Navar Hef - Leader of Monsters: Given his bravado and successful actions in the defense of Ravendelve, Navar Hef was promoted to the rank of Sergeant and placed in charge of one of the new Raptors’ squad. Their superior regenerative abilities allowed Nef and all those wounded on Kiavahr to have regained their strength and thus to participate in the Siege of the Perfect Fortress against the Emperor’s Children on Narsis. Hef and his squad were part of the drop-pod counter-assault which hit the IIIrd Legion’s counter-attack which had pushed back the Raven Guard’s allies from the Therion Cohorts under Sub-Caesari Valerius. Nef and his squad where at the tip of the assault, fighting within eyesight of their Primarch. It is known that during this first engagement, Navar Hef’s mutation still permitted him to carry and use a Bolter, an ability he would eventually loose as his claws continued to grow.With the Raven Guard assaulting Traitor-held worlds, the Raptors and Nef saw much action in the following years. The XIXth Legion took to their old motto "strike, fade away and strike again" to harass those that were loyal to the Warmaster, leaving local forces or their allies to garrison the reconquered worlds before moving on. Nef quickly rose to prominence amongst the Raptors, his command necessitating that he refrain from the Raptors' natural aggression, which made him a far more competent leader that his brutish and bestial physique might suggest.Such was Hef's value to the Legion that he quickly rose to become Commander Branne's second-in-command. By the time the Legion fought the so-called Day of Vengeance campaign, as the liberation of the prison-world of Carandiru would be known, Navar Hef was known as Commander Branne's right hand and had been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant.During this particular campaign, Branne and his Raptors were tasked with the capture of a heavily fortified enclave named Nazdrexes, a peculiar complex where half the fortifications were not directed outwards to repel attackers, but inwards to keep whatever or whomever was imprisoned there secured. Correctly assuming that these high value prisoners might make powerful additions to the civilian uprisings manifesting themselves all over the planet, the Raptors led the assault and were successful in overwhelming the complex defences without casualties, yet they were unprepared for what awaited them.Nazdrexes was not only a prison-compound, but also a diabolic laboratory of the well-known Traitor Apothecary Fabius Bile from the IIIrd Legion. Locked in underground holding cells, vile experiments had been conducted on captured loyalist Legionaries or those Traitors that had fallen in disgrace: towering monstrosities of flesh, muscle and bones, claws and fangs or other stranger and more exotic appendages. Hef and Branne personally led the Raptors into the complex. To the heavily mutated Raptors it must have seemed as looking into a mirror or a possible future that may still await them. The similarities between the Raptors and these aberrations were indeed so many that those Loyalists test subjects that had thus far survived unharmed mistook their liberators for these degenerated monsters and opened fire on them.These survivors were being led by one of the XIXth Legion own missing warriors, namely Techmarine Napenna who had been captured in the Dropsite Massacre. Having been absent from the Legion since then he could have no knowledge of the Raptors and their condition. Infuriated by being referred and mistaken for a ’subhuman’, Hef nearly started a duel with one of the survivors, but held his temper in check. With the complex secured and Carandiru liberated, Corax ordered the Raptors to purge the facilities of theses failed experiments, requesting the task be done by those Raptors similarly afflicted. Despite Commander Branne’s protests, the orders were carried out, the clear-limbed Raptors watching in dire intent as their brothers descended into the subterranean levels to kill the monsters created there. Officially there was no favoritism within the Raven Guard, and as Nazdrexes had been the Raptor’s assigned target, it was only right that this task should be done by those committed to do it - and yet the Primarch’s judgement seemed excessively harsh on the Raptors.