Rictor Grell

Rictor Grell stood on the forest edge looking down on what was left of Vastall. Burnt habs in various stages of ruin, fire still raged in most of the city pushing back the shadows of night. Twisted metal hulks of machinery and vehicles were scattered throughout the the rubble of the razed city. Grell had been tracking a squad of gene fail traitors for the past forty hours and it looks like they had returned to their hole. He had no idea how long the warband had been here but it appeared they were the ones that had caused the destruction below. Human remains could be seen impaled on spikes though out the town. They were in various stages of decomposition but all were terrible and all were missing their heads. He snorted and shook his head, “skulls for the skull throne” he thought. How far you have sank, look at what you have become.

Like him they were once War Hounds, Legion of the Emperor without a Primarch. The day their Primogenitor was found was supposed to be a great day for the chapter. But for some it was a curse, Angron was little more than a bloodthirsty beast. His first act as their leader was killing many of their respected brothers, brothers that were in effect his sons. After realizing what it meant to be a Primarch and their leader he renamed them World Eaters. That was the least of the insults they would endure, he also wanted them to get the same psycho implants he was forced to receive. Some such as Kharn saw those as a blessing but many saw them for what they were, a curse. Devolving them into base killing machines like Angron. A group of high level hounds falsified the reports of the implant insertion and reorganized companies to group up like minded individuals. This was a boon up until Isstvan III when most of those that apposed Angron's beliefs were sent to die. Phor Grell, a first loyal was one of them and he was sent down to be eliminated. But the traitors underestimated the loyalists resolve and paid a heavy toll.

Rictor tried to shake off old memories, they were his and also not his, and sometimes it could be difficult. He was coming up on his seven hundredth year of life but his gene-seed’s life was much older. He was lucky enough to receive the gene-seed of the first loyal Phor Grell, one of those that stayed true to the Emperor and preferred death to betrayal. The honored dead of Isstvan III. An underground facility was discovered below the Governoral palace and the Apothecaries cobbled together a storage system to perserve gene-seed. Every bit of gene material that could be retrieved was extracted and stored, if they would escape this world it would be needed to rebuild. Before the final bombardment many took refuge in the facility to wait out the armageddon. It was there one hundred meters underground that the Dusk Wolves were born. In the future when a brother’s service ended and he joined the Emperor in death his gene-seed would be passed on. The inheritor would take his benefactors surname his mantle as well as his genetic materials. Like many chapters their gene-seed did suffer some mutation, the sense of betrayal and the strife of brother battling brother emanates through them and stored memories and feelings of past inheritors are passed on. The living breathing brother is an amalgam of all those that have passed before starting with the first.

Rictor shook himself free of the past, now was not the time. He had work to do, vengeance to reap. Again he looked down on Vastall and spotted movement. Three forms moved in front of a raging fire on the edge of town, Rictor’s optics zoomed in and enhanced. One of the forms had moved off but the other two were pulling skulls from a pile of ravaged bodies. “Move in, leaving none alive. End their future, no gene-seed survives.” he radioed to the other Wolves in the woods. He didn’t wait for a response, there was none needed.  He sprang from the cover of the forest storming toward the ruined town, Terminator armour was larger than power armour and normally encumbered its wearer. Not Grell, he was one with his armour and he bore down on the two figures at breakneck speed. He wasn’t slowed but he couldn’t stop the sound of his heavy boots thundering over the ground. With an electric crackle his lightning claws blazed into life emanating a red ruddy glow. His quarry turned as he approached their chainaxes and pistols already in hand. No matter how far they had sunk into depravity they were still Space Marines and they were ready.  But ready or not, they were going to die. Nothing could stop that now.

Since being sick I haven't had the energy to get much done at the table to I worked a bit more on the Dusk Wolve backstory. Here's a little run down of Emperor's Guard (counts as Wolf Guard).