#marshal magneric

[caiusmajor]

Warsmith Kalkator and his Sons of Dorn

The War of the Beast, and the Beast Arises series which chronicles it, feature a lot of imperial politics and a lot of fighting with Orks, so I didn't pay much attention UNTIL a fanart of @magicalduck21's tipped me off to the existence of WARSMITH KALKATOR.

Warsmith Kalkator of the Iron Warriors plays a relatively minor role in the War of the Beast saga -- BUT he has not one but TWO intense relationships with sons of Dorn!

First, Magneric. Kalkator and Magneric were friends pre-heresy! As Kalkator says:

I remember a time when our comradeship was lauded as an example of how our Legions could set aside their differences and find brotherhood. (Throneworld, Chapter 17)

Since the heresy, Magneric has been interred in a Dreadnaught, which is how he's still alive roughly 1500 years later for the War of the Beast. He's also become a Black Templar and is the Marshal of a small crusade called the Kalkator Crusade.

... Because he's very much not over Kalkator and has sworn to track him down and kill him.

But then the War of the Beast happens, and well, there are a LOT of Orks. So in an attempt not to all die to Lots of Orks, Kalkator and Magneric agree to a truce:

‘Wait!’ said Magneric, his voice low and distorted, the aged vox-equipment popping. ‘I reluctantly agree. We will fight side by side, one more time. Hear me, warriors of the Black Templars!’ He rotated from side to side, addressing all his followers. ‘No member of our Chapter is to harm the Iron Warriors until our treaty is sundered. So swear I, Magneric, Marshal of the Kalkator Crusade. Ralstan, command Ericus to aid the Iron Warriors ship. Have him provide me an estimated extraction time.’ Magneric bent down, his sarcophagus slit glowing in the failing light. ‘We will leave this world together, Kalkator, or not at all. Do not think to betray me.’

‘You have my word that I will abide by the terms of our agreement,’ said Kalkator, ‘more for the sake of our old friendship than for anything else. Now come! Bring your warriors into the redoubt. We must make our preparations.’ (Throneworld, Chapter 17)

... and they do that! They fight the Orks together and they are successful in escaping the planet full of orks!

Unfortunately the Orks aren't done with them, and catch up to them in the next book of the Beast Arises, Echoes of the Long War, when they're caught up in a void battle between orks and other sons of Dorn.

Magneric doesn't make it out of the battle alive, alas.

But Kalkator does! And he escapes with a portion of the fleet of a chapter known as the Fists Exemplar, a First Founding Imperial Fists descendant probably invented for the Beast Arises saga.

The commander of this portion of the Fists Exemplar is First Captain Zerberyn. I'm going to make a second post for the adventures of Kalkator and Zerberyn, since this one is already getting long!

[goalhofer]

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[lesterplatt]

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[successtomigration-blog]

Colleges Face Growing International Student-Visa Issues

The Trump administration’s immigration policies are beginning to be felt acutely by universities, as international students struggle to get the visas they need to study in the United States. Representatives from 10 schools recently told The Atlantic that they are facing an increasing workload as they try to help students navigate bureaucracy and advocate on their behalf—a sentiment echoed by various college presidents at a dinner with reporters last night. Several of those presidents said some enrolled international students never made it onto campus for the start of the current semester.

After steadily climbing for more than a decade, the number of new international students enrolled at U.S. colleges has declined in recent years. According to survey data collected by the Institute of International Education during the 2016–17 school year, enrollment of these students fell by 3 percent from the previous year. Results from the institute’s 2017–18 survey, the most recent data available, show that it fell again—this time by close to 7 percent.

“I think that both [the Trump administration’s] immigration policy and the messaging of the day are literally turning [international] students away … and making them less inclined to want to study in the United States,” said Brian Rosenberg, the president of Macalester College, a liberal-arts institution in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the dinner. (The dinner, held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., was hosted by the Pennsylvania college Bucknell University and convened the heads of several schools, mostly liberal-arts colleges, to discuss challenges facing higher education.)

