Blackshield - Notable Blackshields: Endryd Haar - Known as the "Riven Hound," Haar was once a World Eater. Both he and his command were believed long lost on-Crusade when his brethren cast in their lot with the Traitors. Endryd was driven to cold madness by the revelation of his Legion's betrayal when he returned to find the Imperium riven by civil war, and he cast off all traces of his Legion's insignia and honours and swore a Death Oath to atone for the XII Legion's crimes. Leading a Blackshield unit known as "The Fangs of the Emperor," Endryd Haar fought alongside the Loyalists as a field commander in the dark days before the Siege of Terra, accepting any mission -- whatever the odds of survival -- so long as in doing so he could spill the blood of the Traitor enemy.Legionary Artal Heloc - Artal Heloc bears the heraldry of the Ashen Claws upon the armour plating of the Contemptor pattern dreadnought chassis within which he is interred. The history and circumstances that befell the warrior prior to the implantation of his physical body within the dreadnought are unknown, as are the details of the Legion with which he fought. Despite the mystery shrouding the warrior's life, the Contemptor dreadnought was pict-captured in no fewer than seven separate engagements with Loyalist forces deep within the Traitor-held territory to the galactic east of the Garmon Cluster. A prolific campaign of traitorous fratricide was put to an end by the neutron laser blasts of a squadron of White Scars Sabre tanks on the scorched wastes of Dellar IX.Support Legionary Kell Dray - Kel Dray was part of a disparate Blackshield band of warriors known as the "True Flame" encountered within the defences of 116 Minoris-Garmon as Loyalist forces swept through to eliminate Traitor resistance. Although no hostility was shown towards the Imperial forces, the True Flame Blackshields declined to join the Reprisal Fleet and instead were given permission by Sanguinius himself to garrison the system. Hails to ascertain their status several solar weeks later went unanswered, leaving Loyalist commanders to assume that they had abandoned their post.Khorak - Khorak was a former Veteran sergeant and member of the Death Guard Legion, serving within the ranks of the elite Deathshroud, Primarch Mortarion's personal honour guard. Though he initially followed his Legion into rebellion against the Emperor, taking part in the slaughter of the Loyalists upon Isstvan III and in the Drop Site Massacre on Isstvan V, he eventually grew disillusioned following the Battle of Molech after witnessing Mortarion utilising witchcraft. Disgusted, Khorak gathered a group of like-minded individuals and broke away from the Death Guard, fleeing upon the vessel Ghogolla. Khorak's group vowed to eventually kill their primarch for his betrayal of their ideals. Regarding themselves as the only "true" remnants of the XIV Legion, Khorak and his followers continued to proudly bear the original colours and heraldry of their Legion. After several battles, the Ghogolla encountered an unknown Blackshield fleet which began to pursue them, until they reached the world of Agarvian in the Leops System. Khorak and his four surviving fellow Legionaries (Hesch, Urgain, Turgalla and Lyphas) escaped their ship and fled to the planet's surface aboard a Stormbird as the Blackshield fleet destroyed the Ghogolla. Khorak and his followers were gradually hunted down by the pursuing Blackshields until only he and his lieutenant, Hesch, remained. The former Deathshroud challenged the hunters which prompted them to halt their barrage. The Blackshield commander stepped forth and revealed himself as Crysos Morturg, a former Death Guard and survivor of the events upon Isstvan III. He declared that no active Deathshroud would be allowed to speak. However, in response, Khorak admitted that he had also broken his vows and turned against their primarch, though he considered Morturg part of the "disloyal dregs of a disloyal muster." Khorak realised that they shared the same goal of killing their gene-sire, though for different reasons. However, before an accord could be reached between the two former brothers, a mortally wounded and confused Hesch fired upon Morturg, revealing that the Blackshield leader was not truly there. Suspecting witchcraft, Khorak concluded that none of the Death Guard Loyalists had survived Isstvan III and that Morturg's presence could