Officio Assassinorum - Notable Assassinorum Actions: Over the course of the Imperium's history, the agents of the Officio Assassinorum have claimed millions of lives for their masters. But their tactics differ greatly from the worldwide slaughter brought to bear by the Astra Militarum or the unremitting force of an Adeptus Astartes strike. Each death they bestow upon the enemies of the Imperium is a carefully crafted link in the chain that binds the realm of Humanity to the Emperor's immortal will.Though every one of these kills is extensively documented in the appropriate temple's datacrypts, only a very small fraction have entered the legends of the Imperium, known by few outside the vaulted halls of the High Lords themselves.The Horus Heresy (ca. 005-014.M31) - After the Warmaster Horus' treachery is revealed, an early incarnation of the Officio Assassinorum sends four operatives, one from each of the major temples, to form an Execution Force and hunt down and destroy the Traitor Primarch. All four are found wanting, for Horus is powerful beyond the reach of mortal men, and his destiny lies elsewhere.Death of a Primarch (ca. M31) - The Primarch of the Night Lords, Konrad Curze, is plagued by visions of his own future demise -- a kill-strike that will be ordered by the Emperor Himself. The knowledge of his genetic father's future betrayal festers within him, and he eventually becomes the fiendish Traitor Primarch known as Night Haunter. As the Heresy unfolds, the Callidus Temple is charged with the Primarch's death. Though his Legionaries fight to catch the killer in their midst, the Assassin M'Shen enters Night Haunter's throne room to find him unresisting. By allowing the Emperor to kill His own son, the creature that was once Konrad Curze believes his rebellion vindicated forever -- for in death, he has proved the Emperor is as callous as he has always maintained.The Beheading (546-646.M32) - The High Lords of Terra are slain to a man when the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, Drakan Vangorich, mounts a bloody coup solar decades in the making. Thus begins a hundred-year period of anarchy in which the Imperium is all but torn apart. It is only at great loss that a Space Marine retribution force delivers the Emperor's justice to Vangorich and his Acolytes. In the aftermath, over fifty Space Marine leaders arrive upon Terra, accompanied by a Crusade-strength "honour guard." After a long council with the great and the good behind closed doors, twelve new High Lords are placed in office, and stability thus returns to the Imperium.A Ghost Amongst Devils (990.M32) - The Culexus Assassin Dranos is sent to destroy the Chaos Sorcerer Xantaka before he can conjure any more daemonic legions from the Warp. Being all but invisible to not only the aether-sight of Xantaka's Daemon armies but also his Rubricae bodyguard, Dranos simply walks up to the Sorcerer Xantaka and burns his brains to ash with a blast of negative energy.Mother Gullet (340.M33) - A Callidus Assassin, sent to steal away the firstborn child of the dangerously self-centred planetary Ggovernor Thygmus van Spracht, disguises herself as the infant's matron-vigilus. By widening her craw with Polymorphine and swallowing the princeling whole, she walks past the elite Palace Guards without so much as a whisper of resistance. She carries the prize in her belly to her masters before regurgitating it whole, mewling but safe. Pict-skull footage is sent to the governor, and he falls back into the Imperial fold within the week.The Blinded Seer (452.M34) - A Culexus Assassin is sent to claim the head of the manipulative Farseer Lithandros-Esmanthil. The Eldar senses the threat and scries the skeins of fate accordingly, but is increasingly alarmed to find he is unable to locate the thread corresponding to his pursuer. After a long and terrifying hunt, the Assassin ambushes his prey in the lonely halls of Saim-Hann's Dome of Reflection. Rendered psychically inert and driven to exhaustion by the chase, Lithandros-Esmanthil gives himself up to the sinister violence that follows.Cull of the Goliaths (372.M35) - The Abhuman Goliaths of Thugrock Secundus, a recruitment moon for the Astra Militarum, develop a blood cult that consumes the planet's ruling caste. In an unprecedented display of miscommunication, no fewer than six Eversor Assassins are dispatched to slay the leaders of the indigenous population. By the time the single surviving Eversor is recovered, not one Thugrock Goliath is left alive, and when the news reaches the Astra Militarum, they are most displeased