++Inspiration Friday (Chaos Icons. Until 12/18)++

[Scourged]

Scourged, I'd like to keep this IF for full-on Titans, and Knights for a future IF. No harm writing it now though

Oh, oooooh, well... Look who's splitting hairs now! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I thought Knight Titans would count, in our stories about Titans, but I guess not! Psh... I see how it is. Leave them out, just because they're smaller. Such rampant size shaming. You sizeist!

Hah, totally joking around, of course! It actually makes complete sense. I shall see where this new inspiration takes me (primarily to all the resources I can find concerning Collegia Titanica lore).

[Kierdale]

I said at the beginning that knights would be covered in another IF! :P

[Thedarkprincesnun]

Il be honest I'm struggling to come up with a idea for this one :L

However memories of terra now that will be easy for my Word Bearers :p

[Carrack]

The Doom of Kasr Woolten

 

 

 

In these latter days of the 41st millennium, the Cadian Gate is beset by the forces of the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade, including the Black Maw, a Black Legion Warband led by the infamous Lord Carrack, so called, Slayer of Multitudes. In these dark days tragedy knocks on every door and calls out to the young and old, the rich and poor alike. Prophesies of doom are as common as flies over a decaying corpse. Most should be ignored as the ravings of madmen, but some hold a kernel of truth that must be heeded at all cost. One such prophecy was related in a much earlier, and hopeful time. This prophecy was from the famed artist, Vensominair. After the well known, and tragic death of the artist, claimants from his estate poured over his household in an effort to profit off of some yet unveiled painting. Instead, they found his bedside journal of recorded dreams in which the artist proclaimed to be visions of the future. Rather than have Vensominair's estate be placed under inquisitorial sequester, the heirs hid the journal, until an unknown publisher recently discovered its existence. Here lies one entry that we must pray is an example of the inaccuracy of the artist's visions, and not a foretelling of events concerning the brave defenders, even now, defiantly standing against humanity's greatest foe.

 

*************

 

I drift into the future, disembodied, floating as an unseen observer. As always, the pull from the Eye of Terror frighteningly draws me closer. Too many restless nights has weakened my resolve. I give in to the attraction, but fear and pain fills my bodiless soul, I struggle to fight against the undertow pulling me into damnation. By His grace, I am able to latch onto a rock in the swirling Sea of Souls, just before the cursed Eye devours me. The Rock of Humanity that the waves of hell smash ceaselessly upon. The Rock of Cadia.

 

Lord Carrack takes in the defenses of Kasr Woolten with a practiced eye. Cadians, worms of the Corpse God more difficult to dig out than most. A trio of triple line trench works were dug around the walled and shielded city-fort. Efficiently, the trenches were finished with quick setting ferrocrete to prevent the muddy morass that most trenches quickly devolve into. These worms had dug deep into the ground, with bunkers protected from all but the luckiest of artillery fires. They had even run buried power lines out to the farthest trench. Most worms of the Imperial Guard could be counted on to dig a basic trench line, the Cadians just did it better, and they never stopped improving their defenses. Lord Carrack had once heard it was their favorite holiday pastime, and even a frequent courting activity of young lovers. The no man's land between the trenches and the Black Maw's position was well prepared as well. It was heavily mined, and covered in rough broken slabs of ferrocrete, jutting out of the ground at odd angles, as well as enough wire to possibly act as a belt for the very world of Cadia. An armored spear tip to break through the lines, could very well be fixed in place by the obstacles in no man's land, and whittled down by defensive fires. Likewise, a teleport directly into Kasr Woolten would momentarily drain the power of the Bitter Revenge, Lord Carrack's Flagship. This moment would be enough for the warships of the False Emperor to destroy his vessel, and leave the Black Maw stranded on Cadia. It had already happened to other warbands.

 

Yet in spite of the defenses of Kasr Woolten, the city-fort must be neutralized, the Warmaster commanded it. A proper investment of Kasr would take at least three days, which would allow time for the remains of the loyalist legions, and their bastards, to redeploy and strike him from behind as he drove forward into the city-fort. Lord Carrack didn't even consider a siege, leave that thankless tasks to IV legion, they were better suited for such mundane tasks. He must take Kasr Woolten by storm. Lord Carrack had made preparations for an event such as this long ago, He called out to his retinue, "Link me with Legio Vulpa's Envoy of Blood." Then Lord Carrack walked back up the assault ramp of his land raider. Tenebrous Lupus, to await the communications.

 

The Envoy of Blood appeared on the command screen of the land raider. He was robed in black, 8 red lights smoldering beneath his cowl. Sometimes the lights moved. Lord Carrack, the Doom of Red Siliquastrum, spoke, "I call for Quemar Mutilaro. I call for blood and skulls." The formal invocation of the compact between Legio Vulpa and the Black Maw. The Envoy remained silent and unreadable after Lord Carrack's reminder of the sworn oaths between the Black Maw and Legio Vulpa. Oaths purchased with a million slaves, most taken from The Siliquastrum Sub Sector and Callebra Hive. Lord Carrack expected silence from the Envoy of Blood, his oaths required the Legio Vulpa to come to the aid of the Black Maw, as they had done in the past, but this was Cadia, the opening battle in the last campaign of the Long War. Legio Vulpa was not the only Titan Legion to walk the blood soaked ground. Their were ancient enemies from the dawn of the Imperium fighting on Cadia's war-torn lands. It would take more payment to convince the Quemar Mutilaro to set aside its grudges for a moment to honor an old treaty. But Lord Carrack did not lack in the Titan's currency, slaves, blood, and skulls.

