Iron-Commander Autek Mor
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| [//almir_h/@count.hodo+] |
[//Allegiance: Red Talons / Pentarchy+]
A rightful heir, is he now, Silver Star? Do you expect me to fall in line, kneel before his awe-inspiring presence? I did not kneel for my own lord, let alone another’s. I walked in their shadow and I waged their wars – the Iron Lord, the Avenging Son, the Red Angel, the Gorgon, titles that mean nothing in this age. I knew them when brotherhood still meant something, and I knew them when it had ceased to mean anything at all. Oh, they were terrific to behold, of that there is no doubt. Their words were enough to make my bones quake – and I am sure that your bastard-father’s would be too.
And while I beheld their greatness, I also beheld their fallibility. I saw my own Primarch die at the hands of the one he – we – held as our closest, his blood draining into the black sand of a world your ilk may not even remember. Even now, I hold on to lumps of his adamantine flesh and when I dream, I still see the void above Istvaan set ablaze. It is a wracking thing, the death of one’s primarch. Though I hated that pissant, my soul was still left riven on that day – a loss that your ‘legion’ will partake in as well, Silver Star.
But I learnt something too, then. I learnt that – for all their posturing and all their might – the Primarchs were still mortal. The Sorcerer-King was broken at the hands of the Great Wolf. The Gorgon fell to the Phoenician’s blade. The Great Angel was struck low by the Arch-Heretic. If the brightest of them could bleed, then so could they all. And if they could bleed, then they could die too – and that is a fate not even your cane-wielding mongrel-king can escape, be he a primarch or not.
[//Autek Mor, during the execution of [REDACTED]+]
A Bloodwrought Legend
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| [//almir_h/@count.hodo+] |
Far did Mor rise by those grim laws of merit and competence.
By the time Ferrus was discovered, he had already come to carry the rank of Praetor and the baleful pride that came with it. In life, he was a lumbering brute – a mountain of genewrought muscles and cybernetics of such excess that many of his brethren would cast aspersions upon the veracity of his nature as an Astartes. In death, Mor’s strength would grow even beyond what had been granted to him in the Himalayzian gene-labs. Felled by sonic weaponry upon a nameless spinward world, the Maimed would refuse Death and hold on to life with a black, hateful spite. Over many hours would his body be grafted to the reinforced amniotic tank of a dreadnought, ensuring his ascent to a bloody rule that would last ten millennia.
Ever since the Great Scouring, Autek Mor has ruled over the Red Talons as a half-dead tyrant, his hatred for the Traitor and the Heretic suffusing both the world of Raikan and his brethren as he plotted retaliatory crusade after retaliatory crusade against the many warbands that still pilfered the stars.
Many considered Autek Mor to be the obvious choice of leader for the Pentarchy of Blood. After all, who better to loose against wayward cousins than Mor, with his litany of ruthless actions against such enemies? The High Lords' eventual choice of the Flesh Eaters' Voivode Jan Velghor, however, was to prove wise – for handing overall command to Mor would have led to the systemic depopulation of whole clusters; along with civilian and auxilia casualties far in excess of anything acceptable for such a layered theatre of war. Many a partisan’s head would have been taken quickly, perhaps even the blighted Creature’s own – but whole swathes of space would have been rendered uninhabitable for millennia to come. Autek Mor was a peerless tactician and strategist, but was also hidebound by his pride and his warrior-soul. Subtlety and subterfuge were tools he despised and rejected in favour of the direct and brutal mannerisms which he had acquired on pre-unification Terra and refined throughout the Great Crusade.
That the Maimed only begrudgingly accepted orders from Velghor, in whom he invested no particular respect, was obvious to many of the Inquisitors present in the theatre. This wounded pride and hateful desire to crush the Partisans would only grow as the war continued and the Red Talons’ harrying operations within Sector Moreau would grow bloodier and more thorough with each passing year. Vessel inspections soon became boarding assaults triggered by the slightest inkling of suspicion. Rapid assault missions turned to protracted sieges. Where focused fire would have proven to be sufficient, the Red Talons turned to carpet bombing. Infrastructure denial was ensured with liberal use of atomic armaments. Instead of excising problematic elements within rebellious populations, Autek Mor ordered wholesale genocide. In ordinary war-times such behaviour would have led to severe censure, for it was a behaviour only fit to be unleashed against aliens and not populations that might yet have been redeemed.
