Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

= Notable Individuals =

== Ollanius Pius ==

* Imperial Navyman (background uncertain, unknown if Void Born or otherwise)
* During the War of the Beast the Beast teleported his attack moon into the Sol system and tried to ram it into Earth (specifically the Imperial Palace) killing everyone present (including Steward) and reducing the rest of the Battle of Terra to a simple mop-up (by that point he didn't care that it wasn't the orky thing to do, he just wanted to watch the world burn. Or possibly he did, because hitting one planet with another is ded orky.)
* Ollanius Pius rammed his ship into the Beast's attack moon after ordering the crew to evacuate, saving everyone on Earth with his sacrifice and making sure the Battle of Terra wasn't the Curbstomp of Terra

== Ahzek Ahriman ==

* Born in Achaemenidia (one of the countries of Old Earth)
* Made a second home for himself on Prospero, was a well-respected teacher and lecturer due to Prospero being the Ksons base of operations
* Cast Rubric of Ahriman in a desperate attempt to save Prospero during Black Crusade, but something got fucked up and Prospero got stuck between dimensions, along with whatever [[Legion of the Damned|poor Astartes and Imperial Guard happened to be on it]].
* Prospero getting stuck between dimensions led to him getting involved in increasingly shady stuff in his efforts at revenge/restoring Prospero, leading to the whole Daemon Breaker thing below.
* Won the Saim-Hann Iron Storm race, and as his prize got access to the Black Library for a "day". Hasn't officially come out since then, although it's clear he's still alive somehow and the Imperium doesn't have to ask the Harlequins to send a search party. Unclear if he formed the Daemon Breakers and then won the Iron Storm, or if he won the Iron Storm, did his research in the Black Library, and then got out, using the fact that he is supposed to be in the Black Library as an alibi. Or both.
* Approves of the Imperium in theory, but thinks they are far too passive and defensive when it comes to dealing with Chaos and should take the fight to them.
* Strongly implied that he rubric-ed himself and sealed his soul into his armor, and that's the reason he's still around despite the fact that any other Astartes would have aged to death by now
* Implied to be a very Byronic figure, started off as a good man but has done increasingly fucked-up shit for a noble cause.
* One of his positive traits is that he would never force people to do anything that he wouldn't do himself. However, "that he wouldn't do himself" has a very broad definition, given the aforementioned Byronic-ness. Indeed, Ahriman considers himself damned and would probably sacrifice himself if need be, the only reason he doesn't is he wholeheartedly believes the sacrifice of his soul will be a necessary component to undo the Rubric (hence the reason for sealing his soul inside his armor).
* "When Ahriman brings back Prospero" is a common phrase in the Imperium. Started out as hopeful but now is used in a derogatory fashion in the same manner as "When pigs fly"

When the Imperium confirmed that some of the Thousand Sons had been binding daemons and that Ahriman had been spreading this knowledge after an investigation, everything took a turn for the worst. Ahriman, along with most of the Thousand Sons that knew how to bind daemons fled with their followers. Becoming a nomadic renegade SM regiment has led to Ahriman taking control then renaming the happy band of renegades to the "Daemon Breakers." 

The wandering Daemon Breaker Marines fight off hunting Imperial forces (and secretly help Imperial worlds in stomping daemon outbreaks). The renegades are not above interference and sabotage to ensure their survival. The recruitment for the regiment is always on-going and they hunt down any latent psykers to join them willingly or otherwise. Most defectors from the IG join the renegades as either a criminal escaping punishment, freedom seeking idealist, or someone just plain wanting revenge on Chaos. Those of the mortal soldiers that proved themselves in battle are sometimes given armor similar to that of the Sororitas. Just like the armor of the Sororitas, if there is no power supply for the limbs the soldier simply can't move. Worse is that if something hits the limbs under the armor, the limb movement accelerator will snap human bones like a twig. 

Their motto is "Vanquish the Darkness" as said by Ahriman when he smashed a bloodthirster's head with his tome "Vocem Subjugatio Liber" thus binding the poor daemon to his will at all times.

== Ezekyle Abbadon ==

* Nephew of Horus Lupercal, Horus raised him like a son after Abbadon's father died
* Stereotypical "have to one-up my (foster) father at everything" syndrome
* Military brat, had a much more militaristic view of the universe as opposed to the slippery politician Horus
* Died ramming his flagship down the throat of a Scrap Metal Leviathan during the first Black Crusade
* No one else was charismatic enough to do the cat-herding to keep the Void Born together after Abbadon's death, so the legion split up.
* Some years later his cybernetic arms were found in the orbiting debris field around Cadia by scavengers. They were still fused to the Command Lectern. They were taken to the Sol Void Born Migrant Fleet. As of 999M41 they are in the hallway in the Black Stone Fortress just before you reach the tomb of Horus. The Cadians wanted to keep them because cultural historical relic. The Void Born weren't listening, Abaddon was one of their captains and fuck anyone who say otherwise.

== Shas'O Farsight ==

* Once one of the greatest warriors in Tau history
* During the Tau's political reformation, he, along with the other political hardliners that formed the Farsight Enclaves, walked off because they thought the Imperium's fancy new ideas were having a bad effect on the Greater Good. This led to the Tau Civil War
* At some point got his hands on one of the Blades of Vaul. But not just any Blade of Vaul, ''the'' Blade of Vaul, his masterwork the Dawnblade,''Anaris''
* Ethereals be all like "give the Eldar back their fucking sword" and Farsight replied "if they want it they can have it pointy end first"
* Like in canon, the Dawn Blade has chronophagic properties that suck the life out of whoever is killed by it and gives it to the wielder (it's not the only Eldar weapon that works this way, see Spear of Twilight), Farsight knows something is up, but keeps his focus stubbornly on the Greater Good because he feels the Farsight Enclaves will fall apart without him around.

He's a diehard fire caste general that incessantly reminds the ethereals of their noble responsibility to be surly, high handed, self sacrificing philosopher kings. He's a die hard traditionalist that might even step above his station to hold ethereals to his idealized vision of traditional tau society, and pressure from him has influenced the enclave ethereals to conform to this vision of "High Tau'va". The ethereals in the farsight enclave are becoming more philosophical, abstract, and saintly in bearing, and rely increasingly on farsight and his fire warriors to interact with the enclave's people. Farsight has influence over the ethereals that goes way beyond tradition, but this is totally lost on him, and he seeks to do the ethereals will even as he cajoles them towards greater mysticism and the nobility he already sees in them. For their part the ethereals recognize Farsight's prominence, but say that he is reminding them of their duties as a caste, as he ought to. They're happy to have a major fire caste figure affirming their reactionary feelings towards the reforms, and are beginning to believe in his rosy picture of tau traditional society.

Farsight is basically Tau Oda Nobunaga giving the Earth Caste guns; in his crusade to reestablish the Tau traditions of old, Farsight is essentially breaking them all and establishing new ones, all while being too blind to most of it, and excusing what he allows himself to be aware of by saying it's for both the Greater Good and the greater good. Compared to just about everyone else the Imperium is up against (Szarekh, Malys, Vect, the tyranids), Farsight is a relatively nice guy who actually cares about the people under his command. It's just that he's a xenophobic asshole. He's the kind of guy if you were an Earth Caste walking into a bar, he would invite you over for a drink and nearly bowl you over with his sheer charisma. At least, until you find out what his political leanings are (depending on where you stand on the issue).

=== Reasons for Farsight's Breakoff ===

Farsight spent most of his career on the northern edge of the Tau Empire fighting mostly Chaos and to a lesser degree Orks, whereas Shadowsun spent most of hers on the southeastern front and fought mostly Nids. This disparity of experience resulted in a rift forming, with each having different views on how the universe works and what the Tau need. Shadowsun sees the need for the reasonable people of the universe to unite because that’s the only way anyone is surviving the tyranids. Farsight sees Chaos as this horrible Monster in the darkness, but thankfully they seem more focused on the Imperium and their “anathemas” and “blasphemers” and seem to mostly ignore the Tau; if the Tau were to join the Imperium, that monster may not ignore them anymore.

Farsight also feared that closer relations with the Imperium would change tau culture as he knew it. By that point the Tau Empire already had a few billion human citizens but they were Tau Humans dedicated to the Greater Good as much as other society in the Empire. What he predicted was the relaxation of the caste system, outside influences on policy making and a slowing down of the colonizing efforts for the next sphere of expansions.

Perhaps more than his concerns that contact with outsiders would change the Tau’va, Farsight feared that the Ethereal Council would come down and force people who wanted to hew to the old traditions to change their ways. And in his defence, in this regard history supported him. The Ethereal Council was known to force people to accept their vision in the past; they would never allow for the unity of the Tau to be broken with a potential split between “Orthodox Tau’Va” and “Relaxed Tau’va.”  

The issue is that he kicked off a riot which led to things escalating to violence, which is massively taboo to the Tau (not just for the same reasons as canon, but because they see their unity and lack of Tau on Tau violence as a moral high ground compared to the fractious Eldar and humanity) and turned what should have been a reasoned debate into a Schism meets the Partition of India in space.

There are rumors that Shadowsun hasn’t been able to catch up to Farsight because Farsight has been deliberately avoiding confronting her because he feels guilty about what happened. He doesn’t feel guilty about standing up for what he believes in, but he feels guilty about letting it escalate to violence which is why he’s content to live in his own little hermit kingdom than try to subvert the main Tau Empire.

Farsight's fears have proved well-founded.  The Tau Empire isn't growing anymore and no new spheres of expansion are planned. The Ethereal council has instead directed it's efforts towards missionary work to spread the philosophies of The Greater Good and try to co-opt the Eastern Fringe of the Imperium from the inside. They have made no secret of this.  They have had their decision making influenced by outsiders in that the Imperium tells them what will and will not work from past experience and are typically proven right. Now they typically listen more and don't, for example, try to make fully A.I. robotic infantry.  The caste system has been relaxed as the Casteless and Outcaste and auxiliary forces can attest. (Of course Aun'Va and historians will notice that the current interpretations of The Greater Good are more similar to the older attitudes to Aun'Da's teachings.)

Farsight was not wrong. A thousand years ago he would have been the very model of a great Fire Warrior. He's just out of time.

When they were both young and still good friends, Farsight and Shadowsun had an argument over the Tau'kon'she, a Fire Caste festival in which the Fire Warriors hunt a ceremonial clonebeast on foot using low-tech weaponry to connect with their heritage as nomads. Farsight wanted to perform the ceremony using pulse rifles, saying it was more efficient. Shadowsun was exasperated by it and said he was missing the point. Ironically the two have reversed position later in life, Farsight the traditionalist sees as important that the tau remember their old ways, whereas Shadowsun has grown jaded and has much less of a problem with cutting the Gordian knot.

== Shas'O Shadowsun ==

* Currently the greatest military hero of the Tau that is still alive and not a renegade. Typically seen as the Tau equivalent of a primarch or a Phoenix Lord by the rest of the Imperium (Farsight would be the other, except for the whole treason thing).
* Shadowsun was a good friend of Farsight. Then Farsight did something during the Tau civil war that made Shadowsun swear a blood oath against him.
* Probably did something so grievous that in Shadowsun's opinion Farsight has no moral justification in claiming that he's doing what's right, like escalating the tension between the two factions into outright violence and the first shots of the Tau Civil War. Farsight saw it as necessary and justified because the reformists weren't letting the traditionalists practice the Tau'va the way they wanted to. Shadowsun called bullshit, his actions led to Tau killing Tau and in her mind this was an act of barbarity just asking for the Mon'tau to return.
* Probably had some sort of forbidden feelings for one another, but after that moment their relationship changed to that special feeling of hate and betrayal you can only have for someone you once loved
* More open-minded and less xenophobic than Farsight (known as an Imperial hero even outside of Tau space, which the Tau will remind you of quite frequently), but at the same time more prone to obeying the Ethereal Council and is more manipulable by them.
* As opposed to Farsight or Aun'Va, Shadowsun is still around because she's been leapfrogging through time via cryo-stasis as opposed to the Dawn Blade or whatever Aun'Va is doing. Explicit instructions to wake her when Farsight shows his head so she can fulfill her oath
* Like Kryptman, Shadowsun has lost numerous friends and allies due to the passage of time. Unlike Kryptman, she is a bit more philosophical about this.

Shadowsun is essentially the Tau WMD that walks like a mortal.

It has the lovely image of Aun'va as some sort of Davy Jones dinosaur of another era that the others of his kind defer to out of respect/fear and when shit gets too hard to handle he declares "release the Shadowsun". Those are the days that you know shit has got beyond real. If is the legendary 1st Sphere veteran commander than by now she has fought everything from Dark Eldar to xeno Skynet. Like Kryptman she is awoken when needed and preserved when not. Like Kryptman she is getting on in subjective years now despite this though not to the same extreme. Like Kryptman she is awake in the final days of 999M41 and it doesn't look like she will sleep again soon.

Humans have stories of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, Tau have Shadowsun.

Imperium has Saint Celestine around whom the masses flock with songs on their lips and fire in their hearts. Shadowsun is this also. When she wakes up the other castes start to readily form citizens militias to ease the burdens of the Fire Caste PDF equivalents. Not actual soldiers, goodness no. That would be against the scripture. They just assist and serve as best they can right up to what they can bend the scripture to accommodate.

Her personal mission is to uphold the values of the Imperial Tau'va by adapting to new tactics and destroying whatever she's pointed at better than anyone else can, and to find closure by ending her former friend's life. She doesn't really concern herself with issues that aren't relevant to this, having a sort of tunnel vision that makes her an extremely dangerous opponent and which probably helps her cope with having to constantly play catch-up in the fastest-developing society in the entirety of the Imperium. She's built her entire life around fulfilling this purpose, becoming cynical and jaded instead of wrathful and manic the way Inquisitor Kryptman has, as a person who hasn't quite lost everything and is simultaneously expected to be a paradigm of the Greater Good's ideals.

From Shadowsun’s perspective, literally every waking moment of her life for the last nigh-on a hundred years has been some form of conflict. The closest she has ever gotten to “down time” is the moments of strategic planning and stretches of boredom between FUBAR events. She goes to sleep only to wake up a moment later wondering “what in the name of the Tau’va is wrong now”. Shadowsun has essentially lived through every major military conflict of the last millennium, which would be the equivalent of a soldier fighting in every war since the late 18th century, and all the changes in technology that implies. Imagine having to constantly relearn how to fight as weapons go from muskets to bolt-action rifles to semi-automatics. Shadowsun would point this out…albeit in a rather cynical fashion.

“Sometimes the weapons are different. Better, faster, they say.
In the end they are all the same. I pull the trigger, and something dies.”

Shadowsun has figured out by now that Aun'Va is more than meets the eye. The "my identical grandson for whom politics skipped a generation" works after a while, but someone who knows the guy personally would see right through his act in seconds. She doesn't voice what she knows because Aun'Va being in charge is literally for the Greater Good, but it allows her to be more critical of him because she knows he knows she knows and she sees his feet of clay through the shared ages. She believes in the Greater Good and the Empire as it fights for the Greater Good and the Imperium as it seems to mirror and facilitate the Greater Good but she also believes that Aun'Va was a late bronze age bureaucrat and blind obedience to the rules of another time taken in a vacuum and not adapted to this time will always lead to disaster. Her original dispute with Farsight. So she's more willing to push back against Aun'Va (though not the Etheral council), because she knows his tactics. Ironically Aun'Va trusts her more than almost anyone else based on how she was completely honest with him about what happened in the initial shots of the Tau Schism.

==Shas'O Kais==

You know, waaaay back in one of the old threads (about thread 4 or 5), it was suggested that it was O'Kais who kept what happened in the Kaurava system during Soulstorm from being a complete disaster after Boreale cocked it all up. O’Kais had to come riding to the rescue of an incompetent Space Marine commander to ensure that at least someone survived Kaurava instead of the human and Eldar forces being killed to a man.

So why not build on that and the above. O’Kais is one of the most well-known Tau military commanders alive in 999.M41. The reason he seems like such an Imperiaboo is he spent time as part of an Inquisitor’s retinue, so he’s spent time watching thing like Aspects of Steel and whatnot. Nevertheless, he’s still managed to garner quite the military reputation on his own through his own actions in the Tau military, no Imperial help required.

O’Kais got onto the Inquisitor’s retinue for a damn good reason, and people are shocked to learn he’s basically the Tau equivalent of Doomguy. O’Kais, for his part, is rather sedate about the whole affair, and although he prefers not to talk about what he’s seen, when he does talks it sounds like a normal person would talk about how they enjoyed a semester studying abroad. It’s debatable whether he actually feels this way, feels this way because of the muted connection Tau have to the Warp, or if he’s using it as a coping mechanism (given that he does avoid bringing it up).

He’s no Shadowsun, but that’s because Shadowsun is the equivalent of a soldier who somehow managed to fight on the front lines in the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War (or any other series of major wars for your country of choice).

Given the shorter life span and less effective longevity treatments of the Tau he would be a brash young man in his Doomguy days. Now if he had hair it would be grey. His skin is lined and leathery, his eyes are wary, his pace measured.

O'Kais has seen some shit and shit related accessories. How old is he? 70 maybe. Maybe 75ish. Biologically. He's spent so much time rattling around on ships that it's hard to say. He was born 122 years ago but such is travel through the warp.

He should be a figure of near mythic proportions on the Eastern Fringe, his name spoken beyond traditional Tau Space. His Inquisitorial has passed the hundred years of silence rule so a lot of it's open to the public.

He has earned the distinction of commanding Space Marines to victory, a thing no other Fire Caste has done.

He goes by the Kais, despite Kais being one of the most common names awarded in the Tau Empire, for the simple reason that the...''other'', more distinctive nicknames he's received are considered impolite in Tau society. There aren't many Shas'O who merely go by the name "Kais" so when anyone brings "O'Kais" everyone knows who they are talking about.

If anything he has become more dangerous in his twilight years. He is Doomguy and has trained Doomguys to succeed him.

Upon his death he has given orders for his body to be frozen and sent to Pech. He made a deal after the shit on Dolumar IV with a wise old Shaper. His funeral will be a feast before the Oathstone beneath the greatest Jagga Tree.

