Hesta Khelena

> "*I have more regrets than anyone that yet lives in the Galaxy. I hope this one act earns me a measure of redemption.*"
> ― Attributed to Hesta Khelena, shortly before her death in the War of the Beast.
>
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## Hesta Khelena

### Titles

The Lady Primarch, Warden of the Eastern Fringe and the Dominion of Storms, Regent of Thramas, Lady-Protector of Gulgorahd

### Status

Deceased

**Hesta Khelena,** sometimes referred to as '**The Ashen Lady**', was the primarch of the XVII Legion of Space Marines, the Ashen Host.

Found on the world of Thramas, Hesta is most notable among her siblings for having created a small, personal empire centered on the world of Thramas by the time of her discovery. A fervent believer in the Imperial Truth, she and her legion were isolated and believed destroyed for the vast majority of the Atlas Apostasy and ignorant of the events outside of the Eastern Fringe until The Scouring. Hesta never forgave herself for her absence from Terra and would largely retire after the Scouring to write a series of texts on the Great Crusade, military strategy and religion and philosophy, notably including the Codex Astartes which provided a framework for the break-up of the legions. Hesta would be called on to lead the Imperium's armies twice more, once during the First Black Crusade in late M31, and finally the War of the Beast in mid M32, where she perished while slaying the Beast.

## History

### Early Life

Hesta landed upon the world of Thramas and was been taken in by the Khelena family, one of the many strato-aristocratic families that ruled over Thramas since the death of the last Baron of Thrame and the start of the Regency of Thramas, where the families would vote on who would assume the mantle of Regent after the death of the previous Regent.

Hesta, being adopted rather than a member of the Khelena family by blood, was excluded from the aristocratic court of Thramas but still received the typical education of a Thramasi aristocrat, in rhetoric, history, philosophy, linguistics and politics, before enlisting into the Thramassi Nightwatch as an officer. Thramas had long been the seat of empires in the Eastern Fringe under the Centauran Republic and then the Tenebris Freehold, and the Regency was no different. Thramas still had an interstellar empire, although vastly reduced to a handful of nearby systems that supplied the hive world with raw materials and foodstuffs in exchange for the security against raiding xenos and pirates provided by the Thramassi Nightwatch. Hesta served in the Nightwatch with distinction, her keen intellect allowing her to rise through the ranks at speed, rising to command a company, and then a regiment of the Thramassi Nightwatch, leading them in combat against orks, Drukari reavers, fleets of Khrave and human marauders. After several years leading her regiment, Hesta would be promoted to the Regent’s Military Staff, overseeing the wider, strategic picture of Thramas.

### Expansion of the Regency

The situation was as dire as it had ever been. Even with the industrial production of Thramas, and the discipline and training of its regiments of Nightwatch, the strategic calculus was undeniably against Thramas. There were simply too many threats, too many worlds to defend, and not enough ships and manpower to do it. Thramas would, over time, be ground down by the attrition of war. Hesta quickly determined that the most optimal approach, a retreat to consolidate Thramas' forces wasn’t an option; Thamas needed to hold the line where it was, to allow the supplies of minerals and food that fed the Hive World and allowed it to survive to continue to flow in.

Hesta was not about to simply give up and fight the war to an end that had seemed inevitable. Xenos could simply not be reasoned with or negotiated with; but human pirates, mercenaries and marauders were another matter entirely. Negotiations were held, and Hesta, arguing with the rhetoric, charisma and passion that only a Primarch could muster, persuaded the marauders and pirates to cease their assaults for payment of tributes, instead turning them against one another, while mercenaries were hired to be spent in the campaigns to come in place of Thramassi forces.

The campaign that was to come was a bloody one, as Thramas’ armies went on the offensive for the first time in centuries, liberating worlds lost to the xenos, or reuniting with those worlds once under Thramas’ protection but since forced to look to their own defences as the horrors of Old Night grew too much for the armies of Thramas to bear. Gradually expanding outwards over the course of decades, first northwards towards the night-shrouded world of Nostramo, as its vast reserves of adamantium were long known to Thramas and needed to fuel the industry needed to support the ongoing wars.

