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Index Daemonica: The Antecruorian Daemonkin of Tivan Chaos is unstable. It fluctuates incessantly, its very flow counter to the rational mind, to order. As the domain, so are its denizens. Though the Chaos Gods are forever, they are not eternal. Though they have existed since time immemorial, they came into being well into their pre-existence. Once born, always existed. Though the daemons never truly die, their lives can be but the brief flickers of candlelight lost in the wind. These entities are forever changing, forever different, never uniform. The Antecruorian, the Born Unborn, are valuable examples of this reality. These daemonic creatures embodied certain aspects of Khorne since stripped, and perpetuated those aspects upon the galaxy. They were the blood-embrace, the first angels of death. They were the anger that raged quietly in the dark. It was they who lent killers their formidable charisma, who enticed and beguiled the innocent and the young to give the blood of life that their master so craved. To forsake the mundane life of virtue for an eternity of power and thirst. None encompassed the devil's blood-thirst like these monstrosities. Since before the beginnings of human history, these beasts, beautiful of form but terrible of spirit, plagued reality. Mankind was no stranger to their penetrating stare, the Antecruorian featuring in many legends, their nightmare following them from the darkness that surrounded their small fires to the empty black about their star. But the flows of the Warp change, and the waters of madness swelled with the pregnancy of a new god, born of the passions and addictions of an ancient race. Not all of its vast power was new, owned solely by this newborn deity. None either was borrowed, but drained or snatched whole, forever, from its equals. To be so diminished, to find oneself sharing the power of all between four where there was once only three, was not well received by the older gods. None raged at the birth of Slaanesh more ferociously than Khorne. For the birth of Slaanesh had erased, with sudden finality, one of his infernal Hosts, the Antecruorian. Once born, always existed. Slaanesh’s birth erased time and wrote it anew, giving this god an eternity of life before birth, just as it had done for those gods before Slaanesh, and as it will for those gods after Slaanesh. With time and existence making room for Slaanesh, the Antecruorian were erased from it. Time undone, atrocities, and afflictions visited upon the galaxy by the never-existed would fade away as a shattered timeline. Who could know what was lost, that which had never happened? Yet, not all was lost. Some memory of the Antecruorian remained, yet anchored by their daemon king, who by blood and ritual managed barely to survive the oncoming wave of unreality. Though known by many names of many tongues, the name given by the ancient Rumanii of Old Earth has remained with them past their nonexistence. Other names, distant legends, erased or subverted, become something else, such as the wamphyr, the strigoi. Perhaps it is because of their dark lord, protector of their gates, whose mortal name is long forgotten. When he rose to become Prince of the Antecruorians, he was known first as the Dracruor, the Blood Dragon. Some say he was the first Prince of this breed. Some say he was the last. Both true, both false, both irrelevant. In this now, he is the only. The Last Immortal, he has been seen across many other cultures of Old Earth, as well as other domains of humanity and beyond, and been known by as many names. When the shattered lands that once linked Nord and Sud Merica together were still enveloped with hot life, he was the War Serpent, Kukulkan. To the Lunar Chirurtechs, he was the Silent Scream. To the Eldarkin, before the rise of another would erase all memory, He Who Thirsts. Upon the distant colony of Moyscax, where he and his children reigned as Blood Gods in the outer night, where they would entomb themselves within protective earth from the galaxy-shattering cry of a new power, imprisoning their black souls within black stone, he was Tivan. For a thousand years, these blood gods survived on this world, Reigning supreme, but bound still. By replacing mortal hearts with these onyx coffins, Tivan and his children could possess and dominate. But never could they reach beyond, extend their infernal souls to be replenished in the winds of Chaos, for they yet remain anathema to its present design. To release themselves fully from their self-imprisonment in this time would be more than simple folly, it would unwrite their very existence from all of time. Only by being remade in the image of Khorne in the Blood God's current incarnation could they ever burst free from the chains they have bound themselves. Carnage, mayhem and massacres, the unthinking ferocity of murder and mindless fratricide. These are what the Blood God favor, what must be enacted a million times over for there to be metamorphosis. Though, there are some who say that this is not intended to receive once more their blood-father’s favor, but that the ritualized letting of Antecruorian blood is of altogether different symbolic relevance, a shifting of their daemonic essences to make them unaligned and free. Either possibility is irrelevant. The population of