Chaos Cultists are the mortal faithful of the Ruinous Powers, the vast tide of humanity that has forsaken the Emperor to grovel before darker gods. They rise wherever Chaos takes root: in the crushing hive-cities of the Imperium, aboard forgotten voidships, and on worlds ground down by war and want, where whispered promises of power and salvation find ready ears. A single cult may fester unseen for generations before erupting into open rebellion, and in that hour its members throw off all pretence and take up arms against everything they once served.
Set beside the transhuman warriors they follow, Cultists are poorly armed and scarcely trained, a rabble of debased zealots, deranged mutants, and desperate malcontents. What they lack in skill they make up for in numbers and in a devotion so total that no order is too monstrous and no sacrifice too great. They will charge into massed fire, hurl themselves upon enemy blades, and spend their lives without hesitation, certain that their deaths purchase the favour of the gods and a place among the blessed.
To the Heretic Astartes, such followers are both weapon and resource, easily raised, easily replaced, and endlessly useful. Cultists screen the advance of their masters, smother strongpoints beneath sheer weight of bodies, and perform the blood-rites that draw daemons into the world. They are the foundation upon which every Chaos uprising is built, the countless damned who make up the Lost and the Damned, and they die by the million so that the champions of Chaos might triumph.
Order of battle
