 Some of us, cursed with knowledge. Sometimes it is perhaps better to be ignorant. This near aphorism is somewhat unremarkable when understood in the context of our day-to-day existence. Does one wish to know the time and circumstance of one's own death, for example? What good would the certainty of knowing precisely how much of one's time one has remaining? What good would it do? To this, and to many questions there besides, the common man would simply answer no, I wish to remain oblivious. We are happier, better off, more fulfilled, with blinders of witlessness occluding our sight. Indeed, such a thing has been the avowed policy of our Imperium for millennia. It is better not to know. Knowledge is a dangerous beast. The first step on the path to a damnation inevitable, as one is forced to confront the true and horrific nature of our universe. It however goes deeper than the simple practicality of keeping the heaving masses of our species unaware of the nature of all things. Ignorance prevents us from anticipating the consequences of our actions, shields us from facing difficult decisions. Our immunizes us against attacks. Maintaining ignorance is a way the current self can extend its own life, avoiding the realization of a morally and practically distinct future self. In a sense, a form of self-preservation. Knowledge, conversely, is a power to foresee, to leverage the world to one's benefit, to consistently adapt to change. To some, knowledge is an intoxicating thread that must be pulled at so that whatever lies beyond the woven veil is finally revealed, that reality may be perceived in dread actuality. The subjects of this account are such men, men cursed with knowledge, but too blinkered in their arrogance to perceive the true nature of things. Know then that this is a record of the scholar-warriors of the Legion as a startys. The battle-librarians, those who hungered for truth, but found only damnation. The 15th Legion, thousand sons. The 15th Legion, as with all of their contemporaries, was first forged on Terra by the Emperor of Mankind, with initial recruits drawn from pre-selected Terran populations. This is however where the similarities end for the 15th. From the outset, they were quite unlike any other a startys force raised within the cradle of humanity. For one, their creation was far, far later than many of their fellows, even past that which their mere numerical designation would suggest. The unification wars were effectively complete, Luna and the Selenar gene cults had already fallen to the wrath of the 16th and 13th legions. The last of Terra's tyrants were or had been put to the sword, and the various planets, satellites, and space stations of the Solar Reaches were already being won for unity by the bolters of the a startys. The character and purpose of many of them were already becoming quite established. This in turn had the effect of allowing their ranks to be swelled by vast influxes of recruits taken from these newly compliant worlds and moons. Especially those legions whose skills, experiences, and qualities were of special use for the theatres the Solar Reclamation threw into the path of the Imperial juggernaut. It was a time of transition. The unification wars were no more. Onwards lay the great crusade. To this came the 15th legion, and it was a birth marked by storms. Not metaphorical, mind you, quite literal. Aetherical squalls in the warp surged to levels not seen since the breaking of the age of strife centuries before. At high anchor, void traffic was halted entirely. Astropathic communication with the a startys forces in the deep Solar Reaches was severed, reduced to blurts of intra-system Vox networks crackling with static. On the homeworld, records spoke of strange atmospheric phenomena dancing across the skies, and a spike in mutant births, both physically and mentally, as the divisio telepathica struggled to account for a sudden upsurge in Psyker awakenings. It is perhaps unsurprising that this prompted an immediate wave of panic over newly unified Terra, as a specter of old night seemed to be raising its hideous head once more. The Arbitas were stretched thin, attempting to quell civil unrest, and the emergence of superstitions in blatant defiance of the Imperial truth. The plate cities of Terra's equator referred to the events as the spiral misrule, while the Nordafric conclaves recorded it as the Song of the Blood Disguise. In official early Imperial Chronicles, far less flowery than their contemporaries, it is simply noted as the First Tempest, being the first immaterial disruption of such a scale noted by the new regime since its inception. Had the lord of this regime been perturbed by the storm, it did not show. The Emperor, with the progress of his conquests momentarily halted by the sudden stoppage of all offworld traffic, appeared to simply put his efforts and attentions elsewhere. Indeed, some officials noted in private diaries that the speed at which the lord of lightning switched the target of his phenomenal focus spoke perhaps to either foresight or forewarning, a plan that accounted for extra time upon the homeworld, so to speak, but also for an opportune aetherical alignment between the local reality of Terra and the unreality of the warp. These theories have further credence lent to them by the supposed date of origins of specialized formations within the Divisio Telepathica, namely its Investigatti's wing, commonly known as the Silent Sisterhood, but also the Black Sentinels. Warpcraft and the Emperor's own utilisation of it is ill-understood at best, so for now we may simply place these theories where they belong. It is verifiable by official records that during this period the first of the 15th Legion were very exactingly created. One says exactly for the means of neophyte selection and ascension was conducted under standards far beyond anything their fellow legions were placed under. Points of origin were restricted to some of the oldest, most stable and culturally