Magnus the Red

The Primarch of the Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marine Traitor Legion, Magnus the Red is one of the few surviving Primarchs, and is currently an extremely powerful Daemon Prince of the Chaos God Tzeentch. A giant in both physical and mental terms whilst an inhabitant of the materium, the copper-skinned Magnus possesed tremendous innate psychic ability, and constantly studied and tried to understand the Warp, becoming a sorcerer of formidable power. Magnus thought he would be able to control the Great Ocean of psychic energy that was the Warp, however his prodigious and careless application of his psychic gifts eventually caused him to fall out of favour with his father, the Emperor, as well as with the majority of his brother Primarchs. His psychic immaturity, recklessness, and arrogance also caused his own undoing, as it eventually brought about his own damnation and servitude to the Dark God of Change Tzeentch.

In the end, Magnus lead his own Legion to the banner of Horus and fought on his side during the Great Betrayal, ultimately surviving those events and being elevated to the position of a Daemon Prince of Tzeentch. He has spent the majority of the millennia since the end of the Horus Heresy ensconced atop his tower upon the Planet of the Sorcerers within the Eye of Terror, planning the ultimate destruction of the Imperium he believes betrayed him and his Legion.

Early Life
Magnus was unique among the Primarchs in that he remembered his origin and creation as a gene-son of the Emperor - and had some sort of psychic communication with his father even during his gestation. Magnus' development of tremendous psychic talent may thus have been planned by the Emperor, as an intentional attribute gained from his gene-stock. As an infant, Magnus found himself on the remote colony world of Prospero, a planet with a large population of human psykers who possessed the mutant ability to wield the potent psychic energies of the Warp. They had chosen Prospero for its inaccessibility, as they were generally shunned, feared, and often persecuted by "normal" humanity. When the pod bearing Magnus fell from the skies, it was like a portentous comet. His pod landed in the central plaza of the planet's then only inhabited city, Tizca, the City of Light.

He became a ward of the psychic scholars and leaders of Prospero, and quickly gained their powers. He soon surpassed his primary master in the psychic arts, Amon, perhaps the greatest sorcerer and psyker on Prospero at the time. Magnus mastered every psychic training program and voraciously went through the arcane volumes in Prospero's Librarium. By that time he had so much control of his psychic powers, he was by far the most powerful person on the planet. Eventually he lead a campaign to rid Prospero of the psychneuein, terrible psychic predator-beasts that roamed the countryside and the many empty cities, which were previously ruined in a mysterious, psychic-related catastrophe.

Elevated to be the rightful leader of Prospero, he unified its sometimes squabbling Cults of Sorcerers, and set towards rebuilding Prospero. Tizca was turned into a city of breathtaking beauty. It was a city where beautifully designed buildings in the form of pyramids and towers of glass, mirror and marble, wide boulevards, paradise-like parks, and a constant, artificially pleasing psychic background, resulted in immediate bliss for all visitors. The period of peace, prosperity and psychic well-being reflected on the world's population of powerful psykers, and Prospero became known as a planet of physically and psychically beautiful humans. Magnus also set himself the task of consolidating and expanding Prosperans' knowledge of the Great Ocean (the Prosperan name for the Immaterium) and of the Primordial Creator (the powers of Chaos), the unseen energy that powered its currents, building in the center of Tizca a Great Library within a magnificent pyramid where all knowledge of both sorcery and the psychic powers of the Warp was kept. Brushing aside the warnings of his wise teacher Amon (later repeated by the Emperor, and similarly ignored), Magnus undertook long and far-reaching psychic journeys into the Warp.

Discovery by the Emperor
With such a mind within the Warp, it was not long until the Emperor noticed Magnus' presence. When his fleet arrived at Prospero and the Emperor set foot upon the planet, he and Magnus immediately embraced and conversed as if the two had known each other for years. Following his discovery, Magnus and the Emperor engaged in decades-long joint travels and study of the Immaterium, with the Emperor imparting further knowledge to his son, along with multiple warnings about the dangers inherent in overindulging the gifts of the psyker.

