The Sand-Sea
A trait unique to all astartes within the Hands of Wrath is a shared dream-hallucination that occurs when the aspirant is implanted with the Catalepsean Node and hypnotherapy begins. Each child is overtaken by a coma, their palsied forms shackled to a bed for the next year as their mind and soul wander what has become known as the Sand-Sea; an endless, scorching desert under a exhausted, reddening sky. As has been recounted by every battle-brother, all claim to have wandered here, where there is nothing but the windblown remains of stone mesas, tor, gorges and buttes. No edifices made by hand exist, nor scraps of civilization, only the blistered scatterings of ruined power armor and the ceaseless desert.
Here, time loses all meaning, and while a Terran-standard year may pass in the realm of flesh and steel, untold cycles come and go, though the sun never changes, and the sands stretch forever on. None can give a precise time as to when it begins, as time is experienced differently for each that wanders here, but all recall the faintest of susurrations beginning when they can no longer recall their own name. Each time one would attempt to listen, the whispers would vanish, only to come again on the wind from a new direction, yet somehow simultaneously without origin. As the temporal river aimlessly swirls ever on, the voice becomes more insistent, clearer, until after an eon seems to pass, a single question can be deciphered. Each son of the Praetorian is asked an identical question, the same question as he once was asked in that desiccated realm; "Who is the blood for?" Those who are able to dredge forth an answer, to proclaim their fealty to the Master of Mankind, awaken with a cry of desperate wrath upon their lips, their irises turning a scarlet hue forever more. Conversely, those who fail to conjure forth the name join the unnumbered remnants of that blasted land, their physical bodies never to awaken from torpor.