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+++ Dawn Cometh - A Word Bearers Log +++


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Aethyr

In the beginning, there was only the Aethyr,

The creation and origin of all things,

Black as the abyss and bright as the eternal dawn.

 

From this unformed and void water, this eternal substance that all things do originate,

the first sentience was formed,

The Miraculous Design, the Divine Plan,

The Will.

Phaos


Through Phaos did the Aethyr create the Black Sea,

A vast emptiness of nothing that stretch for ten-thousand horizons.

In that blanket of darkness were the first stars forms,

Flickering pinpricks that illuminated the limitless void.

 

And it was Good.

 

Through Phaos did the Aethyr create the first candles of life.

All life was born of the Aethyr, their very essence woven from the fabric of that endless river.

All life was given shape by Phaos, a Miraculous design that filled the emptiness of the limitless void.

 

And it was Good.

For a time...

 

All life was born from the Aethyr, and so to would return to it.

Life was tied to the Aethyr beyond the veil of the reality,

For all life was born of it and given shape.

However, the Aethyr was formless, 

And all life echoed in the malleable substance that had created it.

To be born is to know death,

For life was not eternal as the Aethyr that made it.

And though the Aethyr was everlasting,

the echo of death imprinted itself into the formless water.

 

Eternity knew mortality.

 

To be sentient was to know Want,

For all sentience was but an imperfect reflection of a divine infinity.

And though the Aethyr was without conscious,

The echo of Want imprinted itself into the formless water.

 

Eternity knew desire.

 

As life prospers, death so too pursues.

As sentience wizens, despair follows after.

To exist is to know suffering,

The imperfect, fleeting creations of an everlasting and perfect divinity.

 

Wrath, Despair, Deceit, Desire.

All conscious thought echoed into the Aethyr,

imprinting upon the very lifeblood of creation.

 

These echoes were a poison,

A gift of forbidden knowledge never meant to be understood by eternity.

A gift of death to the everlasting that will not end.

A gift of suffering to the divine never meant to feel.

 

With this poison imprinted into eternity,

The Aethyr was irrevocably corrupted and changed,

Driven by the unifying desire of all suffering sentience;

 

To End.

 

Thus did the Aethyr, the origin of all life,

Become the Primordial Annihilator.

 

Kos

Chaos

 

- Excerpt from the 'Psalm of Ethernal Grief ' 

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Edited by Noctus Cornix
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Excellent and atmospheric intro ; makes conceptual sense, and does a great job of presenting a 'sympathetic' perspective upon .. well .. chaos - whilst also keeping both the power and the menace and the yawning-dawning malevolency to it as well. Has exactly the right tone of biased narrator and semi-self-delusion concealing veins of truth-from-a-certain-point-of-view . Looking forward to seeing where the rest of it goes. 

[also, because of the way my mind works and my professional field, I kept side-spooling various real-world cosmological accounts that resonated with pieces of it as I read through, so additional points for that] 

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I
t is easy to consider ourselves as vindicated in the now, for have we not brought the galaxy to look skyward and see the eyes in the storm that stare back at it? Have we not brought the holy tongue of the Urizen to the ears of an ungrateful species that would see the primordial truth snuffed away? We, like our beneficent master, bear His word by writ or flame to those not deafened to the truth...

 

And yet.. 

 

We as a species are beholden to the most grievous of sins, for we have left ourselves blinded to the ineffable mysteries of the Aethyr. We have subjugated ourselves to the conveniences of the present, the here and now as though there is nothing else beyond this unending twilight. To our misguided brothers and sisters, there is only the Carrion God enthroned in golden light. Nothing came before and all else is a boundless sea of madness better left forgotten. We are no less guilty of this most grievous sin, for have we not spoken our oaths to the Four and sung our hymnal dirge to the Sibling Monarchs, terrible and truth in their limitless grandeur? We speak of them reverence and awe in the Now, always in the now.

 

And yet, they were not always the distinct divinity as we know...

 

I tell you this..

