Codex Chaos 2E (1996) EC / Slaanesh Lore

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The Leman Russ battle tank rumbled along the pass, its tracks squealing in protest as the vehicle was driven at speed over the rocky terrain. The steep sides of the gorge ruse up menacingly on either side, the black volcanic walls leaving the pass in permanent shadow. Behind the battle tank came a short column of Imperial Chimeras, the armoured troop carriers’ multi-lasers swivelling to cover the sides of the Pass in case of enemy attack. Inside the Leman Russ, Tank Commander Rosman stared through the vehicle's sights at the boulder-sttewn wilderness ahead of him. His mind was only partially concentrating on the journey, being mainly occupied with thoughts of the Chaos force’s attack on the fort. There were many such isolated outposts and the fort had been built by the frontiersmen of the planet to protect a series of mine-workings from the attentions of the local predatory fauna and belligerent primitive tribesmen.

But why should the place so interest a Traitor Legion such as the Night Lords? Was it just another example of the mindless destruction and wanton havoc-wreaking that so characterised the Chaos Space Marines? Or did the twisted brethren of the Adeptus Astartes have a yet more sinister purpose beyond that of putting another defenceless world to the sword for their foul gods? As soon as the Imperial Guard's headquarters on Purgatory had received the report of the imminent attack on the fort and the request for reinforcements, Colonel Drax had immediately despatched the tank unit under Rosman’s command. Rosman had led numerous assaults on the enemies of the Imperium across the star system of the Ultima Segmentum, from breaking a siege laid by marauding Orks or relieving a Planetary Defence Force from an Eldar attack.

But Chaos Space Marines were something else. Rightly they were held in a position of fear and awe by the soldiers of the Imperial Guard. These damned warriors had defied the Emperor for centuries, gaining invaluable experience in war through a thousand confrontations. Not only that but they marched into battle alongside the grotesque denizens of warp space: creatures with flesh of living metal and blood of liquid fire

“Yea, even though thou pass through the Valley of the Shadow of Death...” Rosman found himself muttering aloud,

“Pardon, sir?” asked the lascannon gunner seated beneath him in the cramped belly of the tank.

“What? Oh, it's just a saying I remember someane telling me from Old Earth, trooper,” Rosman explained. “How far now?” he continued, trying to put the thought of daemons out of his head.

“Thirteen klicks, sir,” the Guardsman replied, checking the instruments in front of him.

“Estimated time till arrival?”

“Eleven minutes, sir.”

The battle tank was suddenly shaken by a deep, rumbling blast as a weapon was fired into the pass. Looking through the sights Rosman saw a section of the gulley wall to the right erupt. Much of that part of the gorge wall proceeded to give way, chunks of rock as big as the Leman Russ tumbling down into the pass, partially blocking the reinforcements’ route. Asecond blast, like a thramming boom, rocked the tank and over the commn-link Rosman heard a cry of anguish from one of the other vehicles. The tank commander scanned the sides of the pass through the tank’s sights but could see nothing. Simultaneously the cliff-face behind the tank crumbled, separating the Leman Russ from the rest of the cavaleade.

“What's going on?” he shouted to his crew.

“Chimera 2’s multi-laser has been hit, sir,” a bolter gunner reported from his station

“By what?” demanded the agitated commander.

''I..I can’t tell, sir. Looks like it was some kind of heavy weapon.”

“All crew on standby!” Rosman ordered. “If you see anything — fire at will!”

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The back of the second Chimera dropped open and the armoured vehicle disgorged its cargo of Cadian troopers amid a cloud of oily smoke. The shot that had knocked out the troop carrier's multi-laser had resulted in a flash-back that caused a secondary explosion inside the vehicle. Clear of the choking smoke, the Guardsmen immediately set about taking up positions around the pass. Trooper Lyle darted over the gravelly floor of the gorge, keeping his body low as he ran, and joined two of his fellows behind the great boulder they were using as cover while they tried to pinpoint the exact position of their attackers. And then they saw then: Space Marines in brilliantly painted power armour standing on the lip of the gorge, the striking contrasts of colours and bizarre patterns daubed on their suits making them all too obvious against the grey skyline. These could only be Noise Marines, Chaos Space Marines who had dedicated themselves lo the worship of the sensual Lord of Pleasure.

