The Fallen

### **Observed Strategic Tendencies**

Orbital Drop Operations, Shock Assault Companies and Macro-scale Decapitation Strikes. Prior to Sanguinius’ return, the IXth Legion was instead more widely known for its use as a tool of attrition-based warfare in war zones otherwise considered too hazardous for normal operation.

### **Noteworthy Domains**

Secondary tithe rights to the worlds of CarnaeVerata, Atshen and Evernight (Protectorate)

### **Warcry**

For the Emperor and Sanguinius! Death! DEATH!

### **Legion Colours**

Red and Black

In battle, the **Blood Angels** Legion was the incarnation of the Emperor's wrath upon those who rejected the gift of Unity, and their coming often nothing less than apocalyptic judgement delivered upon the guilty from on-high. Their arrival on a non-Compliant human world was heralded by blazing assaults on the strongest points of enemy resistance. Descending from the heavens on wings of fire, the Legion conquered by their preternatural fury as well as by the dread and awe they created. In the wake of their attacks, their chosen targets were scoured from existence and in their battle's witnessing, whole worlds fell to their knees cowering before the wrath and splendour of these 'red angels', lest they too perish beneath their burning blades. Against the xenos, no such quarter was given, and the wrath of the Blood Angels was as a tide of unrelenting carnage that only gave way once complete extermination had been achieved.

## Tactics

The IXth Legion was ever one of flesh over steel, warriors over mechanical warfare. When they arrived, they would do so on tongues of fire from the heavens, the flash of teleportation, and of course, the shadow of the great wings of Sanguinius himself, the Great Angel. Throughout the Great Crusade, the IXth Legion became renowned for its 'wars of ultimatum'. These campaigns of open domination against non-Compliant worlds began with Sanguinius, or one of his Praetors, affording a world one opportunity to embrace Unification or face a 'Day of Revelation', in which they would suffer the fury of the Blood Angels unleashed. Many foes confronted by the gathered IXth Legion hosts were overcome with dread and awe, and capitulated without hesitation. Those who did not would see the shining countenance of the Angel Sanguinius transformed into savage fury as blinding destruction was delivered from on-high.

Just as the IXth Legion was famed for their set-piece shock assault tactics however, so they were also famed for their ability, when pressed, to stand against any who would overwhelm them, no matter the odds and no matter the foe, and even in their death throes, drag their enemies down with them to destruction. To even their brother Legiones Astartes, such feats of resilience sometimes seemed to border on the preternatural and could be laid to no single tactical plan nor doctrine nor biological trait, but rather had their origins within their unshakeable will to endure, as if somehow fuelled by the rage and grief wrought in their hearts by the deaths of their battle-brothers. To the Blood Angels themselves, such battles became known as the 'days of sorrows', when few would stand against many and sell their lives dearly, their names and deeds to be reborn eternally in the most sacrosanct of the Legion's rites of battle and remembrance.

## Personality of the Legion

The Legion was widely considered, by their brother legions and the common man alike, to be the pinnacle of Astartes legions, the ones all others would strive to emulate. Their warriors were uniformly beautiful beings fair of face and hair, exemplifying the best humanity could have to offer. Nor were they mere warriors, for amongst the ranks of the IXth, some of the greatest artisans and poets, playwrights and composers could be found.

Truely, to be part of the IXth was to be part of a Host of Angels, the warriors within ever willing to place themselves in harms way, going above and beyond what many of the other legions would see as their duty, though never did they given into hubris.

However, there was one flaw the legion strove, and failed, to keep hidden from the Imperium. A terrifying and brutal malady known only as the Red Thirst. In time, this flaw would prove to be the legions undoing, as they gave fully into their dark selves.

## Sanguinius - The Master of Hosts, The Great Angel, The Primarch of the Blood Angels, the Fallen One

Like the rest of the Primarchs, Sanguinius was bioengineered on Terra to serve as a general in the Emperor's armies, and was stolen in his infancy and carried away across the galaxy by daemonic agents of Chaos in an attempt to foil the Emperor's efforts to unite humanity. Landing on Baal, he was found by the Folk of the Blood, a local tribe who raised him to manhood, despite their initial fears that the child was a mutant of the wastes, small vestigial wings sprouting from his back. Soon, Sanguinius arose from the tribe, rising to rule all of Baal, his wings now mighty feathered appendages, capable of true flight that none could match, only watch in envy, an elevating him to a near godhood level of adulation amongst his people.

