#necron art references
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So for wholesome reasons only is there any chance you have pictures of Szarekh's model close up from the front and from the back sans-cape? For some reason all the pictures online think I really want to see him on his throne.
I would prefer this reference be used for completely degenerate reasons, but sure! It just so happens I have him assembled but not placed in the throne.
Behold, a twink
Seriously just look at this guy compared to Imotekh
He's a twig!!
Hope this helps 😁
#answering asks#warhammer minis#necrons#Szarekh#the silent king#imotekh the stormlord#look im just gonna say it#Szarekh has no ass#and thats a shame#imotekh on the other hand 😏😏😏#necron art references
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Truthseeker Muthyr of Thokt dynasty for @/NemesorX
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Doing a little art dump again.
I want to sketch out what Sannet looks like to me. And then I did the scene where Szeras shows up at solomnec in the silence and the storm.
The second image is just me goofing off, trying to find the way I like to draw Thaszar. My desire for putting necrons in pretty little dresses can never be quenched.
I had a hard time visualizing the clothes in Ghosts, other fanfic. So I just decided to illustrate them myself.
Below that one is a sketch of Obyron taking a nap on Nep’s chest ass the others are goofing around.
These two are very old and as you can clearly see unfinished. The first one is supposed to be the scene in severed where obyron and Zahndrekh are trying to figure out the riddle puzzle to get in to the core.
And the other one I made when the silence and the storm had a particular chapter released that made me emotional to the point of tears for the first time. Thanks Ghost 🫠👍
First one is just a reference I did for Imothk and the other one is my OC Cachet, they are a bit of a fashion geek. Don’t worry about the other fella up in the corner, they are now long gone, hopefully.
And down here below we have our favorite battle fleet armada necrons. I never got to see their full bodies in the play through of the game I saw, so I made the executive decision to try and imagine what their whole bodies look like on my own. I imagine Amarakun being pretty normal and uninteresting down there. And I decided that Zaa secretly has a little tail under a big skirt. Because as everyone know, all astromancers are cats to some degree. 
#necrons#necron#warhammer 40k#the silence and the storm#imotekh the stormlord#obyron#zahndrekh#trazyn#sannet#senet#cachet#zaa#amarakun#like water upon a garden#fanfic#setekh#art dump
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Okay, your turn! Unhinged Character Bingo for… Zultanekh
Is Zultanekh an oddball? He is. Has he charmed his way into my heart? He has. Could I resist infecting him with all the angst in The Twice-Dead King and scores more? Certainly, I could not.
While one of the more reasonable characters in the duology by far, I do think Zultanekh has a spot in this bingo, since he is very weird. The things which motivated him to stick with Oltyx's voyage have almost nothing to do with necron ways of thought. He himself is quite well-adjusted, and narrowly avoids a full bingo on all fronts - but by canonically managing to collect both parental issues, from the same person no less, he merits a honorable mention. 😂
Also this made me scribble. Read more for Z/D angst. TDK spoilers.
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Truthfully, he was close to giving up on the idea Djoseras could be entertained, at least in a way they could both share. Zultanekh is, therefore, astonished when the fair kynazh expresses an interest in the art of metallurgy - and even more so when he requests a presentation of Ogdobekh alloys, promptly if at all possible.
"At Vorronezh," is the core of Djoseras's short explanation, the prince retaining a stiffness of tone despite his curiosity. "The foundries - the metals you had in store. There was fine work being done there. Suffice to say my brother now bears the best of it in his hand, and good for him, as good as anything can ever be."
He's referring to an Ithakan victory back in the war. It makes Zultanekh smile. Despite the ages past, and of his brother's bitter exile, he can't resist tilting his chin proudly at the thought; that's all Djoseras, graceful, soft-spoken, and carrying a very big stick (metaphorically or otherwise) ready to strike out at any second. "This one will certainly attest to that glaive's quality, Djoseras, and may it serve the nomarch well. But what purpose would a scion of Ithakas seek in our alloys? The keenest blades? The sturdiest bastions?"
Djoseras defies expectations once more. "Precious metals. One tires of the fighting and the flux."
"So the kynazh appreciates his bright impermanent things!" Zultanekh laughs. Djoseras tenses, reflexively, though just shy of a bristle. Seeing this, the Crown Prince spares him further discomfort, resting a warm and powerful hand upon his shoulder. "Well, have you come to the right place? Yes, you have. For who has the right to the coffers of the Ogdobekh, the finest of our gold and the wealth of ages past? Anathrosis, of course, of the Black Star! … And, yes, well, Zultanekh too, by virtue of heirship to his matriarch. Come, and I will show you."
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Nothing about metal is permanent. Many have forgotten this truth, but the Ogdobekh live it still. Living or non-living, a metal is a thing with memory: it is fated to be shaped, and to perhaps hold that form for a long time, but eventually it must be made new again. The concept of memory implies survival. Through countless softenings and forgings it carries on slivers of what it used to be, no one fold nor join identical to one that came before it. A metal's past directly informs its future behaviour. Zultanekh would not call this trait heka - no form of silver can defy the laws of silverbeing to become a gold, nor can copper become silver, no matter how much one alters their proportions - but he and his metallurgists consider it the metal's will, and they have never been let down by observing it wherever they could.
Precious metals have it the strongest. By virtue of their utility they live closest to their wearer, and whatever they go through the metals also go through: a careful polish, the violence of the theft, excoriated shavings. The wisps of gold woven into Djoseras's necrodermis are a soft and holy thing, whereas the gold that covers his sire is most foul, the shell as ugly and tortured as the being encased within it. No jeweler worth his deben in buillons would ever go near it, unless Unnas were to endure the star gods' furnaces a second time - and since no one has nor should have to do that, the history of Unnas's gold might as well stop there altogether. Zultanekh is careful to say absolutely none of this as he takes Djoseras through the display.
"Electrum - spangold - the greatest deposit of metagold currently known outside of the solar cults," he says as he takes up two alloys, comparing them side by side. "Experiments with strangesteel. Yet so far nothing short of pure metagold seems to recreate living light, or so we call the insidious tricks of the Nephrekh." He puts them down again, though not before glancing meaningfully at the other. "I'd heard your metagold was sacrificed to Antikef's star, all those millions of years ago. I dare say it's a shame, Djoseras; I would have liked to call upon you for assistance."
Djoseras considers this information silently. Sadly the experiments will have to wait, for it is not gold which has captivated the kynazh's oculars tonight; no, it's silver he wants to see, his lithe body glittering like it as he contemplates its pure form. "Such a fussy thing." He comments, and Zultanekh catches not a small hint of self-deprecation. Djoseras tends to be so careful with his speech (the blandness of it drives the Ogdobekh prince mad sometimes), and he had not thought his vocal acutators were capable of such bitterness. "Ever since the flames of biotransference I have been loyal only to this vermeil. It is a mirror no one could bear. So clear, and yet so easily damaged, and the marks will never come out."
He looks up then, right into Zultanekh's oculars. "Have you an alloy for that?"
All of a sudden Zultanekh desires, painfully, to catch his breath.
"All the ones you'd already know."
In truth, silver is not favoured among the Ogdobekh. They like it fine, it's just that it's best off used as it is. The traits that make silver desirable are quickly lost in alloys - gold drowns it out entirely, lesser metals cut its value, whilst strangesteel lends it a sharp iridescent hue that has nothing to do with silver at all - it is a metal that dies, in other words, if it is anything other than itself. And the Ogdobekh so hate to murder. So does Zultanekh, standing beside the finest silver in all of Ithakas, privy to the cracks that lie underneath. For the silver is Ithakas and Ithakas is the silver. And Djoseras is silver. He mirrors equally all the things that surround him, and when Zultanekh stands close he holds all of Zultanekh upon his surface. But he is not visible unless Zultanekh steps away, the ruddy hue vanishing from his calmwater features, alone and exquisite in the ruins of his city. A lake he can never explore, droplets he can never hold.
He could bring the whole galaxy to its knees and Djoseras will never be his.
"You are right, of course. True silver is soft, too delicate to do much with."
But Zultanekh knows better than to bring any of this up, and when he finally finds the words for his vocal emitter, he keeps them objective and measured. Leaning down beside Djoseras, he chooses an alloy sample that looks the least like an alloy, tracing around the orb with a fingertip. "There are limits to what we can mix it with, but it does need a trace of something else to endure. And our ancestors knew, as you and I do, that the strongest silvers are braced with copper." (Was that a twitch from the kynazh? Zultanekh hopes it was. It is so much more interesting than his daytime stillness.) "Look at this: nine parts silver, one part copper, the best our jewelers will work with. But where you could avoid the physical damage, tarnish would follow, and some take that poorly. Fussy, as you say."
Djoseras buzzes quietly in irritation. For the millionth time he considers the other's copperclad attire. "You are so changeable."
"But present." Zultanekh counters. Djoseras might be bothered by the effort the Ogdobekh must put into preening themselves, but he does not feel it to be wasteful, nor would he apologize for what is natural. "Stains are a part of life, Djoseras."
Djoseras's interstitial link slides shut. It will not open again until they leave this chamber, or else the kynazh this planet, and Zultanekh tries to accept it for what it is. Zultanekh is the Crown Prince. Zultanekh is not a petulant child, he reminds himself, noting for the millionth time that it's nothing personal. It's just Djoseras is fragile, iron-brittle beneath his nobility, and he will break if made to bend too far. Zultanekh need not be the hammer. Anyone could do it, the kynazh's own brother has done it, and it will happen again. He could be welded back together, but since metals have a memory, he will never be the same - and there is nothing Zultanekh fears more than to lose Djoseras as he is now, beautiful and so proud, dying like his dynasty around him. Zultanekh is not a victim of melancholy, nor an indecisive wreck.
What Zultanekh is, however, is sorry. Slowly his hand reaches for the other's, pauses halfway, makes do with a comforting touch on the shoulder. Their oculars still fixed upon the sample alloy.
"This one would brace you well," he whispers, "if you'd like."
Probably for the best, he thinks, that neither of them are versed in linguistical ambiguities.
#warhammer 40k#the twice dead king#necron#necrons#zultanekh#djoseras#oltyx#drabble#we live on archipelagos#fanfiction#unhinged character bingo#i am throwing my vote in for 'zultanekh and djoseras evolved into star crossed lovers and they left many many things unsaid'#and it is the pursuit of that memory that moves zultanekh as much as his loyalty#ugh i am headcanoning and i am INSANE
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Sleep Token as Various Warhammer 40k Factions
Why? Because I'm going Through It right now and because they're British it just seems right.
Vessel: Dark Angels are what immediately sprang to mind for me. The dark robes, the secretiveness, the guilt complex, the association with spooky woods and big monsters, etc. Not to mention we've seen Vessel make a lot of literary references in his lyrics, and the fact that the Dark Angels primarch was named after Lionel Johnson the poet, who wrote about his struggles with depression and desire during a time where homosexuality was persecuted...it all kinda comes together beautifully doesn't it?
My other picks were the Raven Guard (superdepression and secretiveness) and the Blood Angels (guilt, biting). Possibly Dark Kraken (duh).
iii: Orks would be the most easy pick because let's be real we can all probably imagine iii talking about gubbinz. But beyond that, orks are way smarter than people give them credit for, they like checkerboard, they can make anything work, and they're FUN. They're here to have a good time and are pretty much the only faction in the WH40K universe that are having a blast.
Other picks: World Eaters (so much red, so much yelling. "BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD, I SWEAR TO KHORNE YOU WILL ALL CLAP IN TIME OR SO HELP ME-")
IV: Aeldari. They're ancient, elegant, and mysterious. They have a tragic background all their own, but that doesn't mean they don't also know how to beat someone's ass when it comes down to it. After all, if they didn't know how to survive, they wouldn't still be here. They have an appreciation for art, and that's something I feel IV would appreciate, especially with seeing his guitars.
Other picks: EMPERORS CHILDREN, particularly the Noise Marines. "This quiet offends Slaanesh!", covered in spikes, all about the sensations. Makes sense doesn't it?
iii: Necrons. I'm not just saying it because Necrons are my chosen faction but because they're thoughtful, strategically minded, and need something to hyperfocus on in order to keep their minds from failing. Also they took the longest nap in the history of naps, clocking in at approximately 60 million years. And a lot of them ARE STILL SLEEPING.
Other picks: Thousand Sons: Nothing Lasts Forever, and change is constant. Sometimes the best way to deal with it is to become a space wizard. Adeptus Custodes: They're the best at being the best at being the best of the best. The Emperor's golden boys.
