 The following video contains total spoilers for The Region's Shadow by Chris Wraith, so if you haven't read it yet and you're looking to be unspoiled, you might want to give this one a miss until then. If not, enjoy. We of the Imperium like to think we can know a traitor. If asked, we assure ourselves we could easily pick one out of a crowd, for is not the heretic easy to discern? Rural of face, reprehensible of character, venal of attitude. Most assuredly, we tell ourselves. We, those loyal citizens of the holiest Imperium of man, we know who the enemy is. Again, so we tell ourselves. This is obviously naivety at best and supreme arrogance at worst. The history of the Imperium is riddled with treachery that springs from quarters completely unseen. Throne, it is practically founded upon it. But we may like to believe we have ten thousand years of experience in eradicating the wretchedness of the heretic. Perfidious amongst us are as clever as they are wicked, and they live to surprise. Such was the case with a recent and terrible crisis, one that threatened to engulf the Imperium in a civil war, the likes of which we had not seen since the days of the Warmaster Horus's basest duplicity. It was a calamity millennia in the making, precipitated by events truly unprecedented, an event that would test the very fabric of the Imperium itself. No then, that this is a record of the betrayals of the greatest among us. Those who believed that they superseded the Son of a God. The record of the Hexarchy crisis. The roots of this disturbing chapter in the modern history of the Imperium lie in the deepest reaches of the past, as well as the more recent centuries of our time. To explore them in their fullest breadth would be a task somewhat impossible for a single record, but one shall endeavor to try in order to give as many of one's acolytes as possible the broadest foundational information. Part of the reason for this is that the crisis embodies a strange but perhaps inevitable conflict of tradition, law, power, and personality. Overlapping spheres of vested interests, staunchly held beliefs and ancient legal precedents, combining to bring the Imperium to what was, quite honestly, a precipice that threatened utter ruination. To begin, one must fundamentally understand the nature of the power structure from whence this crisis emerged. The Senatorum Imperialis and the High Lords of Terra, a group of 12 individuals upon which falls the responsibility of ruling the Imperium in the god Emperor's stead. While one has committed to record a full chronicle of this august body's foundation and structure, a summary herein follows. It is they, these High Lords, who are charged with the interpretation of his eternal will, and it is they who make the decisions that guide the fate of every single soul in his immortal majesty's domain. Upon their word move the countless armies and navies of the Imperium by their writ to the wheels of the holy bureaucracy levy the Imperium's Jews from its innumerable subjects, and by their attentions is the Imperium steered through its trials and tumults. The High Lords form the pinnacle of the Senatorum Imperialis, or by its full name, the Lord's temporal, martial, and ecclesiarchal of the most divine and righteous Imperium of mankind. The Senatorum is a diverse collection of the Empire's most powerful individuals, representing every aspect of his Imperial Majesty's domain, but the highest twelve are drawn only from the most select of the Imperium's most powerful bodies. The Senate may advise, but it is upon the will of these highest of twelve that all business turns. The legal system that binds the High Lords to their political role, and indeed governs the entirety of the Imperium itself, is collectively known as the Lex Imperialis, or less commonly the Dictatis Imperialis. Its origins are truly ancient, stretching back to the aftermath of the Great Heresy and the Emperor's ascension to the Golden Throne. During this chaotic time of Reconstruction, the Primarch of the 13th Legion Astartes, Rebut Gulliman, bent his mind to reforming his father's realm in its totality. One of the fundamental tenets of Gulliman's reforms was the division of the Lyvianes Astartes into the Adeptus Astartes, the sundering of legions into chapters of no more than a thousand members, in order to prevent any one individual wielding such a force, as had recently burned their way through the entire galaxy. This pattern was repeated throughout the entire breath of the Imperium's armed forces, creating the Astromilitarum and Imperial Navy out of the previously combined arms Exertus Imperialis. Ultimate power for these branches could never again be held by any one individual. The Emperor was enthroned, and even Gulliman's own position as Lord Commander of the Imperium had, by his own hand, far less legal and military authority than he and his fellow Primarchs had before the outbreak of the heresy. Lineage to the Emperor was deliberately excised as a legal authority on paper, albeit remaining in a paralegal sense given the genetic and intellectual primacy of the remaining loyalist Primarchs. Astartes and their genesires were replaced by a civilian government, and at the apogee of its structure, the Senatorum Imperialis, and its highest twelve. Gulliman's death and the loss of such a powerful administrator and leader caused a severe upheaval in the governments of the Imperium. The High Lords, while by the time of the Lord Commander's loss, several generations into their regency, were now for the first time the truest stewards of the Empire, and were facing new challenges of their own, specifically the rising power of the Ecclesiarchy and the Imperial Creed. Until the Adeptus Ministorum's formal foundation and eventual ascension to the High Twelve, the Lex Imperialis had been a fundamentally secular code based upon the pre-heresy Imperial Truth, and the presence of such a vastly powerful and influential religious body within the highest standing of the Imperium precipitated quite seismic shifts in Imperial law, pivoting away from the secular administration towards the undeniably theocratic. The Imperium has ever, even before the heresy, been an autocracy, but with the enshrining of the Emperor Deified as not only the head of state, but a divine one at that, his power now encompassed not only the temporal, but the spiritual, and as all students of historical are well aware, spiritual law invariably becomes quite temporal. Religious concepts now, and currently, fundamentally, form the bedrock of Imperial law. The Lex Imperialis holds that the Emperor demands full temporal and spiritual obedience from every human being in the galaxy. Law is writ, and law is also scripture. To disobey the Lex is not only to disobey the law of the government, it is to contravene the immaculate order of divinity itself. The Emperor is Lord, and the Emperor is God, and his Lex is considered the truest and most inviolate word of the Godhead itself. And the High Lords, his regents temporal, are the ultimate arbitrators of this word. For 10,000 years, this sole institution has been responsible for all of the greatest and most impactful decisions of state, governing the lives of uncountable quadrillions, guiding our species throughout the millennia. There is, or perhaps was, quite literally no greater power. As many upon Holy Terra have observed throughout the years, regents though they may have been, their behavior was that of kings, both of their own domains, and of the Imperium itself. And now, now comes the passage of time. The relentless chronological march, grinding those legal and theological foundations down to their purist, eroding nuances and annihilating subtleties. 