Zaghâsh

Zaghâsh, God of Death and Fire​

Aan was a sub-sector within the Imperium of Man. It had a large number of habitable worlds and because of that it was rich and prosperous. Then, everything changed when the system was invaded by a massive force of Nurglites. While the Imperium eventually won the war for the Aan sub-sector, every single planet within Aan was designated a Quarantine World, because any humans who died within the sub-sector reanimated as a plague zombie. No one was allowed into or out of the sub-sector.

After many centuries with no outside contact, the people of Aan eventually forgot the God-Emperor and ceased to worship him. Instead of turning to Chaos, however, they turned to the worship of a new god, Zaghâsh, God of Death and Fire, whose holy flames purge the unclean and who allows the innocent to rest in peace. The many worlds and the many peoples on them allowed the seed of the god that would be Zaghâsh to grow quickly, but for the longest time it failed to form. Bereft of protection, the seed was consumed by warp predators whenever it reached any appreciable size.

One day, during yet another cycle of the nascent god's growth, an extremely old, large, and powerful warp entity came across it. The entity had the appearance of a three-headed dog and was once the guardian of a pantheon's underworld. When the pantheon was destroyed, it fled and survived by eating daemons and other warp entities. Initially, it approached the god seed to consume both it and the daemons who were preparing to it eat themselves, but then it sensed the seed's domains: Death and Fire. The domains were familiar to it, and so the warp entity consumed only the daemons, deciding to protect the god seed until it was born.

For many years it would feed itself and protect the seed by leaving the direct proximity of the seed, hiding in the shadows, and ambushing the daemons who got close to it. All the while the seed grew stronger and stronger from a sub-sector's worship. Unfortunately, as the seed grew ever more powerful, it shone across an ever greater range and attracted an ever greater number and power of daemons. It came to be that the protective warp entity could no longer engage in ambushes and was forced to engage directly in combat against an ever-increasing horde of enemies. Eventually, the warp entity began losing the war of attrition, taking wounds that could not fully heal before its next battle began. The fate of both it and the god seed seemed doomed.

Luckily, the god seed had undergone much development by then, and instinctively sent visions to its most ardent worshippers of its state. Prophets across the sub-sector received these visions and saw what needed to be done. At the time, the worlds were under extremely heavy assault by the forces of Nurgle. Spreading the word that Zaghâsh needed aid, the prophet convinced people that a mass ritual sacrifice would bring the god to power and bring salvation. Seeing no other hope for survival, a great multitude of people volunteered themselves to aid their god in desperation. With the power of many billions of souls willingly sacrificing themselves to it, the god seed swelled quickly in power and Zaghâsh born in truth.

Everywhere, across all the planets, black-cloaked skeletons bearing large swords wreathed in fire emerged and fell upon the Nurglites with great wrath and terrible fury. Implacable and incorruptible, the daemons of Zaghâsh tore into the Nurgle hordes and, flush with the power of their god's birth, tore them utterly apart. The forces of Nurgle were destroyed to the last and Aan was saved. Meanwhile, in the Warp, the newly born death god unleashed the power of his hate and engaged the daemons in battle, banishing them back to whence they came and saving the life of the warp entity. After the battle, the creature allowed Zaghâsh to give it his power and swore itself to his service, after which he gave it its current name, Grim. Since then, Grim has protected Zaghâsh's afterlife and fought alongside him in every one of his battles.

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Zaghâsh protects the souls all those who show proper reverence to him and bear the mark of his cult somewhere on their skin, which is branded onto them. The curse that raises the corpses of Aan's peoples into plague zombies is delayed from taking hold by those who are branded, and the delay is increased the more faithful the person was at their time of death. Children, whose inferior minds may make them incapable of surviving the branding or even worshipping him, are still protected, but only after being baptised into the cult. This special protection is temporary, however, and expires upon reaching the age where they should receive their branding.

As a god of Death, Zaghâsh gains power from death, though as a Religious God only gains power from the deaths of his own followers. This aspect allows Zaghâsh to interfere in battles in which his followers are dying in great numbers, sending in the weaker of his divine servitors to kill his people's enemies and assure his followers that he is with them.

Human sacrifice is an integral part of the Cult of Zaghâsh. It empowers the god and ensures he can continue maintaining the afterlife where all faithful Aanese go to rest. Occasionally, when the forces of Nurgle launch particularly heavy assault on Zaghâsh's realm, his clergy may call for a mass sacrifice to empower the god enough to win victory. As one of Zaghâsh's domains is Death, the power he gains from the deaths themselves is sufficient to secure victory, and therefore doesn't have to draw from those souls themselves, therefore allowing them their well-deserved rest.

Sacrificing the unwilling to Zaghâsh is considered to be heretical in the extreme, an utter perversion of the faith and sacrifice that allowed the god to be born. Zaghâsh takes personal offence at such an act, and will send one of his divine servitors to destroy whoever would be so foolish and so evil as to do such a thing. He will do so even if his realm is under heavy assault.

The afterlife is believed by Zaghâsh's cult to be a peaceful, extremely heavily reinforced place. For a while they can enjoy this peacefulness, entertaining themselves, conversing with each other, and enjoying the tranquillity that only death can offer, all while being free of the pains of life. Eventually, however, they will begin to become sleepy, and will eventually fall into a slumber from which they will never wake up. It's believed that the more devoted one was to Zaghâsh in life, the longer they remain awake before their eternal peaceful rest. Veneration of the diseased also gives them more time, allowing loved ones to meet each other again in the afterlife, though there is a limit to this. Ultimately, the only ones who remain awake forever are those who have earned the title of Saint.

