The Void Dragon

The Void Dragon, whose true name is Mag'ladroth, was reckoned the greatest and most terrible of all the c'tan star gods. Where its brethren embodied death, deceit or destruction, the Void Dragon was a master of the material realm and of the deep principles of technology and energy that underpin it, and the warriors it fielded in the ancient wars were said to be all but invincible. In the myths of the aeldari it looms as a figure of pure oblivion, a bringer of wanton devastation whose very existence is a threat to the ordered cosmos.

Like the rest of its kind, the Void Dragon met its downfall in the great revolt of the necrons. When the Silent King turned upon the star gods, even the mightiest of the c'tan could not withstand the god-killing weapons arrayed against it, and Mag'ladroth was defeated and shattered into shards to be bound and hoarded like its brethren. Yet a being of such primordial power does not fade quietly, and fragments of the Void Dragon are whispered to lie scattered and slumbering across the galaxy, each a sliver of a force that once threatened to unmake worlds.

One such shard has become entangled with the deepest mysteries of the Imperium of Man. Many tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus revere a being they name the Machine God, and there are those who believe that the object of their worship is in truth a great shard of the Void Dragon, the so-called Dragon of Mars. According to the most closely guarded secrets, this entity was imprisoned beneath the red planet in the labyrinthine depths of the Noctis Labyrinth by the immortal being who would one day become the Emperor of Mankind, chained there since before the Age of Strife.

If that belief holds true, then the Cult Mechanicus has spent thousands of years venerating a fragment of an alien god of destruction, and the machine-worship at the heart of the Imperium rests upon a lie of cosmic proportions. What is certain is that the Void Dragon, whole or shattered, remains among the most dangerous entities the galaxy has ever known, a sleeping catastrophe that necron and Imperial alike have reason to pray never fully wakes.