Stab-lights strobed in the dark. A score of men moved quietly, lasguns held ready and sweeping the darkened street, flicking their gunlights on and off in a trained manner, giving an enemy no steady light to target. Imperial Guard, Mordians even, veterans of that world's ever-night. They were comfortable in the gloom but wary. Their parade-ground uniforms blended into the night as they advanced towards the local power depot. The enemy had come to Javan and the Mordian 990th Iron Guard would not fail in their duty to throw them back. The dark bothered not the Mordians but their charges, the soldiers and civilians of this world.

They were already dead, marked and judged.

The power depot was massive, a square block of brutal wall past which hunched the rounded turbines of the Omnissiah's force. Normally there would be a deep hum and sharp crackle from the many cables running from the depot out into the city. Now there was only a chill silence as the Mordians converged on the entrance. The gate gaped open, a darker hole in a dark wall.

The first Iron Guard reached the depot's doorway. She moved confidently but slipped slightly as her boots hit the cold stone of the interior. A look down, a quick flash of the stab-light. Frozen movement as eyes took in the disturbance below. Blood. Lots of blood. A hissed report sent back to the squad's sergeant who in turn voxed the information to higher command. The order was given: Move in, Destroy enemy, Restore power.

The point-woman slipped further into the entryway, a section of four following and splitting up. The full squad moved forward, leap-frogging section by section through the vast entrance of the depot. Cover was scant, a few strange uprisings of unknown archaeotech that the Mechanicus must find useful. Unfortunately, as the Guardsmen sheltered behind them, they found the lumpen consoles strewn with bits of flesh and flayed skin. Never a full body though, only scraps and pieces. 

As the squad approached the end of the entrance fane, the point held up a hand. Sound was coming from the hallway that lead further into the depot. A faint...sibilant hissing/singing? The squad moved deeper into the building, passing work hab sections and small side chapels of the Machine Cult. Every step made the strange song a little louder, a little more clear. The words were unknown, the melody a steady despondency. 

At last the squad reached the main genetorium. Something was placed in front of the large control panel. Something dark and massive. Their stab-lights barely illuminated it, the light seemingly sucked into the thing's surface. It was covered in skin and chains, blood and bone. The song was coming from it, grating in the ears and vibrating the bones of the soldiers. They surrounded it, moving closer. 

The terminator's eyes snapped one, blazing red with Preysight. Four other pairs burned around the squad, surrounding them as they surrounded the first. The great chainblades rose. The snapped orders, pinpoint marksmenship from lasguns, bayonets slashing. It mattered not. The blades rose and fell, the song continued. 

Silence fell. Darkness continued. The song drifted through the depot. Waiting for the next soldiers to hear it.

The Dirgebound

Contekar Terminator Cadre of the Shrikeborn

“We do not speak. We remember.”

The Dirgebound are the Contekar Terminators of the Shrikeborn, ancient warriors clad in baroque Tartaros plate. Their armor is etched with mourning runes and Nostraman death-script, covered in the skulls and skins of their foes. They are the silent heart of the warband, deployed only when final judgment is required; when a foe must not only be defeated but buried beneath the weight of memory and fear.

Each member of the Dirgebound has taken a vow of silence in battle, speaking only through action and the howling of their great-chainblades. Their name comes from the dirges they play through corrupted vox-casters as they advance; low, droning laments that echo the funeral chants of Nostramo, designed to unnerve and disorient their enemies.

Led by Dissident Varnaz Thule, a veteran of the Great Crusade who has not removed his helm in over three centuries, the Dirgebound are often deployed alongside Stained Lord Carrow himself. They serve as his personal honor guard, and as the executioners of his will, meting out punishment to traitors, oathbreakers, and those who defy the Shrikeborn’s grim code.

Their presence on the battlefield is a symbol of finality, for when the Dirgebound walk, the war is already lost.