Fan Fic / The Mortal Son

The Mortal Son^note Also found here by FreedomOfThinking is a Warhammer 40,000 fanfic.

For far too long, the Master of Mankind has been near helpless to combat the dangers humanity faces while he sits entombed on the Golden Throne. So, he decides to try something new. Well, new-ish.

On the quiet, isolated Agri World of Helios, something wonderful happens. A boy, named Lucian, is born. And for a time, this child knows only peace, living the simple life of a farm boy. But in the grim darkness of the far future, not even a place like Helios is safe from the machinations of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos. And when they finally strike, everything changes.

With his family dead and his home scarred, it is now apparent that Lucian is no longer a simple farmer. He is the heir of the God-Emperor, something far beyond human, whose very presence shakes the galaxy, whose actions will be the salvation or the damnation of trillions. And he's a naïve twelve-year-old, who doesn't know any of this.

Taken away from his home by an oddly cheerful Inquisitor, who's aided by a pair of mismatched Adeptus Arbites and a dying chapter of Space Marines, Lucian must learn to control his tremendous power and determine his destiny — and all the while Chaos and their foul minions seek to corrupt him, a fanatical Inquisitor plots to destroy him, and a myriad of prophecies edge closer to fulfilment.

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The Mortal Son provides examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism: Downplayed, as it's not at all clear what he's really up to, but it's apparent, especially following Chapter 28, that Magnus the Red is reasonably clearly on Lucian's side and isn't interested in helping Chaos.
• Amazon Chaser: Vownus really has a thing for tough-as-nails women. He constantly flirts with his ship's captain, finds several members of his ship's Guard complement rather attractive, and becomes smitten with the Governor of Balor, with her proud military heritage.
• Ascended Extra: Meta example. Inquisitors Vownus, Rykehuss and Ahmazzi are actually canon characters mentioned, however briefly, in the Dark Heresy sourcebook.
• Bash Brothers:
  • The Arbites, Lynwood and Caius — best shown when they take on several hundred cultists by themselves to rescue Lucian on Helios.
  • Brothers Tiberec and Rhamine of the Astral Knights, who have a Body-Count Competition based Friendly Rivalry. Tiberec is almost overcome with grief when Rhamine is killed on Balor.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: The swashbuckling and bizarrely optimistic Inquisitor Vownus is a risk-taker with a cavalier attitude and a weakness for the ladies, who overall doesn't behave like, well, an Inquisitor. But he's a powerful psyker, and his friendliness and empathy (by Inquisitor standards, at least) can often come in useful, such as by gaining the tentative trust of the Space Wolves, who usually hate the Inquisition with a burning passion.
• The Cavalry: Subverted. In Chapter 27, just as all hope on Balor seems lost and the Governor is killed, the Crimson Fists show up to take on the Orks. Then, shortly after they make landfall, Lucian vaporises every last one of the Greenskins.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Despite being a terrible flirt, Vownus is generally quite nice to the objects of his affection, and doesn't make creepy advances or attempt to abuse his authority over them.
• The Chosen One: Lucian, for very obvious reasons. To the point that the Inquisition, Space Wolves, Eldar and Balor Space Marine cell all have prophecies involving him. And, when Lucian meets with the psychic spirit of Malcador, he explicitly tells the boy that his destiny is to take up the Emperor's mantle and destroy Chaos — though the Emperor himself suggests that Lucian should go about reuniting the Primarchs.
• Deal with the Devil: To create the Primarchs, the Emperor made an agreement with the Chaos Gods — each of the Four would grant a boon to each Primarch, in exchange for the Emperor's sons being scattered across the galaxy. Lucian seems to be part of this 'deal', receiving a 'gift' from each of the Four: naturally, they all take this as an opportunity to corrupt him.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Justified example — it's heavily implied that the Ork WAAAGH! which assaults Balor, which just happened to be drifting in the Warp for an indeterminate amount of time, was orchestrated by Khorne in an attempt to corrupt Lucian. What's worse is that it's temporarily successful.
• Do Not Go Gentle: When the Chaos cultists arrive to kidnap Ostus, he takes out a significant number of them with his laspistol and fists before they finally overcome him.
• Doomed Hometown: Downplayed with Helios. The combined forces of the PDF, Ahmazzi and Vownus manage to crush the Chaos cult, but as a result of the cult's very existence, the entire planet becomes absolutely rife with paranoia, both of friends or family being heretics, or of the Inquisition thinking you are a heretic. Things get even worse when Rykehuss shows up and establishes his public Kangaroo Court.
