 am weak. He is strength. In him, I am strong. I am imperfect. He is perfect. In him, I am perfected. I am unfinished. He is finality. In him, I am completed. Catechisms familiar to all good and loyal subjects of the emperor of mankind are contained these truths. Through sublimation to his majesty's divinity, we are elevated above the brute mundanity, transcending the meager scraps of flesh clinging to all our weak bodies, achieving some measure of his ultimate perfection. He once walked among us, and though he no longer does, in the physical sense, his light pierces the darkness of the galaxy, bringing his will to each and every dominion in his eternal imperium. We are not without him, we are told. Humanity would crumble and be consumed, devoured by both wicked aliens and malicious emanations of the arch enemy from beyond the veil. We are to him a flock, and he, our shepherd, in a relationship so thoroughly embedded into humanity's collective psyche by uncountable millennia of religions following this format that to question it is essentially lunacy. The night closes in and we cling to the fire side with the terror of beasts who know predators lurk in the murk. Yet the emperor does not grant us a mere detached presence, at least not entirely. Through his hands are, should the words of the priests be believed, forged torch bearers who guide us in ways far more direct than scripture. It is these individuals this chronicle concerns itself with, those amongst us who, through virtue or deed, have been plucked from the sky and reforged as something else entirely. Know then, that this is a record of the devout martyrs, the elevated pure, the living saints of the imperium of man. The status of saint has existed within the imperial church for almost as long as the church itself has. In the lost Halcyon days of the great crusade, the emperor himself was an ardent denier of his divinity. He claimed to just be a man, a being of prodigious psychic might, most assuredly, but ultimately a flesh and blood human akin to those he sought to rule. His imperial truth espoused a purely atheistic philosophy, approaching the universe, stating that things that currently lay beyond the boundaries of human science, such as the nature of the warp, would ultimately come to be understood, as mankind both recovered the knowledge it had lost and began to forge a brave new human future. All with him at the tiller, of course. Much of what transpired in the fires of the subsequent chapters of history have put paid to this. The revelation of the emperor's divinity fundamentally shifted the course of the entire human species. One does not pretend to claim this chronicle will attempt to debate the divinity of his imperial majesty. Such a thing would land me in the depths of the darkest inquisitorial penitentiary. The argument is moot, anyway. The emperor is a god in all ways one can choose to define it. When set against the malignant intelligences that suckle upon the pain of the material world, we mortals are cast amidst. The imperial cult began, even, in those days where he walked amongst us. Growing within the nascent imperium, as a suppressed religious movement of humans unable to accept either the cold brutality of the world, the imperial truth presented, or for whom the evidence of the emperor's godhood was simply too strong to ignore. During the days of the Horus heresy, as the tendrils of the arch enemy latched onto more and more of the material universe, as literal and figurative chaos spread, witnessed by the terrified multitudes, this cult grew. How could, in a world where demon things coveted with the traitorous former scions of humanity, there not be a force set to oppose them? How could gods not be real, when monsters were? The first saint was birthed in the dying days of the imperial truth, and came to prominence in the darkest days of the Horus heresy. Her name was Euphrates Keeler, a Remembrancer, assigned at the end of her career to the 63rd expeditionary fleet of the Primarch Horus Lupacal himself. Keeler, over the course of events complex, and for records other than this, was drawn into an encounter with the demonic entity Samus, and in her quest for answers, was drawn also inexorably to belief in the godhood of the emperor. The stonewalling of the expedition's commanders did not dissuade her, and implying the depths of Arcana in the Librarium aboard the vengeful spirit, was set against another, albeit far more minor, emanation of the changer of the ways. As if possessed by some unknown force, Keeler wielded an Imperial Aquila to shield herself and her colleagues from the entity's predations, and succeeded in banishing the creature back to the depths of the Immaterium. Although the act placed Keeler in a coma, in which she would lie for some time, the encounter only strengthened her convictions and her path. While spending the near entirety of the heresy, imprisoned upon both Luna and Terra, under suspicions of being a rogue psycher, Keeler was granted a form of clemency during the siege of Terra, by the hand of none other than Malkador the Sigillite. The siege, as one's other records will no doubt inevitably elaborate, was a period of utter desperation for the Imperium. There were days of gambits, frantic grasps for anything that could potentially give the dying empire or a preve from the hordes that bade at its gates. In Keeler, the