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| - However, after Horus' fall on Davin, he was considered too loyal to the old way -- the ideals of the Great Crusade and the Emperor, to be inducted into the dark conspiracy that was overtaking his beloved Legion. Assigned to lead the Sons of Horus contingent's attack in the first assault wave on Istvaan III, he rose swiftly to the mantle of leadership, becoming one of the leaders of the Loyalist faction comprised of those Luna Wolves, Emperor's Children, World Eaters and Death Guard Astartes that refused to betray the Emperor of Mankind and serve the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. Loken and his command cast aside the identity of the Sons of Horus, and proclaimed themselves Luna Wolves once more, extracting a heavy toll of dead on those they had once called brother.
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| abstract
| - However, after Horus' fall on Davin, he was considered too loyal to the old way -- the ideals of the Great Crusade and the Emperor, to be inducted into the dark conspiracy that was overtaking his beloved Legion. Assigned to lead the Sons of Horus contingent's attack in the first assault wave on Istvaan III, he rose swiftly to the mantle of leadership, becoming one of the leaders of the Loyalist faction comprised of those Luna Wolves, Emperor's Children, World Eaters and Death Guard Astartes that refused to betray the Emperor of Mankind and serve the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. Loken and his command cast aside the identity of the Sons of Horus, and proclaimed themselves Luna Wolves once more, extracting a heavy toll of dead on those they had once called brother. But in the end, the Loyalists were overwhelmed and eventually destroyed. Loken faced his former erstwhile brother, First Captain Abaddon in mortal combat, and was gravely wounded. At the time, it was believed that he died in the final orbital bombardment of the Loyalists' position. Later, Loken was discovered as a half-crazed berserker Astartes, who called himself Cerberus. Surviving his ordeal on Istvaan III, he was recruited from the undead-haunted ruins of Choral City on Istvaan III by his fellow Loyalist Space Marine Captain Nathaniel Garro, formerly of the Death Guard Legion, and the Agentia Primus of Malcador the Sigillite's Knights-Errant, to serve as one of the 8 Astartes who would go on to be responsible for laying the foundation of the elite Grey Knights Space Marine Chapter which was later to become the Chamber Militant of the Ordo Malleus of the Inquisition. Loken was an unusually thoughtful, calm and rational Space Marine, referred to as "the quiet one" of the Mournival by Horus. While not a man of many words, he often surprised those around him with the depth of his mind and character, unexpected in one who had been bred for war. Like most of the members of his Legion, Loken was a native of Cthonia, the ancient Mining World near Terra where Horus had been found by the Emperor of Mankind in the early days of the Great Crusade. Unlike his fellow Astartes, Loken spent a great deal of his time reading and studying ancient writings loaned to him from the vast Librarium of ancient human texts, such as the Chronicles of Ursh, aboard the Luna Wolves' battle barge Vengeful Spirit by his friend, the Imperial Iterator Kyril Sindermann. It is the insights gained from this study that enabled Loken to see the corruption of Chaos for what it was as it took hold of Horus and most of the Legion around him. It was his devotion to the truth at all costs, and his loyalty to the Emperor that ultimately placed him at odds with those who followed Horus into darkness. Loken had many friends within the XVIst Legion as well as outside it in the days before the start of the Heresy, an unusual quality for an Astartes, as the Space Marines of the Luna Wolves rarely took notice of the normal men and women many of their kind routinely dismissed as "mortals". He befriended the Remembrancers Mersadie Oliton and Ignace Karkasy. Oliton, a writer, followed Loken and often met with him in his personal armoury to record the takes of his experiences in battle. Karkasy was a poet who, after landing in trouble with the Imperial Army and nearly being beaten to death for openly speaking his mind about the potential immorality of the Great Crusade's conquest of human worlds, caught Loken's attention. Loken respected him for his unusual willingness to speak the truth even when he did not agree with his conclusions and the Luna Wolf captain sponsored him, allowing him to remain with the 63rd Expeditionary Fleet. Loken protected Karkasy, even when Karkasy's poetry became openly critical of the Astartes. Another important figure in Loken's life was the Imperial Iterator Kyril Sindermann, a member of the corps of Imperial propagandists who accompanied each Great Crusade Expeditionary Fleet to carry out the cultural incorporation of conquered human worlds into the Imperium of Man by spreading the Imperial Truth (which, ironically, was actually a lie concocted by the Emperor to weaken the powers of Chaos). Loken had often pursued in-depth discussions on a variety of intellectual topics, including religion, which had been dismissed as mere superstition by the rationalism of the official creed of the Imperial Truth. This association, along with his protection of the Remembrancer Ignace Karkasy, later led to strife for Loken with Horus and his Warmaster's new confidante, First Chaplain Erebus of the Word Bearers Legion, as the Warmaster, often manipulated by the long-corrupt Erebus, turned against all the Remembrancers accompanying the 63rd Expeditonary Fleet, believing them to be of little use in his war against the Emperor, particularly as they began to tell the truth about the corruption induced by Chaos.
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