Legio IX: Grim Angels

Legio IX: Grim Angels

Primarch’s Name: Nyxos
Homeworld: [REDACTED]
Background: Ruler
Psychic Potential: Normal
Gene-seed: Unstable
Talent: Spymaster
Legio IX: Grim Angels
Colors: Plain Pure White
Battle Cry: Lament for now you die!

Primarch History

The Ninth Primarch was found upon a world whose name he has since erased from all records. What is known is that this world was originally shaped to serve as the graveyards and tombs for an entire interstellar empire and with the Age of Strife, it was left alone and forgotten. The small human populace of the world descended from the maintenance and landscaping servants abandoned on the world during the fall of the empire. This populace would have grown and survived sufficiently, even in such a morbid environment if not for the rise of a terrible malignancy - a dark sect of necromancers wielding unspeakable powers ensured that the billions of dead spread through the planet's mausoleums, crypts, and graves did not rest silent, but instead rose from their eternal slumber to attack the living. The survivors of the undead onslaught did so by hiding, moving from secret stronghold to stronghold and maintaining hidden farms and groves for food.

The childhood of the Primarch who calls himself Nyxos is entirely unknown, but what is known is that he did not live in fear of the shambling dead and the endless variety of monsters and horrors of his world. He hunted them. He destroyed the mindless husks of men in their thousands and pursued the malevolent fiends that others became to their crypts and lairs and put them to fire and blade. Nyxos taught nightmares and monsters to fear that which they could not see, and that death would come for them.

Even in his greatest hour of success, the destruction of the necromancers, Nyxos knew no relief nor satisfaction. The dead continued to rise in endless numbers, and the monsters that commanded them could not be killed fast enough to save his people. Nyxos gathered the last handful of surviving humans and prepared for a final stand, constructing a fortress from which there would be no escaping. A final, bitter, spiteful stand was prepared.

At this darkest hour, when the final keep was laid under unceasing attack by the servants of dark powers, the Emperor arrived with overwhelming force. Nyxos accepted his offer of aid, and with great scything bursts of orbital lance strikes, evacuated his people. Once in orbit, he acknowledged the Emperor as his father and his master before taking command of the Expeditionary Fleet's guns and bombarding the world he had grown upon until only dust and echos remained.

Legion Organization

Upon taking command of the Ninth Legion, Nyxos scrupulously maintained the traditional layout as popularized the Thunder Warriors. One aspect differed - Nyxos personally executed every librarian and psyker within his legion to a man, and thereafter forbid their presence within his ranks. It is a relatively little known fact that the standard Legion organization pattern was first pioneered in the ranks of the Grim Angels, though it did not become the benchmark for command structures until after Iskanderos implemented it with the Imperial Redeemers.

Combat Doctrine

The Grim Angels, the sons of Nyxos, are regarded with trepidation even by their allies. A fierce and uncompromising force before being reunited with Nyxos, whose dark past made them even more so. Once unleashed upon a world, the Grim Angels are swift to root out every trace of an enemy, to find anyone who would backtread, feign obedience, or maintain even a shred of disloyalty, and destroy them. This destruction is not swift, nor is it merciful. Nyxos has taught his sons the power of fear and how it may motivate enemies and allies alike.

The Grim Angels follow a very flexible combat doctrine, but hold a special place for rooting out disloyalty and impurity. Mutants of any kind are not suffered to live, and put to the flame as soon as they are found.

Legion Beliefs and Practices

The dark upbringing of Nyxos has spread to his legion, making the Grim Angels more ruthless and breeding a certain distance between them and outsiders. One never knows from where corruption will come, nor when one will be called upon to kill former friends and allies who have been tainted.

It was Nyxos and the Ninth that gave rise to the Chaplains who now serve in all twenty legions, but in the Grim Angels, they are especially numerous, and are held in special respect for their wisdom, purity, and intensely focused wrath. Their black armor and skull helms clearly set them apart from their brothers, yet those same brothers will follow their Chaplains to the heart of a Greenskin Waaagh without hesitation.

