Gender: Male
Homeworld: Rasena was the original 'capital world' of the three-hundred worlds that would eventually come to make up the Rasenan Republic and the Latrurian Sector where they are located, a planet that was found and then settled in the Segmentum Tempestus during the earliest days of the Age of Technology by Terrans that bought with them records of humanities earliest endevours, as well as their failures.
An age of strife and planetary warfare between nations and worlds was concluded by millennia eighteen, the three-hundred worlds becoming nominally united under the Rasenan Monarchy via a series of treaties, laws and obligations, most worlds allowed to retain their own languages, traditions and so forth, indebted worlds required to tithe the Rasenans and their core worlds a portion of their manpower, natural resources, foodstuffs and on.
In the twentieth millennia the technologically advanced city-states of the homeworld were thrown into civil strife, the people no longer wishing to be ruled by one powerful figurehead, each girding their populations for war and eventually sending their assorted militaries against one another.
Centuries of destruction and then rebuilding would follow, the firm end of it all being an extermination of the royal line and the implementation of a republic in its place - thus the Rasenan Republic was born.
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Rasena itself is a blend of civilised world and one which is far more advanced - columned buildings of marble blended with shimmering metallic agri-domes and terracotta tiled villas, whirring and rotating defence batteries nestled among fortifications taken from the ancient days of Terra, and surrounding the planet a never-ending swarm of vessels from across the sector.
Much has certainly changed from the days of the founding, technology and rulership included, city-states remain dotted over a tapestry of landscapes with climates varying from temperate to scorching, but their populations of citizen-warriors have become much more with the arrival of first the Primarch and then the Emperor himself.
Appearance: There was once an ancient Terran artist named Mikélanjalo, a sculpture who carved a seventeen feet high statue of a mythical figure, this figure was named 'David', and it is said that it was one of the most perfect artistic depictions of the human form ever crafted by mortal hands; how true or not this tale is is largely irrelevant, except to say that when the Emperor and his gene-crafters formed Kaelianos they not only did the same but far surpassed his work.
The being, the demi-godlike creation, called Kaelianos by his initial owner - a name of no special importance, but one that he has always been known by - is in no uncertain terms one of the most perfectly formed 'mortals' to ever tread the Milky Way, arguably one step lower than the Emperor himself in heart-aching and tear-inducing physical make-up.
From his head to his toes he is of perfect proportions, standing straight-backed at a height of twelve feet, his broad (but not
too broad) shoulders narrowing down to a lithe yet muscular torso of sculpted flesh, unmarred and hairless skin of an olive tone covering asymmetrical limbs of a length neither too short nor too long, then continuing down legs clearly formed from a being as close to a deity as one may get.
To look upon the face of Kaelianos is to look upon a visage of a gigantic human youth in his prime - a smooth forehead above neat brows of chestnut colour, but below a curling mop of similarly coloured hair, his squared jaw tapering down to a strong chin, and his aquiline nose placed a precise distance from his full lips.
It is rare for most to be able to meet the dark-brown gaze of the Primarch, only those of strong will - fellow sons or daughters of the Emperor for example - able to do so without having to look away after a few minutes.
Out of battle he garbs himself in an enlarged version of the tunic worn by his sons, with colours ranging from deep crimson, to purple, to undyed white bordered in numerous colours.
When Kaelianos takes to the field it is in a suit of artificer armour to match his person, constructed and formed by the finest armourers he could find, made up of numerous pieces of shimmering reinforced ceramite sculpted in the most precise way to his body - it makes him look less like a living being, and more like a statue that moves far too fluidly to be one.
As for weapons, due to his upbringing he wields two Primarch-suitable gladii, blades crackling with energy and the end for many when set to deadly purpose.
Personality: Perhaps the most glaringly obvious thing about the 'young' Primarch is his inability to remain still, even when he is stood doing nothing at all; while he may not be moving psychically, there can be no doubt that an almost ethereal energy fills him from head-to-toe, Kaelianos always seeming to be permanently on the verge of mental or bodily movement, as if constantly on the edge of
snapping into a blur of speed or a lecture of one sort or another.
