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Afternoon (or morning, or night, whatever suits you) everyone, I am a long, long tim lurker here. I have been really struggling to do anything, anything at all, to do with the hobby for so long it's actively painful. I was failing to paint anything the other day, staring at a small five man squad of chaos marines. I didn't really want to paint any of the existing colour schemes. And my painting skills are basic. But... I just decided to have a play around with the paints. I remembered the old Warhammer Fantasy colour scheme for Mousillon, yellow and black, and decided to have a go at making it work on Chaos Marines. The results are just below. I am not any better at photography than I am at painting, so the images are a bit poor, but I just wanted to share. At the moment they are tentatively going under the name of "Solar Giants" and need a warband symbol. I am planning for them to be a result of the Age of Apostasy - a marine crusade or chapter who made the mistake of backing Vandire's side. Rather than admit they had gotten it wrong, they fled from the aftermath, enting up greedy and embittered. Now they act as pirates and mercenaries, but try to drag people into their visions of the 'New Imperium', their broken vision of what could have been or still could be, if they are finally, finally vindicated. If they were right. I wanted to play around with the sorts of ideas presented by the Flesheater Courts from Age of Sigmar, people so broken that they hallucinate their own noble purpose, while being the worst sorts of monsters - and then spreading their delusions as wide as possible like a contagion. Anyway, I am just starting a topic to share them in the hope that it will motivate me to actually keep painting. Any comments are welcome, as well as suggestions for the warband symbol! Something simple would be great, since my skills at freehand are pretty feeble. All the best to everyone :) - Panda

She's finally done, for real this time. I had called her done this winter but i ended up hating the house sigil i made on the left pauldron then i got in my head about the stoles so i went back to the drawing board. Anyways, really happy i went back and gave her the love she clearly didnt get from her family. The whole journey is here, I love all the great ideas and gut checks by this community so thank you!

Warning: This topic is going to be a heavily narrated trip down memory lane. It is intended as both a personal voyage as well as taking others with it. Of course I am exaggerating. Hi everybody! I am WBRBloom. If anyone ever wondered this screen name is also as old as time, and derives from the Ad&d Ravenloft scenario 'When Black Roses Bloom'. But this is a Warhammer 40k forum, innit? So let's get to it! Our story begins back in the far away 1990. Little WBRB was almost at the end of grammar school (grade school across the pond), it was summer, and he and his family were returning from a day at the beach. They all stopped at a very big super market, one of the biggest back then in Greece, to do some Sunday shopping before heading home. It was about a month before schools started again, and the holiday (Christmas) TV ads were still far away (this is very crucial). The new games were still a few months away from being announced. As he usually did, little WBRB wandered off to the toys aisle. He browsed the G.I. Joes a little bit (they were now being replaced by scale models rapidly), and he was never really interested in car toys and such. He then moved further down the isle, towards the board games. Nothing he hadn't seen before, Ghost Castle, Mysteries of old Peking, the usual. And then, he saw it. HeroQuest. Deep inside another dimension, face battling barbarians and evil magic. HeroQuest. On a quest for adventure in a maze of monsters. It was a wall of HeroQuest boxes, an endless wall of HeroQuest boxes. The rest were history. To speed things up, WBRB got his hands on one of those boardgame copies, played it and killed orcs and goblins, but since he was already involved into scale models he also noticed the painted miniatures that adorned the inside of the box and he learned a (very) basic way on how to paint miniatures that was included at the back of the quest book. Apparently, there was this company that designed the miniatures, called 'Citadel', and it made more games than HeroQuest. Enter 1991 (yeah, things in Greece tend to have a year delay), and Space Crusade. Space Marines. Chaos Space Marines. Genestealers. Orks. Gretchin. Dreadnoughts. Oh my.. It is now 2003. WBRB, fresh out of his Navy service and having one of his first jobs, one that allows him for some disposable income, decides to start actually collecting, and playing, Warhammer 40.000. He had found about that game a few years back, in 1995 or 96, when an older friend of his introduced him into the hobby stores that sell it. He was fascinated but never had the money to buy/play it. But now seemed like the best moment. He went into one of the local hobby stores and browsed around a bit. He picked up the 3rd edition rulebook off the shelves, and looked at the different armies. He remembered an old diorama he had seen in one of the White Dwarf magazines, one called 'Horus against the Emperor'. It had Sanguinius at his feet and Horus was wearing a red terminator armour with dual lightning claws. Scattered across the spaceship's bridge, were the bodies of red armoured space marines (Khorne Berzerkers, he found out later). He wanted that. He liked Chaos. He liked the underdog, the villain, the bad guy. He wanted to be that bad guy so badly, that he did not hesitated any further. Grabbing a few more things, a blister pack saying 'ABADDON THE DESPOILER' the Chaos Space Marine codex a squad of Chaos Space Marines, some paints and a couple of paintbrushes, he walked towards the cashier. These models still exist to this day. Abaddon, painted and stripped a couple of times, has only seen battle a few times back in the day. But the cost of him being the same as a Land Raider, deterred the writer from using him anymore, only on specific missions. He now awaits undercoated, with some basic colour added, to be painted and used as a normal terminator (he will probably be dipped in acetone before long and stripped, then re-painted): I wanted his sword to me reminiscent of the original colours of Drach N'yen, but also have a little bit of its own character. The Chaos Space Marines have been all built, converted or scattered along the four winds of Chaos. I will eventually post pictures of all my infantry units, but I cannot possibly find the original marines from that box (although I do know they exist). Instead, I am leaving you with the pictures of the Hand of Death, one of my original dreadnoughts, painted back in the day. This must be one of the most active units in my army. It has been in almost every battle played since 2003. The banner is freehand (not my best work though). More stories to come.