The Thousand Sons Space Marine Legion Magnus inherited were rife with psychic talents, as their genomes had been based on Magnus' own psychically-potent genes. However, the Legion's gene-seed was genetically unstable, often resulting in unwanted mutations, Space Marine-organ rejections, and mental instability. The Legion was under-strength because of these problems and its eventual survival was questionable. It was said the Legion owed its name to the fact that only about a thousand stable Astartes remained functional within it by the time Magnus was found by the Emperor. The Thousand Sons Legion was not allowed to join the Great Crusade at its beginning, with some in the young Imperium advocating its disbanding and the euthanisation of its members; however Magnus pleaded with the Emperor to give him a chance to find a way to stop the rampant mutations. This the Emperor did, and after several decades of often desperate effort, Magnus was finally succesful: the aberrant mutations decimating his Legion stopped. This effort had a visible cost, and a hidden one: Magnus lost his right eye, the skin becoming smooth where the eye had previously been. But to stop the mutations, Magnus willingly consorted with entities from the Warp whose true nature he did not at the time understand. He was unknowingly fooled by the Chaos God Tzeentch into believing he had bested the Warp entities and that he had genuinely found the "cure" for his Legion. However, this was apparently part of a plan by Tzeentch to make Magnus even more arrogantly beholden to his psyker's gift so that he would pursue ever more corrupting forms of sorcery that would lead him down the path to corruption by Chaos.

In any case, because of the setbacks that had befallen the Thousand Sons, the selfless efforts of Magnus to save them, their shared psychic talents, and the continuing suspicion of many in the Imperium and among the other Astartes Legions towards the Thousand Sons' use of psychic abilities and the rampant mutation present in their gene-seed, the Primarch and his Astartes developed an extremely close emotional and psychic bond, probably the strongest such bond among all Primarchs and their Space Marine Legions. Finally, about half-way into the Great Crusade, 100 Terran years after it had begun, the now "stable" and full-strength Thousand Sons Legion, with Magnus leading them into the field, were permitted to take part in the effort, as the 28th Expeditionary Fleet of the Great Crusade.

The Great Crusade and the Council of Nikaea
Magnus fought bravely and successfully during the Great Crusade, but he was always a wild and impetuous commander. Magnus had an inherent affinity for the Warp and the secrets hidden within its fabric. Throughout the Crusade he came into contact with long-isolated human cultures scattered on worlds across the galaxy where psychics had been allowed to flourish. Although warned by the Emperor to shun such matters, Magnus began to gather arcane lore about sorcery from across the galaxy. From this material he compiled the monumental tome of sorcery and psychic practice called the Book of Magnus. The book, whose simmering covers, inscribed with strange wards, were made from the psychically-active hide of a slain psychneuein, was always fastened to Magnus' armour with a heavy gold chain, kept closed by a lock made of lead.

One of the things Magnus discovered during his Expeditionary Fleet's conquests was the existence and nature of the Eldar Webway and of the realspace portals into it. However his knowledge of the Webway's geography and functions was incomplete and fragmented - a fact that later cost him dearly. Nevertheless, he managed to enter its star-spanning corridors by brute psychic force.

The further from Terra the Crusade traveled, the more strange Warp-influenced creatures they came across. This naturally made Magnus look suspicious, as his control over the Warp and the powers he derived from its chaotic energies was similar to the abilities displayed by these malevolent creatures. The Space Wolves' Primarch Leman Russ and the Death Guard Primarch Mortarion both distrusted Magnus due to his and his Legion's use of the powers of the Warp and because of his mastery of deceit in warfare where they preferred a more straightforward use of physical strength and brute force. Another point of contention between the Primarchs was the Thousand Sons' love of knowledge in general; they always sought to preserve and study the knowledge of newly Compliant worlds, carrying libraries' worth of material on the 28th Expedition's starships for eventual archiving on Prospero. This obsession with knowledge - whatever the source - the Thousand Sons' political opponents among the other Astartes Legions found useless, counterproductive to the goals of the Great Crusade which sought to spread the specifically Imperial strain of human civilization across the galaxy, and possibly dangerous to boot because of the malevolent nature of so many of the beings that lived within the Immaterium. During a joint mission between the Thousand Sons and the Space Wolves Magnus and Leman Russ came close to blows over this, and over the use of psychic powers in general - bloodletting was avoided only thanks to the last minute intervention of Lorgar, the Primarch of the Word Bearers.

