Thousand Sons

Thousand Sons armorial with Legion iconography

Thousand Sons Veteran Legionary, Hakor Kallisar, of the Second Fellowship

### Observed Strategic Tendencies

Psychic Warfare, Precision Assaults, Misdirection, Lore Culling, Macro-Coordination Multi-Theatre Campaigns

### Legion Master

Chief-Librarian Mieuren, Regent of the Thousand Sons

### Homeworld

Terra (Currently)
Prospero (Formerly - Dead World)

### Warcry

As the Thousand Sons are able to communicate far better telepathically than with mere words, the legion rarely uses a conventional battlecry. Their silent, coordinated movements, along with their blank-faced helms all contribute to their otherworldly image, inspiring fear in their enemies and un-nerved respect among their allies.

The **Thousand Sons** are a Loyalist First Founding Space Marine Legion bound up with occult lore, mysticism and the otherworldly powers of the psyker. It was these esoteric arts of war that made them one of the most formidable Legions, but at times, also one of the most distrusted. Their copper-skinned Primarch, Magnus the Red, was the first of the primarchs to recognise the existence and the threat the Ruinous Powers posed to Mankind, and because of this the Thousand Sons became the first legion to be targeted for destruction by the forces of Chaos. Though it cost them dear, those that survived the Space Wolves' slaughter during the Burning of Prospero were pivotal in bringing the Dornian Heresy to an end. As the most powerful battle-psykers in the Imperium they are feared and mistrusted, even by the people they selflessly defend against the encroaching darkness.

## Legion History

### The Tempest Born

The XVth was born late in the creation of the Legiones Astartes. The conquest of Terra was already complete, Luna had fallen, and the first-born Legions had started to bring the rest of the Sol System to heel. The Great Crusade was about to begin, starting the cycle of conquest that would see it flood across the stars and the strength of many Legions had begun to wax as their ranks swelled with recruits taken from conquered foes. No longer was Unification the prize for victory, and no longer could the fires of the Imperial
Truth be confined to Terra. It was a time of transition, a time of endings as well as beginnings, and into this time the XVth Legion was born.

Like all of their predecessors among the Legiones Astartes, the XVth Legion was first forged on Terra by the Emperor of Mankind and its original members were recruited from the Terran population. Their gene-seed was first derived from samples of the psychically-gifted DNA of their genetic father Magnus the Red and then implanted into the first Thousand Sons Astartes in the gene-laboratories of Luna. Storms marked the creation of the Legion. The great warp tempests, which had isolated Ancient Terra during Old Night, had boiled up again, and it was said that witch-fire lit the skies, and dreams of terror and brilliance danced through the minds of humanity's birth world.

For a brief time, fear and revelation once again stalked the turning of the sun and stained the light of the moon. Instances of psychic mutation and emergence spiralled to new heights, void shipping was trapped at anchor, and a wave of panic swept the nascent Imperium strong enough to provoke a harsh response from the servants of the Emperor as they sought to crush again the woken serpent of superstition on a newly unified Terra. It is a time now marked in the annals of days and the chronicles of the years as the '*Song of the Blood Skies*' amid the much-stricken Nordafrik Conclaves, and as the '*Spiral Misrule*' by the noble houses of the equatorial plate cities, but most official records know it as '*The First Tempest*'.

In this time the Emperor seemed to have been utterly unmoved and unalarmed by the resurgence of the phenomenon which had blighted humanity for so long, and left such response needed to the judgement of His more parochial servants of civil and military order. The momentum of His conquests contained by this sudden squall of the Empyrean, the Emperor, according to available records, simply channelled His energies elsewhere with a promptness that might imply both preparation and foresight, and it is thought that several branches of the Imperium owe their formal origin to these times, not least amongst them the nascent Silent Sisterhood and the Black Sentinels of the Astra Telepathica, but perhaps chief amongst His acts was the creation of the XVth.

At first, it seemed unremarkable from the other proto-formations of the Legiones Astartes, save that it was clear that very deliberate and exacting criteria were being set upon their intake, strictures imposed that were beyond that of their fellow Legions. The aspirants who would be raised to the Legion were in fact drawn from perhaps the most stable, loyal and culturally sophisticated of the Emperor's domains on Terra, and further sifted finely in selection of candidates. Chief amongst these sources were the Achaemenid Empire, the Enclaves of the Fire Lords of Oaus, and the Kashai Domain. All had been amongst the first powers to give fealty to the Emperor and had supplied warriors for His armies since the earliest battles of the Unification Wars.

All of them also had populations which were largely free of the unpredictable mutation which blighted so many of Terra's children. Other aspirants of the XVth are also known to have been drawn from across Terra, but never in so great a number as to be distinct. The entirety of the Ionus Plateau is recorded as having only given up a single youth to the XVth for example, though hundreds were taken and raised to the VIIth Legion from the region in contrast. The Emperor Himself is known to have selected many of the first recruits personally, an honour done to almost no other Legion, and never to such a degree.

It is unclear how many recruits were submitted to the process to raise them from humanity to the XVth Legion, but many seemed to have survived it. The sealed accounts of those involved in the later stages of the project note that successful implantation and integration of the XVth Legion's gene-seed was remarkably high. What is known, however, is the number who walked from the Terran and Luna gene-forges, a number recorded with exactness across many sources as though it held a significance beyond a measure of strength. One thousand warriors -a fully operable initial pattern Legion induction- clad in the grey that all Legions wore at their birth, knelt before the Emperor and made their Oaths of Eternity. Some who saw it say that as the Emperor bade His 'Thousand Sons' to rise, at that exact moment the storms surrounding Terra broke, their force and fury dissipating and leaving only stillness and calm in the Warp beyond corporeal reality.

### The Thousand

At first there was little to distinguish the XVth Legion despite their auspicious birth, and the honour done to them by the Emperor. Though as competent in the arts of war as their brother Legions, they were still relatively few in number and possessed no special talent or predilection that was immediately apparent as they acted to quell some limited and localised rebellion on Terra itself before being given their first warships and assignments beyond Sol. Their initial deployments and campaigns were not remarkable. In the cloud warrens of Proxima-III, they assaulted the transgenic blasphemies of the rotten alien cities. On Gladris, they held the lines beside the far larger battalions of the VIth Legion, and on Seculoris, they castigated the non-Compliant mica-clans beside the Imperial Heralds of the XVIIth all were early campaigns successfully executed by the Legion.

Yet despite the competency of their actions there was little to draw regard or, in fact, any attention at all. The most that could be said of the XVth was that they displayed a degree of synchronisation and integration in their actions beyond even that common in such exalted warriors as the Legiones Astartes. Perhaps early on the only notable fact about them was that they had quickly adopted some distinct heraldry of their own, namely the ancient '*Millennial*' glyph to signify their Legion, commemorating the Emperor's pronouncement, and elements of the ochre panoply of the storied '*Immortal Regiments*' of the Achaemenid Empire from which they drew their most pronounced genetic ancestry. From the beginning it is certain that the Legion considered itself a breed apart, despite - and unlike certain other Legion raisings - being integrated quickly into the Imperium's order of battle as a general Space Marine force with little, at least to begin with, to distinguish it.

These first years of the true Great Crusade were heady times, and the reputations and strength of the Legions grew at an accelerating pace. The Luna Wolves was a name new on the lips of many, but one quickly distinguished in victory - their ranks having already grown to over 30,000 warriors - and the reputation of Terra's pale 'night's children' which made up the VIIIth could already cow enemies and potential turncoats alike by fear alone, while conversely, the potent fortresses raised by the VIIth already marked the skin of Terra and a dozen worlds beyond Sol's light. While the XVth made no such meteoric rise, they remained indistinguished from their peers as the Imperium moved out into the unconquered stars, and so it was until the first whispers and rumours began to follow them. Then, no sooner had the Great Crusade entered its second decade, an altogether stranger reputation soon clung about them like a cloak.

