Backstory - Karkarov the Artisan

The Mars Ambition

Karkarov the Artisan is the leader of a joint imperial-expedition in the ultima segmentum. Considered missing by official records, and being ruthlessly hunted by the Ordo Machina branch of the Inquisition, Karkarov and his forces travel across the galaxy in pursuit of achieving their goals.

Karkarov was inducted into the Adeptus Mechanicus during M.40 and studied advanced military design and engineering on Mars. He quickly rose up the ranks eventually reaching the rank of Archmagos Fabricator. During this time he had overseen many technological breakthroughs in the imperium, but has only ever left Mars for dire needs, for example he was once called in to consult the Techpriests of Terra about the restoration of the Golden Throne.

However like many of the Martian priesthood, Karkarov eventually began to tire with the day to day runnings of the Cult Mechanicus. After meeting a rogue trader who flew into Mars' Iron ring for ship repairs, he made a deal to repair the ship for free in exchange for and extremely rare alien artefact of origin unknown.

This artefact was a globular organ of xenos nature that contained memetic properties. Karkarov slowly grew obsessed. So much so that he carried it around on his person at all times, whispering to it when no one was looking and listening to it as if it spoke the truth.

Eventually Karkarov realised what he had to do. He had the alien organ implanted within his body, coating his brain. While the magos biologis was paid to not say a word, that didn't prevent him from accidentally triggering the Ordo Machina to perform a search.

The artefact, Karkarov had nicknamed 'the Truth' had slowly begun to warp Karkarov. He became obsessed with xenos and forbidden technology. He mounted on a crusade into the underbelly of the libraries of Mars to find documents on such things, but this turned out to be a grave mistake.

Three-hundred miles under the surface of Mars and Karkarov had found what he was looking for, vast storage of data-picts and forbidden tomes of xenos knowledge. Karkarov had planned to choose it carefully, not to disrupt it too much or the hierarchy would notice, but disaster. Three-hundred miles about a ritual in the temple of the frictionless piston went wrong. Seismic activity shook the whole planet, leaving karkarov trapped and isolated in the vault.

Five hundred years later and Karkarov finally managed to claw his way out. By this point he was completely mad. The Truth had begun to decay and Karkarov's brain was extremely damaged. In the vault he had read all the information and had come to a horrifying conclusions; the Imperium was decomposing. Whereas races like the Tau were rapidly expanding, with new battlesuits and weapon technology appearing on a regular timeframe, humanity was slowly shrinking with more and more technologies becoming unable to replicate. After making his way back to the surface Karkarov began to slowly reconstruct his brain. He was approached by a series of tech-priests from all other branches of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and found that they all felt the same way about the Imperium.

They called themselves the Mars Ambition, and had the goal of introducing xenos technology to the Imperium. They met in secret, as to avoid clash with more heterodox tech-priests, however when Karkarov ended up killing and Inquisitorial operative, they decided the best thing to do was to leave mars.

Karkarov wiped his identity from all official martian records, and using his immeasurable wealth kitted out a Mars-pattern Grand Cruiser with everything he would need to research and integrate xenos and human technology. This ship, called Omnissiah's Dawn, along with several other ships from other high ranking Mars Ambition members set off into the Ultima Segmentum to explore and pursue their goals.

The hierarchy of the Mars ambition consists of three archmagos; Karkarov the Artisan, founder of the Mars Ambition, Magos-Preacher Lupa, a fanatical Magos who's purpose is to ensure that the Mars Ambition stays loyal to Mars and does not abandon the Omnissiah, and Malcador the Butcher. Named after the Sigilite, Malcador is a tactial genius. Training as a Dominus, and from that a high Mechanicus-general, Malcador has seen much action, namely against the Tau and Eldar, hence joining to see if the Imperium could accelerate its technology to the same level as these two races.

The Mars Ambition's vast skitarii armies proudly wear the colours of Mars to show their allegiance to the Adeptus Mechanicus. The skitarii themselves have been programmed with ancient and forbidden combat algorithms, making them far superior to standard skitarii. They also wear many colours, as they are not all strictly martian skitarii, as a few members of the Mars Ambition are from other forge worlds, notably Ryza and Metallica.

While drifting near the Maelstrom, the Mars Ambition came across several worlds being attacked by Eldar pirates. Landing on this world, Karkarov was quickly alerted the the presence of Inquisitor Coteaz, who was in the region for undisclosed reasons. Karkarov and Coteaz came to a deal. Karkarov would supply Inquisitor Coteaz with soldiers, munitions and transport and in return Coteaz would keep the Ordo Machina off his back, and overlook the heretical acts of Karkarov and the Mars Ambition.

Despite this, the Ordo Machina has commandeered a detachment of Ultramarines in pursuit of Karkarov, labelling him as an Extremis-level threat and to be killed on site. Karkarov has fought the Ultramarines before, as a Crusader-class Ultramarine cruiser located and fought Omnissiah's Dawn in space. The Mars Ambition took this as a sign that although they possess great knowledge, the astartes are not to be underestimated.

Karkarov himself rarely fights, and will only appear on a battlefield in times of dire need. Usually Malcador (named after the great hero) can be seen leading the armies of the Mars Ambition. His greatest achievement was successfully merging an ancient combat algorithm into the consciousness of a skitarii primus, named Haldus the Machine-touched. Haldus now serves as a combat advisor to Malcador and often leads his vanguard into combat.