• Establishing Character Moment: When we first encounter Vownus, he's presented with a choice of two routes his cruiser could use to reach Helios — one would take two weeks, the other would take 26 hours but take them dangerously close to a Warp Storm. He immediately chooses the latter. Yet, during the inevitable Daemonic attack on his ship, he fights alongside the Astral Knights to protect his crew, establishing him as a swashbuckling risk-taker who is nonetheless committed to protecting his men.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Lynwood, despite being a stony-faced Adeptus Arbite who's more cybernetic replacements than flesh at this point, is actually surprisingly empathetic at times. There's his bond with Caius despite their age gap, the fact he managed to talk sense into Lucian and snap him out of a Heroic BSoD after he killed 600 people with his mind right in front of him, attends the 'funeral' for his surrogate parents, and generally has moments of affection towards the boy. There's also his doomed romance with his former employer, an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor, with him leaving to join the Arbites after their relationship started affecting her work.
• Hunter of Their Own Kind: Vownus is a powerful Alpha-plus psyker... and also a Witch Hunter (an Inquisitor who specialises in hunting down psykers). However, it's worth noting that (in his canon backstory at least), he thinks psykers are the future of humanity and will go to significant lengths to protect them, but that doesn't stop him taking out any who are unstable or corrupted, as is so often the case.
• Knight Templar: The monodominant Inquisitor Rykehuss, who fits more or less every single nasty stereotype about psychotic 40k Inquisitors to a T. His method of choice in rooting out Heretics is to set up a massive public Kangaroo Court where suspects can be questioned and tortured in front of thousands. Vownus and Ahmazzi both think he's a monster and are determined to get Lucian off Helios before he can show up and attempt to kill him for being a psyker.
• Messianic Archetype: Lucian, obviously. A tremendously powerful, innocent child, destined to (hopefully) take the fight to Chaos. He is the son of (the) God(-Emperor) after all. Bonus points for having a virgin mother.
• Mysterious Protector: Among the members of the cell of repentant Astartes on Balor is 'Mordo', a Space Marine with no markings whatsoever on his armour, which unnerves Caius and Lynwood. It quickly becomes apparent that 'Mordo' is not an Astartes, but some sort of Warp entity — the missing Primarch Corvus Corax, in fact.
• Mystical Pregnancy: That of Lucian's mother. For rather obvious reasons, given that the Emperor isn't likely going to be fathering any children by normal means, what with being a rotting almost-corpse stuck on the Golden Throne and all.
• Noodle Implements: Played for Horror. The ritual the Helios Chaos Cult tries to conduct with Lucian — whether the aim is to corrupt him, summon a powerful Daemon, or something even worse is unclear — also involves Ostus, his mentor-come-father-figure, and his crush Vanella. What exactly they're going to to to them (especially the latter, given that Slaanesh exists) doesn't really bear thinking about. Thankfully the ritual is interrupted, though Ostus still dies from his wounds.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: In Chapter 28, Lucian finally unleashes his full powers. The result? A World-Wrecking Wave that atomizes every last ork attacking Balor, immediately drawing the attention of psychically-sensitive beings across the galaxy — for the only possible explanation for a display of such raw power is that the Emperor is back. And he technically is.
• Person of Mass Destruction:
  • Lucian — as the son of the Emperor, he's quite probably the most powerful psyker in the entire galaxy. In the opening chapters, after the Arbites manage to untie him from the Chaos altar, he turns 600 cultists into Pink Mist in the blink of an eye. The problem is, being an immature child, he doesn't have very much control over this staggering amount of power — he accidentally pulps a very unlucky Tempestus Scion who tried to grab him after the aforementioned incident, and when he finally starts practical training, an attempt to produce a simple lighting bolt leads to a blast of energy more powerful than a nuclear bomb.
  • But that? That was nothing. In Chapter 28, Lucian unleashes a psychic World-Wrecking Wave which reduces billions of orks to ash.
• The Remnant: Among Inquisitor Vownus' retinue are the surviving members of the Astral Knights, an all-but-extinct chapter of Space Marines who wiped themselves out destroying a Necron superweapon^note (this is canon). Only thirty battle-brothers survived (a skeleton crew left behind to defend their Fortress-Monastery base), and only six (plus a Dreadnought) were left by the time Vownus came across them. They all wish to have died gloriously fighting alongside their brothers, and desperately seek to restore their Chapter.
• Resurrective Immortality: Lucian is a Perpetual^note or something much like one. The other human characters find this out when Magnus the Red sends a shapeshifting Lord of Change to kill him, just so he can have a chat with his disembodied consciousness — he then promptly returns to life in a flash of light. Vownus also takes advantage of this during the battle for Balor, killing him after he gets possessed by Khorne.
• Rousing Speech: Among the talents Lucian has inherited from his 'father' include being able to radiate a near-supernatural charisma and deliver speeches extolling the need for unity among humankind which bring tears to the eyes of any watching mortals. This is (kinda) Played for Laughs, given that Lucian doesn't even seem to realise that he's doing it.
• Shout-Out:
  • In Chapter 12, two Orks have a conversation which apes the iconic opening scene of Red vs. Blue:

    Skrollwazza Ironrukk: 'ey Grob.

    Grobgob Gitsmasha: Yea Skroll?

    Skrollwazza Ironrukk: Why you phink we're 'ere?

    Grobgob Gitsmasha: ...wot?

  • Several to Halo: Reach:
    • Chapters 17 and 18 are titled Winter Contingency and Tip of the Spear respectively, both names of levels from the game.
    • During the battle against the Orks on Balor, Wing-Captain Tash crashes his Thunderbolt fighter into an Ork Gargant, severely damaging it, in a Heroic Sacrifice mirroring that of Carter taking out the Scarab in the game's final mission, with matching dialogue to boot.

      Avery: You don't have the firepower to-

      Tash: But I may have the mass.

  • The Crimson Fists fleet includes an Assault Cruiser named Shadow of Intent, the name of the Shipmaster's vessel in Halo 3.
  • The aftermath of Lucian's psychic Ork-Killing Wave is described as "Dust and echoes", a reference to one of Cortana's final lines in Halo: Combat Evolved.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Romosein Welis, Planetary Governor of Helios, is only mentioned in a brief passage in Chapter 1, but his genuine commitment to protecting his people leads to him calling in favours to summon the Inquisitor after Lynwood and Caius discover evidence of a Chaos cult, which means he's probably responsible for Lucian not being sacrificed in the Chaos ritual, and at the very least for Vownus finding him before someone far less sympathetic to Psykers did.
• Tyke Bomb: Titos, Luican's best friend on Helios, has Cadian blood, and is fanatically loyal to the Imperium — wanting nothing more than to join the Imperial Guard as soon as he's old enough. Unfortunately he ends up in the clutches of Inquisitor Ahmazzi, who's impressed by his zealotry — impressed enough to subject him to training so brutal it would make a Navy SEAL nauseous to turn him into an assassin.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Lucian, in spades. His psychic potential is, for obvious reasons, comparable only to that of the Emperor of Mankind, but he has very limited control over it. Best demonstrated when, after he finally tries a practical exercise of his powers, an attempt at producing a simple Warp-lightning bolt leads to a blast of energy several times more powerful than a nuclear bomb.
• Wham Line:
  • In Chapter 25, after Khorne gives Lucian his gift, of a sword, he tells him that he'll become powerful enough to strike down the Krork Warboss if he says it. And he does.

    Lucian: BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!!

  • And one chapter after that, 'Mordo' reveals his true identity:

    Mordo: My name is Corvus Corax, Primarch of the Raven Guard, Son of the Emperor... And I'm here to make sure you haven't killed my Brother, Inquisitor.

• Wild Card: Magnus the Red. It's very, very unclear what his ultimate goal is, which would make him a Hidden Agenda Villain if his evilness wasn't highly up for debate. He starts having psychic dream-chats with Lucian and teaching him how to control his powers, and doesn't seem to be trying to claim him for Chaos — though he does mention that serving Chaos would be better than serving the Imperium.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When the Ork WAAAGH! starts bearing down on Balor, Vownus starts preparing to get the hell out of Dodge, because Lucian and his prophecies are too important to risk getting krumped by dirty Greenskins... Lucian himself then publicly calls him out for being a Dirty Coward, claiming he's ready to fight and die for the Imperium. Vownus concedes he has a point (and/or doesn't want to seem weak in comparison to a child), and decides to stay and fight.
• World-Wrecking Wave: Lucian channels his full power to produce one of these, defeating the Orks. He somehow exploits the psychic connection between the Krork Warboss and his Boyz, producing two waves of golden light that spread throughout the horde — the first freezes the Orks in place, the second atomizes them.

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