10,000 years of radicalizing dogma, petty power grabs heavy-handed redactionism. We've forgotten more than we have ever remembered. We are a herd of blind, idiot children, clinging to survival with machines we do not understand, facing enemies we are deliberately told nothing of. Understanding is weakness, ignorance is strength. The past is a fading light of half-remembered glories, while the future holds only a fearful pal of dreadful uncertainty. Is it any wonder, perhaps, that we cling to what little we still know? For the vast majority of the species, the Imperium has always been, and indeed, always been, as it is now. There was no greater past, no higher ideals, no lofty march towards progress, that the great crusade and the emperor's greatest works, as he walked among us, both embodied. Even for those of us learned of such lost arts as history and scholarship, the past is a patchwork thing at best, riddled with inconsistencies and distorted by millennia of charged rhetoric and rampant propaganda. Are those who guide the species any better informed than we are, acolytes? They are titans of their domains, no doubt, supremely talented people whose capabilities exceed our own a thousand fold. But what do they know? We, as a race, are united, painfully tenuously, by tradition. We latch ourselves onto it like an insecure lover, wedded to its every whim, terrified of incurring its slightest displeasure, blind to how damaging it is to our own self-worth and self-determination. We are deliriously terrified of the unknown, and to own the truth, I can hardly blame us. The galaxy is a dark, dark place, and its occluded, stygian depths are filled with nightmares made of knives. Where this vast, ever-descending arc of our species's once noble progress has led to, in political spheres deeply relevant to this record, is the development of an ultra-conservative and reactionary faction of the Imperium, collectively embodied by a philosophy known as the static tendency. That being said, using the term faction to describe the tendency was, until recently, inaccurate. As before the hexarchy crisis, it was more of a political philosophy than anything resembling a coordinated bloc. Those of the tendency hold that, as the Lex Imperialis and the structure of the Imperium were originally defined by the god emperor, laterally refined by his son, and kept by those who are charged with directly interpreting his word, the law and the empire are fundamentally perfect. They are the creation of the divine, perpetually faultless, and it is not for the hands of mortals to attempt to alter that which is by its very nature beyond mortal comprehension. The plan, the work, they are ineffable, and must be preserved from anything that would alter its mandate celestial. Their proof of this? Survival. The Imperium has endured ten millennia of privation, from Xenos invasions to heretic uprisings to the crusades of the arch enemy. Despite threats internal and external, crises uncountable, billions of human souls fed to fires of ceaseless wars, the Imperium prevails. A testament, they say, to the god emperor's sacred design. Only the work of a god, as the tendency states, could possibly have allowed his species to triumph in the face of so overwhelming a universe. They are the embodiment, this tendency, of traditionalist humanity, wedded to the past to the extent that it informs every aspect of their present. They are the Ur originalists, to whom deviation from the lacks from the Imperium is not only heretical in the most basic religious sense, but an invitation to utter ruin. For to stray from the god emperor's path is to breach divine writ and corrupt the foundations of a heavenly machine set running millennia before all of us were even conceived. Preservation is the watchword. Change is quite literally treason. And what, perchance, is the most direct form of change to these wielders of political forces? Why reform, of course. Not just any reform, oh no. Reform from the hand of one whose very mind crafted the Lex itself. The return of the Primarch, Rebut Gulliman, resurrected from his 10,000 year stasis, has marked an epochal shift in the history of the Imperium. Tomes innumerable have and will be penned that record his deeds, his writings, his battles, and just what the Primarch reborn, the avenging son recast, will mean for the future of this empire of ours. His most direct and immediate actions were marshal in nature, as befitting a demigod of war during the battle of Luna and the catatlysmic second siege. But it is his move subsequent to this, prior to and in the immediate aftermath of the launch of the Indometus Crusade, that this record is primarily concerned with. Shortly after the lifting of the Noctis Eterna, Holy Terra itself lay in ruin. The Imperial Palace had endured its second siege, as the Imperial Palace has and always will endure, but out in the planetary city that covers every inch of Terra's crust, the situation was far, far worse. Complete and utter systemic collapse engulfed the majority of this ecumenopolis, hive-stack after hive-stack after hive-stack, falling to anarchy, thanks to the collapse of both infrastructure and law and order. The adeptus arbites, barely able to contain the heaving quadrillions of Terra's population at the best of times, were completely overwhelmed, unable to stem the tides of maddened citizenry who had seen the sky open up and look into their souls, who had fled as demons of the warp manifested in their streets, in their homes. The average Terran lifespan is 40 years standard, the average Terran living space, a scant single room, the average Terran meal, a flavorless nutrient paste or corpse starch, extreme poverty, extreme malnutrition, extreme fear, all boiled over utterly during the long night. Continents fell to anarchy, and despite the best efforts of the palace and the armies the Primarch had brought with him, it was impossible to put out every fire, to snuff out every insurrection, within the constraints time demanded. Gulliman, with the passing of the Noctis Eterna, was receiving reports hourly from the wider Imperium, a galaxy now cloven in twain by the opening of the Eye of Terror and the birth of the Great Rift. The stars were screaming, they were begging for aid, and the Primarch was painfully aware that his genius was sorely needed out there, amongst the heaving, huddled, terrified masses of humanity. The Regent was faced with a choice, an utterly unenviable one, as so many of his choices are, to quit the throne world before it was fully pacified, or to consolidate further and risk losing hundreds if not thousands of worlds, as the