Avari and Omari

The hive world of Algol was dangerous place for mutants and especially psychics. They were hunted and exterminated, with only a few hand picked psychics being sent back to Terra to be trained. It was on this world that one of the Primarch souls created by the Emperor drifted towards. The Primarch’s soul settled into a fertilized zygote which at some later point split, creating two twin girls which each bore an equal part of the same powerful Warp soul. The children were strange, presumably mutants, with no hair, pale almost translucent skin, and eerie blue-green eyes. Their mother and father, technicians of the upper hive, knew that if their children were discovered to be mutants that they would be killed or at the least taken away from them. So they raised their twin daughters in secrecy, teaching them at home keeping their presence a secret from the world, teaching their children to be wary of outsiders.

Growing up this way made the twins, named Avari and Omari paranoid and distrustful of strangers. They were lonely quiet children who spent much of their time together, though they loved their parents as well. The twins play together for hours without speaking, making their parents at first fear that they were mad. They certainly weren’t simple minded as each had mastered speech when they were barely out of the womb and were reading advanced books as toddlers. Even from birth the twins had a telepathic link, sharing each other’s thoughts and having no need for words. When the twins were only 6 years of age, the doors of their parent’s home were kicked in by Imperial agents who had been notified that mutant children were in the residence. The agents saw signs of children that had been kept off the books, but found no signs of the twins. They killed both parents though as the twins watched in terror, subconsciously cloaking themselves with their latent psychic abilities. The agents ransacked their home and destroyed all that the twins cared about save for each other, the twins fled into the night into the crowded streets of the hive city.

Avari and Omari had never talked to anyone outside of their parents before and suddenly they were alone on the streets with countless millions. They kept up their cloak of invisibility as they struggled to survive. Eventually, they developed additional powers and became more adept at interacting with or even manipulating people. They learned that their abilities let them cloud the minds of normal humans, making them seem as though they were not they. Even on the crowded streets, people would unconsciously step aside to avoid them. Eventually they could extend this power, hiding other people or objects, creating illusions, or masking their appearances. They eventually learned to read minds and sway emotions, reaching into a person’s subconscious to appear like an old friend or create the illusion of a terrible fear. Their physical prowess had increased as well, they became amazingly strong and dextrous. By the time the twins were in their teens they moved among the masses unseen and without fear, taking what they want and doing as they pleased.

Eventually they turned their sights on revenge. They systematically tracked down and killed all of the agents that were involved in their parents death, including the high ranking officials who made the killing possible. The city was plunged into chaos with the death of so many government officials at the same time. The twins, seeking to start a new life for themselves, hide aboard a ship leaving the system. They eventually disembarked on the paradise world of Askelphion, a place with lush forests, temperate weather, and small pleasant towns where the wealthy of the sector came to relax. The twins enjoyed this change of pace and scenery and used their powers to live here in great wealth and comfort. Eventually, they longed for more than mere ease of living, they desired power.

With their ability to read minds and create illusions, the twins quickly and easily amassed power. They had numerous false identities, even more bank accounts, and each identity had a network of contacts and influences. Within just a few years they virtually ruled the planet, with politicians, businessmen, criminals, and common folk all under their thumbs. Different powerful factions may have schemed against one another, but both ultimately fell under the sway of the Avari and Omari. When the occasional trouble maker could not be bought or bribed, they could easily dispatch any foe with greater skill than even the Temple Assassins. The twins were rulers of all they surveyed, secret rulers via a complex network of spies, servants, employees, and informants. None could imagine what the truth was, that they all danced on the strings of the same puppet masters.

In time, they expanded their influence off of Askelphion and to the surrounding system. It wasn’t hard, as many inhabitants of Askelphion also had wealth and/or power on other planets in the system. Within time, they managed to rule the entire system with numerous planetary governors as their pawns. Though they disliked being apart, occasionally the twins would leave each other’s company to better manipulate pawns, directly control factions within their shadow empire, or eliminate enemies. Being apart reduced their psychic abilities, but they still had their telepathic connection despite vast gulfs of space.

The twins began to spread out further, their shadowy empire spreading its tentacles into surrounding systems and even to entirely different sectors of space. As their empire expanded, they learned new things about the galaxy they lived in, about the strange cults which practiced Warp sorcery, about a crusade by some powerful figure claiming to be the Emperor of mankind. They had long sensed a strange intelligence within the Warp with their psychic abilities, they now learned ways to communicate with those creatures. They began collecting these cults as their pawns, learning their secrets and utilizing them in their schemes. They began to master the arts of sorcery themselves, becoming even stronger in the psychic abilities and developing strange new powers as well. They never let the daemons into their minds, they could keep secrets even from the creatures of the Warp, but they became allies of sorts, trading favors with Warp creatures in exchange for powers, abilities, or special insights.

Eventually, the leader known as the Emperor came to their sector. He commanded powerful armies with massive and advanced spacecraft, more powerful than even the forces that the Avari and Omari could amass in resistance. They thought that the wisest option would be to have their pawns surrender to prevent as destruction and maintain stability. They were able to keep a number of their most powerful pawns in place even under the rule of the Emperor, though the Emperor also appointed his own governors in places and off world bureaucrats to enforce his laws as well as to impose taxes. It causes some difficulty for the twins, who felt infuriated that this presumptuous Emperor would try to wrest power from them.

When the Emperor actually entered the space above their planet of Askelphion, they could feel his immense psychic power and even felt his mind searching out for something, for them perhaps. They had no desire for the Emperor to discover them, so they embraced each other and used all of their concentration and sorceries to mask their psychic impression from the Emperor. For a moment they thought he might have noticed something, but he did not, even the great mind of the Emperor could not pierce the veil that the twins could create when working in concert. The Emperor left the sector after appointing several Imperial bureaucrats to oversee Askelphion, bureaucrats that would quickly find themselves under the sway of the Avari and Omari.

In the following years, the twins reestablished much of their power over the system and  had spread out their network of spies, informants, employees, and servants across the greater universe. The twins moved around more frequently than before, keeping out of danger and moving to learn about this Emperor and how to better thwart his efforts. They learned that the daemons of the Warp hated this powerful psyker, seeing him and their worst enemy. They learned of his Primarchs, the sons and daughters of the Emperor who had great powers and lead his armies. Eventually, they learned of the Horus Heresy, of the revolt of the Warmaster against the Emperor and how he was aligned with the forces of Chaos. Avari and Omari used their subtle influence to work against the Emperor, to strengthen his enemies in one system, to weaken his support in the next, to have a critical shipment arrive late or a loyal servant die mysteriously.

One day, a strange ship warped into the space above Baraspine, the hive world that the twins were currently located to oversee the activities of several of their most valued servants. A strange visitor teleported onto the planet’s surface outside of their fortified spire-palace. The stranger sent a psychic message that was heard by both the twins, that the figure knew who ruled here, who pulled the strings of a vast empire of shadows, he said that he came in peace and had a proposition for the mazing woman who was capable of this. The twins feared who could have the power to know such things, though they knew it was not the Emperor, but another psyker of great power. They let him enter their palace, with Omari hiding in a secret room, using all of her force to conceal her presence with Avari meeting the strange man in the library. This man was Magnus, the great psyker Primarch, now wanted and hunted by the Emperor for the practice of sorcery and subsequently treason. Magnus told Avari that had felt her presence for some time and knew that she had created a magnificent network that few others could appreciate. Magnus knew that she was the lost Primarch that the Emperor had not yet found. He said that he served the Warmaster Horus and knew that Avari also allied herself with the ruinous powers. Magnus said that if the Emperor was victorious, that it would only be a matter of time before he came for her and routed her out, that she had the ability to be the decisive factor in the traitors destroying the Emperor. He said that she could continue to maintain her secrecy, but that she could work in cooperation with himself and that they could bring down the Emperor and further secure her power. It was an offer that the twins could not refuse.

Interestingly, it seemed that since the twins shared the same soul, that Magnus only felt a single presence, believing there to be just one of them. This could come in handy and made the twins feel a bit safer, at least they had one secret left from Magnus and his brethren. From that point onward, only Avari interacted with Magnus and occasionally other traitor Primarchs, leading them to believe that she was alone. The twins had no true legion of their own, but were given command of soldiers of the traitor forces, though they favored to employ assassination, sabotage, and espionage. Added to their arsenals were new poisons, advanced technologies, and elite soldiers. As the war raged, they used dark sorcery to augment and enhance already exceptional recruits, creating a force of deadly and loyal assassins who used powers of the Warp to excel at stealth, murder, and terror.

The help of Avari and Omari was crucial in many traitor victories. In return, Magnus taught Avari (and by extension Omari) many of his sorcerous secrets. In the aftermath of the Battle of Terra, Roboute Guilliman was able to trace back several spies and bribed officials to a certain planet, Eskrador. Avari was on Eskrador arranging certain plans when a massive force lead by Roboute Guilliman came into the system. Taking no chances, he destroyed the small fleet in orbit and he scoured the planet of all life, killing Avari. From the vast gulf of space, Omari felt the death and her sister and screams in agony. It was only a few seconds later than her pain was relieved, as two half souls became one once more, Avari’s essence rushing back to become one with her sister soul. Several of the traitor Primarchs knew that Avari had been upon the planet’s surface when it was destroyed and assumed that she was dead. Magnus alone had a vision of seeing her again, finally comprehending that the two had been twins the entire time. In time and with the help of the Dark Mechanicus, Omari was able to create a clone of herself, a body for her sister’s soul, so that once again she might look upon her beloved sister.