Almire Apostasy

### Strength (Attackers)

9 Traitor Legions, Traitor Imperialis Auxilia and Imperialis Militia, Dark Mechanicum, Traitor Titan Legions, Daemons, Mutants, Chaos Cults

### Strength (Defenders)

9 Loyalist Space Marine Legions, Imperialis Auxilia, Mechanicum, Legio Titanica, Legio Custodes, Sisters of Silence, Officio Assassinorum

### Casualties (Attackers)

In the trillions; extensive losses amongst all Traitor assets engaged in the rebellion

### Outcome

Emperor of Mankind mortally wounded and placed within the Golden Throne
Almire slain by the Emperor
Traitor Legions broken and flee towards the Eye of Terror and other warp storms
The complete reformation of the Emperor's Imperium

> "*And in that time the Great Beasts shall walk the earth, beneath their tread shall cities become as dust by their burning breath shall civilisations be as ash. So the End of Days is begun.*"
> ― The Apocrypha Terra
>
>

The **Almire Apostasy** was a galaxy-spanning civil war that consumed the worlds of Mankind for 55 Terran years. Its outbreak marked the end of the Emperor of Mankind's Great Crusade to reunite the scattered colony worlds of humanity under a single government and the beginning of the current Age of the Imperium. The Almire Apostasy is in many ways the founding event of the Imperium of Man as it now exists, so radically changed from the Imperium of Man that the Emperor set forth.

The civil war began following the corruption by the Ruinous Powers of Chaos of the Imperial Warmaster Almire Leoric, the Primarch of the Imperial Justicars, or rather the recently renamed Warmasters Justicars, Legion and the most beloved genetic son of the Emperor, as well as the corruption of two other architects of betrayal, Gaius Augustus Caligula of the Consuls Exemplar, and Surmah Nyyrik of the Hounds of Surmah, the first to fall prey to the whispers of Chaos. The Chaos Gods fed Almire's innate ambition and sense of betrayal by the Emperor until he turned upon his father and sought to claim the Imperium of Man for his own.

Almire convinced close to half of the other Primarchs and Space Marine Legions, as well as large swathes of the Imperial Army and the forces of the ancient Mechanicum, to turn Traitor alongside him and unleash a cataclysmic attempt to conquer the galaxy in his name. In a lightning strike lasting a mere 5 years, Almire all but destroyed the Imperium, all but wiping out 3 of the loyalists legions defending it, taking Terra itself in a cataclysmic battle which saw Camelous and Malcador slain and the Emperor himself wounded, dragged away by his surviving forces. For the next 50 years, wars waged across the fractured Imperium, the surviving loyalists attempting to rebuild their strength, while the traitors began to fragment, their unity of purpose in taking Terra now done. Finally, when the loyalists looked to be able to take no more, the Emperor awoke, leading them in a last effort against Terra, culminating in the Warmaster being slain, though the Emperor himself was mortally wounded, His dreams of creating a brighter future for Mankind forever broken.

The conflict was fought across the Milky Way Galaxy in the first century of the 31st Millennium and resulted in untold trillions dead. The Apostasy concluded with the death of the traitorous Warmaster Almire and the internment of the Emperor in the Golden Throne, though in truth, fighting continued for many years as the last of the traitors were hunted down and slain, or otherwise banished from the Imperium.

## Unity

During the turbulent era known as the Age of Strife, the Sol System and the nearby star systems that had been colonised by humanity during the Dark Age of Technology were effectively cut off from interstellar travel or communication with each other. This was due to the massive Warp Storms that swept the galaxy as the Immaterium was roiled by the millennia-long gestation of the Chaos God Slaanesh and the turbulence that marked the decay of the Eldar empire before the Fall. During this dark time, Terra sometimes held sway over the Sol System, while at other times the rulers of Mars or Luna were dominant. The different worlds found themselves constantly at war. During this 5,000 standard-year-long period of anarchy, fear and violence, Old Earth's once unified planetary government had completely broken down and been divided into dozens of warring states of so-called techno-barbarians.

Continuous warfare raged across the surface of Terra for 2,500 years, beginning in the late 27th Millennium. Little remained of the once sophisticated civilisation of Old Earth's glorious past as the centre of a growing human interstellar commonwealth marked by advanced science, high culture and wondrous technologies. Techno-barbarian warlords and their warrior hordes continuously fought over the planet, which had become little more than a massive battleground for their wars of attrition. They made use of chemical, biological and even thermonuclear weapons of mass destruction, and slowly transformed the cradle of Mankind into a battered, post-apocalyptic wasteland across most of its scarred surface.

This was a dark period for the people of Old Earth, when they were dominated by brutal rulers and despotic tyrants. It was against this backdrop of oppression, violence and casual brutality that the Emperor of Mankind first revealed Himself openly to the people of Terra. In secret, he had been planning for this moment in history for millennia, ever since the Age of Strife had fractured what remained of the ancient human federation. With his massive army of genetically-enhanced warriors who comprised the first units of the Imperial Army and would serve as the prototypes for the later development of the Space Marines, the Emperor began his conquest of Terra. His intent was to reunite the warring nations of the world into a unified planetary government and then use Terra as the springboard from which to begin his reconquest of the galaxy under the aegis of an Imperium of Man dedicated to the Imperial Truth of progress and reason. Brutal rulers such as the warlord Kalagann of Ursh, Cardinal Tang of the Yndonesic Bloc, and the most infamous of all, the half-mad, half-genius Nathaniel Dume, the Tyrant of the Pan-Pacific Empire, would all fall by the wayside. Once unleashed, the geentically-enhanced armies of the Emperor swept all before them like wheat before the harvester's scythe until all the techno-barbarian warlords had either been conquered outright or had agreed through diplomacy to become subservient to the Emperor's will.