MORE STORIES

It’s Getting Harder for International STEM Students to Find Work After Graduation AMY MERRICK RCMP officer looks on as a woman carrying a child waits to cross the U.S.-Canada border. Canada Has Its Own Ways of Keeping Out Unwanted Immigrants TONY KELLER Peruvian citizens applying for U.S. visas wait in line at the American embassy in Lima. The Real Illegal Immigration Crisis Isn’t on the Southern Border KRISHNADEV CALAMUR A major source of this international-student trend appears to be something over which campus administrators have little control. The majority of institutions—83 percent—that participated in the Institute of International Education’s 2017–18 survey cited the delay or denial of student visas as a factor contributing to the decline.

Another president at the dinner, Philip A. Glotzbach of Skidmore College, said that while his liberal-arts school in Saratoga Springs, New York, hasn’t yet experienced a decline in international students, it has had to “work a lot harder” to recruit and retain them. Barbara K. Altmann, the president of Franklin & Marshall College, said that the “latest diplomatic skirmish about visas”—combined with political tensions abroad—has compelled her school, too, to “take extraordinary measures … so international students know [they’re welcome here].” One in five students at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, liberal-arts institution comes from outside the U.S.—most of them from China. So over the summer, Franklin & Marshall “activated a network” of Chinese nationals affiliated with the college, including upperclassmen, asking them to send reassuring messages to incoming students and their families via social media and other platforms.

Read: Should America’s universities stop taking so many international students?

Many of these visa obstacles, according to NAFSA: Association of International Educators, in part trace back to a memorandum issued in 2017 by President Donald Trump that called for the “heightened screening and vetting of applications for visas and other immigration benefits” as well as new or updated requirements for visa holders studying or working at U.S. colleges. For instance, changes implemented by the Trump administration last year made it more difficult for recent graduates with student visas to continue living in the country legally. Since then, international students’ visa issues have created unprecedented workloads for many institutions, whose international-services offices traditionally focused on supporting students with, say, workshops about setting up American bank accounts, English-tutoring services, and basic visa-application guidance.

Before the presidents’ dinner, The Atlantic reached out to numerous schools—including several members of the Ivy League and an assortment of colleges with large populations of non-Americans—to learn what it’s like behind the scenes of their international-students offices. How, if at all, have these offices’ responsibilities evolved in recent years? The 10 that responded described an increase in visa holdups for their international students since the Trump administration issued its directives, and a corresponding increase in work for schools.

“I’ve been in the field for almost 20 years,” Kristy Magner, who oversees Tulane University’s Office of International Students and Scholars, said in an email, “and the amount of immigration changes during the last three years has been exponential.” (Non-Americans make up 6 percent of incoming freshmen this fall at Tulane, a highly selective research university in New Orleans.)

A recent high-profile example of the sort of issues students are facing was the fiasco involving Ismail B. Ajjawi, a Palestinian refugee and incoming freshman at Harvard who, upon landing in Boston late last month, was allegedly detained and interrogated by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officer for hours.

In a letter sent to Harvard’s student newspaper The Crimson shortly after the alleged incident, Ajjawi said that the agent found “people posting political points of view that oppose the U.S. on my friend list” and used this as grounds to cancel his visa. Being detained at an international airport spares a person from being officially deported, the CBP spokesman Michael McCarthy told The Atlantic in a phone interview, meaning Ajjawi could immediately reapply for a visa rather than remain blacklisted from travel to the U.S. for years. Still, once the CBP had deemed him “inadmissible” to the U.S., Ajjawi had to return home and face the daunting task of convincing the U.S. government to change its mind. After a “difficult and anxiety filled 10 days,” Ajjawi managed to make it back to Boston, according to a statement released on behalf of his family.

While the situation Ajjawi allegedly faced is extreme, it offers a peek into the kinds of headaches immigration can cause not only for students but also for colleges like Harvard—which, by sponsoring students’ (and visiting scholars’) visas, are on the hook for ensuring that those visa holders fulfill their paperwork requirements.

