Ebon Talons

Ebon Talons armorial with corrupted iconography.

Colour scheme of the Ebon Talons, displayed by an Initiate Legionnaire.

### **Warband Size**

Approximately 2,500 Heretic Astartes, various allied forces, over seven billion citizens

### **Colours**

Black, Dark Blue with Silver trim.

The **Ebon Talons** are a traitorous chapter of Heretic Astartes formerly named the Emperor's Talons. Utilising the gene-stock of the ancient and wild White Scars, the Emperor's Talons were created as a part of the 23rd Founding, the so-called 'Sentinel Founding', which occurred during the latter part of the 37th and early 38th Millennia. This was one of a series of linked Foundings that took place during this tumultuous period in Imperial history. The Chapters of the Sentinel Founding were intended to repair the power and reach of the Adeptus Astartes that had suffered considerable losses in the preceding millennia.

Corrupted during the fratricidal war known as the Endrabian Heresy, the Talons have carved out an empire as vassals of the Lord of Change Gra'ndruz the Fleshweaver. Now fully enthralled by Tzeentch, the Ebon Talons have constructed a degenerate philosophy worshipping mutation as the cause of human salvation.

## Summarized History

The Ebon Talons were a loyalist chapter of Space Marines that specialized in anti-Tyranid warfare. Their doctrine involved chipping away at swarms en route to biomass centers, and often suicidal Jump Pack assaults intended to assassinate synapse creatures. This method of warfare both denied the Tyranids the biomass of soldiers slain in open warfare and, if successful, left the aimless lower warforms as easy pickings for incineration squads.

Due to the Chapter’s heavy reliance on jump packs, they were considered to be non-Codex compliant. As the chapter’s culture matured, most veteran battle brothers came to serve as assault marines, including the Chapter leadership.

The Talons remained loyal until the events of the Endrabian Heresy. They, along with other Imperial elements, entered into open warfare with the Adeptus Arbites of the Segmentum Pacificus and the Sanguine Host chapter. Initially an effort to defend the holy shrine of Saint Andrew the Torchbearer, the Talons fell to chaos as they pursued the wholesale extermination of the Sanguine Host as vengeance for the murder of the Emperor’s Talons Chapter Master Antanic Qex.

Since their fall to darkness, the Talons have built and defended a minor Chaos Empire in the northeast of the former Segmentum Pacificus. Their territory is a major focal point for demonic incursions in the galactic west. The Talons actively seek to "liberate" the people of the Imperium from the Emperor’s Light, frequently scheming to weaken imperial defenses and seizing vulnerable worlds. Additionally, the Talons play an active role in the Great Game of Chaos, hunting and killing champions of Slaanesh as an act of vengeance for the Dark Prince’s offenses against their chapter.

## Notable Campaigns

* **The Grim Harvest (c. Mid-M38)** - The Ebon Talons were involved in purging several Space Hulks holding the possessed and mutated victims of the Children’s Crusade which appeared throughout the Segmentum Tempestus.
* **Defense of Crao’s World (748.M41) -** Talons regiments were called to the Death World after the seventh and favored son of an allied planetary governor went missing during a training exercise. They discovered and defended the world from a tendril of the Crimson Maw Hivefleet**.**
* **Second Tyrannic War (992.M41)**  - The Ebon Talons participated in the defense of over nine worlds from tendrils of Hive Fleet Kraken. While six were consumed, over twenty billion human beings were saved by the marine’s stalwart defense.
* **Scouring of Kastia Delta (34.M42)**  - Amidst the anarchy of the ongoing Indominus Crusade, the Talons were called on to protect a Ecclesiarchy mission to the feudal world of Kastia Delta, as well as a large shipment of food and needed medicines. While in transit, the Talons vessel *Final Judgement*  became mired in the warp and was attacked by Daemons of Nurgle. While the demons were eventually dispatched, much of the ship’s crew and a portion of the Ecclesiarchy mission were reduced to still-living sludge by Daemonic magic. When the Talons escaped the warp, they delivered the medicines to the population of Kastia Delta. However, the material had been corrupted by the warp, and within a week mutated the citizenry into fungal, bestial abhumans. The Talons purged the world of the daemon-mutated horrors over a decade, and pledged themselves to a Penitent Crusade for the next two hundred years in shame for their failure.
* **The Endrabian Heresy (157.M42)** - The nightmarish disaster that saw the death of over half of the Talons battle-brothers and their fall to Chaos.
* **The Pollux Incursion (172.M42)**  - A strike force of Ebon Talons penetrated the Thousand Sons library world of Pollux in order to steal a portion of their geneseed and deliberately inflict the Flesh Change upon themselves.
* **Humiliation of the Gorger (209.M42)** - A raiding force of Ebon Talons exterminated the Winedrinkers Slaanesh warband. Their Chaos Lord, Talax the Gorger, was imprisoned in a sensory deprivation chamber below Chogai Many-Beaks’ throne.
* **Dark Crusade of the Fleshweaver (237.M42)**  - At the behest of their daemonic master, the Ebon Talons marched to war alongside legions of Tzeentch’s daemons to conquer a greater portion of the Segmentum Pacificus. While they made initial gains, the Dark Crusaders were bogged down when multiple loyalist chapters took up arms alongside the defenders. The surge of warp energy attracted predators - Grey Knights, and the null swarms of Hivefleet Kronos. The Crusade degenerated into a three way battle for the northern segmentum. It was only when the Chaos Lord Unaz Embersworn consumed the souls of nine hundred and ninety nine loyalist sanctioned psykers that he was able to summon the Exalted Flamer Vogred Blazebright and bind it to a red dwarf star that the tide turned for the Chaos armada. The new chaos star unmoored itself from its celestial bindings and crept into the void to cause havoc, blasting its home system to dust simply through the density of its gravitational pull. Much of Hive Fleet Kronos was burnt in its heart. For this feat, Unaz Embersworn was granted apotheosis, and transformed into a Daemon Prince.

