Malakim Phoros

Malakim Phoros, called the Lord of Ruin, is Chapter Master of the Lamenters, a successor Chapter of the Blood Angels born from the 21st "Cursed" Founding and cursed, from its very inception, with a run of catastrophic misfortune that has made it the most tragic Chapter in the Imperium. Where his gene-forebears struggle against the Black Rage in isolation, Phoros wrestles that same curse constantly and openly, dragging himself back from its brink through will alone, again and again, in full view of the brothers he leads. Some among the Lamenters call him the Watcher of the Deeps as much as the Lord of Ruin, a name that speaks to how closely he watches over a Chapter he refuses to let fall. His officers describe a commander who has never once asked of his men a sacrifice he was not already prepared to make himself.

Phoros led the Lamenters into the Badab War on the side of the secessionists, honoring a debt of loyalty to the rebellion's leader, and fought with a restraint and honor rare among that conflict's combatants before surrendering after a crushing defeat at the Battle of Optera. His battle barge, the Daughter of Tempests, was destroyed in that final battle, and he was officially believed slain with it — yet persistent rumor insists that he survived, adrift in the wreckage, and quietly rejoined his shattered brothers in exile.

In the century-long penitent crusade imposed on the Chapter afterward, the Lamenters were nearly annihilated fighting Hive Fleet Kraken, one more catastrophe added to a chapter's-worth of ruin that never seems to end. Phoros leads the Lamenters still, wielding the ancient infernus pistol known as the Catechist and the master-crafted Glaive Encarmine as he has for decades, and the galaxy remembers him as the Lord of Ruin: the man fate never stopped punishing, and who never once stopped fighting back.