sophisticated polities of Terra, namely the enclaves of Aus, the Kashi domain, and most notably the ancient Achaemenid Empire, which stretched across leagues of desert plains to the north of the planet's equator, occupying many of the regions that, what scant records of priest-ryph years remained, claimed were the very cradles of human civilisation itself. The Empire, the enclaves, and the domain had been amongst the first powers to swear to the Emperor's banner during the early days of the Unification Wars, supplying his armies plentifully and thus being spared from the devastation unleashed by his thunder warriors. Their populaces were content, productive, refined, and most importantly genetically stable. It was incredibly low rates of mutation compared to similarly sized polities elsewhere on the once-benighted homeworld, not least the barbarian conclaves that rendered so many neo-fights for other Astartes legions. This would ordinarily have rendered them ideal populations to draw large numbers of recruits from four said legions, but despite this, the number drawn for the new fifteenth remained incredibly low. The Ionis Plateau, for instance, rendered only one youth for the programme, though it had also granted several hundred of its children for the seventh legion for exactly the same purpose. Many who observed this knew it meant only one thing. The Hand of the Emperor, unknowable, all-powerful, was absolutely at work here. Indeed, it is a matter of record that the master of mankind himself personally selected candidates, something he had done for very few legions indeed. While it is of course impossible to ascertain precisely how many aspirants were rendered unto the fifteenth for ascension, it would appear that, according to janitor records and data looms, the implantation success rate was very high. Undoubtedly, the careful selection process for these neo-fights was paying dividends here, as it perhaps would have if any other Astartes legion had paid so much attention to its candidates. It rendered unto the Waiting Emperor a very exact number. One recorded and mentioned so many times one cannot help but wonder if there was some greater significance to the quantity. One thousand warriors, born of the gene-rights of both Terra and Luna, the minimum initial fighting disposition for an Astartes legion, known typically as the Alpha Induction. The Emperor personally presided over their Odes of Eternity, granting them an special honor no other Astartes legion had received, a name before a single bolt shell had even been fired before a single battle brother had been lost. The fifteenth would henceforth be known as his Thousand Sons, and the more poetic of early crusade accounts state that, as these Thousand Sons rose from their knees, the warped storms around Sol dissipated, bringing with them a new dawn for the future of humanity. Howry as this may be, the breaking of the Aetherical disturbances did coincide with the date of the fifteenth legion's formal inception, all sources pointing to a robust resumption of crusade operations around this time. The fifteenth legion were now fully part of the Imperial War effort, but initially there was little to set them aside from their fellow Astartes. They were relatively tiny in number compared to their cousins, and even those that did not vastly atlip them in sheer quantity had managed to develop skills and talents in one form of warfare or another. Despite their incredibly auspicious origins, they were in actuality completely unremarkable, prosecuting their early campaigns with competency, but no flair. They put the Micah clans of Secularis to the torch alongside the seventeenth legion Imperial heralds, supported far larger battalions of the sixth legion in the Purgation of Gladres, and toppled the remaining transgenic blasphemies of Proxima III in their cloud warrens. Nothing about their comportment was worthy of note, beyond, perhaps, a degree of synchronicity displayed by their squads in open combat, but even that drew little attention. Conversely, their name, the stories of their origins, the knowledge of the special favour paid to them by the master of mankind, these absolutely did draw comment. As many, not least the Astartes legions they served beside, openly questioned why such an unremarkable legion was worthy of such august treatment, especially having effectively sat out the entirety of the unification wars. To add to this, the fifteenth wore their cognom and with pride, adopting the ancient terral millennial glyph and ochre patterning redolent of the immortals of the Achaemenid Empire of old. They clearly considered themselves a breed apart from their cousins, something said cousins increasingly began to perceive as completely undeserved. The speculation and curiosity surrounding the legion would only grow from there. As would, it must be said, quiet and then open resentment. It must be understood that in these days of crusade, the legion as Astartes were accomplishing feats of warfare never seen in the annals of humanity that yet survived. The ninth legion of revenants had been sent to the depths of the Neptunian volume, likely never to return, yet had emerged from their suppression of the mutants of the moons, with more Astartes than they had entered with. The Lunawolves was a name on the lips of all, headed by the Primarch Horus Lupercal, first son of the Emperor, or first found son, the Imperium's brightest star. It counted within its ranks upwards of 30,000 Astartes. The seventh legion were fortifying dozens of systems against separations of those who would strike behind Imperial vanguards. The eighth legion had developed such a reputation that word of their approach would drive a world to compliance through fear alone. The fifth legion's star hunters were pushing the boundaries of Imperial stellar cartography faster than the star map makers could keep up with. The Thousand Sons, well, they outgrew their literal name, but beyond that, few within the Imperium had much to say