About the Army of the Second Law:
Shortly after the Zeist Campaign (999.M41) a small but diffuse cluster of star systems in an area of Ultramar and previously known to harbour civilisations was found devoid of all sentient life. It was thought that this might be due to the Tau or Tyranid infestation, but upon inspection the destruction was not typical of either race; The only remaining signs that a planet had supported a thriving civilisation was the crumbling remains of their structures and buildings. All machinery, resources and, more perplexing, any traces of the bodies of man or animal were absent. The plant life however, was thriving. From studying the degree to which the flora had encroached and covered the ruins of once great civilisations, it could be calculated that these planets had been deserted for centuries and no clue was given as to where or why all the people and fauna had gone. The greatest mystery was that one planet, near the middle of this cluster of star-systems, was completely missing and records showed that nothing has been written about this planet since early M35.

Unknown to the Imperial forces that found this mystery, the missing planet was not missing, but hidden to their instruments, their psykers and their naked eyes. This was the home of the Army of the Second Law.
Headed by The Mad Scientist, who's name is long forgotten. A genius left alone on a planet wiped clean of all sentient life by one of his experiments (M35); an experiment that granted him immortality and the collective knowledge and memories of the whole planet, he was slowly driven mad by this knowledge and loneliness while perfecting his techniques and experiments over thousands of years, on the surrounding star-systems.

He developed an obsession for "true" chaos, through the study of the natural increase in the disorder of his home world as the familiar surroundings of a once great civilised (ordered) planet crumbled to dust to be replaced by the randomness of the untouched flora of the planet.
He was persuaded in his madness by the voices in his head that a fictitious god of disorder had tasked him with fighting the tide of order and uniformity created by the habitation of sentient beings throughout the galaxy. He therefore had to increase the disorder in the universe as he believed it should be and that the very nature of the universe tends towards without the structure and order brought about by civilisation. Without his help, he believed, the universe would die when the "unnatural" levels of order became too great.
He does not believe that all life should be destroyed, just that the structure of the various societies should be disrupted and randomised. Any that stand in his way, however, will die. After all, he's on a mission from god.

He therefore set about planning to build an army to spread death, disorder and destruction from one world to the next, destroying infrastructures and spreading "true" chaos, the greater the degree of destruction the better for disorder. An ordered and regimented army, however, just wouldn't do and he set about it's creation as he did for any of his experiments, by bringing together random pieces or elements and mixing them up in one pot.

He ensnared a drifting space hulk (possibly as early as M36), with a kind of tractor beam he invented for the purpose, and brought it in to crash into the planets surface killing nearly all life aboard which consisted of a large population of Tyranids and a small band of space marines that were exploring the hulk at the time. The survivors were left to die on their own or picked off by robotic drones created, but hated due to their lack of disorder, by The Scientist.
The hulk, a collection of ancient and more recent spacecraft, granted The Scientist access (using the robotic probes he designed and built, themselves from ancient knowledge) to the raw material he required to start his army, body parts. He also discovered a vast collection of wargear, equipment and STC data aboard the hulk.

He set about rebuilding whole bodies from what he found and learning about the unique biology of the various species from dissection and by absorbing the knowledge and memories of the dead.
Using all manner of techniques he persuaded, tortured, and brainwashed the reanimated, disembodied, heads of the creatures and humans to follow his command and believe in what he believed. He also implanted small bioelectronic devices into the skulls of his army that would allow the various species to recognise each other as "friends", either directly or by a sort of hallucination to disguise the different, hostile, species. Anyone else, therefore, was recognised as foe in a similar way.
He could then breath life back into the reassembled bodies and use extracted DNA to clone further members of his army that could be brainwashed from scratch and trained by memory implants.

He then sent small scouting parties to raid other planets, particularly scenes of recent battles for fresh and diverse "raw materials" to increase his disordered army and to supply various pieces of hardware required for weapons and vehicles, ready to spread the word of randomness to the rest of the universe. He also utilised techniques to lure "raw materials" directly to his planet in some cases.
He has also developed the transportation technology of the various species encountered through the universe to allow retrieval of equipment and "raw materials" from the battlefield so as to avoid loosing precious hardware and to acquire more from opponents during and after battle. His technology cannot be used to transport his army across the battlefield, only to transfer anything, with one of his transport gizmos attached, to his ship in orbit. All members of his army have a gizmo implanted together with the behaviour implant and all pieces of armour and weaponry have one or more of their own.

