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Hi this is brotherblur, and this is my fanfiction for the War of Light project. In case you haven't heard, its a growing collaboration between Twenty plus community members telling an alternative universe set during the great crusade with whole new characters, plot, artworks and yes new factions that would shape the future to come if your interested please check out the link below and enjoy the story. War of LIght AU Project ************************************************************************************************************************************************* 850M30, Rangdan Xenocide, Planet Cimmerian dark side. Galactic Northern quadrants/ Mid rim. This is a deary world; dark clouds hang over my head ever since we arrived from our thundering hawks. I can't even see the stars but what I do see is the heat. Its unsettling at first; such as when a child dips their head underwater for the first time and opens their eyes. Everything appears in shades of red. The venting thermal heat from the earth, the power cores resting on the backs of my battle-brothers, even my own left hand seems like bright orange-red polygons to these new eyes. I've been told by Priest Hebi that the Jungian binding offered our legion many new gifts with our rebirth. Its startling to think I have more to learn about my physic then when I was a neophant. The crunch of granite and raw silicon beneath the plasteel soles of my boots is one voice among a chorus of foot soldiers. Two hundred battle brothers march down a dried river canyon by my side with fresh arms and armor. From the youngest apirant to the oldest veteran, we hoped this battle would turn the tide of fortune to our colors and signal to the remaining legions that the the third were no longer dead men walking. But so far we found little more then scuttered rock lizards and some sort of decapods hiding around small rocks for camouflage. Our enemy is clever; Referred to as the Rangdan, they have used this world's night side as a cover while harassing the imperial garrisons gathered on the twilight's edge and when our troopers have been exhausted, seep past gaps in the lines to terrorize the civilians with their necro lances that paralyze its victims so that the horrid creatures can fest upon their brains. Or become living bombs that destroy the fragile morality of this planet and the cause across the northern galactic quadrants. Even the bulls are having a hard time with these Cerebraovres. But we plan to change this. I look over to my right where Librarian Ryce Naga scans the mountains ahead with his outstretched mind. A long time friend whom I have relied on since our training together on terra; Inquisitive but loyal. Often giving me cool sound advice. Even convinced me to take the vacant captaincy for the third company after Great Jormu died from the belcher's gland. But since the Jungian binding Ryce has become more distant as his own psychic powers grew. His slitted golden eyes glance my way for a moment with so much focus I think he was reading my thoughts. Or perhaps he was sizing me up like a cat does to another stray cat. I just ignore it for now as I bead in to our scouts ahead, but I still feel the chill. An hour later we meet up with the scouting part near a looping juncture in the canyon's path. Assault Fang Rho, comprised of hot headed youths with some wildman named Damon Boa leading them. Damon approaches me with some sort of swagger in his stride. His scaled face grinning like he was some sort of Cheshire cat. Too confidante this one, like the rest of his ilk from the fifth company. I just stand my ground with both hands resting on my eviscerator, crimison like it was my own walking staff. He tells me he found the Rangdan stronghold four clicks down the canyon path but its heavily guarded. Then with one arm he points skyward; toward the ledges above us at smoke rising to branch the dark clouds with the earth. With jump packs, we vaulted to higher grounds. Assault Fang Rho leads us with careful leaps while myself and two other assault squads follow in pursuit. I left Ryce in charge of the ground forces to proceed on foot to the fortress's main entrance and wait for my signal. No matter what changes come between us, I knew Ryce would act to protect the company. We finally made it to our destination; a thermal exhaust vent burrowed deep in the granite foundation of this high rise. I could see the heat rising like a pillar out of the hole like a torrent of water released out of a pipe. I looked at Damon who gave a friendly chuckle showing off his copper tipped fangs. According to him, this vent feed out external heat from the Rangdan base underground and left it open for a breach. All we had to do was survive the descent; It was a crazy idea from a crazy man hailing from a company of crazy daredevils. I wouldn't' even consider it a viable option if I knew there was another way. I sigh as all three squads approach the lip of the thermal vent where my armor shout out temperature alarms on my HUD. I take crimison in both hands with a solid grip, voxed on a private channel to Ryce to begin the assault, then stepped forward into the super heated steam cloud. The heat