Synistrid the Cronestalker

*"Come into my parlour..."*

The Ynnari Alliance,

Aeldari Empire (former)

## Life

### The Fall

An ancient specter of the Aeldari Empire's past, Synistrid was a young woman before the Fall, the progeny of a privileged family on one of the decadent core worlds. A lover of art and a passionate academic, she grew bored of the pleasure cults and their banal diversions, seeking excesses her academic mind could sink its fangs into. She found her way into a clique of likeminded researchers, pursuing their studies of flesh, mind, soul, and exotic technology on their hapless victims without constraint. The more esoteric studies and technologies grew to capture Synistrid's interest, and in time even the cell of academics she'd found began to show its limitations.

Her desire for ever grander studies eventually carried her to Commoragh, the dark paradise at the heart of the Aeldari Empire where the richest resources and greatest talent the Empire could provide flowed in abundance. Where most aspirants of the Dark City set their sights on the glamour of soaring spires and noble luxury, Synistrid happily descended into the underworld of the Haemonculi, delighting in warrens of experimentation she could barely have dreamt of. She took her place in a Coven specializing in her esoteric passions and pushed her studies to new heights.

Then came the Fall, the day the Aeldari Empire died and the Warp changed forever. Commoragh was spared direct harm, hidden in the Webway, but the rivers of wealth and fodder halted and the shadow of She Who Thirsts chilled the city. The fear of any possible daemonic ingress into their dark sanctuary filled Commoragh's denizens with dread. The practice of any psychic arts and many avenues of psychic and esoteric study were forbidden by the ruling nobility. The coven Synistrid joined was severely curtailed, and pivoted to primarily focus on fleshcraft to avoid possible suspicion. Synistrid initially spared little thought for the untold trillions who'd perished outside the Webway, and tried to adapt to her new work.

### Crone Stalker

Over the millennia, Synistrid grew tired of fleshcraft, yearning for the esoteric and occult studies that held her passion. She diverted her research to the limited avenues of esoteric and psychic technology still allowed. Her persistent straining at the edge of what was tolerated earned suspicion from her fellow Haemonculi, and she found herself working in increasing isolation. She eventually struck out to form a minor Coven of her own, where she could at least work with less scrutiny. The raiding ships that Commoragh's noble rulers sent out brought back relatively little of use to her studies, and her Coven was forced to subsist on the spoils of raids of the handful of raids she could convince minor powers to undertake. Many of her raids targeted Crone Worlds for the esoteric spoils they held, earning her the epithet 'Cronestalker' from her fellow Haemonculi.

Her fortunes improved somewhat in recent centuries with the demise of the nobility and the rise of Vect and the Kabals. What sent shockwaves through the city upstairs only sent ripples through the undercity, but the fractious and volatile politics of the Kabals created more hungry would-be warlords and more sponsors of raid, creating more opportunities for Synistrid to bend an ear to her desires.

A part of Synistrid was a little sad to see the nobility crumble. They had never been much use to her, and there was a certain poetry to the manner of Vect's rise, but the endless succession of forgettable Kabals felt like squabbling children fighting over scraps compared to the vestiges of the old Aeldari Empire that the nobility had kept alive. She found herself thinking about the old Aeldari Empire with increasing frequency, the greatness that had been lost, now only preserved in the performances of the Harlequins and the ghosts of the Crone Worlds she prowled. Commoragh began to feel less like a sanctuary and more like a grave stone.

### A Tangled Web

With somewhat rejuvenated fortunes, Synistrid's Coven was able to sponsor more raids, and retain the Blades for Hire needed to undertake some unilaterally. It was one of these that yielded one of the most profitable discoveries Synistrid would make. She and her coven were charting and scouring a Crone World which had suffered an impact with another celestial body at some point in the past, retrieving specimens of research interest and cataloguing articles of the old Empire's culture, when she detected an anomaly in the debris field surrounding the world. A great deal of mass was missing, enough to add up to a large asteroid or a small moon, and further analysis of the debris field revealed that most of the mass had likely been removed from one location. Examining that location, Synistrid discovered a Webway Gate undocumented on Commoragh's maps.

