The Hidden Legacy of the Dark Angels - A Dark Angel’s Space Marine Journey
While searching for the perfect inspiration to paint our Dark Angels miniature, we decided to dive deep into our oldest archives. Buried among dusty, slightly forgotten codexes, we stumbled upon something extraordinary!
A worn, dust-covered journal filled with densely handwritten text.
Upon closer examination, we realized we were holding a diary written by an actual Dark Angels battle-brother.
How did it find its way into our studio, traveling not only across space but seemingly across thousands of years? We have no idea.
We’ve decided this remarkable discovery deserves to see the light of day. So today, we’re publishing these journal entries, offering you a glimpse into the Dark Angels like you’ve never seen before.
And if, like us, you’re looking for inspiration to build your own Dark Angels army, or dream of seeing your Space Marines with vivid detail and lore accuracy, our team is ready to accept that challenge.
Contact us to have your Dark Angels miniatures look as if they’ve stepped straight out of the pages of this recovered diary.
For now join us as we turn the pages of this diary together, uncovering secrets that have remained hidden for millennia.
After the Horus Heresy - My First Trials as a Dark Angels Initiate
I write these recollections as one of the Dark Angels, looking back across millennia of service. I entered the Chapter in the turbulent days immediately after the Horus Heresy, when the galaxy was still reeling from civil war.
As a newly initiated Space Marine, I was trained by veterans whose armor still bore the scorched marks of that galactic conflict. The Horus Heresy had just ended – the Emperor was entombed on the Golden Throne, and traitors lay defeated but not wholly destroyed. In those early days, our Chapter was rebuilding, and I was a young battle-brother eager to prove myself worthy of the Legion’s legacy.
Aftermath of the Thramas Crusade
My first deployments as an Initiate took me into the aftermath of the Thramas Crusade, a campaign that had pitted the Dark Angels against the Night Lords. Though I had not fought in that crusade myself (it raged while I was still a Neophyte), its shadow loomed over my early missions.
Veterans spoke in grim tones of the Night Lords’ atrocities and the costly victory of Lion El’Jonson – our Primarch – won in the Thramas Sector. I remember piecing together whispers: how the Lion had battled the Night Lords’ Primarch Konrad Curze to a standstill, and how the Dark Angels fleet arrived too late to save Terra because we were tied down in that bitter fight.
Fighting against the Night Lords
In my first live combat action, I joined a purge of a void station where Night Lords still lurked. There, in flickering gloom, I faced the warped remnants of that once-proud VIII Legion. It was a baptism in darkness – the Night Lords fought like cornered beasts. Under the watchful eyes of my sergeants, I helped hunt those traitors through the station’s corridors. With each fallen Night Lord, I felt the weight of vengeance for the Heresy lift slightly from the Chapter’s shoulders.
Yet even in victory, I sensed that something haunted my older brethren beyond the common trauma of war.
Whispers of Caliban's Fate
In quiet moments, I caught my mentors exchanging guarded words about events in our homeworld. I was too low in rank then to be privy to Chapter secrets, but I knew that Caliban, the dark forest world that birthed our Legion, had been cut off during the Heresy.
The Fall of Caliban - Birth of the Dark Angels’ Secret
Return to Caliban
Not long after the Horus Heresy, I found myself aboard the fleet bound for home. I was a mere battle-brother among thousands, but the prospect of setting foot on our legendary homeworld filled me with pride. That pride soon turned to confusion and horror.
As our ships translated from the Warp into the Caliban system, we were met not with a hero’s welcome, but with plumes of fire. The surface of Caliban opened up on our fleet with defense laser batteries, treating us as invaders.
I remember looking at my squadmates. “Why were our home defenses targeting us”?
Rebellion at Caliban
It soon became clear: Caliban was in open rebellion. Lion El’Jonson’s foster-father – Luther – had turned the planetary garrison against us. The reasons were unclear to a simple Marine like me. Some spoke of jealousy, others of darker corruption, but the result was undeniable.
