Tales of the Tzeentch cult: Part One

Greetings, this is Ullian, the librarian (a literal librarian, not the Space Marine kind) of a Tzeentch cult currently en route to a mining world known as T’ros somewhere on the ass end of a xenos state known as the “Tau Empire”. As you probably can see, I’m not one for formality, but in the ranks of Chaos no one gives a shit about protocol anyways who cares if this reads more like a journal than a data log? Anyways, as the librarian of our little cult it’s my job to oversee and expand upon our small library, organizing and categorizing books containing both truth and lies, scrolls with the knowledge of sorcery within them, instructions for runes and summoning sigils, and of course the history of the cult itself, starting with this entry.

I suppose I should give a background summary of our cult. There are 9 people within it, and there must always be 9 people. Why 9? Fuck if I know, it’s Tzeentch’s favorite number apparently. All I know is that if you have more than 9 people then the group’s trust in each other falls to unsustainably low levels, and if you have less than 9 then there aren’t enough people to get shit done. 9 is a lucky number I guess. Each of us is a Tzeentch cultist, a lowly human with the highest hopes and ambitions, and we all have various skills and sorcerous talents that will play a role in the plans to come.

Let’s start with me, as I already told you my name is Ullian and I’m the librarian. I grew up a slave on the Tzeentchian Daemon world of Bathamor. I wasn’t satisfied with being a slave all my life, so I took an opportunity while I was exceptionally young and escaped, managing to hide out in the labyrinths of Tzeentch for several days before being caught. In typical Tzeentch fashion, it was determined that my escape demonstrated ambition, cunning, and hopefulness worthy of a promotion. Go figure. So I ended up the apprentice of a Thrall Wizard known as Lemaitre. While we’re on the subject, I should say that Lemaitre is also in our cult, although I couldn’t tell you much about him. He’s excellent at offensive warp magic, and on the rare occasion that our group needs a sorcerer to fuck shit up he’s our go to guy. But as for his history, I know nothing, he refuses to divulge any information and he’s always saying I should keep my mouth shut lest my enemies use my history against me. He’s probably right, come to think of it.

Then there’s Jimmy. He’s the “face” of our group, a charismatic ex-Guardsman who arranged for “accidents” to occur so he could climb his way up the ranks one dead superior at a time. The treacherous bastard probably didn’t even know he was falling to Chaos until it was too late (not that he minded all that much, I’m sure). He’s good with a lasgun and he managed to get an entire company of Guardsman to defect to Chaos, well, the ones that weren’t turned into Chaos Spawn at least.

There’s also Critter, a Hive scumbag who had been worshipping Tzeentch for a while a part of a separate cult when the Eye of Terror shat itself and the Great Rift was created. Viewing that as a golden opportunity, Critter and his fellow cultists summoned an army of Tzeentchian daemons to conquer the planet while it was vulnerable. Coincidentally, on that same planet there was a second cultist that currently resides within out group. Erika, a local politician who had been bribing, persuading, coercing, and assassinating her way up the ranks of power. She was getting awfully close to her goal of controlling the Hive city as well, which is why she’s still pissed off at Critter for taking the direct approach and just summoning an army to take it by force. Still, she did play a major role in the conquest of her own city, using every bit of her power to ensure that political obstruction resulted in a delayed response to the army of daemons. Of course, then some Chaos Marines swept in and took all the credit for everything, as usual. Neither Critter nor Erika have particularly notable magical talents, but they do possess the skills to make connections with the criminal underbelly and political hierarchy respectively.

Marvaeus is the most powerful sorcerer of the group, and he’s the one who noticed us and organized us all into one cult. He’s a rather enigmatic man who’s got a serious case of tentacle face. Whatever Tzeentch did to him, it resulted in him looking like a mini-Cthulhu. He says little about himself, in fact outside of key information he says little at all. He’s the only one of our group that can see glimpses of other’s future plans, so although he’s far too inhuman to strut about in public once we find a safe place for him to hide he’ll undoubtedly turn into one of our most powerful assets.

Vigil is another such powerful sorcerer, although he specializes in illusionary magic instead. Which is awfully useful, considering he’ll need it to hide the fact that he’s covered in eyeballs. He used to be in the Imperial Navy and apparently still has connections to some Tzeentch cultists within the navy. He’s the reason we managed to get into this “Gue’vesa” cargo ship in the first place. He’s excellent at infiltration, so whenever we need to see behind a locked door or inside some censored documents he’s probably the man we’ll assign to do it.

Finally, there’s the newbies, Winston and Witticker. Both enslaved in a raid on an Agricultural world by the Brethren of Fire. We bought ‘em off their hands to fill our ranks. We don’t know what either of them are capable of at the moment, so the plan is to keep an eye on them and use them as glorified bodyguards while they watch and learn. They probably won’t amount to much, but like I said 9 is a lucky number so we needed two more men on the team.

Well, that sums up the team I suppose. We were summoned into the ship by one of Vigil’s navy connections while it was “dipping” into the Warp. No one will be investigating the cargo of an empty ship returning from a delivery, so we should be able to make it out of the ship without any trouble, and after that it’s just a matter of finding a place to set up shop and then initiating the plan. The plan itself is quite extensive though (honestly now, what else would you expect from a Tzeentch cult?) so I’ll go more into length about it in the next entry