Ebon Drake - From the Ashes of Istvaan: Leaving Baal behind, the Ebon Drake found the Warp becoming ever more turbulent as they closed with the Istvaan System. Yet the Salamanders vessel stayed true to her course, guided as it was by the deft hands and keen eye of its Navigator. Ship logs and other accounts and records from the vessel's crew indicate that the stand-off with his fellow Loyalists at Baal had considerably shaken Xiaphas Jurr. He had intended to make one last stop before setting course for Istvaan at the great Armada Imperialis mustering point of Port Maw, but Warden Arkhad's parting words had stirred the embers of doubt within the Lieutenant-Chaplain's mind. More and more often, Jurr sought counsel not with his fellow Legionaries, but those occult rituals of augury and divination native to his birthworld of Proximal Secundus. In particular, Xiaphas Jurr began conducting rituals of the Drakken-Asca ceremony, the Dragon's Ash Ritual, an obscure practice within the Promethean Cult which was barely tolerated by the Primarch himself. Be it at the hands of one of his rituals or through the benefit of his own intellect, Jurr's choice to avoid contact even with those believed to be his allies proved to be an excellent choice, for unknown to the Salamanders, Port Maw and the entire Manachean Commonwealth had already been conquered by Horus' armies.Having avoided certain destruction, the Ebon Drake pushed on through the whirling aetheric vortex that later Imperial savants would theorise had been created not to bar passage to those who sought entrance, but to prevent escape, cutting off the northernmost star systems of the galaxy from the rest of the Imperium. The Warp Storms of this region were so fierce they effectively cast an impenetrable veil around the Istvaan System, a veil neither Navigator nor Astropath was able to pierce. Yet, Xiaphas Jurr had sworn an oath to Nomus Rhy'tan, an oath he bore on his flesh thanks to the votive forge inside Jurr's quarters. He would reach Istvaan V and discover the Primarch's fate. Sensor-blind, with its Geller Fields straining under the stress of the difficult crossing, the Ebon Drake punched through the ravening tides of the Empyrean, the violence of the aetheric storms forcing them to conduct an emergency translation back into realspace at the very edge of the Istvaan System. Facing a host of unknowns, Jurr ordered every soul onboard the Ebon Drake to battle-stations even before the ship translated back into reality. With its weapons armed and every Astartes aboard ready to repel boarders, the Ebon Drake entered the Istvaan System ready for battle. While Jurr expected to be greeted by the guns of the Warmaster's marshalled fleet or even a monumental shrine to his great treachery, the Ebon Drake found only the cold remains of a battle long fought and forgotten.The vista that greeted Jurr and his companions made for a very bleak sight. In the swathes of space between the planets of the Istvaan System, great hulks and debris fields filled the void, the broken remains of once-proud Legiones Astartes starships left to rot in space. Even as they closed with Istvaan V, the crude pits dug by the Traitors to dispose of the bodies could be seen from space, the slain having been stripped of every piece of usable equipment by Adeptus Mechancus reclamation columns. With no vast armada and no grand palace celebrating Horus' victory to vent their rage upon, doubt again began to assail Jurr's mind: Could this be a trap? And if it wasn't, where were the Warmaster's armies? While to those who have studied history or heard the stories of these dark times, the actions of Horus amid the northern fringes of the Imperium and the birth of the Dark Compliance hold no secret, to the crew of the Ebon Drake the Traitor Legions' absence only added to their many questions, none of which could be readily answered. Making its way through the remains of the fierce void-battle, the Ebon Drake reached high orbit above Istvaan V without any enemy waiting for them in ambush. Nevertheless, her crew refused to relax, the absence of enemy vessels only serving to make them more resentful and cautious. Despite the total absence of resistance, it would take Jurr several solar hours to ascertain that they were indeed alone before letting the first dropcraft leave the Cruiser's hangar bays. The sight of the brutalised orb of Istvaan V quickly quashed all hope they had of finding one of the missing Primarchs alive.For three solar days, heavily-armed search parties roamed the dust plains, witnessing the extent of the losses suffered by the three Shattered Legions. Xiaphas Jurr did not tread the surface of Istvaan V, but chose to remain aboard the Ebon Drake, casting augury after augury while the ship's sensors and Augurs swept the surface in endless new sweep-configuration. All the Loyalist Legionaries found was ruin, wreckage and the silent corpses of the dead with no sign whatsoever of the fates of Vulkan, Ferrus Manus or Corvus Corax. It was only on the third solar day that things changed. Led by the feverish half-dreams of Xiaphas Jurr, who had not allowed himself to rest since their departure from Baal, the Cruiser's sensors detected an anomaly in the geologic strata of one of the glass plains of the Urgall Depression, a testimony to the Traitor's use of atomic weaponry to finish off the last of the Loyalists.The object shown on the Augur readings seemed to be of significant mass and of unknown composition. Better yet, it was broadcasting a faint, almost undetectable signal on an exotic wavelength known to the highest echelons of the Salamanders' command structure. If it hadn't been for Xiaphas Jurr's insistence and strange practices, they might have missed the transmission, dismissing it as some lingering radioactivity. Morale, which had ebbed considerably since their arrival at Istvaan V, flared to new