Dornian Heresy
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PLACEHOLDER COVER TThhee DDoorrnniiaann HHeerreessyy Includes Alternate Heresy Index Astartes articles for the World Eaters Emperor’s Children Raven Guard Word Bearers Ultramarines White Scars Space Wolves Thousand Sons and Blood Angels Introduction & Contents Welcome to the first issue of the Legio Imprint, an electronic magazine produced by the Bolter and Chainsword, the Ultimate Space Marine Resource Site. The Legio Imprint aims to showcase the best of the articles and features to be found on the Bolter and Chainsword, as well as including original content created especially for the publication. This premier issue is devoted to chronicling something a little different; a twisted alternate timeline in which Warmaster Horus was able to cast off the daemonic influences that sought to possess him, and where the Ruinous Powers were instead forced to corrupt Rogal Dorn to overthrow the Emperor. The Dornian Heresy is the tale of an alternate universe where choices, sometimes large, sometimes small, have led to the familiar primarchs and legions meeting very different fates. For instance, how different might things have turned out if Sanguinius had instead been found and raised by the mutant tribes of Baal, or if Angron‟s first meeting with the Emperor had been as an honourable ally against the slavers at Fedan Mhor? Well, read on! ROGAL DORN – THE ARCH-BETRAYER The first article – The History and Legacy of Dorn‟s Betrayal – gives an overview of how different things are in this alternate timeline, with different aspects of Introduction & Contents ..................... 1 the story told from the perspective of individual Space The History and Legacy Marine Legions in their own Index Astartes articles. of Dorn’s Betrayal ............................... 2 The Dornian Heresy is such a large undertaking that we can only present the fates of the first nine legions Index Astartes: World Eaters ............. 9 here, although the plan is to publish the second half of the project in a future issue of the Legio Imprint. Index Astartes: Emperor’s Children... 15 Index Astartes: Raven Guard ............. For those of you who have been following the Dornian 21 Heresy as it has been released on the Bolter and Index Astartes: Word Bearers ............ 29 Chainsword, we have given the articles a polish, added some amazing original artwork, and have also included Index Astartes: Ultramarines ............. 39 articles for three legions not yet seen on the board – the Index Astartes: White Scars ............... 48 Khornate Space Wolves, the soul-bound psychic Thousand Sons and the plague-infected Blood Angels. Index Astartes: Space Wolves ............ 56 So thanks for downloading this first issue of the Legio Index Astartes: Thousand Sons .......... 65 Imprint. We hope you enjoy it! Index Astartes: Blood Angels .............. 73 Aurelius Rex - Editor Credits .................................................. 81 1 Elaidanath was dying; poisoned and ravaged by the Death Guard. The It shouldn‟t have been this way. Dornian The Farseer had been there at her birth; seeding the ball of rock with Heresy life. He had watched the Maiden-World of Elaidanath mature over the millennia into a verdant paradise; a place of peace and unparalleled beauty. That was, until the arrival of the Death Guard. He had foreseen the threat too late to avert it, with only a small group of his companions from the Em'brathar Craftworld arriving before the webway portals succumbed. Thus, trapped on the doomed planet, they had done what little they could against the Plague Marines, but it was clearly a lost cause. Animals lay bloated and glassy-eyed, awaiting the end; the once-great forests were reduced to endless swathes of slime-coated tree trunks. The only creatures to flourish were Nurgle‟s favoured pets; the flies and maggots, but even that wouldn‟t last. Elaidanath was rapidly returning to the lifeless rock it had once been. It was such a pointless waste. With the eastern horizon lightening from black to a deep bruise- purple, Exarch D‟Larha signalled for them to seek shelter during the daylight hours in nearby caves. Even before the warriors had The History declared the refuge safe, the Farseer had slumped down wearily in the entrance of the cave. He was tired, worn thin by his wounds, age, and the heartbreak of what he had witnessed. Within seconds, he had and Legacy settled into a fitful, febrile sleep. of Dorn’s This fate was wrong. Not just that of his companions, or even of this world; the whole galaxy had taken a wrong turn, with The Ruinous Betrayal Powers corrupting everything they touched. His thoughts went back, investigating what could have been… It shouldn‟t be this way… It needn‟t be this way… If only he could change things, find a different, better path… Rather than detaching his consciousness to search the possible futures, he felt himself being pushed back; moving into the past. He traced the strands of history back further and further, feeling the alternate universes flowing together, with even