Editing Story:Warhammer 60K: The Age of Dusk (section)

==Additional background Section 23: Slipping The Leash: The Great Convulsion and The Dreaded Draziin-Maton==

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It is not an exaggeration to say that the galaxy faced, at the close of M55, the greatest continuous period of war in its history. Though the Ages of Strife and the Age of Imperium experienced countless localized conflicts for extended periods of time, none of these periods can compare to the sheer intensity of the battles raging at this time.
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The Necrons ran rampant across the galaxy. Their goals were unfathomable; most of the time, their vessels scoured worlds of life or blasted warfleets into ashes before the fleets even registered what had stuck them. But there were accounts of silver vessels silently dueling in deep space, far from any stars, and whole hordes of the silver abominations battling near identical armies. Though it seemed impossible to the mortals who writhed beneath the gaze of these dueling, eldritch beings, the Reaper seemed to fight on multiple fronts simultaneously. Increasingly vast pocket empires of entrenched Necrons and Krork battled one another for ever greater territorial gain. World ships and Krork-modified Hulks battled one enough in spectacular duels across the stars.

As it would transpire, the galaxy’s mortal population had made several terrible assumptions about the nature of the unloving menace that blighted their lives (but we shall cover the precise history of this colossal Necron campaign in the next section).

While this was occurring, it would be advantageous to look at the galaxy on a macroscopic scale. If it were possible to observe the galaxy in this manner, the Necron wars would have appeared as a great mesh of eternal battles, raging and fluctuating across the galaxy. But equally, many other wars were being sparked off by this sudden influx of carnage. The resources of the main powers were stretched to near breaking point; the colossal Tau Meta-Empire, one of the greatest military empires in the galaxy, was slowly contracting, tightening its defenses against the assaults of the seemingly limitless necron armadas. The Vulkan Imperium increased military output ten-fold, and the Realm of fathers twenty-fold. Yet still there were worlds they simply could not reach; they had to trust in the fantastic infrastructure left in place by Vulkan to see those worlds through that dark century of conflict.

Everywhere, there was a sense that worlds were falling between the cracks left by overstretched militaries. One many worlds, there was lawlessness, and where there was lawlessness, there was anarchy. And where there was anarchy, there was chaos.

'''[Distortion.]'''

I feel sick to the stomach as I write this. I fear what we had forgo[...]may [...] killed us. We forgot that which is most insidious. In their hubris, all the empires forgot the corrupting power of the daemons and their dupes. But it was more than this. A great pattern was set in motion. Only now, here, in this forsaken place [narrator seems to visibly pale. His implants seem to partially corrode?] Have I been able to piece together the pattern, the grotesque scheme, that underpinned the seemingly [...]the great irony; true chaos is inevitable. What I will relate to you in this section shall sound [...]of chaos, but you forget [...]ll planes. This always [...]ed!

'''[Distortion reaching tolerable levels.]'''

Ahriman had set into motion the Dragon’s freedom. It had seemed like chance, but perhaps it was indeed fate (a most monstrous fate!) which saw his cube breach the warpish barriers around Terra? Ahriman, with his new-found powers thanks to the knowledge stolen from Terra, went about saving the galaxy as he saw fit. But he was no savior of man. For all his cunning and all his devious scheming, his plan was a mere mutation of his original plan to save the galaxy from mutation and destruction. He enhanced his Rubric. But his great incantation was extended. He began to create more Rubric Marines. He actively attacked the mark II Astartes wherever he found them, provoking them into battle. No army of Space marines could face the Sorcerer however. An entire company of the Crow Knights Commandery, at the battle of Vanner’s Blockade, were instantly turned into empty suits of dust-filled armor, which then turned upon the human allies of the Crow Knights with heartless ruthlessness. It was a terrifying sight to behold, and all who witnessed it grew very afraid. His misguided apprentice, Crolemere, soon learned the new nature of this Rubric. The souls and energy of those bound by the Rubric had been hijacked by Ahriman. With this captured warp energy, and with the Primarch machines in his possession, he began to turn himself into a being which could challenge even the mightiest Primarch.

“For else how may we defeat the foes arrayed against us, if we do not utilize the knowledge we possess to make ourselves superior?” he is recorded as saying, his ordinarily level and calm voice rising to a hideous mocking sneer.

Crolomere tried to stop him, but barely escaped with her life. She was cast from his presence, and tumbled through the warp. (''Her eventual destination shall be revealed in a later section'').

As Ahriman gathered his powers, at the same time there was a noticeable expansion of the famous warp storms of the galaxy. The Hadex rippled with further waves of psychic force, consuming a dozen star systems in a single week. The Eye too, like some colossal avalanche of madness, swallowed sectors as it hungrily swelled. Pylons upon Cadia began to show signs of major structural fault lines. The Maelstrom spread northwards, like an infected blister.

