The Echoes of Iskvara - a 30k BlackShields project (3rd edition)

[GhostMalone]

 

Part I

+++The Icon of the Silent Gorgon+++

 

 

Quote

 

“We are but statues of war, shaped by betrayal, cracked by grief, and left to weather in the storm of eternity.”

— Primus Medicae Kordael Varn, Echoes Apothecarion assigned to the Revnant Sons Host

 

 

 

In the aftermath of the Drop Site Massacre, not every Loyalist survivor was a hero in the making. Amidst the devastation of Isstvan V, a small conclave of Apothecaries from the shattered Legions — Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Raven Guard — found each other among the ruins. Driven mad with grief, rage, and the impossible knowledge of their gene-brothers’ total slaughter, these men refused to accept defeat.

 

United by shared horror and bitter desperation, they hatched a forbidden plan: to resurrect their fallen Legions through cloning, genetic grafting, and any means necessary.

 

They scavenged gene-seed from the corpses of their brothers, captured traitor Astartes for gene-stock, and began crude implantation procedures on abducted human candidates — in underground vaults, on derelict ships, and amid the craters of dead worlds.

 

Their warband, known to terrify survivors and hunt warlords alike, The Echoes of Iskvara, are a shambling, patchwork force of cloned Astartes, half-finished marines, and failed gene-experiments. These are not proper legion succesors — they’re gestalt replicants of what was lost, reflections of the Apothecaries’ hatred made flesh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fragment 717//A-Null//Iskvara Vault Archives

Access Level: Sigillite-Redacted

Recovered Source: Sequestered Mechanicum Noos-Loom, Orbit Iskvara-Primaris, Segmentum Obscurus

Date: M31.017

 

Title: On the Emergence of the “Silent Gorgon” Phenomenon within Clade-Null Forces

 

 

 

“In the aftermath of the Isstvan Cataclysm, various Loyalist Apothecarion remnants are recorded as having fled to the outlying Halo Stars. There, amid the uncharted moons and void-forgotten colony vaults, records indicate that unsanctioned replication protocols were enacted.

 

It is within these databanks that repeated references to an emblem — a Gorgon’s visage, cracked and weeping — emerged among warbands of what later Imperial lexarchs classified under the designation Blackshields.

 

Designation: The Silent Gorgon.

The symbol was reportedly adapted from a relic-faceplate of an Iron Hands Clade-Myrmidon slain during the Drop Site Massacre. Recovered and obsessively preserved by a rogue Salamanders Praetor-Apothecary identified in fragmentary vox-records as Kordael Varn.

 

Usage of the emblem appears linked to neuro-conditioning rituals enacted upon artificially bred Astartes progenoids — possibly a form of mythic mnemonic imprinting, instilling fear of betrayal and reverence for loyalty through the iconography of the petrifying myth-beast.

 

Ritualized application of this sigil to the foreheads and armour-plate of vat-born clones marked them as inheritors of the Istvaan legacy, simultaneously as executioners and mourners.

 

Surveillance reports suggest that during engagements against both Traitor and Loyalist detachments, Astartes bearing the Silent Gorgon often refrained from verbal communication, operating through gestural command and noospheric glyph-transmission only.

 

As of this record, approximately 23 war-engines, 17 clone-squads, and 2 modified Sabre-class tanks identified as carrying the sigil have been sighted along the Alnisyan Expanse and Algethar Drift. Purge authorisation recommended.”

 

— Fragment 717//A-Null//Iskvara Vault Archives

 

 

 

+++ INLOAD COMPLETE +++
++ SIGILLITE CLEARANCE ONLY ++
DATA FRAGMENT 310.AB // ISKVARA DRIFT
ORIGIN: UNREGISTERED ASTROPATHIC RELAY
DESTINATION: TERRA (RED-LINE PRIORITY)
CLEARANCE: EPSILON-PRIME // [REDACTED]

 

 

"...By the Throne, they're not dead. They're not even men anymore.

We made planetfall at 0300 local cycle. Barren rock, like the whole damn Halo fringe. No signs of habitation, save for a single, ancient Mechanicum vault, half-buried in basalt and bone dust.

They're here. Clad in grey ceramite so pale it seems to bleed into the mist. No heraldry, no rank marks, no Legion colours. Only that face.

[REDACTED] mask of stone. Serpents for hair, empty eyes staring out from helm, from banners, even burned into the sides of their war machines. A Gorgon’s face. Silent. Staring.

We tried to hail them. Vox went to static. No reply. They just moved through the fog. Killing anything that bore the marks of Warmaster or Throne alike.

They're not Iron Hands, not Salamanders, not even Blackshields in the old sense. They're something else. Gestalt things. You can feel it through the helm. Like they're… connected. A single, broken mind spread across a hundred bodies.

This is Apothecary-Commander Vireon of the 73rd Oathbound, final report. The moon Iskvara is lost. Do not attempt retrieval. Do not attempt contact.

They remember us. And they are coming home."

 

+++ PURGE CLASSIFICATION RECOMMENDED +++
+++ DISCONNECT DATUM-LINK IMMEDIATELY +++
+++ NOOSPHERIC BURN PROTOCOLS ACTIVE +++
<< ENCRYPTED TERMINATION CODE: 02-A/THRONE/NULL >>

Edited Saturday at 11:26 AM by GhostMalone
Formatting

[Cenobite Terminator]

I’m excited about this project.

[Tallarn Commander]

A wonderful write up. Perhaps in 10,000 years some disenchanted Blackshield Apothecaries will join Fabius Bile’s Consortium.

[GhostMalone]

 

Part II

 

The Revenant Sons — The Ash Exodus

 

A Narrative Primer for the Echoes of Iskvara Warband

 

⸻

 

In the Ash and the Silence

 

The Drop Site Massacre was meant to be an extinction event. On the scorched, corpse-laden surface of Istvaan V, legions of loyalist Astartes were cut down, their broken remains left to rot beneath the ash storms and orbiting blockades. The traitor Primarchs had made certain no survivors would crawl from that abyss.

 

They were wrong.

 

Deep beneath the shattered surface, amidst the wreckage of an ancient Mechanicum forge complex, a ragged band of survivors endured. Led by Varek Sorran, an Iron Hands Appthecary known for his severe pragmatism and iron will, a cadre of Apothecaries, Techmarines, and half-mad Astartes of the shattered legions clung to life. The forge’s failing life-support systems and primitive auto-surgeons kept them breathing, while salvaged gene-seed and broken wargear formed the currency of their survival.

 

Time lost meaning in those lightless vaults. The dead were stripped of their gene-legacy. The living became increasingly unstable, their trauma driving them toward obsession and grotesque experiments in bio-mechanica.

 

⸻

 

The Signal That Should Not Have Been

 

It was Reman-Kov, a Raven Guard Techmarine-Cybernetica, who cobbled together a corrupted Noospheric beacon. Its broadcast — an incoherent litany of vengeance, loss, and rebirth — was a shrieking data-hymn that called not to the Imperium, but to those who walked the shadows of the galaxy.

 

It was intercepted by Orrix Varn, master of the Blackshield vessel Void Condemnation. Varn, himself an exile and fugitive, recognized the signal as a kindred madness. Against better judgement, he ordered a retrieval operation.

