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The Black Descent

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Symbol of The Black Descent[1]

The Black Descent are a Dark Eldar Haemonculi Coven of Commorragh.[1]


Overview

The Black Descent have a long-lasting hatred for Bellathonis who used to be a part of their coven.[2]

The coven has a complex hierarchy and an even more complex labyrinth. Each haemonculus within the coven is given knowledge only of the pathways that the masters of the coven want them to know. The deadly traps in the labyrinth are used to keep both intruders as well as other haemonculi who get too curious for their rank.[2]

The Haemonculi of the Black Descent love to lay traps and sit back to enjoy their lethal denouement. These range from the feigned flights and baited ambushes of their realspace raids to thousand-year intrigues that see their rivals fully humbled. To cross the Black Descent is to invite a punishment darkly twisted to fit the crime. One who uses brute force against them may later find himself stung by an insect-sized Wrack, the hyperdrenaline introduced into his bloodstream forcing him into a frenzy so severe he literally tears himself apart. One who delays payment for the Black Descent’s poisons may awake one morning trapped in a Sslyth venom-nest. Even unintended offense can yield retribution – when an ambassador from the Kabal of the Baleful Gaze wrinkled his nose at the stench of the Coven’s dungeons, he soon found himself coughing on transmutative gas. Later that night he sprouted the quivering nostrils of an Ur-Ghul, his eyes sealing over so he could better appreciate the fine bouquet of rot.[3]

The Haemonculi of the Black Descent have constructed a pyramidal labyrinth of glass that hangs inverted beneath the Dark City. Promising captives are thrown into the labyrinth’s sensory deprivation chambers whilst the Covenites leer outside. The only way out is to negotiate the maze’s trap-strewn confines through touch and instinct. Almost all of those that undertake this journey are killed, caught in paradox cubes or falling eternally into Moebius pits as they try to avoid the labyrinth’s bladed convolutions. Those that pass through safely are rewarded with a new life as a Wrack, becoming a part of the Coven forever more.[3]

Images

A The Black Descent Wrack

See Also

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