The Emperor’s Angel of Death

"I doubt Mars ever imagined that Zhao-Arcadia would 'piece' together a Warbringer Nemesis Titan from salvaged wreckage during the Great Heresy."

Standing behind the open hatch of the Storm Eagle gunship hovering in mid-air, Sotha Nul gazed at the black Titan in the distance and couldn't help but admire it.

This Titan was essentially Zhao-Arcadia's top-secret project, codenamed Banshee.

Its origins were quite complex. It was only because Sotha Nul's help was needed, and the two sides had developed a very deep partnership, that Zhao-Arcadia shared this crucial information with him.

According to Zhao-Arcadia's Fabricator-General, the Banshee Legion, dispatched to fight alongside the Thousand Sons on Prospero, once repelled the mighty Death Skull Legion. Although it was only a part of the Death Skull Legion, it still demonstrated the improvement in the Titan's combat power brought about by the Black Iron Core technology. This was something Zhao-Arcadia could be proud of, as it proved their Titan technology could potentially reach true first-class status.

But the Omen Seekers shattered this pride. Zhao-Arcadia spent a thousand years investigating this organization. What force annihilated the Prospero garrison had always been a mystery to Zhao-Arcadia. Their secretly dispatched recovery teams searched for clues in the battlefield ruins and recovered combat logs from some Titan wreckage.

According to the records, a Warbringer Titan with no Forge World markings appeared at the time. It had a deep purple hull, carried a unique lion emblem and lightning patterns, and was surrounded by a strange halo. Its head was also very bizarre, lacking the human-like face of a typical Titan, instead featuring an unsettling smooth mirror surface. But the most incredible thing was the weapon on its left arm; the images couldn't capture it, only a blurry blob of light.

It was these Titans that defeated the Banshee Legion of the Prospero garrison!

Subsequently, to investigate the truth, Zhao-Arcadia secretly dispatched many agents, trying to collect intelligence from all sides, and it took more than eight hundred years to find a clue.

In the early days of the Great Crusade, the Emperor once requisitioned 25 Warbringer Titans from Mars at once, but Mars was unwilling to provide them all, only providing 8, with the rest coming from various Forge Worlds. At that time, Zhao-Arcadia had not yet returned to the Imperium, thus avoiding this wave of "Titan tax", but this provided Zhao-Arcadia's agents with a direction for investigation.

After another two hundred years of Zhao-Arcadia's unremitting efforts, an ancient organization surfaced. According to the collected top-secret intelligence, this organization was also known as the Omen Seekers.

".The Omen Seekers are completely unrecorded in Imperial history, never even heard of. It's a credit to Zhao-Arcadia that they were able to dig them out with such persistence."

"The Omen Seekers are actually a special Titan Legion used to defend the Webway Project. They are all heavily modified psychic Titans."

A smiling voice sounded from the shadows of the Storm Eagle's cabin, seemingly very knowledgeable about all of this.

If there was anyone around Sotha Nul who was so familiar with this secret matter, it would be no more than three people.

After a moment, Amnak stood up from his chair and walked to Sotha Nul's side, watching the Banshee wailing as it bombarded the Tyranid lines with its volcano cannon. At the same time, a psychic halo appeared on top of the Titan, originating from a mysterious experimental device that allowed Titan pilots to resist warp interferences such as the Hive Mind.

"After the Webway was blasted through by Magnus's phone call, the Omen Seekers were immediately投入the Webway War. I've seen them. The Master of Mankind gave them a lot of shady technology, and they were indeed quite strong... but most of them were destroyed in the Webway and subsequent battles on Terra. Zhao-Arcadia is essentially setting up a strawman to attack."

"Not entirely."

Kayan's leisurely voice came from the corner of the cabin.

"At the time, the Banshee Legion was indeed the best Titan I had ever seen. Their agility made you feel like they were living beings, not clumsy machines. When defending Prospero, their average numbers and strength were far weaker than the Death Skull Legion's detachment. There were only eighteen Titans at the time, while the enemy had thirty-one, with three times as many Warbringer Titans as the Banshee Legion. Even so, the Banshee Legion still won, even annihilating this detachment. Such a record is unheard of at any time. Zhao-Arcadia's pride is not without reason, but the Omen Seekers completely crushed the remaining ten Titans of the Banshee Legion with only four Titans. How could they accept that?"

Sotha Nul turned slightly.

"By the way, Kayan, were the Thousand Sons involved in Zhao-Arcadia's psychic research at the time?"

Kayan, who was wiping his helmet with a silk cloth, shrugged.

"I was just an ordinary soldier at the time, not even a non-commissioned officer. How would I know such high-level information? You'd have to ask Ahriman."

"After the Great Heresy... didn't the Thousand Sons consider contacting Zhao-Arcadia again?"

"Zhao-Arcadia had already cut ties, and after the Rubric, the Legion didn't have many living people left. Equipment and such was no longer of much significance. It was easier to enslave demons directly than to use mechanical ones. Magnus didn't want anything other than to destroy the Space Wolves, and with Ahriman's departure, who cared about these things?"

Sotha Nul raised an eyebrow, not commenting, but turned his gaze to the majestic Banshee wailing below.

Although Sotha Nul now basically understood the inside story, Zhao-Arcadia's information at the time was very limited. They only knew that this was a force completely subordinate to the Emperor himself, and the level of secrecy was ridiculously high. It seemed to have appeared during the defense of Terra, but Zhao-Arcadia had no more information than that.

However, the more it was like this, the more uneasy the people of Zhao-Arcadia seemed to be, as if there was a deadly enemy constantly watching them from afar, and the惨败of Prospero made Zhao-Arcadia's sages unwilling to accept it.

They wanted to prove that their Titans were the best!

No Titan could defeat a Titan equipped with a Black Iron Core in a one-on-one battle!

This strange obsession and incredible self-esteem, in Sotha Nul's opinion, led to the birth of the Banshee project.

After research by many of Zhao-Arcadia's sages based on the recovered combat images, they deduced that this unique Titan used many technologies not belonging to the Adeptus Mechanicus, and based on a series of simulations, they guessed that this Titan likely used a large number of psychic devices and even equipped psychic weapons.

In this case, to gain an advantage, one had to "fight fire with fire"!

And this involved another secret of Zhao-Arcadia, namely the birth of the Black Iron Core technology. Grand Magus Tacitus Proktos designed the Black Iron Core based on the characteristics of the destroyed Eldar Titan spirit stone core. This strange device could preserve the psychic imprints of previous pilots, allowing members to enter their predecessors' memories and even experiences. In addition, the Black Iron Core was more effective in controlling Titans than the brain-impulse units used by the Collegia Titanica.

In other words, the Black Iron Core itself was actually a kind of psychic device. Since this was the case, then creating a "psychic Titan" became the best choice.