After a few years hiatus and in the process of helping my folks move iv recovered my old minis many of which I never finished. Thinking out of all the factions that my iron warriors are the most likely to be finishable (just doing army nor caring much about codexs or such as I don't game anymore more doing a few cool minis and such. Anyway as my old photobucket is locked down apparently will attempt to add a few pics of what was my counts as deamon Prince dreadnought which was likely the last thing I got for these guys... https://i.imgur.com/hgMGgb2.jpg https://i.imgur.com/abGeWQo.jpg apologies fr edits, figuring out linking pictures. now im looking at the dreadknight im hating the blue on it even if originally it was to explain the mark of tzench. anything to get that inv save boost lol. is definitely on my list of things i want to revisit

Greetings and welcome to my army log! I've been a hobbyist for many years, and am recently back from the longest hobby break since I started painting my first Chaos Warriors at the age of five. The reveal of the Emperor's Children codex is what got me back in, and in this log I will detail my EC-CSM army's transition to a true EC army. No more handicapping myself with limiting my Marks of Chaos, or being miffed that the god-specific keyword had no effect! I've been collecting and playing 40k with my Slaanesh/EC marines since 5th edition, which means that a lot of the collection is outdated, all of my wonderfully converted Noise Marines are now a bit on the small side, their power-fist wielding champions have no place in the army. Many of my old characters have found a perfect match for size and vibe with new units like for example the flawless blades! So I'll start this log with my then-exalted champion, now flawless blade member 1 of 3. I didn't realize just how dusty the model was until I reviewed the pictures, apologies! This guy was converted immediately upon the release of the noise marine commemorative model, but only painted two years later. Very indicative for my usual building to painting speed..! I hope to do better with all the new models, after all I need to get these guys on the table sooner rather than later, having vowed to play no more games with half-finished models. I was inspired by colours of a fresh bruise for this guy, and while I like the usual black and pink for my Emperor's Children, this guy and many of the flawless blades to come will probably come with more individuality in their colouring. To round off my first entry we need some of the new models as well! This is my first converted group of Noise Marines made from the new models. To be honest I was quite disappointed in the uniformity and cleanliness of the new Noise Marines, who to me look nothing like the augmented monsters I had hoped for, they look very factory made to me, more hulkbuster iron man than noise marine. But even if I liked them, I would probably convert them anyways since that is such a fun part of the hobby! And as disappointed I was in the overall look of the kit, as awed was I by the bits and possibilities in it! It is such a beautifully tooled sprue, with options for days, and a proper heavy sonic weapon that did not look like a guitar or something equally silly, wow! The clean lines on these guys also makes it so much easier to cut into! The first changes I made to all of my sonic weapons was removing the fluid containers attached to the underside. This allowed me to cable the Screamer Pistol to the wearer, giving me a compromise giving the small sonic weapon (why would a noise marine ever want a smaller gun?!) some more weight by hunkering it down. I wanted the Blastmasters to stick out a bit more as well, by building the shoulder-mounted cannon and moving the dial to the weapons left side so my marine could still tune it. Both blastmasters also have a backpack with the two weaponized exhausts being reduced to one for a Slaaneshi asymmetrical look. Another part of note is the caped crusader using an infractor head, inspired by talks of caping in Dr Rhuminaus thread. I hope you like them! I will get to painting as soon as possible so hopefully I can post some of these painted soon, together with a rebased Lucius the Eternal, and my then-obliterator-now-Lord-Kakophonist.

