Editing Nobledark Imperium Notes (section)

=== The Indigo Crow and Tzeentch's Involvement in the Raid on Nurgle's Mansion ===

The scene is roughly mid-to-lateway through the Great Crusade. At this time Eldrad was the nominal leader of the eldar people, mostly because he was the one yelling the loudest during the Fall and helped get a lot of people to safety. However, now that the immediate crisis has passed the eldar are starting to go their separate ways and they won’t listen to Eldrad anymore. Eldrad looks into the future. Sees the eldar fragmenting into feuding Craftworlds that barely talk to each other and get picked off one by one, then picking fights with the rising power of humanity which just left both races crawling in the mud. This was unacceptable. Eldrad refused to see his people degenerate and die. Only people eldar would listen to would be their gods, of whom only one was alive and relatively sane. The seers said rescuing Isha would be impossible. Eldrad never liked that word. Eldrad, being Eldrad, decides to kill two birds with one stone. So he comes up with a plan and goes looking for the leader of humanity.

Meanwhile, in the Warp, Tzeentch was equally unhappy with the current state of affairs. Out of all the Chaos Gods, Tzeentch had profited much less from the Age of Strife than the other three. Nurgle had his new unwilling waifu and was settling in for the long haul in which the galaxy has a long horrible decline into utter hopelessness. Slaanesh had their binge-eating fest where they ate most of the eldar pantheon, as well as their numerous still-living cultists on Shaa-dome. And Khorne, BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY, was pleased at the constant war breaking out all across his domain. True, the galaxy was divided into innumerable petty empires whose borders changed constantly through low-level war, but the fact remained that Tzeentch benefited much less from the Fall and the Age of Strife than any of the other Chaos Gods. Additionally, this is most likely the point in time in which the other three Chaos Gods ganged up on Tzeentch and destroyed his wand of wonders, since this was after the birth of Slaanesh yet before the Big Four agreed to temporarily stop fighting each other (at least openly) until the Imperium was dealt with. This was no position for the Eldest of the Gods to be in. So he sends his greatest mortal champion to shake things up.

Back in realspace, Eldrad is starting to get desperate. He knows the eldar’s only long-term hope is to free Isha from Nurgle, but scouring all the old tomes he can’t seem to find any reliable way into the realms of Chaos. Then an old friend shows up out of nowhere (really the Indigo Crow who's stolen his friend's face, and when we say stolen his face, we mean [[Chaos|has literally stolen his face]]) and tells him about an all-but-forgotten path through the Webway he "discovered" via forgotten lore that leads right to the foot of Nurgle’s Mansion. Eldrad isn’t stupid, he knows this is suspicious and seemingly too good to be true, but he’s getting desperate. He uses the information.

The Raid happens. The Raid on Nurgle’s Mansion was still a hail Mary, but it turned what should have been a suicide mission into “merely” a million-to-one chance. Tzeentch’s involvement was just the reason why the raiding party wasn’t jumped by 887 Bloodthirsters as soon as they entered the warp and insta-gibbed. Tzeentch managed to convince the other two Chaos Gods to chip in. Khorne, BLOOD KING OF THE GALAXY, is apathetic to the power struggle, until Tzeentch explains possibilities for conflict should he succeed. Slaanesh already wants Isha, especially taking her from a fellow Chaos God, and is positively giddy there's a Man of Gold up for grabs. Tzeentch's agent would execute the ploy, Khorne's might would to stay Nurgle's reaction, and Slaanesh's seekers were to go catch Isha and bring her back before them. Tzeentch’s real plan was to let the mortals free Isha from Nurgle’s grasp before capturing both Isha and the members of the raiding party (including the last Man of Gold) in one fell swoop, using them as bargaining chips to constantly stir the pot of conflict between the Chaos gods causing constant change and preventing any of the other three from becoming too powerful. [[Not As Planned|None of this happened correctly]].

