Haemonculi - Age of Pain: The Slave King Rises (ca. M35) - A low-born wastrel by the name of Asdrubael Vect engineers his rise to power in Commorragh. It culminates in a great coup that sees the Drukhari aristocracy of old replaced by the deadly meritocracy of the Kabals. Throughout the seismic upheaval that emerges from the Imperial invasion Vect lures into the city and the resultant counterattack, the Haemonculi of the underspires remain neutral. They watch with detached interest as the squabbles of their younger counterparts play out. The covens allow Vect to take overall power, for in the arts of treachery the Haemonculi excel, and the Dark City's blades must remain sharp if it is to rule over the Labyrinthine Dimension forever more.The Ghost Planet (156.M35) - The far-flung Hive World of Auxilion makes a deal with Eldar mercenaries, though after one diplomatic gaffe too many the alliance turns sour. Led by the Haemonculus Kresthekia, a Carnival of Pain descends upon the planet. Five standard years later, Imperial authorities visit Auxilion investigating its failure to pay tithes. They find the world deserted, and not a single spot of blood or spent bullet casing which might explain the phenomenon.A Murder of Ravens (522.M36) - The Haemonculi and the Raven Guard Space Marine Chapter have crossed blades many times, for just as the Drukhari will always prey upon Humanity, so the Space Marines will always defend it. Upon the rural Imperial world of Parocheus the two factions would clash once more, each force vying to control the shadows they both counted as their ally. When the Haemonculi of the Altered last visited the Imperial Mining World of Parocheus in 018.M36, the Raven Guard Chapter lay waiting in ambush. They launched a blisteringly effective attack that saw the Covenites maimed, disfigured, or -- in the case of their lord -- Viscount Syndriq -- blasted into messy chunks by a volley of Heavy Bolter shells. Though the surviving Haemonculi had fled to the nearest Webway portal and escaped back to Commorragh, and enough of Syndriq's latest fleshform was scraped together to effect his regeneration, the damage to the coven's pride had already been done. Viscount Syndriq in particular took the defeat hard. His rage was so great that he discharged himself from his regeneration sarcophagus long before his regrowth was complete. So it was that when the Altered returned to the planet of Parocheus in 522.M36, Syndriq was still a pale and hairless fiend, his knife-sharp teeth bared in a permanent rictus grin that was unsettling in the extreme. During the subsequent fighting upon Parocheus, Syndriq was killed again during the height of battle by missile fire from a Stormraven gunship. It is unknown if there was enough of his remains to recover after the battle for another regeneration. Despite this temporary setback, the aristocratic Haemonculus known as Faerughast devised a far more inventive revenge against the Space Marines. The Altered managed to steal away into the darkness over a score of the Raven Guard's number by the very foe they had come to slay. Two solar days later, a Space Marine strike force blasted its way into the Webway tunnels that fringed Parocheus. After a brief skirmish with the Covenites in the otherworldly tunnels beyond, the missing Raven Guard were recovered to a man, their memories clouded but their bodies intact. A hundred standard years and a day after the clash upon Parocheus, the sudden mutation of Raven Guard gene-seed saw dozens of their finest warriors hatch into grotesque monsters, and an entire generation of new recruits had to be put down. In the end, the vengeance of the Haemonculi had been wrought by the hands of those who sought to defy them.Plague of Glass (926.M36) - The Covenites of the Hex contain and harness the Glass Plague released by the sculptor-fraud Jalaxlar. Vitrifying weapons are soon in evidence whenever the coven mounts its realspace raids. The Hex soon becomes famous for their weaponisation of esoteric curses. Their ornate rifles still fetch a high price in the barters and trades of the undercity of Commorragh.The Breaching (ca. M37) - Asdrubael Vect consolidates his power by forcing open the portals to the last few port-cities that claim autonomy from Commorragh. Over the next few millennia, he relegates all but the province of Shaa-dom to the status of satellites of the greater whole. The covens of the undercity remain neutral