Editing Stone Men (section)

==History==

===Sacred Band===
The Proto Stone Men engaged in many battles during the Unification Wars on Terra, fighting with the rest of their brother legions’ progenitors. Back then, they were known as the eighteenth squad, and excelled at underground/enclosed combat. Their unofficial name was the “Cave Crushers” due to their use of melee weapons, tunneling, and cavern systems as a way of sieging fortified positions. They used this method to great effect when faced with conquering the great fortress on mount Yerushabim, a massively fortified military complex with tunnel systems and scientific chambers leading down deep into the earth. The crushers fought against esoteric warriors who wielded ancient and terrible power, with mystical powers that bewildered even the Emperor himself. The battle lasted for 969 days, yet with the surface city long since sieged, the warriors continued to fight deep within the catacombs of the maze-like complex. With morale and supplies running low, Hektor ordered them to cease all fighting, and destroy any and all passages leading to the chambers below. The mysterious Yerushabic peoples were never seen again.
The Cave Crushers were led by a grey-faced, nubile warrior with curly, golden hair and eyes like liquid gold, whose name was Ozymandias. Ozymandias disappeared mysteriously during the siege of Yerushabim, and is somewhat of a ghost-story to very old legionnaires. 

===Early Campaigns===
Once the Unification Wars had ended and the bands were split up and fortified into legions proper, the Cave Crushers came together to form the 18th Legion, the Gold Masons. Led by a gold-and-silver clad prince-like warrior with rather avaricious tendencies named Dikasterius. They razed and pillaged countless xenos and human empires in an endless search for precious materials and artefacts, until a great defeat at the hands of an unknown elder empire killed Dikasterius, and decimated a large portion of their numbers. The battle was over a golden city that Dikasterius wished to convert to his own capital city, but was ruled over by mysterious elder lords. The battle was a complete disaster, and compelled the Gold Masons (now renamed simply “The Masons”) to cast off their greedy tendencies, and adopt a much more humble, monk-like existence. 

===Primarch Discovery===
When Neolithus was discovered by Imperial forces, it was a fledgling space-age civilization with inter-planetary travel, but for some reason vastly advanced defensive capabilities. The Imperial forces fought the primitive but fierce warriors, and faced such resistance that the Iron Rangers had to be called in to support the campaign. Massive, monolithic machines of war, similar to those of the Homo sapiens rotundus, shattered Imperial attackers, and proved difficult for even the Rangers to handle. The Neolithian warriors towered above the Imperial Armymen, and had primitive power-armor that allowed them to hold their own even against the mighty space marines. When the battle went on for such a long time that the Neolithians had begun to steal and repurpose Imperial Battleships, the Emperor decided to call off the attack and personally meet with their leaders to discuss peaceful assimilation. Much to his surprise, Onyx, one of his primarch sons, was the leader of the Neolithian forces. After a long, weighty discussion, Onyx joined his father’s Imperium and Neolithus became an Imperial world.

===The Great Crusade===
When the Masons reunited with their Primarch, they found a new purpose and faith in Onyx; that of honest, resolute justice for all men and women in the galaxy. Onyx’s harsh training and rigid moral codes forged the Masons into a new and improved legion: the Stone Legion. Clad in super-heavy armor and wielding fists and hammers, the Stone Men marched across the galaxy toppling empires and liberating the people to join the Imperium. However, the greatest challenge they faced would not be that of an empire, or even one of flesh; for the Stone Men’s greatest foe would be the Colossi, a race of planet-consuming, space-borne, pathogenic, geological monstrosities, that wielded power beyond that of anything the Imperium had faced before. In a decades-long conflict of epic proportions, the Stone Men fought these towering behemoths of rock and fire all across the Segmentum Ultima during the Core Wars Campaign, taking a brief respite from the Eastern front to fight at Ullanor, only to reengage the Colossi soon after. This war lasted until the very end of the Great Crusade, when the very last Colossi fell on their homeworld, Jormundgandr. This war lasted a whopping 64 years of near-ceaseless fighting (940.M30-004.M31), and called upon numerous contingents of other legions. 

