Warhammer 40K: The Emperor’s Post-humans – Gods & Monsters
Everyone knows of the Space Marines and the Primaris. But it wasn’t all successes for the Emperor’s genetic programs. Today we look at his less well known sons and daughters.
Today we are going to take an inventory of as many of the separate genetically modified post-humans in the emperor’s service. It has been a bumpy road.
Navigators
Navigators are a very particular form of human mutant, possessing the navigator gene, which gives them the unique ability to navigate through Warp space. This ability makes them absolutely necessary to the Imperium‘s continued survival. All Navigators have a third eye, commonly called the Warp Eye, on their foreheads, which allows them to perceive the psychic light of the Astronomican, enabling them to fully use their powers in guiding ships through the currents of the Warp. Their ability to sense the tides of the Warp is considered psychic, although Navigators never possess any psychic abilities beyond the powers their Warp eye affords them.
Navigators possess natural life spans as long as four hundred years. As they increase in age, their abilities increase in power, and their physical appearance changes: the white and iris of the eye gradually disappears, leaving only a hardened black orb. Because most humans fear and mistrust mutants and psykers, navigators are kept safely cloistered from society.
The Navigator sub-species is so ancient their exact origins have been forgotten. What is known is that their origins go back to the Dark Age of Technology in roughly M22, to a time of genetic experimentation when many kinds of mutants were engineered to fulfill roles envisaged by their creators.
While we can’t directly attribute the Navigators to the Emperor, he was certainly alive and steering humanity at the time of their origin. They remain a vital part of the Imperium, 18,000 years later.
Adeptus Custodes
The Adeptus Custodes were known originally as the Legio Custodes or Custodian Guard. The original Custodians were the first genetically and psychologically altered warriors to appear in the Emperor’s armies during the Terran Unification Wars, where they served as the Emperor’s personal bodyguard. The original recruits of the Custodes were from the offspring of Terran nobility. The first known appearance of the Custodes was early in the Unification Wars during the fall of Techno-Barbarian fortress at Nas’sau. However the origins of the Custodian Guard are shrouded in myth and legend. During the Great Crusade, the Custodes always kept a contingent with the Emperor for his protection, but also traveled individually as envoys. The Emperor valued the Custodians above all his other warriors, and while he was willingly to expend countless of his servants he was always hesitant to bleed his Praetorians. After the Emperor’s internment in the Golden Throne, the Adeptus Custodes took a limited role as protectors of the Imperial Palace, as ordered by Roboute Guilliman in the Edict of Restraint.
Perhaps the Emperor’s most perfect handcrafted creation. Never meant to be a large force to conquer, but an unbreakable force to defend his will. They predate and mistrust all his later genetic creations, having been called to cull them in the past.
Thunder Warriors
The Thunder Warriors (also known as the Thunder Legion or Legiones Cataegis) were the genetically-engineered warriors of Terra created by the Emperor of Mankind to unite the homeworld of humanity beneath His rule in the 30th Millennium. They were gene-enhanced warriors created by the Emperor and served as the precursors to the present-day Space Marines. Wrought to be living weapons, the Thunder Warriors were known to be physically stronger, more savage and more potent in combat than the later Astartes, though they were not as long-lived.
The Thunder Warriors battled throughout the Unification Wars and united Terra for the first time in millennia under the rule of the Emperor. According to myth, they were all killed during the final battle of the Unification Wars, the Battle of Mount Ararat.
The Emperors first tranhuman mass produced soldiers. Brutal, deadly, short life spans. Swept away by a desire for a more stable long-living stock.
Sisters of Silence
The Sisters of Silence have a long history, originally operating from the Somnus Citadel on Luna. They are an all female order, and are all Blanks. Recruited from Untouchable stock<, the Sisters are anathema to psykers. Their very presence disrupts psychic activity and they are presumed to have been immune to most forms of psychic assault. The main purpose of the Sisters of Silence is therefore to seek out and apprehend psykers. As warrior-investigators they were involved in all aspects of the capture and transportation of psychic individuals and still are found among the crew of the Black Ships.
While nominally part of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica, in truth the Sisters of Silence answer directly to the Emperor. This allows them to operate on worlds usually immune to the Imperial Tithe, such as those belonging to the Ecclesiarchy or Adeptus Mechanicus. They also are known to be deployed against large covens of Rogue Psykers or Chaos Space Marine Sorcerers.
The Sisters of Silence’s origins are shrouded in mystery. However it is said that they first appeared during the early Great Crusade when the Primaris Psykers of the Astra Telepathica proved unable to properly control captured Psykers. A better solution was needed, and from this conundrum was born the Silent Sisterhood. An incident known as the Cataclysm of Pentacanaes may be tied to their formation. Others say that the origins of the Silent Sisterhood go back further to a lost agency of the Dark Age of Technology.
Like the Navigators the order’s origin is unknown and it may be tied to a natural mutation in humanity, or something artificial, in a similar vein to the Navigators. In any case they have been molded into a tool of the Emperor as affective and any other.
Ur-Legionaires
The Ur-legionaries were a failed experiment by the Selenar Cults, to create a new branch of Space Marine Legion genetics for the Emperor.