The Forge Knights are a rather successful successor Chapter of the Salamanders, created in the most recent Founding. Like the Salamanders, they have an unusually high amount of Techmarines, and each battle-brother is fully capable of not only repairing his own equipment, but more often than not finds ways to improve upon his armor. While the Chapter Master, Pyralis, has no problem with this, the Adeptus Mechanicus did. To put it lightly, the Mechanicus lost their fudge when they discovered that both the Techmarines and Battle-brothers alike were violating their sacred arms and armor and even their ships with unique adaptations. This created much conflict early in the Chapters history, as the stringent Mechanicus threated the imaginative Forge Knights. It was not until the Salamanders Chapter Master himself stepped in that the Mechanicus let up. Eventually, both Tu’Shan and Pyralis managed to convince the Mechanicus to sanction the Forge Knights and their creations. However, this came at the cost of being required to have at least one Adeptus Mechanicus agent present on every ship in the Forge Knight fleet that contained Space Marines. While Pyralis was hesitant to let his own Chapter be spied on, he saw that this was the only way to get the Mechanicus off of his back.

Since then, the ingenuity of the Forge Knights has proven to be a boon to their efforts in defeating the foes of mankind; specialized teleport homers, new armor, and new weapons have all been created by the Forge Knights, although much of them may never see the light of day (because even though the Mechanicus has “agreed” to sanction their creations, they are by no means required to allow the Forge Knights to use them). A few of the Forge Knights most brilliant minds have even attempted to modify the Warp Drives for use outside of the Warp, acting as a sort of push/pull mechanism against warp anomalies that manifest themselves in realspace, allowing to Forge Knights incredible speed outside of Warp travel. This alone has gotten the attention of the Mechanicus, and if anything the Forge Knights ever create were to see usage through the Imperium, it just might be this.

The Forge Knights also tend to dismiss the "religion" side of the Mechanicus, instead naming their technology using their own conventions mixed in with standard equipment terms. This is frowned upon, of course, but the Forge Knights give nary a damn.

The Forge Knights are a fleet-based Chapter 90 percent of the time, returning to their homeworld or nearby friendly planet once every few years to get their feet back on the ground. They maintain a rather large fleet, containing 10 Strike Cruisers and 5 Battle Barges, 3 Forgeships along with their Fortress Barge, an engineering masterpiece nearing the magnitude of the Phalanx of the Imperial Fists, but with more Nova Cannons.

The Forge Knights are extremely secretive, not willing to disclose the majority of their chapter secrets with anyone, Inquisitor or otherwise, including the true location of their homeworld, and going so far as to manufacture lies to maintain this level of secrecy. Certain records of many wars over the past six millennia have indicated a distinct lack of humanity within the higher organizations of the Imperium, and so the Forge Knights have made it the responsibilities of the reserve Companies to evacuate civilians from warzones where it is necessary to do so.

At 1500 marines, the Forge Knights are the largest Chapter commissioned by the High Lords of Terra. However, their unique purpose and chapter divisions allow for this exceptionally large Chapter to exist without extensive oversight. The Chapter is designed almost expressly for high-risk covert operations where the standard boisterous tactics of the Space Marines would do more harm than good, and each squad is never more than five men, and each Marine is fully equipped with above average armor and equipment. Due to their nature, they are very solitary individuals, however their teamwork is unmatched.

The Forge Knights are put into their own companies, however those companies are put into three 500 man Divisions, Alpha, Sigma, and Omega. Alpha Division is stationed on the Fortress Barge a single Battle Barge and two Strike Cruisers, Sigma commands three Battle Barges and six Strike Cruisers, and Omega is divided in half, with half remaining at the Fortress Monastery on Thraxis and half in a Battle Barge and two Cruisers. The Fortress Monastery on Thraxis, Thraxis Alpha, is perhaps one of the most well defended Fortress Monasteries in the Imperium; the firepower located in, on, and around the monastery is equivalent to that of a Battle Barge. The Forge Knights are so serious about their security that only the Chapters they have fought alongside or rescued members of are allowed within the walls. All other visitors, including the Inquisition an High Lords of Terra, are redirected, sometimes secretly, to a secondary base. Their want for intense security perhaps stems from their small numbers; although there are 1500 Forge Knights, they are never all in the same place, and so each Division must be self-sufficient, going so far as to almost require each Division to recruit from different worlds.

Though they are a Salamanders successor chapter, they routinely operate as silently and invisibly as possible. They are some of the premier marksmen in the whole of the Imperium, and some are even capable of giving the Vindicare assassins a run for their money (assuming assassins have any). They make great use of advanced camouflage, and never wear their chapter colors into battle, and are able to fight in any sort of terrain on any planet. They make use of HALO jumps, wielding grav-chutes to great effect, Drops Pods, and teleportation. Their habit of shooting locator beacons onto the dropsite ensures a safe arrival of all friendly forces and keeps survival rates at 100 percent. In prolonged engagements, the Forge Knights will enlist the help of the local populace and assist in training guerilla forces. Unlike most Space Marine Chapters and Imperial institutions, to the Forge Knights “collateral damage” means “you did it wrong.” Any careless mistakes made by either Forge Knight members or the members of other Chapters is met with swift retribution that usually entails The Master-of-Arms hunting down those responsible and beating them while yelling “oh I’m sorry, I meant to hit the air next to your face, I guess that’s just collateral damage.” The Forge Knights maintain one of the most well-trained and well-rounded fighting forces in the galaxy, even compared to other Space Marine Chapters.