 

In the transcribed scripture of the Aeldari text, 'The Broken Spears', we are witness to the truth of divine conception.. the rapturous awakening of Slaaneth. Yet, even the Urizen himself looked upon this miracle firsthand and asked not the question I ask you now. What conceived the embryotic princeling?

 

Some scholars would claim that divine has simply always existed, and there is some truth to this... For it is known that the divine beyond the veil are not beholden to our reality. Historical records would suggest that our divine Princeling has always been with us, the Hunger that manifests itself. However, to exist and to be born are not one in the same for the divine. Is it not the nature of the omnipresent to manifest at all times, even before one's own conception?

 

The Aeldari, then? Can an entire species be collectively pronounced as Mother and Father to a god? Perhaps one but not both, I should think. In their hubris, they manifested the stillborn princeling, but only by devouring the very souls of a species did his first cry become one of birth. The only logical conclusion, then, is that the first spark of being in that divine conception must have come from the divine itself. 

 

And what of the other Sibling Monarchs? We have evidence and records abound of Slaaneth's birth in conjunction with the fall of the Aeldari, but this is merely the youngest of four divine princelings. Few scholars have delved to research this truth and unearth their origins. Did each of the Four Monarchs come then with the death of a civilization and a species? Did each embryotic birth of divine conception come with the manifestation of a tear in reality itself as it had with the youngest? If this is so, then why are there far more than four of this writing umbilical storms that still gnaw at reality? 

 

At the core of our faith, we accept our place within the eightfold path of the pantheon, the irrefutable fact that our souls are intertwined with the Aethyr and it with us. If our souls are one with the divine of the warp, then it must irrefutably true that within us is a reflection of that divinity. Ask yourselves then, where did you come from? In the millions of years that has spanned across the history of our species and that of the uncountable sentient being across this galaxy, we ask ourselves of our true origin...

 

It is there...

 

There in that void of luminous darkness beyond all conception can it be found..

 

The Primordial reality underlying all phenomena..

 

- From the Lectures of Scolar-Apostate Clovis Valtes on 'The Existence of Phaos and the Idea of God'

 

 

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Edited by Noctus Cornix
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Thank you all so much for the kind words, brothers! :happy.:

 

I'll have the full reveal of this fine fellow tomorrow, so keep your eyes peeled!

 

 

Excellent, excellent work brother! Your metaphysical writing has always been stellar and this is no exception. Looking forward to what you have planned

You know your support always means the world to me, brother. Thank you.

Excellent and atmospheric intro ; makes conceptual sense, and does a great job of presenting a 'sympathetic' perspective upon .. well .. chaos - whilst also keeping both the power and the menace and the yawning-dawning malevolency to it as well. Has exactly the right tone of biased narrator and semi-self-delusion concealing veins of truth-from-a-certain-point-of-view . Looking forward to seeing where the rest of it goes. 

[also, because of the way my mind works and my professional field, I kept side-spooling various real-world cosmological accounts that resonated with pieces of it as I read through, so additional points for that] 

Really glad you like it, Ryltar! This has been something of a labor of love for me for the past.... What, 5 or 6 years? One thing that's always bugged me about Chaos in Warhammer 40k is how little substance there is to it, particularly the Word Bearers. For an entire legion of fanatical devotees, there was a distinct lack of context to their beliefs or why they did much of anything. Just saying 'because the Gods want it' wasn't enough for me. So, in conjunction with being a new log for all my Word Bearer content, I want to explore little bits, here and there about how I like to imagine the Word Bearers truly view the galaxy and their faith... or, at least my particular Warband of Word Bearers that could easily be seen as something of a 'Doomsday Cult' among their brethren, for reason that will become clear in time.

Creepy...

And that is precisely what I was aiming for. ^_^

I would like to subscribe to this newsletter.

A small donation of skin is all you need to maintain a monthly subscription. ;)

Good to see you returning to the Word Bearers, Noctus! In the end, everything shall return to the Primordial Truth.
Looking forward to see more!

All things begin in darkness and so too shall end in that depthless abyss.  

 

Looking forward to showing you all more!

