Astennu Magnumose

Intro

• "One of the Thousand Sons, trying to find his Light in this Dark Universe once again."

• Basic Info

  • Nicknames: Adam, Angel, Young Apprentice, Moongazer
  • Race: Human (Astartes)
  • Class: Sorcerer
  • Alignment: Chaotic Lawful
  • Deity: Tzeentch
  • Age: 11017 Terran Years
  • Height: 5'6" Unarmored (7'11" Armored)
  • Weight: 136lbs Transformed (565lbs Untransformed)
  • Complexion: Bronzed
  • Hair: Pale Black; shaven on the sides and tied into a long knot.
  • Eyes: Shifting Indigo and Emerald Green
  • Handedness: Ambidextrous
  • Scars: Too numerous to count. Left forearm coated in a thick scar tissue, a pair of long crevice like scars line his back.
  • Personality: Reserved but quick to emotion
  • Mannerisms: Drumming fingers and a light Hum
  • Likes: Mystical tomes, Architecture, flowing script and esoteric sculptures.
  • Dislikes: Wolves, Dogs, Illiterate people, zealots, wolves, cowards, drones, and WOLVES

• Description

  Height: 5'11" Transmogrified (7'11" Untransmogrified)
  
  Weight: 136lbs Transmogrified (560lbs Untransmogrified)
  
  Hair: Pale grey, shaven on the sides and tied back in a messy ponytail or bun.
  
  Eyes: Shifting between indigo and Emerald green, right eye has a slit of a scar below the pupil through the Iris turning it white.
  
  Skin Tone: Bronzed tan skin used to the hot sun
  
  Build: Thinner than most when Untransmogrified, rather tall and lean as an Astartes. His frame is rather gaunt either way, with bare skin hanging over ribs and what muscles on his body lingering on his hard worked hands and legs.
  
  Features:
  

  Scars: From the Various scars from the implantation scars over ten millennia ago, to the patch worked and lattice work of scars from combat covering his body. A small scar lines his face, slicing upwards into his right eye. A pair of deep, long scars run down the whole of his shoulders and down into his back, accompanied by a blueish tint to the scar tissue. His left Forearm is covered in a sheath like scar that darkens the entirety of the skin. All of these scars still show up in his Normal human form, but are exaggerated in his Astartes form.

  Body features: Missing the majority of both his Little fingers, clean cauterized woulds that have long healed over. Ashen colored tattoos litter his chest and shoulders, draping down his back with various forms of script. A pair of tattoos take on an almost golden metallic sheen. One is the burning sun of his Legion, emblazoned upon his right shoulder. The other is the symbol of the old Pyrae cult, a phoenix in the midst of rising from its ashes.

  Clothing:Bedecked in rather simple, light robes most often, though he enjoys the feeling of the sun upon his skin so often the robes eschew their upper portion. His robes are often white or red with either a indigo or golden trim respectively. They are rather plain, made of lighter materials to better deal with the Heat. Also carries with him a Golden mask, much like that of his Astartes helm, which will reverse the spell to return him to his full size.

• Gallery

  Astennu in the Field, PreHeresy Even the most Skilled of Sorcerers start off as Tacticals, Here he is Leading his first leadership position during the Great Crusade.

• History of Astennu

  It always comes down to dust. Hard work, monuments, time itself even crumbles to but fine grains when one stares long enough. All is Dust.

  
  It has been a long time since Astennu could remember anything but dust. The ashes of the wars he's waged, the failures of his brothers and father, the turmoil that shook the galaxy to it's core... Even before then, they were naught but piles of ashes stacked high ready to crumble. The future seemed so bright through the tinted glass the ash and sand covered over their eyes. The future was arrayed before them on the tides of the Immaterium, the Great Ocean as the old Sorcerers taught him. But that is also where their damnation would spring from.
  
  Astennu was born as most were on Prospero, to a life of intellectual and mystical pursuit. His mother was a Keen servant of the Thousand sons and the Primarch, Magnus the red. So when it was found she was pregnant with a child whom would one day be a Psyker by the Corvidae cults, she was given the trappings of a finer life to further her aid to the disparate legion. Her son, Named for his birth as he stared at the moon of Prospero with childlike wonder, would be raised alongside the other applicants to the Legion once he was ready to begin the grueling rituals of ascension into the ranks of Astartes. Until then, he would remain with her and learn the ways of the Immaterium from the various scholars and sorcerers in Tizca, the city of light. So was it, that by his tenth year he was already a dedicated student of the Warp and its wondrous splendor.
  
