Celestial Host

"Men fear what they don't understand, the XIXth are exactly that. Powers wielded by select few in other legions are commonplace amongst our ranks, our skin and eyes turn us into inhuman mosters, and even the innermost thoughts of a man are laid bare before us. Men fear what they do not understand. Men fear the XIXth.""Legion Master Sostratos "

The Celestial Host, XIXth Legiones Astartes, is an extreme oddity within the Imperium, a force of diametrically opposed forces as different as the night and day, split as they are between those who follow Nocterra and those who follow Solaris, the twin Primarch's of the XIXth. It was not always this way however, the XIXth Legion once standing as but a single entity, bound by purpose, mind and curse, a brotherhood of unique power, both blessed and cursed as they were by the providence of their genesire.

Psykers, a potent though little understood sub-breed of humanity, had already begun to see use in the other legions by the time the XIXth were first created, others perhaps seeing themselves as adepts of this new way of war or else hating their kind above all reason. They were few in number, but for the XIXth, they were anything but, their kind being commonplace amongst the legions ranks. With such powers at their fingertips, the XIXth Legion struck out into the dark, proving themselves as vicious killers, already becoming adept at utilising their other-worldly powers to spread terror amongst their enemies, descending on tingues of fire to bring death to their foes.

The XIXth Legion never gained a name in those days before their Primarch's arival, unlike so many others, always officially remaining as simply the XIXth. However, what is official belied the words spoken behind closed doors or when backs were turned. Wardens of Asphodel, the Reapers of Bone, the Warlocks, and the Tainted Ones, all were used to single out and describe the XIXth legion, often used as much in disgust as it was in recognition of their skills, many distrusting psykers at the best of times, but when coupled with the manner in which the XIXth manipulated the thoughts of those around them, and the inhuman purples and blues that universally affected the legions skin tones, distrust became disgust, the XIXth often shunned by those with closed minds.

It was only late in the Great Crusade, later than any other legion, that some modicum of change would be wrought, the Primarch of the legion, or rather, Primarchs, being found, the unity of the legion shattered, a name finally earnt, and the Celestial Host finally given life.

The Great Crusade
Fate is a cruel mistress, betrayal a child of many sires, and of the latter, no other could claim such a providence as the XIXth Legion, the Celestial Host of the Imperium of Mankind. No other was so divided amongst themselves, for who else, save those of the IIIrd had such a split nature. Unlike the Umbral Blades however, the twin lords of the Celestial Host were never in agreement, as different in temperament as they were in their looks, the lord of day and the lady of night. In hindsight, perhaps even in foresight for some, the betrayal that ripped the XIXth Legion apart was inevitable, a matter of when, not if. Were any to know the truth behind the Primarch’s origins, they would know how right they were.The last legion to be reunited with their Primarch, the Celestial Host, more commonly known as their split-down names of the Angelis Noctem and Supernal Seraphs, were ever at odds with their own nature, making it all but impossible to grasp a standard modus operandi of the legion as a whole, leading to many of the Logisticae Imperialis to instead treat them as two entirely different entities. The Seraphs were masters of ranged combat, focusing on blinding plasma fire, while the Angelis Noctem were assault troops of the highest order, dropping from the sky in conjured, artificial nights. Truely, the only unifying features of the XIXth Legion were their extreme psychic dominance, and their utter hatred of those who stood within their own legion, but along opposite Primarch lines.

The Warlocks of the Imperium
Twenty legiones were envisioned by the Emperor of Mankind at the dawning of the Imperium, created in the waning years of the Unification of Terra before the Great Crusade took to the stars. Almost all of these legions saw action on the surface of Terra during those days, even the secretive XIIth, XVIIth and XXth Legions known as the Triglav, were active in this time, only one legion left, the XIXth.

The Emperor gave no word to this delay, the XIXth’s geneseed ready for implantation, the preparations made as with all legions and not held in secret like those of the Triglav, and yet it was not until M30.797 that they would move forward and take in their alpha recruits, one hundred warriors from across the conquered worlds of the Sol System, sent to the geneforges of the Selenar Gene-Cults. Mere hours after the last ship arrived, the Emperor’s foresight proved correct once more, Warp Storms the likes of which had torn the galaxy apart during the Age of Strife surged back into existence once more, a resurgence of their fury that engulfed the cradle of Mankind for what would become the final time during this age of the galaxy.

This brief surge of Warp activity generated psychic convergences all across the globe, resulting in spontaneous outbreaks of psychotic violence and mutation, and yet for those warriors of the XIXth, bolstered by their gene-sires genetic and psychic might, it had another effect, anchoring their minds to the warp, bringing them clarity even in such darkness. When the storms blew themselves out, the alpha intake stood ready, one hundred strong, each a potent psyker in their own right. Combat trials took place for these Alpha intakes as it did with all other legions, the XIXth proving themselves enough to see their numbers bolstered by subsequent intakes, soon three thousand warriors standing ready to join a Crusade that had already begun, the other nineteen legions already having pushed out into the stars, bringing the first worlds into Imperial Compliance.

