Editing Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos (section)

===Urkrathos===

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''The Fleetmaster of Chaos:'''''

The dark legend known as Urkrathos is a name whispered with both fear and grudging admiration amongst the officers of the Imperial Navy. Yet few know he was once a good and righteous warrior of the Legiones Astartes named Yisun, and serves as a warning to how even the best of humanity can fall to darkness.

From his earliest days as a recruit of the White Scars, Yisun showed a keen mind for tactics and strategy. Through the Great Crusade and the War of the Beast he served with distinction and fervor, and by the Battle of Terra he earned his place in the elite First Company of the White Scars, the Great Khan’s Spearpoint Brotherhood, and had received his promotion to Veteran Sergeant.

As a man, Yisun was unflinchingly honest with an unswerving, almost naïve faith in the Imperial ideals of justice and equality, and in contrast with most of comrades in his Legion, Yisun favored defensive tactics exploiting terrain to its maximum advantage with heavily armored units and overwhelming firepower. Combined with his stubborn nature, Yisun often butted heads with his superiors, and his supporters within the Legion argued that he should have been promoted to Captain several times over other less worthy officers. To Yisun, however, these arguments were hot air: duty was its own reward, and he was honored to serve whether or not others recognized his efforts.
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In the grim days of the Great Hunt and the Reclamation, the Imperial forces spread across the ashes of the galaxy to pick up the broken pieces of their Imperium, and the Legiones Astartes began to fracture in order to cover the vast expanses of space. During this time, Yisun was seconded to the 13th Company aboard the strike cruiser Divine Wind to assist the young Captain in his operations. The Captain was sharp and able, but there were whispers that he had been promoted prematurely to fill vacancies left by the War of the Beast, and thus he hungered to prove himself to his peers. The Captain’s reckless search of glory during the Hunt led to several open arguments and clashes when Yisun spoke out against the excessive risks to the men, and eventually the Captain and his command staff voted unanimously to strip the outspoken Sergeant of his rank and demote him to a Legionnaire. Many Marines within the 13th Company were outraged by the Captain’s overreach and insult against a popular and well-respected member of the First Company, and they demanded Yisun be reinstated. Yisun, however, accepted the punishment without complaint and instead urged his fellows to stand down to preserve the unity of the Company. He had faith in the judgment of the Great Khan, and knew that once they were reunited with the Legion Jaghatai would see the failings of the Captain and restore Yisun to his rightful place.

And so the Hunt went on. Months passed as Yisun fought as a common Legionnaire beside the men he once led, and all too often he had to bite his tongue when he saw the stretchers of crippled and dead of the 13th Company, casualties that perhaps could have been avoided if the Captain had only been more careful.

Finally, it all came to a head during an engagement against an elusive Chaos Sorcerer and his warband of Fallen the White Scars had long hunted. The 13th Company had split into two flanks to encircle the outnumbered and cornered enemy, yet as the White Scars advanced Yisun grew uneasy. He was already suspicious and wary of the advantageous terrain held by the traitor Marines, and to his horror he spotted subtle but telling signs of daemonic summoning. Without time to notify the Captain of the trap, Yisun seized command of the flank from the sergeants, who were more than willing to cede command to the honored veteran. As the Astartes of Yisun’s flank pulled together into a tight defensive circle the air was split with deafening screeches and filled with unholy light as daemons tore through seams in reality, and suddenly it was the White Scars who were outnumbered and surrounded. Rallying his men forward, Yisun led them as they hacked their way step by bloody step to the other flank where the Captain and the other Astartes were pushing back the daemons, beset on all sides. 

The Captain’s confusion at seeing the other Astartes quickly became fury when Yisun’s voice rang across the vox line suggesting immediate evacuation. The Captain saw that his plan was in tatters and without the other flank in the position the Fallen sorcerer had likely escaped, and so the White Scars withdrew to their Stormravens covered by a hail of bolts from the circling aircraft.

Aboard the Divine Wind, Yisun was immediately arrested and thrown in the brig for court martial, and he accepted this without complaint. Even if it meant his death by execution, Yisun knew he had saved the men of the 13th Company from total annihilation. Yet he was horrified when he heard the Captain was planning to court martial the other sergeants who had aided him. Blameless men would die for his decision if he did not act, and so with great reluctance and sorrow Yisun passed a message to his supporters.

