The Furious Shivs

The Furious Shivs

 - A Slaaneshi Alpha Legion Warband

The story of the Furious Shivs is legend in the Crucible Sector.  It begins with Alpharius and the Alpha Legion...not ever fully trusting any other Legion, the original members of the Furious Shivs were tasked with infiltrating the Emperor's Children to better understand the nature of their chaotic transformation.  A small company of just over 200 men (led by Brother Captain Mer'kar) joined the Emperor's Children as they battled the White Scars in the Crucible Sector during the Horus Heresy.  Masters of disguise and deception, Mer'kar claimed that he and his men were novitiates that had just been sent to reinforce the 5th Company of Emperor's Children.

Though most Alpha Legion members do not commit to any one deity, Mer'kar and his company were indoctrinated into the worship of Slaanesh.  Being fully committed to the mission at hand, Mer'kar and his lieutenants took the blood oaths and began open worship of He Who Thirsts.  Many battles were fought during the Heresy but ultimately it came to an inglorious end.  With Horus being slain by the Emperor, most of the Traitor Legions, including the Emperor's Children, made a full retreat into the Eye of Terror.  It is at this point that Mer'kar saw an opportunity to fill the power vacuum left on the edge of the Crucible Sector.

Throughout most of the war, Mer'kar and his men had operated as an individual cell with only intermittent communication with Alpharius and the rest of the legion.  When news reached Mer'kar about Alpharius' demise at the hands of Rogal Dorn, Mer'kar decided that he would lead his battle brothers to glory and seek power for himself.  Mer'kar dubbed his warband the Furious Shivs and begun the pursuit of artifacts and weapons that would allow him to gain the strength necessary to obliterate the Loyalist scum.  Gaining favor for Slaanesh would afford him opportunities to commune with beings of the Warp and gain knowledge about where such power could be gained.

Evolution of a Warband

While 202 men originally set out to ghost the Emperor's Children at the beginning of the Heresy, only 116 of the original battle brothers remained.  The passing of time has seen some afflicted with the Obliterator virus while dabbling with warp weaponry.  Others committed more fully to the pursuit of ecstasy (magnified as followers of Slaanesh) and chose to walk the path of a Noise Marine.  Still, other battle brothers have simply stayed true to their original training as Alpha Legion and maintained their Legion tactics and training.

Needing to bolster their ranks, Mer'kar and his First Lieutenant Jorvo have tested other renegade marines and allowed only the best to join their ranks.  While they do employ the use of cultists and other more brutish berzerker marine types, the Furious Shivs only ever have 202 true members to represent and honor the original cell.

Having fought for Slaanesh for nearly 10 millenia and winning countless battles along the way, Mer'kar was shown the location of the Knife of Eternity.  A simple weapon, it had been crafted using the shards of Eldar soul stones and was an item highly coveted by the Dark Prince.  In the year 666 of the 38th Millennium, Mer'kar led his warband into the Covictus system and after subduing the local militia, captured the relic in the name of Slaanesh.  His reward for obtaining such a glorious prize was his ascendance into full daemon-hood as a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh.  Despite the jealousy that many of his subordinates felt at that moment, they had no choice but to submit and continue following Mer'kar.  His Lieutenant Jorvo ascended to the position of Chaos Lord and became the outward face for the Warband when dealing with other traitors and aliens alike.

Librarius of the Dagger

The Librarius for the Furious Shevs has always maintained a keen attachment to the Warp.  Even as Loyalists, Epistolary Dorb and his fellow Librarians would dabble and experiment on the people of conquered planets after the Crusade had departed.  This did not changed in their shift to Chaos...if anything has been turned up a notch.  Mer'kar always favored the Council of the Dagger and it is common to have a sorcerer accompany him on every mission.  Their past experimentation with the Warp on living entities has allowed them to perfect methods of enhancing the performance of the warband.  Mer'kar and the other Sorcerers favor using the Warp to increase the speed and strength of his soldiers rather than manifesting lightning or other more physical weapons.

The Hunger for More

Though the warband has fought together for a long time, there is always a need to advance  whenever possible.  When the Furious Shivs were still in their infancy, infighting cost them multiple victories as a result of jealousy and backstabbing foiling the proper execution of battle plans.  It didn't take Mer'kar long to realize he needed to quash these actions if he wanted the warband to survive long after the events of the Horus Heresy.  Though his chaotic heart relished in the violence, Mer'kar was able to instill into his soldiers a discipline not so dissimilar to the notion of "honor among thieves".  The tool he used as an outlet was simple:  whenever there was a matter in question where one Aspiring Champion thought glory or some other trophy had been wrongfully taken, he could challenge the opponent to a Battle of the Shivs.  It was a simple combat where the two would face off in no armor using only a simple bone shiv as a weapon.  The first to inflict 6 cuts on his opponent would be declared the victor and would claim the spoils as his own.

Simple and brutal, it has proven an effective way to retain some semblance of order.  Lemen, Aspiring Champion and squad leader of the Dissonance (First Squad of Noise Marines) has the most victories in the Battle of Shivs.

The Twins

Oreh and Ireh are twin brothers and head up the "regular" Chaos Space Marine legionnaires whenever they enter battle.  Preferring longer range engagements, the brothers are responsible for organizing the squads and choosing champions whenever they go out on missions.  Many times in the past it has seemed that one of the brothers had been fatally injured only to miraculously recover from their wounds after coming in contact with the other brother. 

It is thought that Alpharius and Omegon themselves bestowed upon them a gift or latent Psyker ability that allowed them to share a life force.  Oreh and Ireh work perfectly in concert on the battlefield and have a stranglehold on the Chaos Space Marine element of the warband.  This extends to squads of Chosen, Havocs, and Raptors.

Presence in the Crucible Sector

Having attained daemonhood, it seemed that Mer'kar would be content to sit on his laurels and have his Warband go out and strike at the Imperium, wreaking havoc where ever they were weakest.  But being a Veteran of the Long War compelled Mer'kar to push for more and to one day strike out at the corpse god himself!  With that in mind he again began communing with some of the older denizens of the warp and came to find out about an artifact of great power in the Crucible Sector.  The Vibora Morada was an idol that had been broken in millennia past.  It was shattered into 6 different pieces and the pieces were dispersed to different planets.  Though the Greater Daemon of Slaanesh was purposely vague about what it did, finding all the pieces and fusing them back together would give the wielder a greater control of the Warp in the Crucible Sector.

With images of the site of each of the fragments, Mer'kar and the Furious Shevs set out to recover the fragments to gain dominance in the Crucible Sector.