For all his sins, Kerghan never knew the name of his planet before he left. When the star people arrived, they found a dead world devoid of all sentient life. They also found a man living among the bones and the ruins. That man spoke no common tongue, and instead communicated in a guttural, accented growl. In his company were beasts, his friends and protectors, and they left with him.

Ultimately, the man picked up low Gothic slowly and painfully over the course of several years. Even when he could speak, his story never emerged. It was clear his world had not advanced to the level of spaceflight, and had never encountered the Emperor’s Creed. Why he was the only man alive on that world would remain a mystery.

So many of the star people would not live to discover the reason, if they cared about it at all. Instead they made use of his talents, a tracker, a beast hunter, a warrior born.

Realising that the star people would never see him as an equal, and at best, a savage, Kerghan set plans in motion to leave their company. He had observed their ways and they were a greedy, stupid kind who did not deserve the gifts the Horned God had delivered to them.

One by one, the sky people began to fall afoul of accidents. Ruuhke slipped into the starboard ventilation fan and was diced before he knew he was dead. Nairda was caught in the backblast of an overloading plasma manifold and sent tumbling far below Sub Level C. They never found her body, and Ikka was lost trying to locate it.

Doubtful of these coincidences, Captain Norahs locked herself in her cabin, barricading the door and pointing her bolter at the entrance, day and night. When the Imperial cutter found the scavenger vessel adrift, they lost a few men getting her out, but by then she was mad, haunted by the howling at night and the whispering during the day.

Arrogant in his perception of victory, the cutter’s Captain overlooked one tiny detail. The scavenger vessel’s food stores were exhausted. Years later, the Administratum would be unable to answer questions as to how and why this had happened. Kerghan didn’t care.

His path would lead him from one unscrupulous group to the next, always in pursuit of the knowledge that would set him free. The trail would lead to prescribed texts on ancient worlds, to runes carved into the shattered remains of formerly majestic planets, the babbling of madmen in the darkest prison depths. He would deal with the worst the galaxy had to offer. But soon, he sensed. Soon his victory was coming. On that the day, he thought… “Let the Galaxy Burn.”