 It should be noted, at the outset of this particular record, that the subjects therein represent one of the most secret organizations within the entire history of the entire body of the Imperium. Indeed, all the information one can glean comes only from the most secret of librarians and archives, and none of it dates from any time after the enthronement of the Master of Mankind. It has thus far been completely impossible for me to ascertain the mere existence of this organization subsequent to the Great Heresy. It is possible, given their remit and indeed nature, that the heresy was their end, as it was the end of many of the smaller or more arcane branches of the Imperial regime. Should any information upon their continued existence come to light, I will naturally commit it to immediate record, but for the time being this work should very much be considered as a record of a history-long dead, and considering the organization in question may have that be for the better, for I know of few subjects within the body of the Imperium that come with such a miasma of dread as these. Fear is something inherent within the Imperium, however one wishes to approach it. Our great human endeavor has always had, at its heart, fear. This can be as simple as the fear that, should one defy the will of the Imperium, one will immediately receive the Emperor's just punishment, likely in the form of pain or death. We are an empire founded upon that implicit threat, a regime where the base level of control is as simple as a gun placed against a forehead. Such is the way of things, for the universe is a cruel and unjust one, and requires us as a species to gird ourselves against it, to make trying judgments, and to combine our efforts at all costs. While the Emperor's grand wars of unification, first upon the surface of Holy Terra and laterally abroad the stars on his great crusade, were indeed utopian in their ideals, to reshape the galaxy, to better yield to the dominion of man, none can deny the ultimate choice all wayward human regimes were given, to submit or to die. It was the binary decision at the heart of human unification and remained long after the fleets of the great crusade had passed on. Annihilation waited in the eves. The Emperor had created a myriad of weapons in order to achieve this. Imperial army, yes, the Estartes legions, doubtlessly, but what if forces entirely beyond the mundane needed to be harnessed? What if the master of mankind held the belief that there were some weapons, that despite their utterly abominable nature, yet needed to be bent to mankind's will, even for the deployment against his own kind? The great crusade presented foes whose horror was beyond comprehension, and wars whose nature could simply not be reckoned with by those chained to the mundane. The Emperor had created many monsters to fight his wars, to fight the most inconceivable, to become fear itself. He created monsters of an altogether different and more atrocious nature. Know then, that this is a record of the left hand of the Emperor, of the nightmare engines that stalked the dreams of the human race and brought ruination most complete to its enemies. The Psy Titans of the Ordosinister. The exact foundation of the at least logistical side of the Ordosinister is impossible to ascertain, which is something one's acolytes will have to get used to hearing when discussing this particular subject. As with everything created specifically within the Emperor's personal laboratoria, its genesis was recorded in data spools never intended for anyone's eyes, but his, his closest advisors. And these records are almost all either utterly sealed, or were lost within the fires of the Siege of Terra. What records pertaining to its origins we do have largely comes from personal interactions or log entries from members of the former Mechanicum of Mars, given their quite literally unprecedented exclusion from the project. With the signing of the Treaty of Olympus prior to the great crusade, the Mechanicum had been indelibly bound to the Imperium and had enjoyed a favoured, and indeed central, position in the research and development of the Imperium's technological prowess, glutting themselves on the long thought lost techno-archana that the Emperor had recovered during his reunification of Terra during the latter half of the M20s. Now, in 967 M30, with the great crusade in full swing, the Mechanicum Hierarchy was stunned to its core when the Emperor issued a writ of compulsion, demanding the shipment of 25 warlord-class Titan War Engines to the Vault Imperialis upon Terra itself, in perpetuity. Lone Warlord, a bipedal Titan-class second only to the Imperator in sheer destructive power, remains to the present millennium a weapon to conquer whole worlds and annihilate whole armies. 