Legio Seraphim

The Legio Seraphim (Seraph for singular) or The Seraph Legion, the Ha'Sarefim meaning the Burning Ones, are the highest order of battle within The Stellar Imperium, being the closest to the Emperor and only behind the Luminarchs in glory and strength. They are only Imperial Body solely responsible for protecting the Imperial Grand Palace and the Emperor of Mankind, as well as serving as His most important emissaries, His companions, and the keepers of His many secrets. 
The Legio Seraph are an elite cadre of purportedly genetically-engineered transhuman warriors who are even more potent in combat than the Legiones Imperialis. They are to the Imperial Marines as the Emperor is to His Luminarchs, and it is rumored that each has been created by the Master of Mankind personally.
Where the Imperial Marines represent the mass-produced, genetically-engineered soldiers of the Imperium Dominus, the Legios Seraph are a force of individual warriors, each a bastion in his own right and a sentinel of unmatched capability and singular purpose created to counter any possible threat -- Human, alien or daemonic. These warriors have stood in the presence of the immortal Emperor of Man since before the time of the Terran Unification Wars. And for ten thousand Terran years and more, the Seraphim have stood watch over their lord and master, serving as the Emperor's personal heralds and praetorian bodyguard.
During the Great Crusade these resplendent warriors have guarded the Emperor of Man wherever He went and swore to give their lives to protect His.
== Overview ==
Auphanim- Praetorians of the Holy Throne, these celestials watch over the throne room of God, protecting this most Holy Sanctum from any would be intruders. To these eternal blades Patience is a weapon.
Phanuel (Leader)
Orobas, Purson, Forneus, Raum, Mathias, Focalor, Soneillon and others.
Seraphim - ”We be Light, We be Life, We be Fire! We sing electric flame, We rumble underground wind, We dance Heaven! Come be we and be free!”-The Seraphim
God's Messengers to his Angels, they hold power over even True-Archangels due to a technicality in being the “voice” of God. Seraph or Seraphim, meaning the Burning Ones, are the highest choir of angels in Heaven, being the closest to God.
Seraphiel
Jehoel
== Overview ==
"These men are my bodyguards, My Seraphim, My Burning Ones. They are the warriors of my Imperium, only under the Luminarchs in terms of raw power and authority, each capable of destroying dozens of legions of my enemies on their own, and their lives have become forfeit to the guarantee of my physical safety. Of their loyalty to me there shall be no question nor doubt. I, and I alone, shall have the authority to stand in judgement over them. No other commander shall they have in battle nor in service. None shall bar them from me and none shall hamper or stall their mission. So it is decreed!"
: — Ancient declaration made by the God Emperor of Man during the Dark Ages of Humanity
The Seraphim are the highest angelic beings associated with the prophet Isaiah's vision of God in the Temple when God called him to his prophetic ministry. They are described as having six wings, with two wings covering their faces, two covering their feet, and two used for flight. Their voices are also said to be powerful enough to fatally kill a mere human and shatter glass. It is said that before his fall from grace, Lucifer was once a Seraphim himself and a prince of the choir.
In Kabbalah, the seraphim are the higher angels of the World of Beriah ("Creation", first created realm, divine understanding), whose understanding of their distance from the absolute divinity of Atziluth causes their continual "burning up" in self-nullification. Through this they ascend to God, and return to their place. Below them in the World of Yetzirah ("Formation", archetypal creation, divine emotions) are the Hayot angels of Ezekiel's vision, who serve God with self-aware instinctive emotions ("face of a lion, ox, eagle").
Tradition places seraphim in the highest rank in Christian angelology and in the fifth rank of ten in the Jewish angelic hierarchy. A seminal passage in the Book of Isaiah used the term to describe six-winged beings that fly around the Throne of God crying "holy, holy, holy". This throne scene, with its triple invocation of holiness, profoundly influenced subsequent theology, literature and art. Its influence is frequently seen in works depicting angels, heaven and apotheosis.
== History ==
=== Inception ===
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=== Brotherhood of Demigods ===
"Give thanks to those most courageous and loyal of guardians, the Legiones Seraph, who stand in constant vigil over the Emperor's grand palace. A veritable legion of warriors ready to lay down their lives without doubt for the beloved ward of Mankind. None pass through the Imperial Palace without their knowledge; steeped are they in the arcane secrets of that labyrinthine edifice. Ten thousand blades await the call to arms; to defend against any threat, from without or within."
-Atr. UnknownThe Legio Seraph. It is a name spoken in reverent whispers, for these warriors have stood in the presence of the immortal Emperor of Mankind, and are charged with His protection. His greatness runs in their veins, undiluted by the passage of aeons. They have been called the Emperor's right hand, for they act with His authority and fight in His name.