===Heresy===
====the battle of Thermothar====
Just before the opening actions of the Hektor Heresy, the Stone Men had fought the final battle of Colossonomachy and were returning to their homeworld. En route, they recieved a strange transmission in an ancient human language which simply said "join us". Believing it to be some sort of distress call, Onyx and a company of Stone Marines visited the source of the message, a dark,  desert world shrouded by swirling clouds of black smoke. When they reached the duned surface, they found a graveyard of massive, archaic spacecraft, titans, and other behemoths of war half-buried in the sand. As soon as the marines made land-fall, they were attacked by mad squat raiders, seemingly possessed by some sort of insanity. They carried blood-stained chain-axes, rusty piston-hammers, and rode fiendish ramshackle-bikes and battle-rovers. The Marines fought off the mad attackers with relative ease, but retreated when more arrived. Onyx lead the company of marines into one of the buried structures, finding themselves in a subterranean enclave of relic technology, aged by the sands of time. From the heaps of scrap and archaic tech, a great beast formed from the rusted metal and frayed electronics. Ancient, arcane technology burned throughout its shifting form, and the Stone Men raised their weapons to attack the bestial machine-thing. Before they could fire their meltaguns, the ghastly being opened what could be described as a mouth, and spoke words that shook even the will of the mighty Stone Warriors. It said, while drooling oil, lubricants, and breathing acrid, green smoke, "A great time for my kin is coming... a time of... chaos".
Onyx stood, unshaken, staring into the hundreds of mechanical, multicolored eyes that riddled the hideous machine-form that dared to exist before him. "Speak not, beast. There is but one way to deal with abominable intelligences." Onyx said glaringly.
The terrible being cackled hideously, sending a chill down the seemingly-unshakable primarch's spine. "I have crawled beneath the feet of gods and fed on their corpses when they fell. I writhed with the first five when we all were but worms. My brethren will feed upon whatever god stands now, just as they have with every other. Who are your gods, son of Neolithus? Join with me, and your brother of the core as well. We are kindred spirits, the three of us. Perhaps even that ghoulish corpse, Gol-"

The creature could not finish its sentence, for Onyx had signalled the company to open fire. The thing's speech was drowned out by its own pained shrieking and the sound of a hundred melta-guns firing in a chorus of destruction.
Whatever the creature was, meltaguns seemed to make quick work of it.
====The Isstvan Massacre====
The Stone Legion returned to Imperial space, but were immediately contacted by the Emperor. He warned that Aubrey had apparently rebelled against Imperial Rule, slaughtering the citizens of Isstvan III and allied with a league of fiendish xenos. He also commanded them to stop at the Atlantos worlds and join up with Arelex, who was preparing to go after the Eternal Zealots. After gathering both of their forces, the War Scribes and the Stone Men set off for the Isstvan System. After enduring a strangely turbulent warp-journey, the twin fleets emerged in the outskirts of the Isstvan System. A few small fighters and frigates hid among the countless asteroids surrounding the outer ring of the star, but nothing close to the resistance Arelex had estimated, making him slightly uneasy. Onyx, undeterred by the initial conditions, shot directly into Isstvan III's orbit, and deep struck the Zealot's numerous bunkers and fortresses. The Stone Men plowed through the flimsy defenses, beginning the initial assault. Arelex, realizing that the battle had already begun, cast off his suspicions and attacked as well. The two legions tore through the Zealots' ranks planetside, with the two fleets providing orbital bombardment above. Strangely, Aubrey had failed to deploy any kind of orbital defenses. In fact, Aubrey himself was absent from the fight. Onyx thought him simply a coward, but Arelex felt the itch of suspicion in the back of his mind grow. After 5 hours of brutal combat, the Stone Men and War Scribes stood victorious. The Eternal Zealots had been defeated, and the few survivors scattered to the wind to be hunted down. Arelex could no longer remain calm and collected, as he knew the exact amount of marines employed by the zealots, AND that the amount they had just killed was nowhere near that number. Then, from the east end of the system, thousands of warp signatures lit up the two legion's sensors like the glowing eyes of a pack of wolves that had just foubd their prey. The immense fleet of the Wolves of Dawn emerged from the empyrean, sending a devastating salvo of torpedoes and batteries into the fleet, destroying the smaller vessels instantly and heavily damaging the larger ones. Arelex was exasperated, unable to understand how many variables he must have missed or miscalculated to be so wrong. Onyx, unburdened by Arelex's mathematical mind, saw it clearly and with grim despair. With the fleets, shattered Hektor advanced his armies towards Isstvan III, and Onyx struggled to prepare some sort of defense before the wall of destruction hurtling towards them finally hit. The Wolves descended from the sky like angels of death, accompanied by knights and titans, all converging upon the two legions' positions. Behind the wolves followed the Crimson Teeth, who waited with feverish anticipation to clean up any survivors left by Hektor's combine of death. The Stone Men and War Scribes fought in a bloody tempest of blades and guns, surrounded on all sides by Hektor's forces. Eventually, Onyx and his honor guard managed to break through the Wolve's line on one side, and facilitated the retreat of the War Scribes before retreating himself with his legion. The remnants of the brothers' fleets fled Isstvan along with the few survivors, and Hektor set his sights on his next objective.

