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 !

8. Index Astartes : Night Lords

I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.

Inspired by the Dornian Heresy, by Aurelius Rex.

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Index Astartes – Night Lords : Crusaders in the Shadows

For ten thousand years, the Lords of the Night have guarded the countless trillions of the Imperium's denizens from the darkness in all its forms. As their legendary Primarch once did on their homeworld of Nostramo, they now protect Mankind from the depredations of xenos and traitors, wielding the blade of justice in the darkest places. Across thousands of worlds, their name is spoken as an hopeful prayer by the innocent and as a fearful curse by the guilty. Terror cloaks them like a shroud, and within their hearts echoes the vengeful cry of sons forever seeking to avenge their martyred father, slain by treacherous hands in the flames of the greatest sin of all. With eyes that can pierce the veil of the future, they look into the abyss of Man's soul, and defy it with their every breath.

Origins

It is often said among Imperial scholars that the worlds on which the Primarchs landed when they were taken from their father by the machinations of Chaos shaped them. That the cultures of their homeworlds made them into the heroes and monsters they would later become, and through them alter the nature of the Legions that bear their genetic legacy. They point to Leman Russ, to the Lion, to Magnus and Angron as proof of their claim. Yet in no Primarch is that statement more true, and more false, than it is for Konrad Curze. The Eighth Primarch was shaped by his homeworld, but he also shaped it in turn, making it something entirely different from what it had been when he arrived.

Deep into the Ultima Segmentum, on the edge of the Ghoul Stars, Nostramo was a world plunged in perpetual darkness, its weak sun constantly eclipsed by the moon Tenebor and its air filled with the pollution of its heavy industry. The only wealth on the planet came from the mining of the world's priceless adamantium core, and its trading with the handful of other worlds that could be reached in the tempestuous conditions of the Long Night. The population was ruled over by noble houses and crime lords, with little difference between the two. The people of Nostramo lived in constant fear, and the gang wars between factions left many families torn apart as high-spire born lordlings demanded that their minions go kill each other over petty insults. Crime was at such a high level than only the prodigious wealth brought by the adamantium prevented society's total collapse. Murder and suicide were the leading causes of death, even though on a world with such careless industry, it should have been lung disease or work accidents.

The Old Night had not been kind to Nostramo. But, as the Warp Storms that had kept the galaxy in the dark for centuries were cleared by the cataclysmic formation of the Eye of Terror and the birth of the Dark God Slaanesh, hope came to the world in the form of a falling star. The tale of Konrad Curze's life was written by his own hands, and though he met his tragic fate before completing it, it is still available to the lords and ladies of the Imperium. According to Curze's recollections and research, the gestation pod of the Eighth Primarch crashed through layer upon layer of construction and rock and deep enough to almost reach the adamantium core. From the wreckage emerged a child, pale of skin and dark of hair, his body laced with muscles and thinned by hunger. Alone, with only a sharp piece of his lifepod as equipment, the child climbed up the hole his arrival had made in the surface of the world.

He emerged from the darkness of the depths and into the new, more insidious darkness of Nostramo Quintus, the greatest city of Nostramo – by size and wealth, not by prestige or advancement. Feeling instinctively that he could trust none of the humans he saw, the boy hid in the shadows, stealing clothing for his ever-growing frame with ease, hunting the vermin of the city to feed his gnawing hunger. For several days, he remained hidden, watching the existence of the humans around him and listening to the myriad sounds of their lives. Then, from a abandoned street not far from where he stood, he heard the scream of a woman. Something within him reacted to the sound, and he ran in the direction of the call for help before realizing that his body was moving.

There was no reason to the crime which had caused the scream, only maddened greed inflamed by the touch of drugs and lifetimes of unpunished sin. The woman didn't carry any wealth, nor was she especially beautiful. Through generations of exploitation and violent deaths, the Nostramans had learned that screaming for help wouldn't save them, and only make their aggressors more violent. No one would come. No one cared. Why it is that the woman who was being attacked that fateful night cried out, none but her shade know. But her call would not only save her life, but change her entire world.

The boy saw a woman and the three men who were attacking her. They were taller than he was, and while he carried only the shard of his lifepod as a weapon, they were armed with knifes and guns. Yet he didn't hesitate, and jumped at them with a strength and speed that belied his infant figure. In mere seconds, he butchered them, tearing them apart with his crude blade, screaming in an anger whose origin he couldn't understand. Yet despite his considerable strength and speed and his instincts, sharp beyond imagination, he was still inexperienced in such brutal brawls. A lucky knife plunged in his guts, cutting into his guts and leaving a scar that would remain on the boy's belly under his dying day.

With his opponents dead, the boy fell to the ground, groaning from the pain of his wound. He felt, without knowing why, that the tear in his skin and flesh should have already healed, but he was hungry from the brief battle and an existence that, so far, had barely kept him on the edge of starvation. He was too hungry for his superhuman biology to heal him, instead only clotting the wound and preventing him from bleeding to death. And then, he was saved in turn by the one he had saved.

The woman didn't know who or what this strange child was, who could kill grown, armed men without apparent difficulty. But she knew that the boy was in pain, and she remembered how she had lost her own three sons to the gang wars that tore Nostramo's population apart. Whoever this boy was, she would not leave him to die. She brought him to her home, a small and dirty hab-cell in the great towers where Nostramo Quintus' lowest citizens were herded by their cruel overlords. She laid down the unconscious boy, fed him what little food she had, and to her amazement, the wound that she had feared would infect and claim his life healed cleanly in less than a day, leaving barely a scar.

The woman's name was Theresa Vaqu'iol, and when the boy awoke from his feverish dreams of death and destruction, she was at his side. For a few days, he remained in her care, learning the art of speech and the fact that there were humans who wouldn't harm him on sight. In the years that followed, the boy (who would soon grow to surpass the height of any man on the planet) would often return to her, bringing her gifts and seeking the soothing comfort of her presence. He never warned her of his visits, only appearing in her home without her never knowing how he had entered it. This was so that she would remain safe – for the boy would make many enemies.

After leaving the refuge of Theresa's home, the boy had seen the city as what it was for the first time : a cesspit of corruption and depravity, where the strong mercilessly tormented the weak, offering them in return their dubious protection against other overlords who were neither better nor worse than them. Innocent lives were either crushed in the mud or contaminated by the taint of evil. With his eyes opened to the darkness that he had thought was the natural order – after all, he had never known anything else – the young Primarch decided to change it.

He began modestly at first, attacking those who committed crimes against their fellow humans when he saw them. Murderers and rapists were found massacred in the same streets where they had used to perform their gruesome deeds, and rumors began to spread of a tall and pale figure who brought judgment to the sinners with hatred in its eyes. Soon, the people of Nostramo Quintus gave a name to this mysterious entity : Night Haunter.

Growing in strength, size and intellect, Night Haunter studied the corrupt society of Nostramo, both through his own eyes and ears and by speaking at length with Theresa. The woman was the only one who knew what the rumors were referring to, and she was also the only one to know the man behind the monster of myth. When Night Haunter spoke of his plans to hunt and kill the ones who led the criminals rather than the criminals themselves, she warned him of the danger he would put himself into, and when the nightmares began to torment him, she was the only one he told of them.

The war of Night Haunter continued. Entire gangs were wiped out, others dissolved after their leader's gruesome demise. With the corpses of criminals found hanging from their lairs' walls, horribly mutilated, the people of Nostramo Quintus watched as less and less crimes were committed in their city. Lowly thugs fled the hive in droves, while their high-spires masters called for the head of Night Haunter. Vast hunts were organized, but those who were sent either returned empty-handed or never returned at all. Immense sums were offered for information on the mysterious vigilante, but only one soul knew anything about him, and she would never betray him. When the lower districts of the city were entirely cleared of crime, the attention of Night Haunter turned to the spires where the greatest sinners hid from his judgment. No longer daring to go to where their inferiors lived in order to sate their depraved lusts, the so-called nobles hid in their fortresses, guarded by armies of armed men. Night Haunter knew that even for one such as he, punishing them would be a challenge. He planned for several days, observing the spires from afar, until he knew what to do. On a night when Tenebor was full in Nostramo's cloud-choked skies, he acted.

Whatever the plan of the Primarch was, he never got the chance to put it in action. At the same time he infiltrated Nostramo Quintus' highest strata, the planet's heavens suddenly filled with spaceships of a design none on the planet had ever seen before. Today, we know them to have been of Eldar origin, and surviving depictions of the xenos indicated that they came from the Craftworld Ulthwe, one of the giant ships in which the last Eldar live since the destruction of their empire.

The Eldar descended upon Nostramo Quintus aboard hundred of crafts. Thousands of them disembarked in the spires, and began to slaughter all those they crossed. With the typical arrogance of their kind, they never explained why they had come to Nostramo, instead killing all who were in their way as they sought the one they had come to kill. Night Haunter, enraged at their reckless killing, faced them head-on, rallying to him the shattered private armies of the city's nobles – who, by then, were already fleeing the city, only to be shot down by Eldar artillery in order to ensure their quarry didn't escape. For several days, the two armies fought in the noble district of Nostramo Quintus, reducing it to rubble. Finally, Night Haunter received word of an alien leader, who called for the lord of the night to meet him. Despite knowing that it was most likely a trap, the Primarch accepted the offered meeting, seeing it as his chance to stop the killings. He would have gone alone, but for Theresa, who, despite being an old woman by then, refused to let him go alone. She feared that the alien would attempt to manipulate his mind, and believed that with her present, they could avoid such traps.

Silence reigned in the small chamber. A demigod stood before the incarnation of a dying species' divinities, while an old woman watched from her chair. The Phoenix King had finished his explanation. He had told the demigod of why he and his kindred had come, of the nightmarish future they had foreseen, of the monster the demigod was destined to become. The demigod had not questioned this future, for it was the same he saw every time he closed his eyes.

'Do it, then,' said Night Haunter, kneeling before the one who would be his executioner. 'If only my death can prevent these visions from coming to pass, then I shall welcome it.'

Without any more words, the Phoenix King raised his long blade, and, with a grace that no human could ever hope to match, struck at the demigod's chest, seeking to pierce his twin hearts at once and kill him as painlessly as it was possible for one such as he to die.

But the blow didn't connect. Instead, it cut through the old flesh of Theresa's own body. Somehow, the crone had managed to move fast enough to intercept the Eldar blade. It should have been impossible, but as the Phoenix King – a being that had fought in countless battles for his people, and would fight in countless more – looked into her eyes, he saw the unyielding strength of a mother whose child is in danger.

The old woman fell, and was caught by the arms of Night Haunter before she could hit the ground. Completely ignoring the xenos in front of him, the Primarch looked at her face with eyes filled with absolute grief. The Eldar stayed immobile, utterly stunned by the crone's actions. The seers of Ultwhe hadn't foreseen this.

Theresa lifted a trembling hand, and caressed the pale face of the one who had saved her life all these years ago. A weak smile formed on her lips, and she forced a few last words to leave her throat. No human hearing could have perceived them, but both her killer and her adopted son heard them perfectly :

'You are not a monster.'

Night Haunter closed his eyes, tears flowing down his face for the first time in his bloody existence. In his mind, he felt the paths of the future begin to blur. His fate, that he had believed sealed from the moment of his arrival on this dark world, was no longer fixed. The two facets of him, that had fought each other for dominance over all these years, no longer knew which one was destined to emerge victor. The coin of his fate was spinning once more. Conflicting impulses raged across his brain, each sending new visions of possible futures into his mind. To intimidate, or to protect. To rule, or to cow. To burn, or to excise …

The King of the Night opened them, staring at the killer of innocents before him with a cold, righteous fury. Far above the two godlings, the Seers of Ulthwe felt the shifting of fate, and heard the screams of the Dark Gods as their schemes were undone.

