Egon Talorus

Egon Talorus was a Veteran who served extensively with the Fourth of the , slaying many great and terrible foes and witnessing unspeakable atrocities that would undoubtedly break the minds of even the mightiest of ordinary men. As a Doom Eagle, he carried the burdens of his post with a quiet, mournful dignity, knowing that it would not only be his fate but that it was his duty to someday die in the fires of battle. His determination and incredible martial skill served to propel him quickly through the ranks of his Chapter, so much so that he achieved the distinguished rank of in less than two centuries of service.
In 005.M42, following the return of the and the introduction of the , Egon was among a small number of Doom Eagles veterans to undergo the , an extensive, risky, and controversial modification of their which would transform them into Primaris Marines themselves, following in the footsteps of . Upon passing through the procedure successfully, Egon was promoted to the rank of , to serve as an aide and advisor to the relatively new and inexperienced Halkus at the request of the Council of Eagles.
==Biography==
===Early Life===
Egon Talorus, born Harald Garin, was born on the world of in 682.M41 to a family of lowborn field workers. His father was an abusive alcoholic, notorious in amongst the locals for his unruly behavior, causing Harald and his family to be ostracized by their peers. When he misbehaved, even just slightly, Harald was beaten, usually to the point that the bruises made it uncomfortable to sit or lie down. He typically sought refuge from his father through his mother, however, this only prompted his father to beat her as well.
When Harald was six years old, his mother died while giving birth to his sister, Jenivieve. Following this, his father became depressed and even more temperamental, due to a combination of misplaced guilt and sexual deprivation. His father began to hire prostitutes in order to satisfy his urges, and Harald and Jenivieve often had no choice but to listen to their father "use" them, due to the small size of their living quarters. Eventually, however, one escort refused to engage in "business" where the man's children could hear them, demanding that he agree to take matters elsewhere. Their father, infuriated, broke an empty liquor bottle and proceeded to threaten her with it, raping the woman before stabbing her to death with the makeshift weapon. Harald was forced to bury the woman's corpse.
As rumors spread following the incident (guards unearthed the woman's half-mutilated corpse from a shallow, sloppy grave near the town gates less than a month afterward), escorts began to refuse business from Harald's father, for fear that they too would meet a similarly gruesome fate. Left without an outlet for his desires, their father's rage built up until he finally unleashed it upon Jenivieve, blaming her for his wife's death. Taking a shovel, he bludgeoned and stabbed his own daughter in a fit of blind rage before dousing her in animal fat and burning her to death. Again, Harald was forced to dispose of the remains.
With no one else left, Harald once again became the target of choice for his father's wrath. In his despair, Harald turned to drugs (namely ) in order to gain some sliver of joy amidst his bleak life. He quickly became addicted to the substance, requiring ever greater quantities in order to sustain some fleeting sense of happiness. However, when the drug was in full effect, Harald noted that his father's routine beatings became markedly less painful.
But when Harald's father discovered that Harald had been stealing money to fund his newfound addiction, he was enraged, resolving to kill the boy. But as his drunken father stumbled over to find a nearby bottle to wield as a weapon, Harald grabbed the shovel that had been used in the killing of his sister and rammed it into his father's gut with all the force he could muster. His father crumpled to the ground, and for the next day or so, Harald would watch his own father slowly die while in a drug-induced stupor, as the helpless man pleaded to his son for help and forgiveness.
Harald would then burn down his family home with his father's corpse still inside, taking with him only a few necessities, some food, and, of course, as much Obscura as he could carry. For the next year, Harald lived on the streets of Table City, Gathis II's capital, working as a drug mule for several local dealers. He stole most of what he ate, as he was paid primarily in Obscura.
Eventually, however, Harald was no longer satisfied with the amount of Obscura he was given for his drug muling, and unable to work more due to malnourishment taking a harsh toll on his body, he began to take Obscura from the shipments he smuggled through Table City. However, he was quickly caught, and one of the dealers Harald worked for responded to his misbehavior by beating him nearly to death with an iron rod and leaving him for dead.
