Editing Malus Darkblade (section)

=== The Daemon's Curse ===
Malus is now a successful nobleman, Silar and Lhunara are his retainers and [[Anime|Lhunara has gone dere dere for Malus]]. He also gained the service of Arleth Vann, a renegade assassin from the Temple of Khaine. After coming back from a very successful slave raid (where Malus and his crew tortured a couple as entertainment for the trip), they were ambushed and their captives were all killed, making the raid a bust. Malus figured out who was responsible for the ambush and confronted them. It turned out to be a Dark Elf noble called Fuerlan, a smug schemer and Malus' cousin on his mother's side. Because of the ambush, Malus had Fuerlan tortured, despite Fuerlan's father being the ruler of Naggor, a Black Ark which was in a cold-war-type conflict with Hag Graef, where Fuerlan was staying as a special "hostage" ("hostage" in the medieval European sense, where a noble from one nation would be confined to another's court, and treated with all respect due to their station as long as their nation didn't cause trouble between the two; conversely, there would be trouble if anything bad happened to the hostage).

Malus knew of the political ramifications of harming a noble hostage, but the only concession he made was not to kill Fuerlan. Naturally, this brought some heavy political blowback crashing down on Malus. After enduring the worst of it, Malus learned of a treasure that could increase his power in a temple to the north, and took a personal regiment of Cold One Knights along with his retainers on the trip. Along the way, he encountered and had to negotiate a truce with a tribe of Shades (a feral and aberrant branch of the druchii who even the "dark cousins" to the regular elves thought of as "dark cousins"; their cruelty to their slaves horrified even Malus; the Shades [[Grimdark|removed the eyes and tongues of their slaves while regularly cutting on them in addition to the standard Dark Elf abuses]]). Then the tribe double-crossed him and he and his warband had to fight their way free. After braving a fierce blizzard they encountered Beastmen near the temple and tried to negotiate a truce with them.

When they got to the temple, the Beastmen betrayed them. Malus got his followers to hold the line against the brayherd while he went in alone. Ignoring symbols and statues of Chaos he entered the chamber. He took a ring for himself from the hoard, which awakened the daemon Tz'arkan who possessed him. The daemon announced to Malus what happened, pointing out the Dark Elf's greed and taking the ring brought it on himself. Horrified, Malus tried to commit suicide only for Tz'arkan to stop him by pointing out that if he did Malus would be his plaything for eternity (In the Warhammer Fantasy world, exorcisms involve killing the possessed, [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)#The Cult of Sigmar|with Luthor Huss as the sole exception]].)

[[File:STFUDaemon.png|thumbnail|Like a bickering old couple...]]
Malus and Tz'arkhan have a conversation about the latter's plan; he wanted to be free of the temple, so he tasked Malus to gather five artifacts for the ritual to free Tz'arkan or his soul would be claimed by the daemon. Malus also had a time limit of one year to accomplish this. Enraged and in despair, Malus fled the temple with Tz'arkan's laughter ringing in his ears. In unthinking rage and shame he killed his lieutenants (starting, in a surprisingly emotional scene, with a horrified Lhunara) and then going full [[RIP AND TEAR]] the remaining [[Beastmen]].

Afterwards, he started on a quest with Tz'arkan for the first artifact The Octagon of Praan, a gem that protected its wearer from hostile magic. He acquired this after the killing the Bray-Shaman, a leader of a group of [[beastmen]] who, at least initially, he contacted under peaceful terms but then just went full [[Khaine#mudertenderizer|murdertenderizer]]. When busy not almost getting killed, Malus learned that Tz'arkan could give him power, enhancing his physical abilities beyond mortal means whilst making him uncontrollably violent and more susceptible to the daemon's influence. The powerlevel boost thus gained seemed to have addictive qualities, not unlike the combat stimms (or daemonic aid) over in the other Warhammer. It is described as having pretty drastic (skin pallour, dark bulging veins, etc.) effects on his appearance, and being pretty unmistakable as what it was, so Malus wasn't overtly keen on using it, but wound up having to do so all too many times: as daemons are generally big on temptation, Tza'arkan would be constantly reminding Malus that this was a possibility, sort of like twiddling a syringe with a junkie's drug of choice in their face every five minutes.