Editing Thousand Sons (section)

==History==
[[File:TSEarly.jpg|150px|thumb|right|Pre-Magnus Thousand Sons looking pretty schwing!]]
===Pre-heresy===
The Thousand Sons were one of the late developed legions, being used primarily by the [[Emperor|Big E]] to wipe the floor with whatever remaining resistance there was on Terra during the aftermath of the [[Unification Wars]]. Their creation began during a particularly violent Warp storm which cut Terra off from the rest of the galaxy for a short time. The Crusade ground to a halt for this time period, but the Emperor just shrugged His [[Pauldron|shoulders]] and got to work on other matters. Personally choosing the most genetically stable candidates He could find, the Emperor gathered up as many as met His criteria and implanted them with Magnus's Geneseed. The Legion's creation was extremely slow due to these restrictive criteria, but nobody besides the Emperor knew, aside from genetic stability, what these criteria actually were. After He had successfully implanted 1000 of these individuals, enough to meet the alpha stage of Legion building, He christened them the Thousand Sons. Initially, the Thousand Sons seemed not to be particularly noteworthy in any way; in fact their late creation saw them miss out on the Solar Reclamation completely. They were competent to be sure, but so were all the other Legions, most of whom had developed some particularly outstanding characteristic or other. Additionally, most had by this time a number of nigh-on impossible campaigns to their name, like the IX and XVI Legions, or spectacular exploits of valor and skill at arms, like the XVIII Legion. Yet despite being so apparently mundane, the Thousand Sons were noted to carry, almost to a man, an attitude of smug superiority. They, at least, clearly thought that they were worthy of their auspicious beginnings and special attention from the Emperor. This attitude, combined with them having done nothing to earn it in the eyes of the other Legions, set the stage for the Thousand Sons being rather isolated.

Then, about 20 years into the Crusade, the Thousand Sons began all at once to exhibit psychic powers, finally explaining why the Emperor had spent so much time and effort on them. With these new powers, they became one of the killiest of all the legions, with their powers offsetting their small numbers. It was now apparent why the Legion had received so much personal attention from the Emperor in its creation, and reactions to the revelation that they were all psykers was... mixed. Some thought that making psychic Astartes was a fantastic idea; it just made the killiest weapon in the Imperial arsenal all the more deadly. Most however, did not take this viewpoint. With the Age of Strife having ended within living memory, practically nobody in the Imperium had a particularly tolerant view of psykers. The horrific abominations wrought by mad sorcerers and Warp priests upon Terra and beyond, not to mention all the psychic xenos flitting about, had caused the vast majority of humans to look upon psykers with fear at best, and murderous hysteria at worst. As such, where the Thousand Sons had been regarded with annoyance by other Legions, now they were looked upon with genuine loathing by many of them. The Death Guard and Emperor's Children point blank refused to work with them, and their list of detractors would only grow larger over time. Nevertheless, they were tolerated because they were totally awesome, used their abilities to wondrous effect in service of the Imperium, and in general were exceptionally badass (Superhuman warrior-monk magicians for the win!!). Additionally, despite most in the Imperial Armed Forces hating them due to being psykers, the Emperor never issued any sort of censure of the Thousand Sons. As such, everyone essentially just had to let them be. Their honor roll started to balloon in size and quality, and for a time, they filled a niche of being the guys to call when a psychic enemy needed killing. Even the Emperor Himself utilized them on a number of occasions to combat the horrific psychic xenos known as the [[Khrave]].
[[File:TSHH.jpg|150px|thumb|left|Leave it to the nerdiest of the Primarchs to just self-insert for his legion's colors.]]

As time passed, the Thousand Sons became more and more skilled and powerful with their psychic abilities, but it came with a significant price. They began, in ever increasing numbers, to suffer from an utterly horrific condition known as the Flesh Change. At its most basic, it was an instantaneous mutation into a [[Chaos Spawn|That-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named]] that seemed to have exceedingly limited predictability in both onset and predisposition. From the very first case onward, even the TSons could see that their use of Warp sorcery was clearly one of the factors that was either causing or exacerbating this problem. However, the TSons arrogantly saw their powers as their indisputable right to wield, and doubled and tripled down on their usage. Needless to say, this put them in a very precarious position. They had initially alienated most of the other Legions by being asshats, and then the realization that they were all psykers had turned that dislike to hatred for many. Now, they were literally turning into half-transformed ''The Thing'' entities at random. If anyone found out about their degeneration, half the Imperium would be calling for their outright extermination, while the other half would look on with tepid support for these calls. As such, they did everything they could to hide the Flesh Change. But the problem would only grow worse over time due both to the Thousand Sons using ever increasing amounts of Warp sorcery, and the near completely random nature of the mutations' onset. So the only way to keep their secret was to just stay away from literally anyone who might report them. Part of this meant that TSons in active war zones would oftentimes just up and leave without explanation (the actual reason being they suspected the Flesh Change coming on but were obviously not going to tell anyone). This just made everyone dislike them even more due to how unreliable they started becoming for no apparent reason.

