 All that Imperial Scholarship has been able to discern about the capabilities of the Ordo Sinister, bar that information previously committed to record, comes from one of two sources. Ex-loaded combat logs of the Warlord Sinister Class Battle Titan Bordialis Thune, captured by Mechanicum Adepts in a redacted location, and the sole disposition delivered to the Council of Terra by one Prefect Kellner Anahas. These precious scraps of information, miraculously preserved, can be taken in tandem with the information from one's previous discourse, to infer a much broader picture of the true and indeed horrific nature of this particular formation. Though then, that this is a record in as far as one can be committed of the truest and best concerned histories of the terrifying and forbidden Psi Titans of the Ordo Sinister. The testimony of Prefect Anahas is of particular interest, as it is, per record, the only instance of a member of the Ordo Sinister, having had direct interaction with another branch of either the Imperium or Mechanicum Governments. In all of their perhaps dozen recorded combat engagements during the Great Crusade, the Ordo arrived unbidden and unannounced, and never in full force, sailing into combat zones or planetary anchor under unimpeachable clearance codes of the Emperor's Imperial household itself. No explanation for their presence was ever given, and no hails ever went answered. They simply arrived, engaged the foe, or pacified the population, and departed, that a single communication to any other military or civilian formations within the local volume. It was only under the diarist of circumstances that the Ordo chose to even reveal its existence officially, let alone what it was capable of. The Warmaster's great heresy approaching at Zenith, and the traitor's forces victorious at Betergarmon, the ground invasion of Terra itself, was imminent. The Council of Terra, under the direct command of Rogaldorn, Primarch of the Seventh Legion Imperial Fists, was assaying the still vast military forces under its direct purview, yet something was amiss. The true and full capabilities of the Imperial household, that is to say, what the Emperor himself directly controlled, were perennially kept occluded from the military hierarchy of the Imperium, that was, below the Master of Mankind. The Emperor, as the supreme ruler of humanity, kept certain assets separate from the broader superstructure of his Imperium's forces. The Ligio-Costodes are perhaps the most prominent examples, serving in the great crusade as not just the Emperor's own life wards, but as his finest soldiers and truest bearers of his writ and his justice. With the most casual observer, this was a sum extant total of the Emperor's own private army, but there were others whose roles were kept altogether more secret. Malkador the Sigillite, the Emperor's right hand, commanded a regiment of his chosen, Imperial army troopers drawn from all branches of the Exertus, for the skills and talents they possessed, hand picked by the Sigillite for missions of utmost importance. More occluded still, were the Order Illucidatum, who functioned effectively as Malkador's secret police. Moving amongst the greater bodies of the Imperium as bureaucrats or remembranceers, they were in truth operatives whose remit specifically focused on the destruction and repression of faith-based systems of belief, overseeing the destruction of sacred texts, the removal of religious figures, and the repression of all aspects of faith in order to pursue the security of the Imperial truth. Offed synonymous with the Imperial household, but occupying a questionable position in relation to it, were the assassins of the aficioassassinorum and the sisterhood of silence, the latter nominally being the divisio-investigatis of the adeptus astrotelopathica, but rarely seen deployed, unless under the Emperor's personal request. Being under the necessity of such veils of secrecy, yet also painfully aware of the encroaching traitor hordes, it is understandable that the Council of Terra wished to assay all that they could upon the defence of the Imperial palace. As such, they petitioned the Imperial household for disclosure, through a representative of the Ligio Custodis, Captain General Constantine Valdor. While it is unknown exactly under whose direction the Ordo Sinister presented itself, the fact remains that they did, dispatching to a session of the Council one sole emissary. Naming himself as Kellner Anahat, a prefect of the Ordo, he was surprisingly forthcoming in just about all aspects of his Ordo's nature and structure, stating when one Council member expressed surprise at this, that the Ordo stood in defence of the home world as much as any loyal Imperial must. He opened, by confirming what most representatives of the Council, most notably fabricator general in exile, Zagreus Cain, had already suspected. The Ordo Sinister was the product of the great oblation, an order the Emperor had delivered to the Mechanicum for the delivery of no less than twenty-five warlord-class battle titans to the Imperial dungeons on Terra itself. And additionally, Anahat confirmed that yes, the Ordo's full strength was still deployed upon the home world. It was organised, according to the prefect, strictly upon lines dictated by the Emperor himself at the Ordo's formation, and was not to be deviated from under the pain of immediate death. Not even minor alterations to things like command structure, pilot assignment, or engine capabilities. The Ordo comprised of four self-contained fortress crypts, all of which were fully self-sufficient and staffed by all the necessary menials, engine seers, and magi-arcanists. The fortresses were known by the cardinal points of an esoteric compass, Borealis, Polaris, Orientalis, and Ocidentalis. Each supported a chamber of five warlord titans, which prefect Anahat