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I was thinking if loyalist marines have a chaos/traitor counterpart for everything*, where did the defiler come from?

* I know it's not everything, for example Chaos Space marines (in the codex at least) don't have Land Speeders, Razorbacks, Whirlwinds etc.

This may be a simple question for most of you, but I'm not a huge buff on 40k background, especially the Horus Heresy and what happened immediately after.

IIRC, they were "comissioned" by Abaddon and created by the dark mechanicus, try Lexicanum for details,

(www.lexicanum.com)

Dark Mechanicus/CSM forges build them and then possess a Daemon to the construct.

Defiler is only one type of the Daemon Engines - the machines created especially to be possessed by daemons unlike possessed tanks and Titans that were originally constructed by the Imperials. Other examples of such vehicles are Soul Grinder, Khorne Blood Slaughterer and Brass Scorpion, Nurgle Blight Drone and Plague Hulk.