The mechanations of the Doomed one, Sparrod, coincided perfectly with the new phase of the Eye of Terror; every world the cultist had caused to destroy itself was destroyed according to a very specific date. In 834.M55, the Eye glowed at its brightest. The first world attacked by Sparrod was a light year away from the eye’s edge. He attacked it in the year 835.M55. The next world he attacked was two light years away. He attacked the world on 836.M55. And so, and so on, for decades. He killed the populace, making them focus all their dying sights upon the Eye. This psychic feedback rippled backwards through time and space, resonating with something deep beneath the tepid shallows of the eye’s warp space. Billions of dying mortals peered hopelessly into the pit.

And something looked back. We assumed the great feeling of nausea which passed through all living things that year was due to the rising Necron threat. It was not. The Doomed one had opened the door, if only for a second. At who’s behest will eventually become apparent.

[Archive walls shiver. Tremors disturb the shelves. Reactive structures in anguish. Hallway darkens noticeably. Chronicle must be paused! Chronicler will not pause! Emergency! He won’t stop!]

... Nay I must continue...

Even... [pained panting] Even the denizens of the Eye suffered at this time. Abaddon, just after rebuilding his keeps on Cadia following the Dragon Siege, found his realm inundated with the lost and damned scum of the eye. They were not surging from the eye on a war path or at the behest of some invading warlord. They were fleeing, in their droves. And not just mutant scum; Word bearer armies and even the anti-Angyl fighting forces of the Elite Blasphematii Knights fled. Abbadon ordered the Word bearers to control the mobs and rag tag fleets that were fleeing, and bring them to heel.

He then demanded that the leader of the Word Bearers come before him, and explain what in the seven hells was happening in the eye.

Eventually, Erebus teleported into Abaddon’s throne room on Cadia, much the worse for wear. His armor was not the usual dark, scriptural beauty it had once been. It was ravaged and torn, burned and melded hideously. He looked more like a noise marine or Death Guard veteran than a word bearer.

“Speak,” Abaddon bade him imperiously. 

And Erebus told him what he knew. A new force had arisen, deep at the Eye’s heart.

There was a new planet in the centre of the Eye. It had been dragged from a realm unknown, and it stank of wretchedness. Even the furies sled before it. Upon its surface, impossible fortresses reared from lakes of sky that fell upon stone atmospheres and crawled up through fields of glass like worms in meat. Within these haggard heathen towers, the Draz... the Draziin-Maton crawled free.

It was said the warp itself convulsed in agony at their birth.

This unloving army spread out from the planet like locusts; clambering across the tainted void itself. They did not need ships. They could crawl upon the half-real space of the Eye physically! At the behest of their lords and masters, they attacked all the other daemon worlds. Daemon prince after Daemon Prince fell to them; their armies of daemons could not strike these beasts. As soon as they approached, the daemons’ forms lost all coherency and collapsed into listless chaos, pure and incomprehensible. The Daemon Princes, used to being gods of their own worlds, were soon humbled. They were not devoured or killed by the Draziin-Maton; they were chained. Great collars, like Khorne’s but infinitely more surreal, were placed upon them and they became the property of the Draziin-Matons’ unseen patrons.

The first realm to fall was that of Fulgrim. The daemon which had stolen Fulgrim’s body sent countless forces against the Draziin-Maton. His daemonettes were useless, falling apart before they could strike. The Keepers of Secrets were little better, only able to fell a few of these creatures before they too became formless. Yet, Fulgrim commanded more than just daemons. A wall of annihilating sound shredded hundreds of the Draziin-Maton, as noise marines and Emperor’s Children ascended the battlements of Fulgrim’s decadently-lovely palace. But the fiends could only be held, not stopped. The wonderfully-scented woods and gardens were ransacked and dissolved by the raw stuff of imagination, unmade and remade a billion times. Fulgrim himself battled the creatures. He was unstoppable in combat, and all who faced him perished. But the Draziin-Maton were not foes one could merely duel. They laid him low with their binding sorceries, and soon the daemon-Fulgrim was ensnared. Fulgrim, his human half, cackled with cruel glee as his daemon was itself bound and humbled, as he had been. Only one entity apparently escaped the Draziin-Maton’s clutches; a single marine, apparently a rider. The only trace it left of its passing was a mile-long burning tyre mark, scarring Fulgrim’s world as it fled through the warp.

