Sorcerer. Betrayer. Deliverer. Ahriman, former chief librarian of the Thousand Sons, is one of the most-skilled (indeed, perhaps the most-accomplished) sorcerers of the 41st millennium. When the mutating effects of Chaos became plain amongst the Thousand Sons legion, Ahriman cast the terrible rubric that reduced almost all his brothers to dust and deathless spirit. So did Ahriman earn his exile from the Planet of the Sorcerers. Now he wanders the galaxy, cursed to an obsessive quest for knowledge and power. This warped crusade has led Ahriman to cross swords with some of the mightiest heroes in the galaxy, and has brought him into constant conflict with any who hold arcane knowledge – most notably the Eldar Harlequins and the Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus.

HERO AT A GLANCE

In his latest incarnation, Ahriman is truly a hero for all phases. As with all Chaos Space Marine characters, he's a close-combat monster, with 5 Attacks on the charge. Top this off with a Strength 4 Force Weapon, and Ahriman's already a character to keep an eye on – and he's not something that can be duplicated by many other armies. The Exile really begins to shine when you start to take stock of his psychic powers. Ahriman has access to all five Chaos Space Marine psychic powers. Warp Time primarily increases Ahriman's close-combat abilities, as it provides a healthy supply of rerolls and all but guarantees that each of the sorcerer's Attacks will claim a victim. The other powers are ranged attacks of one form or another, which make Ahriman that rarest of things: a Warhammer 40,000 hero who can inflict serious amounts of damage from a distance. Sounds good so far, doesn't it? And I haven't reached the really good bit yet. Ahriman's Black Staff allows him to use three (yes, really) psychic powers in a single turn. That's a lot of firepower.

ARMY OF CHOICE

Weighing in at the points value he does, Ahriman is a tempting option for any Chaos Space Marine army, but I prefer to let him loose alongside his fellow Thousand Sons and a few Obliterators. Ahriman's sheer close-combat might goes some way to compensating for the distinct lack of the same displayed by the damned warriors of the Thousand Sons, while their blistering anti-personnel firepower can do a fine job of whittling down enemies too feeble for Ahriman to be bothered with. The beauty of an army like this is that while it's elite, and therefore small in number, there are so many Invulnerable saves to go around that you needn't fear those nasty Starcannon and plasma guns half as much. For a counterattack punch, you might want to consider a unit of Raptors, or perhaps a pack of Daemons, but if the enemy gets that close, then you've probably already lost...

UNSTOPPABLE?

Ahriman's chief weakness (fittingly enough) is overconfidence. Three psychic powers a turn adds up to a good chance of a Perils of the Warp attack over the course of 6 turns. As a result, you can normally rely on him inflicting at least a little damage on himself as the game progresses. For those players who don't ever want to know the odds, or would rather be a little more proactive in the thumping of heretics, I can offer the following advice: swamp 'im. In assault against Space Marines or Eldar, Ahriman will likely come out on top, as those enemies aren't likely to be numerous enough to overwhelm his armour and invulnerability. In contrast, a big old brood of Gaunts or an Ork mob is likely to have enough Attacks to overwhelm the sorcerer with sheer weight of numbers.

efore the events of the Heresy, Ahriman had shared his Primarch's obsession with arcane mysteries, and had come to be keeper of the now mythical 'Book of Magnus', a tome of incalculable sorcerous power.

t may have been knowledge gleaned from that very tome with which Ahriman conjured his now infamous master spell. The result of his Rubric, while imperfect, is said to have satisfied Ahriman in its consequence. A veteran Thousand Son from before the coming of Magnus, Ahriman's revulsion at the corruption of the Legion was so great that even the terrible price of reversing it was not too high.

agnus was not of like mind, however. So great was his wrath when the cabal was discovered that the Primarch threatened to obliterate them utterly, but the very patron who had worked the mutations upon them in the first place was said to have intervened. Who can say what the most enigmatic and capricious of entities intended? In any event, the Daemon Prince stayed his hand, instead banishing Ahriman from the Planet of Sorcerers and condemning him to wander the Eye of Terror and beyond in a hopeless quest to understand the Chaos god Tzeentch. For his part, Ahriman refuses to acknowledge Chaos as his master. Across the ensuing millennia he has become a scourge, raiding ancient museums, librarium, scholaria and reclusia, places of learning, religion and contemplative thought. He seeks to acquire artefacts, data, or even persons he believes can lead him to mastery over the way of the sorcerer. He fosters cults on dozens of worlds at a time, providing cult magi with sorcerous power until such time as they have acquired some antiquarian trinket or satisfied another of Ahriman's demands before turning the wrath of his warband upon them. It is rumoured that Ahriman has of late turned his relentless predation upon the Eldar, determined in his belief that the lost knowledge he seeks can be found in that darkest of halls of enlightenment, the vast repository of arcana referred to in whispers as the Black Library.

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