| “ | Call them what you will—Krell, Psyrens or Enslavers. Just one witch, unsanctioned, caused the destruction of Hive Skorpios when one of those things used her brain as a gateway to this world. Within three days the entire hive’s population was reduced to drooling mindslaves. Within three weeks an entire continent was at war. And all because the governor thought his family should be exempt from the psyker cull and refused to give his daughter to the Black Ships. | „ |
| ~ Inquisitor Mallen of the Ordo Xenos on Enslavers |
Enslavers are recurring antagonists in the Warhammer 40,000 franchise. They are a malevolent alien species native to the Warp, who will take over the minds of unprotected psychic beings to use as conduits to invade the material universe.
Enslavers have been featured since the 1st edition of Warhammer 40,000, albeit in a drastically different form from their modern incarnation.
Biology[]
The true, Warp-based form of Enslavers is unknown. However, in realspace, Enslavers have 2 meter tall, transparent, sac-like bodies vaguely resembling some sort of spheroid jellyfish, trailing 8 to 12 tendrils from their undersides, two of which are longer than the rest. Their faces are distinctly armored and arachnid in form, bearing multiple eyes of different sizes, and Enslavers move by floating. As Warp-based entities, Enslavers are able to transcend spacetime to travel across the galaxy, using psychic emanations of realspace beings as their beacons. However, the intelligence of Enslavers is unknown, as they have never made any attempt of communicating with humans, and do not show any other form of communication, nor any usage of tools, yet have displayed the ability to act in rational manners and make reasonable decisions about their actions.
The true power of Enslavers is their ability to track, enslave, and manifest through psykers. The psychic emanations of intelligent beings draw Enslavers to them, from up to 10 light years away, where Enslavers search for an unprotected or unwary psyker to latch on to, gradually converting the psykers into living Warp gates that the Enslavers can then use to enter realspace, destroying the psykers in the process. Once in realspace, Enslavers can freely mind control multiple beings at a time, even non-psykers, within a range of 50 meters. Once a being is under Enslaver control, they will mindlessly follow any and all commands an Enslaver gives them, regardless of how self-destructive it is. Once enough Enslavers have entered realspace, they can enslave entire hive cities, although exceptionally powerful Enslavers can perform that feat alone.
History[]
Enslaver Plague[]
Over 60 million years ago, the C'Tan and their Necron servants fought against the Old Ones in the devastating War in Heaven. The unfathomable destruction caused by the conflict destabilized the Warp, especially due to the Old Ones creating a number of psychic species to be their soldiers, whose psychic connections to the Warp turned it into a chaotic, hellish dimension. This also spawned a number of Warp-spawned predators, including Enslavers, who eventually broke out of the Warp by using psychic species as gateways, including the ancient Eldar. The Enslavers created massive armies from those they took control of, and rushed across the galaxy in assaults on Old Ones strongholds, ultimately wiping out the Old Ones. Thus, the C'Tan retreated, only for their own Necrons to turn on them, trapping their masters in technological prisons before entering hibernation. The Enslavers spread out to take what was left of the galaxy, rendering it into a wasteland until their psyker swarms died off. The surviving Eldar, ascending to the greatest power in the galaxy, trained themselves to be immune to the Enslavers. As such, the Enslavers presumably returned to the Warp or died off in droves, temporarily clearing the galaxy of their presence and allowing new life to emerge.
At some point in time, the Necron Overlord Trazyn the Infinite prematurely awoke from hibernation and set out to expand his historical collection. He somehow managed to collect the ossified husk of an Enslaver.
41st millennium[]
Enslavers persist well into the grim darkness of the far future, although they are largely unknown to the Imperium of Man. The Inquisition, however, is keenly aware of the Enslavers and the danger they pose to psykers, especially when especially arrogant officials attempted to circumvent psyker regulations. As fragmented data on Enslavers was gathered, numerous Enslavers were successfully destroyed by the Inquisition when they tried to invade the Scintilla System. Additionally, Enslavers assaulted crafts of Abaddon the Despoiler's Arks of Omen.
