Lazy Saturnday

Not Safe For Work Christmas Special. If plastic naughty bits offend, stop reading now! Read More »

Meet The Cultist is a weekly feature focusing on some of the least regarded members of a Warhammer 40k Chaos Army, the cultists. In the game they are cannon fodder or a distraction at best, yet I find examining the sonder of their lives interesting. While chronology isn’t particularly important, you can start at the beginning if you care about reading them in order.

Kaduk likes obscure and foreign music. If he can’t understand the words he isn’t bothered at all. Because of the fractured nature of the galaxy Kaduk has ended up collecting media players in addition to any tapes, disk, crystals, ‘cubes or even more obscure recording media. All his time spent repairing the devices so he can listen to his weird ass music has taught him a thing or to about electronics and he’s often brought broken archeotech by the rest of the cult to repair.

His other obsession is birds, or really, any flighted beast. His current gag is due to a recent incident where the morning after a particularly brutal revelry, while most everyone was nursing a hangover of one sort or another, Kudak spotted a rare owl-like creature, and began hooting up a storm trying to entice it close enough to capture.

Meet The Cultist is a weekly feature focusing on some of the least regarded members of a Warhammer 40k Chaos Army, the cultists. In the game they are cannon fodder or a distraction at best, yet I find examining the sonder of their lives interesting. While chronology isn’t particularly important, you can start at the beginning if you care about reading them in order.

Lugax’s passion is being not just average, but super average. If you pick any one thing someone else in the cult will be better at it then him. However if you pick any skill, any obsession, even with his average abilities across the board he’s probably better than a randomly picked other cultist. He can sing, but isn’t fantastic at it. He’s a pretty good shot with a pistol or rifle, and is handy with his mace. In post raid debauchery he’s never the first (or last) to pass out. He has the faintest psychic ability, but can’t do anything spectacular with it. He takes Seanan’s silver regimen, dies his hair, but not his beard. Plays CrimeHive with Zygor though he’s not very good.

His one “claim to fame” would be that he is one of the most agile cultists in zero gravity, however fortunately for his desire of mediocrity the cult is so rarely called upon to perform in low/no gravity that his skills in that regard remain unknown.

Meet The Cultist is a weekly feature focusing on some of the least regarded members of a Warhammer 40k Chaos Army, the cultists. In the game they are cannon fodder or a distraction at best, yet I find examining the sonder of their lives interesting. While chronology isn’t particularly important, you can start at the beginning if you care about reading them in order.

Rhygore was long considered a little weird by the other cultists, which is saying a lot. His fascination with silence, and lack of sensation caused his faith in Slaanesh and the tenets of the cult to be called into question. Unable to satisfactorily explain how complete silence was as much an extreme pleasure as cacophonous noise they ultimate test of faith was administered, his left arm was sawed off, and a new bionic implant was affixed by Taloneus and blessed by Mobeius. Rhygore’s devotion was apparently true for not only did the metallic tentacle take, it was covered with beautiful flexible flesh, even gaining a rasp on the end that secreted a toxin not unlike that which coats the tongues of Seekers.

In controlled quantities the toxin has a similar effect to the Soporific musk the Seekers emit as well as some pleasant hallucinogenic properties. Rhygore demands a fairly high price from his fellow cultists in exchange for allowing his tentacle to be “milked” … though he does hold a bit of a grudge and the surviving cultists who were most directly responsible for putting him under Taloneus’s ministration are absolutely forbidden from partaking in the resulting decoction. Whilst Taloneus did administer the replacement arm, he was not one of those who called his devotion into question and so is not beholden by the ban.

Meet The Cultist is a weekly feature focusing on some of the least regarded members of a Warhammer 40k Chaos Army, the cultists. In the game they are cannon fodder or a distraction at best, yet I find examining the sonder of their lives interesting. While chronology isn’t particularly important, you can start at the beginning if you care about reading them in order.

Taloneus joined the cult while barely a teenager. He likes watching the world burn, cats, watching the sun rise, especially when the smoke from a burning world tints the clouds those amazing reds and purples. Rumor has it that Taloneus eats the cats that he collects, as he never seems to have more than two or three at a time, but in actuality he trains them, cybernetically augments them, and then releases them into new environments. Of course the rest of the cult never sees this as they rarely visit worlds they’ve ravaged in raids, but even if they do who is going to notice a slightly increased feral cat population.

