Memento Damnatorum

[CYGNUS]

314.M38

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - Even the False Tongue can be made to share Truth.

S, these old yellow talons can still out-hook a rusty nail but now they need young eyes and a keener spirit to question their findings - you shall shortly see before you gleanings from my inquest into those relicts of that squat-shanked Radical, the late and venerated Barbosa that his Ordo have failed to deny me: of all my discoveries the fact that demi-albino half-heretic not only shared our talent and our calling but my own point of origin is the least delightful.

 

In truth the fact we both served our First Watch on the HIMNS Indefatigable Fury does nothing to endear him to me, but if nothing else my old mess has allowed us some glimpse into the ossuary that he kept where lesser wights must do their best to deny a few skeletons: a golden thread invisible to eyes of flesh marked where a deck plate uplifted released the most interesting documents which I now share with you by the Emperor's Grace.

 

The History Barbosa recounts cannot now be substantiated or disproven and therefore cannot be denied; I therefore look to you to raise Interest in it amongst our colleagues of the Hereticus and to divine what profits might be shared through that Interest - keep the circulation discrete, you might not even need to whip out your old Colours and make them an offer they can't refuse. 

 

The far earlier document to which it was appended must itself serve as Memento Mori to Chapters now lost to the Imperium through something far worse than misfortune and it seems a most honourable composition for all that its details can now neither be proven nor disproven. Share it with all those that would read it and let us hope that we thereby honour all that was lost to the Emperor's Service without blinding ourselves to all the Ills that followed. 

Accept these words as written in the service of HIM on Earth by the hand of Cyrine, Proud Inquisitor and humble penitent.  

  May the Emperor Protect and Prosper our endeavours.

[CYGNUS]

  From the Requiem Malesent of St Kybra (631.M37)

 

THE JUDGED CHAPTERS (PERDITAS) the collective name bestowed upon some thirty chapters of the beloved Astartes that, touched with the blight of Warp Storm Dionys, were found wanting by our late and retired Ecclesiarch the Blessed Saint Basillius but made a noble end from tragic misfortune.

 

 Decreed irredeemably tainted by the touch of the Warp, taking Council these warrior-angels demanded the Saint allow them the privilege of undertaking some great penitential crusade that they might make themselves clean in Honour and Name, if not in their flesh - to the surprise of all save fellow warriors born, The Saint agreed with and by his Word spoken in the Emperor's Name sanctified this sacrificial endeavour.

 

 Having made Oath of Moment on Shrine World Garrison these Noble Brothers passed through the Cadian Gate and set themselves to Crusade throughout the Eye of Terror.

 

 They passed from sight on the last day of 321.M37 and have been declared Lost, but never Damned.

 

 ALTAR BRETHREN

 ARGENT HAMMERS

 BLADES ETERNAL

 BRONZE GORGONS

 BROTHERS OF THE ANVIL

 CHORUS OF ELTAIN

 CLERICS OF STEEL

 CRUSADERS OF DORN

 DOOM LEGION

 FISTS OF OLCHIS

 GRAVEN FISTS

 ILLUSTRATORS

 INVICTORS

 IRON DRAKES

 JUSTICARS

 KNIGHTS EXCELSIOR

 LANCES OF PTEROS

 LECTORS OF IXIS

 LIONGUARD

 PROPHETS OF MERCURY

 SANCTIONS OF TERRA

 SENTINELS

 SERPENTS OF LIGHT

 SIGILITES

 SPEARS OF OLYMPUS

 STAR GRYPHONS

 TEMPEST LEGION

 VENGEANCE CHAPTER

 VIRIDIAN CONSULS

 VORPAL SWORDS

 

 This Abyssal Crusade was the greatest loss to the Astartes in our Era - may the Imperium soon see their like again.

 

 EVERYTHING YOU HAVE BEEN TOLD IS A LIE

[CYGNUS]

from THE SHADOW NARRATIVE of Barbosa:-

 

Once more the Angels of Death descended upon Shrine World Garrison and they came on in a mighty company: the breakers of Ork-brutes, the exterminators of heresy, the end of Rebellion, the hammer of the Craftworlds, the scourge of the Cabals, those that had driven away the Traitor Legions and the Bane of Daemons were all assembled with the White World of pieties, steel and endless snows their destination - but these Angels of Death were come for a council and not a killing.

