Blood Angels - Revenant Legion: The wars of Unification swept out into the Sol System like a storm, unstoppable and wild, and so too went the IXth Legion. Despite being among the largest in number of the early Legions, its ranks bolstered by widespread recruiting during the war for Old Earth, the IXth found no place in the hosts arrayed to assault the Jovian moons or the resource-rich inner worlds during the early days of the Great Crusade. Instead, its flag was planted among the artificial moons of baleful Neptune, whose labyrinthine tunnels and dark halls were the lair of xenos raiders and the last genetically debased human colonists of that far-flung outpost.There was little here to be gained but time, precious time for the Emperor to claim the orbital shipyards of Saturn and the allegiance of Mars, for which He needed the raiders and mutants of the outer worlds held in place. To that end, He sent the IXth Legion forth to die.Twelve thousand warriors of the IXth Legion, all veterans of the wars on Terra, disappeared on the moons of Neptune. While the Emperor and His grand armies brought Saturn, Mars and the inner worlds to heel, no word of the IXth Legion reached them, either of their success or annihilation. By the time these conquests were completed and the Emperor returned to the cold darkness of the outer system, few expected to find anything other than frozen corpses. Yet when they reached Neptune, it was to find the IXth Legion alive and well; indeed, despite the loss of many of their original complement, the size of the force was almost the same, bolstered by recruits taken from among the dregs of Neptune's barely human population. Where others might have floundered and fallen, the IXth Legion had only grown stronger, rising from the ashes of defeat like a bloody phoenix.In those bloody days, the Legion was an ever-changing beast, its ranks largely formed of line infantry equipped almost exclusively for the brutal madness of close-quarters assault. This was a role at which the IXth Legion excelled, always favouring a sudden and overwhelming charge to a long drawn-out battle of attrition. They well understood the role of their macabre legend in war, most often choosing to stage their attacks at dusk or dawn, and taking to decorating the storm-grey of their early Mark II Power Armour with a variety of charnel images and taking to the field unhelmed, that the sight of their angelic visages streaked with blood might unsettle the enemy.Some companies even began to incorporate the secret bloody rituals of the Legion into their doctrines of battle, tearing apart the enemy on the field of battle or indulging in bloody feasts to break their morale and set panic in their ranks.Again and again the IXth Legion would be cast into the crucible of destruction, only to emerge each time as hale as they had been before. Each time they took from the enemy what was required to fight on and grasped victory where others had seen only defeat and despair, though it left them changed. On the silent black battlefields of the Kuiper Belt and the endless wastes of Rust, the IXth Legion was sent to fight and survive where others could not, to fight the unseen holding actions of the Great Crusade's first faltering steps. Malcador the Sigillite himself was to take note of their exploits and dub them the "Revenant Legion," a title that many came to use for the indomitable warriors of the IXth Legion, as much a sign of the superstitious awe in which they were held by many as it was a commendation of their bravery.Indeed, the Sigillite is but one of a number of senior officials within the early Imperium's Divisio Militaris who seemed ill at ease with this incarnation of the Legiones Astartes, lacking as they did the prestige or open popularity of some of their brethren, such as the much vaunted XIIIth Legion or Horus' own XVIth Legion.A dangerous and unsightly weapon, to be unsheathed only in dire need and then quickly hidden away again, the IXth Legion found themselves often in the company of those Legions less favoured by the bright lords of the newly-forged Imperium. With the savage War Hounds and oft-forgotten IVth Legion in whom Horus had found his own disposable weapons, they found a bitter kinship, though it was rare to see these Legions gathered together.Yet it was the work of these ingloriously practical and gore-spattered warriors that set the foundations of the Imperium in place, though there are scant songs sung in praise of the deeds the Emperor commanded them to perform in the pursuit of the golden empire which He sought to build.