Editing Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos (section)

=== Riastrad ===

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">''''' The Berserker: '''''

Riastrad was not alive during the days of the Old Eldar Empire, but was born in the years immediately after the Fall. Like many born into that strange post-Fall society with the fires of passion and the delusions of youth, he fell in with the Khornate cults, where he found his true calling. The rush of adrenaline and the raw thrill of striking down his foes called to Riastrad, more than anything else he had encountered in his life. Moreover, he was very good at it. He took skull after skull for the Skull Throne, until one day it was his blood that flowed to appease the Blood God. Riastrad’s band of Khornate berserkers had accompanied a larger Crone force in taking a minor world, and while the Crones had won the battle Riastrad was left forgotten among the dead and the dying.

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That would have been the end of Riastrad, then and there, had it not been for the passing Meatweaver Scathach. Scathach had been haunting the battlefield for the same reason all Meatweavers do: looking for spare parts and unsuspecting victims for their next creation. Finding a dying Khornate champion was quite the unexpected windfall. Seeing Riastrad in such a state struck Scathach with a fit of inspiration. In a fey mood of creativity, she took a damaged, empty wraithguard shell left behind by the defenders, fixed it to the best of her ability, and then used a soul stone to rip the dying warrior’s soul from his body and stick it inside the resulting abomination of wraithbone and tainted flesh. Crone Eldar are normally aghast at the use of soul stones, abhorring any such device that would keep one from communing with the gods at their death. It is one of the few things that most sects of Crone Eldar, who will normally fight to the death over the pettiest and most trivial of issues, agree upon. Meatweavers, however, are notoriously oblivious to any such social taboos even by Crone standards.

Whatever the alien reasoning for her doing so, the results of Scathatch’s experiement satisfied her curiosity and she was pleased by the outcome. Riastrad, however, was not. Wraithguard shells are infamous for their lack of conventional sight and dulled physical sensation. Riastrad could no longer feel the rush of battle. He could not feel much of anything.

Since that day Riastrad has become a nightmare, throwing himself into battle again and again without regard for his safety in a desperate attempt to feel something again. He wields dual scimitars, as he was when he was pure flesh and blood, but now ones scaled to a wraithguard in the manner of one of Vect’s Wraithblades. His wraithbone shell is ritually scarified with a thousand ruinous glyphs carved into its surface, and his form is draped with the flayed, blood-soaked hides of his foes. He wears no armor, at least not beyond his wraithbone shell, in the simple hopes that even receiving pain will give him some sensation or death will free him from his wraithbone imprisonment. His violence is accompanied by an ethereal warbling howl, which to others appears to be the shrieking of daemons but is really the Riastrad’s frustrated screams at being so close to what once gave him joy, but no longer. As might be expected, although it gives Riastrad no pleasure, such slaughter pleases the blood god.

Riastrad often haunts the edges of Crone society, staying just long enough to hear the latest news before impatiently setting off for the nearest battlefield. It is not possible to buy Riastrad’s loyalty, but much like the Orks it is possible to entice him to the field of battle with promises of worthy foes and slaughter. Riastrad has even managed to surround himself with eager Khornate acolytes, much as he had once been. He is not their leader in any traditional sense, and indeed most of the time he barely deigns to notice their existence, at best striking down any impudent soul who gets in his way. Instead, Riastrad’s acolytes tend to follow him much as a hunter does a hunting hound. After all, he knows where the best slaughter is.

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