regarding them at all, or fast becoming a footnote in the mytho-historical renderings of the early crusade, notable for not saving the growing gulf between their origins and their comportment. Within this gulf, combined with their still rigorous policies surrounding potential legion aspirants, crept suspicion. Many, or at least the canny, were aware that the regime of the Imperium held secrets. Given the Paul surrounding the Thousand Sons, it drew the eye of the apprehensive and the distrustful. Given their horror when, in the second decade of the great crusade, the apparent reason for the 15th's status became far, far more visible. Across all expeditionary fleets they were present in, the Astartes of the Thousand Sons began openly manifesting psychic powers. These were not the abilities of the psychers that were widely known to humanity. Not for the 15th with the petty powers of the topony gutter sorcerers, but the gelded spotterings of the Imperium's divisio-telepathica psychers. Nor even the vile corrupted aetherics of the genocide priests of Terra's age of strife. No. These were the destructive powers of the immaterium manifested like few had ever seen. The elements of air and fire bent to their will, seemingly alive conflagrations and uncanny lightning storms leaping from the hands of Astartes. These sundered are crushed by invisible telekeem forces, their secrets already torn from their minds by other, weirder adepts. The change was simply staggering, a legion known for practically nothing was suddenly a name on the lips of many, for it was speculated that, finally, the wisdom of the emperor was manifesting. Suddenly the sequestroment, the especial attention, the rigorous recruitment all now had clear and explicable purpose. It was genius, said some, unparalleled, the wedding of the superlative gene-craft of the legion as Astartes, with the psychic potential of the human future. The victory tally of the 15th legion skyrocketed. Though few in number compared to their cousins, the Thousand Sun's psychic craft served as an almost exponential force multiplier, carrying the day against foes both mighty and numerous, none of whom seemed capable of devising means to combat these stunning new battle-sikers. Had times, had context, had history, had they all been different, this would perhaps have finally won the legion, the support and acceptance of its fellows. Would that it were so simple? In actuality, the abilities of the Thousand Sun's only worsened the divides between them and those that they would call kin. To the majority of the Imperium, the Sikre was an abomination, a thing to shackle, if not simply annihilate, control with the strictest of regiments only. The unification wars and the solar reclamation, neither of which the 15th legion had participated in, had been marked by numerous engagements with foes corrupted and swollen by the malignant energies of the warp. It was the fundamental belief of many, that the Sikre was by their nature unspeakably dangerous, that their powers were ultimately corruptive no matter the intent or training of those who wielded them. The idle, frustrated curiosity of the legion as a starty is now pivoted to outright hostility and refutation quite rapidly. For example, the 14th legion dusk raiders during the prosecution of the Kahlgren campaign refused point-blank to deal with any members of the 15th face-to-face, or even over vox-links, instead using human-surf intermediaries or even servitors for what perfunctory communication they deigned to participate in. The 3rd legion emperor's children, too, was noted as having withdrawn all of its ships from orbit over Ostrastus, and the 15th legion rendezvoused with them for outward advance to the sign-stars. Despite this, no word came from the emperor over their conduct whatsoever, and without any rebuke from the Lord of the Imperium, the 15th legion were as free as any other starty's legion to make war in their preferred manner, and make war they certainly did. Their victories went from notable to remarkable to spectacular. Accomplishing feats no other legion had. The tales of their accomplishments were rendered so luridly by contemporary accounts that one often wonders if the taint of fear-fueled exaggeration had crept into the chroniclers who penned them. Whole armies were seemingly turned to ash, starships were pulled out of orbit or formation, whole squads or companies of Astardes were kept free from torrential enemy fire by invisible forces. All of this seems beyond the scope of any one Psyker, but given what is verifiable about the powers the legion wielded, I am hesitant to dismiss any of this as fanciful fabrication. The emperor himself was known to have personally requested the presence of the Thousand Sons at his side during a series of campaigns to exterminate emergencies of the Xenos Crave, a supremely dangerous strain of psychic parasite. About this, the 15th recruitment practices remained firmly the same as ever. When the 16th legion Lunawolves had hit 50,000 serving Astardes, the Thousand Sons remained hovering around a fifth of that number. To be sure, they endured less casualties thanks to their uncanny defensive and healing abilities. Their number kept them from being thrown into the meat grinder battles that the 4th legion was routinely rooted to, but the fact remains that the 15th were easily the smallest of all active serving legions by a long margin. Even for those humans they did mark for Astardes' ascension, success rates had fallen since their departure from Terra, and were now far below the median standard set by the 1st legion. Despite all these challenges, however, those Astardes that succeeded in being raised to maturity all displayed some degree of psychic talent, and at all levels of the power scales the Imperium used to determine aetherical capabilities. Their effectiveness on the field of battle was undeniable. It appeared the 15th legion had truly found its place. Would that it were so simple? It began on Byzant. A lush