[Jagged Alliance 2 1.12 Gold (Mint) The Game
Virginie Fayad
"And thus, driven from Holy Terra and residing forevermore in the underworld, the Sons of Horus, the treacherous Sixteenth, became the Black Legion. From shame and shadow recast. In black and gold reborn."
The Black Legion, formerly known as the Sons of Horus and before that as the Luna Wolves, is a Traitor Legion of Chaos Space Marines that is the first in infamy, if not in treachery, whose name resounds as a curse throughout the scattered and war-torn realms of Humanity. The Black Legion was one of the 9 First Founding Legions of Space Marines who turned Traitor to the Imperium during the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium.
The Black Legion, at that time still known as the "Sons of Horus," became the primary instrument of its primarch, the Warmaster Horus, to overthrow the Emperor of Mankind and seize control of the Imperium in the name of Chaos.
Such are the crimes of the Black Legion in the 41st Millennium that it is easy to forget that the past was very different, and that there was a time when its Astartes and their perfidious master Horus were lauded above all of the other warriors of the Legiones Astartes, and were considered the most favoured servants of the Emperor.
Born as the XVIth Space Marine Legion on Terra, the Black Legion would first rise to greatness under the name of the Luna Wolves. Before the dark days of the Horus Heresy they fought at the Emperor's side on Terra and through the early years of the Great Crusade. They were as stalwart and indefatigable as any of the servants of the Emperor and their actions exemplified what it meant to be a warrior of the Space Marine Legions.
Brutal, ruthless and unwavering but also honourable, and once loyal beyond question, the history of the Black Legion is the history of the ambition of the Imperium itself, and the flaws that broke its founder's dreams of unification and glory for all Mankind asunder.
The Black Legion is now one of the Traitor Legions of Heretic Astartes who are united in the pursuit of the single purpose of overthrowing the Imperium. They oppose the infighting that consumes so many of their brethren amongst the other Traitor Legions, for the Astartes of the Black Legion are the greatest servants of Chaos Undivided. They are always brought together in great numbers to work the will of their Warmaster of Chaos, Abaddon the Despoiler, the heir of Horus. Whenever the entirety of the Black Legion is called to battle, it marks the beginning of another one of Abaddon's Black Crusades against the Imperium of Man.
The Black Legion is the only one of the Traitor Legions to have changed its name following the Horus Heresy. The XVIth Legion was originally known as the Luna Wolves during the Great Crusade. In honour of Horus' great achievements during the latter years of that era after the Imperial victory over the Orks during the Ullanor Crusade, the Emperor suggested that the Legion be renamed the Sons of Horus.
Horus, at first reluctant to aggrandise himself in this way, eventually instituted this change following a conversation with the Primarch Sanguinius in the wake of the Luna Wolves' inability to avoid war with the Human/xenos hybrid civilisation known as the Interex. After Horus' treachery and final defeat at the Siege of Terra during the Horus Heresy, however, the Legion was renamed once more as the "Black Legion" by its new Chaos Lord, Abaddon the Despoiler. The new name was chosen after the Astartes of the Sons of Horus painted their power armour black in grief at the death of their primarch and shame at their failure to overthrow the False Emperor and seize control of the galaxy in the name of Horus and the Ruinous Powers.
The Black Legion are at once the inheritors of the most glorious legacies of the Great Crusade, and the vilest treacheries of the Horus Heresy. Their Primarch was the Warmaster Horus himself, once celebrated as the greatest of the sons of the Emperor, and later despised as the basest of Traitors. Of all the infant Primarchs scattered to the corners of the galaxy before the process of their creation was completed, Horus grew up closest to Terra.
For thirty standard years, the Emperor and Horus fought the opening campaigns of the Great Crusade side by side, the primarch learning at the foot of his sire. When at length the Emperor detected that another of the primarchs was close at hand and departed to locate him, Horus was left at the head of his master's hosts, entrusted with the command of the conquering Imperial armies.
Horus was well-suited to the task, and the lessons he had learned in the previous three Terran decades served him well. As one by one the primarchs were united with their sire and their brothers, Horus came increasingly to be regarded as the greatest of their number, the first among equals.