Our Primarch roared with wrath at this betrayal. I was deployed in one of the furious planetary assaults that followed. The Lion commanded an orbital bombardment rather than risk a drawn-out fratricidal war. Caliban burned under our guns. Through thunder and ash, my brothers and I advanced on what remained of our fortress-monastery, with remorse that we spilled the blood of our own kin.
Father and Son - the final battle
I did not witness the legendary duel between Lion El’Jonson and Luther, that took place deep in the heart of the fortress, where only a chosen few went. I did feel the psychic shockwave, though, that ripped through the warp at the climax of their battle. It was as if reality itself recoiled in pain. Chunks of our homeworld began to break away, torn apart by unnatural forces.
My company barely managed to fall back to the evacuation point as the ground cracked beneath us. We escaped into orbit just in time to see Caliban die.
The Shattering of Caliban and Loss of the Lion
When the storm finally stopped, our sensors revealed an unbearable truth: Caliban was shattered into asteroid debris. All that remained intact was a chunk of the old fortress-monastery, held together by void shields – this floating remnant would come to be known as The Rock, our new mobile fortress.
And there was no trace of our Primarch. We scoured the wreckage for days. I saw the bodies of brothers I had trained with, warriors who had defended Caliban under Luther’s banner, now lifeless in the void.
We found Luther himself alive amid the ruins, weeping and babbling like a madman. He was taken into custody by our senior officers. But the Lion was gone. In those somber hours, the first hidden truth of the Dark Angels was impressed upon me: part of our own Legion had fallen to Chaos on Caliban, and in their fall they had nearly destroyed us all.
The Fallen Angels and Hidden Shame
The aftermath of the Fall of Caliban became the foundation of the Chapter’s great secret. As an ordinary battle-brother at the time, I was not formally told everything, but I had eyes and ears.
I helped gather the wounded and recover what relics we could from the blasted asteroid that was once our home. Whispers passed among sergeants that “many of our brothers were unaccounted for.” Some said the traitors had been sucked into the Warp by the final cataclysm, scattered across time and space by the Dark Gods as punishment or perhaps reward. One of the veterans spat in disgust and said: “Our fallen angels! Cursed and lost.” I pretended not to hear, but the term “The Fallen” stuck in my mind like a thorn.
In the official debriefings, we were simply told that Caliban had been destroyed by a warp storm and that Luther had betrayed the Lion. We were instructed to speak of it to no one outside the Chapter. Thus, the culture of silence and penance began.
I didn’t fully understand it then, but that day marked the birth of the Dark Angels’ deepest secret, which I would spend centuries uncovering, step by step.
The Unforgiven and the Legacy of the Great Crusade
Second Founding and the Unforgiven Chapters
In the wake of the Horus Heresy and the Fall of Caliban, the Imperium was reorganizing and so were we.
Roboute Guilliman’s Codex Astartes dictated that the Legions break into smaller Chapters, both to prevent any one man from wielding Horus-like power again and to better cover the galaxy’s fronts. Thus the Dark Angels Legion was split into a number of successor Chapters during the Second Founding. Our Chapter remained as Dark Angels in name, led now by a Supreme Grand Master.
Many other Chapters were created from our lineage. Collectively, we who descend from the Lion came to be called the Unforgiven. On the outside, we claimed it was a recognition of our shared ancestry, but in our ranks we knew it reflected the penance we all silently bore.
Deathwing and Ravenwing - Elite Hunters of the Fallen
Despite the Codex Astartes reforms, there was a strong effort within our Chapter to preserve the legacy of the Great Crusade days. After all, we were the First Legion; our traditions ran deep. Even in new form, the Dark Angels kept certain rites and organization distinct. Our first two Companies became something special: the Deathwing and the Ravenwing – formations unique to the Unforgiven.