### Whispers and Fire

Perhaps it was the honour done to the XVth Legion by the Emperor at their creation that first drew the speculation and curiosity of others. The Legion had become marked by the Emperor's words at its oath-taking, and had become known as the Thousand Sons even before its first battle honour had been won. Perhaps it was because even as other Legions grew in numbers, the XVth grew slowly, its recruits selected seemingly with great caution from the stock of many worlds according to criteria that remained unclear. But perhaps it was simply suspicion bred by the lack of manifest reason for the unusual manner of their creation and the apparent lack of corresponding exceptional nature. No matter - the Thousand Sons, as the XVth were now widely known despite having outgrown the literal truth of that title, were a Legion that moved uneasily amongst their brothers from their first days, and when the unique qualities of their warriors finally manifested, they did not dampen the embers of distrust, but turned them into a blaze.

A decade after the Great Crusade spilled beyond Sol, the first Thousand Sons began to openly manifest potent psychic abilities. First, just a handful was affected, and then as the years went on, more and more. These were not the petty powers of cult prophets or even the sanctioned lesser arts of the half-charlatan fate-twisters that attended the noble House of Terra, but manifestations of the true potential of the Empyrean at its most destructive and majestic. At the hands of the Thousand Sons was displayed living fire made manifest, there came deluges ofbiolightning, armour-cracking telekinetic fury, thoughts which razored open minds, flesh which healed from deathly wounds before the blood could hit the ground, even visions which guided the seer to find hope in a sea of failure. It seemed to onlookers as though the designs of the Emperor had at long last begun to bear fruit.

The careful selection of recruits, the hidden methods of selection, the meticulous preparation of the Legion's warriors, and even the low numbers taken as potential recruits, all now seemed to be part of a clear purpose. The Emperor in His wisdom had created a Legion which fused the psychic potential of Mankind with the gene-alchemy of the Legiones Astartes. On the battlefield, though still few in number, the Thousand Sons proved as unpredictable a foe to the enemies of the Great Crusade as they proved utterly deadly, but from this very success grew the suspicion of their brothers.

To those who had come through the Unification Wars, the psyker was at best a shunned instrument of occasional necessity, and most often an abomination to be destroyed. So it was that even as more and more of the Thousand Sons manifested their abilities, so too was it that the aura of curiosity which had followed them since their birth became a cloud of distrust and even outright hostility. Some amongst their brother Legions refused to take to the field alongside them, particularly during the initial flowering of their powers. On Ostrastis, the First Millennial of the IIIrd Legion withdrew their ships when a company of the XVth joined the mustering to take the colonies of the Cyn Stars. During the Colgren Campaign, the Dusk Raiders contingent mustered as part of the force refused to look at, listen to or speak to any of the Thousand Sons, dealing only through intermediaries and servitors. It is stated by a few fragmentary sources from the era that even Horus - at that time the only Primarch who was a part of the Great Crusade - voiced direct concerns to the Emperor about the Thousand Sons' growing power and advocated a plan to swiftly cull the Legion should they waver. What the Emperor's response to such a question might have been is neither remembered or recorded, but one fact is undoubted; amongst all of the calls of disgust and fear, and even while the Thousand Sons took to battlefields in a blaze of occult fire, the Emperor withheld His censure and remained silent.

Those first years were not marked by discord or isolation alone. Victories piled up in the wake of the Thousand Sons' passage through the stars, victories won in spectacular fashion, victories that became tales that filled listeners with dread and wonder: armies of hundreds of thousands turned to ash, fortress walls cracked as if by the crushing hand of an invisible colossus, and small companies of warriors marching through storms of plasma fire and emerging untouched. And, beside the tales of destruction, there are accounts listed in records that cannot be doubted - the fact that it took Captain Ohrmuzd only six hours to subdue the planet of Necordo with two hundred warriors, or that the now lost Legio Lacrimae gave oaths of perpetual kinship to the Thousand Sons for driving back a force of countless Orks from their crippled Titans during the reversals of the Rout of Megorania. The remembrances of Solomon Voss even imply that the Emperor Himself went to battle with a cadre of Thousand Sons in His vanguard on at least one occasion against the horrors of the foul xeno-form of the Khrave. These deeds are now the forgotten past of the Thousand Sons, their brief time of glory before the next dark mark on the page of their history.

### The Cursed Legion

The Thousand Sons remained a small Legion even while the star of their martial success rose. While the strength of other Legions grew by the thousands or even tens of thousands, the XVth grew in more modest numbers, sometimes even shrinking when war took its inevitable toll. Half a decade after their exodus from Terra, the Thousand Sons are listed in most records as no more than 10,000 warriors. By comparison the Luna Wolves, the largest Legion of that era, numbered close to five times that strength. Part of this was because the Legion accepted so few recruits, and beyond this, further factors came into play to limit its expansion.

While they harvested conquered worlds for recruits like all Legions, the numbers that the Thousand Sons took were small compared with the mass inductions of the Luna Wolves from Cthonia, or the Imperial Heralds from their cowed enemies. Even of these, records indicate that relatively few of those chosen survived the process of transformation to become a Legionary compared to the success rate of the Ith Legion's induction process (generally taken as the median for such things). But it cannot be disputed that during this period what they lacked in numbers, they compensated for in effectiveness. The dominant majority of the Legion were now fully emerged psykers of some form, though of wildly differing levels of ability, and many of the rest seemed to harbour some lesser tendency. But though powerful, they remained few. So it was that when disaster came, it almost destroyed them.

It began on Bezant. Elements of the Thousand Sons 2nd and 5th Chapters had been given the task of bringing the sun-worshipping humans of the verdant world to Compliance. The Bezantine though were loath to give up their golden temples and the whispered commands of their sun-blinded priests. That might have mattered little if it had not been that the population was witch-tainted to its core. The priesthood were all chosen from those who could 'hear the light of the stars', and the traditions of the cult had shaped the population so that of every child born, one in ten were similarly blessed. When the Legion descended on Bezant, they were met not with swords or armies but with fire, nightmare and the roar of dissolving matter. It was an enemy whose arts they understood but had seldom encountered on such a scale. The Legion fought back using their own powers, as keen to prove their psychic mastery as the War Hounds Legion of the era might have been to test their bloody skills against a cadre of superlative enemy warriors in a brutal pitched battle.

There are no accounts outside those of the Thousand Sons of the battle, but if they can be believed, it was as though the fundamental elements of existence itself warred that day. Clouds spun of lightning cleaved through hurricanes of debris, and the shrieks of
invisible battles soared through the burning air. The Legion had never been so tested; its warriors poured every scrap of skill and strength into the battle, but still could not break the Bezantine priests. Then, as the psychic deadlock forced black rain from the sky, the pressure broke and a single scream echoed through every mind on the planet.

The name of the warrior who fell at that moment is not recorded. In what remains of the Thousand Sons *Book of Days and Passing*, recovered from the burned libraries of Prospero, he is simply called '*Daleth*', and represented by a single ancient sigil in a dead tongue. That the warrior had another name in life is certain, but the meaning of the name his death is recorded under is not. Some savants and linguist-arcanists have said that this thought-form '*Daleth*' has a purely esoteric meaning, and might symbolise the door from the past to the future, or the beginning and the end of all things. Perhaps they are right, because what is known is that at the height of the battle, the substance of the warrior's body slowly blew apart. Slick flows of malleable flesh spilled from his broken armour, bone fused within the substance of his wargear, and his blood misted and congealed into new forms in the air as all the while the nameless warrior screamed for mercy in a thousand silent voices heard in every mind of his Legion.

His brothers killed him then, ripping his rebelling flesh apart with bolter fire and bathing the remains in cleansing flame until he was nothing but the dust of ashes. At the time, those who were present swore to keep the fate of their brother from all outside of the Legion. The accounts we have now of this singular event only exist because of what came after, when there was no longer any hope of the secrets being kept, and no redemption offered by keeping them.

### The Horror Begins

**The Dreamless Brotherhood**

The Thousand Sons made many attempts to cure the Flesh Change before the rediscovery of Magnus and their time on Prospero. Many tried to control it through sheer force of will, suppressing it or using meditative techniques to try to stop it taking hold. Others used alchemical or retro-viral methods to shut off the uncontrolled biological mutation. Most of these attempts would fail, and all would prove ineffective over time. Faced with this failure, the Thousand Sons took to placing those who succumbed to the early stages of the curse secretly into stasis.

