Yoorlungkura and the Abyssal Shades

By author SIngemeister

The Twenty-Fourth Primarch: Yoorlungkura

Name:
Yoourlungkura, also known as the Ghost. Amongst his own Legion, he is sometimes called the Fadewalker or the Dreamsinger.

Appearance:
Yoorlungkura is a tall man, and of a wiry build by Primarchical standards. His broad, rugged face seems weathered, even aged at times, with heavy lines above his solid brow and subtle, pock-marked scars, with an especially noticeable one along the length of his nose. His hair is thick and wavy, mixed shining black and glossy grey, and he wears a tight beard and moustache. Intricate white markings run along his cheeks and forehead, stretching down along his neck, spine, chest, and arms. What these markings depict is a mystery, for they seem to change from viewer to viewer. Indeed, some have said that Yoorlungkura's whole visage sometimes seems different, taller, much younger and more vital, with a youthful power behind it to match or best any of his siblings.

The only constant is his eyes, a deep indigo blaze seemingly without iris or pupil, that draws in the eye of the observer, hypnotising, enthralling, eye-burning. None, save for the Emperor, can stand to meet his gaze for very long.

Most of the time, he wears simple traveller's robes, sturdy and subdued affairs, with rugged boots and a waterskin at his side. When he descends onto the battlefield, he wears the Starplate, a set of magnificent masterwork artificer Power Armour that he personally painted with a nightscape that has yet to be identified by scholars. He wields a Force Spear of unknown make called Tjunkarmur, an extremely potent weapon with a long, curving blade that flies back to his hands once thrown. Around his neck is a metal band of uncertain origin, though it is covered in runic inscriptions that shimmer when Yoorlungkura taps into his psychic potential.

Talents and Personality:

Few among the ranks of the Emperor's children can claim to be as unsuited or indeed as undesiring to be counted among that number as Yoorlungkura. Amongst the Imperium at large, he is callous and antisocial, somewhat crass, and infamously rude to his siblings, the Iterators, Imperial nobility, the Imperial Army, members of the bureaucracy and the Mechanicum. Few could be counted amongst his friends, for he does not seem to seek them. Whereas Iterators and Remembrancers leap at a chance to stand at the side of other Primarchs—those such as the Adamantium Maiden, the Lady of the Dawn, the silver lady of Elysium, the Bronze Primarch and more—they dread the assignment to accompany the tempestuous Twenty-Fourth Primarch, a man known to be mean, standoffish, insulting and unwelcoming.

Amongst most of the galaxy, this is thought to be simply a vinegary personality, much unlike the glittering magnetic charm of the rest of the Emperor's children. Little do they know that this acidity is a deliberate tactic which Yoorlungkura uses to hold the rest of the Imperium at a distance. Among the men of his Legion whom he trusts, a different Yoorlungkura emerges—one who, were he known to the Imperium, would be seen as altogether more dangerous. He is scathing, dismissive and disrespectful towards authority, and makes clear his own distaste for his situation and the Imperium as a whole. He lets nothing of this slip to the Emperor and indeed most of the galaxy. In the company of the untrusted, he maintains a surly and isolated silence.

In battle, he does not take any especial joy, walking through the morass of war with a countenance of bored irritation, with his masterful strikes and slashes appearing almost born of frustration than bloodlust. On campaign, he is easily distracted, almost seeking diversions from his current path, insisting on visiting strange planets and delving into relic sites. When it comes to questions of his past, he is evasive to the point of nausea, often speaking in lies or outright ignoring any questions. At most, he can begrudgingly admit to the utility of the Imperium in dealing with such galaxy-wide problems as Orks, though—in private, trusted company—he speaks in a manner which suggests that he thinks the Imperium is little better.

