One Summoner’s Tale

[OwlandMoonGuy]

All, this is a draft of a prologue to an up-coming 40K game with my emerging daemon army and a friend’s emerging Ultras. You can read about it in our blogs here at the B&C (link in my signature). So in context, it’s not so much of a story itself but an introduction of some infernal characters that will lead up to the tabletop game.

 

I wanted to post it there for your input before I pull together the final draft. Any/all C&C appreciated.

 

-OMG

 

Amidst all the useless flotsam that meanders haplessly in the galaxy; Belgarus Slinn; object 245 was little more than a barren rock in space. It orbits a far off pale star and rotates in a vast ellipse that spans across hundreds of earth years to fulfill. It was the deepest depth of the dark season, when the rock’s achingly slow spin kept its only habited side in perpetual darkness. The useless bit of jagged rubble had one redeeming value. The unending night sky was ablaze with all the bright shining lights of the cosmos spread out before the viewer in uninterrupted majesty. But one such view was not of starlit splendor but of a glowing reminder that all the clockwork order of the universe at some point comes to an inevitable, entropic end. On the planet’s Southern horizon, a cottony red fire of swirling stardust was always visible. That stretch of superheated gas was the far arm across the Cadian gulf; the slash of real space that stabbed into the haunted interior of the great Oculus Teribilis; the Eye of Terror. Planetoid B.Slinn 245 was a daemonized place, poised half way between universes, between the universe of the living and the universe of the damned. It was here that an ageless grizzled summoner set up shop to work his craft.

 

Though it was now impossible to detect, at one point the summoner, Scelestus, was an Astartes, humanity’s elite Space Marines; biologically enhanced super soldiers designed to be the strong arm of human expansion in the galaxy. In his wasted state, hunched over and crippled, he no longer stood the full three meters in height as he once did. His body no longer rippled with the redoubled muscle structure that once carried his enlarged frame. His eyes sunk into deep holes in a swollen skull. His body was wrapped in rags against the harsh cold, wraps that he never removed. He stood, leaning on a splintered staff, bent as he was, on a wide slab of rock worn smooth by his own constant pacing.

 

Through the light haze that was the rock’s only atmosphere a small convoy of warships could be seen floating in near orbit, boldly shining in the Eastern sky. They were so close that their magenta colored hulls were clearly visible as well as the gilded eagle reliefs that enwrapped their prows. Of all the war birds that chanced by B.Slinn 245, these still held a sense of beauty in their appearance. They had their own distinct and terrible nobility that somehow challenged the blazing glory and fathomless dark of space. Scelestus the Summoner had no heart left within him to marvel but if he did they would have caused him to tremble.

 

Moments after their arrival, short range teleport engines worked their technological magic and transported a landing party to the surface. Sulfuric billows of Warp space opened up to reveal the Dread Lord Loquacious Bedlan, clad head to foot in large plates of ceremite armor. He strode confidently from the sweeping warp gasses followed by no less than ten of his Chosen bodyguards. Equally armored, they all bore with them a gaudy display of war trophies and medals of honour. Weapons bristled with jagged bayonets and sharpened spikes. Such death dealers should have nothing to fear from one wasted old man. But Scelestus’ reputation always preceded him. Every visitor tried to impress the oracle in some way. Such displays of power were often considered to be the most meaningless.

 

The loquacious Bedlan advanced hurriedly with purpose, his every footfall in perfect step with the retinue that surrounded him. His face was handsome without so much as a single warp-born mutation to spoil his distinguished human features. His face was like that of a god’s statue sculpted with nothing less than a fanatical devotion known only to the most devout craftsman/worshiper. He had no smug air to put on this day. He came within three meters of the sure set Scelestus and he along with his troupe came to a uniform halt.

 

“Scelestus,” Bedlan opened, “I’m glad to see that we’re expected. I’m sure then that this shan’t take long. My sacrifices have all been made to your specifications and I have final payment well in hand. We’ve been through this enough times to be familiar with your ways. Are these terms acceptable or are there still others that need discussing? Otherwise, I’m anxious to get started.” Scelestus remained motionless, a distant, indirect stare in his eyes. “Well then?” Bedlan began again, “I came prepared this time as not to try your patience but take care, do not venture to try mine.”

 

“I could see you,” Scelestus replied, “when your ships first broke the Warp just a fortnight hence. In the light of that hated Astronomicon they cast shadows that reached across the blank expanse of this asteroid. Various beings clung to your hulls as you made your way, more than any other ship in flight about the Eye these days. Their tongues were wrapped around the sweet treachery you bore with you and took suckle from it as you made your way. But it was not a satisfying suck but a tease, a trickle of what they really longed for. Did you come to quench their lust or to tease them further?”

 

“And they call me the loquacious,” Lord Bedlan replied, “but mind you,” he said pointing a mailed finger, “I’m not some ignoramus wizard. I am a sorcerer of the high god of all excess! Don’t attempt to tutor me in sorcerous ways like some child.”

