Bloodquest

Bloodquest is a series of comics and audio dramas chronicling the unfortunate tale of Captain Leonatos of the Blood Angels and his band of fellow exiles as he seeks his redemption through recovering a relic he had lost. This was originally showcased in Inferno! Magazine, and lasted long enough to eventually see completion.

Though not as outright batshit-insane as Deff Skwadron or The Redeemer, it is particularly interesting to notice how very different the first volume is (clean, distinct blacks and whites with some fairly cartoonish art) compared to the others (gritty, more realistic, with lots of grays).

The Band

• Leonatos - Captain of the Blood Angels, though which company was never disclosed. All that is is that he was gifted a relic blade by Chapter Master Dante as a test of faith as he went to wage war on some Orks. The battle went well enough, but at the last moment he got sucker punched and robbed by the warboss. Seeing that this was his quest to start with, he's very determined to get the sword back at any cost and is willing to sacrifice virtually anything to get it back, even himself.
  • That self-sacrifice manages sees the sword return, but Leonatos is not with it. Instead, he becomes the host of a daemon (the particular one being the same one possessing the Ork warboss who caused this whole mess). Though the daemon leads his legions in his own contribution to a Black Crusade (it's never indicated if this is indeed one of Abaddon's little tantrums and not one that just takes the name), it still faces resistance from the good captain and manages to survive long enough to warn Lysander of as much before leading his entire crusade into a total trap. And the only reason the daemon didn't anticipate this is...because this is a function of the Catalepsean Node to scrub his memory. Kinda weak, in all honesty.

• Cloten - Veteran who somehow avoided getting consigned to the Death Company despite succumbing to the Black Rage following a visit from that fabulous bastard and only joined because he has a death wish. He's already pretty damn violent at the start and only gets more monstrous as time goes on, though it's not clear if this is the Rage taking a greater hold or just the warp mutation from being in the Eye of Terror. At the end of the Eye of Terror saga Cloten is pitted against a monstrous reflection of himself that's fully given over to the chapter's curses. Although losing an arm Cloten triumphs over his demonic visage, which also frees his soul from the two curses. At some point between the end of book 2 and returning to the chapter, he replaces said arm with a teeny-tiny chainsaw.

• Lysander - One of the three scouts who joined Leonatos and has perhaps the greatest development of the entire pack. Then again, he had a lot of room for growth as a scout to the point that he's as scarred and grizzled as a Warhammer Fantasy character with a slick tongue by the time he finishes his journey. He and Cloten stage a suicide trip back to the Eye in order to tie up the one loose end in the third book, but he's the only one to leave after all's said and done.

• Proteus - Another of the scouts and, according to Lysander, was actually the better of them. While he survives long enough to join the team in entering the Eye, he gets led astray by a Slaaneshi daemon and gets corrupted into becoming a champion of chaos with a harem of Daemonettes.

• Tranio - Sergeant and the number two for the majority of the first two books. He's pragmatic and no-nonsense in contrast to Cloten's violence. but unfortunately doesn't last the entire Eye of Terror trip.

• Palemon - Random marine with a bowl cut. Dies to some warp infection while in the Eye of Terror and becomes host to a daemon prince of Nurgle...for all of a minute before getting a merciful *BLAM*.

• Valerius - Other marine. Gives his life to buy his brothers time to escape a vessel haunted by mutants.

• Furion - Librarian who joins because he feels his time coming to an end. It does by holding off a summoned daemon while his brothers drop an orbital lance on them both.

• Menelieus - The Scout who drew the unfortunate "First one who dies" card on a world where the team were guests to a cult that was secretly trying to summon a daemon. A scout just happened to be the perfect sacrifice for the ritual.