 

In the three-hundred and twenty-first year of the 37th Millennium (321.M37) representatives from thirty Chapters spread out across the stars where the Segmentum Solar meets the Segmentum Obscurus - each picked out from a thousand champions as their paragon, each with a fighting tail befitting the dignity of a mighty Chapter and the Glory of the Beloved Emperor: to the mighty chorus of the Faithful that come from the other City-Shrines and from across the Stars to wonder at the spectacle to be seen at the Blessed Berg Arpad, it seemed that no mightier company of Heroes had assembled since the Primarchs had assembled in Triumph at Ullanor.

 

But these Space Marines were come to attend a Council of Despair, for they had been found wanting.

 

The Hosts of the Adeptus Astartes were beheld in all their diversity: in Azure and Crimson, in Silver and Sable, in Green and Gold, in Glittering Splendour and Stern Darkness, the Feral and the Civil, Masters of Siege and Charge and the Smith-Crafts, those that favoured the Bolter and those that loved best the Flashing Blade, those that came in Glory and those that carried only Terror with them, those that Honoured the Codex and a number who might well have preferred to prop up tables with that tome - thirty full Chapters of the Beloved Astartes had sent their representatives and those few carried a multitude of worlds with them: Home World, Conquered Worlds, Worlds Deeply in their Debt.

 

By the Emperor's Grace there were no feuds to be laid to rest between these champions and not a few of these Chapters had stretched out across the stars to make a brotherhood with their fellow Astartes - five millennia of fellowship between the Argent Hammers and the Sigilites, four between Sentinels and the Lectors of Ixis, bonds as recent as that between the Lectors and Lionguard, between the Star Gryphons and the Knights Excelsior, between the Justicars and the Graven Fists (not even a half a Millennium old); the newest of all concluded between the Illustrians and the newly-founded Vorpal Swords, a brotherhood that had restored the Glory of the Imperium across an entire Sector.

 

But little else than Loyalty to HIM on Earth linked them, save this - they had been Judged and now stood condemned.

 

Judged unclean and impure; it was Warp Storm Dionys that brought them to this pass, a torrent of twisting power whipping out from the Eye of Terror to devour worlds and wither hopes, to breed abominations and unleash mutations in all their most terrible forms upon even the most puritan worlds, to unleash Raw Chaos and mere anarchy across worlds as far-flung as the Segmentum Solar - a storm that carried war-bands from no fewer than seven of the Traitor Legions (the Alpha Legion, the Black Legion, the Death Guard, the Emperor's Children, the Iron Warriors and the Word Bearers), that drove perfidious Eldar and Ork-brutes before it, that unleashed Heresy and let loose Demons.

 

Worse still it unstoppered a madness in the Righteous that almost eclipsed the terror of the Warp; a crawling army of informers to match the creeping hosts of cultists, the scourge of Purification to overmatch the whips of the Warp, Hordes of the Righteous that worked more butchery across Imperial Space than the Archenemy would ever be permitted to - all the work of stump-toothed Basillius, confessor and darling of Imperial Guard regiments from the fringes to the Core, ally of the Inquisition and the Adeptus Astartes, now raised to the rank of Ecclesiarch and taskmaster of the High Lords themselves.

 

This Basillius, whose "Puritas Divisions" had spared none, not by virtue of age or sex or circumstance or any reason of common sense; to preserve the Imperium we must do the unthinkable, but need we show such enthusiasm when shattering that which we must preserve?

 

This Basillius who not content with savaging the Segmentum Solar even before Warp Storm Dionys brought the real horrors out of hiding and not content with power to bind and loose the mortal souls of the Imperium now turned his talents to the role of Judge over the very Space Marines who had been the third pillar of his power - many Chapters had seen their Home-Worlds pummelled with all the most terrible influence of the Warp, had seen their aspirants become mutants instead of novices, had done their duty to the fullest of their ability (not merely weeding out, but scourging out all corruption in their protectorates even as they stood against the true Terrors unleashed with the Warp Storm) and were now to be dragged before a mere mortal to accept his judgement ... or so they were told.

 

Greater men than Basillius the Elder have been broken by the Astartes for lesser acts of vainglory - yet this stick insect with a mouthful of stumps (Blessed Emperor I'm glad he was born no shipmate of mine out in the void) was of old the Ally of the Adeptus Astartes, was Beloved of Terra and even enjoyed to some degree the trust of the Inquisition .... was even then beginning to be called "Saint" as well as "Sire" and in truth even the Space Marines will respect a living Saint.