This
force can be seen and felt in almost every aspect of his being, as well as in everything he chooses to do, his joyous demenour and charismatic
bon ami palpable in the very air around him by the psychically blunted - but almost like a hammer blow to those most attuned to the Emperor's mental gifts.
Such energy has turned the ever-youthful Primarch into an intellectual virtuoso, an orator of impeccable skill and verve, and a writer and author of innumerable works - primarily focusing on his own life and the campaigns of he and his fellow legions in the Emperors service.
Even before meeting his father and his sons he was ambitious, this only grew with knowledge of his origins, lending him somewhat of an arrogant air, but one that he could easily back up with either blade or the written word.
Now Kaelianos has turned himself toward the goals of his creator, taking his own pocket empire as an example, and wishing to recreate a universe - a human universe - in the image of the Age of Technology. Mankind managed it once, and he believes that they can become that great again, the Great Crusade of his progenitor being the primary step toward it.
Skills: Kaelianos employs skills that he has learnt throughout his life, made simpler by the very nature of his essential nature as one of the Emperors sons.
Starting life in the Rasenan fighting pits and arenas, training day-in and day-out in the ludus of the man that had first found him, he slew his first man when he was only ten years old - yet already as large as a full grown man, though he would grow larger still - specialising in the use of two blades at a time and caring little for the wounds which, until much later, he did not realise were unlikely to slow him down, let alone kill him.
With his skill as a duelist and combatant came the initial sparks of a charm that would see him become the autocratic leader of a three-hundred world spanning empire, casting uneeringly potent influence over the crowds before which he fought, the officials and politicians sat in their high seats and boxes, and eventually over the man who's death would make him semi-divine in the eyes of some.
Being allowed access to materials hailing from the earliest days of humanity, from scrolls of preserved papyri mingled with dataslates of gathered knowledge, to weapon schematics and the military treatises of geniuses, only formed Kaelianos into an exemplar of a warrior-scholar of the old school - a being as capable of planning a logistically challenging campaign as he was at taking to the battlefield at the head of his warriors.
Every skill was sharp before the arrival of the 'true eagle', his fleets of warships and his golden warriors, but the
Princeps of Rasena only became razor sharp in light of texts from within the Imperium (as well as those of conquered and compliant worlds).
All-in-all he is a warlord at home in both court and killing field, more than prepared to do what he considers to be best for the Imperium, a Primarch as proficient at counting the corpses of his slain enemies as he is at sketching the supply routes for and organisation of his next military exploit.
Assignment Grade: Kappa – Kaelianos is void of
almost all psychic ability, what little he does have manifesting itself in overwhelming prescence and force of personality.
Biography: Ergalisus had always been a greedy man, even his own parents had ejected him from the family home for the amount he ate, the citizen of Rasena having a craving for currency and a fine nose for good flesh - something that he had put to good use, better use than his parents and their stupid agri-farm! - becoming one of the principle
lanisti to the sneering senators and military leaders, supplying them with all the creatures and all the lives they could ever want.
He was not a cruel man, no, just greedy... and it was just business!
This is what he told himself when he abducted a cherubic child, and a spine-chillingly silent child, from some manner of incubator. It did not appear to be asleep when he came upon it by a riverbank, dipping his scarred but strong arms into the broken glass and lifting the child free, those eyes... those deep eyes... he had known then that this child was
different. He had just not known
how different.
Even stranger was the urge, as was natural to him, to simply leave the child where it was - exposure not entirely uncommon in these parts - but somehow he just
couldn't.
Time moved on, the young Primarch given to a wetnurse to be suckled but seemingly needing little in the way of sustinence, and always those deep, dark, eyes watched everything and everyone...
By the age of five Terran years the boy-child had grown to the size of an adolescent, able to speak the tongue of Rasena and often spending his time speaking with or observing the various fighters and trainers-of-fighters surrounding him in his 'fathers' training school.
