text
stringlengths 27
208k
|
|---|
Cryptos - The Incident at Fall Narrow: The Calixis Sector has had only a single, formally-identified instance of a Cryptos infiltration being discovered and destroyed since its foundation, although several more are suspected. This single verified infestation occurred at the mining community of Fall Narrow on 88 Tanstar nearly two Terran centuries ago in the seventh century of the 41st Millennium.Numbering under a thousand inhabitants, the settlement of Fall Narrow was relatively efficient and quite unremarkable; it met its quotas, people were born, worked, and died without unusual incident, and various officials passing through did not find any cause for concern. So things might have continued were it not for a mining accident that was witnessed by a travelling Administratum scribe detailed to carry out a local census.Dozens died during this mishap, and the scribe, to his horror, saw the settlement overseer impaled by a fallen joist. As he died, the overseer's body thrashed about and a green cloud billowed out of his eyes and mouth. The scribe recorded the unwholesome sight on his ocular augmetic before fleeing. In response, the panicking regional governor deployed Enforcer units that attempted to storm the settlement and conduct an investigation.The assault turned into a massacre as the ordinary men and women of the settlement resisted fiercely. The violence quickly and dramatically escalated with the miners attacking the Enforcers with makeshift demolition charges and industrial machines and the Enforcers responding with heavy assault units (the locals seemed to be under the delusion that they were being attacked by corsairs and outlaws).Captured prisoners showed signs of psychic suggestion and mental tampering, and it was clear something alien and malign was at work. This became particularly evident when the Enforcers' own encoded Vox-net was compromised and an entire strike force was led into a trap and destroyed.At some point during the assault, the central explosives store detonated, (although whether deliberately or by a stray round remains unknown). In the explosions and fires that followed, the settlement and almost all of its inhabitants and many of its besiegers were killed.When the Inquisition arrived shortly afterwards, it found that in a demonstration of either compounded incompetence or xenos conspiracy no records were kept of surviving inhabitants (if any) or the names of surviving Enforcers involved in the incident. Given the ability of the Cryptos to possess victims, their evident intelligence, and their skill at evasion, the xenos threat was likely merely displaced to another quiet and unassuming backwater. Despite a full Inquisitorial investigation, no further trace of the Cryptos colony was ever found.
|
Cryptos - Anatomy and Physiology: The Cryptos exist physically as an etheric, pseudo-plasmic, gas-like substance bound by an esoteric energy field that to the human eye appears as a hazy cloud of green-tinted vapour. In their natural state, the Cryptos drift in the great dark voids of the galaxy in small groups who commune via psychic means and are (unless destroyed by violence) effectively immortal.Usually these drifting groups are small, rarely numbering more than a dozen. The utterly alien preoccupations of the Cryptos prior to their contact with Mankind are not open to human understanding. Born in the deep void between star systems, they do not possess intelligence or emotions as humans understand them. However, they know and understand the human mind with an alien objectiveness gleaned from the minds of those they have possessed over the years.
|
Cryptos - The Motivations and Infiltrations of the Cryptos: The Cryptos dominate and control humans, using them with a callousness that is as cold as the void from whence they came. They have no lust for dominion over the weak and fleshy realm of Mankind; instead their infiltration of human communities offers them protection. None can guess at the terror from which they flee and perhaps even they can no longer recall its nature (except for a crawling dread embedded in their racial memory), but to this end secrecy and security are their overriding goals.Regardless of the cause of their fear, the fundamental motivation of the Cryptos has remained unknown to the Inquisition, though some subtle-minded savants serving more Radical masters within the Inquisition have begun to conjecture along the correct lines. Once they have taken human hosts, the Cryptos need to guard against Humanity itself and keep their presence utterly secret, as they know full well the lengths that the Inquisition will go to in order to root them out if discovered.Simply appearing to be the people they have taken as hosts does not suffice, and though they can mimic the knowledge, reactions and personalities of their hosts to an almost perfect degree, their need for safety drives them to build sanctuaries in isolated corners of human society for their long-term protection.The Cryptos are not a numerous species and operate in small groups ranging from a handful to perhaps as many as 20 individuals. When taking hosts, they seek to migrate to obscure and overlooked locations where any side effects of their infiltration will be easiest to control and where they can exert influence over normal humans by taking influential members of the community as hosts.Overseers, preachers, merchants and those in official positions are usually those taken by the Cryptos in the first stage of infiltration, as they are the keys to dominating the humans around them. Thus the Cryptos make their sanctuary more secure and their presence more difficult to detect. Small, self-contained communities are ideal for their purpose, particularly if physically isolated, although they have a distinct aversion to very primitive societies and dislike operating in space aboard vessels longer than they have to.After finding and infiltrating such a location, the Cryptos may migrate from body to body several times, leaving dead or damaged hosts along the way. They may spend several human generations acting as covert rulers and conducting culls to weed out any potential dissent or threat to them, before moving on once more if endangered or due to the urgings of their own inscrutable time table.While they are in control, the Cryptos will attempt to make the communities they hide in as stable and secure as possible so that no undue attention is directed towards them. Over time, the Cryptos are able to seed a psychic influence over those who are close to them. This influence gradually builds until the humans who have ignorantly dwelt with the Cryptos can be made to obey almost any command.This controlling effect is no literal puppetry but rather a power of suggestion that the Cryptos can wield to deadly effect in their defence or to carry out their wishes. The Cryptos also use the human predilection for hierarchy and authority to further secure their control by creating guilds and fraternities that gradually become more and more important to the community that they are part of. The control of such organisations extends and crystallises the Cryptos' dominion of their "sanctuary community" and allows them to create a network of spies and servants to enact their will.Such secretly dominated communities can exist for generations with the Cryptos passing to suitable new hosts when the flesh of the previous ones fail. Should their carefully constructed sanctuary be threatened or draw Inquisitional attention, the Cryptos will move to eliminate the threat using all available resources and then, once the threat has been eliminated, restore their human community to its "normal" state as if the threat had never existed.
|
Cryptos - Knowledge and Ignorance: Little is known of the Cryptos, and what is known is often confused with information about other alien speces. Presented here are guidelines on what different groups know about the Cryptos and their activities outside of academia and Imperial history.The Void Born and Ship Dwellers - There are many Void Born myths that relate to unexplained incidents and strange phenomena that may have the Cryptos as their true source. Particular references to small ships going missing only to be later discovered lifeless, deactivated, and sometimes concealed within asteroid belts and gas giants in outlying colony systems may have something to do with the Cryptos' activities. Likewise, tales of "ghost lights" haunting voidships when visiting distant and empty star systems or crewmen acting in an uncharacteristic manner may perhaps relate to the Cryptos.Ordo Xenos - The race has been declared Xenos Diabolus by the Inquisition and is to be destroyed whenever found. Various factions within the Ordo Xenos have differing ideas as to the severity and danger of the threat. Some Radicals even believe that some effort should be made to capture and preserve a specimen to unlock its potentially ageless knowledge.
|
Cryptos - Ordo Xenos Departmento Analyticus Threat Briefing: Within the Calixis Sector, the current threat posed by the Cryptos is unknown. There have been no recent indications of a hidden infestation and no reports that an infestation might exist. On such evidence, there can be only one conclusion by the Ordo Xenos: the threat is most severe.The few instances of Cryptos activity within the sector indicates that this region of space is not unknown to them. Silence can only mean that out amongst the scattered worlds of the sector there lurk what seem to be men and women, who work, talk, and eat, blending in with their fellows, but inside them is nothing but a cold intelligence, born of the void and driven by terror to escape from something even worse.
|
Crysos Morturg - Crysos Morturg: Crysos Morturg was a section leader of the Death Guard Legion and staunch Loyalist of the Emperor of Mankind and the ideals of the Great Crusade.He would be betrayed upon the world of Isstvan III alongside one-third of the forces of the first Traitor Legions when the Warmaster Horus attempted to cull the Legions under his command of Loyalist elements during the Isstvan III Atrocity.Morturg would survive the initial viral bombardment of the planet and live to fight a protracted guerrilla campaign against the Traitor forces.Despite the odds stacked against him, Morturg miraculously survived, thanks to the actions of Calleb Decima of the Ordo Reductor, and was a part of only a handful of survivors that would later tell the Terran War Council their first-hand accounts of the events of the Warmaster's perfidy that had transpired on Istvaan III.
|
Crysos Morturg - History: Crysos Morturg was a bitter warrior, morbid and given to introspection. He was disliked by his battle-brothers despite his evident talents as a warrior and field commander.He was neither Terran nor Barbaran by birth, having been inducted into the XIVth Legion during an emergency influx of recruits from the induction pool of the 18th Expeditionary Fleet after the Death Guard suffered near-catastrophic losses during the Rangda Xenocide Campaign.Years after his induction, after he rose to the rank of lieutenant, his latent psyker talents manifested. This only served to further isolate him from his fellow Astartes, and he had barely begun his training within the Legion Librarius when Primarch Mortarion had it disbanded and ordered such "witchcraft" suppressed.Morturg was reassigned to the Legion's Destroyer Corps and was frequently given command of Legionaries judged to be fractious or unstable, and his units were tasked to the brunt of the worst fighting the Death Guard endured. Progression through the ranks as he might otherwise have earned was however barred to him, and he was clearly marked for death on Isstvan III for his loyalist sympathies.But Morturg did not die and instead endured, rising to become one of the most deadly commanders of the Loyalist resistance. Despite all the odds, Morturg survived the savage internecine fighting on Istvaan III and he and the few remnants of the slaughtered Loyalists he had gathered to him, formed a deadly and highly effective ad-hoc formation of Blackshields, who would live to avenge themselves upon their former brethren.The exact actions undertaken by Crysos Morturg, like many of his Blackshield contemporaries during the chaotic age of the Heresy, went mostly unrecorded and unheralded. All that is known is that Morturg managed to survive the calamitous events of the galaxy-wide conflict, and was eventually promoted to the senior rank of Captain.He was given command of the 108th Independent Company and stationed at Far Rim Monitoring Station Occludus, along the outer edges of the restricted sectors of the Ghoul Stars, located in the galactic north-eastern rim.In 063.M31, nearly five solar decades after the end of the Heresy, a squadron of strike craft under his command conducting a routine sweep, would intercept a mysterious Astropathic message bearing Imperial code-memes of ancient provenance. The transmission was originally believed to be some kind of warp echo, perhaps dating back to the days of the Great Crusade, although it showed none of the signs of the degradation that usually accompanied such echoes.This mysterious message indicated the last known possible whereabouts of the notorious Blackshield force known as the Ashen Claws, and implied that they still thrived within the forbidden reaches of the Ghoul Stars, undertaking their own Second Crusade to continue forging a human empire within this foreboding region of the galaxy.
|
Crysos Morturg - Wargear: Hardened Power Armour (Hardened against nuclear, biological and chemical weapons)Bolt PistolPower SwordCombi-FlamerFrag GrenadesKrak GrenadesRad Grenades
|
Crystal Harbingers - Crystal Harbingers: The Crystal Harbingers are a thrallband of Heretic Astartes of the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion. The sorcerers of the Crystal Harbingers delve into the hidden recesses of the Silver Towers to explore the Tzeentchian crystalline labyrinth in the Realm of the Sorcerer in the Realm of Chaos to which they lead. Here they glean portents of the future and commune with Daemonic entities, which they then use to terrifying effect in their wars against the forces of the Imperium.
|
Crystal Harbingers - Warband Colours: The Crystal Harbingers' colours are indigo trimmed in bronze. White robes and tabards are often worn by members of this thrallband.
|
Crystal Harbingers - Warband Badge: The Crystal Harbingers' badge is the white sigil of the Cult of Prophecy in the form of a stylised eye, centred upon a field of cobalt trimmed in bronze.
|
Crystal Wyverns - Crystal Wyverns: The Crystal Wyverns are a warband of Chaos Space Marines. They were once a Loyalist Chapter of Space Marines of unknown origin and Founding known as the Bronze Gorgons. 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 Crystal Wyverns.