CSM 10th edition Chaos Terminator Squad This is a topic about Chaos Terminator Squad in the 10th edition. Do you use them? How are you using them? Do you think they perform well? How do you equip them? Do you attach them to any specific unit? Is there a detachment that they are extra crucial? Other Unit of the Week for Chaos Space Marines can be found in the link below. Chaos Space Marine Unit of the Week Links

I found yesterday this blog with lot of interesting pictures of miniatures of Chaos. Specially, I like the Night Lords, with lot of RT flavour. But all the miniatures are really interesting. Very recommended. https://chainaxe.net/ Night Lords: https://chainaxe.net/night-lords-19th-company/

Here will be posted some heavy chaos conversions/kitbashes/scratch builds that I have been working on for as long as a couple years now. I am looking for thoughts, suggestions, and opinions on how to make some really monstrous models. NOTE: Picture quality and size increase drastically later in this plog, so feel free to skip ahead Most recent completed project: current wip:

Original thread start from here. First posts are copy-pasted as regard 40k content, the rest will be running updates. Welcome! This is the log where I'll post anything which I've converted and/or painted for others. Most of my hobby work is not done for my own armies, but rather for my brother's and our friends' collections. It's a great way to experience modelling and painting all miniatures in Warhammer without buying them. Background might be added later on as my friends work that out. This update is however not about something as lethal as cats. It's about something pathetic in comparison, namely a Maulerfiend conversion I've been working on-and-off with for a Skaven-collecting friend of mine. It's based on a sketch he drew. My buddy magnetized a rectangular base so that it could be used as a K'daai Destroyer. He was so eager about the conversion that he managed to sneak it past other projects in my queue... Still, the sculpting was surprisingly quick work and was over before you knew it. Couldn't have done it so fast three years ago: And here's the painted version, alongside his brother. Not painted by me (though the Squats in the foreground are): The CSM-collecting friend, let's call him J.A.B, inspected the newer starter kit Chaos Space Marine lord and Khârn, as well as the new Primaris Marines and probably a few older Space Marine character sculpts. He concluded that hip armour looks good and solves the silly look achieved by the thin thighs of plastic Space Marine legs. Some weeks ago, he visited his parents, brought a gaggle of heretical Marines and asked me to make hip armour on them. Quicksculpted, without time-consuming rivets, difficult spikes or suchlike. He was content, and after returning home to his study town he sent down Berzerkers to receive like treatment, and a FW Necron centipede which needed replacement antennae. I've tinkered with them since they arrived yesterday. Below are the results. Note "KIL KIL KIL" on the knife Berzerker's segmented plates. Also see his painted Lord of Change. http://i.imgur.com/6BKPi38.jpg WIP for my brother's little power armoured collection. Grey Knight legs and helmets and Sanguinary Guard shoulder pads and torsos. Hip plates added to remedy thin thighs syndrome. Cloaks from Anvil Industry to be added later: A Dark Eldar turned into an Eldar Fire Dragon converted for my brother. He thoroughly checked the Dark Eldar sprues back when they were new, and meticulously came up with ways to turn all manner of DE weaponry into Eldar Aspect Warriors with a little converting. More to come: Converted Slaaneshi Daemonprince for a friend: My friend told me to axe the @$$ and instead go for a lean Daemon Prince of Arrogance look, not Lust. As per his instructions, there is now also shin armour plates with images of Elf torture: What else? I also added two lone flowing pteruges dangling from its belt. I'll show you the painted end result whenever he finish this creation: Kill Team A mate of ours has moved back home after years of studying abroad, while a friend of my brother have returned to the hobby after a long break. Combine this with the recently released Kill Team, and we've got a hobby frenzy cooking with making characters, goons and terrain for a mash-up campaign between Kill Team and RPGs. Here is the first harvest of quick-sculpting and conversions, soon back to commercial sculpts. Kastellan Ironstrider, a mate's cyborg: Badoom! Broadbeard, a loudmouth one-Dwarf illegal radio station sending live from his heists and battles. My character: Gnorke Radfizzle, a Gnome sharpshooter with rad weapons, for my brother's friend: The gang so far: Gnorke Radfizzle's car: The friend who has written all the rules and organizes the whole effort has had me convert a gaggle of goons. Here's psyker Spikeskull: And Badoom! Broadbeard's hateful rival, Adman: And finally Gnorke Radfizzle painted by said friend (I had nothing to do with painting). My brother's mate is in for a treat! I've painted nothing of the Kill Team stuff, only converted it. All painted by Johan von Elak, for your display here. Badoom! Broadbeard: During most of our Kill Team-RPG games we've actually had music playing to represent both the immediate sonic barrage emitted by Broadbeard's loudspekers, and the music he transmits across hacked radio channels (with comments of media moguls jumping from windows as their enterprises gets destroyed by Broadbeard's escapades). He obviously also report live from the field, and is the lousiest sneak, at skulking up on enemies, you've ever encountered. Clearly, the audio-disturbed mister Broadbeard has ruined many lives through his noisome adventures. Which leads us to...

