 It has been said, of wild spirits, that they cannot be contained for long, lest the ties that bind them to role and position and duty erode the fundamental nature of their character. Better, they say, to let those of this temperament run free, to be as they truly are, lest we chafe them into a broken existence. But, others argue, is it not the rule of law that separates man from beast? Our codified system of justices and conventions, the structure of our social systems. These are the means by which we have brought the stars themselves to heal. We shaped them by our very will, not the wild fantasies of souls too fanciful or arrogant, to work for the betterment of the whole within the structures we have built. This has ever been a conflict within the soul of humanity. For there are those of us, exceptional individuals, persons of wild hearts and uncontainable selves, who are nonetheless utterly brilliant, for whom the systems by which we abide day by day are not so much as chains. Indeed, it can be said that the armies of humanity are perhaps the best example of this, as those who we send to accomplish the wet work, the murder make, that which we ourselves are unwilling or simply unable to do, are often those who simply cannot fit within the bounds of what we term civilisation. The great crusade was replete with examples. The savage butchery of the 12th legion world eaters, the chemical devastations of the 14th legion deathguard, the unspeakable atrocities of the 8th legion night lords. All serve as snapshots of men who were, arguably, brilliant at what they did, only that what they did was not very nice at all. But, conversely, there are those of an otherness born not from ill intent or delinquency, but simply from uniqueness, from removal from the human volume. They do not hate society. They simply do not enjoy its trappings. The venom of politics unnerves them. The rule of law irritates them. The demands of rulers exasperate them. They wish to be free, to live as they please, to go where they please, to comport themselves by their own morals, their own justice, to simply be. For the subjects of this record, this was the life they once knew, and thereafter the life they sought. But for the vagaries of fate, perhaps they may have once again claimed it. Well, this was not their destiny. Their tales and lives are utterly fascinating, regardless. Know then, that this is a record of the Great Horde, the Tal Scar, the Ordu of the Khan, the fifth legion, White Scars. Founded with their legion as Astartes' cousins upon the scarred surface of Holy Terra during the darkest days of the Unification Wars, the fifth legion was one of the first to draw blood in the name of the Emperor's cause. Drawn initially from the nomadic mechanic-crawler tribes of the Thulean Basin, and later from other scattered hosts of the homeworld's population, the fifth was greatly influenced by the cultures that birthed it. The tribes had weathered the worst of the Age of Strife by isolating themselves in the frozen wastes of Thule, becoming hardened survivalists in an environment few upon Terra would attempt to even consider living in. While other legions, such as the 1st and 7th, were tasked with frontline duties to support the Emperor's Thunder Warrior regiments, the 5th took on an altogether different mien, becoming the eyes and ears of the hosts of unity, assigned to forward reconnaissance and seeker missions, to root out warlords and demagogues from remote regions of Terra. It is remarkable when one considers the scale, as, during this period, all Astartes legions had barely reached the Alpha induction phase, designed to bring them to full combat strength. The 5th numbered only a few hundred warriors, who, given the nature of their assignments, would operate in tactical level groupings of less than a dozen. In doing so, they were to endure the worst of the horrors Old Knight had wrought upon the world. Rampant thinking machines, sigh plagues, rad and chem soaked wastelands, and more. Isolated from the Lord of Lightning's growing empire by distance and purpose, the 5th would subjugate all enemies of the nascent Imperium with a ruthless efficiency, and when encountering those they lacked the martial strength to take to task, would embark upon a guerrilla campaign to bleed them of strength, hastening their defeat, when the armies of unity eventually arrived to bring to them full ruin. The task was, however, thankless. The Codres of the 5th Legion would often be isolated in hostile territory for years at a time, relying on their Thulian survival skills in combination with their Astartes physiology, to endure that which could break even other legions. This inculcated a fiercely independent, and indeed insular, streak in the 5th Legion, who were noted for simply ignoring the orders of many commanders, save the emperor himself, especially those who had not done enough to earn their respect. Those that did prized the 5th for their shrewdness and exacting efficiency. Those that did not would decry them for acting like little better than obstinate scouts. The 5th's task was entirely thankless. They earned few battle honors during the Unification Wars, for when Allegienes Astartes or Thunder Warrior Regiment would arrive to annihilate the target they had carefully selected and winnowed, the 5th would already be gone, off to find the next target, always moving forward. The Albion Fortress of Dubri, the Catacombs of the Indonesian Kadiru, many others. All brought to compliance, thanks largely to the efforts of the 5th, all whose records barely note their engagement at all. It is not recorded that the 5th took this as a slight. Indeed, it seemed that there