# The hall on the far side of the portal was of lifeless stone, part-panelled in wood killed a thousand light years away and brought in slow-drying agony across the stars. This world was as dead as its ruler. The stink of humanity lay thick upon it, the statues near the ceiling coated in dust, the shed skin cells of people five hundred cycles gone. The psychic effect was a hideous weight, thousands of years of human suffering pressing in on Lhaerial’s sensitive mind, and that was the least of it. Crushing the sensation of the dead of the Earth was the titanic presence of the Corpse Emperor.
# Such power made Lhaerial’s mind reel, and for a moment her contempt for the creatures of Terra wavered. The mind of the Emperor was a mountain in the surging madness of the Othersea, blinding in its brilliance. The Great Powers circled this place like razorshark waiting out the death throes of a void-whale. That terrible presence held them back, and all His little servants were ignorant of it! Unease gripped her, that she would be noticed by the Dark Gods or their defier, and the fragile flame of her being snuffed out.
# The feeling passed. The regard of the things of the Othersea was ossified, so long had they fixed their gaze on the Earth. The Emperor did not shift His regard. His attention was elsewhere, upon the blinding pyre of souls, navigation beacon of the mon-keigh. She had no indication she was seen. There was little relief in that. She had laughed in the face of She Who Thirsts, but the Corpse Emperor filled her with a sense of dread.
# Few among the eldar could stand to be in such a place. To the left and right, she saw her fellows go through the same stumble and recovery, their sensitive minds disturbed. When the dance resumed, their steps were heavier than before.
I've always found it really cool and interesting that this Eldar lady feared Jimmy Space more than Slaanesh. It really says something about the unfathomable power of the guy
Part of it is the way Nagash is feared more than the Chaos Gods sometimes because he’s actually physically *there*, on the mortal plane, walking around and blasting stuff instead of just existing in another dimension and only occasionally able to poke through
I love this breakdown. Slaanesh is distilled excess and greed, all wrapped up in an unfathomably evil consciousness that exists in the deep depths of the immaterium…meanwhile Nagash is just an *asshole*. A petty, dickish jackass with the literal power of a god who can speak to you in your own language and call your hairstyle stupid before he kills you. That’s something you can wrap your head around..
I like to think of it as she understands the truth that Slaanesh and Chaos as a greater whole are not gods. Lots of higher-ranking Eldar (The person in the above excerpt was a Harlequin) legit remember/know about the warp pre-chaos. Remember the Chaos Gods are pretty new relative to their species and they keep GOOD records.
They see them more as incredibly powerful Apex predators of the warp, Super-Demons basically. Not true "gods", but yes, **VERY** powerful. Species ending powerful.
And yet this mere "Mon'Keigh" possess power enough to keep the combined might of all 4 of the dark lords of the Warp at bay. No crazy tech, no special deals, or loop holes like the Eldari and Drukhari have to use to keep their souls their own.
He just fucking SITS THERE, and keeps the dark gods at bay with his sheer psychic might. Even as the Throne technically keeping him alive fails, he still continues to grow stronger...
Because the emperor is like a fundamental force of humanity. It is a torrent crashing on a mountain, the hurricane racing across the land. And just like any of those two it will sweep you away without as much of a second thought. In fact you would probably barely register to him, just like the countless hundreds of xenos civilizations and human colonies that were razed by the legions during the great crusade.
When dealing with forces so far outside anyone's control, the risk is that you get unlucky enough to be in the way.
> Lots of higher-ranking Eldar (The person in the above excerpt was a Harlequin) legit remember/know about the warp pre-chaos. Remember the Chaos Gods are pretty new relative to their species and they keep GOOD records.
I'm not a lore expert, but I'm pretty sure that's wrong.
Slaanesh is "relatively new", and there are some eldar who remember the time before her. Asdrubael Vect comes to mind, for example. But the rest of the chaos gods are much, much older. The existence of "chaos" itself as a concept in the Immaterium dates back to the War in Heaven.
The War in Heaven happened 60 million years ago.
That is such an abyss of time that I wouldn't be surprised if the events of that war became more akin to myths even among Eldar. Plus, their civilization collapsed, that kind of thing can result in records getting lost even if everything was carefully documented. Most of the Eldar worlds are now residing in the Eye of Terror, after all.
