Ahzek Ahriman

Remember kids, spend enough time in the library and you can shoot your own bolts of insanity lightning from your hand too!

Ahzek Ahriman (a.k.a. The Sorcerer of the Red Cyclops) is a powerful Chaos Space Marine of the Thousand Sons. He is one of the mightiest psykers in the whole galaxy. He is also noted for pissing off Magnus the Red to the point where Magnus kicked his ass out of the Thousand Sons after Ahriman simultaneously saved/damned his legion with the 'Rubric of Ahriman'. On the tabletop, he is known for two things: costing as much as a Land Raider (the only special character in the CSM codex that costs more than him is Abaddon) and dropping a Touhou-esque level of mind-bullet dakka each round he's on the table. Although being a Thousand Son should make him a space Egyptian, his major quote in the fluff, "the only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance", makes him Socrates in space, since Socrates said that in real life. The man was quite a bro before the Horus Heresy; he noticed all the flaws of the Imperium even during the Great Crusade. This was evidenced during the fall of Prospero, when he fought for the future of mankind rather than the Emperor, which, ironically, puts him in the same league as Roboute Guilliman.

Early Life

Ahriman was born among the wealthy tribes of the Achaemenid Empire, whose kings had allied with the Emperor during the Unification Wars. His name and birth region indicate that he is Iranian. He was then inducted to join the Adeptus Astartes along with his twin brother, Ohrmuzd (who later died of severe mutations, making this a clear reference to Ahriman and Ormuzd, the two Zoroastrian deities of light and dark—guess which one Ahriman is). He quickly rose through the ranks and became both Captain of the First Company and Chief Librarian of the Corvidae (the most powerful cult of the Thousand Sons).

Basically, he is an evil, Persian Space Marine reeking of JUST AS PLANNED, and his origin puts him in a rough tie for oldest human (excluding the Emprah) with a certain pretty fun guy to be around.

During the Heresy

Like all Astartes, Ahriman assisted his Primarch during the Great Crusade, serving as Magnus the Red's second-in-command and advisor. Ahriman was present during the time when Horus became Warmaster. He was also present during Magnus' trial on Nikaea.

When the Space Wolves attacked Prospero (under false orders from Horus), Ahriman led the Thousand Sons Cults to battle, defying Magnus' orders to accept their fates under the belief that their only redemption would be in death. Despite this, the Sons were already near total annihilation until Magnus finally decided that enough was enough. Magnus battled Leman Russ, but Russ got super raggy with a blind shot into Magnus' eye of epicness and was about to slay him. Magnus then swore allegiance to Tzeentch in a desperate move to save his legion, and so Tzeentch teleported Magnus, Ahriman, and the Sons to the Planet of the Sorcerers.

Rubric of Ahriman

Seeing as to how the Thousand Sons were quickly succumbing to the flesh-change, since Tzeentch is the God of Change and all, Ahriman attempted to permanently cure them of their mutations. Without Magnus' consent, he, along with a cabal of other sorcerers, cast the spell known as the Rubric of Ahriman. On the upside, all the psychics in the legion stopped mutating and became more powerful than they had been before. On the downside, everyone else in the legion who wasn't a psyker was cursed to be turned into dust and sealed in their armor for all eternity, turning them into soulless automatons who are unable to think for themselves. Needless to say, Ahriman went derp.

After Magnus learned of this, he flew into a nerd rage so great that even an Angry Marine would take pause to admire it. Magnus was about to kill Ahriman, but Tzeentch himself told him that everything was just as planned, and so the Cyclops kicked Ahriman's ass off of Planet of Sorcerers instead. Ahriman was initially remorseful and went incognito for a few centuries until his emo phase had ended his former brothers tried to capture him so he could undo the Rubric. With the help of some renegade Marines, Ahriman came out on top, got rid of his rivals, donned the bitchingly horned helemt he wears to this day, and began his "War Against Fate".

Current Status

The man himself!

Unlike most other Sorcerer Lords of the Thousand Sons, Ahriman's war band, the Prodigal Sons, have no ties left with the Planet of Sorcerers and its resources (not to mention Magnus's ability to resurrect fallen sorcerers), but they make up for it by mixing in non-Thousand Son Marines and mortals, as well as using their own stashes of magical artifacts (which they have a lot of). Pretty much like the Thousand Sons legion as a whole, Ahriman's band is split into tiny covens most of the time, only gathering together for particularly important battles.

Unlike Kharn, Lucius and Typhus, Ahriman is NOT a devoted servant of his Chaos god, and in fact does not even consider himself Tzeenchian, instead pursuing his own goal of becoming a god himself. The Architect of Fate, however, still thinks of Ahriman as his greatest champion, as he does not concern himself with the faith of his servants, but with their actions and hopes. In a way, Ahriman's rebellion against his patron god and his quest to overthrow him makes him even more Tzeenchian.

In order to further his divine aspirations, Ahriman is constantly trying to gain entrance into a particular Eldar library. And not just any library, where he can nerd out like most other geeks, but the mystical Black Library where he can nerd out mystically and become a new major chaos god (which would tear reality yet another great big asshole like the Eye of Terror). And he is constantly failing at that task because villains can't win. To be fair though, the Library is hidden in the ass end of the Webway. It's also protected by the Harlequins, who are really good at getting their shit done, and the Eldar Laughing God, who still has the full measure of his god-like power and is a master of just as planned (to the point that he can play this dreadfully complicated game on a fairly equal level with The Deceiver, Tzeentch, and the Emperor), and is capable of challenging Slaanesh for the souls for the Harlequin Solitaires—and winning.

In spite of this, he is one of the most awesomely powerful psykers in the galaxy. His miniature can psychic power spam like no one else can, as he is able to throw seven powers per turn, three of which are the same witchfire, which means that he can kill pretty much anything dead with just a mean look. Nerd rage abounds as to whether the Doom of Malan'tai, Varro Tigurius, Eldrad Ulthran, Ahriman, or Mephiston is the most powerful psyker alive who is not balls to the wall insane or a daemon.

(Pretty much answered: at least in terms of pure psychic power, Eldrad's got powerful anti-psyker and Perils of the Warp-bypassing stuff that Ahriman doesn't, though Ahriman can manifest more psychic powers per turn with enough allied sorcerers around to rob them of their charges. They are now both boosted to Mastery Level 4 in the 6th edition codices, so a psychic duel between them can go either way. Other mortal contenders though are not even near the god-like power level of these two.)

And he may well still be a loyalist. Or at least, he may still think he is a loyalist…wait a second…

Let us clarify this point: the main reason Ahriman wants to enter the Black Library is his hope that this will allow him to achieve enough power to rebuild Prospero (among other things), which was supposed to be the first city populated solely by psionically attuned humans, without having to go through all the grimdark soul-bidding processes which are common in the Imperium at present. Want to know how cool Prospero was? Medics of Prospero could cure cancer with their mind powers, and that was an average procedure. So yeah, no need for Emprah-miracles. Too bad Ahriman is currently not above using torture, genocide and daemonology to get the work done (then again, it isn't like the Imperium doesn't do the same thing here and there).

By the way, Ahriman has his own series of novels and stories and is also one of the main characters of the A Thousand Sons novel, and is the main antagonist in Atlas Infernal. You can compare how crazy he has gone by reading the Horus Heresy book first and then Atlas Infernal. Grimdark indeed.

Gallery

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  Mess with him and you'll be shitting lightning bolts. As cool as that sounds, you won't like it.

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  During the Horus Heresy.

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  Disco Ahriman.