It could be a RL reference to the Serpent in the first chapter of the Tora and the Bible (I believe that chapter is called Genesis in english), the one who offers the fruit of knowledge to the fledgling humans. It's a big enough part of the cultural heritage of us westerner RPGers for FFG to use it as a reference. So if the Serpent is a symbol for someone who wants humans to have knowledge so they can make up their own minds about things, it is certainly so that the Inq would want to enforce the idea that the Emperor wants to kill the Serpent. It can of course be interpreted as a simple warning: "If you act like the Snake and give this information to the humans (=general populace), the Emperor (=Inquisition) will kill you".

You know, the 40k world is so twisted that even the Serpent can be made to seem like a reasonable fella :-)

I'm not certainly saying that it is a RL-reference, only that it might be.

I feel compelled to point out the design on the Eternity Gate in the Emperor's Palace.

Out-of-universe, of course, the illustration was drawn well before the Void Dragon was even conceived. Then again, it could be a retroactive reference. Stranger things have happened.

Mellon, that certainly works. As you say, it's prevalent enough.

A quick scan of the Wiki entry Serpent (Symbolism) gives a whole host of things. Deceitfulness, for one, seems to be prime amongst the various bits, certainly in Judeo-Christian traditions. A more specific interpretation, and certainly one which arguably applies here (albeit without specific conspiratorial overtones but instead just 'bare symbolism' at very least) would be the Serpent as being symbolic of 'the Temptation of Forbidden Knowledge'.

That certainly applies in these cases: The Omega Vault (forbidden, what's inside is sealed) and the Serpentis deep library which you have to be poisoned to enter (forbidden knowledge lies within).

The Emperor triumphant over the serpent would imply that he triumphs over the temptation of the lores forbidden; either he protects you from things you aren't meant to know, strikes people down who aren't allowed to or gives strength and guides the truly righteous...

A simple explanation, but it accounts for the symbology of the device without necessitating that it was over the Dragon. The fact (and I've spoken directly to G. McNeill at a signing earlier this year about it) that the Emperor fought and beat the dragon on historical Terra is both symbolic and also literal (inasmuch as Graham feels it's mightily cool. The ability to doubt from the text is something he says he put in afterwards in a moment of weakness, drawing emphasis to the questionability of it all, but in his mind and his intent the Emperor did fight the Void Dragon, on Earth, some time before 'historic' nowadays. It might not have been Constantine and St George, however. He also mentioned that he wants to work in a lot of Celtic/Scottish history, hence The Last Church is very definitely on the Isle of Skye and he was tempted to make the Void Dragon the Loch Ness Monster and the Emperor St Columba etc)

Anyway, the point is the Void Dragon/Emperor symbolism seems to dovetail nicely with this, but I don't see it as being a direct link to the Vault/Library.

art is art, good to see in the m41 the brits still revere St George

Having picked up a copy of The Emperor Protects for Deathwatch and begun looking through it, I seem to have stumbled across what I think is something of an interesting wrinkle. A lot of people seem to want to point to Komus and even the echoing vault and attribute it to the C'tan and the Necrons but this book points out something I guess I hadn't realized. The setting of the line at large (DH, RT, DW) are all set well before the awakening of the Necrons at large. There's even an adventure in Emperor protects that features them, but only barely, and a sidebar points out how the Necrons haven't awoken yet, are unknown to the Imperium of Man, and sort of advises not to have them do so in what I took as something of an 'it's your game but...' sort of way. I found that pretty interesting.

Looking at this situation, I find myself thinking that there are two possible take aways from all of this. One is that sort of as a side result of this, the Tyrant star has nothing to do with the C'tan or the Necrons and is, more likely, something that deals with the Yu'vath. The other, perhaps more interesting for some, conclusion is that Komus still is something that has to do with the Necrons and might actually be, by way of Haarlock's interference in a future timeline, one of the very things that ultimately causes the Necrons to rise in mass and move on the Universe. After all, stars do get consumed at some point in one of those timelines, and you could, in theory, chalk it up to a gathering of power to awaken those living metal monsters.

Personally though, I still lean towards Yu'vath as the cause, but that's just me.

