Games Workshop’s Warhammer Day preview livestream on Saturday revealed many exciting Warhammer 40k news (not least an Astra Militarum army set) but among the most intriguing was a bundle of information – and tantalising hints – about the next chapter of Warhammer 40k lore. The short version: Abaddon, warmaster of Chaos and the biggest, baddest Chaos Space Marine around, is getting a new fleet of heavily armed Space Hulks called the ‘Arks of Omen’ to aid his Black Crusade to conquer the galaxy – and a mysterious daemon character called The Arkifane has helped him get it.
Games Workshop has presented this dark benefactor as being shrouded in the unknown; Warhammer Community loremaster Wade Pryce introduces them as “a hitherto unknown figure” and “a new player who’s entered the game, who’s turned the Space Hulks into Arks of Omen”.
A cryptic video at the end of Saturday’s livestream, loaded with creepy audio static, shows electronic wires and tendrils reaching towards Abaddon, and a barely intelligible mechanical voiceover says: “I am Vashtor the Arkifane, and I have come to make you an offer”.
Well, we think it’s ‘Vashtor’ – it really is hard to hear exactly. The clip ends by flashing up the slogan “Darkness made metal”.
So, who is the Arkifane? We know they’re some kind of daemon; Warhammer Community’s teaser article is titled “The Daemon in the Machine”, refers to the character as “an entity of considerable power”, and includes fragments of very daemonic-sounding flavour text: “Whispers in the void”; “A new power rises from the Warp”; and, of course: “I have come to make you an offer”. Abaddon seems to have made a pact with a powerful daemon.
But what sort of daemon? Well, we think we can make an educated guess at it being a creature of Tzeentch, chaos god of change, fate, sorcery, trickery, and subterfuge. Let’s review what we know so far about the Arkifane:
- They have come to make an offer (i.e. to make some kind of deal) with Abaddon
- They have access to previously secret knowledge – the information, technology, and power required to weaponise a whole fleet of previously inert Space Hulks
- To Abaddon, they represent change (after many centuries of ultimately unsuccessful crusading) and the promise of an improvement in his fortunes.
All these things point towards the forbidden knowledge, devilish trickery, and timely, fateful deal-making of Tzeentch, Changer of the Ways. And that’s before we’ve even nodded towards what we’ve seen of the Arkifane’s physical form.
Tall, slender, and spiny, with wide, taloned wings, and bearing a long-hafted (apparently be-tentacled) weapon somewhere between staff and mace, crackling with blue lightning, the Arkifane looks more like a Lord of Change (the Greater Daemons of Tzeentch) than anything else.
Evidently one that’s been through some mechanical or technological transformation (hence the cables and whatnot) but the shape of the staff-bearing, two-legged bird-figure is definitely there.
Now, we could be way off the mark – and we’ll just have to wait to hear more about the Arkifane and their Arks of Omen before we can really get a handle on Warhammer 40k’s mysterious new daemon on the block. For now, we’ll just have to keep squinting at GW’ spooky, grainy teaser videos and theorising…
Source: Wargamer