But then again, these were not ordinary times.
***
The early War
Autek Mor’s entry into the War of the False Primarch was as sudden and as violent as one would have expected of such an ill-humoured creature. With his chapter’s fleet having fully translated into the sectorial border-zone, they were approached by the Riven Lords’ cruiser Arhunt’s Gavel under the command of Commander Kalim. While this conflict is detailed elsewhere, one would be remiss not to mention that, following pleas for communication and offers of potential alliance from the Partisans, Autek Mor would be the one to dispatch three cruisers to stage an immediate boarding action of the Gavel. Over the course of several tense hours, the Riven Lords’ entire 10th company would be devoured by the plasmo-nuclearic fires of the ship’s strained engines. Though the Gavel would drag two of the Red Talons’ cruisers into the abyss and render the third non-functional for the first third of the war, its demise would make the Red Talons’ – and by extension the Pentarchy’s – intentions unmistakeably clear. |
| [//Mor bore the Rose of the Pentarchy into battle atop his banner; it was later incorporated into his personal heraldry in what a number of Ordo Astartes Inquisitors considered an 'openly provocative manner, at odds with the secrecy under which this conflict ought to have been resolved'. +] [//almir_h/@count.hodo+] |
Following this incident, the Red Talons were sent out by the Voivode to establish a headquarters in Subsector Moreau; and thence to fortify the Sector entire. In order to achieve this titanic feat, the Red Talons were perforce fragmented into auxilia-supported patrol detachments. This was a decision openly maligned by Autek Mor, for he and his warriors had expected to sink their teeth into the enemy and wield their chapter’s full might like the crushing maul that it was.
Frustrated but obedient, Mor established a basis of operations upon the forge world of Heliopolian – a world well-connected by stable warp-routes, much like the chapter’s homeworld of Raikan. In exchange for helping the ruling clade of tech-priests revive their cadres of Legio Cybernetica automata, as well as share the technological blueprints for several standard types of cortex controllers, the Red Talons would be granted sole access and rule over a cold, major forge fane: Fane Choloris.
It was here that Mor spent much of the war’s early years, plotting away in the depths of Choloris. Even at this early stage, rumours of mass-conveyors transporting mewling masses of Underhive scum towards this fane would spread like wildfire – rumours only stoked by the chapter’s mass-deployment of freshly converted tech-thralls. Furthermore, the chapter quickly became known for openly exerting and expanding its influence across the borders of its new domain, until the vast majority of Heliopolian’s capacity had been turned over to the production of power armour, astartes weapons and ammunition.
Those techpriests open to incentivization saw themselves richly rewarded with blueprints and fragments of Archeotech. Those that resisted would find their shipments of materiel impounded by decree of the High Lords via the Pentarchy’s leaders until their forges were at a risk of running dry. Eventually, they all buckled. Soon enough, Choloris had become the dark heart of Heliopolian and the Red Talons’ overseers had spread across the world.
One can gainsay Lord Mor as easily as one can gainsay the tempest. At best, it is a futile effort. At worst, it is an actively suicidal one.
[//Magos Agae, Forgeworld Heliopolian+]
***
Strongpoints and rumours
It was well that the Red Talons and their allies, the Death Eagles II, had established such a secure hold with Heliopolis, for the Delphurnean War would prove not the swift and overwhelming victory the High Lords had hoped for; instead drawing back the veil upon the horrifying size and extent of the Partisan forces.
