Rampager Squad

Rampager Squads were specialised shock assault units within the ranks of the World Eaters Legion during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy during the mid-30st Millennium and early 31st Millennium. They were formed from the most savage and bloodthirsty warriors in the Legion, all of which had undergone the prohibited psycho-surgery and possessed the forbidden cybernetic cortical implants known as the Butcher's Nails.

History
Following the reunification with their lost Primarch Angron upon the world of Nuceria, Upon taking control of the XII Legion, the bloody-handed Primarch enacted many changes. Knowing how successful his cortical implants could be at boosting a warrior's prowess in battle, Angron ordered his Apothecarion to insert the Butcher's Nails implants within every Astartes of the World Eaters Legion to enhance aggression and pain tolerance far beyond that which even the gene-engineered flesh of a member of the Space Marine Legions was capable. Initially, this posed difficulties, as Angron's implants were relics of a long-lost technology, little understood even by their makers, while removing them from Angron for close study would have proven fatal to the Primarch. The Legion's Techmarines and Apothecaries attempted to duplicate the process using the Primarch's own implants as templates to reverse-engineer the devices.

Early attempts to duplicate these implants were far from successful, and resulted in high rates of mortality and irrecoverable homicidal frenzy on test recruits. However, as time progressed, a viable form of the cortical implant technology was replicated and steadily improved, although it was never fully stable or constant between subjects, and entire newly-formed companies of recruits were implanted, as well as large numbers of existing World Eaters who volunteered for the dangerous operation. The majority of these Astartes were absorbed back into the XII Legion's line units, while those deemed perhaps too unstable for such tasks joined a growing number of near-berserker assault units known as Rampager Squads, and even within these units, those too far gone to be anything but restrained as savages between battles became known as the Caedere or the "Butchers," a frightening portent of what was soon to come for the entirety of the XII Legion. Others focused their desire for berserk slaughter through martial discipline, mastering a variety of macabre and savage weapons patterned from those used by Angron's fellow arena gladiators and found on the Feral Worlds from which the XII Legion primarily drew its recruits during the Great Crusade.