Black Legion - Black Legion: The Black Legion, formerly known as the Sons of Horus and before that as the Luna Wolves, is a Traitor Legion of Chaos Space Marines that is the first in infamy, if not in treachery, whose name resounds as a curse throughout the scattered and war-torn realms of Humanity. The Black Legion was one of the 9 First Founding Legions of Space Marines who turned Traitor to the Imperium during the Horus Heresy in the early 31st Millennium.The Black Legion, at that time still known as the "Sons of Horus," became the primary instrument of its primarch, the Warmaster Horus, to overthrow the Emperor of Mankind and seize control of the Imperium in the name of Chaos.Such are the crimes of the Black Legion in the 41st Millennium that it is easy to forget that the past was very different, and that there was a time when its Astartes and their perfidious master Horus were lauded above all of the other warriors of the Legiones Astartes, and were considered the most favoured servants of the Emperor.Born as the XVIth Space Marine Legion on Terra, the Black Legion would first rise to greatness under the name of the Luna Wolves. Before the dark days of the Horus Heresy they fought at the Emperor's side on Terra and through the early years of the Great Crusade. They were as stalwart and indefatigable as any of the servants of the Emperor and their actions exemplified what it meant to be a warrior of the Space Marine Legions.Brutal, ruthless and unwavering but also honourable, and once loyal beyond question, the history of the Black Legion is the history of the ambition of the Imperium itself, and the flaws that broke its founder's dreams of unification and glory for all Mankind asunder.The Black Legion is now one of the Traitor Legions of Heretic Astartes who are united in the pursuit of the single purpose of overthrowing the Imperium. They oppose the infighting that consumes so many of their brethren amongst the other Traitor Legions, for the Astartes of the Black Legion are the greatest servants of Chaos Undivided. They are always brought together in great numbers to work the will of their Warmaster of Chaos, Abaddon the Despoiler, the heir of Horus. Whenever the entirety of the Black Legion is called to battle, it marks the beginning of another one of Abaddon's Black Crusades against the Imperium of Man.The Black Legion is the only one of the Traitor Legions to have changed its name following the Horus Heresy. The XVIth Legion was originally known as the Luna Wolves during the Great Crusade. In honour of Horus' great achievements during the latter years of that era after the Imperial victory over the Orks during the Ullanor Crusade in 000.M30, the Emperor suggested that the Legion be renamed the "Sons of Horus".Horus, at first reluctant to aggrandise himself in this way, eventually instituted this change following a conversation with Primarch Sanguinius in the wake of the Luna Wolves' inability to avoid war with the Human/xenos hybrid civilisation known as the Interex. After Horus' treachery and final defeat at the Siege of Terra during the Horus Heresy, however, the Legion was renamed once more as the "Black Legion" by its new Chaos Lord, Abaddon the Despoiler. The new name was chosen after the Astartes of the Sons of Horus painted their power armour black in grief at the death of their primarch and shame at their failure to overthrow the False Emperor and seize control of the galaxy in the name of Horus and the Ruinous Powers.The Black Legion are at once the inheritors of the most glorious legacies of the Great Crusade, and the vilest treacheries of the Horus Heresy. Their primarch was the Warmaster Horus himself, once celebrated as the greatest of the sons of the Emperor, and later despised as the basest of Traitors. Of all the infant primarchs scattered to the corners of the galaxy before the process of their creation was completed, Horus grew up closest to Terra.The world of Cthonia had been settled in the very earliest days of Mankind's exploration of the stars, its hugely rich natural resources ruthlessly exploited until they were all but played out. Thus, Horus grew to maturity amongst the anarchic gangers that populated the post-industrial nightmare of a world honeycombed with long-extinct mines and dominated by decaying hive city spires. It was from the hyper violent gang-scum of Cthonia that many of the earliest inductees into the Space Marine Legions were taken, and it was there that the Emperor found the first and most beloved of His lost gene-sons in 801.M30.For thirty standard years, the Emperor and Horus fought the opening campaigns of the Great Crusade side by side, the primarch learning at the foot of his sire. When at length the Emperor detected that another of the primarchs was close at hand and departed to locate him, Horus was left at the head of his master's hosts, entrusted with the command of the conquering Imperial armies.Horus was well-suited to the task, and the lessons he had learned in the previous three Terran decades served him well. As one by one the primarchs were united with their sire and their brothers, Horus came increasingly to be regarded as the greatest of their number, the first among equals.While many of his brother primarchs and the Astartes Legions created in their image were gifted in particular fields of military endeavour, Horus was a natural leader, his greatest genius his ability to meld seemingly divergent allies into a coherent whole. This skill was not only of use on the battlefield, for it carried over into contacts with the peoples the Great Crusade met.It was Horus' way to treat with the populations of newly-contacted worlds according to the traditions of each, and this highly successful doctrine was repeated in each of the expeditionary fleets. Tragically, it might also have been the cause of the primarch's fall, and with him fully half of the Space Marine Legions.In the aftermath of the greatest of the nascent Imperium's victories to date, the defeat of the largest Ork empire ever encountered, Horus was granted the title of "Warmaster," commander-in-chief of all the Emperor's armies. So great was the victory that