None know what happened at the meeting, except that Theresa died to the Eldar's blade, and that the killer perished soon after, in a battle that turned an entire district into ruins, described by the few brave enough to approach it as utterly silent safe from the sounds of destruction – no screams or challenge, no howl of rage or plea for mercy. Without any explanation, the Eldar then suddenly retreated, abandoning the planet and returning to their ships. It was wildly believed that it was the fear of Night Haunter that had caused them to do so, and the people of Nostramo acclaimed their savior. Having fought at his side for the first time instead of fearing his approach, they were finally capable of embracing him and the changes he had made to their society. They gave him a new title : King of the Night, the Savior of Nostramo. With the crime-lords slain by his hands and the corrupt nobility wiped out by the Eldar Incursion, there was no one left to rule the city, and the King of the Night rose to the position with no opposition. With no need to remain in the shadows, the Primarch quickly turned the city into a haven of progress and security. In time, the army he had gathered around him during the Eldar Incursion helped him force the other hives of Nostramo to join his kingdom. One by one they fell, with the King of the Night striking ahead of his troops to remove the leaders of the local criminal hierarchy before his Night Guard occupied the hive, often with the help of the very citizens of the city they were invading.

Ruling from his castle, built upon the ruins of Nostramo Quintus' noble district the King of the Night brought a new age of peace and prosperity to his people. Several decades passed thusly, until the Great Crusade reached Nostramo, and the Emperor came to His lost son's world. The King of the Night had foreseen the coming of the Emperor, and ordered Nostramo's orbital defenses, installed in the wake of the Eldar attack, to not engage the fleet. Not that they would have tried : the Master of Mankind came to Nostramo at the head of a thousand ships, each of them superior by far to the planet's technology.

The perpetual darkness covering Nostramo burst apart in a pillar of light as the fleet's mere presence in orbit disturbed the weather patterns of the world. Men, women and children cried in anguish as the light bit into their sensible eyes, and many of them were blinded by the direct sunlight of their planet's weak sun. In the years to come, though he would be far from Nostramo, the King of the Night would ensure that these poor souls were cared for accordingly.

The Imperial delegation, recorded in Nos archives as the Delegation of Light, was a procession of thousands of transhuman warriors, including many of the Emperor's own Custodians. They marched in the streets of Nostramo Quintus, crossing the city toward the castle where the planet's unchallenged master waited for them. The Emperor descended upon Nostramo with no less than four Primarchs accompanying him :Rogal Dorn, Lorgar Aurelian, Fulgrim the Phoenician and Ferrus Manus. Each of them greeted their newfound brother, and then their father did the same.

One by one, they told him their names, these beings that claimed to be his brothers. When the one in yellow armor and white hair told him he was called Rogal Dorn, the King of the Night saw a glimpse of a towering giant, howling his fury at blood-tainted skies on a world of eternal war, before the image vanished and didn't return. When Lorgar introduced himself, the image turned into the scholar-looking man fighting against creatures of nightmares amidst fires and storms. When Ferrus Manus stated his name, he witnessed rot spreading through his form, claiming him as its eternal host. And when Fulgrim spoke, it was hard for the King to hold back his tears as the perfect form of the warrior before him broken and abused in the dark holds of a vessel of the damned. He didn't answer to any of them, and they stepped back, letting their leader advance.

He fell to his knees before the blinding light, trembling hands clawing at his face. In the depths of his subconscious mind, the darkness that he had kept locked away since the coming of the Eldars was burning, hurting him even as it dissolved into nothingness. Images of war and chaos flashed in his mind, and he saw the endless battles that the being before him would cause in the future, the trillions who would die in the name of the one who had come to Nostramo with a fleet and an army, and …

The hand of the Emperor touched His son's forehead, and the visions were gone. A gentle warmth filled the Primarch's body, banishing the pain.

'Konrad Curze, be at peace, for I have arrived and I intend to take you home.'

And then, to the surprise of all present, the King of the Night rose to his feet and embraced his father, laughing with delight, the sound rich and true, and one that none present had ever heard.

The Great Crusade

'We are the Lords of the Night. That name refers to more than our eyes, which can see into the deepest darkness, or to our Legion's homeworld, which will never know the true touch of a sun. It speaks of our nature, of our place in the Imperium. It is our task, our duty to uphold the nobility that has endured through the darkness that has shrouded the galaxy for the last centuries. The Age of Strife is over : this is the age of the Great Crusade, of the Imperial Truth, of the Pax Imperialis. Each and everyone of you is a blade of justice, of protection and punishment alike. We all know the darkness that lives within all human souls, and it is even more dangerous to the Imperium's ideals than the countless horrors that lurk within the stars. By our deeds and our words, we shall keep this darkness caged within forevermore.'

Konrad Curze to his Legion, upon their first reunion on Terra

After being found on Nostramo, and leaving the leadership of the world to those his most trusted ministers, Konrad Curze – having finally received a true name from his father, rather than the titles given to him by lesser men – journeyed to Terra. There, he learned the art of warfare, and was reunited with the Legion that bore his genetic legacy. Prior to the finding of its Primarch, the Eighth Legion had been used to punish those who had joined the Imperium, yet continued the forbidden practices of the Age of Strife. On Terra and across the galaxy, the Legionaries that bore Curze's gene-seed had brought judgment to dozens of cultures that had broken the Imperial Law. Gene-lords and psychic tyrants, overlords who ruled through chemical-induced ecstasy and obedience – all these and more were brought low by the claws of the Eighth, often at the Emperor's own command. The Primarch learned of the deeds of his sons, and he found them good and deserving of praise, yet also feared what the path of pure retribution would inflict upon the soul of his Legion in the long term. In a speech whose records are still kept reverently by the Eighth Legion, the King of the Night proclaimed their mission to be one of protection as well as punishment, and renamed the Legion into the Night Lords. The Emperor smiled on this renaming, and gave His son His blessing before sending him into the stars at the head of his Legion.

With their new name and purpose, the warriors of the Eighth joined the Great Crusade in earnest – no longer a force of retribution but one of conquest. With a steady intake of new recruits from Nostramo, the Legion adapted quickly to its new place in the Emperor's grand plan. Entire systems were fred from the rule of alien overlords, while on others tyrants were brought low and their bloody ends broadcast for the oppressed population to watch along the evidence of the crimes for which they were being punished. Far more iterators tended to accompany their Expeditionary Fleets than the other Legions', and whenever they encountered a human culture apt to join the Imperium, they would not hesitate to spend years trying to reach a pacific and diplomatic end before grudgingly resorting to the immense military power at their disposal. This caused the progress of the Night Lords to be slower than most of their sister Legions, but the worlds they conquered were productive parts of the Imperium in record time after their compliance, their citizens either proud to be part of such a great endeavor or glad that the incarnate nightmares of shadow were gone. In response to several complaints about this perceived slowness, the Emperor declared that Konrad had His whole support, and Horus added that it was better for the Imperium that its worlds were loyal than numerous.

Where before their name had been a whisper in the dark spoken only by fearful serfs, it became a symbol of hope as well – an example of a future where the Astartes were defenders of Mankind. Each world that was added to the Imperium by Expeditionary Fleets led by elements of the Eighth added to the growing rumor that Konrad Curze had inherited all of his father's concern and empathy for Mankind. The scholars who accompanied them and learned the heart of the Eighth Legion and the history of its Primarch soon came to give thanks to the Emperor that He had also granted Curze the moral strength to resist the corruption of Nostramo, for such traits could have easily been twisted by the darkness he witnessed all around him in the first years of his life. Still, for all his perceived softness, Konrad Curze was still a Primarch – a lord of armies, and a destroyer of worlds. In several instances, when he came upon worlds utterly corrupt – those bearing the touch of the Ruinous Powers, though in these days the Legion didn't know what they were – the King of the Night ordered entire planets to be annihilated from orbit. Just as some people were beyond redemption and had to be executed in order to protect the rest, some cultures were too corrupt to be saved and had to be destroyed before they spread their venom across the galaxy. Only he had such authority, though, and when his sons discovered a world that they believed had to be purged, he would travel to them in order to deliver judgment. So the King of the Night spent most of the Great Crusade with dozens of different Expeditionary Fleets, escorted by his First Company, spreading his wisdom and beliefs to the entirety of his Legion instead of delivering it only to the elite forces that accompanied him.

'… and I saw fire descend from the skies, and dark giants the color of night came down with fury and blade. And they fought against the Spirit Lords and their soulless minions, bringing down the flames of justice and hope with them. The hosts of the Unborn gathered to face them, but they were broken by the mages of the giants, who cast lighting and fire unto them. They cast down the idols my ancestors had been forced to rise in the honor of the Spirit Lords, and freed my people from the cages of stone and iron and lies. Then came down their own king, his eyes filled with righteous wrath, and he fought and slew the Spirit King himself, sending his shade screaming back into the Void …'

Extract from The Testament of the Night, a text held as sacred by the Ecclesiarchy and written by one of the survivors of the fifth world to be conquered by the Eight-Hundred and Ninth Expeditionary Fleet, accompanied by Kadara 'the Bloodless', Captain of the 13th Company of the Night Lords

While Konrad was one of the Emperor's favored sons, his relations with his brothers were more disparate. He respected Horus immensely, and was close friend with Magnus and Fulgrim, who had been present on his reunion with their father. When Alpharius was finally found, near the end of the Great Crusade, he was the only Primarch besides Horus to admire their little brother's style of warfare. But several other Primarchs looked down on the tactcs he used with sneers, believing them to be the tools of a coward, not a true warrior. Among these, Guilliman and the Lion were the most prominent. But tactics were not the true point of discord between the King of the Night and some of his brothers – after all, they all had their own ways of waging war. It was on the treatment of humans that the most violent disagreements occurred.

After the Emperor had returned to Terra and made Horus His Warmaster, Konrad's influence in the growing Imperium began to increase. As one of the most ardent supporters of Horus' ascension, he spent much time alongside his brother, helping solidify his authority other the Great Crusade's disparate forces. Many Imperial forces called for the help of the Eighth Legion in resolving conflicts with human cultures that resisted compliance, be it through diplomacy or surgical assaults. The vision of the King of the Night – a population protected by transhuman warriors from the darkness, both outside and inside – appealed to these mortal commanders, and Horus too came to soften his military ways, seeking to use diplomacy more often. Through numerous campaigns alongside the Night Lords, he had been exposed to both their methods of war and their beliefs, and seen the advantages they held for the Imperium. This would eventually lead to his encounter with the Interex, and the discovery of the threat of Chaos by the First Primarch. However, not all Primarchs agreed with Curze's ideals, and as the Great Crusade continued in its Master's absence, rifts between Primarchs and Legions began to grow.

On the world of Kharataan, the Night Lords fought alongside the Salamanders, under the leadership of their respective Primarchs. Kharataan was a world populated by humans whose culture qualified for compliance to the Imperium without it needing to change its laws or beliefs, but the leaders of its great city-states refused the integration out of fear for their people – for the firsts to have reached them were the sons of Vulkan, and even the brief contact was enough for the humans to see the darkness within the Salamanders' heart. Konrad had heard of his brother's failure to add the world to the Imperium peacefully, and came to Kharataan expecting to help bring the population into the fold, knowing that his brother wasn't the most diplomatic soul. But when his ships emerged in the system, the planet was already at war, and he was forced to add his troops to the Imperial attack. With no time to study the foe or learn where to strike to behead Kharataan's leadership, the Night Lords were forced into conventional assaults at the side of the Salamanders. Even so, the cities quickly fell to the Legionaries advance. But every time a city was taken, Vulkan and his sons would butcher a fifth of the population, choosing randomly who would live and who would die in order to impress on the survivors that they had no influence over whether they lived or died.

Horrified, Curze tried to make his brother stop, but Vulkan was deaf to the King of the Night's pleas for restraint. Outnumbered by the Salamanders, the Night Lords couldn't oppose their brothers directly, but they retired their support from the invasion, leaving the system with promises that the Emperor would hear of this. Vulkan laughed at his brother's cowardice, and resumed his bloody invasion. However, when the Salamanders reached the last city of Kharataan and threw open its fortified doors, they found it empty. The Night Lords had spirited away several millions citizens, bringing them aboard their ships to other worlds where they would be safe from the Black Dragon. None but the Eighth know where these refugees were brought, but it is known that Night Lords aspirants are still picked from the descendants of Kharataan. The Salamanders' actions would be reported to the commanders of the Great Crusade, but the scale of the Great Crusade made answering such things difficult, and before any sanction could be issued, the events of Isstvan would make the Salamanders' deeds irrelevant.