Opening and traversing the gate, Synistrid discovered a small planetoid body, large enough to constitute most of the missing mass. Estimating her location in the Webway, she found that she was a stone's throw away from both the newly discovered gate to the Eye of Terror and a nearby gate leading to the Segmentum Obscurus of the Imperium in Realspace, and a not insignificant but also not infeasible distance from Commoragh. Synistrid saw an opportunity in the lifeless rock, calling it the Crone Shard in reference to its formation from the debris of a Crone World, and dug catacombs beneath its surface to create a satellite facility for her Coven. With a research station away from Commoragh's prying eyes, Synistrid was free to dust off some of her old research passions at long last.

After establishing her new research facility, Synistrid received a surprise while laying the groundwork for several new projects. A Harlequin Shadowseer, identifying herself as Ishylla the Huntress, infiltrated Synistrid's catacombs and struck up a conversation. It seemed the Shadowseer's Masque had knowns of the rock for some time, using it as a navigational marker for their patrols. The two were initially unsure what to make of each other, but developed a mutual fondness. Synistrid had met very few people who could engage her in a real conversation on Pre-Fall Aeldari art, and Ishylla had met very few people who had seen Pre-Fall Aeldari art firsthand. Ishylla became a welcome visitor in Synistrid's catacombs, sometimes trading Aeldari artefacts, sometimes trading information, sometimes just trading stories and discussing art.

Over the course of the next few centuries, Synistrid established a network of satellite research stations with the Crone Shard as its hub, allowing her to mitigate the risks of her more dangerous experiments by isolating them in more remote facilities that could be quarantined or destroyed in the event of containment failure or invasion.

### Strands of Fate

Synistrid would receive an unusual visitor when a mercenary contact of hers, an Incubus Kalivex named Nyktas, informed her of another Incubus she wanted her to meet, a former Asuryani walking the path of Damnation who shared some of her quixotic interests. Synistrid met with the Incubus, Ishtá Morai-fen, and found her most peculiar. To Synistrid's mild disappointment, the Damned Asuryani couldn't hold a conversation about worthwhile art for any length of time, but she showed a surprising appreciation for decline of the Aeldari and the losses of the Fall, even if she saw the old Empire from a very different point of view. Her time as an Exarch had even left her with a smattering of memories stretching back almost as far as Synistrid's, though most concerned Craftworld battles and the fortunes of the Asuryani. More peculiar, Ishtá showed great concern for the future of the Aeldari, even if that came in the misguided form of preserving Commoragh's future.

Overall, Synistrid found her to be one of the most interesting Commorites she'd met in a long time, and saw several opportunities in her. An Incubus and a former Exarch with her appreciation for Aeldari history would be valuable in executing her raids on Crone Worlds, and time lapse data of an Asuryani mind metamorphosing along the Path of Damnation was an interesting research opportunity. The opportunity to hold some command in Commoragh, and reliable access to a regeneration tank, proved ample payment for the acclimating Commorite. Synistrid remained in contact with Ishtá, a constant thread through her journey in the Dark City, watching her initial vision of preserving Commoragh's future mature into a much more sensible one of conquering new subrealms to add to Commoragh's bulk and might, and partnering with her Wych cult when she managed to ascend to a position of genuine power in the city upstairs.

### Reborn

The sudden birth of the Ynnari faith proved eminently fascinating to Synistrid. A whole new discipline of psychic techniques and whole new categories of occultism and soul related esoterica to study. The faith's promise of defeating She Who Thirsts and securing a future for the Aeldari held some appeal to her, too. As someone who had spent a great deal of time thinking about what the Aeldari had lost in the Fall, the notion that Aeldari may some day rise again and build a new Empire held great appeal, even if she was skeptical that a new Empire built by modern Aeldari would ever rise to the heights of greatness achieved by the Empire she remembered from her youth. She offered the fledgling faith her covert support, pleasantly surprised when she learned that Ishtá and Nyktas had come to similar conclusions on their own.

