Editing Nobledark Imperium Forces of Chaos (section)

=== Ingethel the Ascended ===

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">'''''The Witch of the Woods:'''''

The people of Cadia have never had much love for Chaos. Although the Cadian Pillars may have kept the planet from being dragged into the Warp wholesale like the Eye, this did not stop daemons from temporarily manifesting on the planet just long enough to drag people off into the night. And while the Neverborn of Chaos may have had trouble remaining corporeal on the surface of Cadia, this did not stop hunting parties from the fallen Eldar Empire from raiding the planet for slaves, sacrifices, and entertainment. However, at the same time, there have always been those insane or broken enough to see the truth of Chaos, to see its awfulness and self-destructiveness, and pledge themselves to it body and soul nevertheless. Such is the case with Ingethel the Ascended.
 
Ingethel was a hedge witch who lived on Cadia about the time the Imperium first visited the planet. She led a coven of witches who lived in the caverns beneath a great mountain in the Cadian wilderness, away from civilization but close enough to numerous villages to practice her dark craft. It is not clear why the dark gods allowed Ingethel and her coven to exist as they did. Normally a psyker such as Ingethel would have been carried off by daemons long before reaching adulthood, their souls a tastier than average treat. Perhaps Ingethel and her ilk were granted the protection of the Chaos Gods because of their whole-hearted devotion to and their wicked ways. Or perhaps, as the Imperium uplifted the planet and drove the monsters back into the dark, the dark gods realized they needed more forces “on the ground” so to speak to go to bat for them.

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Ingethel and her coven were well-known to the natives of Cadia. The people of villages surrounding Ingethel’s mountain had stories about her, about babies being stolen in the dead of night for ritual sacrifice and young men being seduced and spirited away by a seemingly nubile and doe-eyed maiden for nefarious purposes. To the Imperium, who had come to teach the Cadians one did not have to hide from those lurking in the dark, such a thing was unacceptable. At the same token, Ingethel and her coven considered the idea that one did not have to fear the dark gods and their servants as blasphemous, and to suggest otherwise was a declaration of war. Ingethel and her coven fought a sorcerous guerrilla war against the imperialistic efforts of the Imperium, spreading terror and cursing key individuals with hexes and spells.
 
However, despite their dark powers, Ingethel and her coven were very mortal, and they did not have the numbers to directly fight the people of Cadia, let alone the Imperial military. Eventually Ingethel’s coven was whittled down until only she remained, and her refuge had shrunk until it consisted of her mountain, the nearby forests, and little else. Smelling weakness, the Imperium dispatched a strike force to Ingethel’s mountain consisting of twenty Word Bearers as well as supporting elements of the Imperial Army. They surrounded the mountain before entering the vast caverns at its base, determined to end the threat of Ingethel once and for all. This proved to be a mistake, as Ingethel collapsed the pillars of her cavern home on top of them, burying them all inside and crushing them to death.
 
Ingethel used their deaths as fuel for an ascension ritual to daemonhood, ritually disemboweling herself to ascend into a daemon princess of Slaanesh. Being impressed by a mere mortal resulting in the deaths of twenty Space Marines and the better part of an army, Slaanesh turned Ingethel into a four-armed creature seemingly part snake, shark, and worm, her face grotesque with a snakelike jaw filled with shark’s teeth and one bulging and one sunken eye and her body below the waist replaced with that of a great polychaete with rippling vermicular, moist, and translucent flesh covered in orange, hair-like setae and serpentine belly scutes. Ingethel had always been wretched, now she merely looked on the outside what she always been on the inside.
 
In the long term, Ingethel’s trap did little to halt the advance of the Imperium across Cadia, but it did put the fear of Chaos back into the natives of Cadia, which was the Ruinous Powers’ intention all along. Although Ingethel is nominally a Slaaneshi daemon, She Who Thirsts exerts relatively little influence over Ingethel’s soul. Instead, Slaanesh has all but relinquished their claim over Ingethel in exchange for Ingethel acting as an emissary between the four gods. Although normally quite possessive, even Slaanesh sees the benefits of having a neutral messenger who can be trusted to deliver messages between the gods and important mortals without being shot on sight (all in the name of advancing their own agendas, of course).
 
Ingethel’s pursuits when not acting on behalf of the Dark Gods are varied, ranging from starting stories of monsters on worlds surrounding the Eye to creating her own facsimile of old Cadia (Cadia how it “should be”) in her personal demesne within the Eye of Terror. Sometimes she even likes to take a shape similar to her old form, reveling in how easily mortals fall for her innocent façade before showing them her true face. However, she always seems to be drawn back to Cadia to haunt the battlefield during one of the Black Crusades, seeking revenge on the descendants of those who shunned her in life. Demons have a tendency to be repetitive and predictable in their habits. She is the unliving reminder that while the Cadians may strive to forget their past, their past refuses to forget them.

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