2d4chan - User contributions [en]

Malcador the Sigillite

2020-08-29T18:55:35Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:1866:64B3:4D59:E0D8: /* Credits */

[[File:The Sigillite clean.jpg|thumb|300px|The [[Administratum]] of the 41st millennium wishes it could be half as competent as Malcador. On second thought, [[Grimdark|no they don't]]. [[Primarch#Two_Missing_Primarchs_.7C_The_Forgotten_.26_The_Purged|Interesting armrests...]]]]
{{topquote|No one records something they wish to forget.|Anonymous, though often quoted by Malcador the Sigillite, ''The Last Council}}
{{topquote|I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.|''The Lord of the Rings'', [[J.R.R. Tolkien]]}}
{{topquote|I am here because when all else fails, when all the other [[Primarchs|mighty gods]] have [[Horus Heresy|gone off to war]], I am all that's left. Home. Hearth. I am the last Olympian.|Hestia, to Percy Jackson, in ''The Last Olympian''}}

'''Malcador the Sigillite''' (also known as Malcador the Hero or Malcador the Laundryman Of Teh Emprah or Malcador the Mammy) was Regent of Terra, Master of the [[Administratum]], first Grand Master of the [[Officio Assassinorum]], the founder of the [[Inquisition]], and all around bestest bud of the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor of Mankind]] during the [[Great Crusade]] and the [[Horus Heresy]]. The real life equivalent of Malcador's position in the Imperium is that of Prime Minister/Chancellor, who acted as de facto head of government in the name of the sovereign (the Emperor). He was also originally known as Brahm al-Khadour (Brah, Malkhadour '''WUT?'''), last of the Sigillites, the cursed wanderer, the perpetual.

In some respects, Malcador represents something of the Emprah's final dream for mankind as well as something of the nightmare that the Imperium became. In every sense he is just a man. Not a super augmented warrior monk, just a clever old bugger. Like Big E, he understood that the Imperium needed taxes and administration as well as generals and he entrusted those duties to other normal humans. Perhaps because of his belief that humanity would not outgrow the Emperor's influence, many of the organisations he created lacked adequate oversight, and descended into corruption in the wake of the Horus Heresy. Even so, this was at least humans being [[dick]]s to each other not [[Primarch|demigods]] lording it over the rest.

==History==
Having served the Emprah during the Unification of [[Terra]] ''(by his own reckoning he was 6718 years old by the close of the Heresy)'', he was present during the creation of the [[Primarchs]] and advised the Emperor during the early stages of the [[Great Crusade]]. Interestingly, the very first Space Marines (as in pre-legion Dark Angels) were noted to have fought with the Emperor against a psychic group called the '''Sigillites''' (even being mentally shielded against psychic assault by the Emperor himself for the campaign; warriors from said campaign had a base d+10 on psychic defense rolls), implying that Malcador may have been one of their number. ''The Last Council'' confirms this, in addition to revealing that he is a [[Perpetual]]. According to at least one source, it was Malcador that convinced the Emperor to call Himself "The Emperor"; when they met, the "emperor" was just the greatest of Terran warlords and little else.

Malcador himself explains that he is the last of the Sigillite order, and further goes on to explain that they were a group which existed to preserve the memories of the past; it was Malcador's duty to remind the Emperor of the lessons of the past and to guide Him in the future. One can surmise that Emps discovered his Perpetual nature and figured he may as well put him to use in studying Terra's history and using it as a foundation for the further expansion of what would become the Imperium. That said, the Emperor killed the rest of the Sigillites and used their base as the core of the Imperial Palace. It has been implies that the Sigillites were also violent warlords that did their fair share of oppressing.

When the Primarchs started getting collected and the new Imperium spread outwards, Malcador served as the Regent of Terra, acting as a prime minister who kept the day-to-day activities of the [[Imperium of Man]] running, sponsoring various agencies (like the [[Remembrancer|Remembrancer Order]]), appointing the [[High Lords of Terra|Council of Terra]] and building the [[Administratum]] from the ground up. He also was behind the creation of the [[Officio Assassinorum]], because he realised that not all problems could be solved with either [[Iterator|diplomacy]] or a [[Space Marines|public power boot]] to the arse. He also established the Conservator Order to preserve history and the Order Elucidatum to burn any historical texts deemed religious or inconvenient, so the "modern" Inquisitorial infighting is nothing new.

After the Emperor returned to Terra and set up the Council of Terra, the Emperor appointed Malcador to the position of First Lord of the Council (essentially the Prime Minister of the Imperium at that point, where the [[Horus|Warmaster]] was the overall military commander), while the Emperor descended into the Imperial palace and set to work on gaining access to the [[Webway]]. Though he tried to be some kind of cool uncle/granddad to the Primarchs, most of them seem to have gotten jealous of his closeness to the Emperor; all of them made threatening displays of physical oomph in front of him, and at least two of them straight-up assaulted him (with Mortarion strangling him and Lorgar backhanding him around like a ragdoll). At the time, Mortarion was the most recent Primarch to be discovered, so we don't know if [[Jaghatai Khan]], [[Alpharius]] and the rest decided to lay the smackdown on grandpa. Suffice to say, the Emperor only had to deal with the Primarchs at their best on the weekend whereas Malcador had to deal with the behemoth brats for the rest of the week, meaning he got the shit end of the stick. Weirdly, the Primarch that had the best relationship with 'ol Malcy was shown to be [[Leman Russ]], who actually did treat him like a beloved old grandad that he could chill and play hrafnkel with.

His reputation with the Primarchs, especially Horus and [[Alpharius#But_Wait.21|"Alpharius"]], was not helped by the fact that it was him who ultimately made the decision to commit damnatio memoriae on the [[Primarch#Two_Missing_Primarchs_.7C_The_Forgotten_.26_The_Purged|2nd and 11th]], this prompted Horus to confronte Malcador about this, then proceeded to throw a pre-heresy [[Butthurt|hissyfit]] so Malcador made sure to force choke him until he calmed his demihuman tits meanwhile [[Jaghatai Khan]] & [[Alpharius]] watched like children while their drunk dad beat their older brother. Which may have played a part in forming Horus' opinions on humans and not only their ability to, but what right they had, to self-govern.

When the [[Horus Heresy]] broke out, Malcador worked closely but-not-always-that-closely with [[Rogal Dorn]] (there were [[skub|some divergences of opinions]] between the loyal-to-the-point-of-naivety Dorn and the pragmatic-to-the-point-of-cynicism Malcador) in preparing the defenses of Terra and coordinating the logistics of the war effort, as well as overseeing a formation of special projects such as the [[Astronomican|Adeptus Astronomican]] and, towards the end of the Horus Heresy, the [[Grey Knights]].

While he globally did a pretty decent job of keeping the Imperium running, there was one decision that in hindsight came to bite them in the ass spectacularly. With the worlds directly around Terra exsanguinated by the demands of the [[Great Crusade]], Malcador and the Council decided to implement supplementary taxes on top of the already existing [[Imperial Tithe]] to pay for support for the now-widespread and far-flung Expeditionary Fleets. While this was a good idea in theory, in practice it proved to be a source of discontent and rebellion. Where those worlds that had been visited by the [[Salamanders]] or [[Raven Guard]] (whose ''modus operandi'' was to limit casualties) or the [[Ultramarines]] (who wrecked things but rebuilt afterwards) could and did contribute relatively easily, those that had gotten rekt by the likes of the [[Death Guard]] or [[Iron Hands]] '''really''' weren't inclined to pay even more to the Imperium that devastated their planet.

==Malcador's Fate==
Malcador is dead. Very, very dead. During the Siege of Terra, the only chance that the Emperor could get to join the battle would be if someone took his place sitting on the Golden Throne, since [[Magnus]]'s interference broke it and threatened Terra with a new [[Eye of Terror]]. Malcador's psychic power meant he was the only potential candidate to do so while the Emperor fought off the [[Chaos Space Marines]]. However, since he was really not on the same psychic level as Big E, the process of painfully shutting the door in the daemon's faces each time they tried to open it burned him out (literally) in a matter of hours. He crumbled to dust after the Emperor was returned to the seat by Rogal Dorn and Jaghatai Khan. Keeping in mind that Malcador is a [[perpetual]], that's some pretty hardcore currents flowing through and goes even further to show how ridiculously OP the Emperor is. With his last ounce of strength, he allowed the Emperor to communicate with his mortal servants one last time. Truly, Malcador was an all around awesome bureaucrat and manipulator to the very end.

Though, the fact he disintegrated after being taken off of the golden throne sort of defies the claim made in ''The Last Council'' that he's a perpetual. One could argue that he sacrificed his perpetual power to marginally restore the Emperor back to consciousness, what can't be waived away is the fact that unlike any other perpetual, he's a decrepit old man by the time of the Horus Heresy, and it's known he used his psyker powers to mask his age whenever it suited him and he's been subject to rejuvenation treatments to extend his life; both are things that shouldn't be necessary for a perpetual, impossible in the former's case ([[derp|unless it happens he was faking being old this whole time]]). The idea that he self-immolated on the atomic level just so the Emperor could speak without having to use his own psyker powers is also monumentally stupid considering how much more good he could've done had he not, unless it happened there was no chance he couldn't regenerate anyway and was just making some last ditch effort to save the Imperium before the inevitable.

It might be that he was doing more than just sacrificing his perpetual status so the Emperor could open his eyes slightly and slur out some orders like an alcoholic on a binge struggling to stay awake. The going fan-theory is that the Emperor might himself be a perpetual, but the message being sent by this revelation is that while the Emperor is indeed a perpetual himself as of the time he was interred to the Golden Throne, he wasn't always, and it took Malcador giving it to him at the expense of his own life to make it happen, which would make better sense considering that while ordinarily being turned into a rotting corpse means you're not a perpetual as they heal like [[fail|Wolverine in X-Men 3]].

==Malcador's Insights==
There was much more to Malcador than meets the eye. He was the last of the Sigillites, a secret order of chroniclers and history-keepers that guided humanity from the very beginning through their knowledge of the past, and that the '''=][=''' symbol often associated with the later [[Inquisition]] was actually the symbol of his order, therefore he was probably one of the old-school [[Illuminati (40k)|Illuminati]].

As a former enemy of the Emperor, he still acted as a devil's advocate to some degree, disagreeing with the Emperor on some very fundamental points:

*Malcador worried about the Emperor being so far above humanity, [[The Last Church|so inspirational in his efforts to squeeze out superstition and false religion]] that it would eventually cause [[Imperial Cult|religious cults]] to form around himself and his sons instead, which is [[Derp|exactly what happened.]]
*He also warned that humanity would be so invested in the Emperor that if he were to ever leave or die, humanity would not be able to handle the shock and would be left paralysed and without direction. The Emperor himself dismissed this as nonsense, since his intention was to raise humanity and allow it to think for itself, but again it is exactly what happened in the end - another [[Not as Planned|miscalculation]] on his part. To be fair, the Emperor’s plan for human independence was not completed by the time things went to hell.
**When looked at from a different point of view: the Emperor's plan to invade and conquer the Webway ''(which Magnus was supposed to assist with if he had not broken it)'', then lead humanity into enlightenment away from the dangers of unrestrained psychic potential ''(which Mortarion was supposed to be the poster boy for if he hadn't switched sides)'' was so utterly dependent on the Emperor being the center of it all that he was was practically setting himself up for failure. While the Emperor was betting the future of the species on the outcome of his own plan, Malcador was thankfully setting up contingencies just in case everything went tits up.

Therefore it could be said that all of Malcador's efforts to create the agencies that the Imperium would need later were all part of an insurance policy that humanity could deploy if it ever turned out that the Emperor and his Primarchs could [[Horus Heresy|not be relied upon]] to carry humanity on their [[Pauldron|shoulders]]. Needless to say, if Malcador were the Emperor, [[noblebright|things might have turned out better for the Imperium]].

One of his more amusing requests was that [[Fabius Bile|the Primarchs be made female instead of male, or at the very least, add female Primarchs into the mix.]] His primary reasoning was that it would largely deter conflicts within his children, as boys tended to have a competitive "dick-measuring attitude" towards each other, preventing them all from cohesively working with each other. The apparent idea was that girls are generally more level-headed than boys and act more as the voice of reason in a family ([[Derp|according to people who don't have more than one daughter or sister]]), which would probably have eased some of the tensions that led to the Primarchs despising each other. The Emperor eventually dismissed this, both as a joke and as an impossibility, since the Space Marine gene-seed was keyed towards male subjects. He'd apparently tried to create [[female Space Marines]] at one point but it didn't work out; [[Skub|his refusal makes sense]] as the changes to physiology would effectively change supplicants into hyper-competitive dick-measurers anyway in terms of muscle mass, endurance, stamina, and aggression, what with the sheer amounts of testosterone needed for the rapid growth process. So, males it was; it's worth taking this in particular, with a ''healthy dose'' of salt, considering previous paragraphs.

The Emperor expected his sons to be of one mind as he planned to train them under his [[Imperial Truth|unified guidance]], ensuring they would work [[Krieg|utterly objectively with no personal feelings to get in the way]] (much like him). This expectation went to shit when the Chaos Gods spirited the Primarchs away from Terra and they landed on different planets and being raised with different backgrounds and beliefs, causing friction between those whose home culture did not really mesh with each other. To make matters worse, they tended to have complete faith in their own rectitude, [[Thunder Warriors|with utter intolerance of anyone who got in the way]] (much like him). This undiluted brotherly rivalry wasn't helped by the Emperor not bothering to ease the tensions between his sons, which as mentioned above may or may not have been intentional on His part, and it would all eventually royally bite him back in his golden buttplate when the Horus Heresy erupted. As previously indicated, it also caused Malcador quite a lot of physical pain.

==Credits==
He was the second or third most powerful human [[psyker]] of his time (after Big E and possibly [[Magnus the Red]]), being able to do things such as plunging the entire moon of [[Solar System#Saturn|Titan]] in the Warp to protect what would become the Grey Knights from the attacking Traitor Legions. He was also able to prevent a volkite gun from firing even while [[What|surrounded by a squad]] of [[Sisters of Silence]], who were there to keep the psyker [[Knights-Errant|Sevarian]]'s powers in check, without showing any sort of discomfort or loss of concentration.