25 of them is a force to conquer a sub-sector, never minding the sheer material cost of such an attachment. The writ of compulsion near-split the Martian Sinod, with the Magi divided bitterly along religious lines. Some argued that, as the Omnisiah of the Machine God and the Martian Deity's earthly messenger, the Emperor was due all that the Machine God's followers may produce and could lay his claim upon any of the Mechanicum's great works, should he wish it. Others demurred, seeing the purely political implications. The Titan legions of the Colesia Titanica owed their fealty to Mars and to her fabricator general. They were part of the dense lattice of feudal loyalties and treaties that bound the Mechanicum together, and they expressly did not take direct orders from Imperial subjects. While ultimate human authority did flow from the Imperial household, the Treaty of Olympus had established the twin empires of Terra and Mars as an implicit partnership. The Imperium requested, not ordered, the deployments of the Mechanicum's Tagmata and their war engines. To many within the Martian Sinod, the writ of compulsion was not only unilateral bordering on tyrannical, but a move designed to sap Mars of her greatest creations, to place them squarely under Imperial control. They decried the move as the beginning of the end of Red Mars' independence and cursed the Emperor a dictator. Open schism threatened to rend the Sinod in twain, until the Emperor himself met with the fabricator general of the Mechanicum personally. Subsequent to this, all further criticism of the writ of compulsion, indeed that it had ever happened, was actively suppressed from the peak of the Mechanicum's hierarchy. The oblation, as it is recorded in the diaries of Magi critical of the move, went ahead with Mars herself bearing the lion's share of the commitment, shipping eight warlords from her own collegiate reserves to Terra. The remainder of the demand saw the delivery of engines from the Forge worlds of Vos, Metallica, Arachnus, Phaeron, and Caradrin Magna, all of whom had been destined for use in Titan legions, all of which protested at the loss of so critical and powerful a weapon as a warlord. And yet, despite their scale and power, all twenty-five delivered to Terra simply vanished into the Emperor's palace, seemingly never to be seen again. Twenty-five of the largest and most terrible weapons fashioned by the Hand of Man gone. As far as most Imperial history is concerned, the writ of compulsion may well have ended there. It went recorded with some note as an act unprecedented, for the Emperor did not often move in so unilateral a fashion when it came to relations with Mars, aware as he was of straining the human partnership between his empire and that of the fabricator general. Where the Titans had went, none could say, for the vault imperialis was at the core of the Emperor's most secret works, and what transpired within its depths were not for the records of Remembrancers, or even of the ledgers of the Administratum. It was not until the outbreak of civil strife upon the otherwise unremarkable world of Skagan VI that the results of the Emperor's work in this area were first glimpsed. Located close to the southern border of segmentum Solar, not too far in galactic terms from Terra itself, Skagan VI had seen an easy compliance delivered by the fourth legion Astartes with a little bloodshed. However, as the overcrowded worlds of the segmentum's core emptied and migrants flooded to the world, the rapid industrialization and urbanization were badly mishandled by a series of planetary governors, causing the world to reach a level of instability that was bordering on civil war. The current Lord Arbitrator had at the time desperately petitioned the War Council for aid, claiming that their world was about to explode into a violence it had literally never known. The response was entirely unexpected. The Lord Arbitrator had reckoned Arbiter's peacekeepers, or exertus imperialis regiments, maybe even Astartes elements, to viscerally display imperial power. What arrived in orbit was a sole titan conveyor, one of the Basilicon Astra's massive bulk haulers escorted by a cruiser of the Saturnine fleet, and even more surprisingly, an auger frigate in the red and gold livery of the imperial household itself. Without any hails or acknowledgement, a lander bark uncoupled from the conveyor and made for the starport of Decora Breaks that serviced the capital city-place of the planetary regime. From within its hold marched a single warlord-class titan, bedecked in a deep green-black verdigris livery, and bearing, as its only identifier, a silver, snarling lion's head. It bore no other recognizable iconography. There were no kill marks, honorific banners, legio markers, or even mechanical identifiers. It sold gothic lettering, with the rest being an unintelligible, if arcane-looking script, or the title Ordo Sinister, Pavore Dominatur. Above what was reckoned by those who observed it to be the titan's name, Polaris Olbedellach. This name was to become inconsequential, for another, and altogether more apt one, was soon to be given to it by the residents of Skagen. The King of Terror. A warlord-class titan upon the battlefield, or even at rest, is a thing to instill dread into any who would behold it, but this titan was something altogether different. For where it walked, fear followed, not just the simple awe of seeing an engine-class vehicle in motion, but terror of the most dreadful