Arelex Orannis

Arelex Orannis
Title/Honours	Supreme Lord of Atalantos, High Commander of the Galactic Core March
Discovered (world)	Space Hulk Palaestram Matyas
Discovered (period)	c.803.M30
Legion	Second
Heraldry/Sigil
Unique Weapon	Lux Universalis
Distinguishing Traits	Innate technological skills, calculated aggression, voidcraft, 3-dimensional tactics
Flaws	Clannish attitude, blunt, extremely unsubtle
Dominion	The Atalantos Worlds

This page details people, events, and organisations from the /tg/ Heresy, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the /tg/ Heresy Timeline and Galaxy pages for more information on the Alternate Universe.

By way of conclusion, I should note that writing this text has been tremendously more difficult than the previous "Lives". In each case prior to this, I had the benefit of Arelex's brilliant recall, insightful criticism and careful editing. The loss has been far more devastating than I could have anticipated.

While I am not privy to the full workings of our administration, I have little doubt that Arelex's passing has been just as troubling to their work as it has been to mine.

(Excerpt from Arelex Orannis: as he was, by Gaspard Lumey)

Arelex Orannis was one of the Primarchs created by the Emperor of Mankind and scattered throughout the Galaxy by the Ruinous Powers. After he was rediscovered, he led the War Scribes and played an important role in directing the campaigns of the Legiones Astartes as a whole. Arelex Orannis is particularly well-remembered for his work in reforming the Imperium after the Hektor Heresy.

History

Youth

Arelex's pod took a very strange route, emerging from the Warp inside an ancient Space Hulk, rather than on a collision course with a planet like most of his brothers' pods. The scattered tribesmen, descendants of the original crews from those doomed voidcraft, were amazed when the Hulk left the Warp, but this time something stayed behind from its travels. Opening the pod, they found a young infant boy, and despite the ever-present fear of starvation, the tribe added him to their numbers and accepted one more mouth to feed and shelter from the darkness.

Arelex grew quickly, learning the Hulk's ever changing ways from his elders and from first-hand experience. For one with his genetic gifts, the deadly serious business of day-to-day survival also became something of a game. Young Arelex delighted in putting his skills to use, climbing, crawling, sprinting and free-falling through every darkened corner of the colossal metal world, learning all he could of the ship's ways. He would often speak of "listening to the world's songs", and indeed, Arelex could foresee danger than none of his tribesmen even suspected, simply by catching minute fragments of sound that heralded disaster. On more than one occasion, Arelex convinced the tribe to pack up and move elsewhere, sometimes mere moments before an explosion or a swarm of mutant horrors would have descended upon them. In time, he became considered something of a seer, and the tribe's shamans initiated him into their deepest mysteries, his adopted father and tribal leader Ar-El chief among their membership.

Though Arelex was hopeless at reading the mists of time and possibility like his adopted elders, he proved unexpectedly gifted when listening to their oral histories, songs of the long-dead vessels that made up the Hulk, and the various fragmented tales of their systems and equipment, and how to maintain them. By these eternal songs, passed down from shaman to shaman, the fragmented Geller Field Generators were kept barely functional, providing the tribe "safe" havens when the Hulk inevitably returned to the Warp once more. The songs spoke of many other wondrous things, but the tribe simply had no time to spare investigating their truth. Survival came first.

Arelex, on the other hand, was ill-content with this state of affairs. For most of his teenage years, he harassed the shamans to sing the songs over and over, memorizing their least detail. Every trinket, every relic, every heirloom the tribe still kept, all were mercilessly examined by the boy-Primarch. And miraculously... A few of them began to reveal unsuspected secrets. And he began to venture far afield.

For days, weeks at a time, Arelex would disappear into the fathomless depths of the Hulk, and armed with nothing more than a few sharp pieces of hull metal, he would retrieve trinkets and baubles, dataslates and pass-codes, and the corpses of mutants, Orks, and other unknown xenos he had killed. The tribe ate well those days. Over time, some of the braver youths began to follow their hero into the blackness, and Arelex's little band of boys tore their way from one end of the Hulk to the other, practicing a fearless style of patient combat. When outmatched, they waited. Watching. Stalking. Eventually, the mutant would make a mistake. The Ork would quarrel with his comrades. The xeno would slumber. And then Arelex and his friends would act, striking without restraint or fear, plunging their knives deep into the foe's vulnerable flesh. By these methods, the tribe prospered and grew.