galaxy burned under the gaze of the Cicatrix Maladictum. As history records, he chose the former, but he did not depart to usher in the era Indometus, without leaving his mark. Gulliman, ever the statesman, ever the administrator, did what he was ever want to do when faced with the system he felt was inefficient. He reformed it, by his authority as the Emperor's son. The newly enshrined Lord Regent, direct descendant of the Imperial household, took steps to change the functioning of the High Lords of Terra, by removing and replacing several of their number. A swift change in the makeup of the highest twelve of the Senatorum is not without precedent, but what was without precedent was the fact that this time, it happened entirely bloodlessly. Quite a large number of the previous incumbents of the High Twelve had ended their time in office quite dead, either succumbing to the inevitable march of their biological systems, or not rarely at all, by the implementation of a blade, a bullet, or poison. To be a High Lord is not legally a lifetime commitment, but there are few who have held that most paramount of authority within the Imperium who have ever been inclined to take a polite and timely retirement. Those that leave their seat at the table alive have done so under duress or in fear for their lives, the prevailing political tides forcing them to exile or to go to ground, lest their enemies succeed in ending them. Even those who have sought an end to their formal service never have done so in ways that truly relinquish their grasp over political power, influencing their successor, weaving their tendrils ever outwards, and maintaining vast private estates, holdings, and security forces. Gulliman, in what newly enshrined Chancellor of the Senate, Anna-Mersa Jek, noted was a typically Macragion fashion, removed several of the High Lords personally, barring them from holding office within the highest branches of the Imperium, but allowing them retention of all their personal wealth and estates. Chancellor Jek elaborated at the time, in her private writings, that such a move was doubtlessly intended to cause minimal friction, and to express the Primarch's gratitude at the service of these deposed High Lords. However, she noted that both in her opinion, and the opinion of her colleagues in the Greater Terran political sphere, that such an action was, if such a word can ever be used to describe a Primarch, naive. Gulliman must have at the time felt entirely assured that this was enough to placate those removed, or to the complete confusion of those within the palace, that he actually trusted them not to seek some sort of retribution. At this juncture, it would be prudent to provide a summary of the status of the Council immediately prior to the unfolding of the crisis, central as the following are to its precipitation and resolution. The positions targeted immediately by the Primarch, were the two that held the majority of the balance of power throughout the Imperium. The Master of the Administratum, Urthu Himatallion, and the High Ecclesiarch, Bardot's List. Both were old, deeply entrenched within both their own organizations and the wider Terran power structure, and most notably, borderline fanatical adherents to the static tendency. The Administratum and the Church, often united by their shared loathing for such fearful human concepts as progressivism and independent thought, formed the greatest of all impediments to the Primarch's proposed imperial reforms, not to mention the largest barrier to the general acceptance of his return. Gulliman did not act on instinct alone, far from it. By his maximum of theoretical to practical, the Lord Regent had devoured all he could, pertaining to the history of the Imperium, as it had unfolded during his 10,000 year slumber. And the most common of all denominators to all change, be it progress or regress, had been these two institutions. Faced with such arch-conservatives, their removal was a high priority, as was the correct choice for their successors. The new Master of the Administratum was Violetta Roscavlar, former head of the departmental immunatorium, born upon the Imperial Fist's homeworld of Inwitt. Aside from the unprecedented move of a non-Terran taking the most powerful political office in the throne world, Roscavlar was noted at court for being a political outsider with a far more militaristic bent than most bureaucrats. Her appointment was deemed quite unsurprising by the Chancellor, who felt that she was both an ideal tool and an ideal statement, a career politician with peerless military administration experience, a literal outsider to the High Twelve, and very reform-minded. With Roscavlar, Gilliman meant to define his new paradigm. The endometous crusade would be the work of the entire Imperium, from the top down, and he would happily replace all those who brooked otherwise. Similarly, Atlesiarch's list's replacement, Eos Retira, was from even further galactically afield, an ultramarian candidate, further cementing Gilliman's stamp upon the council. The two remaining replacements were a frankly transparent move on Gilliman's part to both shore up his own position and ensure a degree of parity was also included. It would likely have been a far more rancorous reform to not have made the number equal, and, as such, the Peter Novel Envoy of the Navigator House's Ulya Lama was removed in fader of Kadaq Mir. The Envoy has never in Imperial history been an especially influential post, viewed by many as acting more as a barometer for the mood and opinions of the Navas nobility. The replacement was deemed a safe one, and Mir was considered overall a more liberal voice than his predecessor was. Finally, the Speaker of the Chartist Captain, Kenya Danda, was removed from the High-12's table, but not from her office, her post being one of the four seats that conventionally rotate between Imperial organizations of lesser power than the remaining eight. Her seat was replaced by the new Lord Commander Militant of the Imperial Guard, Mar Av Ashariel, a strategic genius and former Lord Solar. Notable for his staunch criticism of the High-Lords prior to his appointment, almost as much as Kenya Danda was for her liberalism. The replacement of the Speaker warrants some further investigation owing to the oddity of its shift, almost as if Danda was involved in events occluded from one's gaze. But upon face value, the move can be seen as one intended to balance the progressive versus static voices on the council, and to shore up the military's representation ahead of the endometous crusade. Moving along down the council, the master of the adeptus astrotelopathica was Latad Afkiropliades, a liberal voice on the council for his entire career, if seconded under the political steamrolling of himotalion and slist. During the Noctis Eterna, the telepathica, and Kiropliades' office specifically, had assumed a sort of de facto control over the Astronomican, whose previous master and then High-Lord, Lyopes Frank, had died on the night the Emperor's light had gone out. His death in the Hollow Mountain attributed to a tragic accident. The replacement master of the Astronomican, Lucius