Loyalty Is Its Own Reward (Grimdark WIP) (Patreon)

Hello!

Another update is here!  This time, I'll be covering one of the greatest servants of the Emperor.  I'll also explain why it ultimately pays off to be loyal to Big E. 👍

First off, Nathaniel Garro is old school.  He was one of the Terran born Astartes who were part of the 14th Legion before they were Death Guard (known as the Dusk Raiders before Mortarion was rediscovered).  As Battle-Captain of the 7th Great Company, Garro was actually crusading while many of the Primarchs were rediscovered and one of the very few original Terrans within the Death Guard by the time the Horus Heresy started.  His rank gives him the privilege of wearing the eagle on his chest, a mark of distinction handed to a XIVth Legion officer by the Emperor Himself.

When Mortarion was rediscovered, he remoulded the 14th Legion to Barbarus' traditions, filling the ranks from his own homeworld's stock instead of Terra.  But due to his long and successful career, Mortarion respected Garro and allowed the 7th Captain to keep his rank and archaic ways.  He even looked the other way when Garro wouldn't adopt a lot of the new Legion practices like the warrior lodges.

When the Heresy kicks off, Garro is in a unique position.  He was onboard a ship called the Eisenstein when his buddy Saul Tarvitz informs him of all the Heresy going down on Isstvan III.  Garro promptly commandeers the ship and makes a beeline for the warp to warn Terra of the treachery.  The traitors (and Nurgle) do everything to try and stop him during transit but he manages get 70 loyalist Death Guard out alive and through some miracles gets the attention of Dorn and the Imperial Fists with a McGuyver warp beacon.  Garro tells Dorn of Horus' treachery but the Praetorian flat out refuses to believe it.  He even smacks Garro around and prepares to execute the Battle-Captain for besmirching Horus' honour until Dorn is shown irrefutable proof of the Heresy.  Rogal Dorn accepts the reality of the situation and takes Garro back to Terra where he meets Malcador the Sigillite.

This is where Garro's contribution to the Imperium becomes vital.  For his unwavering loyalty, Malcador designates Garro as Agent Primus (for his pseudo Inquistion) and tasks him to go around the galaxy to fetch different individuals who will be key to humanity's survival.  These range from Space Marines from various Legions (including traitor ones) like Garviel Loken and people who will eventually help form the actual Inquisition.  Some of the Space Marines he recovers will even become the first Grey Knight Grandmasters.

Around this time, Garro starts to come around to the idea that the Emperor is the one true god of humanity.  Because during the Great Crusade, the Imperium was always trying to push the secular ideology of the Imperial Truth which basically means you should only trust in science.  But after Daemons and weird shit started popping up that science couldn't explain, it was really hard to keep propping this idea up.  So people started turning to the Lectitio Divinitatus written by Lorgar Aurelian that insisted the Emperor was a god (even though Big E denied this from day one but that's a can of worms for another day).  Garro comes across a copy of the Lectitio Divinitatus from his Housecarl Kaleb Arin and becomes one of the first Loyalist Space Marines to believe in this ideology.

I'll cover what Garro's final fate in next month's Mortarion post but for now I'll just say that Nathaniel Garro embodies the true spirit of the Death Guard.  He showed true resilience to the poisons of the warp and stayed true to his convictions while the rest of his traitor Legion withered and fell into the clutches of Nurgle.  In some ways, he has more constitution than his own Primarch, something that really grinds Mortarion's gears, let me tell you that.  Like Loken, the loyalists hold Nathaniel Garro in the highest esteem and for his contributions in the Horus Heresy, he is remembered as the first Martyr of the Imperial Church.

Which brings me neatly to the next topic in this post.  So, do you ever wonder what happens to Space Marines when they die?  Well, if you're of the Chaos variety, you can look forward to a wide selection of creative torments or become a plaything for Daemons.  Even if you somehow roll a natural 20 and become a Daemon Prince, you are merely an extension of your patron Chaos God and lack any free will.  But if you lived and died for the Emperor something special happens.  While this has never been 100% confirmed, there is strong evidence that the Legion of the Damned are deceased loyalists that appear in realspace to help their fleshy counterparts when all hope is lost.  So you can kind of think of them as the warp opposites of Daemons.  At first, this was only seemed to be loyalist elements of the Fire Hawks chapter but a lot of stories push the idea that any loyal Space Marine will be inducted into the Legion of the Damned.  I can cite at least one character who falls into this category.  Even a Primarch has been known to show up in the ghost army.

Anyways, the Legion of the Damned are the cheese to end all cheeses.  They will steamroll anything they come across, turning certain defeat to miracle victory.  One of their most famous interventions was at The Defence of Certus Minor.  The Excoriators were getting their shit kicked in by a Khorne Blood Crusade but the Legion shows up and crushes an unending tide of traitors and Daemons with their plot armour.  And while you are probably screaming how cheesy this all sounds, the Legion of the Damned only show up in very rare occasions and only when a mission is so important it cannot fail.  But when it does happen, the enemy should just give up because they'll just embarrass themselves trying to fight Emperor grade cheese.  The Chaos Gods are all freaking out because they know Big E's ghost army grows as time goes on and they have nothing to counter them when the Great Spanking goes down.  What's Abaddon going to do, get his stooges to throw his arms at them? 😄

The Lion once told Konrad Curze that loyalty is its own reward (hence the title).  He definitely didn't realize how right he actually was.  To top it off, the Legion of the Damned has one of the most badass 40K quotes: In Dedicato Imperatum Ultra Articulo Mortis ("For the Emperor beyond the point of death").

Okay, next up are poses and Trazyn's museum.  I should probably explain how that's going to work.  The Great Necron Troll basically goes around the galaxy and captures items/people of historical interest with Poké Balls then preserves them into his museum in stasis pods.  He has done this for thousands of years so his museum might as well be infinite (haha, get it?  Okay, that's not really where his nickname comes from.) I will provide a tileset of items that community members can use to create their own museum (such as walls, floors, and stasis pods of various sizes you can add stuff to).  I will also include some more famous items that are part of his collection.  Here's an example:

So stay tuned for more pose updates and exhibit examples!  The Fantasy poll will also be up in about a week.  Please have your suggestions in before then.  Thanks!