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The Horus Heresy is an Age of Legends, and so they must be recorded.

Here you may add both characters from the Horus Heresy book series, and the Forgeworld ones.

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The Legiones Astartes

    The Two Lost Primarchs 

Primarchs II and XI

Two Primarchs who were, along with their Legions, completely erased from all records and history so thoroughly, nobody knows what happened to them.
  • Ambiguous Ending: At some point, they simply disappeared from all Imperial records, and the only people who know what happened are quick to cut off any train of thought that would lead to answers.
  • Covers Always Lie: The cover art for the audio drama The Sigillite depicts Malcador the Sigillite sitting on a throne, which has a pair of skulls - marked with the Roman numeral for one of the lost Legions - integrated into each arm rest. When the cover art was revealed prior to release, many fans speculated that it would finally reveal key information about the Legions and/or their fates (something which Games Workshop even hinted at in the article revealing the cover art). Fast-forward to its release, and the only mention of the two Legions and their Primarchs in the drama is an off-hand comment about how, out of the twenty Space Marine legion symbols on the door to the Emperor's old gene-labs, two had apparently been scratched off or worn away.
  • Historical In-Joke: They were originally a reference to Rome's 17th, 18th, and 19th legions, whose numbers and symbols weren't used again after being wiped out in the Teutoburg Forest.
  • Redemption Equals Death: One possible interpretation. Rick Priestley, the inventor of the Lost Legions concept, has said that his personal theory was that they had committed terrible crimes of some sort during the Horus Heresy, but ultimately redeemed themselves, and were allowed to be "forgiven and forgotten" as a result. If this is true, then this would explain why they, but not the nine unrepentant Traitor Legions/Primarchs, were completely lost to history. However, he also noted that, as he has since left Games Workshop, the idea never made it into a published source, and II/XI have since been confirmed to have been deleted several decades before the Heresy, this cannot be taken as canon.
  • Riddle for the Ages: Don't expect to be actually knowing for sure about these guys anytime soon. However, there are theories:
    • It has been repeatedly hinted that the Space Wolves were involved in wiping out their Legions. It would explain their sobriquet 'The Emperor's Executioners', though it seems that they nominated themselves for the title. This was directly acknowledged by Alpharius in his Primarchs series novel, where he says he he suspects at least one of the lost Primarchs met his end at the hands of Leman Russ and the Space Wolves (although he also admits that he has no evidence to back this up).
      • The third Dawn of Fire book, The Wolftime, appears to confirm that the Wolves went after the XI Legion for an act of betrayal, which they were somehow manipulated into. Naturally, it does not explain what happened after, nor who misled them; however, the fact that the XI Legion's Marines were apparently worth re-assigning to new roles after its deletion, but its Primarch was not (as mentioned in The Chamber at the End of Memory), makes him a candidate.
    • Another implication that comes up occasionally is that one or both were genetically compromised in some way. In Fear to Tread specifically Sanguinius believes that the Red Thirst, the genetic flaw his Blood Angels and he himself are subject to, would result in the Legion's extermination if it were revealed and that he personally would become a "third empty plinth" beneath the roof of the Hegemon, referencing the statues of the Primarchs that were put there, with the exception of the missing Primarchs.
    • A justification for the size of the Ultramarines (and some deviations amongst their successors) is that the lost Legions were absorbed by Guilliman's sons. However, the author who suggested this has said that he wished he never wrote it, or at least wrote it in a less credible way, as fans were taking it as gospel rather than in-universe gossip like he intended.
    • A description of the Rangdan Xenocides in Forge World's seventh Horus Heresy rulebook mentions that "entire Space Marine legions [REDACTED SECTION] lost to the Imperium". This may mean that one or both of the two Legions were lost during the campaign, which is supported by an article on the Regimental Standard website confirming that they at least participated in it (although it naturally cuts off just before the Legions' names can be given). However, since part of the quote is missing, other interpretations, such as the Legion(s) simply being believed lost, are also possible.
    • Fabius Bile: Clonelord, a novel set in the 40K era, mentions that one of the Lost Primarchs (implicitly the second due to the timeline of events) led an expedition to the Ymga Monolith early in the Great Crusade, and that no records of what happened during the expedition survived to the present day. Since the Monolith has been discovered to be an insanely powerful piece of Necron technology during the aftermath of the Fall of Cadia, this raise some questions as to whether it may have been involved in that Primarch's disappearance.
    • Roboute Guilliman's comments on the two Lost Primarchs suggest that they "failed" in some unspecified way, yet he still saw fit to honour them by marking their absence at the ceremonial table he'd built for the Emperor and the rest of his brothers. This points to their failure not being an act of treason, unlike the actions of Horus and the other Traitor Primarchs. However, The Chamber at the End of Memory later revealed that almost no one who met them can recall who they were and what happened to them anymore, due to Malcador suppressing the memories at his and Rogal Dorn's request, so it's likely that he just doesn't remember the truth.
    • The Chamber at the End of Memory reveals a substantial amount about them, mainly that the reason they were eradicated was so horrible that both Dorn and Malcador considered it worse than the Horus Heresy up to this point, and that Dorn was willing to lie and willingly alter his own memory to preserve the truth of it, rather than destroy everything. Additionally, their (possible) tombs are protected by extremely powerful wards and it is detailed that their Legions were spared their Primarchs' fate, and put to use somewhere else with their memories of their gene-fathers wiped as part of a scheme enacted by Dorn and Guilliman with the blessing of the Emperor.
      • This connection with Dorn and Guilliman led early reviewers of the story to erroneously claim that it confirmed the Space Marines of the two Legions were absorbed into the Ultramarines and Imperial Fists. While the story definitely leaves this possibility open, it does not actually state where the Marines ended up, and the evidence for the absorption theory is circumstantial at best.
    • In Angel Exterminatus Perturabo remembers ascending a tower to meet the Emperor during his last day on Terra. The challenge tested him to the very limits of his superhuman will and intellect through a psychic communion with his Father. He also remembers that not all his brothers had passed the test... but he does not mention any name.
    • In Wolfsbane, Leman Russ reminisces about being the second Primarch found by the Emperor, and implies that Ferrus Manus was the third; then he starts to discuss another brother who may have been found before Ferrus, only for the rumbling of the ship and the Ruinstorm outside to drown out his words, aside from "...how tragically that ended".
  • Shrug of God: Aaron Dembski-Bowden has said online that there is no official answer from Games Workshop about what happened to the Lost Legions, because there's not allowed to be an answer.
  • The Stoic: Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix gives us a rare description of either of their personalities. It describes the Second Legion Primarch as a contemplative and quiet man with little humor. However, it should be noted that this comes from Fulgrim recalling a recent disagreement he had with the Second (and the other six Primarchs who were active at the time); it is always possible that the Second just acted coldly to Fulgrim out of dislike.
  • Toppled Statue: In a flashback in the short story The Last Council, Malcador informs Horus, Alpharius, and the Khan that he is having the statue of one of the two lost primarchs taken down, pulverized, and used to line the walkways of the Imperial Palace's gardens, as he and the Council of Terra have deemed the primarch in question unworthy of being memorialized in the great Investiary. Horus is furious, and even the Khan is noticeably put off.
  • Un-person: The primarchs of the II and XI Legions were at some point completely expunged from Imperial records on the Emperor's order, and the reasons why are completely unknown. They are alluded to a couple of times (usually as a tragedy). but whenever they are the person who brought them up is very quickly reminded not to talk about it. In The Chamber at the End of Memory, it is revealed that Malcador used his power to telepathically erase everything but the faintest memory of them existing from the Primarchs who personally knew them. Ultimately, it's a downplayed trope in that the missing Primarchs are still notable by their absence. The Legiones Astartes have two obvious missing numerals and the absent Primarchs are still noted by empty plinths among decorations featuring the Primarchs as a whole. Several of the remaining Primarchs also seem to recall that they at least knew them, as Rogal Dorn is able to remember that, while some of them never met the lost two, he knew both for at least a short amount of time.
  • Unwitting Pawn: The Wolftime apparently confirms that the XI Legion did turn traitor, and for this reason. It seems that someone manipulated them into betraying the Emperor, without them realising (at least at first).
  • Watsonian versus Doylist: You can understand that they are intended as blanks for the players and readers to fill in. Or you can spend hours on discussing online what has happened to them.
  • You Have Failed Me: Some characters state that they failed in some way and this was the reason for their erasure. Horus, the Khan and Alpharius' surprise at the seemingly Disproportionate Retribution and Malcador's refusal to elaborate hint at deeper meanings.

Others

Imperium of Man

    The Emperor of Mankind 

The Emperor of Mankind

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/t-be-Wr.jpg

The Emperor of Mankind is the unquestioned ruler of the Imperium. Not much is known about the Emperor, but it is stated that he suddenly appeared during the Age of Strife on Terra, leading armies of Thunder Warriors to unite the splintered nations and tribes of the war-ravaged planet before launching a campaign of galactic reclamation at the head of Legions of Space Marines, known as the Great Crusade. The Emperor established the Imperium and many of its core institutions, conquering thousands of planets alongside his Primarchs and uniting most of mankind under the secular Imperial Truth. Allegedly needed to prevent human extinction, it resulted in the deaths of billions. Ironically, the god-like powers of the Emperor made him the object of a nascent religion.