was a quiet pride amongst the Legion in their less than public victories, but it nonetheless served to isolate them further, through a combination of choice and circumstance from the rest of the Emperor's forces. They were content in the field, content in their solitude, content in their independence. They had the writ of the master of mankind himself, and did not feel the need to heed the words of those they saw as petty generals, giving orders from comfortable headquarters half a world away. This streak was to become the defining trait of the Legion ever after. Even as the Great Crusade dusted off from the homeworld, and the Emperor had barely constituted a full hold on the outer system, the 5th Legion had already left the light of Saul, burning hard into the cold void at full wake, banners now bearing a new cognomen, the Star Hunters. Now, at nearly full Legion strength, they were nevertheless subdivided into over 100 different pioneer companies, tasked with following the strongest warp currents and pushing into uncharted space ahead of the main crusade expeditionary fleets. It was one such pioneer company that first marked the gravity well of Cthonia, as a nest of serpents coiling in the dark that we would be better to destroy. 16th Legion Primarch Horace Lupacal, whose Legion would famously be drawn from, said, reptilian nest, would oft quote the report in good humour, and famously favoured the captain of the company Cornelius Jure, as his pathfinder of choice for the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet. As with previously recorded examples of the 3rd and 19th legions, Horace won the respect of many within the 5th for his peerless understanding of their talents, with the Terran veterans of the Star Hunters treating the Primarch in turn with the respect they granted to but a scant few commanders. This period of the Legion's history essentially mirrors that of their time on Terra. The character of the Star Hunters, even removed from the wastes of Terra, was not altered by their new experiences. If anything, it became even more deeply ingrained, as their military actions followed similar patterns, different only in scale and in the nature of the foes they faced. Xenos empires had replaced Terran demagogues, strike forces now numbered in the hundreds, not the tens, but the means had changed little. Seek, identify, scout, destroy or bleed. Each pioneer company was effectively a Legion onto itself, possessing a shared lineage and structure, but as isolated from the other companies as the Star Hunters as a whole were from the Imperium. While Demi-cultures would shape the Mian of these companies, a unified combat doctrine would nevertheless emerge out of necessity. The 5th's mastery of the hit-and-run, probing raids that would bleed the enemy and draw them out of their holes, allowed the Legion to learn more and more with each strike, knowledge earned through blood to be broadcasted to the pursuing Imperial fleets. The means through which the Star Hunters waged their silent and unseen wars were, however, not sustainable. Each raid would bring losses, be it of Astartes, ammunition or armament. The Thulean survival credos embedded in the Legion's bones allowed them to make war with resource levels that would have crippled the effectiveness of any military formation, let alone an Astartes Legion, and their technological skills permitted them to keep their war machines and starships operating far beyond their operational lifespans. But all of this simply could not be maintained forever. Even the landcraft cities of the Thule Basin had needed to find succor in the darkest days of old night, and nothing of the complexity of an Astartes Legion, not even one as peerlessly resourceful as the Star Hunters, could operate alone forever. The further they pushed into the darkness, the harder it became for them to recoup their losses. Supply lines of new recruits, ammunition, tanks, fliers, weaponry, all became dangerously overstretched. The various pioneer companies were not unaware of their predicament, but the old Thulean stubbornness and disdain for petty authority persisted, rendering the concept of requests for aid a bitter thing indeed. It seemed that many had simply resigned themselves to live and die by their own choosing, under foreign and unknowable skies, fighting for themselves and for their kin, and perhaps the distant ideals of unity. But for a chance encounter, upon the world of Chogoris, this may have been their ultimate fate. The tale of Jagatai, fifth of the Emperor's sons, is perhaps ironically, given the path he would ultimately tread, widely known. His gestation pod crashed into the surface of the temperate planet Chogoris, leaving him to be adopted as a member of one of the many nomadic horse tribes of the Al-Tac, a continental-sized steppe plane covering the majority of the planet's surface. At an effectively feudal level of technology, with no knowledge as to how they came unto the world, the culture of the planet was one of tribal warfare, honor raids, and generational feuds. Years into his life, one such raid claimed the life of Jagatai's adopted father, the Khan of his tribe, and embarked the Primarch upon a road of conquest that would usher him into the realm of legend. The Kurayad, his father's murderers, were the first to fall. In days past, the victor of a raid would claim horses, slaves, and monetary tributes in the wake of victory. Not so with Jagatai. He fell upon the Kurayad with bloody intent, leaving none alive, claiming their territory and spoils entirely as his own. It appeared this art inculcated an idea of unity in the new Khan. No longer would the endless cycle of