It was all for naught however, as Malcador's agents, along with the Divisios Telepathica and Biologis, eventually all found out anyway. They all concluded the fairly obvious; the Flesh Change was a series of mutations brought on by a combination of some genetic flaw in the Legion's geneseed combined with their use of Warp sorcery. The bulk of the transformations had occurred while Legionaries had been using their powers, and the usage of Warp energies in general was well known to cause horrific mutations. But rather bizarrely for the most arguably nerdy of all the Legions, no matter how obvious it became that their sorcery was either the root of, or horribly exacerbating, the Flesh Change, the TSons pridefully continued to use their powers. It got so bad that when their Primarch Magnus was found upon Prospero, there were only (ironically) about a thousand of them left. One important thing to note however was that none of the other Astartes Legions seemingly discovered the existence of the Flesh Change, or [[Alpha Legion|if they perhaps did]], they kept it to themselves. So all things considered, the TSons actually did a remarkably good job of hiding their tendency to turn into literal '''NOPE''' at the tip of a hat. The Emperor, who would obviously have known about the Flesh Change since Malcador knew, also never decided to have them destroyed, or even told them to tone down the Warp phuckery just a bit. One would think He might have, given the time and effort it took to make them. But the Emperor was, despite all His genius, bizarrely detached from certain, seemingly important aspects of His Imperium.

Eventually, the Crusade progressed far enough to make planetfall upon Prospero, whereupon Magnus was introduced to his Legion. He was obviously delighted to finally meet his sons but that meeting was sorely tainted by the fact that they basically all had incurable space cancer. Magnus's first priority was obviously to find a way to cure his Legion; if he couldn't he wouldn't ''have'' a Legion much longer. He searched desperately for a way to alleviate the Thousand Sons' problem. He looked through every dataslate the Mechanicum Biologis possessed on psykers, every scroll in Tizca, every xenos tristies on the Warp that he could get his hands on, every scrap of information the Divisio Telepathica could offer. He even pried the brains of Malcador and the Emperor, and still he found no solutions; only infuriating dead ends and paths to nowhere. Of course, just as with the rest of his Legion, it seemingly never occurred to Magnus that maybe constantly channeling the most intensely mutagenic thing in existence through one's body might have had something to do with the problem...

With his Legion quickly running out of time, and no solutions forthcoming, Magnus began to grow truly desperate. Then one day, deep in psychic meditation, he [[Just as Planned|happened upon]] the [[Tzeentch|The Cuttlefish of Cthulhu]] giggling away in the depths of the Warp. As previously mentioned, Magnus apparently made some sort of pact with Tzeentch without truly understanding what Tzeentch was, and certainly not that he had been responsible for the Flesh Change in the first place. It is also not known for sure how or why Magnus thought that dealing with Tzeentch would fix anything, though his reasoning may have been slightly sinister. Or just unfathomably stupid, and [[EPIC FAIL|get used to that bit of irony when it comes to Magnus and his boys]]. It is speculated by some that Magnus ''did'' in fact have some small idea of what Tzeentch was when he dealt with him. Not that he was the practically omnipotent, omniscient god of [[Just as Planned|aetheric dickery]], but that he was a phenomenally powerful, exceedingly dangerous, denizen of the Immaterium. One that, incidentally, Magnus probably knew full well not to screw with. But desperate, out of options, and arrogant as ever, he struck his bargain, and the rest is history. Tzeentch seemingly agreed to whatever pact Magnus had presented or pretended to lose whatever wager he had proposed, and so the Flesh Change would quiet down for a while. Magnus wasted no time thereafter in reorganizing his Legion to his exacting specifications, forming an extremely esoteric system of ranks and divisions of expertise that rivaled even the Dark Angels for sheer inscrutability (though honestly neither system was ''that'' complicated, even if Magnus and the Lion liked to think otherwise). With their Primarch's genetic material having stabilized their geneseed, the Tzeentchian pact having stopped the Flesh Change, and the ease with which the populace of Prospero could be implanted with the TSons geneseed, things started genuinely looking up for the Nerdstartes.

During the next bit of the Crusade, the TSons, now rid of their Warp pimples, started to show their faces in public again. They struck up a friendship with the [[White Scars]] Legion and their Primarch [[Jaghatai Khan]]. Both Legions respected scholarship, and both had a significant number of trained psykers in their Legions who were present even before the Librarius initiative. The primary difference between the two was that the Khan and his sons possessed common sense and restraint, while Magnus and his possessed neither. Despite this difference in how they approached the Warp, their Legions got on swimmingly, and together they would become the backbone of the Librarius project. This project's idea was that, as all the Legions had psychically sensitive Astartes, it made sense to formalize some system of training for them so that they didn't spontaneously explode amongst their battle-brothers. So the Khan, Sanguinius, and particularly Magnus, began exporting some of the training regiments that the psykers of their own Legions used to their brothers. The idea quickly caught on with many of the other Primarchs, though they ran the gambit between loving the idea and thinking it was outright abominable. Some, like Guilliman, thought it was a splendid idea to not only introduce some order to a pretty random element of the Legions (Guilliman loves his order after all), but to render unto the Legions yet another exceedingly useful tool. Others, like Konrad Curze, greeted the idea with total indifference. Still others, chief amongst them Mortarion, hated the idea so much that they refused to allow any Astartes in their Legion to practice Warpcraft. As such, no consensus was ever reached amongst the Primarchs as to whether the Librarius should be adopted wholescale, and so each Legion just did its own thing as per usual. Most did adopt the Librarius structure however.

