The Thirteenth Talon
The Thirteenth Talon is a Night Lords chaos space marine warband under the command of Icarael Țepeș. Formed from astartes that once comprised the Eighth Legion's thirteenth company, the warband consists of several formations of traitor marines along with limited support units such as armour and strike craft. While the warband used to have capital class vessels and a feared fleet, they are now reduced to a wolfpack of numerous escort sized ships of varying pattern and function following a disastrous naval action that led the Imperium of Man to (erroneously) declare them killed in action. The warband has since been focused on rebuilding their former strength, and have met with recent success in several notable actions.
The warband has recently been involved in several wars across the Eridani Sector - from the Raid on Lachesis to several pirate actions, most notably an attack on Edrastan that culminated in the abduction of many slaves, including children of the right age for gene-seed implantation. Inquisitorial agents within Eridani consider the warband a dangerous threat, and have allocated resources towards their tracking and destruction. To date, these efforts have been futile; Icarael has proven himself a cunning strategist, able to keep ahead of Imperial retribution at every step. Privately those same inquisitors breathe sighs of relief that the Thirteenth Talon are a minor warband, limited in means: Their projections of what a commander like Icarael might be capable of with a full war host at his behest are not comforting reading.
Warband Origins
The Night Lords 13th Company (or "Talon" as the Legion refers to them) are veterans of the Long War against the Emperor and the Imperium of Man. Though they have since recruited several generations of warriors, a core remains of astartes that remember the tumultuous events of the Horus Heresy, the Thramas Campaign against the Dark Angels, and the bloody empire the Eighth Legion carved out of the galaxy's eastern fringe before the death of their primarch father, Konrad Curze.
While by conventional timekeeping these astartes are unimaginably ancient, they have spent long enough in the warp (either in transit or in hiding) that they have experienced the same phenomenon as many other traitor legion warbands: For them far less time has passed, they have viewed the Imperium only in snapshots over the last 10 millennia. The 13th Talon themselves are generally uninterested in how long it's been for them personally since the Heresy, occupied as they are with the prosecution of the Long War - it is the timeline of their enemy that is relevant.
Like many Night Lords warbands, the 13th Talon broke formal ties with the rest of their Legion long ago. The Night Lords were splintering before Curze's death, and when it came, followed shortly after by Guilliman and his Primogenitors, there were too few bonds of brotherhood left. The 13th left Tsagualsa when the void battle turned against the Night Lords, preserving the bulk of their naval might under the rationale that the elements of the Legion that survived (for the vast majority of the Night Lords either escaped Tsagualsa or had left before the Primogenitors arrived) would require a strong fleet if their intent was to continue to take the fight to the Imperium. As it was, the Legion never reformed, and degenerated into countless individual warbands. This left the 13th Talon, under the command of Captain Icarael Țepeș, as a warband with uncommon naval muscle.
Fortunately for the Imperium the sensibilities of their captain kept the warband from ever deploying this fleet en masse offensively. Icarael was a warrior who had always been at odds with his primarch, as Curze had grown to hate his Night Lords since the Legion had been tainted by the recruitment of criminals and gangsters. Icarael, a member of the Legion's later cohorts, argued that although his fellow recruits were undoubtedly monsters, they were still fundamentally brothers - and that bond meant something in a warrior society where they all had risen up from horrendous adversity to achieve initiation into the brotherhood. He suffered for refusing to write off his brothers while his father was alive, and lived up to his belief when freed of all other obligations. Using the 13th Talon as a relief force Icarael went on campaign across the galaxy, saving other Night Lords warbands no matter how depraved or monstrous their actions. Often this strategy demanded a price in brothers or ships, and Icarael paid it willingly - he would always calculate to ensure he was keeping more of the Legion alive than he was consigning to death, and won several friendships with warbands that would otherwise have been rivals, but over time their continued self sacrifice took its toll.
The warband slowly lost its naval power throughout countless campaigns, until finally what was left of a once mighty fleet was ambushed by a canny Imperial Admiral: A single Devastation class cruiser, the Revenant, and its attendant escorts. Forced to jump the ship while under heavy fire and without the proper preparations, the Revenant's engines exploded during their escape into the warp. The strength of this blast disabled the surviving Imperial vessels, and it was determined that no ship could have survived such a calamity. The 13th Talon were declared destroyed by the Imperium, the various atrocities that had been attributed to them over the centuries considered avenged.
The Revenant survived however, and aboard it so too did the 13th. Emerging from the warp some time later, little better than a drifting hulk, Icarael had the remains of the vessel hidden in dark space - and then used it to refit the remains of his fleet (a handful of escorts) for astartes use. Orienting themselves revealed that they had translated just beyond the borders of the Eridani Sector; a quiet region with little to show for itself, beyond a fledgling chapter of astartes and a rich history full of mysteries. It was the perfect place, Icarael thought, to finally rebuild the 13th Talon.