Brigandier said:

This is highly interesting! I don't have The Emperor Protects. How do you know the DH timeline is set before the awakening of the Necrons in canon fluff?

Would it be too much to ask to write up the exact text of that sidebar? I am dead curious

The Laughing God said:

This has been known for a while, it's just the first time it's been spelled out in one of the books.

Officially, first contact with the Necrons (not necessarily their awakening, but the first time they had been encountered with any evidence left behind to tie it to them) took place in 897.M41, in what is known as the Sanctuary 101 Incident. Sanctuary 101 was an Adepta Sororitas Fortress-Convent, which was destroyed and all its inhabitants slaughtered, leaving behind only a vid-recording of the incident and the flayed remains of the Sisters who died there.

As the official 'present day' years for Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Deathwatch are 815.M41, 816.M41 and 817.M41, respectively, Sanctuary 101 will not occur for another 80 years or so, and consequently any contact with the Necrons before that point remains unofficial and inconclusive (that is, the Imperium won't admit or acknowledge it in any official capacity, though some Inquisitors and others may have their suspicions).

Kind of weird, but I was just thinking that a lot of the threads for the Haarlock's Legacy refer to the Yu'Vath, but I just realized another shady unknown threat out there is the Adranti. Perhaps the Komus is tied to the Adrandi somehow?

Salcor

Salcor said:

Could be. But so far I haven't found any clue pointing to the Adrantians. Their thing is genetical manipulation, I think. The clues pointing at the Yu'Vath are scarce and theoretical at best too, but they do conform to the description of ancient, pre-human empires that dominated the Calyx Expanse before it was conquered by the Imperium, and such empires are being mentioned by Solomon Haarlock himself.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

So the Haarlock Legacy could be the 'official' catch-up fluff to introduce the Necron threat into the Dark Heresy universe...

I don't hope so, though. I've never liked how Necrons were suddenly portrayed the arch-über doom after years and years of having Chaos in that seat.

So I’ve reread the Codex: Necrons to see if there are any clues in there that might shed some light on our most beloved mysteries of the Haarlock’s Legacy and the Tyrant Star.

Dead Stars:
The most obvious link are the dead stars, all that is left of a sun after being fed upon by the C’tan in the corporeal form given to them by the Necrontyr, as described in the rantings of adept Corteswain on 59 and 51 of the Codex: Necrons. In the Haarlock’s Legacy (especially in Volume 3 Dead Stars) there is quite some mention of stars being extinguished, either under Haarlock’s rule or by the rule of his enemies.

As Corteswain said:
“We are born for a darker purpose than that of mere existence. There will come a time when stygian night never ends, where dead stars will spread before us like islands that slumber on the ocean, and when the beings that hid like shadows will feed on us forever."
- Adept Corteswain at the Omniastery of Selethoth, shortly before his disappearance

Outer dark/Halo Stars:
On p24 is says that the Necrontyr during the War in Heaven were pushed back by the Old Ones to the ‘outer dark among the halo stars’. Is this coincidence or a deliberate reference to the prophecy surrounding Haarlock’s s return about ‘the hungering ones will be torn from the outer dark’ and the Halo Stars as a region of space bordering the Calyxis Sector?

Devour:
On p5 the text on an Eldar artefact speaks of ‘the devoured ones’. This may link to the motto of the Tyrantine Cabal and Cassilda Cognos: ‘lest the truth devour all’.

Nightbringer weapon:
On p28 it says that during a battle the weapon of the C’tan known as the Nightbringer was cast into the Immaterium, which is anathema to the C’tan. They cannot retrieve the weapon, therefore. The Nightbringer itself was freed from its tomb on Pavonis and escaped, but his weapon may still be in the Immaterium, trying to get back into realspace. No idea what kind of weapon this would be, but it could be the same thing men call the Tyrant Star. I’m just venting ideas here

That’s all I could glean from the Codex. Maybe others found more. However: I am not sure of the Necron link. The Tyrant Star could be the storyline that pushes the Necrons into the official timeline of the Dark Heresy universe, as it’s indeed true as others pointed out: the first official Imperial contact with Necrons takes place in 897.M41 and our official timeline is around 815.M41. But Necrons are anti-Warp, and somehow Komus reeks of the Warp: psykers being born, mutations, planet-wide anarchy accompany each manifestation. Also, we know Erasmus Haarlock, who is probably somehow connected to the Tyrant Star, was well-versed in warplore.