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A small donation of skin is all you need to maintain a monthly subscription. :wink:

Here you go, genuine skin! Mine, even! Well, in a "possession is 9/10ths of the law' sense, anyway...

 

Seriously looking forward to what you end up doing in this thread. The text here is great, obviously, but preview image is incredibly creepy, and I need more.

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Through the the miraculous gift of agony, we are born into this waking, breathing world.
Through the beneficent gift of suffering, our purpose is made manifest by eyes in the sky.

Through the virtuous gift of hatred, we are unborn and reborn as one of the chorus.

 

Through His Gilded Visage, the Will is made real.

Through His presence, the unborn blossoms free.

Through His touch, the miracle is made manifest.

 

Through the gates of charred stone, He strides in tides of fire and seas of  blackened blood.

Bearing the golden face of the forgotten martyr, he has been chosen as heir and lord.

 

Anointed in the tears of the Father, Birthed in the Ashes of the Mother.

He strides out to complete his sacred charge

 

By His Will

We gave Him Dominion. He gave us his Hell.

 

--------------------------------------

 

Witch-Deacon Kor Va'Shoth of the Word Bearers Legion

Sorcerer of the Grievous Will's Host

'He Who Guides The Pilgrimage'

 

He sacrificed his sight and speech so he might speak in the black tongue of the divine and stare into the Aethyr itself with his awakened eye.

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Edited by Noctus Cornix
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„Witch-Deacon“ is a really nice and evocative title!

Very impressive mini to accompany your likewise very poetic fluff. Looking forward to follow you further on the eight fold path!

Thanks! I was actually really happy with the title when it came to me. Quite glad I stuck with it. 

 

Um.

Okay.

I should probably stop cluttering your thread up with replies, but I just had to say extremely yes to this.

Honestly, please don't stop. Feedback from you guys is exactly why I love posting here on the B&C and messages like yours mean a thousand-times more to me than some superficial 'likes' number.  ^_^

 

That being said...

 

Would it surprise you to know that Kor Va'Shoth is not the 'He' that line is referring to?.... ;)

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it would appear that where he's going, he won't need eyes to see 

 

Absolutely true. :biggrin.:

 

I must admit, I was especially excited to know your thoughts on the excerpt from Clovis Valtes' lecture. :smile.:

Edited by Noctus Cornix
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it would appear that where he's going, he won't need eyes to see 

 

Absolutely true. :biggrin.:

 

I must admit, I was especially excited to know your thoughts on the excerpt from Clovis Valtes' lecture. :smile.:

 

it is, again, one of those situations wherein i read it (just now - hadn't had quite the energy beforehand ... what this says about me that it's now just before five in the morning, i'm not entirely sure) - and I hear echoes, resonancies, with things we've run across in my professional sphere. 

 

Now, that's actually rather fitting in a way, because the main thing it reminded me of initially was the usual sort of argument deployed by Hare Krishnas when they run into more orthodox Hindu theology. That is to say , in effect , "you're all worshipping *demigods* rather than the one true monadistic over-divine .. take our approach and go for the direct route!" 

 

Which, as applies what you're going for - well, yes, it's a directly monadistic setup , and one wherein Chaos Undivided (I presume) is actually presented as not only the most viable, but indeed the most 'true' / 'truly meaningful' understanding of Chaos. 

 

Not "Chaos Undecided", at all. 

 

And that's a valid thing to be bringing to the table - as even though I have an innate and instinctive opposition to Chaos , I've been rather disappointed by the way that GW's official line through various more recent Chaos codexes has, in effect, been to steadily de-emphasize further and further the notion of Chaos Undivided actually being 'a' thing , let alone 'the' thing. Partially, I presume, because it's a conceptual 'blank space' in some regards whereas the 'big four' are a lot more easily defined. 

