Decimus

Decimus is a young Night Lords legionary who succeeded Talos Valcoran as the warband’s prophet, grown from the Soul Hunter’s gene-seed. Gene-seed is the genetic material from which Space Marines are cultivated. Talos’s warning indicated that Decimus was also grown from the child of Septimus and Octavia, though this rests on that warning. Variel the Flayer performed the surgical work, and the Eighth Legion, the Night Lords, completed his making.

Decimus carries and wears the warband’s inheritance. It includes Aurum, Malcharion’s twin bolter, a broken aquila, a flayed cloak, and a helm stitched from the vanities of First Claw. His foresight was acquired with the organs implanted in him. Before the Thirteenth Black Crusade, he told an assembly of lords that Abaddon would prevail and that several of those present would not live to see it.

Tsagualsa, the site that produced him, is the place of his origin. Decimus is not Talos. Within the account of the Legion, he represents a need that Talos spent the trilogy in which he appeared declining to acknowledge: a voice that foresees killing and names it.