  • Abusive Parent: Not deliberately, but the Emperor has difficulty understanding or empathizing with his sons in any meaningful way, which caused several of them to cultivate grudges that would ultimately lead them to turn on him.
    • As some characters interpret His words, He doesn't consider himself to be the Primarchs' father, seeing them as his creations rather than his family. He was willing to entertain the notion, since it made them useful. Before he left the Crusade, he grew to appreciate at least Horus as an individual rather than an asset.
    • The Emperor had also been very secretive about the existence and nature of Chaos. If the Emperor had given his sons even rudimentary knowledge about Chaos and his plans for protecting humanity, it's possible that he could have avoided the Heresy altogether.
    • He named Horus his Warmaster and left for Terra, publicly to consolidate the Imperium's gains, privately to work on a project important to the Imperium's survival. He didn't bother telling Horus why he was leaving, and the hurt from this implicit lack of trust along with the enormous responsibility thrust upon him was too much for even Horus to handle, giving the Word Bearers enough leverage to influence Horus into throwing in with Chaos.
    • He whisked Angron away from his gladiator army on the eve of their Last Stand, instead of fighting with them or intervening on their behalf, and didn't bother to even explain himself to Angron. Angron felt cheated out of a dignified ending and out of the extended family he had gathered around himself. It wasn't until much later that we, the audience, learned that the Emperor made a deal with the rulers of that world to take Angron in exchange for a bloodless compliance, though he could have easily interceded or taken the world by force. In the end it was a demonstration that the Emperor would allow his priorities to override that of his sons.
      • Similar to Angron, Mortarion never forgave the Emperor for saving his life. When Mortarion nearly died in a duel against his adoptive father (whatever he was), the Emperor saved the day at the last minute by killing Mortarion's adoptive father, saving Mortarion's life and collecting on Mortarion's oath of fealty. While this should have ultimately been a positive experience, it was colored with resentment. Mortarion, not being a very pleasant individual, probably felt that he should have died for being too weak to follow through on his goal, and saw his elevated position as a form of humiliation.
    • Perturabo, being cold and mercurial when he wasn't consumed with rage, resented that his talents in engineering would be put to use in tearing down fortresses rather than building them. Though destruction matched his temperament, his passion was creation, and he wanted to be an architect rather than a destroyer. Seeing his brother and personal rival Rogal Dorn doing the kind of work he wanted to be doing and being showered with accolades and glory for it, while he was given the hard and costly work and frequently overlooked by the Emperor and the public, left Perturabo with a profound sense of jealousy, an inferiority complex, and deep bitterness. Then his homeworld Olympia rebelled, a great humiliation for Pert, and his fury at this insult caused him to respond with disproportionate force by ordering his Legion to literally decimate the planet. This left him with great shame over how his anger had overwhelmed his better judgment and led him to murder his foster sister and destroy Olympia's people, making him no better than the likes of Konrad Curze. When it came time to sever his loyalties with the Imperium, Olympia would have been the straw that broke the camel's back, but it was more of a bale or two.
    • Interestingly this trope is somewhat muted with Curze. The Emperor seemed to have shown a degree of tolerance for Curze's heavy-handed tactics (the same kind of leeway was given to the Space Wolves and the World Eaters) as well as Curze's psychosis, and the reason for Curze turning against the Emperor was partly because of a vision of his death coming from the hand of the Emperor when they first met. In the end, that would become a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Curze strongly believed that humanity would go feral if not for the promise of retribution, and thus he believed in establishing order via bloody dictatorship. By the time the Heresy rolled around, he and his Legion were already borderline renegades because they constantly went overboard in violently punishing defeated enemies and even turning on allies who tried to force them to show restraint. Curze would eventually let the Emperor's agents kill him, something he felt would ultimately vindicate him. It's curious to wonder how much Nostramo left a mark on him, and just how much of a mark he left on Nostramo.
    • Then comes Magnus the Red, who was one of the Emperor's most loyal sons right up to the Burning of Prospero. The Council of Nikaea was, on paper, a debate about the usefulness of psykers in the Space Marine Legions. It's not entirely clear if the Emperor was planning to make the whole thing into a show trial, or if it was political maneuvering by Magnus's brothers, or if Tzeentch had tipped the scales (and if so, by how much). Either way the reality of the Council was the same: the way the Emperor conducted the proceedings made it more of a character-assassinating Kangaroo Court that left Magnus humiliated and even more determined to prove the worth of psychic powers, despite them now being illegal. When Magnus tried using sorcery to warn the Emperor about Horus' rebellion, he destroyed the Emperor's plan to create an access point to the Webway and didn't even get the warning out before realization and shame forced him to retreat. The Emperor sent the Space Wolves to Prospero to bring Magnus and the Thousand Sons to Terra to answer for their crimes, giving Horus the opening to alter the orders to completely annihilate Magnus and his legion.
    • Further illustrated in the backstory regarding the Imperial Palace: beneath the deepest halls were built 20 apartments that were to serve as homes for the Primarchs after the end of the Great Crusade. While they are described as being huge and luxurious enough to make even a Vanderbilt salivate with envy, it's very clear by the description that they were Gilded Cages, where the Primarchs would be contained, having served their intended purpose and no longer needed. Forget Horus, how would any of them have reacted upon learning they were destined to basically be prisoners once their usefulness ended?
  • A Form You Are Comfortable With: As the real form of the Emperor may cause everything from sudden outbursts of religious adoration to serious brain damage, he often uses humble human guises. He even claims to Corax that he doesn't have a true form, as even his face varies from moment to moment, but he tends to dim his glow when appropriate.
    • To Space Marines and Primarchs His armour is superlatively ornate, while the Custodians see it as more practical and stripped-down. To Arkan Land, who believes Him to be the avatar of the Machine God, He appears more a man of science than a warlord or ruler.
    • Even His words differ depending on who He speaks to, and he lampshades this. A member of the Mechanicum and a Custodian hear Him refer to the Primarchs by number and "it". To another Custodian, He speaks of Horus by name and as a "he".
  • The Ace: The Emperor is the most remarkable individual in the Imperium and perhaps in the history of mankind. He is a brilliant scientist, as his work on post-human modification suggests, a superlative military commander who managed the Great Crusade for a long period of time without a hitch, the most powerful psyker in human history, and a very charismatic leader when he needs to be. The one reason his plans for the Imperium fail is that he's operating on a galactic scale even he can't perfectly manage, with untold numbers of parties and parameters to think about.
  • A God I Am Not: Spends a lot of time trying to convince people he's not, in fact, a deity of any sort. It seems to work on the outside, but as the Heresy goes on, Emperor-worshippers are coming out of the woodwork in increasing numbers.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Pretty much runs on this, even in-universe. Depending on how you look at him, he's any or all of an autocratic tyrant, a flawed idealist, power-hungry conqueror, bringer of peace, usurper, liberator, superhuman or divine.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: He won Terra because he had the mightiest armies, and he had the mightiest armies because he fought for them and won.
  • Badass Bookworm: For all his physical prowess, he's also an excellent engineer and biologist.
  • Been There, Shaped History:
    • Largely averted, as the Emperor has pretty much kept quiet for the long span of time he's been alive, though he has popped up a few times when humanity needed him, and no one is really sure where and when these events were, or the identity he took on at the time.
    • However, by 40K's "present day", he took on an enormous role in the events that shaped humanity's past and the galaxy at large, as the founding of the Imperium is basically ancient history.
    • In The End and the Death, Horus confirms that the Emperor was at least Alexander the Great, though in his insane state, it may be wise to take it with a grain of salt.
  • The Blacksmith: In the short story Lantern's Light the Emperor discusses with Mortarion that he spends at least some of his time crafting weapons and armor as a distraction from running the Imperium and the Crusade. He personally made at least one item for each of his sons, be it a weapon, a piece of armor or something else.
  • Bling of War: His prime self is almost always depicted wearing an insanely elaborate suit of golden armour. That being said, it's not entirely sure if he's actually wearing it or if it's a glamour. The End and the Death justifies the trope by revealing that his armor is made of auramite, a psychically stable material that allows him to more finely manipulate the energies of the Warp.
  • Create Your Own Villain: Most of the traitor primarchs would probably have stayed loyal if it wasn't for his actions. Among his pearls of brilliance are things like:
    • Kidnapping Angron just as his extended family was about to make their Last Stand and leaving them to die instead of intervening.
    • Pegging Perturabo - a talented engineer, architect and diplomat - into siegecraft instead of actually listening to what he'd want. Downplayed, as Perturabo didn't reveal his ideas, and chose to simply accept any order.
    • Leaving Horus to run the Crusade without giving him a proper explanation about the dangers of Chaos or telling him why he was leaving.
    • Responding to Lorgar's fervent belief in his divinity by having the Ultramarines raze the Urizen's most beautiful and successful shrine-city to the ground and forcing him to kneel in its ashes while telling him he was a failure. Although some works stay that he did order Lorgar to cease worshipping multiple times before.
    • Not believing Magnus' tale of Horus' betrayal, instead siccing the Rout on the Thousand Sons.
  • Cult of Personality: By the time of the Triumph at Ullanor, a lot of Imperials would refer to him as "the Emperor, beloved by all", a phrase that would only grow more ironic as the Heresy continued. Its development into an actual cult was basically a surprise to nobody but him.
  • Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Twice.
    • His sons grew up without him because they were kidnapped by Chaos; he spent decades searching for them.
    • He leaves the Great Crusade to work on another of his "stop using the Warp" projects.
  • Deadpan Snarker:
    • Who would've thought? And yet, in Deliverance Lost, when everyone present falls to their knees in reverence as he arrives, his only reaction is:
    An occupational hazard.
    • He's noted by Erda that she knew him as being a funny individual while she worked with him. John Grammaticus, who she's talking to at the time, found this to be a dubious prospect, but he's reassured that the Emperor can be a much more human individual when he chooses to be.
  • Deconstructed Character Archetype: Time Abyss. His age and powers made him pretty much impossible to sympathize with - or for him to sympathize with anyone, for that matter - gave him a raging case of wiser-than-thou and led to him acting in ways that may seem natural to him, but come off as jerkass to others.
    • Some of the Word Bearers were confused as to why he took so long to rebuke them. He told Lorgar not to worship him, Lorgar took it as modesty, the Word Bearers spread his religion for a century, and then the Emperor burned their most successful planet. It is possible that to him, he had just given Lorgar a direct order.
    • A theory out-of-universe has it that he never told Horus about Chaos and didn't explain why he was going back to Terra because for him, leaving for two decades or so is the equivalent of a bathroom break, while for Horus it's a tenth of his life.
    • Malcador notes in The End and the Death that some of the issues with the Primarchs came at least partly from the Emperor being unwilling to trust them, because even though they're supposed to be His sons, the span of time they've been around feels like hardly anything to Him; He feels like he's barely gotten a chance to know them.
  • Depending on the Writer: And the character as well. Partly this seems intentional: that the Emperor and his actions are open to different viewpoints and interpretations. Different writers, and different characters, tend to portray the Emperor in different ways:
    • Graham McNeill generally portrays him as competent and benevolent (if flawed).
    • Dan Abnett portrays him as competent but bloodthirsty.
    • Aaron Dembski-Bowden portrays him as a vicious, needlessly cruel imbecile.
    • The traitors might argue he's lied and deceived them and the rest of humanity for his own power, and is no better than the tyrants many of them overthrew growing up.
    • The loyalists in turn may argue that he had good reasons for concealing things from them, and even if they disagree with those reasons, Horus is still wrong to take it to this extreme just because he feels hurt. It shifts the Heresy from less of a sudden betrayal by moustache-twirling villains to a more genuine civil war between different factions with their own arguments (as much as it can while still staying true to the core background story already set in place).
    • This also seems to be a very unfortunate side effect of his powers. He is a psyker of such power that he is practically a living conduit into the warp. As such, his speech, actions, appearance, and mannerisms are often interpreted differently by different people. Even if the Emperor isn't intending it, people may hear something in the way they want to hear it.
    • In addition, while the Emperor is incredibly powerful and intelligent and driven, and he can be very charismatic and charming when he wants to be, he is very much lacking in empathy or humility. Bluntly speaking, the Emperor is just not used to being told "no". He makes decisions that make sense in trying to achieve his overall goal and objective, but he doesn't take into account other people's feelings or opinions. It is his way or the highway, simple as that, and if you can't understand what he's doing, then you must be too limited. While he was willing to negotiate and grant some concessions, if you did not ultimately submit to his will, then he would mow you down. While this was a very useful trait for a warlord and ruler, it also stirred up a LOT of festering resentment that the Chaos gods were only happy to exploit.
      • Part of this is that he has rarely lived with other people who could match him in terms of power or longevity. If someone hated his decisions, they usually wouldn't live long enough for it to make a difference. If they opposed him, the Emperor was so powerful that he could usually just kill them or bend them to his will.
      • However, even other Perpetuals who have worked with the Emperor, like Ollanius Persson or Erda, often end up turning against him. The Emperor's former colleagues state that his sheer raw power and intelligence, combined with his single-minded devotion to his vision and his objectives, meant that he often came across as an outright tyrant.
    • On top of that, he uses a vast network of glamours and other magic that makes him look and sound completely different depending on who's looking at him and allows or causes people to hear his statements in completely different contexts with completely different words. If the Emperor intends this, he may not realize that many people interpret his behavior in way that gives them the justification they are subconsciously seeking to betray him later on.
    • Even when the Emperor isn't lying or being manipulative, he rarely bothers to give a full explanation of what he is doing for fear that his enemies will use that information against him. Unfortunately, this meant that even his closest servants (like Horus) felt used and abandoned.
    • All of this, when combined together ... means that it's impossible to read the guy and it makes a lot of people distrust him, especially after they've spent a long time thinking about it (like Horus and the Fabricator General for example).
  • Deus Exit Machina: If the Emperor were able to strike out from Terra, the Heresy would rapidly become impossible for the traitors, but he's stuck on the Golden Throne containing the deadly fallout of Magnus's Folly for all but two short occasions where others are able to take the burden for a time.
  • Did Not See That Coming: Towards the end of The End and the Death: Part II, seeing Ollanius in person again after countless millennia aboard the Vengeful Spirit of all places since his betrayal in prehistory is what stops his ascension into a fifth Chaos God cold due to the sheer confusion and surprise seeing one of his oldest friends show up out of the blue in the middle of such a pivotal battle. It is thanks to this confusion that Ollanius is able to talk directly to the Emperor and steer him away from the path he was setting himself towards.
  • The Dreaded: The one and the only thing to ever make the Ruinous Powers ever cooperate on anything because of how much they feared him. The Chaos Gods and daemons have a special nickname for him: the Anathema, suggesting that they do consider him the greatest threat to their existence.
  • The Emperor: As His name suggests, the Emperor is the unquestioned ruler of the Imperium of Man and the maker and leader of his Space Marine Legions for most of the Great Crusade. Depending on the person, he could simply be a brilliant Evil Overlord who is committing massacres for power, or The Good King who is protecting mankind from the many threats to its existence. Nothing is so simple, as the Emperor has mankind's best interests in mind, but doesn't concern himself with the fate of individuals or even mere planets.
  • Emperor Scientist: The Emperor created several breeds of transhumans specialized for war, mastering subjects like genetics and biology to turn humans into super soldiers of varying strength. The most common of his creations are the Space Marines, while the Thunder Warriors were their imperfect prototypes. The Custodians are his most prized creations, and are to a Space Marine what a Space Marine is to an ordinary man. In addition he created the Primarchs, who are only nominally human, having a wildly different biology compared to mere men, resulting in each of them being superhuman in all aspects. The Emperor also oversaw the creation of a human Webway gate and the Golden Throne, suggesting a mastery of psy-tech.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": If he ever had a name, it's lost to time now; at present, he's simply "the Emperor".
    • In Saturnine, Erda tells John Grammaticus that he went by "Neoth" when she first met him. If Horus can be believed, he was also Alexander the Great.
  • Fatal Flaw:His tendency to go for the most expedient route available, combined with farsightedness and arrogance. Specifically, it's shown throughout his life that he has a bad habit of going for short-term solutions, even when doing so would likely create further problems down the line. The first instance of this was when he insisted on preserving the Tower of Babel to be used against Chaos, even when it was pointed how easily it could be abused, which ultimately led to his falling out with his first Warmaster, Ollanius Pius. It's especially apparent throughout the Great Crusade, where he either leaves clearly dangerous or unstable individuals in power (Konrad, Perturabo, Angron) or creates the conditions that would lead to them becoming that way (kidnapping Angron rather than actually helping him) simply because it was the quickest option for getting results.
  • Fantastic Racism: Fervently hates xenos and purges them whenever encountered. His main reason for that is humanity was betrayed and enslaved by countless alien species during the Age of Strife.
  • Flaming Sword: His signature weapon is a colossal power sword that he fuels with his mind to keep it on fire.
  • Four-Star Badass: During the Unification Wars and the Great Crusade he was very much a front-line general.
  • The Ghost: Because he has to stay on the Golden Throne to stop an endless tide of daemons from spilling over into the Palace, he can't leave the Dungeon and thus rarely appears in the series except as a memory, a vision or a psychic voice.
  • God-Emperor: The Trope Codifier. Despite his own distaste for religion, the Emperor's psychic might and incredible displays of power result in many people developing a religious fervour for him. Even his son Lorgar thought for a time that he was a god in human form and wrote the Lectitio Divinitatus, which would ironically become the founding text for the Imperial Cult in the millennia after the Heresy. Certain individuals' faith in him is already strong enough to cause the occasional miracle and ward off daemons, but the religion has yet to be fully formed during the Horus Heresy.
  • Good Is Not Nice: The Emperor is the closest thing to a Big Good the Horus Heresy has, but he is responsible for countless human and alien deaths, mistreated several of the primarchs, and is generally so convinced he's right that he doesn't hesitate to annihilate anything and anyone who doesn't follow his plans.
  • He Who Fights Monsters: It's questionable how good he was to begin with, but he nearly becomes the fifth Chaos god to stop Horus.
  • Hidden Heart of Gold: At the end of Valdor: Birth of the Imperium, Malcador implies that the Emperor actually had a paternal attachment to the primarchs at the outset of the Great Crusade, which was what led him to seek them out after they were scattered by the Chaos Gods rather than write them off as potentially tainted, which Valdor thinks would've been the safe decision to make. He also does indeed pursuit humanity ascendance for its prosperity, not out of powerlust.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: Probably his worst flaw. His might and age make him pretty much unable to empathize with mortals and even his own sons, and he believes they will follow his every word without really wondering what they might think about it.
  • Humanoid Abomination: A rare positive example, in that people view him with awe and admiration, rather than the horror this trope usually provides. While he's considered the best mankind has to offer, it's questionable how human he really is. He's functionally immortal, gifted with amazing psychic powers, his mind glow sends psykers into spasms, and no-one except for his sons can look directly at him. He almost crosses into full Eldritch Abomination territory by becoming "the Dark King", a Fifth Chaos God, towards the end of The End and the Death: Part II just to stop Horus and the other Gods from having their way with humanity, but he's convinced by Ollanius Persson to cast away the power before he crosses that threshold that would have damned mankind anyway.
  • Humble Hero: Well, to call him humble seems like a bit of a misnomer, The End and the Death: Part II reveals that the Emperor's innermost desire is just simply to help humanity achieve its best possible state and he never personally considered himself a factor necessary in that nor wanted the position to lead all of mankind until circumstance forced him to take charge to protect mankind. In fact, its being reminded of his inner wish that he never wanted the power to lead in the first place and put faith back in mankind to succeed by Ollanius that convinces him to cast off becoming a fifth Chaos God altogether to resolve the conflict aboard the Vengeful Spirit.
  • Hypocrite:
    • Uses his psychic powers on daily basis, but bans their use in the Legions (astropaths and Navigators are still very much allowed, since the Imperium literally can't function without them). Then again, the Emperor is an immortal psyker of godlike power who's fully aware of Chaos and its dangers, something that cannot be said for the Librarians, a group founded by Magnus, the guy who in his arrogance had his Legion summoning Warp entities for menial jobs like cleaning armor and bolters.
    • In The Last Church, he claims that religion is evil because deeply held beliefs lead to violence, citing historical examples such as the Crusades to argue the point. He has no qualms with leading a genocidal campaign of destruction based on the belief that Humanity Is Superior, and even refers to said campaign as 'the Great Crusade'. Bonus points in that he gets called on it in the same story.
      Uriah: Didn't you just tell me about the bloodshed perpetrated by the Crusades? Doesn't that make you no better than the holy men you were telling me about?
      The Emperor: The difference is that I am right.
      Uriah: Spoken like a true autocrat.
    • Later, in The Master of Mankind, he shows a past memory of his to a Custodian. There, the Emperor has a former enemy, a priest, executed. The Emperor explains how the priest was initially a good man, but then, driven by a sense of necessity, starting doing terrible things and making horrible sacrifices to keep himself and his people alive. The Emperor blames the priest's actions on his beliefs. Ironically, in the same book, the Emperor orders the mass kidnapping of a thousand psykers. These men, women, and children are then forcibly sacrificed to the Golden Throne, their lives slowly and painfully leached away to keep its arcane mechanisms running. This allows the Emperor to leave the Golden Throne temporarily to aid his forces in the Webway. The Emperor excuses this action by saying that it was a necessity to preserve his vision for humanity.
  • I Have Many Names:
    • On different worlds he's known under different names, among them Golden King, Allfather and Outlander, and different Imperial organizations also have different names for him - the Mechanicum calls him the Omnissiah, while Navigators refer to him as the Cartomancer. Whenever he adopts the guise of an ordinary man, he also names himself Revelation.
    • Old canon from 40K implied that the Emperor was also Jesus, but the implications were poorly thought out and it was quietly dropped from the canon... Although Horus briefly implies that the Emperor may have been Him in The End and the Death, or at least the thought crossed his mind in his maddened, Chaos-fueled state.
    • What is still canon is that he was Saint George. Horus' internal narration in The End and the Death also implies that he was Alexander the Great.
    • In Saturnine, Erda notes that he went by "Neoth" when she first met him in Terra's prehistoric era.
    • The End and the Death: Part II reveals another attributed to him or rather will be by the darker powers of Chaos in one possible future, "The Dark King", a title he will take upon becoming a fifth major Chaos God should he fall to the temptations of his own power.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: ...With trying to wipe religion out. He wasn't just trying to starve out Chaos without mortal followers, but he was trying to keep them from getting a foot in the door. He tells Ra at one point that trying to starve out Emotion Eater deities just wasn't going to get the job done, but it would deny them a point of infiltration. Given that we see Cor’bax Utterblight start to subvert Imperial cult practices, the Emperor had a point. But at the same time, that same faith will eventually become on of his chief weapons against Chaos after the Heresy.
  • Join or Die: His modus operandi. Anyone who does not submit to his will is put down. Just ask Uriah Olathaire from The Last Church.
    • For the primarchs, the "die" part was not even an option. Just ask Angron.
    • For nearly all xenos races, "joining" was largely out of the question.
  • Lack of Empathy: Said to be one of his greatest problems; he's pretty much unable to understand the feelings of others.
  • Large and in Charge: Varies, and it's speculated out-of-universe he can change his size somehow, but when seen next to his sons, he's often at least as tall as them.
  • Naytheist: Proclaims that there are no gods despite knowing perfectly well that Chaos exists. This is why he instated the Imperial Truth, which made a pro-scientific, atheistic worldview the Imperium's official orthodoxy, and eliminated uncounted religions during the Unification Wars and the Great Crusade, including Chaos cults. While the Emperor did legitimately endorse this worldview, the Imperial Truth was essentially a well-meaning lie, which caused a number of problems as the Heresy unfolded. This was a justified trope at the time, as his limited understanding lead him to believe that starving the Chaos gods of worship would eventually kill them.
  • Multiple-Choice Past: There are various interpretations and conflicting stories about who he is and what he was doing before he became known as the Emperor. For three possibilities given throughout the series:
    • He was a Perpetual, but otherwise normal human being like Oll Persson, who for thousands of years guided humanity in the shadows. Eventually, he entered the warp on the planet Molech, and was able to steal some power from the Chaos gods, gaining awesome power and the ability to create the Primarchs. However, it's important to note that this story is open to interpretation, and may in fact be wrong.
    • He's an extremely rare and lucky combination of being born both a Perpetual and a psyker. Or he's just a Superpower Lottery winner and it's his psychic powers that have kept him alive all those centuries.
      • Erda reveals in Saturnine that the Emperor is indeed a Perpetual, though a mutant aberration of such power (psyker and otherwise), that He stood above the others of his kind as much as they stood above ordinary humans.
  • No Social Skills: Played With. Despite his Lack of Empathy and being a Horrible Judge of Character, he's very charismatic, can be diplomatic and easily gives grand, inspiring speeches. One presumes it comes with experience.
  • Orcus on His Throne: A heroic example and an unwilling one, but Magnus putting a dent in reality underneath the Palace forces the Emperor to remain parked on the Golden Throne to keep the daemons locked in.
  • Parental Favoritism: One of his flaws; he clearly puts some of his children above others, and he clearly puts Horus above them all.
  • Parents as People: To paraphrase Roboute Guilliman, one of his sons, for all his might and greatness, he's a deeply flawed human being and a terrible father. To Arkhan Land, he didn't view the primarchs as his actual children, analogising himself as Geppetto to 20 different Pinocchios. It's worth noting, however, that this may be an extension of A Form You Are Comfortable With; Land sees a perfectly emotionless avatar of the Machine God who confirms his preexisting beliefs.
  • Pet the Dog: As is revealed in Saturnine, even though he knew Erda was the one who scattered his sons acrosss the galaxy, along with exactly where she lived, he refused to seek vengeance against her.
  • Physical God: Inasmuch as he tries to deny it, his power level pretty much puts him in this bracket.
  • Poor Communication Kills: He has a huge problem with telling people important stuff they should know. He'd have saved Himself a lot of grief if He'd educated people about Chaos and told His children why He was taking a break from the Crusade.
  • Pride: As much as the Emperor wants the best for humanity, his main flaws are his unswerving ambition and towering arrogance. Many of his poorer decisions come from assuming they're the right one, simply because they are the most expedient for his grand plans. Whether he doesn't realize it or if he's willingly blind to "lesser" matters, he doesn't see consequences in the narrower picture that will grow to become much wider complications.
  • Pro-Human Transhuman: He may or may not be human, but he's very much on the side of humanity and he's its greatest guardian against Chaos and the multitudes of other horrors that dwell within the galaxy.
  • Psychic Powers:
    • The most powerful psyker in human history. He's so powerful that his psychic signature shines across the Warp and can be used as a beacon for almost the entirety of the galaxy. For comparison, Magnus can melt Titans with witchfire, but the Emperor can create and maintain a star in the middle of his Webway gate. It's likely that the only being with greater mastery over the Warp than him is Tzeentch, the literal god of Warp magic.
    • It's also not clear if the Emperor is a one-in-a-quadrillion freak, both a Perpetual and a God-tier psyker, or if he's had some Power Ups along the way. The latter is the most widely accepted, given his historical pilgrimage to Molech may have amplified his powers by stealing some of it from Chaos, though this is a very uncertain proposition.
  • Red Baron: "Master of Mankind". The daemons of the Warp, including the Chaos gods, have dubbed him "the Anathema," the only being they've ever feared. They initially claim to Lorgar that they call him that because he is Anathema towards humanity, while they are the true path. Riiight...
  • Reluctant Ruler: Malcador's narration in The End and the Death suggests that the mantle of "the Emperor" is one that was only taken up because it was necessary, and a look at certain decisions the Emperor made suggest that he was taking steps to ultimately make himself unnecessary, at least once humanity's future was secured.
  • Shrouded in Myth: Whatever he'd been doing before he showed up and begun uniting Terra is a matter of much speculation, and he's not talking.
  • Stop Worshipping Me: He repeatedly has to stop people from setting up cults and cathedrals in his name and is willing to go to great lengths to make others realize he doesn't want to be treated as a god. His most notable action against the worship of his person was to have the Word Bearers' shrine-city of Monarchia destroyed while they watched before psychically forcing them to kneel in the ashes while he told them that he was no god.
  • Time Abyss: He's over thirty thousand years old and still kicking ass. The Emperor was born around 8000 BC in Anatolia and had a hand in building the basis of human civilization. It is also implied that he's spent thousands of lifetimes accomplishing great deeds and guiding humanity toward a brighter future under several identities. The "Emperor" is merely the latest in a long list of personas he's adopted.
  • Unstoppable Rage: In The End and the Death: Part 1, while the Emperor storms the Vengeful Spirit Malcador sees him as nothing short of incandescent with fury, all but incinerating daemons with his mere presence.
    I am here, Horus Lupercal, and for you, I am the end and the death.
  • Unwanted False Faith: How he sees the budding Imperial Cult. The Emperor is against the worship of his own person but is so busy he's only made a couple of symbolic actions that don't prevent the human population from beginning to worship him anyway.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: He will save humanity and defeat the Chaos gods at any cost. Whether he's genuine in this or not is divisive in-universe and out.
  • Willfully Weak: In The End and the Death: Part 2 he's ultimately convinced to give up most of the power he's absorbed because he was on the brink of becoming a Chaos god.
  • Wolverine Claws: Among his signature weapon is a yet to be named lightning claw he wears on his left hand.

    Malcador 

Malcador

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/malcador_the_sigillite.jpg
The Big E merely rules the Imperium. I run it.

The one who makes the Imperium work. The Emperor's right-hand man from the times of Terra's unification, Malcador takes care of all the things that don't look very glorious, but are necessary part of setting up and running a working nation.


