The Sons of Malice are a Renegade Chapter of Chaos Space Marines who turned to the service of the minor Chaos God Malice some time prior to the start of the 13th Black Crusade in 999.M41.
They are the enemies of the Imperium of Man and the other forces of Chaos alike and have battled both successfully during the recent campaigns of the 13th Black Crusade fought against Abaddon the Despoiler near the Eye of Terror.
They seek to reclaim their lost Chapter homeworld of Scelus and carry forth the plans of Malice to unleash the wrath of the Renegade God upon both the Ruinous Powers and the "Lord Carrion" of Mankind.
Chapter History
Origins
The original name of the Sons of Malice was erased long ago from Imperial records, but they were loyal once -- one of the twenty Space Marine Chapters known as the Astartes Praeses, devoted to keeping the Cadian Gate secure.
For centuries, they waged a tough and relentless war against the Heretics and Daemons of the Eye of Terror, patrolling its western marches. Their ferocious manner of war-making became a byword of ruthless and relentless punishment of treachery and heresy, and they prided themselves on the cost they inflicted upon the forces of Chaos.
They took their recruits from their homeworld of Scelus, an Imperial Feral World whose tattooed tribes indulged in rites involving cannibalism.
Fall to Darkness
"We have done nothing wrong. We shall not do penance to any."
- —Chapter Master of the Sons of Malice
The events leading to the Chapter's excommunication began following the successful end of the Cilix 225 campaign, in which three sub-oceanic hive cities in the rebellious Cilix System were scoured of the Heretics who were threatening to depressurise them as an expression of their misguided devotion.
The Chapter's murderous First Captain Kathal led his battle-brother's prolonged victory celebrations, enacting the traditional eleven-year rites of Scelus' culture. These ceremonies were observed by Inquisitor Solomon Pietas, a senior member of the Ordo Hereticus, who was revolted at what he saw as practices verging on the cannibalistic.
As his instincts warned him that the Chapter had already fallen to Chaos, Pietas had brought in a strike force of Adepta Sororitas of the Order of Our Martyred Lady and five regiments of the Astra Militarum to eliminate the Chapter. Pietas had his combined forces fall upon the Sons of Malice when their guard was down, right at the height of their victory celebrations, and they attacked the Chapter with melta and fire and fury.
The attack failed utterly. The strike force found Captain Kathal and his company a horde of fevered maniacs, having worked themselves into a state of animalistic barbarity over the course of their celebrations. Kathal's armour was splattered in gore, and blood ran from his mouth as he presided over the ceremony. Kathal and his brethren fell upon the Imperial strike force with a savagery the Inquisitor was utterly unprepared for.
The Sisters of Battle fought bravely, but their numbers were too few, and their faith, though strong, could not overcome the sheer fury of Kathal and his warriors. By the light of burning torches, Kathal cornered the Inquisitor, then dragged him to an altar within the Chapter's inner chambers, where he was ritually sacrificed.
Word later arrived from the High Lords of Terra that the Chapter was to be offered the chance to repent their sins by undertaking a fifty-standard-year-long Penitent Crusade. But the Chapter Master refused. He would accept neither censure nor punishment. Moved by his own sense of honour, he allowed the Imperial envoy to depart unscathed, convinced that his Chapter's long history of service to the Imperium would vindicate them of the charges that they considered baseless.
The murdered Inquisitor had sent urgent and skewed accounts to the High Lords of Terra, however, and with trouble so close to the Cadian Gate, the panicked response of the Imperium was swift, brutal and sudden. An extermination fleet arrived in the Scelus System within solar months. They would not listen to any of the Chapter's brief messages, and their assault forced the Astartes to flee into the Eye of Terror aboard their battle barge, the Labyrinth.
In doing so, they left their homeworld undefended. The grisly tendencies that had caused this excommunication were found to be rooted in the barbaric practices of the natives of Scelus. The tribes were almost entirely eradicated by the Cadian 331st Regiment in a planet-wide campaign of genocide, and Scelus was declared Perdita to all other Imperial forces.