|
Crystal Wyverns - 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 Bronze Gorgons were one such Loyalist Chapter of Astartes that had been affected by these Warp Storms.When the Ecclesiarchy heard of this sinister turn 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 Bronze Gorgons 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 Bronze Gorgons were no more, for they had become the Chaos Space Marine warband known as the Crystal Wyverns, wholly dedicated to the service of the Ruinous Powers.
|
Crystal Wyverns - Warband Colours: The Crystal Wyverns warband's colours are not listed in current Imperial records.
|
Crystal Wyverns - Warband Badge: The Crystal Wyverns warband's badge is not listed in current Imperial records.
|
Cthonia - Cthonia: Cthonia was the barren and impoverished Imperial Feral World and former Mining World on which the Primarch Horus was raised when his gestation pod crash-landed there after being stolen and transported through the Warp from the Emperor of Mankind's gene-laboratory deep beneath the Himalazian (Himalayan) Mountains on Terra by the Ruinous Powers.It was also later the homeworld of the Luna Wolves Legion of Space Marines before the Horus Heresy, which became the Traitor Legion of Chaos Space Marines known as the Sons of Horus and later, the Black Legion.Cthonia was destroyed and broke apart some time after the end of the Horus Heresy during the Great Scouring.Its destruction was caused either by the forces of the Imperium who sought to destroy any trace of Chaos taint in the Emperor's shattered realm or because of the geophysical instability caused by millennia of overmining within the planet's crust and mantle.
|
Cthonia - Birthplace of the Arch-Betrayer: The world of Cthonia existed in one of Terra's closest neighbouring star systems. Being within reach of even non-Warp-capable spacecraft, Cthonia had been colonised, built upon, tunnelled and mined probably since the dawn of human interstellar space travel before even the Age of Technology had begun.As such, all of the world's natural resources had been stripped away and used millennia before, and the planet's ancient mining technology had long since been rediscovered and removed by the tech-priests of Mars.The planet that remained was largely redundant and abandoned, completely riddled with catacombs, crumbling industrial plants and exhausted mine-workings. None now know who were the masters of this hell world before it was rediscovered by the Imperial forces during the Great Crusade. Some Imperial scholars speculate that it was the Priesthood of Mars, ever greedy for raw materials to feed their forge cities.Other sources indicate that it was a star kingdom that dwindled to nothing long before Unity was even a dream on Terra. No matter who had once controlled the world, they ate the heart of Cthonia until it was a dead husk.Afterwards, before even the coming of the Age of Strife, perhaps, Cthonia had become an orphan world, abandoned to entropy and violence, and even before the great collapse, true darkness had descended there.Whereas the early history of many primarchs is extensively if unevenly documented, the same cannot be said of Horus. Contradiction and omission tarnishes all accounts of Horus' formative years. It is clear that the Emperor did find Horus and also that he took command of the XVI Legion early in the Great Crusade.Beyond these manifest facts, agreement between sources is decidedly lacking, some even placing Horus on Cthonia as a foundling.Like many of his superhuman brethren, these sources say that the young primarch thrived in Cthonia's harsh environment, learning his first lessons in war and killing from Cthonia's tech-barbarian kill-gangs. Another source claims that Horus returned to Terra itself.It is said that Horus grew at the Emperor's side, learning from his father even as they took back the Sol System and forged the alliances between techno-barbarian nations and with the Mechanicum of Mars that created the Imperium of Man.Other highly creditable claims state that the Emperor found Horus, the first of His lost sons, but neither source specifies where, or the location of this finding. Surrounded in millennia of myths and allegory, the truth of Horus' origins will more than likely never be known.
|
Cthonia - Law of the Blade: Faced with complete and total economic and societal collapse, the people of Cthonia had either left if they possessed wealth enough to return to Terra or had sunk ever deeper into a terrible poverty defined by both its savagery and a desperate struggle for survival. Fierce, lawless gangs inhabited the depths of Cthonia, enjoying freedom from the rigours of Imperial citizenship.There was no law but the blade, no desire save that to survive. Some gangs were territorial, their leaders possessing all the pretensions of barbarian kings. With armies of men and women bonded to their service, they would seize access to tunnels, demand tribute from other factions and create enclaves in the lightless heart of abandoned tunnel networks. To other gangs blood and power was a crop to be harvested by violence and violence alone, and the dead meat enough to live on.Holding no territory and living from plunder, these gangs raided, murdered and burned. Where they did not need food, ammunition or supplies they would raid simply to enhance the fear they spread, or winnow out the weak and the undeserving from their own ranks.While these reaving gangs left blood and ruin at their passing, others moved like spectres on the edge of sight, killing silently and for ends that few could understand.Between these factions a fluid web of respect, tribute and rivalry existed. Factions would form, evolve and dissolve in a few solar months. Of those that endured longer, only one thing was certain: their time too would pass.And so it was for the long years of the Age of Strife: the strong killed the weak only to be killed themselves as others rose up again and again and again, and somehow this murderous strain of Cthonian humanity not only survived, but thrived by murder and prospered by plunder, and so Cthonia endured for long years.
|
Cthonia - A Human Harvest: By the time the Great Crusade began in ca 800.M30, Cthonia's mines were long spent, but it had a resource that the new Imperium needed more than metals and jewels: hardened fighters and born survivors in their millions; a lean and hungry race of killers with no illusions about the horrors of the universe.Cthonia, relatively close to Terra in the void, and with whom some minor intermittent contact had been maintained even through the Age of Strife, had its murderous and strife-torn population marked by one of the first expeditionary fleets to leave the Sol System.To fuel the growth of the early Space Marine Legions, the Imperium took full advantage of the bounty that Cthonia provided. At the time of the First Founding, Cthonia helped provide the necessary flesh for the gene-wrights of Luna to fuel the growth of the Legiones Astartes.One report talks of so-called Imperial "recruitment squads" harvesting tens of thousands of Cthonian gangers and shipping them away, chained together in the holds of prison-shuttles, to the geno-laboratories of Luna.The majority were impressed troopers for the crusade's Imperial Army regiments, but the finest specimens were taken for induction into the XVI Legion, later named the Luna Wolves after their first campaign beyond Terra in 798.M30. On Luna these chosen sons of Cthonia were transformed and reborn as the transhuman Astartes of the XVI Legion.It was more common for the first Space Marine aspirants to be volunteers from Terra, and later, after the rediscovery of the Primarchs, from Feral or Feudal Worlds. However, after the usual hypno-psychological indoctrination process, the Luna Wolves created from the men of Cthonia emerged as excellent - and ferociously powerful - Space Marines.Within the Imperial Army, the Cthonians developed a very similar reputation which led to the formation of several elite Solar Auxilia cohorts, collectively known as "Cthonian Head-hunters," which would all side with the Traitor forces of the Warmaster during the Horus Heresy.
|
Cthonia - The Emperor Arrives: Information about the early days of Horus himself is even harder to uncover in Imperial records. It is thought that he was the first of the Primarchs to be recovered by the Emperor, having been cast much closer to Terra than the others, and was found at a much younger age. As a result, Horus was for many years the Emperor's only son, and there was a great affinity between them.The Emperor spent much time with His protege, teaching and encouraging him to reach his full potential and a love sprang up between them that the Emperor believed nothing could ever break. Horus was soon placed in command of the XVI Legion that had been created from his DNA and in many cases from his own fellow Cthonians, who had already earned the moniker of the Luna Wolves during the First Pacification of Luna in 798.M30 -- 10,000 Space Marines who were the true sons of Horus and would later bear that name as a Legion.With these warriors to lead, Horus accompanied the Emperor for the first thirty standard years of the Great Crusade, and together they forged the initial expansion of the young Imperium of Man.
|
Cthonia - Cthonia's Fate: Eventually, a great schism known as the Horus Heresy occurred when Horus betrayed his father and entered the service of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos in an attempt to usurp the Emperor's place as the Master of Mankind. This was the first and most devastating civil war in Imperial history.Occurring in the early 31st Millennium and lasting less than a solar decade, it divided and nearly destroyed the fledgling Imperium. It marked the end of the Great Crusade and the death of Horus and the Ascension of the Emperor of Mankind to the Golden Throne.The Sons of Horus Legion that has been the Arch-Betrayer's own fled under the command of its First Captain, Ezekyle Abaddon, into the Eye of Terror, alongside most of its fellow Traitor Legions. There, over the next 10,000 standard years, Abaddon twisted the XVI Legion into a dark, twisted version of its former self that he renamed the Black Legion, the most potent of the Traitor Legions which serve the Dark Gods of the Warp.In the 41st Millennium, the Black Legion's homeworld of Cthonia no longer exists, having apparently lost geo-structural integrity and broken apart into asteroids and debris during the centuries following the Heresy. Certainly the once ore-rich planet was riddled with mine workings right through to its dead core (in fact the numerous gangers that formed the population may originally have been imported as work teams to maintain the crumbling tunnels), however there is much conjecture that Cthonia was destroyed deliberately by the Imperium after the Heresy during the Great Scouring to remove the tainted world from the demesne of the Emperor.Since the destruction of their fortress in the Eye of Terror, the Black Legion is no longer based on any particular planet, instead stationed permanently on various spacecraft. They possess a single ancient Battle Barge from their original fleet, as well as other vessels commandeered or captured over the years.In particular, many former Imperial Army warships that rebelled during the Horus Heresy now seem to be under Abaddon's command, along with newer vessels he has ordered constructed within the Eye of Terror by the Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicus.
|
Cthonia - Appearance: The people of Cthonia were said to have possessed slightly freckled faces and pale, craggy features.
|
Cthonian Beserk Mole Grenade Launcher - Cthonian Beserk Mole Grenade Launcher: The Cthonian Beserk Mole Grenade Launcher, also just called a Mole Grenade Launcher, is a long-ranged Mole Launcher that fires grenades rather than burrowing torpedoes that is employed by the Cthonian Beserks of the Leagues of Votann. This repurposed mining equipment delivers subterranean explosives into the midst of enemy units, even if they are cowering out of sight.Every Cthonain Beserk who opts to wield a Mole Grenade Launcher is assisted in combat by an L-COG, a robotic Kin labour drone, who carries his primary melee weapon that the Beserk can switch to once close combat begins.
|
Cthonian Beserks - Cthonian Beserks: Cthonian Beserks are workers of the Cthonian Mining Guilds of the Leagues of Votann who can also serve as powerful assault infantry and melee combatants in many Kin Oathbands.Cthonian Beserks are amongst the most heavily cybernetically-augmented and courageous of the Kin. Brandishing mining tools that they have repurposed as weapons of war and unleashing explosives that tunnel through solid rock through the use of their Cthonian Beserk Mole Grenade Launchers, the Beserks storm the enemy's strongpoints and break them open just like they would an asteroid filled with seams of precious ore.
|
Cthonian Beserks - Role: The courageous workers and part-time warriors of the Cthonian Mining Guilds represent some of the most heavily augmented Kin -- unreasonably brave souls who have enhanced the physical capabilities of their cloneskeins with cybernetic implants and upgrades, all the better to extract precious minerals from radiation-plagued nebulae, explosive asteroids, and fathomless ocean depths.Boosted by the cyberstimms that flood their neurological and metabolic systems from their implants, the Beserks can keep battling through life-or-death situations. They eschew the highly-advanced, STC ranged weapons wielded by the rest of the Kin, using robust mining equipment such as Heavy Plasma Axes, Concussion Mauls and Concussion Gauntlets that are efficient in close, melee combat.In the muscled (or mechanical) hands of Cthonian Beserks, these tools become weapons that can penetrate heavy armour or alien carapaces just as easily as stubborn rock and stone.
