TYBOR'S RAMBLINGS

Resource Site for the Dark Heresy Roleplaying Game

This great daemon feeds on the souls of people, who have committed suicide. It has founded countless suicide cults all over the Imperium, posing as the obscure Saint Lokmar the Merciful. The daemon promises an afterlife of peace, hope and happiness.
In the Empire of Man, where most people toil their lives away as little more than slaves for the lucky few, the daemon has no trouble recruiting followers. Nel’zradrikdskeldrak is depicted in the Imperium as man clad in whites with a kind look in his eyes and of course a saintly halo. The daemon’s true form is that of a pale skinned manlike creature, unnaturally thin, long limbed with bleeding veins on wrists and thighs. The daemons face has great open wound where the jaw should have been and foul carrion feed in it. The eyes are blindfolded, and little patches of hair covers its head except for the gaping bloody hole in the back. The Daemon wears a cut off hangman’s noose around the neck, and torn loincloth around the waist.

In the Imperium where psykers are seen as dangerous and the discovery of psychic ability is almost as good a death sentence, suicide might seem tempting to the latent psyker. Nel’zradrikdskeldrak preys upon those weak individuals. It visits them in their dreams either encouraging them to kill themselves and move on to a better world, or more rarely by promising a way out of their problems. Those that follow his way out, usually end up as cult leaders of some sort. For Nel’zradrikdskeldrak to invest time and energy in a potential cult leader, the person must be susceptible to the daemon’s suggestions and more importantly go through the daemon’s rite of allegiance.

Nel’zradrikdskeldrak serves Nurgle, Lord of Pestilence. Indeed the hopelessness and despair, which leads to suicide, are the domains of the Great Corruptor. The hangman’s noose is the symbol of Nel’zradrikdskeldrak.

Nel’zradrikdskeldrak’s rite of allegiance
To receive the boon of Nel’zradrikdskeldrak a person must find someone to take his place as the daemon’s suicide victim. The victim must willingly take his or her own life, while the agent of Nel’zradrikdskeldrak watches. The victim does not need to know any of the motives for the daemon’s agent that is helping and encouraging. After the suicide the agent takes something from the victim that were instrumental in the suicide, a knife, pistol, noose, etc. this item channels the boon of Nel’zradrikdskeldrak and must be carried at all times. The boon offers protection against being discovered as wyrd. Anyone using psyniscience or a device with similar properties in the vicinity of the agent suffers a -30 to the skill check. The boon also offers a more direct way for Nel’zradrikdskeldrak to commune with an agent, in the form of a subtle whisper in the back of the head.

Sample cult:
Hospice of the Merciful
This cult poses as an organization meant to help those who are terminally ill, and those not of sound mind. The cult is funded by contributions from patients and their relatives. The cult works to convince their patients that suicide is a merciful way of ending their lives compared to a slow lingering death or in the case of mental patients the descent in into howling madness.