Editing Dante (section)

===Journey to Angel's Fall===
Dante had grown up hearing the stories of the Blood Angels from his father. When news came that there was to be a trial (456.M40), Dante decided to attempt it. However, his father Arreas tried to discourage him from attempting to join by guilt tripping about abandoning family. Arreas also pointed out that Dante's chances were not good: Dante would be much smaller and weaker physically than other potential recruits, being only eleven. The ''Warlords of the Dark Millennium'' (WotDM) info book is more explicit in stating that Dante’s growth had been stunted by malnutrition, and his body damaged by exposure to the rad-deserts of Baalfora (but so too the case for everyone else).

Regardless, Dante knew the next trials would be a generation away (he would probably be dead then, and certainly too old for the gene-seed implantation procedure if he did live that long), and so this was now or never. One night, Dante left home without a farewell to his father, making off for Angel's Fall where the trials were held.

Dante seems to carry the guilt of this abandonment in his subconscious for his entire life - early on he hallucinates a disapproving image of his father, and at the end of ''The Devastation of Baal'' a half-dead Dante hallucinates his father's image onto one of his brothers, and with child like excitement, presents himself to the illusion saying that he is an angel now and asking if he's proud of him. It's even noted in the book that him retaining such clear memories of his father is unusual, as most Blood Angels partly or completely forget their pre-recruitment lives over time.

Dante made it, showing bravery and character, but also benefiting from a combination of luck and fate. Dante fucked up at the very beginning, losing his roamer to a type of quicksand due to his own fault. He would have died of thirst while traveling across the sand dunes on foot, if not for the [[Sanguinor]], who appeared and pointed the way to life saving water. Dante subsequently befriended a pair of older aspirants (Florian and Daneill) who did not kill him opportunistically (what are the chances?), as you suspect might or should happen to small boys traveling alone in WH40K. Well, Florian and Daneill did contemplate snuffing Dante there and then, but you can only take [[Grimdark]] so far (plus with Dante's literal guardian angel keeping an eye on him, its not like this would get anywhere if they tried).

Thereafter there is a heroic episode in which Dante shows great bravery and resolve, but continues to benefit from luck. It was this and numbers that saw the boys through when attacked by a Fire Scorpion (and it was only a juvenile), though a thirst-crazed Daneill later died when he drank 'thirstwater', which [[grimdark|sucks the moisture out of anything it touches and looks exactly like normal water]]. This stroke of relative luck was pretty much the only thing that let Dante survive to take the trials, as he was running out of supplies and lacked a glider kit (critical to the next step) - both issues which were solved when he inherited Daneill's gear.

The final hurdle is using a winged para-glider to traverse the canyon from the Heavenwall mountains (the 'Angel's Leap', here being where Sanguinius first flew). The potential aspirants were attacked by Blood Eagles, fuckhuge airborne predators with a taste for human flesh that downed numerous aspirants - including Dante, who was forced down and had to walk the rest of the way, narrowly reaching Angel's Fall alongside Florian (by now his best friend, and vice-versa).