The sudden and widespread backlash against Ynnari was an unwelcome but familiar occurrence to Synistrid, reminding her of the crackdown on psychic studies after the Fall. the sudden onset and near universal scope were too clean and uniform to have been an organic development, there was no mistaking that a new purge was underway, even if the Supreme Overlord didn't see fit to sign his name to it like the old Nobility had.

Synistrid contacted Ishtá and Nyktas, both eager to plan for their security, and she revealed the existence of the Crone Shard and its network of satellite facilities to them. She proposed accelerating Ishtá's dream and building a Webway subrealm they could secure the way many other Ynnari Kabals and Cults were doing, but she proposed usning the Crone Shard as it's foundation. Revealing the Crone Shard was a calculated risk, but making a break from Commoragh and pooling their might around her planetoid was both their best chance at security and their best chance at putting Commoragh's fetters behind them once and for all.

While Ishtá and Nyktas busied themselves raising a city on the surface, Synistrid happily nestled into her Catacombs, able to make them her permanent abode for the first time. She relocated what assets she needed to from her old warren in Commoragh to make the Crone Shard the new heart of her Coven, and expanded the Catacombs to accommodate the added personnel and materials as well as adding Halfborn cloning facilities and additional regeneration tanks. Between the city built above and the additions made to the underwold of her catacombs, the Crone Shard produced all the goods and services needed to be a self sufficient microcosm of Commoragh. Ishtá started networking with other Ynnari powers and even some Corsairs, Craftworlds, Exodites, and powers from the Imperium Nihilus reasonable enough to deal with, expanding the Crone Shard's wealth by acting as an independent port city and enhancing its security by making it a power that could not be picked off in isolation.

In the time since the Crone Shard's transformation and the arrival of Tishriel and her Host of the Flowing Spirit, Synistrid has been pursuing a number of new research projects. The Revenant Discipline of psychic technique practiced by Tishriel has been a prominent subject of study for Synistrid, as has developing psychic technologies derived from her insights. She has also helped Tishriel and Nyktas with their project of mentoring Nyktas in the psychic arts. The visitation of the Phoenix Lord Jain Zar, and her occasional transits through the Crone Shard as a Ynnari, have been another interest of Synistrid's, hoping to understand what makes the bodies and souls of Phoenix Lord's so much stronger than those of lesser Exarchs, and quietly hoping their grandeur can be replicated. The missing fifth Crone Sword of the Ynnari prophesy have held great interest for her, studying artefacts and information related to Morai-Heg in the hopes that either a replacement Crone Sword can be manufactured or the prophesy can be made to work with only four Crone Swords.

## The Coven of the Eightfold Web

Synistrid most often leads her Coven independently of Ishtá's Cult and Nyktas' Kabal. When she does lead her forces alongside them, it is often to help accomplish an objective that requires her scientific expertise, and her wracks can be found alongside Nyktas' warriors lending their scientific knowledge to the warriors' strategically important tasks under the cover of Ishtá's Wyhes and Nyktas' Incubi. She sometimes supplements Ishtá's and Nyktas' forces with Mandrakes conjured from the shadows of her Catacombs or Scourges made by her hand.

### Wracks

The Wracks of The Coven of the Eightfold Web are more accustomed to combat than the wracks of many other covens, on account of Synistrid's frequent unilateral raids on Crone Worlds. As a result, the wracks demonstrate greater skill in combat with their blades and their command structure is more adept at military operations.

