076.M42 Interlude: Detached Debauchery
The planet Cadia, the Cadian System, the Cadian Sector, the Cadian Gate. A place of constant vigilance, continual warfare, blood, death and pain. Sagas could be written about the many heroes and villains who had fought and died there, for so very many of them had in fact died during the 13th Black Crusade. There had been death on a scale for almost a century that beggared belief for the small-minded. But for those who had fought in a realm without time and where the laws of space and reality were malleable, it was familiar. For the more intelligent members of the Imperium, who comprehended that their stellar nation had been fighting in one way or another since its very founding, it was grimly accepted. To the war-bred, war-loving orks, it was one of the greatest fulfilments of their every impulse, with a great variety of strong opponents to fight and kill. To the myriad Necrons afflicted by the dying curse of a C'tan, it was a place to enact their foul desires for flesh and blood, to drape and try to consume. To the tyranids, it was a significant amount of biomass as well as a place to analyze threats, and that was all that mattered.
To the Kabals of Commorragh, it was a harvesting ground like no other.
In such dire times, an entire sixth of the Dark City consumed by the energies of the Warp and the servants of Slaanesh invading, the need for slaves was greater than ever. For the usage of the Haemonculi Covens, for torture and sustenance for the citizenry, for amusement and entertainment in the arenas to ensure that Vect was able to provide the image of control and business as usual. Years of hard warfare and effort had pushed the slaves of Chaos back to the ruins of the Gate of Khaine, but the fighting had never actually ceased. It did not help that an entire satellite realm had been consumed by the Mandrakes and their own twisted ascension, nor that the strange and disturbing 'Ynnari' had caused another major Dysjunction prior to their departure. The sheer anarchy of the fighting against the daemons and their servants had allowed the one called Yvraine time and ability to escape with a significant amount of followers and ships, but already Vect had organized multiple hunting groups to find and kill them for their temerity. There were even rumors that another incursion had been attempted through the Gate by other forces but had been thrown back by none other than Vect himself, but only Vect himself knew whatever it was he had so wounded and the greatest of the Dark Eldar would not speak of the matter. Amidst said distractions of Slanneshi, Ynnari, Mandrake, and other entities, there was also the frankly audacious sabotage on the part of their pathetic cousins of the Craftworlds, collapsing a vast number of the Webway's portals leading to the Dark City, requiring frustrating effort to construct a bevy of new portals that could still force connections to realspace.
Regardless, matters had finally reached an acceptable equilibrium, and yet to fuel it the Dark City required ever more to feed upon to sustain itself.
The Cadian Sector, thankfully, provided all that the Kabals could want and more, though some of the lesser Kabals did seek out slightly less dangerous hunting grounds. The greater Kabals, on the other hand, saw it for what it was.
A challenge.
A way to test the skills, to ride the line between life and death like never before, all in the search of prestige and glory, spoils in flesh and soul and goods.
What an array of targets to test the skills!
Necrons, the old foe, for those who wished to prove that they could fight just as well or even better than the Dominion of the ancient days long past. Or, for certain Dark Eldar, a chance to rewrite past failures into current victories, exacting old vengeances upon the Necrons despite them being so consumed by the Flayers Curse that they could not possibly respond precisely how they wished. Some enterprising and perhaps foolish younger Dark Eldar captured a handful and dared to bring them to Commorragh. It would take much work to prevent their recall systems from working, or so it was thought, and yet there were more than a few Wych Cults who were joyous for the opportunity to battle against the ancient enemy in the arena. Others simply took the time and joy to fire upon their ships, re-enacting old battles in the void and blowing the accursed ships to pieces beyond regeneration.
Greenskins, ever popular with the Wyches, and able to withstand frankly incredible amounts of pain. Always a good product in the Dark City for those wishing for quantity if not quality. Which wasn't to say that the pain of orks was particularly sour, but rather that it was somewhat bland. They could not season their cries with fear without a rather extensive amount of effort, and if the day was close to ending and the grasp of She Who Thirsts was particularly strong that day it behooved the average Dark Eldar to simply purchase something that could produce a heaping amount of pain without expiring as quickly as a more fragile human might. That there were some of the greatest of their kind around was only another spice for the feast, and there were rumors that none other than Hesperax herself was making noise about finding and killing the so-called Beast of Armageddon in single combat.
