Arden
Trooper Arden is a member of the fearsome Catachan Jungle Fighters of the Imperial Guard, famed throughout the battlezones of the Spinward Front for his brutal heroics.[1]
History
One of the famous - some would say infamous - fighters to have served in the warzones of the Spinward Front was Trooper Arden of the 301st Catachan Jungle Fighters Regiment. As a son of one of the most hazardous Death Worlds in the known galaxy, Arden was already a formidable fighter before most men could spell (a skill that, according to several of his peers, Arden never actually acquired). It is reported that Arden once intercepted a Flying Swamp Mamba and wrestled it to the ground before tearing its wings clean off, and that he once fought a Blackback Viper, surviving a bite from this most venomous of Death World predators and breaking its spine over his knee before he collapsed from the effects of its bite. These rumours are widespread but, like every story told of Arden before being tithed into the service of the Imperial Guard, wholly impossible to confirm. Official records begin when Arden was tithed into the Imperial Guard, and a whole new world of potential violence opened up before him.[1]
Reports logged by the Commissars attached to the newly raised 301st suggest that Trooper Arden resented the training he received in use of the standard-issue lasgun, preferring to wield his “Devil’s Claw,” a three foot long blade favoured by the people of Catachan. Despite his misgivings, Arden’s Sergeant insisted he at least attempt to learn how to learn how to use basic ranged weaponry, as a very terse and rather vulgar training report on Trooper Arden confirmed. For reasons unknown, however, a second report was filed a week later, reading only “never mind”. Trooper Arden’s first taste of battle (as a member of the Imperial Guard) was at Ashen Regis, when the 301st was tasked with blocking an Ork advance across that world’s primary continent.[1]
It was because of the bloody example set by Trooper Arden that the 301st exceeded all expectations and not only successfully blocked the advance of an entire arm of the Ork horde but began to push it back. Trooper Arden was to be found at the leading edge of the advance, where reports credit him with killing up to twenty-three brutal Ork warriors in hand-to-hand combat.[1]
Trooper Arden is confirmed to have served in at least eight other major encounters with the Catachan 301st before vanishing during an assault on an Ork Warboss’ camp. However, persistent rumours in the 301st place him in no fewer than thirteen other major campaigns after his supposed disappearance. Whether these are the tall tales of soldiers or an intervention by the will of the God-Emperor has been to this point unverified.[1]