 

⸻

 

The Ash Exodus

 

Using stealth-pattern landers and daring orbital drops during a rare geomagnetic storm, Varn’s forces descended to the shattered forge. Of the original survivors, only Sorran, a pair of Apothecaries, a few legionaries of the Raven Guard and a giant of a salamander legionary that still remained comatose alongside several grotesque clone experiments remained alive.

 

The extraction was a slaughterhouse. Aberrant clone-things turned feral. Gene-vaults ruptured. The survivors, half-dead and no longer wholly sane, clung to the promise of escape. In the final moments, the traitor blockade was evaded, and Void Condemnation fled into the outer halo stars.

 

⸻

 

The Birth of the Revenant Sons

 

The remnants made planetfall on Iskvara, a forgotten Mechanicum moon in the Halo Stars, near the Alnisyan Expanse. Here, amidst the derelict manufactorums and half-functioning forges, Sorran and his Apothecaries resumed their work.

 

They began creating gestalt-clones — Astartes bred from salvaged gene-seed, recombinant data, and stolen DNA relics. These beings were not true sons of Ferrus Manus, nor of any Primarch. They were reflections — sterile, grey-clad war-forms, driven by psychic echoes of the dead and the unending trauma of Istvaan.

 

Their symbol became the Medusan Gorgon — a cracked, pallid face crowned by serpentine cables and circuit tendrils, a mark of both vengeance and cursed rebirth.

 

⸻

 

The Revenant Sons Now

 

Today, the Revenant Sons are known as the Echoes — an oath-broken, nameless legion that haunts the edges of Imperial records. They fight for no cause but the fulfillment of vengeance, targeting traitor warbands and scavenging gene-stock for their grotesque resurrection program.

 

Each war-clone is a shell of consciousness, plagued by flickering memories and personality bleed from countless sources. They are shadows of lost legions, wielding dead men’s weapons and speaking in voices not wholly their own.

 

And at their heart stands Varek Sorran, now a figure of myth and terror, known in hushed vox-cant as the “The Broken Son”Master of the Echoes / The First of the Gestalt Architects of Iskvara.
 

 

Arch-Apothecary Varek Sorran

 

“The Broken Son”

Master of the Echoes / The First of the Gestalt Architects

 

Origin:

 

Varek Sorran was once an Apothecary of the Iron Hands’ 77th Clan-Company, present on Isstvan V when the sky turned red and brother turned upon brother. A loyal son of Ferrus Manus, Sorran was known for his cold efficiency, devoid of the superstition or melancholic introspection common to his kin.

 

He had dedicated his existence to preserving the gene-seed of his Legion, considering each fallen brother not a loss, but a resource to be harvested.

 

When the massacre began, Sorran fought tooth and nail to drag his dying brethren from the corpse-fields. But there were too many. Too much death. And when Ferrus Manus fell — when the head of the Gorgon was raised aloft — something inside Varek shattered irreparably.

 

The Breaking Point:

 

Left for dead in a crater of ash and blood, Sorran heard the dead speaking. It was not metaphorical. He began hearing the psychic echoes of fallen marines, their pain, their last oaths, their terror. Whether this was psychic trauma, a latent pariah trait triggered by stress, or a warp-taint from Isstvan’s slaughter, no one can say.

 

He fled the battlefield, taking with him gene-seed, corpses, and surgical equipment.

 

In the years that followed, as the Heresy raged, Varek began his grim work: stealing children from war-torn worlds, implanting them with unstable gene-seed, and creating cloned warriors in the image of those he had lost.

 

Personality and Mental State:

 

By the time of the Siege of Terra, Varek Sorran is a hollowed, nihilistic figure, racked by guilt, hatred, and deteriorating sanity.

 

Symptoms:

• Paranoid schizophrenia-like delusions: Varek believes the echoes of the Isstvan dead constantly speak to him. He records their words obsessively in blood-stained data-scrolls.

• Profound nihilism: He no longer believes in the Emperor, Horus, or the value of life. The only meaning is vengeance — hollow, endless, and ultimately meaningless.

• Survivor’s guilt weaponized: Every time a Gestalt Replicant dies, Varek considers it a personal failure — and harvests their gene-seed in a desperate bid to get it “right” next time.

 

He doesn’t sleep. He barely eats. His flesh is sallow and sickly. His once-pristine armor is a patchwork of Iron Hands black, scavenged Raven Guard white, and burned Salamander green.

 

 

Role in the Warband:

• Supreme commander of the Revenant Sons.

• Oversees all gene-seed harvesting, implantation, and cloning.

• Leads personally in critical engagements, especially against Traitor Legions present at Isstvan V.

• Is both feared and pitied by his followers — many Gestalt Replicants regard him as a father-figure, while others see him as a necessary monster.

 

Legacy:

 

In some versions of the Siege-era apocrypha, it’s whispered that Varek Sorran vanished in the final days of the Heresy, carrying with him a gene-seed vault containing some of the last untouched samples of Ferrus Manus’ genetic material.

 

Others claim he attempted one final experiment: to clone Ferrus Manus himself.

If so, the results were never seen… or perhaps walk still among the nameless Blackshields of the Long War.

 

Quote:

“We are not men. Not warriors. Not sons of the Gorgon, nor the Fire-Drake, nor the Raven. We are the broken echoes of better men. And I will send us screaming into the void until the traitors choke on our ashes.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I thought prior to dumping the WIP pics I’d develop the bulk of the lore for this project so as i hit each milestone for the army I can reference back to these pieces.

 

so I guess it’s time to explain this project idea and why I’ve stepped away from my other projects. 
 

I guess I should start at the heart of the matter, I have been struggling with this Hobby and finding the Enjoyment over the years, especially with an increase in what content creators define as hobby tourists. I have loved Warhammer for over 25 years at this point in my life, it comes and goes as every hobbyist can attest to  depending on where you are in your lifecycle. I’ve seen the hobby change and grow and in a way it’s the natural course of any franchise to change.

 

i however have struggled to grow and change with it, I wanted in a way to capture this in a project and document the profound impact that trying to keep something frozen in time can have on the mental state of a hobbyist.

 

This project is about trying to capture and retain that which we have lost but in doing so eventually destroys that which we loved about the hobby. I personally find that the negativity that comes from us as a collective outweighs the potential positives and am trying to be proactive in recognising my patterns and behaviours.

 

Third edition comes with it a sense of dread and change for the game and I truly do love this hobby but I see that eventually it will become the grey sludge that all things eventually lead to when we loose the core concept of a vision that was held once long ago, I know there are people that will disagree and agree to a certain extent and I just want to note that I’m probably incorrect on my opinions in regards to this.

 

But I feel we are loosing the creativity in the hobby through the exponential access of technology  from 3D printing, to rechargeable Airbrushes, to contrast paints.

 

These are all smaller pieces of a greater whole and I think that a risk was needed, so I decided to take a risk on a project one that I have no idea ultimately will be successful, but I want to grow an audience and  get away from the negativity of the past and move towards the image I have in my head of what Warhammer always was and should continue to be, a dark dystopian fantasy that is reflective of the struggle of one’s sense of self in an uncaring universe.

 

So welcome and I hope you follow along as I attempt to show through the lore and modelling of this project how depression can manifest differently and how continually reinforcing negative thought processes can lead to a deteriorating mental state.

