This inability to replace losses is a problem that afflicted all of the Traitor Legions as the Heresy progressed. Today, it drives them to seek out uncorrupted Imperial Space Marine gene-seed stores whenever possible. First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon ultimately managed to restore a measure of discipline to the XVI th Legion and bring its disparate warbands under his control after he assumed Horus' place as the Warmaster of Chaos, mainly through exercising a level of fear and violence that could cow even the greatest of the Legion's Chaos Champions. In the time when the Emperor's eye first began to fall beyond Terra, He raised new armies to fight His Great Crusade to reunify all of Humanity across the galaxy. He drew these new troops in part from the forces that had already unified Terra during the Unification Wars of the late 30 th Millennium, from willing Terran volunteers like those who comprised the XVI th Space Marine Legion who were implanted with the gene-seed of their missing Primarch Horus like all the Astartes of the First Founding. These recruits were also drawn in part from the Emperor's subjugated enemies, and together they represented the first generation of Space Marines.

During the dark rituals that followed within the temple, Horus' spirit was transferred from his body into the Immaterium. There, he bore witness to a nightmare vision of the future. He saw the Imperium of Man as a repressive, violent theocracy, where the Emperor and several of his primarchs (but not Horus) were worshipped as gods by the masses. While this vision of the Imperial future granted by the Chaos Gods was a true one, it was ironically an outcome largely created by the Warmaster's own actions. The Dark Gods also revealed to Horus that the Emperor had once entered the Warp on the world of Molech millennia before and treated with the Ruinous Powers to gain the knowledge necessary to use the power of the Warp in the process of the primarch's own creation. In the days that followed his miraculous recovery on Davin's moon, Horus' officers detected a change in his character. The Warmaster proceeded to use the warrior lodge present in the XVI th Legion to begin to subvert his officers and their Astartes to the service of the Dark Gods and to build support for his plan of rebellion against the Emperor. Loken was inducted into the Mournival after the Luna Wolves' campaign on the world of Sixty-Three-Nineteen, bringing it into Imperial Compliance. Loken also had the distinction of being the only member of the Mournival not to share a direct facial similarity to the Warmaster Horus. The Triumph at Ullanor, an ancient mural portraying the gathering of the brother-primarchs at the Triumph of Ullanor; from left-to-right: Sanguinius, Mortarion, Magnus, Angron, Jaghatai Khan, Lorgar, Rogal Dorn, Horus and FulgrimAssault on Dahinta (Unknown Date.M30) - On the world of Dahinta, the Luna Wolves fought against a race of self-aware machines called the Overseers, who were led by the artificial intelligence known as the Archdroid. One of the Emperor's longest-standing commands was that no sentient machines could be allowed to exist, for they had nearly caused the extinction of Mankind when they had rebelled against their human overseers during the Dark Age of Technology. Despite heavy casualties amongst, the thinking machines were wiped from the face of Dahinta by the savagery of the Astartes. Only after the campaign had ended was the full truth learned: the Overseers had been created by a vanished offshoot of humanity that had settled Dahinta, perhaps during the Age of Technology. The Overseers had cared for their lost masters' crumbling cities long after they had become extinct or left their homeworld behind.

Many of these titles betrayed the culture of Cthonian gang honours and the tradition of reputation and internecine warfare from which they had sprung. This culture had grown steadily stronger over the years within the rank and file of the XVI th Legion's intake of Neophytes. The heart of the Sons of Horus Legion was the company, which served as the Legion's principal military division. Made up of a grouping of squads under the leadership of an officer with the rank of Captain, the company was the base currency of campaigns and battles. Beneath these non-commissioned officers were the rank-and-file Battle-Brothers of the Luna Wolves and the Sons of Horus. This simple hierarchy belied the truth of matters when applied in practice within the XVI th Legion. Within each rank, prestige and personal reputation counted for much within the brotherhood of Space Marines.The Luna Wolves were the XVI th Space Marine Legion raised by the Emperor of Mankind on Terra at the dawn of the Great Crusade in the late 30 th Millennium. After the Emperor discovered the Legion's Primarch Horus on the world of Cthonia, and gave him command of the Luna Wolves, Horus went on to lead the XVI th Legion in earning thousands of battle honours over the span of the 200 standard years of the Great Crusade.

