Sons of Sanguinius (Modified Deathwatch)

"For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my Battle-Brother eternal.”

–Last Line of the Invocation Initiate of the Flesh Tearers

The Blood Angels are the noble descendants of that most puissant and angelic of the primarchs—Sanguinius. They are perhaps one of the most celebrated Chapters in the entire Imperium, their countless heroic deeds and victories known to untold billions of the Emperor’s subjects across the length and breadth of the Imperium. The beauteous, angelic visages of the Chapter’s heroes adorn gothic facades and stained glass windows in a million holy basilicas, and their portraits gaze serenely from endlessly copied and much cherished illuminated tomes.

   Yet, hidden from the multitudes, the Blood Angels harbour

a terrible curse. When their beloved primarch was slain at the hands of the arch-traitor Warmaster Horus at the very height of the Horus Heresy, every Blood Angel was doomed to share a portion of the pain inflicted upon his flawless form. From that day forth, every Blood Angel has been tormented by visions of the last moment of Sanguinius. The older the Space Marine gets, the more frequent and debilitating such waking nightmares become. Should he not fall in battle, every Blood Angel will one day become so consumed by these soul-searing visions that he will descend into a madness in which he must witness the death of Sanguinius over and over again, ever unable to intervene as the warmaster enacts his vile treachery. The very inevitability of their curse ennobles the Battle- Brothers of the Blood Angels, driving them ever onwards to a glorious death in the name of the Emperor and their primarch. Where lesser men might have surrendered to the dark urgings to shed the blood of the enemies of the Emperor, the Blood Angels have remained pure and noble for ten thousand years. Despite this, the Chapter is dying, for each year ever more of its brethren succumb to the so-called Red Thirst—the desire to rend limb from limb those responsible for the death of Sanguinius, and by extension every enemy of the Emperor. The death of Sanguinius represents one of the most perfidious and tragic moments of the Horus Heresy, for he died at the hands of his brother-primarch, the arch-traitor Warmaster Horus. Although some say that the sacrifice weakened the Warmaster just enough to allow the Emperor to defeat him, the death of Sanguinius is mourned to this day, and felt keenly by the Blood Angels, in whose veins his blood still pumps. When war calls and blood is spilled, the Blood Angels are gripped by a fury born of the last moments of their primarch’s life. For some, the thirst is too great and they are entirely overcome by what is called the Black Rage, cursed to end their days reliving their beloved primarch’s death over and over again. d The Blood Angels hail from a trio of worlds—the rust-red desert planet of Baal, and its two barren moons, Baal Prime and Baal Secundus. While Baal itself has always been a world of red rust deserts, it moons were once paradises. Yet, at some time around the end of the Dark Age of Technology, utter devastation was visited upon Baal and its moons. In a nameless, long-forgotten war, viral and nuclear weapons were unleashed, their effects so potent that many thousands of years later, all three worlds are still subject to deadly radiation storms. Their surfaces are scarred by vast plains of blackened glass and endless tracts of polluted desert. What must once have been oceans are now poisoned seas of toxic sludge, covered in layers of pallid dust. The people of the system must have died in their millions. But somehow, humanity prevailed. The populace became scavengers, picking the bones of their once great civilisation. Many must have perished, growing sickly and feeble as the atmosphere was radically altered. In the dark time that followed the total collapse of their society, it is likely that some became worse than scavengers, and turned in their desperation to cannibalism. Upon the surface of Baal is to be found, half buried amid oceans of dust, some evidence of a once great civilisation - vast edifices, incredible monuments that must have been constructed with masterful skill to have stood for so long. It is obvious that the people of Baal spent their time creating mighty statues of their rulers and their gods, and it is through this record that those people are known. One side effect from the ensuing radioactive atmosphere was inevitable. In time, the accumulated chemical and radioactive toxins that built up in the survivors’ bodies forced them to devolve into mutants, shambling parodies of the men their forefathers had once been. But there were some who held onto their humanity and preserved some semblance of sanity, forming tribes for mutual protection. But these were the embattled few, as a new and savage culture evolved amid the ruins of the old. The only social unit remaining was the tribe. For humanity and cannibal alike, the only folk they could rely on were their own kin. The people of the Baal system became nomads, shifting from place to place, picking the ruins clean, and warring