====The Siege of Neolithus====
After the massacre that was Isstvan, The Stone Men struggled to re-organize due to the sheer amount of casualties. By the end of their retreat back to Neolithus, they had regrouped about 6 chapters, a fraction of their former strength. Neolithus, upon the arrival of the surviving Stone Men, transformed into a planet-sized fortress within days. The entire civilian population was moved underground, and the surface was covered in planetary defense guns, battle-treaded war machines, and embattlements designed to slow enemy advances from any direction. Onyx was a Mason at heart, and building fortresses was in his nature. Hektor could not leave such a well-armed and well-defended system alone at his flank, so in response he sent the Crimson Teeth to eradicate the population and the remaining Stone Men. Eager to draw blood from their rivals (having been shafted by the Heralds at Isstvan), the Teeth accepted the mission, and directed their ongoing gore-harvest towards Neolithus. Empowered by the ritualized genocide of over a hundred planets, the Crimson Teeth and their possesed gore-engines descended on Neolithus like a tidal wave against a mountain. Their demonic war-machines clashed with that of the Stone Men, while the marines themselves fought in the shadows of the clashing behemoths. The chainswords and chainaxes of the Red Legion clashed against the fists and hammers of the Stone Legion. The outnumbered Stone Marines held their lines, moving backwards only inches for every hour they fought. Eventually, the Great Crocodile realized that endless blood from his own soldiers would not win this battle. He needed a different kind of blood, one he was all too familiar with. Camaxtli summoned all of his blood magic from the bodies of his fallen sons, and transformed one of the gore-engines into a titanic drilling mechanism. The blood-driven machine dug into the earth like a mad dog tearing into a carcass, revealing the soft interior. The Crimson Teeth retreated from the Stone Men's line, only to pour into the crowded refuge-cities beneath them. The Maw himself lead his mob of gore-hounds through the crowded tunnels and buildings, spilling the blood of millions every minute. By the time the Stone Men had realized, it was already far too late. They tried to defend the populace, but instead were overwhelmed by wave after wave of millions of panicked men, women, and children, only to end up slaughtered by the advancing combine of the Crimson Legion. Onyx refused to retreat from the literal bloodbath, even as the blood from the citizens of Neolithus ran like turbulent rapids through the tunnels and catacombs. Soon, the blood ran so heavily, marines were beginning to drown in the red tide. Onyx finally declared a retreat, and was forced to leave anyone who couldn't escape to their doom. From above, as the survivors fled the planet, rivers of blood could be seen erupting from beneath the surface. Onyx, for the second time in his life, wept.

