Ancient Remembrancer's sketch of Knight-Commander Jenetia Krole, the "Soulless Queen," during the Great Crusade.
Jenetia Krole, known in popular myth as the "Soulless Queen" or "The Witch-Bane," was the mistress of the Raptor Guard and one of the Emperor's personal battle confidantes.
She was the Knight-Commander (or Vigil-Commander) of the Sisters of Silence and Chief Investigatus-Militant of the Divisio Astra Telepathica during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras of the late 30th and early 31st Millennia. She was slain during the Siege of Terra defending the Eternity Wall Spaceport by the Champion of Khorne Khârn.
History
The Soulless Queen
Knight-Commander Jenetia Krole during the Fall of Prospero.
One of the most mysterious and indeed feared warlords of the Imperium during the bygone eras of the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy was Jenetia Krole, or as the Remembrancers were wont to name her -- "The Soulless Queen." Krole was the indomitable Knight-Commander of the Silent Sisterhood. The foremost battle leader of her order, Jenetia Krole stalked the shadows of the Great Crusade at the behest of her master, the Emperor.
She commanded whole armies of the Sisters of Silence on those few and dread occasions when such were required to take to the field, sought out and slew psykers turned would-be gods, and cut the lives short of those who aimed either to subvert or deny the Great Tithe, and brought down bloody retribution on any who slew those of her Sisterhood.
Unification Wars
Despite her youthful appearance by the time of the Horus Heresy, Jenetia Krole was far older than she seemed. She was born on Terra, a child of the war-wracked nation of Albia, a land that had long resisted the Emperor's dominion. It was Constantin Valdor, Captain-General of the Legio Custodes, who first discovered the hollow-eyed girl and brought her before the Master of Mankind. In His presence, she found a purpose beyond mere survival. She would become a weapon, honed and relentless.
During the Unification Wars, Krole carved her name into history with cold efficiency. She fought in the brutal Wars of Succession, in the Red Frost campaign, and in the final, bloody subjugation of her homeland. She stood at the Pacific, where the last of Old Earth's tyrants were swept aside, and she bore witness to the Last Unity -- the moment when Terra, at last, belonged to the Emperor alone.
Great Crusade
In the opening years of the Great Crusade, Krole's blade cut a path through countless war zones. She fought in Compliance 9-13, shattered the doomsday cult known as the "Final Banquet" during the Cataclysm of Pentacanaes, and carried out the Emperor's command without hesitation or remorse. When the Silent Sisterhood was formally established, it was Krole who was named Knight-Commander. It was she who oversaw the "Great Tithe" -- the relentless culling of psykers across the newborn Imperium.
At some point during the crusade, Krole was attached to an expeditionary force battling for control of the Mournful Gate, where Aeldari slavers sought to hold back the Imperium's advance. When the campaign's commanders were assassinated, she responded with characteristic finality -- executing the remaining general staff for their failure and assuming command herself. What followed was a victory so absolute that the Emperor granted her the Laurels Invictarus, a distinction usually reserved for the Imperium's greatest generals.
Her later battle honours stretched across the stars. She was there at Skagan, where the first Psy-Titan of the Ordo Sinister was unleashed upon an unsuspecting enemy. She fought through the cursed spires of Itria, waged war in the accursed Witch Wars, and purged the world of Asmodex in fire and silence.
Horus Heresy
Fall of Prospero
Assassin, general, avenger and soul-chilling terror, Jenetia Krole was a creature of dark legend long before she was committed as part of the honour guard tasked with the retrieval of the Thousand Sons Primarch Magnus the Red. When the Crimson King was condemned, Krole was chosen to lead the Silent Sisterhood in the coming reckoning. She divided her forces among the Censure Host commanded by Primarch Leman Russ, ensuring the warriors of the Legiones Astartes were shielded from the Thousand Sons' sorcery.
During the Fall of Prospero, upon the battlefield of the Prosperine planetary capital of Tizca, Krole was personally responsible for the division of her ranks into protectorate detachments for the remainder of the Censure Host, a decision which allowed them to ensure the near-destruction of the Thousand Sons Legion though it required the sacrifice of thousands of her troops.
She herself sought out and slew many of the Thousand Sons' most vaunted sorcerers in hand-to-hand combat. By the time of the battle's ending, she appeared a spectral figure of some ancient myth, bedecked in the white dust of shattered marble and the spilled blood of multitudes.
War Within the Webway
Knight-Commander Jenetia Krole, the "Soulless Queen".
The Knight-Commander would later return to Terra to lead her order against the forces of Chaos during the War Within the Webway within the Imperial extension of the Webway, whose entrance was located deep down in the dungeons of the Imperial Palace. The Emperor's efforts to free Humanity from its dependence on the Immaterium for long-distance travel and communication were thwarted as a direct result of the interference of the primarch Magnus the Red's sorcerous warning.
Magnus' psychic presence had penetrated the multiple psychic shields the Emperor had erected around the Imperial Palace in order to warn Him of the Warmaster Horus' perfidy in the days just before the Horus Heresy began. Magnus' psychic sending disrupted the crucial defences erected around the Terran spur of the Webway, causing great rifts to appear within. It was through these rifts that the creatures of the Warp were able to gain egress into the Terran Webway tunnels and threaten to infiltrate the Imperial Palace itself.
Krole took joint command of the Imperial forces stationed in Calastar -- also known as the "Impossible City" -- an ancient and derelict Aeldari city within the Webway that served as a principal hub of the Imperial Webway and bordered the man-made tunnels of the Imperial Webway Project. She fought alongside the Legio Custodes Tribunes Jasaric, Kadai Vilaccan and Ra Endymion. During the intense fighting against hordes of Daemons and Heretic Astartes, Krole survived the retreat from Calastar to the Imperial Palace, losing three fingers on her left hand during the battle.
