From the Ashes of Badab
The Red Corsairs were once the Astral Claws, a Space Marine Chapter charged with guarding the turbulent stars about the Maelstrom, until their Chapter Master Lufgt Huron set his ambition above his oaths. His refusal to render the Imperium its due tithes ignited the Badab War, a bitter decade of fratricidal conflict that ended with his home world shattered and his Chapter all but annihilated. Barely two hundred warriors escaped the final assault, bearing their grievously wounded lord into the Maelstrom, and there they cast off the Emperor's service forever.
The Tyrant Reborn
Huron's body had been ruined by a dying loyalist's melta blast, but his Techmarines rebuilt him into something more machine than man, and he rose from that agony as Huron Blackheart, master of a new dominion. Under his rule the survivors became the Red Corsairs, daubing their plundered war-plate the colour of spilled blood. From hidden anchorages amid the Maelstrom's churning storms they prey upon the shipping lanes and border worlds of the Imperium, striking without warning and slipping away before retribution can gather against them.
An Ever-Growing Host
Unlike the closed brotherhoods of the Long War, the Red Corsairs welcome all comers. Renegade Astartes from a hundred fallen Chapters, mortal reavers, and prisoners broken and reforged into loyal killers all swell their ranks, so that the warband grows larger with every raid rather than thinning with the ages. Huron wields Chaos as a corsair wields a blade, drawing on its gifts and its daemons without surrendering himself to any single god, and his fleets have become a scourge the Imperium has never contrived to root out.
Chaos Space Marines
Order of battle
The Red Corsairs field the units of the Chaos Space Marines — a detachment from the roster:
Kindred formations
Other Chaos Space Marines formations
Alpha LegionThe Twentieth Legion are the great deceivers of the Long War, a serpentine brotherhood that fights not with open battle-lines but with lies, infiltration, and a thousand hidden hands. Where other Traitor Legions announce themselves in fire, the Alpha Legion unravels worlds from within, working through sedition, sabotage, and mortal proxies long before a single bolter is raised. Their warriors share a single defiant claim, that any one of them may be the primarch Alpharius, and so no enemy can ever be certain whom they truly face.
Black LegionThe Black Legion is the largest and most feared of all the Traitor Legions, forged from the ashes of Horus's own Sons of Horus after their primarch's death. Under the iron will of Abaddon the Despoiler, they cast aside their old colours and old shame, taking black armour to mark a new beginning. Where other legions cling to isolation and old grudges, the Black Legion draws in renegades of every stripe, uniting the fractured hosts of Chaos into a single crusading war-engine bent on the Imperium's utter destruction.
Crimson SlaughterThe Crimson Slaughter were once the Crimson Sabres, a rigidly disciplined Space Marine Chapter whose savagery on the world of Umidia drew the curse of Khorne upon them. Ever since, they have been haunted by the spectral voices of those they slew, a chorus of the murdered that no prayer can silence. Only in ceaseless bloodletting do the ghosts recede, and so the warband slaughters without end, dragging its damnation across the stars in a futile search for a moment's peace.
Iron WarriorsThe Iron Warriors are the master siege-breakers of Chaos, grim and pitiless engineers of destruction who reduce fortress worlds to rubble through overwhelming firepower and cold calculation. Once the Imperium's foremost specialists in siegecraft, they nursed a bitter resentment at being spent as siege-fodder while glory fell to others. That resentment curdled into treachery. Today they wage war as a science, favouring artillery, armour and attrition, and they take a grim satisfaction in proving that no wall, no matter how mighty, can stand against them forever.
Night LordsThe Night Lords are the terror-mongers of the Traitor Legions, waging psychological warfare with the same ruthlessness other legions bring to open battle. They strike from darkness in screaming lightning-marked craft, mutilating captives, broadcasting the screams of the dying, and leaving atrocities designed to shatter the courage of the living. To the Night Lords, fear is a weapon sharper than any blade, and a world paralysed by dread is a world already conquered. They fight not for the Dark Gods but for spite, survival and the sheer pleasure of the hunt.
The PurgeThe Purge are nihilist worshippers of Nurgle who cleave to only the darkest facet of the Plague God, despising life in all its forms and seeking not rebirth but annihilation. First appearing in the closing centuries of the 36th Millennium, they became convinced that the galaxy is beyond all saving and that purity can be found only in the sterile silence of death. Wielding poisons and engineered contagions, they wage genocidal war on human and xenos alike, praying for a plague that will scour every living thing from creation.
Word BearersThe Word Bearers are the zealots and prophets of Chaos, the first Legion to bend the knee to the Ruinous Powers and the architects of the entire Horus Heresy. Where other traitors war for vengeance or plunder, the Word Bearers war for faith, spreading the gospel of the Dark Gods across the galaxy with fire, scripture and sacrifice. Their Dark Apostles preach damnation to the masses and summon daemons to fight at their side, and they regard the destruction of the Emperor's atheist Imperium not merely as war but as a holy crusade of conversion.