Meros

Meros was an Apothecary Minorius, a junior medicae, who served in the Blood Angels Legion's 9th Company under Captain Furio during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy. Initially, Meros was a simple line-Astartes of solid, if unremarkable service. But later on, during the opening days of the Horus Heresy, his fate would become inextricably intertwined with that of his Legion and his Primarch Sanguinius during the Signus Campaign.

History
Meros was simply line Astartes that served as a junior squad medicae under the command of Captain Furio’s Ninth Company. After successfully concluding the campaign on Melchior against the vile xenos known as the Nephilim, Meros was summoned by Chapter Master Raldoron, First Captain and Equerry to Primarch Sanguinius. Entering a fallen chapel, the Apothecary was ordered to extract the Progenoid Glands of a fallen Blood Angel Legionnaire by the name of Brother Alotros. Unknown to Meros, Alotros had been afflicted by an unknown malady which he had succumbed to during the throes of battle. This affliction would later be known as the genetic flaw called the Red Thirst. The Apothecary reverently placed Alotros’s gene-seed in a hermetic capsule, but before he could drop it into a seal-pouch at his hip, Captain Raldoron reached out and took it from him.

The First Captain then asked the Apothecary for his name and unit. Meros obeyed, and immediately identified himself. He then received a strange set of orders from the esteemed commander – Meros was ordered never to speak of this moment and that both he and the First Captain were never there. Then he held up the capsule and informed Meros that this particular item didn’t exist. Not quite understanding the Chapter Master’s meaning, he was forced to repeat what the First Captain had just said to him. Obediently, Meros acquiesced to the senior commander’s wishes and saluted. As he backed away, he witnessed another curious occurrence. He saw the First Captain remove an object from his belt pack, a slab of inkstone from the deserts of Baal Primus. With quick motions, Raldoron passed it over the dead warrrior’s armour, obscuring the crimson colour of his battleplate with a layer of glistening, smoky black. The action had a strange, ritual quality to it. Without question, Meros returned to his company, and the strange incident passed from memory.

Bloodlines
Many years later, Meros was assigned to take part in a campaign against the Dark Eldar on Nartaba Octus. He had been assigned to a Blood Angels flotilla that was responsible for overseeing the evacuation of the human scientific colony of the Imperial world before it was subjected to Exterminatus. The foul xenos had infested the planet, and despite the Blood Angels’ best efforts, a horde of Dark Eldar had defied full extermination on the ground. Meros was a part of the rearguard, the last group to evacuate the doomed planet. While attending to an injured civilian the Apothecary was shot in the back by one of the xenos by a deadly Soul-Seeker round. The dart was the war-shot from an Eldar splinter gun, the venomous shard poisoned by conventional means, but doubly so by some monstrous form of psionic impregnation. So it was said, the toxin it exuded would not only destroy flesh, but also disintegrate a man's very soul. Any attempt to dig out the round would shatter it.

Gravely wounded, Meros slipped into a deep torpor of a recovery sleep, his Sus-an Membrane automatically activating. In a desperate attempt to save the mortally injured Apothecary, he was placed by Sergeant Cassiel and Brother Sarga into one of the specially constructed golden sarcophagi of the Blood Angels. These life-giving marvels of arcane technology were master-crafted pieces of machinery, so advanced that even a Techmarine couldn’t fully fathom the intricacies of its workings. These sarcophagi were used in the ritual creation of transforming an Aspirant from a stunted, radioactive-infected Baal tribesman, into the majesty of a Blood Angel; tall, strong and superhumanly powerful, their restructured bodies and features took on a beauty that echoed that of their angelic forebear.

