Cypher

Cypher is a hooded, cowled figure associated with the Dark Angels Space Marine Chapter and with the Fallen, the renegades who sided with Luther in the destruction of Caliban. The name 'Lord Cypher' is a title that belonged to the Order, the knightly brotherhood native to Caliban before the Emperor's Legions arrived; records suggest the title has been held by several individuals, which has led to disagreement over whether the Cypher now active in the forty-first millennium is a single person or more than one. He is described as wearing a heavy cowl and robes that obscure his features, carrying a sword he does not draw and twin bolt-pistols which he does draw. His allegiance, identity, and ultimate purpose are not settled in the surviving record.

Accounts place Cypher among the Fallen, the Dark Angels Legionaries scattered across time and space by the warp-storm that tore Caliban apart at the close of the Heresy. He is treated as distinct from the Fallen the Chapter pursues because he hunts other Fallen himself, yet he also interferes with the Chapter's own hunts and has evaded or escaped the Unforgiven more times than the Inner Circle has been willing to commit to the official record. He has been sighted on Lemnos, Brigia, and Cocytus during the conflicts the Chapter has attempted to classify under a single designation, 'the Forgotten Wars', which are themselves difficult to date with confidence. In the forty-first millennium (M41), he killed an Ork warboss at the Red Stars Campaign who had previously slain Supreme Grand Master Alloken, thereby avenging the Chapter Master's death by means the Chapter could not repudiate even as his presence defied explanation. When a Chaos-tainted rift appeared at Caliban's former location in M41, Cypher convinced the Inner Circle to open a time rift using the device Tuchulcha in order to stop Astelan and Typhus; Supreme Grand Master Azrael then destroyed the rift, and Cypher vanished immediately afterwards.

Cypher appeared on Piscina IV during the Fallen gene-seed plot, a crisis in which Fallen operating from a base on Piscina II threatened the Chapter's genetic continuity at the keep on Piscina IV. He is recorded as having killed Inquisitor Arnuldus during the Septius VII uprising, collapsing a hive-city in the process. When Roboute Guilliman was resurrected at the close of the millennium, Cypher freed the primarch from captivity aboard a Blackstone Fortress held by the Red Corsairs, on the condition that he be allowed safe passage to Terra. He then fought alongside Guilliman's forces at the Battle of Luna against the daemonic assault led by Magnus the Red. Upon reaching Terra, he was arrested by the Adeptus Custodes before entering the throne room and confined in the Dark Cells, the secure vault beneath the Imperial Palace that holds the Imperium's most dangerous prisoners. He escaped during a warp-fuelled attack on Terra, was sighted at the door to the throne room itself, and afterwards disappeared.

Subsequent sightings are fragmentary. He led the Zargosoan Smuggler Fleet at the Black Gulf Mines attack, raided Voss Prime alongside a Black Legion warband, and rallied the final defence at the liberation of Amadis. His involvement in the Hundred Planet Rebellion is attested, though the circumstances are disputed. The Unforgiven Chapters pursued him to the world now called Darkmor, where they were lured into a Chaos ambush meant for Fallen; the Unforgiven escaped the trap by chasing Cypher to a teleporter, and the pursuit cost them heavily. He is known to have been present during the Escovan Campaign, where the Red Corsairs formally swore an oath to kill him.

Cypher's significance lies not in what is known about him but in what is unclear. His sword, which he never draws, has been the subject of speculation, though no account is treated as settled. Whether he is among the Fallen, against them, beyond them, or serving an older loyalty that pre-dates the Heresy remains a matter on which the Dark Angels will not speak openly, and the wider Imperium's institutions have concluded that he cannot be reliably classified. His status is unknown, his allegiance is disputed, and his purpose — whether it will ultimately serve the Imperium, the Dark Angels, Caliban, or something else — is a question that has not been answered.