raids and murder be let stand. Feuds that had persisted for generations until not even those who held them knew the true reason for their persistence would not be countenanced for the wasteful and pointless things they were. Such peace, as is so oft the case, could only be one at the end of a blade. Jagatai's path of conquest was swift and merciless. No bloodthirsty tyrant he, though. To those tribes he defeated, his offer echoed that of the father he did not know he had. Comply, or be destroyed. Word of the Kurayad defeat had spread far and fast, and with few able to offer much in the way of resistance to the new Khan, submission was clearly the preferable choice. Jagatai was not without wisdom, however, and treated all those who submitted to his rule, with an honor that took the tribes of the Al-Tak by surprise, accustomed as they were to the endless years of vindictive reprisals at the hands of their conquerors. His Ordu, Khorchin, the language of Chogores for Horde, swelled with the talent and wisdom of dozens of tribes, all brought under the banner of the Khan through respect, honor, and a newfound sense of loyalty. Within scant decades, a new power had risen on Chogores, befitting a name unheard of in the planet's history. Jagatai was now the Khagan, the Khan of Khans, the unquestioned ruler of the plains. His home subjugated, the Khagan turned his energy and attention now to the despotic empires beyond the Al-Tak that had long since preyed upon the tribes for slaves. The conquest of this period blooded Jagatai in an altogether different type of warfare, as the armies of the city, states, and empires he now faced were different in every possible way to the warrior clans that formed his great Ordu. Yet he adapted, turning a keen military intelligence to adapting the hit-and-run warfare of the plains in order to combat the standing armies and regiments of his enemies. One by one those enemies fell to the hordes of the Al-Tak, with the Khan using the same simple maxim he had employed to bring his tribal kin to heal, surrender, or be annihilated. Destruction and generosity, the two hands of the Khagan, were to once more mark Chogores, but now on a planetary scale, for soon the world itself had been bent to his will. Should the Khan have had any grander plans beyond this, they will never be known, for his true father was at that point to arrive. The Emperor of Mankind had come to Chogores to inform his wayward son of his true destiny, to be the master of the fifth legion Astartes. No transition of power from old legion command to that of the Primarch was ever identical. Some were fraught, others natural. For the Khan it was somewhere in the middle. As the fifteenth son of the Emperor to be recovered, his finding was not the magnificent cause for celebration amongst Imperial command, such as an event had once been. It had, bizarrely, become almost routine. The timing of his discovery was also during the height of the Rangdan Xenosides, and the Imperium was sorely pressed for all possible military assets to be utilized as soon as possible. Not for the Khan was the slow tutelage in the intricacies of Imperial hierarchies, politics, histories, and systems that his brothers had received, for a being such as a Primarch needed to be on a war footing with all haste. Two, however, objected to this. Rabot Gulliman and Rogel Dorne, Primarchs of the thirteenth and seventh legions respectively, felt their brother was ill-educated in the ways of the Empire he now ostensibly served, and that his shallow understanding of its various cultures, laws, factions, would ultimately see him unable to integrate into his father's Imperium. Their foresight was not exactly untrue, but their feelings on the matter, which set something of a tone for how the fifth legion, now being referred to across the Imperium as the White Scars, were seen. They were barbarians, dung-centred uncultured beasts who slept beside their horses, ate bloody meat, and cared not for the rule of civilized societies. Their new Cognomen serves as an excellent example of this, as it was not one chosen by the fifth legion itself. The Ordu, in their typical fashion, represented themselves by their Corchin name, Talscar, the region of Chogores Jagatai had plummeted to so many years before. As with their kin in the sixth legion space wolves, the dignitaries and ordealies of the Imperial regime misunderstood the subtleties, and focused on the ivory rainments, the colours of the old Chogorian Ordu, to apply to them a pleasingly simple title. As the Cogn himself put it, according to the writings of his brother Sanguinius of the ninth legion Blood Angels, they misheard the first, they observed the second. Their words, not ours. It is not recorded that the fifth displayed any particular antipathy towards their official name. Indeed, they did not seem to care much at all. As Chogorian was the primary culture by far in the legion, subsequent to the finding of their Primarch, and Corchin the dominant language, the scars referred to themselves as they always had, the Ordu of Jagatai. What this does is effectively highlight the severe gulf that developed between the Ordu and the rest of the Imperium. It has been noted that the Corchin speakers had difficulty acclimating to the usage of Gothic, often retaining an accent much thicker than their cousins of other worlds in other legions. Most languages on legion five worlds possessed common root elements in the tongues of old earth, making transition to Imperial Gothic a easier prospect. Corchin possessed no such connection, just as the culture of Chogoris was so radically removed from the norms of developed Imperial worlds. This was