Negators

Negators
A pointed Icovellavna
Battle Cry	"Remember me!"
Number	XIV
Successor Chapters	Unknown
Primarch	Aodhán Kael
Homeworld	Nusku
Specialty	Anti-armour operations, rapid redeployment, monster slaying
Allegiance	Traitors
Colours	Mist grey major, woad blue trim

This page is a work in progress, part of the Imperium Asunder project, a fan remake of the warhammer 40 000 history.

This life is but mist, and we walk in the mists only a short while.

- a common Negators saying.

Primarch

Discovery

Aodhán Kael, Primarch of the Negators, was raised on the fiery world of Nusku. An arid, windswept planet, Nusku's surface was primarily made up of sweeping plains, along which scores of ragged canyons ran in twisting lines. The radioactive storms that plagued the surface had transformed a portion of the population into an abhuman species of disfigured giants who had enslaved the remaining humans, driving them into the shadowed ravines that scarred the landscape, forcing them to dig tirelessly for precious stones and scraps of old technology. It was among these downtrodden clans that Aodhán grew to adulthood. His stunning beauty and natural charm quickly raised him into a position of leadership, and, as though driven by a hatred bred into his very bones, he led a fierce rebellion against Nusku's ruling caste. By the time Aodhán was discovered by Imperial forces, Nusku's plains were littered with the bones of dead giants. The Emperor found his son seated upon a throne of bulbous, oversized skulls, adorned in the finery of a warrior-king and basking in the adoration of his people.

The Early Crusade

As a Primarch, Aodhán was boisterous, friendly, and wild, leading his armies from the fore and promising future glory to worlds that complied with the Emperor's will. He was initially glad to march across the heavens as the Emperor's champion, the notion that he was a child of the galaxy's rightful ruler fanning is enormous ego, and his statuesque appearance made him a popular figure with the Imperial populace. He had a friendly rapport with many of his brothers, particularly those more inclined to combat, though the more scholarly among them often thought him a boorish thug of a man, more suited to a life of directionless adventure than leadership. Aodhán, quite ironically, was among the tallest of the Primarchs, standing a full head over some of his brothers. First into battle and last to retreat, he cut a heroic figure, his legendary beauty matched only by his uncanny - some might say freakish - strength. Though never quite possessing the grace of Kashaln or the martial discipline of Staffel, Aodhán commanded prodigious physical might, even by the standards of other Primarchs.

Widowmaker

Boisterous and reckless, he often forged ahead in the Crusade. It was in this way that he came upon the weapon he wields today. Upon inducting a feudal world in the galactic east into compliance, Aodhán led his Legion to deal with the 'monstrosities' that plagued the planet - creatures hailing from a nearby planetoid, seemingly the remains of a once thriving world, now charred down to its very core. The beings he and his men encountered there were like nothing they had ever known. They seemed barely real, shifting and changing with every step, spewing garish torrents of prismatic fire and slipping across the airless surface of the rock like shadows. It was only through immense fortitude and a stroke of luck that the creatures were banished from that place. As the horde thinned and the Negators pushed them to the bowl of a massive crater, the greatest among them revealed itself - a creature of blinding, scintillating feathers and roiling eyes, space flexing and stretching at its command. Though worn down by weeks of sustained battle, Aodhán faced the beast in single combat. It lashed at him with burst of fire and lightning, its touch twisting his armour into gnarled shapes. When it seemed that the Primarch would fall, his weapon cast from his hand, he reached out and found the hilt of an unfamiliar blade.

Driven deep into the ancient rock, the sword was slender in design, shimmering as though with a cold fire, and so tall that even in the hands of a Primarch it seemed overly large. Drawing it forth, Aodhán felt a rage like none other overcome him, and he struck his foe down with a single blow, its breast cleaved open by some irresistible force.

From then on, the Primarch claimed the blade as his own, dubbing it Widowmaker. It has remained at his side ever since.

The King in Red

In self-imposed exile from the Imperium's remnants, Aodhán's strength has only grown. Though he managed to reject Daemon Princehood, the Warp left its barbs in him, and he has slowly become something not-quite-mortal. His skin has become like burnished bronze, his eyes blazing and his rage manifesting around him as a blistering heat. He no longer wears his armour, having little need, and leaves footsteps of flame in his wake.