Destabilising Eridani
Icarael emerged from hiding after spending much of the year or so since his escape from the Cobalt Scions post-Lachesis campaign taking brutal control of a number of the pirate factions native to Eridani. While not every pirate in the sector flies the colours of the Eighth Legion, enough have sworn themselves to his cause to ensure a steady supply of manpower and resources, including the children needed to begin the laborious process of replenishing astartes numbers - though doing so was a lengthy process requiring a return to the derelict corpse of their strike cruiser, the Revenant’s previous form, and turning it from a hollowed out shell into a semi-functional base of operations. Securely hidden in the dark space beyond the borders of Eridani, the derelict ship represented a refuge from the sector’s defenders, a refuge that also happened to contain a wealth of assets Icarael had previously not had the ability to reliably deploy or maintain, such as suits of tactical dreadnought armour, land raiders, ancient patterns of armoured vehicles... And the Venerable Leviathan Dreadnought, Molossus.
Given this newfound strength, Icarael began tentatively considering his first offensive moves in the sector. Since Lachesis Icarael’s forces were largely concerned with replenishment, taking easy, anonymous prizes for their resources while maintaining the low profile necessary to keep away from Imperial retribution. This culminated in a distraction raid on Edrastan, selected for its inability to easily call for aid, in which the world’s Imperial defenders were scattered completely and the population subjected to brutal treatment as Icarael allowed the worst within his legion to run amok, providing ample cover for his mortal forces to strip the planet’s settlements of any useful resources. Raw materials, refined fuel, slaves, even children were taken to fuel the 13th Talon’s war machine. By the time the Cobalt Scions arrived in the system the Night Lords had already departed, leaving a shattered and traumatised populace in their wake.
Warband Assets
The 13th Talon are comprised of a number of formations of traitor astartes including veterans and a sizeable raptor cult, along with the limited selection of support units (such as armoured transports and drop pods) that they could transfer from their derelict strike cruiser to their surviving escorts. The corpse of their capital ship is well hidden in the dark space beyond the limits of Eridani, and while it requires extensive repairs it could theoretically be made whole again through the application of enough stolen parts and slaves. The original handful of escorts they controlled have since been supplemented by others, recent captures from within Eridani at moments when the 13th were sure they would not draw attention to themselves.
In addition to their surviving ships and ground forces, the 13th Talon have also spent the year or so they have been in hiding within Eridani gathering intelligence on the various active Imperial factions including both the Cobalt Scions and Black Templars, as well as Battlefleet Eridani. They have focused their attention on the naval powers of the subsector, both because these forces are the most likely to discover them or chance across a raid in progress, and because their ships represent a rich source of useful parts with which the 13th could repair their crippled strike cruiser.
Known Ships
The Revenant
The Revenant is Icarael's modified Tempest class Strike Frigate and the current flagship of his "fleet". Retrofitted using components from the corpse of his previous vessel it trades much of the cargo space Typical to a Tempest class frigate for increased hangar space and a clutch of drop pod launch bays, along with the small teleportarium the ship already possessed. The limitations of the ship being an escort are clear from the inside - The Revenant is uncharacteristically lacking in cavernous holds and redundant space so common on imperial ships. She has been turned into a lean, utilitarian hunter. The vessel includes the old capital ship's transponder (and machine spirit core), both as a statement to the Imperium and because said machine spirit is particularly old, cruel and dark, and Icarael found that he was able to bond well with it. The vessel has had much of its cargo space filled with secondary systems and components, including a small clutch of drop pod bays and hangar space for a pair of thunderhawks. While this sacrifices almost all of the ship's bulk cargo carrying capacity, the Revenant's newest incarnation is perfectly suited to the deployment and support of small scale operations. What happens to this particular vessel, should the now nameless cruiser corpse in dark space once again be made whole, is unclear - however the foul spirit that is the Revenant’s soul hungers for its old shell.
As to the Revenant’s origins, the ship’s unique signature matches almost exactly that of the Inevitable Dawn, an escort of Battlefleet Cadia thought lost in the warp almost a century ago.
Mortal Followers
The escort flotilla that the Thirteenth now call home is comprised of ships that have been captured from either the Imperial Navy or other unsuspecting human groups. The humans that crew these vessels, be they former Imperials or lifelong outlaws, have all sworn their allegiance to the Eighth Legion on pain of a most gruesome death. Most of the vessels in the flotilla are crewed entirely by mortals, with only the Revenant and the escort carrier Katarn's Pride boasting a permanent astartes presence. These mortal crews have become accustomed to a great deal of free reign in the running of their ships, even to the point of running and expanding their own pirate operations - it suits the Night Lords to have their influence indirectly spread in this way, and as sad as it is for them to admit they badly need the assistance of their mortal followers given the current state of their forces.