Nathaniel Garro - Flight of the Eisenstein: With the remaining Loyalists aboard the Eisenstein, Garro was determined to flee the Isstvan System and make for Terra. Now fully aware of the traitorous actions of Horus and his accomplices, Garro had his warriors make an Oath of Moment upon his power sword Libertas. The seventy remaining Death Guard Astartes all swore to dedicate themselves to the safe carriage of the warning of Horus' betrayal to Terra, no matter what forces were ranged against them.Garro had considered briefly the idea of opening up all of Eisenstein’s vox transmitters to maximum power and broadcasting the truth of the treachery across the entire 63rd Expeditionary Fleet.There were noble warriors out there, he was sure of it, Astartes like Loken and Tarik Torgaddon in the Warmaster's own Sons of Horus Legion, and Macer Varren of the World Eaters. If only he could contact them, save their lives; but to do so would have meant suicide for everyone on the frigate.Every minute they kept their silence was a minute more for Garro to plan an escape with the warning. Loken and the other Loyalists would have to find their own path through this nightmare. The message was far more important than the lives of a handful of Astartes. Garro only hoped that once his mission had been fulfilled he might see them again, either back on Terra at the end of their own escape or here once more with an Imperial reprisal fleet at his back.For now, those Astartes were on their own, as were Garro and his warriors. During the bombardment of Isstvan III with the virus-bombs, the Eisenstein picked up another signal. It was another Thunderhawk on an intercept vector with their ship. It belonged to the Sons of Horus, assigned to the Vengeful Spirit.The pilot identified himself as Third Captain Iacton Qruze, formerly of the Sons of Horus. He claimed to be no longer part of his Legion as he could no longer be a party to what Horus was doing. Garro let the Thunderhawk land upon the frigate.It bore three refugees from the slaughter of civilians that Horus had unleashed upon his flagship; the Luna Wolf Iacton Qruze, Kyril Sindermann -- a high-ranked Iterator, the Remembrancer Mersadie Oliton -- and the former Remembrancer Euphrati Keeler -- now regarded as a Living Saint by those who believed in the dictates of the Lectitio Divinitatus, the cult first founded, ironically, by the Primarch Lorgar of the Word Bearers Legion that held the Emperor to be divine.Garro granted them sanctuary. When Garro spoke with Keeler afterwards, their conversation strengthened his conviction and growing belief in the Emperor's divinity.Garro knew his lightly armed frigate was no match against the powerful capital ships of Horus' blockading fleet. At the time, the Eisenstein was close to the rear edge of the fleet pattern. The ship's captain took the liberty of informing the fleet master's office that they were suffering a malfunction in one of their tertiary fusion generators.It was standard naval procedure for a ship under those circumstances to drop back from the main formation, to prevent other vessels being damaged in case of a cascade failure and core implosion. But the Loyalists knew that the ruse would not last for long. For they would be undone the moment they fired their main engines.Realising something was amiss, First Captain Typhon aboard the massive Death Guard battleship Terminus Est moved to intercept the small frigate when he had received no word from his usually boisterous subordinate Grulgor. He gave chase as the Eisenstein attempted to evade the guns of his ship. The frigate sustained severe damage from the Terminus Est's massive guns batteries as it sped past.The crippled ship limped away from Isstvan III. It was severely damaged, and all of its astropaths had perished in the firefight and their lone Navigator was mortally wounded. The ship was incapable of interstellar communication and had little chance of successfully navigating its way across the Immaterium, but Garro ordered the vessel to make a blind Warp-jump in order to save the lives of everyone aboard.Once inside the Warp, the damaged Eisenstein attracted the attentions of the Chaos God Nurgle, the Plague Lord, who had already claimed the Death Guard Legion as his future champions and had no desire to see Horus' rebellion against the Emperor suffer a setback. Because the Eisenstein's Gellar Field had been weakened by the damage the starship had sustained during its flight from the Isstvan System, the Dark God was able to insinuate its malign influence into the vessel.Nurgle's power resurrected Grulgor, his dead Astartes and the ship's crew who had sided with him, creating the first Plague Marines. The ensuing battle between the infected Warp creatures and the Loyalist Death Guard aboard the ship resulted in the death of the vessel's only Navigator.Grulgor, using a Plague Knife, managed to infect a member of Garro's command squad, the young Battle-Brother Solun Decius, with the terrible daemonic disease known as Nurgle's Rot, and almost triumphed over Garro.However, Garro ordered the Eisenstein to make an emergency transition out of the Warp. Without access to the infernal power of Nurgle sustaining them within the Immaterium, Grulgor and his corrupted brethren's physical forms fell dead once more, their souls sucked back into the Warp, though Grulgor would later be resurrected once more as a powerful Daemon Prince of the Plague Lord.Stranded hundreds of light years from any stretch of inhabited space, Garro ordered the Eisenstein's captain to overload the frigate's Warp-Drive and then jettison it out into space. Garro hoped that the detonation of the Warp-Drive would produce such a powerful shockwave in the Immaterium that any passing Imperial starships might be willing to stop and investigate.The plan would also guarantee that if no rescuers appeared, the Eisenstein would never reach another destination and its crew and passengers would die in the black void of interstellar space.However, the ensuing explosion of the Warp-Drive echoed across the Empyrean and acted as a beacon for the Primarch Rogal Dorn and the fleet of his Imperial Fists Legion, who had been becalmed by Warp Storms unleashed by the gathering power of the Dark Gods as the Horus Heresy began. The Imperial Fists were already on their way back to Terra on the order of the Emperor, where Dorn would take up his new role as the Praetorian of Terra.Dorn rescued Garro and his warriors and took them to Luna aboard the Imperial Fists' great mobile fortress-monastery, the Phalanx. While initially reluctant to the point of outraged violence to believe Garro about his brother Horus and the other primarchs' betrayal of the Emperor, once faced with overwhelming evidence from multiple sources, including the testimony of Iacton Qruze, a member of Horus' own Sons of Horus Legion, he eventually relented.The Navigators of Dorn's massive fortress ship made their way to the Sol System where Dorn would inform his father the Emperor of this dreadful news.