|
Cthonian Beserks - Unit Composition: 5-10 Cthonian Beserks
|
Cthonian Beserks - Wargear: Void Armour (A full suit is rarely worn)Heavy Plasma AxeConcussion Maul (As replacement for Heavy Plasma Axe)Twin Concussion Gauntlets (1 for every 5 Beserks as replacement for Heavy Plasma Axe)Cthonian Beserk Mole Grenade Launcher (1 for every 5 Beserks as replacement for Heavy Plasma Axe)L-COG (Accompanies any Cthonian Beserk wielding a Mole Grenade Launcher)AugmeticsCyberstimmsEye of the Ancestors
|
Cthonian Guild of Kâdokh - Cthonian Guild of Kâdokh: The Cthonian Guild of Kâdokh is a Cthonian Mining Guild of the Leagues of Votann that operates in the Greater Thurian League. Like all Cthonian Guilds, the Guild of Kâdokh carries out most of the Greater Thurian League's mining and resource extraction activities, and embodies the belligerence and acquisitiveness of the Kin. These Kin miners are fearless in the cause of locating, securing and harvesting resources for their league, and think nothing of braving environments so extreme that even other Kin would baulk at their hazards.
|
Culexus Temple - Culexus Temple: The Culexus Temple is one of the most sinister and feared orders of the Officio Assassinorum and its Assassins have been described by Aeldari Warlocks as nothing short of the embodiments of pure evil. Even amongst the upper echelons of the Officio Assassinorum this temple is always viewed with extreme caution.The reason for this is not because of the way that the Culexian Assassins carry out their operations, or the heinous methods of killing they employ. It is because of the very nature of the Culexus Assassins themselves.The Assassins of this particular temple are not chosen because of their innate savagery, cunning or combat skills. First and foremost, potential candidates are chosen to be Culexus Assassins because they are born with an extremely rare human genetic mutation called the Blank Gene -- which means they have no presence within the Warp like all other sentient beings, and thus no soul.Even normal humans find the presence of a psychic Null extremely disturbing, but the effect is most pronounced on psykers, who find Pariahs genuinely terrifying, as though staring into a hole in the universe when they use their Witchsight.It is hardly surprising that Pariahs are often treated like outcasts or lepers in Imperial society, rejected by their parents and banished from their homeworld's local settlements. Local superstitions on many worlds often warn about touching them, saying that to do so would bring bad luck. Resigned to their fate, many Pariahs lead simple, solitary existences, as far away from heavily populated areas as possible.All psykers and intrinsically psychic species like the Aeldari consider a being like a Culexus Assassin to be an absolute abomination. Even monstrosities such as a Tyranid Hive Tyrant can balk at the prospect of being permanently severed from their psychic abilities and the Hive Mind. The Culexus Assassin causes absolute terror in all psykers -- which is why they are so useful to the Imperium.
|
Culexus Temple - History: When the Sisters of Silence first captured and transported large numbers of Pariahs back to Terra during the Great Crusade, humanity had its first disturbing revelation of the potency of these strange mutants. As large groups of Pariahs were brought to Terra, they began to cast a shadow in the Warp, blocking out the Astronomican, the vital psychic beacon used to guide starships to the far reaches of the Imperium.Other branches within the Imperium of Man, especially those that relied upon the abilities of psykers, were horrified by the existence of Pariahs. Several members of the Council of Terra sought to have Pariahs outlawed outright like other dangerous mutants -- tasking the Sisters of Silence with the ruthless extermination of any more Pariahs that were found just as they eliminated renegade psykers who presented a threat to humanity.A number of members of the Council of Terra, including the Paternal Envoy of the Navis Nobilite were pushing the Emperor of Mankind to issue an official decree to rid the Imperium of the "anti-psyker" mutants that threatened their Adepta's very existence.This was unfortunate, for the Officio Assassinorum had been working in secret with the Magos Biologis and Genetors of the ancient Mechanicum on the order of Malcador the Sigillite, the Regent of Terra and the founder of the Officio as the first Grand Master of Assassins, to see if it was possible to harness the Pariah's strange abilities and use them to kill psykers. Their work was almost complete; many years had been spent developing specialist wargear and training techniques, all of which was about to be ruined by a zealous witch-hunt.Fortunately, the Emperor never had to issue an official decree, for at Malcador the Sigillite's behest, the Mechanicum announced that it was ending the Pariah Project, making a great show of closing down its laboratories and executing many of the "specimens" it had tested there. Satisfied that no further action was needed, the bureaucrats of the Council of Terra turned their attention to the more important matters at hand.However, closer study of the fragmentary Imperial records from this time reveal that the number of executions did not match the number of Pariahs contained within the laboratories of the Mechanicum. Working in collusion with the Officio Assassinorum, the Mechanicum spirited away the most promising Pariahs to a specially constructed fortress hidden on Terra, beyond the reach or knowledge of the more zealous branches of what eventually became the Adeptus Terra after the Horus Heresy.It was there that the Culexus Temple, originally known as the Culexus Clade, was born in its modern form under the direction of its first Director Primus, the individual known only as Sire Culexus.Culexus had sworn an oath alongside Malcador and the five other Directors Primus of the newborn Officio Assassinorum to defeat every enemy of the Emperor no matter where or how they sought to hide from Imperial justice. The Culexus Assassins would become an important component of keeping that vow.
|
Culexus Temple - The Fortress of the Soulless: Most of the other ancient temples of the Assassinorum are granted a certain amount of autonomy, allowing the general day-to-day running, training and sometimes mission assignation to be taken care of by older, more experienced Lord Assassins.However, the Culexus Temple is ruled directly by high-ranking officials of the Officio Assassinorum. The temple itself is located not upon Holy Terra, but within a fortified complex located on a dead moon, outside the range of the Astronomican in the far reaches of the galaxy.This is the Fortress of the Soulless, an echoing, armour-clad fastness that lies always beneath a suffocating blanket of dread. All Pariahs and Culexus Assassins are kept within the fortress unless on active duty.If any are ever allowed to leave, then it is always under a veil of secrecy and with the highest levels of security. It cannot be doubted that the Culexus Temple has proven itself of invaluable use to the Imperium on countless occasions. Even so, there are factions within the Imperium that would see every Pariah executed and the Culexus Temple utterly destroyed.
|
Culexus Temple - Abilities: Pariahs can nullify psychic powers, and if they are in close quarters to their targets their very existence drains the strength from psykers. Culexus Assassins therefore specialise in psyker-hunting, most notably of Aeldari Warlocks and rogue human psykers. Culexus Assassins have also been shown to be useful at combating daemons, as daemons are entirely composed of psychic energy drawn from the Warp and given form in realspace only so long as they have a link to the Immaterium or possess a mortal body.A Culexus Assassin carries no gun or hand-to-hand weapons, for he needs none and would be distracted by their use. Once on the battlefield the Assassin's chosen Custodian will release his hold over the Assassin. The large eye in the Assassin's Animus Speculum opens and only then does the full intensity of the Assassin's horrific anti-psyker capabilities flood the battlefield.The Culexus Assassin attacks using his own innate abilities enhanced by years of training, mental exercises and arcane wargear. He slips through the battle lines and bodyguards, his negative aura muddling the minds of conventional troops, allowing him to close upon his targets.Bolts of negative Warp energy blast the minds of enemy psykers and strip them of their powers before he moves in for the kill, sapping the very life-force from their bodies.
|
Culexus Temple - Wargear: Animus Speculum - A uniquely designed battle-helm, the Animus Speculum can either muffle or focus the Culexus' powers as required. Only once an Operative is in the field do they reverse its contra-psychic dampers, allowing the full terror of their null aura to billow forth. The helm is only partially effective even while active, as most people can barely stand to be in the same room with a Pariah. At the same time, the grotesque lens set into the helm's leering faceplate can harvest and focus psychic energy into a devastating beam. In this way, the Animus Speculum allows the Culexus to turn the foe's own sorcerous powers against them, with horrific results. The Animus fires bolts of negative psychic energy, and can drain nearby psykers of their connection to Warp energy to increase its own power. Each Culexus Assassin is accompanied by a Custodian, who operates the Animus Speculum and ensures that his charge remains under his control and does not arouse suspicion amongst the other allied Imperial forces fighting in the campaign.Psyk-Out Grenades - Culexus Assassins also use the exotic Psyk-Out Grenades, a weapon used exclusively by the Culexus Temple and the Daemon Hunters of the Ordo Malleus. These potent weapons contain pressurised canisters of psi-refractive particles that billow forth in crackling clouds when the grenade explodes. This highly dangerous substance is only produced as a metabolic by-product of the Emperor's Golden Throne on Terra. The dust-like substance is heavily impregnated with negative psychic energy and is very rare. When some has been collected, the Imperium's finest armourers use the dust to make Psyk-out Grenades and Psycannon rounds. For most victims caught in the cloud collapse of these particles, all conscious thought is driven from their minds. The effect is far worse for psykers, however, their powers fractured and turned inwards to tear bloody gouges in their psyche.Synskin Bodyglove - The synskin of Culexis Assassins incorporates a nodal layer called Etherium. This strange technology shifts the wearer out of phase with reality, making them appear ghost-like and insubstantial. With the Etherium activated, an Operative becomes a ghostly retinal after-image, flickering toward the foe as though projected upon a faulty pict-reel. When required, a Culexus can simply vanish altogether, prowling through the midst of their enemies and reappearing only when doing so will reap the greatest harvest of terror. This, combined with the Culexus Assassin's innate anti-psychic abilities, means that psychic attacks pass right through him as if he were invisible. Another important aspect of the Etherium is the Force Matrix, the numerous psychic conduits that run within it. The Force Matrix is made from a material similar to that used in Force Weapons. When psykers tap into the Warp, they are not always efficient in using all of the energy they can absorb: much excess psychic energy is simply left to dissipate into the surrounding space. The Force Matrix acts as a conductor, absorbing this excess Warp energy and providing the Culexus Assassin, who is unable to tap directly into the Warp, with a source of energy to enhance his abilities. The closer the Culexus Assassin gets to psykers, the more energy the Force Matrix will absorb.
|
Culexus Temple - Notable Culexus Assassins: Sire Culexus - The founder and first Director Primus of his clade, Sire Culexus was the namesake and founder of the organisation that eventually became the Culexus Temple. He is presumably the first of his kind, and possessed the Pariah Gene. He, along with the other founders of the various clades that eventually became the Assassin Temples, was present on Mount Vengeance. With his fellow clade leaders he 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 Assassin clades hunted down the enemies of the Emperor through stealth and subterfuge, establishing the fact that there was no safe place to hide in the galaxy from the Emperor's justice.Iota - Iota was a female member of the Culexus clade during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy era. Iota was designated as a Protiphage, for she was not fully human in the strictest sense; she was a clone, or as they were known in the Imperium, a replicae. Created by the Emperor's biologians, Iota was conceived from cells that had been combined in a test tube in a laboratory. As a Culexus Clade operative she was a being without a soul, closer to a xenos than her own kind. She was dispatched with the first ever Imperial Execution Force that was composed of Imperial Assassins from every clade, who were attempting to assassinate the Traitor Primarch Horus upon the world of Dagonet. Ultimately, their assassination attempt failed and all the Assassins were slain by the Traitors.
|
Culexus Temple - Sources: Assassinorum Executioner Force: Rulebook (7th Edition), pp. 30-31Codex: Assassins (3rd Edition), pg. 5Codex: Assassins (2nd Edition), pp. 20-23Codex: Grey Knights (5th Edition), pg.52Codex: Necrons (3rd Edition), pg. 8Rogue Trader: The Navis Primer (RPG), pp. 116-117Nemesis (Novel) by James Swallow
|
Cullgene Gas - Cullgene Gas: Cullgene Gas was an Alchemical Weapon 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.
|
Cult Hydraic - Cult Hydraic: The Cult Hydraic is a highly-active Genestealer Cult whose gene-sects are spread across many worlds of the Segmentum Pacificus but often act in unusual concert.To assail an infestation of the Cult Hydraic is to attack a single tendril of a far greater organism. For hundreds of Terran years this organisation has sent broods of Purestrain Genestealers from the orbital dockyards of Vigilance Quadrex. Though many have been subsequently destroyed, many more have started the Cult Hydraic anew, their colours flown on a dozen Imperial worlds across the Segmentum Pacificus.To attack one such node is to invite slow but certain retribution. With news of the hostile act transmitted psychically through the Broodmind by the cult's war leaders, it is only a matter of time before several more claws of the organisation converge on the aggressor -- and either eradicate them entirely, or use sinister charisma to convert them to the cult's cause.It is said that only the cult's High Nexos knows the true number of Cult Hydraic cells operational across the galaxy, and that he passes fragments of this knowledge on to each gene-sect's own Nexoses by psychic transfer.
