The House of the Bitter Laugh

Belatedly, the history of the House of the Bitter Laugh:

So, a long time ago as the Mon-keigh would count it, but really not very long ago for the dark kin, three young girls met at what you might call school. They had much in common, but mainly this: that they did not fit in, which in Commorragh can be fatal. Belfrit Vayne was clever and ingenious, and technically nobility, but she was the heiress to a fallen House, and worse, she was not Trueborn. Morbith Nhyrr was studious and brilliant, and actually was Trueborn, but she lacked the ability to disguise her contempt for her masters and peers. And Agatha, of course, was quite mad.

These three came together as a clique in order to survive, more than anything else, but they soon had much more in mind than mere survival. They gathered to them other outcasts: the hellion Void gang, disgraced Reaver racers, defeated former warriors, wych aspirants who had failed to make the cut. They fixed up the wreck of a Raider with a tendency to break down. Mostly they scavenged, though sometimes they engaged in a bit of light piracy if they could get away with it.

They picked their targets carefully. Belfrit hoped to impress Archon Brakka and gain his favour by aiding him against his enemy, the upstart Osvho. Brakka allowed them to continue as long as they bothered his enemy, and not him, but he scoffed at the ragtag band of rejects. Yet slowly but surely they grew stronger and stronger, and their strikes against Osvho grew bigger and bolder. After many long years, Brakka finally acknowledged them and offered them a true  test of their abilities: he would finance for them a realspace raid. If they were successful, they would find a place in his kabal; if they failed, they had better not return.

They were wildly successful. Between Belfrit's cunning, Morbith's living weapons, and Agatha's skill in slaughter, they butchered the defenders and plundered the outpost of riches and slaves. When they returned, however, they found an army set against them. In their absence, Archon Brakka had been deposed, and the upstart Osvho was now the Archon Osvho, and he remembered them all too well, oh yes.

They barely escaped with their lives and the original broken-down Raider they had salvaged, outcasts once again. And Agatha laughed. She laughed so hard that she fell down on her arse and rolled around on her back, howling. Her laughter was infectious, and Belfrit caught it too, and even Morbith managed a bitter smile. 'We are our own House now,' she said. 'The House of the Bitter Laugh.'

Eventually they recovered and grew strong again. Unusually for Dark Eldar, there is no infighting among them. Both Morbith and Agatha, even in her madness, know that without Belfrit they would never be able to hold on to their power, and Belfrit knows that without both of them she would soon be back where she started, without hope of recovery. And so the House of the Bitter Laugh thrives, a perfect triumvirate.