My Brother,
my report seems to have ended with the last letter, but you do know, that I haven mentioned a certain aspect of my chapter only briefly: The _things_ we do within our old fortress monastery on Campus Actuarii. I think, it all started with the loss of our homeworld. Or maybe even earlier: We always had a strong connection to the Fauna of Campus Actuarii. We were hunters of beast, we were hunted by beasts and … we were a kind of beasts ourselves.
With the loss of our Home World, we also lost an important part of this hunter and beast relationship, a simpler life than the duty among the Stars. But the Beasts never left us. In fact we came obsessed by them, by the idea of the Beast and by the beasts we met during our duty for the Emperor. And so we ignored the Ban on scientific research on Xenos. At first we only studied them, in order to kill them. Then we caught them in order to study them more. We bred them, to train fighting against them under controlled Conditions. And from there on our studies and our successes led the way … we bred Xenos, that we could control and lead into war against it’s own kin. We only use these Beasts of War on rare Occasions and only if our chapter is operating alone. But we created them and we use them.
And then we applied, what we had learned on ourselves … it’s the logical thing to do. Many Marines of my Chapter have minor Improvements, that have their origin within our own Studies, but only few of them know, what exactly they carry within their bodies. Getting Organs implanted is the Beginning of becoming an Astartes. Most of our Brothers take it for granted … their whole existence is based on foreign, external –not to say “alien” – Organs. They hardly question anything the Apothecary do. And why should they? They wouldn’t live without them.
Of course there have been Casualties on the way. Horrible Casualties. The memory of them haunts me. I might know no fear, but I still know what torture is, torture of the body and torture of the soul. I am cause of both and I experienced both. There are times I blame myself for this, but the results and the progress we make constantly push doubts aside. And we desperately need results and progress, as we both know better than most people. We both know, that neither Mankind, nor any of the Xenos Species has an Answer to the Tyranid Thread. In less then a few centuries the whole Galaxy will be nothing but dead rocks, when the Tyranids are done with us, if we don’t make progress.
I am very glad to hear, that my Company will be heading for the Heart of Sotha soon. I made remarkable progress on the Lictor I caught and I have a theory that might help us to lure the Tyranids into a direction we want, but I need to discuss that with you and find a way, how we can exemplify my theory.
Your humble Servant,
Lucas Lacertil
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