Editing The Crusaders (section)

==Heresy and the breaking of a Legion==

Gaudin himself had only barely arrived on Terra when news of the Warmaster’s fall reached him. Shocked beyond measure, it took him a few days to process this, and when he had done so his usual jovial nature was gone and he was a mountain of anger, his booming voice rolling with thunder. He desired more than anything else to take his Legion off and strike back against the traitor, but his was the only Legion in the Solar System, and he could not leave Terra unguarded. However Mars had fallen into bitter civil war, the Fabricator General besieged in the great forge of Olympus Mons by renegade Magos loyal to Hektor. Here was a war he could fight, and so leaving two chapters on Terra as guards, he led his Legion to Mars to break the Siege and destroy the Traitor Mechanicum. For over five years the Legion ground itself down on the red deserts of Mars, fighting first the Mechanicum, and later on infiltrated Iron Rangers and Justicars. Eventually the Legion was forced to withdraw with the arrival of Hektor Himself and his mighty Warhost, ready to bring war to Terra itself.

The Legion’s scattering meant that many elements, ranging from Company to Chapter sized were unable to reach Terra and join their Primarch in the defence of Sol. Instead they linked up with whatever loyalists were in the vicinity and as per their ways took the fight to the enemy. A force of no less than eight whole Chapters under the famous '''Severin Hahn''' would come to [[Battle of Zhuko V|Zhuko V]] and take part in the tank battle there, the biggest Tank Battle in all human History. There they would face those of the Crusaders who had turned on the Emperor and sided with the Warmaster at the '''Battle of Bitter Iron'''. Other Crusader forces fought alongside the Thunder Kings, War Scribes and Steel Marshalls as they struggled valiantly against Hektor’s might. Some of these forces were destroyed and vanished from the pages of history, their stories never to be told. Others earned new Battle Honours, though not ones with the same glory as those won in the Great Crusade. For this was a New Crusade, a crusade against Hektor and the nightmares he had sided with.