Euphrati Keeler
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Euphrati Keeler was a remembrancer attached to the 63rd Expeditionary Force in the closing months of the Great Crusade. As a result of later events, she would later be canonized as one of the first Saints of the Imperial Cult.
Biography
An imagist of some renown, while attached to the 63rd Expeditionary Force under the command of Warmaster Horus[1a], her images included the rescue of Maloghurst from the surface of Sixty-Three-Nineteen[1b], and Garviel Loken taking his oath of moment before the Battle of the Whisperhead Mountains[1c].
She and other remembrancers were allowed to travel to the surface of Sixty-Three-Nineteen during the Battle, though they were meant to be kept well away from the actual fighting.[1d] On an impulse, their group slipped away from their Imperial Army escort and entered the rebel stronghold in the mountains.[1e] She was shaken by an encounter with the daemon Samus in the Whisperheads, which killed the entire group except for herself and Kyril Sindermann.[1f] This experience may have contributed to her eventual joining of the Lectitio Divinitatus, a cult that worshipped the Emperor of Mankind as a deity.[1g]
The Saint
Her devotion to the Emperor became clear when Kyril Sindermann accidentally summoned a demon using the Book of Lorgar in the library of Warmaster Horus' flagship, the Vengeful Spirit, as she stood before the beast and banished it back into the Warp. She went into a state of what could be described as catatonia. The word went out throughout the 63rd Expedition, leading the Divinitatus members to see her as "the Saint", the venerated prophet of the Emperor. She became the target of Horus' assassins, including Maloghurst's enforcer Maggard. She awakened shortly before the battle of Isstvan III, and warned that something was afoot. She witnessed the bombardment of Istvaan, and approached Iacton Qruze to escape the Vengeful Spirit. She escaped from Istvaan onboard the frigate Eisenstein, commanded by Captain Nathaniel Garro, a Death Guard loyalist.
The Silent Sisterhood believed that Keeler may in fact have been a renegade psyker. She was taken to their fortress monastery on Luna and questioned.
On Terra
As the Horus Heresy progresses, Horus commands turned assassin Eristede Kell to hunt down Keeler and kill her, thus causing mass disruption on Terra. Keeler at the time was spreading the Lectitio Divinitatus across the planet, and an assassination would cause mass religious fervor upon her death. At the same time, Garro was searching for her, needing answers after he became one of Malcador's Knight-Errant, and he was able to intervene with the assassination plot and save her. Eventually, she was taken into Malcador's custody. During the battle, Keeler demonstrated the ability to share visions of the future, heal wounds, and stop time to communicate with others.[4]
Legacy
At some point before the start of the Heresy, Euphrati Keeler took several photographs of a comet above the planet El'Phanor. The comet was later named the Keeler Comet. is important to note that the comet was named after Saint Euphrati Keeler, the Prophet of the Emperor.[2]
Likewise, Euphrate's Warp is the name of a stellar phenomenon in the Sabbat Worlds Cluster, in Segmentum Pacificus.[3]
Sources
- 1: Horus Rising (Novel) by Dan Abnett
- 2: Legion of the Damned (Novel) by Rob Sanders, [Needs Citation], pgs. 17, 99
- 3: The Sabbat Worlds Crusade (Background Book) by Dan Abnett, pg. 7
- 4: Garro: Vow of Faith (Novella), Chapters 5 and 6
Uncited
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- False Gods (Novel) by Graham McNeill
- Galaxy in Flames (Novel) by Ben Counter
- The Flight of the Eisenstein (Novel) by James Swallow