His powers were strong enough to casually FORCECHOKE (well, he kinda prepped himself up for the confrontation, even went to pickup his power staff to help focus his powers) [[Horus]] almost to death, when the latter grew angry about one of the missing Primarch's legacies being erased and tries to say their name. Malcador says he can "unmake" Horus there and then, but relents when the Khan begs. Hard to tell if this was a bluff or not. This is before Horus gets blessed by Chaos, but it is still an incredible feat (especially considering that [[Forge World]] gave Horus ''Adamantium Will'' and a terminator armour that makes him near invulnerable to psychic powers regardless of the psykers' might), though Horus could resist to the point that it tired out the old man quite a lot. Also led to Horus being obsessed with Malcadors private history for a few decades, which he shared with the Khan before the Heresy.

Though it has never been seen, he must have been one badass warrior too, since he was the Grand Master of the Assassins. Says something that he took a bone-crunching backhand from Lorgar on the chin. This, in addition to his above-mentioned prodigious psychic power, shows what sort of man Malcador was. With his power - and considering only a few Primarchs are psychic or have psychic defenses (actually they all had psychic potential but most didn't realise, or at least understand, their full potential) - he probably could've put Lorgar on a time out. On the moon. With his mind. Because Lorgar's powers hadn't come into their own yet, Malcador could've put him down for the count quite easily back then. It's also worth mentioning that he was more or less able to withstand the strain of the Golden Throne [[Awesome|''all by himself'']] (and even managed to save some psychic strength for the Emperor) before he died, a feat which in the current era requires the strength of over a thousand trained psykers and the dead Emperor himself to pull off effectively. What a hero.

He proposed the [[Chaplain]] edict, ironically taking the idea from [[Lorgar]] and [[Sanguinius]] though back then they were more like [[Commissar]]s, keeping order and looking for <s>[[heresy]]</s> non-compliance, instead of the modern day warrior-priests.

There is also [[Malcador Heavy Tank|a tank named after him]], though nowadays another tank named after [[Leman Russ|an important hero and leader]] of the Imperium is used more often, the [[Leman Russ Battle Tank|Leman Russ]], passing over yet another [[Macharius Heavy Tank|perfectly servicable vehicle]]. Russ is a [[Galactic Partridges|glory hog]] like that.

He was also potentially the busiest man in existence, having founded the [[Adeptus Terra|administration]] of pretty much the ENTIRE Imperium single-handedly. The organizations he founded - the [[Administratum]], the [[Officio Assassinorum]], the [[Astronomican|Adeptus Astronomica]] and the [[Inquisition]] - have been borderline fucking up everything else (and each other) ever since without his guidance. So far, however, humans still exist; a testament to Malcador's administrative foresight. After all, a stable government gets the job done even with the worst sort.

His force staff was originally thought to have passed to the [[Matt Ward|Ultramarines]], but it turned out it was lost instead and was later found by the AdMech.

What's the best part? He is just a normal dude. A race of potential Malcador's doesn't sound too bad, does it?

As a trivia note, his true name and title, Brahm Al-Khadour the cursed wanderer, is based off of two immortal figures in the real world's cultural legends. One is Al Khadir, an immortal figure in Middle Eastern mythology that acts as a guide. The other is the Wandering Jew, who was cursed like Cain in the Old Testament to wander until the end of time.

== See also ==
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdAN0o3oqB8 Malcador's opinion on Grimdark.]

{{Imperium}}

Malcador the Sigillite

2020-08-29T18:54:36Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:1866:64B3:4D59:E0D8: /* Credits */

[[File:The Sigillite clean.jpg|thumb|300px|The [[Administratum]] of the 41st millennium wishes it could be half as competent as Malcador. On second thought, [[Grimdark|no they don't]]. [[Primarch#Two_Missing_Primarchs_.7C_The_Forgotten_.26_The_Purged|Interesting armrests...]]]]
{{topquote|No one records something they wish to forget.|Anonymous, though often quoted by Malcador the Sigillite, ''The Last Council}}
{{topquote|I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.|''The Lord of the Rings'', [[J.R.R. Tolkien]]}}
{{topquote|I am here because when all else fails, when all the other [[Primarchs|mighty gods]] have [[Horus Heresy|gone off to war]], I am all that's left. Home. Hearth. I am the last Olympian.|Hestia, to Percy Jackson, in ''The Last Olympian''}}

'''Malcador the Sigillite''' (also known as Malcador the Hero or Malcador the Laundryman Of Teh Emprah or Malcador the Mammy) was Regent of Terra, Master of the [[Administratum]], first Grand Master of the [[Officio Assassinorum]], the founder of the [[Inquisition]], and all around bestest bud of the [[God-Emperor of Mankind|Emperor of Mankind]] during the [[Great Crusade]] and the [[Horus Heresy]]. The real life equivalent of Malcador's position in the Imperium is that of Prime Minister/Chancellor, who acted as de facto head of government in the name of the sovereign (the Emperor). He was also originally known as Brahm al-Khadour (Brah, Malkhadour '''WUT?'''), last of the Sigillites, the cursed wanderer, the perpetual.

In some respects, Malcador represents something of the Emprah's final dream for mankind as well as something of the nightmare that the Imperium became. In every sense he is just a man. Not a super augmented warrior monk, just a clever old bugger. Like Big E, he understood that the Imperium needed taxes and administration as well as generals and he entrusted those duties to other normal humans. Perhaps because of his belief that humanity would not outgrow the Emperor's influence, many of the organisations he created lacked adequate oversight, and descended into corruption in the wake of the Horus Heresy. Even so, this was at least humans being [[dick]]s to each other not [[Primarch|demigods]] lording it over the rest.

==History==
Having served the Emprah during the Unification of [[Terra]] ''(by his own reckoning he was 6718 years old by the close of the Heresy)'', he was present during the creation of the [[Primarchs]] and advised the Emperor during the early stages of the [[Great Crusade]]. Interestingly, the very first Space Marines (as in pre-legion Dark Angels) were noted to have fought with the Emperor against a psychic group called the '''Sigillites''' (even being mentally shielded against psychic assault by the Emperor himself for the campaign; warriors from said campaign had a base d+10 on psychic defense rolls), implying that Malcador may have been one of their number. ''The Last Council'' confirms this, in addition to revealing that he is a [[Perpetual]]. According to at least one source, it was Malcador that convinced the Emperor to call Himself "The Emperor"; when they met, the "emperor" was just the greatest of Terran warlords and little else.

Malcador himself explains that he is the last of the Sigillite order, and further goes on to explain that they were a group which existed to preserve the memories of the past; it was Malcador's duty to remind the Emperor of the lessons of the past and to guide Him in the future. One can surmise that Emps discovered his Perpetual nature and figured he may as well put him to use in studying Terra's history and using it as a foundation for the further expansion of what would become the Imperium. That said, the Emperor killed the rest of the Sigillites and used their base as the core of the Imperial Palace. It has been implies that the Sigillites were also violent warlords that did their fair share of oppressing.

When the Primarchs started getting collected and the new Imperium spread outwards, Malcador served as the Regent of Terra, acting as a prime minister who kept the day-to-day activities of the [[Imperium of Man]] running, sponsoring various agencies (like the [[Remembrancer|Remembrancer Order]]), appointing the [[High Lords of Terra|Council of Terra]] and building the [[Administratum]] from the ground up. He also was behind the creation of the [[Officio Assassinorum]], because he realised that not all problems could be solved with either [[Iterator|diplomacy]] or a [[Space Marines|public power boot]] to the arse. He also established the Conservator Order to preserve history and the Order Elucidatum to burn any historical texts deemed religious or inconvenient, so the "modern" Inquisitorial infighting is nothing new.

After the Emperor returned to Terra and set up the Council of Terra, the Emperor appointed Malcador to the position of First Lord of the Council (essentially the Prime Minister of the Imperium at that point, where the [[Horus|Warmaster]] was the overall military commander), while the Emperor descended into the Imperial palace and set to work on gaining access to the [[Webway]]. Though he tried to be some kind of cool uncle/granddad to the Primarchs, most of them seem to have gotten jealous of his closeness to the Emperor; all of them made threatening displays of physical oomph in front of him, and at least two of them straight-up assaulted him (with Mortarion strangling him and Lorgar backhanding him around like a ragdoll). At the time, Mortarion was the most recent Primarch to be discovered, so we don't know if [[Jaghatai Khan]], [[Alpharius]] and the rest decided to lay the smackdown on grandpa. Suffice to say, the Emperor only had to deal with the Primarchs at their best on the weekend whereas Malcador had to deal with the behemoth brats for the rest of the week, meaning he got the shit end of the stick. Weirdly, the Primarch that had the best relationship with 'ol Malcy was shown to be [[Leman Russ]], who actually did treat him like a beloved old grandad that he could chill and play hrafnkel with.

His reputation with the Primarchs, especially Horus and [[Alpharius#But_Wait.21|"Alpharius"]], was not helped by the fact that it was him who ultimately made the decision to commit damnatio memoriae on the [[Primarch#Two_Missing_Primarchs_.7C_The_Forgotten_.26_The_Purged|2nd and 11th]], this prompted Horus to confronte Malcador about this, then proceeded to throw a pre-heresy [[Butthurt|hissyfit]] so Malcador made sure to force choke him until he calmed his demihuman tits meanwhile [[Jaghatai Khan]] & [[Alpharius]] watched like children while their drunk dad beat their older brother. Which may have played a part in forming Horus' opinions on humans and not only their ability to, but what right they had, to self-govern.

When the [[Horus Heresy]] broke out, Malcador worked closely but-not-always-that-closely with [[Rogal Dorn]] (there were [[skub|some divergences of opinions]] between the loyal-to-the-point-of-naivety Dorn and the pragmatic-to-the-point-of-cynicism Malcador) in preparing the defenses of Terra and coordinating the logistics of the war effort, as well as overseeing a formation of special projects such as the [[Astronomican|Adeptus Astronomican]] and, towards the end of the Horus Heresy, the [[Grey Knights]].

While he globally did a pretty decent job of keeping the Imperium running, there was one decision that in hindsight came to bite them in the ass spectacularly. With the worlds directly around Terra exsanguinated by the demands of the [[Great Crusade]], Malcador and the Council decided to implement supplementary taxes on top of the already existing [[Imperial Tithe]] to pay for support for the now-widespread and far-flung Expeditionary Fleets. While this was a good idea in theory, in practice it proved to be a source of discontent and rebellion. Where those worlds that had been visited by the [[Salamanders]] or [[Raven Guard]] (whose ''modus operandi'' was to limit casualties) or the [[Ultramarines]] (who wrecked things but rebuilt afterwards) could and did contribute relatively easily, those that had gotten rekt by the likes of the [[Death Guard]] or [[Iron Hands]] '''really''' weren't inclined to pay even more to the Imperium that devastated their planet.

==Malcador's Fate==
Malcador is dead. Very, very dead. During the Siege of Terra, the only chance that the Emperor could get to join the battle would be if someone took his place sitting on the Golden Throne, since [[Magnus]]'s interference broke it and threatened Terra with a new [[Eye of Terror]]. Malcador's psychic power meant he was the only potential candidate to do so while the Emperor fought off the [[Chaos Space Marines]]. However, since he was really not on the same psychic level as Big E, the process of painfully shutting the door in the daemon's faces each time they tried to open it burned him out (literally) in a matter of hours. He crumbled to dust after the Emperor was returned to the seat by Rogal Dorn and Jaghatai Khan. Keeping in mind that Malcador is a [[perpetual]], that's some pretty hardcore currents flowing through and goes even further to show how ridiculously OP the Emperor is. With his last ounce of strength, he allowed the Emperor to communicate with his mortal servants one last time. Truly, Malcador was an all around awesome bureaucrat and manipulator to the very end.

Though, the fact he disintegrated after being taken off of the golden throne sort of defies the claim made in ''The Last Council'' that he's a perpetual. One could argue that he sacrificed his perpetual power to marginally restore the Emperor back to consciousness, what can't be waived away is the fact that unlike any other perpetual, he's a decrepit old man by the time of the Horus Heresy, and it's known he used his psyker powers to mask his age whenever it suited him and he's been subject to rejuvenation treatments to extend his life; both are things that shouldn't be necessary for a perpetual, impossible in the former's case ([[derp|unless it happens he was faking being old this whole time]]). The idea that he self-immolated on the atomic level just so the Emperor could speak without having to use his own psyker powers is also monumentally stupid considering how much more good he could've done had he not, unless it happened there was no chance he couldn't regenerate anyway and was just making some last ditch effort to save the Imperium before the inevitable.

It might be that he was doing more than just sacrificing his perpetual status so the Emperor could open his eyes slightly and slur out some orders like an alcoholic on a binge struggling to stay awake. The going fan-theory is that the Emperor might himself be a perpetual, but the message being sent by this revelation is that while the Emperor is indeed a perpetual himself as of the time he was interred to the Golden Throne, he wasn't always, and it took Malcador giving it to him at the expense of his own life to make it happen, which would make better sense considering that while ordinarily being turned into a rotting corpse means you're not a perpetual as they heal like [[fail|Wolverine in X-Men 3]].

==Malcador's Insights==
There was much more to Malcador than meets the eye. He was the last of the Sigillites, a secret order of chroniclers and history-keepers that guided humanity from the very beginning through their knowledge of the past, and that the '''=][=''' symbol often associated with the later [[Inquisition]] was actually the symbol of his order, therefore he was probably one of the old-school [[Illuminati (40k)|Illuminati]].

As a former enemy of the Emperor, he still acted as a devil's advocate to some degree, disagreeing with the Emperor on some very fundamental points:

*Malcador worried about the Emperor being so far above humanity, [[The Last Church|so inspirational in his efforts to squeeze out superstition and false religion]] that it would eventually cause [[Imperial Cult|religious cults]] to form around himself and his sons instead, which is [[Derp|exactly what happened.]]
*He also warned that humanity would be so invested in the Emperor that if he were to ever leave or die, humanity would not be able to handle the shock and would be left paralysed and without direction. The Emperor himself dismissed this as nonsense, since his intention was to raise humanity and allow it to think for itself, but again it is exactly what happened in the end - another [[Not as Planned|miscalculation]] on his part. To be fair, the Emperor’s plan for human independence was not completed by the time things went to hell.
**When looked at from a different point of view: the Emperor's plan to invade and conquer the Webway ''(which Magnus was supposed to assist with if he had not broken it)'', then lead humanity into enlightenment away from the dangers of unrestrained psychic potential ''(which Mortarion was supposed to be the poster boy for if he hadn't switched sides)'' was so utterly dependent on the Emperor being the center of it all that he was was practically setting himself up for failure. While the Emperor was betting the future of the species on the outcome of his own plan, Malcador was thankfully setting up contingencies just in case everything went tits up.