The pure white of the armor of the Grim Angels is heavily decorated with other dark signs and emblems of death and mortality. Skulls, bones, and other macabre decorations are etched, painted or hung from the armor of almost every battle-brother from the lowest ranks to the highest. To further enhance their resemblance to the dead, white rags are tied or hung from the armor like the tattered skins of defeated foes.

The Grim Angels also have a favored weapon in place of the classic gladius of many other legions. This weapon is the epieu; resembling a spear but shorter, lighter and easier to maneuver (be it in combat or in transport). It has elongated sharp tip allowed it to sink through thick parts of the body, such as the torso, neck and the upper and lower back. The looped end at the base of the epieu allows it to be sheathed, so that it can be carried at the waist.

Recruitment and Gene-Seed

Without a homeworld, the Grim Angels range far and wide to gather recruits from the purest and least tainted populations available. None know where the recruiting agents might show up next. This pursuit of only the purest of humanity couples with a mild instability of Nyxos gene-seed to make the Grim Angels from becoming a truly numerous legion. This has resulted in a very tight-knit force, where astartes of each company, chapter, and Order are well known to their brothers all through the legion.

Like Nyxos himself, most of the Grim Angels are deeply pale, almost ghostly white in their appearance, but none outside the legion know if this is the result of genetic dysfunction, or simply too much time in low light conditions.

The Bloody Ninth

The Grim Angels are not a popular force and are known by the nickname "The Bloody Ninth" or "The Bloody Knives" after their legion emblem, a winged dagger, often portrayed dripping blood as well as for their ruthless tactics in rooting out traitors or entrenched enemies.

During Heresy

With the Great Crusade coming to a close, the Bloody Ninth were repurposed for defensive and internal security operations, and as a result most of the Legion was stationed in the Segmentum Solar by the time of Iskanderos’ rebellion. Though the Grim Angels lent a number of companies to Operation Starfall, they were largely undiminished by disaster at Apella, therefore forming much of the Council’s strength throughout the remainder of the conflict.

In the face of doubtful loyalties and widespread sedition, Nyxos directed his men to ensure the obedience of Segmentum Solar at any cost, becoming the Council’s primary enforcer and single-handedly being responsible for the Council’s continued grip on the Core Worlds. Though many on the Council argued that Nyxos should be the one leading the expedition against Iskanderos, the Ninth Primarch was ultimately allowed to remain near Terra in recognition of Marvus’ underrated generalship and the Grim Angels’ importance in keeping the Council holdings intact.

As the front lines shifted ever closer to Terra, the Grim Angels became the Council’s rapid reserve, bolstering the forces of the Steel Wardens and the Peacekeepers where necessary and striking at the rebel flanks whenever opportunities presented themselves. Distrusted by their allies, the Ninth Legion preferred to operate independently, answering only to the Council of Terra and Nyxos himself. While the Grim Angels won a number of victories against Iskanderos’ lieutenants, the decisive confrontation eluded them; the Arch-Traitor was able to masterfully orchestrate the assault against the Core Worlds in a way that concentrated his key forces while forcing the Council to spread their armies and fleets across the entire Segmentum.

Realizing that the war was beginning to turn against the Council, Nyxos agreed to a proposal put forth by Echelon to lure Iskanderos to the forge world of Galen IV, where, it was hoped, the full might of the Steel Wardens, the Grim Angels, and eventually the Lion Guard would trap and destroy the rebel leader. Unfortunately, Iskanderos foresaw this development, concealing the larger body of the Iconoclasts under the guise of his own men, while redirecting the Imperial Redeemers to strike at the Council staging grounds in a series of feints and delaying actions. Though he did not have the numbers to take on the combined forces of the Grim Angels and the Lion Guard without suffering crushing casualties, Iskanderos managed to tie up the majority of the Council reserves for a number of crucial days.

