Fūma Isamu

Known after his induction into the Wretched Sons as, *Gashadakuro*, after the flayed giants of Kyojino-rakuen folklore, Isamu was one of a number of Astartes taken from the Legions who didn't side with the Traitors and forced into service under Surmah Nyyrik. Wrathful beyond reason, Isamu was barely capable of rational and functional thinking, his mind broken in the process of tempering him until he was ready to accept the blessing of the Blood God, Khorne.

## History

Failure. Dishonor. Failure. Dishonor. Without cease did the excruciation continue; month after month, year after year, was Isamu forced to relive those final moments where his father was wiped from existence by the very ship he had plied the stars with crashing down upon him. The Witches; they made him relive those hours of butchery where his Legion was torn apart on the blades of Traitors again and again. With exacting clarity did they heap these torments upon his degrading mind until finally Isamu could take no more. Begging in his broken state for a release, pleading for the chance to end his suffering with the honor he deserved, and it was then that the Vicars acted.

Seals and locks disengaged behind the shadows and from them padded a razored silhouette; Sakari, High Vicar of the XX Legion, stepped into the narrow beam of light illuminating his hole. With chilling detachment he deigned to present Isamu with his meager salvation, dropping a napped, obsidian blade at his knees, a jagged skull-like symbol serving as the guard. No words were forthcoming, just the hum of his crimson battle plate and the sibilant intake of breath through his aberrant helmet. Staring up at his captor, gaze burning with hatred, Isamu grasped the hilt of the athame with both hands and plunged the blade into his gut, tearing it across his entire abdomen, spilling his entrails upon the cold, stone floor. Consciousness faded as his life pooled about his knees, the blade clattering to the floor as he pitched over onto his face and breathed his last.

An agonized scream erupted from dead lips as searing pain flooded his body, eyes wrenching open as lucidity returned him to the world of the living. He had died. He could see his life’s blood leaking across the rough stones beneath him, yet all he knew was a world of agony and that somehow he still breathed. Rolling onto his back, he took up the blade again and plunged it into his chest once, twice, thrice… and finally he felt the darkness once more creeping in at the edges of his vision, ready to usher him away to peace at last.

…. Blood was in his lungs, he could feel it draining from his lips, welling up from the wounds in his chest, but life still clung to his tormented frame. And it was then he heard the whispers, echoes within his mind commanding him to free himself, to *be* free. With shaking hands did he once more clasp the athame, drawing deep furrows from wrist to elbow, blood flowing freely down his hands and onto the floor. Into his flesh he carved, his mind slowly fracturing at the abuses heaped upon him as the voice echoed in his thoughts relentlessly, always demanding he free himself. An eternity seemed to pass as he flensed the flesh from his body until a crimson cadaver was all that remained, his Black Carapace gleaming in the fractured light. The whispers he’d been hearing for months, or was it years, kept bidding him to carve deeper, to let the blade sing through the meat of his being, and so he continued.

Time ceased to exist, only the rasping sound of a honed edge on bone and the slop of wet meat falling on stone. The pit reeked of iron and rot, the air having long since grown oppressively humid with weight of desperation. Only when a chill breeze danced across his exposed muscle did he realize he had a visitor. Once again Sakari had come to him, however this time, he came to speak. Kneeling down in the claret pool Isamu had made, he tenderly took the World Shaker’s head in his taloned hands; delicately cradling it as though he would break it with the smallest of gestures. With a voice like poison dripping from satin, Sakari cooed words of vile truth to him; that in his service to his lord he had given everything and yet was only repaid with scorn. Even in death could he not appease his sire, his blood not worthy of redemption, Daito only wishing him to suffer in shame eternal. He had seen fit to abandon Isamu when the galaxy war tearing itself apart and when leadership, when *guidance* was needed most. What kind of *father* abandons his sons in their most desperate time of need?

