Chaos World Encyclopedia

[Charles Flynn]

Taurica should've been happy.

That's what everyone told her, at least.

"You should be happy!" the people she talked to about it would say. "You're a mamono with a handsome hero for a husband, a steady business, plenty of sex, seven beautiful daughters! Plenty of monstergirls would kill to be in your position!"

And she'd laugh and fall in line. Of course she was happy! What sort of mamono wouldn't be happy, living like this?

She was proud of her breasts, because she was a holstaur, and all holstaurs were proud of their breasts. She enjoyed producing milk, because holstaurs loved producing milk. She loved sex. She loved her husband. She loved sex with her husband. She was a mamono, of course she would behave this way. The Demon Lord had decreed it.

But… even if she did all those things…

She felt hollow. She had always felt hollow, since the day she was born.

Nothing filled the hole in her soul.

Nothing she did, nothing about living as the Demon Lord decreed felt real. None of it felt like who she was meant to be. Nothing.

She tried many new hobbies and positions. She tried to divorce her husband, before being politely told by the local mayor (a succubus, of course, because succubi were natural authority figures, by the Demon Lord's decree) that mamono didn't do divorce, since they were, by the Demon Lord's decree, naturally attracted to their soulmates and always picked the exact right person to spend the rest of their life having sex with on the first try. (She was then told to try having more sex, and see if that fixed the problem, just like when the family wagon broke a wheel and she had tried looking around town for a repairwoman.)

Sometimes…

Sometimes, late at night, staring at her smiling, sleeping husband and feeling so hollow inside, she had… treasonous thoughts.

What would her life be like, she couldn't help but wonder, if she'd been born in the Bad Old Days, before the current Demon Lord had risen to power? Would she be a woman? Would she be empty?

And how many other mamono felt empty, too?

How many other mamono's smiles were fake?

How many other mamono stayed up late into the night, lying in bed and wondering?

Of course, the corruption of the Demon Lord raging through her system wouldn't permit her to have those thoughts for long. They'd fade away with a mental suggestion of 'try having more sex, see if that fixes it.'

But the emptiness remained.

---

Lightyears away, titanic ships clashed, some serving a corpse-god on a Golden Throne, others beneath the banner of the eight-pointed star, for sickness, excess, violence, and hope (most treacherous and wicked of the Four).

The results of the battle do not matter to this story.

All that does matter is that, during the fight, a few escape pods on a Black Legion vessel ejected into the Warp, in the direction of a hidden Aeldari resort world left unattended by its true masters for far too long (although a few Drukhari did still swing by to rape, murder and torture the inhabitants every once in a while. Currently, their biggest source of kicks was pretending to be sex-addled morons like the mamono, and seeing just how much rampant cruelty, brutality, and wanton murder they could pass off as just being really clumsy. "Oh, I'm sorry Miss Demon Lord, I didn't mean to peel and core his dick like an apple, my quantum penis-flenser just fell off my belt at a really bad time! I'm sure that if you give me another chance, I can definitely get this sex thing right the next time, promise!")

And with them would come blood, fire, and plague.

---

Krakoom!

The world shuddered, and Taurica's husband shot up in bed besides her. "What was that?"

Taurica shrugged, then got out of bed and started to pull on a bathrobe. "Dunno. Guess we should find out."

Maybe it would fill the emptiness.

Maybe it wouldn't.

Wasn't like she hadn't already tried a lot of things, only for them to not pan out. What was one more?

Her husband followed her out, and together, they stared at the distant smoke trail.

"A meteor?" her husband asked.

She walked on, into the forest.

Her husband followed her.

She heard sounds like nothing she'd ever heard before, as she walked closer.

And then, she saw it.

An enormous metal landing craft of some sort, festooned with dark and terrible runes.

And before the landing craft, two giants in blood-red armor, ten feet tall, each, locked in a duel to the death.

"Blood for the Blood God!" one roared, as he smashed a whirring axe into his brother-giant's side.

"Skulls for the Skull Throne!" the other bellowed, driving his own whirring axe into his brother-giant's skull, killing him, before collapsing, panting.

"Oh gods, are you alright?" Taurica's husband asked, rushing forwards to the fallen giant's side. The giant spat something in an incomprehensible tongue, and batted him away, sending Taurica's husband into a tree with the sound of several ribs cracking.

Taurica didn't care. Instead, as the red plated giant lurched to his feet and stumbled over to finish her husband off, she walked right past him.

Between where the two giants had been fighting was a sword, embedded into the ground blade-first. It thrummed with unholy power, its bloodthirsty song calling to the emptiness of her soul.

Its rich red song warred with the Demon Lord's corruption in her veins, and she was drawn out between the two.

Two roads stretched out before her.

For the first time in her entire life, she could choose.

And so, she chose.

She chose blood.

She chose skulls.

She chose fire and rage and butchery.

She. Chose. KHORNE.

The giant turned, as her hand wrapped around the daemonblade, and she drew it forth to meet him, its weight feeling like a part of herself that she'd been missing her entire life.

She charged.

He charged.

The clash of steel between them made her feel more alive than anything else that came before it.

