Good day everyone! Zak here with another 40k lore post! As requested by @valggav that I cover a bit about Malice... the 5th Chaos God or a Minor God of Chaos.
As we have covered by now, there are the Greater Gods of Chaos, the big four:
- Khorne, the Blood God
- Nurgle, the Plague God
- Tzeetch - The Changer of Ways
- Slaanesh - The Prince of Excess
And with these four Gods there exists something called the Great Game. These Gods basically constantly fight one another, sometimes they will work together, forming temporary alliances and then infighting when one of the four gains the upper hand.
It is a constant balancing act as the four of them try to expand their power in the Warp, in realspace, with followers and how much they affect the entire Galaxy.
But the Warp is full of entities other than Chaos and other than Chaos Gods. There are other Gods, from other races and there is also the psychic might of the Emperor of Man.
And among all these crazy things running around the Immaterium is Malice. Malice, in a nutshell is a Chaos God who fights Chaos. Malice does not love Chaos, it does not want to arrange Chaos into order either. Malice is even MORE chaotic than the other Chaos Gods.
In that sense, Malice might be the ultimate balancer of Chaos.
When one Chaos God gets a lot of power by doing whatever they do best and love most, usually something that another Chaos God hates, through their success and the success of their followers, that Chaos God may manage to hold on to their "lead".
Malice is pure unbridled hatred for everything chaos or order. You can trust in Malice and its demented followers to destroy Chaos and the just and holy with equal impunity. Malice desires Anarchy and Destruction and also represents Parasitism and Vengence.
It may be conceptually possible that Malice along with its followers to be empowered when Chaos is empowered, especially when they are too close to being successful!
The Sons of Malice
The Sons of Malice did nothing wrong! 🤣🤣🤣 Sort of...
But basically, something similar to this situation has happened many times in the 40k storyline. Space Marines, the Adeptus Astartes are technically autonomous from the rest of the Imperium.
In the Hierarchy of the Imperium (something I should cover soon I guess) the Inquisition are able to declare planets or even Space Marine Chapters lost to Chaos and then excommunicate them in a religious sense.
Many times, this might actually be jumping the gun, but many times the conclusion was fairly obvious. The situation with the Sons of Malice is one of those "down the middle" sort of situations.
They have a heritage that is both PURE and CORRUPT and ultimately fall in exactly right with Malice and their two-tone armor color scheme.
Let's consider this, the Sons of Malice were founded and created as one of the 20 Astartes Praeses - twenty Chapters founded JUST to guard a hellish space called the Eye of Terror (which also bears having its own article written).
After the Horus Heresy, the gene seed of Primarchs who did NOT fall to Chaos was used to form the Astartes Praeses. It is unclear where the Sons of Malice got their gene seed from, but apparently for a pure and loyal Primarch source.
Many times, when a Chapter of Space Marines falls to Chaos, they change their names to something more sinister. In the case of the Sons... their name was ALWAYS the Sons of Malice. Sinister.
Now Chapters often get very Dark names and are loyal Space Marines. Dark Angels, Flesh Tearers, Mortifactors, Doom Eagles but to name a few. These have pretty dark and dire names so the Sons of Malice might not initially seem like a big deal...
However... there is another connection between the Sons to Malice before their "fall" and that is the number 11. You see, each Chaos God has a shiny favorite number - Tzeetch is 9, Khorne 8, Nurgle is 7 and Slaanesh is 6. Malice's favored number is 11...
The homeworld where the Chapter recruited their new Initiates from was Scelus, which was by all accounts a barbaric world. This is not always a good thing, but not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes odd beliefs or rituals are brought across to the Chapter.
And among this was a victory celebration witnessed by an Inquisitor that would last 11 years and contained savage acts that verged on cannabilism! So the red flags are: The number 11, the number of the God Malice, being CALLED the Sons of Malice before their fall, and of course... cannabilism...
The Inquisitor began pressing charges of heresy (and a failed attempt to wipe them out) and the Sons of Malice had the opportunity to repent and swear their loyalty but instead, they felt offended and refused, saying that they did nothing wrong.
The Inquisitor then declared them Excommunicate Traitoris, which allowed the Inquisitor to bring a lot more firepower to cleanse the Sons, including other Chapters of Space Marines.
The Sons of Malice fled into the Eye of Terror - the Warp Anomaly they were set to guard against and now escaped into. In the area of almost warp, almost realspace, they attack Chaos and Loyalists alike and should they come across Xenos, they suffer the same.
Hated, hateful and vengeful. Spiteful and destructive. They unmade everyone and everything and salvaged and preyed on anything and everything they could to survive.
Altogether holding on to their tribal beliefs along with that number 11 and that they did nothing wrong... then caused them to slip further along the line towards becoming the dedicated Chaos Space Marine army dedicated to the obscure but deadly God Malice.
Eventually, the Sons of Malice did join Abbadon the Despoiler in his 13th Crusade on the Imperium. Abbadon himself is not dedicated to any ONE of the Chaos Gods and is a vengeful, spiteful character. It may even be possible that Abbadon accepts help from the lesser Chaos Gods such as Malice.
And there you have it! I hope this was an entertaining retelling of the tale of Malice and the Sons of Malice!
Until next time!
Cheers!
@zakludick
