+ inload: Saturnine Plate +

+ Brother Deredeo Thorne +

+ I will be back - So reads the litany inscribed on Brother Thorne's oversized exo-armour pauldron, the scrawled paintwork spilling across the battered golden trim. +

+ Artwork from GW Space Hulk +

+ The Underworld War saw the vengeful might of the surviving Ultramarines as they hunted down the murderers of their world. Despite the impossibility of resupply, both sides remained well-equipped for the duration, owing to the wealth of equipment and materiel laid down at Fleet Anchor Calth. Nevertheless, while there was certainly a lot of equipment to hand – or salvageable from the irradiated surface – uniformity was a low priority. Armour marks, small arms types and the like thus became mixed and matched on both sides over the course of the war. +

+ Brother Deredeo Thorne, a veteran trained in the use of specialist Tactical Dreadnought Armour, is pictured here in an atypical example of the plate. Unlike power armour, which had been developed in the Unification Wars and refined over the course of the Great Crusade, Tactical Dreadnought Armour was still highly experimental by the time of the events of the Horus Heresy. Various types and patterns of so-called 'Terminator' armour had been developed across the galaxy, often by Forgeworlds or inidividual eccentric magi that were secretive or even in open competition with one another. As a result, they varied wildly in appearance and battlefield application; from the technological triumph of Tartaros pattern to the famously unreliable Nova Martus suits. +

+ Complete verification is impossible, but Thorne's armour appears to be a variant based on Primarch Vulkan's designs. These vanishingly rare suits were deployed sparingly by the XVIIIth – but often to great effect, as they mounted additional heavy weapons on top, in a manner similar to a true Dreadnought suit or the Martian Mechanicum's heavy cybernetica divisions. +

+ Thorne's armour is thus an enigma, as the Underworld War took place on the other side of the galaxy to these development and known deployments of these highly-experimental suits. It also diverges from the design in a number of ways; the most obvious being the lack of a dorsal weapon mount. Instead, it bears a curious spinal structure, the purpose of which may be reinforcement, decorative, or perhaps serve a more esoteric use. The author humbly posits that it may be a section of armour retro-fitted after the removal of the dorsal weapon simply to reduce the armour's height – thus allowing its use in the oft-cramped environs of the War. +

+ Seconded to the 15th/190th, Thorne's extensive knowledge of the Calth Arcologies made him a valuable strategic asset to local XIIIth command. His battlefield experience (won securing the Compliance of the abhumans of the Galctic Core), married to his thirst for bloody vengeance against the Word Bearers, made him a frighteningly efficient hunter-killer during the Underworld War. +

+ Like his armour, Thorne's armament is atypical; his combi-bolter bearing a non-standard additional top-loading magazine housing. Little is known of this variant, which may have been a one-off produced by an artificer, or a limited and unsuccessful adaptation of the combi-bolter. The angle of pict-capture demonstrates the scrawled personalisation on his shoulder pad; which is curiously absent of other tactical markings. All in all, Thorne's image provokes more questions than it answers. As with nearly all records of this benighted time, the truth will likely never be known. +

+ One mystery that can happily be resolved is Thorne's given name, Deredeo. More commonly recognised as a Dreadnought variant-type, Deredeo is a Terran name of Old Albian extraction. Records indicate that Deredeo Thorne is genuinely his birth name – Meaning simple 'God of Fear', it would be easy to assume that this is a name chosen after being inducted into the Legion. This was a common tradition amongst the XIIIth since their inception: a necessity so for many of the nameless orphans who were recruited into the so-called 'War Born'; and continued after the discovery of Guilliman as many Legionaries took up names that had Macraggian providence to demonstrate their desire to fit into a cohesive Legion. +

+ That Thorne's long-dead parents would name their child such a dreadful name is perhaps indicative of the horrors of the planet they found themselves in: Old Terra. +