The Coven also maintained significant contacts with Incubi, Mandraks, and Scourges. Since the departure from Commoragh, Synistrid has maintained her contacts with Mandrakes, to the initial surprise of Ishtá and Nyktas, summoning them into the shadows of her catacombs, their mercenary dealings seemingly unaffected by the Crone Shard's new Ynnari alignment. While the departure did disrupt her access to mercenary Incubi shrines and Scourge roosts, Synistrid still contracts teams of Incubi from Nyktas' shrine on occasion when she needs a more potent assault vanguard, and she has begun producing a rookery of Scourges under the joint control of herself, Ishtá, and Nyktas.

### The Catacombs

A sprawling honeycomb of tunnels and chambers dug beneath the Crone Shard's surface, Synistrid's catacombs are lined with her psychically conductive webbing and a pervasive psychic dread hangs in the air as a byproduct of her experiments. The winding threads of tunnels are studded with lab complexes, high domed rooms with specimens and work stations lining both the floors and vertical spaces, regeneration tanks suspended from the ceilings like egg sacks. The Catacombs themselves are the hub of a network of satellite facilities throughout the Webway, housing the more dangerous specimens and experiments. The satellite facilities are compartmentalized to allow the reinforcement, quarantine, or destruction of facilities that suffer a failure of safety protocols without risk to the rest of her network.

Since the establishment of the Crone Shard as a Ynnari subrealm, Synistrid has added facilities for producing halfborn and expanded the regeneration tanks to allow the planetoid to function as a microcosm of Commoragh. She has also modified the regeneration tanks to be fueled by either the conventional Drukhari power from pain or the Ynnari strength from death, allowing for more efficient regeneration. Synistrid herself is most often found in one of the larger central labs, perched high on the domed surface happily at work on one of her latest projects.

## Wargear

* Spider Augmentations - Like most Haemonculi, Synistrid has augmented her body with the dual goals of making it more useful for her research and using it as a living portfolio of her art. Synistrid's body is capable of manufacturing a variety of toxins and chemicals useful for her research, resisting the effects of most hazardous substances she encounters in her work, performing detailed physical and chemical analyses by smell or taste, and spinning webs that have psychically conductive properties. Synistrid chose her arachnoid features as an homage to character from Pre-Fall Aeldari theater, the Weaver. Rarely taking center stage herself but pulling strings from behind the scenes, the Weaver was a knowledgeable manipulator who acted as a morally grey advisor to the hero, rarely leading them to their doom but always ensuring that the hero's actions worked to her benefit. Whether an epic where the hero triumphed or a tragedy where the hero was doomed by their flaws, the Weaver usually got at least part of what she wanted.
* The Spider Dance - A relic blade that Synistrid found during one of her early Crone World raids, before the Fall it was an executioner's blade that incorporated psychic circuitry, resembling an Incubus' tormentor, used to torture the condemned by siphoning their own soul and using to project traumatizing psychic static back at them until either the psychic trauma or soul drain killed them. Synistrid restored the blade and modified it to coat the edge with venoms drawn from her body's toxin reservoirs. She also repurposed the psychic circuitry to siphon strength from her opponent and use it to empower the blade. Lesser foes may never realize the added strength, but worthy foes will feel the bite of a blade enhanced by their own might (Represented by the Flensing Blade)
* Soul Traps - Aside from her blade, Synistrid often enters battle with a variety of soul traps of her own design at her disposal, some empty and waiting to feed on her enemies while others are filled before battle and use the unfortunate soul trapped within to fuel fuel various psychic effects. Synistrids favorites are a soul trap thrown like a grenade that uses a traped spirit to emulate a psyker's smiting power and disrupt the minds of her foes to leave them in a stumbling stupor; another grenade-like soul trap that devours the souls of enemies of nearby enemies and broadcasts their power to strengthen nearby Ynnari; one carried on her person that can be triggered to siphon the soul out of an enemy in close combat; and another one carried on her person that expends the power of a trapped soul in the event of her death to restore her body to life in a manner emulating Ynnari resurrections. (Represented by Poisoner's Ampoule, Animus Vitae, A Most Inventive Demise, Alchemical Maestro)