Background Man Forever

They say the Imperium now holds more than a million worlds and it saddens me to think that I may die and never see them all. That is one of the everyday tragedies, a bitter thing of mortality, that you get to the end of your life not having seen the barest fraction that there is to see. But I have seen much more than most, less than I would like and most I should not have.

To look at I am nothing special. In all the pict-files taken throughout Forever I am invariably the one holding someone else's camera or I am just out of the picture or blocked of by the metaphorical thumb over the lenses. If all of life was a play and the universe was the stage I would be one of the people in the background, making up the crowd as the movers and shakers danced in front of us soaking up the glory. And if the eye of the hypothetical observer was to move over the crowd and pick a face at random I can grantee you it would not be my face that has just been picked.

What do I look like? A question no one has ever asked. Either you are talking to me and can just look and see or you are not and do not care. Because, lets face it, no one cares about the extras in a play, the crowd in someone else's story. But if you did decide to talk to me what would you see? You would see unremarkable made manifest, bland incarnate. I stand at about average height and with similar build, my skin is very dark, my hair is almost black and cut short and my eyes are an earthy brown. I have no cybernetics, no scars, no birthmarks or anomalies to set me apart. I could come from any planet of a million.

Not that I am complaining. An inbuilt animosity has a few advantages. I am never perceived as either threat, pray, victim criminal or suspect. I drift through life sideways never being noticed, forever a shadow in the dark. Even psykers never notice me anymore, which is a relief considering my humanity being less than skin deep.

Even when I travel by warp I am in no real danger. The nightmare denizens of that strange place scarcely acknowledge my existence. I whish that could have been said for my perfectionist brother. But in all fairness carrying around a sword with dodgy glowing runes was not a particularly smart idea. He could not have done worse wearing a sign saying 'possess me'.

Travelling by warp. Now that is something that I have been doing quite a lot recently. A sort of pet project, if you will, to while away the millennia. During my old life of fame and fortune I began to hear rumours of a darkness rising all about. A shadow on the mind. A shadow of a Dragon. I know it has something to do with the Mechanicus. I know the Craftworlders know a lot more than they have told me. But hey have told me how dangerous the bloody thing is. Some thing they call Yngir. Say what you will about me but you can never say I was a coward. Did I hide when the dark fay xenos came to my home? No I bloody well did not. I was a blacksmith, I had muscles at the time and you need muscles for that job. You also need hammers. I am no coward, I will find this Dragon, I will find it and kill it. Not for glory, not for fame, not for reward but because it is the right thing to do. My brothers would have done it for those selfish reasons. Not me. You do the job in front of you and you do it well. Then you find another job. That is how to live. Fame and glory can go hang. Anyone who has seen a battle field afterwards can seldom use words like glory and mean it. And those who can are not worth knowing.

My name? Now why would anyone want to know that? I am old. So very old. In my time I have used as many as convenience has dictated, safe in the knowledge that those that took the time to remember it would forget before the day is out. What could I want with a name. Names are to help humans distinguish each other. But there is only one of anything like me now. All my brothers are gone, in one way or another, and my humanity is only a disguise. So what name could I ever apply to me? Possibly the name my father, N'bel, gave me? But that was so very, very long ago. Between the time I was named and now whole worlds have died. Empires have sparked into life and fallen to oblivion. There is only one of my kind left. I need no name.