Herius Iolanthus Victus, The Dark Prince, Heir Apparent of the Valerian Dynasty, Part 1
“His is a blackened soul. To see as much death, to order as many lives marched to their ends as he has, it changes something inside of you. I can only imagine the shell of a being left after all of this.”
- Warpriest Tesh una Dvnarun, commander of Severan Dominate forces during the Battle of Grasha-117
Herius Victus may be the greatest enigma of the modern age, even surrounded as he is by other mysteries. Little is known about the man commonly referred to as the Dark Prince, even less about his personal warship, the gargantuan alien vessel Invictus. What is known is that the night of April 1st, 2314, he was found abandoned in the personal quarters of Emperor Gaius Valerian Illurius Latollus. Emperor Valerian, himself adopted into the Vestian dynasty, took young Victus as his own, making him heir to the Imperium Terranus. For the first decade of his life, Victus was reclusive, shy in public and frequently absent from Imperial court events. This all changed, however, with the Imperial Crisis of 2326, when Valerian’s political enemies contested both his and Victus’ legal claims to the throne. By Imperial tradition, the emperor must have some lineage with Flavius Aetius, founder of the Aetian dynasty and the man largely credited with saving the beleaguered empire millennia ago, and by virtue of having both been adopted into the current dynasty, conservative hardliners found their claims lacking.
It was young Victus who suggested what would become one of the greatest coups in the history of public relations. Speaking publicly, he challenged his father’s enemies to find him lacking and renounced, temporarily, his claim to the throne. He would give himself, and the greater Imperial conservative movement, 6 years to prove their sides of the argument. He would enlist, against Valerian’s wishes, in the Roma Naval Institute, and he would allow his father’s rivals to pick his teachers and overseers for him. The Imperial public, always fans of a spectacle, found the challenge the most exhilarating thing that had happened to a relatively stable Imperium Terra in decades, and his enemies soon found that young Victus was both a master at interacting with the masses, and the most gifted student the RNI had ever seen.
Victus was a natural, brilliant without making others feel less intelligent, charming and excitable about the subjects he was passionate for, but happier to let someone else talk at length about their interests. He had a magnetism to him that made him a natural leader, and saw his instructors push ever greater responsibilities on to him, ones that he excelled in without fail. To the public, he was a dynamo, exciting, youthful, outgoing without overstaying his welcome in the public eye. He was willing to let his enemies have their own public airtime, and without fail he would let them lay their own traps, flub their own arguments or add yet more challenges for him in his education he could excel at.
For the public, he was a spectacle now that he was finally out in front of the people instead of behind the walls of the Palatine Hill. To the still growing conservative movement, and even to those outside of it, he was dangerous. No one would say it out loud, but he represented a very real fear in the heart of most Imperial officials: that something from outside their 2000 year old system could come along and topple it all. Whispered in the halls of the Senate were every sort of dark conspiracy you could imagine about the young prince, by now 16 and playing into his effortless charm and unnatural good looks. From wooing senators’ sons to a dalliance with Master of the Fleet Casta Vane’s daughter, he slowly built an edge to him that only made concerns inside the halls of Imperial power grow stronger. He was a chameleon, and only they could see it.
And then, one fateful day, all their fears would be confirmed. The 1st of April, 2332. No longer able to stem public clamor, the conservatives finally bow out of the fight, admitting that Herius Victus has proven not only himself, but his father Emperor Valerian, rightful inheritors of Aetius’ grand project. Valerian was now secure in his throne, and Victus would be too when he succeeded him. The only thing left to do now was bite the bullet and crown the young prince as the heir apparent. In Rome, millions gathered in the streets. Across Terra, billions watched with bated breath for the Imperial Laurels to be lowered onto Victus’ head. Every eye in the Imperium was fixed upon Plebeian Square, the public space in front of the Palatine that played hosts to all courtly events.
Not a single eye was turned upwards, where something far more momentous was taking place. If any human alive had any idea what was happening, Terra would have been bracing for war, for tearing out of Realm-space came three leviathans, beasts of the Outer Deeps between the stars. Breaching Realm not at the Sol System’s limits, but over Terra’s atmosphere, they were revelation. Alien ships, gargantuan in scale, mind-numbing in what they represented. Humanity was neither alone, nor was it ignored.
Immediately, Emperor Valerian declared the coronation delayed, and convened a team of experts from every discipline, every background. There was no doubt in any mind what the emperor wanted to know: could the ships, seemingly bereft of any signs of life, be boarded? The answer was a resounding yes, but it left an even more glaring, even more fraught question in its wake: who would do it, and who would lead the mission.
And so Herius Victus was chosen to lead the first expedition aboard one of the three Harbingers, and it would be here that the fate of humanity was forever altered.