Unable to move or call for help, Harald would've certainly died had he not, to his good fortune, been found by a good samaritan: a widowed woman of higher birth by the name of Eris Letva. She discovered him barely conscious near the waste pits of one of Table City's primitive chamack oil plants, where she worked as a sort of supervisor. Unwilling to allow a child to die, Letva took Harald under her wing, nursing him back to health, a particularly harsh ordeal as Harald began to experience withdrawal midway through his recovery due to prolonged lack of access to Obscura. But by the time he was healed, Harald's withdrawal had ended and he no longer experienced a desire to use the substance.
Letva informally adopted Harald as her son, fulfilling a life-long desire of hers that she had long been denied due to infertility. She treated him well, and for the first time since his biological mother's death, Harald experienced what it was like to be loved. Harald showed great potential, advancing quickly in the simplistic lessons in arithmetic and language that passed for an education amongst the Gathian tribes. Letva also introduced Harald to the worship of the great , a magnificent and mighty figure who watched over humanity from the heavens. She also told him of the Emperor's mighty angels, some of whom resided on Gathis II, watching over the Gathians from high in the perilous slopes of the Ghostmountain, tallest of the mighty Razorpeaks.
Unfortunately, Harald's happiness would not last. One day, Harald returned home from exploring in the woods to see a bizarre sight: , tall, slender, lithe, and clad in armor unlike any Harald had ever seen, were dragging people from their homes. Instinctively, Harald fled upon seeing such a frightening event unfolding, but one of the mysterious attackers spotted Harald, chasing after him. It was impossibly quick, and Harald could not hope to outrun it. But just before the creature could catch him, Harald heard a loud splattering sound, and turned to see that his pursuer's cranium had been obliterated, taking a sizable portion of the upper torso with it. As the creature's corpse collapsed, Harald could see a massive figure, larger than any human he'd ever seen and wearing silver plate armor trimmed with crimson and ebon, lowering the smoking barrel of a large projectile weapon.
Harald slept in the wilderness that night, returning home in the morning to find his hometown a mess, with most of its denizens either dead or missing. Most troublingly, Eris Letva was nowhere to be found. Harald waited patiently, praying to the God-Emperor that his adoptive mother would return to him, but day after day, night after night, she did not. Eventually, Harald came to accept the horrible truth: that Eris Letva was gone, and he was on his own once more.
===Selection===
In 695.M41, on the thirteenth day of the thirteenth lunar month of the year, Harald, like every other thirteen-year-old boy on Gathis II, was brought to Table City aboard a glider, as was required by local Imperial law. They were brought to a large stone building, where they were not visible to the general public. Men began unloading them from the gliders, and started lining them up. Confused, Harald felt someone tap him, gently but quite noticeably, on the shoulder. He looked behind him, but saw no one. Moments later, four men took him by the arms and dragged him away. Harald did not struggle to escape their grasp, but was unsure as to exactly why. He quickly began to feel lethargic, and soon lost consciousness.
He awoke high up in the Razorpeak Mountains, just outside of a cave. There with him were several other young boys, all the same age. A voice would reach out to them, instructing them to traverse through the cave. The boys would follow the voice's instruction, making their way through increasingly dangerous perils, unaware that this was the first of many tests that would decide whether or not they would be allowed to join the ranks of the , the Angels of the God-Emperor who resided in the mountains of Gathis II. The boys walked through a field of razorblade thorns and across a path of embers suspended over molten lava, and finally they would drag themselves through hundreds of meters worth of narrow tunnel, with only just enough space for them to be able to pull themselves along with their elbows and forearms just inches at a time, all the while as boiling water bubbled up through the earth and slowly filled the caverns behind them. And all throughout these ordeals, the boys' minds were assaulted by psychic visions of a bleak universe: a once grand and beautiful empire brought to its knees by tragedy and betrayal, its foundation rotting with corruption from within as its once mighty walls crumbled away under the weight of attacks by foes uncounted. Worlds burnt to cinders, dreams turned to ash, lives extinguished by the billions in the desperate struggle for mere survival, all as the very universe itself looked on in perverse satisfaction.
