Warsmith Honsou of the Iron Warriors Traitor Legion
Honsou is a Chaos Space Marine of the Iron Warriors Traitor Legion. Honsou managed to claw his way to the esteemed position of Warsmith of his own Grand Company despite heavy prejudice from other Iron Warriors Astartes for being a 'half-breed'. When Honsou was transformed into a Space Marine, his gene-seed was 'tainted' by captured genetic material from their hated rivals of the loyalist Imperial Fists Space Marine Chapter. Despite their prejudice, Honsou's abilities and tenaciousness help him succeed in achieving the nigh impossible.
History
Siege of Hydra Cordatus
Honsou leads his fellow Iron Warriors in the attack on the Imperial citadel of Tor Christo on the world of Hydra Cordatus
During Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade in 999.M41, under the command of an unnamed Warsmith, attacked the Adeptus Mechanicus Forge World of Hydra Cordatus which supplied weapons and other war material to the Imperium at large, and was one of the few locations in the galaxy where the Mechanicus secretly stored its tithes of Space Marine gene-seed. Alongside his chief rivals Forrix and Kroeger, of the First and Second Grand Companies respectively, Honsou was one of three champions of the Warsmith that lay siege to the large citadel and manufactorum complex known as the Tor Christo. Deep within this formidable Imperial citadel lay the stasis vaults which contained the genetic material drawn from the Iron Warriors' most hated foes, the Imperial Fists Space Marine Chapter.
The Iron Warriors desperately needed the Astartes gene-seed to reconstitute their numbers as the corrupting power of Chaos tended to corrupt their own gene-seed to the point that it was unusable to replenish their ranks with new Chaos Space Marines. Honsou was often belittled be his fellow Iron Warriors for having mixed gene-seed which consisted of spliced Iron Warriors and Imperial Fists genetic material. He was referred by the derogative 'half breed', due to his gene-seed's dual heritage. Despite the Imperial forces arrayed against them, including a large garrison of Imperial Guard troops and even a small Titan Legion protecting its precious contents, in the end the Iron Warriors emerged triumphant. They defeated the Imperial forces defending Tor Christo as well as an entire company of Imperial Fists whom had arrived as reinforcements to try and prevent the theft of their genetic legacy.
Having greatly pleased the Chaos Gods through his monumental victory the commanding Warsmith was gifted with daemonhood. Before his final ascension as a Daemon Prince the Warsmith appointed Honsou as the new Warsmith, handing him the reigns of leadership of the Grand Company. He then commanded the newly appointed Warsmith to take the stolen Imperial Fists gene-seed back to the Iron Warriors' Daemon World of Medrengard within the Eye of Terror. After the forces of Chaos withdrew their forces they bombarded the remains of the citadel to dust, leaving behind a lone survivor to tell the tale of what had occurred.
Medrendard
Warsmith Honsou with his newly grafted arm composed of the living metal Necrodermis
When Warsmith Honsou returned to the Iron Warriors' homeworld within the nightmarish realm of the Eye of Terror, he sent the newly obtained gene-seed to Warmaster Abaddon, but he secretly kept a small portion of the genetic material for himself. With his ill gotten gains, Honsou set about constructing an usual genetic system known as the Daemonculaba - which combined the application of technology and the arcane to create new Astartes to swell the ranks of the Iron Warriors Traitor Legion. This process required an adolescent human boy to be sealed within the womb of a genetically modified human female slave, known as a Daemonculaba, whom had been impregnated with the stolen Astartes gene-seed. The Daemonculabas either produced a horribly mutated freaks known as the Unfleshed (which were cast out) or a new Chaos-corrupted Astartes ripe for incorporation within the Iron Warriors ranks. The Daemonculaba hosts lay within Warsmith Honsou's fortress of Khalan-Ghol.
Refusing to uphold his predecessor's promise to share the stolen gene-seed amongst fellow Iron Warrior commanders, Honsou led his warriors in a brutal civil war with two rival Warsmiths -- Lord Berossus and the Chaos Dreadnought Toramino. Recently exiled from the Ultramarines Chapter, Captain Uriel Ventris and his best friend, Veteran Sergeant Pasanius Lysane were tasked to fulfill a Death Oath sworn by their Chapter Master Marneus Calgar. They accomplished this by traveling aboard the ancient daemon engine Omphalos Daemonium into the Eye of Terror and infiltrating the daemonic world of Medrengard. Once there, they were tasked with the impossible mission of seeking out and destroying the Daemonculaba.