It's been a longtime coming but I need change of scenery from the wolves so its time to flex a bit! The Cerastes Knight Castigator was always my favorite pattern since I saw it. It just has that weapon combo that I find so evocative, gatling cannons for maximum BRRRRT and a sword to end any foolish enough to think that living was an option. After reading Master of Mankind i was all in on the story of Jaya D'Arcus, I won't spoil anything here but it really captured my imagination. I had been flip flopping between a home brew thing and making a version of her in a scrap knight but ultimately decided that would be too restrictive and likely kinda boring visually if i don't do it right. This lead me back to chaos... More accurately though separatist I think. I'd really like to try to make something that looks dark, beautiful, and ultimately evil while avoiding as many of the usual chaos tropes as I can. I like the Abby situation where the intention is to not fall into the thrall of the powers but being unwitting until the trap closes etc. Visually if i can make it look subtly chaos but still be recognizable that would be a win to me. Im also going to be hooking this beast up for sound and have created some audio tracks to really evoke a feel for it. I'll be hiding the bits within the base as I still plan to do the full cockpit and the Cerastes don't have much room in there. Please feast your ears on the smooth stylings of Baroness Regia Sabanth the Curse of Decceon: Warhorn Soundscape Again trying to evoke a ghostly beauty thats also pretty terrifying. The audio is still super WiP so is pretty rough still. But I think I'm on the right path. I've started on the base already and it's going to be a project within the project of course. This has none of the sublety I was talking about earlier though, as it will be an overgrown monument to the Emperor as the The Baroness' bootrest... It's going to be a long road but ideally i'd love to have her done by the time the snow melts. As I make the base Im developing the fluff too so we'll see how it goes! Thanks for looking!

CSM 10th edition Noctilith Crown This is a topic about Noctilith Crownin the 10th edition. Do you use them? How are you using them? Do you think they perform well? Is there a detachment that they are extra crucial? Other Unit of the Week for Chaos Space Marines can be found in the link below. Chaos Space Marine Unit of the Week Links

CSM 10th edition Heldrake This is a topic about Heldrake in the 10th edition. Do you use them? How are you using them? Do you think they perform well? Is there a detachment that they are extra crucial? Other Unit of the Week for Chaos Space Marines can be found in the link below. Chaos Space Marine Unit of the Week Links

CSM 10th edition Fellgor Beastmen This is a topic about Fellgor Beastmen in the 10th edition. Do you use them? How are you using them? Do you think they perform well? Do you attach them to any specific unit? Is there a detachment that they are extra crucial? Any Enhancements that you like to use with them? Other Unit of the Week for Chaos Space Marines can be found in the link below. Chaos Space Marine Unit of the Week Links

CSM 10th edition Chaos Spawn This is a topic about Chaos Spawn in the 10th edition. Do you use them? How are you using them? Do you think they perform well? Do you attach them to any specific unit? Is there a detachment that they are extra crucial? Any Enhancements that you like to use with them? Other Unit of the Week for Chaos Space Marines can be found in the link below. Chaos Space Marine Unit of the Week Links

CSM 10th edition Cultist Firebrand This is a topic about Cultist Firebrand in the 10th edition. Do you use them? How are you using them? Do you think they perform well? How do you equip them? Do you attach them to any specific unit? Is there a detachment that they are extra crucial? Any Enhancements that you like to use with them? Chaos Space Marine unit of the week links

I thought I'd share my Chaos army and various WIP things, hopefully to motivate myself to get some more painting done! I have a decent sized Iron Warriors army, as well as a goodly number of Thousand Sons, which I'll get pictures of later. My current projects are a start up Emperor's Children Warband, and a force of The Cleaved. The Cleaved: I made this Plague Marine years and years ago when I had a spare blob of Green Stuff. The armour was a test piece for the new foundations, its straight Dheneb with a heavy devlan wash. He got some nice armour scores, and some weeping joints I abandoned them for a very long time, until the release of the new codex, whereupon I made a couple of plasma gunners to come later. I also have 5 of these guys that will be geting the cleaved treatment. My very first tank, well over 10 years old with an awful splotchy (but thin) nurgle paint job, back when the mark of Nurgle gave your vehicle +1AV all round. Rather than give it to the Iron Warriors, I've honoured it's heritage and dedicated it to the cleaved. The marine on the back was originally an ultramarine, but the blue wouldnt look good with the colour scheme. Green, however would, and seeing as there will probably be a few new DA players soon...and also to annoy Skink a little. The Nurglings on top need some detailing, as well as a few other bits and bobs, but I consider it table worthy after a weekend's work. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With the new codex, I jumped at the chance to finally get some Slaaneshi marines under my belt. Noise marines with an 80's hair metal vibe. I wanted a full Sonic blaster squad, buy only had one and the blastmaster, so time to make up some stuff: Dude doing a squealy blaster solo, and regular blaster dude. You cant quite see the detail, ut they have hides/skin GS'd onto their leg armour, and regular dude has GW barbed wire wrapped around his thigh. Blastmaster and DeathKorg. You cannot have a band without a synth, so this guy got made up. The idea is that the bolter fires, gets some funky rhythm attached to it as it goes along the barrel, then hits the opponent with some music that they've probably never heard of. Noise Champion: Since squad leaders cannot currently have blasters, and in the hope that they can someday, I made something in between a combi bolter and blaster, the backpack (from the classic NM) and belt amp can also double as a Doom Siren. Smile:

This model is so big I am yet to be able to take good photos!