 

“Mark my words as you will,” Scelestus replied, “and see what marks earn you when the forces you seek to unleash heed your summons. After all you are here to purchase my words aren’t you? The rubric utterances that will bring forth an army of unyielding soldiers who never extract wages, who require no ships to transverse the stars, who never rest or tire, who’s dark purposes may be dark enough to meet your darkest expectations?”

 

“You’ve only delivered me words,” Bedlan said sweeping the long hair from is face. “You know my dark intent summoner. My will is that of the gods and the god’s know it for what it is.” His eyes became cross behind wisps of golden hair.

 

Scelestus stood motionless for a pause and then turned to face the stars. His eyes glazed over and fell back in their deep sockets. “There is one who has taken an acute interest in you Bedlan.” The Chaos Lord swelled inside. It was proper that he was noticed. It was only right that the minions of his patron deity to bow to a mortal, a Lord of Chaos who was their better.

 

“Who then? Has the great god himself heard my cries?” Bedlan asked, unable to bridle his growing excitement.

 

“The creature I speak of once told me to call it Blasphemous and once again, Sardonic, then the Mast’schemer but it was though other entities that I divined its true name if it actually posses such a thing. Slaaneshi Lord, you have become known to Slaanesh’s daemon Herald, called Sa’lili,” and as the words slipped out in serpentine sounds Lord Bedlan felt two distinct and separate sensations as if an off tuned interval had been struck in a well orchestrated crescendo. It was like the stab of a mortal blow at the hight of ravenous ecstasy. He gasped and shuddered despite himself. Scelestus continued, “It is also know as ‘The Lie,’ but we must it out of the aether by its true name and full; ‘Sa’lili the Lie.’”

 

The thin air of B.Slinn 245 blew up an oddly warm breeze only to be replaced by frigid cold one again. Monitors within the Chosen’s dreadnought armor flashed up suddenly and then subsided. Motion sensors went off as well as if they were not alone on the smooth stone platform. It made them all uneasy. If it weren’t for the stark upright form of their commander the seasoned veterans might note a pang of fear in the wind.

 

“What sort of thing is it?” Bedlan spoke long and loud. “What will it expect from me in return for its services?”

 

“Do you suffer a lapse of faith Space Marine?” Scelestus shot back, crooked teeth visible behind his withered lips. “I would think that you would have taken assurance invoking your patron god. The lying thing has attained to the status of Herald but its gifts far out weigh its infernal rank.” Scelestus bent low and began chalking runes in the smooth stone of the platform. “He has many alliances both within and without the steaming realms of pleasure and has never once lifted a hand against any other high lord in all Warpsace; all praise be to the eternal powers. Even the giant mechanicians of the dread Forge will come at its bidding, all lured by its silver tongue and glowering wit. Slaanesh’s blessing is upon its head and oft times it issues forth accompanied by its cousin forms. If fate decrees even the very Masque herself has been seen with it and has been known to shadow its comings but there are even more fell princes in the Warp that may succumb to its seductions.”

 

“Who else then, blast you?” Bedlan’s face flushed red, “Tell me all of their names. Don’t dare to withhold them from me. My down payment price is paid; I demand to know what I’ve purchased.” Scelestus took a long pause. “Tell me!” Bedlan raged. The ragged summoner’s face went ashen a knot visibly caught in his throat.

 

“Of late, the great Lie has won the ear of one so fell I dare not speak its name casually.”

 

Bedlan noticed dark and formless shapes quiver in his peripheral vision. Looking both ways, his eyes darted about but saw nothing. His two hearts began to thunder beneath the armor plates at his chest. Sweat began beading on his brow.

 

Scelestus stood up to full height, dwarfed as it was. He stared blankly at Bedlan with eyes as hollow as deep pools of vast space. He replied, “The Lie has assembled a war host and is prepared to do your bidding. I need but release him to the material world and his assembled cohort will do their worst. And the galaxy shall weep for it.”

 

“Enough of your prattling, name me the price and be done with it.” Bedlan spat, clenching the muscles of his pristine features.

 

“A final word,” Scelestus spoke up. “It’s no small thing you ask. It has its price and once purchased, it must run its course. You’ve never heard the howl of Khorne when the sent of blood runs high or the mirthless titter of she devils as huntress packs rush to slay the living.

 

“Pah!” Bedlan shouted, “I have heard daemons scream magister-“

 

“Not like these Slaanehi Lord. Not like these. It’s a sound that madmen relish and sane men spend their lives striving to forget.”

 

“Yes, yes yes! That’s what I want!” Bedlan’s demeanor became crazed. “Madness, horror and death! Not only to defeat of my enemies but to drag them down to the depths where their very souls quake within them! For this I will pay the price! Give me all this and I’ll pay to see my enemies struck down before me!”

