Malice is the shadow at the heart of the Ruinous Powers, named by some the renegade god, the fifth power that stands against the other four even as it is born of the same Warp. Where Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch and Slaanesh embody the great passions of mortal life, Malice embodies the impulse to tear all things down, including Chaos itself. It is anarchy given hunger, spite given voice, the will to destroy for destruction's own barren sake.
The symbol of Malice is the skull rent through, and its followers are few and fractured, for the god's very nature forbids the unity that sustains the other powers. Those who serve it turn upon the servants of the greater gods with particular relish, seeing in the crusades and plagues and schemes of Chaos merely more idols to be shattered. Some warbands among the Chaos Space Marines are whispered to bear its threefold mark, waging a war of pure negation against loyalist and Chaos worshipper alike.
Whether Malice is a true god, a splinter of the others, or a lie told by the Warp to devour its own is a question without answer, for the god of self-destruction thrives on doubt as readily as on ruin. It offers no reward but the joy of the end, no purpose but the unmaking of purpose. In a galaxy already dying, Malice is the promise that even Chaos will one day turn its knives upon itself, and laugh as it bleeds.
The pantheon continues