throughout, though they profit handsomely from the rising demand for regrowth and rebirth during the resultant civil wars.Vengeance of the Scars (993.M37) - The Chaos Renegade Fabius Bile, having studied the Haemonculi's craft under the Coven of the Thirteen Scars, betrays the trust of his Commorrite mentors. By teaching the secrets he has been entrusted with to the Emperor's Children in his employ, Bile dilutes the art of the fleshcrafter to an unforgivable degree. The Thirteen Scars have long watched for just such an infraction. Using energy pillars linked to the Ilmaean suns, they animate their living fortress for war -- a towering pillar of flesh fashioned from the bodies of those who have defied them in the past. The fortress breaches a long-sealed Webway node on Belial IV, and lumbers into the Aeldari palace that the Emperor's Children were using as a base of operations. Bile's heavily mutated Noise Marine allies turn their Sonic Weaponry upon the hordes of Covenites that pour out from the Tower of Flesh's yawning maws, rupturing and splitting countless monstrosities as they sally forth. Their charge hits home nonetheless. The violence that erupts from the close-quarters battle is as intense as it is invigorating, Chaos Space Marine and Wrack alike screaming in glee as they are physically torn apart. The Tower of Flesh itself duels with the corrupted god-machines in Bile's employ, smashing them aside with its flailing appendages. As their minions fight tooth and nail outside the shattered palace, the Primogenitor Bile is paid a visit in his throne by the coven lords of the Thirteen Scars. After the Renegade's private army of horrors experiences a dozen esoteric types of murder at the hands of the Haemonculi, an understanding is reached. Bile's augmented Emperor's Children are granted death by masochistic ecstasy, and the Haemonculi depart after surgically ensuring that the Renegade cannot speak of his learnings to any other living creature.Pitch Dark (198.M39) - A piratical warband of Traitor Space Marines from the Night Lords Legion ambushes a Drukhari fleet and breaches the hull of its flagship. Several Haemonculi from the Altered are sent spinning out into the cold void of space, though their desiccated corpses are eventually recovered by specially-made Engines of Pain. The Haemonculi are once more regrown, but the insult done to them is not forgotten. Before the solar year is out, the Night Lords warband -- whilst plunging the Imperial planet of Wystengradt into a violence-haunted twilight -- encounter the Drukhari once more. The Night Lords have robbed the planet of power using high-yield static bombs, ensuring that its cities are gloom-shrouded playgrounds for their terror tactics, though the horrors wreaked by the Traitor Legionaries are mild in comparison to what is to befall the planet next. The Altered, having enlisted the aid of several thousand Aelindrachi elders and deployed an ancient antiphoton engine from their deepest oubliettes, shroud the world of Wystengradt in an unnatural darkness. War unfolds as Mandrakes and Wracks engage in a deadly running battle with the Night Lords. The dearth of light is so supernaturally intense that even the acute vision of the Chaos Space Marines is rendered all but useless. The Traitor Marines' doctrine of psychological warfare is slowly and painfully turned against them, and the spark of paranoia that nestles in each Night Lord’s breast is fanned to an inferno. Mandrake attacks come from impossible quarters as new scenes of stomach-churning vileness are uncovered with every hour. The Night Lords seek out the Drukhari antiphoton engine with the intent to destroy it and wage the war anew on their own terms. The ancient machine is finally blown apart by Melta charges, but when visibility is restored to Wystengradt, the Haemonculi are gone. Only a lingering fear of the darkness is left in their wake.A Hideous Beauty (569.M39) - The Haemonculus covens prey on the "lesser races" as a matter of course, though their malefic attentions are by no means isolated to the denizens of realspace. When the Cadian Shock Troop battalions of the metal-skinned Imperial planet Refusal fell under the gaze of the Prophets of Flesh, it was not only the world's garrison that felt the coven's dire touch. Croniarch Sekh is a Haemonculus of the Haemonculi coven the Prophets of Flesh. He became bitter and wrathful with the Succubus Yctria Ghularis, known