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Vanguard Suppressor - Unit Composition: 1 Suppressor Sergeant2 Suppressors |
Vanguard Suppressor - Wargear: Mark X Omnis Power ArmourGrav-ChuteJump PackBolt PistolAccelerator AutocannonFrag GrenadesKrak GrenadesSmoke Grenades (Suppressor Sergeant Only) |
Vanguard Veteran - Vanguard Veteran: A Vanguard Veteran, usually serving as part of a Vanguard Veteran Squad, is a Firstborn Veteran Space Marine of the elite 1st Company in Codex Astartes-compliant Chapters who specialises in close combat.Every member of the 1st Company is proficient in all manner of close assault weaponry. They carve apart their victims with humming Power Weapons, tear them asunder with mighty Power Fists, and gun them down with Bolt and Plasma Pistols.These 1st Company combatants attack suddenly and without warning, drawing upon their centuries of battlefield experience to know precisely where to strike. War engines shudder to a halt, wracked with fiery explosions; elite warriors are overrun, outfought in blistering split-second duels.These elite warriors stand as a living exemplar of the ideals and purpose of their Chapter. Often referred to as a captain's "Iron Fist," Vanguard Veterans are constantly in motion. Even as the last foe falls, the Vanguard Veterans are already charging towards their next victims, for their heroic duty is never done.A Vanguard Veteran Squad is formed from those Space Marines of the Chapter's Veteran 1st Company who have completely immersed themselves in the art of close-quarters combat. Most of them have served lengthy rotations in the Chapters' Assault Squads prior to their promotion, and their skills with chainsword and Combat Knife have been honed and tested in the crucible of bloody melee on a thousand war-torn worlds.It is said that, were a Vanguard Veteran armed only with his fists and his wits, he would still best dozens of foes, and when armed with the Bolt Pistol and chainsword of his trade, the same Veteran could face ten times that number and emerge victorious. With the vaunted weaponry of the Chapter's Armoury at their disposal, Vanguard Veterans take to the fray armed and ready to reap like a bloody whirlwind through entire armies.These weapons are each ancient and revered heirlooms. It is an enormous privilege for a Space Marine to wield such an instrument of destruction in battle.It is of little surprise, therefore, that a Vanguard Veteran fights all the harder with such weapons in hand, not merely to survive the deadly cut and thrust of combat, but to honour both his battle gear's Machine Spirits and the memories of every Adeptus Astartes hero who wielded the same relics in past wars.Whilst they can be deployed at the forefront of an assault, most Chapters employ their Vanguard Veterans as rapid-response forces, using Jump Packs or Rhinos to reposition and apply crucial pressure to an already over-taxed enemy defence, or to reinforce overmatched allies. Vanguard Veterans are famed for arriving at the time and place where their onslaught can make the most difference to a battle.Vanguard Veterans use speed itself as a weapon, to strike at the foe wherever he least expects; this was the way of war for jump troops in the ancient days of the Space Marine Legions, and it still serves well today.Such duty is arduous and never-ending, and Vanguard Veteran Squads are often referred to as a Captain's "iron fist." They are constantly in motion: as soon as one foe is annihilated, fresh orders dispatch the Vanguard Veterans to another corner of the battlefield, there to apply their murderous skill in the Emperor's name. |
Vanguard Veteran - Role: Of all the fighting formations that make up a Codex Astartes-compliant Space Marine Chapter, it is the 1st Company which is most feared. For an Astartes to join the 1st Company is for him to have won renown on battlefields uncounted and to have earned the respect of his Battle-Brothers through deeds of blood and honour.Most such Veterans have served as Sergeants elsewhere in the Chapter-- sometimes for centuries -- before being accepted into the 1st Company, but a notable few are elevated after performing insane acts of heroism.Every member of the 1st Company is proficient in all manner of Astartes weaponry and stands as a living exemplar of the ideals and purpose of the Chapter. With such status comes the right to select weapons of choice from the Chapter's Armoury and, as a result, Veteran Squads are much less rigid in composition and doctrine than other Space Marine formations.They are often equipped and ordered to undertake highly specialised missions that can prove to be force multipliers, such as slaying an Ork Warboss and his bodyguard of Nobs or preventing a wave of Aeldari Aspect Warriors from joining the main body of an enemy Aeldari force.Vanguard Squads are formed from those members of the 1st Company that completely immerse themselves in the art of close-quarter combat. Most have completed lengthy service rotations in their Chapter's Assault Squad, their skills tested and honed in the crucible of bloody melee on a hundred worlds.Power Swords, Plasma Pistols and Power Fists are all common sights in Vanguard Veteran Squads, and Thunder Hammers, Lightning Claws and rarer weaponry are also employed as the engagement requires. These weapons are not employed lightly, for they are without exception all ancient and revered artefacts of the Chapter.A Vanguard Veteran who returns from the field of battle without his armament is subject to the Chapter's gruelling rites of penance.Whilst they can be deployed at the forefront of an assault, most Chapters employ their Vanguard Veterans as rapid-response forces, using Jump Pack or Rhino transport to apply crucial pressure to an already over-taxed enemy defence, or to reinforce overmatched allies. Often referred to as a Space Marine Captain's "Iron Fist," Vanguard Veterans are constantly in motion. |
Vanguard Veteran - Unit Composition: 4-9 Veteran Space Marines1 Veteran Sergeant |
Vanguard Veteran - Dedicated Transport: If they do not select Jump Packs, the unit may select one of the following for a dedicated troop transport:Drop PodRhinoRazorback |
Vanguard Veteran - Wargear: Power Armour or Artificer Armour (Any Firstborn pattern)Bolt PistolChainswordFrag GrenadesKrak Grenades |
Vanguard Veteran - Optional Vanguard Veteran Wargear: May replace Bolt Pistol and/or chainsword with one of the following:Power Weapon (Any type) or Lightning ClawGrav-pistolPlasma PistolPower FistThunder HammerStorm ShieldMelta BombsJump Pack |
Vanguard Veteran - Optional Wargear, Veteran Sergeant Only: Relic Blade |
Vanir System - Vanir System: The Vanir System is a star system of Human-inhabited worlds that is the site of a frantic battle between the Imperial forces of the Achilus Crusade and rebels loyal to the self-proclaimed Monarchs of the Kingdom of Vanir. It is found within the Orpheus Salient of the Jericho Reach.The desperate forces of Battlegroup Icarus, having withdrawn after taking massive casualties from the advancing Tyranids, are now locked in a race to overcome the rebel forces that have taken possession of the Vanir System.The Imperials know that time is short and that the only chance of surviving the oncoming tide of Tyranids is to renew the system's defences before the Tyranids come to destroy Vanir and lay waste to Loyalist and rebel alike. |
Vanir System - History: During the Jericho Reach's "Age of Shadow," Vanir was the seat of the false "Kingdom of Vanir," a petty empire held together by the military power of its Monarchs. A small fleet of Warp-capable starships kept the closely-situated worlds of the kingdom together through fear of orbital bombardment and the deployment of the Monarchs' dreaded gene-enhanced Crown Guard.When the crusade forces reached the worlds of the kingdom, a solar year-long battle ensued that was ended with a highly dangerous attack on Vanir itself by Adeptus Astartes of the Storm Wardens Chapter and the bloody defeat of the Crown Guard.Many of the Monarchs fled before the wrath of the Imperium as Vanir was forced brutally into Compliance; some were hunted down and executed by being crowned with molten gold, but a few escaped into hiding. Later, communications were broken by the Shadow in the Warp cast before the advancing Hive Fleet Dagon.This threw the Imperials into disarray and the surviving Monarchs, long plotting the violent overthrow of Imperial rule, seized the opportunity to spark off a revolt.This rebellion lifted the yoke of Imperial rule once more, bringing down the occupying government in a bloodbath of a civil war. The Monarchs regained control of Vanir.Ragged elements of Battlegroup Icarus attempted to regroup at Vanir after fighting the invading Tyranids along the salient. However, they were attacked as they entered the system and found themselves fighting a war against the resurgent forces of the Monarchs.In desperate need of the resources of the Vanir System, the battlegroup had no choice but to fight at a crippling disadvantage -- their fleet-based firepower muzzled by the fact that they could not risk destroying the planetary infrastructure or defences that they would need when the Tyranids arrived.With time running short, Vanir remains a world divided and facing annihilation. |
Vanitor - Vanitor: Vanitor is an Imperial Frontier World and wilderness world that is the fourth planet of the Konor System in the Realm of Ultramar. Vanitor is a harsh and windswept world that houses the Konor System's astropathic relay. Without this key communications outpost, the system would be left completely isolated from the wider Imperium. The world came under sustained attack by the Forces of Chaos in service to Nurgle during the Plague Wars of the early 42nd Millennium, and the servants of the Plague God proved successful in claiming the planet. Vanitor now writhes with corruption, and the roiling Warp Storms that ravaged its surface brought vast hosts of daemons into reality. The Imperium's vital astropathic relay now acts as a beacon to the creatures of the Warp. |
Vanitor - The Plague Wars: Having gathered significant momentum with their early victories on the outskirts of the Konor System during the Plague Wars, the armies of Chaos spread out across the region like poison seeping into the blood stream of the Imperium.When the Plague Wars began, Ultramar burned. The putrid warbands of the Death Guard, led by the Daemon Primarch Mortarion, launched a furious assault upon the Ultramarines' stellar empire. This eruption of all-out war threatened to drown the stars themselves in bloodshed and terror. Legions of Heretic Astartes and Chaos-spawned monstrosities have already rampaged across world after world, spreading the malignant corruption of the Dark Gods in their wake. Yet all hope is not lost. The return of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman to the region with the end of the Indomitus Crusade has stalled the seemingly unstoppable momentum of the Chaos advance. In a series of bloody battles, the armies of the Imperium -- reinforced with mighty Primaris Space Marines -- have reclaimed many worlds thought lost, forcing their hated foes to retreat and regroup.The worshippers of Chaos sought to regain their advantage by smashing a path through the Imperial battle line to Macragge, homeworld of the Ultramarines. Had they succeeded, the greatest Imperial stronghold in the sector would have been gravely threatened, and Guilliman's forces cut-off and surrounded. To achieve this end, the Forces of Chaos had to conquer the well-located Konor System. Powered by the industrial might of the Forge World of Konor, this centre of produce and production feeds the Imperial war machine with vital shipments of munitions and machinery. Populous and prosperous, with a large and well-equipped defence force, the Konor System embodies the glorious dream that is Ultramar. Crucially, it also guarded one of the few stable Warp transit routes to the Macragge System. If the Chaos advance was not halted, Konor would have fallen, and a path to the heartland of Ultramar would be laid bare to the forces of the Ruinous Powers.Yet the warriors of the Adeptus Astartes had no intention of ceding their rightful domain without a fight. The Ultramarines stood against the Chaos onslaught with nobility and courage, smiting the foe with Bolter and blade. And they are not alone. The military sledgehammer of the Astra Militarum rumbled into action, an armoured fist of devastating tank columns and endless regiments of soldiers that ground all before it into ashes and dust. Scattered Space Marine Chapters rushed fresh reinforcements to the war zone, seeking to aid their embattled kin. Enigmatic Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus sent forth their legions of steel, and mighty Imperial Knights bestrode the slaughter like ancient gods of war.Every single warrior -- every Bolter round and bomb -- was vital, for the Chaos host sweeping across the Konor System was vast beyond imagining. Warriors of the Death Guard marched implacably forward, enemy fire spattering harmlessly from their rusted, ancient Power Armour and pallid, twisted flesh. In return, they unleashed bombardments of noxious toxins and flesh-melting plagues. Daemonic legions surge alongside the Chaos advance, exulting in the chance to wreak torment across the material realm. Warbands of Heretic Astartes, millions upon millions of depraved mortal Chaos Cultists, and a thousand other horrors converged upon Konor, drawn to its aura of agony and death like sharks to blood.Circling this firestorm of destruction were predatory xenos races, ever seeking to further their own mysterious ends. Orks surged into the war in their millions, delighting in the spreading carnage. Craftworld Aeldari and Drukhari circled from afar, offering their services as mercenaries to both sides or launching raids to fulfill some unknowable agenda. Tyranid and T'au forces spilled in from the Eastern Fringe, capitalising on or drawn by the escalating conflict, while even the Necrons sent undying invasion forces to exploit the infighting of the younger races and expand their ancient empires.No part of the Konor System was left unscarred by the war. If the Heretic Astartes' plans came to fruition, the system's own worlds would have been weaponised and turned against Ultramar. The Forces of Chaos intended to force open a route to Macragge, and that shining light of the Imperium would face obliteration. |
Vanitor - The Vanitor Campaign: The Konorian Astropathic Relay, situated upon the wilderness world of Vanitor and guarded by a vast fortress basilica, once linked the Konor System's Imperial defence force to the greater war effort across Ultramar. It was one of the first targets overwhelmed in the initial blitz of the Chaos invasion, for severing this line of communication left the Konor System shrouded in darkness and confusion. Despite a brave stand, the Departmento Munitorum forces responsible for maintaining and defending the facility were encircled and slaughtered. The relay's astropathic choir were ritually bound and excruciated by Chaos Sorcerers, and the sheer agony of their torment -- amplified by the unfortunate beings' raw psychic power -- became a shining beacon to the ravenous monstrosities of the Warp.This piercing psychic scream soon came to the attention of the Grey Knights, who had swiftly identified the growing conflict in Ultramar as a potential lodestone that would draw entities from the roiling depths of the Immaterium into realspace. The grim brotherhood of Daemon Hunters knew that to allow this psychic beacon to continue to broadcast its vile signal would ultimately invite the horror of a sector-wide daemonic incursion. Gathering allies to their side, the Grey Knights assembled several strike forces and fell upon the corrupted defenders of Vanitor with merciless brutality, hacking apart Chaos-spawned horrors and their wretched masters. Yet even the Grey Knights could not accurately grasp the nightmare that was spreading across this windswept wilderness world.Upon the great plains, vast Warp breaches vomited the rancid deluge of the Empyrean into reality. Amidst the soaring Tremantaen Mountains, Heretic Astartes and their foul minions dug in like ticks, creating a circle of rockcrete redoubts around the relay, which rested atop the highest peak. Blizzards of frozen blood and transmutative hurricanes whipped through these mountain passes, birthing new flyblown horrors or flaying the flesh from those foolish enough to brave the open air. At the Konorian Relay itself, Chaos forces defended their tortured wards with savage determination, unleashing blistering cascades of gunfire and artillery upon those who looked to breach the corrupted basilica walls. If the Imperials could not break through this formidable barrier, the agony of the tortured Astropaths would only flare brighter, drowning Vanitor in the surging tides of the Warp. Surely the damnation of the entire Konor System was sure to swiftly follow.Vanitor writhed with corruption, and the roiling Warp Storms that ravaged its surface brought vast hosts of daemons into reality. Chaos forces had taken Vanitor early in the war for the Konor System, slaughtering its unprepared Imperial defenders with ease. By maintaining the furious momentum of their planetary assaults, the followers of the Dark Gods had managed to keep their foe staggered and confused, and unaware of the potential cataclysm that was brewing upon the isolated wilderness world. Yet the growing psychic disruption caused by its tormented choir of astropaths could not be masked for long. Finally freed from the apocalyptic wasteland of fire-ravaged Nethamus, Imperial fleets made for Vanitor at top speed.Having been unsuccessful in their attempts to starve the Konor System into submission by destroying Nethamus' food production capability, it was vital for the Chaos forces to maintain control of Vanitor and its twisted psychic beacon. Vast armies of Heretic Astartes, mortal Chaos Cultists and corrupted war machines flocked to the planet, establishing a fearsome network of fortifications and killing zones. Led by the Daemon Hunters of the Grey Knights, the Imperial armies crashed into these defences, blasting them apart with ceaseless barrages of bunker-breaking artillery, and relentless assaults by infantry and towering war machines. The Loyalists were buoyed by their victory upon Nethamus, and were reinforced and well-supplied. The sheer sledgehammer might of the Astra Militarum's tank regiments ground millions of cultist defenders to bloody paste beneath their relentless advance, and even the elite Heretic Astartes were sorely pressed by the sheer ferocity of the attack. It was only the endless seeping of daemonic entities into reality, drawn like sharks to blood by the power of Vanitor's psychic emanations, that sealed the doom of the Imperial forces.Slowly, inevitably, the momentum of the Imperial assault was reversed, until its armies were in full retreat. Trapped between the murderous mountain forts and tides of daemons sweeping in from Warp breaches across the plains of Vanitor, the Imperials were soon surrounded. The subsequent carnage was appalling, as the hungry denizens of the Warp glutted their eternal hunger upon mortal flesh. Less than half of the Imperial invasion force escaped alive. As the tortured screams of the astropathic choir reached a piercing crescendo, the skies above Vanitor split apart like an open wound. |