The priorities of colleges’ international-services offices shift in response to policy developments—from legislation targeting undocumented immigrants in the mid-1990s to the flood of homeland-security restrictions following 9/11—according to William Stock, an immigration lawyer who works with universities. But he says colleges have never before contended with the kinds of demands with which they’re currently grappling: the growing suite of clerical requirements for the alphabet soup of visas and related authorizations ( F-1s, J-1s, OPTs, H-1Bs) their students and scholars hold; the varying degrees of scrutiny of international visas that can evolve with the changing winds of White House immigration policy and rhetoric.

Several college administrators said students are experiencing lengthier processing times for visa applications in recent years than they have in the past; Josh Taylor, who oversees global programs for NYU, said in an email that in the past couple of school years he has seen more students denied travel in advance of their trips.

Stock, who formerly presided over the American Immigration Lawyers Association, described in a phone interview the Trump administration’s approach to immigration as a “cramped view on the world.” By deterring international students from attending U.S. colleges, the administration’s stance, Stock argued, is hindering schools’ ability to build diverse student bodies—and depleting their budgets. International students, who typically pay full tuition, bring significant revenue to colleges.

Read: The globalization of America’s colleges

In a June 2019 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security, Harvard President Larry Bacow described his institution as a “vibrant, free, and open community that develops talent, produces leaders, and creates new knowledge.” He conveyed his “deep concern over growing uncertainty and anxiety around issues involving international students and scholars,” and pleaded for policy makers to help streamline the student-immigration process on behalf of higher education as a whole.

Some schools are being especially proactive in their efforts to assist international students. In January 2017, just days after Trump’s inauguration, NYU created (in partnership with its law school)—the Immigrant Defense Initiative, which offers “free, confidential advice and representation” to students and staff who may be at risk for deportation.

Other schools, including Columbia University, the California State University system, and George Washington University, have also established free immigration-related legal services for students. In the aftermath of the Trump administration’s executive order in 2017 barring travel for individuals coming from certain countries, 30 colleges and universities signed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn the legislation, taking particular issue with the ban’s focus on six Muslim-majority countries. The executive order, they wrote, would “threaten [their] ability to attract persons not only from the specified countries, but from around the world.”

The advocacy, however, has done little to offset the uncertainty and anxiety that permeates colleges’ international-services offices these days. Much of the feedback The Atlantic received from college administrators was tinged with apprehension—and, a sense of fatigue: These staff members not only help students and scholars navigate paperwork headaches; they also provide those individuals emotional support as they juggle bureaucracy with the everyday stressors of college life.

Reference:  

Joann Ng Hartmann, who oversees NAFSA: Association of International Educators’ work on international-student enrollment, attributed the visa triage taking place on campuses to the Trump administration’s posture of treating all immigrants as “guilty until proven innocent.” The “complicated visa applications and adjudications and misunderstandings,” she argued in an email, almost always trace back to the administration’s new stipulations. A feeling of helplessness can be inevitable, she suggested; a visa process can, as Ajjawi’s case demonstrated, go awry at the very last minute, and “it is very difficult for school officials to assist when problems arise.”

Still, schools hope these challenges are only temporary. “The openness of [the U.S.] higher-education system has traditionally generated enormous good will around the world,” NYU’s Taylor said. “Hopefully we, as a nation, have stored up enough of it to make it through what has clearly been a reputation rough patch.

Read more: migration student visa agent australia

[caiusmajor]

Warsmith Kalkator Part 2: Zerberyn

In the last post, I talked about the adventures of Warsmith Kalkator with Marshal Magneric of the Black Templars in the War of the Beasts.

Now, we're going to talk about Zerberyn. When we meet Zerberyn in Echoes of the Long War, he is the First Captain of the Fists Exemplar. The Fists Exemplar are a First Founding Imperial Fists successor chapter, but you may never have heard of them because they were later wiped out of the historical record for reasons we'll get into below.

The Fists Exemplar were formed of the Imperial Fists that thought the Codex Astartes was a great idea. In addition to this, they have a fine chapter tradition of insubordination, which explains some of Zerberyn's actions.

