I had forgotten I had so many notes on these guys. This is all from a word document I have from a few years back.
History:
1) Zeon Crusade
The Zeon Crusade was launched by High Marshal Urbanus of the Black Templars to conquer the volatile Outremar sector for the Imperium. In the centuries following the original Great Crusade and the events of the Horus Heresy, the Outremar Sector had fallen to massive ork invasions and was cut off from the rest of the Imperium by recurring warp storms. This made travelling to and throughout the Outremar sector dangerous and contact minimal.
The Zeon Crusade was charged with the holy mission of conquering the Outremar sector, beginning with establishing a footholds on Bizantus and Antokus, and shortly followed by the re-conquest of the holy planet Zeon itself. The planet Zeon had originally been conquered during the final days of the Great Crusade and was the location of a great cathedral dedicated to the victories of the Emperor. After a brutal struggle with the Ork hordes that had overrun most of the planet’s continents, the Templars were able to liberate the slaves and pockets of human civilization still miraculously surviving on its surface. The Templars immediately made Zeon their base of operations and established a new Chapter Keep within the capitol city. The long and grueling campaigns to liberate the sector included clearing of many more Ork infestations from neighboring planets, as well as defending against incursions from Eldar raiders.
The planet Zeon itself grew from a fragile bastion of human resistance to a major Imperial world within a few centuries after its re-conquest. Both the blossoming hive cities, as well as the rugged aboriginal inhabitants, provided a steady stream of recruits for the growing crusade, as well as swelling the ranks of the newly-formed Zeon Imperial Guard, who threw themselves whole heartedly into the re-conquest of the Outremar Sector under the guidance of their Templar overlords.
Prior to the arrival of the Plague Fleets, the crusade was believed to command a total strength of at least 500 Templars, augmented by a host of auxiliary Zeon Guard units. The Templars also directed the construction of several smaller chapter keeps spread throughout the sector guarding their interests on strategic points. Aside from the primary keep on Zeon itself, the most important strategic chapter keep was located on the planet Odessar, which was the forward operating base for campaigns against the Orks. The 3rd Crusade Company was charged with the defense of Odessar.
2) Invasion
Precluding the arrival of the Plague Fleet, several of the systems within the Outremar sector reported minor insurrections and acts of sabotage, orchestrated from unknown sources.
The arrival of a major Chaos incursion into the Outremar Sector was heralded by the appearance of a major space hulk dropping out of the warp, under the influence of the chaos god Nurgle. Several pieces of the hulk made planetfall throughout the sector, heralding the invasion of armies loyal to Nurgle and under the command of his servant known as the Leper King.
The outer defenses of the system were unable to stop the hulk’s fragments. The 3rd Crusade Company was nearly destroyed as they were caught unawares during the initial Chaos invasion of Odessar, only a few Templars were able to evacuate, including Chaplain Omer. Castellan Degore of the 3rd Company was counted among the dead. Following the loss of Odessar, the defenses on Saphat and Morab were abandoned as the crusade fleet carried out the Exterminatus order to slow the invasion of the chaos forces. The surviving Templars were forced to withdraw to the Zeon in the face of imminent invasion.
As the hulk approached Zeon, both the crusade fleet led by Castellan Giraldus (4th Company) and planetary defenses led by Castellan Theobald (2nd Company) were overwhelmed. The Templars put up a monumental effort to fight off the armies being landed upon the planet. In a desperate gamble, Marshal Frederick teleported with a host of the Crusade's veterans deep inside the space hulk to seek out the Leper King and destroy him. Their mission succeeded, but at the cost of the some of the Crusade’s finest warriors, including Castellan Ectar (1st Company) and Castellan Heinrich (5th Company).
Following the Leper King’s banishment a massive warp storm erupted, and huge chunks of the hulk smashed down onto the planet’s surface. Huge clouds of dust, ash, and toxic fumes blotted out the sun for weeks. Zeon was completely cut off from the rest of the Outremar sector and the crusade fleet.