The narrow tunnel spiraled down before terminating in a cliff face, a deep chasm standing between the few surviving boys and their apparent destination: an enormous castle carved out of the tallest of the mountain peaks, with mighty stone eagles glowering down at the boys from atop its parapets. Hearing the boiling water rushing down through the tunnel behind them, the boys looked over to find a number of crude wood and fabric hang gliders prepared for them, and with the gliders in hand the boys would throw themselves off of the cliff, relying on the strong winds which whipped across the chasm and sheer force of will to keep them airborne, ignorant and defiant in the face of the bloody death they would face should they have fallen.
For the handful of battered and bloodied young boys who managed to cross the chasm successfully, the voice they had heard echoing within their minds would reveal its form to them. It was a massive figure, far taller than any man that any of the boys had ever seen, clad in blue and silver plate quite similar to that Harald had seen the night his adoptive mother had become lost to him. Here the boys would undergo one final test: their minds, having been rendered defenseless by the exhaustion of their mortal strength, would be combed through by the giant's psychic will. Their thoughts and memories would be poked and prodded to ensure that they stood where they did solely because they had managed to find hope where there was none to be found; to find purpose to go on when none should have existed. Those that were judged unfit by the giant were left to die on the cliffside precipice, while the rest would be granted entrance to the stone castle, having now officially become of the : the Emperor's fabled Angels of Death.
===Service as a Scout Marine: Scionus Crusade and the Kalpur Incident===
Following his success in the trials, Harald, now known as Egon Talorus to separate him from his past identity, began to undergo his gene-seed implantation. This process would infuse his body with a tiny fragment of the divine spark that once flickered within , thereby transforming him into a mighty Astartes. The implantation would be performed in a number of stages and would thus take years to complete, but in the meantime Talorus would still see action as a of the Chapter's Tenth Company. Under the watchful eye of Scout Sergeant Bellicus, Talorus spent his first five years as a Doom Eagle fighting in the Scionus Crusade, against the forces of the Grotpunchaz empire.
On the way back to Gathis II following the conclusion of the Scionus Crusade, Scout Squad Bellicus was redirected at the request of the Tenth Company Captain to aid a small strike force that had come under attack by raiders while responding to a distress signal involving stolen relics on the of Kalpur. Upon arrival, Egon and the rest of Squad Bellicus discovered that the remainder of the Doom Eagles strike force had barricaded themselves within a cathedral, and had gained the assistance of a trio of .
The Astartes and Eldar continued to fight for almost two day-night cycles following the arrival of Squad Bellicus before finally driving off their Dark Eldar attackers, but not before losing nine more Marines and a single Ranger. Afterwards, the Space Marines and the Eldar seemed to part ways, and the Space Marines began to gather whatever geneseed they could from the mutilated corpses of their dead before going to retrieve the stolen relics the Dark Eldar had seemingly abandoned before making their escape back into the . However, as they were retrieving the relics, the Marines were ambushed by a group of five Eldar Rangers, apparently after a number of that the Dark Eldar had also stolen. The initial ambush killed all but four of the remaining Marines, leaving only two and two Scout Marines still breathing. Amidst the confusion, Egon managed to steal one of the spirit stones and escape aboard one of several that Squad Bellicus had brought with them. Leading the Rangers after him and away from his brothers, Egon intentionally crashed the Land Speeder, leaving both it and the spirit stone for the Rangers to find. As the Rangers searched the wreckage for the stone, Egon remotely detonated a that he had planted beneath the passenger seat, killing three of the Eldar and leaving the other two mortally wounded.
Egon and his three surviving brothers would then destroy all of the spirit stones before returning the sacred Imperial relics. Upon return to Gathis II, Egon was promoted to a full , and was sent to the Ninth Company for training in the ways of the . However, the events on Kalpur, combined with his realization that it was in fact the Dark Eldar whom had taken Eris Letva away from Harald Garin, would have a permanent effect on Talorus, fostering within him a special hatred and mistrust for all Aeldari that would stay with him for the rest of his life.
===Trials as a Devastator Marine: The Hurioch Campaign===
After his promotion, Egon served as a member of the Ninth Company's Third Devastator Squad, Squad Vantius, where he was typically tasked with operating a . Egon found the immense power and incredible accuracy of this terrifying weapon to be quite satisfying, but strongly disliked the slow rate of fire and especially its unwieldiness.
