Bahadur Esteri

Part of Surmah's so called "Wretched Sons", Fracturam Lord Bahadur Esteri was once a well known and respected, even revered, member of the Star Guardians Legion, honoured with command of a Star Fort during the First Solar War. However, with the inexorable tide of traitors that spilled over the defences, Bahadur was soon struck down and captured, forcibly possessed at the orders of Surmah himself, arising again as a vicious, otherworldy agent of Chaos Undivided and the Herald of the Dark Pantheon, providing the Wretched Sons with their greatest weapon, able to tear apart even the greatest of followers of the False Emperor.

## History

A Veteran of the IVth Legion, Bahadur Esteri was the first of the Dreadnoughts of those from the Ring, placed within the life-supporting sarcophagus after the bloody victory at 30-5 during the Squat Wars. During the First Solar War, Bahadur was placed amongst the Outer defences, commanding a vast Star Fortress that came under heavy attack by the sons of the XXth Primaarch. though he fought bravely, Bahadur was not inviolable, and over close to a month of fighting, wounds that alone would be insignificant began to combine, systems shutting down one by one, hamstringing the mighty dreadnought in the way of the Hounds of Surmah.

When he finally fell, his leg hydraulics giving out, his weapon feeds spluttering and failing, the tech marines of the XXth moved in, securing his mighty form with blood-soaked chains, dragging him before the Hound of the Moors. Even so weakened, little more than a corpse encased in armour, Bahadur refused to submit, pain long since scoured from his emancipated corpse, the thought of torture bringing a laugh not only from the Dreadnought's vox-grill, but from Bahadur's ruined lips as well. At this, Surmah smiled, a chucle of his own escaping his lips, before he bid his Vicars to begin opening Bahadur's eyes to the truth of the universe.

Bahadur was not seen again for the First Solar War, the Star Fort he had defended echoing impossibly through space with the screams of the once mighty prisoner held there. Slowly but surely, Bahadur was bound further and further to his sarcophagus, where once only mechanical connections had existed, now the warriors body itself threaded through its warping metallic form, even as his ruined nervous system was agonisingly pulled back into full function. Bahadur and his form became one entity, removal of a weapon arm now causing as much pain as a flesh and blood limb torn bodily away from where it was connected but moments before.

In time, even the mighty could take no more, his soul laid bare, even as he, albeit weakly, still resisted the ruination done to him. His willingness was not required however, as the Vicars conducted the final stage of the ritual, opening Bahadur's soul wider still, and inviting in a creature from the warp, a greater daemon of Chaos Undivided; Daevas.

The power of a being such as Daevas was immense, the change done to Bahadur immediate and irreversible, visually the armour moulded to his sarcophagus fusing into a daemonic visage, even as his weapons twisted into new forms, crackling with energy not native to Bahadur's native realm of existence. When the Wretched Sons strode the galaxy during the Frontier Wars, the booming tread of Bahadur often accompanied them, daemonic cannons spitting great blasts of energy at the enemies of the Herald of the Dark Pantheon, before his mighty claws rent them apart with contemptuous ease.