The Enshrouded

The Enshrouded
Number	At least four full haemonculus covens
Strength	Unknown
Allegiance	Dark Eldar, Themselves
Colours	Various

Part of /tg/ 40,000, The Enshrouded are a homebrewed Dark Eldar secret organization. The ranks of this shadowy alliance are filled by Haemonculi covens, in particular covens whose experiments and research are dipping into dark enough paths that they have a justified fear of persecution even from fellow Commorites. Pooling their considerable resources, The Enshrouded have established a safe haven outside of Commoragh within a dark cranny of the Webway. From this shrouded facility they continue their work unmolested, emerging only to gather needed materials and influence crucial players.

Due to their preference for secrecy The Enshrouded do not walk openly within Commoragh, preferring to work through a network of fronts and intermediaries in order to preserve their anonymity. Such is their skill at this industrial-level duplicity that a force chosen to fight for them is entirely unaware of the society's role in the matter.

Main Covens

The Red Slivers

A placeholder name for the original coven these ideas sprang from. The Red Slivers are an old and embittered Haemonculus Coven, believed by most of Commoragh to be long swept away by the predations of upstart rivals. They lurk in the fringes of Commorite society, their works unpraised and their mark unknown save to some who have the foresight to have the history of the Dark City obsessively recorded. No Kabals answer to the Red Slivers, at least overtly, but the truth is this society of torture-surgeons has a far more sinister way of spreading its influence.

The Red Slivers have bent their craft to the creation of a flesh-creature, a sinuous and barbed worm which burrows into the base of the victim's spine and rapidly threads its body with invasive fibres through which the victim may be controlled at will. From the moment of symbiosis the victim is as good as dead, for removal of the parasite causes irreparable damage to the host's innards, literally ripping their blood vessels out with it. The only way to tell if someone is a host is a series of pinprick-like scabs on the host's collarbone, from which the Coven gets its name. Through the horrid science of the Haemonculus' art the Slivers may control the newly assimilated victim, and often the first sign of a Sliver attack is when a proportion of the population goes berserk at the worst possible moment.

The parasites themselves feed upon their host, draining the nutrients on its body until the host is emaciated and bony. The worms also continue to grow, and they shift within the body to accomidate themselves. Thus hosts which have survived for a good while will be horrid, utterly dysmorphic things, lurching forward single-mindedly while the rippling form of their massive symbiote is seen pushing against their flesh.

The Red Slivers themselves are not immune to the sapping effects of the parasites themselves, however, as controlling any more than a few at a time takes its toll upon the mind of the controller. This becomes especially true when the worms come of age and develop a terrible sentience of their own. This goes so far as to warp the bodies of those who regularly use a great deal of the parasites at once into freakish, thin beings not unlike the parasites themselves.

The Enlightened

An extremely secretive and select coven. Its highest echelon of authority are The Reborn, a group of six deserters from various other covens who abandoned them to seek the fruits of intellectual pursuits taboo even within the psychopathic reaches of Commorragh. The focus of their research involved unlocking the psychic potential of the eldar race and using the insane science of the haemonculi to push it to the most absurd levels possible, and seek to tamper with their own bodies and souls that they too may tap into this limitless potential. But Commorragh is an unfriendly face to the psyker, and these six intellectuals were well aware that any such move on their part would quickly see them on the operating table of their superiors. So, after many slow centuries of gradually locating each other as kindred spirits, whilst all that time keeping a low profile, they chose to abandon their names, their faces, and all their former prestige.

The Hollows

A coven focused upon turning themselves into emotionless blanks. They tend to attract old and world weary dark eldar sick of the constant back and forth struggle for their own souls, and so join this strange new movement that preaches complete emotional deprivation in order to slake off the hunger of she who thirsts.

They believe that by throwing off the shackles of their emotions they will in doing so change the very nature of their souls, and be forever out of the reach of Slaanesh, and supposedly the head Haemonculi have been whispered to have achieved this, but have transformed into barren, joyless abominations that are the complete opposite of what every trigger-happy kabalite wants to be.

A universal constant of the Dark Eldar is the euphoric invigoration that each Dark Eldar feels when surrounded by pain, as it energises and feeds their orgasmic glee.

The Hollows are the complete opposite of this, they dont believe in pleasure at all. The way they see it is that the Eldar race is flawed, and must instead look inwardly that they might effect some change upon themselves and become something other than what they are, and only that way may they escape She-who-thirsts.

Portal Coven <No name as of yet>

A coven devoted to webway technology, repairing damaged portions of the webway, improving them, and finding new ways of utilising them. They are big on using all things teleporters in battle. In the open they act much like public servants for all of Commoragh, construction workers if you will, being responsible for improving the transport mechanisms throughout the dark city, and perhaps even assisting in the construction of realms.

Secretly however they use their technology to build up a strong powerbase both within and outside Commoragh, their own tower complex containing many hidden portals that lead to enclaves hidden in the farthest reaches of the webway. their ultimate goal is to construct another city, another Commorragh where they can rule in secret, away from the stupid backstabbing politics of the Kabals.

Crunch

Coming soon!

Gallery

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  A Haemonculus from the Red Slivers.

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  Another Haemonculus, this time from The Enlightened.

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  A Haemonculus belonging to The Hollows

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  A Red Sliver Haemonculus about to have a victim reduced to mindless servitude.

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  A Hollow Wrack

Current thread: http://boards.4chan.org/tg/res/15068132