Taloneus is most adept with the physiology of animals, but is a practiced hand with humans as well, and is the closest things the cultists have to an Apothecary, though what cyber-limbs Taloneus has installed have really only taken with extensive blessings from Slaanesh, it’s pretty obvious w/out divine (as far as the cultists are concerned) intervention most of his modifications wouldn’t have taken. That said not all of his “improvements” have been successful; his ministrations are usually sought as a last ditch effort as several recipients have died or rejected the implants. He claims they were weak of faith, andthis is widely accepted to be the case.

There was even one time when another cultist’s devotion was called into question and as a means of  testing his faith they cut off Rhygore’s left arm, and had Taloneous replace it with a mechanical tentacle. Fortunately for Rhygore Slaanesh smiled on him, after distinguishing himself in the next raid the arm grew a fleshy covering, giving super human strength, and setting to rest any possibility of lack of faith on his part.

Meet The Cultist is a weekly feature focusing on some of the least regarded members of a Warhammer 40k Chaos Army, the cultists. In the game they are cannon fodder or a distraction at best, yet I find examining the sonder of their lives interesting. While chronology isn’t particularly important, you can start at the beginning if you care about reading them in order.

March Svorak has always been a bit of a Luddite, not that anyone really knows that term anymore. Still given the choice between complex and simple machines he’s always eschewed anything that might have a hint of a machine spirit. However collaborating with Talon he’s come up with a number of poisonous coatings for his arrows (many are actually just failed batches of Talon’s experiments). Amongst the cult Berzerk and SexGod are generally considered the most entertaining… Nothing sows confusion in the enemy like one of their own going crazy, though often there is disappointment if the target hit with Berzerk manages to kill the rest of his squadmates leaving no one else for the cult to fight.

In light of this Svorak and a couple of other cultists are often sent off as a diversion… they’ll incite some kind of riot, distracting the enemy from where the real attack is to come from, and in cases like that the relatively silent nature of the crossbow more than makes up for the slow reload time. He’s been on enough side missions with Brunus that they’ve become fast friends and March wears the mask Brunus made, even though it’s a little on the shoddy side thanks to Brunus’s crab claw not being the most dexterous at textile manipulation (aside from snipping!)

Meet The Cultist is a weekly feature focusing on some of the least regarded members of a Warhammer 40k Chaos Army, the cultists. In the game they are cannon fodder or a distraction at best, yet I find examining the sonder of their lives interesting. While chronology isn’t particularly important, you can start at the beginning if you care about reading them in order.

Once upon a time Sekrax had the voice of an angel. He had a promising career as an entertainer on Poulionus, a hive world which was far enough from the regular trade lanes that it seemed the Imperium turned a blind eye to the active trade agreements with the expanding T’au empire. And if the effect of his voice hadn’t been so pronounced he might have done a tour on various T’au occupied worlds singing to Gue’vesa, betraying the Imperium in a small and fairly insignificant way; but that’s not how is story went.

Instead his performances brought money, fame, and fans: drugs and other excesses soon followed. Everybody knows Slaanesh cultists throw the best parties, and once he’d tasted the mind bending extravagances  provided by the petitioners of She Who Thirsts there was no turning back for Sekrax. Before he sang for money, and fame. Now he had a purpose; his voice a living prayer to Slaanesh that enthralled and intoxicated any who heard it.  His presence on the battlefield was usually restricted to the back lines, where his voice was piped through amplifiers and thence to a Noise Marine who used the melodious tones to fire off devastatingly distorted sussurances that were felt rather than heard and left the affected foes writhing in pleasure even as their overloaded nervous systems shutdown from the magnificent over stimulation of it.

Then, while raiding for liquor on a Nurgle infested agri-world, Sekrax’s luck ran out. Some pestilential wind passed over the his squad and whatever noxious vapour it was ruined his voice. Everyone knows that it was Zygor’s fault, but only Sekrax knows the truth; his gas mask was fine, he was just t0o slow getting it on. Initially he was too embarrassed to clear Zygor’s name, not expecting the alacrity or severity with which punishment would be meted out. Now it’s been several months, and Zygor seems to have accepted his fate so Sekrax channels his guilt into battle. His chain sword will just have to sing for him.

Many lament that Tudax joined after Sekrax had lost his voice, but the truth is recordings never could touch a live performance; it was as if the was some magic in his voice that couldn’t be captured by a box of metal and plastic.

Meet The Cultist is a weekly feature focusing on some of the least regarded members of a Warhammer 40k Chaos Army, the cultists. In the game they are cannon fodder or a distraction at best, yet I find examining the sonder of their lives interesting. While chronology isn’t particularly important, you can start at the beginning if you care about reading them in order.

