Terror. Monster. Ghoul.

Those outside the ranks of the Adeptus Mechanicus seldom have cause to look upon their augmented killers with anything but fear and disgust. They are no mere assassins but remorseless knife-limbed murderers who pursue their targets with a fervour that goes far beyond merely following orders. It was in this grisly paradigm that Pallas was reforged, a broken creature sealed within a shell of steel to march and slay for Graia. They look almost a nightmare parody of humanity, long-limbed, hunched and faceless. A thing made not for war but sanctified slaughter.

Though a well-regarded Primus, it is somewhat unusual for Pallas to be chosen for strategic meetings and discussion with those of a less enlightened persuasion. Their form, their errant tics and twitches, can prove somewhat unsettling to those of weaker mettle, and their fleshvoice has a way of grating on the nerves. It hardly helps that their words are seldom less than aggressive and direct. Violence is their nature and bleeds through all aspects of their being even when their moods are haler and objectives beyond the pursuit of combat. Expressing themselves in a manner some might deem “normal” simply isn’t in their design, and to expect anything more from them is optimistic at best.

Perhaps a further point of irritation for outsiders is that Pallas does not broadcast their status. Despite being a ranking Skitarii and Clade-leader their form is utterly bereft of ornamentation, distinguished from their cohorts only by their armaments – the shorter blade and wicked claw. They eschew the robes their standing might allow and garb themselves in but the standard plate and cold-eyed mask of their unit, leaving them just another faceless soldier in the black and red of Graia. So dulled are their colours that the latter seems more the shade of dried blood than the crimson of the Skitarii legions; all the better to blend with the shadows.

It is only in that darkness, in the rush and chaos of war, that they prove the twisted brilliance of their design. Those janky birdlike twitches are the mark of a mind constantly surveying its surrounds, their hunched aspect the shape of a stalking predator, and those long limbs suited to sudden and bursts of speed. Such things might seem unnerving away from the battlefield but on it they seem all the more dreadful. No longer awkward and stilted but a truly efficient killing machine.