Maria Vespa

This page details people, events, and organisations from the /tg/ Heresy, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40,000 Universe. See the /tg/ Heresy Timeline and Galaxy pages for more information on the Alternate Universe.

Icon representing Maria Vespa from the Kuzgeta Sector. Marian art has been produced in tremendous variety. As this example shows, the depictions often bear very little resemblance to eye-witness descriptions of Maria Vespa.

Maria Vespa is a powerful psychic being allied to the Emperor of Mankind. Her appearance in Realspace during the bitter war of the Scouring served to bolster the Loyalist cause against the remnants of Hektor Cincinnatus's Traitor Legions. In later years, veneration of this figure would merge with the Imperial Cult and she would become known as the Sanctis Primaris or First Saint of the Imperium. Aside from these titles, she is also known as the Star of Morning. Maria Vespa is the special patron of the Sisters of Battle and she is often said to influence their battles.

Origin

Blood has always been the price of peace. If shedding mine will settle this matter, so be it. (attributed to Maria Vespa on the announcement of her execution.)

The libraries of the Inquisition contain several theories on the genesis of Maria Vespa, but certain aspects are generally agreed on. During the terrible years of the Hektor Heresy, billions upon billions were slain by the Traitors, causing a vast psychic ferment in the Warp. Although many of the emotions unleashed by the civil war served only to swell the power of the Chaos Gods, many of the Imperium's soldiers died with a feelings of stoic resolve or comradely self-sacrifice. None of the Ruinous Powers served as an outlet for these powerful emotions and it believed that their weight resolved into the form of Maria Vespa around the time of the Siege of Terra.

Shortly after Hektor's defeat, Vespa began to appear on the battlefields of the Scouring. It is believed that she incarnated to avoid the reach of the Chaos Gods, though her contribution to the Loyalist cause was significant. She rallied remnants of the Imperial Army that had been shattered in the Heresy and inspired civilians to enlist to fight for the Imperium. In addition, Maria Vespa showed a significant prowess on the battlefield, credited with the dispatch of demons and traitor marines alike.

Following the Imperium's final victory in the Scouring, Maria Vespa started to become a matter of concern. While the cults that sprang up in veneration of the Emperor of Mankind were troubling, their adherents were thoroughly devoted to their Imperial Duty and readily obeyed the orders of planetary governors. By comparison, those who began to worship Maria Vespa were following a living being who could contradict the Imperial apparatus. In 025.M31, Gesher Hyx, then governor of Magdala, decided to take action. Seizing on the presence of the newly formed Mercurials Chapter, the governor appealed to Chapter Master Augustin Carron to eliminate Maria Vespa. Hyx claimed that Vespa's powers were an indication of mutation or traffic with the Warp, and in any case the cults forming about her were not compliant with the Imperial Truth.

According to the accounts of the Mercurials, Maria Vespa surrendered herself into their custody without a struggle, even calling on her followers not to resist on her account. As was the custom of the times, Augustin Carron presided over a drumhead trial with Gesher Hyx speaking for the prosecution and repeating the accusations he had made in private. Maria Vespa denied that she was a mutant or that she was in league with Chaos, citing her battle record in the Scouring as proof of the latter. However, she could not deny that her presence had inspired deviation from the Imperial Truth and Carron sentenced her to death for this transgression.

Degraded vidcaps of Maria Vespa's execution still exist. A female figure can be seen standing before a firing squad of Mercurials, somewhat obscured by a "crackling" in the vidfeed surrounding her. The vid zooms in on Maria Vespa's face briefly, capturing a look of sublime calm and compassion, before moving to a wide angle. The Mercurials fire and Maria Vespa falls without a sound.

Resurrection and influence

Despite her death being recorded, eyewitnesses across the Galaxy continued to report sightings and deeds by Maria Vespa during the early years of M31. She would typically be recognised intervening on the behalf of otherwise doomed Imperial soldiers. The beneficiaries of her actions were almost always the men and women of the Imperial Guard, and for this reason somewhat dubious. However, Sergeant Quietus of the Entombed Chapter claimed that Maria Vespa appeared to help his squad put an end to Chaos raiders on the world of Norus in 067.M31 and the word of a Space Marine is not lightly dismissed. Orthodox Inquisitors generally believe that these events are best explained by the psychic entity simply reforming a new body in realspace, in a similar manner to Demons. (Thankfully, no chaos demon has been encountered that shows quite the same faculty for doing so as Maria Vespa.)

Such appearances poured fuel on the fire of belief and Marian cults expanded greatly in the centuries after her death. Their organisation was highly martial and centred on fortified convents and abbeys. Marianism was most popular in the Segmentum Obscurus, with the faith centred on Magdala and other pilgrimage worlds where the Star of Morning was known to have fought. Although this large, well-armed organisation certainly registered as a potential danger, Imperial governors were mollified by the great numbers of Marian warriors who answered the call to war against the enemies of mankind. In time many convents became de facto recruitment and training centres for the Imperial Guard.

Views on the nature of Maria Vespa

The scanty evidence and tremendous significance of this figure has led to lengthy and often deadly debate, especially within the Inquisition and the Ecumenes. While Inquisitors have usually settled their disputes by appeal to the most likely explanation, matters of faith are less yielding to reason. The purpose of this overview is not to explain the correct understanding to the reader, but simply to survey the field.

Inquisitorial theories

During M31, the prevailing trend among Inquisitors was to view Maria Vespa as one of the most powerful human psykers to ever live. Adherents to this theory generally believed that Vespa had been instructed by the Emperor and Malcador the Sigilite. They held that her actions during the Scouring were only her most famous deeds, and that her apparent death and resurrection was little more than a ruse at the expense of Augustin Carron. The major problem for adherents to this theory, the so-called Realists, was that Maria Vespa's recorded actions in the Scouring, and particularly after, cover such a wide range of space that she would have to be travelling faster than Imperial Warp technology would allow. The sub-school of Multiple Realists attempted to patch up their theory by claiming that Maria Vespa was not a single woman, but instead a conspiracy. By contrast, Evolutionists took the starting point of Realism and propose that Maria Vespa began life as a powerful psyker but that after her death (and most of these thinkers suggest that she died during the Heresy) her spirit acted as a point of attraction for other human souls in the Warp, gathering their power into herself and creating a metabeing far more powerful than any purely human psyker.

Others are less sanguine about Maria Vespa. The Augustinians believe that she is a demon of Chaos and generally suppose that she serves Tzeentch in some scheme beyond mortal ken but undoubtedly to the detriment of the Imperium.