Barabas Dantioch - A New Purpose: Dantioch and his compatriots managed to arrive in the Realm of Ultramar before the Battle of Calth was initiated by the treacherous Word Bearers Legion. During the attack, the Dark Apostle Erebus managed to complete a blasphemous ritual on Calth's surface, which summoned a Ruinstorm to the galaxy's Eastern Fringe -- a monstrous Warp Storm larger and more destructive than anything space-faring humanity had witnessed since the days of the Age of Strife. It would split the void asunder, dividing the galaxy in two and rendering vast tracts of the Imperium impassable for centuries. The Five Hundred Worlds were unnavigable at this time except for the most high-risk enterprises. Trade and communication across the realm collapsed. Ultramar, as a single and admirable area of Imperial governance, was ruined. The Ruinstorm would also isolate and trap those Loyalist forces caught behind it like the Ultramarines, preventing them from coordinating their efforts and supporting one another as the Traitor Legions moved towards Terra.Barabas Dantioch, Warsmith of the Iron Warriors, was technically a Traitor. He was a Traitor to the Throne of Terra, because his IVth Legion had crossed the line and sided with the Renegade Warmaster Horus. Simultaneously, he was a Traitor to his own Legion, because he had foresworn the Iron Warriors and decided to stand with the Loyalists. He stood alone, besieged by the conflicting loyalties of the new, riven Imperium. For his excellence in siegecraft, and his staunch loyalty to the Emperor, Barabas Dantioch had been recruited by the Lords of Ultramar to help them construct and defend the greatest contingency plan, and perhaps the second greatest heresy, the Imperium had ever known -- Imperium Secundus. Dantioch stoically accepted the challenge. He had supposed that he would be employed in fortifying the physical defences of Macragge and other key worlds of Ultramar, for this was his forte.Then Roboute Guilliman had revealed to him the long-sequestered mysteries of Sotha, and Dantioch had realised that the survival of a pocket empire like Ultramar lay less in fortifying its physical defences and far, far more in strengthening its function and operation. Sotha was a far-flung world close to the edge of the galaxy's Eastern Fringe, almost at the limits of both the fiefdom of the Five Hundred Worlds and the span of all Imperial territory. It was one of the few Terra-comparable ecosystems discovered so far out in the galactic east during the Great Crusade. Imperial surveyors of the world had discovered something amazing beneath Mount Pharos, the tallest of all the peaks in the planet's majestic mountain ranges. A survey mission conducted by both archaeologists and xenoculturists discovered a massive aperture constructed by an unknown xenos species. Known as the Pharos, the interior spaces of the large archaic device were cut from the mountain's living rock by processes that no one had been able to explain. Dantioch spent over nine solar months unlocking Sotha's mysteries and activating the planet's deep-time secrets. Dantioch agreed absolutely with the Primarch's assessment -- Sotha offered a way in which they might overcome the Ruinstorm rather than batten down against its wrath.Dantioch and the Ultramarines descended into the vast chambers of the Pharos on pre-fabricated walkways of STC design to provide platforms, ladders, stairs and bridges that would allow humans to traverse and explore the almost endless interior of the Pharos. During their explorations they discovered a central chamber, later known as Primary Location Alpha, which Dantioch was convinced was the centre of the entire mechanism. Dantioch took to referring to it in his notes as the "tuning stage" or the "sounding board". He had been fairly confident that he understood the function of the Pharos even from the data he had studied before his arrival on Sotha. The Pharos was part of an ancient interstellar navigation system, both a beacon and route-finder, and it also permitted instantaneous communication across unimaginable distances. Unlike Imperial Warp technology that used the Immaterium to by-pass realspace, the quantum function of the Pharos once allowed for site-to-site teleportation, perhaps through a network of gateways. Its fundamental function lay not with psychic energy, but with empathic power.Dantioch also believed that other way stations like the Pharos still existed, or once did, on other worlds throughout the galaxy. It was not one, single beacon like the Astronomican. Dantioch believed the Pharos and other stations like it were once used to create a network of navigational pathways between stars, as opposed to a single, range-finding point the way the Astronomican did. It was more like a lantern than a beacon. The Pharos could be tuned and pointed, illuminating a site or location for the benefit of range-finding. Though Roboute Guilliman was loathe to use xenos technology, Ultramar had to be held together, and to rebuild the Five Hundred Words, they had to restore communication and travel links by piercing and banishing the current age of darkness. Utilising the Pharos' strange abilities, Dantioch was able to illuminate Macragge, lighting it up as a bright spot that was visible throughout realspace and the Warp, despite the effects of the Ruinstorm, providing a directional beacon for navigation in the absence of the Astronomican.