Magos Vathek

“Heresy, they call it. They are fools. The heresy is to have the technology to achieve your will, and to renounce it in favor of politics and outdated traditions. I spit upon the Opus Machina, and I am damned in the eyes of the Omnissiah. I am strangely content, knowing that.”
-Magos Vathek, infamous heretek known as the Unkillable
Magos Vathek is an arch-heretek and former member of the Lathe-Covenant Council. Infamous both in the Tech-Priesthood and amongst
the Inquisition, Vathek devised several machines that operate
on a principle known as the “Sarcosan wave,” originally rediscovered by Umbra Malygris. Sarcosan wave
generators restore a measure of life to the dead,
animating corpses with an unnatural hunger
in an unspeakable mockery of the living. The
Sarcosan wave generators built into Vathek’s
own carapace have allowed his survival in
many encounters that should have been fatal.
The facts of Magos Vathek’s career, before he was cast
out from the Adeptus Mechanicus and became a
hunted renegade are entirely unknown, and the
tech-priest authorities have been singularly
unforthcoming in this regard. It is thought
that he was attached to the Explorator fleets
of Archmagos Paracelsus Thule before some incident
or event drove him mad, turning him into a
renegade hunted equally by the Inquisition
and the forces of the Machine Cult. His known aliases include the Brass Lord, the
Necro-Sage, Vathek the Undying, the Dockside Ripper and many more.
Vathek’s goals are well known to the Inquisition (though
no less dire for that). He is obsessed with the accumulation, perfection and manipulation of
dark technologies to perfect a means of preserving and restoring life within
previously dead tissue, although he is also known to have
created forbidden weaponry, crafted flesh
gholams, and experimented with a variety
of prohibited alchemical and energy systems. To this end, he has exhaustively
researched and uncovered countless banned and heretical
technologies. Some are far older than the Imperium, while
others are even xenos in origin.
In addition, upwards of three thousand
Imperial citizens have died in his vile experiments, most notably
in a mass casualty event known as the “Morningside
Incident” on Solomon, and on a smaller scale during
the “dockside ripper” murders on Dreah. At the end
of the latter, Vathek slew a Mechanicus force
sent to destroy him and escaped offworld. Even worse, the suffering of some of his victims have been prolonged in some horrific ‘unlife.’ To
the Inquisition, Vathek is a highly dangerous threat to the
Imperium who must be eliminated at all costs, and they are
willing to pursue him to the darkest corners of the Calixis
Sector. This zeal in hunting him is only exceeded by the
Mechanicus, who constantly have dozens of kill-teams
pursuing him.
He is also known to have
attacked a previously unknown
resurrectionist cult on the
cemetery world of Pilgrim's Pause and left great slaughter
in his wake, plundering
the cult’s own dark secrets. It is also believed he has some hand in the work of Caste Necrosis, a hidden group within the Hippocrasian Sect, or he may have simply inspired them.
Vathek’s current whereabouts
and activities remain unknown.
In appearance, Vathek looks
to be a heavily augmented
tech-priest, habitually robed
in tattered black, surrounded by
a multitude of black-iron and brass
mechadendrites fitted with surgical tools, callipers,
and energy coils. He is known to have incorporated the forbidden
technology of a Sarkossan wave generator into his own carapace, and his face is covered by a silver skull mask grafted onto
necrotic muscle and bone. He is believed to be no longer “alive” in any meaningful sense, but propelled by the power of his
own dark technology. He has proven extremely difficult to slow or destroy with conventional weapons fire, and extreme
measures are to be advised when confronting him.
Magos Vathek is an archetypical mad scientist, an insane
genius willing to sacrifice everything to learn his secrets.
Therefore, he is most likely to be found in locations where
he may work undisturbed, such as backwater planets without
substantial Imperial presence, or the darkest depths of a hive
world. Vathek is also extremely solitary, and is unlikely to
join forces with local recidivist or criminal elements. Simply
put, he has no interest in their goals or motivations, and
they have nothing to provide him, save further subjects for
his experiments.
Aside from his drive for dark scientific lore, Vathek appears to have no known goals or plans. He also does not cooperate
with or serve others. This does not mean, however, that Vathek is alone or
vulnerable in his laboratories. As a former tech-magos, he is
likely to set up a wide variety of security systems ranging
from las-trips to proximity mines, and have a veritable
army of servitors (or reanimated corpses) he can throw at
his enemies.
According to the agents of the Lords Dragon,
Vathek has made preparations to leave the Calixis
Sector for some distant destination. He has begun
forming around him a group of similarly apostate
Tech-Priests that has been dubbed “the Stygiasts.”
The speculum umbrae is a similar creation of the Animal
Mori, that purports to allow
communication with spirits
of the dead. Firmly renounced
by the Lathe-Covenant Council,
the current theory within the
Calixian Mechanicus is that such
devices instead are contacting the Warp or
are somehow transmitting “echoes” of living
souls rather than the truly dead. This has not
tempered the Logicutioners when they find those possessing such heresies.