Name: Arnulf Wode

Legion: III Legion, The Pact of the Lance

Homeworld: Salient Tertius (Civilized World)

Psyker Grade: Thoroughly Kappa. It is something of a running joke that Wode’s grating personality is caused by lack of a soul, but in truth he merely possesses no psychic potential.

Skills/Abilities: Wode is much like other primarchs, a physical powerhouse coupled to a lightning-fast mind and indomitable charisma. Outside of these gifts, though, he is startlingly mundane, with no psychic powers, nor is he even really as gifted at single combat as the rest of his siblings, his own philosophy of combat relying on meeting the enemy with force so overwhelming that the vagaries of tactics and fighting forms become irrelevant.

If anything sets him apart, it is his determination, and his ability to inspire his men to fight with all they’ve got, to squeeze every last ounce of potential from the seemingly outmatched, outgunned, and outmaneuvered. It remains to be seen if this charisma extends to his siblings however.

Appearance: Arnulf gives the impression of being squat and solid. Short for a primarch, at just above nine feet in height, the demigod exudes a domineering, commanding presence, full of confidence and bravado. His face is craggy and gaunt, covered with scars and pock-mark wounds from past conflicts.

His musculature is, of course for one of his stature, defined, but no artistry was present when he was geneforged. He is bulky, with wide shoulders, big biceps and forearms, and a barrel chest propped on legs that seem to be two stout trunks.

At peace, he wears a no-frills service uniform resembling something from Imperial Army issue, though of course the decorations on it are Astartes, and the tailoring is far finer than anything procured from an Auxilia storehouse.

In wartime, on foot, he wears the bare-metal powered plate of the Pact, adjusted for his size and stature, sporting a powerful DAoT void shield generator that can shrug off firepower far in exces 8s of its diminutive size. Cruelly dismissive of melee combat, Arnulf’s favorite weapon is an oversized autocannon that fires discarding sabot shells, a lost relic of a weapon capable of toppling whole city blocks with a sustained burst of fire. Although he carries a power blade, a cruel, heavy, single-edged cleaver of a sword, he rarely uses it, preferring to obliterate his opponents from range.

More often, though, he rides in the cupola of his personal superheavy tank, a curious vehicle consisting of a Baneblade-pattern hull mated to a Fellblade turret.



Concept: The Emperor made Arnulf Wode to be a winner of wars, a conqueror, with no passions but the swift destruction of the enemy. His talents lie in his ability to lead warhosts of vast size, complexity, and demographics as seamlessly as he wears his clothes. It was with these parameters that Amar Astarte and the Emperor set out to create their perfect soldier, their eater of armies.

A veteran tanker of the Pact. Note the augmentic leg, many tank commanders survive their vehicles being shot out from under them, and leg injuries are common due to interior fires and explosions venting from open hatches as they climb out.

Legion Name: The Lightnings (Pre Unification)/ The Pact of the Lance (Post Unification)

Associated Primach: Arnulf Wode

Concept:The Pact inherited a lot from their Primarch and the fast moving, desert wars of Salient where he learned his trade. The trademark of the young Legion is its tank companies, vast ranks of Imperial armor that strike out at the foe in precise, unstoppable spearheads of steel and guns.

The Pact favors the aggressive war, using their tanks as battering rams to punch holes in the weakest parts of an enemy battle line, then encircling the cut-off foe and destroying them in detail with the less glamorous mechanized infantry of the Legion and its Imperial Army auxilia. It is not uncommon for the Pact to outpace its logistical elements, relying on prosecuting their conflicts with plunder from their opponents.

Culturally, the Pact is very pragmatic and results-oriented. What works, works, and what doesn’t is abandoned. Legionaries from Wode’s host are constantly honing their craft, running training exercises day and night until even the most complicated maneuvers are rote memory.

The unofficial unit emblem of Imperial Penal Assault Unit 31-3.

Faction Name: Imperial Penal Assault Unit 31-3 (Official Designation)
The Damned (Unofficial Designation)

Faction Overview/Concept: The Damned are a penal military unit, made up of the numerous dissidents, prisoners of war, political undesirables, degenerates, and criminals generated by the expanding Imperial rule on Terra. The Emperor’s forces, in great need of manpower, press even the unwilling, unable, and unfit to widen his sphere of influence, and to knock off a few future risk factors in the process.

Strategically, the Damned operate like no other force in the Imperial panoply. They make extensive use of combat drugs, most particularly the newly synthesized Frenzon, to whip the troops up into a bloodthirsty, but malleable, fervor. They make extensive use of exploding discipline collars to punish cowardice, and employ ‘discipline cadres’, regular Imperial Army veterans earmarked for their loyalty to the Imperial Cause, to execute any member of the 31-3rd found wanting.

While any one of these things is not unheard of in the technobarbaric wastelands of Unification Terra, using all of them at once is considered especially inhumane and heinous. However, these brutal methods are extremely effective in pressing untrained, unwilling penal soldiers into feats of suicidal bravery, which is what makes it useful to the Emperor.

Faction Assets: (Brief Overview of their Strengths/Capability)

The 31-3rd is organized along the same lines as a typical Imperial Army regiment of the time. It is on paper, approximately 10,000 - 20,000 fighting men and women. In practice, attrition makes this number far, far smaller. It is rare for the Damned to operate in small units - they are typically massed for wave attacks to probe defense lines, storm fortresses, assault across a wide front, and fight delaying actions for other Imperial forces.

