Melchior Bohemond

> "*You are my blade, my weapon for battle— with you I shatter nations, with you I destroy empires*"
> ― Melchior Bohemond's first words to his Legion
>
>

## Melchior Bohemond

### Status

Deceased

**Melchior Bohemond**, was one of twenty genetically constructed beings by the Emperor known as the Primarchs. Into him, it was said He placed His nobility, honour, and devotion. He was the Grand Master and Primarch of the II Legion, the Hospitallers.

When the nascent primarchs were scattered into the void, Melchior landed upon the world of Maltya. Maltya society was dedicate to knightly orders and religious monasticism, Melchior being inducted and raised in the Hospitallers that combined both these virtues. He spent his youth almost entirely at war or under siege, and as such became a master at defensive forms of warfare, from the construction of impenetrable fortresses to fighting withdrawals.

This mastery did not prevent him from going on the offensive, conquering the world of Maltya before taking it to the stars. His entire life had been spent with a sureity of a greater being or creator, and so he followed this instinct to find him. Both these convictions were mad flesh when he met the Emperor of Mankind, who revealed to Melchior his purpose. This meeting fostered within him a religious devotion to his father that spread to his legion.

Taking to his role quickly, his understanding of fortifications and artillery meant he was often drafted in designing great citadels and intra-planetary defenses in times of great turmoil. This inadvertently gave Melchior a more public image than he may have intended, with his name becoming synonmous with safety and honour. Whether it was by his order or the independent action of his sons, many of the planets visited by the Hospitallers led to seeds being planeted that made the worlds more receptive to the later Imperial Faith that his beliefs would later create.

Suspicions to his devotion were held by few sibling primarchs, chief of which was Atlas. Wishing to cow his religious brother, whose beliefs were an affront to Atlas' opinion of the Emperor and posed a threat to his later Apostasy, Atlas orchestrated the Monarchia Tragedy. Sources disagree over following events, as they were withheld from public publication, however they agree an altercation occured between the brothers that led to Melchior departing and bringing his Legion to the furthest edge of the Imperium.

Initially unbelieving of the betrayal despite Atlas' actions, it was not until the testimony of Aleksandr Zorkastanov that he agreed to return to Terra. For much of the Apostasy, Melchior put his fortifying expertise to work, shoring up the defences of Terra and the wider Solar System in preparation for the greatest battle it had ever seen. Slaying his brother Sceafa Kentigern in the opening stages, Melchior fought many of his siblings and despaired at what had become of them. He was later killed on the final day of the battle, believed in defense of the father he devoted himself to.

As the Imperial Cult supplanted the Imperial Truth, Melchior role in its formulation led to him being branded the '**First Apostle**', despite never holding that title, while his primary epithet is that of the '**First Martyr**' due to his death. Imperial citizens often recall the memory and legend of Melchior fondly due to the fact he did not survive beyong the Apostasy and did not suffer the loss of honour and disgrace experience by his survivng siblings in the interveneing years