 

Let us break the cycle and focus on creating projects that will be memorable and find their place in the extended lore and community.

Edited Saturday at 11:26 AM by GhostMalone
Formatting

[GhostMalone]

 

Part III

 

 

 

 

What Are Gestalt Replicants?

 

The Echoes’ Apothecaries knew they didn’t have clean, uncontaminated gene-seed stocks. What they salvaged from Isstvan’s corpse-fields were damaged, corrupted, and incomplete. Desperate to rebuild their Legions and seek revenge, they resorted to combining the gene-seed from multiple fallen Astartes — sometimes mixing Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Raven Guard samples into a single implant cycle.

 

Through radical gene-splicing, unstable vat-gestation, and crude mnemonic imprinting, the Apothecaries created Gestalt Replicants: cloned warriors forged from multiple Astartes lineages, carrying within them fractured echoes of several gene-lines.

 

They are neither one Legion nor another — but an amalgam, a broken mirror of past warriors and dying Legions.

 

 

 

Gestalt Legionary: Psychological Profile

 

Designation: Subject Group: Revenant Sons / Null-Batch Clones

 

Cognitive Profile Summary:

 

These legionaries are not conventional Astartes, nor even autonomous transhuman soldiers in the sense understood by the Imperium. Created through flawed and unstable cloning processes from the gene-seed and genetic remnants of fallen Isstvan survivors, they lack singular identities. Instead, they operate within a gestalt neural array — a partially psionic, partially noospheric link that connects their individual consciousnesses into a fractured collective.

 

The result is a warband that experiences a diffused sense of self, with personality echoes bleeding between clones. Memories of the original legionaries from which they were grown emerge sporadically, but often in a corrupted or contradictory state. One clone might experience the dying thoughts of a Death Guard Breacher one moment, then shift to the fractured identity of a Salamander Pyroclast the next.

 

Common Symptoms:

• Eidetic Memory Echoes: Random resurfacing of battlefield memories from their progenitors, causing dissociative episodes.

• Identity Dissolution: Many are incapable of referring to themselves in the first person. Usage of “We” or “The Host”is more typical.

• Shared Hallucinations: Frequent collective visions of dead comrades, Isstvan’s devastation, or impossible premonitions.

• Emotional Blunting: Lacking natural empathy, save for a burning, unifying hatred toward traitors and the Imperium alike.

• Death-Seeking Impulse: Gestalt legionnaries often display nihilistic tendencies, seeking combat situations with no expectation of survival.

 

Unique Cognitive Hazards:

• Personality Feedback Loops: In combat stress conditions, clones linked through the gestalt can enter neurological loops, replaying traumatic events endlessly, resulting in unit paralysis or berserker frenzies.

• Reality Anchoring Failures: Prolonged separation from the gestalt link causes extreme dissociative breakdown, identity collapse, and, in some cases, catatonia or suicide.

• Paranoia Cascades: If a rogue memory fragment identifies one of their own as a traitor, entire units may self-destruct in a fratricidal purge.

 

In-Lore Notes:

 

These are not warriors so much as broken ghosts, wearing borrowed flesh and ancient memories. They fight as one because they have no choice; the gestalt is both their curse and sole comfort. The Medusan emblem isn’t just a symbol — it’s a metaphor for their condition: a face that can no longer change, ringed by serpents of thought that forever strangle identity.
 

 

 

Iskvara

 

“The Cinder Vault”

Sanctuary-Moon of the Echoes

 

Location:

• Segmentum Obscurus

• Located within the treacherous reaches of the Halo Stars, near the warp-blighted borders of the Alnisyan Expanse — an unstable region littered with dead worlds, void-anomalies, and long-lost Mechanicum stations.

• Virtually unknown to Imperial records following the Razing of Alnys-Delta, its last listing appears in an old pre-Compliance stellar survey marked as “uninhabited, unsuitable for colonization — high rad-content.”

 

Environment & Features:

• Barren, grey-ash landscape, riven with deep canyons and blasted craters. Constant thin atmosphere storms of irradiated dust.

• The surface is covered in the wreckage of ancient pre-Imperial structures, mostly consumed by time and weather.

• A perpetual ashen sky dims the faint light from a dying primary star.

 

Beneath the surface:

• The Vaults of Iskvara — a network of enormous subterranean bunkers, cloning vats, and sealed pre-Imperial Mechanicum catacombs repurposed by the echoes .

• The original purpose of these facilities remains unclear — ancient gene-forges, now corrupted and expanded by Magos-heretek allies and Azael Kryor’s gene-vaults.

 

Key Locations:

• Echo-Chamber Omega: The central cloning facility where Gestalt Replicants are grown, monitored, and assessed.

• Ashen Sanctum: Korda Vhorrak’s war council chamber, lined with relics scavenged from Isstvan’s battlefields.

• The Weeping Forge: A shipyard hidden in a hollowed-out mountain range, where salvaged vessels and heretek constructs are refitted.

• The Severed Vault: Where failed clone-gestalts are interred or dissected — overseen by Kryor.

• The Ember Spire: A half-ruined Mechanicum temple converted into a ritual site for battle-oaths and genetic rites before major assaults.

 

 

Historical Lore:

 

Long before the Great Crusade, Iskvara was a holding of a splinter Mechanicum faction, the Ordo Cynex, obsessed with gene-manipulation and techno-heresy. They were purged by the early Martian loyalists during the Unification Wars of Mars, and their works abandoned.

 

The Vaults of Iskvara lay forgotten until Vhorrak, Sorran, and Kryor claimed it as their sanctuary, striking dark pacts with renegade Magos Galdran Vhoor — a surviving scion of Cynex lineage — who still haunts the Forge-Reactor catacombs.

 

Function & Purpose:

• Acts as the primary stronghold and operational hub for the Echoes.

• Houses cloning vats, gene-seed vaults, stasis-crypts, and ancient data-vaults.

• Base for launching void-piracy raids against isolated Mechanicum and Imperial shipping lanes in the Halo Stars.

• Contains Iskvara Apexium Array, an ancient long-range warp-comm beacon, used to intercept traitor and loyalist fleet movements in the Alnisyan Expanse.

 

Legends & Rumors:

• It’s said the very earth of Iskvara is infused with the ash of long-dead gene-lords, whose failed constructs still stalk the deepest Vaults.

• Some of the Replicants whisper that one of Vulkan’s failed clone-echoes lies entombed beneath Echo-Chamber Omega, too unstable to awaken but too valuable to destroy.

• The souls of the fallen Loyalists from Isstvan are rumored to haunt the vault corridors, their gene-seed trapped within vat-beasts and proto-clones.

 

 

 

 

Moritat-Centurion Jorik “Void-Fang” Kael

 

“The Severed Man”

Executioner of the Echoes / Clone-Echo of the Forgotten

 

Origin:

 

Unlike most Moritats, Jorik Kael was not a sanctioned line assassin before the Heresy — he was born after Isstvan, one of the earliest Gestalt Replicants. A composite clone forged from at least three separate Astartes gene-seeds (Iron Hands, Salamander, Raven Guard), Jorik’s creation was considered a partial success by Arch-Apothecary Sorran.

