Night Lords - Factionalism: Though seen by history as the battlefield that would pit the Night Lords against the Dark Angels, the Thramas Crusade would also be the field upon which another battle would be fought, a battle for the soul of Konrad Curze himself. Lost among the grand battles and terribleslaughters that formed the backdrop of the Traitor assault on the Thramas Sector, the Night Lords underwent their own quiet rebellion.The two faces of the Legion fought a sullen fratricidal struggle for control of their Legion and its primarch. There were those that yearned for the glory days -- when the Night Lords stood among the legends of the Imperium, a military force to be reckoned with, and those who sought only the bloody mandate to pillage and kill in the wild stars at the edge of Imperial space. Horus had offered them freedom in his rebellion and therein lay the heart of their tragedy, for in freedom they had found only despair, both in the decline of their primarch and in the decline of their Legion.Those among the Night Lords that sought to fully grasp this new freedom Horus offered them were mostly those recruits taken in from the corrupted worlds about Nostramo, though they presented the least unified front. A collection of disparate warlords and warbands, they were united by a desire to kill and reave as they chose, without regard for the goals of the Great Crusade or the desires of distant generals. They sought to return to their origins, to re-imagine the Legion in the form of Nostramo's ancient criminal syndicates and street gangs, but with the power to control worlds instead of hive city blocks. They took the symbol of a cross of bone, its form varying between individual warbands, a mark derived from the traditions of worlds across that dark sector that had long stood for a conflict whose end could only be found in death. It was a signal of both their intent and their goal, to those who opposed them it promised a grisly end and to the Legion at large it offered a path that would allow them to fully exploit the gifts they had been given.This faction of the Legion sought to carve out a kingdom of their own in Horus' new dominion, a realm where they could rule as befitted the warriors of the Night Lords and cared little for the often obscure goals of the Night Haunter. Nakrid Thole stood as a prominent member of this faction, recruited from the hive cities of Nostramo in its final years and schooled in war by the gang strife of his youth and the brutal purges of the Great Crusade's later campaigns.To Thole and those like him, Curze was a distant figure, one enamoured of strange oracles and premonitions who kept them on a short leash. Were he to be kept away from the battlefield, left to obsess over his dreams and regrets then the warriors of the Night Lords could slip the leash and run wild across the stars. Thole and his allies saw a galaxy ripe for the plucking, one where those joined to the cause of Horus could take what had been denied them in the Great Crusade. No longer would it be the Ultramarines and Imperial Fists, the favourites of the Emperor, who would reap the rewards of the long war for the galaxy, but those who had once been forced to skulk in the shadows of the Emperor's great plan.In opposition to them were the veterans of the old VIIIth Legion, both Terran and Nostraman, as well as those newer recruits who saw in their primarch something more than an omen watcher and madman. They were still pledged to the rebellion Horus had begun, determined to see the overthrow of the Emperor, but they retained the spark of honour that had once been at the heart of both the Legion and the ancient gangs of Nostramo. A harsh and unforgiving code that guided their actions, they killed in a manner that the other Legions found brutal and distasteful, but it served a purpose, it was not random slaughter but a necessary duty.In their primarch these Night Lords warriors saw the pinnacle of this tradition, a warrior willing to sacrifice the appearance of honour for the fulfilment of duty, the one who had carved the code they followed into the very soul of those that lived among the worlds of the Nostramo Sector. They sought to stand amongst the other Legions with pride, no longer the Emperor's butchers or hidden knives, but at the forefront of a new regime for all to see. They needed a strong primarch, one that could guide the Legion and see them to their rightful position in Horus' new empire.Foremost among these veterans stood the warrior Jago "Sevatar" Sevatarion, though he himself disdained such politics, he served as the icon of those that fought to empower their primarch. In honour of his devotion to Konrad Curze, the symbol of the red gauntlet which he bore, a death-mark in the old Nostraman code, became the symbol of those pledged to the primarch's side. It was an irony not lost on the Nostraman warriors of both of the Legion's factions that it was a mark of dishonour that stood for what some might interpret as the Loyalist faction within the Legion.Sevatar himself worked tirelessly throughout the campaigns in both Nostramo and Thramas to support the goals of his primarch in war and to strengthen the resolve of the Night Haunter himself. He would commit more than his share of slaughters, but each for a purpose other than his own bloodlust, each for the glory of his Legion and the needs of his primarch. Yet, Sevatar cared not for the machinations of others within the Legion, and fought his own battles without heed for those who would be his allies. Others acted as leaders for the faction. Anrek Barbatos of the primarch's honour guard was one, for his dedication to the Night Haunter was legend within the Legion, and others too among the captains and praetors, these warriors would coordinate the secret war fought between the Night Lords.This hidden war was not to be fought directly. There would be no pitting Night Lord against Night Lord in open battle, no grand confrontation that would settle the issue. Instead it was fought with sharp knives and bitter words, warriors brought low in honour duels and battlefield incidents or disgraced in council and isolated from the primarch. Even as they fought to control the worlds of the Tithe Road at the outskirts of the Thramas System they fought with each other, with commanders struck down over the right to lead invasions and others castigated for their failures in battle and exiled from the primarch's side.As they pushed further into the Thramas Sector the battles would only intensify, both on and off the battlefield, with Nakrid Thole able tofurther leverage the death-tolls of both his own and his subordinates to claim ever more influence over the primarch. Brash words and bloody triumphs served to grant those Night Lords that fought under the Cross of Bone the influence they required to drown out their opponents, whose champions could do little to stem the tide of fervour that took hold of the rank-and-file of the Night Lords. It seemed that what little remained of the VIIIth Legion that had left Terra nearly two standard centuries before had been all but completely suppressed.