Vanitor - Geography: The world of Vanitor possessed several areas of ultimate strategic import for any force seeking to maintain or seize control over the planet during the Plague Wars. These included:The Konorian Astropathic Relay - This vast basilica, surrounded by a perimeter wall dotted with Icarus Lascannons and Sentry Guns, houses Vanitor's astropathic choir. During the Plague Wars, they remained within, bolted to restraining harnesses and pierced by ritual blades, screaming their corrupted insanity into the void. Their trauma, magnified by the profane ceremonies of the Chaos Sorcerers that guarded them, threatened to unleash a colossal Warp rift across the windswept plains of Vanitor. Already the membrane between realms had been torn apart, and legions of daemons had clawed their way into realspace. Those Imperial forces that survived the aetheric tempest that whipped about the mountaintop, or who managed to push their way through the heavily guarded Tremantaen Peaks, were forced to storm this formidable redoubt and eliminate the corrupted Astropaths. The cost in lives and equipment proved enormous, and when the Imperial forces failed to penetrate the Chaos defences, Vanitor became a beacon to the nightmarish denizens of the Warp, as daemons ran rampant across the entire Konor System.Tremantaen Peaks - The mountain passes leading to the Konorian Relay were dotted with Chaos defences, garrisoned by massed legions of Traitor infantry and artillery. Empyric dissonance rendered both teleportation and airborne insertion to the relay incredibly dangerous, and so the hot-zone of the Tremantaen Peaks -- the most viable land route to the facility -- saw ferocious fighting. As the Grey Knights and their allies advanced, they braved twisting, treacherous paths ravaged by bombardments, mines and Bolter fire. Worse still, daemons began to tear their way through the veil between dimensions, and heavy blizzards and empyric storms ravaged both the defenders and attackers.The Festering Gush - The largest localised Warp Storm unleashed upon Vanitor during the Plague Wars was named the Festering Gush by the Heretics responsible for unleashing it. Above a plain of rolling grassland, a ragged wound in the sky vomited the raw essence of Chaos into reality, and where this rancid deluge fell, the flowers of Nurgle's garden bloomed with sickening fecundity. This forest of corruption continued to grow with every passing moment, and, if left unchecked, even the elimination of Vanitor's astropathic choir would not be enough to suture the breach in reality. The Grey Knights initiated a fierce assault upon the Festering Gush, led by Grand Master Aldrik Voldus and a number of their most powerful psyker Astartes. They held back the tide, buying time for their allied armies to destroy the Konorian Relay. Arrayed against them were legions of daemons and Chaos worshippers, protected by a fortress of bursting slime-blossoms, parasitic leech-seeds and a thousand other Empyric nightmares given physical form by the breach. Unfortunately, the Imperial forces proved unable to secure the relay, and Voldus' forces were forced to retreat from Vanitor and accept a rare defeat against the servants of the Dark Gods. |
Vanitor - Fate of Konor Summer Campaign: The Konor System was the location for the 2017 worldwide Fate of Konor Summer Campaign, conducted by Games Workshop to herald the arrival of the 8th Edition of the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop war game. Each week, players at officially-recognised locations around the world, such as various game and hobby stores, would play a series of campaigns set on each world of the Konor System, representing either the Imperial defenders or the attackers of Chaos. Each battle's outcome was then logged with Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000 website. The collective outcome of all those battles determined which force ultimately won canonical control of each planet in the system during the Plague Wars. |
Vanity - Vanity: Vanity -- as it has long been known -- is a barren, radioactive, and haunted wasteland of shattered hive cities and fallen grandeur.Once the prominent Hive World of Corulsiem, it was the capital planet of the Jericho Sector's Cellebos Sub-sector and second only to Varrus itself in its economic and military might.Now it is a contested War World of the Cellebos Warzone between the forces of the Achilus Crusade and Chaos in the Jericho Reach. |
Vanity - History: During the ancient Jericho Sector's Age of Shadow, the prideful and fractious rulers of Corulsiem were among the first to fall to internal division and strife. Its hive cities erupted into a savage civil war, which quickly escalated to the use of forbidden atomic weapons, rendering the planet into a lifeless, cinder-shrouded carcass of a world.For many centuries afterwards, Corulsiem was little more than a target for the most desperate or foolhardy of scavengers willing to brave its deadly, radioactive fallout-strewn wastes in search of spoils.It became known more commonly by the name "Vanity" by those in the Jericho Reach, in reference to the hubris and folly of its former masters.With the eruption of the Hadex Anomaly, Vanity's reputation grew even darker: engulfed for a time within the burgeoning Warp rift, legend has it that the tortured souls of Corulsiem's billions of dead rose up screaming.Since then, Vanity has become legendary as a deadly, haunted place. These legends were proved to be lethal truth as this world became a second line in the war between the advancing Achilus Crusade and the Chaos forces of the Stigmartus; both have suffered at the hands of this world's spectral phenomena.The fighting on Vanity has been both sporadic and brutal, with both sides trying and failing to gain the upper hand and use the system as a base for their own operations, or at least deny it to their enemies.Owing to the extremely adverse conditions here, both sides have taken to deploying troops more likely to survive rather than more numerous fodder unlikely to live long enough to be tactically effective.For the crusade forces, this means the deployment of elite Adeptus Astartes strike teams, while the Stigmartus has formed its favoured forces from twisted mutants well-suited to operate on the poisoned world, backed by witches and with deadly contingents of the Traitor Legions to lead them. |
Vanquisher-class Battleship - Vanquisher-class Battleship: The Vanquisher-class Battleship is a class of Imperial battleship employed by the Navis Imperialis. These ships have often served in the Ultima Segmentum as part of the Dominion Fleet of the Ultramarines Chapter in the Realm of Ultramar.The Navis Imperialis is currently known to operate four Vanquisher-class vessels; all are currently undergoing rearmament and crew training before their return to active service to bolster Battlefleet Ultima in the aftermath of the Battle of Macragge against the Tyranid Hive Fleet Behemoth. |
Vanquisher-class Battleship - History: What few Imperial records survive of its construction indicate that the Vae Victis was the first vessel of the class constructed in the orbital shipyards of Hydraphur in the late 32nd Millennium. Built at the request of the Lord High Admiral Javor, the Vae Victus was the first Vanquisher-class Battleship to see service in the Imperial Navy.Following its construction, the battleship saw action during the Pacification of Magdellan and the Saint-Saen Crusade. Whilst on this extended Imperial Crusade the vessel was recorded as "lost in the Warp" with all hands. Believed to have been thrown wildly off course by Warp storms, the Vae Victis returned to realspace some two hundred Terran years later. Records do not detail the intervening years.Over the next millennia this starship's design underwent an extensive refit, launch bays were removed in favour of forward torpedo rooms. The two antiquated bomber launch tubes are still visible on the vessel beneath the armoured prow. Following heavy battle damage to the Vae Victis's main engines, the ship's propulsion system was radically redesigned. What could be salvaged was converted into the upper engine room, whilst a second lower engine was added. She then returned to patrol duty.Its next known action came when it served as part of the Dominion Fleet of the Ultramarines Chapter in Ultramar.Aged and suffering continued problems with the twin plasma engine units, the Vae Victis was mothballed as part of the Imperial Navy's reserve in the 38th Millennium and left in a stationary orbit around Drawkesd in the Segmentum Tempestus. The vessel's weapons and Void Shield systems were stripped for reuse. For long standard years the battleship was left to decay in orbit of that forgotten back-world. Recently, increased pressure on segmentum battlefleet resources as a result of the assault of the Tyranid Hive Fleet Behemoth on Imperial forces at the Battle of Macragge has led to the Vae Victis being recommissioned. She is currently undergoing rearmament and crew training before resuming active service. |
Vanquisher-class Battleship - Notable Vessels: Crown of Ashes - The Crown of Ashes was commanded by Groupmaster Abedwe and served as the flagship for Battle Group Tarsus of Indomitus Crusade Fleet Primus.Vae Victis - See above.Virtue of Helena |
Vanquisher Cannon - Vanquisher Cannon: The Vanquisher Cannon is a more complex variant of the standard Imperial Battle Cannon. The most obvious difference between the Vanquisher Cannon and the Battle Cannon is that it is almost twice as long. The cannon uses specialised, shaped high explosive shells to take down enemy tanks from afar. The Vanquisher Cannon is most commonly used on Imperial Leman Russ Vanquisher tanks and the Macharius Vanquisher Heavy Tank. |
Vanquisher Cannon - History: The Vanquisher Cannon is becoming increasingly rare in Imperial service due to the actions of the Ork Warlord Arrgard the Defiler, who scoured the Forge World of Tigrus in the 35th Millennium, destroying the Standard Template Construct (STC) designs for constructing the Vanquisher Cannon in the process. Since that loss, efforts have been made to reproduce more Vanquisher Cannons on other Forge Worlds, with only mixed success. The Forge Worlds of Trebor I, Gryphonne IV and Stygies VIII have enjoyed the most success, and are now capable of producing Vanquisher Cannons in limited quantities. Other Forge Worlds continue their efforts, though it is a slow and complex process. Of all the extant Imperial Forge Worlds, only Trebor I caters exclusively to the needs of Cadia. One of the most sought-after creations from Trebor I is its pattern of the Vanquisher Cannon which is known as the Heavy Vanquisher Cannon, and it is the most powerful of all the Vanquisher Cannon variants. During the Dark Age of Technology, the two independent interstellar empires of Terra and Mars co-existed, to the mutual benefit of both. Trebor I was colonised by survivors from both Terra and Mars after their starships were lost and damaged during a Warp Storm. This forced both groups to combine their knowledge and build the most advanced of of all the Forge Worlds. Lost for centuries, Trebor I was re-discovered for the Imperium by Commissar Yarrick during the Second War for Armageddon. As a result, Trebor I has sworn its allegiance -- and more importantly, its industrial output -- only to Commissar Yarrick and to Cadia. |
Vanquisher Cannon - Vanquisher Cannon Variants: The three Forge Worlds' versions of the Vanquisher Cannon are not exact copies of the original STC pattern. Instead, each possesses slightly different qualities. Gryphonne IV's cannons are longer than the Stygies VIII equivalents, producing remarkable shell velocity to penetrate armour plate. Stygies VIII cannons are shorter, and utilise a smaller calibre shell with no barrel rifling. However, the Stygies VIII cannons have superior recoil absorption, allowing for greater accuracy with follow-up shots. The Trebor I Heavy Vanquisher Cannon is the longest of all three variants, and each can be easily identified by its longer and thicker barrel and the heavy-gauge suppressor/velocity compensator that resembles the tip of a Hellhammer Cannon. The thicker barrel along with the heavy-gauge compensators allow for a range that is 25% farther than either of the other two patterns of the cannon, with amazing pin-point accuracy. This power and accuracy has brought many a Chaos Titan and Greenskin Stompa to their demise with little effort as a result of the Heavy Vanquisher Cannon's power. The remarkable penetrative power of the Leman Russ Vanquisher means it is a highly desired tool for Imperial Commanders. Not even a Titan is safe from its mighty weapons. This fact has not escaped the Imperium’s enemies amongst the Forces of Chaos and the more intelligent Ork hordes, who tend to make Vanquishers priority targets for capture. |
Vanus Temple - Vanus Temple: The Vanus Temple, originally called the Clade Vanus during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy, is one of the temples of the Officio Assassinorum, acting as its intelligence-gathering arm.The temple primarily trains their operatives, known as "info-cytes," exclusively in the use of predictive engines and prognostic simulations, to determine the probability of success in completing missions and then using this data to arrange for the elimination of their targets at a distance.These operatives are also used to hack through secure, networked cogitator communications and data management systems to obtain encrypted information through the means of signals and electronic intelligence. |
Vanus Temple - History: Like the other temples of the Officio Assassinorum, the Vanus Temple was originally the Vanus Clade, created some time during the Great Crusade in the late 30th Millennium at the behest of Malcador the Sigillite, the Regent of Terra, who was secretly the Grand Master of Assassins, and the clade's first Director Primus, who was known only as "Sire Vanus" to the clade's operatives.The Vanus Clade was established in a secret location on Terra at the direction of the Grand Master of Assassins and was tasked, like all of the Assassin clades, with killing those who opposed the formation of the Imperium of Man and the will of the Emperor of Mankind. The Vanus Clade was known for being able to remove the enemies of the Imperium through the manipulation of data rather than outright termination through the use of lethal force.Unknown to anyone outside their temple, the Vanus watched over all of the Imperium's components, even the other Assassin Temples. Their cogitator-stacks were filled with terabytes of data on all of the temples' operations and personnel. It was how they maintained their own position within the Officio Assassinorum when their operatives specialised in non-lethal operations -- through blackmail.During the Horus Heresy, the Assassin clades were handed the monumental task of assassinating the Traitor Primarch Horus. Each clade threw their most gifted students into a proverbial meat-grinder, sending them in blind and half-prepared. Every strike against Horus was broken, and he shrugged off these attempted assassinations without notice.In all the history of the Council of Assassins, there had never been a target whose retirement required more than one mission to prosecute. The Horus problem eventually claimed 8 Officio Assassinorum operatives across all 6 of the primary clades. The Sigillite demanded a solution to rid the Imperium of the Emperor's turbulent and wayward son.The veil of secrecy preserved all that the Officio Assassinorum was. Its operatives continued to work in the shadows of the Imperium, at the margins of the Emperor's knowledge, and for good reason. They served Him in deeds that He must never know of, in order to maintain His noble purity.The deployment of an Assassin was a delicate matter and never one taken lightly. In this period, some clades had fielded two or three operatives in a single mission when the circumstances were most extreme, but then always from the same clade, and always after much deliberation.With the approval of the Master of Assassins, the founders of each clade devised an audacious plan to provide members to the secret Imperial Execution Force, an elite unit hand-picked for the task, that contained Assassins from all 6 prime clades of the Officio Assassinorum to try and eliminate Horus upon the world of Dagonet.Deploying six Assassins at once, from every prime clade, was unheard of. The Emperor would never sanction such an action. But Malcador reasoned that the Arch-traitor had displayed no such qualms about violating the so-called "rules" of war.Horus had bombed his sworn brethren during the Isstvan III Atrocity, his own warriors and gene-sons, into obliteration. No action was beyond the pale for him. Unfortunately, the mission to Dagonet ultimately failed, much to Mankind's ill fortune. |
Vanus Temple - Info-Cytes: The Vanus Temple's stock-in-trade is employing operatives known as "info-cytes;" essentially Human computing engines, but at the very far opposite of the spectrum from the mindless cybernetic constructs known as servitors. In matters of strategy and tactics, the insight of an info-cyte was unparalleled; their existence cemented the Vanus Temple as the intelligence-gathering faction of the Officio Assassinorum.It was said they had never been known to make an error of judgement. There were those that considered this as little more than disinformation, however; the creation and dissemination of propaganda was also a core strength of the Vanus Temple.The Vanus also employ operatives known as "cryptocrats," whose primary role is to provide the means for securing communications between its own operatives. This is accomplished by encrypting data using cryptographic algorithms, transmitting it in an encrypted state, and later decrypting the received information.Cryptocrats are also adept at analyzing and breaking the encryption of protected data and detecting whether or not data has been modified by an outside force. Most operations carried out by info-cytes and cryptocrats are accomplished through telepresent means directly from a Vanus sanctum, or from aboard an Officio-sanctioned starship. The thought of actually physically deploying into the field is deeply disturbing for most Vanus operatives. |
Vanus Temple - Unbound Infocyte: Assassins of the Vanus Temple usually operate remotely, manipulating events through altering data to bring about the termination of a target.The noble killed by a jealous lover, after the discovery of rather explicit pict images; the cartel bosses eliminated by their business partners, when they discovered evidence of theft; the city wiped out by a plague because the shipment of a vaccine, which would have saved it, never arrived -- all these were the murder trade of the Vanus Temple, and, for most, the executioner did not have to see their target, or set foot on the killing ground.In fact most Vanus clade siblings did not even take to the field. Direct methods were the preserve of the other temples, but occasionally one of the Assassins of the Vanus Temple was designated as an Unbound Infocyte, and became an exception to the rule. It was not a condition set lightly.An Unbound Infocyte both designated and executed their targets. Once they had eliminated one target they selected another, and so on, extrapolating from termination to termination, until their Unbound condition was withdrawn. Death at the hand of a Vanus was normally ordained and delivered with the remoteness of an angel enacting the will of a deity. To be Unbound is to be both the eyes that see and the hands that cut. |