further exacerbated by the Khan's insistence that Imperial colonization would be in no way brought to his homeworld. As he saw it, the planes of the Altaq bred warriors of sterling quality, and to simply drop Imperial cities and technology into the midst of these nomadic societies would devastate Chogorian culture irreparably. The Khan was not alone amongst his brothers in making these types of demands. Limanrus and Sanguinius both had similar ones, although macro-scale colonization of Fenris was rendered completely impossible by the planet's incredible geological instability, and the same for Baal, with the planet's utterly imicable weather conditions. Chogoris did not possess the churning continents of Fenris, nor the rad wastelands of Baal, but in truth did not possess much in the way of material resources at all beyond its manpower. Too little to sustain Imperial auxilia levies, but just enough to sustain Legionnaires Astartes' recruitment demands. Thus, Chogoris remained as it had been for millennia. The tribes of the Altaq developed new legends in the wake of the great Khan's passing, now accommodating the strange lights of landing craft that occasionally traced the night sky, and paying homage to the bravest and most skilled warriors that would now mysteriously vanish in the wake of many battles. Jagatai, hastily installed in his new position as Master of the Fifth Legion, with minimal time with either his father or brothers, found himself in command of a Legion of, as some uncharitably put it, Vagabonds. The pioneer companies of the Old Star Hunters were spread across a truly incredible volume, fighting in a thousand separate engagements, more divided than any other Legion. The Khan did not bulk at the task ahead of him. If anything, he found himself perfectly suited for the purpose. To forge a new Legion, a new Ordu from scattered bands of nomads, it was truly his life's calling writ anew, a fresh Altaq of stars as his new plane. Recruitment from Chogoris was begun with all haste, with the Khan's erstwhile inner circle becoming the first of the new white scars. He summoned every single pioneer company to the new Legion homeworld, words spreading out through the void by courier or astropath. The call would take many years to reach all of the scattered Fifth Legion companies. The Khan himself waited a decade upon Chogoris, overseeing recruitment and meeting with each newly arrived band, although it is recorded that the last fleet to reappear from the Outer Dark would not arrive some 125 years later, in 000 M31. Terran recruitment dried up to nothing, as the Khan made Chogoris the fulcrum around which his Legion's life would revolve. Terran, a startys of the former Star Hunters, adapted as quickly as they could to the new status quo. A situation perhaps aided by the fact that thanks to their years of isolation from each other, the Legion possessed little in the way of a unifying culture. Corchin was not an easy language to learn, but neither was Gothic in reverse. A form of brotherhood through shared cultural polarity formed, kinship revolving around the inherent differences that they had been ordered to erode. Despite the changes demanded of them, the Terran Star Hunters did not possess much in the way of antipathy to the new culture. As with other legions, the reunion with the Primarch, especially after so long fighting as orphans, was a moment of great celebration, and the compulsion to emulate both him and the Legion's new home was incredibly powerful. The obstinate ways of the Star Hunters were similar to the disdain Chogorians tended to feel towards authority figures, and Jagatai was nothing if not adept at earning the respect of such people. The culture that emerged was Chogorian to its core. Even the staunch tenets of the Imperial truth blurred somewhat by the superstitions and beliefs of the Altaic, something Jagatai would not compromise on, and which drew the skeptical eyes of some amongst his brothers. After ten years of recruitment and integration, the Khan led eighty thousand Estartes into the Kholarn Circle campaign to exterminate the hordes of savage greenskins that dwelt there. Upon those battlefields were the hit-and-run tactics of the planes deftly wedded to the survival skills of the Star Hunters, and out of this forge, a new Legion was to emerge, bloody to new, and united as never before. The years that followed were heady ones, glory days, looked back upon by the scars as the decades of battle and laughter. The second century of the Great Crusade, where the Imperium had emerged from the horrors of the Rangdan Xenosides and was bestriding the galaxy anew, were now one the oft-forgotten fifth Legion of old could fully claim triumphs for. While they were never as numerous as some of their cousins in other legions, the white scars were notable for the fervour with which they made war. They descended upon their foes with an almost unfathomable rapidity, striking the enemy like a lightning bolt from the blue skies. It was often commented upon that they laughed as they made battle, for the sheer love of the fight, for the exaltation of the speed they fought with. Not for the ordu of the Khan was the iron discipline or exacting planning of their fellows. No, for them, war was a thing to be won with fire and passion. Their wildness was unnerving to their fellows, but no less effective, for they were not the ill disciplined rout of the sixth legion or the bloodthirsty butchers of the twelfth world eaters, but warriors of honour for whom the joy of battle was its own reward. They were not warriors of extermination, although as with all legions could be called upon to exact such fate, upon those who