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Story:Warhammer 60K: The Age of Dusk
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==Additional Background Section 11: The Cradle of Putrescence: Return To The Solar System== <div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%"> Where once there was Terra, there was now the sphere. A great ball of unnatural colors and horrific warp-light that spread across a light-year of space, the sphere clung to the very borders of the Western Chaos Imperium like a vile malignancy. Even veterans from the eye feared this realm. Like the warp storms before it and since, it was a swirling mass of madness and warp energy, filled with daemons and degenerates living upon filth and bred on horror. But unlike all the others, this was a storm that had been manufactured by Abaddon himself, by poisoning the Oort cloud and seeding a self-consuming daemon-virus into the very atoms of the star system. <div class="mw-collapsible-content"> In the Age of Dusk, only those who had failed Abaddon, the banished, or those insane beyond all reckoning, ventured inside the Storm of the Emperor’s Extinction. For too long the warp had saturated the worlds within. Jupiter churned with a billion impossible colors, and coiling monsters writhed unseen within its endless banks of mutagenic cloud. Its moons were twisted into daemon worlds that cast vile energies upon one another and warped constantly. Neptune, Uranus and Saturn suffered similar fates. This was a realm where even the Chaos Space Marines were near-helpless. No vessels could enter the sphere’s warp shell without being damaged beyond repair; they soon crashed upon the daemon moons, or were dashed into formless energies by the warp currents, and were there suckled upon by foul things of putrid geometry and biological abomination. Terra was a dark crown rotting towards the center of the horrific churning nightmare. It had consumed its sister Venus and Mercury; huge chains and hooked fronds had drawn them into the world and pounded them like clay, into new and dreadful forms. Luna was swallowed whole, before forming a giant lidless eye that wept oceans of pus into the void, which formed wailing pus-devils of nuglitch heritage that consumed themselves within moments. Mars was no longer red; it was silver and shimmered with arcing patterns of green grave-light. Endless forests of pylons and nightfield generators swathed the world in a cloud of soulless sanity that turned daemons into faded vapor within seconds of approach; for it was the world of the Void Dragon, and he was Oblivion itself, rendered in living metal flesh and pulsating starlight. His Necron Armada had been trapped there through the ploys of Abaddon, but he was far too powerful to defeat. He could only be contained, and contained barely. Every five days, his fleet would dart between every single world in the Solar System. His constructs would utterly scour every single world completely, leaving them as sterile balls of rock. His Necrons killed everything. Then, they would orbit Sol, drink deep of its ancient energies, before returning to Mars to feed their great C’tan master, who grew more powerful and more frustrated every single day. This was because, barely a day after killing every daemon in the Solar system, the daemons would return, and remake their worlds anew. These purges became known as the Dragon Tides, and are the only reliable means of time keeping inside the Storm of the Emperor’s Extinction. They are treated almost like tropical storms by the daemons and degenerates of the Solar realm. They hide before he reaches them. Some survive. Most don’t. But it matters little either way. Chaos always returns, feeding on the misery of those who yet live to fuel it to ever greater feats of madness. Despite the horror of the Sphere, there are treasures to be plundered by those brave and deranged enough to venture within. Terra’s vaults were always warded with unbreakable seals, and they are filled with a wealth of knowledge beyond reckoning, perhaps second only to... this place I find myself within... Ahriman was such a seeker of knowledge. He desired to finally breach the secret vaults, and plunder Terror’s heart. The great sorcerer gathered together Rubric Marines and fellow practitioners of warp magic from across the Chaos Imperiums; not only Thousand Sons, but many psyker cults from every creed and diabolical culture flocked to his Library vessel, formed from the captured hulk of a dead Void Stalker. His Cabal tried a hundred different rituals to breach the impenetrable cloud of warp storms that sheathed the Solar system in both the Materium and Immaterium; millions of their moaning acolytes perished in these attempts, but to no avail. The madness spewing forth from the Oort Cloud was too dense and too nonsensical. Even the most