Jarulek

Jarulek, also known as Jarulek the Glorified or Jarulek the Blessed, was one of the more formidable Dark Apostles of the Word Bearers Traitor Legion. He was considered as one of the favoured servants of the immortal Daemon Primarch Lorgar, serving as a true bearer of the word. Through his extreme devotion to Chaos Undivided and furious passion and fiery oratory he had brought countless millions into the eight-fold path. Countless millions that remained ignorant and resistant to the true faith had been slain in holy war upon his orders.

History

Like all of the senior brothers of Word Bearers, Jarulek was born on the world of Colchis and had been there at the beginning, when their blessed Primarch Lorgar had led the first purge, casting down the Old Faith and conquering the entirety of their world, united the disparate masses into one coherent faith. After the Emperor came to their world and reunited with his long lost son, he had brought the Urizen into the fold and gave him a command of his own legion of warriors, created from his genetic code. The Primarch had bowed in obeisance, leading the population of his world in rejoicing and worshiping the Emperor as the one, true God of Mankind. But their faith had been sorely misplaced. Soon, those found worthy amongst the Colchisian masses were recruited to become a part of the Urizen's legion of the faithful. Jarulek was one of the first to be found worthy of becoming a Legionary.

Great Crusade

During the Great Crusade, Jarulek had already attained the rank of Captain through his acts of valour and extreme faith in the tenets of their Legion's beliefs. Though the Word Bearers were already engaged fighting the Ork menace in the Chairak Nebula, the Primarch dispatch Captain Jerulek and 2,000 warrior brothers to bring the recalcitrant world of Fortrea Quintus into Imperial compliance. He had explicit orders from the Primarch to pacify Fortrea Quintus within 3 months. Quickly establishing positions throughout the planet, Jarulek and the Word Bearers roused the populace, who lived in abject poverty, with rousing speeches and fiery oratory to rise up against their corrupt and ruthless monarchy that grew fat of their labours. The oppressed people of Fortrea Quintus joined Jarulek's march until his army had swollen to more than a million. Only one month after landing, Captain Jarulek and his millions of faithful followers, launched a massive attack against the planetary ruler's final bastion. The casualties sustained by the populace were staggering as thousands died charging the heavily defended walls with little more than pistols and spears. Using this as a distraction, the Word Bearers launched a flanking attack catching the defenders off guard, striking for the heart of the palace. Jarulek himself captured the planet's ruler and threw him to the blood-maddened mob. Nearly 90% of the people who had joined the Captain's march had been killed, while barely a handful of Word Bearers had been slain. When Imperial authorities had finally arrived to indoctrinate the population in the Imperial Truth they were horrified by the Jarulek's careless use of the populace, but found the people as loyal to the burgeoning Imperium of Man as any loyal world could be. Later, during the galaxy spanning insurrection known as the Horus Heresy occurred, the population of Fortrea Quintus rose up and slaughtered their Imperial leaders, siding with Warmaster Horus. The planet had to be cleansed by the Blood Angels Legion. Imperial scholars now widely believed that the Word Bearers corrupted the entirety of the populace of Fortrea Quintus upon the planet's initial compliance.

Horus Heresy

When the Emperor's most favoured son, Horus turned upon his father and instigated the galaxy-wide conflict known as the Horus Heresy, the Word Bearers were once of the first Legions to declare their allegiance for the Warmaster, and none so more fervently than Jarulek. By this time Jarulek now served as the First Acolyte to the Dark Apostle known as the Warmonger (then known as Sor Talgron. At the closing days of this interlegionary conflict, Jarulek was a part of the final assault upon Terra, taking a part in the fighting against the Emperor's palace. After the heresy, when his master was mortally wounded and interred within the sacred sepulchre of a Dreadnought, Jarulek was elevated to the esteemed and coveted position of Dark Apostle, taking control of the Host. He would later serve as the Coryphaus to the First Captain Kor Phaeron.

Dark Fate

Before the end of the Horus Heresy, Jarulek had been afflicted with a dire prophecy which he had penned into his own flesh. After ten millennia had passed his prophecy came to fruition. This was a driving factor in the Word Bearers invading the Imperial world of Tanakreg. Though the planet contained a formidable air defence network protecting it from orbital attack and a large number of local Planetary Defense Forces (PDF), numbering approximately 200,000 soldiers, they were subsequently slaughtered by the invading Word Bearers. The Word Bearers Host only suffered minimal casualties due to their propagation of Chaos Cults and inciting them to rise up against their Imperial overlords. This cancerous rot had spread even into the upper echelons within the PDF, resulting in the Air Defense network being shut down through sabotage, so that the Word Bearers could launch a successful deep strike planetary assault. With the successful subjugation of Tanakreg, Jarulek had the remaining populace enslaved and forced them to build a massive obelisk known as a Gehemehnet. This foul structure is designed to channel Warp energy directly into a planet, effectively turning it into a Daemon World. Jarulek used the Gehemehnet to channel enough Warp energy to shatter the crust of the planet, exposing a dormant Necron Monolith beneath its surface. Accompanied by his First Acolyte Marduk, the Dark Apostle managed to recover a powerful artifact from the tomb, but was slain by the awakened Necron Lord as Marduk made his escape.

Sources

• Dark Apostle (Novel) by Anthony Reynolds