Sigillite saw a potential worth at the very least exploring. Scant evidence had grown throughout the years of the Age of Darkness, that the power of belief in the Emperor himself could provide some means of defense, and perhaps even offense against the demonic. Bereft of options, Malkador reasoned that Keeler's release, supervised of course, would serve as an experiment in the weaponization of human faith at the species's darkest hour. Ministering to the countless refugees trapped within the collapsing walls of the Imperial Palace, Euphrates Keeler became a beacon of hope for many, and an object of fear for others. With the swelling of belief in the divinity of the nigh entombed emperor at the palace's core, she began to exhibit abilities pre-cognitive, telepathic, chrono-mantic, and bi-o-mantic, despite having no actual psychic ability at the genetic level. Such power did not come without cost, however. Faith, as it turns out, is a remarkably crude tool, and deeply susceptible to usurpation if it is not carefully applied. The greater intelligences of the warp are swollen from the emotions of the material universe, and for whatever reason, those of humanity resonate especially strongly with their dread conglomerations. Like whirlpools of pure malignant energy, they draw in our hopes, dreams, fears, and terrors. The path to damnation has ever been marked by decisions small, and thoughts only slightly astray. The faith Keeler was inspiring, was passionate in the extreme, born of pure hopelessness, and within such feelings lies misery, entropy, suffering. One malignancy in particular, the grandfather god of plagues, is dread ruler of those sentiments, and the belief of Keeler's followers was so passionate, so misguided, that one of its greater emanations, a demonic creature by the name Corbach's utter blight, was able to force itself into material incarnation even within the walls of the imperial palace, wrecking great havoc and destruction before its banishment at the hands of both Keeler and members of the Ligio Custodius. The event was a learning experience, bought at phenomenal cost to human lives for the nascent cult imperialis. Faith was a potentially extraordinary source of power, its prospects for the future of humanity astounding, but control over it must be ironclad. The predatory intelligences of the warp were supremely adept in their manipulations of the human mind and the human emotion. Only through unshakable devotion to aspects cardinal could any who wished to use faith for humanity's benefit be assured they were not feeding the very things they sought to destroy. In conversation with former 10th company captain of the 16th Legion of Stardes, Garville Loquen, a chastened but resoundingly devout Keeler, espoused her refined beliefs upon what this meant for humanity. Holding up Captain Sigismund of the Imperial Fists as an example, she professed that humanity must be taught singularly to hate, that their individual lives could not be separated from that of the emperors, that this was how it simply had to be, that the universe had granted to humanity no other choice, but the purity of detestation. Not in the form of one Sigismund, but a billion, a trillion, uncountable, hating with all their hearts. All of humanity's potential stripped away, replaced by the sole manifestation of disgust for the other. In doing so, Keeler was in many ways, unknowingly or not, casting forth what would become the bedrock for humanity's faith for ten millennia hence. One need not tell acolytes that they were raised with merely two things in their hearts. Hatred and the god emperor, one and the same intertwined in absolute. This is the only way we are told, for the galaxy hates us and would see us burn. But the fury of the trillions can it be resisted, even if for a day, an hour. This faith, we are told, sustains us, defends us. It allows us to survive where all others would perish. It is abominable. It is atrocious. It lays under its boot. All other possibilities and stamps them to dust. Ten millennia after Keeler observed a duel between two lunatic astartes on polar ends of a spectrum previously unimaginable, her observations underpin an empire of countless souls and nourish the being at its center. The emperor is a god, sustained by us, his flock, in our belief in him and his power. Through it, his internment within the golden throne, he guards our world from the arch enemy. He guides our ships through their immaterial realms. He acts through his servants, the mightiest of which we are sought to name saints, in honor of deeds and sacrifices. Keeler was the first, the trailblazer, and in her wake countless others have followed. Nathaniel Garrow, the astartes captain who rescued Keeler from the grip of the war master at Istvan, is another. But not all saints were born during the great heresy. In the wake of that dread epoch, with the establishment of the temple of the savior emperor and its subsequent amalgamation, with several other disparate cults of emperor worship, the religious authority of the imperial state coalesced to form the theocratic establishment that is the atlesiarchy, also known as the adeptus minestorum. As with many state-sponsored churches throughout what we know of human history, the atlesiarchy exists as much to enforce imperial authority as it does to minister to the spiritual needs of the human flock in any genuine