Marius Vairosean is a minor antagonist in the Warhammer 40,000 franchise. He is one of the first Noise Marines, a Space Marine of the Emperor's Children Legion who fell to the corruption of Slaanesh during the Horus Heresy.
Marius Vairosean was featured in the novels Fulgrim, The Primarchs, and Angel Exterminatus.
Biography[]
Great Crusade[]
In the grim darkness of the far future, the Emperor of Mankind created the Imperium of Man. In the 31st millennium, He launched a Great Crusade across the stars to rebuild the divided, crumbling human race and return it to its lost golden age. To do this, the Emperor created many Space Marine Legions, each under command of a Primarch, the Emperor's transhuman sons. The Emperor's Children Legion, the IIIrd Legion, was given to the Primarch Fulgrim. Marius Vairosean, presumably from either Terra or planet Chemos, joined the Emperor's Children and was modified into an Astartes, better known as a Space Marine. He became the captain of the Legion's 3rd company, and prized striving to perfection above all things. Like the rest of the Legion, Vairosean struggled to achieve perfection in all things, hating the idea of not being the best at everything. Despite this, he did not recklessly jump at opportunities to gain glory, instead favoring rigorous plans and never deviating from a course of action, also treating warfare with grim seriousness. In his service, Vairosean befriended First Captain Julius Kaesoron, who joked about Vairosean being as perfectionist as an Ultramarine, which Vairosean took as a compliment. Vairosean also befriended Second Captain Solomon Demeter, who he often supported in the heat of battle, although Vairosean would commonly come into conflict with Demeter over Demeter's brash behavior.
During the Great Crusade, Vairosean accompanied Fulgrim and other Emperor's Children marines into the Cleansing of Laeran, a campaign to purge a hostile Slaanesh-worshipping serpentine xeno race known as the Laer. Vairosean fought the Laer across the aliens' orbital emplacements, but the 3rd company took heavy damage, leaving them undermanned when they set out to accompany Fulgrim to the surface. This left Vairosean in despair that he had failed to keep up with Fulgrim's plan, and even though Fulgrim forgave him, Vairosean wallowed in self-pity. He withdrew from his fellow officers and locked himself and the surviving 3rd Company marines in the armament decks of the Pride of the Emperor, where he intensively drilled them to ensure that they would not fail again. Vairosean himself became an even more devoted servant to Fulgrim, and as the campaign on Laeran wrapped up, Fulgrim retrieved a Daemon-hosting sword, which began to corrupt the Primarch through Fulgrim's own perfectionism and vanity.
During the campaign, Vairosean submitted himself for experiments by Fabius Bile, as part of a desire by Fulgrim to improve the Astartes gene-seed in a new quest for perfection. While Demeter refused such experimental treatments, Vairosean believed that he was duty-bound to obey. As the experiments spread throughout the Emperor's Children, secretly swaying them to Chaos, Fabius had the pleasure centers of Vairosean's brain rewired, which resulted in the previously dour warrior becoming constantly on edge as he experienced enhanced sensations, heightened emotions and stimulation through sight, sound and touch, especially through pain. Vairosean initially found that through the expression of rage, he felt the most joyous of pleasures, but kept himself in check in accordance with his Legion's martial philosophy of perfection and discipline.
Horus Hersy[]
Aside from Fulgrim, other Primarchs were falling to Chaos, such as Lorgar Aurellian, Magnus the Red, Konrad Curze, Perturabo, Alpharius Omegon, Angron, Mortarion, and even Warmaster Horus Lupercal. While most of their respective Legions had joined them, there were still Loyalists in their forces. As such, Horus, Fulgrim, Mortarion, and Angron plotted to purge the Loyalists from their Legions during a campaign to the renegade planet Isstvan III. However, Fulgrim, who was friends with Loyalist Primarch Ferrus Manus, sought to bring Ferrus to their side. As such, Vairosean and Kaesoron accompanied Fulgrim to meeting with Ferrus Manus at the Iron Hands fleet. However, Ferrus refused to join Fulgrim, and the encounter turned violent. Vairosean led the destruction of most of the Iron Hands fleet, but to his disappointment, Fulgrim ordered them to stand down before the Iron Hands flagship could be destroyed. As such, the Emperor's Children withdrew to Isstvan III. On Isstvan III, all known Loyalists in the Legion, including Solomon Demeter and legendary Dreadnought Rylanor, were deployed to take out the Isstvan III rebellion. Once deployed, the Loyalists were all slaughtered by virus bombs, orbital bombardment, and an assault by Angron's World Eaters and Horus' Sons of Horus.
