Blood Gorgons
| Blood Gorgons | ||
|---|---|---|
| Gorgon head | ||
| Battle Cry | Unknown | |
| Origin | 21st Founding | |
| Warband Leader | Gammadin | |
| Base of Operations | Cauldron Born (Space Hulk) | |
| Strength | ~900 marines | |
| Specialty | Looting shit, occasional witchery, doing strange things with each other's organs (no, not that, you sick fuck) | |
| Allegiance | Chaos Undivided | |
| Colours | Burnt Umbra | |
The Blood Gorgons are generally considered to be a pretty awesome piratical, renegade chapter of Chaos Space Marines created by Henry Zou for his novel of the same name. In doing so, he also did something that defied the very laws of the universe and Chaos: he made a batch of Chaos Marines that actually have half a shit worth of sense and purpose left in them. Their leader, Gammadin, has a FUCKIN' CRAB CLAW HAND. Suck it, Yarrick.
The Gorgons' patron is a daemon prince of Chaos Undivided (who actually seems pretty chill, relatively speaking that is, for being a manifestation of purest darkness and evil and Chaos and all, and doesn't afraid of no big four) who is named after the eldest son of (the historical) Genghis "muhfuggin" Khan. Not, of course, to be confused with that a certain swift and inscrutable Oriental, and presumably lying about his name, as daemons are wont to do, especially seeing as he is older than humanity. To be fair, it is a pretty badass name though. YET-YEY-YET-Yetsugei! Yeah, that could work for me if I was a hundred millenia old malevolent preternatural entity who wanted to call myself something when doing sneaky business with some puny mortals.)
While most Chaos Space Marines lose it and become fun, psychotic maniacs with no greater goal in life than to constantly bathe in the blood of virgins, the Blood Gorgons were boring, kept their minds, and did silly things like get shit done. They never stuck around too much in one place, never placed their faith too much in one Chaos God (well, one of them did, and it didn't turn out so well), and had a fine old piratical time. They fought themselves some Eldar, Imperials, and even good old Abby himself at least once, as well as some other traitor warbands/legions (notably the Death Guard), and probably more factions to boot. They seem to have given good account of themselves, too. They even, Alpha Legion style, stealthily supported a Maoist-style insurgency in an allegory for American involvement in Vietn-{BLAM|on an Imperial planet}. At least one squad, though, to their lasting shame, got their asses handed to them by some hoofed blue Asian people ("withdraw in good order," they said. The rest of their chapter wouldn't let them live it down.)
Unfortunately, their spiritual liege, the former Black Library writer Henry Zou, who was declared Excommunicate traitoris for some pretty unambiguous plagiarism in a passage from Flesh and Iron, the book about the insurgency discussed above, so we may never know what actually befell them, or if they're still doing their thing. The sad thing is that it was just one passage and not even a very compelling one, and Zou was a pretty promising writer.
Created during the Cursed Founding, they decided they weren't being appreciated enough by the Imperium and promptly left to do their own thing, inhabiting a Space Hulk known as the Cauldron Born. The colour scheme of the chapter is a burnt bronze, and they wear war masks that they claim can scare even daemons. They value their chapter's freedom and independence more than anything else and fight fiercely to defend it.
Their unique, perhaps defining, ritual practice, is the Blood Bond, a process where two Blood Gorgons share organs, blood, and other parts of their flesh with each other, literally swapping body parts. This creates a spiritual bond between the two, sharing feelings and sensations. This practice was apparently started after the resolution century-spanning, fratricidal, intra-Chapter war that followed their excommunication from the Imperial forces. 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. a c Not all in the chapter are bonded in such a way. The coven of Chirurgeon-Witches is a hybrid of Apothecaries and Chaos Sorcerers, led by 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.
Another creepy practice, sort of thematically similar, that they engage in is implanting their slaves with tiny parasites in their cheeks that are kind of like a cross between the chest-popping alien in Alien and the nightmare-fuel earworm from Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (no, not the Primarch, the motherfucker, or the daemon; fuck, this is getting confusing.) This parasite swells if the slave is beyond a certain distance from his or her master (female slaves are noted several times; some of them are called something along the lines of "pampered pleasure pets," selected according to "nine Slaaneshi principles of beauty," which probably makes them pretty hot. And/or have dicks. But anyway.) 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.)
Such is their devotion to freedom they will devote themselves to no Chaos God nor acknowledge Chaos Undivided. A Greater Demon of Chaos Undivided serves as a patron to the chapter, although it is still afraid of much more powerful daemonic servants of the greater gods.
In their eponymous book, Gammadin goes missing and they get betrayed by Muhr, who was allied with a 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. 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.
This is the closest chapter we're likely to get to Chaos Reasonable Marines - they don't treat their slaves like shit (though they end up killing a few anyway) and they pick their battles carefully, constantly training to stay sharp.
It's 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.