Location: Segmentum Obscurus
Source: VIII Legion Battle-Barge Lex Talionis
Authorized: Lord-Commander Jhariuk Zuvassin, Master of the 36th Company, Regent of Melanchthon
+ + Thought for the Day: “Wisdom is the beginning of fear.” + +
Oblivion comes.
Like blades glistening in the twilight of dead and dying stars, our enemies hunt us. Amidst the shadow and ruin of a broken empire, of their broken empire, they hunt us. Their rage and hate consume them, burning like the throne-world once burned, and shall burn again. They hunt us, seeking to wash away their failures with our blood. They hunt us, seeking vengeance, to finally master cruelty in an age that has never known anything but cruelty, to take up the roles they once condemned my masters for becoming.
But the hour is late, too late, for them as well as for us. We live now amongst the echoes of treachery and despair, as blade clashes upon blade and as life is answered with life. Still, they come for us, clinging to their hate, their veins running hot with the memories my masters have left for them. It is said that death haunts the darkness, and that it knows our names.
It knows theirs, too.
We are destined to be forgotten, to become the lingering silence between half-remembered words, the flickering shadows cast from the dying embers of a dead age, the black flame that shall one day illuminate their final hours. Our graves will be the nameless battlefields of unknown worlds, the trackless depths of the void, and the boiling madness of what lies beyond this broken galaxy.
The great sin of my masters was to remind mankind of what it was, rather than what it wished to be. For mankind had come to think of itself as a god in a godless age, and crowned itself with golden lies, even as it sent my masters to slaughter and destroy in the name of peace and progress, even as it then condemned them for it. Who betrayed whom? What guilt when such sins were wrought into the very fabric of their being? My masters corrected such folly and brought low Terra’s hubris, stone by broken stone, lie by broken lie. They slaughtered, and they destroyed. They obeyed, and then they obeyed no more. They brought ruin, not only to His worlds and armies, to His systems and fleets, but to the very dream that still enslaves His children as it had once enslaved all of us. We have poisoned them with their own ideals, we have corrupted them with their own truths.
And for that their brothers have set upon us with the fury of the betrayed, of those who lived long enough to find that the dreams of the past will become the nightmares of the future. They will endure now, as we have endured, but there shall be no progress, no golden age, no Imperium as they sought to shape and enforce it. Like worms they shall return to the rotting birth-soil of their unholy Terra, groveling in the dark, clutching at a worthless corpse-god to save them from the cancerous fear that already gnaws at the tomb-world they have built for Him.
Across the centuries that I have served this Legion, I have seen the hallowed dead abandoned to rot on meaningless worlds beneath meaningless suns, and the glittering beauty of worlds in their death-throes. I have seen the gleaming warships, wrought with ancient and irreplaceable artifice, gutted by the cruel hate of our dagger-hulled monstrosities, bleeding their sacred dead into the cold grave of the void.
My masters have made burnt offerings of the very worlds that they had once made sacred with their own sacrifice, bringing death to entire worlds and systems and fleets, exterminating once-kindred souls with the same indifference – nay, with the same malice, with which we once exterminated the verminous xenos of this infested galaxy. My masters despise their gene-father, but they are his sons nonetheless. They hate him, and even more the One who returned him to them. And, truth be told, I would dare say they hate most of all their very Legion. They sought a different fate, but not even their blood could cleanse them of who they were: the lords of the night, sons of Terra, Eighth Legion.
They shall die in the coming years, hunted and scourged by those they have illuminated from the darkness. My own death awaits even sooner. My ashes will be left to scatter upon the indifferent winds of a ravaged world, or to be cast upon the endless black of the void. I have served my masters through crusade and heresy, through loyalty and betrayal, through endless war and ceaseless death. Thanks to them, I have lived for over two centuries, yet in the end I remained like any other mortal, a weak flame that flickered only briefly in the eternal darkness.
I am no ascended, no demi-mortal, yet I find myself sharing the beliefs of my masters: that our fates cannot be broken, no matter our vanities; that if justice exists in this galaxy, it is arbitrary and without mercy; and that, whatever we may owe our creators, we shall have repaid them our final debts when our last blade falls broken upon a broken world, gleaming in the twilight of His lies, clad in the polished midnight of our truths.
Old Night returns, drawn forth from its restless slumber by the coppery scent of mankind’s fears. Our enemies fight its embrace, praying bitterly amidst guttering candles for a decaying sun to once more rise and return them to the light. Yet it is the fate of all things to end in darkness and despair, to drown in the very depths from which we each arose, weak and nameless, to die alone and forgotten.
As Old Night returns and drinks deeply of this coming age, know then that it was I, Aratus bas Szelekh, last remembrancer of the 36th Company of the Eighth Legion of the Imperium of Man, born of Terra, slave of Nostramo, son of Melanchthon, sworn in fealty to both Legion and Warmaster, servant of the Vor Zekhon, who bound these words to ink and parchment in the dead runes of a dying tongue, who forged bitter memory into the dulled blade of history, and who prepared these works that shall now serve as the silent tomb of my masters’ words and deeds.
And if, in some distant age, these works are uncovered, and the cursed ink of their making still glimmers in the dim glow of unknown stars – to such eyes that may one day gaze upon these pages from across the black gulf of millennia that shall stand between us, I ask of you only:
Remember us.
-Aratus bas Szelekh,
Remembrancer, VIII Legion
+ + "Judgment comes for us all in the end." + +

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If you've gotten this far, thank you for taking the time to read the above lore for my new 30k army. I've always had a like for the general look of the Night Lords since the days of Codex Chaos during 40k Second Edition, so I've decided to build both forces for them in both 30k and 40k, along with a few allied elements.
As such, I'm getting ready to start with the 30k army with the following:
- 2x Legion Tactical Squads
- 1x Cataphracti Terminator Squad w/ power axes
Lore-wise, my 30k Night Lords are intended to represent a force of several company remnants that were left behind to garrison a sector that was brought into compliance early in the Great Crusade. They’re all Terran-born, and were effectively separated from the main elements of the Legion relatively early on in the Great Crusade. I'm hoping to balance the basic core of the established Night Lords character with some of my personal preferences (e.g. I generally find the gore and trophies a little too cartoonish for my tastes in a lot of the Black Library fiction).
My 40k army will be the 41st millennium’s survivors of my 30k force. I’ve already planned to include an allied Militia force for my 30k army, and possibly a Knights force (given I’ve already bought a Chaos Knight for my 40k one, lol). I’m also hoping to include a Battlefleet Gothic fleet and a legio for Adeptus Titanicus at some point - possibly Legio Ulricon if ForgeWorld release more information on them, otherwise maybe the Tiger Eyes (my favorite Legio in terms of looks, lore, and rules) or a home-brew one.
Anyways, thanks for looking, and I hope to start having actual progress pics (and more lore) up soon.