Meros’ battle-brothers believed that by placing their comrade in the sarcophagus it would help purge the poisoned blood from his system, replacing it with fresh, clean blood. During his time spent in the sarcophagus, Meros met Brother Rafen in a maddened fever-dream, a Blood Angel from the far distant future. They both shared a genetic link through their shared experience in the same sarcophagus, despite being separated by ten millennia. Soon, both Blood Angels realized they were not alone as they both encountered the golden guardian of vengeance, known as the Sanguinor. The stories that Rafen had been told was that this was an avatar of all that was good and noble in the character of his Chapter; an undying force of pure will that would give its blessing to warriors fighting against the most hopeless of odds. The golden angel of vengeance who would descend from the skies in the moment of greatest need. The eternal and unending warrior.

Not trusting his own eyes, Rafen reflexively pulled his Bolter from its holster and trained the weapon on the mysterious entity. Rafen had never truly believed the stories, for he had fought at the speartip of wars that shook the pillars of his Chapter's history, and never seen the face of this legend; and to see it now, in this place, brought a sudden fury to the Blood Angel. Meros saw Rafen draw his pistol upon the golden warrior. The figure in gold could only be one thing, one being - for the strictures of the IX Legiones Astartes forbade any but the Primarch himself and his personal guard from donning such armour. It could only be the Lord of the Blood, the Great Angel himself; and here before Meros the warrior Rafen was bringing a weapon to bear upon him. Assuming that the Sanguinor could only be their beloved Primarch Sanguinius, Meros attempted to stop Rafen. Brother Rafen informed Meros that Sanguinius had been long dead for over ten thousand years and that the Blood Angels no longer existed as a Legion.

Refusing to believe such blasphemies, Meros became enraged and attacked Rafen. But before the two Blood Angels could kill one another, they were soon beset on all sides by phantasms. Putting aside their differences, the two Blood Angels fight side-by-side, managing to vanquish their phantom enemies. Both Blood Angels had found a sense of camaraderie through their shared genetic heritage. Rafen soon realised the dire portents of such a meeting. Before being medically awoken from their parallel, yet separate comas, Rafen attempted to communicate with his genetic forebear. With all his might, with every last moment of his strength, Rafen fought to utter a warning. From his mouth came a single, strangled word. A curse. "Horus—." The Sanguinor quickly intervened before Rafen and placed a golden gauntlet over the silent lips of its unmoving mask, indicating to the Blood Angel to be silent. At that particular moment, both Blood Angels were pulled back into their respective realities. Upon awakening from the sarcophagus, miraculously healed from near-death, Meros was surprised to see the Sanguinary Guard Commander Azkaellon checking on his progress. Though he thought the Apothecary would surely die from his grievous wounds, the usually stern Blood Angels honour guard was actually impressed by Meros’ resilience. Azkaellon then informed the assembled Blood Angels that were present that they had received new orders from the Warmaster. The entirety of the IX Legion was to gather in its entirety for battle and new glory. Such an assemblage of the Sons of Sanguinius was unprecedented. For the primarch to gather them all for war, the deed would be of great import. Their destination – the Signus Cluster.

Signus Campaign
Meros served aboard the Blood Angels’ flagship Red Tear during the beginning of the campaign into the Signus System. Not long after arriving in-system, the Blood Angels discovered wrecked ships drifting beyond the edges of the Signus Cluster. The scouts had found the wreckage of more than a dozen different craft drifting in the gravity shadow of the world known as Phoros. Civilian haulers, defence force monitors, and shuttles. Many of them were not even warp-capable. Their trajectory suggested that they were fleeing from the inner worlds. Soon barracks heresy became rife with rumour, as stories began to circulate around the fleet about something unusual that had been discovered by the Blood Angels’ scout vessel Numitor. Docking with the Red Tear, the frigate Numitor had had the docking cylinder to itself, and as a precaution all auxiliaries and non-combatant crew were dismissed to other duties. Meros and a complement of fellow Apothecaries were summoned by a brisk summons with little explanation as to the reason. Meros wondered why armed battle-brothers were needed to escort a medical party on the deck of the Primarch’s own flagship, but no explanations were forthcoming.