Honestly there's so many factions though in WH40K, it's a massively expansive universe and you're never really done learning about it, so feel free to tell me your takes. Just yanno, be nice about it.
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Game References Part 2
I would like to add some more references from other games. These all have certain elements/features or mechanics that I love and would like to reference when coming up with my own idea
Endless Space 2 (faction lore, 4x elements, music)
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Endless space 2 is one of my favourite 4x turn based strategy game's. One of the main reasons for this is the interesting factions and their unique gameplay mechanics. For example, one of the factions is called "Horatio" which is all about a an exceedingly rich eccentric trillionaire who proclaimed himself emperor and started cloning himself, until he built an army of clones which he aims to conquer the galaxy with "beatifying" it by creating more Horatio. The faction has a unique mechanic of splicing other alien species DNA into their own for bonuses.
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Another interesting faction are the Cravers, which eat through the planets they occupy and enslave their species giving large production bonuses but eventually the planet is devoured granting very few bonuses.
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Lastly, another faction I like is the Umbral Choir which is a stealth based faction, which has it's own unique gameplay mechanics as well, focused on stealth and plays totally differently from the other factions. One of these mechanics is that instead of settling on planets, they settle on hidden sanctuaries around the planet. Another faction may conquer said planet without seeing that there exists a sanctuary on it and using their resources.
These diverse ideas are great for my RTS game, which should also have factions with interesting lore that play differently from each other and have their own unique mechanics.
There are a few other elements of Endless Space 2 that may prove useful as well. Such as the resource system (having control of certain resources enables you to build things you otherwise would not be able to). Another cool element of this game is the soundtrack, each faction has their own unique theme and this gives the game a very nice touch of polish. It also makes each faction more immersive and unique adding to the user-experience.
Dawn of war 40k (campaign), map capture points, factions
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The Warhammer universe has always been one of my favourites. Everything from the lore/factions to the concept art is fantastic. Within this universe there is an RTS series called Warhammer 40k Dawn of War, which had a few expansion packs come out (Dark crusade being my favourite one).
One of the amazing features of this expansion was the campaign. Instead of having some sort of mission list, the player picks a faction and then enters a large turn based map with territories to attack. Depending on which territories the player holds, he/she will attain certain bonuses to his army. The goal is to capture the whole map and defeat the other factions. Attacking a factions home-territory is a unique and difficult battle, similar to a boss battle in other games.
Furthermore, the following video by Stardock Games talks about this style of campaign in RTS games and explains why they're so compelling:
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As well as this, I think the way the skirmish games work also provides good reference for my own. Each map is divided into zones and to take over a zone you have to capture a capture point (flag) in the middle. You can then build an outpost there with turrets to further fortify and defend that zone. This mechanic could be one that I may also incorporate into my own game.
The last element of this game that provides important reference are the factions. The Warhammer universe has very interesting and unique factions that many video games and movies take reference from. For example, there is a faction called the Necrons which are ancient machines that can come back to life when killed and their building designs are inspired by ancient Egyptian megalithic structures.
Majesty 2 (Mechanics)
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Majesty 2 is another game I would like to use for reference for one very special reason. In this game you don't actually control your units, rather you act as a governor and are only in control of building buildings. "Heroes" then go to these buildings to buy potions (which you get money from) and so on. To then utilise these heroes in order to do something, you set a quest up for them to "slay this monster" or "scout this area of the map". Some heroes who are looking for adventure or riches will accept this quest and then progress through it.
I find this mechanic very unique, and perhaps one of my factions could play this way. It would certainly make my game stand out more from the crowd.
References
Dead Sun. (2023). Endless Lore: Who are the Horatio? (Humans Pt.2) [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1TEv0II9z4 [Accessed 09th April 2024]
Endless Space 2. (2017). Amplitude Studios. Paris, France: Sega.
Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. (2009). 1C:Ino-Co. Moscow, Russia: Paradox Interactive.
Pangolin Advisor. (2019). Endless Space 2 Penumbra - Umbral Choir guide [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMu5WXMWC2k [Accessed 09th April 2024]
Stardock Games. (2020). Meta Map Campaigns | Strategy Game Visions Episode 8 [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=11diZ63ES_g [Accessed 09th April 2024]
ThunderPsyker. (2016). Retrospective Review - Dawn of War: Dark Crusade [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKXxc7uVDLc [Accessed 09th April 2024]
Troidy Gaming. (2017). Majesty 2 Review - ICYMI [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsujywRapx0 [Accessed 09th April 2024]
Waervyn's World. (2018). Endless Space 2 - Introduction to Cravers [Online Video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIGS5T9vT_E [Accessed 09th April 2024]
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Dark Crusade. (2006). Relic Entertainment. Vancouver, Canada: THQ.
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Excerpt from the Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus artbook. A breakdown of Necron model parts and ingame 3d models. All credit to Bulwark Studios.
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alright. here, finished, are some thoughts on necrontyr. this guy here isn’t anyone important but he would be a surprisingly healthy necrontyr, for reference — other necrontyr, especially ones that would go on on to become major players in the 40k era, looked differently (and probably balder)!
transcript + further notes under the cut
okay so on the left side, top to bottom:
thick, short necks (hidden by feathers). this i thought about, because between my reconstruction of a necron skeleton, and how in the singular canon bit where necrontyr are depicted (the silent king trailer), it corroborates that their necks weren’t exactly the most swan-like.
feathers. hardly visible given their similarity in tone to their skin (which, considering their bodies aren’t evenly covered, felt realistic), but in the black and white sketch you can see ‘em!
no nips =( (yet). i’m unsure as to how necrontyr reproduced. i dunno if they even were mammals. thus, possibly no nipples.
and then right side, top to bottom:
bird inspo., combined with pharaoh headpiece shape. pretty self explanatory, feathers creating a mane with a shape inspired by ancient egyptian pharaoh’s headpieces, you know ‘em and you love ‘em.
fake metal bears, á la pharaoh, common. i figured it was probably a fashion or common piece of jewelry that stuck, lol
missing limbs common, either born without or tumorous (?) and removed later. also pretty self explanatory: see all the talk we’ve been having recently about necrontyr DNA, how it was probably kind of like a jenga tower, thus i figure it’d be common for necrontyr to either be born without limbs or lose them. i also think surgical scars would be common, taking out organs and so on, and while prosthetics would make sense, i’m a little bit reluctant to hand them out, given the necrontyr’s eventual fate. plus, i figure necrontyr society was fairly accomodating to those with physical disabilities, considering that according to these headcanons they would be a majority.
and some further notes
as noted before, this guy here would be a pretty healthy necrontyr. he’s still got all of his feathers, has no major visible scars (that we can see), and is only missing an arm (that we can see). other necrontyr would be missing their feathers partially or wholly, look gaunter and sicker, be missing limbs, have visible scars, etc. he isn’t very swole, though, which other necrontyr plenty were!
(szarekh’s gonna have an undercut!!)
i figure necrontyr had very dark skin given... sun being a deadly lazer and all. also, this skintone is referenced off a real human person!
the eyes and feathers could come in a variety of colours, i just picked green because... well... yeah.
sharp pupils and floofy triangular feathered ears because i caaaaan. but actually yeah, the irises are larger than humans’! i took inspo from how elder scrolls online renders mer eyes, actually :v and yes, the sclerae is very dark. unsure if straight up black, but very dark.
(i do owe the triangular ears idea to @/yestheantichrist go check them out!! here and here is the art theyve shown me!!)
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|| On Eidolons ||
So, here’s a little detail about IX which is both interesting and easy to miss.
Eidolons ( summons ) are born of a planet’s crystal. Created from the memories stored within, they serve to protect that planet at the whim of the summoner who has called them.
But what the game never directly tells you is that not all of the Eidolons you can summon are from Gaia’s crystal. There are Terran Eidolons thrown in the mix! It makes sense-- the two planets are merged at this point. The Terran summons had to go somewhere, right?
So which ones are likely to be from Terra?
The first clue to this is found in Madain Sari. on the Eidolon Wall. The wall is decorated with images of the following summonable Eidolons:
Alexander
Atomos
Bahamut
Carbuncle
Fenrir
Ifrit
Leviathan
Odin
Phoenix
Ramuh
Shiva
Two are missing.
The first is Ark. So how do we know it’s a Terran Eidolon? Setting aside the fact that we encounter it as a boss fight in Oeilvert-- essentially a Terran museum where we can read records about the Terran’s attempts to make a very cool laser shooting airship of death-- the concept art just flat out tells us.
The other is Madeen.
Madeen is a clever one. Given how you obtain it in the game, it’s less obvious that it’s a Terran eidolon. So what evidence is there?
Well, it’s attack is named Terra Homing, for one. It’s element is Holy, so we can count out this referring to earth.
For another? And-- Okay, this isn’t really evidence per-say, but it’s cute so I’m allowed to point it out here. The whole Eidolon is a loose homage to Final Fantasy 6. Consider; Maduin. Moogles... Terra. Hahaha.
Are there more Terran Eidolons? Maybe... Ozma is worth the argument since it’s sort of implied it’s an Eidolon.. thing... What about the Invincible? It’s a Terran ship just like Ark, and seems to be summonable/controllable even when the wielder is outside the ship. What the hell are Zorn & Thorn / Meltigemini?? What about the 4 Guardians? Is Necron an Eidolon? It’s not impossible!
But that’s all just a theory. A gaaaayme theory.
Thanks for watching.
#|| Headcanons ||#long post#I wanted to ramble about this so i did#it is done#personally I totally believe that ozma is some kind of distorted terran eidolon thing#because thats cool#eidolons#final fantasy ix#ffix#final fantasy 9#ff9#game theory
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Halloween art Leman russ in a wulfen form would be awesome
37/38 or i it 38/38? I lost count. I promise I didn’t forget your request bud. So here he is in his hairy glory! I had to reference him from actual werewolf art instead of the canon more furry looking Wulfen.
MORE HALLOWEEN ART:
Adeptas Sororitas Teresa as an Archangel
,Shadow Captain Branwen as Snow White
Space Wolf Vali as a Garden Gnome
Maribella Agosti-Sicarius as a Circus Clown
Morathi as Miss Marvel
Apothecary Khyron as a hippie
Feraseos as The Little Mermaid
Magnus the Red as a Pirate Captain!
Fall Barros as a Cowboy
Khad Blackbyrne as Super Mario
Katharena as Princess Peach
Tempestor Sharaf Madzhab as a harlequin
Necron Overlord Velathain as Superman
Inquisitor Rhiannon as Princess Leia
Ferrus Manus as Elvis Presley
Azarel as a Mummy
Kelari Cuddles as a Bulbasaur
Lolth the Spider Queen as Ursula from the Little Mermaid
Kana Morta as Tinkerbell
Farseer Saerahlyn as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz
Ysrill as a Zombie
Ulfric Seiorfang as Han Solo
Lorgar Aurelian as Imhotep of The Mummy
Night Lord Kalle as Robin
Artemis Prima as The Chiquita Banana Lady
Catachan John Geist as Mr. Clean
Primaris Templar Gareth as Freddy Krueger
Lazarath as Samurai Jack
Minerva Guilliman as Alice in Wonderland
Pirate Prince Vince as Freddie Mercury
Amaukwor as Thor, God of Thunder
Ysrill as Link
Saint Celestine as Fuuko
Archon Skourna as Catwoman
Happy Halloween from Konrad Curze and his Pumpkin Fuuko
Leman Russ as a Furry Thundercat or something that isn’t a Wulfen
Sgt. Bourne as A Scarecrow
Lin Manuel Miranda as Jack Skellington
#vikinggamerbeast#Halloween Art#Halloween 2019#Mun Art#Im tyring#WIP forever#w40k#w30k#OC#Fanart#I'm trying#I want to be better#Warhammer 40k#Warhammer 30k#leman russ the werewolf#leman russ
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Dark Eldar - History and Events
"We are the lords of despair, masters of terror. Dread and agony are our meat and wine, and they are plentiful indeed!"— Attributed to Asdrubael Vect
The Dark Eldar, referred to as the Eldarith Ynneas, or, in more recent days, as the Drukhari in the Eldar Lexicon, are the forsaken and corrupt kindred of the Eldar, an ancient and highly advanced alien race of fey humanoids. Their armies, like their Eldar counterparts, usually have the advantages of mobility and advanced technology, though they are often lacking in resilience and numbers. The Dark Eldar revel in piracy, enslavement and torture, and are sadistic in the extreme. Dark Eldar armies make use of various anti-gravity skimmers such as Raiders and Ravagers to launch high speed attacks. They strike with little or no warning, using an inter-dimensional labyrinth known as the Webway to traverse the galaxy safely and far more quickly than most advanced races are able to with their Warp jumps. The Dark Eldar are unique amongst the intelligent races of the Milky Way Galaxy because they do not live on a settled world or worlds, but rather the bulk of their population is concentrated in one foul city-state -- the Dark City of Commorragh -- that lies within the "ordered" Immaterium of the Eldar Webway. The Dark Eldar are mainly pirates and slavers who prey on targets across the galaxy to feed their unholy appetites for other sentient beings' souls, a terrible desire called the Thirst, though they are sometimes used as mercenaries by other species.
