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At a glance
Prospero was the homeworld of the Thousand Sons, the Legion of the Primarch Magnus the Red. It was a world of scholars and psykers, where knowledge was prized above all things and where the city of Tizca, the City of Light, rose in shining pyramids beneath the mountains. In the age of the Great Crusade, it was one of the greatest centres of learning in the Imperium, a place where the secrets of the warp were studied in libraries that held the wisdom of countless worlds.
Its fate is one of the great tragedies of the Horus Heresy. After Magnus broke the Emperor's decrees and used sorcery to warn his father of Horus's treachery, the Space Wolves were sent to Prospero. The Burning of Prospero left Tizca in ruins and the Legion broken. Magnus tore his surviving sons away into the warp, and the Thousand Sons fell to Tzeentch. Prospero was left a dead world, its libraries burned and its pyramids shattered.
Today Prospero is a haunted ruin, remembered in the sagas of the Space Wolves as a victory and in the bitter memories of the Thousand Sons as the crime that made them traitors.
Geography & environment
Prospero was a world of stark beauty: high mountains, rocky plains and deserts, under a bright sky. Before the Thousand Sons came, it had been settled by a colony of human psykers who had fled persecution on other worlds. They lived in harsh conditions, struggling to survive on a world that offered few resources, but they built a society that valued knowledge and psychic ability.
The planet's surface was largely arid, with mountains rising from the plains. Tizca was built in the shelter of the mountains, close to the sea, and it grew into one of the most beautiful cities in the Imperium. The surrounding countryside was dotted with smaller settlements, observatories and retreats, where scholars studied in solitude.
After the Burning, much of Prospero's surface was ruined. The great city was reduced to rubble, the countryside scorched and the sky choked with ash. Over the millennia, the ruins have been left largely undisturbed, though rumours persist of expeditions sent to recover the lost secrets of Tizca, and of strange phenomena that plague those who visit.
Tizca, the City of Light
Tizca was the jewel of Prospero. It was a city of shining pyramids, broad avenues and gleaming towers, built from white and gold stone and decorated with mirrored surfaces that reflected the sun. The city was a centre of learning, home to great libraries, academies and laboratories, where scholars studied every branch of knowledge, from mathematics and astronomy to the secrets of the warp.
At the heart of Tizca stood the Pyramid of Photep, the greatest of the city's pyramids and the sanctum of Magnus himself. From its summit, Magnus could look out over his city and the world beyond, and in its chambers he studied the mysteries of the warp. The Pyramid was surrounded by the temples of the Thousand Sons' Cults, each dedicated to a different branch of psychic study.
The libraries of Tizca were among the greatest in the galaxy. They held records gathered from countless worlds during the Great Crusade, including ancient texts that had survived the Age of Strife. Scholars from across the Imperium came to study in them, and Magnus was always eager to add to their collections. When the city burned, much of this knowledge was lost forever, and its loss is regarded by some as one of the greatest tragedies of the Heresy.
History
The psyker colony
Before the Great Crusade, Prospero was settled by human psykers fleeing persecution. These people were feared and hunted on many worlds, and they found refuge on Prospero, where they could practise their abilities in peace. They built a society that revered knowledge and psychic power, and they developed techniques to control and harness their abilities.
Magnus on Prospero
The infant Primarch Magnus arrived on Prospero during the scattering of the Primarchs. He was taken in by the psykers, who recognised his extraordinary power. He grew to be a mighty psyker, and he learned the secrets of the colony's scholars. When the Emperor arrived, he found his son already leading his people, and Magnus took command of the XV Legion. The Legion had suffered from a mutation that afflicted its warriors, known as the flesh-change, and Magnus's arrival seemed to halt it.
The Great Crusade
During the Great Crusade, the Thousand Sons became one of the most respected Legions. Their psychic powers made them formidable warriors, and their scholarship made them valuable allies. Yet their use of psychic powers aroused suspicion among other Legions, particularly the Space Wolves, who distrusted sorcery. At the Council of Nikaea, the Emperor banned the use of psychic powers by the Legions, and Magnus was ordered to cease his studies. He agreed, but he did not stop.
The warning and the Burning
When Magnus discovered that Horus planned to betray the Emperor, he used sorcery to send a warning to Terra. His psychic projection shattered the wards protecting the Emperor's secret project beneath the Imperial Palace, causing a disaster. The Emperor, enraged, ordered Leman Russ to bring Magnus to Terra. Horus, manipulating the situation, changed the orders, and Russ was sent to destroy Prospero.
The Space Wolves, supported by the Adeptus Custodes and the Sisters of Silence, attacked Prospero. The battle was brutal, and the Thousand Sons fought desperately to defend their home. Magnus, consumed by guilt, initially refused to fight, believing that the attack was his punishment. By the time he joined the battle, Tizca was burning. He fought Leman Russ in a titanic duel, and Russ broke Magnus's back. As his city fell, Magnus called upon the powers of the warp and transported his surviving sons away from Prospero, into the Eye of Terror.
After the Burning
The Thousand Sons arrived on a daemon world in the Eye of Terror, which became known as the Planet of the Sorcerers. There, Magnus turned fully to Tzeentch, and the Legion became traitors. The flesh-change returned, and Ahriman, Magnus's most loyal follower, cast the Rubric, a powerful spell that turned most of the Legion into dust-filled suits of armour, the Rubric Marines. Prospero itself was left a ruin, abandoned by the Imperium and haunted by the memories of its destruction.