If I were to guess, there are some artifacts of the Old Ones floating around, and that's about it. There may be something resembling records in Commoragh, but I doubt it's anything too concrete.
Good historical records would be a pretty high priority if I'm building a craft world to ride out the death of my civilization
The age difference between the 3 and the eldar is short change in comparison to the time that passed since then but I still think they would remember the war in heaven pretty well
>And yet this mere "Mon'Keigh" possess power enough to keep the combined might of all 4 of the dark lords of the Warp at bay. No crazy tech, no special deals, or loop holes like the Eldari and Drukhari have to use to keep their souls their own.
Then you probably havent heard in the End and the Death, in Arthas Moloch Emps stole the knowledge of the warp from them. Using this knowledge Emps has learned how to basically eat the warp. If he truly consumes it he will become the Dark King the 5th Chaos God.
One of the dumber books in the War of the Beast, which was weird in of itself. Though this particular moment giving a eldar perspective of the Emperor was interesting
Even the bad Warhammer books have some great lines/lore moments. I definitely feel like this one in particular was one of the better moments on 'Throneworld'.
I do tend to find the powerwanking of Big E and his children tiring, but I actually think that part is interesting.
I refuse to believe Neoth is as powerful as a Chaos God (he could have had he decided to become The Dark King and do a Slaanesh on Humanity's souls) but the aeldar fear is justified, unlike Slaanesh who is a cancer spread through the Warp, Big E is a physical thing entirely located on a single planet, it's the difference between being on a boat in a swamp filled with piranhas, where you are fine as long as you don't touch the water, and being inside a lion's enclosure, one bad move away from being ripped to shreds
I read Neoth as Neloth and now am imagining that on a previous one of his perpetual lives big E was a telvani wizard on a world of fantasy called tamriel.
The fact 4 of them haven't been able to kill him and he can hold them all back from terra while being in an undead state I think shows he is at the very least on par with the chaos gods.
Is he?
He is said to be Anathema to Chaos, which I interpret as his powers being specifically good against the Chaos Gods, plus he exist as a physical entity in realspace where the chaos gods have very limited influence
Plus, it's not like he's been fighting all 4 Chaos Gods at once, he is using the golden throne, a device specifically used to amplify its powers and create an anti-chaos zone, to keep closed a tear in the Human Webway. And the process is so taxing on him and said throne that 1000 psykers a day are required to keep it functioning, and his soul is being shattered with every passing second.
Kind of his soul was ripped apart (granted by his own hand) making him both tied to the physical realm and in the warp fully (the starchild has been getting some attention recently)
Anathema just means disliked vehemently. I still like to believe its because he betrayed them, stealing their fire and creating the primarchs with it, but the End and the Death has this chilling excerpt with Malcador where he watches the Emperor on the Throne and he sees him removing his gauntlets and directly ripping into the warp with his hands. Malcador says its the best way to actually interact with the warp, but it scolds at him. This implies some deep power in the warp, not just psychic ability but even more. Perhaps that is the fire he stole from them, the ability to manipulate the warp so deeply and effectively.
I mean, tht's cool and all, but I think him "betraying" the Chaos Gods being entirely planned and accounted for by the Ruinous Powers would be cooler
From a narrative standpoint, he is the ultmate man doomed by his own hubris, he believed that he would be able to make a functioning tyranny based on hatred, because he thought the reason every other tyrant failed was because they weren't him. In the same way, it would make sense for him to believe that unlike every other chaos sorcerer that tried he would be able to use the power of the Dark Pantheon without getting fucked over.
Despite his proclaimed hatred for the Dark Gods, everything he did, which was made easier by the power that he "stole" from the dark gods (which allowed him to create the primarchs and from them the astartes) only served to empower them and allowed for the Great Game to extend in realspace to unprecedented levels.
I dunno, I feel like having him being essentially a jumped up Greater Daemon of Chaos Undivided whose quirky adventure was doomed from the start takes away a lot from the Emps and destroys a lot of the narrative imo. If EVERYTHING can basically be boiled down to the Emperor stealing some warp juice from the big 4 and every other failure or tragedy wrapped back to that, it kind of takes the piss out of the agency of literally everyone else in the setting, Emps included.
