Forsaken (40k Chaos Warband Quest)

[ganonso]

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.

 

[ganonso]

WARBAND SHEET
Character Sheet : Calrith of the Sons of Horus, Lord of the Forsaken
Weapon Skill: 60
Ballistic Skill: 60
Strength: 60
Toughness: 60
Perception: 60
Agility: 55+5: 60
Fellowship: 60+10: 70
Willpower: 70+5: 75

Traits:
Space Marine Veteran: Your already transhuman traits have been honed through centuries of war. Stats 40 +6d5 rounded to the next 5
Son of Horus: Master of all the ways of war: 5 to 2 characteristics
Warmaster's Shadow: You imitate your father in all things: +10 Fellowship; Power Mace and wrist-mounted bolter as weapon


Census
Emperor Children: 36 Marines including 18 Noise Marines and 6 Palatine Blades
Iron's Warriors: 51 Marines
Night Lords: 44 Marines including 10 Raptors
World Eaters: 64 Marines including 8 Possessed and 8 Terminators
Death Guard: 45 Plague Marines
Thousand Sons: 10 Sorcerers
Sons of Horus: 215 Marines including 20 Terminators
Word Bearers: 84 Marines including 20 Possessed
Alpha Legion: 40 Marines

Total: 589 Marines

Coven of Sorcerers: 26 Sorcerers (10 Thousand Sons, 3 Emperor's Children, 3 Word Bearers, 2 Night Lords, 3 Death Guards, 4 Sons of Horus, 1 Iron's Warriors, 1 Alpha Legion)

Apothecaries: 15: (4 Emperor's Children, 1 World Eaters, 3 Night Lords, 3 Death Guards, 1 Alpha Legion, 3 Sons of Horus)

Techmarines: 9 (1 by Legion)

Non-Astartes Assets:
4000 Soldiers
Countless mutant canon fodder

Techpriestess Aki-Zeta 13
25 Dark Mechanicum junior Adepts
275 Skitarii

 

[ganonso]

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.

 

[ganonso]

Daemonology
Once, not so long ago, the word among all Legions, among the Imperium was there were no daemons. This word just like god was forbidden, consigned to the dustbin of history. Yes it was admitted there were intelligences in the Warp. It was known eventually the Eldar wore attuned psychic stones for their consciousness to retreat to as the body was cut down. Sometimes the Immaterium seized a psyker and something horrible emerged from the portal of flesh and bones. But these were explained in rational terms, in equations and formulae. These were but unusual xenos. Would it have been better for the False Emperor to tell the truth? Would wounded Horus not pledge himself to the Ruinous Powers if he knew they were foes of his father's work? Would Lorgar who beheld their faces in his pilgrimage have hesitated more if he knew of their deeds and legions? Would Magnus in his almighty pride have considered the ramifications of making a deal with something so vast as to be called a god? Now everyone knows best. There are daemons and gods in the universe. And these gods are dark and hungry ones who laugh at the pain of humanity.

Not surprisingly, knowledge of the daemonic beyond the concrete use of summoning, is most sought of by the Thousand Sons and the Word Bearers. Although of different outlooks, the sons of Magnus and Lorgar generally share their Primarchs' former amity and they have made working theories. Although one must always remember the rules of reality such as causality and non-contradiction do not apply to the Sea of Souls.

Greatest and most controversial of the theories is that the Dark Gods in fact are illusions. Those most daring Sorcerers who had the dubious privilege of traveling directly in their lords' domains discovered that the four avatars haunting their dreams were unable to be communicated with. The Beast on the Throne roars hatred and wrath through the cosmos, the Heart of the Labyrinth cackles without being understood, the Serpent of Sin is seemingly unreachable on its throne, even the Mountain of Rot simply waves its supplicants by. Still the existence of at least four Empyreal Domains with clear themes is undeniable. Even then though, sobriquets like the Garden of Rot, the Circles of Ecstasy, the Plains of Blood or the Crystal Labyrinth are just images and simile, attempts for mortal minds to quench the fire of revelation.

Is the domain-body of Khorne a vast jungle where beasts tear each other apart, an ocean of blood crossed by sharks whose maws can devour worlds, or a blasted plain under a rain of fiery skulls where armies walk? Yes to all of them and none of them.

Under the Ruinous Powers, these blind idiot leviathans stand the choir of Eidolons, still unfathomably vast but just able to be understood by mortals minds. An Eidolon is an aspect of a given Dark God, part of their purview and terrible might and expressing the interest of the Dark God in a suitable manner. The Thousand Sons identified three Eidolons of Tzeentch: Secrets, Magic and Mutation and are sure there are others. Unlike their progenitor-selves, Eidolons have agency and will and work to bend and subvert the material universe. Every investigation of the Chaos Marks leads to the Eidolons, masters of the innumerable hosts of Chaos. To make matters all the more confusing, they are referred by titles rather by name because they all answer to the name-concept of their progenitor.

Forming their courts are the Greater Daemons. Each of them is a story of material acts resounding with their patron best, made of the souls who partook in such. Each is worthy to be called a god by deluded cultists and like their sires, they may even be hidden under the masks of the greater Powers. Each is able to undo armies on its own but not all are interested in the material. Fortunately for the galaxy the greater bulk of the unnumbered host is engaged in the Great Game, battling to expand their god's being through the Warp. Unfortunately such battles have repercussions in the world of matter, their echo traveling through the universe. Endless are the variations of their forms and endless their guises.

The difference between Greater Daemons and Heralds is complicated and there are sorcerers who posit it's a question of degree rather than nature. Heralds tend to be more identifiable than Greater Daemons in that the sins that gave birth to them are written clean for those who can decipher the symbology of their forms. They are collections of souls but generally there is one who provided the impetus for their birth. They are not to be taken for Princes however, their identity is a coalescence. For instance, the Slaaneshi herald known as the Prince of Ogres was born of a ancient Terran warlord who engaged in horrendous acts for his "pleasure and carnal delight.", it devoured many a killer of innocents before emerging as the sapphire-clad knight it is today.

Also remember that time doesn't exist in the Warp. Most neverborn children of Slaanesh precede the Fall, one of many paradoxes of the Chaos Gods.

Then are the ranks of the Lesser Daemons. They are individual stories, individual sins, individual hatreds and one can beget several in a normal life. They are emotions caged by te aegis of the Dark Gods. Many are mindless, many are unable to be anything but a sorcerer's playthings or form the squads who are thrown through the veil. Yet some manage to inspire the feelings that gave birth to them. According to sorcerous theory, the bestial cohorts of the Gods are formed more about phobias of phenomena associated with the Ruinous Powers. Screamers would be lies, Beasts of Slaanesh fear of decadence, Beasts of Nurgle fear of stagnation and Hounds of Khorne fear of vengeance.

Forever apart from the neverborn are the Daemon Princes. Each is host to a single story, the story of a mortal life brought enough power to blaze across the Warp. Daemon Princes are odd in several ways. First their first manifestation when their flesh became the stuff of nightmares is endless. They are not forced to maintain their existence through sacrifices and sorcery until they are cast into the Sea of Souls. Ascending to daemonhood is the goal of the Path to Glory which admits only three fates: Ascension, death or falling to the state of a mutated Chaos Spawn.