Sanguinius

Sanguinius was the primarch of the Blood Angels, the IX Legion of Space Marines, remembered in Imperial tradition as the Great Angel and the Brightest One. His gestation capsule came to rest on the irradiated moon of Baal Secundus, where the tribe known as the People of the Pure Blood raised him. Wings marked him among his brothers; foresight attended him from youth. He led The Blood against the mutant hordes of Baal until the Emperor of Mankind found him at Mount Seraph, accepted an oath to leave the Pure of Baal in peace, and gave him command of the IX Legion, thereafter the Blood Angels.

He spent three years with Horus and the Luna Wolves before meeting his own sons at the Pacification of Teghar Pentaurus, where he swore an oath to the Legion and took the pelt of a carnodon as a war-cloak. On Melchior he and Horus broke the Nephilim, and there Horus learned of the Red Thirst that haunted the Blood Angels’ gene-seed. Sanguinius stood at the Triumph at Ullanor among the primarchs gathered for Horus’s elevation as Warmaster. At the Council of Nikaea he was recorded among those who had earlier proposed Legion Librarius departments with Magnus the Red and Jaghatai Khan, and he attended the Emperor’s judgement that restrained psychic practice in the Legions.

In the Horus Heresy the Warmaster sent him into the Signus Cluster on a false cleansing order. There Ka’Bandha broke his legs and a psychic backlash left him comatose while the Red Thirst erupted among his sons; restored by his Librarians, he banished Ka’Bandha, refused Kyriss the Perverse’s offer to cure the Flaw through self-sacrifice into the Ragefire—Apothecary Meros took that place and became the Red Angel—and slew Kyriss. Guided by the Pharos through the Ruinstorm, he reached Macragge and was named Imperator Regis of Imperium Secundus beside Guilliman and Lion El’Jonson. On Davin, during the attempt to breach the storm, he fought the daemon Madail and accepted his Herald’s place in the portal that opened a path toward Terra. Late to the Beta-Garmon Titandeath with Jaghatai Khan, he led an offensive on Beta-Garmon II and boarded the traitor Imperator Titan Axis Mundi before the loyalists withdrew to the Throneworld.

In the Siege of Terra he held Gorgon Bar with Imperial Fists under Fafnir Rann, felled a Legio Vulpa Warlord Titan, and at the Eternity Gate fought Ka’Bandha again and then Angron, tearing free the Butcher’s Nails and banishing the daemon primarch. Boarding the Vengeful Spirit with the Emperor’s assault, he refused Horus’s offer of Chaos ascendancy and died in single combat with the Warmaster before the Emperor’s final duel. His body was borne back to Baal. Baal Secundus, Signus Prime, Macragge, and Terra mark the principal stages of a career closed by prophecy fulfilled aboard the Warmaster’s flagship.