Forsithe
Captain Forsithe is the commander of the Imperial Navy vessel the Baleful Gaze and is part of Battlefleet Ultima Primus, which serves in the Ultima Segmentum[1a].
History
When Battlefleet Ultima Primus' flagship, the Enduring Blade, received a request for aid from the planet Dolumar IV, which was under attack by the Tau[1b], the fleet responded and engaged the Tau warship Or’es Tash’var. The fleet fired upon the Tau ship to disable it and reclaim the Ethereal Ko'vash, who had just been freed from Dolumar IV's prison complex, by boarding it.[1c] To Forsithe's and the Battlefleet's surprise, their boarding attack was beaten back by the Tau and a large flotilla of Tau warships arrived in the system to save the Or'es Tash'var and Ko'vash. The Tau ships greatly outnumbered the Battlefleet and in the ensuing battle the Reverus, one of the battlefleet's ships, was destroyed[1a] and the Enduring Blade was successfully boarded. Lord Admiral Benedil Constantine, commander of the Enduring Blade, was pressured to open diplomatic talks with the Tau on his battleship, but they didn't get far before the Planetary Governor of Dolumar IV, Meyloch Severus, barged into the room and declared there would be no peace talks between the Tau and Imperium[1d].
Severus, secretly a heretic, completed a Chaos ritual and a Warp portal appeared allowing a Chaos warhost to materialize on the Enduring Blade. The Admiral and Ethereal were captured during subsequent attack[1d] and as the Chaos Space Marines and Daemons of the warhost overran the battleship, Captain Jehnnus Ardias of the Ultramarines stationed aboard the Enduring Blade, declared that the battleship was lost and ordered its evacuation of all surviving Tau and Imperial forces.[1e] When the last of the escape pods launched from the doomed battleship, the Purgatus, another ship in the Battlefleet, opened fire upon the Enduring Blade, destroying it and bringing an ignoble end to its illustrious career. After the Enduring Blade's destruction, Forsithe and the remaining Captains of the Battlefleet deployed what troops they had onto Dolumar IV, along with the Tau, to reinforce Captain Ardias' Company, after the Chaos warhost invaded the planet.[1f] When the Chaos threat had been dealt with, the Battlefleet and the Tau would part ways peacefully and Captain Forsithe directed the Baleful Gaze to fire upon Dolumar IV; Captain Ardias deemed the planet had been too corrupted to save and ordered the Battlefleet to begin an Exterminatus.[1g]
Sources
