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Legion Summary
The Night Lords are one of the traitor legions of Chaos Space Marines.
History
The Night Lords originated on the planet Nostramo, a world which was trapped in a perpetual night and ruled by the Primarch Konrad Curze, who used Night Haunter as an alias while ruling the world as a merciless vigilante. He later re-adopted the title during the Horus Heresy. They ruled through terror and so were one of the most obvious of the traitor legions. Even before the Heresy, the Night Lords decorated their power armor with symbols of death, realizing that fear was a weapon effective as any Bolter or Chainsword.
The Night Haunter shared a particular distaste for his brother Rogal Dorn of the Imperial Fists. During the Great Crusade, Dorn emphasized compassion for the people they subjugated. That the warriors that had surrendered were now considered citizens of the Empire and should be treated justly and fairly. Kurze decreed that they would always beg for mercy, and rise up as soon as they thought they could get away with their rebellion. The fear of failure must be demonstrated to the entire world so that they would never rise up against the Imperium. Kurze dragged to the next prisoner to his feet, while the man begged for mercy, swearing he would resist no longer. Kurze handed the man his bolter, and decreed that none of his warriors would harm him, to turn back to Dorn. The man rebelled, as Kurze had predicted, but unfortunately did not live long after.
During the Heresy Night Haunter was assassinated by a Callidus Assassin. Rumors have it that the Night Haunter knew of this attempt of his life and submitted to his fate to prove his deeds during the Heresy right. How much of this is true might only be known to the Masters of the Callidus Temple, the High Lords of Terra and maybe some members of the Inquisition. This misfortune, however, did not slow the Night Lords down and they continued to apply themselves to his mantra and to this day are specialists in terror. In combat, they tend to use large amounts of Raptors, Chaos Space Marines equipped with Jump packs.
Appearance
The Night Lords armor is not only commonly adorned in images of their Legion, and symbols of death such as trophy racks/pikes, spiked armor, and numerous skulls of all sizes but the Nightlords alone have a peculiar form of imagry that occurs on each and every legionnair's armor. The Night Lords' night blue armor is alive with a mysterious network of lightning bolts that constantly play across their armor when in combat. Whether artificial, a curse, or something else, this lightning is a signature of the imagery of the lords of night and terrorises their foes in the ink blackness of the night.
The gene-seed of the Night Lords seems to be surprisingly pure. Of all the Chaos Space Marine Legions, the Night Lords seem to be the least mutated. Night Lords marines have jet black eyes and pale skin. The origional legionnairs do not have irises, with the visible part of their eyes consisting entirely of pupils. Their skin, eyes, and even their senses of smell and hearing are all adapted for living in complete darkness.
The one less frightening facet of the Night Lords is that the legionnairs' armor is still reletively unaffected by the warp and thus is as easy to destroy as standard imperial astartes armor, though barely surmountably tough at best.
Organisation
The Night Lords tend not to use Daemons in their armies, although they have been known to work alongside Furies, Daemons of Chaos Undivided who share the Night Lords' fondness for brutal murder and psychological warfare. Night Lords do not worship a specific power of Chaos, instead following the concept of Chaos Undivided. Indeed, the Night Lords have a contempt for all of the Ruinous Powers, as well as weakness of any sort.
Sources
Index Astartes II : The Bringers of Darkness.