Nostramo, divided among its hundreds of feuding families and gangs, fell in line quickly, too disunited to offer resistance, its nobility given promises their status would be retained and eager for the wealth and goods to be gained from trading their adamantium off-world and its violent gangs were judged as suitable for recruitment into Thramas’ army, even if they were ill-disciplined and prone to infighting compared to their Thramasi counterparts. Nostramo’s peaceful incorporation would mark the height of Hesta’s success, with the Regent of Thramas naming her as his Marshal, the military commander of all of Thramas’ forces.

Thramas’ next contact of importance would be the ancient forge-world of Gulgorahd, too proud and powerful to swear fealty to a world such as Thramas, but more than willing to accept an alliance with it to pool their resources against the horrors of the Old Night, Thramas’ resources a welcome gift to Gulgorahd’s forges, while with the Crucible Zone thought to be blocking any warp routes to the Galactic South, Gulgorahd’s heavily fortified zone of space provided a corridor for further Thramasi expansion towards the worlds of Memlock and Heraldor. Hesta’s campaign into these systems would be delayed by her return to Thramas, where following her conquests and the death of the previous regent, Hesta was chosen as the new Regent of Thramas. Her new responsibilities slowed Thramas’ campaign into the Aegis Sector, and before the area was fully conquered, the advance scouts of the Great Crusade would come into contact with the Regency of Thramas.

### Discovery and Great Crusade

The Emperor, pleased by what His daughter had conquered, saw little need to delay His conquests for ceremony or tutelage, and departed soon after, leaving Hesta to be reunited with her legion. Upon being reunited with her legion Hesta was appalled by the XVIIth’s brutish and forceful way of war but approving of their discipline and zeal in its prosecution, and immediately set about channelling their characteristics as warriors into a more constructive and effective means of conquest. She focused on adapting the mechanised, combined arms tactics that had brought the Thramassi victory but also adjusting their post-Compliance undertakings, having those who remained behind on worlds also construct fortifications and logistical infrastructure to support the ever-advancing fronts of the Great Crusade in addition to the destruction of symbols of false belief as undertaken previously by the Iconoclasts, while their hosts of penitent followers were formed and organised into more formal units based around their planets of origin, trained and organised in the manner of the Thramasi Nightwatch.

Hesta’s transformation of the Iconoclasts into the Ashen Host was undertaken as she led her legion out into securing those areas around her burgeoning empire that she had not yet finished the conquest of, such as Memlock, Heraldor and Kehdure IV, before continuing into the Aether Reefs and the Storm’s Jaws. The brutal campaigns against the cannibal legions of Glabro, the battle-psykers of the lost moons of Thex, the monstrous, Ogryn-like warriors of Tohruk, and a dozen more aberrations and xenos races besides would reforge the XVIIth into the Ashen Host as it campaigned alongside the various regiments raised by Hesta in the pattern of the Nightwatch and the Taghmata Gulgorahd, scouring the worlds so that they would not threaten her realm like they had in the past.

But Hesta's success bred envy and jealousy, and Hesta’s domain brought much of it upon her. The three forge-worlds of the Triplex Sector, favoured by both the Imperium and Mars over battered Gulgorahd, viewed her empire with disdain, envy and some wariness, while there were those within Hesta’s domain that sought to throw off her rule. In particular, the Ashen Host's status as the largest of the legions marked them out to be destroyed by Atlas Monomakh at the start of the Apostasy.

### Atlas Apostasy

In the opening act of the Atlas Apostasy, the Ashen Host was badly mauled in the Betrayal at Cherno IX by the Nova Legion and Purifiers, alongside half of Atlas' own Steel Men under the command of Erebus. The Ashen Host survived despite their heavy losses and remained a cohesive fighting force, and reinforced by allied Imperial Army and Mechanicum Taghmata forces provided by Gulgorahd and Triplex, were able to successfully fight on.

Although unable to defeat the Ashen Host and their allies, Hesta remained cut off from the wider Imperium by the Ruinstorm and was widely believed to be dead with her legion destroyed. Hesta did not learn what had transpired in the wider Imperium until the Scouring made contact with her and her legion in 017.M31.

### The Scouring and Later Life

Hesta never forgave herself for her absence, and thereafter remained in the Eastern Fringe of the Galaxy while her legion was split up into numerous successor chapters. She would go on to lead the Imperium's armies during the First Black Crusade before perishing during the War of the Beast. Her body is preserved in stasis in a cathedral on Thramas, where it is a major site of pilgrimage.