Arbus Rosedian

The Category 9 Convoy Defence Platforms were the final dreadful invention of Arbus Rosedian, one of the most spectacularly deadly minds of the first Worm Cult occupation of the Corporation. - Greyblade

''“Arbus Rosedian is a legend,” Greyblade explained. “He studied the forbidden and deadly works of the Kernians. He stared down the Relth. Multiple times. He was the salvation of entire civilisations of Pinian Brotherhood worshippers. That, up there on the Natha’i’s bridge, wasn’t Arbus Rosedian.”'' - Greyblade

Born a Molran in The Centre during the final centuries of the Worm Cult occupation of the Corporation, Arbus Rosedian renounced his species and claimed a position among the Tenth Elders early in his academic career. Even among the Tenth Elders, he was considered a dangerous intellect.

After smuggling himself through the Worm Cult blockades around The Centre, Rosedian escaped the occupied Dimension and spent years in the ruins of the Kernians’ civilisation. After allegedly learning many of their lost and forbidden secrets, he returned to The Centre and put what he had learned into practice. As a worshipper and asset of the Firstmade Pinian Brotherhood, he was granted full discretion to use the Brotherhood's wealth, influence and workforce to create weapons. The pinnacle of his lifetime of effort was the Category 9 Convoy Defence Platforms.

The Vultures, according to Rosedian’s own claims, appeared before him on six separate occasions, four of which were independently verified. He was always able to walk the delicate line between Relth disapproval and full prosecution, however. Whatever rules and laws he broke in the pursuit of knowledge and creation, they were never enough to earn him any punishment.

After the end of the Worm Cult occupation and the conclusion of the resettlement conflicts, Rosedian and all but one of his Category 9 Convoy Defence Platforms departed the Corporation in accordance with new treaties concerning weapons of the so-called Godfangs' power. Their sworn intention was to confront the Worm in its lair and destroy it once and for all. Most of the fleet, known in mythology as Rosedian's Daughters, was destroyed. When several of the Godfangs returned some tens of thousands of years later, Rosedian was allegedly still alive and in command, although the extension of his life by artificial means had reduced him to little more than a biomechanical extension of the platforms' own intelligence by this stage.

This final echo of Arbus Rosedian died shortly after his return to the Corporation, after drinking Modarkan plum wine containing a harmonic fibre to which modern Molren had long since developed an immunity, but to which he was still vulnerable. The fibre induced the subviral flaw known as the long lull, and the thokagna were unable to revive or regenerate him.