And fragmented though they were, the tidbits of ancient times Arelex retrieved were beginning to form recognizable patterns in the Primarch's mind. One piece led to another, and the two together unlocked a third, and Arelex began to unlock doors held frozen for thousands of years, and awaken cogitators slumbering since their masters died centuries ago. It could not be called a "love" of learning, for the merciless needs of survival drove Arelex forward, not some intellectual pursuit, but learn he did, and value learning Arelex would. His genetically enhanced body let him kill, but his razor-sharp mind let him win. And with time, the teenage hellion grew into a gifted savage, an educated tribesman, a leader of his people.

The tribe was all, and all were the tribe. No greater sin than harming a tribesman existed, and the only possible sentence was exile to a certain death in the blackness. The camaraderie of friends and family was a faint light against the horrors of life, and Arelex grew up steeped in that warm embrace of people who work for each other as much as themselves. Despite life's harshness, the Primarch would occasionally remark on his upbringing as a high point in his life, something that many of his brother Primarchs could not say. The people quarreled from time to time, but true divisiveness was swiftly crushed by survival's labor. His adopted family, father, mother, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins, all knew him by name, and he knew them. Without those bonds, the tribe would have perished long ago, and Arelex took pride in maintaining them. And once Arelex rose to lead the tribe, those bonds helped him overcome their fears, and begin to push back the darkness.

In a campaign as terrible and challenging as any he would fight for the Imperium, young Arelex rallied his people and struck outward, using his carefully accumulated storehouse of lore to access new parts of the Hulk, and bring some of its systems back online. New Geller Field generators were found and re-powered, giving the tribe more safe houses to shelter in. Xenos and mutants were killed by reactivated auto-sentries, and their meat fed the tribe, allowing their numbers to grow. Guns were retrieved from ancient lockers, so the tribe could protect itself in Arelex's absence.

Arelex's crowning achievement, surpassing even the final bloodstained purges that reclaimed the entire Hulk for his tribe, was reactivating the Navigator chambers from a long-dormant military cruiser embedded in the Hulk's core. The Warp Drive of the ancient voidship was responsible for its uncontrolled descents into the Warp, and Arelex reasoned that by restoring these systems as best he could, perhaps the Hulk could be aimed, even piloted. The risks were beyond calculation, but the Hulk itself was singing a tale of death and destruction. All things come to an end, and their metal world had precious few Warp Jumps left in it before the whole Hulk broke apart and doomed them all.

The Primarch would have to act soon, his hand forced by time's remorseless passage. The tribe's shamans carried thin remnants of intermingled blood from Navigators and Psykers, forged in ancient days of interbreeding between stranded crew members. None of them had the long lost Third Eye, only a faint ability to sense the Warp beyond the hull like a blind man groping in the dark. But it would have to be enough. Better groping hands than none at all.

And so the tribe braced themselves within the glowing borders of the Geller Fields, while Arelex and the shamans took their places deep within the Hulk. For the first time, Arelex felt true fear, as he commended his entire Tribe to the Warp, and the Hulk's protection. The Primarch gambled all he had ever known on his own skills, and the strength of Mankind's works.

The Hulk disappeared from mortal sight, leaving only blackness behind. Arelex thought of planets, and suns. Strange things known only from ancient stories, worlds with practically infinite space, where life was easy and the air was clean. Titanic balls of fire which nurtured life, rather than the fitful and often explosive emergency lights that dimly lit their world. Lands where water flowed freely, where food grew of its own accord without needing the blood of mutants to drink. Wonders beyond measure, surely. As the Warp howled close around them, Arelex put his faith in the stories, and chose to believe that such things could exist.

Forward. Ever forward. To turn back is to die, to become fearful is to fall into oblivion. Dashing from console to console, Arelex kept the Hulk's fragile components alive, while his father and the other shamans turned their every thought to finding a path through the Warp, to the homeworld of humanity spoken of in so many ancient songs. To the Cradle of Man. To Earth. To Terra.

But the Warp would not let them pass so easily.

It was fortunate indeed that the Hulk was located fairly close to Terra, for Arelex's journey would have been short by the standards of Imperial Voidcraft. But with a jury-rigged composite of a thousand dead vessels? Without a Navigator? Without any real understanding of the Warp, or the Void? Terra might as well have been in another galaxy. Their Warp Jump began as smoothly as could have been hoped, and for a time the winds of Chaos were calm. The shamans navigation was crude in the extreme, and their fumbling hands began to roil the Sea of Souls in their passage. The entire Hulk began to shudder and groan, and Arelex's ears picked up the unmistakable sounds of imminent failure building in its components.