Though Sanguinius was involved in the initiative's inception, he seemingly had no particularly close relationship with either Magnus or the Khan (though to be fair, a mere acquaintance with Sanguinius had the same level of comradery as close friendship with most other Primarchs). Similarly, the Blood Angels seemed not to have had a close relationship with the TSons, though the two Legions were perfectly cordial towards one another. The Scars would later go on to become the only known Sworn Brothers of the Thousand Sons, and this close bond lasted until the Burning of Prospero. For some completely unknown reason, the TSons and Alpha Legion apparently absolutely hated each other. As in even the Space Wolves were willing to at least ''work'' with the TSons, but the Alpha Legion hated the TSons as much as the Death Guard did, and nobody is quite sure why. Additionally, that animosity was reciprocated just as strongly, again without any public facing reason. One of the theories about this (though unconfirmed) is that the Alpha Legion may have discovered the existence of the Flesh Change, as poking their noses into other people's secrets was their bread and butter. It would make sense as to why the Thousand Sons hated them so much; if word ever got out about ''that'', even the Emperor Himself would have had a hard time keeping the TSons from being straight up annihilated by the other Legions. It would also make sense as to why the Alpha Legion shared the TSons' hatred. Knowing that the TSon next to you might just turn into [[Chaos Spawn|the most horrifying collection of asymmetries known to man]] at random would probably have put even the Night Lords off of working with them. Other than that, the Death Guard as previously noted still hated the TSons, the Emperor's Children still hated them, the Space Wolves would grow to hate them, and everyone else, in the short term at least, seemingly kept their low-level annoyance with them. Magnus was personally known to have been at least somewhat close to Perturabo as well (relatively speaking of course), but no mention is made of their Legions having interacted much.

However, the Thousands Sons' luck ran out eventually. After some decades of Crusading, Magnus and his Legion were called to the [[Council of Nikaea]]: a grand gathering of the Emperor and most of His sons to decide if the Astartes should be allowed to use warp based abilities unsupervised. Magnus attended Council in high spirits, thinking that it was going to be an neutral, scholastic conclave where he would be allowed to extol the virtues of unrestricted psykers. What he didn't count on was that the Thousand Sons, and Magnus in particular, had managed to piss off a ''lot'' of the other Astartes Legions and their Primarchs. Even those Primarchs who supported the Librarius initiative couldn't really defend the Thousand Sons rampant use of Warp powers or Magnus's general attitude. A few of them even sent representatives who were told to support the continuation of the Librarius, but condemn Magnus in particular. Dorn and the Lion were foremost amongst them, though they gave no particular reason as to why. Rather than being an open forum, the whole thing essentially turned into a trial of Magnus and the TSons. One in which they had few friends, but seemingly more than their fair share of enemies.

While Magnus's discovery had been a godsend for the Thousand Sons in most ways, he caused them to develop a number of additional quirks that got under nearly everyone's skin. On top of the Thousand Sons' attitude problems, insular nature and the general loathing of psykers in the Imperium, they had developed an obnoxious habit of completely disregarding the Crusade's military needs if some bit of obscure "lore" caught their attention. Whether it be human, xenos, or otherwise, if the TSons caught so much as a whiff of anything related to the Warp, they would be off to study and collect it. This tendency was entirely down to Magnus himself, as his insatiable curiosity had quickly rubbed off on all the mini-Magnuses that comprised his Legion. It had become such a problem that the Thousand Sons were known to just up and leave active warzones without telling anyone if they found something more interesting to occupy them. Unlike during the days of the Flesh Change, it was not just individual TSons leaving, or small groups. Now ''entire Thousand Sons Expeditionary forces'' would simply vanish without a word if they thought something more worthy of their attention was over the horizon. While this was not recorded to have had any disastrous consequences for the forces involved, one must imagine that anybody who was left holding the proverbial bag would have been royally pissed. They would also completely ignore pleas for aid from other Legions, sometimes for literal ''years'', while they tinkered with whatever [[Blood Ravens|shiny Warp bauble they had most recently happened upon]]. This happened to [[Leman Russ]] on at least one occasion, and was known to have been one of the factors as to why the TSons pissed him off so much.