By the time Nyxos and all of the Grim Angels that could be spared arrived at Galen IV, they encountered a battle lost. With the disappearance of Echelon and deaths of many of their commanding officers to Iron Locust assassination claves, the Steel Wardens were left leaderless  against the Iconoclast onslaught and the betrayal of Galen IV’s Mechanicum. Quickly assessing the situation and judging it to be hopeless, Nyxos attempted to salvage what he could, ordering his fleet to scour all life from the surface of Galen IV with virus bombs, anticipating that the Steel Wardens were already lost and that the total destruction of Iconoclasts would more than make up for the loss of a loyal Council Legion.

Unfortunately, Nyxos had underestimated the unearthly powers wielded by the rebels, and could only watch in impotent rage as the Iconoclasts rose from the ashes of their destruction, transformed as Plague Marines. Only the Ninth Primarch’s caution allowed him to escape the Imperial Redeemers’ counter-attack, forcing him to withdraw back to Terra.

As the news of the massacre on Galen IV spread through Segmentum Solar, the Council’s position became increasingly perilous. Gideon of the Peacekeepers, long an opponent of Nyxos’ brutal methods, severed all ties with the Council, taking his Legion with him and practically seceding from the Imperium. Stefan Ignatiyev and Leto, both already independent in all but name, distanced themselves and their realms from Terra even further. With all of the Council’s resources tied up by the ongoing war effort, the outlying Segmentums and sectors were now practically outside of Terra’s reach.

To compound the difficulties faced by the remaining loyalist Primarchs, Malcador, the Emperor’s chosen regent and co-Consul of Terra, had vanished, along with Zaeed and most of the Spears of Eternity Legion. Concerned about yet another betrayal, Nyxos initiated a mission deep behind the enemy lines with a detachment of his best warriors, seeking to discover Malcador’s whereabouts and to unify the remaining loyal forces behind the Council – at this time, composed solely of Rogr Hemri, Dyal Rulf, and himself.

Nyxos confronted Malcador on a hereto secret world of Puritania, where the Sigilite was attempting to gather a number of Imperial forces under his banner for clandestine reasons. In a lightning strike, the Grim Angels overcame the defenses of Puritania’s capital city while Nyxos personally slew Malcador. With a loyal regent firmly in place on the captive world, and its industries suborned to the Grim Angels, the Ninth Primarch returned to Terra to find the Throne World in peril.

The Battle of Sirius, though not a complete disaster, enabled Iskanderos to strike at Terra herself. Seeking to find any advantage they could – and perhaps attempting to make a contingency plan to continue the struggle even if Terra fell – the Council Primarchs decided to redeploy their forces, making an appearance of a flight. Only Dyal Rulf would remain at Terra with his Legion, the Consecrators, and all units that could be spared. It was the Council’s hope that Rulf would be able to hold off the assault by Chaos Legions to force Iskanderos to fully commit. At that time, the Council reinforcements would arrive, and give Iskanderos the decisive battle he sought.

Privately, Nyxos confided to Hemri that the outcome was far from certain. Having experienced the tainted powers of Chaos first-hand in his campaigns, the Ninth Primarch was no longer certain that the Council could win the war. If they were to defeat Iskanderos once and for all, they needed to gather their strength, to understand the nature of their enemies, and – most importantly – to cull all who could not be trusted or relied upon. The Council of Terra was too divided, too naïve to defeat this kind of enemy.

Nyxos’ suspicions were further confirmed when the Liberators, trusted to keep the lines of communication open between Terra and the Council fleets, were found to have been compromised. Though the Seventeenth Legion’s duplicity in communicating the Fall of Terra was eventually discovered, it gave little comfort to Nyxos, who already began to consider the possibility of continuing the fight independently.

