The Selenar, also called the Selenite gene-cults, were a group of religious cultists settled on Luna, the moon of Terra, who possessed some of the most advanced genetic engineering technology in the Human-settled galaxy during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras.
The Selenar were an ancient order, having existed in one form or another on Terra and then Luna since long before the birth of the Imperium of Man. They had been known by many names across Human history, such as the Eleusinians, the Oesirica, the Damia, and the Immacolata. Whatever their title, the cult had always possessed a single goal -- to keep the power of true creation out of the corrupt hands of the rest of Mankind.
At some point during the Age of Strife, they became the rulers of Luna.
The Selenar were divided up among several different cults with varying versions of their ideology which sought to use potent genetic engineering techniques they had developed to resurrect their cultists through multiple lives created through cloning. They hoped in this way to ultimately create the perfect expression of each of several different Human archetypes they had identified.
The Selenar were conquered by the early Space Marine Legions during the First Pacification of Luna in ca. 798.M30, and would go on to use their technology to help the Imperium accelerate the development of new Astartes for the Legions during the Great Crusade.
However, the Selenar never came to terms with being conquered by the Imperium, and mounted several notable instances of rebellion against Imperial rule before their last remnants were destroyed following the end of the Horus Heresy.
History[]
Origin of the Magna Mater[]
The Selenar created the gene-engineering artefact known as the Magna Mater before the founding of the Imperium. The artefact was said to hold the key to the creation of new life.
During the First Pacification of Luna by the newborn Imperium at the start of the Great Crusade, the ruling Selenar High Matriarch Heliosa-54 charged the Selenar gene-witch Ta'lab Vita-37 with safeguarding the Magna Mater from the forces of the Emperor of Mankind.
However, despite the Selenar's efforts which successfully kept the artefact safe for over two standard centuries after the Imperial conquest of Luna, the device was in fact acquired by the Imperium after the Siege of Terra, and the Magna Mater was later used to store perfect copies of the genomes of each of the twenty primarchs.
This genetic material had also been the source used to create the gene-seed for each of the original twenty Space Marine Legions and centuries later it would be utilised again to craft the improvements to the gene-seed made by Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl that would appear in the Primaris Space Marines. The Magna Mater would come into Cawl's possession by way of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman after the Horus Heresy, through the artefact would be known to Cawl as the Sangprimus Portum.
First Pacification of Luna[]
This Imperial campaign in ca. 798.M31 was the first operation mounted by elements of the early Space Marine Legions beyond the skies of Terra. The Unification Wars were still raging across the surface of Mankind's birth world at this time.
Luna was the bastion of a conglomeration of resurrectionist gene-cults whose members believed that Human nature was fractal, fractured and transcendent.
Each of these Selenar gene-cults clung to a different set of archetypes. Every cult member was a product of creation by the Selenar gene-wrights according to formulae crafted in the Age of Technology. Resurrected in body time and time again they sought to distill the true personification of a single Human archetype.
In their subterranean complexes on Luna the cults were powerful, insular and resistant to the Imperial Truth. The Imperials would have normally dealt with these insular cults in the usual matter they handled all of the other Terran factions and techno-barbarian states that refused to accept the rule of the Emperor of Mankind -- by obliteration.
The fact that the Selenar gene-cults had something that the growing Imperium needed complicated that position. The Selenar returned the Imperial entreaties for alliance with silence. As the threats of the Imperium soon began to outnumber its offers, the Selenar cults began to gird themselves for war.
So it was that the Emperor finally ordered Luna to be pacified by the sword, their superstitious beliefs cast down before the Imperial Truth and their gene-craft yoked to the needs of the Imperium. To this task the Emperor set the three of His newborn Space Marine Legions most suited to this purpose on what some Imperial chroniclers name as the first true battle of the Great Crusade.
The combined force of the VIIth, XIIIth and XVIth Legions (later named the Imperial Fists, Ultramarines and Luna Wolves) lifted from the surface of Terra in a scattering of rocket flame.
