The Bringers of Wonder are a Slaaneshi warband based on the Daemonworld Eden, led by the mercurial Queen Sylelle, a human sorceress elevated to daemonhood. Composed of a core of Emperor’s Children legionaries, bolstered by recruits (willing and otherwise) from other legions and an eclectic collection of cultists and hangers-on, the Bringers of Wonder are occasionally a force to be reckoned with - but just as often amount to little more than an intermittent annoyance to the Imperium, as Sylelle’s boundless capacity for whimsy far outstrips any concern for strategic success.
Sylelle
Sylelle began life as the heiress to the hereditary governorship of Helsvault, an unremarkable but productive hiveworld, and beyond the carefree obliviousness to the hardships of the working classes who supported her luxurious childhood, displayed no particular tendencies toward cruelty or malice. In fact she was regarded as unusually studious, eschewing the disreputable sororities and hunting parties typical of her peers and spending most of her time in her house’s vast library, an ill-catalogued collection of thousands of rare tomes taken as trophies from other houses as they were subjugated to her ancestors’ rule during the feudal struggles of Helsvault’s more turbulent past - and virtually unread, which is why nobody for centuries had discovered that among the literature and atlases and religious texts and dry censuses there were several treatises on the worship of chaos.
Left to her own devices this likely would have resulted in Sylelle - whose shock inevitably gave way to curiosity as she read uncensored accounts of the ways of Slaanesh, which in her naivete she considered wildly exaggerated, but which nonetheless fuelled her imagination - sneaking out of her family grounds incognito in search of a brothel or somesuch amusement, however fate took an unlikely turn as, after several months of obsessive reading, she was kidnapped by a scribe from her house’s administrative staff, secretly a devotee of chaos himself, who, knowing nothing of her reading material, considered her simply a sacrifice of suitable beauty and high standing to satisfy the Slaaneshi daemon he intended to summon to empower himself. Surrounded by the corpses of her captor’s former victims and confronted, without any psychic training, with the nascent form of the daemon as it emerged from the immaterium, Sylelle’s sanity was immediately broken - but owing to her proclivities derived from her illicit readings, the remnants of her psyche reemerged as suicidal lust for her would-be executioner, and the daemon for its part found her vastly more apopealing than its summoner, who all told was motivated merely by petty spite at those who had enjoyed more success in life than he.
Curiously, rather than becoming merely a host for the daemon as it gorged its perverse appetites on her body and mind, Sylelle somehow emerged dominant, empowered by the chaos sorcery she had welcomed into herself but retaining her own mind, such as it was by this stage - an outcome not unique in the annals of the Ordo Malleus, typically indicating special favour shown by the adherent’s deity, but rare in a would-be possessee so young and inexperienced. Whatever the reason, by the time her father’s household guard located her Sylelle’s powers vastly outstripped their weapons and training, and she began slaking her newly-awakened thirst for atrocity with their gruesome murders, shortly followed by that of her own father. She proceeded to play the traumatised lone survivor of a massacre just long enough to ingratiate herself with her uncle - who sought to win the regent-governorship for himself by adopting her - and be returned to the seat of planetary governance in the Grand Spire, where she slaughtered the technicians overseeing atmosphere regulation in Helsvault’s several dozen hives and corrupted their machinery to introduce a virulent cocktail of stimulants, hallucinogens, and aphrodisiacs. In little more than an hour virtually the entire population, numbering some six hundred billion, had butchered one another in an orgy of carnal violence; by the time the last living things on Helsvault killed themselves in acts of desperate self-mutilation Sylelle had long since grown bored of watching, rounded up a group of followers from among the frenzied - simply those who happened to be nearby her at the time - and absconded in her father’s star yacht, forcing its Navigator to steer her into the Eye of Terror.
Eden and its Queen
Following a string of exploits Sylelle would characterise as ‘adventures’ - best left undescribed any further - which gained her additional followers, drawn to her by the apparent favour shown her by Slaanesh in that the horrific and often-suicidal pleasures she sought out seemed only to strengthen her, Sylelle’s nascent warband - which she dubbed the ‘Bringers of Wonder’, apparently without a hint of irony - arrived at a planet she would name Eden, a reference to some long-forgotten folklore she read in her old library. While fluctuations in space and time are no strange thing in the Eye of Terror, it is a particular curiosity of Eden that it is thought not to have existed until Sylelle ‘discovered’ it - but upon doing so, the planet, and Sylelle herself, are said to have retroactively existed as long as the Eye itself. A colossal landscaped garden of perfumed hallucinogenic breezes, bucolic fields of razor-sharp grass, hypnotic flowerbeds ripe with parasitic pollen, labyrinthine mazes of carnivorous hedges and trees, Eden is as beautiful and monstrous as its people - to themselves as much as to the prisoners unfortunate enough to be dragged there, but as Sylelle’s mercurial excesses became well-known among her fellow warlords, it was increasingly the case that those who sought service in her warband were already utterly heedless of their own safety in the pursuit of Slaanesh’s notice.
