Imperial Assassin

[Channing Rupnick]

We do not determine the guilty; we do not decide the punishment; we are merely the cold instruments of the Emperor's vengeance. There is no form of death unknown to us; there is no form of terror beyond our means; there is no enemy outside our reach. We are the blade that hovers over the throat of the traitor; we are the bullet that awaits the heretic's skull; we are the poison in the throat of the alien."

Officio AssassinorumRaceMankindHeadquartersTerra (Location Classified)GovernmentImperium of Man

Adeptus AdministratumLeaderGrand Master of AssassinsMilitary ForcesTemple AssassinsEstablishmentPre-Horus Heresy (30th Millennium)

The Officio Assassinorum is a highly secretive agency within the Imperium of Man's Adeptus Administratum that employs different "temples" that train Human Assassins to further the goals and protect the security of the Imperium. Although the Inquisition strikes fear in the hearts of all Imperial citizens, loyal and corrupt alike, the deadly disciples of the Officio Assassinorum strike fear in the hearts of even the most savvy, battle-hardened of Imperial warriors.

Assassins are typically deployed alone wherever feasible, having been trained to operate extensively behind enemy lines with no support. Given the sheer potential political power of this adepta and the fact that its operatives are known to have been used against rival High Lords of Terra in the past, the authorisation to assassinate a target must come from the very highest echelons of Imperial command. For this reason, Assassins are watched very closely to make sure that they are always under the control of the Imperium and serving the will of the Emperor.

Almost nothing is known in Imperial databases about the locations of the Officio Assassinorum's six different headquarters or "temples" except that they are still located somewhere on Terra, save for the Eversor Temple. The Eversor Temple does not maintain a single headquarters and instead keeps its operatives in cryo-stasis on a variety of secret starships and space stations that are scattered across Imperial space and maintained on high-alert for the assignment of a mission at any time.

The Imperial Assassins are the hidden blades wielded by the High Lords of Terra. They are the slayers of kings and false messiahs, the bane of Traitors and rebels across the stars. Once an agent has been despatched, they are as relentless and inescapable as the march of time itself. Every facet of their impeccable training is turned to the business of a single kill. Though the temples of the Officio Assassinorum are shrouded in the utmost secrecy, all men and women of influence fear the shadows they cast, for their operatives are the Emperor's justice made real. In a realm the size and scope of the Imperium, it is all too common for planets to escape the vigil of the High Lords.

With communication and travel at the mercy of the Warp's shifting tides, a populace can go for ten, twenty, even a hundred standard years without being contacted by the wider Imperium. It is a fragile system indeed, and given the crushing grind of much of Imperial life, one that has seen many worlds fall into the thrall of heresy. Left to fend for themselves against a hostile galaxy, it is easy for a planet's citizenry to harbour the seeds of corruption. A world may fail to pay its Imperial tithes, allow its psyker containment routines to slip, or come under the rule of an unsanctioned or secessionist planetary government. Some simply crave independence away from the dictates of the Administratum, the Ecclesiarchy, and a galaxy ruled by twelve faceless figures in the name of a distant God-Emperor.

Regardless of whether the new order is benevolent or tyrannical, its orchestrators make themselves targets for the most violent of retributions. Though their government may thrive in the short term, word will eventually reach the adepts of the Imperium of their disobedience. Sometimes the resultant confrontation leads to open war, but it is just as often resolved by covert means. Coercion, bribery, threats, blackmail and murder are all weapons in the armoury of those whose iron grip defines the realms of Mankind. To this end, the Imperium has developed several institutions to exploit these weapons to their fullest; ancient organisations that trace their history back to the Great Crusade and the very birth of the Imperium. One such organisation is the Officio Assassinorum.

The Assassins of the Imperium are able to change the fate of worlds with the pull of a single trigger. Where the length of the Emperor's reach needs to be made abundantly clear, a Vindicare Temple sniper will put a bullet in the target's head whilst the errant individual is surrounded by his followers.

If the traitorous creed has spread to an entire organisation or military force, an Eversor Assassin will instead be set loose; a bio-enhanced berserker that will slaughter dozens if not hundreds of rebels alongside the key individual they have been sent to slay. Should the deed require more subtlety, an operative from the Callidus Temple will instead be despatched; in such cases it is all but impossible to detect the presence of these shape-shifting Assassins until the deed is done. If the target is a psyker, one of the rare and fearsome Culexus Assassins will be sent to hunt them down -- beings with a strange void in place of a soul that makes them the bane of all who treat with the Warp.