world with a sizable and long considered lost human population. Over the years of strife it had transformed into a stable society predicated around the veneration of the sun as a solar deity. The strength of the faith held by the populace led them to rebuke the emperor's offer of membership within the Imperium, spurning his empire as godless and accursed. It would have made for a fairly routine compliance operation for any imperial expeditionary fleet were it not for the stunning rate of psycher births upon the world, estimated as high as 10%. Accordingly, the 2nd and 5th chapters of The Thousand Sons were rapidly assigned to curtail such a wanton excess of human psychics, with many within the deployed forces marveling at the almost impossibility that the world had not fallen to a grand mal immaterial incursion. Despite the initial optimism the campaign was launched with, Planetfall showed the 15th that despite the familiarity of the sorceress arts they were facing, they were unprepared for the scale that they would be unleashed with. The Byzantine were no rabble of cultists. They were a highly trained and coordinated sect whose members had not only superlative skills, but unshakable loyalty to their solar deity and his priesthood. They who could hear the light of the stars. Their powers appeared to rival those of the Legion themselves, pitching The Thousand Sons into a battle that was far more equal than many they had ever faced. The conflict exists in scant records, few that survive, speaking to the content of the engagements in terms specific. It paints an apocalyptic picture. A sky turned black by unnatural storms and an earth rent by the hands of angry gods. Airstorms roiled across the Metropolis who need to be turned and directed as mines clashed on a plane beyond mortal Ken, all the while the very air thrumming with impossible forces. The very apex of the conflict, when the Legion was being tested as it had never been before, it is recorded, thanks to Legion attendance ships in orbit, that a single scream of unbearable pain broke into the minds of all, human and astartes, planet side and in high anger. It was death, the first death that marked the beginning of the Legion's darkest days. The warrior's name is not known. In what records remained upon Prospero after its burning, he had simply referred to as Daleth. The word is one of significance, or would almost certainly be if any survived who spoke the tongues of impossibly ancient old earth. I have by authority been assured that it, by technicalities, means door, but in symbolic terms that can be rendered as a portal to unknowable beyonds, or as decision made to step forward are the unsealing of spaces and frontiers unknown. Had the Legion understood these implications or possessed their own, we will never know. For poor Daleth, he did mark a step forward, a great and terrible one. His body rebelled against him, simply put. In a sudden and violent transformation, his flesh became as an expanding liquid, flowing out of the cracks of his swelling armor. His blood spurting from ruptured veins at such pressure it misted in the air. Protrusions of bone fusing with the Ceramite, all the while screaming, screaming into the minds of every soul that yet lived upon the world and in its orbit. The only solution was death. His despairing brothers, half manic from the screaming that cacophonyed around their skulls, tore into their kin with bolter and blade, dousing what remained in fire, till there was not left but ash upon the storm choked air. Byzant was rendered compliant shortly thereafter. All present had known of Daleth's passing, regardless of whether they had been planet side at the time or stationed in orbit. All swore that word of it would never reach any outside the Legion. It was hoped, in retrospect naively, that this incident had been singular, a localized warp flux caused by the sheer amount of immaterial energy being unleashed by both sides at the Byzantine War. Senior Thousand Sons command continued to prosecute their campaigns as they always had, unleashing the total might of the Legion's psychic potential. It is unknown when the second incident occurred, for the third, for the fourth, fifth, sixth. Only the fifteenth knew, and while it is absolutely certain records were kept of the circumstances and timing of each so that they may be studied, they were unsurprisingly never made available to outsiders. It may have been months or years after Byzant, but it did happen and then again and again and again. It now had a name, a terror to haunt the Legion. The Flesh Change It followed the same horrific pattern that had befallen poor Daleth, massive, sudden, and utterly uncontrollable physical mutation. The response was akin to that of Byzant, with the Legion scrambling to hide the secrets. Circumstances, however, made such an effort nearly impossible. The Flesh Change had absolutely no predictors. It could strike any fifteenth Legion Astartes at any point. Typically, it would occur when the Astartes in question was utilizing their psychic talents, but that was not always the case. Nor indeed did it strike individuals. In some cases, it affected hundreds at once. It was an epidemic of total lethality with no discernible cause. Naturally, the information eventually leaked beyond the Legion's ability to control it, making its way to the higher echelons of the Imperial military regime, specifically the offices of the Sigillite and the Divisio's Telepathica and Biologis. Many who were now made cognizant of the issue drew the same conclusion. It could only be rooted in the genetics of the Legion as a whole. If it were, say, a Genophage akin to that which had almost destroyed the third Legion in its infancy, or worse yet, the cascading cellular degeneration that beset the Ligio Cataegis, the Thunder Warriors during the Unification Wars, none could rule upon with any authority. Plenty, of course, were quick to point out that the Legion's psychers were the root cause, the grand