Garviel Loken - Loken was the Captain of the 10 th Company and was made a member of the Mournival after the death of Hastur Sejanus. Loken possessed one of the most analytical and perceptive minds amongst the Astartes of the XVI th Legion. Loken remained firmly loyal to the Emperor and his vision of a new Golden Age for Mankind and was one of the first amongst the Sons of Horus to realize that the Warmaster had changed after his miraculous healing in the Temple of the Serpent Lodge on Davin and that he was subsequently leading the XVI th Legion down a dark and dangerous path. Loken, along with his friends Captain Tarik Torgaddon and Sergeant Nero Vipus, were selected by Horus to lead the Sons of Horus' participation in the campaign on the world of Isstvan III, which had recently rebelled against the Emperor and declared itself an independent principality. However, shortly after the liberation of the planet's capital, Choral City, from the Slaaneshi rebels, Horus betrayed the Loyalist Astartes he had deliberately sent to the planet below, and bombarded its surface from orbit with Life-Eater virus bombs. However, because of the heroic actions of Captain Saul Tarvitz of the Emperor's Children, many of the Loyalists manage to survive the initial bombardment. Captains Loken, Torgaddon, and Tarvitz take command of the Loyalist elements that remained and fought a three-month-long holding campaign against the Traitors that delayed their plans to move on Terra. Finally, when Horus had had enough, he sent Loken and Torgaddon's traitorous former Mournival brothers, Ezekyle Abaddon and Horus Aximand, to the planet's surface to kill Loken and Torgaddon while he prepared to wipe out the remaining Loyalists with an orbital bombardment. In the ensuing fight, Torgaddon was beheaded by Aximand, but before Loken could be similarly slain by Abaddon, the ruins they had been fighting in were crushed by the Imperator-class Titan Dies Irae. Loken somehow managed to survive the collapse of the ruins upon him but was left badly wounded in both body and spirit, having been driven partially insane by his Legion's betrayal. He was presumed killed by the XVI th Legion following the final bombardment of the Choral City, but survived and took to wandering the ruins of the Choral City, slaying the groups of wandering Plague Zombies who were raised from the corpses scattered across the dead world by the taint of Nurgle whose influence had grown on the world as a result of the use of the Life-Eater virus to kill its population. Several standard years later, Loken was found alive and partially insane in the ruins of the Choral City on Isstvan III by the former Death Guard Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro, who has been sent to find Loken so that he can become one of the first Astartes to join the Knights-Errant, the special agents of Malcador the Sigillite during the Horus Heresy. Garro engaged Loken in a duel and managed to restore his sanity by reminding him of who he was and that he possessed a duty to fight the Emperor's enemies for so long as he still drew breath. However, such mutations were seen as a mark of favour from the Chaos Gods and were generally displayed with pride by Sons of Horus Astartes, though it also meant that the Legion would soon no longer be able to produce new Astartes from its own gene-seed to replenish its ranks since the Astartes organs would not properly cultivate or had become so genetically warped as to kill any human male they were implanted within. The First Pacification of Luna in 703.M30 was perhaps the most famous of these early victories for the XVI th Legion, but the breaking of the Coriolis Enclaves and the Five Winter left scars in the collective consciousness of Terran society that persist even now. In the Capridian Sinks, it is still common for traders and gamblers to refer to the Legion's ancient number of sixteen as "the counting of the wolf." The Dark Gods portrayed themselves as victims of the Emperor's psychic might, and claimed falsely that they had no real interest in the happenings of the material world. Magnus the Red, the sorcerous primarch of the Thousand Sons Legion, had also travelled into the Warp via sorcery to try and stop Horus from turning to Chaos. Magnus explained that the Warmaster's vision was only one among many possible futures, but one that Horus alone could prevent. Loken was highly regarded as a warrior and commander by both his brethren and his primarch. Admired for his cool head and intelligence as well as his record in battle, he was given the honour of induction into the Mournival, his Legion's cadre of close advisers to their Primarch Horus.

