Timeline
000M30: Foundation of outpost world Tala by humanity at the end of the age of strife. The mysterious world appeared in the region that would later be known as Elara’s Veil, seemingly materializing from nowhere. Bereft of any natural resources, it proves surprisingly amenable to terraforming, and its abundant mineral resources soon lead to its development into a bustling hive world.
010M38: Supposed foundation of the Celestial Lions space marine chapter and stationing in the region of Elara’s Veil.
050M38: Hive world Tala experiences unrest at the hands of a previously unknown cult. These “Shadeweavers” purport to be a mystic order revealing secret truths of the emperor. Their teachings are quickly branded heretical and disorder grips the planet as the adeptus arbites fail to adequately suppress the cultists in their underhive and mining tunnel steadfasts.
130M39: Hive world Tala is gripped by full scale insurrection. A contingent of the Emperor’s Celestial Lions, their 8th company, are deployed to contain the revolt.
400M39: War rages for centuries as the planet slowly descends into anarchy. Inquisition forces are deployed to investigate. At discovery of xenos tech-heresy in use by the cultists, the entire planet is declared traitorus excommunicatus and virus bombed from orbit. Substantial Adeptus Militarum, Adeptus Sororitas, and Inquisitorial forces are lost, as are all 100 of the currently deployed 8th company of the Celestial Lions. This causes friction between the Lions and Inquisitorial forces, though this friction recedes under the arbitration of the Emperor’s Spears.
948M41: Conflict over Inquisitorial misconduct eventually leads to a boiling over in tensions between the Celestial Lions space marines chapter and the Inquisition. At Armageddon, almost the entire chapter of the Lions is lost during conflict with the Orks. The Inquisition’s involvement in this spectacular loss is heavily implied.
999M41: Chaos forces, following the war leader Abaddon the Despoiler, trigger the Cicatrix Maledictum, cutting the Imperium in half. In Elara’s Veil, the decimated Celestial Lions space marine chapter does war with the chaos faction known as the Exilarchy.
010M42: Imperial forces in regions adjacent to the dead world of Tala report faint, incongruous communication signatures emerging from deep within the ruined planet. These reports are lost in the static during the broader conflicts with chaos throughout the region, as are the subsequent reports of emerging biosignatures.
020M42: Hive Beta Urselanorum, an industrial hub near to the dead world of Tala, ceases communication with the broader Imperium. Heretical tampering with the Emperor’s most holy Telepathic Choir is suspected and the Exilarchy are blamed.
030M42: A naval fleet deployed to investigate the disappearance of Hive Beta Urselanorum sends an
SoS after passing through the Tala system. Several members of the Astral Choir on the homeworld of the Emperor’s Spears, Nemeton, go mad upon receiving the message and all communication with the fleet are severed, though it continues attempting communication for several solar cycles before the fleet disappears forever. Before being executed, the maddened choir members are interrogated by Inquisitorial forces, reporting a vision of a dead and blackened planet slowly bursting with golden life and taking on the resemblance of a great gold eye.
050M42: Multiple systems connected to the Tara systems go “dark,” one by one. Reports of sleek Xenos vessels conflict with those of heretical chaos marines, and local inquisitorial forces speculate on the ominous possibility of collusion between the two.
060M42: A heretical naval armada under the control of the Exilarchy visits the Tara system. When next encountered by forces of the Emperor’s Spears, they are acompanied by a new force of chaos marines sporting foul xenos techno-heretical weapons and tarnished copper armor emblazened with the sigil of a half-broken spider’s web. Perhaps most disturbingly, these chaos forces are augmented by daemonic figures resembling lions, and these daemons can be heard screaming the names of long-dead inquisitors and their forgotten crimes.
Introduction
“For 20,000 years, you ruined the golden jewel of our hard-made paradise. For 10,000 years, my people were forced into the shadows. But they waited, and they plotted, and ever they kidnapped those who strayed too close to my domain, casting their bodies into the world stream at Tala’Yi’s core to feed my rebirth.” - Isha’Alar, chaos demigod of fertility, nature, and revenge.
This blog will serve as the main repository for information and images related to my Chaos Marine and Chaos Daemon armies, known collectively as the “Shadeweavers of Elara’s Veil.” I’ve always wanted to create a more coherent record of the army’s lore and this seems like a great place to do it. This will also help motivate me to actually paint things, which I admit I have never been great at doing.
The Shadeweavers are a
CSM/Daemons faction born from the question “what if the Aeldari god Isha became a chaos entity?” It’s a bit of a mishmash of various themes related to fertility/nature with sub-themes involving lions (due to the faction’s connection to the Celestial lions) and drow/spiders (due to lore related to the chaos exodites who founded the faction, which I’ll get into in just a bit). I’ve been developing the faction since around the tail-end of 5th edition when I first picked up a box of dryad bits to help with kitbashing some chaos spawn, and it has evolved and changed quite a bit over that time. It’s a bit of a mess, in some ways, but I’m still rather fond of it, and I hope folks here end up enjoying it, too!
