Destroyer Squad
- Not to be mistaken with the Destroyers Chapter or Necron Destroyer Squad
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An elite formation of the Space Marine Legions of old, Destroyer Squads are the guys tasked with doing the dirtiest work other Space Marines would shun. They were formed to fight in a very destructive way, so what was the problem?
They did so by using forbidden and proscribed technologies, including horrendously radioactive and toxic weaponry originating from Terra's accursed Old Night epoch, along with such nasty gear like the now-lost Phosphex weapons (bombs in this case). This horrific stuff was as devastatingly effective as it used to be in Terra's dark past, but was so morally questionable and considered dishonorable in general from the P.O.V. of even the most pragmatic Legions (and that's a lot), that they fell into general disuse--after all, what's the point in using weapons like these to reduce enemies to radioactive and/or toxic ash when the ground you gain becomes so inimical to human life as to be useless to you or most anyone else for centuries or even millennia, as had been the case during Terra's Old Night?
The origins of this unit came during the Unification Wars of all things, as they were inspired by the various enemies The Emperor faced when he was conquering Terra in preparation for the Great Crusade. Despite the destructive potential, the Legiones Astartes shunned them, seeing in the Marines that were part of Destroyer Squads as the equivalents to That Guy (as in the Marines themselves were morally dubious for even willingly joining those formations). Nevertheless, Destroyers were seen as a necessary evil by Imperial commanders for being so damn efficient against xenos (who had no chance of joining the Imperium at large) or dug-in humans who would not submit and held nothing of strategic value but still needed to be made an example of, though most of the Legions either shunned them, as mentioned previously, or simply didn't have them at all. Fittingly, the only real command personnel who would regularly deploy alongside units of generic Destroyers would be Moritats.
Due to using a loadout that would make Papa Nurgle happy, the Legionnaires who were part of the Destroyer corps were heavily affected by their own weapons. Marines would have as side-effects abnormally pale skin, said skin rotting away due to cellular degeneration, tainted veins and blood bruises on the flesh, yellow eyes, and finally various aggressive forms of cancer that were so bad they required cybernetic replacements. The fact that being assigned to a Legion's Destroyer Corps virtually guaranteed a particularly nasty and slow death, even without any efforts on the part of the Imperium's enemies, meant that such an assignment was a de facto death sentence for many legionnaires who either stepped out of line or got on the wrong side of their Primarch (though a very few tougher-than-nails bastards, such as Crysos Morturg, would survive for a long time and even thrive in such a lethal occupation).
Needless to say, the one Legion that would be associated the most with these guys would be the Death Guard. Having their superhuman resistances further boosted with the capabilities of Mortarion's geneseed, the Death Guard would become the experts on biological and chemical warfare and were sent to places that would prove fatal for normal Space Marines. And because of their love for this type of warfare, the already dubious XIV Legion would be seen with even greater suspicion by the rest of the Legiones Astartes. A prelude to what the Legion would turn into in the future.
A brief list of Legiones Astartes that had special formations or specialized variants of Destroyers in their forces follows below.
Dreadwing
"We have come! We are death!"
- – The battle cry of the Dreadwing
The Dark Angels had their own formation built around Destroyers called the Dreadwing, which is not surprising since the Emperor had the First Legion originally outfitted with stores of weapons from Old Terra, including ones forbidden, unavailable, or sometimes even unknown to any of the other legions, in his crusade to first take back the Sol System and then conquer the Milky Way Galaxy at large. In keeping with the role of the 1st as the Emperor's Exterminators and due to Destroyers being part of their "standard operating procedure" right from the beginning (since so many of Sol's planets were already naturally lifeless to begin with, ergo having no natural biospheres to taint with the use of Destroyer weaponry aside from Terra's, whose own biosphere wasn't exactly in good condition either), the Dark Angels were no slouches in deploying Destroyers when the situation called for it, and even armed them with some of the most devastating vehicles and ammunition the proscribed vaults of Old Terra had to offer, the tamest of which were Phosphex and Vortex weapons.
