Brotherhood of the Horned Darkness

“Choice, such a rare commodity in our times, is it not? Rich or poor, powerful or powerless, the Imperium binds us and enslaves us, and for what? The pleasure of grovelling and dying for some distant and uncaring corpse? No, my friend, we have chosen our master; he is generous and his gifts are very real. His patronage carries a price, of course, but what thing of value does not? It is a rational choice, a wise choice, and yours to make freely...”
—Aku Syn, Servant of the Horned Darkness
The Brotherhood of the Horned Darkness is a dangerous
and highly organized malefic cult whose origins and
activities go back according to some sources to the
founding of the Calixis Sector and quite possibly beyond.
This cult has been repeatedly smashed time and again over
the centuries only to appear again some years or decades
later. Membership, size, form, and power may vary, but it is
always recognizable in its core beliefs and the object of its
worship---the Daemon Balphomael, the Horned Darkness.
The brotherhood, known to some as the “Pact of Balphomael”
or the “Black Society,” is recognized by the Ordo Malleus as
a near archetypical daemon worshipping cult, although often
better resourced and more dangerous than most.
Appealing to the nobility and the ruling elite who tend
toward ambition and megalomania rather than jaded excess
or forbidden pleasure, Balphomael’s supplicants are often
austere, driven, and dangerous individuals who obey their
master’s teachings and feed his hungry demand for sacrifice
and suffering. In the past, multiple groups worshipping the
daemon have been in existence at the same time, either kept
in ignorance of each other or set up as rivals to prove their
worth, depending on their daemonic master’s whim.
Historically, cults worshipping the Horned Darkness have
been discovered as far afield as Landunder, Malfi, and Sepheris Secundus. However, the cult’s greatest stronghold in the past,
and the place where it has reared its head time and again is
mighty Scintilla itself. Here at the heart of Calixis, the heresy
once became so powerful and widespread as to threaten
to corrupt the seat of sector government. Some scholars of
the forbidden believe that the daemon has some particular
connection to this world, which, if it could be somehow
broken, may cast it out more permanently and end its malign
influence on the sector once and for all. Unfortunately, the
past has proven that the threat of the Horned Darkness is not
so easily destroyed.
==The Nature of the Cult==
“By this sacrifice, darkness, tell us.”
—The Rites of Balphomael
The Brotherhood takes the form of a secret conspiracy,
a mystery cult that takes great pains to keep its existence
hidden from the outside world. It makes extensive use of go-betweens,
ignorant hirelings, secret tongues, ciphers, and a
rigidly enforced code of silence to maintain its cover. Behind
this curtain, the cult’s structure is strongly delineated, with its
masters holding complete authority of life and death over its
lesser members.
Commonly these masters form a ruling cabal that numbers
a ritually significant eight members. These are the “servants,”
and each has a direct pact with his daemonic master. They
often grant themselves grand titles such as high magister,
ipsisama, or mokartus, but ultimately the cult’s true master
remains Balphomael itself---none dare disobey its dark
pronouncements. In past incarnations of the cult, the secrecy
and paranoia of its members have meant that none other
than the high magister knew the identities of all the cabal
members, while to others they are only known as masked
figures wielding absolute power.
Below this cabal are an indeterminate number of worshipers,
would-be masters, aspirants, and favored agents, each hoping
that they too will be deemed worthy of receiving the archdaemon’s
notice. Openings in the ranks only occur should
one of the members show failure or weakness, succumb to
madness, or suffer death. Assassination, as long as it does not
expose the Brotherhood or undermine its goals, is viewed as
a perfectly acceptable avenue of advancement within the cult.
As such, the cult’s membership is made up of ambitious and
driven men and women, seekers of power and wealth, and
various power-hungry nobles, criminal overlords, scheming
adepts, and avaricious guilders. Corrupt priests and enforcers
are rarer among the Brotherhood, but highly favored as
avenues for the cult’s wider power and influence.
