Shadows of Calus

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Shadows of Calus
Overview

Domain(s):

The Leviathan

Type:

Assassins

Functions:

Kill those involved in the Midnight Coup for Calus (formerly)
Help restore Calus' power over the Cabal

Leadership:

Emperor Calus
Valus Nohr
Werner 99-40

Affiliation:

Loyalists

 

"My Shadows are a chosen people, selected from the best of the best of each world I've encountered."
— Calus, Emperor of the Cabal[1]

The Shadows of Calus is an elite team of Loyalist champions in the service of Emperor Calus, composed of individuals from various civilizations personally recruited by Calus during his exile.

HistoryEdit

Following his encounter with the Black Edge, Calus would begin recruiting individuals from the various races he encountered in the years after; starting with Valus Nohr and Feltroc from among Calus' own Loyalists. While they would be used as assassins for Calus to send against those who had participated in the Midnight Coup, Calus' scribes claimed in the Chronicon that their true purpose was to help the Emperor usher in the end of times.[2]

In the days immediately before the Red Legion set out to the Solar System to wipe out the Guardians, Calus deployed the Shadows of the Cabal, Psions, Eliksni, Sindû and Arkborn on a suicidal mission to assassinate Dominus Ghaul. Before the mission, the Shadows had stopped bickering that usually came from being different species, seemingly brought together by their acceptance that they were unlikely to survive their mission.[3] Predictably, the mission to assassinate Ghaul failed with every Shadow involved killed. Despite there still being other Shadows he had not sent, Calus declared that his fruitless revenge effort had spoiled all of them.[4]

After learning that Ghaul had been killed by a member of the "Guardian-tribe"[5], Calus would begin auditioning Guardians to replace them as the newest generation of Shadows, starting with a trial through The Leviathan. They would later aid the emperor in clearing his ship of incursions from the Vex, Red Legion and Hive in addition to proving their mettle in the Menagerie; to which the Guardians that succeeded were given the title of Shadow much to the concerns of the Vanguard and the suspicions of Aunor Mahal.[6]

During the Almighty Crisis, a Shadow would infiltrate the Vanguard vaults and steal The Fourth Horseman, which Calus intended to have used to eliminate Red Legionaries. The Guardian, after collecting intel from Psions in the Red Legion working as double agents and speaking to Benedict 99-40, learned that the Shadow that stole the Fourth Horseman had been killed by a countermeasure deployed by Caiatl and that it had been moved to somewhere in the EDZ.[7]

It is unclear what became of the remaining Shadows following the Leviathan becoming infested with Egregore and Calus' ascension into a Disciple of the Witness.

Known ShadowsEdit

Fictional ShadowsEdit

TriviaEdit

  • In the Chronicon, the Scribes referred to the Shadows as Calus' Chosen Killers and his Zenith Champions.[4]
  • The way that Calus recruits his Shadows appears somewhat similar to how the Disciples of the Witness are recruited.
  • It is possible for there to be more than one member of a species to become a Shadow, albeit with a different title, as evidenced by Feltroc and Voyc.

List of appearancesEdit

ReferencesEdit