Malcador the Sigillite
Malcador the Sigillite, also known as Malcador the Hero by decree of the Emperor of Mankind, was the First Lord of Terra, essentially the Emperor's Regent when he was away from Terra, as well as secretly the Grand Master of Assassins of the Officio Assassinorum during the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. He was an extremely powerful psyker who could communicate over long, interstellar distances. He was a close advisor to the Emperor during the Unification Wars of Terra, and the man credited with founding both the Adeptus Administratum of Terra and the Officio Assassinorum. Malcador is also noted for having given the Chaplain Edict at the Council of Nikaea before the Horus Heresy, which created a new group of Space Marines, the Chaplains, who would maintain the order and discipline of their fellow Space Marines, and keep watch for heresy and the use of psychic powers, the former to be dealt with summarily, the latter to be referred to the affected Legion's Librarium.
Malcador was always considered to be a man possessed of the greatest wisdom and was held in special regard, for he had earned his place alongside the superhuman Primarchs as an adviser to the Emperor. His opinions held the force of law for many and his words helped many of the galaxy's greatest heroes, including helping Rogal Dorn realize what he truly feared in life. Malcador had great respect for human history and he had a wide foundation of knowledge on the subject. His greatest possessions were the ancient paintings of the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci and Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh which he maintained in his personal chambers.
During the final days of the Horus Heresy, the Emperor told Malcador that he had to take the Emperor's place on the psychic amplifier known as the Golden Throne, which provided the psychic sheath needed to protect the new, human-built sections of the Webway which had been intended to be the Emperor's final gift to humanity before the Horus Heresy had begun. The Emperor's original choice of his replacement on the Throne had been the Primarch Magnus the Red, but since Magnus and his Thousand Sons Space Marine Legion had sided with Horus and the Chaos God Tzeentch, Malcador was now his chosen successor and the only psyker with enough strength to carry out the duty.
In the days before the final confrontation between the Emperor and Horus in orbit of Terra, the Emperor told Malcador to summon "men of character, skill and determination" who would be tested and trained to become an elite group of investigators with the task of rooting out treachery and heresy across the Imperium to prevent any event like the Horus Heresy from ever occurring again. This marked the founding of the Imperial Inquisition. Among the first individuals Malcador approached for this duty were the Loyalist Death Guard hero Captain Nathaniel Garro and the former Sons of Horus Captain Iacton Qruze.
Though he was a powerful psyker in his own right, Malcador's mental powers were nothing compared to that of the Emperor, and so when the Primarch Rogal Dorn brought the mortally injured ruler of Mankind back to the Golden Throne after he had defeated Horus, Dorn found Malcador sitting wasted, psychic energy lashing across his shriveled body, tortured by the psychic bombardments of the collapsing Imperial Webway. He was almost dead when the Tech-priests made the exchange - disengaging Malcador from the strange machine even as they moved to modify it to support the Emperor's crippled life functions indefinitely. As Malcador was removed from the device, the last flicker of life left him and the dust of his corpse blew across the stone floor.
At the instant of Malcador's death, the Emperor awoke from his coma - for Malcador had saved a last kernel of psychic strength and passed it on to the Emperor so that the Master of Mankind could give his servants their final orders before being interned silently for the next 10,000 standard years within the modified life support systems of the Golden Throne. From there the Emperor would maintain the psychic beacon of the Astronomicon as a replacement for the now-lost Imperial Webway project and do his best to shield humanity from the worst terrors of the Immaterium.
Sources
- Horus Heresy: Visions of Death by Alan Merrett.
- Nemesis (Novel), p. 47.
- The Flight of the Eisenstein by James Swallow (Novel).
- Deliverance Lost by Gav Thorpe