Grey Knights Lore Speculation: An Evil Entombed

[CervantesTheGrey]

It’s a long one, but anyone who likes a good bit of lore speculation will enjoy it, I hope.

 

The Theory:

 

An ancient evil is said to lie entombed beneath the Chambers of Purity, deep within the fortress-monastery of the Grey Knights. Only the chapter's Supreme Grand Master and the members of the Purifier Order are entrusted with the knowledge of the true nature of this evil. This evil has a name, and I believe it to be...

 

Malice, once called Malal, Hierarch of Anarchy and Terror, the Renegade God of Chaos. Both feared and hated by the other Gods, he is a being of indiscriminate anarchy and particularly sought to undo the machinations of his brethren. He no longer resides within the warp, but it is unclear whether he was ousted by the other Gods or left of his own volition.

 

Preface:

 

Having joined the Warhammer community during the 7th edition of 40k, I only discovered the existence of this character while researching the mysteries of my favored faction, the Grey Knights. For others who may not be familiar with the character, Malal and his champion Kaleb Daark (ugh) were lost to Games Workshop due to copyright issues. The character was apparently reworked into Malice but has few references throughout the history of Warhammer and this is even more so in 40k. As far as I know, the last reference of note was a story published in White Dwarf during 3rd edition describing an exiled chapter of Space Marines called "The Sons of Malice" who specialized in fighting chaotic entities, and almost nothing was said about the mysterious deity they worshiped. But I think he may be coming back in a big way and I created an account on these forums just to share my ideas with you guys!

 

But Why Malice?

 

The following items are just some of the reasons I believe this is the true identity of the evil slumbering beneath our citadel. All Grey Knights facts are taken directly from the 7^th and 8^th edition codices but information about Malal/Malice and the Sons of Malice are taken from various online articles and wiki pages, so the information may admittedly be less than credible. If anyone has the old 3^rd edition books or White Dwarf #303/302, any fact checking would be well appreciated.

 

A Solid Foundation:

 

First of all, we must understand that the Grey Knights exist purely to stand against the daemonic, and to think that they would be guarding anything other than a daemonic entity of incredible power would only seem horribly out of place. Understanding this, two facts initially helped me zero in on the idea of Malice.

1. Mount Anarch

The Chambers of Purity stand at the entrance to a series of vaults spanning the roots of Mount Anarch, where this great evil is said to have been entombed by the Emperor Himself during the unification of the Sol System. Searching the web for Mount Anarch references I found there’s a plateau in Canada called Anarchist Mountain and cross-referencing Anarchist with 40k got me reading Malal’s wiki page. But more interestingly, aside from Anarch being just one letter removed from Anarchy (the primary aspect of the deity in question), the exiled Sons of Malice chapter's highest rank (one might say the precipice of its command structure) was called the Anarch.

1. Tremors From Within

Originating from the roots of Mount Anarch, ominous quakes have been known to shake the fortress-monastery, during which the Purifiers seal off the Chambers of Purity from within. Recently, following the opening of the great rift called the Cicatrix Maledictum, these quakes have struck on a planetary scale and the chapter's prognosticars are nearly overcome with portents of doom. To shake all of Titan would of course require an immense amount of power and to affect the prognosticars in such a way would require a deep connection to the warp. Malal's power was said to be parasitic in nature to the other Chaos Gods, growing only when they grew in power, and the forces of chaos have spilled forth from the Cicatrix Maledictum, conquering an untold number of planets on their march towards Terra.

 

Some Familiar Flavors:

 

This was enough to get me interested and as I started reading about Malal/Malice and his followers I found that the Grey Knights are absolutely drowning in reference and similarities with Malice and his “Sons”, especially the Purifiers:

• Purifiers wear pauldrons and helms colored a stark white in contrast to the grey silver of their battle-brothers and they are described as dour and taciturn (synonyms: grim and silent), with eyes that burn with a black fire. Malal's chosen colors are white and black and the Sons of Malice wore the same colors and were said to fight in grim silence.
• Unlike the other Chaos Gods, Malal preferred to have just a few powerful followers, and his sacred number was 11. There are rarely more than 40 Purifiers and currently the Order has 44 (a multiple of 11) members along with Crowe.
• As mentioned before, Malal grows in power when the other Chaos Gods grow in power and this is mirrored in the Purifiers as well; a swell in their ranks is said to be invariably followed by a massive demonic incursion and their numbers have never yet been too little to fulfill their purpose.

I don't believe the Purifiers are servants of Malice but rather that these descriptions have been purposely used by the writers to establish similarities.

