Editing Calael Bishop (section)

==Primarch Origin==
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When the infant primarchs were scattered,  one never found his way to a planet. The space hulk Providence  had rested since time immemorial in the realspace eye of a warp disturbance, a peaceful area where the tempestuous energies of the Empyrean are at their quietest. Not so the area around it- the turbulent warp-streams have  capsized many a spacecraft brave or foolish enough to dare that region. Most craft thus lost are consumed and destroyed, but a lucky few are spat out relatively unharmed into this oasis of calm, and so join with the ancient accumulation of space junk known as Providence.
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	Normally a Space Hulk is no fit environment to long entertain a population, but somewhere in the great mass' ancient past the vessel achieved a sort of equilibrium. Survivors of wrecks clambered inwards seeking shelter, forming communities where the life support systems held, and came to adapt to this strange new frontier, learning to combat the horrors lurking in the dark corners civilization never touched. 

	In an environment like this, the sudden appearance of an unclaimed infant was not as surprising as it might have been elsewhere. New arrivals waylaid, frightened parents abandoning their child in their frenzied flight... callous scenarios, but not uncommon. The tiny primarch was discovered by a passing caravan, and delivered to the nearby colony of Travel Mercies -so named for the hull of the craft in which the town resided. The boy was swiftly adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Bishop, a childless psyker couple who served as the oracles of Travel Mercies. They named their new son Calael.

	The hydroponic systems of the ancient craft composing Providence  were unreliable, and a thousand other disasters that might compromise the hulk's ability to sustain life could arise with little warning – thus, the art of the oracle was crucial to the survival of every community. With séance rituals, the oracle could glean faint snippets of the future, and predict system failures or dangerous arrivals, giving the community time to prepare and respond. In lean times, the oracle could summon the light of their distant home stars to coax their food supplies to growth. While this would be a dangerous gambit elsewhere in the galaxy, in the calm of the warp oasis psykers hardly need fear drawing unwanted attention – perils are so rare as to be nearly mythical.  When young Calael's talent became apparent at an early age, identified by the crystalline antennae of the local Moonfolk residents, the Bishops were overjoyed, and hurried to bring their boy up into their trade.

	Calael took to prognostication like a fish to water, summoning starlight with the ease of the most experienced psykers in Providence. So too did he grow faster than any of the crops in the greenhouse, becoming a strapping young man in record time. Ma and Pa didn't ponder much on this, though- many of their neighbors were abhumans, so they reckoned Cal must just be some sort of previously unseen, very tall, very clever subspecies. Indeed, his rapid growth mostly only drew attention from the mercenaries who guarded the ward, earning joking offers for Cal to take up one of their tower shields and join them in their defense of the corridors- but the boy was happy tending the harvest with his folks, and for a time all was well.

	Then the genestealers came. Always a lurking threat in providence, the hideous halfbreeds were generally kept at bay by Warders- mercenaries who saw to the defense of the colonies. Now, though, they crept out of the dark and unexplored corners of the hulk and gathered en masse for a raid of unprecedented proportions. The Warders that protected Travel Mercies were too proud at first to call for backup from their rivals in nearby colonies. When it became clear the tide of genestealers would not soon flag, it was too late to call for help. Fleeing for their lives, the Warders abandoned their duty, and Travel Mercies to its fate.
	The oracle's arts were never arts of war. The Bishops fell swiftly before the threshing claws of the maddened hybrids, scarcely delaying the demise of their adoptive son. And yet, as young Calael faced his oncoming death, something miraculous happened- something that Calael would not reveal to a living soul for years to come. His parents rose again from where they fell, not in body but in numinous spirit to confront the hideous xenos anew. That was the last the boy saw, and when he awakened, the specters – and the genestealers- were gone.

	There was nothing left for Calael in Travel Mercies – nothing but corpses and wreckage remained anyway. Scavenging what he could, he set off aimlessly into Providence's corridors. Where he came across a ward, he would work odd jobs to make his way, but never stuck long- in part to help conceal his skill as a oracle, which tended to attract attention. Calael had no desire to be special, he just wanted to be.  Traveling alone was a dangerous affair in Providence , so he quickly took up signing on with caravans, who often had mercenary guards for protection. It was thus that Calael had his first encounters with the Breachers.

	As mercenaries who guarded the colonies were known as Warders, the Breachers faced outwards- their task was to explore, to clear unknown territory, to salvage goods for use and, most importantly, to breach the hulls of craft newly arrived at Providence  and investigate what was inside. They too had adapted the omnipresent Warder shields, using them to press through the derelict corridors in a tight shield-wall to prevent whatever lurked within from rushing forth. Theirs was a brotherhood born of the utter certainty that if but one man were to abandon his place in the phalanx, the whole squad might well die. That uniformity of purpose spoke to the directionless Primarch, and before long his rapid growth and gangly strength earned him a spot on a down-on-their-luck Breacher crew, the Hellbenders, led by one Eulian White.