powerful mage’s minds were simply too mortal and too logical to truly perceive a safe route through the tundra of psychosis. All, that is, save for one vessel. The Tersis, the fallen Black Ship had plunged into the very depths of the warp, beneath the undulating incorporeal realms where flesh ran fluid and matter was a myth. In the millennia since that time it had roamed the warp like one of the many warp predators that hunted alongside it. The ship was a living warp vessel, infused with warp energies in every atom of its being, some even claiming is stored a fragment of the pure, deepest warp inside its engine room, which powered the vessel indefinitely. Such was the potency of its corruption; it could remain in the Materium only for brief intervals of days to capture new crew to replace those daemonhosts onboard whose bodies had finally come apart under the strain of demented devilry, before returning to the warp. Ahriman had to use all his esoteric knowledge to predict when the Tersis would next rise to the Materium, and set a watch over the region. When the living, writhing vessel finally did emerge, he instantly opened a warp portal inside the daemon-sub, and deployed his elite retinue within and led the incursion force himself. The Tersis was a nightmare inside and out, and as soon as he boarded the vessel, he was attacked by the gibbering hordes within. Monsters with too many limbs and disjointed bodies wracked by taint drooled through the very walls themselves to attack Ahriman’s band, but his powerful spells managed to ward off much of the onslaught. The mortals of his retinue, protected from harm by the Rubric Marines, wailed and wept in agony simply through looking upon the fluid walls and raw madness that formed the structure of the Tersis. Geometry meant little to this vessel, and Ahriman’s loyal minions traveled for mile upon mile through the cavernous guts of the vessel, wading through bile and burning their way through bulkheads that gnashed and growled at them. Every step of the way, they were followed by loping daemonhosts and scuttling spawn-things. For days they traveled, and no matter how hard Ahriman’s scholars tried, they could not decipher a path through the maze. Ahriman at last used a powerful spell to summon his patron’s own daemons, who managed to break through the cloying masses to send word to the Lord and Lady of the Tersis. They bore the message of the master of the Rubric; Ahriman wanted to parley with them, not to fight them. Instantly, a passage formed, cutting through the maze, directly to the central chamber of the Tersis, where the Lord and Lady presided. Lady Medeline and her nameless Witch-lord spouse presided over the vast throne room of ossified corpses that Ahriman’s Cabal found itself upon; the terrifying rulers of the Tersis seated upon a glowering throne of writhing beetles and fused bulkhead. Medeline perhaps had once been a Sororitas, but even the barest caress of the Nex [ACCOUNT CORRUPTED, SEEK HELP] beyond all recognition. She sat in her bio-mechanical daemon armor, perched upon the lap of the silent, hooded form of the Witch-Lord, the Psyker formerly of Cell Primus, who petted her multi-hued hair, which wriggled with inhuman life as his talons touched it. Medeline spoke for both of them as she asked for Ahriman’s terms. Ahriman asked for passage on their vessel, as it passed deep into the upper pinnacle of the deepest parts of the warp’s non-existent architecture; the Thousand Son knew that the only way to bypass the Solar warp shell was to travel ‘beneath’ it. (I hesitate to utilize the term beneath, for the realm of the warp bears no such physical dimension. Forgive my colorful analogues. They are my only method of coping with such an impossible realm). None are sure what Medeline asked for in return for her services, but it seems Ahriman readily accepted and gathered the remainder of his Cabal unto him as the frigate-scaled Tersis returned to its unnatural habitat. (The journey through the deep warp remains unrecorded here. I have read previous chronicles which attempted to depict such things, but this often renders said documents unreadable and, in some rare cases, unbearably sentient...) Eventually, the Tersis emerged in a blossoming scream of darkest glare, and the firmament itself bled as its fins ripped their way into reality. Beneath them turned the hellscape of the Sphere, the nightmare which had once been Terra, the cradle of mankind. Ahriman deployed onto the surface almost immediately alongside his elite Rubric marines and one of his Acolytes; a young, ambitious woman known as Crolemere. The rest of his thousand strong Cabal did not land upon the surface. It would have seemed that the Tersis had its prize as it returned to the warp and left the Astartes Sorcerer to his own devices. Ahriman instantly got to work, for