  • Age Without Youth: By the time of the Heresy, he's several millennia old, and he's visibly aged.
  • The Atoner: In The Last Council, Malcador hints to Jaghatai Khan that this is his mindset.
    ‘Because I have to be able to believe, when all else is done, that should they so wish, even the greatest monsters of our time can yet be redeemed, and forgiven.’
  • Badass Bureaucrat: He runs the Administratum and his word carries as much authority as if it came from the Emperor himself. He also rules the Officio Assassinorum and the Knights-Errant, and has considerable psychic powers of his own.
  • The Chessmaster: Malcador worked alongside the Emperor to try and prevent the fall of the Imperium through various plans.
  • Cincinnatus: Before leaving for the Webway War, the Emperor makes him the Regent of Terra, effectively turning him into the acting Emperor. Malcador puts the position to good use keeping the Imperium together.
  • Collector of the Strange: He spends his own money funding archaeological expeditions to recover the remnants of Terra's past. Among his collection, he has the Mona Lisa and one of van Gogh's Sunflowers.
  • Cool Old Guy: Malcador is very old because he's a Perpetual, but manages to remain a well-intentioned man who works for the betterment of mankind and is able to snark from time to time to keep interactions from becoming too formal.
  • Dirty Business:
    • Does a fair bit over the course of the Heresy. Most visibly he is prepared to sacrifice Revuel Arvida by fusing him with a shard of Magnus. He might have promised to cure him of the flesh-change, but if it gets Terra a protector and frees the Emperor to act against Horus, he's willing to do it.
    • Many of his more morally upright Knights-Errant start to resent him for his scheming and morally dubious actions. Garro starts to outright disobey order until he sees that Malcador's plans the groundwork for a long war against Chaos, while Rubio may have become more prone to a psychic assault (or felt the way he did from prior conditioning) to nearly assassinate Malcador.
  • Fan of the Past: Malcador's a huge history buff, collecting old paintings from before Age of Terra and searching for things like the Rosetta Stone.
  • Finger Poke of Doom: He can knock people - such as Angron - out with a touch.
  • First-Name Basis: With the Primarchs, which dismayed a number of other officials who couldn't fathom that a mere man could be so familiar with the Emperor and his Primarchs.
  • The Good Chancellor: Malcador is the Emperor's right hand. Among his chief responsibilities are to actually rule the Imperium in the Emperor's stead and to manage the Administratum and keep its labyrinthine bureaucracy running. The Emperor is an exceptional warlord and military ruler and oversaw great scientific projects, but it is Malcador who decides on most of the Imperium's policies and enforces them. Without his relatively efficient bureaucratic work, the Imperium would start to fall apart within days, as indeed it does after the Siege of Terra.
  • Honest Advisor: Probably the only person who truly speaks his mind to the Emperor and the only one the Emperor would actually listen to. Despite it all, the Emperor claims that Malcador may have failed in his role as an advisor by trusting the Emperor too much on several crucial matters, leading to the impending doom of the Imperium.
  • Honorary Uncle: He's theoretically an uncle to the primarchs, but only Sanguinius actually treats him like one.
  • In the Hood: Part of his formal garb is a hood he usually keeps on.
  • Just the First Citizen: Even after becoming the Imperium's second-in-command, he insists on wearing the robes of a simple Administratum adept.
  • Killed Off for Real: This is his ultimate fate; though he is a Perpetual and therefore can resurrect from damn near anything that hits him, the strain of sitting on the Golden Throne reduces him to dust in the span of a few hours. Prior to this, in Fury of Magnus, Magnus hits him with a psychic attack that actually kills him, and he only survives by virtue of another Perpetual sacrificing her own Resurrective Immortality to bring him back.
  • Last of His Kind: Malcador is the last living member of the order of the Sigillites, which was dedicated to preserving knowledge of the past.
  • Like a Son to Me: After losing his temper with the loyalist primarchs in The Lost and the Damned, he later cools down, apologizes, and then tells them he considers them basically his sons. Sanguinius specifically calls him "uncle".
  • The Magnificent: The Sigillite, the title which comes from a phrase "Keeper of the Seal", meaning someone the ruler trusts not to abuse power given to him.
  • Muggle Best Friend: He appears to be this to the Emperor, at first, to the extent that a being such as the Master Of Mankind can have friends. The Emperor certainly trusts him more that He does His own children. It's later shown that the Sigilite has a number of qualities, including his Perpetuality, that make him more of a peer to the Master of Mankind than is first apparent.
  • Number Two: He's sometimes described as equerry to the Emperor, and certainly carries the authority one could expect from this.
  • The Older Immortal/Older Than They Look: Malcador looks to be in his seventies or eighties despite being almost four centuries old. There's in-universe gossip that he may be older than that, a member of the Illuminati of old. Malcador himself claims to be over 6,700 years old by the Heresy; though the conversation is framed as a deathbed confessional with one of Malcador's friends, whom he was comforting as they lay dying. And it's eventually revealed that he's a Perpetual, too. Even if we take his prior statement of nearly being 7,000 at face value, that makes him the youngest Perpetual (barring the Primarch Vulkan) and he still somehow has the body of an old man, compared to the Grammaticus or Ollanius, who appear to be in their 30's.
  • Old Retainer: He's been advising the Emperor since before the Unification Wars.
  • Psychic Powers: He's one of the most powerful psykers in the Imperium. It seems like the only humans surpassing him would be the Emperor, Magnus and maybe Lorgar post-fall.
  • Psychic Strangle: In a flashback in The Last Council, Malcador does this to Horus to stop him speaking the name of one of the Lost Primarchs.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure: More reasonable than the Emperor at times. He's pragmatic, he tries to be the Primarchs' cool grandpa and he realizes that some of the Emperor's actions go against his goals, something the man himself has trouble understanding.
  • Resurrective Immortality: In The Last Council, Jaghatai Khan reveals that he knows that Malcador is a Perpetual.
  • Secret-Keeper: Apparently the only person the Emperor has told about the full extent of the threat that Chaos poses to humanity.
  • Servile Snarker: Certainly isn't above bursting someone's bubbles when it comes to dealing with the Emperor or Dorn. Borders on Brutal Honesty at times.
  • Shrouded in Myth: It's unknown what he'd been doing before becoming Master of the Administratum and how he and the Emperor became friends.
  • The Spymaster: Commands all forms of Imperial espionage services - the Knights-Errant, the fledgling Inquisition and the Officio Assassinorum. He even has spies in the Webway army.
  • Staff of Authority: It's a symbol of his office, but because of his advanced age, he uses it for support as well. For some reason, every single picture of him with it has it on fire. Turns out there is a very good reason for this — it can shoot nuclear fire.
  • Undying Loyalty: He's one of the Emperor's oldest supporters, though he's willing to dish out criticism every now and then.

    Euphrati Keeler 

Euphrati Keeler

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/keeler.png
Libraries can be dangerous places.

A tomboyish and irreverent remembrancer sent to accompany the Luna Wolves and chronicle the Great Crusade. After a soul-shattering encounter with a daemon, she converts to the Imperial Cult and starts preaching the divinity of the Emperor.


  • Badass Preacher: Preaches the Emperor's divinity and singlehandedly banishes daemons.
  • Butt-Monkey: Loken notes that she used to have a knack for getting herself in trouble.
  • Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": "Imagist" is 30K-speak for a photographer, and "picter" is a camera.
  • Camera Fiend: Throughout most of Horus Rising, she carries her picter everywhere and makes photos even when it's explicitly forbidden. As a justification, she points out that her skills as an imagist are exactly the reason she's there in the first place.
  • Convenient Coma: She wakes up just in time to find an escape vessel from the Vengeful Spirit during the opening stages of the Battle of Istvaan III.
  • Continuity Nod: Outside of the Horus Heresy series, a comet she took a picture of is named after her. It returns millennia later, warped by its time in the Eye of Terror and leads a Khornate Blood Crusade behind it.
  • Easy Evangelism: Averted. After witnessing a daemon first-hand, her entire worldview is completely broken. It takes weeks of help from her friends and the influence of a lover for her to become a worshiper of the Emperor.
  • Going for the Big Scoop: Wanting to find something of actual worth, she and several other remembrancers travel unsupervised to the Whisperhead Mountains to catch the Astartes in action. They end up encountering Samus, the first daemon shown in the series, who kills everyone present but Euphrati and Chief Iterator Kyril Sindermann. The encounter causes her to have a nervous breakdown.
  • Herald:
    • To Nathaniel Garro, inspiring his faith in the Emperor and getting him back on his feet when he has his Crisis of Faith.
    • To Sigismund, when she sends him to Earth rather than Phall.
  • Holy Burns Evil: Her tool of daemon-banishment is an aquila which the Imperial Cult has appropriated into its symbol.
  • Holy Hand Grenade: She banishes an accidentally-summoned daemon back into the Warp.
  • Intrepid Reporter: Prior to her conversion, she wants to head straight into the warzone with Astartes battling around her to get the best shots.
  • Living Emotional Crutch: Seems to be one to Garro, as she's the only one who can restore his sense of purpose.
  • Living Legend: Becomes the Saint, the prophet of the budding Imperial Cult. The believers on the Vengeful Spirit are in awe of her, and her reputation allows her to assemble a ragtag militia out of civilian refugees and Army stragglers during the Siege of Terra.
  • Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: In universe and out. She's suspected of being a psyker by the Sisters of Silence, but it's never confirmed. She definitely has some kind of supernatural ability, but it's never specified exactly what it is.
  • Mystical Waif: As the Saint, she loses a lot of her earlier Intrepid Reporter and down-to-earth qualities, instead becoming something more transcendent and mystical, with her very presence swaying the hearts of many.
  • Oracular Urchin:
    • Warns people that something bad's going to happen on Istvaan III before anyone else has an inkling of it.
    • Tells Sigismund to return with Dorn to Terra before the VII Legion's fleet is sent to Istvaan V, as she's foreseen that if he went with the Retribution Fleet he probably wouldn't come back alive.
  • Paparazzi: The Luna Wolves initially consider her an unwanted nuisance, since they're largely opposed to the remembrancers from the get-go, although this changes after she manages to find gold material.
  • Psychic Powers: The Sisters of Silence believe her to be an unrecognized psyker. Whether she is or isn't is mostly left ambiguous. Later it is confirmed by multiple sources that she is not one.
  • The Stoic: She's rather chill about becoming a prophet, being hunted down by Horus' assassins and the many visions of her impending death. It's suggested that she is in some way a vessel of the Emperor's power, which would explain this.
  • The Magnificent: She starts to be called "The Saint" by those who believe in her.
  • Took a Level in Cynic: By Mortis, Euphrati has decided that the Imperium needs an army fanatically devoted to the Emperor as a god and united by its hatred of the alien, mutant, and traitor, and she is willing to send thousands of untrained and poorly armed civilian refugees to their deaths to prove her point.
  • Turbulent Priest: For both sides.
    • After she banishes a daemon from the Vengeful Spirit's archives, Horus' equerry tries to have her killed, with little success.
    • Back in Sol, she goes from orbital plate to orbital plate preaching the Emperor's divinity, to the dismay of Imperial authorities.
    • Averted when she is eventually tracked down and arrested by the Knights-Errant. Only she is taken and the rest of her followers are left alone. She goes with them willingly and claims she will be exactly where she needs to be.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Two of her namesakes return to haunt the Imperium 10,000 years later. The first is a comet named after her that enters the Eye of Terror and comes back on an erratic course past Imperial worlds and leading a Khornate crusade in tow. The second is an image she took of a pre-heresy Horus Lupercal (which some would judge as being dangerous enough itself) along with her notes and journals detailing how she basically started the modern Imperial faith, explicitly against the Emperor's wishes - something that could potentially destablise the entire Imperial creed.
  • Willing Channeler: It's implied she's a channel for Emperor's power in some way, although whether it's true - or intentional - is left vague. In any case, she embraces this fully.
  • Your Days Are Numbered: She's perfectly aware of all of her possible futures, and claims that only one of them lets her survive.

    Kyril Sindermann 

Kyril Sindermann / Lastan Neemagiun Veritus

The Chief Iterator of the Luna Wolves' Sixty-Third Expeditionary Fleet, under the direct command of Primarch Horus Lupercal, Kyril Sindermann is the most famous and skilled iterator in the Imperium of Man. He is a committed atheist and proponent of the Imperial Truth until events during the battle for planet Sixty-Three Nineteen and subsequent incidents lead to him joining Euphrati Keeler's nascent Imperial Cult.


  • Crisis of Faith: Seeing the Luna Wolves legionary Xavyer Jubal getting possessed by Samus shattered his former adherence to the Imperial Truth, leading him to spend a long time within the libraries of the Vengeful Spirit, trying to find answers in humanity's past. His accidental summoning of a daemon from the warp during that time (which Euphrati Keeler ended up banishing) broke his faith in the Imperial Truth completely, leading to him joining the nascent cult of the Emperor.
  • Last of His Kind: As the co-Inquisitorial Representative to the High Lords of Terra during the War of the Beast, he was targeted and poisoned by Officio Assassinorum Grand Master Drakan Vangorich during The Beheading, fifteen hundred years after the Horus Heresy and the Siege of Terra. At the time of his death, he was the oldest living mortal man in the Imperium outside of the Mechanicus, and the last surviving founder of the Ecclesiarchy and the Inquisition.
  • Secret-Keeper: As the Last of His Kind (see above), Sindermann knew some of the Imperium's deepest secrets, including the latter-day whereabouts of Vulkan and the last convent of the Sisters of Silence, and shortly before his death was the only Inquisitor who knew about and had access to the Grey Knights. The latter weighed heavily upon him, having had to declare Exterminatus at least three times to keep the existence of the Grey Knights secret.
  • Take Up My Sword: As he lays dying, he passes on to his co-Inquisitorial Representative the knowledge of the existence of the Grey Knights, the mantle of being the Inquisition's liaison with them, and the means to enter their Fortress-Monastery on Titan.
  • Turn to Religion: Formerly a committed atheist, he is one of the founders of the Imperial Cult and one of the Inquisition's first four founding members. As Lord Inquisitor Veritus, he was a hardcore Puritan, even one millenium and a half later, and would end up formalizing the structure of/co-founding the first two Ordos Majoris (the Ordo Malleus and the Ordo Xenos) shortly before his death.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: During his Crisis of Faith he came across and translated fragments of the Book of Lorgar. His reading of these deciphered fragments ended up summoning a Horror of Tzeentch, which had to be banished by Euphrati Keeler.

    Mersadie Oliton 

Mersadie Oliton

A young remembrancer assigned to the Sixty-Third Expeditionary Fleet, and eventually one of the first members of Euphrati Keeler's budding cult of the Emperor. She is fitted with mnemonic implants that grant her perfect recall and the ability to use her eyes as cameras to record both video and still images.


  • Break the Cutie: Mersadie is severely traumatized by witnessing the virus-bombing of Istvaan III and the subsequent frantic escape from the Vengeful Spirit. It takes her some time to recover.
  • Covert Pervert: She has apparently captured and stored quite a few images of Garviel Loken in a state of undress.
  • Driven to Suicide: After realizing that she has been possessed and is being used as a gateway by the daemon prince Samus, Mersadie throws herself into the Phalanx's reactor shaft to stop the daemonic incursion.
  • Eating the Eye Candy: In Horus Rising and False Gods, she often stops to admire Loken's physique whenever he's shirtless around her. Loken, of course, doesn't notice.
  • Heroic BSoD: She seems to be suffering through one for most of Flight of the Eisenstein, though it's understandable given what she's just been through.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Upon realizing that she's being used as a gateway for daemons to attack the Phalanx, Mersadie throws herself into the station's reactor shaft in order to stop the incursion.
  • Odd Friendship: She forms one with Garviel Loken, eventually becoming his personal remembrancer.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: Poor Mersadie watches as the very foundation of the Imperium is shattered in front of her at Istvaan III. She successfully escapes to Terra, only to be separated from all her friends and imprisoned for seven years while the galaxy goes to hell. When she receives a vision of Euphrati Keeler warning her of great danger, she escapes prison to bring the message to Rogal Dorn, only to discover that the vision was actually Samus manipulating her so he could use her to invade the Phalanx. She ultimately commits suicide in front of Garviel Loken to stop a horde of daemons from overrunning the station.
  • She Knows Too Much: After arriving at Terra, Malcador has her mnemonic implants removed and orders her to be imprisoned on Titan, all for the "crime" of having been a firsthand witness to Horus' fall.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: She is very definitely attracted to Loken, and he seems to return her affection, at least to the degree that an Oblivious to Love Celibate Hero Super-Soldier such as him is capable of doing. Nothing comes of it, though.
  • Unwitting Instigator of Doom: As it turns out, Maloghurst had her implanted with some kind of mental surveillance device called a warp-eye in order to spy on Garviel Loken. Samus uses this to manipulate her into boarding the Phalanx so that he can possess her and strike at the heart of the Imperial defenses. It almost works, too, until Mersadie throws herself down the space station's reactor shaft.

    Lotara Sarrin 

Lotara Sarrin

The commander of Angron's flagship, the Conqueror, often noted for her near-total lack of fear and absolute bloodthirst - which, of course, make her a perfect match for the World Eaters.


  • Action Girl: She takes active part in the defense of her ship when it's boarded.
  • Badass Boast: "No one runs from the Conqueror"
    • Becomes a rather more ghastly one later on in the Heresy. It doesn't just refer to her enemies...
  • Blood Knight: She doesn't care much what side she fights on - for her, war is the end in and of itself.
  • Bloody Handprint: She wears a badge in the shape of a red handprint on her uniform as a mark of her unrelenting aggression and courage.
  • Fearless Fool: It'd probably be wiser not to talk back to angry, Nails-bitten Astartes, but she does so nevertheless. One starts to wonder whether she is actually capable of feeling fear.
  • Haunted Technology: Was eventually absorbed into the Conqueror by its machine spirit during the Siege of Terra.
  • Hot-Blooded: She's very choleric and easy to anger.
  • Improbable Age: Became captain of the Conqueror at the tender age of 30. That's very young for a real naval officer to achieve the only vaguely comparable role, commanding an aircraft carrier, but taking charge of one of the flagships of a massive galaxy-spanning empire in a setting where life-extension technologies can result in officers with centuries of combat experience? It seems truly ludicrous. Yet, she proves to be more than qualified for the role.
  • Insane Admiral: She's aggressive to the point of insanity when commanding the World Eaters' spaceborne forces.
  • Leeroy Jenkins: Giving chase to a fully-staffed Ultramarines vessel with her Astartes-less ship on a whim? But of course.
  • Like a Duck Takes to Water: She was assigned to the World Eaters because she was seen as too bold and fearless to fit in anywhere else, and soon found out that she fit with their nature perfectly. She rises to become one of Angron's very few favourites. In fact, those of the Legion who like her consider her a honorary World Eater.
  • More Deadly Than the Male: Most World Eaters dismiss her as a weak mortal, but she has the entire arsenal of the Conqueror at her fingertips, the support of both Kharn and Angron, and the guts to hold her supposed-betters at a gunpoint.
  • Odd Friendship:
    • With Kharn. She's a mortal Blood Knight, he's an Astartes who tries to avoid sliding into Blood Knight, but they get along seamlessly, likely because of the below.
    • With Angron, oddly enough, though it's less pronounced. He respects her for her boldness and aggressive command style, while she doesn't consider him a "broken one" like many others do, even in his own Legion. She changes her mind after Angron becomes a Daemon Prince, insisting it should be jettisoned into space. She eventually changes her mind... or has it changed for her by the Conqueror, but later he still has to stay outside of the hull.
  • Only Sane Woman: While she doesn't mind the World Eaters' methods, she's not blind to the shrieking insanity of some of their tactics. Later on in the Heresy, not so much...
  • Sanity Slippage: Becomes gradually more worn down and erratic after Angron ascends to daemonhood. She eventually adapts to it.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Part of the reason Lotara's not afraid of any of the World Eaters is that she has Angron's support.
  • Super-Persistent Predator: You do not escape the Conqueror.
  • Talk to the Fist: To showcase just how fearless she is and how ruthlessly she maintains discipline and combat effectiveness aboard the Conqueror, when a World Eater captain's arrogance and aggression led to costly complications (he was supposed to guard the ship but got bored, so he went planetside to the front lines), she demonstrated her displeasure by unholstering her plasma pistol and shooting said captain in the face when he returned to the hangar, stoically facing the reflexive return fire from his Astartes (which missed and at most grazed her) without batting an eye, before laying down a "The Reason You Suck" Speech chastising the captain (who survived, merely knocked flat on his rear) for his foolishness and threatening to bring it up to Angron if he tried it again.
  • Tomato in the Mirror: It's revealed in Echoes of Eternity that amongst the other warp madness overtaking the Conqueror, the ship's machine spirit has been creating memory-echoes of the crew, especially those who are dead or have been absorbed into the ship. The Lotara the reader has been following through the book is one such echo, and is far from the first. The actual Lotara Sarrin has become an inhuman apex predator fused to the command throne, dismissing the wraith as a representation of her weakness and doubt.
    Lotara: You are the part of me that wanted to run from the Conqueror.

