Thousand Sons Deep Dive. Egyptian Space Wizards? | Warhammer 40K Lore

okay I can't lie to you there's definitely going to be some personal bias in this video because the thousand suns are by far one of my favorite factions and all of Warhammer 40K not only is their story super interesting but it's also admittedly kind of super depressing they are Master Sorcerers capable of reshaping reality to their will and harnessing the Limitless power of the great ocean to achieve some pretty horrifying effects on the battlefield but they're more than just a bunch of angry Egyptian space Wizards like did you know that they didn't view channeling the powers of the warp as magic sorcery is a term used by low IQ peasants oh no what they were doing was science they were researchers and philosophers Scholars and academics and they believed Humanity was on the cusp of completely mastering the physical Universe the next Frontier was the immaterium the warp a parallel Dimension to our own and coincidentally the realm of gods and demons if everything had gone according to plan and then the Thousand Sons would have brought the warp itself into compliance that sadly would not come to pass and the Thousand Sons experienced one of the most tragic downfalls out of any faction in the Grim darkness of the far future but who were they really and what exactly happened to them what kind of powers were they capable of wielding and perhaps most important of all who was Magnus the red and did he or did he not up I went to the internet to try to figure that out and so far the results seem inconclusive well today we're going to get to the bottom of that in a whole lot more because as badass as the thousand suns are they're tragically underrepresented in Warhammer media in the tabletop game one new model Games Workshop really man's got a screamer on his base and he can't even summon screamers unforgivable well thankfully the sponsor of this video Warhammer tacticus was here to correct that mistake as they just brought the Thousand Sons to their game as a brand new playable faction so quick shout out to them and then we're gonna dive head first into the Grim dark if you've been watching my channel for any length of time then you've probably picked up on the fact that I am hopelessly addicted to everything Warhammer but thankfully I don't have to suffer that addiction alone as my spouse is also obsessed with everything grimdark and their faction of choice in the tabletop game is the Thousand Suns and if like us you're also a big fan of these spell slinging chaos Space Marines then I have good news as the thousand suns are finally coming to Warhammer tacticus as a playable faction complete with a brand new campaign wherein you get to fight these guys off by taking control of the eldari and defending the craft world of Siam Han I got to play with the new thousand Sons characters recently and I can say with certainty that these guys are going to be an absolute Powerhouse they're super synergistic and due to their passive Weaver of Fates they deal even more damage the more psychic pain they inflict on their enemies there's going to be three characters available at launch socor Toth an elite Scarab called Terminator and one of the most durable tanks in the game The Infernal master of braxus who Buffs his chaotic allies and summons fourth hordes of demonic reinforcements and the zangorn enlightened yasohor fickle fate an incredibly mobile and Deadly Assassin that does increase damage to anything already hit by a psychic attack if you've never heard of Warhammer tacticus before it's an awesome free-to-play mobile tactics game set in the Grim darkness of the 41st Millennium and features tons of different game modes including Arena Guild raids horde style onslaughts and multiple dedicated campaigns use the link in the description of this video or scan my QR code here on the screen to download the game for free today big thanks to Warhammer tacticus for sponsoring this video to even stand upon the same Battlefield as the Thousand Suns is to risk your body sanity and perhaps your very soul for they are the immaterium unleashed the Undisputed masters of the Eldritch powers of the warp fell Sorcerers gifted and manipulating the fabric of reality to reorder fate mutate living flesh and steal the will and Wits of friend and foe alike this Legion of power armor clad witches and spectral Warriors that they command are fueled ever onward for their undying desire for vengeance and an insatiable appetite for Arcane power and demonic knowledge they are the Blessed Children of ziege the great conspirator the architect of Fate the changer of ways and the chaos God of Destiny lies in sorcery through his patronage they are granted as Unholy blessing and a fraction of his Blasphemous power with which they used to launch their nightmarish Wars against the forces of the Imperium Each of which sends Untold millions of souls shrieking into the Afterlife an entire swaths of real space left burn turning with etheric fire every action they take every new insight they gain into the nature of unreality every Victory and every defeat is but a single step one that sends cascading ripples across the corrupted streams of fate and the changer of ways infinitely complex schemes and plans they wield forbidden sorcery as effortlessly as a master swordsman wields a blade and they use their Unholy gifts to unleash Arcane destruction on all those that stand before them their Twisted Sorcerers producing all manner of devastating effect from inflicting rampant uncontrolled mutation upon their enemies or devastating entire Army's wholesale under the cascading infernos of their Eldridge firestorms before the attack comes all is still in silent the first sign of their approach being a crackling sensation felt throughout the air is undiluted warp energy begins to saturate the battlefield their enemies emotions will begin to run wild as clawing tendrils of insanity begin to worm their way inside their hearts and Minds suddenly 10 pairs in reality will begin to form as the chaos-bound Warriors rip their way across space and time each unnatural portal causing the strands of Fate to undulate with chaotic potential second stretch into eternity while minutes Retreat into fleeting moments the only anchor the enemy has to reality is the consistent racing of their heartbeats that harmonizes perfectly with the incessant pounding of advancing astartes like Grim necromancers of ancient Terran myth these Twisted psychers drunk on the fell powers of the warp command their fallen Brothers to rise and fight once more these rubric Marines as they are known are former Space Marines that have been reduced to little more than dust trapped inside a fused suit of power armor a soul trapped between Realms a Mindless killing machine that obeys orders without question free from the shackles of emotion doubt and free will they Advance relentlessly across the battlefield laying down withering storms of sorceress Boulder fire every single shell in sourceled with the corrupting essence of the image ethereum that erupt from their Inferno weapons and soul Reaper cannons blasting the enemy apart with ruinous Force while gouts of mutating fire Billow forward from their warp flamers burning and twisting not just the Flesh of their enemies but also their souls reducing all in their path to bubbling heaps of melted Gore and slag return fire from the enemy ricochets harmlessly off their ancient battle plate and even blasts of searing plasma dissipate harmlessly in the warp fields that surround them alongside them are hordes of deranged cultists and avian-faced beastmen the former being the countless hordes of damned individuals that have offered up their souls to zeench each in the hopes of gaining his favor in order to bring death to their former oppressors well in reality serving is little more than cannon fodder for the damnedestardis they follow into battle whereas the Twisted avian Abominations known as zangors charge into the enemy to the sound of their Bray horns and their bellowing hooting war cries they rip and tear their way through although those that oppose their fell masters with Twisted Baroque blades and revving chain swords protected by twisting schemes of dark energy that deflect all incoming fire even more terrifying still are the chaos spawn Unleashed Beast comprised of roiling masses of mutating Flesh and bone that lurched towards the foe with Mindless furiosity each one a gibbering Abomination an amalgamation of teeth and Claws eyes and grasping pseudopods that lash wildly about crushing all those that do not flee in horror in support of the Infantry or enormous battle tanks and demonic War engines Each of which powered by a corrupted machine spirit that has been Shackled to the will of their Dark Masters their holes crackling with mutagenic energies that twist and churn their metal plating into hideously Twisted faces and screaming mouths the sheer unrelenting Eldritch Carnage they inflict upon their enemies and the battlefield alike is so utterly alien so indescribably horrible that all those who have stood against them and lived find it nearly impossible to put into words what exactly they experienced the overwhelming concentration of sorcery and the psychic Agony generated within their victims festers like a wound in reality a cankerous growth that swells and bursts piercing the veil between universes this carrion call of Arcane energy acts as a beacon for the gibbering Demonic Legions of zinc that tear through the ruptured membrane of reality leaping Into The Fray to spread their corrupted blessings these are creatures so alien so esoteric and utterly horrible that the untrained mortal mind is simply incapable of processing them sanity fractures and the minds of all those who behold their fractured shifting forms are simply obliterated hordes of billowing flamers descend from the sky to incinerate the faithful will flocks of Rey like screamers swoop and dive with frightening speed to shred flesh from the living every one of the Damned individuals within this terrifying force be they Mighty and fearful sorcerer or lowly mortal sycophant seek to further their own Twisted schemes setting the Galaxy in flame with absolute certainty that they are the masters of their own destiny yet all fail to realize that inevitably they are nothing more than Pawns in the Labyrinthian plots and schemes of zinc the Warhammer 40K universe is an absolutely brutal and unforgiving Place full of terrible tragedies some minor and personal whereas others exist on a simply incomprehensible scale the perhaps most controversial of which is the tragic downfall of the 15th Legion once fiercely loyal to the emperor and his Imperium they saw themselves not only as Defenders of humanity but also as Seekers of Truth they were a legion of Scholars and academics scientists and philosophers they were a legion that sought not just to conquer the universe but to fully understand its Myriad complexities and ever overlapping intricacies their ultimate goal to unlock the secrets of reality and harness the undiluted power power of the Sea of souls for the betterment of mankind the legion would tragically fly too close to the proverbial Sun they would gaze too deeply into the warp and with every new secret they Unearthed every new Tome of forbidden lore they scribed and every new insight they gained into the nature of the immaterium they unknowingly stepped further and further down the path of their own damnation now ten thousand years later they exist as a fractured Brotherhood one that is driven onward into the future by selfish ambition an unquenchable thirst for power and a dire need for vengeance now I'll freely admit that after everything I just told you the Thousand Suns seemed like the quintessential mad sorcerer type chaotic villains that are willing to do anything for power whether that be entering into packs with demonic entities or inflicting warp induced genocide on entire sectors of space and while that is certainly true of the Thousand Suns