Aodhán was always an adventurer before a leader, and, without the harness of the Imperium holding him down, this can be quite clearly seen in the erratic workings of the modern Negators. He makes little attempt to keep his Legion loyal - they stay with him as, though turned craven and cruel, they feel themselves bonded as brothers - and routinely vanishes from the estate carved out in Commorragh, often without warning. Once every hundred or so years, he will feast for fifty days, as though building his strength, before embarking upon one such endeavor. He inevitably returns battered, beaten, and awash with the smell of rot, but wearing a winning smile, as though each time he comes a step closer to achieving some great feat.

Aodhán rarely leads his Legion to war, letting them persecute their own raids upon realspace. When not adventuring or embarking upon a rare campaign with the full muster of his Legion, he amuses himself with the delights of the Dark City. His spirits, however, are turbulent, and though he is at many times possessed of a rapacious love for life and its joys, he often takes to brooding, either out of boredom or something darker.

Deep within, Aodhán feels a spark of guilt for the current shape of the galaxy and his hand in it, and foresees a vision of a universe picked clean of life, where there are no great heroes or valiant deeds to do, and no bards to tell his tale or sing his songs, only the laughter of craven gods and the wailing of their tortured supplicants. He drowns these fears in pleasures of the flesh, fighting and feasting and savouring hundreds of concubines, but they remain always, a nagging shard of encroaching doom at the back of his mind.

Gene-seed

For much of the Great Crusade, the Negators' gene-seed remained relatively pure. Reflecting their Primarch's prodigious height, there is a trend towards a taller average height and leaner build among the Negators. Other than this, Aodhán's gene-seed was mostly unremarkable until his Legion's entry into the Heresy.

Warp-Spasm

With time, a specific flaw has appeared in the Negators' gene-seed. A select few of their number, when in the height of rage or excitement, can experience a burst of uncontrollable, intense mutation. The agony of the change sends them into a ferocious berserker state known as the warp-spasm. When the spasm subsides, most outward mutations gradually normalize, but each time a Legionnaire enters the rage they retain some sign of it - jagged fangs, a distended jaw, scythelike talons, etc. Over time, some Negators can become more akin to the monsters they hunt than their fellow brothers.

Culture

Virtue and Valour

The concept of heroic virtue is central to the Negators' Legion culture. The Negator ethos accepts that life - even the prolonged life of an Astartes - is transient, and immortality is found in song and saga. The pursuit of the heroic ideal, of a worthy legend, is the driving force behind much of what the Negators do, and much of what they have inflicted upon the galaxy. Heroism as it is understood is not necessarily anything to do with kindness or caring. It is personal magnificence. In the eyes of the Negators, there are several aspects of virtue. Courage, with which to stand fast and brave perilous odds. Loyalty, to Brother and Legion. Valour, via the performance of daring feats and the slaying of great foes. Honour, by which a man's integrity is measured. Though individual Legionnaires may differ in the specifics of their ideology, or in what small things they find value in, these are the foremost pillars that almost all Negators measure themselves against.

Negators seek to do great things, regardless of morality or cause. This obsession with legacy and legend has also lead to another of the Legion's peculiarities - its fondness for chronicle and saga. If the Negators could be said to have an affinity for any scholarly pursuit, it would without a doubt be history. The Legion continues to train and equip thousands of remembrancers from among its slaves, and generally bestows on them a life of comparative luxury. Though never known as a Legion of great wisdom or intellectual bent, there are perhaps few historical collections to equal those found in the catacombs beneath Aodhán's Commorragh estate.

Glory or Coin

When the first Black Crusade was called, Aodhán's response to the Warmaster's summons became legendary:

"Make it worth my while."

Self-love is the order of the day with the Negators. The Legion has a rich, if volatile, culture, but little driving ideology. They do not fight for conquest, and, on the whole, have no lust for empire. They do not fight for an ideal. They do not fight for the Ruinous Powers. The Negators fight because it is glorious to do so, or because they have something gain from it. The spoils of war are of significant cultural importance to the Legion - trophies, captives, and all manner of ill-gotten gains are seen as additions to a Legionnaire's personal legend, nourishing their repute and increasing their standing in the eyes of their Brothers. It is not surprising, then, that many warbands and companies engage in mercenary activity. Many a Crusader State has menaced a minor power, only to find their forces met by a warband of eager Negators, ready and willing to spread carnage and death for the sake of renown. There is no universal currency, but the Negators are willing to take - by force, if necessary (and sometimes when not necessary) - all manner of payment in return for the chance to put their skills to use. Slaves, exotic weapons, ancient technologies and artifacts... a warband of Negators quickly accrues a vast storehouse of trophies from across the galaxy, whether plundered or gifted.

