Fabius Bile

"If a man dedicates his life to good deeds and the welfare of others, he will die unthanked and unremembered. If he exercises his genius bringing misery and death to billions, his name will echo down through the millennia for a hundred lifetimes. Infamy is always more preferable to ignominy."

- Fabius Bile, The Clone Lord at the Desecration of Kanzuz IX

Fabius Bile is a Chaos Space Marine Apothecary, originally of the Emperor's Children Traitor Legion, who has repeatedly attempted to use his knowledge of cloning and genetic engineering to create superhuman beings under his control in a quest to match and then exceed the Emperor of Mankind's original scientific achievement in creating the superhuman Adeptus Astartes. Travelling the galaxy more widely than any other Chaos Lord of the Traitor Legions, Bile has earned a number of epithets and aliases from those who have suffered the affects of his vile experiments. On Dimmamar, Bile is known as the "Chem-master," on Arden IX and in the Bray System he is called "Manflayer," to the wretched tribes living amongst the ravaged hive cities of Paramar V he is the "Clonelord." He often refers to himself as the "Primogenitor," claiming to have unlocked the secrets of the Emperor's earliest replicae experiments during the creation of the Primarchs and the first Space Marines. Bile's twisted alchemical knowledge and skills at genetic manipulation can be attested to by every planet he has had contact with, for he has left a trail of foul deviants and twisted abominations wherever his ships have landed -- his name is a curse to the Adepts of Terra as his pollution of Mankind's gene-pool has become ever more apparent.

Origins
Fabius Bile was once an Apothecary of the Emperor's Children Traitor Legion who was corrupted by Chaos in his desire to enhance the physical perfection of the Emperor's Children Astartes. Using the knowledge of genetic engineering he had gained from the corpses of the Slaanesh-worshiping reptilian Laer xenos of the world of Laeran that had been conquered by the Emperor's Children during the Great Crusade, Bile developed a series of modified gene-seed organs. These organs were eventually implanted into all of those members of the III Legion who joined their Primarch Fulgrim in turning against the Emperor. This lead to the creation of the first Noise Marines, as well as other types of variant mutant Chaos Space Marines. At the start of the Horus Heresy before the Drop Site Massacre of Istvaan V, Bile modified the nervous systems of his fellow Emperor's Children so that all sensations of pain were rewired to stimulate the brain's pleasure centers instead. This meant that even the infliction of truly horrific or even mortal wounds produced unrivaled pleasure in the modified Astartes.

Battle of Terra
During the Horus Heresy, Bile did not follow the path of his fellow Battle-Brothers in their worship of Slaanesh. Instead he distanced himself from his Legion and devoted himself to researching forbidden genetic engineering technology that would unlock the secrets behind the Emperor's creation of the Astartes. During the Battle of Terra it is known that Bile performed a number of barbaric genocidal experiments on the civilian population to better understand the baseline human genome. He was foremost amongst the Traitor Legions in experimenting on living prisoners, keeping them alive for weeks at a time. Even amidst the carnage that surrounded him during the attack on Terra his fascination was with the alteration of life, not the pursuit of death.

After the Heresy
Bile left Terra before Horus' final defeat, accompanied by a retinue of altered followers drawn from the Emperor's Children and several of the other Traitor Legions. He moved through the war-torn Imperium, exchanging his services with rebel commanders in exchange for prisoners, genetic samples, ancient technologies and archaic technical libra. His abilities to transform normal soldiers into ravening beasts with his serums and create armies using the black technology of cloning was so invaluable that any price would be paid. Many of these ambitious overlords came to rue the day they allowed Bile to experiment on their armies -- his acts of genocide and other atrocities sickened even the most deranged maniacs. As a consequence, genocide and genetic debasement marked his path and the Inquisition still strives to eliminate the threat of his genetically enhanced, psychotic, "New Men" from star systems across the Imperium.

Eventually, like the rest of his fellow Traitors, Bile found his way to the Eye of Terror. Here he discovered the Traitor Legions in disarray, warring amongst themselves. Forever an opportunist, Bile offered his services to the highest bidders, promising the vying Chaos Champions a concoction of vile cures for their ails. After narrowly escaping the Space Marines of the Salamanders Chapter on the world of Arden, Bile's ship became trapped in the gravity well of one of the Daemon Worlds -- a Crone World that had once been the seat of the ancient Eldar empire. Once it had been home to the brightest and best of the Eldar civilisation, now it was a darkened, twisted place of crawling madness, and it was here that Bile made his new home. Bile continues his lifelong unethical experiments there, creating mutated vat-grown super-soldiers he calls "New Men", and other foul things.

