Editing Lyster Larrey (section)

===The Time of Monsters===
Lyster Larrey began life as an inhabitant of Mondus Gamma, the third strongest of the Martian Forges and part of the great Tharsis Quadrangle. Mondus Gamma was a centre for Robotics and was the mightiest stronghold of the Legio Cybernetica on Mars. However young Larrey’s interest was not towards the Robots, but rather the men who served them. He excelled in biology and the study of the human condition. With no chance to further this in Mondus Gamma, Larrey left the forge and headed for Olympus Mons, where he found and was accepted into the ranks of the Ordo Biologis, considered the most unusual of all the orders of the Mechanicum. The Ordo Biologis did not study machines, but rather man, treating the biological form of man as a machine worthy of study. Larrey excelled in his studies and soon rose to a prominent position within the Ordo Biologis where he took up a new field of study.

His initial interest was in the degradation of the human genome after centuries of nuclear holocaust, and how damaged the genome of Terran humans was. The Sol System of the time was rife with all manners of mutants and monsters, the legacy of both Terra and Mars’ own Nuclear Wars of the distant past, reactor leaks, genetic experiments gone wrong and more. Larrey had been part of several hunts for Martian Mutants, and having examined the recovered bodies he was interested if a similar fate yet lay in store for the hapless humans of Terra and whether they had deviated enough from the human baseline to no longer be considered as human and thus worthy of purgation, a belief that was common within the Ordo Biologis at the time. Towards this end, he spent much of his time studying dead and live humans brought back from Terra by the Martian Expeditions periodically sent to Terra to recover the vast hauls of archeotech still left there. His preliminary findings were that the Terran Genome was in a long decline, and within a thousand years would be no longer classifiable as human.

However as the [[Unification Wars (Hektor Heresy)|Unification Wars]] gained pace, he found that there was less and less material being brought back to study. The armies of the Terran Warlord known simply as ‘The Emperor’ seemed to be very hostile to the Martian visits and the kidnapping of Terran civilians and he often launched strikes on Martian camps, slowly driving the Mechanicum from Terra itself.

On one of the final expeditions to Terra, a new subject was brought back for Larrey to study. Among the corpses and terrified human captives brought back from Terra was the hulking corpse of a Thunder Warrior, one of the gene-modified shock troops spearheading the Emperor’s drive across the Planet. This corpse proved to be a revelation and a turning point for Larrey. The Terran Emperor, long discounted by the lords of Mars was proven as a master of biology, converting humans into elite soldiers for his conquest of Terra. Furthermore, this meant the Emperor might yet be able to stabilize the genome of the Terran survivors and prevent the decline into mutant monsters like the Martian ones the early Mechanicum had exterminated.

His interest piqued and a new avenue opened up for himself, Larrey set aside his study of human genetics and thrust himself into the study of the Thunder Warrior, noting the many modifications made to the standard human form, including increased size, boosted muscle, modified bone-structure and implants to increase aggression and combat ability. Unfortunately, he could only retrieve only so much data from what samples he had, and with Terra now off-limits to the Mechanicum he needed to look elsewhere for more information on the types of genetic modification the Emperor was employing. Fortunately, there was one place in the solar system which specialized in such knowledge and which also lay just within reach of the Mechanicum’s armies.