Dornian Heresy - IA: Night Lords

[Aurelius Rex]

It's been far too long since I have posted in Liber, but those of you that remember me, I am in the process of writing an Alternate Timeline called the Dornian Heresy (Guess who fell to Chaos when Horus dodged the bullet!) Check my signature for links to the Legio Imprint PDF and other posts detailing the previously published legions. There are five more to go - or four after this one, which details the Night Lords. The four still to come are the Salamanders, Sons of Horus, Imperial Fists and Death Guard, in case you were wondering.

 

This is one I have been looking forward to since the start, and yet was one of the biggest challenges, for reasons I can't explain. Reading back through their GW IA, I must say that Phil Kelly did an amazing job! It is a real high-water mark for the GW IA's, and a tall order to present them in this alternate form. Thanks as always to everyone who gave me feedback and ideas this time, especially Sigismund Himself and Ace Debonair. Hopefully I even spelled his name right this time. :P

 

One of the things I love most about Liber is the great feedback that I get from you all. I don't consider it finished until I publish it along with the other eight legions in the second half of the Legio Imprint PDF, and so with your help I hope to be able to greatly improve this article.

 

Thanks, and hope you enjoy it,

Aurelius.

 

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Index Astartes: Night Lords

 

The Dornian Heresy

 

Midnight clad, and wielding fear as a weapon, the Night Lords haunt the dark places of the Imperium. They do this not to hide from the light of justice, but because that is where those who would seek to harm the Emperor’s subjects are to be found. Since the time of their Primarch, Konrad Curze, the Night Lords have been guided by visions of the darkest of futures which they are driven to avert, even at the cost of their own lives. By their blood and sacrifice the Imperium of Mankind has been kept safe from rebellions, xenos invasions and betrayals without number.

 

Origins

T

he arrival of the infant primarchs changed each of their homeworlds forever, but few have been transformed so profoundly for the better than the planet of Nostramo. The place the Primarch of the Eighth Legion found as he emerged from his incubator pod was one of eternal, stygian darkness, choking pollution and endemic, institutionalised crime; descriptions which certainly do not apply to the Nostramo of the 41st millennium.

 

In the revered, handwritten accounts of his youth, the primarch tells of how he grew up on the unlit streets of Nostramo Quintus, hiding from everyone, even the gangs of abandoned children which roamed the slums. He watched the press of humanity around him, content simply to study them, until he witnessed a family being menaced by a gang of thugs. The sight of the criminals attempting to steal the baby from its parents offended something deep inside him, and in an instant he was upon them with the only weapons he had – his nails and teeth. By the time his enemies had breathed their last, the terrified family had already fled from their blood-soaked protector. From that point on, no longer was he able to look on as injustice was perpetrated. He made it his business to put an end to such things. Those who witnessed his attacks told of a soulless creature of nightmare which stalked the shadows and wore the darkness like a cloak. For the first time he also had a name: to his prey he was the Night Haunter.

 

As he grew to maturity, he came to realise that the criminals he had been punishing had been given their orders by more powerful individuals. Over the course of a long, bloody year, the Night Haunter waged war upon the corruption which had spread its tendrils right to the top of society. From the heads of the organised crime syndicates to the law enforcement officials who had spat upon their oaths for personal gain, none were safe from his punishment; their broken bodies left for all to see as warnings to those who broke the Night Haunter’s law. Fearing for their lives, the criminals searched in vain for their tormentor. Unimaginable sums were offered for his head, or even for information, but to no avail. He had no-one, so could not be betrayed, and Nostramo contained more than enough shadows in which to hide.

 

The war was bloody, but one-sided, and eventually the criminal population was cowed into complete submission. From the alleyways of the undercity to the corridors of power, no-one dared to break the law lest they be the next to suffer the Night Haunter’s retribution. By the time Imperial Expeditions reached Nostramo, drawn initially tales of its bountiful supplies of adamantium, they found the world orderly, productive and ruled over by a being of preternatural abilities. Magnus the Red of the Thousand Sons ventured down to investigate further, and soon confirmed that another of the Emperor’s long-lost primarch sons had indeed been found.

 

In the time it took for the Emperor to reach Nostramo, Magnus bonded with his brother, and spoke in glowing terms of their father’s great quest to unite the scattered worlds of mankind under Imperial Law. With his interest in justice, this aspect held considerable appeal to the Night Haunter. In return, Magnus was fascinated to learn that his brother was gifted by brief flashes of precognitive ability, although he had so far been unable to use this fore-knowledge in any meaningful way.

