Written for the prompt "Dawn of War 2, Jonah Orion: Character study -Last of his kind" on areyougame.


He is the last of his kind, but he is not alone. Jonah Orion can hear the singing of the Battle-Barge's great soul as they traverse the insanity of the Warp, sailing its strange and unknowable depths. He uses the song as a focus and a light to guide his meditations, holding him firm to the steel decks as he opens his mind to the vagaries of the warp.

Jonah is not a true precog, not as Zaphel was, or the great Father Librarian Kyras is. He takes far more after his late master Isador, and as such his strengths lie in the smiting of his enemies with the potent witch-fire of the Warp. Nonetheless, their recent struggles have been bitter, and so many have been lost. Rhamah, Korinth, Isador...Jonah mourns them all.

Although the silver filigrees of the warp's possibilities are difficult for him to trace, nonetheless he sends his mind veering across the strange echoing of the fabric of Reality that shows itself in their weft and weave. He searches for the threats that have taken his brothers, that have robbed this old ship of her Librarian protectors, that drove his late master to insanity and left Jonah here alone with nothing but the suspicion of his brothers and the shades of those that have gone before hovering at his shoulders.

And shades there are. They stand at his side, their presence a cold breath of chill across his skin, their dead eyes dark hollows as they watch him. Were this a tale of hope they would be his guards and his guides, standing always ready to strike out against the unknown foes of the Warp that might seek to harm him on his roamings. But this is no tale of hope and these are no guardians. They are spectres bound up in chains of guilt and remorse, bitterness and the cold emptiness of failure. Jonah loves each and every one of them still. His brothers, his master, their failures his own to bear, to defeat and redeem.

Jonah Orion sails the seas of insanity on an ancient ship that knows nothing but its own idiot song, and around him his dead brothers keep their watches with the solemn silence of the deceased. Jonah Orion may be the last of his kind, but he is far from alone.