Gabriel Seth

"Today, I will teach your kind the meaning of wrath. I will kill a thousand of your filth-breed before your blood dries on my gauntlets."

- Gabriel Seth, Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers

Chapter Master Gabriel Seth, during the Third War for Armageddon Gabriel Seth is the current Chapter Master of the infamous Flesh Tearers Space Marine Chapter. A Second Founding Blood Angels Successor Chapter, the Flesh Tearers have served Humanity since the dawn of the Age of Imperium. Tragically, the Flesh Tearers have become increasing prone to the most extreme effects of the Blood Angels' Flaw known as the Black Rage, to such an extent that, like other Blood Angels Successors, the Chapter now stands at the very brink of oblivion. In latter centuries, the Flesh Tearers have fallen to increasing extremes on the field of battle. The Battle-Brothers' rage has known no bounds, continuing long after all enemies have been slain. Collateral damage has been excessive, and on several occasions allied forces have been attacked in the immediate aftermath of a successful assault. An apparent disregard for other Imperial forces has led to a number of reported atrocities, with innocents caught in the crossfire slain alongside genuine enemies of the Imperium. Other Space Marine Chapters viewed the Flesh Tearers as being but a single step from turning renegade. Other Imperial forces have come to abhor the Chapter, and it has drawn the eye of the Inquisition as it sought to have the Chapter investigated.

History
In the year 815.M41, the position of Chapter Master of the Flesh Tearers passed to Gabriel Seth. Upon his ascension, Seth listened grim-faced as the Chapter's High Sanguinary Priests presented the evidence of the terrible truth - the rate at which their Battle-Brothers succumbed to madness or death now far exceeded the Flesh Tearers' capacity to replace their losses. Within two centuries, the Flesh Tearers would be no more, abandoned by their allies and betrayed by their own flesh. At that moment, Seth swore that if the Flesh Tearers' fate be extinction, then the would pass into history in proud remembrance, not through whispered rumours of brutality and madness.

Seth has announced his intention that should the Chapter be doomed, the last passages of its histories will be filled with glory. The new Chapter Master intends to undo the damage done in recent centuries, by mounting proactive patrols through regions where the enemies of Mankind are known to lurk. The Chapter intends to be the first to respond to calls for aid, launching utterly devastating counter-attacks to turn invasions before they have even begun. To date, it is too early to tell how Seth will write the last entries of the Flesh Tearers' story, but already, the Chapter is taking steps to undo the undoubted wrongs it has committed, and redeem itself in the eyes of potential allies.

Under Seth's leadership, the Flesh Tearers homeworld of Cretacia has become little more than an automated armoury and recruitment centre. At any given time, the bulk of the Flesh Tearers are off-planet, performing great patrol-arcs through the Segmentum Ultima and Segmentum Tempestus, the Chapter's Librarians sifting the ether in search of astropathic calls for assistance. So it is that the Flesh Tearers will often be amongst the first wave of reinforcements to an embattled world, Seth himself leading boarding actions against enemy blockade vessels or counter-assaults on the invaders' drop zones before the foe have claimed so much as a foothold. Seth knows that he cannot realistically curtail his Battle-Brothers' bloodlust - indeed he himself is as prone to rage-soaked savagery as any of his brethren. Yet by striking first, and in isolation from other forces, the Flesh Tearers' worst excesses are concealed, as is the collateral damage amongst allies that once was the hallmark of the Chapter's assaults. Now, worlds that once reviled the Flesh Tearers praise them as saviours, and Seth as the bringer of that salvation.

It is too early to tell if Seth's strategy will ultimately bear fruit, if the Flesh Tearers can regain their place amongst the Imperium's pantheon of honoured defenders. Despite his intentions, Seth has done little to dispel the mistrust of his staunchest critics, in whom the memory of plans frustrated by the Flesh Tearers' impetuous assault forces lies too fresh. Such things are of little concern to the Flesh Tearers Chapter Master, for, in his heart, Seth has never truly abandoned hope that the Flesh Tearers can be spared from ultimate oblivion. It is a desperate hope, at best. What fate ultimately lies in store for the Flesh Tearers and their Chapter Master, only time will tell.

The Third War for Armageddon
In 998.M41, a massive conflict erupted between the Imperium of Man and the largest Ork WAAAGH! ever raised, led by the Greenskin Warlord Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka. The war was fought on the Hive World of Armageddon where Ghazghkull Thraka had launched his first attempt to seize the planet exactly 57 standard years before. Five full companies of Flesh Tearers participated in the Third War for Armageddon, where the Chapter was nearly declared Excommunicate Traitoris and subjected to investigation by the Inquisition's Ordo Hereticus after they had, in a fit of the Black Rage, slaughtered Imperial citizen militia once they had run out of Orks to kill. Amongst the Orks of Armageddon, the Chapter became known as the "Eaters of the Dead." Later in the campaign, the Orks were known to have retreated when the Flesh Tearers attacked or faced them on the battlefield, a display of fear virtually unheard of among the Greenskins. The incident occurred after the Flesh Tearers were deployed in the Fire Wastes of Armageddon alongside the Sisters of Battle of the Order of the Argent Shroud. The Imperial forces were deployed against the artillery of the Ork Warlord Ruklum, who held positions besieging the civilian settlement of Gaius Point, the citizens of which had formed an irregular militia to aid the Imperial forces in their defence. The Flesh Tearers managed to deploy behind the Orks and force them into the guns of the Sisters of Battle and the Gaius Point militia. After slaughtering the Orks to a Greenskin, the uncontrollable Flesh Tearers assaulted Gaius Point themselves and killed every member of the militia. Rather than fight their own allies, the Sisters of Battle withdrew from the field, but the Order of the Argent Shroud reported the massacre to the Ordo Hereticus and recommended that the Flesh Tearers Chapter be declared Excommunicate Traitoris.