Throde, was a former acolyte of Kiropliades, and a staunch ally to his former master's agenda, increasing telepathica control over the Great Beacon immeasurably. Captain General of the Adeptus Custodes, Trajan Valoris, was a quiet but firm voice in council affairs, markedly proactive in imperial concerns for a member of his usually entirely reactionary formation. Cleopatra Arx, the inquisitorial representative, was a bold reformist voice, seen amongst her organization as a unifier of the inquisitions diverse and often fractious cabals and ordows. During the events of the Noctis Eterna, Arx had spearheaded retreat efforts, pulling military forces out of civilian sectors, in order to ensure the sanctity of the palace was not breached by the demonic invasion. While privately this was supported by the entirety of the council, the other High Lords moved to distance themselves from the move publicly, pinning the anarchy that had then consumed swathes of the throne world on the so-called Arx Doctrine, making the entirely unfazed representative politically weaker at the time of the Primarch's reforms. Lord High Admiral of the Imperial Navy, Meryl de Pereth, retained her position, voicing her support for the Primarch as loudly as she voiced her disgust at Representative Arx's doctrine during the Second Siege. The position of fabricator general of the Adeptus Mechanicus was held by Ud Udia Raskian, and was likewise entirely unchanged, primarily due to the Mechanicus' vital role in the upcoming crusade, and also to provide a balance to the static camp of which Raskian was an ascribed member. The fabricator general was an uncommon member of council meetings, owing to the difficulty of transporting his building-sized form from Mars to Terra. The loudest remaining tendency member of the council, Provost Marshal of the Adeptus Arbites, Aviselia Drachmar, was also retained, one suspects due to the danger in replacing the head of all Imperial law enforcement during a time of planet-wide civil collapse upon Terra. Finally, the grand master of the officio assassinorum, Phaedix, was similarly a conservative, known to be an isolated individual personally from all other members of the council, but to cast votes wherever possible to keep the high twelve in a state of stalemate. Phaedix was disliked for the obstructionism by both reformists and static adherents alike, although such concerns were doubtlessly held private given the nature of the office he held sway over. Overseeing all of these members, and indeed the running of the council, was the newly minted Cancelarius Senatorum Imperialis, the Chancellor of the Senate. The aforementioned Anna Merza-Jack, successor to the previous incumbent Alexi Levterian, who had retired following the events of the Second Siege. Jack was a dutiful supporter of the Primarch, by duty if not necessarily heartfelt conviction, and was noted during this time for being primarily concerned with the re-establishing of order upon the throne world. With his replacements, the consolidation of all imperial warp travel and communications under the shared auspices of curapliades and throat, an ultramarion overseeing the church, support for the endometous crusade from High Administrator Ross Gavlar, Lord Militant Achariel, and Admiral Pereth, Gilliman appeared assured in his hold over the balance of power in the council. The static tendency had been severely reduced in both reach and capability, entirely stymying their ability to oppose the Primarch's reform, or the political and religious acceptance of the general public at his reappearance. Those that remained were occupied in functions too vital for replacement, but also too currently preoccupied to mount effective political opposition, with Provost Marshal Drachmar and Fabricator General Raskian concerned with the insurrections on the throne world, and the reclamation of war-torn forge worlds, respectively. It was, on examination, a stunning reformation of such an august and powerful body. The fact that it was achieved bloodlessly, at least initially, was met with ardent praise from Gilliman supporters, and quiet admiration from those officially considered neutral in such matters, such as Chancellor Jack and Captain General Valoris. Where the Primarch faced his most staunch criticism was the withdrawal from terror, of the bulk of the throne world's military capabilities. With the Imperium begging for aid and Gilliman focused on the launch of his endometrist crusade, the use of terror as a launch site from whence it would venture forth was both a practical and political necessity. Mirroring the greatest endeavor of his father, the launch was doubtlessly a propaganda coup for the Primarch, but noted by critics and allies alike for leaving behind a world barely clinging to imperial control. That the majority of the throne world itself continued to suffer not only civil disorder, but full-scale heretical military interactions. was seen as a tactical error to the supporters of the Primarch and complete disregard of his holy duty by his detractors. As one said, it was the decision the strategic acumen of the Lord Regent bent towards an impossible situation had resolved upon, but the results of it would catapult the Imperium into a situation utterly unprecedented. Critical initially to the pacification moves were Chancellor Jack and members of the Adeptus Custodes, whom the desperate former had convinced to aid the painfully overstretched militarum and arbitre's wings that were suppressing heretical uprisings. The powers of the Cancelarius and Atorum Imperialis during this time form an interesting case study in soft power projection amongst the political elements of the imperial system, while nominally without actual institutional writ, the office of the Chancellor comes with a significant amount of influence that can, under certain readings of the Lex Imperialis, be justified by the Chancellor in invoking actions under the auspices of High Twelve Business. In the name of ensuring the High Lords have everything they need to govern the Imperium, the Chancellor can theoretically summon or call upon any individual in the entire empire, no matter their station, travel through all areas of terror and the palace, not governed exclusively by the Custodes, and even deploy military forces in pursuit of information or persons or persons bearing information. In real politic terms, such power is inevitably only as viable as the one who wields it is clever, and should any who come under the gaze of the Chancellor feel secure in their own power to resist it, there is little in the Lex to gain say such a course. In the case of Cancelarius Jack, a woman of significant experience and formidable capability, the Chancellor's office became crucial in the exposure of a web of heretical arch-enemy-fuelled cults and militias, operating in a frighteningly coherent manner upon the throne world, forcing the deployment of the Adeptus Custodes in strike sodalities to excise the issue as one would canker. Such actions would prove, even with the Custodian's capabilities and success rates, unable ultimately to stem the tide, even with the arrival of the Imperial