No one understood why Ergalisus had shown up with a child, then proceeded to treat the boy like his own offspring, while simply ignoring the unnatural rate at which he grew and learnt, least of all the school owner himself, but it was apparent to all that no-one seemed able to dislike him unless in the grip of an extreme emotion - anger, grief and so on - which would explan why none of the pit-fighters dispatched him in his infancy.
By the time he was ten years of age he was training with the other fighters, besting most of the rawest offerings with little effort, once jovial veterans turning sour as he progressed at some speed - many complaining that their master played favourites and doted on the outsider a little too much.
During one incident he was opposed by a fighter known widely as 'the Reaper', a huge offworlder who had dispatched dozens of opponents, the larger man spitting venomous words at the growing Primarch and asserting that he would take his head and pleasure himself with it.
Needless to say, it was the thus-far unnamed 'son' of Ergalisus that came away from the fight, wounded and bleeding from five-dozen knicks and cuts, but carrying the head of his attacker.
In the decade or so that the Primarch, eventually named Kaelianos by the man who coveted him most of all, fought before crowds of Rasenan citizenry and allies of the three-hundred worlds - dozens at first, thousands by the time of his freedom - he earned a reputation as an undefeated but magnanimous fighter, never killing unless he needed to, and gaining the largest civilian following of any pit-fighter.
While he had been growing up, unbeknownst to one who had spent his entire life in relative isolation and knew nothing of wider Rasenan politics, a former consul had slain his appointed opposite and proclaimed himself dictator for life - something that the senate were powerless to do, as he held the military in his grasp; this had sparked revolts and conflict in the wider sector, allied worlds erupting in bloodshed when they heard the news from the capital planet, a campaign set up by the tyrant was planned to go ahead but he had one thing to do first.
In his thirty-fourth year, though he appeared to have stopped aging much earlier, Kaelianos was granted his freedom by Antius Esdras the Imperator of Rasena. His erstwhile master and father-figure slipped into obscurity as soon as the final contest was over, Antius having him slain, his school sold off, and Kaelianos bought to him the space of two days.
Now began a new phase of the Primarchs life, one of ease and leisure where he had known only hardship and competition, months and then years spent in the libraries and record-houses of Rasena nurturing the mind of the man as food and drink did not. All the while his new patron, the tyrant having semi-adopted him into his own household as a ward, went from world-to-world out in the stars of the wider sector, he said to bring order when he bought more than enough death with it.
While Kaelianos marvelled at the splendid works of the Rasenan people, the blend of high and feudal technology allowed by their unbroken lineage to a bygone age, as well as their mercantile pursuits, glittering metal towers and blue-veined marble temples and buildings, Esdras was returning to his homeworld in triumph.
With the revolts over and most things now as they once were the sector may have gone on much as it always had, but something had touched the Imperator as he fought his battles, and upon his return to Rasena he was different. Oh he had always been flamboyant, deceitful, even sadistic, but now he began proclaiming himself a living God and parading through the streets in garments of shining gold, and history turned swiftly against him.
What happened next, and for exact reasons, are known only to Kaelianos, but suffice to say he slew the former legate-turned-tyrant and through political and military means reformed the republic into a different creature together; now it was an autocracy in all but name, though Kaelianos respected the senate and invited representatives from two-hundred-and-ninety-nine worlds of the sector - he representing Rasena itself, of course - to play the dutiful servant of the state.
Reforms swiftly followed in all tracks of life, treaties being altered and ratified seemingly by Kaelianos alone, military reforms taking place at an alarming rate, and an insistence being made especially on the allied worlds to provide auxiliary forces for the Rasenan war machine.
It was in the midst of these sector-spanning upheavals that a single vessel appeared on the fringes of Latrurian space, a ship - nay, a fortress - bristling with weapons and larger than any in the navies available to Kaelianos, one that honestly he knew could not be contended with, and so he took a small guard and boarded his least impressive vessel and thus did he come face-to-face with his father and his creator.
