Editing Magnus the Red (section)

==The Great Crusade==
[[File:Past-Magnus-The-Red-Primarchs-.jpeg||300px|right|thumb|Magnus nerdin out in his private astrology room.]]
Magnus landed on the planet of [[Prospero]], a planet whose ancient civilization was composed predominantly of psykers, who had fled there because they were persecuted by humanity at large for being psykers. As Magnus was himself such a being, he formed a kinship with the people of Prospero in short order. Taken in by Prospero's people, he absorbed knowledge like a big red sponge, and became crazy powerful, and in time far exceeded the power and control of all of his teachers. After a while, he became the single most powerful ''thing'' on the fucking planet, and he led a campaign to eradicate a race of predators on Prospero known as the ''Psychneuein'', which had overrun many of Prospero's early cities, and had an unhealthy fondness for laying their eggs in unsuspecting psykers' brains. Which was probably why the beasts had destroyed the entire population of Prospero, save for its capital city, Tizca. One by one, bit by bit, Magnus' forces retook the planet, putting the Psychneuein to the sword, and within a year, [[Awesome|Magnus had mostly reclaimed the entire world]] (except for the Desolation of Prospero, which was everything except for Tizca).

Once the campaign on the Psychneuein was complete, Magnus became the planetary leader by popular demand. Magnus decided to be fucking awesome, and rebuilt the cities (or mostly just Tizca). Like a somehow perfectly stable fortress lasting some 50 years in [[Dwarf Fortress]], Tizca became arguably the most beautiful city in Imperial space, with crystalline spires and pyramids, long marble roads, and psychically-resonant crystals in key locations; designed to calm the turbulent minds of younger psykers and help them control their burgeoning psionic potential. The city quickly became known as a shining jewel of humanity, and one that showed proudly how far its citizens had come from the brink of near-extinction. Prospero also had one of the most technically advanced defensive networks in the Imperium, all of which was hilariously wasted except for the shields when Magnus, in a fit of Primarch-scale angst over his "I screwed everything Dad was doing and failed my purpose entirely in the process" whoopsy-daisy, decided that the [[Space Wolves]] should get the rabbit punch.

All this time, Magnus continued to codify and systematise everything he could about the 'Great Ocean' - the name the Prosperans had given the [[Warp]]. Huge libraries filled with knowledge about psychic powers and the warp were established, and Magnus himself used his powers to peer into the Empyrean itself, claiming many of its secrets, though at terrible risk to himself. While this was exceptionally dangerous, much of what the Imperium's [[Inquisition]] currently knows about the Warp came directly from several of his manuscripts that survived.

With such a powerful mind heading into the warp, it was inevitable that the [[Emprah]] (who happened to be out and about the galaxy looking for his lost sons) would eventually take notice. So he eventually came to Prospero, and he and Magnus psychically brofisted before talking for several days. The Emperor taught him even more about psychic powers, but cautioned Magnus to be ''slow and purposeful''. The Emperor was well-aware foul horrors lurked in the Warp and liked nothing better than [[Anal Circumference|forcibly sodomising an unprepared Psyker's soul]], but Magnus didn't care, especially since his forays into the Warp to save his Legion from the flesh-change had already come at a price neither of them realized - Magnus believed he'd only given up on his right eye, sacrificed ala Odin when he had consorted with [[Tzeentch|Warp-entities whose nature he did not understand]]. To Magnus, one eye was was an acceptable price and he didn't heed the Emperor's warnings as he believed he'd come out on top of the bargain.

Magnus was put in charge of the [[Thousand Sons]], but would not immediately embark on the Great Crusade - since many of his Legion were psykers, and there had been so many small mutations that a number of them couldn't survive the gene-seeding process. Even worse, during combat, psykers ran the risk of losing control of their powers and underwent "Flesh Change", where their body mutated rampantly out of control at all the Warp energy running through them (we call them something else, but won't speak its name as... wait, I didn't say it's [[Chaos Spawn|naSHHTLSUROHSONTOOLS!]])

Magnus was aware of the mutations his Astartes were suffering, and entered the Warp to seek answers about the cause of this and if a cure existed, though he didn't know that he had consorted with [[Tzeentch]] by doing so, and the god of [[Just as planned]] saw a ''lot'' of potential in this one. In return for knowledge and a way to stop the flesh-change, Magnus lost his eye so hard that he '''never saw it coming''' [[Cegorach|(ah-ha-ha-ha!!)]].

In any case, because of the setbacks that had befallen the Thousand Sons, the selfless efforts of Magnus to save them, their shared psychic talents, and the continuing distrust and persecution of many Imperial agencies and other Space Marine Legions towards the Thousand Sons' use of psychic abilities and the rampant mutations present in their gene-seed, the Primarch and his Astartes developed an extremely close emotional and psychic bond. One of the strongest among all Primarchs and their Space Marine Legions, exceeding even the [[Black Legion|Luna Wolves]]' dedication to [[Horus]].