within the 42nd Millennium they weren't always like that whereas the thousands sons of today have broken their shackles of restraint and continue to delve deeper and deeper into madness and Insanity their experiments and rituals growing more extreme and dangerous with every passing year the Thousand sons of 10 000 years ago were radically different from their insane modern day counterparts and now exist as a cautionary tale of what can happen when one peers too deeply into the warp so to get a better understanding of who the Thousand sons are we have to examine their tragic downfall and thus we need to go back to the beginning their Story begins shortly after the unification Wars of Terra wherein the Emperor of mankind revealed himself and led his armies against the feuding technobarbarians of old Earth that had carved out in existence fighting over the scraps of ancient technology from Humanity's Golden Era thousands of years ago that was known as The Dark Age of Technology the emperor would ultimately be successful in uniting all of Earth but his Ambitions were far greater than this he sought to take the entirety of the Milky Way galaxy for Humanity by reuniting all of the lost human worlds once again and to do this he would create the finest super soldiers the Galaxy had ever seen the emperor's Angels the astartes the Space Marines all told the emperor would create 20 separate Legions each with a different specialization and the Thousand Sons would end up being the 15th he would also produce 20 children the primarks demigod beings of impossible strength speed resilience and intellect they were created in his Labs beneath the Himalayas through a combination of his Mastery of Gene crafting and the power he stole from the k chaos Gods on the world of Malik the chaos Gods would ultimately have their Vengeance though as they scattered each of his sons across the Milky Way Each of which landing on a different planet and having to be tracked down in his future great Crusade the birth of the Thousand sons was potentially the most ominous of any of the legions as right around the time the first legionnaires began receiving their Gene seed there would be a sudden and Rapid Resurgence in warp storms within the boundaries of the Soul system now warp storms are definitely pretty terrible especially considering that Humanity had just moved out of the age of strife where they had been so rampant that all of the human worlds were cut off from one another and Humanity slipped into a new Dark Age but what was especially concerning about these warp storms is they created these ripples across the surface of Terra that caused the population centers caught in them to experience an outbreak of Madness the people were Afflicted with an insanity plague that caused rates of self-harm and random acts of violence to Skyrocket we don't actually have concrete evidence that it was the creation of the Thousand sons that spawn on these warp storms as more likely it was just an unfortunate coincidence but as many would attest years later these anomalies served as a potent Omen of what was to come the legion's first aspirants were taken from locations on Terra that were marked for their stability loyalty and cultural sophistication these regions and factions included the fire Lords of Oz the Kashi domain and perhaps most prominently the Ackerman Empire before the rise of the emperor these three factions were amongst the first to swear loyalty to him and therefore suffered very little during the unification Wars as they were under his direct protection the aspirins that were taken from these regions were led by a host of scientists and Gene Engineers deep into the underground Laboratories beneath the Himalayas and with the implementation of their Primark Magnus the Reds Gene seed the 15th Legion was born they would be given the name the Thousand Sons by the emperor himself although the exact reasoning he picked that particular name has been the subject of myth and Legend it most likely originates from the fact that when they were created only a thousand Marines were produced though they would however be brought up to full Legion strength sometime later at this point in time Tara had for the most part already been completely brought into unification there were only a few remaining pockets of resistance that the Thousand Sons would be tasked with eliminating but on the whole the other Legions had already conquered most of the solar system and the great Crusade was about to get underway thus at this point the creation of the 15th Legion marked a transitionary period and the fledgling imperium's history it was a time of endings as well as Beginnings after Tara had been fully and completely United the 15th would set off into the Galaxy to reunite all of the lost human worlds as part of The Emperor's great Crusade although not particularly distinct from any of the other Legions the Thousand Sons would serve their purpose admirably it was said that their initial campaigns and deployments were not particularly remarkable although they demonstrated competency and efficiency in their actions and also displayed a particular degree of synchronous amongst their Marines they were utterly average a legion that was good at what they did but had little in regards of distinguishing features that would all begin to change about 10 years after the Crusade moved past the solar system as something remarkable began to happen all of the legionnaires spontaneously began to develop psychic abilities and these weren't just the fledgling powers of some psycher Barbarian or French cult leader oh no they were the true potential of the warp in its most destructive and Majestic form they displayed abilities that allowed them to call down living fire from the sky send forth crackling deluices of Bio lightning that arced through the enemy ranks tear apart armor and War Machine alike with telekinetic Fury razor open minds or even miraculously healed the most Grievous of injuries before the blood could even hit the ground it all suddenly started to make sense to the onlookers the emperor in his wisdom had created a legion which fused the psychic potential of mankind with the gene Alchemy of the Legion of stardes even though they were few in number compared to other Legions the Thousand Sons proved to be an incredibly powerful and frightening Force here's the thing about those early days though since the Thousand Sons were so weird in the fact that they didn't have anything special about them that always Drew curiosity from their cousins and other Legions curiosity that would often turn to speculation and mistrust and when their psychic power started to manifest that mistrust frequently turned into outright revulsion to those who had been brought up during the unification Wars a psycher was an Abomination that if ever utilized for Warfare was something that was only done out of grim necessity hatred for the legion began to grow and many of the other Legions refused to take to the field with them many of them even called for the legion to be disbanded his exact thoughts on the matter are lost to time and may never have even been recorded but one fact remains absolutely true and that is despite all of the calls for something to be done the emperor remained neutral even as the Thousand sons took to the battlefield bathed in a Cult Fire with only a handful of Warriors they could render entire armies to Ash or crack fortresses open as if by the hands of a crushing invisible Colossus everything seemed to be going pretty well for them but the unfortunate truth of the matter was that this was a brief moment of Glory before one of the darkest periods in their history over the next several decades their ranks would swell to an estimated 10 000 Warriors that number is certainly a lot more starties than they started with but you got to bear in mind that that number is still relatively small compared to all of the other Legions their lower numbers were most likely due to the fact that they were specifically looking for psychically gifted youth to take as recruits what they lacked in numbers they made up for in brutal efficiency and at this point the vast majority of the Legion had emerged as a psycher in one form or another albeit with wildly differing levels of ability despite how powerful they may have been their low numbers meant that when disaster finally struck the legion was almost completely wiped out at one point the 15th found themselves locked in a stalemate against a foe that impossibly was able to match them in psychic ability their soldiers fighting not with swords and Firearms but with the Roar of dissolving matter and ethereal fire there were no outside records of what exactly took place that day other than a single burned book recovered from Prospero years after the Horus heresy but it tells of how the psychic deadlock created on both sides caused the sky to weep Black Rain and clouds of Spun lightning cleaved through a hurricane of debris it says that it was as if the elements of existence were warring against themselves on the battlefield it was on this terrible day that the legion's curse would finally make itself known the first Warrior to suffer the change is only referred to in the account as daylith which may have been their actual name or may be representative of a more esoteric meaning in either case during the height of the battle the Warriors body slowly blew apart thick flows of malleable flesh spilled from his broken armor as bone fused with the substance of his War gear and his blood misted and congealed into new forms all while the warrior screamed for mercy and a thousand silent voices heard Inside the Minds of all those within the legion his brothers executed him and burned the remains swearing never to speak of what had happened to anyone outside of the Legion but the dark reality of the situation was that this wouldn't be a one-off occurrence we don't know exactly how long it was before the next Legionnaire fell to the flesh change as it would come to be known perhaps a month maybe a year but it did happen again to a second then to a third their bodies dissolving into warp energy and mutating out of control it manifested again and again and again sometimes afflicting hundreds of warriors in a single instance it didn't matter if the individual was a master psycher or one with only fledgling abilities the flesh change didn't discriminate against its victims eventually it reached epidemic proportions they did everything they could to cover it up withdrawing and becoming ever more secretive and erratic when the rumors of what was happening to them inevitably began to spread many of their former detractors felt Vindicated the legion was cursed what once were only Whispers of Suspicion became shouted condemnations the Thousand Sons were for the first time labeled with the dreaded term of sorcerers despite its rapidly depleting numbers and the fact that they had no allies to call upon the legion would press on its surviving members growing ever more powerful they turned to utilizing certain abilities previously deemed too dangerous as was the necessity of the situation they found themselves in this was an incredibly Bleak dark and if I'm being honest super depressing time for them their vast fleets of ships now crept through the void helmed only by a handful of Warriors the survivors vastly outnumbered by the dead and the lost all while they were suffering the shouts from The Outsiders grew in strength and intensity primarks Legion Masters and other figures of authority throughout the Imperium called for them not just to be disbanded but would outright obliterated some may have Justified this as an act of Mercy seeing their deaths as preferable to letting the legion just die in shame many more felt no remorse or pity for them demanding they be cut from the Imperium like a cancerous growth their Warriors executed and their names and honors stricken from every record once again these calls fell upon deaf ears as the emperor made no move against them and in their Darkest