Angron fell next. His berserkers were harder to overcome, but the Draziin-Maton were patient. They drowned his worlds in sorcery, until even his followers were hopeless mutated until they were barely even human. It took a hundred strong snares to bring the Bloody King to his knees, the force of which shattered his brass-coated throne room as he roared deafeningly.

Mortarion was the hardest to defeat, for his realm was death and decay. Draziin-Maton withered like grapes on the vine as they approached. But it was only a matter of time until the plague world too would also fall. He was silent as they neared his throne. When they attempted to cage him, Mortarion suddenly rotted away to nothing; he had slipped past them and fled. No one knows where he fled. Erebus speculated that Isha, the plague angel, had snatched him away to hide in Nurgles dank wilderness in the true warp. 

Magnus could not be conquered, for his realm was already akin to that the Draziin-Maton brought with them. His land of eternal change could not be further changed. 

“One cannot grasp that which has no form...” was all he chuckled, as the formless daemons and the Tzeentchian daemons mingled. He never fell to the Draziin-maton, for he was always on their side... or so it would seem...

Perturabo’s daemon world, for all its cunning defenses, keeps and bastions, was no barrier to things that could swim through adamantium, and disrupt the very nature of matter itself. He was bound over the broken corpses of thousands of Iron Warriors and those Draziin-Maton rendered inoperative by his violence.

Slowly but surely, they were all brought low by the Draziin-Maton. Those who did not flee became strange, demented things. And soon enough, the Draziin-Maton turned their attentions towards the realm of reality. Through the warp, they contacted their spy within the eastern Chaos Imperium; the Hamadraya responded and Huron was brought under their control without them having to lift a single one of their terrible limbs.

Abaddon listened to this tale with growing suspicion and dread. They would surely come for Cadia next. He asked to know the weakness of the Draziin-maton from Erebus. The devious demagogue smiled, almost coyly.

“I suppose they cannot function beyond the eye. They require mortal minions to conquer reality. Then, they can truly spread chaos. True chaos, as the Primordial Annihilator has always planned for us.”

It was then, with a groan, Abaddon realized where the serpent Erebus’ allegiances had fallen. He had not mentioned his own Primarch, Lorgar. Abaddon knew why. Lorgar was in league with them, and his Legion had followed him. As one, the Blasphematii attacked Black legion bases across the Sector, and then across the Western Imperium in a chain reaction. Normal Word Bearers and corrupted assassins turned upon their Despoiled and Black Legion rulers in great orchestrated coups across the entire Imperium. Abaddon’s astropaths and sorcerers, located next to his throne, all screamed in distress as they relayed this information from across the empire, directly to Cadia. In every pict display, Abaddon saw Word bearer vessels, supported by the huge armies of fleeing pilgrims, and other Chaos Legions united by the Draziin-Maton’s campaign, as they bombarded his fleets at high anchor, blasting them apart in great silent clouds of molten adamantium.

“You are a traitor amongst traitors Erebus! I always knew you were a pathetic creature! What did they offer you? Power? Gutless beast!” Abaddon screamed furiously, thrusting his daemonsword into Erebus.

The hololithic image flickered. Abbadon screamed in demented fury.

Erebus shook his head condescendingly.

“Why Erebus? We had won! Chaos triumphant! No more grovelling to mortal whelps! We were glorious! We were victorious,” Abaddon snarled, as he smelt the scent of possessed marines, who slowly filled the chamber, their eyes glowing in the shadowy galleries around the throne. Abaddon stood from his throne, staring up at the beasts.

The first barrage of their kai guns struck his corrupted Dreadknight bodyguard. The giant bucked and roared in fury, ripping apart several possessed before he fell with a thud; a smoking ruin leaking greenish ichor.

Erebus’ image growled. “Not our victory! Yours! You have no imagination! Look what you did; you ripped down the Imperium, and built a new one in its place. You betrayed chaos’ very ideals. The Eldar resisted their fate and look what happened to them. Now you’d deny our true nature? We are beings of anarchy. That is what we desire!” Erebus countered.

“Anarchy?” Abaddon suddenly smiled. “You want anarchy? Then you must learn to accept even the best laid plans will have complications; things you simply forgot about in the heat of the moment.”

Erebus snorted. “I am not playing your game Abaddon.”

Then the possessed pounced. But the Chaos Emperor was no mere mortal despot. He was still a champion of chaos, possibly the most powerful champion not to ascend. His storm bolter chattered death, churning the bodies of dozens of the possessed scum, as more leapt over their corpses to finish the job. His sword shivered with colored smoke as it carved souls in half, while the Talon of Horus crushed the life from marine after marine.

“You still forgot one thing,” Abaddon sneered, as the bodies mounted around him. More and more turncoats burst into the chamber, pouring fire upon the Emperor of Chaos. They prepared fire points for the havocs to finish the job of killing Abaddon from afar.