|
Cult Hydraic - Sources: Codex: Genestealer Cults (7th Edition), pg. 51Codex: Genestealer Cults (8th Edition), pg. 33Codex: Genestealer Cults (9th Edition), pg. 37
|
Cult Hypodermoid - Cult Hypodermoid: The Cult Hypodermoid is a Genestealer Cult.Its bio-conclaves fashioned a relic injector claw known as the Hand of Aberrance that sends powerful mutagens coursing through its victims. Their bones stretch and shatter, their muscles atrophy or swell until they burst, while their flesh blooms with nests of lashing pseudopods -- or else tears apart as it undergoes involuntary mitosis and seeks to squirm away.
|
Cult Mechanicus - Cult Mechanicus: The Cult Mechanicus, also known in ancient times before the Horus Heresy as the Cult Mechanicum, is the set of religious beliefs that serves as the philosophical foundation of the Adeptus Mechanicus and its predecessor, the ancient Mechanicum.Although the worshippers of the Cult Mechanicus are members of the Imperium of Man, they have their own version of worship that differs substantially in theology and ritualistic forms from the standard state religion known as the Imperial Cult that is dedicated to the God-Emperor of Mankind.The religion of the Cult Mechanicus values knowledge and the technology it creates above all else and views the final embrace of technology in the form of a purely mechanical existence as the ultimate destiny for Mankind's evolution.The Cult Mechanicus -- the religion of the Machine God -- is a complex and labyrinthine structure, a creed of secret rites and ceremonial processions that is never shared with outsiders. Within each Forge World the myriad ranks of Tech-priests vie for mastery in a world where only through the accumulation of technology and hoarded knowledge can one advance.Those who lead the workers and armies of the Cult Mechanicus are called "Tech-priests." It is they that devote themselves to the service of the Omnissiah, altering their flesh forms beyond recognition to improve their ability to execute rites of repair, to placate Machine Spirits and to acquire lost technologies. Given the hostile nature of the galaxy, it is also necessary to ensure that a Tech-priest has the power to slay any that stand in the way of their sacred missions.Despite the never-ending thirst for knowledge of all branches of the order, most Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus have lost the ability to innovate. No longer the master of its creations, the Cult Mechanicus is enslaved to the past.It maintains the glories of yesteryear with rite, dogma and edict instead of true discernment and comprehension. Even the theoretically simple process of activating a vehicle's engine is preceded by the application of ritual oils, the burning of sacred resins and the chanting of long and complex hymns. Should mechanisms break down, as they often do in service to the Adeptus Mechanicus' war effort, a replacement must be found, or knowledge of how to repair the existing one must be learned.Across the galaxy, thousands upon thousands of armies and fleets are already searching, guided by a database begun before the birth of the Imperium. Once found, such items and knowledge are confiscated at all costs in the name of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
|
Cult Mechanicus - Theology: The Cult Mechanicus believes knowledge itself to be the manifestation of divinity in the universe. The supreme object of devotion is therefore the omniscient Machine God, an immanent and omnipotent spirit that governs all technology, machinery and knowledge in Creation. The Machine God is believed to be friendly to Humanity, and to be the originator of all Human technological and scientific knowledge.According to the teachings of the Cult Mechanicus, knowledge is the supreme manifestation of divinity, and all creatures and artefacts that embody knowledge are sacred because of it. Machines that preserve knowledge from ancient times are also holy, and machine intelligences are no less divine than those of flesh and blood -- perhaps more so, because they are more pure expressions of that knowledge without the conflicting emotions and imperfections that riddle organic beings like Man.A person's worth is only the sum of his or her knowledge -- the physical body is simply an organic machine capable of preserving intellect, and one that is far more imperfect in the Machine God's eyes than one of metal and circuits. For this reason, the devotees of the Cult Mechanicus often transform large portions of their bodies with cybernetic enhancements.
|
Cult Mechanicus - Machine God and the Omnissiah: According to the Cult Mechanicus, technology is a higher form of life than that created by cruder physical processes such as biological evolution. Only a divine source could have inspired the perfection of form and function attainable in machines. This divine source is the Machine God. The Machine God is not to be understood in the sense of the ancient Terran Abrahamic religious tradition's personal God; the Machine God is not a person, but rather a force immanent in the universe.For unspecified reasons, it has appointed Humans as its chosen people, and reveals its true designs and machines to them through selected prophets. In order to interact with the physical world it was also prophesied to create a physical avatar, called the "Omnissiah."In the early days of the Great Crusade, the Emperor of Mankind was recognised by the ancient Mechanicum as the Omnissiah, prompting the signing of the Treaty of Mars (known to the Adeptus Mechanicus as the Treaty of Olympus) and the alliance of the Cult Mechanicus with the burgeoning Imperium of Man, transforming the Tech-priests of Mars into the Adeptus Terra's Mechanicum, and during the Horus Heresy in 012.M31, the Adeptus Mechanicus, after the Loyalists in the Mechanicum formally broke away from the Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum who had sided with Horus and the service of Chaos.
|
Cult Mechanicus - The Motive Force: In addition to the Machine God and its Omnissiah, there was a third member of the Cult Mechanicus' divine trinity. This was the "Motive Force," an ineffable and invisible divine power or spirit said to exist throughout the universe that was responsible for the ability of all life, whether it was mechanical or flesh, to move of its own accord.Among the Tech-priests, the fanatical warrior clerics known as the Electro-priests were the most devoted followers of the Motive Force. The Electro-priests are divided by a religious schism into two sects, the Corpuscarii and the Fulgurites. The schism that divides the two sects dates back to pre-Imperial times, when this offshoot of the Mechanicum of Mars was still in its infancy.The forefathers of the Corpuscarii focused their worship upon the Machine God -- they believed His light should be brought to the galaxy. His energies were to illuminate the savage, in doing so bringing more resources to their order. The Corpuscarii mounted great religious crusades to this end, expending a great deal of Mars' resources in the process, but believing the price worthwhile -- those early pioneers considered the Omnissiah's power to be infinite.Those who would become known as the Fulgurites were aghast when they counted the cost of such crusades. They were jealously protective of the Motive Force. Believing their god's favour to be finite, they claimed that the Corpuscarii were flagrantly wasting the Machine God's power -- they not only abused His divine energy in illuminating their voidships, but frittered His power into the ether by channelling blasts of electricity.Incensed at these accusations, the brotherhood of Electro-priests fractured many times, and the first Conduit Wars began. To this day, Mars' surface is still scorched by the legacy of those bitter internecine battles. The dogmatic nature of all Electro-priests means this conflict will never truly be resolved.While outbreaks of open warfare between the rival sects of Electro-priests are now mercifully rare, on every Forge World innumerable smaller hostile acts -- both political and covert -- still take place on a regular basis, and neither side can forgive the transgressions of the other for long.
|
Cult Mechanicus - Machine Spirits: The Cult Mechanicus also believes in the existence of Machine Spirits, minute, animistic fragments of the Machine God that inhabit every machine or piece of technology in existence. These fragments of their deity naturally command a great deal of respect, and they are also believed to be directly in control of the machine's operation.This means that Mechanicus Tech-priests and others they instruct like the Adeptus Astartes' Techmarines generally make many ritualised, prayer-like petitions to their machinery in order to insure their spirits are compliant and respected, and thus that they operate properly.These rituals often include many operations of a potentially mechanically-useful nature, such as lubricating an axle, securing a screw or similar actions, but also operations of no immediately visible value such as sacrifices, chants, libations and the like.The belief in Machine Spirits is also the cause of the cult's stance on alien technology. As aliens do not recognise the spirits of their machines, such devices are enslaved and maltreated by their creators. Because of this, Humans should not make use of xenos technology even if it is superior to its Human-made counterparts.Orthodox Mechanicus cultists usually advocate the destruction of alien technology to free its spirit, while more radical followers may excuse the study, safekeeping and even use of alien devices in the name of the eternal Quest for Knowledge.
|
Cult Mechanicus - Ghost in the Machine: Technology and its mysteries are the preserve of the followers of the Machine God, the Tech-priests, for they believe that machines are imbued with a life-force of their own, a soul granted to them by the Machine God -- a will and a personality.The more ancient a piece of technology, the greater reverence it will elicit from these robed followers, who will spend many solar hours anointing a machine with the correct unguents before pressing the sigils of activation to coax its spirit into life.A machine that is both old and complicated is given the same status by the tech-priests as the Ecclesiarchy would give a major saint, for many of the systems on these machines are irreplaceable, their secrets lost to time. Among the greatest of such machines are the vast battleships of the Navis Imperialis, or the super-heavy Titan war machines of the Adeptus Mechanicus' own Collegia Titanica.But Tech-priests will also lavish their attention upon an antique lasgun or prognosticator, and will spend much time trying to understand the intricacies of a device's workings. All machines though, no matter what their pedigree, are treated as living things by the Tech-priests and they will treat all with reverence, for all are gifts from the long-lost past, knowledge of their function handed on through time only by the beneficence of the Machine God. Woe betide any person who fails to treat their weapon with respect or hurls abuses at their desktop cogitator within the range of the machine enhanced senses of a Tech-priest.Paradoxically, true machine general intelligences -- the so-called "Abominable Intelligence" or Silica Animus -- are held to be anathema by the Tech-priests, for they view these as soulless automata, spiritless things cast into the galaxy to confound the will of the Machine God. Shrouded in myth and legend, these abominations are rumoured to have originated during the Dark Age of Technology.Supposedly pathologically dangerous, an Inquisitor may encounter them, although rarely, in the course of their duties. Should they learn of these creations, the Tech-priests will hunt them down, investigate them and then destroy them. Only properly sanctioned logic engines, those deemed to have a spirit gifted them by the Omnissiah, are allowed to persist.
|
Cult Mechanicus - Quest for Knowledge: The ultimate goal of the Cult Mechanicus is to understand the Machine God and the will of its physical embodiment in the universe, the Omnissiah. The communal and individual attempt of Mechanicus believers at this is known as the "Quest for Knowledge," and the cult's followers view this endeavour as paramount and more important than any other concern.Generally, the Quest for Knowledge is pursued through scientific and exploratory endeavours. The cult believes that all knowledge already exists, and it is primarily a matter of time before it can be gathered together to complete the Quest.The Mechanicus' members are therefore disinclined to perform much original scientific research into previously unexplored fields. They consider it more important to safeguard that knowledge which they already have accrued and gather more by searching for STC templates and similar lost pieces of ancient Human technology from the Age of Technology.Some original research and technological innovation does happen within the Adeptus Mechanicus, particularly among the unorthodox faction of Tech-priests that has now gathered around Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl in the Era Indomitus, although the results of such endeavours are strictly quarantined for many standard years before being disseminated publicly.In the Quest for Knowledge, members are guided by the Sixteen Universal Laws. The Sixteen Laws, or "lores" are as follows:
|
Cult Mechanicus - The Mysteries: 01. Life is directed motion.02. The spirit is the spark of life.03. Sentience is the ability to learn the value of knowledge.04. Intellect is the understanding of knowledge.05. Sentience is the basest form of Intellect.06. Understanding is the True Path to Comprehension.07. Comprehension is the key to all things.08. The Omnissiah knows all, comprehends all.
|
Cult Mechanicus - The Warnings: 09. The alien mechanism is a perversion of the True Path.10. The soul is the conscience of sentience.11. A soul can be bestowed only by the Omnissiah.12. The Soulless sentience (i.e. the Necrons or Silica Animus) is the enemy of all life.13. The knowledge of the ancients stands beyond question.14. The Machine Spirit guards the knowledge of the Ancients.15. Flesh is fallible, but ritual honours the Machine Spirit.16. To break with ritual is to break with faith.
