Deliverance is a moon that bears the memory of chains in its very name. Orbiting the polluted forge-world of Kiavahr, it began as a penal colony called Lycaeus, a place where the criminal, the dissident, and the merely unlucky were shipped to labour and die in the mines beneath the guilds' merciless rule. It was a world of despair, and it remained so until a saviour fell from the stars into its darkness.
That saviour was Corvus Corax, the pale primarch who would lead the Raven Guard. Raised among the slaves, he came to understand their suffering intimately, and he forged the downtrodden prisoners into an army of shadows. Through cunning, sabotage, and patient rebellion he broke the power of the guild-masters of Kiavahr and cast off the moon's chains forever.
In victory the liberated people renamed their home Deliverance, a monument to freedom won through blood and shadow, and from these hardy former slaves the Raven Guard have recruited ever since. Theirs is a way of war built on stealth, misdirection, and the swift killing strike, the tactics of an insurgent turned to the service of the Imperium. No other Chapter so wholly embodies the struggle of the powerless against the tyrant.
That legacy of freedom was nearly extinguished at the Drop Site Massacre, where the Legion was ambushed and butchered almost to extinction upon a distant killing-ground. It was Deliverance and its people who allowed the shattered Adeptus Astartes survivors to rebuild, drawing fresh warriors from the moon that had first given them purpose. To this day the Raven Guard fight as their homeworld taught them, from the shadows and for the freedom of others, striking unseen and vanishing before the enemy can raise a hand.
The atlas continues
