Additional Background Section 15: The Chaos Imperium In Turmoil
Even in desolation I rise, for there are nought but the shivering souls of the unmasked, wailing as they cower before my majesty!
[Editor’s note: Something has written in my chronicle! My hand was not the author of the above... what else is in this place? This place breathes with too much history. I can hardly bear it...]
As alluded to in previous sections, the Western Chaos Imperium was no stranger to upheaval and the dynamic, ever-shifting political composition of a realm in eternal flux. Nevertheless, though each world was a barely held together mess of tyrannies and anarchies, there was a certain security provided by the Despoiled and the Despoiler’s chosen that meant life was almost tolerable, even for the relatively mundane citizens of his realms. Tolerable, but never safe of course.
But trouble built in those closing years in the very middle of this Age of Dusk. Not even the infamous Despoiler was impervious to the great changes and conflicts ripping through the galaxy at this time. But, unlike so many other realms, the threats to Abaddon came not form without, but firmly from within.
The Wulfen had been a nuisance to the forces of Chaos for almost twenty thousand years. They were persistent and tenacious in their animalistic fury. Goaded into battle by the battered remnants of the forgotten 13th Company of the Legendary Fenryka, they seemed to appear on battlefields across the Chaos Imperium, almost at random. No one knew how they could move from world to world without any notable starships in their possession, yet they did. They were almost always outnumbered, and yet they always forced their foes to quail before them. There was something about the wolfish Fenryka, and the blood-maddened Fenrisian hounds that loped after them, that unsettled and unnerved the profane and the daemonic; it was as if the image of the wolf was a primordial image of the hunter of monsters, imposed upon the psyche of all humanity from their earliest years. This common belief and unspoken assumption gave the wolf their power. But it was of course not simply their psychic signatures that were uniquely powerful. Their bodies were fuelled by the superhuman stuff of Astartes, but twisted by genetic mutations to be even more fearsome. They were what the Astartes had the potential to be, if only they forgot their entire human soul, and lost themselves to the beast.
Abaddon tried for century upon century to exterminate the Fenryka. His twisted Dark Mechanicus devised neurotoxins and warp-enhanced viruses to pass contagions amongst the Wulfen. This failed, for the Wulfen spelt the Maleficarum on the flesh of the tainted, and abandoned them. On Maldain, the world built within the hollowed out carcase of a void whale, Abaddon captured Kharn the Betrayer and his blood-greedy coven within cages constructed by Iron Priests. He used these Berserkers during the siege of Mordia, when his generals informed him that howling Astartes-wolves clambered over the barricades of the Mordian Iron Guard to rip apart an entire regiment of the Despoiled in a night of terrible bloodshed. Abaddon dropped Kharn’s Berserker horde into the heart of the war. The carnage that ensued engulfed the entire night-side of the tidally-locked hive planet. The two races of monsters hunted one another in the shadowy places, and the howls of wolves merged with the hoarse screeching of the truly demented disciples of Kharn. Chainblades clashed, and when they shattered or broke, fingers, claws and bloody teeth were used to rip one another to shreds. The few Despoiled troopers stranded below died hideous deaths, as did many of the Mordians. But, unlike the despoiled, the Mordians were never running when they died. They were standing, and they were reloading...
In the end, the Wulfen and Khornate butchers gutted themselves, forcing a stalemate that ended with mutual destruction. As stated earlier, Kharn himself eventually escaped the planet, by storming a battleship in orbit, and breaking through the Chaos blockade by ramming through Ulvenial’s command ship, killing the Betrayer’s rival in the process. Yet Abaddon assumed this was a price worth paying; for surely the Wulfen were all exterminated now? But no, a few years later, and that familiar, frustrating howl echoed once more upon the battlefields of the Chaos Imperium. Not only this, but there were reports that there were many different variants amongst the Wulfen; Wulfen in various stages of animalism, full horse-sized thunderwolves and Fenrisian hunting hounds, and other, strange beast-Marines; clad in tattered, ruptured armor of the deepest black, with distorted, twisted flesh filled with thorns and grasping claws. Abaddon determined that the Wulfen must be spawning somehow. He had to determine where and what was creating more of his most persistent enemy.
