Meros - Signus Campaign: Meros served aboard the Blood Angels’ flagship Red Tear during the beginning of the Imperial campaign into the Signus System. Not long after arriving in-system, the Blood Angels discovered wrecked spacecraft drifting beyond the edges of the Signus Cluster. The IX Legion's scouts had found the wreckage of more than a dozen different craft drifting in the gravity shadow of the world known as Phoros. Civilian haulers, defence force monitors, and shuttles. Many of these spacecraft were not even Warp-capable. Their trajectory suggested that they were fleeing from the inner worlds of the system.Soon the Imperial fleet was rife with rumour, as stories began to circulate about something unusual that had been discovered by the Blood Angels’ scout vessel Numitor. Docking with the Red Tear, the frigate Numitor had the docking cylinder to itself, and as a precaution all auxiliaries and non-combatant mortal crewmen were dismissed to other duties. Meros and a complement of fellow Astartes Apothecaries were summoned by a brisk summons with little explanation as to the reason. Meros wondered why armed Battle-Brothers were needed to escort a medical party on the deck of the Primarch’s own flagship, but no explanations were forthcoming.Each medicae had an assigned number of bodies to examine, and were then to pool their findings. Donning their full suits of Power Armour, the Apothecaries were to observe all biohazard procedures and report anything anomalous immediately. Meros followed his comrades out on to the service deck and found the four coffins set aside for him to examine. He wondered why the corpses had been brought aboard the Red Tear, but it was standard operating procedure.The Red Tear had the most advanced medicae labs and technical facilities of any starship in the IX Legion's fleet. As he opened the container and examined each body in turn, Meros quickly discovered heaps of clothing, curiously laid out in the shape of a person. Taking a sample of blood he discovered that the blood had somehow been altered. The vial of vitae, when held up to the light, showed that instead of crimson fluid, the matter within the crystal tube was thick and sluggish, an oily paste almost purple in colour.Upon closer scrutiny of the corpses, Meros quickly discovered that the bodies lacked rigidity as they were sunken and shriveled in a way that suggested a peculiar form of decay. Much to his shock, he discovered that that there were no bones within the corpses. They were little more than bags of skin and meat in the shape of a human being, misshapen under the weight of their own mass. Even more strangely, the Apothecaries could not figure out how the bones had been removed. The assembled Apothecaries were ordered by First Captain Raldoron to not discuss what they had seen without permission from their commanding officers.As the Blood Angels continued their investigation of the scattered fleet of wrecked vessels, they could not figure out why these craft were even in that particular zone of space. The people of these ships had been obviously so afraid that they willingly sought out the embrace of deep space in order to escape whatever horror they had witnessed. By order of the Primarch, a task force of Blood Angels Astartes were to travel ahead to Signus VI, the Hive World known as Holst by its people, to discern the fate of the people of that planet.Meros and a squad of Blood Angels, accompanied by three Word Bearers Astartes, were sent down to the surface of the planet to investigate. But en route, their mortal pilot was overcome by the nightmarish visions that continued to plague him and all of the unaugmented humans aboard the IX Legion's fleet since it had entered the Signus System. The pilot succumbed to madness and shot the Servitors, the rest of the mortal crew and himself, forcing Meros to pilot the Stormbird and make a crash landing.Once they arrived on the surface of the planet, the Astartes quickly realised they had no communication with their fleet and would not be missed for at least ten hours. They decided to go ahead and explore the planet’s surface, investigating the outer wards of Holst-Prime Hive. During their investigation, the small detachment of Space Marines heard the sounds of gunfire. The Space Marine on point, Brother Xagan of the Blood Angels, had somehow mysteriously disappeared down some ragged sink-hole within one of the habitat buildings.The only sign of his passing was a discarded Umbra Ferrox Pattern Bolter, vapour still curling from its muzzle. As they continued their investigation, the Blood Angels became separated from the three Word Bearers that had been accompanying them, just as they encountered enemy contact from unknown vectors. When Meros and the Blood Angels caught up to their compatriots, they discovered a dead Word Bearer Space Marine.Dark, oily fluid stained the slate-coloured Power Armour of the dead Astartes. With a start, Meros realised that the purple fluid was the Space Marine's blood -- the strange vitae filled his thoughts, his senses. It was the same strange blood he had discovered in the boneless corpses aboard the Red Tear. Suddenly, and without warning, the Word Bearers' Captain immediately interposed himself between the Apothecary and the mutilated remains of his Battle-Brother.As Meros and the contingent of Space Marines attempted to escape from the outer wards of Holst-Prime, the hive city itself came alive, attacking the Astartes in the form of living metallic constructs formed from fragments of wreckage. Surrounded and outnumbered, the small task force was only saved by the timely intervention of Captain Nassir Amit and the Blood Angels' 5th Company.Receiving the strange, but unbelievable reports from the survivors that had been on the planet’s surface, Sanguinius ordered the destruction of the cursed planet. Priming their cyclonic torpedoes and megaweapon systems, the entirety of the Blood Angels fleet bombarded Holst, subjecting it to the rarely used punishment of Exterminatus. Like a tormented animal, the planet ended with a tortured scream that even the void could not silence.Meros would later be a part of a detachment from the 24th Company that set down on the surface of the Agri-World of Scoltrum to investigate whether or not they were any survivors aboard a Signusi frigate called the Stark Dagger, which had attempted to flee from the core worlds of the system. The Stark Dagger had been a part of the Signus Cluster’s outer defence squadron. Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful in their attempt to flee and crash-landed upon the surface of the doomed planet. The Blood Angels managed to rescue a small band of survivors which included a Pariah amongst their number.