Thousand Sons - Specialist Units: Exalted Sorcerers - Exalted Sorcerers are twisted arcanists, wicked of intent and strange of form. Each has an encyclopedic knowledge of complex spells, and is able to shape reality to his desire. Amongst their number are warrior-mystics who have stalked the galaxy for ten millennia, those exiles of Prospero whose lips uttered the spell that doomed so many of the Thousand Sons to an eternity of undeath. To these masters of the esoteric, matters of war are a crass distraction, but these visionaries bring a terrible focus to bear when battle rages.Scarab Occult Terminators - The Scarab Occult Terminators were once the finest psykers in the Thousand Sons Legion and bodyguards to Magnus the Red himself. Reduced to dust along with their brethren, they now possess only an echo of their once-vaunted intellect. They go into battle at the behest of their sorcerous masters, advancing with eerie and unhurried calm. Their ornate armour -- derived from ancient Tartaros Pattern Terminator war-plate -- ripples with arcane force, sending solid shot ricocheting away and even turning aside the beams of high-technology directed energy weaponry. At close quarters, the Scarab Occult Terminators bat away their assailants' blows with contemptuous sweeps of powered khopesh blades, before delivering devastating ripostes against those who insult the warriors of Prospero with their resistance.Rubric Marines - The Rubric Marines are the remnants of those Astartes warriors of the Thousand Sons Legion who were inadvertently created when the Chaos Sorcerer Ahriman cast an incredibly potent spell called the Rubric of Ahriman to halt the process of degeneration and mutation caused by the energy of the Empyrean that afflicted his Battle-Brothers after they had escaped to the Eye of Terror and were exiled to the Planet of the Sorcerers. Though their corruption was halted by the spell and they were now devoid of mutation, they were all but stripped of independent will as well. Rubric Marines are basically living suits of armour which still move and function, and can respond to orders just like a sentient man, though they are little more than automatons. They quickly fall into inactivity unless a Thousand Sons Chaos Sorcerer is nearby to direct them, although in the fire of combat something of their former battle hunger returns and they move with greater clarity and purpose. The Thousand Sons' Chaos Sorcerers use their Rubric Marine brethren as bodyguards and enforcers as well as guardians for the great libraries of grimoires and vaults of ancient scrolls held by the Sorcerers of the XV Legion. The Rubric Marines are particularly excellent in this role, for they have no spark of curiosity left and are utterly loyal to their psychic masters.Tzaangors - Tzaangor Beastmen are bright of colouration and sharp of intellect. Their beaks clack as they chant blasphemous refrains in their dark tongue, grimlet eyes glowing in their aquiline skulls. Their hunger for knowledge stems from a desire for power, and even in battle they look to transcend their base existences by seeking out arcane artefacts and priceless relics. In serving sorcerous masters, they may earn the chance to elevate themselves above their earthly stations, but in truth such occasions are rare, for a streak of cruelty lurks within the warlike soul of every Tzaangor. When given the opportunity, they will take their ire out on those who oppose them in inventive displays of blade-work -- or, when they put aside their artistic pretensions for the gratification of raw brutality -- a gory display of violence.Thousand Sons Helbrutes - Like the Dreadnoughts used by the Loyalist Adeptus Astartes, Helbrutes are walking engines of war driven by the fallen warrior entombed within their hull. But unlike the Imperial walkers -- each an honoured relic of their Chapter -- Helbrutes are viewed with hatred by the living warriors of the Thousand Sons, for each is an implement of eternal torture, a machine designed to transform the suffering of its unwilling inhabitant into unquenchable rage. Helbrutes are entirely symbiotic, requiring a sacrificial mind and body to achieve animus. The first of the Thousand Sons Helbrutes were created when those Traitor Legionaries who were locked within Dreadnoughts were wracked by mutation on the Planet of the Sorcerers. But flesh is harder to come by in the Legion now. The disembodied Rubricae lack the physical and spiritual substance required to fuel the Helbrutes' hungering engines. As such, Sorcerers weave complex schemes to bait Chaos Space Marines of other Legions into their cabals. These foreign warriors are promised powers beyond imagining and mastery over the vast array of knowledge the Thousand Sons have harvested. They are given tutelage in the ways of the psyker -- or so they believe. In truth, each trial they undertake is another step in the ritualistic binding of their soul to the Helbrute's machinery. The surges of power felt by the hopeful