way. The nurturing of faith has waxed and waned, depending on the particular proclivities of those in nominal charge of this august body. And while one is sure, within the earliest days, that the just may have outnumbered the venal, the grinding of 10,000 years have seen the latter frequently supersede the former in both quantity and power. It is this organization, this bloated, corpulent, morass of overfed priests frothing ideologues and amoral degenerates that possessed the authority of imperial canonization. That is to say, the ability to declare a human a saint. To be a saint is, first and foremost, to be a focal point of worship, dissemination, and propagation of the imperial cult. The forms this takes are as myriad as the imperium itself. Though vast and extraordinarily wealthy, the atlesiarchy has never sought to standardize the practice of worship across the galaxy. It is simply too vast and humanity simply too numerous for such an effort to be remotely achievable. Pious practices and beliefs upon one world may be abhorrent upon another. On a planet where imperial citizens are rural agrarians barely brought out of a neolithic strata of technology, the emperor is the sun, bathing their crops and fields in nourishing light. On a world of stone castellums, the emperor is a martial king to which rulers pay homage. On a hive world of countless billions, the emperor sits as you or I may understand him, upon the throne world at the center of a vast and teeming galaxy of his subjects. The most basic dogmatic tenets are enforced, of course. The emperor is God, though he once walked amongst us. He is the only God. All others are abhorrent. They're worshipers deserving of nothing but death. There is no authority but his, and thus the authority of his chosen servants, as present in the imperial government and its holy bodies. The spectrum of piety one may run through amongst these tenets is vast, to say the least. But suffice it, saints are those for whom piety is their blood. Their devotion to the tenets and thus the emperor and his imperial government are second to none. The vast majority are, as is perhaps predictable, in a galaxy and regime consumed by endless warfare, martyrs. They are warriors who saw their lives in the emperor's name to turn the tide of this battle or that through whose acts the fulcrum of war somehow was turned. Others are orators, cruxotically similar to the imperial iterators who in the days of the crusade preach to the exact opposite. Swaying worlds and sectors to the cause of the imperial church are fermenting such zealotry that divine crusades are inspired and cast amongst the stars. Yet others still may be far uncannier. Those whose simple acts of devotion appear to have tangibly miraculous effects. Surviving an execution at the hand of the arch enemy. Delivering a crop bounteous beyond all possible yields. Stirring to life of a destroyed piece of technology. Although in such cases the adeptus mechanicus' own dogmatic branch may seek to claim that particular individual. A common thread between this branch of saints is their intercession. The petition of the emperor himself for aid. Through prayer or devotion. Becoming in the eyes of the church and the flock a conduit for his divine power and will. Given the scale of the galaxy and its complexity the opportunities for such intercession are equally vast and the saints created by it are manifold. There is of course a darker side to sainthood. The beatification of individuals is not always undertaken for reasons pure. Many a saint within imperial canon is a person for whom justice was a concept utterly foreign. For whom piety a tool for purely material gain. It leads yarchy as with all religious bodies sponsored by the state it serves allows for persons lacking in morality to extend their reach and power far beyond what would ordinarily be afforded to them. Provided they are adept in saying the right things at the right times to the right people. There are a few things easier to exert influence over than human faith. Convincing someone that it is the will of their god that you benefit in whatever fashion is revoltingly simple for some of us. Many scholars far more eloquent than I have opined upon the human need for belief and the ease at which said need can be wielded by the unscrupulous for personal gain. I will not divest any more time in this chronicle to this particular subject. That these individuals exist within the adeptus minestorum will come as surprise to none, least of all those who have met well any members of the body above a certain authority. Imperial sainthood frequently extends to some such individuals, those whose crimes in life are retroactively dispensed with through post-mortem canonization. The political concerns of religion are as paramount as a spiritual. Best the heinous criminality of a widely beloved cardinal be forgotten through his beatification, lest the herds of the great unwashed question one of the foundational pillars of their small, benighted realities. Said political concerns extend to far more deserving individuals as well. However corrupt and self-serving a minestorum adept may be, they are keenly aware of the perceptorial power of certain individuals that they can lift up and exalt even higher. Lord Solar Macarius, for example, was deemed an Imperial saint subsequent to his death, adding another exaltation to