Vilyon Luthier

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.

Vilyon Luthier
Title/Honours	Prime of the Tyrrhena Hebdomad, Forge Lord of Crater City

Forge Lord Vilyon Luthier, b.766.M30 (Crater City, Mars), was a largely obscure figure to the Imperium until the Hektor Heresy began. Much of his career was spent in the forge-fanes of Urbis Tyrrhena, better known as Crater City. What fame Luthier in the period of the Great Crusade was as a composer, musician, and manufacturer of civilian goods. His obsession with the automated creation of music drove this talented artisan into the mad embrace of Slaanesh, and after his fall he inflicted terrible atrocities on the population of Mars.

Early Life

The Luthiers were one of the more prominent clans of Crater City. They were known to have followed a liberal interpretation of the Mechanicum creed, as was common in the region. According to the tenets of their congregation, the heathen Langve tribe who infested the gullies of nearby Cimmeria Terra were future converts to the Machine Cult rather than horrific foes to be exterminated. The rise of Yonkada, the self-styled "Warlord of Mars", as leader of the Langve and his subsequent attacks on Crater City around the time of Vilyon's birth would harden religious differences and help to secure the unification of Mars behind Fabricator General Kalkas Tygian. Yet the hardships of this savage time were kept at arm's length from a privileged family. Granted, as a second-born child, Vilyon was at first slated as a candidate for the various military arms of the Machine Cult and might have eventually seen combat against the Langve or other threats to the Mechanicum. However, in 769.M30 his destiny would be diverted by family tragedy. Eldest child Giorea fell from a high walkway, leading to her death and turning Vilyon's path into the ranks of the Artisans. His development into a sensitive and compassionate youth unsuited to war gave comfort to the Luthier family, suggesting that the cruel loss of their daughter had at least served the purposes of the Machine God. Due to his family's influence, Vilyon was apprenticed directly to Forge Lord Anjos Nezax, a member of the Tyrrhena Hebdomad (the council of seven that ruled Crater City).

Under the tutelage of Nezax, Vilyon learned the complementary arts of musical composition and the crafting of musical instruments. Nezax himself had become prominent in Crater City for reviving the construction of the ancient Servo-Harmonium, a derivation of the even older Terran Pump Organ that could combine instructions from a data-stave with the input of a conductor. These instruments were prized for their combination of mechanical precision with human emotion. Vilyon spent considerable time working with the Servo-Harmonium under Nezax and his later career focused on this extraordinary instrument. His first compositions covered largely personal and family themes. His final version of the haunting elegy Giorea became a popular song of mourning on Mars during the 790s. As Vilyon matured and began his independent work, he became more sensitive to larger developments, as is evidenced by the triumphal March of the Omnissiah and his unreleased Lament for Hebes Chasma. Much of the inspiration for his melodies came from the sounds of Crater City, from the chatter of its many free workers to the groans and roars of its mighty machines. He also experimented with minor variations to the Servo-Harmonium design, producing instruments with a range of timbres. When Arelex Orannis's presence was announced on Mars in 808.M30, Crater City's rulers selected Vilyon Luthier to perform a special concert in honour of the Primarch. Before the gathered elites of Mars and visiting Terran dignitaries, Vilyon demonstrated his virtuosity. The finale, his dramatic Son of Mars, won a standing ovation from an audience including no less a personage than the Fabricator General.

Following the death of Forge Lord Frycisz Shama in 812.M30, Vilyon Luthier was elevated into Crater City's ruling council. It was unusual for a Tech Priest still relatively young to serve on the Tyrrhena Hebdomad, but Vilyon enjoyed the confidence of the city's elites and had caught the eye of Kalkas Tygian. Initially, the appointment was a success for all concerned. Vilyon proved to be an able administrator and a warmhearted magistrate, much-admired by the people of Crater City and was soon appointed as the Prime, or head of the Tyrrhena Hebdomad. He proved to be a loyal client to the Fabricator General and routinely spoke in favour of Kalkas Tygian's policies in the Martian Parliament. If his decision to invite the disgraced Genetor Lyster Larrey to take refuge in Crater City was seen as an error, it was attributed to the Prime's generous nature and Larrey's presence caused little outcry.

