SECTION I: ANTICIPATION
Even as Bel’akor ravaged Chamon and Morathi sought her Godhood, even as the Lumineth made themselves known and Hyshian light spilled across the Mortal Realms, Carcosa was silent. All the while, beginning an eternity ago yet also in the present, a thousand realities away yet terribly proximate, Carcosa seethed idly. Czumenth Ereshkigal, the Empress of Ecstasy, the Architect of Agony, the Glistering Goddess, languished in a pleasure-filled haze, her Handmaidens and Courtesans and Concubines boiling with revelry around her throne. Even Queen Cassilda, the Daemon Princess of Ambition Ascendant, had ruled her mortals in hedonism and lust, thinking not of the surrounding world but rather looking inwards for more private conquests. Carcosa had grown engorged with the delights, depravities, and divine indulgences of pleasure. The whole city was poised on a rapturous knife-edge, trembling as if in titillating anticipation of some greater transcendental epiphany.
Even as the small reality twisted and writhed in unspeakable pleasure, its effects seeped into the realms. Mortals, travellers from Carcosa through the Carcosan Gateways, spread the word of the Empress of Ecstasy and her Handmaidens as they travelled, their chains invisible as they spoke the ineffable. The Concubines of the Queen, too, sought out delicious morsels among the mortals of the realms, twisting and turning their thoughts to ambition, to pride, to pleasure, to desire. Gradually, gently, they demanded submission in exchange for release. Gradually, gently, the dark paradise of Carcosa spread its ichor, the products of its arousal, throughout the realms.
SECTION 2: ESCALATION
One particularly vulnerable mortal was in a position of power – though perhaps it was often that powerful mortals were particularly vulnerable. Ambition was a delicious emotion for the daughters of Slaanesh, and its pungent scent attracted even the most discerning daemon. The Freeguild prison-regiments of Chortaxus, an Aqshyan mining outpost, were especially rank with it. After all, by joining the regiments, the miners could travel away from the boiling and searing heat of the mines, could fight in Sigmar’s name, and, possibly, could obtain escape from the searing heat and misery of their outpost-city. Each and every one of them was willing to die for their freedom from the penal settlement. Each and every one was possessed of ambition and desire for a world they could control, rather than being controlled.
Of course, it helped that they were utterly enslaved by alchemy. The alchemists, Ironweld engineers, and Chortaxi enforcers in the regiments delighted in tinkering with the elixirs, developing new ways to control their imprisoned mining workers and penal regiments. So when one of Czumneth’s Concubines slipped into the local Quartermaster’s unprotected thoughts, it became easy to twist the regiments. The representatives from Mystkeep, the main City of Sigmar that owned the Aqshyan mine, failed to notice the corruption until it was too late, and with cries of ecstasy from behind the sealed alchemical masks, the Chortaxi Regiments turned on their own, butchering those loyal to the Sigmar, slaughtering those who sought to keep order. The mining outpost of Chortaxus fell to its own workers, a writhing mass of alchemically addled mortals whose minds were bent by the corrupting urges of Slaanesh.
So it was that Chortaxus fell, and the city of Carcosa earned its first permanent holding in the Mortal Realms. The City Under Black Stars became capitol of an expanding paradise that boiled with ecstasy and shivered with love. Emotions ran high, and Sitra Ahra was born, named from ancient sources and whispered secrets. The realm of Czumneth, centered on her Cyrenaic Citadel, became the Night-side of Paradise, the shadow cast by all good things, the darkness that compliments the light.
SECTION 3: AMPLIFICATION
Czumneth’s court was a riot of sound and intrigue as the news spread. Chortaxus had joined Carcosa as a second holding, conjoined by Czumneth into her own private pleasure-bound empire, effulgent as it was ineffable. The Empress of Ecstasy was pleased with her industrious Concubine, rewarding her with the body of the very mortal she had subverted, granting her dominion over Chortaxus and the surrounding land. The Handmaidens were envious; after all, were they not more powerful? Stronger and more dedicated than any of their beloved Queen’s other servants? They wondered, privately, their pride wounded by the reward of the delicious mortal’s soul to the small Concubine. It didn’t matter that they each had a hundred, a thousand, that their chains wound around so many mortals that they nearly burst. Each soul was theirs, and each that was not was a slight against them.