Amid the picturesque and deadly natural splendour of Eden, various fairytale castles are dotted about, and occasionally come and go according to their own whims; psykers are said to be able to hear the screaming of the mortar holding the bricks together, as it is the ground-up remains of prisoners whose souls remain alive and conscious against all reason. The interiors are bizarre and ever-changing, but generally furnish whatever the warband needs at any given moment, from armouries, shipyards, and training grounds to gladiatorial arenas, pleasure halls, torture chambers, secluded boudoirs, gigantic living wombs, and all other manner of delights and horrors; in addition to their military exploits the Bringers of Wonder are perpetually engaged in every kind of artistic pursuit, from the sublime to the grotesque. The planet has formidable defences, both material and daemonic, but a spotty record of actually employing them against interlopers, whether Imperial assassins or rival chaos worshippers, with Sylelle preferring the fury of pitched battle in her own gardens to simply driving off inbound ships from afar; she has even been known to allow particularly promising ‘opponents’ free access to her personal chambers, taking masochistic delight in the violence inflicted on her sorcery-fuelled body in their attempts to slay her, before indulging her sadism on them in return.
Appearance and Personality
As self-proclaimed Queen of Eden, Sylelle has without doubt been elevated to the status of daemon princess herself - exactly when, none can say, least of all Sylelle, since from the moment she first touched chaos during her would-be sacrifice she has been utterly oblivious to her own mortality, trusting to her sorcery to sustain her in the face of any dangers she faced, or inflicted upon herself; or perhaps it would be more correct to say pursuing her latest whim, whatever it is, has always been vastly more important than such trivialities as survival. Contributing to the uncertainty over when she transcended mortal existence, her daemonic form is simply her human form, as anything else would in her eyes be less than perfect; in both battle and leisure she is known to vary her stature, from a slip of a girl to a towering giantess, but not for any particular reason beyond whichever way her fancy takes her. She not infrequently uses various weapons and armours, but never for long - functionally indestructible and able to channel force exceeding a power fist into a barehanded blow, even the most advanced or enchanted weapons serve her merely as decoration, and any ‘treasured’ trinket she may possess is just as quickly discarded when something else catches her interest; on occasions when no particular wargear has her attention she is just as likely to wade into battle nude, to equally devastating effect.
Sylelle has elevated the egotism common to followers of Slaanesh to an artform - she not only believes her desires are more important than any others, but considers that her personal fulfilment is the ordained purpose of the galaxy as a whole. She seems devoid of ill-will of any kind towards her enemies, wholly believing that their suffering at her hands is the natural order of things, and that every other being in existence shares this point of view, and truly desires whatever fate she may inflict upon them; she is, for the most part, aware that her victims sometimes resist her, or attempt to kill themselves rather than fall into her power, but chalks this up to them ‘being contrary’, and in fact considers it one of her better qualities that she feels no anger towards them for ‘pretending’ reluctance to play with her. She can be said to be a follower of Slaanesh insofar as her pursuits align with those of her god - in her own mind this is merely another aspect of the galaxy being perfectly attuned to her own whims, such that her deity’s goals naturally echo her own. When mingling with other warlords (which she is quite happy to do, regardless of their relative prestige to her, although as always her mood may turn from convivial to murderous at any time for no reason) she has been known to insist that her interpretation of Slaanesh’s will is perfect, even in the face of disagreements from more senior worshippers of Slaanesh, or proclamations carried from Slaanesh itself - her attitude to her god may be best likened to an artist engaged by a wealthy patron, whose ‘suggestions’ for artworks are given polite attention, but ignored as well-meaning but ill-informed whenever the artist has a better idea. Given that Sylelle remains an apparently bottomless font of chaos sorcery, it must be assumed that her antics have done nothing to aggravate Slaanesh, who presumably finds her useful, or simply entertaining.
Factions and Notable Individuals
As is typical for Slaaneshi warbands, the Bringers of Wonder are far from homogenous, with sub-groups and individuals vying for the attention and favour of their mistress and their deity, regardless of the consequences to each other - as with Eden’s perilous natural environment, these constant threats from within the warband itself are no deterrent to its members, so obsessed are they with the absolute individualism embodied by Slaanesh.
