Kayvaan Shrike

Kayvaan Shrike is a Shadow Captain of the Raven Guard 3rd Company and a former Master of Shadows of that Chapter. Born on the forge world of Kiavahr around M41, he was taken as a youth to the moon-fortress of Deliverance and raised as a Space Marine. He made his name as a jump-pack hunter and guerrilla commander before the death of Chapter Master Corvin Severax forced the leadership of the Chapter upon him, an office he later resigned in favour of Aethon Shaan.

As Shadow Captain of the 3rd Company he led a two-year campaign behind Ork lines on the hive world of Targus VIII during Waaagh! Skullkrak in 862.M41, after his force was stranded when its extraction Thunderhawk was destroyed. Shortly afterwards he fought a guerrilla war on Quintus against the forces of the Daemon Prince Kernax Voldorius; one account names his opponents there as the Night Lords rather than the Alpha Legion. On Quintus he allied with Kor’sarro Khan of the White Scars, seized an orbital defence complex to draw out the enemy, and with Kor’sarro killed Voldorius in the capital of Mankarra, pinning the Daemon Prince to a fallen statue of the Emperor with his lightning claws while Kor’sarro beheaded him. In 995.M41 he led a Raven Guard strike that killed the T’au ambassador Myen O’Res on Lurid IX as the ambassador sought to draw that world into the T’au Empire.

During the T’au Third Sphere of Expansion in 999.M41 he took part in the Imperial ambush of Commander Shadowsun on Voltoris with Kor’sarro’s White Scars and Colonel Straken’s Catachans. On Prefectia he recovered gene-seed after Shadowsun killed Severax and was elected Master of Shadows by his fellow Shadow Captains. As Chapter Master he led the Raven Guard in the Second Agrellan Campaign, destroying the orbital platforms above Agrellan and later joining Kor’sarro in the drop-pod assault on Agrellan Prime. After the opening of the Great Rift he crossed the Rubicon Primaris. At the Battle of Xalladin he led Raven Guard against the Orks of Waaagh! Boneskar and covertly destroyed the relic known as the Brimstone Heart when Iron Hands under Feirros and Imperial Fists under Tor Garadon nearly came to blows over it.

Having steered the Chapter through the immediate aftermath of the Great Rift, he selected Aethon Shaan as successor after witnessing Shaan’s victories at Gelvia, the Strigneth System and Aescia II, resigned the mastership, and returned to the captaincy of the 3rd Company. He is recorded as leading a shadow campaign against xenos in the Bastior Sub-Sector. His primary weapons are the bolt pistol Blackout and the Raven’s Talons, a pair of master-crafted lightning claws.

Shrike’s early life was spent on Kiavahr, where as a youth he worked as a runner for the Tarkal Guild, a hive gang. As a teenager he evaded rival gangers for more than a week and killed four of his pursuers before he was captured; after torture he escaped and killed many more of them. These actions drew the attention of Raven Guard Chaplains, and despite his resistance he was taken to Deliverance and trained as a Space Marine. The forename Kayvaan honoured a memory from his gang years of which he would not speak, while he chose the name Shrike for the hunting hawks of the Diagothian Mountains, whose surprise attacks on larger prey he had admired during his formative trials on Kiavahr.

Rising from Neophyte through the ranks of the Chapter, Shrike succeeded to command of the 3rd Company when its captain, Alerin, was interred within a Dreadnought and Corvin Severax was elevated to Chapter Master. After Targus VIII he fought the Orks of Waaagh! Skullkrak on dozens of worlds, and his assaults on Ork conquests in the Donara and Yakhee systems made him a figure of popular veneration on the worlds he relieved. He is said to have reserved his efforts for worlds already abandoned to the greenskins and to have disregarded requests for aid from Imperial Guard and Navy commanders in other theatres. One account records that his strike force was recalled from the Skullkrak campaign before 966.M41 because of the growing threat of Waaagh! Garaghak.

In the Prefectia Campaign Shrike, like Kor’sarro Khan, arrived intending to find and kill Commander Shadowsun. Raven Guard under his command, led by Chaplain Laefin Torovac, ambushed a T’au Hunter Cadre outside Aquillon Hive, and after Severax’s death Shrike’s squads hunted Shadowsun, destroying several Ghostkeel battlesuits by turning their own fire against them, before he reached the site of Severax’s death and secured the gene-seed. In the Second Agrellan Campaign Admiral Hawke called upon him to clear the orbital platforms, which the Raven Guard destroyed by setting melta bombs in the plasma reactors of the largest of them. Shrike also anticipated Shadowsun’s attempt to strike the incoming troop transports with concealed battleships, and with Lord General Troskzer he deployed the Imperial landings on three fronts converging on Agrellan Prime.

After the opening of the Great Rift Shrike summoned the Raven Guard’s command to the Ravenspire, the Chapter’s fortress-monastery on Deliverance, and ordered the Chapter dispersed across the Imperium, from the Imperium Sanctus to the Imperium Nihilus, in the episode known as the Scattering; each Shadow Captain departed under secret orders whose goals were known only to Shrike. He had intended from his election to resign once a successor could safely be appointed, for he saw in himself the recklessness that had cost Severax his life and held that a Master of Shadows should master all three elements of Corax’s Trifold Path of Shadow rather than the Path of Ambush in which he had specialised. Vordin Krayn succeeded him as Shadow Captain of the 3rd Company during his mastership. As a Primaris Space Marine he is of the Vanguard type and wears Phobos-pattern power armour, with a jump pack and an Iron Halo.