Forsaken (40k Chaos Warband Quest)

Favor of the Gods and Chaos Undivided
A simple look to Chaos Space Marines would divide them into three categories. Renegades, Branded and Undivided.

Renegades are these Astartes who do not walk the Path of Glory, this treacherous road where the ends are spawndom, death or ascension as a Daemon Prince. They either do not worship the Ruinous Powers or simply acknowledge their existence but do not pursue their favor with zeal. Their motivations in later ages will vary but in your warband, Renegades joined the rebellion through belief in Astartes supremacy. Most Night Lords, Iron Warriors and Alpha Legionnaires are Renegades as well as part of the Sons of Horus. Your Lieutenant Jipul is of this breed. He is still a soldier at heart and even when using Chaotic assets, he is focused on the material and not the ethereal.

Canonically Talos of the Night Lords and Abbadon the Depoiler are Renegades. Yes even the master of the Black Legion who wields a daemon blade. His aims are purely material and he considers Chaos a tool so he is in its category.

Note that Renegades still empower the Chaos Gods. Fabius Bile doesn't worship Slaanesh but his deeds of tinkering with the human form in a reckless search for perfection means the Dark Prince is strengthened by them.

Branded are those Astartes who bear the Mark of a singular patron or seek to obtain it. A Mark of Chaos is an infection of the soul, a portal by which the patron god will dole out reward and punishment and judge the Branded. Theologians among the Astartes, and yes they exist although for obvious reasons more found in the Thousand Sons and the Word Bearers than the World Eaters by instance, debate on the mechanics of the process. Notably many Thousand Sons think the Branded accords himself with the mythos-body that is the Ruinous Power, while the Word Bearers tend more to think of mighty daemons blessing or cursing the Branded.

World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Emperor's Children and Death Guard are all Branded. They have no choice in the matter, their Primarchs having knowingly or not sold their Legions to their respective gods. Ptrahotep one of the Thousand Sons in your warband actively hates Tzeentch but bears its Mark through Magnus' own contracts. Most of the Sons of Horus who are not Renegades are Branded, as is a plurality of the Word Bearers.

Canonically Typhus, Kharn, Lucius and Ahriman are Branded.

Undivided Astartes are the rarest of breed. They are those who are walking the Path of Glory not in obedience to one of the Four but seeking to transcend them by pleasing them all. Of all the roads of ruin, it is the most difficult and treacherous. A walker of Chaos Undivided will have to offer sacrifices to all four Chaos Gods, as well as minor powers and honor them at the same time in a maddening balancing act. Still the reward is supreme as Daemon Princes of Chaos Undivided are independent in the Great Game and are courted by all the infernal courts. In theory this is the official Word Bearer position but in practice there are few who manage to walk the tightrope and most worship one of the Four above all others.

Calrith is a walker of Chaos Undivided as is Karalet and a select few in the Warband. Another breed of Undivided Astartes are those following one of the two lesser Chaotic powers. They have no name and some say only potential existence but one is a spirit of crushing gears and unfettered invention, and the other a spreader of fear and terror. Perturabo is a Daemon Prince of the former and what few Night Lords Daemon Princes who exist belong to the latter.

What does that means for your warband and your character?

It means you will have up to six scores of Favor representing the attention of the divine on your deeds and being. When I say the Undivided is the hardest, consider a Branded has to busy himself with only one score, you will have to fill them all to become a Daemon Prince.

Favor begins at 0. Not because the Ruinous Powers hate you or anything but you are a Chaos Lord. They expect great things from you. Favor is gained through acts pleasing to one or several of the Dark Gods. As a Chaos Lord, such acts must be grand displays. Slaughters by instance are going to be of planetary scale to gain you Favor. The Pantheon is just in an ironic way and is able to adapt their wishes according to the power of the Champion.

You have also a Scorn score. Scorn represents well how pissed the Dark Gods are with you. Failure brings Scorn as well as deciding to blaspheme against the Pantheon. While Carlith will never do that willingly, you can have moments where you do something tremendous for say Slaanesh and thus angers Khorne greatly.

Speaking of which, some of you may ask the question on how the character is going to be able to gain Khorne's favor as he is a Sorcerer. Well the simple answer is that Khorne's hatred of sorcery is one of the less coherent element of Chaos canon. Khorne is after all made of magic just as the other Chaos Gods. So assume that as long as you use rituals to increase the slaughter level and escalate violence, the Blood God is smiling.

After all if Khorne really couldn't bear sorcery then its cultists could not summon daemons at all.

Psychic Powers and Sorcery
There are two ways of touching the Warp.

