Nightmare

Lore bits:

-The Disaster continued to unfold on Bheta-Decima. The Warp tainted debris of the Gallowdark manifested strange phenomena wherever it impacted. One such mass of fused ship parts and rock destroyed the Forge-Shrine of Toil's Reward. The resulting destruction unleashed vapors that in turn became oily grey-green rain. The tainted rain hideously mutated flesh and metal alike. Soon, the surviving Skitarii of the shrine found themselves beset by packs of cannibal tech mutants whose mutations grew more horrific by the hour.

-The industrial spiral of Gamma-Thaum-3 was moments away from being annihilated by one of Gallowdark's masses when a temporal loop generator trapped inside the mass activated and snatched it away at the final moment. The mass was now locked in a loop. Appearing over the spiral and disappearing a moment before impact, again and again. The horrified labor gangs of the spiral could do nothing but scream each time the mass closed in. They were trapped within the spiral by the guns of the Skittari whose masters denied the labourers escape. So the laborers toiled on, their sanity eroding by the terror-inducing loop.

-Beset by disasters and rampaging armies of heretics and Xenos, and worse besides, Some of the Admech withdrew into their sanctum and locked themselves within refusing to abandon their precious technology. Others went on the offensive pressuring the world's puppet governor into a campaign of purgation that saw the unleashing of atomics and phosphothermic warheads in acts of indiscriminate carnage. An increasing number of tech-priests choose to simply flee the world. They abandoned their low-ranking adepts and servants to make more room in their ship holds for technological treasures and precious experiments. The escaping tech priests also abandoned some of their technology on the world, the technology whose discovery would see them branded as hereteks. Heretical and Xeno tech were left without proper supervision and containment adding to the woes of the world.

-Due to the Warp taint, the firestorms of the Ondor flatlands gained sentience and began to hunt the living scattered across the ruinscape, forcing the warring armies to escape underground and resume their battle there.

-The battles were not limited to the world's surface, there was bloodshed in its orbit as well. A remnant of the Gallowdark floated above the world. This mass of the rock, metal, and squirming flesh was named the Gallow Moon. Teams of Admech, Imperial Navy, and Arbites boarded the Gallow Moon to conduct rescue missions, pursue escapees, or claim technological treasures. What they found inside the mass was monstrously horrific. The Gallow Moon's corridors were soon filled with screams and gunfire.

- The ocean known as the Tumult was among the most affected regions. Clouds above the ocean twisted into miles-long heretical symbols, building-sized fangs emerged from the ocean, and a forest of grasping water hands manifested. The Admech and Imperials sought salvation from the tainted waves inside their holdings and rigs but found themselves beset by the tainted sea life. The swarms of the sea monsters pulled entire structures beneath the waves. But what horrified the Imperials more than the swarms was the fact that these monsters were only fleeing the titanic creatures stirring from the ocean's trenches. Slowly the ocean's behemoths rose from the waves and brought with them a new meaning of fear for the unfortunates caught in their wake.

-Even by the standards of the traitor legions and renegade warbands, the Night Lords are considered honourless sadists. The Night Lords care nothing for the Long War. They exist only to pursue their own selfish gains and desires through piracy and terror.

-The Night Lords view all, be they Xenos or other Space Marines, as prey and playthings to be hunted down and toyed with before being slaughtered and their gear plundered. So greedy and self-interested are most Night Lords that they are willing to turn on members of their own legion if it gains them an advantage or greater plunder. Naturally, such an outlook caused the Night Lord legion to fragment into small warbands. However, such is their expertise in sowing terror and raiding that even in their scattered state the small numbers of Night Lords are capable of spreading misery and terror in obscene quantities.

-Due to the genetic legacy of their troubled Primarch, few of the Night Lords are sane. This is not helped by the fact that the Night Lords choose only the most vicious and sadistic recruits to add to their number. Then after elevation, a warrior of the Night Lords would spend countless years tormenting other lifeforms and witnessing unspeakable horrors. It's not surprising that the Night Lords retain only the smallest fragments of their humanity.

