Home › Units › Officio Assassinorum › Culexus Assassin
1 / 4 · Click to enlargeLore & origins
The Culexus Temple recruits Pariahs, people born with no soul in the warp. They have no psychic presence at all and cause fear and discomfort in normal people and agony in psykers. The Temple trains them to use this as a weapon. A Culexus is sent to kill psykers, sorcerers and daemons.
Culexus assassins are among the most feared of all assassins. People find it hard even to look at them, and animals avoid them. Their presence can suppress psychic powers across a wide area. In the Horus Heresy novel Nemesis, a Culexus named Iota is part of the execution force sent to kill Horus.
The Temple's techniques are secret. Its assassins wear special equipment that channels their null aura into a weapon.
The Culexus Temple employs Pariahs, people with no warp presence at all. Their mere existence is psychically unsettling and lethal to psykers. A Culexus' armour amplifies this 'anti-presence', and they are trained to hunt the deadliest psykers. According to temple tradition Sire Culexus was the first of his kind. During the Horus Heresy, the temple also had cloned Pariahs.
The Culexus Temple began during the Great Crusade in a secret programme run by the Officio Assassinorum and Mechanicum Genetors at Malcador's instruction. Several members of the Council of Terra, including the Paternoval Envoy of the Navigators, wanted the Emperor to ban Blanks as dangerous mutants. The Emperor never had to issue that decree, because the Mechanicum publicly shut down the Pariah Project and executed many of its test subjects. Meanwhile, the most promising Blanks were secretly taken to a fortress on Terra. Unlike other temples, the Culexus has little autonomy. Blanks are naturally shunned by other humans, who instinctively sense something wrong with them.
Appearance & wargear
A Culexus wears a synskin bodysuit and a skull-like helmet with a single eye-lens, the animus speculum. The helm focuses its null aura and can fire bolts of psychic energy taken from nearby psykers. They also carry psyk-out grenades.
They wear black synskin and a skull-shaped etherium helmet with a central life-drain eye. They carry animus speculums that turn psychic energy into weapons.
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Battlefield role & tactics
The Culexus hunts psykers and daemons. Its null aura suppresses enemy powers and its animus speculum turns enemy psychic energy against them. It is the ideal weapon against sorcerers and psychic leaders.
The Culexus is a psyker-killer, used against witches, sorcerers and daemons. It cancels psychic powers nearby and can fire stored psychic energy as bolts.
The Culexus is the ultimate psyker-killer. It drains psychic power and kills the psykers it hunts with its Animus Speculum. It also unsettles any warrior near it. Against armies without psykers it is less specialised, but it is still a dangerous assassin.
Notable battles & users
- Iota: the Culexus in Nemesis, part of the team hunting Horus.
- Iota: a cloned 'Protiphage' Culexus of the Horus Heresy era who featured in 'Nemesis'.
Related
Characters (2)
The Emperor of Mankind · Master of Mankind, Lord of the Imperium
Malcador the Sigillite · Regent of Terra, First Lord of the Council