  His ascension into the mighty form a space marine, or Adeptus Astartes as they are known in High Gothic, was much like the thousands of others whom had Joined the Primarch on the Great Crusade; It was rife with danger and pain, but overall a major success. The Various organs and surgeries needed to transform the young, mentally fit boy into the super soldier that would honor his home world. From there he went into the Legion's Librarius to learn under the Pyrae cult as he ventured from Scout to Tactical and finally to his own position as assistant to the man whom had first Inducted him into the Pyrae cult; Magister Templi Khalophis. It was from this position in the 6th Fellowship, that Astennu watched as the Galaxy turned it's back on the Thousand sons.
  
  It was at the Sector designated as the Ark Reach Cluster, a sector of Binary stars ruled by a Belligerent Human Planetary Empire known as Avenian Empire, that fate showed it's ugly hand. The Campaign had been going swimmingly before the Thousand sons of the 23rd Expedition fleet arrived to aid their Cousins of the Word Bearers and the Space Wolves of the 47th Expedition fleet. Only the Capital world remained, Ark Reach Secundus or Heliosa as it was called by it's native people. Here the Thousand Sons would shine, carving the path for their Savage cousins of the Space Wolves to lead the Deathblow to the Empire. Astennu made himself very useful here, protecting great columns of Imperial Army troops and fellow Astartes with Great shields of flame that protected them from both Enemy fire and the Razor sharp killers of the Skies known as Shrikes.
  
  On the day of the battle, the two legions waged their war from opposite sides. The ostentatious Space wolves attacking from orbit by dropping directly on the highest peak with their own Primarch, Leman Russ The Wolf King. The Thousand Sons, Accompanied by their Primarch as well, took the lower routes in their search for knowledge to defend while ensuring there could be no escape but compliance. Russ took things further however. He had sworn words of doom upon his Legion's Grand Annulus, even going so far as to reject the pleas of mercy and surrender from the leaders of the Avenian Empire themselves. The Space Wolves tore down through the mountain, an unstoppable force of nature, their blades and bolts gutting the defenders' ranks like a butcher with a fresh carcass. Nothing was left in their wake, the mountain city a work of art vandalised by thoughtless brutality and wanton savagery. Behind the warriors of Russ was only death, and before them was their next target for destruction: the Great Library of the Phoenix Crag.
  
  Here stood Magnus himself, as well as Astartes from the 2nd Fellowship of the Thousand Sons. They stood there, resolute in their defense of the Library and the Ancient knowledge held within. Every Thousand Son on the planet heard the Wolf King's reaction to this perceived betrayal. He howled with a fury that killed many Battle brothers with it's psychic resonance, forcing three Fellowships to rush to the aid of the 2nd and their Primarch. Astennu, for his part, joined in the mad rush towards their primarch even when the Psychic howl had nearly destroyed one of his eyes. The three Fellowships that rushed to their aid would come upon A space wolf Great company mid charge, their savagery unleashed towards their cousins before another feat of psychic might forced their charge to a halt. Hastar of the 1st Fellowship and his fellows of the Pavoni Cult of the 3rd Fellowship used their powers of biomancy to halt the great company of some 10,000 marines as limbs spasmed, heart muscles fibrillated and warriors lost all physical autonomy, jerking like the maddened dolls of a demented puppeteer.
  
  Before the situation could turn critical and start a full blown civil war, the unthinkable happened. The Legion's curse returned to them once more. Long before Astennu became a space marine, before was found by the Emperor on Prospero, the Thousand sons had once been just that; A thousand sons. Their psychic abilities and connection to the warp left them vulnerable to violent surges of power that would transform the Marine into little more than a muddle mass of flesh bent on killing everything around it. It was only reintroduction to their gene father and his tireless work that prevented every psychic marine from potentially facing this very threat. But here it was again, taking away their 1st Fellowship Captain Hastar. The Thousand sons reeled from the psychic backlash again as they retreated from their changing brother's form... and as their own bodies began to crave this change as well. But where they were weakened, their primarch was emboldened and empowered.
  