mal-mutation being a widely known side effect of unrestrained immaterial energy use. From without, the remainder of the Imperium observed the Legion that became increasingly insular and erratic in their operations. The former was not exactly new, but the latter was. Thousand Sun's forces would inexplicably pull out of war zones or arrive late. Exertus Imperialus or Mechanicum forces had served alongside them saw a curious increase in inexplicable disappearances. One suspects that these were desperate Legionaries attempting to silence unfortunate witnesses who beheld that which they should not have. The Legion could do not but struggle on, unable to simply disengage from the Great Crusade for obvious reasons, but all the while desperately struggling for a cure to the terror that had befallen them. Personal diaries, or what survives of them, grants us precious insight into this period in the Legion's history. The flesh change was sudden in some creeping in others. It was not always a stunning outbreak like those that had befallen poor Daleth. In some cases a Legionary could feel, sense, or even see the affliction begin to take hold. Many techniques were utilized to attempt to arrest or control its spread. For the Thousand Suns were scholars of Arcana unparalleled and frantically plumbed the depths of their archives, for whatever scraps of information they felt could potentially aid them in their plight. Some attempted long lost alchemical or biogenic methods to isolate the areas of their body they deemed in danger, while others bent their sheer force of psychic will into the suppression of their coming mutations. Some were even placed into stasis, either voluntarily committing themselves as soon as they felt their flesh begin to rebel, or crammed bodily into the vital chambers by their desperate brothers even as their bodies liquefied before their very eyes. As the years ground on, more and more brothers were committed to this dreamless brotherhood. The Thousand Suns battled on during all of this, but casualties upon the field of battle and the relentless attrition of the flesh change were reaping a terrible toll upon their now dwindling numbers. Ironically, even as their brothers succumbed to the curse of the flesh, as newly raised Astartes realized the terrible fate of the Legion that they had become a part of, the powers of those Thousand Suns yet unaflected only continued to grow in scope and scale. Even as they battled the flesh change, the Legion still continued to refine, develop and explore their psychic potential, manifesting new and ever more destructive powers with each passing year. Some chroniclers have defended this action in the past, stating that given their commitments to the Great Crusade and the Imperium as a frontline combat Astartes Legion, they had no choice but to compensate for their ongoing deficiencies with the most readily available skills they had. At the risk of editorializing, it is hard for your most humble of servants to see this as anything other than the Legion's character in its purest, most lamentable form. The Thousand Suns, despite all evidence that doing so may either be causing or exacerbating their affliction, continued to use their powers simply because they believed they had the right to do so. Remember about the force-multiplying effects of battle-psychers. They were still Astartes, capable of taking worlds by bolter and gen-hanced power alone, yet they did not. They appeared to welcome the seclusion from the Imperium, becoming a Legion mendicant, devoid of kinship for with their cousins, continuing their paths of conquest under their own power. They hoped there was a perverse validation in the loneliness and torment they were enduring, a vindication that despite their challenges, they were still able to claim for the Emperor's realm worlds no other Legion could. The Thousand Suns were now upon the precipice, their numbers bleeding away into nothing, calls for their censure now being turned to calls for their dissolution and disbandment. A mercy, some said, to prevent one of the Legion as Astartes from fading into ignominy and shame. Prospero was a planet shaped by legacy, one of both civilization and ruination. A kin to the old earth as described in legend, it possessed a diverse biosphere and climate, and had in the depths of the age of technology being settled in the ancient age of technology during the time of the first human stellar hegemonies. These settlers had colonized every continent on the planet, raising massive metropolis and developing their world into one of peace, understanding, and scholarship. However, as with so many human worlds during the age of strife, this had come to ruin. While the precise course of events is impossible to establish, all signs point to Prospero's population undergoing a massive surge in Psyker births, in an all too common occurrence galaxy wide during the old night. But this, as bad as it was, was merely a prelude to an even worse calamity. The Psyknoen, a predatory species that dwells both within real space and the warp, descended upon the planet, or experienced their own population boom, for the method of their reproduction is truly foul. The eggs of these Xenos filth require a psychically sensitive mind in which to gestate. They are laid, for want of a better term, in the immaterial plane, fusing with the warp presence of the Psyker until they blossom into dreadful maturity within real space. It is a spectacularly horrific way to die, and what it gives birth to is nothing less than one of the most vicious imperial parasites outside of the enslavers, or the never-born themselves. With the crop of Psykers rarely found in the span of the galaxy upon which to glut, the Psyknoen toppled the Prosperine civilization almost overnight. What survivors remained, cling to their knowledge, arcana and technology fled to find the last true bastion of Prospero, Tizca, the city of light. This metropolis was a true jewel, its pyramids made of crystal and marble rising