Rahman Keita'mansa

Rahman Keita'mansa
Title/Honours	the Bold One, the Privateer, Lord of a Thousand Warrants, Master of the Mines of Ghara, Patron-Illustrious of Stygies VIII
Discovered (world)	Manden
Legion	Corsairs Gallant
Great Crusade Command	Primarch, 36th Expeditionary fleet
Heraldry/Sigil
Unique Weapon	The Night Sabre, a blade of xenos origin, and a brace of rare and powerful pistols
Distinguishing Traits	Clever, curious, economical, swashbuckling prowess
Flaws	Nihilism, duplicity, greed
Role	Separatist
Fate	Disappears circa M33, leaving behind a trail of clues that seem to lead into the Halo Stars

This page is part of the Warmasters Triumvirate, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the Warmasters Triumvirate page for more information on the Alternate Universe.

Rahman Keita'mansa is the Primarch of the Corsairs Gallant Space Marine Legion. Known for his keen mind and sharp wit, Rahman was a seen even by his close associates as a roguish and dangerous character, whose talents for rapid actions, bringing about compliant worlds, and supporting his fellows was offset by a habit for duplicity and covert action, often seemingly without purpose and even at the detriment to his erstwhile allies. Though he maintained relatively good terms with many of his brothers, relations were often strained by his actions, and his close friendship with many of the more controversial members of the brotherhood. In truth, much of his bravura and swagger was a cover for a deep nihilism that ate at him, driving him to attempt to fill a void in his soul. Following the Brotherwar he would be further shaken, slowly retreating into isolation until he finally disappeared entirely, leaving behind a trail that would become known as the Halo Map, seen by his sons as a mission set by their father to find him, and by many others as a map to some strange and arcane treasure.

History

Primarch Origin

The world of Manden was a water world dotted by relatively small but densely rivered continents, its climate a mix of deserts and tropic to subtropical in most places.

Personality and Appearance

Appearance

Dark in complexion, far more than most of his brothers, Rahman nevertheless greatly resembled many of them, and their father most of all. With a strong jaw and a piercing set of sterling silver eyes, he stood out among his brothers, even if neither his height nor his build seemed to. All in all, he was decidedly middling in both factors, neither the tallest nor the shortest, not the broadest or the slimmest, though he still towered above the average mortal and even his Astartes sons. Yet still, there was an air about him, a proud bearing and magnetic aura that makes him noticeable, a natural, casual charisma.

A dandy par excellence, Rahman's facial hair was well maintained and groomed in a flamboyant fashion, a keen manifestation of the vanity and 'scoundrel charm' of an illustrious Rogue Trader. His hair, wiry and jet black, was twisted in finely maintained dreadlocks, woven in with glittering charms and skulls of silver, platinum, and gold. There were even some who whispered that the locks of his hair were an arsenal all their own, bearing digital weapons hidden within their rows. However, he was rarely seen bareheaded, preferring to wear a large tricorn of black leather with silver filigree.

While neither the fastest nor strongest of his brothers, he nevertheless was a consummate duelist, more than capable of matching his foes through a combination of brutish cunning and an utter lack of anything approaching scruples. He saw it just like his adopted father used to say: the fair fight was the one you did not prepare right for. Honor was for knights, soldiers, and fools, all just pretty words to a corsair like himself.

Personality

Of the temperaments, Rahman was firmly seen as sanguine. A bold and boisterous man, he had charisma to spare, seeming to charm by his very presence. A consummate showman, his every move was often a calculated act, designed to further his image. Cultivated through youth, this mindset was hammered as essential for a captain and commander, to create an image and mystique that would lead men to follow, to volunteer for things that they did not know they were being led into, and to face death with a smile. It was not to say that Rahman is fake, far from it, but simply that he had embraced the image, and has, as a result, become that image even as he acts it.

Rahman cared for his sons, and he truly saw his legion as such, and to a lesser extent humanity as a whole. Hammered into him from youth as well was this supreme loyalty to family, yet it was one that was also tempered by the necessity for caution, as this loyalty was often tested by less scrupulous members. Thus, a sense of duplicitousness was also ingrained into him, furthered by the necessities of a trader’s way. Plans and schemes, a mind for tactics that was flexible, adaptable, and ruthless when necessary, yet sparing both for the prospect of future business and to preserve the spoils gained in victory.

Curious to a fault, Rahman never shied away from the strange, even the alien. He took in many peculiarities, both animate and otherwise. A menagerie of alien beasts was kept aboard his flagship, the Crystal Skull, while he took on retainers from abhuman breeds, utilizing their uniqueness to his advantage. However, he often courted disaster in pursuit of the strange technological artifacts of the galaxy, caring not if they were old human or xenos in origin. The armory of the Mansa of the Keita Dynasty was full of strange artifacts and items, and he did not shy from using them, earning the ire of many and nearly censorship on several occasions as a result.

As time progressed, he found himself increasingly disillusioned with the destruction of the Great Crusade, his distrust for his ‘father’ sprouting from seeds the Emperor had planted after Rahman had been found and watched his adopted father, the man who had raised and taught him, censored and exiled. His desires for material wealth, in pursuit of some esoteric goal, led him down a rebellious path, though he rebuffed the courtship of Chaos; many mistook him for a being of excess for its own sake, yet there was more to Rahman than that. In truth, Rahman desired a purpose… as time went on, he came to believe that there was no real purpose in the crusade.

To some, this might have been the way for the Great Destroyer to get hooks in, yet Rahman found this even worse; the warp was not even less than the material, the beings there were loathsome reflections of the mortal races, not worthy of anything. There was no discovery, no true curiosity in the warp, merely facsimiles aping true discovery. Excess for the sake of excess was nothing, and while all things decayed there was nothing to be taken from there… and Rahman did not fear it, so much as just… endure it. Neither the Dark Prince nor the Grandfather thus found purchase, and the others had even less a chance of gaining his service.

