Cordelia Hearst fell unconscious after drinking the serum infused with Hogg's living blood. The Eldar Warriors, told that their lord was safe, stayed behind to guard her at the quarters Blacklight had assigned them.
After several years of growth, Hogg had become increasingly stable and developed a new ability. As a remnant of a higher-dimensional life-form, he could use gene-seed made from fragments of his flesh and essence to grant Blackwatch Space Marines considerable resistance to the Warp and powerful regenerative abilities. This gave Hogg a new idea.
If the Emperor could create gene-seed, could Hogg, who had inherited the Emperor's knowledge of biochemistry, make new gene-seed suited to other life-forms?
The answer was yes. In essence, the other Primarchs were high-grade Warp divinities, and gene-seed made from them was a form of Warp creation.
In this universe, where souls existed, humans implanted with gene-seed slowly absorbed Warp energy. Combined with their own flesh and genes, they used themselves as hosts to produce the next seed. That was also why Space Marines shared a special bond with their Primarchs.
But Hogg was different. He wasn't a Warp divinity; he was more like an Outer God from the Cthulhu mythos or an Old God from World of Warcraft. His flesh was his soul. His phantom tentacles moved with his physical body, unlike those of other humans, Primarchs, or even the Four Ruinous Powers, who all had stable projections in the Warp.
His followers' souls could drift toward him only because Hogg's higher-dimensional corruption drew them back to their source. But that created a paradox.
The higher-dimensional law that denied the existence of souls was etched into Hogg's very essence. Of the souls that drifted to him, only the corrupted portions became energy; the rest were annihilated. In effect, Hogg was a crematorium for souls sustained by faith.
Besides, this body was merely the shell of the Eleventh Primarch originally created by the Emperor. Hogg had first killed and devoured Eleventh after arriving in this world. That was why, at the beginning, Hogg had cautiously asked the Emperor whether he considered him his son. After all, Hogg had killed the man's son with his own hands.
Back to the point: Blackwatch's gene-seed was fundamentally different from that of the other Legions, and its weakness was a strange one—if it could even be called a weakness. Its members were small in stature, but not lacking in physical strength. That could be called a Legion trait, much like the Salamanders, whose entire Legion had charcoal-colored skin. The real problem only became apparent when compared with the Psykers in other Legions.
It was simple: the Warp hated these bizarre beings.
Psykers used their souls as beacons, drawing energy from the Warp to cast all manner of powerful psychic spells. Hogg had no soul, so he could only corrupt the Warp with his own body, infect C'tan Shards and devour their energy, then convert it into a dark red energy he had named Psionic Energy to strengthen himself.
For example, before his physical form had stabilized, the Dimensional Lightning he gained from devouring the Void Dragon had been greenish, gradually turning emerald, and had now become dark red. That meant Hogg had completely absorbed that power.
Blackwatch's Psykers had souls, but they couldn't draw on Warp energy. They could only absorb and store it themselves, then release it later.
That sounded safe and effective, but other Psykers could wield enough power to shatter planets or flood the land, and could even use cloud networks to commune with the world and its spiritual energy. Blackwatch Psykers, by contrast, had a small blue bar for casting spells. Once it ran out, they had to wait for it to recharge. Add in the Warp's hatred, and Blackwatch's psychic warriors had one bizarre ability after another.
Some abilities were useful: they could sneak around like the Raven Guard, fire off a few bolts of lightning like Pikachu—just a few, mind you—electrocuting a handful of Xenos, or play instruments to give the warriors a BUUF.
Others were useless. First Company captain Rossmanderson, for instance, could put an outrageously ugly, ridiculous hat on a target. Still, all these bizarre abilities shared one extremely notable feature: they were exceptionally stable and never corrupted the caster.
So, to get Psykers who could serve as battlefield artillery, Hogg set his sights on the Aeldari. The Blacklight had already carried living Aeldari specimens when he returned. Experiments showed that the Aeldari truly deserved their title as the Galaxy's former overlords: every one of them was a Psyker, and even their baseline abilities were remarkably strong.
After simplifying the gene-seed and combining it with various Xenos technologies, Hogg secretly created a new genetic enhancer. Even Tech-Magos Candice Laza knew nothing about it. Made using Hogg's blood as the base, it was named the G301 Living Flesh Enhancer.
This living blood could slowly integrate into the Aeldari's genes, strengthening their resistance to foreign energies and helping those who received the treatment better withstand the whispers of the Warp. But the Old Ones' technology was too advanced, and too many of the other genetic sequences involved psychic abilities. Further alterations would only damage the Aeldari's innate psychic potential, so this was all Hogg could do.
Once the host's body matured, the G301 needed nearly a year to produce a dose of living blood that could be passed on. It perfectly achieved Hogg's goal of controlling the Aeldari, directly replicating the Emperor's gene-seed technology.
The main reason was that Hogg was a psychic dullard who couldn't understand that kind of black technology. Like Space Marines, Aeldari implanted with the enhancer would develop a behavioral filter, coming to genuinely love and revere their Primarch—that was, Hogg himself, as their progenitor.
Meanwhile, what Hogg was working on in the laboratory was a suit of Power Armor. Last time, on Aiers, he had drawn enemy fire to give the Legion time to break out of the tunnels. All the Xenos on the battlefield had concentrated their fire on him.
The suit had been engulfed by excessive plasma, leaving its internal sensors and armor badly damaged. Back then, he hadn't been able to forge a proper suit of armor and had made do with what he had. Now that Hogg was better off, he had the means to start building armor of his own.
He removed the electronic muscles that formed the core of Space Marine Power Armor, making room for more. As a genuine little monster, Hogg had no need for them. The outer shell was made of Auramite and Adamantium, and the segmented armor could expand and contract as his body changed shape.
A Plasma Reactor was installed on his back as a power source, and a range of weapons were mounted on the weapon platforms: a Grav-cannon, a Particle Disintegrator, a Gauss disintegration cannon, and Melta missiles, among others. A collection of Xenos weapons was concealed within the armor, too. Finally, he thoughtfully installed the romantic centerpiece of any mech: a self-destruct device.
Using the power of the C'tan, he twisted a pocket of space into a storage area for ammunition and spare parts. Two mechanical tentacles made of Adamantium could flexibly attack enemies from any angle. Two sets of retractable Power Klaws were mounted on the arm frames, ready to spring out and give the enemy a nasty surprise.
Hogg was very pleased with the finished Power Armor before him, but no matter how he looked at it, something seemed to be missing.
"Right! Why is it gold? Damn it, I nearly ended up with the same taste as Old Man Yellow!"
Startled, Hogg hastily found a bucket of black paint and sprayed the armor. At last, he painted Blackwatch's crimson triangle insignia on the shoulder plate and was satisfied. This Power Armor inherited the name Raider, officially becoming one of Hogg's active weapons. In the future, the armor would write its own legend.
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