|
Cult Mechanicus - Magi: Magi (sing. Magos) of all stripes are senior Tech-priests with advanced specialisations in various disciplines of science and technology who pursue esoteric agendas as likely to end in triumph as they are disaster.Prime HermeticonLord DogmaMechae MoribundusInvictus AcquisitorGerontocraftData-PredatorMagos Dominus
|
Cult Mechanicus - Genetors: Genetors probe the mysteries of the biological, creating ever stranger cyborgs or slaughtering xenos beyond number in order to excise yet more secrets of their alien metabolisms.Magos BiologisArch-chymistGrand ParasiteMetasurgeonCorpus IlluminatorGenetor Extremis
|
Cult Mechanicus - Logi: A Logis (pl. Logi) is an analyst, statistician, and logistician whose purpose is to predict future trends and make forecasts about Mechanicus expenditures and needs. Because of their duties Logi are often regarded as divinely-chosen prophetic figures within the Adeptus Mechanicus.Lexico ArcanusBibliophiliacHyper-rationalistMonitor MalevolusInfo-executionerBiocogitatus
|
Cult Mechanicus - Artisans: Artisans create and restore truly wondrous weapons of war, from ornate Gamma Pistols to the mind-boggling immensity of the Ark Mechanicus.Also known as "constructors," they design machines, buildings, spacecraft, weapons, and military hardware. They often oversee industrial or manufacturing activity on Forge Worlds and control vast labour forces of servitors.Forge LordMechasapientPraetor ElectroidCybersmithTechnoarcheologistNecromechanic
|
Cult Mechanicus - Rank Structure: The term "Tech-priest" covers thousands of different roles within the governing clerical hierarchy of the Adeptus Mechanicus.A genetor, sometimes referred to as a "magos biologis," is a high-ranking Tech-priest usually bearing the title of magos who is essentially a geneticist, zoologist, xenobiologist, xenographer and molecular biologist all rolled into one, studying all matters genetic, anatomic and biological.A genetor numbers alongside the logis, artisan and magi ranks of the Adeptus Mechanicus as members of its ruling Priesthood of Mars, possessing access to knowledge and resources far beyond that of the lesser enginseers and lexmechanics. Yet a genetor's professional obsession with organic life often makes them seem strange to their more mechanically-inclined brethren, who comprise the majority of the Mechanicus. They also can serve as diagnosticians and treaters of disease in the Human body equal to or better than any Imperial medicae.Artisans create and restore truly wondrous weapons of war, from ornate Gamma Pistols to the mind-boggling immensity of the Ark Mechanicus.Magi of all stripes pursue esoteric agendas as likely to end in triumph as they are disaster. Across the galaxy Transmechanics, Lexmechanics, Enginseers, Secutors, Cognitors, Trifactors, Myrmidons, Technoshamans, and more labour alongside the wider Imperium to bolster Humanity's war machine. Within the Adeptus Mechanicus the ranks become even more esoteric.Each Mechanicus Forge World is led by a fabricator-general, or a similar official with a different title, and beneath them their fabricator locum. Each fabricator locum can call upon Magi Technicus, Metallurgicus, Alchemys, Cogitatrices, Pedanticum, Tech-assassins, hive monitors and Holy Requisitioners, who in turn can command a body of fabricators minoris, Fulgurites, Corpuscarii, overseers, underseers, stasis clerks, and techno-dervishes.Each sub-division within every facet of the order is split into dozens of ranks. To avoid confusion during war, the most senior of the Tech-priests in a Battle Congregation adopts the title of Tech-priest Dominus or Magos Dominus to lead the effort.Each Forge World is a citadel of information, a repository of all Mankind's technological knowledge -- the temple to which each Tech-priest is devoted. Mars, the first Forge World, remains the true seat of power for the Adeptus Mechanicus. Its fabricator-general is the de facto leader of the Cult Mechanicus, and is awarded a seat upon the Senatorum Imperialis, the council of the High Lords of Terra.The Cult Mechanicus is ordered by a strong hierarchy, but details on this hierarchy's actual make-up are not always clear. Generally, more highly positioned Tech-priests are expected to have more seniority and knowledge than lower ones, and are consequently more theologically important as greater repositories of knowledge.Within the Adeptus Mechanicus the ranks become even more esoteric. It should be noted that specialists such as genetors and logi may not have any specific rank within the cult as a group, but rather will be ranked as individuals.
|
Cult of Ohn - Cult of Ohn: The Cult of Ohn are an intelligent and ominous alien species that are known to be hostile. As a result of the convulsions in the Warp brought to the galactic core by the birth of the Great Rift in the Era Indomitus that destroyed their home star system, the Cult of Ohn launched attacks into Leagues of Votann space.
|
Cult of Ohn - History: The greatest recorded upheaval to the Leagues of Votann's home space in the galactic core came with the emergence of the Great Rift, and the eruption of multiple Warp storms across the core as a result. Warp storms designated by the Leagues Örgvayr, Töroll, Öggh, Cyklöp and other distorted maelstroms swallowed star systems, consumed Kindreds, sundered age-old trade routes and stable Warp currents, and left many leagues either suddenly embattled or broken into Warp-riven territorial fragments.As the shock waves of the Warp storms rolled outward, worse was to follow. Long-stable celestial phenomena convulsed and mutated, with pulsars becoming betentacled predatory horrors, grav-reefs inverting and black holes sprouting dark matter fangs as they expanded ravenously. Hostile alien races -- such as the insidious Septeryx, the Chrobdyr Ferrophagites and the ominous Cult of Ohn -- were driven onto the warpath as their own home star systems were consumed. Some Warp storms -- Örgvayr and Gëirokh worst amongst them -- vomited hordes of Chaos-worshipping invaders and Daemonic horrors, and one Ork WAAAGH! after another erupted from the fringes of the storms.
|
Cult of the Dragon - Cult of the Dragon: The Cult of the Dragon was a cult extant within the ancient Mechanicum during the 30th and early 31st Millennia that lived on Mars within the mysterious Noctis Labyrinth.The cult was regarded as a group of madmen in the desolate region of the Red Planet that they called home, a region that other members of the Mechanicum avoided at all costs. These individuals consisted of Tech-priests who long ago had tried to build their forges in the region that lies between the Valles Marineris and the Tharsis Uplands, but eventually abandoned them.However, the few that remained behind had formed the cult. The Cult of the Dragon worshipped the entity that was known to slumber deep beneath the Noctis Labyrinthus that some in the Imperium have come to believe might be the hibernating C'tan known as the Void Dragon. Others hold that this entity is, in fact, the original source of the Adeptus Mechanicus' belief in the Machine God.
|
Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor - Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor: The Cult of the Four-armed Emperor, also known as the "Burrowers Beneath," and the "They Who Shall Rise As One," is a Genestealer Cult that was the first ever encountered by the Imperium of Man on the Mining World of Ghosar Quintus in the 41st Millennium. It is now one of the most widespread in the galaxy, concentrated in the Segmentum Ultima.The Cult of the Four-armed Emperor are cunning, wily and endlessly patient. They are the masters of subterranean assault. Wherever one of their devoted walks in the open, a thousand more lurk beneath, ready to surge up for the kill.The methods of the Cult of the Four-armed Emperor exemplify those traits that make the Genestealer Cults such a grievous threat. They lay their plans with horrible, inhuman patience and exploit Humanity's bloated bureaucracy and innate greed for their own ends. They are true and terrible parasites who have spread further through the Imperium than even the most alarmist doomsayers dare to suggest.Hailing from the Trysst mining dynasty of Ghosar Quintus, the Cult of the Four-armed Emperor lies in wait beneath their host planet's surface before launching a long-planned and decisive ambush. Some of their number never see the light until the day of insurrection; when the moment comes, these troglodytes attack with speed and savagery.
|
Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor - History: It was on the planet of Ghosar Quintus, in the year 680.M41, that the horrible corruption of the Genestealer Cults first became properly known to the Imperium's adepts. Investigating what had the signs of a xenos-based perversion of the Imperial Creed, the decorated Inquisitor Chaegryn led a team of Tempestus Scions to the world. He ventured into the largest mining colony there, known as the "Great Pit." The deeper Chaegryn explored, the more evidence of deviance he found.Strangely, the Inquisitor's last communiqué stated that all was well. He concluded that the Trysst Dynasty, who had led the mining colony as its planetary governors in its exemplary record of service for countless generations, should be left to its own devices. With the Inquisitor being a trusted and respected member of the Ordo Xenos, none thought to look further. It was a full Terran year before Chaegryn's fellows noticed something was wrong -- the Inquisitor was still missing, and the style of his last missive was not typical of his usual communications.Fearing some manner of alien presence, a five-man Kill-team of Deathwatch Space Marines was despatched on a follow-up mission of lethal investigation, yet they too were swallowed by the mysteries of the Great Pit. Only when the steel-willed Chaplain Ortan Cassius of the Ultramarines mustered his own hand-picked Deathwatch Kill-team did the Imperium return to Ghosar Quintus.His conviction proved the best weapon of all, for with fire and fury he cut through the web of secrecy and misdirection that protected the Tryssts' hidden workings.The mutant workers of the cult moved to attack, and layer by layer the vile truth was unearthed as the Deathwatch ventured ever further into the pit. Chaegryn himself was never found, though his Servo-skull yielded more of the picture that Cassius and his team were slowly putting together.Kill Team Cassius fought through hundreds of Genestealer Cultists as they plumbed the depths of the Trysst Dynasty's corrupted world. Though they made it out alive, the Space Marines were changed by that gruesome ordeal -- and the Imperium too, after a fashion.Ortan Cassius became a dogged, obsessive foe of the Tyranid race in all its forms, and has worked closely with the Deathwatch and Ordo Xenos to root out a dozen cult infestations since -- for most shocking of all the discoveries upon Ghosar Quintus was not the Genestealer Patriarch that lurked at the heart of the cult, but the damning evidence in the dynasty's shipping holographs.Though the Deathwatch is aware of the threat, since the dawning of the Great Rift, communicating it to the wider Imperium has proven difficult if not impossible.The Trysst Dynasty, and the infestations that followed that of Ghosar Quintus, are so sly they effectively turned the Imperium against itself. Under the guise of industry, the xenos-tainted Trysst Dynasty spread its curse across not only the Ghosar System, but throughout the Charadon Sector and beyond.In efficiency, in the consistent, unflinching work ethic of the cult's members, the war leaders of the Four-armed Emperor have found a tool like no other for their own expansion.Rather than spreading in secret, using single covert stowaways or clutches of Genestealers hidden in dark recesses, the Cult of the Four-armed Emperor works so hard to increase its industrial output that its members are being actively recruited. Blind to the consequences, the agents of the Departmento Munitorum have gone out of their way to ship the cult's agents far and wide as exemplars of an efficient Imperial workforce, and the cult has been only too happy to oblige.Within solar weeks of each transfer, the cult's operation begins anew, its leaders preparing the way for an import of Purestrain Genestealers once the transit connection is well enough established.Before the hideous truth of Ghosar Quintus was revealed by Ortan Cassius, it was used as a prime exemplar of a "Delverworld," a planetoid given over entirely to mining the Eastern Fringe. Its tithes were consistently at least a fifth higher than the required level, and the adamantium mined from its substrata was purer than any other source in the sector -- every ingot polished to a bright sheen, neatly stacked and dutifully categorised by countless Trysst workers.More than that, the dynasty's workers were content to subsist only on gruels and nutrient pills, and there were no recorded incidences of unrest. To the Imperium they seemed a model population. When this came to light through the planet's tithe reports and later Lexmechanic assessment, the Munitorum shipped out work groups of the Trysst Dynasty to every other Delverworld within reach, there to act as consultants and role models for the other, less efficient populations to aspire to.Thriving for sixteen generations before Inquisitor Chaegryn's original investigation, and with thousands of offshoots not on Imperial record, the Trysst Dynasty has spread the Cult of the Four-armed Emperor across half of the galaxy through means both fair and foul.They are consummate miners, burrowers and subterranean explorators; they have learned well how to thrive in the darkness, keeping their insidious secrets buried beneath several layers of respectability. Theirs is a galactic infection rather than a local one, for of all the Genestealer Cults these are the big thinkers, the plotters in the shadows, the grand viziers working hard to prepare the way for a king yet to arrive.Despite the Deathwatch's best efforts to track them down and purge them from existence, their warrens honeycomb hundreds of Delverworlds. There they thrive in the underhives and sump strata of Imperial metropolises. Their workers toil hunchbacked in tight maintenance pipes, labour through sweltering work shifts in heating conduits and clear blockages in vermin-infested sewers without complaint.Their agents scurry along secret passageways and crawl on their bellies through tight pipeways to reach their targets, making their kill before leaving unnoticed.The war leaders of the Cult of the Four-armed Emperor, on the other hand, fight in the daylight as much as the dark. They seek out the schematics for every building and settlement they reach, maximising the potential of each underground network and altering plans so new areas are built -- only to erase all record of them and ensure those involved in their creation who are not kin are despatched elsewhere, or slain.These visionaries push their tendrils into every level of society, but make especial use of the countercultures and underground elements who may know the territory better than any surface dweller.Truly the Cult of the Four-armed Emperor is to be feared. Of all the cults, it is this troglodytic brotherhood that best uses the techniques of demolition, undermining, and ambush from below. They have industrialised their way of war, and whilst doing so, turned the vast, lumbering giant of the Imperial workforce against its masters.To strike against them is to kick a termite nest -- only to find that which crawls across the surface mounds is but the tiniest fraction of a teeming colony of life forms that boils swiftly up from the labyrinthine warrens beneath. Few indeed are those who survive such a deadly mistake; those who do spread chilling tales of risen horrors, and tides of subterranean nightmares seething up to claim the surface world.
