Tarikus - Return of the Dead: Too weak to fight them all, Tarikus was eventually subdued by the Chaotic pirates and sold to the Chaos Space Marine Apothecary Fabius Bile to be used in his heretical geno-experiments. Tortured and experimented upon for over two standard years, he was eventually freed along with the rest of Bile's captives by the Astartes of the Blood Angels Chapter and was returned to his homeworld of Gathis II. There was no precedent for this in the Chapter's history. For the Doom Eagles, death was the closure of all things, the last page in the passage of life. For that book to be re-opened once they had written the final entry was unheard of.Some brother Chapters of the Doom Eagles regarded their association with matters of death as unusual. They were held to be morbid, even macabre. The Chapter had heard these slights from warriors of the Space Wolves and the White Scars, even brothers of the Ultramarines, the very Legion their Chapter had been drawn from. Some viewed the character of the Doom Eagles and saw an obsession with fatality; but this was a short-sighted, narrow view. The Doom Eagles were gifted with an understanding of the universe. They knew the truth, that all life is born dying, moment by moment. What others saw as fatalism, they saw as pragmatism, a manner born out of knowledge that life and joy were transient things, that the only constants in existence were despair, loss, and ultimately the embrace of death. "We are already dead," said the first words of the oath of the Chapter. The Doom Eagles understood that death was always close; and so they fought harder, strove longer, to perform their duties before the cloak of the Final Sleep came upon them. They had no illusions, for death was the end of all things. Nothing could come back from the void beyond it. This knowledge was the pillar upon which stood everything the Chapter believed in. Tarikus, by his very presence, his mere existence, had challenged that.Commander Hearon, the Doom Eagles' Chapter Master, was unsure what measures to take in regards to their returned brother. He had only allowed Tarikus to be brought back to Gathis II on the advice of the Chapter's Librarian Secundus Thryn. Tarikus' return was problematic for he had been declared officially dead. His apparent resurrection was anathema to the tenets of the Chapter's beliefs. Voices called for a swift end to the matter of this return. Chief amongst them were the Chapter's Chaplains and Thryn's senior, Brother Tolkca, the Chapter's Librarian Primus. As the Chief Librarian was in battle in a distant sector, Thryn was assigned to test Tarikus; body, mind and soul. Hearon's responsibilities were to a Chapter one-thousand strong and to a heritage of ten millennia. Though expediency demanded that the Chapter Master simply sacrifice Tarikus in order to protect his Chapter, he could not in good conscience end his life in so cursory a manner, for Tarikus might yet prove to be untainted.Brother Zurus, Tarikus' replacement as squad leader, helped his errant Battle-Brother understand the consequences of his return. Zurus had been assigned to watch Tarikus and to observe him for any sign of Chaotic taint. He took Tarikus to the Hall of the Fallen, where free-floating panels of polished obsidian were suspended. These great polished tiles were perfectly laser-etched into thin strips; each strip sported a half-globe of glass, behind which lay a random item. Next to each name, inside the glass, lay a relic: a fragment of armour, an eye-lens, a Bolter shell, an honour-chain. Every artefact was something that had been touched by the dead. These objects were a piece of them, to be held in trust for as long as the Chapter existed. The name of the dead Battle-Brother was carved in High Gothic script, etched into the black obsidian by a Servitor stoneworker, the letters lined in heavy silver. Zurus gestured towards a particular pane that hung before them. Behind the glass bubble, an Astartes combat blade was visible, the fractal edge still bright and sharp even though the length of the knife was dirty and pitted with use. Tarikus realised that the knife belonged to him. Zurus then had him look to an indicated memorial panel; Tarikus' name had been etched in High Gothic script into the panel. Tarikus finally understood his Chapter's predicament; he was considered dead, and in their eyes, he no longer existed.Back in his isolation cell, Tarikus reflected on what had occurred in the Hall of the Fallen. While he had been held in captivity his greatest fear was that he would be forgotten; that after he was lost in deep space, the many sorties andbattles he had fought, the honours he had earned, all would count for nothing amongst his brethren. He feared that all he had done would be meaningless. But now he saw an even greater horror -- that he had been remembered, in so final and damning a way as to make each breath he drew now a phantom. In the eyes of his Chapter, Brother-Sergeant Tarikus had perished aboard that lost medicae frigate, years past. His kinsmen had counted him gone and made their peace with that fact. When Zurus and Tarikus had encountered a squad of Scout Marines on their way towards Relical Keep, they would not even look upon Tarikus, for they were unsettled by his presence. For a Chapter so intimate with death, the return of a warrior to life shook them to the core. "Our ghosts remain dead," or so said the words written in the Doom Eagles' Prayer Mortalis.