Titus Fortian III

Titus grew up as an orphaned member of specialists in a hive world, where workers created combat spacecraft too small for fitted warp drives. In particular, he worked in information systems to better use blueprints and machine cross-talk for factory lines. Titus's life was fairly uneventful until Intios, a lower member of nobility, noticed a particular bent about him. He invited Titus to work for him on some side projects of his, concerning optimizing machine communication. Happy for the chance to work in the best-afforded parts of the hive, with ready access to luxuries he had only dreamed about, Titus happily agreed and put in eight years with him. In that time, Intios took a particular liking to me, becoming something of an adoptive father.

As Titus became more involved in the secretive projects, however, he began putting pieces together in his head from things he'd seen over the course of the last eight years. Sensing something bigger was lurking underneath the surface, one night he used his passes to gain access to a terminal he knew could connect to Intios's work station, where he hacked it with surprisingly minimal effort. He discovered to his consternation that their collected projects were being used to probe and reverse-engineer xenos tech for those of the highest hive nobility. Although Titus didn't have access to what was being done at the top, he noted that most of the xenos tech designs resembled less weapons and more compact versions of warp-drives. This fact, combined with speculated mass production, led Titus to believe that Intios (and those he worked for) planned to refit a mass number of ships to create their own personal fleet. A fast, mobile fleet that would carve out their own personal kingdom, beginning first with the other hives of our world.

Now realizing the scope of the conspiracy, and fearing his actions would come to light almost immediately, Titus panicked. He temporarily hacked control of the largest vox-communicators of the hive and sent a call for help into space, briefly stating the predicament and requesting any nearby ships to pass the message along. If he was extremely lucky, the Imperium would receive a forwarded message in the near future, before the situation was out of control. Titus then expected to spend the rest of his short life on the run in the underhive, staying one step ahead of Intios's men.

What Titus was not expecting was for an immediate response through the vox-comm, apparently from a vessel very close by. Identifying himself only by the call sign "Third Testament," the commander of the vessel ordered Titus to immediately cut the power supplies to the labs and wait for further instructions.

However, it was not long before Titus was discovered. Attracted by the sudden seizure of hive vox-comms (and the sabotage of the lab power supply), Intios soon appeared with several bodyguards to confront Titus. Forced to improvise, Titus threatened to self-destruct the miniaturized xenos warp drives and kill everyone in the room, if Intios didn't immediately turn himself in for interrogation.

In response, however, Intios simply laughed and used a backup power supply to turn a single device. Now unable to stop the self-destruct timer he'd initiated, Titus finally realized the horrible truth. Intios and his superiors had never planned to mass-produce the devices; they simply wanted them functional before they destroyed them, opening numerous warp rifts and damning his home planet to become the newest Daemon World of the galaxy.

Titus remembers little after that, save a blur of hectic motion. He remembers the bone-shaking roar of a nightmarish fiend, shaking the very foundations of his home hive. He remembers bright flashes of light and being suddenly surrounded by men in robes and armored suits. He also remembers huddled under a console, shaking in fear as energy bolts, screams, and blood flew through the air nearby.

At some point, in the eventual silence, a friendly hand was placed on his shoulder. A man in a leather overcoat and garish hat led him out to where his comrades awaited, standing over the body of a fully-grown daemon, numerous bodyguards, and his former adoptive father. Dazed, Titus barely felt the teleport that extracted them from the surface, to the vessel hovering miles overhead.

He sat in a stunned silence for hours afterwards, in a private chamber little larger than a cell, listening to the vessel's orbital cannons rain destruction on the hive below.