During this time the Emperor created a number of military organisations, such as the Imperial Army, which would become the nucleus of the armed forces that would later support his Space Marine Legions and his reconquest of the human-settled galaxy. Amongst the early Imperial Army units that saw action during the Unification Wars were such venerable regiments as the Geno Five-Two Chiliad, which would become one of the oldest and most respected regiments within the Imperial Army. Like many of these early regiments, the geno-soldiers were created through the use of some of the Emperor's sophisticated genetic engineering techniques, developed in his laboratories beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains and by the advanced geneticists who called Luna home. The most elite of this first generation of genetically-engineered supersoldiers were known as the Thunder Warriors, men who were physically stronger and more formidable in combat than even the later Space Marines, though they were engineered to be vicious killers and lacked many of the more noble aspects of the Astartes as well as their tremendously long lifespans. The Thunder Warriors were engineered to be the means to an end and were never intended to be integrated into the Emperor's new realm after Unity had been achieved. Through genetic engineering and selection the standard geno-soldiers displayed many of the characteristics of the perfect human warrior -- they were physically more resilient, stronger and capable of taking more damage than any of their unaltered techno-barbarian foes. These early genetically-engineered Imperial Army regiments would go on to continue serving the Emperor after the conclusion of the Unification Wars. These regiments would eventually be referred to as the Old Hundred, and would form the core of the initial military force that embarked upon the Emperor's galaxy-spanning Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium beside his newly created Space Marine Legions, the early versions of which had taken part in the later campaigns of the Wars of Unification.

When the Unification Wars were complete around the year 800.M30, the Emperor forged a new unified planetary government for Terra under his leadership. He next journeyed to Mars and met with the Adepts of the Cult Mechanicus. In return for the use of the Mechanicum's vast manufactorums, the use of its Titan Legions and the orbital shipyards to construct the weaponry and starships he would need for the Great Crusade to reunite Mankind under the banner of the Imperial Truth, the Emperor agreed to grant the newborn Adeptus Mechanicus complete autonomy on Mars and its other Forge Worlds as well as an exemption to the atheism required by the Imperial Truth. This agreement, known as the Treaty of Mars (the Treaty of Olympus to the Mechanicus), marks the true foundation of the Imperium of Man in the alliance between Terra and Mars.

## Council of War

Following the successful conclusion of the Unification Wars in *circa 79*0.M30, the Emperor convened the ruling body known as the War Council to manage the execution of the Great Crusade intended to reunite the entire human-settled galaxy under a single government. The War Council effectively became the true ruling body of the Imperium during the early and middle years of the Great Crusade. The Emperor Himself sat at the head of the Council; at his left hand was Malcador the Sigillite, perhaps the Emperor's greatest ally during the Wars of Unity and a human psyker whose powers were matched only by those of the Emperor. The rest of the Council was composed of talented administrators drawn from the great ruling aristocratic dynasties of Terra and the Segmentum Solar, and when the Emperor forged his alliance with the Mechanicum of Mars in the Treaty of Mars, the Fabricator-General of the Mechanicum also claimed his seat. The War Council was also attended by the Paternova of the Navigator Houses. As the Emperor departed the homeworld of Mankind to lead the Great Crusade into the stars, he left the legendary Malcador to act as the Regent of Terra and the head of the War Council in his stead. At the same time, Malcador took the lead in creating the clades of Imperial Assassins that would eventually evolve into the Officio Assassinorum, making Malcador the first Grand Master of Assassins.

## Great Crusade

When the great Warp Storms that had cut off Terra since the end of the Dark Age of Technology subsided, and the Age of Strife came to an end at the dawn of the 31st Millennium, the Emperor of Mankind deemed it time to begin his Great Crusade, a massive campaign to conquer the galaxy by which he and his armies would free all human-settled colony worlds from alien oppression or primitive ignorance and reunite the human race across the galaxy under the single banner of the new Imperium of Man. To execute this plan, the Emperor created the Primarchs, his god-like, genetically-engineered superhuman offspring. The Primarchs were still in their infancy, growing to hyper-accelerated maturity in their special gestation tanks, when they were snatched away from the genetic laboratory deep beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains on Terra where they had been created and gestated by the Emperor using His own DNA. The cause of this disappearance was the Chaos Gods, who were fearful that with the Primarchs, the Emperor would be able to impose Order across the galaxy and weaken their own firm grip on the collective unconsciousness of the minds of men. Uniting their powers, the Dark Gods opened a portal from the Warp and broke into the laboratory through the potent psychic wards the Emperor had erected. Unable to destroy the Primarchs outright because of the protections the Emperor had laid upon them, the Chaos Gods instead chose to scatter them across the galaxy through the Warp. The superhuman infants eventually came to rest on diverse, human-inhabited worlds. It was at this time that the Ruinous Powers first touched the souls of those Primarchs who would eventually turn to the worship of Chaos, infecting them with a shard of corruption. Certainly the fact that each of the Primarchs was ultimately cast ashore on an inhabited human world was no accident; the Chaos Gods may have hoped that by having the Primarchs raised among men without the guidance of the Emperor they would display more of the human weaknesses that would make them easier to corrupt when the time came.

