 The Imperium of Man possesses at its disposal the greatest array of weapons in human history. They are weapons to break planets asunder, to burn atmospheres to conquer whole sectors. Everything from the lasgun of an imperial guardsman, to the sanctified bolters of the Adeptus Astartes, to the Onagur Dune Crawlers of the Mechanicus, to the macrolances of the Imperial Navy, each play their assigned role in the defense of our realms and the destruction of our enemies. From deterrent to outright annihilation, there is no scale upon which the Imperium cannot operate, and, as has been our way since the glory days of the Great Crusade, the macro scale is oft the preferable one. The military juggernaut that is our great empire is an unstable one, with brute force as its hallmark. Not for us, the deceptive feigness of the Aeldari, know, when the Imperium strikes, it is with a mailed fist, direct, honorable, and to the point. The numberless bulk of the astromilitarum, the swift crushing force of the space marines, or even the mechanistic might of the Adeptus Mechanicus, all the better to overwhelm and rout the foe, with as extreme a prejudice as possible, than risk any hint of its surviving. But what of the instances where a more subtle hand is required, where a single death can tip the scales of fate in the Imperium's favor? What of these times when, against precedent, a sole operative can accomplish what ten regiments of the militarum cannot, when a solitary agent can bring the Emperor's justice to a foe powerful enough to defeat an entire company of astartes? When a scalpel is required, rather than a sledgehammer. For this, humanity turns, or rather the select few of humanity blessed and cursed with the appropriate knowledge turn, to the secret murder temples, to the employment of operators so specialized and around whom a pal of secrecy so dense lies, that to most within the highest reaches of the Imperium they are not but a rumor, a fable designed to illustrate in metaphor the reach of Imperial justice. Not so, dearest Acolyte, and pray that you have not accessed this record without pre-approved identical codes, for know then that this is a record of humanity's veiled dagger, human weapons of terrible and terrifying potential. The Agents of the Aficio Assassinorum, the Imperial Assassin. The exact founding of the Aficio Assassinorum is, perhaps unsurprisingly, unclear. The first page of the Grimoire Assassinorum, a tome of unclear provenance purporting to cover the history of the department, states that at the behest of the Emperor of Mankind, where the heads of the six assassin clades gathered upon the slopes of Mount Vengeance, and bade to forever from that point forward serve the Imperial household as his personal agents. Quite how he became aware of their existence is unknown. The Grimoire states that each clade was an established Terran institution, but chose to reveal themselves to the Emperor by their own will. Although how any such organization could have outlasted the unification wars undiscovered is, frankly, ludicrous. It is more likely that, given his wisdom, the Emperor discovered them and bade them join his regime or be annihilated, as per standard unification operating procedure with potentially deadly human organizations. It is also just as possible that the tome is a work of propagandic fiction intended to better provide a history the Aficio wishes to be the official one, but one which omits much. Given their profession, this is not an unfair assumption. It is also just as possible that one or several of the clades are themselves of imperial origin, created at the Emperor's own behest, given the nature of the operatives they employ. Whatever the case, it is likely we will never know, but what is known from records of the period is that from the earliest days of the Great Crusade, the assassins of the various clades stalked the halls of the Imperial, rooting out festering sedition and punishing disloyalty and corruption. This was overseen through an Imperial office known as the Master of Assassins, who met with the six director-primises of the clades in a secure chamber of the Imperial Palace upon Terra, known only as Shrouds. None of the seven individuals who met knew the identity of the others, as the assassinorum of the time was intended to operate on a level of plausible deniability unheard of for any other Imperial organization. Even the Emperor's own input and indeed knowledge of the Aficio's actions was incredibly limited, with the Master of Assassins operating with what appeared to be the Lord of Lightning's full support and writ. The six founding clades were organized around a series of highly distinct methodologies. When combined, the various skills represented almost total reach over all aspects of death and murder, allowing the Master of Assassins to strike at any target within or without, with almost absolute certainty of that target's death in whatever manner was deemed necessary. Clade Vindicare, with the Masters of the Single Bullet, able to end a target's life from half a city away with a perfect headshot. Clade Venenum were tox artisans, creators of the finest toxicological agents outside of the Drukhari, poisons that could annihilate the mind of a target and leave not a trace behind. Clade Calidus were perhaps the most subtle, employing agents adept in the use of the body-shaping drug Polymorphine to impersonate targets for potentially solar years, disrupting clans and strategies from within before striking the final killing blow. Clade Eversor, by contrast, were about the most overt that the clades could possibly be, deploying their drug and chem-fuelled cybernetic killing machines on missions where only the terror of a rampaging assassin would send the proper message. Clade Vanus, operated field agents whose control over the flow of information was simply unparalleled, info sites who were trained in targeting a foe's data and communications to affect a situation in their life that would lead to their eventual downfall. Finally, clade Culexus were entirely the most sinister, the only assassin clade to wield the soulless