 

But it's lead to a situation wherein the only way you actually seem to get 'Chaos Undivided' anymore, is either because it's .. again, "Chaos Undecided" as somebody in the background hasn't actually gone down a mono-god path (yet), or it's because it's not really 'Chaos' at all, so much as 'Chaos Adjacent' (see also: Night Lords a lot of the time) and may over time 'fall' into more active Chaos allegiance ... or because it's something like what Abaddon does, wherein it's *still* in effect, all four chaos gods *together* effectively representing 'Chaos' 

 

Rather than, as you've done here, presenting a 'skip the middleman' approach which presents chaos, I suppose you might say ... as it is. [oh dear, that was another real-world theological snark point] 

 

---

 

Now, it's additionally interesting some of the logic and rhetoric made use of by Clovis [and I see what you did with the name there] - insofar as while I would probably disagree with some of the arguments (e.g. the notion that there must be a large warp-storm accompanying every major chaos god's birth ... and there are a lot of *really large warpstorms in the modern galaxy, therefore there must be more than four chaos gods) ... well, it's in-universe and it makes sense for a chap who's probably running on sketchy information and not above glib sleights-of-hand rhetorically if it serves his purpose. You know, like many cult leaders are :P 

 

Good point, well spotted, as applies Lorgar's own bits and pieces apparently not noticing or caring to notice that 'new chaos god has rather recently been actively generated'. 

 

I'm unaware of the canonicity status of the really old Realm of Chaos era fluff around two other chaos deities being 'born' due to Earth events like Genghis Khan and the Black Death - although it may be interesting to integrate a humano-supremacy element into the direction you're going for. 

 

As if these are true ... or, perhaps we should say, if your characters *want to believe they're true* - that would mean that a comparatively paltry number of humans were capable through sheer force of belief and lived experience to do more to the Warp more quickly, than billions of Eldar were over a much lengthier period of time. 

 

Which would speak, of course, to humanity being the superior psychic conduit - and more closely attuned, more organically so, to the warp .. and for all the Eldar disparagement about "Hey Hey You're The Mon-Keigh" - the Warp, for better or for ill, responds to Mankind much more naturally and overtly. "The Stars Themselves Once Lived And Died At Our Command" ... versus "look what the warp did for our ancestors - and they weren't even *trying* " 

 

Further proof of that could be found on a much more minor scale with the daemon that iirc is Drach'nyen - which, per Master of Mankind , effectively comes into being and is rather powerful at that ... due to the actions of one human upon Terra in the era several thousand years before the present. 

 

The human brain is, I have often said, a 'relevance-making machine' ; and thus, the notion of belief fuelling exterior-to-brain changes in reality makes for an interesting explication of that well-known alchemical principle around occurrences both above and below. 

 

In your chosen context, it may therefore be interesting to have as a bit of a narrative sub-plot ... the notion of attempting to, not "calm" the warp [which is, sort-of, what the Cabal et al were vaguely attempting to do - via the extermination of our species ] , but to effectively empower the rising of the 'oceanic level' so that it re-subsumes to some extent the massive monstrous continent-sized consciousnesses (or not-really-conscious-at-all - it's a matter of perspective and interpretation) that have emerged from it as a result of the water-levels going down to be turned into more god-stuff for the 'big four'. if that makes ... some semblance of sense. 

 

Indeed, the way you could run it - is actually by, once again, drawing from some of our real-world theology. We have a concept, 'Druh', also turns up in Avestan iirc as 'Druj' - which translates, variously, as 'Falsehood', 'Injury', 'Poison', 'Demon'. The ideaa, of course, being that demons are lies and falsehood and pollution of the universe .. or the other way around - that said pollutions effectively wind up with reification in demonic form. Which is very, very 40k. 

 

Now, in an Imperial sense ... you know how we'd run it [in fact, I might do that viz. Adamantia ] ; but in your sense, your concept [and I should uh .. probably not too heavily presume here] - that notion of the 'eclipsing' of the 'true chaos' via the four chaos gods all getting in the way, and often functioning at direct cross-purposes, and 'polluting' things further , may be something useful to explore. 