## Warband Beliefs

Unlike many heretic astartes, the Ebon Talons actively worship Tzeentch, believing he is both the precursor to human sentience and the key to their apotheosis. The Talons believe that baseline humanity will not survive the current millennia. In order for the species to survive, it must aggressively evolve into a higher form both through Tzeentch’s intercession and eugenics. That they have essentially adopted the survival strategy of the Tyranids is lost on them.

What form the new human race is intended to take is not clear. The Daemon Prince Unaz Embersworn is often seen as the exemplar of the Talon’s philosophy, suggesting a desire to draw closer to the psychic and volatile form of life that exists in the warp. Official propaganda features humans born with Firstborn physicality and psychic abilities comparable to the Aeldari. Still others suggest an entirely new form of life, one able to alter its body and biochemistry at will, able to occupy and subdue any environment.

## Homeworld

Since their fall to Chaos, the Ebon Talons have relocated their fortress-monastery to the former penal world of Pylaron Minoris. This den of mutants and renegades is fertile ground for the Talon’s grotesque zealotry and is rife with chaos cults who move openly among the “normal” citizenry.

Since its transformation into a Daemon World, Minoris has changed deeply. Following the summoning of the Memory of Orkhon, the world was infested with a new and foreign ecosystem. Now, Minoris bulges with plant life. Sweet-smelling flowers thrust themselves from the snow, petals adorned with ice, only to die moments later. Vines bloom and freeze to death within seconds.

Locations shift weekly, seemingly disappearing and reappearing as far as different continents or as close as a different neighbourhood. Only the strong will of the Guild of Guides can consistently find their way, and in less time than they should. Many wild regions have been invaded by the daemonic, twisting the wildlife or the ground itself. There are regions where gravity is inconsistent, creating enormous flying islands.

As Tzeentch has willed, Pylaron Minoris has become a physical intersection on the knotted and wounded fourth dimension. Warriors from a distant and incongruous past find themselves stranded, hiring themselves out as mercenaries to the local population and the government. Marines from alternate timelines appear, their memories ragged, unable to understand how they arrived. In certain sacred and secret places, even the most mundane can witness visions of futures yet undetermined.

And, worse still, there are wounds where one can walk straight into the Warp.

## Notable Formations

Despite their servitude to the Changer of Ways, the Talon’s warband operates in a relatively strict hierarchy based upon skill and mutation in equal measure.

### Lord and Master

The Ebon Talons are led by the bombastic, boisterous, and boasteful Unaz Embersworn, Daemon Prince of Tzeentch. Embersworn holds court in the Living City daily, prosecuting his role in the Great Game within our reality rather than the warp. He is a powerful sorceror with limited tactical genius, preferring to burn his enemies to ash in malevolent alpha strikes than suffer the tedium of a metaphorical game of chess.

### The Skyblade

The Skyblade are the most elite, most mutated, most favored of the Ebon Talons. Led by the enigmatic Talaghun Ashmaster, the Skyblade are jump assault specialists with a penchant for cruelty and a disregard for the niceties of civilized warfare. Ashmaster’s minions are known to swoop into unprotected back lines to slaughter command staff and kill generals in their beds. On the battlefield, they tend to target the leadership of opposing forces, often winning battles with brutal decapitation strikes that leaves their enemies leaderless and without orders.

