Ataulf Sachs

This page details people, events, and organisations from the /tg/ Heresy, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the /tg/ Heresy Timeline and Galaxy pages for more information on the Alternate Universe.

Ataulf Sachs was the highest ranking Terran Genewright of the early Imperium. Widely considered to be the Emperor's right hand in the matters that concerned geneurgy, he was one of the founding fathers of the Adeptus Astartes project, although his feelings on the Space Marines could be described as sceptical at best. As one of the Emperor's closest associates, he was appointed to the High Council of Terra after the Scouring and left a profound mark on the young Imperium's culture. In particular, he is chiefly responsible for institutionalising the xenophobia and genetic purism that permeate the Imperium nowadays. In the famous formula "Burn the heretic, Kill the mutant, Purge the unclean," the part about killing mutants is widely attributed to Sachs. At his orders, internment camps were set up on many worlds populated by mutants that either corrected the population's genetic flaws via extensive eugenics, or, if the mutations were found to be too radical, exterminated the current population, freeing up space for genetically pure colonists from other Imperial worlds. Although his methods were highly controversial back in his day, he is universally revered in the Imperium of today for freeing it from the detestable abhumans. He was also the father of Wilmut Sachs, one of the first traitors amongst the Space Marines, but their relations were always extremely strained, and Ataulf repeatedly disowned his son even prior to the Heresy.

Youth

Lusopolis, the Menagerie City

Without a scintilla of doubt, Holy Terra is the shining jewel in the crown of Mankind. With palaces that could house petty kingdoms on provincial worlds, forests of dreaming spires that pierce the atmosphere and cyclopean monuments that peer down from the Empyrean like vengeful gods, it exemplifies the greatness of our race like no other place in the Galaxy. Pilgrims that come there from all around the Imperium are more than content to quietly wither away in its shining streets, realising the futility of ordinary life after having witnessed the marvels of the cradle of humanity. So magnificent is this planet that it almost appears absurd that human hands could have wrought a work of such grandeur. And yet, ten thousand years ago, Terra was very different from the Imperial capital we're all used to. It was a place of savagery and cruelty, of desolation and ruin, of anarchy and inquity. Where gilded palaces now stand, there stood enormous slave pens; where elegant cathedrals stretch their spires skyward, foetid petrol swamps were choking with industrial wreckage. Over this husk of a planet, countless petty warlords lorded, most of them little more than glorified gang leaders. However, some of these kingdoms were truly bizarre, such as Lusopolis, the birthplace of Ataulf Sachs.

Mutations and congenital deformities were hardly uncommon on Terra during the Age of Strife: baleful emanations of the Warp exacerbated by heavy radiation and omnipresent pollution made monstrous births a common occurrence. In most places, such children were considered portents of ill fortune to come and exiled into the ruins, where they joined feral herds of demihumans like themselves. The citizens of other principalities viewed mutant infants as gifts from their primitive gods and groomed them to take on positions of authority when they grow up. However, one of these petty Terran polities was truly unique in that it was populated entirely by beastmen: the Gerontocracy of Lusopolis. Such a peculiar situation was caused chiefly by this citystate's isolation from the nearby human realms. Trapped in a deep valley surrounded by irradiated mountain ridges, the citizens of Lusopolis had no choice but to resort to inbreeding, and over the course of centuries their small gene pool was overwhelmed with mutations. Deformity quickly became the new norm, which only shows how relative the notion of normalcy truly is.

However, as even healthy women sometimes give birth to deformed children, the beastwomen of Lusopolis sometimes brought perfectly healthy infants into this world. Ironically, these unfortunate souls were considered freaks and disgusting subhumans who had no place in the Gerontocracy. They weren't killed or exiled into the mountains like they would be in a savage society: in spite of its bestial-looking population, Lusopolis was a place of considerable refinement, only slightly seasoned by the heartlessness that is so characteristic of societies cherishing their civility. Instead, the healthy kids were taken away from their parents and taken to the House of Smiles - a prison-like freakshow where the beastmen came to gloat at healthy humans.

The House of Smiles

Ataulf Sachs was born into a patrician family that was anxiously anticipating an heir. Initially excited at the perspective of finally getting a son into the family, geront Etzel Sachs was profoundly disappointed when his wife brought him a perfectly healthy child. Although his spouse suggested to conceal the boy's lack of beastial features by having him wear a pair of fake horns, Ataulf refused to go along with this charade and ordered for Ataulf to be brought into the House of Smiles. The boy was brought up there together with other normal children, without any knowledge of his family. The scarce education that they received was only aimed at teaching the kids to act in a civilized manner to the amusement of the visitors, yet the teachers quickly noted the affinity for learning young Sachs displayed. Eventually they started bringing him old books and journals just to bet on how quickly the boy will finish reading them. Ataulf cared little what books he received, for all of them helped him to escape from the grim reality of his life as a sideshow freak; yet he especially enjoyed the manuals on ancient biology and genetics, considered utterly worthless in Lusopolis. As he saw the illustrations of men, women and their body organs, he slowly came to realize the simple fact that the beastmen successfully managed to forget: he was a normal human, they were the monsters.