only be explained through unnatural means. The Blackshield commander did not deny his accusations, though he cautioned that his current form had been forced upon him and reminded the ex-Deathshroud that Mortarion -- the one who had explicitly forbade the use of witchcraft -- had betrayed both of them. However, Khorak declared his defiance and would not accept a potential ally who dabbled in forbidden dark arts. He then attacked but was shot by Morturg's followers. As he died, the former Deathshroud accused the Blackshield commander of being a ghost, to which Morturge replied, "As are you, brother. As are we all."Crysos Morturg - Section Leader Crysos Morturg was a bitter warrior, morbid and given to introspection. He was disliked by his battle-brothers despite his evident talents as a warrior and field commander. He was neither Terran nor Barbaran by birth, having been inducted into the Death Guard Legion during an emergency influx of recruits from the induction pool of the 18th Expeditionary Fleet after the Death Guard suffered near-catastrophic losses during the Rangdan Xenocides campaign of the Great Crusade. Years after his induction, after he rose to the rank of lieutenant, his latent psychic abilities manifested. This only served to further isolate him from his fellow Astartes, and he had barely begun his training within the Legion Librarius when Mortarion had it disbanded and ordered such "witchcraft" suppressed. Morturg was reassigned to the Legion's Destroyer Corps and was often given Legionaries judged to be fractious or unstable, and his unit was tasked with the brunt of the worst fighting the Death Guard endured. During the campaign against the Traitor Legions' Loyalists on Isstvan III at the start of the Horus Heresy, he was marked for death as a Loyalist and sent to the surface on the doomed world. But Morturg did not die and instead endured, rising to become one of the most deadly commanders of the Loyalist resistance. Despite all the odds, Morturg survived the atrocity on Isstvan III and he and the few remnants of the slaughtered Loyalists he had gathered to him would live to avenge themselves upon their former brethren.Moritat-Prime Kaedes Nex - A dark figure of gruesome repute amongst the tightly knit survivors of Deliverance, Kaedes was seen as an ill-omen by his brothers in the Raven Guard Legion. On Kiavahr in his youth he was known as the "Blood Crow," an infamous murderer condemned to rot on the moon prison. There he remained, until Corvus Corax offered him freedom and a pardon if he fought alongside the other rebels and limited his targets to those chosen by his new master. After enduring the painful late transformation to a Space Marine, it was only by the continued favour shown to him by Corax that he remained within the ranks of the Raven Guard, with few of his brothers willing to tolerate his macabre obsession with the hunt. Yet, in the grim shadow wars fought by the Raven Guard in furtherance of the Emperor's grand plan, his murder-honed skills were employed with grim regularity. When the Raven Guard came to Isstvan V, Kaedes came with them, vanishing into the wastes to stalk the Traitors on his own terms. Nothing is recorded of his role in either the retreat from the massacre or the days that followed, and some maintain that not all of the Traitor craft to later leave Isstvan V carried only the followers of Horus, and that Kaedes continued his private war in the shadows of the Horus Heresy.The Nemean Reaver - This unknown Blackshield Reaver Lord fought throughout the middle years of the Horus Heresy, leading the Blackshield band known as the Dark Brotherhood against numerous foes as he sought to carve out a haven within the Eridayn Cataract. He garnered a reputation throughout the Pale Stars, and was often referred to simply as "the Nemean." It is generally believed that he was once an officer of the Ist Legion -- the Dark Angels -- though even this was far from certain. Unconfirmed rumours circulated that he was a survivor of the Rangdan Xenocides, the apocalyptic conflict during the Great Crusade that saw the nascent Imperium threatened with destruction, and he had already entered into the legends of the Legiones Astartes long before the Horus Heresy. At the Conclave of Optera, he renounced his position and departed with Nathaniel Garro, Knight-Errant of Malcador the Sigillite, for Terra, leaving his lieutenants to take command