Name: Azariah KyrasUniverse: Warhammer 40,000
Age: 1,000+ Standard Terran Years
Position: Lordless Chaos Space Marine, former Chapter Master and Chief Librarian of the Blood Ravens
Appearance:
Personality: Bloodlust, intelligence, and a great hunger for power: these are the three traits that have driven Azariah Kyras for well over one thousand years, and are still driving him today. A servant of
Khorne, paradoxically so as he is a
psyker, he kills for the sake of killing and ruins for the sake of destruction for he believes that the very Universe itself is mindless, and that duty and order and loyalty ultimately mean nothing for when you inevitably die and your soul is picked clean by laughing, devouring gods who know nothing of mercy. Yet, he also ponders, schemes, being a well-educated man as the Chief Librarian of the Blood Ravens, space marines who are known for their pursuit of knowledge. Such is his mastery of patience and puppetry that he gathered up a sacrifice to his unholy god, of many hundreds of billions of souls -- while doing barely anything himself.
This sacrifice was but a means to hop to a higher stepping stone -- ascension from mere mortal to an all-powerful and prestigious
daemonic prince -- for his simple but ultimate goal of destruction and carnage: he wistfully wished when the planet Typhon Primaris was being glassed by an Ordo Malleus exterminatus fleet that he would share this gift of death with everyone. For Kyras, the natural entropy of the Universe is too slow and too dull. Active annihilation, disemboweling and crushing foes into bloody pulps, and cracking the very crusts of worlds as the souls of the innocent are herded into Khorne’s great maw is how it all should end.
But his recent and very catastrophic defeat at the hands of Apollo Diomedes has delayed him the opportunity and power to ravage the galaxy as he awakes in a strange place. Weary and without allies, he hides his true and daemonic nature, and slips into the guise of an upstanding space marine: a paladin, a holy angel of death, made from revered bloodstock into a young demigod who is more than human; there to comfort and protect the weak and bring down the tyrant with boltgun, chainsword, and force-staff.
Powers:
- Astartes Librarian, Beta-Grade Psyker: Azariah Kyras is a being of immense psychic power. From his hands cometh warpfire, and from his eyes cometh witch-lightning, two of but a great array of spells he can use to flay flesh and spirit alike. Should he wish not to hide his psychic might, but his mere presence from afar that he is merely a pinprick to the eye is enough to make the heart falter and the knees buckle; the pebbles on the ground shake and the very air reverberate from his inborn power, which had been cultivated, refined and made stronger by the rigors of Astartes training and combat.
- Chaos Sorcerer: Azariah Kyras is an Astartes Librarian corrupted into the service of Chaos. As the use of psychic powers attracts the attentions of daemons within the realm of magic, the Great Ocean, also known as the Warp, he was once bound by many sigils protecting his purity but weakening his powers. But now free from these constraints, he is able to unleash his full psychic potential: he is now able to tear rifts into the fabric of reality itself and call forth the daemonic beings who once preyed upon him, to slay his foes; to feed upon the very souls of his victims to replenish his own; to cast dark spells that would endanger the bodies of non-Chaotic psykers without harming himself. The most repulsive of rituals, gory in nature and absolutely black in morality, are also at his disposal.
- Daemonic Host: Azariah Kyras’ soul shares his body with a greater daemon of Khorne, whom he was not merged fully when engaged in combat and split into two separate entities upon his defeat when the great laser batteries of the Astartes Strike Cruiser Litany of Fury opened fire upon the fledgling daemon prince from orbit. If Kyras is able to sacrifice enough souls, many billions at minimum, he shall attempt to ascend once more into coveted daemonhood. To anyone who can read auras, the immediate space around Kyras is shifting and painted in stark hues of red and black, quite foul to look at, and nauseating when done so at length.
Skills:
- From Revered Bloodstock: Azariah Kyras is an Astartes (known colloquially as space marines): a genetically-modified super-soldier of the Imperium of Mankind, one of one million of such soldiers. Taken at the onset of puberty by the Blood Ravens chapter of space marines, Azariah Kyras was implanted with the genetic stock of their Unknown Primarch and transformed over the years from but a mere boy, to a seven-foot-tall scout, then a nine-foot-tall full-fledged battle-brother, with twin hearts, bulletproof skin where the black carapace is meshed underneath, a fused ribcage creating a nigh-impenetrable shield for his vital organs, and the quick reflexes of a striking snake. In full armor, Kyras weighs just over two tons, and is a walking arsenal of destruction, being one of the Emperor’s most elite.
