Night Lords

Tsagualsa — The Screaming Gallery, Kyroptera & Nostraman Tarot

Before Konrad Curze ('The Night Haunter') was discovered on the pitch-black, crime-ridden mining world of Nostramo, the Terran VIII Legion was recruited from the subterranean 'sink-prisons' of Terra—children born in total darkness inside subterranean penal caverns who had never seen the sun and served as the Emperor's merciless judicial enforcers.

On Nostramo, Curze established peace through absolute terror: flaying criminals alive and broadcasting their screams until crime dropped to zero. Yet as soon as Curze left to lead the Great Crusade, Nostramo's corrupt noble syndicates ('Skraivok's ilk') Stopped sending their finest youths as recruits and instead emptied the planet's rape-gangs and murder-prisons into the VIII Legion's gene-seed vats—filling the Night Lords with cowards and sadists whom Curze despised so deeply that he blew Nostramo up from orbit, and eventually allowed Callidus Assassin M'Shen to behead him on Tsagualsa purely to prove that his darkest prophetic visions were immutable.

Sub-Factions, Secret Orders & Classified Relics

• The Atramentar & The Kyroptera — The 1st Company Terminator elite (marked by the Nostraman lion shoulder guard) and the council of seven Senior Captains who advised Curze.
• First Claw (10th Company 'Exalted' Warband) — The legendary ragged squad led by Prophet Talos Valcoran ('The Soul Hunter') and later Decimus aboard the strike cruiser 'Covenant of Blood' and 'Echo of Damnation'.
• Krieg Acerbus (The Axe-Master) & Zso Sahaal (The Talon Master) — Rival warlords of the shattered VIII Legion: Acerbus is the largest Daemon Prince of the VIII Legion, while First Captain Sahaal spent 10,000 years trapped in warp-stasis hunting the 'Corona Nox'.