Maeleum Datum : 142.M33
"It is known to the numberless hosts of the Lost and the Damned that the Realms of Chaos are the domain of the Dark Gods. It is known to them that the Four, the Primordial Pantheon, hold sway over the Warp, their dominion challenged only by the false-light of the Corpse-Emperor's Beacon of Pain, a blasphemy that must be avenged. It is known that the Chaos Gods make war upon each other within the Realms as well as the Materium, and that all things are part of that conflict, which is called the Great Game by those who believe themselves champions of Ruin. It is known that Khorne, Tzeentch, Nurgle and Slaanesh divide the Realms between themselves, and that only the psychic equivalents of wastelands and ruins are left to those daemons too weak or strange to fall under the dominion of one of the great Powers.
Like so many things the ignorant believe, all of this is false."
From the personal writings of the Chaos Sorcerer Ctesias, member of Ahriman's Cabal
Deep within the Formless Wastes, there was something that, if regarded from the correct angle, might be called a city. In a realm of endlessly changing nightmares, it was a fixed point, an anchor of horror and infernal order. Within its walls, the sounds of hellish construction never stopped, producing palls of black smoke that covered everything. Billions of souls were held within vast furnaces, their agony fuelling the fires of industry. Outside, immense armies made war upon ashen plains, slaughtering one another for the chance to reach the gates and plead their case to the dread lords of that place of terror, madness, and dark wonders.
It was the Forge of Souls, the reflection of every workshop where a weapon of war and murder had ever been made. For countless aeons, the Forge had stood, beyond the greedy reach of even the Dark Gods themselves, and its denizens had crafted countless daemonic weapons and war engines that had been used to make the galaxy bleed. From daemonblades to mighty Chaos Titans, the Forge of Souls was the source of a nigh-infinite number of horrors unleashed upon the stars. Legends claimed that the Forge had come into being when the first Old One, that ancient race that had ruled the galaxy before the Eldars had even risen from the primordial muck, had reached into the Empyrean to use its energies in order to craft the first psychic weapon. Other tales linked the genesis of the Forge of Souls to the first motions of the Great Game, when a cadre of potent daemons rebelled against their masters and sought to create their own kingdom.
Since time beyond memory, the enigmatic Masters of the Forge, entities of great power and cunning, had ruled over the Forge of Souls, brokering deals with the daemons who reached their gates and the mortal engineers who sought to create daemon engines in the Materium. During all that time, the Forge of Souls had remained free of any of the Dark Gods' attempted invasions through the power of the Iron Pact. Alone in the Empyrean, the Masters knew the secret of the Soul Grinders' creation, these vast, terrible engines of war through which a particular daemon might return to the Materium before its period of banishment had expired. With that knowledge, they forced any daemon who sought to become part of a Soul Grinder to swear three binding Oaths.
The first two of these Oaths offered all souls reapt by the daemon and all metal from the engines they destroyed belonged to the Forge, dragged there by the tides of the Warp. The third and final Oath compelled the Soul Grinders to come to the Forge's defense, discarding all previous allegiances, should any of the Ruinous Powers attempt to claim sole dominion over the Forge through conquest. Between the might of the Forge and the vast number of Soul Grinders, the Masters had been able to protect their independence, and the would-be conquests of Daemon Lords had become little more than opportunity for them to test their more destructive inventions.
To the Masters, the tides of the Great Game of Chaos were little more than distractions. But even they had noticed when, in an unprecedented show of unity, the Four had appointed one champion, elevating him above all of their mortal pawns and plenty of their immortal servants. The Heresy had given the Forge plenty of opportunities, as hereteks of the Dark Mechanicum learned the secrets of daemonic binding and the construction of daemon engines, and Techmarines became Warpsmiths. A vast bounty of souls and metal had flowed into the Forge of Souls as world after world burned, and the Masters had seemed pleased to their terrified minions.
So it was that, when Horus Lupercal, Warmaster of Chaos and Prince of the Eye, came to the ashen plains and made his way toward the gates of the Forge of Souls, the Masters took note.