As a result of misinformation campaign and faulty intelligence, the Council fleet was slow to launch, and was delayed even further by the Warp storms summoned by Iskanderos. Some apocryphal writers, however, hinted at another, much darker possibility behind the loyalist delays…

As the light of the Astronomican went out for the last time, the Grim Angels and their allies were confounded. Drifting through hostile space, they were faced with the choice of continuing on to Terra where an ambush could be waiting, hoping that the Emperor or some loyalist resistance still lived, or to turn back and salvage what they could. As the first refugees from Terra arrived, telling the stories of horrific abominations amidst total desolation of the Throne World, the choice was clear…

Post-Heresy

After the flight from Terra, Nyxos grudgingly accepted that the Throne World was lost, and with it, any chance to reunite the Old Imperium under the Emperor’s guidance. He resolved to rebuild the shattered strength of remaining Council Legions, and to use them as a nucleus of the new Great Crusade. To this end, the Grim Angels allied themselves to Rogr Hemri’s coalition, while Nyxos himself became Hemri’s co-Regent and the leader of the Remnant armies.

Now fully aware of the dangers they faced, the Grim Angels set to root out any heresy or insurrection from the Remnant territories. Worlds exhibiting the taint of Chaos or the shame of mutation were scoured clean of all life, while formerly independent systems were made to bow down to meet the ever-increasing production quotas of men, materiel, and weaponry. Though Hemri was the titular senior Regent, it was Nyxos who put the Remnant on war footing, and who planned and executed wide-spanning campaigns of reconquest, expanding the Remnant territories and incorporating many former Imperial worlds into the fold.

In these campaigns, the Grim Angels only added to their terrifying reputation with rumors of atrocities against military and civilian targets, sometimes prompting wayward systems to surrender at a mere mention of the Bloody Ninth being arraigned against them. With the entirety of the Remnant focused on war, the Legion swelled considerably beyond its original size, though still numerically inferior to Hemri’s Lion Guard. To counter this, many Grim Angels pointed at the more rigorous training regimen, and the overall higher standards their Legion recruits had to meet compared to their erstwhile cousins; where the Lion Guard were the Remnant’s foot soldiers, the Grim Angels were its warrior elite.

For several thousand years, the Grim Angels remained at the forefront of reconquest, wrestling back worlds from resurgent xenos, barbaric Chaos overlords, or even other Imperial successor states. Determined to rebuild the Imperium in their own image, Nyxos and Hemri called their endeavor the Crusade to invoke the memories of the Emperor’s campaigns of long ago.

Nyxos believed that the many divisions in the Council of Terra, combined with betrayals of his weaker brothers, were responsible for the Council defeat, and resolved that only a united realm with strong leadership held by very few capable rulers could bring humanity’s fractured domains together and defeat mankind’s enemies once and for all. To this end, he believed that all other Imperial successors, even those led by other Primarchs who rejected the lure of Chaos, had to submit to his and Hemri’s will if the Imperium was to be restored.

The Grim Angels held on to this ideal, remaining an organized, well-drilled force answerable only to their Primarch. It could be said that it was them more than any other faction which held the Remnant together through a mixture of efficient intelligence apparatus, fast reaction strike forces roaming the star lanes, and old-fashioned terror tactics. Not long after the Remnant’s inception, they practically adopted the role of its internal security forces, staving off incursions and crushing insurrections and Chaos cults wherever they appeared.

When the Remnant outriders made contact with the Topian dominion led by Gideon and his Peacekeepers Legion, Nyxos and Hemri saw a chance to bring another strong loyalist faction to heel, increasing their own strength exponentially. Since Gideon rejected their offers of surrendering his realm to their authority, Nyxos decided that an example had to be made to show the Remnant’s resolve in uniting the former Imperium, even if it meant going against a prosperous empire led by their uncorrupted brother.