The Dark Eldar are the living embodiment of all that is wanton and cruel in the Eldar character. Highly intelligent and devious to the point of obsession, these piratical people revel in the physical and emotional pain of others, for feeding upon the psychic residue of suffering is the only way they can stave off the slow consumption by the Chaos God Slaanesh of their own souls. The Dark Eldar, particularly their warrior castes, are tall, lithe, white-skinned humanoids. Their alabaster skin is death-like in its pallor, for there is no true life-giving sun within their dark realm to provide colour. Their athletic bodies are defined by whipcord muscle, shaped and enhanced until they are physically stronger on average than their Craftworld Eldar counterparts, as the Dark Eldar prize physical and martial prowess highly. Yet for all their physical beauty, the Dark Eldar are still repugnant monsters. When viewed with the witch-sight of a psyker, the Dark Eldar's black souls are revealed, for they eternally thirst only for the anguish and torment of other thinking beings in order to fill their own infinite emptiness. Unlike their Craftworld Eldar cousins, the Dark Eldar do not integrate their still powerful latent psychic abilities into their culture, and indeed have a great disdain for psykers of any kind. This is because for the Dark Eldar, the use of psychic abilities would only further draw the attention of She Who Thirsts (Slaanesh) upon them, and their souls are already at risk enough of being devoured by the Prince of Chaos.
History
The Dark Eldar are black-hearted reavers to whom the galaxy and all of its peoples are but cattle to be enslaved at will. These alien pirates strike hard and fast from the shadows of the Webway, vanishing again before the foe can fight back. The Dark Eldar are a twisted reflection of their Craftworld kin. They dwell in the strange realm known as the Webway, inhabiting Commorragh -- a cyclopean inter-dimensional metropolis rightly feared as the Dark City. The Dark Eldar feed on negative emotion, dedicating themselves to a non-stop war with realspace in which they strive to inflict as much pain and misery as they possibly can. Forced through a dark quirk of fate to abandon their once potent psychic abilities, the Dark Eldar instead epitomize physical excellence. Their athleticism and speed are unmatched, except perhaps by their towering arrogance. Add to this their lethal, arcane science, and the Dark Eldar are amongst the greatest of threats in an already deadly galaxy.
Dark Origins
Ten thousand Terran years ago, amid the apocalyptic screams of a newborn god, the mighty Eldar Empire fell to ruin. Yet the architects of this catastrophe were spared the worst of its wrath, hidden deep within the bounds of the Webway. They lurk there still, a race of unrepentant monsters damned to suffer an eternal thirst for the pain of others. The Dark Eldar have fallen from true grace in the most profound of ways. Their roots as a culture lie at the very height of ancient Eldar society, when theirs was perhaps the most highly advanced species in the Milky Way Galaxy. The Eldar once boasted mastery over an interstellar civilization that was the greatest seen in the galaxy since that of the Old Ones. The various cultures of the Eldar that exist today in the 41st Millennium are only shadows of the glory of that ancient Eldar empire. The true origins of those who now call themselves the Dark Eldar can be found in hidden enclaves amidst the atrocity and mayhem of the terrible time of the Fall of the Eldar, the great cataclysm that nearly destroyed the entire Eldar race. It was an event so terrible that not only did it kill trillions of Eldar, but it breached the dimensional barrier between realspace and the Warp, and gave birth to the Chaos God Slaanesh.
The ancient Eldar had perfected their science and technology to such an extent that they could remake planets and quench the light of the very stars at a whim. The need for labor or hard work in Eldar society became nothing but a dim memory of a difficult past. The Eldar, arrogant in the belief that they were now the true masters of their destiny, spent more and more of their time in esoteric pursuits and entertainments intended to escape the ennui that set in over the course of their centuries-long lives of ease and comfort. The Eldar mind and psyche is a thing of duality: it can experience zeniths of bliss and nadirs of suffering far more keenly than that of the other intelligent starfaring races of the galaxy, including Mankind. The Eldar were capable of becoming just as irredeemably corrupt as they were of transcending their flaws and touching the divine. With so much power at their hands, the core worlds of the Eldar Empire -- once the height of civilization in the known universe -- became centered solely on the pursuit of individual fulfillment and self-gratification.
To understand the reasons for the Fall, it is necessary to know something of the Eldar mind and soul. An Eldar's mind is incredibly complex. Their senses are extremely sharp, able to perceive incredible levels of detail. Their emotions can be so strong that a human’s are merely pale shadows by comparison. They are extremely intelligent; their thought processes are much faster than a human’s. All of this means that an Eldar experiences the universe and all its sensations to a greatly heightened degree compared to a human. Similarly, an Eldar's soul is much brighter in the Warp than those of "lesser" sentients like humans who do not possess such potent psychic abilities. Eldar are able to affect the nether-realm of the Warp much more than most other intelligent races. Every Eldar is a latent psychic and has the ability to become a very powerful psyker with training. It is the psychic strength of the Eldar's souls that was one of the primary causes of their downfall.
Before the Fall, during humanity's Dark Age of Technology, the Eldar had an immense galaxy-spanning empire comprising millions of worlds, larger and more powerful than even the Imperium of Man at the height of its power. The Eldar lived in relative peace -- barbarian races such as the Orks were kept at easily manageable numbers and never had the strength to threaten the might of the Eldar Empire. The humans were not yet virulently xenophobic and did not have a large interstellar domain, and the Tyranid Hive Fleets remained unknown. The C'tan and Necrons, the ancient foes of the Eldar, had been defeated long before and still remained dormant, in the midst of their Great Sleep.
Life on the Eldar worlds was idyllic, with fantastically sophisticated machines that took care of all the labor and manufacturing required to keep an advanced society functioning, leaving the Eldar free to indulge in other, more aesthetic pursuits. With all menial work taken care of for them, the Eldar became indolent and decadent. They began to explore more deeply the arts of pleasure, delving ever deeper into hedonism. This descent into decadence spanned millennia. Tradition and order disintegrated as the Eldar pursued the limits of the pursuit of pleasure. Sects called Pleasure Cults were formed, dedicated to achieving the highest levels of hedonistic sensation, and their ceremonies and practices became ever more wild, eventually devolving into violence against one another and even the ritual sacrifice of their own kind. Some Eldar hated what their race had become and left the Eldar homeworlds for the unexplored and virgin Maiden Worlds, or left on the newly-constructed Craftworlds, leaving the Pleasure Cults to their madness.
Among the pleasure-seekers and the interminably curious of the Eldar were those whose pursuit of excess became ever more extreme. These included a great proportion of the aristocracy of ancient Eldar society, who possessed the wealth and time to truly explore the meanings of decadence. One by one, the leaders of the Pleasure Cults that were becoming the centerpiece of Eldar society became obsessed with their own power. They relocated their headquarters to the Labyrinthine Dimension known as the Eldar Webway, for so great was their political influence that they could command the construction of entire extra-dimensional sub-realms just for themselves. Unseen, these Pleasure Cult lords continued to grow in power and influence, initiating more and more of the ancient Eldar population into their strange and shadowy creeds of decadence.
The Eldar are the most psychically gifted of all sentient beings in the galaxy and as the corruption gradually seduced them, the echoes of their ecstasy and agony began to ripple through time and space. In the parallel dimension of the Immaterium, the Warp, the reflections of these intense experiences began to coalesce, as the shifting tides of the chaotic Empyrean can take form around the raw emotions emitted by the sentient beings of the material universe and attract even more of such similar psychic energies to themselves. The constant stream of individual selfishness and indulgence pouring into the Warp from the Eldar empire nourished and empowered that which lay within -- a nascent God of pleasure and pain, content to wait and to grow.
As the Eldar Empire sank into corruption and decadence, brother turned against brother in pursuit of ever more extreme and darker pleasures. Some of the wiser Eldar, however, foresaw the disaster that was approaching their society and fled from the Eldar core worlds to safety. The first of these were the Exodites, who chose to establish a network of Eldar planetary colonies known as the Maiden Worlds far from the blighted heart of the empire. Many of these Exodite colonies still exist in the galaxy, their cultures living in a symbiotic relationship with the world-spirits of the planets they call home and protect. Among the last Eldar to escape from the empire's core before the Fall were the ancestors of the present day's Craftworld Eldar. As their society collapsed into civilisation-wide insanity, these Eldar recoiled in horror from what they were becoming. Realising that they stood upon the brink of destruction, they bent their considerable resources to the construction of the massive Craftworlds, the graceful spaceborne cities that were the size of small moons. The Eldar of the Craftworlds retreated into asceticism and spiritual introspection, preserving what they could of their ancient ways and culture before the time of the Pleasure Cults. They left the core worlds of the Eldar Empire behind for the dubious safety of deep space, to the laughter and contempt of those who remained behind. Some even managed to flee far enough to escape the terrible destruction of the Fall.
The Eldar are exceptionally psychically gifted as a race, and as they wallowed ever deeper into corruption, echoes of both agony and ecstasy began to ripple through time and space. In the parallel dimension of the Warp, the reflections of these intense experiences began to coalesce, for the shifting tides of the Empyrean can take form around raw emotions, feeding on them and growing strong, even sentient. The constant stream of indulgence and depravity pouring from the Eldar empire was as unstoppable as a tide. It nourished and empowered that which crystallized at its center -- a nascent god of excess, content at first simply to wait, and to grow. The long millennia of Eldar hedonism had made a massive impact in the psychic realm of Chaos. Within the Warp the decadent Eldar civilisation was giving shape to a new Power of Chaos, which grew and grew over thousands of Terran years, getting stronger and more defined until suddenly it sparked into a malevolent intelligence -- a shatteringly huge and malign being with an immense and bottomless thirst for Eldar souls. This was the birth of the Chaos God Slaanesh, the Dark Prince of Pleasure, better known as "She Who Thirsts" to the Eldar, Slaanesh as inherently female.
The Fall of the Eldar
This process lasted for thousands of years, corresponding to the historical era that was Mankind's Dark Age of Technology, although when Slaanesh finally came into being the results within the material universe were apocalyptic and sudden. As depravity riddled every aspect of Eldar society, the Pleasure Cults sought ever more violent thrills. Before long the streets of Eldar cities ran with their blood. The elegant architecture of their palaces became battlegrounds as the Eldar preyed upon each other, reveling in the cruelest of crimes. Their insanity and tainted passions poured into the Warp until it finally achieved critical mass. With an apocalyptic bellow that tore the heart out of the Eldar empire, a new Chaos God was born, Slaanesh the Dark Prince of Excess. An almighty psychic shockwave scythed across the galaxy, destroying countless billions of Eldar souls as Slaanesh's birth cries echoed through the material realm. The souls of almost every Eldar were stripped from them in an instant and devoured by the new-born Chaos God in a cataclysm of pain and terror. There were few survivors. Most were driven mad, their minds trapped half in the real world and half in the swirling insanity of the Warp. A great Warp rift was created in the material universe at the site of what had once been the epicenter of the Eldar civilization, encompassing almost the entire Eldar empire and creating the Eye of Terror, thus marking the dawn of the era known to humanity as the Age of Strife. World after Eldar world had fallen into the Warp, to later be known as the Crone Worlds. Slaanesh gorged itself upon the Eldar's horror and despair. Unstoppable in its ascendancy, the new God consumed the ancient deities of the Eldar empire and scattered their psychic remains to the far corners of the Empyrean.