 

But Kael’s mind did not stabilize.

From his accelerated growth period, he exhibited hyper-violence, dissociative fugues, and a lack of higher empathy. While most Gestalt marines heard the whispers of their progenitors in moments of battle or death, Kael heard them always — a constant cacophony of dead voices driving him to relentless slaughter.

 

When deployed for the first time during a gene-seed raid against traitor-held facilities on Yuthrix Primaris, Kael massacred not only the target but his own support squad, executing them for “speaking treason.”

Rather than destroy him, Varek Sorran recognized Kael’s utility and branded him a Moritat, a sanctioned executioner for the Echoes.

 

Personality and Mental State:

• Psychopathic nihilist: Believes nothing in the galaxy is worth preserving. He lives only for the hunt and the moment of the kill.

• Auditory hallucinations: Constantly hears the “echoes” of his gestated gene-fathers — conflicting orders, death-screams, battle-cries — which he interprets as divine will.

• Terrifying calm: Speaks in a flat, emotionless tone even during massacres.

• Ritualistic: Keeps a tally of kills etched into the casing of his twin disintegrator pistols.

 

Appearance:

• Wears modified Mark IV armor, stripped of insignia, save for ritual scars and tally-marks.

• His face is pale, gaunt, with eyes that glow faintly from failed psychic-null organ implants.

• Carries two master-crafted disintegrator pistols, each engraved with the names “Mourn” and “Echo”.

 

Role in the Warband:

• Primary assassin and headhunter of the Revenant Sons.

• Deployed in spearhead assaults to eliminate enemy officers, psykers, or Apothecaries.

• Leads Corpse Echo squads on suicidal infiltration raids.

• Considered untouchable by other Revenant Sons; few will speak to him, save for Sorran.

 

Legends and Rumors:

 

It’s whispered among the warband that Kael cannot die.

That the flawed, recombinant gene-seed within him repairs his body even as it breaks, and that he has “died” more than a dozen times on the field, only to rise again.

 

Others claim that Kael is not one marine at all, but a clone-gestalt of several dead Moritats from Isstvan, their memories and madness given flesh.

Edited Saturday at 11:27 AM by GhostMalone
Formatting

[GhostMalone]

 

Part IV

 

The Mortuary Clade

 

Born in blood and desperation amid the shattered remnants of Istvaan V, the Mortuary Clade is an offshoot of Apothecarion survivors led by the Iron Hands Praetor Varek Sorran and his cadre of Apothecaries. Left for dead beneath the iron skies of Istvaan, these shattered remnants forged a grim purpose: to reclaim their vengeance by any means — even those abhorrent to the dictates of the Emperor and Mechanicum.

 

Origins & Purpose

 

The Clade was founded to preserve the gene-legacy of their fallen brothers and to create a new breed of warriors — not bound by Legion, Primarch, or Imperial decree. In the clandestine depths of their stronghold on Iskvara, within the dying light of the Halo Stars, they began experimenting with gestalt cloning techniques. Using salvaged genetic material from the dead of Istvaan Loyalist and Traitor alike and forcibly acquired candidates, they sought to rebuild a force capable of vengeance against those who betrayed the Legions.

 

⸻

 

The Abductions of the Alnisyan Expanse

 

The Clade’s gene-crafting requires raw material: both to stabilize decaying genetic lines and to create fresh hosts for new Null Gene-Stock Gestalts. The Alnisyan Expanse — a lawless stretch of void-raked worlds, plagued by warp storms and long-abandoned colonies — became their hunting ground.

 

The Process

 

Raiding parties of Blackshield legionaries, supported by covert operatives and collaborators among pirate bands, descend upon isolated settlements. Children displaying even minor physical or psychological anomalies are targeted — indicators of latent compatibility with Astartes geno-encoding. Entire populations are often purged to prevent word of their deeds from spreading.

 

Those taken are brought to the flesh-habs beneath Iskvara’s Dead Moon, where they undergo rigorous bio-psychological testing and genetic screening. Viable candidates are subjected to accelerated organ implantation protocols and experimental psycho-indoctrination, stripped of identity and rebuilt into vessels for harvested gene-seed.

 

The Flesh-Gardens

 

Deep within the laboratories of Mortuary Clade on Iskvara, the Flesh-Gardens bloom — vast chambers of regenerative bio-vats, where partially grown clone-warriors gestate. Corpses of fallen Astartes are harvested for genetic material, while gene-plasm from abducted children stabilizes the recombinant helix structures.

 

The end result are the Gestalt Replicants: sterile, memory-imprinted legionaries built from a thousand dead brothers and unwilling children, programmed with fractured war memories and a single, overriding instinct — vengeance.

 

⸻

 

Symbolic Ties to the Icon

 

The warband’s Medusan Gorgon emblem reflects both their Iron Hands heritage and their new role as architects of death and rebirth. The writhing serpents represent the genetic helixes of their stolen prey, while the cracked visage stands for the death of the past and the terror of the future they forge.

 

Circuit-line squad markings are integrated into armor plating and shoulder heraldry, denoting squad type, battlefield role, and genetic origin strain — a nod to the Iron Hands’ mechanistic symbolism and the Clade’s obsession with bio-data control.

 

The Gorgon

 

The Medusan visage, known within the Revenant Sons as The Silent Gorgon, is more than a mere sigil — it is a mark of remembrance, guilt, and silent vengeance.

 

After the Drop Site Massacre, Apothecarion survivors salvaged shattered gene-seed and broken remains of their brothers. Among them, a single cracked, petrified faceplate was found — a relic from one of the Gorgons of the Iron Hands. This shattered visage became an object of fixation for the Apothecaries, symbolizing both the fall of loyalist Astartes and the unforgiving fate that awaited traitors and cowards.

 

As the Revenant Sons took form through increasingly questionable means — cloning the dead, gestating unstable gene-stock, creating gestalt replicants — the face of the Gorgon was adopted as a warning and a banner. It represented the duality of their nature:

• As both vengeance incarnate and living sins.

• As forgotten sons seeking to petrify the memory of betrayal in stone, while fearing their own eventual descent into monstrosity.

 

In time, the emblem became stamped into the grey ceramite of their armor and vehicles. A visage of stony silence and cracked sorrow. To the Revenant Sons, it is not a symbol of glory — but one of eternal mourning, of unending war, and the cold remembrance of Istvaan’s ashes.
 

 

 

Circuit lines

 

The echoes ’ cloning vats and gestalt network protocols use archaic noospheric conduit arrays to stabilize neural replication — circuit tracery is a symbolic and functional mark denoting node integration within the gestalt.

 

Squad markings take the form of bio-circuit lines painted or etched into ceramite, resembling both circuit board pathways and ancient sigil-work. These lines often radiate from the Medusan emblem or around the helm, pauldrons, or chestplate.

 

Design Ideas

 

Infantry

• Helmet Tracery: Thin white or faintly luminescent grey circuit lines running laterally across helms, meeting at ocular lenses or radiating from the warband emblem.

• Shoulder Pauldron Veins: Each squad could have distinct circuit trace patterns curling around the Medusan face emblem like a crude halo or branching root system.

• Chestplate Glyphs: Stylized node lines linking across the torso — thin, angular or hexagonal traces suggesting latent connection points.
 

