Chapter Text
The Tellucid Stars
A group of 10 stars (or binary star pairs) in the Screaming Vortex known as the “10 Sisters”. Their positions and membership have been in flux since the beginning of the storm as the Vortex brings star systems together, or separates them.
A legend passed down through the ages speaks of 10 sisters, daughters of a powerful galactic tyrant. The tyrant was cruel to his daughters, expecting them to serve him without question, no matter how disagreeable or difficult his demands.
In some versions of the story, the tyrant sired the daughters with his wives. In others, he created the sisters from unliving matter to be his concubines. For stories of gods and demi-gods often include incest.
Five of the sisters turned against their cruel father, while five stayed with him to the bitter end.
Two of the sisters loved each other above all. One, the Princess of Snows with long braids the color of bone, was burdened with the most difficult tasks of all ten, and performed these tasks without complaint. The Princess believed it was her duty to stay with her family, that the tyrant brought peace and prosperity to his empire, and she ought to defend this hard-won “peace through tyranny”. No matter who suffered. No matter who she crushed underfoot.
The other was the leader of the dissenters, the prideful Obsidian Princess who was the tyrant’s favorite child until she was cruelly cast aside when an assassination attempt left her disfigured and on death’s doorstep. The incident allowed her to see her father for what he was, and sympathize with her four sisters who had been treated even worse by him.
Hearing the arguments of the five, the Princess of Snows was torn between her love of her sister and the love she felt for her father, struggling against the invisible chains he had tied around her heart.
Ultimately, she chose the tyrant, and told the him of an impending assassination attempt and coup. The scorned princess, her sister, died upon his blade.
Soon after, the tyrant’s empire, plagued by rebellion and natural disasters, collapsed. Calamity fell on its people.
Some say the princess spent the rest of her life regretting not trusting her sister, for siding with a liar and a fraud like her father. She cut off her long hair and traveled the galaxy as a nun, performing good deeds.
Others say she took a killing blow meant for her undeserving father and he was the one who died alone and remorseful.
The stars of the cluster are named after the princesses in the story.
The Vortex Coursers
The Vortex Coursers are a Black Legion warband who operate in the Tellucid Stars.
Their banner features a Lunar Silkhound (a massive, transgenic Borzoi-like breed) chasing a black rabbit against crescent moon with the Eye of Horus on it.
Originally, they were part of the Emperor’s Children and operated in the Eye of Terror, but Valdemar Telles, their leader, was slain by his concubine and second-in-command, a former Son of Horus. The new leader consumed Valdemar’s brain, gaining his knowledge and memories, and pledged allegiance to Abaddon.
This concubine is none other than the main antagonist of Clothilde’s story, their husband Farhad Osrid Nazari. Of course, it’s not the only name he uses – Valdemar (kill a guy, take his place), Haldomir, Hlodovig, or simply “The Nametaker” – an Astartes contains multitudes, and he can never settle on just one name for all his aspects.
Just like their leader, a number of Vortex Coursers are pacted with dog Daemons, and even ones who aren’t display canine traits, as if the Gods were humoring its leader,
The Vortex Coursers are supported by many human and Beastman auxiliaries, as well as planetary militaries.
The warband rules the sector loosely, demanding tribute from worlds in exchange for protection from xenos, Space Pirates, and other warbands. Most of Farhad’s subjects have never seen a Space Marine in the flesh and can’t name the leaders of the warband.
Hellhound’s Repose
Hellhound’s Repose is a gigantic space station complex orbiting Translucida, a Forge World that supplies the Vortex Coursers. With a population numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and the population of the Forge World being many times that, it is essentially the capital city of the star cluster.
Its name derives from the warband leader, who is known as “The Hellhound of the Tellucids” using it as his base of operations. Throughout the city one can find artwork portraying Lunar Silkhounds, his favorite dog breed, along with Selenar Gene Witches, the ones who enabled his ascension to an Astartes millennia ago.
Translucida exists in a calm region of the Screaming Vortex where several warp currents converge, making Hellhound’s Repose a go-to destination for ships to dock. The city is a “neutral port” where any warband can dock, given they do not take up arms against the warband or any other warbands docked there. The city charges docking fees which serve to enrich the its warlord.
Hellhound’s Repose predates the Hellhound’s arrival in the Screaming Vortex, and is believed to be a renovated space hulk. It is a fully-functioning city with its own laws and customs and extensive infrastructure. Within you may find residential districts, shops, hotels, restaurants, farms, schools, public parks, and anything a city ought to have.
Hellhound’s Repose has a civic government in charge of maintaining the streets, buildings, and public spaces, and it’s the reason its so surprisingly livable. In fact, it’s been voted “best place to live” in the Screaming Vortex for many years.