They are armed with whatever they can get their hands on; the most common armament being solid slug autoguns and shotguns, with the occasional lasgun or crew served weapon. It is not unheard of for close combat weapons to be issued if firearms ever run short, which they often do, as the majority of issued arms are taken from captured enemy weapons, cast offs from other units, and weapons personally stolen by the individual soldier. Standardization is nonexistent, and not considered desirable by the Damned’s command cadre.

Key Characters:

Colonel Jonathan Stavin: The CO of the Damned is a former militia leader who’s organization had been swiftly crushed by Unification forces. As punishment for his dogged defense after being offered surrender, he is forced to lead what started as his old comrades into the meat grinder. Now, he sends the Damned to their doom with a callous cruelty, viewing himself as the ferryman across the river Styx.

Discipline Master Augusta Severina: The Discipline Master of the Damned, Severina was a trooper in the Emperor’s regular army. A hardbitten woman with a reputation for getting it done no matter the cost, Severina climbed the ranks on the deaths of her comrades. She cheerfully carries out her duties in the Damned, relishing the chance to send the Emperor’s dregs to their deaths.

Trooper Caleb Raum: A newly inducted penal trooper, Trooper Raum made the mistake of posting a leaflet that expressed skepticism of the Pax Imperialis. Picked up by the constabulary, they quickly pressed him into the Damned. Trooper Raum was formerly an academic, and possesses no relevant combat experience.

Sergeant Ernest Whitaker: A survivor of the militia unit that formed the initial core of the Damned, Whitaker is a hollow man, a killer of unparalleled skill and uncountable trauma. A mean man with a mean rep, Sergeant Whitaker takes no shit and doesn’t hesitate to lord his position over his lessers.

Faction Name: The Hollow Ones

Faction Overview/Concept: A very small, secretive order of pariahs, numbering no more than around 20 at a time, as well as a somewhat larger cohort of more typical agents acting at their behest. Created by the ruler of Albia and conqueror of the Panpacific Empire thousands of years ago, a Blank himself, his descendants have more recently lost the native holds of their ancestry; at around the same time, a man claiming to be this very same ruler has taken control of the group once more, and the faction has gone into deep cover, biding its time to reclaim what has been lost to them at the opportune moment... and, if their cards are played well, perhaps even more than they could have ever imagined.

Faction Assets: High concentration of Blanks, highly focused on subterfuge at present, with majority of influence effected through ensouled agents of the Hollow Ones. High council of Nulls numbering 3-5 (dependent on current Blank presence) act as the default leadership and administration beneath their liege, or under a Regent elected from their number in absentia.

Key Characters: The Unspeakable King - Founder, c. M27. Also known as Magna Albia and Archtyrant of Panpacifica.
The Unspeakable King (self-proclaimed?) - Current leader, having ousted Barrack Hawke as Regent in the absence of the defeated Magna Albia.
Barrack Hawke, Pwyll Dyved, Kia Rajon, Dolph Bens - High council, and most prominent Hollow Ones beneath The Unspeakable King.

Character Name: The Unspeakable King

Rank/Role: Leader of the Hollow Ones; Magna Albia, Archtyrant of Panpacifica (both self-proclaimed)

Appearance: The man who was The Unspeakable King has long since faded from mortal memory, his looks at the time forgotten in favour of his legacy of horror. The man who claims this title now, for all that it implies, is distressingly mundane. What stands out most is his height, at roughly 210 cm, and yet his physique implies none of the superhuman strength of the techno-barbarians of Terra, let alone the Emperor of Mankind's Legions, whether they be Astartes, Cataegis, or Custodes. Otherwise, his usual look is pale, with black hair and black eyes and an aspect that defies a definite age, and for the time being plain clothing that fails to impress for a would-be King.

Biography: It has never been clothing that has made The Unspeakable King who he is, but his effect on the world around him. In times past, tales were told of the nightmare of his empire, which was not merely himself and his Hollow Ones, but countless hordes of techno-barbarians cowed into working under him. And, of course, the legend himself, whose contra-psychic abilities brought many a sorcerer-king low in the age of his conquest and rule, before passing leadership to his firstborn and exiting the public eye.

Now? Either the failure of his descendants has stirred him, or an enterprising Blacksoul has taken the opportunity to claim the mantle for himself, or perhaps something yet stranger is occurring. In any case, the Hollow Ones outlived the empire they led, and with the death of their reigning monarch and the long-overdue collapse of control over the lands he ruled, one of their number was elected Regent in an effort to reclaim what they could. Instead, they drew the attention of this individual: with nothing more than his bare hands and an aura of unnerving soullessness, he invaded the Hollow Ones' fortress, slew several dozen armed soldiers, beat Barrack Hawke senseless both physically and psychologically, and threw him from the throne that, by the invader's own words, "had always belonged to me and mine; and mine, evidently, are indisposed".

Whoever the individual claiming to be The Unspeakable King was, he was extraordinarily potent in scope. No mere psyker he, but practically the opposite: an anti-psyker of sorts, whose aura of emotional oblivion was manipulated as both scalpel and sledgehammer, more than capable of bringing out the worst in people with souls or slaying them outright in ways that regular Blanks ought to be incapable of. Beyond this, his physical abilities were also exceptional, with speed, strength, durability, and endurance far exceeding the average gene-warrior. Most of all, he was cunning and intelligent both, with great forethought and a ruthlessness verging on amorality; and with that, he had the Hollow Ones select their most loyal subjects, before taking the chosen into hiding, in locations that none beyond himself had realised were so available to them. And after that...