That night, as the Astartes retreated to their quarters to rest, Yisun’s men quietly donned their Power Armor and began their takeover of the ship. Most of the Astartes, confused at the sight of their brothers in full armor, did not resist when they were placed in lockdown, and those loyal to the Captain were unarmed, unarmored, and quickly overwhelmed and subdued by the mutineers. One of them, however, managed to warn the Captain, and so the Captain and his command squad barricaded themselves in the bridge, greatly delaying the mutineers until they finally blasted through the reinforced bulkhead to capture the officers.

With the ship under his control, Yisun plotted a course for the main fleet of the White Scars, intending to bring his case before the Great Khan himself. Even if he were to die for his crime, he could at least see to it that his men were spared and the Captain removed from command. Yet when the ship emerged at the fleet’s location after several weeks of warp travel, Yisun was shocked to see an armed escort of several cruisers awaiting his arrival.

Upon establishing vox contact, the escort’s commander demanded that Yisun power down the ship and all mutineers surrender themselves to their custody, for the Captain had managed to send an astropathic message through the company librarian before they were captured, and the entire legion knew of Yisun’s treachery. Stunned by the hate in the commander’s voice, Yisun attempted to explain his reasons, and requested an audience with the Great Khan as a veteran of the First Company. The commander flatly refused, stating that it was Jaghatai himself who had given him his orders. Reeling from the news that his Khan thought him a traitor, Yisun ordered the warp drive to be activated. The escort ships immediately fired on the Divine Wind upon detecting the energy spike, yet Yisun refused to fire back at his brothers even as men aboard his ship died from the bombardment, and finally they were able to escape to the Warp with heavy damage.

Stunned by the denial of even a chance to speak and consumed by grief at the betrayal of justice by the Great Khan he idolized, Yisun resolved to bring his case before another Primarch, for he still believed that righteousness would prevail in the Imperium, and so he plotted a course for the closest reported Primarch battlefleet. Had this Primarch been Vulkan, or Guilliman, perhaps Yisun could have returned to the fold of the Imperium and served loyally for many more years; unfortunately, the Primarch he found was unyielding Rogal Dorn.

The Divine Wind soon reached the fleet of the Imperial Fists and passed through the patrols without incident. When they came into comms range of the mighty Phalanx, Yisun’s request to speak with Dorn was accepted; yet when Dorn’s stony visage came up on the communications console Yisun knew something was amiss. He had barely said a few words when Dorn interrupted, and the Primarch’s eyes were chips of flint as he gazed imperiously down at Yisun and announced that Yisun and his mutineers were to be taken prisoners and returned to the White Scars to face their justice. Yisun began to protest, but Dorn growled for him to save his breath, for the Khan himself had informed his fellow Primarchs of his anger and disappointment in the once honored veteran, and before Yisun could continue his explanation Dorn ended the call. 

As the Divine Wind activated its warp drive once again, it was struck by several ion bolts from the Phalanx, overloading the cruiser’s systems. As they drifted in space, Yisun could see thin red streaks emerge from the Phalanx as boarding pods hurtled towards the defenseless Divine Wind.

Yisun was staggered. Dorn was famed in the Imperium for his integrity; true, the man was harsh and uncompromising, but always fair and impartial. For him to utterly ignore anything Yisun said and deny him his right to speak in his own defense spat on the very ideals of Imperial law, and this was the final straw. Something within Yisun broke, and his grief became rage. For the first time he saw the hollowness of the Imperium and its ideals, that in the end rules and words meant nothing and that those in power would decide the fate of those beneath them on a whim, no better than any of the dozens of petty despots he had helped crush during the Great Crusade. The Steward and his lackeys were soft and weak, he realized, granting leeway to the powerful and letting crime and strife run rampant in the name of “compassion” and “dignity.” Sitting in the darkened bridge as his men scrambled around him, Yisun cursed Dorn and Jaghatai, cursed their hypocrisy and blindness, cursed the Imperium that he had wasted his life defending. He vowed that if he were to escape, he would spend the rest of his life tearing down the Imperium, never resting until true law and order ruled over the galaxy, enforced by his iron hand. And in the darkness of the void, something heard him and laughed.

