Editing Nobledark Imperium Notable People (section)

== Prince Yriel ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">''''' The Rogue Trader of Rogue Traders: '''''

Savior and Scourge of Tanith. An Eldar trader and privateer who has traveled the Imperium from Old Earth to the fringe. Any fringe.

The story of prince Yriel begins in the dockyards of Craftworld Iyanden in 248.M38. This is not to say that that wads the day or the place of his birth or, as many detractors have claimed, that his mother was a whore who spent her nights with dock worker. It is merely that this is the first time he appeared on any official records. His craftworld of origin has never been reliably determined but given the possession of a soulstone it is probable that he has one.

Despite intentionally covering his tracks "Prince" Yriel claims to be a descendant of the folk hero Ulthanash and thus permited to take his aristocratic title. The authenticity of this claim is dubious at best.

Circumstances that led him to Iyanden in that year, how he obtained the aptly named ship Hoec's Grace or the origins of his motley crew is also unknown.

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What is known is that since that day the mad bastard has cut a swathe of mayhem a light year wide down the millennia from one end of the Imperium to the other. His name is spoken with detestation by dockyard official on a hundred thousand worlds and reverence on at least as many others. His antics have been a bane to the Imperium down the ages saved from disgrace and condemnation only by the times his antics have been a boon to the Imperium. All he claims in search of the snazziest hat, as befits the heir of Ulthanash.

Of all his deeds the most brazen and greatest was the supply of aid in the defense Iyanden during the war of the Great Kraken. It was he who marched at the head of a half million strong host of Krieger soldiery, each eager to stick a bayonet in his back and held in safety only by an official commissars hat and a document form the Emperor himself with a genuinely forged signature upon it.

Best not to mention that he may or may not have had something to do with the agri-futures fiasco of the Ulthran Cartel.

Of the Prince himself little is known. Rumors abound that he maintains a harem of the most exiting beauties upon Hoec's Grace, now flagship of the Eldritch Raiders "Trader" fleet. Some say that his holds are stuffed to the rafters with rare metals, or bound and tortured captives, a small pocket dimension of Necrontyr manufacture, the preserved and still living brain of a Tyranid hive ship and a hundred other somehow even less plausible things. The one about a surviving member of the original Ordo Chronos admittedly turned out to be true, but only by complete coincidence.

Actual witnesses who have seen, for whatever reason, the inside of his ship tell a very different story. They tell of meticulous order, neatness and professional conduct that would seem no out of place in the old Void Born Navy families and completely at odds with the character of the Prince. Every item in the hold accounted for and noted, ever speck of dirt expunged and every crew member busy and happy about their duties. Possibly this is more in part to do with Kasahkrv the First Mate. He is of the demiurg people and they are known to love orderly conduct. How or why he is present on the Hoec's Grace is unknown, maybe it was a penance.

The other incident that lands squarely at the feet of the Prince is the loss of the planet Tanith.

In the harrowing time of the 12th Black Crusade great fleets and armies were mobilized and war was done on a scale seldom seen. What is remembered less are the more insidious assaults upon the Imperium. The words and deeds that slipped in sideways with smiles upon their friendly faces that infected worlds and stole the souls of the people from the light of civility and lead them down the paths of barbarity and selfish indulgence. On of the worlds afflicted was Tanith, that strange and verdant paradise.

The exact events leading up to the loss of the world are not easy to decipher and many accounts are contradictory in nature. When a world is on fire and neighbors turn on friends and kin in cannibalistic abandon documentation of social and political trends tends to be less of a priority than staying alive.

What was known is that the election of the Governor was called into question and numerous claimants arose although it is unknown who many if any were unclean. A strange new fad for very modest habits arose in the population, primarily at Tanith Magna and spreading out wards from there, a fashion among the aristocracy of wearing as little as possible became evident and then what appeared to be a military coup happened. Society more or less broke down at that point. When it became clear beyond reasonable doubt that the military was not marching to the same drum as the rest of the Imperium a not insignificant chunk of it broke away and mostly hunted down in the forests one unit at a time. And then a Bloodpact armada turned up intent on making what was left of the planet theirs.

Into this shitstorm came the Eldritch Raiders "Trader" fleet. It was clear from the radio transmissions, encoded with subliminal (to baseline humans) Dark Hymnal Choirs as they were, that something was a little off. Also the fleet of warships in orbit bearing the blasphemous Marks.