Serving as the Brotherhood’s foot soldiers are hired
muscle (often of some quality, given their master’s resources),
and those deemed useful to the cult who have been deluded,
duped, blackmailed, bribed, or simply cowed into service.
Although the majority of these lesser agents are not true
members of the Brotherhood, they are left by their masters
with no illusions about the price of failure or betrayal. Those
showing suitable ruthlessness and ambition may be elevated
to the Brotherhood proper after proving themselves.
The cult’s principal goal is to further the power, wealth,
and influence of its ruling cabal, and of course to appease
its hidden patron. To this end, the gestalt capability of all
those within the Brotherhood and those they can control
or influence are brought into play. Plots are hatched,
rivals destroyed, secret agreements reached, webs of deceit
maintained, and power wielded in the shadows, and the cult
slowly spreads and grows. Backing all of these more mundane
power games is the baleful influence of the daemon and the
dark rites carried out in its name, all of which must be paid
for in blood and souls.
If the cult has a particular weakness, it is the daemon at
its heart. Sometimes the daemon’s demands outpace its cult’s
ability to covertly fulfil, and the paranoia and intrigues it can
engender, even among its own, can be counterproductive.
Ultimately, Balphomael has a tendency to break its “toys.”
The cult is known to have been aided in the past by the arch-heretic Coriolanus Vestra.
== Tenets, Goals, and Malefic Beliefs ==
If one motivation lies behind everything that the cult does,
it is overriding ambition. The cult’s mortal masters, known
as the ”Servants” (a reference to their direct relation to the
Brotherhood’s daemonic patron), are characterized by their
lust for power and dominance over their fellows, principally
manifested through quite mundane means---wealth, influence,
authority, status, and fear. They desire not to bring down the
Imperium, but to rule it and wield ultimate power from behind
the scenes---to become in effect, the secret masters of all.
The Brotherhood’s membership (which covers both sexes
despite its name) is drawn almost exclusively from the rich,
the powerful, and the ambitious, who, despite their wealth and
station, desire even more. To them, the Brotherhood’s purpose
is to help them dominate others and obtain more privilege
and power. The daemon at the cult’s heart also demands
worship, which takes the form of obeisance, devotion, and
propitiation for the main part, rather than fanatical faith or
belief in its divinity.
Balphomael’s creed, such as it is, breeds disdain, selfishness,
and arrogance, and the Brotherhood quantifies the masses of
humanity (and the whole Imperium for that matter) as so much
chattel to be used and disposed of at whim. The Brotherhood
is wary of rivals and threats to its secret dominion, particularly
so in the case of rival cults and other influences who would
undermine it or usurp its goals. Thus the cult is not above
employing subtle means to destroy the competition (such
as leading on the wrath of the Imperial authorities against
a troublesome rival, etc.). The Holy Ordos, in particular, are
seen as a threat and one which it should be vigilant against.
However, direct conflict with the Ordos should be avoided.
The Brotherhood also has the means to create Infil-Traitors, mind-wiped assassins who do not know they carry a set of instructions within them that can be triggered under specific circumstances to attack their targets. The Inquisition does not yet know how they are able to produce such unknowing double-agents.
== The Rule of the Brotherhood ==
To many who are attracted to the cult, involvement can
seem a rational and even sensible choice, an alliance with
a powerful force that can grant them their desires, protect
them from their enemies, and see them triumph over their
rivals. They may rationalize it as a simple act of commerce
and fealty, no different in essence than swearing loyalty
to a guild or siding with a great house. For many, the fact
that recognizable strictures such as binding contracts, strict
hierarchy, and demanded obedience are all cornerstones of the
Brotherhood’s structure make the cult merely a continuation
of what their lives already demand.
The cult fosters this lie by taking on the trappings of a
secret society dedicated to furthering its members’ interests.
Often it only reveals its true nature to aspirants once they
have been fully tested, compromised, and tempted by the
power and influence the cult offers. Such sane and civilized
trappings are, of course, ultimately a deceit, and one willingly
embraced by the cult’s members to conceal the dark and
festering truth at the cult’s heart, the daemon Balphomael.
