Sons of Russ

The Sons of Russ is an unofficial collective of ferocious Successor Chapters created from the lineage of the feral Space Wolves created in the wake of the Ultima Founding. These Chapters are comprised entirely of newly revealed Primaris Space Marines - the next generation of transhuman warriors - and are of like-mind and bellicose temperament. They now stand as a bulwark eternal vigil over the Eye of Terror and wage an eternal war against the Traitor Legions and those who would make truck with the Ruinous Powers.

Background
The origins of the Sons of Russ harkens back to the dark days following the Horus Heresy when the Second Founding took place in 021.M31. The Legiones Astartes were broken down into separate, smaller existing formations known as Chapters. No longer would they march in ranks of ten thousand Astartes or more. The High Lords of Terra created the Successor or Progenitor Chapters, off-shoots governed by the same gene-seed, so that their Primarch's legacy was maintained across the stars. The more Successor Chapters drawn from the original Legion's gene-seed, the greater the legacy.

The scions of Roboute Guilliman were the ancestors of hundreds of Chapters, as were the sons of Rogal Dorn, and so it was that the Imperium was ultimately modelled in their image. Without Successors, no Chapter lived to exert influence. Successor Chapters - these were what the Vlka Fenryka (the Space Wolves) aspired to create, to ensure that warriors of their temper flourished and endured.

The Wolf Brothers
The Space Wolves created from the genetic legacy of Leman Russ a Successor Chapter known as the Wolf Brothers. This newly formed Chapter was intended to be as numerous as their genetic forebears, and as powerful. They were to have been the first of many Successors, a whole line of descendant Fenrisian Chapters - the "Sons of Russ," capable of carving out a star empire the size of Ultramar. That was the vision of the Space Wolves: to be powerful enough to encircle the Eye of Terror completely, to prevent the Traitors from daring to leave it ever again. It was hoped that the Wolf Brothers and other Space Wolves Successors would fulfill their destiny and find a new purpose in the Age of the Imperium.

But something went terribly wrong and the Wolf Brothers were disbanded, scattered to the six points of the compass. They were disbanded for the same reason there could be no further Successors to the Space Wolves - the existence of the Wolf Within. The genetic code of the Space Wolves Astartes known as the Canis Helix was far too dangerous to be copied. The heritage that made the Space Wolves powerful also made their genomes unstable and prone to rapid mutation.

The Tempering
The Space Wolves shelved their plans to create any further Successor Chapters after the disastrous failure of their previous attempt, but in the 32nd Millennium, a Wolf Priest named Thrar "Wyrmblade" Hraldir believed he was close to a breakthrough. Hraldir had come closer than any other since the time of the Emperor Himself at understanding the genetic nature of the Canis Helix.

Hraldir came close to figuring out how to reproduce the gene-seed of the Space Wolves without any of its inherent flaws. The Space Wolves' dream of emulating the Ultramarines, Imperial Fists and the other First Founding Chapters in the creation of a legion of Successors seemed close at hand. But unknown to the Space Wolves, their ambitions were also known to their ancient enemy, the Daemon Primarch Magnus the Red of the traitorous Thousand Sons Traitor Legion.

The program for eradicating the genetic flaws from the legacy of Leman Russ was known as "The Tempering." For a generation, Hraldir worked on a cure for the Space Wolves' genetic flaws. No fleshmaker had ever discovered more than the Wolf Priest about the nature of the Canis Helix. It had become clear to him the Curse of the Wulfen could be eradicated while preserving the glory provided by the integration of animal DNA into the Space Wolves' gene-seed.

After the end of the Horus Heresy, Magnus the Red was determined to have his revenge for the devastation of his homeworld of Prospero at the hands of his former brother, the Primarch Leman Russ and his Legion. He devised a cunning plan to lure the Space Wolves into a trap in order to enact his final vengeance against them. In a bold trap, Magnus lured the majority of the Space Wolves Chapter away from their homeworld, while the bulk of the the Thousand Sons attacked Fenris in full. During the First Battle of the Fang, Magnus the Red personally destroyed the Space Wolves' gene-laboratories within The Fang. He shattered the birthing tubes and trampled and tore apart the experimental Sons of Russ. The vials of altered Space Wolves gene-seed were all destroyed, broken into glistening shards of glass, while the Cogitators containing the data on their creation were consumed by flames. Irreplaceable equipment, some of it dating back to the days of the Unification on Terra, had been entirely devastated, and priceless inner mechanics were now nothing more than useless wreckage.

During the Daemon Primarch's rampage in The Fang's fleshchambers he was confronted by Wolf Priest Hraldir. Though the valiant Space Wolf faced the Primarch, he proved no match for the might of one of the genetic sons of the Emperor, and was slain.

With his death and the destruction of The Fang's laboratories and data storage, The Tempering could not be completed. None now lived within the Chapter who understood Hraldir's work, and the necessary genetic alteration equipment had been utterly destroyed. After this catastrophe, the Space Wolves believed they would forever remain alone, the sole inheritors of the legacy of Leman Russ.

Hope for the Future
The Ultramarines Primarch Roboute Guilliman, always an optimist, but never a fool, had learned from the mistakes of the Horus Heresy. He had foreseen that the Forces of Chaos would never relent in their aim to bring the Imperium of Man low. He anticipated that the threats Chaos and the xenos presented to Humanity would engulf the galaxy and knew that warriors resilient enough to stand against them would be needed as never before. Therefore, he set a task for the Priesthood of Mars: to develop a new legion of transhuman warriors - the Primaris Space Marines - who were bigger, more physically powerful and possessed faster reaction times than their original Astartes counterparts. Following the Great Scouring, Guilliman tasked Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl with this most important of projects.

The Primarch entrusted the Archmagos with the Sangprimus Portum, a a device containing potent genetic material harvested from the Primarchs and entrusted to Cawl shortly after the Second Founding in 001.M32, that allowed for Cawl's breakthrough in creating the genetically superior Primaris Astartes. It is also known that in addition to the general advancements in their gene-seed, Primaris Space Marines possess three additional gene-seed implant organs compared to their standard brethren and that their gene-seed is far more genetically stable than that of their forerunners. Primaris Space Marine gene-seed has only a .001% chance of genetic deviancy from the original baseline with the passage of each generation, which makes it nearly immune to the severe genetic instability suffered by Chapters such as the Blood Angels and Space Wolves over the course of their existence.

In the pursuit of his attempt to improve upon the original Space Marine template, Archmagos Dominus Cawl collected samples of the genomes of all twenty of the original Primarchs, including those deemed Lost or Traitors, though Roboute Guilliman made clear to his overeager servant that Primaris Astartes were to be created only from the lines of those of his brothers who led the nine Loyalist Space Marine Legions. In regards to the Space Wolves' gene-seed and the creation of new Successor Chapters, Archmagos Dominus Cawl was able to refine the gene-sequences of the Canis Helix, altering it to deliver the supernatural strength of a Space Wolf Astartes without unleashing the ravages of the Wulfen within.

The products of these experiments created within the flesh labs of Mars with the altered Canis Helix were as powerful as a true Space Wolf, as quick in the hunt and as skilled with a blade, but they did not degenerate into the Wulfen, nor did their personalities take on bestial characteristics. They possessed the qualities that made the Space Wolves superb warriors, and purged the genetic factors that would have prevented them from creating successors. Thus, the path was laid to forge anew, Chapters derived from the genetic heritage of Russ.