They waited. Long enough to watch what had been built vanish into an entirely new set of states; in theory easily taken. But the Unspeakable King kept them hidden. The rumour was, so the King had learned, that a new empire was taking form. One which would claim all of Terra in a War of Unification. And after that? Beyond. At the very least, what was a few additional years to see if the rumours were true, when the prize was so easy to take whenever they wished?

Name: Nolrakh, the Veiled One.

Legion: Legio IX.

Homeworld:

Drifting through the cosmic graveyard of the Halo Stars, Laethem is a bleak, monochrome world of dark skies, desolate lands and icy starlight. Much of its surface is covered in barren rock wastes, broken only by sluggish inky seas wherein swim vast and somnolent things of curious and archaic appearance, the only form of life to stubbornly cling to existence under the open air. The thinness of Laethem’s atmosphere and the distance from its star, white-faced Achrum, cast upon it a perennial pall of chilly night, pierced more strongly by the sinister constellations that loom over it at all times than by the feeble sun. To venture out unprotected for longer than brief hours would spell death from cold and asphyxiation in the deepest valley as surely as on the highest peak.

Given the planet’s remote location and the poverty of its conditions, it is perhaps surprising that it should ever have been chosen by ancient humanity not merely as a site of habitation, but of massed settlement. Three great hive spires were built upon the world, though only one still stands to this day, and the already immense networks of caverns and tunnels in its crust were further expanded by gargantuan mining operations until they formed an interconnected web spanning Laethem’s full extension. These feats of engineering have given the modestly sized, inhospitable planet deceptively extensive space for its population to multiply, and in the havoc of Old Night it has grown unchecked, fracturing over the generations into three wide strata roughly distinguished by their proximity to the surface.

The people of the surviving Hive Koytos have deviated the least from base humanity, and still desperately fight to maintain the purity of their lineages. The severity of the struggle, and the harshness of life in the spire, have hardened them into a rigid, severely regimented martial society which brooks no dissent or scruple in the fight for survival. They are beset from below by the teeming hordes of the Pale Ones, the abhuman breeds that have mutated and grown in Laethem’s subterranean labyrinths. Strange and grotesque are their visages, with lean, spindly bodies and chalky hairless skin, their eyes vestigial or wholly absent; some even sport huge nostrils whose fine smell guides them as well as any other sense. While parts of the Pale Ones still cling to vestiges of civilization, many have devolved into barbarism or been swayed to the worship of cruel monster-gods, and seek the conquest of the spire above. The other two hives have already fallen at their hands, destroyed by their last defenders in final acts of defiance.

Deep in the lowermost levels of Laethem’s maze, where even the Pale Ones rarely tread, there lurks a third, seldom-seen strain of deviate humankind. Bred in the distant past for heavy labour in the mines, the ogryn-like colossi known as the Ghug roam vaults that no light has reached in millennia. Never gifted with developed minds, they are now little better than cannibal beasts, and the rare times when their voracious hunting packs ascend from their pits become days of storied dread for the world’s underdwellers.

Psyker Grade: Zeta. A telepath of notable strength, Nolrakh is nevertheless limited in the forms his talent can effectively manifest in, none of which are beyond the reach of most trained human psykers.

Skills and Abilities:

Haunter of the Dark: Born and grown under distant stars and in deepest shadow, Nolrakh shuns the light and takes to darkness as his home. The sight of his vitreous, atrophic eye is dim in the glow of day, but seizes upon shapes and motion with uncanny precision when immersed in penumbra, painting a colourless but stark world of outlines to his mind. Where the shadows grow too deep even for this gift, his psychic ability to perceive the minds of living things in his vicinity supplies, along with the strange senses of his mutated physiology - the taste of the wind, the tremors of the soil, the vibrations in the air all lead him to his quarry. Despite his imposing size, his deftness in moving unseen and unheard as long as darkness cloaks him is downright preternatural, even when armoured; no predator nor prey can match his nightly stalking.

Horror Made Flesh: Fear and revulsion are the mutant’s lot, and Nolrakh is no exception. As heavily as his ghastly appearance weighs on him, he knows it can be leveraged to inspire dread in his enemies, and is skilful in doing so should it be required. Misshapen claws and teeth flashing at the edge of one’s vision, or the apparition of a hideous visage, can break the staunchest spirits, but the Ninth Primarch’s potency of fear goes beyond mere physical intimidation. A hypnotic force dwells in his eye which can strike those who meet its gaze with paralyzing anguish, or plague them with hallucinations were they even to escape its grasp. Should all else fail, he summons forth raw psychic might to batter down the most stubborn mind with the force of Warp-induced emotion.

The Flawed Fortress: Nolrakh’s body is perpetually at war with itself, wracked by periodic surges of degeneration and reconstruction which preclude all attempts at an external cure for his deformity. His regenerative potential, truly stupendous by any standard, stubbornly rejects surgical or bionic alterations as well as the fruits of his mutation, which in turn never fail to reassert themselves in the same immutable forms. Grisly a fate as this may be, a hidden blessing lurks in it, for harm is likewise unable to leave a lasting mark on the Primarch. No matter how deep the wound or thorough the mutilation, he can recover from virtually any injury as long as he is not slain outright, and even regrow entire limbs with minimal medical assistance. This, together with his resilience to pain, enables him to fight in an uniquely lethal style, recklessly exposing himself to damage that he might strike with ferocious abandon.