The Eldar civilisation was gone. All that was left of the Eldar race were the Exodites of the farthest-flung Maiden Worlds, the Craftworld Eldar who had traveled far enough to escape the aftershock of destruction caused by Slaanesh's birth and the formation of the Eye of Terror, and those adherents of the Pleasure Cults who were hidden in the sub-realms of the Webway. Much of the Webway was shattered into ruin by the Fall of the Eldar, but unlike the Craftword Eldar who fled the catastrophe in realspace, those Eldar who had built their own jealously-guarded empires in the Webway remained physically unaffected by Slaanesh's birth. The echoes of the new God's apotheosis still resounded within them, but unlike their kin in realspace they had escaped destruction. In their arrogance, they did not end their quest for excess and decadent pleasure, not even for a momentary respite following the death of their empire. Repentance and atonement were meaningless concepts for a people that no longer acknowledge any limits on their actions, regardless of the consequences.
The change that was wrought upon those Eldar sealed within the Webway was far more subtle. Rather than having their psychic essences, their souls, consumed in one great draught by Slaanesh, their souls slowly drained away into the Warp, taken over time by She Who Thirsts. The Eldar hate and fear Slaanesh above all other things, for she was given life by their actions and yet she waits hungrily to claim each and every one of them, now or later. Where the Eldar of the Craftworlds learned to deny Slaanesh's hold upon them by using the mystical Spirit Stones, the Infinity Circuits and the philosophies of the Eldar Paths to safeguard their souls from consumption by She Who Thirsts, the Eldar of the Webway became exceptionally good at ensuring that other beings suffered in their place. As long as they steeped themselves in the most evil and savagely decadent acts, the Eldar of the Webway found that the curse of Slaanesh upon their race could be avoided. The agony of others nourished their diminished souls and kept them vital and strong, filling their spare frames with unnaturally robust energies. Assuming that they could feed regularly enough upon the miseries of other intelligent beings, the Eldar of the Webway became psychically immune to the passage of time. So it was that the Dark Eldar were born, a race of sadistic murderers and torturers who feed upon the suffering of others in order to prevent the slow death of their own immortal souls. Ten thousand standard years later, in the 41st Millennium of Mankind, Slaanesh's Thirst consumes them still. There truly is no escape, for the Dark Eldar have only exchanged a horrible but quick death for an eternity of infernal hunger and the infinite emptiness wrought by self-absorption.
The Dark City
Commorragh was originally the greatest of the Webway port-cities, impossibly vast and able to transport a fleet to any of the most vital planets of the Eldar Empire by virtue of its many portals. Because of the access it granted to the far-flung corners of realspace, this mighty metropolis was reckoned to be the most important location in the entire Webway. It was too valuable to the Eldar as a whole to belong to any single aspect of their empire, so it existed outside the jurisdiction of the great Eldar councils of that time. Precisely because of its autonomy, the Webway city-port quickly became a magnet for those that wished their deeds to remain hidden from prying eyes. The realm of Commorragh expanded unstoppably as wealth flowed across its borders. It spread outward into the void, consuming other Webway port-cities, private estates and subrealms with each new expansion. Commorragh grew ever larger and more impressive as it fed on their plundered resources. Unseen, the dilettante lords who ruled Commorragh's spires and dens of vice grew in status alongside their adoptive city, initiating more and more of the Eldar into their shadowy creeds.
Deep in the Webway after the Fall, the groups of Pleasure Cult survivors came together and laid the foundations of the vast new sub-realm that they named Commorragh, the Dark City, which was built on the foundation of the ancient Eldar port-city within the Webway of the same name that had lain outside the jurisdiction of all the Eldar authorities of their lost empire. As more and more Eldar survivors from other sub-realms in the Webway began to arrive, they soon added their own regions to the new realm, slowly making it even larger and more heavily populated, until it became what it is today -- a vast domain, an infernal city of suffering and death. To this day, the Dark Eldar raid and pillage the galaxy at large from their hidden sub-realms in the Webway, sowing as much misery and destruction as possible and stealing away millions of captive slaves to their lairs within the Dark City to be exploited for their own horrible ends. They are experts in the techniques of torture as well as mental and physical degradation, as the longer a Dark Eldar can drag out the torture of a slave the more psychic nourishment he can take from him or her. A Dark Eldar who has recently fed upon the suffering of others shines with a cold and startling aura of power, his physical form restored to beautiful, youthful perfection even as his soul rots within its pristine shell. A Dark Eldar who is not allowed to partake of such energies for long enough will become a physical shadow of his former beauty, desperately hunting for a taste of misery to stave off the gnawing thirst in the depths of his own withered soul.
The Satellite Realms
If a traveler were somehow to breach Commorragh's runic wards, they would first bear witness to the Dark City's tributary realms shimmering and distorting around it. One minute these vassal domains glimmer in the distance, the next they loom so close that their palaces and minarets can be seen by the naked eye. To venture unheralded past these satellite realms is to invite destruction -- many large and territorial Kabals of Dark Eldar reside within their twisted geometries, deadly pirate bands of pitiless warriors who live only to inflict pain on others, and will suffer no intrusion on their realms. Worse things lurk in their crooked shadows, or swoop swiftly and silently through the air above in their never-ending hunt for prey. These are the hidden domains in which the Dark Eldar enact their vile rites and devilish schemes. Their origins lie in the tumultuous times that preceded the Fall; as the cults of excess began to thrive, their private realms in the Webway flourished unseen until the largest of their number grew powerful enough to threaten Commorragh itself. However, over the course of its millennia-long history, Commorragh has subsumed all of the vassal domains it has not destroyed. Within the gilded corridors and flesh-pits of the myriad sub-realms frolic those Eldar who engineered the fall of their own race, laughing still at the warnings of their sombre Craftworld cousins.
The Rise of Asdrubael Vect
Over the millennia, Commorragh grew from its shrouded beginnings into a galactic nightmare, its expansion driven largely by the machinations of one being, Asdrubael Vect of the Kabal of the Black Heart, who rose from slavery to become the true Overlord of the Dark City. Four thousand standard years after the Fall of the Eldar, in the time that Mankind calls the 35th Millennium, Commorragh underwent its greatest ordeal since its founding. The Dark City was to be subjected to a full-scale invasion by some of the Imperium's most elite warriors. This catastrophic battle saw the rule of the ancient Eldar noble houses of the city brought crashing down. They would be replaced by a city of Kabals under the rule of Overlord Asdrubael Vect, the architect of this time of strife. Vect began his days as a slave. Yet through pure guile and murderous ambition he eventually rose to become the leader of a militant organisation that he named the Kabal of the Black Heart. By the time Vect had established this powerbase, he had been recognised by the Dark Eldar's Trueborn aristocracy as a genuine threat.
The Kabal of the Black Heart was opposed at all turns by the most influential of High Commorragh's noble houses -- Xelian, Kraillach and Yllithian. So it was that Vect -- ever the master of turning foe against foe to his own advantage -- concocted a plan to bring the fury of the Imperium of Mankind to bear against his many enemies. So audacious was this scheme that, to the eyes of most, it would have seemed like a horrific gamble. This could not have been further from the truth. Every angle had been carefully considered, every necessary loyalty bought beyond any danger of doubt. Asdrubael Vect's plan to achieve ascendancy demonstrated that his mind was like some intricate and unstoppable clockwork machine -- by the time the plan had run its course, millions had been ground between its merciless gears. Vect, meanwhile, elevated himself to a position of total supremacy, borne to unimaginable heights upon an ever-growing mountain of cooling corpses.
The seeds of the Imperial invasion were sown in the region of the galaxy called the Desaderian Gulf. This area of wilderness space was well-known among the human starfarers of the Segmentum Tempestus for the number of spacecraft that had disappeared within its confines. General Imperial practice was to avoid it at all costs. Unknown to the Imperium, there existed a vast portal into a main arterial of the Webway within Desaderian space, shielded by holofields that made it appear to be nothing more than a shimmer in the starlight, perhaps a result of gravitational lensing. Behind this portal lurked the pirate fleets of Commorragh, waiting for unwary prey.
The Dark Eldar's noble houses preyed upon Imperial shipping lanes only rarely in order to escape retribution; hence the missing ships were always considered acceptable losses or written off as bureaucratic errors of the Administratum. Vect's first move was to increase the frequency of these piratical raids tenfold. He made it his Kabal's priority to capture every Imperial Navy warship and invade every human world within reach of the Desaderian portal. He tore apart the Imperial Guard Regiments garrisoning the planets of the Desaderian System, devastated their fortifications and disappeared with his living bounty into the depths of the Dark City, leaving nothing but utter ruin in his wake. This campaign saw the Kabal of the Black Heart grow rich in plunder and souls, though Vect's detractors thought him a fool for antagonizing the massive Imperial war machine.
With its usual ponderous, bureaucratic slowness the Imperium eventually reacted to the disappearances in the Desaderian Gulf. A Strike Cruiser belonging to the Salamanders Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes was close enough to investigate. It was patrolling the edges of the Gulf in search of the sacred artefacts and relics of their Primarch Vulkan. Captain Phoecus of the Salamanders ordered his ship deeper into the Desaderian Gulf. After a short but violent exchange with Vect's Kabalite fleet, Phoecus' Strike Cruiser Forgehammer was crippled by Haywire Bombs and transported through the Desaderian portal into the heart of the Dark City. The furor that resulted from this audacious capture set the spires of High Commorragh aflame with new intrigue. A Space Marine Captain was a great prize indeed, for such an individual could withstand extreme and prolonged mental and physical torture before divulging his vital secrets about Imperial defense. Before long, Vect found his Kabal's fleet in the Desaderian Gulf dwarfed by the armada of the Archon Lord Xelian. The Forgehammer, still rendered impotent by Vect's Haywire field, was confiscated by Xelian, taken to High Commorragh and analysed by a long dissection process.
In his arrogance, Lord Xelian had not reckoned with the resourcefulness of the Space Marines trapped within the stricken Strike Cruiser. The ship's vox communications network had been shorted out by the Haywire field, but unknown to Xelian there remained a more pervasive method of communication available to the Astartes. Captain Phoecus' close friend, the gifted Librarian Hestion, had sent a psychic request for aid as soon as the starship's systems had been disabled. Hestion acted as a living beacon to the rest of the Salamanders Chapter, a beacon now trapped within the spires of Xelian's realm in the Dark City. When Lord Xelian sent the elite of his warrior court to bring the Space Marines to his torture chambers, they were met with far sterner resistance than anticipated. The Dark Eldar found it easy to carve through the hull of the strike cruiser and gain entrance to its dark corridors, but overpowering the Space Marines proved impossible. Lit only by the flashes of Boltgun fire, a desperate battle took place within the hull of the Forgehammer until Astartes and Dark Eldar blood had mingled upon its hull plates. Xelian was quick to realize that he had underestimated his victims. He returned the salvage rights for the Astartes starship to the Kabal of the Black Heart, appearing generous but actually intending to seize the Space Marines once the Black Heart had suffered the losses in taking them captive. Vect readily agreed, forming small strike forces of all those warriors in his Kabal whom he suspected of disloyalty and sent them to face the Strike Cruiser's defenders piecemeal. Vect's Kabalite Warriors, triumphant on dozens of worlds, marched into the Forgehammer without fear, but the battle lasted for days.
Xelian was happy to let Vect drive his so-called Kabal to destruction, believing the Kabal's Dracon to be a fool for not attacking with all the force at his disposal in a single, massive assault. Vect played a waiting game, feeding the disloyal elements of his Kabal to the guns of the Space Marines to buy time and even employing Commorrite mercenaries with well-known ties to Xelian's court, all of whom were soon swallowed by the violence within the human Strike Cruiser. On the sixteenth day of the siege, the skies above High Commorragh suddenly broke open. The Salamanders Chapter had received the coordinates that had led them to their beleaguered Battle-Brothers from the Librarian Hestion's psychic broadcasts. The Desaderian portal had mysteriously been left fully operational, its guards slain and its controls locked so that it could not be closed.
The full fury of the Imperium of Man thundered from the crackling jade-coloured Webway portal directly above Archon Xelian's personal spire. Through it came starships bearing the heraldry of not only the Salamanders but also the badges of the Howling Griffons and the Silver Skulls Chapters of Space Marines. Two dozen Strike Cruisers, each appearing like a chunk of Gothic architecture reshaped for war, hammered though the wide-open portal into the shadowy skies of the Dark City. At their heart was the great Battle Barge Vulkan's Wrath, an immense spacecraft with broadside batteries that could flatten whole cities. Its prow was a vast jutting ram that ploughed straight into the spire where Xelian stood, crushing it like a hammer driven into a priceless sculpture.
