Baal - History: The Blood Angels have been shaped not only by the personality and deeds of their Primarch Sanguinius, but also by the nature of their Chapter homeworld. Few worlds in the entire Imperium could have as devastating an impact on the Human soul as Baal and its inhabited moons: Baal Prime and Baal Secundus.In ancient days Baal and its moons all had Earth-like atmospheres. Baal itself was always a world of rust-red deserts much like Mars but its moons were paradises for mortal men, where their people lived in harmony with nature and pursued lives of ease and freedom.The people of Baal became exceptional artisans, and spent their time creating mighty monuments, carving the mountains themselves into statues of their rulers and their gods. They even ventured onto the surface of desolate Baal itself, leaving colonies and breathtaking edifices in their wake.No one knows exactly what happened to change this idyllic state of affairs. All that is certain is that during the fearful events that marked the downfall of interstellar Human society and the end of the Age of Technology, the moons of Baal suffered terribly in a civil conflict that was most likely between them.Ancient weapons of terrifying potency were unleashed. Cities became plains of smouldering glass. Lush grasslands became polluted deserts. Seas became poisoned lakes of toxic sludge. The people of Baal died in their millions and it looked as if Humanity might become extinct in the Baal System.But somehow people survived. They clung precariously to life on the edges of the radioactive deserts. They became scavengers, picking through the scattered bones of their own once-great civilisation. In the dark time that followed the collapse of all order, some became worse than scavengers, and in their desperation turned to cannibalism.Over the course of the following centuries, the accumulated chemical and radioactive toxins that built up in the survivors' bodies led them to devolve into mutants, shambling parodies of the noble men their forefathers had once been. There were some who held on to their Humanity and preserved a semblance of sane behaviour, but these were the embattled few amongst a new and savage culture that evolved amid the ruins of the old. The only social unit left was the tribe.For Human and mutant cannibal alike, the only folk they could rely upon were their own kin. The people of the Baal System became nomads, shifting from place to place, picking the ruins of their lost civilisation clean, warring to preserve the spoils they had gathered. The tribes fought constant wars, webs of alliances shifting intermittently as each tribe strove for supremacy and survival. Extinction awaited the slow and the weak. Where once the moons of Baal had been near-paradise for Mankind, now they were living hells.For the few surviving Humans, existence was a constant struggle. They wandered the surface in ramshackle vehicles, desperately hoping that their patched-together radiation suits would save them, praying that they would never hear the hideous tell-tale clicking of their rad-counters, a sound that meant death was imminent. For a time it seemed that Humanity was doomed and soon there would only be an endless desert ruled over by the feuding mutant tribes. Then, out of the star-strewn darkness of the heavens, came a sign of hope.