Behind his reserved and discourteous demeanour lurks far more. When presented with a problem that catches his interest, he is obviously possessed of an intellect of incredible speed and depth, with a truly exceptional capability for lateral thinking and outside-the-box solutions, as well as being possessed of a truly staggering array of information of a vast number of topics. With civilians, his Legion, and occasionally his siblings, he has been known to show a side that is extremely tender and caring, more than willing to listen and provide a wealth of wisdom and advice. When he indulges in exploring the more bizarre parts of the galaxy, he shows a giddy sense of wonder, talking animatedly to his Legion about glorious vistas, stunning landforms, alien artworks, and beautiful night skies.

His mind, and his uncanny ability to see benefits and weaknesses where others would not, is his greatest strength, and the one which has been the most use to the Imperium. Though not among the fastest or strongest or most skilled of Primarchs in combat, he has a preternatural ability to read and predict the bodies and movements of his opponents which, when combined with his own potent Warp talents, make him a deadly foe indeed.

In truth, Yoorlungkura is a being who yearns for his freedom, to be unshackled from the authoritarian bloodthirst that is the Imperium, from the visionary tyrant that calls himself his father. Every second of his existence does he chafe under his strictures, always looking for a potential pathway to his liberation. Though he does care for his supposed sons—a term he would never use himself—he would sooner yet be free. At heart, he is a wanderer, an explorer, a sight-seer, one who wishes to take in all the galaxy has to offer and then once again, understanding it as the ever-changing galaxy it is.

In short, he is a Primarch that has no desire to be a Primarch.

Homeworld:
Yoorlungkura has no homeworld—or at least, no homeworld he has been willing to talk about. Statements he has made on the matter are often vague, normally contradictory, and commonly assumed to be lies—that he was found on Terra and forgotten, that he was raised in an abandoned space station, that he landed on an Eldar Crone World, Maiden World, or Craftworld, that he was raised by xenos rendered extinct, or humans and xenos living together, or by an array of artificial intelligences. Whatever the truth is, he refuses to tell it, and it cannot be found.

The world on which he was inducted into the Imperium, Mura-Mura, has become the Legion's new base. A planet of barren wastes and venomous beasts, Mura-Mura has little of the archaeotech ruins or feuding civilisations so common to Astartes homeworlds, with its only societies being bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers, human and xenos alike, who managed the lands on a vast scale belied by the simplicity of their methods. Believed to be descended from lost freighter-crews and transport-workers crash-landed on a planet otherwise overlooked for millennia, Mura-Mura is home to little of interest for most Imperial citizens, apart from the fortress-monastery of Upali. A great and ugly citadel that looms from the largest of wastes on the planet, in addition to the usual functions of a fortress-monastery, Upali acts as museum and mausoleum both to the worlds and civilisations that have been brought into the Imperium's fold by the XXIV. Within its walls are great atria housing endless pict-casts and artefacts salvaged from conquests, and in its shadow lie vast graveyards dedicated to the Legion's dead and those they have slain. Servitors mindlessly tend these memories that none visit.

Psychic potential:
"All things are cyclical. What is, was. What was, will be. What will be, is. Back and forth, around and again, all things come to pass before and now and yet to be."

Whilst there are Primarchs who have greater psychic powers and potential than Yoorlungkura, none can claim his understanding of the ways of the Immaterium. By all standards, his psychic potential maximum is quite low, but his knowledge of who to use it makes him the equal of Alpha-level psykers. Perhaps the greatest example of this is his ability to, as he has referred to it, 'fadewalk'—briefly stepping through the Warp in a manner akin to teleportation (albeit a far more precise teleportation than usually achieved through a teleport homer) to reappear in the Materium at a different point. Another manifestation is his seeming ability to 'go around' the psychic powers of his foes, through means that are still not fully understood, letting them simply move around him as he passes through unharmed. Though he has no natural gift of precognition, he appears to be able in some fashion to discern the skeins of fate through the Warp, and he uses these to influence his decisions and choices.