The only reason that I tend to lean towards the Yu'vath as the source of the Tyrant Star and the Haarlock mystery is simply because, in a metagame sense, it makes sense and is internally consistent. I don't have anything that I can definitively point to and say 'that, that is why' but as game designers to me it would make sense. I look at it like this: Yes, this is a 40k RPG and yes it was made for the fans, but people who've never even heard of Warhammer 40k and who don't have access to the codexes might pick up these books thinking the cover is cool and decide to run the game, becoming immersed in the lore. For that reason, I think it it makes the most logical sense to make the biggest of big bads a creation of the game company itself. That way, when those few players who don't know the world and the source material run up against the same questions that we are, they have the easy answer of it being something Black Industries and Fantasy Flight have created rather than having to plumb the depths of the internet, looking and scrounging for information that might not otherwise be available.

Then again... who knows... Maybe it is the Necrons. It certainly seems to fit in many ways... And I suppose as more books are released, perhaps eventually the truth will out.

The Laughing God said:

No offense, but sometimes I have the impression we are running in circles in this thread. I already quoted Corteswain on page 19 ...

The Laughing God said:

The weapon that was cast in the warp is in fact the Nighbringers flagship.

In regard to my 'C'tan trapped in warp space' theory I also thought about using the Nightbringers ship as the Tyrant Star instead (as was discussed on Warseer about 2 years ago), but in the end I thought a ship (even a C'tan one) is too passive and do not fit my personal vision of a proactive entity (let alone that I do not wanted to bring in the (dull) Nightbringer in any way).

Luthor Harkon said:

I knew that. I even copied the citation from your post. I decided to repeat it for completeness' sake.

Luthor Harkon said:

How do you know? is this an official source?

Could be a candidate for the Tyrant Star.

The Laughing God said:

The ship is called Bringer of Darkness and it is mentioned in the novel Nightbringer by Graham McNeill.

Brigandier said:

Makes sense!

This may or may not be related to the Haarlock legacy, but it might come as a surprise to some that, apparently, the Ordo Chronos had its start in the Jericho Reach ( Dark Heresy: Ascension , scroll/sidebar at the bottom of page 171). This is significant for the following reasons:

1. Mordecai Haarlock, the first to apparently bear the Warrant, had his start in the Jericho Reach.

2. The Erioch Watch Fortress contains the Omega Vault, something that apparently will open up with an appropriate item inside given the proper data inputs at a certain time period.

3. Mordecai Haarlock pays a visit to the Erioch Watch Fortress by accident on 266.M36 and is a guest (?) for three days. What happened to him during that time is anybody's guess, but he never returns to the Watch Fortress. ( Know No Fear web supplement, page 5)

4. Camilla Noesis, speculated to be in fact Cassilda Cognos, pays a visit to the Watch Fortress in 715.M41 just as the Omega Vault opens with a highly accurate clock counting down ( Know No Fea r, page 9).

The sidebar goes on to mention that the Ordo Chronos disappears without a trace. This leads to some interesting questions:

1. Did the Ordo Chronos somehow in fact go back in time and set up the Erioch Watch Fortress for future human occupation? Remember that, among other things, the virus inside the vault will kill everybody except humans and the architecture is apparently human in origin.

2. How much did the Ordo Chronos know about the Tyrant Star? That the vault opens with a clock inside as Noesis pays a visit seems just a tad too coincidental.

3. What did Mordecai Haarlock learn while he was at the Watch Fortress? Could he have come across something that was insignificant to him and/or everybody else, and yet be highly critical to Erasmus Haarlock's endeavor?

Incidentally, were there any odd details in the Haarlock Trilogy that might indicate someone before Erasmus Haarlock has come before, specifically of the Ordo Chronos? This is a stretch, I know, but nonetheless it may bear some examination. For that matter, are there any significant tidbits in either the Deathwatch core rulebook or The Emperor Protects ?

