In the days that followed his miraculous recovery on Davin's moon, Horus' officers detected a change in his character. The Warmaster proceeded to use the warrior lodge present in the XVI th Legion to begin to subvert his officers and their Astartes to the service of the Dark Gods and to build support for his plan of rebellion against the Emperor. Yade Durso - Yade Durso served as the second Captain to command the 5 th Company of the Sons of Horus. One avatar of the increasing influence of the Legion's Cthonian brothers was the late reemergence of Cthonian gang-sigils graven into a given Space Marine's armour that recorded his notable kills and deeds, as well as to which company of the Legion they belonged. This was a practice which accelerated rapidly after the XVI th Legion had transitioned into its new identity as the Sons of Horus following the elevation of Horus to the rank of Warmaster. Serghar Targost - Captain of the 7 th Company and the Lodge Master of the Sons of Horus' warrior lodge, the heart of the Legion's growing allegiance to the Chaos Gods. The XVI th Legion's Great Crusade fleet was likewise accorded to be among the greatest under any single commander's flag, with in excess of one hundred capital ships and perhaps three times that figure in smaller Cruisers and Escorts under Horus' direct command. Taking into account likely losses from the ground war that followed the virus-bombing of Isstvan III, and elements of the Sons of Horus Legion not in the Isstvan System at the time, it would follow that Horus began his war of betrayal with around 70,000-110,000 Space Marines of his own Legion at his disposal, with considerable evidence present in Imperial records that the latter figure is the more accurate.

The Luna Wolves were the XVI th Space Marine Legion raised by the Emperor of Mankind on Terra at the dawn of the Great Crusade in the late 30 th Millennium. After the Emperor discovered the Legion's Primarch Horus on the world of Cthonia, and gave him command of the Luna Wolves, Horus went on to lead the XVI th Legion in earning thousands of battle honours over the span of the 200 standard years of the Great Crusade. Pacification of Schravaan (Unknown Date.M30) - This was a joint Imperial Compliance conducted by the Luna Wolves, Iron Warriors, Imperial Fists, and the Emperor's Children Legions against the xenos Badoon on the world of Schravaan. The Iron Warriors won a great victory when they stormed the final refuge of the Badoon. They breached the defences and held while the other Legions carried the city beyond. During the following victory feast, Horus proclaimed Perturabo the greatest master of siege warfare in the Great Crusade. Fulgrim, the primarch of the Emperor's Children then inquired to his brother Dorn whether he thought even the defences of the Imperial Palace could resist the Iron Warriors, in which Dorn replied that he regarded the defences as being proof against any assault if well-planned. Perturabo flew into a rage and unleashed unfounded accusations against his brother. After this the two rarely spoke, and neither Legion would serve again in the same campaign for the remainder of the Great Crusade. Abaddon also concludes that Epimetheus can't be his "erstwhile brother," as he personally saw that Grand Master dead. However, as Loken rejected membership to the Grey Knights, Abaddon was most likely referring to Severian (who became the Grey Knight Grandmaster known as "Iapto"), an old rival from the time of the Luna Wolves. [9] Wargear However, such mutations were seen as a mark of favour from the Chaos Gods and were generally displayed with pride by Sons of Horus Astartes, though it also meant that the Legion would soon no longer be able to produce new Astartes from its own gene-seed to replenish its ranks since the Astartes organs would not properly cultivate or had become so genetically warped as to kill any human male they were implanted within. Cerberus, the name adopted by Loken after the battle of Isstvan III, is the dog who guards the Underworld in classical mythology. Torgaddon joked that it was an appropriate appellation for Loken, the last Luna Wolf standing sentry over the graveyard of Isstvan III. [6]His strength of character was vouched for by Torgaddon and no less a personage than the Primarch of the Imperial Fists, Rogal Dorn, who was said to appreciate Loken's calm attitude. During a brief visit to the Vengeful Spirit, before his Legion's return to Terra, Dorn counseled Loken to always speak his mind as he saw it, advising that his humanity would balance Abaddon's choler and Horus Aximand's "lofty disdain," when the Mournival was advising the Warmaster. [1e] During the Battle of the Whisperhead Mountains on 63-19 Loken witnessed the Daemon Samus possess his comrade Xavyer Jubal, an event which scared him deeply and served as his first exposure to Chaos. [1f] The heart of the Sons of Horus Legion was the company, which served as the Legion's principal military division. Made up of a grouping of squads under the leadership of an officer with the rank of Captain, the company was the base currency of campaigns and battles.