I would come to learn that these elite companies were tightly bound to the secret quest for redemption. At the time, I only knew that the Deathwing (the 1st Company) repainted their armor bone-white in honor of some old heroism, and the Ravenwing (the 2nd Company) rode into battle on fast black bikes and speeders.
I did not know why their missions were often covert or apart from the main force. But I obeyed without question when a Deathwing Terminator or a Ravenwing outrider would arrive with special orders from the Grand Masters. We all did. Duty and secrecy became twin pillars of our culture.
Gradual Revelation and Inner Circles
During this time, our Chapter maintained a facade of normalcy to the wider Imperium. To outside observers, we appeared to follow the Codex structure like any other Space Marine Chapter – ten companies, each one hundred Marines, etc.
In truth, our inner organization had its quirks. Those brethren who became aware of the truth of the Fallen were elevated into inner circles of trust. I noticed that some Veterans in the 1st Company carried themselves with a heavy burden, with knowledge heavier than any terminator armor. They and the Interrogator-Chaplains (our Chaplains tasked with… special duties) were part of a quiet hierarchy within the Chapter. Promotions were not just a matter of skill, but also of proven loyalty to our secret cause.
Rising in the ranks, proving loyalty
For me personally, those centuries after the Second Founding were a time of gradual revelation. Each successful campaign and each promotion brought me a little further into my Chapter’s confidence.
After proving myself in battle against xenos and heretics, I earned a place in a Veteran squad. Eventually I was inducted into the Deathwing – a great honor for any Dark Angel. The day I first donned the bone-white Terminator armor of the 1st Company, I knelt before the Inner Circle and was finally told the full, unvarnished truth: “The Fallen Angels were real, they were our former brethren, and they still lurked out there in the galaxy.”
Hearing it stated plainly sent a chill through me, even though I had suspected much. The Grand Master’s voice was stern as he said, “We are unforgiven for the sin of our brethren’s betrayal. It falls to us to track down every one of the Fallen and offer them a chance to repent… or to exact the Emperor’s justice upon them.”
I bowed my head and accepted this secret truth as my new sacred mission. The Emperor’s first Legion had been broken by internal betrayal, and it was on us, the descendants of the Lion, to make it right in His name.
Shadows of Retribution - Hunting the Fallen Through the Ages
Shadow war with the Fallen
Thus began my shadow war as a member of the Unforgiven’s inner circle. For centuries, alongside my battle-brothers in the Deathwing and the Ravenwing, I undertook missions that never made it into any official Imperial records.
To put it simple, we hunted the Fallen Angels. It was a grim and often thankless task. The Fallen were elusive. Many had embraced the powers of Chaos to survive; others had become warlords, outcasts, or wanderers. Each one we tracked down presented a unique challenge of capture or execution. We always tried to take them alive if possible – so they might be brought before our Interrogator-Chaplains to repent their sins. Not all came quietly; in fact, few did.
Encountering the Fallen
I recall the first time I encountered a Fallen directly. It was in the 5th century of the 32nd Millennium, on a dust-choked moon where our intelligence indicated a mysterious power-armored warlord had gathered a band of renegades.
My strike force deployed under the guise of a routine purge of heretics, alongside some allies from the Angels of Redemption Chapter. In the final bunker, I came face to face with a warrior whose armor was a patchwork of old Dark Angels plate repainted black. He fought with bitter skill, cursing us as puppets of a lie. Locking blades with him, I saw the Calibanite script etched on his sword and the chapter iconography defaced on his pauldron – he had been one of us.
This man shouted in my face as I pinned him: “The Lion’s sons are traitors to their own! You know nothing of the truth!” Before I could demand answers, our Chaplain struck him unconscious. We dragged the captive to The Rock in chains. I was not permitted to attend his interrogation.
Where the truth lies
The next day, the Chaplain informed my squad that the Fallen one had refused to repent and had been given the “Emperor’s Peace”. We spoke no more of it. Each of us wrestled with our own turmoil after that mission.
