The Tarot, the Hands of Fate, are a grand Chaotic conspiracy entrenched in the Askellon sector. They are made up of four charismatic and powerful heads that lead multitudes of lieutenants and cells across the sector. They are entrenched in nearly every planet and settlement in the sector from hive criminal underworlds to the highest thrones.
The leaders of the Tarot are four men that call themselves the Hands. They lead lieutenants known as the fingers whom lead those lower in the conspiracy collectively known as suites. These are who they are:
Happy Jack, The Living Masquerade: an enigmatic and terrifying figure, the Masque is a being of indeterminate shape or age, but controls a bevy of strange and terrible powers gained by his many travels and exploits. He coordinates the Hands and controls his own fingers and suites outside of any standard pattern of Chaos. Not pledging himself to one god, the Masque is odd as a leader of Chaos where he seemingly holds no patronage not even to the idea of Chaos Undivided. He is completely his own man, in his words. His wants are completely selfish, and he pulls the strings of his "equals" in order to gain his ultimate reward.
The Masque's Known Fingers:
-Sirgev Gach, rising criminal kingpin of Askellon gifted with the umbra malefica, a relic that allows him to form from darkness whatever he wants in his imagination but is slowly corrupting him to its will.
Correction, fire is a weakness per the flamer weakness I listedWeakness as in it takes away the 10 armour away from him in all locations given to him by the Umbra Malefica and not the mesh armour he wears all the time.
-Uriah Davrus, the Matchstick Man or the Showstopper, ex-performancer and now explosive firebrand sorcerer with the smug flair for the dramatic. Uriah grew to two parents under the oaths of lord Richter Struckwell, a merchant prince invested in courier services, commodity transport, and a smaller interest in performancy. Uriah grew to have a natural talent for performancy including pyrotechnic work along with card and magic tricks. His performances were fueled, unknown to him, by his psychic ability to control fire. Lord Richter witnessed him perform by himself one day and immediately wanted to capitalize on him. He took him under his wing to groom him to be a great spectacle and showman. This came a short time after Uriah's parents had died in an accident during courier work. Uriah received the education a member of the gentry would along with knowing the finer things in life. He increased his skill exponentially and was able to keep his pyromancy under wraps once he realized he was the one controlling it. He made his debut is a grand show to the audience of hundreds. He excelled in entertaining the nobility and merchants of Desoleum Primus. After the show, stumbling to his home drunk after a very good show, Uriah came upon a transcript of the assassination of his parents. Blinded by rage, Uriah destroyed his master and the manse he was gifted. Having survived the fiery blast, he ran. He survived on the streets for a short time but he was not a very good vagabond. That is when a hand was extended to him by the living masquerade to put his talents to good use. Now he is fanatically loyal to the Masque and eagerly acts in the name of Chaos. He seeks general revenge on the ruling class of Desoleum, seeing them all as just like his manipulative master.
-Anaesthesia, the iron clad mistress of screams. The bad kind. Trapped in the invasive and brain-altering iron maiden suit, Anaesthesia lacks the ability to feel. Having been given purpose by the Masque, she now serves as an expert torturer and professional sedation master. Her unknown past seems to have been the source for her ways of extracting information. She believes she was flayed by an inquisitor but knows nothing else. Built into her abdomen is the Machina Penumbra, a haywire arc device that she uses against those of the machine cult and machine spirits alike. She lives to hear the screams of her victims, referring to it as singing. It's one of the only stimuli she has left to her.
Yoshihiro Takane, the traitor Librarian known as Oniboshi: Oniboshi is an extremely powerful sorcerer that was once of the loyalist White Scars successor chapter known as the Emperor's Flames. Due to his works, the chapter was destroyed along with his homeworld. He now commands those who owe their loyalty to Tzeentch along with rebels that do not fall under military renegades. He seeks to rid the galaxy of the Imperium so that the will of its individual inhabitants may cause change rather than an aging tyrannical edifice.
(Has his own profile underneath Last Flames of Yaketsuku)
Oniboshi has a motif: Sonaiyo by Jeff van Dyck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzt_6YeINF8
Oniboshi's Known Fingers:
-Dorian Glaw, traitor rogue trader and last scion of the wretched Glaw family.
-Wight Osprey (codename), mysterious and devastating pilot of the archaeotech Aerial Weapons Platform mechanized flying suit.
-"The Child", unknown except for this name. Possible source of the Tarot's mysterious archaeotech and the daemonic constructs serving them.
-Mugon no Otoko, the construct of the dead of night.
Erioch Karpath, codename Rainmaker: General Karpath was once an officer of the Harakoni Warhawks. He earned his name with the pacification of a frontier world that he incited with the deaths of the inhabitant human population's children. He leads those heretics of Khorne's persuasion, although his methods change from Tzeentchian power plays to raw brutal Khornate warring. Karpath believes that even in the 41st Millenium, humanity has grown too soft and has not evolved into a form that would survive the everlasting war of the age. He incites and leads conflict wherever he goes to free the wolves from the influence of the sheep and force humanity to ascend like minerals pressurized into diamonds. Along with Khornate warmongerers, he is in charge of recruiting and leading military renegades and mercenaries to fight for the Tarot's cause.