 

His verdicts, when they came, were astonishingly mild; out of the thousand Chapters only thirty were to wear the Mark of Shame, judged impure and unfit for the Emperor's Service (it is instructive to note that none were of the First or even the Second Founding, though Terra knows that many of those wear the marks of Mutation); some were five thousand years in the service of the Imperium, others still fresh from the 22nd Founding and cursed to see their new-won laurels trampled into ignominy - four chapters of the Judged may well have been of the Cursed Founding and might be thought lucky to have lasted this long - in truth the victims of Saint Basillius' verdict seemed so disparate that his judgement could only seem only the more impartial (in fact the Viridian Consuls had been amongst the Ecclesiarch's most stalwart Allies).

 

Now those Judged and found wanting were assembled to take Council - not merely to share their sorrows but to determine how they might meet their fate as the the Champions of the Imperium they had been created to be, on the very Planet where Basillius the Elder had taken his seat and within striking distance of his Throne.

 

The Astartes being what they are, their discussion appears to have taken less time to reach a conclusion than to act upon it:-

 

On the day after the night these Angels came to Garrison, the masters of Twenty-Eight chapters (with the First Captains of the Blades Eternal and the Crusaders of Dorn standing for their Chapters, whose Masters had been martyred ... at Imperial Hands) marched out of the landing fields where they had met and advanced on the Great Cathedral Shrine where Basillius the Elder was handing out his judgements; they marched in utter silence and perfect step, from ambitious Ciardha of the Anvil Brothers and taciturn Solomso of the Invictors (the most distinguished veterans amongst them), through pious Visvaldas of the Sentinels and calculating Nikephoros of the Bronze Gorgons, proud Khan Lung of the Vengeance Chapter and stoic Konvak Lann of the Vorpal Swords (the youths bringing up the rear) falling into step with many others all marching to meet the Saint.

 

 Who met them seated in gaunt splendour, whittling away at some sliver of bone as he waited patiently for his petitioners to assemble and address themselves to him; his only recorded response upon looking up to find Chapter Masters in strength and no lesser form of Pilgrim before him (having parted the multitudes seeking a blessing or a favour the way a blade passes through butter) was to first fold away his knife, slip it up his sleeve with that make-work bone, and ask for a moment to petition the masses for their patience.

 

A moment later "We who are assembled before you ask no pity, beg no pardon and will not contest your judgement; we demand only the right to purify our flesh in the fires of battle: we will enter the Eye of Terror, we will kill and we will die."

 

Silence.

 

The Saint was never known for his indulgences; all he'd ever offered to those he'd judged and found wanting was a swift demise. The Space Marines would accept his Judgement but they would never accept so shameful a death.  

 

"Sons of the Primarchs, I salute you; yours shall be not only a penitential campaign but a Blessed Crusade."

 

 Sensation; The Saint not only condescended to bend a little but bowed before the Chapter Masters who had come before him clad only in the robes of a Penitent one and all - to the shock of his advisors and all that knew him for a most uncompromising, untouchable soul he went out with the Chapter Masters of the Judged to the High Altar of the Basilica where Saint Grisha had preached the Olympic Crusade three thousand years before and preached a new Crusade even as the Chapter Serfs armoured their Masters.

 

These blighted souls would carry the Aquilla into the Abyss and would strike down the Archenemy at the very heart of their Power; they would thereby prove their loyalty beyond all doubt and stand forever at the very pinnacle of penitence - they would be remembered forever as The Judged who had not been found Wanting.

The Astartes swore Oaths of Moment in the old manner and the Saint Blessed them: Months later an unprecedented fleet approached the Cadian Gate, their relay systems silenced and all proud insignia obscured with mourning black. One by one a hundred and thirty-seven ships disappeared, carrying perhaps twenty-five thousand of the Imperium's Space Marines into certain death in defiance of dishonour - not a few of the Chapters were understrength - a concentration of Force by the Astartes seldom seen even at the Cadian Gate, at least when no Black Crusade batters at the Ramparts of Reality.

 

For a day and a night and a day again by the measure of Mankind's Home that great line of warships formed a new constellation across the skies of Cadia, a lance of starlight fit to plunge into the Eye of Terra and blind it; such a concentration of martial might, such an expression of single-minded Devotion and such a demonstration of self-sacrifice was a moment few cared to forget and all across our Imperium The Judged passed from the realms of History and Myth into Legend, as a perfect example of how the devoted servant of Mankind could transform shame into a Triumph through self-sacrifice.

 

This was perhaps the mightiest assembly of Space Marines since the Beheading and it was most certainly the most shameful Disaster in the Military History of the Imperium since the Horus Heresy: almost all The Judged would return only as Traitors, but first they were Betrayed.

