the Eye of Terror. The survivors adapted, and, using sorcery taught to them by the heretical Librarians of Caliban, made contact with one another and gathered under the leadership of Vortigern, an officer of the First Legion whose battleship, With Blade Drawn, was the mightiest of the assembled fleet. With Caliban destroyed and Luther presumed dead, the first goal of the Fallen was survival : revenge against those who had destroyed their homeworld was second.
This was not, however, how those who already dwelled in the Eye saw it. The Fallen's first contact with the Traitor Legions happened at Zethu, a daemon world under the control of the Word Bearers. When the sons of Lorgar saw the ships of the Fallen arrive, most of them bearing the iconography of the Dark Angels still, they believed that, somehow, the Imperium had found a way to pursue them all the way inside the Eye of Terror itself. Before Vortigern could even speak, the Word Bearers opened fire. The paranoia of the Fallen, honed in the years spent in conspiracy and betrayal on Caliban, served them well here, and they were able to defend themselves and crush the Seventeenth Legion outpost – only to realize their mistake when the wrath of the Crimson Accords turned against them. Several War Hosts of the Seventeenth Legion were dispatched to destroy the Dark Angels, and soon Vortigern found himself leading his brothers into a running battle across the Eye, going from one system to the next with little clue as to where they were going.
"It matters not whether these interlopers are still blindly loyal to the Corpse-Emperor or not. It is the will of the Gods that they be destroyed immediately. Take all your forces and hunt them down."
From a message sent by the Dark Council of Sicarius
Fighting for their lives against the Word Bearers, the Fallen eventually came to the attention of the Horusians. Vortigern found an outpost of the Sixteenth Legion, and recognized the heraldry of the Warmaster. In his desperation to survive, the Fallen Lord made contact with the Sons of Horus, explaining that he and his brothers had also rebelled against the False Emperor.
The commander of that outpost, a Son of Horus named Jelac the Thunder-Eyed, knew full well that the Horusians needed all the allies they could get. He welcomed Vortigern and his men, and after providing what repairs he could to their damaged ships, gave them guides to Maeleum, where they could make their case to Horus himself. Jelac was hoping that, by delivering such ripe recruits to his Warmaster, he could earn Horus' favor. This, however, never happened : mere hours after Vortigern's fleet had left Jelac's stronghold, the Word Bearers pursuing the Fallen arrived, and laid waste to the Sixteenth Legion outpost, killing every Son of Horus they found – including Jelac.
With the help of the Navigators provided by Jelac, the Fallen were able to navigate through the diminishing Horusian territories. In every system they crossed, Vortigern made sure to broadcast his intention of joining Horus on Maeleum, and managed to avoid any more incidents on the way to the Sons of Horus' homeworld. There were still perils on the journey, of course : the Eye of Terror is never kind to travellers. The Fallen fought against daemons manifesting aboard their vessels, and Vortigern directed his fleet in battle against vast void-leviathans – nightmarish creatures that may at some point have been ships, but had been so reshaped by the Warp as to be unrecognisable.
As they continued their odyssey, both the Fallen's ships and the Astartes themselves were affected by the currents of the Warp. The emblems of the Dark Angels emblazoned on the vessels, which had caused the Word Bearers to attack them in the first place, were burned away, replaced by strange, medieval iconography that resembled that used by the Order on Caliban, albeit altered in subtle and sinister ways. The Fallen's bodies and armor were also twisted, taking aspects of the great beasts of Caliban. The higher a warrior stood in the hierarchy of Vortigern's great warband, the more pronounced these changes were : by the journey's end, Vortigern himself resembled a cross between a pagan idol of Old Earth's antiquity and an Astartes warrior.
When they finally reached Maeleum, the Fallen found that they were expected : word of their coming had been sent ahead, using the sorcerous communications provided to the Horusians by the Cabalites. Vortigern was summoned by Horus, called to meet alone with the Warmaster in his throne room. Seeing the strength of Maeleum's defenses, the Fallen Lord obeyed, giving orders to his warriors to keep trying to ingratiate themselves with the Horusians, even if he should not survive his audience with the Warmaster. In the end, that was for nothing : Horus welcomed Vortigern.
Vortigern knelt, trying to conceal his nervousness. In his time, he had faced many things that would have terrified mere mortals : he had fought against xenos horrors, defied his Primarch, killed his own kin and made war against the infernal creatures of the Warp. But none of it compared to this – being in the presence of the Warmaster, his fate and that of his brothers hanging in his hands.
Horus reached with his left hand – the one not locked inside the Talon – and pressed his armored thumb against Vortigern's forehead. The touch was gentle, measured, yet Vortigern still felt as if his skull would crack. The Fallen Lord felt his skin burn where Horus was touching him, and when the Warmaster removed his hand, he saw his reflection in the marble floor : the Eye of Horus was now branded upon his forehead, a black mark against his skin, just between the antlers-shaped horns that sprouted from his skull.
'Welcome, Vortigern of the Fallen,' said the Warmaster. 'Welcome to my service.'
The first order Horus gave to Vortigern was to deal with the Word Bearers who had been set upon the trail of the Fallen. The sons of Lorgar had not abandoned their pursuit after killing Jelac : Horus had received reports of their presence within Horusian territory, hunting for the Fallen and avoiding the fleets of the Sixteenth and Eighth Legions. With the help of the Son of Horus commander Arken and the Night Lord warlord Diathrozek, Vortigern mounted an ambush against the War Hosts.
Using the Fallen fleet as bait, he drew the Word Bearers into battle, only for Arken's and Diathrozek's forces to emerge from the cover of a nearby nebulae of shrieking souls. So intent were the Word Bearers on accomplishing their Gods-appointed mission that they were caught completely by surprise, and promptly annihilated. The deaths of thousands of sons of Lorgar cemented the place of Vortigern and his Fallen among the Horusians, and the repercussions of these losses in the Dark Council helped take off some of the pressure on the Warmaster's dominion.
"Erebus,
Your meddling has not gone unnoticed, nor have its consequences.
Fail like this again and I will have your soul ripped from your body and impaled upon the highest peak of the Dark Cathedral, to scream there for all eternity.
Do not try my patience further."
Message from Lorgar to the Dark Council