"The sole thing that your kind is good for, mon-keigh, is your ability to suffer. I have long been surfeited with physical pain -- your kin provide it in abundance from their cages in Commorragh. The pain of the soul, on the other hand...is a rare delight."
- —Marazhai Aezyrraesh
Marazhai Aezyrraesh, dracon of the Kabal of the Reaving Tempest, now unwilling ally of the Rogue Trader of House von Valancius in the Koronus Expanse. Marazhai has much to teach his mon-keigh ally about the nature of depravity and cruelty.
Marazhai Aezyrraesh is a Trueborn Drukhari dracon of the Kabal of the Reaving Tempest, which is active in the Koronus Expanse of the Segmentum Obscurus. Aezyrraesh would later join the retinue of the Rogue Trader of House von Valancius, though it was never anything but an alliance of convenience with the completely untrustworthy Drukhari warrior.
The Drukhari are considered among the most cruel and malicious of xenos that threaten the people of the Imperium. They are a degenerate kindred of the ancient Aeldari xenos species, a dark society of torturers and raiders, striking out at the galaxy's inhabitants from their labyrinthine shadow-realm of Commorragh in the Webway. Selfish, prideful, arrogant and murderous, the Drukhari are an utterly self-serving people.
Their rulers reign over their kindred with the utmost cruelty and intimidation, for only the fear of death can keep the Drukhari in line. Their subjects are torn between their own ambitions that urge them to backstab their own and a hatred of their common enemies that pushes them into fragile alliances and shaky agreements. The laws of this fractured society are known only to the Drukhari themselves -- and even they often become victims of their own intrigues and games, having faltered in their judgment or one of their plots.
Marazhai Aezyrraesh, a dracon of the Kabal of the Reaving Tempest, is a true scion of Commorragh, who is driven by an insatiable lust for violence and power over others -- things which he achieves through subtle cunning, shady deals, and -- to his great delight -- carnage and the agonising but delicious torture of his enemies. Everything changed for the arrogant Drukhari when another raid by his kabal in realspace went awry, and Marazhai realised that this time it was he who was being hunted. It was time to strike back, not wait for the enemy to get ahead.
But the intricacies of Commorragh's intrigues and machinations are different from the rules of these rampant and bloody slave raids, and the most sophisticated plan can fail if one of your tools is an overly feisty and underestimated Rogue Trader...or if one of the apex predators of Commorragh, with whom you struck a dark alliance, decides not to hold up his end of the bargain.
Stripped of everything that once belonged to him, Marazhai received one final favor -- to perish to the delight of his kin, feeding their insatiable psychic hunger with his exquisite pain. This fate is unlikely to suit the proud Kabalite Warrior of the Reaving Tempest, and he has one last chance to avoid it -- to enter into an alliance with yesterday's enemy. If this uneasy union holds together, if the doomed find their way out of Commorragh, if this Drukhari, a child of the Webway, survives in realspace...then the fallen dracon will have a shred of hope: one day he might reclaim the shards of what he once considered his own or follow the path of bloody revenge as someone with nothing to lose.
The rut of daily life on a Human voidship can be unbearably dull for a creature of such different customs and dark appetites -- and there is none more inventive in devising twisted entertainment than a bored Drukhari. Since only the Rogue Trader is worthy of any attention amid the surrounding Human rabble, it will not be difficult for them to attract Marazhai's special consideration.
A former preything can just as easily be turned into an amusing plaything...or, if the chosen rules dictate, roles can change completely. For a reckless -- or unwary -- Rogue Trader willing to indulge Marazhai's debauched nature, he has much to share on the subject of depravity and cruelty -- such things might just leave a permanent mark on the soul of a willing and receptive mon-keigh.
History[]
Creatures of malice and avarice that dwell within the wounds of the galaxy, never has there been a more apt description of the Drukhari kindred of the Aeldari.
They are the penultimate of an uncaring, ruthless galaxy that preys upon the unsuspecting and defenceless. Pain is their meat and suffering their wine, the psychic sustenance by which they stave off their ultimate end at the hands of the Dark God She Who Thirsts who dwells beyond the thin skin of realspace. Feeding off the misfortune of other intelligent species, they are held together by the fact that every other species that dwells within the galaxy would turn on them the moment they could.
