Legio XV: Hellhounds

Legio XV: Hellhounds

Primarch’s Name: Griven Kall
Homeworld: Caligula
Background: Thinker/Fighter
Psychic Potential: Fair
Gene-seed: Stable
Talent: Great General, Technologist
Legio XV: Hellhounds
Colors: Black, White Pauldrons, Green Arms
Battle Cry: Death to the enemies of man!

Primarch History

Though each of the Emperor’s twenty gene-forged sons faced his share of adversity prior to his discovery, the story of the warrior who would some day lead the Fifteenth Legion had almost been over before it had a chance to start. Instead of falling from the sky of an inhabited world to be found and raised by human colonists, the capsule bearing the Fifteenth Primarch was cast adrift in a planetary nebula far from any habitable worlds, unseen by human eyes.

However, some eyes were watching its arrival with great interest. While as a rule, the Eldar – an ancient xenos species with superficial physical resemblance to children of Terra, but mind as alien as any non-humanoid abomination – looked down on the accomplishments of humanity, the corsair lord who prowled the outskirts of the nebula with his fleet of pirates and renegades was intrigued by the device that matched no known artifice, and decided to investigate. After dragging the savior pod into the confines of his flagship, the pirate was surprised to discover that the pod’s inhabitant, little more than a human child in appearance, had easily dispatched the crewmen sent to subdue him, and threatened to overcome even a squad of trained warriors backing them up. Realizing that he had something highly unusual on his hands, the corsair lord ordered all hands on deck to the hangar, and finally managed to capture this strange human, though at the cost of enormous casualties.

Unfortunately for the rest of his species, the corsair lord decided to travel to the slave markets of Commoragh, an extra-dimensional city of the depraved Eldar kin hidden deep in the heart of the Webway. There, he hoped to fetch a princely sum for his captive from the Dark Eldar lords seeking fighters for their arenas or subjects for their brutal, inhuman experiments.

History does not recall what name the boy went under; he himself refuses to speak of his time in Commoragh in more than the barest terms. It can, however, be surmised that the Fifteenth Primarch became a prized champion in Commoragh’s arenas, easily stronger and faster than anything his alien captors could throw at him and becoming a popular, if resentful, attraction for the xenos crowds.

All the while, the young Primarch sought to devise a way to escape captivity. In his battles, he met many other slaves, some alien, others human. It is with them that he felt the greatest amount of kinship, recognizing his own kind and learning about his species, their history, and their plight. When the time was right, the Fifteenth Primarch started to organize the slaves for a rebellion, plotting to overpower the guards after a particularly gruesome alien feast, and to steal one of the Dark Eldar void-ships to return back to real-space.

At first, the plan went off smoothly, and the Primarch-led troop of human and alien slaves managed to overpower the Eldar guards. On the dark streets of Commoragh where nightmares and monsters prowled, the Fifteenth Primarch fought his way through throngs of warriors and grotesque creations of mad xenos scientists, never wavering even as his band of followers began to dwindle under the relentless Dark Eldar assaults. He allowed himself a sigh of relief once they made their way to the spire where the local Archon’s void ships were parked, seeing freedom only minutes away.

It nearly became his undoing. Several alien slaves, seeking to curry favor with the Dark Eldar rather than risk death in a daring trek through Commoragh’s skies, ambushed the Primarch just as he was about to board the small raider ship. Unfortunately for them, they had underestimated the Fifteenth Primarch’s capabilities. Furious, the Primarch slaughtered his once-allies, making no distinction between the aliens who had betrayed him and the xenos who merely stood by yet unable to rescue all of his human followers who never wavered in their resolute support of his leadership. With the Dark Eldar enforcers at his heels, the Fifteenth Primarch swore that he would return even if it took him the rest of eternity, and that he would have his vengeance, as the raider rose into Commoragh’s alien sky and to freedom.

