Shattered Legions

The Shattered Legions is a collective term used when referring to the survivors of the three Loyalist Space Marine Legions that were cruelly betrayed during the calamitous events of the Dropsite Massacre of Istvaan V in 006.M31, during the open stages of the Horus Heresy. The scattered survivors of each were cast across the northern sectors of the Imperium, and in the weeks that followed, small groups of Iron Hands, Raven Guard and Salamanders coalesced in the darkness. Following the example and vision of Iron Lord Shadrak Meduson, the leader of Clan Sorrgol, Captain of the Iron Hands 10th Company, the Istvaan survivors formed into mixed cells of no more than a thousand Legionaries each, each to commit to an all-out campaign of violence deep behind the Traitors' lines, prosecuting a bitter shadow war intended to divert enemy resources away from the advance on Terra and to bleed the Traitors dry in the process. Later, numerous other such forces would come into being on both sides of the Traitor-Loyalist divide, the fracture between either faction of the civil war far from a clean one.

History
"We must learn to pace ourselves. Tactical restraint. To hit and run, and not to be greedy and trust in overwhelming power as of old. We must learn the tactics and techniques of those thrown in with us and respect them. We must take our iron and alloy it with the mettle of the others who were shattered alongside us. We must mix our broken strength with other broken strengths to forge a new, unbroken edge."

- Captain Shadrak Meduson, 10th Company, Sorrgol Clan, Iron Hands Legion

Following the calamitous events that unfolded in the Istvaan System, what little information Rogal Dorn, Lord of the Imperial Fists Legion knew, came directly from his brother Primarch Corvus Corax, Lord of the Raven Guard. Upon breaking free of the bloodshed of the Dropsite Massacre, Corax had led the shattered remnants of his Legion in a ninety-eight day battle for survival, culminating in its miraculous rescue from the very jaws of the foe. Ignorant of the extent of the Warmaster's betrayal and aware that Horus might expect him to immediately return to his Legion's home world of Deliverance to fortify and regroup, Corax made directly through the turbulent Warp for Terra, and there recounted the awful scope of the Dropsite Massacre. Having done so, Corax then took the last few thousand of his warriors home with the desperate hope of rebuilding his ravaged command.

The fate of Corax and his Raven Guard is well-documented, but of the other Legions betrayed during the Drop Site Massacre, still less was known for certain. Corax had confirmed the bitter news of the death of his brother Ferrus Manus of the Xth Legion at the hands of their brother Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children, news that had shaken Malcador and the members of the Council of Terra to the core. Of the Iron Hands Legion itself, it was known that many had been driven to stark madness by witnessing their father's end and thrown themselves wholesale into the crucible of war as if to absolve their loss in their own deaths. Yet, a substantial number of Iron Hands Legionaries had extricated themselves from the massacre, and while few had made it off the surface, many more had survived the calamitous void ambush of the Legion's fleet, breaking away and scattering across the stars. Some would form isolationist bands, fighting their own private wars against the Traitors, such as the infamous "Red Talons" of Autek Mor, or refuse any master save their own will as did the company known to some records as the "Heart of Stone." Others, such as those who came to follow Shadrak Meduson, would form a series of ad-hoc, cell-structured forces slowly cohering into a single loosely knit organisation; a shattered Legion army shot through with elements of other forces that had been wrecked by the base treachery at Istvaan.

Of the fate of the Legiones Astartes Salamanders, still less was known. Witnesses had watched in horror as the entire sector in which the last of the XVIIIth had fought was consumed in atomic fire. Of all three Legions betrayed at the Drop Site Massacre, the Salamanders suffered the worst, scant few of their number escaping. Of these, most would join the bitter shadow-war against the Traitors either as part of shattered Legion warbands, or more rarely as coherent forces of their own entirely, such as those who followed Xiaphas Jurr, the so-called "Prophet of Fire," at the Siege of Mezoa and the liberation of Goth, while the small guard force of Nocturne acted in the aggressive defence of their native region in accordance to their oaths, continuing to raise recruits in their Primarch's name and their Legion's traditions unchecked. Of the Primarch Vulkan, it was assumed through much of the Age of Darkness, incorrectly, that he had perished.