 

The eventual arrival of the Emperor was a time of hushed expectation and awe. So accustomed to the darkness were the people of Nostramo that when the Emperor first stepped from his landing craft, many were dazzled by the golden light reflected from His burnished armour. However, it was as nothing to what occurred next. As the Night Haunter approached his father in humble supplication, the Emperor opened his arms wide in welcome, and the entire sky lit up as it had not done in living memory. In honour of the new dawn which the Imperium had brought to Nostramo, the Emperor had ordered the orbit of Tenebor to be fractionally altered, so that the moon would no longer hold the world in a permanent eclipse.

 

Even though the light from Nostramo’s dying star was wan and pale, for some it was the last thing they would ever see. Even the Night Haunter was struck down, shaking uncontrollably not at the light, but undergoing one of his prophetic visions. With great tenderness the Emperor laid hands upon His son’s head, and calmed the seizure, saying “Konrad Curze, be at peace. I have arrived and I intend to take you home.” The reply, controlled and level, was recorded for the galaxy to hear:

 

“That is not my name, father. I am Night Haunter... and I have seen the glory of the Imperium that we will create.”

 

The Great Crusade

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he newly renamed Night Lords fought their first campaigns of the Great Crusade alongside the Thousand Sons. This gave Magnus ample opportunity to examine his brother’s fascinating talent, which it seemed was derived from a source far removed from his own method of psychic mastery. Better than almost anyone Magnus knew that the future was not set in stone, and that the visions could as easily be taken as warnings. Yet despite all attempts to use the information gleaned from these prophesies, the fates always seemed to conspire against him. Shorn of context of what they referred to, the jumble of images only seemed to make sense after the event, by which time it was far too late. Night Haunter became increasingly fatalistic and certain these visions were pre-destined to come to pass.

 

Though he had long resisted it, Night Haunter finally agreed to allow his brother access to the memories of his latest vision. Magnus was more successful than they could have hoped, reassembling the headlong rush of knowledge into a coherent form. Forewarned, they were able to prevent the ambush and destruction of many of the orbiting Imperial Army vessels, and the planet fell into compliance soon afterwards. In the wake of this victory, Night Haunter confessed to his brother the dark truth that had haunted him since he had first met the Emperor on Nostramo; that his prophesy had not, as he had publically stated, been of the inevitable rise of the Imperium. Instead it had shown his own execution, and that the deed had been carried out on the orders of their own father. The proof that the visions were not inevitable and could be averted had freed him to at long last confide this knowledge to another person. With the burden lifted from his shoulders, he was at last able to accept and welcome these visions, and rapidly became skilled at their interpretation. He was also free to set aside his past, and reclaimed the name his father had bestowed upon him – that of Konrad Curze.

 

The Night Lords’ apprenticeship was finally at an end, and as the Thousand Sons left, reinforcements arrived in the form of the first Astartes recruited from Nostramo. What should have been a moment of great pride proved to be singularly ill-starred. As Curze greeted these new battle-brothers, he was struck by the vision of his legion corrupted from within and populated by criminals and moral degenerates – individuals who carried out wanton acts of brutality for no better reason than for the sick thrill of it. Where Night Haunter might have resignedly embraced this as the inevitable reason for his execution, Konrad Curze would not. Instead, he ordered the new Astartes placed under confinement, and returned to his homeworld with all haste.

 

He had thought Nostramo left in capable hands. Instead, Curze found that in his absence the criminals had risen up once more and turned the planet into a cess-pool of lawlessness. The Adeptus Arbites and the Administratum had been unable to deal with the situation, so it fell to Curze and his Night Lords to re-impose order through the fear of brutal, inevitable retribution. Within a week, crime had dropped back to nothing, and when the legion eventually returned to the Great Crusade, it was an unbending cadre of Night Lords who held stewardship of the planet rather than the hopelessly outclassed Adeptus Arbites.

 

The Night Lords found themselves changed by the experience of Nostramo, and with the lessons of the campaign weighting heavily upon them, they saw the Imperium with fresh eyes. The Great Crusade had become a victim of its own success. With so many worlds conquered so fast, many took advantage of their distance from the front lines to rise up against the Imperium. Long before the Iron Warriors were persuaded to bleed away their strength in garrison duties to address this, the Night Lords took it upon themselves to re-impose the rule of Imperial Law on the faltering galaxy.

