Editing Vertumnus Alraun (section)

==Origins==
Even amongst the myriads of worlds in the Emperor's domain, it is hard to find a worse place to be born than Clapet. A terrible cataclysm caused by one of the warpstorms that harrowed the unfortunate planet during the Age of Strife drove all of its water resources deep underground, leaving its surface a parched, dessicated wasteland. Those few poor souls who managed to survive were driven to feral barbarity by ravages of the Warp. Soon they learned to envy those who perished to the rage of the Immaterium, for the existence in the smouldering wastes of Clapet was a fate worse than death. The wounded planet was ripe with ways to kill its few remaining inhabitants, but the greatest danger by far was hunger. Without any rain to sustain agriculture, the planet's plant life was soon gone, and its wild animals followed suit. The only species to survive the disappearance of water was humanity, for it was too intelligent for its own good. Several tribes independently discovered that they could survive by digging deep wells that could supply them with water and repugnant slimy flesh of cave fish. Thus, the humans prolonged their pointless and miserable existence on a barren rock that should, by all logical criteria, be devoid of all life.

Needless to say, the wells didn't solve the hunger problem, merely mitigated it. Very soon food became Clapet's only legitimate currency, with 100 grams of edible substance roughly equal to a silver coin of most developed worlds. Living in a perpetual famine also left its ugly mark on the planet's society. The dead were no longer buried; instead, they were carved up and shared amongst their relatives, with the butcher-priest taking his own share. The same fate awaited all children at the age of twelve who still could not hold their breath for ten minutes - a skill absolutely crucial for diving in the wells for cave fish. Some parents even came to appreciate the butchering of their weakling children - at least they got one less mouth to feed and enough fresh meat to buy a new harpoon and a pair of swimfins.

As if it wasn't unfortunate enough to be born in this hellish place, Vertumnus Alraun was also a psyker. As is typical for his kin, he was physically weak, had a slight, asthenic build and a low pain threshold. All of this made him a prime candidate for butchering, especially since his psychic abilities didn't manifest at an early age. All of his life was essentially a countdown to a grisly death, and yet the boy didn't grow resigned to his impending doom. The closer he approached his fateful twelfth birthday, the more determined he became to escape the butcher knife, and as his resolve grew, so, too, did his hidden power. And when the hour had come for him to die to the sacrificial hook, he was strong enough to blow the butcher-priest's ugly head to pieces. This psychic blast had taken all of Alraun's strength, and as his would-be killer collapsed into a pool of his own blood and brains, the boy fell right next to him. 

His tribesmen, however, failed to take advantage of the situation. They were simply scared out of their scant wits by what they had just seen. Convinced that if they killed the warlock boy, his vengeful ghost would come back to drink their blood, they simply tied him up, put him in a barrel and brought to the nearest market to sell him for slaughter. Yet they quickly changed their plans when they saw a wealthy looking obese man with a brass collar wandering around the market looking specifically for slaves with abilities in witchcraft. Hardly believing their luck, Alraun's tribesmen approached the mysterious obese man and tried to sell the boy to him, recounting the recent incident with the butcher-priest as a proof of his abilities. The wealthy buyer, however, was reasonably sceptical. He ordered the tribesmen to untie the boy and revived him by making him smell some strange leaves, the veins on which looked like blood vessels. His peculiar treatment proved most effective: the boy who had only recently seemed on the verge of death immediately regained consciousness and felt full of energy. The fat man introduced himself to the confused boy and then asked for a proof of his abilities. Exploding the heads of his tribesmen would do.

The marketplace quickly plunged into anarchy as the buyers and sellers started to fight over the fresh corpses of Alraun's relatives. The boy nearly lost consciousness again, but the smell of the wonderful red-veined leaves kept him on his feet. Seemingly satisfied with what he had just seen, the fat man kindly invited the boy to his amputee sled that took them to his castle in the middle of the wasteland. Vertumnus let out a shout of disbelief when he saw his new master's abode: instead of bricks, the castle was built from stale loaves of bread! On Clapet, bread was stuff of legends, celestial food of the gods and the source of their immortality. The boy instantly recognised it from his picture books. But the surprises didn't end there: in the sky, he saw majestic floating white mountains, and the ground around the castle was covered by a wet fluffy rug, the colour of which Alraun had never seen before. 

It hadn't been long before he got the answers to all of his questions. His new master was one of the infamous Three Fat Men of Cockaigne, identical triplets who held dominion over much of settled Clapet. A long time ago they figured out how they could use thrall warlocks to evaporate the water from the wells and then cool it down with summoned cold winds until the vapour condensed into rain clouds. The rain thus created was used to irrigate the expansive fields of the Three Fat Men, which they fertilised with the corpses of cheap slaves purchased en masse at local markets. This barbaric system made Cockaigne the only place on the planet that could sustain the growth of crops. By these means, the Three Fat Men had a virtually endless supply of high-quality food at their complete disposal, which they used to exert unlimited power over the starving tribes of the wasteland. For their entertainment, they made the tribes go to war with each other for the promise of a cart full of bread for the victor. They organised vicious pit fights to the death, presenting the winner with a goblet of wine. And if they still had a surplus of food after all this cruel debauchery, they wasted it in grandiose ways just to delight in their enormous wealth, such as ordering their slaves to build full-sized gingerbread houses for them, which collapsed after just a few weeks in the wasteland's sun. 

