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Legend has it among the people of the Great Eye, that when Rogal Dorn died, Slaanesh claimed his soul. The chosen son, the perfectionist, no matter how incorruptible he seemed, went to the same place as all the hedonists and debauchers of the galaxy. He was a being of Warp matter, and to the Warp he would return.
For the rest of eternity Slaanesh would toss him about in hurricane winds and inflict every torture imaginable upon him. It was what the Primarch secretly wanted, after all. As the ultimate torment, Rogal Dorn and his beloved Sigismund were separated forever in death.
In life, Rogal Dorn had spurned Sigismund for heeding the advice of Euphrati Keeler, for believing in superstition rather than science and reason, for refusing to go to Phall and risk dying unremembered in the cold dark.
“You are not my son!” – did the Primarch weep in bitter regret when Sigismund, first High Marshal of the Black Templars, was felled by Abaddon the Despoiler, wishing he hadn't drove a schism between two of them? Did his tears turn to ice as he too was slain by the Black Legion?
In any case, while Slaanesh claimed Rogal Dorn, Khorne claimed Sigismund. Driven by anger to the very end, Sigismund was doomed to fight hordes of daemons and nonbelievers. Numbering among them were Bloodthirsters, Flesh Hounds, Chaos Space Marines, mutated foot soldiers, xenos of all shapes and sizes, and things for which the templar had no name. Each day he would cut a swath through an army that stretched from horizon to horizon, only to see his slain enemies revive before his eyes just when he was completely exhausted.
Separated by the two gods, the two could only pine for each other when there was the briefest respite in their punishment.
But somewhere in the timeless realm of the warp, a third entity was watching. This someone took pity on the two. Every so often, a bridge of immaterial magpies would form, connecting the realms of Slaanesh and Khorne for just one night. Crossing the bridge, meeting at the center, the two would be reunited for what could be minutes, hours, days. Long enough to embrace. Long enough to make love. The Moon and stars as seen from Terra shone down on the two of them, smiling on their union.
Was it the first meeting? Or did it take subsequent crossings over the bridge of immaterial magpies for them to finally fuck. Was it truly unexpected? That Primarchs and Astartes, being unnatural creations, being royalty, would mate with their (symbolic) sons and fathers? Who knew if Rogal Dorn and Sigismund were lovers in life. Perhaps they refused to cross that line. Perhaps in their desperation to be close to someone they loved, after an eternity of being the Gods’ playthings, they’d cast aside taboo and mated like rabbits, not caring who was watching. That night, they held on for dear life, and only the magpies, unable to support the weight of the bridge any longer, could separate them once more. The comforting Moon and stars gave way to unsettling swirling, infernal skies.
Wasn’t it the way of sadistic gods, to give their victims hope but immediately yank it away?
It was after one of these desperate matings that Rogal Dorn fell pregnant. He was certainly surprised, for he was already dead, and ghosts did not get pregnant. He guarded his belly carefully as daemons and apparitions of the dead beat him with clubs. For an uncountable amount of time he wandered through a desert strewn with broken glass, with nothing to eat or drink, feeling as if he were on the brink of death, but unable to truly die. But even without sustenance, even after all the abuse, he did not lose the child. His belly swelled larger and larger, and he was besieged by false contractions. He limped, clutching his belly and hoping the child wouldn’t be born in such a hostile place. As if someone had read his mind and decided to grant him mercy, he found himself on the shore of an oasis. He lay in a rock hollow behind a waterfall and groaned as the first true contractions rippled through him.
The birth was long and painful, but Rogal Dorn relished every moment of it. He gave birth to a baby boy. After he’d washed the child in cool, refreshing oasis water and bitten off the umbilical cord with his teeth, he saw how much his son resembled Sigismund. From then on, Rogal Dorn would no longer be alone in his journey.
Life, or rather, un-life became more bearable. The daemons and apparitions who normally showed no mercy to the Primarch would leave his baby alone, and the hurricane winds and floors of broken glass no longer hurt as much as they did. Slaanesh would allow Rogal Dorn to nurse his little one whenever the baby cried for milk. Little treats appeared on his path more and more frequently: his favorite flowers, a bushel of berries, a piece of bone with a familiar inscription, a field of glowing insects. Rogal Dorn delighted in showing his son new places and teaching him the words for all the beautiful things.