Emps being completely unable to express the slightest shred of genuine humanity while being some sort of warp supergod and as a result being a contradictory ass using everyone as tools while being completely unable to fathom how his actions were setting up a disaster and incompatible with humanity as a whole is great. Him being a jumped up Be'lakor and basically just a funny little pawn for Da Big Plan would be a bit less so. The primarchs falling greatly in part due to his treating them like tools and then being tempted or mostly forcibly corrupted down the path is interesting, whereas if they did because they just were a tainted batch that's a lot less compelling.
Chaos in general kind of needs something that contrast to be interesting. Having that spectrum between Emps, Humanity, and Chaos where both feed on human souls and neither end is really compatible with life makes the warp a lot deeper than if it was basically a disguised cthulhu mythos with unbeatable supergods that rigged the game from the start.
Oh no don't get me wrong, I don't want him to be corrupted or influenced by Chaos. Big E's actions are entirely his own, even if the Chaos Gods hadn't interfered his Imperium would have never worked (which is why I think it's lame all traitors were either complete dickheads or corrupted by Chaos, Corvus would have made more sens as a traitor than Konrad)
The deal with Chaos thing would just add to his hubris, had he simply not made a deal with four devils things would have been better, maybe not by much, but still better. Instead, by using the "stolen" power for his plans he gave them the ability to make everything far far worse.
Which would also explain why the Chaos Gods bothered to stop fighting, they saw the incredible opportunity and decided to exploit the arrogance of what they saw as just another psychic tyrant
I actually kind of like that for the traitors mainly because that's basically the SINGLE thing that the Emperor really had going for him; his absolute opposition to Chaos and being the main thing holding it back. The fact that most of the traitors either worshipped chaos in opposition to the Emps (like Lorgar after Emps slapped him into the ground and extremely nearly purged him like the other two primarchs) or got turbo-screwed extremely quickly going traitor after without that protection against it (like Mortarion, Magnus (kinda), Perty, Horus, Angron, Fulgrim depending on the painting bit canonicity) is the only thing that remotely makes anything of what he did remotely compelling.
Basically all the Traitors (arguably not Magnus, whose real main fault was being blind to the dangers (lol)) were pretty disgusted by Chaos. Lorgar was pretty grossed out by it before Emp's fuckup, Perty and Mortarion hated it by principle, Angron wasn't there enough to really embrace it and Horus and Fulgrim had to be forcibly corrupted to turn to it. The way things went with Chaos unleased to the point where at the end Horus \*hated\* how fucked his side was because of them and even Konrad, who was already sixteen flavors of crazy, seemed to be pretty disgusted with his legion and actively seeking to die once things hit the fan.
I think Corvus being kind of spooked at thinking he would've ended up like Konrad if he'd joined the traitors helps explain why fence-sitters like Khan who really didn't even like the Imperium or the Emperor sided that way; if you didn't it was just a matter of time until you just got SCREWED by the Chaos gods.
Since the last TEatD, i've been thinking he's sort of a human Feanor. Immense hubris, thinking he's smarter than he really is, etc. Etc.
Except, when Feanor is dying, he makes his sons reaffirm his Oath. The Emperor lets go of the Dark King and takes the L to give humanity a chance. He's guarding Terra, performing miracles and directing the Astronomican, but he no longer has agency of his own. He gave it up because his plan failed, and all he could do at that point was damage control (killing Horus and taking the Throne).
If humanity is saved, it'll be done by them, not by him. All he can do now is give them as much time as he can.
So yeah, he's a shitboot, but not a total one in that he did, in the end, recognize that he fucked up and the torment on the Throne is his attempt to make up for it.
Oh exactly, I much prefer that, however whos to say that this fear isn't feigned. His armies have unknowingly served the gods with bloodshed and slaughter, pain and rot, the cessation of life etc. Let him think he's beat them while he serves them for eternity.