confirmed to the Council were specifically modified completely beyond any orthodox or holy mechanical design. By his word, and to the stunned ears of the assembled luminaries, he declared that the twenty warlords of the Ordo's Sinister, note at this point the loss of five warlords from the Oblation Numbers, an interesting and disturbing discrepancy. To be correctly termed, tyrannic pattern warlord Sinister sigh titans, each one completely rebuilt around an emperor-designed psionic amplification matrix called the Syracrux Anima. One must diverge from the prefect's testimony here in order to elaborate on the nature of psychic weaponry. It must be perfectly understood by any and all viewing this record that the experimentation with and development of psychic weaponry was, and remains, banned at the highest of possible levels under pain of the most severe of punishments. To the modern adeptus mechanicus it is a heresy of the highest order, permitted only to the most select magi who operate in the most important of roles, vital to imperial and mechanicus survival. During the days of the Ordo Sinister, such technology had been outlawed by the emperor's own remit, and humanity had not argued this. The scars of the Age of Strife, that hideous epoch where the powers of the warp had run rampant across thousands of worlds, where mad warp-fueled sorcerer kings had wielded the powers of the imiterium for ends dark and terrible, were yet fresh. Every scant centuries before had Terra been all too accustomed to the sheer madness of psychana tech. Its ban, the destruction of extant weaponry, had been one of the emperor's guiding principles during the unification wars. Yet it should come as no surprise that the master of mankind yet pursued it under his own guidance. The emperor was, and is, a being of peerless psychic might and control, and in his desire to shepherd his race, he placed the development of that dread fusion of psychana and technology in the hands of his best and brightest scientificians and meijai. A similar ban of warp tech, beyond that most robust, such as warp drives of starships, had occurred on Mars during the foundation of the Mechanicum, but the emperor's ban on techno-arcana of that nature had additionally been one of the foundational clauses of the Treaty of Olympus that had united the twin worlds. It is a known fact that the desire to pursue it had been a key facet in the defection of senior Mechanicum leadership to the traitor's side, and while a record therein must wait, it should serve as a perfect example of the corrosive nature of psychana's research and development, the temptation to fuse the incredible power of the warp with the mundane might of technologica. However has it bedeviled the minds of those who are ken to the secrets of both. The truth behind the Ordo Sinister's side titans was and yet remains often beyond the wildest imaginations of those outside of a very select series of circles within either the Imperium or Mechanicum. In a disturbing and perhaps ominously prescient symmetry, the warlord's sinister functions in a manner similar to that of the Astronomican. Yet most holy and vital of devices, the Astronomican is the pharaohs from whence the Emperor's light is projected into the galaxy to guide the starships of man, but it nonetheless takes an exacting toll from our species, requiring for its power the very life essences of ten thousand individual psychers, burning their souls in psychic fire as they sing praises of torment to their destiny for the good of the Imperium. Consider a warlord's sinister to be similar, albeit in a much smaller scale and for a much less noble purpose. The Mechanicum sanctified STC patterns were torn asunder by the hands of the Emperor's own Magi, and rebuilt purposefully around a central device wrought by his own hand, the Citicrux enema. The origins of this utterly abominable device lie deep within the shadowed years of the dark age of technology, believed by some to share commonalities with the very first attempts to weaponize human psychic abilities. While its exact works are not and it likely never will be again understood, its purpose is clear, the harnessing of human lives for the purpose of utilizing their power. Through the enema, much as with the Astronomican, the souls of the damned and repentant psychers are slaved to the machine itself, their essences harvested through arcane and damnable technology to fuel the weapon systems and shield wards of the warlord titan they are shackled to. And not just any psychers, no. For those destined to be entombed within the warlord's sinister are Alpha Grade, the most dangerously powerful of their kind. Prefect Anahat was asked to comment upon the selection of these individuals. For what would destined an Alpha Grade Psyker for such an incredibly rare fate? Well, his comments were oblique at best, with the prefect stating that, for some, it is a punishment for their crimes, and for others, a blessed relief from their torments, and that a balance was maintained in order for optimum conditions to be met. It can be inferred from this that perhaps some sort of resonance effect could be achieved when psychers whose temperaments rested upon different ends of an emotional spectrum and whose characters embodied different cardinal points of the humors would be slaved to one single device. Such knowledge is, however, far too arcane for one of my station, and I best set aside such supposition. No good can come of it. Suffice it to say, the selection of the fodder for the engine was precise and carefully scrutinized. But that... that... oh, that is nothing compared to the selection of the pilots. It did not go unnoticed by those attending, that when presented to the Council of Terra, an order of revulsion appeared to cling to prefect Anahat. It is comfort that all those attending became immediately aware of. The