Cassian Vaughn - After Istvaan: Fortunately for the Imperium, Horus' assumption of Cassian Dracos' death would prove wrong. For over a standard year, Cassian Dracos was trapped between the vitrified plains of the Urgall Depression. Scorched, blackened and fused by the unimaginable heat from the orbital strike, Cassian's dreadnought chassis had lost all limbs but for the stump of his right arm, yet the warrior within had endured.Yet, the battered shell of the Dracos Revenant, far from intact but not yet willing to surrender to his final inevitable death, would be recovered by Xiaphas Jurr and the crew of the Ebon Drake when they arrived at Istvaan V in quest of their Primarch's true fate.Lacking proper equipment, the landing party consisting of the assembled warriors of the three orphaned Legions dug the black sands with their bare hands and combat blades. With trembling hands, Xiaphas Jurr connected the sarcophagus to an exterior Vox unit.It soon spoke with the voice of a man twice dead -- "You come seeking our father, but he is not here. I searched for him on the field of battle until they struck me down with a sword of flame that scorched the very heavens, and yet I did not die. I searched for him in the endless vaults of the dead where the crushing blackness tore at my very soul, and yet I endured. I was tested once again through the crucible, and I tell you this -- Vulkan does not walk among the dead!"The recovery of Cassian Dracos and his message kindled new hope within the crew of the Ebon Drake, and even those warriors of the Iron Hands and the Raven Guard that accompanied them were heartened by the thought that their Primarchs might have survived.Few questioned or doubted Dracos' words, such was his reputation. With all haste, Cassian Dracos' Vulkan-forged shell was transferred to the Strike Cruiser, where his esoteric systems slowly began to repair themselves, a tech-miracle that only added to his growing legend. However, the former master of the XVIII Legion had not been left untouched by his prolonged and unsleeping entombment beneath the black and blood-soaked sands of Istvaan.Whereas most Dreadnoughts of his age craved a return to slumber, Cassian Dracos refused all offers to be returned to hibernation. Apart from his changed physical appearance due to the ordeal he had survived, Dracos' mental state was also affected by the isolation he suffered. Lost in prolonged periods of near-incoherent prognostications and memories drawn from his centuries of battle, Dracos exerted a palpable influence over the company of the Ebon Drake.For the few short solar days the Ebon Drake stayed in orbit around Istvaan V, Dracos was revered as "the Twice Dead." His followers, warriors drawn both from the Salamanders and their brother Shattered Legions, began to modify their personal heraldry with a myriad of devotional icons, forged with the greatest of care by the capable hands of the artisans from Nocturne.To further honour the venerable Dreadnought, many Legionaries scorched their emerald battle-plate black and applied images of fiery flames, glowing embers or artistic renditions of Vulkan upon it. Compiled by the diligent hands of Xiaphas Jurr, who took the title of "The Prophet of Fire," the Ebon Drake’s company quickly changed.Even within their own chronicle, the crew of the Ebon Drake increasingly referred to themselves as the Disciples of the Flames, their nominal leader now Cassian Dracos. Yet, Vaughn's influence and strange charisma did not only affect the living crew of the Ebon Drake, but also the ship's Servitors and automata, which became unreliable in his presence.Several of the simple automata that usually performed the more mundane maintenance tasks aboard the Ebon Drake developed anomalous sub-routines in their neuro-cortexes and had to be forcefully reprogrammed to their original task. Seemingly without orders, several high-grade Servitors from the Armorium detached themselves from their routine and formed a semblance of a court around the Dreadnought.From the command logs recovered in later years, it appears that when the Strike Cruiser left Istvaan V, it was Cassian Dracos who commanded her course. What truly motivated him to alter the Ebon Drake’s destination for the beleaguered Forge World of Mezoa instead of returning to Nocturne remains a mystery, but it would prove a fateful decision, for the situation on Mezoa was far grimmer than could readily be anticipated.The Ebon Drake translated back into reality at the very edge of the Mezoan System, only to find itself emerging in the heart of a chaotic void battle where cruisers bearing the sigils of the Iron Warriors and Alpha Legion were firing at a rag-tag fleet of defenders that bore the Eternal Flame of Mezoa, the markings of several detachments of the Armada Imperialis and even the marred icons of the Legiones Astartes.The arrival of the lone Strike Cruiser from a Legion most thought destroyed gave the Ebon Drake’s crew enough time to filter through the confused ballet of identification tags and broadcasts of both fleets before openly declaring for Mezoa and joining the Loyalist fleet.For nine long solar hours, the numerically inferior Loyalists held the Traitors at bay, the naval engagement turning into a bloody stalemate before disunity took its toll. Where the enemy followed a single commander, the Loyalists had been drawn from several Imperial factions, unused and in some cases unwilling to cooperate with each other.This fractured command structure would eventually allow the Warmaster Horus' lapdogs to claim victory. Forced to relinquish Mezoa's orbit to the enemy, the Loyalist fleet retreated.Few ships dared the enemy's guns to close one last time with the Forge World and even fewer survived, but the Ebon Drake was one of them, the revolutionary vessel successfully landing its complement of warriors on Mezoa's surface before making good its escape.