Tales of the Black Host

[Black Hand]

It started with the slightest of tremors.

Were an astropath to monitor the Warp route to Calix Beta at that moment, that was how they would have described the activity in the Empyrean. By the standards of the warp, it was akin to a calm sea; perhaps disturbed by the daily movements of minor sea life. There was certainly no indications of anything suspicious.

Galen smiled, and gently squeezed the arm-rests of his throne. His claws dug into the obsidian, and scraped along it's ornately carved surface. Before him, the bridge of the Pius Cultus hummed gently, though not a single movement could be seen. Galen's grip tightened as he recalled the days when the bridge had buzzed with activity, when the crew of this once-gallant vessel had worked with righteous passion to bring justice to the Emperor's enemies.

Galen let slip a chuckle, the hiss of his breath reminiscent of a furnace. In truth, it wasn't breath that escaped his lips; he had ceased to breathe a long time ago. Galen laughed louder, enjoying the irony of his ship's name. Times had changed. The bridge was now empty, the ship infested with entities similar to himself. It was they who ran the vessel now. The warriors who had guarded the Pius Cultus, too, had long since ceased to be the Emperor's noble Adeptus Astartes. Galen himself had seen to that.

 

As his mind began to wander, Galen thought back to those times.

It had been different, once, back in the glory days. Thaddeus Galen, the celebrated Chapter Master of the Sable Knights, had once been a mortal, a hero of the Imperium's armed forces. His was the hand that had laid low the infamous Khargun the Unspeakable, pirate lord of a host of traitor Astartes. He had led his chapter personally against the forces of the Despoiler during the 10th Black Crusade, in the years preceding his own fall. His chapter had once been spoken of with pride and near-worship as paragons of Imperial Virtue.

It had been the Inquisition's appearance on Syracuse, their home planet, that had presaged the doom of the Sable Knights. Over the centuries, Galen had authorised his librarians to gather as much lore on the Great Enemy as possible. After all, was it not wise to know your enemy? Still, the collection of supposedly "forbidden" tomes had aroused the suspicions of one Inquisitor Raav. Galen remembered that man; the arrogance of the wretch, storming into the Sable Knight's fortress-monastery, and the accusatory tone of his voice as he levelled charges of Heresy and corruption at the Chapter Master. Galen had reacted with fury, and demanded to know what the Inquisitor meant by making such accusations. The Inquisitor had pointed to records of hundreds of forbidden texts said to lie within the grasp of the Chapter Master.

Galen fumed at the nerve of this whelp. Did he not understand?

Ultimately, though, Raav was right. As he recalled those dark times, Galen felt the dead weight of grief settle in his chest, displacing the earlier annoyance. Raav had been right; he had spent too much time reading those books, poring over the knowledge they contained. What he had learned, what it had cost him to do so... it horrified him. He knew what happened to souls in the warp, what would happen to his own when he died. The knowledge sheared his mind like a knife; he felt an icy terror grip him, undoing all of his years of Astartes training and combat experience. It cut him to the core.

For many nights, Galen had not left the sanctity of the Librarium, desperately hunting through his illicit collection to find a way to avoid such an awful fate. On the fifth day, he found something; a reference to an ancient codex of daemonic power, the Eternus Specialis. Galen knew he must have it. The legends of the book took his chapter to the depths of the Eastern Front, to a dead world. There, the hidden temple of the book was to be found. There, Galen would have his answer.

His warriors took to the surface, each making his supplication to the Emperor and Guilliman. Galen waited until nobody was watching before offering a prayer of strength and fortitude, gently placing a seal of protection to his breastplate. Then they had advanced into the temple together, a rough-hewn thing cut into the side of a deep valley.

They found what they were looking for.

As the Astartes reached the centre of the unholy place, the air seemed to shimmer. The warriors raised their guns as the light flickered and danced. Galen remembered the next few minutes with acute clarity. The battle-brother next to him had been lifted up into the air, impaled on the blade of a materialising fiend. Other horrendous creatures, their skins slick with gory pulsating muscle and their eyes ablaze with hellfire, attacked, their inhuman howls in stark contrast to the roar of the Sable Knight's boltguns. Galen had drawn his blade and hewn a daemon-thing in two before he realised the situation was hopeless. If they stayed in this place, they would all surely die. So he ordered them to fall back, holding back the urge to run. The warriors he commanded must not know of his fear.

They had made it in the end, Galen recalled. Scarcely ten of the twenty brothers who had accompanied him were on the Thunderhawk out of there. Still, it did not matter to Galen. He had his prize.

Three months later, the Inquisition returned. His theft of the book had been noted, it seemed, by that insufferable meddler Raav. Worse, he had declared Galen excommunicate. When he heard, the Chapter Master's hearts nearly stopped. To be declared excommunicate meant he was fair game for the vengeful Inquisition. With his life at stake, and his chapter refusing to answer the call to surrender, speeding the war to come, Galen had made his final, desperate plea to the Emperor to spare his life. The Emperor did not answer him. Something else, on the other hand, did. Galen smiled as he remembered the voice. A kindly, fatherly voice; one filled with concern and sympathy for his plight. No cold, distant deity, but a real, tangible being. The Voice had soothed him, and offered a solution; the voice needed souls, plenty of them, and for such a gift it could grant Galen not only immortality, but the means to strike back against the Inquisition that had so blighted him without fear of reprisal. Galen took one look at the book in front of him, and accepted.

 

Galen's recollections ended abruptly, as the hull of the Pius Cultus shook and groaned. The tremor of warp activity became a massive wave, then went silent. He was back in the material realm, and had no need to hide his ship's presence any longer with his psychic will. Galen snarled, and stood, his massive form shadowing the possessed bridge with his magnificent bulk. He made his way down to the launch bays of his beloved Battle-Barge, and there, he found his army awaiting him.

Nurgle had not lied when he had promised Galen an immortal army. There they stood; the Black Host, formerly the Sable Knights; loyal Astartes no longer, each warrior was a soulless slave bound to Galen's will. Their bodies, rotten and mutated to better kill in Galen's name, would not age or die. Concepts such as mercy or restraint did not bother them; they would kill and kill until ordered to stop. Though they acted with the same skill and lethality they had done in ages past, Galen knew the truth. With his immortal army behind him, and Father Nurgle watching him, the Daemon Prince was no longer afraid.

But the citizens of Calix Beta soon would be. Galen had tracked his former persecutor Raav to this planet, and as he prepared to hunt him down, he could not suppress a grin. It spread across his hideous visage, revealing his venom-riddled fangs.

Oh, yes. Raav would learn the meaning of terror.

 

Phew, glad that's done and dusted. This is meant to be in the style of those short flavour texts you get in codexes, the short sections of fluff that usually accompany a page of rules or something of that sort. Feel free to leave your thoughts; heck, tell me it's utterly terrible and order my execution if you wish, as long as you leave some hints for improvement. Thanks in advance!