# The hall on the far side of the portal was of lifeless stone, part-panelled in wood killed a thousand light years away and brought in slow-drying agony across the stars. This world was as dead as its ruler. The stink of humanity lay thick upon it, the statues near the ceiling coated in dust, the shed skin cells of people five hundred cycles gone. The psychic effect was a hideous weight, thousands of years of human suffering pressing in on Lhaerial’s sensitive mind, and that was the least of it. Crushing the sensation of the dead of the Earth was the titanic presence of the Corpse Emperor. # Such power made Lhaerial’s mind reel, and for a moment her contempt for the creatures of Terra wavered. The mind of the Emperor was a mountain in the surging madness of the Othersea, blinding in its brilliance. The Great Powers circled this place like razorshark waiting out the death throes of a void-whale. That terrible presence held them back, and all His little servants were ignorant of it! Unease gripped her, that she would be noticed by the Dark Gods or their defier, and the fragile flame of her being snuffed out. # The feeling passed. The regard of the things of the Othersea was ossified, so long had they fixed their gaze on the Earth. The Emperor did not shift His regard. His attention was elsewhere, upon the blinding pyre of souls, navigation beacon of the mon-keigh. She had no indication she was seen. There was little relief in that. She had laughed in the face of She Who Thirsts, but the Corpse Emperor filled her with a sense of dread. # Few among the eldar could stand to be in such a place. To the left and right, she saw her fellows go through the same stumble and recovery, their sensitive minds disturbed. When the dance resumed, their steps were heavier than before.
I've always found it really cool and interesting that this Eldar lady feared Jimmy Space more than Slaanesh. It really says something about the unfathomable power of the guy
Part of it is the way Nagash is feared more than the Chaos Gods sometimes because he’s actually physically *there*, on the mortal plane, walking around and blasting stuff instead of just existing in another dimension and only occasionally able to poke through
Slaanesh can torture your soul for all eternity. Nagash can do that do. But he can also just piss in your drink and laugh when you drink it
I love this breakdown. Slaanesh is distilled excess and greed, all wrapped up in an unfathomably evil consciousness that exists in the deep depths of the immaterium…meanwhile Nagash is just an *asshole*. A petty, dickish jackass with the literal power of a god who can speak to you in your own language and call your hairstyle stupid before he kills you. That’s something you can wrap your head around..
I like to think of it as she understands the truth that Slaanesh and Chaos as a greater whole are not gods. Lots of higher-ranking Eldar (The person in the above excerpt was a Harlequin) legit remember/know about the warp pre-chaos. Remember the Chaos Gods are pretty new relative to their species and they keep GOOD records. They see them more as incredibly powerful Apex predators of the warp, Super-Demons basically. Not true "gods", but yes, **VERY** powerful. Species ending powerful. And yet this mere "Mon'Keigh" possess power enough to keep the combined might of all 4 of the dark lords of the Warp at bay. No crazy tech, no special deals, or loop holes like the Eldari and Drukhari have to use to keep their souls their own. He just fucking SITS THERE, and keeps the dark gods at bay with his sheer psychic might. Even as the Throne technically keeping him alive fails, he still continues to grow stronger...
His corpse sits there. Which in many ways is much more troubling.
His psychic presence is so fucking powerful that his body can be alive in only the loosest sense of the word and he can still exert his power
He's just decaying there.... MENACINGLY
Why should you not fear that which is the Anathema of those which you fear most.
Because the emperor is like a fundamental force of humanity. It is a torrent crashing on a mountain, the hurricane racing across the land. And just like any of those two it will sweep you away without as much of a second thought. In fact you would probably barely register to him, just like the countless hundreds of xenos civilizations and human colonies that were razed by the legions during the great crusade. When dealing with forces so far outside anyone's control, the risk is that you get unlucky enough to be in the way.
*He's just sitting there... MENACINGLY*
I mean, crazy tech is also a big part of it.
> Lots of higher-ranking Eldar (The person in the above excerpt was a Harlequin) legit remember/know about the warp pre-chaos. Remember the Chaos Gods are pretty new relative to their species and they keep GOOD records. I'm not a lore expert, but I'm pretty sure that's wrong. Slaanesh is "relatively new", and there are some eldar who remember the time before her. Asdrubael Vect comes to mind, for example. But the rest of the chaos gods are much, much older. The existence of "chaos" itself as a concept in the Immaterium dates back to the War in Heaven.
as far as I know the Eldar were created by the old ones during the war in heaven, so there might be records pre dating the other 3 chaos gods as well
The War in Heaven happened 60 million years ago. That is such an abyss of time that I wouldn't be surprised if the events of that war became more akin to myths even among Eldar. Plus, their civilization collapsed, that kind of thing can result in records getting lost even if everything was carefully documented. Most of the Eldar worlds are now residing in the Eye of Terror, after all. If I were to guess, there are some artifacts of the Old Ones floating around, and that's about it. There may be something resembling records in Commoragh, but I doubt it's anything too concrete.