 

 

Vehicles

• Circuit Veins from Iconography: From the Medusan emblem on the hull, have lines branch out like a corrupted machine-spirit circuit map, fading into the grey hull.

• Tactical Designation Lines: Squad numbers or kill tallies incorporated as breaks or terminus points in the circuit lines.

• Runic Circuit Stamps: Along the barrels of weapons, track guards, or hatches, incorporate quick, hard angles reminiscent of early Dark Age data conduits.

 

 

 

“Upon the warplate of each revenant clone is etched the sacred tracery of Iskvara’s last data-vaults — circuit lines not merely decorative, but noospheric conduits that tether them to the lost cognizance stream. These sigils hum faintly with ghost-data, encoding both designation and ancestral sin.”

Edited Saturday at 11:27 AM by GhostMalone
Formatting

[GhostMalone]

 

 

Part V

 

The Shadowed Choir

 

 

 

Among the most disturbing creations of the Mortuary Clade are not merely the flesh-forged Astartes, but the Shadowed Choir — a cadre of psycho-inductive null-choristers, harvested and created for the dual purpose of gene-stabilisation and psychic weaponry.

 

Origins and Function

 

In the aftermath of Istvaan V, certain Apothecaries within Varek Sorran’s circle realised the instability of their early gestalt clones. The gene-seed, decayed and stitched from multiple sources, threatened to destabilise entirely. But through captured Mechanicum data and forbidden lore from the Black Judges of the Alnisyan Expanse, they learned of psycho-reactive biological fields — how latent psychic resonance could act as a binding agent for unstable gene structures.

 

Thus was born the concept of the Shadowed Choir.

 

 

Children abducted from the Alnisyan Expanse who displayed nascent or uncontrolled psychic abilities were not discarded like the rest. Instead, they were kept in conditions of sensory deprivation and pain-induced trance states, their minds broken and rebuilt into a single collective consciousness.

 

Bound together through psycho-reactive implants and somno-sorceric conditioning, these unfortunates chant constant, mindless litanies — their combined psychic field stabilising the gene-seed of nearby gestalt legionaries and muting the latent warp-echoes of their fractured souls.

 

Choral Shrines and Psycho-Resonance Engines

 

Within the strongholds of Iskvara, the Choir dwell in Choral Shrines — dark, echoing vaults where the air is thick with psychic static and agonised song. Each Shrine houses between 8 and 20 Choir members, their bodies kept alive by crude bio-augmentation, psychotropic infusions, and neuro-control helms.

 

Some are permanently wired into Psycho-Resonance Engines — great devices that amplify their combined psychic field, allowing the Mortuary Clade’s experiments to proceed without catastrophic warp phenomena. On the battlefield, these shrines can be mobilised aboard modified Rhino or Sabre chassis as Choral Carriers, projecting stabilising psychic fields or unleashing devastating psychic shockwaves as weapons.

 

The Warband’s Dark Reliance

 

Though loathed even by their creators, the Shadowed Choir are indispensable. Without their psychic harmonics, the gestalt legionaries would quickly succumb to gene-seed rejection, psychic feedback seizures, or total mental fracture. Their presence is marked by a pervasive cold and a constant, distant hum of broken voices.

 

Some believe the Choir’s collective subconscious is beginning to evolve beyond its purpose, forming a primitive hive mind, with its own alien desires and murmurings of revenge against both their captors and the Imperium that abandoned them.

 

Symbolic Presence

 

The warband’s Medusan emblem is often daubed upon the containment units of Choir shrines, with additional markings of dripping circuit-lines and broken helixes, symbolising the bio-mechanical corruption of purity and the binding of flesh and psychic resonance.

 

Choir-associated units often bear squad markings of circuited eyes or mouthless faces, representing both their enforced silence and their collective sight beyond the veil.

 

Edited Saturday at 11:28 AM by GhostMalone
Formatting

[GhostMalone]

 

Part VI

 

The Ferrum Choir

 

“What is flesh but flawed metal? What is the mind but circuitry ill-wired?”

— Varek Sorran, on the founding of the Ferrum Choir

 

Concept and Origins

 

Where the Shadowed Choir was created from abducted psykers, the Ferrum Choir represents the other half of the Revenant Sons’ esoteric stabilisation efforts: a collective of grievously wounded or mentally unstable Astartes, physically rebuilt with cybernetic and alchemical augmentation, their ruined flesh reforged into bio-mechanical conduits for techno-psionic resonance.

 

These were the failed, the broken, the dying — Iron Hands, Salamanders, Raven Guard, and Blackshield warriors whose bodies and minds were beyond salvation. Rather than grant them death, the Apothecaries and bio-indoctrinators of the Mortuary Clade repurposed them into a unique form of psychic null-shield and tech-intercessor, creating a gestalt intelligence capable of stabilising warp anomalies, regulating unstable gene-seed, and weaponising psychic shockwaves.

 

The Choir are not individuals, but a linked network of sentient machine-bodies, their minds linked through cortex-nodes, wetware cabling and neural relays, forming a cybernetic chorus of fractured personalities that sing in perfect psycho-electronic harmony.

 

 

Physical Description

 

The members of the Ferrum Choir are barely recognisable as Astartes. Their bodies are heavily augmented with Mechanicum salvage: half-skeletal frames, oss-metal plating, visible data conduits, and cranial implants studded across cracked helms or exposed skulls.

 

Their armour is stripped of heraldry and painted sterile grey, often stained with machine oil and dried ichor. Circuit line motifs in oxidised black or copper etch their limbs and chest plates, acting as both a circuit diagram and ritual warding.

 

Each member’s face is typically either covered by a blank, expressionless iron mask or replaced by a crude vox grille through which the Choir’s eerie, synchronous chant can be heard.

 

Role and Function

 

The Ferrum Choir serves multiple critical roles within the Revenant Sons:

• Psycho-Induction Fields: Their harmonic chants stabilise warp presence, preventing psychic backlash during cloning procedures or void travel through warp-storm choked regions of the Alnisyan Expanse.

• Clade Data-Recovery: Their implanted augmetics allow them to interface with Mechanicum relic-constructs and derelict datasystems, extracting lost gene-data and war-logs to aid in the warband’s creation of new gestalts.

• Battlefield Null-Wardens: Deployed in combat, the Choir radiate nullifying psycho-electronic fields, muting enemy psykers and reinforcing the resilience of nearby Revenant Sons against the corrupting touch of the warp.

• Sacral Executioners: In moments of mass genetic rejection or uncontrollable psychic phenomenon within their own warband, the Choir are dispatched to neutralise and ritualistically dismember the afflicted, their voices hymning the final litany of purgation.

 

Ferrum Choir Shrines

 

On Iskvara, entire sub-temples are devoted to the Ferrum Choir. Here, the chorus stands in stasis coffins, linked by archaic bio-cables and chanting endlessly in the darkness. These vaults thrum with psychic feedback, causing machine spirits to shudder and unprotected mortals to bleed from the ears.

 

Their primary shrine is known as the Iron Reliquary, a cavernous sanctum of dead machines and fractured statuary, where failed gene-clones are disposed of and new Ferrum Choir candidates are forged in pain and metal.

