Editing Nobledark Imperium Drafts (section)

== The Galactic Pantheon ==

'''The Emperor of Mankind''' - "Is not a god" according to his own words when asked. Nevertheless, even if the Emperor is not a god, he is undoubtedly the most powerful champion of humankind, and the Men of Gold were by far the closest thing humankind ever made to Warp Gods. Though he is not a god, he is the mightiest of mortals and more powerful than many purely supernatural entities, similar to Hercules among the old legends of ancient Greece on Old Earth. There are rumors that the Emperor has grown even more powerful, or more skilled, with age, though for the safety of the Imperium the Emperor has never been put on the front lines where these rumors have been put to the test.

'''Isha''' - Embodied in the Eldar Macha, the all-mother and Eternal Empress of the Imperial dominion. Millennia ago she was the fertility goddess of the Eldar pantheon, she opposed Khaine and in the fall did all she could to save the Eldar people, though she was herself taken captive by Nurgle. Through theses valiant efforts and the rule of ages hence the Matron goddess is said to have gained a regality and might that surpasses her old self. She is much occupied by the maintenance of spiritual health at the widest level for the imperium, vying against Slaanesh for whatever fragments of Eldar souls she can salvage, and affording the Imperium's peoples a dominion within the realm of souls somewhat more hospitable than the wilds of the warp.

'''Cegorach''' - The laughing god of the Eldar, also survivor of the fall, now endless jester of the galactic court and master of the Dark Carnival. An involved player of the Great Game, he is supposedly an invaluable asset to the Imperium in the intrigues of immortal beings. To all the worlds of the Imperium he is a figure of myth and folktale, and any real deed is indistinguishable from pure fabrication. 

'''[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#The_Void_Dragon|The Void Dragon]]''' - At some point this being was a self-aware expression of nested complexity, or perhaps a very long bolt of lightning, but in the millions of years since then it has gained first an indomitable body of living femto-machines, and now a significant warp presence. It is curious, and eccentric, and it wants to experiment with the warp on a grand scale. It seems to have some appreciation of beings more finite and fragile than it, but it is infinite and hard, and it remains to be seen what god it wishes to be. It it also the Omnissiah, and it is fond of its cult, and finds it a perfect instrument.

'''The Nightbringer''' - This one wishes to be death. It has slain countless species, for ages, across light-years of space and centuries of time. It has done so by stellar radiation and by scythe, and it found that as it killed it's legend and spite proceeded it, until it's own lifeless visage was so known and feared that it cast the Nightbringer its own perfect double in the warp. The great murderer withstood even the full and unilateral hatred of the Necron Star Empire and came away not in shards, but as a great battered undead husk and accompanying splinters. Now awakened, the reaper wishes to regain his mighty warp presence and to restore his form. To this end he embeds lesser shards in mortal hosts, saddled with mortal personas to better domineer them to his will, and sets them to sow death in his image.

'''The Deceiver''' - As consumate a player of games as Cegorach, the liesmith, avatar of duplicity, reveled in the peak of the Necron empire's golden age, happy among the chrome aristocrats and toasted as the diplomat of living gods. He is reviled by the Necrons now, and shattered beyond assembly, but the presence of this being persists despite itself. Its incoherent shards still long for subtlety, for veils of words, and find themselves in the flesh of mortals of high stature as best they can. What plot the Deceiver pursues is unknown, perhaps unknowable, but its shards are of a conspiratorial and avaricious sort, with no favor among the living.

'''Gork & Mork''' - The supreme brutes might be thought unchanged in the eons of their long lives. Not so, for unlike the weaklings of Materium, with each blow to the head they become more cleverer.

'''Tzeentch''' - Created alongside Malal, he was an early warp god of boundless creativity, writing new rules of sorcery and new beings of thought into existence as quickly as Malal could deny them. In the original duality, formed from and shaped by the Old Ones, the warp and sorcery were ultimately manageable and illuminating forces. In subsequent eons this order has changed, Tzeentch has changed, and sorcery has become a bleak art of insane rituals and hateful acts. Where once he sung a song of creation, he is now a delirious, deceptive crow of plots. Tzeentch maintains power bases across the galaxy, as he has since time immemorial, but the true might of his cult is in the twisting redoubts of the Webway and the Warp, in colleges and orders of fell and maddening arts.

