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

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Ikon (Eclipse-class Battlecruiser) - The Ikon was a figure of dread in the days of the early Horus Heresy-era as it acted as an outrider to Traitor forces within the Cyclops Cluster, enforcing Dark Compliances on worlds such as Gethsamaine and Taracanis and delivering the Warmaster's ultimatum to scores of other worlds. Most notoriously it was the Ikon's captain that was responsible for the anarchic developments on the word of Moab, which entered history as the Sorrow of Moab. 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. At some time the notion of the Emperor sending His "wolves" to break intractable or potential enemies took root in the consciousness of the new-born Imperium of Man, with the Pacification of Luna in the late 30 th Millennium -- considered by many the first true battle of the Great Crusade -- its apocryphal source. The XVI th Legion embraced the epithet "Luna Wolves" they earned after this first campaign with relish. Jerrod - Replacement Captain of the 13 th Company after Luc Sedirae was killed on the world of Dagonet while he was fulfilling his role as a body double for the real Horus and was assassinated by a special Officio Assassinorum strike team. Angered and wounded that the Emperor would not accept his devotion and worship, Lorgar began what became known as the Pilgrimage of Lorgar to discover the truth of divinity in the universe. This quest ultimately culminated in Lorgar turning to the service of the Ruinous Powers of the Warp -- Dark Gods who were all too willing to accept the devotion of one of Humanity's primarchs. Before long, the Word Bearers Legion had been almost entirely corrupted by the Chaos Gods, and Lorgar and the XVII th Legion's First Chaplain Erebus were tasked by the Ruinous Powers with corrupting all of their fellow Space Marines -- starting with the greatest of them all, the Warmaster Horus.

King Eater (Battle Barge, Unknown Class) - Flagship of First Captain Abaddon during the Manachean War.Hastur Sejanus (Deceased) - Sejanus had been the Captain of the 4 th Company and a member of the Mournival during the Great Crusade. Sejanus was sent as an ambassador of the Luna Wolves to greet the leader of the world of 63-19 who styled himself the "Emperor of Mankind" and whose planet had not yet been brought into Imperial Compliance, and was brutally murdered. Horus had loved Sejanus like a son and felt towards him the way he believed that his own father, the Emperor, loved him. Garviel Loken replaced Sejanus on the Mournival following the Imperial Compliance of the world designated 63-19, and which would become known as Heletine. 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. Seeker Squads - Seeker Squads were comprised of a specialised force of Space Marines whose principal task on the battlefield was to identify an enemy's command structure, its warlords, officers, priests, demagogues, whatever form they took, and slay them with a well-placed bolt round while the battle raged round them. The Alpha Legion are said to have first crystallised the use of this tactic and squad configuration, which had with the Emperor's approval spread to the other Legions, although its use sat poorly within the combat doctrine and martial culture of some like the Space Wolves. Equipped with special issue ammunition to assist their efforts, Seeker Squads were primarily composed of the finest shots within the Legion, as a Seeker strike force often only had a small window of opportunity to take down its targets at close range, rather than enjoying the luxury of distance. 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.

Horus personally faced off with the Nurglite mutant that had been Temba aboard the grounded ruins of his Imperial Cruiser. In the course of that battle, the potent living metal of the Chaos blade wielded by that plague-infused monstrosity left Horus with a bleeding, toxic wound in his shoulder that his Legion's Apothecaries could not heal despite all the advanced technology available to them. His research into the turbulent ancient history of Terra (in ancient tomes such as The Chronicles of Ursh) at the behest of his troubled mentor Kyril Sindermann, and his sponsorship of the rebellious remembrancer poet Ignace Karkasy [1g] put him at odds with some of the most powerful and influential Astartes in the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet, including Chaplain Erebus of the Word Bearers, and even the Warmaster himself. [1i] When Horus was injured on Davin, Loken and Tarik Torgeddon landed on Davin to try and find the weapon used to wound him. Recognizing the blade as being of Kinebrach origin, he realized that it had been stolen from Xenobia, the Interex's capital city. [2a] He and Torgaddon realized Erebus's treachery, but were too late as the other Mournival members had already interned Horus into the temple Delphos, allowing Erebus to corrupt Horus. [2b] Taking into account likely losses from the ground war that followed the virus-bombing of Isstvan III, and elements of the Sons of Horus Legion not in the Isstvan System at the time, it would follow that Horus began his war of betrayal with around 70,000-110,000 Space Marines of his own Legion at his disposal, with considerable evidence present in Imperial records that the latter figure is the more accurate. Beneath these non-commissioned officers were the rank-and-file Battle-Brothers of the Luna Wolves and the Sons of Horus. This simple hierarchy belied the truth of matters when applied in practice within the XVI th Legion. Within each rank, prestige and personal reputation counted for much within the brotherhood of Space Marines.

Yet as the character of any Legion was an echo of their primarch, one can see the flaws of the father in the pride of his gene-sons. Brutal, ruthless and unwavering but also honourable, and once loyal beyond question, the history of the Luna Wolves is the history of the ambition of the Imperium itself, and the flaws that broke its founder's dreams of unification and glory for all Mankind asunder. The presence of Tactical Squads designed to be held in reserve and unleashed once a weakness in an enemy line had been identified, trained in fire saturation and carrying additional close combat weaponry for use in overrunning enemy positions -- the so-called "Despoiler Squads" -- shows again the dominance of the place of the Tactical Squad in Horus' tactical thinking. Such was the effectiveness of this tactic that its use was copied by several different Legions, such as the White Scars and Iron Warriors, who fielded Despoiler Squads of their own. 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.