Disciples of the Flames



The Disciples of the Flames was a rare ad hoc formation of Astartes drawn from the Salamanders Legion following the disaster that shattered the XVIII Legion during the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V. Like many survivors of the three Shattered Legions during those dark years of the Horus Heresy, the Disciples of the Flames attacked the Traitor Legions in service to the Warmaster Horus from behind enemy lines when and wherever they could.

The epic tale of the Disciples of the Flames' sole vessel, the Ebon Drake, illustrates the courage and tenacity with which these scattered survivors of the Shattered Legions still hindered the Traitors' carefully laid plans. Although their decisive actions in the Mezoan Campaign are undeniable and still remembered today, since the Great Scouring, a thick and impenetrable veil of secrecy and mystery surrounds the Disciples of the Flames. All mentions of them have been cleansed from the records of their parent Legion and what information can be gleaned comes primarily from the data-vaults of noble Mezoa itself, the Forge World the Disciples of the Flames helped to save, as well as their own scripture, the Prophecies of the Flames, which is now considered proscribed reading by the Inquisition. As such, the warband's ultimate fate following the Third Siege of Mezoa is currently unknown.

History
The history of the Disciples of the Flames is complicated, as by the end of the Mezoan Campaign the Disciples numbered not only members of the three Shattered Legions, but also members of the Iron Warriors Traitor Legion. However, at the very beginning, the Disciples of the Flames were all Astartes of a single, newly-raised company of the XVIII Legion.

The Voyage of the Ebon Drake
It is on the bleak volcanic world of Nocturne that the tale of the Disciples of the Flames begins. With no news of the expected victory against the Warmaster Horus and only inconclusive rumours about a great disaster in the galactic north a full standard year after the XVIII Legion's departure for Istvaan V, the keepers of Nocturne began to worry. Before his departure, the Primarch Vulkan had designated the wise Lord Chaplain Nomus Rhy'tan as Keeper of Nocturne and warden of the Legion's future. In his wisdom, the Primarch had also left behind a Reserve Company stationed at the Legion's fortress-monastery on Nocturne's moon, Prometheus, as well as a small core of Firedrake Veterans. In their Primarch's absence, the XVIII Legion's instruction cadre had continued their efforts and as the first anniversary of the savage Drop Site Massacre dawned, several new companies could be formed from those Neophytes having accomplished their training and deemed ready to don their Power Armour. Despite this new influx, the remaining Salamanders were deemed too few to both defend Nocturne and send out a grand expedition, yet Nomus Rhy'tan was fully aware that he must act, for without proper intelligence he was at equal risk of failing in his duties as Keeper of Nocturne and protector of the Salamanders' homeworld.

Unable to send a fleet to investigate the fate of their Primarch and their Legion brothers, Rhy'tan decided to send a single ship. His choice fell on the prototype Assault Cruiser Ebon Drake: the first of a new breed of warships specially designed for use by the Legiones Astartes. His duties preventing him from leaving Nocturne, Nomus Rhy'tan himself could not lead the expedition, so he chose both the members of the Ebon Drake 's company and their commander with the outmost care. As the warship's mission was to discover the fate of their Legion, the Lord Chaplain was careful that each of the seven Realms of Nocturne would be represented, choosing the best and most promising warriors from those Neophytes recently inducted as Legionaries. To make up for their lack of experience, Rhy'tan also detached 30 of his own Firedrakes to the Ebon Drake, all seasoned warriors whose steadfast courage and determination would bolster the yet unblooded Neophytes' resolve should they meet some unforeseen enemies. As leader of this company, Nomus Rhy'tan appointed one of his own students, a promising young officer of Proximal-birth, Lieutenant-Chaplain Xiaphas Jurr. To denote the importance of the mission, Rhy'tan also gifted Jurr with the Burning Halo, an Iron Halo of tremendous power, forged by the hands of Vulkan himself.

