Lion El'Jonson - Coming of the Emperor: Shortly after the success of the campaign against the Great Beasts, in 846.M30 the Emperor of Mankind and a small band of His Legiones Astartes scouts drawn from the  Ist Legion arrived on Caliban after they detected the psychic emanations of one of the primarchs. From the moment the Emperor first landed, El'Jonson felt the deep connection between himself and the Master of Mankind, and swore his fealty. In return, the Emperor made the Lion the commander of the Ist Legion of Space Marines that had been created from his genome.The Emperor had launched His Great Crusade after the end of Old Night to reunite all the lost colonies of Humanity and restore Mankind's birthright as the rulers of the galaxy. The Emperor's Space Marine Legions purged entire star systems of Humanity's xenos oppressors. As the Imperium's wave of conquest advanced across the galaxy, Imperial scouts brought word that they had rediscovered the isolated world of Caliban in the Segmentum Obscurus and that it was home to a man who was likely one of the missing primarchs.Only a small honour guard of the Ist Legion would accompany the Emperor to Caliban, for the Legion was still scattered to war zonesacross the front lines of the Great Crusade. A mere 500, mostly veterans of the Host of Death, would precede the Master of Mankind as He journeyed to greet His lost son, the Knight of Caliban known as "The Lion." Arrayed in the jet black power armour and mortuary symbols that had come to be their mark, it seemed as if the old tales of Calibanite legend and myth had come to life, a host of dark angels mustering before thestronghold of The Order and kneeling before Lion El'Jonson.In that initial, fateful encounter the Legion would earn a new title from the first of the primarchs, for he saw fit to test the mettle of his new followers by personally duelling the captain of the company. The Lion stood against the Cataphractii-armoured warrior and matched his Calibanite steel to the power field-wreathed blade of his opponent and left him woundedin the dust; the Lion took their measure and they his and both learned a respect for the other. From that day forth the primarch would call the Astartes of the Ist Legion his "Dark Angels," a title that soon spread throughout the Legion.Within a short span of time, the Emperor arrived at The Order's fortress-monastery to reclaim His lost gene-son in person and induct Caliban formally into the Imperium of Man, its vast forests to be cleared for industry and the first tithes of recruits claimed from among its population to replenish the depleted ranks of the  Ist Legion.The day of the Emperor's arrival was one that would live on for centuries in Calibanite legend. His great vessel descended from the heavens and He welcomed His lost son back into the Imperial fold.The event was slightly marred by an attempt against the Emperor's life made by certain conservative knights of The Order who feared the changes that would be wrought to their world by the Imperium and its advanced science and culture, but these malcontents were swiftly and mercilessly executed as traitors by the Astartes.The Ist Legion's governing Council of Masters on distant Gramarye would soon hear of Lion El'Jonson, the man who was their primarch, and once more they were riven by dissension. Though none would doubt the word of the Emperor that this knight of Caliban was their true lord, they were split by shame and pride. Some were stricken by remorse at the state of the Legion their primarch would inherit, while others wished to set forth and bring a suitable victory as a trophy to set at the feet of their new master.All across the galaxy, the dispersed units of the Ist Legion reacted much the same, some detachments redoubling their efforts and throwing themselves into combat with renewed zeal to bring honour to the Legion, while others sought to extricate themselves from their campaigns so they might travel to Caliban and ask forgiveness of their returned primarch. The Lion himself was brought to Terra by the Emperor, that he might learn of the war the Master of Mankind wished him to prosecute and of the role he would play for the Imperium in the years yet to come.Soon, the Space Marines of the Ist Legion who had accompanied the Emperor to Caliban were putting potential Astartes aspirants from The Order and the other knightly organisations through myriad martial trials and competitions to gauge their level of martial prowess and character. Only the strongest and most dedicated were allowed to pass to the next stage.Many within The Order whispered that they were competing for a place within the ranks of the Astartes. But these trials also served the secondary purpose of determining if the Human strain on Caliban was genetically pure enough to warrant its status as a world that the Ist Legion could recruit from in the coming years.While the Calibanite knightly