Cegorach was a jester, also known as the Great Harlequin, the Great Fool and the First Fool.
In Eldar myth, he was the god of creativity, art, deception and strategy, and the central object of worship for the Eldar Harlequin troupes.
His form was never fixed. Sometimes he appeared as a clown in a colourful costume, wearing a mask that smiled on one side and wept on the other.
Sometimes he was a mist, endlessly shifting through the colours of the rainbow.
Sometimes there was only a faint whisper in the darkness, impossible to tell whether laughter or weeping.
At the Fall, every Eldar god who had reigned for thousands of years was devoured by a ravenous Slaanesh.
The Laughing God used his finest illusion-magic to create countless copies of himself, and in the confusion of true and false, made Slaanesh bite the wrong target.
Then, through that slender gap, he slipped into the webway.
When Tsara'noga, the Outsider, laid eyes on the Laughing God Cegorach, his gaze turned hostile.
Long ago he had been deceived by the Laughing God's illusions and mistaken his own kin for Eldar gods.
Believing what he saw, Tsara'noga had fallen on his companions in a rage and devoured them one by one.
Fragments of the dead star-gods screamed, cursed, questioned, and lamented day and night in the depths of his consciousness. Because of that, the star-god had gone mad and been confined for millions of years in a Dyson sphere beyond the Milky Way.
That was a score that would have to be settled properly. It could not simply be let go.
Yet Tsara'noga did not dare to move. After glaring furiously at Cegorach for a while, he looked away.
The situation was remarkable: the nameless man wanted to strike a deal with Cegorach.
Personal grudges could not be allowed to ruin the nameless man's important work at a time like this.
Cegorach felt Tsara'noga's gaze and glanced his way.
Then he looked over the other star-gods standing quietly behind the Nameless One — the Void Dragon, Zarhulash, Nyadra'zatha the Burning One, and Aza'gorod the Nightbringer.
All were old acquaintances; they had fought one another in the War in Heaven.
At last Cegorach's gaze settled on the nameless man, a faint awe lurking deep in his eyes.
The Nameless One is growing far too fast.
When I first learned of him, I took him for nothing more than an interesting human with immortality and some special abilities.
By the time he slipped into Slaanesh's domain and stole away the souls of several Harlequin troupes, he had already grown into a foe even gods would hesitate to face.
Probably only the four Chaos Gods could still give the Nameless Ones any trouble.
The four had lurked in the Warp for ages, and thanks to the nature of the Warp itself, they could hold out a while longer.
But Cegorach knew that one day they too would be crushed by the Nameless Ones, reduced to fleeting memories, and forgotten by all.
"So, how do you plan to help me?" Datch had no intention whatsoever of getting tangled up in feuds between NPCs.
All he wanted now was to complete the mission of defeating the Four as quickly as possible.
Gork and Mork were the last obstacle he would rather not have had to deal with.
Once the two green gods were settled, he could set to work on the Chaos Gods.
"Gork and Mork exist differently from me and from the star-gods." Cegorach raised a hand and traced several special patterns in the air with his slender fingertips.
A pale-purple circle, representing a Warp entity.
A silver-white cube, symbolising a physical being in the material world.
And a green dot, representing Gork and Mork, moving back and forth between the two realms.
"I am a pure Warp entity, the embodiment of Eldar faith. My power is born of the faith the Eldar project onto me in the Warp; the foundation of my existence lies entirely within it."
"The star-gods are purely material beings without souls, and cannot touch the Warp. Their power comes from the physical laws of the real universe, and they can act in the material world only through bodies of living metal."
"Gork and Mork belong to neither. They are not of the Warp, yet they cannot exist independently of it either; they depend on the Orks' WAAAGH! field."
"When enough Orks gather to form a vast WAAAGH! field, resonance occurs, and the two of them appear in the real universe."
"If the field is not strong enough, Gork and Mork become disembodied consciousnesses, scattered among the Orks."
"The burning fighting spirit Ork boyz feel as they charge into battle, the brilliant ideas Ork mekboyz hit upon when building weapons, the irrational yet astonishingly effective instincts of Ork warbosses when they plan their tactics — all of these are Gork and Mork, dispersed among them."
"When a Green Tide strong enough to sweep the galaxy is born, the fragments of the brothers' consciousness scattered among countless greenskins fuse in the resonance of the WAAAGH! field, and the brothers truly manifest in the real universe."
