In the decadent flesh gardens of Glutos Orscollion, the Grand Gourmand of Slaanesh, a lavish soiree unfolded in a spectacle of debauchery and excess. Sinuous figures danced gracefully amidst a sea of silken tents, bearing platters adorned with devilled aelf-hearts, a delicacy fit for the palate of the depraved.
In the flesh gardens of the Grand Gourmand’s lavish encampment, a grand soiree was in full swing. Sinuous figures gambolled through a field of silken tents, holding aloft platters of devilled aelf-hearts. Writhing figures impaled upon spiral minarets screamed in agony, their voices joining in a terrible harmony. Yonder, a trio of duellists sliced each other to ribbons with needle-thin blades, while a gargant clad in an ill-fitting toga threw up loudly and repeatedly into a crystal fountain.
Reclining atop his palanquin at the centre of the festivities, Glutos Orscollion gazed across the scene of deviance and sighed. He popped another fistful of candied bolefruit into his mouth. Each of the spherical things was soaked in a mixture of sweetwine and blood, and stuffed with a single eyeball that popped in his mouth, releasing its gelid contents.
‘Tasteless mush,’ Glutos spat, the words exiting his mouth along with a spray of half-chewed viscera. This elicited a series of eager expressions from his coterie. Whenever their master was bored, a display of wildly inventive sadism soon followed.
‘Not one of you has brought me a dish worthy of my palette,’ he roared. ‘Only this… this banquet of bland mediocrity. This pauper’s chow. I could find a more scrumptious mouthful at a midden-pit.’
A clear, cocky voice rang out.
‘Perhaps mine own offering might tantalise you, Grand Gourmand?’
Orscollion leaned his massive bulk to the left, peering ill-temperedly through the crowd of nervous sycophants. Swaggering forth came a strutting peacock of a lord with a bare and oiled chest and an ornate half-helm that wrapped about his jaw and the back of his skull, ending in a foot-long blade. A cruel-looking sabre was stowed upon the newcomer’s hip, and in one hand he clutched a crystal decanter filled with a liquid as red as rubies.
Glutos’s bulbous nose twitched as a sliver of pure sensation found its way into his nostrils. An intoxicating waft of simmering madness, almost powerful enough to blur his vision. He felt his mirror-staff shiver as the daemon contained within stirred from its slumber.
Aaaaahhh, something new at last. Loth’shar’s sibilant voice slithered into the Gourmand’s mind. Sugar-sweet and dripping with delicious decadence. We must have it, dearest one.
‘Xythantikos, is it not?’ Glutos drawled, leaning forward to peer at the newcomer.
‘Lord Xythantikos,’ the man corrected, not even bothering to hide the edge of anger in his voice.
Glutos smirked. This fellow had devoted himself to the altar of arrogance. Even if Xythantikos knew well that Slaanesh’s Grand Gourmand could have him boiled alive for such lack of respect, the man could simply not contemplate showing deference to another.
Not that the title of Lord of Hubris was a meagre one. Xythantikos was a name Glutos dimly recalled, one with an impressive history of bloodshed and debasement behind it. Yes, he might even have seen the braggadocious rogue duel once or twice.
And that smell… that tantalising, sickly-sweet aroma.
‘Kingsblood!’ cried Xythantikos, brandishing the decanter. ‘This fabled liquor, rumoured to possess a taste so piquant it can incite a person to the most diabolical excesses.’
He presented the bottle to Orscollion.
‘My gift unto you, O Taster of the Sweetest Sins.’
Orscullion wiped away a splot of jelly from the corner of his mouth, and snapped his fingers. His diminutive, masked sommelier scampered off the side of the Gourmand’s palanquin and snatched the bottle from Lord Xythantikos, placing it in his master’s hands.
The Grand Gourmand raised the bottle to his lips, and allowed a trickle of the stuff to settle on his tongue. He swished the mouthful around, and his eyes glazed over as an electric rush of tantalising insanity coursed through him: a shiver of pure, delicious wrongness that filled his mind with flashes of bizarre imagery. For a moment, he saw his court not as the tattooed, pierced and flesh-warped hedonists that they were, but luminous courtiers bedecked in gem-studded robes, kneeling before him in feudal supplication.
The nearest figure rose, proffering a golden goblet, the contents of which glittered like starlight. Glutos reached down, grasped the man’s shoulder gratefully and bade him rise as he accepted the sacred offering.
Then his surroundings bled away, like paint from an artist’s palette left in the rain. Once more Glutos found himself in his palanquin, surrounded by wide-eyed courtiers. His hands were wrapped around the throat of his food-taster, who was gurgling and turning a violent shade of puce as his eyes bulged out of their sockets.
The Grand Gourmand studied the choking wretch for a moment, then released his grip. The taster flopped like a landed fish, whimpering and clutching his bruised throat. Glutos smacked his lips and shuddered with pleasure. He had consumed all manner of delicacies in his time, but never had he experienced such a strange sensation. Loth’shar’s excitement was almost painful in its intensity.
How unutterably delicious! How sinfully sumptuous!
Had Glutos not been Slaanesh’s foremost epicurean, body and mind alike hardened against the most insidious intoxicants in existence, he suspected he might not have been able to drag himself back to lucidity. How would one with a less redoubtable constitution fare?
‘Tell me, have you more of this delightful ambrosia?’ the Gourmand asked.
