text
stringlengths 27
208k
|
|---|
Bladed Cog - The Xenos and the Beast: An infestation of the Rusted Claw finds it near impossible to move their Magus across the planet of Anacharos at anything faster than a walk. Their Magus' skin crawls with a high concentration of metallophage organisms, and any metal nearby instantly corrodes, rendering vehicles in his vicinity inoperable. Securing the aid of their allies in the Bladed Cog, they commission a succession of Departmento Munitorum crates made of plastic compounds that are just as hard as steel.With these they are able to spread the war leaders of their cult from one planet to another. When their Primus, the resourceful Fender Threnn, hears word of a nest of Ferro-Beasts in the long-forsaken Yimbo System, he uses the same Munitorum crates to capture the armadillo-like metal-eating monsters by the dozen.These he sets loose in the spaceports of Anacharos, causing utter havoc as the beasts go into a feeding frenzy amongst the richly appointed vessels. The distraction is used to full effect as the cult rises up against the rich upworlders -- who, when attempting to flee the planet, find many of their vessels already half-eaten. |
Bladed Cog - The Ghoulwright War: The scions of the Bladed Cog, having thrown off their oppressors on Feinminster Gamma, take their crusade against the oppression of the Adeptus Mechanicus to a string of Forge Worlds across the system -- and to the Iron Hands Space Marines that the priests of Mars call their allies.They propagate the belief that the Machine Cult is misleading the people of the Imperium by cleaving to the mantra that the flesh is weak, and those without access to cybernetic augmentation prove most receptive to the idea they too have intrinsic value. The Bladed Cog welcomes the flesh and blood as well as the cyborg, preaching that flesh is clay to be hardened in the kiln of war rather than replaced entirely.In secret training camps they amass their armies of faith, equipping them with the finest wargear the Imperium can provide. When they strike against the Iron Hands of Clan Raukaan on the Forge World of Ghoulwright, the resultant techwar sees the planet consumed in the fires of battle. |
Bladed Cog - Mark of the Clawed Omnissiah: Resembling a many-clawed incarnation of the Omnissiah, this custom electoo fizzes with potent bioelectricity, surrounding its wearer with a crackling force field that can turn aside even a pinpoint shot from a Lascannon. In times of great physical exertion, it can also release a burst of power so intense that it fries the synapses of any luckless foes standing too close. |
Bladed Cog - Psychic Discipline: Broodvolt Surge - Syphoning off the merest portion of the Broodmind's energetic potential, the cult's psyker melds it with the bioelectric fields of nearby faithful and wreathes them in a crackling protective aura. |
Bladed Cog - Sources: Codex: Genestealer Cults (7th Edition), pp. 19, 48-49Codex: Genestealer Cults (8th Edition), pp. 24-25, 38-39Codex: Genestealer Cults (9th Edition), pp. 32, 58 |
Bladeguard Veteran - Bladeguard Veteran: A Bladeguard Veteran, who is usually part of a Bladeguard Veteran Squad, is a Veteran Primaris Space Marine largely dedicated to a melee tactical role. Bladeguard Veterans are those Primaris Marines who have earned the right to serve in the elite 1st Company of a Primaris-only Space Marine Chapter raised during the Ultima Founding or later, those who serve in the 1st Company of an already-extant Chapter alongside their Firstborn brethren, or those who are already Veteran Marines and have crossed the Rubicon Primaris.Bladeguard Veterans are melee-focussed Astartes who are equipped much like technologically-advanced versions of the knights of ancient Terran legends. Bladeguard Veterans are inexorable warriors, advancing relentlessly with their blades held high -- the very image of the noble knights of myth. As Veteran members of their Chapter's elite 1st Company, each of these vastly-experienced Space Marines have fought to preserve the Imperium on countless worlds. |
Bladeguard Veteran - Unit Composition: 2-5 Bladeguard Veterans1 Bladeguard Veteran Sergeant |
Bladeguard Veteran - Wargear: Mark X Tacticus Power ArmourHeavy Bolt PistolMaster-crafted Power SwordStorm ShieldFrag GrenadesKrak GrenadesPlasma Pistol (As optional replacement for Bladeguard Veteran Sergeant's Heavy Bolt Pistol)Neo-Volkite Pistol (As optional replacement for Bladeguard Veteran Sergeant's Heavy Bolt Pistol) |
Blades Eternal - Blades Eternal: Blades EternalChapterSpace MarinesFoundingEye of TerrorImperialAbyssal CrusadeIt is unknown what they endured during their sojourn into the Eye, and their current status is also unknown, though the Imperial Inquisition has withheld their final judgement on whether or not the Chapter should be considered heretical or extinct until more information is available. |
Blades Eternal - Abyssal Crusade: Following the Ecclesiarchal Purges of 321.M37, a dozen star systems were engulfed by Warp Storm Dionys, its echoes rippling along the spiral arms of the galaxy as it raged through the Empyrean. Records of mutations and Chaos Cultist activity quadrupled overnight. Worse yet, it was not only the citizens who were affected by the sudden influx of Chaos. Many of the Space Marine Chapters with homeworlds affected by the Warp Storm found that the secret imperfections in their gene-seed were writ large upon their new recruits, giving rise to a wave of disturbing manifestations both physical and psychological. The Blades Eternal were one such Loyalist Chapter of Astartes that had been affected by these Warp Storms.When the Ecclesiarchy heard of this sinister tum of events, Saint Basillius the Elder demanded that all those Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes whose homeworlds had been touched by the Warp Storm be rendered unto his judgement. Such was the elder's influence with the High Lords of Terra that within a standard year this had come to pass. After a series of stringent tests and prognostications, hundreds of Chapters were deemed unaffected by the Warp Storm. No less than thirty were found wanting. The Judged, as these fallen Chapters came to be known, volunteered for a redemptive Penitent Crusade. The most militant of their number demanded the right to purify their tainted flesh in the fires of battle, to make a noble end from tragic misfortune. To the surprise of his closest advisors, Saint Basillius agreed to this proposal. He saw it fitting to send the accused into the Eye of Terror, taking the fight for the Imperium's future to the Daemon Worlds inhabited by the Traitor Marines.A representative from each of the doomed Chapters held an emergency Council of Dismay to discuss the proposed Crusade. After scant hours of debate, they acquiesced to Basillius' demands, for they believed that martyrdom was preferable to an existence of suspicion and doubt. The last few days of 321.M37 saw a solemn procession of Strike Cruisers and Battle Barges pass through the Cadian Gate into the Eye of Terror, relay systems dormant and heraldic colours obscured by black mag-plates. One by one, the Chapters of The Judged disappeared into the iridescent dust nebulae that surrounded the Eye. As the massive Space Marine flotilla entered the Eye of Terror, they were set upon by a massive Chaos warfleet. The resultant battle was so fierce that the ships of The Judged were forced to retreat and were scattered to the furthest corners of the Eye.Chapter after Chapter fell to the perils of the Eye, for the Abyssal Crusade had entered a hell from which very few emerge unchanged. The true account of what occurred within the Eye to the Blades Eternal is unknown, but most of the tales of the Chapters of The Judged ended in tragedy and sorrow. The current whereabouts of the Chapter are unknown and the Imperial Inquisition has withheld their final judgement on the Blades Eternal's status. |
Blades Eternal - Chapter Colours: The Blades Eternal Chapter colours are not listed in current Imperial records. |
Blades Eternal - Chapter Badge: The Blades Eternal Chapter badge is not listed in current Imperial records. |
Blades of Rage - Blades of Rage: The Blades of Rage are a host of Khorne Daemonkin of unknown origin. Their most notable actions occurred in 444.M41, when they joined their fellow Daemonkin host, The Wrath, and aided the Daemon Primarch Angron's attack upon the Imperial Hive World of Armageddon in the First War for Armageddon. |
Blades of Rage - Warband Colours: The Blades of Rage warband's colours are not listed in current Imperial records. |
Blades of Rage - Warband Badge: The Blades of Rage warband's badge is not listed in current Imperial records. |
Blades of Reason - Blades of Reason: The Blades of Reason is an ancient and horrific device utilised by Interrogator-Chaplain Asmodai of the Dark Angels Space Marine Chapter and other interrogator-chaplains of the Chapter.This ancient and fell device is full of arcane cruelty and the sorrow of Mankind. Its many sharply honed and well-polished blades are etched with scriptures of repentance in the tongue of Old Caliban, and criss-crossing the weapon's head are cables and fine neural-wires, mystic science that amplifies pain to agonies beyond endurance.With an expert using this device, all but the most resilient of prisoners will very quickly divulge any information they have.Utilising this archaic weapon of torture, Asmodai attempts to extract confessions from captured Fallen Angels during interrogations in an attempt to save the doomed prisoner's soul through his expert and painful ministrations. |
Blades of the Despoiler - Blades of the Despoiler: The Blades of the Despoiler were a warband of the Black Legion dedicated to the service of Khorne.They were eradicated by the Battle-Sisters of the Order of the Ebon Chalice at some point during the Era Indomitus even as their path of slaughter took them on a course headed directly for Holy Terra. |
Blades of the Traitor (Anthology) - Blades of the Traitor (Anthology): Blades of the Traitor is an anthology novella in the Horus Heresy Series of novels, released in non-limited hardback format. Unlike most other Horus Heresy novellas Blades of the Traitor was simultaneously released alongside an ebook version and the short stories contained within were released separately as ebooks. |
Blades of the Traitor (Anthology) - Synopsis: Across the war-torn galaxy, those sworn to Horus' cause shake the Imperium to its very foundations. Before the Traitors' relentless onslaught, the wisdom of ages past is lost and forgotten, Daemons hide amongst the common people and the Warp's corrupting influence can be seen in almost every facet of the Heresy. For those who would become champions of the new order, there can surely be no redemption –- only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods... |
Blades of the Traitor (Anthology) - Contents: Blades of the Traitor contains the following short stories:Black Oculus by John French - After Fulgrim's ascension to daemonhood at Iydris, Perturabo and his Legion were trapped by the singularity at the heart of the so-called Eye of Terror. Their only option? To thread the needle, and dive into the heart of the black hole. Perhaps by sheer blind luck, they were transported far across the Warp to the Tallarn System –- but the Navigators in service to the Iron Warriors fleet were irreversibly corrupted by that harrowing experience. Now they serve a new purpose, and Perturabo's plans for revenge come closer to fruition...Chirurgeon by Nick Kyme - In its earliest days, the III Legion was blighted by a genetic flaw that threatened to end the Phoenician's bloodline forever. Fortunately, through tireless effort and the miracle of the Primarch's own genetic perfection, visionaries like Apothecary Fabius Bile were able to halt the corruption and restore the Emperor's Children to their former glory. Except, it would seem, that a terrible secret has been kept from the rest of the Legion, and the threat of further degeneration is quite real...Daemonology by Chris Wraight - Chagrined by his defeat at the hands of Jaghatai Khan, Mortarion abandons the pursuit of the White Scars and instead leads the Death Guard in a spiteful, punitive rampage across the systems of the Prosperine Empire. World after world has fallen to this horrific onslaught, and yet the insular and secretive Primarch seems preoccupied by some other, unspoken goal. Finally, on Terathalion, the truth of Mortarion’s sinister heritage will be exposed, and the future of the XIV Legion will be written...Twisted by Guy Haley - Since he was crippled by rebel treachery on Sixty-Three Nineteen, Maloghurst the Twisted has continued to serve Warmaster Horus as his closest aide and confidant. His loyalty has remained constant, but the XVI Legion has changed - rivalry and personal ambition run rife, and although Horus's authority is supreme, his equerry's is certainly not. When a daemonic plot to infest the Vengeful Spirit comes to light, Maloghurst reluctantly turns to the few allies he has left: the mysterious Davinites.Wolf Mother by Graham McNeill - Aboard the Molech's Enlightenment, amongst the countless civilian refugees that fled the Warmaster's invasion, a serpent makes its nest. The Chaos cult that brought House Devine to its knees lives on, preying upon the weak and the helpless, and it falls to Alivia Sureka to root out the evil that hides in plain sight. Luckily for her, she has an ally who is more than familiar with such tactics - the lone wolf Knight Errant, Severian. |
Blades of Vengeance - Blades of Vengeance: Blades of VengeanceLoyalistSpace MarineChapterPrimaris Space MarinesDark AngelsUltima FoundingThe Blades of Vengeance were the first of the Primaris Marines created from the gene-seed of Lion El'Jonson.They exhibited not only the tenacious defence for which their primogenitor was famed, but also showed a talent for following up with brilliantly executed counterattacks. |
Blades of Vengeance - Chapter History: After their Founding, the Blades of Vengeance would go on to aid the Primarch Roboute Guilliman during his Indomitus Crusade, serving with distinction.They have thrown their full strength into the Indomitus Crusade, liberating dozens of worlds and putting dozens more they deemed beyond salvation to the sword. They do this in eagerness to root out the Fallen, seeing the crusade as the means by which many of those Traitors will be forced out into the open. |
Blades of Vengeance - Notable Campaigns: War of Beasts (Unknown Date.M42) - The Blades of Vengeance sent two full companies to defend the strategically vital world of Vigilus from attacks by xenos and Chaos forces during the War of Beasts. They fought independently of other Imperial forces across the northern portion of the Dontoria Hivesprawl.Nachmund Rift War (Unknown Date.M42) - Elements of the Blades of Vengeance were deployed to serve in the Nachmund Rift War, an ongoing conflict being waged by the Imperium in the Nachmund Sub-sector. Closely connected to the prior War of Beasts and War of Nightmares fought on Vigilus, the Fortress World itself remains largely in Imperial hands in the wake of those conflicts but the forces of Chaos have now moved instead to besiege the Nachmund Gauntlet itself, the only stable passage across the Great Rift between Sanctus Terra on the Imperium Sanctus side and Vigilus on the Imperium Nihilus side.Arks of Omen Campaign, Battle of Idolatros (Unknown Date.M42) - The Blades of Vengeance were among the coalition of Unforgiven Chapters to join with the Dark Angels in seeking to stop the mad plans of Abaddon the Despoiler and the Greater Daemon Vashtorr the Arkifane from claiming the Key that would allow them to unlock the unholy threat known only as The Weapon. They joined the Unforgiven's fleet in the final assault of the campaign made on the Idolatros System in the Somnium Stars. Like the other Unforgiven, the Blades of Vengeance forces that fought at the Battle of Idolatros suffered heavy casualties. |
Blades of Vengeance - Chapter Organisation: Most of the Unforgiven Chapters follow the Dark Angels' pattern of organisation, including having formations similar to the Deathwing and the Ravenwing.While performing admirably, they have not garnered the recognition of their parent Chapter's Deathwing and Ravenwing companies.Like the Dark Angels, the Unforgiven Successor Chapters also have a clandestine group, known as the "Inner Circle," who possess knowledge of the Fallen and of the true events that occurred on Caliban. |
Blades of Vengeance - Notable Blades of Vengeance: Company Master Sykora - Master Sykora was the Blades of Vengeance officer who commanded the Chapter's forces during the Battle of Idolatros of the Arks of Omen Campaign. |
Blades of Vengeance - Chapter Colours: The Blades of Vengeance primarily wear forest green Mark X Power Armour in honour of their parent Chapter, the Dark Angels, while the faceplate and both insets of the shoulder pauldrons are bone.The Aquila or Imperialis on the chest is red. Chapter markings and unit designations are black. The black squad specialty symbol -- battleline, fire support, close support or Veteran -- is displayed on the right pauldron, while the left pauldron proudly displays the Chapter's iconography.A red Low Gothic numeral displayed on the centre of the squad specialty symbol indicates squad assignment.The heraldry on the right knee guard indicates company designation. The Blades of Vengeance utilise the same heraldry for their Battle Companies as their progenitors and fellow Unforgiven. |
