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CLAWS IN OUR STARS ADEPTUS ASTARTES: ASTRAL CLAWS PROLOGUE: To be lost is an error in judgement - old friend. We chose the path of honour against an uncaring Imperium. What right does anyone have to question our strength? Why do you not see? You thought as I. The Strong, are Strongest...Alone.

Hello everyone, We've been working on several projects over in the Cabal of Dead Ink (see signature), and we have need of a Servitor-Illustrator, Grimdark Illuminator, or Digital Artist who can give their time to produce an image or a series of images which will be placed into PDF documents to enhance and display our work. The main focus of the Cabal is the development of WH40K fiction, mostly the Badab War era, however, recently we have collaborated to produce several entries for the Black Library Open Submission 2022/23. Our plan is to produce an Anthology containing the entries by forum members that GW declined, so that we can showcase the efforts and creativity of the Bolter and Chainsword. However, in order to fulfil this ambition, we need book covers and interior artwork, by someone who's a dab hand with a digital brush. A series of projects is in the works, and so we offer the opportunity to express and challenge yourself with the liveries and bloody glories of different Chapters, to be immortalised in downloads available to all members of the B&C. Due to the nature of both GW's IP and the B&C's copyright stipulations, the artwork must be original (our prose certainly is!) and we are prepared to steer anyone who volunteers, so that our mutual projects can always be available. If you're interested, or think you can help out, please feel free to post below, or if you prefer, you can contact me with a PM and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. FAQ: Will I be required to join the Cabal of Dead Ink? Joining us is not mandatory, and we will soon open our project forums up to the public anyway. Does the Cabal take ownership of my work? Absolutely not - this is a collaboration. You are the creator of the work and have all the rights that are inherently given you by the act of creation and publication of your work. We expect to use your work in downloadable PDF's from the Libraries the B&C provide - so it will be associated with this project. Will I be expected to produce to deadlines? Not really, no. Obviously the projects we produce will have a window for delivery, but this is a volunteer job, with a forum full of volunteers like you with lives and jobs outside it (well, probably). We demand nothing of you, but would hope that you would make time to complete anything you decided to donate to us. Other notices will be made in relevant forums for further opportunities for involvement by writers, artists and folks good with a digital wrench.

