Malcador the Sigillite - Malcador the Hero: After many long solar months, Malcador and Rogal Dorn were finally granted an audience with the Master of Mankind. The order to appear before the Emperor had been timely, coming as it did just as news had reached Terra of the disaster of the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V. The two men looked up at the Emperor from bended knee.He was seated upon a huge chair fully ten metres above them. The chair was bulky and machine-like, fabricated of metal, gold in colour, and gigantic mechanised doors of the same golden metal blocked the strange portal behind him. Beyond lay the Labyrinthine Dimension of the Aeldari Webway, intended to serve as a direct and instantaneous transport network between all the worlds of the Imperium if the Emperor's project proved successful.This new human Webway would recreate the vast network of Warp Gates that had once bound together the Old Ones' and the Aeldari's ancient interstellar empires and would allow Mankind to advance at a more rapid rate, scientifically and economically, than at any other time in its history. A human-dominated Webway would also truly unite the Imperium, preventing Mankind from ever again being divided by time and great distance, and would insulate humanity from the perils of the Warp.The Warp Gate the Emperor had constructed and the short section of Webway passage beyond required constant psychic maintenance lest they fall into ruin. At first this demanded only a small portion of the Emperor's psychic might and so He was able to command His armies and do all that was expected of Him as Emperor. But the hideous monstrosities that ruled the Warp -- the self-proclaimed Chaos Gods-- had ever been His foes, and now conspired to subvert the Emperor's goals as they had since the day He had launched the Great Crusade.To this end they had tempted the naive Magnus the Red to warn Him of the very plot they had initiated, the betrayal of the Imperium by Horus. Magnus sent his warning by means of powerful psychic sorcery and this broadcast had wreaked havoc upon the protective psychic shielding surrounding the Emperor's fragile Webway construct.The spell of Magnus not only allowed the foul denizens of the Warp entry to the section of the Webway the Emperor's secret army of Adepts and Tech-priests had by then conquered, it destroyed the delicate controls the Emperor had set in place. Now the Warp Gate He had constructed required virtually all of His psychic power and mental concentration to secure lest it rip open a permanent doorway between Terra and the Warp, flooding the homeworld of Mankind with the daemonic legions of the Ruinous Powers.The Emperor told Malcador that he had to take the Emperor's place on the psychic amplifier known as the Golden Throne, which provided the psychic sheath needed to protect the new, human-built sections of the Webway which had been intended to be the Emperor's final gift to humanity before the Horus Heresy had begun. The Emperor's original choice of his replacement on the artefact had been the Primarch Magnus the Red, but since Magnus and his Thousand Sons Legion had sided with Horus and the Chaos God Tzeentch during the Fall of Prospero, Malcador was now his chosen successor and the only remaining human psyker with enough strength to carry out the duty.In the days before the final confrontation between the Emperor and Horus aboard his Battle-Barge the Vengeful Spirit during the Siege of Terra, the Emperor ordered Malcador to summon "..men of character, skill and determination" who would be tested and trained to become the elite group of investigators intended to root out treachery across the Imperium in the centuries to come to prevent any event like the Horus Heresy from occurring again. The Emperor also told Malcador to prepare himself for the dreadful sacrifice that he would be called upon to make.The forces of the rebel Warmaster Horus had won a great victory on the bloodstained plains of Istvaan V early in the Heresy. Almost the entirety of three Loyalist Legions of Space Marines, which included the Raven Guard, Salamanders and the Iron Hands, had been annihilated by Horus' Traitors. The Primarch Ferrus Manus was dead -- beheaded at the hands of his former brother Fulgrim of the Emperor's Children Legion. The Primarchs Corax and Vulkan were missing, also presumed dead by the victors, though their bodies had not been recovered from the corpse-strewn battlefield. Meanwhile, the war within the Webway had been going badly for the Emperor.Even though at first the army of the Legio Custodes and the Silent Sisterhood had managed to push back the daemonic invaders, they had taken many casualties. The Imperial forces had never had the advantage of numbers and each death weakened them, whereas the daemons appeared to have a numberless horde at their disposal. Despite thousands of daemons and their allies having been destroyed or banished back into the Warp, there were always thousands more to take