For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden
Throne of Earth.
He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by
the might of His inexhaustible armies.
He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology.
He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed
every day so that He may never truly die.
Yet while the golden era in which the Emperor tread the soil of his Imperium and spilled
the blood of those who might defile it, grows ever more distant, his will can still be felt.
There is a huge and dangerous presence growing within the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp,
and during moments of extraordinary peril, when mankind’s very existence is threatened,
it can make itself felt across realities.
There are many ways in which the prayers of humanity might be answered and the will of
the Emperor made known, but few are the equal of Saint Celestine: Living Saint of the Order
of the Martyred Lady.
It is natural that all those elevated to the highest pantheon of Imperial heroes might
have their accomplishments embellished and character magnified, but the accounts of Saint
Celestine have been remarkably consistent.
Imperial records speak of imminent slaughters turned into rousing victories by the miraculous
intervention of a wrathful warrior borne aloft on angelic wings and righteous fury.
Her figure burns with light, fiercer than the heart of any star.
Courage and resolve builds in any noble soul that meets her gaze, while those that harbor
evil are overcome with abject terror.
A single graceful gesture might call forth an inferno of terrible power, or make strong
again the sick and dying.
Mercy and rage circles her every moment.
In her presence, the faithful are led to victory, while traitors and demons boil away into nothingness.
History is littered with tales such as these.
A legion of pretenders have claimed Sainthood and with it, the Emperor’s favor, but it
is not Celestine’s actions in life that mark her as true Saint, but those that occur
in death.
She has been burned to ashes by the unnatural fires of the Ruinous Powers.
Her armor has been split by eldritch alien weaponry and her body torn asunder.
She has been crushed beneath the treads of demonic engines or mangled on the blades of
the Imperium’s greatest foes.
Every manner of mortal blow has snuffed the life from Saint Celestine, but each and every
time she has returned, rising once more again and again and again to strike down her would-be
killer.
To those who have witnessed these miraculous acts, her explanation is simple: she will
only die when the Emperor himself claims her, and not a moment before.
Very little is known of the life of Celestine before she was declared a living-saint of
the Imperium.
The Order of Our Martyred Lady, one of the great Orders Militant of the Adepta Sororitas,
does however make note of a Sister Repentia by that name within their ranks.
She was said to have been among the armies of the Imperium mustered against the heretics
of the Palatine Schism.
Celestine was at the forefront of the first wave where the fighting was most fierce, and
she was killed in battle during the drive to the capital city on the world of Eurytion.
Celestine was merely one among countless others that lost their lives in the service of the
Emperor that day, but special mention was made of the grim butcher’s toll she inflicted
upon the enemy.
When her body was reclaimed however by her surviving sisters, they were shocked to discover
that when cleansed of the blood and filth of battle, no wound could be found upon her
body.
She arose as if from a deep sleep the next day, and the light of one touched by the divine
glowed within her eyes.
By the time the crusade to end the Palatine Schism reached its apex, Celestine had become
its sacred figurehead.
In this role she gained immense influence and used it to convince the Lord Militant
of the Imperial Forces to liberate a seemingly unimportant world; Sanctus Lys.
While none then alive, save Celestine, were aware of its significance, this backwater
world was a holy place.
It was home to a Shrine of Saint Katherine, a living saint of the Order of the Fiery Heart;
the precursor to Celestine’s own order.
In the shattered remains of this shrine, Celestine came upon a forgotten crypt, and descended
into the darkness on steps none had trod upon for millenia.
When dawn came the following morning, Celestine rose from the tomb like Katherine herself.
Divine radiance had enveloped her, mighty, angelic wings had appeared at her back, while
doves and cherubs circled her transformed visage.
She had donned the armor of Saint Katherine, anointed with the blood of its namesake, but
it was the sword she carried that was most wondrous, and terrible, of all.
From a hilt worked into the shape of the Imperial Aquila, and adorned with skulls and flowers
burned a blade so bright that none could look directly upon it.
Her apotheosis complete, Celestine was declared a Living Saint by the Lord Militant and her
status cemented by a conclave of the Ecclesiarchy soon thereafter.
Hailed as the Hieromartyr of the Palatine Crusade, untold thousands of heretics would
die by her blade until absolute victory was finally achieved.
The deeds of Saint Celestine filled the annals of Imperial history for decades thereafter
until she ultimately disappeared fighting the Renegade Warmaster of Forrax.
She was last seen in the heart of his fortress when the insane pawn of Chaos triggered his
own atomic pile and reduced the entire structure to ash.
The Tower of Heroes upon Sacred Terra itself tolled a single time to proclaim her loss,
and untold billions became united in grief for their fallen heroine of mankind.
And yet dozens of times across the ensuing centuries, reports of an avenging angel, appearing
miraculously on desperate battlefields, reached Imperial administrators and scholars.
In every instance, the radiant form of Saint Celestine was sighted just as hope had been
extinguished, only to vanish once more as soon as victory had been won.
Until in the 999th year of the 41st Millenium, her return became impossible to deny.
As Cadia was shattered beneath the 13th Black Crusade of Abaddon the Despoiler, Saint Celestine
again arrived at the critical moment, together with five full companies of battle-sisters
believed lost in the Warp some fourteen hundred years before.
Their entry on the battlefield revitalized the Imperial defenders.
Celestine herself would throw down the broken body of a Daemon Prince, aided by twin canonesses
whom the living saint had returned to life.
But even Celestine could not stand alone before Abaddon himself.
Drained of her extraordinary powers of faith by the rapidly shifting currents of the Warp,
she would have been killed once more if not for the intervention of other Imperial heroes
determined to face down the Despoiler.
Though Cadia would fall, Abaddon was wounded for the first time in Millenia, his black
armor pierced by Celestine’s blade, leaving a black mark upon his supposed victory.
Yet even as Cadia was consumed by the Eye of Terror, the work of Saint Celestine was
not done.
She was granted a vision of mankind’s salvation, and led the survivors on a dangerous path
that would ultimately lead to the return of one of mankind’s greatest legends, the Primarch
Roboute Guilliman of the Ultramarines.
As the galaxy enters the Time of Ending, Saint Celestine stands at the forefront of the greatest
crusade since the Emperor himself set out to reconquer the galaxy.
She is a shining beacon of hope, appearing wherever the battle grows darkest to call
forth the fires of retribution from on high.
And if she should fall in battle, none now mourn, for she is the living Saint, and until
the Emperor deems it so, she will forever rise and rise again, a living embodiment of
his divine wrath.
It is often said that “only in death does duty end”.
But for Saint Celestine, death is only the beginning.
And no realm of suffering and torment, no trial of faith or duty, no death of hope,
shall ever stand in the way of proving herself worthy of life once more.