The WAY OUT

Entering the Vortex can be a difficult process for the uninvited or unwanted. But LEAVING the Vortex is altogether more difficult... reavers may leave the Vortex, the Gods willing, but without exception, they are always called back - whether they want it or not...

That said, there are ways in and out for those in the know:

THE COMMON PATHS

The 13th Station of Passage is the easiest and most well-known route. Other, similar paths exist, but are more perilous or lead to distant places, and are traveled by few. More recently a path opened to Dusk... but already it is said if you go by this route you can go no further than Dusk.

THE DEEP PATH

Frozen Heart of the Vortex lies at the center of it all. For those brave - or foolish enough - to venture there, the road is wide open. The Vortex will spit you out wherever you want to go, and will no longer have any hold over you. Of course, a million champions have tried, but only a handful are believed to have reached the Heart.

THE OTHER PATHS

The Tyrant Star: the Tyrant Star is a baleful phenomenon that appears within the Vortex as often as without. Ancient legends tell that if a traveler can make his way INTO the Tyrant Star, it can take him not only WHEREver, but also WHENever he wishes to go. Unfortunately, the legends don't tell HOW this might be accomplished, although it's said that the renegade Rogue Trader Haarlock was able to do it.

The Wandering Moon/Gates of Moment: appearing within the Vortex is a small, wandering moon, a celestial body that seems to exist in multiple locations (and possibly times as well) at once. By landing on the moon, a traveler could leave the Vortex, though he has little control over where he'd end up.

Forbidden Portal: many legends tell of the Forbidden Portal, a huge edifice of bone and crystal that never opens, but promises to take a traveler elsewhere. There are two problems: It's never been opened and its location isn't known - each legend places it in a different place.

Path of the Dead: there is said to be a place within the Vortex, where Chaos has no power. None at all. The slumbering dead wait here, waiting for a call to arms. These are the Necrontyr, and they have to power to come and go as they please, crossing the void between the starts a men pass through a door.

The Webway: the Eldar have a presence in the Vortex, have had since time immemorial, and they have never been bound to it like other races. It is thought that the Eldar webway leads to the Vortex, and that at least one such passage is still open and possible to travel along by starship.

Q'Sal

At the juncture of the Sixth and Seventh anteciduals of the Screaming Vortex, a particularly persistent whorl of warp energy surrounds the sorcerer’s world of Q’sal. Here the sorcerer-technocrats of the cities of Tarnor, Velklir, and Surgub have held sway for over eight hundred centuries by their own reckoning, an almost inconceivable timespan in realspace terms. The high loremasters of Velklir maintain that Q’sal lay at the heart of the Screaming Vortex in the earliest days of is formation, but has gradually moved from the center towards the periphery, the Scrollwardens of Surgub counter that they have irrefutable proof that Q’sal began at the periphery and is moving to the center. The Archivist-savants of Tarnor can add their weight to neither view, having been struck mute by decree of the Arch-quaestor of Tarnor for a period of not less than two centuries in censure for their outrageous utterances. So it goes on Q’sal.

Q’sal is a rich and prosperous world that would seem familiar to the inhabitant of a civilized world of the Imperium. The clean lines of its glass-towered cities overlook plains covered with well-tended agriculture, its air is alive with the movement of flying craft. In space, a docking ring and shipyards work constantly and a variety of sleek-hulled vessels can be found moored there. On closer inspection, all of this seemingly ordinary activity reeks of the most potent warp-spawned sorcery; everything from daemon-forged engines to voidships powered by rune inscribed menhirs. Spells and cantrips are implicit in every kind of technology in an arcane fusion of magic and science.

SURGUB

The city of Surgub is built on an island in the bay of the great River Crelix and claims to be the oldest settlement of Q’sal -- a claim hotly refuted by Tarnor and Velklir. Surgub is ruled over by fourteen Factors with palaces in the highest steeples of the city. They meet in a strict pattern according to lunar phases. By their decree, any action that might distract them from their deliberations at such times is punishable by death, banishment, or reward according to their whimsy -- a decision ordinarily made according to the manner of business they were attending to. In the past, infractions have been recorded for a multitude of activities including whistling, not whistling, riotous public assembly, incontinent verbosity, unwelcome eruptions, and snark.

The measure of a Sorcerer’s worth in Surgub is determined by the height of his tower, a law that has caused the city to grow vertically into a crown of crystalline spikes many kilometers high. The highest-ranked Sorcerers seldom descend from the heights, living out their lives in the clouds far beyond the grip of common mire beneath. The Sorcerers of Surgub often weave Warp enchantments to levitate them several inches above the ground when they must go abroad, in keeping with a belief of their city that a Sorcerer setting foot upon the earth loses his powers.

VELKLIR

The city of Velklir lies at the southern extremities of a chain of mountains far to the north. Velklir is ruled over by a tyrant elected every forty-nine years and, by tradition, the features of past tyrants are carved into the rocks surrounding Velklir. Over the centuries this practice has covered the flanks of the mountains with hundreds of stern, hollow-eyed patrician faces, giving Velklir its more common name of "The City of Faces." Velklir’s towers are squat, round-bodied structures of green glass often broader than they are tall.

Velklir’s Sorcerers show a great passion for astronomy and the tops of many of the towers are given to arcane observatories and gigantic astrolabes. The astronomer-scientists of Velklir strive to carefully track every heavenly movement and astral conjunction in the Screaming Vortex. They obsessively make complex calculations, plot horoscopes, and predict the flux of the Warp to discover the most auspicious periods for their undertakings. It is said that a Sorcerer from Velklir can guide a vessel through the Immaterium with astounding accuracy, rivaling even the mutant Navigators of the Imperium, and that the greatest warbands repay Velklir for their assistance with a great tithe of souls. Even a Velklir star-chart is a great aid.

