Sarcosan Wave Generator

The Renegade Magos Vathek is known to have implanted a Sarcosan Wave Generator within his chest that reanimates his own necrotic tissue and that of his many servants

A Sarcosan Wave Generator, also sometimes known as an Anima Chorus, is a heretical device that can reanimate dead tissue and thereby grant unholy life to those who should be dead. This technology can come in many forms and guises, from individual implants incorporated into their own bodies by Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-priests who turn towards tech-heresy to massive facilities powered by multiple plasma reactors that can reanimate hordes of the dead.

History

In the hands of Hereteks this dark technology has become one of the most common ways to raise the dead or extend their own lifespans indefinitely. Ironically the most successful users of this device were a heretical sect of the Imperial Cult, known as the Brethren of the Risen. During the anarchy that followed the Age of Apostasy in the 36th Millennium this cult raised armies of the dead to fight in the name of the Emperor of Mankind, who according to their teachings was the greatest of all the reanimated dead after his internment within the Golden Throne. The centre of these blasphemous practices was the Sarcosan region of the Calixis Sector of the Segmentum Obscurus, which to this day gives its name to the technology. The Brethren of the Risen were in the end destroyed by the agents of the Imperium, but the technology that was their hallmark has since been rediscovered and spread by the Renegade Archmagos Umbra Malygris.

Function

Upon activation, a Sarcosan Wave Generator produces an unknown form of energy field most likely drawn from the Immaterium that saturates and reanimates all reasonably whole corpses within reach. The behaviour of formerly dead bodies reanimated in this manner is usually completely unpredictable, but if they are implanted with a device known as a Sarcosan Wave Enhancer before they are reanimated a measure of control over their actions can be attained. The energy waves produced by the technology are themselves invisible, but the human ear perceives them as discordant moaning. This characteristic has given the Sarcosan Wave Generator its other name –- the Anima Chorus.

Those who are reanimated with this technology retain much of their original personality, but their souls have been replaced within the Warp by a cold darkness. The arcane energies used in their reanimation also give the newly-raised supernatural strength and resilience, but if the wave generator or their enhancer implant stops working they will lose even the new semblance of life they have been given. If the power supply to the device is maintained the risen dead can remain active almost indefinitely. Some Hereteks therefore use this technology to reanimate their own flesh and preserve their existence far beyond even the artificially lengthened lifespan available to a Tech-priest.

Sources

• Dark Heresy: Disciples of the Dark Gods (RPG), pp. 62-65, 146, 192
• Dark Heresy: The Radical’s Handbook (RPG), p. 46
• Dark Heresy: Ascension (RPG), pp. 201-202