+++Unit of the week+++ Fiends How do you use Fiends? Marks Armament Equipment Role This is a discussion about Fiends, both Forgefiends and Maulerfiends in the 10th edition index. Tell us your tactics, fun facts, your experience with them, and other things that are interesting with Fiends. I combined the both fiends together, even though they have different roles and tactics, as they come in the same box, plus if we are going to manage to get through all the units before the codex drops some units must be combined. Cpt. Danjou

+++Unit of the week+++ Helbrutes How do you use Helbrutes? Mark Armament Role This is a discussion about Helbrutes in the 10th edition index. Tell us your tactics, fun facts, your experience with them, and other things that are interesting with Helbrutes. Cpt. Danjou

THE CRIMSON GRASP “War gives the right to the conquerors to impose any condition they please upon the vanquished.” -attributed to Shakespire, Terran dramaturge, M2 I The assault boat floated through the light debris field, ancient and seemingly forgotten, as the strike cruiser approached. Not a single light or control rune blinked to life across its surface, and its engines and weapons sat cold as the grave. It was a truly old vessel - a Trireme-class Assault Boat. Once a mainstay of the Saturnine fleets in the days before full Imperial unification of the Sol System, a handful of Trireme were used by the Legiones Astartes in a handful of their earliest battles, and yet even by the time that the last true rebellions and uprisings died away on Terra they had been almost entirely replaced; the Space Marines had quickly come to favour Dreadclaw and Caestus, whilst the early regiments of the Imperial Army were already beginning to move towards the easier to produce Shark and Condor pattern Assault Boats. The Trireme was quickly forgotten, and now it was rare for a ship in the Imperium’s fleets to even have a way to recognise the obsolete craft in its vast cogitator banks. And that was exactly what Saggar was counting on. Saggar stood in the cramped troop bay of the Trireme, his gaze seemingly locked on his squad’s helms. The light of their emerald lenses were amongst the only sources of light in the mostly powered-down assault craft, and that thin and sickly light caught the edges of the helmet crests of their kin, rendering the Sarum-forged shapes even more monstrous than normal. However, his attention was firmly within his own helm, focused utterly on the runes flickering over his display, showing the approach of the strike cruiser. The plan had seemed so very simple back in the launch bays of the Axeman’s Mercy. The strike cruiser that was approaching belonged to one of the thin-blood ‘Successor Chapters’ of the Imperium, and was unlikely to be able to tell the Trireme apart from the endless debris and flotsam of the void. Built for war in the densely populated Sol System, the Trireme was built to be far more resilient than the later generations of Imperial assault boats - in the battles over Saturn, there was a chance if you missed your target that a ship might actually be able to pick you up, and so the Trireme was able to maintain life support for incredible lengths of time. Especially when most of its occupants had the legendary constitutions of Space Marine Legionnaires. Now though, with the Butcher’s Nails biting hard into the back of his brain, and the vast form of a strike cruiser bearing down on him with no way of defending himself, Saggar was beginning to see all the ways this plan could go wrong. The runes displaying the status of the strike cruiser blinked bright, and Saggar held his breath. Even now, the hundreds of servitors linked to the strike cruiser’s defence turrets would be scanning the Trireme, trying to identify any threats. One long second passed. Then two. Three. Saggar was used to the lightning-grind of melee and the ground war, and each second sat in the dark, simply waiting, felt like a lifetime of agony. Eventually, after five more agonising seconds, a pinging green rune appeared imposed over the strike cruiser rune on his display. Saggar grinned, his tongue clicking off his iron teeth as he opened a vox-link to the hereteks and engine-cultists in the Trireme’s cockpit, Nails at once seeming to calm and tense further as the chance for violence approached. “Bring us in.” Slowly, achingly slowly, the Trireme began to move. It couldn’t ignite its main engines, not without becoming a blazing beacon on every sensor aboard the strike cruiser, and so it had to sputter and limp towards its prey on emergency micro-thrusters - drifting into the cruiser’s path more than actively closing the gap. In the troop bay, Saggar’s squad had begun to notice the movement. To an Astartes, well used to the feeling of an assault craft plying its trade, even these tiny movements spoke volumes. The Berzerkers began to twitch and fidget. The most controlled amongst them ran practised hands over their pistols and axes, performing weapons checks as a small ritual to try and appease and calm the pain engines singing in their skulls. The least controlled began to murmur and convulse, barely holding back their contempt and fury at not yet being in soothing battle. So began Saggar’s main task as a squad leader - trying to keep the World Eaters under his command dancing on the knife edge between mindless, frothing madmen barely useful as even the bluntest of weapons, and the long and painful failure that came from trying to deny the Nails. He laid a hand on the pauldron of one of the nearest struggling Berzerker, Kayst, the sudden and deliberate movement drawing the rest of the squad’s attention. That, at least, was a good sign; before some battles such small social queues had been completely beneath their notice. “Hold steady, brother. Soon, we will be ankle-deep in the blood of Imperials. The Blood