Kobras Aquairre
Kobras Aquairre was a merciless and terrifying Rogue Trader and Inquisitor Lord. These two positions gave Aquairre extraordinary power within the Imperium and he developed a well-deserved reputation as a butcher of worlds.[1a]
Biography
In 570.M40, he led a composite fleet of Rogue Trader and Imperial Navy elements to victory against a Xeno Corsair fleet led by Eldar renegades and the Butcher Archon. This ended their raids of The Periphery called The White Sorrows.[3]
In 101.M41 his fleet entered the depths of the Koronus Expanse after being tasked with rooting out Xenos and those who fled the Emperor's judgment there. Aquairre would never return to the Imperium again, but he couriered reports of his actions back to Port Wander in the Calixis Sector. These reports form the basis of much of what is known by the Imperium about the Koronus Expanse to this day. However, it is believed that Aquairre reported far less than what he found to his masters. Even now, dead and ravaged worlds marked by his banner are still being rediscovered within the Koronus Expanse.[1a]
His reports eventually stopped reaching Port Wander. After more than a decade without receiving them, the Space Station declared Aquairre to be dead in 151.M41. This was met with rejoicing from some and lamentation from others. Rumours also abounded as to how Aquairre died; some claimed his ships were destroyed by a fleet of pale-hulled Xenos craft, others that an unexpected Warp Storm spelled his end.[1a]
No facts or proof were presented either way. In the wake of Aquairre's passing, however, many other Rogue Traders were drawn to the Koronus Expanse to seek their fortune. The truth of Aquairre's final fate was revealed in 201.M41, when the damaged frigate Elementis Vulpa returned to Port Wander. It had been a part of Aquairre's fleet and the crew claimed that he had ordered his ships into the Rifts of Hecaton. They had done so with the expectation of meeting their deaths within the Rifts, and vanished afterwards - all except the crew of the Elementis Vulpa, which refused to follow the Inquisitor's fleet. The frigate's crew instead disobeyed Aquairre's final order and returned to Port Wander. Upon hearing this, rumours abounded in the Space Station of the Rifts' dead suns and lifeless darkness. Aquairre is thought to have sacrificed his fleet willingly, in order to stop some terrifying threat to all Human life. The Elementis Vulpa and her crew meanwhile subsequently disappeared and some say they were taken by the Ordo Xenos.[1a]
In 742.M41, however, there were sightings of a vessel sporting Aquairre's livery in the Koronus Expanse, during the Battle of Agusia. It is said that the black-iron ship assisted the Rogue Trader fleet during the battle's worst fighting. These reports, though, are later dismissed by all the fleet's surviving Rogue Traders, as being “mere fantasy.”[1b]
It was later discovered that Aquairre's fleet had encountered the lost and corrupted Aeldari Craftworld Lu'Nasad in the Rifts. The Craftworld had destroyed his fleet, but Aquairre and a small team of men had managed to survive and land on the massive Aeldari ship. Aquairre used his psychic talents to engage in a battle of wills with the Craftworld's Infinity Circuit while his men were slain around him by the servants of Chaos. Although Aquairre failed, he did manage to transfer his soul into a spirit stone and survived in that form for over six centuries, retaining his sanity only through his devotion to the Emperor.[2]
See also
Sources
- 1: Fantasy Flight Games: Rogue Trader: Epoch Koronus (Posted on 26/10/2009) (Last accessed on 9 August 2021)
- 2: Rogue Trader: Fallen Suns, pg. 48
- 3: Rogue Trader: Battlefleet Koronus, pgs. 55
