Editing Nobledark Imperium Primarchs (section)

== Lion ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> '''''The Black Knight''''' - or ''The Knight of Franj:''

The story of Lion El'Jonson began over a generation before his actual birth, during the Nordyc-Franj war. Clovis Fouché, King of Franj, had sought the aid of Skand against the invasions of the Tyrant of Gredbriton, and after the Tyrant had been repulsed the Nordyc people sought payment for their services. However, King Clovis had proven to be rather miserly with the payment of the debt, and the men of Skand were worried they would never be recompensed. Chief Thengir of the Kalararit was nominated by the chieftains of Skand to travel to Franj to discuss the repayment of the debt with King Clovis.

For whatever reason, the meeting did not go peacefully. The exact nature of the quarrel has been lost to history. The Nordyc claimed that King Clovis tried to short-change them, offering only a pittance in exchange for the blood they had shed. The Franj claimed that Chief Thengir had acted arrogant and disrespectful, behaving more like a conqueror demanding tribute than an ally requesting payment. Whatever the reason, the meeting quickly escalated to violence.

Chief Thengir lost his hand. King Clovis lost his life.

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Thus began the Nordyc-Franj war. In retaliation for the death of their king, Franj soldiers devastated huge tracts of Skand and destroyed entire Nordyc villages. The Nordyc responded by launching devastating raids into the heart of Franj territory. The war only ended when the new regent — fifteen year old Yolande Fouché, Yolande the Clever — called a meeting with Chief Thengir, now known as Thengir the Cripple, to formally apologize and pay back the remainder of the debt along with a weregild for the lives lost. Nevertheless, a considerable amount of hatred remained between the Nordyc and Franj. Perhaps nowhere was this more pronounced than between the noble family of Jonson and the Kalararit house of Russ, both of whom had been involved in the thickest of the fighting.


As a boy, the Lion grew up with stories of glory and heroism, of knights and warriors. And yet not all of these stories were merely tales of fancy. The Lion grew up idolizing his older brother, Luther El'Jonson, who was at first a Knight of Franj and later, when Franj-Europia had been absorbed into the Imperium, a Mark I Astartes. Luther El'Jonson had won fame for his exploits as a mere squire of sixteen in the Nordyc-Franj war, and had only risen in stature since. However, the Sword of Franj had a darker side which was not widely known. Although Luther was a loyal servant of Franj, he greatly disliked the fact that his country was consorting with weak allies, first with the Europia and then later the Imperium itself, when it turned out the Warlord was not as much of a warmonger as Luther expected. 

From the moment he was born, it was clear that something was… different about Lion El’Johnson. Although he truly cared about his fellow man, he often had trouble reading people and came off as unempathetic. Despite being fiercely loyal to those he considered his friends, he was socially awkward and had trouble looking people in the eye. Nevertheless, despite his faults, he was groomed for knighthood by his brother Luther, who recognized his talents. Although Lion would often focus on a problem to the point of obsession, he was tactically brilliant. He also followed the old ideals of chivalry, to a degree that some would consider ridiculous. The Lion was an idealist at heart, seeing the world in terms of dragons and princesses as opposed to corrupt bureaucrats and politicians. This noble behavior won him the fancy of many a young woman’s heart, though throughout history there is no record of the Lion ever engaging in a romantic relationship.

It was for these reasons that when it came time for the Steward to name the twenty primarchs that would command his legions, the Lion was among that number. Such a nomination came as a surprise expected by no one, least of all Lion himself. Before this time, the Lion was only known as the younger brother of Luther, or at best Luther’s squire. But the Warlord knew of the evils that lurked in the hearts of men. Luther was a great soldier, but his mind had been corrupted by hatred and jingoism. The Lion’s heart was untamed but pure, its idealism and love for humanity untampered. Along with Sanguinius Baal and Vulkan, son of N’Bel, Lion was chosen to be one of the three prototypes for the Mark III Astartes augmentation, which was to be the final model of Space Marine augmentation. Some say that this was the point that the seed of jealousy was first planted in Luther’s heart, with all his years of service to Franj and the Imperium being overlooked in favor of his untested brother. Lion, for his part, did not reciprocate the feeling and named his older brother second-in-command of the legion in gratitude for all that his brother had given him. Lion named his legion the Dark Angels after the legendary Black Knight of his country's folklore, who covered his armor in pitch and lived as a wild man rather than subject himself to an unjust lord.