And so began Alraun's new life as a thrall to the Three Fat Men. He was fairly quick to learn the ropes of his new trade, and was soon rightfully considered the strongest of all the warlocks of Cockaigne in spite of his young age. Although he had to strain himself to the limits of his power every day, the red-veined leaves never failed to invigorate him and fill him with a feeling of euphoria. As strange as it would sound, he looked forward to every working day just because of the promise of getting a new pack of the wonderful leaves at the end of it. Once, after a debauched feast thrown by his masters, Vertumnus asked one of them where the leaves came from. Glassy-eyed drunk, the fat man laughed in his face and told him that this is one secret he would take to his grave with him. Indeed, the leaves with their addictive smell were the means through which the fat men controlled their thralls, and they would never share their secret with anyone, lest their wealth and power disappear like dew under a blazing sun.

Young Alraun's disgust with his morbidly obese masters grew with every passing day. He couldn't just stand aside and watch them frolicking in huge swimming pools filled with porridge while the starving tribesmen all across the planet had to eat their own fathers and children just to stay alive one more hellish day. The psyker realised that he and his fellow thralls could theoretically bring at least some of the water to the planet's surface, creating life-giving oases that could serve to rebuild a semblance of civilisation. Alas, they were stuck serving the cruel masters of Cockaigne, slaves to the intoxicating scent of the red leaves. But this did little to impede his noble intentions. Vertumnus began to spend a lot of his free time sharing his ideas of a brighter future with his fellow thralls, trying to sway them to his side and planning a rebellion against the Three Fat Men.

Finally, the day had come when the tyrants of Cockaigne were to be brought down. Instead of going to the wells and evaporating the water, the thrall warlocks went to the quarters of the castle's masters and demanded that they hand over the source of the red leaves. The fat men laughed at their little rebellion and suggested that they go back to work, lest they never see the leaves again. Fed up with the triplets' arrogance, Vertumnus stepped forward and tried to explode their heads, but, to his surprise, his psychic strike bounced back from the brass collars locked around the necks of his masters. Realising the need to act quickly, he jumped at the closest fat man, and, with all the strength he could muster, gouged his bloodshot eyes out. Following the example of their leader, the other thralls jumped at their former masters like a pack of hungry wolves and proceeded to tear them to pieces with their bare hands. Although the Three Fat Men were inhumanly strong, even they couldn't fight off a horde of half-naked, starving slaves driven to a maddening rage. As it is always with tyrants, their arrogance was their downfall.

This victory, however, was most certainly a Pyrrhic one. After the obese masters of Cockaigne had been vanquished, the freed psykers started frantically searching the castle for the tree with the red-veined leaves, only to fight nothing. It wasn't before they desperately searched the mutilated corpses of the three fat men for clues to the tree's location that they realised the grim truth. The heavy black and crimson robes that the triplets always worse concealed a horrible mutation: throbbing leaves of flesh were growing out of their bodies like from a trunk of a succulent tree. The three brothers were themselves the source of the leaves that their thralls were addicted to, and now this source was gone forever. Cursing Alraun's folly for robbing them of their miserable lives' only pleasure, the thrall warlocks took as much food from the kitchens of the brothers as they could carry and wandered off into the wasteland. Completely crestfallen, the young psyker sat on the castle's porch, staring silently into the distance. His dream to use psychic powers to conquer famine was crushed. There was no more reason for him to live now, so he just waited for hunger to catch up with him and collect his due.

Yet just a couple of days later, when he could already feel the cold embrace of starvation, a peculiar flying sled came from the wasteland and landed near the castle. A pair of giants clad in stone walked out of it and approached the dying psyker, asking who the castle belonged to. Vertumnus explained that it was vacant and recounted the story of the downfall of its former masters to the mysterious giants. His mentioning of his potent psychic powers immediately picked the interest of the giants, and they invited the young man to come with them. So began Alraun's history with the [[Life Bringers|Brothers of Death]], which eventually ended with him as the Legion's Chief Librarian. Although he took the Imperial Truth to the heart and swore never to abuse his extraordinary abilities, deep in his heart he never abandoned his dream of using sorcery to feed the empty stomachs all across the Galaxy. That is why Vertumnus was so enthusiastic about the High Genetor's invitation to take part in his research: he saw it as his chance to finally use his powers for something else than merely smiting the enemies of the Emperor. Although he worked extensively with Wilmut Sachs, the only true friend he made in the Genetory was Nikephoros Galen, a specialist in plant modification. Their dreams and interests overlapped to a great degree, and so it wasn't long before the unlikely camaraderie between a scientist and a sorcerer was firmly established.