Luna Wolf: A Rejected Mate Shifter Romance (The Moon Alpha Series)

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King Eater (Battle Barge, Unknown Class) - Flagship of First Captain Abaddon during the Manachean War. Across tens of thousands of battles the Luna Wolves were rarely defeated. In every mode of deployment they excelled, whether as the spearhead of a star cluster-sized assault or as an individual squad supporting a grand formation of the Imperial Army. Other Legions, sometimes hostile to the interference of their fellow Space Marines, would request campaign placement amongst the Luna Wolves and welcome it in return. The Sons of Horus' defeat at the Battle of Terra and exile to the Eye of Terror was a crushing blow to the collective ego of the Legion. It took all the strength of character of their new commander, Abaddon the Despoiler, to restore the Legion's sense of pride and refocus its Astartes on their ultimate goal -- to destroy everything that the Emperor of Mankind created and raise themselves up as the new rulers of the galaxy in the names of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos.

Horus - Horus, also known as Horus Lupercal, was the primarch of the XVI th Legion and served as the first Imperial Warmaster during the Great Crusade. Once the most favoured son of the Emperor of Mankind, he ultimately became the greatest Arch-Traitor in the history of Mankind when he turned from the Emperor's light and led half the Legiones Astartes in a galaxy-wide rebellion known as the Horus Heresy. Ultimately, this rebellion failed when the Emperor confronted Horus at the climactic Battle of Terra aboard his flagship Vengeful Spirit in mortal combat and killed him, which left the Emperor gravely wounded. This would result in his ten millennia internment within the life-sustaining prosthetic device known as the Golden Throne. As the Imperial Warmaster, Horus took over command of the Great Crusade, and accepted his new duties with earnest dedication. However, there was much dissension in the ranks of the primarchs and other parties in the Imperium over the Emperor's decision to withdraw from the campaign and return to Terra as well as to reorganise the political administration of the Imperium under the control of a Council of Terra headed by His regent, Malcador the Sigillite. Only a handful of the primarchs, amongst them a scheming Lorgar, remained steadfast beside the Warmaster during this period of conflict.However there is some conjecture amongst Imperial savants that Cthonia was destroyed deliberately by the Imperium following the end of the Horus Heresy, when the Loyalist Astartes Legions moved to purge the homeworlds of each of the Traitor Legions during the Great Scouring to remove their Chaos corruption. Every member of the Mournival had the helmet of his Power Armour marked with a phase of the moon imprinted on the helmet above the right eye. At the time of Garviel Loken's ascension to the Mournival, Abaddon wore the Full Moon, Aximand the Half Moon, Torgaddon the Gibbous Moon and Loken the New Moon that had also been the phase worn by his predecessor Hastur Sejanus. Tarik Torgaddon (Deceased) - Tarik Torgaddon was the captain of the 2 nd Company and a member of the Mournival who remained loyal to the Emperor when the Sons of Horus turned to Chaos. Torgaddon was killed during the Battle of Isstvan III when he was beheaded by his fellow Mournival member Horus Aximand. His headless body was often used as an imaginary interlocutor in the mad ravings of Garviel Loken, the only survivor of the battle on Isstvan III who would later be recovered by the former Death Guard Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro to serve in the secret organisation known as the Knights-Errant. His strength of character was vouched for by Torgaddon and no less a personage than the Primarch of the Imperial Fists, Rogal Dorn, who was said to appreciate Loken's calm attitude. During a brief visit to the Vengeful Spirit, before his Legion's return to Terra, Dorn counseled Loken to always speak his mind as he saw it, advising that his humanity would balance Abaddon's choler and Horus Aximand's "lofty disdain," when the Mournival was advising the Warmaster. [1e] During the Battle of the Whisperhead Mountains on 63-19 Loken witnessed the Daemon Samus possess his comrade Xavyer Jubal, an event which scared him deeply and served as his first exposure to Chaos. [1f] One avatar of the increasing influence of the Legion's Cthonian brothers was the late reemergence of Cthonian gang-sigils graven into a given Space Marine's armour that recorded his notable kills and deeds, as well as to which company of the Legion they belonged. This was a practice which accelerated rapidly after the XVI th Legion had transitioned into its new identity as the Sons of Horus following the elevation of Horus to the rank of Warmaster.

