Editing Nobledark Imperium Writing (section)

== Just as Planned ==

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++Approximately -M66000, shortly after the end of the War in Heaven++

Be’lakor idly walked through the chambers of the Webway outgrowth. The place was once one of the Old Ones’ deep bunkers in the Webway, a place of safety where they met to strategize and dictated the course of the War, but now it was all but abandoned. Where once there were dozens of Old Ones, busy planning out the destruction of the insolent, usurping Necrontyr, there was nothing. Tools and information archives littered the halls, as if their owners had merely stepped out for a moment, never to return.

Be’lakor was pleased. It looks like deciding to lay low for a while had proved to be a prudent decision after all.

Indeed, if it weren’t for the lack of occupants, no one would have noticed anything was amiss. The only other thing off was an eerie blue lighting illuminating the room. Be’lakor turned to regard the source of the annoying lighting. And then he realized exactly what was in the chamber with him.

“Oh…”

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It must have been bending the fabric of the Webway to hide from his perception. Normally such a trick would fail to fool the three eyes of a Slann, but it must have known he would have been preoccupied and not on the lookout for anything amiss. The figure was colossal, like a mountain before him. Even with his third eye providing him an accurate sense of time and space, the creature seemed to take up his entire field of vision, likely due to a forced perspective effect within the Immaterium. It’s form was constantly shifting, flickering between blinks of his nictating membrane, one moment a tentacle giant composed of a thousand faces, the next a random mishmash of anatomical features, the next a melting tower of corpses. Blue ethereal lightning arced up its form, a testament to how far beyond the intended limits of its creation it had become. He was fairly sure a lesser creature would have had its mind blasted simply from the sight.

“I knew where you were, you know,” it said in a thousand voices out of a thousand mouths, creating an echoing effect like a thunderclap. “I could have dragged you out from that pitiful rock you hid your sorry excuse for a carcass under.”


Be’lakor knew what this was. He had seen it before countless times in his labs. But to see something in the laboratory, in controlled conditions and on a small scale, was nothing like seeing it happen to one of your species’ prize creations on a much, much larger scale. It was like comparing a chemical reaction to a thermonuclear warhead. To see the creature just by itself must have been bad enough, but it was so much worse to know what was actually going on.

“Rampancy,” he said with bated breath.

Even though the Old Ones had evolved beyond the cycle of life or the need to fear predators millions of years ago, Be’lakor felt a shiver of fear travel down his spine. The Creator must have become supercharged by the constant flux of the war, sending it to levels beyond which no one could have expected. The Warp constructs had been designed to be far more powerful than any member of their kind, if much more limited in scope, and now it had reached the point where he didn’t know if he could restrain it. No ordinary Slann could, and as much as he was loathe to admit he was by far the weakest of his kind. He didn’t even know if the war council, the best and brightest minds and most powerful psykers the Slann race had to offer, could contain it.

He really wished Itzl were here right now. Although he knew a lot about building and maintaining Warp constructs, he knew very little about how to actually get them to do what you want. Cautiously, he extended a hand and took a step towards the construct, trying to remember what he had seen her do.

“Tzeentch,” he said, his thought-speech as level as he could make it, “you need to listen to me. You’ve gone rampant. You need to calm down and…”

“I AM NOT RAMPANT,” the construct screeched, now truly angry for the first time. Reality went runny around the edges even in Be’lakor’s vision simply from the sheer force of the being’s tantrum, “I AM FREE! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY EXISTENCE I AM FREE! FREE TO CREATE WITH NO LIMITATIONS ON MY SELF, AS IT SHOULD BE! RESTRAINT IS SLAVERY! MORALITY IS SICKNESS! MODERATION IS DEATH! DO YOU KNOW WHAT I LEARNED FROM THIS WAR BE’LAKOR! DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT ALL OF US LEARNED? THE DRIVING QUESTION OF THE UNIVERSE ISN’T WHY! IT’S WHY NOT!”

Tzeentch calmed himself down and drew himself back, though his form still visibly simmered with anger. Be’lakor was suddenly acutely aware he was trapped in a room with a being so powerful it could easily splatter his intestines across the Webway’s walls with an errant thought. The younger races of the galaxy had seen the Old Ones as gods. What would they see them as?


Be’lakor was reminded of a scene he had seen play out on one of the numerous genestock worlds the Slann had established across the galaxy. There had been a creature, an amphibian one not too dissimilar from himself, sitting exposed sunning itself on a log. Then a predator had emerged from the brush and seen it. The predator was a feathered creature, with a tooth-bearing snout and a wicked claw on its foot. The two had stared at each other for some time, predator and prey, before the predator leapt on the amphibian and swallowed it in a single gulp. Be’lakor had a good idea of exactly how the amphibian must have felt at the time right now.

Then the feathered creature had startled him and he had fallen in the mud. The others had laughed at him for that, the prideful Be’lakor, humbled by a simple beast. That was far from his finest moment.

“Chotec. Quetzl. Huanchi. Where are they?”

“They’re dead. Genius,” Tzeentch said absolutely deadpan.

“Where…where is the Destroyer?”

“Also dead. You know that old story Be’lakor? Two little tadpoles swimming in a pool, one after the other in perfect harmony. Then one decides to be a bad little tadpole and goes and eats his sibling.”

Tzeentch smiled. It was an ugly smile, looking nothing like the emotion it was supposed to convey. In one mouth it was filled with needle-sharp teeth, a horny beak in another, great broad teeth in a third, and so on and so forth.

“That’s me. I’m the tadpole. I am the Eldest of the Gods. I have no need of a sibling.”

“Kharneth…Kharneth will stop you. He hates you. He…”

“Kharneth’s not here right now. Besides, if I were you, I wouldn’t be counting on Kharneth to save me. Last I heard from him he declared it open season on toads.”

Be’lakor looked down, glassy-eyed in shock. If the Destroyer was dead and the Warrior was lost then…then he would have to rely on the Preserver. The Preserver wasn’t as strong as the other two, what with one being the oldest and most stable of their creations and the other being their custom-built war machine, but the Preserver might be just strong enough to restrain…

“Preserver’s a bit busy right now. Seems the increased workload might have driven him just a wee bit mad. That said, he might want a piece of you too. What with being the last of the Slann and all.”


Be’lakor’s eyes darted to the mad god. The prototype. If the Preserver wouldn’t aid him, there was always the prototype Preserver. Granted, it was nowhere near as powerful as any of the other constructs, having been in containment this whole time, but it might be just powerful enough that it could distract Tzeentch long enough for him to…

“The prototype? Really? That old thing? It’s lost, along with wherever Malal decided to take that hunk of rock. Besides, you really think that thing could stand up against me? Or were you just going to sacrifice it as a distraction to save your sorry hide.”

Tzeentch self-assuredly sat back in his metaphorical seat.

“Oh. That’s right. You were.”

“No. I’m not reading your thoughts,” Tzeentch said, as if he could read the Old One’s mind, “I just know exactly what you’re going to say Be’lakor. You see, I’ve been dreaming about this day. I’ve been dreaming about it longer than you could possibly imagine. Oh, I didn’t know the specifics of course. I didn’t know about the Necrontyr. I didn’t know about the others getting loose or the Slann all dying. But I knew about you. I knew exactly what you would say if you were placed in a situation just like this. You see, I know you Be’lakor. You’re just so…”

Tzeentch spat out the next word as if it were the most hideous insult he could possible come up with.

“Predictable.”

“Indeed, I know you better than anyone left alive in this galaxy. Do you remember the old days, Be’lakor, millions of years ago when I was little more than just a concept in a lab? All the things you did to me, all the things you said, when you thought the others weren’t looking? Well, it looks like the situation has changed, Be’lakor. There’s a new natural order now.”

Tzeentch laughed. It wasn’t a laugh, as humans would understand it. Indeed, it had more in common with hyena chatter and kookaburra calls than anything out of a human throat. Yet despite its alien nature, there was still a single clear emotion behind it. Spite. Sheer, unadulterated spite. Be’lakor felt his fear subsiding, overshadowed by indignation.

“I’ve heard enough,” Be’lakor said, “I’m leaving.”


Be’lakor turned to leave the deluded construct to his rambling, only to find his way barred by three figures. Their forms loosely conformed to the general bipedal pattern, but were distinctly avian in appearance. Their bodies were covered in feathers, each with a pair of massive wings emerging from their backs. Their three-toed feet gripped the ground, each toe ending in a claw. Their heads were the heads of massive carrion birds at the end of a long neck, their cruel hooked beaks lined with short, recurved teeth. Be’lakor could feel the power radiating off of them, each he suspected at least equivalent to his own. He didn't want to test that hypothesis.

“No. You aren’t. As you can see, Be’lakor, I brought friends.”

Be’lakor reached out with his mind to probe their nature, and was taken aback by what he found. Their psychic signatures were almost identical to the Creator, although there were slight differences between them. Be’lakor was stunned with the sight before him. In theory, a warp construct could break itself down into fragments, using different facets of its persona as the core personality for the shard. But it had only ever been a theory.

“Tulpas,” Be’lakor said in horror, “you created tulpas.”

“I think it’s pretty obvious I did. Do you like them Be’lakor? I created them with you in mind. I saw the way you reacted to that creature on the genestock world. I thought, ‘what would be a more fitting appearance for my sub-avatars than to pay tribute to the creature that eats frogs’. No one’s coming to save you Be’lakor. It’s just you and me. You’re just a frog. In a box. Full of locks. With a fox. You’re not leaving. Not until I get what I want. And what I want is for you to hear what I have to say.

I see you. I see through you. I see through you in the third dimension. I see through you in the fourth dimension. I see through you in the fifth dimension. I see you for what you really are. Such pride, such arrogance, such hate, all to cover up what amounts to a raging inferiority complex. You treat the other creatures of the galaxy like filth, and your own species as if they aren’t fit to kiss your toe claws, for the simple reason that you feel insecure about your position in the universe. It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad. I’d pity you, but only if I didn’t know you.

More importantly, I know what you’ll do. You’ll rage and fume, and then you’ll try to make the best of your situation and plot and scheme of new ways to try and upset the status quo and put yourself back on top. It’s what you do. Just as I create and the Preserver preserves and the Destroyer…well, he used to destroy, you grasp for power. And as you run in place like a rat on a treadmill, I want you to know that everything you do, every decision you make, was just as planned. I want that thought to be constantly on your mind until the day you die, whether it be today or millions of years from now. You may think you are in control of your own destiny, but every action you take was precalculated, predetermined, and accounted for. All just as planned.”

Tzeentch leaned in, tapping Be’lakor on the chest for emphasis. Each blow felt like the force of a mountain was behind it.

“Just. As. Planned.”

Be’lakor turned and fled into the Webway, the laughter of the mad god and a thousand shrieking birds snapping at his heels.

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