Under the impulse of Xiaphas Jurr, the Ebon Drake soon departed Nocturne, the Lieutenant-Chaplain pressing for quick departure as he saw his commission as more than a simple strategic mission, but rather a matter of deep belief in his Primarch -- in other times some would have even called it a sacred errand. From the start of their voyage, Lieutenant-Chaplain Jurr gave his crew no respite, pushing the ship itself, its crew and his Legionaries to the limits of their abilities through a punishing regime of combat-drills. With aetheric interferences and Warp Storms continuously worsening, the crew of the Ebon Drake would not be able to set course directly to its intended location but would need to take a far more circuitous route, only passing short periods of times in the Warp before translating back into realspace to get their bearings. Jurr hoped that this way they might actually gather some useful information and perhaps learn of their Primarch's fate. Unfortunately, much regarding the Ebon Drake 's odyssey has been lost, consumed in the flames of the civil war, or sequestered by writ of the Holy Inquisition. While some on board the Ebon Drake like Jurr himself kept a journal, their knowledge remains untapped. However, a comprehensive search of the Augur logs of the uncounted millions of navigation beacons and astropathic relay stations that dot the Imperium's domains allows at least a partial reconstitution of the route used by the Ebon Drake whose long journey led her across paths rarely trod by other stellar travellers.

From what information could be gathered, it is the general consensus of Imperial savants that the first emergence of the Ebon Drake was at Sulis. In response to the growing unrest and rumours of war and civil unrest, the lords of Sulis had chosen to isolate themselves from their neighbours, enforcing their isolation through the use of heavily-fortified gun platforms and lumbering Defence Monitors. While the Ebon Drake approached with messages of support from Nocturne, the Salamanders' vessel was met with insults and weapons fire. Sulis would recognise the Emperor as its ruler no longer, nor would it bow to the authority of the Warmaster, determined to forge its own destiny amongst the stars, or so the Vox-hails from Sulis claimed. While such secessionist tendencies were quite common during the chaos of the Horus Heresy, with no news of the civil war or the Drop Site Massacre, the Salamanders of the Ebon Drake saw such an affront to the spirit of the Great Crusade to be intolerable. Sulis needed to be punished and crushed into submission. Over the next three solar days, the Ebon Drake would use its superior speed and weaponry to knock out one gun platform after another, each orbital station then scoured clean by vengeful Salamanders boarding parties, Xiaphas Jurr leading many of these assaults personally. The world's Defence Monitors and interdiction barges, while powerfully armed for their, size could not hope to match the prototype Cruiser's sheer speed and the Ebon Drake easily evaded all attempts to run her down or surround her. The Salamanders' final objective was Sulis' principal orbital station, which they quickly cleared of the secessionist Solar Auxilia regiment guarding it before crippling the void station's gravity engines, letting the entire facility crash down upon the golden palace-city of Sulis' ruling elite. When the Ebon Drake left the system, she left behind a world that could offer no resistance to the Imperium, little knowing that this would later lead Sulis to fall without struggle into the hands of the Warmaster.

The Empty Void
Following the events at Sulis, the path of the Ebon Drake becomes even more obscure. What information could be gathered about this part of the vessel's odyssey was compiled from the fragmentary log entries recovered from the Ebon Drake 's wreck which was discovered during the Great Scouring that followed the Horus Heresy. The ship's log mentions that three Legionairies mysteriously vanished while the Ebon Drake passed through the Warp Storm known as "the Oasis of Nightmare" followed by the encounter of a strange crystalline xenos craft of unknown mark and provenance. While this encounter soon turned to violence, the strange ship's weapons cut off power on the Ebon Drake, leaving the Cruiser a dead weight drifting in space, but made neither attempt to permanently damage or board the ship. It would take several days for the Salamanders-vessel to restore power, by the time the mysterious xenos ship had long since left the system. Likewise, the annals of the portmaster of Valthrudnir - a world only recently brought to Compliance - mentions the sighting of "a craft marked with the sigil of a great black dragon crewed by void-devils". This superficial description may or may not refer to the Ebon Drake.