The Bringers of Wonder Legionaries
By virtue of their numbers, collective combat prowess, and lingering vestiges of martial discipline, the Legionaries of the Bringers of Wonder are the de facto dominant faction, composed of fallen Astartes of the Emperor’s Children legion and other Slaaneshi traitor Astartes; members of legions and chapters devoted to other deities are also present, having been tempted, seduced, or tortured into throwing in their lot with the Bringers of Wonder, along with former members of loyal chapters, similarly swayed or forced to chaos’s service. While this kind of predation on fellow warbands is far from rare in the Eye of Terror, Sylelle seems almost to fetishise it, delighting in corrupting the most unlikely ‘converts’; at times Berzerkers, Plague Marines, and bizarrely even Rubricae, are seen within her ranks, having cast off their former allegiances (willingly or no) and wearing the colours of the Bringers of Wonder. A notable faction within the Legionaries is ‘Death Blossom’, the Havoc contingent, who associate closely with the warband’s Noise Marines and Obliterators.
All Bringers of Wonder, regardless of their personal gender identity (which can often be in a considerable state of flux, as with many followers of Slaanesh), ritually identify as female, a practice intended to honour the Emperor’s Children legion, and remind the galaxy at large that it was the Imperium’s bigotry that condemned Fulgrim to remain unaware of her true self, and thus unfulfilled no matter the accolades that were heaped upon her, until Horus, guided by Slaanesh, acknowledged Fulgrim as his sister, and opened her eyes to the truth. That the Bringers of Wonder’s tendency towards femininity accords with Sylelle’s own preferences (in that she regards anything resembling herself as inherently better than not) is a convenient bonus.
The Twin Mistresses
Fulfilling the role of Masters of Executions, the 'twin mistresses' are known as Milady Justice and Tender Sister. Milady Justice styles herself a 'pacifist', and is said to have never taken a life in battle - but her axe, hewn from the stone of an Adeptus Arbites fortress-precinct's walls, possesses the curious property of bestowing apparent immortality on anyone it injures, allowing Milady to leave in her wake scores of mutilated foes whose lives are sustained indefinitely by sorcery, no matter how little of their bodies remain intact, according to her "so that they may understand and learn from their failings". It is certain that the severed heads she carries as trophies remain alive and aware; rumour has it that even the skulls, bones, and flayed skins decorating her armour remain conscious. Tender Sister has never been known to utter a word beyond inarticulate growls, but Milady refers to her as her 'kinder counterpart', insofar as the victims of Tender Sister's frenzied assaults on the battlefield quickly expire from the horrific wounds she inflicts by hand, before delivering the coup de grace with her trademark frozen axe.
The Fleshsmith
His original name long forgotten, the Fleshsmith was once a deranged but brilliant armourer, uniquely gifted in the creation of blasphemous engines, who sold his services to all manner of chaos warbands, caring not at all which master or god his creations would serve, only that he had the opportunity to work his art. Sylelle, following a passing fancy, contracted him to create a suit of Terminator armour worthy of her - a suit which, in the final moment of its creation, required a living sacrifice to be worked into every fibre of its construction to bring it to life. Sylelle naturally chose the suit’s creator himself - as he had half-expected - and happily wore her new armour, powered by his unending death-agony... for roughly a week, until she got bored of it and abandoned it. Some time later, not wanting to waste the time of one of her actual followers on mundane matters, she extracted the tattered remnants of the creator’s flesh from his creation and reconstituted him - forcing his own body to extrude the cybernetic components she had long since discarded after tearing them out of him during his sacrifice. Now known as the Fleshsmith, he is irrevocably bound to Sylelle’s service, as the Bringers of Wonder’s armourer - a position he takes no joy in, since his talents are wasted on routine weapon maintenance and attaching lewd appendages to servitors, his ruined body is in constant agony, and his standing within the warband is somewhat lower then the merest slave.
Sylelle’s discarded Terminator suit, meanwhile, wanders the halls of her palaces - and sometimes finds it way into raiding parties - driven by some dimly nascent consciousness of its own, searching for a suitable replacement for its mistress; any it sets its sights on it forces into itself, where the agony of enduring a suit meant for a daemon princess burns them out in a matter of days, leaving the suit once again prowling for a new ‘wearer’.
The Order of the Honeyed Abyss
The Honeyed Abyss are the heretic Adepta Sororitas who have been corrupted or seduced to Sylelle’s service. While many accompany their Legionary counterparts into battle, where they fight with similar skill and savagery, the bulk of the Order’s activities take place on Eden, where they have replicated a bastardised parody of the loyal Sisterhood: Hospitallers travel Eden ‘tending’ to its populace by desecrating their bodies with blasphemous decorations and their minds with drugs, Dialogous preach the word of Slaanesh and exhort their colleagues to greater feats of depravity by reciting lurid tales, Famulous school newcomers and veterans alike in ever more convoluted forms of carnality, and so on. The heart of the Honeyed Abyss is a dark convent, echoing the Scholae of the Imperium, where captives and ‘recruits’ are brought to be inducted through profane rituals, culminating in an audience with the Order’s mysterious head, known as the Mother Superior.