While the Kharataan incident ended without the two Primarchs coming to blows, the same cannot be said for what happened in the Cheraut System. There, three Legions came to bring a confederation of worlds to heel : the Night Lords, the Emperor's Children and the Imperial Fists. Together, they broke the back of the Cheraut System's defenders in record time, in an admirable combination of each of the Legions' talents. Such a victory should have been remembered as a triumph of the Imperium, a display of unity that remembrancers should have immortalized in a hundred masterpieces. But that was not to be, for as Curze walked the streets of the last bastion to fall, after the remaining enemy leaders had sent their surrender, he found the Imperial Fists coldly executing prisoners. At first, the King of the Night believed it to be a mistake, that the Legionaries before him hadn't received word of the surrender. But that wasn't the case : the Imperial Fists were executing all those who had resisted the Imperium, in order to teach the survivors the price of disobedience and rebellion. Furious, Curze commanded the Legionaries to cease this instant, and they obeyed – though whether it was because Curze outranked them or because he could kill them all if they refused shall remain a mystery for the ages. The Savior of Nostramo confronted his brother on these executions.

'They fought us. They must die. It is as simple as that, Curze.'

'They fought us because we were at war ! But that is no longer the case. The war is over !Look around you, brother. Are any of them holding a weapon ? Is any one of them a threat to us ? Their commanders opposed us, yes. They rejected the Imperium, yes. I understand as much as you the necessity of bringing all of Mankind into the fold of our father's empire, Dorn, but if we butcher all those who do not wish to join us, then we are only giving them more reason to do so !'

'The war,' growled Dorn,' is never over. There are a million threats in this galaxy, and the war against them will never end. If we allow for any weakness into the Imperium's foundations, it will collapse under the endless pressure of a thousand xenos invasions !'

'And murdering those who are to be our subjects is not a weakness to you ?'

'It is your pandering that is a weakness, Curze ! These mortals must learn their place in the Imperium, or they will fight our dominion over them and refuse our command when the time come ! Your way may be the easiest way, the way that makes you feel like a hero, but it will bring nothing but ruin and death when the true threat comes and they are unprepared to face it!'

'You …'

Curze's words trailed on, unfinished. Dorn looked back at his brother, wondering what was happening, and had a fraction of a second to note the horrified expression on Curze's face before his brother jumped at him and started trying to kill him.

While the two brothers violently argued, Curze was seized by one of the visions that had plagued his childhood. He saw the man before him as he would one day be : a blood-soaked monster, howling in eternal rage and immortal hatred, butchering his own sons and laying low the works of the Emperor in a burning crusade. All reason forgotten, the King of the Night hurled himself at his brother and tried to kill him, inflicting heavy wounds upon Dorn before Fulgrim, who had watched the exchange from a distance, managed to tear his brother from Rogal's prone form. The Primarch of the Imperial Fists was evacuated by his men, and as soon as he had awoken from his wounds, Dorn ordered his fleet to leave Cheraut, severing all ties with the Night Lords. The two Legions wouldn't meet each other until years later, on the fields of Isstvan V.

On Cheraut, Fulgrim demanded that his brother explain his violent actions. Dorn's deeds may have been distateful, and his arguments flawed, but nothing the Phoenician had seen justified such an aggression – if anything, it was certain to make Dorn deaf to any attempt to change his ways. Konrad confessed what he had seen to his old friend : the visions, so much like those who had haunted him during his youth on Nostramo, before the coming of the Emperor and the healing touch of the Emperor's hands. He knew, in hindsight, that attacking Dorn had been a foolish move – even if he wanted to kill his brothers, that wouldn't have been how he would have done it had he been in full possession of his wits. But such had been the horror of what he had seen that he hadn't been able to hold himself back.

It is not known whether Fulgrim believed his brother or not. He had learned, through the Great Crusade, to trust Curze's prophetic visions, but what he described now went against everything the Phoenician believed in. Even if there were tensions between the Primarchs, divergent opinions and approaches on galactic matters, surely it wouldn't come to war like the King of the Night claimed. For several days, the two Primarchs conversed, while their men brought the Cheraut System to compliance and restored order across its worlds with a minimum of bloodshed. When they left and went on their separate ways, Fulgrim had sworn to his brother that they would speak again of these subjects when they next met. For now, he and his Legion were needed far way, called by Ferrus Manus to help in the subjugation of a human culture allied to xenos.

The Heresy

'When I was young, every time I closed my eyes I saw the galaxy burning. I could see the darkness extinguishing the light of hope, creating a future of endless wars and suffering. On fields of stone and dust, demigods waged war among themselves, while Humanity's kingdom crumbled to ruin around them. Daemons and angels they were, fighting a war that never should have been fought in the name of the greatest lie and the ultimate truth, and worlds burned in their wake. I never saw who won this war, though in truth I suspect neither side will if this future comes to pass.

These visions stopped when I was reunited with my father – when He placed His hand upon my head,and dissipated the last traces of Night Haunter clinging to existence in my mind. Even so, I never forgot them, and tried all I could to prevent them from ever becoming a reality. I spoke with those of my brothers I had seen fall into darkness, trying to divert their paths from these infernal realms where I had seen them become slave-kings to false gods. And for a time, I allowed myself to believe I had succeeded.

Now I dream of these things once more, knowing that the warriors I see are Astartes, and all that has changed is that the angels and the daemons have exchanged their places on the chessboard of fate.'

From the private writings of Primarch Konrad Curze, while en route to the Isstvan System

The news of the Isstvan Atrocity reached Curze soon after leaving Cheraut. Gulliman, Sanguinius, Ferrus Manus and Dorn had turned against the Emperor. While the name of the last traitor left a bitter taste in Konrad's mouth – so much could have been avoided had he succeeded in slaying his brother – it was the name of Manus that most filled him with alarm. What had become of Fulgrim, who had gone to help the one who was now revealed to be a traitor ? Horrible doubts and suspicions rose in his mind as he remembered some of the things he had seen on Nostramo, images of the Emperor's Children brought down into damnation by the lies of a Warp-born creature. He crushed these doubts, however, for he knew his brother. Fulgrim would never give in to corruption. If nothing else, he was too prideful to allow such a thing.

The orders from Horus were to gather all Loyalist Legions in range of Isstvan and annihilate the rebellion before it could spread. Yet Curze, despite his loyalty to the Warmaster, hesitated. His visions were returning, and with them the images of betrayal and slaughter. He knew not whether they were true or not, but the data that accompanied Horus' orders – warnings of the dark forces at work in the galaxy that had twisted Guilliman and his cohorts – made him choose to assume they were. While the other Legions that would fight at Isstvan were gathering their full strength, Konrad decided to go there only with his own elite forces, the Night Guard. On his way to the accursed system, he sent secret orders to the rest of his Legion, commanding them to prepare for the worst. His warnings were vague, but they did contain an hint that he may no longer be there to guide them, and that if, somehow, the traitors won the battle of Isstvan despite having only four Legion against the seven that had pledged to come, they were to be ready to fight for the Throne until their dying breath. The Circle of Shadows gathered at several occasions, in small numbers each time, and Curze spoke to his sons for what he knew, somehow, would be the last time. It is said that upon realizing it without knowing how, many Night Lords, warriors and killers all, wept. Sevatar, First Captain of the Night Lords, asked to follow his Primarch to Isstvan, but Curze refused. In a brutal argument caused by loyalty and worry, the Prince of Crows was chased out of Curze's presence, tasked with the impossible mission to lead the Legion if the worst was to happen, his gauntlets marked red forevermore as the sign of his fate – his death would happen at the Primarch's command. Until then, he was forbidden to die.

Upon arriving at Isstvan, Curze sought his brother Alpharius. They spoke aboard the youngest Primarch's battle-barge, but the contents of their exchange remain unknown. Most believe that the King of the Night shared his visions and worries with his brother, and demanded of him that he takes the same precautions against disaster that Curze himself had taken.

The other Legions arrived, and the assault on the traitors' positions was planned. Curze argued that, with his Legion present only in small numbers, it would be better for them to be part of the vanguard. The Night Lords struck first, attacking the traitors with unrivaled fury and quickly securing a landing point for the forces of Alpharius and Mortarion. Tales of Isstvan V are few, but those who speak of the Night Lords record their absolute fury in the front of such betrayal. Other Legions may have had difficulties accepting the truth of the Heresy, and the fact that they would fight their own kind. But the Night Lords felt no such compunction – only a righteous anger that would make the traitors pay dearly for their unthinkable crime.

Twice the King of the Night came blade to blade with one of his treacherous brothers. Ferrus and Curze fought each other amidst the pestilent sons of the Iron Hands' Primarch, Curze demanding his brother reveal what had happened to Fulgrim but getting no answer, until he saw that he couldn't kill his brother, such were the extent of his transformation. Then, at last, Curze faced Dorn. The Primarch of the Imperial Fists rejoiced at such a duel, for by killing Curze he believed that he could prove that he was right, and that not only was the way of the Eighth Legion wrong, it also made them weak. It was not to be so, however, for Dorn was almost slain once again by the blades of his brother, and only saved from death by the intervention of Sanguinius, one of the mightiest of the Primarchs. Facing two of his traitor brothers, even Curze knew that he was outmatched, and he withdrew from the engagement at the same moment that the second wave began to arrive. For a moment, he felt the future stand on the edge of a blade, not knowing whether his visions would reveal true or not.

But the visions had been right, and treachery was brought upon Isstvan V in the colors of four more Legions. When the second wave revealed itself at traitors, Curze would almost certainly have smiled at the reveal of Vulkan's betrayal had it not cost so many loyal lives. Enraged beyond anything he had ever known at the massacre taking place around him, the King of the Night tore a bloody path across the traitors lines, back to the transports, leading the ever-diminishing host of his brothers' Legions. The three of them – Konrad Curze, Alpharius, and Mortarion – are said to have fought side by side against the Traitor Legions, an unstoppable force of nature that called for the death of those who had broken their oaths to Terra. When the loyalist host reached the other side of the traitors' lines, Curze ordered his brothers and his men to go while he held the counter-attack back. Had any other warrior – or even any other Primarch – made that demand, it would have been foolish and suicidal. But Konrad Curze was the King of the Night. He was the punishment of sinners and the avenging blade in the darkness. He was fear incarnate. And so, while Mortarion and Alpharius commanded their men to run for the gunships, their hearts filled with sorrow, the Savior of Nostramo revealed the full measure of his terrible might.

Hundreds of traitors died, torn apart by the claws of an unleashed Primarch, while their own bolts and blades utterly failed to reach him. Darkness coalesced around him as he released his psychic potential, manifesting the darkest nightmares of the oath-breakers in images of judgment and failure. He was everywhere at once, appearing from the shadows and disappearing again, leaving only a trail of defigured corpses in his wake. Only when Vulkan came to face him did the King of the Night stand his ground, and the fight between these two forced the rest of the Traitor Legions to step back, let they be caught in between these two raging gods and annihilated.

The Dragon rose again to his feet, his wounds fuming as he did so. That was the fifteenth time he had died and risen again. Konrad's left claw, Mercy, had broken in his opponent's chest this time, leaving five long talons straight into the other Primarch's primary heart, and yet Vulkan was rising as if it was nothing. This didn't surprise the King of the Night, though. He had known that he couldn't kill Vulkan – he had always known. That was the reason he hadn't tried to kill him at Khartaan as he had Dorn at Cheraut, even though the Black Dragon's deeds were arguably worse.

'Why won't you stay dead, brother ?' he lamented, though in truth he already knew the answer. Like all of them, Vulkan had inherited something from their father. 'Why won't you just accept your own death ?'

Vulkan's answer took the form of a blow from Dawnbringer, the weapon finally reaching the exhausted King of the Night and throwing him on the ground. Konrad tried to stand, but his muscles were burning. Primarch was never made to fight Primarch, and his endurance, endless in almost any other situation, was running out. Behind him, he could hear the sound of the last Thunderhawks and Stormbirds carrying his brothers and their men to the dubious safety of their fleets. A smile, pale, weak and utterly mirthless, showed on his face as the Black Dragon came to stand over him, his hammer held in both hands.

'You should join us, Curze,' declared Vulkan, his smile plastered on his face. 'There is no future in serving our father. He has lied to you just like He lied to us all ! Your Legion would find its true place in the order of things when Guilliman sits on the Throne and we are free to do as we please in this galaxy !'

'I am loyal to our father,' spat Curze in his brother's face. The acidic spit hissed as it tried to eat into Vulkans' back skin, but the face of the traitor healed faster than the acid could damage it. 'I will never betray Him.'

'Then die, fool. The galaxy will not mourn the passing of one such as you. Only the living matter, brother, and I am immortal !'

