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| - The Thousand Sons are one of the Traitor Legions of Chaos Space Marines who are sworn solely to the service of Tzeentch, the Chaos God of Change, Intrigue and Sorcery, though they were once the Imperium of Man's XV Legion of Space Marines. The main feature that distinguishes the Thousand Sons from the other Traitor Legions is the sheer number of psyker mutations that have always existed amongst the Space Marines in this Legion. Every current member of the Legion possesses psychic abilities and they prefer to use Chaos Sorcerers and guile in combat, relying on their psychic powers and sorcerous knowledge to earn them victory. As a result of an ancient spell known as the Rubric of Ahriman that was cast soon after the Thousand Sons fell from their homeworld of Prospero during the early days of the Horus Heresy, every Thousand Sons Astartes that lacked psychic powers had his soul fused directly into his Power Armour. The Thousand Sons have become living embodiments of sorcery animated by the power of Chaos and the will of the Lord of Change. The Thousand Sons are the scions of the Primarch Magnus the Red, the copper-skinned cyclops whose thirst for knowledge in all its forms led ultimately to damnation and an eternity of servitude to Tzeentch, the Chaos God known as the Changer of the Ways. When the Primarchs were scattered throughout the galaxy, Magnus found himself coming to rest upon the distant, isolated colony world of Prospero. It was perhaps fortunate that a being that many societies would have denounced as a mutant came to such a place. Prospero's only inhabitants were a population of outcast scholars and mystics, who had long since fled the galaxy at large to establish a refuge where they could practise the arts of the psyker. Raised by such scholars, Magnus learned and mastered every one of their arts, soon surpassing them in every regard. The Primarch turned from pupil to master, his fearsomely powerful mind able to manipulate the raw power of the Warp in ways no others could. By the time the Emperor located His long lost son, Magnus was privy to every secret the libraries of Prospero could offer. He yearned to learn more, and in his sire found the only being with more psychic potential than he. Accepting command of the Space Marine Legion created using his own gene-stock, Magnus took his place in the Great Crusade, and utilised his puissant skills for the good of all Mankind. But all was not well with this state of affairs, for the Imperium had been envisaged as an end to the superstitions that had benighted the isolated worlds of Mankind for so many long millennia. The worship of deities and fallacious spiritual doctrines was denounced by the Emperor's Iterators, who preached a new age of reason fuelled by the potential of humanity itself and the doctrines of the Imperial Truth. Sorcery had no place in such a society, yet was not the Emperor the greatest of all psykers? A great debate raged in the upper echelons of the nascent Imperium, driven by the need to explain and harness the phenomenon of psychic power whilst putting an end to sorcery and superstition. While still comparatively rare, the number of humans being born with latent psychic powers was increasing, though it was nowhere near so prevalent as it is in the late 41st Millennium. The phenomenon proved all but impossible to explain using the empirical reasoning on which the Imperium was being built, and eventually, a great convocation of the highest ranked and wisest counsellors in the Imperium was called. At this Council of Nikaea, those who denounced the use of psychic powers stated their case, the Emperor Himself enthroned in judgement. At length, Magnus came before the council, and gifted as he was of the intellect and charisma of a Primarch, he refuted each of their points. Furthermore, Magnus stated convincingly his belief that no knowledge was in itself forbidden, so long as the scholar used it wisely. Both parties having made their cases and the judgement appearing to hang in the balance, the Emperor made his decision. The pursuit of psychic powers would be severely limited and strictly controlled, and any incarnation of ritual, superstition or incantation outlawed entirely. Magnus was furious, for the Emperor's pronouncement severely curtailed his Legion's activities, and denied them the use of their most potent weapons of war. And so the Great Crusade continued onwards, but it later became apparent that Magnus had not ceased the pursuit of the forbidden arts at all, but rather had continued it beyond the sight of his peers. Most opposed of all his Brother Primarchs was Leman Russ, who regarded any form of guile used to defeat an enemy as a form of cowardice, and even after the