Editing Jon-Frederic Aristide (section)

==Primarch Origin==
After conquering the warring tribes of Terra during the Unification Wars, the Emperor of Mankind set out to reconnect all the lost colonies of mankind, which had been lost during the Age of Strife. To this end, the Emperor began work on the Primarch project; 21 gene-sons that would serve as his generals in the Great Crusade. Before he could finish the project however, his sons would be snatched away by the Dark Gods of Chaos and scattered across the stars. The Primarch of the XIVth legion, who would come to be known as Frederíc Aristide, landed upon the world of Thiepval Primaris.

Thiepval Primaris was situated in a small but prosperous system, Rhedon XLII, on the eastern fringe of Segmentum Solar, amongst first colonized by humanity during the Golden Age of Expansion. Thiepval Primaris’s climate was perfect for humanity; similar to Terra, but unkempt, lush and a thing of primal beauty. The crown jewel of the Rhedon system, Thiepval Primaris was the economic, governmental, and cultural center, trading with nearby worlds to sustain itself. Unlike Terra however, Thiepval was not nearly as dependent on trade for food and resources. As humanity crumbled about itself during the Age of Strife, the system, though cut off, remained relatively unscathed, though not completely. STC libraries were lost wholesale, and the means to produce, maintain, and repair ancient technology withered and died.

Because of this, after several centuries, society on Thiepval had managed to stabilize and recover from much of the damage dealt to it by the Age of Strife. A lot of technological prowess would remain lost, however. As centuries turned to millennia, Thiepval became divided across countless nation states. 

The infant sixteenth Primarch crash landed on Thiepval Primaris in its darkest era, the once prosperous world stricken with poverty, war, and harsh class divides the world over. The nobility and governments of the planet played wars of fancy with each other, expending lives for games of court and diplomacy. Thiepval's premier empire, and general instigator of the near constant conflict, was the Rayeux Sovereignty, a massive and brutal monarchy that retained a great deal of ancient technology, lobotomizing the Royal Guard and arming them with advanced arms and armour to keep their lands tame, while the rest of their military and subjects suffered by on bolt action rifles and petroleum based vehicles. 

The babe’s loose gestation pod crash-landed in a field in the large principality of Bordeois, where he was found by failed farmers, and disgraced nobility, Jeanine and Grigón Aristide. These exiled nobles, cast from court and exiled to the very lands they used to own, decided that their child, borne from heaven, was an omen. So they abandoned their failing farmhold and moved to the city of Saileux.

His mother worked as a seamstress, a courtly diversion serving as a valuable skill. His father was denied many chances of employment, the commoners seeing a chance to strike back at the upper class, even if that was the case no longer. The most bitter irony being that his claims to land and noble titles were seized by the throne for his demands for better treatment of the rural peasantry that fed their war machine. Resigned, his father became a street sweeper.

Their boy, the Star Child, grew more and more everyday, his mother overjoyed at the boys miraculous nature. His father, betrayed by court and the commoners he sought to protect, became embittered and jealous, and was often given to drink and would become abusive. It was when the babe was the size of a young man, his mother tried to defend the quiet youth from his father's ravings, wherein she was struck by her husband for the first and last time. Frederíc broke his father's legs with his bare hands. 

His father crippled, albeit accidentally, by his adopted son, Frederíc was forced to abandon the safety of his home and seek real work to feed the family. His mother's homeschooling and the boy's work as a clerk in a local bakery gave the boy a keen mind, and his reputation as a hyper intelligent giant eventually made the crueler commoners give his family a wide, but respectful birth. Frederíc was not some silent golem, how ever, and would often spend nights transcribing books to pass to illiterate commoners in a bid to increase literacy. He would gather the neighborhood to clean and repair the city streets, broken gas lamps, and over crowded apartments. Here he worked a variety of menial professions, with a greater proficiency than his fellows allowing him to work at a breakneck pace and thus take more paying work. Fellow labourers first began to loathe the giant young man, but the sheer myriad of work he adopted saw that most crews did not see him long enough to feel outclassed, felt his absence long enough to miss his impact, and enjoyed his return to their labours. Frederíc made few friends during his time supporting his family, keeping to himself and his family. His chair ridden father at the mercy of his son and improving in sobriety and disposition, his mother so proud of her miracle son. It was merely existence for young Aristide, nearly six years of monotonous work simply keeping his parents fed.

It was only in the waning months that his father opened up to his son, when it became apparent that while the boy was certainly miraculous, he lacked direction and drive. With a sober mind he attempted to mend the broken bond he had with his son. After his long days of labour, he would cook with his wife at the fire and regale them of tales of courtly intrigue and his battles with the crown to improve the conditions of the common people. Frederíc saw that his father was not always the embittered husk that sat hobbled by his own hand before him, and while their relationship did little to improve, his tales of political heroics and bold maneuvering unlocked something within Frederíc. The large lad had little in terms of drive, but he began to see the deep flaws his planet, his nation and his city in ways he did not before. It was a strange sensation of civic duty but he saw the world around him with new eyes. The streets were filled with chaos, ignorance, and indiscipline. Frederíc began to loath it, and the commoners and the nobility that allowed it to happen. 