as the Flayer Queen, and ruler of the Cult of the Red Grief, after she killed his favoured gladiator-queen Kariasche. The Haemonculus conspired against her with Yctria's second-in-command, Idyliane. In the resulting Battle of Refusal, Sekh's malevolent plan came to fruition. He was instrumental in the horrible mutation of Yctria, who was very vain about her appearance, into a hideous beast that would be forced to fight in Commorragh's gladiatorial arenas. When his coven next visited the sands of the gladiatorial arena of the Red Grief, they watched with quiet smiles from under their shadowed balcony as they drank in the sight of the Red Grief's new queen as Kariasche, made whole once more, strode into the arena. Led by a bone chain in Kariasche's wake came a lumpen beast of impressive size. Its anguish was plain as it moaned and drooled from a dozen wound-like mouths. Clapping hesitantly at first, but rising to a crescendo as the truth of the spectacle sank in, the Drukhari in the arena got to their feet until the entire arena was united in a standing ovation. There was nothing so gratifying for the citizens of Commorragh than witnessing another's pain, after all, and Yctria's new incarnation had enough of that to last a thousand years. Subtly, but unforgettably, the Prophets of Flesh had reminded the denizens of the Dark City that to cross the Haemonculi was to invite a far darker destiny than mere death.The Bone Curse (232.M40) - The Haemonculi of the Hex learn of the aberrant Cursed Founding of the Adeptus Astartes, and are taken by one Chapter in particular -- the Black Dragons, whose corrupted gene-seed forces sharp protrusions of bone to grow out from its warriors' skeletons. Striking a bargain with the piratical Duke Sliscus, the Hex attack the Chapter as it is purging the Donorian System of the monsters that have spilled into Imperial space. A vicious hit-and-run war erupts across the space lanes, fought within the Adeptus Astartes warships and without. Though the resultant war costs Sliscus several of his prized starships, the Covenites that board the cavernous Imperial flagship capture a dozen of the most mutated Black Dragons in the Chapter and bear them back to Commorragh. Over the course of an agonising three-standard-year period -- during which no fewer than eight breakout attempts are thwarted -- the Hex's Haemonculi take it in turns to experiment upon the slab-bound Space Marines. Soon enough they have isolated and synthesised the genetic curse lurking in the Bone Dragons' gene patterns. The resultant osseovirus is distilled, weaponised and -- in one particularly memorable experiment -- reintroduced to its host in a concentrated form. The twisted bone "dragon" that hatched from the unlucky donor's flesh is hung above the coven's Chamber of Whispers.The Harvest of Chogros (543.M41) - The Kabal of the Broken Sigil begins a series of raids on the planet Chogros, capturing the Ogryn natives for the arenas. When Astra Militarum regiments arrive to intervene, the conflict escalates into a planet-wide engagement. Though they fight hard, the men of the Imperium are eventually defeated. The Crucibael is thronged for many nights to come as the captured Imperial Guardsmen are forced to fight the very Ogryns that they were sent to save.A Maddening Gift (703.M41) - Seething after an imperfect regrowth that he judges to be a deliberate slight, the disfigured Acothyst Mydilian gifts his masters in the Coven of Twelve with a flock of Aelindrachi shaderavens. The avian terrors are well received, for though it is rumoured their caw slowly drives those who hear it insane, it would be seen as an act of cowardice to refuse them. Given the inherent strangeness of the Haemonculi, few notice that the Coven of Twelve are becoming ever more eccentric. A standard year to the day after Mydilian's gift, several of the coven's senior Haemonculi depart into a shattered spar of the Webway without warning. Their clarity of thought long gone, they plunge through a forbidden gate onto a long-lost Crone World, rubbing their clammy hands in anticipation of having Daemonic "specimens" to experiment upon. Upon a plain of burning bones the Covenites find more in the way of Daemons than they bargained for. The horizon is scarlet from end to end with the footsoldiers of the dreaded Blood God. A never-ending cycle of battle begins as the souls of the Haemonculi are claimed as playthings by Khorne