Vanus Temple - Notable Vanus Assassins: Sire Vanus - The founder and first Director Primus of the Vanus Clade, Sire Vanus was the namesake of the Vanus Temple. He was the foremost info-cyte and cryptocrat of his age. He, along with the other founders of the various Assassin clades that would evolve into the Assassin Temples of the 41st Millennium, was present on Mount Vengeance. They swore a pact in the shadow of the Great Crusade, an oath that breathed life into the creation of the Officio Assassinorum. The newly created clades hunted down the enemies of the Emperor through stealth and subterfuge, establishing the fact that there was no safe place in the galaxy to hide from the Emperor's justice.Fon Tariel - Fon Tariel was a Vanus Assassin during the Great Crusade and the opening days of the Horus Heresy. He was an info-cyte of the Clade Vanus ranked at Epsilon-dan, the senior-most rank of his order. He was dispatched with the first ever Imperial Execution Force that was composed of Imperial Assassins from every clade, who were tasked with assassinating the Traitor Primarch Horus upon the world of Dagonet. Ultimately, this assassination attempt failed and all the Assassins were slain by the Traitors.Iaeo - Iaeo was a Vanus Assassin operating during the Great Crusade and the dark years of the Horus Heresy. A former pupil of Master Senus, Iaeo had been selected to operate as an Unbound Infocyte, which meant that she was authorised to select and hunt down targets of her choosing on her own. Iaeo was operating on Tallarn at the time of the planet's invasion by the Iron Warriors Traitor Legion and the start of the Battle of Tallarn, which considerably complicated her chosen task -- the hunt of Alpha Legion infiltrators amongst the survivors of the Iron Warriors' virus-bombing of the world. Of these infiltrators the main target had been identified as an entity named Jalen, a triplet of operatives suspected of having been on Tallarn for solar months before the Iron Warriors' invasion and who were responsible for the corruption of several civilian notables and military officers. Successfully infiltrating the Iron Warriors' stronghold on Tallarn -- the Sightless Warren -- Iaeo had to escape several assassination attempts on herself to reach her designated objective. Realising she was outmatched, Iaeo used the presence of the Warmaster Horus' emissary -- Argonis "the Unscarred" -- to seed distrust amongst the Traitors and enable her to close on her prey. In the tradition of the Vanus Clade Iaeo did not have to kill her targets herself, as one of the triplets was killed by the escaping Argonis and another trapped in a stranded vehicle on the poisoned surface of Tallarn. However, to fully eradicate the Alpha Legion cell, Iaeo had to let herself become captured by the third Jalen-operative before revealing her own location and that of the Alpha Legion to the Iron Warriors. Through her sacrifice did Iaeo ensure that the Chaos artefact known as the "Cursus of Alganar" was kept hidden, and the Alpha Legion's attempt at recovering it spoiled.Clementina Yendl - Clementina Yendl was an operative of the Vanus Temple in the mid-32nd Millennia during the War of the Beast against a massive Ork WAAAGH! that threatened the Throne World of Terra. During this conflict, she was despatched by the Grand Master of Assassins, Drakan Vangorich, to lead a force of Assassins to infiltrate the Adeptus Mechanicus homeworld of Mars, and to discover the secrets of the clandestine project the Tech-priests of Mars were working on that involved the Greenskins. Unfortunately for Yendl's team, their presence did not go undetected, as they were soon discovered by Fabricator-General Kubik, who despatched a force of fifty deadly Sicarian Ruststalkers who managed to kill one of her Assassins. Their mission compromised, Yendl took refuge in a subterranean shelter in an Adeptus Mechanicus facility where she revealed that she was working with Magos Eldon Urquidex in foiling the fabricator-general's plans. Yendl eventually came across a facility housing tens of thousands of Ork corpses, and she became determined to discover what Kubik planned to do with these corpses. Unfortunately, Yendl and her Assassin retinue would be discovered once again, and would be massacred by an elite force of Mars' finest Skitarii led by Argus Van Auken.Kurei Adamta - Kurei Adamta was a member of the Vanus Temple, who was, unusual for a Vanus Assassin, covered in hardened muscle and adept at combat, though he typically avoided it at all costs. Kurei was a key member of the Execution Force that was sent to the world of Achyllan Prime, located close to the Cadian Sector, during the 13th Black Crusade in ca. 999.M41, in order to halt the invasion of a large Chaos force of the infamous Crimson Slaughter Chaos Space Marine warband led by the sorcerer Severin Drask. The sorcerer was intent on sacrificing the Achyllan System's star by using the Temple of Shades summoned from the Eye of Terror in order to create a Warp rift that would endanger Terra itself. During this mission, the Assassins were successful in assassinating Drask, though when the Temple of Shades collapsed with the death of Drask, the planet was left devastated. Kurei would ultimately be the sole survivor of this mission, and most unusual for an operative of his temple, he believed that the death of his fellow Assassins would haunt him for the rest of his days. |
Vanus Temple - Wargear: Vanus operatives often hide discreet bronze vents beneath their hair in the back of their skulls, where interface sockets gleam alongside memory implants and dataphilia. Unlike the cohorts of the Adeptus Mechanicus, who willing give themselves fully to the marriage of flesh and machine, info-cytes' cybernetic augmentations are often discreet and nuanced.Info-cytes are also adept in the acquisition of information through the penetration of local sensor webs, which only presents a minor impediment to one of these operatives. This is accomplished by sending a small swarm of organic-metal "netfly" automata out to chew into any opti-cables they find, and transmit any rich data flows they locate back to their handler.Each netfly by itself is a relatively unsophisticated device, but networked en masse, the information the swarm returns can be combined into a dense picture of what was happening in the surrounding area. An operative could assemble maps of the nearby structures, the flows of foot and vehicular traffic, and worm their way into the encoding of several hundred monitor beads scattered throughout a city zone.Info-cytes also carry an array of specialised equipment for a mission, such as electro-pulse projectors built into a Cogitator gauntlet that projects hololithic panes that floated in the air for means of accessing data as well as a menagerie of other exotic weapons; psyber eagles, eyerats and of course, their ubiquitous netfly swarms. |
Varagyr - Varagyr: A Varagyr Wolf Guard Terminator Squad, or simply the Varagyr, was an elite, exclusive formation of Veteran Marines who served as both personal advisors and the Honour Guard to Leman Russ, the Primarch of the Space Wolves Legion during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras in the late 30th and early 31st Millennia.The Varagyr served as the prototypes for the Wolf Guard formations of the later Space Wolves Chapter after the Second Founding. |
Varagyr - History: The Varagyr, rendered sometimes as "Varangii" in Imperial records, or more literally "Wolf Guard," were the chosen warriors of Leman Russ, hand-picked from his own Great Company to form his personal Honour Guard and close companions in war and council. When Leman Russ was rediscovered by the Emperor's own Principia Imperialis expeditionary fleet on the Death World of Fenris, he was swiftly sent to command the VI Legion, but he did not go alone.With Leman Russ went as many as several hundred Fenrisian warriors who had, despite their age, undergone and survived the implantation and gene-processing required to become Astartes, at least to the greater part. Many had died in the attempt, but far less than might have been expected.These men were to be Leman Russ' first Varagyr. They were Russ' oath-bound warriors, sworn to him even if it meant denying the jaws of death to be at his side, and whose loyalty had seen them leave their world of ice and blood and ascend uncomprehendingly but undaunted to the stars in their lord's footsteps.These Varagyr were valued by their king for this loyalty over the might of the transhuman Astartes of the VI Legion he was given to command, despite their vaunted strength and savage reputation, for they had not yet proven themselves as warriors or earned his respect.Leman Russ ordered the Varagyr to be dispersed partly through the ranks of his Legion, which was cause for some resentment, but it was quickly made known that Russ' rule was not to be questioned, and that the Varagyr were more than willing to offer themselves in single combat to decide any argument over the matter.Following the successful Wheel of Fire campaign, the VI Legion of old and its newly inducted Fenrisian brethren had been forged anew in the fires of war. For the survivors of the old Terra-born VI Legion and what remained of the first Varagyr, Fenris had become home for both, for during the trials of that great campaign, all had indeed come to adopt both the elements of Fenrisian culture their Primarch embodied and its martial traditions.The dark wisdom which the Varagyr brought with them found favour with those in the Legion who wished to be close to their gene-sire, just as the Fenris-born embraced new weapons and ways of war more fitted to the vast and unimaginable battlefields they now prowled across.The 1st Great Company (or "Onn" Company in the Fenrisian dialect) which served as Leman Russ' core of Veterans, included his chosen elite, the Varagyr. To attain such a rank and position, each had distinguished himself in battle many times over, and each had forged his own saga worth the telling. More so than any other of his sons they were the wolves of his pack, marked by the great beast pelt which adorned their armour.To adopt this honour meant more than simply to walk in the Wolf King's shadow and lay down their lives for him. It meant that at least for a time these warriors had foregone the chance to lead their brothers in battle, to watch while others struck, to stand fast and not seek out the glory of battle save when their lord commanded.When such coldly withheld fury was unleashed, however, it fell like a thunderbolt against the foe. The charge of the Varagyr was terrible to behold, a tide of armour-clad, beast skin-draped hulks propelled by superhuman strength and inhuman ferocity. Given sufficient momentum to aid their charge, the Varagyr struck their foes like cannon shells, crushing and killing their enemies before even their fearsome blades struck.Though all served the Wolf King faithfully and with fealty as his guard, the Varagyr also took great satisfaction in showing their superiority to the petty lords and champions of those they slew, vying to honour their master with the trophies of the slain justly anointed in the blood of the vanquished in the hopes of making a tale worth the telling. |
Varagyr - Unit Composition: 1 Varagyr Thegn (Veteran Sergeant)4-9 Varagyr Terminators |
Varagyr - Wargear: Cataphractii Pattern Terminator ArmourFrost Blade (Axe, Claws or Sword)Combi-Bolter |
Varagyr - Optional Wargear: Power FistChainfistThunder HammerCombi-WeaponsSecond Frost Blade (Axe, Claws or Sword)Heavy FlamerReaper Autocannon |
Varagyr - Optional Wargear (Varagyr Thegn Only): Grenade Harness |
Varagyr - Dedicated Transport: 1 Land Raider Phobos or Land Raider Proteus or a Spartan Assault Tank |
Varagyr - Sources: The Horus Heresy - Book Seven: Inferno (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pp. 79-80, 84, 86, 165, 229 |
Varantha - Varantha: Varantha is a minor Aeldari Craftworld that is also known as the "Crown of Our Steadfast Hopes." Varantha is renowned among the other Craftworld Aeldari for the gems it crafts, the rare flowers it breeds, and the beautiful metals its artisans work. The Aeldari of Varantha hate Chaos with a white heat, and so the Craftworld has deployed much of its military to combat the Forces of Chaos across the galaxy as well as to defend the worlds of the Exodites from their taint. |
Varantha - Notable Events: The Fall of Karlsen (Date Unknown)- Varantha's warhost held off the Chaos Lord Karlsen of the Night Lords Traitor Legion during his raids on the Clavian Belt until the Ultramarines arrived.Luring the Beast (Date Unknown) - Varantha's Farseers lured the Orks of WAAAGH! Chobog into falling on the Iron Hands' fortresses on the world of Taira-Shodan instead of assaulting the Imperial and Exodite Worlds in the same region.The Shame of Arhendros (Date Unknown) - Varantha's warriors drove Arhendros the Silken Whisper from the three worlds he had claimed for Slaanesh.The Failed Rebellion (Date Unknown) - Varantha's forces defeated the Word Bearers on Sahch V, making sure the great citadels and halls the Heretic Astartes intended to build there never came to be when a Varanthan Witchblade cut down the warband's Dark Apostle. Varanthan Wraithships drove the Word Bearers Battle Barges and Strike Cruisers out of the system and then led the fleets of Ulthwé and Cadia in destroying the Chaos warfleet before it could return to its sanctuary within the Eye of Terror. |
Varantha - Notable Locations: Grove of New Songs - The Grove of Songs is a forest-hall deep within Varantha where its few Aeldari children are born and weaned. |
Vardus Praal - Vardus Praal: Vardus Praal was an Imperial baron and the Planetary Governor of Istvaan III in the times of the Great Crusade. It is known that he eventually fell to the temptations of the Pleasure God Slaanesh, along with the majority of the planet's indigenous people.The Warmaster Horus Lupercal, now newly corrupted by the insidious Dark Gods, would utilise the rebellion as a means to rid himself of the Loyalist elements that remained within both his own Sons of Horus, as well as three other Space Marine Legions under his command -- the Death Guard, Emperor's Children and the World Eaters.Vardus Praal was killed by Captain Lucius of the Emperor's Children during the initial combat on Istvaan III. |
Vardus Praal - Istvaan System Compliance: One of the more notable campaigns carried out by Primarch Corvus Corax and his Raven Guard Legion during the Great Crusade was the Imperial Compliance of the Istvaan System in 994.M30, located in the northern reaches of the Ultima Segmentum, far beyond the established heartlands of the Imperium.Though cut off, scout vessels ranging ahead of Corax's 27th Expeditionary Fleet had found evidence that human life on Istvaan III had managed to maintain a largely cohesive industrialised society that had endured the millennia intact, making it a high priority for contact and absorption into the Imperium.The military forces of the indigenous Istvaanians, including the renegade psykers known as Warsingers, were professional soldiers who did not break easily, even when confronted with the might of Space Marines. There was some resistance, but the last elements of the aggressive faction, including the Warsingers, were destroyed by the Raven Guard at the Redarth Valley on Istvaan III.The Istvaanians kneeled as a defeated foe but were welcomed into the fold as men of the Imperium. Though they had waged war against one another, the Imperial Truth had prevailed and the Istvaanians had sworn to accept its teachings. By proving themselves men of wisdom and civilisation, they were deemed fitting partners for the many other worlds of the nascent Imperium.The established planetary capital of Istvaan III, the Choral City, was chosen as the site of Imperial power and with the help of the Imperial Army Pioneer Corps and Mechanicum oversight, bunker and barrack networks were constructed to house its sizable new garrison, and the wrecked Precentor's Palace was raised again as an Imperial Castrum-fortress to house the seat of government.Alongside this a star port was created to manage inter-orbital traffic, and the woefully inadequate defences reconstructed and fortified to required Imperial standards. Along with these developments came the usual procession of goods and technologies, as the agents of Imperial law, iterators and administrators flowed into Istvaan III, and an assigned Imperial Commander to govern the planetary system was installed.The Istvaan System had required force to impose compliance so an outlander was chosen rather than a local to rule, and this task was given to Vardus Praal, formerly a Major of the XIth Lastran Rifles and later career politician of the Ultima Segmentum Court. Given Praal's record both as a soldier and civil administrator, he was deemed a "safe pair of hands" to carry the responsibility of shepherding these millions of lives through the transition to becoming productive and loyal members of the Imperium, and initial records show he set to his new role with gusto and considerable success was met in the initial years of his tenure, but this was not to last.Conditions within the Empyrean in proximity to the Istvaan system grew steadily worse almost from the point of Compliance. Isolated as it always had been by distance from other inhabited spheres, it became increasingly difficult to reach by astro-telepathy and navigation as well. What reports that reached Terra, often relayed fifth and sixth hand from distant Expeditionary fleets and Rogue Traders on the periphery, and solar months old, spoke of a rising civil disorder, of iterators murdered and unexplained riots and outbreaks of mass hysteria in the cities.The blame once more was centred on backlashes from the natives after attempts to forcibly dismantle local sects, the most dangerous of which was given the name 'Warsingers'. Matters worsened as Praal ordered the garrison to tear down temples and breach the sealed vaults of ancient religious sites in order to break the subtle but deep hold superstitious fears had over the Istvaanians and bring them into the light of Imperial Truth, but as to the success of this nothing could be ascertained as the warp storms which blocked Istvaan from the Imperium's core worlds worsened and all communications ceased.Six years after the last official communiqué from Istvaan III, a Death Guard patrol ship on the outer edge of the Legion's fleet, near Neo-geddon on the very edge of explored space, picked up a faint echo of an Astropathic transmission from Istvaan III. Though garbled and incomplete, its central message was clear: Istvaan III was in open religious rebellion, the Imperial government had collapsed, and Vardus Praal, now turncoat and perhaps turned mutant or psyker -- the message was unclear -- was leading the revolt, and the streets of the Choral City running red with the blood of non-believers.The message was estimated to be at least two years old, possibly six, but it could not be ignored. For Istvaan III and its tens of millions to have rebelled from compliance was a mar upon the Great Crusade that could not be tolerated, lest such sedition and malcontent spread, but that an anointed Imperial Commander who had received his office by the writ of the Emperor himself led the revolt was a crime that demanded the swiftest and most resolute punishment possible. It fell to Horus, the Warmaster, to bring Praal and all of Istvaan III to judgement, and he publicly vowed to make a fearful, bloody example to all the worlds of the Imperium of the price of sedition. But what few knew or suspected at the time was that the Istvaan III rebellion had provided Horus with the perfect opportunity to strike the first great blow of his own rebellion -- a blow that would fall upon his own. |
Vardus Praal - Conspiracy: For Horus the reconquest of Istvaan III would serve both to amass those forces loyal to him without suspicion, and also rid his own Legion and those of his closest allies of those within their ranks whose loyalties he suspected. The Istvaan system's distant location and the warp storms that still blocked it from Terra made a perfect screen for the dark deeds that were to come, and orders were given for four Legions -- the Death Guard, World Eaters, Emperor's Children and his own Sons of Horus, to rendezvous at Istvaan. Horus had a plan by which he would destroy all of the remaining Loyalist elements of the Legions under his command. |
Vardus Praal - Onslaught: For the attack on the sprawling Choral City itself four primary target zones had been identified from orbit. The first was the heavily fortified Precentor's Palace and its environs which housed the seat of government, and presumably where the Traitor Vardus Praal might be located. This would be the focus of the Emperor's Children's attack.It was in the plazas which adjoined the palace and formed the principal aerial intersection of the city's transport network that resistance was likely to manifest quickly, and this was given as the World Eaters' target to first seize and then spread beyond. The western fortification wall with its Imperial-built bastions and the bunker network they protected were to be the target of the Death Guard's assault, with the goal of either eradicating or boxing-in the garrison forces they contained.The final, and perhaps most difficult, target was located in the east of the city; a vast and ancient complex of tomb-spires, shrines and temples known by the indigenous peoples as the Siren Hold. This complex had been in a state of near-disuse at the time of the first invasion and so left standing, but now long-range reconnaissance surveyor-scans showed the Siren Hold active again, with significant life signs and powerful anomalous energy patterns registering within.Given the assumed religious focus of the rebellion and the psyker-witches also encountered on Istvaan Extremis, the Siren Hold too was afforded the status of a primary target and the Sons of Horus assigned to the attack with orders to destroy everything and everyone they found within. A score of secondary targets to be hit in the first wave were also identified, including the star port and several prominent infrastructural complexes and numerous smaller, splinter forces assigned to take or destroy.After a lengthy bombardment of Istvaan III, Horus dispatched all of the known Loyalist Astartes down to the planet, under the pretence of bringing it back into the Imperium. During the attack on the Choral City by the forces of the Emperor's Children, Vardus Praal, armoured in twisted baroque splendour and wielding strange psycho-sonic weaponry, surrounded by his elite Warsinger bodyguards, encountered the Palatine Blade, Captain Lucius, of the III Legion's 13th Company, in personal combat. Despite Praal's Chaos-gifted abilities, he was no match for the Legionary's superlative swordsmanship, and the Traitor Imperial Governor fell to Lucius' blade.Within hours the rebellion was in tatters with all of the invasion force's objectives secured and tens of thousands of the enemy dead in the wake of the assault. The victorious Space Marines were jubilant, their victory hard-won and well-deserved, but unbeknownst to them, disaster was about to strike. These Loyalist Astartes were betrayed when a cascade of terrible Life-eater Virus Bombs fell upon the doomed planet, launched by the Warmaster's orbiting fleet, unleashing the event known later as the Istvaan III Atrocity. |