The Meeting: Kaelianos had watched with ever increasing dread as it transpired that reports about this unknown vessel had not been
completely accurate, the construct of clearly alien origin had grew larger and larger as he neared it, at times he had even thought of turning back; yet with two-hundred-and-ninety-nine warriors at his back, clad in segemented suits of gleaming armour, high-crested helmets framing their dour faces, it was clearly an option taken away from him as soon as he thought it.
They had landed in one of the many openings, in a hangar large enough to envelope the entire Latrurian ship, disembarking into a highly illuminated... cave?
It had seemed like a cave, with a ceiling so high that the top could not be seen, weapons far ahead of his own seemingly primitive ones tracking the movements of he and his praetorians as they made their way into the light and assembled themselves in serried ranks.
Kaelianos had always thought them so ferocious, eagle-topped standards held before each cohort of them, stoic centurions in 'sophisticated' suits of powered armour, tall plumed helmets framing the faces of the tallest and broadest warriors Kaelianos had been able to find and train.
Compared to the golden being that advanced toward them from the other side of the hangar-cave, and the ranks of giants clad in grey armour that followed in perfect step, they were but children.
At the sight of them the Primarchs heart began to quicken, and it was said in later years that he became as hard to look directly at as his gene-father.
"My son."
It was not a greeting but a statement, the blindingly bright figure coming forward to stand before Kaelianos, his own men shying away and more than one of them immediatly kneeling to the floor in his prescence. He could not deny that he too felt the need to kneel, forcing himself to remain where he was, intent on performing such a ritual of submission only if and when
he desired.
In that moment he noticed a standard that one of the grey-clad warriors carried aloft, the banner showing an unknown scene upon it while at the top... at the top... his breath caught in his throat as he looked through squinting eyes at the two-headed form of a shimmering aquila.
"Who are you?" He managed to say eventually, dragging his eyes back to peer at the 'man' before him.
"I am the Emperor of Mankind, your father."
He wanted to reject this claim, wanted to call this shining beacon a liar and a false emperor, wanted to do anything but accept that he was who and what he claimed - of course he could not do it, such a notion was comical!
Kaelianos had grown rapidly, learnt more than any scholar or sage on Rasena, taken leadership of hundreds of planets from a senate of peers with nary a word spoken against him and no weapons raised.
How, he asked himself honestly, could he have achieved these things if he were like any other man? Any other mortal?
No, the Emperor could not be lying.
"And them?"
"They are my warriors, my Astartes, my Space Marines."
A gesture bought one of these strange warriors forward, a word of command from the Emperor disengaging a helmet with a hiss, the face that confronted Kaelianos like looking in a slightly warped mirror; this Astartes was
beautiful as any mortal would measure it, the face so different and yet so uncannily similar to his own, the dark eyes assuredly containing within them a portion of the Primarch himself.
"These are your own sons," continued the ruler of Mankind almost casually, ignoring the look on his
progenies face, "Astartes of the Eighth Legion created in your image, their former lives beginning across Terra, now they are here."
"And... this?" Asked the Primarch, gazing at their meeting place in wonder even as he absorbed every detail of the Space Marine beside his father.
"This? This is a fortress taken by your legion from my enemies, an action that earned them their titles. It too belongs to you."
Kaelianos allowed himself further moments of contemplation, the Emperor allowing an amused expression to appear on his face before it vanished as quickly.
"I-I cannot leave Latruria undefended, there are worlds that need rebuilding and..."
"My son," said the Emperor, cutting him off, "I would not ask you to abandon so many worlds of Man. No, the crusade I lead is to forge our people into what they once were. I ask that you come with me, lead your sons, join me and your siblings."
"There are others?! Others... like me?"
"Yes, Kaelianos, your brothers and sisters."
The chuckle that followed was like the peeling of a thousand bells, and made Kaelianos forget about asking how this being - his father he reminded himself - could know his name.
"I place what worlds and warriors I possess into your hands, father. I shall come with you to the stars and help you forge anew a future for Mankind."
Only now did he kneel, the image of the Palatine Aquila and the face of the Emperor both burnt into his psyche, his eyes finally cast down at the deck of the monstrous vessel that would soon be his.
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