Psykers & Sorcery

Their ranks mostly pulled from civilizations in the heroic era of iron and early steel age civilizations, the Negators have a particularly unfavourable view of psykers and sorcery. Some Negators even go as far as inscribing fell runes into their armour, disrupting the attempts of psykers to concentrate and unweaving sorcery in their presence, at the cost of the runes gradually worsening the Legionnaire's sanity and making him more prone to succumbing to warp-spasm. This can sometimes result in twisted, ferocious mutants mingled with Warp-warded metal, often deployed ahead of Negator lines as specialized killers.

Though they find sorcery distasteful, the Negators see its uses, and find a place in their halls for slaves with clairvoyant abilities. These Morrígna, as they are called, are generally women, as the specific complaint Negators have of sorcery is that it is unmanly. Aodhán himself keeps a pair of personal Morrígna in the form of Sgathaich and Aoifea, a pair of Eldar Farseers who once managed to deceive and humiliate the Primarch. Negators that manifest psyker powers generally ward their own armour and, if discovered, will have to constantly prove themselves, all the while weathering insults on subjects ranging from battle prowess to sexual potency.

A common Negators' joke: "How do you tell a Sky Serpent and a Warp Raider apart? The Sky Serpent is the one on top!"

Dreadnoughts

The Negators abhor dreadnoughts, but use them nonetheless. Rather than interring their dead within them, they trap captured enemies within their shells, employing the haemonculi of Commorragh to twist their bodies and minds into a state of unholy, utterly insane fusion with the metal of the construct. These dreadnoughts take the role of 'giants' in their traditional games, serving as punching bags of a sort for Astartes of the Legion to whet their appetites for combat against. In battle, they are deployed amidst enemy forces in drop pods, set loose to rampage through the unfortunate ranks of their victims, driven to a frenzy by decades of sustained agony and brutal battle.

Organization

Structure

The Legion

The precise structure of the Negators Legion is tenuous and fluid at the best of times. In years past, prior to the Heresy, the Legion was divided into warbands of a thousand Marines, each of which in turn was composed of ten companies, each headed by a captain. The specifics of force organization were often disregarded by the Primarch, and each Warlord was free to compose his forces as he saw fit, so long as their vision remained somewhat within the realm of reason. In theory, the same structure still exists, but time and disinterest on Aodhán's part have seen the Legion's ranks gradually spin out of control. The Negators do not limit themselves in recruiting, Aodhán having handed the secrets of his gene-seed over to a number of Commorragh's haemonculi cults, not particularly caring about the potential consequences of such a bargain. With their assistance, the Legion has no trouble replenishing its ranks (though, there has been a marked increase in Legionnaires falling to warp-spasm, a fact the Primarch is either unaware of or cares little of). The number of Legionnaires or companies within a warband can vary wildly, as can the number of warbands, and it may very well be that even Aodhán himself does not know how many Negators currently exist. The same can be said of force composition - the Primarch is perfectly willing to let his sons do as they will. If their lack of planning or overspecialization spells their doom, then hopefully they at least die with honour and flair, and carve a name for themselves in history.

The Davidian Circle

The inner council of the Negators and the occupants of Aodhán's court, these ancient Legionnaires are among the most accomplished and famed warriors to have traversed the stars. Officially, only Warlords recognized by the Primarch for their accomplishments and can claim to be Knights of the Circle and preside over a warband, but the number of Negators considered to be Davidians is constantly in flux, subject to hearsay and embellishment, the practice of boasting honed to fine art by the Marines of the Negators. Those unrecognized by Aodhán, however, are bereft of the Circle's greatest boon. Aodhán knights those he acknowledges personally, cutting his Warp-touched flesh and letting the supplicant drink of his fiery blood. The ensuing transformation burns away a touch of the Davidian's mortality, turning their hearts to furnaces of bright flame and filling their veins with unnatural heat. Their skin dims to a burnished bronze, their hands becoming mottled with the rust-red of old bloodstains, and their strength and vitality skyrocket. Few warriors have been granted such an honour, and fewer still can be said to have truly plumbed the furthest depths of the power invested in them.