Sekrax Melgoy had the voice of an an angel, everyone agreed. Hearing him talk or sing was ecstasy. However this not his story.  Zygor Honlock made filters for, and assembled the cults’ supply of gas masks. And the one time he screwed up, his one mistake, was in Sekrax’s mask during a raid in a Nurgle infested agri-world. Sekrax survived, but his voice was ruined by the noxious gases encountered there, thenceforth sounding like Tom Waits gargling sandpaper. As punishment it was ordained that Zygor never speak again; to that end he’s been bound with a similar punishment as Varbhor.

Like most of the cult Zygor’s biggest desire is to curry the favor of Slaanesh. Before his sentence of silence he lead a small group of cultists who’d found some ancient texts on philosophy. As such they’d devoted themselves to the pursuit of excellence, for surly the more perfect they became the greater the chance Slaanesh’s gaze would fall upon them. While he can no longer participate in the debates, he still attends and listens. In addition he is one of the best shots with a pistol in the cult, able to hit a target half again as far away as most marksmen.

Finally Zygor is also a collector; several years ago he came across an ancient miniatures game called CrimeHive. According to the rules the miniature robots and monsters would move on their own, fighting battles as directed by the players. However the ravages have time have not been kind to the sparse selection of models Zygor has found, and while most are in decent condition the electronics inside have long since corroded to the point of being unsalvageable. The are several other cultists who are willing to play his modified rules where they use measuring sticks and dice to determine the outcome of battles, but little would please Zygor more than finding some perfectly preserved pieces with functioning electronics so that they could play the game properly.

Meet The Cultist is a weekly feature focusing on some of the least regarded members of a Warhammer 40k Chaos Army, the cultists. In the game they are cannon fodder or a distraction at best, yet I find examining the sonder of their lives interesting. While chronology isn’t particularly important, you can start at the beginning if you care about reading them in order.

Crucius Rokha is currently in a competition with Tudax that will probably end up getting both of them killed. With there being some contention about his big kill (a Nurgle Daemon prince which was the target of a Noise Marine ‘concert’) Crucius is aiming to take down some thing big, and undisputable and so now keeps his eyes on the sky.

When not on the battlefield he spends a large portion of his free time on the firing range (assuming there is one) or hunting the current planet’s bird analogs. His marksmanship is quite exquisite and if he’d only deign to take a more effective weapon he’d probably earn some sort of boon from Slaanesh, though his perseverance with such a substandard weapon may end up doing the trick if he can ever bring down a big enough enemy.

He is also obsessed with fashion, and is the finest hair stylist in the band, however since he can’t abide a less then perfect cut and no one else can seem to do a good enough job to meet his standards he opts to remain bald and clean shaven. This leaves cologne and lipstick as his main fashion accessories; when he can find them on raids he’ll often part with more valuable loot from his share to acquire them.

Meet The Cultist is a weekly feature focusing on some of the least regarded members of a Warhammer 40k Chaos Army, the cultists. In the game they are cannon fodder or a distraction at best, yet I find examining the sonder of their lives interesting. While chronology isn’t particularly important, you can start at the beginning if you care about reading them in order.

Tudax and Crucius found a pair of antique blunderbusses while raiding the governor’s mansion on an Agriworld. They have since been competing as to who can make the best use of these large bore, but single shot weapons. Tudax as taken out the ankle actuator on a Sentinel and managed to bring down a Screamer. Crucius claim to have gotten the killing shot on a Nurgle Daemon Prince, but a squad of Noise Marines were playing a cover of “his” song Please Don’t Stop Talking at it at the same time so credit isn’t entirely clear.

When not taking potshots with ancient weaponry Tudax likes “dirt farming”, that is growing Mudwyrms, a small maggot like creature grows in rich soil fed by barely decomposing flesh. Half animal, half plant they theoretically have no upper limit to size except that  once they get larger than about 3 feet long they have to spend more time eating than they are awake to maintain size. With Talon’s help he’s been working on a version of amphetamines that will reduce the amount the Mudwyrms need to sleep so they can grow even larger.

He is also an accomplished DJ, his initial claim to fame being a resampling of the ravings of Talon her recorded during a space walk. He now carries recording device nearly everywhere, especially favoring warp travel with weak Gellar Fields for the bizarre and incomprehensible sounds. These samples can then lead to songs that induce a drug like state just by listening to them.