Cloning Horus
At some point after the Horus Heresy, Bile managed to steal the body of the Warmaster from the temple the Sons of Horus' had constructed and dedicated to their fallen lord. He cloned Horus, much to their disgust. Bile thought that this would, amongst other things, curry the favor of Abaddon the Despoiler. Instead, Abaddon destroyed the Horus replicae, proclaiming it a "blasphemy" (as well as a potential threat to his own control over the Forces of Chaos as Horus's heir), and ordered his newly renamed Black Legion to raze Bile's Laboratoria and destroy his experiments. It is fair to assume that Bile has not been on good terms with Abaddon since then; following these events, Bile left behind the cause of the Traitor Legions and became a "free agent", pursuing his own agenda. He has also successfully managed to clone himself, with several of his replicaes active in various places, as he is said to have secret facilities in a dozen locations across the Milky Way Galaxy. His arrogance and twisted amoral intelligence is more than matched by his sadistic cruelty.

The Tower of Flesh
Sometime during 796.M37, the vile Dark Eldar Haemonculi create a stronghold within the dark realms of Commorragh known as the Tower of Flesh. This living, breathing construct is created from the bodies of those who defied the Haemonculi Coven of the Thirteen Scars. The Renegade Apothecary Fabius Bile was later tutored in the Haemonculi's own dark arts of fleshcrafting within its blood-slicked halls, one of the few non-Eldar to ever have been awarded this dubious honour.

Bile on Baal
"Why struggle? You'll feel so much better once I'm finished."

- Fabius Bile

Teetering on the brink of oblivion following the near-disastrous Blood Angels Chapter civil war on the Shrine World of Sabien, the fate of the Blood Angels Chapter required the magnanimity of their Successor Chapters. Lord Commander Dante summoned all of the Blood Angels' Successor Chapters for a conclave on Baal. Dante called on the Blood Angels' Successors to aid the Chapter in the protection of their common Primarch's homeworld and his remains from the attack of both the Tyranids and the Forces of Chaos.

While Dante lead the discussion at the conclave, the Apothecaria was working on a radical new procedure to replenish the ranks of the Blood Angels in one swift stroke: the lost art of replicae (cloning). Caecus was the Chief Apothecary or Apothecae Majoris of the Blood Angels. Disturbed by the dwindling numbers of his Chapter, and dreading its extinction, he was involved in fruitless experiments, which Lord Commander Dante ordered stopped, to clone Space Marines, thus eliminating the need to go through the arduous process of the maturation and implantation of the gene-seed in an Aspirant. However, Caecus disobeyed the order and secretly continued the experiments, prodded by an agent of Fabius Bile.

He was tricked into bringing Bile, who was disguised as a well-known Adeptus Mechanicus Magos Biologis, Haran Serpens, to Baal, mistakenly thinking the false "Magos" would help in cloning Space Marines to increase the Blood Angels' numbers. Through Bile's manipulations, Caecus was duped, and only managed to create monstrous, mutant clone-Astartes known as "Bloodfiends" who were consumed by the Red Thirst. These creatures were a shattered mirror reformed in the image of a Blood Angel, but lacked any of the qualities that might be thought of as human. The mutations that cursed the gene-seed of the Blood Angels had been enhanced by the machinations and Chaotic tech-heresy of Fabius Bile, and with each drop of blood they consumed, the thirst that dominated the Bloodfiends grew stronger. The mutants broke free from the confines of Caecus' laboratorium and began to run rampant through the sacred halls of the fortress-monastery of the Blood Angels. During their rampage, Bile managed to steal a glass vial that Caeucus had carried back from the Chapel of the Red Grail -- a measure of the mingled blood of a hundred centuries of Sanguinary Priests and the Primarch, the raw vitae of the Chapter.

During the Bloodfiends' rampage, a small group of the bloodthirsty mutants assaulted the sacred Chapel of the Chapter's fortress-monastery. Brother Corbulo raced to the Chapel to confront the creatures. He knew exactly what it was the beasts wanted, and he bellowed out a denial, charging in a headlong rush to meet such embodiments of corruption. The creatures swarmed Corbulo as the Sanguinary Priest carved into them with his Chainsword Heaven's Teeth. But the largest of the Bloodfiends, a massive brute easily the size of an Astartes in Terminator Armour, threw itself towards its target -- the Red Grail and the precious blood of the Primarch it contained. The Bloodfiend seized the holy relic and then tipped the contents of the cup into its open mouth and drained it to the dregs. Now that the beasts had tasted the blood of the Primarch, they only craved more. In the aftermath of this desecration, Bile had achieved his goal and escaped from the Blood Angels' homeworld with a sample of the precious vitae of their Primarch to continue his experiments.