God and the Nails will both have their fill and more, and our brothers will praise us as the heralds of yet another glorious victory. Is this not why we are the favoured of the Fell? Trusted above all others to be his preferred companions? We strike smart first, and it does not dull our fury. Blood for the Blood God!” “Blood for the Blood God!” The squad’s response shout was crisp and eager, and Saggar smiled again. Playing to their egos, and reminding them that the eye of one of Khorne’s favoured was on them in part because they could still be trusted to show at least a little restraint, had done its job, and Saggar felt some of his earlier confidence return. A different vox-link chimed, filling Saggar’s ear with the adrenaline-buzz of the Trireme’s heretek pilot-devotee, “Boarding proximity achieved, Lord Saggar. Bringing mag-clamps online.” The assault boat shuddered and hummed as, beyond the thick walls of the troop bay, it gently connected with the hull of the strike cruiser before locking itself into place with an array of esoteric mag-locks and proto-ursus harpoons, sharp as lamprey teeth. “Sealed and airtight, Lord Saggar. Melta-rams are now back online. We fire at your command.” Saggar slammed a fist into the release rune beside him, rising with the unlocked harness and forcing his way through his Berzerkers and the small knot of cultist and subhuman support they had brought with them until he stood at their fore, eyes almost boring a hole through the assault boat’s ramp. “Do it.” Saggar’s squad ran through the sparse outer corridors of the strike cruiser at a speed far beyond a jog. There was little restraint or control here, and even less attempt to move with any true silence or stealth. However, it had not yet devolved into a full and unrestrained charge, and even Kayst was still pausing and changing direction almost immediately after Saggar gave the order, and given how loud and insistent his own Nails were growing, that gave him no small amount of satisfaction. Besides, true stealth would barely have served them here. If the Astartes on this ship had not immediately noticed the assault boat breaching their hull, they would notice soon. Saggar simply had to complete his mission before the Imperials managed to stop him. They had yet to encounter any meaningful resistance. There had been a few knots of mortals here and there, most likely Chapter Serfs trying to eke out a handful of personal, human moments here, far enough from their duties, masters, and the ship’s key systems that the small sins of human inefficiency - love, tabac, and the other tiny excesses of dutiful slaves - were tolerated or ignored. None had survived contact with Saggar’s Berzerkers. He had let Kayst lead the way. The Berzerker had flung himself at each and every small mob of mortals, scattering them like a felinid coming down amidst song birds; with rent lines of blood and shrill cries of weakling panic cast all about him as his chainsword swung. The rest of the squad was barely a breath behind him, chainaxes and eviscerators lashing out at the mortals that tried to move away from Kayst’s frantic swordstrokes. In the wake of each cull (Saggar refused to insult Khorne or his own squad by calling the events ‘battles’, or even ‘skirmishes’) Rell had paused for a half moment to stoop amongst the corpses, the strange tools of his twin disciplines rattling at his waist as he bent to coat his fingers in the rapidly cooling blood of their victims, using it to daub crude runes on the walls and on his own armour even as he rose and moved to catch up with his fellow World Eaters. After the fourth such small ritual, Saggar spared Rell a nod, trusting the old Berzerker to read the implicit question in the gesture. Rell did, but his answer was full of his usual vagaries. “Too soon to tell, Saggar. It’ll all depend on how many thinbloods are on this ship once we are through proper.” Saggar grunted, annoyed but not surprised, before turning back to run with Kayst at the head of the squad. They were coming up on the objective, and there was precious little time to waste. There would be time enough to wrench answers out of Rell later. A few corridors more, and another mob of serfs, and something in the air changed. The keening pitch of the Nails sang higher in Saggar’s skull, and the faint scent of sanctified Mechanicus oils and the burnt residue of gun lubricant began to filter through his helmet. “Kayst, blade up and faster - I taste Imperial corpse-machines on the wind.” Kayst snarled, and Saggar braced himself for a backhand from the Berzerker’s sword, worried for a moment that the bite of the Nails would cause him to lash out at the implicit chains of authority in Saggar’s words. Then the snarl continued, morphing into something akin to a laugh, and Kayst broke into a full-tilt charge, bringing his chainsword up from the lazy and vaguely ready position it had lived in since they had deployed to a proper guard, from where it could be deployed against an actual opponent. Saggar lengthened his own stride, rushing to keep up with Kayst, and as the pair rounded a sharp bend in the corridor, they were met by a hail of solid slugs. A trio of heavy servitors - semi-living and lobotomised human bodies, filled up with simple aggressor machines, targeting matrices, and massive slabs of armour, and literally armed with some form of primitive rotary cannons - had locked their feet against the deck, choking the air down the long corridor with blazing hot ammunition. It was a kill-zone that few forces in the galaxy would be able to push through with ease. The World Eaters had never been a typical force. A veteran of the Long War in the truest sense, Kayst had served in the XII Legion’s Destroyer cadres, even earning the Blood Hand and fighting in the elite Red Hand Squads when Horus’ doomed rebellion had reached Terra. His