The title of Lord Cypher originated in the Order of Caliban, whose Masters secretly chose one knight to renounce his name, hide his appearance beneath cloak and hood, and serve as keeper of the Order’s laws, customs and ceremonies. At least three holders are recorded: an elderly man who advised Luther and Lion El’Jonson during the campaign against the Great Beasts and died before the Imperium reached Caliban; a younger successor who became a Dark Angels Space Marine and advised Luther in the first stages of his rebellion; and Zahariel El’Zurias, whom Luther raised to the office after the younger Lord Cypher tried to kill him in a coup. Whether Zahariel is the Cypher of the 41st millennium is not established, though during his most recent capture by the Dark Angels Cypher spoke the codeword ‘Starfire’, used to turn Caliban’s orbital defences against the Lion’s fleet and originally known only to Luther, Astelan, Griffayn and Zahariel.

Early in the Horus Heresy a Lord Cypher, acting in secret within the fortress of Aldurukh on Caliban, helped the Knights-Errant Garviel Loken and Iacton Qruze escape its dungeons after Loken had allowed himself to be captured and questioned by Luther. Loken recognised him from their shared past, but Cypher declined to join Malcador the Sigillite’s agents and chose to serve in the shadows.

In the Forgotten Wars, dated 580.M31 to 632.M32, the Unforgiven followed Cypher’s trail across the Gothic Sector for decades. On Brigia he appeared in the trenches during their assault on the fortress of the Fallen Grand Captain Tylius and escaped by melting through a blast door with his plasma pistol; on the twin worlds of Cocytus, at the edge of the Eye of Terror, he twice evaded the Dark Angels while sending messages that warned of a trap. After the campaign his signal appeared in the system where the Rock lay, and the hunt-teams sent after it found the Sword of Secrets and the Lion Helm placed in an empty cathedral on a ruined planet.

After Cypher killed the warboss Zogax da Great and recovered Alloken’s relics in the Red Stars Campaign of M33, Alloken’s successor Morderan resolved to capture him and make him an ally; the attempt is recorded as having nearly destroyed the Dark Angels. In M38 Cypher drew the Chapter towards the worlds bordering the Veiled Region, where it uncovered the Hundred Planet Rebellion, and he is later recorded as having done so to take revenge on the Alpha Legion for earlier false dealings. During the Nova Terra Interregnum the Dark Angels attacked Nova Terra in the belief that he was the Saviour of Praxus, a robed member of the Ur-Council who led uprisings there, but took no prisoner, and the identification is unconfirmed. He has likewise been suggested, without confirmation, as the Voice of the Emperor who spread the Second Plague of Unbelief.

Other recorded actions include aiding the Silver Skulls against the Cult of the Red Heresy, saving Cadian soldiers on Monarch Prime and leading them against cultists, escaping Belial, Grand Master of the Deathwing, on three occasions, and killing Inquisitor Rasputin when he learned too much of the Dark Angels’ history. In the opening stages of the 13th Black Crusade he fought the C’tan known as the Deceiver in the warp, in an encounter that appears to have been caught in a loop of time or reality, and lost the C’tan phase knife he had carried.

On the Blackstone Fortress Cypher acted with the Harlequin Sylandri Veilwalker, and after freeing Guilliman he guided the primarch’s company to a webway portal, where other Fallen joined him. When Guilliman broke their bargain outside the chamber of the Golden Throne, Cypher briefly drew his weapons before surrendering with his companions. He escaped the Dark Cells with the Fallen Azkhar, Bakhariel and Korlael after a Dark Angels raiding party under Mordachi destroyed the cells’ generators, reached the Bridge of Ascension by the Path of Martyrs, and withdrew when the wounded Custodian Warden Hekkarron, acting on a vision of the Emperor, told him ‘not yet’. Thereafter he was pursued both by the Dark Angels, whose hunt led to the Massacre at Darkmor, and by a force of the Adeptus Custodes and the Sisters of Silence under Shield-Captain Daryth.

Accounts of his wargear identify his paired sidearms as a plasma pistol and a bolt pistol, which he fires with great precision, and record power armour beneath his robes. Rumour variously holds his undrawn sword to be a relic of the Dark Angels, the Lion Sword, or a broken blade that he intends to reforge and present to the Emperor in return for absolution.