	The Hellbenders had taken heavy losses on a string of bad jobs, and were desperately close to being too under-strength to continue work. Initially, Calael was glad simply to have something to occupy his mind, even work as irregular and dangerous as breaching. The men shared a close, if somewhat harrowed, camaraderie, and White was an effective and experienced leader, rumored to be one of the oldest humans in the business. And yet, as Calael grew accustomed to the patterns of the work,  the powerful mind of a Primarch began to see flaws in their methodology.

	At first the men rankled at this fresh-faced youth telling them how to do their jobs, suggesting changes to age-old room clearing patterns and movement formations that had kept Breachers alive for generations. He became a subject of vicious mockery, particularly by the hard-bitten Endeavor Jones, self-proclaimed “meanest bastard in the bulkheads” – but White decided to humor the newcomer, perhaps recognizing the value of his ideas. The grumbling quickly turned to awe as the Hellbenders' losses fell to almost nothing, encounters with even the deadliest genestealer strains and fiercest Ork holdouts going nearly without a hitch- and all the while, Calael was improving their methods, redesigning the team's shields and devising new types of shot for their trench guns. The Hellbenders rebounded from the brink of dissolution and quickly began to make theirs the most famous name in the region. Calael, for his part, was happy to accredit their success to good fortune, preferring to avoid any personal fame. For the time, he just wanted to be one of the team, and though White would have liked to brag about his new prodigy to his rivals he respected young Cal's wishes.

	With new fame came new work, and the Hellbenders found themselves venturing farther afield than they ever had, passing through the superstructures of dozens of fused craft in their travels. 	Thus it was that they came to the ward of Ebon Cross, hired for a job in a land none of them had ever visited.

	As a frontier hull, on the outer regions of the hulk, Ebon Cross was at greater risk of decompression incidents, and evidently had suffered just such an event some time ago when an undetected derelict  impacted the hulk. The settlement's fighting men had perished before the breach could be sealed, as well as all their Oracles. Lacking the resources to explore the new hull themselves,  the colony council determined to hire a Breacher team- and what better team to hire than the renowned Hellbenders? Cal's shieldmates laughed and clapped each other on the back, reveling in the praise, but Cal was troubled. As normal as they seemed, his oraclular skills told him something was decidedly off about these folk, an itch at the base of his skull that he had not felt since the genestealers ravaged Travel Mercies all those years ago. His concern was great, but to reveal the source of his worry would be to reveal his abilities, to be set apart from his crew. Taking Captain White aside, he  attempted to justify his suspicions with mundane reasoning- how odd it was that the colony had lost all their oracles, and somehow seemed to have no moonfolk, of which they'd made no mention. White understood Cal's misgivings, but figured the ripe salvage from the new hull was worth the risk. Still, he agreed to proceed with greater caution than usual. 

	With their nerves steeled, none of the Hellbenders were taken by surprise when the genestealers rushed them from the bowels of the foreign hull, but Cal was the only one prepared when the men and women of Ebon Cross charged them from behind. It was only thanks to his precognition that what should have been a slaughter became merely  a rout, the Hellbenders closing their line to a protective circle of shields as foes both human and inhuman swarmed about them seemingly as one. By shield and shot the beleaguered men battered their way blindly through the horde, following Calael's directions until they reached a bulkhead that looked no different than any other. Here, Cal lobbed a breaching charge, miraculously revealing a defensible bridge room beyond the smoking hole.

	The retreat was successful, but not unconditionally so- Eulian White was gravely wounded in the struggle. Through mouthfuls of blood, the captain called for Cal to take him deeper into the structure while the others held the breach, so he could join the martyrs in relative peace.

	There, with his dying breaths, he confronted Calael about his uncanny foresight. The young Primarch admitted, ashamed, that his was the Oracle's gift, and that he had hidden it so as not to be set apart from the men. Eulian laughed a red spittle-flecked laugh at this- Calael had always been set apart, from his size to his skills to his intuition, and the men had come to love him for it. White barked one final order for his protege- use those talents to keep the Hellbenders alive, whatever the cost. With that, the dying captain pressed into Cal's hand the enormous breachgun that had been White's signature, a masterful and ancient thing with a handle of  mahogany cut on some forgotten world.