Appearance:

Obscure flaws in the Ninth’s genes have conspired with the Warp to undermine the image of physical perfection that ought to have been his birthright as a Primarch. A germ of disfigurment forever gnaws at him from within, regularly rising to hiderously transfigure him before being forced back by his innate regeneration in an agonizing cycle that repeats every solar month.

At the peak of his health, Nolrakh could well pass for truly human were it not for his stature. Towering at some twelve feet in height, he has the robust frame of a warrior, though his pale skin belies his darkling habits. His firm, if subtly tense posture and unscarred bald head do not appear out of place among the Imperium’s gene-altered troops, and his stern statuesque features lend him an air fit for command. The only flaw marring them are his eyes, of whom one – which precisely is never constant – is a hollow socket, and the other murky, with no discernable iris.

This state, however, only endures for a matter of days, after which an unholy transformation begins. Skin frays and recedes, hard white growths part twisting flesh, and facial features drift almost fluidly overnight, until in about a week the decay is complete.



In this state, Nolrakh’s body is a horrific mass of knotted strands of muscle, ragged coils of pale skin and exposed plates of hardened bone extruding from a fantastically misshapen skeleton. Thin strips of purulent necrosis are nested between the ridges and chaotic contours of his frame. His hands are claws of sharpened bone, his head little more than a skull of exposed osseous exoskeleton, pitted and gouged like a lunar surface. His eye, now truly cyclopean, sits in its fractured center, surmounting the rictus death-grin of a lipless mouth, from which issues a voice at once guttural, crackling and sibilant – a mere ruin of the curt and acerbic, yet compelling tones of his apex. In time, the process of healing begins, and the horror is steadily swathed in healthy skin and flesh once more, but ever it remains skulking under the surface until it is ready to emerge anew.

Ashamed of his monstrous and unstable essence, the Ninth usually hides his features under heavy robes or armour, with a veil or hood that lends him his moniker.

Concept:

A living paradox, a loftiest pinnacle of humanity and a most vile of miscreations coexisting in a single tormented body, Nolrakh is a being haunted by his aberrant nature and forever goaded by the hope for salvation, or at least redemption. Burdened by what he sees as his innate sin, he at once abases himself before the Emperor he has failed and is driven to acts of tremendous hubris in his efforts to restore himself, be that atrocious carnage in a futile bid for glory or the blackest scientific inquests in search of an escape from the unnatural cycle that measures his existence; in the same breath, he yearns to serve humanity and immolates it on the altar of his desperation. Tragic spirit and loathsome butcher, champion and abomination, Primarch and mutant; such is the fate of the Ninth.

Legion Name: Legio IX, “the Reviled”; later known as the Star Reavers.

Associated Primach: Nolrakh.



Concept: Descendants of savage techno-nomads from the nighted Antarctic plains, the warriors of the Ninth Legion are harrowed by the curse inherited from their sire. Though stable enough on implantation, as if eager to infect healthy bodies, their gene-seed is fraught with the exsecratio corporis, the malediction of the flesh, a plague of cascading mutation that ravages them as they age. Some of them swell and bloat into faceless, spike-toothed unwieldy hulks the size of tactical dreadnought armour; others are twisted into hunched, predatory shapes, with exposed plates and ridges of bone matching those of their progenitor. In the vast majority, however, the exsecratio manifests as a gradual atrophy of limbs and organs, forcing its victims to seek bionic replacements.

The Reviled channel the pain and rancor of their affliction into a peculiarly vicious and gruesome form of warfare. Thirsting to mangle their foes’ bodies as well as shatter their spirits with abject terror, they often strike in darkness, bearing down in close combat with a fury of roaring metal and fearsome weapons from Terra’s past. Like their forebears, they are sworn to the chainblade and venerate the ice-flame, and like them they give no quarter.

Character Name:
Osric Sabine

Rank/Role:
The first successful test subject of Geneseed sample 8.
Founding member of the 8th Legion.

Appearance:
Originally a dark skinned, semi-successful underhive ganger from the Hives of Merica who stood at 6'3 feet tall and managed to get enough food to have some serious muscle to go with his height. Extensive surgery and gene therapy have resulted in him gaining a great deal more mass and height then he had before. At the time of being considered successful enough to leave the laboratory for some proper field tests Osric was shaved bald, through it remains to be seen if his black hair will grow back.

His left eye is organic with a black iris while his right is a bionic implant of fairly good quality that was installed after he received the treatments and experiments successfully.

Biography:
In the long history of Terra during the horrors of Old Night, countless billions, if not trillions of humans lived short and brutal lives, attempting to fight for survival on a harsh and often cruel world. The number of those lives cut short in the inherently violent depths of the underhives of Merica are impossible for mortal men to know, as little in the way of record keeping is able to survive contact with such lawless places.

Osric was originally doomed to be one of these countless, faceless people who lived and died unknown and unheralded. Born in the depths of the Hive city of Detroit, it was fully expected that he would live there until the day he died... which in a world where law and order was simply what the strong opted to impose upon the weak generally wasn't a very long time. Osric doesn't know how many siblings he actually has or when along the line he was actually born, but he was neither the first nor the last. He was however one of the four that would live long enough to actually be given a name at the age of six.