The legion was not created to crusade as other legions did, already issues clear and present within their geneseed making the prospect of an expansive XIXth legion little more than an empty hope. However, due to their nature as warp sensitive, even the rawest recruit having a sixth sense for the warp even if they were not full psykers themselves, offered them opportunities that no other legion had. Rarely would they take part in compliance actions, instead acting as an interdiction force for a foe far more insidious than mundane xenos and human empires; their own kind.

The Sisters of Silence were already the renowned witch hunters of the Imperium, pariah’s able to resist and shut down a psykers connection to the warp, but where they were warrior-investigators, hunters and gaolers, tasked with seeking out and, apprehending and processing psykers from the human population of the ever-expanding Imperium, returning them to the Divisio Astra Telepathica for assessment and disposition, the XIXth would have but a single goal; to destroy such foes.

They would become the hunters of their own, using their sense of the warp and their own powers to identify and annihilate any who sought to utilise the immaterium against the Imperium, willingly or not, and as they joined the Great Crusade, they proved how effective they were at this role. Few worlds fell to the small XIXth Legion, but hundreds continued to stand through their actions, psychic incidents cut down before they grew to engulf worlds. Due to the nature of their targets, the legion soon gravitated towards a fast moving hit and run force, jump packs allowing for rapidly closing the gap, allowing for force weapons to be brought to bear most effectively.

The Reapers of Bone
Despite their diminutive size, barely above combat effectiveness as laid down in the years following the creation of the Ist legion, the XIXth conducted themselves well during the early years of the Great Crusade, each warrior within the psychic brotherhood resolving that if they could not be numerous, they would instead attain the highest levels of skill that was possible for an Astartes to possess, each warrior fast becoming a veteran of dozens of battles, their casualty rates amongst the lowest of any legion. This was both a tactical choice and a strategic one, for the legion simply could not afford to take great numbers of casualties as others could.

For all this however, there was one fate the XIXth could not escape, no matter their martial skill or psychic prowess. Indeed, it was particularly prominent in those warriors who pushed their powers too far, digging deep into their psychic reserves and awakening a terrible curse that lay dormant in every single warrior of their genetic line.

It was known by many names, the Final Battle, Elysium’s End, but most knew it by its official name; the Ossification. A condition unique to the XIXth Legion, it saw warriors who relied too heavily on their not inconsiderable psychic prowess begin to change. Focusing as they did on biomancy, this power soon began to run rampant, the warrior’s bones strengthening and swelling in size, slowly beginning to subsume the entirety of the body; skin, muscle, cartilage, organs. There was nothing that escaped this spread, and while in the early stages of the condition the results were purely beneficial, creating warriors nearly as tough without their armour as they were while within it, few ever thought the Ossification was anything but a curse.

Soon, this rapid growth began to slow the warrior, joints seizing, reaction times slowing, pain becoming a constant companion to the warrior afflicted. From here, the condition only worsened, warriors often dying in combat as their slower reflexes left them vulnerable, while for those who survived, the condition continued to expand, sealing them within their own boney prisons, locked inside their own minds, unable to move, unable to scream unable to die without aid. In such a situation, death was a mercy, administered by the legions apothecaries or, in the worst situations where the conditions had gone on for too long, via the application of weaponry; bolters, power swords, even sometimes more powerful weapons, no expense spared by the warriors of the XIXth to give these warriors a final peace.

Casualties afflicted by the Ossification accounted for the vast majority of the losses within the XIXth, any warrior who perished while afflicted marked down as killed by the curse, regardless of what finally cut their thread. As other legions grew ever larger, the XIXth remained tiny, only their position as a force not designed for full frontal combat as the other legions were saving them from the ignominious fate of being relegated to the second line or attached to another legion while their own numbers stabilised.

The Celestial Twins
By M30.934, nineteen of the legions had been reunited with their Primarch’s, many reformed under the new lords as their numbers swelled, making new legends to be forever remembered by the Imperium. For the XIXth however, their Primarch still had yet to reveal himself, the legion beginning to show the strain of the lack of a lord. Morale was low, hope giving way to despair. What if they never discovered their lost liege? What if he had perished upon his world as Ulysses of the Imperial Wardens had, perhaps even a world already taken by the Imperium, his passing unremarkable and forgotten by history. The Emperor’s message to the fleet of the XIXth in M30.938 changed all this.

