| abstract | - The Astral Claws were a Space Marine Chapter created during the mid-35th Millennium's 10th Founding from an unknown genetic origin. The Astral Claws were Founded specifically to defend the Eastern Fringes of the Imperium of Man from any Chaos threats spawned by the massive Warp rift called the Maelstrom in the region of the Ultima Segmentum appropriately called the Maelstrom Zone by Imperial astrocartographers. For centuries the Astral Claws served as members of the alliance of Space Marine Chapters known as the Maelstrom Warders who protected the people of the Maelstrom Zone. The Astral Claws eventually turned Renegade against the Imperium and initiated the major rebellion and attempt at secession from the Imperium by the Badab Sector appropriately called the Badab War in the late 41st Millennium. Upon losing this conflict to Loyalist Imperial forces, including several other Space Marine Chapters, the surviving Astral Claws were corrupted by Chaos and fled into the Maelstrom. They are currently the leaders of a powerful band of Chaotic pirates and Renegade Astartes called the Red Corsairs who present a major threat to Imperial commerce and Imperial worlds in the region. For much of the Chapter’s history, the Astral Claws operated as a fleet-based, crusading force, though still older records suggested that they may have occupied one or more Chapter worlds in the earliest years of service. In the 5th century of the 41st Millennium, the Chapter was assigned along with several others to the force known as the Maelstrom Warders, a group of Chapters charged with defending the sectors surrounding the massive Warp anomaly known as the Maelstrom from the numerous outcasts, pirates and xenos raiders that lurked within. The Astral Claws received the signal honour of appointment as the masters of the Maelstrom Warders, the Chapter’s commander having ultimate power over the entire formation. Though the Astral Claws continued to maintain a powerful fleet capacity, they spent the next several centuries fortifying their new home system of Badab, creating in the process a bastion considered by all that have witnessed it to be unbreakable. In most regards, the Astral Claws were always considered adherents of Roboute Guilliman’s Codex Astartes. However, in the decades before the outbreak of the Badab War, the Chapter underwent a secret shift in its outlook and organisation, a change that accelerated once Lufgt Huron was appointed as Chapter Master. Over those decades, the Astral Claws elevated themselves from the foremost defenders of the Maelstrom Zone, to its absolute masters in all but name. The Chapter established itself at the apex of a potent military force comprising not just its own assets, but those of the other Chapters of the Maelstrom Warders. The Astral Claws had direct control over a vast body of locally raised troops, numbering, it is estimated, in the many millions of warriors. Far more serious, however, was that the Astral Claws secretly transgressed one of the core proscriptions of the Codex Astartes, namely that which restricts the size of a Chapter to around a thousand Battle-Brothers. The true extent of the Astral Claws' heresy would only become clear once the terrible internecine conflict known as the Badab War was unleashed, a conflict that ultimately led Space Marine to fight Space Marine once more, and the Astral Claws to final damnation.
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