Looking for a piece of fluff

[Vesper]

Hey guys,

I've been looking quite a while for that perticular piece of fluff where Abaddon hangs out before his legions of slaves, a slave dare looking at him and a Khorne Berzerker chops his head and stuff.

But sadly, I can't seem to find it. You guys remember it ? Do you have any idea where I could find it ?

[the emperor is scottish]

It's in the 3rd edition chaos dex page 9.

It says from the novel executioners hour.

[minigun762]

I can confirm its from Execution Hour.

[Vesper]

Thanks, it's such a badass little piece of fluff. And I've heard that the novel is pretty good too. That part was also published in a WD, IIRC.

Now I have to found a pdf version of 3rd ed chaos codex :(.

[Reyner]

I thought it was one of his Terminator bodyguard who killed the slave? Execution Hour sounds like a good read - may just pick it up.

[Vesper]

Nah, it was a Berzerker slave master or something.

[the emperor is scottish]

For all the times I've read through that dex over the years I've never thought to pick up that book. Great piece of fluff. Probably pick the novel up now in perpetration for ADB's black legion series.

[Noctus Cornix]

The excerpt you are looking for can be found on page 9 of the 3.5 edition Chaos Space Marines Codex. For those of you who no longer own a copy of the codex any longer or cannot scrounge a copy of that delectable novel, here is the excerpt.

Mesmerized, the Despoiler watched as the planet below entered its final death throes. Its oceans had boiled off into space hours ago, laying bare the broken and dried expanses of once hidden sea-beds. Everywhere, bright lines of fire criss-crossed the planet's surface; rivers, lakes, entire oceans of molten magma flowing up through gaping, bleeding rents in the planetary crust as the planet itself began to break apart. The whole southern hemisphere was ablaze, covered in magma as the planet's molten heart bled out of the continent-sized open wound that the Despoiler's Planet Killer weapon had burned into it. Giant earthquakes shook the planet from pole to pole, forming and then reforming its burning topography into an ever-changing series of different, fiery visions of hell. The planet's biosphere was gone - its oxygen-rich atmosphere had ignited at the first firing of the Planet Killer's awesome weapons systems - and Abaddon assumed that all life on the world was now extinct. Perhaps a few survived the initial firestorms that had scoured clean the surface, hiding in shelters deep below the ground, but nothing could have survived the resultant seismic catastrophe as the Planet Killer's coruscating energy beams tore apart the planetary crust and ripped deep into the underlying rock strata, finally cutting through into the planet's molten core.

Abaddon smiled, remembering other such moments of triumph, other such spectacles of destruction. He remembered standing by the side of Horus on the bridge of the Warmaster's battle barge, watching as wave after fiery wave of bioweapon missiles were unleashed at the world below them. Twelve billion people died in moments during the Scouring of Istvaan III, and the echoes of their mental death-screams had drowned out even the constant warp pulse of the Astronomican, but it was only a prelude to the devastation the come. "Let the Galaxy Burn." ordered the Warmaster, and Abaddon and the other commanders of the Space Marine Legions who flocked to the Warmaster's cause had done as commanded. Abaddon remembdered worlds in flames, planetary systems choked with drifting wreckage left in the wake of cataclysmic space battles, battlefronts thousands of miles long as unbroken lines of Space Marines and the towering machines of the Collegia Titanica clashed with their one-time brethren on a thousand different worlds, under the light of a thousand different suns. He remembered the howl of triumph from a million Chaos-altered throats as he, Abaddon, First Chosen of the Warmaster, led the sweeping charge over the crumbled ruins of the outer walls of the imposter Emperor's refuge on Earth and into the sanctum of the Inner Palace itself.

A tremor tan through the metre-thick ceramite decking beneath Abaddon's feet, reverberating with a dull boom throughout the armoured hull of the massive vessel and interrupting the Despoiler's reverie.

"Warmaster," bleated a hunchbacked heretic tech-priest thing, shuffling forward to bow before the Despoiler. "The planet's core is beginning to break up, causing unpredictable and powerful fluctuations in the in its magnetic field." It paused, twin worm-tongues nervously flicking out to lick at canker-eaten lips. "Perhaps it would be wiser to order the vessel back to a point beyond the area of danger."