Each medicae had an assigned number of bodies to examine, then they were to pool their findings. Donning their full battleplate, the Apothecaries were to observe all biohazard procedures and report anything anomalous immediately. Meros followed his comrades out on to the service deck and found the four coffins set aside for him to examine. He wondered why the corpses had been brought aboard the Red Tear, but it was standard operating procedure. The Red Tear had the most advanced medicae labs and technical facilities of any ship in the fleet. As he opened the container and examined each body in turn, Meros quickly discovered heaps of clothing, curiously laid out in the shape of a person. Taking a sample of blood he discovered that the blood had somehow been altered. The vial of vitae, when held up in the light showed that instead of crimson fluid, the matter within the crystal tube was thick and sluggish, an oily paste almost purple in colour. Upon closer scrutiny of the corpses, Meros quickly discovered that the bodies lacked rigidity as they were sunken and shriveled in a way that suggested a peculiar form of decay. Much to his shock, he discovered that that there were no bones in these corpses. They were little more than bags of skin and meat in the shape of a human being, misshapen under the weight of their own mass. The odd thing was, the medicaes could not figure out how the bones had been removed. The medicae were ordered by First Captain Raldoron that they were not to discuss what they had seen there without permission from their commanding officers.

As the Blood Angels continued their investigation of the scattered fleet of wrecked vessels, they could not figure out why these craft were even in that particular zone of space. The people of these ships were obviously so afraid that they willingly sought out the embrace of deep space in order to escape whatever horror they had witnessed. By order of the Primarch, a task force of Blood Angels legionaries were to travel ahead to Signus VI, the Hive World known as Holst, to discern the fate of the people of that planet. Meros and a squad of Blood Angels, accompanied by three Word Bearers Astartes were sent down to the surface of the planet to investigate. But enroute, their human pilot was overcome by the nightmarish visions that continued to plague him, and the unaugmented humans since entering the Signus System. The pilot succumbed to madness and shot the servitors, the crew and himself, forcing the Meros to pilot the Stormbird the Space Marines were flying in and make a crash landing.

Once they arrived on the surface of the planet, the legionaries quickly realised they had no communication with their fleet and would not be missed for at least ten hours. They decided to go ahead and explore the planet’s surface, investigating the outer wards of Holst-Prime Hive. During their investigation, the small detachment of Space Marines heard the sounds of gunfire. The Space Marine on point, Brother Xagan of the Blood Angels, had somehow mysteriously disappeared down some ragged sink-hole within one of the hab buildings. The only sign of his passing, was a discarded Umbra Ferrox-bolter, vapour still curling from its muzzle. As they continued their investigation, the Blood Angels somehow became separated from the three Word Bearers that had been accompanying them. They made enemy contact from unknown vectors. By the time Meros and the Blood Angels found them, they discovered a dead Word Bearer. Dark, oily fluid stained the body of the slate-coloured armour of the dead legionary. With a start Meros realised that the purple fluid was the legionary’s blood – the strange vitae filled his thoughts, his senses. It was the same strange blood he had discovered in the boneless corpses of the Red Tear. Strangely, and without warning, the Word Bearers Captain immediately interposed himself between the Apothecary and the mutilated remains.

As Meros and the contingent of Space Marines attempted to escape from the outer wards, the Hive City itself came alive, attacking the legionaries in the form of living metallic constructs formed from fragments of wreckage. Surrounded and outnumbered the small task force was only saved by the timely intervention of Captain Amit of the Fifth Company. Receiving the strange, but unbelievable reports from the survivors that had been on the planet’s surface, Sanguinius ordered the destruction of the cursed planet. Priming their cyclonic torpedoes and megaweapon systems, the entirety of the Blood Angels fleet bombarded Holst, subjecting it to the rarely used punishment of Exterminatus. Like a tormented animal, the planet ended with a tortured scream that even the void could not silence.

Meros would later be a part of a detachment from the 24th Company that set down on the surface of the Agri-World of Scoltrum to investigate whether or not they were any survivors aboard a Signusi frigate called the Stark Dagger, which had attempted to flee from the inner core worlds. The Stark Dagger had been a part of the Signus Cluster’s outer defence squadron. Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful in their attempt to flee and crash landed upon the surface of the doomed planet. They managed to rescue a small band of survivors which included a Pariah amongst their number.

