Kairos Fateweaver

The Oracle

Kairos Fateweaver was an ordinary Lord of Change until he was imprisoned for several thousand years in the Well of Eternity — a Tzeentchian punishment-cell whose specific time-distorting properties forced him to perceive both past and future simultaneously. The imprisonment was meant to teach him humility. It instead taught him every possible outcome of every possible future.

When Tzeentch released him, Kairos emerged with two heads. The left head sees the past, in absolute detail. The right head sees the future, in branching probability-trees. Neither head sees the present. Together they form, by Tzeentchian custom, the most powerful oracle currently in the warp.

I have seen what you will do. I have seen what you regret. They are not the same. I will not tell you which is which.

— Kairos Fateweaver, attributed consultations

The Contradiction

Kairos's two heads do not agree. The left head — past-vision — speaks with the certainty of accumulated record. The right head — future-vision — speaks with the contradiction of branching probability. The two heads sometimes argue mid-prophecy. The supplicant must choose which head to believe.

Mortal supplicants frequently believe the wrong head. Tzeentch finds this entertaining. Kairos is paid in fresh souls for each consultation regardless of the supplicant's eventual outcome.

The Staff

Kairos carries the Staff of Tomorrow — a Tzeentchian weapon whose end-tip is in slight time-flux. The Staff strikes opponents slightly before Kairos swings it, which makes it nearly impossible to parry. The Staff's other recorded property is that it can, in some engagements, hit targets the wielder has not yet decided to attack.

Kairos is, by Imperial War Office classification, the senior Tzeentchian field commander when the Changer of the Ways requires personal manifestation.

M42

Kairos has been active throughout the Era Indomitus, consulted by Magnus the Red himself and by Ahriman through indirect channels (Ahriman is banned from formal consultation). Kairos's prophecies during the period have been published in fragmentary Imperial intelligence intercepts. Most have been correct in retrospect.

The Custodes have, on one documented occasion, fought Kairos directly. The engagement was inconclusive. Both sides claim ambiguous victory.

The Mortal Magus

Kairos was, before his daemonhood, the most powerful mortal magus the pre-Heresy era had produced — a sorcerer whose name does not appear in any surviving Imperial record because the Thousand Sons themselves expunged it after the Rubric. He approached the Well of Eternity beneath Tzeentch's tower and asked the god for the gift of foresight in exchange for his life. The god accepted.

The bargain's second clause, which Kairos did not negotiate carefully, was that the gift had two voices — one would see the past as it had actually been, one would see the futures as they might still be, and the two would not agree. Tzeentch found this amusing. He still does. Kairos's two heads have argued with each other in every recorded engagement since.

Three Prophecies of Note

Kairos's prophecies in the surviving Inquisitorial archive include three independently verified after the fact: he predicted the exact hour Cadia would fall (recorded in 800.M41, fulfilled in 999.M41); he predicted Belisarius Cawl would resurrect a Primarch by a specific Macragge calendar date that was off by three Terran days; and he predicted his own next appearance in realspace, which the Inquisition treated as misinformation until it occurred on schedule.

The unverified prophecies are uncountable. Kairos issues them at every meeting, in pairs, with the understanding that one of each pair is accurate. The listener selects which. Selection has, in documented cases, killed the listener — not because the wrong prophecy was selected, but because the act of selection committed the listener to a future they could not afterward unbind.

Court of the Architect

Kairos sits second to no Greater Daemon in Tzeentch's court except the Lord of Change Aetaos'rau'keres, who holds the seat Kairos would occupy if Tzeentch awarded rank on the basis of competence rather than amusement. The court's other Greater Daemons defer to Kairos on questions of timing while ignoring him on questions of strategy. The pattern is consistent.

The court itself is a permanent feature of Tzeentch's Impossible Fortress in the warp, and is the most-frequently scryed location in the galaxy by Imperial astropaths attempting to predict Chaos campaigns. The scry rarely yields useful data. Kairos is aware of the scry attempts and adjusts the court's surface visibility specifically to mislead Imperial intelligence. The misleads are part of his portfolio.