#gorrorron

                                                   The Parent Arc

Ismuth left Jurai shortly after recovering Ardias, as Gorrorron too took leave of the planet to continue his scheme. Ardias’s limbs and most of his body were replaced by cybernetic implants so that he could once again walk amongst the living. For many long years, he trained Ardias and instructed him as to best harness his meagre psychic power. During this time, Ardias helped Ismuth in banishing countless daemons back to the warp, and protecting the sanctity of the Imperium against the threat of the heretic and the xeno.

Until it was finally time. Ardias had harnessed near the full extent of his power and Ismuth ripped him free of his surrogate body parts. Then, through the power of will and in the teachings of his master, Ardias repaired his body with warp made flesh. The process was agonizing and horrific in ways that the mortal mind was never meant to experience. Ardias survived however, with the burning light of vengeance as his torch. He would confront Gorrorron and kill him. In so doing, he would avenge the death of his old life and love, Aiaa. Little did he know, she still lived…

Aiaa’s very existence was a purgatory that no mind or body was ever meant to endure. For years, she was Gorrorron’s plaything. Subject to horrific experimentation and modification, she crafted into a potent locus for a potent dark ritual. As the years pass, more and more of her humanity crumbles away leaving a terrible dynamo of psychic power in its wake. A questionable salvation came to here one day, and she was sent on a path to freedom.

Amongst the forces of chaos, Gorrorron the Wretched is a name to be feared and respected, but he is not without his own enemies. Another warmaster of the dark gods, a cruel mistress by the name of Voleum the Cruel, betrayed an agreement that had been reached between her and Gorrorron. With her most loyal servants, Voleum boarded Gorroron’s vessel and engaged in a vicious battle against his troops. Voleum had been made aware of Aiaa’s situation and sought to claim her for her own dark purposes. Gorrorron was quick to respond however, and the two dueled on his bridge for control of Aiaa.

               Voleum was a superior fighter to Gorrorron, but he wielded a deep well of psychic power and only just barely held the advantage against her. Seeing her defeat loom, Voleum seized Aiaa, and in spite lopped her into the warp so that neither she nor Gorrorron could possess her. Falling through the howling ether that was the warp, Aiaa feared that her body and soul was to be torn apart by its daemonic denizens. Fate smiled upon her in a way, and a roving space hulk dubbed the Courier of Erebus intercepted her flight. Much to her chagrin however, the mad cultists that lived aboard it saw her as the reincarnation of a goddess.  They quickly overtook her in her weakened state and sealed her away in a cryogenic tube, so that they could forever bask in her eternal slumber.

Ardias was soon promoted to become Ismuth’s interrogator and served with honor and efficiency. Through his exploits, he garnered many friendships with varied individuals across the sector. All things were not well however. Ardias soon discovered the myriad of heretical secrets that Ismuth had hidden away. A handful of which contributed to his survival and if discovered by other elements of the Inquisition, would brand him a heretic and mark him for death. Fighting against his former master, Ardias and Ismuth fought a hidden war against each other. Several close comrades to Ardias where slain, tormenting him a great deal, but Ardias was ultimately victorious. The high cost in lives did weigh heavily on Ardias and left him an emotionally distant and unfeeling man.

Many times did Ardias cross paths with Gorrorron but the diabolical sorcerer always managed to slip through his hands. One chance encounter did prove fruitful as Gorrorron taunted Ardias with the revelation that Aiaa still lived. This was immediately followed by her situation of being pitched into the warp however, fuelling Gorrorron’s sadism and Ardias’s embitterment. With this new knowledge however, Ardias pursued countless leads and eventual dead ends in search of his love.

Once more did fate smile, and Ardias encountered the Courier of Erebus in the cold depths of space. Boarding it in a flagrant disregard for anything else, he sought to find Aiaa. Near the heart of that desolate hulk, Ardias found the glass cylinder that contained her. Without stopping to consider what may have happened in their time apart, Ardias freed Aiaa. Bordering complete madness from her suffering and torture, Aiaa awoke to the place of her newest prison surrounded by strange people she did not know nor recognize. She was not going to be imprisoned again. Fueled by rage and bordering the descent into madness, Aiaa obliterated much of the room in an instant and launched a devastating psychic assault against Ardias and his cohorts.