- Supreme Defender, Unchallenged in Battle, Astartes!: The moment Azariah Kyras donned his scout armor of ceramite and plasteel plates for the first time was the moment he abandoned what most would associate with being human. The moment the Master of Recruits announced that Kyras and his brother-initiates beside him were the only survivors of batches of a hundred was when the greatest responsibilities were burdened on his shoulders. In that ceremonial hall, all those young neophytes had already killed many thousands, each. For the soldiers of the Imperial Guard, men and women who fight without the privilege of extensive genetic modification as enjoyed by space marines, eliminating thousands is something worthy of the greatest military award or an honorable discharge so he or she can live in peace and luxury at a planet of their choosing.
But much more was expected of Kyras. The very blood of The Emperor flowed in his veins via the genetic stock of his Primarch-Progenitor, a son of the Master of Mankind, the God-Emperor of Mankind, He Who Sits Atop His Golden Throne and is the Allfather of Humanity. Such feats were nothing to laud about, for his brothers before him had achieved more, and his chapter’s heroes even more so.
When Kyras repeated after the Company Chaplain and renewed his oaths, he became an avatar of war, one son of a brotherhood of a thousand.
A thousand years have passed since then, and even though he has transformed from a symbol of humanity’s wrath to all that which humanity opposes, Azariah Kyras, whether by boltgun, chainsword or force-staff, is -- to say the least -- very, very, good at killing.
Brief Bio:Azariah Kyras’ history is shrouded in mystery. What is known, however, is that he was present on the Blood Ravens’ homeworld of Aurelia when a sudden warp storm had swallowed the planet whole. There, along with his superior officer, the chapter’s chief librarian, Moriah, he defeated the greater daemon Ulkair, and spent many centuries resisting the tempting whispers, caresses, and promises of daemons, but ultimately failing. Corrupted by Chaos, he emerges in the mass of derelict ships known as the
Judgement of Carrion, moving in time to support the Blood Ravens’ 5th Company against the massive tide of daemons and Tyranid aliens assaulting them.
Welcomed as a lost battle-brother to the chapter, Kyras rose through the ranks quickly, owing of his many centuries of experience. Having made pacts with at least two greater daemons, it was with subtlety that he drove his chapter to madness and infighting, corrupting key officers while blaming righteous ones. This was but part of his great plan to turn Subsector Aurelia, the Blood Ravens’ center of operations, into a terrible mass of war and death. When the Tyranid hive fleet known as Leviathan attacked the subsector, when the Orks had come with them along with the Eldar and when even Chaos Space Marines had come to this rather unsuspecting corner of the galaxy, the Imperium of Mankind noticed. And its Lords found the situation unsalvageable.
Thus the order of Exterminatus was given to the Ordo Malleus: the complete and utter destruction of every planet in that subsector so as to deny the enemies of humanity a foothold and to deny them the resources offered by the worlds to be purged. While seemingly against his plans, the act was fully well within them: Kyras had planned for the purging of the many billions of souls both human and alien to be his grand sacrifice to his newfound god, Khorne, the Blood God. And, with his own chapter, his battle-brothers, in the midst of infighting from his clever sowing of dissent, barely any marines would make it out alive. He, who was supposed to be the greatest of the Sanguis Corvidae, had pledged them all to die.
But the actions of three Blood Raven captains had utterly ruined his plans: Gabriel Angelos of the 3rd Company, Apollo Diomedes of the 1st Company, and the Unknown Commander of the 4th. It was Gabriel and the Unknown Commander who had exposed Kyras’ true allegiance to the Great Enemy, and Apollo Diomedes who lead the loyalist strike force to slay the traitor with finality and abort the Exterminatus. They had fought in the Pit of Maledictus, where many Blood Ravens had died fighting the Great Enemy. Victory was, indeed, Pyrrhic. But they had all been saved.
Angelos, wounded gravely by Kyras, replaced the man as chapter master of the Blood Ravens, and was cybernetically augmented to support his biology, such was the extent of his wounds. Diomedes continued to serve as Captain of the Honor Guard, the First Company. The Unknown Commander, however, could only celebrate from afar as he had been sent by Kyras, before he had betrayed them all, to a penitent crusade for investigating.
However, death is a fickle thing for the servants of Chaos. Bound to a greater daemon of Khorne, Kyras never truly died.
Curiously, though, he had disappeared.
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