 

Scelestus had no smiles left to shed but in his greener days he may have found an inward satisfaction at such a wonton expression of faith. If he took any solace in his client’s profession he gave no sign of it. “Your die is cast, Chaos Lord and payment shall be rendered.” For the first time, Bedlan’s stoic retinue broke their composure and looked quickly to each other and all about them. They hefted their weapons at the ready and scanned their surroundings for a visible assailant but there was none to be found.

 

A sound was heard in the heavens like the ignition of a new star. Scelestus turned his back on the others. He strode exactly eight paces and then collapsed, face down in a heap. His hands went up to cover the sides of his head and he buried his face in the rock floor.

 

A hungry vortex of Warp space blew open and pushed back the mighty armored retinue. From out the swirling gasses of sick pink and putrid yellow a lone figure emerged. It was like that of a man or perhaps a woman but yet unlike either. It bellowed aloud in bouts of unforgiving laughter. It gripped its gut in a wrenching display of unabashed, contorted madcap laughs. Then, from either side of the gaping rift, unsightly thin daemoettes danced twirls, slipping in tight displays of swirling of movement. A troupe of them moved out in circles, tracing along the hermitic designs chalked into the platform’s surface. The onlookers stood entranced, enraptured, transfixed.

 

The laughing daemon took several lithe steps from the rift’s gasses, into the half light of the planetoid’s weak sun. Its skin was both black and purple hued. Its face was covered in a gilded mask, enwreathed by bright feathers of unknown plumage. It carried a staff of gilded skulls, feathers and the mark of Slaanesh; that was at once metallic and pink and magenta that shifted colors in the light.

 

The daemonettes danced in abject displays for each of the armor clad Chosen. The towering Chaos Marines stood silent, unable to divert their attention. As the moves of the dance touched every archaic line of the summoner’s circle they turned to approach their captive audience. They rubbed their blackened bodies against the armored ceremite. Their clawed hands caressed the helmeted cheeks and mailed hands. In devotion to their ruinous master, each terminator bowed the knee and then their heads; massive suits of armor bowed lower than the tiny feminine shapes of the dancing troupe.

 

Their sexless mistress held aloft its unholy icon. The Chaos Lord Bedlan was the only figure of his party left standing. The face behind the golden skull seemed somehow compassionate. In the darkness could be seen the slight edge of a jawline, the pale red of its lips and the stark white pools of its eyes. Bedlan stared into the face of the creature he so sought to summon in a way that drunk deep its near human image. With a sound that drove a tear to the Chaos Lord’s eye, the thing spake with the rumble of muted thunder, “Long before you set out to find me I chose you.”

 

At once, all the assembled daemonettes sung in a screech that drove knives through every ear. They cried a sound that stung with the rank of filth that only the infernal could find musical. They brandished their fierce claws; dyed red up to their forearms. They fell upon the gathered retinue in violent strokes that rent age old armor and pierced the fleshy contents of each in turn. Blood flew in spirals as each one took to the grisly task but not a hand was raised to stop them; each Chosen Chaos Marine died without outcry. Their inward parts were spilled to the floor but their heads remained bowed in homage to their ruinous patron.

 

The gilded form of the daemonic Herald swept forward in graceful steps. It came to a halt within inches of Bedlan’s dumbstruck face. It blew lightly against his perfect skin and every hair rose at the touch of its breath. With one clawed hand, the daemon lifted the mask from its face. Eyes wide, Bedlan saw its true, naked form. Blood began to stream from his eyes that dilated to wide, black pupils. He screamed in a gasp of terror that gripped him from the depths of his mortal being. While the wail was still escaping his lips, the daemon thing kissed him. His open, drooling mouth could not respond but the kiss was long and deep and when the daemon had had its fill it spoke the words that accepted the payment for its summoning; “Come away my chosen plaything, you have now become a horseman of the Slaaneshi; a handservant of Lies!”

 

With a nauseating surge of sulfur, the grim host vanished, right along with the bodies of the gutted marines. A rush of air that ran both hot and cold spun up and then subsided as if they had never been there. Even the bright starships that once hung in orbit were gone, as if they had been stripped form their moorings and cast haplessly into Warp space.

 

Scelestus was the sole figure to remain. The dust still spiraling about, he struggled to rise, placing his old weight against his gnarled staff. After regaining his footing, he intoned prayers of thanks and canted spells of warding. A task fulfilled and a client lost all in one day, he chanced to think to himself. The ordeal exhausted him. He stood long, vacantly staring into the haunting gasses that composed the far arm of the Eye of Terror. “And to think,” he thought again, “so many more clients like Bedlan all awaiting their turn. I wonder if the great Lie has chosen them as well?”

[Sigismund Himself]

An excellent read :wub: Would there be any more coming, OMG?

[OwlandMoonGuy]

As stated at the top, the game was played last Saturday as planned. Neither of us got 100% of our armies done but the pics turned out pretty well regardless. Here

[newach]

I can't wait to read the battle report.

[OwlandMoonGuy]

I’ll forward this note to my opponent who’s been awol for some time now.

 

Hopefully we’ll see that written up in the near future. -OMG