The Court of Shadows

Not an official organization by any means, the Court of Shadows nonetheless occupies a singular position of reverence and fear, both within the Legion and in the faiths of its slaves and serfs. Even prior to the Heresy, Aodhán was an insatiable womanizer. It should come to the surprise of absolutely no-one that, without the watchful eye of the Emperor at his back and after roughly ten thousand years of raiding, pillaging, and whoring, the Primarch has fathered hundreds of thousands of children. Though generally human at birth, these creatures rarely remain that way. Aodhán has not been remotely mortal for many centuries, and his Warp-touched flesh does not mingle easily with the mundane matter of purely physical beings. The Primarch's sons and daughters are quickly overcome with rampant mutations, shriveling away from the material world as they become more shadow than flesh. Not beings of the Warp, nor beings of the material, they exist somewhere in-between, creatures of twisting shadow and desiccating flame. Monsters in every sense of the word, they are beings of rapacious, insatiable hunger, constantly seeking the warmth of realspace and the flesh of those that dwell there, yet only able to flicker to and fro between existence and non-existence, and only in places where the skeins of reality are thin.

Still, the Shadow Princes' terrible hunger is sometimes sated. The blood-witches of the Morrígna channel these beings through themselves in their sorcery, scathing their masters' enemies with invisible fangs and claws, and have enshrined them as minor deities in their ramshackle faith. In the rare instances where the Morrígna are seen accompanying the Negators' barbarian auxiliaries, they use profane blood-ritual to let the Shadow Princes infest the flesh of their flock, transforming them into rampaging Chaos Spawn. In particularly favourable conditions, a full circle of blood-witches might even bring one of Aodhán's children fully into the material realm, where it can eat its fill of those unfortunates in its path.

Auxiliaries & Allies

When intent on persecuting a sustained campaign, the Negators rarely arrive on the field of battle alone. The Legion draws upon a vast reserve of auxiliaries, culled from low-civilization worlds, slave raids, and gladiatorial recruitment within Commorragh. Serving as a secondary function as pools from which to draw potential Legionnaires or Morrígna, many Warbands' slave stocks have formed societies and cultures of their own, often lead in religious reverence of the Negators by a select number of Morrígna. Able-bodied men are deployed as Potentiate Auxiliaries across the galaxy, armed with a hodgepodge of looted or traded weapons, and used to hold ground, serve as diversionary forces, and battle with boring or weak foes - tasks with little honour or fame associated with them. Women selected for their psyker talents as Morrígna serve a selection of roles based on their specific, and are inducted into the tradition of grisly blood sorcery that has slowly accumulated among the Negators' pet witches. Most of all, the abilities of foresight and clairvoyance are valued, but sorcery geared toward the binding of daemons or brewing of arcane mixtures (for increased physical prowess, stronger vitality, greater sexual potency, etc) have a place among the crafts of the Morrígna.

Aside from subservient auxiliaries, the Negators are sometimes spied working alongside other forces. The Legion's particularly close relationship with a handful of wytch cults, along with its neighboring kabals, can occasionally mean that the Legion takes to the field alongside a raiding party of Commorrite Eldar. In a few cases, Negators have even been reported to be working under their command - Aodhán sometimes lends his Legionnaires out to favoured wytches, though generally not for long.

In addition to chasing valour and renown as mercenaries themselves, the Negators have on occasion been known to put their coffers to use by employing the services of numerous xenos mercenaries, from the predatory Kroot to the ruthless Rak'Gol.

Tactics

Specialized in bringing down large targets, Negators are schooled rigorously in the means and method to destroying all manner of beasts and war machines. They field large numbers of armour piercing weaponry, utilizing teams of crack shot autocannon specialists, and coat their armaments with all manner of poisons and corrosive gels. Primarily raiders, the Legion strikes hard and strikes fast, their tactics centered around the annihilation of priority targets. They are quick to redeploy once the greatest of foes have been leveled and their glory has been had, utilizing specialized heavy weapon teams known as Venators, equipped with modified, jump-jet assisted power armour. Preferring decisive blows to the grind of sustained combat, the Negators tend to forego battles of attrition, and are often equipped with an array of unstable, single-use weapons that reflect this mentality. Combat is an all-or-nothing pursuit to the Negators - they either destroy their foe with extreme prejudice (and, more often than than not, a great deal of flair), or they themselves are destroyed.