Finally, about midway into the Great Crusade (100 Terran years after it had begun), the now "stable" Thousand Sons Legion (although numbering only 10,000 soldiers), with Magnus leading them on the field, were permitted to take part in the campaign as part of the 28th Expeditionary Fleet. And it was ''glorious''. When they were deployed, the Sons were a sight to behold, flinging psychic storms to consume their enemies and striking bolts with precision and prescience, using their abilities to ascertain enemies' weak-points. Magnus was <s>unique</s> somewhat unusual among the Primarchs in that he would always try diplomatic routes first, however - in this way, the Thousand Sons won many battles without so much as a shot fired. This did not sit well with [[Rogal Dorn]] or [[Roboute Guilliman|Girlyman]], who viewed this approach "unmanly" (even though Guilliman was an exceptionally accomplished diplomat, so where ''that'' came from is anyone's guess). Perhaps his two most ardent detractors were [[Leman Russ]] and especially [[Mortarion]], both of whom distrusted the Sons' sorcerous ways and were somewhat concerned with a really annoying trait the Sons had picked up. [[lootas|After conquering or annexing a world, they would take huge amounts of knowledge: books, scrolls about forgotten /forbidden lore, and ancient artefacts, back to Prospero for study, analysis and codification]]. ''And this doesn't sound like the Blood Ravens, you say? Nicking everything shiny that's not nailed down?'' Point is: nobody looted so prolifically as The Thousand Sons. The White Scars and Blood Angels aligned themselves with them to rig the Librarium. What that did was to actually impose some restraint on psykers, that made everyone a bit more accepting towards them. Their worries only intensified when it was discovered that the Sons had little warp critters (familiars) called "tutelaries" buzzing around them and acting as warp power-packs. This Elegan/tg/entleman believes Magnus’ tutelary was an ADORABLE WARP KITTEN!

When diplomacy didn't work, The Sons were known to fuck entire armies with lightning, fireballs, mass mind-control, precognition of enemy strikes and counter them with precision strikes, dealing so much devastation with only some few squads of Marines. Magnus himself once fought Ork gargants by himself, and despite being able to zap, melt or transmute their hulls with just the power of his mind, he instead [[Awesome|scaled himself to the size of a Warlord-class Titan, and beat the shit out of them with his bare hands]].

A very important event called "Council of Nikaea" or "The Trial of Magnus the Red", took place about 50 years before the Horus Heresy, where Magnus was called by his brothers and the Emperor to answer for abusing his powers and to install some form of control of psykers used in battle across the galaxy. Magnus attended the Council without any forewarning that it was essentially going to be a trial of him and his sons. He thought, somewhat naively, that it was to be a conclave in which he would be able to extol the virtues of psykers to an open-minded audience. Unfortunately, despite his towering intellect, Magnus was oddly solipsistic and, as noted by Konrad Curze, seemed to have absolutely no common sense (think Sheldon Cooper on steroids). This lack of self-awareness left him blindsided by the fact that he'd actually managed to piss off quite a few of his brother Primarchs with his dismissive arrogance and open displays of warp phuckery. The fact that the Sons were obsessed with preserving valuable knowledge (whatever the source), sat poorly with many of his brothers as well. The Thousand Sons' political opponents among other Astartes Legions found hoarding xenos' artefacts useless and counter-productive to the goals of the Great Crusade (which actually more or less sought to eradicate all alien life in the galaxy). Additionally, oftentimes the Thousand Sons would either be absurdly late to help another Legion who needed support, or would just up and vanish from active warzones to chase some scrap of lore. Both Leman Russ and Konrad Curze had had significant problems arise due to this magpie-like tendency; Russ had at one point needed help with a particular campaign and Magnus had arrived '''years''' late due to messing around with some xenos Warp temple, and in Curze's case, he'd attempted to protect the library of a degenerate human civilization from Curze. Where Leman just got a bit annoyed, Curze had straight up shelled the library with the Thousand Sons still inside after he got sick of telling them to clear out. Fortunately the Thousand Sons retreated and nobody was killed, though Magnus was pretty miffed about it.

Magnus was forced to defend his and his Sons' actions, and unfortunately managed to make a bit of an ass of himself. Instead of attempting to compromise with his detractors or displaying any sort of humility, he vehemently defended all of his and his Sons' actions, even going so far as to take the allegorical story of Plato's Cave and alter it to suit his own needs. Likely due to Magnus' own hubris, the Emperor ultimately decided that he had given the Astartes too much free reign when it came to psykers in their ranks. He chose to disband the Astartes Librarius departments and banned the use of psychic powers in combat. The ever fabulous Jaghatai Khan double facepalmed Picard-style, whilst thinking that this was exactly what he'd warned Magnus about. Magnus was ticked off, but quickly realised that there wasn't any easy way for the Emperor to actually enforce this decree without plonking Custodes watchdogs into the Thousand Sons. As such, the Thousand Sons made a show of not using their powers in public while completely ignoring the ban in private. One final interesting thing to note about the Council was that the Emperor had decided to summon Leman Russ to Nikea in secret with a bunch of Silent Sisters cloaking him from Magnus. This rather sinisterly implies that the Emperor thought that Magnus might throw enough of a tantrum that he wanted his personal executioner to be able to ambush Magnus. Maybe Magnus wasn't quite as nice as he let on... Or maybe the Emperor is just phenomenally ruthless. Or both.