Possessed

"To give oneself to Chaos, body and soul -- is there any more complete an act of devotion?"

- Anonymous Possessed

The Possessed, also known as Possessed Chaos Space Marines, are those Chaos Space Marines who have forsaken their humanity and given up their souls and bodies to the Chaos Gods. Their body has been possessed by a Chaos daemon, who keeps its human shell alive using the energy of the Warp. The Possessed feel no pain and their bodies can be warped and mutated to suit the purpose or whim of the daemon that inhabits them.

For some of the more extreme devotees of the Ruinous Powers, simply offering their souls up to the service of the Chaos Gods is not enough. Those who thirst for power at any cost will offer themselves wholly to Chaos, becoming willing hosts for the immaterial entities of the Warp. Such a possession is a lengthy and agonising experience, as the daemons within them infest their physical forms and reshape them to better suit their particular needs. Those who offer themselves up for possession usually spend months in rituals of debasement and scarification, offering up blood sacrifices and preparing their bodies to harbour a daemonic entity. Though the personalities of these half-mad supplicants are subsumed forever within the power of the possessing daemon, mass possessions are nonetheless great celebrations for the devotees of Chaos of the spiritual union between mortal and daemon, material and Empyrean. They are marked by the more lustful amongst the devotees of Chaos with orgies of feasting and other depravity, and by the more devout with solemn hymnals of impurity.

The Possessed are easily identified by their grotesquely mutated bodies; they may possess vicious claws, warped limbs, tentacles, wings, extra mouths and eyes or razored talons that can gouge through ceramite and steel alike. They make superb trackers and can even guide the warfleets of the Chaos Space Marines through the shifting tides of the Warp better than any Imperial Navigator. However, their primary role -- and the activity which they most relish -- is to tear those who stand against the will of the Chaos Gods limb from limb.

History
The origins of the Possessed can be traced back to the middle years of the Great Crusade during the late 30th Millennium. The entirety of the Word Bearers Legion and their Primarch Lorgar were formally rebuked by the Emperor of Mankind on the world of Khur for their desire to worship him as a deity contrary to the proscribed tenets of the Imperial Truth, the secular, rationalist culture promulgated by the Emperor during the Great Crusade to reunite all the worlds of Mankind beneath the umbrella of the newborn Imperium of Man. This collection of beliefs upheld the core values of reason, science and secular progress over older traditions of religion, superstition and faith that had longed defined many of the human worlds that had fallen into darkness during the Age of Strife after the fall of humanity's first interstellar civilisation. The Emperor himself declared that Mankind would never be free to progress and advance to its destined position as the pre-eminent intelligent species in the Milky Way Galaxy until churches, idol worship and superstition were swept aside. After being formally chastised and humiliated at Khur, Lorgar, on the advice of his First Captain Kor Phaeron and the Word Bearers' First Chaplain Erebus, both secret devotees of the Chaos Gods, decided to undertake a Pilgrimage to discover if the gods worshipped by the adherents of the ancient Old Faith of the Word Bearers' homeworld of Colchis were real and worthy of the Word Bearers' faith and allegiance. Lorgar believed that the Emperor was wrong to condemn Mankind's natural instinct to seek out the divine as an unworthy superstition and he intended to discover if there were truly deities worthy of humanity's respect. To this end, though Lorgar no longer had any love or loyalty for the Emperor, he and his XVII Legion rejoined the Great Crusade after Khur, but did so only so their efforts could serve as a front for their pursuit of what came to be known as the Pilgrimage of Lorgar. The Primarch journeyed with his Word Bearers Legion's Chapter of the Serrated Sun to what was then the fringes of known Imperial space.

