Each carried a bladed sekhem staff, and their Storm Bolters were held tightly across the jade and amber scarab design on their breastplates.īrother Amsu, the XV Legion's Standard Bearer, always stood at the entrance to the pavilion, holding a rippling banner of scarlet and ivory. Three Terminators of the Thousand Sons' elite Scarab Occult always stood guard at each corner. The floor was a spiral of black and white crystal, each piece hand picked from the Reflecting Caves beneath the city of Tizca on the Thousand Sons' homeworld of Prospero and shaped by Magnus' own hand. The air within the Photep's sanctum was cool, a precisely modulated climate that owed nothing to machine control. When the Thousand Sons made planetfall on a new world, the Sanctum would be disassembled and then reassembled on the planet's surface. Opaque from the outside, transparent on the inside, it was the perfect embodiment of the leader of the Thousand Sons. This pavilion was a grand, three-cornered pyramid of polarised glass and gold that shimmered like a half-buried diamond. One of the primary chambers aboard the Photep was the Sanctum of Magnus. Typical of the enigmatic nature of Magnus the Red, on his order the Photep aided the crew of the Loyalist Strike Cruiser Sisypheum during their raid on Luna to secure the Selenar artefact known as the Magna Mater, allowing two members of its Astartes crew to survive and escape with the artefact. What orders the Photep received are not known, but the ship later arrived on the Planet of the Sorcerers to join the rest of the Legion in their exile.ĭuring the Siege of Terra at the climax of the Horus Heresy, the Photep was part of the Traitor armada assaulting the Sol System. That such directives left Prospero dangerously undefended was clear to every shipmaster, but none dared disobey a direct command from the Primarch himself. None of the captains of the fleet's vessels knew the reason for their new orders, but all had been given strict instructions not to unlock their orders until reaching their assigned coordinates.
The Photep led the fleet's four battle groups, which made best speed for their destinations. When the inevitable assault of the Space Wolves Legion during the Battle of Prospero was nigh at the start of the Horus Heresy, Magnus sent orders to disperse the XV Legion's fleet, as he had decided not to contest the Emperor's judgment upon him or his Legion. Magnus was aboard the Photep when he experienced a revelation in regards to the inevitable destruction of his homeworld of Prospero at the hands of the Space Wolves Legion. This flagship also transported the Thousand Sons to the historic Council of Nikaea, to determine once and for all whether the use of psychic abilities within the Space Marine Legions should be allowed. The Photep is known to have transported the Thousand Sons contingent to the Triumph of Ullanor, where Horus was elevated to the esteemed rank of Warmaster by the Emperor himself, in recognition of his numerous great deeds and outstanding leadership throughout the Great Crusade.
SPIRAL KNIGHTS MAGNUS ARCHIVE
This vast storehouse of information was kept within the vast library archive stacks aboard the Photep. This flagship led the flotilla of sixty-three warships which comprised the XV Legion's 28th Expeditionary Fleet.Īs the expeditionary fleets of the Legiones Astartes pushed ever outwards from the cradle of humanity to reunify the Emperor's realm, the Thousand Sons not only brought new worlds into the Imperial fold, but they gathered a vast repository of information and knowledge from newly encountered worlds. The Photep was a Gloriana-class Battleship that served as the flagship of Magnus the Red, the Primarch of the Thousand Sons Legion during at least part of the Great Crusade in the late 30th and early 31st Millennia. The Photep, flagship of the Thousand Sons Legion