During the Great Crusade, the Emperor encountered each of the Primarchs on their scattered homeworlds in turn. To fill the gap in his military plans for the Great Crusade wrought by the Primarchs' absence, the Emperor had instead Founded 20 Space Marine Legions, several of which had been raised even as the Unifications Wars still raged. The Emperor used the Primarchs' genetic material still in his possession to craft the genetically-enhanced warriors of each Legion. After the Emperor rediscovered his sons scattered across the galaxy, He deemed it fitting that each Primarch should lead their genetic offspring as the commander of the Legion whose Astartes bore their DNA. However, this would prove a critical mistake, as the Space Marine gene-seed creation process made the Emperor, the Primarchs and the Space Marines analogous to Grandfather, Fathers and Sons, respectively, in their genetic inheritance and superhuman abilities. In time, many of the Space Marines in the Legions, especially those recruited from their Primarchs' homeworld rather than from Terra before the Primarchs' rediscovery, would come to venerate and feel more loyalty for their Primarch than the Emperor of Mankind.

### Triumph of Ullanor

> "*You are like a son and together we have all but conquered the galaxy. Now the time has come for me to retire to Terra. My work as a soldier is done and now passes to you for I have great tasks to perform in my earthly sanctum. I name you Warmaster and from this day forth all of my armies and generals shall take orders from you as if the words cam from mine own mouth. But words of caution I have for you for your brother Primarchs are strong of will, of though and of action. Do not seek to change them, but use their particular strengths well. You have much work to do for there are still many words to liberate, many peoples to rescue. My trust is with you. Hail Almire! Hail the Warmaster!*"
> ― The Emperor of Mankind, at the Triumph of Ullanor
>
>

The Ullanor Crusade was a vast Imperial assault on the Ork empire of the Overlord Urrlak Urruk during the late 30th Millennium. This massive undertaking would mark the culmination of the Great Crusade's expansion.

Ullanor, the capital world of this empire, and the site of the final assault, lay in the Ullanor System of the galaxy's Ullanor Sector. The Crusade included the deployment of 250,000 Space Marines, 10,000,000 Imperial Army troops, and thousands of Imperial starships and their support personnel. The Ullanor Crusade marked the high point of the Great Crusade's vast effort to reunite the scattered colony worlds of humanity. The Orks of Ullanor represented the largest concentration of Orks defeated by the military forces of the Imperium of Man to date.

With the great victory sealed in blood and iron, the call to a Triumph was sounded, to recognise this highpoint of the Great Crusade and to honour all the warriors of the Ullanor Crusade, mortals and Astartes alike, for their extraordinary valour and service to humanity's cause. By the Emperor’s command, Ullanor was remade as a trophy world, designated *Mundus Tropaeum* on all galactic maps and records of tithe. It would be a site of glory and spectacle to cement not only this single conquest over the forces ranged against Mankind, but a greater symbol of the Great Crusade itself. For two hundred Terran years, the Emperor’s mighty endeavour had moved across the face of the galaxy to bring unity and illumination to the lost daughter-worlds of Old Earth. It had pushed back the night, reforged old links between civilisations, battled alien threats -- and with regret, it had often punished those who refused to return to the Imperial fold. A change was coming, though, a change that found its fulcrum on Ullanor. None who walked upon that world knew that the echo of that Triumph would sound for decades, for centuries, *for millennia*. The glory of this triumphant spectacle as so many of the Imperium's scattered military forces gathered in one place for the first time in centuries was to remain in the mind of every Astartes as the high-point of the great endeavour that they were engaged upon. It would prove to be a bright memory to recall in the dark days of the Almire Apostasy after Astartes had turned against Astartes and Primarch against Primarch.

To prepare the world for the Imperial Triumph, geoformer platoons from the Adeptus Mechanicus brought world engines and mobile stone-burners to cut a massive swath across the broken landscape left in the battle’s wake. Orkish dead were buried by the millions with their savage ruins, interred beneath transplanted rocks and the heads of crushed mountains. The Mechanicus eradicated every last remaining trace of the enemy and paved over them with a giant boulevard, a parade stage as wide as the footprint of some entire Imperial cities. They built a highway and allowed only one structure to stand besides the great platform -- an ornamental pavilion of black marble and heavy granite that had been built piecemeal on Terra and then shipped across the void by special envoy. Marker posts decorated with the skulls of Ork commanders paced out the length of the road, and behind them great bowls of smokeless Promethium burned brightly, endlessly lighting the highway with their blue-white fire.

When the Mechanicus had finished their work, the honoured came to pay homage to the battle won, the Great Crusade’s ideal of human unity and the Emperor who was father to all Mankind. The Imperial Army and the Titan Legions bracketed the gathering. Human troops were ranked in uncountable numbers, their host so wide they became a sea of battle armour and dress uniforms. Every common man and woman who stood on Ullanor’s soil that day had been selected for their valour and conduct, and until the day they died each would have the singular honour of wearing the onyx-and-gold Ullanor Triumph Bar upon their uniforms. The award was forged from Bolter shells recovered from the field and melted down. Ranged around them, the great war machines of the Collegia Titanica towered towards a sky cut to ribbons by the contrails of a thousand aerospace fighters; and above those, high over the thin white cirrus clouds of Ullanor’s day, Imperial warships moved as slow as they dared through the upper atmosphere, washes of interface heat rolling off their Void Shields as they showed their flanks in a gesture of renewed fealty.