Variel - Variel: Variel, also known as "Variel the Flayer," was the Apothecary Secundus of the Astral Claws Chapter and later of the Red Corsairs Chaos Space Marine warband who had been the favoured apprentice of the Corpsemaster Garreon.Variel ultimately betrayed the Red Corsairs to join the Night Lords 1st Claw warband commanded by Talos Valcoran, and after Valcoran's death Variel served his successor Decimus.Variel was dubbed "the Flayer" due to his habit of skinning his victims' faces and wearing them upon his shoulder pauldrons. |
Variel - History: The Renegade Space Marine Variel had been a member of the Astral Claws Chapter before the Chapter was corrupted during the Badab War. Following the corruption of his Chapter he continued to serve as an Apothecary Secundus of the Astral Claws and later the Red Corsairs after the events of the Badab War ran their course.It was Variel, his mentor Chief Apothecary Garreon and Armenneus Valthex who treated their mortally wounded Chapter Master Lufgt Huron in the wake of the Badab War. It was they who oversaw the reconstruction of Huron's severely damaged body, helping him to be reborn as the mighty Chaos Lord Huron Blackheart.After the Astral Claws had been cast out of the bosom of the Imperium, and forced to flee into the hellish realm of the Maelstrom where they became the piratical Red Corsairs Heretic Astartes, Variel also undertook additional duties as an infamous torturer who oversaw interrogations, contriving inventively malignant punishments and keeping his "subjects" alive and lucid far longer than they wished to be.This, alongside his preferred habit of skinning his victim's faces so he could wear them upon the pauldrons of his power armour, earned him the sobriquet of "The Flayer." |
Variel - Joining the Night Lords: Late in the 41st Millennium, the infamous Talos Valcoran, called the "Soul Hunter", sergeant of the 1st Claw (squad) of the 10th Company of the Night Lords Legion, came with his warband to the Maelstrom seeking to repair his damaged vessel.At this time, the conflicting loyalties of Variel's past and present persona began to emerge. Variel liked and respected Talos, who had saved his life some solar decades previously on a world called Fryga, far more than he did any of his fellow Red Corsairs or even Huron Blackheart himself.Ultimately, Variel went on to betray Huron Blackheart and assisted Talos in reacquiring the Red Corsairs' warship Echo of Damnation, a former vessel of the Night Lords Legion that had been captured by the Red Corsairs.Variel would faithfully serve under Talos' command, and would be one of only a handful of survivors of his warband when the Night Lords' former adoptive homeworld of Tsagualsa came under attack from the Asuryani of Craftworld Ulthwé, who sought to eliminate Valcoran, for their Farseers had seen through the mists of the Warp that Valcoran would one day become an even more powerful Chaos Lord.Talos instructed Variel to escort his valued mortal servant Septimus and the pregnant enslaved Navigator Octavia off-world aboard one of their Thunderhawk gunships.Once in orbit, both of Valcoran's servants eventually escaped back to Tsagualsa's surface. This forced Variel to pursue them and attempt to claim the Navigator's child, who had been fathered by Septimus.The Apothecary was badly wounded when he encountered the Asuryani Phoenix Lord Jain Zar, losing both of his legs in the battle. He had already lost one leg previously in an earlier encounter with a Broodlord and had it replaced with an augmetic; now both would require cybernetic replacements.Following the events on Tsagualsa, Variel would continue to serve the Night Lords' 1st Claw. Variel harvested the slain Talos Valcoran's gene-seed which was used to create a new prophet of the Night Lords Legion named Decimus.Variel would become one of Decimus' most trusted followers in the years to come alongside Lucoryphus, and would participate in the 13th Black Crusade. |
Variel - Personality: Variel the Flayer earned his name through a brutal and merciless career. He rarely showed any bias as an Apothecary toward saving the lives of any of his brethren he felt did not have a high chance of surviving.This detachment from his fellow Red Corsairs was obvious when he left the Renegade Chapter to join the Night Lords. He did not share the same strong level of disdain for the power of Chaos felt by many of the Heretic Astartes of 1st Claw.Variel is an unusual Chaos Space Marine. He is surprisingly stoic and not externally moved by emotions, and keeps a tight control on his own, rarely displaying them overtly even while he takes action.When a wounded Astartes in a triage station would not let go of his arm after two requests, he grabbed the warrior's arm and removed the offending hand with the laser-cutters and bonesaws on his Narthecium and calmly asked his brother, "What have you learned?"Variel is intelligent even for an Astartes and in his own words, "dislikes ignorance." He takes time to study and learn new things he encounters, whether it be the Aeldari Lexicon (learned from Asuryani captives tortured in his time as a Red Corsair), or studying the unusual mutations of a brother Astartes.Variel is a calm, efficient, competent, utterly ruthless medical officer, and possibly one of the best Apothecaries in all the Traitor Legions. |
Variel - Wargear: Power ArmourBolterChainswordNarthecium |
Varnus - Varnus: Varnus was a Chaplain of the Ultramarines Space Marine Chapter and the de facto leader of the small Space Marine Tactical Squad deployed to the Ice World of Lorn V that was detailed with the task of protecting and delivering a Titan's Princeps and crew to the site of the recently discovered Imperator-class Titan Dominatus. While en route to their objective, they were ambushed by the Blood Legion of Khorne warband of Chaos Space Marines under the command of Crull, a Chaos Lord of the World Eaters Traitor Legion, who shot down their Thunderhawk gunship.Varnus and the handful of surviving Ultramarines held off waves of oncoming Chaos forces, sending an emergency distress message that was received by General Sturnn, commander of the 412th Cadian Shock Troopers Regiment. In response, Sturnn assembled his Imperial Guard troops to go on a search-and-rescue mission deep behind enemy lines. During the battle on Lorn V that resulted, the remaining Ultramarines force escorted and successfully delivered the Titan's new Princeps and crew to the ancient war machine. The crew was able to power up its massive weapon systems and used them to destroy the attacking Ork and Necron forces. Chaplain Varnus single-handedly defeated a Bloodthirster in combat. |
Varro Tigurius - Varro Tigurius: Varro Tigurius is the Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines Chapter of the Space Marines. As a psyker, Tigurius has always stood apart from his battle-brothers. Even to the company Captains of the Ultramarines he is a figure of mystery, possessed of a knowledge that goes beyond the towering datastacks and myriad scrolls of the Chapter's Arcanum.Little is hidden from the Chief Librarian's sight, and many of the Astartes amongst the Ultramarines believe him to be guided by the Emperor's own hand. Tigurius is unique among Librarians, for he has displayed the precognitive capability to foresee events, even on the tactical level, before they have come to pass, revelations of the future that usually come to him in the form of waking dreams and powerful premonitions.In Tigurius' eyes, nothing is more dangerous than incomplete knowledge nurtured in an unready mind. As such, it is common for him to meet inquiries with his own questions, until satisfied that the enquirer grasps the full meaning and consequences of the information he seeks.This can cause tension between the Chief Librarian and the Chapter's Captains, for such heroes have little time for contemplative introspection. However, Tigurius rewards those who persevere with uncanny insight that borders on prescience.Even his merest hunch, honed by centuries of experience and wisdom, is often worth more than the predictions of a battalion of strategists and a fleet of spies. Many times Tigurius' foretelling of impending incursions upon Ultramar have allowed the Lord Macragge to counter many before they had truly begun.There is little that happens that the Chief Librarian does not seem to know. Were he any other man, his prescience might attract suspicion, yet none who have witnessed Tigurius in battle can find cause to doubt him. When the call to war comes, he is oft to be found in the Ultramarines' vanguard.Amid the fury of battle, the Chief Librarian's silent manner falls from him like a shroud, replaced by the vigour of a warrior born.So it was on the world of Boros, which stands as an example of Tigurius' sheer power: focusing his psychic might, Tigurius sent hellfire coursing through the Ork invaders and led the charge that saw the wearied 4th Company victorious over a far more numerous foe.Tigurius has also been able to turn his talents to the threat of the Tyranids in ways no other psykers have found possible. His predictions about their movements have been so accurate that it was almost as if he had tapped into the gestalt consciousness of their Hive Mind – a feat that has driven lesser individuals insane. |
Varro Tigurius - History: Though the Ultramarines are warriors, their Chapter is typified by a warm, generous personality. Ultramarines are of noble demeanour and regal countenance, fierce when roused to anger, but considered urbane and just towards those who are their allies. Among their ranks, however, one stands out as a man alone, an Ultramarine to whom the ready camaraderie of a brother-in-arms comes difficult, if at all. His is a soul burdened by the weight of his calling, afflicted by a power that sets him apart from those around him. He is the mightiest psyker in the Ultramarines Chapter, if not the entire Imperium, and his name is Varro Tigurius.Varro is a common enough name within the Ultima Segmentum and many of the heroes of the Ultramarines Chapter have borne it over the millennia. The parents of young Varro Tigurius could never have known the destiny of their quiet, respectful son, or that one day he would rise to become one of the most famous warriors in the galaxy. As they submitted their son to the marshals of induction, those ominous guardians who convey aspirants to the Fortress of Hera, they tearfully bade farewell to a stoic, but withdrawn child whose apparent awkwardness belied an enviable physical ability and a fearsome intellect.To the trained eye of the Chapter Librarians, who screen each and every aspirant, Varro Tigurius was obviously a psyker of rare potential, and so they kept a watchful eye as he flourished in each and every task set to him. Of particular interest to the Chaplains who oversaw the inductees, even at that early stage, was how Tigurius seemed prepared for the challenges set out, no matter how unusual. Epistolary Xephus surmised at the time that Tigurius was in some way cheating the drill sergeants and Chaplains.Forewarned of the Librarian's suspicions, the supervising Chaplain, one Ortan Cassius, then merely a junior Chaplain under the great Phaelan, tasked the aspirants with an unwinnable assignment. As the dozen other hopefuls struggled to load Bolter rounds into weapons that had been prepared with stripped chambers and breaches milled fractionally too small, Tigurius calmly watched, weighing his choices.Eventually, he strode calmly to the waiting Cassius and, without fear in his eyes, looked upon the skull helm of the Chaplain and quietly told him that the challenge was impossible. Cassius, for his part seemed incensed. He bellowed at the recruit before him, his skull-faced battle helm augmenting the volume of his wrath till it reverberated off of the walls of the agoge with deafening force.In the face of such incandescent fury, almost any mortal would have quailed or fled. Not so Tigurius, who, prompted by the visions he had dreamed as he slept the night before knew just how to react. He simply knelt before the Chaplain until the apparent anger subsided. Then with a booming laugh, the Chaplain raised the aspirant to his feet."You will do," he muttered, before striding from the room.Of course in this, as in many other matters, the young Tigurius proved unnaturally perceptive. Over time the Battle-Brothers of the Chapter Librarius ascertained the nature of Tigurius' rare talent. In addition to a prodigious psychic potential, they learned that Tigurius possessed the ability to foresee future events.This gift was exceptionally rare among the psykers of the Imperium and completely unprecedented within the ranks of the Ultramarines, and yet Tigurius was able to predict many future events, sometimes with such clarity that it was as if he had already witnessed them.The remainder of Tigurius' training served only to prove his natural ability to the Chapter. He fought with the skill of a natural warrior and his physical endurance was exceptional. On completion of his assessment, the Librarius welcomed the young Tigurius with open arms. |
Varro Tigurius - Battle-Brother: Though in the early years of his service to the Chapter Tigurius' ability roused a terrible suspicion among his battle-brothers, even for a Librarian, over time the scepticism he engendered subsided, for the worth of his abilities was clear for all to see. When deployed to a war zone, Tigurius was able to provide a tactical insight to the Captains and Sergeants who lay out the strategies for their warriors. In the Altor Crusade Tigurius forewarned the Scouts of the 10th Company of a successive series of ambushes planned by Eldar Pathfinders. His warnings, initially heeded with a degree of scepticism, doubtless saved dozens of lives -- rather than leading their recruits into deadly traps, the Sergeants instead called in fire support from the Chapter's Stormtalons, which duly turned the awaiting Eldar snipers into grisly corpses with their assault cannon fire. He also warned Captain Agemman to arrive several hours early for the armistice talks with the Eldar Autarch. When the Eldar general arrived with his entourage, he found the jungle foliage that had concealed squads of waiting Striking Scorpions burned to stubble by Agemman's Land Raider Redeemer, Infernal Retribution, and the Captain waiting with his relic blade drawn.Later, serving the 5th Company, Tigurius led a strike force against the Seven Sorcerers of Harka, a coven of Chaos Space Marines who held an entire planet in their thrall. Although Tigurius' visions did not reveal to Tigurius the nature of his foes, he prepared carefully, working with the Chapter artificers to modify his psychic hood ahead of the mission. At first the assault on Harka went well, with the Space Marines storming the Seven's stronghold and fighting their way down the crowded streets. Fighting with typical Ultramarines finesse, the Tactical Squads fought through the hundreds of treacherous humans who had thrown their lot in with the Seven. Faithless renegades and degenerate mutants died by the hundred as Tigurius and his Space Marines stalked through the ruins of Harka searching for the foe.Thinking to thwart the Ultramarines, the Seven Sorcerers attacked them as they were embroiled slaughtering a horde of wretched scum armed only with flintlock weapons and improvised clubs. By contrast to their decrepit minions, the Seven were veritable gods of war -- clad in glossy black power armour and surrounded by crackling nimbuses of Warp energy, they stalked upon the Ultramarines, unleashing a bow-wave of power that blasted hundreds of traitors and a dozen Space Marines from their feet. Only Tigurius felt the shifting power of the Warp at work, as the Seven channelled their sorcery. Warily he turned to face this new foe, raising his force staff as bodies -- friend and foe -- around him began to explode from within like fleshy grenades. Here a Chaos-worshipping traitor blasted apart in a welter of gristle and blood, there a mutant burst into a gory mist as if shot by a cannon. Battle-brother Sydes died before he even perceived his attackers, segments of his armour clattering around as his body erupted. The Seven pointed as one, an indiscriminate movement, and with every gesture there was another grim victim.Tigurius halted their advance with a wall of balefire that seared out from his force staff -- a blazing conflagration that scorched a path through the prone bodies of their mortal followers to embroil them in flames. As their Librarian fought a psychic duel, Sergeant Orestes and a handful of Tactical Marines scrambled to their feet to protect him, holding back the fanatical throng. One Space Marine Librarian against seven Chaos Sorcerers were slim odds, and yet Tigurius did not quail. Screaming in rage he poured more of his soul into his attack. The flames danced around his foes, lapping at the energy that glowed around the Chaos Space Marines. Tigurius' face contorted in pain, and the flames blazed white hot. The psychic hood upon his shoulders radiated with the power coursing through it, and Tigurius' eyes ran bloodshot as the rockcrete roadway began to bubble and melt. As the Seven writhed within the flames, Tigurius' shout of rage became a hoarse shriek and the Seven were burned to death, one by one, slowly at first and then faster as their power died, the smouldering armoured bodies of the seven clattering to fall upon the ground and sink into the boiling road. |
Varro Tigurius - Ascension: In the wake of the incident at Harka, word of Tigurius' power began to spread. His bespoke psychic hood was dubbed, by those who had witnessed him vanquish the Seven, as the Hood of Hellfire. Orestes, who had fought beside Tigurius, and seen his courage first hand, became a friend and confidante of the Librarian, a friendship that served both well for many years. With such glories behind him, Tigurius' ascension to higher ranks was only a matter of time. He quickly left behind the rank of Lexicanium and excelled as a Codicier, providing a depth of insight into the campaign overviews submitted to the great libraries within the Fortress of Hera. Such was Tigurius' natural power, however, that his tenure at that rank was short, and he was swiftly promoted to Epistolary, where he coordinated company-sized operations, using his immense psychic prowess to guide the Captains and Sergeants in system-wide campaigns. The late Captain Invictus described Tigurius, in the wake of the bloody slaughter known as the Rarth Cleansing, as "the greatest administrator the Munitorum had never known."During his time as a Codicier, Tigurius began to prove his exceptional worth to the fleetmasters of the Chapter, delivering several formidable threats to the Ultramarines fleets simply by virtue of the ability to predict where and when the enemy threat would arrive. Tigurius forewarned Captain Ideus of the 4th Company, Fleet Master of the Ultramarines, of the arrival of the Space Hulk Instigation of Wickedness before it ever entered the Leer System on the eastern edges of Ultima Segmentum. As the sinister vessel materialised from the Empyrean, Vae Victis and a dozen other ships of the Space Marine fleet hammered it into wreckage, ignoring the chance to search it in light of the dire warnings Tigurius had given regarding its occupants. Over the years, Tigurius has continued to offer sage counsel to the Admiral of the Fleet, now the venerable Lazlo Tiberius, perhaps the greatest fleet commander the Ultramarines have ever known. Lazlo, for his part, offers no apology for his successes, but rather shares a great deal of credit for his finest victories, such as the triumph over the Orks of Madbrakka and even the Tyranid monstrosities of Hive Fleet Behemoth, with the Librarian. |