 

This was a far more uncompromising, brutal legion than the one which had accompanied the Thousand Sons. It descended on planets only nominally still part of the Imperium, and enshrouded them in a cloak of fear. Planetary leaders were given the ultimatum to submit wholeheartedly to the Pax Imperialis, and any who resisted became bloody public exhibitions to the folly of resistance. They did this not out of sadistic pleasure, but from the knowledge that humanity needed to be subjected to the fear of certain retribution to keep it from straying into corruption. Just as a plant grows twisted if the cane that supports and guides it is removed too soon, the same applied to the Imperium of Mankind.

 

The Night Lords took it upon themselves to do the terrible things required to keep the Imperium from slipping into anarchy and rebellion, and to protect humanity from its own darkest impulses. Curze’s prophetic visions were vital in crushing rebellions before they could gain ground, and the belief was encouraged that they could see the evil that lurked in the hearts of men. They did all of this willingly, knowing that the price was to be hated, and obviously feared, by the very people they were protecting.

 

Treachery Revealed

T

hough undoubtedly effective, the Night Lords’ brutal ways were a source of friction with many of the other, more strait-laced legions. During the Great Crusade Angron personally forbade his World Eaters from fighting alongside them, and the Primarch of the Ultramarines took every opportunity to berate Curze for his methods. Guilliman argued that compliance imposed by fear was too fragile, and pointed to the strength and unity of the worlds his legion had brought into compliance on the Eastern Fringe using the Ultramar model.

 

With the exception of his mentor, Magnus, Curze was never close to his brother primarchs, and so cared little for their low opinion of him. All that mattered was that the Emperor understood his actions. He left his brothers to their machinations, rivalries and petty posturing, confident that while they might differ in their approaches, they were all in their own ways working towards the greater glory of the Imperium. This belief, and the Night Lords’ participation in the Great Crusade, was abruptly terminated on the planet of Cheraut.

 

It was a testament to the fierce, coordinated resistance of the people of Cheraut that the primarchs of three legions were sent to finally bring them into compliance. The Night Lords arrived first, and Curze ordered his legion to carry out terrible and public displays of brutality against the military forces who opposed them to paralyse the individual nations with fear. The once cohesive, unified world which had stood firm against veteran regiments of the Imperial Army for more than a year fell into disarray. By the time Fulgrim’s Emperor’s Children and Rogal Dorn’s Imperial Fists arrived, every city stood alone, isolated from even their closest neighbours, and ripe to be conquered piecemeal.

 

To Curze, the Pacification of Cheraut had been a prime example of combining their various talents to great effect, but when he joined his brother primarchs in the shattered remnants of the world’s last and greatest citadel, he found Dorn not appreciative, but furious. The Imperial Fist railed against what the Night Lords had done, claiming that Guilliman and Angron had been right, and that he would answer for the gross excesses carried out in the Emperor’s name. Unwilling to engage in yet another pointless discussion of his methods, Curze turned to leave, but Dorn reached out to stop him. At the touch, Curze was driven to his knees, struck down by a vision of terrible, sickening potency.

 

Both Dorn and Curze were there, but rather than on Cheraut they were in the midst of the Emperor’s Throne Room on Terra. Rather than the serene majesty Curze had remembered, there were obvious signs of battle damage and the charnel stench of death hung heavy in the air. Dorn’s ornate golden armour was engraved with unholy symbols painful to look upon, and his sunken eyes burned with hate and the icy fires of insanity. Curze tried to move, but could only strain against the heavy shackles which restrained him. His struggling grew ever-more frantic as Dorn drew a black bladed sword, and stepped aside to reveal the broken, unconscious body of the Emperor, and with a smile held the blade to his father’s throat. With an almighty snap the chain holding Curze gave way, and he threw himself across the room at Dorn, hands contorted into talons to rip and tear at the Arch-Betrayer...

 

...When he awoke from the vision, his hands were around Dorn’s throat, and in a desperate attempt to prevent the future he had been shown he continued to attack, rending and tearing with tooth and nail. Even as the blows rained down on him from all those around, he tried to explain the importance of what he was doing, but his words were lost in a howl of incoherent pain and rage. He shrugged off the yellow armoured Astartes as though they were nothing, but before he could take the life of his treacherous brother, Fulgrim was there, and in a blur of purple and gold tore him away from Dorn and knocked Curze unconscious.

 

While held in custody aboard the Phalanx - the vast flagship of the Imperial Fist fleet – Curze came to realise the full gravity of his situation. His carefully crafted reputation as an object of fear, and the damning testimony of Fulgrim, someone known to loathe Rogal Dorn, had left people wary of his motives and even of his sanity. Furthermore, having seen the suspicion and unfair accusations of sorcery that dogged his brother Magnus, any talk of prophesy would serve only to further weaken his case. Knowing the result that a trial before the Council of Primarchs would return, and that his vision had shown him as Dorn’s prisoner, he made his escape from the Phalanx leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. While the Imperial Fists and Emperor’s Children searched for him in vain, he made his way back to his legion, and quietly slipped away into the darkness between the stars.