On top of all that, the TSons had also gotten into at least two serious conflicts with other Legions when they tried to preserve some bit of heretical lore in defiance of Imperial law. An incident upon Ark Reach Secundus saw Magnus and Russ nearly come to blows over a historical repository upon that Magnus wanted to preserve and Russ wanted to destroy. The Space Wolves and Thousand Sons engaged in a small scale skirmish, but the Thousand Sons used non-lethal Warp abilities to disable the small number of Space Wolves who charged them. Sadly however, the Flesh Change decided to pop back up at exactly that time, and one of the TSons turned into an aborted Shoggoth right in front of Leman Russ. Disgusted and horrified, Russ wasted no time in dispatching the former legionnaire. This for some reason pissed off Magnus and the surrounding TSons (which is a little silly as they of all people knew that their former brother was best put out of his misery) and the two Primarchs nearly began brawling. However, Lorgar stepped between them. Lorgar's silver tongue combined with the fact that both Russ and Magnus quite liked him saw the latter two Primarchs stand down. Another such incident involved the Night Lords. Another heretical library had been found by a joint Night Lords/Thousand Sons Crusade force, and the Thousand Sons had so wanted it preserved that they had occupied the building and put up a psychic shield around it. The Night Lords however were under orders to destroy it, as per standard Imperial military policy regarding heretical information. Curze was in overall command of the campaign, and so brought up a massive amount of field artillery to pulverize the structure. The Thousand Sons would not budge however, and began a game of chicken with the Night Lords. The Thousand Sons for whatever reason bet that a group of psychotic mass murdering torturers, decked in skulls and flayed skin, wouldn't blow up a building with TSons still inside. Remember what was previously said about unfathomable stupidity being a pattern? 

At any rate, the two Primarchs had met in person aboard the ''Gloriana-class'' Nightfall to discuss the fate of the library. Magnus plead his case to Curze that the knowledge in the library was not heretical by nature, and that he and the TSons could put it to use for the betterment of humanity. Curze, as one might expect, was completely unsympathetic. After letting Magnus talk for a bit, Curze simply pointed out that he was technically 100% right in his decision to the destroy the library, and that being technically right is the only kind of right that matters when it comes to the law. Magnus tried for a bit of brotherly favor or fraternity, but as one might again expect, Curze wasn't having any of that either. He also tried to argue that, as the self-proclaimed expert on the Warp, he was the one best suited to judge whether or not the library should stand or fall. Curze basically just rolled his eyes, and then ordered the planned artillery strike on the library with the Thousand Sons still inside. The psychic shield held through the first bombardment, but Curze made it absolutely clear that he was more than willing to have the Nightfall completely glass the place if that's what it took. Since he technically didn't have a leg to stand on (he was trying to save an obviously heretical library after all), Magnus very saltily pulled his forces back and Curze leveled the building.

Needless to say, the Thousand Sons had made a lot of unnecessary enemies with their solipsistic douchbaggery, and Magnus ended up having to try to defend all these actions without much in the way of backup at the Council. Sadly for the Thousand Sons, Magnus ended up making a pretty significant ass of himself in front of the Emperor (which is something considering that his primary detractor was ''Mortarion'' of all people). To be fair to the sapient stinkcloud however, Mortarion made a number of quite salient points against the dangers of psychic powers, and Magnus failed in his rebuttal to actually address any of them. The Emperor thus decided that He'd given the Thousand Sons and Magnus far too much leeway in their pursuit of power and knowledge. To keep other Legions from further experimentation, He put the kibosh on the Librarius initiative as a whole, and forbade the use of psychic powers in Astartes combat. However, He did not issue any formal sanctions against anyone at the Council, as He essentially admitted that His directives had been implicit. He'd been relying on the individual Astartes Legions to act with an abundance of caution that the Thousand Sons and Magnus simply did not have. Had Jaghatai Khan, with his common sense and mustache, represented the psyker cause at the Council, there's a good chance things would have been different. Alas, he was so far afield that by the time word of the Council's decision on the Librarius even reached him, the Heresy had already started.

The Thousand Sons were forced to dissolve their Librarius along with everyone else, except for the White Scars, who ignored it, the World Eaters, whose Librarium was so small they didn't even bother disbanding it, the Space Wolves who believed that their [[Rune Priest|librarians]] somehow weren't working with the warp (and who the Emperor made an exception for), and the Word Bearers, who were already [[Heresy|quietly sacrificing people to chaos]]. Obviously, this had a far larger impact on the Thousand Sons than on any other Legion. Psychic powers had essentially formed the core of the Legion's combat doctrine and character, and they were sorely missed in the next few of their campaigns. Predictably however, Magnus didn't give a shit either and headed home to Prospero to continue being a sorcerer in secret. The Thousand Sons in general actually did go along with the ban for a short time, but quickly realized that, as long as they stopped being so flashy with their powers, there wasn't really anyone around to tattle on them. As such, they quickly started back up again, and simply avoided using their powers around anyone who might tell the Emperor. There would be rumors sure, but the Thousand Sons figured that there would be rumors even if they actually did hold to the ban.