Moyscax would never be enough. But if bound to the XII Legion echelon in orbit, sent by the will of a false god in spite of a destiny writ in the blood of true divinity, the Antecruorian may yet live again . . . The story of the Antecruorian continues, as the Eyes of Tivan. =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= Roen screamed. His rifle lay inches away, but forgotten. The titan who towered above him encompassed the whole of his vision, and of his breaking mind. The beast, shaped like an angel of the Emperor yet so corrupted, so different, bellowed back, spittle spraying from the grille upon his helm that sizzled and burned wherever it touched, including Roen. Screaming still, in fear and agony, the guardsman weakly tried to pull himself away from the monster, across the rubble-strewn stone bridge. The titan’s head jerked back and to the side, shards of armor splintering away, the instant before the loud crack of a heavy-caliber rifle reached Roen’s ears. Roen paused in his scrabble, staring at the giant, his screams whimpering down to childlike moans and grunts of pain and exertion as he waited to see if the marksman, likely Lieben, had hit true. The traitor marine slowly rotated his head back, his whole frame visibly shaking as if containing an uncontrollable rage. Roen was struck by the vision he beheld, the fragmented helm revealing what was underneath to the light of the sun. Skin, white as marble and threaded by thick ropes of dark veins, framed an eye of all the madness of fury. As Roen stared, tiny flickers of flame appeared upon the exposed skin, the eye shriveling from the growing heat. The titan bellowed and contorted, stumbling towards the guardsman as it shed armor and skin alike. Any further screams were choked from Roen’s throat by the sight of the beast that had hidden within the World Eater. Almost Ork-like in appearance, yet devoid of its overdeveloped musculature, the tusks more finely pointed like fangs. Long and thin of limb, distended of belly, and aflame. Roen’s stomach lurched at the sight and his vision swam. The daemon pounded across the bridge, every footfall, and swipe of its claws tearing the bridge apart faster than a baneblade. Roen gagged, blood tears streamed his face, unable to flee. Distantly, the sniper Lieben lay twitching, his ears bleeding, as his mind tried, and failed, to comprehend the destruction that was being rewritten and undone as he witnessed it be wrought. The immense, burning hand closed about Roen’s torso, slamming downward with enough force to break through the bridge floor. The two forms plummeted between the towering hive spires amidst the rain of pulverized stone. The creature held fast his grip, pulling the rapidly dying guardsman to blackened lips. As the lifeblood left Roen, leaving him cold and dead, the last sight before unseeing eyes was of the diminishing bridge above, shifting back and forth between whole and pair of broken stubs. Fed upon blood, source of all power, did not save the daemon, as the consuming flames reached a fevered intensity. The creature shrieked, its cry shrill and terrible, and then detonated with nuclear fire. The expanding sphere of pure, unbound, yet flickering light was immediately visible to vessels in low orbit, and within seconds enveloped them. The planet splintered, cracked under the pressure, pieces of the world began moving independent of each other as . . . Trembling fingers found the trigger. Another resounding crack, and Roen’s rifle kicked against his shoulder. The beam burned through exposed flesh and into the brain behind the fiery eye. The World Eater ceased its contortions, and slowly collapsed, causing the stone bridge to tremble under the dead weight. Deep in the titan’s chest, a heart of black stone burns cold, empty. Daemon cage, it sat empty, void of unlife. What might have happened, in another reality, had it been filled? What destruction might such a creature have wrought when freed? Irrelevant. The battle continues. =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= TIVAN War Serpent of shattered sons, Blood Dragon of darkened skies The earliest recorded mention of the daemon now known as Tivan can be found deep in the central radwastes of Urazi, within the Ruslav Spires. There, kept under lock and key by the Inquisition, is a treasure trove of ancient, mythological information pertaining to the local region. These records are incomplete, and suffer greatly from countless generations of scholarly rewrites and biases, leaving only old recorded analyses of older analyses. These antiquated strictures detail a period of great turmoil for the Rumanii, as barbaric, eastern peoples waged terrible war upon them. Salvation came to the Rumanii in the form of one of their princes, whose prayers to the Sole Divine did not go unanswered. A legend speaks of this prince, visited in the night by a winged shadow, granting him angelic blood. This prince grew powerful, crushing those who had gathered before his gates, toppling all rivals to his domain, and inflicting a reign of terror upon his own. The name given to this prince upon his birth is long lost, all that remains is what, in frightened whispers, his people would call him long after his passing. Dracruor, the dragon of blood. This change of man into demon is far from thoroughly recorded, but accounts attributed