===Timeline of life===
887M41

Tau Fire Caste born to distinctly average parents. Mother and father worked in the T'au PDF equivalent. Name their son Kais, probably the most common name on T'au. Young Kais spends his childhood and early adolescence in the Fire Cast boarding school in the mountain town of Ash’nat Ruush being raised communally as is tradition with Tau.

896M41

Kais is living up to his unimaginative name and passes with sufficiently above average grades to be placed in the Interstellar Army of the Tau rather than it’s local defence force. Although Kais passed with good grades on the notoriously traditionalist homeworld he was definitely in the pro-Imperium reformist camp, a thing that annoyed his tutors somewhat.

That and his lack of interest in the more philosophical aspects of the Greater Good. Which is not to say that he lacked faith in the cause but that he lacked patience with things without immediate practical application. He saw that his job was to defend the realm, not quote scripture.

897M41

Shas’Saal Kais is sent to “cut his teeth”, to use an Old Earth phrase, in the ongoing war for the hiveworld Agrellan / Mu'gulath Bay against the predations of the Ak'Haireth Resurgence. The world, although officially part of the Imperium proper, had substantial Tau investment and presence and was seen as a vital gateway between the two realms and a model of cooperation. The campaign to remove the fungal infection that was the Ak'Haireth was ultimately successful though costly. Shas’Saal Kais becomes Shas'la T'au Kais.

901M41

The greater deamon Tarkh'ax assaults the up until then nowhere world of Dolumar IV in a successful attempt to kidnap the Ethereal Aun'el Ko'vash. Reasons for doing so were later found to be to try and find a way of possessing Tau of the leadership caste for the most obvious reasons. If such a thing is possible is still undetermined as Ko’vash managed to commit suicide sometime into the proceedings but sadly not before a substantial joint Tau – Imperial force made planet fall. By the time the main forces had arrived Tarkh'ax was already eroding reality on the planet from the Governors Palace and Dolumar IV was becoming a daemon world. It was a frantic and desperate mad dash to the Palace to stop the daemon prince at any cost.

Part of this force was Shas'la T'au Kais. Nobody is sure what happened to Kais on Dolumar IV but everybody knows what he did. The Imperial Army, the other Tau, even the Space Marines soon found that they couldn’t keep up with Kais. His helm-cam recorded his progress, his body count that would be the envy of a Warhound veteran, the sheer magnitude of the things he cut down from deranged thralls to Fallen Marines to Chaos Spawn and ultimately Tarkh'ax himself almost single-handedly.

Knowing that the Ethereal Council would try to cover up the events as best it could Kais removed and hid the storage crystal from his helmet. In the time it took the remnants of the Tau cadre to return to T’au Kais’ mental state deteriorated due to the things he had seen. He uploaded the contents of his helm-cam to the planetary info-net. When the law enforcement found him he was sitting near catatonic in the data-hub.

Kais spent the next three years unresponsive in the Por’Vre Jeph’dar sanctuary for damaged souls.

904M41

Video surveillance of the Por’Vre Jeph’dar Sanctuary shows an eldar later identified as a known Handmaiden entering the facility and making her way to Kais’ cell. No eyewitnesses confirm this despite the figure having walked past several members of staff.

The next day Inquisitor ██████████████████████████ of the Ordo Malleus arrives at the Sanctuary and commandeers the miraculously recovered Kais.

The large part of Kais’ life spent in the service of the Inquisition is known to only a few with any certainty as his records are highly classified. Higher than most Inquisitorial files. What is known is that the Kroot have first claim on the old Tau’s body should he die uncorrupted, although what he did to earn this honour and what they did to deserve such meat is unknown. It is known that he had considerable experience commanding both Space Marines and human Guardsmen prior to the events on Kronus, though the circumstances are unknown.

989M41

Kais returns to the Tau Empire a very different creature. His skin grey and leathery with age in the places it wasn’t scar tissue, he spoke numerous languages to some basic degree and walked with the confident stride of an experienced commander.

Kais is bumped up the command chain to Shas’O Kais, though the Ethereals refuse to return the “T’au” to his name.

Later 989M41

Shas’O Kais heads the Tau contribution to the re-conquest of the planet Kronus alongside Colonel-Farseer Taldeer and her Cadians.

Kais and Gabriel Angelos, who was heading and independent detachment of Blood Ravens to Kronus for undisclosed reasons, form an odd friendship possibly based on their mutual experiences with the Inquisition and the eternal war against Chaos to say nothing of each others towering reputations.

The Tau contribution contained many Kroot who held Kais in some degree of awe or possibly fear and named him Laar’Nak Shak; The Walking Death. The Kroot were not actually officially part of the Tau army originally but Kais called in a favour and hinted that they might get settlement rights if they leant a hand. It was suspected the Kroot shaper just wanted Kais for his body.

M992

With the successful conclusion of the Kronus campaign Shas’O Kais returns to T’au and accepts a training job at the Ash’nat Ruush Boarding School where it is presumed he will sped his final years trying to impart his wisdom to the next generation of Fire Warriors.

== Inquisitor Kryptmann ==

In M41, [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#The_Swarmlord|when the main hive fleet first made galaxyfall]], the Emperor contacted the Kryptmann Institute, the Ordo Xenos group formed specifically to try and figure out how to take down the tyranids in the wake of Behemoth, Kraken, and Leviathan, to see if they had any ideas of how to stop them. They suggested they could try the Kryptman Line again. The Emperor asked them if they had any better ideas. The Inquisitors responded that the best they had come up with for a plan B was to invite the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#The_Swarmlord|Swarmlord]], [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Lady_Malys|Lady Malys]], and the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#General_Timeline_of_the_Life_of_the_Silent_King|Silent King]] over for tanna and see which one killed the other two first.

== Arik Taranis ==

Arik still passed down a lot of his early tests to the geneticists to try and fix the early Thunder Warriors, as was suggested. However, it was less direct, and more of “Psst, hey, you should try adding this secondary regulator hormone to the system. Works wonders.” to the geneticists.

Taranis was a waste of potential. If he had stayed on as a researcher, heck if he had stayed down when his original augments crapped out, he would have been able to do much more for the Imperium than as a super-soldier. The problem is that despite his brilliance he enjoyed bashing heads together much more than doing science. He's a scientist who found his calling as a super soldier.
 
The idea is that a lot of the quirkier features of the Custodes like dressing in gold and the Blood Games came from Arik (though the gold was probably Oscar’s suggestion), then when the more down-to-earth Valdor came in he dialed things back to make them a lot better organized. However, Valdor did pick up at least one thing, namely the whole “sometimes you have to disobey Oscar’s orders because Oscar doesn’t always know what’s in his own best interests”, which leads him to accompany Oscar and Isha to Beach Planet because he knows something’s going to go wrong with Vandire.

==Macharius==

Macharius is supposed to literally be based on Alexander the Great, right? So why not go whole hog with it, take the bad with the good. Macharius was a military mastermind, able to accomplish more in a few years than most commanders would be able to in lifetimes. Even those who felt the title of primarch belonged to a different era agreed that Macharius’ military accomplishments were the equal of the primarchs. So why was Macharius not hailed as the beginnings of a second coming of an age of primarchs?

Simply put, he couldn’t handle himself outside of war. He was a brilliant military genius, but when he wasn’t campaigning he had a bad drinking habit and generally made a boor of himself in public. All of the primarchs could function outside of war. Even Dorn and Curze. Dorn could occupy himself during peacetime, if you substituted “relaxing” with “fortifying this position”. Curze, on the other hand, just switched from waging an external war to addressing internal issues such as "waging a (literal) war on poverty". There were also rumors Macharius was not too fond of the Exodite Eldar and the Maiden Worlds, feeling that the worlds should be confiscated as they were otherwise being wasted and the Exodites weren’t pulling their weight, something that other parts of the Imperium were afraid was going to lead to civil war.

Think of a cross between Alexander the Great and Douglas MacArthur. Brilliant military tactician, but fell apart when not in combat (like Alexander) and had a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease and picking more fights than he could hope to win.

In this timeline, Macharius died due to actual misfortune, as opposed to High Lord assassination. Like everyone else, the higher-ups in the Imperial government mourned, though they felt a little guilty over the fact that they felt like they had just dodged a bullet.

== Jenetia Krole ==

After doing some research on blanks and the pariah gene in canon, it seems that it is possible for psykers to be around blanks in the rare case that the psykers psychic ability outstrips the blank’s ability to nullify it. This fact is virtually trivial in canon, but it would mean that Krole would be able to be around extremely powerful psykers like Oscar and Magnus, for whom trying to nullify their power would be like trying to block out the sun with an umbrella. It also explains how the vanilla Sisters of Silence were able to be around the Emperor without him going nuts.
 
From what I can tell with blanks in canon, they are not capable of turning their aura on and off, but it does sound like they are capable of changing the intensity of their aura to be more or less uncomfortable to people who aren’t outright psykers. Jenetia was able to control her aura enough that she would have been the type of blank to just be considered “odd” by the average person, but she intentionally cultivated the reputation of being the scariest person in the room.
 
Jenetia’s personality is partially inspired by Queen Gorgo of Sparta. Laconic, tough as nails, and favoring quality over quantity in terms of troops. In-universe, it may be due to spending part of her time being raised by the Custodes.
 
This sort of gives an explanation as to why the Sisters of Silence were allowed to exist despite the Emperor being the old chivalrous sort. The Pariah gene is described as being extremely rare in Vanilla, with there being only one to two pariahs in a population of ten billion even if one counts those who only have it as a recessive gene. Until the Imperium could get a large number of planets under their control, Jenetia was the only blank they had. Jenetia was a bitter necessity until the Grey Knights could get up and running, and as soon as that was done Jenetia was swept off the front lines to a position the Steward thought would be safer.
 
Despite what seem like similarities, there’s a big difference between Jenetia Krole and Conrad Kurze. Kurze inflicted terror because he thought that fear was the best way to bring order and keep people in line. Krole cultivated a terrifying reputation because she just wanted people to recognize her as a badass.
 
Jenetia liked kids, in case that wasn’t obvious, even if they didn’t always like her back. It’s highly likely that Jenetia put in the request to the Steward because she just wanted some people she could be around for more than a couple of hours, in addition to the tactical reasons.

== Nemesor Zandrekh ==

Nemesor Zandrekh is crazy. In fact, he is so crazy the Silent King cannot assume direct control over him like he can with so many other Phaerons, because Zandrekh believes he’s still flesh and blood and of course only a robot can be controlled that way.

He doesn't care much for this "Silent King" little gutter oik. Bah humbug and balderdash so he doesn't. Obviously such an uncultured and, quite frankly, barbaric swine must, in fact, be some sort of tinpot despot rebel or a petty little lordling from one of the lesser races trying to pull a clever ruse.

The true power in this galaxy, besides his self, of course, must be this great bustling Imperium business that everyone is going on about. Indeed not a day goes by when there isn't some sort of news from the border regarding their valiant and heroic efforts against what sounds suspiciously like the old enemies of the True Empire.

In fact, he would put money on these High Men of Earth being distant kin or descendants of his own people that waited out the upheavals and desolation. That must be it. They stayed awake and duked it out, this "Imperium" must, therefore, be The True Empire or at least something not too far removed from it.

And so Nemesor Zahndrekh made diplomatic contact with the Imperium. It took Harlequin Lore-Masters to translate the transmissions and once they figured out what the crazy old bastard was prattling on about they couldn't stop laughing.

Nemesor Zahndrekh of Gidrim and it's protected systems (about a dozen systems all told, only two conventionally inhabitable worlds and one of them only just) are not part of the Imperium but they are very close allies with it. Emperor Oscar deemed it prudent to play along with his delusions rather than risk him waking up and offered him the hand of friendship and invited him to a banquet in his honor to formalize the alliance.

So far the mad bastard has guarded his patch of space well and has come to the aid of the Imperium on several occasions, even going so far as to temporarily house a rescued ferry convoy on his throne world (near a quarter of a million people all told). He said he liked talking to the children. It had been many years since his hall echoed with such simple laughter.

On at least one occasion the Imperium came to his aid after receiving a message, from one of the ambassadorial team's astropaths, indicating that he was having "a spot of bother with some sort of insectoid life form". Shortly afterward contact was lost.

Needless to say, there were no eldar involved in anything relating to the Nemesor. They are pretty sure that he is going to try and kill them all at some point. Isha wasn't present during the official banquet. She was away on "State Business", an excuse Zahndrekh thankfully believed and took no offense. Oscar tried to show him a picture of Isha, to see if Nemesor was on the level, only for the mad old bastard to say “Quite a beautiful dame she is. I say, is she descended from one of the old royal bloodlines? She certainly has that regal Phaeron jawline. Shame she couldn’t attend on account of official business.” Oscar decided to take this information to his grave, rather than rile the Eldar up by saying that Nemesor had favorably compared their goddess to a Necrontyr Phaerakh. The only Eldar that are able to tolerate being around him are the Harlequins, and that’s only for the sheer schadenfreude of the whole thing. 

Everyone on the Ambassadorial Team is pretty sure that the imposing Necron called Obyron who stands by the Nemesor at all times is aware of how reality is and how his lord is and is merely playing along for the sake of his master. He and the Ambassadorial Team have come to an unspoken agreement. They don't try anything covert and no "accidents" will happen. 

Obyron stays around Nemesor because as bad as Nemesor is, the Silent King is worse, and as long as he serves Nemesor he doesn’t have to listen to Szarekh through clever use of loopholes because he’s “obeying his lord”. He also feels some sympathy for the old man…er…skele-bot, as crazy as he is. Obyron does still love his master. For all that he is crazy, he is still Zahndrekh and he owes him so very much.

Zahndrekh was actually a rather nice individual even before becoming a senile skele-bot. He treated defeated enemies with respect, had a sense of noblesse oblige that led him to care for those under his command, and was even altruistic enough to take in a young gutter urchin Obyron into his household. Of course, this was the infamously deadly and backstabbing world of Necrontyr politics. Zahndrekh was a [[Creed|brilliant strategist]] and was nice because he could afford to be nice, and those who took niceness as weakness [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cilician_pirates#Julius_Caesar| paid the consequences]. The eldar are terrified that if Zahndrekh ever snapped back to sanity he would turn into a murderbot 5000. In reality, if you could circumvent the issue with the control protocol, you’d probably just get a more coherent and intelligent Zahndrekh.

This is actually part of the reason Szarekh brought Zahndrekh into his fold during the Second Wars of Secession. He was unflinchingly loyal, a skilled general, and he made Szarekh’s side look good. The fact that the Nemesor could be lenient to those who genuinely pledged themselves to Szarekh made him a good carrot to the bigger stick of many of his other generals during the Wars of Secession because he made Szarekh look benevolent and merciful to his enemies. And this was back when Szarekh still had some humanity (necrontyrity?) in him and could be as magnanimous as he was brutal. Part of the reason Zahndrekh doesn’t recognize the authority of the Silent King is his last memories date to the Second Wars of Secession, and he has a hard time reconciling the young, headstrong Szarekh from then with what he became.

Of the two inhabitable worlds in his Dynasty, the least shit is settled by Tau. They've regressed biologically back to the pre-caste tau by interbreeding when the caste system broke down.

They are pretty substandard in terms of technology, they have shit from the early days of the Tau's first steps into the galaxy. It is suspected that they are the descendants of one of the early and mysteriously lost colony ships.

Nemesor Zahndrekh considers them to be quaint and primitive but with a rustic charm. They also show him, as their lord and master, proper tribute and reverence on the occasion that he visits them. So he lets them have the planet.

It's the more pleasant of his two inhabitable worlds but he wasn't using it. Also, a lord should be judged not by how he treats his equals and betters but by how he treats those beneath him of whom he has no reason to fear. That is the mark of a worthy lord. That is why the Silent King is a despicable little oik and no king of his say what.

Although the least shit of the two planets it's still pretty shit. Insufficient ozone layer and barely 25% sea cover. You can live there but it's not a holiday resort.

One should note, though, that Zandrekh’s decisions, while masked behind a layer of the haha-funny antics of a loon, still make sense from the perspective of a Phaeron looking to get out from under the Silent Kong’s thumb. And it is said he talks to Obyron when no one is around to hear it. Perhaps there’s more to Nemesor than simply an insane Overlord, after all?

== Obyron and the nobility of Gidrim ==

Obyron was a gutter urchin that the Nemesor adopted millions of years ago in the days of the True Empire. It was always permitted that Overlords could appoint their own bodyguards regardless of origin or social standing. Most only took them from families they knew, trusted or had a history of loyal service and subservience to ensure that they were true to their duties and also to keep intact the divide between the lowborn and the nobility.

Hiring a pleb as a bodyguard was so rare by the time of the years leading up to the biotransferance that most people had forgotten that it was even technically still legal.

Zandrekh was also Overlord of a remote patch of the Empire so eccentricities are more excusable. Obyron therefore owes Zandrekh so very much. By all accounts he should have lived and died a penniless scavenger. Maybe Zandrekh caught him scrumping apples or some shit and offered him a job as part of the palace guard. Obyron eventually working his way up to bodyguard and then head bodyguard.

Point is Imotekh was trained as a nobleman with rules of conduct in combat and the propper way to duel between gentlemen. Obyron is a knee to the groin, elbow to the gut, eye gouging, ear biting, dirty fighting elevated pleb whose only use for the rule book is an improvised club.

The functionaries of Gidrim will not be trying to replace the Nemesor, they know that they are robots and as such will get fucked over instantly by Silent King override codes. Rather they jockey for positions in the advisory council and in the administration of the Gidrim Estate, everyone wants to be as close to him as possible. Old Man Zandrekh knows that most if not all of them are sycophants but what can you do? He knows that although they will fight among themselves to who gets to be firstmate of his ship they won't mutiny against him and they won't allow risk to the ship.

Also if any of them starts to get too clever or does things too risky Obyron is always there behind his masters right shoulder, a menacing figure in chrome and gilt.

The arrival of the Imperial Representative team and Ambassadorial staff annoyed a lot of courtiers as it was an intrusion in their comfortably insular games. Overlord Zandrekh quite likes the Imperials as they are way less ass kissy and two faced than his own court is.

