Hamish Morder

The 20th False Primarch

Hamish was one of the ill-fated Primarch Secundus Project, designed to be a new generation of primarchs designed by the Mad Magos Clerval. Hamish Morder is the false primarch who grew backwards through time. He was a powerful psyker who couldn’t control his powers and jumped so far back through time that he was unborn. Since his personal time runs opposite of the rest of the universe, his tale will be told according to his own personal timeline.

## Early Years: The Siege of Nar’Whin

Hamish was intended to be secretly transported to various worlds to simulate what happened to the original primarchs but, unlike his gene-siblings, he really was tossed into the warp by chaos. Harmish, who had aged to about 6 when he arrived, found himself on the planet Nar’Whin months before the siege, sometime in the later days of the Indominus Crusade- a thousand years from when he was born. He lived on the Industrial world, stealing to survive and bearing witness as the forces of Chaos descended on the world. He got the name Hamish Morder after he attempted to enlist using the dog-tags of someone with that name. He met his brothers and was informed by Clerval of his nature. He was trained by his brothers for a short time before the conflict and they informed him that he would one day teach them.

## The First Jump

Jumping through time, to a point earlier in Clerval and his brother’s campaign during the Indominus Crusade Hamish lived with them for several years, training and learning all he could from them. He grew close to Clerval during this, seeing him a very literal father figure despite his madness. Hamish showed a great aptitude for not only combat but technology as well. He was tutored by Bathory Sims and, though not his equal, was regarded as brilliant by his peers. He was his brother’s mentors and trainers when they first met and became a child before their eyes. In turn, they trained him as he had trained them during his later jumps.

## Later Jumps

**Main Article:** Clerval's Crusade

Clerval and his gene-sons, the false primarchs, encountered Morder a total of nineteen more times over the course of events. Hamish was present at each major engagement they fought at, with his skill increasing as the date decreased. He was a one-man army by the end, a true Primarch Secundus who was as much an asset as a battlefield commander as he was operating his small unit, The Twenty. Hamish’s greatest talents lay in the execution of small, surgical, special operations actions which he undertook frequently without waiting for consent of those operating with him. He grew a bit arrogant in his earliest encounters with the other Primarch Secundus; he was a little less than thousand years older than them and had centuries of battle experience that they lacked. While he trained and educated them, he was described as bitter and jaded.

## "Reunion" With Clerval

It is said that Hamish was the first False Primarch “found” by Clerval, as Hamish may have sought his creator out early in his quest and guided him. Records of this are non-existent due to Clerval’s madness and paranoia but it is clear that the early false primarchs knew about Hamish Morder as he is referenced casually in recorded conversations during some of their first encounters. Exactly what his influence was on Clerval is a matter of speculation. Some say he guided him to the best possible path while others say Hamish was an agent of Tzeentch ensuring everything went according to plan.

## The Twenty

He knew his men from their future engagements and had a band known as “The Twenty” that he relied on in combat as his personal companions and confidants. He trained them and, as he got older and they got younger, he relied increasingly less on them. The Twenty were supposedly his twenty most trusted guards that protected him during the Siege of Nar’Whin so he knew they survived until that point and were worthy of his attention. These marines, though Secundus Astartes, were loyal to him and seem to have been given secret missions to carry out in his name during his times of absence.

## Fate

His fate is ultimately unknown but is greatly theorized about, particularly by his brothers. Most believe he was “unborn” and simply ceased to exist at the moment of his inception as a fetus in the gene labs of Clerval. All credible evidence suggests this.

There are, however, paintings saved from Terra’s earliest days that recount someone that looks and sounds like him (though this is probably wishful thinking). There is a phrase, “apophenia” which means “seeing patterns where there are none” and if one indulges in this they can trace depictions of people like him through the Imperium. If true he was he was a Thunder Warrior and was at the Siege of Terra during the Horus Heresy, was at the Battle for Macragge, appeared in each Dark Crusade; he is a nobody in orange armor with dark skin that appears in times of trouble. There are even lies that he was also Alpharius Omegon (or perhaps just one of the pair).

The most heretical rumors say he is known to the Emperor and has been tasked with a terrible purpose by the God Emperor. These lies, codified in the heretical scrolls known as the **Vigil Viginti** (Roughly the *“Watch of Twenty”* in High Gothic) say that he eventually jumped back to man’s earliest days and sired children. It is said that all of the earliest psykers are his children and the shaman who all killed themselves to bring about the creation of the Emperor of Mankind are his children. This would make the Emperor his descendant and he the Emperor’s descendent. The **Vigil Viginti** say that he is currently residing at the moment of universal creation, the beginning and end of time, and awaits the time when he can jump forward again or is called from non-existence for some greater purpose. Several cults worship him as if he were the Emperor himself, a kind of two-part deity: the 20th False Primarch (as a sort of "beginning and end of the Emperor's life") and as the Emperor himself (as the actionable middle part). Each of these groups have been thinly veiled Tzeentch cults and have been purged.

One of Hamish's chosen Twenty.