The Sundering
With Horus broken upon the Vengeful Spirit and her father broken upon the throne, Sgáthach and her Legion were faced with the uncertain future such a pyrrhic victory brought. In many ways, it is said, it would have been better - cleaner at least - had the legion perished in some great and glorious last stand, giving their lives so that the Imperium might be born anew. Instead, they survived, the ragged and bloodied legion diminished but still very present and with a reckoning to be made. Their reception was somewhat mixed. While Russ and the Khan welcomed their sister and her Legion with open arms, the Krakenborn became a thorn in the side of the forces that forged the new vision of the Imperium. Guilliman particularly disliked his rediscovered sister, his feelings born of guilt at his failure to reach Terra. For her part, Sgáthach thought her most aquiline brother pretentious and power-hungry. When Guilliman attempted to impose his Codex Astartes, she outright refused to accept it, casting her copy of the decree from the top of the Crag "so the great leviathans might read it and laugh". Tensions arose, and as Legion after Legion accepted the Codex and split their numbers, the Krakenborn decided that to resist might well mean war and their demise. So it was that a great council was called in the chambers of the Crag, with all the Warqueens of note present with their Primarch. The Draodhean made auguries and uisce was drunk, and it was decided that the Legion would go their separate ways. Lots were cast to determine the makeup of these new forces and contests at arms to decide their leadership. Eventually, it was determined - eight great Warfleets would set out from Manawyddan to find new homes, with the Krakenborn as the ninth. All would still swear their fealty to Sgáthach as their High Queen, but notably, not the Codex or the Lord Commander of the Imperium. Each Warfleet would obey only their Queen and their Primarch, and bring war in their own way and at their own direction.
It was then that Sgáthach revealed the last, and most portentous news of the council. Though Horus, the Eye-marked traitor of her visions, was dead, there were many of his kind still living, including his surviving traitorous brothers. Sgáthach had determined to seek them out, one by one, and slaughter them. To do this she would take no fleet, no warriors, not even an armiger, but go as a champion, a lone hunter in the void between worlds where madness boils and dark powers play their twisted games. The Krakenborn reeled, pleaded, and begged that their primogenitor might remain among them, or else take them with her, but they eventually saw reason. In her place to rule as High Queen, Sgáthach left her most trusted Warqueen, Aífe, who ruled the Krakenborn and spoke with her Mother's voice in all matters from then on.
With the council concluded, Sgáthach departed for her great purpose and the Eight gathered their fleets and their troops and set off into the void. Their deeds are many and their sagas are rich in lore, but they are told in full elsewhere. In short, however, the eight were as follows.
The Imperial Reavers
It would be easy to dismiss the Imperial Reavers - led by Warqueen Juliana Gwledig, the only Warqueen of note not from Manawyddan, and made primarily of Terran-born Astartes. Indeed some among the Krakenborn did just that, naming them as so-called "false Krakens". While strangers to its oceans and islands, the Terran Krakenborn were no less daughters of their Primarch and did their utmost to demonstrate their loyalty, fighting with particular vigour during the War on Luna.
When it came to the Sundering, Juliana gave her sisters another reason to doubt her when she argued enthusiastically for the adoption of the Codex Astartes. Her support came not from enthusiasm for its contents but experience - she had fought in the early Crusade when the legion were the Void Raiders and seen first andd how the Imperium crushed dissenters. To start a new war with the Imperium reeling from the works of Horus would mean death, destruction, and the end of all daughters of Sgáthach. Having been derided as a coward by Warqueen Uathach, the two fought and all mockery was silenced when Juliana tore off her sister's mechanical arm and presented it in victory to her Primarch.
The arguments made by Juliana and her veterans ultimately lost out to other voices, but in commanding the fleets to make war in their own way, Sgáthach allowed for those warriors who would seek stronger links to the Imperium to do so, and the Imperial Reavers became the only Krakenborn warfleet to follow the Codex. In time they would prove that adherence to Imperial doctrine did not mean weakness or disloyalty, and on many occasion, their fleet was the deciding factor between victory and defeat in the wars of the Krakenborn.