Hour the legion would finally find Salvation as their Primark would be located on the isolated world of Prospero okay so the legion and magnus's history both run parallel together so we need to rewind a bit to understand what Magnus was up to from the time of the legion's creation to its reunion with their father Magnus the red was the Primark intended to lead the 15th Legion and whose genetic samples were used to create the gene seed utilized in the creation of his sons Magnus would come to land on the world of Prospero which was super fortunate because he was clearly warp touched they based on his Crimson skinned and innate psychic abilities if he had landed anywhere else he probably would have been executed as a mutant long before magnus's arrival Prospero was seen as a thriving Utopia complete with resplendent pyramids and cities of marble and gold however at some point during the age of strife the population suddenly and without warning had an explosion of psychic potential psychers being born on mass and large swaths of the population suddenly developing remarkable abilities this was admittedly commonplace throughout the Galaxy during this time and the psycho plague as it would come to be known was part of what caused Humanity's downfall now remarkably as a society that put knowledge on a pedestal the influx of psychers didn't actually cause the world to descend into chaos like it did with many other planets but what came next certainly did whether they were native to the planet or had been drawn there by its psycho population is unknown but there existed this insectoid race known as the cycuins these guys would end up becoming a plague of Epic Proportions you see this particular creature had evolved a parasitic relationship with other creatures that had been blessed with psychic abilities the females were able to psychically project their eggs into a psycher's brain the eggs would hatch approximately one day after gestation and rapidly grow as they consume the host's brain the maggots would then burst out of the slain corpse pupae by Nightfall and hatch the next morning as more psychuits this infestation almost led to the complete downfall of civilization on Prospero as the entire population was their ideal prey everyone who lived on the planet were treated into a single city known as tiska while the rest of their great cities and societies ended up completely abandoned in order to survive the people trained their minds to erect invisible barriers of pure light that we're capable of keeping the creatures at Bay these were enough to drive them off and allow the population of tiska to continue on but it wasn't enough to get rid of them it wouldn't be until Magnus taught them to empower the variabilities that had drawn the creatures to them in the first place that they would learn how to effectively destroy them when Magnus landed on Prospero it was said that his birthing pods streaked across the sky and by all who saw it considered to be an auspicious Comet when he was located it was taken in by the scholars of tiska a chief amongst his tutors being the psycho scholar almond seeing great potential in the young Primark the people of tiska began to teach him their ways and seemingly impossibly he was able to master every school of psychic discipline they threw at him Amman continuously tried to instill an air of caution within Magnus to temper his genius with humility though inevitably there would come a time when no further limitation could possibly be placed on him as he had swiftly outgrown even the most learned masters of Prospero he would form the foundation of the five great Cults each focused on mastering different psychic disciplines and those disciplines would prove vital in the culling of the saikuian populations he would additionally move up through tiska's governmental systems remaking the civilization that had fostered him and as he did so perfecting and building on the traditions of the past and raising them and the people of tiska to undreamed Heights of intellectual and psychic attainment a new Golden Age of Enlightenment had come to Prospero its pyramids and Towers Rose higher and higher they made leaps of intellectual intuition they deciphered ancient lore and unraveled many Mysteries all being brought into fruition under magnus's leadership Prospero once again became an Empire of dreams and magnets its Crimson King an interesting thing to know about Magnus was that he was the only Primark to remember who he was all of the others had no memories of Terra or the Emperor as they had been infants when they were scattered not Magnus Magnus knew exactly what had happened to him you see his psychic ability he was so powerful that throughout his life he was able to regularly sail the astral sea and communicate directly with his father the Emperor of mankind back on Terra the two developed an incredibly strong bond and when the day finally came that the emperor in the 15th Legion finally landed on Prospero the two of them embraced with nothing less than love and admiration for one another despite the Elation that Magnus felt upon meeting his father face to face the sad and desperate state of the Thousand Sons absolutely broke his heart even though they had never met it was said that at primark's bond with his Gene sons transcended that of even normal parent and child he told the Emperor as I am your son they shall become mine now United with the legion that carried his genetic Legacy Magnus would dedicate every shred of his towering intellect to undoing the damage their aberrant genes had wrecked upon them however this would prove to be impossible no matter what he tried no matter how much fruit his experiments seemed to be bearing they would always ultimately be met with object failure after arriving on Prospero the flesh change seemed to ramp up even further in its intensity his sons were dying left and right and in his desperation he turned to something ancient and dark a sentience within the warp that promised salvation for a price after the deal was struck Magnus would finally find success the flesh change went into remission and completely vanished from the legion with a second chance at life and a newfound purpose here on Prospero the Thousand Sons were renewed with a fiery Vigor and eager to reach their full potential Magnus would reshape the legion transforming every aspect in His image Prospero became their Homeworld and under magnus's tutelage their abilities would grow exponentially now cured of the flesh change the legion took to rebuilding recruiting youth from Prospero who were not just psychically gifted but whom also possessed intellectual Excellence magnus's intelligence was so great that he was even capable of elevating some of his former mentors into a starting and normally a taboo practice as with every year of Life an aspirant's chance of encountering fatal complications Rose significantly a chief among these older Marines was his tutor almond as well as all of his other mentors these Scholars of tiska would serve the vital role of passing on the teachings of Prospero to the Thousand Sons the chapters of the Legion were renamed fellowships all of which collectively being referred to as the passaged there were originally ten however after rejoining the great Crusade one of them would tragically be wiped out rather than reforming it Magna saw wisdom in reorganizing the remainders into nine going forward a side note 9 is the sacred number of zinc but I'm sure that's not foreshadowing anything important regardless of what Fellowship they were a part of each of the legionnaires would also Join one of the five Great Cults Each of which specialized in a different psychic discipline now all of the Cults had a headquarters in one of the pyramids of tiska where all of their knowledge specific to their area of expertise was housed and the relevant training of its members was conducted the five Colts were that of the Corvette the pirate the pavoni the raptora and the Athenian the Korver days members specialized in precognition and the Divination of the future now culturally their purpose was to Foster the legion's overall philosophical development as well as guided in its path in conflict in battle their gifts could produce knowledge of enemy strategies as well as events just about to happen allowing those they led to move safely through incoming barrages or execute Precision strikes in even the most chaotic of War zones The Cult of the Pirates members practice pyrokinesis including both The Conjuring and control of fire defensively they were able to create molten Shields to protect their allies or incinerate incoming projectiles mid-flight it's said that the students of this cult were said to develop a seeming hot-headed and Brash personality The Cult of the pavonis members on the other hand were biomancers whose psychic gifts could manipulate the physical attributes and body chemistry of living creatures and whether that take the form of resculpting their facial features for use in missions that required subterfuge or even supposedly making oneself immune to dehydration as an example their offensive abilities on the other hand were said to mostly take the form of conjured lightning generated within their own nervous system and the terrifying ability to literally boil the blood of their enemies practitioners of this cult were also said to be invaluable Battlefield Medics and fun fact many of them were said to be rather egocentric and suspiciously all sported classically beautiful facial features The Cult of the raptora specialized in telekinesis they could lift and direct physical objects at their enemies turning anything around them into a lethal projectile or if none were available simply use their powers to directly manipulate enemies disarming them suspending them in the air or in more extreme examples ripping them apart with their minds this was the cult that was responsible for the generation of the iconic kind Shields invisible barriers of physical force that absorbed incoming attacks depending on their ability level they could use them on a single person a a small group an entire Battalion or in one extreme example the entire city of tiska and finally there's the cult of the athenaean whose members were skilled telepaths able to read the thoughts of others as well as transmit their own over great distances and much like the corvidae they were an essential part of the Thousand Sun's intelligence operations the former would Define the schemes of fate and potential Futures to determine what would happen in the near future whereas the athenaeans could use their abilities to intercept the thoughts of the enemy as well as track their position thus taking control of the battle in the present the two of these Cults working together allowed the 15th Legion to win many battles where they were grossly outnumbered and outgunned with only a handful of Marines each of these cult served as a Cornerstone for all of the different aspects of the Legion and by organizing them based on different specializations within the Arcane subjects the legion's members could focus specifically on what they were good at rather than trying to master every possible area of study each of the Cults would develop their own unique cultures but they all shared a similar hierarchical system wherein a cult's leader was known as a Magister templai and there were only actually two ranks existing above that of cult leader the Magus which refers to the master of all cults and was a position held exclusively by their Primark and the ipsimus being the only rank above that which was created specifically to represent the emperor it's probably important that I mentioned that there was almost a six cult known as the aquilae but it was never officially formed it was founded by akit hakarus and him and his followers had sought to specialize in astral projection in order to travel deeper into the great ocean than any had ever before this was an act that was expressly forbidden as although the Thousand Sons at the time did not