Fist's Fortress Monastery Phalanx, along with members of the Third Company of that Hestarti's chapter under Captain Tor Garadon. The problem only appeared to be getting worse, where heretics were more coordinated and help was even further away. Jack's requests to Lord Militant Ashariel to summon more Astra Militarum regiments to the throne world's defense fell upon deaf ears, but the Lord Militant seemingly firmly supporting the Indomitus Crusade. He would claim to her that the High Lords had in the past wielded the Imperial Guard with callous indifference to the human cost of their actions, sacrificing millions to pointless meat grinder battles in pursuit of their own agendas. That the Primarch had returned, the Imperium's population itself was to be protected, even at the cost of Terra itself. Chancellor Jack finding no aid from the Militarum and having a completely uncommunicative Arbite's Provost Marshal in Drachmar turned to the last member of the Imperial military still available to her, Lord Admiral Pereth. To the Chancellorious's surprise, Pereth agreed with her position, bemoaning the frighteningly cruel inquisitorial representative Arx and her palace centric Doctrin, pledging to summon Imperial Navy carrier support, as well as bonded armsmen regiments from Battlefield Solar in order to aid the pacification of Terra. When such aid arrived, it was entirely from an unexpected quarter. Almost immediately after this conversation between the Chancellor and the High Admiral had occurred, aid did in fact arrive, but from an entirely unexpected quarter. The gathering of Battlefield Solar, a vast and predatory vessel, emerged from the system's Mandeville point at full burn into Terran orbit. The Daedalus Crata, battle barge carrier of the Adeptus Astartes Minotaur's chapter. To the confusion and deep unease of Chancellor Jack, none were able to confirm who precisely had summoned the Astartes, who were now in Terran orbit in full chapter strength and denying most hails. A tense session of the High Twelve, unattended by most of the static tendency members, was held wherein the chapter master of the Minotaur's, Asterian Moloch, presented himself as well as his chapter's resolution to suppress the insurrections of the heretic cabals, collectively termed the splintered, by any means necessary. The deployment of the Adeptus Astartes upon Terra is an act supremely rare in the history of the Imperium since the Siege of Terra 10,000 years ago. Despite their strong ties to the homeworld, both through history and the presence of their chapter keep, the arrival of Phalanx and the deployment of Tor Garadon's Imperial Fists was still met with disquiet from those in Terran spheres. The Custodes were effectively incapable of collateral damage, unless deliberately intended, and the military troops from the palace regiments at least looked like the civilians they were attempting to defend. The Adeptus Astartes are shock troops, designed deliberately to pummel an enemy into submission. While the mythical tracks of the Great Heresy are redolent with tales of horror and bloodshed unleashed by the traitor legions during the siege, in practical terms, Astartes are only wielded for pacification operations when annihilation of the foe is called for. Deployment upon the throne world carried with it the risk of severe to critical civilian casualties, mitigated previously through cooperation with the Custodes as well as the discipline of the Imperial Fists, but now seemingly inevitable with the arrival of the Minotaur. While all chapters of the Adeptus are crafted to be weapons of extreme brutality, this particular chapter took aggression to a level surpassing almost all others. Having an apparently unremarkable origin and eventual loss from the pages of history, they re-emerged shortly before the Badab war, when they earned a reputation for unspeakable violence and a ruthlessness far surpassing their Astartes brethren. They almost always operate and operated in full chapter strength and invariably outside the local imperial command authorities. Most common belief amongst those familiar with them is that they acted upon the behest of the High Lords themselves, effectively a chapter on call for whatever actions the High-12 wished to take that would require an entire chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. Obviously, the Lex Imperialis designed specifically to solo off the Astartes from the civilian branches of government forbids this absolutely, but as with all manners concerning the 12, the Lex could often be contravened and broken when such a break could either be hidden or masked as politically or militarily expedient. At the time, the arrival of such a profoundly dangerous chapter of space marines upon Terra caused widespread concern amongst members of the Council, as Gilliman's appointees all professed no knowledge of placing the summons. Despite, it must be noted, Chapter Master Moloch's claim that he had received them. No record of the Minotaur's previous deployment could be found, and the appearance at the time of brand new Primaris space marines amongst their ranks was equally perplexing, as not even Torgaradon's Imperial Fists Company had received this new breed of warriors. Tensions would only continue to escalate, as the Minotaur's brooked no interference from the reform wing of the High Lords, the Chancellor's office or even the Adeptus Custodes, calling to example the situation upon Terra as a clear failure of leadership on behalf of all these branches. Their crackdown was, predictably brutal, causing significant collateral damage to surrounding civilian populations and infrastructure, as they mercilessly purged the cell hideouts of the heretics splintered. To the government within the palace, it was a nightmare scenario, the cure far, far outstripping the disease in severity, and as civilian deaths skyrocketed, the situation was becoming that which Chancellor Jack in particular had been entirely seeking to avoid. The Minotaur's heeded no summons from the council or their petitions, and dismissed most communications with perfunctory acknowledgments at best. Upon several occasions, a starties from the belligerent chapter came to full blows with Imperial Fists space marines who decried their cousins senseless slaughter. The crisis would peak when intelligence reached the palace that the splintered in response to the crackdown by the Minotaur's were discarding insurgency tactics in favour of massing for a full military offensive against Imperial forces. Further reports indicated the presence of a Psyker, potentially Alpha level, going by the title of the Lacrimosa, operating in a cult leadership meagis position amongst the disparous heretic Abals. Propagandists amongst the cult were flooding civilian Vox channels with corrupting messages blaming the High Lords and the Terran regime for being unable to protect the civilians of the throne world, accusing the Imperium's corruption of finally being so rotten that the very birthrock of humanity was succumbing to anarchy and ruin. Worse, they continually utilised footage and audio of the Minotaur's in combat to further support their claims, bellowing