The mayor of the city is a combined mass of humans known only as the “Gigamayor” and she has been ruling since time immemorial from her command room. Because her mobility is limited due to her large size and atrophied limbs, she uses servo skull drones and messenger Daemons to see around the city. Many disability accommodations in the city, such as the proliferation of ramps for utility vehicles are her doing, as her subjects seek to serve her. She is beloved by the townspeople, and has won re-election countless times.
Due to its position inside the Vortex, Hellhound’s Repose has many anomalous properties. The layout of streets may change depending on the time of day. Entrances to districts may only be accessible if approached from the right direction. Maintenance workers take advantage of risky shortcuts that are glitches in reality – stand a certain way, press into the wall, and fall through the space station.
The chaotic (ahem) nature of the Space Station serves to befuddle invaders aiming to capture the valuable resources and facilities the city holds.
Demographics
Space Marines are a tiny minority of the population of Hellhound’s Repose. The vast majority of the city’s inhabitants are humans and Beastmen who work to support the warband.
Cavy, goat, and sheep Beastmen are the most common types. You can go to a cafe and be served a drink by a capybara.
Languages
The lingua franca of the Black Fleet is Stygian, also known as Black Fleet Standard. It derives from the language spoken by Cthonian recruits to the Luna Wolves, as Abaddon was Cthonian. The language has been slower to change than some due to elder Black Legionnaires acting as anchors of living memory. Stygian script is flowing, reading vertically, resembling Mongolian or Persian script. Stygian is a gender-neutral language, even if the Black Fleet lacks gender equality.
Farhad speaks a language dating back to the Neo-Achaemenid Empire, M30. It is represented by Persian in this series.
In general, assume the names of things in this ficverse aren’t their real names, because we don’t know what language would sound 38,000 years in the future, but approximations with the same meaning.
We Accept You
One of the core tenets of the Black Legion is that everyone is welcome, anyone can contribute to the cause. Imagine, if you will, one of those “In this house we believe...” signs but at the very end, the household proclaims their shared goal of overthrowing the Corpse Emperor.
Queer people are accepted onboard Hellhound’s Repose, and the warband leader employs many “eunuchs” to serve his household, offering them any medical procedures they need in exchange for their loyalty. He will hold this generosity over their heads, yes, but a human in the 41st Millennium will take what they can get.
Getting body mods, or having Warp mutations – it’s accepted.
Changing your name is accepted practice (cause those Chaos Marines keep changing their names). It is considered rude to make assumptions about anybody’s assigned sex. People are what they are in the present.
Life is hard, but disabled people aren’t outright killed due to the difficulty of replacing human workers when they die. Plus Iskandar Khayon, prominent member of the Ezekarion, having a brain-damaged sister kept alive by technology is cited as a reason why We Can’t Leave Grandma to Die. More often Grandma gets put in a war machine to serve as its brain. You win some you lose some.
The Black Legion guarantees religious freedom. No matter what god you worship it all feeds the Gods in the end, right? Even if its worshipping the Corpse Emperor. He’s rumored to be Anathema, the fifth Chaos God...
Black Legionnaires: nobility of the Tellucid Stars
Unlike Imperial Space Marines, Black Legionnaires are allowed to have lives outside of the military and to take civilian spouses. Space Marines are an insular bunch, and tend to marry each other (“Swearing Brotherhood”). Preferably under a full moon reflected in the water.
However, there are those who love the smallness and frailness of humans and abhumans, and will marry crew members on their ships. What a joy, to come home from campaigning and your spouse and children are there to greet you!
Daddy’s home! The geneseed implantation process leaves many sterile, but there are treatments that can remedy such a problem. In the vast majority of cases the children are born as regular humans.
But the majority of our guys adopt children, if they have any.
Black Legionnaires and their families are an elite class on the station. If you mess with the wife or daughter of a Black Legionnaire you’re in big trouble. It’s a holdover from Cthonia, where many Luna Wolves and Sons of Horus were recruited from. These people, living on a hell world, had to rely on clan ties to survive. There are complex kinship ties between different Black Legion families and marriages/sending off your sons to be Space Marines to other warbands is intended to prevent in-faction fighting.
Black Legion families distinguish themselves by using an archaic first-person pronoun dating from the time of Abaddon’s childhood, and by dressing in somber colors, covering their hair. In appearance, many of these families descend from people of Central Asia and the Black Sea Basin, with some coming from western China.
Black Legion weddings are often big public affairs, with perhaps hundreds of generations of the same family attending. Since these families come from diverse backgrounds, wedding customs vary.
Marrying a Black Legionnaire is a path of upward mobility, if a risky one. Maintenance workers may marry a lower ranking Chaos Space Marine in order to be afforded protection from other Chaos Space Marines, though most spouses of the Black Legion must work to support their household. Only the highest ranking lords, such as The Nametaker , can afford to keep consorts who don’t work.
Polygamy is common in the Black Legion, and many believe it is the most natural family group for Space Marines. They cite Abaddon and the Ezekarion – a polycule headed by a strong, dominant figure. Taking on war widows as second wives is a common practice.
