Sergeant Tarkus

Sergeant Tarkus is a Tactical Sergeant of the Blood Ravens Chapter of Adeptus Astartes, distinguished from the world of the same name. A veteran of the fighting on Kronus during the Aurelian Crusade, he wears Terminator armour in later engagements and is counted among the Chapter’s most enduring warriors, having served across several of the Blood Ravens’ defining campaigns of the era.

On Kronus, Tarkus served under Captain Davian Thule and subsequently under the officer who rose to lead the Blood Ravens’ forces there as Force Commander, taking into his own keeping the war-plate once worn by the fallen hero Angel Forge. In the aftermath of the campaign he took a vow of silence after being forced to kill a fellow veteran of Kronus who had turned traitor, a burden he carried in quiet penance rather than open grief. He later broke that vow only once, aboard the strike cruiser Judgement of Carrion, to remind the Chaplain Diomedes that whatever Chapter Master Azariah Kyras had taken from the Blood Ravens, he had not taken their duty to the Emperor.

Tarkus’s service continued through the campaigns on Calderis, on Typhon Primaris, and on Meridian, conflicts in which the Chapter’s captains fell in battle, its Librarians were broken by revelations they could not withstand, and the Blood Ravens’ own founding history was uncovered as bound to a hidden crime. Amid this unravelling, Tarkus remained a fixed point of discipline and loyalty, one of the few Astartes to absorb the full truth of the Chapter’s past without turning from his oaths.

In recognition of this long and unbroken service, Tarkus is now represented as the Ancient, bearing the Chapter’s standard in gold Terminator armour, a role that marks him as a living link between the Blood Ravens’ recent, troubled history and its continuing service to the Emperor.