One day, he found yellow children’s clothes neatly folded on a flat rock that fit his son exactly. As Rogal Dorn continued to wander through Slaanesh’s realm, he found more and more baby clothes: yellow jumpsuits, yellow bibs, yellow jackets, yellow shorts, yellow hats, and yellow booties. He even found a yellow baby sling, so he could leave his hands free while his son rode on his chest, and an oddly weightless backpack to carry the clothes in. Each time he found baby clothes, the Primarch looked around, trying to find the being who’d left them there. But no matter how hard he looked, he could never find the mystery artisans. Nor were there any clothing shops, sewing supplies, and bolts of fabric to be seen.
By the way the clothes were exactly the clothes he wanted his son to have, Rogal Dorn soon deduced that somehow, he’d been able to conjure baby clothes with the power of his mind. He would think “I think my son needs a…” and some time later, it would appear. His suspicions were confirmed when he thought of baby toys, and the Warp granted him a baby rattle and stuffed animals in the style of the Ice Pelt Clan.
Rogal Dorn knew his son was no ordinary baby, and indeed, the boy was unusually well-behaved, never waking up his father with his crying or making unsightly messes. After he was about a year old, he stopped aging.
And that wasn’t all. One day, the boy shocked his father by speaking his first words. They were not “mama” or “dada” but complete sentences!
“Father, I sense that you’re sad, because you’ve been separated from the one who sired me. It makes me sad to know this.”
Rogal Dorn jolted back at hearing his son talk like an adult. This was a faerie baby who’d read his thoughts!
“Please, don’t be alarmed,” the faerie boy said, holding up his hands. “While you are trapped in Slaanesh’s realm, I have the ability to travel between the land of different gods and pass on a message to Sigismund. Just tell me what you want to say to him.”
At this announcement, Rogal Dorn was cautiously hopeful, wondering if it was another one of Slaanesh’s tricks. If he let the faerie boy go off on his own, he would be alone again, for who knew how long. But the faerie boy reassured his father that, being a creature of the warp, if he left for Khorne’s realm and came back, it would feel like only an instant had passed.
And so Rogal Dorn conveyed a heartfelt message to Sigismund, telling of his journeys with his faerie son. The boy vanished in a puff of smoke and reappeared moments later, a frown on his face.
While Rogal Dorn adored his son, Sigismund was less enthusiastic, swinging his sword at the faerie baby as soon as he was in killing distance. Of course, he missed, and the child yelled for him to stop and listen. Sensing the Gods were playing a trick on him, Sigismund had drowned out the boy’s attempts to communicate with an endless string of prayers to the Emperor. After several futile tries, including writing the words in the air with glowing red letters, the boy managed to covertly leave a parchment note on Sigismund, in the hopes he would open and read it.
Sigismund, of course, had no message to relay back to Rogal Dorn. The Primarch sighed at the templar’s stubbornness, but was glad to know Sigismund hadn’t lost his fighting spirit.
Whenever Rogal Dorn was between tortures, the faerie boy tried to reach Sigismund again, to Rogal Dorn’s endless worry. Though the faerie boy reassured his father that being a Warp entity, there was no way for Sigismund to kill him, Rogal Dorn was scared that one day the templar would put a sword through the baby’s neck.
What a naughty boy he was, poofing when his father told him not to go. Sometimes he disguised himself as a hellhound puppy, or a very short foot soldier. Sometimes he hid in someone’s backpack. He left countless signs along the templar’s path: stone cairns, bone windchimes, a black pelt slung over a scarecrow holding a message, for example. But Sigismund was far too stubborn to listen to reason or accept the faerie baby as his son.
Perhaps if Sigismund crossed the magpie bridge, and saw Rogal Dorn holding his son, he would finally accept that it was no trick. And so Rogal Dorn and his son journeyed through the land of shadows, hoping the immaterial magpies would return one day, and the three of them could be a family. From his perspective, it could take a few months, or a few years, or thousands of years. He had the rest of eternity to turn the fool around.