Trajann Valoris

Trajann Valoris is the seventeenth Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes, commander of the Ten Thousand and chief guardian of the Imperial Palace on Terra. He holds the office in an era when the Palace is no longer a place of quiet, and the Custodes’ own internal reckoning ranks him as the deadliest individual currently to wear the aquila. As with most who rise to command the Ten Thousand, little of his career before the captain-generalship is set down for those outside the order; the Custodes measure a warrior by decades of service rather than by a recorded novitiate.

Valoris presided over two Blood Games within a single decade of holding office, a frequency of succession contests still cited among the Custodians as without recent precedent. He was afterwards obliged to set aside ceremony for an actual war fought along the Palace walls, as Terra itself came under direct threat rather than the ritualised trials of rank. This combination — a command tested twice in the training cages and then immediately in earnest battle — has shaped his standing among his peers as much as any single deed.

He was present in the Throneroom at the return of Roboute Guilliman, Lord Commander of the Imperium, and commanded the defence of the Lion’s Gate space port against a Chaos incursion sworn to Khorne during that same period. In the aftermath, Valoris took the significant step of releasing Custodians into the wider galaxy, from which ancient edict had excluded them for ten thousand years, so that companies of the Ten Thousand deployed alongside Guilliman’s Indomitus Crusade for the first time since the era of the Emperor’s confinement to the Throne.

His predecessor as first Captain-General, Constantin Valdor, is remembered as having ultimately left Terra behind, his fate afterwards uncertain; Valoris has not. Terra remains his primary charge, though he has since been permitted to treat the rest of the Imperium as an extension of that same perimeter, sending the Custodes to war beyond the Sol System while never relinquishing personal command of the Palace’s defence.

Originally an Allarus Custodian, Valoris gained renown for the destruction of the Space Hulk Mournful Siren, the defeat of the Genestealer Cult of the Emperor’s Writhing Shadow, and a preemptive strike against Waaagh! Krushfist. He then served among the Companions for twenty-two years before reassignment, and as Shield-Captain led sorties through the Sol System and beyond for several centuries. He became Captain-General after Andros Launceddre died during the Years of Madness, and under his rule Blood Games multiplied, cults in Terra’s polar underhives were purged, thirty-two extrasolar interdiction strikes were launched, and the defences of the stable warp routes into the Sol System were strengthened. The Moment Shackle, a relic associated with Valoris from Old Terra’s dark history, is said to have allowed him to anticipate Guilliman’s return and to adapt the Custodes to the Primarch’s ascension.

Though the Captain-General traditionally sat among the High Lords of Terra only in the direst circumstances, Chancellor Lev Tieron persuaded Valoris to take the seat left open by Lord Brach. Valoris was preparing to vote against abolishing the Lex Imperialis when word of Cadia’s destruction reached the chamber; he had already been preparing the Custodes for wider war, and may have summoned the Sisters of Silence years in advance. In the Battle of Lion’s Gate that followed he commanded the Palace defence in person, leading some four thousand Custodes from the gate against Khorne’s daemons, and afterwards allowed Guilliman to stand before the Golden Throne.

He took part in the Indomitus Crusade: one Codex account places him at the head of a Custodes and Grey Knights force in the Battle of Gathalamor, while the novel The Gate of Bones instead records Tribune Maldovar Colquan leading fifty Custodes there without Valoris. At the Relic World of Jovandira he fought with Imperial Fists under Tor Garadon and the Raven’s Watch to recover relics from T’au excavators of the D’yanoi and Ke’lshan Septs. In the Fourth Tyrannic War he led a Solblade from the flagship Manifest Judgement against Hive Fleet Leviathan, and at the Battle of Bastior on Sanctum he led reinforcements that turned the fight against tendril Grendyllus, personally striking down a Norn Emissary that threatened Lord Commander Solar Arcadian Leontus.

He wears the Castellan Plate, wields the Watcher’s Axe, and carries the Moment Shackle and a Misericordia. On the map his career is bound to Terra and to the worlds of his personally attested sorties; on the timeline, to the Years of Madness elevation, the Lion’s Gate defence, and the Indomitus and Bastior campaigns of M42.