Editing Konrad Curze (section)

===Reign of Terror===
[[Image:Warhammer-40000-фэндомы-Vulkan-Primarchs-7575420.jpeg|300px|thumb|The Night Haunter, enthroned and ready to dispense "justice" to the people of Nostramo Quintus.]]
In light of his progress in curtailing crime, Curze became ever more convinced that his way of order through terror had been the correct one. He deemed himself to have taken on the mantle of evil in order that his people might be spared it, and judged his work to have been an ugly but noble and more importantly, successful, pursuit. Seizing the moment, Curze appeared before the few remaining nobles that had survived his vigilante purges - the few who basically weren't complete assholes - and gave them a choice: Obey his rule, or die horribly. One or two protested that he had imposed an order based on fear, but it made no difference (and was kinda the point). Konrad Curze, the Night Haunter, was made the undisputed ruler of Hive Quintus. Shortly thereafter however, he came to rule the entire world by simply hinting to the nobles of the other hive cities that if they didn't fall in line with his laws, he would be paying them a visit. He was ''that'' scary. This makes him the only Primarch to have conquered his entire planet single handedly (not counting the Primarchs who were made rulers out of universal love and/or indisputable competence, like Magnus, Sanguinius or Fulgrim).

To the surprise of most, Curze proved to be quite a capable ruler and was surprisingly just and temperate. He made strong attempts to educate himself on absolutely everything he could learn, and his skill as an adjudicator would have made a [[Reasonable Marines|Reasonable Marine]] proud. This was, of course, until word of an injustice reached Curze's ears. At that point he would leave his palace to pursue the culprit himself, wearing down his prey until they could run no longer before gruesomely torturing the perpetrator to death. Curze had also made it mandatory by law that all citizens own a television, and would broadcast these torture sessions every time he conducted one in order to present everyone on the planet with examples of what happened to criminals. This unpredictable pattern of benevolent wisdom, contrasted by such jaw-droppingly savage violence that even an [[Eversor]] would look askance, ushered in a new era of efficiency and honesty across Nostramo. Exports of adamantium tripled and unlike previously, the prosperity caused by this economic boom was spread across all of Nostramon society. The general populace, once so destitute as to have regularly resorted to cannibalism to survive, now saw wealth the likes of which they had never conceived of.

However, peace and order came at a steep price. Though material quality of life had improved unimaginably for the majority of people on Nostramo, everyone lived in abject terror of the Night Haunter. People policed their every word and action religiously, as nobody could ever be completely sure if something they had said or done might be misconstrued as a crime. Prosperity had spread throughout Nostramo not out of generosity or selflessness, but rather because everyone was terrified that having more than their neighbor might draw the Night Haunter's attention. Furthermore despite the order and prosperity Curze had brought to Nostramo, he was hated by the vast majority of its populace. He was simply too fearsome to engender any other response in baseline humans, and this would have dire consequences in the future. Had Curze ever learned how to delegate to minions made up of the local populace, he might have been more effective but alas. Or if he had followed the occasional visions of noblebright he had and shown mercy to some of his victims. Sadly, this was never truly an option for Konrad; his opinion of humanity in general was too low to entrust anyone else with the execution of his justice. As would be seen later during a rather narrow minded "demonstration" to Dorn, Curze believed that humans could only be made to be orderly through fear of consequences. Without that fear, humans would behave as he had seen them behave on lawless Nostramo; doing whatever they could get away with to whomever they could overpower. Given this, his desire to be the planet's sole judicial arbitrator is understandable.