But Abaddon’s resources were stretched by this point. Not only were his forces policing and controlling the Eye, his semi-loyal followers were keeping the Word Bearers in check (who were quietly spreading their influence amongst the worlds furthest from Abaddon’s iron claw). Abaddon could not even call upon the vast array of pacts he had with the chaotic warbands that positively infested his Imperium. Most had been dragged along in the wake of a vast armada that had surged from the eye, and made full speed towards the galaxy east of the Imperium’s western border. Billions of warriors, soldiers, psychopaths and all many of daemonic mutations and malignancies, all clustered and gathered around this fleet, until it was a behemoth of almost Heresy-era proportions. At the heart of this fleet, truly vast pleasure barges and twisted daemon-yachts moved at a stately, languid pace. Though few ever ventured within such chaos-tainted vessels and survived, it was obvious who led this fleet of extravagant excess; whole planetary populations felt his oily presence slither through their souls as he passed by. Fulgrim rode to war once more. His motives, and his war upon Vulkan, shall be elaborated upon in later sections.
But to return to the matter at hand, this unprecedented situation meant Abaddon could call upon few of his usual minions to do his will. He desired the Wulfen-den found, and its propagators destroyed. It was, in all honesty, likely a suicide mission, and those few chaos forces who remained behind would not be bullied by the weakened Abaddon, and sneeringly defied their Chaos Emperor. Some idiots even attempted to usurp the despoiler. They were tossed bodily into the baleful warp star for their foolishness, and not even this chronicle is capable of remembering their names, for they were utterly expunged mind, body, soul and memory. Nevertheless, Abaddon was forced to call upon outside assistance to achieve his goals.
Bizarrely, it was a battlecruiser of mercenary Blood-knights of Baal who answered his call.
The baroque vessel entered Chaos space at Abaddon’s behest. The only payment they asked for was a world of fresh mortal humans, untainted by chaos, for them to feed upon. Abaddon was surprised that their wishes were so very easy to satisfy, and he agreed warily. The Bloodknights were fearsome, cold-hearted warriors. Like the Wulfen, they had once been Astartes. But the dread techniques used to stave off their twin afflictions had moulded them into something quite different. They were pallid and dreadful to look upon, clad in armour sculpted like skinned flesh, and the image of a fountain of blood gushing from a wailing skull was a common motif across their strange Artificer armour. Hooded degenerates and slaves, dregs from Baal elevated into serfdom, accompanied them wherever they went; spared their master’s hunger due to the teardrop mark branded upon their flesh. The leader of this band was known as Tychellus, and he wore a cloak of stitched together human leather and wielded an Obsidian blade plucked from the fist of a Dark Angel in long centuries past.
Though Abaddon was wary of ancient foes being his allies, the Bloodknights knew nothing of the old antagonisms, beyond stories. The Knights owed fealty to no one in their view; they had each overcome the failings of their flesh, and were free agents in a galaxy devoid of control. They were predators; harbingers of their own destinies. They fought whomsoever they pleased, and made feasts of it. Tychellus claimed he knew where he could find the Wulfen. The Black Legion who met him as envoys scoffed at this notion, until Tychellus tossed the fanged skulls of several Fenryka at their feet, each bearing the tell-tale signs of being cut from bodies violently.