Signus Prime
Upon the blighted capital world of Signus Prime, Apothecary Meros would meet his ultimate fate. It was here that the Blood Angels Legion finally confronted the true enemy that controlled the Signus System, the powers of Chaos. Upon the Plains of the Damned the ferocious Space Marines confronted the vast, nightmarish horde of Chaos Cultists and packs of monstrous Daemons. Sanguinius had sword to personally confront and vanquish the perverted Kyris, the Daemon Price of Slaanesh, who controlled the Signus System, leading his elite companies to besiege the daemons defiled palace known as the Cathedral of the Mark. Awash in blood, the Blood Angels valiantly fought the Forces of Chaos, cutting them down in their thousands. The Plains of the Damned became a charnel house as the Blood angels forced their way into the very heart of the Daemon Prince's realm. On the battlefield of Signus Prime, Sanguinius was confronted by the infamous Bloodthirster Ka'bandha, a Greater Daemon of Khorne. The Angel and the Daemon fought a titanic battle amidst the blood and carnage all around them. At the height of this confrontation, the Primarch prepared to strike a killing blow against the fallen Bloodthirster, Ka'bandha struck a dishonourable blow with its massive barbed whip around the Primarch's legs, smashing the Angel to the ground. The foul Greater Daemon then summoned forth the malefic powers known as the Ragefire, and cut a huge swathe through the ranks of the Sons of Baal with his great axe, killing 500 Blood Angels in an instant. The psychic backlash of so many of his sons dying so suddenly blasted Sanguinius into unconsciousness.

Leaderless, the Blood Angels fury was unleashed in unfettered wrath. The brutal violence of the Bloodthirster Ka'bandha unleashed something dark within the psyche of the Blood Angels, a thirst for blood that would not be slaked until every taint of Chaos had been wiped away from the planet. The sons of Sanguinius had lost themselves in the riot of killing. Careful, drilled lines of company and Chapter had become broken and mixed, and from hour to hour, the Legion slowly transformed into something wild. They became a red hurricane that tore across Signus Prime leaving nothing in its wake. The Blood Angels fought as they had never fought before, not with cool reason and righteous might as their guides, but with hearts beating for vengeance, a berserker’s blood-thirst on their lips. Unstoppable, all that stood in their path was obliterated. The foe had gravely miscalculated the will of the angels. Far from being broken by the vicious, brutal attack upon their beloved Sanguinius, they had been cut loose by it. The bonds that held them in check were slipped, and a darkness previously hidden had been unleashed. Each of them bayed for the blood of their enemy, but it was a thirst that could not be slaked – only given respite for a brief interval. The red tide broke upon the walls of the great cathedral with unspeakable violence and the clash of a hundred thousand weapons. Leaderless and out of control, the Blood Angels acted on lethal instinct, converging at the towers of bone with only one impulse powering them forward. Hate drove them into the cohorts of bloodletters and succubae defending the approaches to the temple, and they tore the daemonic creatures into shreds. The sons of Sanguinius were no longer a Legion, but a force of nature laying waste to everything that stood in their way.

