Night Lords - Night Haunter's Decline: Even as his Legion fought for his attention, struggled to save or to damn him, Konrad Curze turned his face from his gene-sons and lapsed into a fugue that only exacerbated the Legion's internal conflict. Long had he battled against the dire future he had foreseen with that cursed fragment of his father's psychic gift that had passed to him.In his youth he had imposed order with the blood of the wicked, under the guidance of the Emperor and his primarch brothers. He had tried to tame his precognitive gift and see past the terrors it showed him, and as he fought for Horus he tried to drown the visions in death. None had worked, whatever methods the Night Haunter employed, his nightmares remained unchanged and inescapable. Its first signs had already come to pass: corruption had taken root in his cities despite all the blood shed to chain them in fear, and as he had once tried to warn his brothers, the Imperium had fallen into civil war. To the narrow glimpse of the future that the Night Haunter could perceive, what was to follow seemed inevitable, 10,000 standard years of blood and death that would continue long after his own doom.With the failure of his attempts in the Nostramo Sector and the initial stages of the Thramas Crusade to counter the fate he foresaw, Konrad Curze withdrew from the fighting and secluded himself in the half-finished Night Lords fortress on Tsagualsa. There he would spend much of thewar imprisoned in a cage of his own despair, giving vent to his frustration in a series of ever-more deranged and violent displays, enough even to disquiet the Night Lords. The primarch wallowed for a time in despondency, raged at the futility of his struggle and etched his pain onto the hides of those unfortunate prisoners dragged to his lair.In his absence, Nakrid Thole and his disciples who fought under the sign of the Cross of Bone threw the Night Lords into combat across the Thramas Sector, the count of dead foes deemed of more import than the strategic worth of their gains. For as the primarch shied further awayfrom his duties as overlord of the Night Lords, the more power he ceded to Nakrid Thole and those like him. Jago Sevatarion and those others of the primarch's inner circle were tied to his side, unable to take to the vanguard of the war while he languished in his fugue, waiting for new orders and pleading for the Night Haunter to abandon his doldrums and take once again to battle.Their efforts to stir the primarch would bear bitter fruit, raising him to action for a brief confrontation with Lion El'Jonson on Tsagualsa.  In an apparent, unmoored attempt to sway his brother to Horus' cause, the Night Haunter left a deep-void beacon in the patrol path of one of the Dark Angels' outrider vessels. The beacon was set to transmit coordinates in advance, so that the two primarchs could meet and parley on the planet of Tsagualsa. Night Haunter wanted to break his former brother either mentally, physically or both to obtain his objectives.The primarchs were accompanied by two warriors from their personal honour guards to the parley. The meeting began amicably enough between the two as they conversed with relative civility. This amity lasted only until the Night Haunter slandered El'Jonson, and in return the Lion struck his former brother. This melee further degenerated into an all-out brawl between the two sides.As the Night Haunter strangled the life out of El'Jonson, one of the Dark Angels honour guardsmen ran his sword through the Night Haunter's back, saving his primarch's life. Eventually both Legions sent reinforcements in response to this incident. Each side dragged away their respective primarchs from the scene of the combat. Both primarchs survived this brutal confrontation and went on to continue the contest between their Legions for control of the Aegis Sub-sector of the Aegis Sector.No living creature now knows what Curze truly hoped to gain from that battle, for in single combat there were few among the primarchs that could match Lion El'Jonson blade to blade. Perhaps he had hoped that in sharing his visions he might find answers, perhaps he sought to warn his brother of the horrors yet to come, perhaps he even hoped that the Lion would kill him, that he might escape the fate that haunted him in that simple fashion. Whatever the intentions of the Night Haunter, he would leave the battlefield bloodied and no more sane than when he had gone forth.It was a pattern that would be repeated at Sheol, where once again Konrad Curze would throw himself at the primarch of the Dark Angels and force the most loyal of his gene-sons to sacrifice themselves so that his broken but still-breathing form could be recovered. Even as little more than a comatose and insensate burden, the primarch remained at the centre of his Legion's struggle. Those that had fought to free the Legion blamed him for their dire situation, while those that sought to return both the Legion and its primarch to glory struggled to preserve him in the face of his failure.