Chaos Astartes

Note: This thread has been completely rewritten by the story creator. Apologies to the original author Nightwalker9000

Ten thousand years ago the Emperor of Mankind waged the Great Crusade to reunite the disparate worlds of humanity. It was meant to be the last war the human race would ever fight against itself. In order to achieve His goals, the Emperor created the primarchs. Genetically enhanced beings designed to be the complete fulfillment of mankind's infinite potential. Each one would have been worshiped as a god had they not walked in the time of the Emperor. They were His generals, and His sons.

Yet even before His work had begun, it was almost undone. While the primarchs were still yet babes they were flung across the cosmos, separated from their father to die on distant and forgotten worlds. Still, the Emperor would not be defeated so easily. Utilizing the genetic make-up of each primarch the Emperor created the Astartes.

Space Marines.

Ten thousand per primarch, these were genetically engineered supermen created to be the ultimate soldiers. Armed with the greatest armor the galaxy had ever seen and the most destructive weaponry conceived by man, the Adeptus Astartes, led by the Emperor, took worlds at a time. Immune to the effects of illness and age, the Astartes were ideally suited to the task laid before them. Eventually, as the Great Crusade grew, the Emperor was reunited with his sons and granted each of them their corresponding Legions.

Yet all would be nearly undone.

Half of the primarchs would be corrupted and turn against their father, leading their Legions in a war that made the heavens themselves shake.

The loyalist forces prevailed, but the damage had already been done. The Emperor, his body broken, was entombed upon the Golden Throne, and the empire he worked so hard to build was swiftly run into the ground by the Lords of Terra. The light and wisdom he attempted to bring to his people was instead replaced by fear, paranoia, and superstition.

The defeated Astartes warriors fled to various warp-storms, places in space where the laws of our universe do not apply, and space itself conforms to the will of powerful psykers.

And demons.

They are places where no sane man would ever go, unless there was no where else you could go. Imperial forces blockade the warp-storms making sure no ships or fleets leave, but neither do they enter. It is in one of the relatively small warp-storms, only a few hundred light years from one end to the other, but by no means less dangerous, that your war-band has made its home for the last ten thousand years.