He was young when he joined 'Technical Support', one of many violent gangs that had arisen locally in the name of survival. Unlike many such gangs through, Technical Support generally had a knack for operating and repairing the various pieces of tech and long abandoned systems of their underhive home which allowed them to crave out a rather sizeable and relatively stable chunk of territory for themselves.

Osric proved himself to be a rather successful ganger who managed to gather a pretty solid crew around him over the years; While the idea of him being successful enough to literally move up into the upper hive like some of the truly high ranked members of the gang had done before was laughable, he and his crew always had enough to eat with access to fairly reliable medical services from a doc that was part of the crew. However, the relatively comfortable existence they had managed to crave out for themselves wasn't enough for Osric and his people, so when rumors of a piece of technology worth enough to earn a crew lives in the upper hive located somewhere down in the depths of the hive started to spread, they took it.

The 'rumor', as it turned out, was planted by agents of the Emperor who wished to locate and capture some prime Merican test subjects for the Emperor's legion project. As is the nature of underhive gang politics and warfare, the hunt for this non-existent bounty of technology caused a great deal of carnage and bloodshed, with only the strongest, cunning and most brutal of gangs and crews not only making it down to the level that these agents had set themselves up to 'recruit' them, but actually survive down there for any length of time.

Osric and his crew were not the only ones that were subdued and shipped back to be made use of by the Emperor in the creation of the next generation of genetically enhanced super solders, but they were the only ones who were selected to be implanted with the geneseed of the 8th Primarch.

Of the original 11 people subjected to testing out the suitability of the 8th Primarch's geneseed, 6 of them survived; A highly promising result, considering the process was still in need of refinement and the fact that few of the groups connected to other primarchs had more then one or two survivors at best. Future test subjects would further prove that Merican's genetic pool tended to respond best with the 8th Primarch and despite not being under the banner of the Lord of Lightning just yet, were listed as a future recruiting pool for the 8th legion.

Of the surviving 6, Osric proved the most promising in that his body and mind proved the most accepting of the changes it was undergoing. As such, not only has he undergone the experimental process the quickest, but recovered from it the fastest as well. As such, he is considered active enough to be able to undergo field testing, even as the rest of the first 'squad' are being worked on.

Name: Caine

Lord Primarch of the Red Architects, System Governor of Selys, Lord Commander of Cretecia, King of Balidarys, Archduke of the Illede Isles, Grand Duke of Veradania, Numedarnt, and the Tiber, Regent to the Urte Throne, Duke of Clemence, Royan, and Durne, Imperator Executor of the Order of the Thrice Lions, Arch Herald of the Order of St Selys

Legion: IV Legion, Red Architects
Homeworld: Cretecia

Classification: Gamma
Location: Selys System, Segmentum Obscurus
One of the many subjects for terraforming amid the Dark Age, it is practically impossible to know what this world was prior. Like the many other worlds of its solar system, the world grew to be a habitable one with only minor differences to a standard Terran atmospheric composition. With large amounts of arable land, world-spanning oceans, and a variety of biomes, Cretecia could be considered a near clone to the original model. This would all change with the rise of the Age of Strife.

The breakdown of intergalactic travel, and indeed the breakdown of interplanetary travel to a wide degree, would heavily cripple the economies of the Selys System. While it was not under widespread Daemonic threat, space travel appeared to attract a number of threats to include a species of alien which tended to feast on the drive systems. Such feeding would lead to the destruction of several vessels in Warp phenomena. As a result of the breakdown in trade, the system as a whole would be placed under immense stress. Planetary trade would break down as further off mining stations attempted to exert disproportionate pressure on the colonial centers while fabrication regions experiencing a lack of raw materials were forced into poor deals to maintain their operations. A number of reactor failures would only serve to accelerate this breakdown in relations.

Eventually, as the equipment broke down due to a lack of necessary materials, each of the settlements, fabrication hubs, and mining compounds in system reverted to more sustainable, lower technologies. Due to sporadic interfighting between each, the information itself to generate the old technologies would be lost. In time these would grow to be independent states, wary of neighbors as their cultures vastly diverged. By the time a certain habitation pod landed in Cretecia, the system itself had been embroiled in a war for twelve long years, crude warships ferrying troops between worlds or engaging in void combat, massive salvos of artillery shells flung from one world to another via gravity sling, and interplanetary assaults claiming hundreds of thousands in casualties.

Psyker Grade: Delta

While Caine lacks a vast array of skills and rarely is one to extort his capacity as a Psyker openly, he still remains a rather potent subject of the Emperor. Used passively in the Warp's tendencies to allow foresight and prediction, he is quite capable of naturally intuiting the results of battles currently in progress to a greater degree than a normal, mortal servant of the Emperor.

Skills/Abilities:

The Grand Game
A visionary for wide reaching warfare, Caine is comfortable and capable in conducting system campaigns down to the planetary level. His methods of achieving victory vary as the situation dictates, between the use of mass offensives, subtle flanking maneuvers, development of kill zones in defensive lines, or eliminating the enemy support Infrastructure. Caine remains quite light on his feet and responsive towards new developments and unexpected actions, flexible to adjust the details of his campaigns to better achieve victory.