Suddenly, the Primarch had been found, the XIXth's spirits soaring instantly as they turned from their current campaigns and made for the Galactic East, travelling far beyond the ring fo the galaxy and the extent of the Imperium, guided by a shining star in the warp. It took the legion close to two years to finally disengage fully and reach the world, waiting eagerly for the Emperor to reveal their lord to them, standing on the designated parade square for days on end, before finally, a radiant being appeared before them.

At this point, none in the legion knew anything about their Primarch, or Primarchs as the case indeed was. When Solaris made himself known, glowing like the stars he named himself after, none doubted he was their lord, and yet none knelt, something holding them back. Perhaps it was the warrior that stood beside Solaris, an Astartes in yellow armour, the first to bear Solaris’s geneseed, and the first of the soon to be renowned Supernal Seraphs, or perhaps it was the lack of a full genetic link, but in that moment, a rift formed between the veterans of the legion and Solaris, one never to be bridged.

With Solaris’s disappereance, a second being arrived, and this time, the Wardens knelt unreservedly before the dark majesty of Nocterra. Unique amongst the pantheon, Nocterra was not a warrior in the guise of a male, but a female, as dark and unknowable as the void, and yet to the assembled warriors of the XIXth, she was their everything, none hesitating as they were renamed as her Angelis Nocetm.

Now blessed with not one Primarch but two, the XIXth began a rapid expansion as seen within all legions reunited with their lord. Renamed as the Celestial Host, the legion was split along the lines of their Primarch’s, a far cry from the unity of the Umbral Blades under their own twinned Lords. The Angelis Noctem would continue as the Emperor had forged them, coupled with their own predisposition towards terror tactics, and heightened by Nocterra’s own prowess to become some of the greatest drop shock troopers the galaxy had ever known, striking from the night as they girded themselves in the nightmares of their foes. For the Supernal Seraphs however, those new warriors raised from Solaris’s geneseed rather than Nocterra’s as the XIXth had been, the opposite was focused upon, ranged deverstation, often with psychically infused plasma weaponry, was their specialisation, prefering to showcase their abilities from afar, leaning on their considerable psychic powers to bring entire worlds into the Imperium in awe of such warrior mystics.

All legions had those they did not enjoy the company of those they would only fight alongside if there was no other choice. The Hunters Eternal and Immaculate Sons for one, but no other legion had such division within their own ranks, the Angelis Noctem and Supernal Seraphs hating one another with undisguised malice. Rarely, if ever, would the two branches of the legion fight together throughout the Great Crusade, despite the exceptional synergy the two would have undoubtedly brought to the field of battle, specialising as they did in utterly different areas of warfare. It is ironic then that the greatest actions that included both the Angelis Noctem and the Supernal Seraphs did not occur when they fought together, but instead when they tore each other apart during the Black Star Rift.

The Warriors of Day
See More: The Supernal Seraphs

Of the two branches of the Celestial Host, the Supernal Seraphs, more uncommonly known as the Warriors of the Day, were far larger than their night bound cousins, taking their geneseed from Solaris rather than Nocterra. For reasons unexplained, this geneseed was free from seemingly all issues that afflicted the Angelis Noctem, creating creatures of abject beauty, untouched even by the dreaded Ossification no matter how much they delved into their own psychic powers.

Unlike the Angelis Noctem or the XIXth that had preceded them, the Supernal Seraphs placed next to no preference on close quarters combat, preferring to engage the enemy at extreme range, their armouries filled with great plasma mortar batteries or other artillery pieces, the superheated plasma preferred over all other weapons, save one; their own psychic prowess.

Even more than the Angelis Noctem, the Supernal Seraphs were psykers first, second and last, the preeminent force of warp wielding warriors within the Imperium. None could match them in their area, few could even come close, and it is likely this unmatched skill that caused the already arrogant nature of Solaris and his sons to grow rapidly.

Soon, the Supernal Seraphs were known across the Imperium, seen in two very different lights depending on who looked upon them. To mortals, they were amongst the brightest stars of the Imperium, any who stood before them was washed away in the cleansing light of Imperial Truth. These mortals, often part of the Imperial Army, wholeheartedly brought into the myth the Supernal Seraphs cultivated around themselves, believing that they could do the impossible, even when compared to other astartes. To those of greater mental powers, the legions chief amongst them, the darker core could be seen with relative ease, laying bare the truth as a legion of arrogant fools, who often prioritised how they looked over victory itself, showing off with extravagant displays of power, both psychic and gunnery, that were more often than not superfluous, more to sway those who stood beside them than to destroy those who stood against them.

And yet, for all this, the Supernal Seraphs were undoubtedly skilled, bringing hundreds of worlds into the Imperial fold in the few decades they were active within its confines. This would of course come to change soon enough, an inescapable conclusion to their short history, entirely brought on by one being; Solaris.