He continued to renew his city, menial repair work turning into concentrated renewal efforts, lazy and drunken work crews whipped into tradesman unions. Though Frederíc never entered into the literally cutthroat politics of the city, and the Rayeux Sovereignty, in the short few months of his spiritual awakening, many local politicians sought his advice and sponsorship. In seven years he redeemed the Aristide name, and revitalized the stagnant city and surrounding countryside. Eventually the governorship was made aware of the strange man bearing the Aristide name revolutionizing the principality, seemingly through sheer good example alone. This giants crusade of progress undermined their power. The Sovereignty knew very well the nature of their power and a warrant for Frederíc Aristide's arrest was announced, and the city fell into riot. Peacekeepers were torn apart in the street,  civilians put down under rifle and gas, buildings set aflame and destroyed. Infuriated by the chaos and destruction of the lives he helped improve, the Primarch surrendered, to keep the peace and prevent any more loss of life. He was hailed a hero and martyr.

In Rayeux, there are no executions, just conscriptions. Frederíc was sent to the southern front, to fight a nation barely ten years old, created by the Sovereignty to fight. Under equipped, undertrained in anything beyond a street brawl, and without leadership, Frederíc and thousands of other prisoners, dissidents, defectors, deserters, degenerates, and down trodden were thrust out of great armoured transports to the field of battle, to act as wall of living flesh. Naked and furious, Frederíc rallied those who would listen, and using mountains of corpses and rubble as cover, wound their way to the enemy's defensive line. It was a massacre. The enemy expected starved prisoners, ready for death. They did not expect the Stallion.

He burst through concrete walls, dug through mudded trenches, and stalled through shadowed bunkers. His men, emboldened by their first victory in their lives, were a meager but motivated force. It took days, but after disabling gun emplacements, raiding mess halls, and pillaging armouries, the giant of man had turned a small band of desperate but attentive men into an adequate fighting force, aided by the break in enemy morale and Frederíc's seemingly inherent abilities in combat and leadership. Frederíc soon discovered that he had a certain sense of...clarity. It wasn't detached, or some automaton's cold logic, simply a grand focusing of the mind, in which he knew what had to be done, and a vague idea on what he must do to do it. As more desperate conscripts trickled into the besieged bunker complex, Frederíc was able to offer them rest and meals ad he turned to assault into a slow burn siege, having his forces, eat, sleep, maintain their equipment, and train as they best they could, all in shifts. Frederíc took his time, having deserters and discharged soldiers of the Sovereignty military train the poor conscripts without a clue as to the sharp end of a bayonet.

Eventually, the enemy, mad from starvation and lack of sleep, surrendered, signaling to the Sovereignty forces their intent.
Frederíc accepted their surrender, and waited as the main force came to the subdued enemy line. They were astonished, a ragtag group of suicide troops managed to rush, assault, and force the surrender of a fully fortified trench complex. Normally, the conscripts would have been beaten, but...what rules were broken? They had not done their job, they far exceeded it. Frederíc was singled out as the hero of the battle, not a single Sovereignty round fired.

So a grand experiment was conducted. Frederíc, and the most capable of the conscripts in his assault, and a chosen few from each batch thereafter, would be given the uniforms of the dead, and nothing more, Frederíc was given four ponchos and a field blanket for him to sew into something resembling a uniform. They would charge the enemy position, loosed from armoured prison carriers like race hounds, and if they claimed the position and no soldiers had to be used, they all would live. If they failed, or if a single Sovereignty boot was forced to touch the field, they would be dead, if they weren't already. It was a massive proposition, for a hundred odd unarmed men to take some of the most fortified and entrenched positions in the southern front. And each time, Frederíc Aristide, the disgraced noble, the Giant of Saileux, the Star Child, would lead a wild assault, finding the route of least resistance and ran, crawled, dug, and sneaked into the enemy's heart. There where losses, that was inevitable, but the Primarch's keening clarity brought victory to him and his mean each time, sparing them from an ignoble death.

Eventually the soldiers began "leaving" things in the prison transports, boots, socks, field rations, shovels...as Frederíc's legend grew, his group of conscripts became known as the No Men, named after the stretch of land between two fortified or entrenched positions. The No Man's Land. That and "No men would be crazy enough to run across to a trench bare handed and live."(edited)
Frederíc, now nicknamed the "War Horse", had proven himself as a peerless commander and warrior. The Sovereignty High Command saw his position as a neglectful waste of potential, and offered him a commission and position of command in one of the premier cavalry units. So Frederíc because High Marshal of the 373rd Sovereign Cavalry Regiment. Scarcely accepted by the other noble born commanders, but the respect he commanded over the troops and his tactical acumen put him leagues beyond his peers.

Under his guidance, his regiment collapsed the southern front, his simultaneously careful but brash tactics completely taking the enemy, used to patient gun lines and swarms of "disposable" infantry, completely unawares. Within a month of his assumption of command his cavalry and agile No Men stood upon the steps of of the enemy capitol. When he pressed his saber against the lord of the land and demanded his surrender, the Lord spat at his mercy. It was in this moment that Aristide saw that his mercy emboldened the enemy, they did not see him as a conqueror, but as a weak chinned politician. As the rival Lord spat his defiance, Aristide flicked his wrist and claimed his kingly head. As he tossed it down the capitol steps, he gave but one command; "Burn it."

And so the nation burned.

They were quick, and merciless. The flames of conquest consumed the capitol, and spread to the few places not cowed by the War Horse's bloody tear.