Godbound: The Hosts of the Abomiknights

Conceptual History(?)

Warning: These posts link to 4chan archive. Read at your own risk so don't go posting in the comments how you're offended by the content of these posts.

Once upon a time, the 4chan board known as /tg/ had a really silly thread. One which, by all account should have imploded right into absolute nothingness. Instead, it gave birth to what could have been the roots of an interesting had it not been forgotten. The thread had a silly concept, to discuss a setting which didn't exist. In the very first post, the Abomiknights came to be from a single line of 'greentext':

>he thinks Inneros won't be sent straight to the Unmanifest once the Abomiknights get to the Cradle of Life

Now I don't claim any ownership of the ideas, even if I did post in that thread at the time as well as future threads. To my knowledge, all that ever exist of this make-believe fictional media franchise exist in these thread archives. It became known as Blades of the Crimson World and was implied to be some sort of fictional multi-media franchise, with miniature war games, trading cards and all that. If anything else was ever made out of this setting I'm not aware of it. Presumably everyone involved scattered to the four winds and forgot about it.

However I did not. One thing clearly emerged in my mind and stuck and it was those Abomiknights: they had such a silly name, one you'd almost expect from something out of an overly edgy '90 comic book. That said, as people chipped in more ideas to flesh out a faction previous existed only as a single line from a random dudes, many cool ideas emerged about them and they quickly evolved into something interesting. Tortured magitek(?) super-soldiers, a bit similar in concept to the Space Marines (regular or chaos-aligned) of Warhammer 40 000 but with their own elements. That and while we never got anyone to draw an Abomiknight it seemed that people generally agreed they looked like somewhat halfway between a H.R. Giger painting, a psychedelic '80 scifi-fantasy illustration and a mutant knight. Pretty cool, if cheesy, stuff if you ask me.

Drawing from the impossibly contradictory fluff others have written, the Abomiknights are reborn as as friends or foes for your Godbound pantheon!

Personally I think of Simon Bisley's art when I think of theAbomiknights.

The Hosts of the Abomiknights

An order of cursed warriors both powerful and pitiable, these beings have long forgotten their real names alongside entire portions of their long and complicated history. That they were created as living weapons to march in massive armies by the Former Empires that much is known and understood by them. What remain a mystery is if their nature is a now-corrupted blessing passed on to the greatest of these past nations or a horrific curse imparted upon the worst scum given a second chance at life as mighty (yet cursed) champions. Not even the most ancient Abomiknights alive today know for none in their ranks today were part of these original, now-mythical Abomiknights who presumably were named differently. However even the most hopeful of their kind know this a fitting moniker for they are indeed knights and indeed abominations.

Each Abomiknight is a mortal being enhanced and modified far beyond the average human found in most realms. They are large and powerful, fused with their baroque and terrifying bio mechanical armor. If their origin as cursed beings is true, then the armor is proof, for the theotechnical process which fuse flesh and metal is not only impossibly painful but also vital: without this armor an Abomiknight's unstable biology will run rampant, driving the to insanity and/or death. To a certain extent, these armors are what have prevented the Abomiknight from degenerating as the Ancalian cousins and allow them to freely move across different Realms unimpeded. Some would argue that the constant and impossible pain is not worth this benefit.

There are two major hosts of the Abomiknights, the First and Second Host and they differ mostly in terms of goals and mentality. It would be easy to simple say the First Host are the 'good Abomiknights' and the Second Host are the 'evil Abomiknights' yet to do so would be incredibly reductive and an attempt to reduce a complex (and highly convoluted) history into simple good and evil. While it may be true the First Host has noble goals and the Second Host is driven by revenge, individual knights of either Host may very well find themselves in the role of ally or antagonist irrelevant of their Host.

Possibly an ancient Abomiknight?
Art by edsfox.

The Quest for the Cradle

No one knows for sure if the Cradle exist, yet to the Abomiknights it is everything. It is their Holy Grail and what they endlessly quest for. If it exist it is most likely one of the hardest to find (yet powerful) Celestial Engine, one with immense power over the very fabric of life itself. In Abomiknight mythology it is believed the only thing which can truly affect and alter their nature (you decide if a Godbound of Health can unscrew them!). To obtain the Cradle would not only mark one as the greatest champion of the Abomiknights but also allow them to reshape their nature. Initially, the original Host of the Abomiknights sought the Cradle to undo the constant degradation of their nature, to curtail mutations which wracked their flesh and forced them to replace damaged organs with theotechnical works of artifice. Yet after centuries of questing (and countless defeats and setbacks) it became clear this would not be an easy task: there is always one more foe, one more challenge, one more mystery to unravel and it's always the next Realm over. Those who still seek to cleanse/remake themselves with the Cradle are now known as the First Host.

The Second Host has far less noble ambitions and seek the Cradle for selfish or even malicious intent, which have varied depending on their current Grandmaster. They are more vicious, more ruthless and far more self-serving, preferring to follow the philosophy that they are cursed and living weapons and thus should seek to bring destruction when it suit their needs. The most twisted of their kind seek to pollute the Cradle in a grand, horrific offering to the Uncreated Night (which they call 'The Unmanifest') so that everyone and everything ever suffers horribly. Fun stuff for everyone.