===Heresy===
[[File:A Thousand Sons.jpg|300px|right|thumb|Welcome to Prospero Bitch!]]
Before the actual start of the [[Horus Heresy]], Magnus learned of [[Horus]]' corruption and used his powers of sorcery to warn the [[Empra]] about his oh-most-favored son's impending treachery, and that his favored son, if not stopped, was about to [[FATAL|fuck everything up]] and destroy everything the Emperor had sought to build. Unfortunately Magnus' contacting the Emperor in this fashion could not have occurred at a worse time: it caused the Webway portal and the Golden Throne which the Emperor was building to suffer a Blue Screen of Death (Windows has stopped responding. In the grim darkness of the far future there is only Windows Vista) and become damaged beyond repair, and in addition caused a massive psychic blowout across all of Terra, crippling Astropath communication and inducing psychosis-related rebellions and suicides world-wide (see Outcast Dead novel).

<s>Only slightly</s> Way too bummed that he had screwed-up the Emperor's master-plan, Magnus headed back to Prospero in order to prepare to receive the Empra's mercy (read: to be killed in a very cruel way) and sent the Sons' fleet to buy some drinks. Meanwhile, the [[Emperor]], royally pissed at Magnus for damaging the Throne and unwilling to believe his most favored son could betray him, sent the [[Space Wolves]] to arrest him. Horus, who was digging Chaos already, pulled a move worthy of [[Eldrad|Eldrad Ulthran]] in terms of dickery, and sent a fake message to [[Leman Russ]] - with orders to destroy the Thousand Sons instead. Russ had, even before receiving these orders, seemingly been preparing for a worst-case scenario with Magnus (if one takes a charitable viewpoint). When Constantin Valdor arrived at Beta-Garmon from Terra, he found that Russ had been busy arming his Legion to the absolute teeth with proscribed Dark Age tech, Phosphex and other Destroyer-grade weaponry, and Exterminatus level devices beyond that. Valdor was somewhat surprised by this, but it is inconceivable that Russ wouldn't have told him about Horus's change of orders, and so the whole thing appeared to have been on the up-and-up.

However, Leman was to have something of a bro moment despite Magnus being perhaps his least favorite sibling. Though seemingly being 100% on-board with completely wiping out the Thousand Sons and killing Magnus, he apparently either had some hidden doubts as to Horus's orders, or a last minute change of heart. So when he got into Prospero's orbit, he tried to contact Magnus via both vox channels and a Thousand Sons plant within his Legion that he had become aware of (as in a spy, not a psychic vegetable). However Magnus had put up what amounted to a physic bubble preventing outside communications via any aetheric means, and nobody was picking up the vox. After about an hour's worth of agitated pacing on Leman's part and stoic waiting on [[Constantin Valdor]]'s part, the two decided that they'd been more than chivalrous enough, and the Loyalist fleet opened fire on Prospero. Fortunately, there was basically only one city on Prospero; Tizca, and that was so well shielded that despite an Exterminatus level bombardment, the city was unscathed. The Thousand Sons of course had absolutely no idea what the fuck had just happened, and because Magnus had told them to sit tight when asked, they did so even when the initial Loyalist ground assault began. The city's human auxillia however, were not given any such instructions. As far as they could tell, their world had just been subjected to the single worst military disaster in its history, and their Astartes custodians didn't seem to care. They therefore hurried to both engage whoever was attacking them and evacuate the civilians in Tizca's outer sections. There, the confused human soldiers encountered the vanguard of the Wolves, aaannd... well, they met the fate of all mortals who tangle with Astartes. Worse in fact, as few Legions were quite so butcherous as the Space Wolves. They put up a heroic and highly effective fight, inasmuch as baseline humans could against Astartes, but they died to a man in mere minutes.

After some time getting report after report that the human auxillia and civilians were being slaughtered in droves by the Wolves, Chief Librarian [[Ahzek Ahriman]] decided to ignore his Primarch's orders and, in a show of true manliness, led the Thousand Sons and the Spireguard in a defence of the capital. Outnumbered something like five to one against not only the Wolves but the [[Adeptus Custodes]] and the [[Sisters of Silence]], the TSons managed to inflict heavy casualties to the Wolves thanks to both their innate powers and a psychic teleportation network built into Tizca. They were able to use it to precision hit-and-run ambushes upon the Wolves, and then teleport away in the resulting confusion to go do it somewhere else. This not only had the result of allowing the TSons to completely outmaneuver the Wolves, but caused the Wolves to think that there were far more enemies in far more locations than there actually were. This, combined with telepathic assaults on the Wolves' perceptions, slowed their pace considerably, and inflicted far more casualties on the VI Legion than would have otherwise been possible. After a short time wreaking merry havoc amongst the Wolves, Valdor, his Custodes, and the Sisters of Silence joined the fray. They were countered by the [[Sekhmet Terminators]] or the TSons 1st Company, and the the elite duelists of the Khenetai. They died to a man, but managed to wound Valdor slightly and kill about 500 of the Sisters. Meanwhile, the TSons also launched a desperate attack on Russ and his Varagyr Terminators. Led by Auramagma, Captain of the 8th Fellowship, the attack failed after Auramagma himself had a massive psychic fireblast reflected back at him by some innate ability of Russ. Despite these setbacks, the TSons continued to make an exceptional showing of themselves... right up until the Flesh Change once again reared its ugly head. Quite literally. With their home and people under threat of complete destruction, the TSons had been using every psychic trick in the book to gain the upper hand, and this unprecedented use of psychic energy had caused a huge Warp storm to form over Tizca. The more Warp energy the TSons used, the more powerful the storm became, which fed their power in turn. This process started a massive feedback loop which caused psychic energy to build up in Tizca like a static charge, and it eventually exploded in the Thousand Sons collective faces. Once the right amount of energy had collected, the Thousand Sons suddenly started mutating into [[Chaos Spawn|horrific Warp gribblies]] en masse without any warning. The TSons immediately realized that the Flesh Change was back with a vengeance, and this had a horrific effect not just on the TSons' numbers (and bodies), but on morale. Not only that, but even the most die-hard Warp enthusiast amongst the TSons could no longer pretend as though the Warp was not responsible for the Flesh Change. As such, many of them toned down or completely stopped using their powers in the battle. Needless to say, in a battle where their psychic powers were essentially the only thing keeping them from being overrun, losing them was an absolute catastrophe.