To this end, Nyxos personally led an armada composed of hundreds of thousands Grim Angels and Lion Guard, supported by elements of many non-Chaotic warbands striving to prove their loyalty to Hemri, and a million-strong host of fanatical mortal troopers against the Peacekeepers and their dominion. Knowing that the Tenth Legion was always larger than the most, Nyxos instituted an industrial program where thousands of unwilling recruits and vat-grown soldiers were implanted with gene-seed that would never be wasted on true Legionaries, equipped with third-rate armor and weapons, and pressed into service with only minimal explanation of how their implants worked, or even how to function as independent units. Though most of these press-ganged warriors would eventually experience tissue rejection and agonizing decline in physical and mental faculties, Nyxos and Hemri bet that they would remain functional for long enough to counter the sheer numbers of the Peacekeepers by drowning Gideon’s sons in waves of poorly trained, poorly equipped soldiers who could not be ignored like their mortal lessers.

The initial stages of Nyxos’ campaign proceeded accordingly to plan. The border outposts of Topian dominion fell to the Remnant forces with little trouble, though outlying Peacekeeper garrisons continued to be troublesome. Knowing that a prolonged campaign would turn into a lengthy war of attrition that played to Gideon’s strengths, Nyxos resolved to win his campaign by an assault on Topia itself and by forcing Gideon to meet him in battle over his capital world. He hoped that by taking Gideon’s capital world, he was going to force his brother to surrender, or, failing that, he would slay or capture the Lawgiver to achieve the same end.

As the Grim Angel drop pods filled the Topian sky, Nyxos committed his entire strength to this assault. Though a cautious and calculating general by nature, the Ninth Primarch realized that large proportion of the Peacekeeper forces was not in the system, and decided that swift action was necessary. Lessons of Fall of Terra remained vivid in his mind; had the combined might of the Council returned to the Throne World in time, Iskanderos would have been crushed, and the Emperor’s vision for the galaxy would have been saved. Abandoning all sense of caution, Nyxos led his men through the expertly constructed Peacekeeper defenses, losing many of his number, but retaining the hard core of seasoned Grim Angels and Lion Guard veterans.

Unstoppable, Nyxos led his men to Gideon’s palace, calling on his brother to face his destiny instead of hiding like a coward. Though the lord of the Grim Angels slain hundreds of Peacekeepers and their mortal lackeys, there was still no sight of the Lawgiver as Nyxos entered the palace, suspecting that something was amiss.

His suspicions were proven right as Gideon teleported into the palace with a company of his best warriors, attempting to surprise Nyxos and his men. The resulting battle was hard and bloody; after their men were dead or incapacitated, the two Primarchs fought with their guns, blades, talons, and, when all else failed, with their bare hands and teeth. Though Gideon was a famed gunslinger, Nyxos was the better fighter of the two, utterly devoid of his brother’s humanitarian tendencies and trained against every foe the galaxy could throw at him. With a swipe of his lightning claws, the Primarch of the Ninth Legion finally brought Gideon low, smiling as the victory seemed imminent.

The Lawgiver felt his life ebb at the hands of his brother, realizing that the wounds Nyxos dealt to him were mortal and that he only had a few minutes left at the most. Roaring defiance to the ruins of everything he had built, Gideon used all of his prodigious strength to grab Nyxos and to crush him in his arms, heedless of the damage the Grim Angel’s talons continued to unleash on Gideon’s internal organs. Nyxos’ movements became desperate; a moment of laxity cost him dearly, and he attempted to extricate himself from his brother’s deadly embrace, failing to shake off Gideon’s dying resolve.

In the streets of Topia’s capital, another battle went on. Fresh Peacekeeper reserves, kept hidden by Gideon until they were most needed, attacked the exhausted Grim Angels and Lion Guard, reaping bloody toll on their adversaries. Though the Grim Angels fought to the last, dying rather than surrendering, the outcome of Battle of Topia was predetermined as the Peacekeepers sprung their trap.

