The Midnight Sorrow
| Masque of The Midnight Sorrow | ||
|---|---|---|
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| Performance Specialties | Dramatic depictions of The Fall | |
| Tactical Specialties | Hit and Run, Anti-Chaos, Night-Time strikes | |
| Colours | Turquoise Blue and Red. | |
The Masque of the Midnight Sorrow is a Harlequin Grand Masque, and is the poster-child of the entire army. Normally seen with the Dark Eldar, they consider themselves to be Chaos' greatest nemesis among the ranks of the elf-clowns, and that is some stiff competition.
Overview[edit]
The Midnight Sorrow is a Masque hell-bent on the impossible task of cleaning out the warp, or failing that, kicking out whatever warp nasties that happened to have wandered their way into the webway and through to realspace. They are typically seen as the fanatically devoted towards the cause of Cegorach's rivalry with the forces of chaos, and pursue it with both abandon and with the willingness to sacrifice it all to personally flip Chaos the bird and snicker. So great is their obsession with fighting the terrors of the warp that the performers' very identities can be rinsed away by their devotion to the cause, becoming the ultimate method actors in their single-minded pursuit of She Who Thirst's eradication.
Their name comes from a part of their reenactments of The Fall, where Cegorach bears witness to the very darkest hour of their kind, and they are galacticly famous for that specific performance. To their (frequent) Dark Eldar audiences, they are wildly popular, their "The Fall" show being the pinnacle of all Harlequin performance to denizens of Commoragh, as they manage to capture the terror of that time seemingly effortlessly. The Craftworlders however, don't really care for them, seeing them as inscrutable maniacs whose continued aggressive action can only mean bad things for their species if they keep popping up and doing their thing, especially since now they've been frequently pulled into fighting specifically Slaaneshi-aligned forces. It doesn't help that they'll strike up deals with the Mon-Keighs in their desperation to bring the Ruinous Powers down, which can't go over super well with certain craftworlds. But the Midnight Sorrow care little, for they know the great enemy is out there, and must be stopped at all costs.
The Midnight Sorrow were instrumental in helping Eldrad wake up Ynnead, and instrumental in the Battle of Port Demesnus where Eldrad almost blew up the entire Infinity Circuit, and they helped create the Yncarne on the Battle for Biel-Tan. As a result of their involvement, much of the Masque are now Ynnari, if they weren't drawn to it already due to the mere idea of Ynnead showing back up again would be the single biggest troll-job of Slaanesh anybody could possibly pull off.
In warfare, the Midnight Sorrow prefer to strike poetically, striking only during the Witching Hour of whichever blasted hellscape Chaos has ended up in, and usually in such a fast and brutal manner that they leave nothing behind but the sorrow and ruin that they believe best captures the fall of their species.
On the Tabletop[edit]
Exactly as their fluff implies: 8e/9e Midnight Sorrow does two things very well: hit hard, and then Roadrunner their ass away. Their Art of Death Masque Form is disgusting when used in tandem with Rising Crescendo, showing up effectively to stab as hard as possible, and then pop up right back where they started thanks to an additional D6" when they fall back, and up to 6" of consolidation. Their Stratagem and Relic also help with the "hitting" part of hit and run; the Stratagem gives characters a chance to fight again after being killed, and get a special +1 bonus to Strength/Attacks if it was killed by a Chaos unit, or was a Solitaire. The relic meanwhile adds +1 attack to all <MASQUE> units within 6" of the bearer.
The warlord trait is wildly situational, bordering on outright bad on the other hand; adding a second hit on Rolls of 6, and a universal "Add 1" to all hit rolls against Chaos. In any other situation that does not involve Chaos, it is absolutely useless. In any situation where Chaos is involved? Actually rather useful.