The Primarch had come alone, with his Talon on one hand and Worldbreaker in the other, and the warring armies parted before him. Even the most blood-crazed Khornate Neverborn could feel the dark power radiating from Horus, and feared him. Unopposed, he came to the gates of the Forge of Souls, which for the first time in infernal memory opened as soon as he reached them, instead of making him wait upon the Masters' pleasure as had all other supplicants before him.
As the gates of the Forge of Souls, wrought out of black metal and embedded with sanity-blasting images, closed behind the Warmaster, the daemonic legions looked upon one another, the truce that had fallen upon the plains with Horus' arrival growing more and more tense. But instead of falling upon each other again, they turned toward the Forge's gates, and waited, driven by impulses they could not understand. For the first time since its foundation, the ashen plains around the Forge of Souls were silent, while inside, Horus Lupercal met with the Masters.
"Honored Masters of the Forge, I have come to offer you a simple choice. For too long you have remained here, hiding behind your walls, reaping the profits of a war you refuse to take directly part in. This will change. You may become pacted to me, and swear your allegiance to my cause – the destruction of the Imperium the one you call Anathema deceived me and my brothers into building for Him with our blood and sacrifice. I will grant you places of honor and power within my kingdom, and let you keep control of this Forge as you have before.
If you refuse, I shall cast down your walls, cast you out of your domain, and claim the Forge of Souls, that it might serve the Long War. The choice is yours."
Horus Lupercal to the Masters of the Forge
When the Masters predictably rejected Horus' offer, the Warmaster brought Worldbreaker down, the impact of the weapon a signal that activated his real plan. At the edges of the ashen plains, where the small bubble of stability surrounding the Forge met the Formless Wastes, portals opened leading to select locations in the Eye of Terror with strong sympathetic connections to that eternal battlefield. Four such portals opened, one at each cardinal point, with the chamber where Horus stood before the Masters at the center.
Through potent sorceries and by using the vast power contained within Horus' mortal body as a guide through the tides of the Warp, the Cabalites had created paths through which the armies of the Warmaster may reach deep within the Warp itself, and make war upon daemons in the Immaterium itself. Every warrior participating in this attack had had his armor covered in ritual sigils designed by Ahriman himself to protect their flesh and soul from the corrosive effects of the Warp – for even though the Forge of Souls was one of the Realms of Chaos' most stable areas, it was still utterly hostile to mortal life. Cabalite Sorcerers accompanied each of the four hosts that passed through the portals, and immediately set upon the task of binding the stunned daemonic legions to their will.
From the northern portal came the Justaerin, clad in Terminator armor, led by Abaddon himself. A hundred of the Sons of Horus' greatest warriors, and he who was considered by many to be Horus' truest son. During the days of the Legion Wars, many of the Justaerin had willingly given themselves to Neverborn, becoming Possessed in order to fight better for their Primarch. Now, within the Realms of Chaos, their infernal companions helped them adapt to their unholy surroundings more quickly than any of the other forces. Abaddon himself, though he was not Secondborn, nonetheless was the first to recover from the transition from the mustering field to the ashen plains. With his trusted brother and fellow Mournival member Falkus Kibre at his side, the First Captain of the Sixteenth Legion led the charge toward the walls of the Forge of Souls.
From the eastern portal came the Fallen, led by Vortigern, first among the Lion's renegade sons within Horus' armies. Armed with sorcerous blades and secret knowledge gleaned from the archives of Caliban's Order before the planet's destruction, they burned a path through the wastes. The substance of the Warp reacted to their presence immediately, and shadowy figures with wings of black appeared above them, silently observing as Vortigern and his brothers advanced. Nearly every Fallen had one such figure hovering above him, and though they could see them as well as anyone else, they did not react to their presence in any way. The Cabalites accompanying the Fallen paused at the sight of these watchers, until Ahriman, who had chosen for reasons of his own to accompany the Dark Angels renegades into this assault, commanded them to focus their attention on the infernal hordes that laid between them and their target.