Though some of the vengeful Peacekeepers wanted to completely exterminate the few Grim Angels who did not perish in battle or chose to commit suicide rather than face the ignominy of capture, the Tenth Legion instead put them to hard work rebuilding Topia, sending only a sole Grim Angel home with his Primarch’s dead body and a dire warning. From this day, Topia became a byword for the greatest shame amongst the Grim Angels, and the genesis of the Legion’s rebirth.

The magnitude of the defeat resonated through the ranks of the Grim Angels who remained behind to guard the Remnant. As a mere fraction of the Legion’s former strength, they were already overstretched keeping the peace, with most of their senior officers dead along with their Primarch. There were some amongst the conclave of captains and Chaplains who advocated complete dissolution of the Ninth Legion, seeing that it had failed, and therefore no longer deserved to exist. Others blamed the treacherous tactics of Peacekeepers, or the ineptitude of mass-conscripted recruits for the disaster at Topia. A small but vocal faction placed the blame on Nyxos’ own shoulders, arguing that the Primarch had abandoned the Legion’s traditional way of war, and paid the ultimate price. As the debate raged, becoming more heated by the minute, it seemed that the Grim Angels would fall to fratricide in a dark irony of their predicament.

It was then that Marcos Ovid spoke. A mere sergeant, he was only allowed in the meeting due to being the sole survivor of Topian campaign, returning in shame with Nyxos’ body and bearing the bitter stench of failure. Horribly wounded in the final battles of the war, he was at this point more machine than man, sent into the protective coma by his implants and therefore unable to commit suicide when the Peacekeepers overran his unit’s positions.

Ovid reminded the assembled Grim Angels that it was pointless to assign blame, for it was all of theirs to share. The Primarch failed through his uncharacteristic, impetuous tactics; the Legionaries on Topia failed to protect Nyxos and to bring an end to Gideon’s dominion; the Grim Angels who stayed behind failed by not being present at the crucial battle of the war. They had a choice to either let this failure destroy them as it had destroyed Nyxos, or to learn from it, becoming stronger as a result of it.

The sergeant demonstrated the strength of his bionic arm and compared it to the relative weakness of his flesh one, noting how he would not have had this strength if it was not for the failure of his mission on Topia. He called out to the assembled officers, asking them if they were willing to build a foundation for the Legion’s new strength from the ashes of its erstwhile weakness.

Though still traumatized by their losses, the Grim Angels accepted that Ovid spoke true. A vote of the Legion’s surviving officers confirmed him as their new Legion Master, the first to hold that title since the Primarch’s discovery early in the Great Crusade. Once his authority was established, Ovid set to work.

Less than twenty thousand Space Marines wore Grim Angels colors after the devastation of Topia, barely a tenth of their former number. Though the temptation to start a rapid recruitment program was great, Ovid decided that the inability of the Legion to succeed at Topia proved the weakness at its heart. From now on, the Grim Angels would only recruit the strongest, the toughest, most resolute youths free of mutation or idiosyncratic genetics from across the Remnant. To avoid the failures of the mass-produced troopers used by Nyxos in his assault on Gideon’s realm, Ovid mandated that the new Legionaries would be outfitted with the best weapons and armor, and subjected to training regimen of such rigorous difficulty that even Legion veterans would have struggled to succeed. On the battlefield, the reborn Grim Angels would focus on their strengths in asymmetrical warfare, making up for the lack of numbers by frequent use of tactical subterfuge, sabotage, targeted assassination, and callous but effective terror tactics.

But while Ovid’s efforts to return the Ninth Legion to its roots as a mobile, highly trained force specializing in anti-insurgent warfare and maintaining the Remnant’s internal security were worthy of including him in the ranks of the Legion’s great leaders, his greatest accomplishment was even more impressive. Furious with his brother’s failure at Topia, Rogr Hemri moved to dismantle the Grim Angels, ordering the Legionaries dispersed amongst his own Lion Guard and the Legion’s legacy extinguished. Unwilling to surrender, the surviving Grim Angels gathered their entire remaining strength at a Ragnarok Star Fortress, a relic of Dark Age of Technology previously used by Nyxos as a command center. Just as it seemed that the standoff between the Grim Angels and Hemri’s Legion would produce a war both sides could not afford, Legion Master Ovid approached the lord of the Lion Guard under the flag of truce.

