The Roboutian Heresy

by Zahariel

Inspired by the great Dornian Heresy of Aurelius Rex, here is an alternate timeline to the Warhammer 40000 universe, where Guilliman turned traitor instead of Horus, and led half the Legions in rebellion against the Emperor. The Index Astartes are done for all Legions. Now, the Times of Ending have begun ... Also has a TV Tropes page now !

19. Index Astartes : Alpha Legion

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Welcome to the fight, friend.

If you read these words, then you have proven yourself an ally to the Alpha Legion, worthy of accessing this most sacred archive of our past and secrets.

So many rumors and lies are spread about the Twentieth Legion – most of those started by ourselves – that it can be difficult, even to us, to distinguish where the legend ends and the reality begins.

This is the purpose of this archive : to recount the true tale of the Alpha Legion, that we might never lose sight of who we really are, and what our purpose is.

Every word on these pages is true.

Index Astartes – Alpha Legion : The Faithful and the True

From the shadows they come, the sons of the Hydra, heirs to the cunning and wisdom of not one, but two Primarchs. Though the fate of their twin sires is unknown even to them, the Eyes of the Emperor are ever vigilant in their long war against the enemies of Mankind. Masters of infiltration and strategy on the galactic scale, they scheme the downfall of all who would threaten the Imperium. Theirs is the way of the informant, the hidden blade – but make no mistake, they are warriors still, and when comes the time to reveal themselves, they do so with all the strength of the Astartes Legions. They might cloak themselves in lies, but their hearts are true to the will of the Master of Mankind. They care nothing that their deeds go unnoticed and unremembered – to them, duty is its own reward, and glory an illusion sought only by fools. Far from the eyes of the wider Imperium, they work tirelessly in the shadows, enacting the Emperor's great plan across the millennia. Even to their cousins, they are little more than legends, yet the emblem of the Hydra is known throughout the entire galaxy. To the servants of the Imperium, it is a symbol of hope, loyalty, and unyielding purpose – and to its foes, a source of endless doubt and paranoia …

Origins : The Duality of War

The legend of the Primarchs is known throughout the Imperium, yet what most servants of the Emperor hold to be true is a sanitized version of reality. For instance, the common citizenry of entire worlds does not know of the Traitor Primarchs, time-shrouded myths referring only to the nine loyal sons of the Emperor and the nameless spawn of darkness against which they battled. Even among those who know of the Traitor Astartes and their foul progenitors, it is believed that there were eighteen sons of the Master of Mankind. Such mystery has come about as a result of both the inevitable decay of archives that come with the passing of ten thousand years, and the Inquisition's efforts to suppress the truth of Chaos lest the Imperium burn in its flames. Even among the Inquisition, only those with access to the most complete record know of the Second and Eleventh Primarchs, whose fate is unknown to all by edict of the Emperor Himself. Twenty, then, appears to be the number of Primarchs who were created in the Emperor's gene-vaults on Terra. Yet such was not the case, for there were twenty-one.

One of the greatest and most well-guarded secrets of the Imperium is that the Primarch of the Twentieth Legion was actually a couple of twin brothers : Alpharius and Omegon, named from the words used for "beginning" and "end" in a long-dead language of Old Earth. The divine essence of the Emperor that was bestowed upon the Alpha Legion's Primarch was somehow separated into two vessels, though whether that was by accident or design is unknown. The Emperor made sure that this was known to no-one, even among His own research staff, using His psychic powers to alter the perceptions of all those who worked on the twentieth life-pod. Already the Master of Mankind could see the potential advantage this duality would bring to the Legion that was to be forged in the twin Primarchs' image.

But before that potential could be realized, the Dark Gods made their move to destroy the Emperor's dream, and the Primarchs were stolen and scattered across the galaxy. All of them landed on worlds that had been colonized by Mankind in ages past – all of them, except for Alpharius and Omegon. The two Primarchs were separated by the raging madness of the Warp, their life-pod torn to shreds. The two halves each manifested aboard a ship belonging to one of the many factions that had formed with the coming of the Age of Strife and the collapse of Mankind's first attempt at a galactic dominion.

While the exact location of the two Primarchs' arrival has long since been lost with their own disappearance into the mists of history, it is known that they appeared in the fringes of the galaxy, where the stars are few and shine upon the ruins of many ancient xenos empires. We now know this region of space as the Halo Stars, where only the bold and the insane dare to go. Already at that time, this was a place most hostile to human life – for the passing of ten thousand years means little to these age-old ruins and their hidden hazards. Yet still a sizeable human presence endured, though its people had wisely chosen not to live upon the worlds and instead aboard massive migrant fleets, each thousands of ships strong and bound together by a circle of captains and representatives.

It is believed that these fleets first came to the Halo Stars as explorers, but were trapped there when the Age of Strife began and Warp travel became all but impossible, cutting them off from their homeworlds. Using the resources and technology they had brought, the exploring fleets managed to survive and even thrive, growing in size considerably. Yet the resources of the Halo Stars were scarce, and soon conflict had arisen between the different fleets – conflicts that were further aggravated by the baleful influence of some of the xenos artefacts that found their way aboard the human ships.

By the time of the Primarchs' arrival, what had begun as disputes over mining rights had devolved into near-genocidal hatred, with all but the two fleets among which the Primarchs appeared exterminated or absorbed into their own ranks. The one where Alpharius was found was called the Coalition, while the one where Omegon lived called itself the Federation – or perhaps it was the opposite, records are unclear.

These two fleets, which counted millions of souls and were more akin to nations unto themselves than fleets, were divided by the most bitter of hates, though none living remembered its root. Whenever ships of opposing factions met, they fought, and no prisoners were ever taken. Both sides had demonized the other to the point that speaking against the ongoing conflict was considered treason, and ground for summary execution. And yet, as the story of Alpharius and Omegon would prove, the two sides of this conflict were, in truth, all but identical.

The first crewmen who found the two Primarchs were terrified of their sudden appearance – both vessels had been in Warp transit at the time, and the crew knew well the horrors that tended to appear while journeying through the Sea of Souls. Fortunately, the young Primarchs were only babies at that point, and not even these hardened void-sailors could bear to slay sleeping children. Instead, they adopted the newborn into their ranks. Each of the groups of discoverers told their superiors that they had found the baby in the depths of the ship, doubtlessly abandoned there by some uncaring parent. The Primarchs were devoid of any of the genetic deviancies that had begun to plague the void-men over their generations of travel, and so each of them was seen as a blessing and symbol of good luck.

Alone, each of the two Primarchs grew quickly in stature, from baby to child, from child to boy, and then from boy to man. They learned all there was to know about void travel, the ancient mechanisms of the fleet's ships, and even some of the secrets of the Warp itself, taught to them by the master navigators. Those were not the genetically mutated Navigators of Terra, but iron-willed men and women who interpreted the streams of the Sea of Soul with nothing but measuring instruments, centuries of trial and error, and intuition. Soon, they had surpassed those teachers, displaying an affinity for every facet of knowledge they were exposed to.

It only took a few years for the two prodigy children to reach adulthood, and they rose quickly through the hierarchy of their adoptive people. Each was given captaincy of a small explorer ship, tasked with scouting ahead of the main fleet to search for resources. Such a responsibility was one of the most important of both the Coalition and the Federation, and explorers were given considerable leeway in how they performed their duties. It was unheard of for the office to be given to someone so young, but the two had proved their strength and intelligence many times, and the few who dared to raise their voice to question it were quickly silenced by a quick interview with the Primarch in their fleet.

For almost an entire solar year, Alpharius and Omegon fulfilled their duty, each discovering new resources with near-mystical precision. To their crew, it seemed that the captains already knew where they were going, not exploring but instead following some path they had known all of their lives. Ultimately, the two expedition fleets converged on the same planet, as if drawn to it by the currents of the Sea of Souls. They emerged from Warp-transit at nearly the exact same time, and as soon as they detected one another, the battle began.

The two captains were no stranger to void battle, having learned from the best and put those lessons into practice against the automated defenses of lost alien civilizations and outriders from the other fleet. But as they guided their ships into the engagement, for the first time in their life, Alpharius and Omegon met their match in one another. Every manoeuvre was countered, every stratagem seen through. The two flotillas bled one another, until at last the Primarchs were forced to land onto the system's single planet with what forces remained at their disposal, leaving behind the burning husks of their ships.

Once, uncounted millions of years ago, the world had been the realm of some long-dead xenos species. None remain who know of their fate, save perhaps the scholars who dwell in the Black Library of the Eldar. But Alpharius and Omegon came to their grave, driven by a conflict neither of them truly understood. And they marshalled the thousands of soldiers and crewmen who had survived the descent along with them, and made war upon one another, amidst the bones of a fallen empire. Yet just as in the void, the two Primarchs were evenly matched on the ground. Ambushes and feints were predicted and countered, and again and again the two armies met, clashed, and disengaged without any true gain being made by either side.

And as blood was spilled on the ancient stones, ancient things, buried deep beneath the surface of the dead world, were roused to awakening. The fear, suffering and death that always come with war fed the power of the Warp, and in turn, the Warp fed the old mechanisms left behind by the planet's previous masters.

The ground trembled, and then erupted. Spindly limbs of crimson material emerged, followed by segmented bodies, each implanted with a crystal that pulsated with malevolent light. The monsters came in from all over the battlefield, and what had been another careful strike degenerated into utter confusion and mayhem as both sides found themselves attacked by a third party.
The young giant saw one of his men caught by a monster's claws and torn apart, and it seemed that something passed from his corpse and into its killer, and suddenly the monster was faster than ever. He roared in anger and jumped toward the artificial beast, and his spear tore through its core and crashed point first into the crystal. Through the shaft, he felt something crack, and was suddenly thrown into the air by an explosion of multicoloured light that burned his eyes, even through the lenses of his helmet. He managed to roll back to his feet, and saw that the blades of his spear were now glowing with a different kind of light – one that was also uncomfortable to look at, but seemed different somehow, like something important, vital even, had been taken from it, and replaced by something beyond the ken of humans. Cracks ran along the double-bladed weapon, glowing with a pale, cold light. He swung the relic weapon around, and found that despite the apparent damage, its weight was still the same as the day he had picked it up among the ruins of another world, at the beginning of his captaincy. He would need to investigate this later …
And then, he saw him, and his train of thought came to a crashing halt, his body continuing to move and avoid the blows of another construct solely thanks to his supernatural instincts. Among those he had been trying to kill minutes ago, there was now a warrior standing head and shoulders above the rest of the Coalition's men, wielding a sword and pistol that had clearly been manufactured especially for his oversized hands. In that moment, he knew that the other had seen him too, and that the same thoughts were coursing through their minds.
It was like looking in a mirror. Recognition blossomed amidst the madness of the battle, and when their eyes finally tore from one another to look at their surroundings again, they found their perspective greatly changed.
Neither of them could see the differences between their men anymore, not when faced with the abominations emerging from the ground. They were, all of them, humans. The emblems of the Federation and Coalition were nothing compared to that.
Together, then, thought the giant. In his hand, the spear seemed to react to the thought, and as he returned to the melee, a terrifying howl rose from the alien weapon, one that made the humans on the battlefield recoil – and the constructs stop in their tracks, before swirling in his direction.
'For Mankind !' he shouted.
'For Mankind !' replied the other giant, who ran toward him, blocking a blow from another creature that would have severed his head.
'For Mankind !' came the cry again, from one man, then ten, then a hundred, then a thousand, then from the whole armies, as they stood back to back against the constructs.

On that nameless world, Alpharius and Omegon met for the first time since their separation in the Warp, and fought together against the legacy of evil left beneath its surface. Their men, who had lived all their lives told to despise and kill each other, were drawn into that union, and soldiers who had tried to butcher one another minutes ago saved the lives of their sworn enemies. United they stood, and destroyed the assailing constructs.

When the last of the xenos weapons fell, a hesitant silence rose. All wondered who would be the first to succumb to the impulses of a lifetime of conditioned hatred, reinforced by the many atrocities each side had inflicted upon the other. Yet as the minutes ticked by, no one moved to strike. Instead, the medics of both sides were the first to shake off the stupor. They turned to the many wounded and dying, and started to treat them, commanding whoever was nearest for assistance, in both cases regardless of allegiance. Again, some hesitated, but the two leaders – whom the soldiers found they could hardly tell apart now that they stood together – gave the order to comply with the medics' command, and soon the two armies were working together once more to save the lives of their wounded comrades.

Despite their best efforts, thousands more died of their wounds, but thousands still remained, stranded on the planet with no apparent way of escape. Alpharius and Omegon led the survivors back to the crash sites, and for several months they worked together, using every scrap of genius and knowledge they possessed between them. Finally, they managed to return a pair of vessels to life, and lifted off the surface of the planet. For the first time since the battle, the forces of the Coalition and the Federation were separated. But this was not because the tensions between them had resurged – quite the opposite. Even as the two Primarchs worked to escape the planet, they had designed a plan to put an end to the conflict between the two factions – a conflict that they now saw as meaningless, and dangerous in a galaxy filled with horrors such as those they had fought together. They had vowed to bring an end to the feud between their adoptive people, and their forces had agreed to help them accomplish that goal.

Generations of hatred, however, would not be easily swept aside, and both Primarchs knew it. It would take radical action to change the way in which each faction saw the other. Furthermore, with the loss of their fleets, the prestige of the Primarchs was greatly weakened, and they were called to account for the destruction of the ships entrusted to them. Thanks to extensive and cunning preparations, the investigation on both sides confirmed the story the survivors told their superiors : that they had encountered a dangerous xenos remnant and had barely escaped with their lives aboard the only ship left. The system where Alpharius and Omegon had met for the first time was marked on star maps as one to avoid at all costs, and the two Primarchs were allowed back into an exploring role. With much diminished resources, the two Primarchs set to work.

The battle against the xenos constructs had revealed to the two of them that Mankind would only put aside its petty feuds when faced by an external threat. In their mind, it was a natural trait that had evolved over the millennia – in a galaxy filled with things that would prey upon Mankind, those who would not stand together were all dead. But while the Coalition and Federation knew very well of the dangers lurking in the Halo Stars, they also thought themselves strong enough to stand against them on their own – and so far, their long history had proved exactly that.

Later in the Great Crusade, the Alpha Legion would do much to erase the records of its Primarchs' actions during the following years. Whether this was to protect the secrecy with which the Legion cloaks itself, or out of shame, none can say, not even those who bear its mark today. But enough lore remains to indicate that Alpharius and Omegon employed every method at their disposal to put an end to the feud between their adoptive people. Blackmail, sabotage, character and outright assassination, they used all of their Primarch intellect to bending the Coalition and Federation to their will – but even that wouldn't be enough to truly change the mind of their people.

Within a few years of returning from their first expedition, the two Primarchs were the officious leaders of their respective factions, having their agents in the highest circles of command. On the outside, they were merely military leaders, albeit ones of tremendous skill and authority. Under their influence, skirmishes between the two factions had all but died down, with information being secretly exchanged to prevent flotillas from encountering their enemies during exploration. At the same time, the agents spread out across the civilian population began to spread the "treasonous" belief that the conflict was not inevitable, that peace was possible. But the ancient grudges remained strong, and in order to sweep them away, the twin Primarchs committed an act that even the most open-minded and Radical Inquisitor of today would agree was vile, if perhaps cruelly necessary.

In secret, Alpharius and Omegon arranged for the main fleets of their people to come into a pair of systems which were both very close to a third star. Each of the systems was connected to the third by a Warp route of exceptional stability, something that was believed by the Primarchs' agents to be the deliberate work of the ancient xenos civilization who had once claimed all three stars as its domain.

As the fleets exited the Warp on the systems' Mandeville Points and went further, hoping to refuel at the local star, the agents sent ahead by the Primarchs deliberately activated long-buried automated defenses, sacrificing their own lives to spring a trap around their own people. Across both systems, aeons-old ships, crewed not by the living but by ageless Abominable Intelligences, emerged from their slumber. These fleets recognized the human ships as intruders upon their masters' realm, and immediately attacked. With those not in the know caught completely unaware, the Primarchs were able to simulate panic, and both human fleets fled from the system in which they were attacked, using the stable Warp routes to converge onto the third star, with the automated ships pursued them.

While the first two systems had been where the ancient xenos had built their technology, the third only hosted a single temple world, where the aliens had laid their dead to rest and conducted their worship of their ancestors. As far as the Primarchs had been able to tell, the xenos had been uncorrupted by the Warp, instead dooming themselves to a slow extinction when their robotic servants had taken over every aspect of their lives, leaving them to fade into a quiet, luxurious obsolescence. Yet the system was far from undefended, and the human fleets began to fight for their lives as soon as they arrived, nearly at the same time. When their pursuers came in behind them, the situation seemed hopeless – exactly as the Primarchs had planned.

Through their agents, Alpharius and Omegon managed to bring their fleets together, and fought against the Abominable ships. When a captain of the Coalition sent hundreds of soldiers to help repel cybernetic boarders on a Federation ship without either of the Primarchs intervening, they knew that their plan had succeeded beyond expectations. In a daring raid on the surface of the cemetery world, Alpharius activated a self-destruct safeguard left in place by the creators of the sentient vessels, securing victory for Mankind that day, and forging a true peace between the Federation and the Coalition – albeit one born of lies and hidden manipulation.

Despite the final victory, the cost of the battle had been tremendous. Dozens of ships had been lost, along with millions of lives. The union born of the Primarchs' plan was stronger than either of the two factions had been before, but the tally of the dead was still unprecedented in both of their histories. Amidst the chaos and the death, Alpharius and Omegon openly seized control, and began to work to rebuild the strength of their united people, with their secret network of agents continuing to work in the shadows, shaping public opinion to follow their goals and performing all manners of other deeds.

Under the leadership of the twin Primarchs, the new faction – merely named the Halo Alliance – quickly recovered, and together the people of the Halo Stars prospered. Combined lore allowed for a renewal of technological prowess, while putting together ancient star maps gave the Alliance the most complete knowledge of the region. For years, the Alliance lived in peace, with Alpharius and Omegon tirelessly working to shelter it from the threats that still lurked in the Halo Stars. Then, finally, contact was made with the Imperium when Horus Lupercal, Primarch of the Sixteenth Legion, found his younger brothers.

At that time, Horus was acting alone, separated from the Emperor who had gone on some secret endeavour that did not require the presence of his eldest son. Driven by the same strange intuition he had displayed previously about the location of his missing brothers, Horus had taken the Sixteenth Legion far beyond the borders of the Imperium, onto the galactic fringes. And there, as he hoped, he found the last missing member of the Primarchs.

'My lord,' the sensor officers called out in alarm. 'They are trying to get a teleportation beacon on us ! The readings I am getting are … unprecedented. I think they can get pass through our shields !'
'Where are they coming ?' asked Horus, his voice calming the panic that was beginning to spread across the bridge.
'Right here,' replied the human. Horus smiled.
'He is coming, then,' he muttered to himself, before turning his back to the crew and staring at the empty space before the reinforced door leading to the rest of the ship.
Arcs of energy started to course through the air, and a silhouette appeared, at first only an outline, then a full physical presence. It was a humanoid clad in deceptively simple-looking power armor, holding a strange spear of xenos design in its hands. Most importantly, it was nearly as tall as Horus, towering above the Luna Wolves who had tentatively pointed their bolters in its direction. A gesture of Lupercal brought the barrels down – not that the intruder seemed to notice. His attention was fully focused on Horus.
'Hello, little brother,' said the First Primarch, arms spread out in welcome, a warm smile on his noble face. 'I am Horus, son of the Emperor of Mankind. I come here to reveal to you your destiny. What is your name ?'
The intruder rose his left arm and took off his helmet, revealing eyes filled with intelligence who missed nothing of the sight presented to them. There was a resemblance there with Horus' own face, one that only confirmed the intuition that had brought Lupercal to this system.
'I am Alpharius.'

Like so many things about the Alpha Legion, the details of the first meeting between Horus and Alpharius are lost to us. It is unknown if Horus met with the two Primarchs, or if Alpharius and Omegon sought to keep their twin nature secret from their brother. Regardless, Horus quickly befriended Alpharius, admiring the work his younger brother had done with the Alliance. The First Primarch had not believed it possible for Mankind to survive in the Halo Stars, let alone prosper as it had under Alpharius' leadership. Then Horus told Alpharius of the Imperium, the Great Crusade and the Emperor's dream.

To Alpharius, the Imperial Truth seemed a logical extension of his own actions and beliefs, and he readily accepted to travel to Terra and meet with his father. Yet he was also loath to abandon the Alliance, even though he had ensured that there were many other capable leaders in its ranks. Horus offered to take the entire fleet with him – for though the Alliance was mighty, it still paled into insignificance next to the scale of the Imperium. The people of the Alliance accepted immediately, eager to return to the home of their ancestors, their long sojourn into the darkest stars ending at last. Once the fleet reached Sol and Alpharius Omegon knelt before the Master of Mankind, returned from His own secret mission, the Alliance was dissolved, becoming what is known as the Coils of the Hydra.