Background:
Little is known of Yoorlungkura's background, for he refuses to speak any manner of truth on the manner. What is known is that he was a vagrant, travelling through the galaxy by means yet unknown, learning much of the nature of existence in the process. Somewhere in his travels, he gained his knowledge of Warpcraft and honed his natural talents in psykery.

Even from the beginning of the Great Crusade, stories of a tall man with a heavy brow, who spoke with great wisdom and radiated power and left strange changes in his wake for good or ill, were noted by Iterators upon numerous planets folded into the Imperium. Though at first dismissed as folklore, the tireless efforts of the Iterator Lorali Atunberra coalesced these scattered reports from those early decades into a cohesive whole that pointed to the presence and actions of a Primarch, one of the Emperor's missing children. Even this might have gone without remark, had it not drawn the eye of Malcador, the Regent of Terra. At his urging, the Emperor was informed, and elements of the nascent Imperial state were sent on the path to seek the mysterious wanderer.

At what point the search became a hunt, and the hunt became a chase, is a matter for debate, though it was only in the later stages of the Great Crusade that those elements dedicated to finding the Primarch had their first confirmed sighting. From then, they hounded him from world to world, scouring for the information they sought with all the dread means at their disposal.

On Mura-Mura was he cornered. On Mura-Mura did the Twenty-Fourth Primarch meet his father.

None saw the reunion of father and son, for only the Emperor had the skill and the power necessary to track down his errant child and prevent him fleeing once again, and all were left far behind as the master of mankind went after Yoorlungkura. All on the planet, however, from the superhuman warriors of the Custodes to the nomads suddenly exposed to the world beyond the night sky to the half-broken ratings in the orbiting fleet, felt the echoes of that first contact. Fragmented images of blades clashing, blood spilled, prostrate forms; the sounds of roaring wind and hissing dust, of reality rent asunder time and time again; a conversation, enraged or calm or bitter and tearful, impossible to tell. Snatches of words, of sentiment, that were picked through and stitched together by Iterators caught on the heady scent of this tale.

Henceforth we have two accounts. It is widely known that, in the year 853 of the 30th millennium, the Emperor of Mankind rediscovered his twenty-fourth-born son on the planet Mura-Mura. After some initial disagreement—a polite way to describe the screaming rage and violence of that first confrontation—Yoorlungkura agreed to join his father's Great Crusade.

That is a lie.

The truth is that Yoorlungkura was caught by the Emperor in 849.M30, four years earlier. He did not submit. The recalcitrant Primarch was dragged back to Terra in chains. As they voyaged there aboard the mighty battleship Bucephelus, the Gloriana-class starship that played host to the Emperor, the lord of mankind sought to persuade his son of the righteousness and necessity of his path, to unite the human species and free it from the peril of vile xenobreeds, Abominable Intelligences and horrors from the Warp that lurked among the stars. Yoorlungkura did not consent. So he came to the Imperial Palace, not heralded in a triumphant parade, but in darkest secrecy; and the Primarch who did not want to be a Primarch was tossed into a tower cell in the Imperial Palace's dungeons, one specially prepared to restrain his Warp-walking abilities. It was a comfortable, luxurious room; but a gilded cage is a cage for all that. The Emperor visited him every day whenever he was on Terra, which was not always, for the master of mankind was oft called away by his duties as the sole supreme commander of the Great Crusade. Father and son argued vociferously. Each sought to convince the other. Neither was convinced.

Until Yoorlungkura was… or so it seemed. Bit by bit, he gave way to the irresistible force of the Emperor's arguments, thrust on the defensive by his father's abundance of evidence and superhuman intellect. Great as the Primarchs were, in speed, in strength and in intelligence also, they were but a shadow of their father; and Yoorlungkura was not a match for his father's mental power, force of words and strength of will.

In 853.M30, four years after his imprisonment, Yoorlungkura finally agreed that his father was right. This was the only way to save mankind. The Emperor embraced him, released him from his cell and set him free, to take command of the Legion of his gene-sons and join the Great Crusade as was his rightful place and his birthright.