Varro Tigurius - Shadows of the Future: Since his elevation to the rank of Chief Librarian, Tigurius has been an indispensable aide at the side of the Chapter Master. Increasingly, with his office, the solemn Varro Tigurius finds his duty and his gifts a burden that weigh heavy on his soul. He gave the order that sacrificed his best friend, Sergeant Orestes, to save a dozen other Battle-Brothers and millions of innocents in the Hallowed Stars Cleansing. He has witnessed the Legion of the Damned in battle, and beheld the ethereal horror of their warmaking. His report, one of the most accurate depictions of the Legion of the Damned in the Imperial archives next to that of Chapter Master Zacharias Kersh of the Excoriators Chapter, reported how these macabre undead Space Marines appear seemingly at random when all seems lost; rout the enemy with incredible displays of martial valour and ultimately vanish again without leaving a trace. Since that encounter, Tigurius has attempted to divine who or what these strange warriors were, but without success.Increasingly he finds himself drawn from the Library of Ptolemy, and contemplating the truths within its million manuscripts, to the Temple of Correction, where he gazes for solar hours at a time upon the Shrine of the Primarch. Though such an act seems solemn, it appears to invigorate the Chief Librarian, for when he returns from this meditation he is revitalised, as if a bright hope for the future has been rekindled in his heart. So fortified, Tigurius remains one of the greatest weapons in the arsenal of the Ultramarines Chapter, far more than just another battle-psyker in the ranks of its warriors, but a watchman who guides his brothers when he can perceive the right path for them, and fights at their side when he cannot. |
Varro Tigurius - Tyranids: Tigurius has also been able to turn his talents to the threat of the Tyranids in ways no other psykers have found possible. His predictions about their movements have been so accurate that it was almost as if he had tapped into the gestalt consciousness of their Hive Mind -- a feat that has driven lesser individuals insane.If this is true, then Tigurius will have proved himself the most powerful psyker in the Imperium of Man, after the Emperor of Mankind, rivalling even Mephiston of the Blood Angels. |
Varro Tigurius - Resurrection of Guilliman: In 999.M41, almost immediately after the invasion by M'kar's Bloodborn, Ultramar came under assault by a tentacle of Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade then ravaging Cadia, as the Despoiler had been warned that events were unfolding on Macragge that could turn the tide of his Long War against the Imperium in the favour of the servants of the Emperor. This was a reference to the arrival of the Celestine Crusade -- the survivors of the fall of Cadia -- through the Webway with the aid of the Eldar Ynnari. When the Celestinians and the Ynnari were escorted to Macragge, which had become the vital centre of defence in this new Ultramar Campaign, one of their number, Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl, made clear to the Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar's war council that they needed access to the Temple of Correction in the Ultramarines' Fortress of Hera where the Primarch Roboute Guilliman sat enthroned in stasis. The newcomers and their uneasy xenos allies made clear that they had an item in their possession that could resurrect the mortally wounded demi-god. First Captain Severus Agemman was loudly opposed to this idea, and said in no uncertain terms that he did not trust these newcomers, nor the mysterious device they brought with them. The First Captain counselled that, with such immediate danger all around and a furious battle to win, there was only one viable solution. The pilgrims should be put into confinement, and their mysterious package locked down in a stasis vault until its contents could be safely examined. As for the xenos, Agemman counselled that they be swiftly destroyed lest they pose a threat to the safety of the Chapter Master or the Fortress of Hera.Saint Celestine spoke up then, attempting to explain the divine nature of her mission and the revelations she had received from the Emperor. She found herself staring into the muzzles of several Ultramarines Honour Guard Bolters -- not to mention the Condemnor Bolter of Inquisitor Katarinya Greyfax, whose Puritan suspicions had been fired anew -- a clear indication that now was the time for the rulers of Ultramar to speak, and not their visitors.All eyes rested upon Calgar as he looked to Tigurius for further counsel. Though not even the vigilant warriors of the Honour Guard saw it, in that moment both Yvraine and the Visarch tensed themselves in preparation for battle, subtle muscle contractions and minuscule alterations in posture leaving the Ynnari poised to fight their way out should matters turn against them.The Librarian remained silent for several long heartbeats, his weathered features contemplative. When he spoke, Tigurius' voice was deep and resonant, rich with power and wisdom. He reminded his Chapter Master that he had experienced troubling visions in the solar days leading up to the attack upon Macragge. Tigurius had seen a flight of iron birds take wing from a distant, crimson orb full of churning cogs. In the visions, those avian shapes had soared through fire and shadow that spilled from a ruptured castle gate of vast size. They had clutched a blazing sword in their jagged claws, and their wings had shone with holy light as they flew toward Ultramar. Through the ruptured gateway had been visible a staring, slit-pupilled eye, and as the birds neared Macragge, a giant maw full of blooded fangs had yawned wide around them, ready to bite down with crushing force.The Chief Librarian had believed that his visions concerned the fall of Cadia and the subsequent attack by the Black Legion upon Ultramar. Certainly they had spurred the readying of the fortress' defences, and the sending of astropathic communiqués that had brought the Ultramar Defence Fleet back to the Chapter planet at the critical moment.Now, though, Tigurius declared himself convinced that the visions pertained also to these travellers. The Chief Librarian said that he was willing to vouch for their presence, even that of the mysterious Eldar, and that he believed their arrival to be the Emperor's will made manifest.Hushed whispers ran through the strategium at this pronouncement, and Calgar nodded solemnly. Without further comment, the Chapter Master bade the Celestinians speak, and explain their presence in their own words. Between them, Inquisitor Greyfax, Marshal Marius Amalrich of the Black Templars and Saint Celestine did as they were asked, relaying the bloody tale of Cadia's fall and their subsequent flight. Even Yvraine of the Ynnari deigned to speak a little, providing a few, scant details that went some way toward explaining the aliens' presence amongst the group. The only one who refused to divulge further information was Belisarius Cawl; despite Marneus Calgar's repeated questioning, the Archmagos would not elaborate upon what his auto-reliquary contained, or what he expected to occur within the shrine.While the pilgrims spoke their piece, the war raged on. Information continued to stream in regarding troop deployments, attack and counterattack patterns, enemy drop sites, ammunition counts, and endless other articles of strategic intelligence. Marneus Calgar absorbed them all even as he listened to the pilgrims, issuing curt orders where required and keeping one eye always fixed upon the ever-shifting holomap that hung overhead. The Chapter Master wished to understand these strange visitors and the supposed pact they served, but he would not neglect the defence of his fortress while he did so.Finally, Greyfax concluded their tale, adding that she was empowered to act as the Emperor's representative in this matter, and that she would gladly take responsibility for Cawl's summary execution should he prove false. Calgar raised a hand to forestall further comment, both from the pilgrims and from the frowning Captain Agemman. Then, in a sombre voice, Calgar pronounced his verdict.The Chapter Master would permit the Celestinians to bring their auto-reliquary to the Shrine of Guilliman, though they would do so under heavy Ultramarines guard. Calgar said that while he understood and welcomed Agemman's prudent counsel, they lived in unusual days. The worshippers of Chaos had set foot upon the bedrock of Macragge once again, while the Warp churned to madness all around them. Calgar judged that the foe had been aided greatly by the supernatural beings they worshipped in this desperate endeavour. He would not turn his back upon the precognitive powers of his own Chief Librarian, or the wisdom of the Living Saint, at such a time as this, even if he had been given precious little reason to trust Archmagos Cawl.Had Agemman been a hot-tempered Space Wolf or relentlessly logical Iron Hand, he might have contested such a ruling. Instead, he accepted his lord's judgement with stoicism. Belisarius Cawl went to speak, but Calgar forestalled him. The Chapter Master gave his permission for the Ynnari to accompany their allies, for it seemed clear to him that great events were afoot that bore the hand of the Emperor upon them. The presence of the Ynnari could be no accident, and whatever the Emperor's will was in this matter, Marneus Calgar would not be the one to contravene it.Calgar's decision proved wise, as despite a massive Chaos counterattack on the temple to prevent the resurrection of Guilliman, Cawl's arcane technology, combined with the psychic power of the Eldar God of the Dead Ynnead channeled through his priestess Yvraine, healed Roboute Guilliman's wound and allowed him to take up his position once more as the Lord of Ultramar. During the battle in the Temple of Correction against the final Black Legion assault, before Cawl had placed the Armour of Fate upon the Primarch's form, the Tech-priest had moved to cut the stasis field that had long kept the mortally wounded Primarch from his final death. Engaged with the enemy, Calgar looked in desperation to his Chief Librarian to stop what he believed to be a horrific betrayal.Calgar saw the Martian Tech-priest step back from his auto-reliquary with the air of one completing a satisfying task. The dome-shaped device hummed forward, unfurling like the petals of some huge, carnivorous flower. The watching Chapter Master was at the wrong angle to see inside the machine, but he had a fleeting impression of glowing energies, unfurling Mechadendrites, clamping pincer-limbs and whirring bone-drills that filled him with revulsion.The auto-reliquary was rising and stretching out, enfolding the Primarch's seated form in its metallic embrace. At the same moment, the xenos witch-priestess lunged with preternatural grace, evading whistling bolt shells as she raised her blade high."No!" bellowed Calgar, finding his voice. "I command you to stop! In the Emperor's name, Brother Tigurius, stop them!" The Chapter Master's dismay rose to new heights as Varro Tigurius looked straight at him, and shook his head."Do it!", shouted the Chief Librarian, blazing psychic energies into the foe that pressed close all around. "And may the Emperor condemn me if you have played me false, xenos."In desperation, Calgar raised his Bolters and prepared to fire at the Eldar witch, but Yvraine's blade fell lightning fast, hacking through the cabling that fed power to Guilliman's stasis field. Energies flared, and from within the closing arms of the autoreliquary, Calgar heard a rattling sigh that would haunt him until his dying day."What have you done?" he roared, despair and fury blazing through him like a firestorm. Fists clenched, Calgar turned upon the Traitors that had forced this terrible tragedy to come to pass, and waded back into the fight with unstoppable fury.But Calgar's fear was misplaced. He was overcome by the sheer numbers of Chaos Terminators swarming the Shrine of the Primarch, and roared in defiance as he was borne to the ground by a surging mass of foes that swung, stabbed and stamped at him. He did not see the Primarch awaken, and in his raging fury clear the Temple of Correction of the foe and drive the Archenemy back. As they retreated, so the prone form of Marneus Calgar was revealed, his armour cracked and his face beaten bloody. Guilliman paused for a moment in his rampage, looking down upon this fallen son with an unreadable expression on his face.Calgar stirred at that moment, one eye opening to look up at the Primarch reborn. Satisfied that his scion lived, Guilliman pressed on, leaving the fallen Chapter Master to stare in disbelief at his resurrected gene-sire.After the battle in the temple was won, and Calgar had recovered from the combat with the preternatural fortitude possessed by all Astartes, he and Tigurius returned with their Primarch to the Fortress of Hera's strategium. In a dramatically charged moment that would become enshrined in later Macragge statuary, Guilliman formally accepted command of the defence of the Ultramarines homeworld from First Captain Agemman. Marneus Calgar stood at his Primarch's side during this exchange, sorely wounded and supported by two Honour Guards, yet determined to be present all the same. Guilliman showed his nobility by humbly requesting the Chapter Master's leave to assume full command of the Ultramarines at that time. Calgar shrugged off his Battle-Brothers and, grimacing in pain, knelt before his gene-sire. He matched Guilliman's solemnity as he offered unending fealty to the Primarch, and bequeathed full control of the Chapter to him in perpetuity.Like an impresario settling before his instrument, Guilliman spread his hands upon the strategium table and took a deep breath before beginning to command. With his every utterance, the invaders' plight became more apparent. The Primarch's strategic acumen, his tactical genius and miraculous mental acuity were unmatched. The leaders of the Ultramarines looked on in amazement as Guilliman marshalled the defenders like regicide pieces, drinking in reams of strategic data and issuing a steady stream of orders that turned one fight after another in the defenders' favour. Calgar and his lieutenants had executed a superhuman campaign of defiance against the invaders, but the Primarch was operating on a different mental plane.At Guilliman's command, thunderous overlapping firestorms and interlaced webs of interceptor strikes cleared the airspace over the Fortress of Hera. No longer threatened from above, Ultramarines reserves and vast numbers of Ultramar Defence Auxilia flowed into the fight in masterful deployment patterns. Feints, ambushes, false retreats and sudden, overwhelming counterattacks ripped through the Chaos forces and drove them from within the fortress' grounds. Guilliman wielded hundreds of thousands of warriors at once, predicting every move his enemies made and countering before they had even thought to act.By the time the Primarch and his coterie strode out to lead the fight in person, the Chaos attackers were reeling in disarray. The attack led by Guilliman into the heart of their lines was like a final bolt round placed between the eyes of a wounded enemy. Black Legionaries, Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion and Night Lords -- all were hurled back from the walls. Traitor Titans toppled like vast, flaming trees to smash down in ruin. Just three solar hours after his resurrection, Roboute Guilliman concluded the wholesale purge of Chaos invaders from the Fortress of Hera, and confidently proclaimed the Ultramarines' stronghold secure.There now came a time where breath could be drawn, and stock taken. Even as lumbering Servitors and Chapter Serf work gangs laboured to shore up the fortress' battered defences, Guilliman summoned a select company to attend him in the Chapter Master's sanctum. This had long been the domain and throne room of Marneus Calgar. Now it would become the sanctum of the Primarch himself, and it was here that he was formally invested as Lord of Ultramar and Master of the Ultramarines once more. Calgar, Tigurius, Agemman and their closest lieutenants were present for Guilliman's elevation, as were representative brothers from every company of the Chapter. The Celestinians, too, attended Guilliman's formal coronation, the Saint herself ceremonially bestowing her blessings upon the Primarch. Even the Ynnari watched from the sidelines as this momentous event occurred; they lurked amongst the shadows, a silent and staunchly unremarked-upon presence whose expressions remained cold and watchful.As the ceremony concluded, Guilliman rose and addressed the assembly. There was much to be done, and countless questions to which the Primarch required answers. Before he could act further, Roboute Guilliman needed to know everything that had occurred during his long absence.Over the next seven solar months, Tigurius and his Ultramarine Librarian brethren fought well on behalf of their Primarch. However, before the campaign was entirely completed, Guilliman announced that the time had come for him to leave Ultramar behind and travel to Terra to meet with his father the Emperor and determine how best he could defend the broader Imperium from the multiple disasters now converging upon it.The war across Ultramar was still ongoing, however, and with Guilliman leaving, it would require strategically-gifted warriors to keep pushing the Forces of Chaos back. As such, Guilliman gathered a select force of Battle-Brothers from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Companies of the Ultramarines to accompany him to Terra on what he had named the Terran Crusade, and gave the honour of their command to Captain Cato Sicarius. He further requested that Grand Master Aldrik Voldus and the Grey Knights of the 3rd Brotherhood join the Crusade. Others pledged their aid to the Primarch's cause, including the assembled strength of the Ultramarines' Primogenitor Chapters, and Emperor's Champion Marius Amalrich and his Black Templars brethren. The Living Saint, Inquisitor Greyfax and Archmagos Dominus Cawl accompanied the Primarch also -- whatever aid they or the military forces under their command could provide the Primarch would be gladly given.Guilliman gratefully accepted all offers of aid before commanding Marneus Calgar, Chief Librarian Tigurius and Captain Agemman to remain and complete the reconquest of Ultramar. In truth, the fate of the restored Realm of the Five Hundred Worlds could be in no safer hands. |
Varro Tigurius - Plague Wars: When the Great Rift came into being, Tigurius fell into a protective coma for a time. He had not foreseen the coming of the Great Rift, only that the future would be marked by oblivion and doom -- and the psychic backlash of that galactic catastrophe nearly ended Tigurius.Yet he rallied from his mind-coma, joining in the defence against the horrible plague that descended upon Ultramar during the Plague Wars.When the Death Guard and the daemons of Nurgle came out of the renewed Warp Storms of the Noctis Aeterna, it was Tigurius that helped steel the minds of the Ultramar Auxilia, for as courageous as they were, they would have fled before the disease-ridden foes and the terrible Warp plagues they unleashed.At some point during this period, Tigurius chose to undergo the dangerous Rubicon Primaris surgical procedure and become a Primaris Space Marine. |