    Cyrene Valantion 

Cyrene Valantion

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/red_by_noldofinve_d4s6vg9.jpg

One of the handful of survivors from the destruction of the "Perfect City" of Monarchia on Khur, Cyrene became a symbol to the Word Bearers of their foolishness in worshipping the Emperor, and a witness to the XVII Legion's fall into the embrace of Chaos. She's murdered by the Emperor's Custodians for the sin of being a firsthand witness to the Word Bearers' fall to Chaos, only to be resurrected by Erebus as a favour to Argel Tal.


  • Blatant Lies: Claims she has no memory of her time in the Warp while she was dead. For her sake, Argel Tal claims to believe her.
  • Blind and the Beast: Some of her interactions with Argel Tal come across this, particularly in the leadup to Istvaan V as he struggles with the daemon inside him.
  • Canon Character All Along: Possibly. After her resurrection in Katt's body in The End and the Death, she starts going by Katt's full name, Katerina Moriana. This, combined with her psychic abilities and an offhand remark she makes about her inquisitive nature, suggest that she is Moriana, the woman who becomes one of the first members of the Inquisition before falling to Chaos and becoming Abaddon's personal seer. The "possibly" part is complicated by one of Malcador's Chosen being called Moriana Mouhousen.
  • Came Back Wrong: One of the side-effects of Erebus resurrecting her is that she's now a Perpetual.
  • Due to the Dead: Subverted: after her murder, the Word Bearers entomb her body aboard the Fidelitas Lex, but the mortal crew, who consider her the first saint of the Ruinous Powers, raid her tomb and cannibalise her body to use for relics.
  • Foil: She has more than a few similarities to Euphrati Keeler, but is on the other side. Both originally believed in one form of orthodoxy and then came to different conclusions, and both are sources of religious inspiration.
  • Fusion Dance: Her mind winds up inside Katt's body after the two of them are crushed by a falling wall in The End and the Death. The two of them quickly learn that they'll have to cooperate to get anything done.
  • Heel–Face Turn: After dying (again) and being resurrected inside Katt's body, she throws herself into the fight on the side of the Imperium once and for all, using the authority granted her by Rogal Dorn to rally the Imperial forces and spreading the legend of Ollanius Pius among the survivors.
  • Immortality Hurts: In The End and the Death, she's crushed under a falling wall during the Argonauts' fight with Erebus, and her Perpetuality keeps resurrecting her even though she's still pinned under tonnes of rubble. Her POV narration specifically notes that it hurt a lot.
  • Lady in Red: Wears a flowing red gown which takes on another level of meaning when the Word Bearers use the same shade of red to symbolise their renouncing of the Emperor.
  • Meaningful Rename: After her mind winds up inside Katt's body, she decides to go by Katt's full name: Katerina Moriana.
  • Morality Pet: To the Word Bearers in general, particularly Lorgar, Argel Tal and Xaphen. Coincidentally, she seems to have been kept away from the less wholesome aspects of Chaos worship, despite other mortals serving with the Word Bearers being fully inundated in it.
  • My Greatest Failure: Argel Tal thinks like this of his inability to protect her, first from the Custodians who murder her, then seemingly from going down with the Fidelitas Lex.
  • Older Than They Look: Her aging's been artificially stunted by rejuvenation procedures, to keep her looking young as part of her symbolism.
  • Pronouncing My Name for You: Insists that her name is pronounced "Sih-renny" and not "Si-reen". Oddly, the audiobook for The First Heretic (which was released after Betrayer's audio adaptation) pronounces it as "Sy-reney" throughout.
  • Put on a Bus: Hasn't been seen in the storyline since Betrayer. She returns in Mortis as the blind seer Actae, though her identity isn't confirmed until The End and the Death.
  • Rape as Backstory: Implied to have happened to her in the time between Monarchia's destruction and her rescue by the Word Bearers.
  • Red Baron: Is commonly referred to as "The Blessed Lady".
  • Resurrective Immortality: She somehow becomes a Perpetual after Erebus resurrects her.
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: Even the asexual Space Marines and Lorgar consider her beautiful.
  • The Load: Erebus considers her this to Argel Tal, feeling that the latter's obsession with her is making him a liability to the Traitors' cause.
    Erebus: [to Argel Tal] In every one of the Ten Thousand Paths, your erratic, emotional foolishness leads us to lose the war. You had one last chance to turn away from this fate, if you could just overcome the death of that worthless whore-priestess. But no. You begged me to bring her back and in doing so, proved you were as worthless as she was.You cannot be relied up. You cannot be trusted. You cannot, for want of a better word, be controlled. And if we are to win this war, we need control.
  • Walking Spoiler: The events surrounding her after her death are rather spoilerrific.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: The Word Bearers presume she died aboard the Fidelitas Lex when their flagship was shot down by the Ultramarines above Nuceria. It's implied Damon Prytanis might have rescued her before the crash and taken her to the Cabal, who are implied to be interested in just how Erebus managed to make her a Perpetual. As of Mortis, she may have returned in the guise of Actae, a mysterious woman who tags along with Ollanius Persson and John Grammaticus after encountering them in the Hatay-Antakya Hive. Confirmed as of The End and the Death.

    Tarasha Euten 

Tarasha Euten

Seneschal to Roboute Guilliman's adoptive father Konor and pretty much Roboute's adoptive mother. She retained her position throughout the Great Crusade and continues to be Roboute's civil affairs specialist during the Heresy.


  • Action Survivor: Being an old woman, she survives Curze's attack only through hiding and Vulkan's timely intervention.
  • Almighty Janitor: She can easily command Astartes despite her official function being the aide of the house.
  • Almighty Mom: The only mortal to ever sass a Primarch about a hangover. She also tells off Curze and the Wolvesnote .
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: She's pretty much unseen after Unremembered Empire.
  • Cool Old Lady: See the two "Almighty" tropes above. She's the foster mother and closest advisor to a Primarch and her "I am disappoint" moment when she sees Roboute with a hangover is short-lived, but great. It's pretty telling how awesome you are in your old age when a Primarch regresses into a sulky teenager when submitted to your snark.
  • Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: She must be the only person in the entire galaxy to tell Konrad Curze to "Go to hell" to his face.
  • Friendly Address Privileges: She calls Roboute "boy", and he calls her "mam".
  • Good Parents: Notably, she's the only known mother figure in the life of any of the Primarchs, and Roboute turned out to be one of the most stable of the bunch. Seeing how hard it can be to rein in a superhuman to end all superhumans, it tells a lot about her parenting skills.
  • Last-Name Basis: She's pretty much never referred to as "Tarasha" after her introduction, even in parts written from her POV.
  • Like a Son to Me: Considers Roboute to be her son, since she helped raise him.
  • Muggle Foster Parents: For Roboute, as she's pretty much a normal, if longer-lived human.
  • Number Two: She was Konor Guilliman' seneschal during his time as Consul, and after his death she continued in the role for Roboute as he became Battle-King of Macragge. Guilliman even states that she is the only one he'd trust enough to delegate all of his administrative tasks to if he were forced to accept the title of Regent of Imperium Secundus, and the reason he can't is because she is too old and probably doesn't enough time left to her to handle things.
  • Parental Substitute: A mother Roboute wouldn't have otherwise. Especially notable as she is the only known maternal figure for any of the Primarchs.
  • Platonic Life-Partners: With Konor Guilliman, apparently, to the point that she's his most trusted confidant and Roboute considers them to be his mother and father.
  • Older Than They Look: Her aging's been artificially stunted by rejuvenation procedures, so she's over two hundred years old.
  • Old Retainer: She'd been a longtime servant of Konor before the consul even found and adopted Roboute, and it's been almost two centuries since Macragge was added to the Imperium.
  • The Consigliere: During her time as Konor's equerry, and to some extent for Roboute as well.
  • The Good Chancellor: She provides a much more humane and distanced perspective on events that vex Roboute.
  • Uncertain Doom: The audio drama Illyrium ends with Euten and the Ultramarine Sergeant Ammon trapped in a storeroom aboard the Macragge's Honour awaiting rescue during a Word Bearers' assault, with an unknown party activating a breaching charge on the external door.
  • Servile Snarker: She may be Roboute's chamberlain, but as his maternal figure, she's never afraid to toss verbal barbs his way whenever she disapproves of his decisions.
  • Will Not Tell a Lie: Part of the reason why Roboute keeps her around is because he knows she'll tell him the things as they are. She also doesn't even try to hide Vulkan's presence and state of mind, although this may be because she's still in shock from Curze's attack.

    Ilya Ravallion 

Ilya Ravallion

An almost-retired general and Departmento Munitorum bureaucrat sent out to liason with the White Scars to sort out logistical problems their methods of war were causing with the wider Imperium, Ravallion becomes a key part of the Vth Legion's fighting efforts following the outbreak of the Horus Heresy.


  • Affectionate Nickname: Many amongst the Legion call her szu (sage) as a term of endearment.
  • Badass Bureaucrat: Despite the White Scars' infamous aversion to logistics, she manages to keep them going, and over time becomes their advisor, heart and equal partner.
  • Badass Normal: Ilya's just an ordinary human woman, but she has no problem with calling out the White Scars (up to and including their Primarch) when she thinks they're doing something wrong, and has no qualms about putting herself in danger if it serves a greater cause.
  • Going Native: Befriends many members of the Legion and starts adopting some of their idiosyncracies during her time with them.
  • The Heart: Yesugei flat-out calls her "the heart of the Legion" when telepathically saying goodbye to her before his Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Morality Pet: To the White Scars in general, but particularly Shiban, Yesugei and Jaghatai Khan.
  • Odd Friendship:
    • With Jaghatai Khan. She's a bureaucrat and he's the primarch with the least patience for bureaucracy, yet they get on quite well and often spend time in private drinking, debating, and playing board games.
    • With Yesugei as well. He always treats her respectfully, considers her a close confidant, and is always willing to listen to her suggestions.
  • Oh, Crap!: A minor one compared to other examples, but during her first audience with Jaghatai Khan, Ilya is trying to impress upon the Khan the importance of the Munitorum having a logistical supply line to the Fifth Legion, only to realise he's not listening, already bored with talk of such matters, before explaining that such terms are not a part of how the White Scars prefer to fight.
    Ilya Ravallion: As soon as I used the words "revised framework for logistics liaison", I knew I'd lost him. He looked at me, half-bemused, half-irritated. He shifted in his chair, and even in that miniscule movement, I sensed something of the futility of what I was trying to do. He hated being seated. He hated talking. He hated being cooped up inside the walls of his battleship. He wanted to be on campaign, lost in the pursuit, deploying his phenomenal strength in the eternal hunt...I understood then why all our delegations had failed to make an impression on him. The White Scars were not hard to organise because of carelessness- it was a point of principle for them, a doctrine of war.
  • Please, Don't Leave Me: Like all those Yesugei telepathically contacts to say goodbye before sacrificing himself, Ilya begs him to not go through with what he intends.
  • Team Mom: She's somewhere between this and an older sister to the Scars by the time of Path of Heaven.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: During the Battle of Catullus, Ilya allows the Sagyar Mazan to dock with the Swordstorm when their ship is on the verge of being blown to bits by incoming traitor forces, later justifying it to Jaghatai on the grounds that it wouldn't make sense to let over a hundred Space Marines die in the void when, with the Emperor's Children and Death Guard moving in to attack, the Scars need every warrior they can get.
  • Underestimating Badassery: When the White Scars attempt to break past the Alpha Legion fleet blocking them from leaving Chondax, Ilya criticises the Scars for seemingly throwing away their good position and flying blindly into the Alpha Legion's guns. She is then completely caught off guard when it is revealed the White Scars were simply feigning weakness to lull the traitors into a false sense of security, as well as get their ships into position to break through the Alpha Legion blockade in a single strike.
  • Wham Line: A trailing-off-into-internal-monologue one in Scars when she realises the warriors around her have been expecting another fleet to join them above Prospero - unbeknownst to the Khan.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: She's not above doing this when she thinks the White Scars are doing things that are detrimental in the long run. Examples include:
    • Calling them out for remaining out in enemy territory for four years to hamper the traitors' progress toward Terra, pointing out that while they've succeeded in slowing down and hurting their enemies, it has come at the cost of essentially trapping themselves behind enemy lines and goading Horus to commit ever-greater amounts of resources to their destruction.
    • Chews Shiban out for his treatment of Torghun.
    • Angrily tells Jaghatai Khan to not make Yesugei's sacrifice meaningless and use the portal he's created to get back to Terra when the Khan is toying with staying behind to confront Mortarion.

    Harpocratica Morn 

Harpocratica Morn

An old, old mortal general, Morn accompanies Sigismund on a misssion to kill Word Bearers in the Sol System.


  • Badass Boast: When Rann tries to get her to be quiet, she delivers one that shuts him up:
    Rann: "Be-"
    Morn: "Be what? The representative of the Emperor and his Regent? The emissary of the Council of Terra? Or merely a general who has stood on fields of blood and victory since before this Imperium was won?"
  • Four-Star Badass: She's a veteran of centuries of constant war, and not afraid to go into a firefight.
  • Older Than They Look: If what she says is true, she's been a soldier longer than the two centuries for which the Great Crusade has been running.

    Andromeda- 17 

Andromeda-17

A member of Luna's Selenar gene-cults, recruited by the Imperial Fists Archamus and Sergeant Kestros to aid them in countering the Alpha Legion's assault on Sol.


  • Because It Amused Me: This is part of the reason why she decides to work with the Space Marines; the idea of sussing out and thwarting the Alpha Legion's schemes intrigues her, and she seems to enjoy interrogating perps.
  • Bringing in the Expert: Archamus recruits Andromeda because the Selenar cults helped create the Legiones Astartes, and therefore have special insight into the legions' individual natures.
  • The Chessmaster: In Mortis, it's revealed that she's been quietly playing everyone around her like a fiddle in order to gain access to Basilio Fo, the last Lord of Old Night, for reasons that are her own. She even manages to control her gene-bred compulsion to kill him and turn it to her advantage in order to further the deception.
  • Clone Angst: She is the seventeenth Andromeda, and seems rather fatalistic about the fact that she may well be the last version of herself ever to exist, since the Selenar cults are slowly dying out.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Basilio Fo kills her with a bioweapon that melts her face and head into a steaming puddle of goo.
  • Deadpan Snarker: She likes dropping sarcastic remarks at the expense of the two Imperial Fists she's working with in Praetorian of Dorn. She even talks back to Dorn himself at one point in Now Peals Midnight.
    Andromeda: Your master is barely competent at interacting with something that does not have a trigger, but at least he has identified that my weakness is curiosity rather than ego.
  • Facial Markings: She has a small red circle tattooed on her cheek. What significance this marking has remains unclear.
  • Fatal Flaw: Downplayed. Her weakness, as she notes, is her sense of curiosity, which Archamus exploits in order to get her to agree to help them hunt down the Alpha Legion agents that have infiltrated Sol. She even knows what he's doing, but she can't resist the lure. Fortunately for her, it doesn't get her killed.
  • The Gadfly: She initially refuses to work with the Imperial Fists, apparently purely out of spite. Even after Archamus is able to convince her to aid them, she constantly needles them with insults and snarky comments, up to and including tacitly insulting their primarch, which is a major Berserk Button for any Space Marine.
  • Perp Sweating: She engages in a literal bout of this by locking a suspected Alpha Legion operative in an overheated cell, waiting until he's almost totally dehydrated, then offering him water in exchange for information.
  • She Knows Too Much: Invokes this on herself at the end of Praetorian of Dorn, when she thinks Kestros has come to silence her. He averts the trope by informing her that Dorn has decided she can still be of use to the Imperium's cause.
  • The Spock: Throughout Praetorian of Dorn, she serves as the logical, rational counterbalance to Kestros's blunt, straightforward point of view.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Andromeda has no love for the Imperium, and she makes this very clear to Archamus and Kestros. A previous Andromeda was killed by Space Marines during the pacification of Luna, so she has good reason to be bitter. That said, she also eventually realises that, as bad as the Imperium is, Horus would be a lot worse, and by the time of the short story Now Peals Midnight, her relationship with Kestros seems to have evolved into an Odd Friendship.
  • Young Face, Old Eyes: She physically doesn't appear to be much older than a teenager, but Archamus notes that her eyes seem to belong to someone much older. It's implied that this is because she carries the memories of all sixteen of her previous incarnations.

    Niora Su-Kassen 

Niora Su-Kassen

Admiral of the Imperial Army in the Sol System.


  • Four-Star Badass: She doesn't hesitate to draw her pistol and fight when the daemon Samus attacks the Phalanx. She's enough of a badass, in fact, that Dorn entrusts her with control of the Phalanx and command of the Imperial fleet while he goes down to Terra to oversee the defense of the Palace.
  • Outliving One's Offspring: Her torturous uncertainty about whether her daughter (assigned to Horus' fleet) has remained loyal or turned traitor is finally answered when Jaghatai Khan has people dig through the archives. It turns out that her daughter died in the fighting over Isstvan III, when she and other Loyalists in the fleet fought back against the Traitors.
  • Space People: She hails from the Jovian void-clans, noted for producing masters of space warfare.
  • Super-Intelligence: Of the cybernetic variety. Void warfare on a system scale is so complex that Su-Kassen has been given a variety of augmetics and mental enhancements to bolster her recall and ability to take in information. It still takes her several minutes to absorb the strategic hololiths during Now Peals Midnight and The Solar War, while Dorn can take it in at a glance.
  • You Are in Command Now: Dorn hands her command of the Phalanx and all remaining loyalist naval assets in the Sol system when he heads down to Terra to take command of the defenses there.
  • You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: In Now Peals Midnight, Su-Kassen is trying to determine why all the fighting in the solar system has stopped for no apparent reason. Dorn tells her to go and get some rest and addresses her by her given name for the first time since they've known each other. This causes her to realize that Horus' arrival is imminent.

    Katsuhiro 

Katsuhiro

An ordinary citizen of the Imperium, conscripted into the Imperial Army on the eve of the Siege of Terra.


  • Action Survivor: At the beginning of The Lost and the Damned, Katsuhiro has had no basic training and barely knows how to use a lasgun. He winds up living through the hellish initial stages of the Siege by being a fast learner and a quick shot.
  • Badass and Child Duo: He takes responsibility for a baby that Shiban Khan recovered from the warzone and is shown carrying the kid around in Warhawk and The End and the Death.
  • Badass Normal: He's a completely ordinary human with no combat training, and he manages to hold his own against renegade Imperial soldiers, feral beastmen, and even the initial attacks of the Traitor Legions.
  • Cassandra Truth: He tries to warn the Imperial Fists in charge of the defenses when he spots his fellow soldier Doromek, who is really Ashul, one of the Alpha Legion infiltrators from Praetorian of Dorn, behind the walls of the Imperial Palace. They think he's just delirious from sustained combat.
  • Elites Are More Glamorous: Averted. Though he's been assigned to the Kushtun Naganda, a regiment that was formerly considered an elite and prestigious unit, it's been so crippled by losses that it's now made up almost entirely of raw conscripts, with a few Shell-Shocked Veterans in charge.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: He abandons his post and bolts for safety when the outer layer of the defenses finally cracks after several months of sustained fighting. This is also about the time when a fully daemonic Angron makes landfall on Terra and charges the Palace walls, so it's hard to blame him for running.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: He's become one by the end of The Lost and the Damned. It's entirely understandable, considering what he's been through.
  • Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder: He turns out to be a fairly good soldier, despite having been flung into combat as just another warm body.
  • Survival Mantra: "He protects me as I protect Him".
  • You Are in Command Now: At the end of Mortis, he is given command of his sector's defenses by the dying Blood Angel who was formerly in charge. He immediately rallies to the task.