"By the Old Ones' design, the greater the Green Tide, the stronger Gork and Mork become. They are the ultimate war protocol, the most powerful living weapon of war in the galaxy."
Cegorach shaped light and shadow with his fingertips, and the bouncing green dots of light unfolded into the outlines of two gigantic green giants standing side by side.
"If the Nameless One wishes to annihilate the Orks completely and capture Gork and Mork, he must wait for the Green Tide to form, and catch them when they manifest in the material world."
"That is the only way to wipe out the Orks for good."
"The Green Tide is far too great a threat. A single mistake could destroy the entire galaxy. Your proposal must be hiding something," Tsara'noga said darkly.
His eyes were fixed on Cegorach; the words were plainly aimed at him.
"I think so too." Another star-god, the Deceiver, backed Tsara'noga.
During the War in Heaven, the Laughing God had masqueraded as the Deceiver time and again. As a result, the Deceiver had been blamed on many occasions, and was nearly killed by the Nightbringer, who took him for the real traitor.
"If the Green Tide never appears, sweeping the Orks off the Armageddon battlefield means nothing. They will breed and flourish all over the galaxy."
"Ork spores can survive for thousands of years even in vacuum. If a single spore lands on a suitable planet, they will rise again."
"Unless the Nameless Ones are prepared to pay a heavy price to erase the very concept of the Orks' existence," Cegorach explained.
Cegorach would have doubted that anyone else could destroy so powerful a race.
But he placed great trust in the Nameless Ones.
The man was little different from a creator. Erasing a race from existence ought not to be hard for him.
Datch stroked his chin and began to think.
With items like the Infinity Gauntlet and the Heart of the Universe, he could certainly erase the Orks from existence.
They would be eradicated from the galaxy at the very root of reality's laws, and the WAAAGH! field would be torn out of the Warp.
The only price would be the points he had worked so hard to earn by completing quests.
But that would be pointless. Subduing the brothers and completing his collection was worth far more than spending a mountain of points to wipe out a race.
"Nameless lord, this fellow…" Before Tsara'noga could finish, Datch cut him off.
"I've made up my mind. We let the Green Tide rise," Datch declared.
The star-gods exchanged bewildered looks. Tsara'noga looked reluctant, but in the end accepted the order.
The longer one spent around the Nameless Ones, the more keenly one felt the power they held.
Not even the star-gods could stand against it.
His decision made, Datch set the plan in motion.
At first, Commissar Yarrick feared the Nameless One would sacrifice the Imperial forces on Armageddon to intensify the fighting and speed up the Orks' evolution.
The Imperial soldiers who had come to this battlefield were prepared to give their lives.
Yet being used so blatantly as consumables in someone's plan filled him with deep despair.
To those who knew the truth, such a death would be no honour at all.
They would not have died fighting the Orks. They would merely have been used up so that a plan could run smoothly.
But he soon found he had been overthinking it.
Datch did not need to sacrifice the Imperial forces to escalate the war or accelerate the greenskins' evolution.
All he had to do was use the power of the Reality Stone to restore the Orks to their former glory.
The only price… was that he would have to burn some of his points.
Datch ordered the entire Imperial army to fall back to safety.
Yarrick carried out the order. Most positions were abandoned, and many defence lines were overrun in very short order.
Once the Imperial forces had withdrawn, Datch used the Reality Stone to accelerate the Orks' evolution and restore the glory they had known in the age of the War in Heaven.
In a mere few weeks, the greenskins swelled to enormous size and became true green giants.
Every muscle was dense and powerful, like steel cable forged again and again.
Their armour transformed dramatically too, evolving into highly advanced, refined powered suits that surpassed anything the present Imperium of Man possessed.
Their shoulder armour carried small, auto-deploying gravity cannon, and their helmets had built-in tactical holo-arrays that updated in real time.
Their built-in energy cores could not only power their ranged weapons but also charge their melee weapons, making them deadlier still.
Any one of these features would have driven even the most renowned forge-sages of the Mechanicum into a frenzy.
All of this was because the Ork mekboyz had evolved more powerful brains and could now build all kinds of advanced weapons.
The little runts once used as cannon fodder, now with abnormally large heads and jutting brows, had reawakened the command abilities the Old Ones had planted deep in their genes.
They became highly intelligent and cunning — the strategic brains of the Ork army.