Varro Tigurius - Wargear: Tigurius makes use of the best wargear the Ultramarines Chapter has to offer, making him an even more potent foe for the enemies of Mankind than most Astartes Librarians. His wargear includes:Power Armour (Different variants depending on era)Hood of Hellfire - A specially modified Psychic Hood that not only provides protection against the psychic assault of other Psykers, but allows Tigurius to conserve his body's energy, enabling him to make use of his powerful offensive psychic abilities more often than is normal for even the most powerful psykers.Rod of Tigurius - Tigurius wields the Rod of Tigurius, an extremely potent master-crafted Force Weapon that draws the psychic energy out of Tigurius and focuses it into a tight beam of unstoppable energy that blast his foes' souls from their bodies.Force Staff of Malcador the Sigillite - In 922.M41 after the Battle of Andraxas, it is believed that Tigurius came into the possession of what is believed to have been Malcador the Sigillite 's Force Staff.Bolt PistolFrag GrenadesKrak Grenades |
Varro Tigurius - Sources: Codex Adeptus Astartes - Space Marines (8th Edition), pp. 96, 132Codex Supplement: Ultramarines (8th Edition), pg. 42Codex: Space Marines (6th Edition), pg. 107Codex: Space Marines (5th Edition), pg. 86Codex: Space Marines (4th Edition), pg. 29Codex: Space Marines (3rd Edition), pg. 38Codex: Ultramarines (2nd Edition), pp. 71, 74-75Codex: Legion of the Damned (Digital Edition), pg. 20Gathering Storm - Part III - Rise of the Primarch, pp. 8-47Index Astartes I, "Psykana Librarius - Space Marine Librarians"Index Astartes III, "Warriors of Ultramar - The Ultramarines Space Marine Chapter"Warlords of the Dark Millennium - Tigurius, pp. 3-4, 7-12, 20, 22-27White Dwarf 326 (US), "Psykana Librarius: Space Marine Librarians in Warhammer 40,000", pp. 76-89White Dwarf 258 (US), "Psykana Librarius: Space Marine Librarians"Chapter's Due (Ultramarines Novel) by Graham McNeillCourage and Honour (Ultramarines Novel) by Graham McNeillWarhammer Community - Apocalypse Mega-battle and Warhammer 40,000 Preview! (Image) |
Vasgotox - Vasgotox: Vasgotox is an Alchemical Weapon that is a fluid at room temperature and is highly toxic, eating through any flesh exposed to it. It was employed by the Death Guard Legion's Grave Warden Terminator Squads during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy. It was a toxic weapon of mass destruction that was utterly lethal to most forms of organic life. |
Vashtorr - Vashtorr: Vashtorr, also known as Vashtorr the Arkifane, who bears the titles of "Master of the Soul Forges" and the "God in the Machine," is the Greater Daemon of Chaos who rules over the Forge of Souls where Daemon Weapons and Daemon Engines are forged within the Immaterium's Realm of Chaos. Vashtorr serves Chaos Undivided and claims to have no connection to any of the four major Chaos Gods, having come into existence independently in the Warp as a result of mortals' obsessive pursuit of technological innovation at all costs -- especially inventions that resulted in unexpected and terrible consequences.Vashtor is the Daemonic demigod of inventors, engineers, scientists and artisans. He is curiosity and innovation shorn of moral conscience and driven to its darkest extremes. Empowered by the ceaseless inquiring of mortal minds, Vashtorr embodies the mortal need to understand and then enslave natural forces to their will, and to eventually achieve technological apotheosis at any cost. |
Vashtorr - Origins: Few mortal servants of any intelligent species know of Vashtorr the Arkifane, for he has manifested only sparingly in realspace across the long history of the galaxy. Why this should be is unclear, but it has made him a seldom-glimpsed figure of fear, a techno-daemonic bogeyman whose occasional appearances herald nightmarish catastrophe.Some cryptoscholars have claimed that Vashtorr was created amid the reckless arms race of some ancient and galaxy-spanning war. Others posit that he was birthed into the Warp by the horrors of Humanity's Dark Age of Technology, or conversely that he was the author and patron of those horrors. Still others claim that he was greatly empowered in the Warp by technological events such as the birth of the Necrons through biotransference, the "Cursed" 21st Founding of the Adeptus Astartes, and the creation of the Primaris Space Marines. |
Vashtorr - Master of the Forge of Souls: However Vashtorr came to be, he is neither a formerly mortal Daemon Prince nor a Daemonic entity emanating from one of the four major Dark Gods. He has his own sphere of influence different from theirs, and his own unique role within the wider pantheon of the Realm of Chaos, for he is the master of the Forge of Souls. This colossal metaphysical foundry is a realm of dark iron and steam, of clattering cogs and pounding pistons wherein infernal pacts are sworn and grotesque Daemonic transformations effected.Any Daemon of Chaos may approach the essence brokers of the Forge of Souls and enter into a pact with them. Some do so seeing a swift route to martial might, thence into the greater favour of their patron deity. Others seek to circumvent the spiritual bonds and lingering shame of a previous banishment from realspace.Whatever each entity's reasons, Vashtor and his Daemonic brokers are only too glad to forge a binding contract. In exchange for an agreed price of mortal souls reaped and offered up to the soul forges, the entity is fed into the Daemonic machines and transformed into a grotesque melding of war engine and Daemon known as a Daemon Engine, such as a Soul Grinder, a Calamity Engine or an Infernal Bombard.Other Daemons, less desperate or with less to offer up to the soul forges, are simply enslaved to Vashtorr's will for a time, melding torturously within unholy machineries and joining the ranks of his indentured Daemonic hosts. Such Daemons' bonds are shown by a collar, manacle, ritual chain or bodily mechanistic melding that becomes part of their manifested forms while they remain indebted to the Arkifane.Unlike other Daemons, it is not in Vashtorr's nature to lie, trick or deceive. His contracts are explicit in their conditions. Instead he leaves it to the monomaniacal nature of the Daemons themselves to entrap them in his service, for with every defeat an indentured entity suffers, so its soul-debt increases; few indeed are the Daemons that have ever escaped their self-inflicted bondage to the Forge of Souls.Meanwhile, the usefulness of the forces' grotesque war engines to the Ruinous Powers' Daemonic legions, coupled with the danger of being the only Chaos God to lose Vashtorr's allegiance, keeps the Dark Gods' reprisals at bay for the loss of their servants. The Arkifane is the arms dealer of the Great Game, an agent of no single power yet a precarious ally to them all. Yet Vashtorr's activities have nonetheless attracted the ire of other Daemons, most notably Be'lakor, another independent Daemon who serves Chaos Undivided and no individual Chaos deity.Quite aside from the infernal hosts he can summon to fight for him, Vashtorr is himself a frighteningly powerful Warp entity. Whether reordering the mechanisms of reality to his will, or soaring across the battlefields of realspace amidst storms of empyric lightning, the Arkifane is a demigod of dark artifice and corrupted technology. He is a Daemon of ordered and meticulous evil, whose will is as inexorable as the churning gears of some great and unstoppable machine. |
Vashtorr - Arks of Omen Campaign: Rarely ever encountered in realspace before the Era Indomitus, Vashtorr has recently become more active, forging an alliance with Abaddon the Despoiler and the forces of Chaos that Chaos Lord commands to seek out the different artefacts that when combined create the Key, a mysterious, ancient weapon said by prophecy to possess so much power that whoever claims it will be able to alter the destiny of the galaxy forever.It was Vashtorr who created the Arks of Omen voidships from modified space hulks that allowed Abaddon to initiate the series of events known as the Arks of Omen Campaign. Vashtorr became aware of the existence of the Key and believed that if he aided Abaddon in claiming and restoring it, he could use it to increase his own power and ascend to become the fifth major Chaos God.The Arkifane did not know precisely what form all of these fragments of the Key took, but across the span of many mortal lifetimes Vashtorr had learned that each had their own unique signature in the Warp. This would allow them to be tracked down and once all were found, an infernal ritual, Warp alchemy and inhuman ingenuity could be used to restore the Key.But Vashtorr realised he needed significant mortal aid to succeed in his quest, since the artefacts were scattered across realspace. This led him to seek out Abaddon the Despoiler, who commanded the mighty Heretic Astartes forces of the Black Legion and many of the other mortal forces of Chaos. Though Abaddon was greatly suspicious of Vashtorr at first, as he was with all Daemons, he agreed to enter an alliance with the Arkifane to restore the Key, after Vashtorr informed him the weapon's power could be used to finally destroy the Imperium and win the Long War against the Emperor.Afterwards, Vashtorr created the Arks of Omen with the aid of Abaddon's allies among the Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum, and gave them to the Warmaster of the Imperium Nihilus to command. They were designed to both track down the artefacts that were the components of the Key and destroy any who opposed that effort. The fragments of the Key varied greatly in size and shape, from ancient pillars to meteorite-like constructs to cogitator banks. While Abaddon provided several of the Arks of Omen to his own Black Legion officers, he also provided them to other Chaos Lords who swore to aid him in his quest to destroy the Imperium.The nature of the Key and what power it possesses once it is reassembled remains mysterious. All Abaddon told his followers about it was that once it was refashioned, the Key would transform the servants of the Emperor into greater traitors to His cause than any Chaos Space Marine. |
Vashtorr - Wargear: Hammer of the Soul Forges - The Hammer of the Soul Forges is a Daemon Weapon that serves as the primary weapon wielded by Vashtorr. But it is more than just a weapon, for it aids him in all his acts of creation and destruction within the Forge of Souls. |
Vassalians - Vassalians: The Vassalians are a little-known xenos species from the Eastern Fringe.They were waging a war against their xenos neighbours the Donarathi until the arrival of Hive Fleet Jormungandr in the late 41st Millennium.Facing the Tyranid invasion, they accepted the uneasy truce proposed by High Admiral Vortigern Hanroth to join his loose alliance of various fleets with their Slavebird starships.In 995.M41, during the subsequent Battle of Black Nebula, Hanroth and his unlikely allies shattered Hive Fleet Jormungandr. |
Vaul - Vaul: Vaul is the Aeldari God of Smiths and all craftsmen as well as the brother of the Phoenix King Asuryan, the ruler of the Aeldari pantheon in Aeldari Mythology. Vaul is the patron god of all artisans and is worshipped by a small sect of the Aeldari's primary psychic craftsmen, the Bonesingers. Vaul was the architect and primary engineer of Asuryan's palace during the First Age of the Aeldari.Before Asuryan created the barrier between the world of the gods and of mortals that split the universe between the physical realm and the Immaterium, he was depicted as a busy man, always creating swords for the Aeldari War God Khaine, creating or repairing the Needles of Fate for the Crone Goddess Morai-Heg, maintaining the hunting equipment of Kurnous, and performing all the other acts of divine craftsmanship required by the Aeldari gods. He often created musical instruments to accompany the luring dream songs of Lileath or the life-preserving songs of Isha.During the Fall of the Aeldari, Eldrad Ulthran believed that if Vaul had been set free from his imprisonment, he could have marshaled the defences of the Aeldari gods, because of his skills in craft and engineering, and the gods would never have fallen to the hunger of the newborn Prince of Chaos, Slaanesh. |
Vaul - War in Heaven: It was Isha who had inspired the creation of Asuryan's barrier between mortals and their gods, as she had wept over the destruction that Khaine, as the God of War and Murder, was causing amongst her children. It is also said that the first Spirit Stones were crafted from her tears so that the gods and mortals would be able to communicate with each other once more through the barrier erected between the Immaterium and the Materium. One of these stones was given to Isha and the rest were handed over to the Aeldari so that their prayers might be heard.When Asuryan learned that his directive that the gods were to have no further contact with mortals had been violated, he gave Isha and her husband, Kurnous, to Khaine to do with as he wished. Khaine tortured the two of them in a burning pit until Vaul, the Aeldari God of Crafting who was Isha and Kurnous' uncle and was moved by their plight, struck a bargain with the War God to craft 100 enchanted swords, the Blades of Vaul, for him in one's year's time. In exchange, Khaine promised to release his fellow gods from their prison in his realm.The Smith God worked long and hard at this task and managed to forge all of the blades by the deadline except for the last one, which lay unfinished on his anvil. In order to trick Khaine, Vaul substituted the last blade with a mortal one which he delivered to the War God, who released his two captives. The three gods quickly departed. But Khaine was quick to discover the subterfuge and cried out in rage. He called the Smith God a cheat and vowed revenge.He immediately set off to track Vaul down and make him pay. The conflict that followed, known as the War in Heaven, polarised the gods, as Khaine's faction and Vaul's faction engaged in bloody warfare for an eternity. Gods changed sides, great deeds of heroism and of terrible evil were performed by both factions, and the war was mirrored in an internecine struggle between the Aeldari in the mortal realm. Asuryan himself never took a side, watching the carnage impassively, slowly coming to regret his impetuosity in sentencing Isha and Kurnous to Khaine's tender mercies.Vaul reforged the final sword, the one that he had failed to finish for Khaine, the greatest of all, and called it Anaris. Armed with this weapon, Vaul strode forth to do battle with Khaine. It was a long, hard-fought struggle, but even with Anaris, Vaul was no match for the War God. Khaine cast down Vaul, maiming the smith, and bound Vaul to his own anvil.However, the falcon, Faolchú, consort of the Great Hawk, who had fought for Vaul, took the sword Anaris and delivered it to Eldanesh, the greatest warrior and leader of the mortal Aeldari. With Anaris in hand, Eldanesh of the Red Moon took up the fight and faced Khaine in single combat.Eldanesh fought well, but in the end, he too was defeated by Khaine, his body crushed by the God of War. As Khaine slew Eldanesh, his hands began to drip with red blood. Forever after he was to become known as Khaela Mensha Khaine, which means "Khaine the Bloody-Handed" in the Aeldari Lexicon. By this time, Asuryan, the greatest of the Aeldari gods, had seen enough of the slaughter and proclaimed the War in Heaven over. Khaine had gained his vengeance and left the field satisfied. |
Vaul - Vaul-Moon: An Aeldari artefact called The Awakening was discovered by the forces of the Imperium of Man on 2343.724.M41 on the world of Rahe's Paradise. It was studied by Sister Superior Meritia of the Orders Dialogous and is known to have concerned the ancient Necrontyr.According to the translated inscription on the artefact, "the Vaul-Moon shall bring forth the Dragon" and the Sister's annotations led her to determine that Vaul was the Aeldari God of the Forge who was a blasphemous deity who was crippled both physically and spiritually. Her analysis led her to conclude that a "Vaul-Moon" was the Aeldari equivalent of an Adeptus Mechanicus Forge World. |
Vaul - Talismans of Vaul: The massive black star fortresses created by the Old Ones over sixty-five million standard years ago during their ancient conflict with the C'tan and the Necrons (which was the true War in Heaven only dimly remembered in Aeldari Mythology) are known as the "Talismans of Vaul" to the Aeldari, while the Imperium knows them as the Blackstone Fortresses.When the fortresses' power is combined it is possible for them to cause a star to go supernova. This capability was originally intended to destroy the C'tan, who were sentient creatures of pure energy whose natural habitat was the core of stars. |
Vaults of Moravec - Vaults of Moravec: The Vaults of Moravec were a depository of forbidden knowledge and techno-arcana located on the Mechanicum's holy world of Mars in the Segmentum Solar. Hidden in a sealed vault inside a maze of old tunnels and chambers nearly a kilometre deep beneath Olympus Mons -- the mighty forge city of the Mechanicum's ruling Fabricator-General Kelbor-Hal -- the Vaults of Moravec had been deliberately kept locked by the order of the Emperor of Mankind, who correctly judged the knowledge it contained as too dangerous to be known.When Warmaster Horus Lupercal began to plot his rebellion against his father the Emperor, he promised Kelbor-Hal to lift the Emperor's ban on the forbidden knowledge and archeotech stored there, thus swaying this powerful figure to serve him. The opening of the Vaults of Moravec would spark the civil war within the ancient Mechanicum that would become known as the Schism of Mars and mark the true birth of the Dark Mechanicum and the present-day Adeptus Mechanicus. |
Vaults of Moravec - History: The tunnels beneath the great extinct volcano of Olympus Mons on Mars had long served as a burial place for the adepts of the Omnissiah. Here laid a treasure of ancient knowledge, personal logs of past researchers, old dust-covered tomes of knowledge, ancient reliquaries intermittent with tombs and entire caverns harbouring the technologies developed in distant times, now nothing but heaps of rust and metal through long standard centuries of neglect. Hidden in the deepest and most distant corner of this maze were the Vaults of Moravec.The Vaults of Moravec had been created especially to harbour the researches and data obtained by the ill-reputed techno-savant Moravec of Old Earth. Moravec had been a technical genius, way ahead of the technology of his time. He intimately believed that technology would eventually surpass Human intellect and that by technological means he would be able to create this "singularity," the fusion of machine and man that would surpass both.These beliefs essentially mirrored the Mechanicum's creed that one day this fusion between man and machine, the Omnissiah, the physical avatar of the Machine God, would reveal itself to them, which is why Moravec was also considered an important prophet of the Mechanicum, though he was Terran-born. However Moravec would not be content to wait for the coming of the Omnissiah as he had heralded it, but actually tried to bring it forth. Gathering like-minded tech-adepts in what was officially branded as a sect known as the Brotherhood of Singularitarism, Moravec continued his work.As would later be discovered, Moravec had made unholy pacts with beings far more ancient than Mankind, mingling his species' science with the raw, elemental force of the Empyrean to create technologies far in advance of anything seen on Terra. With the influence of perhaps the Chaos Gods or at the very least one of the more powerful Neverborn, Moravec created technical wonders; machines free of the shackles of physics and Human understanding of the universe, Warp-powered devices which did the impossible and fearful -- truly devastating weapon systems that made the atomic devices of the past pale in comparison.This power naturally bred suspicion and hatred with the more secular techno-barbarian warlords that still ruled Terra in these days. Feeling threatened, one of these men, the Warlord Khazar, united the Pan-Pacific tribes and stormed Moravec's citadel, branding him a witch but ultimately failing to kill him.This happened well before even the Unification Wars as Khazar was himself vanquished by Narthan Dume, one of the mightiest rivals of the Emperor during His conquest of Humanity's homeworld. Managing to escape, Moravec fled to Mars where his story finishes. Upon his death, all his works and knowledge were interred presumably with him in the Vaults beneath Olympus Mons that still carry his name.For an entire standard millennium the Vaults of Moravec remained locked. Even when the Emperor trod the soil of Mars and visited the maze of tunnels in the company of Kelbor-Hal, He didn't dare open the mighty door that closed the Vaults. Rightly suspecting that the ambitious Kelbor-Hal would not heed His words, the Emperor psychically wiped the fabricator-general's cartographic memory buffers, so that Kelbor-Hal would indeed know of the hidden knowledge's existence, but would never be able to find it on his own.Over two hundred standard years later, at the dawn of the Horus Heresy, the Warmaster Horus' Tech-priest emissary known as Regulus would lead the same Kelbor-Hal back to the Vaults of Moravec and give him the means to open it. Having given himself over to Chaos, the corrupted Tech-priest Regulus had mastered a corrupted version of the Mechanicum's sacred Lingua-Technis, a Chaos-corrupted scrap-code that infected any nearby electronic system and succeeded in opening the inviolate door of the Vaults of Moravec.Having been affected himself and willfully entered into an alliance with Horus, the fabricator-general was infused with the scrap-code and gave himself wholly over to Chaos. With the new scrap-code embedded in his cybernetic memory buffers, Kelbor-Hal would construct an army of mechanical abominations, perverted in body and in mind by the bale influence of the Warp. This was the true birth of the Dark Mechanicum as it still exists today. |