Sister Angelica
Once a Seraphim, Angelica was bestowed wings through her worship of Slaanesh, and serves as one of the senior leaders of the Honeyed Abyss in battle. While her lewd behaviour and oratory naturally appeal to her followers, her most inspiring quality - by the standards of her flock - is her pregnancy, the result of willingly lying with the vilest beasts Eden could furnish as proof of her unflinching devotion. None can say what manner of creature is gestating within her, but the birth is eagerly anticipated by her fellow Sisters. Angelica is always accompanied by two attendants, her Handmaidens - while fierce fighters their insistence on going into battle naked almost invariably leads to their quick deaths. Nonetheless there is always fierce competition to replace them.
Sister Verity
As a Dialogous novice undergoing tuition from the Order of Pious Toil In His Sight - an extremely minor order consisting of a mere handful of Sisters, based on the unremarkable colony world Cardin’s Dawnline - Verity came to the attention of the Inquisition when reports reach them of her preaching, which was said to be so compelling that even the most hardened of cynics listening to her were moved to wholehearted worship of the Emperor. Before a team led by Inquisitor Amnestine Crall could reach her to assess whether her ‘gift’ was a miracle or the taint of witchcraft, however, Dawnline’s governor coopted her into his command party engaged in quelling a local heretic uprising, intending to have her preach to his men at the commencement of battle. The governor’s ego was his undoing though, as he supplied Verity with propagandistic ‘scripture’ praising him, which in her innocence she repeated - discovering in the process that her gift only worked when she spoke the truth, devastating the assembled soldiers as they seemed to witness the Emperor desert her. As far as the Imperium knows Verity was killed along with most of the governor’s forces - including the governor himself (much to the irritation of Inquisitor Amnestine, who wished she could have had him executed personally for his stupidity) - but in fact she was spirited away by the cultists as they overran the defenders, and after suffering at the hands of various captors she came to be brought to Eden. There Sylelle gave her new purpose, and bestowed upon her the Domesday Book of Slaanesh, an unholy census containing details of the the most shameful sexual desires of every living being in the galaxy - now a member of the Order of the Honeyed Abyss, Verity proudly recites the most abhorrent fantasies of enemy generals during battle for all to hear, shattering the morale of their subordinates as they realise the kinds of men they are expected to lay down their lives for.
Sister Josefa
Josefa was formerly a member of the Pronatus Order of Dutiful Care, in which she specialised in the preservation of ancient battle standards of the Orders Militant, a pursuit she remains tangentially involved in as a follower of Slaanesh: in battle she wears a patchwork coat over her armour composed of fragments of enemy banners, and she specifically targets enemy standard bearers to add to her ‘collection’. She maintains that every prisoner she has taken has willingly surrendered their banner to her, but this is only technically true, in that she inflicts hideous tortures upon them until they relent; she never kills her prisoners though, keeping them alive indefinitely even after they give in to her, so that any enemy who sees their own sigil as part of her coat will know that one of their brothers or sisters still lives in unspeakable agony in her ‘care’.
Sister Julienne
Known as the Midwife of Slaanesh, Julienne is a former Sister Hospitaller obsessed with exploring the intricacies of summoning sorcery. Her speciality is the creation of 'daughter-daemons', daemonettes manifested into the physical plane in a more tangible fashion than their warp-summoned counterparts, using a living host - Julienne uses her medical training and warp-enhanced tools to fashion artificial wombs inside her victims, into which she summons nascent daemonettes, who quickly grow to maturity and violently tear their way out of their 'parents'. She rarely ventures into the field, preferring to remain in her 'nursery' on Eden, where a steady stream of victims are brought to her by other members of the warband eager to witness the spectacle of her work; in between 'births' she spends her time studying the library of arcane tomes Sylelle provides for her, while nursing the 'children' she brings into the world.
Saint Valerie, the Salvation Engine
Formerly a mere sister of the Honeyed Abyss, Valerie achieved ‘sainthood’ - in the eyes of her fellow heretics - by corrupting a venomcrawler the Bringers of Wonder had captured during a raid on an Alpha Legion warband. Having taken a particular fascination with the machine, which had been disarmed of its ranged weapons and consigned to a torture theatre, Valerie petitioned Sylelle for custody of it - which was granted on the basis that whatever happened should prove entertaining - and, after engaging in autocannibalistic rituals of her own devising as preparation, had her sisters feed what remained of her to the crawler. After a lengthy digestion Valerie’s soul succeeded in possessing the daemon engine from within and warped its form to her liking, creating a simulacrum of her former body rising from what had been its maw among various other mutations. In place of the amputated excruciator cannons, Valerie’s former weapon mounts now sport neural tendrils, allowing her to graft herself into the spinal columns of victims on the battlefield, forcing them to turn their own weapons against their former comrades as macabre living gun turrets.