There was a flash of light, and power surged through the Divine Wind’s systems, restoring their functionality. With full power to the engines and forward shields, the cruiser smashed through the surprised ships of the Imperial Fists, ramming past several frigates as boarding pods glanced off the recharged void shields. The Imperial Fists’ ships could not hope to match the modified engines of a White Scars strike cruiser, and soon the Divine Wind slipped beyond their range into the inky blackness of space.

Once they were safe, Yisun gathered his crew, and standing before the Astartes Yisun spoke of his vision, a new empire built on the ashes on the Imperium where true justice and order would rule the galaxy. Many of the Marines were swayed by his fiery words, for they too felt victimized and betrayed by their leaders, and Yisun named his band of warriors the Chosen, for they were the ones who would tear down the rotten façade of the Imperium. Those who refused to join Yisun were not harmed, to their surprise, and were allowed to disembark unarmed upon a backwater planet. All except one: the Captain received a single bolt shell to the temple, the long overdue justice that had been denied within the Imperium.

From that moment, the man who had been Yisun was dead. He cast off that name as a reminder of the shame of his past life of servitude, and in its place he took the name of Urkrathos, from an ancient myth of Old Earth in which a mortal man was betrayed by his father, king of the gods, and in vengeance crawled from Hell to the summit of the gods’ mountain to topple their corrupt kingdom.

After their flight from Imperial Fists, Urkrathos and the Divine Wind largely disappeared from the gaze of the Imperium, though the White Scars never forgot the shame of one of their finest falling to Chaos. Urkrathos did not reappear until the 1st Black Crusade, when a wing of Raven Guard ships was ambushed by a Chaos squadron led by an aged Space Marine cruiser broadcasting Great Hunt era IFF codes, its hull twisted and blackened by exposure to the Warp. The Raven Guard ships were quickly outmaneuvered by the unknown captain’s masterful tactics and only a single crippled Imperial frigate managed to limp away from the battle with word of their loss.

Word spread amongst the Imperium and the Chaos forces of the new warlord, and Urkrathos’ warband soon swelled with recruits as he won several of the overmatched Chaos forces rare victories against the overwhelming Imperium. His first and only defeat ever came late in the war against Abbadon, who privately remarked that Urkrathos was the finest fleet commander he ever faced and would have been a worthy Voidborn. 

The 1st Black Crusade drew to a close at the final Battle of Cadia, as Abbadon gave his life high above its skies and Dorn died holding its walls far below. Urkrathos retreated with the rest of the Chaos forces into the Eye of Terror, and within their marble halls on Chogoris the White Scars added the name of “Yisun” to their ancient Scrolls of Vengeance, vowing to hunt down their wayward brother and take his head to cleanse their shame.

Over the next centuries Urkrathos consolidated his power and status as one of the preeminent Chaos Lords. He obtained his legendary battleship Testudo in a daring raid on the Imperial shipyards at Bakka, and over time he added additional weapons and reinforced its armor plating until it was a veritable fortress in space. Imperial captains and admirals quickly learned to fear the hulking black form of the Testudo and the trail of wreckages and burning ships it left in its wake.

Such success did not come without attention, and even as Urkrathos’ fleet grew in ships and men his rivals plotted to bring him down. He destroyed several Chaos Lords foolhardy enough to challenge him in space, and several times he survived the attentions of the White Scars when they made him the target of their Hunts. Others sought to gain his loyalty and power for themselves, including Luther, Erebus, and even Lady Malys herself, and each of them received nothing but cold refusal from Urkrathos; Erebus in particular received his response in the form of a single contemptuous backhand to the jaw when he came to the Testudo in person to negotiate. The message was clear: Urkrathos would only ever help Chaos in his own time, on his own terms, when it served his purposes.

For Urkrathos had never forgotten his vow: he and his Chosen fought not for glory or power or dark gods, but to overthrow the rule of the weak and corrupt and replace it with true order enforced by strength. To this end, they shunned the usage of Chaotic power and any exposure to the Immaterium to ensure their minds were their own. Whether this worked or not is uncertain, for none can touch Chaos and emerge unchanged, and it could very well have been that Urkrathos and his Chosen were slowly twisted as the dark gods worked in their inscrutable and insidious ways.