And so, with a soul-gem of Abaddon as their safe passport through his realm, they began the hunt. There were merely twenty Bloodknights upon their vessel, known as the Unquenchable; each warrior was a legendary fighter and slayer. Each warrior bore a trophy room stacked high with the broken bodies and captured trophies of slain monsters and vanquished foes. They were skilled in the art of tracking and especially in the kill. Tychellus made sure to capture some slaves from amongst the Chaos Imperial populace, and laced them with a unique blood toxin his Vitae-crafters had specially developed. The bloodknights were experts in manipulating the fundamental components of bodily plasma, and this compound could be tracked across astronomical distances by Tychellus’ chief Librarian, the sallow-featured Mordifax, for the signal it produced propagated across the warp itself. The bloodknights released their unwitting pawns back into the Imperium at large, and hid themselves; watching their tainted captives return to their chaotic ways of ravaging, torture and murder. They were close to a site of previous Wulfen sightings, so Tychellus did not have to wait long before the Wulfen took the bait. They fell upon the tainted slaves, and ripped them to shreds. The bestial fiends did more than just kill; they gulped down great mouthfuls of gory flesh and chewed through bones to reach the marrow. All the while, the blood toxin infested them. The toxin was not a venom crafted by daemons, and thus the wolfish Astartes suspected nothing. When the Wulfen suddenly vanished from the world, the Bloodknights were already tracking them.
Deep did the Baalites delve into the outer circles of Hell’s Iris, almost into the Eye of Terror itself. Within this desolate region, the scattered, mewling empires of mutants and twisted things scrawled and brawled with one another in the darkness. The stars were dim here; girdled with greasy daemonflesh or else obscured by tides of impossible flies and roaches, that coated the worlds in ever-present gloom. Those forces who were foolish enough to cross Tychellus’ path learnt why they were feared half the galaxy over. The bodies of their defeated foes had to be removed in buckets. Drenched head to foot in blood almost constantly, Tychellus grinned a mirthless grin. He noticed how the warbands grew thin here, and ever more cautious.
They were afraid, and not of his men.
He was close.
But the Baalites were themselves being followed. The notorious king-maker and schemer Erebus watched them from afar, and sent an army of his Word bearers to follow them, led by Apostle Vesk. Erebus wished to know what Abaddon was planning, and how to turn it to his advantage. The Apostle was to follow the Knights for as long as possible, and eliminate them if they seemed to be gaining any powerbase within the outer rings of the Hell-Iris.
The Baal Knights began to see curious scenes as they delved deeper. There were the scenes of old battles, and many more recent ones. But this was not what made them pause. From world to world, they began to notice the abundance of ancient sites, many buildings and collapsed towers that seemed to have once been laboratories and research facilities. Tychellus and his men set down amongst the ruins of the most prominent site yet. They found smashed incubator tanks, shredded document wafers and the desiccated remains of un-used tissue samples and biological detritus. Though the former loyalists did not realize this, this was a former lair of one of Bile’s many heinous endeavors. But whatever vile sorcery he had enacted there had been long ago stripped out. Yet, some of the machines seemed too new, too unblemished to be relics of past activities.
Someone had repurposed them, that much was clear. It was then that the Bearers of the word confronted them. A whole company of Astartes, clad in the dried blood-colors of Lorgar’s Legion surrounded the Knights, demanding to know what they were planning. Vesk himself strode forth and gestured with his cursed crozius threateningly. It took approximately five minutes for Vesk to die, as Tychellus pulled his dark blade from the throat of the stunned Apostate. The Bloodknights of Baal were far, far more than Astartes, and it showed. They were hideously fast and stronger than any of their foes. They instantly leapt into combat with the Word Bearers, dodging the hornet’s nest of buzzing bolter fire that pelted their positions. Each of the Knights wielded unique blades and weapons crafted over long years of slaughter; honed to be implements of execution and destruction. The Word Bearers recovered from the initial shock of the Bloodknights, and fell back to make use of their heavy weapons, and the knights were beaten back themselves. But they were fewer in number, and more effectively utilized the dense cover of the ruined factories and labs around them.
They hunted the Word Bearers, and only the possessed Astartes could match their brutality and power in combat. The Word Bearers were soon routed, and they fled to their transports, more out of practicality and a selfish desire to capitalize upon their Apostle’s death than through fear. Still, this gave the Bloodknights a chance to escape on their own ship, before the Word bearer fleet could enact vengeance upon them. Onward they sailed through the semi-madness of Eye-space. Soon, Mordifax’s blood trail led them to a unsettling quiet world.