felt like stinging or biting insects trying to nibble their way into my power armor with each passing meter. The paint on my gauntlet begins to burn off before the rest of my armor does. I can see the teeth of my giant chain sword start to glow. My Hud keeps track of my squads following in pursuit via green triangles. One triangle with the call sign AFS-4 begins to blink out. I hear his deathly shouting over the local vox channels as his armor burns out. When we finally get to kill these Rangdan, we'll offer their lives as prays to our own fallen. And I will make it a habit to learn that brother's name. Damon calls out the entrance we need to enter. We use our jump packs to slow down our descent as we head down into the smaller connecting vents. We press on and cut a hole through the ventilation. As we enter, my boots press down on squisy organic padding that seems to crescent across the structure of the articulate. It was like stepping into a giant blood capilar. There is little resistance at first. Damon takes the lead looking for what ever these foul xenos call a barricks. He runs headlong into a patrol of Rangdan who were on their way to the front. The wildman took little time to dispose of them with his furious chain sword strikes. We ran into more patrols after that, using speed and the element of surprise to take out most of them without a scratch. Crimison in my plated hands worked through Rangdan hunters like they were made from cheap scroll paper. When we started hearing bolter fire I knew it was time to hunt down the leaders of this base; so I called in Assault Fang Sigma as my backup as I broke off to find the center most point in this base. I follow the pulsating, crescent walls to their source using crimison to carve open any barrier along the way. In the center we met heavy resistance from the leadership. They used the main entrance as a bottleneck while continually fire wave after wave of Necro blasts from their necro lances. I click off my belt a frag grenade and toss it inside. Seconds later a bang kicks up miasma and small meaty chucks out of the chamber door. We rushed in with jump packs flared to maximum. My boost tackles me into one of the larger body guards and we both trip over some bio-mechanical organism. Training and instinct cause me to roll on to my feet en guard. My opponent rises to its full height of three meters with whip like tendrils and a mushroom looking head with lashing Cerabvore tongue. It moves its tendrils too fast for me to get a strike in so I use its reach to my advantage. When the creature threw its tendrils at me again, I allowed my eviscerator to get caught then began to rev the engine several times. The chain teeth cut through the strange alien flesh which caused the creature to gaggle in pain. I ran forward to ram Crimison right where its Cerabvore tongue is and started cutting through its internal organs. Thick gooey chuncks ran out of the giant hole Crimison made in its fleshy husk as I pulled my sword out. The bodyguard fell over gurgling to death while I quick scanned the scene playing around the chamber. Most of Fang Sigma was engaged with one or more surviving Rangdan but we couldn't clearly identify the leader among the carnage. So I revved up Crimison again and started to cut down any bio-mechanical organism still standing in the room. When we were done I order Sigma to begin torching the chamber as we leave it. Myself and Sigma grouped up with Damon boa and the rest of the assault force. Then we caught up with Ryce and the rest of the company, whose devastor and tactical squads did clean sweeps of the base's canyon section. Ryce informed me there was heavy resistance at first but with the aide of his psychic illusions did the company have enough cover to reach the entrance and siege the base. The devastators were able to riddle down the door with heavy bolter fire and multi-meltas. The tactical squads then moved in to engage the Rangdan in CQB. Thirteen were injured, seven critical but all were expected to live after the ordeal. Ryce asked what to do with the base. So I told him and the other Sargent to lit the structure a blaze. When we left, the strange Rangdan miasma fueled the promethium fire for hours. Some of the fire burned into a trail behind us creating this burning path that winds with the dried river bed. Damon laughed about it, saying it reminded him about the tale of the Fire Wyrm whose body was living flame that trailed across the sky. Some of the more impressionable members of the company started to associate myself with this legend and started to call me this every time we found and destroyed a rangdan base for the next thirty two days. When we finally returned to the twilight front, my new nick name seemed to have spread to the common trooper as they called me "Fire Wyrm! Fire Wyrm!" And so I adopted the name into my formal title as Captain Noctran "Fire" Wyrm of the Third company of the Ouroboros. The assault trooper who died in the vent I found out was a member of Assault Fang Sigma named Rygos. I gave recommendations to Fang Sigma in my reports for their actions on that dread, gloom of a planet. I think I may have further use of them down the line of this crusade should fate be kind.