supplicant are in fact the first twitches of Warp-connectivity between their mutating neurons and the arcane servo-relays of the Chaos walker. Only when the ritual is beyond reversing does the victim become aware of their inescapable fate. The sacrificial warrior is flensed and reduced with Warpflame to a pulped mass of organs, bones and nervous tissue. Throughout this process, the crafting Sorcerer keeps their subject psychically tethered to the roaring engines of the Helbrute, forcing them to remain conscious through the agony of their transformation. The victim is then placed in an amniotic sac, which in turn is inserted into the coffin-like maw of the Helbrute. This is the tomb in which the sacrificed warrior will experience an agonised existence seemingly without end. The torment of the warrior inside the amniotic sac is fused to the Helbrute's motivators; his unquenchable hatred for those who deceived him hard-wired into the war machine's cogitation arrays. The metal cage that holds the warrior's remains melds with his flesh, turning man and machine into a single psychotic organism. From this point, the interred Chaos Space Marine is bound to his maddening agony. Only by tearing savagely into the enemies of the Sorcerer who controls him can the machine-warrior hope to find the sweet release of oblivion. With monstrous, metallic howls the Helbrute wades into combat, blasting foes into gobbets of flesh from afar or swinging its weapon arms in deadly arcs to pulverise the champions of the enemy army. In the moments before each kill, the screaming consciousness of the Helbrute believes it will receive some relief from its anguish in seeing others suffer, but its thirst for numbness is never satisfied. Where the interred warrior once sought knowledge, he is now denied all thought but the consciousness of his own wretched existence, driving him to ever greater heights of madness and ever more brutal acts of battlefield violence. Between battles the Helbrute is locked in the depths of the Thousand Sons' armouries, where the flesh sac is wrenched painfully from its sarcophagus. Through a web of sorcerous wards, the lumpen being is given sense enough to feel the raw horror of empyric currents flowing through its dungeon cell, and the pain of re-entwining the warrior with its machine body increases exponentially with each iteration. In this way, the Helbrute's insanity is maintained even when not in battle -- a necessity to ensure that its violent psychosis is never dulled.Daemon Engines - Daemon Engines are hulking metallic monsters given animus by the Warp entities caged within their twisted frames. The Thousand Sons do not create Daemon Engines -- instead, they procure the bestial machines through pacts with the Dark Mechanicum, or use fell sorceries to bind the creations of other Traitor Legions to their own malevolent purposes.Thousand Sons Heldrakes - Heldrakes are a savage breed of Daemon Engine, borne to battle on enormous metallic wings. In their appearance and savagery, they resemble the great wyrms slain by the warriors of the Thousand Sons when they first entered the Warp and claimed the Planet of the Sorcerers. Of all the Daemon Engines, Heldrakes are held in the highest regard by the Sons of Magnus, for they are seen as embodiments of the fiery serpent that has long been the symbol of Tzeentch's servants. As the ranks of Rubric Marines make their lockstep marches towards the enemy, Heldrakes swoop overhead with terrifying speed. Opposing fighter craft are torn from the sky with each cruel sweep of the Heldrake's twisted metal claws. Wings and vector thrusters are ripped from the flyers' chassis, sending the crippled vehicles plummeting to the ground below to explode like burning meteors amidst their allies. Following close behind the falling wreckage, the Heldrake spews hails of bullets or gouts of immolating flames from its savage jaws, raking across the enemy formation. Those not cut down or incinerated often turn and flee in abject terror from the winged monster, but few are the prey swift enough to outrun it. With its quarry strewn bloodily before it, the Heldrake takes to the air once more with a mighty pounce, quickly sighting where next it can wreak ruin. Only the most erudite amongst the Thousand Sons know the grim truth of the Heldrakes -- that they were once the Legion's fighter craft. The pilots that flew these craft survived the Rubric of Ahriman only to be subsumed by their war engines, although many welcomed this transformation as a blessing from the God of Change and gave their souls willingly to take on the glorious, draconic form of the Heldrake. The harrowing transmutation from aerial fighter to soaring Daemon Engine drove the pilots beyond the brink of sanity. Predatory entities clawed their way inside each vehicle, where they corrupted the craft's Machine Spirits with their Warp essence. The pilots were also mutated by the presence, their genetically enhanced bodies becoming indistinguishable