When Night Falls: an examination of the Night Lords What is the purpose of terror? From an evolutionary point of view it is something that keeps us safe. As a weapon, however, it becomes something so much more. We often wonder what was the point of creating monster such as Angron and Curze, after all in an enlightened Imperium what is the point of absolute destruction? The Night Lords are the personification of fear, which is essential in all Astartes after all they would not be effective if they were not intimidating, however the children of the Night Haunter take it to a degree we have not encountered. The idea behind the Night Lords is simplistic, if the enemy is terrified then they cannot pose a legitimate threat, even before the Heresy deploying Curzes bastards would result in decimation of entire systems. I suppose you are wondering how this is different from the Vlka Fenryka the emperors executioners, the answer is nobility. We admire the wolves for their ferocity in combat, at the same time understanding that they are savage only when the situation requires them to be. The Night Lords created pits during the great crusade where they would skin their victims in order to instil fear into the populations. The practice is a common military tactic of ancient earth but evokes a sense of revulsion when dealing with a supposedly advanced culture. There is a line in the Prince of Crows that best describes what we are dealing with and comes straight from the gene-father of the legion. “Lorgar and Angron came to me and told me they had already eliminated the untrustworthy from their legions, I looked at them and laughed saying I wouldn’t know where to begin with mine.” Think on that for a few moments Curze was repulsed by what was crafted from his gene-seed, sadist’s criminals and butchers. He became the Night Haunter in order to control his home world, turning himself into an image of fear for the benefit of the population and his own sense of twisted justice. His “sons” lacked said nobility with the possible exception of Sevatar, they took to terror because it was the only thing they were familiar with. Konrad is cursed, there is no way to deny that, imagine his existence he knew exactly how his life would end, he saw the heresy years before it had come to pass, visions of death and annihilation twisted his psyche to the point where whatever nobility he had remaining simply faded away. My belief is that Curze was a product not only of his environment but of potential psionic damage from his time in the warp. He was never intended to be a cadaverous monster, yet the psychic poison flowing through his mind altered his fate. There might also be an alternate train of thought here, the rare instances of “Konrad” showing nobility, when he degenerated he always refered to himself as “the night Haunter” this might be a sign that the psionic damage literally split his personality, the dregs of his noble self constantly screaming to reach the surface only to be overpowered by his damaged psyche. This maybe the reason why he was disgusted with Lorgar and his religious zeal, he was still trying to fight himself until the very bitter end. The question becomes can we excuse the actions of the lord of night and his gene-sons? The simple answer is no, as broken as Konrad was he knew enough that what they were doing was wrong, he just stopped caring, his legion never fully understood the leader they served and simply took to his actions as a way to emulate him, murder without conviction for the simple sake of fear and not a final goal. Sevatar said it best “the end results are the same, fear is the weapon” when it was supposed to be a means to an end. In the end was it genetics, society, or simply psychosis that led to the Night Lords fall from the Emperors light. The simple truth is there can be no light without darkness, and said darkness needs to be terrifying enough to quell worlds into absolute submission. The legacy of the Night Lords is that of fear, unrestrained and primal, something to remind us that there are still things to fear in the darkness.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 00:12:25 +0000
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