 

Alone in his private sanctum, Curze was again plagued by the ghosts of what could have been. His officers all agreed that he had made the right choice. To have tried to penetrate deeper into the Phalanx – to its very command section - would have been madness. The security aboard that massive ship had been so tight that he had been lucky to escape at all, and he had needed to get the news of Dorn’s future treachery to those who could avert it...

 

... And yet...

 

... And yet...

 

... And yet still he felt as though he had made a grave mistake. He felt that if he had been able to reach Dorn – who was already badly wounded – he could have ended this... this heresy before more innocent blood could be spilled.

 

For a moment he was lost amongst the antiseptic corridors of the Phalanx, until his equerry, Captain Shang, entered the room. He had made his decision; there was nothing to be gained in continuing to shadow the Phalanx. They already knew full well where they must be to avert Dorn’s betrayal. They must set course for Terra.

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The Siege of Terra

A

s ever, the background and context to Curze’s prophetic vision had been maddeningly lacking. The only thing of which he could be certain was that Dorn would spit on his oaths of fealty to the Emperor and attempt to kill Him in His own throne room. Knowing nothing of the insidiously corrupting nature of the Ruinous Powers, Curze could not comprehend why a dutiful and self-sacrificing individual such as Dorn would turn on the Emperor. In fact, it was just these traits that had earned him the title of the Emperor’s Praetorian, and the Imperial Fists the honour of garrisoning the Imperial Palace from attack; something which made the Night Lords’ task all the more difficult.

 

They looked on as hunted fugitives, unable to prevent the disasters that were to come, but when Dorn’s treachery was finally revealed at the Istvaan Drop-site massacre, the Night Lords were in place to act. With the anarchy of Dorn’s rebellion, the Night Lords were at last able to penetrate the supremely tight defences of the Terran system without detection. Unfortunately, by this point the Emperor was already trapped inside his Throne Room by the demi-legion of Imperial Fists which Dorn had left to garrison the outer palace.

 

So good were the Imperial Fists at this task that despite all their stealth, it was only with the arrival of the Blood Angels, and their eventual sloppy relief of the Imperial Fists on the outer walls, that the Night Lords were finally able to penetrate the walls of the palace. They ran riot through the palace, attacking the forces of Chaos and the Imperial Fists in particular, but for all the devastation they caused, it was merely a distraction. Their true purpose was to release the Emperor from the cage His Throne Room had become.

 

With the area ahead cleared, they moved out through the Investory. Passing through such an exposed area was a risk, but it was the most direct route back out of the palace. Around them, in a ring, were twenty plinths. Two of positions had long stood empty, and Curze was far from surprised to find that since the Heresy many more of the statues had been either removed or destroyed, including his own representation which had stood upon the eighth plinth. Noticing that his father had stopped in his tracks, Curze looked back anxiously.

 

‘I never liked this place, Konrad,’ said his father, his eyes on the missing eleventh statue. ‘Malcador would never confirm it, but I am certain that this was where the execution was carried out... where my son died at my command. It is as though I can hear his death-scream echoing from these stones.

 

Such talk of executions chilled his heart, and yet still Curze yearned to finally admit to his father what the vision had shown him when they had first met for the first time. But then the moment was gone, and the Emperor was once more striding purposefully towards the far side of the Investory.

 

Curze begged his father to leave Terra, but the Emperor was unbending in his refusal. Even the arrival on Terra of Rogal Dorn at the head of the Istvaan Traitor Legions could not dissuade Him, after which Curze never again broached the subject. What the Emperor said to convince Curze that He must not leave Terra to the traitors has long-since been lost to the ages, but most within the legion believe that it refers to a prophesy borne not by the son, but by the father.

 

Still unaware that their quarry had been spirited away, the traitors continued to focus all of their efforts on breaching the walls of the throne room. This allowed the Night Lords to do what they knew best; instilling the fear of retribution amongst the Chaos forces across the planet. During this time, Curze received further warnings, which he tried to avert with varying degrees of success. His vision of Perturabo being dealt a grievous, plague-infected wound by Sanguinius of the Blood Angels came even as the assault on the Ultimate Gate was about to take place. Despite contacting Perturabo minutes before the attack, the primarch of the Iron Warriors contemptuously ignored the warning, and was instead killed outright by the rotting primarch. Even beyond the grief and responsibility Curze felt for the loss of his brother, the revelation that his actions could inadvertently create an even darker path shook Curze to the core.

