Blackshield - Blackshield Motivations: The motivations of Blackshield warbands were diverse and no two were alike. Among the most common were the following:Eternal Vendetta - One Legion of the Space Marines had earned the undying enmity of this warband's warriors; they were pledged to its downfall and utter ruin, and fought without regard for their own lives to bring them pain. Yet, against other foes, they are loath to spend lives that could otherwise be dedicated to the downfall of their chosen nemesis.Panoply of Old - While they had abandoned loyalty to their old masters, this warband maintained some of the trappings of their old lives, and sought new meaning and honour on the battlefield.Only in Death Does Duty End - In order to atone for some sin or failure, be it real or only perceived, the warriors of the Blackshield warband were sworn to die to the last. Rather than some simple death pact, this end had to come in battle for the sins they bore to finally be erased and their last, bloody victory seized.Spoils of Victory - Some Blackshield warbands, having abandoned their oaths of loyalty, fought only for their own gain. They descended on the weak to loot and pillage, marauders and pirates in a galaxy of ruin where no hand enforced any law save that of the blade.An Eternity of War - Battle madness took many of those that forsook their oaths, leaving them as blood-soaked madmen who sought only to fight and kill without regard for who their enemy might be. For these crazed warriors it mattered not from where the blood flowed, only that it flowed, and so they eventually found their way to the service of the Blood God Khorne.The Flesh is Weak - Freed from the laws of the Emperor and the Warmaster alike, many Blackshield warbands turned to technology long forbidden to enhance their fighting ability. As their lonely new war ground on they replaced weak flesh with uncaring metal, until little of what they had once been remained.Legacy of Nikaea - Some Blackshields embraced the psychic powers that had once been forbidden at the Council of Nikaea -- such warbands were dangerous in battle but prone to self-destruction as they abused their power.The Broken Helix - Unable to claim recruits from their Legions' fiefdoms of old, some warbands of Blackshields turned to fouler means to fill their dwindling ranks -- the old sin of gene-cloning or crude replication of the Progenoid Glands. Denied the training camps of Terra or the complex hypno-indoctrination forced upon the recruits of the later Legions, the warriors they produced had none of the discipline that had once been the pride of the Space Marine Legions, but instead bore terrible mutations and scars as the mark of their forbidden origins.In Disgrace All Are Equal - Many Blackshields warbands were little more than disparate associations of the lost and the fallen, with little direction or leadership other than war and battle. Composed of dozens of petty warlords, such forces were powerful but divided, for each fellowship followed only the commands of their own leader and cared not for any greater strategy.Pride Is Our Armour - Whether Terran recruits from the original Great Crusade expeditionary fleets, battle-scarred survivors of the Great Crusade or elite warriors from the far-flung Legion homeworlds, some Blackshield bands were composed only of the most renowned veterans of their Legion.Taint of the Xenos - There existed many terrifyingly powerful xenos technology weapons encountered during the Great Crusade, which, though incredibly effective, had been declared prohibited by the ancient Mechanicum and the Emperor alike for their detrimental effects on the body and mind of a Human wielder. The desperation of certain Blackshield forces, however, overcame such concerns.Weapons of Desperation - A band of Blackshield Legiones Astartes warriors of this persuasion made no use of the common weapons of their brethren, whether having purposefully cast them aside as tainted by the sins of their fellows or having been imprisoned and forcefully deprived of them. Returned to the fight, they were forced to make use of lesser weaponry, wielding mortal longarms as though they were but pistols and making desperation into a virtue. For amid the ceaseless carnage of the Horus Heresy, even the least of weapons fed the slaughter taking place on battlefields across the galaxy.