The Slaughter Lords

● Gene-Seed Predecessor – World Eaters; Previously thought be Blood Angels

● Founding – Cursed 21st Founding. 931.M35
● Adeptus Astartes Designation – The Sanguine Lords
● Chapter Master – <REDACTED>
● Chapter World – Skalak Prime, now Fleet-Based
● Flagship – Fist of Skalak
● Current Allegiance – Traitorous Astartes
● Current Designation – The Slaughter Lords
● Main Colours – Red and Gold
● Battle Cry – “Blood! Skulls! Slaughter!”
● Current Strength – Approx. 300 Astartes
● Known Descendents – None
 Origins of the Warband & Gene-Seed
Prior to their betrayal of the Emperor, The Slaughter Lords had been founded as The Sanguine
Lords Chapter in the Cursed 21st Founding of 931.M35. Their presumed gene-seed
predecessors were though to be the Blood Angels, however it was later discovered their
gene-seed was that of the World Eaters.

From the first moments of their gene-seed implantation the battle brothers of the Sanguine
Lords were plagued by a manic bloodlust. This was thought to be the Red Thirst, however the
chapter knew it as The Slake. The Slake inspired a thirst for fresh blood in its victims. As their
thirst grew, they would become increasingly maddened and unpredictable. Once afflicted with
The Slake a battle brother could become so enraged with bloodthirst that he would turn on his
brothers and his allies, slaughtering them simply to quench his thirst for gore. Those consumed
by The Slake were known as Afflicted and sent to the Death Companies, named due to the
chapter’s presumed descendance from the Blood Angels. So flawed was The Sanguine Lord’s
gene-seed and so often were marines designated as Afflicted, that the Chapter maintained two
full Death Companies at near capacity at all times. With the opening of the Great Rift the
Sanguine lord’s gene-seed became even more unstable, and a third Death Company was
formed.

Chapter Home World, Fleet, and Recruitment

Due to the excessive loss of battle brothers to The Slake, and their subsequent deaths in
suicidal Death Company missions, the Sanguine Lords required a steady supply of recruits to
maintain their numbers. They found those recruits in the population of Skalak Prime, whose
entire culture centered around supplying the Chapter with applicants. Thousands of children
were given as tithe each year and be held in holding companies awaiting gene-seed. They did
not have to wait long. Those who were not inducted into the Chapter were returned to the
worlds to train, recruit, and lead in the Planetary Defense Forces and high ranking positions in
government. This practice also helped The Sanguine Lords to keep their gene-seed flaws
secret, for all authorities on the planet who knew of the flaws were loyal to the Chapter first and
foremost, even before the God-Emperor himself.

Shortly after the opening of the Great Rift the Chapter World of Skalak Prime was subjected to
Terminatus, and their Sanguine Lords fleet, Battlefleet Skalak, was decimated by the system
wide Sanguine War with loyalist elements of the Imperium.
 The Sanguine War

With the opening of the Great Rift the gene-seed flaws which caused The Slake and created
the Afflicted intensified tenfold. All brothers of the chapter began experiencing symptoms of The
Slake to varying degrees. Only the strongest of mind and spirit could resist and keep from
becoming Afflicted. These most disciplined of brothers held positions of authority such as
Captains, Lieutenants, and Sergeants. It was their solemn duty to see the Afflicted turned over
to the Chaplains and apothecaries of the Death Companies or, if out of control, put the Afflicted
down.

In early M42, after the Indomitus Crusade had reinforced The Sanguine Lords, Inquisitor
Hartman of the Ordo Hereticus became aware through his spy network of rumors that the
Sanguine Lords had been codex non-compliant long before Roboute Guilliman amended the
codex to lessen restrictions on chapters. After being roadblocked and misdirected at every level
of planetary government for years, Inquisitor Hartman finally was able to obtain a sample of
gene-seed to examine. His examinations and continued investigations determined that the The
Sanguine Lords gene-seed was not descended from that of the Blood Angels and Sanguinius,
but instead it was descended from the Heretic Astartes World Eaters, and Angron the Betrayer.

Inquisitor Hartmann immediately branded The Sanguine Lords Excommunicate Traitorous

despite their millenia long service to the God Emperor and the greater Imperium. The Sanguine
Lords felt themselves betrayed by the Imperium. Had their sacrifices meant nothing? Had they
not proven themselves loyal allies and servants of the Imperium across a thousand battlefields?
How could the Imperium expect them to just lay down and die? How could the Imperium betray
them like this?

The Sanguine Lords refused the order to turn themselves and their world over to the control of
the Inquisition, and thereby damn themselves to euthanization and their worlds to purging.
Battlefleet Skalak immediately mobilized to assault Inquisitor Hartman’s meager escort of dozen
Gloriana frigates. All but one frigate, Hartman’s, were destroyed in the battle, and Hartman fled
the system.

For eight solar years The Sanguine Lords continued carrying out their duties defending their
territory from the horrors of Chaos and Xenos invaders, all the carrying out the induction of their
thousands-strong recruit battalions into the chapter, utilizing their vast gene-seed stores to do
so. This time was also spent building the defenses and forces of the Skalak system so as to
repel the inevitable return of Inquisitor Hartman. The Sanguine Lord’s leadership were sure that
any pacification forces would consist of a formidable number of warships, Astartes, Sororitas,
and Astra Militarum regiments. They were not wrong.