The Ebon Drake seemed to have continued to circumvent the great Warp anomaly known as the Maelstrom, occasionally encounter other Imperial or indeed Traitor-vessels. The chronicles of the IV Legion, the Iron Warriors, state that one of their vessels, the Grand Cruiser Grim Paragon - one of several line-units left behind to watch over the Legion's homeworld of Olympia - was heavily damaged as it intercepted a vessel of unknown class bearing the markings of the Salamanders Legion. The Vox-logs state that the unknown vessel entered the system seeking words of the battle at Istvaan. Perhaps damaged in its encounter with the Grim Paragon, the Ebon Drake 's next stop seems to have been the great Mechanicum Forge World of Anvillus, a mighty bastion of Imperial might and the greatest storehouse of ammunition and weaponry of the entire Great Crusade. Unfortunately for Jurr and his crew, while still distant from the frontlines, the Warmaster's shadow had already fallen upon mighty Anvillus. The embers of discontent had been had flared into open conflict between fractions of the Machine God's followers. Where the Ebon Drake came looking for resupply and repairs, it found only war and strife. For outsiders, both fractions were virtually undistinguishable and soon the Ebon Drake found itself in the crosshairs of both parties. Closing at slow speed with the Forge World, the Ebon Drake witnessed titanic duels between seemingly identical fleets of Mechanicum siege-monitors. The Astartes-vessel was bombarded by Vox-broadcasts of seemingly incoherent machine code, interrogative missives from interchangeable steel-faced Magii and other insidious data-djinns intended to subvert the core-systems of the Ebon Drake with the intent of leaving her helpless in the void. Were it not for the unique engineering of the prototype vessel and its own powerful Machine Spirit, such an assault would have surely succeeded. Instead of crippling the vessel, the Ebon Drake only suffered minor damages, non-essential systems suffering cascade failures and causing quite the confusion on the bridge and the ship's Enginarium, but the ship remained largely battle-worthy. Loathe to become embroiled what he regarded as internal strife, Xiaphas Jurr ordered all available power diverted to the engines and the Ebon Drake soon plotted a course out-system, evading plasma carronades from approaching Mechanicum siege-monitors, but unable to evade a spread of Boarding Torpedoes. Whilst Jurr's warriors cleaned the corridors of the vessel from the frenzied murder-Servitors that had gained ingress, Jurr assessed their situation. This last battle in a series of ill-fated encounters had cost the Ebon Drake dearly. The ship's outer hull had sustained serious damage and numerous internal systems would need to be repaired or purged from the insidious data-djinns preventing them from working correctly. Worst still, the casualties to the ship's company meant that Jurr was dangerously low on uninjured warriors. It seemed that without refit and an influx in new fighters, the Ebon Drake 's mission would be doomed to fail.

The next reliable data concerning the Ebon Drake places her at Baal, the throneworld of the IX Legion, the Blood Angels. Given the welcome they had received at Olympia, it might seem surprising that Jurr chose to head to another Legiones Astartes homeworld, yet there is also some reason in it. In contrast to the Iron Warriors, the Blood Angels had not been part of the great punitive expedition despatched to Istvaan V. In fact, acting upon the Warmaster's orders - who still hid his secret intent to overthrow is father under the mask of loyalty -, the angelic Primarch of the IX Legion, Sanguinius, had taken much of the Blood Angels to the outer rim in an effort to pacify the Signus Cluster. With no news of their own Primarch, Jurr might have hoped for some sympathy for their own mission. Upon entering the Baal-system, all that remained to greet Xiaphas Jurr was a small garrison under the command of veteran Legionary Warden Arkhad.

Notable Campaigns

 * Mezoan Campaign (008.M31) - The greatest victory of the Disciples of the Flames is no doubt their successful defence of the Loyalist Forge World of Mezoa. Isolated following the rapid conquest of the Manachean Commonwealth by the Sons of Horus, the militant Forge World had already resisted two prior attempts to bring it to its knees by the Traitors. Led by Autilon Skorr of the Alpha Legion, the third and final attempt to vanquish Mezoa had led to the creation of one of the largest independent hosts since the Drop Site Massacre. Arriving even as the Traitor armada was closing on Mezoa, the Ebon Drake participated in the void-battle above the Forge World before deploying its troops to the surface of the besieged world. Reequipped with the gifts of Mezoa's Tech-adepts, the Disciples of the Flames were a welcome addition to the defenders' forces, while both Xiaphas Jurr's and Cassian Vaughn's decisive actions helped achieve to this much-lauded Imperial victory.