believe in spirits imps and demons or any kind of malefic sentience within the immaterium they were well aware of its dangers and those that peered too deeply could quickly become lost go insane or Worse end up getting ripped apart by the malefic energies within it it's also worth making a quick note here about the dangerous entities that would attack the Thousand Suns whenever they spiritually traveled through the warp and these things often took the form of very familiar Predators like sharks squids jungle cats and other alien creatures of similar makeup things that have been the primordial source of fear within humans and other sentient species since the dawn of time the Thousand Sons believe that these things were not living per se they were not sentient they were the raw and dangerous energy of the warp that took a form that the human mind understood as a threat the Thousand Sons firmly believed in the Imperial truth that there were no gods or demons and there was nothing sentient within the immaterium it was just a realm of energy a mirrored reflection of our own reality where we as the audience and fans of Warhammer 40K are privy to The Meta knowledge of the warp's reality that it is in fact full of prowling demons it's important to try to remove that when we're trying to understand the mindset of a certain group within a particular point in history hakaris however did for firmly believe that sentience existed within the Sea of souls that there were entities of impossible intelligence that dwelt within its depths and if the Thousand Sons were able to make contact with them the amount they could learn was potentially Limitless and during his Ventures into the dark and forbidden corners of the great ocean his theory would be proven correct as he did in fact make contact with one of these beings upon hearing of his research Magnus would Ambush him and place him on trial in front of not only himself but each of the heads of the other great Cults as well they demanded to know what he had learned and sought to determine if there was any value in his research or if he should be censored hakarus argued that the Thousand Sons had limited their potential of understanding by only swimming within the shoals of the empyrion that for True wisdom they had to go deeper that each of the great Cults was only seeing part of the whole and missing the forest for the trees here's the thing about this entire story The Trial is an illusion conjured by Madness he's probing the guy's mind and trying to figure out exactly what he knows in order to determine whether what his son is uncovered is potentially dangerous even though he keeps it a secret Magnus is well aware of the dark entities that dwell within the warp even if he doesn't fully comprehend what they are yet still he knows they're dangerous it's actually ironic when you think about it that the emperor knew full well about the chaos Gods but chose not to tell anyone about them because naming them and knowing of their existence empowered them and when Magnus found out about them having discovered them on his own and never being warned specifically about what they were by his father he came to the exact same conclusion to keep their existence secret it's even more ironic to think that much like how the emperor stole power from them on moloch to save Humanity Magnus in turn stole power from them to save his sons the Apple really doesn't fall that far from the tree but now suddenly someone else may have learned of their existence and that knowledge could be incredibly dangerous if allowed to spread before the Imperium was ready to take that next step the story ends with Magnus rushing forward and nearly choking the life out of him telling him that he will allow him to live but he'll confiscate all of his research and if he's ever asked about any of this he will lie to his brothers just as Magnus had lied to the emperor and his sons this individual ends up being somewhat banished from Prospero is sent off to fight alongside the ape Legion and forbidden from pursuing his studies of which he of course continued in secret in addition to the fellowships and cult temples there existed three distinct orders known as the red orders they were macro military structures that were made to cope with the wider factors of conducting the great Crusade and the furtherance of the Legion as a whole the three orders were the order of Ruin also known as the unmakers the order of the Jackal or the measure of life and death and the Order of blindness that was also referred to as the hidden ones the order of Ruin was a sect of Mystics that was said to be obsessed with numerology and the hidden structure of the universe they were comprised of calculators logicians and analysts and organizers of supreme ability they were Siege makers the logistical Specialists and War planners of the Thousand Sons you can think of this order as the overseers of any of the legion's major military operations they knew the exact strength of every unit in War Machine and were responsible for the maintenance and formations of their fleets they maintain a close relationship with the mechanicum and thus all of the legion's tech Marines were part of this order as their name implies they were the order that was called upon when a city needed to be broken or a planet's defenses brought to ruin directly overseeing the deployment of armor and Ordnance the order of the Jackal however took on a much more somber and somewhat spiritual role and its presence was felt in every facet of the Legion they were the measure of life and death and thus were responsible for not only the recruitment of new Warriors but also the protectors and remembrancers of the Dead they made sure the Deeds of the Fallen were never forgotten and if a warrior found himself on the edge of death and the legion was considering them as a candidate to be entombed within a dreadnought like the Egyptian gods of old Earth it was the order of the Jackal that was called to weigh their great Deeds against their failures in order to determine their fate perhaps their most important role was that they were the Guardians of the legion's gene seed and thus all of the apothecaries within the Thousand Suns found themselves as members of this order there was also a unique military cabal within the order known as the kentai cabal these guys focused Less on mastering the entirety of a specific psychic discipline and instead honed their powers into areas that would allow them to better master sword fighting they were less Arcane Sorcerers and more akin to Warrior monks masters of melee combat with dual power swords they were dedicated Defenders of the five Cults as well as the Guardians of their reliquaries and sacred sanctums they would form psychic links with their brothers that bonded them all together and allowed them to fight as if there were multiple copies of the same Warrior which greatly confused their enemies the order of blindness also nicknamed The Hidden ones unsurprisingly doesn't have a lot of written records about its operations it it was a shadowy order of infiltrators spies interrogators and Scouts that would be deployed to gather intelligence now there is evidence that one of their primary methods of information gathering was done through the use of human spies that had been psychically conditioned we don't know a lot about them but what we do know is that within the order it was a group known as The amitaria Cult these guys served as the legion's elite assassins all of the psychic disciplines they practiced were done with a single goal in mind the precise and efficient dealing of death whether that take the form of precognitive abilities to predict where a Target was going to be obtaining levels of firearm accuracy thought impossible psychokinetically accelerating a shell towards its Target to give it shattering force or if that wasn't enough causing a wounded foe's blood to refuse to clot and then aggressively accelerating it out of their wounds with horrifying speed one of the most common criticisms of the Thousand Sons is that they didn't put any limitations on themselves and didn't practice any form of control now this is fun fundamentally not true they were well aware of the dangers that came with manipulating the warp and aside from Banning certain areas of study or exercising Extreme Caution when pressing into the unknown they would also practice what they called the enumerations a series of 10 philosophical and conceptual tools that allowed a practitioner of the psychic disciplines to shift through the Myriad complexities involved in bending the universe to their will their purpose was to free the individual from the shackles of their own ego and enter altering states of Purity and mental focus in layman's terms they used it to banish emotion so logic and reason could guide their decision-making process the higher the enumeration level a psycho could enter the more powerful the abilities they could safely command each of the enumerations had a distinct purpose and Mastery of each of them was considerably more difficult the higher into the enumerations one delved by the time somebody had mastered all of the Lesser ones they were considered to be an Adept major and were seen as having achieved complete self-reliance but to achieve the Oneness of self and complete ego Extinction they would need to reach the higher enumerations something that few were truly capable of although most commonly associated with the austardis of the Legion the enumerations were taught to the Mortal citizens of Prospero as well though it was admittedly rare for a mortal to truly Master even the first simply by following the system's teachings one would make great strides in their studies and live a far more disciplined and focused life the Practical applications in the enumerations in the field of study are obvious but they also served a vital role in the field of battle as well they allowed a warrior to achieve Supreme Focus preventing his emotions from overwhelming him and allowed his mind to remain free of distractions that could get them killed in war on the battlefield The Surety of death or injury wore A Warrior's constant companion and the enumerations allowed the Thousand Sons to face such thoughts objectively and fight on regardless out of all of the different things that the Thousand Sons practiced the use of the Tudor release was probably in my opinion one of the coolest elements of their early lore and additionally probably the most damning I'm honestly surprised these guys didn't get brought up at the Council of nicaea but we'll get into that later in essence they were warp entities pulled directly from the immaterium and bonded to a psycher they acted as both a psychic Focus that would greatly enhance their abilities as well as a guide when it came to their research and Pursuits of further understanding the war though some have made the argument in the past that it was more of a symbiotic relationship and the psychers themselves were acting as a guide and familiar for the Tudor release as well they were used throughout the great Crusade for all manner of tasks from something as mundane as cleaning a Bolter to assisting them in their astral Journeys they were invisible to all those who did not have the gift of psychic sight though to those who could see them the tutor really took on a different form directly representative of the psycher they were attached to they served a similar role to that of familiar is used by Librarians within other Legions or by many Inquisitor later on in the future being created from the energy of the warp however made them far more potent than anything constructed by man the Thousand Sons absolutely loved these guys and thought of them as their closest friends and Companions of whom most of them only bonded with a single one for multiple decades the tutor release however would have a full mask off moment during the invasion of Prospero wherein they shed their harmless forms and revealed themselves to be full-blown demons attacking not only the