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"There comes to the Emperor’s shores. One night, driven before a storm, a gift in the guise of a child unknowing, unknown and unsought. From womb to sea he is returned, a victim of the churning surf to be saved by a fisherman who sees the gift and not the curse. The error of the innocent a commoner baseborn and bred, will never cost the land so dear or put its people to the test. If murder comes more easily or rude compassion shows its heel, then worlds old and new will be saved from the coming catastrophe. For despite early clemency, and the God-King’s watchful gaze. The child finds its path to darkness and returns not man but plague."

—Necrodomo the Insane, The Liber Caelestior (The Celestine Book of Divination)[1a]

Battista Gaspar Necrodomo, known to history as "Necrodomo the Insane," was a Tilean mystic from the province of Remas known as a heretic scryer, seer and astromancer whose writings inspired the fall to Chaos of the Templar Diederick Kastner, who became Archaon, the thirteenth and final Everchosen.[1a][3a]

Necrodomo used the stars, their relative positions and the patterns they cast across the night sky to make predictions about times that were to come to pass.[1a]

He was the author of several heretical texts: Signs and Wonders, Transcendentia, The Days of Doom to Come, The End Times and The Liber Caelestior also known as The Celestine Book of Divination, this book is considered especially dangerous since it prophesises the coming of the End Times so the Grand Theogonist forbids even his Sigmarite priests to read it, even if some pages had been torn from the tome.[1a]

In this book Necrodomo sets out to reveal the secrets of the world, identifying the events that led to the collapse of the Chaos Gates and the subsequent doom that hangs over the world. He also makes blasphemous assertions about the Gods, interchanging them with the Dark Gods, combining them under the idea that all divine essences are nothing more than reflections of Human experience. Furthermore, it defines the patterns and goals of the Hordes of Chaos, foretelling of the end times as brought on by a Dark Champion of no compare.[2a]

History[]

"Battista Gaspar Necrodomo, his holy vengefulness, Solkan – God of Light and Law – has judged you witchfilth and false prophet, denying the poor and ignorant of this republic the comforts of his guidance. You are a charlatan. You are the herald of lies. You are an artist of nothings. You read the eye, the lip, the face and write false prophecy on the stars. You tell gullible widows what they want to hear, no? A sayer of soothings. Saw you this coming, prognosticator? If you had stuck to prattlemongering, you just might have escaped the attentions of the brotherhood. Though Avenger knows, your professed haruspexery would have been known to him – he who sees all and judges all. Your time would have come, Necrodomo. Necrodomo the foreteller. Necrodomo the skygazer. Necrodomo the reader of futures dark. Now to be known – if known at all – as Necrodomo the Insane. By my order. This, however, this goes beyond the pilfering of credulous coin. The Celestine Prophecies. Signs and Wonders. Transcendentia. The Days of Doom to Come. The End Times. This is heresy in our midst. This is demagoguery, spreading fear through the people. It is a challenge to the Republic. It is a corruption advertised and an invitation of vengeance. It is what brought us to you, Necrodomo. It is what brought you to this. Help me by helping yourself, Necrodomo. Confess your crimes to the brotherhood. Allow Solkan into your heart and I promise a death swift and clean enough to take you to his judgement. Why dally here in the meaningless filth of lies and conspiracy? Why suffer here as well as before the Lord of Light and Law? Commit your contrition to these pages and let me grant you the relief of death."

—The interrogation of Necrodomo by the Grand Inquisitori of the Order of Light and Law[1a]

Madmen, of course, have never been rare in embattled Tilea, even in the relatively stable province of Remas, and Necrodomo might have passed unremarked upon had his writings not fallen into the hands of the Inquisitori.[3a]

Necrodomo was arrested and tortured by the Inquisitors of Law and Light of Remas in IC 1586. There is some ambiguity over whether he truly believed in his blasphemous prognostications, or whether he was simply a religious charlatan seeking to take advantage of the weak and credulous. The priests of Solkan who tortured him acknowledge the ambiguity, but said it did not matter because, either way, his pamphlets were clearly heretical, preaching that Sigmar had simply been a man, not a god, and thus the religion devoted to his worship was idolatrous.[1a]

During his interrogation the Daemon Prince Be'lakor decided that Necrodomo was a fitting instrument for his plan to bring about the end of the world, so he entered the torture chamber, killed the priest, and, finding Necrodomo himself mostly broken and incoherent, sat down to write the heretic's memoirs himself.[1a]

While other stories tell that the Daemon Prince asked for but one boon in return for his help. He asked the ravaged Necrodomo to scribe a prophecy that would change the world forever. Within it, the quivering, broken madman named the champion of Chaos who would bring about the glory of Dark Gods: Archaon.[3a]

Roughly eight centuries later, the first fruits of those insane ravings became prophecy when an unwanted child was left upon the steps of a temple of Sigmar, destined for a stern and unyielding upbringing in the care of the god-king’s templars. Time and again the course of his life was diverted, for though the infant, and later the adolescent boy, could never know it, he had the same patron as the pitiful Necrodomo, and the inexorable hand of fate shepherded the hapless child named Diederick Kastner later known Archaon the "Everchosen" - as he's called by the Tilean seer - towards his destiny.[3a][1b]

Sources[]

  • 1: Archaon: Everchosen (Novel) by Rob Sanders
    • 1a: ch. Prologue
    • 1b: ch. 5
  • 2 Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition: Tome of Corruption (RPG)
    • 2a: pg. 83
  • 3: White Dwarf Weekly 58
    • 3a: pg. 26
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