They danced, sweat and steel and bulging muscle moving as they circled around each other, every last movement devoted to nothing more than killing the enemy before them, as Daemonblade and chainaxe clashed once, twice, thrice-

And then, the opening. She drove the Daemonblade into the gap between her enemy's helm and chestplate, driving straight through her foes neck out to poke out of the back of his neck.

Yet still, he spoke to her. "The blade's name," he said, with his last gaps. "Is Faceflenser. Wield it well, warrior."

She found, in that moment, that she loved this nameless giant from another world more than she had anyone else in all her life, as she killed him. Because she killed him. Because he fought her. Because he respected her.

She would offer his skull to Khorne, as Faceflenser's whispering voice suggested. Such an opponent deserved no lesser honor.

"You saved me," her husband said, his wheedling, worthless voice like the buzzing of a gnat in her ears. "You really are the best wife I could ever ask for. Could you help me up?"

---

She walked away from the remains of her burning home, the skull of her husband clinking against those of her children as she walked.

Eight skulls on her belt. Khorne's sacred number. But these were not for the Blood God. These skulls were hers. Her husband's. Her children's. The skulls of her space-born saviors were offered to the Blood God, that they might be remembered as worthy warriors ought.

As she'd killed them, for the first time in her life, she'd felt the void in her heart filled. Just a little.

Just a little.

And so, she walked down the road to town once more. Not for advice from those who lied about the hollowness of their own hearts as they denied the emptiness of hers.

She marched to kill for Khorne.

 

[Charles Flynn]

The meteor which birthed the Blood Bull, and the Bull's subsequent campaign of slaughter, went relatively unnoticed through the wider world. Eyes would not drift to the new Chaos Champion and the growing warband of Khornate mamono (and even a human hero or two) that joined as the Blood Bull's campaign of slaughter progressed. Not until the Bull had been rampaging for weeks.

Because the Khornate escape pod which freed Taurica from the Demon Lord's chains of corruption was the second such pod to land on the world that was once part of a popular Aeldari tourism chain of resort planets.

And the first had already made quite the splash.

---

DOOM. DOOM. DOOM, rang the bells attached to the two Plague Doctors' carapaces.

"It's been quite a while we've been walking, hasn't it, brother?" Brother Bubonitrox said cheerfully, as the very sound of his armor's bells ringing made the plantlife around him wither and die.

"Why, yes it has, brother," Brother Arsenicus agreed merrily, his bloated, rotting innards letting out a burst of toxic gas through his rectum so potently vile that it broke through his armor's decayed seals to kill everything behind him, reducing already brown and rotting greenery to dust.

"Do you think this planet is uninhabited?" Bubonitrox asked. "Since we've had so little luck finding people?"

"Have faith, brother, have faith!" Arsenicus said with a merry chuckle. "Grandfather provides!"

As he spoke, another bird made the mistake of coming too close, and some of the chuckling Plague Doctor's foul-smelling, molasses-like saliva droplets landed in the poor bird's eye. It began to desperately fly away as fast as possible, unknowingly carrying the diseases of Nurgle along with it to the wider world, as so many birds had before it.

"I suppose that that's true enough, brother," Bubonitrox agreed. "Nurgle provides." Then, he stopped. "Why, brother, do you hear what I hear?"

Arsenicus stopped, straining his ears. Then he heard it. A distant burbling. "Water source?"

"Water source," Bubonitrox confirmed.

"Water source!" both Plague Marines chorused in joyous unison.

"First one there gets to befoul it with their bodily fluids!" Arsenicus cheered, charging towards the sound of water.

"Oh, no fair, brother!" Bubonitrox complained, also taking off at a run. "You got a head start!"

"All's fair in plague and war, brother!" Arsenicus called behind him, as he pushed through the trees and branches ahead of him to find.

A voluptuous woman comprised of slime. Which was making the burbling sound.

"Ugh, false alarm!" Arsenicus called back. "Just some sort of weird xeno!"

"Really?" Bubonitrox asked, bursting through the trees to check that his brother wasn't just trying to trick him. "So it is. Ugh. Disappointing. I was rather hoping to contribute to another big infection vector."

"We'll get 'em next time, brother, don't worry," Arsenicus said, patting his brother on the shoulder. "Remember, Grandfather provides."

Meanwhile, the slime mamono had been trying to figure out how to have sex with the two giants before it. Metaphorically shrugging, it leapt up onto Arsenicus and began trying to commence semen extraction, as was its' species' wont.

"Aw, look!" Bubonitrox said cheerfully, pointing to the liquid lifeform attempting to hump his brother's filth-encrusted, heavily radioactive codpiece. "It's trying to get Grandfather's gifts for itself! Don't worry, little xeno, Grandfather tells us that it's always nice to share, even with disgusting subhuman filth like you! Because Grandpa Nurgle loves everyone equally!"

"Why, I'm happy to help you!" Arsenicus agreed, unlatching and pulling off his helmet to peer down at the liquid lifeform trying to worm its way under his armor. "Here little guy, open wide!"

And then he opened his own jaws wide and retched out a stream of faintly glowing vomit onto the slime.

"I'm pretty sure that one's female, actually," Bubonitrox said contemplatively, hand on his helmet's chin.