Hailing from the ice tribes of the extreme north of Manawyddan, the warfleet of Warqueen Beira stood as superlative ice hunters and made an art of living in the least hospitable conditions. On the Crag, they had their cells on the great cliff face and open to the air so as to dive into the sea or sleep with the comfort of a chill wind. They were warriors of incredible hardiness, and yet were not dour or ascetic. Indeed, they delighted in bouts of wrestling or dueling with harpoon and knife, and each hardship endured seemed to make them more jovial at the feast.
At the Council of the Sundering they argued vociferously against the splitting of the legion, pointing out that should the Imperium decide to wipe the slate clean without the Emperor’s Mercy, it would be easier to pick off a lone thousand warriors than a legion in full splendour. It was whispered that the real reason Beira was reluctant to the parted from Manawyddan was the great affection between herself and Aife, the First Warqueen of the Krakenborn. Indeed, even after the sundering Beira only led her warriors to Emain Deighe, an ice moon within the Manawyddan system.
From that day the Rime went largely in tandem with the Krakenborn; alongside the Cerulean Sharks they formed the fleets known informally as the handmaids. It would be rare to see a fleet of Krakenborn sailing without an escort of at least one of the two handmaid fleets. In this way, only a modest force of vessels from each fleet need be sent away from home to make a force equal to a full chapter’s strength.
When the Rime go to war, they make great use of jetpacks, soaring like the snowfalcons that share the skies of Emain Deighe. As their world’s apex predator they revere the bird above all others, and some warriors of the Rime will breed the birds as companions in the hunt. Inspired by their totems, they have developed a particular swooping dive - the warriors climb to dizzying heights before deactivating their packs and armour motors, falling swift and silent as an arrow onto the heads of their unuspecting foes, only reactivating their warplate mere instants before they land.
The Blood Tide arrived late to the council of the sundering, having carved a bloody vengeance against worlds that had sworn to the traitors, slaughtering all with sword and boltgun. Once there, they quarreled with Warqueen Juliana of the Reavers against what they saw as a muzzling of their proud traditions. They were reined in somewhat when Uathach was subdued and disarmed by the reaver queen, but had their concerns assuaged when it was determined that no warrior would be forced to accept the hated Codex or bow to any but Sgáthach. When Holgia Black Hand swore to continue her war free of any imperial oversight, a few of the more bellicose of the Blood Tide went to her side, leaving a core of warriors utterly loyal to their Warqueen.
Uathach would ultimately be successful in her quest for vengeance, severing the hated Kuchulladdon’s head with her claw, though died soon after from her wounds. Eora, her successor as Warqueen helped put the unrestrained bloodbath of Uathach’s reign behind them, and while the Blood Tide remained a brutal and gory tribe of killers, they did so with an iron discipline that kept them from sliding into the clutches of the dark forces of the void.
In Manawyddan mythology Llyr is a deity of the sea, known also to his adherents as the Ancient Mariner. He stands as an oddity in a pantheon and world so overwhelmingly matriarchal, though may have once been a real person - a fisherman who though the wrath of the weather was blown all the way around Manawyddan but managed to survive wrack and ruin and thus earn regard. Great mariners will invoke the terror of the seas - She Who Awaits The Drowned - but also hope to the blessings of Llyr on their voyage. On an island supposedly once home to Llyr, his tribe still remains a powerful force and known as great mariners. Their rocky home is also home to rich seams of iron, and as well as great sailors they are known as great smiths. The Astartes drawn from these islands bring their skills to the Crag, where they often join the crews of vehicles or forge their sisters’ wargear in the artificier chambers. The most notable of these warriors was Warqueen Gobanna, who held the title of Forgemistress alongside leading her warriors. She served as personal armiger to her Primarch, maintaining the weapons of legend forged by Sgáthach in the days before the Imperium. During the heresy her warriors clashed with the traitorous Iron Warriors in the skies above Terra and proved just as able as their foes in matters of grinding siegecraft and mechanisms of war.
At the Sundering Council the Children of Llyr took a neutral stance, content to watch the duels of honour and let others make their wise councils, though Warqueen Gobanna personally backed the seers against the Terran faction and their allies. When Sgáthach announced her intention to leave, Gobanna was rewarded for her service with Fragarach, the Primarch’s sword carved from the bill of a great shark. Though she begged to accompany her, Sgáthach turned her down, insisting that none but a Primarch would survive the path she would take. Instead, Gobanna formed her own warfleet, taking with her her tribesfolk and all other warriors that had a way for the anvil and the machine.