their place.The Terran Warp Gate would remain closed to the daemons for as long as the Emperor was able to power it from His throne atop the golden portal. Only the mightiest of psykers had power enough to do this and even then most would be exhausted and fail in a short time. Only the Emperor Himself had the might to keep the gate closed permanently and for Him the effort grew harder as the daemonic forces gathered their strength beyond. For as long as the daemon horde threatened to breach the portal, the Golden Throne would be His prison.As Horus' forces began their final assault on the Sol System and the Siege of Terra began nine standard years after the Traitors had first turned upon the servants of the Emperor at Istvaan III, the Sigillite returned from his mission to recruit the foundation of the Inquisition. Only through the most artful of psychic subterfuge were Malcador and his new recruits able to pass unscathed through the battlelines and come unharmed and unseen before the Emperor within the inner sanctum of the Imperial Palace.Malcador had finally received the call and was now prepared to perform his final duty to the man he had followed for the greater part of his life. Once within the depths of the Imperial Palace, the Emperor asked if Malcador was prepared to take His place upon the Golden Throne. Ever loyal, the Sigillite was more than willing to sacrifice himself for his Emperor. But before he ascended to take the Emperor's place upon the Throne, the Sigillite had one last duty to perform.He was accompanied by a group of twelve hooded attendants. In stern silence the Emperor surveyed the robed figures that Malcador had brought before Him, and He saw that his faithful servant had done well. Of the twelve, four were mortal lords and administrators of the Imperium possessed of an inquisitive nature and unyielding strength of mind. The other eight were Space Marines, many of them his Knights-Errants, whose abilities were as peerless as their dedication to the Emperor.Some hailed from Legions that had abandoned the Emperor's light in favour of Horus' dark promises, but these Battle-Brothers had never lost their loyalty and had fought the Heresy from within. Fulsome in His approval of the selection, Malcador the Sigillite ascended to the Golden Throne, replacing the Emperor who now stood before the edifice with His loyal captains Rogal Dorn and Sanguinius.Malcador could not speak, such was the concentration he had to bring to bear in order to control the tempestous forces at his call. The Emperor directed the attention of the two mighty Primarchs, "Behold the greatest sacrifice of our age! Malcador the Sigillite is no more. Henceforth he shall always and only ever be Malcador the Hero!" At this, the three figures retired from the Palace's vault and made ready to teleport onto the Battle-Barge of Horus.The task of keeping the daemons out of the Imperial Palace was daunting for the Emperor, the greatest psyker in the galaxy with millennia of experience to call upon. Though he was a powerful psyker in his own right, perhaps the second most powerful after the Emperor save for Magnus the Red, Malcador was still a mere mortal, his mental powers nothing compared to that of the Emperor, and this task proved overwhelming, consuming him body and soul in a matter of solar hours.When the Primarch Rogal Dorn brought the mortally injured ruler of Mankind back to the Golden Throne after he had defeated Horus in the Siege of Terra, Dorn found Malcador sitting wasted, psychic energy lashing across his shriveled body like lightning, tortured by the psychic bombardments of the collapsing Imperial Webway.He was almost dead when the Tech-priests made the exchange -- disengaging Malcador from the strange machine even as they moved to modify it to support the Emperor's crippled life functions indefinitely. As Malcador was removed from the device, the last flicker of life left him and the dust of his corpse blew across the stone floor. Yet Malcador had managed to prove one final time his loyalty and love for the Emperor, for despite his ordeal and agony, he still managed to gather what remained of his wasted power, and willingly forsook it to feed the Emperor and allow his master to survive the ordeal to come.Malcador's final sacrifice allowed the Emperor to awake from His coma briefly and give His servants their final orders to persevere against all the odds before being interned silently for the next 10,000 standard years within the modified life support systems of the Golden Throne.From there the Emperor would maintain and project the psychic beacon of the Astronomican into the Warp as a replacement for the now-lost Imperial Webway project and do his best to shield humanity from the worst terrors of the Immaterium. Through the sacrifice of Malcador the Hero, Mankind would live on, and its people would face the growing darkness of the Age of the Imperium that was about to dawn with a single chant upon their lips.The Emperor protects....