Editing Realm Guard and Mercenaries (section)

=Chaos Warbands=
Beyond the Realm Guards of the Warmaster, beyond the serfs and slave-soldiery deployed by the Legions of the Chaos Marches, there are thousands upon thousands of independent warbands. A handful are led by Astartes seeking advancement beyond the normal confines of their Legion, but the vast majority are purely human. Or, well. Mostly human. Once human. Still human-shaped. Come to think of it, a lot of them include corrupted Xenos among their ranks as well. But the point is, they're not Astartes. 

==The Bloody Rags==

A Khornate warband operating in the Tempestus gap. They are notable for their evangelical fervor; where most Khornate warbands will simply slaughter indiscriminately and only recruit opportunistically when raiding, the Bloody Rags make concerted efforts to recruit as many people as possible. This process naturally still involves mass slaughter; the entire population is forced into gladiatorial combat until the survivors, soaked in the blood of family, friends, countrymen- generally somewhere between a third and a tenth of the people who went in- are inducted into the Bloody Rags. In this way, they have swollen to immense size, holds of their slaughter-ships bursting with billions of cultists.

On the battlefield, their most distinctive feature are their pure white uniforms. Whatever material they're made out of, it only stains in blood; the mud of the battlefield falls off it cleanly, but blood will never come out. How stained a uniform is forms a semi-formal rank system among the Bloody Rags; the more stained, the more status.

As the existence of an actual uniform indicates, the Bloody Rags have a decent logistical base, although it strains under their ever-growing numbers. In addition to their uniform, each cultist gets at least a lasgun and a chainsword. Support weapons like heavy stubbers and missile launchers are reasonably commonplace, although the Bloody Rags eschew any indirect-fire weapons like Basilisks or mortars as a matter of principle. While the majority of the force is light infantry, there are decent-sized detachments of armored cavalry and aircraft with each raiding group. Notably, although they have the resources to mount a proper training program they do not do so, preferring to let battle sort out the wheat from the chaff. 

In battle, while the Bloody Rags are as eager as any follower of Khorne to close to close range, they're not stupid about it. They make use of orbit-mobile tactics to flank entrenched positions, and in the charge use smokescreens and suppressing fire from support weapons to cover the advance. 

==The Thousand Kinds of Blindness==
A Tzeentchian organization operating in the Tempestus gap. The Thousand Blindnesses operate effectively as two parallel, cooperating, but ultimately separate units.

The first is the cult network. Spread across a large number of worlds, the cults of the Thousand Blindnesses do all of the typical cult things: conversion, destabilization, etc. They are much more effective in this than the average cult, having access to off-world support networks and professional-grade training in infiltration, sabotage, and subversion. The general pattern of operations is to smuggle a few agents onto the planet, who then start exploiting pre-existing fault lines among the society to recruit and build up infrastructure. 

Then there is the raider fleet, which is a bunch of warships and landers stuffed with troops. Beyond a couple of daemon-ships, nothing out of the ordinary. 

When the time comes to take a world, both arms of the Thousand Blindnesses act simultaneously. As the raider fleet translates in-system, the cults on the ground kick off the revolution, inciting riots, sabotaging defense systems, and assassinating leadership. When the ships reach deployment range of the target planet, the defense is already in chaos; chaos which will not be helped by having ten million Chaos reavers dropped on it. 

In battle, the Thousand Blindnesses make heavy use of compromising enemy command networks.. In addition to the normal tricks of compromising vox networks and issuing false orders, sorcery opens up many more options. Subliminal messaging, psychic mind control, shapeshifting doppelgangers, hallucinogens in the officer's mess; the possibilities are near-endless. Setting up these opportunities is one of the prime duties of the cult network pre-invasion; done well and thoroughly, and the Thousand Blindnesses can force the enemy to feed their forces into trap after trap until the soldiers mutiny. 

Among the petty powers of the Tempestus Gap, the Thousand Blindnesses have achieved a reputation for invincibility. In a sense, this is earned; nearly every offensive battle they have engaged in has been an overwhelming victory. However, this is because they choose their battles wisely. With the cult network providing detailed information and destabilizing defenses, the Thousand Blindnesses can choose when and where to fight with exquisite precision. The raider fleet never attacks a system unless it has already won. 

Theologically, they view Tzeentch as a god of pointless change, meaningless change, the change of shifting static on a television screen. A god of Revolutions, named that because they go around in circles. That so many other followers of Tzeentch- and so many of his daemons, for that matter- fail to perceive this is the First Blindness. (Yes, they can name a thousand kinds of blindness. Being able to do so from memory is one of the tests of Grandmastery. The name is not (purely) fanciful.) 

