Cabalists

Not every road to the favour of the Dark Gods is walked with an axe. The Cabalists are Chaos warbands led by sorcerers rather than warlords: covens who climb the Path to Glory through ritual, pact, and hoarded forbidden knowledge. Where a warlord earns his gifts in blood spilled openly, a Cabalist earns his in blood spilled precisely: upon an altar, at the correct hour, and always someone else's.

Their particular mastery is the binding of daemons. To a Cabalist the entities of the aether are not objects of worship but tools to be broken and harnessed, much as a horse-lord breaks a wild stallion, and a well-appointed coven marches with a stable of bound daemons straining at its command. It is perilous work (a daemon bound is a daemon forever seeking the flaw in its chains), and the history of the Cabalists is written in the names of masters unmade by their own summonings. Those who survive become terrible indeed. A Cabalist reads the winds of magic as a merchant reads a ledger, and no miracle they call down is ever free: each spell, each summoned horror, each stride along the Path is bought with a soul: a slave's, a rival's, and in the end a portion of their own. They pay without hesitation, having long since decided that a soul is only currency, meant to be spent.