called for it. They retained the keen intelligence of the star hunters, but tempered now with the insight and spirit of Chogoris. Detailed stratagems and meticulous forward planning were not for them, but they would nevertheless relay all knowledge of any enemies they discovered are bested to the wider Imperium, not simply cold data, but wisdom in the truest sense, knowledge fused with lived experience. To some, the disdain for forward planning was simply maddening, labouring the legion and its primarch with a reputation for being fanciful or unreliable. In truth, the fifth was perfectly reliable when called upon to fight, with an extensive honour roll for a legion of its size. The reputation they had for flightiness was born of a frustration many within Imperial command, even jagatize own brothers, felt in the sheer difficulty of pinning the Khan and the White Scars down. They were a restless breed, the Ordu, ill-suited to remaining in one place for long, always eager for new worlds and new horizons. This, combined with the aforementioned view of the fifth being somehow savage or barbaric, has led to perhaps the most widespread misunderstanding of a legion's character in the annals of Imperial historiography. They may have worn the cloak of the savage, and in their hearts possessed passions and desires considered ill-fitting to the more staid of Imperial cultures, but they were honourable men bound by an honourable creed. Those who knew them best, as discerned from the writings of departmental munitorum general Ilia Ravallion, knew them as warriors who valued politeness and courtesy, but never at the expense of forthrightness. Should they ignore the protocols of others, be they political or military, they did so simply because their own ways served them better, and they were confident enough in this to both let the unassailable results speak for themselves, or to apologise humbly and sincerely should they be found in error. Humanity, as it has been want to do, took straightforwardness for uneducated simplicity, and the valuing of the smaller aspects of life for barbarian ignorance. As for the writings of General Ravallion, neither Khan nor legion was much inclined to do anything to dispel these assumptions. As they had always done, they simply left it up to those with the insight to see past the rumours and snide remarks, and to draw themselves their own conclusions. They simply did not care what the galaxy thought they were. They knew themselves, they knew the trueness of their hearts, and found such a life content. Yet this did, as with the ways of politics, lead to a detachment from the rest of the legion as a starty, it was never to be fully bridged. Jagatai was ever out in the wildness of space pursuing his own ends, and the vanguard of the great crusade, and met with his brother's little, unless the latter made acute efforts to track him down. Those who did, however, were the type to pay no heed to what the Imperium would say of the Khan, and in those brothers, the Khan found his truest friendships. Sanguinius of the Blood Angels was perhaps the most empathetic to his wayward sibling, and it is known that the two were very close. Horus Lupacau, as was his way, cared not for words, only deeds, and fully understood the incredible value the skills of the Khan and his legion represented, earning him their respect in that process. Magnus the Red and Jagatai too found kinship. Bound by a shared isolation from a humanity, they both felt understood neither them nor what drove them. Sadly, regardless of all this, the gulf between legion and Imperium, between Primark and brothers, only drove them further apart as the armies of the great crusade advanced, where the scars would battle and conquer to their hearts' content, and not have to answer to any man. Maps were being completed in those latter years of the crusade, wild space was shrinking. Olinor, where the scars had won themselves many an honor, seemed to have been the last big fight. All that was left was simply filling in the blank parts of the star charts. This the Khan knew, and it sat ill with him. For out of his many brothers, he was perhaps the one who worried most as to the fate of the legion as a starty, once the master of mankind had secured his realm. As is the way of fate, however, destiny was to intervene. The years subsequent to Olinor held much in the way of challenges for the Kagan and his Ordu, with the Council of Nikia and the Chondax campaign being the most notable. Given the scope of these particular events, they will require records of their own, but no yee that this was where the legion and its master stood as the tendrils of greatest heresy crept into the galaxy. They stood apart from their fellows, removed by bearing in culture, by warfare and ideology. They were a starties of an altogether different breed, wild at heart, wishing to shuck whatever chains those they saw as self-important wish to place upon them. Should be born in mind with absolute certainty that there was no malice in this. The fifth legion was true, truer than many could ever have known, for it was a loyalty that did not mesh with the trappings of the Imperium, but a loyalty that dwelt within the heart no less. It was loyal to the Imperium at its core, to the notion that none must challenge mankind's right to be independent among the stars, to live in peace without fear of despot or tyrant, to roam whatever skies they wished unchallenged by any. The tragedies of face would have other plans, until a time as that tale can be recounted. Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. Forward slash Oculus Imperia. 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