Black Ronin

The Black Ronin are the only known surviving loyalists of the 1st legion following the events of the Great Heresy, formed mostly from the Nakama Great Clan. Led by the former clan master, Saekanis Nakama, the warband went renegade during the heresy and made it their sworn duty to bring death to their legion brothers who had betrayed them, casting off their iconography and declaring themselves Ronin without a master.

Origins
While the Ronin were mostly formed from the remnants of the Nakama Great Clan, it also contained astartes from the Gankai and Orekai Great Clans that took up arms against the traitorous elements of their legion. The forces were forced into action as they retreated from the fresh massacre within the Saangan Cluster in which the loyal elements of the legion had been all but decimated and only a minority of the Nakama Great Clan had escaped onboard their flagship, The Unyielding, along with survivors from Gankai and Orekai. Saekanis Nakama, Master of Nakama, was outraged with this betrayal and vocally declared vengeance against both his father and the clan masters who had pledged to aid him in his betrayal while the vessel was temporarily lost in the warp due to the storms surrounding Sangaan. After heated debate with Inaga Tarn, Captain of the 1st legion's 17th company, warrior of Gankai and Blade of The Emperor, it was decided that the survivors would break any ties they held with their legion, defacing their warplate and purging its iconography. The warriors were now without a master as they had been betrayed and so they took the path of the Roni, an ancient Kostillian rite that any warrior without a lord could take following the death of their lord to achieve a single act of redemption or die trying. Vowing that until their betrayers lay in the ground they would not rest, Saekanis and Tarn refashioned the warriors into the Black Ronin and began reorganising them into a single fighting force.