Legion of the Damned - Dark Truth: Another belief whispered amongst the hidden orders of the Adeptus Astartes is that the Legion of the Damned was once a true Chapter of Space Marines, a force that has been claimed by the fires of the Warp and reborn into a more sinister form. After all, across the Imperium's long history, several contingents of Space Marines have made translation into the Empyrean and emerged changed as a result, or not emerged at all.Prominent amongst these are the Fire Hawks, a Chapter whose history was blighted by disaster. In the year 963.M41, the Fire Hawks were sent to the Crow's World Sub-sector to engage a flotilla of Aeldari raiders and bring the anarchy that was spreading there to an abrupt end. The scale of the xenos incursion was such that the entire Chapter fleet, including the Chapter's mobile fortress-monastery, the Raptorus Rex, made a successful Warp jump from the Piraeus System 120 light years from their target coordinates.The five starships, over eight-hundred battle-brethren, and two thousand other personnel expected to reach their targetted quarry within no more than half a solar day, though they never translated back into realspace. The Crows World Sub-sector was left to the mercies of its Aeldari persecutors. Twenty standard years after the event, the Chapter was officially declared perditas. The great Bell of Lost Souls tolled a thousand times, and a black candle was lit in the Adeptus Chapel of Fallen Heroes within the Imperial Palace upon Terra itself.In 986.M41 a routine Imperial Navy patrol passed through the Ork-held star system of Jakor-tal. The squadron discovered altogether unexpected scenes of devastation. The limited facilities available to the patrol could uncover no clue to the identity of the attacking forces. The incident was noted and passed into the records of the Adeptus Administratum.A rash of similar incidents within the same and adjoining sectors aroused the interest of the Inquisition but no sign of the intruders was discovered for almost a standard year. Then, a patrol ship in the Maran Sub-sector narrowly avoided a collision with a spacecraft at the Cift System Mandeville Point. The patrol ship was entering the Cift System as the unidentified craft was leaving. Alerted by the close encounter, the patrol crew scanned the entire jump-area and discovered two long cylindrical objects within the intruder's projected flight-path.These were hauled aboard and proved to be standard coffins used for Imperial starship burials in space, though they lacked any identification markings. The coffins were shipped back to Terra and opened by the Adeptus Mechanicus. The coffins themselves were identified as belonging to the Absolute, one of the spacecraft from the vanished Fire Hawk Chapter fleet.Inside were the armoured remains of two Space Marines. The armoured suits seemed to belong to members of the lost Chapter, and were carefully broken open. The bodies within were Human, but further identification proved impossible due to their advanced state of decay. The unconventional armour colours and unofficial insignia puzzled the investigators, but serial numbers on the armour tallied with the equipment made by or issued to the Fire Hawks by the Mechanicus.Almost a standard year later, a besieged Imperial Research Station received unexpected help. The garrison had been attacked by Ork Freebooterz. After three solar hours of fighting the situation looked hopeless for the station's defenders. Then, without warning, the Orks found themselves attacked from the rear.Within half an hour, several hundred Orks had fallen to the mysterious, power armoured figures. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the unknown warriors vanished. This time they left behind a banner -- the gnarled Chapter banner of the Fire Hawks -- and inscribed upon it was the High Gothic motto In dedicato imperatum ultra articulo mortis ("For the Emperor beyond the point of death"). As well as the banner there was a recorder and sundry other sealed items. These were shipped to Terra.There are those who believe the Fire Hawks underwent some strange metamorphosis after their disappearance, maintaining that they became irrevocably changed by the tides of the Warp, both dying and somehow remaining alive. Knowing they could never openly serve the Imperium in their Warp-tainted state, they became the Legion of the Damned, fighting on in the Emperor's name from the hell that had become their home.The simplest theory as to the Legion's nature, and therefore perhaps the most credible, is that its warriors are simply ghosts. They are the spiritual echoes of once-great Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes whose hatred for the enemies of the Imperium was so powerful that it transcended mortal limits and became something eternal. If this is true, then the Legionaries may come from a great many different Chapters, their insignia and heraldry subsumed by their supernatural rebirth and replaced by icons of doom so that they are linked together by their own damnation.The few reports of those who have seen the Legion of the Damned unhelmed speak of ghostly pallor, sunken skin, and hollow eye-sockets. Every supernatural occurrence, every glitch in reality that is attributed to these mysterious warriors adds credence to this theory. Perhaps those who know of their existence prefer to imagine the spectral Space Marines as revenants, for what mortal mind could possibly stand a life bound to the hell dimension of the Warp and still remain sane?But the recorder shipped back to Terra after the Legion of the Damned saved the Research Station from Orks secretly revealed to the Administratum the truth of what had happened to the Fire Hawks after they had made their fateful final journey into the Warp.Following their jump, the entire fleet had been caught within a Warp Storm of terrific intensity. Stunned bythe power of the Warp, the Chapter was forced to endure the attacks of powerful Warp entities.Ship after ship was destroyed and absorbed into the fabric of the Immaterium. Soon only a single craft remained, and by a daring Warp-exit manoeuvre the craft burst out of Warpspace, emerging far in the galactic east, thousands of light years off-course and beyond even the psychic light of the Astronomican.After the loss of their fleet, the original Fire Hawks numbered 200 surviving battle-brothers. All of the Chapter's gene-seed had been lost in the Warp Storm that took their fleet, all of its initiates were killed, and most of the Chapter's officers were gone. None of the Chapter's Human serfs had survived at all.To make matters worse, the brethren had been mutated by their intense, unshielded exposure to the Warp. This change became more obvious over the next few solar months. The surviving Fire Hawks' skins began to blacken and blister, and their flesh began to fester and putrefy.Slowly they began to die. Within solar days of the transition into normal space it became obvious that the Chapter had been exposed to some form of dangerous Warp mutation or disease. It took many Terran years to navigate a way back within the borders of the Imperium, during which time almost half the surviving brethren succumbed to the malady.Those who remained were no longer sane. Pain and despair had driven even their hardened minds beyond the point of rationality. Doomed to agonising deaths, they gradually became obsessed with their fate. Now they only wanted to die. But they were still Space Marines, still loyal to the Emperor and Mankind. They were determined that they would die only for a purpose.So began the unending war of the Legion of the Damned. The surviving Fire Hawks Astartes elected to remove all official insignia from their armour. Instead their armour was painted black, decorated by each battle-brother with whatever emblems of death he chose.Most of the Legion's Astartes employed a similar theme -- skeletons, bones and skulls. All ranks and company structure were abolished, since most of the Chapter's officers were already dead and the remaining warriors were too few to make up a fully functioning Chapter hierarchy.All of the Legion's battle-brothers were to be equal before death -- leveled in station by the certainty of their collective assured extinction. Using the Emperor's Tarot to go where they were most needed, the warriors decided to expend their lives attacking the Imperium's enemies wherever they could be found. The disease had robbed them of their sanity and their health, but never their loyalty.