Corvus Corax - Corax's Act of Desperation: With his Legion severely depleted from the Drop Site Massacre of Istvaan V and the Imperium teetering on the brink of destruction, a critically wounded Corax was brought back to Terra in a stasis tube. Healed in body but not in soul, Corax eventually returned to his homeworld of Deliverance to rebuild what remained of his Legion. While traveling from Istvaan V, Corax dwelt upon why he had fled from the confrontation with Konrad Curze and Lorgar, and realised that he had felt fear when facing the Night Haunter. Not fear of death, but the realisation that but for a twist of fate, Corax could have landed upon Nostramo instead of Lycaeus, and become a monster as savage as Curze. Consumed by the loss of over 75,000 of his Legion's Astartes, his flight from the Night Haunter, and obsessed with thoughts of revenge against Horus, Corax ordered his survivors to return to Terra, where he intended to ask the Emperor for help in rebuilding his devastated Legion. Following a number of delays and setbacks, and despite the disagreement and displeasure of Rogal Dorn and Malcador the Sigillite, Corax psychically communed with the Emperor, who was devoting all his time battling Chaos within the Warp and what remained of the secret Imperial extension into the Webway in the aftermath of Magnus the Red's catastrophic psychic intrusion into the Imperial Palace. The Emperor revealed certain truths to Corax: the existence of the Imperial project to control portions of the Webway, the nature of Chaos, and the truth behind the outbreak of the so-called Heresy—which in reality was an all-out campaign by the Chaos Gods to defeat the Emperor and enslave Mankind, using Horus and the Traitor Legions as their pawns.The Emperor decided to help Corax, and had another, astonishing revelation to make: the Primarch Project's genetic assets had not been destroyed, as everybody thought, but still existed and were dormant—including living samples of the original gene-stock the Emperor had used to create the 20 Primarchs. The Emperor, who offered no explanation as to why such facilities and the gene-stock still existed, demanded only one thing: this genetic material could never be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. Accompanied by several Raven Guard squads, a contingent of Adeptus Mechanicus specialists, and a number of Custodians to serve as the Emperor's "overseers", Corax managed to locate and enter the Emperor's well-protected gene-laboratories deep beneath the Imperial Palace in the Himalazian Mountains. Corax's strike force suffered a number of casualties due to the numerous traps that the Emperor had put in place in order to protect the pure gene-stock from unwanted visitors. The Primarch gene-stock and related technical information was secured, and Corax and his Raven Guard warriors returned to Deliverance to begin remaking the Legion.After several weeks of effort by Corax, Chief Apothecary Vincente Sixx, and Magos Genetor Nexin Orlandriaz, a breakthrough was achieved, and a new reservoir of stable Astartes gene-seed was extracted from the Primarch DNA. The gene-seed was more pure than "normal" Raven Guard gene stock as it came from undiluted Primarch DNA before it was broken down to the 20 different recombinant strands that gave birth to the Primarchs. It was implanted using an extremely accelerated development schedule within 500 Aspirants, with excellent results. The resulting Astartes, though lacking combat experience, were even more capable than typical Raven Guard Space Marines. They were assigned the name "Raptors", and placed under overall command of Captain Branne, who served as the Legion's Master of Recruits. Following a baptism by fire in a successful attack against a Word Bearers intelligence outpost/listening station, the prospects for the reconstruction of the XIXth Legion looked bright indeed.The Alpha Legion had other plans. Patiently waiting until the Raven Guard had achieved the genetic breakthrough, they were fomenting rebellion among the old tech-guilds of Kiavahr, the Forge World that the moon of Deliverance circled, while assembling an Alpha Legion force nearby, and simultaneously misleading both their nominal allies among the other Traitor Legions and their supposed allies in the Cabal about their true purpose. With the help of Adepts from the Dark Mechanicus the Alpha Legion operatives within the Raven Guard contaminated the pure Primarch gene-stock held by the Raven Guard with a virus that was tainted with daemonic essence. The nature of the virus was unknown to the Alpha Legionaries until after the gene-stock had been contaminated, as their Dark Mechanicus allies had insisted the virus could be easily extracted once the Primarch gene-stock came into their possession.The next cadre of 2,000 Raven Guard Astartes was predictably a disaster. All manifested hideous Warp-related mutations after they were implanted with their gene-seed organs, and many had to be kept imprisoned. Corax announced that mutation or not, he considered them as much a part of the Raven Guard as the rest of his Astartes, and vowed to find a way to reverse the mutations. At the same time, the Alpha Legion's plans were reaching their climax. As the Legion fought in isolation against Horus' forces during this period, isolated from the other Imperial forces, nothing is known for sure of the initial results of Corax's program, but an element of truth is found in the Space Wolves' Saga of the Weregeld, which tells of ferocious monsters lead to combat by their Raven Guard Battle Brothers.The Kiavahr rebellion was well under way, supported by the newly arrived Alpha Legion force, who were camouflaged as Raven Guard, bearing the XIXth Legion's badges, insignia, and armour. These tactics were only diversions intended to allow the Alpha Legion operatives already within the XIXth Legion to steal the Primarch gene-stock and to completely destroy the original Raven Guard gene-seed, crippling the Loyalist Legion. The first objective was successful: the Primarch DNA and all information about it was secured by Omegon, who had been secretly on Kiavahr all this time, manipulating events as needed. To save the gene-seed, Corax intended to go to Ravendelve himself, but Commander Branne begged him not to, saying that he was prepared to destroy Ravendelve to prevent the guilders from gaining the gene-seed, but Corax's presence would prevent him from doing so. Branne's voice cut through the anger in Corax's heart, and listening to a voice he had trusted for so long, Corax realised that he was seeing the face of Konrad Curze, and could not allow his obsession with rebuilding the XIXth Legion to consume him as utterly as hatred had consumed the Night Haunter. Recognising that he must live for the good of his warriors, Corax agreed to remain at Ravenspire while the Legion moved on Ravendelve. Yet the destruction of the Raven Guard's gene-seed was prevented by the Raven Guard Mutants, who were tasked by the dying Chief Apothecary Vincente Sixx to save the future of the XIXth Legion. Corax subsequently allowed the Mutants who were able to fight to join the Legion's Raptor Squads. They participated with the rest of the Raven Guard, a small force of Imperial Fists, and the reconstituted Therion Cohort in the first counterattack against the Traitors, and the Raven Guard's successful campaign against the garrison of an Emperor's Children-held planet near the Kiavahr System.Unfortunately the attempt to rebuilt the XIXth Legion's strength was now in ruins. With a heavy heart, Corax decided that his attempt to use a shortcut to refill his Legion's ranks had been a mistake. He determined that the XIXth Legion would rebuild its ranks in the traditional way, slowly and painstakingly transforming human Aspirants into Space Marines over many years of genetic alteration and training. But the price would be that the Raven Guard would not be able to participate in a meaningful way in defending the Imperium against the Traitor Legions.Following the later reorganisation of the Space Marine Legions into the Second Founding Chapters after the end of the Horus Heresy, the Raven Guard was left largely inoperable as a combat unit and was forced to spend decades recruiting new members and rebuilding itself. Finding itself woefully undermanned and under-equipped following the massacre on Istvaan V, the Raven Guard honed and perfected the use of covert small-unit, guerrilla tactics that utilised little fire support, armoured support or other heavy equipment that the Chapter and its Successors lacked. Even today, the Raven Guard's lack of Predators, Land Raiders, and the latest patterns of Power Armour reflect these conditions of the Chapter's past.