Editing Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos (section)

== Notable Crone Eldar ==

=== Riastrad ===

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">''''' The Berserker: '''''

Riastrad was not alive during the days of the Old Eldar Empire, but was born in the years immediately after the Fall. Like many born into that strange post-Fall society with the fires of passion and the delusions of youth, he fell in with the Khornate cults, where he found his true calling. The rush of adrenaline and the raw thrill of striking down his foes called to Riastrad, more than anything else he had encountered in his life. Moreover, he was very good at it. He took skull after skull for the Skull Throne, until one day it was his blood that flowed to appease the Blood God. Riastrad’s band of Khornate berserkers had accompanied a larger Crone force in taking a minor world, and while the Crones had won the battle Riastrad was left forgotten among the dead and the dying.

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That would have been the end of Riastrad, then and there, had it not been for the passing Meatweaver Scathach. Scathach had been haunting the battlefield for the same reason all Meatweavers do: looking for spare parts and unsuspecting victims for their next creation. Finding a dying Khornate champion was quite the unexpected windfall. Seeing Riastrad in such a state struck Scathach with a fit of inspiration. In a fey mood of creativity, she took a damaged, empty wraithguard shell left behind by the defenders, fixed it to the best of her ability, and then used a soul stone to rip the dying warrior’s soul from his body and stick it inside the resulting abomination of wraithbone and tainted flesh. Crone Eldar are normally aghast at the use of soul stones, abhorring any such device that would keep one from communing with the gods at their death. It is one of the few things that most sects of Crone Eldar, who will normally fight to the death over the pettiest and most trivial of issues, agree upon. Meatweavers, however, are notoriously oblivious to any such social taboos even by Crone standards.

Whatever the alien reasoning for her doing so, the results of Scathatch’s experiement satisfied her curiosity and she was pleased by the outcome. Riastrad, however, was not. Wraithguard shells are infamous for their lack of conventional sight and dulled physical sensation. Riastrad could no longer feel the rush of battle. He could not feel much of anything.

Since that day Riastrad has become a nightmare, throwing himself into battle again and again without regard for his safety in a desperate attempt to feel something again. He wields dual scimitars, as he was when he was pure flesh and blood, but now ones scaled to a wraithguard in the manner of one of Vect’s Wraithblades. His wraithbone shell is ritually scarified with a thousand ruinous glyphs carved into its surface, and his form is draped with the flayed, blood-soaked hides of his foes. He wears no armor, at least not beyond his wraithbone shell, in the simple hopes that even receiving pain will give him some sensation or death will free him from his wraithbone imprisonment. His violence is accompanied by an ethereal warbling howl, which to others appears to be the shrieking of daemons but is really the Riastrad’s frustrated screams at being so close to what once gave him joy, but no longer. As might be expected, although it gives Riastrad no pleasure, such slaughter pleases the blood god.

Riastrad often haunts the edges of Crone society, staying just long enough to hear the latest news before impatiently setting off for the nearest battlefield. It is not possible to buy Riastrad’s loyalty, but much like the Orks it is possible to entice him to the field of battle with promises of worthy foes and slaughter. Riastrad has even managed to surround himself with eager Khornate acolytes, much as he had once been. He is not their leader in any traditional sense, and indeed most of the time he barely deigns to notice their existence, at best striking down any impudent soul who gets in his way. Instead, Riastrad’s acolytes tend to follow him much as a hunter does a hunting hound. After all, he knows where the best slaughter is.

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=== Malaria, the Living Hive ===

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">''''' The Abomination: '''''

When the combined forces of man and eldar had invaded Nurgle’s mansion and wrested Isha from Nurgle’s captivity, none among the forces of Chaos were as shocked by this development as Nurgle himself. Khorne was angry, as he always was, ranting and raving about how the theft of Isha was an insult to all the Chaos Gods. Slaanesh was displeased, for they had still craved Isha for themselves and now the chances of having the last elder goddess at their mercy seemed as remote as ever. Tzeentch was annoyed, for he had used the presence of Isha as a tool to sow discontent among the Chaos Gods and now that tool was gone. But Nurgle. Nurgle was destitute. Nurgle had long been aware that existence was futile in a cosmic sense, having watched his every effort to preserve the beauty of the universe wither and be in vain, but this was the first time he had known despair on a personal level.

For the Conservators of Isha, this was unacceptable. After venting his initial bout of fury upon realspace, Nurgle became despondent. The theft of Isha had forced the Lord of Stagnancy to change his lifestyle against his will, and he didn’t like it. Nurgle withdrew from the rest of the world, and the Conservators of Isha no longer received visits from their beloved Plaguefather. Something had to be done. And so it was that one brave high-priestess went before the Lord of Decay, and offered herself up as Nurgle’s guinea pig in Isha’s stead.

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The few remaining records of the Old Eldar Empire list her name as Maleriel, though across the galaxy she came to be known as Malaria for reasons that will soon become evident. Nurgle took Malaria up on her offer, and for a while it was good, or at least, as close to good as things could get in the Realm of Chaos. However, Nurgle’s mood soon began to sour. Malaria had been brave, but she was not Isha. Whereas Isha’s flesh would have always rejuvenated itself eventually no matter how noxious Nurgle’s creation, Malaria’s flesh warped and mutated. As much as it pained the Lord of Decay to admit it, it just wasn’t the same, and Malaria could never replace Isha in Nurgle’s heart. Nurgle ceased experimenting on Malaria and moved on to other things. The Conservators of Isha breathed a collective sigh of relief, they loved their Plaguefather, but they knew that few could survive such personal, painful attention from the Lord of Decay. However, perhaps the greatest abomination was yet to come: Malaria had proven herself to be one of those few.