from the cockpits in which they sat. Their senses combined with those of their craft, so that all they could see, hear and smell came through the vehicles' Auspex arrays, and damage inflicted upon the monstrous machines was also felt in their own diminishing bodies. Their minds were riven by incomprehensible Tzeentchian consciousnesses, who morphed the crafts to shapes more fitting their natures. Eventually, the pilots were reduced to vestigial hearts at the core of each Heldrake, pumping not blood but malice and contempt through the Daemon Engines' aetheric veins.Thousand Sons Defilers - As the Defiler stalks across the battlefield, the very ground around it heaves and screams under the weight of daemonic energy radiating from its arachnoid form. With every grinding movement, its many-jointed limbs send out ripples of warping force, filling the minds of all who behold the mechanical creature with unrelenting dread. Its fore-claws gouge the earth, helping to haul the immense bulk of the Defiler onwards towards its prey, before thrusting forwards to tear through defensive barricades and mutilate the enemy's ranks. It is a metallic abomination, born of the demented minds of the followers of Chaos, and put to hideous use by the Thousand Sons as a walking engine of devastation. Atop the crawling legs, the Defiler's torso is an armoured fortress from which multifarious armaments protrude. Bursting from its chest, its Battle Cannon launches high-explosive shells with thundering force, and can rupture the armoured vehicles of the enemy with a single well-placed shot. Like the Defiler itself, each of the cannon's shells has become host to a Tzeentchian entity. As the warhead explodes, the released Lesser Daemon warps the shape of reality within the blast radius, sending chunks of shrapnel, rock and bone flying. Ever bound to their prison, the entity then coalesces back in the Defiler's hull, there to reform as another shell waiting to be fired upon another target. Even if an enemy force is able to disable a Defiler by inflicting irreparable damage, its death throes can be catastrophic. The daemon may burst free from its cage in a violent eruption of raw Warp energy, producing an unfettered empyric shock wave which can cause armour to fold in upon itself, organs to spontaneously ignite and weapons to explode in the hands of their wielders. As the raging daemon revels in its liberation, it begins to evaporate, seeping swiftly back to the immaterial plane. The sudden backwash of Warp-essence strips flesh from bone and can disintegrate adamantium at a molecular level. The Defiler's upper limbs can be fitted with different armaments, allowing it to spit out hails of rapid fire, swarms of missiles or blasts of crackling las-energy. Some Defilers instead bear enormous scourging flails that swing and spin with incredible speed, shredding armour and flesh with equal ease. Each of these weapons allows a Defiler to wreak different forms of destruction upon the battlefield. Amongst most Traitor Legions, a Defiler is created with a single set of killing tools, for the daemon inside the machine merges also with its weapons, becoming part of them and they part of it. But those Defilers used by the Thousand Sons are creatures of Tzeentch, and are more amenable to shifting forms and varied methods of brutality. Yet even with a Tzeentchian daemon riddling the war engine, the rituals to separate the Defiler's body parts and replace them with others are arduous and fraught with danger. Such a task is usually undertaken by a large cabal of Aspiring Sorcerers, and few survive the process. The portion of the daemon's essence residing in the weapon is drawn out and held in the minds of the cabal. If one of them falters, the fragmented Warp entity swiftly ravages the psyches of them all, but if they are able to maintain their sanity for Terran hours, days or even weeks, the uninhabited weapon will slough off the Defiler's hull. A new weapon, carved with runes bearing the true name of the entrapped entity, can then be affixed to the shifting metal body, and the daemonic fragment is allowed to return to its altered cage. Due to their sheer destructive capabilities, Defilers are highly sought after by the Exalted Sorcerers of the Legion's many sects. These warlords are often given visions of the worlds they could set ablaze with but a handful of the Daemon Engines joined to their thrallbands. Driven by these prophecies they lay complex plans to deceive and influence the Warpsmiths of other Chaos Legions into binding daemon and machine in the most devastating of configurations. The ambition of the Warpsmiths is their greatest weakness, and the Exalted Sorcerers guide their actions, making them believe they are fulfilling some gods-given task of profane fabrication. When the Warpsmith's grotesque work is complete, the Thousand Sons arrive to claim the fruit of his labour. The creator is butchered, burned or fed as a first offering to his Daemon Engine, then