himself, denying them any chance of regeneration in their Commorrite lairs. They are condemned to an endless grind of unimaginative but extremely gory deaths, whilst Mydilian and three of his peers enjoy a sudden promotion.Beauty As A Blade (718.M41) - Acts of inventive self-disfigurement suddenly become high fashion in Commorragh, and then fall out of favour just as swiftly, allowing the Haemonculus covens to capitalise upon both sides of the trend. The Time of Reparations sees every Commorrite noble who bought into the fad restored to his or her former grandeur. A pattern emerges over the next few years of realspace raids: those who betray the Haemonculi in lieu of their own agendas find their beautiful new faces melting from their skulls.High Art (983.M41) - The senior Acothyst Ymodrian, having spent four hundred Terran years in gruelling servitude to Drecht of the Altered without reward, steals a Hexrifle from his master's vaults and leads a host of his fellow Wracks into realspace. Emerging from a costly sojourn through the Webway onto the Tyranid-infested waste planet of Hope's End, the Acothyst hunts down the largest and most dangerous Tyranid he can find. Whilst his fellow Wracks battle the swarms around him, Ymodrian makes a thousand-to-one shot that turns a rampaging Trygon to glass, yet leaves the Commissar it has recently swallowed trapped like a fly in amber inside the towering thing's gullet. The Acothyst waves his Raiders in low, his fellows binding the strange statue with chains and bearing it back through the Webway to be presented as tribute. Within a single Ilmaean cycle, the artwork is displayed in pride of place inside Drecht's sanctum. Ymodrian is rewarded copiously, undergoing the alchemical rituals that see him join the lower ranks of the Haemonculi.The War of Dark Revelations (990.M41) - Tau forces defending Vigos against the onrushing might of Hive Fleet Kraken make the fatal decision to ally themselves with Urien Rakarth. Despite initial victories alongside their twisted allies, the Tau soon become alarmed by Rakarth's demands that they engage in ever more costly "cultural exchanges." They finally resolve to strike back when he transforms Tau warriors into monstrous Grotesques, and begins demanding a tribute of their sacred Ethereals. The Tau muster their reserves from the world of Rubikon, yet when their blow falls they find Rakarth's fleet already gone, leaving only holograms and sensor-ghosts in its wake. Panicked distress calls begin to issue from the defenceless Rubikon mere solar hours later. These garbled reports tell of twisted, pale-fleshed invaders calling themselves the Prophets of Flesh. Yet it is far too late for the woefully outmanoeuvred Tau forces to respond, and they can only listen in anguish to the death-cries of their world.The Plundered Flesh of Pech (991.M41) - After capturing not only countless T'au upon Vigos but also the mercenaries with which they bolster their cadres, the Prophets of Flesh find out that the Kroot are able to learn and even evolve purely by selectively devouring the fallen. To appropriate such an ability would be seen as a coup even amongst the Haemonculi. Before long, the Prophets of Flesh have opened up a Webway gate upon the Kroot homeworld: the humid jungle planet of Pech. Hovering through the mists upon Raiders lined with barbed rails, the Haemonculi begin a lengthy scouring of the planet's tribal centres. The Kroot respond in force, loosing packs of Kroot Hounds that leap from bough and bole to bear Covenites into the leafy mulch below. Krootox-borne gunners blast apart Venoms and Ravagers in the gloom, though in truth the skimmers in the jungle canopy are little more than distractions. The true prize is seized by the Pain Engines of the Haemonculi, each Corpsethief Claw rendering down as many Kroot Shapers as they can catch. The T'au, fiercely defensive of their empire's mercenary allies, counter-invade in force by mobilising twelve Hunter Cadres to scour the jungle clean. The unfolding battle ends abruptly when the Prophets of Flesh withdraw, their Raiders straining to the point of collapse under the weight of the Kroot corpses they have stolen. Though the T'au propaganda machine celebrates a great victory, the Drukhari have what they came for. They leave a message behind, spelt out in the bloody corpses of their victims. It is loosely translated by the Water Caste as the phrase "Welcome to the Feast."