Formerly Sister Misericordia
Sister Misericordia was once a member of the Orders Hospitaller, specifically a minor order that taught an especially zealous interpretation of the Imperial Faith that maintained all of existence was the work of the Emperor as part of His divine plan that would (eventually) lift humanity above suffering etc. etc. For Misericordia personally this caused some distress, as when treating the wounds of the Sisters in her care she felt anger towards those who had harmed them, who, even if they were heretics or xenos, were supposedly part of the Emperor’s grand design, and therefore - as Misericordia reasoned - to be cherished (even as they were rightfully destroyed), not hated. Having spent every spare moment praying to the Emperor for salvation from her own ‘cruelty’, Misericordia instead received a visit from Sylelle in one of her whimsical moods, who turned the unfortunate Sister into a chaos spawn. From her now very limited point of view, the creature that was once Misericordia had her wish granted, as she exists in a state of pure benevolence - feeling rapturous ecstasy from the horrific mutations inflicted upon her, she takes every opportunity to infect anything she is herded towards with her virulently contagious bodily fluids, in the knowledge that they too will experience the pleasure she feels as their bodies erupt in a grotesque maelstrom of uncontrolled mutation.
The Xenonian 696th
An Astra Militarum regiment drawn from the famously fierce tribes of Xenonia, the 696th seemed cursed. Even before its raising, the winning tribal confederacy of the ritual contests determining eligibility for the Guard was struck by an outbreak of 'the Sacrifice', a local plague, which reduced the pool of winners to the point that the Imperial tithe was only barely reached - and only by putting forward almost 70% unbonded warriors, an ill omen for the Xenonians who prize the fighting skill of bond-sister pairs. During integration exercises against the Listine 87th an outbreak of genuine hostility during live-fire training drew a disproportionate response from the prideful Listines, who directed artillery against the 696th's HQ camp, killing most of the senior staff and leaving a scarbride - normally equivalent to a lieutenant - to be appointed Colonel of the regiment. On entry to service the 696th was assigned the troopship Caliban - itself regarded with suspicion in Navy circles after an accidental firing of its main drive during construction killed thousands of labourers and serfs as its void dock was breached - and, on their first deployment, both ship and crew vanished during warp transit; Militarum officials, though failing to detect evidence of any actual curse through the Emperor's Tarot, nonetheless directed that subsequent regiments raised from Xenonia would begin with the 700th, to place symbolic distance between them and their ill-fated predecessor. While the Imperial record lists the 696th as lost without survivors, there have been unconfirmed sightings of their insignia on the armour of traitor Militarum bands accompanying the Bringers of Wonder; according to the testimony of Sister Innocentia (see below) Caliban had eventually crashlanded on Eden, where the remnants of the 696th, already crazed from warp exposure after the ship's Geller fields became erratic, were easily corrupted to the worship of Slaanesh.
The Six Daughters
An elite cadre of daemonettes, the Six Daughters - Humility, Innocence, Charity, Tranquility, Temperance, and Clemency - have the distinction of being Sylelle’s biological offspring, the result of her coupling with a Keeper of Secrets. Depraved even by the standards of daemons of Slaanesh, the Six Daughters are favourites of Sylelle as warriors and bedmates, displaying bottomless reserves of lust and savagery in both roles. When not actively engaged with their mistress they roam Eden, killing or coupling with its denizens apparently at random - it is said that whatever passes for Sylelle’s soul is shared with them, and she feels everything they experience.
The Maestro
Legend has it that during a visit to a tithe world during the Great Crusade, Fulgrim was so moved by the performance of a child selected to sing the praises of the Emperor as his legion made landfall that he directed his apothecaries to induct the boy, named Canticum, into the Emperor’s Children. Few expected him to survive, for he was somewhat frail even by human standards, and the extensive medical treatments, training, and indoctrination were punishing on him, but despite his suffering Canticum continued to sing for his masters, and those who heard him were forced to agree the legion would be greater for his presence, if he lived. His training took three times as long as any other recruit, but with Fulgrim’s encouragement, at last Canticum became Brother Canticum, and served the Emperor both in battle and in continuing to sing his praises for his legion-Brothers to admire.
Though believed to have perished during the Heresy, according to the testimony of Sister Innocentia (see below) Brother Canticum was reborn as the Maestro, a heretic monstrosity first recorded by the Inquisition in the 33rd Millennium. Sharing traits of both Noise Marine and Obliterator, the Maestro’s body is a constantly mutating maelstrom of sonic weaponry - however unlike its Noise Marine brethren’s lethally discordant ‘song’, the Maestro’s orchestral arsenal creates music of such reality-defying beauty that only powerful psykers can hear it and survive. To all other mortal beings, an instant of the Maestro’s melody is immediately lethal, as the listener’s brain cannot retain any concept of lesser sound alongside the totality of the Maestro’s musical perfection, and the victim’s auditory senses, and memory of hearing any form of sound in their entire lives, are instantly erased; the mental whiplash of going from a split-second of sonic perfection to the utter absence of even the awareness of sound causes a psychic implosion, with effects ranging from immediate daemonic possession to in some cases the victim’s head exploding into a miniature warp rift.
