"Let us return to your warship, Abaddon Warmaster. I feel your curiosity, your blade-sharp need to understand, and it empowers me. Yet there are words that must pass between us in secret. Trust me for but a few short hours more, and in return I will give you the Key to unlock final and absolute victory."
- —Vashtorr the Arkifane, addressing Abaddon the Despoiler amidst the ruins of the Iron Angels Chapter's Reclusiam.
Vashtorr the Arkifane, lord of the Forge of Souls, confronts several battle-brothers of the Patriarchs of Ulixis Space Marines Chapter.
Vashtorr, also known as Vashtorr the Arkifane, who bears the titles of "Master of the Soul Forges" and the "God in the Machine," is the Greater Daemon of Chaos who rules over the Forge of Souls where Daemon Weapons and Daemon Engines are forged within the Immaterium's Realm of Chaos. Vashtorr serves Chaos Undivided and claims to have no connection to any of the four major Chaos Gods, having come into existence in the Warp as a result of mortals' obsessive pursuit of technological innovation at all costs -- especially inventions that resulted in unexpected and terrible consequences.
Vashtor is the Daemonic demigod of inventors, engineers, scientists and artisans. He is curiosity and innovation shorn of moral conscience and driven to its darkest extremes. Empowered by the ceaseless inquiring of mortal minds, Vashtorr embodies the mortal need to understand and then enslave natural forces to their will, and to eventually achieve technological apotheosis at any cost.
History[]
"Where mesh the cogs of industry, to grind between their ever-turning teeth the flesh and blood and soulstuff of the mortal and the infernal both. Where roars the hungry furnace, its flames hope to devour, its heat to give life from searing crucible unto molten ore and blood-and-bile-a-bubble. Where scratches the quill and clatter the keys, by candle flame and cold-buzzing lumen lit, by desperate hand and mind obsessed, driven, set free by morality discarded. Where sparks the wire. Where writhes the cable. Where blends the flesh and the adamant. Where wakes the engine infernal and where laments the bound and bargained soul. There do you find him. There do you see him, and in the seeing does he know your heart, your mind. Your price. There waits Vashtorr the Arkifane, and damnation is his gift."
- —Description of Vashtorr, a Greater Daemon born of mortals' obsession with the pursuit of technological advance at any cost.
Origins[]
Vashtorr the Arkifane unleashes his wrath upon his foes.
Few mortal servants of any intelligent species know of Vashtorr the Arkifane, for he has manifested only sparingly in realspace across the long history of the galaxy. Why this should be is unclear, but it has made him a seldom-glimpsed figure of fear, a techno-daemonic bogeyman whose occasional appearances herald nightmarish catastrophe.
Some cryptoscholars have claimed that Vashtorr was created amid the reckless arms race of some ancient and galaxy-spanning war. Others posit that he was birthed into the Warp by the horrors of Humanity's Dark Age of Technology, or conversely that he was the author and patron of those horrors. Still others claim that he was greatly empowered in the Warp by technological events such as the birth of the Necrons through biotransference, the "Cursed" 21st Founding of the Adeptus Astartes, and the creation of the Primaris Space Marines.
Master of the Forge of Souls[]
Vashtorr the Arkifane wielding his Daemon Weapon, the Hammer of the Soul Forges.
However Vashtorr came to be, he is neither a formerly mortal Daemon Prince nor a Daemonic entity emanating from one of the four major Dark Gods. He has his own sphere of influence different from theirs, and his own unique role within the wider pantheon of the Realm of Chaos, for he is the master of the Forge of Souls. This colossal metaphysical foundry is a realm of dark iron and steam, of clattering cogs and pounding pistons wherein infernal pacts are sworn and grotesque Daemonic transformations effected.
Any Daemon of Chaos may approach the essence brokers of the Forge of Souls and enter into a pact with them. Some do so seeing a swift route to martial might, thence into the greater favour of their patron deity. Others seek to circumvent the spiritual bonds and lingering shame of a previous banishment from realspace.
Whatever each entity's reasons, Vashtor and his Daemonic brokers are only too glad to forge a binding contract. In exchange for an agreed price of mortal souls reaped and offered up to the soul forges, the entity is fed into the Daemonic machines and transformed into a grotesque melding of war engine and Daemon known as a Daemon Engine, such as a Soul Grinder, a Calamity Engine or an Infernal Bombard.