Blood Angels Conclave
In 999.M41, the Blood Angels teetered on the brink of oblivion following the events on the Shrine World of Sabien. The fate of the Blood Angels Chapter now required the magnanimity of their Successor Chapters. Lord Commander Dante summoned all of the Blood Angels' Successor Chapters for a conclave on Baal following a near-disastrous Chapter civil war that nearly tore the Blood Angels apart. Dante called for the support of the Blood Angels Successors to help aid the Chapter in the protection of their common Primarch's homeworld as well as the remnants of their Chapter, in the face of expected invasions by both the Tyranids and the Forces of Chaos. During this time Seth was busy leading a campaign against the Companitas, an anti-Imperial rebel group on the world of Eritaen, when a small Blood Angels envoy brought the summons to the stern Chapter Master. Seth loathed the Progenitors, hating the fact that the Blood Angels were a First Founding Chapter. He felt that they were both haughty and arrogant by nature, and looked down upon their Successor Chapters with contempt. After arriving at the Blood Angels Conclave on Baal, Seth initially voted against his Chapter providing Lord Commander Dante a tithe of Initiates like the other Blood Angels Successor Chapters.

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. 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 the vile Chaos Space Marine Apothecary Fabius Bile. He was tricked into bringing Bile, who was disguised as a well-known Adeptus Mechanicus Magos Biologis, 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 could 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 Sanguinius himself, 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. One of the Bloodfiends 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.

The Blood Angels and their Successors successfully defended their most sacred of sites on Baal — the Golden Sarcophagus of Sanguinius within the sacred sepulchre where the Great Angel lay for all time, sleeping in light, forever preserved. The Sons of Sanguinius destroyed the horde of mutants and erased the stain of Chaos from their midst. They had paid for the continued sanctity of the Great Angel with their blood, and in the aftermath of this misery, Lord Commander Dante took responsibility for what had happened and he accepted it without complaint. Dante believed that it was his hubris that had brought the Chapter to this dark place. The Successor Chapters took this into consideration as well as Lord Commander Dante's original request for the Successors to grant the Blood Angels a small tithe of their Chapter's Initiates in order to replenish the ranks of the Chapter. During this defence of the sacred sepulchre, Dante had saved Seth from one of the vile Mutants. At that moment he realised that all of the Blood Angels Successor Astartes were brothers at heart. The Successor Chapters, including the Flesh Tearers, unanimously agreed to hand over to the Blood Angels some of their own Neophytes to help their ancestral Chapter rebuild its strength in the wake of the Chaos assault — and in preparation for the oncoming assaults by the Tyranids and the Forces of Chaos.

Brotherhood of Rage
The Flesh Tearers face the daunting prospect of extinction in the near future. Their variant of the Blood Angel gene-seed is growing increasingly unstable and a larger number of Flesh Tearers Astartes are succumbing to the Black Rage every year. So many are falling to that terrible curse that the Chapter is finding it hard to replace their losses between campaigns. After realising that there was likely no hope for his Chapter's survival, Seth decided that they would die in battle with honour in service to the Emperor, rather than succumb to their own curse. He increased the production of weapons and new Initiates for the Chapter on their homeworld of Cretacia, so they would be able to serve until the bitter end...

Personality
The Gabriel Seth is a brash, blunt and fearless leader. He has led his Chapter for over 100 standard years. Seth has experienced many victories over his long career but he has also seen so many of his Battle-Brothers fall to the Black Rage that the losses weigh heavily upon his already dour spirit. Yet Seth and the Flesh Tearers have earned a great deal of animosity from other Imperial military forces who the Flesh Tearers often ignore or disregard during combined operations because of their over-aggressive tendencies. At the same time even other Astartes often refuse to serve alongside the Flesh Tearers because of their tendency to rush headlong into battle without regard for strategy or tactics.

Gabriel Seth always leads his forces from the front where he engages in the same acts of violent savagery for which the rest of his Chapter has become so infamous. When not in combat, Seth is a stern and gloomy Chapter Master, preoccupied with the imminent extinction of his Chapter and what, if anything, he can do to stop it. Though Seth hopes for a reprieve, he also is preparing his Chapter to join the annals of the lost with honour rather than being remembered with fear and loathing.

Wargear

 * Artificer Armour
 * Iron Halo
 * Blood Reaver - Seth wields Blood Reaver, one of the Chapter's most deadly relic weapons, which is a massive two-handed Chainsword that is almost twice the size of the standard variant used by Astartes squad Sergeants. It is deadly in its own right, but if the wielder is surrounded by dozens of enemies it can be swung in a 360 degree arc, shattering all of the foes in its path.
 * Bolt Pistol
 * Frag Grenades
 * Krak Genades