	The Hellbenders would escape the trap laid by the “men” of Ebon Cross, and though sobered by their leader's death they were also proud, knowing well how few breacher teams could have survived being caught flat-footed by such a dire foe. Much of the success they attributed to Calael's miraculous intuition, and it was the prickly Endeavor Jones who first nominated the young Primarch to take White's place. Calael's own estimation of his performance, however, was considerably less positive. He was forced to confront the fact that he had for a second time lost a father figure- one who might well yet live if not for Cal's selfish want for fellowship.

	Fortunately the breach team's string of successes had given them a healthy nest egg that allowed them a time to rest and mourn. Calael was unsure he was worthy or able to fill his mentor's shoes, and determined there was soul searching to be done. Saying goodbye to his squad, he took a walk to ease his troubled mind, setting off to wander as he once had after the sack of Travel Mercies.

	Such, at least, was his intention. As his meanderings took him homeward, to Travel Mercies' onetime neighbor settlement of Silk Road Solace, he found a face he had never expected to see again. Selen of the Moonfolk had identified Bishop's psychic talent in his youth, and at the Solace watering hole they met once more. Bishop's grief momentarily vanished at the sight of his old friend, followed swiftly by an incredulous joy that he was not, after all these years, his hometown's sole survivor. He spent many hours celebrating and catching up with the insectile tailor, but when the subject came to Selen's tale of survival against the genestealer horde, a disturbing fact came to light. 
	The Warders who condemned their colony to death had the opportunity to call for reinforcement, but because only rival companies were within reach they chose to abandon their posts rather than seek dubious aid. Selen had only survived to learn this truth because those Warders had returned to pick over the wreckage, and by chance found the Moonfolk buried beneath the rubble. 

	Calael parted ways with Selen later that day, this dark revelation driving him deeper into Providence's massive derelict composite, ever closer to the structure at the heart of the Hulk- the Blackstone Spire.

	As best as any cartographer could reckon, the Spire was dead center within Providence, extending high above and far below the main mass as an enormous obelisk of an ancient and unknown make that no species known could lay claim to. No theories from the learned folk of Providence had ever satisfactorily explained why these protrusions had never been impacted by flying debris, or why any new craft always accreted around the middle of the hulk. So too was it unknown why the spire remained uninhabited despite clearly predating even the most venerable spacecraft surrounding it, and despite its apparent immunity to impact and the obvious advantages of such a vantage point for salvagers. While occasionally Oracles would feel themselves drawn to the Spire for meditation, sometimes even gaining revelations of new spellcraft or visions of the distant future, none ventured deep, and no creature stayed long save for small reptilian beasts which skittered through the shadows and sheltered in the grottos. Even the boldest explorers and breach teams who swore to pubs full of peers their determination to reach the top  inevitably return empty-handed, stating that at some point they simply lost interest. As far as any record showed, the only claims of reaching beyond the eleventh floor were mutually conflicting accounts told by drunks competing to tell the tallest tale. Or so it had been, until Calael Bishop arrived at the threshold of the Spire.

	The ascent passed in a daze, endless flights of stairs devoured by the tireless strides of a Primarch. Calael advanced, heedless of the increasingly non-euclidian architecture. After what might have been years or merely days the boy reached the pinnacle, and even in his fugue what he saw gave him pause- for every Breacher learns early not to step into the open void. The initial shock fading, he realized that the starfield that surrounded him was not the one he knew- it was an observatory of a distant place, or perhaps a distant time. At the stellarium's center  floated a single figure, ethereal, barely visible. The moment he clapped eyes on the strange amphiboid apparition, Calael knew in the depths of his soul that this was the creature which had called him to the Blackstone Spire.

	It took some further time before the two were able to communicate in any meaningful way. The creature, which Calael would come to know as Ry'beth, had a deeply alien mind, a shade of some ancient and mighty race whom mortals could not well hope to fathom. Fortunately, the young Bishop was no mere mortal, and slowly he began to glean insight into Ry'beth's musings. 

	Though the amphibious specter spoke always in cryptic forms, Cal was slowly able to unravel the tale. The creature was a survivor of sorts, a spirit from a antediluvian time who had fled the birth of a dark god and found refuge in this place, though it could hardly sustain his form. Since then, the entity had snatched souls and the craft that bore them from the jaws of its Great Enemy whenever the opportunity arose, until over the eons the mass now known as Providence came to be. So it had been for an unknowable epoch- Ry'beth's understanding of time as a concept seemed a bit nebulous- 'til the fateful day a host of brilliant warp-presences scattered like a flight of comets  through the Immaterium. It had taken all of Ry'beth's gossamer strength and the benefit of surprise to wrest but a single prize from the grip of the dark powers, to guide it here instead of whatever had been its intended destination, but the deed was done. This singular prize had grown into the man who stood before Ry'beth, a psychic titan perhaps mighty enough to master the secrets that had nearly passed from the galaxy with the amphibian's ancient race. 

