Tauro Nicodemus

Tauro Nicodemus was Tetrarch of Saramanth, one of the four Tetrarchs of Ultramar, and acted as an envoy of the primarch Guilliman during the Horus Heresy. The Tetrarchs were regional rulers who spoke for the worlds of Ultramar other than the capital, Macragge. Guilliman regarded Nicodemus as a champion whose presence could serve in place of a letter of introduction.

During the fighting on Calth, Nicodemus brought Titans into Lanshear when Ventanus’s Fourth was about to be overwhelmed by Hol Beloth. After Calth, he travelled to the Schadenhold and informed Barabas Dantioch that the XIII Legion still had use for an Iron Warrior who remembered how to hold a gate.

Saramanth is not Macragge, and the Tetrarchy existed for that reason: Guilliman required lords who could speak for worlds other than the capital. Nicodemus fulfilled that role, yet spent the Heresy chiefly as a bearer of messages backed by armed force rather than as a regional ruler in the conventional sense. His approach to Dantioch illustrates the Tetrarchy’s function, which was to convert a primarch’s trust into reinforcement for others. The title endured; the tranquillity of Saramanth did not.