Eldrad Ulthran

Eldrad Ulthran, whose name means ‘First of Ulthwé’, is the chief Farseer of Craftworld Ulthwé. He was briefly exiled from the craftworld. He is one of the oldest living Aeldari, having been born after Ulthwé’s launch and before the Fall of the Aeldari, and is recorded as more than ten thousand years old. He carries the Staff of Ulthamar, and it is at his direction that Ulthwé remains close to the Eye of Terror. He has led Ulthwé since the Fall, and in the centuries that followed he is recorded as having saved Aeldari remnants on many occasions, though these rescues are not placed on named worlds.

During the Great Crusade, as the Horus Heresy was beginning, and with no narrower date recorded, Eldrad was the first to warn the Imperium of Horus’s treachery, doing so by meeting the Primarch Fulgrim on the Aeldari maiden world of Tarsus rather than travelling to Terra to warn the Emperor. Fulgrim had by then been wounded by Eugen Temba’s anathame and was turning to Chaos; Eldrad found that the Primarch was already corrupted by Slaanesh and carried a corrupted blade, and ordered his guards to kill him. The attempt failed: the Wraithlord Khiraen Goldhelm, Eldrad’s adviser, was destroyed, and accounts also record that Fulgrim destroyed an Avatar of Khaine. Accounts differ on how the encounter ended. One holds that Eldrad’s force withdrew and that Fulgrim then virus-bombed several maiden worlds; another that the Imperials won the engagement and that virus bombs were afterwards ordered against the newly discovered worlds; a third that Fulgrim virus-bombed Tarsus itself in the aftermath; and a fourth that virus bombs fell upon the maiden world before the Primarch could be killed, with Khiraen lost in the melee. Eldrad survived, and thereafter distrusted humanity. He also led, over several months and with no year recorded, the defence of the Exodite world of Haran, afterwards known as Haranshemash, in which a warp rift was closed; Phoenix Lords, including Fuegan’s first reappearance since the destruction of the Shrine of Asur, fought alongside Exodites, Ulthwé and outcasts, and the rift was closed at a heavy cost in lives.

Before Hive Fleet Kraken assaulted the craftworld of Iyanden, Eldrad gave warning of the attack, though he is not recorded as having fought there; Iyanden’s own farseer in that battle, Kelmon, was killed, and Ulthwé’s Black Guard were among the later reinforcements, as was Prince Yriel. In 992.M41 he is listed among the commanders of the Ulthwé force that reached the hive world of Hollonan late in that battle, after the Blood Angels’ Mephiston had been wounded, alongside reinforcements from the Blood Angels and the Angels Vermillion, though he did not command Strike Force Sanguinatus. During the Thirteenth Black Crusade, on Andante IV, he led Ulthwé and the Ghostwind against Ezekyle Abaddon and the sorcerer Zaraphiston at a webway gate leading toward Ulthwé, coordinating the defence by distributing waystones so that strikes could be guided through the webway, and fought Abaddon hand to hand. His retinue prevailed, but Abaddon was withdrawn from the field by his patron gods before the Staff of Ulthamar could strike the killing blow; Eldrad concluded that he could not prevent Abaddon’s wider plans and that his own end would come as a martyr for Ulthwé. He is not recorded on Cadia itself. One account holds that his body then entered the warp as he attempted to save the corrupted soul of a Talisman of Vaul before it boiled Cadia’s seas, and that he was for a time treated as lost; another, without naming that world, holds that he returned with the Shadowseer Sylandri Veilwalker to aid Imperial forces in the crusade.

At the close of the forty-first millennium, Eldrad led the Masque of the Midnight Sorrow on Coheria, the crystal moon of the Imperial world of Port Demesnus in Segmentum Obscurus, in a ritual intended to awaken Ynnead; Watch Captain Artemis and the Deathwatch attacked during the rite, and accounts differ on its outcome. One holds that a stasis bomb, unforeseen by Eldrad, halted the ritual, that he retreated, and that the ritual’s energies were lost to the void and later found Yvraine; another holds that Artemis disrupted the ritual without wholly defeating Eldrad, and that the failed rite nonetheless roused Ynnead at the moment Yvraine died in the Crucibael. Before the battle he had projected his consciousness to the defence of the Black Library, a psychic rather than a bodily visit. In 999.M41 he arrived at Craftworld Biel-Tan with Yvraine and a Ynnari host by way of the webway, during a battle that had begun on the maiden world of Ursulia and was then carried onto Biel-Tan; he is not recorded on Ursulia itself. The Seer Council of Ulthwé subsequently exiled him for the Coheria ritual, for farseers turned to crystal in a warp bridge he had ordered raised, and for the harm done to Biel-Tan, and he continued among the Ynnari as leader of a group known as the Exiles. Later in the Thirteenth Black Crusade, after the destruction of Cadia, he was present on the ice moon called Klaisus (also spelt Kalisus), known to the Aeldari as Ulthanash’s Rest, in the Cadian System; he was among the Ynnari who opened a webway portal in the Crone’s Claw range and guided into the webway the Imperial survivors who had followed Saint Celestine, before the Black Legion, pursuing an artefact held by Belisarius Cawl, retreated. He is not recorded on the planet Cadia itself. After the opening of the Great Rift, in a period no more narrowly dated than the end of the forty-first millennium and the start of the forty-second, he fought in person on Ulthwé, in the Dome of Crystal Portents, alongside Ynnari and Harlequins against daemons including Kairos Fateweaver and Keepers of Secrets; the daemons were banished, and he was afterwards received back by Ulthwé’s Seer Council, though he has since drawn away from the Ynnari, judging Yvraine too ready to spend Aeldari lives and doubting that her path leads away from the Rhana Dandra, the Aeldari’s prophesied final war. Accounts also differ on Zaisuthra, a craftworld hidden within the webway: one, set in the forty-second millennium, holds that Eldrad and Iyanna Arienal told Yvraine of its existence without placing him in the fighting that followed, when her expedition with Iyanden forces found genestealer corruption there and reached the Tomb of Eldanesh; another holds that he travelled with Yvraine and a Saim-Hann warhost to seek the last Cronesword, a search that failed. He remains active.