1st Black Crusade - Abaddon Returns: In 781.M31, five standard centuries after his retreat from Terra, Abaddon returned to Imperial space at the head of a host of Traitors and Daemons.It was the Imperium's first encounter with the newly founded Black Legion and the return of a brutal and bitter enemy many had thought lost to the graveyard of history.Since the Great Scouring, Abaddon had remained within the Eye of Terror, rebuilding the Black Legion as a vengeful reflection of its former glory.At last, the Black Legion and the other Traitors returned to realspace, the first chapter in their Long War against the Emperor ready to be written in the blood of Imperial worlds. Through alliance, threats and promises, Abaddon was able to muster the largest force of Traitor Legions seen since the Horus Heresy and took the Imperium by surprise.Worlds close to the Eye of Terror fell into mayhem and chaos as Legions descended from the sky and Daemons tore their way into reality. Only Cadia, with its formidable defences, stood firm, its brave regiments fighting from the towering gates and bastions of their cities.To counter the invasion, the Imperium was forced to divert many of the newly-formed Space Marine Chapters of the Second Founding from war zones across the Segmentum Obscurus.The Traitor Legions basked in their return from the Eye of Terror, bathing in the blood of innocent worlds and filling the holds of their voidships with new slaves. On a dozen planets, the Black Legion proved worthy of their fallen primarch and the martial prowess of the ancient Luna Wolves.Abaddon had chosen his generals well, and each competed for glory as the Legion tore a bloody gouge across the stars. Zagthean the Broken led his Black Legion warband in an orgy of violence and excess on the Agri-world of Valesia.For his own dark pleasure, the warlord constructed a vast maze of thorns from the world's blood-rose orchards, blinding his prisoners and loosing them within its twisting tunnels, before hunting them down at his leisure.Countless inhabitants spent their final terrifying hours listening desperately for the sounds of pursuit, their flesh bleeding from dozens of thorn cuts and their lungs filled with the sickly sweet scent of the blood-rose.Not to be outdone, Eralak and his company of Raptors brought a bloody nightmare to the floating hive cities of Melphia. Killing millions in their rampage, Eralak's warband sent dozen of cities falling from the sky as he tore out their complex suspensor arrays and vented their plasma reactors onto the farms and fields below.Fashioning giant floating gallows from the remaining, ruined cities, the warlord hung millions of Imperial citizens, their swaying corpses forever doomed to drift across the skies of Melphia, a terrible reminder of the power of the Black Legion.The Black Legion's greatest achievement was not only its brutal victories, but also the unity it had managed to forge among the Traitors and their daemonic allies.Even though the Traitor Marines, Daemons and Heretics turned on each other once Imperial resistance had been crushed, in the presence of the Black Legion, they gave grudging respect.This was the Legion of fear and domination Abaddon had wrought, and it was to be an ominous sign of things to come for the Imperium.