Whatever the case, it is true the Chosen were unusually disciplined and effective for Chaos Space Marines; though they lacked the power of Khornate Berserkers or the resiliency of Plague Marines, they more than made up for it in cold, precise efficiency. Worlds raided by Urkrathos and the Chosen often found the collateral damage to be quite limited for a Chaos incursion, though this would often prove to be scant relief when the targets were key logistical facilities and famine and supply shortages broke out across the affected worlds. Occasionally, Urkrathos himself would anonymously pass intelligence to the Inquisition when his rivals grew too powerful or he caught wind of particularly heinous Chaos rituals. This was not all humanitarian, of course; inevitably the offending Chaos Lord would be assassinated or the scheming cult destroyed, and Urkrathos would sweep in and absorb the surviving men and remaining resources.

As the millennia passed, so did Urkrathos’ dark legend grow. Imperial, Chaos, Ork, Necron, Dark Eldar, it did not matter; when their fleets opposed him, he smashed them all without hesitation or mercy. For his victories in the Black Crusades, Lady Malys named Urkrathos the Fleetmaster of Chaos, a title that he neither requested nor acknowledged. 

In the infamous Battle of the Nyang Moon, Urkrathos stalemated and drove back the main fleet of the renowned Warmaster Solon, protégé and successor of Macharius, during the aftermath of the Third Macharian Crusade. Faced with an Imperial force that outnumbered him 10 to 1, Urkrathos utilized the moon, a thick asteroid field, and favorable Warp currents to restrict his enemy’s movements and neutralize the advantage of numbers. Solon found that his tactical acumen was outshined by the Chaos Lord’s planning and brilliance, and the Imperial fleet’s advance was blunted and turned back. However, Solon was ever the strategic thinker and well aware of his advantage in numbers, so as Urkrathos’ fleet was mired in battle a second Imperial fleet bypassed them and landed invasions on several key Chaos worlds.

Urkrathos finally met his end during the 10th Black Crusade, ironically at the end of a battle as his fleet hunted down the fleeing survivors of an Imperial battle group. In the confusion and discord of battle, the Testudo had not detected a stealthed Inquisition corvette as it pulled up into the mighty battleship’s shadow, and when Urkrathos ordered power diverted from the shields to engines and weapons for additional power to shoot down the stragglers, there was a sudden flash of light on the bridge. 

Several squads of elite Grey Knight paladins materialized with a sharp crack and gust of ozone, along with a contingent of White Scars First Company veterans led by the Master of the Hunt, Kantak Khan. In the brief, frenzied melee that followed, Urkrathos was cornered and finally slain when Kantak Khan thrust the hissing blade of his power sword Moonfang through the breastplate and twin hearts of his long fallen brother. Sensing the life force ebbing from the Chaos Lord’s body and that their mission was complete, the Grey Knights immediately teleported the Imperial forces back aboard the Inquisition ship, much to the dismay and outrage of the White Scars who had come to take Urkrathos’ head. Aboard the Testudo, Urkrathos’ final, gasped words to his remaining officers were to conceal his death from the men and to never give up their cause. With that, one of the greatest threats to the Imperium had fallen.

The Chosen officers obeyed loyally, and for a time the Testudo operated as if nothing had happened, leading even the Inquisition to wonder if their mission had unexpectedly failed. It was not until the Testudo was boarded a second time and destroyed by a combined task force of Space Marines from five chapters did the Imperium finally confirm Urkrathos’ death, for the cunning Chaos Lord never would have fallen into such a trap. Captains around the Imperium breathed a sigh of relief, and for several millennia the Imperium thought one of its greatest foes had been vanquished.

Yet in recent days, troubling whispers have been reported by the Inquisition’s spies and extracted from captured cultists. They say a new figure has been spotted in Lady Malys’ court, a winged daemon with charred black skin calling itself Urkrathos. Some say it is indeed the Fleetmaster of Chaos himself come again, returning as a Daemon Prince to command the ships of Chaos once more and to complete his sworn task to destroy the Imperium. Others, including several captured members of the Chosen, bitterly deny this, for they say the true Urkrathos would never have accepted daemonhood and slavery to the Ruinous Powers. As ever the truth is uncertain, but if the daemon is indeed Urkrathos then woe to captains of the Imperium who must face the beast, for once again they will know the cold certainty of defeat, and the crushing, unfettered power of Chaos.
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