Xythantikos’s smile revealed teeth filed to needle points.
‘Much more, Grand Gourmand.’
‘Wonderful,’ giggled Orscullion. ‘It would be very selfish of me not to share, don’t you think?’
Glutos’s travelling feast-hall was quick to draw the attention of ogorkind whenever it wound its way through their territories. The ravening gluttons often proved a menace, for their bottomless appetite was always spiked by the sensuous aromas drifting from the Gourmand’s campfire spits. Many ogors had ended upon those very spits themselves, and always provided a most bountiful feast.
Yet there were always those amongst the Gulping God’s followers who possessed a touch more restraint, and even a certain acumen when it came to deal-making, which never failed to amuse Glutos.
‘Must we converse with these low creatures?’ sneered Xythantikos, given the honour of joining the Grand Gourmand upon his palanquin.
‘Volg Stoneguts is a most forward-thinking ogor,’ chided Glutos. ‘His warriors have trailed behind my roving bacchanal for many seasons, hoovering up our leftovers. In exchange for a wagonful of sweetmeats every now and then, he kills whatever I ask him to.’
Volg was waiting as the Hedonite entourage approached the ogor war-camp. The Tyrant was enormous like all of his kind, a great slab of fat and muscle enrobed in rhinox hide, his swollen belly protected by a plated belt of metal fashioned in the image of a gnashing maw. Glutos saw the Tyrant’s piggish eyes boil with eager hunger.
‘Boss,’ nodded the ogor. ‘Gots some blade-work for me?’
‘Salutations, mighty Lord Stoneguts,’ said the Grand Gourmand, waving his hand theatrically. ‘May we join you? I bring many delicacies for your consumption.’
He snapped his fingers, and chained sensates dragged forth a number of barrels stuffed with candied aelf-hearts, and a cart piled with lightly charred human remains. Volg’s ogors started forwards, but the Grand Gourmand cleared his throat.
‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘An extra reward for your service these past seasons.’
He produced the bottle of Kingsblood, and his servants brought forward cases of the stuff. Xythantikos had a face like spoiled fruit, clearly not best pleased that his hard-earned loot was being doled out to a bunch of common barbarians.
Volg himself seemed similarly disappointed.
‘Not much fer wine,’ he grumbled, grabbing a bottle from the nearest case and downing its contents in one gulp, then reaching for another. Four more met the same fate, with the only result being an enthusiastic belch.
Xythantikos and Glutos shared a quizzical glance. More ogors lumbered over, stuffing their ugly faces with fistfuls of food and washing it down with Kingsblood.
It took a few minutes for the fun to begin.
One of the gut-plated brutes began to stagger, eyes glassy and wide, darting about as if searching for some invisible threat. The other ogors hollered and guffawed at him. A red-bearded Irongut with a face stained by wine and flecks of meat grabbed the wild-eyed ogor by the shoulder.
‘Can’t ’andle a bit of booze?’ he chortled.
The glassy-eyed ogor responded by jamming his thumbs into his fellow’s eyes. The wounded ogor howled, drew a foot-long blade from his belt and stuck it between his attacker’s ribs, and both went down in a bloody heap.
‘Ah,’ said Lord Xythantikos. ‘Here we go.’
The sudden burst of violence was like a signal beacon flaring to life. In the blink of an eye bedlam took charge. Ogors slapped and tore at each other, those who had drunk too deeply from the cursed amphorae wearing the same strange expression of glazed-over confusion as the first victim had displayed. Some were singing off-key, others babbling a stream of nonsense as they hacked and clawed at their comrades. Glutos amused himself by pointing his mirror-staff at one creature and allowing Loth’shar to wrap its sorcerous tendrils around the fool’s mind. With a dreamy expression on its face, the ogor began to eat its own fingers.
Oh, I am having fun!
Volg Stoneguts had another ogor by the back of the neck, and was slamming what was left of the poor wretch’s face into the ground over and over again. He was smiling as he did it: it was not the cruel smile of a killer, but a dreamy expression of idiocy that made him look disturbingly childlike despite the gore splattered all over him. The Tyrant’s gaze drifted towards Glutos’s palanquin. He dropped this opponent’s corpse and rose to his feet, jabbing a meaty finger at the Grand Gourmand.
Glutos studied the ogor thoughtfully as Volg staggered closer, holding aloft a massive broad-bladed cleaver stained with fresh blood.
‘Begone, foul creature!’ the ogor cried. ‘Thou art not welcome here!’
The odd, archaic phrasing was most out of character. Volg charged, battering aside those ogors drunkenly stumbling in his way. Glutos watched with interest as the huge creature drew nearer, wondering exactly what the brute was picturing in that slab-like head of his. Was it a similar scene to the one that had flashed through his own mind?
Volg was only a few paces away when Lord Xythantikos slid from the palanquin, landing deftly beside the ogor and spinning to slice his duelling blade across the creature’s throat. Blood spurted in a broad arc, and Volg Stoneguts tumbled with his neck yawning, gurgling his last words into the dirt. Xythantikos wiped his blade on the dying ogor’s flank, a perfect look of disdain on his face.
Glutos Orscollion offered the Lord of Hubris a polite tapping of applause. Then he licked his lips and leaned in close for a conspiratorial whisper.
‘How much more of this Kingsblood can you get me, Lord Xythantikos?’ he said. ‘I seem to have developed quite a taste for it.’
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