'Better to die a martyr than to live a monster,' answered Konrad Curze, moments before the hammer came down and, at long last, darkness and silence fell.

Seeing their father fallen, the Night Guards, who despite their father's orders had refused to leave with the remnants of the Death Guard and the Alpha Legion, rushed the Black Dragon, and managed to push him back long enough for them to reclaim their father's corpse and leave the cursed world with it. When they reached their ships in orbit, they didn't leave for Terra with the rest of the survivors led by Mortarion, but instead journeyed back to Nostramo, in order to lay their Primarch to rest. Before separating from the fleet of the Death Lord, however, they assured him that the Night Lords wouldn't be idle in this new Age of Darkness. A message had been sent to the rest of the Legion, warning them of the treachery that had occurred. Curze's heir, First Captain Sevatar, had already taken the reins of the Eighth. If the traitors thought they had broken the Night Lords, they would soon pay for that mistake.

Jago Sevatarion, the Prince of Crows

More commonly known as Sevatar, the Captain of the First Company of the Night Lords was one of the greatest warriors of the Legiones Astartes. Born of Nostramo, Sevatar was quickly identified by the planet's regime as a prodigy, and selected for induction in the Legion. Though his mental balance left to be desired as a member of human society, he adapted extremely well to life among the Night Lords, becoming one of the more popular figures in a Legion that generally cared little for such things. His skill with a blade was without equal in his Legion and with few in the others. Unlike many other duellists of reknown, he cared nothing for his personal honor, using every dirty trick he knew in order to win. It was him who ended the winning streak of Sigismund of the Imperial Fists, by headbutting the other First Captain as their duel reached its thirtieth hour. Though the onlookers of the Seventh Legion decried the dishonorable blow, Sigismund himself appeared to take it with humor, seeing the duel as a lesson for him – after all, few of the opponents he would face in the Great Crusade would fight with any honor. While the Seventh Legion considered that duel a tie, the Night Lords, when they spoke of it without laughing, clearly thought Sevatar had won.

As the First Captain, Sevatar escorted his Primarch during the Great Crusade, and saw more of him than any other Night Lord. This closeness is why he was made heir before Isstvan, and why he, more than anyone else save perhaps the demigod's long dead foster mother, knew his father's heart. As a lord of the Great Crusade, he was a diplomat as well as a warlord, and though he lacked some of the empathy his father possessed he still proved to be a very efficient threat in discussions. Sevater would speak of what he and his men would do to the other party if they refused the offer of compliance, his tone utterly serious and his lips curled into a parody of a smile, and then Curze would intervene and appear all the more magnanimous. It is unknown whether the First Captain was playing a role or simply stating the truth – he proved several times that he wouldn't hesitate to make his threats a reality.

On the battlefield, he fought as the commander of the Atramentar, the Eighth Legion's Terminator elite. With his power spear, he was almost impossible to touch, leading some to claim that he had latent psychic powers, even if he was never part of the Night Lords' Librarius. Centuries after the end of the Heresy, Sevatar vanished during a battle opposing his Legion to a group of Dark Angels who had escaped the Eye of Terror. The Legion Master boarded one of the traitors' ships with his men, and hadn't left it by the time it was pulled back into the Warp by the Sorcerers on board. His ultimate fate remains unknown.

After their triumph at Isstvan, the Traitor Legions began their advance on Terra. Almost at once, their mighty host shattered ,with the Dark Angels leaving to bring the Space Wolves on the traitors' side, and most of the other Traitor Legions choosing to pursue their own goals over Guilliman's great plans. Watching this separation from the shadows, the Night Lords seized the opportunity. Linking with cells of the Alpha Legion and other loyalist elements, they began a long campaign of harassment, attacking supply lines and ambushing the traitors at every turn. On the worlds where the traitors made planetfall to force them to join them or grind them to dust, the sons of Nostramo led the resistance with guerrilla tactics and carefully planned assassinations. Entire regiments of the Imperial Army that had cast their lot with Guilliman vanished from the stars during what came to be known as the Shadow Wars, wiped out of existence by disturbingly small numbers of Night Lords. Eventually, the White Scars were tasked by the Arch-Traitor to destroy the Eighth and Twentieth Legions' elements that were hindering his advance. For years, the Fifth Legion hunted their betrayed brethren, taking great losses for each dubious victory they claimed. The tales of the Shadow Wars are depicted in great war museums and temples on Nostramo, both in stasis-preserved scrolls and in great frescoes representing the most momentous battles. There are even a few depictions of Alpha Legionaries, despite the Twentieth's tendencies for erasing all traces of its actions. Whether the sons of Alpharius allowed the Night Lords to keep them out of personal pride or a sense of brotherhood, none outside of this mysterious gene-line know.

Talos Valcoran, the Soul Hunter

One of the Prophets of the Eighth Legion, Talos Valcoran was an Apothecary in the Tenth Company of the Night Lords during the Heresy. Like all of those few souls who shared their Primarch's gift without being psykers, he was part of the Circle of Shadows, the group of favorites that Konrad Curze regularly met, regardless of ranks or prestige. It was during his last meeting with his Primarch that he was bestowed the title he would bear into legend. As the fleet of the Night Lords advanced toward Isstvan Curze summoned his chosen sons to him, sharing his wisdom with them one last time before going to meet his doom. According to the Primarch, Talos would defy him, refusing to obey his final order and becoming a spirit of vengeance who would hunt down the traitor Legions, abandonning his task of protection to embrace the path of punishment.

Talos, like most of Curze's chosen, was ordered away from Isstvan, to take part in the Shadow Wars if the nightmares of the Primarch proved to be reality. But he disobeyed, and hid aboard the Nightfall, the Legion's flagship. Without his squadmates, he fought on Isstvan, desperately trying to avoid his father's death – that he, too, had seen in his visions. When he saw Curze choose to remain behind in order to give his sons and brothers a chance to escape, he fought alongside his guards, refusing to retreat. When the King of the Night fell, it was he who rallied the demoralized Night Lords and led them into a desperate assault to reclaim their father's body.

After the return to Nostramo and the interment of their Primarch, the rest of the Isstvan survivors elected to remain and protect the tomb of their lord. Talos, however, burned with the desire for vengeance, and rejoined his Company to take part in the Shadow Wars. His visions helped lead the Tenth to many victories against Guilliman's forces, and at the Siege of Terra, he fought against the Blood Angels at the side of his captain Malcharion. Guided by his visions, the warriors at his side would seek out specific individuals on the other side, champions and commanders whose evil deeds resonated through time itself.

Talos Valcoran was thought dead alongside his squad in the War of the Dragon, during the Scouring, but his body was never recovered, and tales are told among the Legionaries of the Eighth and of these Legions who fought at their side during that conflict : tales that he survived, and escaped to hunt down the traitors for all eternity. To this day, there are reports coming from worlds under attack by the Traitor Legions of a warrior in midnight clad, with the ghosts of his lost brothers fighting at his side as he hunts down those treacherous souls who have avoided justice for so long. Whether there is any truth to these stories or if they are no more than wishful thinking from a Legion that has lost much, no one amongst the Inquisition know – despite significant efforts to locate pict-records of the Soul Hunter's deeds.

The Thramas Crusade

Guilliman believed the entirety of Curze's Legion was at work to prevent him from reaching Terra, but he was wrong : only a part of the Night Lords were taking part in the Shadow Wars. The rest were fighting in the Thramas Crusade in the Ultima Segmentum's corresponding Sector, waging war against the forces of the Dark Angels that were taking refuge in the fortresses their Legion had built there in secret while their Primarch went on his path to daemonic ascension. There, under the command of Legion Master Sevatar,a tenth of the Night Lords fought on more than a hundred worlds. The traitors of the First Legion had brought many hereteks from conquered worlds to their hidden domain during the Great Crusade, faking their deaths in the same way they had faked their reports of the Ghoul Stars' exploration, describing entire systems as inhospitable to life so that they may use them for themselves. With the blessing of the Chaos God Tzeentch, these mad geniuses were recreating the horrors of the Old Night. With the help of the Dark Angels' Sorcerers, they were creating Daemon Engines, summoning Neverborn and binding them into the frames of great warmachines. Others were using millions of human prisoners as material for genetic experiment, while many dissected the corpses of loyalist Astartes taken from Isstvan V, seeking to pierce the secrets of the Emperor's gene-craft.

The Dark Angels forces were under the command of Captain Alajos of the Ninth Order, the same Traitor Marine who allegedly gave first the order to open fire on the loyalists at Isstvan V. Alajos' forces vastly outnumbered the Night Lords fleet in Astartes alone, and he had countless other armies under his command, though many had been created in the Thramasian Pits and lacked both testing and battle experience. At the beginning of the Thramas Crusade, the Night Lords had the advantage of surprise : the Dark Angels believed them to be broken since their Primarch's death, scattered across the galaxy and uselessly wasting their lives in attempt at revenge. It was only after the loss of several worlds that Alajos finally learned of the Eighth Legion's presence and that the Crusade truly began in earnest. The Dark Angels hunted the Night Lords, matching their sorcery against the Librarians' visions and their blasphemous daemon-technology against the sons of Nostramo's stealth ships. Sevatar directed the whole operation with the same tactical insight he had shown during the Great Crusade, adapting his battlefield wisdom to the greater conflict with terrifying ease. Leading from the front on every battle he took part in, the First Captain of the Eighth Legion was a nightmare manifested upon reality, his spear forever thirsting for traitor blood.

Nostramo, the Night Lords' homeworld, was near this region of space. Yet not once did the world see battle during the entirety of the Thramas Crusade. Whether the Dark Angels' commander hesitated in committing to an assault on another Legion's homeworld without his Primarch's presence, or some other motive was behind the lack of action from the elusive First Legion, none but their surviving kin in the Eye may know for certain. It may be that the Dark Angels saw that the Night Lords weren't using Nostramo as their headquarters, refusing to make such an obvious move. Indeed, only the survivors of Isstvan V, the bloody remnants of the once-great Night Guard, ,keeping watch over their father's body, and the warriors permanently assigned to the defense of the world stood on Nostramo. Instead, Sevatar had installed his center of operation on a world that had been named Tsagualsa when it had been discovered by the Eighth Legion. Without any resource worth colonization and access to the world difficult through the Warp's tumultuous tide, the Night Lords had chosen to hide the existence of that world, turning it into one of their several bases of operations dissimulated across the galaxy. The Dark Angels learned quickly that they hadn't been the only ones taking precaution during the Great Crusade, and sought to find the location of Tsagualsa. Captured Night Lords were given over the Interrogator-Chaplains in order to extract the information from them, but Sevatar had been wise to their methods. Only his fleet's Navigators knew the location of the planet, the rest of the Legion willingly kept in the dark to prevent such leaks. Those captured and tortured laughed in the face of their captors, more than one of them breaking free of his cell between seances and wreaking havoc behind the Dark Angels' lines.

The Thramas Crusade lasted for most of the Roboutian Heresy. By the end, the Thramasian Pits that the Dark Angels had spent decades to build and had hoped would provide them with the weapons to win the war were in ruins, their techno-overlords slain and their foul laboratories aflame. Only a handful of worlds remained, too deep within the Dark Angels' domain to reach. It was then that Alajos learned that his father had completed his quest, and was now en route to Caliban. Once the Lion's business on his homeworld was concluded, he would come to the Ghoul Stars and expect to find the army Alajos had been tasked to prepare. Panic filled the Dark Angel, for his forces were actually far lesser than they had been when his father had left. Fearing the wrath of the first Daemon Primarch, Alajos tried one last desperate gambit to at last crush the Night Lords and win the Thramas Crusade, hoping to thus earn his father's forgiveness even if he had failed in his given objective.

Alajos used an heretical Warp-engine that housed a powerful daemon of Tzeentch within its core systems to trace the paths of Night Lords ships in the Warp and locate their base of operation. The records of the Eighth state that the Dark Angel had to sell his soul to whatever creature was bound to the device in order to obtain the information – though how the Night Lords learned that is not mentioned anywhere in the archives. Alajos gathered his whole fleet, and launched a massive assault on Tsagualsa. Taking the Night Lords by surprise and with overwhelming firepower on his side, the Dark Angel commander was able to break the back of the Eighth Legion forces. Descending on the planet itself at the head of a vast armada, the Captain reached Sevatar himself and the two of them fought at the heart of the Night Lords citadel. In the end, after his men had left the surface, Sevatar activated his spear's teleportation beacon and was teleported back aboard his fleet, before ordering a full retreat, leaving Alajos screaming in failure while the mines deep within the fortress detonated and brought the whole structure down on the invaders.

