Ravenous One
"Behold the Ravenous One! Blessed by the Lord of Skin and Sinew, his hunger is unending!"
C'mor Preyborn, Propagandist, Cult of the Ravenous One.[1b]
The Ravenous One was the Corpse Grinder Harvest Lord of the Cult of the Ravenous One, that was active in Necromunda's Hive Primus.[1a]
History
He was once a Corpse Guild worker in Hive Primus's Hive City 313-Gamma's corpse farms, before he was corrupted by the Lord of Skin and Sinew. This was shortly after the Great Rift's birth and after his rebirth as the Ravenous One, the Harvest Lord began a Corpse Grinder Cult within the farms. He made the farms' overseers the first to feed his growing followers, during the unrest that was engulfing the the Hive due to the giant Warp Storm's creation. The Palanite Enforcers later attacked it, but were too late and too few to prevent the Ravenous One's escape down a waste sluice, along with a number of his followers. What followed was a long fall to Primus' Hive Bottom, which ended with the Cult broken bodies surrounded by rotten meat and splintered bones. This was where the Ravenous One's story would have ended, had he not called upon the Lord of Skin and Sinew for aid. The Daemon of Khorne heard this and, as he was not yet done with the Ravenous One, the Lord sent forth his daemonic servants to possess the Cult of the Ravenous One. Soon the Corpse Grinder Cultists' were healed by the Daemons, who now wore their skins, and the Harvest Lord led them on a hunt for flesh to consume.[1a]
By chance, their Daemonic senses discovered a psychic scent at Primus' Hive Bottom, that led the Cult to a hidden House Delaque settlement beneath Sump City. The scent was given off by the House's Psychoterica, which was housed within a structure known as the Confluence of Shadows. Ironically, the Psychoterica had been activated by the Delaque to conduct a psychic Star Chamber meeting about warnings of a coming threat to the settlement. This proved to be Cult of the Ravenous One, but as the Daemonic Corpse Grinders drawn towards the Confluence, House Delaque's Spykers became alerted to their presence. Before the Cult could enter it, they were attacked by the House's waiting forces but, their Daemons negated Delaque's poisoned Needle Gun fire. This allowed the Cult to close in on their attackers, but as the Ravenous One did so, he was ambushed by the Delaque Yithir. Once again being possessed made the Delaque's weapons useless and the Harvest Lord was about to kill Yithir, when he was caught in the psychic grip of a Spyker. Luckily before the artificial psyker could crush him to death, three of his Cultists killed the Spyker. This freed the Ravenous One and his Daemon began healing him. Seeing this caused Yithir to flee, joining the other surviving Delaque who had escaped back to the Confluence.[1a]
The Corpse Grinders pursued them into the chamber that held the Psychoterica, where the Cult confronted its Delaque's defenders. While most who had physically attended the Star Chamber meeting had fled, a handful remained intent on defending their territory to the last. As the Cult approached, however, the Delaque surrounded the single surviving Spyker and lent their connection to the Psychoterica to the wretched creature. The Spyker unleashed a reality bending shockwave that enveloped the Cult in a psychic illusion, before they could attack the Delaque. What was once up became down, stairs coiled away to nowhere and platforms, pipes and gantries drifted free from any tethers. Ensnared within the Spyker's mind maze, the Corpse Grinders sought to tear the Delaque apart, but found them to be nothing but mirages, that would reappear elsewhere. The Delaque meanwhile took advantage of the Cult's altered senses, to use the House's heavy weaponry to kill the Corpse Grinders. Despite this quite a few Delaque were cut down, when the mind maze failed to protect them. It was the Ravenous One that last managed to break free of the mind maze's grasp and put an end to it, by killing the Spyker. With their senses restored, the surviving Corpse Grinders could finally attack the Delaque, and the Harvest Lord unleashed a howl, after his kill. The Delaque Yithir, however, was stalking behind him as he did so and placed a primed plasma grenade into the Ravenous One's open mouth. The resulting explosion killed the Harvest Lord and the Delaque were able to kill the remaining members of the Cult. Though the Cult of the Ravenous One was destroyed, only a handful of the defending Delaque survived the battle with the Daemonic Corpse Grinders.[1a]
Sources
- 1: Apocrypha Necromunda: Sump City Sinking, pgs. 2-6