 

Lore Note: Their Originator

 

The Ferrum Choir was conceived by Primus Apothecary Sevastus Marn, a former Iron Hands Apothecary believed lost in the fires of Istvaan V. Marn survived, though terribly mutilated, and it was his hatred of flesh’s weakness and desperate need to salvage his warband that birthed the Choir.

 

Marn’s personal project, codified as Project Ferrum Vox, was initially intended to preserve the minds of dying Astartes by binding them into machine forms — but quickly evolved into a weaponised gestalt presence, embracing the choir’s growing psychic resonance as a tool of survival.

 

Flavour Text Excerpt

 

“We are more than dead men. We are memory, steel, and voltage. Our voices are the dirge of flesh, the hymn of the forge. We are the Ferrum Choir.”

— Litany of the Iron Reliquary

 

 

 

the Ferrum Choir see themselves as the voice of the dead legionaries of Istvaan, their emblem a corrupted visage of the Gorgon, its serpents fraying into metallic conduits and data-spines, eyes dark voids reflecting the cold vacuum of space. It represents both their origins and their corruption — the dead Iron Hands’ legacy twisted into a cult of machine-gestalt and cloned immortality.

 

 

 

A cracked, metallic Gorgon mask — its serpents formed from coiling cables and segmented tubing.

• Data streams or digital runes running down from the mouth and eye sockets like tears.

• A ring of cog-toothed sun rays like the original, but distorted or asymmetrical, suggesting degradation and madness.

• A black and sterile iron-grey palette with ghostly white highlights.

 

 

Ferrum Choir Iconography & Emblem Lore

 

Heraldic Description:

The emblem of the Ferrum Choir depicts a pallid, cracked Medusan death mask, its expression frozen in mournful fury. From the crown of the mask spill writhing serpents, rendered not as organic coils but as segmented data conduits and mechanical cabling. The mask is encircled by a corona of jagged cog-teeth, each uneven and corroded by time. From the mask’s hollow eye sockets and parted lips, ghostly data streams cascade in faded binharic script. The device is typically presented in sterile bone-white upon a field of void-black or iron-grey.

 

 

Emblem Lore: The Mask of the Dead Choir

 

The Ferrum Choir’s icon is more than a badge of identity — it is a morbid monument to the shattered past of Istvaan V. Each face of the emblem is said to represent one of the countless fallen sons of Medusa, their consciousness harvested through forbidden technology, their memories encoded into the void. The data-stream tears symbolize both lamentation and transmission — a ceaseless stream of digital grief and vengeance that the Choir believes to be the voices of the slain Iron Tenth.

 

This emblem is daubed across the grey armor of Revenant Sons cohorts affiliated with the Ferrum Choir, seared into the hulls of their Sabre tanks, and etched into the circuited war-standards borne by the Mortuary Clade’s lieutenants. To enemies, it is a chilling sight — the face of death, remade in iron.

 

It is whispered in hushed tones amongst survivors of Ferrum Choir assaults that the emblem itself pulses in the dark, emitting low, inhuman binharic chants, a mechanical lament for a brotherhood long dead.

Edited Saturday at 11:28 AM by GhostMalone
Formatting

[GhostMalone]

 

Part VII

 

 

ARCHIVE-DATA SLATE: SIGMA-NOCTIS//ISKVARA-EXORDIUM//ECHO-PROTOCOL

 

Status: REDACTED

Recovered By: Inquisitorial Operative [REDACTED]

Location: Iskvara, Segmentum Obscurus

Date: M41.212.019

Security Clearance: Alpha Primaris

 

⸻

 

++BEGIN TRANSMISSION++

 

Subject: Echo Protocol

Classification: Exterminatus-Level Heretekta Project

Originating Authority: Varek Sorran, Iron Hands Praetor (presumed KIA M31.009 during the Istvaan Drop Site Massacre)

Custodian: Mortuary Clade, Revenant Sons Warband

 

⸻

 

Purpose:

 

To establish a sustainable force of Gestalt Astartes constructs utilizing recovered gene-seed, residual neural imprinting, and forcibly harvested genetic stock from the Alnisyan Expanse for deployment against Heretical Legions operating within the Segmentum Obscurus.

 

⸻

 

Process Overview:

 

1. Neural Imprint Harvesting:

→ Partial engrammatic data extracted from deceased Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Raven Guard legionary remains recovered post-Istvaan V.

→ Data collated into the Ferrum Choir, a proto-noospheric construct housing tactical subroutines, combat instincts, and fragmented identity traces.

 

2. Gene-Seeding and Forced Growth:

→ Abduction of biologically compatible juveniles from Alnisyan Expanse worlds.

→ Subjects subjected to forced gene-seed implantation, accelerated maturation, and chemical neuromodulation.

→ Anomalies deemed unsuitable terminated via Directive Orbis-Ferrum.

 

3. Gestalt Conditioning:

→ Gestalt warriors imprinted with composite identity matrices derived from Ferrum Choir.

→ Intended outcome: Combat operatives carrying multiple lifetimes of tactical memory and hereditary vengeance.

 

4. Deployment Parameters:

→ Echo Protocol warriors operate in absolute silence.

→ Hostile elements are eradicated without distinction.

→ All captured resources funneled into continuation of Protocol.

 

⸻

 

Notable Deviations:

 

Echo Break Incidents increasing at alarming frequency.

Gestalt entities experiencing emergent self-awareness, diverging from collective conditioning.

 

Final Notation:

“I am because I chose to be.” — Unidentified Gestalt Designation Verrus-13.

 

Immediate termination protocols initiated for Ferrus-13. Outcome: Unknown.

 

Recommendation:

Immediate Exterminatus of Iskvara.

Censure of records.

Sanctioned Inquisitorial strike teams deployed to monitor Alnisyan Expanse for resurgence indicators.

 

⸻

 

++END TRANSMISSION++

 

 

 

 

Echo Protocol

 

“Echoes of Iron, Sons of Forgotten Vengeance.”

 

Echo Protocol was a classified contingency directive conceived by the Mortuary Clade — the clandestine cabal of Apothecary survivors under Varek Sorran’s command. Originally born of necessity amidst the obliteration of the Drop Site Massacre, it was a brutal failsafe, designed not just to preserve gene-seed or combat viability, but to forge enduring echoes of fallen Legionaries through radical replication processes.

 

Whereas standard gene-seed reclamation was clinical and orthodox, Echo Protocol was a heretical, unstable experiment. It involved:

 

Components of the Echo Protocol:

• Neural Imprint Harvesting:

Extracting fragmented memory engrams, battlefield instincts, and tactical subroutines from the severed heads and remains of dead Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Raven Guard. These were transferred into a proto-data network — the Ferrum Choir — a literal chorus of the dead, used to implant learned reflexes and partial identities into cloned Astartes.

• Forced Gene-Accelerant Cultivation:

Abducted children from the Alnisyan Expanse and beyond were selected for compatibility, their genetic code force-grown and artificially aged within stasis-vats, accelerated by scavenged Mechanicum growth serums and xeno-tech remnants found on Iskvara’s long-dead colonies.

• Gestalt Symbiosis Conditioning:

Rather than unique individuals, these new warriors were designed as Gestalt Echoes — fragments of ancient heroes pieced together into singular bodies. Each clone carried multiple overlapping voices, conflicting instincts, and ancestral rage. Their minds were latticed with whispers from the Ferrum Choir, making them both hyper-efficient killers and psychological wrecks.

