Roja Dorn

Roja Dorn was born to the patriarch of the Dorn clan on the frozen world of Inwit. Inwit has a desolate world covered in ice, with the natives living in vast ice hives and eking out an existence by mining for mineral miles below the icy surface. The people of Inwit were as harsh as their planet’s climate, with strict sets of rules and inherence to rules, tradition, and hierarchy. Though they were hard, the people of Inwit also placed a very high value on honor, bravery, honesty, and a devotion to duty.

It was in these values that Roja Dorn was raised. Her father was a man who personified the values of his society. Cold and aloof, he taught Roja Dorn harsh discipline and the value of dedication to duty and loyalty to her clan and to her rightful superiors. The clans of Inwit were highly patriarchal, with the patriarchs ruling over the men of the clan with an iron fist just as a husband ruled over his own wife and household. So Roja Dorn was not raised to be the great warrior she would one day become, but was instead taught to be an obedient wife for what ever noble lord her father chose for her. Roja Dorn was a young girl of great intellect and ability, though she took her father’s lessons to heart and came to embody those values which her society most treasured - dedication to duty, obedience, and honor. While her brothers and male cousins trained to fight or even went off to war, Roja studied feminine pursuits. Though Roja paid close attention to all that she saw around her - war, political  machinations, industry, and kept that knowledge stored within her mind.

By the time Roja was in her teenage years, she had herself become a paragon of Inwit virtue. A well mannered noble lady, obedient to her father and brothers, dedicated to the welfare of her clan but ready to serve what ever husband was selected for her by her father. Roja had followed her father’s example, suppressing her emotions and turning away from her own wants, for the ideal lady of Inwit, duty came before all else. Her marriage was arranged to the patriarch of another clan and while Roja barely knew this man, she dutifully accepted her father’s choice. As was the tradition for all girls on Inwit, she was to be married upon her 17th birthday. Events would come to pass that would prevent this marriage and change Roja’s life forever, this would be the coming of the God Emperor of Mankind.

The Emperor arrived on the planet of Inwit, sensing the presence of his lost daughter across the void of space. Inwit did have contact with other planets in the surrounding system, though the inhabitants had no idea that such powers existed as the Imperium. The Emperor sought out Roja Dorn and told her that she was created to serve a great purpose, to be a general and lead to fleets of mankind to victory. To Roja this was the most bizarre event imaginable, a request in complete contradiction to everything she had been taught since birth, yet there was some part of her which was not surprised, as if she had dreamed of this moment. Of course, in keeping with the obedience she owed her father and clan, Roja refused the Emperor’s offer. Her father had pledged her to another, it was her duty to marry him. She could not leave, regardless of what was offered her. She could not remain single past the age of 17, that would be to break with tradition and to bring shame to her and her family.

The Emperor would not be denied his lost Primarch daughter. Though he tried to reason with Roja, telling her that ultimately this man she was betrothed to was irrelevant, and that she could truly make a difference to all of humanity, she still refused. Roja would die before she would turn away from her duty. Roja’s father and her fiance were not so stubborn, and when the Emperor offered each of them large bribes to make their clans the most wealth on Inwit, they both decided that they could break off the engagement despite being a breach of etiquette. Roja was shocked that her father would break off the engagement for money, though she was still obeyed his wish.

Because it would bring great dishonor to the Dorn clan for Roja to remain unmarried, the Emperor and the Dorn patriarch decided on a plan. Roja would be married to the Emperor before the great clans of Inwit. This would allow Roja and her father to save face and considering Roja staunch devotion to duty, it would insure her loyalty to the Emperor until such time as she accepted the reality of their situation. The Emperor had no intentions to remain married to Roja or to take advantage of the situation, he would merely keep Roja in his service and explain to her that this marriage was not important to either of them. The Emperor did not realize the significance that the marriage would hold to Roja Dorn.

As wife of the Emperor, Roja set her mind to obey her new master in all things, to strive to please him and to be a dutiful loving wife. When the Emperor told Roja that he did not desire a wife, that he only wanted her for a leader and general, Roja was crushed, though she would obey her husband and strive to be all that he wanted her to be. The Emperor told her not to speak of the marriage, as so she did not, but she thought of it always as it defined for very existence.