-The most sadistic and bloodthirsty of the Night Lords, those who are shunned by their fellow Night Lords, form the Kill Teams called the Nemesis Claws. These kill teams echo the terror squads of the HH. The obscenity and vileness of their bloody deeds earn them great power and prestige among their warbands. Moreover, they are strategic assets. The terror and demoralization they inflict on the enemy armies usually prove to be as effective in breaking the enemy as a straightforward charge.

-Nemesis Claw Kill Teams are made up of complete monsters making them utterly unpredictable. So Night Lord commanders unleash them ahead of their armies. Like wild animals, they are left to their own initiative, to sow destruction and terror wherever and in whatever way they wish.

-Nemesis Claws Kill Teams are led by Visionaries, Night Lords who are blessed/cursed by an echo of their Primarch's prescient powers. These powers allow them to be one step ahead of the murderers they lead to battle as well as predict enemy threats before they happen. Yet despite these abilities visionaries know that it all takes is one slip up, one show of weakness, for them to be torn apart by the blades of their brothers.

-Night Lord Ventrilokars carry with them Voice Eaters created from the remains of slain marines using dark sorcery. These living dead corpses use their tainted omophagea to mimic the voices of those whose flesh they consume and also loudly mutter the victims' deepest secrets.

-A Night Lord warband under the command of a lord named Haardek invaded the shrine world of Pleniaris. It was not going well for the Night Lords. The defenders were numerous and their zeal was bolstered by their faith in the world's saint and his miracles. Enraged by his warband's losses, he unleashed no less than three Nemesis Claws. The Claws slaughtered the elite defenders of the shrine world and stole the Saint's holy relics from the shrine world's holiest most defended sanctum. They brought the relics to a despoiled vox shrine and presented them to the waband's sorcerors. As the sorcerers began to conduct a vile ritual of Warp necromancy using the saint's relics as a focus, the Nemesis Claws defended the vox shrine from repeated attacks from the Imperials. The ritual was completed, pulling the Saint's soul from the Warp.  The sorcerers then tortured the Saint's soul to the point of madness. With the howls of their beloved saint ringing in their minds and souls, the imperial defenders were overcome with despair. They were helpless when the Night Lords renewed their offensive.

-During the war on the world of Emshar, the soldiers of the T'au Empire were inspired by the heroics of a squad of Pathfinders who came to be known as the Blades of Vas'Lar. Again and again, the brave deeds of the Pathfinders saw enemy shields shutdown, communication systems destroyed, and elite heretic Kill Teams annihilated. The Water Caste exalted the heroics of the Blades of Vas'Lar which held up the morale of the outnumbered Fire Warriors as fought against the heretics. This earned the Blades of Vas'Lar the ire of the Nemesis Claw called Ashkor's Claw. Ashkor marked the Xenos for public slow and gruesome deaths. Over a prolonged period of days, Ashkor and his marines hunted down the Pathfinders and picked them off one by one.  They made sure that the horrific slayings were in view of the Fire Warriors. The Claw's Voice Eater wailed in the stolen voices of the Pathfinders and they broadcasted it to the Fire Warriors. Ashkor's grudge had cost him and his men dearly, for the Pathfinders were not easy prey. But the Claw's losses were offset by the crippling damage inflicted on the T'au morale. The tide of war soon turned in favor of the heretics.

-The Dark City is made up of countless scattered sub-realms. And also it borders darker and stranger dimensions like the shadowy realm of Aelindrach. In recent events, Aelindrach intruded into the Dark City and spilled within it.

-Aelindrach is home to many strange and horrible creatures. Amongst the most sinister of them are the Mandrakes.

-Mandrakes can draw on the glyphs on their bodies to manifest flame that they can hurl on the enemy. The flame burns the very soul out of their victims rendering them husks. It's rumored that as normal fire leaps from one fuel source to the next, the Mandrake flame leaps through spiritual connections. The victims' loved ones, those they hate, or simply who were they thinking of as they burned would suddenly be engulfed in icy flame even if they were half a galaxy away.