Chronicles do not name the world, but it was said to be a world of battles past; carcass of a billion tanks littered the rust-dust deserts, while bodies and the remains of buildings formed drifts of dust and ashes thousands of meters high. Only the laboratories seemed to remain in working order, with only superficial damage and wear. This was the place, and Tychellus eagerly descended with his warriors.
The world was a tomb; silent and cold. But it still tingled with trace heat; the faint glow of lingering presence, like the warmth of a new corpse. The Wulfen were there, and they were in vast numbers. Mordifax could feel their blood in his own terrible veins, and Tychellus could almost taste them. Incubator tanks and the myriad apparatus for some crude form of post-human creation were still there, and were still sticky with fresh bodily fluids and the mucus of false wombs. Carefully, the Bloodknights had their acolytes set up their equipment. As they did so, the bloodknights drank in the fresh scents on the wind as they unsheathed a wide diversity of weaponry; billhooks, power blades, stabbing daggers, snarling chain-flails and baroque, ornate scythes amongst their menagerie of implements.
It was then that the Wulfen’s sonorous howl echoed across the dead world, and they charged into combat. At his signal, Tychellus ordered the sonic weaponry brought to the surface activated, and the Wulfen staggered moments before entering the fray. The Bloodknights sniggered as the olfactory and sonic distortion weapons confused and bewildered their demi-canine foes. The Knights were merciless as they launched themselves into battle. Blades clashed, and claws slashed, and there was death. Even near-crippled, the Wulfen were formidable, and five of the knights fell to their jaws and bloodied talons. But Tychellus was a storm of obsidian death, his angel blade carving through hairy pelt and ceramite with equal ease. Mordifax used his dark powers to combat the Rune Priests who supported the beasts, and ethereal energies crackled across the battlefield.
It was then that the Alpha Wulfen made his presence felt. It bounded through its pack on all fours, slamming straggling fenryka and wolves aside as it loped forth, slavering. It was a vast beast, easily dwarfing all others, but that was not what made it distinct. It was punctured by spines and its flesh undulated with black blood. Its eyes were red as fired coals, and its breath was like green smog from a corrupted bellows. It jumped between the sonic beacons, shredding the acolytes and their diabolical tools with equal savage joy. As it howled in triumph, the Knights flinched, for it was truly a sound to inspire dread. But, worse than that, the howl was a psychic shockwave, that seem to ripple throughout the bestial Astartes, making them expand in some cases, while others grew sharper claws, or lost more of their fleeting humanity. It was as if the Alpha Wulfen bled warp power like a nuclear reactor bled radiation.
Only Tychellus remained un-cowed by its dread aura, as he hacked his way through the press of bodies to reach this ultimate animal. He was almost as animal in his own way; ripping apart those wulfen in his way with his bare hands, savouring the tangy blood of the mutant fiends on his venomous tongue. Their final clash was over after barely ten minutes, such was their speed and skill. If it one had slowed time, as the Mirror Devils can, one would have seen a sword-wielding devil in garish red ducking, blocking and swiping, while a towering black-mantled beast of flesh and bladed bones returned every blow with a forceful counter blow. But for all its strength, it was an animalistic monster, while Tychellus was a supreme blademaster. He parried a downward swipe of a great paw with his sword, hacking the hand away in a shower of blood. Before it could recoil, he had leapt atop its head and slammed the angel sword hilt-deep in its collar, and rode his blade down the beast, as it levied open the beasts chest with a gurgling creak. The alpha wulfen fell upon the ground, gore pumping furiously from its mortal wound.
At once, the monster began to shrink to a still formidable, but hardly colossal scale. To Tychellus’ surprise, he noted the great beast wore scraps of Astartes battle-plate still. But this armour was also notable not armour of the Fenryka. It was black; black as deepest pitch. Only the white pinions of a bird emblazoned on its pauldron revealed the identity of the so-called Alpha-Wulfen; the scourge of a sector and the monster most hunted and reviled across the Western Imperium of discordance.