Today, Malaria is a living biohazard, a one-woman weapon of mass destruction. Nurgle had ceased his experimentation on Malaria, but not before he had merged her body with what was at the time his latest creation, the Destroyer Hive. After that, there was no more Maleriel. There was only Malaria, the Living Hive. Malaria is a disgusting creature. Half of her body is covered in hive-like outgrowths, resembling the honeycomb of a paper wasp or the inside of a termite mound, home to growing maggots, rot wasps, daemon flies, and plague gnats. However, the parts of her body that are not covered in these outgrowths, including much of her face save the area around her left eye, are covered by pale white skin, looking as pristine and flawless as they did the day of the Fall.

However, this is only a veneer of normality, literally skin deep. Malaria has almost no original tissue left, and when she has been damaged in the past, breaking in half where most mortals would merely bleed, it is clear that her entire body is nothing more than honeycombs for the insects inside her with a thin layer of skin on top. She shouldn’t even be able to move, having no brain, muscle, or bone, being as much a creature of the warp as flesh and blood now, animated by the arcane powers of the warp and the soul of what was once an eldar.

As for Malaria herself, she does not care as to her appearance. She has the mind of a child, despite producing swarms of plague-bearing insects so vast that they can blot out the sun. Malaria exists in a constant state of pleasure, happiness, and religious ecstasy so common to the followers of Nurgle as insects pupate inside her body, giggling like an innocent child in spite of the horror she leaves in her wake.

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=== Kaimon Adrande and the Choir of Despair ===

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> ''''' The King of Beastmasters...Or Perhaps Not: '''''

Deep at the center of the Eye of Terror, the shellworld of Shaa-Dome is a hive of industry. However, the employment opportunities offered on this world would be alien to any sane eyes, including such things as “daemon whisperer”, “ghastbone singer”, and “flesh warden”. Flesh wardens are the Crone Eldar that handle the various warp abominations the Cronedar capture or [[Nobledark_Imperium_Forces_of_Chaos#Nightmares|create]], breaking them for use as warbeasts or trading them to their kin in Commorragh. Among the most well-known flesh wardens is Kaimon Adrande, a Slaaneshi and the self-proclaimed “King of Beastmasters”. Such an appellation seems confusing at first, given that he counts sentient creatures among his chattel, until you realize that his definition of "beast" is rather lax, considering most sentient creatures including humans, orks, non-Crone Eldar, and even Crone Eldar he deems not sufficiently ambitious enough to count as übermenschen as opposed to sheep to be “beasts”. To the Slaaneshi the world is divided into the dominators and the dominated, there is no middle ground. Kaimon is well-known among the Croneworlders for his brash and arrogant attitude, even among Crone Eldar, attempting feats which most Crone Eldar would consider suicidal. He considers no feat too impossible, no feat too daring, and no beast which cannot be broken to his will.

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Although Kaimon has created and broken many war-beasts over the years, he considers his greatest creation to be his so-called “harem”, his confidant and personal warsteed, the Choir of Despair. It is unknown if the Choir of Despair is a true Nightmare animated by soul stones, or is some other form of Crone Eldar abomination made of ghastbone and twisted flesh. In contrast to most Nightmares, which are made up of hundreds of individuals, the Choir of Despair is only made up of eight souls. Kaimon claims they were a series of eight eldar sisters that he fused together into a single entity, though exactly where and how he got these souls is not clear. They could be Croneworlders, eldar kidnapped from an Exodite world, or it could be that Kaimon’s claim is merely a lie and the sisters of the Choir are merely eight random eldar merged into a single being (possibly not even all eldar). Regardless, Kaimon loves to regale people on the years the Choir spent in horror of their new form as he tried to break them, whether or not listeners want to hear it.

From the waist up, the Choir resemble attractive eldar females attached by serpentine necks to the body of a great armored ghastbone beast. This armor is not put on in the manner of a warhorse, but is outright fused with their flesh. Their humanoid bodies are similarly modified, their hair replaced with segmented ghastbone tendrils and their body covered in chitinous ghastbone armor. Although each head has its own slightly different thoughts and opinions, they no longer have any sense of individuality and consider themselves a single entity. In battle, the heads of the Choir pick out and rip apart targets, tearing at their victims like piranhas as their body smashes through infantry lines, as if taking out their frustrations on the damned. Off the battlefield, the Choir serve, among other things, as Kaimon’s personal advisors, confidants, and quite frankly the only beings Kaimon actually trusts. Kaimon trusts the Choir implicitly, as he considers them to be so broken there is no chance of them attempting any treachery (indeed, it is likely that Kaimon is incapable of trusting any being unless they were broken to his will), and he relies on their many heads to offer him alternative perspectives and keep him informed of anything they see.

However, there are whispers that the Choir is not as loyal as it might appear. The sisters of the Choir remember the indignities they have suffered from Kaimon upon their twisted flesh, and now they plot revenge. Over the years, the Choir has been advising Kaimon to undertake ever more brazen actions of increasing dangers, perhaps in the hopes that one of these outings will eventually kill him. If this were ever the case, it is likely the Choir would take the opportunity to sacrifice Kaimon’s soul as an offering to their own patron deity, Tzeentch.

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