The as yet unnamed XVIth Legion had been chosen to serve as the Space Marine force's vanguard, and had brought its full strength to bear. Cutting power to their assault craft, the Astartes of the XVIth Legion drifted silently towards Luna through the void like arrows fired into the night.
As the smaller wave of assault craft belonging to the VIIth and XIIIth Legions approached the airless world, the Selenar defensive weapon systems embedded in Luna's surface lashed the oncoming Imperial force. The XVIth Legion's assault craft, unlooked for and unseen, struck their targets like a dagger in the night.
Within six solar hours of the first shot being fired, Luna had been pacified and brought into Imperial Compliance, the first off-world conquest of the Imperium of Man. Faced with annihilation, the surviving Selenar cultists bent the knee instead, the surrender communique of High Matriarch Heliosa-54 transmitted to Terra calling for the Emperor to "call off his wolves."
Broken and humbled, the enslaved gene-wrights of Luna would help forge the next generation of Space Marine who would carry out Mankind's conquest of the stars. As for the XVIth Legion, they had earned their name -- the Luna Wolves.
The Blight[]
Always resentful of their conquest by the Imperium and the use of their technology for the Emperor's purposes, the Selenar engaged in an act of shocking sabotage during the Great Crusade. They engineered a virus that infected and destroyed much of the gene-seed stocks of the IIIrd Legion of the Legiones Astartes. Only the Legion's unification with its Primarch Fulgrim saved it from extinction through gaining access to his genome from which new gene-seed could be synthesized.
However, the IIIrd Legion's numbers were so reduced by the disease that the renamed Emperor's Children were forced to fight for many solar decades alongside the Primarch Horus and his Luna Wolves until their numbers could be replenished with new gene-seed derived from their primarch's genome.
Ur-legionaries[]
Heavily involved in attempts to accelerate the development of new Astartes for the Space Marine Legions during the Great Crusade, the surviving Selenar had sought ways to improve upon the Emperor's genetic designs for the Space Marines. Unfortunately, all their efforts failed, and the supposed "Ur-legionaries" turned out to be mutants who were often mindless brutes as a result of the constant pain they endured. Some developed multiple eyes, limbs and even heads.
Even more disturbing, several of the Ur-legionaries developed facial features that closely resembled the appearances of the primarchs.
After the project suffered from repeated failures, the Selenar decided to abandon the Ur-legionaries and admit that they did not know how to enhance the Emperor's original design. All but 10 of the failed Ur-legionaries were euthanised and the gene-labs where the project had been pursued secretly beneath Luna's Herodotus Omega dome were sealed.
Solar War[]
At some unknown point after the Imperial conquest of Luna, it is known that the Selenite gene-cults were ultimately purged by the Imperium due to their rebellious behaviour. However, at least some elements remained on Luna and still possessed their genetic engineering technology and their cult structure at the time of the Solar War campaign of the Horus Heresy.
It was these Selenar who had aided in the development and enhancement of the Legiones Astartes during the Great Crusade.
Shortly before the Siege of Terra began, during the storming of Luna by the Sons of Horus forces under the command of First Captain Ezekyle Abaddon, the leader of the surviving Selenar cultists, the High Matriarch Heliosa-78, refused to carry out her orders from Rogal Dorn, the Praetorian of Terra, to destroy the genetic engineering technology that created new Space Marine gene-seed in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Traitor Legions.
She and the surviving Selenar instead pledged themselves to the service of the Warmaster Horus and promised to mass-produce new Heretic Astartes warriors for his Legions.
Hunt for the Magna Mater[]
With Luna under Traitor control, the fugitive Selenar gene-witch Ta'lab Vita-37 sought to keep the ancient Magna Mater artefact she had been entrusted with before the Imperial conquest of Luna out of Horus' hands at all costs. She sent a distress call out into the void of near-Luna space seeking assistance. Her call was answered by the Shattered Legions Astartes of the Iron Hands strike cruiser Sisypheum.