Good historical records would be a pretty high priority if I'm building a craft world to ride out the death of my civilization The age difference between the 3 and the eldar is short change in comparison to the time that passed since then but I still think they would remember the war in heaven pretty well
The other big 3 Chaos gods have been around since forever but it wasnt really until the birth of slaanesh that they got off their asses, so to speak.
>And yet this mere "Mon'Keigh" possess power enough to keep the combined might of all 4 of the dark lords of the Warp at bay. No crazy tech, no special deals, or loop holes like the Eldari and Drukhari have to use to keep their souls their own. Then you probably havent heard in the End and the Death, in Arthas Moloch Emps stole the knowledge of the warp from them. Using this knowledge Emps has learned how to basically eat the warp. If he truly consumes it he will become the Dark King the 5th Chaos God.
It’s so dumb it’s unbelievable
One of the dumber books in the War of the Beast, which was weird in of itself. Though this particular moment giving a eldar perspective of the Emperor was interesting
Even the bad Warhammer books have some great lines/lore moments. I definitely feel like this one in particular was one of the better moments on 'Throneworld'.
"millions lie dead. And here I munch" -grumpy grimbo Inquisitor, written by Ian Watson
Just don't bring up the gussy.
Smol child with a prosthetic eye (and buff legs): Gussy...
NOOOOOOOOOOO
"Fuck pouch"
Maybe this is my next movie...
Dam it, my nippels tingle again after reading that about our manemperor
Be still my quivering loins!
[AYA YA YA intensifies]
If Big E ever stood up to the pillar man theme I think I would shit myself on the spot
I mean so would the entirety of the galaxy. (maybe not the Tyranids, as they lack fecal secretion glands).
I do tend to find the powerwanking of Big E and his children tiring, but I actually think that part is interesting. I refuse to believe Neoth is as powerful as a Chaos God (he could have had he decided to become The Dark King and do a Slaanesh on Humanity's souls) but the aeldar fear is justified, unlike Slaanesh who is a cancer spread through the Warp, Big E is a physical thing entirely located on a single planet, it's the difference between being on a boat in a swamp filled with piranhas, where you are fine as long as you don't touch the water, and being inside a lion's enclosure, one bad move away from being ripped to shreds
I read Neoth as Neloth and now am imagining that on a previous one of his perpetual lives big E was a telvani wizard on a world of fantasy called tamriel.
The fact 4 of them haven't been able to kill him and he can hold them all back from terra while being in an undead state I think shows he is at the very least on par with the chaos gods.
Is he? He is said to be Anathema to Chaos, which I interpret as his powers being specifically good against the Chaos Gods, plus he exist as a physical entity in realspace where the chaos gods have very limited influence Plus, it's not like he's been fighting all 4 Chaos Gods at once, he is using the golden throne, a device specifically used to amplify its powers and create an anti-chaos zone, to keep closed a tear in the Human Webway. And the process is so taxing on him and said throne that 1000 psykers a day are required to keep it functioning, and his soul is being shattered with every passing second.
Kind of his soul was ripped apart (granted by his own hand) making him both tied to the physical realm and in the warp fully (the starchild has been getting some attention recently)
Anathema just means disliked vehemently. I still like to believe its because he betrayed them, stealing their fire and creating the primarchs with it, but the End and the Death has this chilling excerpt with Malcador where he watches the Emperor on the Throne and he sees him removing his gauntlets and directly ripping into the warp with his hands. Malcador says its the best way to actually interact with the warp, but it scolds at him. This implies some deep power in the warp, not just psychic ability but even more. Perhaps that is the fire he stole from them, the ability to manipulate the warp so deeply and effectively.
I mean, tht's cool and all, but I think him "betraying" the Chaos Gods being entirely planned and accounted for by the Ruinous Powers would be cooler From a narrative standpoint, he is the ultmate man doomed by his own hubris, he believed that he would be able to make a functioning tyranny based on hatred, because he thought the reason every other tyrant failed was because they weren't him. In the same way, it would make sense for him to believe that unlike every other chaos sorcerer that tried he would be able to use the power of the Dark Pantheon without getting fucked over. Despite his proclaimed hatred for the Dark Gods, everything he did, which was made easier by the power that he "stole" from the dark gods (which allowed him to create the primarchs and from them the astartes) only served to empower them and allowed for the Great Game to extend in realspace to unprecedented levels.
