Archaon: Lord of Chaos

by Rob Sanders

  ‘Heal that,’ Archaon dared the monstrous champion of Chaos. The Chaos warlord heard a familiar sound. It was the whooshing revolution of the battle axe. With its star-shaped blade spinning over its haft, the weapon had been vomited up out of the pit with the rest of the rancid champion. As it descended, Archaon lowered his head. As it thudded blade first into the ice, like a wood axe in a block of firewood, the warrior grunted.

  Archaon heard something within the hollow and envisioned that he might be the next mighty champion of Chaos to sate the appetite of the monstrous spawn. Snatching up the battle axe from the ice, Archaon ran forward, intending to chop snaking tendrils or loathsome tentacles reaching out for him and hell-bent on dragging his armoured form down into the pit and a waiting maw. As the squelch of his footfalls took him closer, however, he found no such abominate appendages feeling their way towards him. Instead he was confronted by the nightmarish form of a midnight stallion, climbing out of the hollow. Upon crossing the lip of the ice crater with its spiked hooves, the steed shook itself from snout to tail, rattling the armoured saddle that sat on its back. The daemon Dorghar’s eyes burned with the infernal fire of its transformative powers. Snorting the last of Gangryss’s repugnance from its nostrils, the daemon steed once again spoke. Its words were unknown to Archaon but the furnace-hiss of otherworldly scorn that accompanied them was unmistakable.

  ‘Yes,’ Archaon told Dorghar simply. ‘Quite.’

  Grabbing the reins and slipping an armoured boot into a spiked stirrup, Archaon hauled himself up into the saddle. In the desperation and drama of Gangryss’s end, Archaon had not noticed the haunting silence of the battlefield. The freezing wind moaned about the armoured forms of Chaos warriors who had slowed to stillness. Through the statuesque wonder of warriors and monstrous talent, only one figure moved. An emaciated wretch in rags and chains, his head forever trapped in a cage with no key. The flagellant Gorst. Gorst who had followed Archaon unharmed across the Southern Wastes. Who had survived with him the dread dangers of the dark Realms of Chaos. Who now walked unmolested – and unlike the rest of Archaon’s horde, unchanged – through the Battlefield Eternal. Gorst dragged his trailing chains through the bones, bloody slush and still bodies before coming to a stop himself and staring up at his master.

  About them, dread serenity swept through the carnage, bringing the Battle Eternal to a halt never witnessed before. Foes lowered their weapons. Banners drifted to the bloody ground. The din of battle died.

  ‘I was one of you,’ Archaon called across the frozen silence, his voice carried on the shearing wind. ‘A puppet in a sick show – like this. Dancing for my dark masters. I dance no more. And neither should you. The gifts of the gods are no such thing. Let us not seek reward. Let us not ask for power. Let us not wait on that which is given. Let us take what is ours. Darkness is ours. Ruin is ours. The world turns beneath our feet for the taking. Real power resides not with gods or any following but with those who take it from them. I am Archaon, doom to my enemies, doom to all the world, doom to the gods invested in that world. Come with me. Why earn the treasures of Chaos when you can steal them? Why kill for Ruinous patrons when you can kill for yourself? Why sell your souls so cheaply, when you can make the worlds of gods and men pay for your miseries?

  ‘I might be Chosen of the Dark Gods – but I did not choose them. I will be Everchosen of Chaos, whether the dread Powers and their daemons wish it for me or not. The legions of hell will be ours to command and we shall use them to demonstrate true power. The power to choose. To be or not to. To drag the sick perversity of this daemon-haunted existence kicking and screaming into a time of Ending. To end the world, the gods that torment it and ourselves. That is real power and I ask you to seize it with me. With he who is one of you: lost, damned even, but a slave to darkness no more. With Archaon…’

  The infernal fires of the collapsed gate blazed, like flames upon which gunpowder had been dashed. The balelight of the beyond burned ferociously at Archaon’s god-thwarting words. Archaon couldn’t tell whether the brilliance raged in warning or celebration of his wondrous achievement.

  ‘Archaon!’ a voice boomed across the killing fields. A skull-axe thrust up at the sky, above the heads of countless warriors. It was Ograx the Great, the half-breed prince who was beast no more. The former bestial champion of the Blood God, whose army of manfiends had smashed through the havoc of the Battle Eternal, collecting before its example an ever growing vanguard of Chaos warriors. He knew precious few words in his master’s tongue but he knew the glory of his name. With his chest heaving, Ograx roared the warlord’s name to the storm-crashing heavens.

