Chapter Text
You ask what I thought of my gene father? That brilliant comet of flame that burned bright during the Emperor’s Crusades and disappeared into the far void when his fire sputtered out? I do not know if he is dead or if he will ever return. If he does, he will not be the Rogal Dorn I once knew him as during the Great Crusade.
I do not know where to start. I think there are many things to say about the late Rogal Dorn, some good, some bad. I have too many unresolved questions that I did not get to see unanswered during my tenure under his legion.
I do not think it is unusual for me to interrogate the afterimage of my late gene-father for answers I would not have gotten during his lifetime. He was brilliant. Like a bright star in the constellation of the galaxy of planets that were the 20 Primarchs. But I believe he loved his brothers far too much. His heart burned with affection that drove him to great lengths for the crusade and his legion, yet it also fractured his focus and the certainty of his decisions at times. I couldn’t tell him this. I could never have told him this.
He believed in the dream of a united humanity, an Imperium under his father, the Emperor of Mankind. He believed in his brothers, whose belief crystallized and pressed his burning hearts into a diamond. It was a beautiful diamond. He could reflect the beautiful integrity of that diamond outward into the world. Refracting onto the smaller shards of himself, his sons. I was there when that light shone outwards. I was there for when he could move his men to tears with just words, when his presence inspired fanatical loyalty in the regiments of guardsmen that were often with our legion.
Under that cold steel surface of his was something quite beautiful to witness. It was like seeing a star in the sky- wondrous to behold, but something not to be touched. He burned the ones that tried to get too close, those who tried to see the man underneath the wondrous diamond.
But what I could never understand was why this star kept me in his orbit. I lacked the effect many of my brothers did- I was but an empty vessel that was meant to do little but hold, to dispel the heat of my contents, and to give and give myself away until I had to start all over again. Test me, my gene-patriarch did. I do not understand why he pulled me into his orbit. He did not know me particularly well, nor did he have any evidence as to why I was exceptional compared to any of his other sons, or compared to Sigismund, who did much to distinguish himself during the later days of the Great Crusade.
I was more than content to observe him at a distance. But up close, I could see the things he hid from even his own sons.
He did not have the habit of sleeping well or taking rest for himself. He saw no point in it. Often, he’d take short naps inside the safer confines of his armor lock, where he did not have to think about rest. I am aware he was created to not physically require the rest I might do, but he is still human in some manner, with a beating heart and bleeding soul. It seemed his bleeding soul taxed him more and cost him much more than the years he spent making war on behalf of his father. Each loss cost him something. Each betrayal is a chink in his armor. I was there when Nathaniel Garro brought him word of Horus’s treachery.
Something broke in him that day. Something important nobody close to him quite knew how to name. He became more stone than man. More of the steel wiring that reinforced the wondrous constructs that he helped architect. He buried the struggling man I once saw deeper and deeper under layers of concrete until even I had trouble interpreting his moods.
From the end of the siege of Terra to the scouring- the rest is history.
So ended my involvement with him when I took off to the stars with the beginnings of Sigismund’s new chapter, the Black Templars. As of the 40th millennium, I do not know if I will ever again see a trace of him or witness his return.