Where the power armour of the Emperor’s loyal Space Marines was a pure, uniform hue, the Chaos-distorted ceramite and plasteel plates of the Noise Marines were daubed with a mund-wrenching spectrum of colours. Spots and jagged stripes clashed with fluorescent streaks and bright swirls or colour. Such perverse contrasts and use of colour was enough to turn a sane man’s mind. It all inclicated the extreme forms of stimuli the pleasure-numbed senses of Slaanesh’s chosen required to gain any emotional response from an experience, Intensely-heightened hearing combined with centuries of sensual abuse had left a permanent sear on the psyche of all Noise Marines. It only took a second for Lyle to register all this, which was all the time it took for the Noise Marines to pick their targets. The Guardsmen’s ears were suddenly assailed by a cacophonous wailing that rose and fell in pitch with jarring abruptness. Harmonics formed within the metallic scream and the trooper grimaced in pain as the noise increased in volume. The ground was now vibrating in resonance with the sonic roar.

In showers of crimson sparks or rupturing explosions of white-hot metal shards the weapons systems of several of the other troop carriers were destroyed under the Noise Marines’ barrage. Lyle watched as a squad of shock troops, previously pressed up against the side of the first stricken Chimera, moved out to engage the enemy on the battlefield. At once they were cut down by screeching howls from the Noise Marines’ sonic blasters. Waves of torturous sound ruptured organs, snapped bones and ripped the Guardsmen’s bodies apart. A deep, resounding bass note assailed Lyle’s ears and he was sure that the noise would deafen him. From where he stood, with his hands pressed over his ears to try and block out the banshee wails of the ambushers, the Cadian saw that several of his fellow troopers had wheeled out an autocannon from a motionless Chimera,

Before they even had a chance to use the gun the Noise Marines were firing on them again. Lyle watched in horror, unable to tear his eyes away, as the barrel buckled and the cannon exploded in an impressive display of pyrotechnics. Burning wreckage and charred flesh rained down onto the floor of the pass. The Guardsman desperately looked for the Leman Russ battle tank that had been leading the column of reinforcements. But it was trapped too and under attack from yet more of the brightly painted warriors wielding heavy, long-necked weapons. And then he was screaming himself, through clenched teeth, trying to drown out the sound throbbing inside his skull. With a crack like a thunderclap, the huge boulder shattered. Lacerated by jagged splinters of stone the Cadian stumbled backwards, no longer afforded any protection against the Noise Marines’ sonic weapons.

The agonizing frequencies of the Blastmaster sent conflicting signals spiralling through his nervous system, throwing the Guardsman into a fit of thrashing spasms. Lyle felt one eye and then the other burst inside his head before he was granted merciful release as his body exploded in a red spray that drenched the surrounding rocks.

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Inside the battle tank, Commander Rosman heard the thrumming bass note building in intensity. He took in the scene of carnage through the sight’s monitors as his crew vainly attempted to repel the attackers. The Noise Marines were striding among the blazing wreckage and splattered remains of Cadian bodies. There were no signs of life from any of the troopers. Several figures, their armour patterned in distorted camouflage patterns of orange and purple, were approaching the tank over the rubble of the landslide, huge destructive weapons in their hancls.

There was a sudden, resounding boom and the stranded tank was shaken by a shock wave of incredible force, throwing the men stuck inside around the cabin. Over a long distance the sonic weapons of the Noise Marines would have had little effect against a plasteel hull but at shart range the impact was like the punch of an anti-tank shell. Gears ground painfully as the gunner tried to rotate the turret, suggesting that something essential would buckle if he continued to do so.

“Damage report!” Rosman shouted over the discordant crescendo of the Noise Marines’ assault and the chugging fire of the tank’s heavy bolter sponsons.

*Lascannon’‘s out,” yelled back a crewman, blood pouring from a gash on his forehead, “and the turret’s jammed! We can only fire forwards!”

“And Slaanesh’s curs are behind us and to the sides,” Rosman hissed under his breath.

Howling in ecstasy, their screams of wild abandon reverberating through arrays of strange tubing attached to their helmets, the Noise Marines bombarded the battle tank with another round of ear-splitting pulses of sound from their Blastmasters. Rivets popped free and ricocheted around the interior of the armoured vehicle, inflicting yet more injuries on its occupants. Whipping free of the Leman Russ, strips of track flew off through the air. A heavy bolter exploded before the concussive waves, its ammunition detonating inside the chamber, just as the vehicle’s drive shaft fractured. As the great adamantium rod smashed through motor systems and drive mechanisms the tank was flipped over completely, crashing back down to earth an its crushed turret.

