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 Fluff Library - Inquisitorial Archivist D'hain +++Thought for the day+++ |
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The Sensei and the Star Child
based on Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness and Lost and the Damned.Before the Imperium was established and long before He was confined to his life-support throne, the Emperor lived in hiding among ordinary Men. During his life he fathered many families, while always taking care to vanish and start afresh whenever possible. The Sensei are descended from these descendents. It should be noted that not all of the Emperor's descendents are Sensei and not many of them know that they carry his genes. Only the Sensei are immortal and are likened to the Emperor - stronger, tougher and faster than the rest of Humanity (in many ways the genetic counterparts of Space Marines) but infertile - whereas the majority of his descendents are mortal and merely carry these genes. But every once in a while an infant is born from these people who has extraordinary powers: a Sensei.
Sensei are not conventional psykers, like those of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica for example, but they are capable of using positive warp energy with remarkable results. When ordinary psykers utilise warp energy for their powers, they not only capture positive energy, but also negative as well. Sometimes a psyker captures too much of the latter and is permanently effected by it, such as attracting daemons or going insane. But Sensei are immune to the predations of malevolent warp entities - they cannot experience hate, bitterness, or irrational anger; the disharmony of these emotions brings the individual to the attention of Daemons. They are also 'psychic blanks' which makes them immune to the senses of psykers.
When a Sensei uses his powers he channels warp energy from the 'positive mass' that is the Star Child (see below). So for example, a Sensei can harness the protective powers of the Star Child to shield himself, or his companions, from harm. He could also channel this positive energy into attacks which have devastating consequences for daemonic foes and even remove Chaos taint entirely so that even the most disgusting mutant (including Champions of Chaos) can be free of corruption. Sensei cannot hurl balls of fire at enemies because such power derives from negative warp energy.
Even a Sensei may not be aware of his true nature until he meets another of his kind. He is simply a man who does not age. Only when he meets, or is drawn to, another Sensei does the truth emerge. The new Sensei is taught that he has other abilities: the power to tap warpspace and channel the energy gained into combat; the power to sense Daemons and feel disturbances in the flow of the warp; the power to remain hidden from any psyker. Once trained the new Sensei is inducted into the 'Brotherhood', and burdened with the knowledge of his fate: to battle against Chaos. They gather followers and await the final, terrible battle with the forces of Chaos.
Over the millennia, the Sensei have become adept at hiding within the massed ranks of Humanity. Ignorant of their origins and their true heritage, they have been persecuted and vilified as 'witches' and 'devils' by normal Humans. Their only crime has been to not grow old. Their invisibility to psykers has helped them to hide in the faceless masses of Mankind. In the 41st millennium few outside the Illuminati and the Inquisition are aware of their existence other than as folk tales of the 'Captain Eternal' or the 'Wandering Inquisitor'.
The Sensei are promoted as 'brigands' and 'vagabonds' by the Imperium. A deathsquad tasked with hunting a Sensei and his followers will take over a region's administration, headed by a powerful Inquisitor, where they label the local outlaws, i.e. the Sensei adventurers, as bloodthirsty bandits. The Inquisition seek to undermine the Sensei and so far are succeeding. Consequently the Sensei are nomads by nature and their followers are sworn to vows of secrecy.
The Imperium regards the Sensei and their followers as dangerous bandits, nihilists and psykers who, if not actually in league with Chaos, are weakening the bulwark which the Imperium has set against its threat. As a result the Sensei operate as outlaws. They hide in underground caverns, or deep insides cities, or lead freedom fighters from the forests and mountains. Some sail the seas as pirates and operate from secret islands and coves. Others sail space itself as pirates of a different kind, boarding and robbing Imperial cargo vessels as they move ponderously between planets. Everywhere they champion the poor against the rich, the oppressed against the oppressors. They see themselves as the enemies of both Chaos and repression. Sensei are heroes who wander the galaxy, sometimes in the company of a select band of adventurers who are often themselves powerful heroes. They fight oppression and injustice wherever it may be found. The Inquisition see this as a threat and where most of the Imperium's repression is justified some of it isn't. Inquisitors, powerful people they are too, hunt groups of known Sensei and often put them to death.
Briefly, the brotherhood of the Illuminati is a small and flexible force within the Imperium. Its members are very special people indeed; they have survived Daemonic Possession, they have survived Chaos, and have achieved a balance that eluded even the Eldar. It is the Illuminati who help protect and shield the Sensei from unwelcome eyes. But the Illuminati are not all that they seem...
