Editing Perpetual (section)

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

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

He was one of the Argonauts of Greek myth and fought at Austerlitz (described as Napoleon's greatest victory) and Verdun (infamous as one of the bloodiest battles in all of World War I, which is saying something), as well as the First Gulf War, implied to have been [[Team_Yankee#Iraq.2FSyria|fighting on the side of Saddam Hussein]]. In fact, in all of the [[Ollanius Pius#The Eternal Infantryman|references to his military history]], which is extensive—having been apparently a soldier in all his ''documented'' lives, if not all of them, period—it's also implied that he tends to fight on the losing side, or even exclusively has, whether as some sort of curse or by some sort of design. It also explains how he managed to survive boarding Horus' flagship during the [[Siege of Terra]]. It is unknown if Horus actually managed to kill him: while [[Chaos|CHAOS]] [[Dakka|MINDBULLETS]] certainly sound like they could do the trick, it still is quite possible that [[Troll|he reassembled himself and walked off, not giving a fuck.]] A man with true balls of steel, especially as it's implied that he's never died once in his whole lifetime (at least until Calth), and most of the time he has come back and back again to fight wars in the (literal at times) trenches. He does not want to be bothered one single fuck with John Grammaticus or the Cabal, but gets suckered in to galaxy saving adventures once and again. Such is the lot of a Perpetual.

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

====St. Ollanius Pius: Old Lore and New====
Before Perpetuals were introduced in the [[Horus Heresy]] novels, specifically in ''Legion'' by Dan Abnett, and more on Ollanius is elaborated in the some particularly good stories by Abnett set on Calth stories, especially ''Know no Fear'' and ''Unmarked'' (a short story anthologized in ''The Mark of Calth''), St. Ollanius Pius was just a regular old balls-of-steel Guardsman whose balls turned to adamantium as he threw himself in front of his emperor during the most epic duel of all time, and thus was sanctified in lore and the Imperial cult from then on down. He was later revealed to be a Perpetual, in a [[skub|somewhat controversial]] change. From the point of view of the average Imperial citizen, or indeed, in fact just about anyone perhaps save the Emperor himself, he was that adamantium-testicled Guardsman and remains that holy Saint who is highly revered by the Imperium (the highest decoration in the [[Imperial Guard]], for instance, is named for him.) In fact, of course, he may still be wandering around, probably from what we all know trying to live this all down modestly. Ollanius, no doubt, would prefer the ambiguity as to whether his existence was utterly obliterated in the [[Rip and Tear|horrendous space kablooie]] surrounding the duel between the Emperor and Horus to remain as such. Although, in ''Fury of Magnus'', Magnus was able to permanently kill a Perpetual via the power of sorcery and plot convenience [though it '''STILL''' didn't quite stick], which perhaps makes it more doubtful that Olly is still alive. But ''Fury of Magnus'', while an enjoyable read, poses so many questions and contrived plot points, while answering so few of them, that attempting to deduce any larger implications from it is hardly a sturdy prospect.