The Coils of the Hydra
In the Imperium, Rogue Traders are figure of legends, wielding power and freedom far beyond the common citizens. Many Imperial officials have cursed their existence over the millennia, seeing them as unpredictable elements who are all too likely to turn renegade or outright traitorous. Even among those, there are few who dare to question the Emperor's decision of creating such an elite and isolated caste of His servants – but those who do can find answers to their doubts in the accounts of the Great Crusade.
When the Age of Strife ended and the Emperor began His work of conquest, He encountered many other, lesser lords of the stars – leaders of their own space-faring armadas, who had survived through the Age of Strife by cunning and ruthlessness alike. These individuals were, for the most part, ready to join the Imperium – indeed, some had been searching for a way back to Terra for generations. But their fierce independent streak, and the unique forces under their command (gathered through centuries of wandering the stars) made them unsuitable for integration into the Imperial Army. Many even had xenos mercenaries in their employ, or used technology that wasn't hallowed by the tech-priests of Mars. At the same time, they were far too useful to simply discard, for the Great Crusade needed all the assets it could find in order to fulfill the Emperor's vision of a united galaxy. And so, the Master of Mankind created the office of Rogue Trader – individuals tasked with exploring the stars beyond the Imperium's borders, granted enormous freedom from the empire's laws as long as they remained loyal to the Throne. The first Rogue Traders wandered the galaxy as they wished, sometimes lending their strength to Expeditionary Fleets. Some bloodlines – for the mandate of Rogue Trader is hereditary, something that has caused some rather intense succession crises over the years – forged bonds with the Legiones Astartes at that time, bonds that are often still strong today. The tradition continues today, with Rogue Trader mandates being granted to individuals who are judged to be dangerous for the Imperium if they remain within its borders, while at the same time too useful – or too well-connected – to simply execute.
Such was the case with the creation of the Coils of the Hydra. The Halo Alliance Alpharius brought with him to Terra was a vast fleet, greater than any individual armada of the Great Crusade, save perhaps the one the Emperor Himself took when He left Sol for the first time at the end of the Age of Strife. Keeping it together within the Imperium's borders would have been a logistical nightmare, and the Alliance also possessed much technology it had gleaned during its sojourn in the Halo Stars – technology the Mechanicum would both have loved to obtain and declare techno-heresy. In order to solve all of these problems, the Emperor declared that the Alliance would be divided, each flotilla placed under the command of a single individual to whose bloodline would be bestowed the mandate of Rogue Trader. All of those who were chosen were among the agents of Alpharius, as were their inheritors, in a chain that has continued to this day for the surviving bloodlines.
Those Rogue Traders who belong to the Coils of the Hydra do not advertise their link to the Alpha Legion. Indeed, they do all they can to keep it secret, even from their own servants. While they perform the typical actions of a Rogue Trader (exploring, colonizing, and commercing), they also constantly gather intelligence for the Twentieth Legion. Each Rogue Trader belonging to the Coils has an extensive network of informants under his command, and everything he learns is reported back to the Legion. They are no longer infeoded to the sons of Alpharius : over time, the bloodlines have developed the independence and stubbornness common to those of their rank. But the oaths sworn by their ancestors still hold them, and the relationship is a mutually beneficial one : the Coils have access to some of the Legion's own network, and they are able to call upon the Alpha Legion for help in difficult situations. They typically avoid to do so as much as they can, for the Coils have some sort of competition among them : they seek to be of the most use to their Legionary patrons, while also calling upon them the less. Each bloodline keeps extensive – and heavily encrypted – records of every interaction with the Alpha Legion. On the rare occasions when two members of the Coils meet, they compare the "score" of their families, so to speak, using a calculating system of debts owed and paid as complex as anything else pertaining to the Alpha Legion. They appear to take it very seriously, to the utter puzzlement of all Inquisitors who have ever learnt of this strange custom.

Great Crusade : Redeemed and Ascended

'Ave Imperator.'
Rumoured to be the entirety of Alpharius' speech to the Alpha Legion upon taking command

From its very inception, the Twentieth Legion was shrouded in secrecy. Like the Sixth and Eighteenth, its first members were kept isolated from the rest of their kind, transformed in different gene-forges and trained away from prying eyes. In later years, it was revealed that the Emperor had had a specific purpose in mind for each of the "Threefoil". The Space Wolves were to be His executioners, and served well in this role until their pride and paranoia drove them to madness. The Salamanders were shaped to be the vanguard of His armies, forging a path ahead for the rest of Mankind to follow – but Vulkan's bitter ambition shattered that dream. Of the Threefoil, only the Twentieth Legion remained loyal to the Emperor in the end, but none can be quite sure that the role they ultimately assumed was the one the Master of Mankind intended for them.

The process of creating a Space Marine Legion was incredibly complex, and requires resources that are now lost to the Imperium. From the genetic samples of a Primarch to the creation of thousands of transhuman warriors, enough wealth to buy an entire sub-Sector was expended for each Legion in material and personnel. By the time the Emperor and his gene-smiths began to work on the last of the Legions, however, the process had been fairly streamlined, with all the difficulties worked out. The Twentieth Legion passed easily through the first stages of testing, and reached what was called the "Alpha stage", when a small number of Legionaries – about one to two thousand – are created for battlefield testing. Theories about the Second and Eleventh Primarchs – whose true fate is unknown even to the Alpha Legion's greatest lore-keepers – suggest that it is at this stage that one of the Lost Legions failed, and was subsequently purged.

After a Legion had passed the evaluation of the Alpha stage, generally during deployment on one of the fronts of the ending Unification Wars, its recruitment began in earnest as aspirants were taken from regions of Terra. But in the case of the Twentieth Legion, this did not come to pass. The Legion passed its test with flying colors, yet no influx of recruits was directed to its gene-labs for implantation, and the shipyards and forges of Mars only received orders to prepare the resources equivalent to what a single Chapter of another Legion would need before the Twentieth Legion joined the Great Crusade.

Bucephalus was approaching the Mandeville Point. All around the titanic vessel, the greatest fleet ever gathered by Mankind since the Dark Age of Technology awaited the signal to enter the Warp and begin the Great Crusade. At long last, after centuries of work, the factions of the birth system of Humanity had been brought together.
On the viewing deck of the flagship, a man who was more than a man looked through the reinforced glass and into the infinite blackness beyond. He was so close now. So many obstacles had been laid on his way, so many traps placed by his enemies. But he had still done it. The first step of his plan was complete. Mankind's homeworld had been dragged out of the darkness – the spectre of complete extinction was all but banished now.
It had been a close thing, he mused, far closer than anyone would ever know. If not for the deeds of his youngest grandchildren, everything he had worked so long to achieve would have been turned to dust. They had paid a terrible price for that victory, though, one that he could not repay them. They had been the saviours of his dream, but their future had been destroyed by the very powers they had prevented from burning Mankind's own.
But that his enemies had been desperate enough to resort to such means told him that he was in the right direction. He would find his stolen sons, and return them to his side, where they belonged. Together they would build the Imperium of his vision, and he would free that Imperium from the corruption of the Empyrean.
'We shall yet be free,' declared the Emperor of Mankind to the uncaring void, his eyes fixed on the light of the stars, shining in the darkness.

Without a Primarch, it was unknown to even the Great Crusade's high command under whose authority the Twentieth Legion acted for much of the Crusade – rumors attributed their command to Horus, Malcador the Sigillite, or the Emperor Himself – a few outlandish and likely traitorous sources even claimed that they were working for the first Primarch to fall traitor, Lion El'Jonson. Certainly the authority codes the Legionaries produced whenever confronted were those of highest rank, yet the question remain as to what purpose they served at that time. They appeared all across the galaxy, never more than a single squad at a time. Reports of unheralded Space Marines were fragmentary, but indicated that among the missions they performed, the warriors of the Twentieth Legion were tasked with recovering artefacts from ancient ruins and forbidden temples alike, as well as abduct entire groups of people, who vanished into the holds of their unmarked ships, never to be seen again.

The own archives of the Alpha Legion speak more in detail of its purpose in these early days, however. The Emperor knew that, for all that the Imperial Truth preached of a secular and godless galaxy, the powers of the Warp were still at work to undo all that He had built. Everywhere their agents had been crushed, they whispered still into the ears of the weak and corrupt, seeking to spread madness and anarchy. In time, specialized forces such as the Sisters of Silence and the Assassinorum would be created to deal with the threat of the enemy within, but in the beginning of the Great Crusade, such forces didn't exist. And so the Emperor took the Twentieth Legion away from the lines of open battle, and into a different, but perhaps even more deadly battlefield. Acting under the unquestioned command of both the Emperor and His most trusted advisor and confidant, the Twentieth Legion roamed the galaxy, hunting rebels and heretics wherever they might hide, from the deepest jungles to the most refined palaces of Imperial nobility.

Due to its limited numbers, the secretive nature of its missions, and the lack of a Primarch for most of the Great Crusade, the Twentieth Legion was forced to adapt, and wage this hidden war in ways the other Legiones Astartes had never considered. They became a Legion of infiltrators, saboteurs and assassins. Other Legions had such units in their ranks, of course – such as the Night Lords hunters, or the Raven Guard Shadow-walkers – but the Twentieth was the only one to embrace it as its full war philosophy, its core role in the warmachine of the Imperium.

Over time, despite the veil of secrecy surrounding them, the tactics used by the Twentieth Legion caused its fame to spread. Hundreds of nicknames and titles began to circulate to describe the mysterious Twentieth Legion, some given by allies, others by fearful enemies. Those include (but were by no means limited to) : the Harrowing, the Children of Eris, the Ghost Legion, the Unbroken Chain, the Combine, the Left Hand of Darkness, Aleph Null, the Silent Sons, the Bound Shadows, the Adversaries, the Final Code, the Lords of Sorrow, and hundreds more. It went to the point that it became difficult to keep track of them all, and the enemies of the Imperium thought there were far more than eighteen Space Marine Legions in service to the Emperor. The Twentieth Legion was never issued a formal name by the Emperor either, nor did they take one as their own, as other Legions did. Instead, they revelled in the power their anonymity granted them, going as far as to disguise into the colors of other Legions in order to capitalize on their reputations or keep their implication in a particular conflict a secret.

When Horus brought Alpharius to Terra, less than two decades before the turn of the thirty-first millennium, the youngest Primarchs – both of them – met with the Emperor, and accepted to assist in His work. For the first time since they had left Terra, the full strength of the Twentieth Legion was summoned to a single planet – a human world whose population was ruled over by a caste of tyrants living in high towers and wielding archeotech of tremendous power, who despite their disunity had been able to keep at bay all Imperial forces sent to bring the planet to compliance. Alpharius and Omegon themselves went to this world, Bar'Savor, disguised as mere Legionaries. And there, the Legion brought an end to a campaign that had lasted for years within days, before the Primarchs revealed themselves to their sons and took command of the gathered Legion. For the first time, the Twentieth Legion received a true name of its own : the Alpha Legion. All warriors learned the secret of their twin Primarchs, and vowed to keep it hidden from enemies and allies alike.

Under the command of Alpharius and Omegon, the Alpha Legion partially emerged from the shadows, leaving the duties of hunting the traitor and the heretics to others and joining the frontlines of the Great Crusade. Yet the legacy of nearly two hundred years spent fighting in the darkness would endure across the Legion, even as its numbers finally grew thanks to its Primarchs' presence. However, so did its infamy.

It is thought that the unmitigated success of the Primarchs' plan to create the Halo Alliance was the result for the cavalier attitude for life and the codes of war displayed by the Alpha Legion in the first years following their return. Their methods had worked, after all, producing something that many would consider a miracle – bringing an end to centuries of bitter, hateful conflict. The deaths they had caused along the way were, in their eyes, a sad but necessary price, and one far lesser than what continued hostilities would have claimed. And so, the twins taught the same methods to their Legion, encouraging their sons to continue down the path of supreme pragmatism that they had already been following before being reunited with their fathers.

At the same time, it is said that Alpharius and Omegon suffered from being the last of the Primarchs to be found. In their eyes, the rolls of honor of their Legion were lacking when compared to the others, and they were determined to fill the gap as quickly and efficiently as possible. This was only aggravated by the insulting comments of Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines. The Avenging Son joked that the Alpha Legion, having joined the Great Crusade this late, would never be able to equal the record of his own Legion. Then, when he saw the methods employed by the Twentieth, his humor turned to scorn, and he denounced the Alpha Legion as "cowardly assassins skulking in the shadows, unwilling to face their enemies from the front and unworthy of the Great Crusade". Today, Alpha Legion's analysts believe that this reaction was due to Guilliman's own tragic past, when his family were slain by conspirators while he was away and unable to defend them – instilling in him an understandable disgust for the more subtle ways of war.

That is not to say that Alpharius and Omegon were blameless in how their Legion was perceived by their Ultramarine brother. In the first years after they took command of the Alpha Legion, the campaigns waged by the Twentieth were incredibly brutal and ruthless, with world after world submitting to the rule of the Imperium, its cities in flames, its infrastructure ravaged. No other Legion had matched the rate of conquest of the Alpha Legion in that period, nor has any since. Respect for the sons of Alpharius grew across the Great Crusade, but fear grew far more quickly, and the image of the alpha symbol the Legion wore as its emblem in this day was soon associated with quick, costly "victories" that left naught but ruin in their wake.

Still, the Alpha Legion was far from being the only one employing methods of war that others might find distasteful. But then, on the other side of the Great Crusade, Konrad Curze, Primarch of the Night Lords, received a disturbing report. It came from a traumatized, guilt-ridden magos of the Ordo Biologis, who was begging the Primarch's intervention. According to the astropathic transmission, the magos had worked under Alpharius' personal command to craft a viral plague that was to be deployed against a particularly vicious breed of fungal xenos that fed upon the marrow of living human beings – the Ak'Haireth. This was nothing exceptional – except that in order to use the biological weapon with maximal efficiency, the Alpha Legion had chosen to deploy the virus among the human population on which the xenos had preyed for generation. Thousands of humans had already died, for while the disease had been designed to be utterly lethal to the Ak'Haireth, humans weren't completely immune carriers. Despite his extensive augmentations and the detachment professed by the disciples of the Machine-God, the magos was at his breaking point, and implored Curze, known to be among the most humane of Primarchs, to stop his brother.

It was then that the Savior of Nostramo decided to take action. Leaving his Legion in the hands of his First Captain, he travelled through the entire galaxy to find his brothers fighting the final phase of their latest "compliance."

For a long time, he didn't say anything. He didn't condemn nor accuse. He merely stood there, looking at them standing above the bloody corpses of their victims, with the light of the fires ravaging the city illuminating the scene. Already thousands had died in the fire the Twentieth Legion had started – a diversion, to draw away the palace's guards so that the kill-teams could strike at the planetary leader. His body laid on the ground amid his personal bodyguards, ignored by the three demigods who stood in the ruins of his throne room. Ultimately, his death would break the opposition to the Imperium on this world, and the planet would reach compliance much sooner and with less casualties than would have been achieved through conventional warfare. Kill thousands to save millions – it was the kind of choices that the Legions had been created to make.
And yet, as they stood before their older brother, for the first time in their life, Alpharius and Omegon felt shame for their actions.
'This is not who you are,' said Konrad Curze at last. The voice of the Primarch of the Night Lords was soft and his tone gentle, yet as unyielding as the motion of the stars themselves. 'You are no killer of innocents. You are no blind butcher, uncaring for those you slay on your way to victory. You are better than this.'
'But …' Alpharius protested weakly, and without conviction. It was Omegon who ended the sentence with a single word, one which had once seemed so important yet now sounded so hollow : 'victory.'
Konrad Curze spread out his arms to encompass the destruction they had inflicted upon this city, which had endured the horrors of Old Night without succumbing to any of the predators that haunted the galaxy. Libraries holding priceless knowledge were aflame. Monuments of the past were crumbling to ruin as the mighty pillars of steel that held them up melted in the heat. The sound of screaming echoed amidst the desolation – screams of pain and sorrow. A stab of cold horror and shame pierced through the hearts of Alpharius and Omegon as they remembered how many times before they had heard the same chorus of suffering. There was something about the Savior of Nostramo's presence that pierced through the armor of necessity they had built around their soul, dragging a sense of empathy they thought they had discarded long ago back into the light.
'No victory is worth such a price, brothers.'

This first meeting with Konrad Curze changed the twin Primarchs and their Legion forever. Gone was their cold disregard for civilian casualties, their ruthlessness in the pursuit of victory and glory. In the years that followed, the twins worked hard to change the way in which their Legion prosecuted its war, turning from terrorist strikes and widespread destruction to espionage, information manipulation, and highly-specific assassinations. They also became masters of propaganda, working from behind enemy lines to convince oppressed populations to revolt against their compliance-refusing overlords. The sons of Alpharius were still a brutal force of conquest and domination – they were, after all, Legiones Astartes – but their body count lowered dramatically. Imperial forces, who previously had been loath to fight alongside the Twentieth for fear of being caught in their devastating schemes, came to appreciate the tremendous advantage that the intelligence gathering efforts of the Alpha Legion brought to their allies.

To symbolize this rebirth, the Alpha Legion adopted the reptilian scales that adorn their armor to this day, representing a serpent's ability to shed its skin and continue to live free of the mistakes of its past. It was also at that time that their emblem changed from the unassuming Alpha symbol to the many-headed hydra of ancient myth. The dark reputation attached to this legendary beast, both due to its role as an enemy of heroes in stories and to its association with the snake, might make it surprising that a Legion would take it as its symbol. But Alpharius and Omegon wanted both to represent the individuality favored by their Legion – each Astartes capable of adapting to any circumstances and accomplish his objectives of his own – and pay homage to the brother who had brought them clarity of purpose. Just like the Night Lords, who use frightful imagery to bring about the enemy's surrender, the Alpha Legion chose an emblem that would tell their foes that, no matter how many Alpha Legionaries they killed, there would always be more they had missed.

Yet even after Konrad convinced his brothers to change their way of war, he could not – or did not want to – change their deep nature. Even among Primarchs, Alpharius and Omegon were unconventional strategists and supreme planners, bordering on the paranoid. Despite the countless victories of the Great Crusade, the Imperium still had many powerful enemies, none greater than the ones dwelling on the other side of the veil. Though the corrupted empires of the Halo Stars had long since died, there was no telling what other tainted xenos species might lurk in unexplored swathes of the galaxy, waiting for the slightest opening to unleash unspeakable horrors upon Mankind.

The twin Primarchs knew that their father had a plan to protect Mankind from Chaos, but they also knew that plans had a tendency to fail, and for all that they loved and respected the Emperor, they also knew He was neither infallible nor all-powerful. The fact that He had been unable to prevent the theft of the Primarchs, as well as others, even more secret events, proved it to them. As they saw it, preparing for the worst was their duty, what they had been created for – and so they did.

Taking advantage of the fact that they could wield a Primarch's authority in two places at once, they worked hard to increase the size and assets of their Legion. Pacts were made with forge-worlds to build vast fleets of ships and provide weapons and armor, while recruitment facilities were built on dead worlds, where the tithed youth of many worlds were brought and transformed into Legionaries. All this was shrouded in secrecy, records falsified or outright destroyed. The Alpha Legion wasn't naive enough to believe they were the only ones capable of waging secret wars, and they believed that the best way they could protect the Imperium was if no one truly knew the extant of their capabilities. Sadly, this paranoia proved justified in the end.

The twin Primarchs sent envoys to the Iron Warriors, to learn the art of siegecraft and fortress building from the Fourth Legion's warsmiths. They sent their most gifted Librarians to Prospero, asking to share in the accumulated wisdom of the Thousand Sons. Those sent to the Night Lords perfected their stealth and psychological tactics, and learned much from the humane creed of the sons of Nostramo. And so it was for every Legion, save for the Ultramarines, for Alpharius and Omegon remembered well Guilliman's scorn, and Konrad's words had done nothing to appease their quiet anger at their brother. To themselves and their sons, they claimed that it was because Guilliman's Legion had nothing to teach them – the logistics and statecraft the Thirteenth was famous for were of no use to a Legion fighting in the shadows. But Konrad and Horus were aware of the truth, and worried at what such tension between Primarchs might cause in the future.

None of these students grew to surpass their masters, but they were all considered great and accomplished in their respective disciplines by the time they departed and returned to their own Legion, to share what they had learnt. The Legions with whom this exchange was made were all glad to welcome the sons of Alpharius and share what they knew – for they were all proud of their unique skills, and the envoys were careful not to anger them. The bonds that were forged then would prove most valuable in later years, and become the foundation of the secret channels between the Hydra-marked warriors and their cousins.

Not all of these bonds survived to the onset of the Heresy, however. The Imperial Fists had at first welcomed the envoys of Alpharius in their ranks, appreciating the ruthlessness displayed by the Alpha Legion in the prosecution of its wars against the xenos menace, even if they thought the other tactics employed by the Twentieth were questionable. In their pride, the sons of Dorn had thought it their duty to teach the youngest Legion how to fight a proper war. They had shared their assault tactics and their skills with the blade, and when the envoys had returned to their own Legion, Dorn himself had presided over a tournament in which the sons of Alpharius had performed very honorably.

Then came the Avalorn Compliance, where the Imperial Fists, the Alpha Legion and the Luna Wolves were brought together under the Emperor's own leadership. By that point, the lessons taught by Konrad Curze had spread to the entirety of the Twentieth Legion, and its approach to warfare had changed dramatically. The Alpha Legion intervened on several occasions to prevent the Imperial Fists from endangering the lives of their Imperial Army allies, as well as to stop the sons of Dorn from committing wholesale slaughter on the population of Avalorn when their citadels were finally breached.

'If we are to survive, we must be united by something more than our hatred. Otherwise, when all the stars are ours and all our enemies are slain, we will have become monsters worse than anything we will have fought.'
Attributed to Primarch Alpharius, during a heated discussion with Rogal Dorn that eventually required the Emperor's personal intervention to avoid bloodshed, during the Avalorn Compliance

When Horus was made Warmaster, the Alpha Legion applauded the decision. Alpharius himself journeyed to Ullanor in secret, and vowed his loyalty to his brother. With so many of his brothers bitter at the Emperor's choice, including Guilliman, Lupercal rejoiced for the support of the Alpha Legion. Even so, he promised that he wouldn't attempt to "collar" the Twentieth, knowing that they had their own way of war and that even he would find it difficult to integrate them into his plans.