A preat whoop of perverse pleasure went up from the Noise Marine Blastmaster squad now surrounding the overtumed tank. Under such direct attack and with one burst from the mighty weapons after another, the Leman Russ was weakening. The sustained shots sent hatches and gun casings flying until the tremendous stresses were too much for even the battle tank's sturdy chassis. Metal warped, armour fractured and the hull of the battle tank was breached by the sonic barrage. A few Guardsmen, blood gushing from ears, noses and eyes, staggered out of the wreck before falling to the ground unconscious as their brains turned to jelly under the atonal assault.

Slaanesh’s Noise Marines celebrated their crowning achievernent in one last, mighty clashing cadence from their battery of sonic weapons, their screams of exultation melding with the discordant roar into one agonizing cacophony of destructive sound. The Lord of Pleasure had rewarded their loyalty with the death of the Imperial Guard’s greatest weapon.

There would be no reinforcements to relieve the fort. The humans holed up there would have to fight off the hordes of Chaos unaided or suffer eternal damnation.

 

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CHAOS SPACE MARINE TERMINATORS
51 pts per model Chaos Space Marine armies often include a small number of warriors in Terminator armoured suits: very heavy and bulky powered suits with built-in weaponry. This armour is rare and very precious, and therefore only used by veteran Chaos Space Marines who have managed convince their brethren that they should be allowed the honour of using it.




SQUAD
The Squad consists of 3 to 9 Chaos Terminator Space Marines. In addition, the squad may be led by an Aspiring Chaos Champion bought at additional cost from the Characters section above. Aspiring Chaos Champions leading Terminators must be given a suit of Terminator armour.

WEAPONS ARMOUR WARGEAR
Chain-axe and twin bolter combi-weapon Terminator armour (3+ save on 2D6). Up to two models may replace their combi-weapons with a weapon chosen trom the ‘Terminator Heavy Weapons section of the Wargear list. Any number of models may replace one of the bolters on their combi-weapon for either a flamer or a meltagun (+6 points). Any number of models may replace their chain-axe with a weapon chosen from the Terminator Assault Weapons section of the Wargear list

SPECIAL
Chaos Space Marine Terminators may be upgraded to Khorne Berzerker, Plague Marines, Noise Marines or Thousand Sons Marines at the following points cost: Khorne Berzerker +20 pts per model
Plague Marine +20 pts per model
Noise Marine +10 pts per model
Thousand Sons Marine +10 pts per model
See the Forces section for amy special rules that apply to Chaos Space Marine Terminators that belong to these cults. All of the models in the squad must belong to the same cult. Noise Marine Terminators may replace their combi-weapon with a Noise Marine weapon chosen at additional cost from the Wargear list.

 

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DESIGNERS NOTES

“l have seen further than other men it is only because I stood upon the shoulders of giants.” — Isaac Newton

I've always loved Chaos. My corruption began with the first Realm of Chaos book, Slaves to Darkness. The second book (The Lost and The Damned) was still being worked on when I joined the Studio and I actually exercised some of my crude paste-up skills helping to lay it out. These two books fascinated me — all that baroque brutality and renaissance savagery created a unique sense of atmosphere and all-pervasive threat even in the twisted universe of Warhammer 40,000. With eyeball-snapping suddenness its 1995 and the lord high torturers are telling me and Jervis that is time to write Codex Chaos somehow summarising two 200+ page books into around a quarter of that space. Hmmmmm. First of all we began by looking at the original Realm of Chaos books. We concluded that they evoked an atmosphere with the way they looked and the plethora of excellent quotations in them (many of which we've lovingly requoted in Codex Chaos). The hard information they actually contained was split across the Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer fantasy battle games Unfortunately by now it was somewhat dated and massively overdetailed with numerous random tables with no real application in the game itself. While it is always painful to take things out of a publication, some of it just had to go.

The biggest bugbear was how to supply army lists for the manifold armies of Chaos in one handy Codex. In the originals there were separate army lists for each of the major Chaos Powers in Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 but they repeated a lot of troop types in each one. We decided that we could turn these into a single all-singing and all-dancing list. Players who wanted to create forces dedicated to particular Powers would have the capacity to do so but other players who wanted to sample the full Chaos experience would be happy. The other problem was that the Realm of Chaos lists used to create rather, erm, eclectic armies which didn’treally have a focus. This was carried across into the start “Black Codex’ army list in the Warhammer 40,000 game where you have Beastmen, Cultists, daemons and Chaos Space Marines all squashed together. This is fine in principle but when turned into a 1,500 point army it tends to look rather bitty on the tabletop.