Fel Zharost, the Chief Librarian of the Legion, had been right, mused Sevatar as he dodged yet another lumsy strike from Alajos. He was growing stronger. The Dark Angel commander was a good warrior, and showed evidence of numerous 'blessings' from his unholy patron, and yet Sevatar was quicker and stronger than him. They had been going at it for more than five minutes now, according to the chronometer at the edge of his vision that advanced so slowly, and he hadn't taken a single wound yet. In fact, it was almost a boring fight, despite the novelty of fighting someone in slow-motion. But duty was duty, and by holding the full focus of the enemy commander on him here, deep in the fortress, Sevatar was preventing him from directing the pursuit of his fleet. Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, a single rune on his visual display changed colors – the sign that his plan of evacuation had been executed. Without wasting any more time, he disarmed Alajos in single blow, before impaling the Dark Angel through the chest with his chainspear. The traitor fell on his back, stinking blood spilling from his wound, but he wasn't dead yet. In fact, already the wound was starting to close, and if Sevatar was any judge, all it would take would be a few augmetic vertebrae and the traitor would be as good as new. That was, of course, if he lived long enough.

The Dark Angel looked up at him, and even though they were both wearing helmets Sevatar could feel the hatred radiating from his foe as he waited for the blow that would end his life. Sevatar lifted his spear, ready to deliver it, when a sudden thought occurred to him. He stopped, and lowered his weapon, activating instead the teleport beacon that would bring him back aboard the Nightfall. As whisps of ozone gathered around him, he saw the surprise and incomprehension flare in the Dark Angel's aura, and said :

'Give my regards to your Primarch when he comes here and learn of your failure to kill me.'

Alajos screamed in pure fury, and Sevatar grinned through the blood running down his nose – and his eyes and mouth and ears – as the teleportation flare engulfed him.

Both the Shadow Wars and the Thramas Crusade ended at the same time, with the Night Lords and the Alpha Legion retiring from the front of the Heresy. With their ambush at Tsagualsa and the return of the Lion from the Maelstrom, the Night Lords could no longer prosecute the Thramas Crusade without risking their Legion's destruction, and had already inflicted sufficient damage to the Dark Angels' assets in the region. For the first time since the news of the Isstvan Atrocity had reached them, the Night Lords gathered their full strength in one of the galaxy's darkest corners. Despite the losses the Eighth Legion had taken, tens of thousands of Legionaries gathered, accompanied by many more human soldiers, forces of the loyal Mechanicum, and several Titan Legions. Sevatar, having recovered from his trial during the Tsalgualsa ambush, took overall command of the assembled fleet. Many wondered what the Prince of Crows had in mind for such a mighty gathering. They could return to Terra and add their forces to the defenders of the Throneworld, or strike any of the Traitor Legions that were still isolated from the main advance. A few even suggested that, if the rumors of Guilliman leaving the bulk of his forces in favor of pursuing Alpharius were true, then they could either attempt to slay the Arch-Traitor himself, or attack the forces led by Ferrus Manus in his absence. But Sevatar had other plans – plans that no one could have prepared for.

A Light in the Darkest Night

While he laid down in the Nightfall's Apothecarion, recovering from the damage he had done to his own brain in his duel against Alajos, Sevatar had been visited by psychic messages of strange origin. Several of these communications had gone awry, with the First Captain using his slowly awakening psychic gifts to push back what he perceived as psychic intrusion, but after a while he understood that these were not attacks from the Dark Angels and their daemonic allies, but an attempt at communication from the Night Lords allies. Through means unknown, the Alpha Legion was reaching into the Prince of Crows' very mind in order to deliver information of utmost importance : the fate of the Emperor's Children, and the means to come to their aid.

The Eyes and the Hands of the Emperor

Konrad Curze was the only Primarch close to the mysterious Alpharius beyond Horus Lupercal, seeing his brother's unorthodox tactics as possessing tremendous potential. However, the disregarded Alpharius showed to the damage done to the worlds his Legion conquered made him chastise his brother. While he could understand Alpharius' desire to prove his worth to their father, he told his brother that he shouldn't give such importance to equaling the tallies of conquest of the rest of their brotherhood. Alpharius' talents, reasoned the King of the Night, laid in other matters, and seeking glory at any cost, even if it meant the loss of more lives than was necessary, would ultimately only alienate him to those whose opinion truly mattered.

Alpharius appears to have been convinced by his brother's arguments, for he turned his Legion from a pure, ruthless weapon of war into something altogether more efficient and terrifying. His Legionaries became spies and infiltrators, the skill of which rival those of the Vanus Temple of the Assassinorum. Beyond the eyes and reach of even the greatest Inquisitors, they collect data on the Imperium's enemy, and deliver it to those in position to act on it. Amongst those, the Night Lords were prominent. Few forces in the Imperium can make as good an use of information about the enemy's commanders location, and the bond of brotherhood that linked Alpharius and Curze are echoed to this days by their respective Legions. The ways by which the information is delivered vary, from the mundane to the stupefying, but always the Night Lords know it to come from the Alpha Legion. Some servants of the Dark Gods – and not a few Inquisitors of questionable morality – have tried to manipulate the Eighth by faking messages from the most mysterious Legion, but they have never succeeded. The Night Lords have some way of telling the fake messages from the true ones, and they certainly aren't going to say how.

After having confirmed that the knowledge was really coming from the Alpha Legion, Sevatar gathered the commanders of his gathered force and told them of his plans. Quelling all skepticism with his usual blend of intimidation and charisma, the Legion Master led the Night Lords to a giant Webway portal, large enough to allow entire fleets to pass through. Following the images engraved in his mind by the Alpha Legion's message, Sevatar led his fleet across the Labyrinthine Dimension and to the portions of its infinity where the Bleeding War was raging between the Emperor's Children and the Dark Eldar. The Night Lords struck the children of Commoragh with their full strength, destroying hundreds of their ships and boarding those containing their brother Legionaries. Linking up with the remaining free forces of the Third Legion, they freed Fulgrim and told him of the darkness that had claimed the galaxy in his absence from the material plane.

With the Emperor's Children and their Primarch rescued, most of Sevatar's fleet wanted to leave the Webway and go to Terra. But once again, Sevatar denied them. The Throneworld was already besieged, he said. If they went there through the Warp, they would never reach it in time to tip the scales of the Siege. With Fulgrim's support, Sevatar ordered the two fleets to pass through the Webway once again, following his guidance until they emerged mere hours of warp-travel away from Terra.

'I am justice ! I am judgment ! I am punishment !'

Battle-cry of Jago Sevatarion, Legion Master of the Night Lords, during the Siege of Terra

The Siege of Terra was the final battle of the Roboutian Heresy, and the Night Lords were determined to play their part in it. When they reached the titanic space battle taking place in the Throneworld's orbit, transmissions reached them from the surface of the atrocities being perpetrated by the Blood Angels. Immediately, the Eighth Legion descended upon the treacherous sons of Sanguinius, creating a thousand duels of legends in the ruins of Terra's great cities as champions from both Legions clashed. When Sanguinius' incarnate body was slain by the Mournival and his essence cast into the Warp, the Blood Angels collapsed on the ground, and the Night Lords didn't question their good fortune. They slew hundreds of Blood Angels in the throes of ecstatic agony. The events of that night gave birth to a grudge between the two Legions that has lasted to this day : the Night Lords remember the Blood Angels' atrocities, and the Blood Angels remember what they see as the Night Lords' cowardice.

The Blood Angel screamed as he died, not in pain but in absolute ecstasy. With disgust, Talos tore his chainsword free from the traitor's chest, but the blade was caught up in some twisted bone structure, and broke apart in his hand. Tossing away the useless handle, the Apothecary looked around for a replacement. The power sword of the slain Angel was laying nearby, a golden relic of breathtaking craftmanship, with a ruby the size of a human fist encrusted in its pommel and its name written on its edge : Aurum. Talos reached out to pick up the blade …

He saw himself standing above his brothers' bodies, holding the blade aloft and laughing in madness. Pleasure flowed through his veins, rewarding him for the murder with sensations the like of which he had never known. Above him he saw the face of a perfect being smiling upon him in appreciation of is deed. Around him, ranks after ranks of Blood Angels were hailing him as their lord, their master, their prince …

Staggering, Talos stepped back from the corrupted weapon. With a snarl, he brought down his boot upon the inactive blade, breaking it to pieces with the sound of wailing ghosts. He would continue fighting with his bolter, his combat knife, his bare hands if he had to. Better that than using the enemy's tools against it.

Soon after the fall of Sanguinius, Guilliman perished as well. The Traitor Legions ran, and the Night Lords took in the desolation that had become of Terra. For a few days, they remained on the Throneworld, helping take care of the immediate aftermath of the devastation and healing their own wounds. Then, at the command of the Legion Master, they set course in pursuit of the traitors.

The Post-Heresy

The Emperor's Blades

The Night Lords and the Assassin Temples have long had a relationship most unusual between Astartes and those trained by the Officio Assassinorum. Unlike most of their brethren, the Night Lords do not scorn the Assassins, seeing them not only as a necessary part of ruling a kingdom the size of the Imperium, but also as valuable assets in their own conflicts. As soon as during the Great Crusade, the Night Lords asked for a closer collaboration between themselves and the Temples, and the then-Masters accepted, more than a little surprised by the offer. Ever since then, small squads of Assassins from all Temples have been assigned to the Companies of the Eighth Legion, providing one more tool in their arsenal of terror and surgical strikes. The members of the Callidus Temple are especially useful, since the Night Lords, while capable of stealth, can hardly infiltrate the inner workings of any human society without being spotted as transhuman giants.

In recent years, the Night Lords came to the aid of a secret Callidus Temple on Uriah III, guided by the vision of one of their prophets. This act, echoing the ancient bonds between this particular Temple and the Eighth Legion, has led to a rekindling of their relationship, which had been tense ever since the Beheading proved that the Assassins were also subject to corruption.

Despite the loss of their Primarch, the Night Lords were one of the more prominent Legions in the aftermath of the Heresy. While the surviving sons of the Emperor rebuilt their own Legions or took part in the long, painful process of reforming the Imperium, the Eighth sailed the stars in pursuit of the traitors' fleets. In the galactic purge that followed, the Night Lords were at the tip of the spear of Imperial retribution, bringing countless rebel worlds to heel. When the inhabitants of these worlds had joined Guilliman's rebellion out of fear or deceit, they only punished the leaders who had made the decision to surrender, executing them as a warning to those who would replace them. On worlds where the population had wholly embraced the Arch-Traitor's blasphemous beliefs, they brought punishment in the form of orbital bombardments and merciless culling. While the Night Lords had been hailed as ideal crusaders during the Great Crusade and symbols of hope during the Heresy, the Scouring showed the entire Imperium just how far the sons of Nostramo were ready to go in order to punish and protect. Unwilling to risk any taint lingering and leading to other heresies, they worked closely with the Inquisition in order to uncover any traces of corruption.

It was during the Scouring that word reached the convalescent Imperium of the atrocities committed by the traitor Primarch Vulkan. He and his Legion were carving a bloody path on their way to the Eye of Terror, plundering hundreds of worlds in their wake. Seeing this as a deliberate provocation, the Night Lords prepared for war against the one who had murdered their father. Sevatar planned for it carefully, not wanting to fall into a trap and let the Black Dragon escapes justice. However, his efforts were reduced to nothing when Vulkan revealed that he still had the relics of Konrad Curze, stolen from the Primarch's body during the Isstvan Massacre. The Prince of Crows lost control of the Legion's forces as they burned with rage in the face of that affront, and dozens of Companies launched a premature assault of the Salamanders' fleet.