Of course, the Six never thought of themselves that way; in their own minds they were gracious, gratuitous, genial creatures capable only of happiness and love. They hid their darker natures even from themselves, but such darkness existed nonetheless. For among the Concubines and Courtesans of the Court of the Cyrenaic Citadel, the Handmaidens were in a class unto their own. They were predominantly rivals amongst themselves, unconcerned with the dealing of lesser ranks of daemon or Cassilda’s mortals. This upstart Concubine may have heated the situation, but the Six were constantly vying, constantly fighting. Forever must it be with Slaanesh, for pride and ambition are within Her sphere.
Each Handmaiden struggled for Czumenth’s favor, but there was a clear ranking among them. The two recent arrivals – Hupakheres and Abraxas – were the lowest ranked. Former Godseekers, they were found alone and fighting myriad foes, wantonly destroying and pleasing and loving without care. These pair were shackled by Czumneth, brought to heel by the Exalted Greater Daemon’s power, but never truly had her favor. Lissara and Helecaraxë each had their place – Lissara the Voice Vivacious spoke with eloquence and grace on behalf of Czumenth, weaving lies and truths and secrets into a tapestry of persuasion that broke the heart and sundered the mind of those who heard her. Helecaraxë, the Indulgence Innocuous, was Czumneth’s champion. She bore a hooked pole-arm, ensnaring mortals one small morsel of pleasure, one small indulgence, at a time. She fought in the same style, deceptively and with graceful motion, ensnaring her foe with hook and claw and tendril until they were all but helpless before her final strike. So it was that she was the fighter of the group, Czumneth’s shieldmaiden. The two remaining were the pair who most often fought for Czumneth’s favor between themselves: Anchyche the Song Sublime wove such music that the spheres of the universe themselves spun in a dance to her tune, while Ophidia Vypress the Dance Dulcet swayed lithely to the motion of Anchyche’s music and the gentle background orchestra of the Realms themselves, to which she was delicately sensitive. Both represented certain pleasures in their rawest forms, and shared the greatest kinship-in-being with the Architect of Agony herself. Thus it was that the pair of them vied for her eye, and each fought with the other in the shadows where the real pleasure happened.
SECTION 4: EXALTATION
Between the two, Anchyche was the faster. In the times past, Chaos’s expansion in the Draxic Freehold had been unchecked despite resistance even from the Free City, whose armies often clashed with those of Chaos. Most of the fighting was done by servants of the other gods or Archaon himself. Oftentimes they would clean a fortress or settlement and move on, with cabalists following close behind, swallowing the benighted areas in Chaos magic. But one region, especially, was ignored by the Slaves to Darkness and Daemons of the other Three. A region into which Anchyche alighted with a graceful step from a roiling Carcosan Gateway, her coterie of Daemons gibbering alongside her. A region since known as Qeliphot, the Demesne of Anchyche.
Qeliphot’s locals had, to this point, either been slain or turned; no Sigmar-fearing population remained. But their agonized pleas, their whispered prayers, even their darkest desires had been unanswered until Anchyche arrived; the Keeper of Secrets was like a god to the sniveling mortals. Sitra Ahra had expanded yet again, without a blow being struck. A third holding, joining her sisters: Qeliphot, Chortaxus, and Carcosa. Mortals joyously knelt at the feet of their overlords who offered them such pleasure, and the daemons of Carcosa trembled and lusted. There was exaltation, worship even, offered to the Keepers. Anchyche was named the Queen of Qeliphot by Czumneth, and the lesser Keeper became known as the Exalted Ecstasy as well as her other titles; a just reward indeed from the Glistering Goddess. Ophidia slinked in the shadows, forgotten in the revelry, slithering with sibilant susurrations as she considered how, also, to earn Czumneth’s favor.
Anchyche had become the Queen of Qeliphot, and prepared to languish in largesse even as her newfound mortal slaves constructed her palace, overseen by her Daemonic coterie. Challenge to her power, however, remained, for the Draxic Stormkeep was opening, and Draxis was not as quiescent a city as Chaos had hoped. Anchyche’s languid lethargy may prevent her from joining the fight until it was too late, until the others of Chaos had been forced back to her very doorstep.
But that is a story for another time…
