Mordecai Haarlock was an Imperial Free Captain who helped to lead the defence of the Imperium from the assault of the tyrannical forces of High Lord Goge Vandire in the Jericho Sector during the Reign of Blood in the Age of Apostasy of the 36th Millennium.
As a reward for his service, the reforming Ecclesiarch Sebastian Thor who succeeded Vandire used his influence to have Haarlock granted a Warrant of Trade and made a Rogue Trader. Mordecai would go on to found House Haarlock, a Rogue Trader dynasty that would prove to have a major role in the histories of the Jericho Reach, the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse.
House Haarlock was founded during the Age of Apostasy in the early 36th Millennium in the Jericho Sector by Free Captain Mordecai Haarlock as a reward granted through the influence of the Ecclesiarchy for his role in defending the Imperium during the Reign of Blood.
Between 257 and 262.M36, revolts and armed resistance movements flared up across the Jericho Sector, as labour quota-tallies demanded by the sector's Over-Governors in response to the tyrannical rule of the High Lord of Terra Goge Vandire increased exponentially. While most of these insurrections were quickly and brutally crushed, the resulting collateral damage was extensive, marring the Jericho Sector's production capacity further, which in turn meant ever-increasing demands to make up a shortfall that cannot be fulfilled, creating an ever-worsening cycle of repression and revolt.
The Over-Governors began a paranoid-driven series of purges to remove anyone that they perceived as a potential threat and increased their revenue by plundering the coffers of the sector's corporate magnates and nobility. Among these, the estates and vessels of the then-absent Free Captain Mordecai Haarlock, whose holdings spanned the Jericho Sector and several others beyond its borders, were seized by order of Over-Governor Murella Mordercai on his return. In protest, Haarlock resisted arrest, slaying those who would hold him. He fled with a single vessel, the Spear of Destiny, into the Slinnar Drift, swearing bloody vengeance.
Through sheer force of personality and fear, Free Captain Mordecai Haarlock convinced a vagabond fleet of privateers, refugee merchants and disgruntled Chartist Captains to join him in a war of resistance against the Over-Governors of the Jericho Sector and those that stood with them that lasted from 263 until 270.M36. They begin a guerrilla war of ambush and lightning attacks against tithe-shipping, lone Frateris Templar vessels and outposts, as well as smuggling weapons and Ecclesiarchy priests who had turned against Goge Vandire's mastery of the Adeptus Ministorum and Adeptus Administratum to resistance movements against Vandire's rule across the Jericho Sector and in neighbouring regions.
Mordecai Haarlock displayed an uncanny genius for this kind of shadowed warfare, both as a corsair captain and spymaster. As his infamy spread, he became known as the "Spider Lord." He was the single man at the centre of a web comprising countless strands of terrorist cells, spies, agents, and corsair ships. His emblem of the golden spider clutching an Imperial Aquila became a symbol of hope for those crushed under the Over-Governors' rule, and a mark of fear for their vassals.
In 266.M36 the annals of Watch Fortress Erioch record the arrival of the Spear of Destiny on the edge of the Erioch System. Not knowing where he was becalmed, Mordecai Haarlock moved in-system, and he was swiftly surrounded and brought under the guns of the Deathwatch. Forced to power down, Mordecai and his close associates were taken on board the watch fortress under guard by kill-teams. Three solar days later, Haarlock and his starship were permitted to leave. He never spoke of what occurred within those three days, nor does he ever return to the Erioch System.
By 273.M36 revolt against the Reign of Blood had sparked across the Imperium like wildfire, and elsewhere, the reforming priest Sebastian Thor 's Imperial Navy battlecruiser Power of Terra encountered Free Captain Haarlock and agreed to join his cause. With him he brought a network of contacts within the Imperial Navy's Battlefleet Jericho and alliance with the forces and agents of the Confederation of Light.
In 277.M36 Free Captain Mordecai Haarlock led a fleet of insurgent vessels in a surprise attack on the sector capital of Verronus , having drawn the forces of the remaining Frateris Templar warships in the Jericho Sector away through a diversionary attack on Eleusis. His strike fleet succeeded in breaking through the system's defences. Accompanied by an elite force of unrecorded nature, Mordecai Haarlock executes Lady Sector Castagar Murella for "betrayal of the ideals and soul of the Imperium of Man." Meanwhile, the Arch-Cardinal Udo Asterus is torn apart by an enraged lynch mob while trying to flee.
In 395.M36, following the death of Goge Vandire and the end of the Reign of Blood during the Terran Crusade, Free Captain Mordecai Haarlock was granted a Warrant of Trade and declared a Rogue Trader by the Senatorum Imperialis through the influence of Sebastian Thor, who replaced Vandire as the ecclesiarch and had begun a massive reform of the doctrines of the Adeptus Ministorum. The Warrant is a greater charter of writ to him and the heirs and successors of his blood unto the end of all things, and conditional first upon the restoration of order to an Imperium still plagued by heresy, war, and division.
This honour is supposedly in recognition of Haarlock's actions against Goge Vandire's forces in the Jericho Sector, but some sources note that Mordecai had been expected to ascend to rule the Jericho Sector himself, and that the granting of the Warrant of Trade effectively banished Haarlock (who was perhaps, at best, too dangerous and resourceful a man to entrust with such a task) beyond the bounds of the Imperium once the Wars of Apostasy were over and his usefulness was at an end.
Almost exactly a standard century later in 395.M36, Mordecai Haarlock, taking up the mantle of Rogue Trader, vanished from the Imperium, taking his fleet with him. What ties, if any, he kept with the Jericho Sector remain unknown. However, the dark coincidence of his deep connection to the later founding of the far distant Calixis Sector after the Calyx Expanse's exploration by his descendant Solomon Haarlock, a region that would prove inextricably linked to the Jericho Reach's future through the discovery of the Jericho-Maw Warp Gate in the 41st Millennium, is a matter of shrouding mystery that has troubled many within the Inquisition.