Another instance where the Alpha Legion grew distant with one of its sister Legions was with the Space Wolves. When the Emperor called for the Council of Nikaea, Alpharius publicly sided for the continuation of the Librarius, arguing that psykers were necessary to fight against some of the alien breeds that threatened Mankind. The Sisters of Silence were not numerous enough, he declared, to take on that duty alone – and given the rarity of the Pariah gene, it was unlikely there would ever be enough of them. What truly shattered any bonds of brotherhood that might have existed between Russ and his youngest brother, however, was when the envoys the Wolf King had welcomed in his Legion produced footage captured from their helmet cams during battle alongside the Sixth Legion. The footage clearly showed the Rune Priests employing psychic powers themselves, despite the Wolves' denial of the obvious truth. All of the Rune Priests' claims about the "blessings of Fenris" were useless against such evidence, and Russ cursed Alpharius, accusing him of betraying his trust.

'Lying to yourself will be your undoing, brother.'
Attributed to Primarch Alpharius, said to Primarch Leman Russ, during the Council of Nikaea

When Russ left the Council, with Magnus' equerry wounded nigh unto death at the foot of his Primarch, Alpharius worried about what path his brother would take. While the Emperor had already ordered that a group of His Custodians would accompany the Wolf King to ensure his compliance with the Edict, Alpharius also secretly sent a small group of his own warriors, tasked with following the Sixth Legion and report on their activities. However, no word was ever received from them, and their fate remains unknown to this day. It is likely they were somehow discovered, perhaps using the xenos technology the Wolves claimed during the Errance, and then slain by the Rout.

But Alpharius and Omegon had other concerns on their minds that Russ at the time. The Great Crusade continued, and a new world had been chosen by the Legion to be brought into the Imperium : the human world of Nurth. The two Primarchs learned all that there was to know about this world, as was their wont – however, not even them could have predicted what would take place upon the planet, or how it would shape the Legion's entire future.

The Battle of Nurth : Truths and Deceptions

The Cabal
The Long War that opposes the Imperium to the Traitor Legions and the other servants of the Dark Gods is but the latest phase in a conflict that has been raging for tens of millions of years. Ever since the War in Heavens between the Old Ones and the Necrontyrs threw the Empyrean out of balance, the Chaos Gods have been hungering for all souls in the galaxy, a spiritual cancer seeking to infest the entire body. Soon after the War in Heavens ended with the extinction of the Old Ones, the shattering of the C'tan and the Necrons going into stasis at the command of their supreme ruler, the Eldar spread out and conquered the entire galaxy. Through their psychic powers, they created spiritual constructs that protected their souls from the corruption polluting the Empyrean – the pantheon of Eldar Gods. Through it, the favoured children of the Old Ones – as they then presented themselves – were safe from the hunger of the Primordial Annihilator, and could even return from death with ease. However, not all species were so protected, and while the Primordial Annihilator desired the destruction of the Eldar most of all because of their psychic strength, they turned their gaze to other, more vulnerable species. A series of terrible genocides followed, as species after species was consumed by the ravenous hunger of Chaos, their people corrupted from within before daemon incursions wiped entire worlds clean of life.
In time, an organization was founded by a group of powerful xenos leaders. Calling themselves the Cabal, they included members of the most exotic species, including lifeforms entirely gaseous or even energy-based. By combining their technology, they were able to actually fight against the pervading touch of Chaos. Agents were sent across the worlds of their people, aimed at the minions of Chaos, while psykers banded together to create lesser Warp constructs that held the worse of the daemonic incursions at bay.
For millions of years, they fought, occasionally assisted by members of the Eldar race who took pity on the plight of these younger races. Yet every victory was bitter, for over time, the Dark Gods coalesced from the corruption, giving faces to the different aspects of the Primordial Annihilator. How exactly Khorne, Tzeentch and Nurgle were "born" as true Chaos Gods is unknown – the creation of Slaanesh is well documented elsewhere in the Legion's archives, but what species, if any, crystallised the emotions that feed the three other Chaos Gods is a complete mystery. Regardless of its cause, their emergence marked the beginning of the end for the Cabal's species. One by one, they were snuffed out, until only the Cabal itself remained, forced into a nomadic lifestyle to avoid being caught by the agents of the Ruinous Powers. Yet still they did not give up.
Over the aeons, the Cabal had gained great power and knowledge. The pinnacle of both was the Acuity, a device that combined divinations methods from a dozen member species in order to gain a perfect image of the future. By using it, the Cabal foresaw Mankind's rise to prominence in the galaxy, and the fact that our species' fate would be linked to that of Chaos itself. In the lair of the Cabal, a plan was hatched to bring an end to the Primordial Annihilator once and for all – or at least, that's what it began its existence as …

Nurth was a desert world, discovered by the 670th Expeditionary Fleet. Its population, which had barely managed to retain minimal industrial capabilities by the time the Great Crusade reached the world, ferociously opposed integration into the Imperium. They had long forgotten their origins as children of Terra, and their cultural myths warned them that the coming of outsiders onto their world would be the sign that the evil that roamed the universe had found them at last, and would not stop its attacks until they were all destroyed. Despite its low level of technology, the population had managed to hold Imperial advances for months, using a combination of guerilla tactics, sabotages, and taking advantage of the planet's endemic sandstorms. But the true threat to the Imperium – the reason why, even after several months of bloody campaigning, the only thing Lord Commander Ten Namatjira had to shown as result was a cohort of destroyed Titans and far too many corpses of Imperial soldiers, was that the Nurthene had sorcerers on their side. The population of Nurth had been corrupted by Chaos during the Long Night, offering sacrifices to dread powers in return for the strength they had needed to survive.

The priests of the Nurthene had gained mastery over the elements, becoming able to summon lightning storms from clear skies. Aerial support was denied the ground forces, and any obvious target – such as a heavy column – was destroyed within hours of being detected by the enemy. The Nurthene were also excellent warriors, fanatically dedicated to the preservation of their culture against the Imperium. In many ways, this made Nurth the perfect battlefield for the Alpha Legion, likely the reason why Alpharius and Omegon chose it as their next conquest.

The armed forces deployed on Nurth were, of course, unaware of the existence of Chaos. High command suspected that the strange "air magick" possessed by the locals was somehow psychic in nature, but the Geno Five-Two Chiliad's – the Imperial Regiment tasked with the conquest, a battle unit whose venerable history went back to the Unification Wars – only psykers were too weak and specialized in their powers to be able to fight against it. The Librarians of the Alpha Legion, however, detected it at once. But through the human sacrifices offered in their temples, the Nurthene priests had more raw psychic power at their disposal than the Legionaries, and a mere assault under the cover of the Librarians would not work. Each of the Nurthene cities had to be approached by stealth, its priests slain so that their esoteric defenses would be breached and a more conventional assault launched. Even that would be difficult, for the Nurthene had many warriors keeping watch over their walls, and they were well-trained in the arts of infiltration themselves.

That meant the Nurthene had to be distracted. And in order to achieve that, Alpharius and Omegon had no choice but to use the Imperial Army as bait, deliberately modifying orders so that patrols would be caught outside their fortified camps after dark, time and again. At first, the Nurthene were surprised, and did not strike. Then they took the bait, and the first city fell to bolter and chainsword, though not without hundreds of Imperial soldiers dying in night-time ambushes, struck down by a Nurthene blade or burned to ashes by sorcerous lightning. The first city to fall in that way was Tel Utan, and Omegon himself led the strike team that infiltrated its temple and set it ablaze once the priests had been eliminated, cast into the fires of their own sacrificial pyres – even in those early days, the Alpha Legion could be vindictive.

Tel Utan fell, but its population fought to the death, with such fanaticism that no prisoners were taken from the civilians. Omegon departed the city, taking with him his Effrit Squad. But on his way back to one of the Alpha Legion's many bases of operation on Nurth, he encountered a lone man, wandering through the burning desert with barely any of the equipment required for such a perilous journey. That man was John Grammaticus – a powerful psyker, once a soldier of the Unification Wars, and now a former agent of the xenos conspiracy known as the Cabal, on the run from his former masters.

Where, wondered John Grammaticus, had it all gone wrong ?
A few months ago, he had been an agent for a conspiracy aimed at saving the galaxy from cosmic entities feeding on suffering by setting up his own species' violent extinction. He hadn't been happy about that, far from it, but the Acuity had shown him that it was the best possible outcome, not just for the galaxy as a whole but also for his species in particular. He might be young for a Perpetual, but even he understood that death could be a mercy. Yet here he was, fleeing from his former masters, knowing full well that they could find him no matter how far he ran.
The Acuity, he decided. It had all begun to go wrong there. Somehow, the Primordial Annihilator had gotten to the Cabal's predictive abilities, and managed to twist what the Acuity showed to serve its own designs. He had believed in what it had shown at first, but then something had begin to nag at his mind. Some details about the visions the Acuity had shown him – minor things that only his subconscious had picked up. He had started to doubt the plan could succeed at all – doubt that Mankind's death would truly drag Chaos into oblivion. In fact, he had even began to doubt that Guilliman would truly do as the Acuity showed and destroy Mankind in the first place, should he emerge triumphant in the coming civil war. He had read reports from those tasked with observing the Avenging Son, and it didn't seem that the "spark of nobility" that was supposed to trigger his genocide of the human race was still in him at all.
John had tried to investigate then. He had spied on his own masters, seeking a sign that they were aware of what was going on, that he had been kept in the dark about a change of plans for reasons they would surely explain one day – with their typical unbearable smugness. But that wasn't what he had seen. Instead, he had seen some of the Cabal leaders, entities who had led the fight against the Primordial Annihilator for thousands of years, meet with the slaves of that very same Primordial Annihilator. He hadn't recognized them – they were unlike any alien he had ever seen – but there had been no mistaking the aura surrounding them. They had radiated violence, cruelty, and cunning – and their language had burned into John's brain as he listened in. Then they had found him, and everything had gone to hell.
In the end, he had run all the way here, passing from ship to ship and identity to identity until he had reached this accursed ball of sand. The last thing he had been able to glean from the Acuity before it had turned into a nightmare had been that, no matter how everything else had changed, the Alpha Legion was still the key to the outcome of the war.
He had no idea what he was going to do now. He had barely escaped the "accident" at the star port, and his escape vehicle had died on him hours ago, in the middle of that accursed desert. He was fairly certain he had already died of thirst two times, and he wasn't looking forward to the third. He had no plan, no way to reach the Primarch, let alone convince him he wasn't a delusional madman with the strange ability to return from the dead. All he had was the knowledge that he had to do something, or else all would be lost.
In fact, he mused, a lot of someones would have to do a lot of somethings to avoid the worst-case scenario. And he had seen the worst-case scenario – that was the one accursed gift from the Acuity he had no doubt was one-hundred percent accurate. The Ruinous Powers would not have missed an opportunity to have someone do their work for them by showing him something that he would believe would happen if he didn't do what they wanted him to do, only to have it happen anyway … frak. His head hurt, as it did whenever he remembered the horrors the Acuity had shown him Chaos had in store for Mankind. If it looked like that was inevitable, he was fully prepared to throw himself into a black hole and hope that was enough to kill him rather than be alive to see it become reality.
Something moved ahead – a shadow amidst the infernal burning of the sun. John blinked, and looked up …
… and he saw an armored figure, towering above him, as if conjured from thin air. John blinked again, his thirsty brain trying to process what was happening. For a few seconds, he stood immobile, struggling to even remain on his feet – then he managed to open his mouth and speak :
'I … must speak … with Alpharius.'
Then he fell, darkness and death taking him once more.

Grammaticus had been wandering in the unforgiving heat of Nurth's desert for days when Omegon found him, and he succumbed to dehydration mere moments after the encounter. However, to the Primarch's surprise, his body suddenly forced itself back to life, despite not having ingested one drop of liquid. Intrigued by this strange phenomenon, and by the wanderer's last words before his collapse, Omegon brought him to his camp and had him helped by his Apothecary – under heavy surveillance, of course. The man didn't look like a Nurthene agent, but his seeming immortality was suspicious in the extreme, and deserving of further examination.

It only took several hours for Grammaticus to recover to the point that the Alpha Legion could interrogate him. His first words to Omegon were a warning – he had come to Nurth to meet with the Alpha Legion, to bring them word of a terrible threat to the Imperium, but the agents of this threat were on his trail, seeking to silence him. Something in his demeanour convinced Omegon that he was telling the truth, and the Primarch gave orders to prepare to move to a more secure location. However, just as Grammaticus was finally about to say what his warning was about, the base came under attack. A host of strange xenos creatures suddenly appeared, wielding weapons the likes of which the Alpha Legion had never encountered before. Omegon and the Effrit Squad fought against them, but despite their extraordinary battle skills, they failed to notice that the attack was only a diversion for another assassin to slip through their ranks.

It had all been going surprisingly well – which, of course, meant that his old bosses were about to frak with him once more.
'The Cabal has been deceived !' he called out, desperately rolling out of the way of another strike. 'You must help me stop them !'
'I only have your word for it,' growled Damon Prytanis. The other Perpetual was as cold and determined as he had been since Grammaticus had known him for the first time a thousand years ago, when he had been recruited into the service of the Cabal. 'Who would you trust in my place, John ? You, the mon-keigh ? Or them, who have spent ages fighting the Primordial Annihilator ?'
'If your friend's word isn't enough,' declared a new voice, 'then I hope mine will be.'
The two Perpetuals turned to look at the voice. There stood two new arrivals, the swirling lights of a Webway portal closing behind them. Both of them were Eldar, but they were as different as could be. One of them was young, as such things were measured among the children of Isha, and wore the robes and staff of a Farseer. And the other …
'Asurmen,' John breathed, eyes wide at the sight of the first and greatest of the Phoenix Lords.

After dispatching the xenos attackers, Omegon returned inside the hideout, ready to evacuate Grammaticus. But the human psyker wasn't alone. Instead, another man – one who looked grim and murderous – stood at his side, as did two Eldar. Omegon's first reflex was to strike them down, but Grammaticus managed to convince him to hear them. These two, claimed the immortal, had more details about the threat he had come to Nurth to warn the Primarch about.

The Eldar introduced themselves as Eldrad Ulthran, Farseer of Craftworld Ulthwe, and Asurmen, Phoenix Lord, the Hand of Asuryan. While the Farseer was unknown to Omegon, Asurmen wasn't, and Omegon nearly drew his blade there and then as he recognized the xenos who had killed the foster mother of his brother Konrad. Only when Asurmen expressed his sorrow for the death of Theresa Vaqu'iol did the rage of the Primarch abate and he was able to listen to the aliens' message. Eldrad spoke of how Ulthwe had foreseen a great war among the Imperium, the Primarchs succumbing to the corruption of the Warp. The circle of Seers had been able to identify two of the Primarchs who were at the greatest risk to fall : Konrad Curze, and Angron, and attempted to eliminate them before they grew too powerful. But they had been deceived.

Eldrad had gone to Nuceria, leading the team of hunters that was tasked with the elimination of the infant Angron. But when he had seen the child Primarch walking through the mountains, the Farseer had seen how he and his peers had been deceived. He had seen how the attempt to kill Angron would fail, and instead set him on the path that would eventually lead to his downfall. And he had cancelled the attempt, and withdrew from Nuceria, telling his peers of what he had understood.

At the same time, Asurmen had led an attack onto Nostramo. In their visions, the seers of Ulthwe had witnessed the destruction of their Craftworld at the hands of an army led by a scion of the Night Haunter's bloodline. Yet when Asurmen had confronted the Night Haunter, he had seen that there was something more to the Primarch than madness born of relentless executions and bloody duty. There was light in the life of Konrad Curze, a light the Phoenix Lord nearly inadvertently snuffed out. After his body was broken by the hands of the King of the Night, Asurmen had been resurrected once more by the lingering power of Asuryan, and he had understood that he had nearly been manipulated by the Dark Gods into helping turn a child of the Emperor of Mankind to their service. Yet the plan had failed, and through uniting the people of Nostramo against them and under Curze's leadership, Ulthwe had ultimately averted that possibility forever.

The two separated incidents had convinced both the Farseer and the Phoenix King not only that Mankind could resist the corruption of Chaos, if it were given the chance, but also that even the visions of the Eldar Seers, supposed to be the clearest of all, had been compromised by the Archenemy. And as they explored the paths that might lead to such a grand victory against the Primordial Annihilator, they had discovered the corruption that had taken root in the Cabal, once the greatest enemy of Chaos. They had failed to uncover its source, but the truth was that it didn't matter. Through Grammaticus, they already knew what the plan of the Cabal was. They knew that Guilliman had fallen to Chaos, and that he had gathered to his side those of his brothers who had proved susceptible to his lies. A rebellion against the Emperor was coming, led by the Avenging Son. The initial plan of the Cabal had been to allow Guilliman to win, in the hope that he would then destroy all of Mankind and take the Primordial Annihilator with it into oblivion – but with the Acuity corrupted, there was no chance that this was what would happen should the Avenging Son prevail over the Emperor. Yet this was only part of the warning Grammaticus had come to deliver.

The Cabal knew that the Alpha Legion would never side with Guilliman in the coming war. The xenos puppet-masters knew that, even if the enmity existing between the Thirteenth and Twentieth Legions was not enough, the two Primarchs' knowledge of the Primordial Annihilator was limited, but enough that they would see the signs of corruption in their brother. The Cabal also knew that the Alpha Legion had the potential to be a very dangerous force in the coming war. And so, they had manipulated events so that the two Primarchs and an important part of their Legion would come to Nurth. The recent victory of the Imperium against the locals had also been part of their plan. The Nurthene had grown desperate, and were about to unleash their most dangerous weapon – a Black Cube, one of only five such instruments of planetary destruction, created in ages past by a species claimed by the Primordial Annihilator. The kill-team sent to silence Grammaticus had failed, which meant that they had only hours at best before everything on Nurth was exterminated by the power of the Black Cube.

Omegon used his authority as a Primarch to order an evacuation of all Imperial forces on Nurth, overriding the protests of the Crusade commanders. Alpharius himself demanded that his brother explain his decision, and Omegon promised that he would do so soon. Grammaticus, Damon, Eldrad and Asurmen were all secretly brought aboard the Beta, one of the Legion's battle-barges, even as the frantic evacuation continued, and while great storms of black clouds began to appear above the capital city of Nurth. Thousands of Imperial soldiers weren't evacuated in time, and died horrible death as the raving, unnatural winds summoned by the Black Cube at the cost of millions of human sacrifices ate them alive.

And as Nurth's destruction played out below the Imperial fleet, the two Primarchs accepted the truth of Grammaticus' warning, witnessing a power they had barely suspected existed in the universe. In the death throes of Nurth, they saw the faces of the Dark Gods, howling at them from the ruined planet. With heavy heart, they realized that what they had feared for a long time – the dread possibility of the Imperium turning on itself, for it was the only galactic power with the might to destroy itself – had come to pass.

'What do we do then ?' asked the first half of the Alpha Legion's Primarch. 'How do we fight this threat ?'
'Horus will call for you,' declared Eldrad. 'The Warmaster has been saved from the clutches of Chaos, and his anger at the coming betrayal will be great enough that I can sense its echoes across the Web of Fate all the way here and now. A war will start that will tear your Imperium asunder, Alpharius Omegon. Some of it will be fought in the open, as the pawns of Ruin marshal their armies and march to Terra. The rest will be fought in the shadows, where you and your Legion belong. But it will be a war of a brutality the likes of which the galaxy has not seen in a long, long time. And if you lose, Mankind will be doomed, and so will be all species of the galaxy.'
'Then,' asked Omegon again, 'what do we do ?'
A grim smile appeared on the young Farseer's face.
'That's simple, son of the Emperor. We win. No matter the cost, no matter what we have to do. In this war, even the most bitter of victories is preferable to defeat.'

Heresy : The Unremembered War

'It is a time of great confusion and terrible strife. Madness, it seems, has taken our brothers, casting them away from the illumination brought by the Emperor and into the claws of older, darker powers, who feed on disorder and violence. Those of our cousins who remain loyal to the Throne do not understand why it is so – they cannot understand it, lest the truth burns their own souls black as well. But we of the Hydra are well-used to unpleasant revelations. We have long planned for an eventuality such as civil war, though we never thought it would be of such scope and scale.
Horus has called for us to go to Isstvan, and bring the Emperor's justice upon Guilliman and his treacherous allies. We will answer this command, for to do otherwise would be treason. But we must keep in mind that Guilliman, for all his disdain for the more subtle aspects of war, is no fool. He must have known what Horus' response to his betrayal would be, and he must have prepared for it. When the retribution of the Imperium arrives to Isstvan, he will have a plan.
We must be prepared. We must not be deceived. We must be ready. We must not let the burning desire for vengeance, the righteous wrath of the betrayed, blind us to the reality before our eyes.
We are Alpha Legion, and we take the long view.'
Attributed to Primarch Omegon, during the journey to the Isstvan System

When the message from the Warmaster came, barely a few weeks after the brutal end of the Nurthene Compliance, it confirmed all that Eldrad and Grammaticus had said. Guilliman had turned against the Imperium, corrupted by dark forces lurking in the Warp. Worse, Sanguinius, Dorn and Ferrus Manus had joined him, purging their Legions of all those who would not follow them in their betrayal. As soon as they had deciphered the astropathic sending, Alpharius and Omegon knew that they had to act. Their "guests", humans and Eldar alike, were both still contained aboard the Beta – treated well and politely, but still imprisoned. That had to end. The war against Guilliman and his cohorts was only part of the coming conflict. Primarchs would fight other Primarchs – it was inevitable. But the Cabal would act in the shadows, trying to steer things toward the traitors' victory, and the Imperium was ill-equipped to fight against it. This was the kind of battle the Alpha Legion had been created for, and Eldrad and Grammaticus had information that would allow it to be fought efficiently. Yet Horus' order had to be heeded as well. The Alpha Legion must join into the fight against the Traitor Legions, lest it be seen as traitor itself. And so, Alpharius and Omegon decided to separate their forces. One of the Primarchs would go to Isstvan, and fight the war against the Traitor Legions. Another would go with Eldrad and Grammaticus, and fight the war against the Cabal. This war would never be recorded, would never be known to the wider Imperium – yet it had to be fought.