that such a rich resource has been wasted. To this day, the event is used as a cautionary fable to illustrate the dangers of despatching several Assassins at once.The Reign of Blood (ca. 200.M36) - Goge Vandire, Ecclesiarch and High Lord of the Adeptus Administratum, falls from the Emperor's light. His tremendous influence, charisma and determination to overhaul the Imperium sparks a civil war that lasts for seven decades. His insurrection only ends when a counter-crusade mounted by Sebastian Thor tears power from the Traitor's cold and clutching claws.Death of a Recidivist (501.M37) - The influential Cardinal Jerome the Unsaintly of Oristia IV secedes from the Imperial Creed. He amasses an insane amount of wealth through illegal levies, hoping to gather an army of Frateris Militia to rival that of Goge Vandire. He is shot in the roof of the mouth by a Vindicare Assassin whilst singing subversive hymns.The Morisha Incident (563.M37) - Urhua Thereaux, Assassin of the Venenum Temple, is dispatched to assassinate the Renegade Governor Yawell of Morisha. During transit, the starship is caught in a Warp rift, holding the vessel in temporal stasis for some six hundred and ninety-eight standard years. Not knowing that this has occurred, Thereaux proceeds to her target, only to find Yawell long since dead and replaced by an anti-Imperial democratic committee consisting of over a thousand members. Faced with such an extreme task, Thereaux only succeeds in killing the committee members after spending three solar days poisoning all the chairs in the council's auditorium prior to a meeting of the full committee.The Stargazer's Demise (003.M38) - The progressive astrologer Lenas Scard is marked for death before his heretical discoveries shake the Imperial Creed any further. The Vindicare Assassin Erasmus Menst hangs upside down from a Promethium relay pipe for six solar days, awaiting his prey, only to realise that Scard is aware of his pursuit and has holed up inside his observatory. Menst abandons his plan and instead climbs to the highest spire of Hive Mendicantus, knowing that it is only a matter of time before the glint of Scard's scrying scope appears. Sure enough, as the planet's moon is bisected by the spire, a telltale flash from Scard’s observatory appears. Menst is able to put a shot through the telescope's lens and into the eye socket of the stargazer behind it.Fall of Orlenza Triartes (386.143.M38) - The planet of Orlenza Triartes severs its ties from the Imperium, hoping for better trade terms. The Planetary Governor tricks his Adeptus Arbites into quelling a prison break that turns out to be a carefully crafted ambush, placing the Arbitrators under lock and key alongside those same criminals they had arrested. Word reaches the Imperium, and two regiments of Imperial Guard are sent to intervene. The preening aristocrats at the heart of the rebellion muster their forces and attack, only to find that their chief military advisor, a vulgar but effective mercenary known as Le Kard, was not who they thought he was. The Orlenza forces find their dispersal to be extremely ineffective, and they are surrounded and cut off within a solar week. When Le Kard's airtight cell is opened it is found to contain only a set of discarded clothes and a synskin-clad Callidus Assassin, crouching like a hyper-felid ready to pounce. The Assassin cuts a swathe through the planet's nobility before disappearing without a trace.The Grot That Turned (209.M38) - The petite but fearsome Callidus Assassin Militzia Scarvelli infiltrates Big Mek Oilguzla's workshops in the guise of a Gretchin slave-creature. Just as Oilguzla launches his Deff Dread horde at the Space Marines protecting Hive Imperator, Scarvelli recovers her phase sword from its hiding place in a nearby stack of scrap metal and attacks. Though it takes her almost a full solar minute to do so, she hacks the Big Mek into fist-sized chunks before overloading his force-field generator and bringing the stomping advance of the Deff Dread mobs to a grinding halt.Statuesque (243.M39) - The Vindicare Temple is given a kill order to take out the predatory Dark Eldar pilot known as the Skyknife. Knowing that to enter Commorragh would be to court almost certain failure, the Vindicare Assassin Dejedris Garamach determines the site of a previous sighting of the Skyknife's Razorwing jetfighter. He mounts his vigil in the eye socket of the Threndian Colossus, subsisting on moss and the raw flesh of the birds that use the statue as its nest whilst never taking his eyes from the sky. Six standard years later, his