Only now, as the threat of Chaos grows ever greater and takes its dreaded toll, does that gilded hand reach out and become an eagle's claw. The Seraphim Guard are the talons of the Emperor unsheathed, and they will tear the corruption of Chaos from the Imperium no matter the cost.
Near-immortal are the Legio Seraph, for the golden elixir of the Emperor's own blood runs in their veins. Though outwardly resplendent, there is a scar upon the soul of the Seraphim Guard, an inescapable disgrace that has tainted their history and lives in the heart of every warrior, from fresh inductees to veterans over a thousand Terran years old.
Clad in baroque, golden Seraphim Armour and armed with priceless relic weaponry, the Legio Seraph make for a magnificent sight. They tower over mortals; each has the statuesque physique of an ancient hero, close to nine Terran feet in height even without his scarlet-crested helm. Yet for all their might, for all their bravery, the Seraphims were unable to prevent the Emperor from falling to His traitorous son, the Luminarch Horus.
For millennia, the Legio Seraph have formed the unyielding core of the Emperor's multi-layered defences. Those Seraphim Guard charged with the physical protection of the Master of Mankind spend every waking second devoted to their task, refining their warrior skills and constantly testing and updating their own strategies to ensure the sanctity of the Emperor's throne. They are His last line of defence against a hostile galaxy hell-bent on Humanity's destruction. If they fail in their task, the Imperium of Man will collapse from the inside out. Their duty is so sacred, their reputation so profound, that even Imperial Marines and Inquisitors kneel before them.
Though few truly realise it, Humanity teeters upon the precipice. Aliens and fiends hurl themselves against the Imperium's borders even as the rot of treachery and the mutating curse of Chaos gnaw at it from within. Under such impossible duress, Mankind cannot endure.
Once, the most part of the Legio Seraph would have stood stoically by as the Emperor's foes advanced upon Terra, each lordly champion stern and immobile until the foe crossed the pitch-black moat of the Sol System and hammered upon the palace walls themselves. After all, to keep vigil is the oath they swore to fulfil, and they have never abandoned it, even as thousands of worlds have burned.
Now that sovereign duty has changed. In Mankind's darkest hour, a legend has emerged from the annals of history -- the Ultramarines Luminarch Roboute Guilliman, an icon of authority. The coming of this legendary High Lord has galvanised the Legio Seraph, and after long consultation, seen them reorganised and given new life. The golden brotherhood now numbers not only guardians, but also crusaders.
Alongside the anti-psykers known as the Sisters of Silence, the Legio Seraph bring war anew to the enemies of the Imperium. All shall learn to fear their golden warships, for they herald swift and unmerciful slaughter. These are heroes of fire and blade, and they will not stop until every threat to their immortal master lies slain.
=== The Firstborn ===
"Only in Death does Duty End."
:
The origins of the Seraphim Guard are shrouded in myth and legend. The ancient Legio Seraphim were the bodyguards and sworn protectors of the Emperor and His chosen emissaries, and when the need arose, His most deadly executioners. Genetically engineered warriors of unswerving loyalty and unshakable purpose, their might and skill-at-arms was greater even than the Imperial Marines of the ancient Legiones Angelus, while their weapons and wargear were uniquely potent, representing the apex of the Imperium's technology. Their history is a long one, and for centuries they have walked in the Emperor's shadow as His praetorians and the protector of His secrets.
The Legio Seraphim are by many accounts the Emperor's true firstborn, prefiguring even the gene-crafted Thunder Warriors of the Unification Wars. They are His first genetically-engineered, psycho-indoctrinated warriors, perfected weapons crafted by the Emperor's genius from the dread lore of the Dark Age of Technology.
They are in almost every measurable way superhuman: stronger, faster, more acute of senses and more resilient than even the doomed Thunder Warriors or the Imperial Marines who would follow them, and so far beyond the limits of an unaugmented Human as to be almost godlike in comparison. Indeed, only the Luminarchs and above them the Emperor Himself exceeds them in corporeal might, and to meet them in open conflict is to court death for Human or alien alike.
They are rare creatures, these firstborn of the Emperor's gene-craft. Such was their psycho-physical design, and the intricacy and sophistication of the gene-craft involved, that the modifications which went into their creation required such strict biological and psychological criteria that only a mere one in many thousands of potential candidates might prove suitable for the simplest of the steps involved in the Legio Seraphim creation process.