The defensive line was pushed back to the Pyramid of Photep, Magnus' HQ and last shelter for the civilians. Magnus finally joined the battle, unable to watch his Sons get massacred any more, and decided to challenge Leman Russ in single combat. While he put up a good fight, even breaking Russ's breastplate and piercing one of his hearts, Russ eventually beat Magnus down. Just before being hacked to pieces by the angry brother and as the Wolves started to close in on the remnant of his Legion, Magnus gave himself over to Tzeentch. He and the rest of the Thousand Sons reappeared on the Planet of the Sorcerers. Magnus swore vengeance against Russ and the other Marines who had stupidly ignored his warnings, and started plotting against the Wolves and the rest of the Imperium that betrayed him. Which is of course quite idiotic as Magnus at no point until '''AFTER''' Russ had crippled him even ''attempted'' to talk to his brother.

''Inferno'' puts a different set of events to describe the end of the Battle of Prospero. In-universe, an examination by the Adeptus Astra Telepathica reveals that only a being such as [[Tzeentch]] could have teleported anyone across the galaxy, and as always, [[Sindri Myr|power demands sacrifice]]. The writer goes on to mention that some insane scholars theorized that [[What|rather than transporting the remaining survivors of the Thousand Sons, Tzeentch only teleported Ahriman to the Planet of the Sorcerers, consuming his remaining brother Legionaries as a sacrifice to fuel the act. Every other Thousand Son after that point was a duplicate created by Tzeentch to have Ahriman cast the Rubric]]. However, this theory falls a bit flat when one realizes that, if there had been no actual Thousand Sons, there would not have been any point in casting the Rubric. Unless the entire thing was actually just done for the [[lulz]], which would be indescribably retarded but also very Tzeentchean.

After these events [[Tzeentch]] walked up and sat on his throne in the Hidden Library, at which point he conjured a [[martini]] glass full of salty tears and sipped from it. He then set it down on the arm rest, held his hands together, chuckled and muttered "[[Just As Planned]]".

===[[Rubric Marines]]===
[[File:1297640558332.jpg|250px|right|thumb|The Thousand Sons' custom/basic infantry unit:The Rubric Marine.]]
{{topquote|'''Just as planned!'''|Ahzek Ahriman, who'd never been so wrong in his life before (or after) that}}

''(Aka The Day Management changed all the employment terms and conditions and forgot to inform the workforce, not even a memo. The Unions were pissed.)''

As mentioned previously, the Thousand Sons' army was at one point 66% dust. This was primarily because of [[Ahzek Ahriman]]'s FML spell: The Rubric of Ahriman.[[File:1288054902571.jpg|right|thumb|They didn't take the news well...]] This rite damned everyone without psychic powers to be [[Grimdark|turned into ash and their soul to be sealed for all eternity into their permanently sealed armor unless the armor itself is broken]]; until [[Games Workshop]] gets its head out of its ass (which will probably never happen), it also damned those WITH psychic powers, as Gee Dubs [[Derp|is now claiming]] most of the Scarab Occult Terminators were psykers who got Rubricked, which also means that only the most powerful psykers lived through the spell.
Originally this was supposed to stop the mutations they were experiencing, as the Burning of Prospero had seen the Flesh Change return worse than ever before. Figuring out his own method from Magnus' spellbooks, Ahriman crafted a ritual that caused any Marines with mutations to either survive with their mutations cured and psychic powers augmented - or turned to dust if they weren't strong enough to resist the change. It's worth noting that Ahriman's plan was actually to cure the whole Legion of mutations, but the Warp being the Warp, [[FAIL|things got out of hand]]. Suffice to say Magnus was [[rage|fucking pissed]] and sought to kill Ahriman, but Tzeentch [[troll|applauded]] Ahriman and saved his ass. The spirit-armor Marines became known as Rubric Marines. Of course, in an ironically Tzeentchean sort of way, the spell did indeed cure the Flesh Change. No flesh, no Flesh Change after all. So it worked exactly as intended. Just... well, [[Not as Planned|not as planned]]

