Talakan

Raised to the Star Guardians from the Ring alongside Darius Kardmah, the future Commander of the 20th Division, Talakan likewise survived the Squat Wars, proving his mastery over not only Imperial Technology, but the Squats psi-stone technology, something Forge Master Saros and Shaaa Hydrades himself explicitly forbade. Regardless of his clear distaste for this order, Talakan's skills on other areas of technology were not passed over, the young warrior being sent to Mars for further training in the art of the Machine, directed not simply by battlefield necessity, but by the Martian Priesthood itself. It was during this time that Talakan met and befriended ...., a fellow trainee in the art of the machine, sent to Mars by the XIIIth Legion, the Consuls Exemplar.

As the Crusade continued, Talakan often travelled to the XIIIth Legions crusade fleets at the behest of Gaius Augustus Caligula himself, the Primarch of the XIIIth requesting the aid to ensure his sons, specifically his kill teams, could continue to learn from the mechanically minded IVth Legion, in the same vein as when Commander Harnt Redal had travelled to the XIIIth to better train their warriors in the art of boarding warfare. Talakan never minded these secondments, for while he taught, he was also taught in turn, Gaius allowing him access to the Psi-Stone technology that his own lords had denied him, though Talakan had no idea of the depths of the Consul's experimentation with such technologies, never seeing the ultimate expression of such warp technology, the Obzhet Venatus.

Eventually, as with all of the IVth Legion, Talakan was recalled to Terra in the wake of Ullanor, beginning to work on the mighty form of the Solar Guardian Array. It was also at this time that Talakan's skills were noticed, selected to be part of the expansion of the legion, transferred out of the 1st Division to instead stand as the Forge Lord of the 20th, one of only 19 individuals to hold such a rank within the Star Guardians. This placed Talakan alongside Darius once more, perfectly placing him for the Lord of the Astral Ravagers to turn a mere resentment into disdain, his hearts blackening as treason seeped in. When the inevitable happened and the Warmasters forced reached the Sol System, Talakan joined Darius and a majority of the 20th Division, turning their guns on their former brothers without mercy, adding their might to tear down the festering Imperium and their restrictive laws on technological advancement. It was recorded in the history books that few Star Guardians ever fought o the soil of Terra during the first siege, many having perished during the First Solar War, while those who survived almost universally travelled to Sol to combat the Light Bringers forces there. However, this is not entirely correct, the Astral Ravagers unleashing themselves against the world, Talakan's knowledge of the defences providing invaluable to the traitor forces.

In victory, Talakan did not remain with the Astral Ravagers for long, instead travelling to Mars once more to meet with the new lords of the Red Planet, the Dark Mechanicum to the loyalists, and the True Mechanicum amongst their own ranks. Once more, Talakan learned the ways of the machine, but this time it was not merely the technological he studied, but the daemonic, becoming fascinated with the creatures of the warp, how they could be found to both flesh and metal alike, creating possessed warriors such as those seen in the ranks of the Hounds of Surmah, or terrifying daemon engines, such as the Banelord Titans that had been unleashed during the Solar War. In this, Talakan once again worked alongside ......, the pair binding daemons of ever more power to ever more potent war engines, both taking their first steps on the road to becoming true warp smiths. It was a path however that Talakan would never finish, the gods having another fate in store for him.

Though the daemon engines Talakan and ..... created were indeed great, unnumbered loyalists falling to their weapons, they often laboured on a fare greater project, not merely a daemon within a machine, but a techno-virus, a refinement of the scrap-code in use against the loyalist forces, daemonic essence bound into its every code line. With refinements suggested by the biologis of the Mechanicum and apothecaries of the IInd Legion, the project soon came to fruition, named simply as "The Obliterator".

Designed to perfectly blend the flesh, the machine and the daemonic, the Obliterator Virus had been extensively tested on lesser creations, but the first time it was truly unleashed was not upon the enemies of Antarus, but upon Talakan himself, his flesh warping as it merged with his Terminator warplate, the weapons of his forge being drawn in as he underwent his metamorphosis, When the agonising changes had finally finished, Talakan was all but unrecognisable, a hulking brute whose very flesh rippled and twisted, revealing guns of terrifying potency, powered by the daemons within his skin.

Soon, Talakan strode forth from Mars, rejoining Lord Darius and the Astral Ravagers not as their Forge Lord, but as their Obliterator, the first and mightiest of their kind, a living vector of the Techno-Virus, undying, unrelenting, and utterly without pity.