Even of this small pool of candidates, survival through the multiple solar decades of alchemical augmentation and psycho-memetic training were far from guaranteed. In this fact can be seen a pattern also replicated in the Imperial Marine Legions, only to a far greater degree. While the numbers of the Legiones Angelus were prevented from growing beyond perhaps a million at their greatest strength by the limitations inherent in the means of their creation -- a paltry sum compared to the billions of others who took part in the Great Crusade -- the Legio Seraphim could never have operated on the scale of the Imperial Marine Legions, even if the attempt had been made.
As a result of the inherent difficulty of their creation, the number of active Legio Seraphim warriors never, it is believed, exceeded 10,000. This figure was first attained towards the middle stages of the Great Crusade and maintained diligently enough that the "Ten Thousand" itself became a cognomen for the Seraphim Guard in the works of the Remembrancers and the notaries of the Imperial Court since, whatever its literal accuracy.
Certainly no more than a thousand have ever been seen together at any one time, and then only once at the famous Battle of Gyros-Thravian, fought during the Great Crusade against the Ork Warlord Gharkhul Blackfang and his vast Greenskin horde. The Luminarchs Horus, Rogal Dorn and Mortarion and their Legions were vastly outnumbered and close to defeat when the Emperor led an assault from His golden battle barge, the Bucephelus. At the head of a thousand Seraphims, the Emperor struck at the very heart of the Ork horde, confronting Gharkhul atop a towering Gargant.
As the Emperor decapitated the giant, black-skinned Ork, the Seraphims laid waste to the warlord's prime warriors. It is said that within moments over a hundred thousand Greenskins died and the WAAAGH! was broken. Legend has it that only three Seraphims fell at the battle, their names enshrined forever and engraved on the Emperor's armour thereafter.
==== Wrought by the Emperor's Hand ====
It is not an uncommon belief to suppose the Seraphim Guard were themselves some variant of the Angelus -- if so crude a term might be applied, an "advanced" form, perhaps even a second, improved iteration. While this explanation might seem to fit the facts, particularly to those without intimate knowledge of the Imperium's birth pains during the final acts of the Unification Wars on Old Earth, it could not be further from the truth.
The bloody chronicles of the Unification Wars, particularly in their earliest stages when the Emperor first rose from the nightmarish bloodshed of Old Earth's long night to cast down the reign of the warlords and monsters that had carved Mankind's birthworld into a thousand slaughter-haunted pieces, are difficult now to comprehend. Many are rightly sealed from the Imperium's scholars and even the Terran Court, the dangerous truths within suppressed. But in those dark chronicles the Seraphim Guard, in some form or shape, have their part as far back as any can record or those few souls who survive yet from those times can remember.
Upon the pillars of the Black Manse of Nas'sau, capital of one of the earliest of the techno-barbarian holds to submit before He who was to be known as the Emperor, inscriptions record the "Lord of Lightning" coming before their warlord-kind flanked by His "four giants of crimson and gold," demanding surrender.
Solar decades later, according to detailed extant records preserved in the Trans-Nordyc Akashic archives, a companion guard of thirty "Seraphims," bearing Guardian Spears, clad in Augment Armour and personally commanded by the Emperor, fought at the head of the newborn Thunder Legion in the assault against the formidable Maulland Sen Confederacy. One of their number is even recorded as being responsible for striking the head of the Confederation's Tyrant-Prophet from its shoulders in the aftermath of the campaign's climactic "Battle of the Red Frost."
Solar decades later, it would be the Seraphim Guard in their hundreds, in a form akin to their most modern aspect, who would be charged with leading the cull of those same Thunder Warriors who had once served the Emperor and who had then rebelled against Him in the wake of their forcible disbandment and internment as their mental instability, metabolic collapse and anger over their shortened life spans led to violence.
Only this time the Seraphim Guard would be accompanied by the new gene-crafted warriors meant to replace the Thunder Warriors; the first few thousand prototype Imperial Marines, most of whom would go on to form the nascent Ist Legion, later known as the Dark Angels.
The evidence then is clear; since before the first worlds were conquered as the Great Crusade left the Sol System, since before the taking of Luna and the Treaty of Olympus Mons, since before the Cataclysm of Ursh and the fall of the Yndonisic Bloc, before the Imperial Marines and before the Thunder Warriors, the Seraphim Guard have walked at the Emperor's side.
=== Incarnate Purpose ===
To accomplish the ends to which the Legio Seraphim were designed, not only is a Seraphim's superhuman physical power honed to a razor's edge, but so also is the individual Seraphim's intellect, mental fortitude and martial skill developed with ruthless application and zeal.