And Yoorlungkura rejoiced in the triumph of his deceit. In truth Yoorlungkura had never repented his defiance of the Emperor. The Ghost did not regret one instant of his antipathy to his father. He had simply realised, mouldering in the depths of his cell, that he was not going to be released unless he pretended to join his father's side. And he wanted to be released. Above all else he craved his freedom. He did not want to aid the Emperor in that golden tyrant's wars of conquest and genocide, as he saw it. But if he were ever to be let out from his gilded cage in the Imperial Palace, if he were ever to walk free and breathe free in the galaxy again, it was the only way out.

The Emperor perhaps should have seen that Yoorlungkura was deceiving him; but the lord of mankind did not see the hatred for him that still burnt, black and searing, in the heart of his son, perhaps because he did not want to believe it, and the bias in his heart led him to take the softest interpretation of Yoorlungkura's feelings. For it was hatred, true and deep. Yoorlungkura loathed his father, despised him, abhorred him, held him a butcher and a tyrant and abomination all his works.

With unrestrained joy the Twenty-Fourth Primarch sobbed as he breathed in the cool outdoors air. He and the Emperor agreed the deception about his rediscovery date. It would do no good for his Legion to learn the truth of when he had been found, the Emperor said. It could sow poisonous seeds of doubt and resentment. Besides, it had been a tragic misunderstanding. Yoorlungkura saw the truth of things now. The enmity between them was all in the past.

Yoorlungkura disagreed, but voiced agreement. For, then and afterwards, he was ever careful not to let his father know how he really felt. If his father learnt that he had lied, Yoorlungkura thought, he was headed right back to his cage, and the golden tyrant would not let him out so easily the second time.

The warriors of the XXIV Legion were overjoyed at the prospect of reunion with their (supposedly newfound) Primarch, but found themselves despondent as their gene-father looked at them with wary, unrecognising eyes. He treated them not as long-lost sons, but as a disconcerting and unpleasant burden that had been forced upon him. In time, with the weight of campaigns behind them and the unceasing efforts of his Equerry Yarohaja Andawan, Legion Master Cober Tallaguun, and Master of the Librarius Reider Murringarrie, Yoorlungkura began to open up to and accept his Legion as his own, passing his knowledge and wisdom down to them.

The XXIV Legion: the Abyssal Shades

Name:
The Abyssal Shades. This name predates Yoorlungkura. Despite thinking the name disconcerting and unwieldy, Yoorlungkura never renamed the Legion.

Insignia and Appearance:
A skull rising from ethereal shadows is the Legion's main symbol, with the particular Kinship's own totemic animal depicted within the right eye of the skull.

Navy blue colours with a Kinship-colour trim, though this is often covered up by the colours an Astartes applies to his own armour, leading to a very non-uniform appearance throughout the Legion.

Gene-seed Status:
The gene-seed of the XXIV is fairly stable, with the only notable deviancy being a tendency for the Catalepsean Node to fault and send the Space Marine into a semi-dreaming state for a time. The effects of this vary from Space Marine to Space Marine, but there is a noted recurrence of affected Space Marines to fall to the "Dreaming Sickness", becoming entrapped in a trance-like state which can only truly be described as berserker rage through the medium of soothing meditation. These "Dreamwalkers" move with eerie certainty and grace across the battlefield, not responding to orders as they chatter gibberish, but reacting with prescient speed to enemy strikes, slicing down foes with expertly-placed bolter shells and chainsword blows.

A strange genetic quirk has resulted in the entirety of the Legion having cobalt-blue tongues.

Legionary Assets:
The Abyssal Shades number 190,000 strong, with larger numbers of Aspirants than most Legions not counted in that. The Legion's flagship, the Silent Song, is a Gloriana-class battleship with extensive testing facilities on-board. The Primarch has endeavoured to reduce the number of planet-killer category weapons aboard this vessel by the greatest fraction possible.