The rough seas became a sudden hurricane without warning, and their most skilled psychic, shaman Ke-Kos, burst into lurid flames of a million hues, dying horribly as the fury of the Warp forced itself through his brain. Something horrible began to pull itself through his smoldering body as it fell to the deck, but with his life force severed, the creature never fully manifested, vanishing from whence it came without the shaman's power to sustain itself. Even though it existed for the blink of an eye, Arelex would never forget the jagged shard of fear that shot through him in that moment. Hull-wraiths he knew. Hull-wraiths he had killed before, breaking their ghostly, icy forms with his bare hands. This was something far, far greater and more terrible than those. And as the Hulk shrieked metallic sounds of pain, Arelex began to lose his confidence. The tribe had no choice, the Hulk was dying. He knew this. But had he chosen the wisest path? Could they have pried a voidship loose and flown it to safety?

There was no time. Ke-Kos was dead, and to stop now meant certain death. Shaman Ar-El was the next best option. Arelex knew this. But he also knew it meant killing his own father. Committing the greatest of sins, kinslaying. With a face as grim and haggard as death itself, Arelex asked his father to die for the Primarch's sins, and find them a path through the storm Arelex had guided them into.

And so he did. A kind of golden aura surrounded Arelex's adopted father, something unseen and unheard of in any of the ancient tales. His strength seemed to multiply a hundredfold, and the Hulk abruptly changed course in the Warp's shifting currents. Though they were no longer headed for Terra, Ar-El sang to the tribe, sang of a golden beacon in the madness that promised safety. Arelex believed his father mad, dying, grasping for hope where surely there was none. And yet, what choice was there? The Primarch bent his every skill to sustaining the physical vessel, while Ar-El guided them inexorably towards the beacon.

The Hulk could take no more, and Arelex engaged the cogitators that would return them to reality. Shrieking in protest as they burst from the Warp, the Hulk's systems flashed and died in showers of electrical sparks, never to awaken again. And shaman Ar-El died with them, his own form twisting and distorting horribly as the Warp claimed one final price in blood for disturbing it so arrogantly. His bones and muscle stretched and twisted, drawing themselves out like putty into the shape of a leering skull, then all caught ablaze in violet fire with a final howl of terror.

Nothing more than ash remained of Arelex's father, and even that ash was swallowed up into the Warp.

But, they had arrived around a planet, drifting just inside the orbit of its innermost moon, a beautiful white jewel orbiting above a colossal orb of blue, green, and brown. Its parent star burned a warm orangish-yellow, and Arelex wept as its light fell upon him, the first starlight any of them had ever known. And around the planet, a host of small stars burned brightly in the void, coming ever closer to the colossal interloper suddenly in their midst. The Hulk had failed in its quest to reach Terra, but the Emperor had found another of his children. Immediately recognizing Arelex's presence, the Emperor's mighty flagship put on flank speed to reach his as soon as possible, pulling ahead of the fleet with haste.

The golden giant teleported aboard the Hulk in a brilliant flash, only to see a stonefaced young Primarch standing apart from his tribe, bitter tears running down his cheeks. Though the people comforted his adoptive mother, Arelex himself dared not touch her. The Primarch made arrangements to have his tribe settled on the planet below, and to have the Space Hulk that had sheltered them all these years repaired and remade into an orbital station, a sentry to guard them forevermore. Arelex would see to it that his family led a good life, but he would never return to them again. The code of the tribe was absolute. A kinslayer must go into exile.

And so, Ar-El-Ex Or-Ann-Is, son of shaman Ar-El and mother Or-Ann, would take the name Arelex Orannis, and become Primarch of Legio Secundus, the first Primarch to have been found beyond Terra, and brother to Hektor who remained upon Terra thanks to Malcador the Sage. Though stricken with grief, Arelex walled off the part of him that had been a tribesman aboard the Hulk, and strode forward to an unknown destiny at the Emperor's side, with a new tribe to call his own.

He would not fail them as he had his adoptive father.

The Great Crusade

Joining Arelex on the Crusade were the warriors of the II Legion.

Over time, almost 10,000 of the most aggressive War Scribes split into smaller squads, ranging far and wide across the Galaxy in scouting expeditions, and their reconnaissance proved quite valuable to Imperial strategy and planning.

