Of Gods & Monsters
Pensive, the God King gazed out into the star-studded blanket enveloping the throne room of Azyrheim. As comet trails blazed before the lightning lord all thoughts were cast on the coming of the ancient one, the star master, & of the warning of a coming darkness brought by the celestial daemons. Where the forces of order thought the Seraphon had descended to bring deliverance to their enemies in the opening conflict of the Godstone wars, Sigmar knew their arrival forbade something much more sinister. To rouse the venerable Slann from cosmic meditation could only herald a realm changing event of cataclysmic proportion.
Upon the blood soaked shores of Ghur’s sea of claws, the shattered tears of Slaanesh lay dull & lifeless strewn across the now tainted beachhead. The bestial rage that had gripped the gathered warhosts dissipated revealing the folly of their bloody quest. Broken, the armies that had devoted themselves to the hellish shards retreated, their ranks decimated by the arcane might of the first Slann & the Seraphon. From within the monolithic prison of Uhl-Gysh, Slaanesh cried out in anguish as his new worshippers turned their backs on the dark promises they had been blessed.
Upon cleansing the feral lands of the Dark Prince’s taint, the ancient Starmaster forewarned Sigmar that the dark prisms were nothing more than a rouse, a single strand in an intricate web of illusion created by the arch deceiver to lure the attentions of all from a much grander ambition. The dawn of a nightmare era was revealed to the God King, a time where the lightning no longer struck the lands, a time where the dead of all the worlds stalked the lands united under an amethyst banner, a time where predatory magic would reign unbound, reshaping the very realms themselves with raw elemental power.
These events would be heralded by the malign portents, cast out across reality to those with the means to interpret them. ‘Beware the tomb of the weeping blades, the well of Nadir, & the call of the necroquake.......’
The Soul Harvest
With the Sacrosanct chamber unleashed to oppose the calamitous events in Shyish, Sigmar tasked his advisors with further deciphering the warnings delivered by the star-daemons. As malign sorcery ripped through the mortal realms like a storm, the seers & sorcerers of every race began to harness the eldritch energies engulfing realities’ edges. Though many of the sorcerous energies had been bound into arcane artefacts some proved too powerful to be contained.
Purple suns, suffocating grave tides & malevolent malestroms surged from the prime inner lands of Shyish, conjured the worlds over to swell the ranks of dread Nagash. The God-king realised he would need more than a new warrior chamber to halt the endless legions of the great necromancer. If stormcast souls did not return to the anvil of apotheosis for reforging, soon the dead would vastly outnumber the living, leaving only hope buried in the world.
As the burned, beheaded & brutally murdered rose once more from graves across the mortal realms, ancient entities stirred within Shyish. Free of their amethyst prisons deep within the Nadir, the nine daemons emerged. Once the guardians of the underworlds, the nine shepherded the souls of the dead into the many afterlives mortal societies birthed. Existing between reality & paradise, the nine were kin to neither the celestial nor the chaos tainted of their kind. These powerful beings held the secrets to soul harvesting, an ancient rite enabling the daemons to gather large quantities of the soul-severed ready for their eternal pilgrimage.
When fell Arkhan resurrected Nagash upon their sacred shrine in the world that was, the nine daemons were among the first to be punished by the great necromancer. Sealed within great soul cages deep in the Shyish Nadir, the supernatural reapers were held captive by the very souls they were tasked with herding into the afterlife, forced to watch as Nagash drank deep of their
foresaken quarry. Powerless to halt the ascension of the God of Death, the nine daemons remained dormant in amethyst prisons until their escape during the Necroquake.
Whispers in the dark
As the many mages, shamans, seers, & sorcerers gorged on the boundless energies of malign sorcery unleashed across the realms, the nine daemons sought out the most power hungry acolytes to be their vessels for revenge upon their captor. Whispering dark promises of mastery over the elemental magics, the nine offered forbidden knowledge on the ultimate conduit of arcane energies, the power harvested from souls.
Each daemon possessed the means to summon realmgates to traverse the prime inner lands of Shyish, even able to enter the Nadir itself. Through hidden passageways, the Daemons could guide their acolytes to the well of souls & siphon the energies of the dead from beneath Nagash’s gaze, gaining powers of such irresistible force no rival could hope to defeat them. However, not all could be lured by the promise of such immense power. Kings & warlords craved the knowledge of strategy, thus they would be granted the power to bind their fallen generals & heroes into immortal servitude to gain their tactical acumen. Orruk shamen & Ogor butchers sought to commune with ancestral spirits, demanding knowledge of long forgotten rituals & incantations first taught by their gods. For those touched by chaos, any weapon casting ruin on the world & bringing them closer to their infernal gods was reason enough to take on such a quest. They believed that all Daemons possessed
the wisdom bestowed from gods & needed little coercion.
Some simply wished to save their slain from an eternity trapped as sustenance for the great Necromancer. Whatever the cause, the soul harvest was a mighty prize indeed.
However, none are granted favour from Daemons without sacrifice, & the nine were no different. Each coveted mighty artefacts that powerful sorceries lay bound within, & would not reveal their arcane mysterious without sufficient
tribute.
So began the reaping....
Interesting reead