In Service to Malice
"Fate is kind to those who hate. They destroyed the tribes who were our mother and father. We shall destroy them and eat their souls."
- —Agitor Kanath, before the Battle of Faith's Anchorage
These heinous acts earned the Sons of Malice their declaration by the Senatorum Imperialis as Excommunicate Traitoris. To this day they reside within the Eye of Terror, where they wage a hate-fuelled war against any they encounter, be they servants of the Imperium or even other followers of Chaos.
During the next thousand standard years, Anarch Kathal, who had become the new Chapter Master, held eleven ritual challenges aboard the ruinous ship known as the Labyrinth. These "Challenges of the Labyrinth," which the entire Chapter gathered for every one hundred standard years, consisted in sending volunteers into the depths of the space hulk that The Labyrinth had become to brave its dangers.
None of the competitors were ever seen again, but it was said that those who survived the trials became members of the "Doomed Ones," Malice's family of sacred warriors. They received divine gifts of unimaginable power and now walked the dark paths of the galaxy to murder his foes with cold efficacy.
The truth of these trials was revealed upon the victory of Brother Invictus at the eleventh Challenge, near the end of M41. Firstly, the exit portal at the end of the Labyrinth would allow the escape of only the first aspirant Doomed One to reach it, damning the rest of the aspirants to remain trapped and mutate in the dark ruins of the space hulk.
Secondly, all the successful Doomed Ones from previous Challenges had been captured and trapped in stasis sarcophagi in order to sacrifice them to summon Malice into realspace, once the eleven greatest warriors of the Chapter were thus selected. This dark ritual succeeded, which according to Kathal would be key to their victory in their crusade to retake Scelus, but the eventual consequences of this summoning and campaign are unknown.
Before the start of the 13th Black Crusade, Abaddon the Despoiler convinced the Sons of Malice to join his cause. After many Terran centuries of fighting and struggle, they had finally joined with the enemy whom they had been created to defeat.
After the Fall of Cadia, one warband of the Sons of Malice, led by Agitor Kanath, ambushed and cornered the Cadian Shock Troops led by General Maximus Octavian Grüber III at the frozen moon of Faith's Anchorage in the Agripinaa System, intending to avenge the loss of their homeworld of Scelus, whose people had been exterminated by Cadian troops.
Notable Campaigns
- Cilix 225 Campaign (Date Unknown.M40) - The Sons of Malice successfully prevented a band of Heretics from depressurising 3 underwater hive cities on Cilix 225. However, Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor Solomon Pietas was horrified by their celebratory rites and tried to purge them with the help of a strike force of the Order of Our Martyred Lady and 5 Astra Militarum regiments. The Inquisitor was eventually sacrificed by First Captain Kathal, which would lead to the Chapter's censure and persecution by the Imperium.
- Scelus Incident (998.M41) - The system monitors deployed around the purged Feral World of Scelus were engaged by an unidentified Fire Raptor gunship that was decorated with the Sons of Malice's heraldry and trophies taken from other Chaos Space Marines. The gunship withdrew soon after to an unknown Mandeville Point. The Ordo Hereticus is investigating the incident.
- 13th Black Crusade (ca. 999.M41) - During Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade, the Sons of Malice fought against the Imperial forces, trying to avenge the loss of their Chapter homeworld of Scelus.