From the western gateway came a contingent of Night Lords, belonging to that faction of the Eighth Legion which had embraced the powers of Chaos and turned its back on the Long War. Despite this seeming lack of dedication to his greater goals, Horus had called for their participation in this endeavour, offering both a sizeable tribute and tangling the opportunity for glory and plunder before their eyes. A flock of Raptors and Warp Talons flew from the gate, led by the recently ascended Daemon Prince Krieg Acerbus, once a member of the Kyroptera. Like few mortals before him, Acerbus had ascended to daemonhood not through the patronage of any of the Four, but by his sheer depravity and pursuit of fear and atrocity, elevating himself to such heights of horror that he had earned the approval of each of the Dark Gods in turn.
"Take him. If he doesn't come back, then all the better."
Zso Sahaal, to Horus Lupercal regarding Acerbus Krieg, before the Battle of the Forges
Finally, the southern portal let through a host of mechanized horrors that had never seen the inside of the Forge of Souls, driven into battle by Iron Warriors overseers and Warpsmiths. For centuries, the Iron Warriors had sought to master the creation of daemon engines, and the bitter sons of Perturabo had refused to depend upon any other power. It had taken them hundreds of years of often disastrous failures, but eventually, through trial and error and sheer stubbornness, they had succeeded, and now their creations were let loose upon the Forge of Souls. As the daemon engines charged, the Warpsmiths looked upon the wreckage covering the ashen plains, seeing the ruins of aeons of war, and their hearts were filled with hunger for the secrets that laid buried there. Yet they remained focused on the goal ahead, for they had been appointed their task by Perturabo himself.
Facing Horus and his armies, the Masters laughed, confident that they would crush this attempted takeover as they had all previous ones. They activated the Iron Pact, calling upon the Soul Grinders to join the defense of the Forge of Souls. Swiftly, however, their assurance turned to shock and horror, as the Soul Grinders did not answer their summons.
It was only then that the Masters realized their mistake. The Iron Pact only compelled the Soul Grinders to come should one of the Ruinous Powers attempt to claim sole control of the Forge of Souls. Horus Lupercal was not a servant of any of the Four, and this attack had for goal to seize the Forge for his own ends rather than those of the Dark Gods. By the wording of the Pact, the Soul Grinders could not be summoned, and even if the mighty daemon engines had been willing to abandon their current campaigns to come to the Forge's aid, they could not be brought across the Immaterium without the power of the Iron Pact backing their summoning.
Worse, the infernal legions fighting for access to the Forge of Souls had always taken part in its defense as well, turning upon the invading armies of rival Powers, both to deny them the Forge and to earn the Masters' favor. But now, the Cabalites were instead binding these armies into their service, using words of power granted unto them by Horus himself prior to the attack. The forces Horus had brought across, while mighty, would never have been enough to conquer the immensity of the Forge of Souls. But the four warbands were but the spear point of a daemonic horde beyond any that the Materium had ever seen, save perhaps in the darkest days of the Fall and the Heresy.
Enraged as they realized the scope of Horus' scheme, the Masters turned upon the Warmaster in their midst. Fury outweighing caution, they threw their power against that of the Prince of the Eye, unleashing sorceries they had not employed since long before Slaanesh had been but a glimpse of possibility in the Eldar race's fate. But for all their might and all their lore, the Masters were no match for Horus, who had been the Emperor's finest creation before the Dark Gods had filled him with their power. Even so, the Masters were able to escape, leaving three of their number dead at Horus' hand. Surprisingly, the Warmaster did not give pursuit.
Blood dripped on the floor of the ruined chamber. At the feet of Horus laid the bodies of the Masters of the Forge he had slain.
The Warmaster reached out with Worldbreaker and turned one of them on its back, revealing the face that had been kept hidden in shadows and cowls for longer than the human race had existed.
Despite the blazing pain at his side, where his wound had once more torn open, Horus raised an eyebrow as he saw the true face of the dead Master.
As the Masters fled from their chamber of power, the four warbands and the bound daemonic legions reached the walls of the Forge of Souls. The slaughter was terrible, as the defenders of the Forge, bound to their stations by oaths far more comprehensive than the Iron Pact, unleashed all manner of infernal weaponry upon their foe. But eventually, after what seemed (and might very well have been, for with the Masters' departure the fragile laws of the Forge were eroding quickly) an eternity of fighting, the walls fell and the Forge of Souls was conquered.