Although not truly a member of the Bringers of Wonder - on the thankfully rare occasions it goes into battle against the Imperium, it may be with any Slaanehsi warband - the Maestro is reputed to currently make its home on Eden, where it is one of the few beings Sylelle treats as an honoured guest rather than a disposable plaything.
The Edenborn
The ‘Edenborn’ are the offspring of the denizens of Eden. Whether conceived during cult rituals honouring Slaanesh or as a result of prisoners suffering the vile attentions of their captors, any child brought into being on the daemonworld is insane from the moment of its birth; only the limits of their infant bodies prevent them slaughtering their mothers and anyone else within reach as soon as they breathe air for the first time. Impossible to raise normally - even by the standards of ‘normality’ of chaos cults - these babies are left on the edges of particularly remote wilderness regions of the planet, where they are taken in by the tribes of feral daemonettes that dwell there, presided over by creatures known only as ‘the mothers’. In these inhuman societies the children are raised to a semblance of mental stability, taught to forage and hunt - animals and humans alike - and schooled in the ways of Slaanesh by their daemonic parents.
While in the normal course of their lives the Edenborn are unfailingly hostile to anything outside their tribes, when raiding parties are assembled to attack the Imperium or other rivals, groups of adult Edenborn will peacefully approach the obscene carnivals held to honour the departing warriors; they will in turn be treated with something approaching reverence by the cultists and even heretic Astartes, and afforded places on the vessels sent into the warp in search of fresh prey. On the eye of battle these Edenborn perform savage rituals in which they carve their bodies open, tearing out their organs in an apparent attempt to shed the last vestiges of their humanity, and become creatures solely of Slaanesh. Miraculously some - though never all - survive, and launch themselves into battle among the rabble of cultists naked and gushing blood from their emptied torsos, sustained by chaos alone. Nonetheless they remain no more durable than the humans they once were, and given their absolute disregard for their own safety as they charge they are inevitably cut down by enemy fire in short order; one can only assume Slaanesh finds some satisfaction in watching their short and miserable lives nonetheless.
Kariad
Kariad was born a magus in a genestealer cult, with a chance mutation - while her mind was imprinted with the absolute loyalty to the cult engineered into genestealer offspring, her actual psyche was untouched by it, leaving her with full knowledge of her station and purpose, but no compulsion to follow it. Having feigned loyalty during childhood, she discerned some glimmer of the cult’s true purpose during her teenage years, and - without ever being questioned, as her peers and even the world’s Patriarch could sense the absolute loyalty in her - she used the cult’s resources to prepare an escape route for herself before the ‘Children of the Void’ arrived, and abandoned her fellow cult members to their fate as she fled ahead of the Tyranid advance; it may be said she had some trace of sentiment for her former family, since she took the time to retrieve her father’s skull before she fled and still carries it as a memento, although since her father was still alive at the time this ought not to be considered familial affection in the conventional sense. Discovering her by chance Sylelle took her in, and briefly made her something of a protégé, bestowing a measure of chaos sorcery on her to allow her to impregnate victims in the manner of a pureblood genestealer - not for strategic gain, but simply because she found the notion amusing. Having encouraged Kariad to relish her newfound abilities Sylelle predictably lost interest, but made no effort to protect the denizens of Eden from Kariad’s predations as she built a cult of her own - Kariad, for her part, has limited herself to cultists and prisoners the warband does not miss, and occasionally allies with them in raids on Imperial space to maintain good favour with the Legionaries, unwilling to test whether Sylelle would aid her if the traitor Astartes should start to see her as a threat and turn against her.
The Dream and the Red Lady
Possibly Eden’s most unlikely residents, the Dream is a Drukhari former Wych, who abandoned Commorragh to satisfy a fetish for endangering herself that the brutal gladiator pits were insufficient to satisfy - as an in-demand performer she had earned a place with a prestigious wych cult which deterred any attempts on her life outside planned matches, whereas in the Eye of Terror she is in constant danger, and the merest lapse in concentration could see her soul condemned to Slaanesh’s torments, a horrific prospect even for the famously depraved Drukhari. Among the Bringers of Wonder it is a topic of debate whether she is an enemy of Slaanesh or whether her near-suicidal thrillseeking makes her a worshipper in her own way; regardless there are countless devotees, on Eden and elsewhere in the Eye of Terror, who would jump at the opportunity to provide Slaanesh with an Eldar soul. Sylelle protects the Dream only insofar as she refuses to allow ranged attempts on her life, permitting only face-to-face challenges, which the Dream’s skill with her twin monomolecular-edged blades has thus far seen her survive. The Red Lady meanwhile is the Dream’s former patron, a Drukhari noble who was so unwilling to never see her fight again that she accompanied her to the Eye of Terror. She is inseparable from the Dream, even in battle, although she rarely fights herself - the Red Lady prefers murder without combat, and any challenger in duel or battle, who does not press the Dream sufficiently to force her to kill them outright will be left crippled for the Red Lady to practise her art on, with the gruesome, near-unrecognisable corpses left afterwards preserved and added to the couple’s ‘garden’ on Eden.
