Crimson Fists - War of Beasts: The Imperial Fists were not the only Sons of Dorn to defend Vigilus against the alien during the War of Beasts. With them came their foremost Successor Chapter, the Crimson Fists, who had lost so much to the Greenskin species on Rynn's World a solar decade before. On Vigilus, that debt would be paid in blood.The Crimson Fists were amongst the most numerous of the Adeptus Astartes Chapters present upon Vigilus. That in itself was a significant achievement, given their tragic past. The integration into the Chapter of the Primaris Space Marines brought to Rynn's World by Roboute Guilliman had gone well. They had worked hard to bring their new Primaris brethren into the fold, teaching them the rites of battle and training alongside them night and day until the new warriors fought seamlessly with the old. Each new recruit to the Chapter underwent the trials of the Bloodied Fist, returning with his bare hands stained with the gore of a barb-dragon and the right to wear crimson upon his right hand.There were a few traditionalists of the Chapter who saw the induction of so many off-worlders into their ranks as permanently changing the soul of their brotherhood, but with Guilliman and Pedro Kantor united in their new vision for the Imperium, they kept their counsel to themselves.The Crimson Fists too had heard tell of Vigilus' plight. Resolving to harden the bonds of kinship between newcomer and veteran, Pedro Kantor led five entire companies -- a full half of his Chapter -- to battle in the Nachmund Gauntlet. It was a statement, after a fashion, its intent as clear as the clarions that announced their arrival and the stark blue-and-red heraldry of their battle plate. The Crimson Fists were back in force, ready to fight and die not just for their home territory, but for far-flung worlds that the Imperium at large could not do without.Upon making planetfall at the capital of Saint's Haven, the Crimson Fists did not plunge straight into battle, raining from the skies in thunderous drop assaults as did so many of their fellows. Instead they deployed via Thunderhawk gunship -- many of which had yet to earn a single battle scar, for the armorium of the Chapter had been replenished alongside its warriors by the grace of Guilliman's crusade.Pedro Kantor presented himself to the governing Vigilus Senate that had been set up by the Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar, consulting the war leaders of that august assemblage and seeking the wisdom of Calgar himself. Kantor was there to serve, not to win glory -- he would pay back the faith that Primarch Guilliman held in him through solemn duty.Much to the disappointment and simmering anger of many Crimson Fists, the companies from Rynn's World were not despatched to shatter the Ork forces upon Vigilus. Instead, they were given orders to aid the war effort in the Dirkden Hivesprawl. Their task was to slow down the Genestealer Cultists that had boiled out of the subterraneanlevels of Dirkden, rising up in such impossible numbers that many thought that misbegotten series of hive cities already lost.Without a word of protest, Kantor made haste for the Hyperia-Dirkden Fortwall -- in doing so coming under attack from elements of the cult known as the Pauper Princes -- and crossed to the war-torn hellscape of the Rescalid Underworks. His forces fought nobly and without pause against the Purestrain Genestealers that scuttled like hideous alien insects through the streets, purging nests of the vile creatures with flame and sustained volleys of Bolter fire.Their aim was not simply to exterminate, for even with their newly bolstered companies, there was no way they could have taken on an entire nation of Genestealer Cultists and survived. Instead they fought a complex, overlapping web of battles designed to buy time for the untainted Imperial citizenry to escape the Genestealer's Curse.The populace of Dirkden, having been plunged into a nightmarish existence where every building, hab-site or bunker could harbour twisted alien mutants, had all but given up hope. With the Crimson Fists working alongside Cadian troops to clear as many citizens as possible, tens of thousands of lives were spared, flowing in refugee convoys into the dusty southern reaches of the Hyperia hivesprawl, where the Brazen Claws had so recently hurled back the Ork invaders.When the Adeptus Ministorum decreed that they had overloaded the capacity of Hyperia to harbour more unfortunates, and that agents of the Pauper Princes were also escaping Dirkden disguised as refugees, Pedro Kantor argued for a stringent checking procedure at the southern gate of the Fortwall.He did so with such passion and eloquence that the Ministorum agreed to a compromise, and put into place the checkpoints requested under the purview of veteran Cadian regiments. In the end, even that was not enough -- the Fortwall and Dirkden both ultimately fell to the xenos cultists that had so long prepared the way for their ascension.Yet without the efficiency, conviction and compassion of the Crimson Fists, Dirkden would have fallen long before the culmination of the War of Beasts, and doomed millions more innocent souls.