Nassir Amit - Horus Heresy: Just as it seemed that the Emperor's dream of Human unity could be fulfilled, the Great Crusade ended in the most terrible and unimaginable way. It came to pass that the Imperial Warmaster Horus, the greatest of the Emperor's genetic sons, fell to the temptations of the Chaos Gods and became swayed by their promises of power. He then sought to sway his brother primarchs to his cause.Horus and Sanguinius had fought many campaigns by each other's side. Their relationship was so close it had even incited jealousy amongst their brother primarchs on occasion. But in his blackened heart Horus knew that Sanguinius would never willingly betray their father, and so he had formulated an audacious plan to either convert the Blood Angels Legion to his cause or utterly destroy them.Horus had discovered solar decades earlier a carefully-guarded secret of the Blood Angels during their joint campaign on Melchior. Horus had witnessed Sanguinius killing one of his own Astartes. The Great Angel explained to his shocked brother that he had discovered that within his own genome there was a terrible, mutant trait that lay buried and waiting to be awakened. This genetic flaw would later be known as the "Red Thirst."Solar decades later, Horus would exploit this knowledge of the Blood Angels' Flaw. The Warmaster had found a way to sway his "beloved" brother's Legion to his cause and the service of the Chaos Gods. In his capacity as Imperial Warmaster, Horus ordered Sanguinus to gather his entire Legion and make for the Signus Cluster, a trinary star system located in the Ultima Segmentum near the Eastern Fringe.His IXth Legion was to cleanse the 7 worlds and 15 moons that comprised the Signus Cluster of xenos invaders and release the Humans settled there from their xenos-overlords in what would later be known to history as the Signus Campaign. Unaware of the Warmaster's perfidy, Sanguinius willingly obeyed his brother primarch and immediately set out for this volatile region of space.Unbeknownst to the Blood Angels, they were blindly walking into a deadly trap, for the Signus Cluster had fallen prey to agents of the Ruinous Powers and become a veritable Realm of Chaos -- a system of hellish Daemon Worlds under the rule of a Greater Daemon of Slaanesh known as Kyriss the Perverse. When the Blood Angels arrived in-system, their fleet was ambushed by the malevolent forces of the Warp, crippling or killing many of their Navigators and astropaths in the initial onslaught. The Blood Angels now faced the fury of Chaos for the first time.Amit began to suspect that his Legion had been led into a cunning trap, following the events that occurred upon the world of Horst, after Squad Cassiel had been rescued by the timely arrival of Amit and his 5th Company from strange hostiles. During this time, Amit had also discovered that Raldoron's adjutant, Mkani Kano, a former Librarian, had been secretly seeking out his former brothers of the Blood Angels' Librarius division to restore their fellowship and maintain their psychic abilities in violation of the Edicts of Nikaea. Amit approached Kano and offered to assist him in his hidden endeavours.When the Blood Angels moved upon the Signus Cluster's capital world of Signus III, known as Signus Prime, they were assailed by malevolent energies which surged across the void, attacking the minds of the psychically sensitive mortal crewmen of the Blood Angels' expeditionary fleet. In the second wave of attack, the Blood Angels were set upon by monstrous hell-ships -- deformed mutant vessels afflicted by the warping powers of Chaos -- which broke free of the planet's gravity and surged forwards to assault the Blood Angels fleet.One of the hell-ships collided with the Blood Angels' flagship, the Red Tear, and disgorged hundreds of Warp-spawned creatures and Chaos-corrupted Signusi crewmen. Meanwhile, on the command deck of the Red Tear, the ship's commanding officer, Admiral DuCade, and her entire bridge crew had become infected with madness from the psychic cacophony. After killing her entire bridge crew, the mad admiral set a new course for the massive flagship towards the surface of Signus Prime. She destroyed the bridge's command console with her personal sidearms so that her deed could not be undone.After the Red Tear crashed upon the planet's surface and the accompanying Word Bearers' vessel, the Dark Page, under Chaplain Tanus Kreed fled, Sanguinius called for a Council of Angels, a gathering of all the Legion's senior captains, to decide their next course of action. It was here that Amit spoke bluntly of what had