Like the molten core of Kyojino-rakuen, his rage spilled forth; pure and seething, his hatred flowed through him at the injustice, at the gall of his Primarch. If he had been so mighty, so stalwart, how was it that *The Laughing Mountain* was nothing more than dust and he yet lived? No, Daito, puerile son of the Emperor, *he* had failed, not him, not Isamu. His mind splintered and curled in on itself further still, cognizance dimming until all that remained was a simmering ember of loathing for his former Daimyo and the “Master of Mankind” who had set him on the path to ruin. If his blood could not return to him his honor, then he would drown worlds with the blood of innocents and enemies alike, until the judgements unfairly cast upon him drowned in so crimson a tide.

As his gaze bored into Isamu, Sakari spoke one final proclamation. That while his sire may have felt nothing but contempt for him, there was another lord who had found his unflinching loyalty commendable, who would make proper use of such a wrathful tool as he; all he need do is carve his devotion into his flesh. Isamu’s lidless stare conveyed little but Sakari knew the question burning inside him. Guiding his eyes to the athame, he gestured to the jagged skull and in that moment, lucidity, brief as it was, took hold. Pressing the tip of the blade into the meat of his chest, he replicated the image, his hand steady with conviction as an arterial river flowed anew. And with a bellow of rage that made the pool in which they knelt quiver, Isamu met his new lord, in all his terrible fury.

Under the ministrations of the Legion’s apothecaries was Isamu reborn, his Progenoid Glands being replaced by those of the Hounds of Surmah, and with it, his consecration was complete. His eyes glazed over with a pearlescent film as his teeth and nails began to sharpen to points, his muscles contracting as his body contorted and stretched. Verivaltan runes and Primordial cuneiform was engraved on a micro degree, blessing his frame with the roil power of the Empyrean and further proving his dedication to Arterial Tyrant. With such power focused upon him, his body became a perfect vessel for Khorne's fury, and like an empty chalice, Khorne poured fourth his undying rage into him.

It was the near-mindless hatred that seethed with him that proved to be his most horrific weapon; so potent was the hatred flowing through his veins that any who came into contact with the blood that flowed from the myriad of rents and tears in his armor were driven into a psychotic fury, infecting them with a fraction of the rage that howled through his being. Leeching its way into their system, every thought boiled down to the biological imperative to rip and tear into anything within sight, even their own bodies should they find nothing to vent their fury upon.

And so as a near-incandescent avatar of rage, Isamu strides across the field of battle, taking the tactics instilled in him by his former daimyo and crashing into enemy battle lines like the fist of a wrathful god. Luxuriating in the carnage and wanton destruction left in his wake, Isamu is more akin to a force of nature than a warrior, an unstoppable force that batters through every obstacle it encounters until nothing but ruin surrounds it.

## Wargear

#### **Armor of Scorn**

Wrought in the forges of Ilmarin aboard the *Sielun Murskaaja*, the Armor of Scorn is a titanic suit of Cataphractii pattern terminator armor that he was sealed within, acting as much a bastion of protection as a prison; the style a perverted parody of those worn by his former Legion, it’s reinforced belly-plate proof against all but the most savage of armaments. Over the intervening years, through the blessings of his patron and the ambient influence of the warp, the Armor of Scorn has fused with Isamu's body, muscle, ceramite and adamantium becoming one entity. Horns and other ossiferous growth sprout from its slab surfaces, while his fury-infected blood seeps from deep rents and cracks within it. Despite the more shambling appearance, it's resilience is unquestionable, Isamu casually shaking off direct blast from super-heavy tanks moments before crashing into them to exact retribution.

#### **Fists of the Titan**

Masterfully forged, these power fists became a simple extension of Isamu's body, able to move their intricately wrought servos as deftly as his own mutilated fingers; that his size allowed him such dexterity with such potent weapons was truly a horrifying reality. Spiked bonding studs cap each knuckle and every finger end in a curved point, allowing them to shear through most heavy armor long before the powerfield is even engaged. However, once the archaic disruptor fields are active, the ruin they inflict is abhorrent; the energy not simply wreathing them but detonating in a blast of anti-matter energy, atomizing anything unfortunate enough to find itself on the receiving end of Isamu's fury. Integrated into the palm of the left gauntlet is a chem-thrower that is grafted into Isamu's body, allowing him to siphon his rage-corrupted blood and drown tracts of space around him, spreading his mania and ensuring ever more blood is shed in the name of his god.