Culexus Temple

Imperium Portal

A Culexus Assassin

The Culexus Temple is one of the temples of the Officio Assassinorum. The motto of the temple is: That which is unknown and unseen always commands the greatest fear. This motto is quite appropriate as Psykers, their exclusive targets, are unable to sense the Culexus Assassins, aka psyker-killers.

Operatives

The Culexus Assassins are the most sinister, feared, and hated of all Imperial Assassins. They are null-entities in the warp, their unnatural lack of a presence inspiring even in non-psykers a sense of unease. To psykers their mere presence is terrifying, invoking panic. In the confusion caused by this fear, the assassin can move in on its target and eliminate them. To purely psychic entities like daemons, they are invisible.

The Culexus Assassins possess the "Pariah Gene", making them to all intents soulless, accounting for their having no warp-presence. This gene manifests itself very rarely, in a single individual among a billion, or more. This extreme rarity, coupled with the inevitable losses during training, makes the Culexus assassins the rarest of all Imperial assassins.¹ The Culexus temple is known to hunt down and recruit these Pariahs but also to vat-grow them. Due to the nature of being parent-less combines with the pariah gene making them seem soul-less these Culexus struggle with social interaction. Whilst able to mimic predictive human behaviour of a character they are playing as part of a mission, they may not actually feel emotions. ³

The location of the Culexus temple is a closely guarded secret, said to be located on a planet which orbits no sun, and which is beyond the reach of the Astronomican.

The Eldar, whose leaders are usually psychics, fear the Culexus greatly. Farseer Alladrios Kulcassian, of Craftworld Alaitoc coordinated a centuries-long effort to locate and to destroy this temple. Somehow he discovered the location and dispatched the Legacy of Eldanesh, a shadow-class cruiser. However, using his precognitive powers, he discovered to his amazement that the temple's destruction would lead to the Annihilation of Alaitoc. Choosing the lesser of two evils, he re-called the cruiser home.¹

A Culexus Assassin dispatches a Chaos Space Marine⁴

Equipment

The Culexus Assassin slays his foe by using a deadly psychic blast directed through an ancient device known as an Animus Speculum. It is unknown how this device functions fully, but it is speculated that the warp energy separated from its targets by the null aura of the Culexus is held in this device and then unleashed. Indeed, the weapon becomes more and more potent when within the vicinity of psykers. The device fires bolts of negative psychic energy and drains the power of nearby psykers to bolster its power. Secondly, the Culexus carries an Etherium, a device that induce enormous distortion and confusion in all nearby enemies psychic or not, the fact that the enemy is already disconcerted by the soulless Culexus combined with the Etherium makes the Culexus impossible to target.²

Culexus assassins also make use of psyk-out grenades, which are devastating to psykers, but do nothing to those without psychic potential. The grenades utilize a substance that is said to be a by-product of the constant workings of the Golden Throne itself.

Known Culexus Assassins

• Iota, 'Protephage' a female member of the Assassin Clade during the heresy era, she was dispatched with the first ever multiple clade execution team to assassinate Horus. ³

Miniatures

File:Culexus.jpg

Culexus Assassins

Sources

• ¹: Shadow games in Codex: Necrons (3rd Edition), p. 8
• ²: Codex: Assassins (2nd Edition)
• ³: Nemesis (Novel) by James Swallow
• ⁴: Codex: Grey Knights (5th Edition) pg.52