"Really?" Arsenicus asked, refastening his helmet.

Pain, pain, pain! The slime was in pain! The filth on the man's armor had first made her feel sick, but the vomit made her feel pain!

"It's quite obvious," Bubonitrox said. "You really mean to tell me that you couldn't tell?"

"Eh, mortals mostly look the same to me, and the same goes for xenos," Arsenicus admitted. "Like, I have no idea how they can tell each other's genders apart reliably enough to regularly reproduce. Part of me thinks that they have no idea either and they're just flipping a coin every time they try to talk another member of the species into reproducing with them."

Unclean, defiled, it was spreading, diffusing, corrupting her! PAIN!

"It's the chest, brother," Bubonitrox said, hand on his face. "The chest. Females tend to have very pronounced chests."

"Are you sure?" Arsenicus said doubtfully. "She could just be Slaaneshi. Slaaneshis tend to have a lot of pectoral fat, too."

PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!

"The Slaaneshis have those mutations because it's a common sexually dimorphic trait," Bubonitrox said, annoyance actually starting to overcome his typical Nurglish cheer. "They're all about experiencing all kinds of sensation, so Slaanesh frequently gifts them the ability to experience both male and female sexual pleasure."

"Oh, so that's where they get it from," Arsenicus said thoughtfully. "I thought it was just them being weird, as usual. Huh. I guess you learn something new every century, huh?"

Let the agony stop! Let it stop, let it stop, let it stop, please!

"You really didn't know?" Bubonitrox asked incredulously. "You're not just pulling my leg, here?"

"Really, I didn't know!" Arsenicus said defensively. "Bear in mind, it's been quite some time since I saw humans that weren't plagued into unrecognizability or running away from me as fast as their legs could carry them."

And Nurgle gave her peace.

"The last platoon of Guardsmen we killed was from an all-female regiment," Bubonitrox said. "And you seriously didn't notice?"

"Oh, really?" Arsenicus said. "I did notice that they were pretty out-of-shape. I suppose that'd explain it."

She loved the Fly Lord. She would serve Grandfather with all her being.

"The- The hell do you mean they were out of shape!" Bubonitrox said incredulously. "They didn't seem all that out-of-shape to me when they were sprinting towards us through a hail of bolter fire and air that was literally melting their skin to stab us with those bayonets of theirs.

"But their chests were all fat," Arsenicus noted.

She slithered away, her body congealed by Grandfather's blessings into a slow-flowing puddle of filth and disease, to share the Fly Lord's blessings with all.

"Their chests were supposed to be fat! They were female!" Bubonitrox said. "That didn't make them out of shape!"

"Really?" Arsenicus said. "Wow. What strange and marvelous creatures. We should vivisect the next one we find, to better understand them!"

"Well, I don't see why not," Bubonitrox said congenially. "Oh, we lost your little slimy friend."

"What? No! I was hoping to keep it as a pet!" Arsenicus said, sobbing out tar-like tears so riddled with toxins and diseases that they could probably instantaneously kill a Guardsman on contact.

"Chin up, brother," Bubonitrox said, patting Arsenicus on the shoulder. "We'll keep the next one we run into instead."

"Okay," Arsenicus said. "I just hope the little guy is okay out there."

---

"Don't underestimate the slimes, rookie!" Chuck the Paladin warned his underling. "They may just be starter mob trash, but once they jump onto you, they won't rest until they've defiled your chastity by ruthlessly extracting your vital fluids!"

"Yessir!" Rory the Thief (his class title, he'd never actually stolen a thing in his life) said. "Um, what do they look like?"

"Like glowing blue transparent women of ridiculously jiggly proportions!" Chuck the Paladin said. "And always remember, rookie, that even if they seem like attractive women, they are abominations unto the Chief Goddess, eternal enemies of all humankind! No matter how much you may want to just… just throw them down and have your way with the infernal trollops, you must stay strong and RESIST! Such thoughts are the Demon Lord's vile, heretical corruption that creeps through your mind and you can't stop thinking about it, even if you know that they're wrong, and- Goddammit, where did I put my whip, I need to get the bad thoughts out again!"

"So, they don't look like congealed puddles of filth and disease, then," Rory the thief said.

"No, don't be ridiculous, rookie," Chuck the Paladin said. "All monsters are attractive, female, diabolical strumpets from hell, whose supple, ample forms taunt you late into the night, no matter how hard you whip yourself to try and get them out of your brain, but you have to keep whipping yourself, because you're a hero, you need to be strong, and kill them, kill them all so they'll stop tormenting your sleepless fantasies, and-"

"Um, so if all monsters are sexy women, why is there a puddle of congealed filth and disease sneaking up on you?" Rory the Thief asked.

"Why is there a wh-" Chuck the Paladin started as he turned around, only for the world's first Chaos Slime of Nurgle to leap at his helmetless head. "AGGGGHHH! IT'S MELTING MY FACE! IT'S MELTING MY FACE! HELP ME, ROOKIE! HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

---

"I'm sure she'll be fine," Bubonitrox reassured his anxious brother. "After all, she's got Grandfather on her side, doesn't she?"