Night Lords

Night Lords
Battle Cry	"We have come for you!" or "Ave Dominus Nox!"
Number	VIII
Original Homeworld	Nostramo
Current Homeworld	Unknown
Primarch	Konrad Curze
Champion	Krieg Acerbus (Daemon Prince)
Strength	Unknown
Specialty	Stealth, guerrilla warfare, and terror tactics
Allegiance	Depends on the warband (at least with regards to the Ruinous Powers. Otherwise, it's mostly to themselves).
Colours	Midnight Blue, with Brass trim. *Apply blood liberally, or as needed.*

The Night Lords Space Marine Legion consists of some of the more batshit-crazy emos, kind of like the Chaos version of the Raven Guard. They get off to catching their enemies, skinning them alive and crucifying them, all the while recording it for later. Battle cries include "We have come for you!" or "Ave Dominus Nox".

History

Masters of Ambush

Their Primarch called himself the Night Haunter (his IRL name was Konrad Curze). When Chaos abducted the infant Primarchs, they were scattered across the galaxy. Poor lil Konrad ended up on Nostramo, a world of perpetual darkness. And unlike the other Primarchs who were found by the inhabitants of that planet and taken care of, Konrad was left all alone to fend for himself, in a world where it's a dark, lawless land. So then when he grew up, he became like the Batman of the 31st millennium, where he punishes the corrupt and the evil. The only difference from Batman is that he does it in the most gruesome manner possible, such as by hanging the guilty person's disemboweled corpse for all to see or beating the person to literally an unrecognizable pulp, to the point the sewers were clogged with bodies. Strangely enough, this was actually considered an improvement. So yeah, he became a popular icon that the people of Nostramo basically fixed their shitty society as they fear that the "Night Haunter" will screw their asses to unimaginable levels, thus making him Vlad the Impaler IN SPACE!!! It says something about his world that, even as Vlad the Impaler, he was still quite clearly the good guy (until he went nuts).

They also have an unhealthy addiction to flying, lightning and Batman. Known to try to be some badass terrorist shit by scaring the hell out of civilians. They are also known for being giant fucking nutheads who are stupidly insane. Wherever the Night Lords strike, they leave corpses and signs of their assault on display and generally make it look like all the Segmentum's worst rock bands stayed in the area at the exact same time.

Despite being traitors they claim to be not terribly fond of chaos and make little to no usage of daemons at all, so they're more of a renegade legion than a heretical one. Which makes them either very smart since they're less likely to go pants-on-head-retarded when accidentally possessed or extremely stupid since it's their only great advantage (other than experience from age, which they don't get since they don't hang out in the eye of terror so they'll still age normally irrelevant, Space Marines are functionally immortal anyway, so age doesn't matter as long as they don't get killed) against the Imperium's slightly advancing technology. Notable exceptions include Krieg Acerbus, a Daemon Prince currently leading the largest warband of Night Lords, who also happen to be hardcore, full-on batshit chaos worshipers. There's also first claw's Uzas, who's all about blood for the Blood God. In fact, earlier incarnations of the background listed them as a Khornate Legion, and Khorne does smile upon those who murder their allies, which they do all the damn time. However, because they're in denial about it, they neither get the goodies of the Chaos gods, nor the technology of the Imperium. So whenever loyalists show up with assault cannons, stormbolters, cyclone missile launchers, land speeders, drop-pods, and hunter killer missiles they cry themselves to sleep. Or take it out by kicking the shit out of the local chapter of faggots. Accounts vary.

One day after looking at a planet for a bit, they decided to go fuck it up. They fucked up the communication centers, which sent out a tiny call of help order for pizza tiny call for help. Stop it. They proceeded to send out copies of their earlier recorded cruxi-skinnin-fictions to everyone on the planet. They dropped bombs on the planets that made it constant night on the entire planet. It was so scary that 14% of the population died outright, a third killed themselves, and the rest were hunted down by the Night Lords. When the distress call finally got a response pizza finally arrived, the Night Lords were gone and it was still dark on the planet. Oh yeah, and not a single building had been damaged in the whole affair, which would not be the deal if those other guys were there.

Tactics

Night Lords warbands, for the most part, are somewhat sensible in that they don't like dying. So they generally don't titrush the nearest Titan for lulz unless said Titan is REALLY fucking their mojo up. When they do engage in direct combat, they generally prefer complete overwhelming force to ensure minimal losses, maximum carnage, and enough skulls to stick on their pauldrons. So they're pretty much chaos Reasonable marines.

ALTERNATIVELY:

They make use of their sneakiness and fuck shit up that way. Striking behind enemy lines, attacking from ambush, destroying generators, commander centers, etc. Knowing this, once again makes them either very sensible or very cowardly. In one-on-one combat a Night Lord will do his best to make sure he has the upper hand, and will do his best to cheat or break every rule possible and use every dirt trick in the book to avoid a full 'on equal footing' battle (sounds like Dark Eldar to me!). Basically what I'm trying to say is, they make good card players.

They like unconventional shock-and-awe tactics. One of them, Talos, disabled a ship's bridge by doing a fifteen-second-long vox-amplified scream, which, thanks to his three lungs and super-humanly strong muscles, blew out every unprotected eardrum in the room and put many of the bridge staff in a coma.

If they can't use fear, they fall back on trying to break morale--they like blowing up your gear and infrastructure and ganking your commanders to sow chaos.

BUT:

This isn't to say that their tactica was unstoppable. Terror-tactics work well on people who feel terror, meaning that their normal operations tend not to work as well on Space Marines (as opposed to Guard). Which is to say nothing of how they work when dealing with a race that literally eats fear and a race that cannot perceive it themselves. Against these forces, the Night Lords still had their hit-and-run and stealth tactics to fall back upon, but these were not always enough.

