Editing Stone Men (section)

===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.