A full Twelve of the Space Marine Legions stood represented at the Ullanor Triumph, with more being represented in smaller numbers, and with them came twelve beings of superhuman power and majesty. Twelve gods and angels made flesh, the Primarchs of the greatest armies ever created by human hands. Khnum-Anhuret, the Sunstone King and master of the Watchers of Akhet. The Twin Lords of Love and War, Vinicius & Euphrano Geminius, resplendent in their finery and handsome in aspect, lit by the reflection of gold and platinum. Bartosz, the Imperial Sagittarius and sire of the Palatine Wings, largest of the Emperor's mighty legions. Nautis Soltair, bedecked in the talismans of his homeworld, his beard and terminator armour worked with fresh inscriptions and totems to celebrate the event in his own, seemingly backwards way. Galvarian, the First Ember, seemingly crippled in body but certainly not in mind. Lu Yueh, master of the Blight Wardens, lauded for his actions in the war, developing ways to kill the Orkoid spores before they grew anew. Gaius Augustus Caligula, resplendent in his glorious golden armour, his multiple servo arms hugging his form or waving regally as the parade passed him. Kodiak, the beastial Bear of Skara, his armour still bearing battle damage from the fight, his eyes alight with the memories of its glory. Charon, the Wight Lord of the Wisps of Acheron, his helmet tighly in place as it always was when mere mortals looked upon him. Shaaa Hydrades, the Breacher Lord, and soon to be named the Praetorian of Terra, towered over his bretheren, his gargantuan armour caked in grease, ready for war far more than he was ready for a parade ground.

Then, finally, came Almire of the Imperial Justicars, the Hero of Ullanor, liberator and first among equals. Almire, who was to be given the new honour of an Imperial title above and beyond any that had been bestowed before; a title, it could be said, that would forever carry the echo of his name. After declaring Almireas Imperial Warmaster and the new supreme commander of the Great Crusade, the Emperor to the shock of those assembled announced his own intention to return to Terra to pursue a secret project intended to benefit all Mankind, naming Shaaa Hydrades as his Praetorian to return with him, an announcement met with far less thunderous applause.

### Seeds of Apostasy Sown

After more than 200 standard years of hard conflict by the early 31st Millennium, over two million human-settled worlds across the Milky Way Galaxy had been reclaimed by the Emperor in the name of the Imperium of Man. Beside him had stood the Primarch Almire, who had fought alongside the Emperor for the early part of the Great Crusade as his only rediscovered son and primary military commander, glorying in the singular attentions of his father. The long wars had forged a strong bond between them, and they were truly father and son. But now the Emperor had to consolidate his newborn Imperium, and undertake the next phase of his Grand Plan. He intended to create a Webway through the Immaterium much like that used by the Eldar that would be open to humanity by wielding the psychic augmentation technology of the artefact from the Dark Age of Technology known as the Golden Throne. This work required his continued presence on Terra, and so after Horus' magnificent victory in the Ullanor Crusade, against the largest horde of Orks ever encountered in the galaxy at that time, the Emperor departed and left Almire in charge of the Great Crusade with the exclusive title of "Warmaster." As Warmaster, Almire was the commanding general of all of the Imperium of Man's military forces, charged with leading the other Primarchs and their Legions through the remainder of the Great Crusade.

At this announcement there was much shock and outrage. Many of the other Primarchs did not understand why the Emperor was leaving them to fight the enemies of Mankind alone and, worse still, why Almire should be raised as the first amongst equals.  Artellion Emerabron, Vinicius and Euphrano Geminius and Bartosz were pleased for their brother, seeing no other choice who could have so completely fill the new role of Warmaster, Shaaa Hydrades initially being outraged at the announcement, before his opinion changed completely in the wake of his own promotion, standing fully behind his newly raised brother. Others, such as Nautis Soltair, Surmah Nyyrik and Galvarian all reacted with varying degrees of disapproval, while still more reacted, or rather, did not, to the announcement with seeming indifference, Kodiak Ursidae and Caladiral Hex remaining distant, as was there way.

The situation only grew worse when the Emperor announced that he would be creating a civilian administrative bureaucracy known as the Council of Terra that was comprised of Imperial bureaucrats and nobles to carry out the day-to-day governmental affairs of the Imperium, replacing the direct rule of the Emperor while he was engaged in his secret Imperial Webway Project. The Council of Terra would implement and administer the new galaxy-wide tax of resources and manpower called the Imperial Tithe and other matters of day-to-day law in the Imperium of Man while the Emperor focused on bringing his Webway Project to fruition using the technology of the Golden Throne. The Primarchs would be relegated to a primarily military or paramilitary role as the Imperium's most preeminent commanders. Many of the Primarchs, including Almire, were deeply disturbed that their father would make them subject to normal men and women who had never shed blood in the establishment or expansion of the Imperium and that he would remove them from the political positions of rule to which they believed they were entitled. The Emperor had sought to create a civilian bureaucracy for the Imperium precisely because he wanted regular human beings to learn to govern themselves once more and not become beholden to a permanent, genetically-enhanced ruling class. The Chaos Gods would ultimately use the Primarchs' resentment as one of the all-too-human weaknesses they could exploit to corrupt half their number.

### Lords of the Imperium

After the decisive victory during the Ullanor Crusade, when Mankind's re-ascension to predominance in the galaxy was no longer in doubt, the Emperor bestowed upon the Primarch Almire Leoric the title of Imperial Warmaster and ceded to him control of all the Imperium's military forces in the Emperor's stead. The other Primarchs were then instructed to follow Almire and obey him and complete the Great Crusade under his direction. There was, it is said, some disquiet among the Primarchs that the Emperor had decided to no longer fight alongside them, but the Emperor was as adamant as He was close-mouthed as to what He would do on his return to Terra. The Emperor then departed for the homeworld of Mankind and the dungeons deep beneath his great Imperial Palace to begin His great work on the creation of a human extension into the Eldar Webway under a veil of secrecy previously unknown in the Imperium. He drew to him certain advisors and retired to the private vaults deep beneath his city-fortress within the Imperial Palace.

