Umberto II

Umberto II was a former Ecclesiarch of the Adeptus Ministorum and a High Lord of Terra. Under Umberto's leadership, the common faithful of the Imperium rose up and took the fight back to the Ruinous Powers, standing shoulder to shoulder with their brothers and sisters in the Imperial Guard and the Emperor’s Angels of Death. Ancient Terran scholars ascribed the near two thousand years of uneasy peace between the Eleventh Black Crusade in 301.M39, and the Gothic War in 139.M41, largely to the legacy of Umberto’s efforts in the segmentum.

When Umberto II died, his body was interred on the planet of his birth, the Cemetery World of Certus-Minor located in the Praga subsector. Grave markers, tombstones and statues of every crafted tradition, built almost one on top of the other, crowded the landscape with barely a scrap of precious earth between them. Vaults, mausolea and private crypts sprouted from the sepulchrescape, dwarfed only by the ancestral tombs and necropoli of noble families. It was the Ecclesiarch’s dying wish that his body be returned there upon his death. Such a prestigious burial ground was secured at a premium by the great and good of the fair Imperium. He was buried with full honours and ceremony in the beautiful, baroque metrapol known as Obsequa City within his own mausoleum.

The metropol was a vision of towers, steeples and spires. Stained-glass and rockrete, dark with age, thrusting forth towards the heavens with reverent majesty. With nearly every square metre of dirt on Certus-Minor devoted to the dead, even the city was considered an extravagance. Like a tiny, ecclesiastical hive, Obsequa City comprised bethels, basilicas and cathedrals that were built tall and tight. The narrow alleys and passages were steep and cobbled, leading up to the crowning monument – the heart of the city in both a physical and spiritual sense – the Umberto II Memorial Mausoleum. Nestled at the heart of the devotional architecture and adorning the metropolis like a crown was the enormous roof-dome of the sacred vault that dominated the city skyline - the largest and tallest building in Obsequa City.