Maeleum Datum : 175.M33
In the years that followed the Battle of the Forge, the Masters who had survived the confrontation with Horus re-emerged from obscurity. They had fled the collapse of their kingdom before Horus had dragged it into the Eye of Terror, but such had been the strength of their ties to the Forge of Souls that they had been caught in the wake of the Warmaster's spell.
One by one the Masters fell, pulled from the Empyrean's depths into the Eye, and were scattered within its ever-shifting borders. On daemon worlds and in the savage wilderness of Eyespace, they descended like burning comets, and the agony they felt must have been terrible indeed.
Trapped in the half-reality of the Eye and cut off from the Forge of Souls, the Masters were much diminished. But they remained potent in a manner usually reserved for Daemon Princes, as those unfortunates who encountered them first soon learned to their cost. Tribes of mutants and wandering warbands were slaughtered as the Masters rose from their fall, full of rage at the Warmaster's victory and conquest of the Forge. The terrified survivors of these groups fell to their knees in awed worship, offering their devotion to the Masters in the hope of surviving.
After cooling their fury in bloodshed, the Masters each individually swore that they would have their revenge upon the upstart Primarch. Though they were separated, they knew that their kin had all been dragged into the Eye. Those who had been found by groups with space-faring capabilities claimed ships of their own, while the Masters stranded on primitive daemon worlds used their knowledge to direct their new slaves into the construction of vessels that were as much driven by sorcery as they were by technology, or employed more esoteric means of journeying the Eye.
Despite their overwhelming desire for revenge, the Masters were not blind to the scope of their self-appointed purpose. Horus was the mightiest warlord of the Eye of Terror, and had already proven himself more than the Masters' equal in direct combat. The Masters needed a new place of power, a domain safe from the depredations of the Legions, where they could rebuild their strength and search for ways to claim their revenge and retake what was theirs. There were many such places in the Eye, but most were already under the control of one of the Traitor Legions, or another of the powers that the Masters had no desire to provoke so soon after their arrival. Instead, they set their sight upon a place that held much unrealized potential, still under the radar of the Eye's greater powers. Though only a handful made contact with one another, aeons of working as one within the Forge of Souls had made the Masters similar enough that they all eventually chose the same target.
So it was that, one by one, the Masters came to Aftermath. Located at one of the ends of the Warp route known as the Cerulean Concourse, Aftermath was an amalgamation of hundreds of cities that had been swallowed by the Warp through disaster or uncontrolled sorcery. Populated by the remnants of these cities' populations and dozens of factions and warbands, Aftermath had been in a state of complete anarchy for its entire existence. This changed with the arrival of the Masters.
Through a combination of violence and what, in the Eye of Terror, may be called diplomacy, the Masters quickly conquered Aftermath and divided it up between the ten of them. They ruled through a network of proxies and agents, many of whom had been lords of their own domain before the arrival of the Masters. The Masters themselves were rarely seen, but their chosen enforcers were dreaded throughout the whole of Aftermath – though not as much as the enforcers themselves feared the Masters.
The Masters each shaped their territory to their own vision, able for the first time in aeons to do as they pleased rather than as their collective council decided. Some of the Masters sought to rebuild the Forge of Souls' industry, building immense factories where millions toiled endlessly. The ruins of the ancient cities were broken down for material by immense collection engines and gangs of harvesting slaves, and weapons and engines of war were crafted from their remains – though the output of all of Aftermath put together was but a fraction of the Forge of Souls'.
Others constructed immense laboratories and universities where the darkest secrets of Chaos were explored by those insane enough to brave them, with the goal of learning a way to defeat Horus. Great libraries were built to house the forbidden lore by which many of the stolen cities had been damned, and scholars came from across the Eye to translate alien knowledge for the Masters. In the University Unspoken, students and teachers alike had their lips sewn shut, while in the Conglomerate College, the brains of those who proved most valuable were added to the grotesque, hyper-intelligent mass held beneath the building. Within the chambers of the Choir of Unveiling, hereteks of all stripes worked to construct new and terrifying devices and warmachines from machine, daemon and flesh – as well as other, less recognizable materials.
