Helbrute - Endless Incarceration: Helbrutes are nightmarish mechanical monsters. Twisted amalgams of Warp-wrought metal and writhing flesh, they stand several times the height of a mortal man. They are bipedal, armoured war machines similar to the Dreadnoughts of the Adeptus Astartes. Indeed, the oldest amongst their number were once the venerated ancients of the original Space Marine Legions.However, a skewed resemblance and a shared heritage is where the similarities end. Interment into a Dreadnought sarcophagus is a great honour for a Loyalist Space Marine, transforming a mortally wounded hero into a living relic. By comparison, imprisonment within the raw, rancid womb of a Helbrute is nothing short of a living hell.The infernal, Warp-tainted machineries of a Helbrute sarcophagus are pseudo-parasitic. Their interface subjects the pilot to an agony-wracked waking nightmare that swiftly drives them to the blackest depths of madness. Such is the rage of a Helbrute pilot that, between war zones, they must be chained down and their weapons forcibly removed, lest they vent their homicidal desires upon their creators.Despite the difficulties of maintaining such dangerous war machines, Helbrutes are powerful blunt instruments, effective weapons of indiscriminate destruction. Indeed, they present such a powerful asset to any Champion of Chaos that wars have been fought over the facilities to achieve their creation.For the Imperium, the crafting of a single Dreadnought is a major undertaking, an effort of artifice that is as much spiritual as physical. By comparison, Helbrutes are spat from the daemonforges in great numbers, their industrial production overseen by conclaves of Warpsmiths. Malformed and twitching, these foul engines of war possess a crude Machine Spirit sentience even before they claim a pilot. Indeed, they give off a sense of dark malevolence even when quiescent. However, it is only when a victim is implanted within it that a Helbrute truly comes to life.Unlike the armoured reliquaries around which Loyalist Dreadnoughts are built, Helbrute sarcophagi are terrifying places to be trapped. Many are closed off boxes of rusted iron, blank and featureless but for the bloodstained nests of wires that pack them tight.Others, especially those of Helbrutes long exposed to the mutating powers of the Empyrean, are sucking masses of mottled flesh and slithering folds that consume their screaming implantee with apparent relish. Jagged spines and fanged pseudopods bite deep into the new pilot, black, greasy worms burrowing through muscle and bone to bind them into the Helbrute's foul innards.From that moment forward, the nervous system of the interred victim is twinned with the artificial nerve-bundles of the Helbrute. The seething strength that pulses through its bunched muscles, the furnace-hot beat of its plasma reactor heart, the cold implacability of its armoured hide, all become a part of the pilot forevermore.Yet the process of implantation is brutal and highly traumatic, leaving the implantee trapped in a perpetual war that they can never stop fighting. Never again will they know the simple sensations of taste, smell and touch. Never again will they have the chance to strive for glory in the eyes of the Dark Gods. Small wonder that all but the strongest-willed are driven swiftly and irrevocably insane.Any Chaos Space Marine can end his days within a Helbrute's shell. Some fail an appointed task, but have the temerity to survive. Some threaten their master's power, and must be removed. Others are simply unfortunate enough to be too injured to fight back when the Warpsmiths begin their post-battle harvest. Many implantees go mad within solar days, or even hours, their minds turning inward and tearing themselves apart.Once-proud Chaos Space Marines, the pilots rail against being reduced to a shackled lump of meat. Limbs truncated, bodies stuffed with pulsing cables, they can do nothing to free themselves as claustrophobia deepens to absolute, mind-numbing horror. Tortured by an awareness of the freedom they once possessed, and the ignominious fate they now suffer, the Heretic Astartes implantee soon degenerates into a raving lunatic.