All the Space Marine Legions boast superlative warriors, which renders their constant quarrels over glory and achievements rather futile… especially when the XV Legion are both excellent warriors and the greatest scholars in the galaxy. While their lesser brothers roll around in the muck, these visionaries explore secrets known to no other – save perhaps the Emperor himself.*
Our review of the Legiones Astartes has finally met a Primarch who can appreciate its impartial and objective scholarship – Magnus the Red, who tried harder than anyone else to prevent the Horus Heresy, only for his noble efforts to be violently rejected by the unappreciative masses. It’s time to put mind over matter with the Thousand Sons, who – despite being the smallest Legion – know more than every other Space Marine combined.
The XV Legion was among the last to be created, its ranks drawn from ancient and loyal Terran domains with low rates of mutation, such as the Achaemenid Empire.** In many cases, their recruits were hand-picked by the Emperor himself – almost as though he had something specific in mind. This was a high honour, and if their founding was accompanied by fierce and unexpected warp tempests, well… that’s just bad weather, right?
Though low in number, the XV Legion were strong and wise, and played their part in the early Crusade. Still, they didn’t really make a name for themselves until the psychic powers showed up. It turns out even the smallest Legion can punch well above its weight when its commanders can mangle a Knight with but a thought.
For some reason, survivors of the Age of Strife didn’t take kindly to these extreme displays of close-up street magic, and the XV Legion quickly became pariahs amongst the Great Crusade. To make matters worse, the Flesh Change began to overtake the Legion. Whatever the cause – the overuse of psychic powers, a flaw in their gene-seed, or something else entirely – once-noble warriors would mutate and dissolve, their flesh flowing into hideous shapes as they were consumed by warp-energy.
As its Legionaries succumbed to war and mutation, the smallest Legion became even smaller. The Thousand Sons seemed doomed to an ignoble end – until the Emperor himself gathered the survivors and spirited them away to the remote backwater world of Prospero. A rest is as good as a change, after all.
With the Flesh Change absolutely definitely cured, the Thousand Sons went from strength to strength, organised into an occultic array of Orders, Cults, Circles, and Fellowships that would leave a Dark Angel feeling dizzy. The XV Legion fought with a prescience and coordination to match the most regimented Ultramarine, an eerie discipline that even the competitive Ferrus Manus had to admire. Well, okay, he called them robots, but from him, that’s definitely a compliment.
Being a great scholar might not seem all that useful on the battlefield, especially when everyone else is raising mighty fortresses or revving up their favourite chainaxe as they charge into battle. Fortunately, the Thousand Sons are such big brains that they can see into the future, read minds, or just set people on fire with a thought..
As you might expect, the sons of Magnus can field psykers. A lot of psykers. All the psykers, in fact.
Yes, all your footsloggers and biker squads are psykers – and your characters even get an extra ability according to which of the Prosperine Cults*** they belong to. There are rules for all five Cults – from shapeshifting Pavoni biomancers to soothsaying Corvidae precognitives – so each of your characters can pick one to match their favourite bird.
Cults and psychic trickery are all well and good, but what if the enemy start shooting at you while you’re busy predicting the next time they’re going to shoot at you? Simply use your skills as a magician to make their bullets disappear! There’s nothing up your ceramite sleeves…
Scattered across the galaxy with the rest of the Primarchs, Magnus was fortunate enough to land on the planet of Prospero, which prized peace, perspicacity, and pyramids. Reports of Magnus’s appearance vary, but all agree that he was the tallest of his brothers, with an unfortunate lack of depth perception. In Tizca, the City of Light, he studied with the planet’s greatest scholars, all the while honing his prodigious psychic abilities and bumping into low doorways.
Soon the pupil became the master, and when the Emperor arrived with the remnants of the XV Legion in tow, Magnus was ready and waiting. He even claimed to have “met” the Emperor in mental form ahead of time – telepathic video calls wouldn’t be that hard for the two most powerful psykers in the galaxy – and set about devising a cure for the mysterious Flesh Change that plagued his sons.
With that problem 100% out of the way forever, the Thousand Sons – now literally reduced to 1,000 Legionaries – dusted off their gear and set out alongside their Primarch. The XV spent as much time gathering knowledge as they did fighting, for Magnus saw the Great Crusade not just as an effort to dominate the galaxy, but to improve it – and humanity itself. What a humble guy!
Magnus even worked alongside the precognitive Sanguinius, the shamanistic Jaghatai, and perfectionist-in-all-things Fulgrim to found the Librarius, a system of sanctioned psykers within the Legiones Astartes. Of course there were setbacks, such as when the short-sighted Edict of Nikaea forbade the Legions from using psykers at all,**** but overall Magnus and his Legion were a shining beacon of enlightenment in an ignorant galaxy.
Some believe that the first major battle of the Heresy was at Isstvan, but the wise know that it took place on Prospero, when the crude savages of the VI Legion slaughtered blameless scholars and burned their libraries to punish them for the crime of… trying to prevent the Heresy? Wait, what?
Magnus had seen the future – much like his moodiest brother – and knew that Horus was on the road tor uin. With no way to send a warning to the Emperor by conventional means, he decided to reach him through astral projection. This was a direct and very obvious violation of the Edict of Nikaea, but he really had no other choice. Honest. The entire galaxy was at stake – proving how useful psychic powers are was just a pleasant bonus.
For once, things didn’t proceed as Magnus had foreseen. Instead of a warm welcome and a receptive ear, he was met with explosions and screaming. The Emperor had been holed up in his lab on a special project – his own tunnel into the Aeldari Webway – and like knocking a vase by slamming open a locked door, Magnus’s psychic arrival into the Imperial Palace shattered the gate and unleashed all kinds of nasty warp-spawned gribblies. It was almost as though he’d done something… wrong?
Unwilling to hear his son’s well-intentioned warning, the Emperor sent the Space Wolves – and a few gold-clad helpers – to bring him to account. With a little nudge from the Warmaster, they decided to conduct this censure by killing all the Thousand Sons, auxiliary troops, and nearby civilians, followed up with the galaxy’s largest book burning. A grievously-injured Magnus and his surviving followers could only flee through the warp, arriving on a new planet with a friendly feathered landlord...
While the core of the Legion spent years picking up the pieces at their new secret HQ, elements did take part in many conflicts within the Heresy. Most fought on the side of Horus, after their betrayal by the Emperor and the ravages of the Wolves – but some remained as Loyalists. One in particular, Revuel Arvida, played a quite significant role in the final outcome, and the events to follow…
If you want to know more (and, you should always want to know more) check out A Thousand Sons to learn of the wisdom of the XV and the tragedy that would befall them, and then The Crimson King to see what happened afterwards.
For those after something a touch more historical, Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero takes us back to the happy days – well, back to the days of the Great Crusade, when Magnus was fighting alongside his bitterest brother, Perturabo. Can their shared love of homework overcome the Lord of Iron’s mistrust of all things mystical?
After history class comes art – adorn your Legion with the beautiful colours and arcane marks of Prospero by following this painting guide:
It’s important to know thyself, so learn if you’re a fit for the Thousand Sons and Discover Your Legion Picker over on the Horus Heresy website. You can read all about the upcoming Age of Darkness box set while you’re there – remember, there is no sin but ignorance.
* Remember that qualifier – it’s going to cause problems later.
** These earliest recruits included one Ahzek Ahriman, whose name you may recognise from his many scholarly contributions to the Imperium.
*** Not like that, it’s an organisational term. No dark gods are involved. That they know of.
**** Leman Russ in particular argued that all psykers were dangerous – except his. We’d call it hypocrisy, but we doubt he could spell it.