#darklore

Welcome to CodexMaledictus, the dark archive curated by Apollo Gavinci. This space is dedicated to weaving stories from the grimdark universe of Warhammer 40k, beginning with my favored faction, the Death Guard. Here, you will uncover tales rich in lore, battles echoing through the Warp, and the twisted fates of warriors and warlords alike.

Theme

Ooze (Darklore)

Prompt list

Creature Codex art Challenge

Commentary

Keeping it simple, I wanted to practice with drawing hands and when it comes to oozes there's not a lot you need to convey just what it is and the light hitting off of it so more 1bit practice fun. Good piece.

Palette picked

Bone Faeries

In the nicer myths, or bedtime stories told to children when they lose their small teeth – the tooth faerie is coming for abandoned and unwanted teeth. There have even been sightings of tooth faeries coming for the old and the dentured.

This is a cute picture if you believe that faeries are small and nice. Most of the time, faeries are not nice, and sometimes they are not small. Bone faeries stand just under six feet tall, with dragonfly-like wings spreading up to twenty feet wide.

Tooth faeries collect discarded teeth to grind for building, medicine, or high fashion. Bone faeries bones, discarded or not, out of an obsessive need to hoard them comparable a dragon. Most bone faeries have favourite creatures they like to take from, but they usually prefer to take from humanoid races over beasts or monstrosities. Sometimes they wait for a creature to die, and plunder the corpses like carrion. More often, their violent nature compels them to remove the bones aggressively from still living creatures.

“Corrupted Zendikon” by John Avon, © Wizards of the Coast. Accessed at Scryfall here

[Commissioned by @coldbloodassassin, from the 2e module Hellbound: the Blood War and reprinted in Monstrous Compendium Annual 4. Does anyone know a good source of art for ooze and slime monsters? I’m mostly turning up fetish art of one kind or another through gallery sites like deviantArt, and I’m starting to run out of Magic cards.]

Darklore CR 9 NE Ooze This creature looks like a mass of mud congealed into a living form. Green-black veins run through its body, and it extrudes shapes disturbingly reminiscent of arms and faces as it moves.

A darklore is an extraplanar ooze, formed from the lost memories of the River Styx. As the Styx collects memories, some of those from the strongest willed people settle out and fall into the mud, collecting like flecks of gold in a river stream. After enough memories collect in a single place, they coalesce and form their own body, which lurches forth in search of more sinister knowledge to collect. Darklores are attracted to evil thoughts, feelings and secrets, but they will not hesitate to sup from the memories of even the holiest of creatures.

Darklores go where their prey is, so many of them lurk in marshy corners or waterways of Hell, Abaddon or the Abyss. Fiends are their favorite prey, as even the weakest of them contains enough knowledge of evil to make a satisfying meal. They cannot access the memories they consume, except as strange flashes of insight. Enough random awareness of the scope of reality’s evil infuses their very beings, however, to stun non-evil creatures they strike through pure revulsion. A creature knocked out by a darklore will not be slain, but their minds may be forever diminished by the experience. Seemingly for sport, a darklore may alter the memories of its unconscious victims, erasing its own presence or implanting a single bit of terrible information to haunt its prey.

Although they are dangerous, some creatures go out of their way to ally with darklores. A darklore can teleport not only itself, but other creatures or cargo, making them useful for those fiends without innate teleportation abilities or large loads to carry. In addition, random flashes of sinister lore occasionally surface from their morass of thoughts. A darklore working for or with another creature will demand regular feedings of evil knowledge, and will escape if its demands are not met.

Meet Darklore aka Son of Unicron.

At birth Primus took him from Unicron since he thought “Hey you’d be a horrible father” while Unicron objects but in the end Primus won and raised Darklore as a knight (I have this headcanon that knights were forged to train/protect their selected prime’s) and since we don’t know everything about way back then I just thought I’d put my own lil twist on it. But if you don’t like that then you can think of him as a Prime really because either way everyone hated this poor mech except Megatronus Prime and my oc Zephyr (me realizing that almost everyone has an oc names Zephyr but oh well). Reasons why Darklore isn’t in the Iacon Database is because he’s the spawn of chaos itself and that doesn’t shine a good light on Primes so they yeeted his aft from history as a whole. Megatronus was bad enough for them but Unicron is just pure evil. Well anyways Darklore and Megatronus were basically friends and what not but after the fall Darklore went Boop and got stuck in a capsule. Due to the dark energon that fuels him he never died, he just stayed in a limbo stayed and vibes for eternity until my other oc Chippek discovers his frame on Cybertron (before the war). Owning her own ship has its perks until Lord Megatron says “Hippity Hoppity you’re now my property”. So now we’re going into my version where Megatron captures Chippek (whos a scienctist/historian) and Darklore. He needed Chippek to revive him because Shockwave wasn’t there to wake this ho and wanted Darklore because this ho is strong asf. But what they didn’t know is that they needed dark energon to fuel him but hey that gets figured out later— anywho thanks for reading my ted talk, very much appreciated. After this boi gets woke, Megatron and Chippek taught him and when they tried to brand him the heat of their lasers could barely Mark him. One thing led to another Chippek said “F CONS” and escaped with Darklore (they became close friends overtime). They escaped with the power of friendship and took their ship back then became rogues. Chippek found it difficult to hide the behemoth but hey, it works.

Also they DO NOT have a romantic relationship. Chippek and Darklore are just friends.

Also fun fact: Darklore wields a double bladed sword that merged into one! I’ll be sure to add it when I finish!!