  The creature Hastar had become reached out to Magnus, as though to embrace him, and the Primarch opened his arms to receive him with forgiveness and mercy. But before the Crimson King could help his stricken son, a thunderous bang sounded and Hastar's body exploded as a single, explosive round detonated within his chest. The Wolf King had seen enough. This was one of the first ever recorded acts of violence of an Astartes killing another and the first known time a member of the Thousand Sons Legion was killed by a member of the Space Wolves Legion. Only through the timely intervention of Lorgar, Primarch of the Word Bearers, did the two Primarchs not come to blows. This act of calculated brutality was the first wedge to be driven between Leman Russ and Magnus the Red.
  
  For the next four months, the Thousand Sons poured over the knowledge the Phoenix Crag had to offer, transcribing it for the Libraries on Prospero. Once they were completed, the Primarch told unto them their next campaign; They were to Join the Emperor of Mankind in the Ullanor Campaign against the Vile Orkz. There they would Join the other Primarchs after a mad dash towards the system to find only this wasn't a call for war... but a call for celebration. The Emperor had won the campaign already with his favored son Horus Lupercal. Astennu could recall seeing it all... Over 100,000 Astartes, nine of the 18 Primarchs, and over Eight million member of the Imperial army. As well as Titans from the Legio Titanica, whom stood as watchful obelisks of might amidst the mighty camps. The Thousand sons were the last to arrive, but were still witness to the Emperor's motive for bringing them all here.
  
  To name Horus as Warmaster of the Great Crusade was the Emperor's Intent, much to the shock of all... even Horus himself. After over 200 years of conquest, the Emperor was to return to Terra to manage his Imperium... But his departure was met with more outrage and disbelief among the Legions as the Emperor also deigned to elect a Council of Bureaucrats and nobles to rule in his stead while he worked on... projects. This would come as one of the final nails in the tomb that would be made for the Thousand son's.
  
  For decades and even centuries, the Imperium at large had remained... wary of the Thousand son's and their psychic abilities. And the further the Great Crusade dragged on, the more and more the Expedition fleets were finding the traces of the Immaterium's influence and foul creatures from the Warp itself. They were seen as vile mutants, unworthy of the Emperor's Great Crusade. Even Magnus' own brothers, fellow primarchs along with their legions, called for the disbanding of the Thousand Sons in their entirety to the Emperor himself. This lead to the Council of Nikea... Or the trial of Magnus the Red if you asked anyone on the receiving end.
  
  The Decree Absolute is what it would come to be known as. All Space Marine Legions were to disband their Librarius, and to askew their former Psychic Librarians back into the Legion as normal fighting Astartes once more. Only the Astropaths and Navigators would remain free of this scrutiny, as their existence was a necessary one. The Thousand sons were to discontinue their mystic practices, bowing their heads to the ignorant... The 6th Fellowship stood by their Primarch during the entire Trial and as Astennu sat in the Coliseum... He swore he could see his Father break at the Emperor's promise to bring destruction and ruin to the Legion were they to disobey him.
  
  The Thousand Son's departure was the first of any of those assembled and they made straight for their homeworld to... restructure. The various cults of the Thousand sons were to return to their Libraries and continue their studies while Magnus himself secluded himself in his Private library and the Vaults beneath the Capital city. The Pyrae cult returned to it's own Libraries, uncertain of their position in the Greater Imperium even while their prowess was rising amongst their fellow brothers of the Legion. The Corvidae cult, the masters of Precognition and the Legion's seers, had long held the title of the most illustrious... but lately the future had been dark, too dark for them to even grasp. But soon, Magnus would emerge and gather his Rehati to speak of this coming darkness. Astennu went with his Captain, barely perceiving the grim tidings their Father would tell them.
  
  Horus would betray the Emperor.
  
  The next they all knew of what was to come came with fire. Magnus had hidden the coming destruction from his sons... A psychic veil covered the planet for days, even while the Primarch sent the fleets out of system. So their first warning of the danger to come was their orbital defenses being bombarded and destroyed before they could even muster a defense. Then, streams of Drop Pods assaulted the star port and the rest of the planet... grey drop pods, with the emblem of Wolves on their sides. Prospero was under attack by a fellow Legion Astartes, the Space wolves. Against the supposed wishes of their Primarch, the Pyrae cult began a ritual with their Magister to begin the battle in earnest. Khalophis allowed his spectral familiar to envelop him as Astennu and the other members of the cult lent their power to Khalophis' now heightened psychic power. What happened was perhaps the greatest act of Technopathy to ever emerge from the Temple. The Mighty Warlord Titan, Canis Vertex, Walked with his psychic might.
  
