So, omake for
@Durin about a possible way the fight against whatever bastard is kidnapping our psyker could go.
To Catch a Predator
It floated in the sea in between, plotting and planning as it awaited its next call. Cautiously, as always—servants of the Changer did not live to its ripe old age or achieve its remarkable level of power without possessing caution in abundance, and the seas were particularly dangerous here. Different dangers than usual too, with fewer of the servants of the other Four or fellow plotters nearby, but the twisted and partially digested remains of those that moved too blatantly only hinted at the fate that awaited the unwary.
Danger was coupled with opportunity, though. The favors it had accumulated, the plots set in motion, the boons granted—they made it worth it and more. Few indeed were the servants of even the Changer who could survive its tasks here, and fewer still were those who deemed the risk involved acceptable no matter the reward promised—especially after the fate of the Changeling, still only whispered of in his Lord's domain with thousands of contradictory accounts, the only detail they agreed upon being that it started near here. Supply and demand saw it richly rewarded for its efforts.
In just mortal decades it had gained so much more than it had in aeons. Power and skill bargained for from its Lord to better accomplish the task, greater by far than it had expected to receive with only a phantom sensation of loss to remind it that all such gifts came with strings. Favors and debts from many a powerful mortal practitioner it had shown the way, as well as from those desiring a promising apprentice from those it had diverted. Time apart from and outside the reach of its many rivals, to plan their downfall and set pieces in motion while their attention was focused on more immediate concerns.
And for what? Just a whisper in the ear of those it deemed powerful enough who owed at least some allegiance to its Master. That even as the mortal authorities closed in on them that there was a way out if they would just answer the call. Some accepted immediately, desperate to escape the reach of those constantly hunting them, others believed themselves capable of hiding from the watchers, only answering as the hounds were nipping at their heels, and some never answered at all, either refusing the call or not realizing they were discovered until death was delivered by blade, gun, or power.
Of course, the trip from the planet was quite dangerous even for the marked servants of its Master, but that only gave it more opportunities to advance its goals. Favors for guiding them along the safer routes it knew, for protecting them along the way, for sanctuary at a location offering it favors for guiding the budding sorcerers there. Opportunity after opportunity, for those with the capability to see it, and it had seen and seized them at every turn, trading for the knowledge of other safe routes and building fallback contingencies along the way.
And now the call was answered again. A young thing, even by mortal standards, but powerful nonetheless. Certain enough in the strength of its blessings and its own power and skill to believe itself safe until now when the Witch-Hunters were all but knocking on the door. A brief survey with its own Divination of the Warp surrounding them as it sped from its hiding place suggested it would have enough time to grab them and that there were no worryingly powerful presences nearby—a more detailed survey would be desirable, but even within the Warp time was not on its side and it judged the risk acceptable. Reaching out with its power, it helped the mortal open a stable portal for it to transition through—an unstable one would shred a mortal soul still bound to a body, after all, which would cost it much of its payment, and it rose towards the surface of the Warp to guide their initial step through.
And then everything went wrong. Just as it began opening its senses to the Materium, that dreadfully alien place bound by law in which nothing and everything changed, a force unlike any it had ever experienced in its long existence seized it. It had been summoned before, by powerful summoners too, but not like this. It felt none of the pleasant vibration of the touch of its Master's power in it, reaching from the inside of itself and moving the whole of itself to respond, nor the gentle tug of a summons it could ignore it it so chose. This was a shackle around the whole of its existence, and it was being jerked out so quickly and completely that it could not have voluntarily responded to it if it had wanted to.
With the suddenness and the power of the pull, it half expected to be systems away when it came into being in the Materium, but that was not the case. In fact, it appeared to be almost exactly where it had tried to materialize, albeit it had intended to materialize partially instead of fully, but that was far from comforting. Between the stories and rumors it had heard whispered, as well as its own observations over the past decades, there was not one location in the Materium it would less like to be, even neglecting the forced materialization.