### The Ennead

A formation of ninety nine Astartes who allowed themselves to be possessed by Daemons of Tzeentch to hasten the process of mutation. Led by Chogai Many-Beaks, the Ennead have taken up the role of religious leaders on Pylaron Minoris, evangelizing amidst the masses and gathering chaos cults to their open arms. On the battlefield, the Ennead strike as swift as vipers, charging alongside howling cultists into blazing gunlines.

### The Hellriders

Trapped in the lowly rank of Legionary, hardly mutated and rarely permitted on raids, Vang-Addar the Ever Watcher sought alternate paths to power. At a stroke of genius - or insanity- he struck out into the Prismatic Plains. There, he wandered into the Warp, and in the grey void between godly realms he found his salvation. A herd of lesser daemons, not sworn to any of the gods and perceived as ashen steeds by the limited human mind, grazed on fields of embryonic fleshfruit. Vang-Addar mounted and mastered the Alpha of the steeds, dragging it into reality and forcing his will upon it. Others followed, and now Lord Addar is the chief of his own formation of demon riders.

### Servants of Ansalax

Ansalax Griseneuth, Change Favored, is a man out of time. He is an Ebon Talon, but a Talon of an altogether different timeline.

His Talons were survivors of M39, daemon summoners of Chaos Undivided ready to take part in the 13th Black Crusade. He remembers little- the grotesque pop of daemonic incursion, a desperate attempt to evangelize Tzeentch to the apostate marines, and a Great Destroyer who brought his brothers to their end.

Tzeentch was not finished with his plaything. He brought Lord Griseneuth out of death to this timeline, to serve a new and terribly familiar Prince. In this timeline, in a Universe infested with hope and ripped apart by Chaos, he will have his final victory. Or die trying.

### The Ash Cult

Among the grotesque ranks of the Ebon Talons, there are a small number who possess sorcerous potential worthy of cultivation. These marines are separated from the normal command structure of the warband and placed directly under the protection of Unaz Embersworn, where they study Tzeentch’s mysteries with a gluttonous fervor. There are only nine fully fledged Sorcerers in the ranks of the Ash Cult. Each sorcerer is accompanied by an apprentice who aides in rituals and adds their psychic power to their own in return for learning at the sorcerer’s feet. When the apprentice is ready to advance, they must assassinate their master where, if they succeed, they may learn darker secrets from the Daemon Prince himself.

In addition to their apprentice, Ash Cult sorcerors are accompanied on the battlefield by small units of Legionaries, who act as bodyguards. Noteable members include Uriah Ghul, the Everburning, an aspiring sorcerer gifted with the kiss of Tzeentch’s flame.

### Specialist Legionaries

Rising above the rank and file, there are multiple groups of Legionnaires with valuable specializations. From heavy weapons specialists, to those who maintain and operate the fearsome, daemon infested Predators, to those who conduct the blasphemous rites needed to summon lesser daemons to realspace, these Battle Brothers are the lowest ranking members of the warband with any real standing. All seek to further expand their abilities to ascend the warband’s ranks.

### Legionaries

The largest portion of the warband, and the least powerful, Legionaries are often used as garrison troops, bodyguards, and in rare cases, law enforcement. Their primary duty is to consolidate and protect the Talons homeworld and conquests from rebellion, wildlife, and daemonic incursion. This is a thankless task, especially for those with White Scar geneseed who yearn to ride free. However, it is a necessary duty if the Embersworn Empire is to endure.

Most Legionnaries are recruited either from the 38th Pacificus or the numerous Chaos Cults which follow the Talons. Recruits must have at least some mutation, and are usually chosen for their bravery, cunning, or by omen. The Talons implant Astartes organs relatively slowly, a compromise in the name of enjoying older and more experienced recruits. However, before they are fully initiated as Legionaries, recruits must undergo the Nine Trials amidst the implantations process, which brings recruits into close contact with the daemonic and causes most to go insane, devolve into Spawn, or simply die. Those who survive boast strength, endurance, and intellect greater than baseline Astartes.

## Gene-Seed

The Ebon Talons originating geneseed came from the White Scars. The Great Khan’s geneseed is known to harbor no flaws. In addition to the normal aspects of a Space Marine, the Ebon Talon geneseed prior to their treason was known to grant greater resistance to G-forces and more efficient lungs even than the average Astartes, permitting battle brothers to maintain consciousness in thinner atmosphere with lower oxygen saturation.

