They healed his grievous wound and filled him with the powers of the Warp. Renouncing his oath to the Emperor, Horus led his Legion into worship of the myriad Chaos Gods in the form of Chaos Undivided. He then sought to turn many of his fellow primarchs to the service of Chaos, and succeeded with Angron of the World Eaters, Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children and Mortarion of the Death Guard, who were the first of many to follow, along with many regiments of the Imperial Army and several Titan Legions of the Mechanicum. The wearing of pelts of such augmented canid predators increasingly marked out the field commanders and officers of the Luna Wolves. The XVI th would not be the only Space Marine Legion to bear such a title and embrace this imagery as their own, but they were the first.

As the Imperial Warmaster, Horus took over command of the Great Crusade, and accepted his new duties with earnest dedication. However, there was much dissension in the ranks of the primarchs and other parties in the Imperium over the Emperor's decision to withdraw from the campaign and return to Terra as well as to reorganise the political administration of the Imperium under the control of a Council of Terra headed by His regent, Malcador the Sigillite. Only a handful of the primarchs, amongst them a scheming Lorgar, remained steadfast beside the Warmaster during this period of conflict. The XVI th Legion's homeworld, the ancient Mining World of Cthonia, no longer exists, having apparently lost geo-structural integrity and broken apart into asteroids and debris during the centuries following the Horus Heresy. Certainly the once ore-rich planet was riddled with mine workings right through to its dead core as the numerous gangers that formed the majority of the world's population may originally have been imported as work teams to maintain the crumbling tunnels.The XVI th Legion's Great Crusade fleet was likewise accorded to be among the greatest under any single commander's flag, with in excess of one hundred capital ships and perhaps three times that figure in smaller Cruisers and Escorts under Horus' direct command. Taking into account likely losses from the ground war that followed the virus-bombing of Isstvan III, and elements of the Sons of Horus Legion not in the Isstvan System at the time, it would follow that Horus began his war of betrayal with around 70,000-110,000 Space Marines of his own Legion at his disposal, with considerable evidence present in Imperial records that the latter figure is the more accurate.

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. Assault 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. Iacton Qruze, "The Half-Heard" - Qruze was the Captain of the 3 rd Company, a very old Space Marine who was a native of Cthonia. By the time of the Horus Heresy he was one of the only Cthonian Astartes still serving in the XVI th Legion who remembered what it was like when the Luna Wolves had served only the Emperor before Horus had been rediscovered by his father. Qruze had been a captain of the Luna Wolves since the Legion's inception and was even a veteran of the Unification Wars on Terra. Considered ancient by dint of his length of service to the Legion as well as his continued die-hard loyalty to habits of the Legion from the time of its Terran past that he could not seem to break. Qruze, like most Terran Astartes in the Traitor Legions, remained loyal to the Emperor when his Horus turned to the service of Chaos in pursuit of his own ambitions. Recognising that the Sons of Horus no longer represented the Astartes he had once known, Qruze rescued the civilian Remembrancers Mersadie Oliton and Euphrati Keeler as well as the Senior Iterator Kyril Sindermann from Horus' massacre of civilians on his flagship the Vengeful Spirit and fled with them to the Frigate Eisenstein during the virus-bombing of Isstvan III. During the flight of the Eisenstein to Terra, Qruze formed a firm bond with the former Death Guard Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro, the pair were told by Malcador the Sigillite, the Regent of Terra, that they, along with the Sister of Silence Amendera Kendel, were to form the beginnings of an organisation that would utilise "men and women of an inquisitive nature, hunters who might seek the witch, the traitor, the mutant, the xenos" -- later known as the Imperial Inquisition. 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. Serghar Targost - Captain of the 7 th Company and the Lodge Master of the Sons of Horus' warrior lodge, the heart of the Legion's growing allegiance to the Chaos Gods.