And so, Alpharius and Omegon parted. It is said that Alpharius went to Isstvan, and Omegon followed John Grammaticus toward the kingdom of Ultramar, in order to accomplish the first thing that had to be done to prevent Guilliman's victory, while Alpharius went to Isstvan to join in the retribution fleet. But perhaps it was the opposite. The two Primarchs were ever fond of shifting places, and not even their closest sons could tell the difference. It is theorised by some lore-keepers of the Alpha Legion that they were truly one mind in two bodies, and that any distinctions they pretended existed was purely to hide the truth from those who would see it as unnatural.

Regardless of the truth, the Primarch his sons called Alpharius came to Isstvan with a fleet and thirty thousand Space Marines, ready to join the battle for Isstvan V, where Guilliman and his accomplices had gone to ground following the slaughter of their own sons on Isstvan III. The Night Lords were already there, though only in very limited number. At the demand of his brother, Alpharius met with Curze aboard the Beta prior to the meeting of the loyalist Primarchs, for a discussion whose exact contents have been lost to the ages. All that is known is that Curze delivered yet another dire warning to Alpharius, and that Alpharius sensed the doom that hovered above his brother.

'That's a nice fleet you have out there,' said Konrad. 'Our brothers are sure to find it very impressive for so young a Legion. It must have taken quite the feat of diplomacy to gather sufficient support from the Mechanicum.'
Alpharius didn't say anything.
'So,' asked the King of the Night, something like amusement glittering in his eyes, 'how many more just like it do you have out there ?'
Alpharius still didn't say anything. But something in his body language must have betrayed his shock, because Curze smiled ever so slightly.
'How did I know ? I didn't, but now I do.' His expression sobered. 'Listen to me, brother. You need to be careful when we get down there. Use one of your doubles – do not take to the field in your Primarch aspect.'
'Why ?' asked Alpharius – the first word he had spoken since the two of them had been alone. A shadow fell upon Konrad's face, as if he were bearing the weight of knowledge he would rather not have.
'Because however the battle goes, I know this : the war will not end on Isstvan V.'

Heeding his brother's advice, Alpharius asked one of his strongest and most devoted sons, Kel Silonius, to act as his double during the following war council, then onto the black sands themselves. The Primarch himself took the disguise of a common Legionary, fighting alongside his sons against the traitor Ultramarines. Then came the second, devastating betrayal, when the Dark Angels, Salamanders and Raven Guard revealed themselves in league with Guilliman. Silonius died within seconds of the First Legion opening the first treacherous shots, torn apart by vile sorcery unleashed by the Dark Angels. Perhaps the sons of the Lion expected to break the morale of the Alpha Legion by this cowardly blow, but they were proved wrong, for the Hydra's warriors all knew of the stratagem employed by their father, and the only thing the death of Silonius accomplished was filling them with a cold, vengeful rage. For a time, Alpharius remained hidden among his sons, directing them secretly against the traitor formations. Then the King of the Night and the Lord of Death came together at the spearhead of the loyalist beleaguered army, and Alpharius could hide himself no longer.

Forsaking not only his brother's counsel, but also his own teachings, Alpharius revealed himself, displaying his full might as a Primarch, and took his place at the side of his two brothers. Though Alpharius was close to Konrad, he had barely ever met Mortarion – yet in that moment the three of them were as one, and none could stand against them. The ranks of the Traitor Legions were broken before them, and nothing the heretics could cast at the loyalist triad could even slow them down. But then, as the loyalists neared their transports, Curze turned back, ordering his brothers to go one without him while he held back the traitor assault massing at their back. Alpharius' heart bled to leave his brother to die – but he knew that, of the three of them, the King of the Night was the only one who could give them the time they required to board the transports and leave.

Yet just as the Night Lords Primarchs unleashed his long-contained power against the Traitor Legions forces led by Vulkan, another Traitor Primarch appeared to challenge the loyalists' flight. There before Alpharius stood Ferrus Manus, dripping with the corruption of the Warp, the warhammer Forgebreaker held within still-pristine silver hands. And so, for the first time – but not the last – Alpharius fought against another Primarch.

There were no words.
Alpharius had always thought there would be. In the dark hours of the night, when he and Omegon had considered the possibility of Primarch fighting Primarch, long before Guilliman had broken his oath to the Imperium, Alpharius had been convinced that brothers couldn't possibly fight in silence. Surely, he had thought, they would try to talk to one another, to bring the other across whatever gap in belief had led to their opposition. But that had been a naive thought, one fit only for a sane universe. And Mankind did not live in a sane universe. The monsters the Ultramarines had unleashed were prove enough of that.
And so Alpharius and Ferrus Manus fought without words, without insults, without justifications. They fought as they had both fought for so long – to kill the enemy and nothing more. The Pale Spear clashed against Forgebreaker, the warhammer the Phoenician had created for Manus decades ago, at the dawn of their friendship. Like two beasts of legends dragged into reality by the Emperor's power, the Hydra and the Gorgon duelled upon the black sands, while all around them their sons died by the hundreds. Already Alpharius' weapon had torn a dozen rents through Ferrus' armor, causing a greenish pus to leak – but the Primarch of the Iron Hands didn't even seem to notice. Ferrus' armor already wore the marks left by his brief confrontation with Konrad, and looking at the wounds the King of the Night had inflicted upon him, Ferrus Manus should by all rights be dead. But malevolent energies coalesced around him, filling Alpharius' mouth with bile.
This, then, was the corruption Grammaticus had tried to describe. The sight of his tainted brother was more shocking to Alpharius that the destruction of Nurth had been. This was closer, more personal – more repulsive. And yet … The silver hands of Manus were still unchanged. So was the weapon they wielded. No one knew exactly how Ferrus' hands had become what they were today. Could it be that whatever coated his hands was immune to the sickness that had taken hold of his soul ?
With a snarl, Alpharius sent a mental command to his spear. The ancient xenos weapon shattered, fragments of the blades flying around in a swirling maelstrom that cut several Iron Hands to ribbons. As the fragments penetrated through his flesh, even Ferrus seemed to be hurt, for the first time since the Massacre had begun. He staggered, and Alpharius struck again. His shoulder hit the Gorgon in the chest with enough strength to dent a Land Raider, and the Primarchs of the Iron Hands fell on his back, Forgebreaker slipping from his grasp. As the Pale Spear reassembled, Alpharius switched it to a single-handed grip and reached down with his free hand, seizing the hilt of the warhammer and lifting it up with some difficulty – the thing was heavier than he had expected.
'This is not yours any longer,' he spat to Ferrus as he passed by his fallen brother. 'You lost all claims to it when you betrayed us all.'
Those were the first words Alpharius had ever spoken to the Primarch of the Iron Hands. And they would be the last.

Though Alpharius couldn't kill Manus – just as Konrad had discovered, the Primarch of the Iron Hands had become nigh-invulnerable as a result of his unholy transformation – he managed to put him down temporarily. Soon the surviving loyalists were fleeing Isstvan V, leaving tens of thousands of Legionaries dead upon the black sands. Worse, Konrad Curze, Primarch of the Eighth Legion and Savior of Nostramo, had fallen has well, sacrificing his life to buy the time his brothers had needed. It is written by those Alpha Legionaries who shared the Primarch's transport that, for the first time since any of them had known him, they saw Alpharius weep for his lost brother. But though his sorrow was unending, the Primarch crushed it, sealed it away behind walls forged of duty and discipline. For the war was far from over.

Soon, the loyalist fleet fractured. The Night Lords departed for Nostramo, in order to lay the body of their father to rest upon their homeworld. Then, Alpharius took his leave from Mortarion. At his command, the survivors of the thirty thousand Legionaries he had brought with him to Isstvan scattered, hiding on human worlds laying in the path of the Traitor Legions to Terra. Alpharius himself used his knowledge of Warp-navigation to find a path across the tumultuous Sea of Souls. He did not ask Mortarion to accompany him, for he knew that it would take all of his skills to get just one ship – the Beta – to destination, and that a fleet attempting the same journey would be cast adrift at best, and annihilated at worst. Even with the talent possessed by the Lord of the Hydra, in the end it was only thanks to the last-minute intervention of an Eldar guide sent by Eldrad that the Beta was able to reach Sol, using a long-hidden branch of the Webway network that ended in the vicinity of Mankind's birth system.

On Terra, Alpharius made his report to Horus, and delivered to the Warmaster the weapon Forgebreaker, reclaimed from the hands of Ferrus Manus during their confrontation on Isstvan V. Later, Lupercal would gift the weapon Fulgrim had forged for the Gorgon to Perturabo, and the Lord of Iron would wield it to devastating effect during the Siege of Terra. Then, the Twentieth Primarch journeyed into the depths of the Imperial Palace, seeking an audience with his father. Alpharius believed that the Emperor must be informed of what he had learned on Nurth, and wanted to know what the Emperor had planned. But the Emperor was nowhere to be found, for He was fighting the War in the Webway, His son Magnus at His side against the tides of Neverborn pouring through the seals shattered by the Sixth Legion's attempt to slay the Crimson King. Only with the assistance of Malcador the Sigillite was Alpharius able to enter psychic communion with his father.

Father and son meet inside a memory. Around them, the primitive dwellings of Mankind's firstborn rise from the arid soil, built of clay and wood. In the distance, they can hear the sound of the villagers toiling in the fields, within the valley made fertile by the nearby river. It is peaceful here, so peaceful that it makes the son uncomfortable.
The son stands in the memory much like he does in reality. He is tall, taller than any pure human, taller than any of his own children, but smaller than his brothers – save for one. His armor appears pristine, covered in blue-green scales. The symbol of infinity is emblazoned upon his right shoulder paldron, while a parchment covered in a near-microscopic script hangs from his left. Upon it, he has written the names of all those he saw die during the Massacre.
In this memory, the son carries no weapon, and his noble face is exposed, his helmet absent. Yet there can be no denying his nature. He is a warrior, a soldier, a general – a being designed for violence. He does not belong here, in this peaceful village of primordial humanity, and he knows it.
In contrast, the father appears as a child, dressed in the garments of the people who lived in this village, tens of millennia ago. His skin is brown, as was that of all humans in those earliest of days, before the species spread out across its birthworld and undergo the minute genetic mutations that would create so many different faces for Humanity.
"Is this where it began ?" asks the son, in a language that won't be invented for more than two hundred thousand years. "Is this where you were born ?"
The father looks around in silence for a moment, as if trying to recall a life so ancient it is all but gone from his memory.
"Yes," he says at last. "It is what I remember first. Before everything else … There was this place."
"I have seen places like those in the galaxy," continues the son after his father falls silent. "Where people lived in peace and simplicity. Each time, I mourned that I had to bring them into our universe of war and endless perils."
"No," replies the father, shaking his childish head. "You remember ignorance, descendants of star travellers living in the ruins of their forgotten heritage. This … this is the memory of innocence, Alpharius. Before the Enemy noticed us. Before ..."
His voice trails of once again. The son – Alpharius, Primarch of the Twentieth Space Marine Legions – moves closer, something very much like unease on his face.
"Father ?" he calls out. The child – the avatar of the Emperor, Master of Mankind and Lord of Terra – is trembling.
"It is nothing," says the child, and Alpharius knows that his father is lying to him. "How … how is Horus ? Perturabo ?"
"Angry," answers Alpharius. "They … they took the death of Konrad hard. They do their best to hide it, but I can sense their pain … and their rage. Guilliman has no idea what Vulkan did when he killed him."
The father turns, and looks his son in the eyes again. Strangely, despite the fact that one is a child and the other a Primarch, the father needs not raise his head to be at eye-level.
"You have something to tell me," declares the father. "Is that related to why your brother isn't there with you ?"
"Yes," admits Alpharius. "Omegon and I, we … we have made a pact. An alliance. With … xenos."
"The Eldar," says the Emperor's avatar. "I know. Be careful, Alpharius. Even those who oppose the Primordial Annihilator will always put their own kind before us."
"I will," promises the Primarch. "Father ..." he asks, hesitantly. "What do we do now ? What is the plan ?"
For a long, long moment, the father is silent. Then, he says :
"The Webway tunnels are echoing with the sounds of war. Even now, Magnus is fighting with all he has while I do battle against our foes to prevent them from drowning this world into madness. Your brother is strong, stronger than I thought, but not strong enough."
"So it is true then," whispers Alpharius, a cold dread seizing his two hearts. "The Dark Gods are attacking Terra."
"Yes. As long as the Webway Gate is open, someone must sit on the throne to prevent them from consuming the entire planet."
"Then ..." Alpharius hesitates. Dare he say it ? He does. "Then why not close the Gate ?"
For the first time, Alpharius sees doubt on his father's face. Worse : he sees fear. Uncertainty.
"Because once I close it," he says, each word echoing in Alpharius' mind like the doom bell ringing for all of Mankind, "then it cannot be opened again. And without it, I do not know what to do to prevent Chaos from triumphing in the end. We will fight – we can do nothing else – but … It won't be enough. Eventually, the Primordial Annihilator will grow too strong, and we will grow too weak. Alpharius … my son … The reason I am keeping the Webway Gate open is because I don't know what else to do."
The voice of the Emperor is barely more than a whisper as he says again, as if to himself :
"I don't know what else to do ..."

After his meeting, Alpharius emerged from the depths of the Imperial Palace burning with renewed determination to stop the traitors from ever reaching Terra. He refused to obey Horus' demand that he remain on Terra and help prepare for the coming of Guilliman. Instead, Alpharius argued that his Legion's strength would be better used fighting a guerilla war against the Traitor Legions, slowing them down and bleeding them of their strength through a thousand cuts. Though the Warmaster was loath to risk exposing one of his few remaining brothers whose fate he was sure of to yet more danger, Horus eventually accepted Alpharius' reasoning, and the Hydra threw himself into the Shadow Wars. Under his guidance, the scattered forces of the Twentieth Legion became the nightmare of Traitor Legionaries and human turncoats alike, fighting alongside loyalist forces all across the galaxy. Always they sought to protect those who had remained true to the Emperor – but on worlds that had fully turned to the service of Chaos, they were incredibly ruthless and without mercy. Some warriors of the Legion used methods that would have given even the likes of the Ravenlord and the Black Dragon pause, and when the Heresy ended and the reclamation began, many worlds were found utterly devoid of life, wiped clean by the Hydra's wrath.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, Omegon was fighting against the corrupted Cabal and its minions. Of this epic conflict, fought in the shadow of the Heresy and known to the Alpha Legion as the Unremembered War, even our annals tell little – yet still more than some of other conflicts that were fought in the darkness cast over the galaxy by Guilliman's betrayal. Some forces were battled during that time that were too terrible for even the Twentieth Legion to keep knowledge of them. For instance, according to the fragmented records, it was during the Heresy that the Hydra fought against an entity known only as the Harrowing, destroyed it, and claimed its name as that of one of its favourite tactics on the battlefield. What was the Harrowing, what were its goals and where it came from, we do not know – we know not even if it was a single creature, an invading army, or an entire species.

The half of the Legion under Omegon's leadership had been scattered by his own command, each fragment led by one of his most trusted sons and tasked with fulfilling a specific goal. Grammaticus parted with Omegon there, having received his own mission from Eldrad Ulthran – to meet with the sons of Curze and assist them in their pursuit of vengeance against the Black Dragon, Vulkan. Other groups had their own purposes, the nature of which shall be discussed further into this chronicle. Eldrad Ulthran investigated the fate of the Third Legion and discovered the plot by which Slaanesh had delivered the Emperor's Children into the hands of the Dark Eldar. With the help of the Alpha Legion, a message was sent to Sevatar, Legion Master of the Night Lords, so that they could rescue the Phoenician and his few surviving sons.

Other missions, of which the other Legions never heard of, were also performed in the Unremembered War, with varying results. The hierophants of Ezyrthin were slain before they could sacrifice the planet's trillion souls and become Daemon Princes of immense power, and the cult of the White Serpent on Molech was discreetly purged before they could subordinate the Imperial Knights tasked with defending the planet's hidden secret. But at the same time, the assassination of Ulrach Branthan, the Enthroned King of the Iron Hands, failed. The war against the Yu'vath ended in abject failure, with the population of an entire Sector abandoned to slavery under the rule of the cruel Warp-tainted xenos, where it would remain for thousands of years. And in the depths of the hive-city of Vermungrad, three entire companies were lost to the thing that the cultists had brought into existence there, their gene-seed tainted beyond all recovery by its spreading corruption.

The ship was dead. It floated in the void, its engines silent, its decks open to the cold emptiness of space. Once it had belonged to the Imperial Navy; then it had been claimed by the human followers of the Thirteenth Legion; then it had been purged and reclaimed by one whose name sent shivers of dread and hatred down the spine of any treacherous son of Guilliman. It transmitted no identification codes, but the last name it had worn before its death had been Defiance.
From outside, it was obvious how the ship had died. Vast craters were visible on its sides, left by intense bombardment. The entry wounds where Legion-issued boarding torpedoes had torn their way inside were also in plain sight for one who knew what to look for. But, strangely, all the torpedoes were still in place, despite at least half of them appearing to be recoverable.
On the bridge of the Defiance, five Legionaries waded through the corpses of more than twenty of their traitor cousins. All wore the blue of the Ultramarines, with their armor covered in the unholy symbols that indicated their infernal allegiance. They had died in a variety of ways – blade and bolt were the most prominent, but there were other, more creative manners of death displayed as well. One appeared to have been cut in two by a monomolecular edge, while another had a perfectly circular hole in his chest and a third did not appear to have suffered any damage at all. Just to be sure, one of the Legionaries put a bolt in his helmet, scattering desiccated, frozen brain matter across the floor.
On the bridge's command throne sat another Ultramarine, but this one was different. His armor was devoid of the Ruinous markings of the dead traitors – instead, it was covered in minute scripting, thousands and thousands of small paragraphs, each describing a specific battlefield tactic or trick. Another difference was the helmet – unlike that of the fallen sons of Guilliman, it was painted a bright red.
They had found him. They had found Aeonid Thiel – but they had been too late. He was already dead. Hesitantly, one of the Alpha Legionaries moved to touch the body …
'Stop !' called out another Legionary over the vox. The first Astartes froze, then turned his helmet to look where his brother was pointing – to a clutch of grenades, nearly completely hidden behind the legs of the enthroned warrior. Disturbing the body would cause them to detonate, killing whoever had disturbed the corpse.
Hope flared anew in the Legionary's chest. Careful not to disturb the grenades, he reached toward the helmet, and, with reverence, lifted it up …
… only to reveal nothing but empty space. The suit of armor sitting upon the command throne was empty.
'He bobby-trapped his own armor before leaving,' said the Space Marine, admiration plain in his voice. 'If but a fraction of his wisdom is contained in these engravings, then the armor alone is a prize worthy of a Primarch.'
'Maybe. But if he set that trap, then where is he ?' asked his sergeant. No one had any answer to offer.
The warrior who held in his hands the red helmet of Aonid Thiel knew that the search would continue. Aeonid Thiel, one of the only survivors of the Isstvan Atrocity, loyalist Ultramarine and bane of traitors, was too valuable, too important to let fade into obscurity. But he had a feeling, without being able to explain why, that the Lord of the Red-Marked would never be found.

But the actions of Omegon are more documented. After dividing his fleet, he took only a single ship with him into the Kingdom of Ultramar, to the Five Hundred Worlds where the Arch-Traitor's minions had built great fortresses and spread their unholy beliefs among a population that had once been the example of compliance and loyalty to the Imperium. The Primarch did not come to Ultramar in strength, for he doubted that even the full might of the Twentieth would have been able to break the defenses built by Guilliman. This was a mission calling for stealth and subtlety, the two hallmarks of the Alpha Legion. Guided by the words of John Grammaticus, the Primarch sought to extract a potential ally from Ultramar before the dark plot set in motion by Guilliman reached fruition and engulfed the entire region of space into the Warp. And so, ahead of the retribution fleet led by Lorgar and Angron, Omegon came to Calth.

Using camouflage technology reclaimed from the ruins of a forge-world burned by civil war during the Long Night, the Primarch infiltrated Guilliman's realm, and Omegon and his Effrit Squad set foot upon Calth itself, the world that would later become the cornerstone of the Ruinstorm. With them came Damon Prytanis, Grammaticus' ancient colleague in the Cabal and a Perpetual older than Grammaticus, his mind scarred by all that he had witnessed and done in service to the xenos conspiracy. His heart burned with the desire for vengeance and redemption as he led them toward the one they had come to rescue before he too fell prey to the Primordial Annihilator.

Of the horrors they found on Calth, the Primarch wrote no tales. But he wrote of the one they had come to save – a man who had been old when the Age of Strife had erupted across the galaxy, a man who had seen all that Mankind had to offer to the universe, for good or ill. A man who had lived older than any other, save the Emperor Himself. A Perpetual whose knowledge of the Primordial Annihilator was matched only by his contempt for it and his disgust for all those who would willingly and knowingly offer themselves to its corruption. A man who had worn many names throughout the millennia – and who was now known as Ollanius Persson, retired trooper of the Imperial Army, and farmer on Calth.