In the ruins of a city that the Masters said had belonged to a species called "Necrontyrs", a great market was assembled, where the plunder of the stolen cities was displayed alongside the finds of a thousand explorers throughout the Eye of Terror. All manners of currencies and trade were accepted there, with the Master overseeing this Bazaar taking its cut out of every transaction, this taxation ruthlessly enforced by agents armed well enough to deal with the Eye's denizens.
At the edge of Aftermath, vast shipyards were built where ships of designs never before seen were assembled and put to use in the defense of Aftermath from all who would challenge the Masters' rule, with a few surplus ones of lesser quality being sold to the highest bidder. Though the prices demanded by the Master in charge of the shipyards were exorbitant, there were always buyers, for in the Eye of Terror, only a world has more value than the freedom offered by a spaceship.
The denizens of Aftermath lived in fear and awe of the Masters. Attempts were made to learn more about them, and though those who got to close to the Masters' secrets soon vanished or were made examples of, some details began to filter down into public knowledge – though whether those were true or lies planted by the Masters remained unknown. Under their cloaks, it was said that the Masters were made of flesh, and that flesh was covered in cold, scaled skin. They possessed psychic powers as well as sorcerous lore, and their psychic might was far greater than that of any mortal psyker. They could see through the eyes of their agents, and speak through them – but doing so invariably burned the body of the unfortunate vessel to ash. They each hid a wound beneath their cloaks, inflicted upon them by Horus Lupercal in the battle of the Forge of Souls.
Names were also given to the Masters, attributed to them by the masses rather than claimed by the Masters themselves. Eventually, though, the necessities of ruling Aftermath required that there be a way to refer to a specific Master, something that hadn't been needed in the Forge of Souls, where they had all ruled as one. Those names were more akin to titles than names, loosely translated from the language of daemons into the low Gothic dialects that were mostly used by the population of Aftermath. They were based upon a Master's area of influence : the Master controlling the halls of knowledge was known as Master Head, while the one controlling the shipyards was Master Harbor, the one in charge of the factories Master Task, and so on. These names were only used when speaking of the Masters in their absence. What, if anything, the Masters' agents called them when making their reports and taking their orders was something known to them alone.
Under the rule of the Masters, Aftermath, which before had been a curiosity and a backwater, became a rising power in the Eye, unaligned in the Great Game of Chaos. The Traitor Legions quickly took notice, and emissaries were sent to Aftermath by the Word Bearers, the Thousand Sons and the Emperor's Children, offering the Masters to join them as a protectorate. The Masters refused all such offers, and decreed that no Chaos Marine was allowed to set foot upon Aftermath, lest they face their wrath. Forced to follow the Masters' rules or risk losing access to Aftermath's bounty, the Traitor Legions worked through mortal intermediaries and agents, sending them to negotiate deals on their behalf while they remained aboard their ships, outside the range of Aftermath's impressive defenses.
Apart from the Traitor Legionaries, held at bay to preserve the independence of Aftermath under the Masters' rule, Aftermath welcomed all others, from mortal heretics to mutants to daemons and xenos. The only exception were the Eldars in all their forms, be it Exodite, Craftworlder or denizen of Commoragh. The Masters despised the Children of Isha, for reasons they never deigned to explain, and any such beings discovered in Aftermath were immediately hunted down by their agents and slain on the spot, without trial or interrogation.
Aftermath was already the size of a world when the Masters arrived, and it continued to grow after that. New cities continued to arrive, spat out of the storms that surrounded it and cast their baleful illumination upon it in lieu of a sun. These cities drifted through the void, immediately set upon by plunderers in the employ of the Masters, until they crashed into Aftermath and were added to its mass. By the strange laws of the Eye, the atmosphere of these lost cities remained breathable instead of being vented into the void, though asphyxiation would often have been a kinder fate than what awaited the new arrivals.