Upon his return to Terra, the Emperor called to his side Malcador and the Fabricator-General of the Mechanicum. He issued them with new commands. No longer were they to support the military campaigns, as these were now safely in the hands of his sons the Primarchs and the newly appointed Warmaster. The Emperor needed time and all of his focus to be directed at his next great project, which would tie the newborn Imperium together and unite it as no other human polity had ever been united. To this end, the Emperor convened the first Council of Terra. Unlike the War Council, of which Almire was now the leader, the Council of Terra would attend to matters of state and the establishment and maintenance of Imperial Law across the myriad worlds of the Imperium, though in regulating the Imperium's Law, the new Council of Terra often found itself working either alongside or even in opposition to Almire himself, the Primarch of the renamed Warmasters Justicars having long since taken it upon himself to reform the Imperium's legal system. In particular, the Council of Terra was to administrate the establishment of the Imperial Tithe of troops and resources from all the worlds of the Imperium that were required to support the Great Crusade. In effect, to the new Council of Terra would fall the entirety of the civil government of the Imperium. Malcador, the Emperor's most trusted advisor, was named as the First Lord of the Council and would lead it in the Emperor's absence. The Fabricator-General of the Mechanicum of Mars, Kelbor-Hal, Captain-General Constantin Valdor of the Legio Custodes and the Masters of the Adeptus Astronomica, the Adeptus Astra Telepathica and the Administratum of the Imperium were also appointed to the Council.

Having established the new governing body of the Imperium to carry out the day-to-day work of ruling tens of thousands of worlds and trillions of human beings, the Emperor took refuge in His vast laboratories and workshops beneath the Imperial Palace. He began work in earnest on his new project. While the Emperor was locked away in His subterranean factories, trouble was brewing. The formation of the Council proved to be a contentious decision with the distant Primarchs, who were appalled when news of the formation of the Council of Terra finally reached them on the frontiers of the Great Crusade. Some of the Primarchs took great exception to being ruled by those they deemed less worthy of such an honour than themselves. The less stable Primarchs felt that this was a betrayal of all they had fought and won in the Emperor's name and that their victories now counted for nothing. The Primarchs, and many of their Astartes, felt that it was they who had suffered and sacrificed the most to build the Imperium and thus it was they who should have the greatest say in how it was ruled, not a council composed of effete Terran nobles and faceless bureaucrats. This was one of many growing resentments that allowed the Ruinous Powers to infect and corrupt several of the Primarchs.

The creation of the Council of Terra, seen in this light, lent new weight to Almire's eventual argument to several of his brothers that the Imperium had been betrayed by their father. He argued that the Emperor had proved more than willing to turn His back on his sons and generals and give power instead to petty mortal administrators and the sycophantic Tech-adepts of Mars who lacked the Primarchs' brilliance and superhuman abilities. As Almire prepared his rebellion against the Emperor, he convinced himself that petty functionaries and administrators had supplanted the Primarchs and the Astartes within the Imperium they had won. Once the Imperium had been wholly geared for the war and conquest that was its life's blood since its inception, but now Almire believed that it had become burdened with parasitic exectors, scribes and scriveners who demanded to know the cost of everything. Bureaucracy was taking over -- red tape, administrators and clerks were replacing the heroes of the age, and even his own works were being directly torn down, the Imperial Law changed once more from the perfect system designed by the mind of a demi-god, to a flawed imitation mired in the Imperium's new found bureaucracy. Almire argued to his more receptive brothers that unless the Imperium changed its ways and direction, its greatness as an empire would soon be a footnote in history books. Almire feared that everything he and his brother Primarchs had achieved would be a distant memory of former glory, lost in the mists of time like the civilisations of ancient Terra. It was this hubris and arrogance that led to the Warmaster's inevitable fall to Chaos and the resultant civil war that would consume the entire galaxy, ushering in a new Age of Darkness that would last for millennia.

Yet Almire and his more resentful brothers had completely misunderstood the Emperor's intent in creating the Council of Terra. The Council was to become the body of civilian government that would administrate the myriad bureaucratic tasks needed for the survival of the newly formed human interstellar empire. The Emperor was determined that in His Imperium power would reside with those men and women who were governed by its apparatus and not with an artificial military elite composed of genetically-engineered beings who were so powerful that they already possessed only a very tenuous grip upon their own humanity. The Primarchs and their Space Marines had been created to give life to the Emperor's dream of a united human Imperium stretching across the galaxy and to defend it from humanity's myriad foes. They were not to rule it as a hereditary caste of immortal warriors imposing their whims upon those they deemed mere "mortals" by brute force.

## The Birth of Apostasy

### The Night of Blood

The Night of Blood is considered by almost all historians to be the starting point of the Almire Apostasy, a bloody execution ordered by Almire not of those legions who woud not stand with him, but upon his own forces, purging all those who had been idetified as owing loyalty to Terra first and Primarch second. Under the guise of a joint campaign, the Warmasters Justicars linked forces with the Light Bringers, Consuls Exemplar and Silver Basilisks Legions, the four fleets coming together. As their warriors mingled, recreation time was allowed, many going to sparring cages or taking meals across the fleet. Then, at a single signal directly from Almire that went out to every ship, the brutal pogrom began.

