Editing Black Augurs (section)

==The Decimation==
The former Solar Warriors were once noble, if proud, sons of the Emperor but it was not to last. Their Primarch, the Voidwatcher, was an incredibly powerful psyker and he was dissatisfied his legion did not take after him. While they were the most generally psychically gifted of any of the legions they did not possess anything akin to his focus and power upon his rediscovery. To rectify this perceived shortcoming he set began to develop an immensely powerful spell to "enhance" and "purge all the weakness" from his legion. In the first few months of crusade after the Voidwatchers discovery he held his legion back as reserve for others and spent most of his time locked in his arcane laboratories. Finally, after almost a solar year the Solar Warriors were becoming increasingly uneasy. Their Primarch refused to allow them to gain glory like their brother Astartes and was hiding himself from them. The company commanders finally agreed to confront their absentee Primarch but when they burst into his study they found him waiting over a ritual circle. The sorcery had been prepared for a almost a week but the Primarch had decided to wait so there would be eyes to bear witness. The incense was lit, the stars were in alignment, and all that needed to be done were speak the last crucial words of the incantation.  A pillar of ethereal smoke gathered above the circle, crackling with dark energies and twisting like the screaming faces of the damned. The gathered commanders stared on in awe as it began to twist and writhe like a living being, gathering speed and vigour like a horrible beast trying to escape it's confinement. It finally swirled in on itself, a black singularity of pure malice glaring down at the onlookers. The Voidwatcher spoke a single, final word and the singularity erupted. Howling wind and warp energies gushed outwards, filling the interior of the battleship. Tendrils spilled from every crack and port to seek out the other Solar Warriors ships all across the sector. At the moment the grand ritual was complete.

All the Marines of the 14th Legion immediately suffered violent and reality-defying fits as the energy coiled around them. Their bodies and minds rebelling against them as they were forcefully converted into psykers while their minds were ravaged by all the possible horrors of their future and their past. The vast majority did not survive the process. The truly weak burst into warp flame, exploded, or degenerated in primordial ooze; some devolved into psychotic beasts, were disgustingly crippled, or were reduced to gibbering useless heaps; and only a few, one in ten, survived and mastered their new found psychic ability. These lucky few became among the most powerful psykers in the Imperium. Those that survived suffered the most unimaginable horror during the sorcerous rapture. All were left mentally scoured and all the kindness, all but the basest trace of human compassion was snuffed out in an instant. Replaced with naught but the neverending goal for more power. 

This event was known as the Decimation and resulted in a reduction of the legions fighting force from just over 100,000 to less than 10,000. This forced the legion to overhaul their hierarchy as well as recruitment protocol. The were renamed the Black Augurs and that title would soon spread fear from one end of the Great Crusade to the other. What was once a beacon the Emperor's light was now a collection of the most fearsome, depraved, and completely vicious warpcrafters in the galaxy.

Some say the Voidwatcher laughed as he watched his chaotic essence be implanted in his unwitting men.