Marazhai Aezyrraesh: the Creed of a Tormenter
The Drukhari are considered among the most cruel and malicious of xenos that threaten the Imperium. They are a degenerate society of the ancient Aeldari xenos race, a dark culture of torturers and raiders, striking out at the galaxy's inhabitants from their labyrinthine shadow-realm of Commorragh. Selfish, prideful, arrogant and murderous, the Drukhari are a self-serving people. Their rulers reign over their kindred with the utmost cruelty and intimidation, for only the fear of death can keep the Drukhari in line. Their subjects are torn between their own ambitions that urge them to backstab their own and a hatred of their common enemies that pushes them into fragile alliances and shaky agreements. The laws of this fractured society are known only to the Drukhari themselves - and even they often become victims of their own intrigues and games, having faltered in their judgment or one of their plots.
Marazhai Aezyrraesh, the Dracon of the Kabal of the Reaving Tempest, is a true scion of Commorragh, who is driven by an insatiable lust for violence and power over others - things which he achieves through subtle cunning, shady deals, and — to his great delight — carnage and the agonizing torture of his enemies. Everything changes when another raid in realspace goes awry, and Marazhai realizes that this time it was he who was being hunted. It's time to strike back, not wait for the enemy to get ahead. But the intricacies of Commorragh's intrigues and machinations are different from the rules of these rampant and bloody raids, and the most sophisticated plan can fail if one of your tools is an overly feisty and underestimated Rogue Trader... or if one of the apex predators of Commorragh, with whom you struck a dark alliance, decides not to hold his end of the bargain up.
Stripped of everything that once belonged to him, Marazhai receives one final favor - to perish to the delight of his kin, feeding their insatiable hunger with his exquisite pain. This fate is unlikely to suit the proud Kabalite of the Reaving Tempest, and he has one last chance to avoid it - to enter into an alliance with yesterday's enemy. If this uneasy union holds together, if the doomed find their way out of Commorragh, if this Drukhari, a child of the Webway, survives in realspace... then the fallen Dracon will have a shred of hope: one day reclaim the shards of what he once considered his own or follow the path of bloody revenge as someone with nothing to lose.
The rut of daily life on a Human voidship can be unbearably dull for a creature of such different customs - and there is none more inventive in devising twisted entertainment than a bored Drukhari. Since only the Rogue Trader is worthy of any attention amid the surrounding rabble, it will not be difficult for them to attract Marazhai's special consideration. A former preything can just as easily be turned into an amusing plaything... or, if the chosen rules dictate, roles can change completely. For a reckless – or unwary – Rogue Trader willing to indulge Marazhai’s debauched nature, he has much to share on the subject of depravity and cruelty – things might just leave a permanent mark on the soul of a willing and receptive “mon-keigh”.