to this Dracruor continue centuries after a would-be natural, mortal demise. Though somehow deposed from his position of political power, this entity would become a well-known terror within the darkness of night, preying upon humanity with rarely opposed abandon. The records state that this Dracruor had the capability of creating others like him and that many such children were made. However, no evidence has ever been found of these beasts crawling forth from his den. It was as if, in the process of transformation, they simply ceased to exist. Often throughout history, the Dracruor would fade from mortal memory, as if possessed of some demon trait to cause forgetfulness in all who consider him. Tracing his path upon Old Earth will lead one to the shattered islands of Meztli that link the Merican landmasses together. While even less reliable than the information found within the Ruslav Spires, there is some evidence of a feral god, the Kukulkan. This foul deity, popularly depicted as a great serpent, demanded blood sacrifices in his name, and molded the local tribes to his will. Though much in the myth of the War Serpent points to it and the Dracruor being the same entity, the matter is left unsettled due to the often-conflicting time periods, with some records of the Kukulkan pre-dating Dracruor. However, it is possible that the Kukulkan deity predates the creature known as Dracruor, and that in Dracruor’s travels he would come upon its worshipers who would mistake them for their terrible god. It is impossible to tell how long Dracruor took on the Kukulkan persona, as the march of central pre-civilization would eventually reach this western expanse, and with its coming bury these feral tribes beneath concrete and steel. In this age of ignorance and savagery, those dark times before Humanity would rise into the stars as a truly civilized race, the Dracruor was a figure of legendary malice. War-perpetrator, this vulture of the dead instigated conflicts of theretofore unheard of levels of bloodshed, every drop shed upon dry earth as refreshing to it as the drops that would pour down its inhuman throat. His myth also featured great amounts of guile and charisma. While when caught in the savagery of war this monster would be death for millions, it would also stalk the darkened alleys and shadowed recesses of Mankind’s villages, singling out individual victims and alluring them into its embrace. Often this latter persona of Dracruor’s was connected to the rise and fall of Luna, which perhaps makes it unsurprising what one can find in the recorded histories of the Selenekh Hallowdomes. The populace of Luna has long been a fey lot, easily given over to superstitions, but in this, they may not have been far from the truth. How or why the Dracruor traveled to Luna is not understood, but it quickly began making its mark once it set foot upon the grey dust. In time, the dusty plains surrounding the Selenekh Hallowdomes were littered with the desiccated corpses of the enchanted and the enticed. The chirurgeons of Luna were distressed by the bodies, their faces pulled tight and mouths frozen wide, caught in an eternal silent scream of horror in their final, tortured moments. The Dracruor would plague Luna for centuries, yet could never be cornered or brought to task. In fact, there is little to confirm that this creature of the moon is the Dracruor, but for its identifying behavior and what few reputable eyewitness accounts one can uncover. While potential incidents may have occurred that prove the Dracruor’s continued presence within the Sol System, it appears as though the beast took refuge within the great Hibernatships of Mankind’s initial diasporas into the greater black. Little reliable sources can be found on the creature from this point, though all told points to it perpetuating an age of darkness and blood upon many a world. During the Age of Strife, when the warpstorms isolated and swallowed the domains of humanity, all mention of the Dracruor ceases. Ancient cartographical data originating from the Great Crusade reveal the potential home of the Dracruor during this period. Labeled Moyscax, it was given a peripheral scan and superficial planetside exploration. What was found was a planet enveloped in dark jungles and hot waters, populated by warlike native humans who had truly gone feral upon the fall of civilization millennia prior. A false faith was prominently catalogued, as was the habit of Imperials of this age. The tribes of Moyscax worshiped a pantheon of dark gods who thirsted for blood, and who walked among them as if of them. Though their highest god, the most devoted one by the name of Tivan, matches all prior descriptions of the Dracruor, there are oddities to be found. For one, this Tivan is described as a god contained within the heart of stoneblood, and who walks and massacres among its faithful by means of a devoted taking this stone device within him or herself, replacing their mortal heart. Secondly, this account holds the only reliable source on the so-called children of the Dracruor, often hinted in older legends but never given weight due to severe lack of evidence. Matching in behavior and description, though in varying degrees sorely lacking in strength of will and physical prowess, these lesser deities are likewise encased within small, eye-scoured blocks