	So it was that Ry'beth imparted his wisdom to Calael, and though a mere few months passed in the world outside the men of the Hellbenders would later confide that their young leader seemed decades aged on his return.

	Rather than being reinvigorated by his sojourn, Bishop seemed more troubled than ever. For the first time, he told his comrades in arms of the fate that befell Travel Mercies, and the truth of his hometown's fate as imparted to him by Selen. Just as in the Hellbenders' own disaster at Ebon Cross, the tragedy might well have been averted if the mercenary companies that kept Providence habitable were not so disinclined to work together. Cal's proposition was for the Hellbenders to lead by example, to offer aid unconditionally to those who needed it in the hopes of fomenting a brotherhood among Breachers and Warders.

	Among the superstitious men of Providence, such a concept was slow to spread, but the growing fame and success of the Hellbenders under Bishop's leadership ensured that spread it did. In order to better focus his energies on the task at hand, Calael inducted two new employees- the first was Selen, Bishop's old friend, who would serve as the crew's quartermaster. The second was Constance Lainne, a young, educated woman from the wealthy Ward of Cosmoplex. Fascinated by the tale of the Hellbenders, Lainne was determined to chronicle it from the closest position she could, which, on Bishop's offer to employ her as crew manager and outreach, proved to be very close indeed.

	  A struggling crew called Eden's Rangers were the first to give in- having fallen below operational strength and with a reputation for black luck, the Rangers were liable to be forced to disband or resort to banditry. So it was that, when the Hellbenders chanced to pass the hamlet the Rangers had found themselves stranded in, the Rangers' leader proposed, with gritted teeth and wounded pride, a joint operation.

	What proceeded was an unmitigated success, and the two breach teams parted ways on good terms. The Rangers would swear to any crew they met that Bishop had the luck of the Saints themselves, and carefully preserved the glyph-wards he had painted on their gear to keep that luck at hand.

	Some months later, the Scav Boys put out a desperate distress signal, having found themselves in a trap not unlike the tragedy at Ebon Cross. The Hellbenders soon put the Genestealers to rout, and preserved the lives of  most of the Scav crew.  Soon after, the Corridor Hounds called for aid. Then, the Bulkhead Bastioneers requested aid in defending their ward, an unheard-of thing for a Warder crew to ask of a Breacher. Eventually, the Ogryn leader of the Strongarm Crew appeared before Calael, loudly boasting that  his feats exceeded Cal's own, and challenged the young leader to a wrestling match to prove it.

	After this, there was no stopping the spread of Bishop's good news.  In only a few years, a support network spanned the bulk of Providence that curbed the deadly xenos raids, pushed back the contents of an Ork Rok and saw the turnover rate of Warder and Breacher crews both reduced to a fraction of what it once was.

	Though Bishop would never have called himself Providence's ruler, the following years would run a course very familiar to those versed in the histories of the Primarchs. The lines of communication the Hellbenders established grew into a greater organization,  eventually coalescing into what would formally be called the Warder and Breacher's Union of the United Peoples of Providence. The Union set to rewiring and rerouting the vox systems of the derelicts that made up the hulk, and inducting every community Oracle they could find into their network. Soon, whenever a new craft appeared in system, a genestealer force massed or a ward's hull was threatening to decompress, scarcely any time was lost before Bishop had mounted a response- often with himself at the head. Providence's network of Oracles allowed problems to be predicted and mitigated.

	There was no predicting the arrival of the Emperor of Mankind, however. Enlisting the legendary navigational skills of Rahman Keita'mansa's expeditionary fleet, the master of mankind oversaw the charting of the first relatively safe course through the intense warp storm that surrounded Providence. Though the inhabitants of the Hulk were very much taken aback by the unprecedented appearance of a fully functional warfleet, the promise of regular contact with the outside world saw the united peoples of Providence quickly accept the terms of integration into the Imperium of Man. No small factor in this choice was the revelation that Calael Bishop was, in fact, the Emperor's own long-lost son, a fact easily proved when the golden sovereign crowned Bishop with a halo of silver star-flame on their first meeting. Calael could no longer hide his power, or deny that he was much more than a simple abhuman.

	Begging a year's time to work out the details of establishing trade routes and bringing Providence into the culture of the Imperium proper, the young Primarch soon left his home to join his father and brothers on the Great Crusade.

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