  Those not incremental to ensuring their magister's hold on reality were told to join the battle where he would dictate, the Massive titan striding against the invaders like a striding god amidst the battlefield able to see best where they could muster a defense. Astennu was ordered to take what members he could to the northern defenses of Tizca, where he could maybe join those marines who were attempting to rouse their primarch into action... Canis Vertex itself began to march towards the Corvidae cult's pyramid temple... which was currently burning with thick pillars of smoke as irreplaceable knowledge was destroyed. It soon went up in a thunderous explosion of psychic energy, taking both the titan and its puppeteer with it.
  
  It was under the wisdom of Azhek Ahriman that the Survivors made their last stand around the Photep... There, the best and brighest that remaind entered in a hope to hold up... and perhaps bring their Primarch to bear to join the battle. Vile mutants and blanks that the Space Wolves and the Wolf king had brought harried them to no end, causing the deaths of nearly the entire Thousand Sons. It was to the ethereal howling of the Wulfen and Space wolves that the Crimson king finally gave his reply.
  
  With Magnus' entrance unto the battlefield, hundreds of space wolves died with a mere gaze of his single eye as the Immaterium flowed through their primarch far more than it had ever done so before. With nary a wave of his bladed staff, dozens of war machines sent to destroy his beloved city exploded in masses of eldritch flame. But this was naught the limit of his power, for in the blink of a mortal eye, time froze at the behest of their Primarch. Magnus gave orders to Ahriman, something Astennu did not know or understand... but soon enough Magnus gave battle to his brother while Ahriman lead them all back into the Pyramid of Photep... Astennu could still remember the cries of the civilians, the armor of his brothers stained black with ash, and just how few of them remained. Ahriman estimated they truly were the "thousand sons" once more.
  
  They weren't able to aid their primarch as he Battled the Wolf king, but they could hear the titanic battle outside while they were forced to put down several astartes who were starting to succumb to their flesh change once more... Their once glorious home would be their infamous tomb it seemed. All the while, all while putting down their brothers and soothing those families whom had escaped... the howling of wolves was always present. Ringing in their ears and shaking the walls, burning around them like the fires that raged through their great cities. But that was not the sound to break them however... What came next was.
  
  Over the sounds of an ethereal howl of victory, the Wolf king Leman Russ broke the back of Magnus the Red across his knee.
  
  The retching sound it made tore through the heart of every remaining Marine under the Crimson King's protection, as their great father battled their enraged cousins. But in the final moment before the Wolf king could strike down Magnus, he linked with his First captain via a mind-link with the First captain Ahriman. The final gift he could give, a new home and a new purpose. The sky wept oily black tears as the frost blade of Leman Russ made its motion to take the head of his Brother, but in the moment it would make contact at the neck... Every thousand son and prosperine citizen in was taken away with a wash of psychic power. Prospero was ruins... But now they had Sortiarius, The planet of the Sorcerers.
  
  And as the fires of war began to die down on their once beautiful home world, so too would the fires of war begin to rage across the universe. Magnus was unable to save Horus from his Folly, and thus the largest civil war to ever face the Imperium began: The Horus Heresy. During much of it, Ahriman was forced into leading the shattered remains of the 15th legion as the battle with the Wolf King had left Magnus shattered. Astennu joined those marines searching for the ships and forces their father had sent away from their destruction before the Burning of Prospero, helping flesh out their numbers once more from the dismal fragment that was left as Ahriman and his Cabal worked to restore their primarch.
  
  But once again all was not well, and as Loyalists and Traitors alike clashed across the galaxy in a brutal seven year long war, the flesh change began to take hold of their brothers once more. As more and more chaotic energies would flow through them to change the tides of battle, so too would more and more fellow Thousand son's face the gruesome effects as the energies would take control of their bodies. So powerful was it that the final battle of the Heresy, only had a small detachment of Marines acting in support roles would be present.
  