Horus' lieutenants met the Warmaster in the ruins of what had been the Forge's heart, where he had met and fought the Masters. He congratulated them on a task well done, but their mission here wasn't finished yet. Without the Masters, the Forge of Souls would not last long : as it existed outside the control of any of the Chaos Gods, it required the constant presence of a powerful being to enforce its existence against the tides of the Formless Wastes. Fortunately, Horus had planned for this possibility, knowing there was very little chance that the proud Masters would kneel to him.
Since the end of the Legion Wars and the alliance between Horus and Perturabo, the sons of the Lord of Iron had been hard at work. In heart of the Fourth Legion's territories, on the other side of Medrengard's black sun, they had constructed eight pillars imbued with sorcerous properties. Each pillars was thousands of kilometers long, forged of metal and bone inscribed with billions of runes. It had taken a thousand years and untold millions of slaves to construct these pillars, and the arcane calculations that had been required before their construction could even begin had taken the entire processing power of a Dark Mechanicum forge-world for several years. But it had been done.
Using his authority and power as both Warmaster of Chaos and conqueror of the Forge of Souls, Horus dragged the entire Forge through the Aether and into the Eye of Terror, anchoring it into place in Medrengard with the eight Pillars of Torment. Like a colossal space station, the Forge hung in the Warp-tainted void of Eyespace, kept from falling apart by the Pillars' great sorcery. From Medrengard came Iron Warriors ships, bearing new overseers for the Forge's industry as well as Perturabo himself, come to accept his brother's gift. In this way did Horus consolidate the loyalty of the Fourth Legion to him, as well as renew the dread and awe of the Eye-born realms for him.
Under the management of the Iron Warriors, the Forge of Souls' productivity surpassed that of any Dark Mechanicum forge-world. Convoys of weapons, daemon engines and ammunition left the Iron Warriors territories under heavy escort, delivering supplies to the allies of the Warmaster within the Eye of Terror. Yet most of the Forge's output was dedicated to Perturabo's special projects : the creation of an arsenal of superweapons, to be unleashed at the end of the Long War, when the Traitor Legions at long last broke free of the Eye of Terror to crush the last remnants of an Imperium collapsed on itself. Such were the terms of the pact by which Horus had given the Forge to Perturabo, a compact that, unlike the failed Iron Pact, would not be so easily tricked.
AN : This chapter was heavily inspired by the browser game Fallen London, which was recommended to me by a friend a few months ago and which I have been playing ever since. The Masters of that game reminded me of the Masters of the Forge, and I couldn't stop myself from writing this chapter. Is the Forge of Souls too powerful a resource for Horus to have access to ? I don't think so. The Imperium has many, many more forge-worlds than the Eye, and their output is reliable to work when subjected to the laws of physics outside the star system where it was assembled.
I have a follow-up chapter to this one planned and started already. I had planned to have it be part of this one, but writing down the actual Battle of the Forge ended up much longer than anticipated, and I think I can develop what would otherwise be a mere footnote into an interesting tidbit of worldbuilding. That chapter will answer the question : "what happened to the surviving Masters of the Forge ?" There is too much potential for storytelling here to let it go to waste, I think.
Slowly, without me doing much work, the future storyline of Prince of the Eye is starting to emerge ... It's actually quite enjoyable to feel that happen as a writer.
Concerning the Masters, I have had an idea. In this chapter, Horus learned what the Masters look like, and (one can assume) realized what they actually are. However, while I have some ideas, I haven't yet come to a definite answer for what the Masters are in this timeline.
If you leave me your suggestions as to the true nature and appearance of the fallen Masters of the Forge, I will choose which one (or combination of several) proposal seems the most interesting to me.
That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. The utter anarchy and madness of the Eye of Terror makes it easy to come up with over-the-top, unbelievable, mythological-scaled stories, and I am really enjoying writing this story so far !
Zahariel out.