A group of Loyalist Space Marines from the Loyalist vessel commanded by Captain Cadmus Tyro infiltrated the lunar Herodotus Omega dome to aid the gene-witch. The group succeeded in defeating the forces of a Dark Mechanicum magos who had been tasked with hunting down the Magna Mater, but the Heretek managed to call for reinforcements before his death.
These came in the form of a squad of the Sons of Horus' elite Justaerin Terminators commanded by Captain Trastevere who attacked before Vita-37 and the Loyalists could flee off-world. The Traitors pursued and in the resulting firefight, the gene-witch was mortally wounded by the Justaerin's assault. Knowing that her death was imminent, Vita-37 reluctantly entrusted the Magna Mater to the Astartes of the Sisypheum.
To aid their escape, she unleashed the 10 surviving Ur-legionaries upon the Justaerin, a group of mutated Astartes unsuccessfully enhanced by the Selenar centuries before in an attempt to improve existing Space Marine gene-lines.
The Ur-legionaries were able to overpower and kill most of Trastevere's squad before they followed Vita-37 into death. However, this aid proved to be enough to allow Tyros' Astartes to escape with the precious artefact aboard the Sisypheum.
All of the strike cruiser's crew were later slain escaping from near-Luna space with the artefact save for Nykona Sharrowkyn of the Raven Guard. However, thanks to the unexpected intervention of the Gloriana-class Battleship Photep, the flagship of the Traitor Primarch Magnus the Red, Sharrowkyn was able to hold onto the Magna Mater and hide it with himself aboard an abandoned void station.
Putting himself into suspended animation to survive alone, Sharrowkyn noticed the nameplate of the station read Sangprimus Portum, the name by which the artefact was to be known in later centuries. The Magna Mater would eventually fall into the hands of the Primarch Roboute Guilliman after the end of the Horus Heresy.
Renamed the Sangprimus Portum at this point, the artefact would prove crucial in the eventual creation of the Primaris Space Marines by Archmagos Dominus Belisarius Cawl.
Notable Selenar[]
- High Matriarch Heliosa-54 - Heliosa-54 was the Selenar high matriarch at the time of the First Pacification of Luna by the Imperium in ca. 798.M30. Heliosa-54 handed the artefact called the Magna Mater over to the gene-witch Ta'lab Vita-37 and told her to go into hiding so that the Imperium could not claim the sacred device. She then erased her own memories of both Vita-37's existence and what had been done with the Magna Mater.
- High Matriarch Heliosa-78 - Heliosa-78 was the Selenar high matriarch at the time of the Siege of Terra in 014.M31, over two hundred standard years after the rule of Heliosa-54. She refused the order of the Primarch Rogal Dorn to destroy the Selenar's gene-seed creation technology. Instead, to maintain her own position of power, she swore the Selenar's loyalty to the Warmaster Horus. She promised Horus that she would deliver new Heretic Astartes to him to replenish his Space Marine Legions.
- Ta'lab Vita-37 - Ta'lab Vita-37 was the Selenar gene-witch charged by High Matriarch Heliosa-54 in ca. 798.M30 with safeguarding the Magna Mater. She managed to keep it out of the hands of both the Selenar and the Imperium for over two hundred standard years until she eventually handed it over to the Imperium through the crew of the Sisypheum during the Siege of Terra. She did so because she believed that Horus, as the greatest servant of the Chaos Gods, represented a far worse caretaker for the artefact than the Imperium, and so chose the lesser of two evils.
See Also[]
Sources[]
- The Horus Heresy Book One - Betrayal (Forge World Series) by Alan Bligh, pp. 80–81
- Chirurgeon (Short Story) by Nick Kyme
- Fulgrim: The Palatine Phoenix (Novel) by Josh Reynolds, Ch. 4
- The Solar War (Novel) by John French, Chs. 20-22
- Siege of Terra - Sons of the Selenar (Novella) by Graham McNeill, Prologue, Chs. 6-7, 10-11