Kabal of the Black Heart

The most powerful Kabal in Commorragh, the Kabal of the Black Heart is ruled over by the absolute power in the city -- Asdrubael Vect himself. Living within lowering black spires at the heart of Commorragh, the Black Heart control many of the webway routes that lead from the city and their pirate fleet is the largest of any Kabal. They maintain this position of dominance by exactomg a tithe of slaves and souls taken by other Kabals using the entry points they control. In the past, Archons of other Kabals have risen to prominence and challenged Vect for control of the city. These Kabals no longer exist.

The Kabal of the Black Heart is the oldest and greatest of its kind. It is a vast and sprawling organisation, able to support numerous rival Archons within its hierarchical structure. Each Archon controls a separate faction within the Black Heart, and each vies fiercely with his rivals for the patronage of Supreme Overlord Vect. None brave outright murder, however, for only a fool would blunt one of Asdrubael Vect’s favourite tools. So complete is his stranglehold upon Commorragh that none of these highly placed subordinate Archons dare challenge the Supreme Overlord’s supremacy in anything but the most private dreams or fantasies. Even then, they do so with caution, for it is said that Vect knows well the scent of treachery, and reads the minds of lesser mortals like an open book.

This Kabal’s military strength is virtually unassailable. Countless thousands of Kabalite Warriors, Commorrite mercenaries and lethal gunships stand ready to exterminate their foes at the slightest crook of Vect’s corpse-white finger. A cast-iron bond with the Wych Cult of Strife puts yet more might at the Supreme Overlord’s fingertips, providing him with the closest thing the Dark City has seen to genuine allies. This union -- alongside the impossibly intricate web of spies and informers that Vect has scattered through every stratum of Commorragh, standing compacts with multiple Haemonculus Covens, and secreted agents throughout the wider Aeldari race -- means the Kabal of the Black Heart holds more power than several of their largest rivals combined.

No action taken by or against the Kabal of the Black Heart is too small to elude Vect’s notice, and with fractal genius he subtly influences every outcome. As such, when an Archon of the Black Heart launches a raid into realspace, they do so with the knowledge that Vect’s personal spies have assessed the battle to come, and the Supreme Overlord will have prepared counter-measures for each possible eventuality. Every Warrior and Archon in the Kabal knows that they are under Vect’s gaze, and that their slightest failings will incur his unquenchable fury. This is an exquisite motivator, and leads to vast soul harvests being carried out with flawless precision by the Black Heart.

Power at Any Cost
Asdrubael Vect began his days as a slave. Yet through pure guile and murderous ambition he eventually rose to become the leader of a militant organisation that he named the Kabal of the Black Heart. By the time Vect had established this powerbase, he had been recognised by the Trueborn aristocracy as a genuine threat. The Kabal of the Black Heart was opposed at all turns by the most influential of High Commorragh’s noble houses -- Xelian, Kraillach and Yllithian. So it was that Vect -- ever the master of turning foe against foe to his own advantage – concocted a plan to bring the fury of the Imperium of Mankind to bear against his many enemies.

So audacious was this scheme that, to the eyes of most, it would have seemed like a horrific gamble. His could not have been further from the truth. Every angle had been carefully considered, every necessary loyalty bought beyond any danger of doubt. Asdrubael Vect’s plan to achieve ascendency demonstrated that his mind was like some intricate and unstoppable clockwork machine -- by the time the plan had run its course, millions had been ground between its merciless gears. Vect, meanwhile, elevated himself to a position of total supremacy, borne to unimaginable heights upon an evergrowing mountain of cooling corpses.

Baiting the Trap
The seeds of Vect’s conflict were sown in the area known as the Desaderian Gulf. This region of wilderness space was well known amongst the starfarers of Segmentum Tempestus for the number of craft that had disappeared within its boundaries. Unbeknownst to the Imperium, there existed avast portal into a main artery of the webway within Desaderian space, shielded by holofields that made it appear nothing more than a shimmer in the starlight. The Dark Eldar fleets preyed upon the Imperium’s shipping lanes from within this veiled rent in reality. Yet they did so only rarely in order to escape retribution; the missing ships were considered acceptable losses or else written off by the Imperium’s scribes as bureaucratic errors.