 

The Cherries On Top:

 

The following is a collection of smaller and less organized tidbits that I find exciting and supportive to my case:

• While the Sons of Malice had 11 companies, the Grey Knights are organized into 11 parts: the 8 brotherhoods, the Paladins, the Purifiers and the Supreme Grand Master.
• The Sons of Malice wore black and white, but their leader was covered in gore and blood when an Inquisitor first declared them heretic after witnessing a cannibalistic ritual. The sole colors used in Grey Knights heraldry are black, white and red.
• The Sons of Malice were known to collect trophies from their enemies. The Hall of Champions, the large central chamber of the Grey Knights fortress, is filled with trophies of past battles.
• Malal’s own domain within the warp was said to be dedicated to the torture of other daemonic entities, like a bound Bloodthirster being forced to watch human soldiers in an endless victory parade. Among the other trophies within the Hall of Champions hangs the skull of Iremn’ath, the daemon prince’s soul still bound within, forced to watch the Grey Knights celebrate their triumphs throughout the millennia.
• There are several vague similarities between Kaleb Daark and our own Kaldor Draigo:
  • Kaleb wielded Dreadaxe, which drank his foe’s souls, and a shield emblazoned with a skull. He was Malal’s greatest champion and was gifted his weapon by his God to fight the servants of chaos.
  • Kaldor wields the Titansword, once called Lifedrinker, and a shield embedded with skulls. The Titansword was originally forged by the Emperor for one of his greatest generals during the unification of Terra and it has destroyed more daemonic entities than any other weapon of the Grey Knights.

Note: The adjective forms of ‘dread’ and ‘titan’ are very similar in meaning, and while in the warp Draigo re-forged the Titansword using a slain Bloodthirster’s battleaxe.

• The previous Sons of Malice chapter master was Bak’el Draak, an obvious anagram of Kaleb’s name, and was also mysteriously missing in action. Kaldor’s been separated from our chapter for some time, wandering through the warp.

• Lastly, the original concept art for Malal’s own daemonic servants were mostly insectoid with skulls for heads and half of Kaleb Daark’s head was skull-like in appearance (pale, bald, sunken eye). In the 7^th and 8^th edition codices among the various smaller illustrations within margins and open spaces there are some of skulls with mechanical mandibles, and of knights with skeletal heads; in the 8^th edition book one of these skull-headed knights even has mechanical spider legs. I would be most interested to know if similar images existed in the 5^th and 6^th edition codices.

 

Wrapping It Up:

 

So there it is. At the very least I believe the Sons of Malice were reworked into the Grey Knights during the interim that was 4^th edition. And if they are guarding some immensely powerful demonic entity that the Emperor Himself was unable (or unwilling) to destroy, I can’t see how it couldn’t be Malice. He may not be what Malal was originally intended to be, but he’s sure to play a large part in the future of 40k. I have more theories that are closely related to this belief, but those I’ll save for another day.

 

Let me know what you think of my research, especially if you have any additional evidence that supports or refutes anything listed here!

[Kelborn]

http://gifrific.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/star-trek-mind-blown.gif

 

Dude...I just woke up and now this...

 

Good theory! Though I'm not sure if Big E would be able to encase a entity like a god but maybe, MAYBE it is GWs way of bringing Malice back. Not as a god but rather as a renegade, powerful daemon prince or something like that.

 

At first, I though to myself: Grey Knights and Malice? Yeah....c'mon.

But after checking your notes, it's kind of scary how accurate this is. Would explain a lot... most likely, we will never know though. ;)

[Everon]

I see you've spent plenty of time doing research and cross referencing. I do find it intruiging, but I don't believe it is Malal for the reasons of malal was over powered by the other 4 gods combined so they could have power over him. Yes he grows stronger when they do, but if hes eliminated they grow weaker as well.

 

As well the thing the Emperor defeated and left imprisoned is the dragon of Mars, not Titan.

 

One other thing, in 8th edition codex they finally let a name slip. Page 30 in the fluff of paladins, one of the quests to become a paladins is they have to go below mount Anarch into the lair of the restless dread tome of Abbiallach, and match their will against his for a day and night as he lies chained in the chapters Sanctum Sanctorum.

 

It's found in paragraph 2. I would be curious on any cross reference you may find on him though. Maybe a greater daemon of Malal? Perhaps another of the lesser chaos gods?

[Rurik the blessed]

I loved what you've done.

Interesting theory.

[Guest Triszin]

add to the mirror:

 

4 Chaos gods: khorne, slannesh, tzeentech, nurgle

 

4 Gods of antichaos/anarchy: The emperor, Malal, ynead, Void dragon.

 

chaos reigns! flips table and jumps into warp portal

[CervantesTheGrey]

I see you've spent plenty of time doing research and cross referencing. I do find it intruiging, but I don't believe it is Malal for the reasons of malal was over powered by the other 4 gods combined so they could have power over him. Yes he grows stronger when they do, but if hes eliminated they grow weaker as well.

 

As well the thing the Emperor defeated and left imprisoned is the dragon of Mars, not Titan.

