Lion El'Jonson - Second and Third Rangdan Xenocides: Next, the Dark Angels took part in the vital campaigns of the final Rangdan Xenocides. They fought alongside Titans from the Legio Gryphonicus, Legio Vulturum and Legio Kydianos as well as other Xanite Mechanicum forces from the Forge World of Xana II.The conflict began in 862.M30 when the Rangda, that xenos terror long thought extinguished in the earlier First Rangdan Xenocide, fell upon the northern reaches of the Imperium in numbers that defied belief. For almost a solar decade the veterans of the Ist Legion, now the Dark Angels, fought to hold at bay an enemy that threatened to consume all the worlds of Mankind.The Lion wrought his own legend in those dark times, a grim figure of death and vengeance that descended upon the Rangda in a cold fury: In the first dire standard years of the conflict, when the Imperium seemed lost in a tide of xenos fiends and their slaves, the Lion stood tall amid the carnage. He was no golden hero like his brother Sanguinius, nor a black-humoured figurehead like Horus Lupercal, but rather a silent rock, unyielding in the storm. He did not inspire loyalty, nor any other virtue. Rather he went forth where the foe was strongest, armoured by his pride and confidence and drew others along with him for the simple honour of standing by his side.For near a solar decade the battles would rage, some nine Space Marine Legions taking part in the fighting, and ravaging Human colonies across the northern sectors of the Imperium. Of those Legions caught up in the fighting many would suffer serious losses, the Space Wolves marking the loss of some 5,000 Astartes breaking the siege of Xana alone and the Dark Angels, gathered once again in almost their full number, bore a toll of their own.The Dark Angels hurled themselves at their enemies and broke their greater strength in countless battles against the vile xenos on the edge of the Halo Stars. This campaign culminated in the Third Rangdan Xenocide around 890.M30, which resulted in the loss of the lives of 50,000 Dark Angels Space Marines, spent in preventing the destruction of perhaps the entire northern Imperium by the alien menace from the outer darkness.At the breaking of the great citadel of Vorksag, during the vast clash of void ships over Morcar and the seven-solar-week-long Battle of Morro, where three companies of the Dark Angels held against more than a million Rangdan neuro-shackled servitors, victory was bought at the cost of their lives, and with the blood of the old Legion, for when victory was at last proclaimed and the Rangdan menace vanquished for the final time, the Dark Angels were but a tenth of their old number.Some say the old Legion fought to prove themselves worthy of their new master, others that they bled to make right their failure to destroy the Rangda when first they met at the Battle of Advex-mors, and a few whispered that the Lion sent them into slaughter so he might replace them with more tractable, Calibanite warriors.Whether true or not, it was to Caliban that the Lion turned to replenish the ranks of his Legion. With the Rangdan plague driven back, the first new influx of true Calibanite Space Marines entered the ranks of the Legion, where once they had been but the few older companions of the primarch, now they were dispersed across all the wings and orders of the Legion.They were a new breed of warrior for the Ist Legion, guided more by tradition and ritual than their forebears and unburdened by the weight of pride that had been the lodestone of the Terran veterans. In the wake of the Second Rangdan Xenocide, it was this changed Legion that went forth to continue its works and to bring war to the most fell of foes.From Caliban they spread out across the stars, for unlike many of their brethren they took few strongholds, save for the lonely chantry-holds that held the knowledge of the Legion. Each of their expeditionary fleets was bound to a different corner of the Imperium, to patrol the dark places where monsters were still to be found. The Lion took command of one such fleet, no larger or more grand than any other for he expected each to be an engine of death capable of defeating any foe, and set course for the world known to Imperial cartographers as Sarosh.Due to the extensive losses suffered by the Ist Legion during the Rangdan Xenocides, by 899.M30, the Ultramarines Legion were on the cusp of becoming the largest Space Marine Legion, standing at around 166,000 Legionaries.