Ardias could not stand against Aiaa’s fierce some power and it took all that he could muster to stay alive. He could not last forever, and Aiaa beat him within an inch of his life. As she closed for the final blow, Ardias began to whisper the words of Aiaa’s house hoping to shake her free of the rage that gripped her. She moved to finish him and Ardias lept forth and held her with all his might, reciting the family mantra with increasing fervor. Unperturbed, Aiaa ripped a hole in Ardias’s chest and held him aloft. Only then, did his actually pierce the veil of suffering that enshrouded her mind when he spoke her name. Realizing in horror what she had done to the man she had once loved, she collapsed. Holding Ardias close in his final moments, Aiaa wept for him.

No, Aiaa would not allow this to happen. In a burst of pragmatism, Aiaa reached into Ardias’s mind and rampaged through his knowledge and thoughts for a way to save him. Becoming aware of the Imperium at large and Ardias’s own vessel sitting next to the Courier of Erebus, Aiaa seized Ardias and launched towards the ship in a race to save Ardias from death. Tense minutes pass as death and life become equally assured. In the end, Ardias lives and Aiaa is made free of her prison.

Finally reunited after years of separation, the two lovers spend a great deal of time recounting their lives apart and reacquainting with each other. For near a week, the crew aboard the vessel sees neither word nor sound from the two except for calls for food.

Following their collective hiatus, the two carry on in the new lives that are set out before them. United again and with their gathered talents and skills few are able to stand against them. Many worlds are brought justice and freedom by their actions and the future seems quite bright.

Fate has multiple expressions however, not only can it smile but it can frown as well…

Several months following their reunion, a grave error befalls Ardias. While pursuing a string of unrelated crimes, Ardias is baited into a heinous series of events by the manipulative Daemonhost Karneus, the once bound. In so doing, Ardias is fooled into killing another Inquisitor from a different branch of the Inquisition. With no evidence to defend himself, Ardias is brought to a jury of fellow Inquisitors to be charged for his crime.

During the long trial, a Chaos Warband assaults the world and puts the judgement on hold. While attempting to get to the root of the invasion, Ardias and Aiaa encounter Gorrorron amongst the sieging force. Believing that they Gorrorron’s defeat is at hand, the duo charges the sorcerer with all their fury and vengeance burning in their hearts. Alas, Gorrorron was and is the master of the long con. With but a word he commands the psycho-indoctrination contained within the deepest recesses of Aiaa’s conscious mind.

Ambushed from behind by his love and beaten in front by his mortal enemy, Ardias quickly falls. Gorrorron pins Aiaa in place as his absolute dominion over her wavers. Forcing her to watch, Gorrorron tortures Ardias and impales him with a daemonic blade. All the while, Gorrorron harvests Aiaa’s torment within a crystalline artifact gifted to him by the Prince of Excess, Slaanesh.

From about two miles away, a Vindicare Assassin that had been stalking Gorrorron for a great length of time, placed his shots and succeeded in mortally Gorrorron, but failed to kill him. Cursing his failure of foresight, Gorrorron flees. Freed from her bindings, Aiaa pursues the chaos lord but his walls of servants delay her long enough for him to make his escape.

Lying dying on the ground, Ardias fears that death is inevitable. Aiaa carries his bloodied body back to the best minds in the fields of medicine and the occult to save him. Alas, the daemon blade in his chest has already eaten away at his soul for too long; he is not going to survive.

In his last hours of life, Ardias ponders what must be done before he departs the physical world. In his cold logic he realizes that Aiaa will need all that he has accumulated in his; resources, allies, holdings, all of it. The solution ties back to what he and Aiaa were unable to finish so many years ago.

With a foot in the grave and tears on his face, he asks Aiaa to marry him. Sweeping away her own sorrow, Aiaa accepts. The ceremony is quickly arranged with little time to spare. With the Emperor as their witness, the two are consecrated and none can dispute their holdings. As best as they can, the two carry on with the merry festivities, Ardias having to stop to rest or vomit blood every now and again. Finally it is time. Speaking the last words that he has to Aiaa and all of his acolytes, Ardias rips what is left of the daemonic blade from his chest. For a few moments, he knows peace and darkness envelops him.