The Immaterium churned—an endless ocean of madness, thought, and emotion given form. Here, in this impossible realm where time lost meaning and reality fractured beneath the weight of unfiltered sensation, the Thrones stood.
They were not mere seats of power. They were monuments—vast and grotesque—sculpted from nightmares, desire, despair, and the raw warp-stuff of unreality. Upon these Thrones sat the true rulers of the Warp: the Chaos Gods, eternal and absolute. They were older than stars, vaster than galaxies, and utterly indifferent to mortal struggles, save for the delight those struggles provided.
This was the Grand Spectacle.
Upon a throne woven from iridescent threads of fate and paradox, Tzeentch, the Architect of Fate, stirred. His form was a kaleidoscope of ever-shifting shapes, a storm of color, beaks, feathers, and flame. Eyes blinked open and closed across his body, each gazing into a different timeline or possibility. One such gaze focused on a curious convergence.
The Clown Prince of Crime—the soul snatched from another universe and now an agent of boundless, untethered anarchy. Joker had become a delightful anomaly in the tapestry of fate, not merely following chaos but being chaos. And nearby, the enigmatic Dr. Henry Wu, a mortal whose scientific mind defied even Tzeentch's predictions. His logic, his experimentation, his wild curiosity—it created unpredictability where even Tzeentch expected order.
The Great Schemer observed them both with interest.
> "Even their resistance is part of the pattern," the thought rippled, not in words, but as a conceptual truth. "A necessary tension in the weave. They introduce noise where there was signal. The most beautiful mutations are never planned."
Tzeentch smiled—a smile that bent reality, a smile that existed more as consequence than gesture.
Nearby, a sensual sigh echoed like silk tearing through flesh. On a throne of bone and muscle draped in velvet screams and scented despair, Slaanesh, the Prince of Excess, reclined in a posture of divine indulgence. Their lithe form shimmered with beauty too perfect to bear, eyes glimmering with infinite temptation.
Slaanesh did not gaze outward at battles or wars. Their eyes turned inward, into the souls of mortals as they unraveled themselves.
There was Hisoka, the mad harlequin whose hunt for sensation, thrill, and battle transformed every encounter into an intimate performance. He was a walking contradiction of cruelty and play, a dancer on the edge of the abyss. And then, the Witch-king of Angmar—cold, terrifying, a wraith of despair who shattered the wills of others and fed on their collapse. His presence was fear itself weaponized.
Slaanesh exhaled in pleasure.
> "How exquisite the decay of boundaries. How delicious the collapse of restraint."
They saw obsession blooming like roses in ruin. They tasted the fear that morphed into fascination, the cruelty that became love, the pain that turned into art. Every whisper of lust, every surrender to the self, every indulgent betrayal fed Slaanesh's endless hunger.
On a jagged throne of iron and bone, overlooking rivers of blood and mountains of skulls, sat Khorne, the Blood God. He had no eyes—he was vision through violence. He had no mouth—his rage was the voice. A deep, seismic growl rippled through the warp, not as sound but as force.
He did not observe scheming or seduction. He felt only combat.
Shao Kahn, the warlord of Outworld, now a brutal avatar of conquest in realspace, was his chosen conductor. Kahn, whose every step cracked planets and whose every victory drowned systems in blood, was an offering most pure. Each skull taken in Kahn's name was a hymn in Khorne's brutal liturgy.
> "Let them fight," came the thunderous thought. "Let them struggle until only war remains. The strong will rise. The weak will fall. Either way, they bleed."
And bleed they did.
Across the noxious landscape of rot and blooming fungus, upon a throne of moss-covered ruin and weeping stone, sat Nurgle, the Plague Father. His vast, corpulent frame heaved with every breath, releasing clouds of spore and contagion into the Warp. Yet, his presence was warm, almost tender—a twisted parody of fatherly love.
He watched not the champions alone, but the civilizations. He saw the Imperium straining under its own weight, the cracks widening, the dreams of unity rotting beneath bureaucracy, stagnation, and dread.
Nurgle smiled, his laughter a wet gurgle of joy.
> "They try so hard to hold it together," he mused with affection. "And in their fear, they spread me further. Despair is the most fertile soil."
He saw the small compromises: the psyker pressed into servitude, the heretic tolerated to maintain order, the plague victims quarantined too late. He felt the fear spreading faster than any virus, and in that fear, his garden grew.
Unlike his siblings, Nurgle had no favorites. All rot pleased him. All decay was inevitable. He required no puppets, only time.
---
They did not intervene.
Why should they?
The mortal realm fed them best when mortals believed they fought back. Every decree from the Golden Throne, every reformation by the High Lords, every desperate gambit by a Primarch only accelerated their influence. Mortals tried to fortify their realm, and in doing so bred resentment, cruelty, and instability—each a seed for Chaos.
> Desperation bred violence—Khorne.
Desperation birthed schemes—Tzeentch.
Desperation led to indulgence—Slaanesh.
Desperation became surrender—Nurgle.
The Chaos Gods were not merely watching a war.
They were the war.
They were the echo of every scream, the shadow behind every ambition, the rot beneath every hope. The Great Game did not seek a victor—it sought only continuation. For as long as mortals struggled, the Thrones would remain fed.
And now, new pieces had entered the board—strange souls from other realities, drawn by Tzeentch, tested by all four Thrones. The Joker, the madman without a purpose, the Doctor, the Hunter, the Wraith, the Conqueror, the Fallen King—each a whisper of madness in a galaxy already teetering.
The war would not end.
Because the war was the purpose.