Though unfamiliar with the controls of the Dark Eldar vessel, the Primarch’s instinctive understanding of technology allowed him to pilot it through the webway portal, relying on his superior instincts and reflexes rather than on any specific knowledge to bypass the xenos defenses. For the first time in his life, he saw stars and wept at their beauty, finally his own man at the head of a loyal and courageous crew that would follow him anywhere.

Understanding that the Eldar raider ship would not last long, the Primarch sought a place where he could resupply his vessel. Though he did not know much about the human society, his followers suggested that he may find friendlier reception there, and perhaps a place where he truly belonged. Fortunately for the fugitives, the Webway portal deposited them not far from a human-populated world known in the Imperium’s annals as Caligula.

History is not clear on when Caligula was settled, or if its inhabitants in the time of the Great Crusade were the original colonists or latter-day settlers. The Old Night was not kind to the planet and its people, who devolved to stone age levels of technology while eking a rough living in the jungle-covered equatorial zone of the planet. Though the Primarch openly questioned why a civilization would remain so primitive for extended periods of time, refusing to believe that these were the same species as him and his followers, the reason for Caligula’s lack of development quickly became apparent. The planet was long one of the worlds raided by the Dark Eldar for slaves, and the xenos took great pains to keep their hunting grounds from ever presenting a threat to them.

The Primarch was furious. Did he escape alien slavery, only to find his own species in thrall to the same inhuman overlords? At the same time, he knew that his flight from Commoragh was fortunate. He did not have the numbers to fight a war, and while Caligula’s humans were numerous, their clubs and spears were of little threat to the Eldar. He had to hatch a plan to hurt the hated Eldar while protecting the humans on the planet below, and he just had the idea on how to do it.

Knowing that the primitives fled from the shadow of his Eldar raider wherever it descended, the Primarch hid the ship in Caligula’s jungles, choosing to meet the colonists on foot. Armed with captured Eldar weapons, he and his men fought off the predatory wildlife until coming across a tribal settlement. Though the locals were wary of the newcomers and their alien weaponry, the Primarch was able to eventually win their friendship after slaying some of the more dangerous beasts around the village, distributing the captured alien weaponry to any tribespeople who would make the effort to learn its function, and eventually using his experience in the Commoragh arena to teach the locals military tactics and coordination. He took the name the Caligulans gave him – Griven Kall, a warrior of Caligulan legend who was said to lead the people during Kali Yuga, their apocalyptic end-time war to destroy the “devils” who plagued them.

Knowing that time was not on his side, Griven Kall attempted to reach other villages, convincing the elders to join forces before the next Eldar attack. His scouts found caches of machinery and weapons dating back to the original human colonization of Caligula, and though most of those were at best curious relics, the Primarch managed to restore at least some functionality to the STC-pattern manufactorums, churning out crude yet efficient lasguns, body armors, and explosives to equip his rapidly growing army with.

When the next Dark Eldar raid came, the aliens found not a throng of primitive tribespeople, but an angry, vengeful army that struck from beneath the cover of the jungle and disappeared to places unknown. Where in the past their weapons were an amusing distraction to the xenos, some of whom took to raiding with archaic weapons and armor to make it more of a sport, now they were able to hurt the raiders with well-timed ambushes taking full advantage of their numbers.

In orbit, the Dark Eldar Archon could not believe what she was seeing. Her warriors were getting slaughtered on what was previously a carefully cultivated slave hunting planet. Clearly, she thought, this had to be the work of her political rivals in Commoragh, for some of the weapons used by the Caligulans were definitely of Eldar origin, which prompted her personal intervention into the matters.

Griven Kall was expecting just that. Once his scouts reported that the Dark Eldar Archon was planetside, he and his team of fellow arena survivors used their captured raider to board the Dark Eldar flagship and to overtake its crew, though not without casualties. Then, Griven Kall turned the flagship’s guns against the Eldar camps planetside.