Space Wolves that were invading the planet but in some instances turning on their psychic Masters as well that weren't able to control them the true nature of the Tudor release is something that has been hotly debated within the Thousand Suns fan base for a long time as it's super easy to dismiss them as simply demons in Disguise they were sentient entities drawn from the warp so the title of demon is accurate but the word carries a lot of weight in 40K and I believe that it's a bit more complicated than that we know for a fact that most of them were not malevolent many remaining fiercely loyal to their masters during and after the invasion the first piece of evidence that we have for this is probably the most obvious and that is that Janus a member of the Thousand sons that would become the first supreme Grand Master of the gray Knights only became elevated to such a level when he fused with a Shard of Magnus and his tutorally and now this isn't a video about the great Knights but if you know anything about that particular faction of demon Hunters emerging with a demon is not something they're cool with the second and most complicated bit of evidence is that the Tudor release were said to be a reflection of the psycher that they were paired with and like all entities derived from the warp were creatures made of emotion and thus further empowered by emotion to say the Thousand Sun Sorcerers were having a really bad day and emotions were running pretty hot during the burning of Prospero is a gross understatement and their hatred of the Space Wolves was reflected in their tutor release so when it came to them it was less of a surprise I'm secretly a demon and I have been all along and I'm just now revealing my true nature to you and more of a my true nature is a reflection of you your wants desires and emotional state and right now the entirety of your essence is screaming kill the Invaders what's important to understand about who Magnus was as a person is that when he joined the great Crusade he didn't view himself as a conqueror like his brothers did he was an idealist who saw what he was doing as a means to an end that by the end of the great Crusade the Imperium would become a Utopia wherein mankind would Ascend spiritually and intellectually to a point that surpassed even those who had lived during the Dark Age of Technology he fought for a Golden Age of Enlightenment one in which thoughts knowledge and reason guided Minds free to skim both realities and experience all that existence had to offer every World they conquered every population they brought into compliance all of it was done with the goal of bringing that dream into fruition wherever they went they gathered lore with an almost insatiable hunger and it didn't matter if it came from parchment books datavaults works of artifice and art or countless artifacts from both human and alien civilizations all were gathered and studied with great enthusiasm by the legion whereas many of the other Legions were fearful of the promised days of Peace where their roles as warriors were no longer required Magnus and the Thousand Sons actively looked forward to it Humanity would have need of them as guides in the new age and they had so much to teach them but that age would never come to pass and with a proven track record of tragedy the Thousand Sons were unknowingly set on a course that would see all of their dreams crushed beneath the weight of fear ignorance and betrayal The Cloud of mistrust and suspicious glances from other factions within the Imperium both Space Marine and Mortal alike was something that the Thousand Sons were never quite able to shake even after Magnus had been located it didn't help the fact that many of the Crusades they participated in it didn't really seem to make any sense as the 15th Legion was more interested in procuring Lost knowledge rather than outright conquering and although they didn't waste nearly as much time as the word bearers staying behind on each World they brought into compliance and Magnus refused to leave a planet without making sure it was in a better State than when he left enlightening each population with the knowledge architecture and culture at Prospero many of his peers however still whispered that he and his sons were tainted Magnus was undaunted by the sneers and condemnation of his peers and figured he would eventually Enlighten them he made a lot of effort towards that goal the chief amongst them being the creation of the librarious project which created a system that formerly allowed all of the other Legions to train and utilize psychically gifted astarties just as the Thousand sons did In fairness it wasn't Magnus alone who created the program as jagat icon of the white scars and sanguineous of the blood angels also played important roles in its development though Magnus by far was its strongest proponent and chief architect individuals within other Legions who spontaneously develop psychic abilities would be trained by members of the Thousand sons in doctrines comprised of rituals and practices that drive their Origins from not just Prospero but also from ball and from Terra as well after they had completed their training they would be sent back to their Legion and taught to continue to hone their abilities the Librarians proved to be incredibly useful but it was said that the Thousand Sons kept most of their most powerful practices a secret everything seemed to be going well for a Time the Thousand Sons at last seemed to be gaining the respect of their peers but that wasn't to last forever as the great Crusade carried further and further from the light of the Soul system more esoteric and dangerous foes were continuously encountered and many of these enemies wielded frighteningly powerful psychic abilities never before encountered and suspiciously they were reminiscent of the ones that were wielded by the Thousand sons and the Librarians the old shouts of Witchcraft and sorcery came back in force this was masturbated even further by the fact that the Emperor who had sanctioned the use of the psychers had returned to Terra to work on his web Way project none would question the emperor's judgment while he was there with them but during his absence hatred of the witch was rampant perhaps most damning though was on the world of shrike wherein the Thousand Suns and the Space Wolves would end up working together in a combined operation this is when the flesh change made a sudden and violent return Lehman Russ Primark of the Space Wolves was horrified by the transformation he saw one of the astartis of the Thousand Sons go through he had never trusted them but up until this point had mostly bitten his tongue and ignored their ways after what he witnessed on shrike he declared he had had enough the entire Legion was tainted Beyond repair and he promised them that there would be a reckoning he was not alone in this mortarion Primark of the death guard had a long-seated hatred of psychers as well considering that on his Homeworld of barbarous the population had been enslaved by psychic entities known as the overlords addition corax of the Raven guard and rogaldorn of the Imperial fist joined their side refusing to fight alongside the Thousand Sons or even in some cases other Legions that utilize Librarians the fight over the use of psychers within the legions rapidly reached a boiling point the emperor would end up having to intervene and call it conclave that would come to be known as the Council of nicaea but more accurately it is also often referred to as the trial of Magnus the council was provided over by the emperor and malcador the sigilite acted as its Arbiter all of the detractors who spoke out against the use of psychers voiced their concerns giving damning testimonies against the Thousand sons and labeling them once more as Sorcerers and witches they spoke of how they bore witness to the misery wrought by the Thousand sons and accused them of harnessing dark Powers they said they were no better than the mutants and wretches who had come to make dark kingdoms throughout the Galaxy that the Thousand Sons were using their fell gifts to further their own selfish and sadistic ends Magnus would end up taking to the stand to defend himself and his sons against these claims speaking with such Charisma and conviction that it seemed the trial would ultimately go in his favor this however would not be the case as the emperor's judgment fell like a hammer although mutant psychers such as Navigators and astropaths were still deemed to be a necessity the librarious program would be dismantled and all psychic powers utilized by the Space Marines from this point forward were strictly forbidden one cannot accurately put into words what a blow this was to the Thousand Sons the use of psychic abilities was everything to them it was what they had been made to do it was what their entire culture revolved around and although Magnus and his sons swore to uphold the edict in front of the emperor and their peers they ultimately wouldn't hold to that as the council itself was masking a far more Insidious betrayal that was right around the corner three years later on the moon of Davin War Master Horus would end up being grievously wounded by a blade known as the anathame this caused him to enter a Fugue state state where an arabis of the word bearers acting as a puppet of the chaos Gods was in the process of manipulating him against the Imperium Magnus having foreseen what was about to happen cast a spell to astral project all the way across the cosmos and appeared as a spectral wolf within horus's mindscape he warned of erebus's treachery but Horus looking between the both of them and measuring both sides witnessed Magnus clearly ignoring his father's order at Nikia so he couldn't be trusted any more than Erebus could Orris would ultimately make his decision and he kicked off the bloodiest Civil War mankind had ever seen Magnus needed to warn the Emperor of what was coming and he thought sending a message the old-fashioned way risked arriving too late or Worse being intercepted by the enemy he gathered a cabal of his sons together and cast an immensely powerful spell that allowed him to astral project from Prospero all the way to the Imperial Palace on Terra the spell was so incredibly powerful that it drained the essence out of all of the people that were helping him cast it all except for Armin who alone was powerful enough to survive like a furious psychic Comet Magnus barreled his way towards Tara but when he reached the confines of the solar system he found his way barred by an immense psychic barrier no matter what he did he wasn't strong enough to break through this is when an entity of impossible intellect reached out to him from within the warp it had no form to speak of but was said to be the size of a continent this thing whatever it was did not communicate with words but with raw power Magnus believed that he had never encountered this thing before and didn't know what it was though in hindsight he was communing with the chaos God of change zeech the same one that had made a pact with him to save his son so many years ago zinch offered him the power that he needed to break through as seemingly with no strings attached seeing no other option Magnus took the chaos God's blessing and shattered the barrier exploding into the Imperial Palace to deliver his dire warning here's the thing though that barrier had been erected by the emperor in the first place to keep back the forces of chaos when it shattered the demons flooded in the resulting damage shattered the emperor's fledgling webway project which would have eliminated Humanity's Reliance on the warp for Interstellar travel the instant he broke into the palace all those that stood before him gazed upon the empowered astral form they saw him as a monster a fiery angel come to bring death and destruction it was only the Emperor who recognized him the emperor's custodians opened fire immediately as explosions brought on by the sudden bombardment of psychic energy ripped