Blades of Vengeance - Chapter Badge: The Blades of Vengeance's Chapter badge is a stylised black livery shield set in a field of bone, while a bone-coloured, downward thrust sword is centred upon the black shield. |
Blades of Vengeance - Sources: Codex Supplement Dark Angels (9th Edition), pg. 26Codex Supplement: Dark Angels (10th Edition), pg. 28Codex Adeptus Astartes - Dark Angels (8th Edition), pg. 18Imperium Nihilus: Vigilus Defiant, (8th Edition) pp. 78–79War Zone Nachmund: Rift War (9th Edition), pg. 30Arks of Omen: The Lion (9th Edition), pp. 14-17Warhammer Community: The Ultima Founding |
Blank (Psychic) - Blank (Psychic): A Blank, also known as an Untouchable, a psychic Null, and a Pariah, is a Human who possesses the rare mutation sometimes inaccurately described as the "Pariah Gene" that makes them generate no psychic presence in the Immaterium, thus leaving them essentially soulless. Known also as "Blacksouls" and "the Soulless," a Blank is a living anathema for all psykers, regardless of their species; they are, essentially, "anti-psykers."On the psyker scale commonly employed by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and known as "The Assignment," Blanks occupy the nethermost levels, from Phi-plus to the extraordinarily rare Omega-minus level.The minds of most self-aware beings have a direct connection to the Warp that is actually what is called the "soul" in many cultures of the galaxy. Psykers have especially strong connections to the Warp, and their souls thus appear as blazing brands to those who can see within the Immaterium, spiritual beacons which draw the hungry attention of Warp denizens.But Blanks are born with no connection to the Warp at all, their presence completely invisible within the Empyrean. In fact, the minds of Blanks can actually somehow sever the connection between the Warp and realspace within their local area. The result is that a Blank dampens any psychic or Warp-related powers occurring within their aura's area of effect. A psyker standing within the Blank's range will find their powers weakened if not wholly nonfunctional. The Blank themselves is immune to all direct psychic effects. However, a psyker could still attack a Blank indirectly by using their abilities to, for example, telekinetically launch a projectile at them.A Blank is the direct antithesis of Chaos as he or she possesses no presence within the Warp. Blanks are completely immune to Daemonic possession and spiritual corruption by the forces or agents of Chaos. Blanks can also interfere with the Tyranid Hive Mind's ability to telepathically link Tyranid bioforms through its synapse organisms. However, this interference is nowhere near as powerful as what their abilities do to beings composed of pure psychic energy such as entities native to the Warp like Daemons, who find the presence of Blanks painful, even to the point that they will be driven back into the Immaterium simply to escape their presence.A Blank's proximity to someone who possesses even a modicum of psychic ability can also be quite painful or even lethal to the psyker, especially to psychically-sensitive beings such as the Aeldari. Even ordinary, non-psychic individuals categorised by the Imperium as Sigma grade and below in psychic ability can be affected by a Blank's anti-psyker aura, as they radiate a sense of unnatural "wrongness" that makes all other living creatures extremely uncomfortable and uneasy in their presence. People in the presence of an Untouchable will often harbour intensely hostile feelings towards the Blank for reasons that they cannot explain. As a result, most Pariahs do not live long as the feelings of hatred and distaste they generate among even non-psychic individuals means they have few friends and many enemies.The Soulless are very rare in the galaxy since perhaps only one person on an entire world will be a carrier of the mutation in every Human generation. It is believed by some in the Adeptus Mechanicus that the genetic complex of changes collectively sometimes called the "Pariah Gene" were deliberately engineered into the genomes of the ancestors of Mankind by the Necrons millions of standard years ago during the War in Heaven.Blanks today are most often used by the Officio Assassinorum's Culexus Temple and as Acolytes by Inquisitors of the Ordo Hereticus who find them to be useful psychic shields and weapons against the witch and Unsanctioned Psykers. The Ordo Malleus finds Blanks to be superb living weapons against Daemons. Additionally, every member of the Sisters of Silence, the Imperium's most effective anti-psyker military force, is a Null.While only Humanity is known to naturally produce Blanks, they have also come into being through unique circumstabces in certain alien species, such as the Solitaires of the Aeldari Harlequins, who have lost their own souls to Slaanesh through unspecified means. |
Blank (Psychic) - History: When the Sisters of Silence first captured and transported large numbers of Untouchables back to Terra during the Great Crusade, Humanity had its first disturbing revelation of the potency of these strange mutants. As large groups of Pariahs were brought to Terra, they began to cast a shadow in the Warp, blocking out the Astronomican, the vital psychic beacon used to guide starships to the far reaches of the Imperium.Other branches within the Imperium of Man, especially those that relied upon the abilities of psykers, were horrified by the existence of Pariahs. Several members of the Council of Terra sought to have Pariahs outlawed outright like other dangerous mutants -- tasking the Sisters of Silence with the ruthless extermination of any more Blanks that were found just as they eliminated rogue psykers who presented a threat to Humanity.A number of members of the Council of Terra, including the Paternal Envoy of the Navis Nobilite, were pushing the Emperor to issue an official decree to rid the Imperium of the "anti-psyker" mutants that threatened their adeptas' very existence. This was unfortunate, for the clades of the Officio Assassinorum had been working in secret with the Magos Biologis and Genetors of the ancient Mechanicum on the order of Malcador the Sigillite, the Regent of Terra and the founder of the Officio as the first Grand Master of Assassins, to see if it was possible to harness the Blanks' strange abilities and use them to kill psykers.Their work was almost complete; many standard years had been spent developing specialist wargear and training techniques, all of which was about to be ruined by a zealous political witch-hunt. Fortunately, the Emperor never had to issue an official decree, for at Malcador the Sigillite's behest, the Mechanicum announced that it was ending the Pariah Project, making a great show of closing down its laboratories and executing many of the "specimens" it had tested there. Satisfied that no further action was needed, the bureaucrats of the Council of Terra turned their attention to the more important matters at hand.However, closer study of the fragmentary Imperial records from this time reveal that the number of executions did not match the number of Pariahs contained within the laboratories of the Mechanicum. Working in collusion with the Officio Assassinorum, the Mechanicum spirited away the most promising Pariahs to a specially constructed fortress hidden on Terra, beyond the reach or knowledge of the more zealous branches of what eventually became the Adeptus Terra after the Horus Heresy.It was there that the Culexus Temple, originally known as the Culexus Clade, was born in its modern form under the direction of its first Director Primus, the individual known only as Sire Culexus. Culexus had sworn an oath alongside Malcador and the five other directors primus of the newborn Officio Assassinorum to defeat every enemy of the Emperor no matter where or how they sought to hide from Imperial justice. The Blanks of the Culexus Clade would become an important component of keeping that vow. |
Blank (Psychic) - Silent Sisterhood: The most well-known example of the use of Blanks by the Imperium of Man was the existence of the mysterious all-female order of Witch Hunters known as the Sisters of Silence.During the Great Crusade era in the late 30th and early 31st Millennium, their purpose was to hunt and kill rogue Human psykers whose activities presented a terrible danger to the people of the newborn Imperium.Also known as the "Silent Sisterhood" and the "Witchseekers," they were the militant arm of the Astra Telepathica and were referred to internally within the records of the Council of Terra (predecessor to the Adeptus Terra and the Senatorum Imperialis) as the Departmento Investigates.Along with the Legio Custodes, the Sisters of Silence had the right and duty to walk freely within the inner sanctum of the Imperial Vaults, the sovereign and sole domain of the Emperor and His Household at the behest and license of the Master of Mankind.The Sisters of Silence's primary base of operations was the Somnus Citadel on Luna, the moon of Terra. These warrior-investigators were tasked with the apprehension of untrained psykers, often colloquially referred to on primitive Human worlds as "witches," whose abilities sometimes manifested in ways that could be very dangerous to their fellow Human beings, particularly if they became possessed hosts for the foul entities of the Warp.The Sisters operated the Astra Telepathica's infamous Black Ships, which ranged the galaxy following behind the Great Crusade's expeditionary fleets in search of rogue psykers to capture or expunge, seeking to collect and carry them back to Terra where they would be tested and their eventual fate decided. Though few in number, the Sisters of Silence commanded great respect within the Imperium and most servants of the Emperor regarded them with some awe.Few would willingly stand in their way or interfere with their activities and few indeed were those who were comfortable in their presence. It is hardly surprising that Blanks are often treated like outcasts or lepers in Imperial society, rejected by their parents and banished from their homeworld's local settlements.Local superstitions on many worlds often warn about touching them, saying that to do so would bring bad luck. Resigned to their fate, many Blanks lead simple, solitary existences, as far away from heavily populated areas as possible.Following the end of the Horus Heresy, Mankind had become superstitious and fearful of the unknown, and the Silent Sisterhood were cast out by a distrustful Imperium.They disappeared from Imperial history for nearly 1,500 years, until the Imperium faced annihilation at the hands of the massive Ork WAAAGH! led by the Warboss known only as The Beast. The last vestiges of the Silent Sisterhood would play a key role in defeating this Ork WAAAGH!, thus diverting disaster.Though officially disbanded after the Age of Apostasy in the 36th Millennium, many enclaves of the Silent Sisterhood still fight for the Imperial cause in the modern era, albeit in a more secretive and specialist capacity than before, and would eventually play an important role against Abaddon the Despoiler and the forces of Chaos during the closing years of the 41st Millennium.Following the resurrection of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman during the 13th Black Crusade, the Sisters of Silence were reinstated formally as the Adeptus Astra Telepathica's Departmento Investigates and accompanied Guilliman on his Indomitus Crusade. |
Blank (Psychic) - Culexus Temple: Another well-known instance of Untouchables used by the Imperium are the Culexus Assassins of the Officio Assassinorum's Culexus Temple. The Assassins of this temple have been described by Aeldari Warlocks as being nothing short of the embodiment of pure evil.Even amongst the upper echelons of the Officio Assassinorum this temple is always viewed with extreme caution. The reason for this is not because of the way that the Culexus Assassins carry out their operations, or the heinous methods of killing they employ. It is because of the very nature of the Culexus Assassins themselves.This extremely rare genetic defect occurs for no known reason in less than one in a billion individuals.All psykers and intrinsically psychic species like the Aeldari consider a being like a Culexus Assassin to be an absolute abomination. Even monstrosities such as a Tyranid Hive Tyrant can balk at the prospect of being permanently severed from their psychic abilities and the Hive Mind.The Culexus Assassin causes absolute terror in all psykers -- which is why they are so useful to the Imperium. |
Blank (Psychic) - Inquisition: All the Ordos of the Inquisition makes eager use of Blanks, as they are the most potent kind of anti-psyker tool there is. They are very useful in the fight against witches and Daemons and are sometimes used as Acolytes in the retinues of certain Inquisitors.The Blank is typically made to follow their master around like a tourist, protecting his master from witchcraft and sorcery with his mere proximity. |
Blank (Psychic) - Space Marines and Custodians: At the time of the Horus Heresy, there were no known records of any Pariahs serving within either the Legiones Astartes or Legio Custodes.Some Imperial scholars have suggested that, for the Space Marines, this is due to the psychically-infused nature of the Astartes gene-seed, which could render it lethal if implanted in a subject carrying the Pariah Gene.It is, however, possible for a Space Marine to be transformed into a Pariah after implantation, as is the case with the Ferrymen who serve the Grey Knights. |
Blank (Psychic) - Ordo Sinister: During the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras, the Ordo Sinister exclusively employed Blanks as the commanders of its Psi-Titans.Known as preceptor-intendants, these Blanks were equivalent to the Princeps used by the standard Titan Legions of the Collegia Titanica, but were also tasked with directing and focusing the powers of the psykers that were surgically bound into each Psi-Titan. |
Blank (Psychic) - Astra Militarum: When identified within their ranks, Blanks have been utilised by the regiments of the Astra Militarum for dealing with rogue or xenos psykers, though they appear to be as rare within the Astra Militarum as they are elsewhere. |
Blank (Psychic) - Necrons: The Necrons utilize blackstone, also called noctilith, which is a unique substance that has Warp nullification effects when negatively "charged" that led many in the Imperium to dub it "Pariah Stone."However blackstone doesn't just negate psychic powers or effects, it can also be used to amplify the powers of the Warp should it be "charged" in the right way. |
Blank (Psychic) - Pariah Gene: The exact biological source which creates in a Human being the state of psychic Null, the so-called "Pariah Gene," has proven an elusive and ephemeral subject of study, and in testing no single "gene" at all.Such attempts to exploit or isolate it when pursued by both the Imperial Archotechnologist Corps and the Mechanicum during the Great Crusade's early years courted disaster, and as a result the Emperor decreed a general moratorium upon the study of the biological basis of the psyker Null phenomena, affecting all but His own direct experimentation should He wish it.What remains of those extant studies indicates that most attempts to synthesise, propagate or even weaponise the psychic Null were tragic failures or worse. Despite all this evidence, shadowed accounts of certain clades of the Officio Assassinorum and the dread and obscure Ordo Sinister also contain evidence of the Emperor's own "engineered" use of the psychic Null in warfare. To others however, the mystery of the Pariah Gene, if it truly exists, remains out of reach.So many unanswered questions revolve around this most arcane and dangerous of topics. Foremost are those which centre around theories of how the Pariah Gene came about: was it perhaps the result of xenos tampering with the Human genome or some strange and terrible experiment of the Age of Technology?Or, as the wildest theories state, is it some perverse evolutionary development of the Human species against the Warp-given cosmos itself? There is also the observation that no Space Marine, or Custodian Guard for that matter, has ever been recorded as being a psychic Null.This factor weighs the evidence of some scholars that within the Space Marines' gene-seed itself is perhaps a shadow of the Emperor's own genetic material and a sliver of His own psychic power crucial to the process and success of the transition from mortal to Astartes. If this is the case, it would be wholly an anathema to the Pariah Gene and likely simply kill its implanted subject.It can only be speculated that if even a single Legion of psychic Null Legiones Astartes had been possible, how very different history may have been -- just as without the involvement of the Sisters of Silence in the war and the Emperor's Webway Project, Horus' treachery may well have ended in triumph upon the broken throne of Terra. |
Blank (Psychic) - True Blanks: While the term "Blank" is often ascribed to all who possess the anti-psychic mutation, true Blanks, also called "Untouchables," are those Humans who possess the Pariah Gene in its recessive form in their genetic code.A Blank is often not aware of his powers and may not be able to control them even if he is, but the aura of negative psychic space he projects is highly disruptive to psychic powers. A psyker will find it difficult to impossible to affect the Blank and anyone in his general vicinity with his powers.Blanks have a better chance than true Pariahs to live a peaceful life, for since their aura of "otherness" is weak, baseline Humans may simply pass it off as queerness and leave the Blank alone.Blanks are often recruited as acolytes to serve as living shields against psychic attacks by Inquisitors and are forced to tag along wherever the Inquisitor goes.Generous or pragmatic Inquisitors might even provide their Blank with combat training and some equipment to augment their living shield's survivability. |
