Editing Leviathan Host (section)

=History=

==Pre-Primarch History & Reunion==

While Marduk was stewarding his people and later crushing his enemies, his true gene-sons fought their own long war. The First Legion was a test bed and the tip of the Emperor’s spear during the early Great Crusade. Many technologies were pioneered among their number, most notably the Land Speeder and the Power Weapon. These arms remained prominent among them even until the later Crusade. Similarly, they were the original practitioners of Deep Striking and were part of what defined it as a Space Marine strategy during the early years of the legions. They were originally the standard to which the other budding legions were held, earning the moniker “Immortals”. That name, and importance, would eventually be their downfall, however. The Immortals could always be found at the front of any advance, but as the Crusade waxed greater and greater, they were gradually spread thin. Then as Primarchs began to be found, they quickly took the reins of the campaign from the Lord Commanders, but the Primarch of the First was nowhere to be found. Still the endless war pushed forward, and gradually the Immortals were worn down. Always kept at full strength so they could be the vanguard of operations, they were steadily becoming increasingly weary with the conflict. Battle hardened veterans watched waves of new recruits arrive and be lost almost as quickly, while recruits were greeted with increasingly melancholic leadership and a lack of mentorship because of the high casualties. Some of the other legions began quietly deriding them as “Immortals” because they replaced their dead so fast it didn’t matter if they lived or died.  This went on for decades, almost centuries, before their Primarch was found. When Marduk did finally arrive to greet the Immortals, their morale hung by a razor thin thread.

==The Great Crusade==

Thankfully, when the Primarch did come he revitalized the legion in a way that supposedly surprised even the Emperor himself. Their strategy and tactics were overhauled, and Marduk himself proved to be a more than competent leader. Morale soared, and their victories began to stack back up again. Gone were the days of Immortals being scoffed at by their fellow Legions. They rechristened themselves “The Leviathan Host” after the sigil-beast Marduk brought with him from his homeworld. He led them as a maverick legion, the same spearhead as they always were but faster and even more fearsome. They rode on dark wings, striking the foes of the Imperium without warning and tearing them apart like a pack of sharks. The legion and it’s Primarch’s reputation grew, perhaps even eclipsing that of their original moniker. 

But, all was not as it seemed. Marduk had brought something with him besides his oratory and tactical skills. He had brought something the Imperial Truth shunned, something to be kept under wraps in the company of his father and his more fervent brothers. He had brought faith. The mythos of the Leviathan spread like wildfire among the legion, springing forth from the Dagonian recruits and Marduk himself. It was more than partially responsible for the legion's surge in morale; the brotherhood of faith is a deep and abiding one. They believed themselves to be the coils of the great sea serpent, something they further associated with the Imperium itself, crushing and devouring their foes so that the new life of civilization could spring forth. They knew the Emperor did not look kindly upon this kind of idolatry, and kept it as a secret sailor faith to be told only in hushed tones amongst themselves.

As the the Crusade drew on though, they gradually slipped deeper and deeper into their abyssal religion. They began to associate it more less with the Imperium of Man, but more with darker and more terrible things they had found at the far edges of the Crusades. Chaos began to whisper in the now Warmaster Marduk’s ear, and through him it whispered into the very heart of the Imperium and its Angels of Death. 

By the time Barabash approached the Primarch with the truth of the Ruinous Powers, it took little convincing to make the the Host and its Primarch reconcile it with their secret cult.

==Brotherwar==



==Post-Brotherwar==