The Custodes

    The Custodes in General 

The Custodes

The Emperor's order of personal guards.


  • Always Someone Better: To the Astartes and Thunder Warriors. The Custodes don't have the numbers or armoury to take on any one Legion meaningfully, but they and their weapons are deadlier than their counterparts on a one-to-one basis.
  • Bling of War: Clad all in auramite, matching the Emperor's armour.
  • Bodyguarding a Badass: It speaks to the ferocity of the Great Crusade that the Emperor considers them necessary.
  • Cultured Badass: All Custodians are
  • Deus Exit Machina: Much like their master. If the Emperor commanded it, the Custodes would doubtless strike out in force and do tremendous damage to the traitors, but Magnus's Folly leaves them stuck fighting in a five year meat grinder to desperately try and preserve the Emperor's dream without really impacting the wider Heresy.
  • Elite Army: In an Imperium they share with the Astartes, Solar Auxilia and Mechanicum Taghmata, the Custodes are the most elite of all.
  • Jerkass: The fact they're the Emperor's bodyguards frequently goes to their heads a little bit. Nearly every named Custodes we see acts like he's the be-all end-all of any room he's in, unless the Emperor, Malcador or a senior Custodes happens to be there as well. The Astartes for their part respect the Custodians’ martial prowess, but tend to see them as overly self-important. Rogal Dorn is really the only Astartes they show any kind of respect to, by dint of his position as the Emperor's chosen general of the defense of Terra.
  • Soldier vs. Warrior: Firmly on the warrior side. They are much more individualistic than the Astartes in their fighting styles.

    Constantin Valdor 

Constantin Valdor

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/constantin_valdor.jpg
The Emperor snaps his fingers, and Valdor snaps you.

Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes, superhuman bodyguards to the Emperor. Along with Malcador and Rogal Dorn, he keeps the Imperium together in his master's absence.


  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: His authority in the palace seemingly comes from being a bodyguard to the Emperor.
  • Bling of War: Like all the Custodians, he wears shiny golden armour.
  • Bodyguarding a Badass: The Emperor is so far above everyone else in power levels that he could probably wipe the floor with any enemy Valdor would be capable of stopping. Probably why the Emperor treats the Custodes as his rapid strike force.
  • The Chosen One: In a very strange way, the Emperor seems to have chosen Valdor specifically to some unknown end, having gone to extreme lengths to get Valdor specifically to be a Custodian and gifting him the Apollonian Spear with its special properties on top of that.
  • Combat Pragmatist: Has nothing against sending a team of assassins to off Horus.
  • Determinator: He keeps fighting through the insanity of the Vengeful Spirit even after taking wounds that should have killed him, because nothing and no one will stop him from reaching the Emperor.
  • The Extremist Was Right: Played with. While his plan to assassinate Horus obviously fails, it turns out that the traitors are trying to do the same and both groups end up annihilating each other, not to mention all the intel the assassins obtain.
  • Fallen Hero: Potentially. He is the Yellow King, the Big Bad of the Bequin series. It's ambiguous if he's really fallen, though.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He gets run through during the fighting on the Vengeful Spirit; being a Custodian, it doesn't kill him, but it does slow him down.
  • Jurisdiction Friction:
    • Comes into conflict with Dorn in matters of how the war against Horus should be run. He sends assassins to try and assassinate Horus, but Dorn believes it to be unwise.
    • At Prospero, Valdor has a rather passive-aggressive struggle with Russ over what exactly they should be doing there, with Valdor wanting to arrest Magnus as per the Emperor's order while Russ, riled up by Horus, wants to kill Magnus. Valdor's response, since Russ has overall command but Valdor only takes orders from the Emperor, is to withhold his personal forces (the Custodes and Sisters of Silence) until the Thousand Sons go out of control and seriously threaten to wipe out the Space Wolves, and even after he's forced to commit his troops he attempts to remind Russ of their orders to no avail.
      Valdor: Even now, I would see him taken to Terra, if it could be done. I would wish to know why.
  • Large and in Charge: Bigger than an Astartes, leads the Custodes.
  • Magical Weapon: The Apollonian Spear is a unique guardian spear gifted to Valdor by the Emperor. In addition of the standard guardian spear fare like the power blade and built-in bolter, it also has a mystical ability to grant the wielder a truth about whatever he cuts with it (such as giving the life story of every slain mortal). Valdor uses it against daemons to learns their true names for later use, and also finds other uses for it, such as cutting into the floor to confirm he's on the Vengeful Spirit. The spear is meant as a constant test of Valdor's mental conditioning. Malcador fears that this ability to give insight will eventually corrupt Valdor.
  • Number Two: Wherever Malcador or Dorn doesn't quite cut it, Valdor goes.
  • Overly Long Name: Custodians get to add to their name with each victory they win, and each new name is etched into their armor. While we never hear it in full, Valdor's name is apparently so long it covers the entire surface area of his armor inside and out.
  • Praetorian Guard: Leads the Custodes, honour guard of the Emperor.
  • Super-Soldier: As a Custodes, he's said to be better than your regular Space Marine, albeit still not on Primarch level.

    Aquillon 

Aquillon

Leader of the Custodians sent to keep watch over the Word Bearers.


  • 0% Approval Rating: The Word Bearers (with the exception of Argel Tal) despise Aquillon and his men as a constant reminder of their humiliation at Monarchia, and most don't even bother to hide their contempt for the Custodians.
  • BFS: Favours a colossal sword over the customary guardian spear.
  • Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Despite him and his men being universally hated by the Word Bearers, Erebus insists Aquillon and the other Custodians be kept alive in the hopes that studying their genome for similarities with the Emperor's might yield a weakness the Traitor Legions can exploit.
  • Off with His Head!: Argel Tal bites his head off after he kills Cyrene Valantion.
  • Red Baron: The "Occuli Imperator", referring to his task in the book.
  • Tranquil Fury: Upon learning of what the Word Bearers have been doing.
  • The Watcher: His designated role in The First Heretic.
  • We Used to Be Friends: In their final confrontation, Aquillon tries to reason with Argel Tal, insisting that the Word Bearers and the Traitor Legions have been lied to by the Chaos gods. Argel Tal, fully embracing his new status as a Possessed Chaos Space Marine and seething with rage at Aquillon's murder of Cyrene, ignores Aquillon's attempt and orders his fellow Gal Vorbak onto the attack.
  • Would Hit a Girl: Would run a woman through with his sword.

    Ra Endymion 

Ra Endymion

A Tribune of the Custodians and commander of the Custodian forces committed to the Webway War in Master of Mankind.


  • Demonic Possession: Drach'nyen doesn't end up controlling him, thanks to his immense willpower, but he will have it bound to him for the rest of his life.
  • Dual Wielding: When his guardian spear is out of ammo, he switches to a pair of "Meridian swords".
  • Foil: To the Emperor.
  • Hero Killer: He takes Chaos Space Marines apart, seemingly with little effort.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: He doesn't initiate it, but with Drach'nyen bound inside him, he doesn't even give the Emperor a What the Hell, Hero?, but just races off into the depths of the Webway. By doing this, he keeps the Daemon of the First Murder away from his master.
  • The Watson: A large part of his role is to be exposited to by the Emperor about the Webway Project, the nature of Chaos and Drach'nyen.
  • You Are in Command Now: Everyone in the Webway who ranks above him has been killed when we meet him.

    Diocletian Coros 

Diocletian Coros

A Prefect of the Hykanatoi, and Ra's subordinate during the Webway War in Master of Mankind.


  • Foil: To Zephon of the Blood Angels. He views the regular humans of the Imperium with disdain while Zephon is much more compassionate towards them, is an extremely capable warrior where Zephon is effectively crippled, and varies between stiff formality to cold distance at almost all times, contrasting with Zephon's frequent informal conversations with others and displays of emotion.
  • Jerkass: To an even bigger degree than most Custodes. He makes no secret of his disdain for the Imperium's masses, reacts to child refugees getting in his way by nearly shooting them for slowing him down, and is overall a major arsehole to anyone outside of the Silent Sisterhood or Ten Thousand. He even mouths off to Dorn, of all people, after the primarch questions him during a briefing.
  • The Stoic: Barely shows any emotions beyond the occasional burst of annoyance. Best exemplified by this quote from Zephon:
    Zephon: "You said I disappointed you, Custodian. I assure you that the feeling is mutual. I had not imagined conversing with one of the Ten Thousand to be such an exercise in soulless discourse."

     Khorarinn 

Khorarinn

A custodian sent on a mission alongside Garro to vet the Daggerline flotilla and it's refugees fleeing to Terra.


  • Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: As a Custodian, he believes he's the pinnacle of martial prowess. He doesn't take it well when Garro beats him in a duel.
  • Improperly Paranoid: Is ready to drag the Emperor's Children and World Eaters among the refugees to Terra in chains, but immediately trusts the White Scars in the flotilla. Guess who the real traitors turn out to be? It's not the first two. This winds up getting him killed.
  • Jerkass: Is in stiff competition with Coros for biggest jackass in the Custodes. Khorarinn can barely go a sentence without insulting Rubio and Garro or accusing the latter of being a traitor-in-waiting. While vetting the refugees, he's always one second away from deciding "screw it, I'll just kill them all". But his most jerkass moment comes when he commands Garro to spar with him, then throws a fit and threatens to kill Garro when the latter manages to win.
  • Mean Boss: Garro's biggest problem with Khorarinn: as big an asshole as he is, Khorarinn's in charge of the Daggerline mission, by order of Malcador himself.
  • Once Done, Never Forgotten: Subjects Garro to this for something he hasn't even done. Khorarinn judges Garro for the actions of the Death Guard as a whole and refuses to let him forget it. Nevermind that Garro is actually the one who brought the warning to Terra. He's also not shy about his dislike for Rubio using his psychic powers again.
  • Oh, Crap!: When he realizes that Garro was right and he's got the wrong Astartes pegged as traitors. Too bad the warning comes too late to save him.

The Mechanicum

    The Mechanicum in General 

The Mechanicum

The only religious movement permitted in the Imperium, the Mechanicum worship the Emperor as the Omnissiah, the avatar of their Machine God. Having access to powerful technology that Terra lacked and many "Forge Worlds" scattered across the Galaxy, the Emperor brought them into the Imperium at the beginning of the Great Crusade.


  • Artificial Limbs: Ubiquitous among the priesthood.
  • Church Militant: A church for whom even making weapons is sacred.
  • Cyborg: Part and parcel of being a tech-priest. Their senior priests are, to a man (or woman - it gets very hard to tell) a long way removed from common humanity by the extent of their augmentations.
  • A House Divided: A religious schism shatters the Mechanicus at the outset of the Horus Heresy, with one faction rejecting the Emperor as the Omnissiah and the other remaining loyal.
  • Machine Worship: Human technology is sacred to them, Titans are avatars of their god, and AI is unholy.
  • Scary Amoral Religion: Certainly many of their higher-ups, who think nothing of having millions of people slaved to their scientific vision and tend to view them as a handy resource. Certain battle robots were actually created to wipe out excess thralls. Note that the more unscrupulous leaders were the ones to actually side with Horus.
  • Unwilling Roboticisation: They do this to convicts, and sometimes surplus slaves, turning them into servitors and battle-automata.

    Kelbor Hal 

Kelbor Hal

The Fabricator General of Mars during the Great Crusade, which makes him de facto supreme leader of the Mechanicum. He is convinced to side with Horus when the latter offers him more freedom to explore certain topics that Emperor did not want examined (for good reason).


  • Cyborg: To a greater degree than most techpriests. As befitting the ruler of Mars, there's almost no flesh left in him. He even went as far as replacing half of his brain, because that was the "emotional" half. The Emperor had him wear a golden mask to seem more human, which he discarded.
  • Driven by Envy: While he may truly fear that the Emperor won't allow the Mechanicum to operate its own empire within the Imperium, he's also plainly jealous of the Master of Mankind's power.
  • Evil Genius: Several of the things he creates with the Technology from the Vaults of Moravec are absolutely nightmarish.
  • The Fundamentalist: He still adheres to the pre-Emperor belief that no area of research should be left alone. It gets him corrupted by Chaotic "scrapcode" soon enough.
  • Hypocrite: He pointedly does not care that opening the Vaults of Moravec to acquire the secrets within caused a cataclysm on Mars that, among other things, destroyed irreplaceable knowledge stored elsewhere on the planet.
  • The Leader: By dint of his position as Fabricator General of Mars, he's the leader of the entire Mechanicum. After the Horus Heresy, he is the founder and first leader of the Dark Mechanicum.
  • Mad Scientist: The things he creates with the information in the Vaults of Moravec are the stuff of nightmares.
  • Magic from Technology: Assumes this applies to his universe, dismissing concerns that the Vault of Moravec is tainted by something... other.
  • Mind Rape: When he opens the Vaults of Moravec, the Chaotic scrapcode contained within promptly disables his security systems and re-writes "the sacred base code making [Kelbor-Hal] who he is", heavily implying this trope to be in effect.
  • Mission Control: The art books that came out before the Horus Heresy novels have him end up as this next to Horus on the Vengeful Spirit during the Siege of Terra.
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Not that it wasn't justified, but the Emperor's decision to make certain fields of research forbidden did not sit well with this guy.
  • Not So Stoic: For all that he may seem to have no emotions, he is openly stated to feel rancour and frustration toward the Emperor. Also, during the opening of the Vaults of Moravec, he is openly horrified for a moment when he realises the code released is corrupt.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: Kelbor Hal is the lord and founder of the Dark Mechanicum. His contemporary, Anacharis Scoria, Lord of the Forge World of Xana II from the Siege of Vraks campaign, had rules (pre-FAQ) that let him fight and defeat Primarchs one-on-one.
  • The Resenter: Resents the Emperor's ban on several fields of research, as well as the sealing of the Vaults of Moravec.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: One of the things that convinces him to side with Horus is that the Warmaster offered to open the forbidden Vaults of Moravec, which were apparently sealed because of this trope. Specifically, they were meant to contain Warp-tainted machinery. When Hal opens it, Chaos-infected scrapcode tears through the Martian noosphere, causing planetwide devastation. Hal thinks it was Worth It, though, as he now has access to the forbidden technology within the Vault.
  • Stealing the Credit: Repeatedly tries to claim credit for actions undertaken by Perturabo and his own disciple, Sohta-Nul, during the Siege of Terra.
  • Villain Has a Point:
    • While he is an Evil Genius, he correctly points out that the Emperor essentially strong-armed the Mechanicum into serving the Imperium.
    • On the Emperor's side, Kelbor and the Mechanicus did constantly raid Terra for technology.
    • He also believes that the Emperor is a false prophet and that the Machine God still slumbers beneath Mars, waiting to be found. Dahlia's arc in Mechanicum proves that he is absolutely correct. However, considering that said Machine God is Mag'ladroth the Void Dragon, the most powerful C'tan in existence, it might be better if the Machine God stays asleep.

    Zagreus Kane 

Zagreus Kane

A Fabricator-Locum who remains loyal to the Emperor, and becomes the Fabricator-General in exile.


  • Bad Boss: Some forge thralls mistake him for the Omnissiah and start praying. His response is to shoot one, and he thinks nothing of promising that thousands of them will be turned into servitors and automata. Justified, because if he allows that worship in any way, shape, or form without harshly correcting it, he would be the one turned into a servitor as it would be considered blasphemy.
  • Cyborg: Before Mars fell, he was a downplayed example of this, having his cybernetics either concealed or relatively difficult to notice. Afterwards, he went the exact opposite direction, essentially becoming little more than a head and torso that can attach itself to various cradles or karts to move around. He even resents having to actually speak rather than communicate electronically and begins expressing significant ire at "pointless" talks with his subordinates, in contrast to his willingness to talk with an apprentice during Mechanicum.
  • Government in Exile: Following the Schism of Mars and becoming the Fabricator-General, Kane is in charge of the Loyalist Mechanicum; however, as Mars is in Dark Mechanicus and traitor hands he and his government effectively have no power there.
  • Man in the Machine: Post-Schism, most of his human parts are replaced with mechanical parts. All that visibly remains of his flesh is a single eye.
  • More Dakka: After arriving on Terra, he "sanctifies himself" with an impressive array of cannons.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Has four arms after his decision to go full cyborg.
  • Ridiculously Human Robots: Dislikes these greatly, believing that no machine should perfectly replace/replicate a human being.
  • The Resenter: He's not happy to be stuck on Terra while Kelbor-Hal continues to rule Mars. The Council of Terra's flagrant disregard for his authority doesn't help at all.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Subverted. Arkhan Land is not impressed by Kane's modifications on Terra.
  • Took a Level in Jerkass: He wasn't exactly the nicest person before Mars fell, but become far more of a Jerkass afterwards. See the Bad Boss entry above, for an example.
  • You Are in Command Now: After every other senior loyalist on Mars has been killed, he becomes Fabricator-General of the exiled Loyalist Mechanicum.

    Hieronyma 

Hieronyma

A priestess of the Mechanicum Ordo Reductor. She volunteers to becomes the "Archimandrite", a Mechanicus superweapon which will lead the relief effort into the Imperial Webway.


    Arkhan Land 

Arkhan Land

A legendary techno-archaeologist of the Mechanicum who recovered several key STCs in the early years of the Great Crusade, including the schematics for the Land Raider and Land Speeder. This has given him a bit of an ego.


  • Break the Haughty: His story in Echoes of Eternity is basically one long breakdown. He starts off arrogantly saying he's "too important to die" but ends up repeatedly threatened, suffers injuries and indignities, is forced to fight in traumatic warzones, and loses his beloved pet and new friend, reducing him to pathetic crying and begging. He gets better, though.
  • Bold Explorer: His job more or less boils down to combing through ancient ruins and archaeological sites to find caches of archaeotech or long-lost repositories of information. This eventually gets him killed sometime after the Horus Heresy.
  • Bond One-Liner: Despite mostly being a Non-Action Guy, he delivers a pretty good one after managing to take out a World Eater.
    Blood for the Machine God.
  • Character Development: He shows a little bit of empathy and bravery by the end of Echoes of Eternity.
  • Deadpan Snarker: It comes out a lot in his interactions with Kane. And everyone else, really.
  • Entertainingly Wrong: He thinks one of his colleagues is an idiot for proposing that long-extinct monkeys had prehensile tails that could be used to hang from tree branches. Obviously their tails were stiff, segmented, and tipped with venomous stingers.
  • Inelegant Blubbering: He doesn't handle the Siege particularly well.
  • Insistent Terminology: It's not a Land Raider, it's Land's Raider. He found it, it's named after him, and he won't let anyone forget it.
  • "It" Is Dehumanizing: He tends to talk about the Astartes and the primarchs this way. He refuses to refer to the primarchs by name, only using their numbers.
  • Killed Offscreen: Land ultimately died on an expedition into the Martian ruins where he found the STC for the Land Raider some time after the conclusion of the Horus Heresy.
  • Jerkass: He's arrogant and rude. The effect is heightened by the fact that he's being disrespectful of characters usually held in high regard, especially the primarchs, who he considers aberrations.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: Not that some of his criticisms of the Primarchs and the Astartes aren't valid.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He doesn't seem to understand how to express it, but he ends up developing a genuine friendship with the skitarii Transacta-7Y1 during Echoes of Eternity and is inconsolable when his skills aren't enough to save her life.
  • Lost Superweapon: Being a techno-archaeologist, he recovers one and wields it in the latter days of the Siege. It's a pistol from the Dark Age of Technology that can One-Hit Kill just about anything, including Astartes, by dissolving them into dust on a subatomic level.
  • Not So Above It All: For all his arrogance and pomposity as a rational man of science, he still baby-talks to his pet psyber-monkey the same way people coo at cute puppies.
  • Robot Buddy: He has a "psyber-monkey" (or "Artificimian") named Sapien who travels everywhere with him, constructed based on his theories about the biology of long-extinct simians. While generally treated as no smarter than a normal animal, it can apparently communicate with skitarii.

