The Aeldari chamber was full of the dead.
Mara knew that before she understood how.
Hundreds of Aeldari stood beneath pale wraithbone walls, each holding a small stone.
Nobody drank.
Nobody shouted.
Nobody laughed.
Mara:
“I thought this was supposed to be a celebration.”
Chibi:
“Who told you celebrations have to be happy?”
A woman stepped forward.
She pressed a spirit stone against the wraithbone.
The wall accepted it.
For one instant Mara felt something that was not hers.
Sunlight beneath a violet sky.
Laughter.
A hand held by another hand.
Fear.
Love.
Then it was gone.
Mara grabbed Chibi’s sleeve.
“They’re still here.”
“Sort of.”
“Stop saying sort of.”
“It’s complicated.”
The Aeldari began to sing.
Not one enormous voice.
Hundreds of different voices.
Together, but still distinct.
Mara listened.
“It’s different from the Imperial procession.”
“Yep.”
“They all became one big voice.”
“Yep.”
“But these people don’t.”
Chibi looked towards the spirit stones.
“They’re very careful about losing themselves.”
Mara understood.
“Slaanesh.”
“Yep.”
Their civilisation had once discovered what could happen when boundaries disappeared completely.
So even in collective grief, individuality mattered.
Then the Harlequins arrived.
Colour exploded across the chamber.
They danced the history of a civilisation.
Its beauty.
Its joy.
Its brilliance.
Then its excess.
Its hunger.
Its Fall.
A Solitaire entered.
Mara whispered:
“Who is that?”
“Slaanesh.”
“That isn’t Slaanesh.”
“They’re playing Slaanesh.”
“Why?”
Chibi watched the dance.
“So everyone else doesn’t have to.”
The performance became beautiful enough to hurt.
Then—
darkness.
No applause.
No encore.
When the light returned, Mara realised she had been holding Chibi’s hand.
She let go quickly.
“That was horrible.”
“Yep.”
“And amazing.”
“Yep.”
“I hated it.”
“Yep.”
Mara hesitated.
“I want to see it again.”
Chibi looked at her.
“That’s probably why they don’t do an encore.”
Slowly, the chamber returned to ordinary life.
People spoke.
Families gathered.
The grieving woman smiled.
Only slightly.
Mara:
“Nothing changed.”
Chibi looked around.
“Didn’t it?”
The dead were still dead.
Slaanesh still waited beyond the stones.
The Fall had not been undone.
But the living were leaving differently from how they had entered.
Mara thought about the Guardsmen drinking to friends who had died yesterday.
The Imperial families carrying candles for someone who had died ten thousand years ago.
And now the Aeldari carrying their dead with them almost literally.
Mara:
“Why do people always remember together?”
Chibi:
“Maybe because one person remembering something is a memory.”
Pause.
“Lots of people remembering it together becomes part of a world.”
Mara looked at the glowing walls.
“So forgetting is dangerous.”
“Yep.”
“And remembering everything forever?”
Chibi tilted his head.
“Could be.”
“Because then the past decides everything?”
“Maybe.”
Mara groaned.
“Why does everything have two bad answers?”
“Because three would be excessive.”
She elbowed him.
They reached the exit.
Behind them waited thousands of years of memory.
Ahead waited lives that had not happened yet.
Mara:
“So how do you know what to remember?”
For once Chibi did not joke.
He looked straight at us.
“Maybe that’s why remembering is something we do together.”
“So nobody decides the whole story alone?”
“Maybe.”
Mara looked at us too.
“And what if everyone remembers it wrong?”
Chibi smiled.
“That’s a much worse question.”
What do we owe the people, places and stories that made us — and how do we remember them together without letting the past become the only future we are allowed to have?
Game: Warhammer 40,000
System: Wrath & Glory / Imperium Maledictum
Campaign: Mythveil Chronicles
Theme: The Bacchanalia — The Dead Are Still Here
PLAY EPIC. FEEL THE STORY.
Campaigns and games:
https://startplaying.games/gm/dunchan
Research, philosophy and the living worlds of Mythveil Chronicles:
https://www.patreon.com/c/mythveilchronicles_bydunchanhuntergames