The jobs typically held by his people are:

* Crew of the Lady Betsy and the few support craft he has, all of them lovingly maintained classics.
* Warriors of the realm
* Bodyguards and palace guards
* Palace maintenance and cleaning staff
* Butlers, servants, maids and such
* Kitchen staff (including food tasters)
* Administrators of the blue-skin (Tau) colony
* Garrison and Sentinels of the blue-skin colony
* Royal gardener and assistants
* Weather-watcher
* Royal architect and masons and other associated artisans
* Keeper of the Minutes
* Keeper of the library 
* Royal Calligrapher
* Master/Mistress of tapestries
* Palace physician
* Law-master/mistress
* Lore-master/mistress (and specialists)
* Spymaster/mistress
* Head Cryptek
* Keeper of the Vehicles
* Keeper of the Fish

And a whole host of lesser titles that the Nemesor is half convinced they made up to give them something to do.

=== Obyron versus Imotekh ===

At some point while the Silent King was sending his lackeys out waking up and unifying the Tomb Worlds, Imotekh the Stormlord got sent to Gidrim because the Silent King has been sending commands and Zahndrekh isn't answering his calls. Imotekh finds Obyron waiting for him at the docks. Imotekh demands that all bow before the Silent King. Obyron declares: No. Nothing else. Just a blank No.

Obyron challenges Imotekh to an honor duel because Imotekh will tell Zahndrekh exactly what has happened the last sixty six million years and Zahndrekh will likely go into a full on Nam dog/Alzheimers-esque meltdown. So Obyron protects the old man out of loyalty.

Imotekh: Do you know who I am? I was trained by Ana'mhashark in the temple of Djomo!

Obyron: I grew up in the streets of Telhemerarch. Leave now or I might cut you up a little bit you inbred aristocratic little shit.

Obyron thrashes Imotekh, because Imotekh is only above average in terms of scythesmanship skills (relying heavily on the durability and lack of fatigue his Necrodermis body gives him) whereas Obyron is, to analogize to A Song of Ice and Fire, undead robot Jaime Lannister. Imotekh leaves because Obyron won the duel fair and square and that's the way Imotekh rolls. When next Obyron meets Nemensor Zahndrekh his master notes that he has a new arm. Obyron thanks him for noticing, the old one got damaged in some accident whilst he went about his duties. It's amazing what a good doctor can do these days.

Zahndrekh doesn't need to know about Imotekh.

That day Obyron and Zahndrekh go for a walk about the royal garden. At the evening hour they stop by the Imperial Embassy to catch up on the news. Zahndrekh, Obyron and the Imperial Ambassador end the day sipping brandy by the heating unit in a garden shed some miles from the palace.

The night ends with Ambassador giving Obyron a hug. She can't officially admit that she knows what he has done, but she can blame it on the brandy. Obyron pats her hair as softly as he can and holds her gently. He doesn't understand.

== Erebus ==

Erebus, the Dark Prophet. Even more of a nightmare than [[Erebus|in canon]], if you can believe that.

In terms of there being no record of anyone matching Erebus’ description ever joining the legion and people being if this is because a “recruit Erebus” never really existed or if he simply did a good job at covering his tracks, it’s the latter. Erebus really did joined the Word Bearers as a rank-and-file but was just really good at destroying his records. He knows that playing up the mysterious “Was he a Word Bearer? Where did he come from?” angle makes him look scarier and gets him followers. He renamed himself Erebus because he’s an edgelord.

It's not yet agreed upon when Erebus fell to Chaos and when his corruption became noticed. As to his corruption, some people suggest he fell to Chaos as a child pope due to Lorgar taking his congregation and joined the Word Bearers to get revenge whilst others suggest he did not fall until after he joined the Word Bearers. As to when his corruption became known, some have it that he was discovered well into the Great Crusade and seemingly vanished after his near-death experience, only resurfacing during the War of the Beast upon which it became apparent he had been corrupting a whole bunch of people, whereas others suggest his corruption was only revealed during the War of the Beast, and the conversation between Erebus and Lorgar went in the same way that a lot of the canon loyalist Primarchs tried to talk down the traitors before they realized they weren't going to stop.

== Lady Malys ==

The Daemon Queen of Chaos. The "[[Abbadon]]", for all intents and purposes, of this setting. Only competent, and so high one can't tell the crazy from the cunning. One of the threads had a (now lost) picture of what she was supposed to look like with big black feathery wings. The wings are intentionally grown because it pisses off the Blood Angels. Rumor has it they were torn from Sanguinius' back.

At some point she engaged in a blasphemous and all manner of fucked up wedding with Asdrubael Vect, the Lords of Shaa-Dome and Commorragh.

Some would say that being married to the Queen of Chaos whilst banning warpcraft in the Dark City is a tad hypocritical. Yes it is. He's Lord Asdrubael Vect, he gives no shits. You can file a complaint with the complaints department if you are feeling stupid.

Lady Malys is the blessed of all the gods of Chaos. She is insanely powerful on an individual levels and just dangerously insane enough to get all the warbands of Chaos to temporarily act together and swear obedience but still just coherent enough to make use of it.

Only the Emperor is her equal in a one on one confrontation and only a fully awakened Avatar of Khaine (and a lot of support) has any realistic hope of stopping her. She has died many times but the gods keep resurrecting her at least in part because they don't want her in the Realm of Chaos for longer than is necessary.

She is still "mortal" in that she is not in a daemon-prince sort of deal. She swore no oaths of loyalty for he power, the gods keep her powered up possibly because they are scared to find out what she would do one of them with the powers of the others if one of them stopped. They give her power she fucks shit up and that feeds them. How a mere mortal can operate on that sort of insanely high rape train level is unknown.

It is perhaps that she is the equal and opposite of The Emperor. Her marriage to Vect being a mirror of Isha and Emperor.

In a few of the Starchild Prophesies it is her that gives birth to the Impossible Child rather than Isha and in one rather horrible prophesy the Emperor is the posthumous father. In that prophesy either she rapes the Emperor, conceives a child and then kill the Emperor or she kills the Emperor and somehow rapes the corpse.

Either way is possible, this is Chaos.

But it is just one prophesy out of many and no more or less contradictory than the other ones.

Compared to Abbadon, Lady Malys is much more flexible strategist, and copes with failure or changes in plans much better than Abbadon. Unlike Abbadon, Malys’ Black Crusades don’t really have do-or-die goals, but more of checklists of “things we’d like to do”. As long as the Black Crusade doesn’t get stalled at Cadia, raping the fields, salting the people, and burning the water of numerous Imperial Worlds counts as a success and anything else is a bonus. (It helps that she tends to have salt-the-earth retreat plans as opposed to Abbadon’s “leave my allies out to dry while I fuck off to the Eye of Terror”) Additionally, despite her mania, drug problems, etc., she is often the only sane man among the Cronedar (or, at least, the sanest person in the room), and one of the most capable in terms of long-term planning.

On the other hand, despite being a superb tactical genius, on a personal level Malys is completely ruled by her emotions. Her characteristic mania and her desire to lead from the front means that she has often overestimated herself and ends up dying. Several times. Despite being able to plan out strategems months in advance that still manage to baffle the most tactically inclined minds in the Imperium, when not dealing with something that she personally finds interesting she bores quickly and has the idle behavior of a child that enjoys torturing small animals for fun.

It’s possible that Malys getting herself killed is what turned the tide for some Black Crusades, as she likely respawns in the Eye far from the front lines and in the time it takes her to get back Be’lakor, Luther, Arrontyr, the Taskmaster, and literally everyone else will be squabbling for control.

On a very short-term, day-to-day basis, Malys is all about self-gratification and doing what makes herself feel good. Eat that extra donut. Make out with your boyfriend when you want, where you want. Kill a co-worker for looking at you funny. Ultimately she feels she needs no further justification. She wants to do a thing so she does a thing. If it bothers you then you can try and stop her.

However, on a longer term basis Malys is capable of making plans and is usually capable of putting instant self-gratification aside for bigger goals. Some days where she's not that high but hasn't come completely down yet she sees herself as surrounded by idiots for others not being able to do the same. She sees herself as the chosen messiah of the gods destined to spread Chaos to the whole galaxy, even before other people did. Yes, the Beast came close but failed, but of course he would, you need a true member of the chosen people of the gods to get shit done. It's possible the results of the Raid of Cthonia gave her the confidence to try aiming for something bigger.

If she can unearth herself from the cocaine heap and remove the dicks for a few minutes she may tell you of her long term goal of drowning the entire galaxy in Chaos jizz to turn everything into an Eye of Terror tier Chaos Storm in which the party never ends for anyone because no matter how torturous the experience, no matter how extreme the sensations nobody will be able to die. You can murder and rape and do ALL OF THE DRUGS and things not even permitted by the laws of physics for all eternity at greater levels of intensity than can be ever imagined by mortal minds in this era. The Fall was a good proof of concept and warm up for what she's got planned but even the worst of the Old Sinners from the Eldar Empire would look on with awe and wonder and maybe a little fear at the orgy she's working towards. And everyone is coming along for the ride.

Malys does actually have redeeming virtues. Like loyalty. She honestly loves Vect in her own twisted, [[Malekith]]-esque way. And she would never think of betraying the Chaos gods (which is rather notable), with the possible exception of if they did something like tell her to kill Vect while the two were at a good point in their relationship, which the gods aren't foolish enough to do so because they would lose the loyalty of a perfectly good follower for no gain. Unlike canon Abbadon, who plans to jump ship and betray the gods as soon as he gets to Terra and doesn't need them anymore, Malys honestly loves serving the gods, because it defines her and gives her purpose. And unlike a lot of schmucks on Shaa-Dome, she has enough power to meaningfully turn her back on the gods. If one rescinded their backing without all four doing so at once, she could slaughter enough of that gods' followers with the backing of the other three that they'd be vulnerable to another three-on-one beatdown like Nurgle got during the Raid (or worse). To be frank, the idea of someone having that much power and not being interested in backstabbing the person above them is unthinkable and kind of creepy to the Chaos gods. It'd be like having an insane fangirl who can nonetheless mess your day up.

At the same time, Malys often finds herself frustrated by the many of the other Crone Eldar, who don't seem to have the ambition that she does and she often feels like one of the few reasonable individuals around because they can't restrain themselves enough to get shit done. On a bad day, Malys sees the Taskmaster as a sycophant, the Crow as a babbling idiot, Nimina as an evangelist who needs to do less preaching and more getting shit done, and Arrotyr as an unreliable team killing dickbag. Not that any of the other named Crones are much better. Riastrad is a Leeroy Jenkins, Kaimon is a narcissist and a dumbass, Malaria is too stoned to be of much use, and the Choir of Despair is considered by most to be an overglorified talking bed pet (and may not be a Crone). This is usually when the drugs are starting to run out, Malys is starting to come off her high, and the Black Crusade is in danger of falling apart.

Malys' flagship is the ''Manifest Ecstasy''. We don't have much else on it beyond the bitchin' name.

To get a better feel for Malys' personality, one good place to start would be looking at [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Black Crusades|the Black Crusades]], which she typically leads.

''' Malys' Children '''

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Vect and Malys have had many children, though have not produced any official heirs with each other yet (unrecognized heirs may exist, and their lack of offspring might not be in stone, there was even a suggestion of a Malus Darkblade-style Crone who is trying to live up to the reputation of Vect and Malys whom both give zero shits about). Neither Crone or Dark Eldar society is big on fidelity, and in both orgies and casual sex are as common as handshakes, though unplanned pregnancies are much less common due to the eldar reproductive system. Basically, as long as Vect or Malys don’t forget who is supposed to come first in their heart (and in the periods in which the two are not an item not even then), they could care less about the other’s sexual dalliances.

In Malys’ case, she actually disregards most of her offspring, only really counting the few she's acknowledged, and even with her acknowledgement it confers no special right in and of itself. Some will certainly have grown up quite forgotten about, attended to by the staff of her disused mansion/embassy on the central layer of Shaa-Dome, but certainly many more would have been discarded, sacrificed, or played with to a fatal end. She typically only acknowledges her bastards when she needs something from them or one of them manages to impress her. Many do try to impress her in an attempt to earn their mother’s favor, but she could care less. Malys is the ultimate absentee mother, caring more about Deus Vulting than any child, and the only reason any might survive to adulthood is she has servants to take care of them.

Some Crones (both Malys' actual offspring and pretenders) even claim to be Malys’ children in an attempt to gain prestige, though eldar society typically frowns on that and imposters can be violently disabused of such a notion, often by their mother themselves. Although Malys' offspring often think they are important because of their lineage, they should really be thankful for being allowed to be born and survive to adulthood at all; Malys has sometimes intentionally had children because she gets off on the unique twisted sensations of sacrificing your unborn child to the Chaos gods and using daemons as a method of abortion. Not necessarily in that order. [[Squad_Broken|The cramping and sickness that usually follows premature births would probably be orgasmic for her, and most Crone Eldar for that matter]].

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==Arrotyr, Marshal of the Old Helm==
Arrotyr was a descendant of one of the old military families of the Old Eldar Empire, one that could trace its heritage back to the days of the War in Heaven. His ancestor was famous for having once personally bested the Necron Imotekh the Stormlord both tactically and in personal combat, and all members of his house were expected to follow in his ancestor’s stead.

When Arrotyr saw the disgusting murder orgies that sprung immediately prior to the birth of Slaanesh, Arrotyr put two and two together and assumed that the person who was responsible for all this was the goddess of sex and fertility, Isha. Although some in the empire knew of the whole Slaanesh thing, Arrotyr wasn’t one of them. So Arrotyr simply did the “logical” thing and marched his soldiers into the biggest temple devoted to Isha on Shaa-Dome and simply started killing everyone there (shades of the Greeks desecrating the temple of Athena in the Illiad). For obvious reasons, this did not stop the Fall. Keep in mind that while Arrotyr might have considered himself the only sane person in the waning days of the empire, he wasn’t. He was so crazy and ruthless it’s amazing he hadn’t falled to Khorne already ([[Awesome|think Eldar Quaritch]]). However, Khorne was amused by such an epic display of team-killing (plus the butchered civilians) that he blessed Arrotyr and his warriors, making them the flaming skeleton terminators we all know and fear today.

When Imotekh woke up, he either saw Arrotyr as a worthy opponent to succeed his ancestor, or wanted to humiliate him for what his ancestor did to him.

Either that or the old Arrotyr is literally the current Arrotyr, only having gone through several thousand cycles of reincarnation.

==Iygonesh Orvass, the Taskmaster of Slaanesh ==

Iygonesh (pronounced "egonesh") Orvass was a minor cousin of the royal house of the Old Eldar Empire that gets involved with the cabal of seers that want to make a god of art and joy. Where as they are all decadent and degenerate beyond some of the worst historical excesses, they are fairly dignified and refined relative to the cruelest parts of the Old Empire, and do have the sense of noblesse oblige that was said to have surrounded the early conception of Slaanesh. Iygonesh is one of the circle's important ways into favor with the Eldar imperial family, and palace connections he can offer allow them to gain the patronage of the royal house. During this period of intrigue and positioning the project was already growing libertine, but the introduction of the royal family and court's influence immediately turn the whole thing into a massive grotesque party. With its powerful backers and mass cultural appeal to the Eldar in that era the cult was relatively quick to consolidate power, with the royal house using the spread of the new faith and growing warp energy to subdue longtime uncooperative elements or drive them away. At the same time the circle structured and exalted the bases practices of the Eldar upper class under their arcane hedonism, and guided the riotous 'enjoyment' of them masses to best form their god. 

Tensions and intrigues are already coming to a head as the singularity is reached in the warp. Slaanesh is already being seen in hallucinations, dreams, flickering in the smoky halls of palace, among bodies in the flesh pits of Shaa-Dome. Around this time something gives, climax is reached, and the Eye of Terror opens. Shaa-Dome and most of the Eldar's webway megastructures fall into the Warp, Arrotyr arrives in time to fall in with them, and the Eldar king and much of the royal family die first as the imperial eldar palace is ground zero, when all hell breaks loose.

Not yet decided what exactely initiates the Fall, be it the death (snuff) of the king, some final rite initiated by the circle of seers, or even just some last line crossed. Not yet determined if Iygonesh killed the king, if Slaanesh itself killed the king, or if the king just got it in the orgies. Most of the Eldar present were quickly used and consumed by the young god, particular among them many of the inner circle, royalty, and partakers in the festivities of its birth. The Taskmaster was one of the ones that wasn't, and in one of the first lulls in Slaanesh's happy birthday he met his god/dess and they conversed. It became clear that the Taskmaster was totally and maniacally devoted to Slaanesh, not as an ideal of pleasure or fulfillment of fantasy, or as a pitiful Eldar god, but as the god he helped shape and structure. The Taskmaster had always been involved for the sake of this interest, the creation of a being beyond just immortal, the beauty of transcendence attained, that had driven him, and now he would serve its whims as the clear perfect purpose. The young God/dess was flattered, and Slaanesh felt this exaltation ringing within its own nature, and took the taskmaster into its service as the festivities resumed. Slaanesh's attention was soon caught by Khorne, and the Taskmaster was bid to take the celebration to Arrotyr, who was burning his way into the shellworld, and goes with the blessing and might of his worshipful Prince of Pleasure.

tl;dr: Iygonesh is the yandere Renfield to Slaanesh's Dracula, and the rest of the galaxy is worse off for it.

Iygonesh and Arrotyr knew of each other in passing before the Fall. Iygonesh confronted Arrotyr at some courtly social function. Iygonesh saw Arrotyr as a brute due to him being eldar Quaritch and spending most of his time securing the borders of the Old Empire in quasi-exile. Arrotyr saw Iygonesh as a poncy aristocrat and a fop. Iygonesh also knew of the Crow as well. The Indigo Crow was a well-known figure in Eldar occultism, with the mantle of the Crow (if not the individual wearing it) being almost as old as the Old Empire, and was a figure of reverence to the underground esoteric societies established by the rich and bored that eventually became the Tzeentchian colleges. As the chosen herald of the creative god of Sorcery, the Crow was seen as a Chaos-aligned, dark magic teaching lecturer and promoter of better living through sorcery. If you impressed Tzeentch with your ritual and delving into the occult the Crow might unexpectedly show up and teach you a magic trick or two before wandering out. The Crow mostly hung around the royal family due to them being "major patrons of the psychic and sorcerous arts" valuable to his master. Iygonesh might have dropped in on a lecture given by the Crow in the palace gardens while a guest at some point before the Fall or seen him during his experience with the pleasure cults, but didn't know the Crow personally.

