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Cherubael

Cherubael was once a Daemon Prince, worshipped as a god on the feral world of Clanar II. When Inquisitor Quixos freed the Clanars from Cherubael’s domination, he managed to enslave the creature into the body of one of the warriors. Cherubael served Quixos for many decades, until finally he was banished back to the warp by the intervention of other, more puritanical, Inquisitors. However, he was never totally free, and once more he has been drawn back into a mortal body, serving Inquisitor Eisenhorn.

Equipment: None.

Special Abilities: Ambidextrus; Daemonic – invulnerable; Possessed; Vampirism. Although unarmed, Cherubael’s close combat attacks count as having the following daemonic properties: Deflection; Gnawing; Magic absorption; Mind stealer.

Psychic Powers: Blood boil; Regenerate; Warp strength; Psychic shriek; Telepathy.

WS BS S T I Wp Sg Nv Ld
Cherubael 51 53 55 55 53 91 101 96 28
A daemon bound to serve man
Daemons are creatures of the immaterium and the natural laws of real space prevent such beasts from manifesting themselves in the material plane without exceptional effort. The barriers between warp space and real space must first be weakened by ritual and sacrifice, and the correct words of power must be spoken by those who would summon such things. A much easier way for a daemon to force its way into real space is possession, whereby the daemon uses the unprotected mind of a vulnerable psyker to forge a bridge between it and the material universe.

The Emperor’s holy Inquisition has long known the depredations of the Daemon Prince Cherubael. The beast’s name sullies the blasted pages of the Liber Malum, that accursed volume which records the fate of those who tread the path of damnation. Kept chained within the deepest dungeon of the Library Sanctus on Terra, to even mention its name is to invite insanity. Quill-servitors painstakingly record the horrors of the daemonic, to better aid those who would stand against them. The archive-dungeon groans and contorts with the horror of its contents and entire tomes within its rune-encrusted walls are devoted to the evil that is the Daemon Prince Cherubael.

He is known as the Death of Worlds by the pitiful survivors of the Fenestra system, whom the daemon enslaved for millennia, and as the Scourge by the people of the Kitarax Nebula. Cherubael has, in a variety of guises, slaughtered his way across the galaxy for thousands, if not millions, of years leaving untold suffering and cries of lamentation in his wake. He extinguished the civilisation of the Ronja in a single night and set the entire Gethme sector ablaze for a thousand years. Masquerading as a prophecised leader, Cherubael incited the entire population of Medredax to commit ritual suicide, feeding on the world’s psychic death-scream as a sweetmeat. His desolations are legion, and scarce has a creature so base and vile been unleashed upon the galaxy.

The Daemon Prince was finally to meet an adversary worthy of his attentions on the world of Clanar II, where he had enslaved the feral population of that world to perform untold blood sacrifices in his name. Entire generations were fed to the Daemon Prince before Inquisitor Quixos freed the Clanars from the daemon’s hellish bondage. Leading a small band of warriors, Quixos fought the Daemon Prince’s host body, delivering a mortal blow with his own daemonblade, which contained the bound essence of Kharnagar the Deathly, a Daemon Prince whom Quixos had defeated some decades earlier. As his host body died, Cherubael’s spirit form leapt into the nearest available host body, one of Clanar II’s mightiest warriors, lest he be banished back to the freezing void of the Immaterium. But Quixos had anticipated this and had previously adorned his warriors’ bodies with hidden pentagrammic wards and powerful sigils of binding.

The daemon’s fury at being so imprisoned almost tore the warrior’s body apart as spasms of power warped through his flesh, searing out his eyes and imparting a measure of the daemon’s form to his new prison of flesh. Vestigial horns burst through his forehead and soulless white light burned where his eyes had once been. Gales of raw power whipped around the body, tossing it high into the air as phantom winds spun and twisted the warrior’s body in its grip. Cherubael’s exertions were in vain; Quixos’ knowledge of the abominations of Chaos was deep and the Daemon Prince could not escape. Quixos chained the thrashing creature down and hammered blessed spikes of gold through the meat of the Daemonhost’s body, intoning the six hundred and sixty six verses of the Canticle of Binding. He then fastened scrolls, inscribed with unspeakable oaths in his own blood, to Cherubael with fine silver chains. Finally, after this gruelling battle of wills, the Inquisitor had bent the Daemon Prince to his bidding.

Thus was the Daemon Prince Cherubael bound to the service of Inquisitor Quixos and his millennia-spanning bloodbath brought to an end. Quixos was no ordinary Inquisitor, though. Many years before encountering Cherubael, as he banished a Daemon on the world of Lackan XV, fragments from his foe’s bestial claws became lodged in his heart, every attempt to remove them ending in failure. The vanquished Daemon’s legacy would be with Quixos until he died. Though its influence gradually corrupted the Inquisitor’s body, it granted him a tangible link to the warp and a measure of insight into the workings of Chaos. He resolved to further investigate the potential uses of Chaos, earning a reputation as a maverick amongst his fellow Inquisitors.

Now, with the Daemon Prince Cherubael in his service, his powers grew daily as his body twisted and his mind descended into madness. For another hundred years, Quixos and Cherubael were to destroy many deadly threats to the Imperium, the Daemonhost’s warp-borne strength and psychic powers proving invaluable to the Inquisitor. In the decades that followed, Quixos was forced to perform blasphemous rites to transfer the Daemon Prince’s essence into fresh hosts as its Chaotic essence eventually destroyed each body. Even the awesome power of a Daemon Prince could not hold the dissolution of its host body at bay indefinitely. The flesh of each victim would become corrupt and unable to contain the beast, and another unwilling victim would be forced to become host to the monster. With each new incarnation of the Daemon Prince, another piece of Quixos’ humanity was forfeit. He was to delve yet further into the mysteries of Chaos and, as his knowledge and powers grew, so too did the corruption of his body and soul.

There are those who whisper that the bindings which Quixos had intoned over the imprisoned body of Cherubael were doomed to fail from the outset, and it was the Daemon Prince’s insidious corruption seeping invisibly from his bandaged form that drove Quixos over the edge of sanity. It is likely that no one will ever know for sure, as Quixos was declared Heretic and Extremis Diabolus in 342.M41 by Inquisitor Eisenhorn. Three years later, Quixos was dead, executed by Eisenhorn, and the daemonic form of Cherubael had passed into the service of his killer. The circumstances surrounding this are shrouded in mystery and certainly Eisenhorn has never spoken of what took place between him and Quixos.

The Daemon Prince has since fought alongside the Inquisitor for many years and, among Eisenhorn’s opponents within the Inquisition, it is suspected that his close ties with the Daemonhost has been the cause for the increase in his psychic powers in recent decades. Whether this is true or not is unknown, although there are many who believe that Eisenhorn is becoming as much of a danger to the stability of the Imperium as the renegade Quixos was.

Only time will tell.

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