Legion Organisation:

For much of their history, both before and after the discovery of the Primarch, the Abyssal Shades operated under the Principia Belicosa, the same organisational structure as the Thunder Warriors: squads, companies, chapters, et cetera. More recently, as Yoorlungkura's opinion towards his sons has thawed, he has divided them into eight Grand Kinships, each given a specific colour and totemic creature.

—First Kinship, dark blue and the Void Whale, led by the Primarch himself and his Equerry, Yarohaja Andawan.

—Second Kinship, grey and the Psycheneuein, led by the former Legion Master, Cober Tallaguun.

—Third Kinship, gold and the Void Kraken, led by Harke Indonjul.

—Fourth Kinship, green and the Ambull, led by Vinstan Horath.

—Fifth Kinship, black and the Khymera, led by Damurriudan.
—Sixth Kinship, azure and the Crotalid.

—Seventh Kinship, white and the Thornmaw.

—Eighth Kinship, red and the Clawed Fiend.

The numbers of each organisational unit are often fluid, both as Astartes are reassigned to meet campaign needs through debate between the leaders of each unit—who are in turn elected by the Space Marines under them—and as Astartes return from solo missions and attach themselves to either the nearest or most relevant squad, company, et cetera. Equipment distributions are equally fluid, with each Kinship maintaining a pool to be accessed for the purposes of discovery missions or readied assaults.

The Legion is heavily decentralised, with unit commanders having significant flexibility and latitude in means and methods of accomplishing mission goals. The Legion possesses a greater proportion of psykers than most, of high, middling, and low talent, with a powerful Librarius spread throughout the Kinships. Whether these psykers are deployed as individual supports or as a unit varies from campaign to campaign.

Special units:

The Jaarlna—The personal bodyguard of the Primarch. Controversially, the Jaarlna is composed entirely of psykers, mostly of a lower tier of psychic strength than those found in the Legion's Librarius. Yoorlungkura has selected these talents as his protégés in his Warp methods, and they have proven able students, following the Primarch as he slices through the veil between reality and unreality, re-emerging to strike down the foe.

The Foesingers—The much aspired-to position of Foesinger is granted only to those in the Legion who have shown exceptional and inspired talent in the field of understanding the enemy and gathering knowledge in the field, as well as possessing long-term survival skills. These individuals are sent on reconnaissance and discovery missions of indeterminate length and scope against particularly widespread and destructive species—most notable the Greenskin menace.

The Waking—Those affected by the more severe faults of the Catalepsean Node are gathered into units known by this name. These warriors are considered all but dead, and are unleashed onto the harshest of battlefields in their serene frenzy.

Expertise and Combat Doctrine:
The doctrine of the Abyssal Shades has long been based around the acquisition and application of detailed information and understanding of enemy forces prior to engagement. Not for them the 'when-all-you-have-is-a-hammer' doctrine of the I Legion or the 'one-size-fits-all' approach of the VIII. When the XXIV strikes the enemy, it is with pinpoint knowledge of their weakness, of their tendencies, even of how generals and politicians are likely to react.

With the reunion with their Primarch, this doctrine only expanded to include gathering an understanding of culture, history and Warpcraft.

The approach to this data collection will vary from data set to data set, but generally includes a mixture of orbital and aerial scans, mass auspex deployment, psyker divination, and infiltration of squads and especially solo individuals onto the planet in question. Information will be gathered and then analysed by the attendant Legion corps until the officer elected to command of the operation deems it sufficient to act upon. Information-gathering continues throughout the war, with analysis gathered by combatants being added into the Legion's noosphere during and indeed after the campaign.

The Legion's decentralisation encourages subcommanders to act with great latitude and flexibility in the prosecution of commands from higher up, and the Legion culture encourages ingenuity and unorthodox thought in battle-plan construction. The Abyssal Shades' induction ritual, mentioned below, and information-gathering techniques have resulted in a Legion with strong capabilities in the areas of fire-team tactics and solo operations, stealth and infiltration warfare, and the usage of assault packs.