The cultists howled their curses at Ollanius as he killed them. There were twelve of them and only one of him, but they weren't soldiers. All they had was their madness, granting them strength and the ability to ignore pain. Against Ollanius, it wasn't enough. He was used to fighting madmen – it had been one of the few things that had remained constant throughout his forty thousand years of life. No matter how much time had passed, there wasn't much difference between these cultists and the cannibal he had killed in the trenches of Verdun, in a war even more senseless than the one that would soon ignite across the galaxy.
By coming to Calth, he had thought he could finally get some rest, some peace away from it all. Had he not done his part ? Had he not done enough ? But it seemed fate was determined to prove him otherwise. He had sensed something wrong when the Ultramarines fleet had returned to the planet years ago, but at the time he hadn't know why. Then the cults had started to appear. People had begun to go missing in the night, in the arcologies. If he had half the sense of a goat, he would have left the planet right then. But he hadn't : instead, he had investigated, and soon found out what the Thirteenth Legion had brought back with it from its journeys across the stars.
He couldn't escape now. The entire planet was in lock-down – only the Legion used transports to orbit, while the population drowned in its own corruption. Bands of madmen and madwomen roamed the streets and the countryside, burning and killing everything they came across – including each other, when two bands met. Day by day, the veil was getting thinner, yet there were no manifestations of daemons – not yet. Something was holding them back, letting the pressure accumulate, probably in order to let it loose all at once. Ollanius definitively didn't want to be on Calth when that happened, nor anywhere else in the Five Hundred Worlds if he could help it. The problem was, he couldn't. He wouldn't make it within a kilometer of a spaceport before the Ultramarines' pet witches would detect him, and then the Legion would know of his presence. He was quite certain the only reason he had managed to elude them so far was because they didn't know he was here. He might not be the most important piece on the board – that dubious honor belonged to the Emperor, and after him to the war-bred giants he had created as his sons – but he was still not someone the Enemy would allow to roam freely.
He moved away from the corpses, back into the overgrown fields. No one had harvested anything on Calth in years. Soon, the reserves of food would dry up, and he dreaded to think of what would happen next. He had seen it before, so many times, even back on Earth when …
Something moved in the distance. Ollanius snapped to attention. At first, when he caught sight of the hulking, armored figures, his heart sank – then he saw the emblem on their shoulders, which reassured him only a little. Then he saw the man among the giants.
'Damon Prytanis,' he said in an incredulous voice. 'With Legionaries, no less. What has the Cabal done this time ?'
'I don't work for the Cabal anymore,' replied the killer. 'John convinced me they had gone mad.'
'John,' repeated Ollanius, remembering the younger Perpetual. 'And where is he ?'
'He wanted to get you in person,' shrugged Damon. 'But he is busy with something else.'

The Effrit Squad barely managed to escape with Ollanius in tow, but their pursuers were hot on their tail, and they were forced to resort to desperate measure. In order to escape the deluded cultists and their tainted Astartes masters, Persson used a relic blade – an athame – he had taken from his would-be captors, and cut a hole through the fabric of reality itself. They passed through the tear in space and time, leaving their foes howling in dismay as the rent closed behind them. Mere hours later, the fleets of the Word Bearers and World Eaters reached the system, and the Battle of Calth began, while elsewhere in the galaxy, the Drop Site Massacre was about to unfold.

Thus began an epic odyssey, which took Omegon and his allies to all manners and places and times – from the war-torn hellscapes of Old Earth during the Age of Strife to the paradise worlds of the Eldar at the time of their ascendency. With his own eyes, Omegon saw the power Mankind had wielded during the Dark Age of Technology, and how rampant Abominable Intelligences had all but wiped out the species in millennia past. Most of those places were dangerous in the extreme, and the group only remained long enough for Persson to find another spot where he could use the athame and take them closer to their intended destination – Terra, at the time of the Heresy.

But on every step of their journey, they were hunted by the Primordial Annihilator. Time means nothing to the Dark Gods, and the same powers Ollanius was using were also in the hands of the Slaves to Ruin – though only the greatest of them could hope to wield them with anything approaching control. At first, daemons hounded them, ghostly wraiths following the trail of their souls and possessing the bodies of those whom they crossed in their journey. When they were banished by Primarch, Legionaries and Perpetuals, the Archenemy sent other agents : its deluded pawns in the Cabal, xenos of shapes and powers the Imperium had never met before. These were ancient creatures, who possessed the same antediluvian lore Persson was employing to guide the group through the hidden paths in time and space. All those the group fought believed the lie the Cabal had fallen victim to – that, by helping Guilliman's victory, they were ultimately ensuring the destruction of Chaos itself. Yet they too were defeated, their traps avoided or escaped, their bodies left broken in places where they would become the roots of a thousand legends. Traitor Astartes were sent, too, the Dark Gods bending their minds until they would accept to ally with the xenos of the Cabal – but they too fell, unable to stand before Omegon's might as a Primarch.

Then the Dark Gods became angry, or perhaps fearful. The wanderers had escaped them long enough, and their agents – both mortal and immortal – had failed them one too many times. The hour for desperate measures had come, for the Ruinous Powers would not allow Ollanius to reach Terra. Not even they knew just how the Perpetual could change the course of an entire galactic war, but they were unwilling to take the risk. Too long had Ollanius and his immortal kindred opposed the Primordial Annihilator, and after their attempts to subtly suborn Damon Prytanis into their service had failed, the Dark Gods had stopped being amused by the immortals' futile struggle against them. Perhaps, with the help of the only other Perpetual whose age was even in the same scale as His own, the Emperor would find a way to repair the Webway Project, or find another path to free Mankind from Chaos. And so, the Ruinous Powers banded together, and freed one of their most dangerous servants from its prison, where it had been banished in aeons past in order to prevent it from destroying the entire galaxy and starving the Gods from the souls they needed to survive.

That servant was Aetaos'rau'keres, once a Lord of Change of Tzeentch, though that classification utterly fails in capturing the scope of its power. This daemon had been among the first born of its kind, created during the War in Heavens by the abuse of knowledge on both sides that nearly unmade the galaxy. Older even than the god it would eventually become associated with, Aetaos'rau'keres was completely, utterly mad, even compared with other Neverborn. It desired nothing but the complete destruction of all things in the universe, and wielded power and sorcery the likes of which no one else has ever mastered. Those few unfortunate scholars who had learned of its existence in the terrified drawings of butchered species named him the Slayer of Souls, Lord of Hosts, Distorter of Worlds, and many other titles, all of which failed to catch its true horror. Even the Eldar at the height of their power had feared the Slayer of Souls, and it was all their newborn gods could do to keep it away from their worlds and into the realms of lesser species.

When Tzeentch had emerged from the Empyrean, Aetaos'rau'keres was its prime rival for mastery of magic and secret, forbidden knowledge. Yet even the Changer of Ways had not been able to bring the Slayer of Souls under its control. Aetaos'rau'keres was the incarnation of knowledge misused and turned into an instrument of war and destruction, and it could not be reasoned with, nor was it capable of bending knee to the God of Change. In the end, rather than allow it to continue its rampage across the galaxy, Tzeentch fought against Aetaos'rau'keres, calling upon the aid of its dark brothers in the first such unholy covenant. Daemonic legions clashed while the Dark Gods themselves battled the Lord of Hosts, and eventually Aetaos'rau'keres was defeated, dragged deep into the Crystal Labyrinth, and sealed away from the Materium and Immaterium alike, with bonds so strong not even its dreams could reach out and influence the thoughts of mortals. And there it had remained for tens of millions of years, nearly forgotten by the galaxy and even the Gods who had broken it.

But now, only Aetaos'rau'keres had both the power to destroy Omegon and his allies, and the knowledge required to hunt them down through time and space. Other minions of the Dark Gods might be able to do so, but they were all engaged in their own plots and wars, and their masters were unwilling to risk losing an advantage in the Great Game, even to prevent the ruin of their greater plan – for such is the selfish nature of Chaos. Even so, the Dark Gods dared not release the primordial daemon with its full strength. Tzeentch bound Aetaos'rau'keres with a thousand and one pacts, bindings that restricted its power and compelled it to obey those with the knowledge of its chains. The bindings also had the unforeseen effect of imposing something like sanity upon the daemon's shattered psyche, and it was sent after the wanderers with the singular mission of destroying them, whatever the cost.

Ollanius sensed the new pursuer at once, and his old heart was filled with dread. He knew of Aetaos'rau'keres, and he knew that, should the daemon find them, there would be little they would be able to do against its awesome power, chained as it might be. Aetaos'rau'keres was more akin to a primordial force of thought and soul than a daemon, closer to the Dark Gods than almost any other creature of the Warp. And so the wanderers fled, faster and less cautious than before, as behind them the Slayer of Souls left a trail of ruins across time and space. Finally, it caught up to them, on a world brought to ruin by the war between Mankind and its own, sentient creations. The wanderers had been trapped there by Aetaos'rau'keres' scheme, cornered with no place to escape – or so it seemed – for the war had ravaged the Warp itself, erasing the weak spots in the fabric of space-time where the athame could cut.

There was only one possible way out of the place that did not lead to the same spot they had come from, a pit of pure blackness where the very concept of reality had been destroyed by the energies unleashed by the conflict. But the pit was far from where the wanderers had arrived, and Aetaos'rau'keres was right behind them. So, Omegon made the same choice his brother Konrad had made before him, and resolved to stay behind and gain time for his allies to escape. For the first time in the entire existence of the primordial daemon, a being of flesh and blood stood his ground before it. And while Omegon fought Aetaos'rau'keres, Ollanius found the way through the pit of non-space, and the rest of the wanderers escaped the ruined world – leaving the Primarch alone with the Slayer of Souls.

The thing Persson had called Aetaos'rau'keres – spitting on the ground after speaking the name out loud – towered above Omegon. It was covered in so many silver chains and burning brands that it was all but impossible to see the aspect its body took in the Materium. What could be glimpsed through the chains suggested avian features with too many eyes, and dirty feathers that grew from skin patched with nine-pointed gears. Clawed hands were bound in heavy manacles, each band of unnatural metal as wide as Omegon's shoulders. Yet despite all these handicaps, the daemon had still beaten Omegon to an inch of his life. With blazing flames and kinetic pulses, it had sent him flying into the piles of rubble that were nearly everywhere on this ruined world. And yet, every time he had been thrown down, Omegon had risen. He had managed to score a few hits, striking with enough speed that the daemon hadn't been able to react in time, hindered by its chains.
Now he was on his knees, and Aetaos'rau'keres loomed over him, something like curiosity twinkling in its ever-changing eyes. It had been furious when Ollanius and the others had escaped, and Omegon had paid the price of that anger – but now, it seemed the emotion had passed, replaced by a sense of wonder that made the Primarch feel like an ant beneath a magnifying glass.
'You are surrounded by lies and deceit,' said the daemon, and every word was a stab of pain, like glass being forced into Omegon's brain. 'Every step you take only bring you further into darkness. Yet despite this, you persist. Why ?! You know the truth now ! You have seen the true face of the universe ! You know of Chaos, you know that all your father told Mankind is lies ! So why do you persist ? Why do you still cling to your pathetic code, your pitiful dreams ?! It is all a lie, so why will you not fall !'
Omegon stood, blood flowing freely through the cracks of his armor. He looked up, staring right into the eyes of his tormentor, and amidst the terrible agony and despair at what the galaxy had become, there was strength, unyielding and untainted.
Across the long, bloody ages of Mankind, tyrants of all stripes had seen that look in those they would bend to their will. They had seen it in the eyes of their dying foes as they died on torture racks, refusing to break. They had seen it in soldiers and mothers and children, who defied them even if they knew they could not hope to prevail. They had seen something they did not – could not – understand, something they had cast out of their own soul the day they had begun to walk the path to glory. And as they saw it, deep within their black hearts, they knew fear.
And so did Aetaos'rau'keres as the Primarch took a single uneasy step in its direction, the words coming out of his mouth weak, yet capable of bending worlds :
'Because I am not a lie !'

Though he eventually claimed victory and banished Aetaos'rau'keres, Omegon was heavily wounded, and separated from Persson and the rest of his Effrit Squad. Cast adrift across time and space by the daemon's sorcery, the Primarch wandered for a timeless eternity, seeing many things he would rather forget. Without the athame, Omegon was at the mercy of the cruel whims of the Warp, and he never remained in one time and place for long before being torn away and sent into a new, always more dangerous location. Then, finally, he was delivered from his wandering, and brought back to the galaxy.

'You took your time.'
Attributed to Primarch Omegon, when John Grammaticus recovered him from his errance.

Grammaticus, returned from his failure to assassinate Vulkan, had used the secrets he had learned in his time as an agent of the Cabal to find Omegon and bring him back with him. Only thanks to Eldrad's warnings had the Perpetual known of Omegon's fate, and only by following guidance from Asurmen himself was he able to find the Primarch. A single record indicates that Omegon was found on a world of endless crystal plains, haunted by the techno-specters of the species who had destroyed itself there in a failed bid for immortality. Of Aetaos'rau'keres' fate, we know nothing : the daemon never returned to haunt the Imperium, despite far, far more than a thousand years having passed since its banishment at Omegon's hands. Whether the circumstances of its defeat resulted in its complete dissolution, or its failure was punished with renewed imprisonment, is something even the seers of the Thousand Sons are unable to tell.

As the years of the Heresy dragged on, the Traitor Legions drove ever forward, crushing all who stood in their path to Terra. Despite their divisions, Guilliman had managed to keep the Ultramarines and Iron Hands together, and the Tenth and Thirteenth Legions were more than capable to break the weakened forces of the Imperium arrayed before them. The Alpha Legion forces were dispersed, fighting on a thousand worlds against the minions of Chaos. For years, Alpharius had directed them from the shadows, striking at every weakness the traitor armada showed to his expert eyes. But it simply wasn't enough, and the fate Eldrad and Grammaticus had foretold haunted him. The image of his father, trapped within the mechanisms of the Golden Throne, screaming in agony for the rest of eternity, tormented his every waking and sleeping moment that wasn't spent fighting the traitors. And so, despite the warnings of his allies, Alpharius weaved a final, desperate plot to stop Guilliman from ever reaching Terra.

The Primarch of the Alpha Legion arranged for Guilliman to hear of the fortress the Hydra had built on the world of Eskrador, near the Ruinstorm. More importantly, he made sure, through the orchestrated capture of several of his sons – who had willingly undergone mental wipes so that this would be the only useful information that could be extracted from them – that Guilliman knew that Alpharius was there. This was a challenge and a threat to the Ruinstorm that the Arch-Traitor could not ignore, and Guilliman left the leadership of the advance on Terra to Manus, taking with him the elite of his Legion in order to destroy the Hydra – for Guilliman still believed, even then, after everything the Shadow Wars had taught him about the Alpha Legion, that slaying the Primarch of the Twentieth would remove the threat they posed to his plans.

Eskrador had been claimed by the Twentieth Legion during the Great Crusade, and turned into an outpost to keep watch on the Five Hundred Worlds – for Alpharius' paranoia and personal dislike of Guilliman had driven him to be wary of the Avenging Son's kingdom long before the first signs of treachery had ever been discovered. The elite of the Thirteenth Legion was met with powerful defenses, but nothing could prevent Guilliman from making planetfall. This, however, had always been Alpharius' plan, and he drew the Arch-Traitor into the hollowed mountains of the world, in a deadly three-dimensional maze that only a Primarch's mind could navigate unaided without getting lost forever. Through taunting and cunning manoeuvres, Alpharius isolated Guilliman from his warriors. Then, the Hydra finally revealed himself to the Arch-Traitor, and the two brothers began their long-awaited duel, each burning with the desire to prove their superiority.

'You are nothing,' screamed Guilliman as he tore his way through the cavern, his gauntlets shattering the massive pillars of stone as if they were twigs. 'Do you hear me, little snake ? NOTHING !'
And then he was on him, towering above Alpharius. Dark power radiated from him. On the ground, bleeding from wounds that would not close, the Primarch of the Alpha Legion looked up into the madness that burned within the eyes of his brother. Guilliman went without a helmet – a sign of his arrogance he had held long before the Heresy. His face, once so noble, had become proud and bitter, gaunt even – yet it was also inhabited of unholy vitality, black veins running with eldritch energies. It was the face of death and damnation, of tyranny and the wilful embrace of ruin. It was, simply, the very image of all that the Great Crusade had sought to banish from the galaxy.
Alpharius' own helm had been broken by a glancing blow, the pieces scattered across the room as the two Primarchs fought. That is why, as Roboute rose his gauntlets to deliver the final blow, he was able to see that Alpharius was smiling at him.
'I am the one who beat you,' said Alpharius through broken teeth, and he pushed the trigger of the detonator held in his left hand. Far above the duelling brothers, the charges set weeks before the Thirteenth Legion had arrived to Eskrador exploded.
Guilliman screamed as the roof of the cavern collapsed, burying both Primarchs under thousands of tons of rock ...
... and Alpharius kept smiling, right until the end.

So died Alpharius, Primarch of the Alpha Legion. Hours after the mountain's collapse, Guilliman burst from the rubble, enraged beyond measure and radiating Chaotic power. For several days, the minions of the Arch-Traitor searched for Alpharius' body, hoping to desecrate it to further insult the Alpha Legion and demoralize the Imperium. But despite all their efforts, they could not find it, and eventually the Primarch of the Ultramarines abandoned the search. With the death of Alpharius, Guilliman believed that the threat of the Alpha Legion was ended, and he now could focus all his malevolent will upon the conquest of Terra and the claiming of the Golden Throne. And so, as the Dark Master of Chaos returned to the frontlines for the final push toward Sol, he sent summons to all of his brothers in treachery. One by one, those who remained abandoned their own pursuits, and the Traitor Legions converged onto Terra. There would the fate of the Imperium, of Mankind, of the entire galaxy, be decided.

And contrary to what Guilliman believed, the Alpha Legion would be there. For though it had lost one of its main heads, the Hydra was still as strong as ever, and the seeds it had sown in secret during the Heresy would soon bloom and usher forth the Arch-Traitor's downfall.

The Siege of Terra : Salvation Through Hidden Paths

'We are here.'
Marking discovered aboard the Maccrage's Honour during the first phase of the Siege of Terra, beneath the symbol of the hydra

Grammaticus had brought Omegon to Terra, with only weeks left before the arrival of the Traitor Legions. The Perpetual did not accompany Omegon to his destination – he had other plans, and alluded to another duty he must perform. As soon as his body appeared on the Throneworld, away from the distortions through which he had spent what seemed to him to be an eternity, Omegon collapsed on the spot, his many wounds finally catching up to him. For several days, he remained between life and death, until a group of Imperial menials found him and, in a panic, called for Legion Apothecaries who rushed in and did their best to heal him.

When Omegon woke up, he knew at once that his twin brother was dead, the bond that had always existed between them severed forever. For several hours, Omegon remained motionless in the Palace's depths, unable to process the absence of his other half – until, at long last, deep below, the Emperor closed the Webway Gate. The thunderous sound shock spread across the entire Imperial Palace, and stirred Omegon from his mourning. Freed from the burden of the Golden Throne, the Emperor's exhausted mind reached out to His sons on Terra. Each received a different message – for instance, Mortarion was told about the fate of the Khan, and commanded to hunt him down and destroy him once the war arrived to Terra.

To Omegon, the Emperor offered comfort for Alpharius' loss, and then delivered a dire warning. He told the Primarch that, without the Webway Gate, His plans for Mankind's future were no more. The Master of Mankind could also sense His doom approaching, and while He had entrusted leadership of the Imperium to charismatic, beloved Horus, He knew the Warmaster did not have the sort of mind required to fight the hidden war against Chaos for the future of the species. Horus would fight the enemies of Mankind on every battlefield, but he did not understand the more subtle aspects of the war against the Archenemy. It would fall upon the Alpha Legion to find a way to deliver the species from Chaos' corrosive touch – the Master of Mankind had no more ideas now that His aeons-long plan had been reduced to ash. Roused from his grief, Omegon vowed to honor his brother's memory by protecting Mankind's future from all those who would snuff it out. He emerged from the depths, shocking his brothers with his sudden appearance, and began to prepare.

To the Primarch's dismay, Ollanius Persson and the other wanderers had not yet arrived. He knew that, considering their method of travel, they might arrive at any second, or in ten thousand years – but if they could not reach Terra before the end, then the Primarch's mission would have been an abject failure and a considerable waste of time. All he could do was hope that Ollanius would find a path to Terra before the appointed hour, and do everything in his power to delay that hour as much as possible. Through long-prepared channels, he contacted the rest of his Legion, and learned the details of his brother's demise.

Even without any of their Primarchs to lead them, the Alpha Legionaries who had fought in the Shadow Wars were drawn to the Siege as surely as the Traitor Legions, and they fought with every trick they had learned to make things more difficult for the renegades. Ships were sabotaged, leaders slain, doubt and fear seeded into hearts that were all too ready to accept them. Guilliman's armada was a coalition of faithless, honorless traitors and turncoats, after all, and the Alpha Legion had become expert at playing them against each other.

When the Traitor Legions made planetfall, the sons of the Hydra were scattered across the world. They fought behind enemy lines, cutting off lines of resupply and ambushing reinforcements and wandering packs of insane cultists. Today, there are billions of humans on Terra and beyond whose ancestors only survived the Siege thanks to the intervention of the Alpha Legion. Often, these Legionaries wore the colors of other Legions. Sometimes they wore those of the loyal Legions who had not arrived to the Siege yet – the Night Lords, the Emperor's Children, the World Eaters and the Word Bearers – in order to seed confusion and fear among the traitors. At other times, they disguised themselves as traitors themselves, bearing the indignity of the faithless emblems so that the distrust between the Traitor Legions would grow. Even without the outward signs of corruption, the Traitor Legions's ranks were wide and varied, and there were many among most of them who had not yet fully succumbed by the time of the Siege – enough to make the ruse believable, at least.