that the great and good of the palace cared absolutely not for the lives they were nominally charged to rule and defend. Their target, determined by the efferoy of the Custodes, was determined to be the Cathedral of the Emperor Deified, the largest and foremost centre of Imperial worship upon Holy Terra. While the attack would, against the forces arrayed against us, doubtlessly fail, the loss or even damage of such a locus of the Faith, and indeed Imperial power, was deemed utterly unacceptable, liable as it was to even further destabilise Imperial control over the Terran Hives. Grand Admiral Perath, in the aftermath of a summit of the High Lords organised by Captain General Valoris, informed, Chancellorius Jek, that her asked for reinforcements had entered Terran orbital space. A division-level force of infantry, as well as heavy air support, and even orbital-to-surface armour deployments. Jek was stunned. Not only was the fleet in possession of military forces far beyond what she had expected, given Lord Militant Ashariel's earlier dismissal of her petitions, she could see that parsing the data Perath had provided, it was much, much more. Ground armour, artillery, engineering and logistic encores, battleships with surface-targeting weaponry. Not only had Perath's naval detachment came with forces unasked for, it had brought with it material far outside the purview of the Navy. This was not a naval force, but a combined Navis and Astra Militarum strike fleet. Perath admitted this directly to the Chancellor when asked. Yes, she was quite correct. The Navy and the Guard were working together, as was she and Ashariel. They were here to root out treachery, but not the heresy of a group of traitor insurgents. No, they were here to seize the Imperium back from the treason of a Primarch. Elsewhere upon Terra, a combined custodes and imperial fists detachment with seconded elements from the Militarum's Palatine Sentinel's regiments, masked to provide defense of the Cathedral, but were utterly outmaneuvered by the Minotaur's. The brazen Astartes, under the cover of a full orbital bombardment of the site, launched forces in full chapter strength at the Holy Site, annihilating with maximum prejudice the heretic militia and causing untold damage to the structure itself. To the utterly stunned Custodies Division, further reinforcements from the Imperial Navy and Astra Militarum were deployed from Orbit to fortify the Cathedral. Captain General Valoris, in command of the Custodians in the field, rapidly requested open communication with the entirety of the High Lords. Only Lords Arx, Russ Kavler, Kyra Pleiades, Mir, and Retira, reformists and Gilliman appointees all, responded. Then, from within the ruins of the once proud Cathedral, across all possible open vox and vid channels, came a transmission. Asterian Moloch, the chapter master of the Minotaur's, was bearing aloft the severed head of the leader of the Splintered for all to see. As the footage changed, it revealed a new figure, taking his place upon a high altar. Irthu Himatallion, the once master of the Administratum, flanked by no less than two of the Sitting High Lords, Drachmar, the Provost Marshal, and Fedex, Grandmaster of Assassins. Finally, this party was joined by yet another deposed council member, Slyst, the former Ecclesiarch. Together with Admiral Perrith and Lord Militant Ishariel, they numbered six, one third of the Sitting High Twelve, and fully half its number, if one accounts for the lack of power wielded by the newly enshrined Roscavlar and Retira. Himatallion and Slyst's respective replacements in Administratum and Ecclesiarchy. The former master's speech, records of which are currently actively suppressed by both the Arbitas and the Inquisition, lest their treachery be let persist in popular imagination, has been preserved here for the sake of posterity, at least for those with the clearance to review such information. Imperium Materna, the most perfect realm ever conceived and realized, created and guided by his infallible will, shaped and defended by his faithful servants. How, then, has it endured when our enemies are possessed of such infinite malice? It has endured because it has been preserved by its people. We have had faith unshakable for 10,000 years. Faith that our destiny is not just to survive, but to conquer. Faith to wage eternal war against the heretic, the mutant, the Xenos, and faith that this perfection has been enshrined in laws. To break those laws is, as we have discovered, to invite anarchy across our threshold. And so the corrupted have run amok on the holiest of all worlds, a blasphemy that should never have been tolerated by its masters. I know well that you have suffered during this time. I know you have been afraid. You understand, as I do, that some eruptions should never have been allowed to take place. You understand, as all of us here do, that change is the enemy of reciditude, and those that let it happen do not suffer as you are suffering. They are always safe, and from that position of security they have sought to lecture you on what must come next. They have bent their minds, put a thousand other worlds ahead of this one, and sent away the great armies that fought by right towards to guard against the unraveling of the law. So the High Lords have failed you. They have failed him. Even now they engage in their own disputes while your spires burn. Enough! Enough! It can be bore no longer. We have acted. The foul heretics, known as the Splinter, are destroyed. No more shall they have filled pollute this world. I ordain this, because I, wearing the half-nature of your old masters, put in place to defeat them. The enemy is a savage beast. To fight him, we must employ savagery of our own. Now the task has been achieved. From this day onward order returns. The law returns. We are, as you can observe for yourself, taking back control. Believe me, I did not wish to assume command in this way. I regret that our ancient and sacred precipitates were overturned so brutally, and that this has therefore become necessary. Thankfully, other members of the council also understood the need to act. You see, beside me two of them. In the void above, two more stand with us in command of our fleets. Together with my valued colleague, the rightful Ecclesiarch, we are Sithics, the Hexarchy, a refutation of the failed reform council and a renewal of the old one. Moreover, you may be assured that we are men and women. Our bodies are touched by manipulation, genocides, or suspect magics. The Imperium has always been governed by such men and women, its foundational laws state that such must be so. Indeed, those very laws were drafted by the only one who, in this current age, has done so much to uproot them. Perhaps his memory faded during his long slumber, but we are now here to remind him. The Hexarchy coup was the static tendency made entirely manifest. A refutation of the reforms of Gilliman brought to horrible realization by the machinations of Heymitalian and his cabal. It has emerged in the aftermath, thanks to the testimony of the silent sisterhood, that the heretic uprising was, while not caused by, entirely