Refusing to believe that Horus, his most beloved and trusted son, would actually betray him, the Emperor instead mistakenly perceived the traitor to the Imperium to be Magnus and his Thousand Sons, who had long suffered from a near-debilitating run of mutations because of the instability of Magnus' own genome and were known to have practiced the sorcery that had been expressly outlawed in the Imperium at the Council of Nikaea several Terran years before. Hastur Sejanus (Deceased) - Sejanus had been the Captain of the 4 th Company and a member of the Mournival during the Great Crusade. Sejanus was sent as an ambassador of the Luna Wolves to greet the leader of the world of 63-19 who styled himself the "Emperor of Mankind" and whose planet had not yet been brought into Imperial Compliance, and was brutally murdered. Horus had loved Sejanus like a son and felt towards him the way he believed that his own father, the Emperor, loved him. Garviel Loken replaced Sejanus on the Mournival following the Imperial Compliance of the world designated 63-19, and which would become known as Heletine. Severian - Severian was an Astartes of the 28 th Company who was incarcerated in the prison of Khangba Marwu on Terra after the outbreak of the Horus Heresy. Severian escaped from the prison along with several other Astartes of the Crusader Host. Severian was last sighted in the Petitioner's City on Terra and his ultimate fate remains unknown. Every member of the Mournival had the helmet of his Power Armour marked with a phase of the moon imprinted on the helmet above the right eye. At the time of Garviel Loken's ascension to the Mournival, Abaddon wore the Full Moon, Aximand the Half Moon, Torgaddon the Gibbous Moon and Loken the New Moon that had also been the phase worn by his predecessor Hastur Sejanus.Iacton Qruze, "The Half-Heard" - Qruze was the Captain of the 3 rd Company, a very old Space Marine who was a native of Cthonia. By the time of the Horus Heresy he was one of the only Cthonian Astartes still serving in the XVI th Legion who remembered what it was like when the Luna Wolves had served only the Emperor before Horus had been rediscovered by his father. Qruze had been a captain of the Luna Wolves since the Legion's inception and was even a veteran of the Unification Wars on Terra. Considered ancient by dint of his length of service to the Legion as well as his continued die-hard loyalty to habits of the Legion from the time of its Terran past that he could not seem to break. Qruze, like most Terran Astartes in the Traitor Legions, remained loyal to the Emperor when his Horus turned to the service of Chaos in pursuit of his own ambitions. Recognising that the Sons of Horus no longer represented the Astartes he had once known, Qruze rescued the civilian Remembrancers Mersadie Oliton and Euphrati Keeler as well as the Senior Iterator Kyril Sindermann from Horus' massacre of civilians on his flagship the Vengeful Spirit and fled with them to the Frigate Eisenstein during the virus-bombing of Isstvan III. During the flight of the Eisenstein to Terra, Qruze formed a firm bond with the former Death Guard Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro, the pair were told by Malcador the Sigillite, the Regent of Terra, that they, along with the Sister of Silence Amendera Kendel, were to form the beginnings of an organisation that would utilise "men and women of an inquisitive nature, hunters who might seek the witch, the traitor, the mutant, the xenos" -- later known as the Imperial Inquisition. The presence of Tactical Squads designed to be held in reserve and unleashed once a weakness in an enemy line had been identified, trained in fire saturation and carrying additional close combat weaponry for use in overrunning enemy positions -- the so-called "Despoiler Squads" -- shows again the dominance of the place of the Tactical Squad in Horus' tactical thinking. Such was the effectiveness of this tactic that its use was copied by several different Legions, such as the White Scars and Iron Warriors, who fielded Despoiler Squads of their own. Following Horus's recovery, Loken was further distanced from the rest of the Son's of Horus following Horus's murder of Emory Salignac, leading to the Auretian Technocracy War which lasted 10 grueling months, with Loken visibly aged from. [2c] Horus, already jealous and resentful of the Emperor, proved all too receptive to the Ruinous Powers' false vision. The Chaos Gods' pact with Horus was simple: "Give us the Emperor and we will give you the galaxy." Driven by his jealousy, desire for power and anger at what he saw as his father's abandonment of him, Horus accepted the Ruinous Powers' offer. The Dark Gods portrayed themselves as victims of the Emperor's psychic might, and claimed falsely that they had no real interest in the happenings of the material world. Magnus the Red, the sorcerous primarch of the Thousand Sons Legion, had also travelled into the Warp via sorcery to try and stop Horus from turning to Chaos. Magnus explained that the Warmaster's vision was only one among many possible futures, but one that Horus alone could prevent.