Therefore it could be said that all of Malcador's efforts to create the agencies that the Imperium would need later were all part of an insurance policy that humanity could deploy if it ever turned out that the Emperor and his Primarchs could [[Horus Heresy|not be relied upon]] to carry humanity on their [[Pauldron|shoulders]]. Needless to say, if Malcador were the Emperor, [[noblebright|things might have turned out better for the Imperium]].

One of his more amusing requests was that [[Fabius Bile|the Primarchs be made female instead of male, or at the very least, add female Primarchs into the mix.]] His primary reasoning was that it would largely deter conflicts within his children, as boys tended to have a competitive "dick-measuring attitude" towards each other, preventing them all from cohesively working with each other. The apparent idea was that girls are generally more level-headed than boys and act more as the voice of reason in a family ([[Derp|according to people who don't have more than one daughter or sister]]), which would probably have eased some of the tensions that led to the Primarchs despising each other. The Emperor eventually dismissed this, both as a joke and as an impossibility, since the Space Marine gene-seed was keyed towards male subjects. He'd apparently tried to create [[female Space Marines]] at one point but it didn't work out; [[Skub|his refusal makes sense]] as the changes to physiology would effectively change supplicants into hyper-competitive dick-measurers anyway in terms of muscle mass, endurance, stamina, and aggression, what with the sheer amounts of testosterone needed for the rapid growth process. So, males it was; it's worth taking this in particular, with a ''healthy dose'' of salt, considering previous paragraphs.

The Emperor expected his sons to be of one mind as he planned to train them under his [[Imperial Truth|unified guidance]], ensuring they would work [[Krieg|utterly objectively with no personal feelings to get in the way]] (much like him). This expectation went to shit when the Chaos Gods spirited the Primarchs away from Terra and they landed on different planets and being raised with different backgrounds and beliefs, causing friction between those whose home culture did not really mesh with each other. To make matters worse, they tended to have complete faith in their own rectitude, [[Thunder Warriors|with utter intolerance of anyone who got in the way]] (much like him). This undiluted brotherly rivalry wasn't helped by the Emperor not bothering to ease the tensions between his sons, which as mentioned above may or may not have been intentional on His part, and it would all eventually royally bite him back in his golden buttplate when the Horus Heresy erupted. As previously indicated, it also caused Malcador quite a lot of physical pain.

==Credits==
He was the second or third most powerful human [[psyker]] of his time (after Big E and possibly [[Magnus the Red]]), being able to do things such as plunging the entire moon of [[Solar System#Saturn|Titan]] in the Warp to protect what would become the Grey Knights from the attacking Traitor Legions. He was also able to prevent a volkite gun from firing even while [[What|surrounded by a squad]] of [[Sisters of Silence]], who were there to keep the psyker [[Knights-Errant|Sevarian]]'s powers in check, without showing any sort of discomfort or loss of concentration.

His powers were strong enough to casually FORCECHOKE (well, he kinda prepped himself up for the confrontation, even went to pickup his power staff to help focus his powers) [[Horus]] almost to death, when the latter grew angry about one of the missing Primarch's legacies being erased and tries to say their name. Malcador says he can "unmake" Horus there and then, but relents when the Khan begs. Hard to tell if this was a bluff or not. This is before Horus gets blessed by Chaos, but it is still an incredible feat (especially considering that [[Forge World]] gave Horus ''Adamantium Will'' and a terminator armour that makes him near invulnerable to psychic powers regardless of the psykers' might), though Horus could resist to the point that it tired out the old man quite a lot. Also led to Horus being obsessed with Malcadors private history for a few decades, which he shared with the Khan before the Heresy.

Though it has never been seen, he must have been one badass warrior too, since he was the Grand Master of the Assassins. Says something that he took a bone-crunching backhand from Lorgar on the chin. This, in addition to his above-mentioned prodigious psychic power, shows what sort of man Malcador was. With his power - and considering only a few Primarchs are psychic or have psychic defenses (actually they all had psychic potential but most didn't realise, or at least understand, their full potential) - he probably could've put Lorgar on a time out. On the moon. With his mind. Because Lorgar's powers hadn't come into their own yet, Malcador could've put him down for the count quite easily back then. It's also worth mentioning that he was more or less able to withstand the strain of the Golden Throne [[Awesome|''all by himself'']] (and even managed to save some psychic strength for the Emperor) before he died, a feat which in the current era requires the strength of over a thousand trained psykers and the dead Emperor himself to pull off effectively. What a hero.

He proposed the [[Chaplain]] edict, ironically taking the idea from [[Lorgar]] and [[Sanguinius]] though back then they were more like [[Commissar]]s, keeping order and looking for <s>[[heresy]]</s> non-compliance, instead of the modern day warrior-priests.

There is also [[Malcador Heavy Tank|a tank named after him]], though nowadays another tank named after [[Leman Russ|an important hero and leader]] of the Imperium is used more often, the [[Leman Russ Battle Tank|Leman Russ]], passing over yet another [[Macharius Heavy Tank|perfectly servicable vehicle]]. Russ is a [[Galactic Partridges|glory hog]] like that.

He was also potentially the busiest man in existence, having founded the [[Adeptus Terra|administration]] of pretty much the ENTIRE Imperium single-handedly. The organizations he founded - the [[Administratum]], the [[Officio Assassinorum]], the [[Astronomican|Adeptus Astronomica]] and the [[Inquisition]] - have been borderline fucking up everything else (and each other) ever since without his guidance. So far, however, humans still exist; a testament to Malcador's administrative foresight. After all, a stable government gets the job done even with the worst sort.

His force staff was originally thought to have passed to the [[Matt Ward|Ultramarines]], but it turned out it was lost instead and was later found by the AdMech.

What's the best part? He is just a normal dude. A race of potential Malcador's doesn't sound too bad, does it?

As a trivia note, his true name and title, Brahm Al-Khadour the cursed wanderer, is based off of two immortal figures in real life. One is Al Khadir, an immortal figure in Middle Eastern mythology that acts as a guide. The other is the Wandering Jew, who was cursed like Cain in the Old Testament to wander until the end of time.

== See also ==
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdAN0o3oqB8 Malcador's opinion on Grimdark.]

{{Imperium}}

Perpetual

2020-08-29T18:50:58Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:1866:64B3:4D59:E0D8: /* Predating the Great Crusade */

[[File:OllPious.jpg|350px|right|thumb|Ollanius Pius, the most famous Perpetual, the man, the myth, the legend.]]
{{topquote|I just want a normal life." "My friend, you will have as many of those as you wish.|The beings who would one day be [[Ollanius Pius]] and the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]]}}

A '''Perpetual''' (''Homo Superior'') is a person of [[40k|the grim darkness of the 41st millennium]] who drew the absolutely shortest straw possible: they are immortal. And nothing of this "age without youth" or "immortality without indestructibility" bullshit: they do not age (after some point in adulthood that isn't clear but seems to be the mid-to-late 30s or early 40s, maybe [[Alivia Sureka|earlier]] or maybe [[Ollanius Pius|later]]) and can survive the most gruesome deaths imaginable up to and including taking an [[Exterminatus]] to the face because they can reassemble themselves from their constituent atoms. [[/co/|They're like Wolverine on steroids like that]]. Which, given [[Grimdark|the relentless sunshine of the Warhammer 40.000 universe is NOT a good thing: not even death will relieve your suffering.]] There are only a [[Sly Marbo|few things]] said to be able to kill a Perpetual for good, but these powers and weapons are known to only a few individuals in the galaxy (and even then it's not known for certain how effective they are, or if they even work). Very little is known about the Perpetuals including their origin (but given the fact that Ollanius Persson was around as far back as the time of Greek myth, they've undoubtedly been around for ages), number, purpose or even if those suspected to be them actually being Perpetuals (all that we know is that during the Horus Heresy, there were exactly 3 Perpetuals living in Ultramar; given that Ultramar consisted of 500 planets at the time, we have to assume that they're extraordinarily rare). Of only eight individuals is the status of Perpetual known or confirmed. Another foible they have is their very existence fucks up farseeing to a considerable degree, which lead Eldrad to kill off as many of them as possible to try and find a way to avoid Chaos winning overall.

We do however know, that people could be turned Perpetual by being resurrected. Which, ironically, might imply that [[Kharn]] and [[Lucius]] at some point became Perpetual too, since they've both came back from dead. It'll explain how Kharn managed to survive for that long despite his suicidal psychotic charges into everything he sees, and how Lucius resurrected without possessing anyone's body after first being outfought by Nykona Sharrowkyn of the [[Raven Guard]], and then subsequently being cut to pieces by an emotionless [[Rubric Marine|Rubric Swordmaster]] (who in any case no longer had a body to possess either).

Recent fluff has revealed that the universe itself (or is it just the Eldar? Assholes that they are.) isn't too keen on Perpetuals as their very existence is a spanner in its gears, because <s>[[meme|people should die when they are killed]]</s> each of their revivals end up fucking farseeing over and altering causality. In order to try and find alternatives to the Cabal's plan of letting humanity die to kill Chaos, Eldrad went on a galaxy wide murder tour bumping off other Perpetuals and members of the Cabal, a choice he deeply regretted when he tried farseeing and saw what the future would eventually hold. It also turns out they're capable of resisting daemonic possession, partly due to any warp entity inhabiting their soul gets fucked up when they die (and then come back). It's still implied to be horrifically traumatic but it explains how both Alivia Sureka and Anval Thawn were able to resist.

==Predating the [[Great Crusade]]==

===The Emperor===
With all of his mysteries about the [[Emperor]] it would explain a number of things if he was a Perpetual: such as his age, knowledge in an era where everyone else on [[Terra]] was too busy [[LARP]]ing a crossover of [[Terminator]] and [[Fist of the North Star]] to learn shit and his massive power (learned over time). On the other hand it would not explain why he didn't just regenerate after being bitchslapped by [[Horus]]. The best explanation for this (besides Horus being able to injure the Emperor permanently through being the virtual avatar of all four [[Chaos Gods]]) is that that the Golden Throne, while maintaining his life functions, is also keeping him from resurrecting himself- in theory, if it was shut down, the only real effect it would have is that the Emperor would "die" for a day or two at most before fully healing from his injuries. A shame that nobody seems to realize this, as it would end most of the Imperium's problems on the spot at the expense of leaving Terra defenseless to being raped, both literally and figuratively, by hordes upon hordes of daemons, even if for a couple days. ''(That's assuming he doesn't turn into a real God the moment he "dies" and use his new God-like powers to seal the broken portal)''. Though it would create some new problems, as quite a few people wouldn't be happy with the return of [[Imperial Truth]], especially the Ecclesiarchy. Of course, knowing the Emperor he'd crush them like bugs if they tried to oppose him, or even if they didn't. There is no way he would agree with the current Imperium.

Recent revelations from the Horus Heresy books also suggest that his godlike powers were actually stolen from the Chaos Gods themselves instead of being wholly his own. Needless to say, the Ruinous Powers still have a grudge.
*'''Note''': This is what Chaos Gods told Horus (since the initial Horus Heresy trilogy, though ''Vengeful Spirit'' had them stick with the story), and we all know how trustworthy they are. The most plausible explanation is that Emperor either tried to destroy them but failed or he infiltrated their compound to learn the secrets of the warp so he could divide fragments of his souls and make Primarchs from them. Or possibly, the original "gods" in the portal may also have been referring to Eldar pantheon (or what remains of it), who may have given the Emperor his powers, and possibly an easy way back home (via the webway) since the Emperor didn't need a ship to get back home.

Recent fluff from 7e suggests that Golden Throne is not a life-support, but a pain engine, better than any DE Haemonculus could possibly dream of, sapping his strength to keep the seal intact, and that [[Malcador the Sigillite|Malcadore]], also supposed Perpetual, crumbled into dust without resurrection after several hours. Apparently, it damages soul itself, and even with his psychic geshtalt status and powers stolen/bargained from Chaos Gods he takes a heavy toll.

===[[Erda]]===
<strike>Big E's waifu, mom to the primarchs</strike> Erebus 2: Menopause boogaloo. A female perpetual who donated her egg cells and genetic expertise to the Primarch Project, make her their mother minus a lot of her genes. It turns out that ''she'', not Horus or Argal Tal being sent back in time by the Chaos Gods, scattered the Primarchs. What a TWEEST!

===[[Ollanius Pius]], AKA Ollie Persson===
A confirmed Perpetual. By the time of the [[Horus Heresy]], Ollanius reckons his age to be around 45,000 ''(give or take)'' and he is fully aware of the connection between the Imperial and the Gregorian calendars, putting his birth at around 15,000BC (or in layman's terms, somewhere in the latter half of the Stone Age) in Biblical Nineveh. [[Ollanius Pius|Ollie Persson]] is quite reasonably older than the Emperor, considering that big Emps was born in Anatolia around 8000BC. At some point in time he became a Christian, and maintained his faith until, well, forever. Even once the word "Catholic" was somehow corrupted into "Catheric." This has interesting [[Ollanius Pius#Religion|implications]] given his service to the atheistic Empire of Terra.

He was one of the Argonauts of Greek myth and fought at Austerlitz (described as Napoleon's greatest victory) and Verdun (infamous as one of the bloodiest battles in all of World War I, which is saying something), as well as the First Gulf War, implied to have been [[Heresy|fighting on the side of Suddam Hussein]] (in fact, the [[Ollanius Pius#The Eternal Infantryman|occasional references to his military history]], which is extensive—having been apparently a soldier in all his ''documented'' lives, if not all of them, period—it's also implied that he tends to fight on the losing side, or even exclusively has, whether as some sort of curse or by some sort of design.) It also explains how he managed to survive boarding Horus' flagship during the [[Siege of Terra]]. It is unknown if Horus actually managed to kill him: while [[Chaos|CHAOS]] [[Dakka|MINDBULLETS]] certainly sound like they could do the trick it still is quite possible that [[Troll|he reassembled himself and walked off, not giving a fuck.]] A man with true balls of steel, especially as it's implied that he's never died once in his whole lifetime, and most of the time he has come back and back again to fight wars in the (literal at times) trenches. He does not want to be bothered one single fuck with John Grammaticus or the Cabal, but gets suckered in to galaxy saving adventures once and again. Such is the lot of a perpetual.