Some of the more prominent worlds near the Galactic Core, a few dozen in number, became known as the Atalantos Worlds, a realm where the embers of Humanity's past were slowly, painfully being rekindled into a blaze of power. Arelex's Space Hulk "homeworld" was not among these worlds, being so close to Terra and now firmly integrated into the Imperium, and so the War Scribes primarily recruited from Atalantos, the world for which the area was named, as well as the vast civilian and Legion Serf population aboard their colossal fleet.

At the Council of Nikaea, Arelex was...

The Hektor Heresy

To reinforce the Legion, all the exploration squads were immediately recalled, and more than 10,000 warriors returned to bolster the Legion's ranks. If not for their absence, Imperial scholars agree that the War Scribes would be no more than a footnote to history. Immediately, an urgent call for recruits was sent out to all the Atalantos Worlds, and a massive wave of War Scribes was created. Arelex suffered mightily during this time, as his Legion's need for gene-seed drained him severely. While he labored to heal his Legion, he could think of nothing but his own failures.

Personality

In the immense archives of the War Scribes Legion, there are two great bodies of recorded knowledge concerning their Primarch's dealings with others. There are those of the clan, to whom Arelex extended an endless reserve of loyalty and camaraderie. And there are those not of the clan, to whom Arelex maintained a cordial detachment until such time as they showed themselves worthy and deserving of his trust. He was slow to anger, quick to put transgressions behind him in order to focus on more important tasks. Though he never forgot an offense, and forgiveness was unlikely, Arelex was opposed to holding grudges. They were rarely productive, and that, Arelex would not abide. But for xenos, Arelex's opinion was very different. No slight went unavenged, no attack went unanswered, no dead Marine was ever laid to rest without a pile of xenos corpses to accompany him to the afterlife. Eldar, Ork, or any other xenos, Arelex sought their deaths with equal fervor. At every opportunity Arelex bade his Legion to practice the most merciless genocides against the xenos, and few Marines are so hated as the sons of Arelex in alien folklore.

Arelex was the great pillar upon which the Legion rested, the centerpoint that each Marine from the youngest Neophyte to the oldest Chapter master could consult at any time. He was a judge, a mediator, an organizer, a teacher, a general, and a loving father, all bound into one man. For those who were truly part of Arelex's life, few requests went unanswered, no matter how outlandish or extreme.

He could be an infuriatingly aloof character, cold, distant, detached. While he described himself as disciplined and clear-headed, many labeled Arelex stubborn and obstructive. Quite simply, most Imperial affairs were not worth his time, and he ignored them with a casual indifference bordering on insult. After all, those were tasks for the Administratum, or the Adeptus Mechanicus, or any number of Imperial functionaries, noble lords, and middle-men. The job of a Primarch was to focus on tasks that only a Primarch could accomplish, or so Arelex believed. Why else would the Emperor have created him and his brothers, if not for that reason? Diverting a Primarch from his pressing affairs was treading close to treason, and Arelex ill-favored those who he felt were wasting his time. The hypocrisy of allowing himself to be emotionally swayed by the needs of his Legion, the Emperor, or certain other Primarchs appeared to have escaped Arelex entirely. Or perhaps it was the most human facet of his character. Equally ignored were the embers of resentment that slowly built around him, smoldering within the upper echelons of human society.

Arelex sought to become a spark that would reignite the lost passions of human achievement, and bent his every effort to mastering as many fields of science, engineering, mathematics, economics, and management as possible. If a thing could not be done, he did not rest until he found a way, whether from his own innovation or lore recovered from ancient human archives. It is quite clear from re-examining Arelex's writings from a historical standpoint that he did not trust his fellow Primarchs to restore humanity. Perhaps as a result of his clannish upbringing, Arelex secretly felt he could only truly rely on himself, the one controllable constant in a wild and untamed universe. The Primarch felt the entire Galaxy's weight upon his shoulders and his alone, though none had forced it upon him or even asked him to bear it. Such a misplaced burden took a toll on Arelex's psyche over the years.

Even though Arelex held his brother Primarchs in generally high regard, few of them sought to be as self-sufficient as he did, and a certain hint of disapproval is evident when examining his correspondence with them. Some within the Imperium derided Arelex for his lack of focus on warfare. Some even quietly voiced opinions that the Second Legion's master sought to surpass the Imperium entirely, and feared the Legion's independence. Ultimately though, the Emperor's voice was the only one to which Arelex truly paid heed, and the Master of Mankind remained silent in implicit approval.