|
Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor - The Bore Wars: The Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor took over the volcano-farming world of Thousandile in a single Terran year in the 41st Millennium. Having been commissioned to "bleed" the lava rivers that are slowly cooking Thousandile's hive cities -- much as a medicae would use leeches to bleed a swollen limb -- the Trysst mining dynasty brings in hundreds of large industrial drills. At first, their work goes well -- or so it seems -- as the temperature in the hives drops to become bearable once more.Then, on what comes to be known as the "Day of Eruption," all of the geothermic tunnels overflow at once -- worse still, their level is swiftly rising. The reason for the rising tide of lava is secondary to survival. In their desperation, all the gangs within the hive move to higher ground, fighting their way into the upper spires and eventually overcoming the Spyrer hunters who attempt to repel them through sheer weight of numbers.Meanwhile, the cultists of the Four-armed Emperor take more and more of the hive for their own territory, and when the lava recedes, use aqua pipes and sluices to harden the metal of the main hive once more. Amongst the melted organic-looking labyrinths of the lower hives, a new order rises -- and this time, its deadly tides rise all the way to the top.
|
Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor - Sword of the Four-Armed Emperor: This peculiar sword has not one blade, but four bound as one. When its handle is given a sharp twist, the blade splits and splits again until it resembles a sheaf of gleaming tentacles -- or a striking hydra -- more than it does a conventional blade. It symbolises the cult's abiility to shroud themselves in normality until the time comes to reveal the hideous and lethal truth.
|
Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor - Cult Psychic Discipline: Undermine - Just as the dark depths below serve to shelter the Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor, so too can they be psychically opened into an abyss that swallows their enemies whole.
|
Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor - Sources: Codex: Genestealer Cults (7th Edition), pp. 42-43Codex: Genestealer Cults (8th Edition), pp. 20-21, 38Codex: Genestealer Cults (9th Edition), pp. 30, 56
|
Cult of the Red Heresy - Cult of the Red Heresy: The Cult of the Red Heresy was an anti-Imperial human anarchist movement and Chaos Cult active during the 36th Millennium, from 290-310.M36.Aided by the Fallen Angel Cypher, they gained support from seven different star systems in the Don'lorth Sector.However, in the midst of the Plague of Unbelief, Cypher betrayed the cult and helped the Silver Skulls Chapter and its Unforgiven allies suppress its rebellion. It is unknown why Cypher and other Fallen first aided, and then betrayed the cult.
|
Cult of the Red Heresy - History: During the Age of Apostasy, in 290.M36, the Red Heresy Plague erupted across the Don'lorth Sector, a foreshadowing of the later battles that would become known as the Plague of Unbelief. It is here that the Cult of the Old Gods rises.Agitators and anarchists stirred up the hive cities into open rebellion. Workers in their untold billions were urged by red-robed priests to cast off their shackles, to reject the Corpse God that was the Emperor. The horrific slaughter of all agents of the Adeptus Administratum and Adeptus Ministorum was enough to draw in vast fleets of Imperial armed forces.Seeking a quick way to end the rebellion, the Silver Skulls Chapter deployed en masse in a desperate attempt to kill the leaders behind the rising cult. The hunt proved disastrous -- with Drop Pod assaults ambushed and multiple Thunderhawks brought down en route to their objectives.Only the arrival of Dark Angels Deathwing and Ravenwing forces, along with the 3rd Company of the Angels of Vengeance, staved off certain defeat. However, the Silver Skulls observed the Deathwing forsaking the battle in pursuit of a mysterious robed Space Marine, who turns out to be the notorious Fallen known as Cypher.Before Cypher escaped, an Angels of Vengeance Librarian detected several Fallen Angels ensconced within the red-robed hierarchy of the Red Heresy.The Silver Skulls were left to dig themselves out of their own predicament. They did so, but openly condemned the Dark Angels; another formal protest about their behaviour was filed with the High Lords of Terra.
|
Cult of the Second Son - Cult of the Second Son: The Cult of the Second Son is a Genestealer Cult native to the Hive World of Necromunda. Its genesis infestation was located in Hive Secundus, the second major hive city of the planet. The "Second Son" in the cult's name is a reference to its city of origin.Hive Secundus was eventually destroyed by a radioactive bombardment that caused it to topple, but the cult was not destroyed.Instead they took up residence in the vast subterranean warrens that lie beneath Necromunda's hives. The underhive gangs of Hive Primus have recently come into contact with the highly mutated cultists and the result has been internecine warfare.
|
Cult of the Second Son - History: On the infamous Hive World of Necromunda, the spire-like edifice of Hive Secundus was known for being rich in spirit and enlightenment as well as material wealth, more so even than its peer structure, Hive Primus, the capital of the world. Scholars sought to learn the mysteries of the Imperium from its extensive archives, and were so entranced by what they found they never left.But its outward appearance was a sham, for Hive Secundus was under the sway of a vast and frighteningly influential gene-sect. When this fact finally came to light, the lord general of Hive Primus ordered the bombing of the rival metropolis with high-yield rad munitions -- so thorough was this bombardment that the entire hive city, built far taller and thinner than its counterparts, toppled onto its side with an immense crash that caused seismic disruptions for hundreds of kilometres around.The entire area was declared quarantine extremis, and the denizens of Necromunda forbidden from even talking about it. Unfortunately for the hive lords, the bombing of the spire and its subsequent toppling did not prove enough to eradicate the cult that lurked at its heart.So hardy and determined were the cultists that hundreds of thousands of them survived, and ventured out once more through the extensive tunnel networks that tendrilled from their old haunts. The underhive gangs of Hive Primus, their interest piqued by the very forbiddal of raids upon the fallen metropolis, entered those same tunnels.The troglodytic creatures they found in there were mutated beyond all reason by the baleful emanations of the rad bombs -- and every bit as lethal as the Purestrain Genestealer from which they had been born.
|
Cult of the Star Saviours - Cult of the Star Saviours: The Cult of the Star Saviours is a Genestealer Cult that took over the world of Evergrind some time in the 40th Millennium.
|
Cult of the Star Saviours - History: Robbed of both its Genestealer Patriarch and Magus after a pinpoint strike by the Imperial Navy, the Cult of the Star Saviours misreads a solar-week-long meteor shower as a sign of imminent salvation. Taking the shooting stars in the skies of Evergrind as confirmation that celestial rapture is close at hand, the self-proclaimed "Last Hierarch," Primus Adamant, puts into motion his plans of conquest.On the night of the grand insurrection, every breeder city and dust farm upon Evergrind's surface is lit by the fires of revolution as the cult insurgency rises to impressively destructive heights. The cult's ascendance is like a flame to dry tinder. Riots break out in every quadrant as the local citizens take the opportunity to loot, kill and burn, exacting revenge for endless Terran centuries of oppression by their taskmasters.During the fighting, Primus Adamant is slain by an entrenched heavy weapons team, and with his demise the cult loses much of its cohesion. By the time the new moon rises, the planet has devolved into a post-apocalyptic bedlam populated by warring tribes, lone scavengers and scuttling half-xenos predators. Those craft whose captains are foolish enough to make planetfall upon Evergrind are soon brought low and claimed by the leaderless and atavistic cult -- and the ships' passengers with them.
|
Cult Tendricul - Cult Tendricul: The Cult Tendricul is a Genestealer Cult that originally infested the space station of Delugen but eventually spread to new worlds despite the intervention of the Craftworld Aeldari. In time, the cult even infected Aeldari space.
|
Cult Tendricul - History: A strike force of Black Guardians from Craftworld Ulthwé descended upon the gyroscopic space station of Delugen. The prophetic Farseer Anathroelle Starseeker led her warriors into Delugen's corridors. There they slew the Cult Tendricul in the most thorough fashion, putting every human they find to the sword whether they were infected by the xenos taint or not.The station's astropathic distress signal reached a Black Templars fleet, and whilst the Asuryani were rooting the last of the humans from the station's corridors, the Boarding Torpedoes of the Space Marines struck home.The Ulthwé force was driven off, and the last few survivors of Delugen escaped. Within a Terran year, however, the symbols of the Cult Tendricul were seen on a dozen planets, including the Aeldari Maiden World of Virgose.
|
Cult Tenebrous - Cult Tenebrous: The Cult Tenebrous is a Genestealer Cult that has been corrupted by Chaos, in this case the Plague God Nurgle.
|
Cult Tenebrous - History: Around 998.M41 elements of the Genestealer Cult Tenebrous found themselves becoming the infested, rather than the infesters, when their bulk lander was swallowed by a Warp Storm that stranded them on the outskirts of the Garden of Nurgle in the Realm of Chaos.The cult discovered the true meaning of parasitism and horror. Eventually, the Grandfather of Plagues allowed them to emerge into realspace once more, horrifically changed and ready to serve their new master's sickly agendas.
|
Cult Veridian - Cult Veridian: The Cult Veridian was a Genestealer Cult located on the Death World of Moraz III.
|
Cult Veridian - History: Moraz III, a Death World swathed in carnivorous jungle flora, is struck by the wreckage of a Rogue Trader's menagerie-ship. The Genestealer that broke free from the ship's hold infects the local populace, giving rise to the nascent Cult Veridian.However, every Human and hybrid member of the dynasty is killed when a regiment of Catachan Jungle Fighters uses Moraz III as a training world for their hunt-and-slay tactics. Only the Genestealers escape.Once the Catachans have left the planet, the xenos emerge once more, swiftly becoming the alpha predator of the jungle and reclaiming Moraz III for themselves before beginning the cycle anew.
|
Cults of Destruction - Cults of Destruction: The Cults of Destruction are warbands comprised of Chaos Space Marines who have devoted themselves to the merger of Daemons with machines and vehicles.These cults are primarily comprised of Obliterators, Mutilators and Warpsmiths, who all seek to spread the Chaos technovirus that creates hideous, arcane mergers of flesh and machine.