Pelvic Pain: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment Options

One avatar of the increasing influence of the Legion's Cthonian brothers was the late reemergence of Cthonian gang-sigils graven into a given Space Marine's armour that recorded his notable kills and deeds, as well as to which company of the Legion they belonged. This was a practice which accelerated rapidly after the XVI th Legion had transitioned into its new identity as the Sons of Horus following the elevation of Horus to the rank of Warmaster. Rassek - Rassek was a Terminator Squad Sergeant attached to the 10 th Company. He was possibly a member of the elite Justaerin Terminator Squad of the 1 st Company. There was no fixed strength for a company within the Luna Wolves and the Sons of Horus. While other Legions codified and enforced strict limits on the size of similar formations, this was not the case amongst the Sons of Horus, which had begun in more regimented form, but had become increasingly ad hoc in structure and disposition over time. Company strengths as small as 36 and as large 972 Astartes were recorded by datafactors during the XVI th Legion's action against the Dasim Patrimony, for example. Whatever its origins, the primary duty of the Mournival was to advise Horus in all aspects of strategy, tactics, diplomacy and all other matters that concerned the Warmaster or the Luna Wolves Legion. The Mournival could be used to serve Horus' political needs at times when he dealt with the other Primarchs or other Imperial organisations like the Imperial Army, various Imperial Planetary Governors, the Council of Terra and the Mechanicum. Horus, already jealous and resentful of the Emperor, proved all too receptive to the Ruinous Powers' false vision. The Chaos Gods' pact with Horus was simple: "Give us the Emperor and we will give you the galaxy." Driven by his jealousy, desire for power and anger at what he saw as his father's abandonment of him, Horus accepted the Ruinous Powers' offer.

While Abaddon and Horus Aximand opposed him in their desperation to save Horus Lupercal's life by any means necessary, Tarik Torgaddon stood with Loken in believing that such a violation of the Imperial Truth could only lead to even greater harm than the Primarch's death. The rift in the Mournival over this issue nearly came to violence, but Loken ultimately gave into the broader Legion's feelings on the issue and he chose to wait and see the result. Space Marine fought Space Marine as Terra itself was finally invaded during the climax of the Heresy, and the Imperial Palace itself was besieged and breached by the Forces of Chaos during the Battle of Terra. But in the end it was Horus who was slain by the psychic power of the Emperor aboard his Battle Barge Vengeful Spirit, and with him died the rebellion. Guljuk Ygethddon - Sergeant Ygethddon commanded a Despoiler Squad of the 9 th Battle Company, 2 nd Battalion. Though the Luna Wolves had won many victories in their years of ceaseless conflict, one would eclipse all others and see them reborn once again. The greatest of the nascent Imperium's victories during the high point of the Great Crusade came in the form of the defeat of the largest Ork empire ever encountered.

Avakhol Hurr - Hurr was a part of the XVI th Legion's Rukal Breacher Battalion, which was primarily employed as a support assault contingent during boarding action and siege operations. The Rukal customarily practised the macabre preservation of any blood spray from their previous engagements on their armour as a visible sign of their destructive intent. The Sons of Horus' defeat at the Battle of Terra and exile to the Eye of Terror was a crushing blow to the collective ego of the Legion. It took all the strength of character of their new commander, Abaddon the Despoiler, to restore the Legion's sense of pride and refocus its Astartes on their ultimate goal -- to destroy everything that the Emperor of Mankind created and raise themselves up as the new rulers of the galaxy in the names of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos.