Fabius Bile
Fabius Bile is a male literary character who features in Warhammer 40,000.
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Biography
Fabius Bile was a male human born on Terra to Europan nobility where he spent some of his childhood in the region of Ingolstadt. During these years, he came to learn the art of fleshcrafting from one of the servants of the family. In this time, his first experiments were made on mice who he modified to duel one another in elaborate garb. He was saddened when the mice came to disobey his orders and killed one another. At some point, he came to be modified into a Space Marine where he was inducted into the ranks of the III Legion of the Emperor's Children that were charged with expanding the Imperium of Man in their service to the Emperor of Mankind.
In the latter years of the Great Crusade, Bile's uncanny skills saw him move from the rank of simple Apothecary all the way to earning the grade of a lieutenant commander of the Emperor's Children. But even as a leader of Astartes, Fabius was rarely away from his surgeries for long. Bile saw his fellow warriors not as comrades or brothers, but as fresh test specimens ready to be experimented upon. Each was but a stepping stone in his great work; a tapestry of genetic information to be unpicked and woven anew in Bile's quest to understand the forbidden genetic sciences of the Emperor Himself. Using the knowledge of genetic engineering he had gained from the corpses of the Slaanesh-worshiping reptilian Laer xenos of the world of Laeran that had been conquered by the Emperor's Children during the Great Crusade, Bile developed a series of modified gene-seed organs. These organs were eventually implanted into all of those members of the IIIrd Legion who joined their Primarch Fulgrim in turning against the Emperor.
He was once an apothecary of the Emperor's Children Traitor Legion, but has since left the legion. Fabius dabbles in genetic engineering and helps the Traitor Legions recruit new members in return for their protection. After the Horus Heresy, he worked to unlock the secrets of creating Space Marines.
During the Horus Heresy, Bile did not follow the path of his fellow battle-brothers in their worship of Slaanesh. Instead he distanced himself from his Legion and devoted himself to researching forbidden genetic engineering technology that would unlock the secrets behind the Emperor's creation of the primarchs and the Astartes. Following the Drop Site Massacre Fabius had explored the ancient choral conclaves on Isstvan V, scavenging knowledge left there by the Chaos-corrupted Warsingers of the Isstvan System. Fabius later joined several Emperor's Children commanders such as Lucius and Marius Vairosean in using extreme torture to exorcise the Daemon that had possessed Fulgrim in the wake of the Drop Site Massacre. At his Primarch's demand, Fabius produced his first cloned primarch, creating a replica of Ferrus Manus, the primarch of the Iron Hands Legion and Fulgrim's greatest friend among his brothers, which Fulgrim tried to again convert to his cause. Every single time, the clone of Ferrus refused the offer just like the original man and Fulgrim killed him again in his rage. Fabius created multiple clones of Ferrus Manus, and each refused to join the Traitors' cause before Fulgrim slew him in a rage. Fabius proved vital for the Emperor's Children during the Heresy, reviving both Lord Commander Eidolon and Lucius at the demand of their primarch. As the war ground on, his experiments became more and more depraved, torturing captive Space Marines of both the Traitor and Loyalist Legions to give birth to his first generation of Terata, Enhanced Warriors who could prove physically stronger than even other Astartes but were prone to rampant mutation and mental instability.
The events of the Heresy culminated in the Siege of Terra. The Emperor's Children, by this time a Traitor Legion fully under the sway of the Warmaster Horus, invaded Terra with Horus but took little direct part in the fighting around the Imperial Palace. Instead, they descended upon the civilian populations of Terra's Administratum; the mind-bogglingly complex infrastructure of clerks, bureaucrats, curators and menials whose efforts kept the lifeblood of the Imperium flowing. Whole dynasties of staid scribes and strata of haughty prefects were caught as they fled the war zone consuming their world. They were consumed in their turn. More than a million prisoners were rendered down under Bile's supervision and distilled into an array of stimulants and intoxicants for the Emperor's Children to ingest. It was the crowning depravity of their slide into the abyss, and it pleased their new master Slaanesh greatly. Perhaps it was at this time that Fabius Bile committed himself completely to the darkness. He was certainly foremost in the experimentation upon living prisoners, keeping them alive in their torment for solar weeks at a time and cataloguing every ghoulish result. Even amidst the carnage that followed the breaking of the Heresy, the Great Scouring, Bile's fascination was with life, not death. Bile guided the Emperor's Children ever further into the embrace of Slaanesh, the Dark Prince. His surgeries ensured that only one path was left to them; an eternal pursuit of sensual excess that has scarred the stars ever since. Yet Bile himself never underwent the surgeries he so thoroughly inflicted on his so-called brothers.
As his fellow Space Marines lost themselves in sensuality, Bile moved further and further along his own dark path. He left Holy Terra shortly before Horus' defeat at the hands of the Emperor, accompanied by a handful of his most gifted acolytes. This act incensed Fulgrim, who put a bounty on his former Apothecary's head. Bile's warband moved through the war-torn Imperium like a shard of glass in an intestinal tract, carving a new legend with every twist and turn of their journey. Wherever he made planetfall, the Primogenetor offered his assistance in exchange for prisoners, genetic samples and ancient technical libra. Despite his infamy, Bile still adhered to a twisted version of the old Imperial Truth, believing that only the foolish and weak sought the comfort of gods like the Ruinous Powers and the pursuit of scientific truth was to be held above all other values. Many ambitious planetary overlords came to rue the day they joined their fates with Fabius Bile. His atrocities and acts of mass genocide often repelled even those that had ordered the deaths in the first place. Nonetheless, few could deny that the assistance Bile offered was potent. His serums could transform mediocre defence troopers into ravening super-soldiers, and his mastery of the cloning process saw him able to mobilise thousands of 'perfect warriors' within months. As a consequence, genocide and genetic debasement marked his path and the Inquisition still strives to eliminate the threat of his genetically enhanced, psychotic, 'New Men' from star systems across the Imperium.
Yet for all his twisted genius, Bile could not hold back the furious crusade of Loyalists that launched outward from ravaged Terra during the what became known as The Scouring. Retribution finally caught him in the Arden System, where he was supporting the excesses of the Renegade Lord Tyrell in exchange for foetal material. The Salamanders Chapter launched themselves down upon the corrupted world of Arden IX like fiery angels of vengeance. Bile's flesh refineries and cloning vats all burned in a single night as the righteous fury of the Salamanders incinerated all evidence of the Primogenitor's precious experiments. Bile brought low a dozen Space Marines in the battle, his rictus grin illuminated by flickering fire as his once-brothers died agonising and inventive deaths. Yet he barely escaped the battle. He was forced to flee for his life, and his ship was crippled by an Imperial Gothic-class Cruiser as he fled for the dubious refuge of the Warp. Whether by accident or design, Bile's vessel was slowly drawn into the Eye of Terror. He drifted there for an age, constantly experimenting on those few acolytes he had left until the hand of some dark god guided his ship into the gravity well of a Daemon World. Once, the planet had been one of the scintillating jewel-worlds of the Aeldari Empire before their own debaucheries saw their civilisation torn apart. Now it was a shrivelled ruin, a Crone World of seething madness called Urum that echoed to the screams of souls long dead. To Fabius Bile, it became home.
He came to be tracked down to the Arden system where he was supporting the excesses of the renegade Lord Tyrell in exchange for foetal material. The Adeptus Astartes launched themselves down upon the corrupted world of Arden IX. Bile’s flesh refineries and cloning vats all burned in a single night as the righteous fury of the Salamanders Chapter incinerated all evidence of the Primogenitor’s precious experiments. Bile brought low a dozen Space Marines in the battle as his once-brothers died agonising and inventive deaths. Yet he barely escaped the battle. He was forced to flee for his life, and his ship was crippled by an Imperial Gothic class cruiser as he fled for the dubious refuge of the Warp. Whether by accident or design, Bile’s vessel was slowly drawn into the Eye of Terror. He drifted there for an age, constantly experimenting on those few acolytes he had left until the hand of some dark god guided his ship into the gravity well of a Daemon world. Once, the planet had been one of the scintillating jewel-worlds of the Eldar civilisation before their own debaucheries saw their civilisation torn apart. Now it was a shrivelled ruin, a Crone World of seething madness that echoed to the screams of souls long dead. To Fabius Bile, it became home where he continued his unethical experiments, creating mutated super-soldiers and other foul things.
Bile soon discovered that the shattered Traitor Legions making their home in the Eye of Terror in the 32nd Millennium had particular need of his skills. His augmented warriors and bio-magicks were useful indeed, and clones and slaves were put to good use on a hundred battlefields. Yet it was the skills Bile had learned as an Apothecary that were most precious to the Traitor Legions. Most of all, they needed Bile's ability to extract precious progenoid glands from the fallen in order to create new Chaos Space Marines. Without these skills, the Long War would slowly dwindle, and the fires that Horus had lit would go out forever. With so much influence at his behest, Fabius Bile negotiated a delicate bargain with the Traitor Legions, selling his secrets to each of them but refusing to aid one any more than any other. In this way, the Primogenitor ensures his position at the heart of a genetic web that spans across the Eye of Terror and beyond. Bile took up command of the remaining Emperor's Children and regrouped at Canticle City, the fortress of the Emperor's Children on the Daemon World of Harmony. Bile went about continuing his work from before the Heresy, attempting to unravel the secrets of the gene-seed and the Emperor's techniques in creating the primarchs. To that end, Bile continued to clone primarchs as he once had Ferrus Manus. At some point after the Heresy, the Primarch Horus' body was stolen from the Sons of Horus' Legion world of Maleum, for with its potent genetic information and biological secrets, it was a great prize indeed. In a sudden assault, the remnants of the debased Emperor's Children, having grown vastly in power after firmly cementing their terrible pacts with Slaanesh, easily smashed their way through the defences of the Daemon World of Maeleum and into the central chambers of the Sons of Horus' stronghold. They stole the body of the slain Primarch from the heart of its tomb and spirited it away, handing it over to the Primogenitor. Bile cloned Horus, much to the Sons of Horus' disgust. Bile thought that this would, amongst other things, curry the favour of Abaddon the Despoiler. Instead, Abaddon destroyed the Horus replicae during the Battle of Harmony, proclaiming it a 'blasphemy', and ordered his newly renamed Black Legion to raze Bile's Laboratoria on Harmony and destroy his experiments. The other Emperor's Children considered Bile's retreat from Canticle City with the remnants of his work as a betrayal. After the fall of Canticle City and Harmony, Bile found himself pursued by multiple foes, including his fellow Traitor Marines, the Craftworld Aeldari, the Dark Council, and even Fulgrim himself. He eventually returned to the Crone World of Urum. After these events Bile essentially left behind the cause of the Traitor Legions and became a "free agent", pursuing his own agenda. He has also successfully managed to clone himself, with several of his replicaes active in various places, as he is said to have secret facilities in a dozen locations across the Milky Way Galaxy. His arrogance and twisted amoral intelligence is more than matched by his sadistic cruelty.
Overview
Personality and attributes
He came to be known by a number of epithets during his long life with these including Clonefather, Primogenitor and Spider.
Bile had said that if one dedicated their life to good deeds and the welfare of others then they would die un-thanked and unremembered. Instead, he came to believe that if one exercised their genius to the misery and death of billions then their names would echo through the millennia for hundreds of life times. Thus, he came to believe that it was more preferable to live through infamy rather than through ignominy.
Such was his reputation that he came to be regarded as one of the most abominable renegades to blight the Emperor's realm.
Powers and abilities
Fabius experiments on himself via his Churgionen, an Arcaic device fuelled by Warp spawned fluids, resulting in vast variations on his strength and other abilities. On the battlefield, he might also bestow the questionable gift of his enhancements to others, with uncertain results. Sometimes the experiment is a success, creating psychotic killers superhuman even in comparison to their corrupted Chaos brethren, but sometimes the subject's metabolism disintegrates in the face of the stress, resulting in instant death.
One of the weapons at his disposal was the Rod of Torment.
He was also always accompanied by a Surgeon Acolyte who assisted him in his twisted work.
His creations included:
- Terata :
- Kakophoni :
- New Men : viewed as the pinnacle of Bile's 'art'. These were creatures who possessed strength and intelligence superior to any human, as well as the worst traits of mankind. Fabius secretly seeds New Men on worlds across the Galaxy, hoping to one day have them overtake the Human race.
Bile after being made into a Space Marine was assigned to the III Legion of the Legiones Astartes. These came to be renamed to the Emperor's Children following their Primarch being found and taking leadership of them. In that time, he came to serve as the Chief Apothecary of his fellow Space Marines.
Notes
- Fabius Bile was created by Games Workshop where he featured in the setting of the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
In other media
Video games
- In Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr, Fabius Bile appeared in the setting of the 2018 video game where he was voiced by actor Brian Stivale.
Appearances
- Warhammer 40,000:
External Links
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