3) Quarantine
When Marshal Frederick and Castellan Einred (1st Company) returned with their veterans to Zeon they found the planet covered in toxic ash and radioactive snow, and the cities in ruins with survivors and marines fighting for their lives against a new threat. The Templars who returned in their absence the Plague of Unbelief had spread throughout the Imperial citizens, causing them to turn into mindless rotting zombies with a hunger for human flesh. The cities devolved into anarchy, with only a few bastions of Imperial strength still in existence.
Worse yet, the Templars themselves found they were not immune, and some of their loyal battle brothers succumbed to the plague. The crusade apothecaries discovered that a deadly disease had been brought down from the hulk by the strike-team survivors and had now spread through the surviving Templar ranks. No cure was found, and only a handful of Templars were completely immune to its effects. Every other Templar was infected, and slowly doomed to outward bodily decay, and eventual loss of sanity as the desire for human flesh grew too great. One of the first Templars to succumb to the curse was Marshal Frederick, who was given last rights at the hand of his loyal successor, Marshal Einred. Einred declared that any battle-brother who succumbed to the curse be executed before the curse had run its full course. He also ordered that tainted brothers be permitted to continue to fight on the front lines; despite their failing condition he recognized that the crusade was rapidly losing numbers and needed every available Templar to help fight the Chaos forces.
News of the Plague of Unbelief and the curse was spread throughout the Outremar Sector to ensure no further forces were landed on Zeon surface. The quarantine meant that only supplies and ammunition could be dropped to aid the besieged Templars, primarily air dropped by 4th Company fleet. Warp storms make contact with the rest of the Imperium all but impossible for almost a decade.
4) Fall of Zeon
After a decade-spanning war of attrition on the surface of Zeon the Templars and Imperial survivors were almost wiped out. When the Warp storms finally abated, Marshal Einred made the decision to evacuate the planet and regroup off world. The surviving Templars and some of the survivors were loaded the crusade's remaining spacecraft and departed the Zeon system to the undead forces of Nurgle. The planet is left before EXTERMINATUS can cleanse it from the unholy taint.
During the Zeon Quarantine the remaining crusade keeps had also fallen under siege, with only Aecar still completely in Templar hands, though it was also under siege and faltering under its own onslaught of the Plague of Unbelief.. The survivors of Zeon were only briefly able to regroup on Aecar before the system fell to Nurgle, and the Templars of the Zeon Crusade were forced to depart from the Outremar Sector entirely. Shortly after the fleet left, the entire sector was enveloped by warp storms.
After the fall of Zeon, the crusade was reduced to barely 200 Templars. Most of the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th companies were wiped out, and the rest of the crusade companies also took horrific casualties. Upon the evacuation of Zeon and later Aecar the crusader fleets were scattered in the confusion; the fates of the 4th and 6th companies and their Castellans are unknown to the rest of the crusade. Marshal Einred commands the known survivors from the crusade's greatest surviving battle barge, and carries within its depths the largest contingent of the Zeon Diaspora and surviving cursed Templar marines. Marshal Einred has renamed this surviving contingent of the Zeon Crusade “the Remnant,” and has launched a penitential crusade across the galaxy in order to atone for his failure to defend the Outremar Sector and to gather strength until such a time arrives to return to reconquer Zeon and rebuild the Temple of the Emperor Ascendant.
The Templars of the Remnant consider themselves marked for death. While the origin of their curse is at the hands of Nurgle, and therefore an abomination to everything they and the rest of the Imperium hold dear, the Remnant marines now view their plight at the hands of the Curse as a blessing from the Emperor, a way to live out a purgatory of pain and crippling defeat in this world, and go to join the Emperor in the next life. As such, the marines throw themselves at the enemy, crushing all who stand before them in the name of the Emperor, often reveling in the chance that they may yet be set free. Others in the Imperium who have contacted them or have fought beside these doomed marines feel a mix of revulsion and profound admiration for this cursed holy warriors, doomed to rot and live a tortuous existence, yet to do so with blind faith in the Emperor constantly on their lips.
