IT: The Dreadreavers

[Deadass]

The Dreadreavers
The Mongrel Company, Sons of the Warmaster
 

• The Dreadreavers started their life as the "Dreaded" 55th company of the Luna Wolves. They were considered extreme in a legion renowned for its savagery, a circumstance owed to their large amount of destroyer squads.
• The 55th has continually developed their own version of the legion's famous speartip strikes, using their destroyer corps to soften up enemy soldiery before committing their assault elements in an attempt to expose more exploitable weak points.
• During the Ullanor Crusade, 55th captain Arkhon Zar is laid low by greenskins and thus considered unfit for company command. His successor, Dyrath Kal, continues to lead the company down their path. His style of leadership betrays an even greater contempt for foreign lifeforms; the Dreaded quickly becomes relegated to xenos extermination and last resort deployments.
• As the Luna Wolves become the Sons of Horus and the Galaxy erupts into flames, Kal and the 55th relish the new callousness their legion displays. The company as a whole sees more deployments again, Horus sanctioning more and more destroyer operations in his slow downward spiral into damnation. The Dreaded usually fights in the vanguard of the Warmaster's push for Terra, often at the side of the Death Guard and the World Eaters.
• Elements or even the entire strength of the Dreaded have fought in theatres such as Dwell, Molech and Beta-Garmon. The company partook in the Culling of the Wolves at Yarant under First Captain Abaddon before joining the majority of the traitors for the muster at Ullanor and the subsequent Solar War.
• In the aftermath of the Siege of Terra the 55th company splits off from the rest of the Sons of Horus on Maeleum, taking the warship Pillager deep into Eye of Terror. Their colours press them into fighting a war on multiple fronts, with no end or reinforcements in sight.
• They reappear some time later as the Dreadreavers, wearing Abaddon's black - the exact circumstances of their change of sides remain ambiguous.
• The new warband is, like so much in the modern Imperium, a twisted reflection of its former self. All four ruinous powers have found purchase in the Dreadreavers - the Reaver Attack Squads of old have been absorbed by ravenous packs of Khorne Berzerkers, where Destroyers used to blight the earth Plague Marines tread as they dispense Nurgle's blessings. The tally of worshippers is long, yet undivided elements - like Dyrath Kal himself - remain. Thus, as the influence of chaos seeps into their order of battle, their tactics and strategies have largely stayed the same.
• The Dreadreavers have, upon donning the Long War's black, pledged their undying loyalty to Abaddon. While this is an absolute truth, the warband includes/hides a sub-sect of considerable size seeing Horus as a kind of 'black saint', a dark martyr whose sacrifice allowed his followers to finally begin the endgame ten millennia later.
• The warband also inherited a plethora of cthonian traditions by way of their origins as a company of the Sons of Horus. Gang-runes, topknots, mirror-coins and other charms and design elements can be found aplenty among the astartes.
• Although they recruit and cultivate new space marines from all eighteen bloodlines, the Dreadreavers also strive to keep the first Warmaster's genetic memory alive, having set up a permanent apothecarium on the Pillager. There, their flesh-smith - name to be decided - toils endlessly to have Horus' genes live on. Imperfect cloned DNA strands, chimeric geneseed, even pacts with the malign Fabius Bile are not below them in their desire to continue the line of the sixteenth. In reality, they could not have strayed further from this goal.
• One of the Heretic Astartes' most important assets is a suitably large number of mortal followers. Under the watchful gaze of their posthuman masters, human and abhuman menials provide the warbands with a crew for their ship, bodies to throw at the guns of their enemies and a steady source of aspirants. The difference for the Dreadreavers is that their auxilia consists not of cultists worshipping them as dark angels eager to step in their shadows, but rather slaves, kept submissive through the teeth of chainblades and whipped into a frenzy before being unleashed in battle.
• Lastly, the rechristened Dreadreavers are once again known to have participated in a number of the most pivotal campaigns in the Long War. Sightings of Dyrath Kal himself were made on El'Phanor, Tarinth, Cadia and Vigilus. The most recent astropathic missives, fragmented as they are, mention the warband as attacking seemingly random targets across the Imperium. Whether this behaviour is truly whimsical or part of Abaddon's plans is unknown at this point.
   

Edited May 2, 2020 by AHorriblePerson

[Deadass]

Been experiencing a wave of hobby enthusiasm with the current global situation (it's a tiny bit upsetting that it took a literal pandemic to get me there), so I'm finally revising the lore for my tabletop army as the first iteration was too self-aggrandising. I also wanna try to keep the final product a good bit shorter than my chapter, as I'm in danger of regurgitating a lot of info from Horus Heresy Book 1, the Black Legion's official IA and several novels, chief among them A D-B's books about Abaddon and friends.

 

Currently, the post above is an early work in progress. Everything up there may be subject to change, but I thought it'd be worthwhile to get a few opinions, just to gauge which aspects of the warband I need to adjust.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Good job so far. Do the Dreadreavers have a goal beyond "kill for pleasure" and "watch the galaxy burn"? Maybe the "seemingly random targets" are potential Imperial strongpoints identified by fortunetellers in Abaddon's service, which the Supreme Warmaster wanted eliminated so they wouldn't impede his armies' progress in future Black Crusades?