a life filled with important titles, and allowing the Ecclesiarchy to weave his dedication to martial prowess and strategic brilliance into the fabric of the Imperial cult. There have been, and yet persist, saints of an altogether different vein. Removed from the politicking of the Ecclesiarchy, elevated to his status beyond human. A living saint. The title itself is a curious one, as in almost every case, the living saint is an individual who is dead. Through what can only be described as the will of the Emperor, they are blessed with divinely wrought resurrection, returned seemingly to life that they may carry out his will. They differ from psychers, a genetically evolved mutant strain in almost all cases. The individuals displayed no psychic talent before their martyrdoms, although upon their return they appear to be able to conjure highly similar phenomena, kinetic shields or pyromanic blasts, telepathy, chronomancy. Debate rages amongst clandestine circles as to the nature of these powers. The sisters of the Adeptas Aurora Tass insist that such power is drawn from faith, miracles manifested through the devotion of the Emperor himself, blessings delivered from him to his servants. Elsewhere, scholars of the Arcane and the Prescribed muse that the line between the powers of the Psyker and the powers of the Devout is a meaningless one, as all extra-normal forces utilized in this galaxy are ultimately drawn from one place alone, the warp. Psykers are merely the term humanity has applied to one of our own that has developed a genetic ability to access the powers of that non-world behind the world. A wellspring of fundamental universal energy separated by the veil of the actual. Emotional resonance has often been observed to be key in such access, and what is faith if not a deeply emotional thing? More shall be opined upon this later, but suffice it to say living saints are exceedingly rare individuals, and their coming is typically at the time of utmost catastrophe for the Imperium. It should come as no surprise then that instances of living saints have increased, as the 41st millennium drew to a close, and the Kikatrix Maladictum, the Great Rift, tore the skies apart. There have been several living saints of note, one such as Saint Sabat has delivered an entire sector to the Imperium such that it has been named after her, but the most revered of the living saints currently active within the Imperium is an honor that falls upon Saint Celestine, the hero martyr of the Palatine Crusade. Initially entering imperial records as a sister repentia, whose crimes are unknown, Celestine fell upon the fields of the Palatine schism after reaping a toll of hundreds of heretics. Although initially believed dead, she was delivered to life despite her grievous wounds, a feat marked by the sisters of the order of our martyred lady as a clear sign of the emperor's beneficence. Her victory in a fresh assault the following days saw her star rise yet higher, becoming eventually a figurehead for the crusade and an icon for the faithful. Such was her clout that she was permitted to divert from the campaign's path to visit the Shrine World of Sanctus Lys, reputed to have been visited by Saint Catherine, second in command to the founder of the Adeptas Sororitas, Elysia Dominica. Entering a crypt alone, Celestine emerged the following dawn a changed woman, bedecked now in the armor of Saint Catherine herself and wielding the ardent blade. Even accepting the new raiment, Celestine was recorded as now possessing an uncanny, divine aura. Onlookers spoke of a radiance, both metaphorical and literal, as a soft light emanated from her very presence, bathing those nearby in warmth, both physical and spiritual. The Thorian inquisitors attached to the crusade moved quickly, pushing the commander to proclaim the creation of a new living Saint. Dozens of wars of faith followed, with Celestine becoming rapidly one of the most prodigious commanders in Sororitas history before her ultimate fall on the world of Forex. Her passing was marked by the tolling of the Bell of Lost Souls, entering her into Imperial Canon alongside the likes of Solar Macarius and Sebastian Thor, and the mourning of her sisters was said to have lasted months. This was of course far from the end of Celestine, merely that of one of her lives. The Saints reincarnation at the dawning of the 13th Black Crusade and her subsequent role in the resurrection of the Primarch and the Terran Crusade are best reserved for records in and of themselves, but this same emergence and her feats since then grant us insight and clues into unraveling the mysteries of the living Saints. What sources we are drawing from primarily come from those who have observed her or fought alongside her, but also scattered journals purporting to be from her own hand. All speak of a being that defies explanation and is, for seeming want of a more appropriate word, miraculous. On the surface of Luna, when Rebut Gilliman and his Terran Crusade fought the arch enemy in orbit of the throne world, she displayed no need for a void suit, her skin touching the moon's airless surface with impunity. She is born aloft by wings that are simultaneously mechanical and angelic. She has displayed resilience to wounds utterly beyond the capability of human biology and imperial technology. And of course, she has displayed the ability to