Rainmaker's Known Fingers:
-Finn Greely, traitor guardsman an ex-NCO of the Cadian Shock Troopers.
-Wu Tang, deadly mercenary and master of martial arts and gunslinging that brims with gangster bravado. (More information on the page with his name)
-Cao Wei, the Jiangshi, assassin and witch with blood-curdling powers.
-Mallaithe the Tempest, a berserking body possessed and puppeted by ancient daemon possessed arcane armour and devastating weaponry. Once a warrior of Kul, the possessed body of Mallaithe came upon a weapon and suit of armour of arcane power. Unfortunately, giving into the boon for too long locked the possessed in a permanent and insane servitude to the daemons that inhabit the sword Kheshral and the armour Kashran. The daemons do not fully control his behavior and as such they have to act indirectly while giving him commands to carry out. Mallaithe was put under the thrall of General Karpath by the sorcerer Oniboshi. Karpath carries with him a rune-encrusted calling stone that allows him to control Oniboshi. Along with this control, he can cause the beast to unleash its true power and give the daemons in his gear more control along with sprouting horrid wings, a pincer-like tail, and horns on his head. The warrior inside is in a permanent primal state
(Don't give him Blade Master if you're feeling merciful to your players)
-Howl Bloodthresh, Khornate Berserker Marine: Howl is not complicated. He is an asshole who loves to maim and kill. He often finds himself loathing the company he keeps around him that seem to be able to segue into a monologue about ideology, motivations, and the like at the drop of a hat. He just wants to murder. Just shut up.
-Rhioghain, Prophet of the Brass Prince and Chosen of Khorne: Rhioghain was once a knight of Wylde. He was corrupted over time through talks with the beastmen mutants his fellow knights slaughtered. Along with his heretical talks, he observed the relationship Wylde had with the rest of the Imperium and found an absurdity to it draped with pretentious pageantry. The Imperium is clearly capable of destroying the two forces on Wylde permanently, even with fears of permanently scarring the planet. It keeps the planet in its conflict because it leads to training veteran rough riders for their wars elsewhere. When he left Wylde, he found the planet to just be a microcosm of what the Imperium does in the rest of the galaxy. His vindication came in the form of the death of his daughter. A fellow knight, she attempted to convince him to not leave the planet with a warband of corrupted warriors and beastmen on a flyer that was to smuggle them aboard a visiting voidship. She was shot down with arrows and bolts, an investigating force confusing her presence at the escape from the planet for compliance in her father's plan. This was the beginning of Rhioghain's tempered rage and a step towards his worship of Khorne. He gave up his birth name and took upon a name resembling a vengeful spirit of war from Wyldian mythology. Decades later, Rhioghain would amass such skill, willpower, and favour from his patron daemon, the Brass Prince, that he would walk in the warp to the lair of the Count of Slights. The Count was a greater daemon of Tzeentch, and Rhioghain's trial was to pluck the Count's eye from its socket. He succeeded and was granted the boon of becoming a chosen of Khorne. Not a daemon prince, but an avatar and prophet of the god of war. He has joined the Tarot under the view of Karpath for his own reasons along with wanting challenges from the Imperium's mightiest fighters. He truly believes that the Tarot's plan of harnessing the power of Malal will fail, and he is there to witness it all while using the Tarot's resources for his own means. He believes he would serve as a better hand than Karpath but he is happy to kill and slaughter using the claw of his patron shaped into a halberd. He wears the eye of the Count on a shield, harnessing its power to defend what the Count hates most of all.
Lascivious, the Sonic Sorcerer: Lascivious has no known true name. Even his past as a possible loyalist astartes is shrouded. What is known is that he was once of the Emperor's Children. Disagreeing with their form of Slaaneshi worship, finding it trite and boring, he left for the planet Guelph and gained mastery over his powers with the help of his favoured psy-focus, an ancient model Blastmaster operated by strings. Lascivious leads the Slaaneshi cultists under the Tarot's influence, and has several dalliances with Slaaneshi cult leaders. This, along with dark sorcery, has led to the creation of the Mirror Guard, literal sons that mirror his visage with their features and their expertly crafted weapons and armor. Lascivious's want is simple. A galaxy-wide sanguinalia where he and his lovers may live in constant ecstasy.
-Luxa Tentare, matriarch and masterful temptress of the Slaaneshi cult the Incandescent.
-Ivory, Mirror Guard and a favored son of Lascivious and lady Tentare inheriting his father's razor sharp fighting skills and inhuman boon of speed along with an archaeotech gift granting instant teleportation shift.
-Alabaster "Crimson", Mirror Guard and less favored son of Lascivious and the Khornate aspiring champion Queen Crimson of the Obsidian Maw.
Together, they are the instigators of the sector-changing event known as the Catalyst, which was secretly a great ritual that affected the Pandaemonium and caused the separation of the materium and immaterium to narrow. They seek to use the Pandaemonium to further their goals.
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