Especially noteworthy is that the last time they really had to fight straight-up was right after the Heresy, when the Ultramarines came looking for them on their fortress planet Tsagualsa . The Night Lords got slaughtered. Now, to be fair, this was a while after the Heresy, they hadn't been recruiting enough to replace their losses, and they decided to actually bunker down (which isn't really part of the hit-and-run playbook). Not to mention the fact that many warbands were not present, the Legion having started to splinter after the deathS of their Primarch and Sevatar. Also, the character recounting this, when challenged by another about "losing to the Ultramarines", points out that it wasn't JUST the Ultramarines chapter, but every successor chapter as well. He comments on Howling Griffons working side-by-side by Novamarines, while being supported by Genesis Chapter flanking maneuvers. He comments on how every single chapter involved was running by the same playbook (The Codex Astartes), in perfect unison, and pretty much without any dissension or rebellion (unlike the Night Lords), with the result that the Night Lords were pinned, routed, outflanked, bombarded, assaulted (or counter-assaulted), sieged and otherwise fucked over in a completely textbook fashion. The Night Lords lost so badly that they fragmented, and were never a united force ever again (although there were signs of a semi-reunification in the period leading up to the 13th Black Crusade). And before you cry "Wardian BULLSHIT", this was in the Night Lords own book, written by Aaron Dembski-Bowden (actually it was Games-Workshop's fluff that limited the Night Lords.)

Bear in mind that upon returning to this fortress planet, the Night Lords proceed to get revenge on the Ultramarine Genesis Chapter, defeating them with the time honored strategy of blowing up the fucking moon. Why fight fair when you have nukes?

Fun Facts

• It is believed they're linked to Scary Marines
• They are also the origins of the Raptor Units, the Chaos version of the Loyalist assault marines. Raptors are fail since Gav Thorpe decided that living longer than everyone else in the Eye of Terror meant that the only difference from loyalists is that renegade/heretics are not fearless The mere fact that you know that upon your death, your soul will be cockmongled by legions of daemons tend to make a few people less than willing to die, unlike the Imperium who thinks they'll just be chilling with the Emprah upon death.)
• They are one of the few Astartes legions who actually think ambushing is a good idea, rather than standing in front of a gunline and charging it.
• NANANANANANANANANANANANANA BATMAN!
• They stick bats in their helmets to help them fly.
• Aaron Dembski-Bowden (AKA the newest edition to the Bald Brotherhood of Awesome 40K Writers) has made them fucking GREAT. 10th Company GETS SHIT DONE!
• When the Word Bearers, Iron Warriors, the Alpha Legion, or Black Legion (the only four legions that really give two shits about Chaos Undivided, and even then the Iron Warriors aren't the biggest fans of it and the Alpha Legion are closet loyalists) try to recruit them for their next great crusade for Chaos, the Night Lords tell them to piss off and send the messengers back in a box(or several).
• They're probably lucky that those other legions are typically too busy to deal with probably the least threatening of the Chaos Space Marine Legions. They don't get Daemons and warp dickery, they don't get immunity to age due to hanging in "physics? lolwut?" land, and they get none of the new stuff that the loyalists have developed. Sort of. The Aaron Dembski-Bowden Night Lords book mentions Talos remembering the defeat at Terra as being only a few decades from his perspective due to chilling in the warp. He does mention his bestie is getting crows feet though from time outside of the warp.
• That's not to say that the Night Lords aren't pants shittingly terrifying. They know what they're good at, hit and run terrorist attacks, and they stick to it. They've had enough common sense to survive for so long despite having so many disadvantages compared to the other eight legions, so they're probably the most sensible bunch. Of course this is relative to chaos so by sensible we mean "will hang you with your small intestine to cause fear in the enemy" rather than "completely ignore the enemy army to attack a strategically worthless town to make sacrifices for the dark gods." It helps that their attacks are so low-key (except for the bombing a planet once and causing a MASSIVE psychic scream by torturing a bunch of astropaths and sending dozens of planets into psy-communicating-blank) that the Night Lords are not actively hunted by the Imperium. Otherwise they'd likely be wiped out in short order (as mentioned above with the Ultramarines kicking their ass).(DOWN WITH THE BLUE-TRDZ!(Ehem)I mean smurfs...)
• Does this sound familiar to you? --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2wzpfPFBlw

Gallery

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  'Sup, Darkclaw?

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  Masters of Stealth

The Traitor Legions and Warbands of Chaos
Chaos Legions:	Alpha Legion - Black Legion - Death Guard Emperor's Children - Iron Warriors - Night Lords Thousand Sons - Word Bearers - World Eaters
Legion Offshoots:	Apostles of Contagion - Bloodborn - Broken Aquila Foresworn - Mouldering Claw - Plague Fleet - Prodigal Sons The Consortium - Warband of Subsector Aurelia
Fallen Chapters (Including Judged):	Adharon's Reavers - Blood Gorgons - Company of Misery Corpus Brethren - Crimson Slaughter - Deathmongers Death Shadows - Invocators - Lords of Decay Oracles of Change - Red Corsairs - Shriven The Brazen Beasts - The Flawless Host - The Scourged Skyrar's Dark Wolves - Steel Cobras - Voidrippers
Unknown/ Other:	Apostles of Minthras - Claws of Lorek - Disciples of Destruction Dragon Warriors - Extinction Angels - Hakanor's Reavers - Punishers The Cleaved - The Purge - The Pyre - Sons of Malice - Sons of Vengeance The Reborn - Violators - Warp Ghosts - Bleak Brotherhood