Azus Bahmut

**Azuz Bhamut**, known as the '***Ghost of the Sands***' and '***The King of Darkness***', is the Primarch of the XIVth Legion - the Dune Serpents. Seldom was the enigmatic Primarch seen - even by the Space Marines of his own Legion - yet his authority was absolute. Despite his covert style of leadership, Azus fought as a consummate predator in battle. 'The King of Darkness' was known for his fierce and deadly skills in battle, striking from the shadows like a deadly desert cobra, killing his foes from afar, without hesitation or remorse, before fading into the shadows once more.

Outside the Assassin Clades of the Officio Assassinorum, Azus' skill-at-arms were honed to a fine killing edge - born of the convergence of will, physiology and conditioning - with the fieldcraft and panoply of arms and wargear that was second-to-none. His ability to insinuate himself into the perfect position to deliver the killing shot from afar at the pivotal moment of a campaign, became legendary. Extant records indicate that during the Great Crusade, the skills of the Fourteenth's Primarch were enough to bring at least a dozen or so worlds successfully into Imperial Compliance, doing so with only a single shot or a well-placed blade instead of the expenditure of countless rounds and thousands of lives of Imperialis Auxilia troops.

## **History**

### **The Ghost of the Sands**

Far on the Eastern Fringe of the galaxy, a desolate, barely inhabitable world named Dhul'hasa was about to rise from obscurity. Once a hub of technology and scientific research, the Age of Strife broke Dhul'hasa, atmospheric pollution raising the global temperature of the planet so high that most of its surface turned to desert just as all contact with the wider Human Empire was lost. After this had followed centuries of territorial warfare between clans and factions, until almost all left on the world was dust. The one constant over this period of change and darkness was the ring of space stations and satellites orbiting Dhul'hasa, all scanning systems trained on the stars in the desperate hope that humanity would return from beyond the cloudless sky.

Onto this background, the Primarch of the XIVth Legion landed, his pod lighting up the night sky. Whether by radios receiving data from satellites or simply by looking upwards, all the tribes near to the landing site saw descent of the spaceship and rushed to meet it as it rushed towards the ground. The Primarch's journey had been long, and so he had already matured partially when he first made planetfall on Dhul'hasa. Stepping out of the pod, labelled AZU-5, he fled into the night before the amassed clans could investigate his arrival.

In the aftermath of the skirmish to claim the Primarch's pod, the Dhul'hasan clans each discovered the wealth of technology that this craft from the heavens had to offer and wanted more. So it was that search parties began to be sent out to trace whatever else had been in the empty pod, first only one or two per week, and then increasing in frequency until almost all the resources available to the clanspeople were directed towards this great search.

The Primarch, who had taken the name Azus, could only remain isolated in the desert for so long. He soon heard of the amassed forces searching for him, and due to their ever increasing size, he could not avoid them for long. And so it was that the first humans that the Primarch Azus encountered attempted to take him prisoner. However, despite his lack of training, Azus was after all a Primarch, and so tore through his assailants with ease. After that, he became more careful. Staying far away from others, hiding and only engaging enemies at range when necessary, Azus was able to survive the assault of the clans for well over six months.

However, one day, the inevitable happened. Well versed in the arts of stealth as Azus himself had become, Dhul'hasan warriors surrounded the Primarch at night, and although he killed near to one hundred in the ensuing struggle, he was captured, put in chains, and hauled back to the city of Kaobyrra, the stronghold of the Bahmut Clan, as a prisoner. There, this captured giant suffered months of research, his superhuman skin reknitting after every dissection, and bones healing after every marrow extraction. Slowly, the Dhul'hasan scientists' outdated, malfunctioning medical equipment began to reveal the secrets of the Primarch's advanced biology. Soon, the experiments became increasingly violent, all non-vital organs being removed and rudimentary brain scans being conducted in an effort to synthesize a compound nearing gene-seed.

Eventually, battling through the mind-numbing effects of the concoction of tranquilisers that he was constantly drip-fed, Azus developed a plan. During a simpler medical procedure, the Primarch pulled so hard against the restraints holding his left arm that his hand was torn clean off. He proceeded to batter the nearest scientists to death with his bloodied stump, freeing himself and staggering out of the operating chamber in which he had been kept a prisoner. The few that dared to oppose Azus' incandescent fury were blessed with quick deaths. After only about an hour, the people of Kaobyrra submitted to the Primarch in awe and terror. Azus' coup was brutally efficient. The surviving scientists' final task was to craft the Primarch a new bionic hand to replace the one he had lost, before they, along with the city's existing governing body, were executed, leaving none to oppose Azus' rule. His power within the city had become absolute within a week of his escape.

