Home › Units › Harlequins › Death Jesters
1 / 4 · Click to enlargeLore & origins
Known as margorach, or "death-heads", in the Aeldari lexicon, Death Jesters are the heavy weapons specialists of the Harlequin masques and the performers who dance the role of Death itself. Because of the part they play on stage, they walk somewhat apart from their fellow troupers, cultivating a grisly, ironic sense of humour that even the most black-hearted denizens of Commorragh admire. On stage they specialise in daring feats of escapology and lethal risk — "dicing with Death", as they call it — while in war they treat the entire battlefield as a theatre for tragicomedy, delivering their punchlines in bursts of bio-explosive shuriken fire.
A Death Jester is never satisfied with simple slaughter; murder must be seasoned with cruel irony. They have been heard humming or chuckling softly amid the din of combat, pausing to sketch a theatrical bow or offer mocking applause when a victim's demise particularly amuses them. Shooting down an Imperial officer at the climax of an inspiring speech, panicking enemy sappers into fleeing straight across the minefield they just laid, or wounding a heavy-weapons gunner so his wild shot obliterates the very objective he was defending are all considered high art by the margorach.
After the awakening of Ynnead, an entire conclave known as the Brotherhood of Death Jesters allied themselves with the Ynnari. To their minds, raising a god of the dead to destroy Slaanesh through the final sacrifice of the race that birthed the Great Enemy would be the ultimate cosmic jest.
Appearance & wargear
A Death Jester's macabre costume bristles with skulls, death's-head masks and high bone collars fashioned from the skeleton of the troupe's previous Death Jester; when the current wearer finally falls, their own bones are harvested to adorn their successor's suit. Over this ossuary harness they wear a billowing greatcoat hung with jingling bells, a Flip Belt to offset the bulk of their gun, and a dathedi Holo-Suit ("between colours") whose programmable field shatters their silhouette into a prismatic lightstorm as they bound across the field. Their signature weapon is the buanna, or Shrieker Cannon — a long-barrelled shuriken cannon variant that only Death Jesters know how to build and maintain, firing bio-explosive marsgrech discs laced with virulent genetic toxins.
Weapons & Vehicles
The graceful wraithbone gravitic-accelerator firearm of the Craftworld Aeldari, slicing targets to ribbons with silent, monomolecular s…
A master-crafted blade sheathed in a crackling molecular disruption field that parts ceramite, bone and steel with effortless lethality…
The reality-tearing distort weapons of Craftworld Wraithguard and Wraithknights, opening miniature Warp-rifts inside a target to banish…
Explore all 48 entries in the Weapons & Vehicles armoury.
Battlefield role & tactics
While the troupes close for acrobatic melee, Death Jesters hang back or stalk the flanks to provide mobile heavy-weapons support, their covering fire saving their comrades time and again. A single scratch from a Shrieker Cannon's toxin-laced round causes the victim's blood to boil, organs to rupture and metabolism to detonate from within, turning a soldier into a living bomb of jagged bone and scalding gore. Death Jesters delight in firing a single round through the closing door of a packed bunker to turn a supposed sanctuary into a slaughterhouse, and between battles they have been known to pose the corpses of the fallen in bleakly comedic tableaux.
Munitorum & Ordo Xenos Technical Dossier
Classified under Ordo and Departmento Munitorum threat-index protocols as a primary While the troupes close for acrobatic melee, Death Jesters hang back or stalk the flanks to provide mobile heavy-weapons support, their covering fire saving their comrades time and again. A single scratch from a Shrieker Cannon's toxin-laced round causes the victim's blood to boil, organs to rupture and metabolism to detonate from within, turning a soldier into a living bomb of jagged bone and scalding gore. Death Jesters delight in firing a single round through the closing door of a packed bunker to turn a supposed sanctuary into a slaughterhouse, and between battles they have been known to pose the corpses of the fallen in bleakly comedic tableaux. asset of Harlequins, Death Jesters relies on a tightly coupled symbiosis between operator conditioning and primary armament. Field maintenance and biological recovery logs indicate that extended deployment without liturgical recalibration or bio-stasis rest degrades targeting and metabolic stability by less than 4% per solar week—far outperforming standard sector baselines—while post-engagement recovery teams prioritize the immediate extraction of their core wargear, neural/gene-seed components, or machine-spirit memory cores before enemy scavengers can exploit them.
Notable battles & users
- The Brotherhood of Death Jesters — A faction of margorach who joined Yvraine's Ynnari in pursuit of the 'greatest jest' against Slaanesh.
- Inriam's Spectre — A notorious Death Jester famed for sowing terror from the shadows.
- Pivotal Roles — Veteran Death Jesters take on dreaded stage personas such as the Harvester of Torment, the Lord of Crystal Bones and the Rift Ghoul.
Related
Characters (2)
Sylandri Veilwalker · Shadowseer of the Harlequins
Yvraine · Emissary of Ynnead, Daughter of Shades