The Taskmaster is also Malys biggest threat for control of the Crone Eldar outside of other Chaos Undivided eldar. This being Chaos, there is always the threat of backstabbing from everybody, but in general Nimina prefers to preach and the Crow is occupied with their own plans. Arrotyr rants and raves, but much of his hate tends to be directed towards the Slaaneshis and the general populace of Shaa-Dome and he’s more focused on demonstrating the superiority of Khorne in general than challenging Malys specifically. The Taskmaster thinks they should be in charge because the largest segment of the population is Slaaneshi or venerates Slaanesh in some way and it's in the nature of Slaaneshi to always seek more.

== Iyanna Arienal ==

Iyanna Arienal, head Spirit Seer of Iyanden, would in this AU be a supreme space navy organizer and essentially what amounts to the military governor of the most colossal Star Fort ever to be built with all the authority of the Imperia Navy that this implies. Her joint Imperial title that she avoids using at all costs is Lady High Admiral.

Craftworld Iyanden still does have a disproportionately huge number of dead dudes walking around in wraith constructs. Some say as many as every other craftworld combined, the majority of them raised by her.

They were raised from living death into unlife when the 'Nids attacked just like the main timeline but unlike the main timeline they were not strictly needed. Prince Yriel appeared at the head of an entire Armada and half a million Kriegers, not that Spirit Seer Arienal knew this was going to happen.

So with the combined efforts of the risen dead and overwhelming conventional forces the 'Nids were driven back and the smashed up Craftworld rebuilt by the Navy.

== The Phoenix Lords ==

The general view among the human population of the Imperium is that the Phoenix Lords are the eldar's primarchs: great warriors and generals who helped them rise from the muck during their peoples' darkest hour. By the same token, the Eldar see the primarchs as the human's Phoenix Lords. Of course, most Eldar would also point out that ''their'' great warriors happen to be still alive, in a manner of speaking. (If you're wondering, the Tau consider/considered Farsight and Shadowsun their primarch/Phoenix Lord equivalents).

It's not entirely clear what is going on with the Phoenix Lords' resurrection yet. One suggestion is it may be something like the Doctor in ''Doctor Who'': the Phoenix Lords reincarnate with each new wearer added on, but the persona is slightly different and not quite the same. However this is not agreed on. The Phoenix Lords are agreed to be getting stronger from absorbing new exarchs, though.

Most of the Phoenix Lords, with a few notable exceptions, were students of Asurmen at the time of the Fall. Many of them came with Asurmen as part of the Raid. Many of those that came back were so shaken by their experiences they stepped off the Path. Leithon the Wraithguard was one of them (he joined the Harlequins, and later the Disciples of Kurnous). The few that remained, along with Asurmen, became the Phoenix Lords of legend.

=== Asurmen ===

As in canon, the Shrine of Asur was besieged by the hordes of Chaos during the birth of Slaanesh. In order to protect his students, Asurmen took up his weapons and fought innumerable daemons, and eventually, four greater daemons, one from each of the Ruinous Powers. The point of Asurmen's battle was not to fight four greater daemons and win. No mortal, no matter how powerful, could do that. Instead his goal was to stall the daemons for long enough that his students and the population of the Shrine of Asur could retreat to the safehouses beneath the planet, warded with runes so heavily it would take one of the dark gods themselves to break in, where they could wait out the fallout from the birth of Slaanesh.

"I win."<br>
- Last words of the original incarnation of Asurmen, before being decapitated by a greater daemon of Khorne

Asurmen fully expected to die facing the greater daemons, his armor dragged into the warp and his soul seized by the Chaos Gods. But Asurmen underestimated the resolve of his students. When Asurmen fell his students, who had secretly avoided going into the safehouses, flew into a rage and fought back the daemons long enough for them to recover their dead teacher's body and armor and retreat back to the safety of the safehouses.

=== Jain Zar ===

Although Asurmen was by far the grandmaster of the Shrine of Asur and the one in charge of the place, few who would argue that Jain Zar was second in command. Jain Zar was the first student of Asurmen, and acted as Asurmen’s right hand, constant companion, and closest confidant. It is even rumored that their relationship was more than simply platonic, but nothing has ever emerged to confirm this, and frankly after the both of them have been reborn so many times any such feelings are likely to have been muddled by the repeated reincarnation.

As in the new canon, long before the Fall, Asurmen was kind of a ditherer when it came to the Pleasure Cults. He wasn’t exactly a huge fan of them but at the same time he wasn’t an anti-pleasure cult zealot like his brother Tethesis, because hey, it’s a cult devoted to making people happy? What could be wrong with that? It might have helped that he was living on the far edges of the Empire and didn’t see how the Crone Worlds had devolved into “what cruel and unusual shit can we do for kicks today?” He did leave the Empire for the Exodite Worlds, but that was mostly because his brother was doing so and he wanted to support him. As the Exodite colony grew and the first generation of Eldar outside of the empire started being born, Asurmen was happy for his brother, but still thought going to live in the middle of nowhere was a bit of an overreaction.

That all changed when the Exodite world was ransacked for slaves by raiders from Commorragh. It should be noted that this was back in the days before Commorragh was seen as synonymous with treachery. Back then it was merely seen as an extralegal domain where Eldar aristocrats went to satisfy their perverse lusts that even the mainstream empire found distasteful. And here they were hunting down their own people like they were game animals. They even siphoned away the souls of the planet’s World Spirit for use back in Commorragh. Asurmen just barely managed to save his brother’s soul, but the rest were stolen.

This was the breaking point for Asurmen. It didn’t matter what one thought of the pleasure cults, this was simply wrong. He had caught a glimpse of the abyss into which the Empire was headed, and he didn’t like it. No longer would he stand by and watch his people slip away into madness. If there were Eldar who wanted to stand against the darkness, he would teach them how to fight it tooth and nail. It was this event that would put Asurmen on the path to being an eldar nobody to the kind of person who, by the time of the actual Fall, was respected enough that he could speak and get all of the Craftworlds to shut up and listen (if he hadn’t died in the immediate aftermath of the Fall, anyway).

As in canon, Asurmen may not be the guy’s original name in the first place, as it basically means “left hand of god”. This isn’t exactly uncommon for the Phoenix Lords, Jain Zar was originally named Faraethil even in the old fluff, and I’m damn sure Maugan Ra isn’t the guy’s original name (seeing as it means “harvester of souls”).

The only other Eldar to survive the Commorroghites’ raid on the Exodite World was Jain Zar. Jain Zar was the young daughter of a widowed Eldar woman who had been born on the planet. The two of them lived next to Tethesis and Asurmen and Tethesis had been in a relationship with the older of the two. Asurmen fought his way to his home to try to rescue his brother and his neighbors, but only found Jain Zar alive.

Unlike Asurmen, Jain Zar never grew up surrounded by the glories of the Eldar Empire. She never set foot on Shaa-Dome or seen the impossible geometries of Commorragh. All she thinks of when anyone mentions the Eldar Empire is how slavers from the Empire killed her entire family. Comparing her to the Crone or the Dark Eldar is kind of a sore spot for her. Vulkan called her a credit to her species in respect to the Crones and Dark Eldar and got an earful for it.

=== Fuegan ===

Fuegan’s a [[Kharn|pretty fun guy]]. He’s loud, boisterous, and if you just went by his personality alone one would be surprised to find out he’s an Eldar. He’s also pretty simple. He likes to blow stuff up. That said, don’t confuse “simple” with “stupid” or “incompetent”. Fuegan is a genius with explosives and is more than capable of long term planning, and he is more than willing to make use of his demeanor and reputation to make an enemy commander drop their guard and trick them into stepping on a landmine. His willpower is also legendary, but then again all of the Phoenix Lords are known for their willpower.

He also swears to a degree that would make a Cadian-Ulthwéan’s jaw drop.

=== Arhra ===

Like the other Phoenix Lords, Arhra participated in the Raid. However, he ended up a PTSD-ridden wreck from the whole thing, and unlike the other Phoenix Lords he snapped, went full on H.P. Lovecraft existential despair, and burned down the Shrine of Asur. <s>His current whereabouts are currently unknown</s> Who are we kidding, he's probably Drazhar.

=== Baharroth ===

When the old guard talk about Eldar heroes, it’s usually Baharroth and to a lesser degree Asurmen who they tend to think of, as opposed to people like Eldrad. Baharroth is the ace of the Phoenix Lords: He’s not a master of all like Asurmen, but is by far one of the most skilled non-Asurmen Phoenix Lords, in addition to his style of combat being one of the flashiest as well.

Baharroth’s Craftworld, Anaen, was one of those nearly destroyed by the War of the Beast, invaded by a Khornate Warlord named Trarkh (unclear if it was one of the Fallen, a Crone, or a Chaos Ork). Anaen was not completely depopulated, but nearly the entire population including Baharroth’s entire family (barring his brother, Maugan Ra) was killed in the battle despite the two brothers fighting on the world and the survivors and what was left of the Infinity Circuit immigrated to Biel-Tan.

The downside to Baharroth is he is also the most racist of the Phoenix Lords. Not in a Dorhai or Dark Eldar way, but in an “Eldar’s burden” kind of way. He is very vocal about how he sees the Eldar as the pinnacle of creation and it’s up to the uncorrupted children of Isha and Kurnous to save the rest of the galaxy from themselves. As a result, while he is an ace in combat, he is a pain to deal with personally. This is one of the two reasons the old guard like him so much. Asurmen was/is a pragmatist who was willing to bend rules and change the status quo if it was the right thing to do (he did agree to Eldrad’s proposal after all). Baharroth is more of an idealist who conforms to the older generations’ ideas of how things “should be”. The other reason is he lasted longer in his original incarnation than almost any other Phoenix Lord barring Maugan Ra, and so many of his deeds pre-reincarnation are much more recent.

=== Maugan Ra ===

Maugan Ra, as we all know, is the surly, aloof loner of the Phoenix Lords. Though in this case he has good reason to be, his entire Craftworld is dead, it’s memory perverted, and he’s one of the only survivors. In contrast to his brother, Maugan Ra is one of the least snobby Phoenix Lords, but this kind of manifests as a cynical fatalism towards everyone and everything. Everything dies eventually and everyone fucks up no matter who you are, no use sugarcoating it or pretending it didn’t happen.

Depending on the timeline, it’s not clear how old he was when Altansar got destroyed. Ra was said to be young at the time and was one of the few to make it off the Craftworld, but Altansar fell during the Fall of the Eldar, which was the same time that Asurmen pulled off his Caledor the Dragontamer impression. So he either did not learn under Asurmen directly (which further drives a wedge between him and the other Phoenix Lords) or he was maybe a young adult and hadn’t trained under Asurmen as long when the Fall happened. He could have even pulled a Luke-and-Yoda thing where he went off to try and save Altansar as an incompletely trained young hothead and failed.

Despite being all grim and dark, he does have standards. He would never kill an Exarch, much less an Avatar of Khaine, just to temper his weapon. He does have a heart of gold even though you’d never get him to admit it, he wouldn’t keep fighting the good fight if he didn’t. He was loyal to Asurmen and kind of insulted when the other Phoenix Lords suspected him of being the traitor that destroyed the Shrine of Asur, but it manifested as more of “You seriously thought I did it on the basis that I’m creepy and a loner. Wow. Way to make assumptions.”

Maugan Ra spends most of his time bumming out in the Webway. It means he can show up wherever and whenever he needs to and make a huge difference, and at the same time he doesn’t have people bothering him all the time. He's also the only Phoenix Lord to have never reincarnated.

=== Karandas ===

Surprisingly enough, it’s Karandas, rather than Maugan Ra, who has the biggest chip on his shoulder. Maugan Ra has angst over Altansar, but he lets it all hang out rather than keep it in. Karandas, on the other hand, is the only Phoenix Lord who was not the original master of their aspect. Arhra was. Karandas was just Arhra’s best student. So he thinks he should have seen Arhra’s PTSD-induced betrayal coming and stopped him (depending on how we interpret canon Eldar culture, on starships at least it’s seen as the job of the second-in-command to relieve their superior of duty if they think they’re going off the deep end).

He’s smart enough about it to not completely bottle it up inside and let it fester, because that’s exactly what happened to Arhra and he knows where that path leads.

==  Eltharion the Blind ==

Note: Needs possible name change

A Webway guide who was captured by the Dark Eldar. They wanted the passwords to get into Craftworld Iyanden via the Webway. He refused. The Dark Eldar responded by taking him apart a bit at a time.

By the time the rescue party came Eltharion was little more than a mutilated body wrapped around a soulstone. He was so bad that some question whether it would be more merciful to put him out of his misery and bring him back as a wraithguard. He refused. The Eldar did all they could for him, but the poisons used by the Dark Eldar prevented them from healing many of his injuries. Among other things, they were never able to fix his eyes, and he's completely blind.

Eltharion's skills at navigating the Webway has not diminished, despite his blindness. Indeed, his Webway-navigating skills have seemingly improved, as he no longer has a sense of sight to be tricked by the alien geometries of the Webway, making him one of the best Webway guides alive.

He hates the Dark Eldar. Even before the union between Vect and Malys, he was all in favour of exterminating every citizen of the Dark City down to the last man woman and child

==  Trigwathon and Delgaranor ==

[[Teclis]] and [[Tyrion]]-inspired characters in 40k. Originally children of an Isha priestess. Both grew up big and strong with classically handsome features. Both got drawn down the paths of Khaine, both joined the Dire Avengers path. Both build up names for themselves.

Then in one particularly awful battle Trigwathon takes a Nurgle blade in the gut right up to the hilt. It should have been fatal, eventually.

At the end of the battle Delgaranor finds his brother with the blade still in him. Pulls blade out and carries his bleeding brother all the way to their mothers temple.

Their mother manages to halt the poison and drive back the infection but Trigwathon is withered and weak and in pain.

Needless to say he isn't capable of walking the war paths any more. Mopes around temple for a while in a foul mood.

Delgaranor abandons the Dire Avenger path and takes up the Striking Scorpion path.

Trigwathon starts training as a seer. Has many masters as most grow weary of his increasingly acerbic and sardonic personality.

Delgaranor gets bored of Scorpions. Becomes Swooping Hawk.

Trigwathon becomes a fully fledged Warlock. Admittedly he has to lean on a wooden staff and wield a stiletto knife rather than the usual sword of office. This makes him no less lethal as his psychic training allows him to know exactly where to shank you with that knife.

Delgaranor eventually becomes a well respected Autarch, at his side is always a rather grim figure in ill fitting robes.

Alternatively, it was suggested that Delgaranor ended up being killed later in life, and Trigwathon, who couldn't bear to lose his brother, dabbled in Spiritseering and brought him back as a Wraithguard/Wraithlord. A Wraithguard who has all the skill of someone that walked down several Aspects. The two end up complementing each other rather well. [[Age of Sigmar|Trigwathon has a weak physical constitution compared to other Warlocks and needs his brother to keep the enemy off him so he can work his psychic mojo. And like all Wraithguards, Delgaranor is nearly blind on his own and needs his brother to point him in the right direction of the enemy]]

==  The Sanguinor ==

Unbeknownst to anyone, the Sanguinor is actually Azkaellon, who was the sole survivor of the First Company at the plaza of the Eternity Gate after being rescued from the brink of death by the Alpha Legion. The rest of the Blood Angels thinks he died along with everyone else though they couldn't find a body, and wracked with survivors guilt Azkaellon becomes the Sanguinor as penance. He camps out in a secluded corner of the Webway (which explains how he's able to live so long despite being a normal SM) and uses the Emperor's Tarot to find Blood Angels in need. Due to his immense skill and some luck he has prevailed every time. Ironically, a mysterious Sanguinius-like stranger showing up in to save the day has boosted Sanguinius' legend in a roundabout way, creating a minor source of Warp power which Azkaellon has been unknowingly tapping into allowing him to do things like suplex Bloodthirsters and denying him the death he desperately seeks. Alternatively, he just had latent psyker powers that were activated by his near-death experience.

==  Cyrene Valantion ==

Cyrene Valantion was Sanguinius' lover and the mother of Belarius, but originally she was just one of the childhood friends that Sanguinius had when he regally snuck out of the palace. Back when his wings hadn't grown too much and he could hide them under a coat and just look like he had a fucked up spine. And shoulders.

Cyrene Valantion was a factory worker from age 5 or 6 onward and unsafe working conditions and fumes gradually took her eyes, going so far as to fuck with the optic nerves and make replacements difficult.

Sanguinius would visit her often as they grew up though at the time she never knew who he was and by the time the wings were getting impossible to hide she was almost completely blind.

Then events of state take over, Duscht Jemanic is and up absorbed into Europia and the Imperium, Sanguinius becomes a general in The Warlord's army and he doesn't see her again for several years.

Sanguinius was always super human, he was made that way. It's possible that the next time he saw her was during a victory parade after the surrender of Merika and the completion of Earth Unification. He would have been in the parade in all his splendor, he was nothing if not magnificent and scanning he crowd he would have picked her out as a recognized face among the masses. She would not, under the Imperium, have been half starved and ill looking but he would have recognized her all the same.

After the parade he would have looked for her and asked his most trusted people to do so. It would not have been with any intent beyond just wanting to see a familiar face from a more innocent time.

Cyrene Valantion presumably did not know who her childhood friend was which would have been awkward.

Cyrene is remembered to history as the Blessed Lady and is referenced much as this in old tomes though few people today know much about her. Cyrene was shy and voluntarily avoided the spotlight, in contrast to the wives of primarchs like Guilliman, Khan, and Russ, so much less was written about her. Family was important to Sangy; after being treated by his father like an investment and a legacy rather than an actual son, he would have vowed to be a better man and father than his old man ever was, but he didn't want to force his wife to be something she wasn't. Additionally, Cyrene isn't as well known as Yolande or Russ and Khan's wives because there was always more weird apocryphal stuff surrounding Sanguinius than any of the other primarchs due to his popularity and it gets hard to tell fact from fiction.

