Lykus the Mongrel

"Every dog has his day, wouldn't you agree?"

- Lykus, before decapitating a rival Chaos Lord

Perhaps the first non-Cthonian member of the Black Legion, Lykus is the result of the gene-tampering experiments undertaken by the now deceased Apothecary Hradeggon during the Eye of Terror Slave Wars. In an attempt to bolster the then-Sons of Horus' failing numbers, Hradeggon created perhaps the first "half-breed" Asartes using organs and gene-seed taken from both Loyalist and Traitor Legions alike. The result was Lykus, better known as Lykus the Mongrel, an unhinged Chaos Marine who fought and clawed his way through the Black Legion's hierarchy to become the feared Chaos Lord he is today. Possessed of a keen intellect and a vicious cunning, Lykus has won just as many battles through outsmarting his foes as he has out-fighting them, and yet still remains a pariah amongst the forces of the Black Legion, a fact he takes a bizarre sort of pride in.

Hrageddon's Plot
In the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, the Sons of Horus had been shattered. Their Primarch slain, their once mighty Legion reduced to only a few companies worth of Marines, what little remained fled into the Eye of Terror to escape the wrath of the vengful Loyalists. Settling on the graveyard world of Maeleum, the Sons of Horus constructed the fortress Lupercalios, entombed their Primarch, and licked their wounds, broken by their defeat.

During this time, the Sons of Horus' gene-stock was beginning to become scarce as the sheer proximity to the warp corrupted battle-brother after battle-brother. Hrageddon, one of the Legion's few remaining Apothecaries, found himself working every day just to ensure a few more years of time for his Legion. The problem was twofold; the Sons' of Horus gene-stock was rapidly becoming unusable, and they had little in the way of recruitment save the wretched slave-stock they had brought with them, and they were even more susceptible to corruption than they were. Hrageddon however, was not about to let the Sons of Horus die out, and formulated a plan that could potentialy save the Legion, or potentialy damn himself in the process. The problem was, he lacked the sufficient implants and gene-stock to go through with his plan.

Surprisingly the answer to that particular problem came in the form of the destruction of the Lupercalios, as the depraved Emperor's Children forced their way into the inner sanctum and made off the Horus' corpse. While at first this seemed to spell the doom of the Sons of Horus, the arrival of Abaddon changed everything. The self-Proclaimed Warmaster of Chaos took the remnants of the Sons and transformed them into the Black Legion, sending them after the Emperor's Children to take their vengeance. Hrageddon was their when the Legion broke into the inner sanctum of Fabius Bile, and to his joy he found exactly what he needed to complete. Organs, implants, and gene-seed taken from both Traitor and Loyalist Legions lined the walls, Hrageddon taking his fair pick of the most suitable implants. Now he had his materials, and all he needed was a test subject...

A Mongrel is Born
"....Subject is displaying signs of dermal outgrowth, most likely a sign of genetic rejection. Amputation and skin-grafting shall be necessary....."

- Vox-Recording recovered from the Eye of Terror, Source Unknown

Lykus was the spawn of degenerate slave-stock, just another miniscule part of the teaming masses of unfortunate souls that had accompanied the Sons of Horus into the Eye of Terror. The only thing that made him stand out was the fact that despite having been born and raised on Maeleum, showed no signs of Chaos-induced mutation, a curious trait that attracted Hrageddon's attention. Seeing the young slave as a suitable first candidate for his experiment. Taking the boy into his makeshift Apothecarion, the corrupted Apothecary set to work immediately, beginning the process to transform the child into a fully-fledged Space Marine.

Though the first implantation process was successful, Hrageddon did not have the time to allow the implants to settle within their new host, instead utilizing all manner of ungodly procedures to accelerate the process. The gene-seed implantation was a particular hurdle, as Hraggedon did not have a matching set and was forced to cross-splice the genetic information within two dissimilar gene-seeds. As for Lykus, the process was excruciating to say the least, his body metamorphosing as such a dramatic rate that his increasing musculature was literally bursting from his skin, forcing the Hrageddon to flay new epidermis from other "test subjects" in order to serve as skin grafts, and thus leaving Lykus with a hide of cross-stitched, patchwork flesh. Even worse was the psychological effect the sudden changes had on the young man, though Hraggedon just barely managed to save Lykus' sanity through the painstaking manipulation of his nerve endings, thus somewhat dulling the pain.

(MORE TO COME)