Over the next seven years, Azus waged a bitter war of subjugation over the rest of the planet. Slowly, the Dhul'hasan clans fell to Azus of Bahmut, a figure revered and feared in equal measure due to his martial prowess and terrifying presence and morals respectively. To most Dhul'hasans he was rarely glimpsed, a hidden fiend who ruled with an iron fist. His elusive nature earned him the title 'Ghost of the Sands', a name he grudgingly appreciated. Eventually, the entirety of Dhul'hasa came under Azus' rule, and he began to turn his ambitions skywards.

It was then that fleet approaching Dhul'hasa was discovered.

### **Dhul'hasa Under Siege**

Satellites began transmitting warnings that ships were approaching Dhul'hasa's system for the first time since the arrival of Azus Bahmut. Needless to say that these signals were taken very seriously by the planet's people, some fearing invasion, some hoping for a joyous reunion with the rest of mankind. Those hopeful few were to be disappointed. The fleet was revealed to be xenos in origin as it approached, and it was approaching quickly. Quietly, within his lair in the palaces of Kaobyrra, Azus began to plan. The few still functioning factories on Dhul'hasa's scorched surface were put to work manufacturing large quantities of weaponry. Outriders were sent to inspect the ancient orbital defence platforms and ready them for war. Within a matter of weeks, Azus had readied the planet for the imminent incursion, with predicted landing sites being surrounded with troops, traps laid around significant settlements, and the populace armed and trained in basics of combat. It was then that the fleet arrived.

It was nothing like Azus had expected. The ships careened towards the planet's surface with little care for their own safety, descending too quickly for the orbital defence batteries to lock on to them. Ignoring flat, empty areas, the ships crash-landed in a random pattern, belching smoke and crackling with flame. It quickly became clear that this had not been an invasion, but an escape.

Azus sent a delegation to meet the first ship to land which he himself accompanied, albeit in secret. While the Dhul'hasans were prepared to negotiate with the refugee xenos, the aliens opened fire as soon as they caught sight of the delegation, slaughtering it to a man. Azus watched from the shadows, and fell back to Kaobyrra. It seemed a war was to be fought after all.

The clans were informed, and readied for battle. Warbands mounted on outdated, barely-serviceable jetbikes were sent to harass the xenos as they disembarked from their ships, striking so quickly that the attackers had barely any time to respond before the Dhul'hasans fled once again. Struggling to navigate the planet's monotonous and harsh terrain, the refugees' first attempts to make territorial gains were easily repelled. Quickly, however, the xenos began to breach the first lines of defence Azus had put in place, making targeted pushes for nearby oil refineries. It became obvious that the objective of the invaders was to refuel and depart as quickly as possible, rather than to take the planet. While it may have been easier to simply stand back and give the xenos the resources they needed, Azus' rise to power had come via uncompromising strength and bitter justice, and in the act of invading Dhul'hasa, the xenos had slighted Azus personally. This was something that they would come to regret.

Using hit-and-run tactics, Azus' forces baited the xenos to collect in large numbers. At that point, chemical strikes were launched, decimating the invaders and damaging their morale. The reprieve for this was violent, with diversionary attacks being launched by the xenos into nearby settlements, while other forces desperately rushed to the refineries. The Dhul'hasan soldiers moved to defend the oil refineries, while incendiary bombing campaigns were launched against settlements in which the xenos attackers were most concentrated, with no concern for the lives of the unlucky human civilians. The fighting became so bitter that the arrival of a second fleet in the system went completely unnoticed by the Dhul'hasans.

Fleeing desperately from their newly arrived pursuers, the xenos launched a final push to break free of the Dhul'hasans and escape. The clans mustered to retaliate as quickly as they could. Azus himself took to the battlefield, sensing that his men's morale needed to be boosted. Seeing an opportunity to destroy the aliens outright, the Dhul'hasans fought with every weapon in their arsenal, no matter how unpleasant, cutting down xenos by the thousands. Although they fought back with terrified determination, the invaders were finally defeated in the ensuing pitched battle. The relief of Dhul'hasa's liberation was palpable. So when Azus saw across the sea of xenos corpses an amassed fleet of Imperial craft descending through the planet's atmosphere, it came as a surprise.

In the ensuing meeting, Azus was introduced to the leader of the xenos' pursuers, a human commander belonging to the Imperial Army. His name was Hector Krum, an elderly, battle-hardened Terran who had been chasing the xenos fleet after having been ambushed in deep space. The enemy had finally been forced to make planetfall on Dhul'hasa after their ships suffered colossal damage in a void engagement. Instantly recognising the visionary despot of Dhul'hasa as a famed Primarch, Krum offered Azus a place amongst the Imperial Great Crusade. Azus was initially hostile to submitting to a mere human, and as such the Emperor Himself arrived in secret in order to get the measure of his newfound son. After the Emperor revealed his identity, Azus quickly accepted the offer to join the Crusade, both seeing it as an opportunity to take the people of Dhul'hasa to the stars once again and fearing the wrath of the Imperium of Man should he refuse.