 

As the Siege of Terra ground through its third month, the war fell into stalemate, with neither side able to comprehensively defeat the other. With the long-delayed fleets of the Dark Angels and Space Wolves growing ever-closer, the Imperial forces sought a way to end the rebellion before they could arrive by killing the Arch-Betrayer himself. However, since the breaching of the Imperial throne room Dorn had rarely been seen on Terra, and had instead taken to coordinating the campaign from the Phalanx.

 

Protected behind countless banks of void shields and wielding enough firepower to devastate any Imperial fleet sent against it, the Phalanx appeared impervious to assault. Every attack simulation the Warmaster could conceive ended in abject failure, and while a covert action might prove more successful, there was no time to put such a plan into operation. At that moment Curze stepped from the shadows, and announced that he would be able to bring down the Phalanx’s shields for long enough to allow a strike-force to teleport aboard. He had been granted a vision of the desperate direct assault against the Phalanx, and of the Imperial fleet, including the Warmaster’s own flagship, illuminating the night like new suns as they burned. Since he had received that warning, the Night Lords had spent every waking moment preparing and analysing the weaknesses of the Phalanx. Just as Konrad Curze had escaped from the Phalanx as it lay in orbit around Cheraut, he was certain he and his team could also break onto it.

 

The Phalanx

T

he Plalanx that Curze found waiting for him was subtly different from the one he remembered from his last visit. Gone were the cold, functional ascetics, replaced instead by the corruption he had come to associate with the servants of the Ruinous Powers. The insidious taint affected even their vox channels and drowned their frequencies with white noise. He and his hand-picked companions ghosted with ease through the darkened, nearly deserted corridors. By melting into the shadows to avoid patrols and killing only when necessary, they were able to reach their objective without alerting the enemy to their presence. Though the shield generator dwarfed anything aboard their own ships, it was only one of many aboard the Phalanx, and its destruction would leave the ship vulnerable for only a brief span. The Night Lords triggered their explosives and reduced the shield generator to slag, but with their vox channels useless they could but hope that the Emperor’s strike force had been ready to attack.

 

With their presence revealed, the Night Lords took advantage of the devastation and darkness to turn the enemy’s territory into their own. They were in their element, but such was the size of the Phalanx that Curze knew it would be impossible to reach his father before His assault on Dorn’s command sanctum. The Night Lords would have been content simply to punish the followers of the Arch-Betrayer that pressed in on them, but it soon became apparent that something had gone terribly wrong.

 

Due to the corrupted nature of the ship, they almost dismissed the twisted half-figure merged into the wall as yet another daemonic manifestation, and yet the distinctive burnished golden armour revealed it to be nothing less than one of the Emperor’s Custodian Guard. Curze even recognised the man as part of his father’s strike force, who had clearly suffered a catastrophic accident during teleportation. As Curze reached out to close the eyes of the tortured man, he was again struck by a vision of the near-future. Through tears of grief, Curze told his officers that he had seen the traitors triumphant. He spoke of Dorn boasting of how he had feigned shaking off the daemonic and begged forgiveness, and had used that moment of confusion to strike down first Warmaster Horus and then the Emperor.

 

With no way to contact his father to warn of Dorn’s treachery, and being much too far from the command bridge to fight their way there, Curze did the only thing he could to get into Dorn’s presence. Much to the dismay of his Night Lords, he left them with the cryptic phrase “This will be my Investory”, before surrendering to the Imperial Fists and demanding to be taken before their primarch.

 

The Night Lords fought on with renewed ferocity, but by the time they cut their way through to the Sons of Horus the battle, and the Heresy, had already ended. Curze’s actions had bought the Emperor enough warning to raise His guard against Dorn’s deceit, but it came at a terrible cost. The last seconds of Curze’s life were recorded on the vid-logs of the primarch’s own armour. Curze was securely chained and shackled, yet confident as he was brought before Dorn. When offered the stark choice between life and death – to join the rebellion, or die there and then - Curze gave a chilling, contemptuous laugh, and calmly rejected his offer, before defiantly addressing Rogal Dorn:

 

“Why did I come before you only to be killed? Because your Heresy, and the act you are about to commit, proves the truth of my actions at Cheraut. I merely tried to punish one who would go on to cause so much harm – my only regret is that I did not succeed in killing you before you made war on our father, our Emperor. Death is nothing compared to vindication."

