Vashtorr
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 This article or section is EXTRA heretical. Prepare to be purged. |
- – President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address
"And make us all dance to their song"
"To the tune of starving millions"
"To make a better kind of gun"
- – Iron Maiden, Two Minutes To Midnight
- – Vashtorr, trading barbs with his predecessor
Vashtorr the Arkifane is a daemon unaligned to any of the Chaos Gods who holds dominion over the Forge of Souls; though he has no loyalty to any of the four major Chaos Gods, he has established himself as a demigod by acting as their shared arms dealer, thus making him important enough to deter any of them from trying to attack him. A demigod born from the mortals' drive of curiosity and inquiry, of creation and invention, of obsessive artifice and infernal industry, of imagination, inspiration, innovation and improvisation, and of dreams, designs, data and devices. Of utilising untested and unpractised theorems, agents and technology regardless of conscience, ethics, safety, and regulations in the name of liberated intellect, even if those morality-discarded ideas malfunction and mutate by accident or design. His technological skills have made him not only a figure of adoration among the Dark Mechanicus and Warpsmiths among the dark powers, but also the mastermind behind the newfangled Arks of Omen, weaponized Space Hulks molded by his own flesh that are part of Abaddon's renewed offensive on the Nachmund Gauntlet. The two of them now seek the fragments of an ancient relic known only as "The Key", which if reassembled would give its wielder the power to define the fate of the galaxy itself. This is because the Key would allow its wielder to not just open, but create a portal into a Webway. But the true purpose of the Key involves unlocking a secret vault (known as "The Lock") hidden in the Webway which is apparently jam full of all kinds of weapons and knowledge left behind by the Old Ones from the War in Heaven. All the races created by the Old Ones, who are basically called too stupid by Vashtorr, didn't understand the technology and feared it, and dismantled all they could; the Lock holds all the stuff they couldn't destroy. Among them all is something known as "The Weapon", something so horrible devastating that its use can allow him and Abaddon to destroy the Imperium while providing Vashtorr the push he needs to ascend to as the Fifth Chaos God.
Curiously enough, Vashtorr might actually be more along the lines of Lawful Evil rather than whatever spectrum the big 4 decide to be on any given day. While the contracts he brokers with daemons willing to become Soul Grinders are never exactly fair, he's a stickler for the exact terms of each contract and will always uphold them. Often, it's the contracted daemons who grow too greedy and thus break the terms of their own accord.
While holding considerable power in the Warp, his efforts to become a fifth Chaos God have so far been stymied by a lack of influence over the Materium, and so he sees his alliance with Abaddon as an opportunity to establish himself in realspace. Thus far, the only real opposition he faces is from Be'lakor, who undoubtedly does not like the competition for his own attempts in ascending to godhood. However, like his parents, even he hesitates at making a direct offensive lest he find himself thrown into a pit of thousands of daemon engines.
Notably, there's been no word about his presence in the Mortal Realms. On one hand, his presence is so recent that there was likely no chance for him to even appear in the most recent Chaos Battletomes, meaning that GW has plenty of time to write up some sort of plot hook to add him in and preserve the pan-universal theming of daemons. However, it's also likely that he just won't show up there as the forces of Chaos in that setting don't really have much on the tech angle - but c'mon, there's no way you wouldn't want Warp-corrupted steampunk dwarf zepplins. Also, Hashut is the one filling his niche of "evil god of industry" for fantasy/AoS. Not necessarily. Hashut in both Fantasy and Age of Sigmar is the Chaos God of Tyranny, whereas Vashtorr seems to be more of the embodiment of the innovative spirit. For Hashut, it is not the Dawi Zarr's use of technology that feeds him, but the subjugation and suffering that they use to fuel their infernal forges and their binding of technology with souls of the damned and daemons forever bound within Daemon Engines. Vashtorr does not operate in the same way, as he does not deceive or manipulate, but instead seeks to innovate, modify and grow as people are pushed to ever more dangerous extremes of development. In that sense, Hashut and Vashtorr are just complimentary in that tyranny does not necessitate the harsh conditions of the forge, but in the grim darkness of the far future where technological innovation is dying, the two may overlap more than one would hope.
The big man reveals himself[edit]
Vashtorr didn't just pop outta nowhere on Abaddon's ship. During the War of Beasts, some Black Legion and DarkMech ruffians found a strange data-tome that gave everyone the willies. It was actually a portal that allowed Vashtorr to materialize in realspace. He soon showed the Armless dude how to make terrifying behemoth cruisers, the Arks of Omen. Of course, Vashtorr had his personal ark, the Orac Unleashed.