'''Malal''' - Originally the 'destroyer' of the Warp, be he denial or the thought of mortality, Malal swept up the multifarious gibbering creations of Tzeentch and met them with their nullifying opposites, or talked them apart with what they weren't. He was supplanted by Khorne after the War in Heaven, and it seemed like impassioned, honorable, involved destruction would better suit the minds of the galaxy than Malal's own nihilistic void of denial.

'''Nurgle''' - In the spring of the galaxy Nurgle was created between Tzeentch and Malal, to me maintainer, shaper, and preserver, until such time as Malal might rightly end a story or thought or thing. In the wake of the War in Heaven, as the triumvirate adjusted to the new galactic order, Nurgle began the slow slide into malignance that also afflicted Tzeentch. Nurgle still ultimately serves his role as preserver, but where once in his garden he strove to safeguard against Khorne and temper Tzeentch he now maintains a landfill. His servants can be found on caustic wasteland planets and in the gutters of rookeries, but the foremost among them are the attendants of Isha, seeking to return her to the garden 'for her own safety', and the Astartes of Sisigmund.

'''Khorne''' - Born in the heat of the War in Heaven, he may be the psychic reverberation of that bloody event, but it has been posited that he coalesced on the battlefield around some great weapon of the Old Ones, prototype to Eldar and Ork alike. His relationship to Khaine is unclear, but they were alike in aspect, and he has taken up much of the old Eldar empire's military caste in his immortal service. He has much love for the Great Game, and it was in the wake of Nurgle's horrible loss that Khorne championed the usurpation of the Orks. The Blood God is the great power in the warp as of the 41st millennium, commanding the fiercest core of Crone Eldar and Fallen warbands and retaining his Ork auxiliaries with greatest ease. His catalyzing role in the War of the Beast, drawing Slaanesh's lust for Isha and Tzeentch's will for change to push Nurgle's corruption en-masse of the orks, such that he might incite them to a direct and purposeful war, has emboldened him to name himself lord of the Immaterium. The Blood God arrays his armies before the Skull Throne in him immaterial domain, and there they drill, and march, and war, and stage interminable invasions of the real. Khorne is said to retain Malal, in some form, as advisor, or weapon, but the diminished god's status in the court of murder is unknown.

'''Slaanesh''' - The Prince of Pleasure was originally conceived to be the god of joy, and of beauty, but its birth, the fall of the eldar, demonstrated the already fallen nature of the eldar empire. The prince now rules the Brass Palace in the warp, attended by daemons and horrors, and for a long while it eagerly feasted on the souls of the eldar. The great mistress of Shah-Dome has since turned to more complex, extended, and varied predilections. While young and weak as a warp presence, Slaanesh maintains a vast physical empire and cult within the eye of terror, intent on shaping the state of the materium for greater power within the warp. The dark prince and its cabal of faithful cenobites wish to see Slaanesh as master of the warp, with all other gods bound before its throne. The Slaaneshi cult is particularly interested in fulfilling the domination of the eldar pantheon, hoping to angle its personal enmity with the unified empire into a claim to arch-deamonhood and luciferian mastery of all temptation.

'''[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#Khaine|Khaine]]''' – (UNFINISHED) Still shattered into a million pieces like in canon. Needs a blurb.

'''The Outsider''' – See [[Nobledark Imperium Notes#The_Outsider|The Outsider]] (Temporary placeholder)

'''[[Nobledark Imperium Notable People#The_Hive Mind|The Swarmlord]]''' - More of a primordial force of nature than an actual deity, though perhaps it is only natural for mortal minds to immediately jump to the deific when confronted with a warp presence of such magnitude. The Hive Mind is both the summed consciousness of every tyranid organism within the swarm as well as its commander. It’s thought process is alien and incomprehensible by mortal standards. At the very least, its goals are clear: the consumption of every living thing in the galaxy.

'''Ynnead''' – There are whispers of something going on in the warp. Echoes seen by farseers communing with the Infinity Circuits and World Spirits like the thunderhead of a great storm. Some say there appears to be some strange congruence between the portents of this phenomenon and the Starchild Prophecies All that is known is the name of this being and that it is not here yet. Everything else is up in the air.