wielded by and supported by the Hexarchy, providing them, through the widespread civil strife, all the legitimacy and political credit they appeared to need to launch their coup. The Minotaurs, clearly under their control, had made a loud and destructive show of their operations, but upon later analysis had apparently deliberately ignored crucial intelligence regarding key cell locations and leadership figures. The Astartes had crushed essentially meaningless insurgent groups, publicly, brutally, and bloodily, while letting the overall web of the splintered go undamaged. They stoked the fires of the heretic uprising to provide their masters all they needed, and it worked spectacularly well. The Hexarchy had total control over the Terran orbital lanes thanks to Peret's fleet, overwhelming military assets thanks to Lord Millet and Deshariel's forces and Moloch's Minotaurs, and a newly fortified headquarters upon Terran soil, one publicly and visibly, crushing the heretic elements that the Reform Council had so clearly failed to. They had numerous and clear advantages in almost every respect, but lacked one crucial element, control of the Imperial Palace. Their reasons for doing so are obvious. Any assault upon the palace in force draws the immediate attention and full capabilities of the Adeptus Custodes. While normally they are in neutral in Imperial politics, the Ten Thousand under no circumstances broke any threat to the Emperor's sovereign domain and resting place upon Terra. If the Hexarchy wished to be fully legitimized, the Reform Council must be deposed, and the palace gained. Only then would the coup's authority be granted the legality they clearly believed they possessed. A summit was called by Himatallion, to which Captain General Valoris and the remainder of the Loyalist Council assented to attending. The former master of the Administratum's demands were clear. Immediate cessation of all political purges within the ministries of Terra. The immediate restoration of the previous Council members to their seats and positions. The Reform Council members to be arrested for high treason. The Primarch Gilliman to be summoned before the High Lords for censure, and his authority to be placed under that of the civilian government. And, finally, a full halt called to the Adomatus Crusade, until such a time as Imperial control could be re-exerted over Holy Terra, and the general galactic situation properly assayed. The Hexarchy claimed legitimacy under an originalist interpretation of the Lex Imperialis. Primarchs no longer had any place within the power structure of the Imperial government, and indeed had been deliberately excised from it following the great heresy. Transhuman control over the Imperium had been a thing untolerated for one hundred centuries, and the disruption and willful meddling caused by the newly reborn Gilliman threatened to destabilise the entire Empire at a time when it was more vulnerable than it had ever been. Despite his status as literal gene-son of the God-Emperor of mankind, with no tracks within the Lex to establish the legal precedent for his ascension to the position of Imperial regent, the Hexarchy had been forced, they claimed, to deem the move unlawful, a break of the Holy Lex laid down by the Emperor's own hand, necessitating the ensuing crisis. They operated, they claimed, in the best interests of the Imperium. Their demands, as I'm sure you are aware, were utterly impossible to meet, but they were not intended to. Such a move was a power play of the most heavy-handed variety, and undeniably came from a position of strength. The Hexarchy were wagering that the only extant military force greater than theirs in the Saul system, the Adeptus Custodes, would remain out of the direct conflict, long enough for the situation to force a sole concession from the hands of the Reform Council. Just one such surrender, however small, if it could be made, would cause the Regents' nascent regime to utterly collapse, his total legitimacy shattered in one tiny crack that would make way for more and more concessions, fundamentally undermining his authority. Worse, the seeds of such civil strife would spread out from Saul like a fire, as all Imperial subjects would be forced to choose between High Lords or Primarch. Out and out it would go, consuming the Navy, the Militarum, the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Adeptus Astartes. No facet of the Imperium would be spared the choice between mandate by divine lexography or mandate by divine heritage. The Imperium would fall into a civil war not seen since the Great Heresy, and all would come to fire and death. The Empire had faced corruption from within the High Lords before. In the aftermath of the War of the Beast came the beheading, when every single High Lord was slain by the assassins of Grand Master Van Goric, disgusted as he was by their handling of that calamitous conflict. The time of Goge Van Dier had been another example, the mad tyrant seizing the Council and uttering in his reign of blood. Yet the coup of the Hexarchy came at a time when the Imperium did genuinely stand upon a knife edge, its destruction lying upon both sides. This was not the power grabbing of the mad or hungry, it was the fundamental conflict between the Imperium's past and its future, between preservation and reform, between the imperial government and the imperial line. The coup would end, as Chancellor Jack would later muse, in a manner that despite such unprecedented times remained deeply and traditionally imperial. The Hexarchy, despite its meticulous planning and apparently superlative patience, was undone from within. Defection from their ranks of Grand Master Phaedix. In quite a spectacular fashion. Upon the bridge of Peret's flagship, the Grand Admiral and Lord Militant Ashariel found themselves staring into the faces of complete strangers, strangers who had a moment ago being their most trusted command officers, strangers who then plunged powered blades into their torsos. Within the Cathedral of the Emperor Deified, the remaining assembled Hexarchy's heads simply detonated. Played vindicare snipers executed all perfectly simultaneously, while in orbit the clayed Caledus agents, who had dispatched the other two, melted once more into the crowd, their polymorphine-infused bodies bending into new shapes to disguise their exfiltration. A costode's sodality, led by Shield Captain Valyrian of the High Catanoi, sent to extract Phaedix, narrowly avoided confrontation with the Minotaur's, thanks to the intervention of Administrator Master Roscavlar. The gullumin-appointed High Lord was teleported in at the moment of the assassin's execution, displaying her seal of office. It was recorded, through captured vid logs, that she spoke to Chapter Master Moloch personally, standing down the Terminator armored warrior as he approached the custodians. While it is not recorded what precisely was communicated, Moloch and his warriors immediately stood down, withdrawing to the Daedalus Crater and quitting Terran orbit with as little communication as they had arrived with. The remaining elements of the Hexarchy command disintegrated entirely, if