Home › Units › Thousand Sons › Rubric Marines
1 / 4 · Click to enlargeLore & origins
Rubric Marines are the remnants of the Thousand Sons Legion. After the Heresy, the Legion suffered terrible mutations, so the sorcerer Ahriman and his cabal cast a great spell, the Rubric, to stop them. The spell ended the mutation, but it reduced most of the Legion's non-psychic warriors to dust, sealing their souls inside their armour.
The remaining Rubric Marines are remorseless, implacable foes. They obey their sorcerer masters with little thought of their own, marching steadily through enemy fire and firing warp-touched bolts that burn through armour.
After the Space Wolves burned Prospero, the surviving Thousand Sons fled into the Eye of Terror, and the old curse of mutation came back to the Legion faster than ever. Ahzek Ahriman led a cabal of sorcerers who wrote the Rubric, a vast spell meant to stop the flesh-change for good. It worked in its way. The most powerful psykers survived it with greater power. Every non-psychic warrior was reduced to dust, his spirit sealed inside his sealed armour. Magnus exiled Ahriman for it.
No one knows if any trace of each soul survives, but the armour still moves and obeys. Rubric Marines are near-mindless and stand inert unless a sorcerer directs them. Sorcerers bind squads to themselves and use them as bodyguards and as guardians of their libraries.
The Thousand Sons fell victim to the "Flesh-Change," a rampant mutation. A cabal led by Ahzek Ahriman cast the Rubric to stop it, while Magnus watched from the highest tower of the City of Light on the Planet of the Sorcerers. The Legion's non-psykers, by far the larger part, were reduced to dust inside armour sealed shut. Thousand Sons sorcerers sometimes offer their Rubricae to whoever promises knowledge and power, and many have pledged them to Abaddon's Black Crusades.
Appearance & wargear
Rubric Marines wear blue and gold ornate power armour, often with tall crested helmets. Inside the armour there is only dust and a trapped soul.
Rubric Marines wear ornate Prosperine armour in blue and gold, with crested helms and eye lenses glowing with warpflame. When one is breached, only dust pours out. They carry inferno boltguns firing warpflame rounds, warpflamers or soulreaper cannons, and they are led by an Aspiring Sorcerer with a force stave.
Weapons & Vehicles
The signature .75-calibre rocket-propelled mass-reactive firearm of the Adeptus Astartes, firing self-propelled explosive bolts that de…
A volatile liquid-promethium projector that floods bunkers, trenches and xenos swarms in clinging, self-oxidising gouts of cleansing ch…
Psychically attuned silvered blades, halberds and daemon hammers forged exclusively for the Grey Knights of Titan, channelling the wiel…
The arcane techno-sorcerous sceptres of Necron Crypteks and Overlords, unleashing searing bolts of captured stellar radiation while ser…
Cackling lesser daemons of Tzeentch that hurl warpfire and split into smaller Blue Horrors when slain.
Explore all 48 entries in the Weapons & Vehicles armoury.
Battlefield role & tactics
Rubric Marines are resilient infantry with deadly sorcerous firepower, led by an Aspiring Sorcerer.
They are slow, implacable and very durable. Solid shot barely affects them, and even plasma or power weapons may not stop them. Their warpflame rounds burn through power armour. They fight best as escorts and firebases for a sorcerer, who moves them like pieces on a board. Without that direction, they falter.
Rubric Marines are slow but extremely durable. Solid shot barely affects them, and their Tzeentchian auras can deflect even plasma or power weapons. Inferno bolts with warpflame ignore most armour. They hold objectives and advance steadily under the control of a sorcerer.
Notable battles & users
- The Rubric of Ahriman: the spell that created the Rubric Marines and turned most of the Thousand Sons to dust.
- The Rubric of Ahriman: the spell, cast in the Eye of Terror after Prospero, that created them.
- Ahriman's later Rubric: during the 41st Millennium he tried to repeat the spell, hoping to undo the first, and created further Rubricae and the Tzaangors.
- Webway assault (998.M41): Thousand Sons forces fought through the Webway to within sight of the Black Library.
Related
Characters (2)
Ahzek Ahriman · Exiled Sorcerer of the Thousand Sons
Magnus the Red · Primarch of the Thousand Sons, the Crimson King