Notable Disciples of the Flames

 * Cassian Vaughn, "The Fallen Master", Avatar of the Sacred Flame - Cassian Vaughn, known also as Cassian Dracos and "the Fallen Master", was the Lord Commander of the XVIII Legion from the time it was founded on Terra during the Unification Wars until the discovery of the Primarch Vulkan on the world of Nocturne during the Great Crusade. After he was mortally wounded in battle against the Orks, Vaughn was interred in an unique Dreadnought sarcophagus known as the Dracos Revenant, or the "Iron Dragon", forged by the hands of Vulkan himself. On Istvaan V he fought with unmatched fury, until he was struck by an orbital Lance strike that glassed an entire part of the battlefield, trapping him beneath the black, blood-soaked sand of the Urghall Depression for several months at least, Cassian Vaughn was unearthed by Xiaphas Jurr and the crew of the Ebon Drake. Whilst Dracos' Dreadnought-shell was badly mauled, the man inside it was very much alive. Taken onboard the Ebon Drake, Cassian Vaighn soon began to exact its influence on both the Legionaries and machines of the Ebon Drake, soon becoming their leader as well as a figure of prophetic wisdom. It was under his influence that the Disciples of the Flames were truly born. Having earned new titles such as "The Twice-Dead" and the "Avatar of the Sacred Flames" Cassian Dracos would direct the company's steps to far distant and beleaguered Mezoa where the Tech-Magii of the Adeptus Mechanicus recognized him as an Avatar of the Machine God and restored his Dreadnought to its former glory. Returned to the battlefields of the Imperium to enact his vengeance, Cassian Vaughn would prosecute his own war of vengeance against those that had sided with the Warmaster.
 * Xiaphas Jurr, "The Prophet of Fire" - Initial commander of both the Ebon Drake and its complement of Legionaries, Lieutenant-Chaplain Xiaphas Jurr was a member of the Igniax, the formation that preceded the Reclusiam within the Salamanders Legion. A pupil of the great Nomus Rhy'tan, Jurr had been born on Proxima Secundus and inducted into the XVIII Legion at the end of the Great Crusade. Reckoned amongst the most promising of the officer-recruits who remained on Nocturne in the wake of the muster in the Istvaan System, he was later chosen by Rhy'tan to lead the mission to investigate the Primarch's fate. It was Chaplain Jurr's fervour which drew the dispirited men under his command to him, in the wake of the rumours of the catastrophic events that played out at Istvaan V, and bound them to him in the dark odyssey that followed aboard the Ebon Drake. During their long voyages, Jurr resolved to use practices long frowned upon by his fellow Igniax, such as the Drakken-Asca, an art of divination and augury to plot the Ebon Drake 's course. The Drakken-Asca safely led the Ebon Drake first to Istvaan V and then to Cassian Vaughn's resting place, a feat many saw as guided by the hands of the Primarch. Upon the recovery of Cassian Vaughn, Xiaphas Jurr willingly relinquished command of the Ebon Drake and its troops to Vaughn, becoming both his second-in-command and the Prophet of Fire, the voice of the Disciples of the Flames and the hands that would eventually write down the Prophecies of the Flames. It was Jurr who commanded the Disciples of the Flames in their defence of the Mezoan forge-fanes for the majority of the Mezoan Campaign.
 * Nârik Dreygur, Equerry to the Iron Dragon - Former Consul-Praevian of the Iron Warriors Legion and commander of its 114th Grand Battalion during the Mezoan Campaign, Nârik Dreygur was but one of the many converts swayed by Cassian Vaughn to renounce their oaths to the Warmaster Horus and turn upon their former allies of the Alpha Legion. Following his betrayal, Dreygur became the right-hand of Cassian Vaughn, a silent and brooding figure that preferred the presence of his own Battle-Automata to that of his former -- or new -- brothers.

Colours
Typical of the Legiones Astartes of this ad hoc formation, the Disciples of the Flames were much changed in appearance by the time they arrived at Mezoa. Much of the Salamanders spartan heraldry that was worn at the outset of the Ebon Drake ' s voyage was drastically changed. The original drab green armour of these Legionaries was often obscured by patterns of black ash and fire, along with ritual images of the Dragon Revenant and Vulkan. Suspended on chains across their armour were engraved bones and fragments of the armour of the fallen from Isstvan V, each an omen of events yet to pass, cast in the presence of the Iron Dragon himself.

Heraldry
The insignia worn by the Disciples of the Flames consists of a flaming drake's head, similar in appearance to the Salamander's original Legion iconography, but subtly corrupted, wrought by the influence of Cassian Dracos. Often the Legion insignia was replaced by devotional images of the Primarch Vulkan. Suspended from some of these Legionaries' pauldrons were pages from the writings of Xiaphas Jurr, the so-called Prophecies of the Flame, with some affixed with the seal of the Forge World of Mezoa.

Gallery
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