far above clean, airy boulevards flanked by glorious statuary and public art, all the while the breeze from the sea wafting throughout the city. Despite the ravages of the Psyknoen, the Psyker genome expressed itself just as strongly among the surviving Prosperine. Almost every member of society possessed some measure of psychic potential. While this would have spelled doom for countless worlds, those of Prospero maintained full control over their powers. As a millennia passed, great schools and traditions emerged through which their potential could be channeled, harnessed and made safe for the betterment of all. Through this world, this gleaming prize of civilization in a storm-wracked galaxy fell from the sky a king in crimson. Magnus the Red, fifteenth son of the emperor, plunged from the stars into the heart of Tizca itself, his arrival being not only physical but aetheric. As Prosperine records spoke of the populous awakening suddenly at the moment of his impact, their dreams filled with riotous light. Naturally, for as discerning and studious a society as Prospero, every aspect of this event was meticulously recorded, and indeed debated upon. Few could deny that such a strange event was portentious in the extreme, although whether the omens were a boon or a curse to the city, none could say. Or rather not for centuries to come, if I may offer some gallows humor. The child, unmarked and uninjured by his fault to the planet, grew to maturity in a kind, nurturing, and intellectually challenging society. The rigors of the latter he applied himself to with the dedication that bordered upon the obsessive. As with his brothers, Magnus was sculpted by the world that he landed upon, as much as he would go on to sculpt it in kind. But unlike so many of his gene kin, the Cyclops did not have to struggle or claw his way to supremacy. Not for him was the dank of Nostramo, or the fighting pits of Nusiriya, or even the lethal politicking of Olympus. Prospero was a civilization of care and kindness, and within it, Magnus flourished. Under the eyes of his tutor, Amon, the Prosperion realized that this child had the potential far beyond the limits any of them had previously imagined, and sought, where possible, to temper the towering ambition of so singular an individual, with humility and empathy. Wisdom, Amon would tell his charge, was far more valuable than knowledge, as the universe had a way of burning the fingers of those who groped around too blindly in their arrogance. It was of course not long before the pupil outstripped the master, Magnus, as with many of his brothers, rose to the pinnacle of the city's governmental and academic circles, reshaping the world that had forged him and expanding its already peerless scholarship. Through warp-worn divination, Magnus and his covens scryed the imiterium for knowledge of the past, present and indeed future, filling librarians with information thought long lost, or discoveries not even conceived. Shaps of scientific knowledge became almost commonplace, and the untangling of mysteries thought inscrutable was merely a day of the week. Crimson King, as he became known, was truly in his ascendancy. Some colleagues of mine in ages past have speculated that a bond, or connection, existed between the Emperor and Magnus during this time. Magnus himself is known to have claimed such, stating that he was never truly separated from his father as his brothers have been. Some of his statements are far more direct, that he by maturity was holding frequent psychic communion with the Emperor, learning the skills of a theoretical craft from his sire as much as his tutor Amon, and that the two had frequently quested across the immaterial realm together. How much of this is true, none can say. Both the Emperor and Magnus were of course beings of transcendent psychic might, and the workings of the Arcane are strange and uncanny indeed. But it is also likely that Magnus may have been speaking metaphorically, or poetically, as he was wont to do. This all being said, the Emperor certainly possessed the foresight enough that, upon the great crusades reaching Prospero, he arrived for the unification with his long lost son, alongside all that remained of the legion Magnus's genetic code had sired. It was left of the 15th, scant few thousand, knelt before their Primarch. The moment was one of complicated emotions for Magnus. At least he had his disciples, sons of his own line, capable of rising with him into the bold new frontier for humanity he had dreamed about in his wildest of idealistic fantasies. But this was one so reduced by calamitous circumstance that the Cyclops' heart was nearly broken. Matters worsened still. Even as the Primarch welcomed his sons to their new home, even as Prospero took its place within the Imperium, so too did the rates of the flesh-change emergence hasten. Almost as if contact with their Primarch had caused the gene seed of the thousand sons to rebel further, pushing it into a final, horrific phase of the curse. In Magnus, this was of course simply untenable. Harrowed by his son's account of the change, only now to see it rise up at the very moment of their reunification, the Primarch bent his every iota of knowledge, wisdom, and power, curing the ailment in its totality. In his own way, he clearly counted this as a test, a trial by fire as much as an act of fatherly love. Here was an unsolvable riddle, a blight that neither the legion savants nor the emperor himself appeared to be able to counteract. Surely there was no greater proof of the value of Prospero, of what it's, what his learning, what all they have accomplished, what this could do for the betterment of the human future. And Magnus was victorious. That much is history. The means by which he accomplished this. Well therein lies only shadows and doubt. The cure was found, but the method of its finding, of its cost, is uncertain. What Prosperine Records remain state that Magnus consulted every single biologian, medicaid, alchemist, and