However, Vilyon was greatly troubled by the Forgeworld Wars. Crater City historically favoured free-willed menial workers over Servitors, but the conflicts on Mars and beyond had led to significant changes. Menials were conscripted into Tagma, often led by higher-ranking craftsmen, and departed from the Red Planet to conquer worlds such as Dieseleum, Neutros Scrayaer, and Cyraxus II. In order to maintain industrial output, Servitors created from the prisoners of war were marched into Crater City's forge-fanes. The once rich soundscape of Vilyon's home was greatly diminished, and promising artisans who might have continued his musical tradition lost their lives far from Mars. Despite his heavy responsibilities as a civic leader, Vilyon continued his composition in this period and produced a series of brilliant, maudlin symphonies, publicly dedicated to the dead of Crater City. In private, Vilyon occasionally admitted that his works also mourned the loss of heretic lives, though such a thing could not be said openly under Kalkas Tygian's regime. He also developed new variations of the servo-harmonium with a "ghostly" quality in an attempt to give a voice to the lost children of the Omnissiah. A further indignity for Crater City was the mobilisation effort for the Great Crusade. At the command of the Fabricator General, many civilian industries were curtailed in order to produce weapons and munitions. Crater City had historically been a producer of quality Volkite weapons, but these expensive specialised items were set aside in favour of the tough, utilitarian Terran Bolter. Vilyon Luthier at first took heart from the victories of the Space Marine Legions and hoped that the crusade and its distortions of ordinary life would soon be over. As the decades wore on, he began to greet every proclamation of new conquests with the inner question, "When will it end?"

Giorea

Age and long periods of stress weakened Vilyon's living tissues, and by the second century of the Great Crusade he had become more machine than man. The increased sensitivity of his cybernetic sense-organs gave the Forge Lord some satisfaction and his prodigious output of compositions continued throughout his transformation. His soundscapes focused more on abstraction from the industrial noises that now filled Crater City. If works such as Requisition 24-85913-903 had a certain beauty, Vilyon no longer made artwork about human experience - or for human ears. The menial workers and junior craftsmen he had once entertained were gone, replaced with soulless Servitors. He began to wonder if he would be the last composer of Mars. Even if the tirade of requisitions, battle reports and mobilisation orders ended, would the Mechanicum regain their taste for art? Who would be left to teach a new generation? These questions nagged away at Vilyon. As sleep was only a memory, he could only take refuge in work.

During the 920s, Vilyon Luthier ceased his musical compositions altogether. Instead, he embarked on a secret project, a work that probed the boundaries of heresy. Rather than let his art die with him, Vilyon dared to design a machine capable of making music that expressed the feelings and sensations of its period. He knew - none could doubt - that such a task would risk the creation of Abominable Intelligence. But Vilyon chose to believe that the Machine God would not permit the perversion of a work motivated by such good intentions. To affirm the nobility of his work, Vilyon named the project after his lost sister, "Giorea". Working in secrecy and groping blindly for a miraculous technological solution, the Forge Lord laboured for decades without result. Finally, in the last decade of M30, he hit upon a solution. Rather than create a master algorithm capable of selecting and transforming emotional inputs into a musical output, Vilyon instead designed a self-expanding algorithm that could create sub-routines capable of dealing with specific instances. Although this approach held great promise, it took Luthier even closer to Tech Heresy. For in order for his master algorithm to function, it would need to evaluate the success of the sub-routines it created - it would need to think for itself. Aware now that he was treading on forbidden ground but unwilling to turn back, Luthier developed this code in his own memory and first ran the programme in his body's circuits.

The work was a wild, dangerous success. The algorithm began to propagate, creating composition sub-routines organised around sets of Vilyon's memories. Although his chambers were silent, the Forge Lord's consciousness was drowned in a sea of music. He fell into a trance-like state for what seemed like eternity. When roused by a lesser adept, sent to return him to his duties, Vilyon found he could dim the harmonies playing through his mind but not shut them out entirely. The matter bothered him little. For the first time in decades he felt a sense of comfort and completion. The Forge Lord's days became a waking dream, with the harshness of his life filtered through symphonies of ever-increasing sophistication and beauty. The change did not go unnoticed.

Anjos Nezax, Vilyon's old mentor, confronted him in private and began by asking mildly if there was anything Luthier would like to discuss. Although the man that Vilyon Luthier had once been would have responded calmly, the symphonies in his mind began to swell with anger. Moving in time with the hate-filled melodies, Vilyon attacked his comrade and former teacher, ruthlessly tearing Nezax's cybernetic form asunder. Murder had its own music, and Vilyon was enchanted by the new experience. Once the killing was done, Vilyon stood over the body of his victim, relishing the melodies unleashed by his betrayal. He was silent on the outside for precisely 512 seconds, then bent over Nezax's corpse and began to strip out his components. Vilyon incorporated the choicest parts into his own shell, delighting in the forbidden ecstasy of cannibalism. But he was seeking more than just immediate gratification. Taking the chips that stored Nezax's memories gave Vilyon's inner companion a whole new range of experiences from which to generate the songs that now made up the Forge Lord's existence, but the delights wrought from Nezax's life only fueled Vilyon's hunger. He cruelly betrayed the other lords of the Hebdomad, laying them low in succession and robbing their bodies of material and memory, then hunted the few remaining tech priests of Urbis Tyrrhena for what sustenance they could provide him.