Cults of Destruction

The Cults of Destruction are warbands comprised of Chaos Space Marines who have devoted themselves to the merger of daemons with machines and vehicles. These cults are primarily comprised of Obliterators, Mutilators and Warpsmiths, who all seek to spread the Chaos technovirus that creates hideous, arcane mergers of flesh and machine.

History
An alliance struck deep in the Eye of Terror has seen a strange machine-plague boil across the worlds of the Imperium. The Cults of Destruction -- those warbands consisting of Obliterators, Mutilators and the Warpsmiths who strive to control them -- have always acted as seething hotbeds for the Chaos technovirus that infects them.

Since the Daemon Primarchs Perturabo and Mortarion combined their genius in the Eye of Terror, however, this affliction has been weaponised. Now, instead of slowly and organically claiming the souls of those Heretic Astartes who obsess over their wargear, this curse now spreads in the form of an airborne info-virus, often referred to by the Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus as "scrapcode."

Scrapcode can be seen as the machine equivalent of the Dark Tongue, seemingly nonsensical at first, but harsh upon the ear to the point of causing physical pain, and possessed of an anarchic power that can cripple a machine spirit and pervert a war engine to the cause of Chaos.

Some say that even battle tanks and mighty Imperial Knights have been brought low by this ravening, self-replicating scourge, sprouting clusters of oil-slick gun barrels and forests oflashing cables from their adamantium hulls as they indiscriminately kill and destroy.

Despite their mistrust ofWarpsmiths, warbands of the Daemonkin welcome the Cults of Destruction amongst their ranks, for they bring with them unending carnage and anarchy.