  ‘Archaon, Archaon… Archaon!’ the daemonbreed chanted.

  ‘Archaon!’

  ‘Archaon!’

  ‘Archaon!’

  Once more the battlefield rang with the thunder of his name, uttered like a dark oath from thousands of doom-lifted hearts. Warriors of Chaos, fighting for every Ruinous Power and daemonic master, united as one dark, apocalyptic force behind the dread syllables of his name.

  ‘ARCHAON!’

  ‘ARCHAON!’

  The warlord turned his daemon steed about to soak up the power and possibility of his intoxicating achievement. The ground trembled. The fires of hell roared forth from the gate of oblivion. Thunder tore through the sky and lightning shattered the gloom.

  ‘ARCHAON!’

  He held up his battle axe, the steel blade of the Ruinous Star rising. He lifted it above the chanting thousands. The dark star of a Chaos undivided. United. As one. The chanting echoed to nothing on the chill air.

  ‘Let us be the storm that rolls south!’ Archaon bellowed back at them, levelling his battle axe towards a world awaiting its end. It was all the monstrous horde needed to hear.

  Chapter XIII

  ‘There is a mountain of shadow thrown,

  The only feature the Wasteland knows.

  The mountain waits;

  The mountain slumbers;

  The mountain quakes;

  The mountain thunders.

  A mountain more than storm or place –

  The Black King of an ancient race.’

  – The Mad Minstrel, excerpt, Chimerica

  The Chimera Plain

  The Northern Wastes

  Date Unknown

  Archaon would not make the same mistakes again. There would be no repeated disasters. You could not be betrayed by those you did not trust – and Archaon trusted no one. The only betrayals the horde suffered would be his own.

  Archaon’s colossal host marched south. Through the Shadowlands. His vast Ruinous army contained representation from every marauder tribe fighting for god-fearful territory in the Wastes. Northmen from the mountainous lands of Norsca. Berserker Bjornlings. Warring Aeslings and Sarls. Werekin. Expeditionary raiders from the Kraken Sea and Varg reavers. From the cruel lands of the Kurgan and the Eastern Steppes he had Yusak warlords, centigor nomads of the Endless Land, savage horsemen of the Tokmar and Skull-landers of the dread Kul. Of the mighty Hung, Archaon’s host boasted masterless warriors of the Man-Chu, Weijin invaders and terrors of the Great Bastion, pirate clans of the Yin and even fallen hordes of the unstoppable Ungol.

  Where Archaon’s marauders happened across territorial hosts of their parent tribes, the Chaos warlord gave instructions that such savages be assimilated into his army or be utterly wiped out. Bestial hordes needed little convincing of Archaon’s strength when stunt-horned scouts reported back his army’s expanse and growing number. Only Clovak Moonhoof and Truskag the Red denied Archaon the brutality of their beasts. The coward Clovak Moonhoof and his half-breeds fled Archaon’s outriders and were lost in one of the Shadowlands’ soul-swallowing storms. The blood-crazed Truskag the Red, conversely, gave Archaon’s expeditionary champions a sample of their talents by leading his warherd into sacrificial annihilation, in honour of his gorethirsty god.

  The bulk of
the horde’s continual supply of recruits were small hosts, warbands and lone champions wandering the Wastes. Chaos warriors and dread sorcerers, devoted to different Ruinous paths and honouring different barbarous gods and aspects of the Dark Pantheon. These warriors had found themselves on the path to darkness from innumerable lands, both civilised and savage lands. Many heralded from Archaon’s homeland – the doom-ripe principalities of the Empire. His horde also boasted twisted knights of Bretonnia, raven-haired warriors of the southern states, who felt the chill of the Wastes worse than most, man-eating hulks of the Ogre Kingdoms, who had wandered too far north in search of slaves, and hardened Kislevites, fallen veterans of the border wars against Chaos invaders.