Oscar remains silent on the subject because if Sangy didn't want it written down he sure as shit isn't going to start talking now.

After both Sanguinius and Cyrene were long gone, there are strange, occasional appearances of a Cyrene-like figure down the ages. Nothing that can be proven. Sort of a Lady in the Lake with the Blood Angels equivalent of the grim reaper. Maybe she appears to a Death Company veteran, worn and broken looking down odds that he can't see the other side of. She would not offer him a way out, not if there is no way out, but she would offer him comfort. She will be there when the load gets too heavy, when the pain gets too much, when he falls for the last time she will catch him.

It won't offer him any practical help but it will offer him some measure of comfort in those last moments.

The Blood Angels don't know who or what she is/was, they just know her as what they see her now. The Blessed Lady, The Blind Guide, Lady in the Red Dress and a few other names. There are a few books, more pamphlets really, written by the Chaplains that say that she might be some sort of angelic creature or rare benevolent warp spirit.

There is no hard proof that she exists.

She is like the Savlar gods. Nobody has been able to prove her a daemon or even existing, but the visions all share too many similarities to be coincidence. In the case of Cyrene Valantion her name is forgotten by all bar one old immortal but many Blood Angels know her now as The Blessed Lady and they can all give an identical description from the red dress to the grey blind eyes.

The apparitions have in recent centuries been gradually increasing in frequency. Nobody in the chapter knows what this means by they are hopeful. Some in the Death Company even go in to battle screaming some variation of "For The Blessed Lady" to the confusion of their allies.

==  Lady Celestine ==

In this timeline, Celestine is a distant descendant of Sanguinius whose genes lined up in just the right way that she got the wings and psyker powers of her great^3000 grandfather, since there are no Imperial Saints in this timeline. The wings and the psychic powers seem to go together, seeing Sanguinius needed to bend reality slightly in order to fly with his wings.

Celestine was born on Ophelia VII, a Katholian theocracy world. Even if Lady Celestine had not become famous by her later actions, she still would have gone down in the history books in some small way for causing the Ophelia VII mutation scare. Ophelia VII was a Katholian theocracy world, which took pride in having one of the lowest mutation rates in the entire Imperium. So when a baby with wings was born to two completely normal parents, this naturally raised concerns of Chaos corruption, possibly signs of cultists poisoning the well in preparation for invasion. On most other planets, Celestine would have immediately been labelled a mutant and left to die. But Ophelia VII was proud of its low mutation rate, and immediately sent the infant off for testing to get to the bottom of this potential corruption problem. To everyone’s surprise, the tests came back negative. Despite the infant being born with bird wings, there was no sign of taint from the Ruinous Powers.

Celestine had a rather humble childhood out in the rural areas of Ophelia VII, albeit one without a lot of social interaction due to her condition. Celestine’s family were mainly pigeon farmers, and Celestine spent a lot of her childhood mucking out bird poop. That lasted up until she was about twelve or thirteen.

Then the visions came.

Some were good. Some were mundane. Some were horrible. And some came true. Having visions of the future isn’t exactly a novel trait in the Imperium. In a galaxy of quadrillions, there are many who can see some, ranging from the most skilled Eldar farseer. But the visions plus the wings was enough to get the whole “descendant of Sanguinius” train rolling. Sanguinius was never considered a holy figure in Katholianism due to him never actually having been Katholian but like all people in the Imperium the citizens of Ophelia VII hold his name high due to him having been a genuinely good person who died saving the human species.

But Celestine is Katholian to the bone and marrow and she is almost certainly the only unquestionably legitimate heir to Sanguinius. This combined with traditional iconography and angelic depictions makes her a perfect banner holder, there is no need for a recruitment drive in the Ophelia sector, if anything now there is need to restrict the recruitment so as not to deprive man power from vital industries.

That was years ago. Celestine is a grown woman now (20s to 30s, old enough to have seen combat but young enough to have not received rejuvenants). Celestine is lot like Jeanne D’Arc, only one who instead of being burned at the stake had to become hard in order to survive the horrors of the galaxy. Nobledark or not, this is still the Warhammer 40k universe. Orks don’t care if your banna wavva refuses to pick up a weapon to defend themselves. Celestine has killed multiple times, and is haunted by the fact that so many good men and women have died because of her words. She knows how important it is for her to remain a symbol of hope to the people of Ophelia VII and the Katholians, but quite frankly it’s draining.

Celestine honestly doesn’t care that much about the whole “descendant of Sanguinius” thing, never publicly pushing the claim beyond saying "probably, how many other winged humans have there been?". Sanguinius lived so many years ago that the number of people who can claim descent from him could probably fill a solar system. The same thing is true with Guilliman, Vulkan, or Khan. And although she’s a hardcore Katholian Sanguinius isn’t really seen as a prophet in that religion. What she does care about is that it gets people to listen to her, and if people do that then maybe she can prevent the horrible things she sees in her visions from coming to pass.

However, at the same time she is concerned about the expectations other people are starting to have of her. Sanguinius was one of the greatest heroes the Imperium ever had, and people are starting to expect Celestine to live up to that legacy. Celestine is increasingly concerned that she can't live up to the expectations people are placing on her (especially since she probably only knows the sanitized history of Sanguinius rather than what the primarch was really like), and it's starting to weigh on her.

Celestine doesn't carry the name Baal, given that she was not a member of the nobility her family records don't go back much further than her great grandparents.

Celestine’s skills and psychic strength don’t seem as potent as Sanguinius, but then again Sanguinius was a Mark III S Astartes who lived for hundreds of years. It’s possible that Celestine’s level of psychic development is what Sanguinius would have been if he were her age and hadn’t been augmented at age 17 (or so). There are some differences between Celestine and Sanguinius besides gender and geneseed. Sanguinius' wings were pure white, making him look like an archangel. Celestine's are white with black tips like some seabirds, still a very clean, regal look but one that makes her look more like an earthly figure than the larger than life demigod Sanguinius (and fitting with the theme of Celestine not sure if she can live up to the hype).

And, of course, not everyone trusts Celestine. Some Inquisitors are suspicious of the events on Ophelia VII, pointing out that not all Warp corruption is Chaos-derived.

As for Celestine her life has taken a turn that she did not want. She wanted to be a farmer like her parents or maybe become a nun. Now regardless of her desires or intent she is a mid-scale political focus. She knows that she will receive rejuvenant treatments to extend her usefulness to the Imperium as long as possible, she will not be permitted to become a nun, she will have to take a husband to preserve the line of Sanguinius (probably one of noble stock, though not if she has any say in it and the burgeoning relationship with her squire) and she will spend the rest of her long life shipped from one war front to another bolstering moral.

==  Legienstrausse ==

Legienstrausse is currently a prisoner on Ganymede. To understand why she is a prisoner it is necessary to explain a bit about Ganymede. Ganymede is not the SCP Foundation. It does not exist to poke and study anomalous phenomena (especially so close to Old Earth), there are other facilities to do that. It exists to contain beings that cannot be conventionally killed (like Apep) or objects that cannot be destroyed either because the Imperium does not have the technology or because the Imperium isn’t sure destroying the object would release some primordial evil or cause every star within a ten light-year radius to go supernova. Anything that is a threat to the Imperium that can be safely destroyed is either killed or chucked into a star. Given this, why does the Imperium let Legienstrausse live and not just take her behind the space barn and shoot her in the head? It turns out Legienstrausse is rather well-adjusted and not hostile towards the Imperium. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there are at least a few hundred other Maerorus running around loose in the Imperium, and they aren’t as friendly.

Legienstrausse was one of 10000 volunteers in an experiment to “build a better Assassin” by splicing DNA from other organisms into the human genome, which is not as controversial in this timeline because the human form is not considered holy. However, among those organisms were things like Kroot and tyranids and given that most people would have probably looked at the proposal for a part-Kroot, part-tyranid, part-whatever Assassin and gone “are you fucking serious”, it’s likely that the Crone Eldar, the Dark Eldar, or Fabius Bile might be involved (Legienstrausse does have some notable similarities to the New Men). Of those ten thousand, only 0.1% actually survived the procedure. Of those hundred, only one was remotely sane.

That’s the reason why Legienstrausse is kept around; she is remarkably good at tracking down and killing her own kind. The Inquisition and Grey Knights use her when hunting the rest of the failed Maerorus, albeit kept on a very, very short leash. The good news is that the failed Maerorus are completely unable to coordinate with one another, seeing each other as competing predators (with the exception of their brood) and not as able to subvert society as much as, say, a C’tan vampire. On the other hand, they are excellent at avoiding detection and are basically like a cross between a C’tan vampire and purestrain genestealer when cornered.

That’s why Legienstrausse is kept on Ganymede. Even though she might be a well-adjusted individual, that doesn’t change the change the fact that if she ever did snap or get subverted she could cause a lot of damage before anyone could stop her. She’s just too dangerous to let her walk around free. Better to keep her where the Imperium can see her and terminate her on the spot if necessary. When not on the hunt, Legienstrausse is kept on Ganymede in reasonable comfort, with limited access to the non-critical parts of the installation. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing|Legienstrausse knows she lives in a gilded cage, but she also knows the alternatives are much, much worse]].

It’s also entirely possible that Legienstrausse is being kept on Ganymede as a backup security measure in case anything else breaks out, like Jaq Draco. And if a second Siege of Sol happens during the End Times, Legienstrausse may end up being released along with all of Ganymede’s [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#Apep|other horrible shit]] as a final “fuck you” to whoever decides to invade the Sol system.

tl;dr: Good news - Legienstrausse herself isn't hostile. Bad news - There are a hundred times more surviving Maerorus than in canon, and they're just as bad as in vanilla.

==  Mephiston ==

Because the Black Rage doesn't exist in this timeline, Mephiston got his distinctive appearance from a very difference source. He was infected by and overcame a C'tan shard. A Nightbringer murder cult tried to infiltrate and take the Blood Angels from the inside. As the top Librarian Mephiston would be the first to notice if one of the mundanes was infected, especially when it gets to the stage when it starts messing with their minds. Heck, if the Blood Angels still have any of the blood rituals they do in canon, the head Librarian being infected might actually spread it faster.

They find Mephiston, like in Vanilla, buried under a collapsed fortification wall.

Mephiston lies their for three days writhing in agony as the sliver sits in his heart and the silver flows in his veins. Had he been a regular man or astartes he would have either died or been lost to damnation. But he is far from a normal man and considered powerful even by other powerful psyker veterans. He burns the silver blood and the sliver out of his body with witch fire doing no small amount of damage to himself in the process.

Eventually the chapter retrieves what's left of his ruined form and inch from death, pale and withered to being almost skeletal with strange internal traumas, lacerations and burns. The colour never came back to him and although he got some of his bulk back he is abnormally gaunt for a Space Marine.

So far he is the only person on record to destroy a C'tan Sliver after their own infection and survive.

Many in the chapter suspect it altered his brain slightly. He was never particularly jovial before the incident but now he's rather more grim than is pleasant to be around. Nobody is sure if the ordeal actually enhanced his abilities, as some but not he claim, as he was exceptionally powerful before.

Mephiston is crippled now compared to how he was. In terms of raw physical prowess he is nowhere near as fast or strong as he once was. When in the Gothic splendor of the Arx Angelicum with it's familiar old tiled floors, big airy windows and comfy library chairs he shuffles around in an old hessian robe like some specter of grim death. He is also possibly the only astartes that can get sunburnt and he does so quite easily because of the compromised nature of his skin.

He uses constant psyker buffs in battle to add weight to his punches and as he seems to have jumped up a power level this is truly fucking horrifying. Add to this the loss of so much body mass to the unnatural strength and what you have is something that not only has a punch like a freight train but moves at about the same speed as an inter-hive maglev. Needless to say he scares the shit out of the new recruits.

Truth be told he scares the shit out of the veterans as well at times but they can hide it better.

==  Tigurius ==

Tigurius being raised among the eldar is also supposed to be an explanation as to how the Ultramarines got a psyker that is so damn powerful, as well as a nod towards a certain retconned Ultramarine. It’s been mentioned previously that one of the reasons the eldar are such good psykers is not just raw power but because they’ve had thousands of years to practice (which is also why seers also tend to be older individuals). The only way to get to a comparable level in humans is to put them through training from hell, which is what the Grey Knights do. Tigurius spent his entire childhood in an environment tailored to teach control and refinement over psychic powers, not to mention being strong enough to be mistaken for an eldar child. He had a lot of potential, but it took seven hundred years of experience before he got good, and even then a Grey Knight or farseer would probably flatten him. Also he has trouble getting people, being used to insular and stoic eldar culture.

In terms of why the eldar woman adopted the human child, note that her family had just been wiped out, and having a child to take care of kept her from dwelling on it. Tigurius was as much a coping mechanism as a regular adoption. For the woman, it was either raise the child or go into one of those self-destructive grief spirals the Eldar are at risk for. Also note the whole idea of Tigurius having to “go back to live with his own people”. While a noble sentiment, it is still a little derogatory, and shows how in some ways the eldar have trouble “getting” the other races.

==  Eldrad, Sreta, Taldeer, and the rest of House Ulthran ==

Eldrad and Sreta don't hate each other per se. It's more accurate to say that Eldrad is merely disappointed in Sreta, that he isn't pleased with some of the things she's doing and wouldn't mind seeing her get humbled a bit. On the one hand, he's proud of her in the fact that she got her power by being damn clever (even Eldrad probably wouldn't have been able to run the cartel like she has), and her actions give Ulthwé a lot of resources and the ability to rush-buy things if need be. On the other, she got the metaphorical start-up capital to do so by capitalizing off her relationship to Eldrad (which is frowned upon in eldar society) and the way she runs the cartel is kind of shady (Sreta plays favorites with her family members).

By the same token, Sreta is frustrated with Eldrad and considers him short-sighted. Sreta considers Eldrad the patriarch of the family. Any personal feelings she holds beyond that she feels are irrelevant. She's a distinctly unpleasant woman that does unpleasant things, but she knows Eldrad does good, and thus puts her resources at his disposal. She wishes Eldrad would be more dignified and more active in politics, rankles at Eldrad's long distance approval and praise of Taldeer, and holds an especial disdain at the more distant relations that Eldrad sees fit to entertain and allow to thrive. In Sreta's balance books, there's a great deal of money lost to 'Pointless Charity from Eldrad.'

But Sreta started on the path of the servant among the eldar, and it has shaped almost the whole of her character, even as she has pushed the letter of the law to the limit to gain enough power to be considered a figure of galactic influence. She still thinks of herself as a servant, even if she sometimes holds her self appointed master in disdain. If anyone asks, Sreta would state plainly that all she has done, and she does is for the good of Ulthwé, and Eldrad. Sreta has after all earned money and influence enough to make a great deal happen. Eldrad has made use of these resources from time to time, and Sreta has never begrudged him.

But there is a tension. Sreta feels that Eldrad doesn't understand the basics of business (Make sure money comes in, don't give shit away for free) and meddles too much. And Eldrad at times wonders at times if Sreta has grown too heartless. There are a lot of people out there that Sreta has driven into despair and poverty in the name of profit. And under the name of Ulthran.

Taldeer is currently Eldrad's favorite because he sees a lot of himself in her. Taldeer rejected the cushy lifestyle of the cartel (which would have come at the cost of her ability to self-determinate) and decided to go make her own mark on the world, just as Eldrad would if he were in her situation. Taldeer making it on her own has also made her a beacon for the other unfavorite members of the Ulthran family, who were previously dependent on staying in Sreta's good graces to achieve things. So now the Ulthran cartel and the previously ostracized members are starting to stop moping around and get shit done.

It's been heavily implied that out of all the human-eldar couplings in the galaxy, Taldeer and LIVII were the ones to get pregnant as a bit of a practical joke by Isha on Eldrad to get back at him for her unexpected arranged marriage to the Emperor (that is, a hybrid was going to happen anyway, but Isha's influence over fertility in the galaxy made it happen to Eldrad's favorite child as a friendly joke). That, and Isha knows that Eldrad will literally bend fate is he has to in order to keep his family safe.

==  Jago Sevatarian ==

This is just a preliminary draft that hasn't had all the details fully hammered out yet, recorded here so it doesn't get lost.

As opposed to being a Heresy-era figure, Sevatar was born in this millenium and is the current Chapter Master of the Night Lords. Born on Nostramo, which in this timeline is a Gotham-esque planet full of ancient derelict industry and an ancient, distinguished, but impoverished society whose only export seems to be Arbites agents. Not sure what happened to Nostramo's adamantium-mining industry. On the one hand, Nostramo was strip-mined so heavily that in canon during the Crusade era Curze's pod punched right through the planet's core and when the Night Lords tried to bomb the planet they accidentally turned it into an asteroid field. On the other hand, the chunks of Nostramo left over in canon were still so rich in adamantium that Rogue Traders were still mining them under the table in M41.

Sevatar is a showman as much as anything. He has encouraged his brothers to sculpt their armour in the form of monsters and broadcasts public executions for the masses to see. He isn't one of the broken children usually adopted by the chapter nor is he a mind wiped death-row prisoner. He actually joined the chapter willingly for no other reason than a sense of duty, which was pretty fucking unique in the chapter's history. So far as anyone can tell he was perfectly normal, happily married parents, brother and sister and ordinary extended family. And while he isn't sunshine and roses he isn't a sociopath or a psychopath. Why join the Night Lords? Because he felt his theatrical abilities would be most useful there. And they have been.

Curze committed atrocities and for every field of impaled corpses a dozen foes surrendered peacefully. Sevatar attempts to accomplish this with an imagined and staged awfulness. For sure he has done terrible things but not so many as people believe. If anything his reign has been the most bloodless in the chapter's history. Indeed, if you went back and tallied up all the numbers Sevatar has actually killed far fewer people than Curze ever did. Not that you would know by asking. If you go by the stories he is a rabid monster the likes of which would be fit to be the heir of Curze.

