Zade Hugo

The 7th False Primarch

Zade was one of the ill-fated “Primarch Secundus Project", designed to be a new generation of primarchs designed by the Mad Magos Clerval. Zade Hugo, also known as “The Biter” was raised on the forge world of Enshu. He found his gene-brother, Renault Vork, The Eater, before Clerval could reclaim him. He was a morose and cruel man who drank the blood of others. He was ultimately either executed or became a daemon of Nurgle.

## Early Years

Zade was born on Enshu, a remote forge world that was orbited by the trash world Naraku. The forges burned bright but the people’s spirits were downtrodden. Slave labor was enforced across the planet’s surface and most of the underclass was nothing more than fuel for the forges. Zade was put to work in a foundry at a young age and picked up elements of the Cult Mechanicus’ teachings, though only in the most general sense. He would pervert these teachings as he grew and use them to his own ends.

The false primarch stole many trinkets and scraps from the foundry he worked at and had constructed a great many weapons and pieces of technology that he sold for extra food and to bribe guards. In time he had started a criminal operation that funded several revolutionary groups on the planet’s surface. In one fell swoop his criminal empire, known as the Black Cartel, overthrew the planetary governor and seized the means of production. The Adeptus Mechanicus had no choice but to deal with him directly and the morrose giant of a man demanded a great many leniencies for him and his cartel but offered much more in return. A deal was struck and forge world Enshu began becoming more productive than it ever had been while being corrupted from within by Zade.

Zade learned what he could and eventually collected enough dirt on key members of the Mechanicus that he was able to leverage them to make a great many weapons for his growing army. He himself was a talented engineer, despite not having any formal training, and was later indoctrinated into a heretical sect of the mechanicus by a Heretek who saw an opportunity.

## Blood & Science

Zade had a taste for blood from a young age and used to suck it out of bilge rats and chem dogs for sustenance. It became a rite of passage when joining the Black Cartel and a hallmark of their iconogy. His fascination with blood lead to him cutting himself and others for no other reason than to watch it pool. Most of his later work focused on hematology and genetics, both in the medicinal sense and as a means of biological warfare.

Despite his cruel ways, Zade was an astute medical researcher and engineer. He would twist this knowledge to perform horrific medical experiments on his population and create heretical bio-technological monstrosities that would make even the Dark Mechanicus look on in awed wonder.

Unlike his brothers Zade knew from a young age what he was and he had grand plans of his own to spawn a legion of his own marines. He started by tampering with the genetics of members of his Black Cartel; turning many of them into inhuman monsters while achieving bio-technological effects that raised some of them almost to the level of an Astartes.

## The Brother’s War

Once he’d placed his cartel at the head of the (now corrupted) forge world of Enshu, he set his sights on the warring marauders of the feral trash world in the system. With them he’d have an army to wield the weapons of his forge world and he could proceed to squash others worlds underneath its heel. Unbeknownst to him his gene-brother, Renault the Eater, had been secreted away to Naraku and had likewise taken the world by force. Before Zade could act, Renault and his marauders (known as the Red Sons) invaded Enshu. The Black Cartel was able to repel them, but at great cost. The ensuing war left a quarter of the population of the forge world and half of the remaining population of Naraku dead.The two depopulated planets struggled to meet the increasing burdens of the war and eventually it came down to feral hand to hand fighting in the capital city of the forge world. It was here that Zade and Renault first met and engaged in a primal struggle. Both were left disfigured by the battle, sporting scars that would remain with them for the rest of their lives, but neither could best the other. Renault took a bite out of his ear and Zade took a chunk of flesh from the Eater’s shoulder in the process during the battle. Recognizing each other not only as kindred souls but also as equal combatants they settled on a co-monarchy where Renault would administer Naraku, train troops, and manage the slave labor force. Zade would ruel Enshu, provide weapons of war for the troops, and maintain the supplies. It is said that after this they became inseparable; becoming not only abusive lovers but also they would grow inconsolable and frantic if they were apart for too long. They even developed a weird, grunting, language that originated on Naraku that only they spoke.

## The Devil’s Gambit

While Renault set out on a conquest of nearby worlds ruled by exodite eldar, Zade set his sights a bit higher. He and his Black Cartel set out to steal the gene seed of a powerful heretical chapter of marines on the fringe of the system known as the Devil’s Cousins. They had occasionally raided the forge world and were a threat to their power. Even with the augmented members of his Black Cartel and some of the warriors of Naraku it would be impossible to destroy them. Zade set a trap, luering the Devil’s Cousins to attack a convoy of theirs for supplies too good to ignore. Once onboard he released a powerful biological weapon that compromised even their Astartes immunities (as it actually piggybacked on them) but preserved their gene-seed. Zade, gene-seed in hand (corrupt though it was), then sent a suicidal strike force to their homeworld to “as for forgiveness” but actually spread the plague he had invented. When it was all said and done Zade had the gene-seed and organs required to make his own marines and the Devil’s Cousins lost a full 1/4th of their number.