The Orks launched ever fiercer attacks on the Imperial positions.
A single salvo from the Krork cannon tore a void-shielded section of an Imperial fortress out by its roots.
The Orks employed all manner of tactics, leading their warbands against the weakest points of the Imperial defences.
Without the help of the Eldar and the many star-gods, these evolved Orks might well have laid waste to human territory.
The Bonebreaker clearly felt the change. His physique grew ever more monstrous.
As an Ork warlord, he had already boasted the most massive frame of any Ork.
The Reality Stone's power swelled him to an extreme.
Encased in heavy armour, his body was like a walking steel golem. Every swing of his arm made the air boom.
The evolved Bonebreaker could tear a tank apart with ease; even an Imperial Knight was no match for his raw strength and would be ripped to pieces.
It was easy to imagine how far his evolution had gone.
"Old Man with One Eye, I've won this war!" the Bonebreaker bellowed at the sky with a ferocious howl.
The other Orks roared with him. Their war cry rang across the ground and echoed in the void, creating a resonating WAAAGH! field.
Green WAAAGH! energy gushed from the roaring Orks' bodies and merged into a green torrent.
The terrible green energy surged out and blanketed the whole of Armageddon.
The ancient planet resonated with the WAAAGH! field, triggering a strange reaction, and something ancient began to stir.
When the resonance reached its peak, Gork and Mork appeared in the real universe.
Both were typical Orks: Gork brutal but cunning, Mork cunning but brutal.
Like world-destroying gods out of myth, Gork and Mork stood imposingly on the earth, swinging gigantic war-axes, their whole bodies sheathed in green shields.
Terrible WAAAGH! energy radiated ceaselessly from their colossal bodies.
First Gork roared at the sky; then Mork followed.
The roars of the two green giants rang through the void together, and every ancient Ork that heard them answered with the most fervent devotion, gazing up at the sky.
"WAAAGH!"
As Gork and Mork appeared, the Bonebreaker let out an even more terrible roar.
His gigantic body, evolved to the very peak of the Krork, was like an ant gazing up at a giant at Gork and Mork's feet.
Countless Orks roared with him. War cries from every corner of the battlefield merged into a pure, unstoppable green frenzy.
The terrible sound shook the entire Warp. Psykers light-years away all felt a primal terror welling up from the depths of their souls, a terror no language could express.
At the very moment the Orks were cheering the arrival of Gork and Mork, Datch, who had been waiting patiently, appeared with the T'au goddess, Cegorach, and a host of star-gods.
"They're finally out. Catch them! Give them a proper thrashing!"
Datch called on all his pets to swarm Gork and Mork and beat them up.
The gods advanced as one and launched a ferocious attack on Gork and Mork, who had only just set foot in the real world.
The Void Dragon dived from directly overhead, its undulating living-metal body slicing a straight rift through the green WAAAGH! field.
Pure void energy blasted from between its wings at Gork and Mork.
Zarhulash cut in from the flank, loosing a beam of devastating power.
Aza'gorod the Nightbringer swung his reaper's scythe without mercy, wearing down the brothers' shields.
The Deceiver and Cegorach conjured countless illusions so that Gork and Mork could not find their real targets.
Gork and Mork roared and struck back together.
Every swing of their war-axes sent a star-god reeling, while their green shields soaked up the gods' attacks and hurled them back.
The fight escalated in an instant, and the terrible energies unleashed shook the whole planet and the void around it.
The brothers' WAAAGH! field, the star-gods' reality-bending energy, and the faith-power of Cegorach and the goddess Titania collided, tearing at the veil along the edge of the Warp and causing countless temporary rifts to open and close across the void.
The collision split the planet's crust with countless cracks that spread across the entire continent.
Gork and Mork fought bravely, but in the end they were hopelessly outnumbered. After a fierce battle, they were defeated by the gods.
The Void Dragon cut Gork's war-axe in two, and Mork's shield was smashed to pieces by the combined attack of Tsara'noga and the Burning One.
As the brothers teetered on the brink of death, Datch took out Master Balls and threw them.
The Master Balls traced two smooth, beautiful arcs through the air and struck Gork and Mork squarely on their brows.
Deep-purple light enveloped the two gods and drew them into the spheres.
The Master Balls landed, bounced several times on the scorched earth, then came to rest and emitted a confirmation sound.
...