and primeval nature. Fear seemed to bleed from the skin of this metal colossus, a choking, bludgeoning miasma of pure horror that stole the light of all that was good in the world, from any who beheld it. Where it walked, and walked forth it did, tens of thousands simply fled before it in unreasoning animal panic, their subconsciousness overridden by the primal terror that even beholding the titan brought about. Others simply prostrated themselves before its passage, their limbs refusing to move and giving them no choice but to fling themselves upon the ground in abject debasement. The engine made no hails, even its iconic warhorn did not sound. All that could be heard was its slow, thundering steps and the screams of those it passed. It is not recorded for exactly how long the king of terrors remained unskagoned, but the effect it had was profound. Even days after its passing, the dreams of those it had walked past, loyal or potentially traitorous alike, were dark things filled with cold oblivions and spectres of impending doom. Violent tendencies were quelled, grievances were stilled, their bearers unable to raise them in the face of the inco-hate horror the titan had brought. The Ordo Sinister departed Skagen Six shortly thereafter, leaving a planet cowed and obedient without a single weapon having been fired. Word of the Skagen incident was not widespread, and there is evidence its occurrence was actively suppressed from Divisio Militaris records by those within the Imperial household. Eyewitness testimony did, however, make its way into the hands of those who watch for such things, and eager if hushed discourse upon the nature of this Ordo Sinister was replaced with theories of the capabilities of its titan. Immediate speculation fell upon what was, to those with any knowledge in such matters, clearly the use of psychically resonant technology, maybe even the weaponization of psychana itself, a thing expressly forbidden by the highest writ of both the Imperium and the Mechanicum. Psychic weaponry was a facet of the dark age of technology and the age of strife that had wrecked untold devastation and suffering upon the human race, and its outright ban was one of the core tenets of the emperor's imperial truth. Old knight was dead and buried, as those within the Imperium believed, an arcane psychana with it. What could it mean now that the emperor was seemingly experimenting with it? Second time in recorded history that the Ordo Sinister's involvement in a battle could not be disguised was one where such direct involvement was likely specifically and deliberately chosen to test their capabilities far more robustly than Skaegan. The campaign, known to the annals as the defense of Heliorit, focused upon the prosecution of the Eildari craft world of Mag Cithral. The Xenos of this worldship were by any example yet encountered, the most grief-stricken and deranged of their foul breed that the Imperium had ever seen. Driven near mad by the loss of their stellar empire millennia before, they had fallen upon the planets of the Heliorit sector with a savagery unseen, burning world after world for the crime of their mere existence. Upon the worlds of Luxor and Ratep did the Imperium yet resist, with scores of exertus imperialis regiments, Takmata, from the forces of Anvilus and Incaladion, and even a Demi legio of the legiofureans, barely resisting the Eildari onslaught, for the enemy possessed far greater than average numbers of their own Titan-class war machines. Outright disaster was narrowly averted by the intervention of the Primarch Sanguinius and fully one-third of his ninth legion Blood Angels. And while the Astartes could not secure outright victory, they did succeed in driving the Xenos back to the splintered halls of their craft world itself. Mag Cithral was far from toothless, however, and as Sanguinius led the Imperial invasion force to make world fall, they unleashed their army of the dead. Tens of thousands of Eildari wraith constructs, foul and detestable necromantic machines animated by the very souls of dead Xenos, were deployed against the invaders. Towering above them were fully a dozen Titan-class engines, and at their fore, the most dangerous of all Eildari technology. A warlock Titan, a construct animated by the psychically fueled souls of all the degenerate Xenos psychers that yet remained housed within the craft world's bones. The landing force was fully stalled, and even the Titans of the legiofureans were no match for the fury unleashed by the Eildari engines. From out of the Imperial flotilla stalked a Titan conveyor, making directly for the Imperial landing zones. Flanked by red and gold-brocaded Imperial household cruisers, it itself bore no markings. The three Titans who stalked out of its belly to walk upon the surface of Mag Cithral were unmistakably the same Argent lion-bearing warlords as the King of Terrors. The craft world was said to have audibly shrieked as if the very presence of these machines revolted it. While the Carapace bore the standard Titan-class turbo-later batteries, and their right fists on orthodox yet still nominally baseline Ariok power