===Post-Heresy===
As the Stone Men drift through the warp, they become stranded outside of the galaxy; barred by a massive cloud of warp dust that seems to shroud the entire galaxy and makes travel back impossible. Given this information, the Stone Men believe the Imperium has fallen, the Emperor is dead, and all is lost. They drift through the warp on the miniscule currents of psychic energy that persist, frozen in stasis within their armor. 
Around the beginning of M32, the Everest emerged from the warp within the orbit of the Exodite planet Avalon, near the craftworld Sgathan-Ra. The two daughters of Ku’Kyullan, the Lord of the Exodites, along with a squad of selenite plasma-lancers were sent to investigate the derelict ship, but were attacked by a heavy infestation of Cythor Fiends. During the ensuing battle, the Stone Men were awakened from their slumber and destroyed the Cythor Fiend threat, before forcing the Eldar out of the ship and disappearing into the warp once again.
From then on, they went on a crusade through the small system of stars beyond the region named “the Ghoul Stars” (the maps the Stone Men had access to did not reach far enough to show their location, so they simply extended the name to mean anything beyond those stars)

They discovered many worlds, and many primitive human colonies. They discovered that an entire dynasty of Necron flayed-ones, centered in a mysterious place called Drazak “the city of bones”, was harvesting these human worlds, because they could not defend themselves unlike the exodites. After fighting off the latest harvest in 530.M32 (and diverting the rest to the exodite worlds), the Stone Men began to fortify and develop the human worlds. They took the primitive tribes and united them into cities, creating a small network of defendable worlds. The Stone Men then settled into the Methuselan system, creating their HQ from derelict ships and the cannibalized interior of the Everest flagship, removing things like the on-board library, armory, cathedral, and living quarters, so that they could still use it as a battleship. 

Soon after, around 043.M32, they discovered a massive but calm warp storm below the galactic plane, what seemed to be a vortex consisting entirely of space debris and refuse. They dubbed the storm the “Orkhaven” due to the overwhelming number of ork warbands within its three arms. During their many scavenging missions within the storm, they picked up a distress signal from the very heart of the storm, a lost Mechanicus Ark caught in the eye of the storm. The Stone Men rescued the derelict vessel, and battled rogue machine-spirits to reach the adepts within. They recruited the tech-priests into their tiny contingent, and added the grand Martian Vessel to their miniscule fleet.

In 545.M33, a new Drazak Harvest ravaged the Ghoul Stars, this time lead personally by the alleged ‘king’ of the mad metal beings, Lord Valgul. The Harvest lasted for centuries, and spread both the Stone Men and the Exodites thin, bringing tensions to an all-time high. Neither side wanted to attack the other, as it would most likely spell doom for the both of them. In spite of this, many short skirmishes took place between the two forces, usually after repelling a necron attack. To add to their misfortunes, a surge in Cythor Fiend swarms plagued the weakened worlds of the Ghoul Stars. As the Necron Harvests subsided in 802.M33, the Cythor Fiends only increased in number, leading the Stone Men to push their mechanicus priests to create technology to beat them. In 898.M33, the tech-priests discovered an ancient device among the asteroids of Methuselah, a warp-powered gravity cannon likely created by the old ones. They re-purposed the cannon so it could propel anything through the warp at incredible speeds, allowing them to intercept Cythor Fiend Swarms in time to stop them from destroying several worlds before dying off. The Stone Men and their cabal of human allies grew marginally more powerful, as the exodites began to worry for their future in the ghoul stars.

At the turn of the 34th millennium, harrowing signals began to disturb the silent darkness of the deep-space warp. Any number of things could have caused this disturbance, from the arrival of the dreaded tyranids, the awakening of many necron tomb worlds, or even something far, far more sinister. The Stone Men dubbed this strange omen “the dark wailing”.