In the Maeleum Datum 175.M33, several years after the Masters' capture of Aftermath, the Warmaster dispatched his own envoys to the amalgam world. Horus had long since learned of the Masters' return, and knew that diplomacy would not serve him here. Nor was the Warmaster willing to spend the resources required to invade Aftermath : the planet was too far from the territory of him and his allies to make holding it a viable option. Destroying it would not only waste its potential but also scatter the Masters anew, forcing them to find a new place from where to scheme, one Horus may not find. Instead, Horus' goal was to undermine the Masters' rule and to make sure that he had his own stake in the power games of Aftermath.
Once more, the Warmaster's cunning was displayed in the unpredictable way he approached the problem. When the flotilla of the Sixteenth Legion emerged from the storms surrounding Aftermath, the Masters roused the alarm and prepared their defenses, thinking that the Warmaster had come to finish what he had started at the Forge of Souls. But the flotilla hang back, seemingly waiting for something else to happen. Only the crazed scholars of Aftermath's dark universities realized the plan, and then only too late. A few days after the flotilla's arrival, the storms parted once more, revealing not Horusian reinforcements as the Masters' warlords had suspected, but a new city.
Before any of the Masters' plunderers could reach it, the Sons of Horus forces fell upon the latest city stolen by the Sea of Souls. There, they were welcomed as saviours and liberators by the Horusian rebels whose actions had triggered the city's doom. The whole city, hundreds of kilometers long, was turned into a stronghold by the Sons of Horus and their allies, with the terrified human population either driven into submission or exterminated.
The defenses of Aftermath could not destroy a target of that size, and the Sixteenth Legion flotilla protected the drifting city until the last stretch of its slow, inevitable journey. Vast void-shields were activated, covering areas of the city from bombardment by the Masters' own ships. Eventually, it slammed into Aftermath's edges, where the forces of the Masters were ready for the attack.
But no attack came. Instead, a single servitor emerged, broadcasting a message from Horus himself. The Warmaster declared that this newest region of Aftermath belonged to him, an Embassy through which his will would be made known. His Ambassador – the only name by which the Son of Horus sent to oversee the operation and then the interests of the Sixteenth in Aftermath – was his voice and his hand upon Aftermath. In a show of insults disguised as generosity, Horus granted the Masters their control of the rest of Aftermath, so long as they accepted his Embassy and remained neutral in the conflicts of the Eye of Terror.
The servitor was obliterated, and the Masters ordered that the border of the new city be sealed. But even with all of the resources under their command, there was simply too much distance to cover. Agents of the Warmaster slipped out and mingled with the crowds of Aftermath, and the Horusians joined the latest front of the Great Game of Chaos. Armies sent beyond the border disappeared, ambushed by Sons of Horus commandos and the augmented mortal soldiers they had created from the descendants of those who had plunged the city into the Warp. Eventually, the deal Horus had offered became reality in practice, even if the Masters never accepted it.
As Horus had no doubt expected, the Masters' merciless rule caused rebellion and unrest. Just as Horus had done for the Imperium with his Proclamation, the Ambassador presented himself and Horusian rule as an alternative to the Masters' tyranny. The Masters' hold grew more tenuous as uprisings secretly sponsored by the Horusians multiplied, answered to by crushing force. Aftermath became a battlefield where wars were fought in the shadows of the amalgam-world, all sides of the conflict seeking to preserve the value of what they were fighting over.
Other factions beyond the Masters and the Traitor Legions formed in Aftermath. The Ix, a breed of mutants hailing from the Trebedius Sector, had been forced to flee after the Imperium had discovered their inhuman rule over the world of Nebrend. They had brought their capital city, along with the source of their power, the Pit of Fire and Flesh, and proven strong enough to withstand the Masters' initial attempts at subjugating them. A treaty was negotiated allowing the Ix to retain control of their city and their chattel, though the Masters demanded that the Ix' ability to create new members of their kind by plunging mortals into the Pit be heavily restricted in compensation. The Ancients, those mysterious progenitors of the Ix race, agreed to the Masters' demand. Strong beyond mortal measure, the Ix became mercenaries and enforcers for the other factions, prevented by the terms of the treaty to expand their territory beyond their single city. Lineages that had once ruled continents on Nebrend became something akin to crime syndicates, offering protection to those who could afford their rate in wealth, flesh and souls.