    Lukas Chrom 

Lukas Chrom

One of Kelbor-Hal's chief lieutenants and the creator of the Kaban Machine.


  • Bad Boss: His response to an adept expressing concerns about the Kaban Project is to threaten him with a chainsword nearly as large as he is, then send a sadistic cyborg assassin after him on the grounds that He Knows Too Much.
  • The Engineer: Chrom built the Kaban Machine's shell and much of the AI's code, including the esoteric weapons it uses and the void shields it packs. He's also stated to be a master at constructing Mechanicum-sanctioned battle-automata and robots.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: To Dahlia and the Knights of Taranis' arc in Mechanicum; while he never directly fights them, his Kaban Machine is responsible for the majority of the conflict in their arcs.
  • Jerkass: He's also by far the most overtly unpleasant of Kelbor-Hal's inner circle, snapping at Melgator despite the rather generous terms Horus offers to them and treating his subordinates like dirt. Even Kelbor-Hal himself considers Chrom to be an arrogant, insufferable ass.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Chrom's eyes have been replaced by glowing red augmetics, just in case he didn't seem menacing enough.
  • Skull for a Head: Wears an iron skull with wiring trailing from the jaw over his face, giving him this look.

    Urtzi Malevolus 

Urtzi Malevolus

One of Kelbor-Hal's chief lieutenants.


  • Evil Gloating: Once Malevolus has Ravachol (the adept on the run from Chrom's assassin) trapped between himself and the assassin outside, he takes the opportunity to monologue about how the Emperor's time is ending and their plans can't be stopped any longer.
  • False Friend: More or less his relationship with Pallas Ravachol; he welcomes him back to Malevolus' forge, only to betray him to Chrom's assassin to prevent Ravachol leaking their plans.
  • Faux Affably Evil: He's very cordial and even friendly when welcoming Pallas Ravachol to his forge, showing him around the workshops and the fresh-made suits of Space Marine Power Armor to calm him after his frantic escape. Then he reveals his allegiance to Horus, mocks Ravachol's horror at what they're planning, and casually hands him over to Chrom so that the Kaban Machine can execute him on the steps of Malevolus' forge.
  • Internal Reveal: In The Kaban Project, Malevolus is revealed to be in cahoots with Horus and Chrom, much to Ravachol's horror; the audience of course knows this due to Mechanicum coming out nearly five years before The Kaban Project (which also established that Ravachol was Doomed by Canon).
  • Magnum Opus: Malevolus considers his crafting of Horus' Terminator armor to be his crowning achievement in a long career.
  • Meaningful Name: Urtzi Malevolus *. Certainly sounds like the name of a heroic character, right?
  • Ultimate Blacksmith: This guy crafted Horus' post-Chaos Power Armor, though Kelbor-Hal applied the finishing touches.

    Meer Edv Tawren 

Meer Edv Tawren

A senior Mechanicum adept assigned to Calth. When the Word Bearers attack the planet, she is thrust into the heart of the fight.


  • And This Is for...: She acknowledges that she is fighting the Word Bearers for Hesst, who was her life partner.
    Tawren: I miss him. I do this for him.
  • Cyborg: Like any good member of the Mechanicum, she is heavily augmented with cybernetic implants.
  • Death from Above: She obtains personal control of Calth's orbital weapons grid and uses it to demolish any Word Bearer that dares show his face on the surface.
  • Died in Your Arms Tonight: Uhl Kehal Hesst, her predecessor and life partner, dies in her arms after being fatally wounded by the destruction of Calth's noosphere.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: She and Captain Ventanus become good friends after being thrown together during the chaotic initial stages of the fight for Calth.
  • Platonic Life-Partners: Her relationship with Hesst seems to be somewhere between this trope and a standard romantic relationship.
    Tawren: He was, I suppose, my husband. My life partner. The Mechanicum does not think in such old-fashioned terms, and our social connections are more subtle. But yes, captain, we were close. A binary form.
  • Trust Password: She unlocks the data-engine that Hesst used to conceal his killcode with two different numeric codes: her organic birthday, and the date she achieved "full-plug modification".
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: She coordinates and directs the loyalist forces via vox and satellite during the Battle of Calth and the subsequent Underworld War.
  • You Are in Command Now: When Hesst is mortally injured by the data-shock from the destruction of Calth Veridian, he tells Tawren to take over as Server of Instrumentation and get the planetary weapons grid back online. She ultimately ascends to command of all Mechanicum forces on Calth.

    Arook Serotid 

Arook Serotid

A skitarii officer caught up in the Battle of Calth.


  • Cyborg: A long military career in service to the Mechanicum has left him heavily augmented.
  • Last Stand: Offscreen, he heroically stays behind to cover Remus Ventanus' escape.
  • Large and in Charge: He rivals Space Marines with his augmented size.

    The Kaban Machine 

The Kaban Machine

The pet project of Mechanicum Adept Lukas Chrom, it is the first Artificial Intelligence created by man since the Dark Age of Technology. Naturally, it ends up on the side of the Traitor Legions.


  • Ascended Extra: Initially appeared in a short story before taking a much larger role in Mechanicum. Due to the limited publication of the short story, the backstory comes much later in the main series.
  • Book Ends: Its first appearance in Mechanicum has it fight the Knights of Taranis. Its final appearance in the story has it fight those very same knights and, ultimately, lose to them]].
  • Combat Tentacles: Several of its weapons are attached to mechadendrites.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Inflicts this on Raf Maven and his Knight in their first meeting, defeating his Knight and very nearly killing them both without suffering any damage.
  • Deflector Shields: It has void shields. This lets it dominate its first battle with the Knights of Taranis, because they don't have the firepower to easily break said shield.
  • Freudian Excuse: How do you program a true AI to be evil? You don't. You get it to be friends with a fundamentalist who views the Emperor as a god and its existence as an affront to his laws, then manipulate it into killing him.
  • The Heavy: Fulfils this role in Mechanicum: it kicks off the Knights of Taranis' arc by attacking a reactor they were guarding and joins Dahlia's arc when it is sent to hunt her down, but it ultimately is subservient to Lukas Chrom and Kelbor Hal.
  • It Can Think: It learns from its mistakes and actively works to avoid repeating them. This almost lets it achieve its goal in Mechanicum, until The Knights of Taranis arrive to fight it.
  • Made of Iron: It's a robot, but even then, it still takes an absolutely colossal amount of firepower to take it down. Justified, due to it being equipped with a mix of heavy armour and void shields.
  • More Dakka: Has enough firepower on it to make an Ork jealous.
  • Robotic Psychopath: It functions perfectly well, it's just that its creator wanted it to be evil.

Non-Imperial

    John Grammaticus 

John Grammaticus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/johngrammaticus.jpg

An enigmatic psyker, John is actually a Perpetual and an agent of the Cabal, Ancient Conspiracy hell-bent on saving the universe from Chaos. Due to nature of his arc and character, even trope names may be spoilers here.


  • Ace Pilot: A variety - he's capable of flying all types of vessels, whether human, xenos, or Astartes.
  • Battle in the Center of the Mind: Tries to have one, but his enemy being a Legion Librarian, he's severely outclassed and lives only on Numeon's mercy.
  • Brought Down to Normal: Twice in the same book.
    • Narek puts a psyker collar on him to stop him from smooth-talking his way out.
    • By "killing" Vulkan with the fulgurite, he seemingly robs himself of Perpetuality.
  • Compelling Voice: Part of his logokine powers is ability to do this, although a sufficiently aware and focused victim can fight back.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Uses this as a way to cope with the insanity of the universe around him.
    John (to his "rescuers"): I actually felt safer when I was on my own.
  • Double Agent: For some time, he plays for both sides while trying to break free of the Cabal.
  • Driven to Suicide: When he realizes that what he has done may have triggered the extinction of humanity, he throws himself out of the airlock. His Perpetuality proves to be a problem, though.
  • The Eeyore: When accompanying the Salamanders, he's the one to voice the most fatalism and preach of incoming failure.
  • Goggles Do Nothing: Averted, they're necessary in Traoris' environment.
  • Guile Hero: He's pretty much nothing when it comes to combat abilities, but watching him work his charms and mind to get around obstacles and fool the chase is a pure pleasure.
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam: The Cabal doesn't let him come over to the good guys' side and his attempt at helping Vulkan ends up killing him, albeit thankfully, only temporarily.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Rather than pass the fulgurite to Curze to kill Vulkan for good, he does the deed, believing that if a Perpetual does it, it will instead cure Vulkan's broken mind.
  • Herald:
    • For Alpharius and Omegon, as he's the one who brings the Cabal to their attention.
    • For Oll Persson, setting him on a mission to save the Imperium.
  • Hitman with a Heart: He's tasked with killing Vulkan, but finds himself questioning his cause.
  • Go Among Mad People: He's said to have spent eighteen years in an insane asylum.
  • Master of Disguise: Probably the most powerful tool in his arsenal. He can become pretty much everyone, and that's before he starts using his logokine powers.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Has this moment after engineering the Alpha Legion's Face–Heel Turn.
  • The Needs of the Many: His ideology while serving the Cabal, but he begins to question it when he realizes that the "many" doesn't equal "humans".
  • Non-Action Guy: Despite being an ex-soldier, he's next to nothing in terms of physical powers and instead relies on his smooth talking and guile to make it through.
  • Odd Friendship: It's curious how he and Oll Persson managed to get together and become friends enough for John to turn to Oll when world-saving is required, given how Oll is just trying to live out his lives beneath notice while John is always out on a Cabal mission.
  • Older Than They Look: He looks about thirty, but has fought in the Unification Wars, so he must be at least two centuries old.
  • Omniglot: Being a logokine means he's instantly fluent in any language as soon as he sees or hears it, including alien tongues, sign languages, and Enuncia, though the latter was incredibly painful to learn.
  • Out of Continues: After losing his Perpetuality, he frequently reminds himself and others that he's "on [his] last life". He notes that it focuses his mind quite well to know that if he makes a mistake this time, he can't get up and walk away.
  • Pint-Sized Powerhouse: His digital weapon, a ring that can be worn on a finger and can blast a Legionary into a wall.
  • Pro-Human Transhuman: He starts trying to become one after Legion.
  • Psychic Powers: John's a logokine, a psyker with abilities centred around speech and language, which has numerous uses including Compelling Voice, Master of Disguise, and Talking in Your Dreams.
  • Resignations Not Accepted: Turns out the Cabal doesn't accept employees retiring.
  • Resurrective Immortality: The Cabal turned him into an artificial Perpetual (somehow), and he always comes back to life when killed.
  • Rogue Agent: Tries to defect from the Cabal and follow his conscience. Also, he was initially an Imperial commander before the Great Crusade left Earth, but joined the Cabal in the interim.
  • The Social Expert: He can easily smooth-talk people and slide into any part without a problem.
  • Sour Supporter: He's not happy about following the Cabal, but doesn't know what else to do. It translates to his demeanour.
  • Super-Senses: He has some sort of psychic sense enabling him to find people over large distances.
  • Swiss-Army Superpower: John is a logokine, an incredibly rare type of psyker whose main repertoire of powers relate to language. It's actually really versatile.
  • Talking in Your Dreams: How he communicates with Oll.
  • Transhuman Treachery: How he comes to see his service to the Cabal, and what it is, really - he helps ensure mankind's extinction to save the rest of the galaxy from Chaos.
  • Wild Card: He'll work with you whenever it suits his goals and will turn against you whenever it suits his goals. This applies to both the Imperium and the Cabal.

    Eldrad Ulthran 

Eldrad Ulthran

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eldrad_ulthran_6th_ed10.jpg
Whatever this big thing behind him was, he's had enough of it.

An Eldar Farseer and member of the Cabal, Eldrad seeks to save the galaxy from Chaos, even if it means getting creative.


  • Cassandra Truth: While his own people treat him seriously, the Imperium has a notoriously bad track record with believing him:
    • It's rumoured that he tried to warn the Emperor that Chaos was going to become a bigger threat than the galaxy's xenos inhabitants, only to be rebuked.
    • Attempts to warn the Imperium of Horus' impending treachery, only for his listener to be Fulgrim, who at the time is already being corrupted by Chaos.
  • Chewing the Scenery: He sure does that during his formal dinner with Fulgrim.
  • Herald:
  • I Do Not Drink Wine: He does not eat... meat. Albeit this may be just him trolling Fulgrim.
  • Psychic Powers: He's one of the most powerful psykers out there and no-one would be surprised if his power would be equal to Malcador's. His speciality lies in foreseeing the future, though.
  • Rogue Agent: Seems to be working against the Cabal somehow.
  • Seers: He can predict the future with chilling accuracy. This could be the reason why he fights the Cabal; he's foreseen that their actions against the Emperor would result in the all-consuming hellhole that is the galaxy in the 41st Millennium and the grinding stalemate between the Emperor and Chaos that could potentially result in the Chaos gods' final victory.
  • Spirit Advisor: How he appears to both John Grammaticus and Vulkan.
  • Take a Third Option: Apparently finds a way to save the universe without killing off humanity.
  • You Are Too Late: He attempts to warn Fulgrim of Horus' treachery, only to realize that Fulgrim is already corrupted.

    Oll Persson/Ollanius 

Oll Persson/Ollanius

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ollpious.jpg
The classic 40k Badass Normal, reborn. Once again.

A Perpetual, Oll has been living for a long, long time and is actually a peer to the Emperor. Despite wanting nothing more than calm and continued existence, he's sucked into the plot as the Heresy comes to the world he's chosen to call home.


  • Beneath Notice: How he's lived through the millennia - he's not changing the world, he's not using his knowledge, he's not standing out, he's simply one of those guys doing their jobs about whom the historians won't bother writing. Emphasised by one of his earliest interactions with the Emperor.
    Oll: I just want a normal life.
    The Emperor : My friend, you'll have as many of those as you want.
  • Call to Agriculture: After retiring from the Imperial Army, he's been working as a farmer on Calth.
  • The Call Knows Where You Live: He moved to Calth hoping it'd be his safe haven. Some time later, the Word Bearers roll around and bring the Heresy with them.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: Takes his time to rescue a bunch of people he does and doesn't know in the chaos of Calth's destruction, despite the fact that their lack of knowledge of daemons may end up dooming his mission.
  • Exposition of Immortality:
    • He often reminisces about his past actions, such as the Battle of Verdun or the voyage of the Argo.
    • He uses phrases that have long been out of use in the Imperium, such as "okay".
  • Foil: To the Emperor, actually. They're both immortal, both have lived for thirty thousand years and both are somewhat apart from the rest of Mankind, but while the Emperor ended up becoming a colossally arrogant warlord who has pretty much forgotten how to relate to normal people, Ollanius clings to his humanity and stays under the radar.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Despite being by all accounts, barring his Perpetual nature, an ordinary human physically. Ollanius stands his ground against an Chaos-empowered Horusnote  from reaching the wounded Emperor, declaring that You Shall Not Pass! as he defiantly blasts Horus with a Lasgun before he's absolutely obliterated from existence by the raw power before him which, alongside the sacrifice of a Custodies that charges Horus, gives the Emperor just enough time to exploit Horus's Fatal Flaw and turn the hopeless battle against his son.
  • Hunk: If the pictures are to be believed, yes.
  • Glamour Failure: He can see daemons for what they really are.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: He's tired of immortality and just wants to live a normal life.
  • Inconspicuous Immortal: He deliberately takes low level positions (usually) due to just wanting to be normal.
  • Ironic Echo: Ollanius was the Emperor's very first Warmaster. It's implied that all the equivalent Warmasters in the Emperor's past also turned against him, although none as devastatingly as Horus.
  • Julius Beethoven da Vinci: Averted. While he was present in many historical and mythical events, he's never been anyone famous. That's part of his character's point, really. For instance, he was one of the Argonauts, but not Jason himself.
  • Killed Off for Real: Horus erases him with a blast of raw Chaos energy when Oll interposes himself between the Warmaster and the Emperor.
  • Living Relic: He has the attitudes and instincts of a bygone age, and sometimes uses turns of phrase more fitting to our times and history than the 31st Millennium. 'Okay' is a Verbal Tic of his, to a point that John Grammaticus replicates it to impersonate Oll.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Pious, as in "Religious Bruiser".
    • Oll Persson, if you read it quickly, sounds like "Old Person", which describes him perfectly. Probably justified, as it's likely he made it up for his latest "life", though it seems that it is similar to his actual name, as he went by "Olivier" for a while in WWI.
  • Odd Friendship:
    • Seemingly the only basis for friendship between him and John Grammaticus is their shared Perpetuality, yet they seem to know each other well.
    • He is also one of the few Perpetuals loyal to the Emperor (or at least thinks He's the best option), despite the Cabal trying their best to recruit them all against him.
  • The Older Immortal: He's been referred to as the first of the Perpetuals and states that he's even older than the Emperor.
  • Outliving One's Offspring: His son died in infancy and Ollanius could do nothing to save him. He's said to have taken three centuries to cope with the loss.
  • The Quest: He's tasked with reaching the Emperor and delivering him an athame that he can use to kill Horus. He and his Argonauts spend several years wandering across time and space on their way to the Imperial Palace.
  • Really 700 Years Old: He's as old as the Emperor. Or, in some accounts, even older.
  • Reconstruction: To Emperor's Deconstruction of Time Abyss. He shows that even though time does its best to alienate such person from mankind, and brings centuries of experiences, it's possible to remain a member of society and not forget one's roots.
  • Religious Bruiser: He's devoted Catheric (Catholic). In fact, the very reason he's decided to settle on Calth is because it's easier to be a believer further away from Terra.
    • How do you fight a horde of daemons? By reciting the prayer O Lord and Master of Mankind, which is derived from an actual Christian prayer.
  • Resurrective Immortality: As a Perpetual, he comes back every time he dies. This being said, he's apparently lived for many thousand years without a single death before Calth. Horus kills him permanently with a blast of raw Chaos energy.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Going by his flashbacks, he's been a soldier for his entire life, and there's pretty much nothing that can terrify him anymore. He's got quite a lot of baggage from that, too.
  • Talking in Your Dreams: How he has his conversations with Grammaticus.
  • The Magnificent: You may know him better as Ollanius Pius.
  • We Used to Be Friends: Despite being on the Emperor's side in the present, he and the Emperor had an ugly parting of the ways in the prehistoric past. When Ollanius was serving as the Emperor's first Warmaster, they had a disagreement over a near-complete Enuncia lexicon they captured at the Tower of Babel. Ollanius destroyed it, out of fear of what the Emperor would do with it.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Ollanius just seems... tired of his endless existence, as if each of his lives weighs heavily on him.
  • You Shall Not Pass!: This is how his fate plays out - brandishing his lasgun as Horus advances on the unconscious Emperor, Ollanius fires it at full auto until the Warmaster reduces him to red mist, refusing to abandon his friend.

    Alivia Sureka 

Alivia Sureka

An adventuring companion of the Emperor before he was empowered into what he was during the Unification Wars. Left behind on the Knight World of Molech to guard the portal into the Realm of Chaos that the Emperor used years ago, she proved no match for Horus, but survived due to her Perpetual nature.


