Editing Malus Darkblade (section)

===Prologue===

A short story which involves Malus going on a rite of passage for Dark Elf nobles called a Haskeer cruise; the young noble is given command of a force and has to conduct a successful raid and return. The send-off they get, how many retainers they have and the amount of ships under their command is a reflection of their status in the family; Malus got one ship - the ''Manticore'', one retainer and no send-off. The story starts with Malus being dragged there after a failed assassination attempt from one of his siblings involving a poisonous snake, [[Grimdark|that he only survived because the snake bit Malus' two "bodyservants"]] - that is to say, [[rape]] slaves - first, so didn't have enough venom to kill when it bit him. Let us not forget that, whilst a popular and well-developed character with a pretty solid fanbase, he's still who he is. Whether he's a product of his environment or [[Always Chaotic Evil|just an evil person]] is not ''quite'' fleshed out, although most stories about the elves/Aeldari, and the amount of time the reader gets to spend inside Malus's head, so to speak, it lean towards the former with a really big handicap from the latter. Other members of the crew include the captain Hathan Gul, and the [[Anime|tsundere]] female first mate, a corsair named Lhunara, with whom he alternatively shares flirtations and blows. Originally, this motley crew were slated to go raid Bretonnia but Malus arranged for them to raid Ulthuan instead because he wanted the cruise over and done with, Ulthuan was closer and [[Elf|elven]] slaves were worth about 100x their [[Aerwin the mon-keigh expert|human]] equivalents (despite the fact that Ulthuan was about equivalently much more dangerous).

Malus suspected his retainer — a down-on-his-luck noble called Silar — was hired by Lurhan to kill him. When Silar confronted Malus, Malus learned that was wrong; Silar had a sense of honor and duty to Malus for the time that his contract covered, and generally wasn't a dude who was about subtlety being much more [[RIP AND TEAR|brutally honest]]. Silar actually confronted Malus to express his disapproval of Malus' plan to raid Ulthuan, which Silar considered suicidally stupid. Lhunara overheard them and, surprised by Malus' move and seeking a better position that what Gul offered her, approached them and spilled the beans to Malus; Lurhan had actually arranged with Gul to get Malus killed by a Bretonnian Duke they had an arrangement with (the corsairs took prisoners from the Duke's dungeons as slaves, in exchange they'd leave the area under his care unmolested). Malus decided to go ahead with attacking Ulthuan and, through a combination of luck, cunning and a surprise attack at night was successful. He captured a village of High Elf civilians but was forced to kill them in a ruse to kill a High Elf Sea Guard patrol the next morning (much to Malus' chagrin, due to the aforementioned value of pointy ears at the flesh markets) and escape. They took a lot of treasure from the High Elves, but Malus gave it to crew to make them loyal to him instead of Hathan Gul; Gul himself was tortured by Malus in a suitably [[grimdark]] manner for the whole Uriah Gambit and killed by his former crew (with Malus keeping Gul's gold false teeth as mementos).