He pointed out that Nyxos was undone by his own hubris, and by abandoning the Legion’s purpose. The men who remained, said Ovid, were pure of purpose and strengthened by the Legion’s failure, all of its weakness excised at Topia. If they were to be spread out amongst Lion Guard, or forced to become something they were never intended to be, the Grim Angels would never be able to atone for their defeat. No – if they were to make amends for their weakness, they could only do it by serving Hemri’s Remnant as a small, elite force loyal only to him, standing apart from the rest of their brethren yet remaining strong and uncorrupted.

Privately, Ovid confided to Hemri that the weakness of the old Legion was not yet fully removed. There remained a number of commanders who still saw themselves as heirs to Nyxos’ crusading campaigns, and who hoped to some day return to Topia and succeed where their gene-father had failed. The Remnant did not need crusaders, Ovid said – it needed guardians, blades in the night who would strike at the heretic and the mutant without hesitation, and who would remain satisfied with their place under the guidance of a wise, seasoned Primarch leader.

If there were other things said in that meeting, history does not have a record of them. Not long after Ovid returned to his men, the Lion Guard blockade of Ragnarok was lifted. As a concession to Rogr Hemri’s will, Ovid broke off almost half of the remaining Legion forces, dividing them into a thousand-strong Chapters and ordering them to strike the Legion heraldry from their armor. Each of these Chapters would answer directly to Rogr Hemri or his chosen lieutenants, serving as a mobile task force or guarding key worlds. On pain of total extermination, these Chapters would erase their records of history as a part of the Ninth Legion, and would henceforth accept Chaplains from the Lion Guard to reeducate them in their new ways. Curiously, almost all of the Marines in the Chapters were drawn from the warriors who exhibited a desire to continue Nyxos’ crusades, while the much-reduced Legion under Ovid’s command was made up from traditionalists and newly indoctrinated recruits.

Thus refocused, the Grim Angels returned to their duties as the safekeepers of Rogr Hemri’s Imperial Remnant. Due to the comprehensiveness of their recruitment and training process, they remain a relatively small force, barely able to replace their casualties and rarely exceeding ten thousand Marines at their maximum strength. As it is, the Legion is usually spread out across the Remnant, and it is very uncommon for more than company-strength formations to be present at any given location. Most Grim Angels operations are squad-level missions targeting insurrections, Chaos cults, alien incursions, or pirate raids. While the Legion does not shy away from open warfare when it must make a statement, it tends to avoid all-out engagements when subterfuge and sabotage might win the day. In this way, the Grim Angels seek to maximize their superior training, equipment, and resolve.

As Ovid’s reforms took hold, the Chaplains’ teachings strove to emphasize self-reliance, purity, and strength of purpose. The Legion Master deemed that the true story of Grim Angels’ shame on Topia could lead unprepared minds to dangerous conclusions, and mandated that the records of Topian campaign were sealed from all but the most senior of the Legion’s officers. Instead, the Chaplains teach a heavily revised version of that war, shifting the blame for the Legion’s defeat on the weakness of its supporting troops rather than on Nyxos’ mistakes. Moreover, the story was further altered to show the battle as a victory in which the blessed lord of the Ninth Legion slew his wicked brother, only to be undone by treachery and spirited away through vile psyker means to the parts unknown.

Though Nyxos’ body remains hidden in the inner chamber of the Ragnarok star fortress, its location and existence known only to the Legion Master and the highest ranking Chaplains, most of the Legion believes that the Primarch survived Topia, and will return to his sons when all of their weakness has been excised, when they are as strong and resolute as he intended for them to be. Until that time, the Grim Angels strive to live up to their Primarch’s ideals, as taught by their Chaplains and officers.