Blank (Psychic) - Pariahs: Pariahs, also known as "Blacksouls", "Psychic Nulls", or the "Soulless", are mutants in whom the Pariah Gene is dominant. They have no presence whatsoever in the Warp and thus no "soul."Their aura of "otherness" is so powerful that a baseline Human finds it impossible to be in the Pariah's presence; and they are a living embodiment of the worst possible nightmare for any psychically-gifted being.Unlike Blanks, true Pariahs can siphon off and thrive on the psychic energy of psykers, breaking the connection between the Warp and the Materium wherever they go, and their aura quickly proves fatal to psykers in its area of affect.Pariahs are quite often killed at birth as mutants, for their "otherness" is very palpable.Surprisingly, Pariahs have always been much sought-after by the Imperium, first organised in the all-female Sisters of Silence order, and now trained to become the much feared Culexus Assassins. |
Blank (Psychic) - Notable Blanks and Pariahs: Ferik Jurgen - Jurgen was an Imperial Guardsman originally of the 12th Valhallan Field Artillery Regiment, who served as aide, driver and adjutant to Commissar Ciaphas Cain. Jurgen saved the life of his Commissar on more than one occasion thanks to his ability to dampen psychic powers.Culexus Assassins - All Culexus Assassins are fully-fledged Pariahs, trained and equipped to the highest Imperial standard to become the bane of psykers across the galaxy.Iota - Iota was a female member of the Culexus clade during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy era. Iota was designated as a Protiphage, for she was not fully Human in the strictest sense; she was a clone, or as they were known in the Imperium, a replicae. Created by the Emperor's biologians, Iota was conceived from cells that had been combined in a test tube in a laboratory. As a Culexus Clade operative she was a being without a soul, closer to a xenos than her own kind. She was dispatched with the first ever Imperial Execution Force that was composed of Imperial Assassins from every clade, who were attempting to assassinate the Traitor Primarch Horus upon the world of Dagonet. Ultimately, their assassination attempt failed and all the Assassins were slain by the Traitors.Necron Pariah Warriors - The Necrons harvest Human Pariahs and transform them into these cybernetic abominations to protect themselves from psychic activities."Spear", the Black Pariah - Within Imperial history, there has only been one known so-called "Black Pariah" to have ever existed. He was a former Imperial Assassin by the code-name of "Spear", who lived during the time of the Horus Heresy. Born as a Human Untouchable, he was captured by the Silent Sisterhood and brought to Terra, where Clade Culexus experimented upon and augmented him in an attempt to create a more powerful and deadly form of Culexus Assassin. It is not known whether these augmentations or his unnatural abilities made him a Black Pariah. Spear was eventually deemed too unstable and dangerous by his clade's masters to be left alive. He was placed in the care of the Sisters of Silence and was sent aboard one of their lone vessels, bound for the heart of a nearby sun. Unfortunately, this vessel was intercepted by a Renegade vessel carrying the Dark Apostle Erebus of the traitorous Word Bearers Legion. Boarding the Sisters' vessel, the Word Bearers killed all aboard, with the exception of Spear. Sensing the usefulness of such a unique specimen, Erebus found a new purpose for his captive. He forced Spear to undergo a painful and vile Chaos ritual, in which a minor Daemon from the Immaterium was bonded with the former assassin. This bonding created a highly dangerous apex predator -- a "counter-psyker" -- capable of redirecting a psyker's attack directly back upon them. In order to utilise this ability, the Black Pariah first had to obtain a sample of his target's blood. This was a necessary component that helped him synchronise with his target's psionic abilities in order to reflect their attacks. Two standard years later, following the events of the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V, Erebus tasked his deadly minion to assassinate the Emperor. Spear spent an inordinate amount of time in order to painstakingly reach his ultimate goal -- a document that possessed a minute drop of the Emperor of Mankind's precious blood. Spear obtained the document on the world of Dagonet, bringing him into direct conflict with an Imperial Execution Force composed of Imperial Assassins from every clade, who were attempting to assassinate the Traitor Primarch Horus. Though the mission was ultimately deemed a failure, resulting in the death of all its members, this confrontation resulted in the Black Pariah's destruction. Horus later chastised Erebus for his audacious plan to assassinate the Emperor, declaring that when the opportune moment finally dawned, it would be him -- and him alone -- who killed the Master of Mankind.The Distaff - The Distaff was a group of Blanks created and utilised to hunt rogue psykers by the notorious Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn in the 41st Millennium and also seconded by him to other Inquisitors for particular investigations. The leader of this unique group of Untouchables was Alizabeth Bequin. The Distaff proved instrumental in the defeat of the Traitor Inquisitor Quixos, a formally venerated Radical Inquisitor of the Ordo Malleus who became tainted by Chaos. The Distaff was finally destroyed in 386.M41. |
Blasting Charge - Blasting Charge: A Blasting Charge is an explosive known to be used by the forces of the Genestealer Cults. Created from scavenged Imperial detonators and low-end demolition gear designed for non-military uses, the short-fused blasting charges used by Genestealer cultists can be hurled into the enemy ranks to sow death and disruption ahead of a concerted assault. |
Blastmaster - Blastmaster: The Blastmaster is a heavy Sonic Weapon that when fired focuses a throbbing bass note into an explosive sonic crescendo that can burst eyeballs and rupture internal organs. By varying the frequency of the blast, the effect of the weapon can be altered to produce different effects. The Blastmaster is used alongside the smaller Sonic Blaster weapon.These weapons are employed by Noise Marines and Daemon Engines that serve the Chaos God Slaanesh. The Blastmaster is about the same size as the Astartes man-portable Lascannon, and is wielded with both hands. The weapon is also used by Chaos Sonic Dreadnoughts, where it is mounted upon one of the Dreadnought's weapon arms.The Blastmaster is also used by the Slaanesh Subjugator Daemon Engine during close combat to ensure that its victim cannot fight back while it tears it apart with its Hellslicer Battle Claws. Imperial records do not list any other known users of the Blastmaster, though there probably exist many more. |
Blazoned Legion - Blazoned Legion: The Blazoned Legion is a Loyalist Space Marine Chapter of unknown genetic origin and Founding. |
Blazoned Legion - Chapter Colours: The Blazoned Legion primarily wears white power armour, including the shoulder plates, arms, leg armour and helmet. The trim of the shoulder pauldrons as well as the upper torso and groin area are dark red. The Aquila or Imperialis on the chest is dark yellow.The dark red squad tactical specialty symbol -- battleline, close support, fire support, Veteran or command -- is indicated on the right shoulder pauldron. A white Low Gothic numeral centred on the squad specialty symbol indicates squad number.The colour of the left poleyn (knee guard) indicates company number in accordance with the Codex Astartes -- i.e. white (1st Company), yellow (2nd Company), red (3rd Company), etc. |
Blazoned Legion - Chapter Badge: The Blazoned Legions' Chapter badge is a dark red, upside-down fleur-de-lis on a field of white. |
Bleak Brotherhood - Bleak Brotherhood: Bleak BrotherhoodChaos Space MarinesWarp Ghosts |
Bleak Brotherhood - Notable Campaigns: Magdelon Incursion (712.M41) - The renegade Bleak Brotherhood makes a compact with a daemonic power for aid in coming wars, the price the entity demands being the casting down of the Crystal City of Magdelon. The renegades enact their pact of the fell bargain, and in so doing attract the attention of the Space Wolves Space Marine Chapter. Wolf Lord Ragnar Blackmane leads his Great Company against the splinter warband, and in the ensuing battle amidst the shattered ruins of the Crystal City the ferocity of the battle is so pleasing to the denizens of the Warp that a major daemonic incursion is triggered. The Space Wolves emerge triumphant, despite the odds. Having been ejected from Magdelon, the Bleak Brotherhood flees to Lycanthos Secundus.Lycanthos Drift Campaign (780.M41) - Having been ejected from Magdelon, the Bleak Brotherhood flees to Lycanthos Secundus, where they occupy the mighty bastion known as the Widowmaker. Throughout the Lycanthos Drift Campaign of the Fourth Quadrant Rebellion, this stronghold withstands repeated assaults by numerous Imperial forces for three decades before at last falling to Lufgt Huron and his Astral Claws Chapter in 780.M41.13th Black Crusade (999.M41) - During Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade, the Bleak Brotherhood was one of the Chaos Space Marine warbands that participated in the massive assault by the Forces of Chaos against the Cadian Gate. |
Bleak Brotherhood - Warband Colours: The Bleak Brotherhood wears jet-black coloured Power Armour with green flames. |
Bleak Brotherhood - Warband Badge: The badge of the Bleak Brotherhood is a green outline of a locust's head on a black background. |
Bleak Brotherhood - Canon Note: The Bleak Brotherhood possesses the same badge and colours as the Chaos Space Marine warband called the Apocalypse Company. It is unknown whether this is meant to signal that both warbands possess a prior relationship or whether it was just a mistake on the part of Games Workshop. |
Bleeding Eye - Bleeding Eye: The Bleeding Eye is a particularly large Chaos Space Marine Raptor cult within the Night Lords Traitor Legion whose members often act as mercenaries for other Chaos forces.They are known to operate in cells across several sectors of the galaxy, allying themselves with other Heretic Astartes warbands despite having their origins within the Night Lords Traitor Legion.The Bleeding Eye is known for taking part in various acts of cannibalism, eating the remains of their fallen enemies. |
Bleeding Eye - Notable Bleeding Eyes: Lucoryphus - Lucoryphus is the commander of a thirty-man strong cell of the Bleeding Eye Raptor Cult that originally served Abaddon the Despoiler, but eventually left his service to ally themselves with a fellow Night Lords warband known as The Exalted commanded by the eponymous Exalted himself, Vandred Anrathi. This warband was eventually decimated by an Aeldari warhost from Craftworld Ulthwé on the Daemon World Tsagualsa, the former base of operations and homeworld of the Night Lords Traitor Legion. Lucoryphys later re-emerged at the dawn of the 13th Black Crusade alongside Variel the Flayer as one of Decimus' right-hand men.Vorsha - Vorsha was a member of the cell of the Bleeding Eye Raptor Cult commanded by Lucoryphus. He was killed on Tsagualsa.Tzek - Tzek was a member of the cell of the Bleeding Eye Raptor Cult commanded by Lucoryphus. He was killed on Tsagualsa. |
Bleeding Eye - Warband Colours: The Bleeding Eye's colours are the same as their parent Legion, the Night Lords. Their armour is night blue with a mysterious network of lightning bolts that constantly play across their armour when in combat. This is framed with brass.Many members' armour has also been reshaped by Warp exposure. |
Bleeding Eye - Warband Badge: The Bleeding Eye's badge is the same as their parent Legion, the Night Lords, a bleached skull with red Chiropteran wings superimposed over a field of midnight blue. |
Bleeding Eye - Sources: Blood Reaver (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-BowdenVoid Stalker (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden |
Blessed Autocimulacra - Blessed Autocimulacra: The term Blessed Autocimulacra refers to an extensive set of automatic repair systems used by the vehicles and combat walkers of the Adeptus Mechanicus.These self-repair systems can range from self-healing alloys sourced from irreplaceable relic-stockpiles, to an on-board servitor-simulacrum used to shore up breaches and re-route severed fuel and circuit lines while chanting the Rites of Revivification.The same automated repair systems are present in the hellforged vehicles and combat walkers of the Dark Mechanicum, and are known as Infernal Autocimulacra. |
Blessed Lady - Blessed Lady: The Blessed Lady was one of a triumvirate of unique Imperial Abyss-class Battleships of special configuration, created and built in the early 31st Millennium.This vessel was constructed in secret during the latter years of the Great Crusade by the Renegade Dark Mechanicum faction loyal to Kelbor-Hal, the Fabricator-General of Mars' Mechanicum.This vessel was constructed for the Word Bearers Space Marine Legion, who were secretly ordered by the rebellious Warmaster Horus to bring their unfettered wrath down upon their hated rivals, the Ultramarines Legion. |
Blessed Lady - History: During the opening days of the Horus Heresy, Primarch Lorgar had ordered his two most trusted advisors, First Chaplain Erebus and the Dark Apostle Kor Phaeron, to unleash their unfettered wrath against the Realm of Ultramar. This was done in retaliation for the humiliation the XVIIth Legion had been forced to endure by being forced to kneel in disgrace before the Emperor and Roboute Guilliman and his Ultramarines on the world of Khur at the Emperor's orders during the Great Crusade.The purpose of the Word Bearers' invasion of Ultramar in the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy was to tie down the XIIIth Legion, which administered the region as its Imperial fief, and prevent the Ultramarines from reinforcing their fellow Loyalists as the Traitor Legions marched relentlessly on Terra itself. To this end, Lorgar commissioned the Fabricator-General of Mars, Kelbor-Hal, in the construction of a mighty vessel of unique design, built on a scale never before seen by man.This gargantuan warship, the largest ever built by the Imperium, was christened by the Word Bearers with the name Furious Abyss. The Furious Abyss was to be manned by one thousand Word Bearers Astartes. They were led by Fleet-Captain Zadkiel, a devout and zealous follower of the Word of Lorgar. He was charged by the Dark Apostle Kor Phaeron to lead the assault upon the Ultramarines homeworld of Macragge, where they would strike the first blow for the Word Bearers against the hated Imperium of Man. But ultimately, Zadkiel failed in achieving his objective when the Furious Abyss was boarded by a small ad hoc force of Loyalist Astartes who had learned of the Word Bearers' role in Horus' rebellion and who proceeded to sabotage the massive vessel and destroy it before its array of formidable weaponry could be brought to bear against the worlds of Ultramar. |
Blessed Lady - Shadow Crusade: In the meantime, the Word Bearers' invasion of Ultramar proceeded to achieve a monumental victory at the Battle of Calth. The Ultramarines Legion was badly crippled by the Word Bearers' assault at Calth and no longer presented a viable threat to Horus' plan to drive on Terra. Erebus had managed to complete his blasphemous ritual on Calth's surface, which summoned the beginnings of the sorcerous Ruinstorm to the galaxy's Eastern Fringe -- a monstrous Warp Storm larger and more destructive than anything space-faring humanity had witnessed since the days of the Age of Strife.Simultaneously, with the Word Bearers' assault on Calth, Lorgar and the more reliable Word Bearers under his command launched a second offensive, a joint Shadow Crusade with his brother Angron and his World Eaters Legion into the rest of the Realm of Ultramar. They would go on to lay waste to the Five Hundred Worlds with reckless abandon, slaughtering twenty-six worlds in rapid succession. This was to ensure the success of the sorcerous Ruinstorm, which would ultimately split the void asunder, dividing the galaxy in two and rendering vast tracts of the Imperium impassable for centuries, effectively cutting Ultramar off from the rest of the Imperium. |