Additionally, the permissively xenophilic nature of Yoorlungkura has resulted in the Legion gathering more than its fair share of exotic, esoteric and xenotech weaponry to be distributed liberally throughout the Kinships. Indeed, the Primarch led the Legion to the location of several archaeotech caches which they used to furnish their ranks with bizarre and dangerous weaponry. Yoorlungkura's own distaste for warfare has also led to the—darkly ironic—tendency for the Legion to execute its campaigns with a striking amount of callous inhumanity and a disregard for what would often be considered the unspoken rules of warfare, quite at odds with its otherwise inquisitive and artistic nature.

To fight the Abyssal Shades is to fight an enemy that strikes from nowhere with strange and disturbing weaponry, that hits with horrifying force against weak points and key targets that the sorry foe did not even realise existed, with tactics that seem to be unpredictable for a battle-plan that cannot be counteracted.

Legion Weaknesses:
"What if you were to launch a campaign, and no one was there?"

—Anonymous Abyssal Shade.

Those same aspects that make the Legion strong also make it vulnerable. Given time to sufficiently analyse an enemy, they are extremely dangerous—but if that time is not there, or the Legion has had to move on from one target to another without the necessary time to refocus their knowledge, they become significantly less effective. Additionally, their reliance on this knowledge base and thus on continuous data transfer, be it through electronic or esoteric means, results in them being even more vulnerable to having their communications disrupted than other Legions might be.

The Legion's decentralisation and the leeway given to subcommanders means that they are, not without merit, considered disorganised and undisciplined by comparison with other Legions, and those same shocking, unorthodox tactics can sometimes be poorly coordinated and unsupported by other subcommanders if they do not have the same battlefield vision. The Legion's devotion to knowledge-based warfare can also often result in strategies and tactics that are, to be blunt, too-clever-by-half, being unnecessarily complex and overthought when simple brute force would have sufficed.

Finally, the Legion has been noted for its relative lack of bloodthirst, which has only increased since their reunion with their Primarch. There are whispers in other Legions that the XXIV have lost their 'killing edge'.

Beliefs and Practices:
"Once upon a time, I dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering near and far, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of my happiness as a butterfly, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awoke, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man."

—Attributed to Yoorlungkura.

As a result of their combat practices and their reunion with their Primarch, the Legion's culture has become highly individualistic, and perhaps more disturbingly, quite spiritual. Astartes are encouraged to take significant effort in decorating and adorning their own selves, arms and armour with meaningful symbols and sigils, ranging from pict-cast transfers, to Primarch-mirroring star maps, to intricate patterns that go down to the microscopic level. Once a Novitiate has ascended to the ranks of a full Astartes, he is granted a cloak, usually made from animal hide, which is to be personally decorated to record the Space Marine's greatest victories, kills, and even defeats. It is said that each Abyssal Shade can gain a full understanding of another through a mere glance at his cloak.

The Legion paces great value in musical composition, encouraging Space Marines to create their own works: great saga-songs in the traditions of both their homeworlds and those worlds they have fought upon, detailing their journeys and the journeys of others they have met upon the way. These are not boasts or braggadocio, instead being soulful recollection and meditation—even when sung as the Legion marches to battle.

Despite this, the Legion has an extremely strong sense of camaraderie within—often to the expense of inter-Legion relations, with others believing they are more loyal to the Abyssal Shades than the Imperium. This culminates in the Corroborree, a grand gathering held whenever there is a lull in campaigning, when much or even all of the Legion regathers to exchange gifts and wisdom with each other. Here, rank truly does not matter, and the Primarch fraternises with the most recent of inductees.