geneticist upon the world, and bent his will to examining every librarian and archive the planet held, requesting additional resources from the Imperium and the Mechanicum, and his father's own household too. It is beyond doubt that Terra, Mars, and the Imperial household provided what they could, although the extent of which, given the secrets jealously guarded by all, is difficult to ascertain. Magnus was known to have grown increasingly desperate, as avenues thought promising failed to yield results, as lore ancient and untested proved to have no application, as more and more experiments became nothing but dead ends of sunken time and lost efforts. The Crimson King despaired, at one point to such an extent he withdrew into the sanctum, at the heart of his Prosperine Temple, to meditate upon what options yet lay open for him, seeking perhaps a path yet unconsidered, yet hidden from even his prodigious sight. Casting his mind across the warp, his aether presence in its grief sought far and wide across the realm immaterial for an answer desperately needed. This is where what can be independently verified ends, one should note, given all that has transpired since, both in terms of the burning, and the heresy, and all that has occurred in the ten thousand years after. It has been suspected far and wide and by parties diverse, that in his torment, down in the depths of the new place that is the warp, Magnus came across what he was looking for, but that to obtain it, a price was demanded. Quite what held the precious lore the Kings and Crimes sought inches into the realm of madness and outright heresy, the very discussion of the entities and invocation of not only their names, but their concepts is a danger of the highest order. One considers it, after all has been said, that in all deepest likelihood, based on all available evidence that in that pit, the Cyclops met with the feathered many, they that change the path material, or at least some aspect of this greater concept. Within this things grasp lay the secret to solving the flesh of his sons. In a universe that so beloveds its dramas, and within the unreality of the warp so wedded to the hectic weight of stories, a desperate father seeking to cure for his sons, only to strike a packed Faustian beyond belief, it has the ring of universal truth to it. Certainly the emanations of the Imperium, the monstrous self-aware hurricanes of pain and hatred they are shards of, apparently sought to bargain with those of the mortal plane, ensnaring the desperate and the arrogant within their honeyed webs. Magnus the Red, empowered by his knowledge so sure of his power, yet panicking for the death of those born of his blood, what more perfect a target could exist. Should this have been the case, it is of course certain that what was sold was a doom wrapped within salvation, because that simply is how the powers of the warp operate. Given how history was to transpire after this point, I need to say little. To say that the thousand sons were reinvigorated by the work of their Primarch would be a disservice to language. Mind you, given the size of the legion subsequent to the curing of the flesh change, it would not have been a significant task to reintroduce much in the way of reforms. The fifteenth legion were now living up to the truth of their own name once more. One thousand individuals remained active, a number that, had it been reported widely, would no doubt have caused some raised eyebrows for the curious symmetry it represented with their initial founding. What remained, at least, was fertile ground for one such as Magnus to cultivate. Those Astartes that had resisted the flesh change were mighty in abilities indeed, but under the tutelage of their Primarch, these were refined to hitherto unknowable complexities. The five Prosperine cults were embedded into the fabric of the legion, with each Astartes joining that which suited his gifts and temperament. The legion was rebuilt, from the legion's hierarchy to its language, fine-tuned all by Magnus's idiosyncrasies into a truly unique combat force. Warrior scholars like never before were the Thousand Sons, and this was reflected in the intake standards, even more refined than they were previously. The Crimson King introduced rigorous academic requirements for aspirants to meet, prizing intellectual refinement as much as raw psychic potential and genetic stability. Initially, these were all drawn from Prospero, the seemingly unique population of Tizca, rendering hundreds of successful candidates, while other worlds would have supplied a scant dozen. Included in this number two were senior figures from the cults. Ordinarily, the Astartes ascension procedures became risky to impossible to implement once a human passes through adolescence, but with the alchemic techniques of his homeworld and the phenomenal command of bio-mancy and other psychochemical arts that Magnus possessed, the legion was able to achieve a success rate, and indeed completeness to later life ascension that outstripped every adept within the Imperium. Magnus's old master Amon was foremost amongst them, granted a physiology and functional immortality of an Astartes at years far beyond that of even unsuccessful aspirants, and with a degree of vitality that similar figures, such as Cor-Phaeron, of the 17th Legion word bearers, could not hope to match. These risen masters would be crucial to the intake and training of new Legion brothers, overseeing the process with a keen dedication seen by many as gratitude for the gifts bestowed upon them by the Primarchs' fidelity. When the reborn Housen Suns rejoined the great Crusade in earnest, the change apparent could not have been more pronounced. Many a legion had undergone seismic shifts in their character upon reunification with their Primarch. Some indeed had become almost inversions of their previous selves, hijacked as they had become by the sheer force of their Genesire's personality. With Magnus, however, the 15th Legion