If the Dark Angels were to become a proper legion, they would need a strong recruiting base. Fortunately, the Lion’s home country of Franj was almost perfect for the task. Franj was extremely healthy in terms of both health and population, and the only other primarch from Franj-Europia, Roboute Guilliman, did not seem that interested in recruiting from his home nation. Guilliman, ever the long term thinker, preferred to recruit from all over Old Earth instead of a single country, with the mind of forming an army that had no loyalty to any nation but the Imperium itself. The Lion, on the other hand, felt he needed soldiers he could trust, and so he recruited heavily from his home country of Franj-Europia. Compared to many of the other nations of Earth, the knightly orders of Franj were organized, well-trained, and well-educated militarily, making them ideal Astartes candidates. As a result, by the time the Unification of Sol was complete, the First Legion was bigger, better trained, suffered from fewer casualties, and could recruit faster than any other legion.

It was for this reason that the Dark Angels were picked to be the first legion to travel outside of Sol, acting as an expeditionary force to scout the galaxy ahead of the rest of the Great Crusade to see what of humanity had survived the Age of Strife. The Lion was enamored with the idea, starry-eyed at the prospect of meeting new peoples and reuniting with lost colonies of humanity. Luther, for his part, was not. He was growing increasingly dissatisfied with Europia-Franj’s increasing lack of autonomy in the increasingly peaceful Imperium, which was only magnified by King Gunthar Fouché, son of Roboute Guilliman and Yolande Fouché, turning over all military production and funding to the Imperium on the reasoning that there was no one left to fight. Perhaps in a bout of paranoia, Luther feared that his assignment to the expeditionary fleet was an unofficial exile as opposed to an award, and that the Imperium would completely gut his beloved Franj while he was not around to watch it.

Lion and the Dark Angels set out in The Rock, one of two completed super-battleships — along with the Phalanx — that were commissioned by the Steward to be the flagships of the new Imperial Navy, along with several ships of the Voidborn primarch Horus Lupercal (whose cartographers happened to be the ones that owned all the maps). At first the mission did not go well; the first sentient life the expeditionary force encountered was the orks, followed by the Dark Eldar, the latter of which in particular fostered a particularly deep-seated dislike of Eldar in the two brothers. Even the Lion, despite his general open-mindedness, never really felt comfortable with the Imperium being on good terms with the Craftworlders, as he had a hard time distancing the likes of Eldrad and Macha from the atrocities of their distant kin.

And yet despite these setbacks there were also great triumphs. Despite the Dark Angels' first encounters being with the orks and Dark Eldar, the Dark Angels encountered other races — such as the Diasporex and the Watchers in the Dark — who would prove to be loyal allies. And there were so many human colonies, many of whom welcomed the Dark Angels — and by proxy the return of humanity as a power in the galaxy — with open arms. After seeing Russ’ success at recruiting warriors from the planet of Fenris, the Dark Angels set up recruitment stations on many of these worlds, causing the Dark Angels to swell even larger. Nevertheless, many of the Dark Angels, particularly the officers, still came from Franj.


It was sometime during this period that Luther was contacted by Erebus — the Dark Chaplain, the First Traitor. The Ruinous Powers had seen the doubts that lay in Luther’s heart, and saw their opportunity to sow dissent within the forces of the Imperium. Erebus told Luther that he saw the nobility in Luther’s heart and his loyalty to Franj and humanity as a whole, and yet the Imperium was willing to get in bed with all the old enemies of Franj and humanity; the Duscht-Jemanic, the Nordyc, the Eldar. On behalf of the Dark Gods, Erebus offered Luther a deal: divert all Dark Angel reinforcement from the upcoming war, and in exchange Chaos would only target non-essential or non-human interests. Many have wondered, when it became clear that Chaos would never uphold such a bargain, why Luther would have continued to serve the interests of the Ruinous Powers. Captured members of the Fallen have said that Luther was never fully convinced by Erebus’ words, but merely planned to double-cross Chaos and re-establish Franj as an independent power, similar to Hy Braseal. Luther saw the Imperium as a noble ideal, but corrupt and rotten to its core — better to burn it all down and start afresh, preferably with Franj as its center. However, as with all traitors whose minds have been warped by the influence of Chaos, it is difficult to say if they are telling the truth.