The Caligulan tribesmen cheered as plasma fire rained down from the sky, wiping out their erstwhile oppressors in a day of wrath. The Kali Yuga was upon them, the time for humanity to rise as the dominant species of their world. The few Dark Eldar who had survived the orbital bombardment were hunted down through the planet’s surface over the next several weeks, hunters becoming prey in a dramatic reversal of roles. The Archon herself was one of the last to be captured. It was said that when she was brought before Griven Kall to be executed, she offered him all of her wealth and status as one of Commoragh’s princes in return for her life, yet the Primarch spurned the desperate plea, mounting the Archon’s head on a spike as his victory trophy.

In the midst of the celebrations, a lieutenant alerted Griven Kall that another fleet was approaching the planet, though its size and composition dwarfed the recently defeated Eldar. Cold sweat broke on the Primarch’s face and neck. Did he win a great victory only to spend all his stratagems and to leave himself vulnerable to these new invaders, whoever they were? Quickly, he dressed for war again, instructing his men to disperse through the forests and to prepare for the worst.

Surprisingly for him, no attack came. As the troop transports descended from the sky, Griven Kall saw that they held men rather than aliens – warriors with the stature similar to his own, clad in baroque yet brutally functional armor. Their leader, a man even larger and more imposing than Griven Kall himself, explained to the Primarch that they were here to cleanse the alien infestation and to bring Caligula into the fold of the new human empire. Instead, the leader claimed, they had found something even more remarkable.

The man, who revealed himself as the Emperor of Mankind, explained that Griven Kall was his son, one of the twenty Primarchs created to free humanity from alien oppression, superstition, and fear. If the Primarch were to pledge himself to the cause, he, too, could be a part of this Great Crusade to ensure that humanity would never be enslaved or become an alien plaything again. The Emperor had barely finished speaking when Griven Kall went down on one knee, recognizing the truth in his father’s words, and pledged his allegiance and that of Caligula to the Imperium. In return, the Emperor granted Griven Kall the command of the Fifteenth Legion of Space Marines, which the Primarch named the Hellhounds – relentless, merciless creatures of nightmare who would punish the wicked by any means necessary.

The Great Crusade

The Fifteenth Legion quickly proved its worth as one of the premiere fighting forces in the Imperium. Given the Primarch’s expertise coming from his years in Eldar captivity, the Hellhounds were quick to adopt a scientific attitude towards xenos weaponry and technology, dissecting and disassembling any captured artifacts to understand their form and function, and to find ways to improve their own weapons and vehicles. Though this attitude did not make them popular with the Martian custodians of Imperium’s technology, who claimed that the Hellhounds were polluting the purity of Omnissiah-sanctioned designs with their ill-advised modifications, the many successes of the Fifteenth Legion made the Senate and, eventually, the Council of Terra turn a blind eye to its unconventional ideas.

Already one of the larger Legions at the time of Griven Kall’s discovery, the Hellhounds lent themselves well to serving in multiple simultaneous campaigns, using their numbers and mobility to envelop any force foolish enough to resist them while hunting their enemies down as relentlessly as their namesakes. In spite of many Mechanicus accusations, the core of the Fifteenth Legion was still employing the standard weaponry and vehicles of Legiones Astartes, however, a number of specialist formations soon came to prominence.

Though the Hellhounds reserved particular hatred for the xenos, they did not shy away from fighting the other enemies of humanity. It is their treatment of conquered or liberated populations that earned them more laurels than many of their peers. While the three Primarchs discovered before Griven Kall – Kthuln, Nyxos, and Nihlus – were typically more concerned with rapid (and often brutal) conquest than with consolidating the newly taken holdings, leaving the task of winning the hearts and the minds of the new Imperial subjects to many Terran iterators and propagandists, the Hellhounds took great pains to spare human civilian populations wherever possible, often using forward scouting squads and agents to establish contact with human resistance on worlds oppressed by the xenos in preparation for the invasion. The aliens, of course, deserved no such treatment, and were given no quarter.

Perhaps it was a stroke of fortune that the first large campaign led by Griven Kall had the Fifteenth Legion arraigned against a particularly repugnant xenos empire known as the Nephilim, but it definitely served to give the Fifteenth Primarch a reputation as a noble liberator, a hero to the oppressed human masses, a terror to their enemies. Thinking back to taking the tribesmen of Caligula under his wing, Griven Kall encouraged such reputation – not only did it make conquest considerably easier with willing collaborators springing up at every step, but it served to remind him of his reasons for fighting.

