Alpha Legion - The Hydra: Of the many mysteries that surround the Alpha Legion, the most fundamental and key enigma is the question of the Alpha Legion's primarch, Alpharius. Of all of the primarchs who remained to draw blood against each other in the Horus Heresy, of Alpharius the least is known for certain. Furthering this mystery and the outright deception perpetrated by Alpharius, many reliable accounts of his origins differ.One such account of the finding of Alpharius circulated secretly between the houses and factions of the Imperial Court on Terra, which states that his discovery was an accident of the Luna Wolves Legion prior to the end of the Great Crusade and the beginning of the 31st Millennium. By this, Alpharius was the leader of a confederation of human star systems whose fleet of warships, no match in size or scale to Imperial vessels, managed through trickery and ambush to ingloriously lay low one of the outlying Luna Wolves Battleships as it entered an unnamed star system.Responding to this unforgivable defeat, Horus himself and his fleet gave chase, only to find themselves mired in ambush after ambush, tricked into deadly traps and chasing shadows until Horus' own flagship, the mighty Vengeful Spirit, came under attack. In the ensuing confrontation, the Luna Wolves smashed the enemy fleet's desperate attack aside, but in the confusion a single assassin broke into the flagship, and through stealth and murder managed the impossible task of fighting his way clear to Horus' command chamber and slaughtered his Justaerin bodyguards before Horus himself was forced to confront him.But Horus did not slay the attacker but recognised him instead for a brother. He had found the last primarch! The new arrival called himself Alpharius and claimed to have been travelling this region of space for many Terran years. However, he remained tight-lipped as to where he had come from. Various worlds in that locale were subsequently brought into the Imperial fold, but Alpharius always denied that any of them were his homeworld of origin. The conglomeration of planets he had been leading was persuaded to join the Imperium with little bloodshed.Another account torn form the mind of an Alpha Legion Centurion captured by the Legio Custodes after the Fall of the Seraphin tells the story of the finding of Alpharius. It speaks of a nameless Dead World at the edge of the Mandragoran Stars whose civilisation rose and was wiped out by bloody hands long before Mankind first walked on Terra.On this nameless orb, the nascent primarch fell into the shattered ruins of a fallen city murdered long ages ago. Utterly alone, voiceless and without aid, he was forced to survive against the tortuous elements of the desolate world and the predations of the hungry ghosts of the charnel pit into which he had been consigned.His solitude was only broken after many long years by a new star falling from the heavens; a corsair ship of degenerate half-human Renegades and alien mercenaries intent on plundering the dead ruins for whatever worth might remain. Instead they found only death at the young primarch's hands, and Alpharius gained their weapons, their knowledge and their vessel as his own, and with it he set out in search of He who had made him.Two other accounts, found encrypted within the pages of certain volumes of the suppressed work of memetic corrosion known as the Transit of the Human Soul through Strife, or the Codex Hydra as it is sometimes known, offer differing contentions. The first is that the lost primarch was deposited on a thriving tech-oligarchy world known as Bar'Savor, but before his first solar decade of life there was done, the skies of Bar'Savor darkened as the nightmarish xenos worm-creatures known as the Slaugth descended to feed.Capturing the young primarch, a being alone strong enough to resist them, the Slaugth kept Alpharius as a curiosity, twisting his mind with their horrors and enslaving him and tutoring him as a living weapon to sow strife and discord on their victim worlds before they fell upon them to feast.It was the Emperor Himself who at last liberated him, His gold Battle Barge ramming into the heart of the vast stone ship of the foul xenos to break it open, the Emperor's wrath like that of a vengeful god of legend in retribution for what had been done to His son. For long years after, Alpharius remained at his father's side as the Emperor undid what had been done to mar His creation.This account also offers a contradictory version of events, saying that Alpharius alone, unfinished in some way, had been spared or at least some part of him had remained behind though gravely injured when the rest of the primarchs were scattered across the stars by unknown hands. Here, in the shadow of Terra, he grew and was nurtured alone of the primarchs by the Emperor Himself, his existence a jealously guarded secret even from those closest to the Emperor, lest the dark fates move against him.Upon his maturity he became the Emperor's own secret hand and His greatest shield, until he was at last parted from his father, his destiny to fulfill. It is unknown which one of these accounts are true and which are lies. The recorded facts suggest none of these accounts are real and they are but a few of the phantasms that purport to be the secret truth of Alpharius' past. Like the most potent of falsehoods, perhaps they contain a grain of truth within them, a hint at a greater secret yet.