- Battle of Faith's Anchorage (ca. 999.M41) - The Battle of Faith's Anchorage began after a mishap in the Warp sent a portion of the remnants of the Imperial Navy's Battlefleet Cadia and Cadian Shock Troops forces fleeing Cadia's destruction under the command of Admiral d'Armitage and General Maximus Octavian Grüber III in the wake of the 13th Black Crusade into the Chaos-invaded Agripinaa System, where they were ambushed by the warships of a Sons of Malice warband commanded by Agitor Kanath. The Imperial Navy forces had no choice but to flee, as they consisted only of a few troop transports and the poorly armed Claymore-class Corvette Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke and the Venerable Warrior, both warships of Battlefleet Cadia. It was their identification as Cadian vessels, however, that had drawn the Sons of Malice to hunt them. It was a Cadian regiment that had purged the Sons of Malice's homeworld of Scelus and exterminated all of its people, and the Chaos Space Marines were determined to do the same to every surviving Cadian in the galaxy. The void battle soon went in the Sons of Malice's favour and the commander of the Cadian flotilla's surviving ground forces, General Grüber of the Astra Militarum, deployed his remaining Cadian Shock Troops on a water ice and promethium-mining moon of the world of Morton's Quay, itself a naval reserve outpost, called Faith's Anchorage, to make a last stand. Before fortifying an abandoned mining facility on the moon with Void Shield Generators to force an infantry engagement rather than face an orbital bombardment, Grüber had Captain Zabuzkho of the Lord-Lieutenant Berwicke try and draw away the Chaos fleet to give his troops time to complete the fortifications. Zabuzkho did so and also agreed to try and reach Terra if his ship survived to warn the Imperium that Cadia had finally fallen. Unfortunately, neither of the Imperial Navy vessels managed to escape the Agripinaa System, as the Venerable Warrior was hunted down and destroyed by a Sons of Malice warship and the Berwicke was so badly damaged that its Gellar Field failed when it attempted a Warp jump, destroying the vessel in a great explosion. There would be no one to take word of the Fall of Cadia to Terra. The Sons of Malice fleet next began an orbital bombardment of the Imperial-occupied mining facility on Faith's Anchorage in an attempt to overload its Void Shields even as a warband of Sons of Malice Chaos Space Marines, supported by swarms of Chaos Cultists and cybernetic Mechslaves, served as cannon fodder. Though the Cadians successfully eliminated wave after wave of the Chaos forces' mortal troops, there was little doubt that the Heretic Astartes would eventually overwhelm the remaining Cadian defenders under General Grüber's command. Unfortunately, the orbital bombardment eventually brought down the Cadians' Void Shields, which, combined with the direct assault of the Sons of Malice, eventually wiped out Grüber and the remaining Cadian Shock Troops. However, word of the Sons of Malice's assault against the survivors of Cadia had reached other Chaos forces in the region and soon Chaos Space Marine warbands of the Sons of Slaughter, the Crimson Slaughter, the Black Legion and five of the other Traitor Legions had arrived in the system, eager to gain their own share of glory in the extermination of the last Cadians. At the same time, another Imperial Navy fleet, under the command of Admiral d'Armitage, had also been fleeing the loss of Cadia and been caught in the same Warp mishap that had brought Grüber and his troops to the Agripinaa System. Though d'Armitage's fleet arrived above Faith's Anchorage too late to save the Cadian infantry forces engaged with the Sons of Malice on the moon below, it did launch an assault against the gathering of Chaos forces. The suddenness of the Imperial fleet's appearance caught the Chaos fleet off-guard, and they were forced to engage the Imperial warships before they could retrieve the Sons of Malice forces mopping up the last Cadian defenders on Faith's Anchorage. While the Imperial warships were able to fire off multiple surprise volleys at the Chaos fleet, the Heretic Astartes eventually recovered and focussed their fire on d'Armitage's flagship, the Grand Alliance. The flagship took heavy damage and began to drift further into the Chaos fleet, where it came under even heavier fire, and was unable to pull away. Yet the Grand Alliance's salvation suddenly appeared in the form of the Space Wolves strike cruiser Stiklestad which attacked the Chaos vessels and bought the Grand Alliance enough time to withdraw to safer space. Together the reinforced Imperial fleet eventually defeated the Chaos void forces, and few Chaos warships remained to disengage and flee into the void. Next, General Isaia Bendikt of the Astra Militarum deployed his Cadian Shock Troops to Faith's Anchorage from d'Armitage's fleet and over the next two solar weeks eliminated the Sons of Malice troops who had been stranded on the moon. The Battle of Faith's Anchorage ended with the death of the last Heretic, but this marked only the start of Admiral d'Armitage and General Bendikt's ultimately successful campaign to clear the Agripinaa System of all traces of the forces of Chaos.