Eight years after Inquisitor Hartman limped away from the Skalak System, he returned at the
head of the Inquisitorial Crusade Force “The Emperor’s Judgement”. The Crusade Force
 consisted of near 750 vessels ranging in class from destroyers and frigates to Emperor and
Retribution Class battleships. Their ground forces consisted of 750 Imperial Guard Regiments,
including the Cadian 173rd Armored “Ironbound” and Catachan 351st “Long Blades”. They were
accompanied by four full chapters of Blood Angels Successors and a preceptory of 750 Adeptus
Sororitas sisters. The Sanguine War had begun.

Despite The Sanguine Lords numbers swelling to well over 4,000 battle brothers and their own
Imperial soldiery numbering in the high hundreds of thousands, the chaotic energies of the warp
unleashed by the Great Rift caused too much instability in their gene-seed. Too often did
masterfully executed plans suddenly fail as hundreds of battle brothers suddenly turn on their
allied guardsmen or charge suicidally into enemy fire. Too often did mass drop pod assaults fail
as initial landing zones were cleared and The Sanguine Lords turned upon one another rather
than slaughter the enemy who were only slightly further away.

To their credit, the regiments allied to The Sanguine Lords never wavered in the support of their
demigod overlords, no matter how many of their rank were slaughtered by the blood crazed
Afflicted. However the naval forces of the Sanguine Lords and their allies could not withstand
the array of forces being unleashed against them by the Crusade. One by one the orbital
defenses of each planet in the Skalak system were subdued and the ground forces of the
Crusade dispatched to the surface. Despite Battlefleet Skalak rivaling the Crusade in naval
power, The Sanguine Lords never would risk their fleet in open battle with the Crusade, instead
preferring hit and run strikes, destroying a few warships at a time to try to whittle the Crusade’s
fleet down.

The End of Skalak and the War

Despite Inquisitor Hartman’s naval successes, the ground assaults proved much more difficult.
The civilian population of every planet in the Skalak system took up arms against the Crusade’s
regimental invaders. Vast hordes of raging men women and children would overrun Crusade’s
forces before they could ever establish a foothold. A regiments ammunition would be completely
spent and lines overrun by tens of thousands of fanatics, some armed with not much more than
sticks and rocks as they clambered over their friends and neighbors' las-scorched corpses for
the opportunity to kill the enemies of their lords.

This went on for ears before the Inquisitor realized even if the crusade forces did capture the
planets, the populations had already turned their backs to the emperor and were beyond
redemption. Inquisitor Hartman ordered the immediate Exterminatus of the entire Skalak
System. Trillions burned in the fires of Cyclonic Torpedos or died painfully, violently, in the
gaseous clouds of virus bombs.

Even as the last bombs fell on Skalak Prime, Battlefleet Skalak launched it’s entire fleet in one
suicidal charge to Inquisitor Hartmans Flagship. Terminator Lightning Strikes saw the command
personnel of a hundred battleships slaughtered, as Reivers and Infiltrators set bombs and
primed reactors to overload on hundreds more. Despite devastating losses for Battlefleet
Skalaks suicide run, The flagship, Fist of Skalak, remained unscathed right up until it punched
rammed straight through Hartmans Flagship. The last thing Inquisitor Hartman saw has
Terminator lightning claws burst through his chest from behind was Skalak Prime burning in
exterminatus.

With the Hartman dead, his flagship destroyed, and hundreds of meltabombs detonating and
reactors overloading, the orbit of Skalak Prime looked much like its surface. A burning ruin. The
remnants of the Crusade were subsequently dispatched in hundreds of bloody boarding
assaults, and The Sanguine Lords took what remaining forces they could and departed the
system on warp jump straight into the Great Rift.

Within the Cicatrix Maledictum The Sanguine Lords learned to accept their lineage as World
Eaters. They forsook their loyalist designations and rebranded themselves as the World Eaters
Warband, “The Slaughter Lords”. Eventually they were found by the Bloodthirster Kor’Galath,
fresh from the Escalation War of Kelly’s Redoubt, who turned the Slaughter lords to the worship
of Khorne. Uniting The Slaughter Lords beneath his Banner, they launched bloody assaults on
imperial worlds shrouded by the Great Rift. The Slaughter Lords Chapter master earned
princedom in these battles, and the apothecaries and chaplains learned the way of the
Berzerker-Surgeons. In time the bulk of the remaining battle brothers had accepted the
implantation of the Butcher’s Nails, and donned the wargear of the heretic.

When The Slaughter Lords finally emerged from the madness of the Great Rift, it was in the
vanguard of a strike force under Haarkem Worldclaimer in the Nachmund Gauntlet. Bearing the
symbols and iconography of both the World Eaters and the Chaos God Khorne, and the battle
chant of “Blood! Skulls! Slaughter!”, the Salughter Lords waged war against Imperial, Xenos,
and Civilians alike. For Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it does.
 Battle Records - Selected Engagements
931.M35- <REDACTED>

565.M37-<REDACTED>

<REDACTED> - <REDACTED>

787.M39-<REDACTED>

888.M41-<REDACTED>

~???.M42- Battlefleet Skalak spotted in the vanguard of one of Haarlem Worldclaimer’s strike
forces. The Slaughter Lords and their fleet seem to have committed themselves to the World
Eaters chapter. Wherever they go, carnage and slaughter follows.

Known Chapter Composition and Strength

-300 Traitor Astartes of The Slaughter Lords
-17,000 cult militants and renegade guardsmen
-Unknown numbers of daemonic allies
-Unknown numbers of crew and civilians

-Chapter Barque - Fist of Skalak

-Two Battle Barges
-One Emperor class Battleship - Skalak’s Revenge
-8 Gladius class Frigates
-Variable size flotilla of cult followers’ vessels