the tiniest choice causing a division, innumerable streams joining and flowing into the sea of time. From his view outside of history, the mon-keigh‟s Heresy was the greatest confluence; the place where a single choice could by have changed the course of history so profoundly. He searched for a strand where the Death Guard and their ilk had never turned to Aurelius Chaos; for a path where this wrong fate, both on this planet and in the wider galaxy, could be averted. Rex Before he could find his utopia, a dark presence slammed him back into the time-stream, forcing him down into a brutal and twisted alternate history… 2 Pre-Heresy: their snare, the Ruinous Powers turned large part due to Guilliman‟s The Seeds of Destruction their attentions elsewhere. organisational skills, and so a suitably overwhelming force was assembled in In the closing years of the thirty-first The ordeal revealed to the Warmaster opposition. Dorn summoned the might millennium, the Emperor‟s Great the true dangers of Chaos - a power so of nearly half the Emperor‟s legions to Crusade to reunite humanity under His great that even he and his fellow the task, although offers of forces from banner was continuing apace. Vast primarchs were not immune to its long-time rival, Perturabo of the Iron expeditionary armies, spearheaded by corrupting touch. Horus was severely Warriors, were pointedly rebuffed. His primarch sons, surged out across weakened by the events of Davin, and the galaxy, bringing enlightenment and out of position to deal with what was to Such was the size of the task of compliance wherever they went. The come. First, Curze of the Night Lords bringing the secessionist realm back to future seemed assured, and during a attacked Rogal Dorn, before going on heel that two whole legions were sent mighty celebration on Ullanor, the the run with his legion. Worse still, deep into Ultramar Segmentum. The Emperor announced that He would word came from the galactic east that Alpha Legion, never friends of the return to Terra, and that Horus, Guilliman had declared independence Ultramarines, were to infiltrate and Primarch of the Luna Wolves would from the Imperium, claiming dominion undermine the rebel worlds, while the command the Great Crusade in His over a massive region of space that he religious zealots of the Word Bearers stead. Some say that this event was called „Ultramar Segmentum‟. used a more direct approach: bringing where the seeds of disaffection were the light of the Emperor to the very planted amongst the primarchs, with Even as the Imperial forces assembled core of Guilliman‟s powerbase on the one of their number being so publicly to confront the Ultramarines, terrible Eastern Fringe. elevated above the rest. In truth, the rot news came from Prospero that the had started long before. Space Wolves had fallen upon the The first to join the Imperial Fist fleet homeworld of the Thousand Sons. After the Ullanor Declaration, the outside the Istvaan system were the cracks began to appear. Bitter disputes Raven Guard and the increasingly over the use of psychic powers came to With the Warmaster insular and secretive marines of the a head at Nikaea, with legions Iron Hands. These were closely vehemently split over their use. The having escaped their followed by the Salamanders, led by Emperor's final ruling, and the special snare, the Ruinous their burned, bitter primarch. Shortly concessions he gave to the Thousand after came the Emperor‟s Children, Sons, enraged Russ and his Space Powers turned their fresh from extinguishing the xenos threat on the planet Laer. The events of Wolves. They saw Nikaea as a terrible attentions elsewhere... mistake, and secretly vowed to save the that campaign had affected Fulgrim Emperor from himself. deeply, and on arrival he declared that They proclaimed that Magnus was his legion had achieved the pinnacle of On the feral world of Davin, mired in foul sorcery, and sought to the Emperor‟s „Perfection‟. The relish Warmaster Horus was struck down by destroy them before they could betray with which they embraced the chance a mysterious contagion which baffled the Emperor. With the dream of to prove their superiority over other the finest of the legion‟s apothecaries. mankind coming apart at the seams, the Astartes bordered on the unseemly. During his recovery, Horus attended an legions came into high orbit around initiation ceremony of one of Davin‟s Istvaan V. Then, in precise, well-ordered primitive warrior lodges, after which formation, came Angron‟s World the Warmaster‟s condition dramatically Betrayal at Istvaan Eaters. Long-gone was the savage worsened to critical. That a primarch Guilliman and the lion's share of his gladiator mentality of Angron‟s early could succumb to any natural pathogen massive Ultramarines Legion were years – his first meeting with the should have given a hint that what identified as being present at his Emperor on the slopes of Fedan Mhor happened in the halls of the Knife of newest conquest, the fifth planet of the had seen him reject his former brutality Bone involved the supernatural.