Rubric Marines are automatons - without a strong guiding presence, they lapse into a passive state - they are immortal beyond even a Space Marine's immortality and thus make the perfect guardians for the libraries and bases of the Thousand Sons. When guided by a Sorcerer or placed in the front lines against a foe, their old battle-hunger returns and they move with more of a sense of purpose. They obey orders without hesitation, and know no fear. Or much else for that matter. Making them far more fearsome, their Sorcerers equip them with modified bolter rounds that are enchanted to explode into bursts of white-hot warp-fire on impact, burning through armor with incredible speed. Additionally, since they're functionally animated suits of armor, they possess phenomenally strong supernatural protection due to their construction and are a bitch to kill as a result. They are, however, incredibly slow.

Whilst the current generation of Rubric Marines date back to the Thousand Sons' expulsion of Ahriman, it's believed they have the ability to make more by using altered and notably scaled-down versions of the rite that resulted in the Rubric. Even with this, however, the creation of them is lengthy and time-consuming, ergo guaranteeing that their enemies will slowly whittle down their numbers by drowning them in corpses, which is pretty much the tactic used by the Imperials against chaos marines constantly. Though, like all major Chaos Marine forces, the Thousand Sons have their own armies of lesser men: Surprisingly non-traitor Chaos Guard called Spireguard, which is used to drown their enemies in corpses or to tie up Imperial meatshields whilst Rubric Marines and Sorcerers do the jobs that matter. In editions past it was mentioned, that Thousand Sons Sorcerers can reanimate killed (broken?) Rubric Marines with a simple yet time-consuming ritual and Magnus himself can somehow bring back fallen Sorcerers in his super-awesome Black Tower on the Sorcerers Planet. All of this was possible due to how the Rubric made the souls of both Golems and Sorcerers all but immune to the powers of Warp so they cannot be nommed by daemons - although, as [[Erebus]] showed in "Betrayer", it is quite possible (though not easy) to resurrect even one whose soul "was torn apart and eaten by daemons". It was never retconned, so we can assume that this fluff is still valid, and no matter how many Thousand Sons you've killed, they'll always [[Commissar Yarrick|come]] [[Anval Thawn|back]] [[Lugft Huron|from]] the [[Necrons|dead]]. At least they wouldn't do it right the next second, just after you've killed them.

Tabletop-wise Rubric marines are of debatable use. Yes they're fearless, are fairly good at being shooty, especially if their bolters are enchanted, has a +4 invul save, so basically, they rape any kind of infantry that doesn't have the toughness of a Terminator. But on the downside, they're slow like termies and aren't necessarily as tough as them, they're nearly useless if the sorcerer leading them dies, they don't wow anyone in CQC, and overall they're hard to use for beginners. Overall, sort of a bridge between the shootiness of Slaanesh Noise Marines, toughness of Nurgle Plague Marines, and the fearlessness of Khornate Berzerkers. Throw them in a [[METAL BOXES|Rhino]] and let the games begin. You really have to know what you're doing with these guys. They CAN do quite awesome, but you need to use them right. And having Tzeentch smile upon you (in a way) never hurts.

The Thousand Sons have a distinctive battle cry [[Grimdark|''"All is Dust."'']] Only the relatively rare standard Marines they have however, scream it - instead, the sorcerers typically emit it [[Awesome|as a sonorous chant, accompanied by flickers of warp-light as the squad emerges from seemingly nowhere]].
[[File:All Is Dust by MajesticChicken.jpg|250px|right|thumb|Ahzek Ahriman, aka The One Who Psy-Bolts your Ass to Death.]]

===Post-Rubric===
Like most other Chaos legions, the Thousand Sons broke their coherence after the Heresy and split into small warbands, or in their case "warcovens" (because space witches). Those warcovens are usually not just small, but ''tiny'', with few of them having more than four or five sorcerers and a few dozen golems. As the Thousand Sons fleet survived the burning of Prospero and the Rubric pretty much unscratched, every single one of these covens usually has at least one cruiser-class ship and probably a few escort wings, and it's not uncommon for them to fill these ships with some nasty shit like Dark Mechanicum robots, daemon engines, summoned daemons, or animated constructs to make sure they're safe from boarding parties despite their numerical disadvantage when it comes to clashes with other CSM warbands. They usually hire themselves as mercenaries for bigger warbands, Dark Mechanicum forges, or the Black Legion, in exchange for resources, knowledge, and magical trinkets, which they then move to their base of operations on the Soritarius, the Sorcerers' planet; there, they can study them and nerd out in their libraries, while plotting to outshine each other in "the nerdiest sorcerer of the Galaxy" contest. While many of them no longer hold much love for their daemonic Primarch (no surprises here as his good and noble aspect was consumed in the creation of Ianus / Janus, the first supposed Grand Master of the Grey Knights), their loyalty to him stems from the simple fact that he's capable of bringing dead sorcerers back to life without even need for their corpses, with a nice bonus of having the access to the Soritarius' resources and research facilities. Still, some warcovens (like Ahriman's Prodigal Sons) went rogue and cut their ties with their new homeworld, and [[Iskandar Khayon|some]] decided to [[Black Legion|wear black]] and join [[Abaddon|the Despoiler]] in his [[Long War]] - in fact pretty much all of the Black Legion's top-ranked sorcerers and diviners are ex-Thousand Sons, and they are amongst the most valued members of the legion, some even part of Abaddon's inner circle.

