Kasper Ansbach Hawser

"There are no wolves on Fenris."

- Kyril Sindermann

Kasper Hawser (also known as Ahmad Ibn Rustah) was an Imperial Conservator (historian) who lived during the Great Crusade and was ensnared in a plot by the forces of Chaos to cause the Space Wolves and Thousand Sons Space Marine Legions to destroy each other.? He was made a skjald, or oral historian of the Space Wolves, and was witness to some of the most important events in the history of the Imperium of Man, including the Council of Nikaea and the Fall of Prospero.

History
Kasper Ansbach Hawser was born on Terra, at the beginning of the Great Crusade and during the violence that marked the slow end of the Age of Strife. Discovered as an orphan, his highly inquisitive nature eventually compelled him to become a Conservator, determined to prevent much of the information that had been lost in the Age of Strife to be being lost to continuing Terran warfare and the beurocracy of the nascient Imperial Administratum. Hawser particularly wanted to know the cause of the Age of Strife, and why so much history that could tell him seemed to be being systematically destroyed by the new Imperium of Man. He quickly found that he was apparently opposed from many sources in his unrelenting search for knowledge but did not know why. Hawser could only find tantalising clues as to the reasons. After finding a strange ancient temple on Terra, he was non-violently but forcibly removed from it by Astartes of the Thousand Sons; when he returned much later, it was gone as if it had never existed. He later found also that his long-term assistant Navid Murza was a Psyker, something Hawser did not even know existed. Murza had become enmeshed within a dark cult of unknown origin or nature, and only just escaped being sacrificed when Hawser rescued him.

Near the end of his natural life as a man in his eighth decade and disillusioned by the Administratum's apparent undervaluing of knowledge, Hawser felt a sudden and inexplicable compulsion to go to the Death World Fenris, home of the Space Wolves Legiones Astartes. The Space Wolves were suspicious of him from the beginning, but he managed to gain permission to land only for his landing craft to be mistakenly shot down by an Astartes named "Bear". Only just recovered on the point of death by the same Astartes after being attacked as a "bad star" by the native human tribes, he was then put into long stasis and throughly rebuilt using an adanced rejuvenat treatment while the Space Wolves figured out what to do with him, believing his arrival was not coincidence.

When Hawser awoke decades later having been rebuilt with the physique of a much younger (and stronger) man, he was to his surprise made a skjald - an oral historian - of the Space Wolves. He was attached to the Tra (Third) Company and allowed to accompany them on their campaigns. He found that he could speak the native languages, Juvyk and Wurgen, although he did not know why. Allowed to go whereever he wished and see whatever he wished among the Vjkla Fenryka - the Space Wolves - he first witnessed the destruction of the Olamic Quietude, a vastly powerful ancient cybernetic human civilisation that the Space Wolves swept aside in days, and came to understand that the ferocity of the Space Wolves was tempered with intelligence and that they were not simply feral barbarians.

Hawser came to realise from recurring dreams, and with the assistance of a dying Rune Priest wounded against the Quietude, that he was being used as an oblivious pawn in some great scheme, and that he had been compelled to go to Fenris by a will that was not his own. The Rune Priest could not determine who was using him or why, but there was another presence implanted in his mind that subtly altered his perceptions to turn him against the Space Wolves, and which now lurked at the back of his conscienceness and was aware of everything he was aware of and was probably passing the information on to someone or something else. Hawser was brought to Nikaea in the wake of the successful Ullanor Crusade, and to his astonishment was confronted by the mighty Space Wolves Primarch Leman Russ. In the presence of Russ' protectors the psychic nulls the Sisters of Silence, Hawser found that he could no longer speak the languages of Fenris. Russ told him that it was his distrusted brother Magnus the Red himself who had invaded Hawser's mind, sent him to Fenris, and was using him as a spy against the Space Wolves.

Russ took Hawser before a group of extremely distinguished men that included no less than Chief Custodian of the Adeptus Custodes Contantin Valdor; Raldoron, Chapter Master of the Blood Angels; Typhon, First Captain of the Death Guard; and the Primarch Fulgrim. To Hawser's enormous suprise they all already knew who he was, and that he was well respected at the highest levels of the Imperium. They offered to find out why Magnus was using Hawser, but it would mean great danger for him. One of the Custodes took him past the Council of Nikaea, where he witnessed the Emperor of Mankind and Malcador the Sigillite speak to the gathered powers of the Imperium.

While watching this from afar and in awe, Hawser was confronted by a powerful Thousand Sons psyker who easily paralysed his Custodes guardian with sorcery based on stating names. He introduced himself as Amon, Equerry to Magnus the Red. Hawser, angering Amon by questioning his use of sorcery as the cause of the Age of Strife, was only just saved by the intervention of Bear. Unlike the Custodes Bear seemed proof against name sorcery, but an injured Amon managed to escape through methods unknown. After this apparent crime by the Thousand Sons and perhaps in small part due to it, the Emperor outlawed the use of psychic powers.

As the Horus Heresy approached, Hawser's dreams became more and more urgent. One of the Rune Priests, Eada Haelfwulf, was attacked attempting to unmask this presence from Hawser's mind, and was regressed to Wulfen by its power. The priest had to be given the Emperor's Peace after giving dire warnings of the impending treachery of Horus it had seen from the mind of the presence but which were ignored as lies.

Hawser bore witness to the burning of Prospero as Leman Russ, fully believing Horus' lies that his brother Magnus had turned traitor and that he was the presence in Hawser's mind, took the full assembled might of his Legion to destroy the Thousand Sons. As Prospero was murdered Hawser was finally was confronted by the presence that had used him as a puppet - not Magnus but a presence that called itself the Primordial Annihilator, probably a Greater Daemon of a very rare unity of Chaos Undivided, and possibly having also pretended to be Amon. It appeared to him as Horus Lupercal at first, taunting Hawser with images of the Anathame and promises of Horus' fall to Chaos.

Hawser attacked the Daemon as it was caught by surprise by his strength of will, and called for help. But the hellish thing could not be killed by the weapons of the Space Wolves, and used their names against them in the same psychic-sorcery it had used before, stealing the names from Hawser's own mind. Only Bear (whose real name "Bjorn" had been always mistaken by Hawser), and Hawser himself (who had never known his birth name),? were able to withstand its warp-sorcery. Despite Bjorn's resistance the Daemon was still more than a match for him; it clutched and corrupted the Astartes' left hand, thinking to toy with him before it killed him. Hawser Bjorn by cutting off the hand and halting the corruption before it could consume him. This missing hand eventually earned Bjorn the moniker of Bjorn the Fellhanded.The Daemon was only defeated upon the arrival of the Sisters of Silence, who negated its psychic powers and allowed two Dreadnoughts to pulverise its physical form. It was sent back to the Warp even as elsewhere on the battlefield Leman Russ broke the back of his brother Magnus over his knee.

In Prospero's murdered ruins, Hawser was left to reflect upon the partial victory of Chaos. As Magnus had not resisted but had taken what he believed was his just punishment for his sins, the Thousand Sons and Space Wolves had not annihilated each other as the Ruinous Powers had wanted. However Magnus and the Thousand Sons had used terrible forbidden knowledge to preserve themselves, and had finally been pushed? over the line into damnation to become true traitors.

Final fate
As he had been tainted by the Warp, Hawser knew that he could not return to his duties. The Space Wolves, for all their savagery in battle, were too sentimental to simply kill him. Kasper Hawser was taken by Leman Russ and placed in stasis deep below the Fang where the Legion Dreadnoughts slept, to be woken some time in the far, far future when he was needed to once again recount the things he had seen as Skjald of the Vylka Fenryka.