Konrad Curze - An Empire of Fear: Upon the dim stars of the Nostramo Sector, Horus would first unleash the Night Lords. Those worlds that had once bent the knee to the Night Haunter, before his sudden departure from Imperial space in the years after his imprisonment on Cheraut and the destruction of Nostramo in 984.M30, would once again face the judgement of the Night Haunter. Consisting of nearly a hundred inhabited star systems, manyincluding long-established and heavily populated Hive Worlds, the Nostramo Sector remained a valuable recruiting and manufacturing hub for the Traitor forces, even after the destruction of its capital world.Here could be found in abundance desperate and bitter souls to take up arms in the name of the Warmaster and prosecute his wars against a distant Terra that had long dictated their trials and misfortunes, and whose labour could be swiftly turned to the service of Horus' growing hosts. In form the sector was perfectly suited to the rebels and ripe for the taking, owing as it did little fealty or allegiance to any Loyalist faction or warlord. The Night Haunter and his Legion, seen from without, were the perfect tools for its conquest. This would be a rare error in judgement by Horus, for the Night Haunter would prove ill-suited to the task he was assigned.Long had the worlds that surrounded now-dead Nostramo suffered under the rule of the Night Haunter. His stringent and unforgiving code of law had enforced a dreary life of suffering and toil upon those who served him, with any infraction, no matter how insignificant, punished by maiming or death. While it had maintained a brutal form of order, it had done so by means of a fear so ingrained that it had begun to eat away at the souls of those who dwelt under its burden, the suppressed sins of its people a threat overlooked by their old masters.With the Night Haunter's absence during the final years of the Great Crusade this threat would come to the fore, with many of the worlds of that far sector overthrowing the tyrannical regimes forced upon them by the Night Lords and reverting to the anarchic ways of their past. Corrupt criminal syndicates and brutal gangs took control of cities and worlds, indulging in all that Konrad Curze had forbidden and bringing a more chaotic terror to the weak that dwelt on those benighted worlds.The syndicates that rose up to take control would have proved just as capable of fulfilling Horus' needs as any more legitimate government, but to the Night Haunter they were an affront to all he stood for, a blight upon the realm he had killed so many to establish. Where others among the Traitors' ranks might have accepted the allegiance of the new overlords of the sector, co-opting their strength to serve the Warmaster, the Night Haunter sought a path of his own. As the Night Lords' main fleet arrived in the sector, the Syndarchs of the Blood Moon syndicate gathered on the isolated world of Kehdure IV to pledge their loyalty to Konrad Curze, expecting only to cede some measure of their wealth to his new rebellion, confident he would not wish their territories plunged into chaos when they could offer a ready bounty of troops and munitions.Instead, they would find the Night Haunter descending upon them with the sole intent of ending their lives, without regard as to what tribute he might otherwise reap by accepting their pledge, and leaving Kehdure IV a broken and bloodied world, its few inhabitants little more than collateral damage to the slaughter of the guilty.This would set the pattern for Konrad Curze's return to his adopted home sector, with even those worlds that had remained largely true to his draconian laws suffering a blight of gruesome punishments simply to ensure their continued loyalty. While the other Traitor Legions busied themselves with the initial assaults on the Warp channels leading to distant Terra, and the worlds of Paramar and Karadoc had been transformed into vast battlefields for the warlords fighting over the Imperium's corpse, the Night Lords set about waging a more private war. For the return of the Night Haunter was far more than the prosecution of the Warmaster's conquest, but also a piece of a vision that the Night Haunter had long dreaded, the next step on a path that had begun when Horus had first raised his banner at Isstvan III.In the descent of Nostramo and its neighbours into madness and debauchery, and the setting of brother against brother, Curze saw the beginnings of his own demise and the eternal damnation of his Legion. It was a fate he still fought to deny, though his methods were ever more led by desperation before cunning, and he loosed the warriors of his Legion to eradicate all signs of that possibility, to wipe clean the stain of perfidy with blood and perhaps turn the course of fate itself.