Miraculously unaffected by the Red Thirst, Chapter Master Raldoron, Meros and a small strike force of Blood Angels assaulted the Cathedral of the Mark. As the majority of their Legion was gripped in the bloody throes of their genetic curse, Meros and his battle-brothers fought through hordes of daemons in order to infiltrate the profane basilica. In the meantime, Raldoron's Adjutant, Brother Mkani Kano gathered his fellow, former Librarians that had been forbidden to use their psychic abilities since the Emperor's Decree Absolute during the Council of Nikaea, in an attempt to commune with their combined psychic abilities in order to wake their Primarch from his dark torpor. Using their combined mighty, the Librarians sacrificed themselves with the exception of Kano, and miraculously awoke their Primarch, bringing him back from the edge of the abyss. The Angel arrived to confront both Kyris and Ka'bandha. The Bloodthirster and the Angel fought once more, but ultimately, Sanguinius prevailed and cast the Greater Daemon back into the Warp. The Blood Angels discovered the source of the rage that infected their entire Legion. The Dark Apostle Erebus had created a fell device, a psychic construct, which contained the half dead body of Captain Tagas (the former Captain of the 111th Company) who was presumed killed in action on the world of One-Forty-Twenty, the world called Murder, decades earlier. Trough the use of the dark sorceries of Chaos, they created a conduit of undiluted rage that consumed nearly the entirety of the Blood Angels Legion. Driven to uncontrollable rage over their fallen Primarch, the Blood Angels would lose control of their noble aspect, and willingly give themselves over to the scarlet path and the worship of the Blood God Khorne.

The Red Angel
The Daemon Prince Kryris offered the Angel a deal most foul; if the Primarch would willingly take the place of the half-dead Tagas within the psychic construct and give himself fully to the Ragefire, he would ensure that his sons would never be affected by the genetic curse of the Red Thirst ever again. The Primarch seriously contemplated the daemon's offer and finally came to the conclusion that his sacrifice was worth it, to save his beloved sons. But before the Primarch could make the leap into the construct, Meros made the decision for him, and lept into the suspended crystal construct. Sanguinius threw himself into the air in an effort to save his errant son, but was too late. The Apothecary committed the act without any uncertainty, for he knew it was right. The Angel could not fall. When Meros had met the warrior Rafen in the dreamscape of the healing blood-sleep he had said a name, a warning. Only at that moment did Meros fully understand. Sanguinius had to live, in order to meet the Arch-Traitor Horus on equal footing. When the confrontation finally came, the Angel had to be there to face him, brother against brother.

Before Meros stepped into the swirling vortex of undiluted rage, he forcibly and painfully forced his cutter to open a jagged tear through the layers of Ceramite and flesh beneath. Using the reductor on his gauntlet, he guided the device as it bore through his skin, and removed his own progenoid glands. The device sucked the nodules of gene-rich tissue into a reservoir pod, sealed inside for preservation. Meros's bequest to his Legion now lay secured. Detaching the medicae module from his armour he tossed it towards his Primarch, who snatched it out of the air, and requested him to take it, so that something of him would live on. The Angel vowed to honour his son's final request. With this final act, Meros stepped into the whirling vortex. Meros transformed, writhing in the grip of an infernal glow as the burning power merged with every atom of his being. The flesh of his face distorted into a hollow mask far beyond the guise of pain. His armour became dark and disfigured, joints steaming, the shell of it trembling as it fought to contain energies never meant to be bound to this reality. In the warp’s shadow, a pair of ghostly, blood-drenched wings briefly unfold from the wounded Apothecary’s back, anointing the ruined bones beneath with a rain of phantasmal blood; then they were gone. Brother Meros ended, and the Red Angel began.

Confronting the daemon-possessed Blood Angel, Sanguinius demanded that the avatar of hate release it's hold on his son. The Red Angel flatly refused. When the Primarch inquired if there was any small part of Meros that remained, the Red Angel responded that there was a small trace of the former Apothecary. The Primarch told the vile creature to heed his words; whatever Ruinous Powers it served, whatever irrational choice Horus had made to seek a pact with them, they stood defeated this day upon the cusp of victory. Sanguinius vowed that Meros's sacrifice would not be in vain, and that one day, he would find a way to free him from the daemon that now possessed his mortal shell. The Red Angel then took its leave from the Cathedral of the Mark and disappeared in a Warp Gate that it had conjured. The Red Angel eventually presented itself to Warmaster Horus aboard his flagship, the Vengeful Spirit. He revealed himself as the Fallen Son of Baal, the Cruor Angelus, the Willing Slave. He was the Red Angel, a weapon to be used at the Warmaster's disposal. The ultimate fate of the Red Angel remains unknown.