Varro Tigurius

Varro Tigurius is Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines and Master of Arcana, the Chapter’s most powerful sanctioned psyker. A psyker is an individual able to draw on the power of the Warp, and ‘sanctioned’ denotes one whose use of that power the Chapter permits and monitors through its Librarius. Born on Macragge, the Ultramarines’ homeworld, he was given by his parents to the marshals of induction at the Fortress of Hera. His gift showed itself early: his use of foresight during training exercises was at first treated as cheating, and his training overseer as an Aspirant was Ortan Cassius. The Librarius took him in, and he served first as a Lexicanium.

His most notable early accomplishment came in the Altor Crusade, where he forewarned the Scouts of the 10th Company of a series of ambushes laid by Eldar Pathfinders and advised Captain Agemman to arrive hours early at armistice talks with an Eldar Autarch, defeating a planned treachery. Later, serving with the 5th Company, he led a strike force against the Seven Sorcerers of Harka and bested all seven at once. In the wake of that battle he became famous within the Chapter, formed a lasting friendship with the battle-brother Orestes, and rose to Codicier. After helping the Ultramarines fleet predict the movements of Warboss Madbrakka’s Orks and of Hive Fleet Behemoth, he was raised to Chief Librarian. His warnings let the Ultramarines annihilate the war fleets of Madbrakka and the Chaos Warmaster Niadar as they emerged from the Warp, and Marneus Calgar has said that without his counsel Behemoth would have overwhelmed the Chapter during the Battle for Macragge.

Tigurius has always stood somewhat apart from his brothers, who regard him with feelings ranging from wariness to suspicion. He says little, often answers a question with another, and holds that nothing is more dangerous than incomplete knowledge or a mind untrained to absorb it. His premonitions come as dreams or small seizures and allow Calgar to counter invasions before they begin, a gift some within the Imperium suspect of Chaos taint; in 848.M41 his insight prompted the Ultramarines’ purge of the Hallowed Stars. As Chief Librarian he guards the Library of Ptolemy in the Fortress of Hera, including Guilliman’s own manuscript of the Codex Astartes, and he is reckoned one of the Imperium’s foremost experts on fighting Orks, guiding Calgar’s surgical strikes against the Ork Empire of Charadon.

In 922.M41 he led an Ultramarines strike force to Andraxas to rescue Tech-priests from an Ork invasion. Besieged in the Great Bastion and outnumbered fifty to one, his warriors were saved when the Legion of the Damned appeared; Tigurius renewed the attack, secured the Bastion for the evacuation of the world’s surviving Imperials, and kept the force staff the Tech-priests had unearthed, which is suspected to have belonged to Malcador the Sigillite. In 944.M41 he and the 4th Company destroyed the forces of the Ork Empire of Charadon that had invaded Boros, halting the empire’s expansion for a time, though another account credits the command at Boros to Calgar. In 973.M41 he answered the distress call of Damnos, deploying with Captain Cato Sicarius’s 2nd Company against the awakened Necrons. He led the strike that destroyed the gauss siege cannons and Pylons bombarding Kellenport, scouted the Thanatos foothills, and took command of the company after Sicarius was gravely wounded; with the Dreadnought Agrippan he judged the world lost and held the city until its population had been evacuated.

During the Invasion of Ultramar in 999.M41 he failed to foresee the coming of the Bloodborn, but his visions guided the disposition of the Chapter’s forces, and he predicted that Captain Uriel Ventris would play a crucial part in the outcome. Judging that the greatest threat lay at Talassar, he went there with Calgar and the 1st Company. At the fortress of Castra Tanagra he held M’kar’s daemons off the walls for weeks, and when the outer wall fell he drove them back with a final blast and a psychic barrier before collapsing into a coma. When M’kar entered the fortress and held Calgar helpless, Tigurius woke; too weak to stand, he was carried to the fight by a dozen refugees and unleashed a psychic blast that drove the daemon back and severed its link to the star fort Indomitable, buying time for Ventris to arrive with M’kar’s true name.

He could not foresee the Great Rift, sensing only an inexorable doom, and its psychic backlash cast him into a coma from which he recovered by strength of will. During the Ultramar Campaign, as the Black Legion besieged the Fortress of Hera, his grave visions persuaded Calgar to accept Belisarius Cawl’s plan to revive Roboute Guilliman, and he was among those who met the Primarch in council after his return. Guilliman left him in Ultramar with Calgar. On the Primarch’s orders he later performed a ritual that cost the lives of many of his Epistolaries, projecting himself into Calgar’s dreams to carry the command that Vigilus must not fall.

Tigurius has since crossed the Rubicon Primaris. In the Plague Wars he oversaw the quarantine of the Library of Ptolemy and much of the defence of Macragge, confronting the Great Unclean One Rotigus inside the Library to protect the remembrancer Fabian Guelphrain, and on Espandor, with the Librarians accompanying Guilliman, he banished the Great Unclean One Qaramar after the Primarch struck it down. During the Arks of Omen he commanded Task Force XII of Fleet Primus, bound for the relief of Marwent’s Reach, and turned it to the Rock when Vashtorr assailed the Dark Angels’ fortress-monastery. He personally led the main assault against Black Legionnaires on its surface and, when Azrael coldly ordered the Imperial forces away, obeyed. He bears the Hood of Hellfire, which greatly magnifies his psychic power, and the Rod of Tigurius.