Lore
Before the rise of Slaanesh, an Exodite maiden world, Tala’Yi, was sucked into the warp by a warp storm. The eldar believed the world to be lost forever, alongside its people, but it in fact survived: beset by the warp, the exodites retreated deep into their planet, near to the world stream at the planet’s core, and found relative safety. As the years progressed, however, the world stream weakened, and the exodites turned to ritual sacrifice, casting unwilling souls into the stream in order to bolster it and prolong their own survival just a little while longer.
Eventually, the warp corrupted the world stream, forever damning the exodites and turning them into the Shadeweavers, chaos worshipping eldar whose culture and beliefs vaguely mirror the Llolth worshipping drow of
DnD. The priestesses of the Shadeweavers were able to hear the “call” of the worldstream that protected their peoples, and they came to believe that it was the voice of Isha, who had been “murdered” by the void god Nurgle and was seeking to use their world stream as a method of rebirth within the warp.
This ritual of “rebirth” was interrupted when the Aeldar race brought Slaanesh into existence at the end of the age of strife, triggering many warp anomalies, including the ejection of Tala’Yi back into realspace. The Shadeweavers knew something had changed, and their rituals were failing, but had long since abandoned exploring the warp-tainted upper reaches of Tala’Yi’s crust. As a consequence, when humans came upon the seemingly dead world, neither humans nor Weavers realized the existence of each the other for many years.
Eventually, however, the rich mineral resources of the planet encouraged human mining and, some time after the heresy, human miners accidentally excivated their way into the domain of the Weavers, leading to the Weavers finally coming to understand what had happened. The Weavers began infiltrating imperial society, tainting prominent figures in the hive cities of the world while also capturing and sacrificing human souls to their world stream for the first time.
It was their conflict with the Celestial Lions that led to the full fledged birth of their worldstream as a warp “demigod” and the evolution of the faction into a
CSM style warband. When the inquisition virus-bombed the planet to end the Weavers’ actions, they failed to penetrate to the planet’s core where most of the fighting forces of the planet were currently staging a desperate assault on the home of the chaos exodites. Cut off from resupply and with nowhere to go, the imperial forces were eventually overwhelmed and enslaved or sacrificed by the Weavers. This sacrifice included all 100 of the 8th company of the Celestial lions, whose powerful souls fueled the full fledged manifestation of the exodites’ world stream as the chaos demigod Isha’Alar.
When the Cicatrix Maledictum disrupted the Imperium of Man, and warp energy bathed the galaxy, the Weavers used the chaos to stage a slow-burn invasion of neighborning planets. Upon meeting the larger and better connected warband of the Exilarchy, they pledged their services to them. They hope to one day take control of the Exilarchy, then of Elara’s Veil, and then spread their domain across the entire galaxy, bringing all to the worship of the dark majesty of Isha’Alar, their reborn chaos goddess of fertility, nature, and revenge.
Design & Project Intent
I’m making two armies at the same time: Chaos Space Marines and Chaos Daemons. My original army was Daemons, but I have since branched out. I feel the two factions together better represent the full “feel” of chaos. The Shadeweavers are a bunch of chaos-crazed space elves who have co-opted human forces, including a company of space marines, to their dark and nefarious ends. They use daemonic summons and chaos cultists in equal measure. Leaving one side of the equation out wouldn’t make sense.
The core intent of this project is to have two fully painted and thematic armies ready for a loosely scheduled meetup with some friends in late Spring. I’ve never been a prolific painter, and I have a substantial pile of gray shame. Fielding a fully painted army has always been a bucket list goal of mine and I think I can pull it off, now. I won’t torture myself to meet the goal if things fall apart, but I will be modeling and painting with that thought in mind.
As a consequence, I have put together two lists–one for
CSM (currently renegade raiders) and one for Daemons (Shadow Legion). The lists will be below, and it should be noted that, while they have a high model count, both forces share significant numbers of units. This was deliberate: I won’t be fielding the two armies together, so this can help me to meet my modeling/painting goals. This also allows me to feel like the two armies are part of the same general faction, which is something I want quite a bit.