====St. Ollanius Pius: Old Lore and New====
Before perpetuals were introduced in the [[Horus Heresy]] novels, specifically in ''Legion'' by Dan Abnett, and more on Ollanius is elaborated in the some particularly good stories by Abnett set on Calth stories, especially ''Know no Fear'' and ''Unmarked'' (a short story anthologized in ''The Mark of Calth''), St. Ollanius Pius was just a regular old balls-of-steel Guardsman who's balls turned to adamantium as he threw himself in front of his emperor during the most epic duel of all time, and thus was sanctified in lore and the Imperial cult from then on down. He was later revealed to be a Perpetual [[skub|somewhat controversial]] change. From the point of view of the average Imperial citizen, or indeed, in fact just about anyone perhaps save the Emperor himself, he was that adamantium-testicled Guardsman and remains that holy Saint who is highly revered by the Imperium (the highest decoration in the [[Imperial Guard]], for instance, is named for him.) In fact, of course, he may still be wandering around, probably from what we all know trying to live this all down modestly. Ollanius, no doubt, would prefer the ambiguity as to whether his existence was utterly obliterated in the [[Rip and Tear|horrendous space kablooie]] surrounding the duel between the Emperor to remain as such.

===John Grammaticus===
Former officer of the Emperor's armies during the [[Unification Wars]] on Terra and later agent of [[the Cabal]] and a lesser [[psyker]]; [[Perpetual#John Grammaticus|John Grammaticus]] [[meme|<strike>WHO WAS GORDON GRAMMATICUS' BROTHER WAS ONE DAY AT AN OFFICE TYPING ON A COMPUTOR</strike>]] is an interesting case: after he died at Anatol [[Hive]], an [[Eldar]] [[Autarch]] called Slau Dha found his body and made him into a Perpetual. This signaled that it is possible for humans to become Perpetuals; or, Slau Dha was the equivalent of Ramirez and John was Connor MacLeod from Highlander. If this were the case this would make John and Slau Dha at least eight times more [[awesome]]. Grammaticus' skills gained over the course of a millennium of life were instrumental for recruiting [[Alpharius]] to the cause of the Cabal, but he felt bad for this and stepped out of an airlock in the faint hope that it would kill him. (It did, but then he just came back to life again). After the [[Drop Site Massacre]] he spent some time digging up an old relic spear that was actually made from cast-off lightning of the Emperor's divinity, reputed to be able to kill anything, even other immortals. After the apparent failure of the "Alpharius Gambit" ''(two choices, two primarchs, go figure)'' the Cabal had intended to use it to stop Vulkan from reaching Terra and interfering with their future plans. Unfortunately such a powerful relic made Grammaticus into a big giant target, and he ended up getting captured, killed and recaptured by the [[Word Bearers]] and the broken legions and eventually finding his way to [[Macragge]].

On the way he was contacted psychically by [[Eldrad|this dick]] who told him that he could strike back at the Cabal by stabbing Vulkan himself, since if [[derp|another immortal did it it would work differently]], and in this case it would somehow heal the primarch who was mentally broken after years of torture by [[Konrad Curze]]. Because of reasons. So after seeking Vulkan out on Macragge he stabbed him, investing his own immortality into the strike, and sucking it out of himself and making him mortal... also apparently killing Vulkan properly this time and therefore doing what the Cabal wanted in the first place. Also at some point during the invasion of Calth he found Oll Persson and tried to recruit him to the cause, though that didn't go too well as he was only half-hearted in his attempts anyway, plus Oll couldn't be bothered. He was mindwiped after the Vulkan thing, but Eldrad restored his memories and asked him to make sure Oll reached Terra.

===Damon Prytanis===
[[X-Files|Alex Krycek]] in space. Another agent of the Cabal, though unlike John Grammaticus, Damon was more of a soldier than a spy and got all the killy jobs. It is heavily implied that he was the one who killed Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as other important figures throughout human history. No, really. The novels specifically mention he was responsible for the death of "the good man in Memphis" and "the brother in the City of Angels".

Was apparently more comfortable with his position in the Cabal, even though it meant working against his own species, and would infer as much during his meetings with John Grammaticus, which made him more trustworthy in the eyes of the Cabal. During John's last mission Damon was sent to watch over him and make sure that he didn't falter or chicken out and try to derail their plans. Though he sort of failed to contain Grammaticus, he does kill Vulkan once, shredding him with a pair of shuriken pistols, but it's worth noting the primarch was already pretty shattered after having died a couple of times by that point.

He was the individual who brought Cyrene Valantion into the Cabal's fold, having to die once or twice on board the Word Bearers' starship just to prove a point to her. He's now definitely dead for real after Narek shot him in the head with a fulgurite round at point blank.

===[[Alivia Sureka]]===
Another female Perpetual and empathic psyker and the most recent to be introduced. Unlike most of the others though she has no apparent connection to the Cabal at all, and in fact is much more closely linked to the Emperor. She had traveled with Him and undisclosed "others" to the planet Moloch where the Emperor somehow travelled directly into the Warp and stole portions of the Chaos God's powers (or so the Chaos Gods claim).

She was left behind on Molech to guard the gateway to stop anyone else from passing through and doing the same thing. Which apparently she did dutifully for a few thousand years... meaning that she is the only other Perpetual in the Emperor's peer group who is actually loyal to him at the time of the Crusade. When the Great Crusade arrived on the planet, the Emperor fortified the shit out of it, leaving detachments of [[Blood Angels]], [[Ultramarines]], [[Imperial Knight]]s, [[Titans]] and [[Imperial Guard|Imperial Army]], making her somewhat redundant so she settled down and married. At least until [[Horus]] arrived during the Heresy and laid waste to most of the Imperial forces in a bid to follow in his father's footsteps and take the same power for himself.

Humorously, Alivia has several affectations brought over from the third millenium; she has a tendency to use "modern-day" phrases such as "OK", which do not actually exist in the 31st millenium. She also carries around a book of Hans Christian Andersen stories ''(probably one of the most priceless artifacts in the Imperium, if anyone knew what it was)'' which she reads to her adopted children.

==Surfaced during and after the Great Crusade==

===Vulkan===
Like his dad probably was, [[Vulkan]] of the [[Salamanders]] was a confirmed Perpetual. This was put to the ultimate test by none other than <s>[[Konrad Curze|the goddamn Night Haunter himself]]</s> [[Konrad Curze|the little emo goth kid on super-steroids]], who proceeded to perform the [[Daemonculaba|most depraved tortures and murders on the Lord of the Salamanders in an attempt to break his will]], [[/d/|and had to invent several new ones just for the occasion]]. Whether he was [[Grimdark|shot with bolters at point-blank range, cut apart, decapitated, eviscerated, impaled, dismembered, evaporated, getting his throat torn out with a rusty fork, being quite literally mindfucked, or being tossed naked into an active warp drive]], Vulkan would neither break nor stay dead, [[Rage|pissing Curze right the fuck off]]. Eventually, Curze locked him in a maze courtesy of [[Perturabo]] where he would hunt Vulkan himself. Curze's mistake was to place Dawnbringer at the center of the maze. When Vulkan got to his hammer, [[Awesome|he proceeded to hand Kurze a helping of it straight to the face]], then [[Just as planned|he activated a built-in teleporter that sent him right over to]] [[Macragge]] where he promptly burned up in the atmosphere like a human meteor, killing him again in the process.

Here things get complicated: Vulkan regenerated on Macragge but lost his mind, so Guilliman kept him locked up until he could figure out what to do with him ''(even concealing his presence when the Lion arrived)''. However, when [[Konrad Curze]] arrived on Macragge after stowing away on the Lion's flagship, Vulkan escaped in a moment of lucidity and tore his way across the planet (while naked) hunting Curze down and almost defeated him in a one-on-one duel. Shortly afterwards John Grammaticus found the broken primarch and stabbed him with the fulgurite, a stone spearhead charged with the psychic essence of the Emperor himself. He could not regenerate from this and neither [[Roboute Guilliman]], [[Sanguinius]], nor [[Lion El'Jonson]] could remove the spear from their brother's chest. Given that he was sent back to [[Nocturne]] for burial, we are forced to assume that his casket included a long tube-shaped appendage at least several feet long sticking out at an unusual angle, making this (while [[Grimdark|tragic)]] at least [[Khorne|eight]] times [[Lulz|more amusing]] (assuming that he was ever stabbed in the first place[though it was only the head of a spear not the shaft itself]).

Guilliman was hopeful that Vulkan would resurrect himself in time and insisted that the coffin was a preservation capsule, which Guilliman dubbed "The Unbound Flame". Some Salamanders who maintained a vigil of mourning thought they could hear a heartbeat. After an even more convoluted series of events surrounding the return of Vulkan's remains to Nocturne, the Primarch was found alive and well once more, which is even more confusing given that the fulgurite, which was supposed to kill him permanently, was still sticking out of his chest at the time of his entombment.

What raises an interesting question in Vulkan's case is regarding the source of his powers. If it was given to him by the Emperor, it begs the question why the Emperor did not give all of his sons this ability (though it sort of answers itself with the thought of [[Angron]] becoming the [[Juggernaut]] (bitch!). If it was not the case, it would suggest that the Perpetual trait can be passed down one's bloodline, or at least transferred by cloning. Big E certainly ''knew'' that Vulkan was immortal and depended on that fact in order to get him to bring the Talisman of Seven Hammers back to Terra. This couldn't have been the Emperor's "ultimate plan" for Vulkan, and seems more of a last ditch contingency considering how badly the Golden Throne got fucked over by Magnus; if he had planned to put a self-destruct on it all along, he probably could/should have done it before he got stuck sitting on it.

The Emperor also told Vulkan plainly that his son's "humanity" was his single greatest trait and also his proudest achievement, and that he hoped that Vulkan would eventually teach it to his brothers. Certainly Vulkan was probably the nicest of the Primarchs and as such would probably have been the best bet for an undying son, especially if you were relying on him to tone down the more [[Rip and Tear|extreme]] traits of his brothers after the Great Crusade was finished. When Empy was looking over the petri dishes for which one to add the immortality to he had to choose between (in order): [[Lion El'Jonson|a two faced jerk]], [[Primarch#Two_Missing_Primarchs|a [RECORDS LOST]]], [[Fulgrim|a preening egotistical asshole]], [[Perturabo|a genocidal maniac with poor impulse control]], [[Jaghatai Khan|Genghis Khan]], [[Leman Russ|a dick with a furry fetish]], [[Rogal Dorn|a stubborn joyless masochist]], [[Konrad Curze|a psychopath serial killer who uses terror as a weapon]], [[Sanguinius|a guy with a terrible terrible secret]], [[Ferrus Manus|a nerd who'd rather be talking to a toaster]], [[Primarch#Two_Missing_Primarchs|a [RECORDS LOST]]], [[Angron|an explosively violent psychopath]], [[Roboute Guilliman|a jerk with a heart of gold]], [[Mortarion|an aspie psychopath]], [[Magnus the Red|a massively powerful arrogant psyker who can't take orders]], [[Horus|a spoiled egomaniac]], [[Lorgar|a petulant child with a religiously pathologic daddy complex]], [[Corvus Corax|an emo bird]], and [[Alpharius|two people obsessed with]] [[Omegon|secrets and lies]]. On the other hand, a lot of those traits were nurture rather then purely nature. Even so, if he did do it deliberately, he [[Just as Planned|made a decent choice]].

===Dalia Cythera===
Dalia Cythera was a former Administratum Transcriber and a psyker during the Great Crusade. While deemed a potential Heretek due to progressive attitudes to technology by the Martian priesthood, she was protected by Adept Koriel Zeth and involved with the implementation of his Akashic Reader project (which was a Mechanicum project to construct a throne with a command help to collect the complete sum of knowledge of the universe by siphoning off residual power from the Astronomicon and with an empath psyker to find the Akashic Records in the warp before transcribing them before the empath burned out). Such a feat would potentially help humanity regain all its' lost knowledge and free itself from the shackles of ignorance, dogma, and superstition. Unfortunately the project was destroyed during the Martian Schism due to scrapcode with Dalia and her companions fleeing for their lives from the Kaban Machine into the Noctis Labyrinth. There, they encountered the Semyon, a legendary hidden figure in Martial lore that turned out to be a synthetic Perpetual secretly tasked by the Emperor to be the guardian and gaoler of the Dragon of Mars. Afterwards Dalia was turned into an artificial Perpetual via Semyon transferring his powers to her via mechanisms from the Emperor as his time was up. In doing so, her Skitarii companion and her body were made immortal as Semyon and his servitor servant turned to dust. She then took over Semyon's place as guardian after his death alongside her Skitarii protector, Rho-Mu 31, and continued to guard the Dragon of Mars for over ten millennia after the Horus Heresy.

===Anval Thawn===
Justicar [[Anval Thawn]] of the [[Grey Knights]] is the biggest mystery of them all. All that is known is that he can walk away from the most gruesome [[Daemon]]-inflicted deaths one can imagine, much to the chagrin of his brothers and bewilderment of the Brotherhood's [[Librarian]]s. It also begs the question of why him being a Perpetual was not detected during his induction into the Grey Knights, [[Gene-seed|either during the tests or abnormal recovery from the involved surgeries or the speed at which he accepted the nineteen organs]]. Perhaps the Perpetualness is undetectable by normal science or it manifests after a person's first death (much like in Highlander or the [[Planeswalker]] spark of [[Magic: The Gathering]]). Another option is that he might be Ollanius Pius or John Grammaticus, who were tired of dicking around for another 10.000 years and wanted a shot at becoming a [[Space Marine]]. And an even better question is how the fuck the [[Eldar]] were able to recognize him for what he was after only a short period of interaction with them.