force of human pariahs, null people whose lack of warp presence causes discomfort in baseline living creatures, but outright terror and agony in a ciker. Their genetic defect amplified by the technology of their clade, those of the Culexus became pure nightmare things, beings that appear to all senses a hideous nothingness, even before their blades puncture the fragile bodies of the foe. Each assassin is a master in their murderous arts, a human-shaped weapon crafted from childhood to be the perfect killer. Almost all are orphans, selected as such for their utter lack of family ties, and initially at least enrolled into the Scola progenium. The assassin clades were quick to pick out potential aspirants, watching their scholar careers with interest before whisking them away on sleek ships with irreproachable ident codes, never to be seen by their classmates again. Training varied with each clade temple, although they are all universally punishing to be almost beyond any mortal reach. The aefficio only wants the best, and each aspirant was pushed to their very limits, undergoing impossibly arduous and painful physical regimens, cybernetic and chemical enhancement, and relentless psycho indoctrination. They trained with every form of weaponry, from the most exotic and prescribed technology the Imperium possessed, to simple pistols and blades to their very fists. Each assassin, no matter their clade temple, was required to be able and willing to complete their mission regardless of what technology they had on hand. Each was expected to, if needs be, simply pummel a target to death with their bare hands. As secrecy was of paramount importance, not only to the aefficio as a whole but to each of the separate clades, deployment of an assassin was almost always a solo operation, with only a few records chronicling incidents where more than one was required. In the case of the latter, this was even still accomplished using agents of the same clade, as the organizations were by their nature suspicious in the extreme, and in possession of secrets and technologies they would quite literally kill to prevent the loss of. For the most part, the master of assassins was content with this arrangement, as it allowed them to play the rival clades off each other, and ensure that each would respond willingly when called for, lest they fall out of favor. It also granted the master a high degree of discretion when choosing what type of agent to employ, as the death of a prominent figure would have different effects depending on what clade was called for. A demagogue could find his sermon cut short upon the pulpit, his skull turned to a fine bloody ruin at the hands of a vindicare bullet none saw coming, nor would ever know the origin of. A rogue ciker could have their control of their coven completely usurped when a colexus operative struck, their powers guttering to nothing in the face of the soulless horror. A recidivist merchant would see their bank accounts emptied by the invisible hand of a vanus infocyte, and soon find himself with the dagger of a previously loyal but now unpaid underworld ally sinking into his heart. The true nature of his killer never to be known. None need know of the true reach of the hand of the Emperor's justice. They simply needed to be aware that none could hide from it, and that all illegal actions would never remain clandestine for long. Naturally, it is not known just how many of these individuals met their ends at the hand of the assassin clades during the Great Crusade. The number could be anywhere from hundreds to thousands to hundreds of thousands, as our species has never lacked for bad actors, nor any era ever been bereft of opportunities for them to try and carve out their illegal or heretical lot. The Horus heresy, as it did in so many other parts of history, marked a turning point for the operations of the aficio-assassinorum. After their failure at at least eight previous assassination attempts, and truly despairing at the advance of the traitor Warmaster, the master of assassins ordered the clades to form the first execution force, a multilateral strike team formed from a single operative from each clade, working together with a single goal, in this case, executing Horus, before he could turn his devastating war into something altogether more terrible. This unheard of operation was, despite its ultimate failure to end the Warmaster's life on Dagonet, a success in that it brought the clades into a much more collaborative environment, and also the unseen consequence of bringing the aficio into imperial light, as both the location and existence of Shrouds was discovered by the Praetorian of Terra, Seventh Legion Primarch Robel Dorne. The Primarch decried the use of the clades techniques as honourless. In his rage, he unmasked each of the clades' director primuses, as well as the master of assassins himself, revealed to be none other than the imperial regent and right hand of the emperor, Malkador the Sigillite. Dorne was on the cusp of demanding a permanent end to the aficio, and the clades, before the emperor himself intervened, stating that the actions of the clades had been too secretive, too occluded, and that more oversight and openness would henceforth be required. What exactly transpired in the aftermath of this is currently unknown to imperial scholarship. It is likely that, given the direction the heresy took, Malkador retained overall jurisdiction as master of assassins, and continued to employ the clades until his death, during the Siege of Terra. The aficio survived the reorganisation of the Imperium, following the ascension of the emperor to the Golden Throne, becoming a major political force in the aftermath of the scouring. After what could only have been a truly momentous power struggle amongst the various clades, the position of grandmaster of the aficio assassinorum was created some time after the emperor's ascension, a figure of such distinct presence that they were permitted to cease in the imperial senate as one of the High Lords of Terra. One of the few figures whose names ring throughout history in this