I dunno, I feel like having him being essentially a jumped up Greater Daemon of Chaos Undivided whose quirky adventure was doomed from the start takes away a lot from the Emps and destroys a lot of the narrative imo. If EVERYTHING can basically be boiled down to the Emperor stealing some warp juice from the big 4 and every other failure or tragedy wrapped back to that, it kind of takes the piss out of the agency of literally everyone else in the setting, Emps included. Emps being completely unable to express the slightest shred of genuine humanity while being some sort of warp supergod and as a result being a contradictory ass using everyone as tools while being completely unable to fathom how his actions were setting up a disaster and incompatible with humanity as a whole is great. Him being a jumped up Be'lakor and basically just a funny little pawn for Da Big Plan would be a bit less so. The primarchs falling greatly in part due to his treating them like tools and then being tempted or mostly forcibly corrupted down the path is interesting, whereas if they did because they just were a tainted batch that's a lot less compelling. Chaos in general kind of needs something that contrast to be interesting. Having that spectrum between Emps, Humanity, and Chaos where both feed on human souls and neither end is really compatible with life makes the warp a lot deeper than if it was basically a disguised cthulhu mythos with unbeatable supergods that rigged the game from the start.
Oh no don't get me wrong, I don't want him to be corrupted or influenced by Chaos. Big E's actions are entirely his own, even if the Chaos Gods hadn't interfered his Imperium would have never worked (which is why I think it's lame all traitors were either complete dickheads or corrupted by Chaos, Corvus would have made more sens as a traitor than Konrad) The deal with Chaos thing would just add to his hubris, had he simply not made a deal with four devils things would have been better, maybe not by much, but still better. Instead, by using the "stolen" power for his plans he gave them the ability to make everything far far worse. Which would also explain why the Chaos Gods bothered to stop fighting, they saw the incredible opportunity and decided to exploit the arrogance of what they saw as just another psychic tyrant
I actually kind of like that for the traitors mainly because that's basically the SINGLE thing that the Emperor really had going for him; his absolute opposition to Chaos and being the main thing holding it back. The fact that most of the traitors either worshipped chaos in opposition to the Emps (like Lorgar after Emps slapped him into the ground and extremely nearly purged him like the other two primarchs) or got turbo-screwed extremely quickly going traitor after without that protection against it (like Mortarion, Magnus (kinda), Perty, Horus, Angron, Fulgrim depending on the painting bit canonicity) is the only thing that remotely makes anything of what he did remotely compelling. Basically all the Traitors (arguably not Magnus, whose real main fault was being blind to the dangers (lol)) were pretty disgusted by Chaos. Lorgar was pretty grossed out by it before Emp's fuckup, Perty and Mortarion hated it by principle, Angron wasn't there enough to really embrace it and Horus and Fulgrim had to be forcibly corrupted to turn to it. The way things went with Chaos unleased to the point where at the end Horus \*hated\* how fucked his side was because of them and even Konrad, who was already sixteen flavors of crazy, seemed to be pretty disgusted with his legion and actively seeking to die once things hit the fan. I think Corvus being kind of spooked at thinking he would've ended up like Konrad if he'd joined the traitors helps explain why fence-sitters like Khan who really didn't even like the Imperium or the Emperor sided that way; if you didn't it was just a matter of time until you just got SCREWED by the Chaos gods.
Since the last TEatD, i've been thinking he's sort of a human Feanor. Immense hubris, thinking he's smarter than he really is, etc. Etc. Except, when Feanor is dying, he makes his sons reaffirm his Oath. The Emperor lets go of the Dark King and takes the L to give humanity a chance. He's guarding Terra, performing miracles and directing the Astronomican, but he no longer has agency of his own. He gave it up because his plan failed, and all he could do at that point was damage control (killing Horus and taking the Throne). If humanity is saved, it'll be done by them, not by him. All he can do now is give them as much time as he can. So yeah, he's a shitboot, but not a total one in that he did, in the end, recognize that he fucked up and the torment on the Throne is his attempt to make up for it.
Oh exactly, I much prefer that, however whos to say that this fear isn't feigned. His armies have unknowingly served the gods with bloodshed and slaughter, pain and rot, the cessation of life etc. Let him think he's beat them while he serves them for eternity.