Far
to the North, deep into the Chaos Wastes, shattered walls and ruined bastions surround
the edge of the world. They are ancient things, raised at a time when the world
was free of corruption and every land and every age belonged to mortal hands.
In many ways they are the last relics of a better world, a hint at a lost golden era.
Who raised them will forever be a mystery. Many are no doubt the work of civilizations
long since rendered extinct, monuments to races who have long since been forgotten.
While the question of who raised such mighty works will go forever unanswered,
it is clear to any with even the barest knowledge of Chaos what brought them low.
The Slaves of Darkness possess every kind of foul sorcery and monstrous beast,
but to so effortlessly shatter stone and rock requires a different kind of power.
It requires the malign works of the Dawi Zharr, it requires… the Hellcannon.
The ruinous powers of Chaos can twist metal and timber as easily as flesh and bone,
but a true Daemon Engine is not merely a corrupted vessel. They must be built with baleful intent,
for it is neither machine nor beast, but a daemonic fusion of both. They are at once
a cage in which the malign spirits of the aethyr might be bound, but also a conduit in
which a Daemon might persist far longer than the counterbalance of reality would normally allow.
Every daemon engine is an unnatural intertwining of mechanical engineering and sorcerous power,
a grotesque amalgamation that defies conventional understanding. In their form, flesh, sinew, metal
and soul are joined in twisted union. The malefic spirit of Chaos inhabits every joint and every cog
and every plate, expressed as grotesque faces, fanged maws, and tendrils of writhing energy.
Yet even within the unholy arsenal of the Ruinous Powers, the Hellcannon is unique.
The kinds of daemon that might be bound to mortal constructs are simple things,
wishing only to rush forward in their new forms to rip and tear at the foe.
But the Hellcannon is a siege engine, a ranged weapon that can only function if
it remains far from the enemy. The nature of such a thing is hateful to a Daemon, and
so the Hellcannon is not merely at war with all those around it, but its own monstrous essence.
When brought to battle, a Hellcannon will always be accompanied by a group of Dawi Zharr, Chaos
Dwarfs who remain the only mortal engineers alive today that possess the secrets of such weapons.
Yet these are not a Hellcannon’s crew, but rather its sadistic handlers. They must prod and coerce
it into submission and carefully direct its overwhelming thirst for destruction.
Hellcannons are always chained to the ground upon deployment, a necessity to ensure the daemon
engine does not forget its purpose and madly rampage towards enemy lines. The Dawi Zharr are
the brutal masters of these weapons, but even their most deliberate precautions might prove
useless. Hellcannons have been known to fire into their own ranks if no enemy lies in range,
or suck its own handlers into its furnace. The daemon inside might sometimes break its
bonds or go berserk and in such cases the Dawi Zharr are always the first to die.
Yet the destructive power of these weapons makes even the gravest misfire an acceptable
price to pay. They fire not cannonballs or rockets, but the raw energy of tortured souls.
On impact, these blasts liquify anything they touch, shaking the very earth so that solid rock
might run like shifting sands. To power such things, each Hellcannon contains a furnace at
its heart in which the Dawi Zharr relentlessly shovel the bodies of their enemies and slaves.
Within, flesh runs like wax, bones crack and blood evaporates, hungrily consumed by
the daemon bound within. In moments, only the souls remain, ammunition for the next volley.
Many great fortresses and cities lie across the known world, enormous bastions of civilization
whose mighty gates have withstood the test of time and the might of armies.
Within, citizens go about their lives in peace, confident in the knowledge that their nations and
empires are eternal, their supremacy on this world assured. They are not the first to think such
things. Far to the north, beneath the shattered walls and ruined bastions, statues of forgotten
peoples bear the same sentiment upon their pedestals. They express the same bold sentiment in
a thousand different ways in a thousand different tongues that none today can read.
“Look on my works, ye mighty and despair”. Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of
those colossal wrecks, boundless and bare. The tracks of their destructors stretch far away.