The Dark Eldar overcame their surprise quickly. From nearby Port Shard came hundreds of exotic craft, each a needle-like splinter next to the slab-like Imperial vessels, but no less deadly for that. Voidraven Bombers and Razorwing Jetfighters careened out of their towering hangars like bats from a cave, descending in swarms to attack each Astartes Strike Cruiser. Though many were destroyed by the Imperial cruisers' broadsides, others systematically targeted the larger ships' guns with focused Void Lance fire and sustained hits from their Disintegrator Cannons. The Vulkan's Wrath was struck by thick blasts of electromagnetic force produced by Port Shard's salvage spars, rendering the majority of its weapons systems useless. One by one, the Imperial ships' guns were silenced. But these were Space Marines, and they were nothing if not resourceful. Ejecting from each Strike Cruiser came Drop Pods, fired with such force that they were projectile weapons in their own right. The Drop Pods hurtled down, smashing through Dark Eldar fighter craft and Commorrite starscrapers alike, each containing a squad of Space Marines who deployed upon impact with their weapons blazing. They left pure ruin in their wake as priceless Eldar statues shattered and the spires of the Dark City fell.
The Astartes' counterattack robbed the Dark Eldar of the initiative. Within only moments of the Drop Pod assault, the Space Marines had established a perimeter in the obsidian-paved streets of the Kraillach Quarter. Though they took constant fire from Kabalite Warriors and Scourges that flew through the dark skies above, Astartes Power Armour proved to be an effective barrier to the Dark Eldar's splinter weaponry. Yet it was not long before more of the Dark City's denizens joined the fight, drawn to violence and death like sharks to blood. Massed swarms of skyboard-mounted Hellions and Reaver Jetbikers swooped down to rake and tear at the Space Marines, who returned fire, literally, with their Promethium-fueled Flamers. The half-daemon Mandrakes and Raider transports loaded with Dark Eldar Warriors assaulted the Space Marines with claws, knives and Splinter Pistols. Battle was joined from one side of High Commorragh to the other and the streets seethed with violence. Entire sections of High Commorragh burned as the invading Space Marines cut down or incinerated each new breed of horror that assaulted them. Word spread quickly through the Dark City of the human invasion and high up in the arenas, the gladiators of the Wych Cults mobilized for war.
The Space Marines within the city were 500 strong, almost half the size of a full Chapter, and they maintained a defensive perimeter throughout the Kraillach Quarter. High Archon Kraillach himself led a massed charge against the Astartes, intending to crush the invaders that were destroying his personal fiefdom. Yet Kraillach's rampage was ultimately halted by a "stray" blast from a Dark Lance that vapourised him where he stood.
As the Forgehammer lay shackled by electromagnetic force high in the spires, the battle in the skies of the Dark City intensified. Xelian's last command had been to destroy the captive human ship no matter the cost, for if mere humans recovered his prize, the Archon's authority and that of his fellow noble-born peers would be shattered forever. Flights of winged Scourges armed with Haywire Blasters and Heat Lances began to systematically destroy the captive ship while a fleet of Ravager gunships forced the Space Marines who sought to rescue the vessel's Battle-Brothers back into cover. Then, in a storm of light generated by their teleportation technology, Terminators from the Salamanders' 1st Company teleported directly onto the hull of the Forgehammer and returned fire. The Scourges were driven back and Captain Phoecus seized his chance. His men emerged from cover as a single force, sending a Krak Missile soaring into each of the nine towering spars that held his craft captive with their beams of electromagnetic force. Miraculously, each missile triggered a chain reaction of explosions, and the burning spars crashed down into the streets below. The Librarian Hestion summoned a psychic storm of his own, a raging inferno in the shape of a flaming drake that tore the Ravager gunships out of the sky one by one. The Forgehammer had been ravaged by the Dark Eldar assaults, but it was free at last from the Dark City's clutches. With a roar, the Strike Cruiser began to ascend into the sky and freedom.
Far below, the Space Marines fighting in the Xelian Quarter were completely encircled as the full weight of Commorragh was pressed against them and warriors from dozens of noble houses joined the defence of the city. Yet the Space Marines' objective had been achieved, for the Forgehammer was free. A single curt comm-signal was sent and within mere moments, the main bulk of the Space Marines in the Dark City teleported away in a brief burst of light. Those that had been cut off from the main assault gave their lives to buy their brethren time or else were paralyzed by Dark Eldar hypertoxins and taken away to later fight and die as warrior-slaves. Confusion reigned as the Haywire fields that had shackled the Imperial spacecraft were disengaged one by one. The Battle Barge Vulkan's Wrath, now joined by the badly damaged Forgehammer, fired its retros and disengaged itself from the ruins of what had been Archon Xelion's pride. The vast starship's engine blast flattened spires and starscrapers alike before the Space Marines made their escape. The entire Astartes fleet then passed through the still-yawning Webway portal above High Commorragh and escaped triumphantly into realspace.
In the aftermath of the Imperial invasion, Commorragh changed forever. The power vacuum left by the vanquished noble houses of High Commorragh was quickly filled by Asdrubael Vect and his jubilant Kabal of the Black Heart, who had proven their superiority to their rivals in the crucible of war. In the years that followed, Vect played politics like a true Machiavellian master of intrigue, forever asserting the meritocracy of the Kabals over the ancient aristocracy of the Eldar noble houses. Into the yawning power vacuum stepped Asdrubael Vect and his Kabal of the Black Heart. Eschewing all pretense at innocence, Vect ensured that word of his machinations became public. All would know that to stand in the way of Asdrubael Vect meant certain death, and in the centuries that followed his grasp on power would inexorably tighten. So it was that the Kabal of the Black Heart rose to ascendancy over the Dark City in place of the old nobility and Archon Vect's new position as the Supreme Overlord of Commorragh and the Dark Eldar race was sealed.
Dark Eldar in the Calixis Sector and the Koronus Expanse
The Calixis Sector and Koronus Expanse are regions that have some significance to the Eldar, and while it has been many millennia since they have had any major presence there, the worlds of that great frontier are still laced with many thousands of Webway passages and tunnels connecting worlds and star systems. Today, these tunnels are twisted, stretched, and torn by the psychic pressure of the Warp storms dividing the Calixis Sector and Koronus Expanse. While the mysterious rites of the Harlequins long ago sealed many of these passages, others still remain open to the tides of the Warp, infested with vile and ephemeral creatures.
This region of damaged tunnels is centered across the Warp Storm known as the Screaming Vortex. The Vortex is home to teeming hordes of daemon-worshipers and mutants, living and dying at the whims of warlords and sorcerers intent on murder and subjugation in the name of their dark gods. While this is a ready source of slaves and victims for the raids of the region's Kabals, it is a realm largely inhospitable to the Dark Eldar, so strong is the presence of She Who Thirsts within the storm. However, suspended at some point between the Screaming Vortex, the Koronus Expanse, and the Webway is an island of relative stability where numerous groups of Dark Eldar have formed a twisted haven. Here floats the Nexus of Shadows, a Dark Eldar outpost built upon an ancient and massive technological relic.
Three major Kabals dwell in the tunnels and passageways that cross the Calixis Sector, the Koronus Expanse, and into the Screaming Vortex. The foremost of these, at the heart of the Nexus, is the Kabal of the Splintered Talon. The others, the Kabal of the Shadowed Thorns and the Kabal of the Crimson Woe, are of a more mercenary inclination due to their lesser status, often selling their murderous skills to other races in exchange for resources or opportunities to grasp at power. The Kabal of the Crimson Woe operates in the Calixis Sector more than in the Koronus Expanse, in part to avoid directly competing with the Kabal of the Shadowed Thorns and thus drawing their ire. Numerous other groups exist alongside these, from the Cult of the Withered Blade, which controls the Bloodspine Pits on the Nexus of Shadows, and The Sutured Helix, a coven of Haemonculi that operates from the Nexus of Shadows, to numerous smaller factions that raid and scavenge for scraps of their betters' might and prestige.
The Dark Eldar operating near the Nexus of Shadows are frequently on the move, either carried within fleets of voidships or travelling in smaller groups on light skimmers through the winding and impossible labyrinth of the Webway, returning to the Nexus of Shadows only periodically to trade their cargo of tormented victims for supplies and to replace slain warriors. These itinerant raiders often cross paths with pirates and reavers of other species, particularly the Chaos-aligned flotillas that hail from the Screaming Vortex and isolated bases like Iniquity. A select few of these have been shown the location of the Nexus, so that they may trade in slaves, dark lore, and abhorrent technologies, but these are relatively rare.
The Dark Eldar are a plague upon the Koronus Expanse. Raiders, slavers, pirates, and even Rogue Traders suffer at their barbed lashes and blades. Any who cross the Maw and sail the void of the Koronus Expanse learn to fear the wicked silhouettes of their voidships and their seemingly endless cruelty towards all life, including their own. Only vigilance and firepower keep the worst depredations of these terrible raiders at bay, though from the dens of Footfall to the commerce halls of Port Wander there are countless tales of crew lost and ships savaged in their sudden attacks. Within the Calixis Sector, the Imperial Navy keeps the Warp routes and sector worlds protected against the worst of these raids, and while some outposts and lone vessels still disappear at the hands of the foul xenos, most Imperial citizens sleep soundly, never even knowing that such a depraved species haunts the stars above their heads.
In the Koronus Expanse it is different, as that lawless place has neither a fleet capable of guarding the uncharted wastes nor a tightly controlled network of worlds that can call upon one another in times of need. The Expanse is a playground for the Dark Eldar, where along with the myriad of other alien menaces they can raid worlds and take voidships with relative impunity, slipping away into the night from whence they came. The power of the Dark Eldar is compounded by the fact that no one knows precisely where they come from or where they go, nor can they explain the aliens' uncanny ability to appear from nowhere and then vanish with their stolen cargos of goods and slaves just as quickly. Some Rogue Traders believe there must be a Dark Eldar world somewhere in the Expanse from which they launch their raids, though where exactly it is and how it could have evaded detection for so long remain a mystery that has yet to be unraveled.
Salaine Morn - Archon of the Kabal of the Shadowed Thorns
The Gaelan Sphere, upon which the Nexus of Shadows was built, is an ancient relic of a long-forgotten age of technology. The size of a small moon, covered with towers and antennae, the sphere was crafted around a solid core, the remnants of some mineral rich asteroid that its automated systems are slowly eroding away as it adds more and more levels to the sphere. Neither the Gaelan Sphere's alien inhabitants nor those few explorers from the Imperium who have had a chance to study it know its true purpose. How the sphere came to enter the Webway is also a mystery. Abandoned for untold ages, the sphere could have drifted through a Web-gate or even been drawn towards one by the ancient programs and protocols of its Cogitators seeking to study a breach in the Webway that it perceived as a celestial phenomenon. Alternatively, it is possible that some unknown force moved it into the Webway for some inscrutable purpose. Once it entered the Webway, the sphere spent aeons drifting from one region to another before becoming trapped in a confluence of ancient forces and alien powerfields. Now, it floats in a relatively stable position, more debris of a forgotten age of enlightenment.
It was Salaine Morn and her Kabal of the Shadowed Thorns that first rediscovered the Gaelan Sphere and decided to put it to use. After being exiled from Commorragh, the Archon spent many Terran years wandering the Webway with her fleet, raiding worlds and looking for a place to claim as her own. The sphere, with its well-hidden location and ancient technology, presented the perfect place for a new home. Unfortunately for Salaine, the sphere's defenses and legions of Servitor guardians were too numerous and powerful for her Kabal alone to overcome. Thus, Salaine forged an alliance with Zaergarn Kul and his Kabal of the Splintered Talon, and together they purged the city of its ancient human defenses, destroying that which they could not control and sealing away the areas that they could not inhabit.
Even though their forces had secured a landing zone and deactivated the aging orbital defenses, it was to take years for the Dark Eldar to carve out the areas where they would build their city. As more Dark Eldar came to the Nexus, new sections would be cleared of their ancient automated defenses. Often the Dark Eldar would drive thousands of slaves into an area to identify these dangers, or simply to exhaust a turret's ammunition so it could be destroyed. Other xenos races were also allowed to settle in the Nexus as part of trading missions, though these aliens had to clear their own areas for in-habitation. The lasting result of this wanton conquest by the Dark Eldar and their allies is that many areas of the Nexus still show signs of battle, and the stripped remains of the combat machinery of the sphere is a common sight along its shadowed streets. Occasionally, the Nexus' old defenders rear their heads once again, but the Dark Eldar usually put them down swiftly.