-The limits of Real Space seem to have little hold on Mandrakes. They can contort and twist their bodies unnaturally, their shapes shift and change constantly,  they can defy gravity, and most disturbingly jump in and out of the shadows as if they were doorways. They can sink into the tiniest patch of shadow as if it was deep water and then appear in another shadow as if the distance between both doesn't exist.

-Mandrake Shadoweavers can deepen the darkness of shadows until they tunnel through reality itself.


-Mandrakes fight alongside Drukhari usually but it's not an act of kinship or servitude. The Drukhari merely know how to contact them and are willing to pay the terrible price for their services.

-Mandrakes care nothing for conventional wealth but they are willing to take living captives. What the Mandrake seek are strange and esoteric prices for their services such as a cherished memory, a heartbeat, and many other surreal demands. How the employers deliver this price does not concern the Mandrakes. More than one employer sealed their fate by desperately agreeing to the Mandrake's price but not knowing how to pay it.

-The Mandrakes are superb terror troops, saboteurs, guards, and also rescuers. However, the sanity of those experiencing their terrifying rescues might not survive.

-Mandrakes offer their services to both Drukhari and other races. Sometimes they leave their shadowy realm on their own accord seeking their own agendas.

-Whether to collect on a debt, summoned mistakingly, or by their own whim, Mandrakes are a threat to all sentient life whenever they manifest in Real Space. An infestation of Mandrakes could last for days or it may last longer and be more widespread. Even should mandrake rampage be put down there's no assurance of safety. Vengeful Mandfrakes could crawl back from their realm at any time.



The plot:

Intro:
The distress and anarchy of Bheta Decima were like blood in the water drawing in predatory fiends. midnight-clad killers stalked toward the Forgeworld. However, their first slaughters fell on the neighboring Ulkhor cluster. A cargo ship was left adrift, its lifeless halls decorated with the skins of its crews hung with snarl-wire and etched with heretical symbols. An Imperial night world was thrown into cold complete darkness when its defence platform unexpectedly opened fire on the planet's genetorum complexes. Armored killers then stalked the cities of the world slaughtering and torturing at their leisure, and ambushing the enforcers and PDF that sought to bring an end to their reign of terror. After the killers departed, a grainy image captured from a servitor satellite showed a corrupted Imperial warship slipping into the void. This and more atrocities were left in their wake, charnel houses where the final screams of their victims were broadcasted on a loop.

When the killers arrived at the Yolven system, it would be the fleeing tech priests who would suffer the worst of their predations. The tech-priests in their haste to escape the Bheta Decima disaster brought with them little of their escorts so they were easy prey for the killers. Somehow always creeping undetectably toward their prey and from an unexpected vector, the killers' warship would annihilate the small number of escorts and cripple the Admech ships. What followed was a sadistically prolonged slaughter.

The killers left the Admech ships intact alongside their monitoring systems. The killers wanted their bloody work to be witnessed, they wanted the fear to spread. Rescue and salvage teams pieced together the identity of the killers from the fragmented recordings. It was revealed that they were the Night Lords and the ship that carried them was called the Death Rattle. The Night Lords were making their way toward Bheta Decima.

The Night Lords were not the only form of nightmarish fiends to threaten Bheta Decima. The new threat that was manifesting on Bheta Decima was not world-ending nor was it a conquering force. It was a personalized horror that would stalk the unfortunate souls on the dying Forgeworld.

Light and basic support systems aboard the forge shrine of Thanator Argo-5 were shut down due to lack of power. Low-ranking tech adepts and traumatized guardsmen who had sheltered in the shrine worked together to reroute power to the shrine's systems, siphoning power from an unknown source connected to the shrine. The celebrating shrine personnel did not know that the unknown source was a secret deep vault containing forbidden Xenos relics. Among these relics was an obelisk of dark bone and mirrored jet. With the stasis field cut, fathomless darkness and frost spread from the obelisk. What followed was long-fingered hands emerging from the obelisk's mirrors.