At first, it actually seemed like Chaos was going to keep its side of the bargain. The entire tone of the war did not shift, but many worlds that had been predicted to be in the path of breakaway warbands suddenly found themselves waiting for an invasion that never came, though this may have been more due to the actions of Horus and Guilliman than anything Erebus did. At the same time the response of the Dark Angels to crises became extremely variable and unreliable. The Dark Angels who fought alongside the Lion responded valiantly and with alacrity, but other groups replied to cries for help sluggishly, if at all. However, it wasn’t before long that Erebus appeared beyond Luther again. He told Luther that the war against the Imperium wasn’t going so well, and while before the forces of Chaos were content to have Luther sit out the war now they needed help. There was a chance that the followers of the Ruinous Powers might actually lose the war, and if that happened, well, there was no guarantee that the Imperium wouldn’t find out about Erebus and Luther’s little bargain from captured traitors.

In retrospect, what Erebus said was clearly a ruse. Although Chaos and the Beast’s forces had lost some momentum on their blitzkrieg through the stars, the tide was far from turning, and even if the Imperium had found out about the deal from prisoners of war they would have had little reason to believe it was anything more than an attempt to sow suspicion among Imperial forces by traitors. Erebus had no evidence beyond his word that such a deal had been made. But in the heat of the moment, and due to his own guilt over having been tempted into making this deal in the first place, Luther was unable to recognize Erebus’ claim for what it was. Luther was enraged by this, Erebus was clearly altering the terms of their deal, but he didn’t see any way out of it.

Having made judicious use of the stick, Erebus then offered Luther the carrot. The Ruinous Powers didn’t require much in order to help their schemes succeed. All they needed Luther to do was burn down some Maiden Worlds. It’s not like Luther would be required to commit treason or kill humans. They were just Eldar. Luther accepted Erebus’ terms with a snarl, before setting off to organize his forces to perform the deed. Fifteen Maiden Worlds burned before the relentless assault of Luther’s Dark Angels. Upon hearing this news, the Lion was horrified. Already irritated by the apparent lackadaisicalness of his forces, he immediately set out to find Luther and demand an explanation. 


The Lion finally caught up to Luther in the ashes of the Maiden World once known as Tarsus. Already in a rather poor state of mind, the Lion made no attempts to try and talk his brother down or convince him to surrender. Instead, he marched his honor guard down the ramp of his ship, bolters drawn, before asking his brother what the hell he thought he was doing. Even though Lion didn’t like the Eldar either, there was a world of difference — or rather, fifteen worlds — between merely disliking them and butchering the civilians of their nominal allies. Being fixed by the Lion’s withering, contemptuous glare, Luther found himself having trouble explaining his actions to his little brother. His tone low, and with a bit of shame in his voice, Luther told Lion that he had made a deal… for Franj. Upon hearing those words, the Lion long pent-up rage finally erupted and he struck Luther in his anger. It wasn’t a hard blow, but it was enough to knock Luther off his feet and escalate the situation to violence. Lion yelled that committing massacres in Franj’s name did nothing but sully Franj’s honor, and the country would rather die than have such blood on its hands.

Something in Luther snapped at Lion’s accusation. He declared him a traitor to Franj, willing to let his country be gutted and eaten by foreign powers rather than protect it, and in a fit of madness ordered the Dark Angels to kill him. Both brothers were enraged at the other’s perceived betrayal.

Luther’s order sent the Dark Angels into disarray. Luther had originally justified his orders to the Dark Angels by claiming that the Eldar had turned on the Imperium, and the Lion had ordered the Maiden Worlds burned in retaliation. Most of the Dark Angels had obeyed, since they were used to Luther being the spokesman for the Lion and Lion’s poor personal skills meant he had trouble voicing a reasonable counterargument. Many were more loyal to Luther than Lion, being Franj nationalists. Others — particularly those who had spent significant time with Lion or capable of critical thinking — realized that Lion had ordered no such thing and that Luther had completely lost it. Still others had no clue what was going on due to the contradictory sets of orders and were merely caught in the middle. When the Dark Angels loyal to Luther raised their bolters, those loyal to the Lion did so response. It was absolute chaos, brother against brother, with many not even knowing if they were fighting traitors or those loyal to their cause.