[CYGNUS]

from the SHADOW NARRATIVE of Barbosa:-

 

By the measure of Mankind eight centuries had passed; during that time Basillius the Elder, unsparing judge and incumbent Ecclesiarch, accounting his mission accomplished and his purpose Purity not pride, relinquished his exalted office and retired to a hole-in-the-wall hermitage where he could live out his last days mouldering in Holy Obscurity - after this unaccountable act of Humility even those outside the ranks of the Imperial Guard and the Inquisition began to venerate him as a Saint all across the Imperium (all the more so when living memory of the purges, opponents lost to 'natural causes' and the fears he had honed to a pinnacle of paranoia began to die out).

 

The Judged, where they were remembered at all, were venerated as martyrs who had defied the Warp itself and proven themselves the very epitome of self-sacrifice in the Name of the Emperor and for the Honour of their Chapter, carrying the Aquila into the Eye of Terror itself and doubtless slaughtering multitudes of the Traitor Legions and other Archenemy populations all the while before their presumably-Glorious demise.

 

In the one-hundred and twelfth year of M38 (112.M38), the Judged erupted from the Eye of Terror and Panic followed with them.

 

 The sheer Inconvenience of these survivors to those who had been pleased to consider them nothing more than a life-lesson in the pivotal role of self-sacrificing Suicide as a viable alternative to appeals for Due Process can only be called astonishing; it was presumed impossible for even Astartes to return untainted from a death-ride into the Immaterial Abyss and the Inquisition spared those elements of the Judged now returned from that most twisted crevice of Creation not one single consideration in all the intensity of scrutiny that followed - representatives from three Ordos of the Blessed Inquisition, my own Malleus foremost amongst them, subjected the Chorus of Eltain and the Prophets of Mercury and the Vorpal Swords to the most pitiless inspection, discovering (much to their astonishment) that these few survivors (of whom the slightly-more-than two hundred-strong Vorpal Swords were by far the largest part) were as pure as those Brothers of the Deathwatch and those others of the Astartes who had been called upon to ensure that these survivors could not only be constrained, but utterly destroyed if their Corruption were proven.

 

What those who survived the Abyssal Crusade thought of all this inconvenience has, alas, gone unrecorded; unfortunately for the Inquisition what followed did not - Konvak Lann of the Vorpal Swords declared that not only had the Abyssal Crusade been a tragedy and a most brutal campaign (as was only to be expected) it had been founded upon a Betrayal: Basillius the Elder, that unrelenting scourge of heresy and disloyalty was himself a Traitor who had not only sent the Judged to their deaths but fully intended to set the seal on their Damnation.

 

Had the Inquisition not been fully aware that the 'Saint' yet remained amongst the living at an impossible Age his claims might have been not merely dismissed but material evidence of Corruption - what other source of enlightenment other than those in service to the Ruinous Powers might be found at the heart of the Warp? - yet in truth the claims of Konvak Lann tied in all to neatly with the dark suspicions of the Blessed Inquisition, which has never been afraid to question the unquestionable and consider the unthinkable.

 

Even so the Judged were inches from death; to permit them to live would be to tear away the mantle of martyrdom that had blinded the Imperium to the folly of the Abyssal Crusade and worse, would throw not only the sanctity of the Ecclesiarchy in all its works but the basic competence of the Inquisition itself into question.

 

Worlds have burned that presented a lesser threat to the pivotal Institutions of the Imperium - many since have questioned why the Vorpal Swords and the few other survivors of the Judged that had rallied to them were permitted not only to live with such damaging knowledge but to very openly avenge themselves upon the Traitor Saint and publicly shatter his sanctity, but the truth is very simple: The Ordo Hereticus had lost control of one of its most potent puppets and the Hammer of Daemons were unwilling to permit their failure to cost the Imperium warriors of invaluable temper in its Long War against the Warp in all it's manifestations - thankfully the Ordo Xenos were persuaded to see things our Way, for once in their careless, alien-bothering existence.

 

To cut one long story short so that another might be told, the Vorpal Swords were committed to an Inquisitorial Strike-Force alongside their fellow survivors as an impromptu trial by combat - triumph and they would be proven Pure beyond dispute, fail and they themselves would be deemed the Traitors: committed to an attack against the World-Hermitage of Vasilika they encountered fanatical resistance from zealous devotees of the Traitor Saint (with all the armed power that elements within the Ecclesiarchy and Imperial Guard could offer their own beloved saint ... even if they expected to be guarding his relics, rather than his living person) but carried all before them, though the last voices in the Chorus of Eltain were silenced as they helped grind through the death zone of the defences and the last Prophet of Mercury perished giving his life to open the Ultimate Gate (having slipped through the defences to the appropriate controls, the defenders

finally caught up with him and reduced him to charnel, but were themselves fatally distracted in the process).