His sad existence came to an abrupt end when he was in his early twenties. One day, terrible panic took over Lusopolis: the agitated citizens were running back and forth, not sure what to do. From overhearing fragments of conversations, Ataulf managed to deduce that the valley was attacked by a band of giant warriors wearing armour that even five men struggled to lift. Apparently, they were greatly weakened by the heavy dose of radiation they received when crossing the mountains and the city's militia managed to bring most of them down; yet some managed to escape and scatter throughout the valley. Always a quick thinker, Ataulf immediately realized that the general panic offered an excellent opportunity for him to escape from captivity. Taking his closest friends with him, he waited until the guards were sufficiently distracted and sneaked out from his prison. He knew the city map well enough from the journals he's read, so escaping from Lusopolis was a trivial task for him and his followers.

Imperial invasion

Admittedly, Ataulf had no clear plan of action once they've left the city, but the destiny smiled at him for the second time in one day: they barely walked a couple of miles away from Lusopolis when they came across a giant warrior wearing a suit of armour emblazoned with thunderbolts. The warrior was heavily wounded and clearly dying, yet he had enough strength left in him to talk to the young people. In a strange dialect, he explained that he was one of the Thunder Warriors sent by the Emperor of Mankind to reclaim Lusopolis, cleanse it from the beastmen and retrieve the valuable Dark Age artefacts contained within the city. Unfortunately, his squad failed to fulfil the objective, but at least the defenders of Lusopolis were also broken. Now all that remained was to call in reinforcements to finish what was started, but the only vox device capable of doing that belonged to the squad leader and was captured by the beastmen after his demise. Before closing his eyes for the last time, the warrior begged Ataulf and his friends to find and use the vox transmitter in the name of Mankind.

He didn't need to ask twice. Ataulf hated the beastmen with a passion, and now that he had a confirmation that they were a bad joke of nature, he was determined to help wipe their vile kin out. With a couple of grenades and a combat knife taken from the Thunder Warrior, the young people made their way back into the town. By hiding in dark back alleys and eavesdropping on the conversations, they soon found out that the armour of the defeated giants was being displayed on the main square. Once there, Ataulf threw a grenade into the crowd surrounding the armour suits from his hiding place and made a charge towards them in the ensuing confusion. He's never seen a vox device before, but the Thunder Warrior's description was accurate enough for him to spot it at the first sight. With the device clenched firmly in his fist, he rushed back into the dark alleys of Lusopolis, which eventually led him back out of the hated city.

All that remained was to activate the call for reinforcements, which Ataulf did with great pleasure. It was with grim contentment that he watched from afar how the Thunder Warriors turned Lusopolis into a pile of smouldering rubble. Once that was over with, large flying machines came from beyond the mountains and landed in front of the ruins, safe from the flak cannons that normally guarded the sky over the valley. A shining demigod in golden armour walked out from one of these machines, basking the debris of Lusopolis in his divine light. This was the first time Ataulf Sachs saw the Emperor of Mankind, and this encounter affected the young man profoundly. He was still standing in place looking at the Master of Mankind when he was approached by one of the officers in charge of the operation. He commended the young people on their quick and decisive actions and offered them a place amongst the Emperor's servants. Ataulf immediately agreed.

Life and career

Genewright-Bailiff

As was common with the orphans found by the Imperial forces during the Unification wars, Sachs received an offering to take military training to become an officer in the young Imperial Army, but he decided to decline it. His true passion lied with biology and geneurgy, so he asked for an apprenticeship with the Genewright guild instead, which he was granted. Already quite knowledgeable from his extensive reading in the House of Smiles, Sachs quickly became a star student and surpassed all of his teachers one by one. His colleagues kept guessing what drove the young man's insatiable curiosity, but none knew the true answer. His difficult youth gave Sachs a zealous hatred of mutants and abhumans of all kinds as well as a dream to one day correct all of the mutations and genetic flaws found in humans and make his race perfect. A bold aspiration, for sure, but young Ataulf worked hard to achieve it. Whenever the Imperial forces managed to recover ancient dataslates containing information on genetic engineering, he was the first to study them and try his new knowledge in practise. In several years, he rose up to become the Bailiff of his guild and Terra's foremost authority on geneurgy. Even the Emperor himself consulted with him on the matters concerning genetic engineering.

