Katsuhiro
Katsuhiro was a Human of Terra during the Horus Heresy.
History
Living his whole life on Terra as a bureaucratic enumerator in an agriculture district, when the Siege of Terra finally began Katsuhiro was Conscripted into the Imperial Army's Kushtun Naganda and stationed at Bastion 16 outside the Helios Gate of the Imperial Palace.[1a] Receiving virtually no training and a mere Lasgun, Katsuhiro and his fellow Conscripts including Myz and Doromek fended off attacks by Beastmen, Mutants, Traitor Army, and other horrors in the early days of the Siege.[1b] Later when the Death Guard arrived, Katsuhiro and his unit were only saved thanks to a counterattack led by Jaghatai Khan. During these battles Katsuhiro went from a barely trained conscript to a hardened veteran, enduring untold horrors and becoming distrustful of Myz and Doromek. When another soldier in the unit declared the duo traitors, he was mysteriously found dead.[1c]
After weeks of brutal fighting and eruptions of plague at Bastion 16 Katsuhiro's unit was finally overrun by a large-scale Death Guard attack led by Plague Towers. Facing death, Katsuhiro retreated into a tunnel under Bastion 16 where he overhead Myz and Doromek plotting to destroy the fort with explosives. Katsuhiro slipped away from the Alpha Legion Operatives and only escaped back into the palace thanks to a counterattack from the Helios Gate led by Sanguinius. As he was attended to by medics inside the Palace, he spotted Doromek disappearing into the crowd of survivors. He declared Doromek a traitor, but his attending medic thought him delirious and subdued him with drugs.[1e]
Despite surviving the first battles of the Siege, Katsuhiro was by no means safe. He was transferred to the Palatine Arc region of the Palace, enduring Death Guard biological warfare in a region now nicknamed Poxville. Katsuhiro would have been slain in a traitor attack had Euphrati Keeler not appeared.[2] Now a grizzled veteran of the Siege, Katsuhiro acted as a de facto authority figure spreading the Imperial Cult to other desperate Army troopers at the Marmax bastion of the walls against repeated traitor assaults. During the battle, his life was saved by the Blood Angels officer Baeron. Baeron was grievously wounded during the battle, and his last act was to put Katsuhiro in command with a plea to hold the line at all costs.[3a] He was present when Shiban Khan arrived at the walls holding an abandoned infant alongside the dying Imperial Army Lieutenant Cole,
While not a veteran, Katsuhiro nonetheless became hardened by the later stage of the Siege and his fear had become replaced by religious zeal. He later encountered Garviel Loken, who was searching for Euphrati Keeler. By this point Katsuhiro still had possession of the baby Shiban had found and was now overseeing religious militias in a desperate struggle against the traitors. Katsuhiro had taken command simply because all of his superior officers had since died, and if one of higher rank appeared he would consent to their authority.[4]
Later in the final stages of the Siege, Katsuhiro, still with the baby, was part of Euphrati Keeler's exodus from the Sanctum Imperialis to an unknown destination and guided by a mysterious light.[5] He is part of the group that makes it to the Hollow Mountain, and informs The Lord Cypher of the fear the refugees feel during the Death Guard attack.[6]
Sources
- 1: The Lost and the Damned (Novel)
- 2: The First Wall (Novel) Chapter 27
- 3: Mortis (Novel)
- 4: Warhawk (Novel) - Chapter 23
- 5: The End and the Death: Volume I (Novel) - 3:xvii
- 6: The End and the Death: Volume III (Novel) - 10:xiii