Blessed Lady - Assault on Armatura: During one of their early campaigns, the joint Traitor fleet was to assault the War World of Armatura, a vitally important planet that fed the Ultramarines Legion with recruits and munitions. Its close-orbit played home to immense Imperial shipyards. Orbital bastions of linked gantries and docking maws drifted above the placid world. Above and beyond the shipyard was the first concentric ring of void defences. Here, weaponised satellites and fire platforms bristled with turrets, alongside independent landing decks for fighter craft in lockdown. Beyond those, the true defences began.These were literal castles in the sky: great fortress-stations with their own racks of fighters and entire battlements given over to plasma batteries, laser broadsides and ship-killing Lance arrays. In highest orbit, the outer sphere of satellites was a three-dimensional spread of solar panels, clockwork engines and slaved Servitor brains all connected to vast long-range weapons arrays.Amidst that outermost defence sphere waited the Evocati fleet. While the Legion mustered at Calth, the XIIIth Legion’s War World could never be left undefended. The Evocati was comprised of several thousand Ultramarines drawn from a dozen Chapters of the Legion, awarded the highest honour of all: overseeing the operations of Armatura and the training of new recruits, commanding an Imperial fleet to rival any other.It appeared that Lorgar's plans to assault Armatura were for naught, for to attack the War World the Word Bearers would need a vessel to rival anything humanity had ever wrought. The Word Bearers had possessed such a vessel once -- the Furious Abyss. But it had been destroyed solar days earlier, close to the same moment Kor Phaeron's expeditionary force had struck Calth. Its corpse was probably still a shadow in the skies of Macragge, a monument to the Word Bearers' failure.Lorgar had told Zadkiel he was foolish to attack Macragge, but the Fleet-Captain was so keen to bathe in glory, for all he ever heard were the whispers begging for revenge for the humiliation of the Word Bearers on Khur. So the Aurelian had indulged him. But Lorgar had been underestimated, for he had planned for just such an eventuality. He had been planning the events that led up to the Horus Heresy for nearly half a Terran century. Lorgar's foresight became apparent when a vast trident of dark metal emerged from Warpspace near Armatura, a great warship whose shape was immediately familiar to the Word Bearers fleet approaching Armatura.The starship that emerged into reality was a reflection of the slain colossus once called the Furious Abyss. A veritable city of monasteries and cathedrals rose from its back with the reverence of clawed hands sculpted to clutch at the stars. Where most Imperial Battleships were spears of crenellated intent and iron-ridged might, this was a fortress in space, borne on the back of a great trident.The central tine served as the vessel's core: dense at the stern, encrusted with massive engines and tapering towards the prow, where it formed a pointed ram the size of lesser vessels. The trident's adjacent tines formed smaller blade-wings, each one barnacled with laser broadsides and Macrocannon batteries. If one were to clad the concept of spite in iron and set it sailing amongst the stars, it might approach the image of what burst back into the universe in that moment. It was, in every way, the Furious Abyss reborn.This mighty vessel was the Blessed Lady. This colossus was named for the Word Bearers' former Confessor, Cyrene Valantion, the Confessor of the Word, and the lone survivor of the destruction of the Perfect City of Monarchia at the hands of the Ultramarines on the world of Khur. The Blessed Lady easily eclipsed the Gloriana-class Battleships used as flagships by most of the other Space Marine Legions.But Lorgar's final secret was yet to be revealed. He had not had only two of these mighty vessels built in the Mechanicum shipyards orbiting Jupiter. As a second Warp-slice ripped across the stars near Armatura, another colossus was revealed.This was the Blessed-Lady's twin sister-ship, the Trisagion. The pair of Dreadnoughts rivaled even the Imperial Fists' Primarch Rogal Dorn's precious Phalanx in size and firepower. Lorgar had secretly had three of these mighty vessels built for the service of the Word Bearers.The Blessed Lady and her twin sister, the Trisagion, made a mockery of Armatura's orbital arrays, dismantling one of the best-defended worlds in the Imperium with barrage after barrage from their howling, flashing weapon decks. The ships' size and scale rendered all countermeasures obsolete. For the first hour, nothing could punch through their Void Shields. Nothing even managed to scrape their skin.It took the combined firepower of a battle-station, two orbital defence platforms and a suicidal ramming from an Imperial warship to finally penetrate the Blessed Lady's shields. She sailed on, oblivious to the thousands dying within one of the flaming monasteries on her back, for their agonies made no difference at all to a crew composed of half a million men and women, all singing the praises of Lorgar and the Chaos Gods. The Word Bearers' mighty Battleships made a mockery of the Ultramarines' defences and helped crush the Evocati fleet and win the day at Armatura for the Traitors.The fate of the Blessed Lady following the campaign at Armatura is currently unknown in the fragmentary Imperial records of the Horus Heresy era. |
Blessed Lady - Armament: Likes its lost sister-ship the Furious Abyss, the Blessed Lady possessed a formidable array of weaponry, with hundreds of laser batteries that ran the length of both of its sides. It also possessed an experimental weapon: a Plasma Lance embedded in its prow, developed as a direct fire, close-range weapon for ship-to-ship combat, which was able to fire at point-blank ranges.The Blessed Lady could also deploy psionic mines when in transit through the Warp, to collapse stable Warp routes behind it when being followed by enemy vessels. |
Blessed Wormlings - Blessed Wormlings: The Blessed Wormlings are a Genestealer Cult whose cultists feed only on the beetles and squirming annelids that burrow through the loam of the Cemetery World of Masuchi Parr. A sombre brethren who are dark of mood and aspect, they believe that the verminous insects that prey upon the dead inherit the strength of all creatures once they pass into the earth.They preach that, by embracing the ways of the most lowly creatures of creation, they will find a humility that brings them closer to the god they name the "Star Emperor." In truth, the deity they refer to is not the Master of Mankind, but an anthropomorphic personification of the Great Devourer -- the Tyranid species that will one day consume them all.To this end, the Blessed Wormlings infest carrion-rich battlefields, festering grave-pits and corpse-recycling manufactoria, even spreading to new worlds by lying for solar weeks amidst the heaped dead of mortuary voidships. They emerge into the dayligbt only grudgingly, preferring to spring from ambush and drag their captives screaming into the dark, often bound up in nets shot from webbers. It is said that these unfortunates are fed to deep pits of carnivorous bugs, which are then devoured in turn by the Blessed Wormlings that they might gain the strength of their foes.In the 41st Millennium, a seven-man Deathwatch Kill-team was deployed to Masuchi Parr to investigate reports of the existence of the cult. When they discovered that the threat was greater than first feared, the Kill-team fought heroically to reach the planet's spaceport and escape to bring word of the menace to the wider Imperium.Yet their numbers proved too few and, though the Astartes heaped the corridors with xenophile corpses, the Deathwatch Space Marines were eventually overrun. Theirs was but one story of tragic loss for the servants of the Emperor during this time, when the Deathwatch found themselves stretched to their limits and beyond by the growing xenos threats to the Imperium. |
Blessed Wormlings - Sources: Codex Adeptus Astartes - Deathwatch (8th Edition), pg. 25, "Contact Lost"Codex: Genestealer Cults (7th Edition), pg. 51Codex: Genestealer Cults (8th Edition), pg. 33Codex: Genestealer Cults (9th Edition), pg. 37 |
Blight Drone - Blight Drone: A Blight Drone, also known as a Bilecyst, is a Daemon Engine dedicated to the Chaos God of pestilence and disease, Nurgle. The Blight Drone is a seemingly weird conglomeration of insect larva, flying machine, and Daemonic entity.The maddening, incessant droning buzz of their rotor disks echoing across the battlefield has become recognised as an omen of death by soldiers of the Imperium of Man.Stories from the maimed and rotting survivors of Blight Drone attacks are quick to spread through the ranks of Astra Militarum regiments that engage them in battle, each story having negative effects on morale and spreading fear and panic amongst the soldiers which has become a great concern for commissars.The threat to the morale and overall stability of a regiment has been deemed so serious that any guardsmen caught retelling these tales faces immediate arrest and transportation to a penal unit. |
Blight Drone - Grim Origins: The origin of this foul Daemon Engine of Nurgle lies back over ten standard millennia earlier, during the Horus Heresy. Blight Drones are believed to be twisted perversions of Vultarax Pattern Stratos Battle-Automata.The Vultarax was a robust, multi-role robot which was both heavily armed and remarkably swift. It was based on pre-Imperial STC templates for autonomous aerial machines and constructed around a powerful variant of the Cybernetica Cortex used in most Imperial Robots.The Vultarax was conceived during the Age of Strife on the Forge World of Anetarbraxus and later given up in tribute to holy Mars. From the Red Planet, it quickly spread to other Forge Worlds in the solar decades after Anetarbraxus' reunification with the Imperium.By the time of the Horus Heresy, it was one of the rare testimonies to the Forge World's existence, as Anetarbraxus had been reduced to molten slag during the Great Mandragoran Incursion.The designs of these rare aerial Battle-Automata were more than likely spirited away by their Dark Mechanicum masters when they fled into the Eye of Terror after the Heresy ended. Within the Eye, these once noble machines became corrupted by the decaying touch of the Plague God Nurgle, becoming fly-like mechanical horrors known as "Blight Drones."These hideous war engines bear rusting plates and rot-iron armour, their hulls overflowing with putrescent foulness. They drift towards the enemy, riding the high air currents over the battlefield on droning turbines, before dropping down to slaughter the enemy with cannon fire and feed upon their seeping corpse-fluids. |
Blight Drone - Siege of Vraks: The very first recorded contact between the armed forces of the Imperium and Blight Drones was during the Siege of Vraks in 813.M41, where the Blight Drones were encountered in large swarms fighting alongside the Vraksian Traitor Militia and their Chaos Space Marine allies.The first sightings of Blight Drones, often recorded from the tales of badly maimed survivors, led to their initial misidentification, with some of them being labelled a conventional aircraft of some kind or as massive, Warp-mutated insects.Eventually, the scholars of the Inquisition were able to piece together various pieces of evidence, and the truth that they were facing a new form of Daemon Engine became abundantly clear. The creatures themselves were usually encountered in large clusters or swarms, acting much in the manner of carrion flies and ambush predators.The drones seemed to appear on the battlefield where there were large concentrations of the dead as much as they appeared to be ordered into combat by some unseen force. Whereever the Daemon Engines passed the air grew thick with poisonous fumes and the soil itself blistered and rotted.There exist unconfirmed reports of Blight Drones coming down to rest upon piles of corpses seemingly to feed, liquifying the carcasses of the dead and the dying, and sucking up the decaying sludge, perhaps to fuel themselves or maintain their presence in the physical universe. There exists no evidence of Blight Drones landing anywhere or needing any form of maintenance, nor did they ever return to any base of operations.Although the Blight Drone's first confirmed encounter with the Imperium was during the Siege of Vraks, and their true origins remain unknown, it was far from the last. Since the Siege of Vraks, Blight Drones have been encountered in several other battles, notably fighting alongside Heretic Astartes warbands such as The Purge and other Death Guard splinter factions.Additionally, unconfirmed reports have placed these obscene weapons as part of Daemonic incursions in both the ongoing conflicts in the Charadis Rifts war zone and the Auralis war zone, and they were also sighted during the fall of Hive World Mitra, the invasion of Forge World Graia, and during the 13th Black Crusade. |
Blight Drone - Armament: The Blight Drone's macabre and deadly reputation was more than matched in dreadful fact by their effectiveness on the battlefield. The drone is armed with a Reaper Autocannon, and a Mawcannon.The Mawcannon is a smaller version of the weapon found on the mighty Soul Grinder Daemon Engines, and fires out gouts of corrosive toxic bile that is powerful enough to eat through metal and liquify flesh in solar seconds as opposed to the Soul Grinder's preferred Warpfire. The bile from the drone's Mawcannon was extremely effective against the entrenched infantry and vehicles on Vraks, while troops out in the open had little cover from the drone's Reaper Autocannon.The creature's Mawcannon is also capable of spitting out large, roiling masses of mutating phlegm at a distance, destroying entire enemy squads in one great blast.The Blight Drone's seemingly squat and bloated form is also unusually resilient against attacks, especially for a skimmer of its size. This quality is attributed to the living flesh and rusted armour plating of the drone, as well as the will of whatever dark intelligence is guiding them.If a Blight Drone is destroyed in combat it invariably detonates in a shower of bile and pus, and is capable of causing extreme damage to everything caught within the blast. |
Blight Drone - Ordo Malleus Departmento Analyticus Technical Specifications: The technical specifications of the Blight Drone have not yet been determined by the Ordo Malleus of the Inquisition. |
Blight Drone - Sources: Codex Heretic Astartes - Death Guard (8th Edition), "Grim Origins," pg. 50Imperial Armour Volume Seven - The Siege of Vraks - Part Three, pp. 35, 151-153, 189, 210Imperial Armour Volume Thirteen - War Machines of the Lost & The Damned by Andy Hoare with Alan Bligh & Neil Wylie, pp. 131-133Imperial Armour Apocalypse II, pg. 65Imperial Armour Modelling Masterclass II, pp. 80-81Imperial Armour Aeronautica, pg. 74Labyrinth of Sorrows (Audiobook) by George MannWarhammer 40,000: Space Marine (Video Game)Forge World Webstore: Blight Drone of Nurgle |
Blight Grenade - Blight Grenade: A Blight Grenade, also known as a Death Head of Nurgle, is a highly effective improvised grenade and biological and chemical weapon utilised by the Plague Marines, Chaos Sorcerers and other devoted followers of Nurgle. Each is made from the decapitated head of a conquered enemy using an art the Death Guard Traitor Legion perfected long ago.Cultivating these contagions into explosive devices designed to wound and infect over a large area, Blight Grenades expose those who are injured by the corrupted pieces of plague-ridden shrapnel to the most deadly of toxins. These contain virulent toxins that eat away at armour and fill the air with thick clouds of blinding, pathogenic spores.The most ostentatious Blight Grenades are "Death's Heads" crafted by the Foul Blightspawn in veneration of the diseased projectiles flung by Nurgle's daemonic Plague Drones.These rotting, weaponised crania are made from the severed heads of fallen enemies by Nurglite Chaos Sorcerers, each filled to the brim with a grim cocktail of festering disease, blood, pus, acid and other putrid creations allowed to fester and rot before being sealed with ancient wax.The result is a potent missile which will burst upon impact, spraying infectious liquids and toxic gases in all directions. The contagions released by Blight Grenades can penetrate cracks in armour, cause flesh to boil and slough away, and fill the air with blinding spores, all the while keeping the victim alive until the very end, so they can better enjoy the gifts of the Lord of Decay.Each splattering detonation they create is a prayer to the Grandfather's glory. The heads of more powerful enemies deliver better results in the creation and potency of Blight Grenades, so enemy champions are highly prized. |
