Editing Nobledark Imperium Notable People (section)

== The Rainbow Serpent ==

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">''''' A Relict of Days Long Past '''''

I could be that there is somewhere in the wastes an old independent warp spirit. One of the really old fuckers from when there was only Tzneetch and Malal. His job was to make a note of the things created before they were destroyed, sort of an early draft of Nurgle although he was never capable of trying to preserve things, he is a very small warp creature.

He just made watched and remembered things because someone had to.

Back then there were really only the Old Ones that were any sort of power in the galaxy. They had warp travel and had just started to spread across the stars. Necrontyr were still a primitive race barely sapient dying of cancer. C'tan didn't have a warp presence and everyone but the Old Ones were isolated by interstellar distances.

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By necessity the gods of that time, if you could even call them gods, were small.

The Chronicler was therefore typical of his time. He achieved his form when he got too involved with a quaint little species of child people. One of them saw a rainbow and tried to draw it in powdered rock and berry juice but it came out looking like a snake. A younger member of the social group came over to look at it. By dusk they were making up stories for fun around the camp fire of The Rainbow Serpent.

The Chronicler was making a record of those people at that time and got too close to the story telling. He was shaped by their imaginations and saw no reason to fight it. chronicler became the Rainbow Snake.

Rainbow Snake and other spirits like him kind of adopted the stupid little shits out of pity and fascination and endearment. Tried to teach them how to make some sort of civilization, rudimentary though it was. Kind of a group hobby for bored proto-daemons with nothing better to do. Had some success but never got them past the late Neolithic in terms of technology, they weren't the brightest sapients.

Tzneetch and Malal creation and destruction without morality and therefore fed well by the Old Ones get overall power in the Warp.

Then the War in Heaven came, the Warp becomes all manner of churned up and the small spirits that the shamans talked to are either devoured by larger and more terrible things or shredded in the storm. Rainbow Snake and a few others survive for a time but as Khorne is born and the other 2 become more and more exaggerated to obscenity the others are picked off one by one.

The adorable idiots without guidance slip back into their older more primitive ways, living in the ruins of what little heights they had managed. Even their homeworld seemed to get darker as ethereal fallout subtly twisted the wildlife to be more dangerous.

By the time the Old Ones came there was Rainbow Snake and maybe a half a dozen helpful spirits left from maybe hundreds. Perhaps it was better that the others had died than see what was born from their adopted children, what the Old Ones did to them.

The other gods didn't survive Gork and Mork's initial rampage and the endearing little morons didn't survive their twisted offspring. The other spirits tried to fight or run and were squashed and eaten. Rainbow Snake found a crack in the rock to slither into and hide, Gork and Mork just brawled right over them and when Khorne came to collect them he slithered away into the Formless Wastes to die.

He visited the old ork homeworld once after the creation of the orks, just once. He found one of the few remaining tribes, possibly the last tribe, before the orks did. It was high up in some desolate mountain where no one wanted to go, no value to anyone but the orks will have their fun. The last spirit talker hacked off one of his finger and gave it to the old serpent, the last of his gods.

Rainbow Snake took the last piece of his children with him when he returned to the Warp. But the deep warp was very much changed from when he was young. It had never been "safe" as such but neither had it been entirely terrible. Now it was actively and totally malevolent.

The Chronicler Snake slithered away to the places where gods don't see, beyond the realm of outcasts and the lost. Beyond the places where life can be found, to the mass graves of his children. To the fields of bones and the dried out riverbeds and the ruination of innocent memories with the severed finger of his last shaman held gently but firmly in his mouth.

The finger will not grow in that dead land but the only place left that it could grow is deep in enemy territory and he is just a small snake.

In that lifeless place without sustenance he should be dead and have died long ago. But he has not. Is it because in his time he has learned to be super efficient? Can he hibernate perfectly because he's a snake? As a daemon of remembrance does the mere act of being observed? Who can say. It's not exactly living, not living as such but he is surviving. He is hiding. If he waits long enough something will change and he can plant that finger in good soft mud. He might have to wait several eternities but he is a snake, he is very patient. He just has to remain hidden in the fields of bones.

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'''See Also:''' [[Nobledark_Imperium_Writing#Innocence_Lost|Innocence Lost]]