First off, while Tzeentch had been planning to stall the other gods as much as he could, he almost didn’t need to. Khorne didn’t need an excuse to wreck someone else’s shit, and led his forces on a merry rampage through Nurgle’s garden. Arrotyr is still a flaming anti-Isha fanatic and fucks his part of the operation sideways by opening fire on the other gods' assets before dismissing the task as unfit for his involvement and leaving to take potshots at Nurgle while the Blood King gave him the ax. Slaanesh almost immediately tries to screw the other three over and take Isha for itself, but the force of Keepers of Secrets that were supposed to take out the Steward is intercepted by Tzeentch's own kidnapping force stepping in so Slaanesh can’t just abscond with the prize (because they would eat it, thus running the entire endeavor). The Taskmaster is supposed to be organizing the real-space attack on wherever the portal was, which he half assed, but gladly used as an excuse to expand the Slaaneshi naval presence over Shaa-Dome and around the Eye. Meanwhile, the mortals had slipped into the realm of Chaos relatively unannounced, oblivious to the god war going on in their midst, and had grabbed Isha. Eldrad had realized almost immediately it was a trap and figured that the best way to get out of a trap is [[Alpha Legion|to play along and make your enemy think you had taken the bait until the last second]]. Eldrad, Oscar, and co. weren't supposed to survive their little trip into the Realm of Chaos. They did, against all odds. When you lay a trap, the mouse isn't supposed to make off with the cheese.

What was once a relatively organized plan now broke down into a free-for-all as the squabbling gods realized exactly what was at stake and that the mortals had a very real chance of making off with the prize. The mortals, meanwhile, are running for the portal like the legions of hell are on their heels, which to be frank they kind of are. Against all odds, they managed to make it out.

No matter, for the Indigo Crow although Plan A was a bust, it was time for Plan B. Plan A was the raid fails. Chaos now has the last surviving Man of Gold, the Phoenix Lords and a bunch of literally who humans to [[Rape|play with for ever and ever and ever]]. Also the Craftworlds start to get desperate and more of them fall to Chaos. No large scale civilized galactic society forms and Chaos gets to treat the galaxy as their playground. Good for Chaos overall, including him and his master. Plan B was that even in the unlikely event that the mortals would actual succeed Nurgle still loses Isha and Tzeentch fucking hates Nurgle. Also the upset in the Great Game means change and influence peddling time on a greater scale. Good for him and his master. Also if this alliance between human and eldar sticks and forms The Imperium then he, and by extension Tzeentch, have influence on highest members of its society who will personally owe him a big favour. From his point of view the game was rigged so he couldn't lose.

It looked like "[[Just As Planned]]" time too. [[Not As Planned|Then Eldrad tried to shank him because Eldrad wasn't a fucking fool and knew what games the Indigo Crow as playing]]. Crow escaped because Crow always expects to be stabbed in the back as part of his job and has got very adept at knowing when to cut losses and bolt for the horizon. Tzeentch wasn't happy about his favorite pawn's failure.

Overall, Tzeentch’s involvement in the raid was a combination of the time-old tale of “[[Just As Planned|trickster god tries to pull off something audacious]] (like steal fire from the gods, or all the knowledge in the world), [[Not As Planned|only for it to blow up in their face due to their own hubris]]”, combined with an unlikely event of unexpected success that nevertheless had massive repercussions for the rest of history (e.g., assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand). The Chaos Gods were so fixated on playing the Great Game that they didn’t realize the mortals could become a problem until it was too late.


''‘A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it. At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else’s care - and that only at an early stage, when it first begins to grip. But as far as I know Bilbo alone in history has ever gone beyond playing, and really done it. He needed all my help, too. And even so he would never have just forsaken it, or cast it aside. It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him.’ ‘What, just in time to meet Bilbo?’ said Frodo. ‘Wouldn’t an Orc have suited it better?’''

''‘It is no laughing matter,’ said Gandalf. ‘Not for you. It was the strangest event in the whole history of the Ring so far: Bilbo’s arrival just at that time, and putting his hand on it, blindly, in the dark. ‘There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his deep pool again. So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!''

''‘Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that maybe an encouraging thought.’  -J.R.R. Tolkien''


''Oft does evil hurt itself - J.R.R. Tolkien''