Flesh Tearers - Recent History: "By his Blood I am made.By his Blood I am armoured.By his Blood shall I triumph."— Catechism of BloodIn 998.M41, news reached Baal that the Cryptan Shield, the Shield Worlds of the Cryptus System which stood as a bastion of the Blood Angels' homeworld, was endangered by a large tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan reaching out towards the Cryptus System, and soon, every planet of Cryptus felt the talons of the Great Devourer.Knowing that the consumption of the Cryptus System would open the floodgates for an unstoppable Tyranid invasion of Baal, Lord Commander Dante took action. The Flesh Tearers was the first of the Blood Angels Successor Chapters of the Sanguinary Brotherhood to heed Dante's call to arms and quickly joined its parent Chapter in the defence of Baal and the surrounding sectors.Part of a grand alliance of the Blood Angels' successors, the Flesh Tearers had taken their place in a thin crimson line standing against the Tyranids. The Chapter sought redemption for its many past misdeeds, and Chapter Master Gabriel Seth hoped that he might yet bring honour to his dying Chapter, tempering its Red Thirst in the blood of its enemies.Many Chapters have become wary of the Flesh Tearers, with their dire reputation for unrestrained carnage and their excesses of violence. However, to Dante the Flesh Tearers were still his brothers, born of the blood of Sanguinius, and worthy allies in the war against the Hive Mind. The fact that Seth led the Flesh Tearers to the Cryptus System in such strength spoke volumes about the bond between his Chapter and the Blood Angels.At this time, there were scarcely four hundred Flesh Tearers left, and during the Cryptan War more than half of the Chapter's number -- some five under-strength companies -- were deployed in the war zones of Armageddon. Even so, Seth mustered much of what remained for the defence of Baal and its nearby sectors, clinging to the belief that only through the blood of their foes and the manner of their deaths could his Chapter be redeemed. However, this righteous intention would be set against the Flesh Tearers' own dark nature, as they suffer the flaws of their gene-seed even more than the Blood Angels themselves.Foremost of these flaws is the Red Thirst, a bloodlust that takes the Flesh Tearers battle-brothers in the heat of battle and transforms them into mindless killers. It is this effect of the Flaw that has given them a dire reputation for carnage, and one that continues to define them. Many worlds have lived to regret the coming of the Chapter, for the reckless destruction and rivers of blood and death it has spilled in the throes of its battle madness has sometimes been worse than the predations of the foes it bested.The Flesh Tearers would prove their reputation for ferocity many times over on the battlefields of Lysios, the Space Marines venting their fury upon the Tyranids in a maelstrom of blood. Supported by the Chapter's finest war machines, theirs would be a horrific war of annihilation upon which they would seek to quench their Red Thirst.At the head of a mighty strike force that comprised the 1st and 2nd Companies of the Blood Angels, Brother Corbulo, Captain Karlaen, Chief Librarian Mephiston and the bulk of Gabriel Seth's Flesh Tearers, Dante struck out for the Cryptus System and the battles to come.