|
Cults of Destruction - History: An alliance struck deep in the Eye of Terror has seen a strange machine-plague boil across the worlds of the Imperium. The Cults of Destruction -- those warbands consisting of Obliterators, Mutilators and the Warpsmiths who strive to control them -- have always acted as seething hotbeds for the Chaos technovirus that infects them.Since the Daemon Primarchs Perturabo and Mortarion combined their genius in the Eye of Terror, however, this affliction has been weaponised. Now, instead of slowly and organically claiming the souls of those Heretic Astartes who obsess over their wargear, this curse now spreads in the form of an airborne info-virus, often referred to by the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus as "scrapcode."Scrapcode can be seen as the machine equivalent of the Dark Tongue, seemingly nonsensical at first, but harsh upon the ear to the point of causing physical pain, and possessed of an anarchic power that can cripple a Machine Spirit (artificial intelligence) and pervert a war engine to the cause of Chaos.Some say that even battle tanks and mighty Imperial Knights have been brought low by this ravening, self-replicating scourge, sprouting clusters of oil-slick gun barrels and forests of lashing cables from their adamantium hulls as they indiscriminately kill and destroy.Despite their mistrust of Warpsmiths, warbands of the Daemonkin welcome the Cults of Destruction amongst their ranks, for they bring with them unending carnage and anarchy.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Cults of the Thousand Sons: The Cults of the Thousand Sons represented sub-formations composed of potent psykers within the Thousand Sons Space Marine Legion first created during the Great Crusade era who specialised in certain psychic and sorcerous disciplines.The Thousand Sons, like some of their fellow independent-minded Astartes Legions, employed a non-standard organisation within the XVth Legion that were known as "cults" and into which every Astartes was placed based upon their level of psychic ability.After the fall of the Thousand Sons to the service of Tzeentch during the Horus Heresy and the transformation in the Legion wrought by the casting of the Rubric of Ahriman, the five cults of the original Legion became nine.With this new Legion structure, the sorcerers of the XVth Legion delved more deeply into the true secrets of the Lord of Change and were guided by the will of their Daemon Primarch, Magnus the Red.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Pre-Heresy Cults: Though some Thousand Sons Astartes never developed any measurable amount of psychic ability after being implanted with the XVth Legion's gene-seed, the majority did develop some form of psychic ability just like their Primarch Magnus the Red soon after completing the transformation process.The Legion used these five different cults to develop and improve the abilities of the often powerful psykers found amidst this Legion's ranks.Membership within these cults was determined regardless of the Fellowship (Chapter) to which each Astartes belonged within the Legion since cult membership was based upon the psychic ability for which a Thousand Sons Astartes displayed the most affinity.Each Fellowship of the Thousand Sons was usually made up of Astartes coming from all five of the cults within the XVth Legion, though it was not unheard of for a Fellowship's membership to be dominated by the members of just one of the cults.The five cults had been founded within the Legion by the nine original members of Magnus the Red's inner circle or cabal who were collectively known as the Rehati. The Rehati had each earned mastery in one of the 5 recognised psychic disciplines.Each cult was formed to further the development of one of the recognised psychic aptitudes: the Athanaeans focused on telepathy, the Corvidae sought to develop their precognitive abilities, the Pavoni learned to make use of physiokinesis, the mental manipulation of one's own physiological processes, the Pyrae plumbed the secrets of fire, a discipline called pyrokinesis, and the Raptora mastered the potent power of telekinesis.The leader of each cult bore the rank of Magister Templi. The leader of all the cults was known as the Magus and this was a rank exclusively held by the XVth Legion's primarch, Magnus the Red.The highest rank within the cult system was that of Ipissumus, a grade which represented a being free from limitations, who lives in balance with the corporeal and incorporeal universe. For all intents and purposes, the Ipisssumus was the most perfect being in the universe. This esteemed rank was represented by the most powerful Human psyker in existence -- the Emperor of Mankind.On the Thousand Sons' lost homeworld of Prospero, in the capital city of Tizca, each cult maintained its own pyramidal headquarters, which served as both a repository of the arcane knowledge that they had collected about their chosen psychic disciplines from across the galaxy as well as training facilities specifically geared towards enhancing psykers who displayed strength in one of the five recognised psychic disciplines.Each of these pyramids' front gates was topped by the great golden icon that represented the cult, save for the pyramid of the Pyrae Cult, which was topped by an ever-burning flame and whose gate was guarded by Canis Vertex, a Warlord-class Battle Titan of the Legio Astorum that would see action during the Burning of Prospero.To further represent the distinctiveness of the Cults' members, the Astartes from each cult would display the cult's insignia upon the shoulder plates of their Power Armour, with the cult's distinctive icon placed within the centre of the XVth Legion's Pre-Heresy Legion badge. The five known cults of the Pre-Heresy Thousand Sons Legion are described below.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Post-Heresy Cults: After the casting of the Rubric of Ahriman, the confluence of once-noble fellowships that comprised the XVth Legion was replaced by a hierarchy born of Magnus' will. The Thousand Sons were divided into nine great cults, each devoted to a separate facet of the Change God, and whether wittingly or not these cults all serve Magnus, and all have a purpose in the unfathomable plans of Tzeentch.Though the Planet of the Sorcerers to which the Thousand Sons were exiled after the Fall of Prospero is a world in constant flux, its inhabitants are governed by a strict order set in place by Magnus. The spectral remnants of the Legion's warriors, known as the Rubricae, reign over throngs of Chaos Cultists, Tzaangors and mutated Warp beasts, while above the Rubricae is the former bodyguard of the Crimson King, known as the Sekhmet.Raised above all of these is the Rehati -- a coven of nine Exalted Sorcerers and Daemon Princes who are favoured by Tzeentch more than any other amongst the Thousand Sons, save Magnus himself.From this overarching hierarchy, the Legion's forces are now further divided into nine cults. At the head of each is a member of the Rehati who bears the ancient rank of Magister Templi. Beneath each Magister Templi are nine other Daemon Princes and Sorcerers who, though lesser in rank, still bear much of Tzeentch's favour. These nine steer the cult along the ever-changing paths of fate.Other Sorcerers hold lower positions in the cult, and along with troops, tanks, mutants and Daemon Engines are capable of claiming vast swathes of realspace for their cult masters. Each cult has worlds from which they draw resources and magical energy, and populous planets to provide them with constant streams of Cultist soldiers, slaves and subjects for their arcane experiments.Aside from constituting a terrifying military force, each of the cults is an amalgam of the twisted minds of those in its ranks, and though inherently self-serving, the members of a given cult are ultimately bent towards the same purpose. To a mortal mind, untouched by Tzeentch's corruptions, the complex plans laid out by these cults are utterly unfathomable, but to the Thousand Sons they are both a form of profane worship and a route to vengeance over the Imperium of Man.Often, the goals of a given cult will undermine or even contradict those of the other cults. As such, the cults are wary of one another, and alliances between them are ever-shifting. The power and influence of each is also in constant flux, with every cult going through cycles of activity and torpidity as befits their inscrutable machinations.It is extremely rare for the entirety of a cult to deploy in a single war zone, though when this does happen the fabric of reality quakes in their presence. More often, the cult's malevolent goals require its forces to be spread throughout space and time, allowing each splinter to play a separate role in some larger and more sinister stratagem. A cult therefore comprises many sects, each of which may prosecute their own seemingly unconnected campaigns of terror.Where the combined forces of a cult could easily set a whole system ablaze, a single sect is still capable of devastating a planet. Often, several sects will launch simultaneous strikes across large tracts of realspace, plunging entire sub-sectors into disarray and panic.As nearby worlds send reinforcements to the embattled planets, more Thousand Sons appear to attack where defences have been stretched to breaking point. Devastating as they are, these attacks rarely give any clue as to the ultimate goals of the cult.A sect is made up of multiple warbands, called "thrallbands" within the Legion, which can also act independently of each other. With several units of Thousand Sons bolstered by auxiliary troops and vehicles, a single thrallband can obliterate an enemy fortress or turn a city into a blazing pyre.A number of thrallbands operate in complete isolation -- some have been exiled from the Planet of the Sorcerers, while others chose to leave to pursue their own ends. But even these forces ultimately serve the goals of one of the nine Thousand Sons cults, whether they themselves know it or not.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Athanaean Cult: The Athanaean Cult's members were practiced masters of the discipline of telepathy, and were able to transmit their thoughts and read the thoughts of others.They often acted as the Legion's communications officers since their communications were secure from all but other psykers and they assisted the Corvidae in conducting intelligence operations based on psychically-gleaned knowledge.While the Corvidae could provide an overall strategic direction based on their reading of the likely probabilities of future events occurring, the Athanaeans could use their ability to read the minds of the enemy to shape the Legion's battlefield tactics more directly, through weapon choice, the types of troops to be deployed and where, and the choice of the most advantageous terrain.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Corvidae Cult: The Corvidae were skilled in the psychic discipline of precognition, determining the likely probabilities of future events. They served as the XVth Legion's seers, warning their battle-brothers of dangers before they materialised.The Corvidae Cult also helped guide the Thousand Sons Legion along the lines of Fate during times of conflict and in pursuit of their overall psychic and material growth as a Legion. The Corvidae were responsible for much of the Legion's strategic planning.Corvidae could determine events that were not only far in the future but were immediately about to happen, which allowed them, for example, to navigate a minefield before it exploded or to know the exact sequence in which a series of enemy soldiers would fire at a particular target. The Cult badge of the Corvidae was a black raven's head.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Pavoni Cult: The Pavoni Cult tended to be the most egocentric of the known cults within the Thousand Sons Legion, as they had developed the psychic discipline known as physiokinesis. Physiokinesis allowed the Pavoni to manipulate body chemistry and physiology within themselves as well as others, a very useful trait for a group of already superhuman warriors.Skilled practitioners of physiokinesis were able to alter their physical appearance by manipulating the physical characteristics of their facial features at will as well as making themselves immune to the harmful effects of dehydration and other physical ailments.On the field of battle, the Pavoni were able to generate lightning by unleashing the inherent bioelectricity of their own nervous systems and focus it offensively, as well as cause the hearts of enemy warriors to explode by literally boiling the blood within their veins. When using these abilities against their foes, the Pavoni had a reputation for venality and spite which bordered on the sickening.The Pavoni were also the designated healers of the Legion, as they were capable of accelerating cellular growth and protein synthesis, which made them extraordinary medics who saved the lives of countless Astartes when even the Apothecaries could not.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Pyrae Cult: The Pyrae were pyrokinetics, meaning that they had developed the ability to both generate and control fire, the power for which was drawn from the Warp. The Pyrae could both generate lethal bursts of fire from their bodies that they could shape into a number of different forms, including projectiles fired from their hands as well as fire shields that could hold back foes and melt away incoming weapons fire.The Pyrae could manipulate existing or standing sources of fire and with their connection to the Warp could lower the temperature of flames striking their own bodies or the bodies of others, effectively making them immune to the effects of fire or great heat. The Pyrae also developed secondary psychic abilities that allowed them to control and manipulate mechanical automata like the robots of the Legio Cybernetica and even the massive Titans of the Collegia Titanica.These secondary abilities were known as technopathy. At the time of the closing years of the Great Crusade, the Pyrae Cult was in the political ascendence within the XVth Legion's hierarchy, while the Corvidae Cult was at its lowest ebb for nearly fifty standard years.For centuries, the Corvidae had been pre-eminent within the ranks of the Thousand Sons, but in the Legion's final decades within the Imperium, their power to read the twisting paths of the future had diminished until their seers could barely penetrate the shallows of things to come, largely a result of the masking efforts of the Chaos Gods. The cult badge of the Pyrae was a phoenix wreathed in flames.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Raptora Cult: The members of the Raptora Cult were gifted practitioners of the psychic discipline called telekinesis, and were known as telekines. In battle, a Raptora Cult member could psychically fling physical objects at their enemies or rip their enemies bodies' apart through the application of immense telekinetic power drawn from the Immaterium.When used defensively, telekines could generate barriers of invisible telekinetic force known as "kine shields" to block physical attacks on themselves or others.During the Fall of Prospero, the massed members of the Raptora Cult generated a massive kine shield over the whole of the city of Tizca intended to protect it from an orbital assault by the Space Wolves.The shield eventually failed when the sheer power unleashed by the Loyalists' assault upon the kine-shield proved to be more than the individual Raptora Astartes could mentally bear. They fell exhausted to the terrible mental strain, one by one, until the psionic shield collapsed.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Cult of Change: The Cult of Change is anathema to order. They are the great unravellers, launching their armies wherever civilisation and reason exist. Similarly, in places of utter anarchy, the cult appears to impose their ever-shifting will.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Cult of Duplicity: The Cult of Duplicity is unique within the Legion in that it both is and is not guided by a unified desire. The Sorcerers of this cult are by their very nature deceivers, at once appearing fractured and singular in their purpose. As such, it is impossible to know whether the sects within the cult are acting independently or as part of a singular, terrifying plan.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Cult of Knowledge: The Cult of Knowledge is also drawn to the many curios hidden throughout the galaxy, particularly tomes of eldritch learnings, dark secrets and paradoxical logics. Through such lore, the cult is able to extrapolate the weaknesses in their enemies, and in the fabric of reality itself.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Cult of Magic: The Cult of Magic is dedicated to the pure and unfettered use of sorcery. Their bloody campaigns are launched to secure arcane objects held by Imperial, xenos and other Chaos forces. These artefacts are then used as foci in the weaving of devastating spells.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Cult of Manipulation: The Cult of Manipulation is similarly deceptive, using its tendrillar web of influence to sway the actions of its enemies. Vast networks of mortal and daemonic spies allow the cult to oversee their plots as they unfold through assassination, possession and the wreaking of pure havoc.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Cult of Mutation: The Cult of Mutation embodies the transfiguring aspect of Tzeentch. Not only do they embrace the warping of flesh, but also the warping of reality itself. By their hand civilised planets are transformed into Daemon Worlds, and entire populations moulded into grotesque abominations.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Cult of Prophecy: The Cult of Prophecy is guided by incessant whispers that bleed from the Warp. From these they divine the outcomes of multiple futures, and seek out events that can be twisted to their own purpose.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Cult of Scheming: The Cult of Scheming is perhaps the most insidious of the cults, for the creation of convoluted plots is to them a form of profane worship. Every conquest and withdrawal is a perfectly planned manoeuvre, a single step that leads towards some unseen master stroke.