Inevitably, Sachs became one of the primary architects of the Adeptus Astartes project. He did not approve of his master's idea to create a race of genetically enhanced humans to help him conquer the Galaxy, as Sachs abhorred all deviations from the perfection of the human genome. But his loyalty was out of question, and he joined the Master of Mankind in his effort to make a perfect supersoldier. While the Emperor was certainly the main creative force behind the project and came up with most of the features, Sachs cleaned up after his liege, painstakingly searching for any defects and imperfections and removing them. It was largely thanks to his hard work that the Space Marines came out much more stable than the Thunder Warriors. Although he did not manage to weed out every single genetic flaw for every type of geneseed, he came close enough to make the Adeptus Astartes a reliable force that could sustain a centuries-long crusade.

Familiy life

At some point, Ataulf felt a natural longing for female affection. Instead of marrying a lady from the Imperial court, he sent his thralls to scan every nook and cranny of the Imperium for the most genetically pure female. They came back with a modest commoner woman from one of the Untarqtian Hives. Although she nearly worshipped her husband for giving her a life of luxury, he only really loved her chromosomes and was rather cold to her. Eventually, they conceived an heir who Ataulf named Wilmut after a xenophobic cult leader from the Age of Strife. He planned for Wilmut to take his place after his death and fulfil his dream of purifying Mankind, but the boy had something very different in mind. Where his father was obsessed with correcting genetic sequences and weeding out defects, Wilmut loved improvisation and experimentation. He saw the standard human genome as plain and boring and believed in his ability to improve on it. Such views angered Ataulf greatly, and the two quickly grew far apart.

Eventually, Ataulf gave up on his son, stopped homeschooling him and sent him off to a cadet school. This decision backfired spectacularly, as Wilmut was eventually selected to become one of the first Space Marines. Seeing his genetically perfect son turn voluntarily into a mutant left a profound scar on Ataulf's mind. He disowned the boy, tried twice more to conceive an heir, but only got two daughters. Eventually he decided to adopt an orphan carefully chosen by his thralls, but he could never really connect to a boy who didn't share his genes. His failed family life made Ataulf a very callous man, and he directed his frustration at fighting the remaining mutants of Terra.

Medical camps

His most famous creation are the so-called "medical camps". Although they were formally merely temporary internment camps for the mutants and beastmen, their true function was far more sinister. In these camps, the mutants were extensively studied and experimented on to reveal the sources of their mutation. Sachs didn't pull any punches on conducting cruel or dangerous experiments on the inmates if he saw that necessary. Some even say he derived sadistic pleasure from torturing mutants and tortured many of them to death in his laboratory purely for his perverted satisfaction, although this would be at odds with the Genewright's razor-sharp rational mindset. Once the source was identified, the camp personnel set about weeding the mutations out, either by cruel eugenic programs that were not unlike cattle breeding and often required the parents to copulate with their own offspring, or by direct medical intervention, extremely painful and with a low survival rate. But even these two options were preferable to the the dreaded third one. In those cases where the mutation was deemed too entrenched in the genome to be removed, all of the bearers of this mutation were mercilessly exterminated. The inhuman cruelty and barbarity of these camps, so unbefitting of the state that touted itself as the beacon of civilisation, drew wide criticism from many prominent Imperial leaders, but the Emperor himself decided to turn a blind eye to it. Sachs saw this as his liege's silent approval and began setting up medical camps on those worlds taken during the Great Crusade where the mutant population was most prominent. The human race became much more homogeneous thanks to his efforts, but at a dreadful price.

Later life and death

Sachs was obsessed with genetic purity to the point of lunacy. In any conversation, he surreptitiously scanned his interlocutor for subtle signs of mutation. He commonly judged people on the basis of their genetic purity, believing that only a pure body can house a pure soul. To him, defects in physical appearance reflected moral defects, and nothing could convince famously obdurate Sachs otherwise. Although he was one of the primary architects of the Adeptus Astartes project, he remained very sceptical about the Space Marines throughout his lifetime. Astartes were just another species of abhumans to him - useful for a time, but genetically imperfect and potentially dangerous nonetheless. When half of the Legiones Astartes betrayed the Emperor and threw in their lot with the Dark Gods, he was perhaps the only high-ranking official on Terra to remain perfectly calm. Although he was unsure what shape it would take, he always saw a great calamity involving the Space Marines coming, and the outbreak of the Heresy only calmed him down, if nothing else.

A major proponent of putting the remaining Thunder Warriors down after the Unification Wars, Sachs advocated the same fate for the Astartes after the Scouring. Yet his voice was drowned out by the other High Lords, who saw the necessity of the Space Marines for the protection of the Imperium. Deeply disappointed by the decision of the High Council, Sachs retired to his estate on Titan, fully convinced that a second Heresy was coming. He died shortly thereafter, most likely poisoned by his political opponents. The passing of Ataulf Sachs was bemoaned throughout the Imperium, especially by the Genewrights, who saw him as their spiritual liege. Statues of him were erected throughout the Galaxy, his aphorisms were included into Imperial Quotebooks and the Apothecaries began revering him as their founding father, unaware of the view he really held towards their kind.