  • Action Survivor: Goes through the wringer throughout the Heresy.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Old Wounds, New Scars
  • Affectionate Nickname: Liv
  • Almighty Janitor: Able to get Astartes to work with her.
  • Empowered Badass Normal: An assassin who commanded ships in the era of Old Earth and racked up a bodycount of hundreds.
  • Berserk Button: Mess with her kids and a messy death ensues.
  • Demonic Possession: Uses her Perpetual powers to survive it with the least damaged aftermath of anyone in the Heresy, and the only person shown to be able to do so.
  • Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: She defies Horus Lupercal at the Hellgate on Molech and nearly closes it. Nearly is not quite sufficient.
  • Dirty Business: Protects the Emperor's secrets on Molech for millennia. Then Horus and his Heresy happen.
  • The Empath: Her main Psyker ability, more of a curse than a blessing.
  • Guile Hero: Able to manipulate her way through things aided by her empathy.
  • "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Tries this with Horus at Molech. Doesn't work.
  • Julius Beethoven da Vinci: Was Artemisia at the Battle of Artemisium in the past.
  • Killed Off for Real: In Fury of Magnus, after Magnus accidentally kills Malcador permanently in a fit of rage, Alivia sacrifices her Perpetuality to revive him, dying in the process.
  • Living Relic: Both is one and has one, a semi-magic book of Hans Christen Andersen tales, no less.
  • Mama Bear: One of her main focuses and the source of much of her badassery.
  • Morality Pet: Her two daughters, who she devotes far more time and concern to than she does her husband.
  • More Deadly Than the Male: Racks up an Astartes-tier body count on Molech prior to the invasion.
  • Only Sane Woman: Did not consider it wise to hide the existence of the Warp.
  • Pro Human Trans Human: The most explicitly pro-human psyker besides the Emperor and the only one actively involved in supporting his schemes without direct involvement in the Imperium.
  • Psychic Powers: Empathy.
  • Really 700 Years Old: At least as old as the Biblical Deluge.
  • Reconstruction: As with Oll Persson, of the Time Abyss trope, showing that it's possible to endure for millennia without becoming inhuman.
  • Resurrective Immortality: Dies the most of any Perpetual on screen not named Vulkan. She eventually gives it up to revive Malcador after Magnus somehow permakills him.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: The person whose original task was to guard the Hellgate on Molech. Did so successfully for millennia until Horus Lupercal hit Molech like an orbital bombardment.
  • Sour Supporter: By the time of the Siege of Terra, if not before, is utterly disillusioned with the Emperor and disliked the Astartes from the beginning.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Seeks to avoid Malcador and the Imperium's elite when she arrives on Terra
  • Time Abyss: Old enough to have survived the Flood of Noah.
  • Token Good Teammate: The only person involved in the Imperium's Shadow Wars who actively tries to avoid amoral actions.
  • Walking Spoiler: In Vengeful Spirit. And with her friendship and ex-boyfriend status with John Grammaticus, to say nothing of Grammaticus predating when the Cabal supposedly made him.
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?: Outlived her original family and does not relish surviving daemonic possession on Molech's Enlightenment.

    Uriah Olathaire 

Uriah Olathaire

The priest of the last church on Terra, Uriah appears only in the short story The Last Church.


  • Alternative Character Interpretation: In-Universe, Uriah regards the Emperor as just another insane, brutal tyrant in humanity's long history of insane, brutal tyrants, who just happens to have a bit more brains, ambition, and gumption than most. And he foretells that, just like all those other tyrants, the Emperor's own faults will be the ruin of him.
  • Badass Normal: In his youth, he was one of the few survivors against a battle with the Thunder Warriors, and as an old man, he does what even Astartes haven't: rejected the Emperor and told him to his face what a tyrant he is.
  • Badass Preacher: He is best known for telling the Emperor how flawed he is to his face and declaring he wants no part in the Great Crusade.
  • Break the Believer: The point of his story is the Emperor trying to talk him out of relying on faith, while ultimately succeeding, Uriah chose not to live under the Emperor.
  • Crisis of Faith: The Last Church is about the Emperor trying to get Uriah to reject his beliefs, but in the end, Uriah refuses and dies loyal to his faith. Or rather, in defiance of the Emperor.
  • Crystal Dragon Jesus: His faith, though left vague, is all but stated to be a form of Christianity, probably Catholic. The titular Last Church is probably the monastery at Lindisfarne (although there are also clues that the Lightning Stone itself is the Old Man of Storr on the opposite side of Great Britain).
  • Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: He gives a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the Emperor.
  • Dramatic Irony: Neither he nor the Emperor is aware at the time, but his speech foreshadows the Emperor's ultimate fate.
    Uriah: And if you succeed in this grand vision of yours? What then? Beware that your subjects do not begin to see you as a god.
    • Uriah thought he had an encounter with an angelic figure in his youth, which led him to his faith. At the end of the conversation with an agent of the Emperor called "Revelation", Revelation revealed himself to be none other than the Emperor in disguise, showing him that he was the one Uriah encountered which awakened his faith, showing that it was built on a false premise. The irony comes from Uriah's continued rejection of the Emperor and his tenants, favoring of the outlook promoted by his faith, and walking back into burning church rather than living under the Emperor.
  • Driven to Suicide: At the end of his story, he walks back into his burning church after rejecting the Emperor.
  • Heel–Faith Turn: He served in a rebellion against Imperial rule, following a madman who led thousands of civilians against the Emperor's Thunder Warriors and regiments of the Imperial Army. He barely survived the battle, met the Emperor and dedicated himself to good work and peace for the rest of his life.
  • Hijacked by Jesus: In-universe. Hours after narrowly surviving a local revolt against the Emperor's regime, he had an encounter with a "glowing, golden figure" who asked Uriah why he didn't "follow me". This led to Uriah turning to faith. It was quite a shock when "Revelation" dropped his guise and revealed himself to be the Emperor, the figure who Uriah met in his youth. Once he gets over the initial shock, he decides that the event that led him to faith being a misunderstanding is irrelevant compared to the good he did in its name over the following 50 years. He reaffirms his faith, telling off the Emperor in the process, and dies a martyr in his burning church.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gives one to the Emperor, which provides the page quote for the God-Emperor page.
    Uriah: You are a madman. And you are arrogant if you believe you can subjugate the stars with warriors such as these. They are powerful to be sure, but even they are not capable of such a thing. [...] It is a dangerous road you travel. To deny humanity a thing will only make them crave it all the more. And if you succeed in this grand vision of yours? What then? Beware that your subjects do not begin to see you as a god.
  • Strawman Ball: The conversation between Uriah and the disguised Emperor can read like an Author Tract on religion; considering the arguments between the two are amateurish, it can read one as a tract going either way. Word of God from Graham mentions that Uriah has no formal theological training, as he's just a guy who had a call to faith after a personal experience as a young man. And the Emperor might just have been patronizing. In the end, Uriah's main point of contention was that, regardless of good intentions, the Emperor's authoritarian drive made him no better than the tyrants he claimed to oppose, and Uriah had something of a point.
    • The Emperor condemning religion for the Crusades and then calling his own conquests a crusade in practically the same breath, using the justification "the difference is, I know I am right" is what convinces Uriah he's just another hypocritical madman.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Uriah's own opinion of his younger self. A highlight was drunkenly taunting a group of Thunder Warriors until one of them got pissed enough to throw him off a cliff.
  • You're Insane!: Said to the Emperor.
    Uriah: You are a madman.

    The Interex 

The Interex

A federation encountered by the Luna Wolves, the Interex differs from the Imperium in that it seeks to ally with and coexist with alien races peacefully. They also actively recognise the threat of Chaos (though they name it Kaos), and strive to educate their citizens about its dangers. They attempt to ally with the Imperium, but these efforts are sabotaged by Erebus stealing an anathame, one of their most taboo weapons, and ultimately the Interex enters a war with the Imperium which they lose.


  • Attack Drone: They have automated combat drones. This notably sets them apart from the Imperium, which doesn't use AI of any kind.
  • Elegant Weapon for a More Civilised Age: The Interex's weaponry is pretty much exclusive to them, but is so elegant that the Luna Wolves dismiss it as ceremonial at first. They quickly learn how brutally effective Interex technology is once the battle begins.
  • Energy Bow: Some Interex soldiers are armed with bows which fire energy arrows strong enough to go straight through a Space Marine's Power Armor.
  • The Federation: Their primary difference from the Imperium.
  • Foil: They're very clearly intended as one to what the Imperium would become, and essentially exist to show what the Imperium could have been. They ally with alien species where the Imperium is absolutely xenophobic, wield highly advanced technology where the Imperium's becomes bound in superstition and decay, and actively understand the threat of Chaos where the Emperor attempted to conceal the truth from his subjects. Also, their armed forces are Greek-themed, while the Luna Wolves are more Roman.
  • Forgotten Fallen Friend: In a way - after a brief mention in the second book, they're barely ever alluded to.
  • Our Centaurs Are Different: Their warriors wear combat platforms to increase their mobility which also makes them resemble centaurs. It also goes with their Greek theme.
  • Poor Communication Kills: This is ultimately the Interex's downfall. They hold the Imperial expedition at arm's length, fearing that they are corrupted by Chaos, and even when one of their soldiers converses with Loken and realises the truth, Erebus' theft of the anathame quickly destroys any chance of an alliance because both sides refuse to back down once the fight begins.
  • Rule of Symbolism:
    • The Interex embodies most of the traits classically associated with sci-fi humanity: technological advancement, a diplomatic mindset that is still able to defend itself, and having an advanced aesthetic. Their destruction due to the manipulations of Chaos emphasize how this kind of mindset won't work in the nightmare that is about to begin.
    • The fate of the Interex mirrors the one of the Imperium - both were ascendent human polities that were brought down by treachery and Chaos. The main difference is that the Imperium managed to survive its fall, at the cost of becoming just as bad as the thing it's fighting.
  • Small Role, Big Impact: The get wiped out in the first book, but it's heavily implied that Horus's encountering them and realizing that it was possible for humans to work with AI and aliens was the first time he began to doubt the Emperor and his methods, and he "lost hope" after being forced to destroy them, setting up his fall to Chaos.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: With their idealistic federation of humans and aliens co-existing peacefully and engaging in diplomacy, they'd fit well in a more optimistic sci-fi setting. Unfortunately, they're not in one and pay dearly for it.
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: Kaos, anyone?

    The Cabal 
A group of several aliens who have battled Chaos for a long, long time. They seek to manipulate the outcome of the Heresy to defeat their foe forever.
  • Detrimental Determination: One of the biggest flaws of the Cabal is that they will not stop on their chosen path even if other avenues to achieve their goals (with massive casualties, even) open up. This is the major reason Eldrad wipes them out - they could have potentially destroyed the galaxy by accident because of how flawed their plan was
  • Didn't Think This Through: One of their Fatal Flaws - their plan to destroy Chaos doesn't seem to consider how the Chaos deities existed before mankind came into being and fed off of the emotions of other species (and given how their method of viewing the future is derived from Aeldari seers, they should know that Slaneesh was created through the Eldar's hedonism), meaning that, as with the Emperor's plan, they would likely just reduce the Dark Gods' portions at best if they wipe out mankind. Part of the reason Eldrad destroys them is that they can't get this through their heads.
  • Dramatic Irony: Readers, having been clued in to the true nature of Chaos, will realize that the Cabal's plan to destroy Chaos will never work — as Chaos feeds off the actions and emotions of all living beings, the best the Cabal can hope for is to temporarily reduce the Dark Gods' portions until another race rises to replace mankind. Eldrad eventually conspires to wipe the Cabal out because he realizes their actions might lead to Chaos winning the Heresy and conquering the material universe.
  • Fatal Flaw: Stubborness and Pride — they so heavily believe that their plan is right that they refuse to consider that a different path might work. Eldrad decides to kill them off when his efforts to determine the future make it apparent that their plan will probably allow Chaos to win in the end.
  • Kill All Humans: Their plan for beating Chaos, as they reveal to Alpharius, is to have Horus kill the Emperor, because doing so will end with Horus having a Heel Realization and making war upon his own followers, ultimately bringing about the extinction of mankind. However, they will take Chaos down with them. Eldrad's scrying implies they're completely wrong.
  • Killed Off for Real: Eldrad eventually wipes out the majority of their agents during Old Earth to ensure that they do not cause Chaos to win by accident.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It's implied their efforts to allow Horus to win the Heresy are directly what leads to the future they're trying to prevent.
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Given that several members express Fantastic Racism toward humans and their unwillingness to consider any paths other than the one they already decided upon, it's likely the Cabal may want to Kill All Humans for selfish reasons in addition to saving the galaxy.

    Erda 

Erda

A female Perpetual who once served the Emperor.


  • All-Powerful Bystander: It's implied she's second in power only to the Emperor Himself. She has no aspirations of becoming God-Empress of Mankind and is content to sit things out.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Ambiguously - she does try to protect the Primarchs from the Emperor by scattering them across the galaxy, but she does so at random, without considering that they might end up on planets that could severely damage their psyches. The ambiguity comes from the fact that we don't actually know Erda's level of power, so it's possible she simply didn't have the power to select where the infant primarchs would end up.
  • Flat-Earth Atheist: When she is speaking with Erebus in Warhawk, she declares that she doesn't believe the Chaos gods are anything more than random disturbances in the warp caused by the emotions and feelings of the galaxy's sapient inhabitants, even though there is now ample evidence to indicate otherwise.
  • Killed Off for Real: Erebus summons four greater daemons to take her down. She kills them instead, but the battle drains her sufficiently that Erebus himself is able to finish her off with his athame. As he's walking away, however, he wonders if she let him kill her.
  • Mama Bear: What finally motivated her to turn on the Emperor was him planning to use her children as weapons of war.
  • Missing Mom: She's actually the closest thing the Primarchs have to a biological mother, as the Emperor used her gene-stock to help create them.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Saturnine reveals that Erda is the one who actually dispersed the Primarchs around the galaxy, having done so because she did not want them to grow up as puppets of the Emperor. While her actions are understandable, they also make her partially responsible for how poorly several of them (namely Mortarion, Angron, and Konrad Curze) grew up to be, and in turn, for their falls to Chaos.
  • Really 700 Years Old: Erda is a Perpetual, just like Oll Persson and John Grammaticus. She's The Older Immortal to John, as it's indicated she's in the same age range as the Emperor himself.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Maybe. Erebus implies that the Chaos gods tricked or influenced her into scattering the primarchs, though Erda insists that she did it of her own free will.
  • Walking Spoiler: It's difficult to talk about her without revealing several important details about the Emperor and the Primarchs.
  • We Can Rule Together: Erebus offers to help her achieve apotheosis in the Warp, claiming that it is a reward for having furthered the Chaos gods' aims by scattering the primarchs. She flatly refuses his offer even when she has a knife to her throat.

    Leetu 

Leetu (LE2)

A prototype Space Marine who was created sometime during the Unification Wars. He has been serving as Erda's bodyguard for centuries by the outbreak of the Horus Heresy.


  • Hidden Depths: He's an amateur artist who enjoys drawing and also carries a tarot deck with him, which he knows how to use.
  • Knight in Shining Armor: He visually invokes the trope, as his power armor is silver. He's also one of the nicer Astartes in the series, surprisingly enough.
  • Line-of-Sight Name: The designation LE2 is etched onto his armor, which is apparently why he calls himself that.
  • Mythology Gag: He's named after and physically resembles the LE2 Space Marine miniature, one of the first Space Marine models ever released. Likewise, he is one of the first Space Marines ever created.
  • Oh, Crap!: He gets two. The first comes when he first sees Horus and the Emperor fighting and internally freaks out when it occurs to him that he's witnessing a fight between gods. The second one comes when Horus tells him that Erda is dead and tosses him into the Warp-tainted shadows surrounding Lupercal's Court, where he comes face to face with the Chaos gods themselves.
  • Super Prototype: He's one of the first Space Marines ever created, before even the first members of the I Legion, and his gene-stock is derived directly from the Emperor and Erda.
  • Undying Loyalty: He's pledged to defend Erda from anyone who might come after her, even the Emperor himself.
  • Weapon-Based Characterization: He carries an antique M676 Union Model bolt pistol that predates the Imperium's treaty with Mars, reinforcing the idea that he is part of the Imperium's early history.
  • You Shall Not Pass!: He fends off several waves of Neverborn that attempt to devour Sanguinius' corpse.

    Basilio Fo 

Basilio Fo

An amoral master of biomechanical technology and survivor of the Age of Strife who fled Terra during the Emperor's Unification Wars. He was later captured by Horus during the Great Crusade and imprisoned in the Imperial Dungeon.


  • Affably Evil: He's unfailingly polite, even to someone he's moments away from stabbing to death.
  • Boxed Crook: Valdor decides to rescue him and put him to work, designing a bioweapon that could end the war.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: Horus notes that Fo was a self-professed "Worker of Obscenity", as far back as the Age of Technology.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: He's terrified of the Night Lords. So far, they're the only thing to make him lose his cool. He also regards the primarchs as an even bigger perversion of the natural order than any of his experiments ever were.
  • Foregone Conclusion: His project to create a bioweapon that will kill off every single Primarch and Space Marine either isn't going to work or won't be used. Even if it were used by the end of the Heresy, that leaves four Daemon Primarchs who would be immune to such a weapon. However, there's circumstantial evidence to suggest that it was held in reserve as the Terminus Decree, which is a doomsday protocol held by the Grey Knights.
  • Horrifying the Horror: Fo is responsible for creating a planet full of Genetic Abominations and was considered a monster even before Old Night. Seeing Horus in person disturbs him badly enough that he launches into a "The Reason You Suck" Speech then asks to be killed rather than continue to live in a galaxy where "things like you [Horus]" are loose.
  • Hypocrite: Considers the Astartes and the Primarchs to be worse than his creations. While more destructive, the Astartes and Primarchs are at least visibly human and usually capable of interacting with society, while Fo's creations are Genetic Abominations that he looses on innocents for fun.
  • Mad Artist: Fo refers to himself as an artist during his debate with Horus in Misbegotten. His idea of "art" involves creating Genetic Abominations from people and recombined DNA, then letting them loose on innocent people.
  • Mad Scientist: Created monsters just for the sake of it, and unleashed them on innocent people just to see what would happen.
  • Maker of Monsters: By the time of Misbegotten he's created nearly a hundred thousand different Genetic Abominations from a few hundred individuals, each of which is fully capable of killing a fully-armed Astartes.
  • Manipulative Bastard: He's able to talk himself out of being handed over to a pair of Custodes for execution with a few well-chosen turns of phrase that imply they may be lying about their orders or otherwise compromised. It's all the more notable in that he's manipulating another Custodian into second-guessing his own brethren.
  • Noodle Incident: He did something to the Selenar gene-cults that was so horrible, they engineered their descendants from then on to have a hard-coded, overwhelming instinct to kill him if they ever came into contact with him.
  • Older Than They Look: He's over five thousand years old, having extended his own lifespan with his biomechanical genius, and notes that, imprisoned without access to a lab, he's starting to age.
  • One Degree of Separation: He reminisces on old acquaintances, names that are held in horror by Terra's historians, such as Narthan Dume and Cardinal Tang. Considering the degree that "gene warriors" were used during old night, one can guess Fo made a tidy business with them, or had enough influence to know these people in person. He was practically their peer before the Emperor started to bring order to Terra.
  • Out-Gambitted: Comes close to escaping his prison, but Andromeda-17 is one step ahead. Then, to his shock, she lets him go anyway.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: When Horus confronts him in Misbegotten and derides him for creating his "abominations", Fo delivers a downright vicious speech in response:
    You think I've made monsters? In my wildest deliriums I could not have designed monsters like you. I practise simple and ingenious arts of genetics and anatomy. I tinker and edit, to make puzzles and delights and curious wonders, things to make us think, and ponder the nature of our being and our place in the scheme of life.
    I do not make things that will burn the galaxy down. I do not make things that will doom our species and lead it into an endless frenzy of war. You are the most abominable thing I have ever seen. Grotesque. Sickening. Misbegotten. I could not hope to kill you all, but to abort just one before it reached potential… well, that would have been some solace.
  • The Remnant: Basilio Fo is a man who extended his life by 5,000 years, and was an associate of the tyrants of Old Night. He's not only one of the few people from that era, but he's the last surviving infamies of that time before the coming of the Emperor. Not only that, but he's one of the few individuals still alive from humanity's Federation-esque first empire from the Dark Age of Technology.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: He survived on Terra until he recognized the Emperor was becoming an unstoppable force, at which point he fled deep into space. He actually remained at large until he was captured by Horus some fifteen years before the siege of Terra. (This would place his capture around, or just before Horus was declared Warmaster.)

