Dark Angels - A Fortress of Pride: These trials would shape the Ist Legion into a fearsome weapon, the largest and most heavily armed of all of the Legiones Astartes during the early years of the Great Crusade. They fielded more warriors under arms, maintained a larger fleet and had access to weaponry more powerful than any of their brother Legions at that time, even those such as the Luna Wolves and Space Wolves which had already been reunited with their primarchs. The Grandmaster of the Ist Legion stood at the left hand of the Emperor, one of the most influential personages in the early Imperial Court whose counsel was second only to that of Malcador the Sigillite and Horus Lupercal.Despite the hidden nature of many of their triumphs, they were acknowledged by all as pre-eminent among their transhuman kin; the most powerful force-at-arms in the serried ranks of the Imperial armies. In those heady years of conquest and victory the Ist Legion stood true to their name at the apex of Imperial might, feared by those who stood against the Emperor and His dream of unity and respected by all those who fought at their side.Yet, as with all things, the glory of the Ist Legion would be a fragile thing and one that could endure only for a short time before becoming something less than it once was. For the Ist Legion, in those days before the return of their primarch, the great foe that would topple them from their place of honour would not be any terror from the outer dark, but rather their own hubris. For, though the black cruisers of the Legion were ever to be found at the edges of the map, hunting formonsters in the dark between the stars, they now took a perverse pride in pitting themselves against only the most powerful of foes, those that wielded a power equal to that of their own, those in whom they saw the possibility of defeat. Other threats -- deemed too insignificant for the Ist Legion, too weak to pose a real challenge, foes that would not test their strategies or mettle -- would often be bypassed and left to the Imperial Army regiments and other Legion fleets that followed in theirwake.Yet with each encounter they grew only stronger; no enemy, no matter how powerful or destructive, could stop them and each triumph only added to the shield of arrogance they had built about themselves. The stubborn pride that had sustained them through hardships unnumbered now became a double-edged blade. The Hexagrammaton, once an ever-shifting body of knowledge that changed to match each challenge, had become fixed in place; the warriors of the First assuming that they had reached the apex of skill and could learn no more. Recruitment from outside their ancient enclaves on Terra and a few other worlds slowed to but a trickle, with those from outside the traditional recruiting grounds considered less valuable.Each battle led them further down the path of wilful arrogance, each victory hailed as a triumph of their skill and each defeat dismissed as the folly of lesser breeds of warrior and leaders rightfully culled from the Legion by their failure. Tradition and ritual became more valued than innovation, with each order and host jealously guarding their own small fragments of the Legion's battle-lore, certain that it was this scrap of knowledge that was the true heart of the Legion's success.The Legion began to turn in upon itself, the openness and inquisitive nature of their early years slowly being replaced by a secretive and tradition-bound approach. They had begun the Great Crusade as mentors and guides for the other Legions, seeking out the stratagems and tactics through which the potential of the Legiones Astartes might be fully realised, but now came more and more to resent those they had once guided. The other Legions claimed world after world for the Emperor, easy victories in the eyes of the Ist Legion, trivial conquests against unworthy foes, yet ones for which they received laurels and praise equal to that of the First Legion's hard-won battles.Some also came to rival the power of the First: the Ultramarines, now re-united with their primarch, Roboute Guilliman, could claim more warriors under arms, and the Imperial Fists, under Rogal Dorn, boasted the firepower of immense relics such as the Phalanx in their fleets. To a Legion that had built its pride upon a sense of authority, some might say superiority, to find itself now merely one among many would shake its foundations.Perhaps the final blow to their fragile pride was to come at Canis-Balor, where simple conquest and stubborn complacency became ignominy and disaster. Here, in an otherwise insignificant star system home to a xenos breed as yet uncatalogued by the sage-brothers of the Legion's Orders of Extinction and Annihilation, the Ist Legion and its Grandmaster committed a small force to the assault, confident in their ability to prevail and secure in the tested strategies of the hosts and orders. Yet the xenos of Canis-Balor, their identity long-since purged from records, proved a threat unlike any faced before, fighting without regard for sane tactics and with a technology that defied rational explanation. The Ist Legion's initial attack was repulsed with heavy losses, an indignity that the Ist Legion had not known for solar decades.Defeat was a foe they thought they had conquered and pride began to cloud their wisdom. A second assault followed and then a third, each repulsed in turn with mounting losses.With his faultless record now tainted and his pride sorely wounded, Grandmaster Hector Thrane led one final assault himself, refusing to accept that any might equal his own warriors in skill and tenacity. This assault, even weakened by the losses already sustained, cut a swathe through the xenos forces defending the planet, but could not overcome the sheer numerical superiority of the foe. Overwhelmed, it teetered on the brink of annihilation.Grandmaster Thrane, realising the folly of pride that had driven him into battle, chose to remain behind with his lifeguard, sacrificing himself to allow the retrieval of valuable combat assets. The world of Canis-Balor was reduced to ashes from orbit, all trace of life on its surface incinerated in nucleonic fire, a measure that many argued should have been taken earlier had pride not forced their hand. All records of the alien foe the Legion had fought were sealed away, though they would later be recovered by the Order of Broken Claws before being sealed once again for reasons equally lost to history.The loss, both of the battle and of Grandmaster Thrane, proved a catalyst for turmoil among the ranks of the Legion. Each of the masters of its hosts and the preceptors of its orders were sure that had their doctrines been given primacy, they could have turned the tide of battle. A subtle struggle for power erupted among the complex tiers of authority within the Legion, a struggle that slowed the pace of their conquests and threatened to unseat the Legion from its pre-eminent position of honour once and for all.