The Nemean

The Nemean was a Terran Dark Angel and Blackshield, scarred in the Rangdan Xenocide, who founded the Dark Brotherhood, a pirate empire in the Pale Stars. A Blackshield is a Space Marine who declines to declare for either side in the Horus Heresy. The Nemean wore Kithairon plate and a Calibanite flammbard, and he concealed his damaged face beneath a hood.

He regarded the conflict between Horus and Terra as the concern of others until the Alpha Legion made the Pale Stars costly to hold. Garro then approached him with a coded summons and a list of twenty names. The Nemean asked after the Lion and observed the Brotherhood, the Alpha Legion and the loyalists collide on Optera. He then accepted teleportation rather than die defending what remained of his realm.

Official accounts record that he fell on the walls of Terra. An unofficial account holds that a nameless Dark Angel later sat among Malcador’s eight, and it is possible that the Nemean became Epimetheus or that he died unrecorded. Such uncertain endings are characteristic of Blackshields. The Nemean was offered a choice of allegiance and exercised it on one occasion only.