Away from the field however, in the secrecy of the dining hall and council chamber, the Clann na Closaih were little different than their sisters - quieter and more dour perhaps, but their initiation wounds were no impediment to their speech and their silence merely a battlefield vow of will. At the Sundering council High Priestess Senuna recognised that the Clann had grown too large to simply disband or continue as an arm of the Krakenborn, and proposed a separate fleet. Her warriors would not take up the codex, but would go their own way, making war as silent ghosts as they plumbed the mysteries of the silent void. Their flagship was the Lúin, a thin spike of a ship that suited their quiet, unnatural way of warfare well as they left into the far void to bring grim-faced war to the foes of Sgáthach .
When it came to the Sundering, Juliana gave her sisters another reason to doubt her when she argued enthusiastically for the adoption of the Codex Astartes. Her support came not from enthusiasm for its contents but experience - she had fought in the early Crusade when the legion were the Void Raiders and seen first andd how the Imperium crushed dissenters. To start a new war with the Imperium reeling from the works of Horus would mean death, destruction, and the end of all daughters of Sgáthach. Having been derided as a coward by Warqueen Uathach, the two fought and all mockery was silenced when Juliana tore off her sister's mechanical arm and presented it in victory to her Primarch.
The arguments made by Juliana and her veterans ultimately lost out to other voices, but in commanding the fleets to make war in their own way, Sgáthach allowed for those warriors who would seek stronger links to the Imperium to do so, and the Imperial Reavers became the only Krakenborn warfleet to follow the Codex. In time they would prove that adherence to Imperial doctrine did not mean weakness or disloyalty, and on many occasion, their fleet was the deciding factor between victory and defeat in the wars of the Krakenborn.
The Rime
At the Council of the Sundering they argued vociferously against the splitting of the legion, pointing out that should the Imperium decide to wipe the slate clean without the Emperor’s Mercy, it would be easier to pick off a lone thousand warriors than a legion in full splendour. It was whispered that the real reason Beira was reluctant to the parted from Manawyddan was the great affection between herself and Aife, the First Warqueen of the Krakenborn. Indeed, even after the sundering Beira only led her warriors to Emain Deighe, an ice moon within the Manawyddan system.
From that day the Rime went largely in tandem with the Krakenborn; alongside the Cerulean Sharks they formed the fleets known informally as the handmaids. It would be rare to see a fleet of Krakenborn sailing without an escort of at least one of the two handmaid fleets. In this way, only a modest force of vessels from each fleet need be sent away from home to make a force equal to a full chapter’s strength.
When the Rime go to war, they make great use of jetpacks, soaring like the snowfalcons that share the skies of Emain Deighe. As their world’s apex predator they revere the bird above all others, and some warriors of the Rime will breed the birds as companions in the hunt. Inspired by their totems, they have developed a particular swooping dive - the warriors climb to dizzying heights before deactivating their packs and armour motors, falling swift and silent as an arrow onto the heads of their unuspecting foes, only reactivating their warplate mere instants before they land.
The Cerulean Sharks
When the great council of the Sundering had concluded and determined that the Krakenborn would go their separate ways, all the Warqueens of note stood and gathered their warriors. With all accounted for, the Krakenborn still numbered a great host, and knowing that to remain so would risk the wrath of the Imperium, it was determined a further Warfleet would be formed. With no Warqueen of note, the duty and honour of leading this fleet fell to a virtual unknown. Snow-Handed Muiri, a lesser champion under the command of Warqueen Beira of the Rime, had risen during the latter days of the Horus Heresy, though at its inception she had been a mere line warrior, and she alone of the future Warqueens did not take part in the Luna War, being but a child aspirant at the time. Muiri had fought well during the Heresy, particularly against the blasphemous warriors of the Word Bearers, and slew the Apostle Ea-Nasir the Brazen in single combat. With little command experience of her own, the other Warqueens had their doubts, but after agreeing to a period of fosterage under Aife, the First Warqueen of the Krakenborn, it was so decreed that Muiri would command the aspirants and newer warriors of the legion. Taking the white of her boreal homeland quartered with the blue of her Legion, she named her legion of neophytes the Cerulean Sharks.
