War Priest Charon – The Apostate of Éire

Of all the souls coveted by Hell, none are more sought after than those once destined to serve in the light of the Lord, for they are the sweetest of morsels that Hell can devour. One such figure was the Trench Cleric, Cormac Mac Niadh, a famed resistance fighter of Éire who was captured by Heretic Naval Raiders after the fall of Gaillimh. Taken aboard Hymn of Obscenity, the diabolical arts of Hell’s greatest torturers ravaged his flesh, promising an end to his suffering if he would only renounce his faith and embrace damnation.

For ten years Cormac held firm, but inevitably he eventually cursed the name of God and pledged his soul to Hell everlasting. Cormac Mac Niadh was no more, and in his place arose War Priest Charon, an exalted servant of Hell and champion of the Court of the Seven-Headed Serpent. For decades, Charon served at the left hand of Zacchur the Conqueror, aiding in the war against his former homeland, but the worms of envy forever gnawed at his corrupted soul. Though Éire was a great prize for Hell, Charon’s wanton appetites saw it only as a petty distraction, when far greater treasures were to be claimed elsewhere.

Though none within the Court can prove it, many suspect it was Charon who allowed the Fianna to learn Zacchur was aboard Hymn of Obscenity, and, still further, that it was he who allowed them to reach its magazines and destroy the ship. This, coupled with the collapse of the Irish Hellgate, saw the war turn against the Heretics and led to their ultimate defeat. War Priest Charon took command of the broken fleet and led it back to Gibraltar, successfully fending off the remnants of the British Navy, launched too late from their southern ports. For saving the Heretic fleet, Charon was richly rewarded by the lords of Dis, and his cursed star rose in prominence within Hell’s hierarchy. Yet still Charon wanted more. Envious of the demonic lords that set the course of the Great War, Charon aimed to topple those above him and win a seat at the War Council.

Such a feat would require a mighty prize, and so Charon returned to his former teachings as a War Priest of Saint Patrick – and the old legends of that holy man casting the snakes out of Éire, the roots of which lay in ancient legends of Leviathan, the great sea-serpent cast down by the Lord Himself. Sailing in search of clues and texts that pointed to Leviathan’s resting place, Charon’s flagship, Peccatum Originale, cut a gory swathe across the Mediterranean, ravaging the Athenian coast, murdering thousands on Cyprus, and desecrating the corpse-caves of the Cretan saints. Charon himself is a terrifying figure, clad in armour forged from blood-soaked plates of infernal iron salvaged from Hymn of Obscenity, with a horned elk-skull mask to mock those of Éire taken by the Path of the Beast. In battle, he bears a mighty seven-barrelled falconet and a thorned trench club carved from a branch of the Zaqqum tree to send the souls of his enemies straight to Hell.

Upon piecing together the cosmological circles within the gnostic’s Ophite Diagrams, Charon sailed to the Carrion Coast, where the threads of fate unwoven by his Goetic sorcerers spoke of Leviathan rising again. With Hell at his back, the Apostate of Éire will stop at nothing to awaken the vile serpent and yoke it to his cause, for only with such a powerful weapon can he hope to storm the Iron City of Dis and seize the Hungry Throne for himself.