We wanted Chaos forces to have a strong theme so we looked at what had gone before and what people chase tor their Chaos armies in the “95 Warhammer 40,000 tournament. This gave us one overwhelming answer, Chaos Space Marines. Every army contained Chaos Space Marines and nearly all included daemons as well. Working with this we decided to make the main army list in Codex Chaos depict a raiding force of Chaos Space Marines from the Eye of Terror, Any daemons in a force could be summoned up from the warp during the game using special rules, Hawking this idea proved players were very taken with the idea of using an army of evil Space Marines. We were in business.

‘The next things to worry about were how to make the Chaos Space Marines different from Imperial Space Marines: was it to be simply a case of different coloured power armour or something more? Obviously something more. And what about the people who like armies of Cultists, daemons and Beastmen? Ignore them and we could end up being lynched.

Jervis cannily suggested that we could put two ‘appendix’ army lists into the Codex, These would cover the scions of Chaos which weren't present in the Chaos Space Marine section. These two extra lists (for Daemon World armies and Chaos Cults} proved to be an excellent way of showing what the forces of Chaos could be like. They could also be allied together with Chaos Space Marines to create the kind of armies you got with the Black Codex and the early Realm of Chaos books.

To me the Chaos Space Marines needed to be characterised as a threat reaching back from the Imperium’s past, a threat which had refused to lie down and become part of history. This is in part why the gods of Chaos are less pivotal in Codex Chaos; we felt that the motivations of Chaos Space Marines should remain their own, no matter how debased and vile. Though the corrupted Space Marines of the Traitor Legions make excellent champions for the gods of Chaos. they are not pawns and have their own agendas of vengeance, empire-building, vindication or arcane study which give them purpose

The Chaos special characters have all been written and designed with this idea very much at the fore. Hopefully they succeed in reflecting the different aspects of obsession which have driven them onward and how these powerful individuals have reforged their existence in the service of darkness. The insane devotion of Kharn to the Blood God illustrates one extreme, the adarnant refusal of Abriman to accept his damnation quite another. Even the daemon princes have not been created us an exercise in creating mega-monsters but to give an insight into the way daemons can be personalities too, with their own idiosyncrasies and foibles which make then unique.

This idea was also carried across into the character of the Traitor Legions themselves. In the original Realm of Chaos books four of the Legions (World Eaters, Emperor's Children, Death Guard and Thousand Sons) had been written up in detail and the others were ignored. To carry this through we made the four Legions already detailed the ones which had become completely dedicated to Chaos Gods. and had (naturally) received the physival rewards of those Gods. It was easy to imagine that some of the most deranged and fanatical individuals from all of the Legions would dedicate themselves entirely to the Chaos Gods and so Khorne Berzerkers, Plague Marines, Noise Marines and Tyeentchian Sorcerers were spawned.

Another interesting spin we came up with was to make Chaos Space Marine forces feel as if they had been exiled to the Eye of Terror ten millennia before the Imperium’s ‘present’ day. Though the technological advancement of the Imperium moves at the speed of an aged tortoise ten thousand years was bound to bring some changes. This suggested limiting the Traitor Legions’ weaponry to some of the ‘older’ types and making others dangerous, experimental precursors of the guns used by Imperial Space Marines. This, combined with the older patterns of power armour the designers have used, gives the Chaos Space Marine miniatures a dark, archaic feel which contrasts well with the clean, upright loyalist Space Marines.

Well that’s probably enough babble from me. Before you go I should emphasise that although I've talked about the ideas that went into Codex Chaos the talented individuals who made this all work are the miniature designers, the artists, production guys and the figure painters. Their enthusiasm for Chaos in general and Codex Chaos in particular has made it a real pleasure to be a part of and they are the ones who have carried the whole book further beyond my wildest expectations. I'd also like to thank my hairdresser and wardrobe department, my mother and all the little people...

 

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ABADDON THE DESPOILER, WARMASTER OF CHAOS

Abaddon the despoiler. Abaddon the arch-fiend. Abaddon who has led Black Crusades without number against the horrified worlds of mankind's fragile Imperium. An inhuman monster whose name has become a tenfold curse for the ten thousand years of terror he has rained upon the galaxy he once helped conquer in the name of the Emperor.