through the laboratory in the exact moment he made eye contact with his father all of the emperor's plans that had been previously kept secret from him were suddenly laid bare Magnus realized just how badly he had messed up he saw the web Way project in its completion he saw himself upon the Golden Throne guiding Humanity in into the future by his father's side how it was he who was intended to bring about the imperium's ultimate victory in a single act he had shattered his fathers and thus Humanity's dreams he wept as the gravity of his towering arrogance and unthinking hubris beared down on him he thought he knew better than his father how to wield the power of the great ocean he believed he was its Master but in the ruins of his father's great work he could now see the truth countless void Predators were being drawn in behind him as he felt his astral form dissipating and being dragged back to Prospero with the emperor's forces be able to hold them off he had no idea and the realization of just how much blood was on his hands absolutely broke him in the aftermath of magnus's seeming betrayal the emperor Unleashed his dogs of war sending Lehman Russ and the Space Wolves to apprehend Magnus and bring him to Terra to be put on trial however despite the emperor's orders being simply to capture Madness and see that Justice was done the order was intercepted by Horus who at this point had not revealed himself to be a traitor the drop site Massacre had not happened yet he relayed the emperor's order to Russ only after twisting his words Russ unaware of horus's treachery and seeing him as an admired individual that he trusted wholeheartedly took him at his word that the emperor's order was to kill Magnus destroy the Thousand sons and burn the world of Prospero in his grief Magnus locked himself away in his Tower where in a fit of rage he lashed out destroying everything in the room including a very particular mirror when he gazed upon it shattered reflection he saw his eye reflected back at him nine times and each in a different color this is when the Creature from the warp spoke to him it told him that he had always been their first choice the one that would bring about the Eternal chaos of Destruction and rebirth the making and unmaking that had cycled throughout time and would continue for all eternity Horus had been a poorest second that magnus's potential was far greater and despite his resistances the chaos Gods knew that one day he would be theirs The Entity tells him that names are meaningless but from Humanity's perspective this thing was certainly a god Magnus realizes that this is the entity that he had stolen power from to save his sons and the creature laughs telling him that although that may have seemed to have been what happened it had only postponed their doom and that their deal had now come to a close the demon informs him of their impending doom how Lehman Ross and his wolves were on their way to Prospero this entity that most certainly was zeench tells him to just say the word with a snap of its Eldritch fingers it could eradicate those fleets instantaneously but Magnus refuses and ends the conversation by burning the mirror and everything else in the room Magnus knew what was coming he was racked by unbelievable guilt over what he had done in attempting to save the Imperium and his father he had directly aided the traitors and the Demonic entities they had aligned lined with he knew that what they ultimately wanted was for two Legions to destroy each other and although it pained him greatly he made the decision to Veil The approaching Space Wolves Fleet from his sons did he do it out of grief as a full acceptance of his crimes or out of a final desperate act to deny his enemies what they wanted it is likely a combination of all three he knew the Imperium would have need of the wolves in the future and if him and his sons fought back all of his opponents at nikea would have been Vindicated he would not let chaos destroy two entire Legions this day when The Invasion began the Thousand Sons were caught completely unaware they didn't know what to do the Wolves had come to destroy everything they loved they burned their great libraries and slaughtered their civilian population and legionnaires alike azik aramon Chief librarian of the Thousand Sons refused to listen to Magnus who told his generals when they confronted him to lay down their arms and accept their death With Honor he led a desperate defense of Prospero for the first time seeing his father father is not a mentor but a fool if Magnus wanted to wallow in his self-pity and lay down his life then let him but the Thousand Sons would not go quietly into the night the legion fought back valiantly against the invading wolves while Magnus watched on from his balcony psychic Force rampaging through his body demanding to be let loose on the foe but he clinched his fist and fought it down he knew he mustn't fight back he heard the voices of his sons crying out to him begging him to take to the field but he ignored them forcing them from his head he clinched his teeth knowing that he mustn't fight the anger hatred and sense of betrayal the Thousand Sons felt that day cannot be truly Quantified anger at the unthinking violence that had been Unleashed upon them anger over the death of so many of their brave warriors that deserved better anger how despite the fact that their goals and Pursuits were ultimately Noble and they had followed the Imperial truth to the letter that their allies had turned on them and perhaps most of all anger that their Primark had left them to face their Doom alone in the final battle when all hope seemed lost and Lehman Russ was leading the charge aramon and the soldiers under his command looked up to see a glorious sight Magnus had finally descended from his Tower unable to Bear witness to the slaughter of his children any longer he descended from the sky his bladed staff throwing off blinding arcs of lightning that destroyed armored vehicles and thunderous explosions his baleful eye sweeping across the lines of space wolves killing all caught in his gaze instantaneously only Lehman Russ and his wolf companions were unfazed by the sudden appearance of Magnus and the Wolf King looked as if he relished the idea of the coming fight Magnus tells his sons that this Doom was meant for him and that they needed to retreat inside of the pyramids that within them waited a Priceless gift if they refused his order then everything he did would have been for nothing and then him and the Wolf King charged Magnus had no expectation of surviving the duel but this fight would buy his sons enough time to escape as the gift he had spoken of before was a mighty portal that would Ferry them to safety Magnus and the Wolf King struggled with the fate of a world balanced on the outcome forking traceries of lightning shot upwards from the ground isolating them from the host of wolves in the custodies Russ reigned blow after blow on Magnus shattering the horned breastplate and in return Magnus struck his brother with a searing blast of cold fire that cracked his armor and set light to his braided hair it seemed as though the combatants had swollen to enormous proportions like the Giants that were in the myths and legends the wolf King's frostblade struck at Magnus but his golden ax turned the blow aside as they spun and twisted in an epic battle Beneath The Madness of a blazing storm of sheet lightning and pounding Thunder this was a battle fought on every level physical mental and spiritual with each Primark bending every ounce of their almost Limitless power to the other's destruction when Armand made it to the pyramid Aman was there waiting for him and he presented to him the book of Magnus he was to be its new protector as Magnus had seen into the future and knew that he wouldn't die here this day Armand didn't understand why Magnus had entrusted it to him but it dawned on him was sudden terrifying Clarity that his Gene sire had no expectations of surviving his duel with the wolf King although both Magnus and Russ fought with the fury of Titans both seemingly each other's equal inflicting dozens of blows on one another that would have easily killed lesser men eventually Russ got the upper hand lifted Magnus into the air and brought him down on his knee shattering his back before Russ could bring down his frostblay to decapitate his brother Magnus used aramon as a conduit to perform the final part of the Arcane ritual he had prepared before joining The Fray with a final word of power Magnus and the rest of the Thousand Sons vanished from the surface of Prospero and were teleported into the eye of Terror to the world of sortiaris a world that would come to be known as the planet of the sorcerers Prospero was burned its cities destroyed its great libraries incinerated this by far was one of the darkest days in imperial history and the amount of knowledge destroyed is impossible to truly quantify so much history culture and secrets of the universe never again to be relearned by mankind but this was not the end of the Thousand sons in the aftermath of Prospero the Thousand Sons would end up joining in horus's rebellion and perhaps out of all of the traitor Legions none had a better reason for doing so than they as they had been betrayed first by all accounts however their commitment to the Traders was done more out of necessity and a desire to survive rather than actively believing in horace's cause it was revealed that the wolf King had not only shattered magnus's back but his soul as well pieces of which being flung all across the Galaxy aramon and his cabal would dedicate most of their time between the years of the burning of Prospero and the siege of Terra helping Magnus relocate all of the missing shards to rebuild him to his former Glory most of which would eventually be located and the Primark was nearly whole again until it was revealed that the very last Shard was on Terra and it was within the Imperial Palace this finally gave the Crimson King and the Thousand Sons a reason to participate in the siege of Terror during the siege of Terra Magnus and his sons would prove instrumental in the summoning of demonic reinforcements as well as casting a swath of supporting spells that assisted the legionnaires of the other traitors rather than directly participating in the conflict themselves there's actually a really heartwarming scene in one of the siege of Terror books where Magnus has a conversation with mortarion his brother whose voice had carried the most weight in his condemnation at Nikia at this point in the story mortarion has become a demon and with that he has also become a psycher The Pale King had been turned into that which he despised the most and now partirobo and his Grand plans for the destruction of the Imperial Palace has decided that the death guard and the Thousand Sons would best be used in support of one another mortarion is obviously not happy about this and when he sees Magnus he doesn't look pleased to see him though Magnus smiles and tells him that he's glad to see his brother there's a lot that's been left unsaid between these two and a lot of bad blood mortarion opens his mouth to speak but Magnus says don't worry I have no wish to trouble you and I understand your discomfort it's an awkward exchange but they make small talk talking about their plans and how they're obliged to support one another and how best to go about taking the colossite gate though mortarion's characteristic Gower demeanor kind of puts a damper on that he's convinced he can take the gate himself and doesn't need any support the entire time he's talking he's wheezing and wincing and clearly in an enormous amount of pain he was built to be more durable than any of them but the rampant mutation his body has undergone since his transformation is clearly taking a toll on him he's covered in Weeping sores and every breath is ragged and forced Magnus looks at his brother this person that had always been against him who had always called him and his sons