Omegon himself fought among his sons, as he had done during the Great Crusade. When Horus fell to Sanguinius, the Primarch of the Alpha Legion was on the other side of the Palace, executing the renegade tech-priests tasked with the repairs of a Titan battle-group. He grieved for the Warmaster's death, but his heart was already numb, rendered cold and unfeeling by the weight of his twin's passing and the terrible responsibility that rested on his shoulders.

Mere hours before the end of the Heresy, as Guilliman's forces finally breached into the Cavea Ferrum, Ollanius and the remnants of Effrit Squad materialized, mere steps away from the Emperor's sanctum. If not for Omegon warning the Emperor's guardians of their arrival, they would have been gunned down on the spot. Instead, the warriors of Effrit Squad and Damon Prytanis joined the last line of defense around the Emperor's sanctum, and fought to hold back the escort of the Arch-Traitor. They fell to a man, though the ultimate fate of Damon Prytanis is unknown. Then, as Guilliman advanced to confront his father, he found Ollanius Persson standing in his way.

'You cannot hope to stand against me and survive,' declared Guilliman. 'You are nothing but an accident of fate, while I am the chosen of the Warp, the Dark Master of Chaos. Your immortality means nothing before me. Do you think that the power I hold isn't enough to destroy you utterly ? When I have been planning to kill one such as my father ?'
'You are more than able to kill me for good,' conceded Ollanius. 'And yet, here I stand. How many billions have stood against you on your way to this room ? Did they not know you could kill them as well ? And yet, they stood against you, even as fear filled their hearts to bursting. Why do you think that was ?'
'They were ignorant fools', scoffed the Thirteenth Primarch. 'The naive and the deceived, who were blind to the truth.'
'No,' said the Perpetual softly. 'They looked upon you and your allies, and they knew they were looking at an evil that must be fought. They stood against you because they had to, because their hearts would not allow them to do otherwise. Even without hope, they defied you – and you killed them. You killed so many of them ...'
Ollanius took a single step forward, and despite everything, Guilliman had to hold himself back from taking a step back.
'Was it worth it ?' said the old man, and for the first time there was wrath in his voice. 'Tell me, you thrice-damned bastard. Was it worth it ?!'
'Yes !' roared Guilliman in reply, loud enough that the frail mortal was staggered backward by the volume of his voice. 'Once I have cast my father down, I shall remake Mankind in my image, blessed with the power of the Warp ! None shall stand against us !'
Roboute raised the corrupted Gauntlets of Ultramar, and black warp-fire poured forth, engulfing the silhouette of Ollanius. For a fraction of a second, the shape of the old Perpetual was visible amidst the inferno – then it vanished, and the flames died down.
The Arch-Traitor looked at his hands, then at the pile of ashes. At first, his expression was incredulous – then a booming, insane laughter left his lips. A bluff – it had all been a bluff. The old immortal had had nothing that could hurt Guilliman. He had been worried about nothing – just the last pathetic effort of his father's allies to delay the inevitable …
High above the Imperial Palace, aboard the Andronicus, Fulgrim, Primarch of the Emperor's Children, rushed toward his ship's teleportarium, praying to whatever powers for good remained in the galaxy that he would be in time to help his father in the final confrontation.

Despite the secrecy surrounding the activities of the Alpha Legion during the Heresy, the story of Ollanius Persson somehow spread across the population of Terra, and later the entire Imperium. Much of the details were wrong, of course – they got his name wrong for one thing, immortalizing him as Ollanius Pius, and some accounts even say that he was a soldier of the Imperial Guard, which is impossible as the organization didn't exist at that point in time. But the core of the tale remain the same : a mere mortal, Saint Ollanius stood in the path of the Arch-Traitor, and gave his life for the Emperor of Mankind. He was canonized by the Ecclesiarchy soon after its foundation, and his memory is prayed to across the entire Imperium, while the Order of Saint Ollanius is the highest honor in the Imperium, bestowed only by the High Lords of Terra themselves to a handful of individuals across the millennia.

The sacrifice of Ollanius delayed Guilliman just long enough that, when the Arch-Traitor was about to strike down the Emperor, Fulgrim teleported behind him and struck first. Together, the Phoenician and the Master of Mankind slew the Avenging Son, forcing the Traitor Legions to flee from Terra in disarray. Though the Emperor had been wounded nigh unto death, victory belonged to the Imperium – and it tasted every bit as bitter in Omegon's mouth as Eldrad had warned him it would.

Post-Heresy : In the Shadow of Legends

'I am alone. The bond is broken, the other half of my soul is gone. My brother is dead. I feel like I am drowning, falling deeper and deeper into darkness. But … No. I refuse to accept it. He is dead, yes, sacrificed in the battle against the enemy I now know can never be truly defeated by mortal hands and wills. But his sacrifice was not in vain. I realize that now.
And I now also realize, as I look up from this parchment and toward the warriors standing all around me, guarding me with their lives ... They are not my sons. Not anymore. Not after all they have been through. They, and those humans who stand with us, who dedicate their lives to the ideals and purposes of the Alpha Legion, are more than my warriors, more than my agents.
Now, they are my brothers and sisters, and with that knowledge comes another revelation :
I am not alone. I will never be alone, as long as one soul stands in defiance of Chaos.'
From the writings of Omegon, Primarch of the Alpha Legion

Though the Heresy had ended, the Unremembered War had not. While the other loyal Legions threw themselves into the Scouring, hunting down the Traitor Legions and forcing them into the Eye of Terror and the Ruinstorm, the Alpha Legion focused on wiping out the Cabal. With Guilliman's failure, the lies of the Acuity had driven the survivors mad, persuaded that the ultimate victory of Chaos was now inevitable. Many took their own lives out of despair, while others sought to wipe out Humanity in a desperate bid to prevent the rise of the Primordial Annihilator. The last sightings of John Grammaticus date from this period, when the Alpha Legion slew the last agents of the Cabal, before turning on its xenos masters. One by one, the lords of the Cabal were brought down, their influence removed from the galaxy. An organization that had stood for millions of years against the Dark Gods died, after being corrupted from within and turned into an unwilling instrument of the very power they sought to defeat. That lesson is one the Alpha Legion has taken to heart – nothing, nothing, is truly safe from corruption by the Ruinous Powers.

However, while the destruction of the Cabal was completed within a hundred years of the Siege's end, there was still one problem. The mysterious species Grammaticus had seen meeting with the leaders of the Cabal all those years ago – those Chaos-tainted aliens whose presence had made him leave the conspiracy in the first place – were never identified. Through much research and investigation, the Alpha Legion was able to theorize that they were the ones responsible for the destruction of the Interex, the peaceful and powerful civilization that Horus had found just before the Heresy, where his eyes had been opened to the threat of Chaos. Everything that could be gathered from the Interex' ruins is still kept in the Legion's archives, and the Hydra is ever vigilant for any signs of this hidden menace. But none have been found in ten thousand years.

With the Unremembered War finally put to an end with the death of the last Cabal lord, the Alpha Legion could at last look to the Imperium's future, as had been ordered by the Emperor to Omegon. The Primarch met with Eldrad once more, this time aboard Craftworld Ulthwe, the world-ship of the Eldar that sails closest to the Eye of Terror. There a pact was struck between the Alpha Legion and the Council of Farseers, an alliance against the Primordial Annihilator. There would not be peace between the Imperium and the Eldar – neither of those present had the authority to make such promises. Indeed, in the millennia that followed, the Imperium would often clash with the forces of other Craftworlds – especially those of war-like Bel-Tian. For every occasion where the prideful Eldar have joined forces with the Imperium against a common foe, there are a dozen more incidents where the two greatest forces for Order have fought instead.

But the Alpha Legion would ensure that those among Mankind who called for the systematic extermination of the children of Isha were silenced, and the Farseers would do their best to curb those of their own who longed for a return to their faded days of glory, where the entire galaxy was theirs to do with as they pleased. Word of that alliance was sent to Perturabo with utmost secrecy, the Lord of the Iron Cage, in order to avoid that he spends his resources fighting Craftworld Ulthwe when they both had a common enemy within the Great Eye. In the years since, the eldars of Ulthwe have been an occasional ally to the Iron Warriors in their fight against the Traitor Legions. Yet this alliance was only the most open part of the covenant forged on Ulthwe.

The second part is one of the greatest secrets of the Alpha Legion, and one that could spell its doom should it ever be revealed. The pact of non-aggression with Ulthwe could be explained by pragmatism, and the occasional alliance with them is hardly unheard of in the Imperium. But in secret, Omegon, Eldrad and Asurmen forged an alliance aimed not at preserving their respective people, but craft a better future for them. In Eldrad's eyes, the Eldar were doomed to a slow extinction, their numbers dwindling over the course of thousands of years until nothing remained of them but ghosts and shrieking shadows within the court of the Dark Prince. And Omegon knew that the Emperor had feared a similar fate for Mankind, as the species evolved toward a psychic race and thus became more and more vulnerable to the depredations of Chaos. Together, Primarch, Farseer and Phoenix Lord designed a plan that would span millennia, but at the end of which Eldrad could see the light of hope. Long and hard would be the way, fraught with mortal perils which all held the potential of silencing that hope forever – but it was the only path the three of them could think of.

The first of these perils revealed itself a thousand years after the end of the Heresy, and brought the Imperium closer to destruction than anything else since. The danger came not from the Slaves to Ruin, but from a source the Imperium had believed broken forever : the Orks. We know this period as the War of the Beast, and it reminded Mankind of the might possessed by the greenskins.

One thousand years after the Heresy, the Imperium was enjoying a period of peace and prosperity such as Mankind had never known before in its long, bloodstained history. The Legions – along with most of the Imperial warmachine – were fighting on the borders, claiming new territory for hopeful colonists to settle. Dozens of minor xenos species were brought to extinction during that period, and the Imperium grew proud and confident, certain that nothing could threaten its might. It is likely that the Orks took this as a challenge.

By that time, Omegon had already vanished from sight, with no Alpha Legionaire even pretending to be him. The warriors of the Twentieth believed – as they do now – that their father hasn't died or been lost, but instead has become truly part of the Legion, fighting at the side of his sons as a simple battle-brother. Certainly, there are many instances recorded in the Legion's archives of a battle-brother displaying endurance, strength and skill beyond those of an Astartes when his brothers are in a desperate situation. But regardless of its Primarch's fate, the Alpha Legion was caught just as surprised by the War of the Beast as anyone else. So focused had they been on the potential threats from Chaos that the Orks had been forgotten, believed to have been broken by the defeat dealt to them by the Emperor and Horus on Ullanor.

Even the Farseers of Ulthwe and the oracles of the Thousand Sons had been unaware of the rise of the Beast, for the Orks' psychic reflection in the Warp had shielded their growth from sight. Perhaps Magnus would have been able to sense it – however, the Crimson King had fallen into his coma more than two hundred years before that point. Caught by surprise, its forces overextended, the Imperium was devastated by the first wave of attacks. Using new gravitational technology capable of bending even space-time to their will, the Orks teleported massive "attack moons" - enormous space stations crudely fashioned in the image of an Ork's face – to dozens of battlefields across the galaxy. Thus began the War of the Beast – with a crippling blow, masterfully delivered by a species Mankind had come to underestimate to its great cost.

War of the Beast Timeline

108.544M32 : First wave of attacks. Disastrous casualties as the greenskins arrive in multiple ongoing battles, with their attack moons destroying fleets and shipyards. Death count estimated in the trillions. The Legions turn back from the border to help defend Imperial worlds, but they are cut off from one another and fight isolated, if heroic battles against the greenskins.

242.544M32 : While the High Lords are in disarray, unable to decide on leadership during this unprecedented crisis, an Ork moon appears in Terran orbit. The Imperial Navy and the Proletarian Crusade is launched out of utter terror and desperation – and slaughtered to the last. Despair seizes Terra, with dozens of apocalyptic cults taking to the street, burning supposed "sinners" in the hope of causing the Emperor to intervene. Strangely, the Orks do not attack Terra, despite the walls of the Imperial Palace being severely undermanned.

355.544M32 : Angron returns to Terra with part of the World Eaters Legion. His fury at the failures of the High Lords and the defilement that is the Ork attack moon in Terra's sky is terrible, but as always, restrained.

042.545M32 : On Terra, under the recommendation of the Inquisition, Angron founds the Deathwatch, combining the strength of the Astartes forces that managed to reach the Throneworld in answer to Angron's call. By combining their strengths and experience fighting the xenos, it is hoped that they can oppose the endless armies of the Orks with cunning and precision rather than brute force.

060.545M32 : With the help of the Deathwatch, Angron launches an attack upon the Ork attack moon orbiting Terra. The hateful construction is destroyed, though Terra's surface is ravaged by the following rain of debris. After this success, the Deathwatch is deployed across the galaxy, tasked with fighting the Orks in every way possible. However, the disturbance in the Warp caused by the Ork Weirdboyz prevents the efficient gathering of forces.

129.545M32 : It is discovered by a Sons of Horus force that killing the Ork overcharged psykers cause the greenskins nearby to die as well. The Mechanicus and the Inquisition throw themselves into the study of this phenomenon, hoping to weaponize it.

255.545M32 : The Sisters of Silence are brought back from exile by the Thousand Sons in order to combat the unnatural psychic influence of the Beast, which is strong enough to drive the sons of Magnus and other Librarians mad with feral, mindless rage.

327.545M32 : The Death Guard returns from its wars beyond Imperial borders, drawing a massive portion of the Ork forces to them. An astropathic message from the Legion Master to Angron warns the Lord of the Red Sands that, if he does not slay the Beast and cause the command structure of the xenos to collapse, by the time the Fourteenth is done dealing with the issue their way, there will be precious few worlds left to the Imperium.

026.546M32 : Through the analysis of the patterns in the Ork attacks, their center of operation is located : Ullanor, where the last Ork Empire was shattered by the Emperor.

133.546M32 : Using all resources available, including deploying kill-teams of the new Deathwatch (proved in battle in the destruction of the attack moon), Angron tears through the defenses of the Beast and confronts it and its underbosses. With the help of great warriors from other loyal Legions, constructs of the Mechanicus, the Sisters of Silence, and Inquisitorial support, he manages to claim victory.

200.546M32 : To prevent the Imperium from being caught unaware by such a threat again, the Inquisition splits into the Ordo Xenos and the Ordo Malleus, each focused on a specific kind of threat to Mankind.

333.546M32 : A warning from Eldrad reaches the Alpha Legion : the forces of Chaos have sensed the weakening of the Imperium, and they are gathering their strength to take advantage of it. Operatives are sent to the Eye of Terror and the Ruinstorm to infiltrate the gathering Black Crusades. By making sure the Traitor Legions are aware of the other Black Crusade, the Alpha Legion ensures that the traitors of the Eye destroy themselves against the traitors of the Ruinstorm in the Unborn Crusade. This, however, requires the efforts of most of their devastated networks, leaving them unable to prevent the descent into madness of Vangorich, Grand Master of the Assassins.

001.547M32 : The Beheading occurs, and Angron returns to Terra at once. He confronts the Grand Master of Assassins and kills him within the heart of a temple of the Ordo Assassinorum.

In the end, the Imperium survived the War of the Beast, and the Unborn Crusade dealt with the minions of Chaos who had fought to take advantage of the Imperium's weakness. But the scars of these events would remain for a long time. The Beheading – the assassination of every other High Lord of Terra by Drakan Vangorich, the Grand Master of the Assassins – further threw the Imperium into disarray. The motives of Vangorich are unknown even to the Alpha Legion or the Inquisition – all that Angron said when he emerged from the temple with the Grand Master's blood on his hands was that "he thought he was doing the Emperor's work".

The War of the Beast reminded Mankind that there were many kinds of threats to its existence, and that not all of them came from within. The Alpha Legion began to search for threats coming from xenos species that weren't necessarily touched by Chaos – the grand plan of Omegon would mean nothing if the Imperium was destroyed by aliens before it could reach fruition. The Ordo Xenos was founded – creating the first division in the ranks of the Inquisitors, who before had all been equally responsible for the quelling of all threats – and the Deathwatch appointed as its militant chamber. Almost immediately, the first Radicals of the Ordo Xenos appeared : the Bestiam Domitores.

The Bestiam Domitores
More commonly known as the Beastmasters than by their self-appointed High Gothic name, this Radical faction of the Ordo Xenos was founded in the aftermath of the War of the Beast. Much was learned of the physiology of the Orks during that terrible conflict. From the study of the exceptionally powerful Ork psykers that appeared in the Beast's wake, the Magos Biologis were able to understand more about the psychic connection that exists between all greenskins. Those with high enough authority to know how the Orks came to be understood that this was likely deliberately engineered by their Old One makers, as a mean to optimize their efficiency in the war against the Necrontyrs – and, perhaps, as a mean of control as well. The Beastmasters seek to subvert this link to their ends, in order to take control of vast armies of Orks – in order to keep them away from the Imperium's world, or to use them against our enemies as the weapons they were designed to be. Many among the Bestiam Domitores argue that such an act would be a return to the Orks' natural state, and even something the greenskins themselves would enjoy, as they would be able to fulfill their true purpose at last. Of course, others among the faction simply seek the means to commit a galaxy-wide purge of the xenos.
Beastmasters and their Acolytes often make use of various xenos fauna, controlled through the prototypes of the devices by which the Inquisitor hopes to fulfill the faction's agenda. They make use of all manners of Acolytes, though few come from religious backgrounds. Mostly, the retinue of a Beastmaster is composed of hunters, specialized in taking their targets alive for study, and magos capable of aiding the Inquisitor's projects. Psykers are also very common, as a mean to study the connection between greenskins. On occasions, they will even have xenos mercenaries as allies, including Orks, though the greenskins aren't told that the true purpose of their employment is to study them and eventually cut them apart.
The faction has endured through the millennia, mostly using assassinations and manipulation within Ork territory to prevent powerful Warbosses from unifying the greenskins and starting a Waaagh!, but a few still follow their first goal, and they have even had some success, using ancient xenotech of dubious origin. Considering the origin of the Orks - who were created as living weapons by the Old Ones in their war against the Necrontyrs and the C'tans - it is possible that they might actually accomplish their goal and enslave the Orks to their will. However, others are wary that the faction might be turned to the Dark Gods in their pursuit of forbidden knowledge. The Alpha Legion is especially wary, for their Eldar allies have warned that attempting to emulate the deeds of the Old Ones might end very badly.
With Kryptman's Gambit, however, the faction has known an increase in influence, as it is hoped by many that their methods might enable the Imperium to resist whatever will emerge of the fallen Inquisitor's folly. To that end, some members of the faction have focused their efforts on the hive-mind of the Tyranids, hoping to understand the synapse link between creatures to take control of them. Recent breakthroughs have revealed something unsettling, however : though the synapse link between Tyranids is far stronger than the one between Orks, researchers believe that there are too many similarities for all of them to be coincidences.

After the War of the Beast, Inquisitorial archives point out to the implication of the Hydra – a name that, with the disappearance of Alpharius and Omegon, soon came to describe the whole of the Legion – in almost every human endeavour on the galactic scale. And while some of it is mere blind supposition and mistaken theory, seeing patterns where none exist, it is true that the Alpha Legion has involved itself in most of the Imperium's history, seeking to uphold the Emperor's mandate and guide the species toward a future free from Chaos. Even across the wider Imperium, it is said that the Alpha Legion is the hidden hand of the Emperor, acting upon His will even as He sits silently upon the Golden Throne.

In the thirty-fifth millennium, a new threat to Mankind's continued dominion was on the rise. The Dark Eldar, corrupted cousins of the Craftworld Eldar, had grown in arrogance and power as the Imperium's own might was spread out against a thousand foes. The noble Houses of Commoragh rampaged freely across the galaxy, abusing the Webway to strike at defenceless worlds and take billions of slaves back to the Dark City for their debased amusement. Through the unholy arts of the

haemonculi, the population of Commoragh had grown to a point that their soul-thirst was nearly impossible to sate. In order to curtail these depredations, Eldar Ulthran reached out to the Harlequins, the disciples of the Laughing God Cegorach. Heeding his plea, the Harlequins delivered onto the Alpha Legion a map through the Webway that would lead a fleet to the Dark City.

After the Heresy, the Alpha Legion had become so scattered across the galaxy that it had become difficult for it to wage its own battles, especially one as important as an invasion of Commoragh. Instead, the sons of Alpharius transmitter the map to the Emperor's Children, who bore a terrible grudge against the Dark Eldar since the Bleeding War, during the Heresy. Fulgrim called upon his brother Angron, and together the Third and Twelfth Legion nearly burned Commoragh to the ground. However, before they could complete the work and completely raze the Dark City, the Imperials were forced to retreat before the risk of the caged suns of Commoragh escaping their bonds. Though the population of the Dark City had been culled to less than a tenth of what it had been before, Fulgrim had been lost in the attack, and the path the Legions had taken was sealed forever by the survivors once they had secured their city.