he had no time to dally; he had but five days before the next Dragon tide, and he also knew he was not the only deranged plunderer who had come to pry the Emperor’s vaults open and sample the putrid fruits within. He and Crolemere cast a runic enchantment about their retinue, which cast out the questing talons of passing daemons birthed in the sour wombs of the Storm of the Emperor’s Extinction. The place that was once Terra was a place much-changed. There were semi-organic citadels that crawled across its surface like impossibly vast hermit crabs. Whole civilizations of mutants lived and died in the span of hours. The surface constantly shifted and rolled like an ocean of swarming locusts, and it took a great force of will for Ahriman’s disciples to merely avoid being swept away into nothingness by these buffeting tides. Yet it was the woman Crolemere who discovered a means to navigate the blasted orb. Though it was an impossible wasteland, beneath the surface, the ancient passages and subterranean boulevards of Luna, Venus and Terra remained in a semblance of order, even if they were hopelessly ruined. Using this sanity like a divining rod, Ahriman moved at a brutally brisk pace. Yet, he was not the only faction of power hungry travelers to reach the sphere of madness. The Mage Mistress Vaxigotsh, one of the most powerful chaotic warlords in the Segmentum Obscurous, had breached the Oort cloud through sheer attrition; sacrificing a fleet of fifteen thousand of her best ships. Only her burning flagship, the Delirium, pierced the veil, and filled with her cybernetic legion known as the ‘Host Divine’; degenerate killing machines one and all. They too desired the secrets of the Revenant Vault; the Emperor’s Laboratories. Her vessel crash-landed in a collection of fang-like mountains, and emerged on foot at the head of her vast army. She happened to land closer to the great heart of the Terran daemonworld, outside the palace itself, where the rift itself was ripped open and raw with the passing of innumerable daemons and nightmares from the very deepest descents of the warp. And it was she who had the dubious privilege to encounter the new master of Terra personally. Where once the majestic Imperial Palace had crowned the Himalayas, now there stood a towering keep of dull stone and weeping brass which shuddered as if laughing as if laughing in mockery of its former glory. As she approached, she found the blood-filled moat surrounding this keep grew into a vast and terrible ocean, filled with sharks and betentacled things that gnashed and wailed in agonized fury. The only way across the blood sea was a narrow bridge formed from the rib cages of vast beasts. Her army ignored these omens and plowed on ahead in their column of befouled armored vehicles and super heavy tanks. Every step on their journey was watched by skinless shrikes, that instantly reported all they saw to the Prince of Terror; the regent of Terra. When the army was halfway across the bridge, the Daemonic legion struck. Bloodthirsters soared overhead, landing before and after the army, trapping them upon the colossal bridge. Meanwhile, veritable tides of Bloodletters charged along the bridge, growling and snarling with eager bloodlust, while juggernauts stampeded in their midst. Battle was suddenly drawn, and both sides fought with savagery; one warp born, the other induced by cybernetic implants and slaught infusions. Vaxigotsh’s champions were beheaded one after another by the Skulltaker herald of Khorne. Meanwhile, daemon engines of truly colossal scale rose from the depths like legendary leviathans, and ripped the bridge itself apart, tossing both sides into the boiling torrent of scalding blood. When the skull taker finally took Vaxigotsh’s head, he was bidden to keep the severed organ quite alive, so the master of Terra could witness her destruction in close proximity. Ahriman chose a different path through the hellscape. He traveled beneath it, hugging sanity like a crutch. All the while he weaved his sorceries, and the realm above was in flux, changing according to conflicting whims. The Thousand Sons Marine summoned daemonic allies and entire warp portals on the surface, instigating titanic wars and conflicts that sundered the mountains themselves with their fury; all this was to distract the Daemon regent of Terra. Doombreed, the first and eldest mortal daemon ruled Terra with the bloody claws of a tyrant, but even he, most powerful of daemon princes, was not omnipotent. Yet, even as he grew more and more frustrated with the sorceror’s feints and illusions, Doombreed knew Ahriman was there. “Do you think to confound me Astartes whelp? This is my world; my home. I tainted this planet’s soil with blood and pain long before the Anathema’s folly of an Empire arose! I arose long before he bred his sons, and their