As the first Primarch to be lauded as the Hero of the Imperium, Griven Kall was the subject of many works of art and drama, and was one of the most prominent leaders by the end of the early stages of the Great Crusade. The ability to win hearts and minds of humans served him well – on more than one occasion, the citizens of splinter human empires revolted against their masters at the news of the Hellhounds’ approach, while many starfaring kingdoms had voluntarily submitted to him, reasoning that they would be better off surrendering to Griven Kall than suffering the wrath of his brothers. Even though the discovery of other Primarchs had lessened the impact of Griven Kall’s reputation somewhat, he still commanded the respect of most Imperial citizens even in the days leading up the Iskanderos’ rebellion.

Legion Organization

The Hellhounds were initially organized on a pattern derived from the ancient Thunder Warriors of Terra, however, the Legion’s love for divergent technologies and unique formations necessitated a number of idiosyncratic changes. As the Great Crusade progressed and the companies were forced to operate more independently, it was no longer feasible to keep the specialist formations separate from other Legion forces and still maintain the same level of operational coordination Griven Kall expected from his sons.

As a result, while the Hellhounds still use the ranks and the organizational structure common in most other Legions, the composition of their units tends to be considerably different. Though Grand Companies are, on the surface, nearly identical to their equivalents elsewhere, these roughly 10,000-strong formations are more of formal designations than tactical groups. Instead, the primary organizational unit within the Fifteenth Legion is a Chapter, led by a Chapter Master and typically kept at between 700 and 2,000 warriors, depending on combat losses and demands of each campaign.

Griven Kall’s doctrine dictates that each Chapter should be capable of independent operations, including fighting behind enemy lines, maintaining its equipment and vehicles, recruiting new Marines if necessary (though the practice of inducting members of unproven populations is typically frowned upon, and considered an act of desperation), and, most importantly, performing battlefield research and engineering to employ any pieces of human or alien technology they can find. As a result, from a third to a half of any given Chapter’s strength is typically given over to specialist squads, and the Hellhounds boast a considerably higher number of Marines with medical and engineering training than most other Legions. Though the ordinary Astartes retain an important role in the Hellhounds’ strategies, they are only one weapon in the Legion’s armory.

The large number of specialists within each Chapter also necessitated changes to the structure of Companies composing the Chapters. Though the Companies are still led by warriors with the Captain’s rank, they are increasingly specialized, and are typically of uneven sizes. As a result, a Captain of a Tactical company may command a well-rounded force of traditionally armed and armored hundred Space Marines, while a Captain of an Ignis Fangs unit may only have as few as twenty warriors in his charge.

The highest-ranked officers of the Hellhounds are granted the title of Sebastos, assigned a Great Company to formally command, and are considered to be the equal of Lord-Commanders in the standard Legion structure elsewhere. As the Grand Companies are loose associations at best, in practice the Sebasti are treated as theater commanders and trusted generals who would follow Griven Kall’s orders to a letter if necessary; the command of a Grand Company is, therefore, a ceremonial title at the most, and does not carry with it the inherent administrative responsibility of another Legion’s Lord Commander.

Combat Doctrine

From their earliest days as a Legion, the Hellhounds practiced the doctrine of a combined arms force, avoiding undue specialization. While Griven Kall generally agreed with the principle, realizing that teamwork and understanding of capabilities of different warriors mattered more than brute strength, he found the Imperial technology curiously lacking in many aspects, and the Mechanicum’s prohibitions on innovation stifling. Having experienced the advanced, if demented science of the xenos first-hand, the Fifteenth Primarch had little doubt that the human technology could benefit from incorporating these taboo principles if it served further to elevate mankind above all.