The result is the creation not simply of a preternaturally deadly fighter or master assassin -- though they can readily serve as both -- but to create a being whose perception and apprehension of threat and how to counter it is literally beyond the natural limits of Humanity or the powers of a machine. By means unknown and unknowable beyond the Emperor's own forbidden laboratories are the minds of the Seraphims programmed and fortified, filled with an encyclopaedic knowledge of all the arts of death, deceit and destruction they might encounter in their duty, and how both to counter and employ them. Beyond even this their education is prodigious, for they are not simply the Emperor's protectors in intention. They are also made to be His companions and with Him they are armed to converse on such matters of warfare, politics and philosophy as He wished.
Most importantly, their psyches are also crafted and shaped as a master gemsmith might cut and polish a perfect stone, fashioned to precise order and pattern, a pattern to which loyalty and discipline, duty and unflinching obedience to the Emperor goes deeper than blood and bone, deeper than conscious thought or unconscious desire. If at any stage in the process of Seraphim augmentation the merest flaw is encountered, as with the gemsmith's search for the perfect stone, the flawed subject is discarded.
The product of these amassed arts, arcane, academic and militant, is a body of warriors who are living weapons. These made up the Legio Seraphim and later the Legio Seraph itself, the Ten Thousand. As an organisation, it was in many ways both alike and unalike to the ancient Imperial Marine Legions in formation and structure, a paramilitary force unique in Human history, inviolate in action and answerable only to the Emperor. While each Legion was, at least at conception, a highly stratified and self-contained military organisation designed to be the shock troops and principal military agency of the Great Crusade, the Legio Seraphim was similarly self-sufficient and self-contained, but was never armed or expected to prosecute a full war, but instead to utterly dominate whichever particular close battle in which they fought. Their base of operations is Terra itself and their own domains interwoven with that of the Emperor.
They hold few voidships of their own, but could command by edict any such vessel of the Imperialis Armada or later Imperial Navy to their task, and in fact requisition anyone or anything within the Imperium in extremis to serve their most sacred and undaunted task; the protection of the Emperor and His works from all the foes of Humanity. Whether serving as part of a detachment acting as the destroyers of some ill-fated foe, or tasked as a bodyguard for the Emperor or some element of His household, or even where a handful of Seraphims might be deployed to act as the personal protectors of an Imperial emissary or Lord Militant, they are tireless, vigilant and remorseless.
They are armed, created and trained to be the match and the death of anything they might encounter face-to-face, be that Human, xenos or machine, in any circumstance of single combat, counterattack to ambush or close-range assault. Again and again has history seen the Seraphim Guard stand off and defeat odds that seem beyond reason or belief. It has seen them slay monsters foul enough to have been dredged up from pure nightmare, and defeat and slay assassins born of arts both dark and subtle beyond Human ken.
Tested again and again, be it on alien worlds untrodden by Humanity, or within the tangled under-hives of the domains of Mankind lost to the Age of Strife, or the twisted palaces of alien warlords, the Seraphims proved themselves warriors of terrifying ability. Their service and their mystery saw the Legio Seraphim and the later Legio Seraph quickly become a legend equal in wonder and terror even to those alongside whom they served and in the echoes of whispered stories in every corner of the burgeoning Imperium.
To the common soldier and planetary governor alike, the golden-armoured image of the Seraphim Guard was a visible sign not only of the Emperor's direct protection and the embodiment of His will and agency, but also the omen of His unstoppable wrath, as personal and as terrifying in their way as the Angels of Death, His Imperial Marines, were impersonal and all-conquering avatars in the minds of many of the Great Crusade itself.
== Organisation and Structure ==
From outside, the organisation of the Ten Thousand seems byzantine. When they deign to account themselves at all to other Imperial bodies their ranks appear complex and highly stratified. Yet much of this is tradition, or else purposeful misdirection; in practice, the Legio Seraph use a robust and easily adaptable system to organise their forces.
The full details of the organisational structure, disposition and regulation of the Legio Seraph are shrouded in secrecy as befits an institution dedicated to ultimate security. Those outside its ranks, even though they operate close to the Senatorum Imperialis and the highest levels of the Divisio Militaris, cannot hope to know more than a degree of detail which is purely observational, and likely barely scratches the surface of the no doubt byzantine Seraphim. What can be outwardly observed is contained here within this account, as are the various details and titles with which the Seraphim Guard openly interacts with the other organs of the Imperium's power.