To solve this growing dispute over the use of psychic abilities once and for all, the Emperor called for a debate between the Primarchs on the use of psychic powers in the Imperium of Man as a whole. The great conclave of Imperial notables gathered on the world of Nikaea and the Emperor presided over the resulting debate during what became known to later Imperial historians as the Council of Nikaea. The Council collectively determined that the use of sorcery in the Imperium was hemceforth to be illegal, but human psykers were to be properly trained and sanctioned by the Imperium, within certain limits, for the benefit of mankind, since many psychic abilities were of great benefit if properly controlled. The Council also created a new position among the Space Marine Legions, the Space Marine Chaplain, to uphold the Imperial Truth and help maintain the purity of an Astartes Legion's dedication to the Emperor's commands. Disappointed and unhappy with the decision, Magnus was forced to accept the new prohibitions on sorcery in the Imperium, but he soon tried to find rationalisations and justifications to circumvent it.

Horus Heresy


After the Emperor had given overall command of the Great Crusade to the Warmaster Horus of the Luna Wolves Legion and had returned to Terra to pursue his secret Webway Project beneath the Imperial Palace, Magnus, meditating on Prospero, psychically foresaw Horus being corrupted by Chaos and the future events of the Horus Heresy: The betrayal of the Emperor by half the Space Marine Legions, and the sundering of the Imperium by a tumultuous and costly civil war. The only fate the vision did not reveal was Magnus' own. Burdened with the information by this precognitive vision, Magnus used the power of his Legion's greatest sorcerers to convey the news of the impending civil war to the Emperor himself on Terra via sorcery, rather than the more unreliable and limited, but legal means of astrotelepathy.

The Emperor was furious at Magnus' oath-breaking of the proscriptions against sorcery set by the Council of Nikaea, especially because Magnus had used the Webway to reach Terra in time, and his actions ruined the Emperor's secret Webway Project, a centuries-long attempt to control and use this Eldar construct as a way to render dangerous Warp travel obsolete and physically connect all the worlds of the growing Imperium of Man together using human versions of the Eldar's Webway portals. The Emperor saw Magnus as the traitor to the Imperium's ideals, not his beloved son Horus, whom he did not believe was capable of ever betraying him. Leman Russ, Primarch of the Space Wolves Legion, who had always been averse to sorcery and had a general antipathy to Magns as a result, was ordered to bring Magnus swiftly to Terra to account for his actions before the Emperor. During his voyage to Prospero, Leman Russ was instead ordered by an already corrupted Horus to destroy Magnus' Thousand Sons Legion rather than simply bring them to account. Horus, as the Imperial Warmaster, carried the authority of the Emperor himself, and was therefore able to fool Russ into believing this was the Emperor's will as the Emperor had thought about his decision and changed his mind. Accompanying the Space Wolves were a full contingent of Adeptus Custodes, millions of Imperial Army troops, and the elite Imperial anti-psyker (Pariah gene-bearing) units, the Sisters of Silence.

In the meantime, Magnus had finally come to realize that he had been used as a pawn of Tzeentch - and he also realized that the forthcoming clash between the Space Wolves and the Thousand Sons was also part of a Chaos plan to destroy two Loyalist Space Marine Legions. He decided to sacrifice the Thousand Sons and himself, rather than be the unwilling puppet of Chaos yet again. For this reason he did not forewarn the people of Prospero of the coming Imperial assault or his own Space Marines. He actually placed a psychic veil over the planet so his Legion would have no knowledge of the approaching invasion fleet, did not order the manning of the planetary defences, and sent the fleet of the Thousand Sons away from the star system.