All across the fleet, loyalist Astartes were cut down, never knowing their enemy. Sleeping warriors awoke as doors to their quarters were smashed open, before being riddled with bolt shells fired on full auto. Astartes in mess halls suddenly found knives plunged into their backs and necks, or garroting wires pulled tight by fully armoured kin. Brothers in sparring cages who just moments before were honing their skills suddenly faced opponents who activated power fields around their own weapons, cutting them down in a heartbeat.

No one knows how many died in those few hours, traitor records being forever shrouded from the eyes of those who later documented the event, but it was easily into the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Few of those deemed loyal to the throne survived, those that did managing to flee in conquered vessels, such as Arrule, one of the XVIth Legions Excursors, who flew towards Terra hounded by Silver Basilisks vessels. Rorrick, the Legion Master fo the Warmasters Justicars, also escaped the initial purge, fleeing into the bowels of the *Last Judgement*, surviving in the depths of the mighty flagship until help finally arrived in the form of Charon. They were the exception, not the rule however, and in the space of a few hours, Almire had brought order to his own house, the word going out across the galaxy soon after that the true Apostasy was to begin.

#### The Flight of Arrule

> "*For as long as I can remember, I have been an Excursor, a faceless assassin of the Indominate. I am not an astartes, I never have been. We may clasp hands, and fight shoulder to shoulder, I may even laugh as I call you brother. But I am not here. There is no Arrule. There is only the Excursor, and by his hand do you now die.*"
> ― Arrule of the XVIth Legion Excursors
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Before the Night of Blood, few had ever heard of the warrior known as Arrule, this annonimity by design, not chance. Arrule was a member of the mysterious and often doubted Excursors within the XVIth Legion, infiltartors designed to have no face, no identity, beyond what was implanted upon them. Arrule in this was no different, having no sense of self, instead merely seeing himself as an observer to the different roles he played in service to Almire, constantly trapped within his own body, and while he still had the ability to think and adapt as required, it was solely in the context of the character he was playing, his own self lending itself not to a noble warrior, but that simply of a psychopath, forever removed from anyone, even other Excursors.

In short, Arrule was the perfect Excursor, right up until he was not.

In the weeks running up to the Night of Blood, Arrule was not idle, sent on a final excursion as he had done thousands of times prior. However, this time things were not simple, Arrule sent to **[REDACTED]**

In the aftermath, Arrule, for perhaps the first time since his raising to the legion and his assignment to the Excursors, was shaken to his core, not simply brushing it off on the veneer or his persona. Questions raged in his mind, even as his training warred with them, attempting to surpress them as he was taught to do. These conflicting mindsets were still at war when the Night of Blood errupted, Arrule carrying out the execution on autopilot, and it was this that allowed his target to escape his first blow, the planned execution turning into a savage brawl. For minutes, an eternity in such a fight, the pair grappled, Arrule at war with himself as much as his opponent, allowing the warrior to put up a fight even without his armour, something Arrule was wearing. Eventually however, the inevitable happened, Arrule shattering the warriors neck and spine, a quick knife blow to the primary and secondary hearts ensuring death was unavoidable.

In a daze, Arrule returned to his handlers as ordered, but here, Arrule found he was no longer the Warmasters trusted blade, met by Exursors who had but one target; him. As emotions and personalities warred within his mind, Arrule finally snapped, his training fragmenting across his mind, the warrior at the core of Arrule's being lashing out. Three Excursors fel to his blade in as many swings, before Arrule broke into a run, moving through the *Last Judgement*, until finally, he reached a shuttle bay. Shooting into the void, Arrule watched as a Frigate, the *Invictus*, was powering its engines, the crew on board attempting to escape their pursuers from the Consuls Exemplar legion. Arrule barely made it on board before the *Invictus* leapt into the warp, carrying the few survivors away from the immediate dangers of the Night of Blood.

Damaged but alive, the *Invictus* was hounded by the Consuls Exemplar vessels, forced to drop out of the warp shortly after their flight had begun, their navigator slain in the taking of the vessel. The space they found was not peaceful however, emerging into an ongoing battle once more, this time waged by but a single legion, the Ashen Crows, the Primarch Galvarian finally snapping and attempting to flee, while Durath, Lord Furgol of the XIth Legion, sought to stop him. The sudden appereance of vessels from other legions however changed the flow of the battle however, the Consuls ships changing target almost instantly, turning to follow Galvarian's flagship as he jumped into the warp, tracking the First Ember and disappearing after him, leaving the Ashen Crows alone with the *Invictus*.

With evidence presented to them, and backed up by Arrule and the other survivors testimonies, the Ashen Crows realised that the betrayal and hunt of Galvarian was minor in comparison to what was engulfing the galaxy. Terra had to be warned, and with that forefront in his mind, Durath made the decision to split his forces. The majority would remain at large in the galaxy, hunting down Galvarian before the Consuls could reach him, but many, Durath included, would head for Terra with the crew of the *Invictus.* Many of those from the XIth were Apothacaries, the elite of the XIth Legion, but alongside them were also the monsterous ablaze, as well as evidence of Galvarian's betrayal, irrefutale proof that at least part of what they said was true.

When the XIth and the *Invictus* reached Terra, bringing word of betrayal, they were met not with open arms, but suspicion. Confronted by the Star Guardians, Praetorians of Terra, the survivors were taken in shackles to Luna, there to undergo questioning not only by Shaaa Hydrades, but Malcador himself. Though Shaaa did not wish to believe of Almire's betrayal, the evidence presented by the survivors of the *Invictus* was damning indeed, and finally, the truth was known by Terra. The Warmaster had turn his back on the Emperor of Mankind, war was coming for Terra, the Star Guardians the only ones now standing between the Emperor and the full force of at least four legions, though at that time, none knew if it was simply four, or the full might of sixteen others, Shaaa and his sons moving to prepare the system for whatever form the eventual storm took.