By the time that the Great Crusade reached Prospero, there were more trapped in this unchanging existence between life and death than there were amongst the living. Some had elected to enter the stasis vaults when they felt the first signs of the Flesh Change take them. Others had been subdued as the curse took hold, their distorting flesh frozen in the instant of dissolution.

Of the thousands committed to stasis, it is generally believed that only a few survived Magnus' cure. It is assumed that most had been removed from their timeless sleep and had persisted as the Flesh Change took hold, or were too far gone to save and put from their misery. That assumption, like so much else must be weighed, and we must wonder at the true fate of the Dreamless Brotherhood.

For a time after Bezant, the Legion seemed unchanged to outward eyes. Even within its ranks the feeling was that Bezant was an aberration, a unique and terrible fluke caused by the psychic energies unleashed in the battle with the Bezantine. The Great Crusade continued on and the Legion continued to conquer, all the while manifesting ever greater levels of psychic strength. We do not know how long it was until the second warrior fell; only the Thousand Sons know the truth. Perhaps it was months, perhaps years, perhaps longer. But a second did succumb, and then a third Legionary, their bodies dissolving into warp energy, mutating without control. The Legion gave a literal name to the curse that had come upon them; they called it the '*Flesh Change*'. The Thousand Sons fought to control what was happening to them, and to keep it a secret, but both endeavours were doomed.

The Flesh Change manifested again and again, and in ever-growing carnage, sometimes afilicting hundreds in a single instant. Such an epidemic could not be kept entirely secret but the Legion strove mightily to do so, twisting the facts where they could not be entirely hidden, so as to hide their shame. Those few within the Imperium's hierarchy who knew that some deep-rooted defect had manifested within the Legion believed it a form of deep-seated flaw of cellular degeneration, such as had once afflicted the Thunder Warriors, or perhaps gene-seed damage such as that which external tragedy had inflicted on the IIIrd Legion, and did not fully suspect the unfolding horror for what it was.

That the Flesh Change was linked to their psychic abilities and their gene-seed cannot be doubted, but how or why, none save perhaps the Emperor can know. That it afilicted Legionaries who had no, or slight, psychic inclination did not matter to the shadows of hatred and fear which flocked around the Legion even as they floundered. With few facts to draw upon, the forces of the Imperium saw the Legion become withdrawn, and ever more secretive and ever more erratic in its commitment to the Great Crusade. Also, units which fought alongside them increasingly suffered inexplicable losses and even 'accidents', which in retrospect can be seen as perhaps a desperate silencing of witnesses.

There was little sympathy from their brother Legions, and for those within the Imperium's hierarchy who learned of or at least suspected some measure of the truth of the Flesh Change (or merely the Thousand Sons' 'affliction' as some in ignorance called it), a common belief was that it was just the manifestation of the Thousand Sons Legion's genetic and perhaps even philosophical corruption. The whispers of suspicion soon became shouted condemnations. 'Sorcery', they called the arts of the Thousand Sons, dredging up the word from the black days of the Age of Strife and setting it on the XVth Legion's head like a crown of cold iron.

The Thousand Sons struggled on, their numbers dwindling. Battles and the curse of the Flesh Change cut deeper with every passing year. Shunned by their brother Legions and much of the rest of the Imperium, they continued to slowly conquer even as they seemed to whither. But even as they were undone from within, their psychic might grew. The most powerful ascended higher still in mastery, well beyond any known psyker of the few found in the ranks of other Legions; the number of the surviving warriors within the XVth manifesting powers with increasing potency. From a certain point of view, it might be said that they had little choice. With their numbers falling, and with few others to aid them, they fought using the weapons they had. There is another view, one that resonates with the paths that the Thousand Sons would walk over the following centuries; they persisted in using their powers not only because it was necessary, but because they believed that they were right to do so.

### Decay

The Thousand Sons, as has already been noted, were never as numerous as their brothers, and with this gathering calamity, they began to spiral into nothing. Formations which had been thousands strong became hundreds, which became handfuls of warriors outnumbered by the dead and the lost. Ships which had carried great armies of conquest now carried no more than a haunted remnant of past glories walking echoingly empty corridors. The condemnations of others also grew in intensity and strength as the Thousand Sons shrivelled.

Primarchs, Legion Masters and figures of authority throughout the body of the Imperium called for the XVth Legion to be disbanded. Some perhaps called for this thinking it a kindness, a mercy given to a once great Legion dying in shame. Others called not just for the Thousand Sons to be dissolved, but for them to be obliterated, and some even said purged-cut from the body of the Legiones Astartes like a cancer, their warriors executed, and their names and honours struck from every record, monument and memory.

The Emperor did not heed the calls for Him to end His Thousand Sons. Whether He would have, or if the Legion would have simply slid into nothingness, will never be known, because at the moment when it seemed certain that only oblivion waited for the Thousand Sons, they were saved.

### The Crimson King

During the great diaspora, when humanity colonised the galaxy, the world of Prospero was chosen by the mutants and psykers that settled it precisely because of its remoteness and lack of mineral resources. In their splendid isolation, these outcasts from the rest of humanity created Tizca, a shining city of light, learning and culture amidst the barren wasteland. Although they had been cut off for thousands of years, tales still abounded of the howling mobs that had persecuted their forefathers, and they lived in quiet dread that their haven would be invaded. Unsurprisingly, when the infant Magnus' incubation chamber fell to earth amongst the shining silver towers in Tizca's central plaza, the population was gripped with terror. Finally overcoming their trepidation, they found it to be not an orbital bombardment or the vanguard of an invasion force, but a battered, scorched and damaged wreck containing a badly injured child.

Though he was near the point of death when they first found him, the boy displayed a tenacious will and remarkable constitution. Under the ministrations of the commune's healers he quickly returned to robust health, but nothing could be done to save the boy's right eye. An ugly welt of scar tissue covered the socket, but in a society where mutation and deformity were rife, this was little cause for comment. He was named Magnus, or, more usually and affectionately, Magnus the Red after his ruddy complexion and the colour of the unruly mane of hair that he doggedly refused to cut. Magnus quickly grew to vibrant maturity and threw himself wholeheartedly into learning.

He was most often to be found poring over the ancient tomes in the city's extensive libraries and animatedly debating with wizened scholars many times his own age. Knowledge was his passion, and with the fiery certainty of youth he believed that no subject was beyond his mastery. It was the study of the hermetic arts of alchemy and sorcery that changed his life forever. Doing so awakened him to the true power of the Warp, an act which levelled the building in which he had been studying. As his psychic powers blossomed, he became aware of both the Gods of Chaos, and his father, the Emperor of all Mankind.

Though separated by half a galaxy, the Emperor and Magnus recognised each other for what they were. With his insatiable thirst for knowledge, Magnus eagerly learned about every aspect of the young Imperium, of the Great Crusade, and the search for his brother primarchs. Through his expanded acuity and the tutelage of his father, Magnus became the first of the primarchs to learn of the terrible threat posed by the Ruinous Powers. Even as the Emperor taught him these things, He swore Magnus to secrecy, explaining that the threat was so grave that even knowledge of their existence would be enough to seduce some to their worship. Magnus had seen to his cost the palpable link between sorcery and Chaos, but argued that the Ruinous Powers could easily use such ignorance to corrupt the unwary. Despite this, he was unable to persuade his father. The Emperor spoke of a grand plan that would one day see humanity strong enough to resist Chaos's wiles, but until then, He solemnly forbade Magnus from telling anyone outside his own legion, even his own brother primarchs, of what he had learned.

### The Gift of Salvation

War and the Flesh Change had cut deep by the time the XVth were reunited with their sire. So many now slept in stasis or had succumbed to battle or mutation that when the Legion came to Prospero, summoned by the Emperor, a scant few thousand knelt before their father. The bond between a Primarch and his gene-sons is said to transcend even that of human parent and child. Between beings such as Magnus and his psychically attuned gene-sons, the bond seems to have been closer still, for from the moment they were reunited, both Primarch and Legion seemed extensions of one another in thought, outlook and spirit. At last Magnus had pupils and disciples both capable of assimilating his teachings and walking the path he saw for Mankind. But even as Magnus took command of his Legion and declared Prospero its home, so the Thousand Sons succumbed to the Flesh Change with increasing frequency, as though the contact with their gene-sire had brought on a final, terrible phase in the curse's cycle.