It was as at this point that one of the Lion’s biggest mistakes becomes clear. The Lion recruited much of his legion, including most of its officers, from Franj because he felt he needed people he could trust. Sadly, the officers of the Dark Angels were loyal to a fault, but not to him. Although many in the legion respected the Lion — and those who actually got to know him personally actually found him quite pleasant, if persnickety — the Lion often relied on his brother to motivate the legion due to his lack of people skills. The Lion had so much trouble reading people, and was so trusting of his brother, that he had not seen the viper in the grass before it bit him. Between two-thirds to three-fourths of the legion had been subverted by the Ruinous Powers. If it were almost any other legion, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem, but by the time of the War of the Beast the Dark Angels were by far the largest legion. Thus, having two-thirds to three-fourths of the legion go renegade was the equivalent of having two or three other legions fall to the Ruinous powers.

In the confusion, Luther and many of his followers commandeered the Rock, the flagship of the Dark Angels, and escaped into the Warp. Luther’s madness only worsened as he mulled over Lion’s words and the fighting on Tarsus, leading him to believe that the entire Imperium including his brother had turned against him. Many of the Dark Angels felt the same way, seeing themselves as abandoned and betrayed by the Imperium they had once served, and resented it. After Tarsus, Luther’s Dark Angels began burning both human and Eldar worlds indiscriminately. The worlds that had been “spared” after Luther’s initial bargain found themselves the target of Chaos, with interest. Besieged Guardsmen on many worlds looked to the skies in hope when they saw the famed Astartes legions come to reinforce them, only to be butchered when their “saviors” landed on the planet. Chapters of the legion devolved into civil war as former brothers drew arms against one another as they realized they served different causes. Many more Dark Angels turned to the service of the Ruinous Powers out of desperation and a desire for survival.

The Lion never returned to Old Earth during the War of the Beast to participate in the Battle of Terra. Many have criticized the Lion for these actions. In the Lion’s mind, however, his priorities were clear; his men were slaughtering one another, and it was his duty to put things right. Perhaps more importantly, it was his mistake — HIS mistake — and the universe would not be set right until he took pains to correct it.


Eventually, Lion tracked Luther and his inner circle to the world of Caliban. Getting to Caliban was easy enough. When the Dark Angels reached the planet Luther’s Fallen found themselves sandwiched between the loyalist Caliban garrison and the Lion’s reinforcements, forcing them to temporarily break their hold over the planet in order to regroup. However, when the Dark Angels found out from captured traitors what Luther was actually looking for on Caliban, they were stunned. Luther had learned from the entity known as Be’lakor ([[Nobledark_Imperium_Drafts#Be.27lakor_and_the_Alpha_Legion|which the Imperium had only recently learned existed due to the actions of the Alpha Legion, and only then at great cost]]) that Caliban was the site of the Ouroboros, a device created by an ancient xenos race — one even older than humanity, the Watchers, or the Eldar — capable of warping the very fabric of space-time, which they had used to create the Webway. The Dark Angels realized the implications of this discovery; here was the potential solution to the issue of the fragile, irreparable Webway, and possibly a means to free the Imperium and the galaxy from the tyranny of the Warp, whereas the Watchers were shocked at learning the origins of their eons of suffering had been buried under their own feet. No one knew exactly what Luther planned to do with the equipment, but all agreed it could not be anything good.

The Dark Angels and Watchers were faced with a dilemma. Destroy the device that could potential prove the salvation of the entire galaxy, or leave it to fall into the hands of the Fallen. Although the loyalist Dark Angels could disrupt Luther’s control of Caliban, they could not hold the planet, as Luther’s forces greatly outnumbered their own. In the end, it was the Watchers who made the decision to blow up their own homeworld. They loved Caliban, it was their home despite being harsh and warp-tainted, but they realized the danger that Luther in control of the Ouroboros would prove. Better that no one have it than let it be abused. As the Watchers wired their planet to blow with Exterminatus-class weaponry, the loyalist Dark Angels launched a counterattack on the Fallen, with the Lion particularly eager to take the fight to his brother. However, when Lion reached what should have been Luther’s sanctum within the Rock, he realized he had been tricked. Luther had known where Lion would have looked for him, and therefore did the exact opposite, taking a small strike team to the surface of Caliban. However, he was quickly forced to turn around when he realized what the Watchers had done to their planet. Lion was also forced to retreat, realizing that he and his men risked being cut off and overwhelmed by the Fallen if they tried to wait to ambush Luther. No one had won at Caliban. Luther had lost the Ouroboros, but Lion had lost his brother.