The Cults of the Thousand Sons
The Thousand Sons were divided into fellowships known as Cults, each specialising in a different branch of psychic study. The Corvidae studied divination and the reading of the future; the Pavoni mastered the manipulation of the body; the Athanaeans practised telepathy; the Raptora specialised in telekinesis; and the Pyrae controlled fire. The Cults were based in their own temples in Tizca, and their rivalry drove the Legion's scholarship forward.
The Cults were not merely academic societies. They were centres of power within the Legion, and their leaders held great influence. Their members studied together, practised their powers and competed for prestige. The Cults also maintained links with the scholars of Prospero, and many of the city's people studied under them.
After the Burning, the Cults survived in the Eye of Terror, but they changed. Their studies became darker, and their powers became more dangerous. The Thousand Sons' sorcerers continue to practise the arts of their Cults, but they are now servants of Tzeentch, and their knowledge is bent to the purposes of the Changer of Ways.
Magnus's folly
The road to the Burning began with good intentions. Magnus believed that knowledge was the key to humanity's future, and that the warp could be studied and mastered like any other natural force. He also believed that his father was wrong to fear it. When the Emperor forbade the Legions from using psychic powers at the Council of Nikaea, Magnus accepted the decree publicly but continued his work in secret, convinced that he could prove its value.
In the depths of his research, Magnus made pacts with powers he did not fully understand. He believed he was dealing with benign entities of the warp, but he was being manipulated by Tzeentch. When he learned of Horus's corruption, he saw a chance to save his father and to prove that his studies had been worthwhile. He gathered his sorcerers in the Pyramid of Photep and projected his mind across the galaxy to Terra.
The warning reached the Emperor, but Magnus's arrival breached the wards that protected the Emperor's great project, an extension of the Webway beneath the Imperial Palace. Daemons poured through the breach. The project was ruined, and thousands of the Emperor's servants died holding back the tide. In one act of pride, Magnus had destroyed the Emperor's greatest hope and condemned his own world.
Prospero after ten thousand years
In the long millennia since the Burning, Prospero has never been resettled. The Imperium regards the world as cursed, and the ruins of Tizca are left to the wind and dust. Imperial records list it as a dead world, and few ships pass through its system. Those who do report strange phenomena: psychic echoes of the battle, apparitions in the ruins, and voices that seem to speak from the ash.
The Thousand Sons have never forgotten their homeworld. On the Planet of the Sorcerers, deep within the Eye of Terror, Magnus raised a new city in imitation of Tizca, a twisted mirror of the City of Light, its pyramids rising beneath a sky of shifting colours. Ahriman, exiled by Magnus after the Rubric, has spent ten thousand years searching for the knowledge that might undo the curse on his Legion, and his journeys have taken him to many lost libraries in search of what Prospero once held.
The Space Wolves, too, remember Prospero. Their sagas tell of the Burning as a great victory, and they regard the Thousand Sons as their eternal enemies. Yet some among the Wolves wonder whether the destruction of Prospero was truly just, and whether they were manipulated by Horus. The feud between the two Legions has outlasted the Heresy by ten thousand years, and it shows no sign of ending.
People & culture
The people of Prospero were scholars, artists and psykers. They valued knowledge, beauty and reason, and their culture was sophisticated and refined. They lived in harmony with the Thousand Sons, who regarded them as kin. Many of the people of Prospero were psykers, and they studied their abilities in the academies of Tizca.
Prospero's culture was influenced by the ancient civilisations of Terra, particularly those of Egypt and Greece. The architecture of Tizca, with its pyramids and temples, reflected this influence, as did the city's devotion to learning and philosophy. The Thousand Sons themselves wore armour of red and gold, decorated with symbols of their Cults and with ancient hieroglyphs.
When the Space Wolves attacked, the people of Prospero suffered terribly. Many were killed in the fighting, and the survivors were left to die in the ruins. Some may have been taken by Magnus into the warp, but most simply perished. The death of Prospero's people is one of the forgotten tragedies of the Heresy.
Defenders & war-machine
In the days of the Great Crusade, Prospero was defended by the Thousand Sons, whose psychic powers made them formidable opponents. The planet also had its own defence forces, drawn from its people, and the city of Tizca had powerful defences, including void shields and psychic wards. Tizca's people also contributed to its defence, as many of them were trained psykers who could fight alongside the Legion. Yet when the Space Wolves attacked, these defences were not enough. Magnus had foreseen the attack but had chosen not to resist, and by the time the defence was organised, the attackers had already landed.
The attacking force was overwhelming. The Space Wolves came in strength, led by Leman Russ himself, and they were joined by Custodians under Constantin Valdor, Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes, and by the null-maidens of the Silent Sisterhood. Prospero's psychic defences were made useless by the Sisters, and its void shields could not stop the bombardment. Many of the Thousand Sons died before they could even reach their weapons.
Notable battles
- The Burning of Prospero (M31): the Space Wolves, Custodes and Sisters of Silence destroy Tizca; see The Burning of Prospero.
- The duel of Magnus and Russ: the two Primarchs clash amid the ruins of Tizca, and Russ breaks Magnus's back.
Trivia
- The Burning of Prospero is one of the key events of the Horus Heresy, and it is a source of enduring hatred between the Space Wolves and the Thousand Sons.
- Tizca's architecture was inspired by the ancient civilisations of Terra, and its pyramids were said to gleam so brightly at dawn that visitors had to shield their eyes.
- The Pyramid of Photep was the sanctum of Magnus.
- Magnus is often depicted with a single eye, and he was known as the Crimson King for his red skin and hair.
- The Thousand Sons were one of the smaller Legions by the time of the Heresy, after the flesh-change had claimed many of their warriors, which made every loss at Prospero keenly felt.
- The Thousand Sons' Rubric Marines are the result of Ahriman's attempt to cure the flesh-change.
