Crusade Force Name: Zagon Sulica
Space Marine Chapter: Dusk Knights
Successor of: Dark Angels
Founding: XIXth
Chapter Master: Yevan Tretan
Homeworld: Auscalis Prime
Fortress Monastery: Monastyr Traur

Allegiance: Imperium of Man

The Dusk Knights are a successor chapter of the Dark Angels (although their exact progenitor chapter is conjectured), initially drafted during the XIXth, founded to patrol the vast and dangerous expanses at the edge of Ultima Segmentum. For centuries, these Astartes hunted for heretic, xenos and more mysterious targets, far from the gaze of most Imperial authorities.

The events of Noctis Aeterna rent apart the Imperium as well as the Dusk Knights themselves. Caught in a succession of warp storms, their voidships assailed on all sides by horrors from beyond the Veil, be they traitors or worse, the Chapter suffered a succession of crushing defeats, losing all but their Battle Barge and a few hundred battle brothers. By some yet unrecorded miracle, they escaped, only to crash among the dark forests and marshes of Auscalis Prime.

Unfavourably close to the Great Rift, the planet presented an alluring target to several renegade or traitor warbands. Master Tretan of the Moon Host (the heavily motorised 2nd Company of the Dusk Knights) and one of the scant surviving higher officers, decided to stand and fight, determined to defend as much the Emperor’s Domain as he could. Desperately outnumbered and outgunned, Tretan eschewed the traditionally direct and brutal doctrines of his chapter: enemy patrols were ambushed, their camps were silenced in the dead of night, their storage dumps cindered to ashes following sudden blazes. When confronted, the Dusk Knights would hold off the main hostile element with what remained of their Terminator and armoured complement, while lighter troops manoeuvred to outflank and destroy.

Not all action in war is successful however, and even victory is bitter. The months of an unfair campaign whittled down the surviving Astartes to but a few dozen battle brothers, mostly from the Veteran First and Second Companies. Only the fortuitous arrival of a Torchbearer fleet, with its host of Primaris reinforcements, saved the Chapter from certain extinction. Over the following decades, the Dusk Knights slowly rebuilt. Raised to the position of Warden of Auscalis and its sector, Hospodar (Chapter Master) Tretan works to his best ability to mend the rift between his Firstborn veterans and the newcomer Primaris.

The surviving Old Guard laments the departure from their ancient void-linked traditions, the adoption of Auscalis’ customs (most notably the paralleling of the planet’s widespread austere monastic culture) and the new preponderance of brothers tainted by Cawl’s heretical experiments.
Yet, its days are numbered: whether through attrition or surviving the Rubicon (as Tretan did), their numbers ever dwindle. The Dusk Knights of Era Indomitus go to war most gladly clad in Phobos and Gravis Mark X, emulating the tactics that kept their chapter alive over the darkest hour. In due time, a chosen few will learn of the dark secrets of their gene-line, and their own Chapter.

Zagon Sulica in the Auril Sector

Zagon Sulica slipped into the Auril Sector, undetected to the best of their knowledge, a few months ago. The small force arrays only a few squads pulled from the 3rd and 7th Sotnyas (Companies), tasked by Hospodar Tretan with but a simple objective: identify the battered remains of one their voidships lost during Noctis Aeterna, and retrieve any artefacts of interest or power that may be found within its husk.

However, this is only the first of the Hospodar’s behests. The second, privy only to the force overall commander, Setnik (Captain) Tymon and to the Librarian Mizko, is to assess and erase any logs and records of the vessels last moments. Should anyone have tampered or previously retrieved these, they are to deal with the interlopers accordingly. Tretan did not elaborate on the why of this mysterious assignment, and both Tymon and Mizko know better than to enquire further. For every Son of the Lion, loyalty is its own reward.