 There are things in our galaxy that defy our explanation. In many respects, almost all, in fact, we do not wish to explain them. To explain something is to comprehend it, and comprehension invites the possibility of questions about other matters. Therein is a genesis of individual thought, and that is the mightiest blasphemy against the divine order of the Imperium and our Saviour, the God-Emperor of mankind. His perfect order is not to be questioned, and thus must rebuke all that is not encompassed within it, which the alien in all its forms most assuredly is not. We must therefore seek explanation over the nature of the alien at our own peril. Understanding such creatures is, in defiance of the God-Emperor's word, and doing so must be done purely for the purposes of reinvigorating one's devotion, and ensuring the destruction of the alien is made altogether easier. The subjects of this record fall under the category of Xenos Minoris, mercifully few in number but no less revolting for it. Their nature is, if anything, even more alien than species that eclipse them in quantity. Know then that this is a record of the shifting cephalopods of segmentum pacificus, the riotous players, a record of the thyrus. A thyrus' cranial region, or what humanity would identify as a cranial region, is essentially recognizable as one, containing a central sensory organ through which the Xenos processes incoming information. This, however, is where similarities end. Despite the receptors for the senses being collected here, it is not a brain in the sense we would understand it, as further examination reveals that a thyrus' nervous system is distributed throughout their entire body. Additionally, the outer shell is not bone, but a sort of brittle, multi-layered keratin, forming a shell of sorts. The creature is in possession of four distinct ocular organs, which Mechanicus biologis adepts estimate as providing it with a 230-degree field vision, approximately 50 degrees more than a baseline human. Dissection of these organs displays a differing quality to each pair. The rearward eyes show a massive increase in photosensitivity, while the forward pair have masses of cone photoreceptors that indicate an ability to parse higher wavelength spectra, allowing the creatures to see in everything up to and including infrared. Below the forward oculary appears what humans may identify as a mouth, although in reality it is more of a filter than a traditional ingestion orifice. Masses of spongy fibers form a sieve not unlike those found in common microorganism feeding cetaceans, allowing the xenos to alter the arrangement or porousness of its filter to ingest what nutrients it requires. The filter extracts the waste from the material it ingests, and adepts have also posited that its sensitivity may allow for the filtration of toxins and gases from the air, in effect becoming a sort of organic gas mask. Echoing that quadraform eyes are quadruple forward limbs, each of which are triple-jointed and encased in the same keratin shell as the cranium. Finger analogs at the end of each are limited in their range of motion, meaning the subject has very limited dexterity. Running in a central column through the xenos' body can be found the ganglia of the nervous system, connected in a shaft to the sensory organ suite in the skull. Encased in a similar protein weave to the forelimbs in the cranium, it appears that the nerve spine is the body's primary support. Thyrus do not have either endo or exoskeletons. The mass of its body surrounds it, coalesce it, tentacular muscular cords that provide it with both its size and means of movement. Similar to cephalopods in many respects, these tentacles are nevertheless extremely dense in musculature, providing a level of strength and dexterity that would not be assumed by simply observing Thyrus' lumpen shifting mass. The interior of this body, upon examination, is largely devoid of any distinct organs. A very rudimentary single lung pumps osmotic gas throughout the system, while an equally minor digestive organ distributes nutrients sifted through the mouth filter into the cellular system directly. It appears that a Thyrus' body chemistry operates upon this cellular level. There are few other explanations for how it could survive otherwise. The final notable aspect is their dermal layer, appearing gray to the site, but upon examination, in post-mortem, shows an extremely versatile musculature capable of forming layers of dermis into distinct shapes for communication purposes, one supposes. The upper mantle is additionally replete with pigmented glands, akin to those, again, of an ocean-going cephalopod. Thyrus are able to flush this gray skin with an extremely wide array of colors, which, combined with the shaping of the skin through muscles, is considered by many to be what the species uses as a combined means of communication and threat displays. A cursory summation of post-mortem