place had always been in the teeth of the enemy, screaming back in the face of firepower that should have been overwhelming. He had survived the heavy weapons of Dorn’s precious Imperial Fists, the massed fire of entire Aeldari corsair bands, his own lethal and sickening wargear, and even, at the height of the Legion Wars, a full salvo of lascannon beams from the Sun Killer elite of the III Legion. These servitors were nothing in the face of such a legacy. The Destroyer lowered his shoulders, turning as he ran so that most of the howling slugs struck the already scarred Legion badge on his heavy pauldron. The weight of fire seemed to barely slow Kayst, and he howled as he continued to put one foot in front of the other, closing the gap between the squad and the servitors with the unnerving speed of a true Astartes. The bullets could do little against the ceramite of power armour, and where they found the soft armour of joints and armour seals, the sting of pain simply caused Kayst to howl louder and run faster, fury burning his blood as he sought to avenge himself upon the machine-men. As Kayst reached the servitors, he laid into them with his chainsword, crashing into the Imperial cyborgs with a series of heavy, two-handed swings. The first few blows struck at the weapon limbs of the servitors, although Saggar was unwilling to assign that to a desire to help cover the advance of the rest of the squad, or to any sense of strategy or tactics, rather than the blind and mad luck of a warrior lost to the Butcher’s Nails. Regardless of why he had done it, Kayst’s first flurry of blows had nonetheless knocked their heavy guns out of their pre-sighted alignments, and the rest of the Berzerkers were left unopposed as they ran the last stretch of the corridor, their own howls joining Kayst as they joined the fray. There was more of a fight here than there had been with the Chapter serfs. The blade-limbs of the servitors were just fast enough to parry one or two of the World Eaters’ swings, and a desperate close-range salvo from one of their cannons brought Badis crashing to a knee, a string of impact craters running down his breastplate. However, they were just three simple machines, and in the face of ten of the most powerful assault specialists the Imperium and the Eye had ever produced, they had never stood a chance, and by the time Badis had heaved himself back up with his eviscerator, the fight was over. It took Saggar long seconds to silence his own Nails enough to look to his squad after the last of the servitors fell, and even more valuable moments were lost as Saggar and his Brothers pulled the worst of their members back from the abyss. Even once calmed, Kayst paced like a caged predator as he waited for the squad to advance again, and Badis had been lost for a while, furiously tearing into the collapsed servitor that had shot him. However, eventually Saggar was able to drag his squad back from the fog of the Butcher’s Nails enough that he could stand and take stock, grinning as he saw what the servitors had been guarding: an interior bulkhead door, marked with an eyeless skull emblem - the same heraldry that had been emblazoned across the side of the strike cruiser. Another iron-toothed smile broke behind his helmet. Saggar turned, barking at Rell to get to the door. He paused, his eye lenses rising up to meet Saggar’s. He had taken advantage of the squad’s brief halt, daubing a dozen crude runes in the thick blood of the squad and the vital almost-oil of the servitors, and all but covering both of his vambraces in the strange half-script. The lifeblood was stark and bright against the death-grey of his armour, and as he moved past Saggar to investigate the door, it seemed to move slower than the rest of him, lingering like the afterthought of ritual in his wake. “Can you get it open, Rell?” Rell’s first response was little more than a grunt; a distracted half-snarl of Nail-bite and focus that made it very clear he would answer when he was good and ready, and not when Saggar asked. Saggar felt his anger rise in response to the implied disrespect, and forced his ire back down as Rell set to work, pulling a series of dataspikes and grav-drivers from his belt in order to assault the command console next to the bulkhead door. Long ago, Rell had been an initiate of the XII Legion’s Forge. Having shown a natural aptitude for machinery and mechanisms, he had been pulled from the line and named a Techmarine Initiate. However, Rell had never been sent to Sacred Mars to learn the great mysteries of the Machine Cult; just as his aptitude had been discovered, Angron and his sons had been called to Istvann by the Warmaster Horus, and would soon be embroiled in the all-consuming chaos of Horus’ Rebellion. With the World Eaters dispatched to Ultramar for Lorgar’s Shadow Crusade, and Mars besieged by those still loyal to the Throne, Rell had been taught his trade not in the Forge-Shrine, but in the crucible of war. As a result, Rell had never learned the higher mysteries of the Cult Mechanicus, but he had learned a brutal practicality that appealed to Angron’s Legion. No deep studies of the ancient Cybernetica or the lore-matrices of the great cogitators for Rell, instead he learned to repair a tank whilst under attack by Guilliman’s precious Locutarus Squads. No chance to ever learn the nuances of voltike production or how to set a voxgheist upon an entire world, instead Rell had learned the art of forging weapons from the broken machines of the XIII Legion. Rell might never have been considered a ‘true’ Techmarine, and even now boasted little of the true heretek mastery of the Warpsmiths of other warbands, and yet his ability to function as a rough mechanist under fire and through the howling of his Nails was an asset Saggar had long-since come to rely on. It had left its mark on