Katarinya Greyfax

Katarinya Greyfax is an Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus, a Puritan so severe that even fellow Inquisitors speak her name with caution. Her doctrine holds that faith owed to the Emperor should never be diluted by veneration of lesser figures, living or dead, and she treats displays of open reverence toward saints and relics as a standing danger to Imperial orthodoxy. This severity is not an affectation but the settled outlook of an officer who regards compromise with the miraculous as the first step toward heresy, whatever its source.

For an extended period Greyfax was held captive among the exhibits of Trazyn the Infinite, the necron archivist of Solemnace, who preserved her alongside countless other specimens drawn from across the galaxy’s history. Trazyn released her amid the fighting for Cadia during the opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum, and she returned to a galaxy transformed: the Imperial Cult she had left behind had, in her absence, grown further entangled with the cult of the Living Saint Celestine, a development she regarded as a doctrinal failure the Ordo Hereticus ought to have prevented. The mindshackle scarabs implanted upon her by her captors were removed only afterwards, and only with considerable difficulty.

Greyfax’s return placed her among the defenders of Cadia and, subsequently, within the coalition that escorted the newly revived Roboute Guilliman to Terra so that his authority might be confirmed at the Golden Throne itself. She marched at Celestine’s side through this campaign, from Cadia to Terra and on to Macragge, without ever becoming reconciled to the miracles that attended the saint’s presence; she judged each such wonder a further erosion of the discipline the Ordo Hereticus existed to enforce. That she nonetheless lent her authority to Guilliman’s elevation reflects a characteristic calculation rather than a change of heart: she judged the alternative, an Imperium left leaderless amid the Great Rift’s opening, to be the greater danger.

Armed with a condemnor bolter, a weapon pattern favoured by the Ordo Hereticus for the summary execution of psykers and the unclean, and wielding the blade known as the Tyrantslayer, Greyfax remains an active and formidable field Inquisitor. She is not accounted a companion of Celestine by temperament or choice, and her continued proximity to the saint is better understood as vigilance than devotion. Within the wider Inquisition her name still carries the weight of someone who would rather destroy a miracle than risk what its acceptance might invite.