Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma
Hester Aspertia Sigma-Sigma was a Magos Domina of the Mechanicum during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy. She was known as a master of cloning and soul-merging.[2b]
Overview
Initially a loyalist of the Emperor, when the Sons of Horus led by Horus himself attacked her world of Trisolian A-4, she quickly defected out of fear that her collective knowledge, including her plans to become immortal through cloning, would be lost. In siding with Horus she disgusted her acolyte Belisarius Cawl, who killed her during the Battle of Trisolian. Cawl destroyed her foetal clones, but downloaded her collective knowledge into himself.[1b]
Aspertia's personal needle ship, Silencia, was located in a secret private dock in Septa Station of the Heptaligon during the Battle of Trisolian.
Biography
As a child around 10,000 years ago, Hester Aspertia spent some time growing up on the planet Sarum. On this Forge World she trained in combat with other youths with varying degrees of mechanical augmentation. At this time her passion was fighting. The young acolyta would spar with each other above the world's magma mining platforms with electro staves. This was done under the multiple-eyed guidance of Warleader Soren every day. Hester would become rivals with one acolyta, a promising young combatant named Cadillain-8-Opir. Cadillain was an older boy who received combat augmetics at a markedly young age. He stood about a head taller than Hester, had metal teeth, and a three-fingered metal right hand.[2a]
For 300 years, Aspertia fought as a domina of the Taghmata. She have served in 7 different Exploratory Fleets of the Great Crusade, and has been to the edge of the galaxy and back. During her travels she faced 14 hostile xenos species, 103 divergent human civilisations. She has waged war alongside 9 different Legions, and seen the belligerent arts of the Machine-God tested in every imaginable warzone.[1a]
To preserve the vast knowledge gained from prior experience, she kept perfect clones of herself in a suspended embryonic state. Stored in several canisters hanging from her chest, their brains were linked to hers and constantly fed data so that their brains could replace hers if she died. Out of fear of losing her knowledge, she would betray the loyalist Mechanicum forces fighting for Trisolian A-4.[1a]
