Chaos Space Marines

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Miniature of a Chaos Chosen in Terminator Armour

In the table-top wargame Warhammer 40,000, the Chaos Space Marines are one of the forces of Chaos.

Contents

1 History

1.1 The Horus Heresy

2 Recruitment and Creation of Chaos Marines
3 Current status
4 References

History

According to the story, 10,000 years ago, Warmaster Horus, Primarch of the Luna Wolves (later known as the Sons of Horus, and presently known as the Black Legion) was tainted by Chaos while he recovered from wounds on the planet Davin, having been inducted into a "warrior lodge" that was little more than a Chaos cult. Horus introduced the "warrior lodge" ideal to his legion, and eventually spread the taint of Chaos to fully nine of the twenty Legions. These corrupted marines wholeheartedly followed Horus's idea of a new Imperium of Man, with Horus as its new emperor.

Unaware of the treachery, the Emperor of Mankind sent Horus to Istvaan III to suppress a rebellion. Horus ordered his ships to virus bomb the planet, annihilating the population in seconds, and releasing a psychic shockwave said to have been louder than the Astronomican.

After months of procrastination, the Emperor dispatched seven legions of Space Marines to confront Horus, his sons and the two other legions that had openly sided with Horus. The first wave of three legions met the traitors in battle on the surface of Istvaan V. However when the second wave landed, they turned their guns not on Horus' troops, but on those of the first wave, all but wiping them out. Thus began the Horus Heresy.

The Horus Heresy

Ultimately Horus' forces laid siege to the Emperor's palace on Terra. After many long and ferocious battles, Horus devised a plan to finish the war in one stroke. His battle barge's shields dropped to lure the Emperor into combat and defeat, before the Space Marines legions of the Space Wolves and Dark Angels reached Terra, and turned the tide of the assault on the Imperial Palace. This drop in the shields allowed Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists, the Emperor, and Sanguinius of the Blood Angels, as well as their retinues, to teleport onto the barge. It is not known precisely how it happened, but they were split up in the teleportation and ended up in different parts of the ship and were immediately assailed by daemons and even the ship itself, which had been warped by Chaos energies.

Since all combatants were killed in the final showdown, exact details about how it occurred are not known, and as such, the many accounts vary. What is known is that Sanguinius was the first to encounter Horus, and was killed by the powerful Warmaster. When the Emperor reached Horus, a massive battle followed, fought both physically and psychically. During the battle, an Imperial Fist terminator was slaughtered by Horus, after which the Emperor was able to destroy Horus, but had suffered fatal injuries. The barely alive Emperor's body was then found by Rogal Dorn, who returned with it to Terra.

The Emperor's forces drove back the Traitor Legions, who took refuge within the Eye of Terror, a rift in space where reality and the Warp merge. Inside the Eye they are immune to the effects of time, and have spent the last ten millennia plotting - and attempting to enact - the overthrow of the Imperium.

Recruitment and Creation of Chaos Marines

Unlike their Imperial counterparts, there is no set method of recruiting and creating new Chaos Marines; however, as they are still genetically tailored superhumans, genetic enhancement still occurs somehow. Fabius Bile, formerly a high-ranking member of the Emperor's Children Legion, is known to lend his skills toward the creation of new Chaos Space Marines in exchange for protection.

A story in the Codex: Chaos Space Marines (Chambers, et. al, 2002) describes the son of a tribal leader on the planet Kaschada, whose tribe unwittingly worships the Chaos powers and is thus ostracised for it. At the instigation of a Black Legion Chaos Marine (referred to as a prophet), his tribe fights against Kaschada's Imperial armies and their Storm Giant (the tribe's term for Imperial Space Marines) allies. In the end, the tribesman successfully kills a Storm Giant and is recruited into the Black Legion; it is hinted that the gene-seed from the fallen Storm Giant will be used to turn the tribesman into a Chaos Marine.

One method is described in the novel Dead Sky, Black Sun (McNeill, 2004). In contrast to the rigorous selection of the loyal Space Marines, the Chaos Space Marines under Warsmith Honsou put much larger numbers of potential "candidates" through their process. Where the Space Marines use surgery, psychological and psychic conditioning to create a Marine, Honsou uses giant mutated women (called Daemonculaba), imbued with the legion's gene-seed, into whose distended uteri terrified children are inserted. When the Daemonculaba infuse the children with the gene-seed of the legion, the victims are removed. At this point they have no skin, and must receive grafts, taken from humans enslaved, force fed, and harvested for the purpose. Those who emerge from the process alive, but too mutated to be used as Chaos Space Marines are cast off, and become the Unfleshed, horrific beings who hunt humans for skin and food.

Current status

The Traitor Legions and the fate of their respective Primarchs are:

Black Legion – Warmaster Horus (killed by the Emperor)
Thousand Sons – Magnus the Red (daemon prince)
World Eaters – Angron (daemon prince)
Night Lords – Konrad Curze, also known as Night Haunter (killed by a Callidus assassin)
Word Bearers – Lorgar (daemon prince)
Alpha Legion – Alpharius (accounts vary, but presumed killed by Roboute Guilliman)
Iron Warriors – Perturabo (daemon prince)
Death Guard – Mortarion (daemon prince)
Emperor's Children – Fulgrim (daemon prince)

The daemonic Primarchs no longer take much direct interest in the affairs of their legions; one notable exception to this is Angron, who personally led the first invasion of Armageddon. The closest thing to a leader the fractional Chaos Marines have is Abaddon the Despoiler, who was Horus' second-in-command and rumored to be his clone son. Abaddon is the only man since Horus to be able to command the loyalty of all nine traitor legions, and has led thirteen Black Crusades against the Imperium of Man.

There are also many humans and mutants who serve Chaos, and they are often used by the Chaos Marines to bolster their ranks. These traitors, mutants and heretics are collectively labelled the Lost and the Damned.

References

Warhammer 40,000 Articles
Main Armies Chaos \| Daemonhunters \| Dark Eldar \| Eldar \| Imperial Guard Ork \| Necron \| Space Marines \| Tau \| Tyranid \| Witch Hunters \|

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