The bulk of the Pentarchy of Blood were committed against the Silver Stars, Inheritors, Red Fish and – latterly – the Marines Saturnine and Argent Heralds across the extent of the massive Delphurnean League. Meanwhile, on the Rimwards front, the Carcharadons were embroiled in conflict with the Firebreak and Wormwood Sons Chapters. Meanwhile, the Red Talons and Death Eagles II sat, and waited. Mor's fury at the reports – and his impotence to do anything about them – were, according to Chapter records, 'notable', though no further detail was given.
It is a mark of the coldness of Mor's fury that he did not allow his rage to override his orders. Expecting a counter-attack – and soon – from the newly-revealed Partisans, he ordered all Red Talons forces to make landfall on the worlds they had spent long months fortifying, and make active their defences. Alongside the Death Eagles II's own trenchworks and fortifications, it was largely as a result of this order that Sector Heliopolis was not more badly affected by the sudden and untrackable appearance of raiding forces from the Void Barons, Jade Talons, Silver Stars and – most treacherously of all, in Mor's eyes, the Star Wardens.
Despite their preparedness, more than sixty planets in the Sector were invaded as Partisan forces made landfall, of which more than forty-five declared for the Partisans – including, to Mor's still-building anger, a dozen defended by the Red Talons. While the tactical wisdom of deploying the Red Talons and Death Eagles II across the sector was proving demonstrably wise in preventing wholesale panic amongst Orthodox forces, its strategic limitations were also showing. Mor witnessed his forces divided and isolated, individual squads of his Red Talons being picked apart piecemeal by mobile and highly-motivated enemies. For all their preparation, skill and support, the Pentarchy found themselves on the back foot. Mor was determined to do something about this, and attempted to contact Knyaz-Martial Broso of the Death Eagles – only to find that he too had perished. His strategic calculations altered accordingly. Defeat was for the weak.
Following these first engagements against Partisan forces – be they skirmishes fought by Red Talons patrols or forces of other Pentarchy chapters – darker rumours began to surface. Rumours of red-clad apothecaries travelling to battlefields still steaming with blood, digging their hands into the iron-rich muck and pulling from it the bodies of the slain. Indeed, records of the Riven Lords and the Star Wardens in particular would make numerous reports about being unable to retrieve their chapters’ fallen brethren. Not on account of the corpses themselves having been lost to decay or desecration – but due to the fact that the remains had vanished from the fields of battle.
Such graverobbing was highly unusual, even in the grimmest of internecine battles and to level such an accusation at any one chapter was a fatal insult. Nevertheless, many Ordo Astartes inquisitors active in the warzone suspect Autek Mor to be the hand behind these thefts – to what end, one could only speculate.
***
The Panoply of 'the Maimed'
“Rend the Heavens, my brethren, and raise the bloody Storm!”
[//Autek Mor during the Breaking of Icathus+]
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| [//Detail of the Sepulcris Inviolata, Autek Mor's unique Dreadnought armour+] [//almir_h/@count.hodo+] |
Though remembered mostly as a warrior-king, Autek Mor – as befitting his rank as Iron Father of the industrious Xth Legion – was a great forgewright in his own right. Specializing in the technologies of the Terrawatt Clades and the Legio Cybernetica, Mor would gain great renown within his own legion as a swordsmith and enginseer of battle-automata, a master with few equals.
Foreseeing the choice of death or internment in a sarcophagus as the inevitable and unavoiable destiny of any Astartes warrior, Mor laboured for many centuries on a tomb of his own. Whereas most Astartes lords, loyal or traitor, vastly prefer the Contemptor pattern for its neurological stability, Autek Mor selected the Leviathan pattern as the basis for his magnum opus. Where the standard-issue frame utilises a layered ceramite and adamantium weft composite material for its ablative plating, the Sepulcris Inviolata has been wholly fashioned from adamantium mined on Raikan and fitted with esoteric gravitic weaponry.