At any rate. Zerberyn's small fleet of Fists Exemplar, as well as Kalkator's single ship, both escape from the void battle of Vandis, but none of the ships are in good shape. Kalkator offers to bring Zerberyn to a place where they can all repair their ships and then be on their way.

Zerberyn agrees. Unfortunately, the first place Kalkator takes Zerberyn, the world of Prax, has already been colonized by the orks, who are using it to process human captives en masse into food to be distributed to the ork war effort. (War of the Beast orks are more civilized than most; this is part of why they're such a problem.)

So they fight their way through Prax, which was conquered by the Iron Warriors way back in the Great Crusade, along with some human stormtroopers that...unfortunately have to be killed when they discover that the Iron Warriors are traitors and try to kill them. Zerberyn at this point is getting along well enough with the Iron Warriors that he cooperates with this, and even condemns some of his own Fists Exemplar to death to cover up the Iron Warriors' involvement.

Also Kalkator calls Zerberyn "little cousin," which is cute.

Anyway, it turns out that Perturabo had installed a self-destruct button for the planet Prax. So Kalkator hits the self-destruct button, killing a lot of orks and their human food/slaves and hopefully disrupting their war effort. And Zerberyn and Kalkator and their Iron Warriors and Fists Exemplar fly away together.

After Echoes of the Long War, Zerberyn and Kalkator show up briefly every book or so -- half a chapter in The Hunt for Vulkan, a whole chapter each in Watchers in Death, The Last Son of Dorn, and Shadow of Ullanor.

By the The Last Son of Dorn, Zerberyn's Fists Exemplar and Kalkator's Iron Warriors have set up housekeeping together on a moon of Immitis VII. They're sharing supplies, working together on defenses, and even raising neophytes together:

A pair of bulky, muscular youths, perhaps eleven or twelve standard years of age, hovered behind [the Apothecary]. They looked sickly from blood loss and enforced genhancement. [...] Zerberyn could not tell just from looking whether they were Iron Warriors or Fists Exemplar. (The Last Son of Dorn, Chapter 11)

The Fists Exemplar and Iron Warriors continue to be allied and grow gradually closer (and Zerberyn closer and closer to severing ties with the Imperium), but the next really important developments are in the final book of The Beast Arises, The Beheading.

With the War of the Beast over, Zerberyn finally sends word to the other sons of Dorn of where he is and asks them to "come in peace and bearing the markers of truce." (The Beheading, Chapter 7)

Chapter Master Bohemond of the Black Templars arrives instead, determined to kill the Iron Warriors. When the Fists Exemplar won't give up the Iron Warriors, the Black Templars' ship attacks and Marshal Bohemond himself teleports onto Zerberyn's ship and tries to kill Kalkator.

After some fighting and intense discussions of philosophy, Zerberyn kills Marshal Bohemond to protect Kalkator and orders his fleet to fire on the Black Templars' ship.

At this point, some of Zerberyn's own Fists Exemplar subordinates rebel against orders and fighting breaks out between (and on) the Fists Exemplar ships. One ship gets away and returns to the Imperium; more on them later.

Zerberyn himself? He's made his choice.

‘A Fist Exemplar is never mistaken,’ he said. He knelt [before Kalkator]. Behind him, the crew and Space Marines of the Dantalion followed his example.

‘Iron within, iron without,’ he said.

And this is the last we see of Kalkator and Zerberyn! So, as far as I know, they're still living together as Iron Warriors, somewhere in the galaxy.

As for the rest of the Fists Exemplar, the one ship that defied Zerberyn and made it back to the Imperium shows up with 22 surviving warriors. In the meantime, the Chapter Master of the Fists Exemplar, Maximus Thane, had become the Chapter Master of the reconstituted Imperial Fists. (The previous incarnation of the Imperial Fists had all been killed by orks.)

Because of the shame of Zerberyn's betrayal, Thane has the Fists Exemplar chapter dissolved and all records expunged. Surviving Fists Exemplar not in the Iron Warriors were inducted into the new Imperial Fists chapter.

So that is the story of Kalkator and his sons of Dorn! Please do take a look at the original books if you are interested -- there's a lot of details I didn't have time for here.