Alastor Rushal

Alastor Rushal is recorded as a captain of the Night Lords Legion who served among its commanders during the Thramas Crusade of the Horus Heresy. He belonged to the VIIIth Legion under its primarch, Konrad Curze, and is one of several company captains named alongside First Captain Jago Sevatarion in accounts of the campaign.

The Thramas Crusade (007–009.M31) followed the Isstvan V Dropsite Massacre. Horus Lupercal directed the Night Lords against the Imperial holdings of the Aegis Sub-sector in the Eastern Fringe, chiefly to protect his flank and to delay the Dark Angels from reaching Terra. Rushal appears in the roll of Night Lords captains who took part in this campaign, together with officers such as Var Jahan, Malithos Kuln, Cel Herec, Kheron Ophion and Tovak Tor. The surviving record attributes to him no separate command, engagement or personal feud, and his origins, his rank before the Heresy and his relationship with Curze are not established. Accounts that link him to the Raven Guard are not confirmed here.

Rushal is significant mainly as evidence of the Legion’s captaincy during the campaign that broke the Night Lords as a unified force. Its losses included the destruction of the 1st Company and the capture of Sevatarion by the Dark Angels, and Curze himself was afterwards reported missing. Nothing is recorded of Rushal’s fate after the campaign, so his status is given as unknown. His contemporaries include Curze and Sevatarion on the Traitor side and, among the Loyalists, the Dark Angels under Lion El’Jonson, who were held in the east while the Siege of Terra began.