Vashtorr

Vashtorr, the Arkifane, is a Chaos daemon king who rules the Forge of Souls and seeks to become a fifth Chaos God through the making of weapons. He is recorded as a demi-god of inventors, particularly those who value the weapon above its consequences, and his cult, the Cult of the Arkifane, draws its adherents from that tradition of unrestrained innovation. His domain lies within the Warp, on the map’s Warp anchor, and not on any material world, which is why the entry lists no homeworld. The four principal Chaos Gods are recorded as tolerating him because they have use for the engines and arms that his forges produce.

The defining trait attributed to Vashtorr is reliability. He does not misrepresent the terms of a contract, and accounts agree that this, rather than deceit, is the source of the danger he presents: a mortal who bargains with him receives exactly what was promised, together with every consequence the bargain contained. Vashtorr treats innovation pursued without regard for the soul as a sacrament, and he draws strength from such work wherever it occurs. Later tradition holds that his ambition to stand beside the four Chaos Gods depends on the volume of that activity, which is why the Imperium, a civilisation that continues to invent, remains a source of sustenance to him.

Three episodes place Vashtorr within the wider chronology. The first is his bargain with Abaddon the Despoiler, from which the Arks of Omen resulted; it ties the daemon to the Black Legion’s war effort in the Daemon and Arks of Omen period of the timeline. The second is his raid on the Rock, the Dark Angels’ fortress-monastery, which was frustrated by Be’lakor, another daemon with ambitions of his own; the episode shows Vashtorr as a rival to other Chaos powers as well as a supplier to them. The third concerns Caliban, the Dark Angels’ shattered home world. After the ruins of Caliban became Wyrmwood, Vashtorr is recorded as having concluded that the Key still had a lock to be found, and Caliban therefore forms the principal character-to-location binding on this page (see the linked timeline entry caliban-1112). The sources do not fully explain what the Key opens, and this page does not speculate.

Among his contemporaries, Vashtorr’s clearest points of contact are Abaddon, as bargain partner; Be’lakor, as obstructing rival; and the Dark Angels, as the target of his interest in the Rock and in Caliban. He is also recorded as retaining an unresolved interest in Belisarius Cawl, the Adeptus Mechanicus Archmagos, whose own inventive work makes him a natural object of attention for a power of this kind. Vashtorr remains an active daemon in the current era. He has not ascended to the rank of a fifth Chaos God, and no account records him abandoning that aim.