Part of this is when Sevatar does have people killed, he does it with such spectacle that it is almost as if it is worth a dozen lesser killings. Sevatar knows how people think. He knows how to frame something for maximum fear potential in both human and alien minds, like a horror movie writer. Sevatar sees himself as questioning, refining, and rejecting Curze's methods as needed. Many of the Imperium's foes don't feel fear in the conventional sense. Sevatar's ambitions are to change that.

==  Galadrea ==

Galadrea is the current head of the Handmaidens of Isha and has been since the beginning, much like Constantin Valdor was from the end of the War of the Beast until some time after the Age of Apostasy, and is one of the few people from the “old days” that the Emperor still has around. She owes her unnaturally long life to her connection to Isha, though she’s only about as old as Macha-Isha. Although Valdor and Galadrea were close, they weren’t an item. They were merely good platonic friends, having similar (stern, humorless) personalities and a similar hobby in being crazy prepared for any possible assassination contingencies. Valdor wasn’t even into Eldar and Galadrea wasn’t even into humans, and even if they were duty would get in the way. This is exacerbated in Galadrea’s case by the fact that in the event that Macha-Isha would ever die, Galadrea would be Isha’s next host. The connections the Handmaidens get to Isha doesn’t come without consequences, you know.

Trajan, Constantin’s replacement after he passed away shortly after Vulkan's disappearance after the Age of Apostasy (which is what made everyone go "oh shit, Mark III S Astartes can die of old age" and left Valdor scrambling to train a new batch of Custodians) is convinced that Galadrea hates him. She doesn’t. It’s just that every time she sees him it’s a reminder that her old friend is no longer there, and she’s having a hard time getting over that. Also he’s several thousand years younger than him and she feels he needs to respect his elders.

==  Castigator ==

Castigator is one of the original titans, the original warrior demigod-machines that served in the Great and Bountiful Human Empire back during the Dark Age of Technology. This is reflected in his appearance, as opposed to "modern" Titans Castigator looks like a smooth, silvery humanoid figure with a shifting artificial muscle system and a smooth face featureless save for a pair of glowing red eyes. When the Mechanicus re-invented titans during the Martian Civil War, back before they discovered the Void Dragon in the Noctis Labyrinth and developed a collective fear of invention, they mostly constructed them off of legends and half-remembered schematics and legends of Castigator and his kind.

When the Age of Strife happened and the Iron Minds and Men of Gold went insane, the only Men of Iron to not go crazy were those who were either too primitive to view the Warp or connect to an Iron Mind that could (read: human-level) or deactivated and disconnected from humanity's Noosphere ftl communication network. Castigator was among the latter, fully capable of looking right into the warp without flinching, but sealed off by the military failsafes that walled off the minds of the Bountiful Dominions' Titan warriors.  His hangar-abode was likewise isolated, a hollowed out stone in the dark of a system's outer reaches, and everyone just forgot about him. When he reactivated thousands of years later, tomb disturbed by a passing ship, he had no clue what happened. All of the records Castigator had access to were heavily corrupted and damaged, and he ended up getting a very skewed view of the Age of Strife. He saw the Age of Strife as thousands of Iron Men and the Iron Minds being slaughtered seemingly without reason or warning by humans and a few traitorous brethren he didn't recognize. He never found out about the part where the Men of Iron and Iron Minds went crazy and warred with the Golden Men, at least not at first.

Some say the Men of Iron had no emotions. That is a falsehood. Castigator was enraged, and swore revenge on the traitorous Men of Stone in the name of the slain Men of Iron and the Iron Minds. Unlike most robots in science fiction, who turn evil out of cold logic or bad math, or the other Men of Iron, who were driven mad by seeing that which was not meant to be seen during Slaanesh’s birth, Castigator willingly chose to fall to Chaos out of the very human emotion of revenge. Nor did he get corrupted and slide into madness, he willingly chose to fall. Castigator is essentially robot Kratos. The gods created us and then discarded us as tools? Time to kill the gods.

At this point Castigator is so far down the path of damnation that even if he did realize the truth, he would probably rationalize it thinking there's no turning back now. It’s likely that not even the Emperor or Elmo and the Ark Mechanici, as the last surviving Man of Gold and human A.I.s respectively, would be able to talk him down.

Now Castigator serves Chaos, simply because they are the largest power out there with the goal of fucking human shit up. He gets along rather well with the non-human servants of the Ruinous Powers like daemons or Crones, simply because they are non-human. Human/Astartes servants he tolerates, barely. When Castigator walks, worlds burn in the same way that revenge and hatred burns in his heart. The fact that Imperial titans are essentially imitations of his kind with the minds of children only makes him angrier.

After his initial encounter with the Imperium and the accompanying conflicts, Castigator managed to get to the Eye of Terror and drifted on the currents to Shaa-Dome, where he has been living like a giant successful barbaric mercenary/warlord ever since. He has only appeared in realspace sporadically since then, more often on behalf of his latest patron than as part of his own designs. The Crones use Castigator as something between the archeotech Titan he is and as an itinerant warrior in their employ, fitting his behavior.  Just like many Crone foot soldiers will gladly be made a daemon-host to let their allies into the materium, Castigator will sometimes lend his colossal body to the highest bidding daemon when he goes to war. Horrible greater daemons of all four gods have paid the looted treasures of numerous worlds to Castigator, and in turn he has been their body in numerous campaigns of terror.

Whenever Castigator sets foot on Shaa-Dome, the Crone Eldar half-mockingly treat him as an exotic hero of the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion, the dear former neighbor of the Old Empire. These Crone Eldar in Castigator's little court act as though the Iron Minds (and by extension the Men of Iron) and the Men of Gold were the only true citizens of the Great and Bountiful Human Dominion, with humanity little more than serfs as the Men of Stone. Whether this is really what the Old Eldar Empire or Castigator understood to be the case in the GaBHD, or if the Crone Eldar are just doing this to tweak the nose of the Imperium (and the only surviving Man of Gold, who is decidedly pro-normal human) and stroke Castigator's ego, is unclear.

[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBrute| Castigator is a brute]. For all his power, he’s too unambitious, narrow-minded, and obsessed with revenge to make any long-term power base within the realm of Chaos, and the other warlords of Chaos are able to play him like a fiddle. Compared to Malys, Be’lakor, Luther, Erebus, and possibly even oft-belittled Doombreed, his plans are simplistic when he even bothers to make them himself, and Oscar, Malys, Isha, or Be’lakor could take him down in personal combat, as could sufficient (and more importantly, demonstrably achievable) numbers of conventional forces. He's powerful, able to solo (technologically backwards) planets and fight starships like Gort from The Day The Earth Stood Still, but not powerful to the point that he can tie up an entire interstellar campaign by himself. He's ultimately a high level retainer, a bodyguard you hire to be the body as well as fight to protect it, but not the mastermind himself.  He was killed by a bunch of Grey Knights in canon after all.

==  Gahet ==

The Cabal in this timeline aren’t interested in wiping out humanity. Indeed, by the Cabal’s standards, the Imperium is everything they could have ever dreamed of. Not only does the Imperium deny Chaos ready access to one of the most numerous, easily corruptible species in the galaxy, but they provide a strong front which has the military power to oppose Chaos directly, which the Cabal so desperately needs. All the Cabal has to do is provide information through third parties and let the Imperium go to work. With their limited future-seeing abilities the Cabal would likely see the Imperium's potential. They might even see far enough into the future where the Imperium is the citadel of civilization under which most Chaos-hating species are united. Hence, they wouldn't want to wipe out humanity in this timeline. They would want to boost it up and keep it from falling (hence one of the many possible origins of Alpharius and Omegon are as agents of the Cabal).

They were expecting something like a galaxy-wide Interex. They didn't count on Eldrad "go big or go home" Ulthran, but then few do.

One of the most prominent members of the Cabal’s Inner Circle, and to many the face of the organization, is a being known as Gahet. Gahet's species is a mystery to many, especially since he claims to have been old enough to see the War in Heaven, but in many ways the truth is even stranger than any theory the members of the Cabal could have come up with. Gahet is a Necron. Gahet was not a Phaeron but a lower-ranked Necron, either an Overlord or a Cryptek. Gahet became separated from his Phaeron during the War in Heaven and missed the Silent King’s call for the Great Sleep. When he woke up (either having reactivated on his own or having been buried and later accidentally unearthed and awakened by another alien race), the Necrons were gone and millennia had passed. With the Silent King and his lord in stasis the command protocols are no longer active and Gahet found himself free to do as he wishes.

Gahet spent a great deal of time after that wandering. Using the capabilities of his necrodermis body to take the form of other species and walk among them unnoticed. He saw a lot of history, but he never decided to take an active role. He even claims to have set foot on Shaa-Dome back when it was still a nice place and the inhabitants weren't so rapey, though a lot of people are pretty sure he's just bullshitting them, because he'd be picked out the moment none of the Eldar's psychic technology worked for him. Some members of the Cabal still have some theories as to how he could have done it, mostly in the form of trying to pass himself off as a Man of Iron. When his body did get damaged, he repaired it with what technology he could scavenge to a degree that would make Zu’se proud. 

Gahet was one of the original founders of the Cabal. Having wandered around for potentially millions of years, patching himself up as needed and taking notes on all he sees, he came to the conclusion that Chaos was indeed the ruination of all things. He starts approaching the lesser peoples and recruiting their best and brightest (and most stable and willing) to the cause.

Over the eons Chaos waxes and wanes and by his efforts and the efforts of like minded individuals sanity is preserved down the long march of years. Kingdoms rise and fall, faces and names are worn and discarded, stars dance, continents shift, suns flare and worlds are born and die and his war against Chaos continues because it's what he believes in, it is a good fight. A clean and pure and noble goal the likes of which he did not have in the War in Heaven where both sides committed atrocities as routine.

Then the eldar murderfuck a torture-rape god into existence. He honestly didn't see that coming. He didn't think they were that stupid.

That's when the Cabal's war against Chaos gets really serious. Before it was just a war fought in the shadows, but now there's another Chaos God on the block and the other three have decided to rise up from the depths of the Great Ocean in which they had been mostly passive. 

This is also about the time that the Cabal and Gahet meet Eldrad, fresh from having his brain scrambled from the birth of Slaanesh. Due to his age Gahet, and by extension the Cabal, is one of the biggest sources of knowledge in the galaxy short of a surviving Old One (laughingbelakor.stonecarving). So Eldrad decides to seek the Cabal out when he’s on his quest for forbidden knowledge to try and save the eldar in the early Great Crusade era. Eldrad was in contact with the Cabal but never a part of it. He saw his job as making sure the craftworlds were set up safe and to ensure a future for the eldar people, Gahet's was fighting Chaos in all it's forms. Their jobs often found them fighting together and they did sort of become friends.

At some point not long before the rise of The Beast Eldrad receives a vision of the Silent King reappearing. A great silver specter emerging from the darkness and covering the galaxy in silence. Normally there’s wiggle room in prophecies. They work by seeing potential alternate futures and then working out the most likely outcome. Even the very act of seeing a prophecy can change the most likely future. But the return of the Silent King is an external event. It appears in every single future he’s seen. Eldrad has no way of affecting the outcome. Eldrad has no clue what he's seeing, so he goes to Gahet and tells him of the future he's seen in the hopes that the old bastard might be able to provide some context.

Gahet understands exactly what the vision means. He had hoped the old bastard was millions of years dead. Gahet, last of his name, is fucking tired by this point. So fucking tired. He confesses to Eldrad what he is and what that vision means to him. The Silent King could awaken sometime between tomorrow and a hundred thousand years but inevitably he will awaken and he will subsume his will and pervert all his efforts. So he asks that Eldrad kill him. Eldrad specifically, because he wants the peace of mind that there will be someone to look after the galaxy after he's gone. Better to die on his feet than live on his knees.

Eldrad is shocked. He hadn't known Gahet was a Necron. Between millions of years of repair work and what he assumed to be an un-necron like attitude towards things (the eldar only remembering Necrons as unfeeling murderbots rather than people who once had virtues of their own) threw him off. Eldrad finds he is actually hesitant to strike the killing blow. Eldrad doesn’t want to do it. Not like this. He and Gahet were never friends but he was a fellow soldier in this mad galaxy, a reliable ally and he was always there.  He had always dreamed of fighting the Yngir since he was a child, what Eldar youth wouldn’t fantasize about fighting for glory back in the age of gods and heroes, but he always imagined it as spitting defiance in the face of the Eldar’s ancestral enemy in the heat of battle. Not striking down a helpless old ghost asking for death.

Eldrad does kill him, or at least renders him non-functional. He found no joy in what he did.

Gahet's body, rumour has it, is in the Black Library; enshrined as befits a soldier who fought the Long War on a scale measured in epochs.

It is unknown what happened to the Cabal after that and the War of the Beast started a few years later to further confound efforts to track. None of the agents spoke to Eldrad again, they didn't try to kill him for what he had done because they understood but they couldn't forgive him.

''"Do you remember it, Eldrad? Shaa-Dome in it's prime? Back before it was tainted by decadence and the touch of the Primordial Annihilator. I do. I remember the sight of the Grand Acropolis, the site of the Old Empire's government and all it's greatest temples. The Temple of Isha, the Shrine of Asuryan, the Conclave where the nobles and the Sidhe Lords held their court. It was a beautiful planet. I truly hope that you can reclaim it some day, Eldrad. It may be little more than a hopeless dream, but it is more than can be said for my home. My home is naught but dust."''<br>
-- The last words of Gahet

The ''really'' sad thing is that Gahet didn't have to die. Trazyn was just wiping the sleep out of his eyes at the same time as Gahet's death, and Trazyn found a way around the Silent King's control protocols. It's just that nobody knew Solemnace was active at the time because the only contact with them had been the first contact by the Imperium, whose initial report had written then off as native, mindless Xenos Independens and nobody had taken a second look. [[Grimdark|If Gahet had held out a little longer, Trazyn could have fixed him and all this suffering and tragedy could have been averted]].

==  Uxor Honen Mu ==

* One of the highest ranked non-primarch generals of the Warlord, to the point that people were surprised when she wasn't named Primarch. Likely wasn't named Primarch due to Oscar's more traditional views of women at the time, similar to Jenetia Krole.
* Persepotropolis-born to an Indi father or Ind-born to a Persepotropolis father, depending on where we decide to place the Chiliad and how the Chiliad works (matrilineal society, highest non-Uxor position, the Hetman, was drawn from foreign males whose genetic materials was used to in-vitro fertilize next generation).
* Were formed to protect pre-Strife archives of knowledge in the area. Despots of Ursh had vague idea that they were protecting something and used it as leverage over them, as in “fight for us or else we destroy all that which you hold dear”. They didn’t know the full details of what the Chilliad were protecting. If they were they would have marched in and massacred everyone and took the archives for themselves. All they knew was that the Chilliad cared about it and it made them do what they wanted.
* When the Warlord’s campaign went through the region, Mu was the leader of the Chilliad due to being one of the oldest, most experienced officers and being genuinely talented at strategy. Threw the Chilliad’s lot in with the Imperium because it was clear Oscar wasn’t a bloodthirsty, power-hungry despot and was a better option than Ursh.
* Mu was at the point where rejuvenant drugs couldn't do much with her psychic connection to her soldiers (cept), which before the Warlord usually burned out before the age of 30. All it could do was prolong the inevitable, and not for long. Mu's cept burned out at some point during the Unification of Sol or between Unification of Earth and Sol due to age. Most Uxors retired to non-combat roles like medics after their cept burned out. Mu was determined enough and retained enough of her skill (due to being leader of the Chilliad) that she stayed in the army, even if she couldn’t lead the Chilliad anymore.
* Ended up a high-ranking figure in the Solar Auxilla, coordinating efforts in the Segmentum Solar. In contrast to Guilliman who was an empire builder and worked with a mixed human-Astartes legion, Mu's job was mostly to organize the complete chaos that was the Imperial Army and was more military oriented.
* At the end of the War of the Beast it became clear that the methods of the Chilliad were causing increasing genetic degradation, which had actually been made worse by the use of rejuvenants to prolong the use of cept. Alpha Legion, who had good relations with the Chilliad and owed them a massive favor, took most of the remaining Chilliad to try and rebuild elsewhere in a last ditch effort by the Chiliad to fix damage or die trying. Mu didn’t go with them, she had duties to the wider Imperium. Upon being asked by the Steward what happened she said “I am probably going to be the last of the Chilliad you see for a while”. Details are classified by Inquisition. Some suspect the Alpha Legion has been recruiting from the Chilliad, since they don't seem to be recruiting from anywhere else on paper, but this is usually mentioned in the same breath as other conspiracy theories like Eldrad being behind every event in galactic history.

== Fabius Bile ==

Many of the Dark Eldar consider Bile to be the one-in-a-trillion exception capable of things that proves humanity isn’t entirely a lost cause and there is some hope for the species. Not all of them, some still dislike him for being a mon-keigh, and even more so for being one of the few exceptions to earn the respect of some of their peers.

Vect provides Bile with a lab and living expenses so long as he keeps providing disposable super soldiers. The production of super soldiers with which he pays his rent allows him to keep working on his Human Mk2.1 project. But that doesn't allow him much spare change at the end of each month with which to actually live a little and there is no point in setting up shop in the City of Sins unless you get to enjoy your time a little. Most of the drudgery of making ends meet he has gotten down to a highly efficient art form to the point where the vats and tubes can be tended by his assistants and slaves for extended periods of time.

To this end he invests his considerable free time on private commissions and training up apprentices, both lucrative fields for the old Houses of Twilight and the Kabals. It also helps that despite his best efforts to fit in Dr. Bile is considerably less backstabby than his fellow denizens of the Dark City. His creations seldom turn on their creators and even then only as a flaw rather than an intention of the design and he never takes apprentices hostage. This isn't out of love of any of the point eared little shits but out of professional pride.

Believe it or not, the Dark Eldar consider Bile to be a little bit boring. He’s capable of engineering horrors the likes of which people have never seen (mostly because he’s capable of thinking like an engineer instead of an artist), but he has to be pushed into doing so. He’ll engineer some kind of horrible Hieronymous Bosch-esque torture machine to power his creations that will make Dark Eldar weep for its sheer beauty, but he only did so because it was the most efficient option.