polluted little mongrels; mongrels like you. I shall swat you as I have swatted all who came before you little mortal. You and your race of posthumans are not worthy of the fruits of the Gods’ power!” he bellowed, his dread voice carrying to every corner of the world. Crolemere cowered at the din, but Ahriman dismissed her fears; he would ensure her safety, until she had completed her part of the bargain. The image of the Doombreed was burned into Ahriman’s mind as he silently fought a battle of wills with the Khornate daemon prince. The daemon appeared as a terrible mirror image of the Emperor; where his armor was gold, the Doombreed’s was brass, and wept oily pus and stinking venom, and where the Emperor’s shining features (for all his faults) had appeared majestic, Doombreed’s face was a contorted mask of patchwork flesh and burning charcoal eyes, topped by a crown of obsidian spines. But Ahriman’s mind, while weaker than the ancient daemon’s power-glutted essence, was by far the more agile, and he avoided Doombreed’s fiery gaze. After four days of battle and stealthy infiltration, Ahriman’s band reached the catacombs of the Dark palace. It was here that Ahriman needed his minions more than ever. He was drained from his relentless mind war with the prince, and only his Rubric marines could defend him from assailing daemons and maddened degenerates that assailed them from every angle; each new wave was gunned down dispassionately by the undead automatons. At long last they reached the desired vaults. At the foot of the vault doors, dried husks marked the manifest failure of previous tomb raiders. Only Crolemere’s touch could open the vault, for she was of the purest blood and an innocent who was immune to the effects of warp taint; one of the few grey Sensei ever to have existed. Only the Emperor’s blood could open his most secret vaults, and part of his blood flowed in her rebellious veins. Her touch opened the bio-coded seals, and granted Ahriman access to the shrouded labs. As it opened, the stasis field inside disengaged. As Ahriman stepped inside, he was staggered by what he found. Mortal scientists, clad in pristine white robes of plastic and rubber, and towering machines of unique and intriguing designs, most of them alien in nature. It was then that he felt his powers suddenly leave him, and he staggered to his knees. From behind a cable-veined column stepped a woman in ornate armor, clutching a wickedly sharp silver broadsword in her delicate fingers. Her mouth was covered with a grill, which only a veteran of millennia long past could ever recognize; she was a sister of silence. The Rubric marines were slain as further Silent Sisters cut down the giants as they slowly reached to this new menace. The Emperor had planned against plunderers a long time ago. But Ahriman was not so easily cowed, not when he was so close to his ultimate goal. Slowly, he rose to his feet, snarling with indignant anger. “I am the Outcast of the Cyclops God, and the scion of the Rubric! I shall not be denied that which shall save us all! All is Dust, but from dust rises... everything!” he declared in a loud voice before the Sisters descended upon him. He and the Sensei battled them furiously, ignoring cuts which would have slain lesser men a hundred times over. His staff was hacked apart, and his helm ripped away. His own blood ran freely, never getting a chance to clot as he threw himself into combat. As the last Sister of Silence died, his powers flooded back to him with a vengeance like an ethereal gale, which blew the vault closed behind them. What happened within with the Emperor’s surviving scientists cannot be fully known for certain, but it was known that Crolemere and Ahriman bore extensive tomes and texts with them into the vaults. Ahriman drained the vaults of their knowledge some say, while others claim he merely completed the incomplete knowledge which resided within those hallowed halls of learning and research. All that is known is that, Doombreed registered a sudden surge in warp energy beneath Terra’s crust, which alerted him to Ahriman’s presence. However, when his legions reached them, they were nowhere to be found. Not only had Crolemere and Ahriman vanished, but so too had the entire vault, leaving a perfect, square kilometer cube of empty space in its place. Doombreed howled his frustration to the bruised skies, even as the Dragon Tide swept in and scoured his world clean of all matter once more. What Ahriman couldn’t have known at that time, of course, was that his dramatic exit had punched a hole not only through real-space, but also pierced the Oort cloud shroud. The prison walls broke on that year; a year forever known as the year of the Dragon, which would be the catalyst of all that was to come. </div> </div>
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