Top 10 Best Cryptocurrency Wallets of November 2023

The XVI th Legion showed a preference for the use of Tactical Squads. Squads configured in this form within the Luna Wolves and later the Sons of Horus outnumbered all other squad types combined throughout the Great Crusade. Horus remarked on several occasions that there were few challenges of war that could not be met by, or did not require, the use of such units. Before being chosen to join the Mournival, Loken's place had been filled by Captain Hastur Sejanus of the 4th Company, a particularly beloved friend of Horus who had been murdered during the negotiations to gain Imperial Compliance of the world of Sixty-Three-Nineteen. The rank of Captain within the Legion also held subtle variations of authority. Generally those in command of a lower numbered company outranked those in a higher numbered company, while those who had once had overall command of a campaign were considered superior to those officers he had commanded during that action. At the top of this informal but very real hierarchy of Legion officers were those Captains who served as Horus' closest advisors and in particular the First Captain of the Legion who commanded the elite 1 st Company and also served as his primarch's principal field officer and second-in-command. His strength of character was vouched for by Torgaddon and no less a personage than the Primarch of the Imperial Fists, Rogal Dorn, who was said to appreciate Loken's calm attitude. During a brief visit to the Vengeful Spirit, before his Legion's return to Terra, Dorn counseled Loken to always speak his mind as he saw it, advising that his humanity would balance Abaddon's choler and Horus Aximand's "lofty disdain," when the Mournival was advising the Warmaster. [1e] During the Battle of the Whisperhead Mountains on 63-19 Loken witnessed the Daemon Samus possess his comrade Xavyer Jubal, an event which scared him deeply and served as his first exposure to Chaos. [1f]

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. The XVI th Legion was originally a flexible fighting force, able to adapt to almost any combat situation. The Legion possessed an efficient chain of command, which fell into disarray after its primarch, Horus, was killed during the Battle of Terra. In the years immediately following the end of the Horus Heresy, the Sons of Horus' discipline broke down completely, as the Legion dissolved into a number of competing warbands of Chaos Space Marines, each led by a different Chaos Champion who maintained his rule through the favour of the Dark Gods and often lethal discipline. As with all of the Space Marine Legions, Horus' command as primarch over his own Legion was absolute. Beneath Horus were his Captains, beneath them were the squad Sergeants, and where a formation of squads came together for a purpose, the informal rank of "Chieftain" was given to the Sergeant granted field command authority, a matter not always of seniority, but rather selection of the best or most suited Astartes for the task at hand; an approach which fitted well within the Legion's pragmatic and sometimes impulsive approach to warfare. Compliance of Tethonus (Unknown Date.M30) - The Luna Wolves fought against an unidentified xenos-adversary whose identity is not recorded in existing Imperial records while bringing the world of Tethonus into Imperial Compliance. This Compliance action was a long siege of the xenos fortress-states on Tethonus. Horus had tasked the masters of the Forge World of Diamat to create continental siege machines; vast artillery pieces that could devastate the most powerful fortifications. But the war machines took much longer for the forge masters to complete than planned. By the time they were finished, the campaign on Tethonus had been over for over a standard year and a half, and Horus had moved on to other conquests. So the weapons were put into a depot on Diamat against the day when he would come to claim them. Fifty standard years later, Horus would reveal his perfidy at Isstvan III, and would send raiding forces to claim these siege engines for later use in his attempt to overthrow the Emperor of Mankind.The Mournival was broken during the Battle of Istvaan III as the majority of the four Traitor Legions at Istvaan III turned on the Loyalist Space Marines who remained within their ranks, and Loken and Torgaddon faced off against Abaddon and Aximand just before Horus' 63rd Expeditionary Fleet began its final orbital bombardment of the Loyalists' positions and ended the battle. Loken and Torgaddon were believed to have died during that bombardment, though Loken survived to later serve the Emperor as one of Malcador the Sigilite's special Space Marine covert agents known as the Knights-Errant.