Obliterator - History: Obliterators are unique amongst the forces of Chaos as they have no allegiance to any particular Chaos Space Marine warband. Entire planets have been laid to waste, whole civilisations perished just to provide a handful of these monsters with the archeotech they so desire, in an effort to gain the promise of their future support.Yet, for all their power, the origins of the Obliterators remain open to much speculation and debate among Imperial scholars.The first Obliterator's story begins during the Horus Heresy on the dark Forge World of Sarum, a place loyal to the Hereteks of what became the Dark Mechanicum.During the final days of the Horus Heresy, the Primarch Perturabo of the Iron Warriors was sent to find Angron and bring both his Iron Warriors and the World Eaters Legions to the Traitor Legions' muster at Ullanor, so that the final assault on Terra could begin.Knowing that the Tech-priests of Sarum supplied the World Eaters with much of their wargear, Perturabo set course for that planet to ask for news of his brother's whereabouts. When the Iron Warriors arrived in orbit of Sarum, they found the planet sheathed in debris.Descending onto the surface, Perturabo and his retinue were led deeper and deeper into the heart of the Forge World. There they found a Warp entity bound to the core of the planet. This being was the Daemon of Khorne named Sa'ra'am who claimed to have come into existence at the moment the first weapon made by a mortal to take a life was forged.Being confined to the heart of the Forge World was a fate the Daemon secretly relished, as this fate meant it was free from the direct control of the Chaos Gods and no longer had to serve their every whim.Perturabo threatened to free the Daemon if it did not reveal the whereabouts of Angron. The Daemon acquiesced and revealed that Angron could be found on the world of Deluge. The Daemon then possessed the Iron Warrior Volk.Volk was the former commander of the 786th Grand Flight, a Lightning Crow pilot who had most of his body rebuilt and housed within a suit of modified Tactical Dreadnought Armour after being shot down in an engagement. The Daemon's touch transformed Volk into the first Obliterator. This new amalgamation of Daemon and Heretic Astartes left the planet with Perturabo. He would not be the last of his kind.The Obliterators who came after Volk are often thought to once have been Techmarines of the Emperor's elite Legiones Astartes during the Horus Heresy. Obliterators are known to be obsessed with the merging of the material and the immaterial, the organic and inorganic. Using knowledge gleaned from their pact with the Ruinous Powers, and with the techno-arcane methods of the Dark Mechanicus, Obliterators have managed to blur the line between man and machine, and mortal and Daemon.There is talk within the ranks of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Inquisition that Obliterators are the result of centuries of cybernetic research -- something the Tech-priests strive for in their own existence. It is their belief that someone within the ranks of the Mechanicus succeeded in the ultimate convergence of man and machine through the application of the reality-warping power of Chaos.However, some (a minority) scholars dismiss such claims. Instead they believe that Obliterators have contracted some form of daemonic virus that puts their flesh into a permanent state of flux and mutation.It is their belief that many who contract this virus simply perish as their bodies eventually rebel against the changes wrought upon it. They think that the Obliterators are those few humans who have managed to exercise a manner of genetic control over the flux -- they are able to fashion weapons and armour from within their very bodies by tapping into the transmuting power of the virus.Thankfully, this view is much dismissed as there are many flaws with its application -- the least of which is that the abilities exhibited by Obliterators in no way act the way any known pathogen should behave.Aside from their abilities, there is much speculation about the nature of the pact between Obliterators and the Chaos Gods. Obliterators do not sport any obvious marks of allegiance to any particular Chaos God. They also do not bear the colours of any Traitor Legion or one of the myriad Renegade warbands.Many Chaos Lords will go to extreme lengths to secure the fickle aid of even a single Obliterator. Obliterators are exceedingly rare, and while their exact numbers can only be guessed at, it is apparent that they are among the least numerous of assets employed by the forces of Chaos.They exist outside the structure of the warbands and Traitor Legions, and move about from one to the next, exchanging their expertise and power for the chance to claim ancient Archeotech, or exotic and esoteric wargear from their foes.