Athenaeum of Kallimakus
The Athenaeum of Kallimakus was a great library of forgotten knowledge on Appollonia, maintained by a cult that worshiped the memory of Mahavastu Kallimakus[1a], the remembrancer who served as the personal scribe of Magnus the Red, Primarch of the Thousand Sons, during the Great Crusade.[2]
1600 years after the Horus Heresy, when he was exiled from his Legion, Ahzek Ahriman led a warband of Rubric Marines to Appollonia. After a month-long siege, Ahriman and his Marines broke into the library and looted the tomes of knowledge therein, then burned the library to ashes, to ensure that no one else would learn its secrets.[1a]
Contents
Historys
Prologue
After the Burning of Prospero, the remembrancer Mahavastu Kallimakus, personal scribe of Magnus the Red, fled Prospero, along with many of the works Magnus had dictated to him.[2] Kallimakus sought aid from the Inquisition, hoping for a place where this forbidden knowledge could be both studied and kept out of the wrong hands. The Inquisition offered the secluded moon of Apollonia.[1b] Before Kallimakus passed away from old age, he created his life's work, the Athenaeum, using both his own memories and the notes compiled from his time at Magnus's side. The Athenaeum was, in effect, an exact copy of the infamous Book of Magnus and after Kallimakus's death, his work inspired a cult of fanatics to study the Athenaeum for thousands of years, filling up the grand library of Apollonia with notes and commentaries on it.[1b][3][4]
Capture
In the aftermath of the Horus Heresy, Ahzek Ahriman and his Cabal of Sorcerers were exiled from the Thousand Sons for casting the Rubric spell which both saved and doomed the legion.[3] After his exile, Ahriman recalled Kallimakus and his works and began to search for it, hoping to read the cursed spell once again and try to find the flaw he may have missed. Though it reportedly took him sixteen hundred years[3a], he eventually discovered the location of the Athenaeum, from the mind of Inquisitor Iobel. Ahriman took his warband to Apollonia. After an intense battle with the Inquisition, the Grey Knights and traitor elements of his own warband which resulted in major losses to all sides, Ahriman secured the Athenaeum and burned the library to ashes.[1b],[3a]
The Athenaeum was hidden at the core of the moon, and in fact was responsible for holding much of the moon's geography together. After Ahriman removed it, the moon collapsed in on itself.[1b]
Sources
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- 1: Codex: Chaos Space Marines (4th Edition)
- 1a: pg. 51
- 1b: [Needs Citation]
- 2: A Thousand Sons (Novel), Chapter Nine, pgs. 164–166
- 3: Codex: Chaos Space Marines (6th Edition),[Needs Citation]
- 3a: pg. 60
