Nightfall

The Nightfall was an ancient Battleship that served as the flagship of Konrad Curze, the Primarch of the Night Lords Legion during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy of the late 30th and early 31st Millennia. This flagship led a large flotilla of Night Lords warships which comprised the VIII Legion's Expeditionary Fleet. During the opening days of the Horus Heresy the Warmaster Horus sent Night Haunter and his VIII Legion on a campaign of genocide, later known in Imperial records as the Thramas Crusade, against the Imperial strongholds of Heroldar and Thramas in the Aegis Sub-sector of the Eastern Fringes, thus protecting Horus' flank and delaying the Dark Angels Legion from reinforcing the Loyalists. This bitterly contested campaign dragged on for nearly three standard years. During the climatic conclusion of the campaign, the Nightfall and fifty vessels of the VIII Legion confronted the entirety of the Dark Angels Expeditionary Fleet in a desperate action to allow the surviving Night Lords vessels to scatter and run for the deepest black. Still severely damaged from the previous encounter with the Dark Angels, the Nightfall suffered catastrophic damage during their final confrontation as was most likely destroyed in the encounter.

History
The Nightfall was a Standard Template Construct (STC) Gloriana-pattern battleship painted in the Legion’s colours, with bolts of lightning streaking across her massive hull. A Gloriana battleship was the size of a densely compacted city, and accordingly populated not only by officers and expert crew, but by a slave-caste numbering tens of thousands of souls. Most were consigned to live in the warship’s lightless bowels, breathing poorly-ventilated air and furnace fumes, but many still saw service on the upper decks. Nine full Companies of Night Lords Legionaries, including the Atrementar of the elite 1st Company, were stationed aboard the mighty vessel. The Dark Angels' flagship Invincible Reason was born of the same breed. The Nightfall was present during many notorious events that occurred during both the Great Crusade; Pacification of the Cheraut System, Destruction of Nostramo, and the Horus Heresy; the Drop Site Massacre at Istvaan V and the Thramas Crusade, the latter, which saw her suffer catastrophic damamge and most likely resulted in her destruction.

Bridge
The bridge of the Nightfall, like the rest of the vessel, was immersed in perpetual darkness so common to VIII Legion ships. This intentional blackness was utterly natural to the Night Lords, each one born of the same sunless world. Servitors trundled about their simple duties as mortal crew performed the myriad functions that were necessary for the ship’s continued running. Crew members wore lamp packs and photo-visors to penetrate the gloom. Within the center of the bridge,upon a raised dais, was an ivory command throne where the Primarch directed the vessels of his fleet.

Night Haunter's Sanctum
The inner sanctum of the VIII Legion's Primarch was a veritable charnel house; scourged naked bodies hung on vicious flesh-hooks connected to dense chains connected to the chamber's ceiling. Here the madness within the Primarch's mind, pushed out to infect the surrounding world. A psyche's truths, written in skinned bodies and desecrated remains. Plagued by excruciating dark visions, Curze talked to the corpses, divining future events from their desecrated remains. A single, immense round table was the center piece of the Night Haunter's chambers. Here the Primarch's elderly and devoted archivist, Ekra Trez, the "Sin-Eater," wrote down his master's visions on parchments and later archived them in stacks of data-slates. Often the circular slab played home to a mouldering cadaver that looked as if it had been pulled apart by a surgeon using no tools, nothing more than the Primarch's bare hands. Gobbets of blackening meat would be strewn across the table's surface, cemented there by dried blood and bodily fluids. The Primarch spoke to these desecrated bodies as they were, ravaged and brutalised, and would know if someone had moved them, which enraged him. It was here that the Night Haunter confessed his deepest and darkest visions to the ancient archivist. He told the Sin-Eater everything, including when and how he would die, for he had always known. The knowledge pained him more than anyone could ever understand. The pressure of it, the inevitability, was a tide against his consciousness.

Notable Personnel

 * Fleet Admiral Torun Keshr - Fleet Admiral Keshr served as the Shipmaster of the Nightfall and was the senior-most commander of the Night Lords' fleet. Towards the end of the Thramas Crusade he was mortally wounded during the Dark Angels Legion's initial ambush. The salty commander had a reputation for remaining stoic when facing insurmountable odds and even remained unfazed when he lay dying under wreckage, as the Nightfall's bridge burned around him.
 * Wing Commander Taye Karena - Wing Commander of the "Veiled One," an elite squadron composed of Wrath-pattern starfighters stationed aboard the Nightfall.