Eldritch Raiders were officially a trader fleet and as such any identification broadcasts automatically sent out from the fleet would have identified them as such and been completely genuine. Which is not to say that they were entirely true. At least half the ships in the fleet, Hoec's Grace among them, were armed to the teeth. As pirate deterrents they would often claim. Hoec's Grace tore from the ranks of the fleet at full burn, shield up and glowing red, weapons crash charged and a fleet of almost equally mad ships trailing behind it, a pack of mad jackals charging into the midst of wolves. Prince Yriel, never the most stable of creatures, was out for blood.

Formidable as the ships were they were still no warfleet of the Imperial navy and no real contest to an armada of the Bloodpact in a prolonged slugging match. The course of action was questioned by his demiurg First Mate and long time accomplice/friend as this was well outside what he deemed wisdom;

"WISDOM! We have gone well beyond the bounds of wisdom! I say no more. They attack and we hold the line. They invade and we fall back. They take whole sectors and we fall back. Their type took our whole [untranslatable profanity] Empire and we fell back. No more! No more. Here I am drawing [untranslatable profanity] line in the stars! Here, I say! Here! No Further!"

Hoec's Grace slammed into the lead ship at a truly excessive relative velocity, all weapons firing at any available target and it's armored prow plowed through the marauder ship and emerged from the inferno dragging hellfire behind it. Still firing, still killing, scarp and flame and bodies coating it's hull, boarders on half the decks, the control room knee deep in dead chaos... creatures and The Prince himself down to one good eye and more tragically having to resort to only his second snazziest hat.

For what it was worth the attack on the marauder fleet was never meant to destroy them so much as it was a diversion.

The cargo haulers had slipped round the other side of the planet and with the help of mercenary warlocks were scanning the surface for pockets of uncorrupted people. Using the extremely rare (and unlicensed) imperial telelporters a little over fifteen thousand of the helpless were snatched from certain death. By the time what was left of the Marauder fleet realized what was happening it was too late, the hauler fleet was already too far away and accelerating to the systems edge, fleeing with time bought by the escort fleet. Something of Tanith had been saved, the gods had been denied.

But of Tanith itself there was nothing more that could be done. Nuclear warheads were detonated in sequence to cause vast firestorms that scoured the planet clean of the taint of Chaos. Sadly, the warheads also of robbed the planet of most complex life. They say, the men in robes or reds and of dark greens, they say that one day it may bloom again. The Great Nalwood trees might be resurrected to wander again. Tanith Magna might be rebuilt in all it's glory. The children might return home. One day.

It was a pyrrhic victory for both Chaos and The Prince. Chaos wanted a new world to raise cannon fodder on and were handed a holocaust, The Prince wanted to save a world and was forced to burn it as a mercy kill.

The surviving Tanith, such a ragged bunch as they were, were ferried to the unsettled maiden world known as Lileath's Briar Patch in the High Speech. The rather unimaginative refugees rechristened it New Tanith. The world had been claimed by Biel-tan, who had been intending to start colonization any century now and had been for at least the last five thousand years. Their complaints were met with a curt response that boiled down to: It's a big planet. It's a small number of humans. Find another island. Biel-Tan could have contested the settlement but their representative took one look at Prince Yriel and saw that it would not be in anyone's interest to push the issue, if only because Yriel was crazy enough to not back down. To save face, the Craftworld claimed that they had gifted Lileath's Briar Patch to Prince Yriel as a reward for his bravery. If Yriel wanted to give the planet to a bunch of mon-keigh refugees, well, that was his prerogative.

There were a few soldiers that were saved, slightly more than a regiments worth. The nearest they had to a commanding officer was Commissar Gaunt, later Colonel-Commissar. From the remnants of the military of a dead world enough were left behind to form a PDF adequate to the meager population and an undersized regiment that could be used as the core upon which to build with offworld recruits and taught the Tanith way of war. Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt never forgot what Prince Yriel had done for his adopted people and swore an eternal oath to the Corsair Prince. An oath the Corsair Prince was mostly indifferent to.

For this service to the Imperium Prince Yriel received an official Writ of Trade, hand signed by the Emperor himself and presented to him by a senior priestess of Isha. What more, they gave him a new hat and it was a good day.

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