“What is that then?” Erebus shrugged from his safe location.

“The rider of course. The one who escaped first,” Abaddon suddenly chuckled, his laugh disturbing even to daemons. As he laughed, the great crystal ceiling of his throne room burst asunder, as the legendary Doom-rider plunged downwards as if from no where, howling his own name as his body was wreathed in unholy fire. His bike landed in the upper galleries, and he gunned the daemonic engine with all his power, running down those Word Bearers he did not cut down with his sword.

Then, as suddenly as he appeared, the rider vanished, as if his bike had punctured reality itself. When the dust settled, Abaddon was gone. He had fled when the turncoats had taken cover. The Dark Lord fought his way to the orbital docks, battling through the human hordes that vainly tried to slow him down. As he rampaged through his own fortifications like a wild beast, a blood-crazed band of his Despoiled, and some of his Black legion formed around him. Together, they launched a lightning raid upon the Planet Killer. They killed those who tried to capture the vast world killer and he took it for himself. The warp weapon easily blasted its way through the hasty naval blockade set up to stop him, and with that he fled the Cadian system.

Yet it mattered not to Erebus, who teleported down to Cadia, followed by Lorgar. He placed a great black crown upon his Golden-skinned Primarch’s head, who smiled quietly as his forces spread throughout the Western Chaos Imperium like venom. Lorgar then raised his gauntlet high and clicked his fingers once. As he did so, high explosive charges planted at the base of every pylon on Cadia detonated at once. The skies darkened, as the warp flooded the world for the first time in millions upon millions of years. The Dark Cadians looked to the heavens in terror, as the sky was full of daemons, who leered with unbound glee. But worse was to come, as things clambered down from heaven, and unmade flesh with ever slash of their limbs. The Draziin-Maton were rising.

Abaddon became an outlaw in his own empire. Once again he had felt the cold hand of betrayal. He realized the folly of civilization. The only path left was that of the barbarian. If that was what they wanted, then so be it. As he left his Imperium, he raided his own planets for resources and ships, in preparation for his new war. He even bombarded the tower of stitched flesh, snatching away one of the crazed clones of Bile. Once that was done, he escaped over the border into the Vulkan Imperium.

Kor Phaeron, who had managed to capture the Vengeful Spirit, gathered about himself a mighty fleet of chaotic daemonships and warships of a million different varieties. He was bidden by Lorgar to pursue and destroy Abbadon, wherever he fled to. Kor Phaeron set about his task with relish, eagerly chasing Abbadon into Vulkan space.


A Note on the Draziin-Maton:

The Draziin-Maton appear to be the primary military forces the Nex- [Sobbing picked up on audio track. Query: malfunction? Tapes corrupted?]. They are loping, elongated nightmares composed of glistening purple flesh, unnatural limbs and alien weapon systems that twist and coil from their imposing, vaguely humanoid forms. They exhibit a wild variety of weapon systems and devices and indeed can grow and change their forms in the heat of battle itself. This versatility is a result of these entities being some form of proto-wraithbone, which encases an internal warp entity. No two Draziin-Maton are alike, but all are uniformly deadly; able to crush an Astartes with ease with limbs that evolve new methods of creative death almost instinctively. Reports from the most ancient of eldar suggest that these constructs were once ghost-machines used by the old Eldar Empire to fight their wars and extinguish troublesome civilizations. That they are now the shock troopers of a rising new power of utter entropic disorder suggests this new foe is far more ancient than anyone could guess.

The nature of the entities that empower and drive these corrupted war-robots is not known, but much speculated upon. It is said that the warp contains the emotions and consequences of every decision and thought conceivable in reality; every possible idea or emotion that could ever exist. Some say that, deep in the very depths of the warp, beneath layers and layers of demented pantheons and roiling storms, lay the forgotten; the raw elements of existence. Every aborted timeline, every step not taken, every deferred dream and every child unborn; all came to rest in the quagmire of non-existence. The most popular (''and horrifying'') theory about the Draziin-Maton is that they are powered by these impossible entities. Of course much like deep warp daemons (and the Nex- [archive groans as if under strain. Author drools vomit slightly] for that matter), such intrinsically unstable entities would last a fraction of a second within the material realm. In that second they would irrevocably damage the materium, but otherwise their effect should be slim unless powered by a warp rift. In the case of the Draziin-Maton, this impossible existence could theoretically be maintained within a sufficiently-polluted wraithbone matrix.

The N- the deep warp may not appear to have any overarching strategy beyond dissolution, but someone designed these abominations, and someone has been planning this incursion for a very, very long time.
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