come to pass, voicing both his fears, and that which no one wanted to admit -- they faced neither xenos nor any foe that had been spawned from the material realm -- for these enemies were literal Daemons.When Sanguinius tried to tell Amit that he had made his point, the "Flesh Tearer" continued to speak, though many would not wish to hear it. Amit declared that his fears about Signus Prime had been proven right, and the world was nothing more than a trap, plain and simple. Amit went on to state that the Blood Angels had been assailed with lies and treachery since they had first first set sail through the void for the Signus Cluster. And the Word Bearers' Chaplain's duplicity in leading them there could mean only one thing. They had been betrayed by their brethren Astartes. Kreed was not the architect of this betrayal, for he was only a follower, not the leader. Amit dared voice the opinion that it was the Warmaster who had sent them here with a lie on his lips. That he had possessed full knowledge of what they faced all along, and sent them anyway.Amit's words had barely left his lips when Sanguinius swept forth and knocked Amit down with the pommel of his great sword. His red blade then came about and its tip was placed upon the captain's bared throat. The primarch would not abide such aspersions being cast upon his brother Horus. He ordered Amit to recant, for he would cut his armour from him and mark him for punishment.The willful captain refused, for in his hearts he knew that he spoke the truth. Amit's fears were confirmed by Helik Redknife, who led a small cadre of Space Wolves that were also present at the proceedings and had accompanied the Blood Angels to the Signus Cluster.Before the Blood Angels had set out for the Signus Cluster, the small cadre had been sent by their Primarch Leman Russ, under orders from Malcador the Sigillite, the Regent of Terra, to watch over Sanguinius, and if need be, to attempt to kill him if he showed any signs of disloyalty like that of his brother Magnus the Red. Redknife explained that such betrayals had already been committed, such as the act committed by the Thousand Sons' primarch, who had broken the Emperor's Decree Absolute with his continued embrace of psychic sorcery on Prospero. With these new revelations, the Blood Angels resolved to face the threat on Signus Prime and emerge victorious, no matter the cost.During the subsequent Battle of Signus Prime, the ferocious Space Marines confronted the vast, nightmarish horde of Chaos Cultists and packs of monstrous Daemons. Sanguinius faced a new threat, in the form of a Greater Daemon of Khorne, a Bloodthirster of the Blood God named Ka'bandha. The Angel and the Daemon fought a titanic battle amidst the blood and carnage all around them.At the height of this confrontation, as the primarch prepared to strike a killing blow against the fallen Bloodthirster, Ka'bandha struck a dishonourable blow with its massive barbed whip around the primarch's legs, smashing the Angel to the ground. The Greater Daemon then summoned forth the malefic powers known as the Ragefire, and cut a huge swathe through the ranks of the Sons of Baal with his great axe, killing 500 Blood Angels in an instant.The psychic backlash of so many of his gene-sons dying so suddenly knocked Sanguinius into unconsciousness. Leaderless, the Blood Angels' fury was unfettered. The brutal violence of the Bloodthirster Ka'bandha unleashed something dark within the psyche of the Blood Angels, a thirst for blood that would not be slaked until the taint of Chaos had been wiped away from the planet. The sons of Sanguinius lost themselves in the riot of killing. When Amit and some of his warriors fell into the depths of the Red Thirst they set upon Helik Redknife and his Space Wolves, slaughtering all of them.Following the battle, Amit submitted himself to First Captain Raldoron for punishment. He revealed what had occurred to the Space Wolves, but Azkaellon, the commander of the Sanguinary Guard, revealed to Amit that he had already lied to their primarch about how the Space Wolves had died. Enraged, Amit nearly came to blows with the Sanguinary Guard Commander, but Azkaellon explained that if their lord knew the truth, he would blame himself for what had happened.He would then tell his brother, the Wolf King Leman Russ, the truth. This would risk the bonds between their two Legions, a bond at a time when unity was sorely needed. Amit asked Azkaellon how he was supposed to ease the pain in his heart with what he had done? Azkaellon informed him that it was a burden that he must ultimately learn to bear.