The Emperor desired a general and a great warrior and so Roja saw it as her duty to become what her master desired. She dedicated herself to the study of warfare and conflict. She listened to all that the Emperor’s most learned experts and veterans had to teach her, she read every book and battle account which she could find, she tested herself in every way possible to improve her tactical and strategic mind. She learned from Roboute Guilliman and Angron Helvic, she studied the victories of the other Primarchs and their loses. While at first she lagged slightly behind, within several years she was equal to or superior to any Primarch as a war leader, so much so that the Emperor even gave her slight consideration for Warmaster despite his great love of Horus.

Roja Dorn also became a skilled commander of soldiers, leading them by example and demanding the same high standards from them as from herself, her legion was soon commonly thought to be the most dedicated and loyal soldiers in the Imperium. Roja Dorn became a master of personal combat as well, driving her body to the limits of endurance learning practicing and training. She learned to focus her psychic power into her body, giving her superhuman prowess, to foresee the future so as to predict enemy actions, and even to tear great war machines with the power of her mind. Her psychic presence was such that those soldiers she commanded could feel in during battle, Roja’s bravery strengthening their hearts and minds. Roja truly became the Primarch that the Emperor desired her to be.

All this time, Roja though of the Emperor as her husband, though her spurned her affections and gave her praise only for her accomplishments on the battlefield. Though he made her Emperor’s Champion, his own personal guardian which was a great honor, it was not the honor which Roja truly desired. Roja came to see that the Emperor personified all of those traits she had been raised to uphold - honor, dedication to duty, bravery. She had her battle armor gilded in gold to match that of her husband and wore always the red cloak that her had placed upon her back at marriage ceremony. She grew to love him more and more with time and became increasingly sad that he did not return her feelings. She also felt ashamed that she felt this way in contradiction to to Emperor’s will, a form of disobedience even if it was only in her heart.

This shame and despair increased as time passed. Roja thought that she must purify her mind and soul, first through flagellating herself just as she had been beaten as a child when she disobeyed. Though this was far to little punishment for one such as her. She eventually moved up to more technologically advanced methods, machines which would inflict agonizing pain directly to her nerves. She began to wear such devices frequently, when she needed to physical pain to distract her from the emotional pain that she felt.

When Horus and the other traitors turned against the Emperor, none were more furious than Roja Dorn. When Horus attacked Holy Terra and began his siege, Roja was ordered by the Emperor to maintain the defenses of Earth, a most important duty which Roja through herself into completely. When the Emperor saw his chance to teleport aboard Horus’ ship and destroy the traitor Warmaster once and for all, Roja begged the Emperor to accompany him or to go in his stead. He denied her requests and said that she was too important to Terra’s defenses, and as she always did, she obeyed her master.

Roja Dorn, leading the defenses of earth then felt something terrible. With her psychic power, she felt the Emperor’s life slipping away from him. With great anguish, she decided she must disobey the Emperor’s last command to her and teleport to Horus’s ship with a handful of her elite retinue. There, she found the Emperor’s mutated and dying body, the last ounces of life slipping away from him. Roja Dorn released a scream of such horror and anguish the its echoes in the Warp harrowed the souls of even daemons. Roja was able to take him back to the Imperial Palace where his technicians could enshrine him upon the Golden Throne, keeping him in a state between life and death.

It is said that this day Roja Dorn went mad with grief. After the traitors had been repelled from the Sol system, she amassed a great fleet under her command and drove relentlessly at the traitor legions. Her fury was unquenchable, she paid no need to her own life, only avenging the Emperor against the foul traitors and Chaos worshipers. Some say that this great crusade was what truly broke the back of the Chaos legions, not just the death or Horus. Eventually Roja Dorn lead her forces against a far superior fleet of Chaos vessels, and engagement that her fleet won, but where Roja Dorn was killed when her flag ship took heavy damage, a sacrifice which many believe made the Imperial victory possible.