the rites are begun to bind the Defiler to its new master.Thousand Sons Forgefiends - Like a great lumbering beast, the Forgefiend tromps across the battlefield, its piston-like legs shattering the earth beneath its massive weight. The daemon sown into the machine emits its deafening howls through metallic grills before opening fire, blasting bodies to pieces and vehicles to slag. Though a Forgefiend resembles a monstrous beast in appearance -- a terrifying predator at the apex of some Death World's food chain -- its instincts are not those of an animal, but of a malevolent empyric entity. It is motivated to hunt by spite and pure hatred, spitting long-range death at its prey on the battlefield. The foundries used to create Forgefiends lie on worlds where swirling Chaos matter can readily be drawn upon. Warpfire furnaces blaze with the heat of suns, for only in such conditions can daemons be bound within their eternal metal cages. Into this inferno the Warpsmiths pour their sorcerous energies, sacrificing portions of their own sanity to realise their blasphemous designs. When the body of a Forgefiend has been shaped and the daemon entity sealed within, the Tzeentchian fire used to fuse the two together continues to rage in the amalgam-creature's core. Unquenchable and ever-changing, this flame provides the reservoir of Warp power to which the Forgefiend gives destructive form. Some Forgefiends bear on their bestial frontal limbs a pair of Hades Autocannons, heavy six-barrelled guns that lay down sawing lines of solid shot. Each of the hundreds of bullets fired per minute is a crystallised strand of the Forgefiend's blazing internal Warpfire, and they crackle through the air before searing their way through enemy armour and infantry ranks. The barrels scream as they disgorge their unnatural payload, spitting out thick clouds of iridescent smoke that quickly fill the battlefield with a choking fume. Other Forgefiends have clawed limbs that open as gaping maws to vomit globules of empyric matter over their targets. These cannons are a twisted perversion of ancient Imperial plasma technology, and draw upon the Forgefiend's own unstable energy reserve rather than relying on an external power core. With every searing discharge, an Ectoplasma Cannon lobs an orb of Warp-matter saturated with the unquiet remains of lesser entities that have been absorbed by the daemon within the Forgefiend. Forgefiends are filled with jealous contempt for the unbound daemons of Tzeentch. Such daemons exist to exert their will freely, to create change and flux by the outpouring of their own essence. Confined inside their mechanical exoskeleton, a Forgefiend is greatly limited in the fulfilment of this existence. The Thousand Sons know that this is torture to these daemons, and they use this torture to their advantage, for a Forgefiend will allow the fires inside themselves to erupt whenever they get the chance, raining many-formed destruction upon whatever enemies are lured into their sights.Thousand Sons Maulerfiends - Maulerfiends are anarchic siege engines, created to rampage ahead of a thrallband's march where they can wreak the most havoc. With Warp-infused servos driving their enormous forelimbs, a Maulerfiend can build up terrifying speed and momentum, stomping over piles of smouldering wreckage and mounds of corpses before crashing into defensive fortifications. Their clawed fists make quick work of ferrocrete barricades, allowing the machine-beast to continue on its warpath, mashing its way through infantry and vehicles with equal disregard. Many Sorcerers deploy Maulerfiends armed with magma cutters to eviscerate opposing columns of armour before they even reach the main battlefield. Through a magma cutter, the daemon bound within the Maulerfiend can focus its searing breath into a short-range beam of heat that can slice open thick ablative armour. At other times, when the divinations of the Thousand Sons have shown that they will face dense packs of footsoldiers, they loose before them Maulerfiends fitted with lasher tendrils. These thick, tentacle-like cables thrash violently and erratically, whipping with lightning speed and transforming whole ranks of enemy troops into crimson clouds of blood and viscera. Though lasher tendrils are usually forged from liquefactive metals, on some Maulerfiends they have morphed into barbed strands of aetheric matter or mutated biological appendages. A thrallband will often carve cryptic runes on a Maulerfiend to bend the daemon within to their specific purpose. In their battles with the Necrons of the Nephrekh Dynasty, the Silver Sons forged sigils that filled their Maulerfiends with a rapacious hunger for metal. The machine-beasts thundered through the enemy lines, tearing the metallic warriors limb from limb. Even when the Necrons reassembled themselves, the Warp energy emanating from the slavering Daemon Engines caused them to reconstitute as twisted, inviable conglomerations of mismatching body parts.