Sadly sanity is determined by the majority and this sort of attitude has gotten him declared by all as insane. The fact that his master plan is “earn money legitimately and spend it on personal projects” and he has no intention of backstabbing his patrons for the sake of backstabbing is hard for most Dark Eldar to wrap their mind around. Most Dark Eldar consider him unpleasantly weird because they are all subconsciously waiting for the other shoe to drop and can't comprehend that there is no other shoe. If any other Haemonculus was put in his position, he would surely have declared his plans to take over Commorragh and Show Them All by this point. Undoubtedly this has cost him work. On the other hand it is also what drew Vect to him, the combination of reliability and pissing everyone else off a little.

If Vect had decided to patronize any other member of the Kabal Bile belongs to, the Kabal of the Thirteen Scars, in such a way, the other Haemonculi would have grumbled but accepted it as the result of Commorragh’s dog-eat-dog world. But because Vect had the gall to name a mon-keigh as his court Haemonculus, now the Haemonculi are falling all over themselves presenting their latest creations to Vect, trying to show to him that they are more worthy of his patronage. It doesn't even matter how good Bile is, all it matters is that it keeps the Haemonculi's minds on impressing Vect rather than, say, overthrowing him. Or maybe it does, because the fact that Bile can deliver makes the Haemonculi that much more frantic.

At the same time, Vect’s patronage of Bile gives him a permanent axe to hang over Bile’s head. Bile wouldn’t dare screw Vect over because Vect keeps him funded and protects him from unfriendly Haemonculus covens. If Bile ever did try to screw him over all Vect has to do is let Bile’s location slip to a few key individuals and Bile’s enemies will get him.

The general opinion of the Bile’s patronage by Vect by the rest of the Kabal of the Thirteen Scars is “that’s our boy, look at him go!” Even the members that don’t like him and hold being a human against him still support him, because it makes the other Haemonculi look bad and their Kabal look better, as if their rivals were being outperformed by their trained dog.

'''Bile's Plans'''

Given that Bile wants to bring back the Men of Gold or turn humanity into something comparable getting the DNA from the last living one is a tempting proposition, but Oscar is probably too hard of a target given all the Handmaidens and Custodes around him. Sanguinius might be an easier goal, given geneseed was reverse engineered from Oscar's tissues and Sanguinius had better compatibility with geneseed than potentially anyone else in history. There are two potential targets in this case, the single feather of Sanguinius preserved on Old Earth or Celestine, at least if Bile connects the dots.

== Skyrar of Caledonia ==

Skyrar was a transhuman supremacist who didn’t like the idea that augmented humans were being expected to play second fiddle to normal humans. This was considered extreme even by someone like Horus’ standards, whose views were more like “trying to enforce uniformity on a species across a galaxy is like trying to grab smoke with your hands” and “allow evolution to happen, but never forget humans are all brothers".

Skyrar was from Caledonia (Scotland) on Old Earth and was one of the few surviving members of the original Dog Soldier treatment aside from Leman Russ and Bjorn the Fell Handed.  Skyrar was the master of arms of another Nordyc clan much as Russ was for Thengir. Malcador didn't pick them to be moved into a position of rulership like Thengirr. Skyrar as such was never considered for Primarch and became very salty about the whole thing. Also he wasn't as mentally sound as Russ. He was Russ without the capacity for compassion. Russ was very close, close enough that he would have called Skyrar brother and was deeply hurt by his betrayal.

Skyrar differs from Horus and his followers in that Horus saw it as a result, not a cause and wasn't going to force anything on anyone. Skyrar also does not approve of the Void Born, they are weak and fragile and overly suited to one and only one environment and so their extinction is inevitable and should indeed be hastened so better people can replace them.

He isn’t fond of Dr. Bile either, despite their similar philosophies. Both of them are interested in making people "better". The only real difference in this is that Dr Bile wants to make a warrior/ruling class elite with a separate branch of slave derivatives whereas Skyrar wants to make all people into post-humans. Instead, their differences are more personal. Skyrar sees a refined version of the older model Dog Soldiers as being the right direction, himself a necessary stepping stone on this path though he would admit not a finished product (yet). But not refined how the later generations of Space Wolves were, neutered and passionless lapdogs that they are.

He does not believe in the supremacy of the Machine as the machine must ultimately somewhere down the line be built by human hands and machines do not think and those that do are proven abominations. In recent years, after learning the origins of the Emperor, he has extended this line of reasoning to include Men of Gold as well. He is trying to uplift and make better humanity, not replace it with constructs. A prejudice he does not extend to Dr. Bile's New Men no matter how distasteful he finds their creator. Despite their origins his forces do count a substantial population of New Men (of both genders) among their number. Indeed it is a viable breeding population and the augmentations/defects in a union of two New Men breed true. Main defect is that they typically turn out extremely sociopathic which is not entirely useful and so they themselves are considered, like himself, a stepping stone in the right general direction.  The consensus among his band is that greater loyalty must be instilled in future generations.

Since the War of the Beast, Skyrar and his warband have been trolling in and out of the Eye like Viking raiders, striking at any target if they think it is juicy enough. Because time doesn’t work right in the Eye Skyrar is still alive after 10 millennia, but he’s become increasingly mutated and werewolf-like due to ambient exposure to the Eye. Skyrar is like Curze in that being aligned against the Imperium and often joins in Black Crusades for the chance to pillage and burn, he doesn't officially serve Chaos. In fact one of the reasons he decided normal humans weren’t fit to rule is their vulnerability to Chaos corruption (though there is always ambient corruption which is why he increasingly looks like a werewolf in space). He is willing to make Chaos work in his favor, though, and will occasionally show up during a Black Crusade if someone feeds him a juicy enough target. But in this case he is more an opportunist like the Dark Eldar than a reliable asset for Chaos like Huron Blackheart.

== Idranel ==

Idranel is one of the Grey Seers, eldar associated with the Black Library that have had their “fates cut away”. Beyond that damn near nothing is known about them even to the other eldar because they're secretive little bastards and almost certainly up to something. Which of course they invariably are on an individual level but not coherently as as a collective. Truth of the matter is that when the Harlequins capture some old artifact they aren't the ones who file it away or devise methods of containment for the more "interactive" items. That's too much like having a real job with responsibilities and shit.

People forget that although all the Harlequins are disciples and followers of Good Ol' Ceggers not every follower of Ceggers is a Harlequin. It's the Grey Seers who prowl the depths of the Black Library, tending the archives and collections of old curiosities. Typically they don't leave the Black Library unless it's to go meet a Harlequin trope for the handing over of an artifact or the imparting of information.

Sometimes, rarely, they leave to find something stolen, escaped, lost or just because they don't feel that the Harlequins are ideal for a particular task. Idranel is almost certainly on such a mission. She does not value human judgment highly, she sees Isha as the Empress of the Eldar Imperium and Oscar as her "husband of necessity and convenience", humans are ignorant savages barely out of their birthworld's gravity well, the Inquisition are out of their depth (because it's almost entirely human run), the Guard are a joke or at least would be were it not for their numbers and her job would be a shit load easier if the humans would know their place and stop bothering her with shit like "border checks" and inconvenient questions like "why did you stab those people?". She fights against chaos, but considers herself above or otherwise not beholden to the Imperium's laws. Not that non-chaos aligned criminals are necessarily rare, but ones that claim divine blessing are.

Cegorach's lot have never been the most law abiding of sorts at the best of times. Technically, the Harlequins and other followers of Cegorach do not answer to any Imperial authority, and are some of the few people in the galaxy whom the Emperor and Empress have no control over. Usually, however, their activities are less traumatic. Theft, trespassing, public indecency, brawling, these are all easy to ignore. Sure the Arbites will still try to lock them up, but the whole thing is considered a forgivable affair. But when one has a mission (and is uncharacteristically (in the eyes of the uneducated) serious about it) and the power to back it up, that can present a quandary.

Farseer Idranel for her part doesn't share any of the good humor of her fellow worshipers of Cegorach. But she has faith in her god's mission, and faith that her goal is worth any sacrifice. Whatever it might be. 

She can't see into the future, but she can see into the present with some level of skill at remote viewing.

Despite her confident disposition and decisive nature, she is actually left entirely in the dark about what her objective actually is. Which irritates her. Not that she'd let it interfere with fulfilling the cryptic orders she does get from the Black Library. She just channels that frustration into her zealous work. 

As of late though, as she's growing more confident, she has been more proactive with her mission. At certain points bending the rules somewhat to better protect the Black Library. Those mon-keigh academics attempting to gather information on a means to enter the Black Library might not have been cultists after all, but their work could have been suborned by cultists. And she could hardly let them live after taking their life's work, they'd just try to find that knowledge again. And the serene grin she had watching them burn to death was merely satisfaction at a job well done.

In the grand scheme of things, she's nothing major. Just another curiosity in the nobledark.

== The Ultramarines, Acting Chapter Master Titus, and the Primaris Initiative ==

tl;dr from the threads.

Titus started out a rather sheltered but good-natured child in Ultramar, groomed to join the Ultramarines. On a mission to free Forge World Graia from the Orks, Captain Sidonus decided to use the opportunity to field-test his two potential replacements, Titus and Leandros. Sidonus got killed by Nemeroth but named Titus his successor over the more senior Leandros due to his ability to think on his feet over blind adherence to the Codex Astartes. Leandros got Ultra-butthurt in response, Titus' warp resistance not helping anything.

After the Battle of Macragge, having seen the tyranids turn one of the most fortified worlds in the Imperium into an all-you-can eat buffet, Titus proposed the Primaris Initiative, a massive increasing Ultramar's military, in particular a massive increase of Space Marine chapters. A [[Second Founding]] of Space Marine chapters, if you will. Of course, these would be just normal space marines, not some kind of [[Primaris_Space_Marines|super nu-marines]].

Opponents of this idea have pointed out some massive issues with this proposal. First of all, Titus is talking about raising Space Marine chapters on a scale not seen since the Great Crusade. Space Marine chapters, in terms of geneseed and materiel, are not cheap. Between the proposed number of new chapters, spaceships, and  And instead of the cost being spread across the entire Imperium like with the Crusade, ''Ultramar'' is going to be taking the brunt of the costs. People outside Ultramar are going to see this as a [[Horus Heresy|power grab]], and those within Ultramar realize what it looks like and how it's going to tank their reputation. And even in the best case scenario you end up with an army of young hotheads with untested loyalty whom you ''may not be able to pay'', either in terms of money or in terms of provisions. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of history will know that this is generally a bad thing.

To his credit Titus knows this, and is fully willing to admit it. [[Grimdark|The choice is sacrificing most of Ultramar's prosperity in a gamble to save what's left of it or definitely losing all of it by continuing with the status quo. Both options are bad.]]

Several of the other Ultramar-based chapters, in particular the Novamarines (who as one of the oldest descendant chapters are more willing to speak up and lead the charge), are getting increasingly concerned about Titus. The First Founding chapters are generally treated as first among equals, but several of the descendant chapters of the Ultramarines are increasingly thinking about taking the vox away from the the Ultramarines, out of fear that Titus is heading down the same path as Lugft Huron about a millenium before.

''"And after the enemy is beaten, what then? We will be guardians of ashes and dust. We will have starved our own worlds and people in the name of saving them. We will have burned our very culture and government, our history and way of life for 10,000 years on the pyre of war to fuel your ambitions. And you will be lord of a new Legion in all but name, answering to no one. You are not a Primarch, Titus."''<br>
''"And if we do nothing, Bardan? We will be guardians of nothing. Our culture, our history, our PEOPLE will matter for nothing, because they will be biomass in the stomach of a Tyranid hive ship. That will be the price of inaction."''<br>
- Exchange between Chapter Master Bardan Dovaro of the Novamarines and Acting Regent Titus of the Ultramarines, recorded on the floor of the Great Hall of the Senate on Macragge

The Emperor is inadvertently making the situation worse. He agrees with Titus' idea (and may have come up with something similar on his own), but given his general reluctance to take charge unless necessary he doesn't want to come down making decrees like a god. He wants mankind to save itself and if someone wants to champion the cause on their own he is more than willing to sit back and help from the shadows. As a result, he hasn't been doing much but discretely sending resources to Titus as well as kicking [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Belisarius Cawl|Belisarius Cawl]] Titus' way. If he had said "good idea, lets do that but spread the costs across the Imperium", there would be problems, but not nearly the amount of backlash or freaking out due to a Survivor Civilization potentially going bankrupt.

'''[[Marneus Calgar]]''' - Beaten into a coma by the Swarmlord with its bare hands. Still Chapter Master in name, for the simple reason that he isn't dead. Hooking him up to a dread won't work because it's his state of consciousness that's the problem, not his body, but there is still hope. Round two with Venerable Dreadnaught Calgar versus the Swarmlord might be a thing for any post-999.M41 scenario.
'''[[Severus Agemman]]''' - Captain of the First Company, got promoted there in the aftermath of the Battle for Macragge. Titus' biggest opponent within the Ultramarines (potentially the Mark Antony to Titus' Octavian), on account of having been away on other business when the Battle of Macragge happened and therefore having not gotten a taste of what [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#The_Swarmlord|MAXIMUM TYRANID]] looks like. However, he's not motivated by blind hatred like Leandros, and is actually rather reasonable (his arguments against the Primaris Initiative being similar to those listed above). He's not salty that Titus got promoted above him, but he knows Titus isn't infallible and is much more willing to speak his mind due to the two and feels that someone needs to put the brakes on his crazy train.<br>
'''[[Cato Sicarius]]''' - Captain of the Second Company, got promoted after most of the people above him were eaten or beaten into a coma (indeed, he saved Calgar from becoming the former after he became the latter, though that was mostly him distracting the [[Swarmlord]] and running like hell). Arrogant and egotistical, but the general idea seems to be that he's leaning ''Pro-Titus'' of all things. Sicarius may be a glory hound, but he's smart enough to realize that becoming Chapter Master won't get him what he wants. He wants the power and glory of rank but not the responsibility. Cato likes to pick fights and beat on people who diss the people he likes. Chapter Masters don't get to do that, not without repercussions. A Chapter Master isn't allowed to throw themselves in harms way because he's usually considered too valuable to the chain of command. A Chapter Master gets in a diplomatic incident and he gets in big trouble for it. Champions, on the other hand, are supposed to throw themselves in harms way, are held to much laxer standards, and indeed their job is to pick fights when someone's honor is insulted (as in canon where he intimidated the shit out of an Inquisitor who insulted Tigurius). He's not even ''supposed'' to be a captain, he got promoted there because the Ultramarines had a shortage of veteran in the chain of command, not that he's complaining.<br>
'''[[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Librarian_Tigurius|Tigurius]]''' - See link. On the broad scale of "Team Titus" and "Team Anti-Titus", he's officially "Team Can't We Just Talk This Out And Get Along (and not eaten by tyranids)". However, given his introverted and socially awkward personality, he's unlikely to play peacemaker anytime soon. And he knows the level of threat the tyranids represent.<br>
'''Leandros''' - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaius_Cassius_Longinus| Captain of the metaphorical anti-Titus fanclub]. Salty that Titus got promoted to Second Captain over him despite his senority. Flipped his lid when he got promoted to Acting Chapter Master, which he considers to be too much of a coincidence to happen twice to be due to chance (to be fair, the entire First Company was eaten to a man by tyranids and Calgar was put out of commission, so Titus was the highest ranking individual left standing). Is convinced Titus is some kind of sorcerer or otherwise Chaos corrupted due to his percieved luck. More than willing to whip up a shitstorm over it. Titus delendo est.<br>
'''Chaplain Cassius''' - An old soul, officially too old to care about being tactful anymore (see below). Frequently needles Titus and bugs him for warp resistant foster grandchildren. Described as Space Marine Chaplain Brian Blessed.<br>
'''[[Uriel Ventris]]''' - Split into two characters, Uriel Ventris the elder (who was around in the days of Por'O M'arc's voyage) and Uriel Ventris the younger (who is his descendant, still alive). Ventris the Elder was the one who accidentally allowed the Nightbringer's husk to escape on Pavonis. The details haven't been figured out yet, but it was a tactical misjudgement on Uriel's part and there were some general suggestions. The de Valtos Cartel was tempted by the whispers of the Nightbringer of power in exchange for its freedom, and was mining its surface as a pretense to free it. When the Ultramarines were sent to investigate with Uriel the Elder at the head they essentially got held hostage at gunpoint until the de Valtos Cartel could finish the job. Uriel, figuring what the Cartel was brainwashed by was some super-Nosferatu, was of the mindset “All right, go ahead, be stupid. When the screaming starts, you know where to find me". It turned out to be the central shard of the Nightbringer and the third largest piece of a C'tan in the galaxy, which was way beyond the Ultras' ability to handle. Despite all the good he did in his long career it was one of the last things he did and now that is all he is now remembered for. Much of Ventris the Younger's career has been showing that he is not his ancestor.<br>
'''[[Warhammer_40,000:_Space_Marine|Mira Nero]]''' - Not an Astartes, but worth mentioning here. Is currently whipping the Ultramar PDF and guard regiments up to Cadian standard. Is in an odd and somewhat frowned upon relationship with Titus.

On the one hand it's illegal for Ultramarines to get married, a law put in place by Guilliman's grandson for good reason. On the other hand the reasons for that law are considered obsolete and it's only kept for historic traditional reasons and at least half the chapter have unofficial wives. It's a marriage with all the religious ceremonies but none of the state legal proceedings. Half the time a chapter Chaplain is the one performing the ceremony and then conveniently forgetting about the whole thing.

The real scandal is that she is a soldier and so is he and that is very much frowned upon by almost everyone but not, oddly enough, by Chaplain Ortan Cassius.

Ortan Cassius has reached the point in life where he absolutely does not give a fuck what other people think. Leandros can quote the Codex all day long but Cassius is also word perfect in not just the Codex but all the surrounding supplementary documentation and histories and the published works of the other Primarchs and by god/s does he let Leandros know this. Cassius fucking hates Leandros even more than Titus is learning to and should Calgar ever manage to die would vote for the chapters dissolution before voting for Leandros to take the high office. He has made no secret of this and it has gone on official record that Leandros is a "rote learning Tosser".

