Ursarkar E. Creed

Ursarkar E. Creed was born on Cadia and rose to become Lord Castellan of Cadia and a Lord General of the Cadian Shock Troops, commanding the Cadian 8th Regiment throughout his career. His birth year is recorded variously as 959.M41 and as 937.M41, the two dates never reconciled in the record. At the age of eight he was at Kasr Gallan, on Cadia, when cultists attacked the settlement, killing his parents and an elder sister; he was found some time afterwards amid the ruins by soldiers of the Cadian 8th and was thereafter raised within the regiment itself. It was among the Whiteshields, the youth auxiliaries of Cadia from whom the regiments draw their future soldiers, that he first met Jarran Kell, who would later serve as his Colour Sergeant and remain at his side through the campaigns that followed. Accounts of his early service during the Drussite Crusade of 975.M41 diverge: one holds that he joined the crusade as a Whiteshield and had, by its conclusion, been promoted to the rank of captain, with Kell raised to Colour Sergeant at the same time, while another describes him instead as a young lieutenant already holding commissioned rank when the crusade began. No world is named in connection with that campaign in either version.

As a field commander, Creed led the 8th Cadian at Amistel in 977.M41, a world attributed to the Agripinaa Sector, elsewhere rendered as the Agrippina Sector, within Segmentum Obscurus, where he defeated an Ork invasion force known as the Bluehackers, fighting alongside the 219th Albitern Grenadiers and an Attilan regiment under the command of Khan Harumann. His next notable engagement is recorded in two differing forms: one account places the destruction of the renegade Chaos Lord Brule on Treconondal, carried out jointly by the Cadian 8th and the Terrax Guard, in 980.M41, while a second account instead sets this victory during the Hrud migration of 983 to 985.M41, describing Creed as fighting alongside Kell throughout that migration before leading the forces that hunted down and killed Brule on Treconondal. Both versions agree that he was promoted to Lord General of Cadia in its aftermath. In that new rank he won his first victory at Aurent, the sixth planet of the Agripinaa System, in 992.M41, driving off an assault by the Eldar of Craftworld Ulthwé upon Cadian holdings there. In 996.M41, acting under Warmaster Ryse’s crusade, he was despatched to retake Besana, a mining world of the Gort System, after the Anckorite Brotherhood’s rebellion had already destroyed the Imperial force sent to suppress it; Creed accomplished this by holding a fortified position astride the world’s paved roads and annihilating the retreating cultists with combined naval and ground firepower. By 999.M41 he commanded at the Battle for Tyrok Fields, near Kasr Tyrok on Cadia, landing there by ornithopter together with Kell and assuming command of the counter-attack after the Volscani regiment turned against the Cadian muster; for this he was named Lord Castellan of Cadia.

As Lord Castellan, Creed directed the defence of Cadia during the Thirteenth Black Crusade, a battle in which Kell was killed buying him time to escape the Bringers of Despair and in which he himself lost an arm shielding Saint Celestine and Inquisitor Greyfax from Abaddon the Despoiler. What became of him once Cadia fell is recorded differently depending on the account: the Cadian 8th’s own personnel records list him as missing in action, whereas a separate account holds that the Necron overlord Trazyn the Infinite lifted him from the surface before its destruction and placed him within a gallery on Solemnace, labelled as depicting the Last Stand of Ursarkar Creed, with neither version resolved against the other. In M42, following the opening of the Great Rift, he was among the figures released from that gallery on Solemnace to help defend it when the daemon Pestamutadis the Observer invaded, and he was given command of Astra Militarum forces likewise drawn out of stasis for that defence. He was succeeded as Lord Castellan by his daughter, Ursula J. Creed. Before Cadia’s fall he had left a data-crystal within a personal vault on the planet, holding a contingency intended for use should the world be lost in the war against Abaddon, and this crystal was later recovered by Ursula.