Remembrancer

"Arm the bastards and they might win a few bloody worlds for us in between verses."

--Leman Russ's high opinion on Remembrancers.

A Remembrancer was a blanket term for a variety of types of artist given the task of recording the glories of the Great Crusade. Very few of them were straightforward historians, as the Emp did not like that sort of thing. They along with the Iterators made up most of the non-Army personnel in the Expedition Fleets. Legions had varied opinions on them: Aesthetically inclined Legions like the Emperor's Children and the Blood Angels loved them, the Sons of Horus were fine with them, and Legions like the Death Guard, Space Wolves, and Raven Guard hated them. Angron actually had the World Eaters throw theirs out of their main expeditionary fleet (onto another ship, not out the airlock like you would expect) when they started bugging his flag-captain. They are featured throughout the Horus Heresy series.

As for their future, the Remembrancer Order didn't survive to see the 41st millennium. They were disbanded by the Order of Dissolution, decreed shortly after Horus' betrayal became known. The Horus Heresy was deemed too tragic and wrong to be worth remembering.

Notable Members of the Remembrancer Order

• Euphrati Keeler - Human camera turned crazy ultra-charismatic psyker turned first Imperial (possibly Living) Saint. One of her more enduring pictures caught a comet that was renamed after her. The fact that this comet went through the Eye of Terror and lead a Khornate warband across the stars is rather ironic.
• Mersadie Oliton - An intrepid reporter that would have had sexual tension with Loken of the Luna Wolves/Sons of Horus, except he was an Astartes. Witnessed and recorded Horus's murder of the remembrancers on the Vengeful Spirit, which she replayed to Rogal Dorn as evidence that his brother had gone mad. Also one of the few black people in all of 40k.
• Ignace Karkasy - A poet who saw the true grimdark of the Imperium, and chose to speak out against the Astartes as being more brutal, self-interested soldiers than a tool for "defending" humanity. However, he chose to do this as the Horus Heresy was starting to wind up, so Horus got him murdered so he wouldn't have to deal with the asshole. Rather ironic, since he would have been killed shortly thereafter over Istvaan III anyways.
• Petronella Vivar - Horus's number one fan and later his biographer. She was a rich asshole who should not have abused her bodyguard so much. There seemed to be some undertones with her that implied some romantic feelings towards Horus, but her feelings changed when he snapped her neck. Happens to be one of the few Americans in 40k, which tells you what the BL writers think of Americans.
• Ostian Delafour - Sculptor who was better than Fulgrim because his statues were less perfect (Fulgim's were more like idealized automatons that dipped into the uncanny valley), and who chose to make a statue of the Emperor right in front of Chaos'd Fulgrim. Fulgrim, who already hated Ostian for his critique even before being corrupted, responded to this by impaling him with the anathame, through the statue of the Emperor Ostian was making and finally deeming it "perfect."
• Serena d'Angelus - Painter who, under Slaanesh's influence, realized how she could paint with all the colors of the human body (using bodily fluids from human corpses as the paints), only to realize through her actual love of Ostian how crazy Fulgrim's fleet was and ended up killing herself along with Ostian by impaling herself in the same statue Fulgrim did. A Chaos'd Fulgrim was horny and decided to have some fun with her corpse (by unimpaling it, kinda anticlimactic). Note that most of the other (non-possessed) newly Chaos'd marines didn't really think of sex at all, and got their ecstasy from murdering those around them and wearing their skin.
• Bequa Kynska - Composer and total bitch who was primarily Slaanesh fodder. Corrupted during the pacification of Laer along with the rest of the Emperor's Children, she tried to recreate the effects of the temple's music. The night before the Drop Site Massacre, she played her efforts, the Maraviglia, to the Emperor's Children and senior Army officers, and her music turned everyone into deranged psychopaths that murdered and raped everyone else in the general area, as well as being enough ear rape to summon up a few daemonettes. She was killed by a daemonette at the height of ecstasy. The Emperor's Children really liked the novelty of this, duplicated the instruments she commissioned and started using them on the battlefield. Fulgrim, meanwhile, and looked around at this and grinned, and said "So tell me, who are we?", and his Legion said "We're the aristocrats!" Kynska's ancestor may or may not have been Rebecca Black.
• Mahavastu Kallimakus, Scrivener Extraordinary to Magnus the Red whose library was later trashed by Ahzek Ahriman. While he was an excellent writer in his own right, he is best remembered for telling Lemuel and friends to "Shut the shitting hell up" when they were arguing. Unfortunately for him, he didn't get to do much of his own writing with the Thousand Sons, as Magnus was in his brain a lot (using him as a pen) and he simply refused to pull out. Captured by the Space Wolves while his ship was leaving Prospero for Terra, and what happened to him afterwards is a mystery.
• Lemuel Gaumon, Societal Behaviourist and friend of Ahriman (until Ahriman betrayed him by murdering Eris). Also a psyker (like all Remebrancers attached to the Thousand Sons), he could read auras.
• Kallista Eris, Historiographer who could see the future. After a brief period spending time in the shops of Tzica and making out with a member of the Prospero Spireguard, she had a major episode where she had to be hospitalized, only for Ahriman to allow her powers to run free. Ended up burning to death from Warpfire while screaming about "the Wolves at the door" and something about "Ravens of Blood crying out for an unknown father". Wonder what that was about?
• Camille Shivani, Architectural Archeohistorian who could tell the history of objects just by touching them. Also a flaming hot lesbian with a flaming hot Prosperine girlfriend.
• Kaspar Hawser - A Skjald who was with the Space Wolves when they burned Prospero. Not actually a Remembrancer, but former archaeologist that became a specialized Legion Serf that recorded oral histories. He was played like a fiddle during his lifetime buy a daemon representative of some warp entity, and proved to be pivotal in the events that would eventually lead to the corruption of the Thousand Sons. While the Wolves still considered him a bro, there was the off chance that he still might be tainted by Chaos, so they stuck in in the fridge at the bottom of the Fang with all the dreadnoughts, and reheat him once every century to tell the tales.
• Mendacs, a "painter" who really works for a Legion that does not exist.
• Persephia, former remembrancer, now artificer for the Salamanders. Mostly useless.
• Solomon Voss, the first remembrancer and the founder of the order along with Kyril Sindermann's founding of the Iterators. He became the last remembrancer after he ignored the Order of Dissolution and became the personal scribe to Horus (very Chaos'd at this point). Horus gave him back with the truth. Voss figured out the truth of the paranoid and grimdark wreck that the Imperium would become even if Horus died right then, as Horus had destroyed all trust. Rogal Dorn killed him to stop the truth from getting out, marking the first time the Imperium officially censored itself.
• Seriph, Vulkan's Remembrancer. Curze killed her for the lulz.
• Halerdyce Gerwyn, a comic book artist. Seriously. He intended to illustrate Apothecary Meros's heroic actions at Nartaba Octus, but when the Blood Angels went to the Signus Cluster, the Chaos-tainted space got to him and he took his own life.