Since their treason, like many warbands, the Talons have come to rely on a combination of theft and manufacture to replace lost geneseed. Some battlebrothers still hold ‘pure’ White Scars geneseed, while others may possess Thousand Sons, Raven Guard, or Imperial Fist genetics. However, as geneseed is normally subject to deliberate warp contamination before implantation as standard practice, each Astartes is ultimately possessing of a uniquely tainted genetic code.

### Genetic Flaws

The Ebon Talons deliberately cultivate geneseed flaws in order to hasten the process of mutation which otherwise must come from the blessings of the Changer of Ways. Common flaws include elongated toes with sharp claws, heat vision with the loss of normal sight, and shifting skin tones. More extreme flaws are considered to be blessings, and often lead to quick advancement in the warband’s ranks.

## Warband Relics

**The Peacock Bow** - A handmade bow and sheath of arrows crafted in traditional Chogoris style. Given to the first Emperor’s Talons Chapter Master by Angnar of the Dark Hunters.

**Memory of Orkhon** - A vial of dirt filled from the steppe-plains of Orkhon, the Talons previous homeworld. Using forbidden magic, Unaz Embersworn conjured an entire ecosystem from the bacteria present in the Memory, though one which is forever perverted by the daemonic.

**Horn of the Dozen Arrows** - A hunting horn once used to signal the beginning of a mounted hunt, usually targeting large predators or other dangerous wildlife. While these hunts continue, the Horn is now a spiritual fulcrum used at the apex of daemon summoning rituals.

## Relations

### Allies

Numerous, and deadly.

(((Contributors: You are welcome to add your own army to this list if it is non-Slaanesh Chaos Marine, Daemon, or Traitor Guard warband.)))

The **Bloodflame Covenant** are the personal retinue of Gra'ndruz the Fleshweaver. Consisting primarily of hellish Flamers and swooping, shimming, manta-like Screamers, as well as numerous enslaved daemons of Khorne, the Legion manifests wherever the walls between realities thin and sanity grows dim.

A small number of **Scourged** make their home on Pylaron Minoris, those who were captured and about to be executed by the Sanguine Host prior to the Ebon Talons incursion. They are led by the Sorceror Magnachar Screamblaze (“the Subtle”, though never to his face) and the Terminator Sergeant Volk of the Many Eyes.

The **Extinction Fangs** are a mercenary Obliterator Cult hired by Unaz during the Fleshweaver’s Crusade. While still separate from the Talons, the Fangs are well regarded for their obvious mutation, and are treated like kings by the adoring populace. Their contracts have been extended many times in return for new archeotech, and every time their place in the Embersworn Empire becomes more entrenched.

The **38th Pacificus** are a regiment of Traitor Guard led by the Brain’Ead Ogryn Uggot Longshanks. Acting as a vassal force to the Ebon Talons, the Pacificus govern their own territory within many of the planets within the Embersworn Empire, where they are required only to keep order and prepare to march to war alongside the Talons.

### Enemies

Numerous, and irritating.

(((Contributors: You are welcome to add your own army to this list, especially if it is Slaanesh-aligned or a Blood Angels descendent.)))

The Ebon Talons actively feud with various **Servants of Slaanesh**, with the ultimate, though unattainable, goal of forcing the Prince of Pleasure out of this galaxy entirely.

For their slaughter of the Sanguine Host, many of the **descendants of the Blood Angels** have declared feuds against the warband.

The Talons consider themselves enemies of **the Tyranid swarms**, though the swarm itself regards them as little more than slightly prickly food.

## Notable Quotes

### By the Ebon Talons

”We deny you mercy. We deny you honor. You will be forgotten by history.” - Unaz Embersworn, speaking to the Cardinal of a resisting Missionary world.

”Stagnation is death. To drink from stagnant water is to invite poison into the body. So too is to permit physical, mental, or spiritual stagnation. Change means survival. Change means a better, kinder future.” - Evangel Boris Five Eyes

”Nothing like dropping into low orbit to get the blood pumping. Sure wish I had a real pair of wings.” - Lady Talaghun of the Skyblade

### About the Ebon Talons

”These particular heretics are rational, on the face of it. Yet, beneath their philosophizing and state building, their basic motivations are entirely mad.” - Interrogator Jostein Daville

 Tzeentch Warbands
 Nurgle Warbands
 Slaanesh Warbands
 Chaos Undivided Warbands
 Malice Warbands
 Minor Chaos God-Aligned Warbands

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