The first mystery that outsiders must cope with is that of identity. The Seraphim Guard are themselves effectively ageless and as unchanging as granite, and just as impenetrable to outsiders. They each profess to a given name, often a compound drawn from the lore of Ancient Terra's roll of kings and tyrants, gods and legends. Whether or not this represents some humour or deliberate irony on the Emperor's part given the Seraphim's role is something that it is perhaps unwise to speculate on. Such true names they knew as part of their birth and origin are likely obliterated by the process of their creation, but the myths that have grown up around the Legio Seraph have long held that each Seraphim Guard garners over his centuries a long list of additional names and titles granted purely by the Emperor for their deeds, history and character. Such names are held as a secret of their Order and never betrayed to others, though some myths would have it that this roll of honour is graven in hidden fashion upon their golden armour or even etched microscopically into their very bones. It was said that Captain-General Constantin Valdor obtained 932 names prior to the assault of Horus upon Terra.
In terms of structural organisation, it is apparent that the Legio Seraph is unique unto itself in terms of form, offering little in common with the rest of the Imperium's agencies of warfare such as the Astra Militarum or the Legiones Angelus. This is only fitting as the Legio Seraph, like other elements of the so-called "Talons of the Emperor," can be more accurately described as a paramilitary rather than a strategic force, neither geared nor equipped towards the fighting or winning of wars, but to its duties of protection and execution. The Legio Seraph operate as a military force, a gathering of champions each of whom possesses unassailable authority over virtually any other organisation in the Imperium. Conversely, no Imperial agent can give a Seraphim orders. Even such worthies as the High Lords of Terra and Lord Commander Guilliman are able only to request -- not demand -- their aid.
=== Seraphim Creation and Training ===
As has been mentioned, the Seraphim Guard and the Imperial Marines are related in form, as perhaps might be expected of works of the same creator's hand, but they are very different in function and capacity. There are of course similarities between the two. Both are physically transformed well beyond "natural" Human limits in terms of strength, endurance and fortitude, and fitted for inhuman environmental adaption and resilience, though in this the Legio Seraph are the markedly superior of the two in might, if not in adaptability. Both are subject to extensive psychological and cognitive conditioning, and are physically and mentally reworked to render most of their baser drives inert and their beings rechannelled towards aggression, goal acquisition and the fulfillment of duty. As a further safeguard against distraction and as a biological control, both are of course incapable of procreation. In both cases all that is left are beings of singular purpose; in the case of each Angelus, what is created is a living engine of conquest that cares for little else, and in the Seraphim Guard, each is created protector of unrelenting diligence and savage capability -- a watchman whose vigilance will never tire.
What also differs truly between the two, Seraphim Guard and Imperial Marine, is not just their functional purpose, but the extent of their augmentation and the means by which it is accomplished. While the process through which the Legiones Angelus are fabricated from a human being is well-enough documented in its outline, though its details are, of course, rightly held secret by those parties involved in the process on a Chapter by Chapter basis, genuine facts about the manner in which the Seraphim Guard are created are very few, even within the hands of the Imperium's hierarchy. This is because -- as with all else about the Seraphim Guard -- it is a matter for the Imperial Household alone, and that authority is one none may gainsay or question. What is known, however, marks them as different.
Firstly, there is the matter of the age of the candidacy. For a child to become one of the Legio Seraph, it is known that they must begin the process in their late infancy and certainly before adolescence has taken hold on their physical structure. This stands in stark contrast to the Imperial Marines whose implantation with the gene-seed is only possible after adolescence and best served before full physical maturity. This may link to a second of the few known facts about the creation of the Legio Seraph: that the gene-craft and alchemistry that transforms them is as absolute as it is subtle, and worked upon the smallest conceivable microscopic level of their genome and cellular structure. It is a process that effects such change on the mortal human form that, when complete, unless they suffer such massive bodily harm as to forcibly end their lives, they are effectively immortal, without perceptible ageing taking place after full maturity.
Not then for the Legio Seraph the pattern of surgical grafting and organ implantation that creates a Imperial Marine, no such crudities of augmentation at all mar the Seraphim; what creates them is as invisible as it is potent, worked upon the core genetics and at a deep cellular level, and perhaps tailored to each specific inductee. There are those who insist that so invisible and yet so powerful this process is that it crosses over into a metaphysical realm of biomancy and psychic manipulation on a level unguessed at. Given that it is said that the Emperor Himself has overseen the creation of every single Seraphim Guard who has ever lived, this may well be true. The peerless warriors who then result from this arcane process are a rare breed indeed, and not to be squandered recklessly on the battlefield. They were created with a single purpose in mind; to be the Emperor's own elite guard. They were a force created both to defend the Emperor from physical harm wherever the Great Crusade might take Him, to stand watch over His private domains and most guarded secrets, and to serve as the direct agents of His will -- as His personal emissaries -- be that will to protect, to venture, to claim, to keep secret, or to execute without remorse.