Engulfed in civil war, Khalan-Ghol was under seige by Warsmiths Toramino and the Chaos Dreadnought Berossus. The Ultramarines enlisted the help of the former Raven Guard renegade Ardaric Vaanes and his group of Space Marine Renegades, infiltrating the fortress at the height of the siege. However, they were soon captured by Honsous's daemon-possesed Iron Warrior bodyguard, Onyx and taken to the halls of the Savage Morticians, Dark Mechanicus techpriests that had created and oversaw the Daemonculaba process. Once there, Uriel was entombed inside the womb of one of the Daemonculaba. Honsou showed great interest in Pasanius's bionic arm of living metal, for his arm was made from Necrodermis, the living metal that comprised the cybernetic bodies of the Necrons and their C'tan Star Gods. The Sergeant's bionic arm was removed and reattached for Honsou to wear. This enraged Pasanius against the Savage Morticians, as Uriel miraculously fought free of the Chaos-corrupted womb and made good his escape, along with a few survivors, down a sewage chute.
In the meantime, making one final push against Khalan Gol, the forces of Lord Berossus stormed Honsou's citadel. The two rival Warsmiths fought a titanic duel, but with the help of his daemon-possessed bodyguard, Honsou eventually emerged triumphant. With the death of their lord, Berossus's men defected to victorious Warsmith Honsou, and joined his forces against the rival Toramino. Leading a band of the Unfleshed, Uriel once again infiltrated Honsou's citadel and successfully destroyed the Daemonculaba. Captain Ventris also freed the Heart of Blood, one of the most favoured Daemonic avatars of the Blood God Khorne, which had been imprisoned by the Iron Warriors and forced to create and sustain an unbreakable psychic barrier around the fortress of Khalan-Ghol for over 10 thousand years. With the psychic barriers broken, Toramino was able to employ psychic attacks against his hated rival's citadel.
During the ensuing melee, Honsou and his retinue discovered and cornered both Uriel and Pasanius before they could flee the citadel. But before the Warsmith could have his retinue slay the upstart Ultramarines, the Unfleshed arrived on the scene and viciously attacked the Iron Warriors and slew them. Fleeing from the battle, Captain Ventris caught up to Honsou and shot him in the head with his Bolter. Having fulfilled their Death Oath, the two Ultramarines returned to their Chapter. After their departure, it is revealed that by some dark miracle, Honsou had managed to survive the near-fatal wound. The wounded Warsmith then later discovered the Heart of Blood, thoroughly exhausted from its battle with a daemonic rival and collapsed upon the floor of the ruined citadel. Employing the formidable powers of the Heart of Blood against Toramino's forces, Honsou eventually emerged triumphant. The slaughter and destruction the daemon had unleashed was unlike anything the Warsmith had ever seen before, its ancient fury deeper than the darkest chasm in the Daemon Primarch Perturabo's lair. It had reduced everything before it utterly to ruin and Medrengard's blazing black sun had gorged on the souls released into the dead sky.
The Warsmith's Wrath
Though Honsou had emerged as the victor in the brutal conflict it was a Pyrrhic victory at best. Most of his forces has been smashed by the two rival Warsmiths and their armies during the internecine war. Despite his losses of both his men and the Daemonculaba, Honsou began the task of rebuilding his forces. He accomplished this by inviting those surviving Chaos renegades into his growing army. These renegades include the likes of the infamous Chaos Space Marines Ardaric Vaanes and Cadaras Grendal as well as a loathsome creature known as the Newborn - a clone of Uriel Ventris that had been created by the Daemonculaba before its destruction.
The recent destruction of Khalan-Ghol on Medrengard made the Warsmith seethe with rage at the bitter defeat by the hands of Uriel Ventris. Honsou plotted his vengeance against the upstart Ultramarines Captain and his hated Chapter. Honsou knew he would not be satisfied until he had inflicted the most wretched humiliations on the one enemy to escape him. Honsou attacked Defence Platform Ultra Nine, an Imperial space station that orbited above Tarsis Ultra, the sight of Captain Ventris's stunning victory over the Tyranids a few short years ago. Honsou's warband slaughtered everyone aboard the station and seized control of its deadly missile payload.