Tyranids, unlike necrons or orks, were far less amusing. They were a nuisance, but a dangerous one. The Hive Mind had, once or twice, managed to infiltrate the Webway, but no sect of Eldar would accept such a thing. The Hive Mind did not leave behind terrified survivors to be captured and enslaved. All it did was consume and cleanse the galaxy of prey and targets, and this was simply infuriating. Tyranids were not worth capture, for even a minor bio-form had the potential to bring a spore into the Dark City and cause further infections. Given the fighting still ongoing any disruptions to the effort at containing the forces of Chaos within Commorragh such problems were unacceptable. At the same time, the most desperate or daring Dark Eldar were willing to make an attempt at capturing particularly interesting and dangerous tyranids, for the Haemonculi were more than a little interested in experiments that could be done with such material. None had taken up the standing offer to try and transport an entire Hive Ship to Commorragh, however, as Vect had made a clear announcement that any attempt at such foolishness would result in total extermination of the Haemonculi Coven and Kabal in question beyond any chance of recovery.
Humans, such valuable subjects, were far more favored than the tyranids. For torture, for experimentation, for entertainment. The fighters being deployed in the Cadian Gate were some of the best that the pathetic humans had, and the Wych Cults were quite pleased with those that could be taken away. Even better with the flood of ships traveling this way and that. The sigils that they wore, the Gods that they worshipped, it didn't matter to the Dark City, it needed souls to drain of vitality and pain to sup upon. Especially the Sororitas and Astartes, if only because it was that much more orgasmic to break them down and shatter their mistaken assumptions about the place of humanity in the galaxy. Ten thousand years of thinking of themselves at the top, when in truth they were lower than the boot! But they would learn. They all would learn.
Even better were these 'New Men' that the brutish simpleton that called himself the Despoiler had unleashed. In the utter chaos of the Cadian Sector, if a few dozen ships went missing, what did it matter? They had brought more than a billion to the field in the first day, apparently sourced from worlds across the Imperium and beyond, from places that the Inquisition had not been able to find and that the infamous Fabius Bile had not been able to hide. The latter fact was especially amusing. The only human to ever be taken into one of the Covens not as a subject, but as a student and member. Many of the Haemonculi were incredibly taken with dissecting and altering the creatures that were brought to them, for depending on which of the Dark Gods they had ended up indoctrinated by, there were a variety of mutations and differences. Which was building already on the various differences based on environment and which batch of experiments that Fabius had finished with throughout the years.
So many targets, so many holds filled and flush with spoils, all for the wealth and glory of the Kabals of Commorragh. If it happened to distress and infuriate the humans all the more, so much the better. If the Despoiler could not deploy a group of New Men or trained regiments of cultists because their ships had been taken in transit, resulting in the Imperium scoring several minor victories on his northern flank, so be it. If an entire company of space marines, two regiments of Imperial Guard, and a thousand Sisters of Battle never reached their deployment zone, ensuring that an influx of daemons was capable of overrunning a fifteen square mile area of Imperial territory – and causing thousands upon thousands of fatalities – then so be it. If a battlegroup fresh from a Dark Mechanicus Forge World's shipyards did not arrive in accordance with the Daemon Primarch Perturabo's timetables, so be it, his bitter wrath and rage as his precise plans were upended time and again were so powerfully ambient through the Warp that certain extreme seekers of sensation would dance their ships close by to savor it before heading elsewhere. The monstrous cybernetic creations would win favor in the arena to those they were sold to, the spoils sold off to other Covens, the slaves taken even worse fates than what the forces of Chaos had imagined. What did the Dark Eldar care for any of how any other felt? The brutes and barbarians and maddened foes would play at war, and the Dark Eldar would feast as they wished. Such was the true way of things. Millions upon millions of souls. All to be tortured. All to suffer. All for the pleasure of the universe's true masters.
And so the 13th Black Crusade ground on.