 

After all ... if you are presenting a 'benevolent' take on what is fundamentally .. well .. chaos - then the 'next step in mankind's pathway towards the stars of apotheosis' vibe does require a certain explication of just why those guys over there have descended to gribbling monstrosities no longer human nor sapient . And the answer is, "No  True Scotsman" - the notion that the people who are, fundamentally, getting what Chaos ... does .... and losing out heavily for it , are suffering so not because - in your characters' view , chaos is wrong, evil, malefic, and chaotic - but rather because it wasn't the *right* chaos , because something in them wasn't 'worthy' , or because some greater power than them got involved and mucked things up. 

 

It's the inherent self-reinforcing (self-delusion) of the 'true believer' cultist. 

 

And that, I feel, is *exactly* the vibe you may wind up going for when it comes to explicating the "why you're actually all wrong about this thing that is called the primordial annihilator" to soembody with a more orthodox (and, to my mind, *sane* ) view. 

 

Oh, also, a final point [and then i should probably get back to  work :P .. or painting .. or, who knows, Adamantine theology in my own logs] 

 

now, that 'divinity' element, sparks of divinity in the human soul etc. ... it occurs to me that a lower level sort of acolyte may make the presumption that that means that *they'll* be becoming a demigod or something. A useful recruitment tool, as it always is. 

 

Whereas I somewhat suspect that what you're going for is .... in the eventual, literally ultimate sense, 'union with the divine' ... which, well, you probably know the various conceptry around this in a number of real-world religions. 

 

A number of which basically have, of course, the droplets of water returning to the sea and becoming part of it losing all individuality etc. [and some of which, interestingly enough, *don't* .. but this is neither hte time nor the place for a sustained rant about those lesser-known perspectives within the Hindusphere] 

 

I mention this because, of course, the notion of psychic gestalts coming together from human souls , or indeed simply great misshapen chaotic beasties as a result of warp energy bringing people together into .. well .. those ... is a well-worn trope. 

 

In this context, it could even have a fitting sense to death-rites - or sacrificial rites - wherein sacrificial victims may be congratulated for allowing their soul-stuff to take a more direct pathway toward 'union' with this chaos over-divinity. And maybe , it might even be "true" - for a given and not-literal definition of "true" ... dependent upon how clever your characters are, there might be some daemon that's rather pleased at the fact that it's worked out how to set up an auto-feeding mechanism of sorts. 

 

Or, it may be that one of your characters *himself* has the similar idea, and is going around powering himself via such sacrificial victims being absorbed (which may or may not prove problematic if the 'erasure' of who and what they actually were is .. imperfect, leading to 'echoes' of their consciousness turning up in his head and pushing through the subconscious barrier from time to time). 

 

Anyway, *final* final point [for now] ... 

 

i mentioned earlier something around human brains, and the human race, being an immensely powerful source of 'energy' and 'upheaval' within the Warp context. 

 

Now imagine what that looks like when it's not just ordinary humans .. but *Astartes* that are doing the believing and thinking and experiencing ... 

 

Astartes, I might add, who *already* have an additional heaping, heaving helping of the 'divine' warp-stuff - that's partially how they're .. well .. astartes in the first place. Whether we are running the Emperor's genetic heritage/gift or the more indirect form via th Primarchs and their stabilization of geneseed, the 'bargain' made with the Chaos Gods, etc. etc. etc. 

 

You get the idea. 

 

Anyway, I should let you get back to your promulgation of your own conceptry before coming in with a spanner and such. Keep up the good evil beyond-go(o)d-and-evil work. 

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#bringbackmkii

 

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Okay... So maybe it's not fully MK II, but it's the thought that counts, right? Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to get my grubby little paws on any full mkii marines from Forgeworld before they went out of stock. I haven't been giving my Horus Heresy Word Bearers much attention lately (that's a different log for a different day) but damn if I wasn't inspired by Kizzdoug's beautiful Mk2 Emperor's Child over on his log.

 

 So, with what few MK II bits I had lying around (just the head and shoulders,) I followed my inspiration and put together a rather standard line marine from a tactical squad. 

 

This wasn't really planned and we'll return to our regularly scheduled Chaos Worshipers in the 41st Millenium soon enough. 

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