role is Draken Vangorech, the grandmaster during the infamous War of the Beast. While the full nature of this conflict will require a record of its own, it resulted in one of the most blatant power plays in imperial history, when Vangorech, completely despairing against what he saw as the total paralysis of the High Lords, in the face of the apocalyptic orc invasion of imperial territory, and, sickened by the personal ambitions he saw redolent in every one of their political maneuvers, undertook what became known as the Beheading. He employed the full extent of his office to execute every member of the High Lords, replacing the most powerful ones with Calidus doppelgangers and simply disposing of the rest. Vangorech, then operating under the new role of Lord Protector of the Imperium, led as the empire's sole effective ruler the following century, until his paranoia and madness led to his, shall we say, very necessary removal. The officio was not without its successes during these intra-millenia. The clades were reorganized as temples. Their presence, as noted by Vangorech's seat upon the senatorium, greatly expanded, although still clandestine. Prior to the War of the Beast, the Calidus assassin, Mishen, was responsible for the death of 8th Legion Primarch Conrad Curse of the Night Lords, in his citadel of bode and skin on the planet Sagualsa. Despite the rampages of Vangorech, the officio and the temples retained their authority and independence, frequently collaborating with the still nascent Inquisition in matters of extreme imperial security. It was not until the Age of Apostasy, in M36, that the assassinorum saw true reforms. Not immune to the predations of the renegade Ecclesiarch Goge Vandier, a heretical Calidus assassin by the name of Teziz Jarek, attempted the execution and replacement of the then Grand Master, and it indeed appeared for Vandier's purposes that this was a success. The officio was wielded bluntly by the tyrannical High Ecclesiarch, a bloody hand for his own political ambitions, and only upon his death did it emerge that the erstwhile Grand Master had in fact survived, and now returns to the fore to reclaim the officio assassinorum from traitorous hands. The ensuing conflict became known as the Wars of Vindication, with the Grand Master gathering loyalists from the various temples to assault all of their locations upon Terra itself. The fighting was inevitably hideously destructive, spilling out rapidly into the reaches of the imperial palace itself, as ancient technologies and Xenos weaponry were unleashed by the warring temples. Gene sympathetic nerve gases filled the corridors of the emperor's own reaches, poisoning courtiers and adepts by the thousands, while neurotronic warheads destroyed millennia old wings that had survived the siege of Terra itself. In the end, the former Grand Master was victorious, but in penance retreated into self-imposed exile, leaving the officio at the mercy of the apoplectic senatorum imperialis. The senate was swift to capitalize upon the power vacuum within the officio to enact a series of laws designed to radically curtail the independence of the assassins. The first ordered the division of the separate temples, removing them from Terra and scattering them throughout the galaxy in an attempt to avoid another costly intra-temple conflict and indeed to dull the power of the officio as a whole. Secondly, a new edict stated an assassin could only ever be deployed upon the request of the senate itself, and only then with the two-thirds majority. Lastly, under senate orders, the Inquisition founded the Ordo Sicarius, a minor order through which the assassin temples were to submit to routine inspection and psychoanalytical testing, as well as providing full debrief reports for inquisitorial analysis. By necessity, this has led to the Ordo embedding agents within the various temples themselves to monitor the still highly secretive assassins, although given one standing within the Inquisition, obtaining any records on their rates of success or mortality would be next to impossible. What has been stated by official records is that, since their foundation, the Ordo Sicarius has successfully foiled two attempts by the temples to assassinate a High Lord of the Imperium, and one to assassinate a fellow Inquisitor. In the four millennia of its existence, the fact that there has only been three cases speaks to either the incredible effectiveness of the Ordo and steadfast loyalty of the temples, or, perhaps more sinisterly, the absolute efficiency of the temples in ensuring that their actions remain hidden. The assassins of the Imperium remain to this day a whispered threat, inherent upon the lips of all who speak of the Emperor's justice. They stalk the shadows of the galaxy with wicked and vicious intent, ready to meet out the punishment of the High Lords should it be required. Many a war has been averted at the careful application of their murderous arts. Many an alien despot has fallen to their skills, many a heretical leader annihilated by their unique talents. Records are spotty, incomplete, and heavily redacted. And I have the odd sensation of eyes upon me. Perhaps a Vindicare bullet bears my name, watchful for the slightest deviance. Perhaps a Hivanus agent dogs my research, listening to this very record. Perhaps a Calidus operative brought me my morning recap. I may never know, nor to own the truth do I especially desire to. There are some things even one such as I am best ignorant of for my own sanity, if nothing else. Should you wish to tread this path, appended to this record shall soon follow several accounts of the temple clays of the assassins in greater depth. Until such a time, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel are made possible through the incredibly kind contributions of my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com forward slash Oculus Imperia. And if you're looking to keep in touch with the channel, get regular updates, you can follow me on Twitter, at ButstuffKaiju, or check us out on Discord. A link will be in the description and on the channel page.