It was on the moon of the Feral World of Davin that Horus' fate was sealed. This was the second time his Legion had been posted to this world; after the previous visit sixty standard years earlier the Luna Wolves had adopted the native Davinite institution of warrior lodges. Though these lodges had begun as simple fraternities of warriors, their secretive nature handed Lorgar, the primarch of the Word Bearers Legion and his First Chaplain Erebus, the tool they needed to manipulate Horus towards the service of the Chaos Gods.Abaddon also concludes that Epimetheus can't be his "erstwhile brother," as he personally saw that Grand Master dead. However, as Loken rejected membership to the Grey Knights, Abaddon was most likely referring to Severian (who became the Grey Knight Grandmaster known as "Iapto"), an old rival from the time of the Luna Wolves. [9] Wargear Like most of the embryonic Space Marine Legions, the XVI th Legion drew all of its first recruits from the Terran population. Though it is difficult to be certain based on the existing Imperial records from this lost time, there are indications that many of the XVI th Legion's early intake came from the hunter clans of the Jutigran Bowl and the Samsatian sub-plate slums. Perpetual conflict and the harshness of life on the desolate margins of Terran society had given these people the hard edge of ruthlessness and independence that would serve a Space Marine well. The XVI th Legion's homeworld, the ancient Mining World of Cthonia, no longer exists, having apparently lost geo-structural integrity and broken apart into asteroids and debris during the centuries following the Horus Heresy. Certainly the once ore-rich planet was riddled with mine workings right through to its dead core as the numerous gangers that formed the majority of the world's population may originally have been imported as work teams to maintain the crumbling tunnels. As with all of the Space Marine Legions, Horus' command as primarch over his own Legion was absolute. Beneath Horus were his Captains, beneath them were the squad Sergeants, and where a formation of squads came together for a purpose, the informal rank of "Chieftain" was given to the Sergeant granted field command authority, a matter not always of seniority, but rather selection of the best or most suited Astartes for the task at hand; an approach which fitted well within the Legion's pragmatic and sometimes impulsive approach to warfare.

In eschewing formality and fixed structure above the basic level of the company, Horus demonstrated his pragmatism and his preference for waging war with careful precision. Within the Luna Wolves and the later Sons of Horus, squads also commonly had their own honorific or epithetic titles rather than simple numerations: the Illuminators Prime, Death Makers, Jerrok's Reavers, the First Sons, and similar appellations, while some were named for the Sergeant or Chieftain that led them if their leader's own reputation was strong enough alone. Keylek Genocide (923.M30) - Early in the Great Crusade the Luna Wolves fought against the hostile alien reptilian race known as the Keylekid on the world of Keylek, ultimately wiping these reptilian xenos from the face of the galaxy. This was a long, brutal and miserable genocidal campaign that was fought long before Horus was made the Imperial Warmaster. At this time Horus was referred to simply as "The Commander" by the Astartes of his Legion. The First Chaplain Erebus of the Word Bearers Legion later took on the appearance of Sejanus through the use of sorcery during Horus' healing in the Temple of the Serpent Lodge of Davin's moon to deceive him and lead him towards corruption by the Chaos Gods.In the time when the Emperor's eye first began to fall beyond Terra, He raised new armies to fight His Great Crusade to reunify all of Humanity across the galaxy. He drew these new troops in part from the forces that had already unified Terra during the Unification Wars of the late 30 th Millennium, from willing Terran volunteers like those who comprised the XVI th Space Marine Legion who were implanted with the gene-seed of their missing Primarch Horus like all the Astartes of the First Founding. These recruits were also drawn in part from the Emperor's subjugated enemies, and together they represented the first generation of Space Marines. He took up the Emperor's old offer and renamed the XVI th Legion the Sons of Horus after being convinced to do so by his brother Primarch Sanguinius of the Blood Angels Legion just before his experiences on Davin. Horus was now allied body and soul to the Ruinous Powers of Chaos, and he had a new vision for the Imperium with himself rather than the Emperor at its head. The Orks of Ullanor represented the largest concentration of Greenskins ever faced by the military forces of the Imperium of Man before the Third War for Armageddon began during the late 41 st Millennium. Following the defeat of the Orks of Ullanor largely due to the tactics and leadership of Horus, the Emperor of Mankind returned to Terra to begin work on his vast project to open up the Aeldari Webway for Mankind's use. In his place to command the vast forces of the Great Crusade he left Horus. Horus at first refused, fearing that to so set himself above his primarch brothers would lead to factional strife. Eventually he did institute this change, at his bother Sanguinius' urging, just prior to the events culminating in his conversion to the service of the Dark Gods of Chaos on the world of Davin.