He tried to besiege the Rock, and almost got to the secret parts of the ship when Be'lakor stepped in and decided to fight Vashtorr instead of the Dark Angels, because Be'lakor didn't like the idea of Vashtorr becoming a God before he did.
In any event, despite the best efforts of the Imperium of Man, Farsight Enclaves, or his demonic rival Be'lakor to stop him he ultimately managed to get all the artifact pieces he needs. So at the end of the Arks of Omen narrative, he is able to form the Key or “Dissonance Engine” as it’s also known by rebuilding the shattered remnants of the Dark Angels homeworld of Caliban and turning it into a Daemon World which Vashtorr rechristened as Wyrmwood. As it turns out the whole damn planet was part of the Key the whole time, with the Trinity of mysterious Warp engines from lore about seven years earlier - Tuchulcha, Plagueheart, and Ouroboros - being brought back from the bus as the last three pieces that form the Dissonance Engine: a machine used by the Old Ones to originally build the Webway. The Dark Angels were as you can well imagine rightly pissed off by this revelation and the fact their home world was now fully a demonic hellhole. However before the Dark Angels or their newly returned Primarch Lion El'Jonson could try and kill Vashtorr or his Chaos allies for this offense, Vashtorr activated the Dissonance Engine and opened a new portal into the Webway that absorbed Wyrmwood and thus allowed him and his allies to escape. Now the rest of the galaxy can only hope and pray that someone amongst them can track Vashtorr down and stop him before he can locate the Webway vault, find the Weapon and uses it to ascend to godhood.
What's Happening Now?[edit]
Naturally, as no one important can follow him into the Webway and him getting the Weapon would shake things up too much, he currently in a limbo-state in GW's writing with the feasible excuse that the Webway is both really too fucking big to check quickly and is filled with Aeldari who'd not want a new Chaos God. So yeah. That said, he has been referenced to a couple times since.
The First was in Crusade: Pariah Nexus book, taking place in the namesake Pariah Nexus; a growing area of space maintain by Noctilith Pylons built by the Necrons that cut of the Warp in the affected region, with the goal of the Silent King, their leader, to have this network spread across the whole galaxy. Plus side to this, no more Warp storms and Daemons. Downside is that this leaves many humans and other lifeforms basically brain-dead, on account of our souls being in the Warp, so they just leave the physical bodies without anything controlling it (if it doesn't outright kill them), leaving a whole bunch of helpless, unresisting human bodies for the Necrons to take to for experiments to become new host bodies for the Necrontyr. Guilliman sends an advanced battle group as part of the Indomitus Crusade to investigate and stop this, led by Belisarius Cawl, to both prepare for Guilliman's arrival and to harvest the Noctilith for the Imperium's "Liminal Abraisers" which counter the Necron Pylons' effect. TLDR is that the Mechanicus and the Necrons get into a one-up competition with each other, throwing increasingly terrifying and forbidden doomsday devices at each other that they usual keep under wraps for reasons; the Necrons due to their code of honor, and the Mechanicus because said weapons are irreplaceable Dark Age of Technology stuff. Also because said weapons end up killing their own allies and themselves along with the enemy. Orikan the Diviner, who arrived at the scene to stop an event occurring brought on by this arms war, goes full panic-mode as he realises he can't stop it, the Necrons Dynasties fight each other, the Mechanicus and Imperial army keep escalating and dying due to broken communications, until it all leads to one guy getting corrupted by Chaos and uses some more DAoT stuff to destroy some Necrons, some Imperials, and a Pylon. The Pylon survives and instead reverses polarity, becoming an amplifier of the Warp instead of a nullifier, and creates a hole to the Warp.
And out the portal arrives Wyrmwood, the event that Orikan tried stop, but which Vashtorr had long-ago set events in motion for. Through these acts of "worship", the technological destruction bought on by those many stubborn individuals pursing their own agendas and the corruption of their brilliant minds, Vahstorr was empowered enough to let him tear a rift into the Pariah Nexus, a space that would otherwise be a death sentence for his kind, leaving the Silent King gob-smacked at the bullshit that just occurred where it by all rights should be impossible. Yes, the Imperium and the Necrons was causing such a ruckus with their doomsday weapons that even a logical being like Vashtorr had to account for a detour in his plans for Godhood just to cash-in on all that action feeding him. And Vashtorr has plans, wanting to turn the Noctilith Pylons for his own uses, and goad the "little king" to great enough lengths to feed him more. Not much currently is known about what will happen, only a later White Dwarf issue reveals that Magnus is watching the area as well and is working to prevent Vashtorr's ascension, not liking his visions of that future. To that end, as the Pariah Nexus is deadly to him and most of the Thousand Sons, his has sent only one of his Thousand Sons along with a large number of ancient pre-Heresy robots from Sortiarius to steal Noctilith from the Mechanicus for his own ends.
