Angels and Dragons

Throughout the long history of the Blood Angels chapter, they have been the only known possessors of an artifact recovered during the Great Crusades, the Standard Template Construct for the Predator variant known as the "Baal" pattern. Because of the exclusivity of their ownership, the Blood Angels guard their tanks and even the smoldering wreckage of their tanks very fiercely, lest it fall into the hands of someone who could reverse engineer it.


One Blood Angels successor chapter, The Blood Skulls, founded during the 21st founding (similarly to the Copper Dragons) was fighting a Renegade Space Marine Chapter in service to Khorne. The Blood Skulls were not alone, however, aided by the Copper Dragons, a Salamanders strikeforce, and small elements from the Space Wolf chapter. Over the course of the campaign the Taint of Chaos spread throughout the ranks of the Blood Skulls and the Space Wolves. Both corrupted armies mutated into horrendous creatures of a most otherworldly appearance, and quickly set about to destroy their former allies. The newly renegade were shocked to find that the Salamanders had ordered in a strikeforce from the Ordo Malleus, knowing full well how insidious and relentless the Taint of Chaos truly was.

The ensuing conflict was tremendously bloody, and the day was won, but at a terrible cost. The Copper Dragons lost nearly four hundred battle-brothers over the course of the campaign, and only a few of the Salamanders lived until the end. The Ordo strikeforce vanished as quickly as it had arrived, leaving the Copper Dragons to clean up the planet.

After the battle was over it took the Copper Dragons nearly three months to collect their fallen brethren's gene-seed and to scavenge among the wreckage of the vehicles and corpses of the slain in hopes of finding any equipment that could have been used by the army, but what they found over the course of those three months was worth every battle-brother lost, and every minute they spent fighting. They found a Baal Predator that had formerly belonged to the Blood Skulls, that had an electrical malfunction and never saw the battle lines. After many years of research the Copper Dragons techpriests finally discovered the secrets that set the Baal Predator above all others: The engines. They quickly replicated and implemented the engine design in every Rhino chassis they owned, making their tanks truly fearsome. Fortunately for the Copper Dragons, the Baal Predator that they found during the Mori campaign was of the variety that sported a Flamestorm Cannon and sponsen mounted Heavy Flamers. To this day, they haven't recovered any Baal Predators with the twin-linked assault cannon and sponsen heavy bolter patterns.