Daemons
Warp beings are a part of life in Hellhound’s Repose. Strong emotions will summon the Neverborn. Objects become cursed or blessed depending on the feelings of their users. Scolding mothers will “talk life” into objects that hurt their children.
Ælfwine Nazari, the third-born son of the Nametaker, calls the Neverborn “faeries”. It’s a common sentiment. Don’t anger the faeries, or they’ll hurl a space rock at your house. Leave offerings for Nurglings. Don’t knock over anything that looks like a faerie house.
Vortex denizens are a superstitious lot for good reason – following the rules of dealing with the Neverborn can mean life or death.
The Gigamayor aims to make everybody in the city happy to avoid summoning aggressive Daemons. A common sight are “love puppies”, white and fluffy Neverborn who look like dogs with too many or too few eyes. They are formed of the love parents feel for their children, and the love people feel for their pets. If a love puppy makes friends with one of your pacted Daemons, however, the Daemon will become docile and useless for battle.
The Vortex Coursers employ a number of pacted Daemons. Among them are “Mailer Daemons” who relay handwritten letters through the Warp. Written communication is less liable to mangling than Astropathic relays.
Others are “Door Daemons” who open portals for the Warband. They figure prominently in folk art, especially as “door guardians” on the entrances of homes.
Dog Heaven
One of the planets technically under the Vortex Coursers is known as “Dog Heaven”.
It is ruled by a Daemon prince known as the “Great Horned One”, the host of the Wild Hunt.
On this world, the souls of dogs get to chase game, eat tasty food, and be played with until they are ready to dissolve back into the Warp.
Of course, the game animals chased by the dogs are none other than the souls of unlucky humans, transformed into birds, squirrels, and deer as part of a twisted punishment for perceived sins in life.
Not all the dogs in Dog Heaven are dogs. Some of Daemons formed from the idea of a dogs, strong feelings human beings have had for their dogs through the millennia.
Farhad is pacted to one such Daemon. Many years ago, his husband and captor Valdemar Telles took him to Dog Heaven, which, owing to Warp vagaries, was accessible through the Eye of Terror. There he took part in the Wild Hunt and was noticed by a Daemon resembling a female Lunar Silkhound.
Upon pacting with the Daemon, Farhad took on bestial features. His teeth grew sharp, his hair turned white and grew over parts of his body that were bare, and his nails became thick and black.
Within the Vortex, Farhad involuntarily transforms into a daemonic Silkhound when experiencing intense emotions, and is subject to canine impulses, such as the urge to chase small animals.
Food and dining
On Hellhound’s Repose, what cannot be grown on-site has to be flown in at considerable cost. Fresh imported food is a luxury – most people make due with dried, pickled, and frozen goods.
Local agricultural staples include mushrooms, nutritional yeast, rabbit meat, snails, crickets, meal worms, alliums, and potatoes. The environmental favors foods that require less water and space to grow. As rabbits are associated with The Moon, where their leader became a Space Marine, they have a special place in the culture of the Vortex Coursers.
(There are debates between different ships and space stations on the best vertebrates to grow for meat. The merits of chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, pigeons, iguanas, and herbivorous fish are fiercely debated.)
Vertebrate meat is considered a luxury, especially freshly-killed meat. Citizens will get most of their protein from vat-grown, insect, or dried sources.
Grains must be imported from places where the climate and labor situation is more amicable, and often foods like bread or noodles utilize root vegetables instead.
Eating pets, feral animals, and deceased loved ones is accepted practice, although Space Marines are more likely to be cannibals due to poison and disease immunity.
One of the most luxurious restaurants onboard the station is The Flower of Carnage, where one can order raw meat taken from the bodies of beings from all around the galaxy. Imperial guardsmen, Orks, Tyranids, even Eldar. The house special for Space Marines? “Alphabet soup” - the language processing center of someone who knows your target language, raw and suspended in richly-spiced broth. Consume it and learn a language in a day!
In the Future, everybody recycles
Due to the risks and expense of space travel along the Screaming Vortex, resources are heavily recycled onboard the station. Corpses, human or not, are rendered into food and useful products. Nutrients are removed from wastewater so both components can be reused. People hang on to broken household items and barter them for materials they need.
Waste heat from electricity generation and excess heat from solar radiation is used to grow tropical foods. There are compost facilities where waste is converted into growth medium, and a rendering plant where animal tissue is converted into useful products such as soil amendments.
Clothes are expensive, and people will pay to have a smaller set of clothes repaired rather than buy new clothes. There are families of tailors living on-site, one in particular who provides most new clothes for the captive Space Marines.
Chaos Marines and their auxiliaries are used to living with limited resources, and are prone to hoarding. A typical Black Legionnaire’s quarters are crammed full of stuff he can’t bear to part with and has no time or will to organize.