[hider=The Primarch]

[b]Name:[/b] Nolrakh, the Veiled One.

[b]Legion:[/b] Legio IX.

[b]Homeworld:[/b]

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

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

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

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

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

[b]Skills and Abilities:[/b]

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

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

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

[b]Appearance:[/b]

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

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

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

[center][hider=And lo, the star in his brow was extinguished]
[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/768974759387201547/1126988246824517742/chaos-spawn-hx-1920x1080_-_Copy.jpg[/img][/hider][/center]

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

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


[b]Concept:[/b]

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

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

[b]Associated Primach:[/b] Nolrakh.

[center][hider=Battle Colours of the Ninth]
[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/768974759387201547/1126999736847712387/leg6.png[/img][/hider]
[hider=Then suddenly all the stars were blotted from the sky…]
[img]https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/768974759387201547/1126999736549908731/3Tvoyf0.jpeg[/img][/hider][/center]

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

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