Faced with this unfolding disaster, Magnus turned all of his power, lore and learning to discovering a cure to the curse which was killing his sons; it was not simply an act of filial patronage but also, as some have suggested, a test, and one set by the Emperor Himself to His strangest of sons. What occurred next can only be guessed at, or deduced in shape from the shadows it casts from that time into the present. Magnus found a cure and saved his Legion. At the time none were certain how he had achieved this, and such were the abilities of the Crimson King that few, even amongst his brothers, could have begun to understand the answer even if he had given it. Now, with suspicion gifted from the scars of treachery, it seems possible that Magnus delved too far beyond what Mankind should know for the means to save his sons, and perhaps with his salvation sold them to a greater unforeseeable doom in the far future.

The Legion had been saved by Magnus, but not without loss. From amongst those few who still walked, and amongst those who dreamed in stasis, fewer yet survived to see the Thousand Sons saved. Just as at their foundation they again numbered just 1,000 warriors, and whether by strange accident or occult design, the exactitude of this number can only be wondered at. Again and again throughout their history this numeration would follow the XVth, repeating in the cycles of their near-extinction and rebirth. It might be easy to ascribe coincidence to such phenomenon, but when considering anything to do with the nature of the Emperor's creations, and the Thousand Sons in particular, coincidence must be treated with suspicion.

### The New Sons of Prospero

Magnus did not just save his Legion, he reshaped it within and without. Prospero became the home world of the Thousand Sons, the source of many of its new recruits, and its ways became the foundation of the reborn Legion. In place of the old structures drawn from the echoes of the Unification Wars, Magnus created new foundations of authority, knowledge and mysteries which spiralled through one another, transforming everything from the Legion's command hierarchy to its panoply of war to the very language it used in common discourse. Far from denying the use of psychic powers, Magnus enhanced and refined their use, training his sons in the arts he had distilled on Prospero.

The Five Prosperine Cults were spread through the Legion, with each psychically able warrior taking one which most fitted the nature of his gift. The abilities of those who had survived Magnus' cure for the Flesh Change were great, but under Magnus' tutelage they grew, became deeper in application and stronger in subtlety. In fresh recruits he sought both psychic potential and intellectual excellence and sophistication-no mere killers bred to slaughter would carry his gene-seed. Many recruits came from Prospero itself, selected
from the brightest of its youth, though as the Legion ventured once again into the stars, more would be taken from other worlds with a deftness of selection that fitted their singular purpose.

From amongst his former masters and disciples, and amongst the population of Prospero, he also raised a few to the Legion, even though they were too old to receive the full gene-seed implantation, achieving successes in doing so unparallelled elsewhere. Prosperine alchemical techniques, arcane physiochemical augmentation, and Magnus' own biomantic powers allowed these half-breed Legionaries to follow Magnus on his quest into the stars. Among these elevated humans was Amon, one-time faithful mentor turned disciple, and now Magnus' aide in the remaking of his Legion. Much of the lore and technique gathered and developed by Magnus was passed from Amon, and these chosen few served as teachers and mentors to both the survivors of the original Thousand Sons and its new initiates. With his Legion growing once again, its curse apparently lifted and its strength sharpened, Magnus joined the Great Crusade.

### The Great Crusade

As Magnus and his new legion ventured across the stars, it gave them an opportunity to gain that which they craved the most: knowledge. Each world brought into compliance with the Emperor's will revealed to them the learning and insights of a new culture. As well as the countless human societies, the myriad xenos breeds were also a constant source of wonder. From the subtle Eldar to the brutal Orks, each new sample was characterised, dissected and catalogued. This expansion also brought with it fresh dangers. Even forewarned against the Ruinous Powers, the Thousand Sons still suffered losses. Every battle brother that fell hardened their hearts against the evil of Chaos, and turned Magnus' thoughts to the casualties sustained by the other legions who had no concept or defence against the threat they faced.
Their travels across the galaxy brought them into contact with many of Magnus' brother primarchs. Some, in particular Horus of the Luna Wolves and Lorgar of the Word Bearers, became firm friends. Others, such as the Mortarion of the Death Guard and Leman Russ, the feral primarch of the Space Wolves, took an instant dislike to Magnus and everything he stood for. The uncouth Russ called him mutant, sorcerer, unclean and even a cyclops after the one-eyed giant of Terran legend. At every meeting, be it cordial or adversarial, Magnus respected the Emperor's demand to keep silent about the nature of Chaos, despite the crushing certainty that ignorance left his brothers vulnerable to the predations of the Ruinous Powers.

Magnus bore his brothers' harsh words with good grace, in the certainty that once on the field of battle all enmity would be placed aside. This was tested most sorely on the fortress-world of Bartok, where a campaign by the Space Wolves to bring the planet into Imperial compliance had degenerated into a bloody stalemate. In order to bring the campaign to a rapid conclusion, the Emperor Himself had ordered the Thousand Sons to reinforce the assault. The headstrong Leman Russ detested the idea of being seen to need the help of another legion, especially one he had so publically denounced, but he grudgingly submitted to his father's decree.

Even with the might of two legions, it soon became clear why Russ had struggled. The final and greatest city was protected by directed energy fields and ringed with trenches, strongpoints and bunker networks resulting in brutally effective interlocking fields of fire. The approaches had been turned into a killing ground worthy of those designed by Perturabo or Dorn. As Russ prepared to throw his forces into yet another headlong charge against the enemy guns, Magnus and his legion exposed the weak link in the Bartok defence. All across the battlezone, the Thousand Sons reached into weak, unguarded minds and urged them to turn their guns on their friends. Even as Russ' Wolves advanced, heavy weapon emplacements tracked away from them to fire upon each other. The doomed forlorn hope was transformed into a famous victory, and once inside the lines of defence, the city quickly fell.

Perversely, the Space Wolves did not appreciate this intervention, again throwing accusations of sorcery and evil intent. Though Magnus well knew the difference between warp-tainted magicks and the pure psychic talents his legion deployed, Russ could not be reasoned with. Only a rapid departure from the warzone averted fratricidal bloodshed. Magnus hoped that never again putting his legion in a position to fight alongside the Space Wolves would allow his brother's anger to cool, but by then the damage had already been done.

### The Coming Storm

Just before the Emperor was set to return to Terra, leaving Horus in supreme command of the Great Crusade, He called His primarchs together to the planet of Nikaea. There He sought to address the increasingly acrimonious disputes that had broken out over the nature of psychic ability. Mortarion, Dorn, Corax and of course Leman Russ led the charge, saying that there was no boundary between psychic abilities and the use of destructive sorceries. It was all a matter of degrees, with one inevitably leading to the other. The Emperor‟s decision to withhold knowledge about the nature of Chaos had not stopped the primarchs from sensing its dangers, and as Magnus had feared, some lashed out against psykers, the eternal scapegoats.

Hamstrung by the Emperor's decree, Magnus realised that no words of his could pacify the growing mob. He desperately begged a private audience with his father, and in a move both practical and symbolic, proposed that, starting with himself, every member of the Thousand Sons be soul-bound to the Emperor. Just as soul-binding fortified Astropaths against the horrors of the Warp, the rite would purge and protect the legion from the temptations of sorcery, and be a palpable sign of their loyalty. The Emperor agreed to this elegant solution, and the act was performed that very night.

When the primarchs and their attendants filed into the council chamber the next morning they saw Magnus standing proudly alongside his father, his one eye socket an empty wound. The process of soul-binding, of merging essences with the psychic might of the Emperor, had burned out his optic nerve and left the 'cyclops' blind, but Magnus was filled with a second sight that left him far from vulnerable. Though it pacified most, the judgement did nothing to assuage Leman Russ, who stormed from the chamber, and into the service of the Blood God.

Before the legions left Nikaea, Magnus met with his brother primarch, Lorgar of the Word Bearers. He was a pure soul, genuinely happy for the great honour that he saw his friend had been given. Magnus had long held his tongue about the Ruinous Powers, but it had cost him his eye, and he feared that before long it would cost them all far more. For the first time, Magnus broke the vow to his father and warned Lorgar of the threat posed by Chaos. The dire news was received gladly, as it reinforced all that the Word Bearers believed. Their piety and dedication to spread the worship of the Emperor as a deity stood vindicated as vital to the continuation of the human race.