In addition to this, as a notable architect who rebuilt his home system in the brutal, utilitarian method which has grown to characterize the Selys System, Caine places strong emphasis the restoration of worlds to a useful state following his conquests. He considers it to be an integral portion to the action of galactic conquest, something not to be shied away from in the name of speed. Despite this, Caine is not so inflexible as to place his forces at risk in the name of rebuilding a planet. A planet taken does not require immediate construction, save for the rapid placement of strongholds to which the Red Architects have become known for.


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Direct War
While Caine is rarely known to directly participate in personal combat, he remains a lethal implement of the Imperial will. Honed in training again and again, he prefers his fights to be brief, brutal, overwhelming. Utilizing a power blade and bolter, he applies force aggressively to shift enemy attentions, remove defenses, and if able quickly end combat with a bolter shell to the neck or a blade through the chest.

Appearance:

Standing at 11' 7", while one could claim the inheritors of the Emperor's gifts possess degrees of otherworldly beauty this is quickly proven false with Caine. With more mortal facial features, a smooth oval face, short black hair, and a bushy mustache extending past the corners of his mouth, if it weren't for his size one could potentially mistake the Primarch as an Imperial Army officer. His tanned musculature is notably lean, long limbed as he is, with calloused hands. Caine exudes a quiet confidence, capable and demanding of respect to all those about him.

While at peace, he wears a simple uniform in the Cretecian style with deep navy blue jacket, blue field kepi, trousers, and boots. The campaign ribbons are in a similar style, plain lines of muted colors against the blue sewen into the fabric. The quality of the uniform itself is relatively poor compared to what otherwise may be expected for a Primarch, drawn as it was from Selys stores. When in war zones, Caine dons a set of Mk III Powered Armor painted in the deep crimson of his Legion. Equipped with a number of shield generators intended to deflect incoming blows, he bears a single edged, curved power blade and a bolter into the close combat.

Concept:

The General. The Builder. As the hammer to break down the Imperium's many foes and the cement for which conquests would be integrated into that same Imperium, Caine is suitable towards the great many challenges for the future. Flexible, aggressive, and demanding, his way is that of total war, commitment to the victory no matter in which shape that might come. If a world can be taken with diplomacy only, that is his route. If a world must be taken by force, that is acceptable as well. Noncommittal to any singular way of war, he is perfectly comfortable whether his forces fly for leagues about a flank, land deep in the foe's rear to attack their leaders and supply lines, form long lines of defensive layers and fortresses, poison enemy supplies and arms, or all of the above. To worlds taken, Caine is exceedingly pragmatic, working on primary needs first with utilitarian, plain structures for power, water, housing, and transportation.

Legion Name: Red Architects
Associated Primarch: Caine
Concept:

A generalist Legion, the Fourth utilizes a wide range of tools to achieve its objectives in the Great Crusade. Aggressive in its actions and total in its measures, the Legion employs its full energy to move forces in offensive assaults, construct forward operating bases, build defensive lines, and to effectively destroy the enemy. Its tendencies to construct installations and strongholds extends far past the end of the planetary conquest, with Legion elements aiding in reconstruction efforts. In this degree, the Fourth is known to work exceptionally well with the Imperial Army to the degree that units permanently attached to the Legion tend to adopt many of the tendencies of Legionnaires.

Culturally, the Red Architects are highly pragmatic, holding that their tasks must be as perfect as can be practicably seen. Self-critical, they assess combat actions from low to high, often employing large numbers of observer servo-skulls to observe their actions and relay information back to the fleet. The Legion is highly insular to other Legions with only a few exceptions, eschewing the radical extremes of such.

Faction Name: Magh Meall

Faction Overview/Concept: A sanctuary for Felinid Abhumans carved out by a bloody slave uprising a generation ago. The Pan-Pacific Empire treated Felinids as a slave caste; visibly different, it was near-impossible to hide their status, and this made enforcement drastically easier. During a war with the Yndonesian Bloc, rations ran dangerously low, and the slaves were the first to have theirs cut--during a bread riot in the capitol, a spark ignited that threatened to cripple the economy of the Pan-Pacific.

At the height of the riots, a faction organised by Daira nic Leir snuck into their midst and inflamed the rioters to violent action; with much of the Empire's security forces pacifying occupied territories behind the front, the local defenses were quickly overwhelmed by sheer numbers and violent desperation. That the Pan-Pacific forces were routed was less remarkable than that Daira nic Leir was able to organise a rapid looting campaign of the capitol's stores and guide countless survivors out of the city and into the wilds, where they were brought to the 'promised land'--Magh Meall.

In truth, Daira's ancestors had found the secluded grove with their fellow escapees entirely by accident; a verdant plot of fertile land in the midst of an archipelago near the edge of the Pan-Pacific Empire's territory. Originally, the small commune was a haven for escaped slaves, kept safe by being kept secret, but Daira and her co-conspirators were born there, and, hale and healthy by comparison, felt they had an obligation to create a home for their people. They planned their intervention for years--the bread riots were their chance, and they seized on them eagerly. Preparations had been in place for some time, and the mythical 'promised land' was an easy way to convince the survivors to make the trek into the unknown.