autopsies will lead any biologist's adept worth their corpse starch to arrive at similar conclusions. A Thyrus' biology may appear rudimentary, but is extremely robust, quite advanced, deeply alien, diverged from so much humanoid or human-adjacent analogue organs, systems, or forms. This also presents a challenge for investigation. For example, the gas-mask properties of its mouth filter were only discovered when a biologist's adept attempted to euthanize a captured Thyrus through lethal gas exposure, forcing eventually the adept in question to administer a last pistol shot to the skull. The sheer robustness of their bodies grants them phenomenal resistance to extremes of atmosphere, gravity, and environments. It must be noted that these are generally speaking hypotheses. The Imperium has not encountered Xenos of this species often enough to properly discern migratory or habitual data with any degree of absolute certainty. After action reports were primarily logged by Inquisitor Maturin Ralei, or Dozenos, which are a valuable primary resource for this particular chronicle. Dispatches from an unidentified command authority within the regiments of the Stemivari of the Astra Militarum, Ralei's notes primarily concerned an invasion mounted by the Thyrus on the world of Stemivari in segment and pacificus. It was by these accounts a campaign dominated by sheer inexplicability. The Thyrus invasion was the most concentrated, apparently yet seen by the Imperium, but followed no logical patterns of either military strategy or even the most basic of animal predatory instincts. Whole columns are what were referred to as luminous war machines would assault poorly manned imperial defences, or be committed to seize towns and facilities the Imperium had deemed of utterly negligible strategic value. While, at the same time, small bands of Thyrus lacking armor or heavy weaponry would attack Militarum armoured convoys and be annihilated for the effort. The surrealism of the engagements, however, granted the Xenos invaders an asymmetry that thoroughly unmanned the Imperial defenders. They simply could not be predicted, allowing their victories to amass and the guardsmen to constantly be forced into defensive patterns, consistently placed on the back foot by the apparent insanity of the enemy attacks. This pattern, inasmuch as the lack of a pattern is in and of itself a pattern, continued, with each perplexing defeat of the Thyrus being marred by an equally perplexing victory. The distinct lack of intelligence on the Xenos themselves reportedly paralysed intra-regimental communication. Without the means to explain precisely how a defeat had been suffered, regimental staff became reticent to discuss matters with their superiors, lest they be executed for incompetence. Formenting a sudden culture of silence precisely at a time more intelligence sharing would have been required. Inquisitor Raleh is known to have attempted to intervene at this juncture, to provide the Stemavari with what knowledges he could concerning the Xenos. But he was apparently rebuffed by senior command officials who wished to simply develop coherent stratagems for defeating the invaders, instead of, quote, giving credence to their supposed culture. Raleh is noted in his logs as having simply demurred at this point, leaving the Stemavari generals to their fate in order to simply capture a live specimen for his own study, as the final bastions of imperial control on the world fell to the Thyrus. The addition of the creature to Raleh's infamous bestiary, and his notes upon it, contained a vast quantity of the only concrete information one can uncover of this Xenos Minoris species, including the autopsy report at the beginning of this very record. It is supposed by Raleh, and debated by other imperial Xenobiological and Xenoanthropological scholars, that the Thyrus are on a cultural level lacking in concepts that we would understand as victory and defeat. Such things are ephemera, no means by which the individual or collective can choose to define themselves or their place within the universe. Instead, the act of combat, for example, is another means of experiencing existence, prompting apparently profound self-reflection and self-expression for the Thyrus, a means of experiencing a supposedly profound transcendence from the mundane. In essence, all pursuits of the Thyrus are self-indulgent, engaged in with no greater purpose than the advancement of the species' culture and the individual's own lived experiences. Such a concept will no doubt frighten some who hear of it, and I will admit that I myself was immediately put into a frame of mind that considered the species fallen to the predations of the primordial annihilator. After all, he is not one of the cardinal aspects of chaos, the greater intelligence referred to as the Dark Prince by their ardent followers, not defined by excessive indulgence. The riotous colours depicted by the