The Horned Darkness is a powerful entity able to grant great
boons to those that swear it service. However, its price is
likewise heavy, its only coins of exchange are sacrifice and
death, and it is a jealous and unforgiving master.
The Brotherhood also sees the value in blackmail, brutality,
and the exploitation of the vices of others as effective tools to
bring the weak to heel and ensure their obedience. It prefers to
suborn, intimidate, and corrupt as an exercise of power. When
the time for killing comes, however, the Brotherhood either
employs calculated and overwhelming force so as to make a
terrifying example to others, or masks its crimes as accidents
or random acts of violence, whichever best suits its needs. It
is this high degree of self-control that has made the cult so
dangerous in the past. Its ability to operate clandestinely and
sparingly, where other less organized or more psychotic cults
often expose themselves by succumbing to their own excesses
or deluded beliefs, makes it an unusually subtle enemy for
the Ordos.
==The Myth of Khorazin==
On a more than a dozen occasions through the years, the
cult has been discovered spreading corruption at the heart
of several commercial empires and noble houses on Scintilla.
It has also spread its tendrils into the apparatus of state, the
Administratum, and even the Ecclesiarchy. Only through the
eternal vigilance of the Inquisition, and with much destruction
and bloodletting has the Brotherhood been excised. In the
most perilous of these cases, the Brotherhood, through the
front of the Tellurian Combine, almost managed to co-opt
and corrupt the Lord Sector’s government before it was found
out and destroyed.
This has led some within the Ordo Malleus to search for
some focus for the daemon on this world over and above its
worth as the sector capital. Some believe there is some hidden
warp-rift, tainted relic, or phenomenon on Sibellus, which if
it could be uncovered and destroyed, might provide a more
permanent solution to the problem. The Daemonhunter
Orpheus uncovered a potential name for this focus in the
secret ciphers of the cult, that of “Khorazin.” Just what this
Khorazin is---a place, artefact, allegory, or individual---remains unproven, but evidence suggests that it is somewhere
in Scintilla’s barren wastelands.
==The Daemon’s Domains==
Behind the veneer of the cult’s power mongering and the
secretive machinations of its controlling cabals, Balphomael
demands its due. As a result, the cult maintains a string of
hidden shrines to its daemonic patron. These are temples
of forbidden worship where ritual murder is carried out
in Balphomael’s name, and where the cabal members can
commune with their dark master, call down malefic curses on
their enemies, and summon daemons to do their bidding.
Such shrines and temples are constructed in secret and
hidden within noble estates or concealed in disused industrial
facilities and other forlorn and abandoned locales where the
cult’s business can be conducted far from prying eyes. No
matter how well hidden, these structures (thanks to their
ritual significance and Balphomael’s own requirements)
remain a vulnerability to the cult, as they must be left in place
once constructed and consecrated and cannot be abandoned
or easily moved. Indeed the authorities’ stumbling on such
a temple to the Horned Darkness has precipitated the cult’s
discovery and destruction in the past.
A notable encounter with the cult took place in 770.M41, in which the Inquisitor Felroth Gelt and his retinue followed a group of the cult to the death world of Woe, whereupon the world itself came to life and attacked the offworlders, whereupon was declared off-limits by the Inquisitor. Balphomael's true purpose for sending his servants to their deaths on Woe is not known, and they were not successful in whatever ritual they were commanded to perform.
==The Pact of the Horned Darkness==
The daemon lord of the Brotherhood is a fell being that
demands service and sacrifice, and who enters into Dark Pacts
with those mortals with sufficient ambition, ruthlessness, and
lack of conscience to attract its interest. Indeed, the upper
echelons of the Brotherhood are exclusively made up of such
darkly favored individuals.
More information on the game effects of Dark Pacts can
be found on page 241 of Dark Heresy, and of the pacts
illustrated there, both the pacts of Dominion and Survival
are particularly appropriate to Balphomael’s infernal bargains.