Almost immediately after the arrival of the Dark Eldar and its establishment as a port, the Nexus began to operate as a hub for trade and a base for raiding. Close to the Koronus Expanse and the Calixis Sector, it opened up fresh opportunities for slavers and worlds that before had been out of reach or too dangerous to raid using the fractured remains of the Webway. The Nexus of Shadows quickly grew in size and wealth on the backs of its slaves, despite the fact that most Dark Eldar of Commorragh at least openly shun the cursed place and the outcasts who live there. The xenos of the Koronus Expanse and the Renegades of the Screaming Vortex have no such compunctions, however, and have found the Nexus to be a useful place to trade and congregate, a place far from the reach of the Imperium and utterly hostile to its agents. Salaine welcomed such factions into her city on account of the wealth and influence they offered, as well as the added protection it afforded her against those who would try and take the city from her. Unfortunately for Salaine, it was not an outside force or an alien that was to oust her from power. In the end one of her own, Zaergarn Kul, usurped her, and exiled her once more into the Webway before she could do the same to him. For many of the inhabitants of the Nexus this change in power meant little, especially for the slaves, to whom one Dark Eldar Archon is much the same as another.
Salaine Morn intentionally projects a presence that is both evasive and unmistakable; her dread majesty is as hard to put into words as it is to ignore. Appearing at once menacing and tempting, the Archon catches many of her foes off-guard, uncertain of the obfuscated nature of this ancient being. Morn is several thousand Terran years old, though only she knows for certain how long she has been alive, and has seen and done much that would long haunt the nightmares of lesser beings. Like all Dark Eldar Archons, she is possessed of a deadly martial prowess, but her true weapon is a mind finely-honed by the lethal intrigues of Commorragh's high society. She finds it utterly distasteful, then, that she and all those she commands are exiles from the Dark City and now even the Nexus of Shadows. At her grudging command, the warriors of her Kabal have turned to mercenary work, selling their efforts to lesser beings as part of a plan to regain the power she once possessed. On the rarest of occasions, she deigns to speak to these prey-creatures herself.
Recent Events
The history of the Dark Eldar is one of unrelenting horror. Much of it is hidden in shadow, recorded only in allegory and fable by those intelligent races whose worlds they have ravaged. Records are kept, however -- tomes scribed in still-living flesh using bladed quills of bone. These histories divide the tale of Commorragh into three ages -- ill-defined and overlapping though they are -- each more redolent with cruelty and evil than the last.
The Age of Dark Genesis
The Port Commorragh (c.M18) - Commorragh establishes itself as the primary nodal port of the Eldar Webway, growing larger with every passing decade. Built entirely within the Labyrinthine Dimension and hence outside the jurisdiction of the Eldar councils, Commorragh acts as a magnet for those who wish to avoid attention.
The Twilight Cults (c.M18-M20) - Those leading the new Eldar paradigm of total self-indulgence rise in status and power until they can secede entirely from the physical plane. They take up permanent residence in the Webway, from which they can plumb the depths of decadence undisturbed by puritans and weaklings. Over time, their sovereign estates grow into entire sub-realms, many of which are powered by the energy of stolen suns. The solar systems and their inhabitants plunged into darkness by the Eldar's star-theft wither and die in the freezing cold of the void, but the Eldar care not.
The Ailing Pantheon (c.M19-M24) - The worship of the traditional Eldar gods beings to wane as new sects and societies rise to power. The Dark Muses, many of whom are synonymous with sensual vice and sin, become the unofficial figureheads of the new order.
Darkness Rising (c.M25-M30) - The depravity of the Eldar race plumbs terrible new depths. Cults of pleasure and pain flourish in the hidden reaches of the Webway, and even the core worlds of Eldar society become obsessed with ever-greater acts of excess. As the lines blur between sensation-seeking and outright evil, a new force stirs in the Warp.
Exodus (c.M30-M31) - Sensing the end, portions of the Eldar race combine and modify their voidships Craftworlds, gigantic living vessels able to accommodate an entire planet’s population. One by one they begin to escape the corruption that plagues their empire. Hundred of Craftworlds sail into the sea of stars in search of the relative safety of the untrammeled void.
The Fall of the Eldar (c.M30-M31) - A new Chaos God is born, collapsing the entire Eldar Empire -- Slaanesh, the Dark Prince, whose birth-screams tear out the heart of the empire and leave pure Chaos in its place. The shockwave of the new god's apotheosis plunges a vast section of realspace into the Warp, creating the Eye of Terror. Most of the Eldar Craftworlds are destroyed in the psychic backlash. Only the Exodites, the Eldar of the farthest-flung Craftworlds, and those hidden in the sub-realms of the Webway survive. The Eldar race is shattered forever in a single apocalyptic instant.
Commorragh Ascendant (c.M31-M32) - In the wake of the Fall, the unrepentant Eldar hidden within the Webway consolidate their power. The next millennium sees the port-cities and sovereign realms of the labyrinth dimension grow steadily in size and influence, and Commorragh becomes a sprawling realm unto itself. The Dark City thrives under the oppressive rule of the noble houses that lurk at its heart.
The Rise of Vect
A Legacy Begins (c.M32) - A halfborn Eldar slave -- known only as Vect -- vows that he shall rule the Dark City, even if it takes an eternity to do so. Vect founds the Cult of the Black Heart, the first organisation to openly refer to themselves as Eladrith Ynneas or "Dark Eldar." The Thirteen Foundations of Vengeance are laid down at this time, an intricate code of dishonour destined to spread through the society of the Dark City in the centuries to come. The impact of Vect's rise to power will resonate through Commorragh's history for millennia to come.
The War of the Sun and the Moon (c.M33) - The solar cults that control the Dark City’s stolen suns rise in power and influence, ultimately declaring war upon the Eldar noble houses that would see Commorragh plunged into permanent night. An aerial war rages for centuries, but ultimately the noble houses emerge victorious. Vect's Cult of the Black Heart transforms to become the first true Dark Eldar Kabal during this troubled time, and is instrumental in the final defeat of the solar cults during the Battle of the Seven Shrouds.
Vect Ascendant (c.M35) - Asdrubael Vect launches a series of punishing raids against the Imperium's shipping lanes in the Desaderian Gulf. True to his plans, this triggers a punishing counterattack from three Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes. Vect manipulates the invasion to cripple the powerbases of the patrician Archons and, in the aftermath, takes their place as ruler of High Commorragh. Shortly after, the Desaderian portal is forcibly collapsed, triggering a massive implosion and annihilating Imperial naval elements mustering for a second attack.
The Kabals Ascendant (c.M35-M36) - The aristocracy of Commorragh is in disgrace. It is soon replaced by the Kabalite system, as pioneered by Vect and his Kabal of the Black Heart. Privilege and status are supplanted by sheer ambition and murderous capability. Many elder noble houses reinvent themselves as Kabals, though they never forgive Vect for usurping their power.
The Breaching (c.M37) - Vect causes the hidden portals that link each satellite realm and port-city of the Webway to be revealed, forcing them open and building the Great Gates: huge edifices that are permanently guarded by Vect’s elite Incubi and Kabalite Warrior garrisons. Over several millennia of civil war and violent strife, Commorragh expands into these once autonomous regions until they become integral to the Dark City. Only the realm of Shaa-dom remains autonomous.
The Age of Pain
The Ghost Planet (156.M35) - The far-flung Hive World Auxilion stubbornly maintains radio silence after its unsanctioned decision to hire Eldar mercenaries, though after one diplomatic gaffe too many the alliance turns sour. Led by the Haemonculus Kresthekia, a Carnival of Pain descends upon the planet. Five years later a large-scale Imperial delegation is sent to investigate the lack of forthcoming tithes. When they make planetfall they find no trace of human life signs whatsoever. The entire planet, every hive, hab-block and spire, is completely deserted.
The Battle for the Thaxar Rift (745.M35) - The Severed begin to plunder the region of space known as the Thaxar Rift. They find their efforts hindered by Chaos-worshipping Renegades, who have a substantial presence in the region. Rather than face the Renegades directly, Archon Ariensis ensures that his foes come to the attention of the Imperial Navy and Adeptus Astartes, and a grinding war ensues. The Severed haunt the edges of this conflict, tales of murderous ghosts and xenos pirates spreading like wildfire in their wake while they test and study the Imperium's way of war. Eventually the Imperium's forces are reduced to a shadow of their former might. They are forced to resort to selective Exterminatus to annihilate what remains of their Traitor foes. While the doomed worlds still smoulder, the Severed descend in full force. They annihilate the surviving Imperial Navy warships left behind to watch over Thaxari space, before proceeding to plunder and pillage at will.
Vect's Gift (677.M36) - Asdrubael Vect tricks his would-be rival Archon Kelithresh into opening a casket that has ostensibly been presented as a tithe. Held precariously in the collapsing field of the casket is the unstable essence of a black hole. Kelithresh's entire realm is plunged into a howling, yawning vortex.
The Black Conquest of Yaelindra (724.M36) - Yaelindra of the Blackened Tear uses her preeminent grasp of the arts of Shaimesh to poison an entire Imperial Hive World. Even as the populace of Tybor III are withering into desiccated husks, Yaelindra is granted a boon by Asdrubael Vect. She chooses to take a spire of her own in High Commorragh, founding the Wych Cult of Lhamaea and training an army of deadly courtesan warriors to further her deadly works.
The Plague of Glass (926.M36) - The noted Commorrite artisan Jalaxlar is feted for his incredibly lifelike black-glass statues of Dark Eldar. His rivals soon discover that he is using an isolated viral helix to create his masterpieces from living victims. In the fight to control this deadly virus it is accidentally released, running rampant through several districts of the Dark City. This Plague of Glass is eventually contained and weaponized by the Hex, whose Haemonculi are intrigued by its artistic possibilities.
The Slow Death of Graegus (345.M37) - The Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue comes into conflict with a fleet of Ork Freebooterz stationed out of Graegus. Lady Aurelia Malys is incensed that mere barbarian pirates should deny her will. Personally capturing a musclebound Ork Nob, Malys instructs her Lhamaean poisoners to prepare a surprise for the greenskins upon Graegus. Lady Malys' Kabal makes planetfall weeks later, fighting their way into the centre of the Ork capital city and impaling their barely-living captive upon a half-built Gargant before melting away into the night. The corpse begins to shed millions of spores into the air, each of which bears a cargo of terrible wasting toxins. As the infected spores corrupt the Orkoid reproduction cycle, the population of Graegus grows weaker and weaker. When Malys returns it is a simple matter to slaughter the survivors.
War in the Webway (579.M37) - A coven of Chaos Sorcerers of the Thousand Sons conduct a great ritual in the Webway, hoping to gain access to Commorragh. At the ritual's climax, hundreds of Dark Eldar pour from an invisible portal into their ranks, led by vaulting troupes of Harlequins. Battle is joined as the Tzeentchian Sorcerers counterattack; the fabric of the Webway is breached in the process and its arterial walls buckle and burst. The backlash strands the combatants in a shattered pocket reality with no way out. It is rumored in Commorragh that they fight there still, locked in an endless cycle of war and rebirth for the rest of time.
The Tower of Flesh (796.M37) - The Haemonculi stronghold known as the Tower of Flesh is created -- a living, breathing fortress, made of the bodies of those who defied the Haemonculi Coven of the Thirteen Scars. The Renegade Space Marine Fabius Bile is tutored in the dark arts within its blood-slicked halls. Bile is accompanied to the Dark City by Lucius the Eternal, who is declared by his "hosts" -- the Wych Cult of the Wrath Unbound -- to be endlessly entertaining both on and off the arena floor.
The Blade of Vect (984.M37) - The sub-realm of Shaa-dom grows steadily in influence and power until Archon El'uriaq, the self-proclaimed Emperor of Shaa-dom, declares himself more worthy of rule than Asdrubael Vect. Vect publicly vows that all of Shaa-dom will feel the edge of his blade, much to the amusement of El'uriaq's famously well-funded and elite forces. Three solar days later, a Warp rift opens suddenly above the satellite realms and a burning Imperial Navy Battleship thunders downward, plunging deep into the hidden city's heart before its Warp-Drive detonates. The palace-fortress of El'uriaq is torn apart. The Warp rift allows Daemons to invade the city, and in a matter of a single solar week the devil-haunted realm of Shaa-dom is reduced to cinders. Vect is reported to have allowed himself a rare smile at the moment of its fall.
