Macharius

"The meaning of victory is not to merely defeat your enemy but to destroy him, to completely eradicate him from living memory, to leave no remnant of his endeavours, to crush his achievement and remove all record of his very existence. From that defeat there is no recovery. That is the meaning of victory."

- Lord Commander Solar Macharius

Macharius was the Lord Commander Solar, the chief military commander of the Imperium's Segmentum Solar and one of the High Lords of Terra who is also perhaps the most famous commander of the Imperial Guard. He undertook the Macharian Conquests, also called the Macharian Crusade, of 392-399.M41, which in only seven standard years added nearly 1,000 new worlds to the Imperium at the very edge of the Milky Way Galaxy. He was also later canonised as a saint of the Imperial Cult by the Ecclesiarchy. Macharius launched a vast campaign, unrivalled since the Emperor's own Great Crusade that founded the Imperium of Man, to expand the boudaries of the Imperium into uncharted regions of the Milky Way Galaxy and beyond. Macharius operations have become textbook examples of how to run interstellar military campaigns and he is considered one of the greatest military minds to have been produced by humanity, easily the equal even of the genetically-enginnered superhuman Primarchs. His conquest was only halted by the refusal of his men to continue. This refusal arose only when their path of conquest had reached all the way to the outer border of the psychic protection and interstellar navigation afforded by the Emperor's Astronomican at the farthest edge of the galaxy, beyond which Warp travel would become much more dangerous, slow and difficult. It is said that when Macharius learned that he would be unable to conquer any more worlds in the name of the Emperor of Mankind, he fell to his knees and wept.

Many things and places throughout the Imperium have been named in honour of Macharius, including the Imperial Navy Battleship Lord Solar Macharius commanded by Captain Leoten Semper, the Macharius heavy tank, and the Battleship Macharia Victrix. The planet Macharia, in the Cadian System, was destroyed by Abaddon's Planet Killer superweapon during the 13th Black Crusade in 999.M41.

Title
It was once believed that Solar Macharius was Macharius' full name, and that his military rank in the Imperial Guard was Lord Commander; however, revelations of "Lord Solar" being an auxiliary title for the defunct Imperial rank of Warmaster (the latter held by the cursed traitor Horus, and thus never used again in the Imperium after the Horus Heresy) have led to questions as to whether "Solar" was part of his title, or part of his name. The newest Imperial Guard codex mentions the title of Lord Solar "most gloriously being held by St. Macharius," and the actual recorded dialogue between him and his deputy commander, General Sejanus, refers to him as "the Lord Solar." It is now generally accepted that the title of Lord Commander Solar is the title granted to the commander of all Imperial military assets, both Imperial Guard and Imperial Navy, in the Segmentum Solar which is often held concurrently with the highest Imperial Guard title of Lord High Militant. Likewise, the officer who commands all Imperial military assets in the Segmentum Ultima would be the Lord Commander Ultima, in the Segmentum Obscurus the Lord Commander Obscurus and so forth. However, because the Lord Solar commands the defence of Terra itself, he is often given a seat in the Senatorum Imperialis and serves as one of the High Lords of Terra, the rulers of the Imperium in the Emperor's name.

Trivia
Lord Commander Solar Macharius is based on the real world historical figure of Alexander the Great, the Macedonian conqueror of Egypt and the Persian Empire in the 4th Century BC and the greatest military leader of the Classical world.

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