L-XII-1884 Tiberius Thanatos
"Go and slaughter, sons of the Merciless. Let there be war."
- Captain Tiberius Thanatos of the World Eaters, Before the Atrocity of Isstvan III
Captain Tiberius Thanatos commanded the World Eaters 16th Great Company (L-XII-1884) during the times of the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy. A Terran Born veteran once known for his unmatched skills as a void commander, he was among the first to volunteer as a test for the Butcher's Nails soon to become widespread within the Legion. Unfortunately his implants were a particularly strong device and degenerated sooner than expected: after the battle for Isstvan V they had already eroded much of the man he was, allowing him only glimpses of the leader his men were used to and turning him into a colder, killing addicted monster who gladly broke his former self on the same anvil that twisted his father, and would do so again even knowingly.
History
Great Crusade
“Aye. I too witnessed the glorious days of the Warhounds. I lived them all, one by one. And not a single day has passed since then where I did not thank my Primarch for making me a World Eater”
- Tiberius to Irex Nornas, Legate Commander of the Merciless
First born son of a Terran tech-barbarian warlord, Tiberius Thanatos was taken as a tribute and recruited in the Emperor's 12th Legion after his father was cast into submission at the end of the Unification Wars. He swiftfully emerged from the ranks, being the exact kind of officer the twelfth needed at the time: a brutal, cunning but noble leader driven by his own pragmatic honor code, as he had been raised up to be when he was meant to inherit the mantle of command in his tribe. When the 16th Company's Centurion died in the Siege of Hierotzelem, Tiberius won command over the Merciless by defeating every other pretendant in the ritual fights that followed: not yet satisfied, he also challenged those of the other two companies attached to the 32nd expedition along with the 16th, who had also lost their respective Centurions during the Siege. Bending or killing every opponent, he found himself alone to command a battleship and -at full strenght- three hundred Astartes, a position that would later be confirmed with a laughter of approval by the Primarch Angron. In the following years he proved himself a skilled void commander and a warm brother for all of the 12th Legion, respected for his insight and martial sense of humor as well as for his physical resilience and hand-to hand skills, but he was never animated by the same fervour some of his brothers had towards the Emperor of Mankind. To Tiberius he was a distant, brutal tyrant who destroyed the life he was meant to live and whom he was forced to serve by lack of choices. This is why when Angron came to the Legion with his tragic story and his bloody warrior code he was seen by Thanatos as a similar soul to him, and easily won his loyalty over that for the Emperor. In Angron, Thanatos found a true leader to follow, someone he would gladly fight for: such was Tiberius' devotion to his genesire that he was among the first to volunteer as a test for the cortical implants soon to become widespread within the Legion. The Conqueror's Apothecarion was nowhere near creating a stable, final product at the time, and as it would soon turn out, Tiberius' implants were too similar to those of his Primarch. Too strong even for an Astartes to endure, they soon took away the best from him -but he resisted them for long, stoic, functioning as best as he could as a leader for his men and never regretting this act of devotion to his genesire.
Horus Heresy
[Record incomplete]
Wargear
Gorebringer
The suit of Antinuus