I suppose my soft spot for the Emperor's Children comes from 4th edition, back when bolters could seriously harm most things in high enough quantity and Space Marines felt a little weak. I bought the Chaos Space Marines codex and was stunned at the variety and options Chaos had over their vanilla brethren - You mean I can upgrade my marines to have +1 A, I, W, or T? It seemed pretty cool at the time, but what caught my eye was the book of Slaanesh in particular. That section was an explosion of Sonic Weapons (bolters you could move and double or triple shoot with *gasp*), Combat Drugs, and neat upgrades. Nowadays however the tables have sort of turned in 40k, with Space Marines having all the variety in free Chapter Tactics and Chaos having been stripped of nearly all unique legion special rules and selections. It is kind of discouraging, but then of course there is 30K! The purpose of this post is to talk about the Emperor's Children as they were in the Horus Heresy and more specifically the different tactics they can employ which make them effective versus the other legions. Admittedly it's not as easy to see what makes the EC so good when you have other 'heavy-hitter' legions like Iron Hands (-1 S to ranged weapons and FNP is a highly effective combination on MEQs and TEQs), Imperial Fists (+1 BS Bolt weapons and Tank Hunter devestators), Salamanders (Artificer Armour troops with Flamers/Meltaguns, Storm Shields, Eternal Warrior and Mastercrafted!) and Alpha Legion (Infitrate EVERYONE!) but after a lot of thought I think I've sorted it out. ... There seems to be a consistant theme throughout the Emperor's Children of Combat Resolution Bonuses, Initaitive bonuses, speed increases, and sporadic (but still present) non-Unwieldy AP2 in close combat. Naturally almost all of these gear the Legion towards Close Combat, which would be BAD in 40K where many armies can outfight you (since you're still just marines with some perks in most cases) but in 30K since it's for the most part MEQ on MEQ its sort of okay. With some of the upgrades and improvements that have been applied to 30K with the release of new books, there's actually a new angle that can be played quite effectively - Outflanking + reliable reserves. This particular combination comes to fruitition when using the legion's unique Rite of War the Maru Skara. The ability to have reserves arrive exactly when you plan them to is invaluable, and having Outflank means you can set up some pretty devestating ambushes to catch more stationary gun-based opponents off-guard. I could write a whole article on the Maru Skara and the application of it, but instead I'm going to move to the next most important point: Fulgrim. Amongst his brothers, Fulgrim is arguably one of the best Primarchs in the game. With the upgrade he can take a Mastercrafted Paragon Blade (which also has higher chance to ID) which is pretty much a no-brainer, and so armed is statistically likely to kill any other Primarch in the game in a one on one battle (except Horus, who can wear him down and kill him over many turns). This is just a perk however, not his main draw - the big benefits to taking Fulgrim in your EC army are: 1) You can choose his Warlord Trait from the BRB or Crusade Army List. This opens up a whole pandoras box of army building options... you can have Master of the Ambush Fulgrim to press in your Bikes/Marines, Fighty Fulgrim with Coordinated Assault, Shooty Fulgrim with Target Priority, or even Victory Fulgrim with Legendary Fighter (you can count on your opponents refusing pretty much every challenge though...) 2) Reroll Reserves - as if the Maru Skara isn't enough reserves shenanigans, you can ensure everything else arrives right on time too! 3) Combat Resolution Bonus - stacks nicely with Rylanor's Aura for a +3 bonus. If you can't get enough of this, Paladin of Glory Fulgrim increases it to +4. So basically unless you completely whif versus World Eats you are unlikely to lose too many combats... Later I'll talk about the unique units and potential army lists in more detail, but for now I'd like some more experienced EC players to chime in. Are you out there?