The fears of the other Warqueens were ultimately unfounded, as Muiri was a swift learner and a natural commander. Fighting in concert with their mother legion, the sharks were keen to prove their worth and made excellent progress. Even once the period of tutelage had past, Warqueen Muiri elected to keep her fleet in orbit over Manawyddan, recognising their role as a buttress to the Krakenborn’s own strength and a useful transitionary stage from acolyte to warrior. From then on, the Sharks would remain one of the ‘handmaid’ chapters, sworn to fight alongside the Krakenborn wherever they fought, and remained keen warriors, eager to impress their primogenitors and their sisters in the Rime.
The fears of the other Warqueens were ultimately unfounded, as Muiri was a swift learner and a natural commander. Fighting in concert with their mother legion, the sharks were keen to prove their worth and made excellent progress. Even once the period of tutelage had past, Warqueen Muiri elected to keep her fleet in orbit over Manawyddan, recognising their role as a buttress to the Krakenborn’s own strength and a useful transitionary stage from acolyte to warrior. From then on, the Sharks would remain one of the ‘handmaid’ chapters, sworn to fight alongside the Krakenborn wherever they fought, and remained keen warriors, eager to impress their primogenitors and their sisters in the Rime.
The Blood Tide
The Blood Tide were belligerent, bellicose, and by their own boast the fiercest warriors to rove out from Manawyddan. They were led by their Warqueen Uathach Iarnaich, named after her grievous injuries at the hands of the Luna Wolf Sa’id Kuchulladdon in the Luna War. The Iron Queen from that day returned to leadership ever the fiercer, her mind of iron and flesh turned only to war and vengeance. During the Heresy she led her troops with a relish bordering on the unseemly, taking great pleasure in the slaughter of the Sons of Horus - though her wrath was not overly discriminating. Her warriors, already proud champions, draped themselves in glory and not a small amount of gore. They took the name of the blood tide, a bardic allusion to the seas after a naval battle or a great kraken hunt. It was said that the commanders of the legions they fought alonside feared their thirst for vengeance would corrupt them and take them down the same path as the World Eaters, though Uathach dismissed the concept. As Horus fell however Uathach found little comfort, for her adversary escaped the War on Terra and fled deep into the void.
The Blood Tide arrived late to the council of the sundering, having carved a bloody vengeance against worlds that had sworn to the traitors, slaughtering all with sword and boltgun. Once there, they quarreled with Warqueen Juliana of the Reavers against what they saw as a muzzling of their proud traditions. They were reined in somewhat when Uathach was subdued and disarmed by the reaver queen, but had their concerns assuaged when it was determined that no warrior would be forced to accept the hated Codex or bow to any but Sgáthach. When Holgia Black Hand swore to continue her war free of any imperial oversight, a few of the more bellicose of the Blood Tide went to her side, leaving a core of warriors utterly loyal to their Warqueen.
Uathach would ultimately be successful in her quest for vengeance, severing the hated Kuchulladdon’s head with her claw, though died soon after from her wounds. Eora, her successor as Warqueen helped put the unrestrained bloodbath of Uathach’s reign behind them, and while the Blood Tide remained a brutal and gory tribe of killers, they did so with an iron discipline that kept them from sliding into the clutches of the dark forces of the void.
The Children of Llyr
At the Sundering Council the Children of Llyr took a neutral stance, content to watch the duels of honour and let others make their wise councils, though Warqueen Gobanna personally backed the seers against the Terran faction and their allies. When Sgáthach announced her intention to leave, Gobanna was rewarded for her service with Fragarach, the Primarch’s sword carved from the bill of a great shark. Though she begged to accompany her, Sgáthach turned her down, insisting that none but a Primarch would survive the path she would take. Instead, Gobanna formed her own warfleet, taking with her her tribesfolk and all other warriors that had a way for the anvil and the machine.
The Circle of Awen
The sisters of the Circle of Awen are as much mystics and lorekeepers as they are warriors. Garbed in the arboreal green of their adoptive homeworld Môn, when not at war they can be found drawing auguries and seeking the great mysteries of being.
