Sadly, I own neither Warhammer 40k, nor Mass Effect. They belong to Games Workshop, and Bioware, respectively.
Balnaor the Defiler, champion and servant of Slaanesh was rather infuriated with the long wait his host had given him. This host, Dark Apostle Marcion of the Word Bearers had called him forth with promises of bringing favor to him from the Ruinous powers such that joining one of Chaos War Master Abbadon's Black Crusades would pale in comparison and the granting of a single desire from the at the behest of the dark gods should Balnaor succeed.
Finally, the lights came on and revealed the presence of three of Balnaor's soon to be greatest rivals.
Unknownst to him and apparently everyone else in the room not under the direct service of the Dark Apostle, Marcion had also invited 3 other lords of chaos, each affiliated with a different member of the vile pantheon. For Khorne it was a man known as Abel the kinslayer, who had murdered his brother Cain in cold blood; For Tzeentch, Gehenna, Master of the Mad, stood as their representative; and finally for Grandfather Nurgle, the ironically named Byron the Majestic.
"Treachery!" Bellowed Abel as he and the rest of the Chaos lords moved to dispatch their rivals when out of the blue the seemingly impossible happened…
Daemons poured out into the room with the intention of stopping the conflagration between these mortal foes. These ranged from mere Nurglings and Daemonettes to the servants of Khorne, but the last of those mentioned were the ones that actually gave the conflict pause. If Marcion had managed to convert these servants of the Blood God to the role of peacekeepers in his service, then the promise of the killing to come was to come must be truly magnificent compared to the impending slaughter of the now.
Suddenly a cold laughter filled the room. The Daemons that were one used to hold back the occupants from killing each turned black and every shadow in the room shifted as if to merge into one. Then, one by one, the various mortal servants apparently under Marcion's employ each began to have their flesh boil over until they exploded into a mess of gore from which the constituent mess of flesh, bone, blood, and metal swirled throughout the room. These various ingredients were then used to first forge a great feast and the table and chairs that held them. But they were not finished there- finally, the shower of mess of innards moved to where the shadows had merged to form their host, the Dark Apostle Marcion himself, cackling and clapping to himself with glee.
The spectacle was such that Balnaor and apparently Gehenna were green with envy.
"Gentlemen," the man said with an aura of glee, "I am glad you all came. I welcome you as participants of my Great Game as to you, your game master."
It was to this Balnaor finally spoken and in doing so said, "Great Game? You speak of the eternal conflict within chaos."
"Indeed." Stated Marcion "And in veneration of the Dark gods, I intend to recreate it on a much smaller scale with each of you as their representatives. In this game you will each compete to see how many worlds you can rot in the allotted time."
In a moment of surprising insight for a Khornite, Abel was the first to speak the sentiments of the group, "And what is to say that you are just using this to eliminate us one by one or elevate yourself to daemonhood at our expense? And why did your pet daemons move to stop our conflict?"
Marcion responded by saying, "I have long prepared for this day and to many sacrifices have been made to blow it all on the elimination of four mere rivals. Should this plan be successful, I intend to reenact this plot indefinitely. Furthermore, I would rather not have to go through the process of finding a new champion for one of the dark gods before my game has even started."
"So then, Apostle, show us which imperial sector the game shall be played so my sorcerers can bring us there," stated Gehenna.
"Your sorcerers? Your sorcerers will bring you to the sector successfully and conveniently lose us in transit, leaving you as the game's sole participant, and as such winner," Stated Abel, once again showing intellect belying his status as a follower of Khorne.
"Are you sure you're a follower of Khorne, Abel?" asked Balnaor, "None of the other champions of Khorne I have previously met have ever shown the intelligence you have just displayed."
Abel licked his lips before growling out a counter jab,"Ah, Champion of Slaanesh, Khorne will indeed reward me well when I present the skull of a campaigner of his arch foe. As for my intellect, how is it you, as a slave to the prince of pleasure last 5 minutes while not molesting a Grox?"
Laughter filled the room in response.
"Hmmm…." Mumbled the Champion of Slaanesh, "Never thought about doing it with a Grox before, I'll put that one on my checklist, right after I finish doing so with a Squig."
More laughter filled the room.
"Hohoho," Laughed Marcion, "Good show there. But Abel has a point- I would not trust the sorcerers in the bondage of any of my game's participants to not be biased towards their masters. Furthermore, none of the sorcerers under the employ of any of you would be able to get you to where my contest will take place, for it will not be in the Materium you are used to."
It took a few moments for any of the lords of chaos to grasp the full weight of what Marcion just said.
"This materium? Hmmm… so it is true. I have heard tales and seen evidence that the warp is connected not just this materium, but countless others. However, until now there has been no definite proof, as those who go to those materiums do not return." Spoke Byron for the first time since he arrived.
"Indeed," Spoke the dark apostle, "I have made many sacrifices to make this possible, to make a breach in the warp consistent enough that one could move from Materium to Materium with relative ease, up to the point that I could have become a daemon prince several times over, but instead I stuck to my dream, which has only now began to bear its glorious fruit. To this I present to you a world, no a galaxy that has been, up to now unpolluted by the glorious touch of chaos, which is now yours to play with. Now then, LET THE GAMES BEGIN!"
To that declaration, rapturous applause filled the room.
It is said that a dead god can dream.
However, there are some things a god would not wish to dream, nightmares, not even these greatest of minds wish to think about, let alone a mere mortal.
Nazara had such a dream, and it spoke volumes about it when that one dream alone had dredged up emotions it thought long forgotten when the many constituent fleshes that made him (it?) merged to become a single steel. An emotion that reverberated straight through the entire Reaper fleet.
And what was this emotion? Was it fear?
No.
It was pure, unadulterated terror.
A terror invoked by a word long misinterpreted and only barely kept at bay by their continuous cycles, with them none the wiser. A word which entire battle fleets fought for and against this word whose scale dwarfed their kind, both in number and size. Five symbols were made for this word, four of which symbolized the parts of the greater whole that the last represented- an eight spoked wheel with arrows all pointing outward.
But what was this word, and what could it mean if it brought the fearless ships that had ordered the galaxy a thousand times to the brink of gibbering horror?
After all, it was a mere word?
Chaos.
Let the galaxy burn.