Additionally, some further boons that might be granted by
the daemon are listed here.
The Boons Of Balphomael
Infernal Lure: By passing a Scrutiny Skill Test Opposed
by his subject’s Willpower, a character with this boon may
automatically know the heart’s darkest desire or secret vice
of a single individual by looking in his eyes (whether he
knows it himself or not). This information is conveyed only
in generalizations rather than in specific names or details,
but it is still sufficient to provide a +20 bonus to Charm
or Intimidate him where relevant. Particularly single-minded,
dull, or virtuous individuals may be immune to this, having
no such dark recesses to exploit.
Blood of Shadows: This boon replaces the subject’s
blood with a blackish ichor that quickly dissolves into smoke
if spilt. Other than a greyish caste to the skin (which can be
covered with cosmetics), there is no outward sign of the malefic
transformation within. The subject gains the Daemonic and
Dark Sight Traits and adds +10 to his Strength and Agility.
Daemonic Familiar: The subject is granted the boon of
a daemonic familiar or similar dark entity bound in service to
them.
Dark Rites: Another common boon granted to the servants
of the cabal is knowledge of certain dark rituals including
the summoning and binding of non-aligned lesser daemons,
and rites to foretell the future, cause disaster, manipulate fate,
and discover secrets. However, the sacrifices and cost involved
in such rituals as the Horned Darkness instructs are often
shockingly high, and so they are used relatively sparingly by
the Brotherhood.
The Daemon’s Due
Balphomael’s demands on his servants are unremitting and
steep. He demands complete and unswerving allegiance to
him above all other creeds and gods, and the pledge of his
followers’ immortal souls. He also demands far more tangible
sacrifices in the form of the ritual murder of the Brotherhood’s
enemies in his name and the burnt offerings of the betrayed
and the weak to appease his hunger and fuel his darkly given
rituals of power.
For those with whom he enters into a Dark Pact, his boon
comes with this price and more: he demands true sacrifice,
the destruction of something of great personal value to the
petitioner in Balphomael’s name. Just what this sacrifice entails
will vary, but commonly involves the betrayal and death of a
close friend, loved one, or cherished dream. For some coldhearted
petitioners with no such humane foible, the daemon
has been known to take a hand, an eye, or a handsome visage
whose loss the petitioner must suffer in payment.
==Tales Told in Darkness==
“Canon Alberic? Ah yes, one of my... more colorful predecessors as chaplain to the House. I wouldn’t believe all you hear, foolish tales of dark altars, pacts with daemons, and such. Superstitious nonsense fit only to be repeated by the serviles! Why I use the very same library and apartments as he, and if there’s anything dark lurking, why I’m sure I’d have found it myself...”
—Brother Wraxall, Chaplain to Skane Keep, Sepheris Secundus
Although the population is quite ignorant of the existence of
the Brotherhood, it has troubled the sector enough times in
the past to have merited a place in the varied occult lore and
secret histories of Calixis. Accordingly, information on the cult
is held not only by the Holy Ordos, but some references also
occur in many old and proscribed texts, court records, and
the private journals of many noble houses and the Adepta.
The table on page 140 offers the kind of information that can
be gleaned from the use of a Challenging (+0) Forbidden
Lore (Cults) Test.
==Secret History of the Fall of the Tellurian Combine==
The cult has threatened scores of worlds at various points in
the sector’s history, and individual Brotherhoods have ranged
greatly in power and dominion, from a dozen individuals in
a single guild to grand malefic conspiracies encompassing
a chain of worlds with thousands of cultists bound to
Balphomael’s service. Without doubt though, the most potent
danger the cult ever posed was to the very heart of the sector
itself some 440 years ago.
