10,000 years before the Emperor revealed himself to mankind, a humanoid Xenos species dominated an expanse of worlds just beyond the periphery of the Ghoul Stars.
Their names are unimportant. Forgotten by history, wiped clean by the hand of a an angry god.
They made great strives in the arts, technology, social reform. Their towers, made of scintillating glass, stretched heavenward. Their great bronze cities covered whole continents, surrounded by the vast expanses of green arcologies.
Their technologies are forgotten. Their arts have been destroyed. Their towers have been thrown down, never to touch the heavens again. Their great bronze cities atomized, their arcologies burned, by their own hands.
Then came a time of great conflict. When the last cornerstone had been laid, when the last hold out had been conquered. When the greatest revelations in technology seemed but a generation away, they fell to fighting.
There were those who believed that “faith” was a weakness. That belief in anything that could not be proven with empirical evidence or seen with the naked eye was inherently false. Science was their deity, the laboratory their altar. Morals were merely convenient evolutionary tools, they said.
And then there were others. They came to reject all learning as inherently flawed, for it came from mortal minds. They rejected science, for it seemed to them a blasphemy. When the great thinkers proved one theory or published another, they turned their backs. Such was falsehood, they claimed, planted by those who wished to steal away their faith. At best, such discoveries were red herrings, false relics and data left behind by the gods as a means of testing their faith.
And the great civilization that dwelt there, amongst the ghoul stars, began to tear itself apart.
Then came a prophet. Her deeds are legendary, though her name is forgotten. She brought them the Truth. She brought them Malal. The “great thinkers” were chastened for their intolerance. The “fanatic believers” were chastened for their ignorance. And for a time, harmony was achieved.
When the prophet passed into the world beyond life, the society she had worked so hard to reform began to crumble. False prophets led them astray. Well meaning zealots tried to educate the masses, but their words were misinterpreted. Those who remained among His most faithful said to themselves, “The time is coming for the Great Rebirth. His Will must be done. These are the signs. This is the place. The end time is nigh.”
And others among the faithful said, “No, no! It is not within our ken to know the time or the hour! The time will come when it comes! You cannot manipulate the gods!”
But those who believed most fiercely in their broken ideas, led by the self-aggrandizing prophets, saw to it that the end times came. One by one the cities blinked out. The cities burned. The wine dark seas boiled away. And silence crept over the words of these once noble people.
And those who remained said to themselves, “See His Theophany, burning brightly in the heavens! We will be rewarded. He will be pleased!”
But Malal was not.
It is not given unto mortal men and women to decide when the time comes.
But Malal was not.
The needless sacrifice of His children is anathaema.
But Malal was not.
For many innocents, those who opposed this course of action, died alongside the faithful in those flames of arrogance.
And Wolf-Headed God, the Faceless Sphinx, the Dragon in Ebony, roared his anger so loudly that they say his thunders still skirt the Ghoul Stars, things of absolute hate that spread like tendrils of entropy across those much blighted worlds.
Now, the souls of those nameless people, He divided in twain. Those who had been innocent, those who had no hand in what came to pass, were given their reward.
But for those who had taken part, those who had thought to enact His will without His writ, he cursed. “I have cast you into the heavens, upon the tides of the warp. And there you will serve me, in the great bronze catacomb ships of your own making. Until each has paid her debt.”
And they still travel those tides today. Every so often, one of their number is slain and does not return: his cosmic debt repaid, His forgiveness earned. But they are billions, and His wrath is not easily lessened. Many will dwell there, upon ceaseless tides, until the end times have come. And when they have come to pass, and the Rebirth is brought about, there too they will continue to dwell. Until all debts are paid. Until all sins are forgiven.
Until that time, they are His. They are His alone. The eldritch things that once were men and women inhabiting the very artifice that once made them mighty. In ships of patinaed bronze. In suits of patinaed bronze. In silent service. In constant terror. In a state of perpetual living death.
His Will Be Done.
Should His Void Mariners come to collect you, pray to your gods. For you shall receive no respite from mine.
- Words of the “Mad” Magos of Gehenna, M32