The Thousand Sons returned from Terra irrevocably changed. Though the soul-binding had taken their sight, they were given a psychic awareness of their environment that was far superior. It had also given them a measure of inner strength – a touch of the Emperor's reflected aura, as it were - that they had not even known they had been missing. The most obvious outward sign of their change was shown in their helms, which they had re-forged on the journey back to Prospero into unnerving, eyeless faceplates. They still retained the ability to obtain detailed information on their surroundings from their suit's autosenses, something that became of particular importance in the presence of psychic blanks such as the Sisters of Silence.

As well as eliminating the need for the vision-enhancing effects of the occulobe implant, the soul-binding also had the welcome effect of reducing the rate and severity of mutation within their bodies and gene-seed. They also brought back with them a member of the Legio Custodes. Though ostensibly sent as the Emperor's personal envoy to monitor the progress of the soul-binding, Magnus suspected that his father had learned of the confession to Lorgar, and the guard was a reminder that he was being watched closely.

Just as the newly transformed legion prepared to return to the Great Crusade, Magnus received intelligence of the utmost importance: The Archenemy had made a move against Horus. While visiting the Warmaster, a Word Bearers chaplain named Erebus had recognised the malaise that Horus had contracted on Davin was in fact nothing less than possession by a powerful daemonic entity. Only through an epic act of heroism that required both spiritual salvation from Erebus, and the combined psychic might of the entire Thousand Sons Legion, could the warp-creature be cast out and Horus' life saved. In a terrible irony, before they could even recover from the exertions of saving one primarch from Chaos, another descended upon Prospero intent on planetary annihilation.

### The Dornian Heresy

Without warning, drop pods and assault craft lit up the sky like comets, and the worst fears of the people of Prospero were realised. Distracted by the events of Davin, and, it is suspected, with their precognitive skills blunted by Khorne‟s power, the Space Wolf fleet devastated the planet‟s orbital defences. Before any kind of effective resistance could be mustered, the newly built cities were turned into funeral pyres, killing all those who had come from across the Imperium seeking protection. Though shielded from orbital bombardment behind powerful energy fields, grey figures were seen massing just outside Tizca for a grand offensive. Unthinkable as it was, Magnus sanctioned his legion to use lethal force against other Astartes.

Before the Thousand Sons had always held back their true power for fear of alienating their allies, but in the face of extinction they threw caution to the wind. They lured their enemies into ambushes on the outskirts of Tizca, first disorienting them with psychic powers, and then cutting them down in lethal crossfires. Just as the battle seemed to be tipping in the Thousand Sons' favour, the power of Khorne tore through the Empyrean like a tidal wave, affecting every psyker on the planet. The Thousand Sons, protected as they were by the soul-binding, were left powerless and dazed. The civilian population was affected far more gravely. Those who survived boiled madly from their shelters, only to be torn apart by the bestial, inhuman creatures the Space Wolves had become.

With his world turned to ash and its people murdered, Magnus strove to access his psychic powers, but to no avail. Under such physical and mental assault, it was all the Thousand Sons could do to stay alive. When Leman Russ inevitably came for Magnus he was unrecognisable: a blood-drunk beast steeped in the power of Khorne. Only through the Custodian‟s heroic self-sacrifice was Magnus able to escape with his life. With the disruption to the aetheric plane finally beginning to wane, Magnus was able to obscure his remaining brothers from view, and leave the necropolis that Tizca had become.

Hearing of Dorn's betrayal at Istvaan, it became clear that the attack on Prospero was just the opening salvo in a much larger war. Even with their numbers so depleted, the Thousand Sons were determined to do what they could to save the Emperor. Following Russ' much larger fleet at a discreet distance, they used their mastery of the warp to delay the enemy and send them far off track. It was hoped that in this way they could buy time for the loyal legions to end the rebellion before they arrived. Their gambit to divert the Space Wolves into contact with their bitter rivals, the Dark Angels, sadly did not erupt in the hoped for bloodshed. They greeted each other as allies in Chaos, although it did at least mean that from then on they were keeping two Traitor Legions from the Emperor's throat.

Their contribution did not come without a price, however. The continuous strain began to take its toll, and towards the end every day that went past left another brother as a powder-dry corpse inside his power armour. With the Space Wolves and Dark Angels just days from Terra, the Emperor was forced to break the stalemate and confront Dorn directly. Magnus felt the psychic battle going on aboard the *Phalanx*, but was powerless to intervene. Though the Dornian Heresy was ended that day, it left the Emperor wounded to the core, and Magnus felt every one of those agonies across the light-years.

### The Bloody Aftermath

As the Traitor Legions scattered to the stars, the Thousand Sons arrived to do what they could. Along with the Iron Warriors, Magnus interned the Emperor's paralysed body within the life-sustaining mechanism of the Astronomicon. Meanwhile, the rest of the legion put their talents to use in cleansing the taint of the daemonic from the planet. Terra had been the site of many desecrations and summonations, and it took decades to ward all of the portals that had been created. The worst site of all was inside the old Imperial throne-room. When Dorn had found that the Emperor had escaped him there he had desecrated the nascent webway portal that had been under construction. An army of daemons had flooded out, and even after the Heresy it took an almighty effort to seal.

Magnus threw himself wholeheartedly into finding a way to restore his father's vitality. It became an obsession, with effective command of his legion falling to Captain Ahriman of the First Great Company. One day Magnus emerged from the Astronomicon in high spirits, and, eschewing all offers of company, left Terra, saying only that the solution was “to gather together the Emperor‟s sons”. What was meant by this, he has never explained, not even to his own legion or to the High Lords of Terra. By this point most of the primarchs were either dead or turned to Chaos, and as the millennia pass, fewer and fewer remain alive.

The Thousand Sons have never grown used to the unsettling nature of their primarch's frequent disappearances and unheralded returns. At first his quests were measured in months or years, and he found the time to lead them on the quest to purge the Space Wolves from their homeworld of Fenris. As time went on, Magnus vanished for decades at a time, his whereabouts obscured from even the most determined of seers.

In Magnus' absence, Regent Ahzek Ahriman went to great lengths to see the Thousand Sons rebuilt. His callous and high-handed attitude towards the lives of allies, especially those of the Imperial Army, meant that even as their numbers rose, the regard in which they were held fell. This reputedly earned a furious rebuke from Magnus on his return, after which Ahriman was careful to show more respect for non-psychics, or at least to moderate his public comments.

At the end of his life, Regent Ahriman was finally able to redeem himself. When the hexagrammatic wards used to seal the webway portal in the old Imperial palace began to decay and threatened to tear wide open once more, Ahriman was at the forefront of researching a way to permanently close the rift. His divinations showed that this could only be done from within, something which, as the pre-eminent expert, he insisted on doing personally. Despite all of this, there are still some who claim that it was a ploy; that he survived the process, and became the first human to walk the webway's paths and search out the secrets of the Eldar's infamous Black Library. Though such guile was certainly part of Ahriman's character, if this was the case he has never returned to the Imperium to speak of what he found there.

## Legion Organisation

Though still nominally commanded by their primarch, Magnus' lengthy disappearances mean that in practice the legion is led by the Captain of the First Great Company as Regent. It is rare enough to find a candidate worthy of becoming an Astartes in a normal legion, but when they must also be strong and resilient psykers, the task becomes even more difficult. For this reason they have never been a large legion, although they have long ago exceeded their nominal thousand brothers. Their grand companies are small, and only Fulgrim's self-imposed limit of thirty grand companies has allowed the Thousand Sons to exceed their numbers.

Though they intentionally cultivate a distant and mysterious persona, the Thousand Sons are forced by their low numbers to frequently work alongside more numerous organisations such as the Imperial Army. Ever since the damaging days of Regent Ahriman, Magnus has taken great pains to ensure that the Thousand Sons are perceived by their allies as an invaluable advantage in any battle. So important is this that Thousand Sons of any rank may be reprimanded and even demoted for giving their allies the impression they are being treated as disposable cannon fodder.