Blight Grenade - History: As with many Chaos-born artefacts, the origins of Blight Grenades lie in the darkest of legends. Nurgle, as even the lowliest student of daemonic lore knows, is the Plaguefather, the brewer of poxes and plagues. Desiring to know how virulent each of his creations is, Nurgle tasks his legions of Plaguebearers to keep record of every creature, mortal and immortal, that succumbs to each one.Up to a point, Plaguebearers can keep mental track of these bogglingly vast numbers, but even they cannot maintain accuracy forever -- they need some mechanism to record their tallies. Thus do Plaguebearers construct massive abacuses from rusted iron poles and the shrunken heads of plague victims.Each abacus holds many thousands of these gruesome "beads," each of which is stuffed with maggot-ridden fluids teeming with Nurgle's virulent gifts. This is not an attempt at defilement, as it would be if a mortal performed such an act. Rather, the Plaguebearers are as aesthetically bound as any creature, and find the heads more pleasing if their orifices weep with pungent seepings.Were it up to the Plaguebearers, these heads would remain upon their abacuses for eternity, clacking along their poles as the number of plague-slain grows. Unfortunately for the tallymen, the Great Unclean Ones view the shrunken heads as parcels bursting with joy, and cannot bear to see such delightful gifts wasted.As such, they often send Nurglings to steal the heads from the Plaguebearers. Not all such raids are successful, as the Plaguebearers glumly expect other Daemons to interfere in their work, and all too often a diminutive thief finds himself caught and impaled, burbling with disgust, next to the very prize he thought to steal.Should a Nurgling succeed in his mission, however, the Great Unclean One rewards him with a tidbit of rotting flesh and sends the mite on his way. If the shrunken head contains particularly interesting pestilences, the Great Unclean One sometimes keeps it, in order to study the virulence within. All too often, however, the Greater Daemon quickly loses interest, adding the purloined head to the pile of gewgaws and trinkets from which he chooses gifts to bestow on particularly pestering mortals.Of course, few beneficiaries realise the true provenance of these plague-filled heads. If they survive the act of giving (and not all do), they see the thing merely as a weapon to be hurled at the enemy, rejoicing in the flies, maggots and the diseased cloud of pus that burst forth when the head ruptures.So the story goes, Blight Grenades came about following the occasion upon which the Great Unclean One Ku'gath presented three whole abacuses full of shrunken heads to the Death Guard Traitor Legion. Other heads had been presented to mortals before, but never in such numbers.The Traitors were greatly pleased with this sign of favour, for each head contained a pestilence fit to reduce an entire planetary system to a diseased-choked charnel. Indeed, this was the purpose for which Ku'gath's gift was pledged, and over the space of a Terran decade, the Death Guard used the heads to transform ten-score verdant Agri-worlds of the Demeter Sector to liquefying ruin.Soon, however, the shrunken heads were all used, and no amount of prayer or sacrifice to Nurgle, or to Ku'gath, saw the supplies restored. Both god and daemon had grown bored with the antics of the Death Guard, and turned their attention to other things.Seeking to replenish their stocks, the Legion's sorcerers descended upon the worlds of the Demeter Sector and crafted their own versions. Heads were struck from bloated corpses, their skulls extracted and their flesh boiled in great bronze vats filled with black blood. The cavities were then filled with infected matter, and the orifices plugged shut with wax.Though these Blight Grenades were by no means as effective as Ku'gath's original gift, the Plague Marines have ever after sought to refine the recipe to achieve its full potential. Different warbands favour different concoctions of plague. Most consider Nurgle's Rot the only true blessing a Blight Grenade should deliver, though Cankerheart and the Crimson Seep are both popular choices.It is said that only Mortarion has truly mastered the original formula, and is saving it for his next inevitable battle with the Grey Knights, when the Battle of Kornovin's indignities will at last be repaid. |
Blight Grenade - Hyper Blight Grenade: A Hyper Blight Grenade is a type of Blight Grenade created and carried on the Blight Grenade racks of the Death Guard's Biologus Putrifiers.It contains even more virulent strains of deadly diseases and plagues than the normal Blight Grenade, if such a thing is possible. |
Blight Grenade - Sources: Black Crusade: Core Rulebook (RPG), pg. 159Codex: Chaos (2nd Edition), pg. 75Codex Heretic Astartes - Death Guard (8th Edition), pp. 14, 33, 79Codex: Chaos Space Marines (6th Edition), pp. 46, 66Codex: Chaos Space Marines (4th Edition), pg. 38Deathwatch: Mark of the Xenos (RPG), pg. 126Imperial Armour Volume Seven - The Siege of Vraks - Part Three, pg. 15Realm of Chaos: The Lost & the Damned (1st Edition), pg. 27Warhammer 40,000: Munitorum - Blight GrenadesWarhammer 40,000: Warlords of the Dark Millennium - Typhus, pp. 11, 29 |
Blight Launcher - Blight Launcher: A Blight Launcher is a heavy Grenade Launcher used by the Blightlord Terminators and Plague Marines of the Death Guard Traitor Legion. It is particularly effective at firing Blight Grenades at the foe, unleashing innumerable daemonic pathogens and diseases. |
Blighted Claw, The - Blighted Claw, The: The Blighted Claw are a warband of Chaos Space Marines. They were once a Loyalist Chapter of Space Marines of unknown origin and Founding, known as the Sanctors of Terra. They were corrupted after entering the Eye of Terror in 321.M37 as part of the Imperial Abyssal Crusade. It is unknown what they endured during their sojourn into the Eye, but by the time they made their way back into realspace, they had become the warband of Chaos Space Marines known as The Blighted Claw, servants of Nurgle. |
Blighted Claw, The - Abyssal Crusade: Following the Ecclesiarchal Purges of 321.M37, a dozen star systems were engulfed by Warp Storm Dionys, its echoes rippling along the spiral arms of the galaxy as it raged through the Empyrean. Records of mutation and Chaos Cultist activity quadrupled overnight. Worse yet, it was not only the citizens who were affected by the sudden influx of Chaos. Many of the Space Marine Chapters with homeworlds affected by the Warp Storm found that the secret imperfections in their gene-seed were writ large upon their new recruits, giving rise to a wave of disturbing manifestations both physical and psychological. The Sanctors of Terra were one such Loyalist Chapter of Astartes that had been affected by these Warp Storms.When the Ecclesiarchy heard of this sinister tum of events, Saint Basillius the Elder demanded that all those Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes whose homeworlds had been touched by the Warp Storm be rendered unto his judgement. Such was the elder's influence with the High Lords of Terra that within a standard year this had come to pass. After a series of stringent tests and prognostications, hundreds of Chapters were deemed unaffected by the Warp Storm. No less than thirty were found wanting. The Judged, as these fallen Chapters came to be known, volunteered for a redemptive Penitent Crusade. The most militant of their number demanded the right to purify their tainted flesh in the fires of battle, to make a noble end from tragic misfortune. To the surprise of his closest advisors, Saint Basillius agreed to this proposal. He saw it fitting to send the accused into the Eye of Terror, taking the fight for the Imperium's future to the Daemon Worlds inhabited by the Traitor Marines.A representative from each of the doomed Chapters held an emergency Council of Dismay to discuss the proposed Crusade. After scant hours of debate, they acquiesced to Basillius' demands, for they believed that martyrdom was preferable to an existence of suspicion and doubt. The last few days of 321.M37 saw a solemn procession of Strike Cruisers and Battle Barges pass through the Cadian Gate into the Eye of Terror, relay systems dormant and heraldic colours obscured by black mag-plates. One by one, the Chapters of The Judged disappeared into the iridescent dust nebulae that surrounded the Eye. As the massive Space Marine flotilla entered the Eye of Terror, they were set upon by a massive Chaos warfleet. The resultant battle was so fierce that the ships of The Judged were forced to retreat and were scattered to the furthest corners of the Eye.Chapter after Chapter fell to the perils of the Eye, for the Abyssal Crusade had entered a hell from which very few emerge unchanged. The true account of what occurred within the Eye to the Sanctors of Terra is unknown, but most of the tales of the Chapters of The Judged ended in tragedy and sorrow. By the time they reemerged from the Eye many standard centuries later, the Sanctors of Terra were no more, for they had become the Chaos Space Marine warband known as The Blighted Claw, wholly dedicated to the service of the Plague Lord Nurgle. |
Blighted Claw, The - Notable Campaigns: The Devastation of Gehöft (Unknown Date.M41) - The Imperial Agri-world of Gehöft came under assault by The Blighted Claw, who spread a virulent, daemonic plague across the planet. The plague not only destroyed the world's crops and livestock, but killed vast swathes of its population. To the horror of Gehöft defenders', the plague did not simply kill its victims, but turned them into Plague Zombies who sought to consume the flesh of the still-living. With The Blighted Claw overpowering the planet's defenders and the undead rapidly increasing their numbers, Gehöft was nearly overrun within only solar months of the warband's invasion. Despite this bleak outlook, the Brindelweld regiments of the Astra Militarum, as well as elements of the Dark Angels Chapter, came to aid the world's defenders against the servants of Nurgle. Kor'sarro Khan, the White Scars' Master of the Hunt, also led his 3rd Brotherhood to Gehöft, but knew the world was already doomed before he even set foot upon it. Instead, he came to conclude a Great Hunt against the Blighted Claw's Chaos Lord, Paramyx, and put an end to the warband's similar infectious assaults of worlds across the Imperium. Leading a squadron of Attack Bikes, Kor'sarro pursued Paramyx across the dying planet, as the other Imperial and Chaos forces clashed around them, hoping to catch his prey before he moved on to his next target. The squadron had nearly run the Plaguelord to ground when they were ambushed by a large group of Blight Drones. With their prey escaping, Kor'sarro looked for aid from Sammael and the Dark Angels fighting nearby, only for them to abandon the White Scars and pursue one of their own mysterious goals elsewhere on the world. Despite the lack of assistance, the White Scars managed to destroy the Blight Drones, but only Kor'sarro was left standing; the other White Scars in his squadron lay dead or too badly wounded to continue. With his brethren broken, Kor'sarro was forced to retreat, and grudingly allowed Paramyx to escape off-world. Soon afterwards the remaining Imperial forces were routed by the growing horded of undead. The order to evacuate Gehöft was given and once the survivors were in orbit, an Exterminatus was launched to prevent the Zombie Plague from despoiling yet another one of the Emperor's worlds. |
Blighted Claw, The - Notable Blighted Claws: Plaguelord Paramyx - Paramyx was once the Chapter Master of the Sanctors of Terra before they were deemed corrupted by the powerful Saint Basilius and their ill-fated journey into the Eye of Terror during the Abyssal Crusade. When they returned, they were wholly corrupted and dedicated to the worship of Nurgle. Now Paramyx is the Chaos Lord who leads his warband in spreading Nurgle's plauge across numerous worlds of the Imperium. These plagues not only cause death amongst a world's population, but turn their victims into Plague Zombies who fall upon the living, seeking their flesh and spreading the curse. Currently his warband's rampage of infection has made Paramyx a target of the White Scars' Master of the Hunt Kor'sarro Khan, who leads his 3rd Brotherhood in pursuit of The Blighted Claw. Kor'sarro hunted Paramyx across half of a Segmentum and has vowed he will claim the Traitor's head no matter how long it takes, a vow that was nearly fulfilled on Gehöft. |
Blighted Claw, The - Warband Colours: The Blighted Claw warband's colours are not listed in current Imperial records. |
Blighted Claw, The - Warband Badge: The Blighted Claw warband's badge is not listed in current Imperial records. |
Blightlord Terminators - Blightlord Terminators: Blightlord Terminators are an elite formation of Chaos Terminators utilised exclusively within the ranks of the Death Guard Traitor Legion. Relentless and unstoppable, these elite Death Guard warriors are bound forever to mutated suits of Cataphractii Pattern Terminator Armour.They stalk forward with guns blazing, mercilessly mowing down rank after rank of the enemy. Combi-weapons, Plague Spewers and Blight Launchers add to the fusillade, reducing infantry and vehicles to slop. |
Blightlord Terminators - Role: Blightlord Terminators are an elite formation of shock troops utilised exclusively by the Death Guard. Bound as they are to their Cataphractii warplate, these deadly warriors stalk relentlessly towards the foe's battlelines with their deadly array of virulent weaponry mowing down the enemy's ranks with contemptuous ease. At the last, the Terminators break into a lumbering charge, hefting huge weapons with which to hack and bludgeon the enemy. Flails of corruption entangle weapons and limbs in sizzling, corrosive barbs. Bubotic Axes and Baleswords tear ragged wounds into which a thousand poxes seep. By the time the Blightlord Terminators stomp on in search of new victims, nothing remains of their enemies but maggot-riddled corpses.Combining the protective powers of Cataphractii war plate with the diseased resilience bestowed by Nurgle's gifts, Blightlord Terminators are terrifyingly hard to kill. They take great pride in this fact, advancing contemptuously into the teeth of the fiercest firestorms, mocking their enemies' attempts to lay them low. This arrogance grates upon their Death Guard brothers, but the Blightlords make such exceptional shock troops that it is overlooked -- or even condoned -- by their masters. Most Death Guard vectoriums include at least one band of Blightlord Terminators for breach assaults, boarding actions and sudden teleport strikes, and it is a rare ship of the Plague Fleets that takes to the tides of the Warp without a complement of Blightlords aboard.Due to the amount of time they spend embarked upon diseased warships, Blightlord Terminators are saturated with Empyric entropy. This foulness pours off them in waves, rotting flesh and corroding metal in an area around them. Where the Blightlords tread, crawling veins of corruption radiate outwards like spiderwebs of rot and rust. An enemy needs only to be gripped by them in order for these energies to start agonisingly eating them away, while vehicles and fortifications exposed to the Blightlords' malignant presence soon slump and crumble.On many Death Guard warships, Blightlords act as an elite garrison, standing ready to defend the bridge, magazines or enginarium at a moment's notice. During void battles, Plague Fleet captains bring their ships in close to an enemy vessel, allowing massed formations of Blightlords to teleport directly aboard. Like parasites hatching in the body of a luckless victim, the Death Guard Terminators begin their destructive rampage. Bulling their way down narrow corridors and corroding through sealed bulkheads, the Blightlords mercilessly crush the ship's defenders while spreading their corruption throughout its decks. |
Blightlord Terminators - Unit Composition: 1 Blightlord Champion4-9 Blightlord Terminators |
Blightlord Terminators - Wargear: Corrupted Cataphractii Terminator ArmourBlight LauncherCombi-BolterPlague SpewerReaper AutocannonBaleswordBubotic AxeFlail of Corruption |
Blightlord Terminators - Optional Wargear: Any Blightlord Terminator may replace their Combi-Bolter with a different Combi-weapon (Combi-Flamer, Combi-Melta or Combi-Plasma). For every five Blightlord Terminators, one warrior may replace their Combi-Bolter with a Plague Spewer, Reaper Autocannon or Blight Launcher. |
Blightlord Terminators - Sources: Codex Heretic Astartes - Death Guard (8th Edition), pp. 13, 16, 23, 39, 58, 62-63, 81 |
Blind Grenade - Blind Grenade: A Blind Grenade, also called a Baffler Grenade, is an Imperial grenade that explodes with a burst of dense, dark grey smoke including infrared bafflers and broadband electromagnetic spectrum chaff.All of this is designed to block eyesight and even advanced visual detection methods like infra-red vision, scanners and targeters are of little use.The effect is short-lived, but while it lasts it provides an excellent cover for advancing forces. |
Blind Grenade - Blood Ravens Variant: A variant of Blind Grenade used by the Blood Ravens Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes releases a bright flash of electromagnetic energy that incapacitates its targets, stunning them for a short duration.This type of Blind Grenade does not work on vehicles or infantry units that are inside of a building. |