The first is being a psyker. Through your species or a genetic quirk you naturally touch the Sea of Souls and that translates in psychic powers who are innate abilities although they can be trained. As your powers still come from the Warp, you are vulnerable to daemonic attack and most of the training is not being horribly subverted by the Neverborn and your body transformed into a portal to hell.

The second is sorcery who is touching the Warp through the use of spells, magical items, ritual correspondences and the like. You do not need to be a psyker to practice sorcery although being one increases your potency with the art. This is shown repeatedly by the fact you can summon daemons without psychic powers but if you are a psyker your attempt is likelier to be successful.

A good example of the difference is to consider the Genestealer Cults Maguses. They are pure psykers and all they do is based on their mastery of telepathy. On the side of the spectrum Erebus in Horus Heresy does nothing who is not based on incantations or ritual magic. Even his rare shows of spontaneous powers are if I remember well item-based.

What complicates the matter is that psykers are using props and amplifiers to focus their powers all the time. So you have ambiguous situations like Eldar Farseers and their runestones. Are they simply a focus for their divinations or are their trances examples of sorcery? That depends on the point of view. Another complication is that sorcerers can bargain for bona-fide psychic powers. Worship Tzeentch in its aspect as the God of Magic and it will give you psychic potential.

Hilariously, the Imperium is full of sorcerers. The Emperor's Tarot can be drawn by non-psykers. Space Marine Librarians are mostly psykers except for Rune Priests who abord the art through ritualistic means and commune with spirits who give them powers. Indeed from what I understand from the Horus Heresy novels, they are as ritualistic if not more than the Thousand Sons which absolutely make the Sons of Russ giant hypocrites, and not only by the Traitors. Rogal Dorn himself finds the Rune Priests' justifications as bullshit.

Hell if you are extra-heretical, in the Sister of Battle comics the Sister Squad gathers around a wounded sister and pray. Her wounds outright close. If none of the Sisters are psykers, something you think the Imperium would aggressively test in Schola Progenium cadets, that means it's the ritual who has power and is thus sorcery.

Every psyker in your warband practices sorcery but the reverse is not true. Several high ranked Word Bearers and you are sorcerers without being psykers. This means in practice your displays of powers are ritualistic and grand rather than Vader-like displays. Still you are one of the rare members of the Legions who can understand the Thousand Sons when they begin to delve deep into their lore.

The Azkeli Sector
Things had changed thought Neferou.

It was not the ceremony in itself. Yes it had been refined, the circles redrawn with the numerology of the Changing God, the runes now understood as hymns as members of the shifting courts. Sacrifices were no longer hidden but performed in full views, throats opened for blood to pool at his feet. Yet these but details and trifles. Even the mutations wrought on his armor, the red having long flaked over to a rich blue while his helm had become a baroque horror seeming like the head of a long-beaked bird were not important. He still adorned it with the writings of burnt Prospero, seals and symbols showing his station and helping focus his mind. No. What had changed is that before these rituals had been practiced only by the Fifteenth Legion and perhaps the hypocrites of the Sixth. Even before they had been driven to secrecy when the Emperor had made his edict against witchcraft, they had been private affairs. Now? Not only Carlith who had saved them from the disaster of the Siege had ordered his gifted brothers to perform the ritual but Neferou and his brothers were not alone.

They were a motley assembly. Almost half of them were sons of Magnus in blue and rich gold standing with their scepters and curved swords. But all the genelines were represented except of course for the fierce sons of Angron. Some like Farj of the Alpha Legion were still Librarians at heart even if their psychic hoods had been replaced by more practical instruments to channel the fury of the Empyrean. Some like Carlith himself had not been blessed with psychic power at birth. They had seized it through bargains and learning, something the Thousand Son could admire. Even the three fly-eaten Death Guard elicited his curiosity rather than his disdain. The Death Lord had been clear in his distaste of witchery. Yet Neferou could not bring himself to resent him too much. He had held to his convictions rather than covering his sorcery with a cloak of lies. Yet some of his sons had learned the customs and equations of the Garden of Decay had they crossed it on their way to Terra. They had striven to understand the ineffable and they had managed it at the last. Their attempts to cage the Warp through science was misguided but their persistence was admirable.

He loathed them still of course. The bargains made with the Ruinous Power meant he could not help but resent those who had given themselves to the Power opposed to his own. Still oaths had been sworn over glittering and fetid blood alike. There would be rules for contests and usurpation and Calrith had sworn he would hunt the souls of those who would imperil the warband through internecine warfare. One day fear would not be enough of a yoke but for now all remembered the Siege and how the Legions had abandoned each other to Imperial guns. Nobody would interfere in the rites. Neferou opened his pouch, letting his runestones fly around him, the power of the other sorcerers supporting him.

