Daemonhost

The Daemonhosts are unholy creations of foul and dangerous rituals in which a powerful Daemon is bound into a living human host body and enslaved to its creator’s will. An utterly foul act, the creation of a Daemonhost condemns the soul of the host body to eternal torment and provides a lasting home in the universe for a Daemon to work its evil. Despite the horror of their creation, there are those within the Inquisition itself, it is said, who have dared to replicate the act, hoping to turn their creations against enemies of the Imperium. Unfortunately, Daemonhosts are not only the preserve of a handful of Radical Inquisitors. Insane dabblers in proscribed knowledge and the most powerful of cults have also been known to create Daemonhosts to serve them in their designs. Daemons do not rest easily under the will of any mortal, and to earn the enmity of such a creature is to gain an immortal enemy, so a Daemonhost’s creator is faced with a dangerous conundrum: the more powerful the Daemonhost created, the weaker the bindings of the Daemon.

Background
Although it is possible for a daemon of Chaos to directly manifest itself within the physical realm, it is very difficult. The barriers between warpspace and realspace must be weakened by rituals and sacrifice, and even then the daemon can only appear for a comparatively short length of time. Daemonic possession is a more common form of intrusion, where a daemon imparts some of its power and will into a physical host. Like manifestation, possession is normally limited in time, but can be extended almost indefinitely if certain ceremonies and procedures are performed at the time of possession. This can drag a daemon from the warp and trap it inside the possessed, creating a creature known as a Daemonhost. These are created for a number of different reasons. Some are willing volunteers, members of Chaos-worshipping cults who give over their bodies so that their master may walk amongst them. Others are less self-sacrificing, having been captured by a cult and waking with a daemon living inside their mind  -- an experience likely to drive even the most strong willed into insanity. Inquisitors, particularly the Daemonhunters of the Ordo Malleus, also create Daemonhosts. Some use them merely as a way of interrogating daemonic entities about the warp and its powers, refusing to free the trapped daemon until they have answered their questions. Other Inquisitors, particularly those who have no psychic powers themselves, use Daemonhosts as psychic fighters.

Instruction in the Malefic
The knowledge of how to create a daemonhost is very hard to acquire. Besides being considered heresy of the highest order by the Imperium (outside the Inquisition, one could be executed for even knowing of the existence of such abominations), the information is simply not widely known and even less widely distributed. Some particularly devoted Chaos cultists or sorcerers may research daemonhost creation, but their work is often fragmentary, or even dangerously flawed. Only the desperate or insane would trust their mad scribblings. A scant few tomes do include detailed—and somewhat reliable—instructions. These books are filled with malefic and daemonic lore, and are often very rare and very, very old. Some may have even been inscribed when the Emperor still walked on Holy Terra. Even if such a tome is obtained, a victim is still required. Although no two sets of instructions for creating daemonhosts are the same, nearly all require a living, human victim. Normally, one cannot create a daemonhost by binding a daemon within an animal or a corpse. If there are more specifications describing a suitable victim (such as male, female, or pure of soul), they will be described in the instruction set. How the victim is obtained, of course, is another matter entirely...

Once the summoners have obtained both the proper instructions and a suitable victim, they must determine what daemon they will bind. This is the most difficult part of the process. The summoners cannot randomly summon a daemon, then bind it within a host. They must know who the daemon is, specifically its name, if it is a follower of a particular Ruinous Power (or simply a being of Chaos, undedicated to a particular patron), a measure of its deeds and interactions with the mortal worlds, and other details. Since the daemon will undoubtedly regard the binding as a hostile act, many choose to bind vanquished daemonic foes or rivals, well known to them through prior encounters. After all, what sweeter revenge is there than having your vanquished enemy forced to do your bidding?

Vile Craftsmanship
Once the pieces are in place, there are two steps to creating a daemonhost. First, the actual bindings detailed in the instruction tome must be applied to the victim’s body. This is done by inscribing the wards and phrases of containment directly onto the skin. The inscribing can be done in simple ink—although considering the terrible consequences should the wards have even the slightest flaw, most prefer a medium that cannot be carelessly smeared or altered, such as tattoos or scarification. Once this is done, additional bindings such as sanctified chains and locks, purity needles, and sigils of authority are added to the victim as well. The entire process is usually quite detailed and time consuming (although under duress, it can be accomplished quickly. Such sloppiness often leads to unpleasant results). An summoner can expect the procedure to take at least a full day, especially if the wards are etched into the skin, rather than drawn. At the end of the process, the ritual's success will depend on the summoner's knowledge of Daemonology. The basic difficulty of the ritual depends on how many levels of binding the summoner wants applied to the future daemonhost. If the ritual is successfully, the bindings have been wrought correctly. However, for every degree of failure, miniscule flaws render the bindings one degree less than the summoner intended—thrice-bound becomes twice-bound and so forth. The summoners will only discover how successful they were when they attempt to summon the daemon. However, successful or not, everyone involved in applying the bindings shares the essence of the warp that will plant its seeds of corruption.

