Editing Blood Gorgons (section)

==Notable Characteristics and Practices==
Created during the Cursed Founding, they either committed some act of heresy, decided they weren't being appreciated enough by the [[Imperium]] and promptly left to do their own thing, or, it is occasionally implied in the books (but never stated outright), did nothing wrong, but were declared ''excommunicate traitoris'' by the Inquisition because reasons. "Now," they inhabit a Space Hulk called the ''[[BattleTech|Cauldron Born]]''. This is not your ordinary battle-barge, even by the multi-kilometre-long standards of 40K. Not only being fuckhueg, it's a warp-tainted monstrosity composed of Emperor-knows how many ships and asteroids and who knows what else brought together by gravity and warpfuckery, bathed in the Eye of Terror, and then fused with the very soul and flesh of the Chapter Master, who's practically symbiotic with the thing, needing his genecode to really start the thing working. The ''Cauldron Born'' (awesome name innit?) is so big that even the Blood Gorgons themselves don't know the whole layout and it developed it's own ecosystem and evolved it's own organisms. Daemons love the place and the Gorgons have to be careful not to summon the wrong ones accidentally or fuck up some pentagrammatic wards or whatever. Every time the ship goes through the warp it gets a makeover, too.

The colour scheme of the chapter is a burnt bronze, and they wear war masks that they claim can scare even daemons, featuring lots of horns and scales and organic-seeming growths. Their unique, perhaps defining, ritual practice, is the Blood Bond, a process where two Blood Gorgons share organs, blood, and [[Slaanesh|other parts of their flesh with each other]], literally swapping body parts. This creates a [[gay|spiritual bond]] between the two, sharing feelings and sensations. This practice was apparently started after the resolution century-spanning, fratricidal, intra-Chapter war that came after their excommunication from the Imperium. It worked pretty well for thousands of years, and then enough stuff happened to write a novel about it. Go read it, it's pretty good. The title is... ''Blood Gorgons''. Go figure.

Another creepy practice, sort of thematically similar, that they engage in is implanting their slaves (and even a captured [[Dark Eldar|deldar]]) with tiny parasitic worms called "thrall-worms" or "slave-seeds" which are placed inside the cheeks or somewhere on the face of each slave. The thrall-worm is kind of like a cross between the chest-popping alien in ''Alien'' and the nightmare-fuel ear-worm from ''[[Star Trek]]: The Wrath of Khan'' (no, not the Primarch, the motherfucker, ''or'' the daemon; fuck, this is getting confusing.) Anyhoo, the worm swells if the slave is beyond a certain distance from his or her master. This swelling, within a day or so, leads to, well, it's [[grimdark]]. When the Gorgons deploy off-ship, they extract the parasites, to be replaced again on their return. If they don't return due to death in battle, then the slaves are all slain. Grimdark. (But not without parallels in historical human cultures, either.)

Of note, and of eventual particular significance, not all in the chapter are subject to the Blood Bond. The coven of Chirurgeon-Witches is a hybrid of Apothecaries and Chaos Sorcerers, led by one Anko Muhr. They are psykers responsible for preserving the gene-seed of the chapter, creating new space marines, and performing the ritual that binds brothers together. Between their lack of bonding and their studies of the deeper chaos arts which the other Gorgons distrust, there is a rift between them and the rest of the chapter.

In their eponymous book, Gammadin goes missing and they get [[Sindri|betrayed]] by Muhr, who was allied with a [[Nurgle|Nurglite]] warband to subjugate and turn the Blood Gorgons to Nurgle. Fortunately, a Blood Gorgon called Barsabbas manages to pull off some [[awesome]] feats like soloing a group of fifteen [[Dark Eldar]] Batman-style to free Gammadin. The passage written from the deldar's perspective when they realize they aren't fucking around with regular old mon-keigh is pretty neat, you can almost imagine the smugness wiping off their knife-eared little faces.

Once Gammadin returns, the Blood Gorgons (stripped of their weapons and held prisoner) manage to force the warband of 550 Plague Marines and 4 companies of Septic Infantry to GTFO the ''Cauldron Born'' in only nine days, killing their Terminator Lord and Muhr too. Unfortunately, given this pretty badass foundation, it is unlikely that GW will do much more with the Blood Gorgons in future fluff, since Henry Zou was dropped by [[Black Library]] for plagiarism. However, the cover art of the ''Blood Gorgons'' novel has been reused for every edition of the Chaos Space Marine codex since 6th, so GW hasn't quite forgotten about them yet.

{{Chaos-Official}}