With such a beginning, the War of the Dragon cost much to the Eighth Legion. Across a dozen of the Salamanders' most recently conquered worlds, the forces of the Night Lords fought against their most hated foe, taking heavy casualties as fury pushed them to abandon their usual tactics of hit-and-run in favor of full-front confrontations. It took several months for Sevatar to retake control of the campain, and only with the help of the Sons of Horus did the Night Lords finally managed to defeat the Eighteenth Legion, with the final battle taking place in the ruined system of Crythe. The relics of the King of the Night – his crown, his signet ring, his lightning claws, Mercy and Forgiveness, and several other items that were torn from his body by his greedy brother upon his death – were reclaimed in a daring assault, and are now enshrined next to their owner's body on Nostramo. The Eighth Legion still sees it as a personal failure that they failed to slay Vulkan himself, instead unwillingly taking part in his ascension as a Daemon Primarch of Chaos Undivided when thousands of them died in ill-prepared assaults.

In the aftermath of the War of the Dragon, Sevatar condemned all of the surviving commanders who had attacked without his orders to bear Red Hands until they had atoned for their failure. Although such a large sentence was unprecedented in the annals of the Legion, the condemned themselves accepted it as their rightful punishment, stepping down from their command in order to serve as simple battle-brothers once more. None of them was ever graced, and all of them died in battle, only earning absolution through their own sacrifice. The fact that Sevatar himself was still carrying the Red Hands himself was one that none dared to bring up.

In retaliation, Sevatar burned Nocturne to the ground himself, reducing the Warp-infested planet to cosmic dust in a combination of firepower rarely seen in the galaxy. The first Legion Master is said to have smiled at the spectacle – and for once, it was an actual smile, not his usual corpse-grin. Somehow, witnesses' accounts describe it as even more terrifying.

Decades later, while the Night Lords were fighting the remnants of the Dark Angels' empire in the Ghoul Stars, Sevatar disappeared during an assault on one of the traitors' battle-ships. In his absence, a new Legion Master was elected, and the Legion continued its work.

The door of the cell opened without a sound. Sevatar didn't move when he felt the assassin enter, for he knew that he was being watched by means beyond mere optic surveillance. A moment later, he felt the restraints opening as the presence placed the keys she had stolen from one of his captors into the holes and recited the correct incantation, hissing in pain as the warp-craft took its toll. Simultaneously, she dropped a small container onto the ground, and it liberated a smoke that would temporarily silence any esoteric alarm. Assured that all was taken care of, Sevatar stood and began to stretch his painful muscles.

'Now,' said M'shen, an Assassin of the Callidus Temple that had been attached to Sevatar's own personal command. 'We have to get out of here. We can steal a small aircraft in the docks and reach one of the smaller ships and take it over. Then …'

'No,' interrupted Sevatar. 'We aren't leaving just yet.'

She looked at him with her blank mask, somehow letting her anger show on the featureless surface. Before she could voice her disapproval or ask her question, the Legion Master – though he hoped that the others had already chosen his successor and weren't waiting for him – continued :

'There is another prisoner here that we have to rescue, M'shen. An astropath – a little girl. She is trapped here aboard this ship of monsters, and she helped me resist the Interrogator-Chaplains. We need to rescue her.'

'This is foolishness on a level that is unprecedented even for you, Sevatar.'

'There is more to it than mere humanity and common decency, Assassin. She knows a lot of things about the First Legion. And if she can shield me from the bastards soul-torture without them even noticing, then she is even more important.'

'And if it is a trap ?' asked M'shen, already resigning herself to doing whatever this madman wanted.

Sevatar smiled, the same, heart-stopping corpse-smile that he always used. Even if he was dirty, covered in fresh scars and without either his armor or his weapons, M'shen had to resist the urge to draw back from him. He always had that effect on her when he smiled.

'Then we shall kill whoever stands in our way.'

Millennia after the Roboutian Heresy, the Night Lords were part of the attack on Commoragh, alongside the Emperor's Children and the World Eaters. Upon witnessing the atrocities of the Dark City, the Night Lords fought with a fury unseen since the days of Isstvan itself, and liberated thousands of slaves from the Dark Eldar's pits. These poor wretches were then cared for by the Legion, but most of them died quickly, too weakened by the horrors they had gone through. A few of those who survived were incorporated into the ranks of the Sin-eaters, having seen one of the galaxy's darkest places with their own eyes, while some of the youngest became recruits of the Legion.

Organization

Thanks to the foresight of their Primarch, the Night Lords were prepared to deal with the loss of their gene-sire, and though their mourn his death to this day, they are still determined not to let it make them falter in the pursuit of their sacred duty. Because of the sheer size of the Imperium, however, it is not possible for them to continue bringing justice and retribution with any rigid command structure. The Legion is divided at the level of individual Companies, patrolling the Imperium in order to keep it safe. Their ships wander the darkest roads of the Warp, hunting for the renegades, pirates and traitors that use them.

At the highest level of command stand the Legion Master and the seven commanders of the Kyroptera. The Legion Master is master of the Legion's flagship, the Nightfall, a ship reclaimed from the graveyards of Isstvan and repaired at great cost by the Mechanicus, and personally commands at least ten Companies. He is the one to whom all Captain answer, and the one deciding when to gather the Legion's dispersed strength for a specific goal. Among the Legion, his word is final, carrying the authority of the King of the Night in whose name he rules. When the current incumbent dies – a fate that, no matter what rank an Astartes holds, is inevitable – the members of the Kyroptera gather on Nostramo and seal themselves away from the rest of the Legion. Only when they have chosen a new Legion Master from among their ranks do they emerge once more, which is immediately followed by the induction of a new member in the Kyroptera to fill the hole formed. The process by which a new Legion Master is chosen is unknown, even to the highest-ranking Inquisitors with close ties to the Eighth Legion. Rumors abound of duels being fought, or of communing with the Primarch's spirit through the visions that rake some of the Night Lords, but all those taking part have sworn an oath of secrecy that, after ten thousand years, remains unbroken.

The Kyroptera and the Circle of Shadows

During the Great Crusade, Curze gathered a group of Legion commanders to act as his seconds in the prosecution of the Emperor's will. Seven officers chosen from the entire Legion belonged to this group, replaced when they fell in battle. The King of the Night didn't limit his choice to those Night Lords in the highest echelons of the Legion's hierarchy, naming several simple Captains in the Kyroptera. There were only two criterias for entry when an opening appeared : one had to be an officer of at least the rank of Captain, and possess some talent for warfare that Curze thought would be of use to the Legion. Void tacticians, diplomats, masters of infiltration and ruthless warlords : all of them were incorporated to the Legion's elite commanders. Membership of the Kyroptera didn't officially change rank in the Legion, but even Chapter Masters of the Night Lords listened when one of the seven spoke. Across the theaters of war of the Great Crusade, the members of the Kyroptera led the forces of the Eighth Legion and counseled their father on the myriad decisions that fell to a master of the Crusade. They also had the task of maintaining relations with the rest of the Imperium by directing join efforts and being their Legion's voice in Great Crusade. When the Primarch of the Night Lords fell on Isstvan, it was one of the Kyroptera's members, Sevatar, Captain of the First Company, who took up the mantle of Legion Master, and rebuilt the circle of the seven during the Heresy. This inner circle of command still exists to this day, with new members co-opted by the others from the Legion's current officers, using the same principles as their Primarch once did and performing the same duties under the Legion Master. Without the wisdom of a Primarch, however, it is not unheard of for intra-Legion politics to play a part as well in these nominations.

While the Kyroptera was a formal institution with duties and rights of command, the Circle of Shadows was a much more informal group. Within it were gathered Curze's favored sons, from all Companies and ranks, elevated to their status on the Primarch's apparent whim, even if there was always a purpose to his decisions. There, warlords commanding thousands of Legionaries were equal to battle-brothers or Apothecaries. The Circle gathered around Curze, listening to their Primarch's wisdom and reporting to him about the Legion's status and state of mind. Through it, the King of the Night was able to keep in touch with all of his sons, to hear their concerns and doubts and appease them. Unlike the Kyroptera, the Circle of Shadows didn't survive the Primarch's death. The name is still used by the Legion, but it now refers to the mourning rites that are conducted after each battle fought by the Eighth.

Homeworld

When the Eighth Primarch landed on Nostramo, it was an industrial nightmare ruled by petty tyrants who used violence and intimidation to force an exploited workforce into submission. Projections based on the mining and melting practices indicate that had Konrad Curze not conquered the planet, its atmosphere would have become unbreathable in two to three centuries, and its mined core would have collapsed in four to five more. Today, Nostramo is the safest world in the Imperium, with an Arbites force that sends members to the rest of the Imperium in order to teach others their sense of justice. Adamantium mining, which was once the source of all of the planet's wealth, has been restricted in order to prevent damaging the world, and the planet has instead turned to other, less damaging industries. Now, though the world is still plunged into eternal night, the skies are clean enough that the citizens who walk away from the hive-cities' illumination can see the stars, and the light of their weakling sun, though occluded by the moon, still spreads across the world in a feeble dawn. In the city of the King of the Night, Nostramo Quintus, there is a great fortress, that was once Curze's castle, and is know the Legion's headquarters, where the aspirants are trained and the Legion's relics kept.

Nostramo enjoys fruitful trade relationships with dozens of systems, and it is seen as something of a rite of age for Nostramans to go on a journey in the stars aboard one of the space ships that make the tours between the night world and its partners. By doing so, they can see the light of day for the first time in their lives, and learn of how the rest of the Imperium's denizens live – often in far worse conditions than their own people do. Genetics, however, are merciless, and it is dangerous for the sons and daughters of Nostramo to live one worlds with a normal day cycle. Their skin burns with prolonged exposure to sunlight, and skin cancers can appear if they try to live on these other planets. After this pilgrimage, they return to Nostramo and enjoy the quiet prosperity of its great industry and culture. A few fall in love with the vastness of space, though, and petition for a place aboard the crew of one of Nostramo's famous Rogue Traders. Like most homeworlds of the Legions, Nostramo is spared from having to raise regiments for the Imperial Guard, since its youth are instead screened for recruitment into the Eighth.

In ten thousand years, the homeworld of the Night Lords has come under attack several times by members of the Traitor Legions seeking revenge for the destruction of their own homeworld during the Scouring. First amongst these are the White Scars, who remember Chogoris' purge all too well. Beyond the Legionaries permanently stationed as defenders of Nostramo, the planet is also protected by orbital batteries and a fleet of the Legion's oldest warships, now considered too cumbersome for anything but the greatest of space battles. In the very few instances where traitors have managed to get pass these defenses and land on the planet, they have come under attack not only by the Night Lords, for whom Nostramo's dark streets are the ultimate hunting ground, but also by the population itself, who will fight at their transhuman protectors' side in the same manner that their distant ancestors fought alongside the King of the Night.

Beliefs

The Sin-eaters

In his youth on Nostramo, Konrad Curze learned the value of confiding your secrets to another soul instead of letting them fester inside of you. When he performed his bloody crusade to cleanse Nostramo Quintus of crime, he would speak of what he had done to his mortal family, telling them of his deeds and of the dark thoughts that they brought to his mind. Merely to speak these doubts helped him keeping the darkness at bay, and the counsel of his adopted kin helped him to finally shed his Night Haunter persona after the Eldar Incursion.

When he was reunited with his Legion, he brought with him the descendants of these mortals who listened to his soul's torments as he brought Nostramo into the light. The Night Lords quickly adopted the practice, taking mortals as their own confessors, from the iterators accompanying their fleets and from their own kin on Nostramo. The name of 'Sin-eaters' was derisive at first, coined by Russ when he heard of the practice, but it stuck and is still used today. Sin-eaters are more than listening ears for the Night Lords : many of them come from entire bloodlines dedicated to such work amongst the myriad mortals who serve the Eighth Legion, and through the years they have learned more on the workings of the Astartes mind than the demigods themselves may ever know. They can see when a particular Night Lord is about to go over the edge and embrace the Night Haunter that slumbers within every son of Curze's gene-line, and steer his thoughts away from that dark path.

In other Legions, that role of confessors is held by other Astartes. Chaplains still exist among the Night Lords, but they have a different purpose. They keep moral high on the battlefield, but are also responsible for the infliction of torture to those who have sinned against the Imperium, so that the rest of the Legion may remain untouched by such necessary darkness. They are also the ones responsible for finding worthy young men for induction into the Legion.