Griven Kall’s battles in the Commoragh arena taught him that a warrior who specializes only in one style of combat is certain to be defeated by an opponent specializing in defeating that style. Only a well-rounded force could prevail against the multitude of threats arraigned against the human species, and coordination at the highest level of command was key to ensuring that this force was competently led and utilizing its capabilities to the fullest.

As a result, the Hellhounds are taught to embrace the virtues of teamwork, allowing specialization at squad or Company level, but frowning upon it within the context of larger formations. The only officers ever promoted past the rank of a Captain are those who had demonstrated the ability to consider multiple tactical approaches, and who had displayed proficiency with multiple battlefield roles. As such, it is very common for Sergeant-rank Hellhounds to transfer between multiple Companies, serving a tour of duty in each before being recommended for promotion.

The use of esoteric and alien technologies is, therefore, a tool rather than the defining trait of the Fifteenth Legion. Though the weapons produced by such means provide the Legion with an additional series of tactical advantages, such tools merely expand their arsenal and afford them new possible strategies.

Legion Beliefs and Practices

The Hellhounds are avid adherents to the Imperial Truth, and the supremacy of humanity over all other sentient life forms. While most Imperial citizens take the latter point as self-evident, the Fifteenth Legion takes it to its furthest extreme. The teachings of Hellhounds’ Chaplains emphasize that just like a victory is only won when the enemy has been fully and utterly destroyed, the supremacy of man can only be ensured by eradicating every other sentient species in the galaxy. Unsurprisingly, this widely stated belief endears them to many mortal citizens of the Imperium who had suffered under alien depredations over centuries before the coming of the Legions.

Many of the Hellhounds have openly embraced their role as the Imperium’s heroes, and do not shy away from interacting with their mortal admirers. Consequently, most Legionaries receive additional instruction on how to act when in the presence of their human supporters, to the point where many are more comfortable around mortals than around Space Marines of other Legions.

Recruitment and Gene-Seed

While Caligula’s population is strong and warlike, it is considerably smaller than most other Legion homeworlds. As a result, the Hellhounds took to recruiting from multiple planets – a relatively easy task due to the Legion’s popularity amongst the citizenry. Wherever the Hellhounds establish recruitment centers or keeps, volunteers tend to appear in droves. Even though most of such volunteers fail the exacting standards of the Fifteenth Legion, the sheer numbers of willing inductees ensure that the Hellhounds remain at peak operating strength no matter where the war takes them.

When on campaign, the Chapter Masters of the Hellhounds are given broad authority to induct additional recruits from the planets they liberate, however, in practice this power is rarely used. The Fifteenth Legion tends to require the most stringent tests of genetic and ideological purity before it would consider a world to be a viable recruiting ground warranting a keep. Because of that, most newly conquered planets are considered relatively untrustworthy or unproven, and only the most exceptional individuals are ever considered for Legionary duty. Even then, battlefield recruitment usually only occurs due to Chapters suffering significant casualties, which tends to reflect poorly on the Chapter Master’s command ability and reputation amongst his peers. As a result, most of the Legion’s stock is drawn from worlds with long ties to the Hellhounds.

The gene-seed of Griven Kall is as efficient as his Legion. Though lacking any distinctive strengths or characteristics, it does not have any obvious weaknesses, and is generally considered pure and viable.

Weapons of the Enemy

Despite their stringent belief in humanity’s supremacy, the Hellhounds understand that the galaxy is a dangerous place, and survival requires every tool they can obtain. Though the Legion believes that in the long run, humanity would be able to surpass the technological accomplishments of every species before them, the Hellhounds are not above being opportunistic when feasible. To the sons of Griven Kall, who used the alien weapons to liberate Caligula, there is no difference between taking advantage of favorable terrain and integrating a xenos design into their weaponry as long as it advances the Legion’s overall goal. As a result, many of the Legion’s armor, weapons, and vehicles bear marks of alien technologies, or at the very least modifications that were not approved by the tech-priests of Mars.

Ignis Fangs

While plasma weapon technology dates to the earliest days of human expansion into space, much of it has been lost during the Old Night, producing weapons that are as unreliable and dangerous to the user as they are powerful. That said, the Mechanicum of Mars is not the only source of plasma technology if one is willing to ignore certain taboos.