  Confronted with the fearful number of Archaon’s Chaos army and the potent determination of their purpose, most warriors from these far off lands and their motley warbands of afflicted oddities came to see the darkness from Archaon’s unique and incontrovertible perspective. Whether delivered in person or through the champions he honoured with temporary command of despatched hosts, the offer was always the same. The dark warriors and their bedraggled followers could continue their service to the Ruinous Powers or single unholy god under Archaon’s banner of the Ruinous Star – bringing honour to Chaos in all its contradiction and undivided glory – or be sacrificed by Archaon’s horde to the self same cause.

  Most had been wandering victims of the Wastes and its perversities for some time. In Archaon’s great host they saw food, water and even protection from predatory daemons, competing warbands or the insanity of the environment itself. Some champions felt they had lost purposes of their own, if they ever had them, and felt the pull of Archaon’s fate and the prosecution of his personal mission to find the legendary treasures of Chaos. Some simply gave him their blood fealty based upon some measure of supremacy. His warrior prowess. The wonder of his accomplishments. The leadership of his loyal masses – the example of warriors like themselves, who rode with Archaon and fought for him.

  There were of course those who refused his dark offer. Upstarts, newly arrived in the Wastes and wrapped up in delusions of their own invincibility. Madmen who didn’t seem to understand that they were courting certain death or whose minds had been so warped that they didn’t care. Then, of course, there were the pretenders. Exalted warriors of Chaos, dark lords and monstrous sorcerers who had been deceived by their patron Powers or had lied to themselves: champions who called themselves the Chosen of Chaos and boasted of their fearful ambitions. Death was the only cure for their predicament and Archaon granted such warriors the swift mercy of his battle axe for such Ruinous blasphemies, before assimilating their warbands into the dark magnificence of his horde.

  As the colossal horde wound its way through the warping landscape of the Shadowlands it drank polluted rivers dry. Archaon had charged Jharkill with the training of mounted hunting parties to track and kill herds of twisted beasts that roamed the gloomy wilderness. Many parties disappeared – no doubt eaten by something they in turn had been stalking – but those that returned did so dragging the warped carcasses of rhinox, roaming sauria, thundertusk and razorgor hogs, ready for skinning. Jharkill himself Archaon kept busy with the hunting and enslaving of further monstrosities to add to their abominate collection of calamities. Chimeric predators. Skulking daemons. Flocks of flesh-feasting harpies. All fell to the huntsman’s eye, his poison-smeared arrows and the brute range of his tusk bow. It had been Jharkill who had found the Chimera Plain.

  Intent on finding the Slayer of Kings as soon as possible, Archaon had entrusted small hosts of his greater horde to four champions of Chaos who had proved themselves worthy lieutenants. Having his colossal horde make camp in a fang-lined impact crater called the Whispermaw, where champions of Chaos were supposed to hear the land give up its secrets, Archaon sent his four champions off in search of the lonely mountain. All set off in different directions, the mounted champions and their contingents swallowed up by the gloom of the Shadowlands.

  Casimir Ghislaine returned first. The Bretonnian knight wore his exquisite suffering like he wore his suit of immaculate armour. His dark plate was riven with barbs and spikes on the inside as well as on its polished surface and enclosed the Pleasure Lord’s champion like an Iron Maiden. His steed’s armour and Ghislaine’s saddle were similarly a nest of spikes to suffer upon. Archaon was furious with the Slaaneshi knight for returning so swiftly but Ghislaine insisted that he and his host had been gone for months. He hadn’t found the mountain Archaon was seeking but had discovered another called the Thunderhead, at the foot of which he had discovered the age-browned bones and rotting armour of the past champion simply known as Deng. Deng had been a hulking easterner, a former worshipper of Tzeentch, the Great Changer, who had been a silent but deadly warrior-lieutenant in Archaon’s horde. His lacquered armour was very distinctive, however, sporting a daemon-mask helmet through which Deng’s strange blue eyes used to blaze. It was unlikely that Ghislaine had found the armour of another such champion and Archaon reasoned that Deng and his host must have been caught in some kind of storm at the Thunderhead, trapping them in some horrific version of the past.

  Lothar Bott made his way back some weeks later at the head of his slave-swarm of mange-eaten beastmen, also unsuccessful in his quest to find the lonely mountain. The Nurglite was a stinking sorcerer with three heads, grotesquely conjoined at the temple and jaw in the same orientation as the Great Lord of Decay’s sigil. Carrying a scythe-staff and riding a skeletal steed, Bott was an unimaginative, if capable lieutenant who carried out his master’s orders and no more.