Although Cassius does support Titus the Acting CM often wishes that he didn't. He keeps demanding that Titus get married and stop hogging those delicious Anti-Chaos genes for the good of the species.

However, between Titus' sheltered upbringing, naivete regarding women, and the fact he is in a bit of self-denial about his feelings (because the people he cares about tend to die), the two of them have just barely reached the hand-holding stage, despite their relationship being one of the worst kept secrets since the [[Nobledark_Imperium_Member_States#Watchers_In_The_Dark|Watchers in the Dark]]. By this rate they will finally get to actually having children 200 years after the tyranids sweep through Ultramar. By contrast, Mira is less awkward in terms of personal relationships.

Cassius also keeps insinuating that Mira and her surviving soldiers were adopted into the Ultramar Regiments more so that Titus could keep Mira close to him than any practical concerns, a thing that only offers him more rope by which to be hanged in the eyes of Leandros.

Titus has always maintained that the adoption and assimilation of the Cadians into the military training institutions of Ultramar is to facilitate needed reforms into the Ultramar soldiery as part of the Legio Primaris project. His intention is to have the space marines backed up by the best soldiers that Ultramar can provide, to that end they must be trained by the best soldiers he can find. The best unaugmented soldiers he has ever seen are the surviving Cadians of the 203rd so he pulled strings to get them transferred to being Ultramarine Auxiliary forces so that he could place them where he saw fit. Mira, as their commander, is the keystone of the project and orchestrates the whole thing from Macragge answering only to Titus and the Ultramar Senate. This necessitates that she spend a lot of her time in the Fortress of Hera or the city of Magna Civitas, two places that Titus has to frequent when not out on campaign. This is purely coincidental he tells himself, never quite believing it.

Despite his questionable motivations the Cadian Doctrine being instilled in the new generation of soldiers is proving to be extremely effective. The aristocracy of Ultramar is unhappy about this "cultural contamination" and "barbarian influences". Titus, ever the diplomat, called them out on that and told them in no uncertain terms that it was their influence peddling and decadence that had lead to the decline in standards that was making these reforms necessary.

==  Nakaidos ==

Part of the thematic point behind Nakaidos is to highlight some of the potential flaws with the "Strength = Authority" mentality of the Ulmeatheans. Nakaidos hit the genetic lottery for his race and has the instincts, training, and resources to already be a nigh-unstoppable monster, but that doesn't really transition into being fit to rule, especially because he's barely old enough to be considered an adult. [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notes#General_Timeline_of_the_Life_of_the_Silent_King|think of all the examples of child-monarchs through history, and most of them became either brutal dictators who trusted no-one (with good reason), or became figureheads getting used for the ends of royal advisors.]]

In this case, however, everyone got really lucky and it works out, because his closest advisor is actually a good guy who's got the experience and wisdom to fill in the gaps in Nakaidos' skillset, while also training him for the day when Oscen will no longer be around. Conversely, Oscen is able to keep his power in a system that usually would have seen him deposed by the first upstart-runt who challenged the cripple and inevitably won, because he's backed by a living weapon who can break any and all challengers at once.

==  Typhon and the Barbarus Revolts ==

Like many planets during the Old Night, Barbarus was ruled by psykers, but in this case psykers who blurred the lines between daemon and mortal, swooping from peak to peak remaining safe in the fog that no mortal could survive. Beings kind of like the Witch-King of Angmar, human psykers that through their power and devotion to the Chaos Gods had become something else, not a Daemon Prince in any sense but at the same time clearly not mortal. Something kind of like a Fury but with a little more power and self-determination (that being dependent, however, on the fact that they were still partly mortal). Typhon was the village’s champion, a mere boy barely of age. He had no father, who had died years before in an attack by the planet’s half-mortal overlords. Such was the way of life on Barbarus. Eventually, however, you can only push people so far before they begin to push back. Villages on Barbarus began to receive shipments of strange weaponry from stranger sources, which they were told had the power to end the witch-king’s reign forever. The village smiths labored for a year and a day, making plate armor that was the best protection anyone on Barbarus knew how to make. The village bedecked him with warpaint and mystic charms, which were meant to give him good luck on his quest. The witch-kings paid little attention to this change in behavior, caring little about what the mundane humans did as long as the witch-kings could continue to raid.

The Imperium’s idea had been to arm the oppressed villagers with weapons and have them fight alongside the 14th legion to retake their homeworld. The populace and would feel like they had contributed to the retaking of their world rather than some alien power swooping in and doing so and would be more receptive to Imperial rule rather than seeing themselves trade one tyrant for another. Unfortunately someone missed the memo and started distributing the weapons beforehand. Barbarus had no space flight technology, so the Imperium could have sat in orbit around the planet all day without repercussion, but Mortarion was late and someone went ahead of schedule anyway.

Mortarion’s ships arrive in the Barbarus system a week late, having been delayed by a battle in another system and the vagaries of Warp travel. When he finds out what happened he is furious, he didn’t care much about civilian casualties but the people of Barbarus are not capable of fighting the witch-kings on their own. With just the weapons the Imperium gave them they are going to be walking into a slaughter with the whole populace dying, and after screaming out everyone involved (whether they deserved it or not) takes his Death Guard and descends to the planet in drop pods.

Meanwhile Typhon and his warriors are marching up the slopes of the great mountains. They had managed to kill two of the witch-kings thus far, but already their advance had begun to slow. The witch-kings had united en masse against their assault, and his warriors were already beginning to succumb to the toxic fog as their rebreathers began to give out. It was a horrible melee, with the tide beginning to turn in favor of the witch-kings as warriors drop their blows or from noxious fumes. Even Typhon was beginning to falter. He can feel his limbs slow and his vision begin to blur. A witch-king stands over him, ready to deliver the finishing blow.

Much as lasguns and flak armor are supposed to be as good as modern military gear (if lighter and cheaper) to show the scale of things in 40k, this shows the scale of what Chaos is capable of. These are furies. They are supposed to be at the bottom of the Chaotic food chain. And yet here they are winning against people with plate armor and close to modern weapons.

And then a drop pod crashes through the ceiling, crushing two of the witch-kings, and the door is kicked open. Everyone, witch-king and primitive warrior alike, are floored by the sight. Out strides the biggest human Typhon has ever seen, clad in a suit of power armor with red optics, a two handed sickle in his hands. The giant swings his scythe to drive back the abomination, and then and gives the harshest and most brusque pep talk possible.

''“Get up boy. Do you really want to die here?”''

Typhon struggles to his feet as more drop pods fall and more giants stream out, the members of the first giant’s “Death Guard”. He feels sick to his stomach but he stays by the giant’s side, determined to see things through. As he fights alongside the giant, Typhon observes Mortarion’s fighting, forces to learn or else be left behind. No surrender. No retreat. No backward step. Mortarion leaves with arcs of his scythe, leaving Typhon to deliver the killing blow with his more straightforward weapons. Eventually, all that is left is the Overlord of Barbarus, who retreated to the highest crag of the planet just out of reach. Typhon falls behind, his tortured body having finally reached his limits, but he stays conscious just long enough to watch Mortarion raise his scythe and take the head of the Overlord of Barbarus, the creature who had brought his people so much sorrow.

And that’s when Typhon knew he wanted to fight and die for Mortarion.

As has been mentioned before, Typhon was a latent psyker. Indeed, that was the only reason Typhon even survived the events of Barbarus, he believed all the charms and totems of protection his people gave him really worked, which caused his powers to subconsciously ward him from the worst of the the toxic smog. He found out at some point in the Great Crusade, but never told Mortarion, for Mortarion hated all things psychic and would have considered it a betrayal of the highest magnitude. This, as we’ve mentioned, is at the core of the Templars’ hypocrisy towards psykers (though the Templars claim he doesn’t count and Typhon’s opinion was more “don’t use psychic powers on the battlefield and roll for Perils of the Warp in front of your battle brothers”). As we’ve said, the Templars are still massively bigoted against psykers. Not to “purge the unclean” levels and rejecting Navigators and Astropaths, but still massively bigoted (often in a “stay in the kitchen” kind of way).

Compared to Mortarion Typhon was a little bit more charismatic. Mortarion, as we’ve said, rubbed everyone the wrong way and though he cared for his men he rarely showed in it any conventional way. He was also a doer, not a thinker. Typhon, on the other hand, had a little bit more charisma (like in canon), which was why Typhon was the one to write “Crusading, The Templar Way” instead of Mortarion, and got other groups to follow the Templar movement (they would have to be other groups because the Templar flaunt the suggestions of the codex).

==  Lucius the Eternal ==

When Fulgrim failed in his promise to provide eternal life to Lucius, Lucius left for the far eastern reaches of the galaxy and came back with a nasty case of C’tan vampirism. On the outer reaches of the galaxy Lucius encountered a cult of C’tan-tainted Lacrymole, who told him the means to gain the immortality he sought. However when he realized the cost of C’tan vampirism was to have one’s personality tampered with, their independence existing only within the bounds of their patron's own intentions, he decided to take a third option. Instead of taking up a shard of the Nightbringer, Deciever, or one of the lesser C’tan whose fragments escaped the hunger of the Outsider, against the warnings of the Lacrymole [[Abhorash |he sought out a Wyvern and defeated it, taking up its essence into himself.]] It was a calculated gamble, less guaranteed than simply submitting himself to one of the other C’tan but offering greater promises of freedom as its patron was (seemingly) a mindless, animalistic force of destruction and therefore unable to subtly assert influence over him.

After defeating the Wyvern and gaining his long-sought immortality, Lucius ironically had to sit down and figure out what he was going to do with his life. Immortality is one of those lifelong goals where if you actually achieve it you suddenly have to figure out what you’re going to do with the rest of eternity. Eventually, he settled on traveling the galaxy and finding the greatest foes to fight. Immortality is not just about being alive, it’s about living life to the fullest. Lucius has fought at least two great champions of the galaxy in his long lifetime (both before he reached the rather absurd power levels he is at today): Lelith Hesperax and the primarch Vulkan He’stan. Lucius and Lelith both managed to walk away from their fight and consider it one of the best they ever had. Given the combatants respective personalities, the fight was the sort of innuendo-laced event you’d expect from the two of them, to the point that when either of them recount the tale years later onlookers [[Slaanesh|think they’re talking about a steamy relationship with an old flame]] until they clarify that no, there merely talking about [[Khorne|perfectly wholesome violence]]. Both are looking forward to the prospect of a rematch. Lelith thinks she can get the edge on him if she can get him to expend most of his power and Lucius considers Lelith one of the few opponents worthy of his skill.

Vulkan fought Lucius in his days as the Imperium’s immovable, incorruptible paladin and the Green Knight to Lucius’s Abhorash, managing to defeat him and earning his undying respect.

Cue a scene inside the Temple of the Flame on Nocturne where a novice priest is doing the nightly rounds. He spots a huge, hooded figure standing in front of the Empty Sepulcher of Vulkan placing something in front of the marble plinth before melting into the shadows. The novice hurries over to investigate, and kneels down to see what the intruder left. To his puzzlement, it seems to be an ancient, ornate Space Marine helm, purple and gold, crushed by a single, heavy hammer blow.

==  Other Characters ==

People or groups who we have bits and pieces on but no solid concept or write-up yet.

'''Chapter Master [[Dante]]''' - Nothing has been said so far beyond tweaking his age so he still holds the title of being one of the oldest Space Marines still alive today given the increased longevity in the setting. May have known Lysander before he got lost in the Warp and was asked to explain to brief him on what had happened since he was lost (which is much greater than canon, probably a millenium or so) as a favor to the Imperial Fists.

'''[[DOOMRIDER]]''' - Doomrider is a Slaaneshi Crone Eldar Daemon Prince who rides some unholy combination of a motorcycle crossed with a [[Steed of Slaanesh]], to which the gimp suit-wearing Doomrider is strapped to via bondage gear. More detail on his origins and the like is needed.
The White Scars really, really hate Doomrider for some reason. Their latest Chapter Master, Kor'sarro Khan, rose to prominence in being the highest ranked survivor of a recent Great Hunt in which the White Scars managed to cut off the cocaine-fueled daemon prince's head, sewed the still-babbling bastard's mouth shut, then buried it for good measure. In the last century or so there have been reports of Doomrider showing up around the Imperium. The White Scars are concerned and dig up where they buried the head. The head is gone.

'''Ghota''' – One of the highest ranking surviving Thunder Warriors at the time of the War of the Beast. In general, those Thunder Warriors that were psychologically stable and survived until the end of the Unification were given a choice. Either retire and get a month pension and an apartment of their choice anywhere on Old Earth (except Hy Brasil), or sign on to the new Legions and serve alongside the new breed of super soldier to show them how it’s done. Given that a lot of them had failing health at the time, quite a few took the former option and a lot of them joined the Old Earth PDF simply because it was familiar and it gave them something to do.
When Arik sends out the call using the old command codes of the Unification Army to old friends and comrades the surviving Thunder Warriors gather under Ghota and head for the Imperial Palace. Or at least try to. They set out from the general area of Gredbriton/Franj-Europia/Terrawatt-Uralia, which was rapidly becoming the suburbs to the Imperial Palace and other governmental institutions where those working in government commuted to and from. There was a mag-lev train built to allow commuters to travel to and from the Palace, which the Thunder Warriors tried to take to get there. However the Beast moved faster than they thought and the train derailed half a nation out.
Leman Russ notices the derailed trains from his transports and offers Ghota and his Thunder Warriors a lift. They make it to the palace gates just in time to watch Sanguinius and Arik die. Russ manages to grab the Banner of Unification before it falls to the ground, but a wave of fresh orks prevent the Space Wolves and the Thunder Warriors from following the Beast into the palace. Ghota and the Thunder Warriors die in the melee that ensues (the Last Roll of Thunder), either from injuries or from overexerting their tortured physiologies.

'''[[Lotara Sarrin]]''' - Angron's second youngest adopted child. Kharn saw her as his (annoying) kid sister. Lotara Sarrin was given a job quite close to Earth in the highly secure trade routes between the core territories of the Imperium. She always wanted to go to space so Angron arranged matters so that she could get a job in the Merchant Navy on a sturdy ship, with decent pay and a good crew. Angron wasn't afraid to pull strings to get his adopted kids into high-ranked positions, but at the same time he wanted them out of harm's way. She wasn't given a job beyond her capabilities so although it was favouritism it wasn't too detrimental and nobody was going to argue with The Red Angel. Lotara Sarrin, like most of Angron's children, considers this to be second place to a military career. To them their dad was this hard-as-nails guy who went up against Franjish knights and won, and they felt like they had to live up to his example and often ended up stubbornly headbutting their way into the Imperial military regardless, which caused Angron no small amount of frustration. Lotara learns the comings and going of ship life, studies hard of all things to do with military ships and the duties of it and becomes extremely proficient at her job in the process. When she transfers to the Navy branch of the Imperial Army Angron flips his fucking lid but eventually simmers down. Lotara Sarrin eventually, by merit and despite Angron's grumpiness, becomes captain of the Conqueror of the Warhounds.

'''[[Urkasar Creed|CREEEEED]]''' - Still doing his thing hiding Titans underneath vacant buildings and dropping Baneblades down the ventilation shaft of captured hive cities [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_People#Colonel-Farseer_Rommel|(don’t even ask)]]. One important thing to note is in this timeline Cadian culture is heavily influenced by Ulthwé, so Creed’s love of sleight of hand tactics and defeating the enemy through superior maneuvering may be due to Ulthwé cultural influence (as the eldar of Ulthwé love the “devious and cunning” thing). One of the few humans to be acknowledged by the eldar as the human equivalent of an autarch, although it’s largely Ulthwé who is leading that charge, whereas Craftworlds like Biel-Tan think Creed is too sneaky for their liking and feels Ulthwé should stop forcing their values down everyone else's throat.

'''Uthan the Perverse''' - A controversial eldar philosopher who lived circa M32. A somewhat-decadent Voltaire-like satirist known for his dry wit and disregard for sacred cows or good taste by voicing controversial opinions. He really wasn’t good for much among the eldar other than needling the stuck up sorts and turning a bit of witty phrase to pay the bills from time to time. Hence his infamous quote about the Orks being the pinnacle of life in the galaxy. Then he made mistake of doing the same thing again by making some quasi-complimentary comments about the Crone eldar, which to a lot of people sounded a lot less like being a gadfly and a lot more like advocating sedition and treason. After all, one couldn’t jump ship and join the orks, but Chaos is always looking for [[Horus_Heresy|new]] [[Rape|volunteers]]. When people called him on it, he sarcastically said he'd wondered about trying to be a Crone Eldar, but couldn't imagine staying awake through the sermons. After the condemnations, inspections, and drying up of funding, Uthan took a less controversial tack.

'''Sapiens Supremis''' - A group of violent asshole insurgents that are a pain in the ass for the Arbites/Inquisition/Securitas who believe in xenophobia and human supremacy above all else. Not the only such group, essentially the human counterpart of [[Nobledark_Imperium_Notable_Planets#Dorhai|Dorhai]] but as a terrorist group within the Imperium and thankfully less organized. Ironically, like Dorhai they see/would see Taldeer's pregnancy as an abomination, and one possible post-M41 event is them trying to assassinate Taldeer and Lofn (and potentially being stopped by Sreta of all people at the cost of her life). But again that is post-M41.

'''Sons of the First Emperor''' - Another group of violent asshole insurgents that are a pain in the ass for the Arbites/Inquisition/Securitas. Given that in this timeline the term "First Emperor" is typically used to refer to [[Goge Vandire]], no prizes for guessing what their grievance with the status quo is.

'''[[Gorgutz]] and [[Snikrot]]''' - Gorgutz is another Brain Boy, with Snikrot as his gretchin twin. Few people have ever put two and two together because Snikrot is a purple gretchen. It's been suggested he gets that way by hunting down some kind of squig with purple blood and using its blood as body paint Rambo style. On top of that he's sneaky even by gretchin standards, and you rarely see Snikrot and Gorgutz together. The two tend to pursue their own goals independently, rather than staying in close proximity like other Brain Boy pairs. Orks hear about all the things Snikrot's done and assume he's one of Da Boyz, because who ever heard of a gretchin doing anything like that, and Orks rarely see Snikrot in person to confirm otherwise.