Though it is an absolute secret within the Legion's records, there are several documents penned by Arelex himself describing firsthand experience with the Warp. Ever since his earliest childhood, Arelex feared and hated the madness that lurks beyond our reality. He was exposed to the Warp over and over during his youth upon the Space Hulk, protected by little more than damaged, fitful Geller Fields cobbled together from scraps and blind luck. Hull-ghasts and shades of the dead were his tribe's constant companions, and more than one relative was dragged screaming into the Immaterium. He wrote of hideous beings scraping at the walls of his mind, and his private fear that somehow he had been compromised by them in some indescribable way. As with all things, the Warp was an area of research, and Arelex pursued it avidly. Unlike most seers and psychics, he sought only to find its weaknesses, how it could be broken or purged or sealed away forever.

Arelex trusted Sanctioned Psykers and Astropaths only because they were approved by the Emperor himself. Navigators were tolerated as relics of ancient Man and his peerless sciences. Librarians were a sore point for Arelex. He could not deny their utility, but he could never bring himself to trust them as completely as he did the rest of the Legion. War Scribes Librarians would never consider their post an honorable one because of this, and they were likewise few in number. All others who used the Warp were considered enemies of the highest degree. Mutant psykers, Eldar Seers, Daemon summoners, these Arelex hated above all else. To him they were ulcers in reality, bleeding sores through which all might be brought to ruin.

In his own way Arelex was more foresighted than the other Primarchs regarding the Ruinous Powers' potential danger. Perhaps if the Emperor had given him any concrete information to refine his instinctual hatred of the Warp, Arelex might have found a way to counter the Gods' influence in the Galaxy. Perhaps even the Heresy could have been strangled in its cradle.

But the Emperor remained silent, thinking only to protect his sons.

And Arelex remained ignorant.

Appearance

Arelex is a bald, hulking mass of scar tissue, shallow gouges from long-healed projectile wounds, and burn marks from both Warp energies and sparking electricity and plasma. Growing up inside the nightmarish tangle of metal and energy that is a Space Hulk left indelible marks even on the body of a Primarch. They are signs of a lifetime spent delving into dangerous places in search of relics and lore with which to protect his tribe, and the price that must be paid when attempting to reverse the decay of millennia. They are also the unmistakable marks of a man who has struggled with nameless mutant horrors with nothing more than fist, foot, and fury.

The right side of his jaw and cheek has much of the flesh replaced with bionics, a grim but treasured reminder of his second year spent among his Legion, hunting and being hunted, challenging them to reach new heights, and their final achievement in bringing their Gene-sire down at last.

Shorter in stature than most Primarchs, he stands only a few inches taller than the average Space Marine, though quite a bit broader at the shoulder and extremely muscular. His compact frame served him well crawling through the maze in which he grew to manhood, and his endurance is truly inhuman. Large hands and a short, thick neck give him something of a wrestler's look, and to fall into a grapple with Arelex is to court death.

Though his body is scarred, ravaged, and frightening, the Primarch's pale green eyes are almost kind, a reminder of the gentler man he might have been had his pod not been spirited away.

Wargear

Arelex's armor is well equipped for almost any need. Crafted by the finest Martian savants, it is a masterpiece of form and function. A multitude of useful tools are cleverly miniaturized and concealed beneath thick armor plates. Inside the expanded power pack lurks a powerful force-field of arcane design liberated from the Space Hulk where Arelex grew up. Enormous thrusters jut from the armor's shoulders, capable of lifting even a Primarch aloft. If needed, Arelex can remain airborne for considerable time, useful for both land and space operations. Finally, a complex array of sensors and communications arrays fill the helmet and run underneath each armor plate, using the entire suit as a resonator antenna to speak with troops on the ground and in orbit. With the advanced HUD systems, Arelex can maintain near-total battlefield awareness at all times.

Upon the helmet is a small silver plate reading Dominus Legio, "Master of the Legion".

Arelex's preferred weaponry is at first glance unassuming, appearing little more than a fancy las-rifle. It is obviously well constructed, and designed with a nearly imperviously rugged, utilitarian outer casing. Many firearms are larger, and many are more potent. This particular rifle is a tricky piece of equipment, however. With a simple mental signal from the wielder, the gun alters the energy it emits. At need, Arelex's rifle can produce energies analogous to Melta, Las, Plasma, Volkite, Gauss, and other, still more esoteric wavelengths. Though no more potent than a well-crafted version of each individual firearm, combining all of them into one tool is marvelously useful.

Arelex made the simple addition of a Power Bayonet for close quarters combat himself, and named the gun Lux Universalis, "Universal Light".