Nightbringer

During 847 M41, the Nightbringer was rampaging through the backwater Imperial sector of Montlúcon, effectively unopposed; the PDF and Imperial Army forces stationed in the volume could do nothing in the face of such terrible might except flee or die. Worlds burned. Billions died, either beneath the Nightbringers' scythe or at the hands of its motley retinue; fresh- spawned Nosferatu, mad Maynarkhs, twitching Flayers, all devoid of any directive except to kill. It would take months to muster and dispatch a force capable of opposing the Nightbringer; months the worlds of Montlúcon did not have. But salvation would come from a most unlikely source.

 

The Bloodthirster Gharragroth decided that the Nightbringer's skull would make a truly great addition to the Skull Throne, and led his legion of thousands of lesser daemons into battle. The two monstrosities met on the world of New Cuarilia, the daemons rising from the blood and gore left behind by the Nightbringer's passage through the cities.

 

Perhaps they knew of the C'tan's vulnerability to the Warp, and expected a relatively easy battle. But the Nightbringer had become a very different creature than any of its peers, and the agony of the trillions it had killed had made its reflection in the warp sharp and deep. It wrapped all the fear and suffering it caused about itself like a cloak, striking supernatural terror even into the immortal. When the daemons faced it, for the first time in their millennial existences, they knew fear as a mortal was. Briefly they hesitated at the unfamiliar and unwelcome sensation; then they shook it off and charged.

 

When they closed, they found a foe that could not merely best them but destroy them. With every strike the Nightbringer not only tore at their material shells but devoured them, consuming their essences to fuel itself. With every daemon slain it grew a tiny bit faster, a tiny bit stronger, a tiny bit tougher; and all the while its cloak of terror wormed into their minds.

 

To be sure, the daemons did damage in turn, tearing great rents in its necrodermis body that spilled flaring starstuff and sealed over wrongly in gnarled lumps of tissue as the self- repair routines were corrupted by exposure to the stuff of the warp. But still the Nightbringer was winning.

 

Seeing the attack on the Nightbringer falter, Gharragroth commanded his legion to step aside so that he could engage the weakened C'Tan in single combat, and take all the glory for himself. For an hour the two titans were locked in battle, trading blows which would shatter superheavy tanks, tearing up the earth around them like an artillery barrage. In the end the Nightbringer proved the superior, tearing off Gharragroth's head and devouring the daemon, utterly unmaking a being which had existed for millions of years.

 

This proved too much for the survivors of the daemonic legion, and with the Nightbringer's mantle of fear still clawing at their minds, they broke and ran for the safety of the warp. Or rather, they tried to; Khorne was displeased by this display of cowardice, possibly the first time ever his daemons had fled before an opponent, and killed all the daemons which tried to escape back into the warp. Turn and fight or die by my axe, he commanded. Your lives are all forfeit for this shameful display, but perhaps the one who brings me the head of the Nightbringer shall be spared my wrath.

 

So they turned, and fought, and died. And at the end of it that great daemonic legion lay dead upon the field and the Nightbringer was victorious. But only barely- it was close to death, covered in open wounds and twisted scars, the stuff of Chaos still contaminating its body in a hundred places slowly corroding it away. It was forced to flee into deep interstellar space, spending decades healing and purging the stuff of Chaos from its necrodermis flesh through the simple expedient of cutting it out. Thus was the remainder of the Montlúcon sector saved.

 

Since then, the Nightbringer has avoided further large battles with the daemonic, fearing that perhaps this time they might manage to kill it. But at the same time its appetite has been whetted; it has found that as delicious as the souls of mortal beings are, daemons are a greater delicacy still. And it wonders; what would a god taste like?

 

The Chaos gods believe themselves immortal, but the Nightbringer knows that all things die. So it waits, and it plots, as its hunger and ambition grow.