Konrad Curze - Acceptance of a Dark Future: By the end of the Great Crusade, the Night Lords were a Legion set upon a course that would lead them inevitably to their destruction, a course whose origin could be found on distant Terra and the inscrutable plans of the Emperor, but that would see its bitter end among the dim stars of the Eastern Fringe. As was fitting for a Legion of such ill-repute and terrible mien, it would not go meekly to meet this ordained fate nor accept without bloodshed an end to the path they hadchosen to walk.Amid the turmoil and destruction of the Horus Heresy the first signs of that which awaited them would appear, heralded by the Night Haunter himself, and the Legion would turn upon itself in an orgy of violence in an effort to sever itself from the curse of its primarch. This was not the end that they stumbled ever closer too, that the Night Haunter had seen in a thousand cursed dreams, but merely a foretaste of the horror thatwas to come. For despite the grim fervour with which they struggled, the Night Lords sought the wrong foes for their rage, choosing to blame a corruption they saw within their own ranks as though it had been brought to them from the outside.Instead, the curse they sought to end had ever lived at the heart of the Legion, a blight that had festered in the place that it had been set by the Emperor's own hand, in aid of plans incomprehensible to the minds of mere mortals -- the Night Haunter himself.Afflicted by the curse of seeing but a fragment of the foresight that guided his gene-father, Konrad Curze had seen the grim possibility that waited for him and his gene-sons on the far side of the Horus Heresy. Once he had sought to fight that possibility, to struggle against the future hoping that his dark dreams would clear, that the blood he shed and the lives he had claimed would be enough to shift the path of the future ever so slightly. That the dreams that had haunted his mind, the visions of a dark and terrible future would clear and be replaced, that he might find a place in the empire his father sought to build among the stars.Yet even after Horus shattered the course of the Emperor's plans and remade the future of the Imperium itself, Cruze's vision remained constant and unchanging, a curse that he came to believe was inevitable and immovable. That all the struggle and death had been in vain, that it had all meant nothing, worked on the mind of the primarch in a manner more catastrophic than the cut of any blade, a wound that no chirurgeon could mend.Thus, by the time of the Thramas Crusade he had come to embrace his doom, to revel in the futility of his existence and the bleak truth he thought he had discovered.Angered by the Emperor's rejection of their methods of protecting and extending His realm, the Night Lords and their primarch willingly joined the Warmaster Horus in his rebellion against the Throne of Terra. When the Warmaster revealed his treachery during the Isstvan III Atrocity and plunged the galaxy into the fires of civil war, Konrad Curze would eventually throw himself into a bitter campaign of death and destruction, giving full vent to his most violent urges.When Imperial forces were assembled to strike against Horus and the four turncoat Traitor Legions who had joined him in the Battle of Isstvan III, there were many who were surprised to learn that the Night Lords had answered the call. For years the VIIIth Legion had existed on the border between sanction and censure, fighting its own wars of terror like shadows within the forces of the Great Crusade.Such was the desperate spirit of those times that few questioned Curze's aid, and those who did perhaps remembered the Night Lords' need to punish those who strayed from the light. As the treachery of the Drop Site Massacre would show, however, the Night Lords had not forsaken contact with all elements of the Great Crusade, and their need for retribution had led them to become the Traitors and criminals they had once loathed.Once unfettered by Horus' need to drive on Terra and their tenuous allegiance with the powers of Chaos, the Night Lords went on to conduct a campaign of terror that continues to echo down the millennia to this day, wreaking bloody murder across the galaxy. The Night Lords would participate in the epic Siege of Terra and the Siege of the Imperial Palace by the forces of Chaos. Immediately after the death of Horus, the Night Lords went on a killing spree in the Eastern Fringes of the galaxy that caused havoc for long Terran years after the Horus Heresy had ended.After this atrocity, Curze and his VIIIth Legion left a trail of violence and atrocity across the sectors they conquered. They now killed merely for the sake of causing pain and suffering, while spreading fear and death in their wake. The Night Haunter also began to change, denouncing the Emperor of Mankind as a weakling and a hypocrite, and transforming into a hunched and terrible predator. Many believe it was during this period that the primarch began to heed the whispered temptations of Chaos.The campaigns of the Night Lords became less justifiable, little more than terror campaigns that left behind devastated worlds across the galaxy. The Night Haunter no longer crusaded in the Emperor's name, instead fighting only in the name of death and fear. Eventually, the Emperor was forced to order the recall of Night Haunter to answer charges laid against him and his warriors by the other primarchs and the citizens of various worlds that had felt the terrible onslaught of the Night Lords Legion. But before the Night Lords reached Terra, a new crisis for the Imperium erupted.The Night Haunter did not fall during the Horus Heresy, and neither did he receive the dark blessing of the Ruinous Powers in the form of apotheosis to Daemonhood. Instead, he met his end at the hand of an assassin of the Callidus Temple named M'Shen on the planet Tsagualsa, where the VIIIth Legion had built its fortress after the destruction of Nostramo.It is known that throughout his life Curze had possessed the gift (many would say curse) of psychic foresight; he was constantly struck with powerful visions of the worst of all possible futures, and that his last had been a foretelling that he would die at the hand of one such as M'Shen. This prophetic psychic ability was passed on to other Night Lords who share their gene-sire's genetic heritage. This was a unique trait, as it is said to be unrelated to Warp taints or other known psychic properties. It is believed that Curze let his assassination happen, in order to show his father, the Emperor of Mankind, that he stood by his beliefs as surely as the Emperor stood by His. While acknowledging his own crimes against humanity, Curze also stated that his martyrdom would ultimately vindicate him and his methods.Curze ordered his Legion not to pursue his assassin, a last wish that was eventually disobeyed. The primarch's acceptance of his own fate confirmed his bleak worldview, granting him a victory he could never attain under the rule of his father. His death did not slow the Night Lords down, as they continued to apply themselves to his mantra and are specialists in the application of terror and the tactics of fear to this day. Though they paid lip service to the Ruinous Powers of Chaos and certainly felt its insidious pull, in the end the Night Lords, like their primarch, served only their own twisted conception of justice.