But these alliances of convenience, shaky at the best of times, run contrary to the inherent perfidious, backstabbing nature of the Drukhari. Yet they follow the byzantine rules of their wretched society of the great Webway city of Commorragh, living in a constant politically cutthroat arena while grappling with the far greater civilisations they prey upon.
Among those high-rung players is Marazhai Aezyrraesh, a dracon or officer of the Kabal of the Reaving Tempest and a true scion of Commorragh.
But something unexpected has happened and the balance he has worked hard to achieve has been thrown into disarray. For while he has mastered the political space of the Drukhari's realspace slave raids, the rules of Commorragh society operate under truly incomprehensible logic that would sooner end in his corpse thrown out into a gutter if so much as even a single one of his political pawns is misaligned. This makes his position even more precarious as, in taking steps to protect himself, he must rely upon the unpredictable and mercurial nature of a Human Rogue Trader to ensure his next steps play out smoothly.
But politics is a dangerous game with life, sanity and sanctity on the line. And sometimes, the people taking chances and playing the game well are those who lose most often -- what might become of a Drukhari when their only lifeline is the one they used?
Before coming to rely upon a mon-keigh, it would be generous to say the heir to the von Valancius dynasty and Marazhai had a turbulent relationship -- anything less would be quite abnormal. Drukhari raiders always want to pursue that which others have, and the Drukhari have very little without an ample supply of slaves captured from other intelligent species and stolen goods. But the dynastic worlds of a Rogue Trader and all that they have to offer can, at times, prove too tempting a target to resist. Even more so when they are defended by someone like the Craftworld Aeldari Ranger Yrliet Lanaevyss who seems more than capable of providing rich entertainment to a cruel, capricious soul. But things seldom pan out well when so many moving parts are involved in a plan.
Now Aezyrraesh's once entertainment may well be his only safe haven from that which once served him. However, trust is not something easily bought, even more so when the one trying to earn the trust is by their very nature untrustworthy. But strange circumstances make for strange bedfellows. And only time will tell now whether this relationship with the Rogue Trader might have a chance to bud into something more or will end with one at the other's throat.
Psychically energised by the pain and suffering of their foes, Drukhari delight in making sport of battlefields in which their lessers are fighting for their lives. They find a sickening glee in watching them cower and scramble while trying to mount some kind of desperate defence or heroic last stand. Only to then have it picked apart by the drug-fueled mania of the various cults that dominate Commorran society. In this way, Marazhai's unique Drukhari origin offers a special trait that separates him from the rest that empowers his ability to act in battle even whilst gripped by great pain.
Personality[]
Love, both the concept and word, is anathema and incomprehensible to the debauched and depraved way of life the Drukhari lead with gleeful abandon. They are capricious creatures who value themselves above all else. Whether it be toward servicing their obsessions or furthering their own political ends, they seldom engage in the frivolities that their slaves dwell amidst to make palatable their servitude.
However, there may well be something to find within the blackened hearts of these cantankerous denizens of Commorragh who dwell within the wounds of the galaxy. And for Marazhai, it matters little whether his potential sexual partners are male or female. He may well respond to the romantic advances put toward him by a Human, but pursuer beware the utterly sadistic, selfish and perverse whims of the Drukhari.
Beyond the ideals of utter selfishness and whatever whim may strike them at a given moment, Marazhai, like any Drukhari, subscribes to no higher form of belief or morality beyond whatever is most convenient to him to maximise his own pleasure, power and position at the time. This outlook is somewhat similar to that of his Aeldari counterpart in the Rogue Trader's service, Yrliet Lanaevyss, his Asuryani cousin, but divorced from any notion of protecting the wider species.
As such, Aezyrraesh subscribes to no conviction or form of belief that Humanity might recognise or understand, and therefore he is beyond any classification of beliefs that the Inquisition might make, save perhaps for an equal hatred of the mortal and Daemonic servants of Slaanesh, the Chaos God of pleasure and pain who seeks to swallow every Aeldari soul. obviously, the Drukhari's utter depravity renders them utterly heretical in the eyes of the Emperor's servants even if they can be used as allies of convenience.