Fanfic / Be All My Sins

"Alright then. Well if you'll excuse me, I've got to go and find Luce before she eats someone without me."

I stood up, clambered back over the table to Malcom's consternation, and then paused in the doorway as I was leaving. Something didn't seem right about what I'd just said.

"I mean before she eats anyone. That is what I meant. Not the other thing."

Yes. Exactly. Didn't want them getting the wrong, and totally spurious, idea.

Be All My Sins is a Warhammer 40K fanfic starring Natalie, a goth girl who gets dropped onto an imperial planet during a chaos attack. Things go about as well as expected. Soon captured, singled out and recruited, watch as her own morals decay and spiral out of control, like a slippery slope covered in blood and terror... and daemons.

The Fanfic can be found in the Spacebattles Creative forum.

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Be All My Sins provides examples of:

• Affably Evil: Skeryn, and Natalie more and more
• Anti-Villain: Natalie. She starts out with the simple motive of surviving as long as possible in the Warhammer 40k 'verse, and delaying her torture in the Warp by daemons upon death, but quickly becomes corrupted enough to casually resort to murder just to get out of awkward situations, and feel little about it afterwards.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted. Flak armor won't stop many weapons most of the time, but it will stop some weapons some of the time, making it a better combat option than shirtsleeves.
• Bad Boss: Discussed with Skeryn, though no outright answer is ever given. Where does she get her ritual sacrifice victims; are they failed members of her crew, or simple kidnapping victims, or deliberately purpose-recruited, or...?
  • Downplayed at the very least with her apathy towards Natalie and Luce's encounter aboard her ship involving several victims.
• Berserk Button: Do NOT damage Nat's tail. It pains her greatly, which she very much does not appreciate, being entirely willing to take Extreme Mêlée Revenge in retaliation.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Natalie's most useful and prominent mutation for most of the story is a dangerous bladed tail that can inflict stabbing and slashing wounds, feels pleasurable for her to use in combat (or against less equal victims), and comes with combat instincts. It's well-earned, considering she got it after sacrificing a case of Eldar Spirit Stones to Slaanesh.
• Black Comedy: Fairly frequently featured, often with Natalie's odd or askew reactions to things that would horrify an ordinary person, as her mind gets more and more warped, and her self-awareness and decision-making prowess... varies greatly. And her interactions with other characters. Heck, see the page quote.
• Boot Camp Episode: The aptly named "Boot Camp" story arc, where Natalie undergoes basic training under the Imperial Guard..
• The Corruption: Chaos in general and Luce in particular. The corruption train has no brakes.
• Combat Pragmatist: Natalie quite deliberately embraces this, and will openly advocate for exploiting any advantage you can get to win a fight.
  • Nearly all of her fights with Khornates end in either psykery or other trickery, such as when she explicitly agrees to fight without using her Psyker powers. The second the match starts? The warrior's legs are shot off by Simms, one of Natalie's ...Friends?
  • See also Nat's discussion with Malcolm about using every tool that's available to you.
• Cyberpunk: The Marrow arc revolves around a planet like this, run by several megacorps and with technology superior to real life but rather different in both aesthetic and philosophy to the more common, largely war-or-practicality oriented supertech of the 40k 'verse, being far more commercialized and closer to real life culturally.
• Demonic Possession: Early on, Luce tries to pull this off on Nat. A quick visit to Skeryn's cryogenically-frozen Blank quickly dissuades her, and later in the story she decides Nat is much more interesting as a summoner than a bodysuit.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Exaggerated when Natalie's around Luce; Nat is completely unable to resist her seductive aura, especially when being touched by her.
• Driven to Villainy: it was a very short drive, but Nat's motive in joining Chaos was just to survive a bad situation.
• Face Palm: Dinola's reaction to a lot of Nat's antics. Natalie for much of the insanity of Chaos cultists and Imperials alike.
• Fair-Weather Mentor: Downplayed with Skeryn. She does intend for Natalie to survive the large-scale ritual she's preparing her for, and would prefer to not have to directly mind-break and sculpt her psyche into shape for it, but she is prepared to do so and mostly sees Natalie as an amusement. See also her entry under Sink or Swim Mentor.
• Future Me Scares Me: Past!Natalie is horrified to discover her present day self is a Chaos cultist.
• The Gadfly: Skeryn, mostly though not exclusively to Natalie. She starts out messing with Natalie by deliberately playing to Nat's expectations of her being a monster, then develops a habit of throwing Natalie into situations without giving her relevant information - or much information or preparation at all. Also, the constant cannibalism 'jokes' - and as Natalie notes, she likely can't call Skeryn's bluff, because she probably isn't bluffing.
• Human Sacrifice: A major first step for the beginning cultist. Other rituals also involve or utilize human deaths.
• Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: It's 40K, so naturally this applies. Warp travel gives Nat nightmares and grates on her sanity.
• Hypocritical Humor: Natalie's endless complaining about insane cultists. She very much is one herself - and knows it.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Nat keeps promising not to "cheat" with sorcery in fights. Nat keeps lying, or finding other ways to cheat.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Nat's reputation and sort of true
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Slaanesh certainly likes this trope; while nothing openly lewd happens onscreen, these themes crop up a lot.
  • Rituals done in Slaanesh's name usually both involve murders and prove highly pleasurable for Natalie.
  • Her Slaanesh-gifted murdertail is also entirely too pleasurable for her to use.
  • Nat's offscreen encounters with Luce seem to invariably be very sexual, very pleasurable, and involve a bodycount if not outright cannibalism.
  • Near the end of the Visionary arc, Skeryn trades for a number of artifacts, including a sword that induces intense pleasure in its victim, and of course decides to test it on Natalie.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Natalie starts out by choosing damnation over death, and from that point on seems to try and get out of her corruption... by getting ahead of her corruption. Though she still hangs on to many hang-ups.