|
Cults of the Thousand Sons - Cult of Time: The Cult of Time is similarly enthralled by the future, as well as the present and past. They view the flow of time as an unwrought resource that can be shaped into a weapon. By their victories, ripples are sent both forwards and backwards in time, so that their enemies may be defeated before they are even engaged.
|
Currency - Currency: A currency is a standardisation of money in any form, in use or circulation as a medium of exchange, for example paper notes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a system of money in common use within a specific environment over time, especially for people in a state. Currencies may act as stores of value and be traded between different governments or private individuals in foreign exchange markets, which determine the relative values of the different currencies. Currencies in this sense are either chosen by users or decreed by governments, and each type has limited boundaries of acceptance; i.e., laws may require a particular unit of account for payments to government agencies.In the galaxy of the 41st Millennium, the currency of Human-settled worlds consists of whatever objects are a common unit of exchange in a given locale -- government coinage, ephemeral digital ledger-data, ammunition, gold nuggets, or even beautiful shells picked from a beach. The currencies of Mankind are as varied as the worlds of the galaxy they inhabit, and are only measured in some standard unit of account when it comes time to collect the Imperial Tithe.
|
Currency - Imperial Currency: The economic systems in existence across Imperial space vary from world to world and their levels of technological progression and so there is no standardised financial system or currency in use across the entire Imperium. On more primitive Feral and Feudal Worlds, there may be no system more complex than bartering or the exchange of a basic, precious metal-based currency.However, most civilised worlds that have achieved the standard level of Imperial starfaring technology make use of some form of fiat currency for all economic transactions which is often digital or electronic in form. The names of these currencies vary as wildly as the Human cultures that employ them. Some are used only on individual planets or their surrounding sub-sectors, while on others the currency may be accepted on a sector-wide or even multi-sector basis.For example, the Imperial currency of the Calixis Sector and many of the surrounding regions such as the Koronus Expanse is known as the "Throne Gelt," embodied in the form of metallic coins known simply as "thrones," a reference to the Emperor's Golden Throne. Currency of a similar name had been used as far back as the time of the Horus Heresy in some regions of the Imperium. This currency, like most in the Imperium used across several worlds, is a fiat currency based ultimately on the in-kind value of the local region's Imperial Tithes. There are also precious shell tokens or coins of rare or strategic metals that are accepted as legal tender on all of the civilised Imperial worlds of that sector. Thrones can also be dispersed in electronic form as payment, usually by using a data-slate.Human reavers and pirates across the frontiers of Imperial space are often refugees or descendants of settlers from the Imperium, and so understand Throne Gelt's value. Of course, to these Renegades, offering currency in trade without a display of force or at least a little bloodletting first is a sign of weakness. Yet some Renegades, dark corsairs and slavers among them, favour hacksilver, items of technology, ammunition, and slaves as currency -- or trapped souls and bottled vitality, if the darkest stories are to be believed.In the time of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, the most common form of Imperial currency were coins known as "Aquila pieces." They came in various denominations, including a five Aquila piece, which was about the same size as the coins used at present to represent thrones. Aquila pieces were commonly used among the expeditionary fleets of the Great Crusade and were introduced into the worlds they brought to Imperial Compliance for use in interstellar trade.A currency known as "crowns" were also used at the time of the Great Crusade and were still in use in the 41st Millennium on the Mining World of Karoscura.On the Hive World of Necromunda, the standard planetary currency is known as the "credit."The "ducat" is a unit of currency issued by the Navigator houses of the Navis Nobilite in the 41st Millennium that comes in the form of golden coins. They are usable as currency wherever the vessels of the Navis Nobilite go in the galaxy, particularly when carrying out transactions between the houses themselves.The "Estrillian newmark" was a planetary currency in use on the world of Atraxia in the 41st Millennium. On Atraxia, a tarot deck could cost approximately 27 newmarks.
|
Currency - Xenos Currency: Xenos species and empires also have their currencies, though their interpretations of this concept may be remote and strange to Humans. The vile Orks, for example, count wealth in "teef" -- literally the teeth of enemy Greenskins kept for noisy, threatening trade with "dem 'ard gits what got the bitz we needz."By comparison, the deceitful Aeldari kindreds do not appear to employ any form of monetary currency at all, and are said to find such Human concepts of valuation primitive or debased. Aeldari do value certain items -- particularly the lost artefacts of their species. However, attempting trade with Aeldari of any kindred is a harrowing experience, with the negotiations ever treacherous and shifting.Perhaps of all the xenos known to Mankind, the nomadic Stryxis have the most "Human" outlook on trade. Though strange to look on, Stryxis caravans offer an often bewildering variety of goods, many perilous and outright prohibited within Imperial space. However, their inscrutable masters drive a hard bargain, and are never to be underestimated.
|
Curse of Solomon - Curse of Solomon: The Curse of Solomon, also called the Beast of Solomon, is a monstrous creature said to lurk in the darkness of the heavily industrialised territories between the hive cities of the Hive World of Solomon in the Calixis Sector known as the Interior Industrial Zones.Solomon is a blighted, slowly dying, and heavily industrialised Imperial Hive World where rebellion, superstition, and hate fester in the shadowed canyons of rockcrete and steel. Its hive cities are pollution-shrouded places plagued by suspicion, greed, and unrest. Between the towering monolithic citadels of Solomon's hive metropolises, thousands of square kilometres of rusting pipelines, thundering processing vats, and fire-belching pyro-towers cover the landscape and darken the skies with a thick haze of black smog.In the lightless spaces of these Interior Industrial Zones, or simply the "Interior" as the Solomonites call them, many terrors are said to haunt unseen. Of these tales, the dark legend of the so-called "Curse of Solomon" or "Beast of Solomon" is perhaps one of the oldest, most consistent, and most widely recounted. It is passed from generation to generation among the unfortunates forced to dwell in the work-houses and labour in the depths of Solomon's Interior. It is a myth of some monstrous alien thing that stalks the darkness seeking only to kill, a shadow within shadows, and of good people taken without warning to gristly deaths with only bloody shreds left to mark their passing.The Beast is an envoy of merciless death made manifest and a horror never fully seen -- a thing lurking at the edge of the terrified minds of the populace. Yet the Beast is no mere tale, but an ingrained fear that alone is powerful enough to move ordinary men and women to commit horrors in its name. Worse yet, the monster itself may be far more real and dangerous than the most febrile imaginings of those bound by its terrors can conceive.
|
Curse of Solomon - The Darkness's Due: Down in the lightless pathways beneath still-stacks of the Solomon Interior, in the pollution choked chem-spoils and rust barrens where people labour to eke out a living by the light of guttering promethium wicks, fear has an unfettered reign, and chief among these is the fear of the Beast of Solomon.A mind and heart consumed by terror can contemplate any act to gain a moment's respite, and amongst these dwellers in the dark a horrific tradition has grown. These people have been consumed by their fear of the Beast. They have no self-given name, no title, and no organisation. They are simply victims who have succumbed completely to their terror of what lies in the dark. They are united by a single factor -- their wish to placate and propitiate the Beast, to preserve themselves by giving the Beast its due, even sacrificing their own in desperate, appeasing worship of this emissary of death.Those not living their brief years cursed with poverty, disease, and fear in Solomon's darkest places cannot understand the fear of knowing that the darkness is watching you and may take you if it pleases. Accordingly, most who make sacrifice to the Beast are ordinary industrial labourers and families who are forced to live in the areas of the Interior where tales of the Beast are strongest. These stories are often backed up with slews of disappearances, the discovery of bloody remains, and sightings of monstrous things stalking the shadows.To understand those who sacrifice to the Beast of Solomon, it is important to understand how these bitter and fearful people live. Buried far away from light and wind in the depths of Solomon's Interior, these "zoners" labour by promethium lamps, drink water thick with pollutants that seep from the still-stacks, and know that they are born and will die at the whim of greater forces -- be it the slow death sentence passed by the Imperium's thirst for the product of their toil or the Beast that stalks their dark world.The poisoning of Solomon by its own industries has brought other miseries that those forced to inhabit the Interior bear the brunt of -- successful births are rare, and with each successive generation, a greater percentage of those born live only a few solar months or are touched by mutation. Those who sacrifice to the Beast believe that their only chance to affect their fate is to appease at least one of the forces that prey on them.
|
Curse of Solomon - The Ritual of Sacrifice: Around the areas considered to be the Beast of Solomon's hunting grounds, even those who do not seek to placate the Curse with sacrifice know of the practice and keep their mouths firmly shut on the matter to outsiders. Thus they are to some degree complicit. Though some may believe firmly in the God-Emperor, they also know that they are accursed and that they must offer sacrifice to appease the Curse.Those sacrificed to the Beast are often outsiders who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, so it is that offerings tend to be roving scum, minor officials, and those unfortunates who have been forcibly "relocated" to the Interior to keep up the work quotas. It may even be the case, where fear of the Beast has grown so strong that an entire community has fallen into sacrifice, that the community's leaders may lure outsiders into their deadly web so that they can be offered to the "Beast in the Dark." However, given the danger this poses to the community, the situation will be desperate indeed for this to occur.In other cases, sacrifices will be taken from amongst the local populace, the victims being selected by lottery or some other dubious means of divination. At the agreed time, the bound victim is taken by a throng bearing bright torches to keep the Beast and the dark away, their faces hidden by crude (yet sometimes elaborate) cloth masks. In a place where the tangle of pipes is thickest, the sacrifice is chained and left in complete darkness to await their fate.
|
Curse of Solomon - Inquisitorial Threat Briefing: The Ordo Xenos has been long aware of the myth of the "Curse of Solomon" but has also long relegated it to the mass of other petty myths and horror stories that abound on Solomon, as on many other worlds. The ordo reasons such stories are a simple, natural response to the frailty of life and harsh conditions there.Received wisdom points to the myth's widespread nature as evidence that it is likely a mere convenient scapegoat, as a single Beast could not be everywhere at once and a whole genus of such creatures would have made themselves apparent some time ago. They do not, however, dismiss the possibility of one or more rogue xenos predators' actions or even a localised Daemonic incursion being blamed on the Curse, or even some heretical faction using the myth for its own ends.Some factions within the Ordo Xenos are not so sure, however, believing that there is more than meets the eye in these "folk tales." Perhaps there is enough to warrant further investigation.
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.