Fidus Kryptman

Inquisitor Kryptman of the Ordo Xenos

Kryptman is a notable Inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos, one of the primary sub-divisions of the powerful and secretive organisation known as the Imperial Inquisition. A Tyranid expert, saviour of the Imperium in the Hive Fleet Leviathan crisis, and the discoverer of a full 82 new alien species (all of which he subsequently deemed a threat to the Imperium and ordered eradicated). Kryptman was the first Inquisitor to witness the devastating effects of a Tyranid invasion during the attack of Hive Fleet Behemoth and fought the Tyranids for over 250 years. He was one of the most active members of the Inquisition against the Tyranid invasions, even taking drastic measures to the dismay of other Inquisitors. During the Invasion of Hive Fleet Leviathan, Kryptman led Deathwatch Kill-teams to the Tarsis Sector to aid the Mortifactors Chapter and the Ultramarines of Tarsis Ultra. By capturing a Lictor, Magos Biologis Locard (Kryptman's Adeptus Mechanicus Biologis) created a biological weapon to use against the Tyranids and his Deathwatch members used it to destroy the Norn-Queen. Kryptman later authorised the largest single act of genocide the Imperium has ever inflicted on itself by abandoning or destroying all worlds in Hive Fleet Leviathan's path. He was later issued a "Carta Extremis" and was stripped of his title. However, this did not stop him and he soon led his loyal Deathwatch warriors to steal Genestealers in stasis and used them to lure Tyranids to the homeworlds of the Orks of Octavius.

History

The Death of Tyran

Tyran, or more formally Tyran Primus, is the former Ocean World on the very edge of the Milky Way Galaxy in the Eastern Fringe where the Adeptus Mechanicus of the Imperium of Man maintained a small research outpost. It was on Tyran that Mankind made first contact with Hive Fleet Behemoth, which destroyed all life on the planet in early 745.M41 and initiated the First Tyrannic War. a data-codex plummeting into the depths of what remained of the outpost before being torn apart.

The precious data collected by the world's defender within a single data-codex would prove to be the Tyran outpost's greatest legacy, for its video, pict and data records of the first Tyranid assault would be found almost a full Terran year later by Inquisitor Kryptman, a man who would later dedicate his life to ending the Tyranid threat to humanity. Without Kryptman's arrival, the fate of the Tyran outpost might never have been known and the Imperium taken completely unaware of what was to come. Kryptman had found a sterile, Dead World that now bore no sign of the once-thriving Ocean World it had once been. The planet had been literally sucked dry and scoured of all life, with every scrap of vegetation and even all of its water consumed by the Hive Fleet as needed biomass and nutrients. As Kryptman reviewed the data-codex he found in the outpost's ruins, the full horror of the first Tyranid attack was revealed to him. The Inquisitor immediately left the ghosts of Tyran behind to warn the galaxy of the Great Devourer's approach, a terror that Kryptman named the "Tyranids" after the first Imperial world they had consumed. The nightmare of the Tyrannic Wars had begun, and the Imperium of Man would never be the same.

Thandros

Kryptman immediately ordered his Astropath to project a vision to the Imperium, but the Psyker could not penetrate the Warp turmoil left by the passing of the alien fleet. Even the nearby Thandros Adeptus Telepathica relay matrix was obscured. In desperation Kryptman set course for Thandros in the hopes of re-establishing communications there. But it was already too late, for the Tyranids had attacked Thandros and moved on long before the arrival of the Inquisitor. As with Tyran, the Telepathica adepts manning the orbiting telepathica matrix were unable to send word of their plight to the Imperium because of the Tyranid's psyhic blockade. The Thandros System had fought and died alone. Kryptman and his retinue salvaged the telepathic matrix and sent a message of warning to the unsuspecting Imperium of the magnitude of the Tyranid threat. After days had passed, Kryptman finally received orders from the Lords of the Ordo Xenos to travel to the planet Macragge in the Ultramar System, the empire of the Ultramarines Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes. There he would assist Chapter Master Marneus Calgar in locating and eliminating the Tyranid fleet. As dictated by Imperial tradition, the alien Hive Fleet had been codified with an ancient and forbidding name from legend: Behemoth.

The Battle for Macragge

Thanks to Ordo Xenos Inquisitor Kryptman's discoveries at Tyran Primus, the defenders of Macragge had been forewarned of the horror headed towards them. Upon learning of the threat posed to Ultramar by Hive Fleet Behemoth, Marneus Calgar at once drew up his plans. Deeming Macragge to be the star system most immediately threatened, Calgar ordered its already formidable defences to be further improved. A dozen warships already hung in orbit, and each day more arrived from the Warp. Massive Strike Cruisers cast shadows over civilian vessels and Imperial Navy Destroyers, and were themselves dwarfed by the brooding presence of the Ultramarines' Battle Barges. Between this mighty fleet of warships and the planet's no less formidable orbital defence stations, Macragge was anything but defenceless.

As the Ultramarines readied themselves for all-out war with the Tyranids, and Kryptman allowed himself a glimmer of hope, he heard the news that Battlefleet Tempestus had finally been despatched from the orbital docks at Bakka. Kryptman had met with Marneus Calgar, and after long discussion agreed that Macragge was the system most immediately threatened by Hive Fleet Behemoth. A month later, the Tyranids attacked Macragge, and a fleet of bio-ships now numbering well over 1,000 vessels swept aside attacks by Ultramarines' Strike Cruisers defending the outlying worlds as they pushed in-system. A large section of the Tyranid fleet then descended upon the garden world of Prandium, a paradise once referred to as the jewel in Ultramar's crown, and left a barren ruin in its wake. Despite the Inquisitor's warnings, Calgar was shocked to the core by the fate of Prandium.

