Weiss Schnee, the Chiller of Stars, High Thrall Witch of the Thousand Sons:



The Inquisition does not have the privilege of feeling compassion, but they are not truly heartless. Perhaps it is only a matter of pragmatism, but the Holy Ordos, in a more somber mood, admits that the Imperium, all too often, breeds its own monsters. Endless hate drives good soldiers into the grasp of Khorne, abandoning all sanity in favor of being able to live with themselves. The exacting demands of the Ecclesiarchy provokes the sleepless nights in which Slaanesh can whisper, promising perfection in all things. Hopelessness finds the oozing hand of Nurgle helping others to find at least peace in their suffering. And Tzeentch? Tzeentch is the cruelest of a cruel pantheon, but he is ultimately the most forthright; the Great Conspirator never claims to be anything but untrustworthy and manipulative, and for the duration that a pawn is useful to him, the Architect of Fate is at least a generous god. To those repeatedly betrayed, having a partner who at least gives you some hope before the inevitable backstab is as close to having a real friend as they have ever had.



Such as it is with the sorceress Weiss, once of the House of Schnee of the planet Atlas. Once a noble and honorable clan of Rogue Traders, the family was undone when it let the cruel Gele clan of planetary governors marry into their lineage. The greed patriarch of the youngest branch, Jaccques, set about turning his own offspring against each other, selecting for the one of his three children who was "strong" enough to let go of familial affection and turn to true ruthlessness. The eldest sister was driven to the Imperial Guard, where she served with distinction and competence for many a year, but Weiss, the middle daughter, was frozen between an abusive father, a broken mother, and a son who was sadly every bit the manipulator his father demanded. Disinherited and stripped of her one true love in life, void-faring, Weiss retreated into herself and her family's library, desperate for some way out of her prison and to return her family to autonomy.



Inevitably, a daemon of Tzeentch, a cunning Horror known only as the Steward of Seven Voices, heard the heiress' broken song, and drawn as a diseased mouth to soul-flame, inserted a very specific tome into the Schnee's library-a compilation of the various maddening fables of the cult known as the Menagerie of Fate, a star-traveling circus whose performances showed the truth of reality as a mutable, broken thing where only personal will mattered. Either the would-be Trader would be driven insane and ripe for possession, or her own strength of will would allow her shattered mind to refuse into a larger form, one capable of the unholy equations of sorcery without inherent psyker ability. To its delight, she proved to be the latter-and then some, as she continued the bleak logic and designed a spell that allowed her vox-caster to reach the Planet of the Sorcerers and its master. When the Thousand Sons came, it was with a rather cliched goal of kidnapping the princess in mind-but with her permission and eager cooperation.



While, being female, she could not accept the progenoids and join her saviors in their quest for unclean lore directly, Magnus has a use for those who are able to innovate with sorcery, let alone one barely into her seventeenth year. He tutored her himself, awakening true psychic potential within her and teaching her the arts of Warp alchemy. Today, she is the primary organizer for the Thrall Wizards, the organization of mortal sorcerers who serve as the proper Chapter's serfs and support organization-and easily the equal of many true Chaos Marine Sorcerers herself, second only to true Chaos Lords and Magnus, and even the former is not a sure thing. With but a wave of her Daemon Rapier, Myrthenser, she may turn the atmosphere of a planet to ice and freeze armies where they stand, leaving them horrible alive and aware as her masters casually butcher all opposition without difficulty. In what little free time she has, she still sails the void. She is quite proud of her substitute Navigator-she termed it the Pater Singularis, both in mockery of the Paternova who directs the true Navis Nobilite, and her first successful example, bound via chains of unfreezing ice to the helm and eternally exposed to the airless void. Sometimes she even dines with him, as families are wont to do.