Editing Lions Rampant (section)

===The Culling===
Not every marine succumbed to the rot that festered at the legion's heart. The second division was largely inoculated against the blight by the clash against the greenskin menace of the Orlak Drift. Master Apothecary Sippeman died facing the Ork tides, leaving the proliferation of his dark research to stagnate. His apprentices continued their work, but progress was slowed by the clash against the alien hordes. The 2nd would be the most conflicted of the divisions in the face of the coming heresy, though they were not alone. Throughout the legion veteran marines unknowingly resisted the lure of chaos by evading the ministrations of their physicians. As heirs to the old stubbornness of the pre-primarch raiders, the holdouts persisted up until the coming heresy.
With time running out before the outbreak of war, Cromwald and his faithful could not wait for the sickness to claim the legion fully. To cleanse his ranks of the loyalists he orchestrated a silent campaign of assassination. Elements of his divisions he could not sway were given the most hazardous assignments to whittle away their strength. As the strength of the loyalists within his ranks diminished, the faithful began quietly murdering their brethren when they were vulnerable. In most cases these killings remained discreet, though across the 2nd and 4th divisions firefights broke out as secrecy gave way to hasty violence. The traitors were able to silence the loyalists and prevent word escaping to the Emperor, but the purges bled much of their strength for the initial stages of the heresy.