### The Istvaan Massacres

See also: The Istvaan Massacre

> "*It was treachery at first. To turn against brothers, to kill for personal advancement and power. But we have seen them, how their minds and bodies have been corrupted. Their very belief systems have been warped. This is no longer Almire's treachery. It is his Apostasy.*"
> ― Khnum-Anhuret, the Sunstone King, Primarch of the Watchers of Akhet Legion
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Unknowing of the deaths being handed out to those forces remaining loyal to the Emperor during the Night of Blood, plans years in the making entered their final stage. In the Istvaan System far to the Galactic North, close to 200,000 Astartes waited for new orders, their Primarch awaiting word from the Warmaster on where their mustered strength would fall. They were the XIVth Legions, the Palatine Wings, identified as being loyal to the Emperor, no amount of persuasion by those forces loyal to the Warmaster believed to be able to sway them. For such foes, only a single fate could secure the Warmasters flanks, and it was to that task that the Blight Wardens and Brothers Encarmine were set.

Approaching under the guise of assisting in the campaign to come, the two new legions spread themselves throughout the XIVth fleets, before suddenly showing their colours. Guns roared silently into the void, torpedoes smashed into shield-less vessels, and all across the two loyalist fleets, battle was joined.

It was a slaughter, thousands dying in seconds. The lightly armed Palatine Fleet overwhelmed in moments, many of their warriors forced to evacuate to the world of Istvaan V as their ships burnt, the Palatine Wings choked on toxic air as the Blight Wardens descended to the world.

It was the Palatine Wings who met their match first, Bartosz, the Imperial Sagittarius charging through the carnage on Istvaan V, only to come across his brother, Lu Yueh Zhi Zi. Lu Yueh had never been regarded as a great fighter, but neither had Bartosz, and as they clashed, one of Lu Yueh's many servo arms snapped out, finding a gap in Bartosz's armour and injecting a toxin into his bloodstream so virulent, it could slow even a Primarch. Already feeling the effects of the drug, Bartosz broke free from the combat, making to retreat to ride out the effects, but alas he would never get that chance. Vinicius and Euphrano Geminius, the twinned lords of the XIIth Legion, found Bartosz first, and unlike Lu Yueh, they were great fighters amongst the Pantheon, few amongst the Primarch's able to best them when they fought together. Bartosz fought valiently, but the oucome was not in doubt, and as warriors of the XIVth stared on in horror, Bartosz's head was seperated from his shoulders.

In a single battle, forces loyal to the Warmaster had wiped out almost an entire legion, ripping the elite heart of the Palatine Wings apart and slaying their Primarch. The Imperium would see no aid from the sons of Bartosz, the Warmasters flank secured as his forces pushed on towards Terra.

### The Siege of the Ring

See also: The Siege of the Ring

The Ring, homeworld of the Star Guardians legion, was more than just a symbol of the Praetorians power. It was a shipyard to rival the largest elsewhere in the Imperium, and it was also a Fortress, one that sat at the mouth of the strategically vital Hydian Way warp route, one that stretched all the way to the Beta Garmon cluster, and beyond that, to Terra. This route represented one of the fastest ways for Almire to reach the throneworld, but while the Ring stood, Almire's forces would never be secure. However, Almire could also not afford to dedicate troops to taking the gargantuan space station, billions of warlike humans calling it home, alongside 5,000 Star Guardians, the elite of the 2nd Division. Taking the station would bloody the Warmasters forces too much, and present too much of a distraction, and so instead, malific means were turned to to silence the station until Terra itself fell.

The Brothers Encarmine legion, most of their number at Istvaan, was chosen for this strike, their Widow companies sent to lay siege to the Ring, barely 10,000 against an entire station. In their first stike, they managed to land on the station with surprise on their side, but it was never a foothold they could exploit, and soon, the XIIth were repulsed once more, holding firm on the edge of the system. The defenders of the Ring believed the threat was over, preparing to sally forth to meet the survivors, before the warp yawned wide, reinforcements delievered to the battle.

The *Purest Intent*, formerly the flagship of the Palatine Wings legion, burst from the void, its oversized engines training as it plunged towards the Ring. Defence batteries opened fire, but soon the true reason for the Widows initial strike became clear, targetting computers malfunctioning and sending shots wildly off course. The defenders of the Ring could do nothing as the mighty flagship of the XIVth came ever closer, before detonating against its surface with the force of caged star.

The explosion was deverstating, but what came next was far worse. Instead of a ball of expanding plasma, dust and debris, an ugly scar now dominated the space torn in the Ring's hull, and through that tear poured creatures who had never been born in the material plain. Daemons, Neverborn creatures, Nightmares, no matter what name they were known by, they were indoubtably deadly, and with unmatched force they slammed into the defenders. All thoughts of manning anti-ship guns or mounting counter attacks were abbandoned in favour of throwing any soldier they could at the neverending tide, and with that, the mouth of the Hydian Way was secured, the Widows staying on station to watch the slaughter unfold with uncharacteristic glee.

### The War of Osyris

The Kraken Lords, VIIIth Legiones Astartes, had long been out of favour with the Warmaster, such views stretching back to M31.006 and the events of the Silencing. Since that time, the Legion had been on a crusade of exile, kept far from the Imperium, and most importantly, their homeworld, somewhere the legion returned to every Osyran Decade to enact a ritual to contain "The Deep", warp powers that the entire legion was wary of, never trusting any who weilded such malific power. With their exile however, Nautis had asked his brother, Surmah, to continue this tradition, something he had agreed to do, but that Nautis would come to regret for all time.