 

Operational Purpose:

 

Echo Protocol was never meant to save lives — it was crafted to deliver absolute retribution. Wherever the Revenant Sons struck, they did so with the tactics and fury of long-dead Legionaries reborn. It was a campaign of erasure; an attempt to obliterate the traitor legions by sending them their own dead in new shells.

 

The Protocol demanded absolute silence and no quarter. Any world that harbored traitor forces would be reduced to ash. Any soul who betrayed the Imperium would become raw material for the next generation of Echo-clones.

 

Echo Breaks and Final Awakening

 

A phenomenon noted within later iterations of the Protocol was the occurrence of Echo Breaks — moments where a clone would, for a brief instant, separate from the Chorus of voices within. Most were driven to madness or immediate termination, but a handful exhibited emergent self-awareness.

 

The final recorded instance of this was Legionary Verrus-13 during the fall of Iskvara, marking a turning point where one of the Gestalt Legionaries became something more.

 

Symbolism and the Icon

 

The Medusan Gorgon emblem of the Revenant Sons — a decayed visage surrounded by serpents — symbolized both the petrifying nature of grief and the endless, writhing voices within each clone’s mind. The cracked skull was a representation of the shattering of old identities and the horror of becoming a vessel for dead men’s memories.

Edited Saturday at 11:24 AM by GhostMalone

[GhostMalone]

 

Part VIII

 

The Corpse Echoes

 

Designation: Post-Mortem Neural Residuals

Codename: Corpse Echoes

Custodian: Ferrum Choir | Mortuary Clade

Status: Operational Anomalies (Strategic Utility)

 

 

The Corpse Echoes are the fragmented psychic and noospheric remnants of fallen Astartes — the death-throes of battle-brothers and shattered commanders who perished during the Istvaan V atrocity and subsequent battles of the Shadow War.

 

Harvested from the shattered neural interfaces of Iron Hands, Salamanders, and Raven Guard corpses, these engrammatic echoes are extracted moments after death or during the brief window before cerebral dissolution in gene-engineered flesh.

 

The Ferrum Choir utilizes these residual fragments as raw data:

• Combat reflexes

• Tactical instincts

• Emotive memories (rage, vengeance, duty)

• Partial identity remnants

 

These are then woven into the noospheric tapestry of the Echo Protocol, forming the multi-voiced, contradictory gestalt minds that drive Revenant Sons Legionaries.

 

Function in Gestalt Creation

 

Each Gestalt Legionary isn’t just a clone — they are a vessel.

Within their psyche, multiple Corpse Echoes whisper.

Some command.

Some plead.

Some rage.

 

This creates fractured, unstable identities prone to both brilliance and madness. In battle, the echoes often surface unbidden, resulting in bursts of strategic genius or episodes of hallucinatory bloodlust.

 

Gestalts report:

• Hearing the voices of dead Iron Fathers.

• Memories of battles they never fought.

• Recitations of ancient war-cries from lost Clans and brotherhoods.

• Nightmares not their own.

 

 

Corpse Echo Variants

 

Designation//Source//Effect

 

Echo-Ferrus//High-ranking Iron Hands Warlords//Drives cold, hyper-rational tactical assessments 

Echo-Vulkanis//Dying Salamanders Forge-brethren//Instills protective instincts, suppressed by the Mortuary Clade

Echo-Corvidae//Raven Guard Pathfinders//Haunting premonitions, fatalist dread

Echo-Cantor//Ancient Trcarine voice fragments//Causes sporadic machine empathy, communion with forgotten engines

Echo-Medusan Null//Varek Sorran’s personal command Cadre//Direct conduits to the Ferrum Choir Networks

 

Operational Implications.

• Pros:

Enhanced battlefield reactivity.

Layered decision-making.

Pre-existing tactical experience without formal training.

• Cons:

Identity fractures.

Echo Break incidents (gestalts developing unwanted selfhood).

Nightmarish instability in prolonged campaigns.

 

 

Why It Matters

 

The Corpse Echoes represent the Revenant Sons’ greatest heresy: the desecration of the dead to prolong a war long since lost. The echoes are both a weapon and a curse — giving form to vengeance while denying the dead their rest.

 

For the Revenant Sons themselves, the burden is immense:

• Some gestalts adopt fragments of names, referring to themselves as “I am Vulgaris-Korr. No — I was. I was.”

• Some hear old war-songs and chants when no sound should carry.

• Some believe themselves haunted, possessed by the remnants of their progenitors.

 

The Mortuary Clade deliberately allows minor fractures, seeing them as a test of will and loyalty. Only those capable of mastering the chorus of the dead are permitted to lead.

 

Excerpt: Ferrum Choir Battle-Cant

 

“We are iron reborn, shadows given flesh.

Our voices are many.

Our grief is legion.

We are the Echoes.

And we will endure.”

Edited Saturday at 11:24 AM by GhostMalone
Formatting

[GhostMalone]

 

Part IX

 

Orrix Varn, The Ash-Marked

 

 

 

Affiliation: Blackshields

Former Legion: Unknown (Speculated Iron Warriors)

Role: Void Captain, Rogue Warleader, Shadow-Brother to Varek Sorran

Known Titles: The Ash-Marked, Grave-Kin, Varn the Hollow

 

Character Profile

 

Orrix Varn was a Blackshield of enigmatic origin — his true Legion colours burned away in the ash-storms of Istvaan V. Described by survivors as a towering, deathly-quiet figure clad in scorched Mk III war-plate, his heraldry scraped clean, adorned only by hand-daubed ash sigils and a crude Medusan effigy stitched from plasteel and charred flesh.

 

When Varek Sorran and the remnants of his Iron Hands brethren — alongside scattered loyalists and broken Blackshields — were encircled by Traitor forces in the slag-fields of the Urganth Depths, it was Varn who descended in the void-battered strike cruiser Ghost of Ages.

 

His ship, a derelict relic half-consumed by warp-fire and scavenged wreckage, broke atmosphere in a ragged orbit, using malfunctioning teleportariums and drop-craft to extract survivors under Traitor fire.

 

Key Traits & Themes

• The Reluctant Rescuer:

Varn didn’t seek to save Sorran out of loyalty or duty. His motives were born of pragmatism — salvaging any living assets capable of sustaining his isolated warband in the long war.

• Ash Sigils:

Varn’s armour was marked with crude ashes drawn from Istvaan’s dead. Each sigil represented a survivor saved or a life taken in defiance of the Warmaster.

• Grave-Kin Pact:

After the extraction, Varn forged a mutual survival pact with Sorran, pledging unity until their vengeance was fulfilled. This pact laid the groundwork for the Revenant Sons warband, with Varn’s crew and vessels forming its voidborne nucleus.

• Haunted Past:

Whispers among the Revenant Sons suggest Varn was once a loyalist of high station, his identity stripped after a failed assassination of a Traitor Primarch or a kin-slaying during the Dropsite Massacre. The Ferrum Choir list him only as “Echo Unstable — Type Varn”.