In their short time as a chapter, the Forge Knights have made it their goal to stand apart from the other chapters. Whether or not it means anything, to anyone, remains to be seen.

By all respects, Arakor should not even be a Space Marine. A weaker, yet strangely quicker than average Space Marine scout, his only saving grace was that he was captured during a Dark Eldar raid while performing training maneuvers. Arakor was then subjected to the brutalities of the various arenas of Commorragh, nearly dying in his first fight. However, as the days, weeks, and months passed on Arakor soon became used to the arenas, and as his skills increased, the amount of times he was stabbed/punched/bloodied during the fight decreased proportionally. He began to use his opponent’s weapons against them, even going so far as to steal a Hellions Hellglaive and Skyboard at one point. Although his joyride did not last long (he couldn’t fly the thing if his life depended on it, which was bad because it did), he managed to save himself by landing on a Helspider, which broke his fall quite nicely. Arakor spent a full year in the arenas, fighting various xenos beasts, Wyches, Trueborn, Incubi, and everything else. What was once a torturous fight to stay alive soon became like a game to Arakor, for every fight that Arakor fought, he learned that much more. That is, until Drazhar, the master of blades, strode into the arena. Drazhar was Arakor’s hardest and most disappointing fight, as the match ended in a draw. Arakor, who was usually not one to give much of a damn, gave a lot of damns after that fight. For days, he replayed the fight in his mind, going over every swing, every miss, every step that both he and Drazhar took.

However, he would never get the chance to challenge Drazhar again. By sheer luck, the slave transport Arakor was on was attacked by a gang of Hellions, giving Arakor the chance to escape, although “escape” may not be the correct word. Arakor had fought Hellions many times over the past year, and overpowering one of them while the rest were distracted was no big deal. Arakor killed the Hellion, stole his Skyboard, and lept off the edge of the transport. As he fell, the spiked spires of Commorragh drew ever closer, and he thought to himself that this may have not been his best move. He finally managed to get his feet on the board just in time for him to smash headfirst into a Reaver pilot, who was just as confused as he was. He punched out the jetbike pilot and promptly lost control of the jetbike, weaving in, around, and through the Dark City before finally pulling up. As he did so, a flash caught his eye, and he quickly turned to look. To his surprise, he was not only speeding through one of the labyrinths of Commorragh, but a webway portal had been activated, and Kabalite warriors were rushing to get into realspace. He made a beeline for the portal, accidentally and totally not purposefully murdering the crap out of some of them with the jetbikes’ bladevane. As he came screaming out of the portal, he took in his new surroundings. It was cold, windy, with the smell of blood in the air. The cold distracted Arakor long enough for him to forget that a Reaver Jetbike actually requires concentration to drive, and he ended up plowing straight into the side of a Raider, blowing both vehicles up and sending Arakor flying. Impacts and burns barely affected Arakor by now, but snow was another thing. There was also the matter of being surrounded by Dark Eldar. Arakor couldn’t have cared any less; he was free. He celebrated his newfound freedom by punching a Wych in the spine and taking her impaler, then romping towards the flank randomly hitting things as he ran, hopped, and flipped by. Arakor reached the flank, which was right up against a forest. He ditched the Impaler and headed straight for the Imperial lines, bounding through the forest with an almost unnerving glee. As he leapt over a wall, he was instantly cornered by a dozen Space Marines. After a bit of a talk, with Arakor telling them he was an escaped slave, they not believing him, then him telling them they should believe him because he isn’t not one, Arakor finally persuaded them to allow him refuge. From there, it took Arakor another week to gain both proper clothes and clearance to contact his chapter, and then another month before Arakor was declared the new Master of Arms shortly before rising to the rank of 1st company Captain.

As Master at Arms, Arakor directs most of his efforts in stopping Dark Eldar raids. Partially because he does not want to see more innocents captured and slaughtered in the arenas, like he saw so many times, but mostly because he wants another go at Drazhar. His time in the arena was superior to any training he could have gotten as a Space Marine; now, he is as swift as the best Imperial assassin and just as deadly. Though his hatred of Dark Eldar has brought him into conflict with Pyralis on more than one occasion, Arakor and Pyralis remain battle brothers to the end, and oftentimes go to war together, each one covering the other weaknesses.