monsters and he tells him that he forgives him mortarion looks puzzled and repeats what he says you forgive me and Magnus tells him that he does that they're now both what mortarion had always hated and he knows the pain that he's going through martarion snaps at him and says that he can handle the pain Magna steps closer to him he tells him that he understands why he submitted to save his sons that there was no shame in it and he Bears him no ill will in a moment of admission martarian says that he hates this and Magnus reassuringly says that he knows there was no changing it but he could help ease his torment he reaches out his hand and touches his brother's shoulder The Pale King flinches and demands to know what his brother is doing Magnus tells him that he has had his gifts a lot longer than him and he wants to show him how they can be harnessed it's then that Golden Light seeps from his fingers and spreads through mortarion's ragged plate the Lord of death blinks and then straightens slightly he takes a breath one that isn't painful for him he seems taller less bowed by the pain his eyes become Fierce and unclouded and he feels strong he turns to his brother with a look of confusion and gratitude that in his soul he felt he didn't deserve you are kind to me he says softly Magnus tells him that there was only one enemy now and that they would face him together mortarion looks back at the wall and then back at his brother he's confused he doesn't really know how to interpret what just happened but he reaches down and picks up his scythe and then marches out towards the Battlement every once in a while looking over his shoulder and back at Magnus and then he bounds out of sight this to me is my favorite part of Warhammer books I've read somewhere between 150 and 200 of them at this point and don't get me wrong I love the great battle scenes but it's these tiny powerful interactions between characters that hit way harder for me I'm not gonna lie even just like reading the script that I wrote and remembering the scene kinda got me a little bit choked up for everything that Magnus has been through all of the awful things that mortarion has said about him and his sons and how he had been the one that gave the most damning testimony against him Magnus forgives him he still loves his brother and seeing him suffer like that and having become the thing that he hates having become a psycher Magnus now feels this newfound kinship with him and mortarion who is clearly suffering in the scene everything he does causes him to feel Unbelievable pain and he's struggling with the reality of having become a witch something that he has condemned his entire life in addition if you know anything about mortarion you know that he's had a very very rough life and he's not used to being shown kindness he doesn't know what to do in this moment he doesn't know how to react to hearing that his brother forgives him and still loves him it's such a small powerful humanizing moment for both of these characters and then Magnus immediately ruins it when aramon walks up to his side and he's like you know mortarion is going to be super pissed when he finds out that you're using him to get inside the palace and Magnus is like don't don't say that out loud I need him fighting at his absolute best I can and I can't have his judgment being clouded by the pain I was left just sitting there reading that like God damn it Magnus that was an awesome thing you did and you just all right whatever moving on with the story Magnus and oramon have no intention of actually fighting in this battle They Don't Really Care which side comes out Victorious they're only here for that final Shard and in addition if Horus does manage to win Magnus was fully planning on betraying him he still believes in the promised golden age of humanity and he doesn't think Horus is capable of leading them there he has seen what has happened to his brother he is bloated with the power of the chaos gods and has become nothing more than their puppet Humanity would need a strong leader one of completely sound mind and when he thinks of all of his other traitor Brothers besides Horus which one amongst them was truly capable of that fulgrim angron mortarion Conrad kurs none of them would be capable of this at one point he says that Puerto rabo might be able to do it but he's too consumed with his hatred of Dorne he's too vindictive Magnus was the only one that would be capable of leading Humanity into the next age this obviously doesn't come to pass but it is important to know about to understand his mindset at the time anyways in order to get inside the Imperial Palace he was going to need the death guard to help break the gates this would ultimately be accomplished though when Magnus harnessed his awesome power to ensnare the wounded thousand Sons capital imperialis a super heavy tank that was over 80 meters long he hurled it at the wall and it detonated with a fury equivalent to that of 12 Atomic weapons it created a massive breach that the forces of chaos were able to funnel into though the reality of this awesome Display of Power was simply to be a distraction Magnus aramon almond and two other sorcerers would then sneak inside Magnus had not given himself over to zinch at this point and thus had not been elevated to that of a demon Primark this is important because it meant that he was immune to the chaotic repelling properties of The Emperor's Aegis a psychic barrier that he generated to protect the city they used their powers to disguise them ourselves as blood angels and work their way through the streets of Terror towards the palace there is actually a really interesting moment here where their psychic disguises begin to flutter and they're at risk of dissipating but in the same moment the cathedral that they happen to be passing through where hundreds of civilians have gathered to escape the shelling begins to collapse they need to move they need to leave these people to their fate or risk being discovered but Magnus can't do that he allows his disguise to fall away and utilizes his power to stop the ceiling from crushing all of the civilians trapped inside now needless to say the civilians are horrified by him but they're thankful nonetheless they had been saved by a red Angel this moment is really important because it demonstrates that Magnus is still capable of good and at this point in the storyline he believes that each one of his shards represents a different facet of his personality furthermore he believes The Shard that's here on Terra is everything that is good honorable and Noble about him between the events of Prospero and right now he's become a shell of his former self he's been cold and vengeful and believes that once he finally has the missing piece of himself he will be whole once more after this the group would make their way through a series of underground passages beneath the palace and they end up bumping into malcador the sigilite who had been there waiting for them in a Subterranean Lake which had been the last known location of the final Shard malcador informs Magnus of the truth that not only had The Shard left and Magnus would never be able to retrieve it but it had simply been a sliver of his entirety The Shard possessed his entire personality and it was just a minuscule piece of his soul Magnus had been Magnus this entire time enraged by what malcador is telling him he lashes out and kills him although side note he would in fact get better so don't worry malcolor fans with the only thing he had come here for now far beyond his grasp his objective changed Now magnus's goal was to kill his father he would ultimately Infiltrate The a throne room where he found his brother Vulcan waiting for him and although the emperor was incapacitated on The Golden Throne he was able to speak to his son using his psychic abilities in a shocking twist the emperor offers him something that he never expected mercy and forgiveness he tells him that he's sorry for everything that had happened and he acknowledges that a lot of it had been his fault he tells Magnus that he could come back that he would be forgiven these words stun Magnus this is more than he could have ever asked for before the burning of Prospero he had always been loyal he believed everything that he did was for the good of mankind even still he doesn't believe what he's hearing forgiveness comes with a price the emperor agrees and decides to be truthful with him he said that although Magnus could be forgiven his sons couldn't they were too far gone there was nothing the emperor could do to save them their Jean seed was far too corrupted and that had been made progressively worse than spending time in the eye of Terror their fate was to be completely consumed by the flesh change and they would need to be eradicated no matter how smart the emperor was no matter how much power he had there was nothing he could do to save the legion but that wouldn't be the end of magnus's career as a Primark as the emperor had a shiny brand new Legion that he wanted him to lead one that was pure and far more powerful than any of the other Legions and also was made up entirely of psychers he's talking about the gray Knights if there's any confusion Magnus was flabbergasted by this but as badly as he wants to accept the emperor's offer he can't he won't how could his father even ask such a thing he sat there on his throne acting as if he was giving him a choice but there was no choice to be made it wasn't an offer that could be accepted Vulcan pleads with his brother to come back to them and Magnus snaps demanding to know if Vulcan would accept such an offer if it was his son's lives on the line with a heavy heart Vulcan looks down and lifts his hammer readying himself for combat and he tells his brother no no he would not accept that and with that both primarks charge in the end of this fight Vulcan would ultimately emerge as the Victor thanks in no small part due to two of his sons that came to assist him during the fight they hack and slash Magnus apart and as he lays on the ground bleeding out he finally accepts his role in the universe he gives himself over to zinch and descends into his demonic form now a full-blown demon he cannot exist within the emperor's Aegis so it expels him banishing him from the Imperial Palace now having fully given himself over to horace's cause Magnus would infiltrate the web way and do irreparable damage to the emperor's psychic Shield Vulcan was dispatched to stop him and they once again come face to face and once again Magnus is no match for the dragon of Nocturne but before Vulcan can finish him off he stops time so they can have one final conversation and if I'm being honest with you and I don't normally criticize 40K writing absolutely hated this conversation in the beginning it's basic just an imperial Fanboy wankfest but as it goes on in certain elements of the conversation don't line up it suddenly gets pretty good Vulcan spells out for Magnus exactly how he did in fact do many things wrong every bad thing that had happened to him in his Legion was his fault that his massive ego and insane arrogance was the direct cause of his downfall that the absolute worst part about him is that he thinks he is free that he somehow continues to delude himself into thinking that he isn't a puppet of chaos for all of their flaws at least the other traitor primarks recognized what they had become but not Magnus for as intelligent as he claimed to be he couldn't see the jail cell he was trapped in Magnus defends himself saying that he had been missing crucial information that the emperor kept too many things secret from him and if he had only known his plans things would have been different Vulcan counters this saying none of the other primarks felt they needed to know the emperor's plans himself sanguineous Dorne none of of them felt betrayed by the emperor for not telling him about the warp or the web Way project why was Magnus different he thinks he is doing what is right but he's directly assisting