In a legion of battle psykers, the captains of the grand companies are amongst the most potent and skilled, with powers far exceeding those of the chief librarians of any other Astartes. Commanding upwards of a hundred squads, each captain is charged with a specific task by the regent. This varies from guarding Holy Terra and combating incursions of the daemonic, to prosecuting the Long War against the Traitor Legions, in particular the berserkers of the Space Wolves. Realising that psychic strength is nothing without the fortitude of faith in the Emperor, the Thousand Sons were the first legion to import Lorgar's concept of chaplains. These individuals play a vital role in guiding the moral and spiritual growth of the legion. Initiates who, as Lorgar put it, display a particularly intense 'communion with the divine' during the soul-binding ritual are marked out for further training within the Reclusiam.

Just as the chaplains guard their brethren's souls, the grand company‟s Apothecarion and Armoury protect their bodies and wargear. Despite this, it has been said that comparatively little care is given to these roles, with positions such as the crewing of vehicles being seen as dumping grounds for those who have not fulfilled their early promise as battle-psykers. However, this is not always the case, as among their ranks are brethren able to manifest psychic talents invaluable to these specialties. Such prodigies can perfectly attune themselves to their subjects, able to reach inside matter to re-knit flesh, soothe a restless machine spirit or re-forge a shattered mechanism, and are vital to the legion's continued existence.

### Specialist Units

* **Rehati** - The Rehati is the XVth Legion's inner coven of advisors and was comprised of the most trusted confidants to Magnus the Red. The Rehati are drawn from the ranks of the elite Captains of the Thousand Sons' Fellowships to address whatever issues are currently concerning the XVth Legion. Its members are ever-changing, and inclusion within the Rehati is dependent on many things, not least of which was an Astartes' standing within the Legion. The Cults of the Thousand Sons vie for prominence and a place in the Primarch's inner circle, knowing that to bask in his radiance will only enhance their powers. As the power of the Empyrean waxes and wanes, so too does the mystical abilities of the Cults. The Rehati serve a similar position for the Thousand Sons that is comparable to the Mournival of the Luna Wolves Legion.
* **Sekhmet (Scarab Occult)** - The Sekmet, also sometimes called the Scarab Occult or Magnus' Veterans, are made up of the best and brightest of the the Thousand Sons Legion and equipped with crimson-coloured Tactical Dreadnought Armour. The Sekhmet are all members of the elite First Fellowship, under the command of the First Fellowship and acting Regent. These proud and extremely devoted warriors are both combat veterans and highly-ranked members of the psychic mastery cult system of the Thousand Sons. None of the Sekhmet are below the Cult grade of Philosophus, the final Cult rank a warrior can hold before facing the Dominus Liminus. Each warrior is able to mentally transcend their physical and emotional weaknesses; achieving a form of emotional purity that results in warriors who are both fearless and willing to follow orders immediately and unquestioningly. This extraordinary level of discipline was commented on by some of the other Primarchs who witnessed the Sekhmet in action during the Great Crusade. The Great Khan of the White Scars Legion, Jaghatai Khan, commented that they were no better than automata, whilst, in a similar vein, Ferrus Manus of the Iron Hands Legion likened them to robots, though some within the Thousand Sons suspected that knowing the Iron Hands' affinity for technology, this comment may have been meant as a form of compliment. Leman Russ, the Great Wolf of the Space Wolves Legion, showed disdain for what he perceived as the Sekhmet's perceived "lack" of fighting spirit and *espirit d'corps* due to their taciturn natures.

### The Cult Arcana

The Thousand Sons, like some of their fellow independent-minded Astartes Legions, employ a non-standard organisation within the XVth Legion. The pillars of the psychic mysteries of the Thousand Sons are known as the Five Fold Cults. Cults specialise in a single strand of psychic power and every psyker of manifest power within the Legion belongs to a Cult which mirrors their foremost ability.

Though some Thousand Sons Astartes never develope any measurable amount of psychic ability after being implanted with the XVth Legion's gene-seed, the majority do develop some form of psychic ability just like their Primarch Magnus soon after completing the transformation process. The Legion uses five different Cults to develop and improve the abilities of the often powerful psykers found amidst this Legion's ranks. Membership within these Cults is determined regardless of the Fellowship (Chapter) to which each Astartes belongs within the Legion since Cult membership is based upon the psychic ability for which a Thousand Sons Legionary displays the most affinity. Each Fellowship of the Thousand Sons is usually made up of Legionaries coming from all five of the Cults within the XVth Legion, though it is not unheard of for a Fellowship's membership to be dominated by the members of just one of the Cults.

These five Cults had been founded within the Legion by the nine original members of Magnus the Red's inner circle or cabal who were collectively known as the *Rehati*. The Rehati had each earned mastery in one of the five psychic disciplines recognised by the Legion and most other scholars of sorcery. Each Cult was formed to further the development of one of the recognised psychic aptitudes: the Athanaeans focused on telepathy, the Corvidae sought to develop their precognitive abilities, the Pavoni learned to make use of physiokinesis, the mental manipulation of one's own physiological processes, the Pyrae plumbed the secrets of fire, a discipline called pyrokinesis, and the Raptora mastered the potent power of telekinesis.

The leader of each Cult bears the rank of Magister Templi. The leader of all the Cults is known as the Magus, and this is a rank exclusively held by the XVth Legion's Primarch, Magnus the Red. The highest rank within the Cult system is that of *Ipissumus*, a grade which represents a being free from limitations, who lives in balance with the corporeal and incorporeal universe. For all intents and purposes, the Ipissumus is the most perfect being in the universe. This esteemed rank is represented by the most powerful human psyker in existence -- the Emperor of Mankind.

On the Thousand Sons' home world of Prospero, within the capital city of Tizca, each Cult maintains its own pyramidal headquarters, which serves as both a repository of the arcane knowledge that they have collected about their chosen psychic disciplines from across the galaxy as well as training facilities specifically geared towards enhancing psykers who displays strength in one of the five recognised psychic disciplines. Each of these pyramids' front gates is topped by the great golden icon that represents the Cult, save for the pyramid of the Pyrae Cult, which is topped by an ever-burning flame and whose gate is guarded by *Canis Vertex*, a Warlord-class Battle Titan of the Legio Astorum that would see action during the Burning of Prospero.

To further represent the distinctiveness of the Cults' members, the Legionaries from each Cult display their Cult's insignia upon the shoulder pauldrons of their battle-plate, with the Cult's distinctive icon placed within the centre of the XVth Legion's badge.

The five Cults of the Thousand Sons include the following:

* **Athanaen** - The Athanaen's secrets are bound to the workings and manipulations of the mind and thought. Both subtle and powerful telepaths, they hold the Legion together in battle, channelling orders and intent seamlessly into the minds of its warriors, forming a communications network unbreakable and unparalleled in scope. Because of this, it often seems not an army of individuals but of machines driven by a single, dominating will. Out of the press of battle, many of the Cult are given to asceticism and withdrawn contemplation: a consequence of their contact with the thoughts of others, perhaps. They are often also used as emissaries to other Legions and factions of the Imperium.
* **Corvidae** - The Corvidae are soothsayers and augurs who bend their abilities to touch the flow of time and consequence. Perhaps the most subtle of all the Cults, it is said by their fellows that they can read the past in a dying man's breath, and can glimpse far distant possibilities, and even manipulate the flow of one second to another by the force of their minds alone. The mark of the Corvidae is also the mark of the Legion's greatest strategists and generals, and it is no coincidence that Ahzek Ahriman, Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons, and foremost of its leaders at the dawning the Dornian Heresy, was Magister Templi of the Corvidae.
* **Pavoni** - The Pavoni concern themselves with the interaction of the ætheric and living flesh. Biomancers, they are flesh shapers and re-makers, and their initiates can channel the powers of the Warp to harden their flesh against damage, boil the blood of their enemies, and even to heal the bones and flesh of their bodies. Deeply connected to the process of life, the Pavoni are often said to hold the heart and the passion of the Legion, and in matters of doctrine, oratory and belief, their adepts often dominate.
* **Pyrae** - The Pyrae's abilities express themselves in a terrifying manner - the control and creation of fire. Their thoughts can become hell-storms burning as bright as a star's fury, and their touch can reduce metal to slag in mere moments. Most bellicose of all the Cults, the Pyrae excel in destruction, and their smouldering pride beats with the heat of the Legion's martial heart.
* **Raptora** - The Raptora focuses on manipulating physical reality with their will, operating psychokinesis and control of fundamental forces such as gravity. The can conjure shields of invisible energy known as 'kine-shields', crush metal with their minds, and summon storms of debris to flay their foes. Many of the Raptora are also amongst the Legion's most gifted theoreticians and scholars, noted for the coldness and cleanness of their reasoning and their logic.