===Cyrene Valantion===
Cyrene Valantion was a common woman from Monarchia, a planet conquered by Word Bearers during the Great Crusade, until the [[Ultramarines]] blew her home city to ashes to send a "Stop Worshipping Me!" message from the [[Emperor|Big E]] to [[Lorgar]]. Since the smurfs weren't complete assholes they evacuated all civilians first (only [[blam|BLAMing]] those who didn't want to in process). Well, except Cyrene and a couple (hundreds) of others. She decided to stay out of the city borders and watch as orbital bombardment erased her home. Apparently watching an entire city being nuked was not her best decision, since she lost her eyes and almost died due to the extreme flash of light and from radiation burns. When the [[Word Bearers]] arrived they rescued her and figured that she was the only surviving witness of their punishment, because smurfs couldn't be bothered helping civilians whose city they just destroyed. This turned her into some kind of saint in their eyes, so they offered her a position of Confessor/Holy Relic, aka "The Blessed Lady" in their fleet. During the few decades of her service to the Word Bearers she became on a short hand with captain [[Argel Tal]] and guided him to his path to become the first [[Possessed Marine]] and overall awesome guy who kill loyalists and isn't afraid anything. Everything was fine and dandy until the Heresy, when during the Drop Site Massacre she got herself killed by some Custodes assholes <s>for just being in their way</s> [[FATAL|who thought they'd have an easier way ''obtaining'' answers out of her than from any Word Bearer]]. Needless to say Argel Tal cried manly tears of rage over her corpse and swore revenge at Custodes, which he delivered just a few hours later, butchering them all amidst the ashes of Istvaan V.

Fast forward one year to [[Erebus]] being a dick where he resurrects her to facilitate his machinations with Argel Tal. Mind you while she was dead for a year, [[Grimdark| he had her soul torn apart and eaten by multiple daemons]] from whom Erebus "persuaded" to give the pieces back. Being the badass she was, Cyrene recovered from the shock of being mutilated and tormented in hell surprisingly fast, until the battle for Nuceria, wherein her ship was blown up and she got rescued by none other than Damon Prytanis who told her that being resurrected turned her into Perpetual. And then... cliffhanger.

===Joaqhuine Desdemondra===
Joaqhuine Desdemondra is a Living Saint and a secret lover of Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak. Formerly a blood-drinking Death Cult assassin from the Path Incarnadine, she was an associate of Czevak. Other names she was known as include Saint Joaqhuine the Renascent - Living Saint of the Imperial Creed, or The Idolatress. She was identified as a form of immortal called a Reanimate upon being introduced in the "Atlas Infernal" novel. Unfortunately for her, she was later captured by Ahriman and was tortured repeatedly by being incinerated to death in front of Czevak in order to break the mental wards placed on his mind so Ahriman can extract knowledge about the Black Library from him. While Czevak was later taken from Ahriman's hands, she remained in captivity. Which is a point of motivation for Bronislav to confront Ahriman again.

{{Imperium}}
[[Category:Space Marines]]

Perpetual

2020-08-29T18:50:39Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:1866:64B3:4D59:E0D8: /* Erda */

[[File:OllPious.jpg|350px|right|thumb|Ollanius Pius, the most famous Perpetual, the man, the myth, the legend.]]
{{topquote|I just want a normal life." "My friend, you will have as many of those as you wish.|The beings who would one day be [[Ollanius Pius]] and the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]]}}

A '''Perpetual''' (''Homo Superior'') is a person of [[40k|the grim darkness of the 41st millennium]] who drew the absolutely shortest straw possible: they are immortal. And nothing of this "age without youth" or "immortality without indestructibility" bullshit: they do not age (after some point in adulthood that isn't clear but seems to be the mid-to-late 30s or early 40s, maybe [[Alivia Sureka|earlier]] or maybe [[Ollanius Pius|later]]) and can survive the most gruesome deaths imaginable up to and including taking an [[Exterminatus]] to the face because they can reassemble themselves from their constituent atoms. [[/co/|They're like Wolverine on steroids like that]]. Which, given [[Grimdark|the relentless sunshine of the Warhammer 40.000 universe is NOT a good thing: not even death will relieve your suffering.]] There are only a [[Sly Marbo|few things]] said to be able to kill a Perpetual for good, but these powers and weapons are known to only a few individuals in the galaxy (and even then it's not known for certain how effective they are, or if they even work). Very little is known about the Perpetuals including their origin (but given the fact that Ollanius Persson was around as far back as the time of Greek myth, they've undoubtedly been around for ages), number, purpose or even if those suspected to be them actually being Perpetuals (all that we know is that during the Horus Heresy, there were exactly 3 Perpetuals living in Ultramar; given that Ultramar consisted of 500 planets at the time, we have to assume that they're extraordinarily rare). Of only eight individuals is the status of Perpetual known or confirmed. Another foible they have is their very existence fucks up farseeing to a considerable degree, which lead Eldrad to kill off as many of them as possible to try and find a way to avoid Chaos winning overall.

We do however know, that people could be turned Perpetual by being resurrected. Which, ironically, might imply that [[Kharn]] and [[Lucius]] at some point became Perpetual too, since they've both came back from dead. It'll explain how Kharn managed to survive for that long despite his suicidal psychotic charges into everything he sees, and how Lucius resurrected without possessing anyone's body after first being outfought by Nykona Sharrowkyn of the [[Raven Guard]], and then subsequently being cut to pieces by an emotionless [[Rubric Marine|Rubric Swordmaster]] (who in any case no longer had a body to possess either).

Recent fluff has revealed that the universe itself (or is it just the Eldar? Assholes that they are.) isn't too keen on Perpetuals as their very existence is a spanner in its gears, because <s>[[meme|people should die when they are killed]]</s> each of their revivals end up fucking farseeing over and altering causality. In order to try and find alternatives to the Cabal's plan of letting humanity die to kill Chaos, Eldrad went on a galaxy wide murder tour bumping off other Perpetuals and members of the Cabal, a choice he deeply regretted when he tried farseeing and saw what the future would eventually hold. It also turns out they're capable of resisting daemonic possession, partly due to any warp entity inhabiting their soul gets fucked up when they die (and then come back). It's still implied to be horrifically traumatic but it explains how both Alivia Sureka and Anval Thawn were able to resist.

==Predating the [[Great Crusade]]==

===The Emperor===
With all of his mysteries about the [[Emperor]] it would explain a number of things if he was a Perpetual: such as his age, knowledge in an era where everyone else on [[Terra]] was too busy [[LARP]]ing a crossover of [[Terminator]] and [[Fist of the North Star]] to learn shit and his massive power (learned over time). On the other hand it would not explain why he didn't just regenerate after being bitchslapped by [[Horus]]. The best explanation for this (besides Horus being able to injure the Emperor permanently through being the virtual avatar of all four [[Chaos Gods]]) is that that the Golden Throne, while maintaining his life functions, is also keeping him from resurrecting himself- in theory, if it was shut down, the only real effect it would have is that the Emperor would "die" for a day or two at most before fully healing from his injuries. A shame that nobody seems to realize this, as it would end most of the Imperium's problems on the spot at the expense of leaving Terra defenseless to being raped, both literally and figuratively, by hordes upon hordes of daemons, even if for a couple days. ''(That's assuming he doesn't turn into a real God the moment he "dies" and use his new God-like powers to seal the broken portal)''. Though it would create some new problems, as quite a few people wouldn't be happy with the return of [[Imperial Truth]], especially the Ecclesiarchy. Of course, knowing the Emperor he'd crush them like bugs if they tried to oppose him, or even if they didn't. There is no way he would agree with the current Imperium.

Recent revelations from the Horus Heresy books also suggest that his godlike powers were actually stolen from the Chaos Gods themselves instead of being wholly his own. Needless to say, the Ruinous Powers still have a grudge.
*'''Note''': This is what Chaos Gods told Horus (since the initial Horus Heresy trilogy, though ''Vengeful Spirit'' had them stick with the story), and we all know how trustworthy they are. The most plausible explanation is that Emperor either tried to destroy them but failed or he infiltrated their compound to learn the secrets of the warp so he could divide fragments of his souls and make Primarchs from them. Or possibly, the original "gods" in the portal may also have been referring to Eldar pantheon (or what remains of it), who may have given the Emperor his powers, and possibly an easy way back home (via the webway) since the Emperor didn't need a ship to get back home.

Recent fluff from 7e suggests that Golden Throne is not a life-support, but a pain engine, better than any DE Haemonculus could possibly dream of, sapping his strength to keep the seal intact, and that [[Malcador the Sigillite|Malcadore]], also supposed Perpetual, crumbled into dust without resurrection after several hours. Apparently, it damages soul itself, and even with his psychic geshtalt status and powers stolen/bargained from Chaos Gods he takes a heavy toll.

===[[Erd]]a===
<strike>Big E's waifu, mom to the primarchs</strike> Erebus 2: Menopause boogaloo. A female perpetual who donated her egg cells and genetic expertise to the Primarch Project, make her their mother minus a lot of her genes. It turns out that ''she'', not Horus or Argal Tal being sent back in time by the Chaos Gods, scattered the Primarchs. What a TWEEST!

===[[Ollanius Pius]], AKA Ollie Persson===
A confirmed Perpetual. By the time of the [[Horus Heresy]], Ollanius reckons his age to be around 45,000 ''(give or take)'' and he is fully aware of the connection between the Imperial and the Gregorian calendars, putting his birth at around 15,000BC (or in layman's terms, somewhere in the latter half of the Stone Age) in Biblical Nineveh. [[Ollanius Pius|Ollie Persson]] is quite reasonably older than the Emperor, considering that big Emps was born in Anatolia around 8000BC. At some point in time he became a Christian, and maintained his faith until, well, forever. Even once the word "Catholic" was somehow corrupted into "Catheric." This has interesting [[Ollanius Pius#Religion|implications]] given his service to the atheistic Empire of Terra.

He was one of the Argonauts of Greek myth and fought at Austerlitz (described as Napoleon's greatest victory) and Verdun (infamous as one of the bloodiest battles in all of World War I, which is saying something), as well as the First Gulf War, implied to have been [[Heresy|fighting on the side of Suddam Hussein]] (in fact, the [[Ollanius Pius#The Eternal Infantryman|occasional references to his military history]], which is extensive—having been apparently a soldier in all his ''documented'' lives, if not all of them, period—it's also implied that he tends to fight on the losing side, or even exclusively has, whether as some sort of curse or by some sort of design.) It also explains how he managed to survive boarding Horus' flagship during the [[Siege of Terra]]. It is unknown if Horus actually managed to kill him: while [[Chaos|CHAOS]] [[Dakka|MINDBULLETS]] certainly sound like they could do the trick it still is quite possible that [[Troll|he reassembled himself and walked off, not giving a fuck.]] A man with true balls of steel, especially as it's implied that he's never died once in his whole lifetime, and most of the time he has come back and back again to fight wars in the (literal at times) trenches. He does not want to be bothered one single fuck with John Grammaticus or the Cabal, but gets suckered in to galaxy saving adventures once and again. Such is the lot of a perpetual.

====St. Ollanius Pius: Old Lore and New====
Before perpetuals were introduced in the [[Horus Heresy]] novels, specifically in ''Legion'' by Dan Abnett, and more on Ollanius is elaborated in the some particularly good stories by Abnett set on Calth stories, especially ''Know no Fear'' and ''Unmarked'' (a short story anthologized in ''The Mark of Calth''), St. Ollanius Pius was just a regular old balls-of-steel Guardsman who's balls turned to adamantium as he threw himself in front of his emperor during the most epic duel of all time, and thus was sanctified in lore and the Imperial cult from then on down. He was later revealed to be a Perpetual [[skub|somewhat controversial]] change. From the point of view of the average Imperial citizen, or indeed, in fact just about anyone perhaps save the Emperor himself, he was that adamantium-testicled Guardsman and remains that holy Saint who is highly revered by the Imperium (the highest decoration in the [[Imperial Guard]], for instance, is named for him.) In fact, of course, he may still be wandering around, probably from what we all know trying to live this all down modestly. Ollanius, no doubt, would prefer the ambiguity as to whether his existence was utterly obliterated in the [[Rip and Tear|horrendous space kablooie]] surrounding the duel between the Emperor to remain as such.

===John Grammaticus===
Former officer of the Emperor's armies during the [[Unification Wars]] on Terra and later agent of [[the Cabal]] and a lesser [[psyker]]; [[Perpetual#John Grammaticus|John Grammaticus]] [[meme|<strike>WHO WAS GORDON GRAMMATICUS' BROTHER WAS ONE DAY AT AN OFFICE TYPING ON A COMPUTOR</strike>]] is an interesting case: after he died at Anatol [[Hive]], an [[Eldar]] [[Autarch]] called Slau Dha found his body and made him into a Perpetual. This signaled that it is possible for humans to become Perpetuals; or, Slau Dha was the equivalent of Ramirez and John was Connor MacLeod from Highlander. If this were the case this would make John and Slau Dha at least eight times more [[awesome]]. Grammaticus' skills gained over the course of a millennium of life were instrumental for recruiting [[Alpharius]] to the cause of the Cabal, but he felt bad for this and stepped out of an airlock in the faint hope that it would kill him. (It did, but then he just came back to life again). After the [[Drop Site Massacre]] he spent some time digging up an old relic spear that was actually made from cast-off lightning of the Emperor's divinity, reputed to be able to kill anything, even other immortals. After the apparent failure of the "Alpharius Gambit" ''(two choices, two primarchs, go figure)'' the Cabal had intended to use it to stop Vulkan from reaching Terra and interfering with their future plans. Unfortunately such a powerful relic made Grammaticus into a big giant target, and he ended up getting captured, killed and recaptured by the [[Word Bearers]] and the broken legions and eventually finding his way to [[Macragge]].

On the way he was contacted psychically by [[Eldrad|this dick]] who told him that he could strike back at the Cabal by stabbing Vulkan himself, since if [[derp|another immortal did it it would work differently]], and in this case it would somehow heal the primarch who was mentally broken after years of torture by [[Konrad Curze]]. Because of reasons. So after seeking Vulkan out on Macragge he stabbed him, investing his own immortality into the strike, and sucking it out of himself and making him mortal... also apparently killing Vulkan properly this time and therefore doing what the Cabal wanted in the first place. Also at some point during the invasion of Calth he found Oll Persson and tried to recruit him to the cause, though that didn't go too well as he was only half-hearted in his attempts anyway, plus Oll couldn't be bothered. He was mindwiped after the Vulkan thing, but Eldrad restored his memories and asked him to make sure Oll reached Terra.

===Damon Prytanis===
[[X-Files|Alex Krycek]] in space. Another agent of the Cabal, though unlike John Grammaticus, Damon was more of a soldier than a spy and got all the killy jobs. It is heavily implied that he was the one who killed Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as other important figures throughout human history. No, really. The novels specifically mention he was responsible for the death of "the good man in Memphis" and "the brother in the City of Angels".