“What is this? You are not one of the Wolves...” Tychellus hissed quietly, licking his long ivory incisors with frustration and confusion.
The dying monster spluttered black gore as it began to laugh uproariously, even in its death throes.
“You are fools! I am a broken son of a Heartbroken father, driven to lengths he should never have had to go, and never should have suffered. They are the ones you seek,” it muttered as it died, and gestured to the towering figures who had appeared behind the Bloodknights as if walking upon air. They only realised the threat when the two giants began to roar with all the dread hate and wrath he could muster.
For the ‘Alpha-Wulfen’ was just one of the many loyalist monsters abandoned within the Eye. It had become a leader of the wulfen, unfleshed refugees from failed chaotic experiments who had refused to repent their faiths, and all those penitent Astartes lost in the eye for so long, their minds had broken, and they had become the monsters that their psycho-indoctrination had kindled in their hearts.
But the Alpha Wulfen was not the creator, nor gatherer of such forces. The two titanic figures who now circled them were, however. Both were utterly ramshackle in their appearances. One was utterly naked save for scattered shreds of clothing and masses of blood-matted fur. In his hand he wielded an ancient alien bone sword, ripped from the body of some biomechanical Tyrant beast so long ago. It was a force blade, and glowed with the reflected rage of its owner. His face was bestial, yet noble all the same. While he stood tall, the other giant was hunched, almost prowling on his hands and knees. While he wore marginally more armour and clothing, he was much less sane. His pallid flesh was tarnished by self-inflicted scars and smeared with blood and dust, and his hair was ripped out in clumps. While the noble wolf-giant stood tall and snarled indignantly, this one babbled and growled with misery.
For these were the two wanderers; the loyal sons of the Emperor who had vanished into the warp like myths on the breeze. One, the great Raven King, had fled in same and self-loathing, dragging the monsters he couldn’t bear to destroy with him into self-imposed exile. The other was the Wolf King, who had given no reason for his exile. The truth is complex (too complex to summaries here), but part of the reason for this absences was that Leman had heard of the Saga of the Weregeld, and of the Raven’s flight. He had determined that he would lose no more brothers. Too many had died; some by his hand, some through treachery, others still through folly. Russ was followed into hell by his own army of monsters; those marked by the ultimate expression of the Canis Helix. He was convinced that the raven Guard’s monsters were not monsters, but were manifestations of the powers necessary to drive out and destroy Maleficarum in all its myriad forms.
Eventually he had found him, but by then, they were trapped. The only way out of the Eye was to fight; something the two brothers were extensively good at.
“What are you? Blood Angels? Is that one of the Lion’s swords?” Russ demanded forcefully.
Tychellus was not intimidated by the two Primarchs. He was far beyond fear. “Blood Angels? Those words are blasphemy! Hat are you? I see before me two monsters. You linger in your pits like cowards, while the world turns without you! You have failed, and all your works are dust! Dust!” he hissed furiously. “The Emperor is DEAD!” he added with a spiteful flourish. “All your efforts are for naught, for he returned to the world a greater monster than his foes. You are finished!”
Russ listened to this tirade carefully, his teeth clenched tightly together until Tychellus stopped, holding back Corax, who desperately wished to ruin Tychellus’ body.
Russ then shrugged. “Be that as it may,” he began, before leaping forwards and hacking Tychellus’ head from his body. Tychellus stumbled backwards, and Russ easily caught the Dark Angel blade as it fell. “I do not like thieves. Brother, let us finish this.”
No Bloodknights escaped that world. Nor did the Unquenchable. For some reason, it charted a course directly into the System’s star.
Perhaps you, my readers, question why I did not add specific emphasis to the first confirmed reappearance of two Primarchs in this section of my chronicle? As will become apparent in upcoming additions to this Chronicle, the Eye at this time was undergoing a great upheaval, which truly dwarfed this comparatively low-key event.
For it was not just the mortal Primarchs who were preparing for battle once more. The Pantheons convulsed, and not even the Monarchs reigning in Hell could ignore it.