### The Red Orders

In addition to the core structures of the Legion, there are three Orders which exists both within and beyond its circumference. The Orders stand apart from the Fellowships and their Circles, and indeed the Temples of Prosperine psychic lore, their membership crossing such divides. Their purpose is not the practice and ascendancy of psychic mastery, for that is the purview of he great Cults, nor the day-to-day tactical operations of the Legion, but rather they are macro-military structures. Perhaps as much an outgrowth of the traditions and culture of the Legion as a deliberate structure, they are made to cope with the wider factors of the conducting of the Emperor's crusades, the furtherance of the Legion as a whole and its relation to the wider Imperium.

* **The Order of Ruin**, '**The Unmakers**' - Known by the symbol of a poised serpent, the Order of Ruin is a sect of mystics said to be obsessed with numerology and the hidden structure of the universe. Calculators, logicians, analysts and organisers of supreme ability, the Order of Ruin are the siege makers, logistical specialists and planners of the Thousand Sons. When the Legion deploys its armour and ordnance to lay waste to a city or break a planet's defences, it is the formulae of the Order of Ruin which guides the number, placement and timing of shells, explosives and force. It is said that the Order of Ruin knows the strength of every warrior and war machine within the Legion, and weighs them all in calculations that only they and their Primarch understand. When a force is raised for a campaign, the Order of Ruin will be in the background assisting by arcane means in the determination of the disposition and strength of that force. The arraying and maintenance of the Legion's warships also fall under the Order's hand, as does the creation and supply of all its material. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Order of Ruin also maintains the closes contact with the Mechanicum, in particular with the isolated Forge World Zhao-Arkhad, which the Legion had liberated millennia ago and with which it had maintained many binding ties afterwards. Under its general command labours all of the Legion's forge-masters and Techmarines, many of which come directly from within this Order's ranks.
* **The Order of the Jackal**, '**The Measure of Life and Death**' - The Order of the Jackal has a presence in every other structure and faction of the Thousand Sons, including the other Orders. The role of this small Order is twofold: to remember the dead and to raise the next generation of warriors for the Legion. The grave urns of the dead kept beneath the Whispering Tower, which houses the light of the Astronomican itself, are tended by their hands, and it is in the memories of each member of this Order that the deeds of the fallen are held. When a warrior on the edge of death is considered for the honour of internment in the iron embrace of a Dreadnought, it is the Order of the Jackal who weighs his worth and decides his fate. To them also falls the task of assessing and selecting aspirants for induction into the Legion. On Terra and many other worlds, they will walk amongst the gathered throngs of potential recruits, testing with their minds and casting divinations of their fates. In this way, the Order are the guardians of the Legion's past and future. The Legion's Apothecarion, who also are all but indivisible from the Order of the Jackal, maintains the Legion's gene-seed and are but a practical manifestation in some ways of the Order of the Jackal's wider purpose. In their role as protectors of the Legion's traditions, the Order serves another highly important ritual position as arbiters within the Legion, as their members within each of the Five Cults form the guardians of each Cult's temple; their dual allegiance and responsibility marked by their ceremonial jackal-masked helms and emblems alongside the symbols of the Cult.
* **The Order of Blindness**, '**The Hidden Ones**' - It is only by extrapolation, and the interception of scraps of intelligence, that the wider Imperium knows of the existence of the Order of Blindness. Thought to have been headed by Magnus' Equerry, and former tutor, Amon - the so-called Hidden Ones appear to have been an Order of infiltrators, spies, interrogators and scouts deployed to gather intelligence. How the members of this Order are recruited, controlled and deployed remains unclear, though there is evidence that the use psychically conditioned non-Legiones Astartes humans are a part of their broader methodology. It is believed, that a mortal operative of the Hidden Ones infiltrates a target organisation of interest to gather intelligence while operating under a cover so deep that they never even realised that they have been psychically-reprogrammed to act as a sleeper agent for the Thousand Sons. Beyond this, their membership and purpose remains shrouded, though there is some evidence that the Order might also have been responsible for the control of certain fringe military elements within the Legion, whose purposes are less to do with stealth than the creation of chaos in a foe, such as the Thousand Sons' few Destroyer-type units, although this remains unconfirmed.

#### Notable Sects

* **Ammitara Occult Intercession Cabal** - The very existence of the sect known as the Ammitara Occult is in some cases doubted, such is the group's secrecy and shadowed reputation beyond the confines of its Legion. Even within the ranks of the Thousand Sons, it is spoken of obliquely, if acknowledged at all, as evidence collected from the wreckage of Prospero was later to attest. The Ammitara is the striking fangs of The Order of the Blindness, perhaps the most hidden and obscure division of the Thousand Sons, dedicated to misdirection, reconnaissance and some claim even espionage beyond the Legion, with the Intercession Cabals of the Ammitara specialising in another dark art of war -- assassination. The psychic talents of the Ammitara are more subtle and honed than those of the greater adepts of the Thousand Sons, and encompasse a number of forces touching on the purview of the different Cults, but with a single goal in mind -- the precise and efficient dealing of death. So it is that one Ammitara might use delicate precognition to predict where their target will be when they fire with preternatural accuracy, while another might psychokinetically accelerate a shell towards its target with shattering force, or cause a foe's blood to evacuate their wound with horrifying speed. These myriad esoteric agencies of death were manifested as a single unique psychic power -- the 'Mind Killer'.
* **Khenetai Occult Blade Cabal** - The Khenetai Occult are a mystical sect within the Thousand Sons' Order of the Jackal who serve as the guardians of the Prosperine Cults as well as their reliquaries and sanctums. Bound together by oath and ritually-forged psychic bonds, each of these elite are all initiates of the Cults' inner secrets and adepts in their techniques, philosophies and arts. The foremost warriorrs of the Khenetai form cabals of 'Blades', sublimely skilled warriors who have honed their psychic powers to be at one with their sword mastery. Their dual Force Swords are shaped from single sheets of psycho-crytalline-infused ceramite and gilt, with sigils said to correspond to the wielder's secret name and the deeds they have performed. In battle they wear armour forged and shaped by the Legion's blind artificers using fire and the force of their minds alone, and fight with a unified precision that make them seem a single warrior manifested many times, rather than a group of individual fighters.

## Legion Home World & Recruitment

The Thousand Sons' homeworld of Prospero was originally colonised by outcasts from human society, in particular by those gifted with psychic talent who wished to escape the baying mob. By the time Magnus the Red arrived on their world they had constructed a haven of enlightenment, a place where learning was pursued for the simple joy of it. The psychic gifts displayed by the population were a perfect match for Magnus' new legion, and under the primarch's aegis, psykers flocked to Prospero from across the Segmentum. New cities mirroring the beauty of the capital were constructed, and this influx of hardy, resourceful immigrants improved still further the quality of recruits available to the legion. This idyll was short-lived, though, with even the oracles of Tizca unable to foresee the global destruction the corrupted Space Wolves wrought upon the world. Despite the best efforts of the Thousand Sons the cities were blasted to rubble, its libraries burned to ash and the population brutally exterminated.

After the Heresy, with Prospero nothing more than a mass-grave, the Thousand Sons felt no reason to return there. The place held too many memories and ghosts of dead friends. With Magnus labouring to modify the Astronomicon to sustain the Emperor's essence, and the Thousand Sons' invaluable psychic talents put to use in eliminating the taint of the daemonic from the very heart of the Imperium, they began to regard Holy Terra as their new home. Quietly, and with the consent of friends among the High Lords of Terra such as Lorgar and Abaddon, the legion fortified and expanded the chamber used to carry out the soul-binding ritual into their new fortress-monastery. This massive citadel is located within the citywide complex known as the City of Sight, the headquarters of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica. From this imposing edifice of silver and white, the Thousand Sons select recruits from amongst those psykers brought in by the Black Ships. They are tested in any number of ways, the final one being the ritual of soul-binding. Those who survive are declared ready for training, and for the gene-seed implantation process to begin.