However the Cults were only able to produce heavily deformed and mutated Legionnaires, who became mindless due to the pain of their existence. Some grew to have multiple eyes, limbs and even heads. More disturbingly, a few of the Ur-legionaries developed facial features that led them to greatly resemble the Primarchs. After repeated failures, the Selenar Cults decided in time, to abandon the Ur-legionaries experiment. All but 10 of the failed Legionaries were killed and the gene-labs secretly located beneath Luna’s Herodotus Omega dome, were sealed. Hundreds of years later, though, during the Horus Heresy, the dying Gene-witch Ta’lab Vita-37 freed the remaining Ur-legionaries as the Battle of Terra began. Though malformed, the Ur-legionaries were larger and stronger than the Terminator clad Astartes and thanks to their Black Carapace, they were able to withstand multiple bolt rounds before dying. Such was the rage filled Ur-legionaries’ strength, that they were able to easily tear apart the Traitors’ power armour, as if it was made of paper.
A genetic dead end, but proof that specimens much more offensively potent than marines are possible. Their appearance similarities to the Primarchs has troubling implications. Were they based on the Primarch project, or are the appearances of the Primarchs themselves a result of a common root material?
Adeptus Astartes
The direct replacements for the Thunder Warriors, the first Space Marines were created from the genetic material of the Primarch Project after they were spirited away from the Emperor by the Gods of Chaos in the aftermath of the Unification Wars. Twenty Legions of Space Marines were created, each from the genetic material of a specific Primarch. The first Astartes were created only by the massive effort of the Emperor and countless Terran scientists of Amar Astarte‘s Biotechnical Division who worked deep within the Himalazia Mountains. The original Astartes gene-seed was unstable and caused its subjects to degrade rapidly, but once it was stabilized by samples provided by newly rediscovered Primarchs, long-term stability was achieved.
The Legions took part in the Great Crusade, during which the lost Primarchs were rediscovered and given command of their respective Legion. The Crusade, lasting for two centuries, ended with the treachery of one of the Primarchs, Horus, who led at least half of the Legions in a rebellion known as the Horus Heresy against the Emperor. In the final battle for control of the future of mankind, Horus was slain by the Emperor. With the rebellion defeated, those Legions which had sided with Horus were driven into the Eye of Terror.
The Legions which had remained loyal were eventually reorganised according to the dictates of the Codex Astartes, in the event known as the Second Founding. Each Legion was divided into several autonomous Chapters, which remain the primary unit of the Space Marines to the current day.
Successive foundings over the millennia have created new Chapters. There are now around a thousand Chapters in existence, each Chapter ultimately descending from one of the loyalist Legions.
It is interesting to note the Primarch Project was not an end to itself, but the 20 individuals were meant as geneseed prototypes and stability control mechanisms to maintain the genetic longevity of the legions. It is unknown if the Emperor really intended for them to lead as generals or explore the galaxy which was forced on him by the scattering of the Primarchs. It is also notable that the Primarch Project was meant to correct the specific problems inherent in the Thunder Warriors project.
Primaris Marines
Primaris Space Marines have been genetically altered by Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl to be bigger, faster and stronger than their Space Marine brethren. The seed of their creation lies in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, when the Primarch Roboute Guilliman charged Archmagos Dominus Cawl with creating a new legion of warriors that would aid the Imperium in its next darkest hour. Guilliman gave Cawl the Sangprimus Portum, which allowed the Archmagos access to information regarding all twenty Primarchs themselves. Cawl also used several of unique STC-technologies during the process of creating of Primaris’. Nonetheless, the task would take ten thousand years to complete and now, during the Thirteenth Black Crusade when the Imperium is poised on the brink of annihilation, the Primaris Space Marines have been unleashed to fight against the Chaos hordes of the Despoiler.
Tens of thousands of Primaris Marines were secretly created by Cawl over the millennia, while many more were made after the rebirth of Guilliman. Many of these were produced and held in stasis within the Zar-Quaesitor, Cawl’s flagship. Half of the original batch of Primaris Marines were used to form the new Chapters of the Ultima Founding. The rest were gathered into great armies known as the Unnumbered Sons that would be gradually reduced over the course of the Indomitus Crusade through the reinforcement of existing Chapters scattered throughout the Galaxy. Roughly 94% of existing Space Marine Chapters came to accept Primaris Marines into their ranks. These marines subsequently were called The Awoken to distinguish them from the other Primaris Space Marines, created later.
The first wave of Primaris Space Marines were great reinforcements for the Imperium. But new forces were needed for defense, and therefore, under the Cawl‘s guidance and with the help of his arcane technology, the Space Marines Chapters were provided with technologies to create their own Primarises from new aspirants. So the next generation of Primaris appeared, created from people born in the 41st millennium. These marines were named The Indocrinated.
The latest generation of the Emperor’s super soldiers. We will have to wait and see how much of an improvement they are over their predecessors, and their fate.
Oddballs
The Imperium is full of myriad hard to classify genetic programs, with unknown origins and goals:
13th Founding aka “Cursed Founding”
~ Who do you think are the most perfect of the post-humans, who are the victims, and who are the true monsters?
