The air in Lorgar Aurelian's private sanctum aboard the Infidus Imperator did not merely hum; it thrummed with barely contained power. Carved deep within the vessel's corrupted core, the room was less chamber and more consecrated void, a space where the veil between realities wore thin. Velour tapestries woven with patterns that seemed to shift at the corner of the eye hung from bulkheads that whispered with latent energy. Sigils—not of the Emperor's design but born of ancient cults and nascent Warp-lore—glowed faintly in the perpetual twilight. This was Lorgar's temple, built in secret, a testament to his desperate, burning need to find the divine the Emperor so adamantly denied.
Lorgar knelt upon a cold obsidian altar, his massive form dwarfed by the swirling, contained chaos around him. His contemplation was deep—a descent into the treacherous currents of the Warp, seeking echoes of the primordial, whispers of truth beyond the Emperor's stifling Imperial Truth. He sought the gods, the ultimate arbiters of existence, the beings his father refused to acknowledge. Monarchia had scarred him. The Emperor's censure had shattered his faith in how to worship, but not the need to worship. He had merely shifted his gaze, turning toward the boundless, untamed sources of power.
He felt the usual currents: the slow, grinding malice of Nurgle, the fierce, fleeting passions of Slaanesh, the cold, calculating flux of Tzeentch, and the raw, boundless rage of Khorne. They were familiar now—like the weather systems of an alien world he was painstakingly charting. But today, something new surged.
It began as a tremor, a ripple through the psychic ether that escalated into a tidal wave. It wasn't the focused psychic might of a Librarian or the predatory hunger of a daemon. This was… mirth.
A wave of divine mirth hit Lorgar with the force of a supernova. It wasn't joyous or welcome—it was jarring, overwhelming, and deeply haunting. It echoed not just in the Warp, but seemed to tear at the very fabric of reality around the sanctum. It was the laughter of something ancient, powerful, and utterly deranged—something that found infinite amusement in the fragile structures of mortal existence and the grand, illogical narratives they built.
Lorgar recoiled, a gasp escaping his lips. The familiar psychic landscape fractured, dissolving into kaleidoscopic shards of impossible color and sound. The laughter intensified, a chorus of invisible entities joining in, their voices weaving together in a symphony of cosmic mockery. It felt like being held upside down by a giant, insane entity and shaken—his carefully accumulated knowledge and belief rattling loose.
He felt himself pulled—not physically, but psychically—ripped from his anchoring consciousness and hurled into the heart of the disturbance. His body collapsed onto the obsidian altar, mind lost in the storm.
---
The trance took hold.
He saw not through his own eyes but through the distorted lens of the Warp itself. Reality became a stage—one where the script was being rewritten spontaneously by a capricious, unseen hand. And at the center of it all danced a figure.
A jester.
Shadowed, its form indistinct yet undeniably present. It wore motley that shimmered with impossible colors and a cap with bells that jingled with the sound of shattering stars. Its face was a mask of exaggerated, painted glee, horrific in its unchanging rictus. It moved with impossible grace and unnatural speed, its limbs twisting and extending in ways that defied physics.
Lorgar watched, helpless, as the jester danced through timelines. He saw glimpses of past and future, but they were distorted—manipulated. The jester would leap onto pivotal moments, tracing a pattern in the air, and that timeline would ripple, diverging wildly from its expected course. Prophecies and destinies were treated like threads in a tapestry—yanked loose or snipped clean.
The jester didn't merely manipulate. It unmade.
With a jester's sceptre tipped in a mocking skull, it would point—and empires would spontaneously ignite, not in fire, but in cascades of pure, unadulterated Warp energy. Populations dissolved into shrieking motes of light and shadow. Cities crumbled, revealing foundations inscribed not with blood or ink but with the very essence of distorted reality.
These sigils were the jester's art. Alien. Nonsensical. Yet meaningful. They bound the broken fragments of fate together in abhorrent, chaotic harmony. With a flick of its wrist, the jester claimed the wreckage for forces Lorgar was only just beginning to understand.
The laughter was not separate—it was the jester, and the Warp around it. It pulsed with every timeline twisted, every empire undone, every sigil etched into the soul of creation.
Lorgar felt a terrifying understanding dawn.
This wasn't just a Warp vision. It was a message. A revelation.
The jester was no random manifestation. It was a prophet. An avatar. A being of significance to the Chaos Pantheon. Not of Khorne or Nurgle, but Tzeentch and Slaanesh—entities who saw not just power in mortal existence but amusement. The jester—its sigils carried familiar echoes. They aligned with the styles Lorgar had glimpsed before in his dark studies. But this jester moved outside their hierarchy. It was not bound. It danced between their domains, bearing a chaotic unity through performance, mockery, and entropy.
The vision swelled. The jester's dance became frantic. Its laughter rose to a crescendo, echoing through the galaxy. Sigils appeared on battlefields past and future—on Istvaan, Calth, even on the blackened future Lorgar dared not name. A distorted laugh tore across all perception, a final echo that seemed to mock the very idea of destiny.
Then silence.
---
Lorgar gasped, his eyes snapping open. He lay on the altar, drenched in sweat. The air still thrummed, but the overwhelming tide of mirth had receded. His body trembled, not from fear, but from the sheer power that had passed through him.
A jester.
A divine jester.
It explained so much. The subtle inconsistencies in prophecy. The shifts in the Great Work. The unnatural string of improbable victories—like the survival of that xenos-fighting xenos on a death world the Word Bearers had scoured. Or the psychic "prank" that had struck Erebus on Serranos Prime. Lorgar had dismissed them as minor daemonic artifacts. He had been wrong.
It was deliberate.
There was a pattern. Or perhaps—an anti-pattern. An influence acting not out of malice, but entertainment. A presence enjoying the unraveling of mortal plans.
He rose to his feet, slowly. His thoughts raced. He needed to record this.
He named it: the Second Revelation.
The first was discovering that gods existed. The second—more terrible, more profound—was understanding that they laughed.
He entered his scriptorium. Among scrolls of forbidden lore, he began writing a new scripture: The Book of Masks. Its chapters would follow no logical order. They would be written as a play—absurd, sublime, horrific. Truths hidden behind gestures. Faith delivered through laughter.
He wrote of the Harlequin of Fate. The Laughing Prophet. The divine jester who danced between gods, mocking them even as it served their will. He described burning worlds, shattered fates, and sigils that only the insane could read.
Outside his sanctum, his Astartes stood vigilant.
He could not yet reveal everything. But he could sow curiosity.
Subtle messages spread. Chaplains whispered of a laughing god. Librarians spoke of psychic echoes carrying fragmented amusement. Warriors muttered a new phrase in passing, at first in jest, then in hushed reverence:
The gods are laughing.
The phrase spread. And with it, doubt—and devotion.
---
Lorgar finished a passage, closing the Book. He had seen anomalies in the Warp—regions where the veil was thinnest, where the jester's laughter echoed loudest. Many aligned with areas now unstable—zones later known as the Eye of Terror.
He issued new orders. Through Kor Phaeron and Erebus, the Word Bearers' course changed. Quietly, without declaring it, they embarked on a pilgrimage.
Not of faith.
Of madness.
The Great Crusade marched on. The Emperor's legions brought order and light. But in the dark corridors of the Infidus Imperator, Lorgar Aurelian—Prophet of the Pantheon—had seen the true face of divinity.
It grinned.
It danced.
And it laughed.