Night Lords - Shattering of the Night Lords Legion: Despite the apparent failure of the Night Haunter's plans, it would be his actions that finally tipped the balance of power within the Legion to those of his gene-sons that sought to free him from his visions. For in giving the more headstrong portions of his Legion their freedom he had allowed them to overextend their forces and commit themselves to a series of battles during the Dark Angels' Thramas Crusade that were now beyond their means to finish -- they were caught in the trap of their own hubris.In the final solar months of the Thramas Campaign, many of those that bore the Cross of Bone were cut down, Nakrid Thole falling at Thramas, Vaeduc the Maimed at Sheol and Malithos and Cel Herec at the hands of Jago Sevatarion and his Atramentar. With their deaths, the more loyal sons of Curze finally took control of the Legion, with Sevatar assembling a new inner council, the Kyroptera of the Night Lords, filled with warriors he counted as loyal to his cause and the Legion's survival. This new council would lead while the primarch languished at the edge of death, setting a more pragmatic course than those that had taken the reins for the majority of the Thramas Campaign.True to its desire to return the Legion to its former glory, the new Kyroptera commanded its warriors to take the shattered remains of the Legion to Horus' side, that they might fight in the manner of true warriors and cease skulking in the shadows of the grand rebellion that had overtaken the Imperium. Thramas and the strange madness it had inflicted upon their primarch were abandoned, his attempts to thwart fate set aside as he lay wounded, and the ragged remnants of the Night Lords fleet assembled to depart the Eastern Fringe and return to the heart of the war in the Segmentum Solar. The Night Lords would be free of the Nostramo Sector, the burden of guilt for their homeworld's destruction and the enforcement of the Night Haunter's failed regime. They would fight once more as a true Legion, wild conquerors and not boredwardens, and the fury of open battle would cleanse them of the taint that had taken hold of the Legion. This was Sevatar's final plan and the resolve of those that had aligned themselves with him, to free both their Legion and primarch from the slow degeneration that plagued them both.Yet it was not to be. Even as the surviving warships of the Night Lords gathered, their commanders convinced by the power of Sevatar's argumentsor by the blades of his allies to join their warriors to this new plan, the two nemeses that had plagued them since their arrival in the Thramas Sector intervened once more. The Dark Angels were the first, an incarnation of the Emperor's wrath given terrible form and power that could not be matched in open battle. The black ships of their fleet poured forth from the Warp, the blasts of their weapons a penance for the hubris of the Night Lords and the multitude of sins they had committed, cutting a path through the remnants of the Night Haunter's fleet.This alone could not have ended the Night Lords' hopes of salvation, for the Lion and his gene-sons could wound them, wound them gravely, but not kill them before they could escape and begin the path back to glory. It would be the second nemesis, by far the most deadly of the two, that would seal their fate, a threat that they could never truly be free of. Even as the starships of the Night Lords fleet closed on the pre-set Warp-translation Mandeville Point that would take them to Horus' side, the Night Haunter suddenly stirred from his torpor and ordered his Legion to engage the Dark Angels.Unable to ignore the orders of their gene-father and unwilling to abandon him to the mercies of the Loyalists, many among the Legion joined a last suicidal assault into the teeth of the Dark Angels. Perhaps this was a last attempt by the Night Haunter to find death at the hands of hisbrother and avoid the dire fate he foresaw, or nothing more than a last spiteful dart thrown at his enemies, but in either case the attack had no chance of stopping or delaying the Dark Angels. Instead, it sundered what little of the Night Lords Legion that remained as a coherent fighting force. Those Night Lords Astartes that managed to fight free of the battle disappeared into the Warp almost at random, scattered across the galaxy and unable to reform the Legion as it once was, while those who turned back to fight at the bidding of their cursed master were all but annihilated.All of the death that had been wrought to restore the Night Lords, all of the hardships that had been endured by its warriors, had been in vain, thwarted by the actions of the Night Haunter. They had become a poison spread across the Imperium, sowing chaos and death wherever the scattered warbands had been deposited. It was the next stage of Konrad Curze's nightmares given form at last, but one step away from the oblivion of eternal damnation that awaited them, one step away from the Night Haunter's death at the order of his father in a future he had hoped never to see.The last bitter sting of the lash, the last howl of despair that haunted Konrad Curze as he went into exile trapped aboard the Dark Angels flagship Invincible Reason, was the knowledge that it was he himself that had brought the curse to fruition. Here would be the end of Konrad Curze, the last remnants of the Emperor's troubled gene-son subsumed by the darkness that had come to dominate and control him. All that would remain was the Night Haunter and death.