A salvo of sixteen orbital torpedoes surged from the planetside launch bays, followed by another rippling salvo seconds later. Another three salvos launched until all but one of the platform's entire payload of missiles was expended. Each missile dropped away rapidly from the platform in a ballistic trajectory towards the planet's surface. As the missiles reached a predetermined altitude over the planet's surface, each one exploded and spread its viral payload into the air. Vast quantities of the experimental Heraclitus strain were released into the atmosphere. All across the planet, a terrible rain fell, wreaking terrible damage as it went to work on the indigenous and xenos vegetation.
The world of Tarsis Ultra had suffered the horror of invasion by the monstrous swarms of the Great Devourer. Though the invasion had been defeated, the dreadful legacy of the alien invaders remained to taint the planet's ecology forever. From pole to pole, horrific spires of dreadful alien vegetable matter towered over the landscape, slowly choking the life from the natural landscape. The alien flora had subsumed entire continents, a rapacious instinct to devour encoded in every strand of its genetic structure. Nutrients were leeched from the soil and used to create hyper-fertile spore growths that drifted on the heated currents of the air to seed new regions and pollute yet more land.
The Heraclitus strain had been developed from a partial fragment of ancient research conducted by Magos Heraclitus. The bio-toxins were intended to increase the growth rate of crops on agri-worlds, designed to increase the productivity of such worlds a thousand fold. Within seconds of the Heraclitus strain being released into the atmosphere, the alien growths reacted to its touch, surging upwards and over the planet's terrain. Overwhelmed by mutant growths, poisonous plant life expanding kilometres in seconds as the virulent growth strain sent its metabolism into overdrive.
Huge amounts of nutrients were sucked from the ground and released as enormous quantities of heat, raising the ambient temperature of the world in a matter of moments. Oxygen was sucked greedily from the atmosphere by horrifyingly massive spore chimneys and the planet's protective layers were gradually stripped in unthinking biological genocide. This was not the rapid death of Exterminatus, but ecological death of worldwide proportions. Panicked messages were hurled out into the Immaterium and only those with the money, influence or cunning escaped on hastily prepped ships that fled the planet's destruction.
In the wake of the attack, billions had been left behind and, weeks later, as the last of the planet's atmosphere was stripped from it by the hyper-evolved alien biology, stellar radiation swept the surface, killing every living thing and laying waste to all that remained. Months after the launch of the missiles, nothing remained alive, the deadly alien vegetation killed by lethal levels of radiation and the frigid cold that gripped the planet without its protective atmosphere. All that now remained of the planet was a dead, lifeless ball of rock, its surface seared and barren, with only the skeletal remains of its blackened cities left as evidence that human beings had once lived upon it.
After the death of Tarsis Ultra, Magos Locard of the Adeptus Mechanicus and members of the Skitarii landed upon the dead planet, attempting to investigate what occurred. Following a lone beacon, the Explorator team found a lone battered orbital torpedo. Removing the payload bay of the torpedo, the Magos reached inside and removed its contents -- a cracked helmet, the paint chipped and one eye lens missing. The helmet was a deep blue and bore a symbol an inverted omega symbol of the Ultramarines Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. The helmet was meant to send a message to Uriel Ventris -- that you don't walk away from a fight from Warsmith Honsou without paying a price.
The Skull Harvest
In order to rebuild his forces, Warsmith Honsou travels the Badab Sector, the sight of the infamous Badab War, to the heart of the Maelstrom -- majoris grade interference between the warp and real space. Within the heart of this hellish realm lay New Badab, the homeworld of Huron Blackheart, the infamous Tyrant of Badab. Honsou attends the Skull Harvest, a contest hosted by Blackheart between Chaos warbands where vying Chaos Champions fight one another for supreme dominance, until only one victor emerges. The reigning champion than takes control of the losing Champions' warbands. The Skull Harvest takes place within the Arena of Thorns, the large venue that hosts the murderous contest; the decapitated heads of the fallen mounted and displayed upon spikes. Any warrior who dared to bare his neck in the Skull Harvest was present his blade upon the Arena of Thorns when the Great Eye opened. Blood would be spilled, the weak would die and the victor would benefit greatly from the Tyrant's patronage. Honsou was determined to win the murderous contest at any contest, for he possessed a grand vision of revenge with only the slimmest chance of victory.
