Abaddon - Rise of the Black Legion: Following the dire events of the Horus Heresy during the final epic Battle of Terra and the death of the Warmaster Horus aboard his flagship, the Vengeful Spirit, First Captain Abaddon and the surviving Sons of Horus broke orbit over Terra and fought their way free of the battle and escaped into the void. A time of reprisal and retribution known as the Great Scouring followed, and countless worlds were put to death by the Loyalists for siding with Horus, their corpses left as a warning to others. Those Traitor Legions that remained in the Imperium were hunted mercilessly and hounded across the stars by pitiless Loyalists. Abaddon and the remaining Sons of Horus took refuge in the Eye of Terror, choosing to plunge into that maelstrom of madness rather than face extinction at the hands of the Emperor's vengeful warriors.The Sons of Horus managed to reach the Eye of Terror with the bloodied survivors of the Scouring, but the once mighty XVI Legion was reduced to a fraction of its former size. Led by only a few remaining captains, the Legion struggled with its loyalty to their fallen Primarch and the cold reality of their defeat at the hands of the Emperor and His lackeys. Bereft of their glorious Primarch, the Legion floundered, and in desperation turned to each of the Chaos Gods in turn in their search for renewed power, inviting daemonic possession and the ever more costly blessings of the Warp. All the while, the Legion suffered the jealous attacks of their former allies. As the Traitor Legions turned upon one another, the Dark Gods subverted and manipulated their new playthings, reshaping the Legions for their own ends and the never-ending war between the gods.Ezekyle Abaddon abandoned the Legion; broken by the death of Horus and sick of war, he wandered alone into the Eye of Terror. Taking his Legion's massive flagship, the Vengeful Spirit, Abaddon left his brothers behind and plummeted into the furthest reaches of the Eye. The former First Captain knew theLegion Wars would never end. These were not his battles. Shedding blood for slaves and territory -- Abaddon wasn't a barbarian, to fight over trivial nothingness. He was a soldier, a warrior. If the Nine Legions wished to raid one another's hunting grounds for table scraps and steal each others' toys, then he would let them. Of his own Legion, he felt no need to save them from their petty fate. They chose to fight and die in a worthless war. Abaddon's Dark Pilgrimage took him across the thousands of worlds of the Eye. He walked the surface of every world in their purgatorial prison. He felt that he had to -- to learn the realm's boundaries, to see its secrets. Abaddon would not mourn a Legion he had left behind. His time as a pilgrim layered wisdom and perspective atop the brutality of his former command.Meanwhile, the Sons of Horus carried the body of their Primarch, preserved in stasis, further into the Eye, ignoring the wars that raged around them. On the Daemon World of Maeleum, a graveyard world of steel and rust, the Sons of Horus raised a fortress, fashioning a mighty citadel from the wrecks of decaying vessels lost to the Warp with the aid of the thousands of slaves they had taken from the worlds of the Imperium. The Legion interred Horus' body within a great tomb, where many fell into worship of their fallen demigod. Lupercalios, the Monument, was a mausoleum to the XVIth Legion as much as a stronghold. It was where the body of their Primarch had been interred after the Terran Breaking. Few of the other Legion were permitted anywhere near the Sons' last bastion. It also served as a fortress from which they would launch further attacks upon both the Imperium and their fellow Traitor Legions. All the while, the XVIth Legion suffered the jealous attacks of their former allies amongst the forces of Chaos as the brief unity between the Dark Gods and their servants during the Heresy once more broke down into the normal state of internecine rivalry, unleashing the Slave Wars.With their Primarch dead and their Legion on the verge of extinction, the Sons of Horus stagnated. Some captains suspected that it would be but a matter of time before they and their Battle-Brothers were drawn into the wars between the Traitor Legions, and so they pushed for the Sons of Horus to replace its losses by increasing the Legion's gene-seed stocks. These same captains knew that any fortress, no matter how grand, could not hope to hold back a determined Space Marine assault, and called for more warriors to be found. Unfortunately, the majority of surviving captains were convinced that the Warp would provide all the power they needed, if only they could master the methods of merging daemon and Space Marine.The wars between the other Legions who had sided with Horus during the Horus Heresy raged across the Eye of Terror even as the Sons of Horus ignored the events happening around them, and continued to raise their fortress ever higher, worshipping the corpse of their Primarch. The Sons of Horus had remained largely apart from these conflicts; however, jealous eyes now turned their way. Traitorous forces gathered against them and conspired to rob them of the remains of Horus to further vile and selfish ambitions. The Primarch Horus' body, with its potent genetic information and biological secrets, was a great prize indeed. In a sudden assault, the remnants of the debased Emperor's Children, having grown vastly in power after firmly cementing their terrible pacts with Slaanesh, easily smashed their way through the defences of Maeleum and into the central chambers of the Sons of Horus' stronghold. They stole the body of the slain Primarch from the heart of its tomb and spirited it away, some say with the purpose of handing it over to the dark Apothecary Fabius Bile who intended to clone it in order to create a new and still greater Warmaster of Chaos to restore the Traitor Legions' unity and fortunes.