 

Despite exhaustive examination, the exchange has given little clue as to exactly how Curze’s death averted the events of his prophetic vision. All is certain is that through this act of supreme self-sacrifice, the Emperor’s life was saved, and the Arch-Betrayer’s Heresy brought to an end.

 

Pax Imperialis

D

orn’s Heresy had ended with his death aboard the Phalanx, but it had dealt a crippling blow to both the Emperor and His Imperium. Just as Nostramo had slipped back into corruption and anarchy when Curze first left the planet, they saw the same thing happening on a galaxy-wide scale. Though the grieving Night Lords yearned to join the other loyal Astartes in running down the retreating Traitor Legions, their first Legion Master, Zso Sahaal, realised that their skills could be put to use in a far more productive way. The Night Lords used their dread reputation and the promise of inevitable and bloody retribution to prevent the fragile Imperium from splintering into a million warring fiefdoms. They became the shadow of fear that enforced the Pax Imperialis.

 

In this task they were aided by the High Lords of Terra, who ruled in the Emperor’s name, and in particular by their leader, Ezekyle Abaddon of the newly renamed Black Templars. Having seen at first hand the service and sacrifice of Curze and his Night Lords, High Lord Abaddon gave them carte blanche to bring rebellious planets back into line, and to ensure that governors thinking of declaring independence reconsidered the wisdom of such actions. He also ordered that the full weight of the Officio Assassinorum stand alongside the Night Lords in this task, an edict which remains in force to this day.

 

Along with the extensive intelligence-gathering abilities of the Vanus Clade of Assassins, who monitor and predict worlds likely to fall to rebellion or to come under attack by invasion, a rare few Night Lords are also blessed with their primarch’s gift of prophesy. This allows the Night Lords to crush insurrections in their infancy, and to divert forces to stand against acts of aggression by Xenos and Chaos forces. Yet for all the good that the Night Lords do, their appearance is rarely greeted with enthusiasm. All too often they are seen as harbingers of doom, arriving as they do just ahead of either an invading war-fleet, or as agents of bloody vengeance. With good reason it is said that the black eyes of the Night Lords are able to see the evil in mens’ hearts, and as few are without a trace of sin, many a guilty conscience is prickled by word of their arrival.

 

‘They’re a pretty sorry bunch, Prophet,’ growled Brother-Sergeant Renzar as they watched the ragged group of villagers climbing aboard the transport shuttle. The vision had shown the villagers massacred, and while Tarl was thankful they had been saved, it was difficult to see what galaxy-shaking tragedy they had just averted.

 

‘Perhaps it wasn’t the civilians – the vision could have been about these Traitor Astartes. The motivations of the Dark Angels are almost as difficult to fathom as the prophesies,’ said Tarl. He stooped to pick up a bolter-pocked shoulderpad bearing the icon of the ‘Ravenwing’ and threw it into the heart of the blazing pyre. Be it determination, desperation or simply arrogance, the traitors had attacked despite knowing the world was under the protection of the Night Lords. On this occasion, though, all of their vaunted speed had served only to bring them into the ambush that little bit faster.

 

Lost in thought, Tarl did not notice the broad-shouldered man climb onto the transport, and take one last look back at the corpses of the former battle brothers who had hunted for him...

 

Combat Doctrine

T

o the Night Lords, fear is a weapon as deadly as the bolter or the chainsword. For this reason they openly proclaim their presence through haunting whispers in the vox channels even before the first flayed enemy corpse is left for all to see. This throws their opponents into disarray, often withdrawing back to the perceived safety of their bases, although by this time the Night Lords have long-since infiltrated the area.

 

They strike seemingly from nowhere, favouring hit-and-run attacks to frontal assaults, before melting back into the darkness. Nowhere is safe from the Night Lords’ wrath, and this continues until even the dullest of imaginations comes to see them in every shadow and dark corner. In this way a small number of Night Lords can seemingly be everywhere, and can paralyse a whole army, or even a whole world with fear. Only when a base or settlement is psychologically isolated, with nothing to listen to on the vox but the chilling promise of retribution and the looped screams of their missing squad mates, do the Night Lords mass for the final attack. With their helms decorated like skulls, they appear as death incarnate, come to claim those who have transgressed the Emperor’s laws.

 

Even in cases where the enemy is said to have no fear, the Night Lords finely honed talents have still proved to be effective. Be they the synapse-creatures of the Tyranid Hive-mind or the corrupted Magos of the Dark Mechanicus, by targeting their leaders, the followers are soon left either milling around in confusion, or are soon ordered to adopt a far more static, defensive stance. Though some may call it a simple logical or evolutionary response to the presence of the Night Lords, this rapid drawing in of forces and settling into a state of heightened awareness holds many similarities to that of fear.