Was apparently more comfortable with his position in the Cabal, even though it meant working against his own species, and would infer as much during his meetings with John Grammaticus, which made him more trustworthy in the eyes of the Cabal. During John's last mission Damon was sent to watch over him and make sure that he didn't falter or chicken out and try to derail their plans. Though he sort of failed to contain Grammaticus, he does kill Vulkan once, shredding him with a pair of shuriken pistols, but it's worth noting the primarch was already pretty shattered after having died a couple of times by that point.

He was the individual who brought Cyrene Valantion into the Cabal's fold, having to die once or twice on board the Word Bearers' starship just to prove a point to her. He's now definitely dead for real after Narek shot him in the head with a fulgurite round at point blank.

===[[Alivia Sureka]]===
Another female Perpetual and empathic psyker and the most recent to be introduced. Unlike most of the others though she has no apparent connection to the Cabal at all, and in fact is much more closely linked to the Emperor. She had traveled with Him and undisclosed "others" to the planet Moloch where the Emperor somehow travelled directly into the Warp and stole portions of the Chaos God's powers (or so the Chaos Gods claim).

She was left behind on Molech to guard the gateway to stop anyone else from passing through and doing the same thing. Which apparently she did dutifully for a few thousand years... meaning that she is the only other Perpetual in the Emperor's peer group who is actually loyal to him at the time of the Crusade. When the Great Crusade arrived on the planet, the Emperor fortified the shit out of it, leaving detachments of [[Blood Angels]], [[Ultramarines]], [[Imperial Knight]]s, [[Titans]] and [[Imperial Guard|Imperial Army]], making her somewhat redundant so she settled down and married. At least until [[Horus]] arrived during the Heresy and laid waste to most of the Imperial forces in a bid to follow in his father's footsteps and take the same power for himself.

Humorously, Alivia has several affectations brought over from the third millenium; she has a tendency to use "modern-day" phrases such as "OK", which do not actually exist in the 31st millenium. She also carries around a book of Hans Christian Andersen stories ''(probably one of the most priceless artifacts in the Imperium, if anyone knew what it was)'' which she reads to her adopted children.

==Surfaced during and after the Great Crusade==

===Vulkan===
Like his dad probably was, [[Vulkan]] of the [[Salamanders]] was a confirmed Perpetual. This was put to the ultimate test by none other than <s>[[Konrad Curze|the goddamn Night Haunter himself]]</s> [[Konrad Curze|the little emo goth kid on super-steroids]], who proceeded to perform the [[Daemonculaba|most depraved tortures and murders on the Lord of the Salamanders in an attempt to break his will]], [[/d/|and had to invent several new ones just for the occasion]]. Whether he was [[Grimdark|shot with bolters at point-blank range, cut apart, decapitated, eviscerated, impaled, dismembered, evaporated, getting his throat torn out with a rusty fork, being quite literally mindfucked, or being tossed naked into an active warp drive]], Vulkan would neither break nor stay dead, [[Rage|pissing Curze right the fuck off]]. Eventually, Curze locked him in a maze courtesy of [[Perturabo]] where he would hunt Vulkan himself. Curze's mistake was to place Dawnbringer at the center of the maze. When Vulkan got to his hammer, [[Awesome|he proceeded to hand Kurze a helping of it straight to the face]], then [[Just as planned|he activated a built-in teleporter that sent him right over to]] [[Macragge]] where he promptly burned up in the atmosphere like a human meteor, killing him again in the process.

Here things get complicated: Vulkan regenerated on Macragge but lost his mind, so Guilliman kept him locked up until he could figure out what to do with him ''(even concealing his presence when the Lion arrived)''. However, when [[Konrad Curze]] arrived on Macragge after stowing away on the Lion's flagship, Vulkan escaped in a moment of lucidity and tore his way across the planet (while naked) hunting Curze down and almost defeated him in a one-on-one duel. Shortly afterwards John Grammaticus found the broken primarch and stabbed him with the fulgurite, a stone spearhead charged with the psychic essence of the Emperor himself. He could not regenerate from this and neither [[Roboute Guilliman]], [[Sanguinius]], nor [[Lion El'Jonson]] could remove the spear from their brother's chest. Given that he was sent back to [[Nocturne]] for burial, we are forced to assume that his casket included a long tube-shaped appendage at least several feet long sticking out at an unusual angle, making this (while [[Grimdark|tragic)]] at least [[Khorne|eight]] times [[Lulz|more amusing]] (assuming that he was ever stabbed in the first place[though it was only the head of a spear not the shaft itself]).

Guilliman was hopeful that Vulkan would resurrect himself in time and insisted that the coffin was a preservation capsule, which Guilliman dubbed "The Unbound Flame". Some Salamanders who maintained a vigil of mourning thought they could hear a heartbeat. After an even more convoluted series of events surrounding the return of Vulkan's remains to Nocturne, the Primarch was found alive and well once more, which is even more confusing given that the fulgurite, which was supposed to kill him permanently, was still sticking out of his chest at the time of his entombment.

What raises an interesting question in Vulkan's case is regarding the source of his powers. If it was given to him by the Emperor, it begs the question why the Emperor did not give all of his sons this ability (though it sort of answers itself with the thought of [[Angron]] becoming the [[Juggernaut]] (bitch!). If it was not the case, it would suggest that the Perpetual trait can be passed down one's bloodline, or at least transferred by cloning. Big E certainly ''knew'' that Vulkan was immortal and depended on that fact in order to get him to bring the Talisman of Seven Hammers back to Terra. This couldn't have been the Emperor's "ultimate plan" for Vulkan, and seems more of a last ditch contingency considering how badly the Golden Throne got fucked over by Magnus; if he had planned to put a self-destruct on it all along, he probably could/should have done it before he got stuck sitting on it.

The Emperor also told Vulkan plainly that his son's "humanity" was his single greatest trait and also his proudest achievement, and that he hoped that Vulkan would eventually teach it to his brothers. Certainly Vulkan was probably the nicest of the Primarchs and as such would probably have been the best bet for an undying son, especially if you were relying on him to tone down the more [[Rip and Tear|extreme]] traits of his brothers after the Great Crusade was finished. When Empy was looking over the petri dishes for which one to add the immortality to he had to choose between (in order): [[Lion El'Jonson|a two faced jerk]], [[Primarch#Two_Missing_Primarchs|a [RECORDS LOST]]], [[Fulgrim|a preening egotistical asshole]], [[Perturabo|a genocidal maniac with poor impulse control]], [[Jaghatai Khan|Genghis Khan]], [[Leman Russ|a dick with a furry fetish]], [[Rogal Dorn|a stubborn joyless masochist]], [[Konrad Curze|a psychopath serial killer who uses terror as a weapon]], [[Sanguinius|a guy with a terrible terrible secret]], [[Ferrus Manus|a nerd who'd rather be talking to a toaster]], [[Primarch#Two_Missing_Primarchs|a [RECORDS LOST]]], [[Angron|an explosively violent psychopath]], [[Roboute Guilliman|a jerk with a heart of gold]], [[Mortarion|an aspie psychopath]], [[Magnus the Red|a massively powerful arrogant psyker who can't take orders]], [[Horus|a spoiled egomaniac]], [[Lorgar|a petulant child with a religiously pathologic daddy complex]], [[Corvus Corax|an emo bird]], and [[Alpharius|two people obsessed with]] [[Omegon|secrets and lies]]. On the other hand, a lot of those traits were nurture rather then purely nature. Even so, if he did do it deliberately, he [[Just as Planned|made a decent choice]].

===Dalia Cythera===
Dalia Cythera was a former Administratum Transcriber and a psyker during the Great Crusade. While deemed a potential Heretek due to progressive attitudes to technology by the Martian priesthood, she was protected by Adept Koriel Zeth and involved with the implementation of his Akashic Reader project (which was a Mechanicum project to construct a throne with a command help to collect the complete sum of knowledge of the universe by siphoning off residual power from the Astronomicon and with an empath psyker to find the Akashic Records in the warp before transcribing them before the empath burned out). Such a feat would potentially help humanity regain all its' lost knowledge and free itself from the shackles of ignorance, dogma, and superstition. Unfortunately the project was destroyed during the Martian Schism due to scrapcode with Dalia and her companions fleeing for their lives from the Kaban Machine into the Noctis Labyrinth. There, they encountered the Semyon, a legendary hidden figure in Martial lore that turned out to be a synthetic Perpetual secretly tasked by the Emperor to be the guardian and gaoler of the Dragon of Mars. Afterwards Dalia was turned into an artificial Perpetual via Semyon transferring his powers to her via mechanisms from the Emperor as his time was up. In doing so, her Skitarii companion and her body were made immortal as Semyon and his servitor servant turned to dust. She then took over Semyon's place as guardian after his death alongside her Skitarii protector, Rho-Mu 31, and continued to guard the Dragon of Mars for over ten millennia after the Horus Heresy.

===Anval Thawn===
Justicar [[Anval Thawn]] of the [[Grey Knights]] is the biggest mystery of them all. All that is known is that he can walk away from the most gruesome [[Daemon]]-inflicted deaths one can imagine, much to the chagrin of his brothers and bewilderment of the Brotherhood's [[Librarian]]s. It also begs the question of why him being a Perpetual was not detected during his induction into the Grey Knights, [[Gene-seed|either during the tests or abnormal recovery from the involved surgeries or the speed at which he accepted the nineteen organs]]. Perhaps the Perpetualness is undetectable by normal science or it manifests after a person's first death (much like in Highlander or the [[Planeswalker]] spark of [[Magic: The Gathering]]). Another option is that he might be Ollanius Pius or John Grammaticus, who were tired of dicking around for another 10.000 years and wanted a shot at becoming a [[Space Marine]]. And an even better question is how the fuck the [[Eldar]] were able to recognize him for what he was after only a short period of interaction with them.

===Cyrene Valantion===
Cyrene Valantion was a common woman from Monarchia, a planet conquered by Word Bearers during the Great Crusade, until the [[Ultramarines]] blew her home city to ashes to send a "Stop Worshipping Me!" message from the [[Emperor|Big E]] to [[Lorgar]]. Since the smurfs weren't complete assholes they evacuated all civilians first (only [[blam|BLAMing]] those who didn't want to in process). Well, except Cyrene and a couple (hundreds) of others. She decided to stay out of the city borders and watch as orbital bombardment erased her home. Apparently watching an entire city being nuked was not her best decision, since she lost her eyes and almost died due to the extreme flash of light and from radiation burns. When the [[Word Bearers]] arrived they rescued her and figured that she was the only surviving witness of their punishment, because smurfs couldn't be bothered helping civilians whose city they just destroyed. This turned her into some kind of saint in their eyes, so they offered her a position of Confessor/Holy Relic, aka "The Blessed Lady" in their fleet. During the few decades of her service to the Word Bearers she became on a short hand with captain [[Argel Tal]] and guided him to his path to become the first [[Possessed Marine]] and overall awesome guy who kill loyalists and isn't afraid anything. Everything was fine and dandy until the Heresy, when during the Drop Site Massacre she got herself killed by some Custodes assholes <s>for just being in their way</s> [[FATAL|who thought they'd have an easier way ''obtaining'' answers out of her than from any Word Bearer]]. Needless to say Argel Tal cried manly tears of rage over her corpse and swore revenge at Custodes, which he delivered just a few hours later, butchering them all amidst the ashes of Istvaan V.

Fast forward one year to [[Erebus]] being a dick where he resurrects her to facilitate his machinations with Argel Tal. Mind you while she was dead for a year, [[Grimdark| he had her soul torn apart and eaten by multiple daemons]] from whom Erebus "persuaded" to give the pieces back. Being the badass she was, Cyrene recovered from the shock of being mutilated and tormented in hell surprisingly fast, until the battle for Nuceria, wherein her ship was blown up and she got rescued by none other than Damon Prytanis who told her that being resurrected turned her into Perpetual. And then... cliffhanger.

===Joaqhuine Desdemondra===
Joaqhuine Desdemondra is a Living Saint and a secret lover of Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak. Formerly a blood-drinking Death Cult assassin from the Path Incarnadine, she was an associate of Czevak. Other names she was known as include Saint Joaqhuine the Renascent - Living Saint of the Imperial Creed, or The Idolatress. She was identified as a form of immortal called a Reanimate upon being introduced in the "Atlas Infernal" novel. Unfortunately for her, she was later captured by Ahriman and was tortured repeatedly by being incinerated to death in front of Czevak in order to break the mental wards placed on his mind so Ahriman can extract knowledge about the Black Library from him. While Czevak was later taken from Ahriman's hands, she remained in captivity. Which is a point of motivation for Bronislav to confront Ahriman again.

{{Imperium}}
[[Category:Space Marines]]

Erda

2020-08-29T18:49:35Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:1866:64B3:4D59:E0D8: /* Biography AKA The Skubian Heresy: Erda would like to Speak to your Manager */

{{Spoilers}}
{{WTF}}
[[File:ErdaArt.jpg|300px|right|thumb|For a 40,000 year old Karen, she is quite the [[PROMOTIONS|MILF]]. But please for the love of the Emprah's rotting testicles, please don't tell [[Fulgrim]] [[Slaanesh|of her existence.]]]]
{{Topquote|In the Grimdarkness of the Far Future, not even the Emperor of Mankind is safe from the horrors that is, Child Custody.|Erda in a nutshell.}}
{{Topquote|So basically, the entire [[Horus Heresy]] has been reduced to 'Karen took the kids'.|Some anon's description of Saturnine.}}

Woo boy! Where to we begin. First appearing in the Horus Heresy novel: Saturnine. Erda (Old High German for Earth, huh! get it? ''Mother Earth''...) is a [[Perpetual]] who used to be one of the [[Emprah]]'s most closest allies. Some [[Heresy|Heretics]] even believe that she was Big E's first and only girlfriend throughout the aeons. Whether or not E-Money actually [[/d/|''fertilised'' Mother Earth]] with his [[Dick|big, throbbing Power Sword,]] we have no idea, but we do know that Erda would have had the Galaxy's strongest ovaries to handle the genetic makeup of Big E's manly bits. DUN DUN DUN! Yes, Erda is the [[Primarch|Primarch's]] mummy, not sure how [[Roboute Guilliman|Big Bobby G's]] foster mom, Tarasha Euten, is gonna feel about this.