appeared to have finally, truly found itself and its purpose. They were elevated by him and he by they, a symbiotic relationship that seemed to bring only joy, triumph, and purpose. An avowed utopian in the truest sense, Magnus entered his father's great crusade with the express stated purpose, that his mission was to elevate humanity. Many of his brothers could be considered idealists, such as any who operated within the totalitarian framework of the imperial regime could be considered thus, but theirs was a hope born of militaristic frames of mind, or perhaps societal and civil development altogether mundane. Magnus could little stand minds whose views were so myopic in nature, or those he considered short-sighted. For the Crimson King, anything other than reaching for the impossible was considered a failure of imagination. This naturally put him at odds with some of his more pragmatically minded brothers, but made natural kin with the most optimistic amongst them, namely Sanguinius of the Blood Angels and Lorgar of the Wordbearers. Part of his drive to push the species towards heights undreamt was a furious desire to accumulate knowledge and lore, as a child of academia through and through, only through the recovery of science lost, and the discovery of that yet unfound, could humanity achieve the enlightenment that the emperor and his imperial truth had so clearly ordained they pursue. To this end, it became stated 15th Legion policy, that the knowledge and learning of every planet that was rendered compliant be catalogued, archived, and transmitted to Prospero for further study. All forms of media and record, from parchment to books to cogitator vaults, were meticulously digitized and recorded and, if possible, physically shipped off-world once the banner of the Aquila had finally been raised. This was not merely restricted to human worlds, Xenos artifacts and technology were similarly snapped up by the Legion, often drawing suspicious eyes from their fellow Astartes, and in the cases of Technologica, the more dogmatic of the Mechanicum Tagmata. Indeed, the appetite for lore verged on obsession with some members of the Legion, their acquisitiveness often leading them on campaigns that made little to no strategic sense unless one was privy to the scrap of information that was leading them to such great discoveries. In some cases, members of the Legion would be withdrawn from frontline combat service on the express wishes of its command staff, or a primarch, to be dispatched to worlds that had already been rendered compliant and stable, simply in order to investigate or acquire that which the Legion deemed valuable. This behavior, along with the Legion's already fairly toxic reputation across the Imperium, and Magnus' open and boisterous use of his psychic powers, did little to change the minds of those who either hated or feared the Thousand Sons. If anything, the split in opinion was only intensified. The Legion, and their primarch, did little to attempt to dissuade their naysayers. Theirs was now a pride born of utter self-confidence, a reciprocal sustaining loop between Gene Sire and Gene's son. This is not to say they did not seek to persuade and educate. The Thousand Sons were no magpie hoarders of lore. Indeed, they eagerly sought to raise up and enlighten wherever they could, sharing the fruits of their burgeoning utopia with wherever they could find fertile ground. Alas, too often they found said ground barren. Their aid spurned by bigotry and superstition, finding themselves labeled all too often with the strife-era monikers of witch and sorcerer. The Librarius, as discussed elsewhere within one's chronicles, is the most notable of such outreaches, but there were many more upon every level of scope and scale. Far too often, they were merely rebuked. Magnus steeled the hearts of his sons against this. Should the blinkered of the Imperium not wish to learn and educate their minds so lacking, then the Thousand Sons would simply make them see the rightness of their cause, through noble action, faultless comportment, and peerless scholarship. To many, this would naturally track as mere arrogance. The fifteenth simply could not help that. If a mind was so truly closed as to not accept enlightenment when offered in good and true faith, then what other paths were left open to them? Simply accept the presence of ignorance and bigotry within the Imperium, kowtow to the oblivious and blinkered and give their craven superstitions equal say in matters they knew nothing of. When aggrieved and helpless in the face of seemingly willful stupidity, it behooves one to simply turn the other cheek and carry on, to leave the unwilling to squat in their own intellectual squalor. Or so many within the Legion would off to pine. This was rarely a choice made venomously, although of course there existed a starties of the Thousand Sons who would say such of the ignorant within the Imperium in less than charitable terms. More often than not, the feelings expressed were those of a profound pity for the lack of vision such bigotry betrayed, but also resolve as to the course the Legion had set itself upon. The Great Crusade was the golden opportunity for humanity, it appeared, a chance like never before to seize true enlightenment from the cosmos and bend it for the good of all. It is easy to see how this infectious utopianism of the Primarch could extend to that of his sons, and doubtless the Legion accomplished so much in these years under such fervently idealistic ideology. But as with so many things in this most hated universe as ours, the claws of fate are nothing if not pernicious, and they were closing around the Legion with the passage of each grain of sand in the celestial hourglass. Until such a time as I may relate more of this tragedy, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com slash Oculus Imperia. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter at Oculus Imperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.