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| [//The Sepulchris Inviolata incorporated numberless baffles and defences, ranging from the brute resistance exhibited by layered adamantium to the delicately miniaturised void shield generator Mor's genius had allowed him to piggy-back from the reactor.+] [//almir_h/@count.hodo+] |
While this produced a dreadnought of superlative protective capability, it also increased its energy requirements by several orders of magnitudes – an issue that Autek Mor keenly resolved by blending pre-imperial cold-fusion technologies with containment matrices derived from distinctly non-human sources under the guidance of Archmagos Vadim of forge world Telerac. Many are the wonders that draw their lifeblood from this source – chiefly The Kinslayer, Sunderstrike, a miniaturized void-shield, and – perhaps most critcally – the Maimed’s cerebral interface.
Utilizing Terran technology retrieved from Bodt during the Great Fratricide, Mor had managed to engineer this neural cowl for the purpose of mitigating many of the debilitating effects the Leviathan frame exerts on the pilot’s cerebral structure. This – in tandem with Autek Mor’s decisively non-standard and enhanced physiology – ensured that the Maimed’s neural integrity remained largely unassailed by the strain placed upon it by nature of its walking tomb; and Mor’s singular tactical acumen and memory were preserved well into the War of the False Primarch and beyond.
Weaponry
That pre-Imperial Terra was a landscape of horrific warfare – and even more horrific technology – is one of the few facts considered indisputable when studying that gruesome era of human history. It is not clear how – nor when – Autek Mor had retrieved Kinslayer, his battle claw armament. This particular example of ancient Animus Silica soldiery ostensibly stemmed from the Albian Techno-Crypts; but hidden beneath the current plating of standard Imperial technology lurks the dissected, cleansed and retrofitted remnants of something far darker and more malicious.
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| [//Albia-pattern Manipulator Claw {identval=}The Kinslayer+] |
***
Though Mor’s panoply sports a great many examples of rare and strange technologies – some as subtle as the blessed autosimulacra, others as overt as the thrumming void-shield mounted in the chassis’ back – none are perhaps as obvious and brutally direct in their application as the neutron beamer known as Sunderstrike.
Salvaged from the ruined remains of some strange cybernetica creature during the tail end of the Great Heresy, this neutron beamer would first be fitted as a unique weapon on to Mor’s personal transporter from whence it would punch man-sized holes into rhinos, land raiders and assault carriers alike. Once consigned to his half-life as a dreadnought, the Maimed would command that Sunderstrike be retrofitted onto his new frame and slaved directly to its non-standard power source. With it, Autek Mor would slay xenos megafauna and heretek constructs by the score.
Sunderstrike would serve Mor well during the War of the False Primarch, its lances of wailing un-light punching through protective fields and layered armour alike as dreadnought after dreadnought, vehicle after vehicle would dare to cross the Maimed’s bloody warpath.
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| [//Incaladion-pattern Neutron Beamer eptihetval=true: 'Sunderstrike'+] [//almir_h/@count.hodo+] |
Sunderstrike would serve Mor well during the War of the False Primarch, its lances of wailing un-light punching through protective fields and layered armour alike as dreadnought after dreadnought, vehicle after vehicle would dare to cross the Maimed’s bloody warpath.
***
War suits him. It suits us all, but few more so than him. All he does is bent towards it. Never has he crafted an implement that was not meant to kill. Never has he written a treaty that did not deal with the extermination of a particular foe. Even now, half-dead as he is, he refuses to slumber. Instead, Lord Mor runs endless tacticae-simulations and pushes us through combat-sim after combat-sim. We are made in his image. There is not a single artisan amongst us – only bladewrights and gunsmiths. No poets, only war-singers. Our canvas is the gridlock, our paintbrush a battery of artillery.
He is growing more restless. That thirst of his is deep and ancient, and it will only be slaked with the blood of those found wanting – it was thus during the darkest of days and it will be thus in the days to come. He is not long for the Voivode’s yoke, I reckon. Another’s authority never suited him – it chafes Lord Mor and he has little care for the importance of the task assigned to him. He craves blood – we all do. Perhaps this pride of his will be his – and our – downfall in the end. Even now, he plots the destruction of Icathus. The Voivode does not wish it; not now at least. But the Red Talon yearns for its second Bodt.
And he shall not be denied.
[//Moritat-Immortal Perkûn, Private Writing+]