 

One other thing, in 8th edition codex they finally let a name slip. Page 30 in the fluff of paladins, one of the quests to become a paladins is they have to go below mount Anarch into the lair of the restless dread tome of Abbiallach, and match their will against his for a day and night as he lies chained in the chapters Sanctum Sanctorum.

 

It's found in paragraph 2. I would be curious on any cross reference you may find on him though. Maybe a greater daemon of Malal? Perhaps another of the lesser chaos gods?

 

Thanks for the input here. I've looked back through my books and tried to scrounge up some more information.

 

I agree Malal as he was originally designed would be difficult to make work. I've thought about what they could turn Malice into (like the fact that his number is 11 and the XI'th Legion, and their primarch, were mysteriously erased from history...) but it seems we just wont know until GW is ready to tell us.

 

As for the dragon of Mars, one of my personal friends brought this up when I mentioned my ideas to him as well. As far as I can tell these are two different entities that the Emperor was unable to kill and were imprisoned instead. While the Emperor being unable to kill the evil on Titan is missing from the 8th edition codex, it is described in the 7th edition codex, 2nd paragraph of the Chamber of Purity description (eerily enough, on page 11). The being on Mars is the Void Dragon, which appears to be a dormant C'tan, and while the C'tan were very powerful, they were wholly different from daemons, and so I would be very disappointed if Titan ended up harboring one.

 

As for Abbialloch, I wasn't able to make any connections elsewhere (except a place called Alloch that was connected to Dachau), though reading the section on the Paladins trials again it seems that the tome is a separate trial that takes place after their time beneath Mount Anarch. Abbiallach is the name of the tome itself, and it's kept in the Sanctum Sanctorum, of which the 5th Brotherhood are the protectors. The descriptions of the locations of the main parts of the fortress-monestary can be a bit vague, but it seems to me the Sanctum Sanctorum and the Librarium Daemonica within are separated from the Chambers of Purity and Mount Anarch.

 

Seeing the appearance/disappearance of certain descriptions and references just between the 7th and 8th edition codices really makes me want to get my hands on the 5th and 6th editions to see if there are any other clues I might be missing.

[Everon]

 

 

I see you've spent plenty of time doing research and cross referencing. I do find it intruiging, but I don't believe it is Malal for the reasons of malal was over powered by the other 4 gods combined so they could have power over him. Yes he grows stronger when they do, but if hes eliminated they grow weaker as well.

 

As well the thing the Emperor defeated and left imprisoned is the dragon of Mars, not Titan.

 

One other thing, in 8th edition codex they finally let a name slip. Page 30 in the fluff of paladins, one of the quests to become a paladins is they have to go below mount Anarch into the lair of the restless dread tome of Abbiallach, and match their will against his for a day and night as he lies chained in the chapters Sanctum Sanctorum.

 

It's found in paragraph 2. I would be curious on any cross reference you may find on him though. Maybe a greater daemon of Malal? Perhaps another of the lesser chaos gods?

Thanks for the input here. I've looked back through my books and tried to scrounge up some more information.

 

I agree Malal as he was originally designed would be difficult to make work. I've thought about what they could turn Malice into (like the fact that his number is 11 and the XI'th Legion, and their primarch, were mysteriously erased from history...) but it seems we just wont know until GW is ready to tell us.

 

As for the dragon of Mars, one of my personal friends brought this up when I mentioned my ideas to him as well. As far as I can tell these are two different entities that the Emperor was unable to kill and were imprisoned instead. While the Emperor being unable to kill the evil on Titan is missing from the 8th edition codex, it is described in the 7th edition codex, 2nd paragraph of the Chamber of Purity description (eerily enough, on page 11). The being on Mars is the Void Dragon, which appears to be a dormant C'tan, and while the C'tan were very powerful, they were wholly different from daemons, and so I would be very disappointed if Titan ended up harboring one.

 

As for Abbialloch, I wasn't able to make any connections elsewhere (except a place called Alloch that was connected to Dachau), though reading the section on the Paladins trials again it seems that the tome is a separate trial that takes place after their time beneath Mount Anarch. Abbiallach is the name of the tome itself, and it's kept in the Sanctum Sanctorum, of which the 5th Brotherhood are the protectors. The descriptions of the locations of the main parts of the fortress-monestary can be a bit vague, but it seems to me the Sanctum Sanctorum and the Librarium Daemonica within are separated from the Chambers of Purity and Mount Anarch.

 

Seeing the appearance/disappearance of certain descriptions and references just between the 7th and 8th edition codices really makes me want to get my hands on the 5th and 6th editions to see if there are any other clues I might be missing.

Very interesting. Well there's non6th edition codex, but I do have a 5th so I shall begin page flipping and see what I can find. Got me really curious now about who's chained up in that basement.