The two lists are as follows:
Daemons (Shadow Legion): Isha’Alar’s Shadow Menagery
Belakor
Fateskimmer w/ Fade to Darkness
Nurglings (3)
2X Seekers of Slaanesh (5)
3X Screamers of Tzeentch (6)
2X Accursed Cultists (16)
2X Dark Commune (5) w/ Mantle of Gloom and Leaping Shadows, respectively
Sorcerer in Terminator Armor
Traitor Enforcer (2)
Traitor Guardsman Squad (10)
CSM (Renegade Raiders): Princess Syllelle’s Shadeweavers
2X Dark Commune (5)
3X Lord Discordant on Helstalker
Cultist Mob (10)
2X Accursed Cultists (16)
2X Possessed (5)
2X Traitor Guardsman Squad (16)
2X Chaos Rhinto
2X Chaos Bikers (3)
2X Venomcrawler
I’ve purchased everything I need to complete these models, but there are only a few which are already painted. For my general collection, much of what I have (and certainly what I’ll share today) are old models that I constructed before developing a full feel for where I wanted to go with the faction. I agonized over replacing models and the like before ultimately deciding that I’d mostly leave in the old stuff, and opportunistically replace models if I had a compelling idea about what I’d want to put in. So, for instance, there are quite a few old metal pink horror models that I painted up but don’t see fitting into the faction’s themes. I’m leaving them in, regardless, because I can’t think of anything I’d rather stand in for them right now. On the other hand, I have a ton of old metal screamers that I am retiring and replacing with manticore models I bought on Etsy. The manticores felt like they fit quite well with the chaos warped Celestial Lions theme of the army, so I ordered them and will be painting them once I get them.
I’d like the armies I’m fielding to really feel like their own unique faction, with the warp corrupted souls of the Celestial Lions 8th company being manipulated by the chaos worshipping exodite Weavers while the daemonic manifestations of the chaos corrupted worldsoul, Isha’Alar, loom all around. I’m avoiding using lots of bog standard chaos marines because the faction would have limited access to them. Possessed units, daemons, and daemon engines would be more prevalent, as would the enslaved mortal servants such as cultists and chaos guard. Specialist marines might be something I include later, but they would still be rare.
Forces so Far
Syllelle - Lord Discordant
“My people survived the ravages of the warp itself, and we grew stronger. What, do you think, will become of us now?” - Princess Syllelle to Inquisitor Saggritorix, Tala, 400M39, as virus bombs were being deployed to the planet’s surface.
Syllelle is the leader of the Weavers, chaos worshipping Exodites lurking in the core of the ruined world Tala. When the planet was first subsumed by the warp during the Age of Strife, she was the one chieftess of the various exodite tribes living on the planet to realize that retreating to the planet’s core might preserve their people due to the influences of the World Stream. Under her leadership, the exodites first began their sacrifices to the stream, and under her leadership the Weavers transitioned into the cruel and malevolent chaos worshippers that terrorize Elara’s Veil in the 41st millennium.
She personally oversaw the capture of the 8th company of the Celestial Lions after her planet’s virus bombing, and, upon sacrificing the company champion as her hundredth sacrifice to the emerging chaos god Isha’Alar, she ascended to demonhood herself, becoming a demon prince (though she follows the lord discordant rules).
Fun fact: she actually does enjoy weaving as a hobby and many of the protective cloaks and dresses worn by her most prominent servants were made by her own hand.
Menagerist Orgoll, Herald of Isha’Alar - Fateskimmer
"Revel! Revel! She is come again!" - Menagerist Orgoll, 800M39, the birth of Isha'Alar.
Menagerist Orgoll is the herald of Isha’Alar, the chaos demigod born manifested from the warp tainted world stream of Tala. The most skilled master of possessions in the Weavers, Faer is responsible for skimming the world stream to find the daemoniacal souls that have been merged into Isha’Alar and drawing them forth to create the “menagerie” of her lesser demonic servants. In the Weavers, greater demons are direct manifestations of Isha’s being, but minor demons are generally corrupted souls that have been brought out of the world stream and into the material world as warped, shadowy version of their previous selves.
Two such minor demons can be seen accompanying Faer. The first and most obvious is Hasan, the former champion of the Celestial Lions 8th company whose sacrifice was the final one necessary to lead to Isha’Alar’s awakening. As can be seen, he manifested into the form of a fierce manticore, and he can be heard reading out the names of all Celestial Lions, past, present, and future, who have or will be killed by inquisitorial forces. This droning curse acompanies Orgoll everywhere she goes.
The second creature is Hafsa, the daughter of the imperial governor at the time of Tala’s exterminatus. Orgoll summoned her soul as a demonic lynx after sacrificing her in front of her father, then turned that summoned demon on the rest of the governor’s family, murdering them all.
Orgoll, if you could not guess, is not very kind. Ruthless and maniacal, it is Orgoll who leads the Shadow Menagery of the Weavers into battle when Isha’Alar is not directly present.
Hope you liked my post! I'll put up more as I have time to write explanations/paint up more, though you can already find additional pictures in the images I posted to Dakka in preparation for starting this blog.
