Editing Kleisthenes (section)

==Youth==

Kleisthenes' gestation pod landed in the wastes of the Hive World Europa.  Like the goddess for which it had been named, the planet had been ravaged, but Europa yet possessed a formidable culture and fairly advanced technology.  Tragically, the competing hives used what remained of their proud human legacy to make endless war upon one another. The infant Kleisthenes was discovered by the heir to one of the leading families of the rising Vitruvian Empire.  He was given a patrician's education, learning history, rhetoric, art, statesmanship, and warfare.  Kleisthenes excelled in all fields, but particularly the last. His fast maturation and great strength was not unnoticed and he soon came to the attention of the Ten Thousand, the heads of the patrician houses that ruled Vitruvia and its dominions.

Appointed first to the command of a small unit, Kleisthenes rapidly rose through the ranks to become the foremost field commander of the empire's armies.  His martial prowess saw Vitruvia subjugate its foes, finally uniting Europa's hives under one government.  But for some among the Ten Thousand, an equal share of the whole planet was not enough.  The wars of unity had been done barely a year when civil war broke out in the Vitruvian Empire.  Kleisthenes was appalled by the reckless ambition of his fellow patricians and generals.  He pledged his might to the one man on Europa who did not seek to rule the world for his own sake.

The only sincere man who came to Kleisthenes was his old mentor, the philosopher Diokles.  As a slave, the thinker could not put forward a claim to rule Europa and he did not pretend to such.  Instead, he had one more lesson for Kleisthenes.  The man who the Primarch sought was himself.  Every other general had manoeuvred and looked to his own advantage.  If Kleisthenes wished to put the least-bad man upon the throne of Europa, he would have to take it himself.

The wisdom of Diokles moved Kleisthenes to action.  He gathered up the veterans of his old campaigns and set his sword to the task of reuniting the empire he had built once before.  Though the wars against old friends and comrades were hard, Kleisthenes and his partisans emerged triumphant.  At last, Europa would know peace - and Kleisthenes, trapped as her monarch, would endure a life he despised to guard it.