Editing Thramas Crusade (section)

==008.M31: The Dark Angels Arrive==
[[File:Thramas-void combat.jpg|thumb|right|350px|The war in Thramas begins in earnest]]
The Lion, upon learning of the Night Lords treachery from [[Perturabo]] at Diamat, immediately departed for the Thramas sector with a small flotilla of 18 capital ships. Arriving first in the Triplex system, engaging the Night Lords at the edge of the system, the Lion's flotilla erased the enemy defense monitors before they had a chance to respond. The enemy command ship, the ''Shadow of Justice'' was left crippled and boarded by the [[Dreadwing]] who proceeded to virus bomb the crew leaving only the bridge staff alive, who were captured for interrogation.

At this point the Forge Worlds of the Triplex system began marshalling their forces at Triplex-Galatia and cautiously awaited the approach of this new opponent, which turned out to be a massive mistake. While the [[Firewing]] were torturing information out of the captured Night Lord commanders, the small flotilla of 18 ships grew to nearly one-hundred capital class vessels as nearby Dark Angel expeditions began to answer the call of their Primarch, reducing the Traitor advantage from 10-1 down to 2-1. The Dark Angels eradicated Triplex-Galatia, leaving only the orbital shipyards intact as a future loyalist staging post, while the larger Forge World of Triplex-Phall immediately surrendered rather than suffer the same fate.

With the Forge Worlds of Triplex secure, more Dark Angels started pouring into the warzone. While at the same time, the Night Lords, now knowing who they were facing, started invoking their '''Midnight Treaties''' calling forth what mutants, criminals, and tech-heretics from hidden worlds that had been spared during the [[Great Crusade]] when the Imperium would otherwise have burned them, giving the Traitors access to legions of willing fodder and sufficient materiel to prosecute war for a very long time. Thus, what followed was one of the most bloody and violent campaigns of the Heresy.

For the most part, the Night Lords opted to play to their strengths; although they had greater manpower, the Dark Angels had the larger fleet. Knowing they couldn't win a stand-up fight against the Dark Angels, they executed ambushes and lightning assaults across the sector, never lingering too long in one place; Essentially they were running in, kicking a kitten to death (or at least crippling it so it lives the rest of its miserable existence suffering), and then running away shouting in childish glee "you can't get us, you can't get us". As stupid as this sounds, it actually worked extremely well, and the Dark Angels were forced to play an exceptionally annoying game of sector wide hide-and-go-fuck-yourself.

At this point, the [[Battle of Calth]] had already occurred, and now the '''Ruinstorm''' had descended upon the Eastern Fringe, effectively trapping all combatants in their arena. With the [[Astronomican]] obscured and the warp now in a turbulent state, the only means of navigation was by relay beacon, which were likened to candles next to the star of the Astronomican. These beacons allowed for risky short ranged travel, and the Dark Angels assumed that the Night Lords had tacitly agreed not to strike at them for fear of stranding friend and foe on both sides alike, though in reality this may not truly have been the case, as the traitors seemed to be helped by favourable warp currents and were able to perform what had previously been considered impossible feats, such as closely shadowing other ships in warp transit.

During the campaign, the Night Lords encountered a force of White Scars. These White Scars were considered veterans of the Crusade but had only ever heard rumours of the First Legion, and given their earlier reputation, these rumours weren't exactly flattering. The Scars believed the Dark Angels to be a bunch of vain glory hounds, so it wasn't hard for the Night Lords to convince them that ''they'' were the loyal ones and the Angels had turned traitor. The Scars aided the Night Lords until it finally dawned on them that the guys who were ''literally wearing the skins of their enemies'' might not be telling them the truth. Just goes to show how effectively the Dark Angels had removed themselves from the minds of the Imperium at large, and how incredibly unreliable information during the Heresy was. It also goes to show what complete asshats the Dark Angels generally were, that ''anyone'' would believe that the ''Night Lords'' of all people were the good guys in virtually any situation, nevermind a 3000 strong force of one of the least retarded Legions.

In payment of their debts at the battle of the planet Thramas itself, the White Scars sacrificed their remaining numbers in order to destroy several key generators on a Warp capable Forge-Moon.

===Savage Weapons===
After one year of fighting and getting nowhere, Curze offered a parley to the Lion on the world of '''Tsagualsa'''. They each brought their honor guard to the meeting: [[Sevatar]] and '''Shang''' for Curze, '''Corswain''' and '''Alajos''' for the Lion. The talks ended in battle as Curze revealed to the Lion that while they had fought for two years in the dark whilst the galaxy burned, he had foreseen that future generations would look to the legacy of the Lion with doubt; because of the delay caused by this campaign, the Lion's name and deeds would be forever tarnished by suspicion and mistrust. Where was the Lion, people would ask? Could he have been waiting to see who was victorious before declaring for a side? Somewhat oddly, he also flat out told the Lion that he was deliberately wasting the Dark Angels' time and that the whole thing was a strategic trap to keep the Lion occupied; it was this revelation that made him completely change his strategy for the second year of the campaign.

The Lion would never be trusted ever again (the audience is meant to believe hunting an entire traitor legion and its Primarch going on a murder spree would cause them not to be trusted; yes, we know, GW doesn’t understand people and it's not like records of the campaign wouldn’t exist on worlds fought over by the two legions, exonerating the Dark Angels). To be entirely fair however, practically all the civilians who would have kept such records would die during the fighting, the Dark Angels keep practically everything about them a secret, and they already had such a poor reputation that the aforementioned White Scars, when given a choice to support the Dark Angels or the ''Night Lords'', chose the latter.

The Lion, not giving a shit about how he looked in the future, ''because ("loyalty is its own reward")'', apologised to his brother before impaling him through the gut with the Lion Sword. The meeting instantly devolved into an all-out brawl. As the brothers fought, so too did their honour guard; this would prove to be the first time the two brothers had matched blades, as the Lion mentioned that they had never sparred before. The Lion's skill with a blade proved to be the better as he continued to inflict injuries upon his brother. Curze was not the Lion's martial equal, but was so absurdly fast that he was still able to hold his own even with the giant stab wound. Eventually Curze just spear-tackled his brother, sending them both crashing to the ground. Curze ended up with the advantage in the brawl, and he started smashing the Lion's head into the ground while choking him.

As these two demigods fought in the dust of some forgotten world, their hands around each other's throats, Curze continued to rant and rave, claiming that the Lion should just die, and that the future would be far more kind to him if he did so (which amusingly enough was actually true). Sevatar and his companion fought Alajos two on one before removing his head from his shoulders (the last time Sev and Alajos had fought, Sev had removed the skin from his face) as he tried to hold them both off before reinforcements could arrive.

As Curze drew close to strangling the Lion to death, Corswain performed a heroic intervention. He leapt onto Curze's back and stabbed him straight through the spine, before wrapping a chain around his neck and riding him like a bucking bronco (the author's intent was to demonstrate the difference in attitudes and priorities between the two legions). This resulted in Curze getting up off the Lion, who regained his feet but had been seemingly [[what|injured badly enough in the brawl to not be able to finish off the now-twice impaled Curze]]. Reinforcements would arrive from both Legions and the bloodied and injured primarchs were dragged away, screaming abuse at each other. It also reveals an interesting bit of Primarch physiology in that Curze's ability to move was seemingly not hindered in any way by getting stabbed through the spine. This means that Primarchs must have some manner of redundancy in their CNS that allows them to remain fully functional even with a severed spinal cord.