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Warhammer 40K: Lady Malys – Rising Archon of Commorragh

5 Minute Read
Jun 28 2024
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Lady Malys was once a consort to Asdrubael Vect.Now she’s positioning herself to become the future ruler of Commorragh.

Lady Aurelia Malys is a Dark Eldar Archon of the Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue. She leads her Kabal with a polite, if aloof and haughty manner that belies her great mind. Lady Malys, possessed of an incredibly byzantine mind, is highly intelligent to the point that she has matched Asdrubael Vect for wits time and again, and she is also amazingly precognitive. Her current position as one of the most successful Archons in Commoragh and her precognizant intellect may, in time, even overcome Vect himself.

 

Rise To Power

In the time before her ascendancy, Malys had been a consort to Vect himself, and had been remarkably intelligent even then. In time Malys became one of the most prominent members of Vect’s Inner Circle, particularly after the talent she displayed in the Panacea Wars. After a time, Vect grew bored of the distraction Malys provided, and banished her from his court. Infuriated, Malys and her followers left Commoragh for the webway. In the “wilderness” of the webway, Malys had encountered one of the many strange beings that inhabit the realm. The being banished Malys’ followers, and challenged her to a contest of wills, the victor of which would gain the heart of the loser.

Amazingly, Malys had won the contest with the trickster, and the being had dissipated, leaving an animate blade and its crystal heart behind. Malys used the blade to remove her heart, and replaced it with her prize. The Harlequin Masque known as the Veiled Path is known to have indirectly arranged this meeting to create an arcane bond between Malys and Cegorach. Malys returned to Commoragh, determined to have revenge on Vect, and began her slow rise to power.

In 345.M37, Malys led her Kabal of the Poisoned Tongue against Ork Freebooterz on the world of Graegus after the Greenskin fleets raided her own forces. Malys captured a Nob and infected it with a deadly virus sensitive to the Ork reproduction cycle. Malys dropped her new biological weapon onto the Ork forces on Graegus many weeks later, annihilating the greenskin population.

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Against Vect

In 999.M41, Malys learned of Vect’s capture of Nulls in the Raid on Bakka as well as the instability of Khaine’s Gate. She feared that Vect planed to intentionally trigger its opening and drown his rivals in Daemons. Lady Malys, Archon of the Poisoned Tongue activated assets all across the Dark City. Waves of empyric energy rolled from the Eye of Terror to batter Commorragh, collapsing sub-realms and breaching portals. Bands of Kabalites, Wyches and Harlequins loyal to Malys or Vect engaged in increasingly bitter skirmishes around the Undercore. Oblivious to the irony that both factions were fighting to achieve the same end. Meanwhile, in a chamber filled with swirling madness, hairline cracks spread across Khaine’s Gate.

In early M42, a series of massacres orchestrated by Vect were expertly evaded by Malys, who had seen the strikes coming and taken the entirety of the Poisoned Tongue to relatively unknown parts of the webway. Many of her rivals died during this time, allowing her to expand her influence remotely through her own agents or through puppet Kabals. She has come to completely control the Scarlet Harbour and Netherdell districts of Commorragh as well as numerous individual establishments. Outside of the city, Malys also has holdfasts hidden in the webway for the purposes of information gathering and the distillation of poisons, including one specialized toxin manufactory she established with a Grand Harlequin Masque.

Lady Malys And The Soulshackle

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Using captured oracles, she divined the reappearance of a massive Space Hulk from the warp and that, should a particular Imperial ship be attacked beforehand, a mon-keigh prison barge containing a very valuable individual would come out of the warp close to the Hulk. The individual, an incredibly powerful psyker, was not of value to her because of his abilities, but rather the fact that he was the bastard son of a human military commander, and only the commander, and those born of him, could open the weapon vaults on the planet Kesdimas, which contain weapons capable of cracking entire continents. She planned to use the psyker to obtain those weapons, then use them against her rival, Archon Urethisk when she, encouraged by Malys, raids Kesdimas, and planned to blame Urethisk’s death on the humans.

She sent one ship, containing multiple Hand of the Archon teams and a couple of escort ships, to the hulk to insert the teams in preparation for the prison barge’s arrival, and employed Mandrake mercenaries to infiltrate the barge, called the Dyad of Zaffre, itself. Once the Dyad was close enough to the Hulk, the Mandrakes emerged and opened webway portals, through which large numbers of her Poisoned Tongue emerged. They began slaughtering the crew and used haywire charges that disabled several of the barge’s important systems. Unfortunately, this caused the Dyad to collide with the Hulk, causing the instantaneous death of numerous of her servants.

 

Wargear & Equipment

Like most Dark Eldar Archons, Lady Malys is a swift and deadly opponent, and a ruthless and skilled leader. Although intellectual and genteel, Malys is very dangerous in and of herself. She arms herself with a razor-edged steel fan and a sword called “The Lady’s Blade”. Presumably the same sword left behind after her contest in the webway, the sword is semi-sentient.

Both weapons are very deadly in her hands. Though the Lady’s Blade is prone to rebelling and crippling her combat capabilities. Due to her strange powers, she and her company are immune to psychic powers and she’s precognizant enough to dodge weapons fire and enemy blows, or to stay one step ahead of her opponent’s strategy

Learn More of the Archons of Commorragh

Lexicanum

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Author: Larry Vela
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