Specialized Troops

Venator Teams

Exemplifying the Negators' preference for overwhelming killing power, Venator squads take the place occupied by Devastators in a more traditional Legion structure. Foregoing plasma and bolter technology, Venator teams utilize accurate, armour-piercing weaponry - autocannons (often equipped with specialized ammunition), lascannons, rocket launchers, etc. Renowned for their accuracy and encyclopedic knowledge of anti-armour tactica, many Venator teams are also equipped with modified, jump-jet assisted power armour, allowing them to rapidly move from one priority target to the next. Some Venators have taken this pursuit a step further, commissioning the haemonculi cults of Commorragh to fashion leathery wings or biological thrusters into their very biology.

Giantslayers

Veteran Negators, seeking to prove their worth against the greatest foes, sometimes embark upon a ritualized quest, delving into the darkest of daemon worlds in order to slay a Warp fiend of repute. They bind these defeated daemons to their weapons. Groups of Giantslayers, galvanized by daemonic energies and tempered by centuries of combat, cut a bloody swathe through the ranks of their foes, seeking out yet greater monsters to challenge and foes to break. Foregoing the use of ranged weaponry, they seek solely to test their mettle against the most terrible of daemons, warmachines and monsters, adding their foes' legends to their own.

Bane Knights

Typically disinterested in technical pursuits, it is no surprise to anyone that much of the Negators' equipment has fallen into a dire state of disrepair over the ages. Though the Legion maintains a vast horde of slaves to which the performance of mundane tasks is relegated, over time their lack of technical know-how and naturally adventurous spirit has resulted in inventive ways around this problem. One such method eventually lead to the Bane Knight tradition. Negators in search of new and higher thrills will sometimes delve into the murky depths of Commorragh, in hopes of binding one of the shadowy daemons that stalk those ancient passages. These nightmares, as they are called, are broken and trained as daemonic steeds. Carrying their riders across the battlefield with unnatural swiftness, they swathe the air around them in shadow, obfuscating their true position. Bane Knights generally wield Storm Shields and Flamespears, discarding these single-use weapons after a crushing charge to draw their primary arms.

Potentiate Auxiliaries

Have you ever found that combat against puny shits like Tau or Guardsmen gets totally boring after a while? Do you often find yourself hacking through swarms of disposable scum, bereft of glory or excitement? Do you find your thoughts drifting toward greater exploits? You too can solve this problem by chucking hordes disposable primitives at it. Plucked from savage worlds or Commorrite gladiatorial rings, these plucky mortals need minimal trailing and equipment, making up for with pure spunk and desperation. If any of them live long enough, they might even make good Legionnaires in future!

Equipment

One Shot, One Kill

Negators are partial to unstable, often one-use weapons that tear through armour like wet tissue and cause decisive damage in a single stroke. Their bolters are often customized with an cylindrical barrel known as a firedrake attached to the underside, carrying a one-shot melta charge. Unstable and wildly inaccurate at all but the closest ranges, these attachments are often fired at point blank against larger, armoured foes. In many instances, this causes severe damage to the bolter itself, sometimes even rendering it unusable. The Legion's characteristic Flamespears are a similar concept - polearm weapons designed to deliver a burst of melta waves upon impact - and often utilized by assault squads, alongside Eviscerator chainswords and other such weapons. Many Negators Terminators eschew handheld ranged weapons (though, shoulder-mounted autocannons remain popular), striding into battle with a pair of modified power fists. Constantly trailing tongues of crackling blue flame, these unstable modifications can be used to trigger a burst of melta emissions at will, often used to roast the innards (or crew, in the case of war machines) of a Negators' monstrous target.