There were reports of a “Cypher”-type character on both sides of the conflict. Based on reports either he could travel really fast or (more likely) there was more than one of him. Some say he was the court battle-wizard of the legion who had gone missing/presumed dead two years previously whilst fighting a Big Mek and his Orkblitorator Cyborks on a Forge World. Some of these Cyphers may have actually been Alpha Legion infiltrators covertly helping the loyalists and hindering the traitors.

What happened to the Fallen mostly depended on what they did immediately after the War of the Beast. Some of the Fallen, mostly members of the lower ranks who realized they had been fed bullshit for the whole ordeal, surrendered when the enormity of their error became apparent. They ended up being sentenced to serve in the penal legions until they were deemed to have sufficiently repented for their sins after the first Black Crusade, after which the survivors were scattered among the other legions. The remainder, which represented at least half of the surviving Dark Angels, were spirited away by the Ruinous Powers to the Eye of Terror where they formed the core of the Fallen as we know them today. Of the being known as Cypher no conclusive answers have been obtained. He still appears in Imperial records from time to time down the ages with no discernable pattern. He is either leapfrogging through time via cryo-sleep or it’s not the same man. Even a Mark III S Astartes should have aged to death by now. The Eldar allies of the Dark Angels are unable to predict his movements and, much like the tyranids, he acts as a travelling blank spot in their prophecies.


In the years immediately following the War of the Beast, there were many who criticized the Lion's actions, chief among them Leman Russ. At one point the Great Wolf said within earshot of El'Jonson that Luther's betrayal was a near certainty, because "that's what one gets for trusting a member of the house of Jonson". That was a fateful mistake, as while the Lion might have been distraught, he wasn't deaf. The Lion was enraged — although his brother may have fallen to the Ruinous Powers, the Lion had still remained loyal to humanity and had done all in his power to help the Imperium. At least one son of House Jonson had retained his honor. In retaliation, the Lion turned and struck the Great Wolf on the jaw, knocking him out cold. In the aftermath of the fight, Leman Russ decided he had enough of witches and Jonsons and decided to relocate to Fenris entirely, nearly severing all ties with Old Earth. The Great Wolf would not set foot on his home planet again until nearly forty years after the Lion's disappearance, slightly humbler and wiser from his experience setting up the Fenrisian colonies.

As with all of the Primarchs save Sanguinius and Angron, the Lion was active following the War of the Beast, though one would be forgiven for thinking he was not. Unlike most of the Primarchs, who were primarily focused on rebuilding the Imperium, Lion was focused — some would say obsessed — with trying to recapture the Fallen. He split the remaining loyalist Dark Angels into knightly orders, reminiscent of those once present on Franj, and scattered them to distant worlds, with a program of frequent officer exchange between orders to keep them loyal to the Imperium rather than any one place of origin. He also instituted a mandatory position of Watcher within each chapter, held by a member of the Inquisition in order to monitor the chapter from the inside. These days, the job is usually held by a really old member of the Inquisition who refuses to retire despite being too old to chase anyone.


Finally, years after the War of the Beast had ended, the Lion received the news he had waited so long for. The Rock, and by extension Luther, had reappeared.

The Dark Angels and the rest of the Unforgiven fell upon the Rock swift as a flock of ravens, hounding it from system to system in a series of skirmishes, until they finally cornered the Fallen Angels on a long forgotten feral world. Amidst the twilight murk and murmuring rustle of a primeval forest, the once comrades faced each other after long centuries of hunting and waiting. The trees bore silent witness as loyalist and traitor slaughtered one another with a fury born of the void left by brotherhood and filled by hate, the quiet split by the roar of bolters and the scream of chainswords on ceramite. Bodies clad in green and black fell soundlessly to the mossy undergrowth, and the soil drank deep of rich dark blood.

