The History of the Storm Lords
The Storm Lords are a chapter with a history rich with conquests, betrayals and campaigns. This is the tale of the history of the chapter, and how it became to be classed as endangered in the forty-first mellenium.
The First Great Betrayal
Not long after the Storm Lords split from their Founders, the White Scars, they settled on a planet still unnamed by the Imperium, and classed as the world 1055, being the fifty fith world conquered by the tenth expeditonary fleet, consiting mainly of the White Scars Legion themselves.
Unknown to the Storm Lords, the founding father of the chapter, an arrogant figure named Maldir Calistro was tainted by the warp, and had chosen this world for its strategic location, near the Eye of Terror, from where the tainted man could call for either daemonic or corrupted forces from the Eye and have little time for their arrival.
Calistro, who was widely respected by those who did know that he had turned, dispatched the second and the fourth companies, as well as elements from the Storm Lords reserves, to the world of Gorgalis Prime, to stop the citizens who had split from Imperial rule.
However, what was not revealled to the Storm Lords Strike Force, was that the taint ran a lot deeper than a few minor rebels, and indeed - when the adeptus astartes touched down, they found themselves facing against a whole planet - the world of Gorgalis Prime had turned against the Emperor completley, and were now practicising deamonic rituals in the streets, eager to call forth as many deamons from the warp as possible.
Being the cunning man that Calistro was, the Chapter Master also dispatched those loyal to him to Gorgalis Prime, where he would ensure that the two apothecaries who were accompanying the force were to be put down, so that the dead astartes could not have their geneseed harvested and returned to the chapter.
Calistro wanted not only the Storm Lords to be divided, but not to be able to start again. Indeed, his agents conducted his work so skillfully that even the Venerable Dreadnought Gor'kan Math, who had served with his chapter during the Horus Heresy, could not see what was unfolding before his eyes.
Seven Days after the landings on Gorgalis Prime, the Cutilists had amassed enough sacrifices to turn the world into a Daemon World, and so - they called for the Daemonic host to enter from the Warp.
Caught unawares, the Iron Lords strike force was cut off from their starships in space, and were slaughtered to the man by the combined forces of Daemons from all four Ruinous Powers.
Upon hearing the news from those in the same heretical group as Calistro, the Chapter Master put his next plan into action, and informed the remaining companies of the initial strike forces failure, and ordered the majority of the chapter to avenge them on Gorgalis Prime, leaving only a small portion of the Chapters Scouts behind, as well as the fifth company.
When the main fleet arrived on Gorgalis Prime, Calistro dispatched every adeptus astartes that he knew whom would not join him to the planet below, which indeed was a large majority of the chapter. In fact, nearly all of the chapter - apart from a couple of Librarians and a few scouts whose minds he had managed to infect.
As soon as the loyalists began to establish a beachhead on the planet, they were all betrayed in one, swift stroke in a repeat of Horus Lupercal's treason at Isstvan, which saw virus bombs unleashed on the planet below, bringing death not only to the daemons and the cutilists, but also to the adeptus astartes on the planet.
As the last virus bomb was extingushed, Calistro departed Gorgalis Prime with his posse and returned to 1055. On the way, the corrupted Chapter Master gathered a band of heretical followers that pledged an oath to serve in his warband as long as they lived, from various other planets nearby - as well as a few chaos space marines who had had the common sense to escape Gorgalis Prime before the virus bombs struck.
As the Chapter Master arrived back home, word of his betrayal had somehow reached the few remaining Storm Lords on 1055, and when the heretical warband arrived on the homeworld of the Storm Lords, they found nothing but a Fortress-Monastry burning, crushed in orbit by the loyalists who would rather see their own fortress destroyed than in the hands of chaos.
Swearing that he would one day seek vengeance on the Storm Lords and seize their geneseed, Calistro lead his forces into the Eye of Terror, where they established a base on the Daemon World of Magnas. Months after Calistro's arrival, several chaos forces from various different gods flocked to Magnas, each determined to pledge their support to the Chapter Master after hearing of how he had destroyed a whole chapter of the hated space marines.
As Calistro's Warband grew stronger, he was elevated to the status of Daemon Prince, becoming a chosen servant of Chaos Undivided.
The Aftermath of the Betrayal
The ships that flew Calistro's wrath sought out a new planet, and it was on the world of Skyfall that they settled, and established a new base and begun to recruit potential aspirants to their number, in an attempt to rebuild the Storm Lords once again to their former glory, lead by their new "Lord Commander", Thearon Asphel.
Knowing that Calistro would one day return to seek vengeance, Asphel inducted tougher and harder trials than other adeptus astartes chapters to make sure that they would not listen to Calistro's lies, and would be able to face him when that time came.
Indeed, he formed a group called "The Honour Seekers," consisting of five veterans who had been recovered from 1055, and tasked them with their duty to seek out Calistro's forces, and be an early warning measure for the Storm Lords Chapter.
The Ghoran Incident
The next major incident that the Storm Lords took part in, due spending the next few years trying to build up their strength, was the Ghornan Incident, where the Chapter decided to interfere with a small-scale uprising on the world of Gora III.
However, this small-scale uprising quickly turned out to be a mass Genestealer infestation, and a large portion of the Storm Lords were dispatched to Ghora III to quickly rid the threat of the Genestealers before any Tyranid forces arrived.
But, it was far too late, and even as the final battle took place in the Governor's Palace, Mycetic Spores began to rain down on the planet below, causing the loyalist population to be even more terrified than they had been during the Uprising.
The Storm Lords however, were not as terrified as the populace, for they were Space Marines - and they knew no fear. Immediatly setting up battlelines, the Chapter knew that they were to whether this fight alone - for due to the Shadow in the Warp, no aid could reach them. They began training the locals, inspiring all those that were thinking of fleeing, and ordered them to stand and face the xenos head on. They had already, by this time, taken over a large majority of the planet - but now, it was the astartes turn to fight back, and fight back, they would.
The Chapter Master, at the time a Space Marine named Gabriel Ioan, was in command of the Storm Lords on Ghora III, and immediatly, having faced the Tyranids before - set about extracting surgical strikes on the Synapse creatures, using the Chapter's Scouts to get their locations and then, after their whereabouts were confirmed - lead his Honour Guard and the Veteran First Company into battle along with Assault Marines from the reserve company, leaving the rest of the Chapter behind to protect the major cities and supply routes.
After several months of fighting, almost every synapse creature on Ghora III was extingushed. Apart from one, a Hive Tyrant codenamed by the Imperials, 'Death'.
And 'Death''s Next target, was the Capital itself, ruined from the genestealer uprisng and still playing host to several genestealers - Ghoras Magma.
(To Be Continued)