heights as many Legionaries assembled on the planet's surface. Lacking heavy machinery suited to delicate excavation work, the transhuman crew of the Ebon Drake tore at the fused black sand with their Combat Blades and even their bare hands.In ominous silence, the work parties laboured for an entire solar day until they uncovered a massive metallic object, blacker even than the black sand they had been digging in. Even revealed, the object was so massive that it took the combined might of three Iron Hands Cataphractii Terminators to heft it from the clutches of Istvaan V's hungry maw, where it had rested for more than a standard year. Even though it had been fused by unimaginable heat, scoured and scorched by atomic fire and abandoned to rot beneath the surface of a dead world, the object they had torn from the dark heart of Istvaan V was still unmistakably the armoured sarcophagus of a Mark IV Castaferrum Pattern Dreadnought.All its limbs save the stump of its right arm had been shorn away in the gruesome battle it had fought. The ornate heraldry worked into what remained of its hull still proudly proclaimed the identity of the Dreadnought's occupant: Cassian Dracos, the last man to have born the title of Master of the XVIII Legion. Consulting a readout of the Shattered Legions' dead, one of the Legionaries confirmed that Cassian Vaughn had not been confirmed as killed in action. There on the barren grey plains of the Urgall Depression, surrounded by the wreckage and the dead of his Legion, Xiaphas Jurr, with shaking hands, connected the sarcophagus to an external Vox unit, and the haunting, hypnotic voice of a man twice dead rumbled forth over the assembled warriors of three orphaned Astartes Legions:"You come seeking our father, but he is not here. I searched for him on the field of battle until they struck me down with a sword of flame that scorched the very heavens, and yet I did not die. I searched for him in the endless vaults of the dead where the crushing blackness tore at my very soul, and yet I endured. I was tested once again through the crucible, and I tell you this -- Vulkan does not walk among the dead!"Dracos' words filled the hearts of every Astartes with hope, even those Legionaries not of the Salamanders daring to believe that their respective Primarchs might also have survived. Such was the Venerable Dreadnought's reputation that none doubted his words. Dracos -- who would soon gain the new title of "the Twice Dead" -- had a positive effect on the Space Marines' morale. Where previously they were sulking, brooding individuals, the warriors of the Shattered Legions moved once again with purpose and the easy camaraderie of warrior-brothers. With all the reverence due his rank, the battered sarcophagus of the Iron Dragon was transported to the Ebon Drake. As later pict-captures would prove, those who had trod the surface of Istvaan V also left with numerous memento mori, including pieces of shattered armour taken from the corpses of their fallen brothers and turned into votive talismans. The Ebon Drake lingered for a short time in the Istvaan System, during which Cassian Dracos began to exert his influence upon the Ebon Drake 's company, slowly turning them into the Disciples of the Flames.Whereas most Dreadnoughts of his age craved a return to slumber, Cassian Dracos refused all offers of hibernation. Without outside help, his Vulkan-forged shell slowly began to restore his systems, a tech-miracle that only served to bolster Cassian Dracos' growing legend. Apart from a changed physical appearance due to the ordeal he had survived, Dracos' mental state was also affected by the isolation he had suffered under the black sands of Istvaan V. He was frequently lost to prolonged periods of near-incoherent prognostications and memories drawn from his centuries of battle, reliving past events with no notion for the present. Many of the ship's company came to him to receive wisdom and prophecy, both from amongst the Salamanders and those of their brother Legions. For the few short solar days the Ebon Drake stayed in orbit around Istvaan V, his followers began to modify their heraldry with a myriad of devotional icons, forged with the greatest of care by the capable hands of the artisans from Nocturne. To further honour the Venerable Dreadnought, many Legionaries scorched their emerald battle-plate black and applied images of fiery flames, glowing embers or artistic renditions of Vulkan upon it. Compiled by the diligent hands of Xiaphas Jurr, who took the title of "The Prophet of Fire", the Ebon Drake’s company quickly changed. Even within their own chronicle, the crew of the Ebon Drake increasingly referred to themselves as the Disciples of the Flames, their nominal leader now Cassian Dracos.Yet Vaughn's influence and strange charisma did not affect only the living crew of the Ebon Drake, but also the ship's Servitors and Automata, which became unreliable in his presence. Several of the simple Automata that usually performed the more mundane maintenance tasks aboard the Ebon Drake developed anomalous sub-routines in their neuro-cortexes and had to be forcefully reprogrammed to their original task. Seemingly without orders, several high-grade Servitors from the armourium detached themselves from their routine and formed a semblance of a court around the Dreadnought. No explanation for these events is recorded in any official log retrieved from the Ebon Drake and no attempt was ever made by the crew to fully understand this strange phenomenon.With their original mission fulfilled, many amongst the vessel's crew assumed that the Ebon Drake would eventually head back to Nocturne and report to Lord Chaplain Rhy'tan, but Cassian Dracos would not allow such a course to be plotted. Instead, the inscrutable Dreadnought insisted that they set course for the Coronid Deeps and more specifically the Forge World of Mezoa.