==Biography AKA The Skubian Heresy: Erda would like to Speak to your Manager==

There should be a warning on what you are about to read about Erda's history with the release of Saturnine as her entire backstory has caused [[Skub]] and [[Rage|Nerd Rage]] on a scale not seen since [[Matt Ward]]'s Ultramarine Fanwank and Grey Knight Power Scaling. For all intents and purposes, as a Perpetual, Erda was one of the oldest living beings in the Imperium. She met the Emprah in [[Terra|Terra's]] ancient past when he was a warlord king known as [[Conan the Barbarian|Neoth in the age of the First Cities.]] At that time, the Golden Daddy was already shepherding Mankind into the path that would lead to the creation of the Imperium. Erda grew the hots for him and we can't really fault her for this because any normal women could not resist that guy. I mean, just look at that ''hair'' and those ''pecs''...Aaaannnyways, Erda became one of the Emprah's closest and most loyal advisers and, during the [[Unification Wars]], was his chief geneticist along with Astarte in the creation of the [[Primarch]] project.

However, this is where the true [[Skub]] begins. While it makes sense that the Emprah has chosen Erda as the Primarch's mom due to the fact that they are both Perpetuals and their genetics complement each other, Big E prevented Erda from taking part in their lives so he could prepare them for the upcoming [[Great Crusade]]. This understandably pissed off Erda to no end as anyone with an overbearing mum would understand. On the other hand, she was horrified of the idea that her sons would be used by the Emperor as automaton-like yes-men as generals of the Astartes legions; especially as he and Malcador were all but disowned by the other Perpetuals as fringe radicals who were pushing the evolutionary envelope too fast to guide mankind's evolution into truly psychic and superior species. Unfortunately for all of us, Erda's way of 'saving' her children, [[Wat|involved the creation of a Warp vortex which scattered the Primarchs across the galaxy.]] Yes, turns out it wasn't the interferences of those [[Chaos Gods|Warp Goblins]] who scattered the Primarchs, but the action of a woman. [[FAIL|It was an act of such idiocy and lunacy that by 'saving' the Primarchs from the Emprah,]] [[Leman Russ|it condemned]] [[Angron|some of them]] [[Konrad Curze|to a childhood]] [[Mortarion|worse than death.]] One wonders how the likes of [[Angron]] and [[Mortarion]] is gonna react to [[RAGE|''this'']] [[RIP AND TEAR|revelation.]] Due to this, Erda officially wins the [[FAIL|Galaxy's worst Mom award]] and seeing as how some likes to chastise the Big E as being a shitty father, maybe those two truly deserve each other in the end.

After Erda pulled an oopsy, she then went into hiding for many years. [[RAGE|E-Money understandably, had the mother of all God rage,]] but strangely enough, he never sought to retaliate against Erda, even when he knew where she was. By the time of the [[Siege of Terra]], Erda was living in exile at Guelb, an ancient site in Mauritania close to her birthplace. Living with a group of servants and even her own personal Space Marine called Leetu. We have no idea whose [[Gene-seed]] Leetu had, although being the geneticist she is, Erda may have made him via leftover genetic samples from E-Money's junk. Either that or [[Daemonculaba|she pushed him out the old-fashioned way,]] but doing this means that Erda would would quite literally have the Galaxy's strongest uterus, damned vaginal walls must have been made of adamantium.

She was eventually visited by John Grammaticus. Grammaticus sought Erda's help in getting into the Imperial Palace and had also arranged to rendezvous with [[Ollanius Pius|Oll Persson]] at her home. Erda was shocked to hear that Oll had become involved in the affairs of the Human race again, and expressed worry over his fate when he did not arrive. Though sympathetic to John's cause she ultimately said she had no way to help him enter the Palace due to, you know, a [[Emperor of Mankind|certain couple's quarrel.]] It is unknown what Erda is doing now in the 41st Millennium, but it wouldn't surprise us if she is still hanging out in her home. Now imagine if [[Roboute Guilliman|Rowboat Girleyman]] met her on accident and was revealed the truth.

[[Category:Imperial]]
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]

Perpetual

2020-08-29T18:46:45Z

2601:280:5B7F:85C4:1866:64B3:4D59:E0D8: /* Dalia Cythera */

[[File:OllPious.jpg|350px|right|thumb|Ollanius Pius, the most famous Perpetual, the man, the myth, the legend.]]
{{topquote|I just want a normal life." "My friend, you will have as many of those as you wish.|The beings who would one day be [[Ollanius Pius]] and the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]]}}

A '''Perpetual''' (''Homo Superior'') is a person of [[40k|the grim darkness of the 41st millennium]] who drew the absolutely shortest straw possible: they are immortal. And nothing of this "age without youth" or "immortality without indestructibility" bullshit: they do not age (after some point in adulthood that isn't clear but seems to be the mid-to-late 30s or early 40s, maybe [[Alivia Sureka|earlier]] or maybe [[Ollanius Pius|later]]) and can survive the most gruesome deaths imaginable up to and including taking an [[Exterminatus]] to the face because they can reassemble themselves from their constituent atoms. [[/co/|They're like Wolverine on steroids like that]]. Which, given [[Grimdark|the relentless sunshine of the Warhammer 40.000 universe is NOT a good thing: not even death will relieve your suffering.]] There are only a [[Sly Marbo|few things]] said to be able to kill a Perpetual for good, but these powers and weapons are known to only a few individuals in the galaxy (and even then it's not known for certain how effective they are, or if they even work). Very little is known about the Perpetuals including their origin (but given the fact that Ollanius Persson was around as far back as the time of Greek myth, they've undoubtedly been around for ages), number, purpose or even if those suspected to be them actually being Perpetuals (all that we know is that during the Horus Heresy, there were exactly 3 Perpetuals living in Ultramar; given that Ultramar consisted of 500 planets at the time, we have to assume that they're extraordinarily rare). Of only eight individuals is the status of Perpetual known or confirmed. Another foible they have is their very existence fucks up farseeing to a considerable degree, which lead Eldrad to kill off as many of them as possible to try and find a way to avoid Chaos winning overall.

We do however know, that people could be turned Perpetual by being resurrected. Which, ironically, might imply that [[Kharn]] and [[Lucius]] at some point became Perpetual too, since they've both came back from dead. It'll explain how Kharn managed to survive for that long despite his suicidal psychotic charges into everything he sees, and how Lucius resurrected without possessing anyone's body after first being outfought by Nykona Sharrowkyn of the [[Raven Guard]], and then subsequently being cut to pieces by an emotionless [[Rubric Marine|Rubric Swordmaster]] (who in any case no longer had a body to possess either).

Recent fluff has revealed that the universe itself (or is it just the Eldar? Assholes that they are.) isn't too keen on Perpetuals as their very existence is a spanner in its gears, because <s>[[meme|people should die when they are killed]]</s> each of their revivals end up fucking farseeing over and altering causality. In order to try and find alternatives to the Cabal's plan of letting humanity die to kill Chaos, Eldrad went on a galaxy wide murder tour bumping off other Perpetuals and members of the Cabal, a choice he deeply regretted when he tried farseeing and saw what the future would eventually hold. It also turns out they're capable of resisting daemonic possession, partly due to any warp entity inhabiting their soul gets fucked up when they die (and then come back). It's still implied to be horrifically traumatic but it explains how both Alivia Sureka and Anval Thawn were able to resist.

==Predating the [[Great Crusade]]==

===The Emperor===
With all of his mysteries about the [[Emperor]] it would explain a number of things if he was a Perpetual: such as his age, knowledge in an era where everyone else on [[Terra]] was too busy [[LARP]]ing a crossover of [[Terminator]] and [[Fist of the North Star]] to learn shit and his massive power (learned over time). On the other hand it would not explain why he didn't just regenerate after being bitchslapped by [[Horus]]. The best explanation for this (besides Horus being able to injure the Emperor permanently through being the virtual avatar of all four [[Chaos Gods]]) is that that the Golden Throne, while maintaining his life functions, is also keeping him from resurrecting himself- in theory, if it was shut down, the only real effect it would have is that the Emperor would "die" for a day or two at most before fully healing from his injuries. A shame that nobody seems to realize this, as it would end most of the Imperium's problems on the spot at the expense of leaving Terra defenseless to being raped, both literally and figuratively, by hordes upon hordes of daemons, even if for a couple days. ''(That's assuming he doesn't turn into a real God the moment he "dies" and use his new God-like powers to seal the broken portal)''. Though it would create some new problems, as quite a few people wouldn't be happy with the return of [[Imperial Truth]], especially the Ecclesiarchy. Of course, knowing the Emperor he'd crush them like bugs if they tried to oppose him, or even if they didn't. There is no way he would agree with the current Imperium.

Recent revelations from the Horus Heresy books also suggest that his godlike powers were actually stolen from the Chaos Gods themselves instead of being wholly his own. Needless to say, the Ruinous Powers still have a grudge.
*'''Note''': This is what Chaos Gods told Horus (since the initial Horus Heresy trilogy, though ''Vengeful Spirit'' had them stick with the story), and we all know how trustworthy they are. The most plausible explanation is that Emperor either tried to destroy them but failed or he infiltrated their compound to learn the secrets of the warp so he could divide fragments of his souls and make Primarchs from them. Or possibly, the original "gods" in the portal may also have been referring to Eldar pantheon (or what remains of it), who may have given the Emperor his powers, and possibly an easy way back home (via the webway) since the Emperor didn't need a ship to get back home.

Recent fluff from 7e suggests that Golden Throne is not a life-support, but a pain engine, better than any DE Haemonculus could possibly dream of, sapping his strength to keep the seal intact, and that [[Malcador the Sigillite|Malcadore]], also supposed Perpetual, crumbled into dust without resurrection after several hours. Apparently, it damages soul itself, and even with his psychic geshtalt status and powers stolen/bargained from Chaos Gods he takes a heavy toll.

===Erda===
<strike>Big E's waifu, mom to the primarchs</strike> Erebus 2: Menopause boogaloo. A female perpetual who donated her egg cells and genetic expertise to the Primarch Project, make her their mother minus a lot of her genes. It turns out that ''she'', not Horus or Argal Tal being sent back in time by the Chaos Gods, scattered the Primarchs. What a TWEEST!

===[[Ollanius Pius]], AKA Ollie Persson===
A confirmed Perpetual. By the time of the [[Horus Heresy]], Ollanius reckons his age to be around 45,000 ''(give or take)'' and he is fully aware of the connection between the Imperial and the Gregorian calendars, putting his birth at around 15,000BC (or in layman's terms, somewhere in the latter half of the Stone Age) in Biblical Nineveh. [[Ollanius Pius|Ollie Persson]] is quite reasonably older than the Emperor, considering that big Emps was born in Anatolia around 8000BC. At some point in time he became a Christian, and maintained his faith until, well, forever. Even once the word "Catholic" was somehow corrupted into "Catheric." This has interesting [[Ollanius Pius#Religion|implications]] given his service to the atheistic Empire of Terra.

He was one of the Argonauts of Greek myth and fought at Austerlitz (described as Napoleon's greatest victory) and Verdun (infamous as one of the bloodiest battles in all of World War I, which is saying something), as well as the First Gulf War, implied to have been [[Heresy|fighting on the side of Suddam Hussein]] (in fact, the [[Ollanius Pius#The Eternal Infantryman|occasional references to his military history]], which is extensive—having been apparently a soldier in all his ''documented'' lives, if not all of them, period—it's also implied that he tends to fight on the losing side, or even exclusively has, whether as some sort of curse or by some sort of design.) It also explains how he managed to survive boarding Horus' flagship during the [[Siege of Terra]]. It is unknown if Horus actually managed to kill him: while [[Chaos|CHAOS]] [[Dakka|MINDBULLETS]] certainly sound like they could do the trick it still is quite possible that [[Troll|he reassembled himself and walked off, not giving a fuck.]] A man with true balls of steel, especially as it's implied that he's never died once in his whole lifetime, and most of the time he has come back and back again to fight wars in the (literal at times) trenches. He does not want to be bothered one single fuck with John Grammaticus or the Cabal, but gets suckered in to galaxy saving adventures once and again. Such is the lot of a perpetual.

====St. Ollanius Pius: Old Lore and New====
Before perpetuals were introduced in the [[Horus Heresy]] novels, specifically in ''Legion'' by Dan Abnett, and more on Ollanius is elaborated in the some particularly good stories by Abnett set on Calth stories, especially ''Know no Fear'' and ''Unmarked'' (a short story anthologized in ''The Mark of Calth''), St. Ollanius Pius was just a regular old balls-of-steel Guardsman who's balls turned to adamantium as he threw himself in front of his emperor during the most epic duel of all time, and thus was sanctified in lore and the Imperial cult from then on down. He was later revealed to be a Perpetual [[skub|somewhat controversial]] change. From the point of view of the average Imperial citizen, or indeed, in fact just about anyone perhaps save the Emperor himself, he was that adamantium-testicled Guardsman and remains that holy Saint who is highly revered by the Imperium (the highest decoration in the [[Imperial Guard]], for instance, is named for him.) In fact, of course, he may still be wandering around, probably from what we all know trying to live this all down modestly. Ollanius, no doubt, would prefer the ambiguity as to whether his existence was utterly obliterated in the [[Rip and Tear|horrendous space kablooie]] surrounding the duel between the Emperor to remain as such.

===John Grammaticus===
Former officer of the Emperor's armies during the [[Unification Wars]] on Terra and later agent of [[the Cabal]] and a lesser [[psyker]]; [[Perpetual#John Grammaticus|John Grammaticus]] [[meme|<strike>WHO WAS GORDON GRAMMATICUS' BROTHER WAS ONE DAY AT AN OFFICE TYPING ON A COMPUTOR</strike>]] is an interesting case: after he died at Anatol [[Hive]], an [[Eldar]] [[Autarch]] called Slau Dha found his body and made him into a Perpetual. This signaled that it is possible for humans to become Perpetuals; or, Slau Dha was the equivalent of Ramirez and John was Connor MacLeod from Highlander. If this were the case this would make John and Slau Dha at least eight times more [[awesome]]. Grammaticus' skills gained over the course of a millennium of life were instrumental for recruiting [[Alpharius]] to the cause of the Cabal, but he felt bad for this and stepped out of an airlock in the faint hope that it would kill him. (It did, but then he just came back to life again). After the [[Drop Site Massacre]] he spent some time digging up an old relic spear that was actually made from cast-off lightning of the Emperor's divinity, reputed to be able to kill anything, even other immortals. After the apparent failure of the "Alpharius Gambit" ''(two choices, two primarchs, go figure)'' the Cabal had intended to use it to stop Vulkan from reaching Terra and interfering with their future plans. Unfortunately such a powerful relic made Grammaticus into a big giant target, and he ended up getting captured, killed and recaptured by the [[Word Bearers]] and the broken legions and eventually finding his way to [[Macragge]].