At the Sundering Council a faction emerged led by various Draodhean and Cailliachs, concerned for their future should the legion bow to the Codex Astartes and its strictures on psykers and their art. They argued that like their colleagues in the fifth and sixth legions their powers derived not from the warp but the spirits and gods of Manawyddan - the Great Leviathan, She Who Awaits The Drowned, and the Ancient Mariner, among others. Though the faction that became the Reavers argued that the Imperium would not accept deviation and the Codex provided a safe outlet, the anti-Codex argument won out and the Draodhean formally forged the Circle of Awen. Unlike the other fleets they chose not to elect a Queen, led by their seers as they were. Instead, their path would be derived from the augurs of sacrifice and cast stones. This approach appeared to work, for the spirits led them to a homeworld full of the signs of the Gods and the wisdom of the woods, where they still practice their arts and sally forth to wage war on the enemies of humanity.
At the Sundering Council a faction emerged led by various Draodhean and Cailliachs, concerned for their future should the legion bow to the Codex Astartes and its strictures on psykers and their art. They argued that like their colleagues in the fifth and sixth legions their powers derived not from the warp but the spirits and gods of Manawyddan - the Great Leviathan, She Who Awaits The Drowned, and the Ancient Mariner, among others. Though the faction that became the Reavers argued that the Imperium would not accept deviation and the Codex provided a safe outlet, the anti-Codex argument won out and the Draodhean formally forged the Circle of Awen. Unlike the other fleets they chose not to elect a Queen, led by their seers as they were. Instead, their path would be derived from the augurs of sacrifice and cast stones. This approach appeared to work, for the spirits led them to a homeworld full of the signs of the Gods and the wisdom of the woods, where they still practice their arts and sally forth to wage war on the enemies of humanity.
The Angels Abyssal
The Angels Abyssal were born from the Clann na Closaich - the corpse clan. As the days of the Heresy drew on, more and more of the Krakenborn turned to their esoteric mysteries as ward and weapon against the dark forces the traitors mustered. Whole squads dedicated themselves to the faith, undergoing the opened throat initiation that granted them access. Soon, the speaker for the dead was inundated with those who wished to join the mysteries and gathered to herself a whole warfleet clad in the unmarked black of the tribe. The warfleet fought in silence, not a sound passing their lips, even from those uninitiated. Developing an elaborate sign language, the warriors felt no impediment from their silence and proved a terror on the battlefield, even to other astartes who came to fear the sudden and horrifying sight of silent scarred warriors appearing to move and fight in unison, yet without direction.
Away from the field however, in the secrecy of the dining hall and council chamber, the Clann na Closaih were little different than their sisters - quieter and more dour perhaps, but their initiation wounds were no impediment to their speech and their silence merely a battlefield vow of will. At the Sundering council High Priestess Senuna recognised that the Clann had grown too large to simply disband or continue as an arm of the Krakenborn, and proposed a separate fleet. Her warriors would not take up the codex, but would go their own way, making war as silent ghosts as they plumbed the mysteries of the silent void. Their flagship was the Lúin, a thin spike of a ship that suited their quiet, unnatural way of warfare well as they left into the far void to bring grim-faced war to the foes of Sgáthach .
The Black Hand Fleet
The Black Hand Fleet was formed by Holgia, the eponymous Black-Handed Queen. It is said she gained her name by her habit of sealing her missives and communiqués with a print of kraken ink. Holgia was a grim, vengeful warrior, and to be served a proclamation of doom sealed with her print was to be given a promise of death by her hand. It is rumoured Holgia even sent a sealed letter to the Emperor himself, enraged at her gene-sire's treatment after the Luna War, though whether it ever arrived upon Terra is unknown. At the great council of the Sundering she argued against the splitting of the legion and bowing to pressure from an Empire that would not acknowledge their wisdom or foresight. Overruled by her peers, she gathered her tribe and all those warriors who could not stomach serving the new Imperium, and left. From the prow of the Carnyx, a barge captured from the XII legion, she led her warriors into renegadery. At first, her warriors waged a private war of revenge against the forces of the traitors, driving them into the warp, and the actions of this rogue fleet were tolerated - even supported. In time however, her wrath turned upon Imperial forces too, and across all four segmentae, stories spread of Imperial vessels found listless, their crews slaughtered to a man and bearing the black-inked hand of Holgia. Despite their best efforts to curtail her and bring her back to the fold, the Krakenborn were unable to corral her vengeful path. About a hundred years after the Sundering, all contract between the Krakenborn and the Black Hands stopped, and from that day none knew of what had become of their wayward sister.
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