FERRYMEN ADEPTUS ASTARTES: REVILERS CHAPTER CONCEPT: NARRATIVE SUMMARY (Max 100 Words): Sergeant Ravyx Atton leads a Phobos Strike Team from the secretive Revilers Space Marine Chapter. When the navigators of a Torchbearer fleet are incapacitated by a psychic trap, becalming them in Magellan’s Crucible – a fluctuating passage through the Cicatrix Maledictum – Atton and his men deploy to the embattled world of Aluxan to sequester their psychic novices, in order to save the fleet and prosecute the will of Roboute Guilliman. Strike Team: Charon must infiltrate and evade the legions of rebels to effect a rescue, and thwart a deadly plot by the Alpha Legion, before time runs out EXTRACT (Max 500 Words): Racing to the door, Atton tore smoke grenades from his body webbing, hurling them down either corridor, before stepping out, sweeping the carbine left and right. Telemetry depicted where the rest of his team were, and they moved as fast as he, efficiently from room-to-room. His foot smashed doors in, then a shock grenade, followed by a sweep of the space with the carbine. He set the weapon stablight to strobe, for maximum disruption, erupting into the confined quarters at the same moment as the pummelling concussion thundered. Heretics were blasted off their feet by the detonation, before the scene became a series of flash-picter images. Atton executed them with tight shots from the suppressed carbine, not a round wasted. He was grateful for the forward grip; the mobility of the weapon was exceptional. Moving to another room, he repeated the sequence, and it sounded like a storm was battling to escape the temple. Great bolts of noise were quelled by the baffles in his auto-senses. Heretics reeled from his attack, hands pressed to cover popped eardrums, before Atton put them out of their misery with a wicked volley. One of them, mutated into a hulking brute, crashed through the wall before he could ready his next bomb. It roared at him, grappling him from behind, in a slew of plaster and stonework. The mutant’s clutching claws snapped the strap on his bolt carbine, sending it spinning away, as the creature barrelled forward, trying to make him a permanent fixture within the opposite wall. The power of his foe was tremendous, muscle-corded arms wrapping his body, trapping his limbs, rivalling his Rubicon-wrought strength. Anger spurred defiance. Atton pushed off with his feet, hurling both combatants back through the jagged gap the mutant had opened, and they tumbled together crunching furniture and ripping down hanging silks. The heretic-beast shifted grip, clamping its paw over his face, fingers fused into two long talons, hooking onto his skull mask and trying to wrench his helmet off. The change gave him a chance, and he got his left arm free, seizing a broken table leg and thrusting it up behind him where his Lyman’s Ear discerned the enemy’s voice box. Clotted, guttural bellowing announced his success, and he twisted the stake, breaking it off, the pressure on his ribs vanishing as the brute grasped to remove the painful splinter. As they writhed, rolling across the floor, the mutant trapped Atton’s neck more by luck than skill, but even as the pressure warning indicator flared dangerous amber sigils, Atton’s hand closed on his heavy bolt pistol. Four shots pumped into the brutal knot of twisted muscle behind him. He didn’t care where he was hitting, Atton trusting that the Emperor’s ordained tools would do the work. The mutant howled even as its organs were pulverised, a strangled human note to the plaintive cry, before Atton punched the barrel under its blubbery chin, and blew its mismatched, horned head off in a shower of red-grey gruel. ++++++++++

View File The Whisper - A Celebrants Chapter Short Story In the aftermath of a Tyranid invasion on bountiful Konig's World, Astartes warriors of the joyful Celebrants Chapter hunt down the remnants of the Hive Fleet's forces. Led by Lieutenant Cadmus, they search for the psyker-beasts whose vile whisperings could draw even greater hordes to the Agri-World. The Celebrants battle against numberless broods and hideous monsters, but however diligently they purge the hated xenos, the psychic whisper continues unabated. Cadmus wonders how the aliens are staying hidden. Is someone helping them? He must solve this mystery, or Konig's World will face the hunger of the Great Devourer again. Short story based on my submission to the Black Library 2023 Successor Chapters Submissions. Thanks go to @Mazer Rackham and the Cabal of Dead Ink! Submitter Lysimachus Submitted 11/22/23 Category Background (Lore)  

View File Down In Flames (A Fire Hawks Short Story) The Lycanthos Drift Campaign is almost over. To secure the Widowmaker Bastion, a force of Space Marines from the Fire Hawks Chapter is given the honour of subjugating the outlying Sentinel Fort. Infested with Chaos Space Marines of the Bleak Brotherhood and their traitor guardsmen, the Fort's existence prevents heavy siege guns being laid by the men of Krieg, and threatens the right flank of Lugft Huron's assault. As part of the task force, Knight-Sergeant Emeryk Zann is keen to win glory and honour for his Chapter and the God-Emperor, but as he discovers, this assault is little more than a deadly Forlorn Hope - one that even his Chapter Master, the gruff Knight-Commander Stibor Lazaerek wants to fail... Submitter Mazer Rackham Submitted 04/12/23 Category Background (Lore)  

DOWN IN FLAMES ADEPTUS ASTARTES: FIRE HAWKS PROLOGUE: This is it, old friend. For those times we saved each other, shed our blood and sweat under the roar of guns and upon the strange tides of war. To now stand unrecognisable and unrepentant of our choices, blades drawn and bloodied by the bodies of our brothers, and the corpses of our sworn oaths. All we have cherished, what we gave our lives to, broken down with our own hands. How did it all come to this? Is it only now, that we realise both of us are lost?