Starting in 707.M41, Devastator Squad Vantius was deployed in the Hurioch Campaign, against the greenskin hordes of Stompyfeet. Once again, Egon would display incredible courage, specifically on one occasion prior to which his entire combat squad was killed aside from himself and a single squadmate, Brother Cretalus. Cretalus, although still able to fight, was badly wounded and losing blood fast from a rupture in one of his hearts, while the power cable linking Egon's Lascannon to its power source had been severed by an Ork . Egon discarded his weapon and picked up a Godwyn pattern bolter from the corpse of a dead Tactical Marine, covering Cretalus's flank as his wounded brother laid down suppressing fire with his . When Cretalus finally lost conciousness, Egon stripped off the destroyed parts of his brother's armor and carried him to safety over his shoulder, but not before rigging his Lascannon's damaged power supply to detonate in order to cover his retreat.
For their exceptional bravery and dedication in the service of the Emperor, both Egon and Cretalus were transferred to the Eighth Company in 708.M41 for training as .
===Training as an Assault Marine: Nihilicus Crusade & the Storming of Felvath===
In the Eighth Company, Egon served under the esteemed Veteran Sergeant Valmor Scallius, as a member of the Third Assault Squad. Scallius was an expert practitioner of the Doom Eagles' favored art of jump assault, and was held in high regards as an excellent teacher of his craft, so much so that despite his possession of the , no one in the Chapter objected to Scallius remaining in service to the Eighth Company rather than serving with the Chapter in the First.
Egon and the rest of Squad Scallius would see plenty of action while supporting the Fifth Company in subsector Nihilicus, retaking the region from a of the traitorous and their fanatical renegade armies. In 718.M41, the Crusade took Squad Scallius to the of Felvath, where the squad would be deployed amongst several others as shock troops to weaken the hostile defenses and break enemy morale in advance of an assault by the bulk of the Fifth Company. Unfortunately, aware of the coming attack, a and his cabal of warriors were waiting when the assault force made planetfall. Short work was made of the cultist and renegade fodder supporting the , but the seasoned Chosen veterans dealt considerable casualties upon the comparatively inexperienced Loyalists. Sergeant Scallius was wounded in the fight, his sword arm severed but still fighting with his and . Meanwhile, Egon slew two Chosen, but a third tore his from his hands and crushed it beneath the grasp of a .
Taking up his Sergeant's discarded power sword, Egon fought on, killing the Traitor Marine responsible for the destruction of his previous weapon before also slaying a fourth Word Bearer. However, it was then that the Dark Apostle himself entered the fray, engaging Egon in close combat. Egon was quickly overpowered, and his sword was knocked from his hands. Egon then tackled the Dark Apostle, and as he kept his foe occupied by attempting to wrestle away his , Egon pulled out his and buried it in the Traitor's neck.
Stunned by the loss of their leader, the Chosen retreated, ending the bitter fight, and the Fifth Company's attack was able to commence. Thoroughly impressed with Egon's actions, upon return from the Nihilicus Crusade in 620.M41, Sergeant Scallius had Egon sent off to the Sixth Company, for training as a Tactical Marine.
===Early Service as a Tactical Marine: The Sixth Company===
It would be in the Sixth Company, under Sergeant Hydrik Cortellus of the Fifth Tactical Squad that Talorus truly found his niche. Not only did the tactical flexibility required of a Tactical Marine come easy to Egon, but he found it liberating. The blade and the boltgun were truly the weapons that Egon was fated to wield.
His first campaign as part of the Sixth Company would be in aiding Captain Diominus Feldon's Fourth Company in the extermination of a minor xenos race known as the Traev, native to the Traechus Star System. Despite being incapable of any form of faster-than-light travel, the Traev were highly advanced, with devastating plasma-based void weaponry and sophisticated personal protection equipment on the ground. Worst of all, the Traev's leadership caste was composed of potent .
==Personality & Traits==
Egon was a disciplined, focused warrior, quiet in demeanor and grim in his outlook on the world around him. Like many Astartes, Egon was largely stoic and unemotional, and as a Doom Eagle he was at times especially so, maintaining this characteristic reservation even while in the company of all but his most trusted of fellow Astartes.