The Despoiler growled in irritation, his thoughts disturbed by the intrusion of the minion-thing now cowering at his feet. Sensing its master's mood, his sword shivered in its scabbard, eager to be unleashed and fed. Abaddon laid a reassuring hand on the skull-carved pommel of the sheathed weapon, soothing the mood of the daemon-thing bound into the warp-forged metal of the blade. Also sensitive to their master's mood, one of the hulking, armoured figures of Abaddon's Terminator bodyguard stepped forward, crackling lighting claws sliding out with a low, buzzing hiss from its armoured fists as it prepared to remove the source of its master's irritation. Another termor ran through the deck, underlining the tech-pries's words, and through the viewing port Abaddon saw a gout of fiery magma hundreds of miles long spurting up from the burning surface and exploding high in orbit above the dying world.

At a curt gesture from Abaddon, the bodyguard stepped back to rejoin the circle of silent warriors standing round the edge of the chamber.

Whimpering in terror, the tech-priest thing scampered off gratefully away back into the safe anonymity of the surrounding shadows.

Turning his back on the viewing port behind him, Abaddon strode into the centre of the chamber, his bodyguards effortlessly moving to reform in a protective circle around him. Tech-priests, acolyte attendants and mewling chaos spawn abominations scuttled out of the crushing path of armoured giants.

At another gesture from the Despoiler, the central section of the floor of the viewing chamber began to descend down through the lower decks of the vessel. Abaddon's unspoken command was already spreading through the length of the massive Planet Killer vessel, and as the open elevator platform rumbled downwards, those upon it could see the frenzied activity as the ship's crew hastened to act on those orders. Beyond, Abaddon knew, the crews of the ship making up his Planet Killer's escort fleet would be doing likewise, their relieved captains no doubt offering up quiet prayers of thanks to the Powers of the Warp as they manoeuvered to move their vessels away from the violent and unpredictable death throes of the doomed planet.

It was forbidden on pain of death for any of the thousands of slave workers to look upon the face of the Despoiler, and as the platform descended through the main crew decks, snarling overseers rushed to assure immediate obediance amongst the work-crews of prisoners under their command. Already recognizing the tell-tale sound of the descending elevator, many of the slaves cowered in terror, gaze fixed at their manacled feet and endless slave work momentarily abandoned, as the platform and the dread figure standing upon it moved past them. Others continued working, raising faces in silent question at the sound of the platform's passing and showing dark empty holes where eyes should be. Assigned to tasks where eyes were deemed unnecessary, these poor wretches had had their sight brutally taken from them by the hands of their overseers.

One chain-gang member, his still intact Imperial Navy officer's uniform showing him to have been only recently captured and enslaved into the Warmaster's service, either ignored or did not understand his overseer's barked warnings. Risking a glance towards the platform as it rumbled past, he was quickly smashed to the ground by the figure of a slavemaster wearing the dripping sigil-daubed power armour of a World Eaters Chaos Space Marine. Snarling in rage, the World Eater brought its chain-axe up and in one swift blow summarily decapitated the screaming slave. With solemn ceremony, it reached down and picked up the severed head, holding it up in salute to the passing figure of the Despoiler, the slave's dead eyes now permitted to gaze upon the sight that had been forbidden to them in life.

Thus did Abaddon the Despoler, Warmaser of the Legions of Horus, commander of the so-called 'traitor legions' as the servants of the false Emperor called them, pass through the midst of his followers. Not caring whether they lived or died, not caring whether they served him through devotion, just as long as they served him first through fear.

From the novel 'Execution Hour'

By Gordon Rennie

And now my fingers hurt. That took me longer to write than I expected.

[Beachymike123]

i'm going to go with - a scene from the BFG rulebook, or it may be from a WD from around that era when the planet killer was released, judging by the way you've described it, vesper. abaddon goes onto the deck, all slaves have to avert their gaze down as they aren't worthy of looking at the despoiler except one, who is still in imperial uniform and doesn't know better. he then loses his head to one of abaddon's bodyguards but the head is held up, the treat he was denied in life but now he will forever look upon the despoiler. or words to that effect. i'll have a butchers in the morning and find out if it was a WD issue or the BFG rulebook vesper. hope you find what you're looking for.