Psykers on the worlds of Aan are brutally suppressed. Those who show an aptitude for fire are taken into the Cult to be inducted into the priesthood while the rest are summarily executed. Those psykers that did not fall to Chaos before their execution go to the afterlife, where they are trained to use their powers. Those who fail are used as fuel for the forge that makes the arms and armour of Zaghâsh's divine servitors.

Aan's military forces, descended as they are from the Imperium, are strongly reminiscent to the Imperial Guard, if with a greater focus on mobile firepower, high-yield weaponry, and fire weapons to combat the forces of Nurgle. Additionally, they field a higher-than-average quantity and quality of pyromancers compared to other armies with no other psykers of any kind, though those pyromancers do double as daemon-summoners.

Zaghâsh's forces are split into two distinct groups: the Deathfire Host and the Soulfire Host. The Deathfire Host is comprised of Zaghâsh's divine servitors while the Soulfire Host is comprised of those mortal souls who've died who, without prompting, volunteered themselves to fight and, after passing judgement to test their suitability, were accepted. Induction into the Soulfire Host involves a ceremony wherein all the souls' weaknesses are burnt to ash, turning them into killing machines without fear or corruptibility. This burns away their flesh and blood, leaving nought but skeletons whose skulls are wreathed in flame. Only Saints are precluded from conducting this ceremony. The Deathfire Host functions as a typical daemonic army while the soldiers of the Soulfire Host fights largely as they did during their mortal lives, with guns, armour, vehicles, psychic powers (if applicable), and other such things included.

The lesser divine servitors of Zaghâsh are called Reapers. They appear as skeletons wearing full black-coloured feudal plate armour (sans helmet) with a plain, black, hooded cloak over it. They bear two-handed longswords whose blades are wreathed in flames. At their hip they carry a simple iron lantern. Reapers have two primary duties. The first duty is to destroy Zaghâsh's enemies, as one might expect. Their other primary duty is to collect the souls of those faithful to Zaghâsh after they die and take them to the afterlife. The souls are kept in their lanterns, which, when carried by Reapers, illuminate the secret ways that allows a Reaper to reach the afterlife without interference. Reapers are capable of reason and logic, but are very neutral and even in temperament. Over time, their emotional range expands and they develop personalities, though they generally retain their even temperaments.

Several things change for a Reaper once they've gained enough favour to become a Herald of Zaghâsh. To begin with, two black-feathered wings sprout from the Herald's back, granting it flight. Second, its lantern gains gold filigree, and through channelling their power through it the Herald can call upon the divine miracles of their god. As Heralds of Zaghâsh, their duties change as well. They now only collect the highest priority of those souls faithful to Zaghâsh, leaving the rest to their Reaper brethren. Furthermore, their role in battle changes from being backbone troops to being either champions or leaders of the Deathfire Host. Finally, a Herald can swap their sword for a scythe, which while inferior for attacking single opponents is better for attacking hordes.

Among Zaghâsh's most powerful servants are the World Saints. Each one of Aan's worlds has a World Saint, who in life were incredibly pious mortals who did great things for their worlds. For their piety and service, they would be worshipped by their world as its World Saint and be empowered by Zaghâsh. Their link to their worlds of origin allow them to be summoned on them much more easily than divine servitors of equal power.

Hounds of Grim are beasts holy to Zaghâsh who patrol his realm for intruders, run down his enemies, and serve as mounts for his divine servitors. They have the appearance of large black dogs with glowing red eyes and have an inner glow that shows clearly through their throat and shines through their skin at points. Hounds of Grim are fast, strong, exceptionally perceptive, and can breathe fire. While Hounds of Grim bear Zaghâsh's power, they are neither divine servitors of his nor are they mortal souls, but are instead warp entities birthed by Grim.

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Zaghâsh has been in constant war with the forces of Nurgle since the moment of his birth, whether it be in skirmishes in the Warp or withstanding full on invasions of Aan, his divine realm, or both. At times, great sacrifices have had to be made to allow Zaghâsh to emerge victorious, sacrifices which take a long time to recover from. Additionally, while both Zaghâsh's power and Aan's power have continued to increase over the centuries, the power and danger of Nurgle's forces have also been increasing, and at a slightly higher rate. They were winning the war of attrition.

To gain enough power to reverse his fortunes, Zaghâsh joined the alliance of minor gods in their raid on Nurgle's holdings. The raid's massive success gave him a great deal of power as well as two new miracles.

The first allows him, and by extension those of his followers imbued with the power to call down miracles, to imbue the ashes of the dead reduced to such by holy flame with Zaghâsh's power. The ashes form as charred, blackened skeletons of what they once were and fight on the caster's behalf for a time, after which they cannot be called forth as such again. Unlike the unholy mockery of life and death that are plague zombies, this miracle imbues the dead with no false life and leaves their souls in peace, affecting only the physical corpus. It is essentially no different to how a servo-skull is powered by the Motive Force.

The second of his new miracles is that of a ritual that improves the fertilising property of ash, allowing crop fields fertilised with it to grow much more quickly, healthily, and with greater yields.

The power Zaghâsh gained, combined with the order of withdrawal for so many daemons given by Nurgle himself, allowed he and his forces to inflict immense casualties on the forces of the daemonic as the withdrawal turned into a rout. All nearby worlds with a significant Nurgle presence were defeated and scoured of all life by his divine servitors.

After meeting and speaking with other minor gods of the alliance, Zaghâsh has decided to renounce his prior goal of gaining the unrestricted domains of Death and Fire, fearful of what it would mean for both him and his people. He is now considering other possible long-term strategies to survive the tides of Chaos. For now, with the Warp space near Aan temporarily clear of hostiles, Zaghâsh and his divine armies are conducting mission after mission for the eldar to accrue favours and technology.

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The amount of skull ornamentations and imagery in the Aan systems surpasses that of the Imperium of Man.

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