When the Emperor had created the Primarch’s for the twenty legions, he had created twenty one of their number, the IIIrd legion blessed with a twinned lord as an experiment, never again to be repeated. And yet, when the Primarch of the XIXth was scattered in their pod, something happened that split the being, chaos undivided striking at the psychic primarch, attempting to corrupt the being for their own ends. In this they failed, but they would not be stopped, for if they could not corrupt, they could stip back what made a Primarch a Primarch, and it was this act that formed Solaris. A being made more of chaos than flesh and blood, unaware of his own nature for an age. From him came geneseed that linked his sons to him even tighter than the bonds between a normal Primarch and his sons, damning the Supernal Seraphs before the first warrior had even completed implantation.

The signs were non-existent, Solaris not knowing, perhaps even the Emperor himself unaware of such a change, or perhaps uncaring, the near one hundred percent success rate for Astartes drawn from Solaris being considered more important than his true nature. Whatever the case may have been, the Supernal Seraphs brought undeniable truth to an ancient adage.

The candle that burns the brightest, shines for the shortest of times.

The Warriors of Night
See More: The Angelis Noctem

The smaller but arguably infinitely more effective force within the celestial Host, the Angelis Noctem were formed around the veteran core of the XIXth, Nocterra enhancing what her brother had formed in the decades the legions had fought together, drop assaults from orbit still being the preferred, and indeed almost the sole, tactic of the branch, Nocterra merely bringing such drops into line with her preference for warfare in the darkness of night that she brought with her whenever she walked, the legion becoming the nightmares of the foes of mankind.

Unlike other legions however, even the Supernal Seraphs, the Angelis Noctem rarely fought to make worlds compliant, though there are some examples of them doing just this, added to their honour roll and recorded in Imperial Archives. These are few and far between however, and soon the Angelis Noctem had the smallest tally of recorded worlds brought into the Imperium, something Solaris was ever quick to remind others of to swell his own ego. To Nocterra however, this mattered little, her legion tasked by the Emperor himself to fight a greater foe, one previously only tackled by His own Custodes; to hunt, capture or exterminate those creatures of Old Night that still lived, something most did not know still existed. These records were sealed, the battles of the Angelis Noctem kept from all others, but they would forever know, caring little for public glory, comfortable in the shadows away from the Imperium.

Across a hundred worlds, the Angelis Noctem, often supported by the Custodian Warders of the Vaults of Rython, annihilated such foes, from the Night Wraith remnants on Noxim itself, to the Omnicorn that had infested the world's surrounding Iratha, and far more besides, the legion struck like a lightning bolt, nothing held in reserve as they slammed home. Often this broke the enemy, few able to stand before them, but there were many who could, the legion forced to retreat and reassess their plans in the face of such enemies, lacking much of the heavy equipment and sheer numbers that other legions could bring to bear to punch through such foes.

In a similar vein, the legion rarely planned far in advance of their current goals, unlike those such as Alexios or Anbaqil who had plotted out not only their next move, but dozens of moves following on from that. For the Angelis Noctem, such advanced planning was a folly they need not indulge in, so much of their crusade revolving around fighting enemies that wildly differed from one another, and who could be found with but a moment's notice, making planning for their destruction a necessarily quick affair. As such, the legion placed a supreme importance on individual creativity and spontaneous ideas, the flat structure of the XIXth becoming flatter still under Nocterra’s rule, few elevated beyond their fellows, creating a brotherhood of trust few other legions could match.

Due to this solitary mission, the Angelis Noctem are often forgotten by many within the Imperium, the Celestial Host and Supernal Seraphs springing to mind far more readily when the XIXth is thought of, the far larger personality of Solaris filling the mind much more readily than Nocterra and her introverted warriors. This again suited Nocterra, the female Primarch seeking anonymity as much as she could, though not for purposes of stealth such as the lords of the Umbral Blades, the Angelis Noctem ill-suited for such roles. Slowly, this desire to remain an unknown factor bled further into the legion, friendly duels or sparring matches with those outside of the legion all but forbidden, with those few that did take place happening under strict orders to fight using foreign styles than the warrior would normally use, matches often thrown that could be won, so as to not draw unwanted attention down on themselves, little despised more than sprinkled accolades and honeyed words.

While it may not have been the primary purpose of the actions, this withdrawn nature would begin to work in their favour in the hellish wars that engulfed the Imperium during the first half decade of the 31st Millennium when Astartes turned against Astartes. Few knew the Angelis Noctem in those days, and so few could formulate a strategy that directly countered the warriors, allowing the branch victories that may otherwise have been denied them. It was this factor, along with the wildcard that was Tuchulcha, that allowed the tiny legion to aid the Secessionists in dozens of battles, securing many telling victories against the forces loyal to the Emperor.