The Last Act of Lord Korscht (182.M38) - Inquisitor Lord Korscht of the Ordo Xenos second-guesses the Dark Eldar raid upon the Imperial industrial world of Demoisne. The moment the Kabal of Immortality Denied blink into existence above Demoisne's capital, they are all but annihilated in a thunderous firestorm. Korscht's absence is keenly felt at the post-action debrief, however, and the Inquisitor Lord's underground fortress complex is investigated. His remains are found, spread thinly upon every page of every occult tome in his library.
WAAAGH! Zoggit (227.M38) - The Ork Warlord Zoggit, famous for killing anyone foolish enough to imply he might be a bit of a Weirdboy, declares a WAAAGH! straight into the vermillion spacerift encroaching upon the world of Zogg-Dis. He and his Boyz emerge in the Commorrite port-spar of Blackblood, much to the surprise of its resident Kabal. The resultant storm of violence carries hundreds of thousands of Orks into the twisting byways of Commorragh. War is joined in earnest when the Dark City turns its attention to the Orkoid invasion, systematically isolating each Ork army in order to destroy it piece by piece. However, each Kabal is preoccupied by trying to turn the unexpected invasion to its advantage that the Orks cause far more damage than any of the Kabals thought possible. Several districts of Commorragh are toppled or burnt to cinders by wave upon wave of howling Orks. Eventually the Orks are coralled and over 10,000 greenskins are captured by the Wych districts packed to capacity for almost an entire fortnight.
Beauty Relinquished (717.M38) - A new fashion sweeps the spires of Commorragh, and soon every member of the noble houses has paid to have himself horribly disfigured. The suddenly fashionable Haemonculi consider it to be a very good year, but the trend is predictably short-lived. The Time of Reparations proves even better for business, and suspicions abound.
Pandaimon Betrayed (799.M38) - The trans-dimensional satellite realm of Pandaimon declares independence from Commorragh, instantly triggering a great war between Archon Qu, Lord of the Iron Thorns, and the Kabal of the Black Heart. Qu is ready for Vect's attack, but not for the treason of his own daughter, who reveals herself as one of Vect's many courtesans. Civil war rages for solar weeks but ultimately the realm of Pandaimon is delivered into Vect's hands.
A Gruesome Lesson (933.M38) - During the prolonged campaign for Massgrve, the 121st Cadian Elite, famed across the Ultima Segmentum as the "Eldar Killers," disappear completely without so much as a comm-signal. Weeks later thousands of headless and armless human bodies with Imperial Eagle tattoos are found roaming aimlessly along the arched streets of Commorragh's Vault District, moaning, staggering and bumping into each other before being put out of their misery by Hellion hunter-gangs.
Desperation's End (272.M39) - The Imperial frontier planet of Desperation unwittingly sows the seeds of its own demise when it sends an astropathic message detailing an invasion of hellspawn. In fact, Desperation has been chosen as the theatre for the latest unveilings of the Children of Bone, a clique of Haemonculi who specialise in unusually large Grotesques. After the desolation of the planet's cities, the Haemonculi disappear with holocaptures of their vile creations at work. Years later, the rescue voidships that enter Desperation’s orbit determine the natives of the planet to be heretical beyond recovery, for they now worship the Children of Bone instead of the Emperor. The natives fight with frenzied tenacity, for they fear the Haemonculi far more than the Imperium's troops, but nonetheless the world is completely purged within the space of a solar week.
The Thieves of the Ice Mists (616.M39) - Upon the ice-locked planet of Fenris, aspiring Space Wolves recruits begin to disappear during their Trial of Morkai. Each aspirant has been implanted with the gene-seed of Leman Russ, and only the strongest have iron will enough to prevent it from ravaging their bodies and effect permanent devolvement into beasthood. The Wolf Priests notice that an unprecedented number of these aspirants are going missing and, after fruitlessly patrolling the wilderness of Asaheim, focus their scrutiny on nearspace. Sure enough, a Dark Eldar fleet is stationed above the ice caps of the neighboring planet of Mydgarden. The Space Wolves mount a lightning invasion upon the Mydgarden ice caps, their Thunderhawks descending on tongues of flame to bring the last remaining xenos there to battle. The Space Wolves fight with the fury of the storm, but soon enough the Haemonculi covens garrisoned there fade away into the mists, their mocking and distant laughter receding into nothing. The Space Wolves find a series of white-capped chambers leading deep down into the planet's crust. Each is empty of life -- empty, that is, save for witless brutes of bulging muscle and fur incarcerated in tubular pods, some of whom resemble the Primarch Russ himself. The Space Wolves do not speak of this day.
The Dark Within the Light (117.M40) - The veiled cryptoscientist Vorsch perfects a technique he calls photonic transubstantiation, transforming himself into a living beam of light and travelling distances purely in order to proclaim his genius. He is eventually captured in a prism-trap by the Kabal of the Black Sun, who use Vorsch's technologies to stage large-scale terror attacks upon the peace-loving Naiad Republic.
The Hunters Hunted (835.M40) - Duke Sliscus is hunted by the Groevian Fiends, an elite reptilian bounty-hunter cadre who have a reputation completely annihilating their targets. Sliscus instructs his agents upon the Groevian flagship Last Chance to place a device of the Duke's own invention in the metal belly of the craft. Just as Sliscus is about to pass through an ancient webway portal, it seems that game is up -- the Last Chance emerges from a gas cloud in hot pursuit, guns blazing, and follows it into the webway. The Duke's ship emerges above the home world of the Groevians, primes and ready for planetfall. The flagship Last Chance, its navigational coordinates corrupted by the device placed amidships, emerges in the blazing heart of Groevia's sun.
A Guantlet Thrown (226.M41) - Lelith Hesperax issues a challenge to the Dark City. Should anyone produce an inhabitant of realspace that can pose her a genuine challenge in the arena, that individual will be honoured beyond their wildest dreams by Hesperax herself. The competition sparked by this challenge is immediate, violent and widespread. Archons lead raiding parties to strike at the length and breadth of the material realm, returning with ever mightier champions and deadlier monsters trammeled in their holds. Yet Hesperax defeats every victim brought before her, carving down hissing Tyranid Hive Tyrants, Choppa-wielding Ork Warbosses and righteously indignant Space Marine heroes with equal ease. Archon Khargiel of the Bleaksoul Brethren finally presents Hesperax with a foe that can answer her challenge. In an especially daring and costly raid, Khargiel has kidnapped Brother-Captain Cadulon of the Iron KnightsSpace Marine Chapter. Known as the "Saint of Blades," Cadulon is an exceptionally talented swordsman who has twice been declared victor at the ritual Feast of Blades. As Hesperax meets his eye across the arena floor she knows she faces a worthy foe. With a predatory grin, the belladonna of the Dark City goes to work, her blades ringing against Cadulon's sword in a blizzard of sparks to the maddened roar of the crowd. The duel lasts for over six solar hours before Cadulon finally falls, leaving Hesperax victorious with but a single, bloody cut across her midriff. Amid the sudden hush, Archon Khargiel descends to the arena floor to accept his reward. Yet his look of triumph curdles as Lelith kicks the fallen Space Marine's blade across the floor to land at the Archon's feet, explaining that the greatest honour she can bestow is the deadly kiss of her knives. To the amusement of the crowd, Khargiel is lucky to last six solar minutes.
The Coup-Deamons (248.M41) - The vainglorious Archon Ysclyth of the Kabal of the Talon Cyriix, the last descendant of a pure-blooded lineage that had lasted for thousands of standard years, bridles against the tyrannical dictates of Asdrubael Vect and his forbiddance of Old Empire knowledge. Deciphering the archaic rites inscribed upon the crypts below his palace, he learns how to contact Daemons of the Warp and bind them to his will. Though his plan takes almost a century to come to fruition, Ysclyth stages his coup against Vect with shocking and unstoppable force. Under the soaring skycraft of his Kabal comes a ravening daemonic host that drives all life before it. Before the horde can wreak too much damage Vect activates an ancient failsafe and completely seals off the spur of Talon Cyriix from the rest of Commorragh. It is not long before Archon Ysclyth finds out that his control over his daemonic allies is not as complete as he imagines. Trapped with only the Daemon legions for company, Ysclyth and his Kabal are slowly torn apart.
The Reaving of Garmos (312.M41) - The Garmos System is plunged into a war between the Imperium and the Orks of WAAAGH! Deffsmasha. Throughout the conflict, the Coven of the Dark Creed and the Kabal of the Bladed Lotus lead raiding parties to prey on both sides. They subtly tip the balance of power back and forth, extending the war far past its natural duration and reaping the harvest of fear and misery that results.
The Dancing Dead (327.M41) - The insane Archon Thyndrak of the Last Hatred launches a raid on the Imperial Hive World of Tamantra's Folly. During fierce fighting between her Kabalite forces and the Tallarn 8th Infantry, Archon Thyndrak abducts the planet’s tyrannical governor and his entire sadistic household. Within the cycle, the luckless abductees have been fitted with neural restraints, dressed in improbable and torturous finery, and installed in life support tubes built into the ceiling of Archon Thyndrak's grand ballroom. Trapped in an agonizing half-life, the Imperial nobles can be lowered down to the Archon’s dance floor at will on wheezing brass armatures, their mere presence leaving the hall awash with an aura of pain and misery that the Commorrites find most refreshing. Needless to say, Thyndrak’s new toys are something of a coup, her guests delighting in dancing and frolicking with the whimpering humans amid the mocking laughter of their peers.
The Raven's Prey (394.M41) - The Kabal of the Obsidian Rose suffer an unacceptable defeat when they are overwhelmed by the armoured might of the Cadian 346th Regiment, the "Ironheads," on the mining planet of Greystar. Determined to save face, Archon Khromys orders diversionary attacks against key points all across the planet. While battle rages, a single squadron of Voidraven bombers -- crafted by Khromys herself for just such an occasion -- swoops undetected into the primary spoil-shaft of the northern polar mines. Hurtling through narrowing tunnels and jinking between slabsided industrial machinery, the Voidravens' superior systems see them reach the deepest extent of the mine workings. Here, dangerously close to Greystar’s molten heart, they deploy a trio of masterwork Void Mines that trigger an apocalyptic chain-reaction. Even as the Voidravens hurtle to safety, the Obsidian Rose retreat to the Webway laden with slaves and plunder. In their wake, Greystar tears itself to pieces, billions dying along with their planet in order to satisfy Khromys' need for revenge.
The Plague of Becoming (399.M41) - A narcissist without equal, Archon Vhane Kyharc of the Black Myriad releases the Doppelganger Virus on the planet of Phlogiston VI. This transmorphic plague rewrites the biology of every living creature on the planet, forcing their features to reform in the likeness of their alien conqueror.
Steel Fang (421.M41) - A nameless messenger butchers the Inner Council of Craftworld Lugganath, smashing apart a statue of Khaine and using the shards as deadly weapons. Fleeing into the Webway with a holocapture of her murderous deed, the young warrior calling herself Steel Fang is welcomed by the Wych Cults of the Dark City. She soon founds her own Cult, and her teachings in the art of improvised weaponry spread throughout the arenas of Commorragh.
Fear the Shadows (462.M41) - The Kabal of the Black Heart strike at the Hive World of Lapradus, but are hurled back in disarray by the intervention of Titans from the Legio Castigatum. Mere solar days later, Princeps Gendath -- the author of Castigatum's victory -- is murdered on his own bridge. He is hacked to shreds within his amniotic tank by hissing horrors that slither into being amid the thrashing soup. The murky shapes disappear as suddenly as they struck, leaving only a half-frozen mulch of blood and shattered armaglass in their wake.
Just Beyond the Door (346.497.M41) - It is on this date that word reaches Asdrubael Vect of a disturbance at Khaine's Gate. Something has begun to pound slowly -- rhythmically -- impossibly -- on the other side. Vect stations five hundred Incubi to watch over the Gate chamber as a delaying measure. He pays exorbitant sums to ensure their discretion, while simultaneously ensuring all those Incubi hired hail from brotherhoods who have defied or hindered his machinations in the past. As further insurance, Vect deploys several of his more esoteric arcane weapons within the chamber itself, ingenious failsafes that include temporal flux-mines, the Seventh Shard, and a tri-prismic dimensional mirror keyed to hurl anything reflected in its surface into the heart of a sun.
The Veiled War (518.M41) - The Wych Cult of the Red Grief engages the warriors of Craftworld Saim-Hann in battle over a broken alliance. The war is fought at breakneck speeds through the cloud-archipelagos of the planet Stratos, where visibility is almost zero and the smallest misstep threatens a deadly plunge into the void-ocean far below. The warring Eldar factions are eventually forced to disengage by the onset of a vast superstorm, leaving scores unsettled and bad blood festering between them.