pronouncements of Nikaea, a bitter resentment smouldered between the Legions. It was during the opening phase of the Horus Heresy that this resentment exploded into something far worse, with tragic consequences for the Imperium. On the eve of the Warmaster Horus' treachery, Magnus is said to have experienced a vision in which he saw as no others could the full extent of the galactic civil war to come, and the part each Primarch would come to play in it. He saw brother slaying brother and pacts being sealed with unspeakable beings. He saw the Ultramarines being unknowingly steered far beyond any hope of intervening, and worst of all, he saw what fate awaited the Emperor Himself. Yet, the one thing Magnus could not see was his own role in the coming war, but he determined to intervene nonetheless. Magnus knew that in warning his sire of the coming treachery he would be admitting that he had disobeyed the edicts of Nikaea, yet he knew he had no choice. Furthermore, he saw that with events unfolding so fast, the only sure way of warning the Emperor was to project his consciousness across the void, breaching the psychic defences of the Imperial Palace, and to appear before his sire in spirit form. The Primarch of the Thousand Sons issued his warning, but in so doing revealed his crime. To make matters worse, attending the Emperor at that moment was Leman Russ, whose rage at such blatant disobedience was second only to that of the Emperor Himself. In a stroke, Magnus was condemned. The Space Wolves were despatched to Prospero to call the Thousand Sons to account, yet what followed must surely have been far more destructive than any, even Magnus, could have foreseen. The Space Wolves fell upon Prospero as savage barbarians, unleashing their bestial anger on the Thousand Sons and all of their works. The delicate silver towers of the so-called City of Light, Tizca, were cast down as brother fought brother, savage fought scholar and warrior fought mystic. At the height of the destruction, Russ and Magnus met one another in bitter conflict, and ultimately, Russ proved the stronger of the brother Primarchs. Yet, at the very moment of Russ' triumph, Magnus uttered a word of power and caused himself, and the City of Light, to vanish from the surface of Prospero, disappearing into the Warp to reappear later within the depths of the Eye of Terror on what would come to be known as the Planet of the Sorcerers. Given the heritage of their Primarch, it can be no surprise that the Thousand Sons Legion was always prone to mutation. Prior to the Heresy, stringent purity checks and relentless discipline had kept mutation at bay whilst simultaneously developing psychic power. Having steeped themselves in the raw power of Chaos, however, the Thousand Sons fell prey to rampant and uncontrolled mutation, to such an extent that a cabal of the Legion's senior Librarians, led by their chief, Ahriman, determined that something drastic must be done to save the Legion from complete dissolution. With Magnus retired to the highest tower of the City of Light, his mystic, all-seeing gaze cast bitterly upon the dimensions without, Ahriman and his cabal set about enacting a mighty spell that would purge the Legion of mutation and impurity, and leave behind a body of utterly purified warriors. Ahriman cast his rubric, and the skies over the Planet of Sorcerers erupted in an etheric storm of unprecedented proportions. Bolts of power formed from the raw stuff of the Warp arced from the roiling clouds, each striking a Battle-Brother of the Thousand Sons, until all but Magnus in his tower and the cabal of Sorcerers had been scoured by the mighty rubric. But when the storm receded, Ahriman saw the awful truth of what he had wrought. Instead of purging the flesh of ravening mutations, each of the Thousand Sons who lacked psychic power had been transformed. The seals and joints of their Power Armour had been welded shut, and the body within turned to ashes. What remained was a suit of animated armour, devoid of mutation, but of all independent will as well. When Magnus the Red saw what Ahriman had done, he turned his back, ascended his tower and turned his gaze upon the Imperium. In that moment he knew that everything he had ever striven towards was now, quite literally, ashes. Some say that Magnus resides in his Silver Tower still, his baleful gaze sweeping the domains of Mankind in search of the means of enacting his final vengeance. While their Daemon Primarch broods upon the total annihilation of his enemies, the Sorcerers of the Thousand Sons lead their automaton warriors, their Rubricae, the length and breadth of the galaxy, wielding the power of Tzeentch and enacting the schemes of their master upon the Imperium.
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