(this is the home of Akram the All-seeing, High Sorcerer of Q'Sal)

TARNOR

The city of Tarnor occupies a region of irrigated desert west of Velklir. Seen from afar it appears as a mass of domes and spheres tinted a thousand scintillating colours; whorls of amber, vermillion, carmine shot through with bubbles of cobalt, puce, lavender, and sienna. The sight of Tarnor gleaming beneath the desert sun can strike the unprotected blind. At sunset, the innumerable hues of cityscape merge to make colours unnamed in ordinary reality. The shadows cast are not those of Tarnor, but other cities in other times and places, making a grotesque shadowplay of the future. The Sorcerers of Tarnor wear a variety of placid-seeming masks whenever in public, changing them several times daily in correspondence to chimes rung throughout the city. The spoken word is frowned upon and a complex system of ritualized gestures is used to undertake most transactions. A visitor that abides by these strictures will find themselves feasted and entertained in great style by their silent hosts, though cautionary stories abound of guests causing offense by exclamations of delight.

Part of the Tarnor Sorcerers’ obsessive silence extends from their bizarre love of music. It is said that a Sorcerer of Tarnor cannot pass music being played without stopping to listen and that they will bestow amazing gifts on those that bring them a new kind of instrument or an unheard tune. By night, the curving streets of Tarnor echo with the weird strains of otherworldly melodies and alien harmonies. The mad profusion of instruments achieves a dissonance that can at times overwhelm the senses and blast the ears, or at others transport the soul on sublime breezes to a place of paradise.

The Tale of Kobald the Godless

Do you remember the Tale of Kobald the Godless?

Of course you don't. No one remembers him. Even the Gods have put him out of their minds.

Long ago, Kobal was servant and champion to all the Gods, the High Masters and the Low Ones, the Four Greater and All the Lesser.

Until one day he decided he would no longer follow anyone, but be his own lord and master of all. So he turned his back to the Gods, who had for aeons lent him their strength and offered him protection.

The Gods were not pleased.

They could have destroyed him with but a snap of their allmighty fingers, but they did not. Ever benevolent and all-powerful, they sent their envoys to treat with him instead.

But Kobald would not receive any visitors, not even those on the Gods' business.

So the Gods had no choice but to punish the Godless, so that he would take notice. Depravity, mutation, bloodshed, and disease, and much more they sent onto Kobald's flock.

But he would not relent.

So the Gods were forced to sterner measures. All Kobald's followers died, all his works turned to dust. Others rose up in his place, and he was forgotten.

Finally, he received the envoys - there were none left to bar their way. Each pleaded with him, offering him priceless gifts.

First came the Banshee, the Envoy of Tzeentch, but he would not listen to reason. He had no use for magic, or prophetic power, or anything else the bird-god had to offer.

Ellia Gut-ripper was next, carrying the word of the Skull Throne, but the offer of bloodshed without end could not convince Kobald. What use had he for blood or brass, or anything else offered by a god without a real face?

Grimm the Smiling, Herald of Slaanesh brought pleasure and pain in equal, bountiful measure, but the Godless just sat there, unmoved. These were ephemeral things, old things, worn out, useless. Not gifts, but curses. Besides, he had no use for a God who couldn't even decide to be man or woman.

Last was Surglub the Everliving, the humble Voice of Nurgle. But Kobald had fallen asleep, and no amount of shouting could wake him. Surglub had to return back to his master, his task unfished.

Finally, the Gods shrugged and left Kobald alone.

In the end the Godless died alone and powerless, a withered old man, while his peers ascended to Daemonhood.

The End.

The Threefold Curse Denied

Barotta opted to deny the Threefold Curse. Rather than pick one option, he chose all three - but did exactly the opposite of what was required.

Facrast did not burn. Instead, its peoples came together, united and free of civil war for the first time in living memory. Thus the Horned Darkness was spurned.

Solace was not sucked into the Vortex. The sorcerer Nereus did not get one of Barotta's hearts, not Krawl's. Nobody offered up their sword in his service. Instead, Nereus got his old sword back, and willingly abandoned his great ritual. Thus was the Four Powers spurned.

St. Annard's Penance didn't see the masters burn, nor the pillars fall. Instead, the Chosen were extinguished and the world abandoned, and the sleeping dead may slumber forevermore. Thus was Malal spurned.

It's a story worthy of retelling. This is not how the Threefold Curse normally plays out. The Champion denied all the Gods, seeming without care for their inevitable wrath. Presumably, the way forward is now firmly shut, and all manner of trouble now awaits.

The Threefold Curse

The Threefold Cruse is a recurring theme in many Chaos myth cycles. The Champion is presented with three choices, all of them in some way bad. To go forward in his quest (often for daemonhood), he must then pick one of these three evils - and suck up the consequences. More often than not the hero of these tales pick the wrong option and die horribly. Or refuse the challenge - and are cursed by the True Gods. More rarely, the champion succeeds at one task, only to find he has been tricked.

Barotta's Threefold curse, as penned:

The Fall of Solace
Onto a world where men live like ants,
Where the sorcerer Nereus prepares the Ritual of Ages.
Offer him your heart and your sword.
Thus the Way shall be opened and revealed onto thee.

The Rising of Facrast
Onto a war-torn world on the edge of nowhere,
Where enemies three await with weapons ultimate.
Offer up the world on the Horned One's altar.
Thus the Way shall be opened and revealed onto thee.

The Sacrifice of St. Annard's Peace
Onto a hidden world of toil and bondage,
Where the ancient dead slumber away the eons.
Offer the oppressors to the Avenger.
Thus the Way shall be opened and revealed onto thee.