the extinction of his own species Vulcan condemns him for Having learned that Horus manipulated Russ into attacking him yet he still stood on the side of the war Master he condemns him for what he did to warn the emperor having not stopped for a single moment to think that there may have been something manipulating him he condemns him for the deals he made with the pantheon to cure his sons of the flesh change believing that he had saved them only to deepen the taint he condemns him for trying to hide it and delaying the inevitable vulcan's words are certainly getting through to Magnus but something's not adding up he has spoken how it's possible that he knows all of this all of these mistakes all of these secrets there's no way that he could know all of them the most interesting part of the conversation is when Magnus brings up what happened in their previous engagement he talks about the impossible deal feel that the emperor offered him Vulcan shakes his head and tells him that that is not what happened the final uncorrupted piece of his soul had barged into the palace weeping and sobbing and begging for forgiveness forgiveness that the emperor denied Magnus is super confused by this as that's definitely not what happened but he begins to start piecing it together in his mind although it's not directly stated in this exchange it's heavily implied that this isn't Vulcan he's talking to Vulcan is still sitting there Frozen in Time about to execute him he is talking to the Emperor who is wearing vulcan's face in order to issue his final condemnation of his wayward son after the conversation ends Vulcan executes his brother who having become a demon now cannot truly be killed but it ended his participation in the siege of Terror after The Siege concluded and the traitors would ultimately be pushed back into the eye of Terror the next major thing that would happen in the Thousand Sun story is that of the rubric of aramon when after studying the book of Magnus the chief librarian believed that he had found a ritual that would rid the Thousand sons of the curse of the flesh change forever and in a sense it would in fact ultimately prove successful what he did did destroy the flesh change but it would change them in a way that none could have anticipated and the consequences of aramon's hubris would Echo that of his fathers and the emperor before him he played with powers he did not comprehend and in desperation turned to forbidden lore the outcome proving not to be one of salvation but of grotesque tragic horror for a Time the Thousand Sons kept to themselves within the eye of Terror upon the planet of the sorcerers the flesh change was worse than it had ever been and most of the Thousand Sons began to go mad as the constant warp exposure wormed its way into their hearts and souls even if they did not become full-blown chaos spawn and lose themselves to the flesh change completely warp induced mutation was proving incredibly common throughout the legion taking the form of many huge tentacles additional appendages flesh fusing with armor and all manner of intricate and impossibly irreversible changes some of these changes were seen as powerful Boons that made the recipients into stronger Fighters and more talented Sorcerers were as others became gibbering wrecks of heaving flesh and Bone some accounts say that what Armand and his cabal did was done in secret without Magnus being aware though most believed that nothing upon the world of sorcerers escaped his notice that he had strictly forbidden aramon from pursuing this at this point aramon had had enough he had become completely disillusioned with his Primark his love and adoration for him turning into bitter angst he blamed his father for the legion's downfall and refused to stand idly by while his brothers were suffering his early attempts to find a cure would prove successful but he wasn't strong enough to scale the spell to the point that it would cure the entire Legion in secret he gathered others to his side and like him they had become disgusted by how far Magnus had allowed them to fall the nine-fold tomes tell of a rubric of Armin how the chief librarian sought to turn change against itself they describe a spell so powerful that it sent a cascading pulse of energy that roiled through the Imperium into Infinity the cabal summoned a catastrophic superstorm of sorcery that fully engulfed the planet like a star collapsing in on itself the storm erupted in an explosion of raw magic that was said to be so powerful that it locked the planet in a fixed Point within the warp all of the writhing strands of Fate here were snatched up in an instant and crushed into a stasis Singularity violent lightning strikes lashed out from the sky each striking a member of the Thousand Suns blasting through them and then arcing through their ranks aramon most likely would have lost control over the spell and how dire the consequences could have been or Unthinkable considering that the roiling power he was generating was said to be so great that even demons that lingered in the area around the planet fled deep into the warp to escape it it only came to an end when Magnus who could physically feel the pain of every one of his sons afflicted by the spell intervene beseeching zines to bring an end to it by that time though the damage was done every single member of the Thousand sons who had been struck by one of the sorcerer's bolts would be changed forever particularly powerful Sorcerers did in fact find themselves cured of the flesh change where as the vast majority of them individuals who were not powerful enough to withstand the raw energy found the joints and seals of their armor fuse shut and their physical bodies reduced to nothing more than in sourceled Ash their souls trapped within their armor forevermore Armand had single-handedly obliterated his Legion the flesh change was gone but his brothers had been reduced to little more than Golems lifeless automatons that were only capable of movement when under direct command by a sorcerer Magnus was beyond Furious and would have executed Arman on the spot but zinch forbid this as he still had great plans for the chief librarian instead Magnus banished aramon from the legions sent him to live in Exile saying he could only return turn after accomplishing The Impossible learning the true nature of the changer of ways Magnus would then go about salvaging everything that he could within the legion his sons now having been split into two sides the sorcerers and the rubric Marines although a shell of their former self and faint traces of who they were still echoing within their Hollow frames the rubrics could still be controlled they could still follow orders and under the command of a sorcerer would continue to serve the legion free from the shackles of Doubt physical limitations and Free Will whereas aramon vowed that he would one day find a way to undo his rubric to return his brothers to life and truly save his Legion this would become his life's Mission although the gene seed in each one of the rubric Marines had been destroyed along with their physical bodies and the legion seemed to finally be in its Death Rows the remaining Sorcerers would eventually learn of rituals of rebinding wherein a slain rubric Marine's armor could be pieced back together and the Fallen Warriors dust and ghost would manifest within it once more making them truly Immortal the fires of War tragedy treachery and betrayal had laid the legion Low by all accounts it had been shattered Beyond repair but the Thousand Sons were no strangers to tragedy they would harness the power of the rubric Marines and churn the schemes of fate in their favor by the nine-fold blessings of zinc and the raw power of the great ocean Magnus would lead his sons Down A New Path not one in which they sought to bring about Humanity's next Golden Age but one with a far simpler ambition Revenge if it wasn't made apparent throughout this video the thousand suns are by far one of my favorite Legions and their story is pretty massive and unfortunately I couldn't fit the whole thing into a single video so we'll end up covering the modern thousand suns in a follow-up I find their story both fascinating and deeply tragic they were a legion that had the odds stacked against them from the very beginning one that suffered greater than any other they bore witness to their brothers dying in droves standing by helplessly as the flesh change rampaged its way through those they cared about the most knowing full well that at any moment it could comfort them their deaths would not be celebrated there would be no battle song sung in their honor they would be executed like a monster their existence and Final Moments covered up in shame and all while this was happening all while they were suffering they were constantly subjected to ridicule fear and mistrust they were called witches mutants Sorcerers the existence of their misery serving only to their supposed allies is direct evidence of their heresy further fuel for the fires of hatred and disgust despite this they pushed on they clutched tight to their Duty and their bonds of Brotherhood and made their contribution to the Crusade even when they were reunited with their Primark and miraculously he was able to cure them this was only delaying the inevitable it was perhaps an even more cruel twist of fate than having died unremembered and forgotten they built Prospero into a Utopia a repository for all knowledge and despite how they had been treated and all they had suffered they desperately believed in what they were doing that they were building a better Universe a better home for Humanity a golden age was coming one in which they could hang up their bolters and see the needless violence of conquest and compliance exist as a relic of necessity utilized in a more barbaric time no matter how hard they fought no matter how many great achievements they celebrated and no matter how many secrets of the universe they learned hatred and suspicion is a disease that only goes into remission and never truly dies because of the mistakes Magnus made whether or not they were done with the best intentions or not the legion would see everything they had worked for everything they built purged in the fires of War now years later having survived even more tragedies including seeing their remaining brothers that had lived on through everything else reduced to nothing more than Barren husks those few remaining Sorcerers have abandoned the old ways cast off the shackles of the enumerations and become the monsters the Imperium always accused them of being now they exist as a fractured band of warlocks delving deeper into a heretical lore than any who had ever come before these once enlightened philosophers and scientists have become deranged and chaotic Mad Men fueled not by a longing for understanding and belonging but an unbridled power with which to turn all of that pain and suffering they endured back on all those that betrayed them time and time again the thousand suns have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they can overcome anything the cruel and unforgiving Grim darkness of the far future can possibly throw at them no matter what tragedy befalls them no matter who stands in their way be they man monster or deranged deity the Thousand Sons will never rest they will never stop and above all else they will have Vengeance for Prospero

Channel: WesHammer

Views: 129,158

Keywords: warhammer, warhammer 40k, warhammer 40000, warhammer lore, warhammer 40k lore, 40k lore, chaos, chaos space marines, chaos space marines lore, 40k chaos, 40k space marines, astartes, space marines lore, thousand sons, thousand sons lore, magnus, magnus the red, magnus lore 40k, primarchs, primarchs lore, emperor of mankind, council of nikea, horus heresy, horus heresy lore, tzeentch, tzeentch lore, chaos gods, chaos gods lore, nurgle, slaanesh, khorne, games workshop, weshammer

Id: 7scOBWRRhwQ

Length: 89min 28sec (5368 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 11 2023