A fairly p*rny Culexus Assassin (Patreon)

Hey all,

So as I said, this weekend I will again be away visiting family, I'll try to see if I can get something up on Monday seeing as I very likely will not make the Sunday upload, but I also am hopping from visiting the fam straight into work on Monday so I might not be able to make that either, we'll see next week I suppose.

But anyway, time for another porny warhammer40K gal. This time our fourth, and final Imperial assassin. The Culexus.

Now technically, for those who remember it from an older post, or those familiar with WH40K. Would know that there are six, not four, assassination temples. But as I said then, the final two never make an appearance in the lore save for vague mentions that they exist, and are basically never shown nor described. We know nothing of them except their methods. So drawing them could be... challenging.

The Culexus however, is not one of those final two, and we do know a good deal about them.

Culexus assassins are unique among the Assassin temples, in that they specialize in assassinating a specific kind of individual. Namely, psykers.

In the world of 40K there is a place called the warp, or immaterium. A mirror dimension to our physical realspace, where time and space don't work like they do here, and emotions are made manifest. Congealing together into entities that embody that emotion or feeling, or group of emotions.

There is lots to talk about the immaterium, what dwells there, and what it means for 40K, but that is a topic for another time and different sexy babes. Let's focus on psykers for now.

Psykers are individuals who have a strong mental connection to this warp realm, and can somehow tap into it and use its energies to do what basically amounts to magic. They can use it to shoot mind lasers, they can use it to levitate objects, influence minds, perceive things you normally can't see, all kinds of things.

They are very powerful, and very, very dangerous. Because the denizens of the warp aren't of the friendliest sort, and will attempt to break out into our reality using the psyker as a conduit. They will then proceed to violently murderape their way through reality until the psyker turned portal to hell runs out of juice or is otherwise dispatched off, barring of course they don't find different ways to persist here once making the jump.

And so since these individuals are so dangerous, a kind of assassin was created to target them specifically, to dispose of them before they can become an even greater threat, provided of course that the imperium of man hasn't already managed to get them through the usual channels and killing them is the only way left to get rid of them.

Aside from psykers, there's another kind of "mutant" human, even rarer than those individuals who can tap into the warp. A blank.

Now everyone has some connection to the warp, some mental, psychic footprint we leave behind in the immaterium, psykers are just those with a particularly strong connection to the warp, to the point where they can tap into it as a power source and do magic. A blank is the exact opposite, they lack any and all connection to the warp.

We don't know what that means or how it works, as logically, any intelligent thinking individual should have some connection to the warp, because that is the place where all our collective thoughts and feelings are made manifest. Some say it is because they lack a soul. In any case, we know even less of where they came from or how they came to be, as their existence should not be possible. Yet here they are. In old lore it was mentioned that their existence among humans was a part of the machinations of the Necron, or their very own trickster god now shattered and imprisoned slave The Deceiver to be specific. But that has since largely been dropped and hasn't been mentioned in a while.

I must point out again, that technically, there is no such thing as an established "true" canon for Warhammer 40K, there are only official statements on the setting, oftentimes contradictory, and all these statements are equally "canon". As in, someone in the setting could very well say and believe these things. While another may say and believe something else.

They simply also may not be true, and it's up to us to interpret all available information and any future information that may come, to draw our own conclusions.

In the case of the blanks, we really don't know, the old lore hasn't been mentioned in a while, so many assume it's been largely dropped, though the information is still there, so technically, canon.

There is a bunch to say on the blanks, and I'm sure we can talk about them again some time later as the Culexus isn't their only appearance in the setting, but now that you know the basics, let's focus on the actual subject of this meandering post/lore dump.

Blanks, and thus Culexus assassins, are a complete void of warp energy, to the point that they cancel out warp activity wherever they go. It is outright painful for a psyker to even be on the same planet as a Culexus assassin, and may be driven mad from the pain of simply being anywhere near them.

One can only imagine the sheer agony should they touch one, blanks are wholly anathema to a psyker, and the Culexus' latent anti-warp abilities have been augmented on top of that. That's what the funky skeleton helmet is for. In another piece of borderline heretical tech, their helmet somehow enhances, focuses, and weaponizes their anti-warp field they exude, and can shoot it out in anti-warp beams made of 'fuck you' and 'super-normality, no weird magic shit here die'. Weaker psykers could outright die from being within their vicinity, while the stronger ones would probably rather commit suicide than bear the pain of facing one. They probably represent the greatest anti-psyker weapons the imperium of man possesses, and they are incredibly rare. Or at least are among the most effective weapons against some of humanities chiefest enemies.

If you are facing an enemy, and that enemy is a psyker you can't get to in any other way short of obliterating the planet they are on but you don't want to do that because it's an important planet? Send a Culexus after them.

Does that mean they are so valued they live lives of excess and pleasure, enjoying the highest boons of imperial society has to offer and are basically a new form of ultra-aristocrats?

Of course not you dummy, this is 40K, their existence is hell. Haven't you been paying attention?

SoCarter out.