Daemons of Chaos

    Daemons in General 

The forces of Chaos are the evil and monstrous denizens of the Warp. Led by the Ruinous Powers: Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, and Nurgle, they seek to corrupt and destroy the material realm.


  • Arch-Enemy: To the Emperor of Mankind, who they collectively refer to as the Anathema. The Emperor knows about their destructive power, and seeks to starve them by banning religion and imposing rational truth. However, this doesn't fully work, for the forces of Chaos are sustained by the thoughts and emotions of living beings... mostly the bad ones.
  • Chaos Is Evil: They are servants to the Chaos Gods, and they are incredibly evil.
  • The Corruption: People who dabble in Chaos don't end up turning well.
  • Cosmic Horror Story: Their very existence tells the reader what exactly the universe of the 30th millennium is.
  • Demon of Human Origin: Daemon Princes are these, former mortals who have appeased the Chaos Gods in such a way that they are elevated to become an immortal monster.
  • Deityof Mortal Creation: The Chaos Gods themselves were created by the minds, thoughts, dreams, and emotions of millions of living creatures, and remain sustained by those thoughts and desires. While Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch developed slowly and became sapient in the Middle Ages, Slaanesh's birth was a lot more rushed and cataclysmic, creating the Eye of Terror and annihilating the vast majority of the Eldar species.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Chaos is full of these, monsters that literally break minds by existing.
  • Four Is Death: Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, and Slaanesh are all malevolent deities.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: The Chaos Gods are these, for while their servants and puppets orchestrate much of the Horus Heresy, they themselves are absent, particularly because they are wholly immaterial and incomprehensible.
  • The Heartless: They would not exist if not for the thoughts, desires, and emotions of mortals, warped and exaggerated into monstrous forms.
  • Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: The Daemons of Chaos dwell in the Warp, which is used by humans as interstellar travel.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The reason the forces of Chaos haven't succeeded in destroying the material realm yet is because they like to infight.

    Samus 

Samus

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/samusvsdorn.jpg

"Samus is the man beside you. Samus will gnaw on your bones. Look out! Samus is here."

A daemon, and the very first one ever seen in the series.


  • Anthropomorphic Personification: Of the Horus Heresy itself, mostly of humanity's predisposition to harm each other and destroy themselves
  • Butt-Monkey: He is no pushover, but he is summoned into multiple battles only for his host to be destroyed each time. It gets to the point where a traitor character lampshades that it dies a lot. Notably, the most success he's had in any of the lore up to this point is the Burning of Ohmn-Mat, and even then he still died when the loyalists decided to set the whole planet on fire rather than let the traitors win. This only gets more sinister when its revealed that Samus represents the Horus Heresy itself, and thus mankind's self-destructive tendencies.
  • Demonic Possession:
    • Possesses Sergeant Xayver Jubal during the last part of the Battle of Sixty Three Nineteen.
    • Then it possesses Mersadie Oliton, and tries to take possession of the Phalanx itself.
  • Demon of Human Origin: His tabletop model states he's a daemon prince, which means he was mortal at some point. Subverted at the end of the series, where it is revealed that he is actually the embodiment of the Horus Heresy, being created by Erebus' murder of Loken at the end of the Siege of Terra.
  • The Heartless: Of the Horus Heresy itself, a galaxy-wide showcase of mankind's inclination to betray the honor of their brothers and kill each other for power.
  • Intro-Only Point of View: Fittingly, the prologue of The End and the Death is a first-person monologue of Samus observing the Siege.
  • In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: If what Erebus says is true, then Samus represents this to humanity, as the Horus Heresy was perhaps the greatest example of brother betraying/killing brother in the history of mankind.
  • Madness Mantra: "Samus. That's the only name you'll hear. Samus. It means the end and the death. Samus. I am Samus. Samus is all around you. Samus is the man beside you. Samus will gnaw on your bones. Look out! Samus is here".
  • Non-Human Head: mostly humanoid, but has the head of a dog.
  • Outside-Context Problem: Up until reaching Planet 6319, the Luna Wolves had mostly been dealing with your average science fiction fare, with psychic aliens being their worst foes. Samus, however, is an actual daemon, and his actions end up being a portent of exactly what kind of genre the series is going to turn into.
  • Paranoia Fuel: In-Universe, he's this, tormenting the Imperial forces by talking to them over their voxes (radios), even if they don't have voxes.
  • Red Herring: The End and the Death features repeated mentions of "The Dark King", an unknown Chaos entity that is apparently arriving soon. Given he narrates the prologue, the novel's title and Arc Words come from him, and the fact that he was the first daemon in the series leaving an obvious opportunity for Book Ends, one might assume Samus is about to make a grand return in a more powerful form. The Dark King is actually Horus, on the verge of ascending to become a new Chaos God, and Samus never physically appears... only for The End and the Death: Part II to double down on it being another Red Herring and reveal that "The Dark King" is neither Horus nor Samus, but instead the Emperor himself the moment he succumbs to Chaos and becomes a fifth Chaos God.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: He was imprisoned under a temple fortress on Planet 6319, and the planet's last defenders against the Imperium took up station there to defend it from the invaders, and possibly out of spiritual significance. When the Luna Wolves attacked, they unleashed Samus without realizing what they were doing. They managed to banish Samus back to the Warp, but he would keep popping up to plague Imperial forces throughout the Heresy.
  • Small Role, Big Impact: He has a small appearance in Horus Rising, but his actions are directly responsible for the rise of the worship of the Emperor and the start of Loken's arc. Additionally, he's also the one who ends up informing Loken of the continued existence of the warrior lodges, as Loken finds a lodge badge when he's going through Jubal's personal effects.
    • That role expands massively in The Solar War. It turns out that Maloghurst gave Samus a backdoor into Mersadie Oliton's mind with the intention of using it to spy on Loken. Horus later decides to put this to an altogether grander use, manipulating Mersadie onto the Phalanx and then having Samus possess the Imperial Fists' flagship.

    Drach'nyen 

Drach'nyen

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/drachnyen.jpg

A daemon born from the first human act of murder.


  • As Long as There Is Evil: As long as humans continue to be their own greatest enemy, Drach'nyen will exist.
  • Biblical Motifs: He was born of the first human murder, and the story has a number of parallels with the story of Cain and Abel. Within The 'Verse, it may have been the murder that inspired said story.
  • Demonic Possession: Visits this upon servitors, automata, a dead Custodian's corpse, the princeps of a Titan, an ornithopter and then its wreckage, and finally the Archimandrite.
  • Eldritch Abomination: One of the forms it takes is a vortex of mouths and fangs and nothing else. Possessing the Archimandrite, it becomes an unholy monstrosity of metal and flesh.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: While daemons and Chaos Marines can handle one another with varying levels of acceptance, vitrually nobody likes the presence of Drach'nyen.
  • Evil Counterpart: To the Emperor, in a sense. It views killing Him as the purpose of its existence.
  • Evil Weapon: Unlike most daemon weapons, which are daemons forcibly shoved into a weapon of some sort, Drach'nyen would take the form of a sword over the course of the battle. The Emperor would seal it away, apparently forcing into such a form permanently. Handy, since it would be later be claimed and used as such by the Emperor's greatest surviving enemy.
  • Humans Are Bastards: Is essentially the embodiment of Humans Are Bastards. As the echo of the first murder, Drach'nyen embodies the inherent self destructive tendencies of humanity as a concept, something that adds to him being an Evil Counterpart of the Emperor.
  • Lightning Bruiser: When confronted by the Silent Sisters, it's vulnerable despite its terrifying power.
  • MacGuffin: After the War within the Webway, Drach'nyen would be stuck as a sword prophesied to kill the Emperor, and could grant the necessary power to achieve that feat. A few thousand years later, an opportunity to win Drach'nyen in daemon weapon form would be the prize in the final war of the Legion Wars (where the Traitor Legions fought for basic survival resources within the Eye of Terror, eventually evolving into wars over power, territory, or personal or religious significance). Abaddon's last opponent and final hurdle was a Nurglite Sorcerer Lord named Thagus Daravek. It was a struggle that ended in a three-way battle between two consolidated Chaos forces and the Imperium, where Abaddon left his lieutenant Iskandar Khayon to handle Daravek while he went off to duel Sigismund of the Black Templars. But that's another story.
  • Our Demons Are Different: Drach'nyen is different from other daemons in that its power and age set it apart from the others. It also possibly predates the Chaos gods themselves. It's so much an embodiment of concentrated evil that other pure manifestations of evil don't like it.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: It possesses a very malleable form, with its Shapeshifter Default Form being the Stone Age man whose act of murder gave it form.

    Ingethel the Ascended 

Ingethel the Ascended

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/300px_ingethel.jpg

A Daemon Prince of Chaos Undivided who guides Lorgar and the Word Bearers into the worship of the Dark Gods.


  • Demon of Human Origin: Was once a female human shaman of the original human population of Cadia.
  • Evil Smells Bad: Post-ascension, she smells so bad that she causes mortal crewmen to vomit. She also leaves a trail of green slime.
  • Psychopomp: Serves as one to first Argel Tal and then Lorgar in guiding them through the Eye of Terror and enlightening them as to the nature of Chaos and the plans of the Dark Gods.
  • Snake People: In her daemon form, Ingethel has a humanoid torso and a serpentine lower body.
  • This Cannot Be!: Ingethel has a moment when she cannot believe Khorne has violated the agreement the Dark Gods have regarding Lorgar as their champion, and wants to pit one of his Bloodthirsters against the Word Bearers' Primarch, curling up, clutching her head and muttering "Kharnath has violated the accord" over and over.
  • Wham Line: "I am Ingethel, and this world is Cadia".

    Lord of the Flies 

Lord of the Flies

A powerful Daemon Prince of Nurgle with a personal grudge against the Death Guard.


  • Amputation Stops Spread: Subverted: after being injured by a Plague Marine, Decius cut his arm off in the hopes of stopping the spread of the infection. Unfortunately for him, Nurgle's Rot can't be stopped by such measures...
  • Arch-Enemy: To Nathaniel Garro after Decius's apotheosis.
  • Came Back Strong: How he views his restoration by Nurgle.
  • The Corrupter: The Lord of Flies reappears in The Buried Dagger as this, raising and inducing Chaos cults and terrorist cells on Terra to sow panic and destruction ahead of Horus's invasion.
  • Deal with the Devil: When no treatment the Imperium has available makes a difference against his infection, Decius sells his soul to Nurgle in exchange for release from the pain.
  • Demon of Human Origin: Was originally Solun Decius, a Space Marine of the Death Guard Legion under Nathaniel Garro's command.
  • Kill It with Fire: The first time Garro killed him, the daemon's remains were hurled into the sun to destroy them. In another encounter, Malcador incinerates the Lord of Flies with nuclear fire. Unfortunately, the daemon returns.
  • One-Winged Angel: His apotheosis at Nurgle's hand twists Decius into a humanoid-insect creature with a serrated insect limb in place of his missing hand.
  • Wound That Will Not Heal: Decius was slashed across the arm by a Nurgle-corrupted knife, infecting him with Nurgle's Rot, slowly corrupting and mutating him.

    Ka'Bandha 

Ka'Bandha

A Bloodthirster of Khorne that is described as one of Khorne's greatest servants. He confronts the Blood Angels multiple times.


  • Arch-Enemy: Towards the Blood Angels in general and Sanguinius in particular; Ka'Bandha is the source of the Red Thirst and has returned several times to try and finish his corruption of the sons of Sanguinius. In his Horus Heresy rules, Ka'Bandha will gain a variety of buffs designed specifically to make him better at killing Sanguinius if the Primarch is on the table. When he reappears in Echoes of Eternity, he's referred to as "The Bane of the Ninth Bloodline".
  • Big Red Devil: All Bloodthirsters look the part, being horned, bat-winged, red-skinned, cloven-hooved monsters with short tempers and bloodlust.
  • Challenging the Chief: During the Siege of Terra, he challenges Sanguinius to a rematch. It doesn't end well for him.
  • Death is Cheap: Is killed twice by Sanguinius, once at Signus Prime and the second time during the Siege of Terra. Justified since he's a daemon, an immaterial being native to the Warp.
  • The Ghost: Despite being fairly important in the lore of the Blood Angels and appearing in several novels and other stories, Ka'Bandha had no official model for a long time, only rules for the Horus Heresy tabletop. Finally averted as of July 2022, when his model was released.
  • Hate Plague: During the battle of Signus Prime, he unleashed the Ragefire, a magical artifact that channeled the Red Thirst, upon the Blood Angels.
  • Hero Killer: Almost; to date, Ka'Bandha is the only daemon of any god to defeat a Primarch in battle, and Sanguinius at that. Though Sanguinius returned the favor twice over before his death, it's still an impressive feat.
  • Humiliation Conga: Sanguinius defeats him and throws him back into the Warp; this failure gets him banished from Khorne's inner circle, leaving him weak and forcing him to skulk around the edges of the Blood God's territory, being hunted by lesser daemons he once would have easily destroyed. When he finally gets a second chance, he ends up losing to the Angel once again, experiencing a moment of panic as he realizes his failure is entirely his own fault, and presumably loses his god's favor permanently.
  • Wakeup Call Boss: Ka'Bandha's incursion as leader of the Ruinstorm was one of the first and largest encounters between the Imperium and the Chaos Gods, and his initial defeat of Sanguinius showed that not only was the Warp real, the entities within were incredibly dangerous as well.

    Manushya-Rakshasi 

Manushya-Rakshasi

A Keeper of Secrets that the Emperor's Children summon to assist them in hunting down the White Scars.


    N-Kari 

N-Kari

The most powerful Keeper of Secrets in existence.


  • The Cameo: Makes one of his very few appearances in the 40K timeline in Slaves to Darkness, where he's engaged in a fit of debauchery with Fulgrim.
  • Extreme Omnisexual: It comes with the territory of being part of the setting's Succubi and Incubi— the only being N-Kari is shown engaging in sex with (or at least getting ready to do so with) is Fulgrim, who by this point in a four-limbed Daemon Prince whose lower body has been replaced with a snake-tail.
  • Orcus on His Throne: Is the most powerful Keeper of Secrets in the setting, but his only appearance has him in the realm of Slaanesh, pleasuring himself without care for the ongoing conflict in the mortal realm; though a brief name-drop in The End and the Death indicates he finally got involved during the final days of the Siege of Terra.

    The End and the Death - (Warning - Unmarked Spoilers) 

The Dark King

A name whispered throughout the warp for eons, a myth referred to in fragments throughout history across the galaxy, a legend consigned to the darkest and most obscure lore.

The Dark King is a potential Chaos God, the fifth and possibly final one.

  • Abstract Apotheosis: As with all Chaos Gods, but the Dark King differs in that it isn't clear exactly what it's domain is. Something to do with ultimate doom and failure galaxy-wide, essentially a parody of the Emperor's ambitions.
  • Always a Bigger Fish: It is implied heavily that had the Emperor truly become the Dark King, he actually would have been vastly more powerful than all four of the other Chaos Gods combined and would have effortlessly assimilated them all into his new being as the one singular God in existence, being as much as an apocalyptic situation for the Ruinous Powers themselves as it would have been for all of mankind.
  • Ambiguous Situation: Samus' prediction as to who would become the Dark King is couched in rather vague terms, owing to the vaguery of prophecy surrounding it. The Emperor and Horus are clearly identified but Samus also alludes to the "the maniac prophet slithering through the open wounds between unblinking stars" which is likely to refer to Erebus.
  • Dark Is Evil: Absolutely, though what form of evil it is is unknown.
  • Deity of Mortal Creation: Again, as with the other Chaos Gods. The Dark King's apotheosis is clearly linked to the Heresy and the rise of Humanity, but some characters theorise that it's always potentially existed within the Warp, even if it couldn't incarnate until the very end of the Siege of Terra.
    • More literally, Samus theorises that there are three potential candidates for apotheosis / revelation on the Dark King. Horus and the Emperor are the two obvious choices, but Samus even theorised that Erebus - "the maniac prophet" was in the running.
  • Eldritch Abomination: When the Emperor almost turns into the Dark King, he took the form of a lightning-sheathed sphere of obsidian, accidentally incinerating all of the Custodians around him, turning them into little more than heavily burnt walking corpses.
  • Evil Only Has to Win Once: The most terrifying thing about the Dark King is that fundamentally upon the moment of its birth, would immediately end everything because it would consume not just everything within realspace but the Immaterium itself into what would become the lone singular being in all of existence, which serves as the titular "The End and the Death" the Eldar are shocked has been set in motion and the Chaos Gods gladly welcome as their final victory.
  • God Is Evil: While the four Ruinous Powers are all gods of evil, this takes it even further, implying to devour the other Chaos Gods and become the singular and only deity in existence.
  • Godzilla Threshold: After the Emperor felt the true extent of Horus' power, he realized that victory would be unlikely unless he empowered Himself greatly. Out of desperation, the Emperor drank from the Warp but on a scale previously unseen, almost reincarnating as the Dark King for the good of mankind. It was the quick persuasion of Ollanius Persson to remind the Emperor of the needs of humanity that allowed the Emperor to resist the great power, but he only managed to delay its incarnation.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: Rapidly becomes the single greatest threat to the entire galaxy, eclipsing even the old Gods of Chaos and Horus. It's hinted that everything in the 30k plotline has been a very long term plan to incarnate it.
  • The Heartless: Represents the drive to complete destruction without reason or aim, and within the Emperor is the desire to dominate all life.
  • Outside-Context Problem: Almost no one involved in the entire Heresy knows about it until the very final days of the Siege of Terra. Everyone who comes across the contrived coincidences that presage it's name assume that it's a particularly powerful daemon or another title for Horus Lupercal. NO ONE, barring perhaps the gods themselves, think that it's the potential incarnation of an apex Chaos God.
  • Prophecy Twist: Everyone, readers included, assumed that Horus would be the being who became the Dark King. They were very wrong- he's the potential Chaos apotheosis of The Emperor himself.
    • Ahriman almost directly refers to the trope when describing how the prophecy has slipped during the warp time stasis enfolding the Sol System.
    • It even manages to do this to the Aeldari, a race known for it's prognosticators. The Harlequins hold their first performance in realspace since the Fall at the very end of the Siege. Onlookers assume they are performing the Dance Without End - the Aeldari myth of their final days. Even Eldrad is surprised to find out that it's the actually the Dance of the End and the Death - possibly meaning that the Dark King's apotheosis has superseded their own long prophesised doom.
  • Tarot Troubles: The first sign of it's impending arrival. Decks of cards or prognosticatory tarot decks keep showing a card called the Dark King, along with a very particular spread of other cards. The problem is the Dark King does not have a card and it's pattern keeps appearing in perfect sequence every single time a spread is drawn - even when mathematically and physically impossible.
  • Top God: Perhaps the most terrifying thing about it is that not only would it be the most powerful Chaos God from the moment of birth, but it would likely go on to consume every other Chaos God into itself. Even worse, the other Gods would apparently be okay with this because it would mean the final total victory of Chaos.


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