The runes were powerful in themselves. He had made them in the Burning of Prospero with the bones of a Rune Priest he slaughtered. The Custodes blood who had serve to paint them had cost the lives of three battalions of the Spireguard. He had strengthened them by bargaining with Tiresias of the Emperor's Children, promising a dread favor in exchange for powdered Eldar bones who made them shine with forbidden light. He forged his array with ancient symbols. The Eye of Horus to see through illusions, the Changing Serpent to strengthen it, the Winged Skull to chatter in terror and even the Broken Sword to help in the Hunt.

Soon he saw them burning bright and the mists of space-time opened to him in a flood of image. He saw world tumbling across the void and collated them with the surviving briefings in the databanks. There was an empire of reptile. Big as Orks, with eyes at the side of their faces rather than in front, great armored crests and intelligence the greenskins did not possess. They warred among themselves with Humans chained to their feet as soldiers, workers and even food. The runes showed some potential in their wise men and indeed they threw their foes around with unseen forces.

Another flood of image. Great factories and libraries, temple to cold knowledge like to the red sands of Mars. Slim creatures with skin like flayed fishes, elongated skulls and great eyes black as the void. Slender fingers poking through the mysteries of matter. Great robotic hosts born in forges orbiting distant suns and deployed across the field. Humans there too as slaves bearing the tell-tale signs of augmentation. Still most of the servants and soldiers were creatures of metal. This made the sorcerer hesitate. There were edicts the Thousand Sons had not been interested in breaking and the soulless machine was one of them. Still the visions and compacts had said that all knowledge took its root in Tzeentch.

A third flood becoming a fire. Feminine figures with blue or purple skin and bony crests. Azure soul-flames in cities where aliens mingled together. A fruit of the decadence of an entire empire, a race crafted for the enjoyment of the arts carnal left to develop when the masters had screamed with the horror they birthed. Warrioress and huntresses and weaver of webs. Subversives who enticed with art and prayed to images of gods who were no more. Neferou could not see their future with precision as each was a gifted and the strands of fate rewrote themselves with their choice.

Just like the last flood of images. Divine irony of divination. The seer was blind to those who shone brightly through the Sea of Souls but also those who did not shine at all. The remnants of an ancient kingdom who by hubris had wrought its own doom. Fields of bleached bones lovingly maintained by ignorant murderers. Tombs patrolled by the very creatures who had cleansed them of life. Borders maintained by those who had made all defenses useless. Minds of metal wise in all ways of slaying and useless for anything else. And in the Sea of Souls howling and shrieking the daemon born of the souls of their creators, from the fear who had made them fashion their own executioners.

Major Factions of the Azkeli Sector
Tzynn Empire: Physically strong reptilian aliens in constant low-level civil war. More intelligent Orks from scrying reports. Telekine psykers present.
Likken Technocracy: Slender aliens looking like the Grey of pre-Imperial legend. Specialists in robotic armies and laser and plasma weaponry.
Yondarim Matriarchy: All-Female humanoid psychic race. Diplomats and subversive with a focus on the arts.
Eliminators: Ruined polity patrolled by the ancient defense system who slaughtered it. Scrying detect a powerful Neverborn at the center surging from the neuroses of the murdered species.

The news of the scrying ritual make their way to your throne. Your geneforged instincts scream at you to exterminate the xenos and even the Word Bearers are clear that Humanity is the chosen of the Pantheon and inheritors of the galaxy. Still what to do with these lesser breeds will be a choice for later. Your warband demands war to whet their swords and be united by shed blood. None of the polities in this sector will give you the time of the day if you do not impress them. So you have to show part of your hand and show your arrival in a suitably grandiose manner.

Choose your first target (1)

[] The Tzynn Empire relies on strength and seems to respect it in a degree. Conquering one of their worlds will elicit in them the same reaction than in Orks. They will be forced to count with you and as they are more intelligent they are likely to respect your claim.

[] The Likken are dispassionate scientists but their esoteric weaponry could be useful in your hands. From what you scried their worlds and research outposts are well-defended by sleepless legions but that means the data must be valuable. You will be able to induce talks when you will have proven you have knowledge of destruction to share.

[] The Yondarim seem a soft target who could be brought to submission by a display of strength such as the conquest of one of their worlds. They are witches all and all and such have potential either as warriors or as sacrifices to the Pantheon. They also despite being not overtly warlike, possibly your rivals for the attention of the Dark Gods.

[] The Eliminators are hated by all and their tombs are ripe for the taking. Even if their robotic frames do not contain the souls so prized by the Pantheon, the aetheric reflections of their murdered worlds contain Neverborn aplenty. This war will bring you few favor with the gods but the material rewards are substantive.