  They would be there though. As Terra burned much like Prospero, as their brother Astartes lost themselves to madness and worse, as the galaxy tore itself in twain... Astennu could only watch, as he oft did with the passing of the moon in his youth. His great shields of fire and summoning of new... daemonic aid greatly helped whichever sectors of the battle he tread. But his greatest feats would come as the Final battles began to unwind. As they marched through the outer walls of the Imperial palace, there the senior sorcerers would wage psychic war against the wards of the Eternity gate to the Emperor's own throne room. Astennu was not one of these.. but he defended his brothers with great moving waves of fire and ash, destroying fortification after fortification and scores of defenders. Even as they began to push with ranks of renewed ranks of the Imperial Fists' legion and their Primarch, Astennu could still be seen above burning wreckage weaving great firestorms.
  
  But as their defense of Prospero was for naught, so too was the battle on Terra. Horus would soon do battle with the Emperor aboard his flagship, and fail. With the fall of Horus, a rout was all that could come of the traitors. The Thousand sons would leave their fellow traitors to the whims of the now vengeful and mourning Loyalists as they began a crusade to retake the Imperium. With their goals accomplished, the remaining sorcerers of the legion took their fleet through the warp back to Sortiarius through a rift that sealed before any could give chase.
  
  Their retreat was not a reprieve however, as now fully within the grasp of chaos and deep within its horrific realm, the flesh change began to take them with an ever increasing strength. Although some dedicated Tzeentch worshippers saw these changes as a sign of their god’s favour, those of higher understanding knew better, and decided that the Thousand Sons' search for enlightenment and knowledge could not end in the dreaded transformations they would inevitably suffer. Ahriman, once Chief Librarian of the Legion, and second only to Magnus in power, united his conclave of trusted sorcerers, and together they cast a spell, known as the Rubric of Ahriman, of tremendous magnitude that would save the legion from the fate of mutation.
  
  Failure is always evident in the success of greater men.
  
  With a blinding wave of light that even predators of the warp shied away from, blue and yellow lightning storms engulfed the planet whole and began striking down every single marine their bolts would land upon. Only the intervention of their Father Magnus was able to stop the spell before it reeked an even heavier toll than what would become apparent.
  
  Of those Sorcerers that had once been the back bone of the entire legion, a scant few over a few hundred remained. The rest of their legion was filled with their non-psychic brothers, whom were not spared the wrath of the Rubric. It had been a normal day of study for those still in the Pyrae cult, mastering their magics as pure energy would flood every one of them... His mind was heightened, his strength increased... the immaterium flowed through him freely and without effect as he wielded the warp more effectively than ever before. But his joy was soon quashed with heavy grief, as many of those he had grown with and fought beside in the legion... were naught but dust. He would find this was the case with the entire legion. There were only a hundred of the sorcerers now, commanders of several thousand inanimate suits of armor and piles of dust. Saved from the flesh change but damned to a life of soulless autonomy.
  
  Magnus would exile Ahriman after his Rubric, being denied vengeance for his sons from the deity that saved them. Astennu was not part of Ahriman's cabal, but with the good grace of his father and a handful of those mindless Automatons named after the Spell that transformed them into containers of dust: Rubric Marines. He swore a vengeance that could never be sated, but as the millennia waved on... it was also one that could never be fulfilled.
  
  Astennu has spent much of his time waging war against the Imperium and has found much of it enlightening. Even as their Emperor sits in unending torment to light the Astronomicon, the Loyalists found resolve in their service. They found faith in their Emperor. Asteunnu could only watch as the dreams that the Legions all once held fell into a deeper and deeper memory, long forgotten under the stains of bureaucracy and fanaticism. So too could he only watch as his fellow traitors fell into an even darker abyss. Straining themselves against madness and embracing it wholly in many cases. They fought ever on to bring the Imperium to ruin, to see the galaxy burn.
  
  Astennu used to spend much of his time waging war against the Imperium. But now he wages it on two sides. No longer content to see his brothers as mere husks and his cousins waste away to the predators of the warp, he came through to real space once more and... laid claim to a planet of his own. There he would do what he remembered he was good at, protecting others. All the while he tirelessly searched the Immaterium for a shard of knowledge to help him reverse the effects that damned his fellow legionaries. He has since stayed far from Sortiarius, his path far diverged from the Legion even as it returned their home from the warp.