As a devout follower of his Chapter cult, Egon held a powerful fixation on the nature of death, his personal beliefs on which contributed to a strong personal philosophy of self-sacrifice, a common trait among many Doom Eagles. This also led to a strong distaste for extreme glory-seeking behavior as well.
===Physical Appearance===
Egon's body was somewhat strange in appearance. Without a terrible amount of observation it was clear that his frame was not originally meant to accommodate such a huge form, and that his once relatively lithe body had been artificially altered to support the immense amount of added muscle mass and the various Astartes implants. Like most Space Marines, his relatively normal-sized head seemed disproportionately small compared to his otherwise massive body. These traits were amplified further when Egon underwent modification to his gene-seed to become a Primaris Marine, further increasing his physical size.
Egon possessed an unusual amount of hair for a Space Marine, preferring to keep it around an inch or two in length, though he periodically shaved it. He typical kept himself clean-shaven, though he did sometimes sport five o'clock shadow or even a short beard, particularly while on long campaigns which kept him from regular grooming.
==Wargear==
===Firstborn Wargear===
*Mark VII Aquila power armor
*Master-crafted Mark Vb Godwyn pattern bolterTalorus's favorite ranged weapon as a Firstborn Marine was the signature weapon of the Adeptus Astartes, the Godwyn-pattern boltgun. Egon's bolter, however, was specially hand-crafted just for him, using parts from his original bolter, which was destroyed during the Severus Crusade. Like most Godwyn pattern boltguns, Egon's bolter sported a built-in ammunition counter, Sinister/Dexter locking mechanism, and a palm-print genetic sensor. But in addition to these features, Egon's bolter included support for both semi-automatic and fully automatic firing modes, and the weapon was tuned specifically to the autosenses of Egon's armor, significantly increasing its effectiveness in his hands. Holy scripture was also painstakingly inscribed into the weapon's casing, appeasing the weapon's and further augmenting its accuracy and killing potential. Sadly, the weapon was directly hit by a traitor Legionnaire's during the , saving Egon but damaging the weapon beyond repair.
*Mark III bolt pistolThe standard sidearm of the Adeptus Astartes, Talorus used his Bolt Pistol as a fallback ranged weapon.
*Ingelldina pattern power swordGifted to Egon by Diominus Feldon shortly after he was promoted to Sergeant, Egon's sword was his weapon of choice for close-range fighting. Inscribed into the blade in flowing, spidery script was the phrase "", a phrase from an ancient -era tome sacred to the Doom Eagles Chapter. The weapon felled uncounted foes until it was eventually broken in two during the Fall of Cadia, and the recovered fragments would ultimately be reforged into the master-crafted blade which Talorus would wield as a Primaris Lieutenant.
===Primaris Wargear===
*Mark X Tacticus power armorJust as Egon was among the first of his Chapter to endure the Rubicon Primaris, Egon's Mark X Tacticus power armor was among the first such sets produced by Doom Eagles Techmarines based on design schematics. Crafted with the knowledge that Egon would be the one to wear the armor, it was inscribed with his personal heraldry and adorned with his many battle honors.
*Master-crafted Mark II Cawl pattern bolt rifleOne of a new breed of bolt weapons designed for use by the Primaris Space Marines, Egon's Mark II Cawl pattern bolt rifle was once again one of the very first of such weapons to be produced natively on Gathis II by the Techmarines of the Doom Eagles Chapter.
*Cawl pattern bolt pistol
*Talon of Raemnor, master-crafted power swordMasterfully reforged from the remnants of his trusty power sword which was broken on Cadia, the Talon of Raemnor utilized ancient power field inductors salvaged from the Fist of Raemnor, a relic once wielded by Diominus Feldon.
==Trivia==
*From 990.M41 to 992.M41, Egon kept a mouse named Gabriel as a pet after he discovered the animal orphaned following the Liberation of Hafstrom II. He hand-raised and weaned the creature on the trip back to Gathis II, where he kept it in a glass case in his quarters at The Eyrie for two years until its death.
*Like the majority of Doom Eagles, Egon was exceptionally skilled in the use of , even despite the fact that he was not an Assault Marine. This was best seen during the Eneldor Campaign, when he and his squad donned jump packs in order to reach Ork anti-air guns atop Manufactorum Mendrachis.
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