For me, it was a mix of grim satisfaction – one less traitor in the galaxy – and a lingering question about what that Fallen meant by “you know nothing of the truth.” What truth had twisted his soul? Was it mere Chaos lies? My faith demanded I dismiss his words, but the incident only bound me tighter to the Chapter’s secret purpose.
The Complexity of Redemption
Over time I learned that not all Fallen were irredeemable monsters.
A few, upon capture, did repent sincerely. Those rare individuals were given the Emperor’s Mercy after confession – a quick death to spare them from Chaos’s corruption – or, even more rarely, they were permitted to fight alongside us in secret to atone (such individuals we called “Risen,” though they were never openly acknowledged).
These cases were few, but they taught me that the line between damned and redeemed could blur. Each Fallen we confronted was a mirror of what might have been – if I had been born on Caliban in those days, could I have been swayed by Luther’s words? It was a sobering thought that kept me humble. It also steeled my resolve that no outsider must interfere in this duty. The Fallen were our responsibility. We owed it to the Emperor, the Lion, and the memory of our lost brothers to make things right personally.
The Great Rift - A Galaxy Divided, a Chapter Transformed
The 13th Black Crusade and the Great Rift
The centuries marched on. I fought in countless wars – the Ork’ss threatening Segmentum Pacificus, the Tyranid incursions in the Eastern Fringe, the Black Crusades of Abaddon spilling from the Eye of Terror. Through it all, the Dark Angels Chapter endured, ever carrying our burden in silence.
I myself had risen to the rank of Company Master by the dawn of the 41st Millennium, commanding the 5th Company. By then I was fully part of the Inner Circle, trusted with the Chapter’s darkest truths. I thought I had seen it all. But nothing could prepare any of us for the calamitous events that ushered in the Age of the Great Rift.
It began, as so many disasters do, with a monumental war. Abaddon the Despoiler launched his 13th Black Crusade around 999.M41. The Dark Angels committed all ten companies to the war, fighting around the Eye of Terror to halt the tide of Chaos. We battled traitor legions and daemons on a dozen worlds.
Galaxy torn apart
I led strike forces on Cadia’s neighboring systems, cutting down Black Legion sorcerers and hunting for any sign of Fallen among the Chaos ranks. But even our valor couldn’t alter fate: Cadia, the bastion world, fell. Its pylons were destroyed and the Eye of Terror vomited its corruption across the stars. The galaxy itself was torn in two by a massive Warp storm, what is now infamously called the Great Rift.
The sight will haunt me forever: a colossal scar of purple-black nothingness, shot through with lightning, spreading across the starscape like ink spilled in water. Worlds were cut off overnight. The Dark Angels Chapter was effectively split by this cosmic disaster. Many of our successor chapters and even elements of our own were now on the far side of the Rift. We did not know the fates of many of our brother Chapters.
Siege of the Rock
During the formation of the Great Rift, The Rock came under one of the gravest threats we’ve ever faced. A massive daemonic assault struck our fortress-monastery unexpectedly. It turned out a Fallen who had fully embraced Chaos – a Fallen Angel turned Daemon Prince named Marbas – led this host, somehow breaching our wards.
The battle within The Rock’s halls was desperate; bolter fire and the roar of chained demon engines echoed through our sacred libraries and armories. I personally clashed with packs of bloodletters in the Basilica of Saints, determined not to let them despoil the resting place of our honored dead.
Ultimately, we repelled the invaders (the Chapter’s counter-attack was swift and lethal, led by our current Supreme Grand Master Azrael himself in the vanguard). But as the last daemon was banished, Azrael made a chilling discovery: the attack had been a diversion.
Luther’s Escape
In the chaos, the arch-traitor Luther – who had been kept imprisoned in stasis deep in The Rock for millennia – was freed and disappeared. The man behind our Legion’s fall was now loose upon the galaxy once more. This realization shook the entire Inner Circle.
The question clawed at every Dark Angel’s soul: “did someone free Luther to rally the Fallen again?” Or perhaps, “to twist him into an even darker weapon?” We swore, with renewed intensity, to recapture him. The sins of Caliban had literally come back to haunt us in our moment of crisis.