mistress of the Astronomican could barely retain her seat, such was her extreme distress and clear physical pain. Those of the Council are wise in many matters, and no doubt had met those of Anahat's kind before. But each time they did, it took effort to even remain in such a being's presence. The prefect was a null, a blank, one of the untouchables, an extremely rare human inversion of the psychic gene, where the individual in question has no presence whatsoever in the warp. They are, effectively, if prosaically, without a soul. In sub-sigma-level psychic humans, this will simply cause a feeling of inescapable wrongness to cause them to avoid such a person. To psychers, they are anathema, beings of sheer existential terror, proximity to whom causes agonizing physical feedback loops as their psychic essence withers and their nerves in flame. While a true discussion of their nature must wait for a further record, blanks are rarer still than psychers, and their utilisation by the Imperium restricted to, at that time, the Divisio Investigatis of the Adeptus Astrotelopathica, the Silent Sisterhood, and the Tlaid Culexus of the Aficio Assassinorum. Here now, was another branch of the Imperial military for whom nulls were carefully selected, and again, one at the beck and call of the Emperor alone. Upon exactly why, and under what conditions, the nulls of Sinister were selected, Prefect Anahat refused to comment, merely stating that the criteria of selection was completely different from those of the Sisterhood or the Tlaid. The statement is interesting in and of itself, for despite their natural soullessness, a null is, for all intents and purposes, baseline human. They are not necessarily faster, stronger, or smarter than the rest of us, but naturally should they turn out to be, such a null would find themselves prized for utilisation by the Sisterhood or the Culexy. What interests one here is a facet yet undiscussed, but fascinating when brought up. Prefect Anahat, when asked, confirmed a query that stunned the fabricator general, and came as no small shock to the others. A warlord Sinister is piloted by a single null. A battle titan is a monstrous creation of staggering complexity, requiring an entire crew in order to maintain effective operation. This ranges from mindless weapons and system servitors to tech priest-engine seers to helmsman and steersman, and finally, moderati and the princeps who oversee it all. Through the mind-impulse units of each, the crew commune with each other and the engine's machine spirit in a new-spheric neural system known as the manifold. This closeness of shared thought not only ensures a speed of reaction and decision-making impossible otherwise, it also ensures clarity of instruction beyond compare. The crew are not just piloting the titan. There are one with it, an almost-gestalt entity united in wholly destructive purpose. For the warlord Sinister, it is another thing entirely. Ordinarily, such a titan would have a crew complement of at least seven not-counting servitors. This helped spread the burden of the neural inloads, for the human brain, even augmented, would shatter under the weight of a titan's bellicose machine spirit. It would appear, given Prefect Anahat's statement, and the data surviving from the warlord Sinister Borealis Thune, that this is diffused through the minds of the machine's psychers, who are in turn slaved to the will of the Prefect attendant. This completely contradicts accepted-mechanicum dogma regarding the treatment of the warlord engine, something fabricator-general Cain was no doubt quick to express, but is in and of itself a fascinating alternative. Whether or not the psychers themselves commune with the manifold, the utilization by the Prefect attendant fulfills the same purpose as Moderati, and bears the brunt of the usual resonance feedback caused by engines enduring damage. It is unknown whether, for example, it is the psychers or the ordo-prefects that sustain the usual princeps stigmata as battle takes its toll upon their engines. Regardless of the questions Anahat's testimony in this area raised, the sheer fact that a sole Prefect commands the power of a warlord, yet alone one rebuilt around Forbidden Saikana and proscribed Archaeo-Tek, is simply staggering, and to the assembled council a no doubt disturbing realization of the sheer power the master of mankind had at his disposal, and kept close to his chest. The sole further source, one possesses access to, is an odd thing, to say the least. It purports to be the combat record of a warlord sinister Psy-Titan, designated Borealis Thune, engaging a demonic enemy at a location that has been entirely redacted. Considering that the subject itself is one of the best kept secrets of this chapter in Imperial history, the need for the household archives to keep the mere location of its engagement, occluded from one's eyes, is, well to say the least, deeply troubling. I shall have to make further, if subtler inquiries into this matter. But to the subject at hand, the data unloaded from Borealis Thune prior to its destruction and ultimate loss, provided glimpse of the inner workings of such a machine. The Prefect attendant, in this case a man named Hydrogyrum, pilots the Titan from within a sphere of steel rods, each representing a facet of the arcane alignment matrix used to guide and drive the Psy-Titan. Known by Hydrogyrum's account as the Crucible, the operation of this machine is possible only by the null Prefect of the Sinister, for the runic language of the rods is arcane beyond imagining, and redolent of the darkest and most terrible secrets known to humankind. Through this, commands are dictated by the attendant and carried out by a trio of governors, essentially servitors that form a diffused human mind, named by Hydrogyrum as pain, darkness, and silence. It is presumed, given their role