On the way he was contacted psychically by [[Eldrad|this dick]] who told him that he could strike back at the Cabal by stabbing Vulkan himself, since if [[derp|another immortal did it it would work differently]], and in this case it would somehow heal the primarch who was mentally broken after years of torture by [[Konrad Curze]]. Because of reasons. So after seeking Vulkan out on Macragge he stabbed him, investing his own immortality into the strike, and sucking it out of himself and making him mortal... also apparently killing Vulkan properly this time and therefore doing what the Cabal wanted in the first place. Also at some point during the invasion of Calth he found Oll Persson and tried to recruit him to the cause, though that didn't go too well as he was only half-hearted in his attempts anyway, plus Oll couldn't be bothered. He was mindwiped after the Vulkan thing, but Eldrad restored his memories and asked him to make sure Oll reached Terra.

===Damon Prytanis===
[[X-Files|Alex Krycek]] in space. Another agent of the Cabal, though unlike John Grammaticus, Damon was more of a soldier than a spy and got all the killy jobs. It is heavily implied that he was the one who killed Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, as well as other important figures throughout human history. No, really. The novels specifically mention he was responsible for the death of "the good man in Memphis" and "the brother in the City of Angels".

Was apparently more comfortable with his position in the Cabal, even though it meant working against his own species, and would infer as much during his meetings with John Grammaticus, which made him more trustworthy in the eyes of the Cabal. During John's last mission Damon was sent to watch over him and make sure that he didn't falter or chicken out and try to derail their plans. Though he sort of failed to contain Grammaticus, he does kill Vulkan once, shredding him with a pair of shuriken pistols, but it's worth noting the primarch was already pretty shattered after having died a couple of times by that point.

He was the individual who brought Cyrene Valantion into the Cabal's fold, having to die once or twice on board the Word Bearers' starship just to prove a point to her. He's now definitely dead for real after Narek shot him in the head with a fulgurite round at point blank.

===[[Alivia Sureka]]===
Another female Perpetual and empathic psyker and the most recent to be introduced. Unlike most of the others though she has no apparent connection to the Cabal at all, and in fact is much more closely linked to the Emperor. She had traveled with Him and undisclosed "others" to the planet Moloch where the Emperor somehow travelled directly into the Warp and stole portions of the Chaos God's powers (or so the Chaos Gods claim).

She was left behind on Molech to guard the gateway to stop anyone else from passing through and doing the same thing. Which apparently she did dutifully for a few thousand years... meaning that she is the only other Perpetual in the Emperor's peer group who is actually loyal to him at the time of the Crusade. When the Great Crusade arrived on the planet, the Emperor fortified the shit out of it, leaving detachments of [[Blood Angels]], [[Ultramarines]], [[Imperial Knight]]s, [[Titans]] and [[Imperial Guard|Imperial Army]], making her somewhat redundant so she settled down and married. At least until [[Horus]] arrived during the Heresy and laid waste to most of the Imperial forces in a bid to follow in his father's footsteps and take the same power for himself.

Humorously, Alivia has several affectations brought over from the third millenium; she has a tendency to use "modern-day" phrases such as "OK", which do not actually exist in the 31st millenium. She also carries around a book of Hans Christian Andersen stories ''(probably one of the most priceless artifacts in the Imperium, if anyone knew what it was)'' which she reads to her adopted children.

==Surfaced during and after the Great Crusade==

===Vulkan===
Like his dad probably was, [[Vulkan]] of the [[Salamanders]] was a confirmed Perpetual. This was put to the ultimate test by none other than <s>[[Konrad Curze|the goddamn Night Haunter himself]]</s> [[Konrad Curze|the little emo goth kid on super-steroids]], who proceeded to perform the [[Daemonculaba|most depraved tortures and murders on the Lord of the Salamanders in an attempt to break his will]], [[/d/|and had to invent several new ones just for the occasion]]. Whether he was [[Grimdark|shot with bolters at point-blank range, cut apart, decapitated, eviscerated, impaled, dismembered, evaporated, getting his throat torn out with a rusty fork, being quite literally mindfucked, or being tossed naked into an active warp drive]], Vulkan would neither break nor stay dead, [[Rage|pissing Curze right the fuck off]]. Eventually, Curze locked him in a maze courtesy of [[Perturabo]] where he would hunt Vulkan himself. Curze's mistake was to place Dawnbringer at the center of the maze. When Vulkan got to his hammer, [[Awesome|he proceeded to hand Kurze a helping of it straight to the face]], then [[Just as planned|he activated a built-in teleporter that sent him right over to]] [[Macragge]] where he promptly burned up in the atmosphere like a human meteor, killing him again in the process.

Here things get complicated: Vulkan regenerated on Macragge but lost his mind, so Guilliman kept him locked up until he could figure out what to do with him ''(even concealing his presence when the Lion arrived)''. However, when [[Konrad Curze]] arrived on Macragge after stowing away on the Lion's flagship, Vulkan escaped in a moment of lucidity and tore his way across the planet (while naked) hunting Curze down and almost defeated him in a one-on-one duel. Shortly afterwards John Grammaticus found the broken primarch and stabbed him with the fulgurite, a stone spearhead charged with the psychic essence of the Emperor himself. He could not regenerate from this and neither [[Roboute Guilliman]], [[Sanguinius]], nor [[Lion El'Jonson]] could remove the spear from their brother's chest. Given that he was sent back to [[Nocturne]] for burial, we are forced to assume that his casket included a long tube-shaped appendage at least several feet long sticking out at an unusual angle, making this (while [[Grimdark|tragic)]] at least [[Khorne|eight]] times [[Lulz|more amusing]] (assuming that he was ever stabbed in the first place[though it was only the head of a spear not the shaft itself]).

Guilliman was hopeful that Vulkan would resurrect himself in time and insisted that the coffin was a preservation capsule, which Guilliman dubbed "The Unbound Flame". Some Salamanders who maintained a vigil of mourning thought they could hear a heartbeat. After an even more convoluted series of events surrounding the return of Vulkan's remains to Nocturne, the Primarch was found alive and well once more, which is even more confusing given that the fulgurite, which was supposed to kill him permanently, was still sticking out of his chest at the time of his entombment.

What raises an interesting question in Vulkan's case is regarding the source of his powers. If it was given to him by the Emperor, it begs the question why the Emperor did not give all of his sons this ability (though it sort of answers itself with the thought of [[Angron]] becoming the [[Juggernaut]] (bitch!). If it was not the case, it would suggest that the Perpetual trait can be passed down one's bloodline, or at least transferred by cloning. Big E certainly ''knew'' that Vulkan was immortal and depended on that fact in order to get him to bring the Talisman of Seven Hammers back to Terra. This couldn't have been the Emperor's "ultimate plan" for Vulkan, and seems more of a last ditch contingency considering how badly the Golden Throne got fucked over by Magnus; if he had planned to put a self-destruct on it all along, he probably could/should have done it before he got stuck sitting on it.

The Emperor also told Vulkan plainly that his son's "humanity" was his single greatest trait and also his proudest achievement, and that he hoped that Vulkan would eventually teach it to his brothers. Certainly Vulkan was probably the nicest of the Primarchs and as such would probably have been the best bet for an undying son, especially if you were relying on him to tone down the more [[Rip and Tear|extreme]] traits of his brothers after the Great Crusade was finished. When Empy was looking over the petri dishes for which one to add the immortality to he had to choose between (in order): [[Lion El'Jonson|a two faced jerk]], [[Primarch#Two_Missing_Primarchs|a [RECORDS LOST]]], [[Fulgrim|a preening egotistical asshole]], [[Perturabo|a genocidal maniac with poor impulse control]], [[Jaghatai Khan|Genghis Khan]], [[Leman Russ|a dick with a furry fetish]], [[Rogal Dorn|a stubborn joyless masochist]], [[Konrad Curze|a psychopath serial killer who uses terror as a weapon]], [[Sanguinius|a guy with a terrible terrible secret]], [[Ferrus Manus|a nerd who'd rather be talking to a toaster]], [[Primarch#Two_Missing_Primarchs|a [RECORDS LOST]]], [[Angron|an explosively violent psychopath]], [[Roboute Guilliman|a jerk with a heart of gold]], [[Mortarion|an aspie psychopath]], [[Magnus the Red|a massively powerful arrogant psyker who can't take orders]], [[Horus|a spoiled egomaniac]], [[Lorgar|a petulant child with a religiously pathologic daddy complex]], [[Corvus Corax|an emo bird]], and [[Alpharius|two people obsessed with]] [[Omegon|secrets and lies]]. On the other hand, a lot of those traits were nurture rather then purely nature. Even so, if he did do it deliberately, he [[Just as Planned|made a decent choice]].

===Dalia Cythera===
Dalia Cythera was a former Administratum Transcriber and a psyker during the Great Crusade. While deemed a potential Heretek due to progressive attitudes to technology by the Martian priesthood, she was protected by Adept Koriel Zeth and involved with the implementation of his Akashic Reader project (which was a Mechanicum project to construct a throne with a command help to collect the complete sum of knowledge of the universe by siphoning off residual power from the Astronomicon and with an empath psyker to find the Akashic Records in the warp before transcribing them before the empath burned out). Such a feat would potentially help humanity regain all its' lost knowledge and free itself from the shackles of ignorance, dogma, and superstition. Unfortunately the project was destroyed during the Martian Schism due to scrapcode with Dalia and her companions fleeing for their lives from the Kaban Machine into the Noctis Labyrinth. There, they encountered the Semyon, a legendary hidden figure in Martial lore that turned out to be a synthetic Perpetual secretly tasked by the Emperor to be the guardian and gaoler of the Dragon of Mars. Afterwards Dalia was turned into an artificial Perpetual via Semyon transferring his powers to her via mechanisms from the Emperor as his time was up. In doing so, her Skitarii companion and her body were made immortal as Semyon and his servitor servant turned to dust. She then took over Semyon's place as guardian after his death alongside her Skitarii protector, Rho-Mu 31, and continued to guard the Dragon of Mars for over ten millennia after the Horus Heresy.

===Anval Thawn===
Justicar [[Anval Thawn]] of the [[Grey Knights]] is the biggest mystery of them all. All that is known is that he can walk away from the most gruesome [[Daemon]]-inflicted deaths one can imagine, much to the chagrin of his brothers and bewilderment of the Brotherhood's [[Librarian]]s. It also begs the question of why him being a Perpetual was not detected during his induction into the Grey Knights, [[Gene-seed|either during the tests or abnormal recovery from the involved surgeries or the speed at which he accepted the nineteen organs]]. Perhaps the Perpetualness is undetectable by normal science or it manifests after a person's first death (much like in Highlander or the [[Planeswalker]] spark of [[Magic: The Gathering]]). Another option is that he might be Ollanius Pius or John Grammaticus, who were tired of dicking around for another 10.000 years and wanted a shot at becoming a [[Space Marine]]. And an even better question is how the fuck the [[Eldar]] were able to recognize him for what he was after only a short period of interaction with them.

===Cyrene Valantion===
Cyrene Valantion was a common woman from Monarchia, a planet conquered by Word Bearers during the Great Crusade, until the [[Ultramarines]] blew her home city to ashes to send a "Stop Worshipping Me!" message from the [[Emperor|Big E]] to [[Lorgar]]. Since the smurfs weren't complete assholes they evacuated all civilians first (only [[blam|BLAMing]] those who didn't want to in process). Well, except Cyrene and a couple (hundreds) of others. She decided to stay out of the city borders and watch as orbital bombardment erased her home. Apparently watching an entire city being nuked was not her best decision, since she lost her eyes and almost died due to the extreme flash of light and from radiation burns. When the [[Word Bearers]] arrived they rescued her and figured that she was the only surviving witness of their punishment, because smurfs couldn't be bothered helping civilians whose city they just destroyed. This turned her into some kind of saint in their eyes, so they offered her a position of Confessor/Holy Relic, aka "The Blessed Lady" in their fleet. During the few decades of her service to the Word Bearers she became on a short hand with captain [[Argel Tal]] and guided him to his path to become the first [[Possessed Marine]] and overall awesome guy who kill loyalists and isn't afraid anything. Everything was fine and dandy until the Heresy, when during the Drop Site Massacre she got herself killed by some Custodes assholes <s>for just being in their way</s> [[FATAL|who thought they'd have an easier way ''obtaining'' answers out of her than from any Word Bearer]]. Needless to say Argel Tal cried manly tears of rage over her corpse and swore revenge at Custodes, which he delivered just a few hours later, butchering them all amidst the ashes of Istvaan V.

Fast forward one year to [[Erebus]] being a dick where he resurrects her to facilitate his machinations with Argel Tal. Mind you while she was dead for a year, [[Grimdark| he had her soul torn apart and eaten by multiple daemons]] from whom Erebus "persuaded" to give the pieces back. Being the badass she was, Cyrene recovered from the shock of being mutilated and tormented in hell surprisingly fast, until the battle for Nuceria, wherein her ship was blown up and she got rescued by none other than Damon Prytanis who told her that being resurrected turned her into Perpetual. And then... cliffhanger.

===Joaqhuine Desdemondra===
Joaqhuine Desdemondra is a Living Saint and a secret lover of Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak. Formerly a blood-drinking Death Cult assassin from the Path Incarnadine, she was an associate of Czevak. Other names she was known as include Saint Joaqhuine the Renascent - Living Saint of the Imperial Creed, or The Idolatress. She was identified as a form of immortal called a Reanimate upon being introduced in the "Atlas Infernal" novel. Unfortunately for her, she was later captured by Ahriman and was tortured repeatedly by being incinerated to death in front of Czevak in order to break the mental wards placed on his mind so Ahriman can extract knowledge about the Black Library from him. While Czevak was later taken from Ahriman's hands, she remained in captivity. Which is a point of motivation for Bronislav to confront Ahriman again.

{{Imperium}}
[[Category:Space Marines]]