Thousand Sons
| Thousand Sons | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Battle Cry | "All is dust!" | |
| Number | XV | |
| Original Homeworld | Prospero | |
| Current Homeworld | Planet of the Sorcerers | |
| Primarch | Magnus the Red | |
| Champion | Ahzek Ahriman | |
| Strength | Really depends on how you view Rubric Marines | |
| Specialty | Psykers, Chaos Sorcerers | |
| Allegiance | Tzeentch | |
| Colours | Blue, yellow/gold | |
The Thousand Sons is a Chaos Spehss Mahreen legion, they currently devote themselves fully to Tzeentch. Their Primarch is Magnus, an extremely powerful Psyker who's red skinned(literally) and has a cyclopean eye. While we don't exactly know what he does with this 3rd eye of his, he did use it to peer into the warp which turned him insane and used it to stabilize his mutating legion during the first founding. Roughly 66% of their army, at one point, was dust.
No, seriously. Incredibly pissed-off dust. Due to this, they have the single coolest battle cry ever.
That its actually a otherworldly whisper somehow makes it all the more terrifying and awesome.
Pre-heresy
During the pre-heresy era where the Great Crusade was underway, the Thousand Sons was the first legion to exhibit psychic powers and they extensively used Psyker and Sorcerer powers at the same time, though because of the Imperium's never ending fear of psykers, they were usually distrusted by most of the Imperium. 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!!).
However,the Thousands Sons luck ran out eventually. Magnus and his Legion were called to the Council of Nikaea to stand trial for sorcery. While they were never proved to be sorcerers, the Thousands Sons were forced to dissolve their Librarius along with everyone else. Predictably, Magnus didn't give a shit and headed home to Prospero to continue being a sorcerer in secret.
Heresy
Before the actual start of the Horus Heresy, Magnus learned Horus' corruption and used his powers of sorcery to warn the Empra about his oh-most-favored son impending treachery, and that his favored son, if not stopped, was about to 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 and become damaged beyond repair.
Only slightly 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 Ulthran in terms of dickery, and sent a fake message to Leman Russ - with orders to destroy the Thousand Sons instead.
Unable (or unwilling) to contact the Thousand Sons to offer them a last chance to surrender and evacuate the civilians, the loyalist Space Wolves opened fire on Prospero, Magnus' homeworld, and caused immeasurable damage to some of the largest caches of knowledge in the fucking Imperium. Chief Librarian Ahzek Ahriman then decided to ignore his Primarch's orders and, in a show of true manliness, lead the Thousand Sons and the Spireguard in a defence of the capital. and the lives of all within. Outnumbered something like five to one, the Sons managed to inflict heavy casualties to the Wolves, but everything started to fall when two or three of the Sons' officers exploded after using too much Warp energy. The defensive line was reduced to the Pyramid of Photep, Magnus' HQ and last shelter for the civilians. Magnus then saw that he wasn't getting shit done, and decided to challenge Leman Russ in one of the MOST EPIC BATTLAHZ EVAH. But things didn't go well for the Cyclops. Just before being hacked to pieces by the angry brother ("WAT?!?!? HE KILLED MAH PUPPIEZ?!?") Magnus cast a last spell and all the Thousand Sons vanished in a *POOF!* and 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 to attack Fenris.
After these events Tzeentch walked up and sat on his throne in the Hidden Library, at which point he conjured a martini glass with his alcohol of choice 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
(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.
This rite damned everyone in the legion without Psychic powers to be turned into ash and their soul to be sealed for all eternity into their permanently sealed armor unless the armor itself is broken. Originally this was supposed to stop the mutations they were experiencing as they defected to Chaos; Ongoing mutation paired with the earlier slaughter of the Thousand Sons by the Space Wolves meant that they were slowly dying out, and Magnus and the Thousand Sons actively sought a way to stop it. 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 a Sorcerer. Suffice to say Magnus was fucking pissed and kicked Ahriman's ass out of the Eye of Terror. The spirit-armor Marines became known as Rubric Marines.
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. 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 animate 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 every major Chaos Marine forces 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 do tie up Imperial meatshields while Rubric Marines and Sorcerers doing the job that matters. In editions past it was mentioned, that Thousand Sons Sorcerers can reanimate killed (broken?) Rubric Marines with a simple yet time-consuming rithual 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 Rubric made the souls of both Golems and Sorcerers all but immune to powers of Warp so they cannot be nommed by daemons. It was never retconed, so we can assume that this fluff is still valid, and no matter how many Thousand Sons you're killed, they would always come back from dead.
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 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 "All is Dust." Only the relatively rare standard Marines they have however, scream it - instead, the sorcerers typically emit it as a sonorous chant, accompanied by flickers of warp-light as the squad emerges from seemingly nowhere.
Connections with the Blood Ravens?
It's never proven to be absolutely canon, but in the "A Thousand Sons" novel from the Horus Heresy book series, there are some hints that the Blood Ravens stemmed from a Thousand Sons cult who remained loyal to the Emperor, which was a large force of Thousand Sons marines who were sent outside Prospero before the Space Wolves came to fuck the whole planet over. Specifically, the most painfully obvious of the hints is this particular line from the novel where a remembrancer is using divination:
Since these Marines never fought the Space Wolves and weren't drawn into Magnus' plans of heresy and revenge, or didn't even hear about it, after getting their planet bombed, they remained loyal to the Emprah. Probably because they, like Leman Russ, discovered after the fact that it was a trick. Sucks to be Russ when he found out.
And note that the Blood Ravens have no idea which legion or chapter they originally came from and the fact that they produce an unusually higher number of Psykers than your average marine chapter and the Thousand Sons were known to have a large number of Psykers in their legion, as well as having a fetish for various flavors of knowledge. Also, the Thousand Sons' pre-heresy colors are strikingly similar to the Blood Ravens', the only difference is that instead of a white trim, the Blood Ravens use black, but the armor's overall color and their helmet's visor color are virtually the same.
Additionally, certain records were found upon Kronus that alluded to the Chapter's origin, yet Thule had them destroyed. Some suggest that the evidence was so damning as to link them to prove this theory. Alternatively, it may simply be that the records were in fact Azariah Kyras' perverted /d/eviant porn and Thule destroyed it because of the sheer amount of extra-heresy it contains that it would drive any lesser man to insanity.
There is some more evidence that the Blood Ravens are a Thousand Sons offshoot in the book Dawn of War: Tempest, but that was written by C.S. Goto, so take it with a grain of salt.
"Rather nice chaps, I thought - Brother-Captain Jefferies, Classy Marines Fourth Company.
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See Also
Gallery
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Even with all of his powers, Tzeentch will never give up, even to Ahriman, the greatest of all riddles.
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Hey, don't ask me how come they have Raptors at all, I'm curious as much as you are.
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The golden years
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