Editing Perpetual (section)

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

===The Emperor===
A great many of the mysteries surrounding the Emperor would be explained if he was a Perpetual: his age, his 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 his duel with [[Horus]] on the ''Vengeful Spirit''. 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 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 <u>real</u> 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 the original [[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 the 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. Not to mention that this "explanation" is precisely what Horus himself wanted to hear. 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 the Golden Throne is not a life-support, but a pain engine, better than any [[Dark Eldar|Dark Eldar]] [[Haemonculus|Haemonculus]] could possibly dream of, sapping his strength to keep the seal intact, and that [[Malcador the Sigillite|Malcador]], also stated by Erda and Jaghatai Khan to be a Perpetual, crumbled into dust without resurrection after several hours. Apparently, it damages the soul itself, and even with his psychic gestalt status and powers stolen/bargained from Chaos Gods it has taken a heavy toll on the Emperor.

Welp, as of October of 2018, any ambiguity as to whether or not the Emperor is a perpetual has since been removed, with GW itself stating it outright in an FAQ post. And as of 2020, with the release of ''Saturnine'' in the ''Siege of Terra'' series... Well... While it too makes it damn clear that Big-E's status as a perpetual is confirmed, it does so in a way that raises a metric fuckton of further questions.

===[[Malcador]]===

The Emperor's right-hand man is confirmed to be a Perpetual himself. He claims to be over 6700 years old by the time of the Horus Heresy. Despite being a Perpetual, he manages to die twice during the Siege of Terra. First, Magnus accidentally barbecues him while throwing a psychic tantrum in the Hall of Leng deep beneath the Imperial Palace. Alivia Sureka (see below) sacrifices her own Perpetuality to resurrect him. His second and final death, as we all know, comes from taking the Emperor's place on the Golden Throne so that Big E could go deliver the mother of all bitchslaps to his wayward son.

===[[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, making her their mother minus a lot of her genes. It turns out that ''she'', not Horus or Argel Tal being sent back in time by the Chaos Gods, scattered the Primarchs (specifically, she helped The Four do it by making a warp vortex). This makes her a race traitor extraordinaire. What a TWEEST! The Emperor was of course [[Rage|slightly cross]] about this, so Erda fucked off to live quietly in the deserts of Afrik with a specially designed Space Marine bodyguard. Her ultimate fate remains unknown, although there's a big hint [[Erebus|the slimy motherfucker extraordinaire]] perma-killed her when she refused to help him.

(The Valdor novel states that Chaos energy was detected in the room signifying that the Chaos Gods were still involved in the scattering of the Primarchs. It's possible that what Erda did was to disturb the wards around the primarchs' gestation capsules, which let the Chaos gods snatch them up.)

===[[Ollanius Pius]]===
AKA Oll Persson ([[Derp|Old Person]]...seriously? Fucking really, Abnett? Truly swung for the fences with that one, didn’t you?)

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 around the end of the early stone age) in Biblical Nineveh. [[Ollanius Pius|Oll 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 [[Team_Yankee#Iraq.2FSyria|fighting on the side of Saddam Hussein]]. In fact, in all of the [[Ollanius Pius#The Eternal Infantryman|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 (at least until Calth), 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.

At some point in Earth's early history, he also served as the Emperor's first-ever Warmaster, but this ended badly during a war in East Phoenicia. They defeated a cult which had been building a tower [the literal fucking Tower of Babel] that contained a complete lexicon for Enuncia, the weird transcendent language that fucks reality sideways when spoken and which is capable of causing permanent [meaning it isn't fixed once back in the warp] damage to daemons; what this editor henceforth refers to as "Space Thu'um". Ollanius wanted to destroy the tower, regarding Enuncia as an existential threat, but the Emperor wanted to preserve it as a doomsday weapon, and/or a repository of knowledge for their own use. Oll expressed his concern with this decision by shanking the Emperor and wrecking the tower before then running away... By Christ, this is a flashback where nobody comes out looking pretty.

====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 whose 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, in a [[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 and Horus to remain as such. Although, in ''Fury of Magnus'', Magnus was able to permanently kill a Perpetual via the power of sorcery and plot convenience [though it '''STILL''' didn't quite stick], which perhaps makes it more doubtful that Olly is still alive. But ''Fury of Magnus'', while an enjoyable read, poses so many questions and contrived plot points, while answering so few of them, that attempting to deduce any larger implications from it is hardly a sturdy prospect.

===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 about 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 Shattered Legions before 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/assassin 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".

He was apparently more comfortable with his position in the Cabal, even though it meant working against his own species, as seen 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 Barthusa Narek shot him in the head with a fulgurite round at point blank.

===[[Alivia Sureka]]===
Another female Perpetual and empathic psyker. 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 Molech where the Emperor somehow travelled directly into the Warp and stole portions of the Chaos Gods' 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]] to guard the gate. This made her somewhat redundant, so she just settled down and got 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. Alivia tried to seal the portal, but wound up getting killed before she could complete the ritual. She resurrected, escaped Molech, and headed for Terra with her adopted daughters.

Humorously, Alivia has several affectations brought over from the third millennium; she has a tendency to use "modern-day" phrases such as "Okay", which do not actually exist in the 31st millennium. 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.

She is now definitely dead, having pulled a Grammaticus and sacrificed her Perpetuality to resurrect Malcador after he was killed by Magnus during the Siege of Terra. This is a shame, as she was probably one of the smartest, toughest, and most well-adjusted people in the Imperium.