#immaterium

Imperial Spaceship in the Warp (Warhammer 40k)

The Warp (Immaterium) is parallel dimension to real space (Materium). It's completely chaotic because it's made of pure psychic evergy (emotions and thoughts of all sorts). While for many creatures from real space that's an awfully dangerous "place", for Chaos Gods the Warp is a sweet lovely home... where they hunt for pray.

OPENS 21 JULY

ASSIGNMENTS SENT 11 AUGUST

GIFTS DUE 17 NOVEMBER

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I am the guide.

I kneel before the altar, I clasp a rosary in one hand and a censer in the other. Sweat greases my palms as tendons flex and lock, I concentrate, surrounded by a half a dozen others. We mutter litanies and prayers of safe voyage, though I lead the flock in our fervent whispers, for I am the shepherd to this herd.

A woman beside me keens as she bears the brunt of a psychic onslaught. Our task commences. Before me, visions of colours that should not be and creatures that never were whip and tumble. I am assaulted in every sense of the word. I feel my bones crack, my organs rupture, my soul wail in agony. I know this to be a falsehood.

I cannot discern the mundane from the abstract any longer, the keening woman has transmogrified in ways I cannot describe, her being bulging and morphing into shapes unrealised by the human mind and sounds echoed by the Urr-song of the Dark Gods.

I am the beacon.

My soul flares bright. My flock sees me, they swarm my soul, a warm, bright shroud against the lapping darkness of the unmaking waves. My soul burns with the heat of ten thousand suns, the pain of the unreal caught ablaze in the rapturous sense of communion I have with my fellow clandestine guides.

And then darkness devours us whole. I can see but two lights in this shroud of confusion, dampened like cascades of incandescence strangled by a thick-woven bag of burlap. Where am I? Where are the flock? Their radiance had blinded and captivated me so that I have been disoriented. Where is the Astronomicon? Where is my beacon? I call for my congregation to converge, but my throat is caught and sealed with cloying tar, burning it shut as I am forced to make a judgement.

I scream in frustration and fear. The tar sloughs down my throat like a slug and the sack tightens around my throat. I must decide. And so I do.

I am the font.

Energy surges through my body, it is as if my spirit is swollen and bloated. I feel my veins and innards bellowing and ballooning in my physical self. I cry out, the burlap is removed from my skull and I am face to face with a horror I can hardly describe. The tar melts away, yet my throat is still raw from screaming, bloating to impossibly broad proportions as the being grins at me sadistically.

I understand now. I am the font. This thing, it molests my very essence, it defiles my soul and uses me as nothing more than a portal. I am bursting apart as it uses me to infiltrate my flock, my ship, my charges. 

I am the end.

I do not want to die like this. For this anathema of a creature to use me in such a heinous way. I lash out, I beg for death, for release, to be stopped. I am plagued with visions of the beginning and the end, I become a mouth-piece for this being to espouse scornful truths of what is to come.

It warps my voice, I warble and gurgle each word simultaneously; several voices erupt from my throat at once as other cretins see to use my flesh as a means of breaching the realm of the real.

Please, I beg, end it.

But no righteous fate shall befall me, none of honour, none of peace. I bloat, I choke, I distend, I burst. 

I am not dead.

Luminescent rays explode from my body as I finally rupture, and from them cascades the remnants of my very being. I shatter marble and crack armaglass, bisecting one of the flock who was knelt beside me. I have failed them. My consciousness fades as the soul dissipates, all I can do is watch in silent disgrace as the daemons tear through the room, razing all in their wake.

Khorne- Barb Wire or CHERUB: Revenge and desire to kill fuel them, after a kill, more will follow to fill the skull throne.

Nurgle- Beelzebub: Originally Beelzebub is related to flies. Gluttony causes health decay and Nurgle is the most chilled among the big 4.

Tzeentch- Sera: With her twisted tongues and possibly manipulation from an unexpected place, Lord of Change can see uses in her.

Slaanesh- Mammon: Greed, Possessive, Ego, and a long list. If Slaanesh will pick someone from Vivzieverse Mammon would be on the top list.

Dark Mechanicum/Vashtorr- The Vees: Social Media, Porn, and TV? Maybe Angelic Steel would be nice for a daemonic weapons upgrade too.

Word Bearers- Adam/Lute: Zealous exterminators and if about Sir Pentious got to heaven? Lute may abandon her former loyalty for someone else mightier, like what Lorgar did.

A/N: Slight domestic abuse TW here, should be the only chapter for that.  

  The day I was born, an entire battalion of Guardsmen went missing. Eaten by the local wildlife, they said. My family thought different, and made sure I knew it. "Touched by Chaos", they called me, among other things. As my childhood went by, it only got worse. I didn't see the outside of my own home until I was nearly 15 years old.

  A few months after I turned 10, celebrated by slightly more scraps from dinner than usual, the first signs of my "gifts" appeared. When my father kicked me back to my little cave under the main house, I glimpsed into his mind. There was so much, I couldn't make out most of what I saw. All I felt was the pain of memory and hate... for me. I pondered the implications of this for weeks, but it would not happen again until my brother decided I hadn't cleaned his room well enough. He beat me, as he often did, with whatever was nearest to hand. With every blow, a flash of his mind was given to me. Hate, like my father, but also disgust. It felt like acid, this disgust, burning my mind, my very soul. Once he was satisfied, my brother sent me back to my "room" and I was left alone again, this time with my thoughts.

  The flashes continued for three more years, only appearing during moments of physical contact or emotional stress, which were all too frequent. I never mentioned them, mostly due to not being allowed to even speak. One day, however, my gifts went too far. My father, drunk and angry, hit me one too many times. The next thing I remember was a flash of light and my father was laying at the foot of the dining table, bleeding from his head. He lived, of course. I could never be so lucky. After that, he - along with the rest of my family - became ever so slightly more respectful. If anything, they were only that way out of fear.

  For weeks afterwards, I was kept increasingly isolated. For weeks, I slept alone with dreams of an eye. It almost seemed to look at me, but something else had its full attention. A beacon, shining out amongst the stars. And from that beacon came many smaller lights, all of them burning just as fiercely. One of those lights broke from the rest and rocketed towards me like a meteor, brighter and closer with every passing second. Just before it hit, I caught a glimpse of what looked like a man's face. Then I awoke, my rag of a shirt drenched in sweat. The feeling of being watched, of not being alone, remained.