Before their damnation, the warriors who now form the Scarab Occult were the veteran heart of the Thousand Sons, brothers of proven skill and, often, nascent psychic gift. The Rubric spared none of them the common fate of the Legion, and their souls were burned to dust like all the rest. But it left them clad in the massive, near-impenetrable plate of Terminator armour, and so they endure as the most resilient of all Rubricae.
In battle they are a grinding, implacable force. Their heavy armour shrugs aside firepower that would annihilate lesser troops, and they advance with the same fearless, mechanical certainty as their lighter brethren, only slower and far harder to stop. They carry weapons of fearsome power, from inferno-charged combi-bolters to blades wreathed in unnatural flame, and each squad is bound to the will of a Scarab Occult sorcerer who marches among them, weaving protective enchantments and lethal spells.
The name recalls the scarab, the ancient symbol of resurrection and eternity, though there is a bitter irony in it, for these warriors are neither reborn nor truly eternal, merely preserved in an endless, hollow half-existence. They are the honour guard of a Legion of the damned, elite and unstoppable, and utterly, tragically empty.
Order of battle
