When Horus fell and his Legion crumbled into infighting and despair, it was Abaddon who dragged the survivors from ruin. He renamed them the Black Legion, burning away the memory of the Warmaster's failure and forging a new identity from spite and ambition. Their black plate bears no single god's mark, for the Black Legion worships Chaos Undivided, courting the favour of all four powers at once.
Unlike the insular legions that hoard their strength in the Eye of Terror, the Black Legion actively recruits, absorbing lesser warbands, fallen Chapters and freelance renegades into its swelling ranks. This makes it not merely a legion but a movement, a rallying point for every warrior who dreams of seeing Terra burn.
Abaddon has hurled the Black Legion at the Imperium in crusade after crusade, culminating in the assault that finally broke the Cadian Gate and tore the galaxy asunder. In the age of the Great Rift, the Black Legion stands as the spearpoint of Chaos, its numbers beyond counting and its ambition without limit.
Order of battle
The Black Legion field the units of the Chaos Space Marines, a detachment from the roster:
Other Chaos Space Marines formations
Alpha LegionThe Twentieth Legion are the great deceivers of the Long War, a serpentine brotherhood that fights not with open battle-lines but with lies, infiltration, and a thousand hidden hands. Where other Traitor Legions announce themselves in fire, the Alpha Legion unravels worlds from within, working through sedition, sabotage, and mortal proxies long before a single bolter is raised. Their warriors share a single defiant claim, that any one of them may be the primarch Alpharius, and so no enemy can ever be certain whom they truly face.
Crimson SlaughterThe Crimson Slaughter were once the Crimson Sabres, a rigidly disciplined Space Marine Chapter whose savagery on the world of Umidia drew the curse of Khorne upon them. Ever since, they have been haunted by the spectral voices of those they slew, a chorus of the murdered that no prayer can silence. Only in ceaseless bloodletting do the ghosts recede, and so the warband slaughters without end, dragging its damnation across the stars in a futile search for a moment's peace.
Iron WarriorsThe Iron Warriors are the master siege-breakers of Chaos, grim and pitiless engineers of destruction who reduce fortress worlds to rubble through overwhelming firepower and cold calculation. Once the Imperium's foremost specialists in siegecraft, they nursed a bitter resentment at being spent as siege-fodder while glory fell to others. That resentment curdled into treachery. Today they wage war as a science, favouring artillery, armour and attrition, and they take a grim satisfaction in proving that no wall, no matter how mighty, can stand against them forever.
Night LordsThe Night Lords are the terror-mongers of the Traitor Legions, waging psychological warfare with the same ruthlessness other legions bring to open battle. They strike from darkness in screaming lightning-marked craft, mutilating captives, broadcasting the screams of the dying, and leaving atrocities designed to shatter the courage of the living. To the Night Lords, fear is a weapon sharper than any blade, and a world paralysed by dread is a world already conquered. They fight not for the Dark Gods but for spite, survival and the sheer pleasure of the hunt.
Red CorsairsThe Red Corsairs are the largest renegade warband in the galaxy, a pirate empire that rules the warp-torn depths of the Maelstrom under the iron hand of Huron Blackheart. They are no ancient Traitor Legion but a wound torn open within living memory, born from the ruin of the Astral Claws Chapter after the fratricidal Badab War. Where insular Legions dwindle with the centuries, the Corsairs only grow, swelling their host with every raid, every renegade, and every captive broken and remade in Chaos.
The PurgeThe Purge are nihilist worshippers of Nurgle who cleave to only the darkest facet of the Plague God, despising life in all its forms and seeking not rebirth but annihilation. First appearing in the closing centuries of the 36th Millennium, they became convinced that the galaxy is beyond all saving and that purity can be found only in the sterile silence of death. Wielding poisons and engineered contagions, they wage genocidal war on human and xenos alike, praying for a plague that will scour every living thing from creation.
Word BearersThe Word Bearers are the zealots and prophets of Chaos, the first Legion to bend the knee to the Ruinous Powers and the architects of the entire Horus Heresy. Where other traitors war for vengeance or plunder, the Word Bearers war for faith, spreading the gospel of the Dark Gods across the galaxy with fire, scripture and sacrifice. Their Dark Apostles preach damnation to the masses and summon daemons to fight at their side, and they regard the destruction of the Emperor's atheist Imperium not merely as war but as a holy crusade of conversion.
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