-Kirov

Hey Kirov,

Valid points, which have been raised higher up in the thread. Also, did you note that Cassila Cognos/Camilla Noesis spent 13 days at the Watch Fortress/Omega Vault? The number 13 is as symbolically relevant to the Haarlock Legacy as is the whole obsession with clockworks, countdowns, and time manipulation ...

However I am not sure how you think the Ordo Chronos must be tied in here? IIRC there is no link hidden in any of the books that connects the ill-fated Ordo Chronos to the Jericho Reach and/or the Omega Vault?

The Laughing God said:

I guess you don't have access to Acension ? It's stated in that previously-mentioned scroll/sidebar thing at the bottom of page 171. The exact quote is, "The Ordo Chronos, so it is believed, was established in the Jericho Reach in order to combat any temporal anomalies that might arise from these [meaning time distortions from warp travel], and similar events." The text goes on to say that the members of the Ordo Chronos was concerned with travelers appearing in their past somehow also interfering with the fate of Mankind and the intentions of the Emperor, and that their investigations expanded to include time anomalies of potentially deliberate nature.

As for the Ordo Chronos and the Omega Vault, this is admittedly speculation on my part. Still, don't you find it strange that the Omega Vault opens not only during significant events, but with something also totally appropriate to that event? I don't know about you, but I get the feeling that the Ordo Chronos may well have had something to do with setting up the Omega Vault . . .

Back to the Haarlock legacy, I'm curious as to when the Ordo Chronos disappeared. Erasmus Haarlock's attempted monkeying around with his own past would certainly have fallen within the Ordo Chronos' mandate, but was the Ordo Chronos ever in existence at the same time as Erasmus Haarlock?

-Kirov

Kirov said:

Well even if they weren't, time manipulation means that they could be!

When did the Ordo Chronos disappear?

I have Ascension and did read about the Ordo, but the link with the Jericho Reach I had forgotten!

Okay so I've reread the information on the Tyrant Star from it's purest and most original source: the Dark Heresy rulebook, to see what light it may shed on the Haarlock mystery. Here's what struck me most:

* The Hereticus Tenebrae ('black doctrine' or 'shadow heresy') refers to the prophecy of the Tyrant Star, but it's also the namesake of the entire game: Dark Heresy.

* on p287 the Tyrant Star is quite blatantly connected to long-vanished alien civilizations in the Sector. Many inquisitors hope that indeed it is a legacy of these aliens, 'for the alternatives have implications that are unspeakable'. I.e. if not alien in origin, it must be human. This connects nicely to the Obscuro threat category to which Komus is assigned in the first chapter of Disciples of the Dark Gods: threat that are unknown in origin or long-lost threats of mankind's own past.

* on p317 it says that the prophecy is about a 'darkness' that will devour human civilization. Note the word 'devour': lest the truth devour all.

* a coming darkness may also point at suns extinghuished: the Dead Stars of the Haarlock's Legacy.

* the coming darkness will be announced by signs and portents, so called herald events. The Tyrant Star itself is such a herald event. So Komus is not the doom itself, but a herald of the coming doom (p317)

* Komus is described as a 'black sun', and so most people assume the Spectral Sun whose appearances have been observed, is Komus/the Tyrant Star.It has manifested 18 times in the sector in the last century.

* the Tyrant Star/spectral sun orbits a system's own star as if possessing it, and turning it to black. This reminds me of the Necron star vampires, the C'tan, entities of energy that feed directly on suns, 'killing' them in the process.

* Inquisitor Zerbe, leader of the Tyrantine Cabal, (p318) balances all factions and power groups in the Inquisition so that none overcomes and the others and 'the Hereticus Tenebrae' might be averted! This is the storyline of Haarlock NOT being allowed to return in the Dead Stars finale: the glimpses of alternative futures in the Tesseract hint that without a unifying threat such as Haarlock, the Inquisition will grow weak from infighting, powerless to stop the rise of the Slaugth who will have a field day in the sector. On p318 is suggests that the Inquisition falling to its own petty squabbling is in fact part of the prophecy, part of the Dark Heresy.

* So the prophecy is not about the Tyrant Star per se, but of a coming doom and darkness, of which Komus is a herald/harbinger, and a vital element of the prophecy might be the Inquisition tearing itself apart.