The Ignis Fangs are a specialist formation of the Hellhounds who took to modifying their Mars-issued plasma weaponry with enhancements reverse-engineered from Eldar and other xenos species. While their plasma guns are perhaps slightly less powerful than most Imperial equivalents, they are infinitely more reliable, and are capable of sustaining a considerably higher rate of fire. The only thing preventing the spread of Ignis plasma guns throughout the rest of the Legion is their rather limited range and relatively low accuracy.

Nightblades

Personal teleportation is still a very expensive, energy-inefficient, and unreliable tool for most of the Imperium, however, the Hellhounds’ research teams had found a way to utilize Eldar Warp Spider technology to enable fully equipped warriors to transport themselves instantaneously over short distances. Unfortunately, the energy requirements of such jumps are very high, and grow exponentially with the subject’s mass – while these do not come into play with considerably smaller and lighter Eldar warriors, they present a major engineering problem for heavier, bulkier Adeptus Astartes, whose armor reactors are insufficient for powering the devices.

The Nightblades are the Fifteenth Legion’s solution to battlefield personal teleportation. Wearing only much lighter carapace armor, the Nightblades are trained to perform covert strikes against the crucial points in the enemy fortifications, to perform rapid assassination missions, or to sabotage supply depots and installations behind the enemy lines. The warriors selected for Nightblade duty are typically honored veterans, many of whom further augment their reflexes with judicious use of bionics and digital implants, for the Nightblade’s chief weapons are speed, surprise, and ability to quickly escape when the odds are against him.

During Heresy

As a founding member of the Council of Terra, Griven Kall was incensed that the dispute with Iskanderos escalated to a full-scale war. The Fifteenth and the Sixth Primarchs were known to be somewhat close over the years, and as a result, Griven Kall refused to send any of his forces to join Mohktal in Operation Starfall.

As the tales of disaster at Apella began to filter down to Terra, many Council members began to look at Griven Kall with suspicion, distrustful of his loyalties. The Fifteenth Primarch’s popularity proved him a difficult man to ignore, however, the mounting suspicions made the Council politics particularly poisonous in the days following Starfall. After the departure of the Doom Reavers and Jaws of the Deep, and subsequent blinding of the Astronomicon, the Council was left with no information on the events outside of Segmentum Solar.

In order to prove his commitment to the Council, Griven Kall accepted a mission to discover the fate of Kthuln and to reinforce his brother in the galactic north, if necessary, against the Gargoyles. As the Hellhounds traveled through the turbulent Warp, observing the scenes of brutal campaigns and battlefields that left no survivors, they came upon the scene of a battle. The Jaws of the Deep were on the verge of defeating the traitor Gargoyles, however, they were not alone – they were aided by sleek, thin-looking warriors operating weapons that were all too familiar to the sons of Griven Kall – the alien Eldar.

The arrival of the Hellhounds distracted the Jaws of the Deep and allowed some of the Gargoyles to escape the total defeat, however, the fact that the Second Legion was allied with the most hated xenos of all did not sit well with Griven Kall. He confronted his brother on board of the Jaws’ flagship, the LEVIATHAN, demanding to know why he would conspire with the enemies of man. Kthuln, already incensed that the arrival of the Hellhounds allowed his prey to escape, did not take kindly to the accusations, and struck Griven Kall down, warning him to never meddle in the Firstborn’s affairs again.

Smarting from his beating at the hands of Kthuln, Griven Kall reconsidered his allegiance. If the Council mandated Kthuln’s actions and sanctioned his xenos alliance, it was no better than it claimed the rebels to be. And Iskanderos, after all, was once a trusted friend and ally to him. Still contemplating his actions, Griven Kall was approached by an emissary from the Imperial Redeemers, who claimed that the rebels had access to the kinds of powers that would end the war in right hands, and that would give humanity an insurmountable advantage over all other beings in its struggle for supremacy.