The Seraphims, winged agents of Tzeentch, flew from the storms surrounding Aftermath without the need for spacecraft. Twice as tall as mortal men, they took residence within what had once been a spire of an Imperial hive-city, the previous occupants being subjected to unspeakable acts that turned them into mind-broken puppets of the Seraphims. After a few attempts to reclaim the spire ended up in disaster, one of the Masters went there itself. When it emerged several days later, an accord of sorts had been reached : the Seraphims were given the right to the spire and the ability to go through Aftermath unopposed, so long as they did not interfere with the business of the Masters. In the wake of that declaration, the Seraphims began to wander the streets of Aftermath, following the unfathomable errands given onto them by the Changer of Ways. Sometimes, they were accompanied by one of their hollowed servants, to speak in their stead – none living in Aftermath could truthfully claim to have ever heard a Seraphim speak.
The one known as Zerayah, said by some to be the daughter of Fulgrim, came to Aftermath alone, but did not remain so for long. She – if it was indeed a she – became the center of the Slaaneshi cabals in Aftermath, a figure of worship and adoration. Even the Masters recognized that some of Aftermath's population needed recreation, and so they allowed Zerayah to rule over a host of clubs and houses of pleasure, where the denizens of Aftermath could seek a reprieve from their harsh lives. The cults of the Dark Prince were deeply embedded within this network, drawing many to the worship of Slaanesh. Zerayah sat on her throne atop an empire of vice, surviving all attempts made to remove and replace her. The rumors of her parentage began when a daemonhost of Khorne sought to destroy her and, after the resulting battle left an entire district in ruins, she emerged from the devastation not only alive and victorious, but without a single wound.
There were more. The killing guilds of Ezythios, banished from the Imperium for their worship of murder; the revenant cults of the graveyard-world of Hallow's Mark; the refugee clans of the Rak'gol fleeing from some terrible infighting deep within the xenos' territory … All of these and more came to Aftermath, seeking something they believed they could find in the stolen cities and the small empires that had been built upon their corpses. Both the Masters and the Embassy, along with the envoys of the other powers of the Eye, manipulated them to their own ends – and, sometimes, very rarely, they were manipulated in turn.
None of the Dark Gods could claim Aftermath, but it was certain that Tzeentch was the one who derived the most pleasure from its existence.
AN : You may think that this chapter was inspired by Fallen London, and by "inspired", I mean "shamelessly ripped off". But, surprisingly, you would be wrong. The initial idea of Aftermath was inspired from the Nightside novels, and I had first planned to write a short story in it. But that was months ago, and I decided instead to cannibalize the idea for Prince of the Eye. However, Fallen London has since become a huge inspiration for the details of Aftermath.
As you can see, the Ix from Warband of the Forsaken Sons have made their way to the Eye of Terror in this continuity. Without the Forsaken Sons to plunge the Trebedius Sector into a permanent Warp Storm, they were forced to flee from the Imperium's wrath, and ended up in Aftermath.
What are the Masters ? Why do they hate the Eldar so much ? Who is the Ambassador ? What lurks at the center of Aftermath, pulling the lost cities to itself ? Let me know your theories. I am not quite sure what I will do with Aftermath going forward - I have this crazy idea for a series of CYOA stories in the style of ... well, Fallen London, but I am not sure I can afford the time investment right now. If there is enough interest in the setting of Aftermath, I will consider it.
For now, there is another chapter of Prince of the Eye that is almost finished. After that, I am going to focus on another project, one whose nature can be found on the Spacebattles thread for the Roboutian Heresy. I am hoping to get that one ready in time for Christmas.
I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. As always, if you have ideas for this story going forward, don't hesitate to tell me : Prince of the Eye is yet free of the shackles that come with me having actually decided an ending, so your suggestions may end up shaping the fate of this entire timeline !
Zahariel out.