his Legion, originally called the Luna Wolves, was later renamed the Sons of Horus.The Emperor returned to Terra to oversee the next phase of the creation of His interstellar empire, but on the moon of the Feral World of Davin, Horus was struck down by a malady devised by the Nurglish Chaos artefact known as the Anathame that was sufficiently virulent to affect even a superhumanly resilient primarch.At some point during his treatment or recovery, Horus was inducted into one of Davin's warrior lodges, the Temple of the Serpent Lodge, and it is likely that during that process, he was corrupted in some manner that led to his eventual downfall. Horus emerged from his illness changed, and the practise of establishing Warrior Lodges spread throughout the Legions. With it, apparently, spread whatever Chaos taint had corrupted the Warmaster, and the fate of the galaxy was sealed.As the pre-eminent primarch, Horus had always enjoyed the confidence of his brothers, even when internecine rivalries had caused disputes. It appears that through a masterful series of manipulations and deceptions, Horus subverted the loyalties of those primarchs personally closest to him, whilst simultaneously diverting or undermining those others, such as Rogal Dorn, Roboute Guilliman and Sanguinius, who would oppose his treachery.The Warmaster's plans were impossibly well-coordinated, each of the primarchs experiencing a turn of fate or a precipitating incident that determined which side they would take in the ensuing galactic civil war.Imperial scholars have long debated how many and which of these events were directly brought about by Horus' machinations and which were sheer coincidence. Others still must surely have been the work of the Ruinous Powers themselves, turning their unknowable attentions upon the domains beyond the Empyrean and exerting their will upon them.Whatever the case, events reached a head according to the Warmaster's strategy when he virus-bombed the remaining Loyalists in the nascent Traitor Legions on the world of Isstvan III, an act so dire that five entire Astartes Legions were despatched to call him to account for his apparent rejection of all the Great Crusade stood for.It was at Isstvan V that the Warmaster finally revealed his true colours. The first wave of the Legions sent to confront Horus made planetfall, only to discover themselves in the midst of treachery. Faced with overwhelming odds, the Salamanders, Raven Guard and Iron Hands -- later known as the Shattered Legions -- attempted tolink up with the second wave, only for the true extent of the Warmaster's treachery to be fully realised.The second wave, consisting of the Word Bearers, Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion, and World Eaters turned upon their embattled brothers, and the result was the infamous Drop Site Massacre, one of the darkest moments not only of the Horus Heresy, but of the entire history of Mankind.The ensuing civil war pitched the whole Imperium into anarchy and chaos. It was not only the Legions aligned to Horus that rebelled, for the Warrior Lodges and the Chaos taint in general had spread far and wide by the time of the Drop Site Massacre.The Imperial Army was split almost in half, regiment fighting regiment and ﬂeet fighting ﬂeet. The Titan Legions of the Mechanicum, the ancestors of the Adeptus Mechanicus, were equally affected, and soon fully half of the Emperor's hosts were engaged in bitter conﬂict with the other. Barely a single world was untouched by a war that accounted for countless billions of lives and that culminated in the Warmaster's assault on Terra itself.As events neared their tragic conclusion, those Legions not committed to the defence of Terra raced through the Warp,converging on the homeworld of Mankind in such numbers that the Traitors, massed to assault the Imperial Palace, would be defeated. At the last, Horus lowered the shields of his battle barge, effectively inviting the Emperor to teleport aboard and confront His treacherous gene-son.In the battle that followed, Horus was slain at the hand of his sire, his soul psychically annihilated so that not a shred of its essence remained. But in defeating the primarch, the Emperor had suffered such wounds that only His ascension to the life-sustaining Golden Throne could keep death at bay.Even as Rogal Dorn carried the Emperor's body from the Warmaster's battle barge, the Traitor hosts began their fighting withdrawal, and in the anarchy and confusion Horus' body was recovered by his Legion. Having fought their way clear of the Sol System and ﬂed for the Eye of Terror, the Sons of Horus established themselves upon a world that was at once the tomb of their lost primarch and a fortress from which they would launch further attacks both upon their fellow Traitor Legions and against the smouldering Imperium.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 during the so-called Legion War. At length one such rival, the remnants of the Emperor's Children, stole the body of the slain primarch from the heart of its tomb and spirited it away, some say with the purpose of cloning it in order to create a new and still greater Warmaster.The salvation of the Sons of Horus came when one of its greatest captains, Ezekyle Abaddon, led an attack on the Emperor's Children that destroyed the body of the primarch and in so doing ushered in a new age for the Legion.The Traitors changed their name once more, this time in reference to the fact that their armour was now adorned black, calling themselves the Black Legion. Through his actions, Abaddon re-invigorated the Legion, reviving the old notion that none could stand in their way and that they would one day inherit the galaxy itself.He prepared his warriors now for what he called the "Long War," a campaign fought across ten thousand standard years to accomplish what Horus could not -- the conquest of Terra and the death of the False Emperor.When the warbands of the Black Legion and their allies gather under the wrathful banner of the Chaos Lord and Warmaster of Chaos now called Abaddon the Despoiler, the words of Horus are ever heard upon their lips -- let the galaxy burn.