==The Wings of Rust==

A Nurglite force operating in the Tempestus Gap. The Wings of Rust are notable for their heavy focus on air power. Instead of the typical plague zombie horde or the plodding heavy armor favored by mechanized Nurglite forces, the Wings of Rust consist nearly entirely of aero-space craft, typically deployed from orbiting carriers. The strategy is entirely straightforward: first, achieve air supremacy. Then, blanket the helpless population centers in virus bombs until the planet succumbs to Nurgle's embrace. Leave. 

The Wings of Rust have a theme of industrial pollution and decay, as opposed to the usual pus and vomit or the Second Son's Chernobyl. Their pitted, corroded aircraft trail thick clouds of chemical smoke, which jam the guns, foul sensors, and corrode the engines of enemy aircraft that fly through them. The bombs they drop are filled with toxic metals, asbestos, and condensed smog in addition to the normal run of diseases. Metal rusts, machines fail, and guns jam. Tetanus crawls on every surface as jagged oxide spikes sprout from every metal surface like some metallic fungus. Unusually for a Nurglite force, the Wings of Rust also make moderate use of incendiaries, adding plumes of choking ash to the pollution. As the relentless bombardment continues, the planet's sky becomes choked with ash and smog, the sun dims, factories choke. Everything comes to a halt.

Although their tactics are simple, countering them is usually beyond the resources of the average planet. With anti-orbital defenses always the first installations targeted, the target planet is soon deprived of the ability to strike at the carriers. With their starships forming an unassailable rear area, the Wings of Rust can then strike at any point on the surface of the planet with near impunity. Screaming down from orbit in deep dives, targeted installations are often given mere minutes to brace themselves for the assault. The Wings of Rust use extremely high force concentrations, often committing their entire force to individual attacks. This limits their operational tempo, but ensures that their specific target will be utterly outnumbered. Thus, the defenses of the target world are smashed apart one element at a time, until the planet lies helpless, incapable of meaningful resistance.
Then the bombing begins in earnest.

The Wings of Rust do have a ground force, consisting of air cavalry and drop infantry. They are used as commandos, striking to destroy hardened targets where air power alone cannot suffice. On occasions where taking and holding territory becomes necessary, the Wings of Rust prefer simply to throw hordes of 'Smog Zombies' (a variant of the standard plage zombie, purely aesthetic) generated by their bombardment at the problem.

Once the planet has been reduced, the Wings of Rust simply depart. Although many planets such visited become sources of further Nurglite warbands, the Wings never recruit from the world they attack, and often never even land on them. They replenish their numbers and supplies exclusively from their unknown homeworld.

==The Howling Swarm==

A Slaaneshi warband operating within the Tempestus Gap. In a variation of normal Slaaneshi operating procedure, the Howling Swarm makes heavy use of cybernetic and genetic augmentation, trying to achieve heights and types of sensation impossible for unmodified humans. Skin-grafts with massively denser nerve endings, eyes that see magnetic fields, internal drug reservoirs, dozens of tentacles for arms, yard-long cyberdongs, every day brings some new atrocity against decency and sense. Many members of the warband are no longer even vaguely human.

As a result, they have close ties with the Dark Mechanicus, volunteering themselves as guinea pigs and fighting for Dark-Mech interests in exchange for new implants. The majority of the warband give praise to the Omnissiah alongside Slaanesh, and most even see them as the same entity, in the same way OU orthodoxy held that the Big E and the Big O were the same entity. After all, both seek the same goal- the transcendence of the limits of the human mind- and, for the Howling Swarm at least, the same methods.
Links with some more unscrupulous DEldar Haemonculi are also rumored, but not confirmed. 

In battle, the Howling Swarm tend to use sensory-overload weaponry. Hallucinogenic gases, mind-affecting magnetic beams, blinding lasers, seizure-inducing stroboscopes, eardrum- and mind-shattering sonic weaponry, and the simple overwhelming terror of their inhuman appearance, carefully sculpted for maximum psychological effect. Once incapacitated, the enemy force is collected for forcible induction, sacrifice, or sale as slaves. Against enemies hardened against these weapons, the Howling Swarm relies on its heavy augmentation to carry the day in close combat, backed up by swarms of lesser cultists/meat-shields. 

If these don't work either, they will generally retreat, muttering that they probably wouldn't have made good playthings anyway.