“We are the dead that march. We are the embers of a fire that will not be snuffed. And when all else is gone, we will remain.”
Of Ash and Iron
In the long shadow of the Long War, there are those who fight not for glory, nor for the madness of the Dark Gods, but because war is all that remains to them. Among the countless warbands and shattered cohorts of the Black Legion, there are those whose loyalty is not to a lord, nor a creed, but only to the bonds of battle-forged brotherhood. Such is the way of Squad Olethros.
Born of the crucible of attrition, the warriors of Olethros are veterans of a thousand campaigns, their forms draped in the ebon plate of the Black Legion yet bearing the scars of past allegiances. The whisper of Iron Warriors lineage lingers in the brutal efficiency of their siegecraft, the cold logic of their tactics, and the unrelenting nature of their assaults. Yet, it is a lineage tempered by time and by the Eye, twisted as all things are within its maddening crucible.
The Last Five
Time and battle have stripped Squad Olethros down to but five. The endless grind of war has worn away at them, leaving behind only the most enduring, those too stubborn to fall, or too cursed to die. Each is a remnant of something greater, yet together they persist.
Of particular note among them is a recent addition—one not of the old Legion, but of the new breed. A warrior born in the nightmare of the Eye itself, wrought not from the genetic stock of a Primarch’s dream but the tortured reality of the Long War. He is a contrast to his kin, a spark of grim enthusiasm in a brotherhood dulled by attrition and duty. Where the others are stone, he is flame. His origins remain a matter of speculation, a favoured gossip subject for members of the Long war. What legion’s seed runs through his veins? What twisted forges gave rise to him? And more pressingly—why does he seem to revel in his service when the rest of Olethros fights out of weary necessity?