 

Later Fate

 

Following the early formation of the Revenant Sons, Varn commanded the Echo-Blade, a heavily modified strike cruiser serving as both fortress monastery and genetic laboratory for the Mortuary Clade. He oversaw initial forays into the Alnisyan Expanse, capturing candidates for the Gestalt experiments and expanding the warband’s fleet.

 

In M31.012, Varn vanished during an assault on a rogue Mechanicum void bastion known as Cyclotrope-Null. Only static-laced vox transmissions remained:

 

“The dead follow me.

We are legion.

I am… the last ash.”

 

No remains were recovered.

 

Battle Cant: The Pact of Ash

 

“One from the fire.

One from the grave.

Bound in ash.

We endure.”

 

Why He Matters

 

Varn’s intervention gave the Revenant Sons their genesis moment — the chance to escape Istvaan’s slaughter and become something more than scattered loyalist remnants. His actions forged the blood debt that binds the warband’s disparate elements, and his memory is invoked before every major engagement.

 

Amongst the Revenant Sons, a rankless warrior adopting the Ash Sigil motif is viewed as a grim omen: either a warrior marked for death or one chosen to fulfill a final, suicidal duty.

 

 

Echo of Ash: The Ghost Story Rites of Orrix Varn

 

Within the Revenant Sons, no name is spoken aloud in the silence between battles more than Orrix Varn. Not as a hero, nor as a saint — but as a cautionary omen, a fractured echo still tethered to the warband through blood and data-sigil.

 

Amongst the void-born, ship-kin, and the Gestalt Legionaries, the following rites are performed to ward against “Ashbound Fate” — the condition of becoming a lost soul adrift in the void, condemned to haunt the iron corridors of a dead ship.

 

The Ghost Story Rites

 

Known as: The Ash Chant, Grave-Kin Vigil, or Echo Watch

 

Performed:

• Before major warp translations

• On the eve of boarding actions

• When vox signals begin to crackle with dead frequencies

• When an unexplained death or vanishings occur aboard ship

 

Rite Invocation

 

A lone Legionary, typically the most junior or one bearing the most recent battle wounds, steps into the med-bay’s cold chamber or void observation blister. They etch a crude ash sigil onto their chestplate using burnt promethium dust or pulverised augmetic remains.

 

The chosen chants:

 

“Ash follows ash, void claims void.

I speak your name, Orrix Varn, to bind you.

Hold to your own grave, lest you take mine.”

 

This is repeated thirteen times.

 

During the chant, it’s said the vox relays will sometimes emit static resembling a low, rasping laugh, and the faint outline of a hollowed Mk III helm will flicker in reflection against the blast shield glass.

 

The Pact of the Ghost-Helm

 

Some Revenant Sons carry battered, unmarked Mk III helms believed to have belonged to Varn’s original warband. These are carried into battle during shipboard raids and placed atop the corpses of slain commanders or treacherous officers — binding their echoes and preventing them from becoming “dead echoes” that might linger aboard the warband’s vessels.

 

Failure to perform this rite is blamed for outbreaks of madness, warp flare anomalies, or entire decks going dark.

 

Shipboard Legends

• It’s said that in the deepest void holds of the Echo-Blade, a lone figure in ash-streaked plate roams, still seeking the names of those he failed to save on Istvaan.

• Survivors claim to hear the final vox message “I am the last ash” looped through dying vox arrays after prolonged warp travel.

• It is considered both a curse and a mark of impending destiny to encounter Varn’s Echoin battle. Those who do are known to perform acts of suicidal bravery or unbreakable defiance.

 

Meaning to the Warband

 

Varn’s rites aren’t simply ghost stories — they reinforce the Revenant Sons’ core creed: that nothing truly dies. Echoes persist, in data, in ash, in memory, and in the half-formed thoughts of the Gestalts. The Mortuary Clade even logs echo-frequencies attributed to Varn in their arcane databanks, believing him to be the first true Corpse Echo — a sentience sustained by residual data and iron-willed hatred.

 

To forget the rites is to be forgotten by the warband.

 

 

Vox-Recording: Ferrum Choir Acolyte Ritesinger Vered Morth

 

Designation: Echo Log 7-13-Null

Location: Echo-Blade – Deck 31, Void Shrine 3A

Time Stamp: [Data corrupt]

Status: Recovered, partially degraded

 

⸻

 

[Crackling static. Heavy breathing.]

[Sound of oil lamp igniting. Soft humming begins.]

 

“Ash follows ash… void claims void…

In the name of the dead, we chant.

In the name of the lost, we bind.

In the name of Orrix Varn… we remember.”

 

[Soft metallic scraping — ritual blade against helm.]

 

“I name you now, Grave-Kin.

Hold your grave. Do not rise.

I offer my name in trade,

To bind you to ash and shadow.”

 

[Indistinct whispering, distant clang of something on metal.]

 

“I am Morth, Ferrum Choir.

I speak this rite in blood and scrap.

May you not claim my voice,

Nor wear my face in the night.”

 

[Long silence. A low, wet, static-laced chuckle.]

 

“I am the last ash…”

[Vox transmission ends.]

 

 

Echo-Fragment: Vox-Log 5-Null-Sigma

 

Designation: Corpse-Echo Ritual Invocation

Recovered from: Data-shard embedded in Revenant Sons tactical helm

 

⸻

 

“The dead remember…

The dead linger…

We are the ash of broken vows,

The clay of unremembered oaths.”

 

“By the Ferrum Choir’s lament,

By Orrix Varn’s hand,

We rise with no name,

And bleed in no Emperor’s light.”

 

“Speak not to the living,

Take no oath but death,

And should the Echo Protocol call,

Answer in ruin.”

 

[Low chorus of guttural voices in unison:]

“I am because I choose to be.”

 

 

 

The Ferrum Choir’s Dirge

 

“It’s said you can hear them, deep in the coil-tunnels of Iskvara’s hangar decks. The Ferrum Choir. Voices without faces. Names burned from memory. They sing in old binary cant, metal scraping bone. A song to wake the Echoed Dead and guide the silent ships to war.”

 

“If you hear it — never answer back. They only call the unfinished.”

 

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

 

Ghost-Lung Varn

 

“Orrix Varn wasn’t no man. Not by the time he found ‘em. Word was, something took root in his throat when Istvaan burned, a curse made of ash and static. Spoke in two voices, one his and one like broken glass on old vox-loops. They say when you heard both in unison, someone nearby would die before dawn.”

 

“Better not be you.”

 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

Corpse Echoes

 

“The Sons leave marks. Not just on worlds, but in the air itself. Old Navigators call it the Echo — a residual pulse like a scream trapped between walls of unreality. You linger too long on a battlefield they walked, you might hear them. Might see faces in frost bloom. Might start answering to a name you don’t remember ever having.”

 

“Ain’t no way back after that.”

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

The Name That Chooses You

 

“Revenant Sons don’t get born with names. Names come after the blood’s spilled. After the Echo Protocol’s done its work. Some say the Ferrum Choir gives them. Others say the dead whisper them in ship-hull seams. Either way, you don’t pick it. It picks you.”

 

“And you damn well better answer.”

Edited yesterday at 08:42 AM by GhostMalone
Formatting

[TheTrans]

Damn brother, this is some good :cuss:, I may have to pilfer some stuff from it haha. Absolutley fantastic hook!