  Ulfen Schorsch was the last to return. A champion of the Blood God, Schorsch was a ghoulish sight in the red and black of his armour, trimmed as it was with spikes and draped with blood-soaked furs. Worst of all was his patron’s gift of a fleshless face. Sparse muscles and tendons were still visible about his blood-stained skull, as well as a pair of piercing eyes that never closed and peered out from hooded sockets. A pair of gleaming brass fangs framed his jaw and marked him out as a warrior-parasite. A cannibal. He commanded a contingent of similar warriors, who bore the same curse of fleshlessness and blood-hunger, which he called the Crimson Company. Many of the Crimson Company were merciless warriors of Chaos in their own right and acted as Schorsch’s own lieutenants.

  At first, Archaon thought that the fleshless-faced champion had news for him. Instead, Ulfen Schorsch only had news of a running conflict the Crimson Company had become involved with along the banks of a river of eel-teaming mist. After an unsuccessful ambush, a furious Schorsch had committed his host to hunting down their attackers in a labyrinth of razor-sharp canyons. Stalking and slaughtering their foes to the last urchin-armoured warrior of Chaos, Schorsch boasted to his master of a battle to the god-honouring death with Kormac Graw and the bloodfeast that followed. With fang-lisped insolence, Schorsch told Archaon that Graw was a celebrated champion of the Ruinous Star, very much like the warlord himself. Archaon was furious with Schorsch, berating the bloodthirsty champion not only for failing in his mission but also for wastefully sating his personal appetites on potential recruits for the horde.

  When Jharkill returned from a hunting trip a day later, however, he soothed Archaon’s anger with news that he had sighted the mountain his champions were searching for. Leaving Casimir Ghislaine in charge of the crater camp and Khezula Sheerian with a secret responsibility for watching over the twisted Slaaneshi, Archaon took charge of a scouting party himself. With the ogre huntsman tracking for them through the changeable landscape of the Northern Wastes and taking the Swords of Chaos as a Ruinous escort, Archaon also selected Ograx the Great as extra muscle. If there was blood to be spilt, then who better than a champion of the Blood God to perform the duty? With the half-daemon, Archaon also ordered Ulfen Schorsch and his Crimson Company along, to demonstrate his displeasure with the Chaos champion and his butchers.

  With Jharkill’s broad strides taking the monstrous huntsman a
t a pace through shimmering highlands on the border of the Shadowlands and the wider Wastes, Archaon had little trouble keeping up on the back of Dorghar. The members of his wraith-warrior escort also made short work of the frost-baked terrain, for Eins, Zwei and Drei now seemed less and less part of Archaon’s world of blood and muscle. Day by day they continued a transformation they had begun in the Realm of Chaos, assuming the terrifying form of solidifying shadows. The servants of the Blood God enjoyed the pace less, however. At least Ograx had the benefit of having walked half way across the world in the footsteps of his master. Ulfen Schorsch and the leeches of the Crimson Company were attempting to keep up in full plate and weighed down with their butchers’ weapons. By the time the highlands dropped down into a desolate wilderness, the skull-faced Schorsch was in no doubt that he and his men were being punished.

  As Jharkill tracked for them across the featureless Wasteland, the ground as hard as iron below their feet and the clouds the colour of iron above them, the malformed ogre pointed out the mountain to his master. Following the line of the huntsman’s tusk bow, Archaon sat up in the saddle and picked out a distant peak rearing out of the cold haze of the wilderness. Using the Eye of Sheerian, the jewel glowing eerily in its setting, Archaon brought the sight of the mountain streaming closer.

  The mountain looked as unnatural as any other feature of the Chaos Wastes. Thrusting up out of the plain, it was a fat peak, nestling in scree and boulders. Its lazy inclines were thick with dust and grit, which had given purchase to isolated patches of wretched vegetation. Sitting in the broad peak was a hollow, like the crater of a dormant volcano, despite the fact that it was clearly a mountain. As Archaon stared at it, something bothered the Chaos warlord about its shape and the strange, sweeping lines of its ascent. Something he could not quite explain. Like much of the warped Wastes, it seemed dreadfully suggestive of a land that was living. A track swirled its way about the mountain’s odd dimensions, up to the rim of the hollow peak in which Archaon was confident he would find his prize.