The Skindancer
The Skindancer was once a Callidus assassin, provided with specialised training and indoctrination in the hope that she could infiltrate Eden and assassinate Sylelle early in her ‘reign’, before it was generally known that she had achieved daemonhood. While successful in surviving Eden’s perils and reaching the palace Sylelle was then dwelling in, her attack ultimately failed - or rather, Sylelle regarded the dozens of lethal injuries inflicted upon her as ‘foreplay’, and went on to amuse herself with the assassin for some time. Eventually tiring of physical play, Sylelle decided to corrupt her new plaything in an unconventional manner, using her sorcery to shield the assassin’s mind from the psychic influence of chaos, but summoning the essence of dozens of daemonettes to directly possess the polymorphine within her. Driven insane by the contortions of the body she was now trapped within, the assassin broke, and now serves Sylelle willingly in battle, putting her daemonically-enhanced shapeshifting abilities to grotesque use in subjugating promising opponents in duels.
Serpentine
A reluctant ally of Sylelle’s, Serpentine can trace her misfortune to the War of the False Emperor, a brief but bloody campaign by a chaos warlord styling himself ‘the Emperor Reborn’, who blazed a trail of destruction through a sizeable swath of the Segmentum Pacificus before being put down. While hard evidence of his fate was lost with the destruction of his flagship, it is rumoured that when challenged - not by a rival from within his warband, or an elite Imperial assassin, but by a simple Sister of Battle - four champions stood by his side, one representing each of the chaos gods: the warriors of Khorne, Tzeentch, and Nurgle fell in turn, but Serpentine, the chosen of Slaanesh, fled to save herself from the Sister apparently favoured by the true Emperor, and thus escaped. Hated even by her fellow heretics for her desertion of her lord, Serpentine has found sanctuary with Sylelle - not out of any feeling of sympathy, but because Sylelle finds it entertaining to watch the progress of vengeful chaos champions travelling to Eden and attempting to fight their way through its perils in their efforts to strike Serpentine down.
For her own part, Serpentine is reported to keep her distance from her adoptive warband, having given up all hope of redemption in the eyes of Slaanesh. She nonetheless accompanies them on their frequent forays into Imperial space, taking little part in their festivals of violence and violation, but instead using the opportunities to scour Adepta Sororitas reliquaries for information regarding the Order of the Blade Corvus - an Order that does not appear in any Imperial records - and an individual known as ‘The Rose’.
Imperious Spud
Possibly the worst chaos cultist - not in the sense of ‘most monstrous’, but rather ‘bad at it’ - Imperious Spud was born on the agriworld Akrazel’s Disappointment; his parents, a pair of unassuming tuber farmers, had consulted the local Ministorum chapel regarding the boy’s likely fate shortly after his birth, and on being assured by the preacher (after a sizeable donation of tasty potatoes) that he would become a great general in the Astra Militarum and win many glorious battles for the Emperor, they named him accordingly, and further donations secured him a basic education that, they hoped, would be the first step on his path to greatness. Regardless of prophecy, young Imperious instead wound up in a planetary guard motor pool, charged with making an hourly account of the number of armoured vehicles awaiting repair; since the pool contained one Chimera, and no tech-priests, this was not a challenging task, but he found it quite satisfying. After months of diligently pointless service he fell to chaos since his fellow menials were part of a chaos cult, and he assumed he was supposed to be doing what they were doing; following a raid by the Bringers of Wonder (incidentally denying several sectors of the Imperium of quality root vegetables, forcing them to subsist on beetroots and cabbage instead) Imperious ended up on Eden, where he continues to unimpress. Despite barely being able to wield a weapon, and his most diligent efforts at worshipping Slaanesh amounting to (after much effort) dyeing his robe pink, he has survived, apparently by being so uninteresting that neither friend nor foe really notice him; indeed after several years in the Eye of Terror he remains uncorrupted, since apparently even the all-pervasive influence of the Ruinous Powers can’t be bothered, and only remains a part of the Bringers’ cultist rabble because he doesn’t have the imagination to leave.