Notable Individuals

Davidian Knights

• Warlord Aglovale Tor: Not a Negator through the geneseed of Aodhán, Aglovale's chapter of origin is lost to the mists of time, and few are willing to risk bringing shame upon their Brothers by revealing his genefather. In the distant past, Aglovale defied his Chapter Master over some act of dishonour, and was cast out of his chapter. Without direction, he turned to the Paladins of Kor, becoming a Knight Errant of their order. How he came to be disillusioned with the Imperial remnants remains a mystery, but something prompted him into a bloody betrayal of the Errant vows during the Ninth Crusade. Now truly alone, Aglovale traveled the stars as a blackshield, offering mercenary services to all those who would accept him. Eventually, his travels lead him to service under the Negators, and his skills granted him a place in their ranks. His flagrant disregard for injury and relentless nature quickly propelled him to eminence, and he was personally knighted by the Legion's Primarch. Aglovale cuts an intimating figure, clad from head to toe in unadorned, black armour, the glow of his Warp-frenzied eyes burning behind his visor. His Warband is characterized by its tenacity and stoicism, less prone to re-positioning than most Negators forces. His fleet is often reported to be reaving the occluded passage where Protectorate and Storm Kingdom borders press closest against one another, scourging worlds on either side of the divide, and he has a special interest in testing the mettle of other Errants.

• Warlord Neirin of Uhulis: Born on the fertile world of Krieg, Neirin rose to his current position from the very underbelly of the Negators' hierarchy. He, along with many of his fellow colonists, were taken from Krieg in a slave raid. Neirin's youth was a desperate struggle for survival - first in the pits of Commorragh, then on the battlefield as a Potentiate. He survived these trials and was inducted into the Legion. Almost a millennia later, there is little left of the boy from Krieg. Neirin is a shrewd, possessive creature, with a penchant for 'hammer and anvil' tactics, utilizing a great number of Assault Marines paired with armoured battalions and Terminators. He is uncharacteristic of most Negators in that his warband does not roam widely. Instead, he has secured his home sector of Uhulis under an iron grip, and defends it viciously against outsiders.

• Warlord Guiscard Daire: A recent addition to the Circle (by Davidian standards), Guiscard is a mere nine centuries in age. A life defined by adversity, enterprise, and no small amount of luck, Guiscard was born among the human population of Dún Scáith, to a serf community descended from captured pilgrims. He was steeped in the bloody culture of the Negators Legion from birth, and was quick-witted and fortunate enough to be picked out as a squire. Eventually put through the trials of Commorragh's gladiator pits, Guiscard was initiated fully into the Legion early in his life. His time among the trophies and war-memorials of his former masters, now Brothers, has remained with him, and Guiscard is to this day a compulsive hoarder. Merry and sly, the Warlord roams the stars in search of plunder - the rarer and more esoteric the better. Inundated with greater personal wealth than any man could spend even given a thousand lifetimes, Guiscard's search is an endless one, doomed to go on into eternity, for the void in the Astartes' soul can never be filled. He is known for employing vast numbers of xenos mercenaries, particularly Tarellians, Sslyth, and Rak'Gol, and even facilitating a means of contraband trade throughout certain stretches of Segmentum Tempestus. Presently, Guiscard's Warband is locked in a conflict with the Nihilakh Necron Dynasty, after the Negators descended upon one of their worlds just off the eastern shoulder of the Jade Empire, their rapacious Warlord seeking to plunder the oversized and much-renowned Warscythe wielded by Overlord Akheten, an accentric noble of the Dynasty who had twisted his metallic form into that of a gigantic, insectoid monster. The battle continues to spread, gradually spilling deeper and deeper into Jade Empire territory.

• Warlord Deucalion Caerrick:

• Warlord Breunor (The Bloody): A giant of a man even by Astartes standards, Breunor's scarred visage has been twisted time and time again by the Warp-Spasm, leaving him with a feral, maddened appearance. The Warlord's earliest memories are dim, but they do not stretch beyond the torture-racks and fighting pits of Commorragh. For as long as Breunor can remember, blood has been his wine and battle his bride, and feverish agony his constant companion. His prowess in the gladiatorial arena attracted the Negators' attention, and he was brought into the Legion. Over a thousand years later, Breunor remains an unsophisticated brute. He both loathes and loves his Primarch, hating his demeanor and natural superiority, but in awe of the immortal's savage strength. Aodhán is by no means unaware of this, and mocks the giant relentlessly for his indecision, often goading him to the edge of rebellion. Some Negators even suspect that Aodhán only gave him the gift of his blood so that he could continue to humiliate and berate Breunor for centuries to come. Renowned for his strength and ferocity, Breunor is decked from head to toe in furs, skulls, and assorted trophies, hurling himself in battle with an ornate Eviscerator in each hand, their psychoactive teeth carved from the actual fangs of one of his finest kills. He is impatient and brutish, with just enough awareness of leadership to understand that it is better delegated to his officers than left to the Warlord himself, and is ever at the fore of his Warband, seeking blood and glory. In recent years his Warband have been reaving worlds near the Tempestus end of the Firewall, not particularly caring whether they belong to the Unyielding Vigil or the Iron Hearts.