Maybe this is an Abomiknight instead?
Art by Kailyze

Abomiknight Nature

The exact nature of the alterations placed upon the Abomiknight is a mystery, even to them and only a Godbound of Artifice, Health or Sorcery could ever come to a clear understanding of the changes made to their biology. Suffice to say that, whatever they are, they're neither physically nor aesthetically pleasant and the average Abomiknight often look far better with his face hidden by a scowling metallic demon head than by exposing their real face (it should be noted that, while Abomiknights cannot remove their armors entirely, most can retract or remove their helmets): some of them look like discolored lepers, others have what is called the 'Fallen Flesh' which leave them half-rotting with skeletal faces. Discolored skin, glowing eyes, twisted nodules akin to horns and more grotesque deformities mar their flesh as do battle scars. They age much more slowly than humans but their deformed and twisted flesh run a higher risk of 'rebelling' and mutating in an out of control fashion, eventually killing them. They are universally large and powerful and most people cannot tell female Abomiknights from the male ones. How they reproduce is best left unanswered but given they have familial lines one has to assume they do have offspring.

Most 'average' Abomiknights are Mortal Heroes or, if you have Ancalia: The Broken Towers I'd stat them similar enough to the Ancalian Knights with the added bonus that they are immune to most minor environmental hazards: they don't need to breathe, they don't freeze or die of heatstroke and they cannot be affected by ordinary pathogen. There are magicians among the Abomiknights, wielders of Low Magic and even Theurgy but few people know this because even they are heavily armored bruisers who will march alongside the troops, only taking a special place among the Host when their special skills are needed. There are no weak or frail Abomiknights, safe for those whose mutations are killing them. Ritualistic suicide is expected before fatal degeneration.

Each Abomiknight feels constant pain and this pain only worsen with age. It is both a physiological and metaphysical pain and those few who have ever spoken with non-Abomiknights on the matter describe it as a certain feeling of 'unwholeness' which they cannot quite properly convey in words. Their emotions can run wild and many Abomiknights succumb to a bloodthirsty fury and are forever lost, reduce to mindless brutes.

You know what? THIS is an Abomiknight!

Using Abomiknights

The Abomiknights were originally scheduled to appear in my (now dead) Godbound game should there be the need to introduce some organized, high-power threat from a distant Realm and this is exactly what these guys should be. They're not exactly numerous but their ranks are nonetheless large enough to enable the use of entire mobs of Abomiknight troopers supported by specialists. How easily they can be repelled depend on how much force the Realm they appear in can muster. Of course, an Abomiknight invasion is by far the most boring scenario:

• Lone, questing Abomiknights are fairly common and they could appear as possible allies or foes, depending on the circumstances. Both hosts have a strong code of honor and martial ethic yet that doesn't stop them from becoming sell swords who trade their superhuman combat prowess in exchange for information on the Cradle as well as rare alchemical components to sustain their bodies. In particular, Abomiknights of the Second Host will often sell their services to act as some terrifying, armored enforcer to a powerful establish lord and/or would-be conqueror. They are ruthless and will never hesitate to kill but they would never turn their back on the cause short of being double crossed by their current master. Beware trying to manipulate an Abomiknight and abusing their code!
• In other cases, entire squads may end up offering their service and many Abomiknights of the First Host have been known to eventually cave in to their conscience and defend those who cannot fend for themselves. Unfortunately many are soured by the experience as their appearance and bloodthirsty ways may cause the appearance of superstitious mobs who fear their new defenders and turn on them 'just in case'.
• A lone Abomiknight could approach an established Pantheon and offer his service in exchange for information on the Cradle or at the very least some useful boon from the Godbound which would help in his question. However the violent and destructive ways of the Abomiknights could make the situation complicated for a more peaceful pantheon. Killing the lone Abomiknight may be easy yet it could very well draw the ire of more of their kind, possibly irrelevant of Host affiliation.
• Of course, perhaps the Abomiknight are meant to play a more directly and openly antagonistic role after all: their armies require vast resources to sustain themselves and sometimes they just pour out of a Night Road with the intent to strip a region bare and move on to more important matters. This could draw the ire of a Pantheon. Then there is the issue of what happen if they do find the Cradle: even the more noble Abomiknights of the First Host may very well change their tune should they complete their eon-long quest of ridding themselves of all their negative mutations. Now more powerful than ever could decide they alone can bring order to the fractured Realms.
• Perhaps the Abomiknights have found the Cradle already...and it isn't what they expected. It could be their long-lost sleeping progenitor, a Made God with amazing powers over flesh. Once awakened it reactive the original 'programming' of the Abomiknights, ancient coded mantras which make them his or her slave. Alternatively, the Cradle is a dangerous thing which wipes out most of the orders and the survivors come crawling to the Pantheon for help against some ancient threat they foolishly unleashed.