vigil is rewarded when the Skyknife appears from midair in a flash of azure light. Within a half-second of its appearance Garamach puts a turbo-penetrator round into the cockpit, killing the pilot instantly.To Slay a WAAAGH! (718.924.M40) - The Ork Warlord Urgak the Unstoppable is on the verge of completing his Gargant and launching a WAAAGH! into the Vondiac Sector when a Vindicare Assassin sends a bullet into the reactor core of the giant effigy. The thing catches fire and then explodes spectacularly, killing not only Urgak himself but also the vast majority of the Meks in his employ. The WAAAGH! is halted before it even begins, putting the lie to Urgak's self-aggrandising title and plunging the surviving Orks into a bloody civil war.The Tigers Caged (231.M41) - Hetman Grettch of the 593rd Kadaveran Tigers becomes so incensed at constantly being interrupted by the Tactical Auto-Reliquary of Tyberius that he "accidentally" deactivates it with a ceremonial mace. It is the first step in a rebellion that sees not only the 593rd, but the entirety of the Kadaveran Tigers, turn against the Imperium. A Callidus Assassin is sent to infiltrate Grettch's advisor corps, assuming the identity of his eyeless astropath before killing the traitorous commander and taking his place. When the Tigers open hostilities against the Cadian 342nd, their orders suddenly become contradictory and counter-intuitive, and when the command staff is obliterated by an artillery strike called down upon their own position, the entire rebellious war effort falls to pieces. The Kadaverans, their forces decimated within the hour, quickly see the error of their ways and submit themselves for a regiment-wide court martial. Though the Tactical Auto-Reliquary is recovered and later repaired, they are found guilty and executed to a man.A Destiny Denied (290.M41) - The Officio Assassinorum, having failed to destroy the obscenely powerful Chaos Lord Malfecius with operatives from the Eversor and Vindicare Temples, sends the Culexus Assassin Vaedrex instead. The Culexus haunts the steps of Malfecius across the Eye of Terror. Only when Malfecius ascends to Daemon Princehood does Vaedrex finally strike. With Malfecius' latest incarnation rendering him vulnerable to Vaedrex' Psyk-Out Grenades, the Culexus finally manages to kill the reeling Daemon Prince with a punishing series of blasts from his Animus Speculum.The Dread Gestalt (353.M41) - The Wyrdvane Psykers of the 122nd Vostroyan Firstborn come through a difficult Warp translation as a gestalt entity of terrifying psychic power. Revelling in their new abilities, they rise up amongst the ranks of their former comrades and enslave every one of them to their bloodthirsty desires. When the regiment arrives on Sylvanus II they set about the murder of the populace. The Hammers of Dorn are sent on a planetfall mission to destroy the Dread Gestalt, but the powers of the Wyrdvane Psykers are so swollen that the Space Marine attack is repelled with terrifying ease. Only when the Culexus Assassin known as the Revoker is unleashed into the Vostroyan ranks does the Dread Gestalt lose its power, flopping back to earth as weak as newborns. They are killed to a man by Vostroyan bayonets even before the Revoker can close with his target to finish the job.Sons of the Interstice (886.M41) - The Lubricae Cult arises within the Adeptus Mechanicus, a body of Heretics that worship the interstitial substances that keep the universe running smoothly. All twelve of the senior Technomagi gather around a black and shimmering pool of arcanoil, anointing themselves with a mixture of war-virgin's blood and boiling grease as they declare open war on their former brethren. A slick black devil bursts from the pool's depths when the Eversor Assassin sent to slay them reveals himself. Within moments every one of the Lubricae Cult is slain. Their Skitarii legions attack nonetheless, but without leadership they are quickly defeated by their Loyalist counterparts.The Foe Untouchable (ca. 999.M41) - Within the Eye of Terror, a Black Crusade of unprecedented size musters to break open the Cadian Gate. Rumours abound that its supreme warlord is empowered by the Gods of Chaos, and that whilst he enjoys their favour, he cannot be laid low by mortal weaponry. The agents of the Officio Assassinorum are dispatched en masse to slay the Warmaster of Chaos Abaddon and his most favoured lieutenants before they breach realspace. One by one they reach a succession of grisly ends, and still Abaddon remains at large as the 13th Black Crusade unfolds to devastating effect.