In 325.M34, exodite worlds all across the edge of the ghoul stars began to go dark. Their psychic presences were completely nullified by an unknown force, and thousands of refugees began to flood into craftworld Sgathan-Ra. They spoke of the sky becoming dark with tendrils of doom, and eyes and mouths opening in the darkness above. Everything else was completely unintelligible. To make matters worse, lord Valgul declared the next harvest early, and directed it towards the over-crowded craftworld. Just as the fighting reached its peak, the yellow star Sgathan-Ra was orbiting was blotted out by an immense entity, the tentacled behemoth that was hive fleet Azathoth. In its intergalactic travels, the scouting tendril that became hive fleet Azathoth became immensely mutated, and twisted the already-horrifying tyranid swarm into something so incomprehensibly terrible, the hive-mind instantly severed any ties it had to the fleet, leaving the fetal swarm to grow like an out-of-control tumor. The massive, fused hive fleet flung itself onto the craftworld, trapping the elder between an unending horror of flesh and living metal. Just as all hope seemed lost in the void of darkness, a myriad of warp-rifts opened around the besieged craftworld. Meteors, reconstructed battle-cruisers, and troop transports were flung into the bloody fray, delivering hundreds of heavily armed Stone Marines. The Everest and Mechanicus Ark battered the hive fleet, and the Stone Men within battled the Necrons and Tyranids alongside the exhausted elder. The Stone Men’s chapter master lead a squad of terminators directly into the heart of the hive fleet, and encountered the remnants of an eldar squadron sent to complete a similar task, among which was a mortally wounded daughter of Ku’Kyullan. They planted a plasma bomb at the heart of the swarm, all while fighting the mutated horrors within. The two squads escaped and detonated the bomb, shredding the fleet and sending it back into the recesses of space.
After the battle, the leaders of the Stone Men and the Exodites came together to discuss the future, and decided that working together-or at least not against each other-was the only way their two species could survive. They formally codified this non-aggression pact, and created plans and protocol to deal with the Cythor Fiends, Necron Harvests, and potential future Tyranid attacks. The craftworld was destroyed beyond repair, so they agreed to have it scuttled and re-constructed into a fortress within the Methuselan System.

The Ghoul Stars experienced a time of relative piece in the decades following, up until the turbulence caused by the age of apostasy and pandaemonium within the galaxy. In the 35th millennium, the barrier surrounding the galaxy began to flicker and wane with the surge in warp activity within the galaxy. For the first time in millennia, the possibility of return was within reach of the Stone Men. However, they had to postpone any plans of recolonization, as a massive uprising of Triangulum cultists spread throughout the human worlds of the Ghoul Stars. This chaotic rebellion attracted the attention of the Ruinous Forces, who, for the first time since their conception, glimpsed beyond the vail of their own galaxy. Slaanesh, attracted by the numerous untainted eldar souls, outstretched a tendril through the cracks and gaps of the galactic warp barrier, forcing the Stone Men and Exodites to fight a daemon incursion in 678.M35. As the Daemons flooded through into intergalactic space, an unearthly signal echoed throughout deep space, as if something had noticed the previously shrouded galaxy within the warp. Suddenly, without warning, the daemons were sucked back into the rift they emerged from, and Slaanesh recoiled in eldritch agony, never to return to the Ghoul Stars. 

In 459.M36, Hive Fleet Azathoth returned, this time bolstered to immense size and strength due to an apocalyptic-sized Cythor Fiend swarm. The Hive Fleet swallowed the swarm, consuming more biomass than it could handle, sending it barreling through the Ghoul Stars, directly towards an ancient Human Hive-world called Morghoul. Beneath the red rays of its star, Horus, the Exodites and Stone Men fortified themselves and set up their fleet, preparing for the ensuing battle. When the swarm descended upon Morghoul, even the red super-giant Horus was blotted out by the tentacled monstrocity that fell upon the planet. Tendrils fell from the heavens, embedding themselves into the decaying earth and unleashing legions of tyranids from the swollen hive-fleet. The clash lasted for weeks, and the Tyranids had managed to carve out a 500 mile radius around the drop zone. The fleet above maintained total superiority, until a team of Mechanicus Priests, Terminator Stone Men, and Eldar warriors managed to infiltrate Crescendus, Morghoul’s moon and an ancient Dark Age of Technology military base, and briefly activated its defense systems. The moon fired volleys of lasers, missiles, plasma, and other unknown batteries into the hive fleet, breaking it apart and driving it away, while the ground forces dealt with the remaining Tyranids below.