Belisarius Cawl

Skittering into battle on a multitude of metal legs, Belisarius Cawl is a nightmarish amalgam of ﬂesh and iron swathed in robes of Martian red. Millennia of tinkering and obsessive self-improvement have left Cawl as a grotesque, and his lumpen form towers to several times the height of a grown man. The Archmagos Dominus can unleash tank-busting frepower upon his foes, even as their panicked return-fre rebounds from his thrumming force feld. His many mechanical limbs terminate in glowing energy weapons, piston-claws and vicious combat armaments capable of peeling open a tank like a ration tin. Clustered eyelenses glow beneath his heavy cowl, their gaze insectile and utterly remorseless as it dissects his victims’ every weakness. A master of the manifold binharic cants of the Lingua Technis, Cawl can reinvigorate a machine spirit or stop its reactor heart with but a single phrase. No secret is safe from his acquisitive grasp, and those who seek to keep Cawl from his prize are soon nothing but glowing ashes upon the wind.

Cawl himself is over ten thousand years old, though how exactly he has sustained his life for so long is unknown. After the Horus Heresy he was charged by Roboute Guilliman to oversee two great tasks should the Primarch fall.

At the time of the 13th Black Crusade, Cawl was guided by a Harlequin Shadowseer to a planet which was long-abandoned during the 4th Black Crusade. After battling Orks on the world he recovered an artifact and learned of the Pylons holding back the Immaterium. He was then instructed by this mysterious Shadowseer to go to Cadia, where he aided in the defenses of the world against the forces of Chaos. He was eventually joined into a reluctant alliance with the Necron Lord Trazyn the Infinite and the duo joined together to activate Cadia's Pylon array. While initially successful in activating the Pylons, Cadia was shattered by Abaddon's redirection of the remains of a Blackstone Fortress into the planet. Cawl fled the Cadian system with his artifact and several allies including Saint Celestine, Inquisitor Greyfax, and Marshal Marius Amalrich. Hounded by the Black Legion who sought his artifact of still unknown significance, Cawl and his allies were eventually guided into the Webway on Kalisus by his saviors: Eldar under Eldrad Ulthran.[2]

The Eldar guided the expedition to Macragge where Cawl revealed that his precocious artifacts were the Emperor's Sword and a suit of Power Armour that could heal the comatose Primarch Guilliman. During the Ultramar Campaign Cawl was able to successfully work with the Eldar in resurrecting Guilliman, who drove the Chaos invaders from Ultramar. Cawl accompanied Guilliman in the subsequent Terran Crusade and was one of the few to reach Terra. Once on Terra Cawl talked with Guilliman of a secret pact with Mars and of his work nearing completion. He then made his way to the Red Planet to oversee its success.[3]