Vect’s first overt move was to increase the frequency of these piratical raids tenfold. He made it his Kabal’s priority to capture every warship and invade every human world within reach of the portal. He tore apart the Astra Militarum regiments garrisoning the planets of the Desaderian system, devastated their fortifications, and disappeared with his living bounty to the depths of the Dark City. Vect left nothing but ruin in his wake. The campaign saw the Kabal of the Black Heart grow rich in plunder, and though Vect’s detractors thought him a fool for antagonising the Imperium’s war engine, the raids continued apace.

Eventually, as Vect had known they would, the Imperium reacted to the disappearances in the Desaderian Gulf. The Strike Cruiser Forgehammer -- a warship of the Salamanders Chapter -- was close enough to investigate, and Brother Captain Phoecus ordered his ship deep into the Desaderian Gulf. Like predators stalking their kill, Vect’s Kabalite fleet shadowed the Forgehammer, encircling it undetected before striking in overwhelming force. After a short but extremely violent skirmish, the Forgehammer was wreathed in a crippling haywire field and towed back to the Dark City.

The furore that resulted from the capture of so many live Space Marines -- precious commodities for the arenas -- set the spires of High Commorragh aflame with intrigue. The noble houses could not be seen to permit the upstart Kabal to retain their prestigious prize. Before long Vect found his fleet dwarfed by the armada of Lord Xelian and the Forgehammer ‘confiscated’. The Salamanders ship, still sheathed in a crackling haywire field, was dragged back to the spires of High Commorragh and tethered to Lord Xelian’s stronghold, ready for dissection. Yet the noble lord had underestimated the Space Marines trapped within. Though the Forgehammer’s comms were inoperable, Captain Phoecus’ gifted Librarian, Brother Hestion, had sent a psychic call for aid as soon as the ship’s systems had been disabled. Hestion was acting as a living beacon for the rest of his Chapter; a beacon that was nestled deep within the spire-clustered confines of High Commorragh.

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Blade
When Lord Xelian sent his warriors to bring the Space Marines to his torture chambers, they were met with far sterner resistance than he had anticipated. The Dark Eldar carved through the hull of the Strike Cruiser with ease, but overpowering the Space Marines proved a far greater challenge. The Forgehammer was a sizeable warship, its every crawlspace and corridor fortified against boarding actions. The Space Marines were on familiar territory, and they fought with utter, unshakeable determination. After sustaining significant losses, Xelian changed tack, returning the salvage rights of the vessel to the Kabal of the Black Heart. After all, the Space Marines could always be seized later, once Vect’s Kabal had born the brunt of their fury.

Vect, ready for this move, casually played a waiting game. He systematically fed the least trustworthy elements of his Kabal into the guns of the Space Marines, eliminating them while buying time for the Imperium to respond. On the sixteenth day of the siege, the skies above Commorragh yawned wide. The Salamanders Chapter had homed in on Brother Hestion’s psychic beacon. They found the Desaderian portal mysteriously unveiled, its guards slain and its controls locked out so that it could not close.

The fury of the Imperium thundered from the crackling jade webway portal directly above Archon Xelian’s personal spire. Through it came ships bearing the heraldry of not only the Salamanders but also the insignia of the Howling Griffons and the Silver Skulls. The spectacle of their vertical entrance was jawdropping, even for the jaded Commorrites in the streets below. Two dozen Strike Cruisers, each a bullish colossus of gothic architecture built for war, hammered through the wide-open portal into the skies above the Dark City with all guns blazing. At their heart was the Battle Barge Vulkan’s Wrath, an immense hulk of a ship with broadside batteries that could flatten whole cities. Its prow was a vast ram that ploughed straight into the spire where Lord Xelian stood and obliterated him utterly.