Cautious but willing to test out the Imperial Redeemers’ claims, Griven Kall sought to gain revenge on the Jaws of the Deep, treating them as traitors to humanity for their dalliance with the Eldar – and perhaps seeking to avenge his own indignity against Kthuln. With Warp sorceries at his side, Griven Kall managed to effectively ambush several Jaws units before withdrawing into the uncharted space. The new weapons worked exactly as promised; unlike the Council and their lackeys, Iskanderos was as good as his word. His mind made up, Griven Kall decided to throw his lot in with the rebels on the promise that Iskanderos was committed to achieving total human supremacy in the galaxy.

In the course of the war, the Hellhounds were one of the most reliable rebel units, constantly acting as a thorn in the Council’s side. Griven Kall’s declaration for Iskanderos had another effect, too – many Imperial worlds, who had previously seen the civil war as a conflict between the Primarchs and Legions that avoided most civilian targets, now began to flock to Iskanderos in droves due to the Fifteenth Primarch’s popularity. With recruitment standards relaxed, the Hellhounds managed to greatly expand their numbers within a year of switching sides. Though most of these new recruits were only barely capable of being used in attrition tactics, the Legion’s generally high level of technology, now augmented with Warp sorceries and psychic means, ensured that they were able to effectively counter other large Legions such as the Lion Guard and the Peacekeepers in pitched battles.

Post-Heresy

After the Fall of Terra, the Hellhounds remained one of the largest unified forces in post-Imperial space. Where the Legion had previously recruited from Imperial worlds without directly ruling them, Griven Kall ordered that the Hellhounds assume a more direct role in the governance of planets, creating a sizeable empire of their own while the other traitor Legions’ dominions crumbled.

After the death of Iskanderos, Griven Kall made his bid for the leadership of all Chaos forces, claiming that for as long as the remnants of the Council still existed and any xenos still lived, humanity’s supremacy was not yet assured. In another age, this might have been enough to gather the Legionaries under his banner, however, the Fall of Terra only finalized the creation of new breed of a warrior, concerned only with his own means and ends, and no longer dedicated to the noble goals that were once his reason for existence.

What followed was the age of war. Griven Kall’s Hellhounds contended against the Nurgle-aligned Iconoclasts and the warring factions of the Imperial Redeemers, while other rebel Legions began to fracture from within. At the Second Battle of Terra, the Hellhounds managed to claim the Throne World for themselves, however, by that time humanity’s homeworld was a smoldering wreck populated largely by scavengers and feral tribes descended from the survivors of initial Chaos assault, and its importance was largely symbolic. Having sensed freedom, the Legion’s officers had little inclination to once again subject themselves to the Primarch’s orders, and started to take their Chapters, Companies, and other warbands on campaigns further and further away from Terra, eventually not even bothering to return.

The slaughter of the Second Battle of Terra did, however, serve another purpose. As the ships died in their thousands and legacies of victorious Legions were irrevocably broken, Griven Kall had gained sufficient favor from the gods of Chaos to ascend to full daemonhood.

Though Griven Kall still holds his court in the ruins of Terra and commands the nominal allegiance of the Hellhounds warbands, he is rarely seen amongst them. Mortals on a thousand world worship him as a god, offering sacrifices unto him in hopes of good fortune or deliverance from their enemies. Their words fall on deaf ears.

Some amongst the surviving Hellhounds’ Sebasti whisper that the Fifteenth Primarch is plotting a great war, though none could say with certainty against whom. Perhaps, they ponder, he is seeking to reunite the galaxy as before, gathering a multitude of forces who would swear allegiance to him over their own Primarchs or gods to sweep away the Imperial Remnant, the other successor kingdoms, and any challengers to humanity’s throne. Perhaps, they say, his goals are more prosaic, and he seeks to return to the arena of his youth in Commoragh – not as a gladiator, but as a sword of judgment who would exterminate the Dark Eldar for their slights against him. One thing, however, is certain. Griven Kall, the Daemon Emperor of Terra, still has a role to play in the fate of the galaxy.