Varinius Rampt

Varinius Rampt is one of only twenty warriors in existence who holds the ultimate honour of being the first amongst their legion, the first one to not only begin implantation, but to survive the process, becoming the first of the superhumans to carry Shaaa’s geneseed within him. Varinius well remembers the time of the Crusade before it was truly the crusade, fighting a few small skirmishes on Terra itself, before leading a massed assault on Luna as the first extraterrestrial action of the entire Great Crusade, even the Primarchs having no such a claim.

Named as the Lord Commander of the IVth Legion, it was Varinius who pioneered the idea of the ‘tomb ships’ of the IVth that took Luna, deactivated lifeless ships floating towards their target unseen and unlooked for, and it was also Varinius who renamed the IVth, becoming the Dark Watchers to ensure that the very tactic he had developed did not in turn get used against the Imperium.

For decades, Varinius commanded the Dark Watchers with skill and honour, before finally the legion was reunited with their sire. There, at the Ring, Varinius knelt before Shaaa and pledged himself anew to the reborn Star Guardians, retaining his title of Lord Commander, now of the 1st Division instead of the entire legion. It was a position he would hold for but a few more years, Varinius almost surviving the Squat Wars unscathed, almost.

At the final climax of the war, Duran, the Squat’s military leader, struck against Shaaa himself in a suit designed to match a Primarch, Varinius powerless to do anything but stand before it without fear, only to be crushed, his life almost snuffed out instantly. By nothing more than grit and determination however, Varinius survived, being placed into stasis and returned to the Ring, there to be interred within a dreadnought sarcophagus, the Lord Commander no more, now rising as the Fracturam Lord Commander, commander of the Fracturam, the legion's honoured dreadnoughts.

From that day forth, Varinius would forever be on the frontline, leading with the skill he displayed in life, and taking to his new form like no other had before or since, perhaps within the entire Imperium. First crusading within a Contemptor shell, Varinius would later be transferred to a mighty Leviathan dreadnought in the days after Ullanor. However, even Varinius was not immune to the flaws of the Leviathan shell, his new body placing a lethal level of strain upon his mind, and it soon became clear that Varinius would pay the ultimate toll over a century after his first ‘death’, either with his reason, or his very life.

Shaaa would not allow that to happen. Varinius, one of the few Terrans to have ever bonded properly with the Breacher Lord, only Julius Atalan rivaling him in that regard, both served on the Syriac as a result. Shaaa would not let such an ancient and noble warrior fall to the mechanical failings of his new body, and so set about creating a new, final form for the former Lord Commander.

The end result could not have come soon enough, and barely a decade before the Antarus Apostasy erupted, Gauis was transferred to the “Olympian Dreadnought” shell, there to remain until his final day. The Olympian shell was a marvel of technological engineering, though never designed for widespread use, and as such could afford to utilise the greatest materials available, and even, under direct authorisation from the Emperor himself, some of the advances used within the Custodes own Telemon Heavy Dreadnought. While many of that dreadnought's technology was denied for use for the project, Shaaa holding to the Emperor’s word and not using the full scope of what he learned of the vehicle's construction, the Olympian Dreadnought was still far superior to any other shell used within the legions.

It was equipped with an Aiolos Missile Launcher in place of the Spiculus Bolt Launcher or Frag Launcher usually mounted on the back of the Leviathan or Telemon, as well as a custom wrought cannon based off of the Iliastus Accelerator Culverin, though it lacked the specialized heliothermic warheads for its shells, instead making use of micro-plasma warheads instead, and finally a Siege Claw to tear apart enemies in close quarters. When combined with numerous backup, redundant and secondary support and weapon systems, the Olympian Pattern shell was a force to be reckoned with and feared in equal measure, Varinius making heavy use of it throughout the Antarus Apostasy and the First Solar War.

In the end however, no matter the skill of the pilot and the nature of his wargear, Varinius was not invincible. On the soil of the world that bore him, fighting against the impossible odds of the Siege of Terra itself, one of the few Star Guardians who had not reached the fleet before the Star Guardians, Varinius came face to face with the Daemonic Assassin of the Consuls Exemplar, GL-41-V3. Though Varinius fought well against the warp-tainted creature, he was in the end no match for its power, GL-41-V3 tearing through his sarcophagus and finally ending Varinius’s long life, hauling his decrepit corpse out for all those to see, mortal forces fleeing in terror at the sight of the ancient warriors true form.