Many among the Legion, especially in the higher ranks and the Librarius, have studied and adopted the Primarch's own views on existence, on the nature of Materium and Immaterium. As a result, they have a widespread understanding of Warp lore, often adding the more esoteric folklore of their own culture and other cultures to the general collective consciousness of the Legion. Even the lowest among them are trained in the recognition of the signs of Warp activity and best practice around it. Those more established in the Legion have come to see the Imperial Truth's doctrinal take on the Warp—firmly insisting that all Warp entities are hostile to humans and must never be bargained with and must never be trusted—as overly stolid and ignorant, in much the same way as a native tracker would regard a foreign nobleman's insultingly fanciful treatise on the flora and fauna of their homeland.

Two notable features that have arisen out of this are a tendency to see all things as cycles or patterns to an almost restrictive degree, and a general distaste for saying the names of those who have died—instead referring to them by deed or other notable features of their person.

Recruitment and Discipline:
Whilst Mura-Mura remains the Legion's homeworld, its low populace make it unsuited as a prime Astartes recruiting world. The Legion takes in Aspirants from all the worlds it has brought into Compliance, with an especial focus on war orphans and child victims of violence for their recruits. Several times, other Expeditionary Fleets have accused the XXIV Legion of scouring their planets, including those ostensibly under the jurisdiction of another Legion, for recruits—with the Legion seemingly focusing on finding children of psychic potential to be recruited especially.

Once selected for induction into the XXIV, recruits undergo fitness and combat training regimens, as well as instruction in the ways of the Legion. Once deemed fit by an officer, they are sent on the Walking Trial, missions with limited resources and unlimited parameters in order to prove their worth and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Quite what these missions are vary from assignment to assignment, though most often are comprised of mid-length reconnaissance and data-gathering missions.

Characters of Interest:
Yarohaja Andawan, Equerry to the Primarch—Originally 2nd Captain of the 4th Company of the 3rd Chapter of the 6th Grand Company, it was Yarohaja, a Terran native, who was the first Imperial to truly make a connection with the brooding Primarch. A skilled fighter with canny insight, Equerry Andawan remains the Primarch's right hand and consultant for all matters relating to the Imperium.

Cober Tallaguun, Master of the Second Kinship and former Legion Master—The former commanding officer of the XXIV Legion, Cober Tallaguun had long ago made his reputation during the Unification Wars as a wily fox who could think his way through a corkscrew without touching the sides. Having risen through the ranks to his position just before being reunited with the Primarch, it was Tallaguun who taught the Primarch in the ways of the Legion's war. It was also he who chose that first target of WAAAAGH! Snakebite.

Reider Murringarrie, Master of the Librarius—One of the most potent Space Marine Librarians to be found outside the XI Legion, Murringarrie is the Primarch's key protégé in the ways of the Warp. A fast learner and a master of countering his own gene-sire's arguments, Reider fights alongside the Jaarlna in battle.

Maran Olingue, First of the Jaarlna—A Mura-Muran inducted to the Legion who lost the power of speech during his own Walking Trial, Maran is a keenly observant figure and the greatest fighter in the XXIV Legion, wielding the Power Sword Without Reason to great effect.

Harke Indonjul, Master of the Third Kinship—The first non-Terran Kinship Master, Harke Indonjul is the premier void warfare expert of the Legion, and a prime example of the Legion's lateral thinking. Books have been written on the eclectic and seemingly mystifying collection of stratagems known as the Indonjul Manoeuvres, which comprise all manner of strange techniques and ship-augmentations preferred by the Void Kraken.

Vinstan Horath, Master of the Fourth Kinship—The second non-Terran Kinship Master, ascended to the rank during the chase for Yoorlungkura, Vinstan is noteworthy for his outspoken loyalty to the Imperium, its mission and its truth, and his equally outspoken and fiery opposition to the Primarch's new direction for his Legion. In turn, his Kinship—which often refers to itself as the Fourth Great Company—has become the refuge for the likeminded Astartes of the Abyssal Shades, and becoming larger than the other Kinships in the process. Still, they have yet to meet any mistreatment from Yoorlungkura, and Vinstan retains a position in the Primarch's Inner Circle.

