Who pays for somebody else’s safety? Bring that question into the living hive of NO APPEAL: Adeptus Arbites in a Living Hive. Explore a Wrath & Glory campaign where protection, power and exploitation are never merely abstract ideas.
Warhammer 40,000 · Spooky October · Week II · The Price of Protection
The woman looks younger every time someone screams.
Stacy has been watching her for several minutes.
At first, the Drukhari noblewoman appeared exhausted. Her movements were slow, and there were fine lines around her eyes.
Now she stands straighter.
Her skin seems smoother.
She is smiling.
Beyond the glass, somewhere beneath the beautiful towers of Commorragh, another prisoner cries out.
STACY:
“It’s actually working.”
CAELWYN:
“What is?”
STACY:
“The suffering. Look at her.”
Caelwyn watches the noblewoman.
CAELWYN:
“She looks healthier.”
STACY:
“Not just healthier. Something is being restored.”
She checks her dataslate.
“The Drukhari are losing something continuously. Their souls are being drained by Slaanesh, even here in the Webway.”
CAELWYN:
“And the suffering of others replenishes what is taken.”
STACY:
“Yes.”
A long silence.
CAELWYN:
“Then their fear is real.”
STACY:
“Very real.”
“And their solution?”
Stacy looks towards the chamber beyond the glass.
STACY:
“Also real.”
Their host approaches.
Vaelith is tall, elegant and dressed in dark ceremonial garments.
She carries a small glass of something that glitters like liquid silver.
VAELITH:
“You seem troubled.”
STACY:
“I’m trying to understand the mechanism.”
VAELITH:
“An admirable instinct.”
STACY:
“Does the suffering have to be deliberate?”
Vaelith smiles.
VAELITH:
“Deliberate suffering is easier to cultivate.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No. But it is the answer that matters here.”
Caelwyn turns towards her.
CAELWYN:
“You’ve made pain into an industry.”
VAELITH:
“Your species farms living creatures for nourishment. We have merely refined the principle.”
STACY:
“There’s a difference between eating to survive and constructing an entire civilisation around the prolonged suffering of conscious beings.”
VAELITH:
“A difference of degree?”
STACY:
“Of experience. Of choice. Of the ability to recognise what you’re doing to someone else.”
Vaelith considers her.
VAELITH:
“And yet you cannot deny that we survive.”
Stacy looks at the readings again.
STACY:
“No. I can’t.”
They walk through a gallery overlooking one of the lower districts.
Below them, workers repair weapons, prepare transports and carry supplies through narrow streets.
A young Drukhari sits beside a workshop.
His movements are slow.
His face is drawn.
He looks older than he should.
CAELWYN:
“Is he ill?”
STACY:
“He’s weakening.”
They watch as a distant scream rises from another building.
The young worker closes his eyes.
His shoulders straighten.
For a moment, he seems less exhausted.
Then the sound fades.
CAELWYN:
“He didn’t hurt anyone.”
STACY:
“Not that we saw.”
“But he benefited.”
“Yes.”
Caelwyn watches the worker return to his tools.
CAELWYN:
“Does that make him guilty?”
Stacy hesitates.
STACY:
“Of surviving?”
“Of living inside a system that survives by hurting others.”
She studies the young Drukhari.
STACY:
“I don’t know.”
A pause.
“Not in the same way as the people who built it.”
Vaelith joins them at the railing.
VAELITH:
“You see the problem.”
STACY:
“I see several.”
VAELITH:
“Without what we harvest, our souls wither. She Who Thirsts takes us, little by little.”
CAELWYN:
“And so you take from others.”
VAELITH:
“Precisely.”
STACY:
“But not every Aeldari lives this way.”
Vaelith’s expression cools.
STACY:
“The Asuryani use spirit stones and infinity circuits. The Exodites have their world spirits. There are even those who have sought another path through the Ynnari.”
VAELITH:
“Do you imagine those choices are simple?”
STACY:
“No.”
“Safe?”
“No.”
“Available to everyone?”
Stacy pauses.
STACY:
“Probably not.”
Vaelith smiles.
VAELITH:
“Then perhaps you should stop offering us the luxury of impossible virtue.”
Caelwyn looks towards the worker.
CAELWYN:
“Perhaps the question isn’t whether every Drukhari can leave tomorrow.”
VAELITH:
“Then what is it?”
CAELWYN:
“Whether those who could choose differently have any intention of doing so.”
The noblewoman’s smile disappears.
For a moment, she looks almost offended.
VAELITH:
“You think we enjoy this.”
STACY:
“Some of you clearly do.”
VAELITH:
“And if enjoyment makes the necessity bearable?”
CAELWYN:
“Then I would wonder whether you have begun to protect the enjoyment rather than the necessity.”
Vaelith studies him.
VAELITH:
“You speak easily. Your soul is not being slowly consumed.”
Caelwyn lowers his eyes.
CAELWYN:
“No.”
A pause.
“And I cannot promise what I would become if it were.”
Stacy turns towards him.
CAELWYN:
“I might be afraid. I might accept things I once considered monstrous. I might even learn to enjoy the power of making someone else pay for my survival.”
Vaelith says nothing.
CAELWYN:
“But understanding that possibility would not make it right.”
Stacy looks down at the workers.
STACY:
“That’s the difficulty. The danger is genuine. The dependence is genuine. But the system also rewards cruelty.”
CAELWYN:
“And once cruelty becomes profitable, those who profit may no longer want a cure.”
They return to the chamber where the screams first began.
The beautiful sculptures still move in the artificial breeze.
The water still runs silently through the floor.
Everything appears peaceful.
Except the door.
Stacy places her dataslate on the table.
STACY:
“I’ve been thinking about the worker.”
CAELWYN:
“The young Drukhari?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t choose the Fall. He didn’t create Slaanesh. He didn’t build Commorragh.”
CAELWYN:
“But he was born into its consequences.”
STACY:
“And the people above him have turned those consequences into an empire.”
Caelwyn looks towards the sealed door.
CAELWYN:
“Then the price of protection isn’t paid equally.”
STACY:
“No. The victims pay in suffering. The powerless pay in dependence. The powerful collect the rewards.”
A distant scream echoes through the wall.
Stacy closes her eyes for a moment.
STACY:
“What frightens me most is that their solution works.”
CAELWYN:
“Because it makes their cruelty harder to challenge?”
STACY:
“Because it lets them stop asking whether there might be another way.”
Caelwyn watches the lights of Commorragh beyond the window.
CAELWYN:
“And if another way were found?”
Stacy looks towards the sealed door.
STACY:
“Some would take it.”
“And the others?”
“Some might have forgotten how to live without victims.”
Silence.
Then Stacy asks:
STACY:
“If another person’s suffering really can keep us alive, when does survival become an excuse for cruelty — and who has the right to make someone else pay that price?”
Game: Warhammer 40,000
System: Wrath & Glory / Imperium Maledictum
Campaign: Mythveil Chronicles
Theme: Spooky October · The Price of Protection
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