This extended even to armoured vehicles, such as Fellglaives equipped with Warp Cannons, Vindicators firing Vortex Shells, Whirlwind tanks firing radiation missiles and at least one vessel with an Annihilator Cannon. As such, the Dreadwing got the call whenever the Legion needed some really nasty shit to get rid of a target immediately and collateral damage was not an issue. However, a contentious deployment of this formation got the Primarch Lion El'Jonson and his Legion kicked out of Imperium Secundus. After the Horus Heresy, it is suspected that the Dreadwing were formed into the Star Phantoms Chapter, given they share the skull hourglass insignia.
Grave Wardens
The alchemical warfare specialists of the Death Guard. While the XIV Legion's regular Destroyer squads contented themselves with plain old rad and phosphex, the Grave Wardens used stuff that made those weapons seem tame by comparison, like cullgene gas and flesh-eating vasgotox fluid. These weapons were so toxic that the Wardens had to wear heavily modified Cataphractii Terminator armor so they wouldn't be killed by their own munitions. Their armor also contained special gas projectors, which allowed them to shroud themselves in a toxic fog known as the Death Cloud.
Mortus Poisoners
The actual Destroyers of the XIV Legion, specializing particularly in chem-flamer warfare. Apparently, their favor of these was considered extreme even within the legion considering that it had deleterious effects upon the legionaries assigned to it. As with Destroyers in other legions, this action was deemed something of a punishment and a death sentence as the poisoners were consigned to die from exposure to these chemicals. Oddly enough, they didn't tend to mind that much...
Pyroclasts
A specialist unit based on the Destroyers and unique to the Salamanders Legion, Pyroclasts were pyromaniacs even by the Salamanders' standards. Vulkan saw little place in his Legion for Destroyers (due to their status as That Guy), so he reduced their number to a required minimum he used for xenos-purging, whereas the now naked majority of them he armed with Pyroclast flame projectors, weapons they were named after and which Vulkan himself designed.
The weapons of these warriors were essentially equivalents to Fusion Projectors or Ork Burnas; they could burn large swathes of enemies or focus their streams in order to cut through armor. Apart from this fancy weapon, every Pyroclast wore a suit of armor called a Mantle of Ash, which was even more heatproof than typical Astartes armor.
Angel's Tears
The Destroyers of the Blood Angels legion. Much like the Dreadwing of the First Legion, they were drawn from the ranks of other companies. Service in the Angel's Tears was temporary, and they were deployed only on the orders of Sanguinius himself when the complete and utter annihilation of an enemy civilization was called for. Each member donned a silver mask and set aside his identity for the duration of the deployment, taking on the guise of a true angel of destruction. The anonymity insulated the chosen Marines against the stain of atrocity that they committed while serving in the Angel's Tears, allowing them to return to their original rank and company afterwards without any censure from their brothers. Only Sanguinius retained his identity when he deployed among them, for he knew his nature well; as he put it "even in the myths of the past, angels were not created for kindness".
Angel's Tears deployed as jump pack-equipped Destroyers armed with twin volkite serpenta pistols, and could swap their weapons for a wide variety of guns including rotor cannons, assault cannons, heavy flamers and rad grenade launchers.
Ashen Circle
A specialist division that stood alongside the Word Bearers Destroyer units. Rather than being tasked with the absolute destruction of the enemy, their duty was to obliterate their enemy's culture, knowledge, and faith, everything which would give the foe the heart to continue fighting. Interestingly, this formation predated Lorgar's induction to the Legion, echoing from a time when the Word Bearers were originally the Imperial Heralds, who would bring the truth of the Great Crusade to newly encountered human civilizations.
This meant that they would specifically seek out and burn libraries, schools, churches, and government buildings as well as targeting enemy priests, officials and standard bearers so that it would be easier to replace them with the Imperial Creed when the time came for compliance. To this end they were armed with Hand Flamers and specialist Axe-Rakes, which were designed for tearing down icons and symbols, but were also good for dragging down fleeing targets. They were also uniformly equipped with Jump Packs and combined their drop assaults and charges with bursts of flame.
In Lorgar: Bearer of the Word, it's revealed that the original Ashen Circle were all hardcore Imperial loyalists who, for obvious reasons given the whole faith-obliterating thing, were extremely unhappy with the religious nature of the Word Bearers. When the smackdown came at Monarchia, they were pretty pleased that the Word Bearers were going to get back on the track of obliterating faith as opposed to engaging in it, but their excitement at the turnaround didn't last long. Kor Phaeron and Erebus promised them the chance to burn a bunch of Lorgar's religious works, which caused much rejoicing among the Ashen Circle. However, joy soon turned to ashes (see what we did there?) in their mouths when the obliteration opportunity turned out to be a giant trap and they were slain to a man before they even really realized what was happening. Then Kor Phaeron and Erebus had their remains torched to hide the evidence, which is a classic bit of hamfisted irony from Black Library.