When the Emperor found Baal, it is said Sanguinius spoke no words, kneeling before his father as a single tear rolled down his face. From that moment on, his Eaters of the Dead were no more, the Blood Angels rising in their stead to emulate their newfound lord.

A swordsman without equal, a statesman beyond compare, of all the Primarch’s, Sanguinius was the favoured son, even standing above Antarus as the Primarch to most closely resemble the Emperor in thought and deed. Few would have been surprised if he, and not Antarus, had been named Warmaster in the wake of the Ullanor Crusade, but alas, the future held a darker path for the Fallen One.

## Baal

Hidden deep within Ultima Segmentum, the Death World of Baal hung in the inky blackness of space, its radiation wracked desserts looked over constantly by the twin moons of Baal Primus and Baal Secundus, feral worlds by the reckoning of the Imperium. It is here Sanguinius was found, and here the Blood Angels call their home, and their eventual grave.

Few worlds in the entire Imperium could have as devastating an impact on the human soul as Baal and its inhabited moons: Baal Prime and Baal Secundus. In ancient days Baal and its moons all had Earth-like atmospheres. Baal itself was always a world of rust-red deserts much like Mars but its moons were paradises for mortal men, where their people lived in harmony with nature and pursued lives of ease and freedom.

The people of Baal became exceptional artisans, and spent their time creating mighty monuments, carving the mountains themselves into statues of their rulers and their gods. They even ventured onto the surface of desolate Baal itself, leaving colonies and breathtaking edifices in their wake. No one knows exactly what happened to change this idyllic state of affairs. All that is certain is that during the fearful events that marked the downfall of interstellar human society and the end of the Age of Technology, the moons of Baal suffered terribly in a civil conflict that was most likely between them.

Ancient weapons of terrifying potency were unleashed. Cities became plains of smouldering glass. Lush grasslands became polluted deserts. Seas became poisoned lakes of toxic sludge. The people of Baal died in their millions and it looked as if humanity might become extinct in the Baal System. But somehow people survived. They clung precariously to life on the edges of the radioactive deserts. They became scavengers, picking through the scattered bones of their own once-great civilisation. In the dark time that followed the collapse of all order, some became worse than scavengers, and in their desperation turned to cannibalism.

Over the course of the following centuries, the accumulated chemical and radioactive toxins that built up in the survivors' bodies led them to devolve into mutants, shambling parodies of the noble men their forefathers had once been. There were some who held onto their humanity and preserved a semblance of sane behaviour, but these were the embattled few amongst a new and savage culture that evolved amid the ruins of the old. The only social unit left was the tribe.

For human and mutant cannibal alike, the only folk they could rely upon were their own kin. The people of the Baal System became nomads, shifting from place to place, picking the ruins of their lost civilisation clean, warring to preserve the spoils they had gathered. The tribes fought constant wars, webs of alliances shifting intermittently as each tribe strove for supremacy and survival. Extinction awaited the slow and the weak. Where once the moons of Baal had been near-paradise for Mankind, now they were living hells.

For the few surviving humans, existence was a constant struggle. They wandered the surface in ramshackle vehicles, desperately hoping that their patched-together radiation suits would save them, praying that they would never hear the hideous tell-tale clicking of their rad-counters, a sound that meant death was imminent. For a time it seemed that humanity was doomed and soon there would only be an endless desert ruled over by the feuding mutant tribes. Then, out of the star-strewn darkness of the heavens, came a sign of hope.

## Equipment

The IXth legion ever focused on speeds and shock during their assaults, descending upon their enemy from on high, shattering enemy resistance in a single, devastating blow that few could home to reform from. Because of this, flamer and melta weaponry was particularly favoured within the legion, valued not only for their devastating killing ability, but the spectacle they caused when they killed, the awe and terror being as effective at bringing an enemy to heel as any bolter shell or sword thrust.

Alongside the standard flame and melta weapons of the legions, the Blood Angels boasted weapons that only saw major use in their brother legion, the Wisps of Archon, hand flamers often being wielded in pairs by assault sergeants, while others took to the duty of tank hunting, a pair of compact inferno pistols clasped in each hand. Even in the swirling arena of melee combat, the legion stayed true to the flame, mighty Blades of Perdition leaving firing trails as they clove through flesh and bone.

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