 

Organisation

T

he Night Lords still retain their formal grand company command structure, although in practice they are split into forces of rarely more than a half a dozen squads, the better to cover the truly enormous scale of the Imperium. They generally prefer small, swift vessels to the massive battle-barges of some other legions, relying on speed and stealth rather than raw firepower. Their mere presence in a system is sufficient to remind Imperial governors and citizens alike of their responsibilities, and to banish any foolish thoughts of rebellion. Given their preferred method of combat, the actions of even a single squad of Night Lords are magnified by wildfire rumour so that the enemy will believe they are fighting an entire company of shades.

 

The legion is aided both on and off the battlefield by the temples of the Assassins, from the infocytes of Clade Vanus procuring and analysing data to the agents of the Vindicare training battle-brothers in the fine art of killing from afar. Though a Night Lord force commonly counts but a single assassin amongst their number, far rarer and more prized are the legion’s prophets. They can come from any background or specialisation – for instance, one of the legion’s finest and most valiant prophets was not an officer, but an apothecary – and as soon as their talent manifests they come under close scrutiny by the brothers of the Librarium.

 

As Magnus the Red well understood, there is little link between the psychic power of the librarians and the prophetic visions of the Night Lords. They are invaluable, however, in helping to draw out and analyse the often maddeningly vague assemblage of images into a coherent form, and to help identify when and where the disaster is set to occur. They are also used to test the veracity of both the prophesy, and even of the prophet himself, as the consequences of the Ruinous Powers influencing these visions would be truly disastrous.

 

Homeworld

I

n the centuries before the coming of the Imperium, Nostramo had been mined intensively for the adamantium riches which lay beneath its surface, and the industrial processes needed to refine the metal for export had reduced the atmosphere to a noxious fume. It did not require the power of prophesy to foresee that, if left unchecked, the Imperium’s insatiable greed would rapidly mine the planet hollow and render the air completely unbreathable. For this reason, on taking Nostramo as their homeworld the Night Lords enforced stringent quotas on mining, and have remained unbending even in the face of intense pressure to increase production. If they should ever waver, they need only remember the tragic fate of Cthonia, and indeed the fall of the Dark Angels on Caliban, to stiffen their resolve.

 

Despite the arrival of the Emperor bringing daylight to Nostramo, the population have proved unwilling to embrace this new dawn. For a people genetically adapted to the darkness, even the weak sunlight which reaches them can be blinding, and under the protection of the Night Lords there is little to fear from the shadows. Because of this, Nostraman society conducts its business wherever possible during the night, with the population careful to return to their shuttered homes before the first scorching rays of sun return at dawn. The only souls to be found out during the day are those not indigenous to the planet, or those forced by circumstance to brave the daylight behind goggles of smoked glass and layers of protective clothing.

 

Over the millennia the five cities of Nostramo have steadily expanded, although Quintus, the place where the infant primarch first fell to earth and the site of the legion’s fortress-monastery, retains primacy. It is said by off-worlders that despite their large populations the cities of Nostramo are unnervingly quiet and well-ordered. The streets are clean and free of litter, and even the air is sweet – at least in comparison to the levels of pollution pumped into the atmosphere before the arrival of the Emperor.

 

Recruitment

W

hile many of the Emperor’s legions draw their recruits from across the Imperium, the Night Lords take aspirants almost exclusively from their homeworld. They do this not from dogmatism, but from long experience that, not just physiologically, but also psychologically, the Nostraman population yields the most promising and compatible aspirants. However, there was a time when this was not thought to be the case.

 

During the Great Crusade, Curze had to return to Nostramo to reverse the world’s descent into anarchy and corruption. To prevent his legion from becoming tainted with moral degenerates and psychopaths he turned his Night Lords loose upon the criminal elements in an echo of his first great purge of Nostraman society. So effective was this that some grew concerned that the population had become cowed into such a submissive state that they would be all-but useless as Astartes. Needless to say, they should not have doubted their primarch. Just as the Nostraman people had adapted to the dark by losing their irises, they also adapted to a society where crime was so swiftly, brutally and publically punished by embracing Curze’s concept of natural justice not just as the norm, but as their moral duty.

 

Rather than passively avert their eyes from criminal acts, secure in the knowledge that their Night Lord guardians would soon deal very publically with the miscreant, Nostramans gained the confidence to stand against wrongdoers themselves. While at first this may have been done out of fear, that inaction might have been seen as complicity, it has long since been because seeing such acts genuinely offends their ingrained sense of justice. While the Night Lords continue to watch over Nostramo and its people, what little crime that might occur is frequently dealt with by ordinary citizens. The Night Lords continue to watch silently from the shadows, but their role is now as much to identify those who might possess the moral fibre to become potential aspirants as it is to guard the streets from crime.

