Horns of Ruin

Summary of Legion XXVIV

Undivided, Destruction

Legion Equipment

Legion Doctrine

Once Kranios received his legion he began to bolster it with all the men who stood a chance of surviving the initiation progress. Into each legionnaire was beaten a desire for warfare in its most grueling and harsh forms. No mercy was ever to be given to the enemy and none was to be received. It was understood among them that any planet they were unleashed upon had rejected the Emperor's offer of being a part of His Imperium and was thus only deserving of total annihilation. As the Horns of Ruin brought shattered world after shattered world into the Imperium some criticized them for the brutal nature of their wars, but very rarely were these qualms brought up in the presence of Kranios or his Legion.

The Horns of Ruin were quick to fall to the powers of Chaos. Kranios did not find the idea of standing idly by once the Great Crusade had been finished to be as near as tempting as the never ending war that Hektor's new Gods had promised, and his Astartes were all to eager to follow behind him. After taking part in the Massacre on Istvaan V, the Siege of Terra, Hektor's subsequent death and the Emperors internment on the Golden Throne, Kranios and his Legion made there way to the Eye of Terror, reducing every world that crossed their path along the way to ash.

Kranios, Primarch of the Horns of Ruin

Appearance

Kranios was had a very harsh apearance, and stood at the taller end of the spectrum of his brothers. The Primarch's bronze skin was covered in the various scars he had received throughout his life, most noticeably the one he received from his fall down the mountain as a child, which had left a massive mark that ran along the side of his head. The scars were only made worse by a harsh looking face that made even his smiles and laughs appear mean spirited, though that may have been because they often were. Kranios often kept his head shaved, and grew a short black beard over his face.

He remained in his armor at almost all times, content to know that he was created for destruction and war. He seemed to have little intention or interest in trying to be anyone who was not concerned with annihilating the enemies of the Imperium. He is said to have found it amusing that some of his brothers have tried to play the man or some form of beast and not the war machines they were designed to be.

Youth

Kranios' homeworld, Satares, was a volatile and dangerous planet save for precious few sub continents where the tectonic plates held still. The constant earthquakes and raging storms gave birth to countless mountains and bottomless chasms as far as any eye could see, save for the few "Eyes" that dotted the planet. In these Eyes had been built massive cities, hubs of culture and progress. Then Kranios fell from the sky.

The gestation pod careened through a sky over one of Satares' greatest capitals and crashed into a neighboring mountain ridge. The young primarch crawled from his carriage, dazed and confused high in the mountains, before slipping and falling down the mountain side, against jagged rocks and steep inclines into the camp of a tribe of mountain people, men and women who were descendants of those who had been cast out of the cities in ages past. The infant was bruised and bloody and a gash was so deep in his head that his brain could be seen beating, but though the giants were a harsh people, any child who fell from the sky alive was a good omen to them, half dead or otherwise.

The Coming of The Emperor

Kranios healed, was in good health, and set off on the same kind of life many of his brothers did. He used his strength to take control of the Mountain People, he used the mountain people to take control of one of Satares' Cities, and he used the City to begin creating the war machines, and then he used his newly made warmachines to take control over his world. That is how he described it. The people of Satares described it as 30 years of excruciating terror and atrocity as the mountain people slaughtered, destroyed, and ruined at the cost of hundreds of their own people, while being led by a true giant who seemed hell bent on their civilization. Not one city yielded willingly to Kranios, knowing that submission to him meant slavery and a life of suffering. This was fine with Kranios, he enjoyed every hard fought battle as his enemies lashed out like beasts as their cities crumbled. Had his enemies surrendered he would have become bored.

The Emperor arrived on Satares, to find it's few remaining Mega-cities belching out black smoke and deadly war machines, and sitting on the throne found in the greatest of these glorified war factories was Kranios. Despite the lack of anything beautiful in his world, the Emperor could not deny that the conquests and the appearance of this man proved him to be one of his lost sons. The Emperor offered him a place in his great crusade, and Kranios, seeing the great weapons the Emperor and his men wielded, accepted.