Ahzek Ahriman

Overview

Ahzek Ahriman is the most powerful sorcerer of the Thousand Sons and its former Chief Librarian. He cast the Rubric that turned his brothers to dust, and Magnus exiled him for it. He has spent millennia seeking the knowledge that could undo his mistake.

He carries the Black Staff of Ahriman and commands a cabal of sorcerers and Rubric Marines. His powers are among the greatest of any mortal psyker, and he has spent ten thousand years trying to reach the Black Library of the Aeldari, believing its secrets could restore his brothers. His quest has made him an enemy of Aeldari and Imperium alike. Ahzek Ahriman was Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons and one of the greatest sorcerers in history. After the fall of Prospero, many of the Legion were mutating into spawn. Ahriman gathered a cabal of like-minded officers and cast the Rubric to save them. Its effect was catastrophic. For this, Magnus exiled him, and since then he has hunted forbidden knowledge across the galaxy, hoping to undo his mistake.

Origins

He was born on Terra in the Achaemenid Empire and joined the Thousand Sons. Once Magnus was found, he became one of the primarch's favoured students and Chief Librarian.

On Prospero, Ahriman studied the Enumerations, the meditative disciplines through which the Thousand Sons controlled their powers. The flesh-change, a mutation that plagued the Legion, threatened his brothers. After the Burning of Prospero and the Legion's fall into the Planet of the Sorcerers, he gathered a cabal and cast the Rubric to save them, with catastrophic results.

His story starts with a pair. Ahzek and his twin brother Ohrmuzd were both taken into the Legions after the Emperor's alliance with Mars. Five years into the Great Crusade, the Thousand Sons began manifesting psychic powers and, with them, the dreaded flesh-change. Little is recorded of his Crusade service. One detail is that he was seconded to the Word Bearers for five years and found their worship of the Emperor as a god deeply uncomfortable, since it broke the Imperial Truth. The earliest surviving record names him in the Aghrou Campaign, the compliance of a pre-industrial world by the 28th Expeditionary Fleet. There he befriended the Space Wolf Rune Priest Ohthere Wyrdmake and spoke freely about the Thousand Sons' psychic disciplines. The Wolves later used those conversations against his Legion at Nikaea.

Key events

1. Led the Thousand Sons' psykers through the Great Crusade.
2. Witnessed the burning of Prospero by the Space Wolves.
3. Cast the Rubric of Ahriman to stop the flesh-change, reducing many brothers to dust in armour and creating the Rubric Marines.
4. Was exiled by Magnus and wandered the galaxy with his cabal.
5. Has repeatedly tried to reach the Black Library of the Aeldari.

Before the Heresy he was Chief Librarian, captain of the 1st Fellowship and leader of the Scarab Occult, the Legion's Terminator-armoured elite. Long after his exile, he hid in the Khornate warband the Harrowing as Horkos, a lowly sorcerer-initiate despised as an oath-breaker. Amon's Brotherhood of Dust followed his psychic trail there and sent Tolbek, an adept of the old Pyrae cult and one of the original cabal who had cast the Rubric. Tolbek went aboard the warband's ship Blood Crescent to deal with its leader, Gzrel, and saw through the disguise. In the 13th Black Crusade, Ahriman reached the Webway using knowledge torn from Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak, the only human ever invited to the Black Library. The Aeldari had in fact been using Czevak as bait. Ahriman also used a forgotten portal on Etiamnum III, a world left to the Imperium by the lost Craftworld Altansar.

Battles & campaigns

• Prospero: He fought in the defence against the Space Wolves and Custodes.
• The Rubric: The spell that broke the Thousand Sons.
• The Black Library: He has made repeated attempts to break into the Aeldari's greatest archive.

Personality

Brilliant, proud and searching, convinced that the right knowledge can repair any mistake.

He is driven by guilt as much as ambition. He believes knowledge is the key to every problem and refuses to accept that some mistakes cannot be undone. That refusal makes him both tragic and dangerous, because he is willing to risk entire worlds to test his theories.

Weapons & Vehicles

Nemesis Force WeaponsPsychic Weapon

Psychically attuned silvered blades, halberds and daemon hammers forged exclusively for the Grey Knights of Titan, channelling the wiel…

Bolter & Bolt RifleRanged Weapon

The signature .75-calibre rocket-propelled mass-reactive firearm of the Adeptus Astartes, firing self-propelled explosive bolts that de…

Plasma Gun & Plasma IncineratorRanged Weapon

A volatile directed-energy rifle that hurls bolts of miniature sun-hot plasma capable of vaporising Terminator plate and tank armour—at…

HeldrakeDaemon Engine

A winged, dragon-like Daemon Engine of the Chaos Space Marines that dives from the skies to shred enemy aircraft with its claws and bat…

Explore all 48 entries in the Weapons & Vehicles armoury.

Connections

Characters (5)

• 
  Kairos Fateweaver fellow servant of Tzeentch · Chaos Daemons

  Ahriman and Kairos are among Tzeentch's most notorious servants.

• 
  Lucius the Eternal rival · Emperor's Children

  Ahriman once halted Lucius's killing blow with telekinesis; Lucius later spent time among Ahriman's cabal.

• 
  Magnus the Red commander · Thousand Sons

  Ahriman was Magnus's Chief Librarian and is now an exile who seeks to undo the Rubricae.

• 
  Tzeentch patron · Chaos Daemons

  Ahriman's Rubric reduced most of the Thousand Sons to dust. Many accounts suggest Tzeentch let it happen, or intended it.

• 
  Eldrad Ulthran enemy · Craftworld Aeldari

  Eldrad led the defence when Ahriman broke into the Black Library.

Factions

• Thousand Sons primary faction

Some links are thematic parallels (marked "parallel") rather than recorded meetings. See the connections web.

Legacy

Ahriman cast the Rubric that turned most of the Thousand Sons into dust-filled automata. His search for redemption, or at least for a cure, drives him across the galaxy, and his quest for the Black Library makes him a danger to the Aeldari as well as the Imperium. Every Rubric Marine is a monument to Ahriman's best intentions, and he has not given up hope of undoing it.

His second attempt went through a tear in the Webway near Lorn V, which the Blood Ravens Librarian Rhamah had opened by accident. With his Prodigal Sons, the stolen Tome of Karebennian, which he had taken from the Solitaire of the same name, and the captured Daemonifuge Ephrael Stern, he searched for an Arcadian gate to the Black Library. He even summoned a vast manta-shaped warp beast called a Leviathan. He was still thrown out of the Webway without what he had come for.

Appearances & sources

• Codex: Thousand Sons
• A Thousand Sons (Graham McNeill)
• Ahriman series (John French)