As Surmah's eyes were slowly opened to the Primordial Truth of the galaxy, so too did the nature of the Deep, or so Surmah thought. In the superstition, Surmah saw Chaos undivided, and with this in mind, moved to instal cults loyal to the pantheon on the world. When Almire began looking for allies, Surmah championed the VIIIth, thw Warmaster agreeing to let Surmah try and sway them, despite his dislike of the Kraken Lords.

Putting out the call, Surmah beseeched his brother to return home, attaching the seal of the Warmaster to the missive, their exile now over. However, the Hound of the Moors underestimated the speed with which the legion would return home once allowed, the Kraken Lords arriving well in advance of the Hounds of Surmah, unearthing the tip of the Chaos Cults infesting their home, and with a rage unrivalled in any of the legions, began to purge their kind.

When the Hounds finally arrived, they found these purges in progress, and though they attempted to claw back the initiative to turn Nautis and his sons to the Warmasters cause, Nautis laid the blame for such an uprising squarely at Surmah's feet, forcing Surmah to change his plans. If the VIIIth would not stand with the Warmaster, then they stood against him, and as such they would die.

All across Osyris, the full might of the Chaos uprising made itself known, millions taking up arms against the unbelievers, the Kraken Lords turning their guns on any not wearing their armour, and yet on they came, undaunted and undeterred by their own losses. In orbit, the Hounds opened fire, the Imperial Vessels stationed in orbit fleeing, rather than face the might of the Hounds, Nautis cursing them for their cowardice long after they had cut vox communications.

Outnumbered and abandoned by their brother legions and Imperial forces, the Kraken Lords fall back into the worlds oceans. There, in the crushing black depths, an ancient and unknowable starship is found larger than even the greatest starforts, and at its core, a single, fractured portal to another realm, the source of the Deep the VIIIth had combated for so long, the malign influence that had unknowingly corrupted their world for generations.

Faced with no other choice, wanting to punish all those they still could, Nautis took up his mighty axe, bringing it down on the portal, and with a single blow, opened it wide, allowing the forces contained within to burst free. In seconds baleful energy had engulfed the world, enveloping it in rolling storms of warp energy. Communication is cut between the surface and the void instantly, nothing able to find a way through the unnatural energies, be it technological or warp based in nature. Soon, Surmah declared that the VIIIth was no more, all life having perished on the surface of Osyris and moving to continue the greater war., the true fate of the Kraken Lords remaining veiled for many years.

## Disposition of the Traitor Legions

Much remains uncertain in regards to the strategic positions, deployments and configuration of the forces loyal to the Warmaster Almire in the early phases of the war, and even their full scope and extent cannot be ascertained with any genuine certainty by the historian. Perhaps a full half of the Titan Legions and the numberless hosts of the Excertus Imperialis -- hundreds of millions of soldiers, vessels and war machines -- had either through corruption, misguided loyalty to Almire or simple blind ignorance in compliance with their orders, sided with the Warmaster. But this alone would never be enough to overthrow the Emperor. A thousand Battleships might be wrecked against the defences of Terra, ten million Auxilia might spend their lives in besieging the Solar Guardian Array, and ten millions follow them, and again and again, but Almire knew this alone would never avail him. Not against the superhuman warriors who held it; not against the *Legio Custodes* and defences designed by Praetorian of Terra and his sons, not if it were allowed to be completed. So it was that the greatest attention should be placed on the location and strengths of the Traitor Legions. The Legions at the Warmaster's side during this period at the start of the conflict comprised eight Legions. Although the Istvaan Massacre had inflicted terrible wounds on the Loyalist forces involved, and a hundred other ambushes had drawn strength away from all others, the Traitor Legions had not themselves come away from the cataclysm unscathed which, combined with losses suffered during the recent purging of the Traitors' ranks at the Night of Blood and elsewhere, had weakened Almire's position from its notional strength when the die for war was cast. Even with these early victories, the forces Almire commanded were not enough to win a protracted war, and so only one option was left. It was bold, but Almire's forces only had a singular option.

A lightning strike at Terra itself, to besiege and take the throneworld before any reinformcenets could stand beside the Star Guardians, striking a blow to the moral of the Imperium itself from which none would ever recover.

The Traitor Legions were the single greatest power and strength of Almire's armies, but they were far from alone. To achieve the ultimate aim of laying siege to Terra and casting down the Emperor, the Traitors would have to call upon and fight alongside a wide array of other forces, some simply obeying the will of masters of long association, while others were brought into the Warmaster's fold through bribery, pacts of alliance, coercion or the infamous progress of the Dark Compliance. As early as the Istvaan Massacre, mortal Auxilia troops were used with unspeakable callousness by their Space Marine masters, herded towards the enemy as bullet-soaks on which the foe's ammunition would be expended before battle was truly joined, and such disregard for the purely human component of the Warmaster's forces would be shown time and again throughout the bloody years that were to follow. This was not however universal, as at other times, Almire and his principal subordinates entrusted vital missions to the more reliable of his mortal allies, and split entire battlegroups of Traitor Auxilia and Armada units on independent operations either of conquest or destruction, although it was not uncommon for him to assign an officer or cadre of the Warmasters Justicars, Consuls Exemplar or Hounds of Surmah to oversee such forces in the field.

## See Also

* The Unification Wars
* Unification Wars Chronology
* The Great Crusade
* Great Crusade Chronology
* Almire Apostasy Chronology