Blood Angels - Blood Angels: The Blood Angels are one of the 20 First Founding Legions of the Space Marines and were originally the IXth Legion before the Second Founding broke the Legiones Astartes up into separate Chapters of 1,000 Space Marines each.They are well-known across the galaxy for their bloodthirsty nature in battle, and feared for the curse of flawed gene-seed they carry. The Blood Angels are amongst the longest-living of the Adeptus Astartes, with some of the Chapter's Space Marines having served the Emperor of Mankind for over a thousand standard years.Due to recent events, the Blood Angels' numbers were severely depleted. Under the threat of extinction, and in order to quickly replenish their numbers, the Blood Angels were forced to ask their kindred Successor Chapters from subsequent Astartes Foundings for a tithe of warriors from the related Chapters' pools of neophytes, their candidate Space Marines.With these tithes of new recruits, and the recent arrival of the Primaris Space Marines during the Indomitus Crusade, the Blood Angels were able to replenish their losses, though they still face a time of trial like none the Chapter has known since the days of the Horus Heresy.The Blood Angels are the noble descendants of that most puissant and angelic of the primarchs -- Sanguinius. They are perhaps one of the most celebrated Chapters in the entire Imperium, their countless heroic deeds and victories known to untold billions of the Emperor's subjects across the length and breadth of the galaxy.The beauteous, angelic visages of the Chapter's heroes adorn Gothic facades and stained glass windows in a million holy basilicas, and their portraits gaze serenely from endlessly copied and much cherished illuminated tomes.Yet, hidden from the multitudes, the Blood Angels harbour a terrible curse. When their beloved primarch was slain at the hands of the Arch-traitor Horus at the very height of the Horus Heresy, every Blood Angel was doomed to share a portion of the pain inflicted upon his flawless form. From that day forth, every Blood Angel has been tormented by visions of the last moment of Sanguinius.The older the Space Marine gets, the more frequent and debilitating such waking nightmares become. Should he not fall in battle, every Blood Angel will one day become so consumed by these soul-searing visions that he will descend into a madness in which he must witness the death of Sanguinius over and over again, ever unable to intervene as the Warmaster enacts his vile treachery.The very inevitability of their curse ennobles the battle-brothers of the Blood Angels, driving them ever onwards to a glorious death in the name of the Emperor and their primarch. Where lesser men might have surrendered to the dark urgings to shed the blood of the enemies of the Emperor, the Blood Angels have remained pure and noble for ten thousand standard years. Despite this, the Chapter is dying, for each year ever more of its brethren succumb to the so-called Red Thirst -- the desire to rend limb from limb those responsible for the death of Sanguinius, and by extension every enemy of the Emperor.The death of Sanguinius represents one of the most perfidious and tragic moments of the Horus Heresy, for he died at the hands of his brother-primarch, the Arch-traitor Horus. Although some say that the sacrifice weakened the Warmaster just enough to allow the Emperor to later defeat him at the climax of the Siege of Terra, the death of Sanguinius is mourned to this day, and felt keenly by the Blood Angels, in whose veins his blood still pumps.When war calls and blood is spilled, the Blood Angels are gripped by a fury born of the last moments of their primarch's life. For some, the thirst is too great and they are entirely overcome by what is called the Black Rage, cursed to end their days reliving their beloved primarch's death over and over again.The beatific Sons of Sanguinius are known and celebrated across the Imperium, representations of the greatest heroes of the Blood Angels carved in marble, painted in oils, and sewn in tapestries in a million cloisters and more. Their angel-winged primarch is an object of veneration on countless worlds, his perfect visage gazing down on the faithful with a mixture of benevolence and pity. The Blood Angels are the inheritors of Sanguinius, and they bring death from above to the enemies of the Emperor.The Chapter seeks the beauty of perfection in all it does, and in one particular field of warfare surpasses all other practitioners. While all Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes are masters of the Drop Pod and Thunderhawk assault, the Blood Angels have become synonymous with the flawless execution of the aerial assault.They employ an entirely new pattern of vehicle of mysterious origins: the Stormraven gunship. This vessel appears as a lighter cousin of the Thunderhawk, and while its smaller size means it carries less weaponry and a smaller troop capacity, it greatly makes up for this in speed and manoeuvrability.While the Adeptus Mechanicus took several standard centuries to examine and debate the use of the Standard Template Construct imprint of the gunship, the Blood Angels saw its worth immediately, and set about introducing it into their armoury.Lately, the Chapter's Forge has been able to perfect its fabrication methods to such an extent that the gunship is now being used throughout the entire force. While the gunship is only just beginning to enter service in other Astartes Chapters, the Blood Angels are already masters of its use, and they have refined methods of aerial assault others are just beginning to learn.The Blood Angels' doctrine of aerial assault culminates in savage close combat. Whether they are delivered into battle by Thunderhawk or Stormraven gunship, or in the troop bay of an armoured transport such as a Rhino, Razorback or Land Raider, the Blood Angels are all but peerless in their mastery of close assault.This is in part because the gene-seed of Sanguinius grants his sons an incredibly long life span even for Space Marines, during which endless solar hours of practise and countless battles hone their skills to perfection. Yet, the Blood Angels are not driven towards the fury of close assault by tactical necessity or battlefield doctrine alone.The Chapter's reliance on blood and the need to cleanse it to keep the Flaw at bay exerts a strange and all but irresistible hold on the Blood Angels. In battle, the Blood Angels are drawn to spill the blood of their foes, and their ordinarily noble countenance can occasionally transform into twisted, rage-fuelled masks of savagery.This is referred to as the Red Thirst, and it is something that every Blood Angel experiences. For many, the Red Thirst is prelude to the ultimate expression of the Flaw, the Black Rage, in which the state becomes permanent and all-consuming.The Blood Angels and their Successor Chapters, known as the "Sanguinary Brotherhood," are unique in that their gene-seed imposes an unusual, and ultimately tragic, flaw upon each battle-brother. For most Chapters, service begins as a neophyte, with the initiate becoming ever more senior the more battles he survives until the few that remain are granted command of a company, become a specialist such as a Chaplain, or even become the Master of the Chapter itself.The Blood Angels experience an entirely different journey, though few outside of their ranks ever learn of it. The Blood Angels possess an almost supernaturally noble, almost saintly countenance, their features handsome and pure.This is all the more amazing because the Chapter recruits from the short and stunted men of the tribes of Baal, riddled with stigmata, lesions, and carcinoma caused by radiation poisoning. Their dramatic transformation into the saintly neophytes is only made possible by arcane bloodrites.Over a lifespan far longer than that of the average Astartes, the Blood Angel hones his skills, yet with each battle he experiences something more of the Flaw, the urge to spill the hot, steaming blood of his foes growing ever stronger.As it does so, the battle-brother is driven to spend longer periods of time purging his own bloodstream within the crimson embrace of his transfusion casket. After several standard centuries of service he must spend long solar hours within it, having every drop of his own blood scrubbed clean.At some point, the Blood Angel is likely to feel the stirrings of something deeper, the rage descending not at the culmination of battle but before it. These are the first echoes of the Black Rage, and while most Blood Angels fall in combat long before succumbing to it, those who cannot hold it at bay are forced to enter the Chapter's infamous Death Company. |
Blood Angels - Chapter History: Fate is a cruel master, for no matter how much his prey might twist or turn, no matter what triumphs they might rise to or what trials they overcome, he will still drag them down. The Blood Angels struggled against the fate written into their very genes, defied the role the Emperor chose for them and dared to believe they could transcend the darkness that followed them.They took the worst of Mankind and made of it something bright and true, they rose above what they had once been and stood astride the fledgling Imperium like the guardian angels for which they were named. Yet, nurtured in their successes were the seeds of their fall, in the jealousy of the fallen Warmaster Horus who saw in them everything he himself had thrown away.The opening stroke of the Horus Heresy brought the Blood Angels to their knees, and the tragedies that were to follow would shatter their resolve and leave them broken. Such is the nature of the IXth Legion that they did not surrender to despair nor surrender to darkness, but rose again and again.What might have Sanguinius and his sons achieved were it not for the dark fate brought upon them by treachery and genetics? What brilliant flower might have bloomed from the carnage and blood of their origins? That unknown future is yet another casualty of Horus' civil war, the Blood Angels left to endure the slow degeneration of their noble line with the stubborn pride that is their hallmark. |
Blood Angels - The Dregs of Old Night: There are many noble legends of the Unification Wars, of the battles where the Emperor's newborn Space Marine Legions swept aside all who opposed Him before them. Among these tales there are none to be found that mention the IXth Legion, only grim rumours and half-heard whispers. Where the first companies of the other proto-Legions were blooded in Albia, Yndonesia and Franc alongside the massed ranks of the Thunder Warriors, the IXth Legion was absent, granted a role as vital as it was unsightly.The old IXth Legion served the Emperor as an inferno serves a general upon the battlefield; they did not conquer but instead ravaged, growing and growing as they went, a weapon that could not be directed or controlled, only endured.Few in number, the early Space Marine Legions fought as mere vanguards to larger forces, a sharp dagger alongside the blunt sledgehammer of the armies of Unification. They were the fulcrum upon which battles turned, the point of control, waging small scale battles by precision strike and audacious raids. The IXth Legion was made in a different image. Even in their earliest days they were among the largest of the proto-Legions and when they made war it was like the sudden arrival of a tsunami, sweeping away the opposition in a flurry of brutal assaults.They found themselves deployed to the most dangerous war zones of Terra, to those accursed regions ravaged by the rad-phages and chem strains of Old Night, places where only the most twisted and debased breeds of Mankind still lived. In the wastelands that existed outside of history's spotlight they held the line, alone and unnoticed while the Emperor drove home His grand conquests.This grim fate was no accident, no arbitrary choice made by a distant general, for each of the Legions had been granted genetic tools to fit the roles for them by the Emperor, and the IXth Legion was no exception. Where other Legions took only the best recruits, princes and champions among the conquered techno-barbarian nations of Old Earth, and produced but few Initiates, the IXth Legion took in the hordes of dispossessed and broken, and made of them an army of angels.Scarred by so many long generations mired in the rad-zones and sunken fortresses of Terra's poisoned wilds, these creatures were no longer entirely human, but horribly mutated beasts that the tyrants of Old Earth had driven out and hunted. Yet, from such base materials emerged a breed of Legiones Astartes uniformly tall and fair, their features sculpted in stern elegance.The unique genetic template of the IXth Legion's as-yet unknown sire seemed to favour the twisted and warped, though the pain it inflicted on those inducted into the Legion was more than most could bear. As those weakened by years of exposure to the most horrific rad-zones and poisons rarely survived such an ordeal, the number of recruits that endured to become Astartes of the IXth Legion were few. Yet, unlike the other Legions, the IXth cast their net wide, and claimed entire tribes of wastelanders, prisoners of war and the long train of hopefuls that always followed in their wake seeking the miracle of transformation.The bloody-handed Apothecaries plied their knives without rest to keep the Legion at fighting strength in even the most hellish war zones, and though the legend of the IXth languished, its ranks did not. Even as their ranks swelled, the dark rumours that followed them grew as well, for the Emperor's legacy had endowed them with other, darker, gifts. These gifts were also to grant them a new epithet among the rank and file of the Emperor's mortal armies, the "Eaters of the Dead." For in the wake of each battle, the elegant forms of the IXth Legion haunted the field of battle long after the fighting had ceased, seeking out the finest among the fallen and feasting upon their flesh and blood.Many of the victories fought to bring Unification to Old Earth were marred by the sight of blood-smeared angels stalking the fallen and wounded champions of the enemy across fields choked with corpses, though few among their detractors realised the purpose of this grim fixation. For this too was part of the Emperor's grand design, for through the genetic augmentations that had transformed them, the IXth Legion were capable of stealing their enemy's power from them, genetically absorbing their knowledge and skill and making them their own through the use of their Omophagea implants. All that was required was the consumption of the foe's bodily tissues.In the broken places where they fought, alone and far from aid, this trait brought the IXth Legion priceless information and made even the most raw recruits battle ready. Yet the macabre reputation they had gained hung about them like a shroud, lessening their achievements. They had been created to fight monsters, alone and in the darkest places, but in doing so they risked becoming creatures even more foul than those they fought. |
Blood Angels - Revenant Legion: The wars of Unification swept out into the Sol System like a storm, unstoppable and wild, and so too went the IXth Legion. Despite being among the largest in number of the early Legions, its ranks bolstered by widespread recruiting during the war for Old Earth, the IXth found no place in the hosts arrayed to assault the Jovian moons or the resource-rich inner worlds during the early days of the Great Crusade. Instead, its flag was planted among the artificial moons of baleful Neptune, whose labyrinthine tunnels and dark halls were the lair of xenos raiders and the last genetically debased human colonists of that far-flung outpost.There was little here to be gained but time, precious time for the Emperor to claim the orbital shipyards of Saturn and the allegiance of Mars, for which He needed the raiders and mutants of the outer worlds held in place. To that end, He sent the IXth Legion forth to die.Twelve thousand warriors of the IXth Legion, all veterans of the wars on Terra, disappeared on the moons of Neptune. While the Emperor and His grand armies brought Saturn, Mars and the inner worlds to heel, no word of the IXth Legion reached them, either of their success or annihilation. By the time these conquests were completed and the Emperor returned to the cold darkness of the outer system, few expected to find anything other than frozen corpses. Yet when they reached Neptune, it was to find the IXth Legion alive and well; indeed, despite the loss of many of their original complement, the size of the force was almost the same, bolstered by recruits taken from among the dregs of Neptune's barely human population. Where others might have floundered and fallen, the IXth Legion had only grown stronger, rising from the ashes of defeat like a bloody phoenix.In those bloody days, the Legion was an ever-changing beast, its ranks largely formed of line infantry equipped almost exclusively for the brutal madness of close-quarters assault. This was a role at which the IXth Legion excelled, always favouring a sudden and overwhelming charge to a long drawn-out battle of attrition. They well understood the role of their macabre legend in war, most often choosing to stage their attacks at dusk or dawn, and taking to decorating the storm-grey of their early Mark II Power Armour with a variety of charnel images and taking to the field unhelmed, that the sight of their angelic visages streaked with blood might unsettle the enemy.Some companies even began to incorporate the secret bloody rituals of the Legion into their doctrines of battle, tearing apart the enemy on the field of battle or indulging in bloody feasts to break their morale and set panic in their ranks.Again and again the IXth Legion would be cast into the crucible of destruction, only to emerge each time as hale as they had been before. Each time they took from the enemy what was required to fight on and grasped victory where others had seen only defeat and despair, though it left them changed. On the silent black battlefields of the Kuiper Belt and the endless wastes of Rust, the IXth Legion was sent to fight and survive where others could not, to fight the unseen holding actions of the Great Crusade's first faltering steps. Malcador the Sigillite himself was to take note of their exploits and dub them the "Revenant Legion," a title that many came to use for the indomitable warriors of the IXth Legion, as much a sign of the superstitious awe in which they were held by many as it was a commendation of their bravery.Indeed, the Sigillite is but one of a number of senior officials within the early Imperium's Divisio Militaris who seemed ill at ease with this incarnation of the Legiones Astartes, lacking as they did the prestige or open popularity of some of their brethren, such as the much vaunted XIIIth Legion or Horus' own XVIth Legion.A dangerous and unsightly weapon, to be unsheathed only in dire need and then quickly hidden away again, the IXth Legion found themselves often in the company of those Legions less favoured by the bright lords of the newly-forged Imperium. With the savage War Hounds and oft-forgotten IVth Legion in whom Horus had found his own disposable weapons, they found a bitter kinship, though it was rare to see these Legions gathered together.Yet it was the work of these ingloriously practical and gore-spattered warriors that set the foundations of the Imperium in place, though there are scant songs sung in praise of the deeds the Emperor commanded them to perform in the pursuit of the golden empire which He sought to build. |