The weapons of the Assassins range from simple knives and garrotes, to exotic neural shredders and phase swords that can cut through armour and force field alike. Even barehanded, these operatives are lethal foes; each is trained extensively in unarmed combat and is more than capable of fighting their way free from the mayhem that ensues from their kill.

Returning to their masters, they are extensively debriefed and examined before being given a new mark and mission to accomplish. In this way, each Assassin is locked into a constant cycle of headhunting that spans the breadth of the Imperium, reforging the fragile chains of Imperial rule even as the Era Indomitus in the 41st Millennium breaks them apart.

When the Emperor spoke this famous declaration during the early years of the Great Crusade, a number of his most loyal servants met, eager to help enact his dreams of uniting Mankind across all the settled worlds of the galaxy. These men and women were highly skilled in the craft of stealth and subterfuge and highly accomplished in the arts of death.

They hunted down those who would bring ruination to the Emperor's plan for Human betterment. In secrecy they acted, preferring not to receive praise from the Emperor for their actions, for they felt themselves unworthy of such attentions amidst the great sacrifices and destruction caused by the ongoing operations of the Great Crusade. They carried out their executions silently, moving unseen from world to world in the wake of the Emperor's conquest, ensuring that promises made to the Imperium by rulers newly brought into Imperial Compliance were not reneged upon, that newly installed planetary governors remained loyal, and that treaties and pacts were enforced.

In time, these servants realised that they could not hide from even their own deaths forever, and that their skills must be passed on to a new generation if their great work was to continue. Thus, they finally revealed their existence to the Emperor. He saw, sorrowfully, the necessity for their existence and the terrible duty that they had taken upon themselves and he was most pleased. Great temples were constructed and the most skillful and deadly youths were sought out to train at them.

Thus was the Officio Assassinorum created in secret, and the names of Callidus, Venenum, Culexus, Vindicare, Eversor and Vanus were forever immortalised. The strongest survived their rigorous training, and in turn passed on their skills to others. New skills were learnt and new temples of death were later founded; the art of blade and pistol, poison and garrote were honed in every aspect conceivable. So it is that there is no world in the galaxy beyond the Emperor's rule; no enemy beyond the Emperor's wrath.

During its early history all six Assassinorum Temples, then known as "clades", were located on Terra. Each clade was led by an official known as its "director primus." The Officio Assassinorum was created during the Great Crusade in the 30th Millennium by Malcador the Sigillite, the Regent of Terra, who served as its first overall leader or "Grand Master of Assassins" on the order of the Emperor. The Assassins of all 6 existing clades were tasked by the grand master and their founding directors primus with carrying out the Imperium's goals in those circumstances where unleashing the full military forces of the Imperium would prove unwise or too costly.

The Assassinorum clades came into their own during the Horus Heresy of the early 31st Millennium, when they were tasked with eliminating the rebel Warmaster Horus and other leaders of the forces of Chaos; these missions met with only mixed success as the brutal history of that period all too amply demonstrates.

However, after the Wars of Vindication which took place shortly after the death of High Lord Goge Vandire during the Age of Apostasy in the 36th Millennium, a renegade Callidus Assassin by the name of Tziz Jarek attempted to assassinate the Grand Master of Assassins of that era. After a series of terrible atrocities that were precipitated within the Imperial Palace itself, the Assassin temples were split up and distributed across the width and breadth of the galaxy.

This was to ensure that should one fall to alien influence, Daemonic influence, or other heresy, the others would remain untainted. Similarly, a hidden ordo of the Inquisition was implemented, known as the Ordo Sicarius, to monitor the Officio Assassinorum, and its power was drastically limited -- assassinations could only be performed after receiving a 2/3 vote from the Senatorum Imperialis of the High Lords of Terra. All Assassins were to give detailed accounts of their mission activity, subject to Inquisitorial inspection at any time. Lastly, all Assassins (with the exception of those of the Eversor Temple) were to undergo regular psycho-indoctrination, again under the scrupulous eyes of the Inquisition if deemed necessary.

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