The Indomitus Crusade and Primaris Marine
Amidst this turmoil came a beacon of hope: news spread that a Loyalist Primarch had returned. Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines, was revived from stasis and had taken command as Lord Commander of the Imperium.
With him came the Indomitus Crusade and the introduction of the Primaris Space Marines – a new generation of Adeptus Astartes engineered by Archmagos Belisarius Cawl with advanced gene-seed organs, taller and even more physically potent.
At first, many of us in the Dark Angels were wary of these developments. We respect Guilliman as a son of the Emperor, but we are nothing if not cautious. Questions buzzed in the Reclusiam and among Company Masters.
Nonetheless, when Guilliman’s fleets reached out to The Rock, we answered. I stood on the bridge as we rendezvoused with elements of the Indomitus Crusade. The Dark Angels, scattered from fighting the Black Crusade, began to regroup. Primaris reinforcements bolstered our ranks – fresh warriors in Mark X armor, bearing our Chapter colors and symbols, eager to prove themselves.
I will admit, I was initially cool toward them. These Primaris brothers had not undergone the same trials or indoctrination; they had grown in distant Cawl-forges and knew nothing of Caliban’s fall or the hunt for the Fallen. Introducing them into the Chapter was a delicate task. Our Chaplains and training officers worked rigorously to integrate them without immediately exposing them to our darkest lore. Over time, I fought beside Primaris squads – Hellblasters with plasma incinerators, aggressive Inceptors dropping from the sky – and I gained respect for their prowess. They were true Space Marines in courage and skill.
Crossing the Rubicon Primaris
On a personal level, the Great Rift era forced me to confront my own limitations. I had fought for over a thousand years by this point. My flesh had been scarred and healed countless times. But even a Space Marine can fall to a well-placed bolt shell.
Becoming Primaris
During a brutal confrontation with a Daemon Prince on the world of Almace, I was mortally wounded. I struck the beast down, but its dying flail shattered my body. Organs failing, I was rushed back to The Rock, kept barely alive in a stasis field. It was then that Supreme Grand Master Azrael offered me a path not only to survival but renewed service: the Rubicon Primaris. The apothecaries could attempt to rebuild me as a Primaris Space Marine, implanting the new organs and rejuvenating what remained of my physiology. The process was risky – many who attempted the crossing perished on the table.
For me, the decision was simple. I would risk death to continue the fight. And so I agreed.
I awoke as a Primaris Dark Angel, my form renewed. I stood taller, my senses were sharper. The first time I donned my power armor again, the plating had to be refitted to my enlarged frame. I felt like a neophyte again learning my own strength. But in truth I carried all my centuries of experience forward. The Rubicon Primaris had not changed my soul – only given it a more durable vessel.
Some of my fellow veterans soon undertook the same transformation upon seeing me survive it. The Chapter as a whole gradually embraced the Primaris infusion. Even Azrael, our Chapter Master, underwent the Rubicon Primaris (after sustaining wounds in a later conflict); seeing our Supreme Grand Master emerge as a Primaris was a galvanizing moment, a symbol that we Dark Angels would evolve and adapt, but on our own terms and without abandoning our traditions.
Return of the Lion at Wyrmwood
We could test our newly gained abilities during a battle on a planet called the Wyrmwood. The Dark Angels and nearly all our Unforgiven successors had gone to war there to stop the daemon’s plans, seeking also to recapture Luther.
The fighting was apocalyptic – we even confronted Angron, a Daemon Primarch of Chaos, on the field. In the fiercest moment of battle, when all seemed on the brink, unexpected reinforcements arrived: the noble Blood Angels led by Commander Dante, and with them a hooded knight in ancient armor, wielding the Emperor’s Shield and a glowing blade. I heard the cries over the vox: “The Lion! The Primarch Lion El’Jonson fights with us!”