Like his brothers, Rahman was naturally psychic. However, his talents as a psyker were limited almost exclusively to the art of divination, and he never trained this sense as much as many of his fellows. It also instilled in him a sort of paranoia that drove him to attempt to have a handle on things, to know everything he could and also to trust those outside of his family very rarely. This included his 'brothers,' sparing a select few, and the Brotherwar seemed to validate this mindset in many ways. The fall of Mot Hadad most of all struck him; the abrasive Primarch of the Forge Lords was a friend, and indeed he was almost the only friend Mot had. Despite his abilities he was seemingly blind to his brother's path to damnation.

Torn by paranoia and curiosity, a desire for good and a fear of nihilism, Rahman was often torn in two directions. This desire for knowledge and meaning is part of what led to his eventual 'fall' into corruption of another sort.

Equipment

Rahman’s personal armor is one of the finest examples of power armor ever artificed, perfectly fitted to his body in every way. Though of comparable defensive power to that of a suit of master-wrought Terminator armor. Constructed in baroque style, it’s blue-gray coloring matches that of the rest of legion, with the same silver accents as well. On the center of the cuirass is a large embossed silver emblem, that of his legion, the Cardinal Skull. This houses a powerful force field generator, one of considerable strength. The backpack mounts several lenses and surveyors, linked into the monocle he wears as well, as well as what appear to be crystal structures in mountings of some kind. The suit’s pauldrons have dangling silver filigree, giving them something of the look of epaulets.

However, the armor also integrates a heavy coat styled as those of his adopted father’s calling, a flamboyant mix of high-collared and silver-edged naval uniform and daring rogue that integrates on his armor, a deeper navy, almost black, in color. The coat is woven with voidsheen, a micro-vitrious mesh designed to diffract and absorb energy, making it more than mere decoration, but a layer of defense all its own. It also holds another secret due to another material woven into it, one that reacts only when another device is activated.

A secondary defense to the force field generator, a holo-field hangs around his neck, one of several pendants of various kinds. When activated, it generates a blurring image, and casts off reflections that hide his position. Photoreactive materials in the coat assist in this process, making it difficult to track him when he is in motion. The origins of this technology are disputed, with the official claim being that it is derived from archeotech from before the Age of Strife, yet similarities to Eldar technology have cast doubt on this.

The crystalline structures on his backpack are often thought of as mere decoration or perhaps some sort of targeting matrix, but in reality are part of piece of technology of unequivocal xenos origin: a Ulumeathi Plasma Syphon, which creates an aura that destabilizes the fields of plasma weapons around the wearer, making it nearly impossible to accurately target with them. Another piece of hidden xenotech is the Eldar flip-belt integrated into the suit’s waist, one that he uses only sparingly to avoid revealing.

Per weaponry, fitting someone who prides himself both on his flamboyance and tactical flexibility, and someone who so greatly appreciates unique curios and relics, he carries with him quite a panoply. Specifically, his primary arm is the Volkite Petronel, a unique archeotech weapon. At its most basic, it resembles a volkite weapon, yet is capable of far higher output. Firing a pulsed storm of energy, it could reduce entire squads of lightly armored foes to ash. It was often carried alongside two other weapons, both of xenos origin. The first, a psychocrystalline weapon of unknown alien manufacture, the Neuro Disruptor was one of several xenos treasures that Rahman had and uses, pulling out the weapon to lay waste to the most dire of foes. It had no obvious power source, internal workings or mechanical trigger, but worked by intent. It used intricate psycho-crystalline circuitry to emit a wave of particles that disrupt the brain's neural pathways. He also carried another weapon of xenos origin, the Blast Pistol. Not to be confused with a weapon sometimes found in the hands of other Imperial officers, not being a laser weapon but rather one that fires a strange material referred to as Darklight, harvested through unknown means. Limited in ammunition, Rahman kept it as a trophy and used it only in the most dire circumstances, bringing a power that can tear through armor with ease.

For melee, he is no less esoteric, and while his panoply includes several eldritch items of unknown origins, the primary being a heavy falchion of black metal, etched with emerald lines and runes that dances with energy of the same. It’s grip is of human make a caged basket hilt that integrates a light suspensor to lighten the weapon to near nothing, while the blade itself is of xenos origin. The blade is unusual in its ability to phase in and out of Realspace by molecular realignment, allowing it to plunge clean through armour, flesh and bone as though they were not there at all. Energy shields, armour and even daemonic bodies are of no defence against a it’s fractal edge.

Further, both hands are festooned with rings, several of which contain digital weapons of various kinds, rounding out the flexible panoply of death Rahman carries with him. However, this is not the extent of his arsenal, and he’s been known to make use of micro-void shields, phase generators, and peculiar cloaking devices, all manner of device both archaeotech and xenos, based upon his whims and fancy and cunning plans, black tetrahedrons with dark green circuitry across its alien surface. A favored weapon are strange metal spheres around the size of a man’s fist, seemingly featureless and activating only if thrown, delivering a stunning shock upon impact.

Rahman is usually accompanied by a Gyrinx by the name of Musa, a 2 meter felinoid creature that bonded with him during one of his many explorations into the depths of space. The creature accompanies him nearly everywhere, and is widely considered one of the largest of its kind; gyrinx are known to take on the physical traits of those they are bonded to, and it is likely that Rahman’s unique physiology and prodigious soul caused the peculiar growth in the creature. The creature accompanies him even into battle, a stalking predator with peculiar abilities, assisting his ability to think and react.

Rules