Siege of Terra
Jenetia Krole fighting during the Siege of Terra.
Jenetia Krole was present when the orbital bombardment of the Imperial Palace began on Terra in 014.M31, heralding the arrival of the traitorous Warmaster Horus and his Traitor Legion cohorts. The Siege of Terra, the epic final battle of the Horus Heresy, would determine Mankind's fate. As the walls of the Imperial Palace trembled under the weight of Traitor guns, Krole stood in defiance. She fought at the Eternity Wall Spaceport, where the doomed defenders were set upon by the mad, blood-drenched hordes of the World Eaters. In the heart of that slaughter, she moved unseen -- not just to Daemons, but even to mortal eyes, her presence a ghostly whisper amid the carnage.
There, amid the madness, she saved a lone Imperial Army trooper, Ollanius Piers, from certain death at the hands of a blood-crazed World Eater Legionary. Despite the Imperial defenders' best efforts, the spaceport was doomed. As the defences crumbled, she waged a one-woman war against Angron's Legion, cutting down scores of frothing berzerkers. Then, she was confronted by the World Eaters' Eighth Captain Khârn, the Eater of Worlds, swollen with the blessings of Khorne, who came for her with the wrath of a god. Unfazed, she bravely faced the berserker in melee, clashing in a duel of fury against discipline, madness against purpose. Though she was faster, more precise, more deadly, it was not enough. In the end, the berserker's chainaxe, Gore Child, struck true.
As she fell, Khârn hesitated -- not in doubt, not in remorse, but in confusion. He could not fully grasp what he had just slain. Even in death, Krole remained a ghost to the World Eater's senses due to her innate anti-psyker abilities as a Blank.
Raptor Guard
Knight-Commander Jenetia Krole accompanied by her elite Raptor Squad cadre.
Jenetia Krole was often accompanied into battle by her Raptor Guard cadre; the elite warriors of the Silent Sisterhood.
When not in battle, the Knight-Commander was also accompanied by a proloquor, Melpomanei, who spoke on her mistress' behalf. Necessity demanded that Melpomanei remain a constant presence at her side. Something in Krole's appearance slid greasily from the senses of other people, refusing to remain in the mind.
Even the mighty Custodians of the Legio Custodes who had fought alongside the Silent Sisters for solar decades and understood their silent language of hand gestures and signs known as "Thoughtmark," could be looking directly at her, watching her hands move in patterns they knew as well as any spoken language, yet sense and meaning would came only in fragments, as though they were hearing the barest scraps of any conversation. This was due to Krole's powerful presence as a psychic Null.
Personality
Knight-Commander Jenetia Krole of the Sisters of Silence as she was at the time of the Siege of Terra in 014.M31.
Jenetia Krole possessed an acute sense of the fine balance of a conflict -- when to strike and when to stay her hand. Her strategic acumen was the match of any strategos of the Divisio Militaris of the ancient Imperium. Proof of this came during the bloody war to liberate Mournful Gate from the clutches of Aeldari slavers after the Great Crusade expeditionary commanders to which her cadre had been attached were assassinated as she was hunting down Aeldari psykers.
She herself assumed command of the terrified militia army and executed the panicked general staff and subordinate officers who remained, and thereafter succeeded in turning a disaster into the making of a triumph. The victory at Mournful Gate earned her the right to bear the Laurels Invictaris of a lauded general of the Imperium, the only one of her order ever to do so.
Appearance
Tall and lithe, Jenetia Krole cut a striking figure. Her mouth remained hidden behind a great silver mouthpiece, surgically bound to her jaw and cheekbones. She was completely bald, with the exception of a large, red-dyed crest of hair on top of her head.
Ritualistically, the Sisters of Silence never cut their hair from the moment they take the Oath of Tranquility. Krole's mane, even bound at the roots into a topknot, was long enough to reach the base of her spine.
Wargear
Knight-Commander Jenetia Krole of the Sisters of Silence outfitted in Artificer Armour and wielding Veracity.
- Enhanced Voidsheen Cloak - The voidsheen cloaks worn by Oblivion Knights are made from micro-vitrious mesh designed to diffract and absorb energy, and are particularly effective against diffuse attacks. Those worn by the commanders of the Silent Sisterhood are further reinforced by refractor generators as a mark of their rank and office.
- Veracity, the Sword of Oblivion - Fashioned in the manner of a highly ornate two-handed Execution Blade of her order, the Veracity is in fact the pattern from which all others of its kind were said to have been made, and stands as the symbol of the Knight-Commander of the Silent Sisters. This mighty weapon was once wielded by the Emperor Himself, before He made a gift of it to the Knight-Commander. The sword's true mystery lies in the substance of the blade itself, for it can cut almost anything without evidence of any kind of power field or disruption generator, its origins an enigma to all save perhaps the Emperor.
Sources
- Horus Heresy: Collected Visions (Art Book), pp. 85, 149-150, 152, 350-351, 411
- Prospero Burns (Novel) by Dan Abnett, Ch. 14
- The Master of Mankind (Novel) by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Chs. 2, 24
- Saturnine (Novel) by Dan Abnett, Part 1, Chs. 3-4; Part 2, Ch. 2; Part 3, Ch. 5
- The Horus Heresy Book Seven: Inferno (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pp. 69, 129, 258-259
- Forge World Online Store - Jenetia Krole, Knight-Commander of the Silent Sisterhood
- Warhammer Community Forge World Open Day