Libricar - "Let None Be Beyond the Emperor's Wrath": The Libricar owe the moment of their birth as a cohesive doctrine to the aftermath of the so-called "Slighting Wars" that erupted in the Ptolemaic Reach and Crassan Sub-sector regions of the Ixaniad Sector, on the Calixis Sector's coreward border in the late 430s of the 41st Millennium. When the Crassan governorship fell vacant, a long burning morass of bitter noble vendettas and bloody trade feuds broke out into a series of interplanetary wars and civil conflicts that saw a volume of space blessedly untouched by direct warfare for more than three standard centuries suddenly bathed in blood.The wars, though brief and swiftly brought to a crashing halt by the intervention of the Navis Imperialis' Battlefleet Obscurus and the Lords Segmentum, were exceptionally vicious and saw the whole of inter-sector trade and supply in nearby conflict zones reliant on their output grind to a standstill for nearly a solar decade. The repercussions of this economic anarchy led directly to the failure of the second Meridius Crusade and the loss of a dozen inhabited Imperial worlds to the Orks' WAAAGH! Heart'rippa and a wave of other setbacks.In the aftermath, the task of rooting out the guilty fell to the controversial figure of Inquisitor Claudia Tarshek, then a respected Amalathian of long standing. Given her writ of legatine authority by the Inquisitorial Representative to the High Lords of Terra in person and charged specifically to "Let none be beyond the Emperor's Wrath" in the matter, it was clear from the start that an example was to be made at the highest levels for the whole segmentum. With battlefleet detachments, an entire army group and thousands of Arbitrators put at her disposal, and over seventy other Inquisitors placed under her warrant, rarely has such power been vested in a single hand in the present-day Imperium. In retrospect, perhaps it was too much.The Crassan Purge lasted for eleven standard years, considerably longer in fact than the wars that had spawned it. During this time, it is said that Tarshek signed over three hundred thousand death warrants by her own hand. The principle target of the purge quickly became the Crassan Sub-sector's ancient and convoluted network of governing noble clans and commercial guilds whose greed and narrow-minded arrogance had caused such ruin on worlds far removed from their own.Sickened by the political corruption and overweening ambition and greed she found among the sub-sector's elites, Tarshek railed savagely and publicly against the Crassan nobility's sins. On some worlds entire aristocracies were sent to the gallows or the pyre, while on the planet Merovincha, the primary hive city was bombarded from orbit when its rulers refused admittance to her inquest.As time passed, Tarshek strayed ever further from the spirit of the Amalathian doctrine, if not its letter, and implored repeatedly in council and in her many missives to those Inquisitors placed under her command to be as "Libricar," to use the pre-Imperial form. She desired for them to weigh the souls and the worth of those in power on the scales of their judgement, and send those found wanting to perish.As the purge went on and on, dissent began to breed in the ranks. Tarshek's judgement began to be called into question as she began to re-visit and re-purge worlds that had already felt her anger, often finding perceived flaws and inequities in individuals she herself had formerly put in power. Matters came to a head and spurred open conflict within the Holy Ordos itself when she and her closest coterie of allies began to target members of the Adeptus Terra and even Inquisitors present in the Crassan Sub-sector not part of her purge, often accusing them of dereliction of duty in allowing the wars to occur in the first place.Not long after the publicly bloody apprehension and trial (and the subsequent escape) of the infamous Xanthite Witch Hunter Mokartus by her followers, Tarshek's personal flagship, the Lunar-class cruiser Magera, suffered catastrophic reactor failure and consigned both Tarshek and much of her inner circle to fiery oblivion.Whether this was pure misfortune, or the result of the actions of the wily Mokartus, the vengeance of the Crassan nobility, or even the action of the Lords Segmentum as some dissident voices in the Inquisition have since claimed -- ridding themselves of a tool that had outlived its usefulness -- remains unknown. Certainly investigations into the matter afterward were desultory at best and the Crassan Purge was allowed to quickly die out without the impetus of its driving force and central authority.Even though her life and the now-infamous purge she led were ended, Claudia Tarshek's legacy was to live on. She has provided both a heroic martyr and an intellectual framework for a hardened core of disaffected Amalathians ever since.Those who are driven either through conviction or bitter experience and look to bloody and retributive measures to reassert the Emperor's chosen order and defend against damaging change view her work not as a monstrous excess but a golden standard. She has also given these self-professed "saviours" of the Imperium's traditions a name; the Libricar, and her example would become a rallying cry to them for years to come.