reincarnate. Following the retaking of Ophelia VII by the Endometous Crusade, a greater emanation of the changer of the ways, the demon thing calling itself the tyrant of the blue flame, attempted to usurp Celestine and her unknown powers as a conduit to his incarnation with the world of the physical. The possession attempt was only ended by the blade of the custodian Longinus, who slew Celestine to prevent the demon's manifestation, but to the amazement of all present, the saint was almost instantly returned to life. Years later, she fell in personal combat against Karn the betrayer, damned member of the world eater's traitor legion and a foe most formidable, only to once again find herself incarnated. From the saint's own testimonies, she has described the ordeal of this return to life as, well, an ordeal. Awakening seemingly on a mountain of bones with no memory of who or what she is, Celestine fights against waves of demons seeking to destroy her spiritual body and her resolve, attempting to subvert the duty she knows she must submit to. She comes to realize the bodies and the bones she climbs across are hers, her previous lives, now aetheric remnants, markers of time she cannot remember for memory simply no longer matters. The earliest one places her in the imperial palace, as the bombardment cannons of the traitor legions lay waste to it. Ten thousand years ago, at the genesis of faith, at the kindling of the flame that would become the imperial cult inferno, the link drawn here is remarkable. Just as Euphrates Keeler was opining to Garvia Lokenne that she would grant unto the galaxy a billion Sigismans, humans bereft of anything save the cold impossible fury of hatred faith, the girl or the iteration of the girl that would one day become Saint Celestine ended her first life, or perhaps the last life bereft of the duty that she would one day come to. Duty, faith, subservience, the tenants of the imperial creed form the foundational reason for the existence of the living saints. Our galaxy is bereft of hope, of love, of things we have discarded in a lunatic scramble for mere survival. Celestine would believe she is hope, and perhaps she is after a fashion, but it is hope come at the cost of utter submission to the one being at the heart of humanity, he who would grant us the merest chance of continuous existence, the emperor. His son, Gilliman, believes that the faith of the Sororitas and the function of the living saints are one and the same as Psychana. He is mused on possibilities darker still. That, after ten millennia of existence as a being of almost purely spiritual energy, his physical body sundered. The emperor's reality, as immaterial, has wrought changes upon the emotional and psychic energy he harvests from his flock. That now, ten thousand years after his internment, he has the potential, or the ability, to manifest his will in much the same way as the greater intelligences of the primordial annihilator do. Reaching through the veil, pouring fragments of his power into an individual, exalting them, transforming them into beings etheric, so that they may function as emanations of his greater self. One cannot bring oneself to put the phrase Imperial Demon to paper, for to reduce it to so blood a summary is not only heretical, but misleading. Celestine, Sabat, the saints do not function as beings of the darkest warp. Despite their phenomenal powers, they are still flesh and blood, still in possession of a self. In the past, the presence of the being Imperius has shed possibilities on fragmented incarnations of aspects of the emperor. In Imperius' case, the Astronomican. They have been, however, far removed from the vitality that the living saint possesses. Not for the saints are the detachments that come from not truly existing, nor for them being a fractal shard of a psychic vortex calling itself a god. Although they are similar, they are not quite the same. In a way subtle, but fundamental. The galaxy is a vast and deeply strange place. Mysteries exist, and many will never have answers. To fret over some answer will drive one to madness. There is a peace that comes with ignorance, as many within the Minestorum would seek to remind you. Beings of extraordinary power of unanswerable natures are more common than we should ever be comfortable with. The avatars of the Aeldari craft worlds. The Sangunor heralded the blood angels. The legion of the damned. Rumors of a cancerous, cloned thing in the depths of the Drukhari's dark city. Hateful. Terrible. Wicked is this world of ours. The saints. They grant the comforts religion typically intends to, but also provide loci around which the faith, the hatred we are told we need may coalesce. On their words are crusades launched. On their actions our worlds turn to dust. Through their submission to the God upon terra he is sustained. And granted servants under his total power. They are monsters. They are not human, and yet they as we have always done are monsters of our design. Of the emperor's design. Monsters within cast against monsters without. We look upon them. And do we not see the majesty and the terror that Euphrates Keeler showed to Loken? The death of enlightenment. The end of progress. The raw furious power of hate. And what that must do to those who stand against it. This world. Oh, this world. This damned cursed place. Ave Imperator. Gloria in Excelsis Terra.