My hearts nearly stopped. Through the swirling melee I caught a glimpse: a warrior with the unmistakable countenance of the Lion laying low a Greater Daemon with one sweep. Our Primarch had awoken in our darkest hour.
We learned later that he had risen from a secret chamber in The Rock, where the Watchers in the Dark had kept him in stasis all these millennia, awaiting the time of dire need.
Lion El’Jonson - The Dark Angels Primarch’s Legacy and Return
Legacy and Influence of Lion El'Jonson
It is difficult to put into words the impact of seeing Lion El’Jonson in the flesh after so long. For centuries, he had been a figure of legend and reverence. We spoke his name in our litanies: “For the Lion!” had been our battle-cry across the stars. We preserved his teachings and example as our guiding star.
Lion El’Jonson’s legacy in our Chapter is everywhere. It’s in the way we form our ranks, the way we honor discipline and tactical flexibility. For ten thousand years, we prosecuted war in his name, always hoping that somehow he still guided us.
On Wyrmwood he fought like a divine avenger. I saw him strike down Angron – banishing the daemon Primarch back to the Warp with righteous fury. The Lion’s swordsmanship was sublime, a blur of lethal grace. Even in my enhanced Primaris form, battling nearby, I felt like a neophyte watching a grandmaster.
The Primarch of Dark Angels in 42 milenium
After Wyrmwood the Lion has publicly refrained from immediately reassuming command of the Chapter. Outwardly, Chapter Master Azrael still leads the Dark Angels, and we fight as we always have. But in truth, our Primarch watches from the shadows, protecting humanity in Imperium Nihilus where the darkness is thickest. Lion El’Jonson operates as a knight-errant across the half of the galaxy, striking at the heart of new threats. He is a solitary figure in many ways – much as he was in his youth on Caliban, hunting great beasts alone in the forests.
Lion El’Jonson’s current status is something like a living myth. Officially, many citizens of the Imperium only hear whispers that “another Primarch walks among us.” Some dismiss it as rumor.
But we, the Dark Angels, know the truth. The Lion is abroad in the stars, gathering forces to defend humanity’s fringes in the darkness of the Great Rift. In war council, he has been advising Guilliman on strategies to hold the Imperium together. It is a strange time – two Primarchs alive in the 42nd Millennium, where once none were. It feels as if a long, dark chapter in our history is finally turning a page.
From the Shadows to the Inner Circle - An Oath Renewed
Reflections on Duty and Redemption
Now I sit in the quietude of my chambers on The Rock, quill in hand, finishing this chronicle. I have journeyed from a green recruit in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy to a seasoned Primaris veteran standing on the cusp of the Inner Circle’s highest echelons.
The galaxy around us is beset on all sides: a Great Rift divides reality, xenos invasions like the Tyranids menace from without, and traitors and witches still lurk within.
Yet I find my spirit unbroken and my purpose clearer than ever. The Dark Angels Chapter has weathered every storm by binding itself to duty, brotherhood, and necessary secrecy. We bore a burden of shame in silence, not for pride’s sake but to prevent the Imperium from losing faith in the angels that protect it.
Oath of the Inner Circle
As a member of the Inner Circle, I now help guard these truths from those not ready to bear them. Not every battle-brother needs or wants to know the full saga of the Fallen Angels until the time is right. We reveal it with care, as one might handle a volatile relic. I have sat in on councils with our Grand Masters and watched the weight in their eyes. But I have also seen hope ignite there anew. The Lion lives!
In closing this journal, I reaffirm the oath I took so long ago, now with fuller understanding: I am a Dark Angel. I am a weapon of the Emperor, forged in the legacy of the Great Crusade, tempered by the fires of betrayal, and sharpened in the hunt for redemption.”
As I seal these records and prepare for the next battle, I whisper a final prayer: Emperor, give me strength to always walk in the light – and when I must walk in darkness, let me be true to the Lion’s example.
For the Lion. For the Emperor. For redemption.