Lion was unstoppable that day as he stalked the battlefield with his Deathwing honor guard, the Lion Sword flashing red as the Fallen fled before the Primarch. Yet the scum before him did not interest Lion; he had come with only one goal, and he would not be denied. 

In the tangled forest the Primarch soon was separated from his honor guard and found himself alone at the edge of a clearing. He brushed aside the foliage in time to see a lone figure in black cut down the last of a squad of Dark Angels, carving through their armor with contemptuous ease. Lion did not need to see the golden fleur-de-lis on the horned onyx helm to know who the traitor was. His stance, the arrogant grace with which he moved, the way his sword danced in his hand like an extension of his arm. Luther.

Luther turned at the sound of Lion’s footsteps. The clearing was quiet as the eyes of the two brothers met behind the mirrored lenses of their helms, then Luther raised his sword in an old Franjish dueling salute, half mocking and half earnest. Lion did not return the gesture. Then sudden and swift as his namesake, he charged. The Lion Sword descended in a shining blur, faintly glowing with a pale inner light, and their blades met with a shivering clang as the Arch-Traitor blocked the Primarch’s savage strike, the Sword of Luther wreathed in a delicate corona of the void, tendrils of the Immaterium spilling forth from the edges of the blade. The sound of swords rang through the forest as back and forth the brothers traded blows, each unable to take the advantage as Lion’s cold ferocity and superior augmentations were matched by Luther’s consummate skill and the blessings of Chaos Undivided. 

So bathed in the dappled light of the setting sun Lion and Luther did battle. Against the backdrop of the ancient giants of the forest, they might have been boys play-fighting with sticks, swatting at each other with wild abandon; but this was no game, and these were not the familiar old oaks of Franj. Bright gashes appeared on the brothers’ green and black armor where they found openings in the other’s defense, and blood trickled out where the blades had pierced the flesh beneath before the wounds were stanched by their superhuman physiologies. Pressed by his brother’s assault, Luther eventually began to tire, yet Lion remained as unrelenting as ever. Sensing victory, he battered Luther with a flurry of blows, tearing off the helmet with a glancing slash to the head, and finally drove his blade into his brother’s leg. Luther fell to one knee, and before he could react the Lion Sword was at his throat, the tip pressed against his bare neck.

For a moment the two men were motionless. Then Lion removed his winged helm with one hand and let it fall to the ground, and for the first time in a century the brothers looked each other face to face. Under his matted blond hair Lion’s eyes were red and wet. Another moment of stillness, then the Lion Sword dipped, and lowered away. Sharp as a whipcrack, Lion said only one word: “Why?”

The accusation in his brother’s voice struck Luther like a hammer, and emotions welled up within him. Rage. Humiliation. Guilt. Shame.

How could he have lost to Lion? Never before had Lion bested him in their sparring, except the few times when he had allowed it. But he deserved this. He betrayed his brother, and the Imperium, and had nearly damned humanity to extinction. 

No, no! His plan had been sound, and with a single stroke they could have rid humanity of xenos influences and secured a future for Franj among the stars. If only Lion had listened and followed. Lion had always sought his counsel and followed him in matters of import, never defying him until that fateful day. 

Yes, with that once act of defiance, of betrayal, Lion had doomed his plan and consigned him to a life of furtive scavenging and raiding. It was Lion! 

LION!

With a cry Luther burst upwards, his sword a malign black blur streaking towards Lion’s throat. Surprised, Lion threw himself back and raised his sword to parry, but it was no use; against foe as deadly as Luther, even an inch of an opening would have been fatal. But the Chaos Gods were not done with their servant yet. In a final act of malicious caprice, they lifted the scales of madness from Luther’s eyes and allowed him to see with a clear mind what he had done.

In that moment Luther saw: Lion as the solemn boy he had taught to swing a sword, who wanted so much to be like his famed older brother; as the young man he had personally knighted, a rare, sweet smile spreading across those stern features; as the man he had fought and laughed and bled with on the battlefields of a thousand worlds, side by side. And he saw the brother that he had just killed, the tip of his sword cutting smoothly through a pale throat, a thin spray of blood in its wake.