Since that day, the Dark Eldar have somehow learned of Eldrad's involvement in the Burning of Commoragh. Asdrubael Vect has sworn to punish the Farseer for this, and Eldrad has been forced into a nomadic lifestyle away from Ulthwe, lest he brings the assassins after his life and soul there. He now wanders the galaxy at the head of a small army of followers. His recent activities have pitted him against the servants of Chaos more and more often, and it is whispered by the agents of the Inquisition that he now seeks to awaken the Slumbering God of the Eldar, Ynnead, in order to defeat Slaanesh and save the souls of his people from the grasp of She-Who-Thirsts. He was last reported seen on Port Demesnus, but the reports also speak of pursuers, clad in the red armor of the Blood Angels. If the Ninth Legion has been set after Eldrad by the Dark Prince, then surely what he seeks to accomplish is a threat to Chaos – or perhaps Slaanesh merely desires to devour the soul of the ten-thousand years old Farseer.

A thousand years after the Burning of Commoragh, the Imperium entered a dark age, as a number of threats besieged Mankind all at once. Too busy fighting against the forces of Chaos, the Alpha Legion failed to foresee and prevent the rise to power of Goge Vandire – which, some suspect, hints at the terrible fact that the Tyrant was not in any way tainted by Chaos, but acting out of his own mortal free will. However, the Alpha Legion was involved with one of those who ended the Age of Apostasy : Sebastian Thor. Notably, during the first meeting of Thor and the Word Bearers returned to Terra to punish Vandire, it was the Alpha Legion's envoy to the meeting who prevented the sons of Lorgar from executing the holy man on the spot. Afterwards, the Alpha Legion fought in the Wars of Vindication, when the Ordo Assassinorum turned on itself as a consequence of Vandire's plots to take control of the Assassins.

This implication in Thor's fate is far from unique. For reasons not shared with outsiders, the Alpha Legion has always watched those who display an affinity with the Emperor's light, especially those who became Living Saints eventually. In the halls of the Inquisition and the Ecclesiarchy, it is rumoured that, somehow, the Alpha Legion knows who is a potential Living Saint beforehand, and arranges events in order to facilitate the incarnation of the Emperor's fragmented will into these mortal hosts.

The Living Saints
For many centuries, the existence of the beings known to the Imperium as the Living Saints has perplexed and infuriated the Inquisition. Thousands of years of research have yielded precious little trustworthy lore, and there are hundreds of wildly different theories as to their origin, nature and purpose. Some believe the Living Saints to be impostors, a cruel trick of the Dark Gods to mislay the faithful, while others think them witches who deceive all those around them – and perhaps even themselves – into thinking that they are the Emperor's servants.
But the main theory, the one those Inquisitors who hold dear the core principles of the Imperial Creed, is that the Living Saints are avatars of the Emperor's power. According to this theory, the Emperor was made into a god when He ascended the Golden Throne, for He became the center of a galaxy-spanning faith of trillions of souls. Every emotion is reflected in the Sea of Souls, and so it is as well for the prayers of the countless billions who devote their daily prayers to the Master of Mankind. This creates a massive reserve of psychic energy, which is by its very nature anathema to the Dark Gods and their minions.
Most of this energy is channelled across the galaxy toward the Golden Throne, where it helps fuel the power of the Astronomican. Psykers who stand on the Terra's holy ground, or even enter the Sol System, can sense the crushing presence of the God-Emperor, and few who are not soul-bound to Him can sustain it for long, even if they are untainted by the Ruinous Powers. But even untainted Warp energy remains wild and unpredictable, and sometimes, whether by random accident or by the ineffable design of the Master of Mankind, a piece of that power is instead incarnated within a human being. The moment of transfiguration from mortal to Living Saint is never the same for two of them – some are struck by a bolt of divine lightning while kneeling in a church, while others are raised from the dead upon the field of battle, their soul returned to a miraculously healed body.
The power of a Living Saint is immense, matched only by that of a Daemon Prince or other divine champion. Their actual abilities vary tremendously – some cast a light that heals all those loyal to the Throne, while others are supreme warriors or channel the purging fire of the Emperor's wrath. But regardless of the way in which their might manifests itself, the battlefield is shaped by their presence. The morale of Imperial forces soars when a Living Saint takes to the field, while only the most black-hearted of Chaos' servants or the most wilful of xenos can stand their ground.
Outside of battle, Living Saints are lords of the Imperium, beholden to none – but they have no mortal ambition, and are instead driven by visions of the Emperor and His unfathomable goals. Entire shrine worlds are dedicated to their worship, and the faith of these devotees strengthens them, refilling the psychic energy that grants them their power.
Though they are loyal to the Imperium, not all Living Saints are benevolent. While many are endowed with the Emperor's mercy and compassion, others are receptacles of His wrath and nothing else. These are watched by their own allies on the battlefield, especially when circumstances force a Legion to deploy along such a blatant figure of worship. It is not unheard of for these ruthless avatars of fury to inflict grievous punishment on their own followers when the unaugmented humans fail to meet the Living Saint's unreasonable expectations.
Furthermore, Saints aren't invincible. They can be killed, though they can later return to life – albeit sometimes only after centuries or even millennia, depending on the circumstances of their demise. Champions of the Dark Gods are drawn to them like moths to a flame, seeking the glory that can only be earned by slaying such an avatar of the God-Emperor. And they are incredibly rare – throughout the entire history of the Imperium, there haven't been more than a hundred Living Saints, with rarely more than two or three being active at the same time in the galaxy. However, in the last years of the 41st Millennium, sightings of Living Saints have increased across the Imperium. Most of those are still doubtful and under investigation, but already some in the Inquisition wonder at what it could portend.

One of the more recent and notable failures of the Alpha Legion is the fate that befell the Imperial World of Tanith. In the year 765.M41, the Sabbat Crusade met the forces of Chaos head-on, using intelligence provided by the agents of the Twentieth Legion. But a splinter fleet escaped, and before the Imperium could react, it attacked Tanith, burning it to the ground. The splinter fleet was led by an Imperial Fist voidmaster, whose first act upon arriving in the system was to order the destruction of the ships orbiting the planet, denying the three Imperial Guard Regiments who had just been founded upon the world any means of escape. Recovered communications reveal that they fought to the death against the Chaos invaders, inflicting a heavy toll upon their foes, under the leadership of Commissar Ibram Gaunt, who is presumed to have fallen in battle while battling the Imperial Fist himself - though his body was never recovered, nor sighted as a trophy. The Alpha Legion made a point of hunting down the warlord and executing him, while throwing its full support behind the Sabbat Crusade's continuation, so that Tanith's doom would not be in vain.

Now, as the forty-first millennium comes to a close and the Times of Ending are coming upon us, the Alpha Legion is more active than ever. Everywhere, the enemies of Mankind are rising, and the Imperium's might had been much diminished by ten thousand years of relentless conflict, with only brief periods of relative peace. Much has been lost that can never be recovered, and ignorance and fanaticism have become the only defenses against the corruption of Chaos on far too many Imperial worlds. Still, the Alpha Legion continues its great work, even as distrust toward its agents grow in the Imperium. The relationship between the Hydra and the other branches of the Imperial war machine has always been a complex one – while others relish the intelligence delivered by the Alpha Legion, many look down upon the methods by which such information is obtained. Should the truth of the alliance between the Twentieth and Craftworld Ulthwe ever come to light, the results would be disastrous, as half the Imperium would denounce the Alpha Legionaries as traitors, while the other half would either call for further investigation or stand along with them, seeing the alliance for the necessity that it is.

We cannot let this happen. Our plans must go on. The Emperor's dream shall be made reality.

'No escape,' growled the daemon. 'No peace. Your Emperor is dead, little snake. His light is gone. There is only the dark ... Now and forever.'
He ignored the words as he kept fighting. His blade danced around, striking down the daemon's minions – yet more and more arrived, brought forth from the infernal realm by their master's dark will.
'You struggle in vain,' continued the creature. 'The hope you embrace is a lie. Your fight serves no purpose !'
'Everything has a purpose.'
'No !' it shouted. 'You stand against the inevitable, wasting your life for the sake of those who will never thank you for your sacrifice. What purpose is there in such a death ? You are alone, son of the Hydra. Alone ... and soon to die.'
A blow shattered his eye-lenses, and he tossed his helmet away, revealing his features for the first time in ... had it been decades ? Centuries ? There was so much he had to know, so much he had to keep in mind at all times to keep the plans started millennia ago running, that he had completely forgotten about the last time he had removed his helmet. But the daemon recognized him regardless, and shock appeared on its monstrous visage – quickly replaced by fear. They were always afraid when they saw him, when they realized just who it was they were facing.
'I am Alpharius,' said Omegon calmly, his blade stabbing right through the skull of yet another infernal servant. 'I walk the hidden path, to the end of glory, and I am never alone !'

Organization

The Pale Spear
The Alpha Legion has few relics, and even fewer whose existence is known beyond its own ranks. But among those who know of the sons of the Hydra, the Pale Spear is an artefact of legend. Wielded by Alpharius himself during the Great Crusade, it is said that the Primarch found the weapon on a xenos world in the years before he was found by the Emperor. At first, Alpharius only took it as a trophy, and because it was one of the rare weapons that were to his size. However, during the battle when the two Primarchs of the Alpha Legion were reunited, the true power of the spear was revealed when it was used to destroy one of the Warp-fuelled constructs.
At the mental command of its wielder, the two blades of the spear can shatter, forming a hail of razor-sharp fragments that twirl around the wielder, capable of tearing even through ceramite, before reforming the blades, as strong as ever. Furthermore, the Pale Spear is anathema to the creatures of the Warp, which recoil at its mere presence – although the Inquisition scholars are unsure whether this is a natural property of the weapon or something it acquired later, after being used so many times against the Neverborn. Even psykers are uncomfortable near the spectral light that emanates from the blades' fracture lines, speaking of an "ancient, nameless presence, roused forth from oblivion by eternal ambition".
The spear was thought lost when Alpharius fell against Guilliman on Eskrador, but after the end of the Heresy, the Alpha Legion returned to the planet, and dug up the entire mountain their Primarch had collapsed during his duel with the Arch-Traitor. They sought the body of their father, but while they did not find Alpharius' mortal remains, they did find the fragments of the Pale Spear. It is said that a hundred thousand servitors worked tirelessly for a hundred years before every fragment was found, and the Pale Spear was reforged – although the process simply involved putting every piece together and letting the weapon's mysterious abilities do the rest. Now, the Pale Spear is wielded only by the champions of the Legion, who put its powers to devastating effects.
In recent years, with the awakening of the Necron dynasties, many who know of the Pale Spear have speculated that the weapon might have its roots in the strange, impossibly potent technology of this ancient species. The Alpha Legion, however, has fiercely denied the theory, which of course has only roused further suspicions – either the sons of Alpharius are trying to prevent the Necrons from learning about the Pale Spear and coming for it, or they know its true source and are offended by the association of their Primarch's relic with the undying xenos.

Of all the loyal Legions, the Twentieth is the one with the most bizarre command structure. Indeed, it could be argued that the Alpha Legion simply doesn't have such a thing, at least not on the scale of the other Legions. There is no Legion Master – the supreme commander of the Legion is still Omegon, even though he hasn't made an appearance in nigh ten thousand years. Such is the reputation of the Alpha Legion that any son of Alpharius revealing himself to Imperial forces will be quickly brought to the highest ranking officer present, so that he can learn what the Alpha Legion has to tell him. Of course, precautions are still taken – while many of those contacted in this way know secret protocols and passwords to confirm the message's authenticity, there are always those who are contacted for the first time, and must make sure the Legionary isn't an assassin in disguise. The Alpha Legion understands and approves of this prudence; in fact, they were responsible for many of the security measures deployed around them in the first place.

Still, over the millennia the Alpha Legion has cultivated its network of contacts among all branches of the Imperium, from the Administratum to the Imperial Guard and the Inquisition. These individuals do not owe any particular fealty to the Twentieth Legion – indeed, their strict adherence to their oaths to their own organization are one of the reason they are approached. Only individuals of exceptional skill and loyalty to the Imperium are chosen to serve as the voices of the Hydra, and they often rise high in the ranks of their organization as a result.

Even when the Legion is forced by circumstances to gather in great number, its warriors do not wear any insignia indicating their rank. This is a trick they learned during the Heresy – some say it was first inscribed upon the armor of Aeonid Thiel – and used to confuse enemy snipers and kill-teams by denying them any obvious target. In such operations, rare as they might be, the chain of command is clear, though the actual names of the ranks are changed between each deployment, to further the enemy's confusion. The only rank the Alpha Legion uses with anything approaching regularity is that of Harrowmaster, a rank that was already used during the Great Crusade. In a war zone where the Alpha Legion is involved, the Harrowmaster is the one in overall command of all Twentieth Legion's assets. Because they are those who mix with the war councils of Imperial forces, such individuals are the only Alpha Legionaries who are known to the rest of the Imperium by name, though it is highly unlikely any of those is their true one. They are extraordinary strategists, capable of reacting to the evolution of the battlefield with lightning speed.

Harrowmaster Phocron, the Faceless Lord
There are few names that strike dread in the hearts of traitors like that of Harrowmaster Phocron. In the last millennia, the Imperium has come to know that name as well, but to the Traitor Legions and their servants, Phocron has been a ghost story for the last ten thousand years. Back during the Heresy, it was Phocron who fought the agents of the Spineam Coronam on Terra itself and foiled their plot to poison the population of Afrika. When the Siege of Terra raged, it was Phocron that led the team that slew the possessed cultists sent by the Dark Angels to detonate the plasma reactors of the Europan hives. And so it has gone on ever since, without Phocron ever removing his helmet, which earned him the title of Faceless Lord from his terrified foes.
Phocron is more than an individual, for obviously many Legionaries have worn that name over the years. He is a legend that was deliberately crafted by the Alpha Legion, a myth to which the Legion has given form in order to weaponize its own reputation. To those who know of his presence on the battlefield, he is like a ghost, who could be anywhere at any time, and always seems to know everything they are trying to keep hidden. The name of Phocron is only bestowed upon the best officers of the Alpha Legion, those in whom the cunning intellect of the Primarchs manifest most strongly. At any given time, several Alpha Legionaries across the galaxy might be using the name, which has caused no end of frustration to the attempts of other Imperial agencies to identify him.

No one knows how many sons of Alpharius live today. Considering the lack of Legion-wide command, it is possible that even the officers of the Legion are unaware of the full extent of their operations. During the Heresy, entire battle-groups were cut off from the rest of the Legion, isolated by Warp Storms and forced to rely on none but themselves. These groups used the resources available to continue fighting against the Traitor Legions, their recognition codes and encryptions evolving over time until their protocols were no longer compatible with those of the main Legion's body. While the biggest of these offshots were reintegrated in the years of the Scouring, there are still small groups of Alpha Legionaries operating on their own, having been separated from the Legion for thousands of years, with new aspirants being turned into Space Marines by Apothecaries who have never been part of the greater Legion themselves. These groups still operate on orders ten thousand years out of date, unquestioning the objectives ingrained in them during their Ascension. Some of these groups have even been corrupted by Chaos, their members becoming unwitting pawns of the Dark Gods. Ever since the terrible events of Vraks and the atrocities committed by Arkos the Faithless One, the Alpha Legion has dedicated considerable resources to the identification and reintegration of all such groups, but such a task, by its very nature, can never be declared complete.

'Ciaphas Cain,' said the giant, towering above me. 'Who do you serve ?'
Well, there wasn't really a choice in what I could answer, was there ?
'I serve the Emperor,' I replied, doing my best impression of a Hero of the Imperium. Or at least, my best impression of what I believed a Hero of the Imperium would sound and look like. Not like I would know – I have never met one, after all.
Of course, had I known just how much trouble this simple statement – and one that was true, even, then as now, despite everything else you might have read already in these memoires – would get me into, I would have said something else, something that would likely have earned me a swift execution, and I would have been happy with that.
From the Cain Archive

Combat Doctrine

'Faithless. Honourless. Cowards. All of these and a hundred more insults have been thrown at us for our approach to warfare. Most of the time by our foes, as they curse our name while running for their lives, all of their plans falling apart around them. But sometimes, even those who are ostensibly our allies feel disgust toward the way we fight the Long War against the enemies of Mankind. Do not resent them for it : they need the trappings of honor, for without them the human mind rebels against the horror of war, and without the strength to wage war, Mankind is doomed. But we of the Twentieth know better, and through the gifts of our gene-sire we are strong enough to need no consolation from the truth.
That is why the first step on the Hydra's path is to understand that there is no such thing as glory in war. Whether you kill your enemy in an epic duel under the gaze of thousands of soldiers or from ten kilometers away with a sniper bullet, it makes no difference – dead is dead. And whether your name is engraved on a thousand statues, or never mentioned in the history books, makes no difference either. Service to the Emperor is its own reward.'
From the Alpha Legion's ever-changing tactical lessons to its Initiates, sometimes jokingly nicknamed the "Codex Hydra" by Legionaries and operatives alike

While most of the Alpha Legion's operations are geared toward the gathering of intelligence that is then passed on to other, more numerous Imperial forces, the sons of Alpharius are still Adeptus Astartes. Through sabotage and assassination, they bring down the cohesion of enemy forces. They are especially gifted at playing on the nature of Chaos, turning members of already fragile alliances against each other. Dozens of Black Crusades have been averted by the sons of Alpharius sending a single vox transmission at the correct timing, stealing something valued by a warlord and delivering it to the vault of one of his allies, or any other of the countless means of making Chaos Lords betray each other. They also use similar methods against the Orks, but the very biology of the greenskins make it all but impossible to truly prevent a Waaagh! once the xenos have reached the critical mass.

On the battlefield, the Alpha Legion prizes both discipline – for the Legion must act as one in order for its schemes to reach fruition – and individual adaptability. This apparent paradox is due to the fact that it is quite frequent for a son of Alpharius to find himself separated from his brother, either because of the chances of war or as part of the current plan. But while a single Alpha Legionary is still a dangerous foe, when the Legion acts as a group, they are devastating. Their main tactic is known as the Harrowing, and is composed of a first phase during which the Alpha Legion creates confusion among the enemy, making it strike at shadows and turn against itself as it wastes most of its fighting potential. Then, when morale is at its lowest, the Legionaries strike from a hundred directions at once, following unpredictable patterns of attack that cut supply lines and behead chains of command. This tactic was used far more frequently during the Great Crusade, and has only been used a handful of times since the Roboutian Heresy – but the enemies of Mankind tremble at the memory of each such occurrence.

The Alpha Legion also makes extensive use of its Librarius. The primary duty of the psychic sons of Alpharius is to shield their brothers' thoughts from detection by any means. They are specially trained in the appropriated psychic arts, and their knowledge of telepathy is said to rival even that of the Thousand Sons' Athanaean Cult. Around one of the Hydra's psychic sons, no secret is truly safe, for they are exceptionally talented at prying open even the strongest of minds – yet the truly impressive part is that they can do it without the victim noticing, nor suffering any negative effects from the intrusion.

The Operatives of the Alpha Legion
Those chosen to become agents of the Twentieth Legion come from a variety of backgrounds, though many of them are members of families who have served the Hydra for generations. Different from the mortals who serve the Legion directly by maintaining their equipment, crewing their ships, and piloting their transports, these operatives are spread out across the rest of the Imperium's population – and, in the case of a few individuals, beyond. Each operative has a cover identity, which can be completely authentic – especially in the case of first-generation recruits – or created by the other agents of the Legion.
Entire networks of operatives are maintained throughout the galaxy, most of the time hired by other operatives higher in the hierarchy. However, it is considered a tradition for any new inductee to be brought before a Legionary. This cements the operative's loyalty, as well as confirm to him that his secret employer really is an agent of the Legion, and not an heretic seeking to manipulate him to his own nefarious ends. After receiving the recruit's oath, the Legionary will use a special device – a compact hypno-teaching engine – to quickly ingrain the knowledge of the proper cyphers and communication techniques and procedures into the mind of the new agent. Along with these gifts is a powerful suggestion that, should the operative be captured and tortured, will prevent him from spilling any secrets long enough for the Alpha Legion to mount a rescue operation – or, if no such operation can be launched within a certain time frame, trigger an heart attack that will kill the operative. The heart attack is also triggered by psychic intrusion powerful enough to bypass the hypnotic barriers that are also part of the package.
The duties of an operative, beyond maintaining his or her cover, vary tremendously. Some are simply tasked with surveying their community, and report anything they think might be of interest to their masters once a month, or even once a year. The Legion provides them with basic life necessities, but the operatives do not do what they do for money – though the Hydra does employ mercenaries on the occasion, those are not trusted with the secrets of the Legion. Other operatives are used as active spies, sent to infiltrate criminal organizations and even cults. Those who prove capable receive more training, should they so desire – many choose to keep their lives, serving the Emperor in a modest but important manner without seeking further advancement. But some do not have such a choice – they are exposed to the Legion's enemies, and risk death for them and their acquaintances if they remain where they are. The Alpha Legion has a great deal of experience in extracting compromised agents and give them new identities elsewhere – but for some, this first brush with lethal danger only reinforces their dedication to the Hydra.
The operatives who are ready to truly give themselves to the Legion are remade in body and mind. The Alpha Legion Apothecaries reforge them on a genetic level, making them stronger, faster, and more resilient. Their minds are filled with the distilled knowledge of generations of operatives before them – they can vanish into a crowd in the blink of an eye, wield nearly any kind of weapon known to Mankind, and infiltrate any strata of Imperial society. Yet all these gifts do not come without price, and most are unable to remember much of their lives prior to their transformation into what many call "True Operatives". They also require regular monitoring to prevent psychotic breaks, as their minds struggle under the weight of all the knowledge and memories that aren't their own. Over the course of the millennia, the Alpha Legion has become very good at handling these issues, but even then, few True Operatives live long – though the service they give to the Imperium is invaluable. Because of the less rigorous selection process they go through, they are not as lethal as the agents of the Officio Assassinorum – something which was proved beyond doubt during the Vindication Wars, when thousands of Operatives were lost to the blades, pistols, poisons, and other lethal implements of renegade Assassins.