within the surviving data spool, that their functions roughly correspond to weapon servitor, sensorium servitor, and void shield servitor, although in the case of the latter, there is significant evidence from the record that the voids of Borealis Thun, and indeed all Warlord Sinisters, are further augmented by projecting the psychic nullification qualities of their pilots. While this cannot be confirmed in its entirety, it would be a decent supposition given the foes that have been deployed against it in combat. The pacification of Skagan-6 and the defense of Heliorat both record phenomena similar to that which a human null displays, albeit of a vastly scaled-up scope. Most visceral, however, is the surviving footage of Borealis Thun's weapon vid captures, for it sheds further light upon the weapon around which so much of the Warlord Sinister is clearly designed to function. The Sinistramanus Tenebrae, or in Logothic, the left hand of darkness. The first recorded usage of such a weapon is noted in the annals of the defense of Heliorat, elaborated upon in one's previous record upon the Ordo Sinister. The imperial forces that witnessed the Ordo in battle, most specifically the Ninth Legion Blood Angels, recorded that each Warlord possessed a left-arm weapon of a device unrecognizable to any present, a gun-arm that spat forth what was described as a beam of the purest and most malignant darkness. These beams made no sound, for they appeared to eat all ambient noise, and devour all ambient light, a single line of infinite shadow. Whatever it struck was simply annihilated from sight, and given the testimony of Anahat and the footage of Borealis Thun, it was not only that. The Sinistramanus Tenebrae is, effectively speaking, a weaponized Starship warp drive, a device that breaches the veil between reality and unreality, and channels the latter in order to affect the complete obliteration of all matter in its path. Whatever the beam touches ceases to exist. Borealis Thun's weapon footage additionally demonstrates the Psy Titan's ability to fire the weapon as a sphere, causing a significant area of effect upon impact. It is not only those caught by the weapon's fire that face its wrath. Those within proximity to the beam are ravaged in an altogether different manner, having their very souls stolen from them by the Sinistramanus. They simply die, their bodies falling like dolls, unmarked and unblemished, yet utterly cold. This weapon fed through the anima, wielded by the knoll in their crucible, this is the truest horror of the Sinister. Its ammunition is people. Human beings, Psykers, yes, but human beings whose torment and anguish and suffering are torn from their bodies and forged into a pure cannot be. In their crystal caskets do they dream blackest dreams until they are finally fed to the thirsting mollok of the anima, searing witch fire eating their souls so that the enemies of humanity may be brought to ruin. That such a weapon exists would be utter blasphemy, an affront to the nature of all creation, but it not for the need the emperors saw for it. The concept of a gun that can channel the psychic screams of enslaved humans in order to meet out the most total and complete annihilation, it is too terrible to even contemplate. The existential pain the existence of this brings, the weight threatens to crush me. Are we so damned that we have created these monstrosities? Or are we truly so perched upon the precipice of destruction to deem it necessary? Is the universe too utterly loathing of our mere presence that it would range against us foes of such horrific nature as to warrant the creation of this atrocity? Yes mercifully, that is all that can be obtained of Borealisthun's combat records at the time of penning this chronicle. Given the abruptness of the record's end, it would appear the warlord sinister fell against a greater never-born at this undisclosed location. Its sacrifice was recorded and remembered, but by whom, well, one cannot say. Such is the nature of the sinister. Prefect Anahat upon giving his disposition vanishes from record, along with the entirety of his ordo and all further details pertaining to their existence, history and capabilities. Given that so much was lost in the fires of the Siege of Terra and the chaos of reconstruction, it is possible that such records existed and were simply destroyed. Given the nature of the ordo and its specific remit, it is equally likely that they met their end in their entirety, during the heresy and the siege. Perhaps all twenty of the remaining warlord sinisters fell in the same unknown location as Borealisthun, or perhaps some were ranged against the warmaster's armies as the walls of the palace came tumbling down in the seconds ticked closer to midnight. One cannot say, and one does not exactly wish to. The sight-heightened is a thing to bring only horror, both of mind and the spirit. It is a hateful creation. It simply should not be. All that is good and pure and true in the universe withers before it, for it exists only to annihilate in totality and does so by means unspeakably foul. It wields powers that man cannot and should not. It exploits the worst of all universal systems and the most damnable facets of our genetics and our sciences in order to accomplish unspeakable deeds. Better they remain dead, better they remain hidden and buried, dreadful would the day ever be if a king of terrors walks again of a Imperator. Gloria in Excelsis Terra. This video and this channel is made possible through the incredibly kind support of my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com forward slash Oculus imperia. If you want to kick me a buck or two to help keep the lights running and the scripts flowing. You can keep up to date with channel news if you follow me on Twitter, at buttstuffkaiju. 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