Something within Luther broke. Beneath the horror of this realization, his tortured psyche fell to pieces, and when the Deathwing finally came upon the clearing they found a screaming Luther kneeling over Lion’s still body. Their act of domination complete, the warp echoed with dark laughter as the Chaos gods spirited Luther away amidst a hail of bolter fire.


The Deathwing immediately recovered Lion, and in a battle barge in orbit the Chief Apothecary and his team fought to save Lion’s life. Indeed, it was a miracle that Lion had survived so long, made possible only through the astounding power of the Mk III S augmentations, for even a Sus-an coma would not have saved a normal Astartes from such a grievous wound. Yet while the apothecaries could stabilize Lion, they could not restore him. A slash from a mundane weapon would have soon been healed by Lion’s regenerative abilities, but Luther’s cursed blade had inflicted a wound that would not close, the treatments and medications unable to take hold on the tainted flesh. Lion was slipping away, and with no other options, the apothecaries could only seal Lion in a stasis-coffin, and hope that some day a cure would be found.

To this day, Luther is still a broken man, given to wild swings of mood as his mind flits to and from the scattered shards of his personality, from charming magnanimity to unbridled rage to brooding despair. Yet buried within the dark cage of madness lies the last piece of good within Luther’s heart, his nobility and honor and love for his brother. And once in a rare while that light emerges from its prison, and Luther awakens to the reality of the nightmare around him and the horror that is his life. He screams then, and as he slaughters the Fallen around him he weeps and begs Lion for forgiveness. Inevitably, that moment of lucidity is swallowed again by warp-fueled madness as the Chaos gods reassert their power over their servant. But that piece of goodness remains, perhaps as the last spark of hope for Luther’s redemption.

Lion still sleeps in his coffin, his features peaceful beneath the crystal cover, frozen in time on the precipice between life and death. He would surely perish were he removed to perform the canticles of purification to cleanse his wound, and so he remains in his millennia-long slumber. Entreaties to Isha have proved fruitless, for she has said healing Lion would be beyond ever her powers as the Goddess of Life; Lion is too far into the realm of death for her to exercise sole influence over him. Indeed, it would take another god, a God of the Dead, in conjunction with her powers to restore Lion to life, and surely no such god exists. But the Dark Angels are not deterred; they wait and dream, sure that one day the last remaining Primarch will return and lead them all to their long-promised salvation.

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=== The Lion Sword ===

Throughout his travels the Lion was known to use a red blade of excellent quality. When the Lion was put into his coma, his sword was interred alongside him in the Rock, ready to be wielded again by its master should the Lion ever wake from his coma. That sword is The Lion Sword, a Kinebrach blade exchanged as part of the ceremony finalizing the alliance between the young Imperium and the Interex. 

It was the last blade made by the venerable master Mez-Go-Bur, who was said by witnesses to his work to have used neither forge nor hammer in his smithing, and that the metal he worked was taken from the shell of a fallen Cybernetica robot. He struck the metal with his bare fists, and as it started to heat up and become pliant the swordsmith beat all his sorrows (which were many) and his wrath (which was considerable) into the metal before him. The cherry red blade was quenched in a barrel of ceremonial oil mingled with his own blood, and on that concoction-laden blade he inscribed words of binding — banes against daemonic beings. Daemons had made his life a misery, so his blade would cut them and leave them maimed and miserable in turn with a pain that would follow them to the depths of their Hell. No matter if or how they healed the wretches would never stop hurting — as he would never stop hurting. But though he would die the daemons would linger eternally, and upon them would be inflicted a pain that would likewise linger eternally — for ever and ever and ever.

He smiled when the sword was handed over to Lion El'Jonson. He died not long after.

There are many Kinebrach blades in circulation in the Imperium and the art of making them is in no danger of ever being lost, but few are as vindictive as the ones made by Mez-Go-Bur; The Lion Sword was his last creation and believed to be his best.

There was a legend among the people of Franj: if an implement is left for more more than a year and day it will hunger for blood. The blade has been idle for too long now. Too many summers under a shroud of dust, even as its edge remains razor keen. If the old stories are true, then the Lion Sword thirsts a great deal. It would take a man of iron will to tame that blade now.