After Isstvan III, the Emperor's Children, now fully in the control of the traitors, set out to Isstvan V to assault Loyalist Legions present there. During the journey, Fulgrim, Vairosean, Kaesoron, and the rest of the Pride of the Emperor's officer corps were called to a concert being hosted aboard by Bequa Kynska, a Terran composer and remembrancer who had accompanied the Emperor's Children. She had been present on the campaign against the Laer, and had entered a Slaaneshi temple on the planet's surface, which quickly corrupted her. As such, she craved to recreate the sensations of the unholy shrine, and remade the ship's auditorium into a grotesque recreation of the alien temple. Once the traitors took their seats, Kynska began playing the Maraviglia, a symphony she composed to recapture the wonderous sounds of Slaaneshi taint. The music utilized strange sonic instruments, and the cacophony was no mere song, but a ritual to open a Warp rift. Said rift allowed the power of Slaanesh to enter the auditorium, washing over the audience and immediately mutating many of them. Additionally, the Slaaneshi corruption created an orgy of both hedonism and bloodshed in the audience, and summoned Daemonettes to join the slaughter. However, the Daemonettes had taken the bodies of the concert's players in order to manifest, killing Kynska in the process, so Vairosean and other Astartes rushed the stage to keep the music going. Picking up an instrument, Vairosean fumbled with the device, having no idea how to work it, until he made it unleash a devastating sonic shockwave. Now holding the instrument like a gun, Vairosean realized he could use them as sonic weapons that fired blasts laced with the energy of Chaos itself.
Vairosean, Kaesoron, and the other Astartes who picked up the vile instruments were mutated further as they gave the entirety of their souls to Slaanesh, and formed a new unit known as the Kakophoni, the first Noise Marines. Vairosean's visage became almost unrecognizable from the extensive Warp mutations, his eyelids permanently stitched open, his ears torn off with V-shaped gashes where they once were, and barbed cabling forcing his mouth to be open in a perpetual scream. His power armor was now covered in jagged spikes, padded with the faces of those Vairosean killed during the Maraviglia, and Vairosean's now-bald and malformed head was further augmented with cybernetic resonance amplification devices. However, in spite of all his mutations and the corruption of his mind, Vairosean kept his dogmatic strategic intellect, using it to lead the Kakophoni to systemically raze all who stood in his way, killing many Loyalists during the course of the Horus Heresy and spreading discord wherever he went.
Later, during a joint campaign between the Emperor's Children and the traitorous Iron Warriors to seek out a forbidden xeno weapon, Vairosean ventured into the Eye of Terror Warp rift with his fellow Chaos Space Marines, finding a long-lost Eldar Crone World where the weapon was kept. Vairosean killed several Craftworld Wraith constructs guarding the weapon, but Fulgrim, who was leading the campaign alongside the Iron Warriors Primarch Perturabo, promptly revealed that the real reason he had gone to the world was to ascend into a Daemon Prince. This made the Iron Warriors turn on the Emperor's Children, and Vairosean killed several Iron Warriors in the resulting conflict. Then, Iron Hands Space Marines burst in, having survived the attack on Isstvan V, and engaged Vairosean in battle. Vairosean was gravely wounded by an Iron Hands Dreadnought, but kept fighting and rampaging through the ranks of the Iron Hands, losing his Sonic Cannon and instead using a sonic weapon built into his very lungs, thus making his screams as devastating as his gun. However, Vairosean was then confronted by Ignatius Numen, and Iron Hands Morlock, who was struggling to hold up a hefty ancient Volkite weapon. Vairosean unleashed a sonic scream on Numen, but to his shock, Numen was completely unaffected, for Numen had been rendered deaf to all sound. With that, Numen fired the Volkite cannon at Vairosean, piercing clean through Vairosean's power armor and instantly vaporizing his body.