While most Sin-eaters now come from the ancient bloodlines of Nostramo – with some of them even having blood ties to the Primarch's own confessors – or from aspirants to the Legion who failed the physical testing but not the moral one, it is not uncommon for the Night Lords to induct others inside their strange priesthood. On worlds delivered by the Eighth Legion, individual having shown a great sense of justice and honor can be offered such a position. A particularly famous example of that tradition in modern times is that of High Priest Cyrus of Tyrias Secundus. The Ecclesiarch was rescued from a rebellion on his world, led by elements of the Raven Guard, that ended up in a daemonic incursion, but his faith and refusal to bow to the usurpers, even in the face of his own horrible death, earned the respect of the Night Lords. After the world was destroyed from orbit, he abandonned his high rank in the Ecclesiarchy and became a Sin-eater for the Eighth Legion's 10th Company.

There is a duality in the Eighth Legion's soul, for its members are as much protectors of the innocents as they are punishers of the sinners. To be a Night Lord is to walk down the line between these two roles, never committing to one or the other entirely. Fear of punishment must be balanced by the certitude that one is protected by this same being that mets out the sanction, or tyranny and corruption will inevitably grow. Justice, after all, exists both to punish and to protect, and the sons of Konrad Curze have embraced these twin roles as their own. Whilst their father once used fear to bring order to Nostramo, the events of the Eldar Incursion taught him that true unity could only come through a common purpose, and that it made any group far more effective than his previous methods ever could. But even so, the King of the Night never forgot the lessons of his youth, when he saw the evidence of Humanity's potential for depravity in every street of Nostramo Quintus. The seeds of evil lie in every soul, and must be contained lest they bring all civilization into darkness.

To the Night Lords, the Heresy proved that their father had been right : it was the darkness within humanity's soul that was the greatest threat to both its survival and its progress. They see Chaos as the ultimate enemy, above all other threats, for it is the incarnation of evil. Although most criminals within the Imperium do not consciously serve the Ruinous Powers, the Night Lords know that their crimes feed the Dark Gods regardless. And even if many rebellions begin with genuine grievances or because of one man's ambition, the servants of Ruin will always be quick to take advantage of it to further their own agendas of death and damnation. That is why, for the Night Lords, all crimes and rebellion must be punished regardless of the intent behind it.

Because of this, and of the practice of the Sin-eaters, few Night Lords have ever succumbed to the lures of the Ruinous Powers and turned their back on the Imperium. Those few who did, however, proved terrifying champions of the Dark Gods, and their former Legion hunts them down with a fury entirely at odds with their usual calm, controlled behavior. With no care for their lives nor, more unusual, for those of the mortals caught in the crossfire, they will stop at nothing to bring their treacherous kindred to justice – for they know all too well the horrors that a fallen Night Lord can unleash. Entire worlds have died screaming to the claws of but a few such renegades, and their psychic death-cries still reverberate in the Sea of Souls. It is theorized by those within the Inquisition who dare study such matters – for even amongst the Holy Ordos, the Night Lords are seen as a force not to anger – that the perpetual moral chains to which the sons of Curze submit themselves make them fall all the deeper when they finally crack, while their tactics of psychological warfare make them uniquely suited to wreak havoc and horror within Imperial space. Truly, it is a blessing that the Legion as a whole remained loyal to the Emperor, rather than succumb to darkness as the Night Haunter once dreamt it would.

The worship of the God-Emperor holds a strange position in the Night Lords' philosophy. They, like almost all other Astartes loyal to the Imperium, do not believe the Master of Mankind to be a god in the true sense of the term. They love Him and respect His greatness, of course, and know themselves to be the instruments of His will. But to them, the faith preached by the Ecclesiarchy is a moral crutch, forcing people to behave in a righteous manner out of fear of damnation instead of doing it because it is the right thing to do. At the same time, they acknowledge that not all humans are as free of doubt as they are, and that it is better for the masses of Humanity to pray to the Emperor than to risk them falling under the sway of other, darker deities. Like so many other things, they ultimately see the worship of the Emperor is a sad but necessary consequence of Mankind's inherent weaknesses. This has led to some frictions with the rest of the Imperium. Ironically, the Night Lords are criticised both by the Ecclesiarchy itself for their perceived lack of faith, and by the Word Bearers for believing that what the sons of Lorgar see as a giant scam to be necessary.

Combat doctrine

'In a galaxy full with a thousand different enemies of Mankind, the only weapon that will work against all of them regardless of their origin is fear. Every xenos know it, in one form or another, be it a conscious emotion or an evolutionary response. Every human traitor, no matter how debased or altered, knows it too on some level. Through fear, we can shatter the resolve of even the more resolute soldier, we can force even even the greatest commander to make mistake, we seed doubt into the faith of even the blackest-souled heretic, and we can make even the proudest culture kneel without needing to shed innocent and misguided blood. Fear is the ultimate tool of war.

But remember : it is only a tool. We must take care not to let it become our master, for to do so would be to become the same as the ones who were once our brothers, and are now our bitterest enemies. They are those who have broken their oath. Though they may have once been our equals, and therefore without fear, they are no longer true Astartes. They have willingly turned their back on the ideals of the Great Crusade, and instead embraced madness and egoist purposes. While we do not fear death, they now see it as the end of their own selfish quests. And thus, they fear it. Only our own kind are truly fearless in this galaxy, and none of them will every fight against us – for to do so is to become something else entirely, something vile, corrupt and soulless.'

War-sage Malcharion of the Eighth Legion's Tenth Company, from his treaty The Tenebrous Path

Though the King of the Night had abandoned his ways of terror when he was reunited with his Legion, he knew the value of fear well. Through it, entire armies could be broken into submission without needing to sacrifice lives that could be better used by the Imperium. The tactics he used and perfected as Night Haunter are still employed by the Night Lords, and it will shock many of their allies to see the calm and just sons of Nostramo on the battlefield. In order to save as many lives as possible, the Night Lords will use maximal brutality on those who must die. With stealth that shouldn't be possible for transhuman demigods in active power armor, their hunting squads will penetrate behind enemy lines, and, without any support, begin their campaigns of terror. They will hunt down their enemies' leadership with a tenacity unmatched by any other Legion, and inflict upon them tortures dating back to the sunless world's darkest days, making sure that all their victims' subordinates learn of the exact circumstances of their leader's demise. In other instances, they will let the enemy know that they are amongst its ranks, revealing themselves before vanishing back into the darkness. Without needing to take a single life, the moral of the enemy will collapse as every soldier realize that the Legionaries could kill him any time if they so desired. Once the enemy is in that state, he almost welcomes the arrival of the rest of the Night Lords' armada, either surrendering outright or throwing his life away in a suicidal assault on an enemy that, at last, he can see and fight.

Such is the reputation of the Night Lords amongst the Imperial elite that often, all it takes for an Inquisitor to quell any thought of rebellion amongst a troubled court is to mention the presence of an Eighth Legion's vessel in the system. However, precisely because of their methods, the Night Lords always choose their battles with great care. They have no desire to be deployed against populations whose only crime is to rail against the incompetence of their lords and masters, or to be turned into instruments of oppression. Their duty is to maintain the rule of the Emperor and the Pax Imperialis, and they will not be embroiled in the political scheming of lesser men and women. More than one Planetary Governor has called for the help of the Eighth in order to put down a rebellion against his rule, only to end up hanging from his palace's walls once the Night Lords discovered that the rebellion was due to his own greed. The gruesome fate of Harikon Kadulus, governor of Khai-Zhan, is but the most recent example of such ill-advised decisions.

In a more open conflict – something that the Night Lords consider abhorrent, as it is the sign that not everything was done ahead in order to get an edge on the enemy – the sons of Nostramo are still terrifying urban fighters. Their extensive use of Assault Squads wearing jump-packs – which are called Raptors in the Eighth Legion – allows them to harass the enemy with impunity. The Night Lords know, however, that they are not as strong as other Legions in more traditional forms of warfare. They are still transhuman warriors, and their lines can hold most of what the galaxy has to offer, but they like the frontline mentality of the Death Guard, the martial prowess of the Sons of Horus, or the tactical insight of the World Eaters. They are aware of this flaw, and balance it by relying on allies both in other Legions and amongst the Astra Militarum – with the desirable secondary effect of maintaining their ties to both, preventing the Legion from descending into arrogance and isolationism.

Ever since the losses their fleet took in battles of the Thramas Crusade, the rescue of the Emperor's Children and their intervention at Terra, the Night Lords have had less capital ships than other Legions. During the Scouring, they reorganized their fleet to be able to pursue the traitors all across the galaxy, by increasing the number of Astartes Strike Cruisers in their fleet. Each of these ships, built using technological lore that is now lost to us, carries a single Company of Legionaries within its holds. Thanks to the modifications wrought by the Legion's Techmarines, they are also faster and stealthier than those of the other Legions. However, this has also made them less resilient, and the Eighth Legion is loath to engage enemy ships in a straight fight. Like they do on the ground, their voidmasters will use ambushes and complex maneuvers in order to go for the enemy commander, using boarding pods to strike at the most vulnerable points. Unlike other Legions, they will also not hesitate to retreat in the front of the enemy, not out of cowardice but because to die while the enemy still draw breath is seen as a great shame in the Eighth.

The Red Hands

One of the few traditions Konrad Curze carried from the underworld culture of his homeworld into his Legion is that of the Red Hands. Within Nostramo's gangs, to have one's hands tainted red was a death sentence issued by one's master for crimes or failures too grave to forgive. The marked one lived only to the permission of his lord, each night a gift until the hour of execution was decided. Amidst the Night Lords, it was a mark of censure, attributed to those who failed their duties. The reasons for such punishment were varied : some were due to over-zealous pursuit of the Legion's punishing philosophy, leading to the slaughter of innocents and sinners alike. Others were met out to reprimand cruelty, or defiance of orders. Any Night Lord officer with a rank equal or above that of Captain can condemn one of his brothers to join the Red Hands, although it is more a responsibility than a privilege of rank – to use it means that the officer failed to prevent whatever crime he deems deserving of such punishment.

Once the armored gauntlets of a Night Lord have been painted red, only the Primarch – or, since his death, one of the Kyroptera – may release the warrior from his condemnation, once he has proved both his regret of his crime and atoned for it. In the meantime, the Red Hands are used for the most dangerous missions available to the Legion, their lives not considered expendables but risked before those of any unblemished Legionary. When a Red Hand dies in battle, however, his sin is considered paid for, and his body is treated with all the honors due to his rank, before his name is taken off the rolls of the condemned. The tradition of the Red Hands continue to this day.

Recruitment and Geneseed

The Night Lords' gene-seed has two minor variations compared to most Astartes. Their occulobe is overactive during their transformation, giving them entirely black eyes that can see into pitch-black darkness but also makes them vulnerable to direct, intense light. Their melanchromic organ also turns their skin permanently as pale as that of the Nostramo-born, who for their most part look as if they have never seen the light of any sun. Apart from these two traits, which are more marks of their homeworld than real mutations and are actually useful in enhancing the terror impact of the sons of Curze, the Night Lords have a gene-seed of great purity and stability, and their Apothecaries enjoy a rate of successful implantation superior to most other loyal Legions. Adepts have theorized that this may be due to the fact that Nostramans share both traits with the Legionaries, which may help diminish the rate of rejection, but it is only a theory, and the Night Lords, like all Legions, jealously protect their secrets.

As previously said, most of the recruits for the Eighth Legion come from Nostramo. However, as soon as during the Great Crusade, Konrad Curze foresaw the risks in taking too many of the greatest youths of a single planet. With its brightest children taken away, the culture and strength of Nostramo would weaken, and the world would descend into slow, irreversible decay. To avoid this, there is a strict quota of recruitment, even if it leads to worthy specimens being ignored. The rest of the Legion's recruits are taken from other hive-worlds. There, the Chaplains silently walk the shadows of the underhives, where gangs of young men and women fight for survival. They seek those who not only display great potential, but also an inner sense of justice bred from witnessing to many crimes in their cities' underworld. It is not unheard of for entire groups of such youths to be taken to the stars by the Night Lords, creating legends that will last for generations.