## Reunion with Clerval

After the situation with the Devil’s Cousins and several other crusades, Renault and Zade were visited by an envoy from Clerval. They consumed the envoy, splitting her equally, and sent a message to Clerval that everything in the system belonged to them, including his ships and troops if he entered their system. At the Battle of Naraku Renault and Zade were bested by forces lead by their gene-brethren Hamish, Bora, Dracon, and Pandu. It is said that Hamish himself bested Zade in combat though sheer experience and foreknowledge of Zade’s actions- earning mutual respect. Once bested The Eater and The Biter were detained and eventually deemed too valuable by Clerval not to use. For their part they were motivated by the thought of conquest and plunder during the crusade and joined on.

## Role in Clerval’s Crusade

**Main Article:** Clerval's Crusade

Zade was like Clerval in many ways; bright in science, skilled in engineering, and deeply twisted. Zade’s odd behaviors went ignored by Clerval who considered him his “lab assistant” or “protege”. Under his tutelage Zade flourished and eventually used his newfound skills to not only produce more Secundus Astartes but augment his own with new techno-biological features. He achieved this by studying the corrupted gene-seed of the Devil’s Cousins. (Heretical rumors say that some of these augmentations made it into the primaris space marines.)

On the battlefield Zade was just as savage as his brother Renault. His forces were known as the Black Cartel and they consisted of not only Secundus Astartes but were augmented by the horrific nightmarish abominations and servitors that came out of Zade’s lab. His marines were also subject to many techno-biological modifications and had strange powers. They kept up the disgusting habit of drinking blood and other bodily fluids of their victims - though it was more ritualized and less prevalent than it was in the early days of the Black Cartel.

The Black Cartel had a distinguished history on the battlefield and are famous for their defeat of a powerful sorcerer coven during the Battle of Hellsmith Falls that saved Pandu and Dracon from an untimely death.

## Fate

During the crusade it was obvious that Renault, Zade, and Bora were cut from a different mold than the rest. They were violent, brutal, and fought for the joy of it. Renault and Zade in particular fetishized this aspect of war and fell deeper and deeper into the clutches of Chaos. They grew stranger and stranger, nibbling on each other’s flesh and remaining closer than ever. Khorne and Nurgle and poisoned their minds and during the Battle of Runciter where Clerval’s forces fought with the Eldar against a chaos warband the forces under the command of Zade and Renault turned on the rest of Clerval’s fleet. The bloody battle pit gene-brother against gene-brother and Clerval’s forces took heavy losses from which they never fully recovered.

During this battle Zade put his grotesque cannibalistic tendencies on display for all to see when he ate his brother, the false primarch Horation Shrike. Shrike was a failed experiment who never got his brother's enhancements and legend has it that Zade ate Shrike, ripping him into bloody chunks and eating him part by part while he was still alive. It also says that Zade still has a red stain on his lips from eating Shrike’s body.

One theory says that Zade Hugo fled into the Immaterium with the aid of the Dark Mechanicus who prized his talents and whisked him away at the last moment. The other says that he was slain by Bora in single combat, by Pandu when he tried to burn the corruption out of Hugo, or by his own brother Renault when they both consumed each other. It is likely that Zade, or some part of Zade, still exists in the Immaterium as a daemon of Nurgle and many claim to have seen him or at least something that looks like him since the Battle of Runciter and such a being may have partaken in the Siege of Nar’Whin against Clerval’s forces.

## The Black Cartel

Hugo’s men are now a faction affiliated with the Dark Mechanicus and Nurgle. They constantly modify their decaying bodies and breed increasingly horrific bio-mechanical monsters to use as beasts of war. They live on the blood of others, as it is pumped into their deformed bodies as fast as they can gulp it down. A mess of tubes and syringes they know only pain and futility. Many were killed by Col. Horatio Shrike's men before they escaped (possibly to the Immaterium) for their master's crime of eating their commanding officer.

Before Clerval’s crusade they were a criminal organization that crushed the leadership of an entire forge world under their heel and they still maintain that mafioso mindset. They are famous for daring thefts and terror attacks accompanied by violent biological warfare attacks. Even during Clerval’s crusade they were disgusting, deformed, wights who only vaguely resemble humanity. Once they were freed from Imperial restriction they took on increasingly inhuman forms, sacrificing any connection to who they once were.

A Morose and Desecrated ManPossible Daemon FormA Secundus Astartes from Zade's Black Cartel.