In time, Magh Meall's reputation grew, and it both became a haven for escaped slaves and a target for reprisals. A militia formed, which later became an army--and when the ancient military bunker was found beneath the mountain, Archaeotech tanks made that army unstoppable on their home territory. Raids were launched to free more slaves, and before long the thorn in their side was more like a blade.

But with success came greater danger, and more than once, Magh Meall's existence seemed to hang on the edge of a knife; their enemies were vastly more numerous, and only their qualitative superiority allowed them to survive and thrive.

Eventually, Daira nic Leir passed, and her daughter, Ainne Anirsech, inherited the title of nic Leir. A soldier through-and-through, she is keenly aware of the suffering her people are only a generation removed from, and of the necessity of a powerful and skilled military to maintain that separation. She continues the trend of raids to keep the army sharp, but she hears rumblings of a force from beyond the Empire's borders--one that might end her people's trials once and for all.

Faction Assets: Controls an unusually-fertile archipelago near the edge of the Great Ocean, bordered on all sides by high cliffs that make conventional assault almost impossible; retractable medieval-style bridges span between the islands, with winches and cranes providing dockyard access for fishing. Population is remarkably high for the geographical area(which is roughly comparable to, say, Ireland or Scotland) due to migration, with a high urban/rural split to maximise farmland. Military consists of comparatively small conventional forces equipped with domestically-manufactured flak-style armour and lasguns, with limited CBRN survival capability(for traversing hazardous zones) via masks and similar. Most valuable conventional assets are domestic artillery production, with the most valuable assets in general being a number of heavy archaeotech tanks that are closely-shepherded and reserved for local defense or particularly dire situations where the risk of their loss is considered worthwhile. Raids are largely carried out by smaller 'buggy'-style vehicles produced domestically. Small but skilled conventional archaeotech air force, and significant locally-produced anti-air defenses for fending off the primary method by which the Pan-Pacific could theoretically attack.

Key Characters:

Ainne Anirsech nic Leir

Character Name: Ainne Anirsech nic Leir

Rank/Role: The Nic Leir / Ruler of Magh Meall

Appearance: Red hair, pale skin, green eyes, and freckles; a Felinid, with furry tufted ears, a long furred tail, sharp teeth, and wide-irised slit-pupilled eyes. She often wears martial attire; even when not in combat, her appearance tends to resemble a celtic warlord from the iron age more than anything else. She's slight and not particularly tall, like most of her species, though she's ludicrously agile and has good resilience to make up for it.

Biography: Daughter of a hero to her people, Ainne was born with a lot to live up to. Raised somewhere between a noblewoman and a soldier, she took much of the best of both worlds, with a strong sense of noblesse oblige; her mother had left paradise to bring others back into it, after all. As an adult, she became an officer in the Meallan military, developing skills as a general and leader-of-men that would come in handy later. At the same time, she was witness to the creation of an upper class of pseudo-nobility in her mother's lifetime, as the original members of the commune felt they had been there first and deserved certain preferential treatments--a quasi-feudal caste system emerged, which Daira was either unable or unwilling to prevent.

When her mother died, she came into a nation that had relatively little land but outsized power, ability, and resources; even still, projection beyond their borders except to free slaves was functionally impossible, and the inability to meaningfully topple the Empire that had enslaved her people vexed her. With the rise of the Imperium, however, she sees an opportunity to throw her lot in with a faction that will not only help her to achieve that, but, perhaps, give her and her people an even greater purpose.

(note; this character won't be introduced until the Great Crusade, I'm just apping her now so it's done)

Character Name: Lygeia 'Jay' Goldfinch

Rank/Role: Navis Imperialis Commander, Second in Command of the Heavy Cruiser Intruder

Appearance: Blonde-haired, freckle-faced, thin but well-built, Lygeia is a broadly unmodified Human from Iapetus, a moon of Saturn, she wears the blue-and-white of the Navis Imperialis, with a single golden pauldron as homage to her roots as a Voidsman-at-Arms.

Biography: Born on the Saturnyne moon of Iapetus, Jay was enamoured with the void from a young age. Raised by a family of Saturnyne Sailors, she enlisted as a Voidsman-at-Arms as soon as she was old enough, skipping the lengthier process of officerhood for a chance to get into the stars now. Quickly seeing action against first the Ringers and later Xenos, she gained significant combat experience--and a reputation for uncanny luck, surviving explosions and even decompression remarkably unscathed, and often being found in the midst of scenes of carnage unharmed. When she did take an injury fighting a Xenos raid on Titan, she was awarded a battlefield commission as a Lieutenant and given training in weapons systems; by the time she was thirty, she was a Lieutenant Commander in command of her own picket ship, and at fifty she is the second-in-command of the Heavy Cruiser Intruder, a Commander and the presumed next-in-line for the Captain's chair when her superior, Captain Thomas, retires.

Lygeia, however, craves more than a Captain's chair--one day she means to become an Admiral, and then...well. The stars are the limit.

Name: Leanna de Vries

Legion: XII

Homeworld: Verakracht

A feudal world originally occupied by Xenos, the young Primarch rapidly became identified as a divine figure by the locals, having quite literally fallen from the heavens; raised by guerillas in the forests and wilds outside of civilisation, she was groomed as a leader by her foster parents, themselves nobles deposed when the Xenos came from the stars. When the time came and the support of the people grew strong enough, Leanna was chosen to lead the rebellion--for it was the abduction and public executions of her parents that had galvanised the population. Leading a military revolt against the occupiers, she achieved military success, crowned empress of a new Empire--an Empire now tasked with the multiple responsibilities of defending against a returning invasion, squashing internal discontent, and conquering the rest of the world.