## Legion Combat Doctrine

"*You're angered, I am not. A thousand fires burn inside but show no emotion, it can destroy your soul.*"
— Attr. Phael Amoketh, Veteran Legionary and member of the Raptora Cult.
As has always been Magnus' intent, the Thousand Sons use their psychic talents to the full on the battlefield. As well as wielding powers that make them formidable opponents, the legion's commanding officers use their prodigious talents to guide and coordinate the movement of their squads and those of their allies. Never a numerous legion, they rely heavily upon the Imperial Army, as well as on guidance from the Emperor‟s Tarot to strike at the most auspicious time and place. Though this sometimes strikes their allies as intransigence, once committed they are able to turn the tide of any battle.

Individual squads are led by sergeants who are powerful battle-psykers in their own right. It is their responsibility to coordinate and focus the less mature abilities of those in their charge. Despite the intensive training they receive to do this, it is an exceptional talent who can effectively direct more than five or six of his brethren. In this way, each squad is able to employ psychic powers to complement their battlefield role. Such is their unity that each feels the other‟s pain. A wound suffered by one, let alone a death, is felt across the mental link by all, and the loss of the sergeant can leave the squad stunned and without focus.

Tactical and Devastator squads are able to telekinetically guide their shots to hit weak points in an enemy's armour, or to strike down those who believe themselves safely behind cover. Units specialising in close combat use their skills to blot themselves from their opponent's sight, allowing them to approach undetected. The most skilled of veterans can even use their powers to read what an opponent will do even as they think it, an advantage they use to the full in the brutal mêlée of the battlefield. By the time a brother has earned the right to wear Terminator armour his skills are all-but mature. At this stage they are able to channel their psychic might through the crystalline matrix of a force weapon, and the long, arduous training to lead a squad of their own can begin.

## Legion Beliefs

The Thousand Sons believe that the only way humanity as a species can ultimately defeat the Ruinous Powers is for it to gain sufficient psychic strength and fortitude to resist its predations. This brings with it a great dilemma as their very existence, and that of the Emperor, relies upon the Black Ships which bring in a constant harvest of psykers from across the Imperium. How, they ask, can humanity increase its psychic potential when psykers live in fear of the howling mob, and while the finest talents are constantly being removed from the gene-pool?

To this end the Legion yearns to reconstitute the original dream of Prospero by creating isolated havens for those with psychic talent. Whenever this has been tried over the millennia it has ended in disaster, either through massed daemonic incursion or resentment from neighbouring cities at the extensive and preferential protection offered by the Thousand Sons to these settlements in times of war. Their staunchest critics leap upon such plans as evidence that the Thousand Sons are intent on the forcible replacement of humanity with those of the 'mutant psyker strain'. There are some amongst the legion who whisper that in the face of such hatred perhaps this would be a good thing. They are, however, in a very small minority, and the legion continues to fight as loyally for the Imperium as it has since the day that Magnus first knelt in fealty to the Emperor.

## Legion Gene-Seed

In the early years of the legion's history there were severe problems with spontaneous mutations, both of the body and among their gene-seed implants. This was known as the 'Flesh-Change'. With the advent of the soul-binding the incidences of this dramatically reduced. This communion with the Emperor has been described as alleviating the innate mutability of the Magnus' gene-seed, although at the time critics claimed it had more to do with the legion being forced to forego the corrupting influence of sorcery. Despite this, the Thousand Sons still suffer more from spontaneous mutation than any other loyalist legion. Although the use of bionic limbs to replace ones lost in combat is common among the Emperor's Astartes, for the Thousand Sons the cause is more likely to be due to the effects of progressive mutation.

This instability also extends to the Magnus gene-seed. While it continues to enhance the psychic talent of the recipient, its inherent mutability shows a noticeable decline in implant efficiency within a bare handful of generations. Although this has been remedied by the frequent infusion of fresh gene-stock derived directly from their primarch, this dependence is yet another cause for concern over Magnus' frequent and lengthy disappearances. Even beyond their anxiety over the risk of losing their primogenitor, the Thousand Sons realise that his death would also be the harbinger of their own extinction.

## Legion Fleet

* ***Photep* (*Gloriana*-class Battleship) - The *Photep* serves as both the Primarch Magnus the Red's and the XVth Legion's flagshig.**
* ***Ankhtowe* (Battle Barge)**
* ***Kymmeru* (Battle Barge)**
* ***Scion of Prospero* (Battle Barge)**
* ***Sekhemra* (Battle Barge)**
* ***Sycorax* (Battle Barge)**
* ***Geometric* (Destroyer)**
* ***Herumon* (Unknown Class)**
* ***Phosis T'Kar* (Planet Scourer, Unique Class)**
* ***Waning Moon* (Strike Cruiser)**

## Legion Appearance

### Legion Colours

#### Pre-Prosperine

The pre-Prosperine panoply of the original XVth Legion cannot be more in contrast to that which it was later to take on, its colouration and armourials echoing that of both the Achaemenid Empire and the Noe'hion "Witch-Mark" of Old Terra centered above a lapis-blue coloured "M". It was from that region of Terra that many of the first recruits of the XVth Legion were first drawn. Like their fellow Space Marine Legions, the XVth originally wore unadorned stormcloud gray-coloured power armour. However, following the end of the Terran Unification Wars and the beginning of the subsequent Great Crusade, many Space Marine Legions began to incorporate individual livery and colours in keeping with their Legion's character and further distinguishing themselves from one another. The Legionaries of the XVth Legion adopted pearl-coloured power armour with gold-coloured trim, while the right inset was coloured lapis-blue and the left inset was coloured a deep orange colour. Individual livery and markings were also incorporated upon the surface of their battle-plate, their exact symbolism and meaning unclear to outsiders.

#### Post-Prosperine

Following their reunification with their Primarch and subsequent reorganisation, the newly renamed Thousand Sons adopted red-colourd battle-plate in honour of their Primarch, Magnus the Red, whose skin was crimson in tone. This was further enhanced by gold trim and custom sub-pattern helmets of Prosperine design which were reminiscent in appearance to the ancient culture of Gyptus on Old Earth.

### Legion Badge

The pre-Prosperine badge consisted of a lapis-blue coloured "M" (Terran "Millennium" iconography). The "M" most likely represented the ancient Romanii numeral that stands for the numeral for one-thousand, which is the source of the Legion's name and the original number of Space Marine Legionaries raised for the XVth Legion, most of whom had been hand-picked by the Emperor Himself. This number also was reflected by the number of Magnus' gene-sons who survived the horrible "Flesh Change" when they finally reunited with their Primarch on the world of Prospero.

Additional Legionaries were eventually recruited during the course of the Great Crusade, swelling the ranks of the Thousand Sons well beyond their eponymous number. Space Marine Legions were usually comprised of a minimum of ten thousand active Astartes. Like many of their contemporaries whose numbers grew over the centuries of the Great Crusade, the Thousand Sons were no different, eventually swelling to 80,000-90,000 Astartes at the height of the Imperium's expansion before the Horus Heresy.

Just before the Dornian Heresy began, following the reunification with their Primarch Magnus, the newly renamed 'Thousand Sons' altered their Legion icon into a solar glyph, which would become the Thousand Sons' official armourial icon.

## Trivia

This article was originally authored by Aurelius Rex over on the Bolter & Chainsword forums. All rights are reserved to him.

## Gallery

Thousand Sons Shai-Captain, Thotek P'Tra, of the Fifth Fellowship, Magister Templi of the Pyrae CultThousand Sons elite Scarab Occult (Sekhmet) Terminator, Kalophis Z'kar, of the 1st Fellowship arrayed in relic Cataphractii Terminator Armour.Modern-era Thousand Sons Veteran Legionary and member of the Raptora Cult, Phael Amoketh, arrayed in Tartaros Terminator Armour.Thousand Sons Cult-Sergeant, Sanakht Maat, of the 12th Fellowship.Thousand Sons veteran Tactical Legionary, Phael Thothmet, of the 4th Fellowship.Thousand Sons Destroyer Legionary, Anubius Sum, of the 7th Fellowship.