Imperial Response
Aside from after-action reports given by the survivors (where there are any) of the Bringers of Wonders’ raids - which shed little light on their nature beyond the brutality typical of the traitor legions and their followers - the Imperium’s knowledge of the warband comes primarily from the testimony extracted from Sister Innocentia, formerly a devout sister of the Adepta Sororitas Order of Blessed Obedience, believed killed in action during one such raid, but later discovered wounded but alive in the aftermath of another several months later, having evidently cast off her faith and served Slaanesh in the interim. Swiftly excommunicated and declared a heretic, she was secretly spirited off from her staged execution by torture by the Inquisition, who hoped to extract valuable strategic information from her. However it was quickly discovered that, while eager to describe the ‘delights’ she had discovered during her time with the Bringers of Wonder, her newfound obliviousness to the distinction between pleasure and pain made it virtually impossible to compel her to focus on topics of any practical value.
For want of anything better to do with her - and on the slight chance that she might eventually divulge something useful - she was moved to an oubliette base, populated solely by a handful of maintenance servitors, and Scrivener Cotton, a scribe who had had the misfortune to offend Inquisitor Absalom Gilt by taking note of trivial factual errors in an address he made to his underlings. By way of punishment, Cotton has been assigned to spend his days ‘interviewing’ Innocentia - which generally amounts to simply having to listen to her disjointed recollections - until such time as he has uncovered sufficient valuable intelligence to be considered redeemed for his slight. Despite his cynicism mounting as weeks turn to months with only the company of voiceless servitors and a heretic madwoman, Cotton is as yet unsuspecting that his penance is classified as indefinite, unless one of his superiors thinks to reassign him - which given that Inquisitor Gilt’s attention has since turned to the brewing Tyranid conflict and nobody else is bothering to read Cotton’s reports, is unlikely.
Foes
Zaran Craftworld
The Bringers of Wonder and the forces of Zaran came into conflict during Sylelle’s attempt to seize the ‘Dreams of Lileath’, a psychic artefact reputed to be a lost fragment of the goddess Lileath, daughter of Isha, to be consumed by Slaanesh. Zaran’s Lavair - a rank especially prized on Zaran, held in equal esteem to senior Seers on other craftworlds - Eloshar discerned Slaanesh’s scheme and pursued Sylelle, who briefly captured her before Eloshar’s acquaintances among the Harlequins located her and routed Sylelle’s forces, leading to the Dreams being returned to Zaran and taking seat in the craftworld’s unused throne of Khaine - Zaran never having had a fragment of the war god to generate his avatar, this unusual arrangement resulted in their forces being able to call on a similarly powerful Avatar of Lileath. Eloshar for her part was troubled by Sylelle’s - unsurprising - attempts to seduce her during her captivity, fearing that there was a kernel of truth to Sylelle’s belief that the vitality of chaos tempted her in contrast to the staid confines of her craftworld; Sylelle meanwhile, unwilling to deny herself any aspect of the emotional spectrum no matter how contrary to her goals, developed a genuine romantic attraction to Eloshar, leading to her engaging in an ongoing macabre courtship where the Bringers of Wonder attack Zaran’s forces at random simply to provide Sylelle the opportunity to flirt with Eloshar mid-battle.
The Xenonian 70Xth
Responding to reports of survivors of the Xenonian 696th regiment being seen among the Bringers of Wonder, Xenonia petitioned for a standalone tithing to the Astra Militarum between the raising of the 704th and 705th regiments, pursuant to Xenonia's native honour code which demanded a punitive expedition against such traitors. The 70Xth regiment is a quarter the size of a standard tithe, but drew heavily on 'bloodmaids', feral warriors normally excluded from Guard eligibility due to their propensity to murder anyone outside their own clan lines; the particular honour debt invoked in the creation of the 70Xth is one of the few causes in the Xenonian code that would compel such warriors to cooperate with one another. Militarum chain of command is another matter; upon deployment the 70Xth essentially hijacked their own troopship, Carrion, and have frequently raided Imperial shipping and settlements for munitions and supplies rather than awaiting resupply through official channels, earning their Colonel Phinna Kurz and her troops a standing order of mass execution (officially for "unsound methods") - however this order, and other punitive measures, have been delayed by Imperial decree for so long as the 70Xth continues to use the proceeds of their raids to attack traitor forces, which they do with bloodthirsty zeal at every opportunity. Meanwhile the Militarum has taken to leaving supply caches ahead of the projected course of Carrion, to mitigate the civilian casualties they would otherwise cause while 'resupplying'.
Canonicity
Index Astartes: The Emperor’s Children (White Dwarf 255, republished in Index Astartes I) mentions Sylelle in passing, in the sidebar related to Eidolon; this is Sylelle’s only foray into canon, but I like to pretend this makes everything about the Bringers of Wonder canonical as well (I know that’s not how it works, I just snuck her name in as a joke). The Inquisition is overstating the case that Eidolon was Sylelle’s ‘consort’; she just had sex with him once, but since an Inquisitor noticed - it was in the middle of a battle - they assumed the rest.