Long ago Abaddon was a great hero, a mighty warrior who battled in humanity’s wars of expansion and retribution. He was captain of the Luna Wolves’ 1st Company during the Great Crusade and followed Horus from ancient Terra to conquer the distant stars, The Luna Wolves battled across uncounted worlds to free them from alien tyranny or the taint of Chaos and Abaddon was ever at the fore. He worshipped the Warmaster like a god and Horus treated him as his most favoured son, indeed some whispered that he was in truth the clone-son of the Primarch himself, product of the earliest Primogenitor experimentation. None were prouder than he when the Emperor renamed the Legion the Sons of Horus in honour of the Warmaster’s accomplishments in the Ullanor Crusade.

When the Heresy came it was clear that Abaddon’s loyalty was to his Primarch and not the distant Emperor of Mankind He led the Terminator armoured Sons of Horus in campaigns on Istvaan, Yarant and in the siege of the Imperial palace on Earth. Abaddon fought Imperial Fists Terminators aboard Horus’s battle barge in the final trap the Warmaster laid to destroy the Emperor, and his anguish at Horus’s defeat in that final conflict drove him deeper into madness and hatred than any mortal should ever sink.

Abaddon Jed the Sons of Horus in a furious counter-attack that reclaimed the body of his beloved Warmaster and drove the Imperial forces from his battle barge. For himself he took Horus’s lightning claw, tearing it from the Warmaster’s armour with a howl of hatred which echoed through the great ship. As the rebel fleet scattered in confusion Horus’s great battle barge disappeared into warp space and set course for the Eye of Terror. Abaddon passed from mortal space and into legend.

When Abaddon returned it was at the head of a diabolic horde which ravaged entire systems around the Eye of Terror before the Imperium could muster the strength to halt it. Planet after planet fell in an apocalypse of fire and steel before his traitor legionaries. The hordes of Abaddon were only driven back at a bitter cost by the combined efforts of Titan Legions and Space Marine Chapters and this was but the first of Abaddon’s “black crusades” against the Imperium. Abaddon dreams of forging a diabolic empire of his own from the blazing ruins of the shattered Imperium. Each world, each city destroyed, is a step closer to wiping the canvas clean so that he can make his mark upon the galaxy.

During the first Black Crusade Abaddon made many bloody pacts with the infernal powers. In ‘he crypts below the Tower of Silence on Uralan Abaddon recovered a daemon sword of prodigious power. He battled his way through the haunted labyrinth to the great inner chamber where the blade had languished in stasis for millennia. With the howling daemon blade in his fist Abaddon became nigh on unstoppable, Whole cities were burned in sacrifice to the ever-hungry daemons of Chaos, and entire armies were torn apart by gibbering warp entities, Abaddon’s power swelled to inhuman proportions as the gods of Chaos rewarded him lavishly and he undertook acts of fiendish bravery which horrified those who stood against him,

At El’ Phanor he led the charge against the gates of the Citadel of Kromarch. The Kromarch had built his fortress well. It had only one gate and that was solid adamantium fully three metres thick. Only one in ten of those that followed Abaddon through the barrage of fire from the walls reached the gates and there they were trapped by heavy bolters to left and right. But Abaddon held aloft his daemon sword, black fires burning along its edges, and swept it down with a deafening bellow of fury. The gates were harder than diamond and stronger than steel but they split like cordwood before that blow and daemons feasted on the Kromarch and his kin that night.

When the Blood Angels joined battle against the horde at Mackan Abaddon singled out the sons of Sanguinius with cold, implacable fury. He led a band of Khorne Berzerkers into the teeth of the Blood Angels’ Devastator positions. Only a handful of the Berzerkers reached the hilltop strongpoint but even the Blood Angels’ own assault troops could not dislodge the frenzied warband and recapture the bodies of their fallen comrades.

Abaddon has led twelve Black Crusades against the Imperium. Some have been great invasions of whole Legions of the lost and the damned, others have been vicious raids with only a few companies of the the mast deadly Chaos Space Marines al his command. Each attack has sent the Imperium recling and ravaged worlds close to the Eye of Terror. The High Lords of Terra five in fear of the day that Abaddon unites all of the Traitor Legions into an unstoppable horde and returns to play out the last acts of treachery begun by Horus ten thousand years ago.