• Kill It with Fire: Natalie's natural discipline as a psyker is pyromancy. This trope follows.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Is joked about in posts on the thread, such as how Natalie could be lured into assassinating the God-Emperor by Luce, as well as within Natalie's own self-talk at times, when she's trying to avoid responsibility for her actions.
• Mystical Plague: Nurglites like these in general, and helping the nurglite Timothy cause one (by 'blessing' parts of a Space Hulk with necrotic magics before it crashes into a planet) is part of the objective of the Hulk arc.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Skeryn, the Treachery of Flesh, Who Teaches Flesh Betrayal. As a biomancer, the epithets are quite apt, though she's never seen using them for hostile purposes.
  • Implied at the end of the Warp's Angels arc; Keth reveals that he introduced Natalie by another name, reasoning his warriors wouldn't have believed her real one, though we're not told what he called her instead.
  • And the Noodle Incident is subverted in the later chapter Marrow; the name he called her was Skotos, meaning Darkness in historical languages, and with several additional connotations that could be considered appropriate to Natalie, many of them scary or unpleasant.
• Natural Weapon: Natalie's tail, and she also eventually acquires claws by way of mutation.
• Noodle Incident: The humor of the story often runs on these, though sometimes (like in the case of Natalie's alternate name) they're revealed (or at least further hinted on) later on.
• Outside-the-Box Tactic: About to attack a large group of Khornate warriors and ambushed by orks? Propose a competition where whoever kills more of the enemy gets their ship.
• Plague Master: Timothy, a worshiper of Nurgle, the Chaos God of Infection and Decay. He is able to 'bless' a Space Hulk with corruption that will cause its decay, and plagues in humans.
• Protagonist Journey to Villain: A rather accelerated version. As oft repeated here and on the thread, the corruption train has no brakes.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Natalie takes on a variation of this attitude when cooperating with other Chaos forces, approaching their tasks and situations with her signature pragmatism in order to achieve their mutual interests. She allows and even enables other cultists in worshiping as they see fit, rather than getting drawn into ideological opposition and infighting (beyond necessary/unavoidable self defense), but also will not alter her own personal strategies and mindset and approaches to fit in with the sensibilities of other Gods and their followers.
  • She's also explicitly aware, in her more lucid and reflective moments (or often in conversation with others) that Slaanesh would be considered evil by most sane people, and objectively causes unjust harm to both individuals and the galaxy, but continues to worship Slaanesh out of a combination of Evil Feels Good and self-interest/self-preservation to gain and keep the power to continue to live as comfortably as possible in the Warhammer 40k universe.
• Running Gag: Natalie continues to get in situations or react in ways to convince others she is a cannibal, no matter how much she protests. As time goes on it becomes a bit more true.
• Self-Insert Fic: This is explicitly one from the outset. Natalie is the author, summoned via Warp shenanigans among several others to the Warhammer 40k universe.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: Skeryn is a Downplayed example to Natalie. She does provide her with study materials and basic techniques on controlling the Warp, using Psyker powers, and invoking Warp rituals, but is aloof otherwise and very rarely directly teaches her anything. Also, she had her forcibly exposed to a Blank to get her to understand her nature as a Psyker, explicitly because she was too impatient to use slower methods. Last but certainly not least, the denial of information on her missions and the locales she sends Natalie to...
• Team Killer: Natalie doesn't deliberately set out to be this, given her pragmatic approach (when she has the chance and ability to think), but Luce isn't always so restrained, and Nats herself isn't shy of defending herself against other Chaos-aligned individuals where necessary. Nor is she always in the mood to be diplomatic. Such as that one time she murdered a street preacher out of simple irritation, embarrassment, and feeling put on the spot..
• Trapped in Villainy: Natalie, at the very start. She presumes "Lexus"/Skeryn is a monster who'll kill her for putting a toe out of line, and well, she's basically right - Skeryn really is deliberately manipulating Natalie to emotionally bind her to following Skeryn, and while she eventually treats Natalie as somewhere between an amusement and an apprentice, her primary goal is to ready Natalie for participation in a large-scale ritual, and she's prepared to break her mind forcibly and directly mold her into the role if necessary.
  • Discussed, especially in "Transit End" when Natalie briefly considers attempting an escape on the Hive World Sophoss, but she believes there's no true hope of escaping Skeryn. However, her self-talk also argues that the power of Chaos and pleasures of worshiping Slaanesh would be too tempting to her even at that point - possibly even if she were returned to her own universe! - and it's left ambiguous as to how much this is true at the time, and quickly left behind as she slips and spirals deeper into corruption.
• Tricked Out Time: Discussed in the Hulk arc, alongside You Already Changed the Past. Natalie notes that how time travel (via the Warp) works is inconsistent in its rules even In-Universe due to the chaotic vagaries of the Warp - so they can maximize their chances of success by playing into these tropes (by effectively putting The Plague's release on a time delay, so that it will be released after the period of time where the lack of a plague was observed).
• Villain Protagonist: Natalie. Completing a murder-ritual under the threat of death or mind-breaking brainwashing is one thing, but she 100% had the choice to leave the Eldar Spirit Stones right where they were, and not become involved in that affair, rather than deliberately sacrificing them to eternal torture and/or consumption by Slaanesh.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Dinola and Natalie regularly refer to each other as "freak" and "musclehead."
• Xenomorph Xerox: While Natalie's canon mutations don't really fit the trope, only really having the Beware My Stinger Tail directly in common, she got memed as such in the thread, spawning fanart and omakes of Natalie mutated into a xenomorph.
• You Already Changed the Past: Discussed in the Hulk arc, alongside Tricked Out Time - see that entry.