The Prophets of the Eighth Legion

Like their Primarch, the Night Lords' Librarians are subject to visions of the future. But while the King of the Night was strong enough to endure these glimpses of what may be and keep his awareness of his surroundings, Astartes afflicted with his questionable gift suffer from seizure when in the throes of prophesy, trashing around and howling their visions through the vox. Only through long and painful training can the psykers of the Eighth Legion learn to master their wild talent, and even then it is a gambit whether or not any Librarian will remain active for the duration of a battle. This has led many commanders of the Night Lords to shun the use of their Librarians in important deployments, instead using them as counselors and advisers. Knowing the future is as much of a tactical advantage as it looks, and entire campaigns have ended with unparalleled swiftness once a Prophet of the Eighth Legion told his commanding officer where the enemy leaders were hiding. In other cases, however, creatures of the Warp have taken advantage of the Librarians' connection to the Warp to falsify their visions, like they did in several instances during the war for Grendel's World. In M34, the Eighth Legion fought against a cult of Slaanesh led by a handful of Blood Angels on the planet. For months, the Librarians accompanying the force were beset by false visions, twisted by the Keeper of Secrets that the traitors had summoned onto the world. By the time the Greater Daemon was finally found and slain, the entire population of Grendel's World had been killed by the Blood Angels and their minions.

While all Librarians bearing Curze's gene-seed suffer from his prophetic gift to some degree, there are also those in the rest of the Legion who share it as well, earning the title and unofficial rank of Prophet amongst their brothers. They are exceedingly rare, with less than one Legionary out of a thousand showing the unmistakable signs. Without the psychic gift to help them harness and control their talent, these warriors endure pain beyond imagining each time they see into the future, their torment so great that it is difficult for them to speak coherently of what they see. Unlike their Librarian kin, their own visions cannot be altered by the Warp, and while their curse makes them unfit for leadership, it grants them an undeniable position of honor amongst the Legion. They are seen as the ones closest to their defunct father, and though the pain and their lack of control over it invariably turn them into dour, secretive souls, it is a mark of great prestige for a Company to have one of them in its ranks.

Prophets, however, do not tend to live long – at least compared to the near-immortality their other kindred enjoy. Beyond the obvious risks of being seized by a vision on the battlefield, their gene-seed keeps trying to alter their bodies further than it already has. While the process is barely understood, even by the greater Apothecaries of the Legion, the symptoms are clear : terrible and constant pain, visions growing more frequent and erratic, and various brain malfunctions as the gene-seed attempts to rewrite the cartography of the Night Lord's grey matter. The longest living Prophet lived four hundred years before succumbing to his curse – or rather, before one of his brothers took pity on his writhing, agonizing form and granted him the Emperor's Peace. Some individuals amongst the Eighth Legion and those few members of the Inquisition who know of the Prophets' existence believe that, if one of them could be somehow made to endure the agonies of their curse at the terminal state, they would emerge as something beyond a simple Legionary, a step closer to their Primarch's miraculous physiology.

Warcry

It is rare for the Eighth Legion to engage the enemy in open battle. Most of the time, the first signs of their presence are the screams and pleas for mercy of past enemies they broadcast over the vox, and the whispers in the darkness as they close in on those who have sinned against the Imperium. When the enemy's morale is in ruins, when they jump at every shadow and are praying whatever deity they believe in for a quick death, the sons of Curze will attack with screams of 'We have come for you !' or honor their father's memory with the call of 'Ave Dominus Nox !' If the foe they face belong to another Legion, they will echo the battle-cry of Sevatar at Terra, claiming : 'We are Justice ! We are Vengeance ! We are the Night !' When facing the hated Salamanders, however, the only things to leave their lips are oaths of revenge and promises of retribution, spat over the vox with barely contained hatred.

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AN : and here they are. In midnight clad, shadows and saviors : the Night Lords.

Once again, this chapter surpasses all who came before in size ( and that's without what is below). Seriously, I must try to refrain myself, or else there will be a great unbalance between the Legions (even worse than what there already is). The Night Lords, however, are one of the most popular Traitor Legions, and they have a lot of backstory in canon that I could exploit here. Also, I wanted to make Konrad Curze as much of an hero as he is a monster in the Horus Heresy timeline. That takes construction, and that takes a lot of words. I read books again and researched the web for details that coud be turned on their head, and I must say that I am quite proud of the result.

It has often been said the Canon Curze is a grimdark version of Batman IN SPACE. I suppose that then this version is a composite of Batman and Harvey Dent (pre Two-Faces) IN SPACE. I gave Curze a surrogate mother because I really think that it's growing without any parental figure that twisted Canon Curze like that. I could have gone with a father, but then I remembered that Canon Guilliman also has a foster mother of a sort, and besides, a woman fitted better into the narrative.

As for the Eldar ... I needed something that would make Curze's vision of Mankind change significantly, as well as that he had of himself. In Canon, he believes himself to be a creature of darkness, committing sin so that others won't have to, and doomed to die at his father's hands (directly or not). The Eldar attack shows him that there is more to humanity that animals that need to be herded through fear in order to rise above their primitive instincts, while facing the Phoenix King and seeing Theresa die to save him teaches him that he is not a monster, nor is his fate sealed (I am not certain that the scene with the coin is clear, so I will state here : this represents how his fate as Night Haunter is being overwritten). My Curze also has a split personallity, as is hinted in several official volumes, but here the King of the Night managed to beat down Night Haunter.

I am aware that I may have made Curze's too good. That's because I am trying to make the Roboutian Heresy a mirror of the Horus Heresy, with heroes becoming monsters and monsters becoming heroes, and the scale of their evil in one must be as great as that of their good in the other. Well, except for Fabius Bile. That guy is a monster no matter the timeline, and the Dark Gods have nothing to do with it (if The Talon of Horus is to be believed, even them think that he goes too far).

Talos own mystery is a little present to myself in the future. If all goes as I have planned, I will write a chronicle of the Times of Ending for the Roboutian Heresy after I have finished decribing every Legion, and through them the current state of the galaxy (there will probably be a need for a few more info-dumps in order to set the scene, but I will think of something). In order for this to work, I need to plant seeds in every Index Astartes, preparing for the TImes of Ending. So, perhaps Talos will return at the head of a legion of ghosts. Perhaps it is nothing more than a rumor, but the belief of the Legion and its serfs will make it real. Or perhaps it is only a trick of Chaos, seeking to use the Soul Hunter's legend to drag the Eighth into the darkness it fights. Who know ? Right now, I sure as hell don't.

That's it for the Night Lords. Now, I have something I want to tell you, but first, here is a warning :

WARNING - SPOILER ALERT : THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS CLEAR SPOILERS FOR SEVERAL VOLUMES OF THE HORUS HERESY, MOSTLY 'THE FIRST HERETIC', 'BETRAYER' AND 'AURELIAN' BY AARON DEMBSKI BOWDEN, AS WELL AS POTENTIAL ONES FOR VARIOUS DETAILS CONCERNING THE WORD BEARERS LEGION - PROCEED WITH ALL ADVISABLE CAUTION

I was re-reading the novel Betrayer recently, and decided to also read again The First Heretic and the short audio drama Aurelian. As I finished the later, an unpleasant thought occured to me - a theory that both fascinated and terrified me. It concerns Argel Tal's - the first Possessed Marine - ultimate fate. And I am going to share it with you now, because there is no reason I should be the only one to suffer, and also because I hope one of you can find a reason why I am wrong.

Those who have read Betrayer know all too well what it appeared to be : Argel Tal was betrayed by Erebus, killed by a dagger forged from a fragment of the blade that laid down Horus on Davin. It was a poignant moment, especially since Argel Tal - and us readers - had been led to believe that his fate was to die at Terra, under the shadows of Sanguinius' wings. Not only was it what Raum, the daemon inside his soul, had told him, it was also what Lorgar had seen when he walked the Eye of Terror with the daemon Ingethel. The death of Argel Tal pushed Kharn a little further down the Eightfold Path, and Erebus believed that without Argel Tal's kinship to hold him back, the Eight Captain of the World Eaters would become the Champion of the Blood God that we know in the 41th Millenium.

Yet as I listened to Aurelian, I heard Lorgar describes, while he was shown a vision of the Siege of Terra, a daemonic creature that Ingethel told him was Argel Tal. Previously, I had assumed that it was his possessed form. But there is something that doesn't fit : the creature described by Lorgar's narrative is too huge for that. When Argel Tal fights at Isstvan V or in the Shadow Crusade in Ultramar, he is taller than a Legionary, but not by much. In the vision, he is tall enough that he tears an Imperial Fist in two and impales the upper half on one of his horns to finish him. Possessed Marines are not supposed to be that huge. Only Daemon Princes are. And that is what my theory is : Argel Tal's tale doesn't end with Erebus' blade.

There are several reasons that this idea took root in my mind. Firstly, a rule exists that Possessed cannot become Daemon Princes, since they are already host to a Neverborn and therefore cannot become one of them themselves. But in the final seconds before his death, Argel Tal wasnt' a Possessed. The first thing Erebus' athame did was banish Raum back into the Warp. He was, once again, a normal Astartes.

Secondly, the vision. If Erebus actually killed Argel Tal, then the vision that was shown to Lorgar was wrong. But this vision was inspired by the Gods, and Erebus, for all his arrogance and belief that he is the one shaping the events of the Horus Heresy, is no more than their slave. Slaying Argel Tal for his perceived failures was exactly what the Dark Gods wanted him to do. So it seems strange that the Dark Apostle's actions would result in modifying a vision that corresponds to the Gods' plans reaching fruition. Instead, in this theory, Kharn is closer to become the Betrayer, Lorgar is shown that he cannot defy the Gods' will despite his beliefs, and Erebus is humbled by Kharn, which leads to him losing his temper in front of Horus bloody Lupercal in Fear to Thread, which leads to his face being torn off (Gods how I love that scene), which leads to him planning Vulkan's own fate. It's tortuous, overly complicated, and exactly the kind of thing that the Dark Gods are always up to.

Thirdly, there is of course the reason of why the Dark Gods would make Argel Tal into a Daemon Prince. He hates them, after all. But he still serves them, and I would say that he served them very well indeed. He was the first Possessed Marine (amongst others, okay, but still). He was the one who brought the Primordial Truth to Lorgar. He has slain hundreds of Loyalist Marines, and several of the Emperor's Custodians. Before that, he was the one who broke the Emperor's Geller Field in His genetic laboratory on Terra, allowing the Primarchs to be scattered across the stars. He fought in the Shadow Crusade, leading the elite forces of the Word Bearers. There are Daemon Princes who have achieved ascension with deeds of only a fragment of his' magnitude and reach. Of course, there is the matter of which God made him into a Daemon Prince, but M'kar was also made during that period, and he wasn't marked by any of the Gods, and obviously there are Lorgar and Perturabo as well, so apparently the Dark Gods could work together during the Heresy on that point.

And the motive of the Pantheon ? Simple : make Argel Tal suffer. That's exactly the kind of thing that these bastards would do. He will live on as a Prince of the Damned, while Cyrene, now one of the Perpetuals, will never truly die and go to the Sea of Souls. Even if there is no romance between the two, that's still some high-level drama here. He will see the Imperium become everything he fought to prevent. He will be part of the forces that will slaughter billions of innocents for all eternity. He will know that he and his whole Legion were deceived, and be unable to do anything about it. And, if the novels are any clue, he will damn good at it too. Allowing him to incarnate again on Terra would give him one final chance to influence the galaxy in any meaningful way, and that, too, will fail when he died again 'under the shadow of great wings'.

And the last and most damning reason : ADB can be cruel with his characters. I hope that I am wrong, because honestly there is such a thing as too much grimdark. As it is in canon, Argel Tal died a miserable death, his fate unwoven by a betrayer's blade. In this theory, it is even worse.

So. If you see any reason (that cannot be explained by the unique circumstances of the Heresy or the timeless nature of the Warp), please PM me or leave them in your review. If someone can see a fault, I will share it with the rest of my readers, that they too may be relieved. Otherwise, I will just have to hope that I am wrong, and that ADB never reads this, lest it gives him ideas.

SPOILER ALERT OVER

So, with this, this chapter comes to an end. Next in the Roboutian Heresy will be the Blood Angels, noblest sons of the Emperor who fell to the clutches of Slaanesh. That will be a tale, let me tell you, and I will do my best to write is as good as I can. But it will not come soon, for I want to finish the current arc of Warband of the Forsaken Sons. A chapter of this fic will probably be the next thing I release, unless an idea for a short story catches my attention.

EDIT : I forgot to tell you all something : one of my readers, Nemris, is doing artworks of the Roboutian Heresy. You can find him on Deviantart, and the links to his works are on my profile. They are really good pieces !

If you liked this chapter, see conflicts that I will need to blame on the Alpha Legion, or have a question, please review !

Zahariel out.