While many of his brother primarchs and the Astartes Legions created in their image were gifted in particular fields of military endeavour, Horus was a natural leader, his greatest genius his ability to meld seemingly divergent allies into a coherent whole. This skill was not only of use on the battlefield, for it carried over into contacts with the peoples the Great Crusade met.
It was Horus' way to treat with the populations of newly-contacted worlds according to the traditions of each, and this highly successful doctrine was repeated in each of the expeditionary fleets. Tragically, it might also have been the cause of the primarch's fall, and with him fully half of the Space Marine Legions.
In the aftermath of the greatest of the nascent Imperium's victories to date, the defeat of the largest Ork empire ever encountered, Horus was granted the title "Warmaster," commander-in-chief of all the Emperor's armies. So great was the victory that his Legion, originally called the Luna Wolves, was renamed the Sons of Horus.
The Emperor returned to Terra to oversee the next phase of the creation of His interstellar empire, but on the moon of the Feral World of Davin, Horus was struck down by a malady devised by the Chaos artefact known as the Anathame that was sufficiently virulent to affect even a superhumanly resilient primarch.
At some point during his treatment or recovery, Horus was inducted into one of Davin's Warrior Lodges, the Temple of the Serpent Lodge, and it is likely that during that process, he was corrupted in some manner that led to his eventual downfall.
Horus emerged from his illness changed, and the practise of establishing Warrior Lodges spread throughout the Legions. With it, apparently, spread whatever Chaos taint had corrupted the Warmaster, and the fate of the galaxy was sealed.
As the pre-eminent primarch, Horus had always enjoyed the confidence of his brothers, even when internecine rivalries had caused disputes. It appears that through a masterful series of manipulations and deceptions, Horus subverted the loyalties of those primarchs personally closest to him, whilst simultaneously diverting or undermining those others, such as Rogal Dorn, Roboute Guilliman and Sanguinius, who would oppose his treachery.
The Warmaster's plans were impossibly well-coordinated, each of the Primarchs experiencing a turn of fate or a precipitating incident that determined which side they would take in the ensuing galactic civil war.
Imperial scholars have long debated how many and which of these events were directly brought about by Horus' machinations and which were sheer coincidence. Others still must surely have been the work of the Ruinous Powers themselves, turning their unknowable attentions upon the domains beyond the Empyrean and exerting their will upon them.
Whatever the case, events reached a head according to the Warmaster's strategy when he virus-bombed the remaining Loyalists in the nascent Traitor Legions on the world of Istvaan III, an act so dire that five entire Astartes Legions were despatched to call him to account for his apparent rejection of all the Great Crusade stood for.
It was at Istvaan V that the Warmaster finally revealed his true colours. The first wave of the Legions sent to confront Horus made planetfall, only to discover themselves in the midst of treachery. Faced with overwhelming odds, the Salamanders, Raven Guard and Iron Hands -- later known as the Shattered Legions -- attempted tolink up with the second wave, only for the true extent of the Warmaster's treachery to be fully realised.
The second wave, consisting of the Word Bearers, Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion, and World Eaters turned upon their embattled brothers, and the result was the infamous Drop Site Massacre, one of the darkest moments not only of the Horus Heresy, but of the entire history of Mankind.
The ensuing civil war pitched the whole Imperium into anarchy and chaos. It was not only the Legions aligned to Horus that rebelled, for the Warrior Lodges and the Chaos taint in general had spread far and wide by the time of the Drop Site Massacre.
The Imperial Army was split almost in half, regiment fighting regiment and fleet fighting fleet. The Titan Legions of the Mechanicum, the ancestors of the Adeptus Mechanicus, were equally affected, and soon fully half of the Emperor's hosts were engaged in bitter conflict with the other. Barely a single world was untouched by a war that accounted for countless billions of lives and that culminated in the Warmaster's assault on Terra itself.
As events neared their tragic conclusion, those Legions not committed to the defence of Terra raced through the Warp,converging on the homeworld of Mankind in such numbers that the Traitors, massed to assault the Imperial Palace, would be defeated. At the last, Horus lowered the shields of his battle barge, effectively inviting the Emperor to teleport aboard and confront His treacherous gene-son.
In the battle that followed, Horus was slain at the hand of his sire, his soul psychically annihilated so that not a shred of its essence remained. But in defeating the primarch, the Emperor had suffered such wounds that only His ascension to the life-sustaining Golden Throne could keep death at bay.
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