Blood Angels - The Immortal Ninth: Time and time again the pride of the IXth Legion was to fall on the field of battle, yet the records of their valour make common mention of the same handful of warriors and champions. Some Remembrancers and historians have taken this to indicate a long history of redoubtable heroes, even going so far as to compile these records into a number of epic stanzas, forming the separate entries into a single legend. Yet, the true reason for the longevity of certain names within the order of battle for the IXth Legion is far less heroic.Since its foundation, the IXth Legion had operated in the most extreme battlefield conditions and necessity had forced upon them a number of practises that might otherwise be seen as monstrous. One among these, fostered by the nature of their design and the conditions under which they fought, was the consumption of fallen captains by their followers in order to preserve their hard-won skills and experience.As a mark of honour as well as practicality, it also became accepted that recruits took the names of those whose skills they absorbed, and lieutenants would assume the names of their captains. Such was the resemblance of each member of the IXth to their flawless brothers that most outsiders failed to notice this subtle brand of immortality.The most famous example of which being the figure thought to have served as the IXth Legion's first and only master, other than Sanguinius himself. Known to history as Ishidur Ossuros, this warrior is commonly held to have commanded the IXth from Unity to the discovery of Baal in 843.M30, yet a closer examination of the records shows that name died numerous times, only to be replaced by another.Over time and battles past count, this practise became an honoured tradition of the Legion, a visceral ritual that bound the survivors together despite their often disparate origins. Yet as much as it bound those of the IXth Legion to each other, it forced them away from their brethren among the Imperial Army and other Legions.In the years before Sanguinius' return, no few of the other primarchs expressed a distaste with the practises of the IXth Legion, though they could not dispute their success on the battlefield. Such was the legacy of mistrust and barbarism that the IXth carried with them, one pressed upon them by the brutal necessity of their calling. |
Blood Angels - The Charnel Feast: In the early years of the Great Crusade, as the fleets of the Emperor first pushed beyond the boundaries of what is now known as the Segmentum Solar and into Wilderness Space, His armies would encounter battlefields to shake the sanity of mortal men. Of these fel and terrible places, termed zones mortalis in the formal language of the Dvisio Militaris, few were more loathsome than the world known to history as Kiy-buran.The first expeditions to Kiy-buran were to vanish without a trace, four full regiments of the Imperial Army's Veradan Regulars swallowed up and gone, and a flank of the great Crusade's galaxy-wide advance left open. In response, the Emperor unleashed His own terrors to seek out whatever beasts might lurk there.Running ahead of the Expeditionary fleets of the Great Crusade in aid of the Veradan Regulars, three companies of the IXth Legion's Astartes were dispatched to Kiy-buran. The world was a wasteland of irradiated sands inhabited by chattel tribes of degenerate mutants and ruled by a techno-barbarian warlord, Ek'Lobia.These tribes were both bodies to be spent in conflict and the primary foodstuff of Kiy-buran's inhabitants; each sustained by a vicious economy of ritual acts of bloodshed and cannibalism. It was these mutants which had been encountered by the beleaguered ranks of the Imperial Army stranded on the planet. Hordes of barely human mutants armed with little more than primitive clubs and picks had decimated their ranks, the corpses of the fallen hauled back to flickering fire-pits to be cooked by night.For three solar months, the serried trenches of the Imperial Army repelled the mindless onslaught before the storm-grey Drop Pods of the IXth Legion fell from the sky, wreathed in black smoke. Crashing to the ground, the Revenant Legion broke through the mutant throng with contemptuous ease and relieved the embattled Veradan troopers. The IXth attacked the cantonments of local tribes, their superior arms and armour allowing them to seize control of the northern mountain ranges, casting out the indigenous mutants they came across with uncompromising brutality.In the opening stage of the IXth Legion's war on Kiy-Buran, they came upon little organised resistance, freely conquering territory, and for solar months the IXth Legion ravaged Kiy-Buran before news reached the warlord Ek'Lobia, who swore an oath to eradicate the invaders.Under his command was an army of mutant chattel whose numbers were beyond count and over which he held a power of such terror that they would throw themselves to their death rather than face the freakish horrors which his enslaved sorcerers might unleash. As the IXth Legion crossed into Ek'Lobia's territories, the resistance they met from indigenous forces increased until the IXth was drawn into full scale battle.Initially, they easily quashed any bands of savages making strikes against the edges of their line, but quickly these became an unending deluge of bodies which threatened to overwhelm and encircle the remains of the three companies. The IXth girded themselves to repel the tide of mutants, whose hideous deformities made them capable of rending ceramite with their tortured flesh and whose numbers set the earth atremble at their approach.Though the Legiones Astartes fought doggedly, killing scores of enemy for each Battle-Brother lost, the sheer numbers of the foe began to force them back. Attempting to regroup, the three companies of the IXth Legion formed a spearhead in an attempt to break through the mutants and reach the distant banner poles that signified the position of the horde's brutish commander.As the tip of the Legion formation threatened to reach the encampment of Ek'Lobia, the horrors of Old Night were unleashed. Reality rippled and tore as the Cracked Skull's ensorcelled chattel brought forth horrors beyond description, reaping a hideous toll of casualties amongst the Astartes and mutant horde indiscriminately, turning the tide of the battle.Incapable of combating such a threat, the IXth Legion warriors were forced to quit the field of battle or be utterly destroyed, a choice that might have doomed other more honour-bound Legions, but not the pragmatic Revenant Legion of old. The Legionaries turned and hacked a red path through the throng with toothless Chainswords, broken blades and the cracked pieces of their own fallen comrades' armour.The strength of almost two companies was lost in that monumental battle, and those Legionaries who escaped were forced to question how they could survive and endure without reinforcement or resupply. The staggering degree of losses suffered created the need to reorganise Legion resources among little more than 380 remaining Legionaries, speaking to the utilitarian and consequentialist nature of the psyche of the early IXth Legion. Foremost among these assets, their Apothecarion was reformed and grown into a combat-support formation; the survival of the remaining Legionaries as well as propagating gene-seed considered paramount to their ability to continue to pursue conquest.Reformed in the crucible of war, far from the path of the Great Crusade, those orphaned companies of the IXth Legion recommenced their campaign at a more considered pace; making squad-based shock assaults against enemy encampments before withdrawing to avoid organised reprisals. The campaign soon stagnated into a pattern of thrust and counter-thrust, a war fought on the back foot to bleed the foe whilst hugely outnumbered.This war, which became known as the "Banquet of Kiy-Buran," continued unbroken for 12 standard years, all but forgotten by the wider Imperium. The IXth Legion, piece by piece, broke the tribes of the world in bloody close quarters actions, and refused to be drawn into a full-scale engagement. In the early years of this conflict, accepting the desperation of their predicament and bereft of resupply, the IXth Legion were forced to take practical measures to survive. Raids against local mutant tribes on the northern continent became matters of domination, not destruction.Those creatures which could be of use were press-ganged into the service of the Legion. Testament to the hardiness of the IXth Legion's gene-seed, even these irradiated and hideously mutated beings were considered suitable candidates for the Legion, their children bred to be little more than meat-stock for their techno-barbarian overlord ascended into angelic perfection by the implantation of Sanguinius' gene-seed.Furthermore, the Legion's Apothecaries encouraged them to join their foe in cannibalism of the war-dead for sustenance, benefitting the Legion and denying the foe in equal measure. These practices allowed the IXth to replenish its numbers and continue without contact with the wider Imperium greatly beyond the capability of any other Legion.Undertaking this strategy, the Legion steadily took ground from Ek'Lobia, diminishing both his armies and food supply in the process, while taking that material into themselves with which to rebuild the strength of the Legion. Perhaps the Legion went too far in the name of survival, however. A diary later recovered from the equipment of a missing officer of the Veradan Regulars refers to the IXth as the "Charnel Feast," a cognomen which, when later disseminated, became popular amongst the rank and file mortal soldiery of the Great Crusade before it was quashed by the coming of Sanguinius.The same diary hints at a dark end for the 46th Veradan Regulars: as they became unable to continue to prosecute the war, the diary suggests they were also rendered to feed the Legion, whether through literal consumption or to allow the charnel priests, what had become of their Apothecarion, to use their flesh as part of the process of creating new warriors.Other recovered journals claim that the populace of Kiy-Buran came to see the Legionaries as the devils of their myths, stealing their children and feasting upon corpses in a manner more barbaric even than the ritual cannibalism of their masters. It states that the nativepopulation feared that their own magicks had unleashed the "Imperium of Mankind," speaking of it in hushed tones as the force of their own undoing.In the twelfth Terran year after planetfall, the final confrontation of the campaign was all but a foregone conclusion. Ek'Lobia, suffering from years of starvation and surrounded in his fortress spaceport by a replenished force of almost 1,000 Legionaries and theirown degenerate serfs, attempted once more to unleash his slave-sorcerers.The massed, unarmoured novitiates of the Legion, recruited from among the tribes of Kiy-buran, suffered the brunt of the attack, while the Legion's off-world veterans made directed strikes against the warlocks, the sheer numbers brought to bear by the IXth overcoming the warlord's feeble defences.His sorcerers dead and his fortress in ruin, Ek'Lobia attempted to flee in a primitive spacecraft, rising from the surface in a cascade of scrap and broken corpses, only to meet a squadron of Imperial cruisers bearing the heraldry of the VIIth Legion inorbit, his life ended under their guns. The Imperium had finally come to reclaim its warriors, expecting to find a world brought to Compliance and ready to accept the Emperor's law.At the head of the fleet, Rogal Dorn, but newly reunited with his own Imperial Fists, arrived in Kiy-Buran to instead discover aruined world of the Imperium's making. Upon receiving the report of the IXth Legion he was wrathful, as he refused to accept the Compliance of Kiy-Buran as the Dream of Imperium his father had described to him.In the Charnel Feast Dorn saw monstrous misdeeds, but also the resourcefulness of desperately capable warriors. Reprimanding the surviving IXth Legion warriors for their questionable judgement, the Praetorian of Terra ordered the city of Buran razed and burned, the sins of the IXth Legion erased before a single Remembrancer ever set foot there. |
Blood Angels - A Descent Into Madness: With each victory, the dire legends that surrounded the IXth Legion grew and spread. They were the spectres that haunted the wild places at the edge of the Great Crusade's advance, the terrors loosed by the Emperor to clear His path across the stars. It was a duty and title they accepted with grim pride, never shirking the mantle that they wore in His name and never baulking from the tasks assigned them.Each campaign was undertaken with a cold fury that stood them apart from the Emperor's other attack dogs and hidden murderers, a quiet, brooding hunger for blood and death that was as terrifying as it was effective. Once committed to battle, the IXth did not relent, did not retreat, and could not be stopped. They fought until the enemy was utterly destroyed and paid no heed to the thought of mercy or the need to build an empire rather than a graveyard.Few among the mighty and renowned welcomed their presence on the eve of battle, for the stench of death and madness was ever on them. So, lacking a patron among the handful of returned primarchs to guide them and give purpose to their conflicts, the IXth Legion slipped further into isolation and infamy. It became home to a strange mixture of Imperial doctrine and crimson ritual, its ranks and formations riddled with charnel cults and bloody prophets of war, the superstitions of a hundred worlds given power by the nature of their transformation and left to fester on the worst battlefields of the Great Crusade.Worse, the appearance of these blood-soaked angels, tall and striking, perhaps even more so when caked in the gore of the battlefield, often set those they brought into the Imperium to their worship, lest they anger the red angels that had come. It was a slide towards madness that would see the end of the Legion. For were it not abated, it would become a worse danger to the Imperium than the monsters it was made to hunt.The seeds of this destruction were already sown, with many watching the Legion and its commanders, already distrustful of the Immortal Ninth and its blood-soaked killers. The IXth Legion's 14th Company was sanctioned by Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists for its actions during the Second Siege of Yarant, where the IXth Legion's warriors took to killing and consuming prisoners on the walls of the fortress to demoralise the enemy, as well as to secure intelligence.While the Imperial Army brought grievance against the Legion after reports were filed that mortally wounded soldiers of the Malagant Rifles Regiment had been slaughtered and drained of their blood by the IXth Legion rather than left to the mercy of the enemy during the retreat from Shedim. Such brutal necessities seemed of little concern to the IXth Legion, but served only to add weight to those who claimed they should share the fate of the other two failed Legions.Broken apart by the dictates of war and the needs of the Great Crusade, the IXth Legion became outcasts among the brotherhood of the Space Marine Legions. Now they fought in small isolated companies, each fostering its own distinct brand of the red cults that had spread across the Legion. They still maintained a force mostly composed of line infantry and jump troops, but less from tactical expediency and more due to the Divisio Militaris' reluctance to supply them with more potent arms and munitions.In the face of this, the Legion turned more and more to its own macabre methods to win battles, prizing victory more highly than the respect of their peers. Bitter pride in what they saw as the jealousy of others sustained them, but also served to drag them further into disrepute.The IXth Legion stood upon a knife's edge. They were still a necessary, if bloody, piece of the Emperor's plan to conquer the galaxy, yet that conquest would not last forever and eventually the IXth would become more of a burden in the new golden age built by the Emperor than a blessing. A reckoning approached for the IXth Legion. They would either be born anew, changed and not lessened as they had been before, or they would be ended and expunged from history.It was at this crucial time that a scout flotilla of the Great Crusade was to discover an otherwise insignificant world of ruins and deserts, a world whose moons also had their own legends of a bloody angel, a world called Baal. |