* so what's up with the whole herald thing ... Erasmus Haarlock is often described as the Herald, but Komus is a herald too. Are they both heralds of the coming darkness? Is Haarlock a herald of Komus and Komus a herald of the coming darkness, the stygian night that will never end? Or ... has Erasmus Haarlock become Komus, has he become the herald when he returns from that place from which none return?

Okay this may be a pointless tidbit of fluff, but still ... in Creatures Anathema, on p83, there is an account of Captain Leomyr's encounter with the Eldar corsair prince, Ulthyr Ellarion. In the Inquisitorial record data this report is cross-referenced to some other report, which is only mentioned and not detailed:

- The Battle of Sheol 784.M41//The Entine Prophet//Haarlocks's Legacy

Anyone got any clue to the relevance of this, if any?

the only info i found regarding sheol, is sheol 17, in the inquisitor's handbook. Here is what it says:

in the icy outer sphere of a star that has no name other than a blank codifier sequence, lies the mechanicus facility known in encrypted transmissions as sheol 17. built around a jagged and ferrous asteroid mass, the facility is a vast, open framework of struts and pipes that carry life support feeds to the sealed units that hang there like spiders' nests clustering in the shadowed branches of a dead tree. Each isolated unit is up to half a kilometre in length and holds up to a thousand breathing souls. sheol 17 is a prison; here techno-heretics that have sinned against the holiness of the machine god are condemned to be kept until the mechanicus is certain their heresy does not reveal some truth or lead to accomplices yet unpunished. when certainty is reached, prisoners are taken to the heart of the machinery and their flesh put to use as a servitor, their bodies blessed to serve the omnissiah until it proves its weakness and fails, the graven rune of sheol burned into their skin as a warning to others.

in my opinion FFG does not throw the Haarlock Legacy around left and right, so i believe it has merit. the fluff in creatures anametha says it was a battlefleet engagement regarding the battle of Sheol. that makes sense if sheol is an asteroid, as there would be no "ground assault" to perform. Which means imo, that the facility is tied to Haarlock. the facility is built like a spiders nest, which spiders are in the heladry of Haarlock. So it was a battlefleet engagement for control of the facility. Then the mechanicus were brought in to make sense of the machinery found there. Not making total sense of it, the facility was then converted in to a prison for tech-heretics to keep the mechanicus presence there for further study. It seems that they discovered the means to make servitors there as told above. Meaning this could be the place were Haarlock made his "devices" that use machinery and the bodies of his kin, such as the gilded widow, iron daughter, and the widower. It is the place he partook of the use of the ancient dark science of flesh and matter, which is one of the themes of the Haarlock Legacy.

also significant is that it is a 2nd location in the hazeroth abyss related to Haarlock. Since it is hinted that Haarlock is the one to stop the slaught from over running the calixis sector, and they use the abyss as their base to infiltrate the sector, having 2 locations at the base of a major threat is eye opening to say the least.

That's **** interesting!

From wikipedia I gleaned the following:

Sheol (pronounced "Sheh-ol"), in Hebrew ??????? (She'ol), is the "grave", or "pit" or "abyss".

In Judaism She'ol[3] is the earliest conception of the afterlife in the Jewish Scriptures. It is a place of darkness to which all dead go regardless of the moral choices made in life and where they are "removed from the light of God" (see the Book of Job). She'ol is a concept that predates the Christian and Muslim ideas of judgement after death and also predates, and is different from, Heaven and Hell. It is unclear whether Sheol was to be considered a real place or a way of describing the unknown status of a person's conscious being.

Don't know how relevant this is. Sheol-17 seems to be a forsaken place. Now there was a battle there, but what does Ulthyr Ellarion have to do with it? The Eldar consider the Calyxis Sector cursed, and I still think this is because of the Tyrant Star, and since the Tyrant Star is tied up with the Haarlocks, because of the Haarlock's Legacy too.

Now the Entine Prophet, the other cross-reference added to the encounter with the Eldar corsair, also sounds vaguely familiar ... anyone know what this is?

find it interesting that Ulthyr Ellarion, has interest in the calixis sector, koronus expanse, and the jericho reach. Seems he has his hand in those sectors as any organizations that are involved in them.

I have not found anything on the Entine Prophet, though it does seem familiar............................