Night Lords' intro:

The Night Lord warbands making their way to Bheta Decima called themselves the Midnight Hunt. They were led by an Exalted Champion of the Dark Gods called Vresk the Hollow, a veteran of thousands of years of slaughter and atrocity. Vresk managed to remain in command this long by offering his ruthless men plentiful plunder and prey and by setting his lieutenants at each other's throats. Those foolish enough to challenge him for command ended up as part of his long tooth-chain around his neck.

Daemonic voices had whispered to Vresk of a dying world filled with vaults containing the darkest of technological treasures. When the warband arrived to that world, Bheta Decima, Vresk offered his men great rewards and dark favor for any of his champions who brought him the finest prizes from the world. His men were eager to fulfill the command of their warlord, none more so than the warband's Nemesis Claw Kill Team, the Torments.

The Torments were led by a Visionary named Grymm Shevekh. So skilled in his unnatural ability to foresee danger that many feared him as a full-fledged psyker who could peer into their minds. It was this fear as well as his murderously skillful use of the Nostroman chainsblade that made challenges to his command few and far in-between. However, those too mad or ambitious to be dissuaded had their skins added to his cloak. But nothing comes without a cost. His sixth sense bestowed upon him paranoia that constantly tormented him, a paranoia that would intensify on the rare occasions when his ability deceived him.


The story:

Bheta Decima's defense platforms suffered damage to their sensor arrays and defensive batteries by the debris showers from the fragmenting Gallowdark. The Night Lords exploited this to attack one of the platforms. By the time the half-blinded defensive platform detected the juggernaut of a warship barreling down on them, it was too late. The Night Lord cruiser, the Death Rattle, unleashed its weapons and dreaclaws on the platform cutting the loyalists' resistance short.

As their brothers hunted and butchered the platform's crew and defenders, the Toments fought their way to the sanctum connected to the head of the Space Elevator that linked the platform to the world. The fragile structure was damaged by the disaster and made unstable so only the insane would consider using it. Naturally, the Torments had no qualms about using it to descend to the world.

It was Shevekh's ambition to topple Vresk and take command of the Midnight Hunt. He could not do that by his own strength so he hoped to find a powerful weapon on Bheta Decima that would be potent enough to lay low his warlord. It was an ambition that he was willing to sacrifice his entire team for.

The Torments raided, butchered, and tortured the Imperials in their way. From the tortured screams of his victims, Shevekh listened for any hint of what he sought. He found it. A torn-open Imperial officer screamed of a place called Shrine Forge Thanator-Argo-5. At the utterance of the name, Shevekh felt the pull of premonition. Guided by the pull of fate and greed,  the Torments made their way to the shrine.

The Torments approach the Shrine Forge and take cover in an Ork wreck field. They spot Skitarii emerging from the shrine. It became quickly obvious that the cyborg warriors weren't coming after the Torments or else the shrine defensive guns that created the wreck field would have been fired already on them The disorganized and panicking state of the Skitarii suggested that they were fleeing from the shrine.

The Torments ambushed the Skitarri and slaughtered all save for one. The lone Skitarri had his legs surgically removed by bolter fire. He was to be interrogated by Shevekh.

Shevekh demanded from the Skitarri warrior the access codes, the layout of the shrine, and everything else he knew. The Skitarri responded by saying that it would do the traitors no good. The Shrine was plagued by terrors that no being of flesh, blood, or metal could defeat.

Shevekh demanded again. The Skitarri refused, saying that he would not willingly betray the secrets of the Omnissiah. Then the cyborg warrior reached toward his gun.

Shevekh stomped on the cyborg's arm crushing it, and he told him he said nothing about willingness.

Shevekh beckoned the Torments' Ventrilokar who went by the name of Thrull. Thrull brought the living dead marine corpse he hung on his icon pole that he affectionately Brother Mine. Thrull lowered Brother Mine toward the Skitarri. The corpse stirred and reached toward the Skitarri. Soon the cyborg began to scream.