With the victories the Warsmith and his champions had won over the following days, Honsou's force had grown exponentially in size, numbering somewhere in the region of five thousand soldiers. Scores of armoured units and fighting machines, as well as all manner of xenos and corsair warbands were now his to command. The swords of seventeen warbands now belonged to Honsou and, by any measure of reckoning, he had a fearsome force with which to wreak havoc on his enemies. But the Skull Harvest was not yet over and the Tyrant's rule decreed that there could be only one champion left standing at its end.
As the fourth day of killing drew to an end only the armies of three champions were all that remained. The Blood God's Champion, Pashtoq Uluvent and his force of six-thousand blood-hungry skull-takers, the Pleasure God's Champion, Notha Etassay and his procured warband of five-thousand fighters. And Warsmith Honsou's warband of Iron Warriors. On the final day of the Skull Harvest, the three warriors stepped into the arena, clad in their armour and each armed with their weapon of choice. This stage of a battle would be where each warrior sought to gauge the measure of the other, searching for signs of weakness or fear to be exploited. Honsou knew he would find neither in these two opponents, warriors hardened by decades of war and devotion to their gods. Honsou cared nothing for the thrill of the fight, nor the honour of the kill. This entire endeavour was a means to an end. He cared nothing for the piratical schemes of the Tyrant, nor honouring any one of the ancient gods of the warp.
The Slaaneshi champion is quickly bested, and Honsou faces the berserk Ulevent. In the ensuing battle, Honsou manages to destroy the Khornate champion's weapon, forcing him to grapple with his opponent in bloody close quarters. The sheer ferocity of Ulevent's attack nearly overwhelms Honsou, who only just manages to free his bionic arm and to rip open the jagged wound wider in Ulevent's neck. Weaponless and bleeding out quickly, the Khornate champion calls for another weapon to finish the dual between himself and the Warsmith. As he reaches for a sword from his champion, the apparent turncoat Cadaras Grendel (who had recently served Honsou, but had changed allegiances) at the last moment, Cadaras Grendel reverses his grip and rams the blade into the champion's chest. The tip of the weapon rips out through the back of Uluvent's armour and the mighty warrior staggers as Grendel twists the blade deeper into his chest. Roaring in pain, Ulevent spins away from Grendel, wrenching the sword from his grip and drops to his knees. Honsou gave him no chance to recover from his shock and pain, and brings his axe down upon the warrior's shoulder, the dark blade smashing the warrior's shoulder guard to splinters and cleaving the champion of the Blood God from collarbone to pelvis. He then honours the former champion's last request, and takes his skull with a sweep of his axe. Honsou emerges as the sole victor of the Skull Harvest.
At the final tally, Honsou left New Badab with close to seventeen thousand warriors sworn in blood to his cause. Pashtoq Uluvent's warriors, and those he had won, were now Honsou's, their banners now bearing the Iron Skull device. The Slaaneshi champion Notha Etassay survived the final battle and had willingly sworn allegiance to Honsou. True to his word, the victor of the Skull Harvest had indeed benefited greatly from his patronage. As the Warsmith's ship broke orbit, numerous other vessels now accompanied it, gifts from the Tyrant of Badab to be used for the express purpose of dealing death to the forces of the Imperium. In addition, a ragtag, yet powerful fleet of corsairs and renegades also formed up around Honsou's flagship. The Warsmith's fleet departed the Tyrant's domain and set course for the Eastern Fringe and the Ultramar Sector.
Sources
- Storm Of Iron (Novel) by Graham McNeill
- Dead Sky, Black Sun (Novel) by Graham McNeill
- Planetkill (Anthology) - "The Heraclitus Effect"' (Short Story) by Graham McNeill -
- Heroes of the Space Marines (Anthology) - "Skull Harvest" (Short Story) by Graham McNeill
- The Chapter's Due by Graham McNeill