Vaults of Moravec - Trivia: The Vault of Moravec was likely inspired by the Austrian-Canadian computer scientist Hans Moravec of the Robotics Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, known for his work on robotics and artificial intelligence. He is also credited with describing Moravec's paradox which holds that the computation resources required to achieve reasoning by a machine is far less than those required to achieve sensorimotor and perception skills by an autonomous robot. |
Vaultsword - Vaultsword: A Vaultsword is a type of archeotech power sword that is wielded by the elite Blade Champions of the Adeptus Custodes. They can be wielded either as single greatswords, known as "Klaimors," or paired with a slightly smaller "Nemis," depending upon what the Blade Champion's chosen Martial Ka'tah requires. |
Vaxanide - Vaxanide: Situated at the edge of the Calixis Sector in the Malfian Sub-sector, Vaxanide is a poorly supplied, desperate world, struggling to enter the "inner circle" of sector planets. It has decent mineral output and considerable exports of meat and fish, but it fights to survive.Its three billion people answer to Lord Vaxanide, scion of House Vaxanide, which has holdings on Scintilla, Malfi and Regulus. The economic degeneracy of Vaxanide results in it being a generally lawless, dangerous Frontier World, especially beyond the precincts of the central hive city, Vaxanhive. The planet is especially famed for its porcelain, glass and fish products. It is also the site of a shrine to Saint Drusus, where miracles are said to occur.Base rumours say that a hidden city exists in the canyons of the dense equatorial jungles. The city is said to be a mirror of the Lucid Palace, populated by phantoms of the actual Lucid Palace's denizens. All expeditions into the jungle areas have ended in failure, with few members returning alive. Those who survive are usually insane, raving of "grey death" stalking them, or simply ending their lives in a variety of messy ways. |
Vaxanide - Departmento Cartographicae Planetary Database: Galactic Position: 735-4/445/CS/NNEClass: Frontier WorldContact with Other Worlds: Stable Warp routes run from Vaxanide to Malfi, Ganf Magna and Kalf. |
Vaxhallian Genocide - Vaxhallian Genocide: The Vaxhallian Genocide was a notorious campaign conducted by the Forces of Chaos in 926.M41 upon the Imperial world of Vaxhallia. The vile Chaos warband known as The Purge sought to vent their hatred of all living things upon the unsuspecting verdant planet as their victim.The planet's surface was soon riddled with consumptive disease and crippling famine. Over the course of a single solar month, the Purge engineered the destruction of no fewer than 14 billion Imperial citizens. |
Vaylund Cal - Vaylund Cal: Vaylund Cal is a high artificer of the Sons of Medusa Chapter and one of its three commanding iron thanes. He leads its Atropos War Clan.Cal is the undisputed master of the Atropos War Clan, serving in a dual role as his War Clan's master weaponsmith as high artificer and war leader as its iron thane. He is considered to be a soullessly cold and emotionless figure, made all the more imposing in his hulking black and emerald power armour.During the lamentable internecine conflict between Space Marine Chapters known as the Badab War, Valund Cal and the Sons of Medusa were treated with suspicion by their fellow Loyalists both because of their widespread deviation from the tenets of the Codex Astartes and because of their supposed ulterior motives for their involvement in the conflict.But they soon put any doubts to rest as to their effectiveness when fighting against the forces of the Secessionists. |
Vaylund Cal - History: Iron Thane Valund Cal is the master of the Atropos War Clan of the Sons of Medusa contingent that took part in the Badab War. Clad in his hulking black metal and emerald armour, it is almost impossible to tell where the man ends and the machine begins.Vaylund Cal's almost entirely augmetic body is a testament to his lifetime's work as a servant of the Machine God. What little remains of his organic tissue is shot through with bionic and auto-sanguinary systems that increase his strength and endurance beyond even the superhuman levels of a Space Marine.The Sons of Medusa closely follow the tenets of their Iron Hands forebears, purging the weakness of the flesh with the purity of the machine, and indeed go even further than their progenitors in this regard thanks to the dangers they face as a space-borne Crusading Chapter.As a fanatic member of the Moirae Sect of the Cult Mechanicus, Cal is renowned for employing Devastator Squads with extremely high levels of deliberate cybernetic augmentation in his clan's forces, skirting to the edge of what some more traditional Astartes see as a heresy against the Emperor's divine order. These squads are deployed in an implacable advance against the enemy, ruthlessly and systematically gunning down their foes.During the Badab War, the inhuman Valund Cal and the Sons of Medusa were treated with suspicion and barely concealed contempt by their fellow Loyalists for their Chapter's widespread deviation from the tenets of the Codex Astartes and because it was believed by many of their fellow Astartes that they had ulterior and dark motives for their part in the war. The Sons of Medusa joined the Loyalist cause in the Badab War in direct response to Legate Inquisitor Jarndyce Frain's call for Space Marine re-enforcements after the Secession of the Astral Claws had been declared heretical.The Sons of Medusa's stated reason for participation in the war was the punishment of the Renegade Astral Claws and the other Secessionist Chapters whom they viewed as having earned retribution for their betrayal of the Emperor's trust.Although Iron Thane Valund Cal deferred to the magister militum (supreme commander) of the Loyalist war effort, Lord High Commander Carab Culln of the Red Scorpions, in strategic deployment and the operational tasking of his Chapter, no Sons of Medusa answered to the orders of any but their own Chapter superiors at the tactical level.Culln had fought alongside the Sons of Medusa before during the defeat of WAAAGH! Skullcleava thirty years previously and knew them well, whilst the Red Scorpions also earned the Sons of Medusa's respect as a Chapter and this helped to maintain amicable relations within the Loyalist camp.This prior history allowed Culln and Cal to pursue a smooth working relationship when they might otherwise have been in discord due to their disparate natures, and Culln wisely deployed the Sons of Medusa only where their strengths and tenacity would prove most advantageous to the Loyalist cause.The Sons of Medusa took part in multiple engagements during the conflict, including the scouring of Cygnax of Secessionist forces as well as leading assault raids against Decabalus and Eshunna, the outer worlds of the Badab Sector.The Sons of Medusa most famously conducted the subjugation campaign against the rebel world of Galen. The last major engagement the Sons of Medusa took part in was the hard-fought assault on the orbital fortress of Sentinel-Sigma in preparation for the final Loyalist attack on Badab Primaris.It was Vaylund Cal at the head of the Atropos Terminators who fought his way to the Star Fortress' main engine vaults and severed the five-metre-thick plasma couplings to silence the station's guns, allowing the Loyalists free rein to attack the station's surface. The eventual conquest of Sentinel-Sigma shattered the Badab System's vaunted "Ring of Steel" defences and allowed the final assault on Badab Primaris itself to begin.Cal crossed the Rubicon Primaris to become a Primaris Marine some time after the birth of the Great Rift. He is now accompanied into battle by Aggressor Squad Kolgrimm, who serve as his stalwart bodyguards and his faithful servitor M0RTI5, who carries the iron thane's Omnisian Axe into battle. |
Vaylund Cal - Wargear: Artificer ArmourServo-HarnessThunder HammerOmnisian AxeIron Halo |
Vectored Retro-Thrusters - Vectored Retro-Thrusters: Vectored Retro-Thrusters provide enhanced manoeuvrability to T'au Battlesuits outfitted with a Jetpack. Vectored Retro-Thrusters are a Battlesuit Support System available to most forms of T'au Battlesuit, with the exception of those that do not possess a Jetpack such as the XV88 Broadside Battlesuit, and those such as the XV104 Riptide Battlesuit which cannot use the system due to their immense bulk.Battlesuits equipped with Vectored Retro-Thrusters possess additional thruster nozzles for their Jetpack, granting them a high degree of manoeuvrability that is useful in escaping enemies which have engaged them in close combat. Whilst Vectored Retro-Thrusters are now a commonly available Support System for use, when first introduced, they was special-issue and entrusted only to Battlesuit pilots of the rank of Shas'vre or higher. The previous rarity of the system also meant that its distribution was limited to only one per Hunter Cadre, although this has since changed. |
Vectored Retro-Thrusters - Vectored Thruster Array: A Vectored Thruster Array is a new application of Vectored Retro-Thruster technology to the larger XV109 Y'vahra Battlesuit that augments the chassis' own Jetpack to further increase the manoeuvrability of the Battlesuit, allowing it to make huge bounds across battlefields in order to reach its target, leap high into the atmosphere so as to redeploy elsewhere, or boost out of close combat with assaulting foes. |
Vectors of Pox - Vectors of Pox: The Vectors of Pox are a warband of Chaos Space Marines. They were once a Loyalist Chapter of Space Marines of unknown origin and Founding, known as the Doom Legion. The Doom Legion was responsible for the maintenance and garrison of the Faithful's Deliverance, the pre-Horus Heresy star fortress that overlooks the notorious Elusian Maze asteroid fields. Few other Space Marine Chapters could boast spaceborne firepower of this magnitude. All that is known about the Doom Legion's homeworld, Elusia Prime, is that it was situated within the Ultima Segmentum. They were corrupted after entering the Eye of Terror in 321.M37 as part of the Imperial Abyssal Crusade. It is unknown what they endured during their sojourn into the Eye, but by the time they made their way back into realspace, they had become the warband of Chaos Space Marines known as the Vectors of Pox. |
Vectors of Pox - Abyssal Crusade: Following the Ecclesiarchal Purges of 321.M37, a dozen star systems were engulfed by Warp Storm Dionys, its echoes rippling along the spiral arms of the galaxy as it raged through the Empyrean. Records of mutation and Chaos Cultist activity quadrupled overnight. Worse yet, it was not only the citizens who were affected by the sudden influx of Chaos. Many of the Space Marine Chapters with homeworlds affected by the Warp Storm found that the secret imperfections in their gene-seed were writ large upon their new recruits, giving rise to a wave of disturbing manifestations both physical and psychological. The Doom Legion were one such Loyalist Chapter of Astartes that had been affected by these Warp Storms.When the Ecclesiarchy heard of this sinister tum of events, Saint Basillius the Elder demanded that all those Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes whose homeworlds had been touched by the Warp Storm be rendered unto his judgement. Such was the elder's influence with the High Lords of Terra that within a standard year this had come to pass. After a series of stringent tests and prognostications, hundreds of Chapters were deemed unaffected by the Warp Storm. No less than thirty were found wanting. The Judged, as these fallen Chapters came to be known, volunteered for a redemptive Penitent Crusade. The most militant of their number demanded the right to purify their tainted flesh in the fires of battle, to make a noble end from tragic misfortune. To the surprise of his closest advisors, Saint Basillius agreed to this proposal. He saw it fitting to send the accused into the Eye of Terror, taking the fight for the Imperium's future to the Daemon Worlds inhabited by the Traitor Marines.A representative from each of the doomed Chapters held an emergency Council of Dismay to discuss the proposed Crusade. After scant hours of debate, they acquiesced to Basillius' demands, for they believed that martyrdom was preferable to an existence of suspicion and doubt. The last few days of 321.M37 saw a solemn procession of Strike Cruisers and Battle Barges pass through the Cadian Gate into the Eye of Terror, relay systems dormant and heraldic colours obscured by black mag-plates. One by one, the Chapters of The Judged disappeared into the iridescent dust nebulae that surrounded the Eye. As the massive Space Marine flotilla entered the Eye of Terror, they were set upon by a massive Chaos warfleet. The resultant battle was so fierce that the ships of The Judged were forced to retreat and were scattered to the furthest corners of the Eye.Chapter after Chapter fell to the perils of the Eye, for the Abyssal Crusade had entered a hell from which very few emerge unchanged. The true account of what occurred within the Eye to the Doom Legion is unknown, but most of the tales of the Chapters of The Judged ended in tragedy and sorrow. By the time they reemerged from the Eye many standard centuries later, the Doom Legion were no more, for they had become the Chaos Space Marine warband known as the Vectors of Pox, wholly dedicated to the service of the Ruinous Powers. |
Vectors of Pox - Warband Colours: The Vectors of Pox warband's colours are not listed in current Imperial records. |
Vectors of Pox - Warband Badge: The Vectors of Pox warband's baqdge is not listed in current Imperial records. |
Veil of Darkness - Veil of Darkness: A Veil of Darkness is a device of Necron techno-sorcery that can summon dark energies which twist and billow about the bearer like a ghostly cloak blown by an ethereal breeze; almost akin to a billowing sheet of tangible shadow that envelops the bearer and his allies. When the darkness ebbs, the enshrouded bearer and those Necrons nearby will have disappeared, only to rematerialise mysteriously some distance away on the battlefield later. This allows the bearer of a Veil of Darkness to swiftly redeploy himself and his fellow Necrons into unexpected positions from which to better destroy the enemy, a tactical advantage that few others can afford.Each Veil of Darkness is fashioned from transpositanium, a substance so rare that it can only be found in a handful of places in the galaxy. It is highly sought after by the Necrons, and wars have been waged to secure it. Veils of Darkness are only carried by Necron Lords and Cryptek Psychomancers. |
Veiled Region - Veiled Region: The Veiled Region is a vast, unmapped region of Wilderness Space in the Segmentum Tempestus of the galactic south that consists of dense nebulae and newborn stars. As a result, this area of space is afflicted by high concentrations of ionising radiation, various space-time anomalies and a heavy cloak of stellar dust that makes the region very difficult to penetrate with the use of Imperial sensing technologies, hence its name.The great expanse of the Veiled Region is known to be home to Ork Freebooters and xenos mercenaries as well as many Imperial traders seeking lucrative new routes and unexplored planets. The Veiled Region is also populated by a large number of Necron dynasties, though this is unknown to much of the Imperium.The inhabited worlds of the Veiled Region are also known to have greatly suffered at the hands of the Khornate Berserkers of the World Eaters Traitor Legion. |
Veiled Region - History: Since the time of the Great Crusade, this area of space in the galactic south has been referred to as the Veiled Region. It is known that Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleets have barely probed the surface of its dense nebulae since the time of the Horus Heresy and so Imperial knowledge of the Veiled Region remains largely sketchy.A Rogue Trader known to have travelled to the outskirts of the Veiled Region before heading to the western edge of the galaxy had limited encounters with several intelligent and previously unknown alien species in the region. The Veiled Region's astrographic hazards make it very difficult to navigate and some scholars believe that it has remained largely unexplored simply because of the large amounts of time and resources that would be required to fully map it.Among the greatest difficulties in exploring the Veiled Region was the limited nature of astropathic communication with any Imperial vessels that ventured into the region. Astro-telepathic communications transmitted from outside the Veiled Region were often reflected back, making communication with any explorers impossible.For all these reasons, exploration of the region was rarely attempted, and no expeditions had yet proven successful by the time of the 41st Millennium.Due to the scarcity of knowledge of what lies within the Veiled Region, the Imperium long ago banned any Human colonies from being settled within the area. However, despite this prohibition, there are persistent but unproven rumours of many Human-settled worlds in the Veiled Region. |
Vejovium III - Vejovium III: Vejovium IIICivilised WorldPahr SectorSegmentum UltimaOfficio MedicaeAdministratumnobilityThe unexpected arrival of Purestrain Genestealers on the world opened vast new areas of experimentation for the nobility who ruled the world's medifactoria complexes. Seeking biological perfection and perhaps even immortality, these researchers willingly hybridised the human genome with that of the Genestealers, ultimately creating an "artificial" Genestealer Cult known as the Twisted Helix which now is the de facto ruler of the planet.The shadowy researcher who led these initial experiments was known only as the "Prime Specimen," though whether this is a reference to a Genestealer Patriarch remains unknown.The Twisted Helix now spreads their unique version of the Genestealer's Curse to other worlds through the propagation of its biomedical products, all of which promise their users extended life and enhanced health while actually infecting them with Genestealer DNA. |