Thyrus' bodies would not look out of place in a procession of heretic astarties fallen from the Emperor's children legion. Such suppositions are currently merely that. Inquisitor Raleigh and several other agents of the Ordosenos who have encountered this species have carefully examined them for any signs of chaotic taint. None has yet been discovered. It seems that, despite nominal alignment with one of the cardinal aspects of primordial annihilation, the Thyrus have managed to remain uncorrupted, continuing their indulgent existence purely for its own sake. No examples of Saikana have been observed within the species. It is possible they share little to no connection with the warp beyond the base level all sentient beings have in common. Lending further credence to the concept of their separation from the predations of chaos. In actuality, the broadest similarity they share to any species beyond their own seems to be to the mysterious Harlequins of the Eldare. Inquisitor Raleigh's treatise posits that the self-reflection and self-indulgence of a Thyrus individual is correlated with that of its fellows into a sort of performative culture. Every aspect of their lives, from warfare to simple day-to-day existence, exists within a continuum of a vast pantomime. The Thyrus seem to believe that, to paraphrase the ancient dramaters Shakespeare, that all the world is a stage and they merely the player is upon it. Decisions as we would understand them are not aspects of free will, merely a role dictated by the performance. It is unclear who, if anyone, the Thyrus believe are their audience. Certainly a cultural dedication of this immensity would usually point to some sort of religious aspect, that the Xenos are engaging in a grand alien pantomime for the benefit of a particular deity. But considering we do not currently possess a means to communicate with them reliably, this will remain within the realm of supposition. They, apparently, exist for the drama of it all. The grand theatrical aspects of existence are to them to be amplified, experienced to the fullest as a means of advancing the self, the culture, the species. This is, by Raleigh's words, an explanation for why their supremely well-adapted bodily functions for camouflage are used for precisely the opposite. In battle, Thyrus make no attempts to conceal their presence or identity. Their skin, which would allow for them to blend into almost any surface with impressive obfuscation, is instead a riot of color from all ends of the spectrum, constantly shifting hues blending and dazzling in a hypnotic cacophony of shades. This is amplified by their technology. Their war machines are referred to as luminous for a reason, for upon the battlefield they are a blaring riot of questing pulsing strobe lights. Their personally portable plasma weaponry is gaudy in the extreme, developed in order to produce spectacular theatrical blasts of multicolored energy in addition to customization of their exhaust manifolds to produce melodic sounds. Such indeed is the tempo of a Thyrus engagement, that in battle it can sound like a symphony orchestra fighting itself. A pair of the words of the Stemivari general, now deceased, quote, a race dedicated to the indulgence of art, I can think of nothing so detestable. Indeed there is perhaps few species within our galaxy that embody such a cardinal opposite to our own in the spheres of culture as the Thyrus. Humanity has, by necessity, so often invoked by our batters, ground the concept of artistic expression for its own sake into dust millennia ago. What culture we produce is for a purpose, the veneration of the immortal God Emperor. Should any of his subjects take anything from such works beyond the central tenets of the imperial regime, that is purely coincidental, and indeed frowned upon. Self-expression is, after all, the first step upon a path that leads to questioning the fundamentals of one's existence as an imperial subject. Questions are frowned upon in the extreme. It is scarce wonder that we have such a difficult time anticipating the Thyrus upon the battlefield. One's sense for the dramatic, for the theatrical, is pulverized out of one from birth. How can we possibly see the world in anything even approximating the way these disgusting things do? Our struggle to impose logic upon them is self-defeating, for art is inherently illogical. And humanity is a species that is utterly uncaring with the concept of self-reflection, such that we can't even glimpse the reasoning behind it. We are utterly at odds, our two species. Coexistence is impossible for a myriad of reasons, but such wanton frivolity of life are comprehend. Until a time, such that I am forced to record another record upon the various stains upon our galaxy, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com.com.com. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter at oculusimperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.