The only assistance came in the form of a decrepit space hulk, which crashed into the southern continent, flattened three villages with debris, and unleashed an archaeotech cache into the hands of Leanna's Empire--which they have put to very good use.

Psyker Grade: Iota

Skills/Abilities: A skilled orator with a supernatural aura of charismatic gravitas, Leanna is also a talented administrator, politico, artist, and warrior, though unlike many of her siblings, she prefers to fight in 'light' armour, trusting on superhuman speed and grace to carry her, rather than inhibiting heavy armour; that said, she remains a Primarch, and 'light' for her standards is still enough to take most smallarms and indirect impacts. In combat, she is primarily a fencer, favouring a 'small' Volkite pistol as a sidearm, and otherwise prioritising command and control over personal glory; she is a strategist and tactician before a warrior, though she is skilled with both.

Appearance: Tall and imposing like her siblings, Leanna is slimmer of frame than they. Hardly fragile by mortal standards, she remains less physically imposing than her peers, with a narrow face and almond-shaped eyes. Typically wearing a black headwrap with a jewelled tiara as a badge of office, she carries a thin, wickedly-curved power-sword and a volkite pistol with golden detailing. Her armour is golden and unsubtly ornamented, though she has a more subdued variant when the situation requires. With her veil down, her hair is raven-black, shoulder-length, and typically tied into a bun, plait, or tail, to keep it out of her eyes.

More notably, her time in the warp mutated her--her teeth are razor-sharp, her eyes slitted, with black sclera and pink pupils, and a lion-like tail with a black tuft lashes behind her.

Concept: Lady Fulgrim. Also; 'Light Primarch'. Duellist and Strategist instead of Warrior

Legion Name: Starlight Knights

Associated Primach: Leanna de Vries

Concept: 'Light' Legion, intended as scouts, special forces, probing attacks, assassinations, and, slightly anachronistically, melee duellists. Their unit culture and combat doctrine is distinctly that of a medieval force given firearms, with a higher priority on individual prowess and chivalric honour-codes than military professionalism and unit cohesion. An army of Gallants, they embody the platonic ideal of an Arthurian-style knight--emotional to the point of mania, fiercely passionate, skilled with blade and volkite alike, and with a unit-wide notion of noblesse oblige, they are determined that their geneseed gives them an obligation to care for the mortals of the Emperor's realm, and to shepherd them to eternal glory through camaraderie and force of arms. Often caught singing aloud when battle is joined, the Knights prize skills like art, music, and good management as much or more than skill at arms, giving them a reputation as somewhat decadent, and perhaps slightly mad, if lethally skilled. They prefer modified Astartes Scout-pattern armour, which allows greater mobility and agility in combat, with volkite pistols or rifles paired with power weapons for close-quarters combat. Most visually distinctive besides their equipment are their mutations; geneseed producing sympathetic changes to their lost Primarch, typically manifesting in sharpened teeth, black sclera and irises with colourful slitted pupils, and leonine tails, though not all members of the Legion receive every mutation--and some receive others entirely.

Name: Dargo Slynn

Legion: XIth, Astral Wardens

Homeworld: Kracsis III (Civilized World)

Psyker Grade: Delta. Dargo's primary use of his psychic abilities is to amplify his already prodigious strength and stamina to devastating levels, and he shows little interest in training them for anything else. They are already perfect.

Skills/Abilities:

Skin Like Stone: All primarchs are strong, but Dargo would count himself as the most sturdy. Even when out of armor, his latent psychic powers prevent most mundane weaponry from even drawing blood. Of course, like any psychic power, can be worn down over time if he is forced to maintain it.

Nothing You Build Can Keep Me Out: Dargo takes the direct route towards his goals. Fortifications crumble under his feet, and walls burst apart when he steps through them like they don't exist. This is yet another manifestation of his psychic ability.

Crafty and Cunning: While Dargo himself rarely has to worry about complex battle plans, the men and women in his service are a different story, and their fragile mortality thanks them for his consideration. A consummate tavern brawler, Dargo delights in laying traps and executing feints, often presenting himself as a diversion on the field of battle while his soldiers execute far more clandestine plans behind enemy lines.

Concept: A lover of lost lore and seeker of ancient artifacts. Dargo was created to be a historian and warden both, gifted with curiosity enough to dig deep into humanity's past to enrich their future, and strong enough to cage whatever must remain hidden. He collects antiquities both grand and small, keeping the greatest of them for his own personal collection aboard his flagship.

Dargo also is also possessed of incredible wanderlust, never satisfied on one planet for terribly long. Even prior to his official recovery by the Emperor, there exist many stories across many planets of his sudden arrival and equally as abrupt departure.

Legion Name:XI: Astral Wardens

Associated Primach: Dargo Slynn

Concept: Masters of void warfare, the Astral Wardens saw little activity until after Terra was unified. Their doctrine most closely resembles the swashbuckling ideal of naval warfare. This includes such things as broadsides, naval ramming, and boarding actions being common. When they do deploy planetside, it is almost always to accomplish a strategic objective with shock tactics before returning to their vessel. They tend to grow rather irritable when forced into a prolonged engagement. A symptom of their primarch's wanderlust perhaps.