of stone. Whatever the case may have been, the planet was tagged for immolation at the hands of the XII Legion, a task undertaken in the opening days of betrayal that would bring the Great Crusade to an end. Decades later, when Imperial vengeance entered Moyscax space, they found a planet still in a slow blaze, with the few survivors taken into Imperial possession raving of their need to attract their gods back to them with acts of bloodshed. They were in short order put down. In the process of confirming classification of Moyscax as a Dead World, no material evidence of their false faith was found, beyond the ruined remains of ossified temples splattered with boiled blood. Whatever was on Moyscax, if it was the Dracruor, left with the World Eaters. =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= BLOOD OF STONE Blood Nonetheless Rodon found the talisman archaic, rudimentary, and foul to his senses, as any trueborn son of Magnus would the blunt work of the Blood God. Yet, he could not help but admire the effectiveness to be found within its simplicity. The stone was warm to the touch, lightly pulsating in the semblance of beating life. Everything about it spoke to its nature. A rock of black glass, forged from the fiery blood found deep within the heart of a world. Its shape smooth and smoky, yet contoured to fit perfectly within the cavity of a full-grown man’s chest. An indentation upon the stone, that of a small circle, gave it the impression of an eye. It was the ritual importance of the eye that lent it its power and integrity, and yet the carving upon the stone predates the power of the eye as a ritual device. The Eye of Terra, not yet raised, not yet corrupted. The Eye of Terror, symbol of the Warp upon the material plane, not yet named. Eye of Horus, of Abaddon. The Eye of the Warmaster not yet born. The eye stared outward from the stone, and by looking out prevented all sight of within. It was basic, lacking in subtlety or complexity, yet Rodon found the blood-washed stone alluring. How this Tivan had the knowledge or wherewithal to even conceive of these black hearts, constructs that would house beings existing outside time that was, is and will be, was completely beyond him. Both the device and the daemon were decidedly unlike anything the Thousand Son had ever encountered among the Khorne-sworn. But then, he supposed that may be the point. =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= =][= To Become a God If Able Krune tore the twelfth heart from a screaming savage. It was a sacred number to his brothers, for it was their Legion numeral in the ancient past. It meant nothing to Krune, as this Legion many of his older brothers were once a part of meant nothing to him. Nevertheless, he tightened his grip on the young boy thrown flat upon the stone as it went into spasms. Krune passed the heart to a brother, who held it aloft with a roar before devouring it, and gestured for one of the gods to be handed over. Dutifully, an attendant serf, one of the Blood-touched, heavily scarred from the lash and the pit-duels, passed him the obsidian stone with reverence, his hands and forearmed heavily threaded with black lines from the contact. It was one of hundreds kept in the possession of Krune and his brothers, who each bore one within them as well. All had been upon a stone slab such as this one, their hearts ripped free and replaced. Gripping the small form of this lesser god in his armored palm, Krune once again marveled at the ease with which he could simply crush it, grind it into dust. Though such acts of deicide were not uncommon among his uncontrollable brothers, it was well known that all god-slayers are hunted down, slain and their skulls and obsidian hearts ground to powder, lest their perfidy taint the warband further. As always, Krune dismissed the thought and plunged the hand gripping the stone of liquid black into the boy’s chest cavity, holding it in place where the heart once was. Instantly, the body arched its back upwards, veins becoming visible as something darker than the space between stars threaded through. The screams sputtered and became choking, the spasms grew in strength. One of the serfs reached over with some gear taken from the corpse of a medicae, and stapled the boy’s chest closed. The boy’s head snapped around as the noises escaping his tortured throat became filled with anger. Eyes of the deepest black stared at Krune with pure hatred. Then the flesh around the eyes browned and blackened, and small embers formed in the eyes. The roars of anger degenerated back into screams of pain, as blackening spots appeared across the body. With a snarl of disgust, Krune tossed the boy off the altar with a swipe of an arm. It came to rest at the base of the temple of skulls among blackened skeletons just as flames began to flicker across the skin. Krune looked across at the other half dozen altars built upon the smoldering plains of this feral world. One of his distant brothers roared in triumph, holding high his sacrificial victim by the throat. Even across this considerable distance, Krune’s enhanced sight bore witness to the changes beginning to come upon the boy. He let out a deep growl as he gestured impatiently for the Blood-touched to drag forth another of the crying masses below. Krune tore the thirteenth heart from a screaming savage.