of the Dark Brotherhood and lead it as they saw fit. It is believed his duty to the Sigillite culminated at the Siege of Terra upon the walls of the Imperial Palace during the very climax of the Horus Heresy.Warsmith Kyr Vhalen - Warsmith of the Iron Warriors 77th Grand Battalion during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy, Khr Vhalen was a name of relative obscurity before the events of the Great Betrayal were to thrust upon him the mantle of greatness. He was neither Terran nor Olympian by birth, having been recruited as an adolescent from the formerly xenos-enslaved world of Meru at the edge of the Yetzirah Abyss. Initiated into the 77th Grand Battalion, he fought his way up through its ranks by dint of excellence and sheer bloody will to survive, gaining the epithet of "Shatterblade" after fighting through a nine-solar-hour-long battle with the broken remains of a Xenarch sabre impaled through his chest. The 77th, like a number of Iron Warriors detachments dispersed across the Imperium and all but forgotten, had become almost completely self-sustaining by the end of the Great Crusade, and when the Horus Heresy came, he and his forces were utterly ignorant of their Legion's betrayal. At the First Battle of Paramar, he and his Legionaries would take bitter pride in their stubborn loyalty to the Great Crusade as brother turned against brother.Forge Tyrant Erud Vahn - Erud Vahn had once been counted amongst the foremost Forge-Tyrants of the Death Guard. Acknowledged grudgingly by the grim master of his Legion, Mortarion, as a master of the esoteric disciplines of alkemic warfare, Vahn had spent long Terran years in study with the Tech-adepts of Mars. With the outbreak of the Horus Heresy, Vahn found his loyalty to the Mechanicum outweighed that to his distant primarch and he declared for the Loyalist cause. Seconded to the command of Endryd Haar for his knowledge of the more esoteric mysteries of the Machine Cult, Erud Vahn led the infiltration force upon the Forge World of Xana II during the Xana Incursion, that boarded and later seized control of the Ordinatus Ulator Ashurax. Of the twelve Techmarines of the Loyalist Legions who entered the sanctum at the heart of the Ashurax, only five would survive the attempt. To accomplish this feat, Erud Vahn's heavily modified Mark III Iron Power Armour was stripped back to bare metal before having a crude approximation of the Sons of Horus heraldry applied to it. The markings used to mask Vahn's true allegiance were in fact those of a Sons of Horus mechanised assault detachment, rather than the emblems actually employed by the Techmarines of that Legion. Fortunately for the infiltrating force, the magi of Xana had little experience with the heraldry of the Warmaster's Legion, having had little contact with much of the Imperium other than the tithe fleets of Terra.Redemption - This unknown Legionary, referred to in some records by the post-event designation "Redemption," his armour scorched and blackened, was present with one of the small ad hoc formations of Loyalist Legiones Astartes, known as "Battlegroup Revenant," that fought at the counterinvasion of Numinal. He is credited with the killing of over fifty Tech-adepts, Thallaxii and other lesser combat-automata during a solitary assault targeting one of the immense flesh-processing crawlers. The self-applied Loyalist icons that adorned the Legionary's armour conformed to no known pre-civil war pattern or scheme, but served to mark him as present at numerous other engagements, both major and minor, across what became known as the Horus Heresy.Legionary Zhinnon - Legionary Zhinnon was recruited into the IV Legion in 849.M30, the very same year that Primarch Perturabo took control. Though untested in battle at that time, Zhinnon's native martial bearing saved him from being swept up in Perturabo's purge of the IV Legion. Zhinnon saw extensive service throughout the five solar decades of the Great Crusade preceding the Triumph of Ullanor, and at the time of the Warmaster Horus' great betrayal was serving under Warsmith Vhalen in in the 77th Grand Battalion, 5th Counter-Armour Wing, 30th Squad, and is known to be one of the few Loyalist survivors of the First Battle of Paramar.Morkan Sayle -  A former member of the Raven Guard who turned to his own allegiance.Nuhmarak ("The Crippled King of the Void") - Nuhmarak was a Blackshield of the Horus Heresy.