With the Hive Fleet destroyed after the sacrifice of an Imperial Battleship created a Warp vortex that destroyed the majority of the Hive Fleet, Calgar's surviving starships came about and roared back to Macragge to try to save the beleaguered polar garrisons. Calgar, feeling that the situation was becoming critical, sent the 3rd and 7th Ultramarines Companies ahead in their fast Strike Cruisers while his remaining damaged ships limped back to Macragge. Despite horrendous losses inflicted upon the Tyranid fleet from the orbital and polar defence grids, many Tyranid organisms were able to reach the surface of the planet. The Tyranid swarm swept across the planet with the most intense fighting in the region of the northern polar defence installations. Despite the Ultramarines fleet's ability to destroy the Tyranid bio-ships, horrific casualties were suffered by the planet's population as well as the Chapter. Calgar went down to the planet's surface, leading the 3rd Company against the ravenous hordes of the Great Devourer. The entirety of the elite 1st Company was wiped out to a man whilst defending the northern pole's defence grid. The Ultramarines 1st Company was gone and the 3rd and 7th sorely diminished. It would be many long years before the Chapter could properly replace its losses from the Battle of Macragge, but replace them it would.

Tendrils of the Kraken

In the aftermath of the First Tyrannic War there was little the Imperium could do to strike back at its foe. Behemoth had arrived from a virtually unexplored quarter and had all but disappeared after the Battle of Macragge. Two and a half centuries passed with neither sight nor sound of further Tyranid incursions. Then, without warning, a new Tyranid invasion came without warning in 993.M41, and no one could be sure how many planets had fallen to the Tyranid horde already. Hive Fleet Kraken appeared to be made up of many sub-fleets which moved to attack worlds across an entire sector simultaneously. The alarming disruption in the Warp brought about by the hive fleet's passage blocked out astropathic communication beyond the besieged systems and Warp travel in their vicinity had become dangerously unpredictable. Inquisitor Kryptman's activities during this tumultuous time are not recorded, but suffice to say, he was more than likely actively involved in combating the Tyranid menace.

The New Threat

Less than five years after the defeat of the Hive Fleet Kraken in the Second Tyrannic War, Lord Inquisitor Kryptman noted the tell-tale signs of yet another Tyranid invasion in 997.M41. He implemented the Kryptman census, burning out dozens of astropaths in the attempt to contact scores of worlds on every fringe of the Imperium. Slowly, the responses - and lack of them - formed a pattern, and the venerable Inquisitor was able to chart the course of the Tyranids' latest Hive Fleet to arrive in the Milky Way Galaxy. Codenamed "Leviathan", this time the Tyranids were approaching from below the galactic plane, attacking from two points spaced wide apart in the shape of a closing pair of jaws, cutting off large portions of the galaxy from Warp travel or astropathic communication. In 999.M41, at a great cost in human life, a combined force of Planetary Defence Force troops, two Regiments of the Imperial Guard, the Ultramarines and Mortifactors Chapters of Astartes, and a Deathwatch Kill-team under the command of Inquisitor Kryptman crushed the left "half" of Hive Fleet Leviathan on the world of Tarsis Ultra, destroying the Tyranids nearest to Terra, and reestablishing astropathic contact with the worlds between Leviathan's jaws. The Imperium had won its first victory.

Yet Leviathan continued to carve its bloody path through the Imperium. Perhaps Leviathan's main gain was the vital Forge World of Gryphone IV, home of the Legio Gryphonicus ("War Griffons") Titan Legion. Kryptman knew he had to slow down the Hive Fleet's advance to buy time for the Imperial Navy's Battlefleets Solar and Tempestus to muster. With grim finality, he ordered a cordon to be established. Every world within was to be evacuated and undergo immediate Exterminatus wherever possible. With one stark, callous decision, the Inquisitor had inflicted the Imperium's worst act of genocide upon on its own since the Horus Heresy. Kryptman was denounced as a radical and a traitor; when migrating Orks claimed a score of former human worlds, he was stripped of his title and cast from the Inquisition by his brethren.

Yet Kryptman still had loyal allies within the Deathwatch, and incepted a plan to halt Leviathan without the loss of further human life. When a Genestealer infested Space Hulk drifted from the Warp, members of the Deathwatch loyal to Kryptman captured a brood in stasis. Using the brood of captured live genestealers, the Inquisitor engineered a Tyranid invasion within the Ork-held Octavius system, very close to Leviathan's advance. The crowded Ork cities, so teeming with life, were the source of a huge Orkish infestation, and soon drew the entirety of Leviathan into the tight cluster of Ork systems. The plan had worked, and both races are now thoroughly involved with destroying each other. One thing is certain: each race thrives on war, and there remains the possibility that if the Tyranids emerge victorious, the Imperium shall have to face a threat far greater than before, as in a victory, unlike other races, Tyranids effectively lose no military strength or resources, their casualties and still living warrior strains reabsorbed by invading hive ships along with the remains of the conquered worlds, thus every victory has no repercussions, only benefits. This also means that the Tyranids will assimilate vast quantities of strong, survivable Ork DNA that makes Orks such successful survivors and incorporate it into their own bio-constructs. Indeed, worlds on the edge of the conflict have begun to file captures of Tyrands assault organisms larger than ever before. The implications of Kryptman's manipulation of this alien threat are too horrible to contemplate.

Sources

• Codex: Tyranids (5th Edition), pp. 8-9
• Codex: Tyranids (4th Edition), pp. 6, 8
• The Inquisition (RPG)
• Warriors of Ultramar (Novel) by Graham McNeill
• The Last Ditch (Novel) by Sandy Mitchell