Kabal of the Twilit Gaze

The Kabal of the Twilit Gaze is led by Archon Xabaoth, who considers his Kabal to be the cream of the elite. He disdains the use of Hellions and Reavers, which he views as common riff-raff. Though the Kabal of the Twilit Gaze lacks in manpower, its warriors are highly disciplined and a large number are Trueborn. The fortress of the Twilit Gaze resides in a curious sub-realm of Commorragh, where the cold is not so much felt physically as spiritually. Its gantries and halls are marked with the frozen remains of traitors and foes, locked into an eternity of sensual deprivation.

The armor of the Kabal's warriors is midnight blue, with details picked out in bone. Many edges of their wargear seem to shimmer, as if in imitation of a skeletal system, framing the warrior as a half-formed reaver in the dark. Almost every member of the Kabal has some sort of bioluminescent augmentation to their features, giving them appearances reminiscent of deep-sea predators. Glowing eyes are a particularly popular feature, and though it is more aesthetic than practical, their victims find it wholly unsettling.

Despite its prestige and the effectiveness of its raids, the Kabal of the Twilit Gaze was never particularly infamous or influential. This changed after Xabaoth acquired a piece of long-lost Eldar terraforming technology: the Nightshrouds. These arcane devices, about a dozen in number, when placed into the orbit and activated, could cut off a planet's access to the light of its sun, cloaking it in darkness. Within days, the planet becomes uninhabitable. With such an ingenious stratagem at his disposal, Xabaoth and his Kabal have been on the rise. This newfound clout has won Xabaoth new allies- namely the services of the Scourges of the Shardrain Pact and the mutual sponsorship of the Cult of the Unseen.

The Kabal of the Twilit Gaze has a long-standing relationship with the Haemonculi Coven of the Maw, whose forces regularly accompany them on raids, and are only too happy to supply the esoteric fashions of the Kabal's trademark lumiscent augmentations. Far more enigmatic, though, is Xabaoth's pact with the Mandrakes that prowl the lower parts of his domain. Though these wraiths rarely join the Kabal in their initial assault, after the Twilit Gaze has departed with their prizes, the Mandrakes follow, haunting the unfortunate world and making it their own in its final days, free to stalk and slaughter at will.

The Kabal of the Twilit Gaze is infamous for its shock-raids. It will wait until the Nighshrouds have activated and the victim world is tearing itself apart beneath the endless dusk before attacking. By this point, any would-be defenders are usually demoralized and quickly fall prey to the precise lightning-strikes of the Kabal, descending en masse in Raiders and Venoms, the shimmering edges of its warriors' armor being the last source of light their victims shall ever see. The Kabal then quickly fades away, leaving the few survivors to their entropic doom. The Nightshrouds, however, were not built as weapons and are vulnerable while going about their lethal work. Thus, the Kabal takes great pains to conceal them by utilizing cloaking technology, or disguising them as asteroids, its fleet ever-ready to mount a counter-attack.

Xabaoth once took great pleasure in a decade-long assault of the feudal world Jaduya. He had eleven of the Nightshrouds hidden within the planet's moons- the twelfth was disguised as a comet that crossed the sky of Jaduya every solar year. When the comet passed, the Nightshrouds activated and Jaduya was plunged into a day of darkness and the Kabal of the Twilit Gaze would descend, massacring and pillaging before departing. The Jaduyans came to fear this comet as the herald of a day of wrath- eventually the population was reduced to desperate, superstitious pockets of habitation. At this point, the Nightshrouds activated permanently, and the Mandrakes crawled forth to bring Jaduya its last apocalypse.

The solar cults have come to fear Xabaoth's Nightshrouds, realizing that he could potentially hold the Dark City for ransom, should he choose to shut off access to its stolen suns, and have begun secretly acting against him. The Archon is nowhere near brazen enough for such a move, mindful of the retaliation he would face from every force in Commorragh. It is possible, though, that he is merely playing the long game, waiting for the right opportunity to seize control.