Ra Endymion

Tribune Ra Endymion occupies a unique and tragic place in the history of the Adeptus Custodes and the Empire itself. He was one of the Tribunes — the highest operational rank within the Custodes hierarchy, second only to the Captain-General himself — and was personally entrusted by the Emperor of Mankind with one of the most critical missions in human history: the defense of the Imperial Webway Project, the Emperor's greatest and most secret undertaking, which promised to free humanity from its dependence on warp travel and revolutionize the Imperium's ability to traverse the galaxy.

The Webway Project was the Emperor's masterwork, a plan to create a human-controlled section of the ancient Webway — the extra-dimensional network of tunnels built by the Old Ones millions of years before — that would allow instantaneous travel between worlds without the dangers of the Warp. The project was based beneath the Imperial Palace itself, where the Emperor had constructed a vast portal into the Webway and was in the process of extending and stabilizing the human-controlled passages when disaster struck. Magnus the Red, Primarch of the Thousand Sons, inadvertently breached the psychic barriers protecting the Webway entrance in his desperate attempt to warn the Emperor of Horus's treachery, and the daemons of the Warp poured through the gap.

Ra Endymion was given command of the Custodes forces tasked with holding the Webway gate against the endless tide of daemons that flooded through the breach. This was not a battle that could be won — the forces opposing them were literally infinite, drawn from the boundless legions of the Warp — but merely a holding action, buying time for the Emperor to seal the breach or find some other solution. The defense of the Webway became one of the longest, most grueling, and most heroic military actions in Imperial history, a war fought entirely underground in the cramped tunnels and vast chambers of the Webway with no reinforcement possible and no retreat permitted.

As Tribune, Ra was not merely a warrior but a leader, responsible for maintaining the morale and combat effectiveness of his Custodians through a conflict that tested the limits of even their superhuman endurance. He fought alongside his brothers, holding the line against daemon princes and greater daemons, rallying his forces when the tide of battle turned against them, and making the terrible tactical decisions about which positions could be held and which must be abandoned.