Compliance of Krypt (Unknown Date.M31) - The Compliance of Krypt was a relatively short campaign conducted during the Great Crusade by both the Luna Wolves and the Death Guard Legions against the Orks upon the frozen plains of the world of Krypt. Fighting together for more than a week across the frozen surface of the planet, the Space Marine Legions turned the blue ice dark with xenos blood. The Luna Wolves’ Captain Garviel Loken and his 10 th Company are known to have fought alongside Death Guard Battle-Captain Nathaniel Garro and his 7 th Great Company at this time. Horus initially declined this honour, not wishing to be set above his brothers, and so his Legion continued as the Luna Wolves for a little while longer. But Horus and the other primarchs never came to terms with the Emperor's absence. Their hurt feelings over his seeming abandonment of the Great Crusade to pursue a secret project whose purpose he chose not to reveal to his sons laid the seeds of jealousy and resentment that would ultimately blossom into the corruption that begat the Horus Heresy.

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The Sons of Horus' defeat at the Battle of Terra and exile to the Eye of Terror was a crushing blow to the collective ego of the Legion. It took all the strength of character of their new commander, Abaddon the Despoiler, to restore the Legion's sense of pride and refocus its Astartes on their ultimate goal -- to destroy everything that the Emperor of Mankind created and raise themselves up as the new rulers of the galaxy in the names of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. The configuration of squad types within a company varied as widely as its strength. Some were comprised almost exclusively of Tactical Squads with a few Support Squads. Others were an eclectic mix based on the varied requirements of different campaigns and the will of Horus. By way of example, the 17 th Company, known as the Hesperus Guard, had a standard strength of 205 Space Marines at the time of the virus-bombing of Isstvan III. Even Horus, a generalist and a pragmatist, upon being given command of his Legion is thought to have adopted new squad formations after having seen their effectiveness in other Legions. For example, it is noticeable that until the Lactrical Onslaught the number of Storm Shield-equipped Breacher Squads was relatively low in the XVI th Legion. The contributions of such units amongst the forces of the Imperial Fists cannot have escaped his notice. After Horus' corruption by the Ruinous Powers of Chaos following his healing by the Chaos Cultists of the Serpent Lodge on Davin's moon, the Mournival became divided. Abaddon and Horus Aximand gave themselves over completely to their beloved leader and chose to follow him into the worship of the Chaos Gods, while Torgaddon and Loken remained loyal to the Emperor of Mankind.

The terrible galactic civil war that followed and lasted for 7 Terran years of genocidal death and destruction on a scale never before witnessed by Mankind, called the Horus Heresy by later generations, was the most terrible conflict in the history of the Imperium, and came close to shattering it forever. Horus and his Traitor Legions moved relentlessly towards Terra, determined to throw down the Emperor once and for all. Dawnstar (Strike Cruiser, Unknown Class) - Part of a triumvirate of vessels commissioned by Roboute Guilliman to the shipwrights of Armatura as a gift for his brother Horus, the Dawnstar and her sister-ships, the Spear Strike and the Wolf of Cthonia, were sleek and swift hunters. They were charged to hunt down the Iron Hands survivor-group known as the Ignarak. The Dawnstar would later be destroyed by the Oathbound, an Imperial Fists vessel, which fired her torpedoes and breached the Dawnstar's plasma reactors. While en route to the Thousand Sons Legion's homeworld of Prospero, Horus convinced Russ, who had always been repelled by Magnus' reliance on psychic powers, to launch a full assault on Prospero instead, even though Magnus had been entirely willing to face the Emperor's judgment once he realised he was being manipulated by the entities that called the Immaterium home. Leman Russ was convinced by the Warmaster to become Magnus' executioner rather than his gaoler. The result was the campaign remembered as the Fall of Prospero. Whatever its origins, the primary duty of the Mournival was to advise Horus in all aspects of strategy, tactics, diplomacy and all other matters that concerned the Warmaster or the Luna Wolves Legion. The Mournival could be used to serve Horus' political needs at times when he dealt with the other Primarchs or other Imperial organisations like the Imperial Army, various Imperial Planetary Governors, the Council of Terra and the Mechanicum. The Mournival was the advisory war council of four Space Marine Captains of the Luna Wolves Space Marine Legion that served their Primarch and Warmaster Horus as advisers and close companions throughout the Great Crusade until the start of the Horus Heresy.As the Imperial Warmaster, Horus took over command of the Great Crusade, and accepted his new duties with earnest dedication. However, there was much dissension in the ranks of the primarchs and other parties in the Imperium over the Emperor's decision to withdraw from the campaign and return to Terra as well as to reorganise the political administration of the Imperium under the control of a Council of Terra headed by His regent, Malcador the Sigillite. Only a handful of the primarchs, amongst them a scheming Lorgar, remained steadfast beside the Warmaster during this period of conflict.