Rell, though. There was a petty spitefulness that ran through the very core of Rell’s psyche; the old wound of never being allowed to study and master the great war-arts of the Mechanicum had never healed. Saggar had once heard that during the Shadow Crusade, Rell had made it his personal mission to kill as many of the Ultramarines’ Techmarines as he could, robbing the enemy of the knowledge and expertise he would never have the chance to obtain. Those same rumours had claimed that each of the tools of the Techpriest that Rell carried had been taken from those same murdered foes - each dataspike and wrench and plasma-cutter a trophy of a foe slain and a blow delivered to the accumulated wisdom of the enemy. Saggar had no idea if such tales were true, but having seen Rell’s fury in the face of Imperial Techmarines in the long years since Skalathrax, he could well believe it. “Saggar, it’s as we feared,” there was a rumble beneath Rell’s voice, an anger borne of having to admit defeat - admit weakness - for even a moment, “Whoever these thinbloods are, they actually put some thought into defending themselves. The inner bulkheads have a kinlock on them. I could force this one open, but all the others would stay locked shut. My dataspikes and petty scrapcode will never convince the door we are supposed to be here.” Saggar nodded, slapping a hand against Rell’s power pack, hoping that the gesture of camaraderie would reach through the Nails and the Berzerker’s wounded pride. They had always known there was a chance Rell would be unable to breach these sorts of defences - the soft work of corrupting and deceiving augury and identification systems had never been his great strength - and so they had come prepared. Saggar shouted an order back down the corridor, to where a small knot of cultists and mutants were slowly making their way through the strike cruiser in the Berzerkers’ wake. Several bestial mutants lumbered forwards, braying and bellowing in something between brash posturing challenges and pious prayers to their Astartes masters. Two were pure brutes, towering over the mortal cultists and blessed with spiralling crowns of horns atop their elongated heads, and swung their heavy chainswords with the righteous arrogance of bodyguards, but it was the third beastman that Saggar had called forward. Smaller than its kin, the third beast was hooded in the ragged approximation of robes, and carried a long stave - a cobbled-together badge of office made from broken icons, glyph-stained bones, and a twisted skull. The beastherds that dwelt in the depths of the Axeman’s Mercy called creatures such as these “shamans” - petty witches and pseudo-psykers whose extensive mutations had given it some deeper connection to the Warp. As the shaman approached, Saggar felt the edges of a Nails headache press at his mind. It was nothing compared to a purer human psyker or true Astartes Librarian, though - Saggar had often wondered if the beastmen’s sheer Warp pollution registered differently to the pain engines in some way, although whenever he had attempted to discuss it with his brothers they had laughed at his interest. However, the ‘softer’ impact of the mutant witches made it easier for the Berzerkers to stomach their presence, which is why they had been picked for this mission. “Burn their pathetic machines awake, witchblood. Open this ship to the Crimson Grasp.” The shaman brayed a response and lumbered forward, beginning to gesture and murmur in a language uncomfortably close to High Gothic for something with such bovine features. Where Saggar and his kin worshipped Khorne above the other gods, and as a grand warrior and pillar of fury and sacred rage, the beastherds worshipped Chaos as a single, primordial whole - an antithesis to order and civilisation. Whatever magic the shaman had taught itself to call upon was clearly borne from this idea of a Primordial Annihilator; it was the magic of disorder, the sorcery of lies and deception, the song of the twisting of bonds and proper function and loyalty. And it was exactly what the squad needed. The Nails buzzed louder in Saggar’s skull as writhing shadows began to dance between the shaman’s staff and the console, and he bit down hard on the urge to cut the beastman down, casting an eye over his squad to make sure that they were doing the same. The shaman’s dark magic poured through the bulkhead door’s sensor-arrays and gene-protocols, myriad illusions confounding it and overwhelming the simple machine spirit. The sensors scanned and scanned again, and a donut emerged in its protocols. There were Astartes in front of it, and surely they were its masters? What other Astartes could be on the ship? It served the Astartes. It served these Astartes? “Rell, now.” Saggar’s command cut through Rell’s battle with his own Nails, and he pushed his way back towards the console, grunting in disgust as the tendrils of the shaman’s magic caressed his armour. A dataspike slammed roughly into the console, and with that the machine spirit’s defences were finally completely overwhelmed. Rell grinned, feral delight overwhelming him despite the proximity of the mutant’s foul sorcery as he punched in a command. Emergency Protocol Exile Extremis Initiated. Unsealing all inner bulkhead chambers. Ave Imperator. The bulkhead door began to scream and screech as it slowly unlocked and rolled open, revealing the dimly lit corridor beyond. For a second, nothing beyond the bulkhead changed. Then, as the rest of the strike cruiser began to realise what was befalling it, the corridor beyond was lit by the flashing strobe of warning crimson, and the screaming of the door was joined by the wailing of klaxons. Saggar began to laugh, and punched through a vox command to the waiting Trireme. “Pilot, relay the following back to Axeman’s Mercy: Mission accomplished, Lord. We have our way in.”