### **An Uneasy Reunion**

Soon after Azus' discovery, he was transported along with the few men he counted among inner circle to the relatively nearby world of Choler, above which orbited a vast network of stations and docks, at which a combined force of the 83rd, 412th and 1087th Expeditionary Fleets (all belonging to the Sightless Fourteenth) had recently arrived to refuel and rearm. The news of a Primarch’s impending arrival came as a surprise, and after scrambled preparations had been made by the stations' workers and inhabitants, the leader of the Fourteenth’s fleet (the current Legion Master, Jon Lawrenz) was reunited with his Primarch.

At first, the reunion was not entirely amicable, with Lawrenz being thrown by the dark, unforgiving personality of his Primarch. Azus, on his part, was determined to make this new legion his own, and had little regard for Lawrenz, whom he was suspicious of due to his potential to act as a barrier to Azus' ultimate authority, something which he had become accustomed to during his rule of Dhul'hasa.

However, over time the relationship between the two men grew less tense, in part due to Azus recognising an aspect of himself in the cunning, slightly amoral Terran veteran. Additionally, the two saw eye-to-eye around the issues of the legion's division, with Lawrenz' method of allowing the Fourteenth to maintain their tribal divisions and splitting the legion among multiple near-autonomous fleets appealing to Azus. Previously, Azus had served as the orchestrator of only significant action and reform on Dhul'hasa, preferring to command from behind the scenes in other areas with his trusted lieutenants able to act in important governing positions, submitting to Azus' authority where necessary. Thus, the most recent system of the Dune Serpents' organisation evolved, allowing the legion to operate in multiple small semi-autonomous fleets that would be under the overall command of Azus.

Eventually, the Terran Sightless Fourteenth transitioned to become the '*Dune Serpents*' (or *Alrrabeshr*), a name adopted by Azus as a nod to the fabled king of the *Afaehamra* snakes native to his homeworld's deserts, which play a fundamental role in Dhul'hasan culture and medicine. The legion's colour scheme was also altered, transitioning from a pure white to dirty yellow and violet, once again colours appearing in Dhul'hasa's tradition as those worn to denote a Badisin, or tribal leader. These, despite Azus and Lawrenz's eventual amicable relationship, would not be the last of the changes made to the Serpents to cement Azus' power.

Fundamental changes to the legion's tactics were also introduced upon Azus' discovery; namely, the increased emphasis on stealth and infiltration, rather than sole reliance on speed which had defined the early Sightless Fourteenth's campaigns. However, the Fourteenth's emphasis on mobility was not lost upon Azus' discovery, and in fact was incorporated by Azus more heavily into his legion's tactics, especially given the proficiency of the Terran legionnaires in hit-and-run engagements. Due to the multitude of semi-autonomous Dune Serpent fleets often containing either almost all Terran or Dhul'hasan legionnaires, a number of different variants of tactics emerged, meaning that, apart from at points when the legion was united either as a whole or as part of a *Hashd*, the early Dune Serpents often operated using a number of slightly different approaches to tactics.
This system of division of the Legion into various *Hashd* meant that, as the Great Crusade progressed, each *Hashd* developed their own divergences in culture. The emphasis within the Legion placed on independence, therefore, led to it in essence being comprised of autonomous groups, a trend that could be seen from the *Hashd* to a single battle company. While the ability of Dune Serpents fleets to operate independent of the large part of their Legion was of great benefit during the Crusade, as the Fourteenth were able to deploy their resources to numerous warzones simultaneously, allowing the Serpents to arguably be in more places at any one time than any other Legion, it would also be the Legion’s downfall. For as the First Ruin approached, the Fourteenth were divided, and upon the advent of Five Ruins would be unsure of where their loyalties truly lay.

## **Wargear**

* ***Armour of the Sands*** - During the early years of the Great Crusade, Azus clashed with wyches belonging to the Cult of the Red Grief. He took note of the Night Shields with which the xenos transports were fitted, and charged his allies within the Mechanicum with reproducing this technology and incorporating it into his artificer-wrought armour.
* ***Devil's Vengeance*** - The *Devil's Vengeance* is a large, master-crafted custom rifle, made to Azus' specifications by the Techmarines of the Dune Serpents, and named after a legend of his homeworld. The rifle fires four types of unique ammunition, the most infamous being the Separator Round, named for both the smoke canister that detaches itself as the projectile flies through the air, and the bullet's uncanny ability to separate head from body.
	+ **Fleshburner Rounds**
	+ **Electroscrambler Rounds**
	+ **Nervebane Canisters**
	+ **Separator Bolt-Rounds**
* ***Anarchy*** - The same enormous scimitar Azus was given as a child on Dhul'Hasa, *Anarchy* has since shrunk in comparison to its superhuman owner. Upon making contact with the Imperium, *Anarchy* was given to the artificers of Terra. It emerged again having been hollowed out and fitted with a power field, meaning Azus could swing it as easily as if it were his own hand while carving through all in his path.
* **Frag, Defensive & Smoke Grenades**