Second was in the ending of Rogue Trader. One of your party members, a tech-priest named Pasqal Haneumann, eventually learns he possesses a secret weapon known as Eschatos, which is a special Noosphere signal that can negate machines; it interrupts any life that is "created by the Omnissiah" and can put Machine Spirits to death. It was invented after studying Necron tech by a splinter cult of hive-minded tech-priest philosophers called the Amarnat Collective who became obsessed about "Discontinuing the Cycle" - the Cycle being a metaphor about Mechanicus dogma of wanting to understand everything but yet being too close-minded to accept new inventions or ideas or anything not made by humans like Xenotech, instead preferring to seek out existing human tech and then hoarding it without sharing it, then doing it again when that tech is lost because they were stubbornly guarding it. Retreading the same ground and being trapped by this cycle instead of trying to expand their knowledge. Eschatos was intended to be used against any technology corrupted by enemies, such as another Necron-inspired invention by Amarnat known as "tech-blight" and Amarnat's dabbling with a shard of Mag'ladroth, but Amarnat started wondering if the weapon was a good idea since it would be the perfect weapon to destroy the Adeptus Mechanicus entirely. At end of his quest, depending on his character progression and your choices, Pasqal may decide to both keep Eschatos and not reform the hivemind, remaining as just Pasqal and one who has "earned" the weapon as the Messiah of Discontinuing. At the end of the game, it is revealed that Pasqal, free from his vows from Amarnat, took a squadron of ships with him and left, with the ships turning up decades later in the corrupted sector named the Cauldron, with the ships crews worshipping a heretical image of the Machine God. The figure is described as "adorned with sinister flesh-embedded lumens and golden mech armour, and crowned with clawed wings", with a "grim and belligerent likeness". Yeah, that sounds like Vashtorr alright, and he explicitly names Pasqal as "His unrighteous Messiah". So... Good for him?
The final was in the Custodes 10th Edition Codex, where, under the warnings of an Inquistor, a Company of Custodes with some Sisters of Silence and a Callidus assassin end up investigating one of Jupiter's shipyards. The shipyard is discovered to be filled to the brim with Vashtorr tech-cultists working to corrupt the Imperial ships being made there hidden biomechanoid parasites, and the cult was wiped out in an event known as the "Jovian Purge".
Etymology[edit]
His epithet of 'Arkifane' spells out his role within the Forge of Souls, 'Arki' coming from Ancient Greek and Latin for 'chief or leader' and comes from the older árkhō meaning 'to lead, rule, govern or begin'. While 'Fane' comes from the Latin 'fanum' meaning shrine or temple. So Vashtorr the Arkifane literally means Vashtorr the master of the shrine. Digging into meanings a little you also get Vashtorr 'the first of the shrine', in the ancient Greek/Roman sense of the 'first citizen' being the oldest and most respected man within the Senate and unspokenly the most influential and powerful member. A title that was taken and used by all Roman Emperors for that very reason, to demonstrate that they were the most powerful person in the Senate. Roman Emperors were also deified after death, and later were deified while they were alive and regarded as gods within the Roman pantheon, which is the goal of Vashtorr within the Chaos Pantheon. There is also the 40k angle that every factory the Adeptus Mechanicus makes is also a shrine to the machine god.
So you can read his epithet as: Vashtorr the first, the most powerful, the leader, The God or soon to be God, of the shrine, with shrine understood to be "shrine to the machine", The Forge of Souls.
Crunch[edit]
9th Edition[edit]
As you might expect from the lord of the Forge of Souls, Vashtorr's abilities excel in both empowering allied Daemon Engines and crippling the machines of his enemies. His main ability, Will of the Arkifane, has one of three modes that can be chosen from in each Command Phase. The first one adds +1 to hit to all Chaos Space Marine Daemon Engines (other than aircraft, Characters, and superheavies) within 3" of him, the second causes an enemy unit within 18" to have their guns' range get cut in half, and the last one halves the movement and Attacks of an enemy vehicle within 18".
He's fairly good in a fight himself, with plenty of Wounds, the FLY keyword, Warp Strike, a 4++ invulnerable save, and the ability to reduce incoming damage by 1. His weapons are his claws (a 12" S5 AP-2 flamer) and his hammer (an AP-2 power fist that deals 4 mortal wounds to a targeted vehicle on a 5+). As an Agent of Chaos he can join any Legion or Chaos faction without breaking their mono-faction bonuses, making him a good way of supplementing any army that could use a little extra mechanized oomph (particularly when supplemented by his Army of Renown rules).
