Draykavac

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"These Knights are vital components of the Taghmata that protect Forge and Fane, yet despite their pride, they are but one tool among many and they will bend to the Omnissiah's will or be broken by it."

– Archmagos Yelav Draykavac upon the rediscovery of House Atrax, circa M30

Archmagos Yelav Draykavac was the military leader of the Forge World Cyclothrathe during the Horus Heresy, which sided with Horus during the war when the latter promised to let them expand as much as they pleased after the wider Mechanicum tried to check their expansion. He is infamously remembered as one of the most brutal butchering bastards of the the first-generation Dark Mechanicum (despite being borderline unknown before the Heresy) and for a colossal act of fail that we'll get to later.

He had a horse skull on his face. Presumably to scare horses.

History

Draykavac commanded the Mechanicum's military forces on Cyclothrathe, a barely liveable rock that was constantly ravaged by violent electromagnetic storms and largely isolated from the Imperium and even the Mechanicum at large. These guys were fucking hardcore, with a reputation for being incredible fighters and excessive brutality; they were also known for being isolationist and arrogant, shunning even other Mechanicum Forge Worlds like their neighbours Z'pandex and Mezoa.

The archmagos was known for three things: doing just about anything to gain knowledge and further his understanding, running the Cyclothrathine Knight House like a slave driver, and being an unforgiving asshole. Seriously, Draykavac pretty much butchered any member of the House who refused to side with Cyclothrathe, then basically enslaved them by holding their Thrones Mechanicum hostage while keeping the Knights themselves locked up unless it was time to fight.

When the Heresy began, he jumped on the team Horus bandwagon as means to expand his own pocket empire. Despite doing pretty much his own thing regardless of the Sons of Horus captain at Port Maw, he was still a key player in the war for the Coronid Deeps, fighting constantly against the Agathon Solar Auxilia and the loyalist Knight Houses of the region. He also had an obsession with turning people into servitors for his armies, once ordering that an entire planet should have its population converted into Servitors, then servitorizing the tech-priestess in charge when it wasn't done fast enough; when people tried to revolt, he crushed the uprising in the space of a few days.

The Battle of Numinal (that place mentioned above) was both Draykavac's most infamous act of on-screen brutality and his biggest goof-up. Draykavac spreading his troops across the world meant that he had no quick response when around 40k Solar Auxilia landed, having used a mix of sleight-of-hand and a loyalist Rogue Trader vessel to break through his orbital blockade; in the two hours he needed to launch a counter attack, they'd fortified their LZ to hall and back. The first force he sent to break them was promptly sent back in several small sandwich bags despite him remote-controlling entire divisions, forcing a very annoyed Draykavac to take the field himself with his Knights and Battle-Automata in tow.

Draykavac thought that by using his Knights and battlebots, he'd be able to at least force them into a stalemate until reinforcements could get there. Unfortunately for him, he'd been tricked hard - the guy running the show on the resistance's side had fought beside the Mechanicum before, and knew full well how they tended to rely on their computers logic-engines. The result was that Draykavac hit their lines and penetrated deep, only to find it was raining fucking Knights as the Loyalist House Hermetika dropped right on his flanks. Draykavac himself managed to bring down a Knight-Castigator, reducing the pilot to liquid with his Graviton Gun as a final act of spite before being forced to retreat; what Mechanicuim Knights and forces remained were sacrificed to cover his escape.

While he remained in command of the Cyclothrathe Taghmata, winning many victories and apparently doing some pretty evil shit like genociding the Forge World of Goth, Exterminatusing the seventeen worlds of the Donia League, and the Lucine Travesty (whatever the fuck that was), his post-Numinal career is described in almost no detail whatsoever. Well, with one notable exception: that high-profile fail we mentioned earlier.

See, his flagship was found floating near the Maelstrom during the Great Scouring, completely abandoned and containing an fully intact archive of all his campaigns. This would give the Imperium precious information to better fight the Dark Mechanicum in the millennia to come, and resulted in Draykavac going from a dreaded warlord to a source of information for the Imperium he fought against.

On The Tabletop

	Pts	WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
Archmagos Draykavac	240	4	5	4	6	3	4	2	10	2+

Gallery

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  The only image we have of the Archmagos.

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  Slithering across the battlefield like the snake he is.