Chapter Homeworld
Originally, the Sons of Malice recruited their neophytes from among the tattooed and cannibalistic Human tribes of the Feral World of Scelus. When the Inquisition forced them to flee from the system, these tribes, deemed to be the root of the Chapter's horrific and heretical practices, were almost entirely exterminated by the 331st Cadian Shock Troops Regiment.
After this planet-wide genocidal campaign, Scelus was declared Perdita, and to this day remains a stark example of what happens when the tolerance of the duly appointed representatives of the Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition is tested.
Chapter Organisation
In comparison to the other Traitor Legions and Renegade Chapters of Chaos Space Marines, the general organisation of the Sons of Malice does not seem to differ far from the organisation outlined in the Codex Astartes, as they maintain a corps of Librarians and Techmarines.
The title of "Agitor" was used by one of the Sons of Malice's warband leaders, and seemed to be equivalent to that of Chaos Lord.
Chapter Combat Doctrine
The Sons of Malice reportedly fight in utter silence, and those who have fought against them cite this characteristic as the prime source of the deeply disturbing aura surrounding them.
Chapter Beliefs
In origin, the Sons of Malice were a Chapter loyal to the Emperor, but were influenced by the brutal cannibalistic practices of the tribes of their homeworld of Scelus from which they recruited. Every eleven standard years, the Chapter held rites in which sacrificed captives were devoured and the Astartes drove themselves into a state of animalistic fury.
Nonetheless, the Sons of Malice were a byword for the ruthless and relentless punishment of betrayal and heresy, and prided themselves on the high cost they inflicted upon the forces of Chaos.
After the Inquisition censured them and they fled into the Eye of Terror, the Chapter rejected the Emperor as the "Lord Carrion," and openly worshipped a Warp entity known as Malice the Lost, the Renegade God, the Pariah, the Hierarch of Anarchy and Terror.
Every one hundred Terran years, the Sons of Malice gathered in the space hulk and former battle barge known as the Labyrinth to eat alive dozens of xenos and Human captives in Malice's honour, and to hold the sacred "Challenge of the Labyrinth" through which they would eventually choose eleven "Doomed Ones" that could be used as sacrifices to summon this minor Chaos God into realspace. However, Kathal and his warriors kept rejecting the Ruinous Powers.
At least one faction of the Chapter, possibly led by Agitor Kanath, joined the forces of Abaddon the Despoiler for the 13th Black Crusade, and eventually began to worship Chaos Undivided.
Chapter Gene-Seed
The origins of the gene-seed of the Sons of Malice does not appear in any official Imperial records or Adeptus Mechanicus geno-archive.
Notable Sons of Malice
- Chapter Master Kathal - Once the first captain of the Sons of Malice's elite 1st Company, Kathal was granted the honour of leading the Chapter in its victory rites after the successful Cilix 225 Campaign. It was these rights that led Inquisitor Solomon Pietas to declare the Sons of Malice Heretics and ultimately to his death at the hands of the Chapter. It was Kathal who ritually sacrificed the intruding Inquisitor and ate his remains alongside his battle-brothers before they turned Renegade and found a new home in the service of Malice. He later became the Chapter Master of the Sons of Malice after its corruption by Chaos.
- Agitor Kanath - Kanath was the "agitor" or Chaos Lord who led the assault against the Cadian Shock Troops who had survived the Fall of Cadia at the Battle of Faith's Anchorage. It is unclear whether he survived the subsequent Imperial purge that swept all of the forces of Chaos from the Agripinaa System.
- Cainin - Cainin joined the successful Doomed One Invictus' group during the Challenge of the Labyrinth. He died soon after, murdered by a mutant.
- Kado - Kado was famous for having fought off an Ork ambush alone during the Battle of Uderverengin. He joined the successful Doomed One Invictus' group during the Challenge of the Labyrinth. He was the second to die, as a camouflaged laser cable cut off his head as they crossed a narrow bridge.
