Axe Mortalis

The Axe

Axe Mortalis is Dante's two-handed power axe, balanced for his Sanguinary frame and weighted to a tolerance the chapter's Tech-marines have to recalibrate after every campaign. The axe was forged on Baal, in the pre-Heresy decades, by smiths whose names are inscribed on the haft in script no modern Apothecary reads cleanly.

I have not counted the daemons. The axe has.

— Dante, attributed Devastation of Baal

Notable Kills

Axe Mortalis has, by chapter record, slain: at least twelve daemon-princes; two Tyranid Norn Queens; the Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha (banished, not killed) during the Devastation of Baal; and countless Chaos Champions whose names Dante has not bothered to commit to memory.

The Pair

The axe is paired in Dante's loadout with the Perdition Pistol — an inferno pistol of similar age and provenance. Together the two weapons have, by the Chapter's formal kill-record, outlasted every Blood Angel currently living except Dante himself.

Origin

The Axe Mortalis was forged on Cretacia, the death-world of the Flesh Tearers, in the chapter's earliest decades as an autonomous chapter — a deliberate Blood Angels successor that the Heresy-era schisms had left in unstable institutional condition. The forging was conducted by the chapter's first Reclusiarch, a Sanguinian veteran whose name has been deliberately omitted from the chapter's hagiographic record. He produced the Axe in a single working session lasting eleven days, during which he did not eat, sleep, or speak. The Axe emerged in two parts — head and haft — that the Reclusiarch ritually joined on the twelfth day and consecrated to the chapter's then-Chapter Master Amit.

The consecration ritual involved the Reclusiarch's own blood. The Axe absorbed approximately three pints from the Reclusiarch's femoral vein over the course of an eleven-hour ceremony. The Reclusiarch survived the bleeding but did not survive the subsequent week. He died in his cell on the eighteenth day of the cycle that had begun with the forging. The chapter's interpretation of his death is that the Axe required the Reclusiarch's complete commitment to the chapter's specific theological purpose, and that the commitment included his life.

The Flesh-Tearer Use

The Axe Mortalis is, by Flesh Tearers chapter doctrine, the chapter's Chapter Master's specific personal weapon during engagements where the chapter expects the Red Thirst to manifest. The Axe's specific magical-or-bioengineered property — the chapter has not formally classified which — is to focus the wielder's Red Thirst into a controllable channel rather than letting it overwhelm tactical decision-making. A Chapter Master wielding the Axe is, by the chapter's recorded combat reports, approximately four times more lethally effective than one without it, while remaining able to issue coherent commands to his subordinates.

The Axe has been wielded by every Flesh Tearers Chapter Master since its forging, with one exception — the Master Lukyas, who was in extended Thirst-fugue at the time of his ascension and was deemed unfit to receive the Axe by the chapter's Reclusiarch council. Lukyas served as Chapter Master without the Axe for eighteen years before his death, during which time the Flesh Tearers' chapter-internal Thirst-management records showed a documented deterioration. The chapter has not made the records public.

The Cost Question

The Axe's specific operational cost — beyond the original Reclusiarch's death — has been the subject of three classified Inquisitorial investigations across the chapter's history. The investigations have produced inconsistent results. The first, conducted in M37, concluded that the Axe drew slightly elevated quantities of biological resource from its wielders but that the draw was within acceptable Imperial Cult relic-class limits. The second, conducted in M40, concluded that the Axe was extracting something less easily measured — an unspecified psychic-or-spiritual quality that the Inquisition could not name but could observe degrading in wielders over time. The third, conducted in 030.M42 after the Indomitus Crusade's chapter-evaluation programmes, concluded that the Axe was operating within parameters the Inquisition was unwilling to specify.

The Flesh Tearers' chapter-internal position is that the Axe's costs are known to the chapter and acceptable to the chapter, and that further external evaluation is not required. The position has been formally endorsed by Roboute Guilliman in his post-Indomitus chapter-evaluation report; Guilliman classified the chapter as "stable, operationally effective, and trusted." The Axe was not specifically named in his report. The chapter understood the omission.

The M42 Status

The Axe Mortalis is, in the Indomitus era, in the personal possession of the current Flesh Tearers Chapter Master Gabriel Seth. Seth has wielded the Axe in seventeen documented engagements during the Indomitus Crusade, including the Battle of Baal's later phase, two confirmed engagements against Word Bearers daemon-prince Erebus's lieutenants, and the chapter's contribution to the Plague Wars on Iax. In each engagement, the Axe has operated as the chapter's hagiographic doctrine predicts: the wielder's tactical effectiveness has been enhanced, the chapter's overall engagement outcomes have been positive, and Seth himself has remained command-functional throughout.

The chapter's senior Reclusiarch has, in his confidential chapter-internal log, noted that Seth is showing the early-stage Axe-degradation pattern that the third Inquisitorial investigation had observed. Seth is approximately one hundred and forty Terran years old; the chapter's working actuarial assessment is that he will hold the Axe for perhaps another twenty years before the chapter's Reclusiarch council formally retires him from active wielding. The Axe will then pass to his designated successor. The successor has not yet been formally named, but the chapter's senior officers know who Seth has identified.