The Harvest of Chogros (543.M41) - The Kabal of the Broken Sigil begins a series of raids on the planet Chogros, capturing the Ogryn natives for the arenas. When Astra Militarum regiments arrive to intervene, the conflict escalates into a planet-wide engagement. Though they fight hard, the men of the Imperium are eventually defeated. The Crucibael is thronged for many nights to come as the captured Imperial Guardsmen are forced to fight the very Ogryns that they were sent to save.
The Enemy Beyond (601.M41) - The Incubi standing guard over Khaine's Gate report new and disturbing developments to Asdrubael Vect. In accompaniment to the slow, relentless pounding, the Gate has begun to vibrate at the microscopic level. Worse, those who stand too close to the portal report hearing whispered voices. Though he shows no outward signs of concern, Vect continues to lay new plans.
The Shadow-Hunt (626.M41) - The Kabal of the Baleful Gaze and Wych Cult of the Wrath Unbound cripple the infrastructure of the Imperial industrial world of Durondas II using sustained haywire bombing. The Cult then lands great packs of hunting beasts, Khymerae and Clawed Fiends, the beasts loping through the darkened streets and tearing the planet's defenders to shreds. Buried in darkness, weapons fried and transportation crippled by the Haywire Bombs, the terrified Astra Militarum and their civilian charges are forced to fall back time and again. The hunted survivors are finally herded together in the Grand Templum District of Durondas' capital city. Here the Dark Eldar Beastmasters loose their feral pets en masse, beginning a horrifying massacre that takes several long and bloody solar days to conclude, and from which no human emerges alive.
The Panacea Wars (824.M41) - Vect sets his Archons a seemingly impossible task: "poison the Imperium of Man, and bring proof of the deed." Lady Malys proves equal to the task. Through the Harlequins she has learned that the Tech-priests of Verdigris IX have recovered an STC codenamed the Panacea, a miracle cure that could save billions of human lives. Using hit and run raids, Malys' Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue lure the might of an Ork WAAAGH! down upon the heavily-defended Forge World. The Ork fleet literally ploughs headlong into Verdigris IX, one massive voidship after another slamming into the world’s surface to cause untold destruction. As wave upon wave of Orks disembark from their wrecked spacecraft, the planet's surviving defenders find themselves embroiled in a desperate war for survival. Malys and her Kabal swoop into the midst of the resultant havoc, cutting down anyone who stands between them and their prize. After prying the Panacea template from the gnarled fingers of the Ork Big Mek who had stolen it before her, Malys returns to the Dark City, leaving Verdigris IX to burn in her wake. Asdrubael Vect is reportedly impressed with this audacious raid -- even as Malys is setting the Imperium's miracle cure atop a pedestal in her personal trophy hall, she receives an invitation from Vect to dine with him by way of congratulations.
The Nobility Resurgent (842.M41) - Descendants of the Eldar noble houses deposed during Vect’s ascension, Archons Xelian, Kraillach and Yllithian attempt a coup. They successfully resurrect the ancient Archon El'Uriach, once Emperor of Shaa-dom and the last individual to present a genuine challenge to Vect's supremacy. However, their schemes go horribly awry, leading the Dark City into a period of strife unlike any it has seen for thousands of Terran years. As a result of their actions, a mighty daemonicDysjunction shakes Commorragh to its very foundations and forces Asdrubael Vect himself to take drastic action lest his city slip into oblivion altogether.
The Vandred Atrocity (864.M41) - Archon Thysk leads his Kabal of the Bloody Storm against Vandred, a Feudal World from which the Angels Sanguine Space Marine Chapter recruits new Aspirants. Sure enough, a strikeforce of Angels Sanguine makes planetfall within solar days, yet they are playing into the Archon's hands. Thysk releases a blood-plague acquired at great cost from the Haemonculi Coven of the Altered, a virus that taps directly into the tragic gene curse of Sanguinius' sons. Aware of their madness but unable to stop themselves, the Angels Sanguine butcher and devour those they came to save before falling upon each other, while the Dark Eldar drink in the agony, terror and despair.
The Long Midnight (891.M41) - The Last Hatred ravages the Imperial Hive World Persya in a six-cycle long siege, using arcane technologies to bring pitch darkness to its principal hives and sending Mandrakes and Ur-Ghuls into its confines. Many hive workers go mad with terror, but are taken back to Commorragh nonetheless. It is claimed that during this siege, Kheradruakh the Decapitator selects an unprecedented seven worthy skulls for his macabre lair.
The War of Dark Revelations (990.M41) - Tau forces defending Vigos against the onrushing might of Hive Fleet Kraken make the fatal decision to ally themselves with Urien Rakarth. Despite initial victories alongside their twisted allies, the Tau soon become alarmed by Rakarth's demands that they engage in ever more costly "cultural exchanges." They finally resolve to strike back when he transforms Tau warriors into monstrous Grotesques, and begins demanding a tribute of their sacred Ethereals. The Tau muster their reserves from the world of Rubikon, yet when their blow falls they find Rakarth's fleet already gone, leaving only holograms and sensor-ghosts in its wake. Panicked distress calls begin to issue from the defenseless Rubikon mere solar hours later. These garbled reports tell of twisted, pale-fleshed invaders calling themselves the Prophets of Flesh. Yet it is far too late for the woefully outmaneuvered Tau forces to respond, and they can only listen in anguish to the death-cries of their world.
The Age of Plenty
As the 41st Millennium draws to a close, the galaxy is riven with war as never before. Madness and mayhem consumes whole star systems, affording the denizens of the Dark City ample chance to raid at will. Yet there are those who whisper that even Commorragh is not proof against the horrors that draw near:
Vect's Declaration (994.M41) - Asdrubael Vect looks upon the war-wracked galaxy and declares this to be an age of plenty. The races of realspace are beset by woes, their civilizations battling a never-ending tide of enemies, each more monstrous than the last. Vect orders his lieutenants to take advantage of the galaxy's worsening plight, to strike wherever the lesser races are spread too thin and pillage unopposed. Slaves and riches flow into Commorragh in a tide, and the Dark Eldar revel in their own unmatched might. However, all of this is but a distraction, albeit on an unimaginably vast and complex scale. While Vect's subjects glut themselves upon the hapless peoples of the material dimension, their eyes are turned outward, away from the dark deeds of their ruler.
An Unexpected Ally (995.M41) - The Craftworld of Iyanden, struggling to survive after its horribly narrow victory over Hive Fleet Kraken, is forced to engage WAAAGH! Rekkfist in order to prevent Iyanden being invaded again. Early engagements cause rippling damage on the greenskin empire, but the Orks counter-attack in force. Iyanden is left with no choice but to disturb more and more of their revered ancestors from their deathly slumbers and place their Spirit Stones into mighty Ghost Warriors in order to contain the counter-invasion. Just as all seems lost, the Wraithkind Kabal and the Cult of the Flayed Hand burst through the webway portal at the Craftworld's rear. Fighting alongside Iyanden's Aspect Warriors and their Ghost Warrior allies, the Dark Eldar drive off the Orks. When asked by Iyanden's Council of Seers as to why they intervened, the Dark Eldar reply that they find Iyanden's angst-ridden forays into the world of necromancy extremely entertaining.
Danger Unseen (996.M41) - In the Undercore, the phenomena that beset Khaine's Gate become ever more pronounced. Many of the strange portal’s guards have been driven mad by the whispering voices that now pervade the Gate chamber. Those who have not hacked each other apart or taken their own lives have begun carving "Let us in" into the walls of the chamber, some scratching this unsettling mantra directly into their flesh. The air of the chamber shimmers with half-glimpsed shapes, while Mandrakes and Shaderavens gather in increasing numbers in the tunnels around and about. Overlord Vect continues to suppress knowledge of these phenomena with cruel efficiency, while quietly relocating ever more of his own powerbase to hidden sub-realms behind multiple, well-guarded portals. A number of Archons who had believed their Kabals out of favour are delighted when Vect presents them with reconciliatory gifts of prime territory, ceded from the ownership of the Kabal of the Black Heart and located directly above the Undercore.
Rakarth's Larder (998.M41) - Urien Rakarth recognizes similarities between his kin’s frenzied reaving of realspace and the blood-mad days that led up to the Fall. Ancient beyond mortal comprehension, Rakarth still dimly recalls that apocalyptic event. His memories are enough to prompt him to precautionary action -- though Rakarth has no interest in the survival of either realspace nor his own race, without the living resources that both provide, his personal quest for depravity would come to a crashing end. Thus the Haemonculus begins stockpiling what he views as raw materials, leading raids to seize vast quantities of slaves and dragging them back to the oubliettes in chains. As the scale of his raiding operations increases, Rakarth enlists the aid of several powerful Covens, including the Black Descent, the Coven of Twelve and the Prophets of Flesh. These monstrous cliques claim new sub-realms within the Webway and begin to fill them with countless ranks of stasis-pods that fade away for miles into the gloom. Each contains a living being, stolen from realspace in order to stock the vile larders of the Haemonculi against hard times to come.
Warpsurge (924.999.M41) - A mighty storm front rolls through Warpspace, plucking at the edges of the Labyrinthine Dimension. Arterial passageways shudder uncontrollably while smaller, more damaged offshoots tear or collapse altogether. Khaine’s Gate glows white hot for several moments, and one of the mighty chains that bind it snaps with a sound like a thunderclap. At the exact same moment, every single portal within the Dark City flickers out and then comes back to life, plunging hundreds of thousands into limbo or tearing them apart in transit. The Dark City is soon in uproar, and demands that Overlord Vect take action to prevent a full blown Dysjunction become ever louder. Vect suspects the hand of Lady Malys in this agitation, but his attempts to procure proof are foiled by troupes of Harlequins that appear from nowhere to slay Vect's agents or abduct his informants.
Stealing the Void (978.999.M41) - The Kabal of the Black Heart and the Wych Cult of Strife lead a massive raid against the Imperial Navy moorings at Bakka. The attack causes immense destruction and leaves a swathe of the Imperium open to further raids, yet this is merely a by-product of Vect's true purpose. While the bulk of the raiding forces are fully engaged with the Imperial Navy, a small Dark Eldar force breaks away under the cover of advanced Night Shields. Led by Vect himself, with Lelith Hesperax at his side, this force assails the Inquisitorial stronghold concealed behind Bakka's third moon. In the ensuing battle, the Black Heart successfully kidnaps a handful of very special Imperial personnel. Aberrant anti-psychic mutants, the very presence of these so-called Nulls deadens the tides of the Warp and is anathema to the Daemons of Chaos. The Nulls are smuggled into the depths of the Dark City, destined for grotesque machines arranged around the Undercore. Yet, though the luckless mutants are moved with the greatest care and secrecy, Vect's plan does not go entirely unnoticed, for the eyes of Lady Malys are everywhere.
The Great Eye Opens (995.999.M41) - The Thirteenth Black Crusade surges from the Eye of Terror, Imperial and allied armies flooding from across the Imperium to oppose it. Kabalite raids descend upon realspace in their thousands to take advantage of the mayhem, yet now battle is also joined in the Dark City. Through arcane channels, Lady Malys has learned of the developing situation around Khaine's Gate. Fearing that Vect plans to intentionally trigger its opening and drown his rivals in Daemons, the Archon of the Poisoned Tongue activates assets all across the Dark City. Waves of empyric energy roll from the Eye of Terror to batter Commorragh, collapsing sub-realms and breaching portals. Bands of Kabalites, Wyches and Harlequins loyal to Malys or Vect engage in increasingly bitter skirmishes around the Undercore, oblivious to the irony that both factions are fighting to achieve the same end. Meanwhile, in a chamber filled with swirling madness, hairline cracks spread across Khaine's Gate, and the caged Nulls begin to scream.
Source: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com
#horus heresy#warhammer 40k#dark eldar#eldar#adeptus arbites#adeptus astartes#adeptus mechanicus#adeptus sororitas#adeptus custodes#astra militarum#Adeptus Astra Telepathica#officio assassinorum
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Prince Osmit of Bastet legacy, reference sheet commission for Gabriel credit to @ julesthavenet (on instagram) for graciously allowing to use his concept as a base (not included in my post), check him out
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Excerpt from the Warhammer 40k: Mechanicus artbook. From tabletop models to ingame character art. Cool to see how models were simplified or altered for a more cohesive faction. I could identify all models except for the last one. All credit to Bulwark Studios.
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