The Inner Circle is renowned for its shouting matches.

Despite this, a strange loyalty exists between Kinship Master Horath and Yoorlungkura. Horath has yet to be purged by his Primarch—whether stripped of rank, executed outright or simply sent to the front lines of many battles until his luck runs out—as has befallen so many like-minded Astartes in other Legions. And Horath has not confessed against Yoorlungkura. A few words in the right ears, and soon the Emperor would know that Yoorlungkura has not abandoned his old beliefs, that the truculent Twenty-Fourth Primarch remains bitterly opposed to the Imperium. To confess is his duty to Emperor and Imperium. Yet Horath says nothing. Perhaps he still hopes that his gene-father can be brought around to the right way of thinking, if only he can find the right argument to convince him. Perhaps he is just too stubborn to give up. Perhaps he knows Yoorlungkura's mind will never change, but he loves him still—as loyal in his own way as those of the Abyssal Shades who actually agree with Yoorlungkura.

Damurriudan, Master of the Fifth Kinship—A quiet and taciturn fellow, Damurriudan has little care for anything outside of the study of warfare and opponents, and leads his Kinship on long-term missions away from the rest of the Legion against the more esoteric foes.

Kobingihur Dunam, the Sleeper Venerable—The first Abyssal Shade to ever undergo the Dreaming Sickness, Dunam has been entombed in a Dreadnought since the Conquest of Luna. Though he is rarely roused to fearsome combat, acolytes gather round Kobingihur's coffin-chassis to note down his often-prophetic sleep-talking.

Battle-cry:
A collection of songs, played over laud-hailer for the duration of the battle.

Legionary History:
—The Unification Wars

Recruiting mostly from the disparate rad-nomads of the Southern Wastes, a hardy and ingenious people, the XXIV were the subtle blade to the crushing hammer of the other Legions. Deployed far earlier than their Legion number would suggest for unknown reasons, the Abyssal Shades gained their name from the eerie war fought in the chasm-fortress of Mariana.

—Cleansing of the Oort Cloud

Abyssal Shade infiltration teams penetrated the corsairs and xenos pirates that dominated the Sol system's Oort Cloud during the Solar War. Their unorthodox tactics and knowledge base allowed them to eliminate the threat with minimal casualties.

—Subjugation of the Forge World Ynklyne

A key Forge World that refused to submit to Imperial or Martian remit, the Abyssal Shades were tasked with bringing Ynklyne into the fold with minimal damage to its infrastructure. A significant campaign of blackmail and highly specific sabotage leading to the fermentation of a popular revolt achieved all mission goals.

—WAAAAGH! Snakebite

The first major campaign undertaken by the newly reunited Abyssal Shades, this bloody war against the Orkish menace managed to make the Primarch somewhat more committed to the Imperial cause, having seen now the threat posed by the Greenskins. Legion tactics focused primarily on assassinations of high-ranking Ork Warbosses within the WAAAAGH!, culminating with Yoorlungkura running through Great Big Snakeboss Snakebite Snake-Eater himself.

—The Conquest of Ritu-Mar-Dellan

A heavily fortified world that resisted all incursion but preliminary auspex sweeps. Yoorlungkura identified a plant from another planet that had small, hardy seeds, and would be liable to grow rapidly in Ritu-Mar-Dellan's predominant climate and chemical composition for building materials. Delivering megatonnes of these seeds into the planet's atmosphere through extreme-range dispersal pods, the planet's infrastructure is rapidly swamped by the invasive flora, rendering it easy to infiltrate and invade.

—The War Against the Vyzh

A naturally immortal, highly religious and impenetrably-armoured species, the Vyzh Dominion was a threatening foe that proved a severe obstacle to Imperial expansion. Yoorlungkura devised a method to sabotage their food supply planets with levo-amino acids, causing widespread vomiting and renal failure amongst their warrior caste across the battlefronts.