The Alpha Legion has a lot less Astartes than its influence over galactic events suggests. Every Legion has a massive number of human servants - the crew of their ships, their armourers, and so on - but the Alpha Legion takes it to a whole new level. It is generally assumed by the Inquisition that for every son of Alpharius, there are a thousand human agents operating undercover across the galaxy. Some will be integrated into the fold, serve and die, without ever setting eyes upon one of their Astartes masters. The agents do not have any identifying marking - a tattoo of the Legion's symbol was mentioned at the beginning of the organization, but quickly rejected as both too risky and too easy to duplicate. Instead, the agents of the Hydra reveal themselves to one another by pass-phrases, cyphers and body language. This requires more training, but the Alpha Legion has access to some of the best hypno-teaching devices in the Imperium specifically for that purpose.

It is also thanks to the use of these devices that the Legion has agents infiltrated among the Traitor Legions themselves, both human and Legionary. These spies risk their soul by exposing themselves to darkness in order to gather vital intelligence on the movements of the warbands they infiltrate. Prior to deployment, their minds are scrubbed of any Legion secrets they know, with only the ways to contact their handlers to transmit their reports left, and carefully crafted false personalities are implanted in their brains in order to deceive mind-reading sorcerers. Behind these mental masks, the original personality remains, watching everything the mask does, learning and waiting. Such assignments are dangerous in the extreme, and the Alpha Legion is always very careful in the cover identities of its agents. They pose as pirate lords, renegade captains, and other "minor" heretics, since faking the true corruption of the soul is impossible – at least not without resorting to methods the Alpha Legion refuses to use, lest it becomes what it fights. Despite these precautions, it is not unheard of for such an agent to be consumed by the Ruinous Powers : the mask grows too strong, and the true personality is trapped inside, forced to watch as its former cover identity commits unspeakable atrocities using its body. Such a fate – called "being consumed by the Betrayer's Mask" in the Legion – is greatly feared among the Alpha Legion and their operatives.

Thanks to the many seemingly impossible feats the sons of Alpharius had pulled off over the centuries, the Legion has a reputation among the servants of Chaos. Servants of the Dark God Tzeentch live in fear and hatred of the Hydra, while any Chaos Lord who hasn't completely succumbed to madness yet is wary of any sign of the Twentieth's presence. To the Alpha Legionaries, this reputation is just another weapon in their arsenal, a tool with which they can sow paranoia and distrust within the enemy ranks.

However, as has been proved many times in the history of the Imperium, the Alpha Legion is not infallible. Schemes can fail, agents can make mistakes, and so on – ever since the first military strategist had forged a plan of action, there have been complications leading to that plan falling apart. And due to the Alpha Legion's reliance on working in the shadows, when their plans fail, they fail quite dramatically. On the rare occasions when the sons of Alpharius have been outwitted by their enemies – most often the thrice-cursed Dark Angels and their infernal prophets – worlds have burned in the fires of Chaos, their people lost forever to damnation. It is said that the Alpha Legion keeps a grim tally of these failures, each researched for years so as to understand the exact manner in which the Legion was defeated – all so that it can never happen again. The Alpha Legion is obsessed with learning from its mistakes as much as it is with learning its enemies' secrets.

The Effrits
Those sons of Alpharius who are chosen to become Effrits bear a heavy burden. Named after the Effrit Squad, Omegon's own chosen group of battle-brothers (which itself was named after an ancient, mythical spirit of destruction from Old Earth), they are forever separated from their own Legion. While the rest of the Hydra operates in complete cooperation, weaving schemes on a galactic scale, the Effrits fight alone, deep behind enemy lines, with only a set of mission parameters to guide their actions. For years at a time, an Effrit will remain completely cut off from the rest of the Legion, without any contact. Hidden among the enemy, he will then work to spread confusion and anarchy, using whatever means necessary. Most of the time, the Effrits are deployed among human renegades and traitors, but they are also deployed in xenos territory when the situation calls for it. The survival rate of the Effrits is extremely low – but so is their failure rate.
No Legionary chooses to become an Effrit. It is a rank that is bestowed – or rather, inflicted – upon suitable warriors by the Legion's Librarians, the only ones who can see into their brothers' soul the potential to become this most dangerous kind of warrior. The process of becoming an Effrit involves ritual separation from the Hydra as a whole, and many believe that this changes the Legionary deeply on a spiritual level. This is followed by extensive mental conditioning, rewriting the Legionary's mind so that his tactics will be adapted to his new function. With nothing but their duty to the Imperium left to them, most Effrits become bitter beings, who take a twisted amusement in the destruction they inflict upon the enemies of Mankind. According to the Librarians, this too is necessary, for the venom in the Effrits' soul can do great harm to those against whom they are unleashed. Still, many in the Legion are uncomfortable with the practice, and would see it ceased.
The Effrits are directed by the Legion 's Harrowmasters, sent away like the weapons they have become to delay or destroy foreseen threats. Before leaving for his assignment, an Effrit will study his target group intensively, and prepare everything he could possibly need for the mission, having full access to the Alpha Legion's vaults. As a consequence, there is no way of knowing what gear an Effrit has with him on the field – they have all access to all manner of technology, some of it utterly prohibited by the Adeptus Mechanicus. Those Effrits who complete their mission – usually by utterly annihilating the faction they were sent to infiltrate – are rewarded with another mission, usually immediately after their return, for the Alpha Legion as few Effrits, and many enemies.

Homeworld

The Alpha Legion has no single world serving as base of operation or recruiting ground. Instead, it has hundreds, possibly thousands of outposts scattered across the Imperium. These hidden lairs are most often vacant, instead serving as supply depots and refuges for the Legion's many agents. They are also used as transmission nexuses for the intelligence gathered by Legionaries and operatives, and as vaults where the most dangerous weapons seized – or, in some cases, built – by the Alpha Legion can be stored safely until the time they are needed.

Such outposts can be abandoned quickly, and new ones are constantly created wherever the Legion's operations take its warriors. After ten thousand years, this network is so elaborate that as long as he operates in Imperial territory (and often even if not), an agent of the Alpha Legion is never more than a few days of travel from an outpost. Whether he knows the location of the outpost and its access codes, however, are a different matter, and untimely deaths have caused entire sections of the Legion's support network to be completely forgotten.

However, the fact that the Alpha Legion has no homeworld hasn't stopped its members from spreading rumors claiming the opposite. These tales speak of a planet where the knowledge of the Legion is compiled and their relics and stores of gene-seed are hidden. No such thing exists, but the enemies of the Legion have expended considerable resources trying to locate it, driven on by carefully laid out false hints. Entire operations have been mounted by the Alpha Legion whose sole purpose is to keep the deception alive by creating convoys supposed to be going to the mysterious homeworld, and then leaking their course to the Legion' enemies so that they can attack and try to seize the convoy's navigational data. In order to deceive even the mind-readers of the Traitor Legions, some Legionaries are deceived into thinking that the homeworld does exist – a deception that sits uncomfortably with those who know the truth, but the nature of the Long War makes it a necessity.

Beliefs

'One life – any life – is a light in the dark once it is given true, righteous purpose. It stops to be a call for the daemons behind the veil and becomes a beacon raised in defiance against the shadows that crowd at the edge of the universe. It becomes a cry that despite everything, despite the cruel gods that lurk in the Warp and thirst for our very souls, despite the monsters that haunt the blackness between the stars, we still matter. In ten thousand years, we will all be dead, our bodies turned to dust and that dust scattered across the infinite expanse of the universe. But here ... here and now, we are alive. And we will not hide ! We will not cower from our foes ! We will not kneel, and we will not break !
WE ARE MANKIND ! STOP HIDING IN YOUR PATHETIC METAL BOXES ! COME AND FACE US !'
Firaeveus Carron, Alpha Legion Captain, at the final battle of the Kaurava Campaign

By their position in the Imperial warmachine, the Alpha Legionaries know more of the current situation than any other force, safe perhaps the highest-ranking Inquisitors, the High Lords of Terra, and the greatest seers of the Thousand Sons and the Grey Knights. Most souls would be crushed by despair when beholding the countless threats to Mankind and the slow degeneracy of the Imperium. Yet the sons of Alpharius refuse to give up.

While other Legions fight to preserve the statu quo, or in the hope of delaying the downfall of the Imperium for just one more day, the Alpha Legion fights to create a future for Mankind in such a dark galaxy. They strive endlessly to undo the plots of the enemies of Humanity, fighting knowing they are very likely to die alone and unremembered by any save their brothers – if they are lucky. They know that there is no glory in war, only its cold necessity in a galaxy filled with dangers – a position much similar to that of the Iron Warriors. To them, duty is its own reward : no one might ever know that an Alpha Legionaire sacrificed his life to prevent a xenos plague from ravaging a hive-world, killing billions and crippling the economy of an entire Sector – but he will know, even as the sole remaining sample of the disease eats him alive inside his sealed armor. And that is enough for them.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Alpha Legion is the one of the few Legions who hold some belief in the Emperor's divinity. However, this belief is not fuelled by blind faith or ignorance, but by a very real understanding of the metaphysical concerns behind the existence of the Warp, as well as lore of the nature of the defunct Eldar Gods. In the eyes of the Alpha Legion, the Emperor has become a god since His placing upon the Golden Throne. He was not a god before – "merely" a psyker of tremendous power wielding unique abilities – but the prayers of trillions of souls have made Him one since, and those who refuse to accept it are clinging to His ideals in a manner that, while praiseworthy, is ultimately futile. Yet the Eldar Gods were formed over the course of hundreds of thousands of years, before they were abandoned by their people as the Eldar turned to decadence. Therefore, the Alpha Legion believes that the God-Emperor has yet to reach His full power, and has been searching for a way to hasten this apotheosis ever since the end of the Roboutian Heresy.

The sons of Alpharius keep their belief hidden from their cousins, who would likely react to it with consternation, as the ever-pragmatic and rational Twentieth would seem to have succumbed to superstition and the lies of the Ecclesiarchy. But paradoxically, most Alpha Legionaries have nothing for contempt for the high priests of the Imperial Creed, seeing them as usurpers of the Emperor's words who only use them for their own gains. Low-level priests, working in the underhives or among the Imperial Guard, are much more likely to earn the favour of the Hydra. In the same way, the Alpha Legion does not offer prayers to the Emperor – instead, they do His work on the hidden battlefields of the galaxy, acting out of sight to save the lives of His people.

'Our brothers turned against us because they believed that our father had betrayed us all and sought to become a god. That wasn't true, of course – it was a lie created by the Dark Gods in order to breach into our brothers' soul and infect them with the hideous corruption of Chaos. The Emperor never wanted to be treated as a god – He wanted to destroy every god and free Mankind of their tyranny forever.
The greatest irony, then, is that in order to save Mankind and bring about the end of glory, we must make that lie a reality.'
From the archives of the Alpha Legion – top level clearance only

Recruitment and Geneseed

"My name is Legion, for we are many."
From the Terra Apocrypha

There is no flaw in the gene-seed of the Alpha Legion, as might be expected of the last Legion to be created. All implanted organs work to perfection, and the compatibility rate of the Twentieth Legion's gene-seed is among the highest of all. Still, there is a minor deviation from the norm. In all Legions, transformation into an Astartes alter the facial traits of the individual, changing them to reflect something of their Primarch's own visage. But in the Alpha Legion, this is taken to extreme. Almost every Alpha Legionaire is an image of their long-lost Primarchs, and it is nearly impossible for mortals outside of the Legion's servants to distinguish between two of them. Most Legionaries whose genetics prevent this from happening choose to undergo facial reconstruction surgery in order to become more like their fathers. However, a few decide to retain their original faces, and make a point to go without a helmet as often as possible – all in order to further confuse the enemies of the Legion.

The Alpha Legion recruits from a vast number of planets, and the population isn't aware of it on any of them. In order to avoid being infiltrated, the Legion changes from one recruiting world to another randomly, never taking more than a handful of aspirants, and not coming back to a particular world for centuries at a time. Furthermore, on the slightest hint that the planet's population has been compromised, all recruiting activities will be abandoned – possibly forever. This would create difficulties for the Alpha Legion to recruit, if not for the sheer size of the Imperium.

Unlike other Legions, the Hydra does not select individuals for induction in its ranks, but instead targets whole packs of children, who already have a group dynamic in place. Whether street gangs in the underhive or orphans banding together for safety in the slums of a medieval capital, the Alpha Legion offers them a chance at Ascension as a whole. Female members of such groups, who cannot become Astartes, are instead trained into the ranks of the Operatives, and are most often assigned to the squad of their childhood friends. This strengthens the bonds between Legionaries and Operatives, preventing the sons of Alpharius from seeing their agents as mere tools : instead, they are family.

Because of the importance the Legion places on teamwork, aspirants who have passed the preliminary compatibility tests either succeed as a group or fail together. Hypno-training and conditioning engrave a sense of purpose and dedication to the greater whole into each Legionary along with the tactical skills required to fight for the Legion. Yet the sons of Alpharius lose no more of their previous lives as those of other Primarchs in the process – in fact, they often lose less, thanks to the reaffirming presence of their friends around them. Over time though, as each Legionary gains experience and acquires new skills, the memories of their time as human inevitably fade away, replaced by the more recent and intense memories of a Space Marine.

Each "batch" of recruits generally counts three to five individuals, who are then assigned to a veteran of the Legion and deployed into the field. Training, however, never ends, and a son of Alpharius is expected to continually hone his skills and gain new ones. All Legionaries spend most of their sparse free time training, but the Alpha Legion has entire programs dedicated solely to learning a skill as quickly and efficiently as possible. Among a squad, every warrior is aware of all the skills of his companions, so that each is able to design a plan using all the squad's assets in any circumstances.

The two exceptions to this recruitment process are the Legion's Librarians and Techmarines. While most psychic recruits are picked up from the Black Ships, those whose talents are detected during their training are taken away from their group for specific, rigorous preparation. Other Librarians, as well as psyker servants and Operatives, teach the aspirants to master their gift. They are often returned to their group once their Ascension is complete, but most of the time, their new abilities will forever set them apart from their friends. Due to the nature of the Hydra's operations, they are, however, a vital part of the Legion, and those who fight alongside them know to value their lives more than their own. For while a squad of the Alpha Legion can adapt its approach to the death of any of its members, many are the missions that become flat-out impossible without the psychic cover granted by a Librarian.

As for Techmarines, the forge-worlds bound by covenant to the Alpha Legion send their brightest compatible youths to serve the Hydra. After their Ascension, they are sent to Mars in order to complete their training. Because of their heritage, they are often among the Techmarines most devoted to the Machine-God across all the loyal Legions – but their loyalty is, first and foremost, to the Alpha Legion and the Imperium. After coming back from Mars, they receive the secret technological lore of the Twentieth – the knowledge that the tech-priests would never willingly allow a Legion to possess.

Warcry

While the Alpha Legion conducts most of its battles hidden in the shadows, the sons of Alpharius have inherited some measure of their gene-sire's pride. When everything is in place, when there is no chance for failure and they deliver the killing blow, they make sure that the enemy knows just who is responsible. Over the millennia, the last words ever heard by many Chaos Lords have been the simple declaration of 'For the Emperor', followed by the sound of a bolt pistol fired next to their head. On the rare occasions when the Alpha Legion has been forced into open battle, their rallying cry is that of 'I am Alpharius' shouted at the same time by every warrior involved. Through this battlecry, the Legionaries honor the memory of their lost Primarch, and feed the enemy's fear that they might actually be facing one of the Emperor's sons – something that even the most demented servant of the Ruinous Powers fear with something approaching atavistic terror. Against the Ultramarines, this cry drives the foe to frenzy, as it is a direct insult to the supposed victory of Guilliman over Alpharius on Eskrador. The Legion specifically teaches its members to use those as their last words when surrounded by the foe, with the goal of enraging the enemy leader, causing him to make mistakes – or, in the case of some Chaos Lord, goading him into such fury that he will kill the next underling approaching him, allowing the Legionary to take one more enemy with him.

The human servants of the Legion, however, have another phrase that they only speak when they are about to die, having blown their cover to serve the interests of the Legion. No matter how much pain or fear they might feel in these last moments, their last words are always the same : 'To the end of glory.' When tortured for information, these words are all they say, over and over, until they escape or die. What the words mean is unknown even to the Inquisition. It is theorized that it might be a reference to the endless wars Mankind is locked into, and to some grand, over-arching plan to finally bring peace to the Imperium. It could also be about how these men and women have forsaken the pursuit of individual prestige and power, sacrificing their lives in order to serve the Emperor – just as the Alpha Legion itself has done throughout history.

Both of these theories are wrong. And we will make sure no one learns the truth until we are ready.

The warrior had died bravely, but not well. His killers had taken their time before finishing him, and had only done so because they had sensed the approach of intruders on their bloody work. They had fled so quickly that they had left behind the bodies of the two of their brothers that the warrior had managed to slay before being captured. From a distance, the three dead could be believed to be kin – they were all of similar proportions, and wore armors that were of the same forest-green color. But as soon as one drew near, the differences became obvious. Part of the warrior's armor had been peeled off his body, so that the torturers could access his flesh and make him suffer. But what remained of his armor and body were untainted, while the corpses of the captors bore the marks of the Changer of Ways on both. Their helmets were decorated with twirling horns, their armor engraved with runes that glowed with fell magic even after the death of the wearer. Their weapons weren't in sight – the one thing their brothers had taken with them, plundering them from their corpses before fleeing. The only weapon visible was the shattered chainsword with which the warrior had fought and slain those he had once called brothers.
One of the hydra-marked giants approached the Fallen Angel, and reached out with his gauntleted hand to close his eyes – which even in death stared ahead defiantly, daring his killers to hurt him if they thought they could make him scream. What remained on his face was marked by agony, but not age. This one had emerged only very recently, a few decades or a century at most. But he hadn't been able to do much before the servants of the Lion had found him. For ten thousand years, the Dark Angels had hunted those who had stood with Luther upon long-dead Caliban, dragging them in chains before their Daemon Primarch so that he could break them and destroy them. Ten thousand years of unceasing hunt, with the Fallen always fighting to remain one step ahead … but no more.
'We need to warn Cypher,' said one of the Alpha Legionaries. 'He is the last one now.'

---

AN : To the end of glory.

What do those words mean ? Well, that, my friends, is a story for another day ...

It is done, then. Nearly three years and four hundred thousand words, and the Index Astartes of the Roboutian Heresy are complete.

This is not the end, however. The Times of Ending shall come - they must, considering how much I hinted at them in those Indexes. Much work remains to be done before I can start to write the actual story, however. In the Roboutian Heresy, I have created an entire myth, with a lot of characters that all will play a part in the resolution of this alternate universe. I have a plan, a series of arcs already in mind, but they must be ironed out, the pieces put into their places, and most importantly of all, I must decide what are the possible endings. I doubt I will be able to choose an ending, though - that is something that I hope shall emerge naturally during the course of writing the Roboutian Heresy : Times of Ending.

This Index was, fittingly, the longest I have ever written - not just in the Roboutian Heresy, but the longest chapter period, unless you count the collected Chaos Quotes on ffnet. It was not easy to write, but it was certainly fun and entertaining - pretty much like the entire series. Writing the whole thing with the Cabal was the most complicated part - in the future, I might elaborate on the details of what happened during the Unremembered War. As for the identity of the mysterious corrupt xenos who made contact with the Cabal's leaders and destroyed the Interex ... That is a card I am keeping up my sleeve. I already know who/what they are, but I am not going to tell you. Have fun coming up with your own theories !

Those of you who are readers of fantasy might have recognized the source of the 'Because I am not a lie' line Omegon uses. It comes from R.A. Salvatore Drizzt Do'Urden series, more specifically the book Maestro. When I read that book months ago - way, way before starting work on this Index - I just knew I had to place that line in the Alpha Legion chapter. It just clicked perfectly into place. And it fits with the theme of this chapter, which is that the Alpha Legion of the Roboutian Heresy is, above all else, loyal to the Emperor's dream. The Master of Mankind might have failed in His path to freeing the species, but the end goal remains ...

The Bestiam Domitores owe their entire existence to Shadow of Mordor and the upcoming Shadow of War. The Orks' nature as creations of the Old Ones made the opportunity to create a faction aimed at doing what Thalion and Celebrimbor do in those games just too tempting to pass.

This is likely the end of this fic, though I will not mark it as "completed" in case I need to add some details to the universe before starting the Times of Ending proper. However, before I do that, I want to finish the Warband of the Forsaken Sons story. After the next chapter, we will enter the final arc of that particular fic as well (though how long it will take to actually reach the end, none can say but the Emperor, I fear). As I finish that story, I will also gather my ideas for the Times of Ending, set up a plan, an order to the many, many events and battles that will take place to determine the fate of the galaxy.

If you have questions about this Index, suggestions for the Times of Ending, or any kind of comment, don't hesitate to contact me or leave a review. I suspect there will be many questions asked on the spacebattles thread for this fic, and that's where I will answer them, so if you are reading this on ffnet, consider checking the thread as well if you have questions, to make sure they haven't already been asked.

As usual, my thanks to Jaenera Targaryen for betaing this chapter during the long and arduous writing process. Check her page on ffnet for more stories set in the Roboutian Heresy universe. Also, Nemris has amazing artworks for the RH on his page on deviantart (with character such as Gabriel Angelos, Eliphas, Logan Grimnar, Lugft Huron, and images of every Legion), and he too has written a story in the RH universe, which is excellent as well.

Zahariel out.