Vejovium III - History: The Cult of the Twisted Helix's original site of infestation is Vejovium III, deep in the southwestern edge of the Segmentum Ultima; the planet is technically a Civilised World, but it was long ago overtaken by the industry of the macro-alchemical distilleries that manufacture its exported medicines.So influential have these complexes become -- and the dynastic corporations that rule over them -- that everywhere the Vejovian skyline is ridged with enormous medifactoria. These appear, when viewed from the hive aristocracy's spires, like the laboratory of some godly sage -- spiral glass pipelines and chimneys belch strangely coloured smoke alongside vast alembic structures and cooling towers. Given the influence they have over the lives and even anatomies of the populace, the divine comparison is an apt one.The war leaders and Biophaguses of the Twisted Helix think of themselves as a new breed of god-like being, their clay the flesh and blood of those around them, and their creations a blend of human, alien and voidstuff. These they see as nothing more than experimental subjects, and every skirmish, hostile takeover and even large-scale uprising purely another test bed from which to draw firmer conclusions about their experiments thus far.They have created works of mad genius in their quest for the perfect life form, yet seek daily to surpass them, for nothing short of galactic domination will satisfy the power-mad maniacs who rule the cult's medifactoria behind a façade of intellectual curiosity.Vejovium's rulers long ago cracked the secrets of dulling the human mind. After the costly Doxencrafter Rebellions of the late 38th Millennium, the Planetary Governor commissioned an inhibitory chemical that could be mixed into the food paste and corpse-starch of his citizenry's diet. The spread of this potent chemical saw the populace rendered docile, even bovine in its apathy to anything but the strongest stimulus. Though those visitors who saw this for the horror it was did everything to bring some manner of justice against the rulers of the cult, they were always undermined, kidnapped or shouted down by those with controlling interests in the planet's industrial fortunes.With Vejovium supplying so many of the medi-packs, Apothecarium supplies and void sickness pills to the Imperium's military bodies across the Pahr Sector, the investigations never plumbed the depths that would have unearthed the conspiracy spreading at the heart of the planet's fortunes.Ironically, it was this deadening of the psyche that was to prove a temporary salvation for Vejovium's people. When a clutch of Purestrain Genestealers, intended as fodder for more extreme experimentation, reached the planet via the Imperial black market, the first of the stevedores to meet one of the Tyranid vanguard organisms face-to-face was no easy prey for his wouldbe corrupter.His narcotically-dulled mind proved resistant to the strange hypnotic effect of the Genestealer's psychic aura -- and, on instinct, closed the airlock in which the beast and its kin lurked, slamming the reinforced door shut just as the creature's ovipositor darted out to graze the glasscrete.The incident was reported to the on-duty overseer, of course, and from there the message reached the highest hive city spires. At a worryingly steep cost in the lives of their "volunteers," the leaders of the industrial cult laid low their Genestealer prisoners -- after assailing the airlock with radiation baths, poison gas, sonic destabilisers, and even acid mist they eventually resorted to a hail of bullets that not even the Purestrains could survive. They subsequently dissected the very xenoforms that had sought to infect them.Over the course of hundreds of exhaustive experiments, the medical overseers of Vejovium III learned how to extract the pure germ-seed of the Purestrain from the cellular genomes of those who have been blessed by the Genestealer's Kiss. At the behest of the shadowy individual known only as the Prime Specimen, likely the cult's Genestealer Patriarch, the implications of this discovery were exhaustively researched.It was eventually concluded that they stood on the threshold of a new evolution -- that the xenos gene-pattern was the path to true biological perfection, and perhaps even immortality. Under strict test conditions, the aristocracy of Vejovium injected the stuff of the alien into their veins, and began their transformation into something resembling Neophyte Hybrids.In essence, though they had at first evaded the curse that sought to infect them, the lords of Vejovium instead voluntarily started their own transformation into alien monsters at a far later stage of the standard Genestealer brood cycle. Sure enough, after many hideous by-blows and aborted experiments, they birthed a new clutch of Genestealers with which to further their agenda -- albeit a brood given life in the sterile tubes of a secret medifactoria rather than the incubatory anatomies of infected hosts. These in turn infected new infestation sites, and the Vejovians slowly began to resemble a Genestealer Cult like any other.So it was that the Genestealer Curse took hold upon Vejovium through a new and disturbing vector. Obsessed with their discovery, the Prime Specimen and his peers widened their research time and time again, venturing into the most bizarre territory in their search for new bioforms that would reinforce their delusions of godhood. They became convinced that to seed their concoctions throughout the people would be to secure their undying loyalty, even worship.Subsequent experimentation led to methods of incorporating the pure Genestealer germ-seed into the curative syringe vials that form a major part of Vejovium's interstellar medical exports -- and from there, into the veins of millions of unsuspecting Imperial citizens. Every recipient is rendered susceptible to the brood curse that is sure to follow; those with constitutions stalwart enough to resist are often given compulsory vital supplements in pill form, and later given reinforcement via a midnight visit from one of the cult's "independent vectors" -- Purestrain Genestealers. |
Vejovium III - Canon Conflict: In the 8th Edition Codex: Genestealer Cults the description of the Twisted Helix cult says that its homeworld of Vejovium III is located in the eastern region of the Segmentum Obscurus. However, the map of Genestealer Cult locations in the galaxy on pg. 34 shows that Vejovium is actually located in the southwestern region of the Ultima Segmentum. For canon purposes we are assuming the map was correct while the text was not. |
Vektrônn's Eye - Vektrônn's Eye: Vektrônn's Eye is a Quicksilver-class Scout Ship employed by the Farsail of Thryk Kindred of the Trans-Hyperian Alliance.It was downed on the contested Adeptus Mechanicus Forge World of Bheta-Decima during an attempt to locate a Legacy Vault and crashed into the fortified hold known as the Deeprealm that was the home of the Genestealer Cult called the Cult of the Chittering Verse. A team of Hernkyn Yaegir called Need's Gaârd was sent from the downed Vektrônn's Eye to locate and recover the Legacy Vault, but its Extrication Craft Thargr 7 was shot down by elements of the cult's corrupted Traitoris Militarum regiment known as the Cadian Neo-917th.The Yaegir soon found themselves surrounded and in a desperate fight against a unit of the Cadian Neo-917th known as the "Wardens of the Verse" that was comprised of the cult's Brood Brothers and Genestealer hybrids. |
Velayne Ramaeus - Velayne Ramaeus: Velayne Ramaeus is an Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos and the leader of the faction of the Deathwatch known as the Dead Cabal in the Jericho Reach. |
Velayne Ramaeus - History: Inquisitors are, by their very nature, subtle, inscrutable, and enigmatic. Most wear this mystery around themselves like a cloak, almost ostentatious in their guile. The same could be said about Velayne Ramaeus, though such sentiments would hardly do the mysterious Inquisitor justice.Little of certainty is known about the woman, though her credentials are of the highest order and as a result, her authority among the Deathwatch is all but limitless. None remember the details of her arrival in the Jericho Reach, though most assume that the Inquisitor rode in on the first waves of the Achilus Crusade, as few can recall her presence before that time.If asked directly about her service with the Deathwatch, the stewards of Watch Fortress Erioch react with puzzlement. Back through the centuries, scattered among the recollections of the older members of the Deathwatch, are memories of a woman bearing her description, though no official record exists as evidence. It is almost as though she had always been there, but went unnoticed until the last several solar decades.Beyond her Inquistorial Rosette and her authentication seal, no concrete record exists of her before the discovery of the Jericho-Maw Warp Gate leading to the edge of the Calixis Sector. Despite this lack, the Watch Fortress Erioch Chamber of Vigilance has reconciled her credentials and required no other confirmation of her devotion.Since her arrival, Inquisitor Ramaeus has proved to be like many of her kind, not one for sloth or inactivity. In but a few short standard years, she had taken command of the Dead Stations and collected about her the four members of the Deathwatch who would become known collectively as the Dead Cabal.With her trusted Battle-Brothers positioned throughout the Jericho Reach and watchful for unusual phenomena and dire warning signs, the Inquisitor set about her own work, though what this is, few can say. The few times she has made her actions widely known, it was to provide evidence that the things which lurk between the stars of the Jericho Reach are stirring and to demand that the Deathwatch take action against them.Perhaps due to her intense secrecy and unwillingness to disclose what she has learned, these warnings and demands have largely fallen on deaf ears. As a result, Inquisitor Ramaeus spends little time actually aboard the watch stations of the Deathwatch and rarely, if ever, enters the confines of Watch Fortress Erioch.Despite her routine absence, she has a reputation for suddenly appearing where she is most needed and vanishing just as abruptly when the situation has passed; a habit that does little to inspire trust among her fellows. She has a habit of finishing the sentences of others and responding to their actions before they happen, almost as though she knows what one is about to say or do before they do it.Some speculate that this shows that the Inquisitor possesses some psychic talent. Other, highly learned scholars and adepts among the Deathwatch, whisper even more mysterious explanations, perhaps even a connection to the obscure Ordo Chronos.What Velayne Ramaeus' true purpose is, not even the members of the Dead Cabal can accurately say. Many among the Deathwatch suspect that the outspoken Inquisitor knows a great deal more about the goings on of the Jericho Reach than she lets on, and a small few accuse her of outright sabotage and treason.She does little to acknowledge these accusations, simply dismissing them as the idle chatter of those who spend too little time taking action against the doom which lies ever at the doorstep of the Imperium. These days, the Inquisitor leaves the matters of the Dead Cabal to those whom she trusts, Watch Captain Mathias in the main.There are a great many rumours concerning Inquisitor Ramaeus among the Space Marines and Inquisitors of Watch Fortress Erioch, but each is as unsubstantiated as the next. Some speculate that lack of recorded information concerning Ramaeus is due to a coverup of the highest order; that perhaps all record of her has been expunged to conceal her place in a great conspiracy or to obscure her part in a failed operation.Others suspect that she is not who she says she is and that the Chamber of Vigilance has placed undue trust on the duplicitous Inquisitor. True paranoiacs among the Inquisition even claim to have evidence that Inquisitor Ramaeus is, in fact, a highly trained operative of the Officio Assassinorum, sent to infiltrate the Deathwatch until the day when her murderous arts shall be called upon.Whispers between these sceptics claim that Ramaeus has learned the use of polymorphine from the Callidus Temple Assassins and uses the transformative, shape-shifting drug to take the form of any number of individuals throughout the Deathwatch in the Jericho Reach, thus explaining her mysterious comings and goings.For her part, Ramaeus does little to quell these rumours or explain herself, leaving her brethren to speculate while she girds the Imperial holdings in the Jericho Reach against what is to come.In recent years, Inquisitor Ramaeus has become more active than ever before. She travels the Jericho Reach by her usual, unknown means, passing from one Dead World to the next, with a haste and an urgency that has drawn the attention of the Battle-Brothers stationed aboard the Dead Stations.Where once she acted entirely alone, she has recently led several separate excursions to the worlds of the Dark Pattern. Some of these missions end in conflict and bloodshed, as the Inquisitor and her chosen escorts unearth the slumbering horrors of these worlds.Others, prepared for similar action, find only dead rock and barren wastes, almost as if the Inquisitor were expecting some event that had yet to happen. Recently, Inquisitor Ramaeus has been conferring closely with Knight-Warden Alric, though the subject of those conversations remains unknown.Given their shared preference for working alone out among the scattered worlds of the Dark Pattern, such discussions suggest a discovery which may have dire implications for the Jericho Reach. As well, these interactions give some credence to the long-standing suspicions that the Inquisitor and the inscrutable Black Shield had a connection to one another prior to their time in the Deathwatch. |
Velk'Han - Velk'Han: Velk'Han is a Sept of the T'au Empire in close proximity to the Jericho Reach. It is also one of the Septs furthest away from the T'au homeworld of T'au.As a result, its existence is considered by many to be a great credit to the prowess and tenacity of the Air Caste as it managed to not only reach, but also settle, such a far-off world.Unfortunately, for much the same reason, this Sept is a great source of anger for the Imperium of Man and is a key reason why the High Lords of Terra commissioned the start of the Achilus Crusade to retake the Jericho Reach. |
Velk'Han - History: The T'au Empire's expansion has been dictated by the constraints of the methods its starships use to cross the vast gulfs of space separating the stars. The T'au do not make use of Navigators in the sense that Humanity does, and neither do they utilise any of the esoteric or outright sorcerous methods that allow the other intelligent races of the galaxy to navigate the Warp.It has been posited by the Imperium's xenobiologists that the T'au have very little perception of the Warp, a fact that may serve to protect them against the predations of the denizens of the Empyrean but that also blinds them to the power it offers.In order to cross interstellar space, the T'au utilise a purely technological solution that allows their vessels to make short jumps, effectively "skimming" the surface of the Warp without immersing themselves in its seething depths. It appears that entering only the shallows of the Sea of Souls allows the T'au to guide their ships by conventional means, and protects them from the perils that beset other species.The downside of the 'au method of interstellar travel is that longer jumps are impossible, making it far slower than other methods of faster-than-light travel. To date, this has not been a major issue for the empire's expansion, because the stellar cluster which it occupies is so dense that each Sept is only a short jump away from the next.The T'au discovered the secrets of interstellar travel through reverse-engineering the wreckage of an alien vessel discovered on a moon of their home planet. The Jericho Reach was discovered in a similar and equally serendipitous manner.On the world of Landfall at the very edge of the T'au Empire, Earth Caste explorers discovered an ancient tablet crafted by the hands of some long-fallen alien civilisation. Upon examination by the greatest minds amongst the T'au, the tablet was determined to represent a star chart, plotting a fast and safe route through the Warp to a distant region of space.The discovery was made all the more fortuitous by the fact that if the T'au had used a conventional Warp-Drive, the passage would have been impossible, assailed as it was by raging Warp Storms. But the T'au's gravitic-effect "skimming" drives allowed them to anchor themselves on the emanations of the distant Black Reef, and although the passage was not an easy one, most of the force sent to scout the passage made it through safely.Armed with their knowledge of the passage between Landfall and the Black Reef, the T'au can move forces between the two regions far faster than would otherwise be possible. The alien star chart is perhaps one of the closest guarded secrets of the Velk'Han Sept, and Earth Caste explorers from the Sept are busily engaged seeking similar artefacts with which to fuel the dynamic expansion of their species into a new region.Small T'au expeditionary forces comb the Jericho Reach in search of such secrets, a fact that the Imperium has yet to become fully aware of. |
Velk'Han - Establishment of Velk'Han Sept: The Velk'Han Sept is comprised of a cluster of worlds that have fallen entirely to the forces of the T'au, their Human populations turned from the Pax Imperium to the collectivist doctrine that is the Greater Good. Just how compliant the Humans are in this process depends on the world in question, for some resisted the coming of the T'au and fought for many standard years, while others threw down their arms at the first contact with a Water Caste envoy.The T'au's effort to insinuate themselves within the Jericho Reach is an unusual one, for it marks a departure from their well-established patterns of expansion and conquest. The T'au Empire has thus far expanded its holdings in concerted, species-wide efforts, the forces of a number of Septs spreading outwards to bring a new "sphere" of space within the T'au's influence and establish still more Septs within it.The Velk'Han Sept was established outside of this pattern, representing not an empire-wide crusade into surrounding space, but a single, concerted strike across the void towards a very specific, discrete region.The Jericho Reach is quite some distance from the dense stellar cluster in the Eastern Fringe occupied by the T'au Empire, and so it represented an impressive feat of voidsmanship for the T'au to even reach it, and a daring display of military skill to capture as many worlds as they did in such a short time.The T'au's interest in a region so far from their own domains was one of the main factors that caused the High Lords of Terra to declare the Achilus Crusade. In the aftermath of the abortive Damocles Gulf Crusade, the T'au not only retook the worlds they had lost to the Imperium, but exploited the momentum of their counter-advance to take hold of many more Human-owned star systems.Given the calamitous events that enfolded during the Battle of Macragge, few in the Imperium were overly concerned for the fate of a handful of frontier systems. Others, however, still brooded on the events of the Damocles Gulf Crusade, and were fearful of the T'au poisoning more sectors with their vile philosophies. It was these men, such as Confessor Gurney of the Ecclesiarchy, who warned of the perniciousness of the T'au and the danger of them being allowed to expand into worlds far beyond their empire.With the Jericho Reach accessible once more thanks to the opening of the Warp Gate, many great and powerful men swore that never again would the T'au or any other xenos species be allowed to pluck away Human worlds while the Imperium's gaze was turned elsewhere.What happened in the aftermath of the Damocles Gulf Crusade would not be repeated, it was promised. The T'au would not only be swept from the newly accessible Jericho Reach, but driven back to their empire by a vengeful Imperial Crusade that would not stop until a new front had been opened up against the T'au Empire itself.Fortunately for the T'au, they were sufficiently established in their new Sept to resist the initial advances of the Achilus Crusade, and the other belligerents active in the region diverted the Imperium's attention away from committing overwhelming forces against the Sept.Now, the T'au are engaged in an effort to eject the Imperium from the Greyhell Front. When this occurs, millions of sympathisers on the worlds of the Canis Salient will rise up against their oppressors and the T'au will push the Imperium all the way back along the salient and cast it into the depths of the Well of Night. |
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