- Vallius - Vallius was known for having ripped off Lord Bacchus' head at the gate of Ansolom. He joined the Doomed One Invictus' group during the Challenge of the Labyrinth. He was the third to die, crushed by an automated door that had seemed inactive.
- Mortigan - Mortigan had served alongside the Doomed One Invictus at the Exterminatus of Corodon IV, and joined his group during the Challenge of the Labyrinth. He was the fourth to die, covered in corrosive waste as he crawled through an excoriation pipe.
- Angustine - Angustine joined the Doomed One Invictus' group during the Challenge of the Labyrinth. His final fate is unknown, as is that of the remaining 4 other Doomed One aspirants of this group.
- Moloch - Moloch joined Genareas' group of Doomed One aspirants during the Challenge of the Labyrinth. He died when Invictus pushed him off into the void while they reached for an entry airlock from the outside of the Labyrinth.
- Crassus - Crassus joined Genareas' group during the Challenge of the Labyrinth. He died when he was mauled by a mutant.
- Septimon - Septimon joined Genareas' group during the Challenge of the Labyrinth. He sacrificed himself to keep a closing door open while Agon, Genareas and Invictus escaped the mutant monster that had killed Crassus.
- Agon - Agon joined Genareas' group of Doomed One aspirants during the Challenge of the Labyrinth. He ran ahead of Genareas and Invictus, but was killed by a mutant just before crossing the exit portal.
- Genareas - Genareas was Invictus' friend since they joined the Chapter, although the latter always felt Genareas kept him in his shadow. He was treacherously murdered by Invictus at the end of the Challenge of the Labyrinth.
- Invictus - Invictus was the eleventh and last of the Doomed Ones of Malice to win the Challenge of the Labyrinth. He was sacrificed by Kathal to summon Malice from the Warp.
Chapter Fleet
- The Labyrinth (Space Hulk) - The Labyrinth originally served as the Chapter's battle barge. It later became a space hulk that served as the sacred gathering spot for the Chapter and the site of the Challenges of the Labyrinth that selected each of the 11 "Doomed Ones" who were crucial sacrifices to bring Malice into realspace.
- Bronze Minos (Strike Cruiser) - This strike cruiser was commanded by Agitor Kanath. It took part in the Battle of Faith's Anchorage.
Chapter Appearance
Chapter Colours
The Sons of Malice paint their power armour in a quartered black and white scheme, with silver trim.
Chapter Badge
The Sons of Malice Chapter badge is a skull that is white on its left side and black on its right, sometimes surrounded by the arrows of a Chaos star. This imagery is centred on a field of black.
Canon Conflict
According to Index Astartes IV, Kathal's cannibalism was denounced by Inquisitor Pietas, who is consistently referred to as a female. In the novel Cadia Stands, however, the Inquisitor's name changed to Solomon Pietas.
Moreover, the original fight between Kathal and Pietas takes place on Cilix 225 itself, while in Cadia Stands it seems to have occurred on Scelus.
Finally, while the number 11 appears to remain sacred to the Sons of Malice in this novel, there are no further mentions of the Warp entity called Malice, which had been introduced in the short story The Labyrinth.
Sources
- Codex: Chaos Space Marines (3rd Edition, 2nd Codex), pg. 76
- White Dwarf 281 (UK), pg. 44
- Codex: Eye of Terror (3rd Edition), pg. 16
- Chaos Space Marines Collector's Guide, "Colours of Chaos - Renegade Chapters" (2003), pg. 3
- White Dwarf 303 (UK), "Index Astartes: Rogue Sons - Renegade Space Marine Chapters," pp. 71, 72-73
- Index Astartes IV, "Rogue Sons - Renegade Space Marine Chapters", pp. 54, 56-57
- Heroes of the Space Marines (Anthology) edited by Nick Kyme and Lindsey Priestley, The Labyrinth (Short Story) by Richard Ford
- Imperial Armour Volume Thirteen - War Machines of the Lost & The Damned, pg. 77
- Cadia Stands (Novel) by Justin D. Hill, Part 4, Chs. 2-8