claws, the weaponry equipped on their left arms was a pattern unlike any seen by any Imperial element present, no matter their experience nor origin. The Mechanicum and the Astartes were both equally stunned, for from these elongated single-barreled guns spat beams of pure silent darkness, a black bar that appeared to swallow all light along its path and whose impact seemed to devour everything it touched. Indeed, wherever such a beam impacted, it appears to cause some form of invisible shockwave, utterly lethal to Xenos constructs, which simply fell like puppets whose strings had been cut. The Eldari immediately alerted to the sheer horror and lethality of these Titans, rounded upon them in force, with the attacks of the Witch Titan, causing a curious and absolutely devastating feedback impact whenever it struck one of the warlord's void shields. Coruscating Witch Lightning met a cold white barrier, causing an Imperial Force blowback that leveled whole districts of the Eldari's world city. It was clear to all watching just what the Ordo Sinister Titans were, Psy Titans of the Emperor's own creation. Imperial forces rapidly withdrew as more and more were becoming caught in this titanic battle of eldritch energies and consumed as reality began to locally fragment under the force of sheer colossal psychic powers being unleashed. The battle was to last for three standard hours, costing the Ordo one of their warlords until finally all of the Eldari Titan constructs had been overcome, and the two remaining Imperial Titans tore the very head off the Witch Engine. With its death, the craft world of Mag Cetral began to die, fragmenting and splintering, with the Eldari defense becoming a route easily wrapped up by the Ninth Legion. From the Ordo Sinister, no communication was ever received, as the two warlords gathered up the remains of their fallen comrade and made for their lander, departing the sector with haste. These two engagements form essentially the entire scope of Ordo Sinister deployments during the span of their confirmed existence. Heliorat is the best recorded, largely thanks to the diligence of the Ninth Legion blood angels in their record keeping. But there are scant a dozen more, each bearing similarities to the two chronicled here, the presence of a completely impossible enemy, usually psychic in nature, or the subjugation of a world through a supernatural fear. The Ordo Sinister's remit, such as can be parsed from these records, is fairly clear. To be the Emperor's personal apocalypse, deploying macro scale weaponry utilized by literally no other branch of the Imperial or Mechanical militaries to annihilate foes of such a horrific danger that there were none else who could oppose them, not even regular titans of the Caligia Titanica. For such enemies did indeed oppose the human hegemony, not just the witch engines of the Eldari, but the helispont void forms, enslave our alpha incursions, and worst of all, the rangdan Osio Wars that had claimed the lives of uncountable Astartes and Imperial forces. Given their performance, and the scale and frequency of their deployments, it is not clear whether the Ordo Sinister occupied the role of an experimental testbed for the necessity or simple battlefield testing of entirely prescribed weaponry, or if they truly did embody the ultimate in military capabilities for the Imperium short of Exterminatus. They remained exclusively within the purview of the Imperial household. At no point were any of the Ordo's engines placed under the command of anyone other than the Emperor, not even the warmaster Horus Lupercal, following his ascension to the role subsequent to the Ullinor campaign. Just as with Skagan and Heliorit, their very presence was at all times never announced, nor did they communicate with any of the forces they fought beside. As with similar branches of the Imperial regime during the latter years of the Great Crusade, it is entirely possible that their true purpose, whatever it may have been, was curtailed or simply ended by the outbreak of the warmaster's treachery. Whatever the Emperor's ultimate aim for the Ordo Sinister was, or is, we will never know. The full scale of the Ordo Sinister's strength and capabilities recluded from the Imperium for the entirety of the Great Crusade, existing essentially in the territory of Rumor given the events on Skagan and Heliorit. All we know about their technology comes from one disposition given by an Ordo Sinister princeps immediately prior to the siege of Terra itself. A record which shall have to wait for another day as the true and terrible nature of their side titans requires a more in-depth discussion than my exhausted frame can cope with at this time. Until I make such a record available, Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. 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, nope not changing that name anytime soon, and new this month, if you'd like to support the channel with some merchandise, my very first t-shirts are up for sale on tspring.com forward slash oculus imperia. Join the channel on discord as well, a link to all of this will be in the description below.