Blood Angels - Trials of Sanguinius: After the Emperor oversaw the creation of the primarchs, the Ruinous Powers made off with the infant demi-gods still in their gestation capsules and carried them through the Warp. Unable to destroy the primarchs because of the powerful psychic and physical protections laid on them by the Emperor, the Daemonic powers nonetheless did their best to alter the Emperor's work to their own dark ends. Thus it was that even the best of the Emperor's creations became corrupted at the outset.The gestation pod that housed the infant Sanguinius came to rest upon the moon of Baal Secundus, at the place now known as Angel's Fall, which later grew into the moon's only major settlement. Few of the young primarchs who were spirited away from the Emperor on Terra through the Empyrean by unknown means found themselves in conditions that any might describe as fair, and yet even among their number Sanguinius was particularly ill-favoured by where fortune cast him.Though the Baal System had once been a thriving hub of Mankind's ancient interstellar empire, it had since been reduced to a sea of radiation-scorched ash and dust by its people's own folly during the Age of Strife. On the second moon, where the primarch Sanguinius was cast adrift, there eked out a fragile remnant of Humanity, a number of feral, warlike post-apocalyptic tribes that stalked the wastelands surviving on the plunder of war and what little could be foraged from the deserts.Sanguinius' earliest days were spent in the deep desert and of them little is known, for Sanguinius never spoke of them in later years. Doubtless he faced hardships that would have slain full grown men, slew the mutant creatures of the wasteland that even the desert tribes avoided and survived where the radiation unleashed by the atomic weapons used on the moon during Old Night would otherwise have cooked the flesh of mortals in solar minutes.It is not known how long Sanguinius' sojourns alone in the radioactive wastelands lasted, but by the time he was discovered by one of the many Human tribes of Baal Secundus he was a young boy, almost of age by the standards of the tribesmen. The young Sanguinius' life almost came to an end then and there, for great white wings, like those of a mythological angel, emerged from his back.Whether these wings were born of Baal's mutating influence upon his posthuman genome, an affect of his transport through the Warp or were part of the Emperor's intentional design is a secret known only to the Master of Mankind. Many among the tribesmen who found the primarch wanted to kill the child as just another mutant, though in all other ways he was as perfect a Human child as had ever been seen.Eventually innate compassion prevailed and the child was spared. Sanguinius was quick to adapt to his new life among the tribe, as were all his kind in similar circumstances, and his strength and resilience quickly earned him a place within the ranks of the tribe that had found him, known, as were all the tribes of Baal, simply as "The People of the Blood" or "The Blood."The young Sanguinius was a prodigy -- he grew quickly and learned everything his adoptive parents could teach him. It is said that even when still a child he slew a giant fire scorpion with his bare hands, and that he never once showed fear at the colossal beast's onset.As Sanguinius grew his wings grew also, becoming mighty pinions that could bear him aloft upon the desert air. He could walk without a rad-suit in the most poisonous of Baal Secundus' deserts, and could shatter massive boulders with a single blow of his outstretched hand. In the use of all weapons he soon excelled his teachers.When a wandering band of feral mutants surprised the tribe, Sanguinius slew them all, although they numbered over a hundred. This was the first time the members of The Blood had ever seen him truly angry, for he felt his comrades' lives were in danger. When the blood-rage overtook him, Sanguinius was indeed terrible to behold -- his mighty primarch powers awoke to fullness and a nimbus of light played about his head.He grew to manhood rapidly, troubled all the while by dreams and ill-portents of death and blood, and the arrival of a grim and unknown king to Baal from other worlds. He fought against the mutated sub-Human creatures that prowled the deep desert and the raiders of other tribes with the same single-minded focus that he gave to his loyalty to his new people of The Blood. Yet, unlike so many of the other primarchs, there was no long war of planetary unification undertaken on Baal Secundus, no glorious campaign of conquest to prove the young demi-god's worth.The legend of the winged warrior had spread far across Baal, stories of a warrior tall, fair and much unlike the stunted and radiation-scarred people of the moon. Ferocious in war and wise in peace, he seemed to be a vision of past glories come once again to Baal, a promise for the future that had all but been forgotten among The Blood. Despite any denials on the part of the primarch of his divinity, he became as a god to his foster people, and warriors from across the wide desert came to fight at his side. Under his guidance they rolled back the mutant tide. For a time Mankind had a respite on the moon of Baal Secundus.Within the span of a few short local Baalite years, each an endless scorching summer, a vast host had gathered at the Great Angel's side, to learn from his words and to shelter beneath his wings. He had become the master of his world not by force or conquest, but simply by the acclamation of a desperate people. |
Blood Angels - Coming of the Emperor: Baal was a world long dead, reduced to ruins and radiation-blasted wastes by the long-forgotten wars of Old Night. The initial expeditionary fleets had overlooked it as a target for the Great Crusade, as even though it sat along a major stable Warp current, it possessed no real industrial value and only the most tenuous Human population.Yet it was here in 843.M30 that the Emperor would rediscover one of His lost gene-sons, the primarch Sanguinius. As with so many of the primarchs, Sanguinius had brought a bloody peace to his adopted homeworld, moulding the primitive barbarian tribes he had found there in accord with his own ideals. His was to be a legacy of peaceful conquest tempered with justice and knowledge, a path so very different than that taken by the IXth Legion that would be bequeathed to him.Thus it was that when the Emperor came for His missing son, when starships once again returned to the skies of Baal, it was not to find a king of battle and war, but instead an unwilling god. Having long foreseen his father's coming and the many consequences of that meeting, Sanguinius came to meet the Emperor alone, without the long train of his worshippers or the warriors pledged to his service. Alone he fell to his knees before his father and asked only for the lives of his followers, fearing the wrath of a man who had sworn to topple all religions.Seeing in the winged primarch a servant of rare talents and keen loyalty, the Emperor granted his wish. His Imperial Truth was withheld from Baal and no Imperial voidship would set itself down upon the second moon of Baal again, save at the behest of Sanguinius himself. The Blood would continue to live as they always had, kept in part as surety against the Great Angel's pact, and Sanguinius himself departed to begin his service to the Emperor. |
Blood Angels - Teghar Campaign: Sanguinius was to learn the ways of war at the side of Horus himself, accompanying that Primarch and his Luna Wolves, to see how war was waged among the stars and to understand the functions of the vast Imperium that the Emperor was building. As Sanguinius forged a bond of trust with his mentor and brother, the IXth Legion was finally summoned to attend upon their new and true master.Gathered from distant war zones across the galaxy, it took many solar months for each disparate band of the IXth Legion to be found and recalled. It would be two standard years and four solar months before the gathering was complete, and on the storm-wracked world of Teghar, an army of grim killers with the faces of angels assembled, eagerly awaiting a new slaughter of which to partake.The captains of the Revenant Legion, the Great Crusades' blood-soaked angels, gathered as Stormbird transports bearing the mark of the Luna Wolves descended from orbit. From within came a troop of warriors clad in the white of Horus' own Legion, yet the one at their head was not Horus, though by his stature he was a true son of the Emperor and one of His Primarchs.Great white wings unfolded and Sanguinius revealed himself to his gene-sons, his sculpted features the very image of those that thronged about him. Sanguinius beheld the gathered warriors of the IXth each bearing the scars of unrelenting battle both on their proud faces and in the dark recesses of their spirits.These were not men to be impressed by the pomp and ceremony of his escort, nor by simple strength of arms. The winged Primarch, amid the rain and storms of that far world, took a knee before the rough-cast killers and scarred blood-drinkers and, rather than demand their allegiance, he offered them his own.The warriors who had offered up everything to the new Imperium and in return been granted only scorn and mistrust, were now offered a Primarch's loyalty, given freely and without reservation. Sanguinius had won their devotion with his actions, and to seal them to him he led the assembled Legion on their first campaign together, standing in the front lines of battle where his valour spoke for the sincerity of his pledge.The storm-wracked fifth world of the Teghar System, Teghar Pentaurus, was the stage upon which Sanguinius fought for the loyalty of his Legion. There he gave of his blood in the maelstrom of combat and came to understand the true nature of his sons. Sanguinius witnessed the bloodlust and fey hunger that ran through his Legion's core and recognised it as his own darkness.The Abhuman hordes of Teghar and their bestial thralls fell before the IXth Legion like wheat before a scythe, Sanguinius himself claiming the pelt of a dire carnodon as a trophy of battle and a symbol of the pact he had formed with his sons. In the gore-spattered aftermath of the campaign, Sanguinius saw one possible future, a crimson future of war eternal where his sons would truly become monsters, the playthings of a dark and terrible fury. Yet, the winged Primarch did not despair.Even in the heat of battle, there remained in the warriors of the IXth Legion a spark of nobility, the still-warm ashes of their martial pride and determination. They fought to grasp the fickle favour of victory, not simply for slaughter, and held to their own codes of honour with an iron will. These would be his weapons in the battle for the IXth Legion's soul, the tools with which he would raise them up.The winged Primarch knew full well that no future was absolute, no dark fate beyond hope of repair, and with the end of the battle for Teghar he declared, "even though a darkness hangs over them, a future soaked in blood and horror, they are angels yet. Angels of Blood." The IXth Legion, the Revenant Legion, had been reborn and earned a new name: the Blood Angels. |
Blood Angels - A Legion Reborn: The newly titled Blood Angels did not return en masse to Baal -- that blistering wasteland had little to teach them that the ruins of Terra and a thousand other dead worlds had not. Instead, Sanguinius sought the aid of his brother, Horus, who had been his mentor and friend during his first years as part of the Emperor's grand army.Dividing his Legion, its heraldry now changed both to honour the Primarch and to match the new name they had been granted, he set each company to fight alongside one of Horus' own Luna Wolves companies. At the side of these renowned warriors, the Blood Angels would fight for the next solar decade, seeing the fall of countless worlds and the prosecution of campaigns of every kind, from the brutalsimplicity of wars of extermination to the deadly subtlety of quiet campaigns of strike and fade. In the shadow of the Luna Wolves and the greatest of the Emperor's Primarchs, the once-outcasts of the IXth Legion would gain stature in the eyes of their peers and a newfound sense of decorum.Each of the campaigns was a new trial, a subtle test selected with keen insight by the two Primarchs to salve the wounds inflicted by time and fate upon the Blood Angels. Sanguinius instilled in his sons a new sense of pride, not in simple carnage and the blood-soaked eternity of melee, but in a future in which they stood as exemplars of the Imperial creed, equal even to Horus' own warriors.In the year-long siege of Anaxis XII, they grasped the value of brotherhood as they stood shoulder to shoulder with the Imperial Fists against a tide of Hrud that seemed without end; on Cambriole and Prehalt they were taught discipline as they matched blades with inscrutable Aeldari reavers; while on Kentaurus Beta they learnt something of mercy as Sanguinius led them on the bloodless pacification of the Kentauran colonies. With each battle, the Legion shook off part of the stigma of their past and took their first faltering steps along a new path.Eager to prove worthy of the oath Sanguinius had made to them, the warriors of the IXth Legion strove to put aside the gore-soaked solitude that had once been the armour of their pride and to embrace the new virtues Sanguinius had shown them. Fury temperedby wisdom, blood-hunger chained with discipline, when the IXth Legion finally came to Baal, they were no longer that rough beast which had once stalked Terra, but were now a Legion reborn in form more fitting of their angel-winged sire.There, on the sands of Baal, they were met by the newly-raised and trained contingents of Astartes drawn from The Blood, the native people of that rad-scoured system, whom Sanguinius himself had raised up and schooled in the arts of war. The two halves of the Legion were joined, warriors from both Terra and Baal spread across the many companies of the Blood Angels that they might strengthen each other and weaken the hold of the IXth Legion's Terran past.The hunger remained of course, a shackled beast that lurked ever ready at the edge of madness, waiting for the chance to be set free once again, but by the faith of their Primarch they had a firm hold of its fetters. The Blood Angels honed their minds and wills, devoting themselves to the study of wisdom as well as war.They became scholars as well as warriors, and under the approving gaze of their winged Primarch, they put aside the barbarism they had once embraced and sought to prove themselves a force worthy of the future for which they fought. As time passed and the Blood Angels' past slipped from the memories of those they fought alongside, the blood hunger became little more than a myth, a half-remembered ghost story of ancient ghouls once bound in service to the Emperor.Those few among the Legion that succumbed once more to its thirst or to the black fury that followed on its heels were quietly concealed, granted the Emperor's peace or sealed away on Baal. The Blood Angels and their Primarch joined the Great Crusade as equals, looked down upon by none and followed the call of war to the stars.The new crimson-clad IXth Legion was both familiar and yet fundamentally changed in character. It still waged war with a fury to shake the heavens, but now it was leashed to a deep well of discipline and keen intellect. Still they favoured shock assault, a falling upon the foe suddenly and without warning, but now with a Primarch's will at their back they made use of the full panoply of Imperial technology.Now, when the angels came, they fell from the sky like a rain of fire, a thousand burning lights against the dawning sky, the wrath of the Emperor Himself given crimson form. Nor was this the extent of their skills, for though the sudden onslaught was their preference, they knew now full well the value of the feigned retreat, the gun line and a hundred other stratagems besides.They were a Legion fully formed, so much more now than the simple bludgeon they had once been, and this is perhaps the truest evidence of the Emperor's plan for His Legions, that with their Primarchs they became whole -- far more than the sum of their genetic legacy and the harsh lessons of Unification.So it was that the Great Crusade surged onwards as never before. New battlefronts opened up under the Primarchs' direction and worlds were reclaimed by the thousand. Throughout it all, the Blood Angels and their Primarch, Sanguinius, fought at the Emperor's side, serving as honour guard to their beloved creator. Driven by their still-fiery temperament, the Blood Angels' fearsome reputation as shock troops came to feed a rivalry between them and the equally assault-oriented World Eaters Legion.Yet, in truth, the Blood Angels were never as ferocious as the World Eaters, for the wise influence of Sanguinius tempered their bloodlust. Of all the Primarchs, Sangunius formed the closest bonds to Horus, Leman Russ and Jaghatai Khan. Though he was yet in the early days of his legend, Sanguinius was thought to be the noblest of the Primarchs and was ever deep in the Emperor's counsel.Even Horus, later the proud Warmaster of the Great Crusade, sensed a purity of spirit in Sanguinius that he could never match, a oneness with their father that no other Primarch could ever hope to approach. Whilst many of his brothers fought the Great Crusade solely out of the joy of battle, Sanguinius fought to secure the golden era of peace and prosperity which would surely follow. His vision was the Emperor's, a hope of Mankind united in peace and prosperity. Alas, it was not to be. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.