As a result of their Primarchs' actions, the Imperial assault of Prospero took the Thousand Sons by total surprise. Raining death down from orbit, the invading force reduced the unprotected planet to a burned-out slab of rock. Because the Prosperan capital city of Tizca was always protected by an impenetrable void shield, an invasion of the city was staged. In the brutal fighting that followed, Prosperan combatants and civilians were ruthlessly exterminated, and the city was utterly destroyed, along with its libraries and all their hard-won psychic knowledge, which sent Magnus into a deep melancholy. Even as Prospero burned, Magnus was convinced that he had done nothing wrong to merit such a retaliation from his father the Emperor, nothing that would demand such destruction. However he took to the battlefield and broke the Space Wolves' assault with his great psychic powers, eventually meeting his brother Leman Russ in melee combat. At the climax of the battle, Magnus shattered Russ' breastplate with a mighty punch, puncturing one of his hearts, but Leman clung onto his opponent's arm and when close enough, kicked Magnus in his single eye. With Magnus blinded, Russ seized his opportunity to lift Magnus into the air and broke Magnus' back. In his moment of greatest need, Tzeentch came to Magnus and offered to save all that he had wrought if Magnus offered his eternal fealty to the Changer of Ways. To save himself, his Legion, his world, and all the knowledge he had accumulated, Magnus pledged his soul to the service of the Chaos God of Change and Sorcery.

The response of Magnus' new patron was immediate. The City of Light was transported into the Eye of Terror to a new Daemon World. Prospero was destroyed that day, but Magnus and his Legion survived. By the time the Thousand Sons were seen next, they had joined up with Horus' force of Traitor Legions on their way to lay siege to Terra, and Magnus the Red had become the most powerful of all Tzeentch's daemonic servants.

After the Heresy
After the Emperor defeated Horus on his battle barge and the Traitor Legions fled from Terra, the Thousand Sons claimed a daemon world for themselves within the Eye of Terror called the Planet of the Sorcerers, complete with a twisted, Chaotic caricature of the city of Tizca. Tzeentch had another "gift" for the Thousand Sons, namely the full return of their aberrant genetic mutations, which threatened to turn all of the surviving Thousand Sons Chaos Marines into mindless Chaos Spawn. A number of high-ranking officers of the Traitor Legion, lead by the Sorcerer Azhek Ahriman, who had been Magnus' closest advisor since their Legion's earliest days, established a secret Council of Sorcerers to find ways of stopping the mutations. With Ahriman at the fore, these sorcerers eventually invoked a powerful sorcerous incantation that backfired, killing all those Astares of the Legion who lacked psychic abilities and transforming them into living automatons: their organic bodies turned to ash, while their unknowing spirits were trapped within their suits of Power Armour, which were hermetically sealed and fully animated by their trapped souls. Every joint of the armour was magically sealed, and the only way for the soul to escape this prison was for the armour to be destroyed. The minority of Thousand Sons Astartes who did not succumb to the Rubric of Ahriman found their psychic Warp powers increased to a tremendous degree. The ritual also accomplished its goal, for the mutations stopped, both in the surviving sorcerers and their undead brethren. Magnus was enraged by the outcome of the spell and what it had done to his Astartes and became determined to gain vengeance upon Ahriman and his cabal of rogue sorcerers.

Thanks to the very close bond Magnus still had with his sons, he keenly felt their unforeseen suffering at the hands of Ahriman. Consumed with grief and anger but also proud of the level of sorcerous knowledge the Legion had attained through their metamorphosis, he assaulted the Council of Sorcerers and Ahriman, until the Daemon Primarch finally caught up with his sorcerer and former adviser and bested him in a duel. However, Tzeentch personally intervened and saved Ahriman's life as the sorcerer was a useful pawn for furthering the Changer of Ways' byzantine plans. So Magnus, now a Lord of Change and potent daemon himself, exiled Ahriman and his remaining collaborators from the Planet of the Sorcerers and ordered them to forever roam the galaxy in search of understanding and knowledge of the true meaning of Chaos.

At present, Magnus' ever-changing form resides on the Planet of the Sorcerers within the Eye of Terror. Here, Magnus stands atop the tallest of the towers in his mockery of lost Tizca, the Tower of the Cyclops, and its vast sorcerous eye surveys the entire planet as he plots the destruction of the Imperium of Man and the Emperor he believes betrayed him so long ago.