 

To those truly without sin, the world of Nostramo is the safest in the Imperium.

 

Tenebor

The moon of Tenebor holds a great fascination for the people of Nostramo. During the hours of darkness its presence is cursed, as the moonlight it reflects is said to spoil the purity of the night. To a Nostraman it only becomes ‘true night’ once the moon slips below the horizon. Conversely, during the day the total eclipses it brings are seen as greatly favoured, as they blot out not only the sun, but also a great many of the stars in the sky.

 

As befits such an influential celestial body, Tenebor makes an appearance among the Lesser Arconoi; a Nostraman variant of the Emperor’s Tarot. Because of the duality of its nature, it is said to carry a multitude of different interpretations depending upon its position, orientation and interaction with the other cards in the draw.

[clearfloat]

 

Gene-seed

A

lthough the primarch of the Night lords is long-dead, his legacy lives on in the form of the gene-seed implanted into every one of the legion’s battle-brothers. This gene-line has proved to be stable and resistant to mutation, with all nineteen implants functioning with commendable efficiency. Of particular note is the startlingly acute night-vision displayed by the Night Lords, which is believed to be due to a particularly fortuitous interaction between their occulobe and the black, irisless eyes of the Nostraman population.

While this gift has helped to shape the tactics used by every Night Lord, there is another, far more extraordinary inheritance passed down from Konrad Curze to but a select few of his brethren – the power of prophesy. Such are the stresses that these visions place upon both body and soul that their bearers can be readily identified by their haunted, even haggard appearance. Because of the huge role that these warnings play in the psyche and effectiveness of the legion a staggering amount of research has gone into understanding how to increase the number of individuals able to harness this invaluable talent. Over the centuries innumerable approaches have been championed, and yet in truth the proportion of individuals with this talent has barely kept pace with the expansion of the legion.

 

Battle Cry

G

iven their preferred style of combat, the Night Lords rarely use a conventional battlecry to stir the blood before a charge. The closest approximation to this would be the whispered threats and agonised screams which they bleed across the enemy’s comm frequencies, or the soft sigh of a blade being drawn when you thought you were alone.

[Shinzaren]

Wow... Just wow. Fantastic work. Reminds me so much of the GW IA, but in a bright mirror. Nicely done!

 

Have to put this in, because it reminded me so much of what Octavulg said to me when I made a similar comment in an early draft of an IA...

 

Just as a plant grows twisted if the cane that supports and guides it is removed too soon, the same applied to the Imperium of Mankind.

=

...And then did the Emperor require that his sons should bring unto him each a shrubbery. But Horus did see the perfection of his father's shrubberies, and he did envy them, as he once had envied the glory of the turnip, that most holy of foods (this is why Horus is also known as the Masher-of-Turnips). And so did Horus plot with the Gods of Chaotic Gardening: Nurgle, God of Mulch, Slaanesh, God of Sweet Scents, Khorne, God of Thorns, and Tzeentch, God of Annuals. And thus the son of the Emperor turned over a new leaf...

 

No gardening metaphors. Doesn't fit the tone of the grimdarknessofthefarfuturewherethereisonlywarandblackpudding.

[Aurelius Rex]

:P

 

Well, if the shrubbery is provided by Roger the Shrubber it might be all right. If it's good enough for the Knights of Ni...

 

 

 

(Ni!) :)

[Ace Debonair]

Yay! I Finally got rid of Alpha Legion me!

 

...Wait, if Alpha Legion me was from the Dornian Heresy... does that mean I'm the evil one? :blink:

 

...Damn. ;)

 

 

Well, I've always been a massive fan of both the Dornian Heresy and the Night Lords. This piece doesn't disappoint in either regard - it's a great story, and at last the pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place regarding the Phalanx and what occured there.

 

 

Also, the shrubbery exchange has convinced me The Emperor's Gardeners are a great company of Night Lords in the DH-'verse.

[Sigismund Himself]

Excellent work as always Aurelius :) The only criticism I have of it is that there isn't as much time spent describing the modern day Night Lords but given Curze's rather involved storyline, it's understandable. The article might benefit from a bit of trimming but I know that's on the agenda for the PDF. Apart from that, a bit more on the current relations between the Thousand Sons and the Night Lords would've been interesting. I look forward to the next one!