Worse, the veil of distance shrouding its sight of the area had cleared, and what it revealed was far from welcome. The Blade and The Stillness stood, along with a third of the significant souls which held its shackle, in the area. The Blade, rumored to have fought the Changeling and won, who had cut that which could not be cut, a fighter whose face was hidden and who hid behind her face. The Stillness, the Witch of Nothing, bane of psyker and Daemon that cursed others with her weakness as she used their strength. Legends both, oft entwined in tales with where the skills and identity of one stop and the other start blurred.
The bulk of its attention, however, was directed towards the third. Her power, the very power holding it to this realm, and how she had concealed it even from the hasty examination it had made before answering the call, spoke to how dangerous an opponent she was. Worse, despite how the very set of her soul spoke to her unending opposition to its Master and peers, it had heard nothing of her. No name, no title, no deeds. No indication of how she fought, what her capabilities were, her motivations. No plans in place, no contingencies prepared.
Contingencies, yes, contingencies. It could tell that the bulk of the third woman's attention and power was focused on keeping it materialized, pinned to this realm. Disrupting or distracting her should allow it to escape, to retreat to one of its many bolt-holes and prepare its revenge. For bare seconds it hoped that its erstwhile charge would provide that distraction, but it was not to be. In two quick, decisive swings of the extension of her very soul called her sword the Blade split an abortive blast of warpfire, potent enough to melt through centimeters of amor, in twain, as well as the sorcerer's throat. The split was soul-deep, though the body would twitch there was no coming back from that for a sorcerer so near the beginning of their service.
As it started to marshal its power, to flee, strike out, or defend itself it did not know, it felt the creeping malaise or the Stillness falling over it, stifling its essence. It had felt it before, those rare times it had risked snatching a target from under her nose before it had become fully aware of just how dangerous she could be, but never with anything approaching this potency. Power failed, strength diminished, skills faded, senses dulled, and thought slowed. A fight which began with the clear goal to kill, disrupt, or distract the unknown threat in order to escape devolved into a struggle to so much as reach her, in body, power, or mind, and finally into one to prevent its defeat, as even that failed.
Even still as it fought it plotted and planned. Even if banishment was inevitable it would have its revenge. It had built up a network of favors and debts as well as personal power, a word here, a debt called in there, and these fools who disrupted his plans would pay dearly.
Too late did the daemon's fogged mind remember why it had refused to risk from stealing psykers from our from under the Blade's nose. Too late did it remember which of its opponents should it truly fear, for whom defeat meant not just banishment for millennia but true death. Too late did it realize what their plan had been all along. The Blade's blade cut, and the Daemon of Tzeentch, the Bane of Skalgos, The Dark Whisper, ————— was no more.
**So, explanation time. The Daemon's totally made-up, don't bother looking for it (and I'd be very surprised/worried if you found it), as I'm betting Durin has already decided on the approximate power level etc and this doesn't lock it in to anything but a few titles it has.
One detail I'm trying to show/imply is that the Daemon isn't exactly opening the portal for its side—given that even the First Circle needed summoning (and in fact needed it
more), that just seems extreme/odd. Instead, the psykers themselves are in charge of opening it up—all of them are at least delta level, which is what I recall the minimum for opening a rift was.
I'm doing a fair bit of this from a Daemon's perspective, which kinda has to be weird. The Materium's as alien to them as the Warp is to us, and they don't use our sense natively. As such, the somewhat arbitrary titles I gave to our heroes are basically descriptions to it.
I also tried to capture a bit of the Tzeentchian thought-process for it. Things are tied up in bargains in the like because a key part of plotting (at least in my mind) is viewing every action in terms of costs, benefits, and risks—a large part of the actual making of one is assigning a value to what you want in what you're willing to give up for it, which is a very transactional mindset.
As for why it can glean very little about the little outside context problem fucking its normally foolproof operation, it's a combination of factors. First, a lot of the 'rumors' it assigns to people are based on 'recognizing' them, and her control of her aura is such that it is extremely hard to pin shit to her. Second, she does not leave many survivors to make rumors. Third, Tzeentch bastards have (in my mind) a conceptual weakness to details/things they failed to account for in their plans.
The very end, the — bit is supposed to be having it losing its true name due to true death—the very concept it is based on dissolves/is destroyed.**