It would be in the Cadia System that Lorgar would learn that his suspicions had been correct and that the shape of all of the religions across the galaxy that possessed so many similarities to the Colchisian Old Faith were not artefacts of Mankind's collective unconsciousness, but expressions of worship in the universal truth that was Chaos. Discovering the world of Cadia, a Word Bearers landing party, led by Lorgar, was greeted by a large number of barbaric human tribes that showed little fear. The Word Bearers eagerly approached the natives. A strange woman emerged from the crowd and addressed the Primarch directly, calling him Lorgar Aurelian and welcoming him to Cadia. This woman, the Chaos priestess Ingethel, would ultimately lead the Primarch down a path of spiritual enlightenment that actually marked the beginning of Lorgar's fall to heresy and Chaos. Later, the Priestess Ingethel of Cadia would initiate a ritual that would see her transformed into the Daemon Prince known as Ingethel the Ascended, and then lead the 1,301st Expeditionary Fleet's scout vessel Orfeo's Lament into the Eye of Terror. The Word Bearers' Serrated Suns Chapter dutifully carried out the final stage of Lorgar's pilgrimage. Entering the Immaterium that made up the hellish realms of the Eye of Terror, the Word Bearers were possessed without their knowledge by daemons. Unlike the later possession of Daemonhosts by the malevolent entities of the Empyrean, these initial possessions were less a brutal subjugation of the host's physical body than a symbiotic fusion of both beings on a spiritual level. Indeed, Lorgar would later point to the survivors of the journey into the Eye of Terror as examples of what Mankind could become if Horus succeeded in overthrowing the rule of the Emperor of Mankind and delivering the galaxy into the service of the Chaos Gods. The remnants of the Serrated Sun Chapter eventually returned to their Legion after a 7 month-long subjective ordeal in the Eye of Terror that lasted only mere moments for those of the XVII Legion waiting in realspace for the Serrated Suns' return. During questioning by Lorgar about what had happened within the Eye, a Word Bearer by the name of Argel Tal detailed what he had experienced in the Warp, providing useful insight later used as the foundation for the heretical Book of Lorgar. Lorgar also noted that Argel Tal now appeared to possess "two souls"; Argel Tal's own and, unknowingly, the soul of the Daemon known as Raum. In honour of his achievements, Lorgar made Argel Tal the Captain of his Gal Vorbak (the "Blessed Sons" in Colchisian), an elite cadre of Astartes made up of the surviving members of the Serrated Sun Chapter. Many years later, the Warmaster Horus declared his allegiance to Chaos and revealed his treachery at Istvaan III, thus beginning the galaxy-spanning conflict known as the Horus Heresy. During the Drop Site Massacre on Istvaan V when the Traitor Legions showed their true colours and betrayed their Loyalist brethren, the Gal Vorbak underwent a final metamorphosis. When Lorgar attacked Corax, the Primarch of the Raven Guard Legion, all of the members of the Gal Vorbak became true daemons. Their flesh and ceramite fused and warped into new, bestial forms, marking them out as the first of the Possessed. After the battle, the Gal Vorbak resumed the form of normal Astartes again, though the battle had proven costly. Only five of their number had survived taking on a Primarch in battle to continue to fight in the service of Chaos throughout the rest of the Horus Heresy. In the millennia to come, they would be joined by many more of their fearful kind.

Possessed Chaos Champions
Perhaps the most potent forms of the Possessed are those rare few Champions of Chaos who seek to prove their ultimate devotion to Chaos by allowing their forms to be possessed by one of the entities of the Warp. These individuals enjoy a more symbiotic relationship with their possessing daemon and are the present-day equivalents of the ancient Gal Vorbak of the Word Bearers Legion, the first of the Space Marines to be possessed by daemonic entities.

Other Forms of Possession
While Space Marines are favoured as hosts by the entities of the Warp, due to their impressive resistance and robust constitution, they are not the only beings who can be possessed. Such is the nature of daemons that they can possess any living being with a soul; such a joining of beings is called a Daemonhost. In its long career, the Ordo Malleus has encountered Orks, Squats, Hruds and many other types of beings serving as Daemonhosts. The only exceptions to date are the Tau and the Tyranids. The Tau are believed to be protected from possession by their low psychic presence and rigid philosophical adherence to the Greater Good, while the Hive Mind of the Tyranids is powerful enough to keep any intruder out of its multitude of bodies. And of course, as the majority of the Necron lack souls, they are immune to possession as well.

Wargear

 * Power Armour
 * Any Chaos Space Marine Close Combat Weapon