Thousand Sons

Warhammer 40,000 Thousand Sons News, Reviews, Editorials & Unboxings.

The Thousand Sons are a faction from UK-Based Games Workshop's Tabletop Wargame Warhammer 40,000. The Thousand Sons were the XV Legion of the original twenty Space Marine Legions. Their Primarch is Magnus, often called Magnus the Red. The Legion turned traitor during the Horus Heresy, after which it relocated to Sortiarius, the Planet of Sorcerers, in the Eye of Terror, and dedicated itself to the Chaos God of change, sorcery and magic, Tzeentch.

The homeworld of the Thousand Sons was Prospero, a world populated by a small commune of outcast psykers. Once a world of great beauty, it was attacked by Imperial forces led by the Space Wolves, utilising planet-busting weapons during the Battle of Prospero, with the result that it became a blasted ruin, declared Purgatus by the Inquisition.

Magnus was unquestionably the most profoundly mutated of the Emperor's Primarchs, both physically and psychically, and the Legion imprinted with his geneseed reflected that with a high percentage of Thousand Sons manifesting some level of psychic ability. Unfortunately the legacy of Magnus also brought with it a curse; a debilitating flaw in the geneseed known to the Thousand Sons as the Flesh Change (also Flesh change, Flesh-change), a degeneration - sometimes sudden and extreme - into mindless, mutated, monstrosities.

For the Thousand Sons, knowledge is power, and the most knowledgable the most powerful. Arising from the origins of their first recruits and being driven by the early legion's need to discover a cure for the flesh-change and gain deeper understanding and control of their psychic abilities, these linked beliefs resulted in two major cultural factors developing in the Thousand Sons; veneration of the text and veneration of their Primarch. As a result, the Thousand Sons, while sworn to the Emperor and the Imperium in word and duty, found that at the moment of testing during the Horus Heresy, their loyalty to their primarch and their desire to preserve their acquired knowledge was enough to lead them down the path of damnation.

Once the Thousand Sons had retreated back to the Planet of Sorcerers within the Eye of Terror members of the legion began to suffer the flesh-change en masse. Ahriman, once Chief Librarian of the Legion, united a conclave of his most trusted sorcerers, and together they cast a spell, known as the Rubric of Ahriman, of tremendous magnitude that would save the legion from the fate of mutation. The Thousand Sons were now safe from the taint of chaos, but at a terrible price. Those untouched by the flesh change had their psychic powers greatly strengthened, but those who had already mutated had their physical bodies reduced to dust and their animate spirits damned to live inside their armour forever. Most of the legion were changed into Rubric Marines, little more than mindless automatons.