The Illuminati have an altogether different interest in the Sensei. Mankind will fall unless the Emperor is renewed; therefore the Illuminati are manipulating events to a point where this can happen. The Illuminati, their own existence carefully shrouded in mystery, have sought out and protected the Sensei, even helping the Sensei establish their secret 'Long Watch' of Sensei Knights who will fight in the 'last battle against Chaos'.
The Sensei, however, have been duped. There is to be no final battle against Chaos, the battle that the Sensei are preparing for, only uncertainty. The uncertainty lies with the Emperor. How long will he last? The Illuminati plan to round up the Sensei, when his power is clearly declining, and sacrifice them to the Emperor where he will then become whole once again. The Sensei Knights do not know of this plan and neither the Emperor for if he knew he would prematurely abdicate.
After his fight with Horus, the Emperor lay dying, his psychic energy ebbed from his body that had sustained him for thirty-eight thousand years. The Emperor's immortality was no more and the weight of age descended upon him. His body shrank and his bones cracked, his eyes sank into his skull and his skin darkened so all that remained inside his armour was a shrivelled mummy-like thing.
Released from his body, the Emperor's psychic power, his soul, was cast adrift upon the tides of the warp, to be carried on the random undercurrents and eddies of the Sea of Souls until such time as it was ready to be reborn. Although the Powers of Chaos hunted tirelessly through the warp for the Emperor's soul they could not find it. The warp is huge, and its energies dispersed and flowing. Like the shamans of ancient times, the Emperor was at one with the whole warp, so his soul melted easily into it and so remained hidden from the Chaos Powers.
The Emperor's body was taken and placed in a life support machine. Although he was dead by any ordinary understanding of the word, while some of his cells still lived they provided a link through which his spirit could communicate with the material universe. While his body was relatively fresh it could be animated, and was even to speak a little. Thanks to this the Emperor was able to supervise the construction of a special psychic life-support machine called the Golden Throne.
Even the Golden Throne cannot keep the cells of the Emperor's 'dead' body alive forever. Over the millennia the link between his soul and body has become increasingly tenuous. Worse of all, the Powers of Chaos have begun to infiltrate his mind, sowing seeds of doubt, dissolution and fear.
It is impossible to say for how long the Emperor can survive in this condition. It is unlikely that even he really knows how much time is left to him before the tenuous hold upon his physical body is broken by weakness or finally rent apart by insanity.
The humans that were left in charge of the Imperium had no real understanding what had happened to the Emperor. The concept that he could be born again never occurred to them. To the rulers of the Imperium the Emperor continues to live, though his body was broken, by means of his indisputable powers. But it can only be a matter of time before the link between the corpse on the Golden Throne and the Emperor's soul in the warp is severed; only part of the Emperor's soul exists on the Golden Throne.
As the spirit of the Emperor drifted through the warp it gradually dissolved into the flow of energy, returning to the cosmic force of the nature of the warp in its uncorrupted form. Only a tiny core of the Emperor's humanity remained whole, like a small child bobbing upon the tide of a colossal storm in a tiny reed boat.
Thus the soul of the Emperor was cast adrift into the warp. While the Emperor's soul survived there was still hope for mankind. For just as the New Man had been born from the collective souls of the shamans of old, so the Emperor's soul might be reborn one day. But that day would lie far in the future, when the cries for a new saviour would strengthen the core of the Emperor's soul within the Star Child and rekindle it into new life.
So the Emperor's soul joined the cosmic mass of 'positive' energy and his considerable spirit gave it form at last: the Star Child. This positive energy had existed since the dawn of time when it dominated the warp, but with the evolution and subsequent development of humanity this superiority had wavered so that the negative predominates - and there is much to feed from with the Imperium continually at war.
The Star Child now exists as a supreme entity of purity - goodness, love, happiness, and hope - and only occasionally do psykers tap into it, with the use of healing powers for example, and they know nothing about it. Only a few select individuals learned the secret over the following millennia, and they became the highly secret brotherhood known as the Illuminati. The Illuminati await the birth of the Star Child and the second coming of the New Man. They know that their knowledge makes them dangerous heretics in the eyes of the Imperium, and consequently maintain a strict secrecy over their activities.
Even though much of the Emperor's soul lies within the Star Child he does not know of the Sensei and neither know of their relationship. He cannot 'see' something that does not exist to his psychic senses, and the Sensei have no reason to believe that they are related to the Emperor (and not even know about the positive mass known as the Star Child).