During those days, the Brotherhood had become imbedded
in the sector’s infrastructure and even within the Lucid Court. Meanwhile, its figurehead organization, the Tellurian
Combine, rose to become the dominant economic force in
the sector. Faced with the dire truth when uncovered, the
Holy Ordos had a difficult choice to make. To denounce and
attack the Combine directly would have tempted anarchy in
the highest echelons of government and perhaps even risk
open civil war within the sector.
Instead, the entire resources and wiles of the Ordos
Calixis---Malleus, Hereticus, Xenos, and others---were
brought to bear in a true shadow war. Within a decade, the
whole edifice of the Combine was mercilessly brought down,
its cabals isolated and destroyed by covert raids, exorcist-death
squads, and contract assassinations. At the same time,
the cult’s workings and secret pawns were forced into the
light and slaughtered in what is believed to have been the
largest deployment of Officio Assassinorum agents in the
history of the Calixis Sector.
Much of what the Inquisition knows of the Brotherhood
and its dark patron harkens back to this great and secret
purge. It was the famed Daemonhunter Orpheus himself, at
the head of an intercession force of Grey Knight Terminators,
that finally vanquished the avatar of the Horned Darkness
in a hidden temple in catacombs deep under the Tellurian
Chancellery in Hive Sibellus.
Although the power of the cult was broken and thousands
of unclean heretics and their duped lackeys were slain,
the Brotherhood did not die. Time and again, signs of the
Brotherhood stirring has come to light, although it has
never managed to attain even a fraction of its former power
and glory---or so the Inquisition believes. Others, however,
believe this relative silence simply means that it has become
even more subtle and adept at hiding its tracks. They fear that
unless the true root of the daemon-incursion is found, it is
only a matter of time before the Brotherhood rises once again
to corrupt the Calixis Sector from within.
==Flavian Invicta: The Traitor Cardinal==
Perhaps the greatest shock in the aftermath of the whole
Tellurian affair was the revelation of the identity of the
Brotherhood’s greatest diabolist, Flavian Invicta, cardinal
palatine of the Holy Ecclesiarchy. Invicta was a highly ranked
but otherwise undistinguished clergyman attached as part of
the Ministorum’s delegation to the Lucid Court. He appeared
in public to be an affable, pious old man from an old and
respected family in the twilight of his Ecclesiastical career
but was, in fact, a ruthless power-broker and diabolist who
harbored ambitions to be the true power behind the throne
of the whole sector.
Invicta was thought to have sold his soul to Balphomael
while still a young man, and close inspection of his personal
history uncovered countless strange occurrences and the
mysterious deaths of many rivals and competitors. The official
record states that Invicta died suddenly of natural causes, but
rumors within the Ordo Malleus persist that he remains alive
still, cursed by the boon of longevity that his master granted,
screaming endlessly in a pain amplifier buried deep beneath
the Bastion Serpentis.
== Inquisitorial Threat Briefing ==
The Ordo Malleus regards the Brotherhood of the Horned
Darkness as a clear and present danger to the Imperium of
Man, and one that all members of the Holy Ordos within the
Calixis Sector are aware of to some degree (although many
believe it to be but a shadow of its former self). The threat
the cult posses is considered to be twofold. The first is the
political and spiritual corruption created by its conspiracies and
infiltrations---a danger made worse as the largely elitist makeup
of the Brotherhood allows it resources, finances, capabilities,
and scope that many cult groups and daemon worshipers could
not hope to match.
The second is the daemon Balphomael, its works, and its
warp-spawned minions---a threat rightly classified as Malleus
Abominatus Extremis by the Holy Ordos. The daemon is a
powerful entity capable of generating high-magnitude warp
phenomena, casting malefic curses, and investing into those
mortal servants who enter into pacts with it a fragment of its
unclean might. Its powers are not, however, limitless, and
their use seems to be inextricable linked to ritual murder and
willing sacrifice by those in its service. The proven strategy
for combating the Brotherhood then is threefold: gather
intelligence to uncover the degree of corruption, destroy its
foul places of worship to limit its power, and identify those
who have sold their souls to the daemon and bring them the
judgment of the Emperor’s wrath.