orders revelled in their differences and often resorted to combat to settle their feuds, the Space Marine Legions were united in purpose and will. Such division could not be tolerated, and at the behest of the Lion and the Dark Angels, the individual knightly orders were disbanded and brought under the control of the Ist Legion.Such a drastic move did not happen overnight, and could not pass without dissenting voices, but when the Lion spoke in favour of the union of knights and the glory that would be theirs for the taking in the service of the Emperor, most such voices were stilled -- most, but not all.More objections were raised when the soldiers of the Imperial Army descended to the surface of Caliban. The Ist Legion's aspirant trials had already identified the likely candidates for recruitment into that august body, but the vast majority of the planet's population would still be able to serve the Emperor as troops of the Imperial Army.Within an unimaginably short period of time, the surface of Caliban was transformed from a world of sprawling wilderness and castles to one of martial industry that rang to the beat of factory hammers and the tramp of booted feet as its populace girded itself for interstellar war.The Emperor's servants had descended to Caliban with enormous earth-moving machines that cleared dozens of kilometres of forest a solar day and left flat, lifeless soil in their wake, ready to be planted or built upon. Mines, refineries and manufactoria followed, ready to transform the planet's abundant resources into vital war materiel for the Emperor's crusade.Cities were built to supply the sprawling industrial sites, growing upwards and outwards with each passing Terran year as the traditional villages and towns surrounding the fortress-monasteries were emptied and their citizens relocated to better serve the Imperium.Finally, the day arrived when those individuals whose courage had been proven beyond doubt, whose stamina, endurance and strength had seen them through the Astartes trials were ready to be added to the ranks of the Ist Legion.Word had come from Luther that the Astartes had made their final selection for advanced training and the genhancement required to join their ranks. Through the application of Imperial science and the marvels of the gene-seed, these aspirants were transformed over the next several standard years into battle-brothers of the Ist Legion, the newly renamed "Dark Angels."Luther had also been chosen to join the Ist Legion by the Astartes, but in common with a large proportion of that initial intake from The Order and the other Calibanite knightly orders, he had been too old to benefit from the implantation of gene-seed.In its place, Luther, and others like him, had undergone an extensive series of genetic, surgical and biochemical enhancement procedures designed to increase their strength, stamina and reflexes to superhuman levels. They were taller, stronger and quicker than mortal men, but for all that they were still not true Astartes.It was difficult for Luther and the others to come to terms with that fact, knowing that they were surrounded by those who had once served under them as squires and junior knights, but were now far more powerful than they could ever hope to become.Luther still served as the Lion's second within the Legion, earning his position based on merit and fuelled with a desire to prove himself by his devotion to the Imperial ideal. But despite his successes, he could not escape his own inner conviction that he was somehow being looked down upon because he was not a full Astartes.As for Lion El'Jonson, his brother primarchs would come to call him dour and morose, given to dark moods and heedless of the counsel of others, but he saw things simply and starkly. He learned on Terra that the war he had fought in Caliban's monster-haunted forests had not been ended, but only begun -- for the galaxy teemed with monsters to be slain. He dedicated himself to one task: killing.He had no time for Sanguinius' chivalric ideals, for Mortarion's arbitrary hatreds or Fulgrim's obsession with beauty, such passion only obfuscated the true goal: that the enemies of Mankind should be destroyed. As the first of all the primarchs created by the Emperor, he was both more and less than his brothers: a primal force of destruction whose single-minded focus wrought him more inhuman than even Magnus the Red.The Lion could stand against any of his kin, match blades with Fulgrim and stalemate the strategies of Roboute Guilliman and, though some might exceed him in the details of some tasks there were none that were his equal in the grander scope of battle, none whose will could match the bloody-minded determination of the Lion. His talents and resolute confidence, which some might have called arrogance, won him few friends but saw him placed at the head of his Legion faster than any of the primarchs to be rediscovered before