Black Tide
Having finally secured their homeworld against Bile's mutant-creations, Lord Commander Dante assigned Sergeant Rafen the vital mission of recovering the missing phial that contained the blood of their Primarch that had been secreted away by Bile during the Blood Angels' conclave. Rafen was to recover this most precious of resources and execute the one who stole it for his foul transgressions. Rafen futilely followed the trail of Fabius Bile aboard the Strike Cruiser Tycho for some time, but the trail had gone cold. With the help of Sergeant Noxx of the Flesh Tearers Chapter, the two noncommissioned officers were able to combine their squads and redouble their efforts in tracking and hunting down the elusive Bile. Eventually, the Clone Lord's whereabouts were traced to a powerful Adeptus Mechanicus Magos by the name of Matthun Zellik who had prior dealings with Bile in his usurped identity as the Magos Haran Serpens, the same alias used by Bile to infiltrate the Blood Angels' fortress-monastery on Baal. The joint Space Marine strike force attacked the vessel Archeohort, an ancient and unusual excavation ship solely manned by Servitors and members of the Skitarii.

Rafen and Noxx were able to take advantage of a turncoat within Zellik's retinue, and were able to make their way to Zellik's trophy room. They were able to force the Magos' surrender when they began to smash and destroy the relics he had recovered during his long career. With the vessels Archeohort, Tycho and the Flesh Tearers' vessel Gabriel, Sergeat Rafen and his Battle-Brothers traveled to the world of Dynikas V, a world in the Ghoul Stars region, where Magos Zellik had last had dealings with "Magos Serpens." This unusual world had fallen victim to the predations of a tendril of a Tyranid Hive Fleet, but do to unusual events, somehow the oceans remained intact. Within the oceans of the ravaged planet lurked several aquatically evolved Tyranid bioforms, who were now leaderless without a Hive Mind to control them. Thanks to a captured Zoanthrope Bile "modified", the pheromones produced by the creature were used to confuse the Tyranids and hide the existence of Bile's facility from their senses.

Sacrificing Magos Zellik's ship, Sergeants Rafen, Nox and their men descended upon the planet using a submersible to approach Bile's suspected base of operations. But the mission soon went awry when the Space Marines were forced to battle enormous Tyranid creatures that rivalled the mighty Ice Krakens of the Death World of Fenris. During their nautical battle, Rafen was somehow separated from his allies and managed to float to the surface where he was captured by Bile's enhanced, mutated slaves and brought to the Clone Lord's laboratorium within his bleak fortress complex. Disarmed and strapped to an examination table, Rafen had a strange maggot implanted into his body that bound itself to him and was taken before Fabius Bile himself.

The Emperor Project
"The Dark Gods and their slaves have nothing to offer me now, but I have far more to offer them."

- Fabius Bile

The Clone Lord began to espouse his grand scheme to use the highly pure blood of Sanguinius to help him in his most audacious scheme: obtaining the complete genetic code of the Emperor of Mankind and creating a replicae (clone) of him -- that Bile would control -- with all of the Emperor's psychic powers and other attributes, though none of his moral sense. For millennia, Bile had been collecting body parts and genetic material from captured or killed Space Marines to further this project, the ultimate goal of his quest for human perfection begun so long before. Sanguinius' blood, carrying a purer strain of the Emperor's DNA than that of the genetic material reaped from the gene-seed organs of countless Astartes, was a huge leap forward for Bile's ambitions. Though severely wounded and weakened from his recent ordeal, Rafen managed to attack the wretched Bile and tear out his throat with his teeth, killing him.

However, unbeknownst to Rafen, Bile was not actually dead. Following this assassination, Rafen was taken to a bizarre arena where he was forced to take part in a race against mutants and other captured Astartes, lest he be killed. During this contest, Rafen saw Bile in the audience, somehow still alive. During this contest, Rafen encountered the bellicose Tarikus, a captured Doom Eagles Space Marine, and conspired with him to effect an uprising against the Clone Lord. Meanwhile, Sergeant Noxx had taken charge of the joint Space Marine strike force and effected an assault upon Bile's fortress complex. During the ensuing battle Brother Ceris, a Librarian in Rafen's squad, psychically contacted his squad leader and bade him to assault a strange Warp signature to prevent Bile from effecting his escape. This strange Warp signature proved to be a captured Zoanthrope that had been harvested by Bile and bent to his will to create Warp portals and ward away the other Tyranid bioforms on the planet. The Zoanthrope welcomed oblivion at the hands of the Blood Angels Sergeant.

