Night Raptors

Huntsmaster Therun Kargas, a pre-Heresy Night Lords Legion Night Raptor

The Night Raptors were a specialised Legion Assault unit of the Night Lords Legion, comprised of the most brutal Nostraman cutthroats and murderers among the Legion, who were equipped with Jump Packs and an array of close combat weapons.

They served as an elite shock assault unit divided into squad formations for the VIII^th Legion during the era of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy.

Following the end of the Heresy and the Traitor Legions' flight into the hellish realm known as the Eye of Terror, these troops were slowly and insidiously corrupted by the Chaos Gods so that, step by step, they were turned into something altogether the opposite of what they had once been.

Where once the Night Raptors had been proud, noble Space Marine warriors, there now stood the vain, selfish creatures that quickly became known by both themselves and their enemies simply as Raptors. Some still "evolved" further, transforming their physical forms into the loathsome Warp Talons.

The corrupting influence of the Ruinous Powers have enabled these vile creatures to be able to stalk their prey through the veil of reality. Having lost their sentience, these animalistic hunters behave like flesh-born Daemonic Furies, existing only to stalk and kill their prey.

History

Night Lords Night Raptor Saveth sowing death and terror during the bloody battles of the Horus Heresy.

The Night Raptors were a caste apart from the rest of the Night Lords Legion -- not so much a martial elite as a bloody coterie of murderers wedded together by similar proclivities and chosen styles of warfare. The Night Raptors were equipped with Jump Packs and an array of close combat weapons, all of which they utilised to bring unfettered savagery down upon the heads of their foes in a single, overwhelming onslaught.

Where the Night Lords as a Legion wielded terror as a weapon, the Night Raptors rejected all subtlety in favour of assaults as bloody and direct as a butcher's axe cleaving meat. The Night Raptors found bleak joy in soaring above the battlefield like screaming predators hunting for victims and savoured most that stark moment of clarity when a victim witnessed their death reflected back to them in the eyes of their killer.

Like many of the VIII^th Legion's elite, where possible they adorned their armour with grisly trophies and utilised advanced hololithic systems to project images of death upon its surface, images that depicted the doom of the Night Raptors' countless victims in eternal loop, as much for the amusement of the wearer as to stun his target into insensate horror.

Composition

• 4 to 10 Night Raptors

• 1 Huntmaster (Squad Leader)

Wargear

Night Raptor Huntmaster Gudel, armed with a Nostraman Chainglaive.

• Power Armour (Any Firstborn pattern)

• Bolt Pistol

• Chainsword or Combat Blade

• Jump Pack

• Frag Grenades

• Krak Grenades

Optional Wargear

• Power Weapons

• Nostraman Chainglaive

• Single or paired Lightning Claws

• Flamer

• Meltagun

• Plasma Gun

• Plasma Pistol

• Hand Flamer

Optional Wargear (Huntmaster)

• Volkite Serpenta

• Hand Flamer

• Plasma Pistol

• Melta Bombs

• Artificer Armour

Notable Night Raptors

• Huntsmaster Therun Kargas - Therun Kargas was a Night Raptor of the Night Lords Legion during the Horus Heresy. A huntsmaster of the Night Raptors who operated as part of the Legion's 9th Chapter, his power armour was adorned with grizzly trophies and Nostraman gang markings which noted some sort of ongoing feud within the VIII^th Legion.

Sources

• The Horus Heresy Book Two: Massacre (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pg. 241
• The Horus Heresy Book Nine: Crusade (Forge World Series), pg. 183
• Horus Heresy: Legions (CCG), "Hidden Dagger" Expansion (Card List) (Image)