him.And the Legion he inherited was in sore need of its primarch and in need of a new beginning. Scattered and fractured, the Ist Legion remained a powerful fighting force but one whose purpose had become lost in the long years of the Great Crusade. Before the coming of the primarch they had been mentors and guides for the younger Legions, but their students had long since found their own wisdom. Now Lion El'Jonson would grant them a new purpose, one in keeping with the primarch's own methods and the vision he had for the Emperor's Great Crusade.His first acts were to merge many of the teachings of Caliban's techno-feudal aristocracy with those of the Ist Legion Hexagrammaton, fusing the best of Terra and Caliban to create something new and more refined, and to gather the scattered fragments of his Legion together. With the first generations of recruits taken from the ranks of the worthy among the knights of Caliban still undergoing implantation of gene-seed, hypnogogic indoctrination and live-fire training, the Lion prepared to embark on a crusade of his own.With him were to be found the original 500 warriors that had first arrived at Caliban as well as those chapters and battle groups that had sought him out to pledge their allegiance, as well as auxilia companies raised from the stock of Caliban to serve the Imperial Army, and a small retinue of Mechanicum magi from the Forge World of Xana II, eager to court favour with the new primarch. In full they numbered 20,000warriors, perhaps a third of the Legion, each marked by the new beginning they were pledged to, adorned with the winged sword of Lion El'Jonson's Dark Angels instead of the grim marks of an age now ended.Lion El'Jonson led this host forth, seeking out those companies of his gene-sons that had not yet found their way to his side. To find those scattered warriors amid the chaos of the Great Crusade, a war waged across a galaxy by ten billion warriors under arms, was no small feat and made possible only by the genius of the Lion himself and the arts of the tech-adepts of Xana, who quickly parsed the data banks of the Divisio Militaris to discern in which campaigns the Ist Legion bled and died.For any other Legion the arrival of their newly-rediscovered primarch might have been the cause for raucous celebration or ostentatious parades, but not so for the grim Ist. News of Lion El'Jonson's approach most often spurred the warriors of the Ist Legion to redouble their efforts in battle, throwing themselves upon the foe without care for their survival so that when they stood before their gene-father they might offer him the blood-soaked laurels of victory.Each battle-worn company received their new master with the same stoic reserve, with silent courtesy and brief but solemn vows of allegiance, and each was tested in battle by the primarch himself before they joined the ranks of his growing entourage. As was the way of the Lion, he demonstrated his worth by his actions and skill rather than with words and vague promises, allowing those who might doubt him to match their blades against his in honest combat. None among the Legion could question his right to lead after such a trial, though some few within the Legion harboured misgivings at the sudden changes the primarch brought to the centuries-old doctrines of the Legion and the shift in authority he represented.Within a few short standard years, the Lion had gathered the vast majority of his Legion together, near 100,000 warriors, and led them to the ancient stronghold of the Ist Legion on Gramarye. There the gathered Council of Masters and Preceptor's Conclave awaited him amid the many glories of the Ist Legion's long and glorious history and the amassed wisdom distilled from its battles. Here, surrounded by the dusty trophies of the past, Lion El'Jonson made his Legion whole once again; he faced the ceremonial champion of the Council of Masters in the ring of honour, battling Pyrhus Calagat, the master of the Host of Fire, in an hour-long duel that has since become legend. This final trial ended, the primarch accepted the titles of Grandmaster of the Ist Legion, the six wings of the Hexagrammaton and High Preceptor of the Orders Militant of the Ist Legion, the first warrior to consolidate the leadership of the entire Legion under one banner.To the gathered warriors of the Dark Angels, whose oaths had now been sworn in blood and sacrifice, the new primarch swore an oath of his own, an oath to seal the pact between them. This oath is recorded in the books of the Council of Masters: "We are the Angels of Darkness, for us there is no peace, no end but war and death. We shall not walk in the golden halls of Mankind's future, but stand resolute in the shadows beyond. While we yet draw breath, this Imperium will not fall and we will not know defeat, for I pledge every warrior, every drop of blood in the Legion in the name of victory, no matter the cost."