Nekane Lucanus
Nekane Lucanus was a Magos and Explorator of the Forge World Gryphonne IV.[1a] Archivist Primus to Lord Explorator Traskel. Curator and Sator of the Oblivis Manifold. Author of A Treatise on the Epistemological Validity of Common Proto-Human Origins, which investigates various human creation myths.[1c]
Lucanus was an archivist and theorist who spent the majority of his 300 year career as master datamancer of the Ark Mechanicus ship Almagest. Like many adepts of the Cult Mechanicus, his fixations had been broad and eclectic, shifting with each new document and artefact he obtained.[1a]
History
Magos Nekane Lucanus set down a series of texts sometime in the early centuries of M41 consisting of the accumulation and interrogation of creation myths. This was but one of his secondary interests – almost an idle hobby, in comparison with his greater works. Genesis. Kumulipo. Enuma Elish. Olodumare. Names given to the oldest of human myths, describing the seeding of life across celestial bodies. Told and retold by countless cultures as they rose and fell across the million worlds of the Imperium.[1a]
Several Imperial theologians subsequently incorporated elements of his work into their imperfect canon of worship. Lucanus had considered these not for their religious or anthropological significance but had collected and deconstructed them in support of a far grander thesis.[1a]
He proposed that at the centre of every allegorical narrative lay not the actions of fickle gods and djinn, nor the improbability of spontaneous biological inception, nor even the divine work of the Omnissiah, but a technology. A lost work of humanity’s mastery, employed in the first millennia when humanity extended its hand to claim the galaxy for its own. The knowledge and ability to seed life across barren earth.[1a] This was Magos Lucanus' most controversial theory.[1b]
Genesis Device
Prior to the Almagest's entombment in Misery's Daughter, Magos Lucanus would eventually come into the possession of an Eldar artifact, a blood-red crystal-fragment and had it stored within a stasis field. It allowed for the spontaneous creation of life in a variety of forms.[1c]
Lucanus was trapped in the space hulk with the Genesis device for two centuries[1d] and used this artifact's power to bring to life grass and ferrus trees within the command deck of the Almagast. Lucanus would create his own personal verdant paradise within this portion of the ship and ruled over the abhuman remnants descended from the ship's crew as a god. Having enmeshed himself with the ship's systems, he gave orders to the mutants through the ship's binharic vox-emitters.[1c]
Eventually, Explorator Talin Sherax would track down the trapped vessel in the hope of finding clues to track down the mythical source of Lucanus' world-seeding technology theory. After having crossed half a subsector, she and her companions would kill the former scholar and steal away the crystal-fragment in the hopes of finding its origin.[1c]
