DEXCESSA
THE TALON OF SLAANESH
When Morathi sliced open the gullet of the Dark Prince in her ritual of apotheosis, she unwittingly let loose a terror – a shard of Slaanesh’s own essence, cast forth to coalesce and divide. This was the Newborn, the Two-who-are-the-Lord, infernal scions of Slaanesh who may one day inherit their chained father’s throne. Each half holds the other in contempt, yet they represent the totality of Slaanesh’s nature, and so often they fight as a pair to remake the realms in their daemonic image.
Dexcessa embodies excess at its wildest, most rapacious and manic – the ecstatic frenzy that one does not awake from until the damage is done. They are ever consumed with lusty impulses to mangle and maim, to bathe in pain and terror with ululating howls of laughter. Physical sensation is everything to the so-called Talon of Slaanesh, be it the lustre of gaudy ornaments or the pricking mutilation of flesh. Not for Dexcessa the belief that the surest road to damnation is the gradual, well-intentioned path. Their pleasures are base, elaborate and overtly deplorable, and in battle this translates into exultant bacchanals of slaughter.
Dexcessa is an arrogant force of nature who cannot abide taking orders from another. They see themselves as Slaanesh’s chief warlord, often overthrowing lesser champions and ordering their warhosts to abandon long-fought campaigns and focus on new, bizarre objectives more pleasing to the Talon. Only Synnessa’s wicked tongue can convince Dexcessa to listen – and even then the daemon rails at the patience advised by their despised sibling, ever liable to suddenly act.
SYNESSA
THE VOICE OF SLAANESH
Synessa is the other half of the Newborn, one of the god-heirs of Slaanesh unleashed upon the realms. Like their kin Dexcessa, they remain a nascent thing, a budding echo of the Dark Prince’s full majesty, yet already their strength rivals that of their sire’s greater daemons. Synessa, more specifically, is the manifestation of Slaanesh’s beguiling allure. They despise Dexcessa’s propensity towards crude violence, seeing it as artless at best. Any fool can win a victory through tearing foes and mangling flesh; the greater accomplishment by far is to do so without ever needing to lift a clawed finger.
Befitting their appellation of ‘the Voice’, Synessa relishes any chance to play the glorious demagogue who inspires swathes of mortalkind to plunge into ruinous vice; more than one stronghold has fallen into anarchy through such passionate oratory. Yet the daemon also embraces the role of the suave tempter, the imp of the perverse, the proverbial devil on the shoulder. They carefully craft every exchange to ruin their victims, yet they ensure that these fates are always of the mortal’s own volition and choice. Unlike Dexcessa, who cannot abide to appear in anything less than majesty, Synessa is more than happy to adapt a comparatively unassuming guise and slip into the heart of society, spreading discord simply by exposing what mortals desire and providing them opportunities to realise it. When Synessa is in the ascendancy and wrests control of the daemonic hosts from their sibling, the battleplans they devise are things of obsessive beauty, every detail meticulously arranged and every disagreement mollified with a gilded tongue. Even the Lords of Change do not readily enter into a war of words with Slaanesh’s Voice.
For all their favouritism towards more subtle seductions, there are times where Synessa must back up their commands with action. Unfortunately for those who would contest the Newborn, to speak the Dark Prince’s words also grants access to his most dire incantations and sorceries. Synessa is a master at wielding the arcane energies of Slaanesh. With but a single syllable and a simple flick of their accursed staff, they can compel over-stimulated organs to rupture, bid allies turn on one another in jealous frenzies, and command enemies to rend and tear at their own skin. Through these same means can Synessa raise up mortal supplicants into throes of ecstatic obedience – the fact that they are often left witless and drooling in the aftermath, burned out by the majesty visited upon them, is quite immaterial.