such a structure can even be said to have existed in the first place. While summary executions did indeed follow for the closest members of Achariel and Peret's military staff, they were fairly minimal, as in this case almost unique amongst the annals of the Imperium, to have just been following one's orders was proven to be quite a legitimate defence. To the broader Imperial public, who are aware of the Hexarchy's coup, they have been relegated to a footnote in the history of would-be Imperial traitors. Their regime was short-lived, scant hours occurring between Himmitalian's address and his spectacularly abrupt passing. They achieved none of their aims, they treated and supported Heretics, and were responsible for the deaths of untold Imperial civilians during the crackdowns that had occurred specifically to further their aims. They had been defeated by the heroic intervention of a High Lord of Terror, who, as the Chronicles will no doubt write, saw the error of the Hexarchy's ways early, and sought to organise their downfall and save the legitimacy of the most august senatorium imperialis, at a time when the Imperium needed his skills and leadership the most. Certainly Grand Master Fedex, and indeed Master Roscavlar, have emerged from this crisis with their roles and political positions entirely assured, as has the entirety of the Reform Council, remaining loyal to the regime of the Lord Regent and his father the God Emperor, despite being sorely tried. The conclusion is a neat one, and serves the propaganda reels well, as an example of what happens should anyone, or indeed six, think themselves the truest font for the Lex Imperialis. Yet, in one's role as Oculus Investigatus, the entire affair's conclusion warrants a bit of further scrutiny. The eventual move by Fedex, despite his office's, let's say, storied history when it comes to coordinated removes of several High Lords, was clearly not in a position to dictate the entire course of the coup's rectification. For one, the presence of Councilorius Jack aboard Peret's flagship, only to be saved by the agents of clade Calidus, could not have been accounted for as a variable. Neither could the intervention of Shield Captain Valyrian, positioned as he was to extract Fedex from the potential wrath of the Minotaur's at just the right moment. Which brings us, and perhaps most tellingly, to the intervention of Roscavlar, whose timing and arrival via dangerous technology not often used by civilian authorities, is the most obvious sign of forward planning. If we are to presume that the coup had been foreseen, whom was it foreseen by? Chancellor Jack, being at the centre of such a political web, would have seemed an obvious example, were it not for her diaries upon the matter completely disavowing all knowledge of it. She may be lying, of course, but if such were the case, her trusting of Peret leading to her capture would make little sense. The Custodii's sodality's rescue of the Grand Master of Assassins draws Captain General Valoris into this, and it would, to one's estimation, seem highly likely that his involvement was critical. Certainly, it is doubtful to the point of ludicrous that Fedex would have acted alone with no possibility of preserving his own life, and the Captain General was the only one capable of providing the warriors required to ensure it. His actions, as the coup was unfolding, were to merely placate the situation, remaining a bastion of patience and his own counsel. In perfect keeping with the role the Custodii's upon holy terra have been set out to play, strict non-interference, despite the Captain General's own position as sitting High Lord. The Ten Thousand were completely absent from the wide-scale surrender operations in the Cathedral, overseen very publicly by the Imperial Fists, another win for the video reels. The keeping of the Ten Thousand's reputation for a political non-interference was clearly paramount here, but it is hardly a stretch to imagine that the most well-equipped and most superlatively capable of all Imperial military and security agencies would let a situation transpire upon the throne world that did not work out precisely as they would mean it to. The lack of a direct connection between Valoris and Fedex existing is troubling, yes, but given their respective organizations and positions, none possibly could, unless one or both wished it to be known. The Minotaur's, who had summoned them and why they had departed, are another mystery. Clearly, given the unfolding of events as they did, there is a deep and undeniable link between the Chapter and the High Twelve, specifically with the Master of the Administratum. Oskavler's last-minute intervention implies that she was positioned by Valoris, and informed of the overall plan of the events. Could this mean that, him Italian, believing he was wielding the Astartes under his old, but self-righteously assured, authority, was doing so completely unaware that Oskavler was permitting it? A brutal necessity deemed so by the dire need to draw out the traitorous Hexarchy into a public display that would allow Fedex's assassins to strike? Perhaps the entire Chapter is memetically hide-bound, slaved by psychoconditioning to the will of the Master of the Administratum, and the High Lords as a whole. If so, such an act is indeed in direct contravention of the Lex. But as this entire affair has demonstrated, the Lex is open to interpretation when the situation demands it. There is, as I would hope one's acolytes may now see, one clear victor in this. Whatever about Valoris keeping his golden custodians free from any damage to their reputations, whatever about Fedex gaining mountains of political capital, the Lord Regent Rebut Gulliman has had his regime fully cemented. Traitors at the highest level of imperial rulership were exposed and excised with utter ruthlessness. His Reform Council won not only legal legitimacy, but the freedom to liberalise and reorganise the Imperium at the Primarch's every direction, free from any static tendency block forming amongst their numbers to stymie them. The endometous crusade has proceeded without interruption, free to draw upon all of the resources it may have needed. The Regency is law, the Regency is all, unassailable now, whereas it once stood upon tenuous foundations. Did Lord Gulliman mastermind this whole affair? Did he, in his theoretical, anticipate the needs, wants, whims, desires, alignments, concerns and interests of all these players, manoeuvring each around the board of proverbial regicide, until, when all the pieces were in total alignment, he merely had to step back and watch his practical unfold? Perhaps. We will almost certainly never know. But one fact remains. Despite this being Gulliman's new Imperium, his new reformed empire, an empire resurgent against all that would threaten us, a union led by the Son of a God. It is still very much the Imperium we have all known these long millennia, demonstrated as neatly as possible by the detonating craniums of the most powerful individuals within the galaxy. Ave Imperator. Gloria in Excelsis, Terra. at Oculus Imperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.