Other Daemons, less desperate or with less to offer up to the soul forges, are simply enslaved to Vashtorr's will for a time, melding torturously within unholy machineries and joining the ranks of his indentured Daemonic hosts. Such Daemons' bonds are shown by a collar, manacle, ritual chain or bodily mechanistic melding that becomes part of their manifested forms while they remain indebted to the Arkifane.
Unlike other Daemons, it is not in Vashtorr's nature to lie, trick or deceive. His contracts are explicit in their conditions. Instead he leaves it to the monomaniacal nature of the Daemons themselves to entrap them in his service, for with every defeat an indentured entity suffers, so its soul-debt increases; few indeed are the Daemons that have ever escaped their self-inflicted bondage to the Forge of Souls.
Meanwhile, the usefulness of the forces' grotesque war engines to the Ruinous Powers' Daemonic legions, coupled with the danger of being the only Chaos God to lose Vashtorr's allegiance, keeps the Dark Gods' reprisals at bay for the loss of their servants. The Arkifane is the arms dealer of the Great Game, an agent of no single power yet a precarious ally to them all. Yet Vashtorr's activities have nonetheless attracted the ire of other Daemons, most notably Be'lakor, another independent Daemon who serves Chaos Undivided and no individual Chaos deity.
Quite aside from the infernal hosts he can summon to fight for him, Vashtorr is himself a frighteningly powerful Warp entity. Whether reordering the mechanisms of reality to his will, or soaring across the battlefields of realspace amidst storms of empyric lightning, the Arkifane is a demigod of dark artifice and corrupted technology. He is a Daemon of ordered and meticulous evil, whose will is as inexorable as the churning gears of some great and unstoppable machine.
Arks of Omen Campaign[]
During the Arks of Omen Campaign Vash'torr invaded the Dark Angels' fortress-monastery, The Rock, to find another fragment of the Key.
Rarely ever encountered in realspace before the Era Indomitus, Vashtorr has recently become more active, forging an alliance with Abaddon the Despoiler and the forces of Chaos that Chaos Lord commands to seek out the different artefacts that when combined create the Key, a mysterious, ancient weapon said by prophecy to possess so much power that whoever claims it will be able to alter the destiny of the galaxy forever.
It was Vashtorr who created the Arks of Omen voidships from modified space hulks that allowed Abaddon to initiate the series of events known as the Arks of Omen Campaign. Vashtorr became aware of the existence of the Key and believed that if he aided Abaddon in claiming and restoring it, he could use it to increase his own power and ascend to become the fifth major Chaos God.
The Arkifane did not know precisely what form all of these fragments of the Key took, but across the span of many mortal lifetimes Vashtorr had learned that each had their own unique signature in the Warp. This would allow them to be tracked down and once all were found, an infernal ritual, Warp alchemy and inhuman ingenuity could be used to restore the Key.
But Vashtorr realised he needed significant mortal aid to succeed in his quest, since the artefacts were scattered across realspace. This led him to seek out Abaddon the Despoiler, who commanded the mighty Heretic Astartes forces of the Black Legion and many of the other mortal forces of Chaos. Though Abaddon was greatly suspicious of Vashtorr at first, as he was with all Daemons, he agreed to enter an alliance with the Arkifane to restore the Key, after Vashtorr informed him the weapon's power could be used to finally destroy the Imperium and win the Long War against the Emperor.
Afterwards, Vashtorr created the Arks of Omen with the aid of Abaddon's allies among the Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum, and gave them to the Warmaster of the Imperium Nihilus to command. They were designed to both track down the artefacts that were the components of the Key and destroy any who opposed that effort. The fragments of the Key varied greatly in size and shape, from ancient pillars to meteorite-like constructs to cogitator banks. While Abaddon provided several of the Arks of Omen to his own Black Legion officers, he also provided them to other Chaos Lords who swore to aid him in his quest to destroy the Imperium.
The nature of the Key and what power it possesses once it is reassembled remains mysterious. All Abaddon told his followers about it was that once it was refashioned, the Key would transform the servants of the Emperor into greater traitors to His cause than any Chaos Space Marine.
Wargear[]
- Hammer of the Soul Forges - The Hammer of the Soul Forges is a Daemon Weapon that serves as the primary weapon wielded by Vashtorr. But it is more than just a weapon, for it aids him in all his acts of creation and destruction within the Forge of Souls.
Sources[]
- Arks of Omen: Abaddon (9th Edition), pp. 16, 19-23
- Arks of Omen: Vashtorr (9th Edition), pg. 5
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