Nemesis Chapter
The 22nd Chapter of the Ultramarines Legion, known as the Nemesis Chapter, was a conglomerate chapter consisting of a number of specialized units, most famously two whole companies of Destroyers. Roboute Guilliman didn't care for them very much, since their specialization in completely wiping out anything that ever lived on a planet went against his general desire to colonize and civilize worlds, as opposed to just nuking them back to the Stone Age. In turn, the Nemesis Destroyers were distant from their primarch. They had earlier served alongside the Night Lords in at least one campaign, which led them to start adopting the VIII Legion's appearance and mentality. In order to try to get them back into the fold, Guilliman appointed a new, young hotshot Captain named Eleon Iasus to try and get them moving towards the Ultramarines ethos. It sort of worked, despite the fact that some of the captains in the 22nd went so far as to outright disobey Iasus during the Battle of Thoas (resulting in a geological catastrophe that killed the disobedient officers, whoopsy daisy) and Guilliman reluctantly began to incorporate them a little bit more into the battle lines of the Ultramarines as the Heresy got worse and worse.
Some elements were present at the Battle of Calth, where they mustered in the highlands far away from civilian population centers. Ironically, this meant that they were among the few elements of the XIII Legion to escape the devastation wrought by the Word Bearers. At Pyrrhan, the 22nd led the way laying waste to unending ranks of daemons with their devastating weaponry, because sometimes the best way to deal with Chaos is just to coat it in phosphex and radiation until it stops moving. They also participated in boarding actions against the Word Bearers at the Battle of Anuari. After the splitting of the Legions, the 22nd went to form the Nemesis Chapter, a Second Founding Ultramarines successor chapter. Maybe they kept their love of horrifically devastating weaponry, but we don't know. Their last recorded action was when they committed their entire chapter to fight the Necrons in the Orphean War because sometimes the best way to deal with Necrons is just to coat them in phosphex and radiation until they stop moving (or phase out or pray to Ra or whatever they do these days).
Red Hand
Some of the Destroyer Squads in the World Eaters Legion were formed from those who had earned the Blood Hand or Butcher's Mark, the red handprint which was the highest accolade that could be borne by any Astartes of the XII. To bear the Blood Hand meant that one had committed an act of exemplary violence in the name of the legion, whether by destroying hundreds of lesser foes or taking the head of a single enemy champion. These squads were brought together by rivalry and enmity, each member striving to outdo the others in acts of savagery and bloodshed to prove that they were worthy of the fell mark laid upon them. In keeping with the World Eaters' preference for close combat, the Red Hand squads wielded Caedere weapons such as Excoriator chainaxes, barb-hook lashes, falax blades, and meteor hammers alongside the rad and chem weaponry that was the hallmark of the Destroyer corps. Their unremitting savagery was brought to bear on many worlds during the course of the Horus Heresy. They also became known as team-killing fucktards before that became a standard World Eater trait, since they weren't particularly careful about who was in the way when they started shooting and tended to hit other World Eaters as often as they hit the other side.
Karaoghlanlar
The V Legion's Destroyers, also known as the "Dark Sons of Death" by people who want to avoid summoning a daemon when they speak. Their specialty was the total annihilation of the enemy, both on the physical and spiritual planes. They were savage and unrestrained in combat, tearing into the enemy at close range before mutilating their corpses and invoking dark Chogorian rites meant to unmake their spirits. Though they preferred to use close combat weapons like chainswords and power glaives, they did not shy away from more typical Destroyer tactics, and used rad weapons and alchemical bio-agents to ensure that anything they captured would be uninhabitable for ages to come. As a result, the Astartes assigned to the Karaoghlanlar were regarded as deranged and sinister by the rest of the White Scars, and they could only be deployed on the word of Jaghatai Khan and the Stormseers' Council. Their armor was painted black or bright red rather than the Scars' usual white and covered in wards and shamanic totems to avert the evil that was thought to follow them.