Before Brother Mine could complete stealing his voice, the Skitarri activated some sort of self-destruct mechanism that fried his brain. Shevekh got the access protocols and schematics of the shrine but nothing else, nothing of the terrors that stalked the shrine. Just as well thought Shevekh. There is no better way of learning about something than hunting it.

What the Torments found inside were scenes of horrific carnage. Some of the Imperial scum had fought against their attackers while others fled or cowered. All the same, they were slain to a man. Initially, the Torments thought it was the work of fellow Night Lords but under closer inspection, they realized it was the handiwork of some other force.

The victims' jaws were yawning wide and dislocated apparently from extreme screaming. Some of the corpses collapse to ash when touched. Others had wounds that spoke of being somehow scorched and frostbitten simultaneously. The warband tortured their victims, certainly, but they had no weapons that could inflict this damage. Then there were also the strange sigils that were carved onto the victims and on the structures of the shrine. These were not Night Lords' symbols.

There were disturbing patterns present in some victims. A number of them were missing their left arms.

The Torments found a curious sight. A corpse that hung from a mirror, the victim's chest and upward vanished into the mirror as if something pulled them partially into the mirror. This made the Torments wonder if this was the work of daemonkind but they dismissed it. It was something else.

Suddenly whispers filled their vox systems. Even Brother Mine was hearing the whispers indicating the supernatural nature of these voices. Frost started spreading from the broken lumen lights and the darkness stirred and spread. Dark inky rain began to pour down from the ceiling. Shevekh's danger sense burned hot and his overwhelming paranoia awakened threatening to devour his rationality. Shevekh Steadied his breathing and focused on the goal ahead. His prize awaited beyond this chamber. If anything was foolish enough to attack them, then they would teach it the meaning of fear.

The moment the Torments made it to the middle of the chamber, they were attacked.  A slender figure emerged from the darkness beneath the feet of the Torments' Fearmonger and stabbed its blade into his throat. Even with blood gushing from his throat the Fearmonger lashed out with his posthuman reflexes. The counterblow did not land. The creature contorted its body, in such a way that it would have broken the bones of a normal creature, and evaded the Fearmongers dagger thrust. The creature ripped its blade from the Fearmonger's throat and dove into the shadows from whence it came.

Shevekh's prescience alarmed him of danger at his back. He turned to find one of the creatures emerging from the darkness to throw a ball of fire at him. Shevekh dodged the flames. However, the flame flew past and hit the gurgling and staggered Fearmonger immolating him and sending him crumbling to the ground.

Shevekh aimed his plasma pistol at his attacker. The prey sense of his helmet was flooded with contradictory data so he ignored his helmet readings and he trusted in his killer instincts honed in countless battles and fired. The shot flew true and obliterated the shadowy creature's head. The form of the creature burned away in a satisfying shriek.

The Torments Heavy Bolter gunner was drowned by a tide of darkness and the shadowy figures that hid inside it. The heavy bolter fired and fired and then it went silent.

The Torments realized they were fighting Mandrakes. They had walked into their killing ground. Shevekh considered abandoning his Kill Team and making a dash to the chamber's exit but decided against it. He needed his men's aid in his escape.

Shevekh called his men to his side and they answered with impressive speed but not all of them made it to his position. The Torment's Screecher fought on but was isolated by Mandrakes. And there were no signs of three of the Torments members.

Shevekh and his men made a circle to cover all angles of attack and advanced. A Mandrake leaped at the Torments and was seen off with a blast from a flamer. Another attacked them with a massive blade. The Torment's Skinthief met the creature's swing with a swing from his chainglaive, locking both weapons together. The marine's strength proved greater. The chainglaive sawed through the creature's blade and then the creature itself.

Things were going well, Shevekh thought. As long as they kept this defense there was no way the Mandrakes could overcome them. It was then his danger sense activated. A picture of a pool of darkness forming between him and his men manifested in his mind. In a heartbeat, a taloned hand gripped his faceplate from behind and he heard a hiss so close it seemed to come from his armor.

Shevekh tried to turn but it was too late....far too late.