During the battle that ensued, Fabius Bile was killed no less than four times. The truth of the matter was revealed to Rafen and a handful of his allies when they encountered a pair of clones of Bile; apparent copies of the true Fabius Bile who was not even on the planet. Though unfortunate, when confronted, one of the Bile clones did possess the coveted phial of Sanguinius' blood. When Rafen fought the last Bile clone he managed to take it from the clone and inject it into himself, temporarily attaining enormous strength and power from the blood of Sanguinius. Bile had told Rafen that he did not need the blood anymore, as he had analyzed it already, and had grasped its genetic secrets. The Space Marines then effected their escape by teleporting away from Dykinas V while the Tyranid bioforms ravaged Bile's fortress complex in the absence of the captured Zoanthrope who had been keeping them at bay.

Following these events, the presumably "real" Bile is still alive and well on an Eldar Crone World. His knowledge of the Emperor's DNA is intact, but the replicae project has suffered major delays thanks to the Blood Angels and Flesh Tearers' actions. He was offered an alliance with the Daemon Prince Malfallax to take revenge against the Blood Angels, although it is not currently known whether he accepted the offer.

Physical Appearance
The vile Apothecary wears his white hair bound in a long scalp-lock, which only serves to render his already gaunt features more skeletal and emaciated. His eyes are black, having changed to match those of his daemon Primarch. Bile wears a floor-length coat of flayed human skin, taken from the bodies of the dead on Isstvan V. Here and there, it is possible to recognise the features of a face, a mouth stretched in an endless scream of agony or eyes wide with horror at the sight of the skinner's knife. Fabius also favours a belt of knotted sinew pierced through with metal loops, from which hang the tools of the excruciator's art. Hooks, blades, spikes, pliers and barbs glittering with the promise of excruciating and exquisite pain.

Wargear

 * Chaos Artificer Power Armour - Fabius Bile's Chaos-tainted Power Armour contains multiple devices of his own invention intended to fill his veins with powerful stimulants and pain killers that make him more effective in combat and which transform all the pain he feels into a form of pleasure in the best tradition of Slaanesh.
 * The Chirurgeon - This is a complex part-sorcerous, part-technological device that is attached to Fabius Bile's spine and extends its spidery limbs over his shoulders. It pumps life-giving ichor around his body, charged with the immortal energy of the Warp itself, resulting in vast variations on his strength and other abilities. On the battlefield, he might also bestow the questionable gift of his enhancements to others, with uncertain results. Sometimes the experiment is a success, creating psychotic killers superhuman even in comparison to their corrupted Chaos Space Marine brethren, but sometimes the subject's metabolism disintegrates in the face of the stress, resulting in instant death.
 * Rod of Torment - The daemon-forged Rod of Torment is a specially-crafted close-combat weapon that amplifies the slightest pin prick into a raging well of agony. Any opposing enemy that suffers more than one wound from the Rod of Torment is immediately disabled by the pain and suffers death, regardless of his or her constitution.
 * Xyclos Needler - Bile also employs other obscure or Archeotech weaponry, such as the Xyclos Needler, a Needle Pistol that shoots toxin-laden darts capable of felling even a Space Marine. Bile had this weapon specially crafted so he could "test" new genetically-engineered serums in battlefield conditions.
 * Bolt Pistol
 * Enhanced Warriors - Fabius Bile is known to make use of enhanced warriors drawn from a pool of willing Chaos Space Marines who have been altered through the use of genetic manipulation and specially crafted drug cocktails. These squads of "enhanced warriors" do not always perform as well as he hopes. Sometimes their mutations are stable, enhancing their strength and fortitude on the battlefield beyond the norms of regular Astartes, but at other times become create ravenous, out-of-control monsters.

Notes on Fabius Bile
Inspiration-wise, Fabius is an amalgamation of various "mad scientist" figures from both the real world and fiction, from the Nazis' Josef Mengele to Dr. Victor Frankenstein. The etymology of Fabius Bile comes from the Latin word Fabius, which is the name of a Patrician Roman gens and Bile, from Latin bīlis (“bile”). In biochemistry bile is a bitter brownish-yellow or greenish-yellow secretion produced by the liver and stored in the gall bladder. The word Bile also means bitterness of temper; ill humour; irascibility.