 

 Confronting the Traitor Saint at long last they could not claim to have encountered any undeniable sign of the Ruinous Powers; the withered Basillius was found seated, an island of peaceable distraction amidst the fire and fury and smoking ruin of the assault, was confronted with his treachery by Chapter Master Lann and for a moment looked on the brink of some enormous outburst of indignation, as pious as it was geriatric ... but then "something changed in his face, that all-encompassing indignation like the first tremor of an earthquake replaced in a flicker of amusement with a hideous amiability - "did I play my part in the comedy well?" he asked and died laughing as Konvak Lann suited action to Chapter Words."

 

How then did an apostle of the Ruinous Powers not only infiltrate the ranks of the Faith Imperial and Triumphant without being weeded out, but ascend to the very pinnacle of power over that Institution (and far more of the Imperium besides) without being incinerated, decapitated or otherwise eliminated after being exposed through the rigorous scrutiny of the Blessed Inquisition (the very founding purpose of which is to avert such travesties) before subjecting the Judged and other Loyal victims uncountable to his tender mercies?

 

 In truth we planted him there - or rather the Hereticus found in the adopted son of some Guard Regiment with tendencies to disloyalty the Void-born son of disgraced naval Armsmen who had mutinied outright, a young man whose own Heretical tendencies were washed away as the Inquisitor who uncovered this little iconoclast elected to make use of him as something other than a roast (at the instigation of his pet assassin, Miro the full brother of Basillius, some claim); Mind-wiped into unwavering loyalty to HIM on Earth and a most useful agent of the Inquisition, he reduced his old regiment not only to compliance but to a fever of zealotry and began to make his name as an Inspiration throughout the Imperial Guard.

 

 His ever-increasing popularity with The Guard and the steadily increasing pitch of their fervent devotion opened up new possibilities for the exploitation of this asset; setting him to climb the ranks of the Ecclesiarchy (aided by his battle-won allies in the Adeptus Astartes and the Inquisition), the occasional loss of his opponents to 'Natural Causes' no more than the common stuff of Politics at this level of the Imperial Hierarchy, Basillius the Confessor became Basillius the Ecclesiarch (with the Ecclesiarchal Purges to propel him still higher than could ever have been dreamed of) and the Hereticus achieved the summit of their power through his influence.

 

How the Guiltless suffered with the Guilty! But how then did the puppet weave a web of Treachery that cost the Imperium perhaps Twenty Nine full chapters, despite - or perhaps FROM - the steely strings by which a domineering master dangled him?

 

 Perhaps Warp Storm Dionys unleashed some little spark of Chaos into his fractured consciousness that twisted his mind into Traitor Darkness? Perhaps having achieved their purpose his handlers grew complacent and allowed him too free a hand? (unlikely, I know); perhaps Basillius rose a little TOO high for easy handling, the controls required to maintain his loyalty impossible to impose with all the scrutiny of the Faithful in Mankind fixed upon him? Perhaps he simply looked within himself one day and found the smooth certainty of his mind cracked from side to side, then began to fill those cracks with something else?

 

Perhaps he never was a Traitor and a Heretic, but did EXACTLY as the Hereticus commanded him from first to last (even to the massive elimination of the Astartes that was the Abyssal Crusade ... all the better to trigger a Founding to replace them that might be shaped to suit the requirements of Imperial Othrodoxy).

 

Only the Traitor Saint can ever know all the harm he knowingly did, but the Judged remain the most obvious evidence of his treachery - of Thirty Chapters Judged and committed to the Abyssal Crusade only the Vorpal Swords remain loyal beyond question; the Chorus of Eltain and the Ancient Prophets of Mercury perished as Martyrs, the Fists of Olchis were lost to the Warp and a fourth remains in question, for the Blades Eternal have yet to prove themselves Loyal or Traitor undoubted.

 

All the rest were not only Lost to the Warp, but twisted beyond all recognition into an Elite amongst the Archenemy, such a gift to the Ruinous Powers as had not been made since the Horus Heresy - of the damage wrecked across the Imperium in service to Chaos, in the name of mere anarchy or for the sake of Revenge there is already too much more to be told for me to relate here in any brevity.

 

I fear that there will be much, much more to tell before the last of the Judged are brought to their end.