With the redo of the Thousand Sons line, the above has been quite heavily retconned. While some did break from the Legion, many remained within its ranks; splitting into Thrallbands (Small Companies) and Sects (Small Chapters). While they are members of the Legion none are exactly loyal (although there are some standout cases of those who are). Each individual brother serves his own purposes and sees his group as a way of personal advancement. In the same way, the leaders of groups serve Magnus only because of the resources and connections that come with being in the Legion. Even the Rehati and their Cult Command (Magnus’ Inner Circle, kinda) are implied to all be scheming against each other, and even him to an extent. This is not that dissimilar to the old lore, as each group is essentially its own warband, generally doing what it wants. While using the resources of Sortarious in exchange for occasionally helping out in the Cults aims, in fact, some groups (mostly from the Cult of Duplicity) have been exiled for disobedience/team killing yet still remain in the cult because they are useful. So basically nothing changed much apart from we now have a legion of autistic space wizards fumbling about as they fail to purge the space furries because Bob's too busy dicking Dave over.

===Wrath of Magnus===
{{Topquote|ENOUGH! You are all my sons, born of my blood. Some loyal and faithful through the ages; some wayward and treacherous, walking their own paths. But the crimes of the past mean nothing. All paths have led back here. [[Awesome|The Blade of Fate hangs above Fenris; together, we shall drive it deep into the icy earth of that worthless world.]]|Magnus the Red}}

As of recently, Magnus has gotten off his ass and returned some semblance of unity and order to his legion (which had been falling apart for ten thousand years) in a colossal scheme of [[Just as Planned]] to royally fuck up the Space Yiffs, involving Daemons, Wulfen, and Bringing the Planet of the sorcerers into the material realm. Doing this, they used the fact that the Wulfen only appeared when [[Daemons]] appeared to trick the [[Grey Knights]] and [[Dark Angels]] into thinking that the Wolves had fallen to chaos. This ended with a dead Wolf Lord, the majority of the Fenrisian population being either killed or Sterilised by the Grey Knights, the chapter crippled very badly, and currently bitching and crying their way to [[Cadia]] to recover.

Seeing the way [[Mortarion|Morty]] launched the invasion of the [[Scourge Stars]], the Sons realized that they needed a place too. So, they took [[Stygius Sector|several planets from the Imperium]], including the homeworld of the [[Mordian Iron Guard|Mordian Guardsmen]] but ultimately they were repelled by the combined forces of [[Ulthwe]] and the Imperium.

===Hope for redemption?===
Out of all the Chaos Legions, the Thousand Sons are the most sympathetic. Yes, they have went out of their way to mass cleanse Fenris and kill the Space Wolves, but [[Black Templars|a lot]] [[Imperial Fists|of]] [[Inquisition |people]] [[Dark Angels|hate]] them. However, it has been established by various books that the majority of the Sons hate being Tzeentch puppets. When attacking the Imperium, most sorcerers seek for justice or forbidden knowledge. Magnus himself hates serving the Chaos God even though his mind was reshaped to serve. The Primarch and his Legion are basically slaves. The Thousands Sons also attacked the Sons of Horus, which led to the events that saved the Shattered legions.

In short, there are only two possible chances for salvation since the Rubric:
# Ahriman's mission to save his brothers leads to a possible separation of the Legion from Chaos. Seeing how well that worked the first two times he tried his Rubric, a third one is not any more likely to work.
# If the separation of Magnus' soul is possible. It could be undone in theory (although given the nature of Daemon Princes, the chances of this are abysmal), but Magnus has actively prevented the Thousand Sons from trying.

In conclusion, to put it bluntly, it is near impossible. If it were to happen, most of the Legion is likely to die in the process. Besides, Magnus most likely doesn't want to go back to the Imperium anymore anyway. ''Fury of Magnus'' reveals that the Emperor offered him a chance to return to the Imperial fold at the head of the [[Grey Knights]], and Magnus rejected it because it would have meant abandoning his sons to Chaos, which he considered too dear a price to pay. Furthermore, he attempted to kill the Emperor and forever repudiated him afterward, and the odds of his having changed his mind after 10,000 years of constant war are pretty small. It was originally thought that if the Thousand Sons found out about the Sons of Horus' involvement in the destruction of Prospero, Magnus would go after him. As it turns out, though, Magnus already knew that Horus had interfered by changing Russ' orders from "arrest Magnus and haul his ass back to Terra" to "wipe him and his legion off the face of the galaxy", and he still blames the Emperor and Malcador for sending the [[Leman Russ|primarch]] and [[Space Wolves|legion]] because Magnus is a fucking idiot.