The next step is to summon the actual daemon. The summoning ceremony will also be described in the instructions, and while the specifics differ, all ceremonies involve aspects such as warded circles made of sanctified salt and blood, long ritual incantations, and probably a live sacrifice of some type. Once the daemon manifests, the summoner conducting the ceremony speaks the words of binding and engages in a battle of will with the daemon. If the summoner loses the battle, the daemon vanishes back into the warp, swearing vengeance. If he wins, there is a flash, a deafening crack, a sudden stench of ozone, and the daemon finds itself inside the host body.Now, the summoner discovers how strong his bindings are. The ritual reveals the strength of the bindings. As long as the daemonhost is at least once-bound, there is no immediate danger. However, if the daemonhost is unbound, it is not constrained by the summoner's orders. It will lash out, attempting to kill the person who summoned it, as well as anyone else in the vicinity.

Compelling the Daemonhost
Once the daemonhost is bound and contained, the summoner who bound it can compel it to do his bidding. As long as the daemonhost remains bound, it is unable to directly harm the summoner. However, how closely it follows orders depends on how strong its bindings are—and how specific the summoner is with his directions. When given basic instructions such as “protect me,” or “follow me and be silent,” the daemonhost will obey the summoner without trouble. However, when instructing the daemonhost on a specific set of orders (such as “go to this building, kill this man, let none see you”), the summoner's and the daemonhost's volitions will clash once again. Provided the summoner wins, the daemonhost will obey his orders to the letter. However, if the summoner shall show mercy, the daemonhost will creatively interpret his orders with more liberty, preferably to the detriment of his master.

The Machinations of the Daemon
The summoner should make no mistake, the daemonhost is no friend of whomever it serves. At best, it is a grudging servant, doing its master’s bidding whilst taking any opportunity to delight in bloodshed, slaughter, and destruction along the way. Whenever it has the opportunity, however, it will cause trouble for its master in any way possible. Most often, this comes in the form of bending its master’s orders as much as it can—without quite breaking them. As an example, a daemonhost is ordered to go to a specific building and kill an individual while remaining unseen, but the summoner who created it did not mention anything else. The daemonhost will still go to the building and kill the individual, but then perhaps it will kill everyone else in the building in a gory and obviously supernatural fashion, drawing the attention of the authorities and likely spoiling its master’s plans. A daemonhost is bound not to harm its master. However, if its master is weak-willed enough, it is free to ruin his plans, fail to aid him if not specifically ordered to, or even harm those around him. Needless to say, this makes daemonhosts some of the most dangerous and fickle allies a band of cultists can possess, and they should be treated with caution.

Notable Daemonhosts

 * Cherubael - Cherubael was once a Daemon Prince, worshipped as a god on the feral world of Clanar II. When Inquisitor Quixos freed the Clanars from Cherubaelís domination, he managed to enslave the creature into the body of one of the warriors. Cherubael served Quixos for many decades, until finally he was banished back to the warp by the intervention of other, more puritanical, Inquisitors. However, he was never totally free, and once more he has been drawn back into a mortal body, serving Inquisitor Eisenhorn.
 * Hedrodal - Also known as the Twice-bound Daemonhost. Created by the false prophets of the Pilgrims of Hayte using the unwilling body of the fallen Interrogator Cripon, Hedrodal is a foul thing. A long purple snaketongue flicks from between its grinning teeth, glowing eyes burn with an icy light and its chain-crossed flesh is covered in rolling eyes and glistening boils. Everywhere Hedrodal passes there is the sound of nameless things scuttling, and lurking shadows of horrible visage can be seen inhabiting the darkness around it.
 * Kapeth-Shem - Kapeth-Shem is a daemonhost that was created by an Xanthite Inquisitor Selech of the Ordo Malleus. Having absorbed every scrap of knowledge that he could find, Inquisitor Selech determined that his most loyal servant, Imperial Guardsman Kapeth, would be the first to receive the honour of “illumination”. Despite every one of the Inquisitor’s precautions, the daemon had tricked him. It was not cast out, but lurked within the very deepest recesses of Kapeth’s soul. When Inquisitor Selech announced the process complete and his servant cleansed, Shem regained control of the vessel, transforming it into a hideous parody of a man, and struck his summoner down. The thing that became known as Kapeth-Shem slaughtered Inquisitor Selech as well as his Banishers, and broke free of its bonds. Three dozen servants of the Ordo Malleus died before the daemonhost was finally cornered and bound, deep within the Inquisitor’s fastness in the wastes of Scintilla.
 * The Burning One - The Burning One is one of the most feared daemonhosts in the whole Calixis Sector. The name of the Acolyte who became the Burning One is lost, as is the name of the daemon who resides within him. What is known is that he was created by the radical Inquisitor Kal Xorn as a way to store vast amounts of forbidden lore without tainting the minds of his personal retinue. Originally thrice bound, as only his mental faculties were required, the Burning One at some point acquired the knowledge of how to break his conditioning despite his inability to break the wards binding him inside his human host. The Daemonhost immediately slew Inquisitor Xorn and several of his retinue whose habits and weaknesses he had studied over a course of years. It is believed that his first victim was a young sanctioned psyker who had been enticed to assist in his escape.