• Warlord Mágach Crom: Mágach has not been himself in a great many years. Ancient even in comparison to many of the other Davidian Knights, the Corpse-Eater's (as he is called) addled mind is a chronicle of bloodshed and glory spanning multiple millennia. Even before he drank from his Primarch blood and became more than mortal, Mágach had very little in the way of humanity, having succumbed far too often to Warp-Spasm. In modernity, the Warlord is a rarely-cognizant monster, towering above his fellow Legionnaires upon digitigrade legs and belching garbled orders from a throat more tooth than flesh. Mágach remains (barely) sane only through the constant attentions of his Morrígna court, who interpret his monstrous whims and, in many ways, could be considered the true leaders of his Warband. Beset by a constant, agonizing rage, Mágach rarely returns to Dún Scáith, his fleet engaged in a near perpetual spree of raiding a pillaging across eastern Tempestus.

• Warlord Moriaen Vale: An elder of the Legion, Moriaen remembers the early days of the Negators' descent into depravity, before they settled in Commorragh. Secretive and quiet, the Warlord has made the most of his environment, deeply entrenching himself into the politics of the Dark City, and often serves as Aodhán's ear to the ground. His Warband has close ties to the Wyches of the Cult of the Bloody Hand, who have come to the participate in the mysticism of the Morrígna and their debased religion. Moriaen has heavily involved himself in the Morrígna's faith, shaping it when he deems appropriate, and his Warband utilizes their sorceries to a greater degree than any other. Some even whisper that Moriaen himself has stooped to indulging in the unmanly pursuit of witchcraft, though few to the Warlord's face, for no matter his perversions, Vale remains a potent warrior. Moriaen and his Warband tend to be exceptionally selective in their raiding activities, striking targets of personal interest to the Warlord, or at the guidance of their bloody-handed priestesses. Increasingly, Moriaen has busied himself with Webway esoterica, and many sites in the Materium that attract his Warband's attentions are linked to this burgeoning interest.

• Warlord Bran Konnor:

• Warlord Caollaidhe:

• Warlord Rhydderch Kane: Though he does not speak of it, there is little doubt that Rhydderch is the first of the Davidian Circle, and the first Negator to be blessed with immortality through his Primarch Warp-touched blood. A seasoned tactician and peerless warrior, Rhydderch has seen ages turn across the course of his lifetime, whetting his appetite for glory upon a thousand battlefields on a thousand worlds. In modernity, the Warlord is almost as reticent as his Primarch, and ventures into the material universe only when a worthy foe pulls upon his heartstrings. Possibly his Primarch's oldest living friend, his loyalty to Aodhán is ironclad, and he is perhaps the only Davidian that the Giantslayer speaks to as something approaching an equal. Loyal beyond reason, Rhydderch is most often concerned with the fortifications of Dún Scáith, his Primarch's security the first matter upon his mind at all times, and he often has to be convinced by Aodhán to lead his Warband into the materium, doing so almost grudgingly. For most of the galaxy, this is a blessing. A duelist beyond compare, Rhydderch has seen ages of warfare come and go, and few warriors would wish to face him in single combat. He commands his Warband - primarily composed of storied veterans, though none of them as old as the Warlord himself - with calm, stoic diligence, his intellect honed by millennia of experience in the art of war. Rhydderch's battle plans are balanced, precise, and exacting for both his foes and his own men.

Negators of Infamy

• Bother-Captain Coighann Muir: Otherwise known as Warboss Morr. Recruited from the savage world of Elgos V over eight hundred years ago, Coighann Muir was inducted into the Negators Legion at the height of its depravity. A man of unparalleled fury even before his transformation into an Astartes, Coighann was unruly even by the standards of his Legion, and rose in prominence purely by merit of his startling ferocity. Demented by a perpetual lust for conquest, Coighann and his company have not returned to the Dark City in almost six centuries, tearing their way across Segmentum Tempestus on a non-stop crusade for valorous combat. Presently, Coighann and his company preside over Waaagh! Morr, a tide of greenskins that constantly press into the realms of the Unyielding Vigil. Recent reports indicate that he has taken to painting himself green and adorning his armour with the hides of various ork warbosses.