Legio Tempestor - Treachery of Maximus Karania: After the division of the Legion into two commands, control of the Titan Order's expeditionary force was invested in the senior Princeps Maximus Karania. Where the Stormlord was known for his disdain of the political and doctrinal infighting that had befallen the Mechanicum in the later years after the Unification of the Imperium, Maximus Karania was his mirror, subtle and secretive, although with an unimpeachable war record. So adept at intrigue was he that he had long hidden his machinations and strange preoccupations in plain sight.Unknown to most, beneath a professed orthodoxy Karania was a disciple of a certain strand of esoteric machine lore called Teleologicalica, itself a form of arcane numerology, a discipline that purported to predict imminent and all-consuming doom by reference to the patterns of past cataclysms. Perhaps these beliefs might have had little impression were it not for prevailing attitudes amongst the Tech-priests of Estaban III, the Mechanicum domain where the Legion was mustered at the conclusion of the Epsiloid Binary Cluster campaign.The Tech-priests of Estaban III had not accepted the prevailing Mechanicum doctrine that the Emperor was one and the same with the divine being they referred to as the Omnissiah, and paid only lip-service to the Martian Doctrines.Karania's native political cunning in discovering this and his own schismatic doctrine enabled him to make private and secret alliance with the Tech-priests of Estaban III long before the outbreak of the Horus Heresy. The result was a poisonous cocktail of lies that, now in retrospect, can be seen to have led the Legio Tempestus into the service of the Ruinous Powers of the Archenemy.As time progressed, Karania moved to purge his princeps cadre according to the patterns revealed to him by the doctrines of cataclysmic teleology, ensuring that only those inducted into the discipline's innermost secrets remained within his demi-Legio, but was careful to keep such apostasy shrouded from outsiders, although it had not escaped the attention of the Warmaster's agents, who worked upon it to secure Karania to their cause.When at last he received word of Cavalerio's death on Mars, Karania believed it as nothing less than the fulfilment of his own occult prognostications, and he pledged his demi-Legio to the cause of the Warmaster body and soul.The treachery of Maximus Karania would at length lead the Legio Tempestus to the hallowed ground of Terra itself in bloody war, and then would the true extent of the Stormlords' fall and the nature of the power behind that fall, be made evident.Having received word from Mars that he was now the de facto master of the Tempestus loyal to the Traitors' cause, Maximus Karania pronounced that his allied Forge World of Estaban III would henceforth and for all time enjoy the full protection of the Legion in return for the bounty of its mighty foundries. Karania, at the behest of the Traitor magi, led a purge of any Imperial servants on Estaban III that would not bend knee to the Warmaster's cause.Executing a series of actions that crushed all Loyalist opposition with, it appears, reference to his cultic numerological beliefs, Estaban II and its macro-manufactora were quickly subdued. In barely a solar week of brutal fighting, the rest of the planetary system around it followed, and by the time orders for the Legion's redeployment to the Warmaster's invasion fleet bound for the Coronid Deeps came, the Traitor Stormlords had firmly established a new power base to supply and strengthen them.A single archival entry, recovered years after the event, suggests that even with the full extent of Karania's treachery revealed, elements of his own Legion serving further afield declined his recall order and refused to share his betrayal.These he vowed to hunt down and slay, for their very existence made a lie of the teleological precognostications by which Karania was planning and executing, his Legion's future causing him to delve ever deeper into his occult practices. In the aftermath, this hunt would lead Karania and the Traitor Legio Tempestus along many dark and winding paths never before travelled by any Legion of the Collegia Titanicus.While leading his own division of the Legio Tempestus, Karania proved himself a strategist whose cunning served as a formidable force multiplier and elevated the Legion to the highest tiers of the Warmaster's servants. This rise in favour, however, was ever checked, for its oldest foe, the Legio Mortis, remained of all the Traitor Titan Legions always first in Horus' service.Despite their common cause in the ranks of the Arch-traitor, Tempestus and Mortis, long rivals, slowly became bitterest enemies even as they fought alongside each other, a diametrical opposition that would at length become horribly evident as the unspeakable powers each had sworn themselves to exerted their hideous influence.The traitorous elements of Legio Tempestus -- now referred to as the Legio Tempestor to distinguish them from their Loyalist counterparts -- were present during the Siege of Terra at the end of the Heresy, but when the Warmaster fell, they were driven towards the Eye of Terror along with the rest of the Traitor Legions during the era known as the Great Scouring.There they remain, trapped in servitude to the Chaos Gods, fighting the Long War against the "Corpse Emperor" that began ten millennia before. The Legio Tempestor's current whereabouts are unknown.