Editing Rangdan Xenocides (section)

==Trivia==

Interestingly, the Xenocides were also the first time [[Alpharius]] was heard of, <s>even though the primarch of the XX Legion had yet to be recovered at that point</s> Head of the Hydra reveals this was actually the true Alpharius, just deep undercover and unknown to his brothers. An 'Alpha Legionnaire' gained an audience with the Lion at some point during the campaign, and offered to secretly take over the war so that the Dark Angels could withdraw to Caliban and rebuild their numbers. The end goal, he explained, was to keep the Dark Angels from losing their status as the biggest legion and therefore improve the Lion's chances of someday becoming Warmaster of the Imperial armed forces, the creation of which position both the Lion and Alpharius believed would be inevitable. The Lion turned him down because he was determined to finish what he'd started, which went well for his Legion. And of course he lived to regret this decision as, had he been Warmaster, the Horus Heresy would never have occurred. At very least he could have brought the idea to the Emperor and leaned on Big-E not wanting to lose his gets-shit-done Legion full of Dark Age technology (the only legion with such access and abundance, incidentally).

The mention of [[Slaugth]] Murder-Minds as part of the Rangdan forces ties the Xenocides into the 41st Millennium via the xenos species of the same name mentioned in the [[Dark Heresy]] RPG. Not surprising, though, since the fluff for the Dark Heresy system and the first several Horus Heresy campaign books were written by [[Alan Bligh]], Emperor rest him.

The names of the some of the Rangdan forces also implies some unpleasant things about their dietary habits, specifically the Cerabvores and Osseiovores. "Cerab" would seem to derive from "cerebrum", the Latin/formal English word for the brain, and Osseio looks an awful lot like "osseous", the Latin word for "bony", which in turn derives from the word "os", meaning "bone". Vore is a suffix meaning "one who eats", deriving from the root word "vorare", "to devour". So, Cerabvore would translate approximately to "one who eats brains", and Osseiovore to "one who eats bones". Given that the Slaugth are also known to eat brains, this suggests they may have gotten it from the Rangdan, or vice versa.

After the end of the Xenocides, the First Legion left a garrison in the Rangdan home system, tasked with guarding the acquired knowledge and relics of the Rangda, just in case some of them had somehow managed to survive the bio-pogroms. The garrison was nearly wiped out at the start of the Horus Heresy by a sneak attack from a [[Black Legion|Sons of Horus]] chapter that had come in hopes of [[Ork|looting the place]] for Rangdan technology to aid them in the war against the Emperor. Though the traitors were initially able to inflict heavy casualties on the defending Dark Angels, that didn't last long, as the Lion's sons then turned around to kill almost 50 [[Justaerin]] Terminators and at least three squads of regular Astartes, recapture or destroy most or all of the stolen relics, and generally give the Sons of Horus a well-deserved spanking.

This setup bears similarity to the [[Guardians of the Covenant]], an Unforgiven Chapter known for keeping a great archive in their [[Fortress-Monastery]] located on the edge of the Segmentum Pacificus. Coincidentally, one of the Chapter traditions consists of giving a compendium of stories about xenos races annihilated by mankind across the long millennia to their brothers serving in the [[Deathwatch]] ([[Humanity Fuck Yeah|for the purpose of uplifting their morale]]). In the grim darkness of the 41st millennium, memory of these ancient horrors perhaps survives...

If one looks at the Imperium as being basically a copy of Rome (which, honestly, it really is) then the Rangdan Wars can be seen as the Imperium's Punic Wars, right down to there being three of them. Although, it looks that instead of being a republic fighting a series of mercenary-backed trade monarchies with a powerful navy, it was instead a military dictatorship fighting a bunch of aliens who may or may not have used Slaugth mercenaries and had an insanely powerful navy.

tl;dr, it was basically a carbon copy of the Punic Wars.

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[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
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