The Red Tear was the Gloriana-class flagship of Sanguinius, most beautiful and beloved of all the Emperor's sons, and it was a vessel of such splendour that even hardened void-crews spoke of it with reverence. Shaped like a great teardrop of crimson and gold, it soared through the void as gracefully as the winged Primarch himself, carrying the Blood Angels into the light of the Great Crusade. It was nobility given form.
Within its halls hung works of art gathered from a thousand worlds, for the Blood Angels prized beauty and craftsmanship as few other Legions did. Statuary, murals, and reliquaries adorned its decks, so that to walk the Red Tear was to walk through a gallery of the Imperium's finest achievements. Yet for all its grace, it was a warship without peer, its weapons the equal of any flagship in the fleet.
When Horus's treachery split the galaxy, the Red Tear bore Sanguinius and his sons toward their fated stand upon the Palace walls of Terra. The angel led from its bridge with the same tragic gallantry that marked all his deeds.
The Red Tear endured as a symbol of what the Blood Angels had been before sorrow claimed them, a monument to their fallen lord's peerless beauty and the doom that awaited him beneath the shadow of the Warmaster.
The fleet continues