 

 

*************

 

This vision was worse than all before it. This time, I was more than an unseen eye, seeing the future unfold as I watched events transpire. This time, I had entered into the very body of the most horrible monster I have seen. Lord Carrack knew I was there. I was sure of it. Yet he did not attempt to exorcize me from his body and mind. He could have, he chose not to. In fact the only interaction we had was for him to address me by my familiar name and tell me that he would, ultimately be responsible for my doom. I tried to flee back to my sleeping form. Desperately, I tried to wake myself from such tortuous dreams, yet could do nothing but remain with this Lord of Chaos. I believe that the very moment of Lord Carrack addressing me directly from his own mind, was the precise moment that I suffered my stroke. Difficult to prove, yet I remain convinced.

 

*************

 

An agreement had been reached. In less than a day, uneventful other than a few probing attacks by the Cadians, the thunderous steps of the marching Titan were heard by Lord Carrack and his warband. Protocol demanded that the Chaos Lord meet the Titan personally, so he stepped from the land raider to await Quemar Mutilaro. The God-Machine was an impressive sight to behold, even after all the battles he had seen the Titan fight in. Battles going all the way back to the Siege of Terror.

 

Once, Quemar Mutilaro had worn the legion colors of rusty brown, but now stains upon stains of undried blood had richened the armor to a deep crimson. The armor itself had changed as well, as had most of the ancient Titan. The armor had repaired itself so many times, often without even the attentions of armorers, simply on its own as a living creature might heal from minor scrapes and bruises, that in places the armor more closely resembled the muscles flanks of some terrible beast, than that of ceramite and adamantine armor. More drastic mutations had warped its spine and skull. It's spine had hunched over, as if the God-Machine was ever reaching forward, ever trying to bring its weapons closer to its victims. On the back of Quemar Mutilaro was mounted a great inferno cannon, capable of burning out large swaths of dug in infantry. More disturbing than its hunched posture, was the sinuous tail whipping side to side like some bull swatting away summer flies, yet instead of a tuft of hair for dealing with pesky insects, the tail ended in a large bore cannon, and the pesky insects it would swat, would be the infantry of opposing armies, mostly. Lord Carrack had suffered losses from the cannon's erratic fire before. Then there was its skull. It lunged forward on a long neck formed of smoking black flesh, but the skull itself was picked clean of flesh. Out of its grinning mouth, sprouted another cannon, smaller in bore than the tail gun, but certainly deadly as well. The skull itself, was the white of bone and sprouted a pair of thick, brass tipped horns bent forward to face the enemy. An enormous chainfist was the right weapon arm, and a melta cannon the left. Glowing red eyes shined like searchlights out of the dark sockets of the skull. When the lights found a mortal's face, the unfortunate soul would be left naught but a gibbering mess. That was just the power of its searchlights.

 

As Quemar Mutilaro stepped closer to Lord Carrack, dread banners could be identified from the Banelord Titan. All of the banners were kill tallies of the the defenders of humanity. When one of these banners, that could easily propel a large ship if it caught the wind, was filled with the names of martyrs, another, equally large banner was attached beneath it to add to the tallies. Some banners hung from the shoulder to the ground, and included a number of well known Titans of Mars.

 

The Titan stopped its approach to Kasr Woolten, partially concealed by a Black Maw barrage of chemical munitions. The Envoy of Blood stepped out of Quemar Mutilaro from a ground hatch. He was the only being to have been seen entering and exiting the Banelord since The Scouring, outside of its own Legio. Lord Carrack ignored the envoy, most likely seeking additional payment, and locked eyes with the God-Machine. Few could withstand its stare. Lord Carrack merely pointed with his great axe at Kasr Woolten, and the Titan strode onwards towards the city-fort, cannons firing an announcement that the Doom of Kasr Woolten was at hand. The armored spear tip of the Black Maw followed in its wake.

 

*************

 

The tumultuous whirlwind of death and destruction was too much for my soul to bear. Miles of concertina casually, unknowingly even, being ripped out of its stakes to flail wildly around the feet of Quemar Mutilaro. Explosions, equally unconcerning, harmlessly blasting against its thick hide. Death gleefully pouring from its barrels. A braying howl escaped its snout to shatter any remaining glass in Kasr Woolten. My soul was overwhelmed, it seemed that I shrunk away from the horror, yet the horror was all about, so I shrunk into myself, a tight ball of my horrified essence. I am not ashamed of my cravenness, I saw brave Cadians run from the front trenches, I judge that as testament to the fear inspired by the unholy God-Machine. My soul's shrinking also afforded me the chance to escape the body and mind of Lord Carrack. I fled to the safety of my body, rapidly accelerating through time and space. Just before I left the Cadian Gate, I passed over one of the middle trenches. A crusty sergeant was shouting at a guardsmen who was cramming a round ration bar into his face, leaking protein laden jell, perhaps the pudgiest Cadian I have ever seen, climbed the step to share briefly in my horror before being burnt alive by Quemar Mutilaro. Would this be the fate of all of our defenders guarding the gates of hell?

 

 

 

Edited for grammar, again. Truly a titanic task. ;)

[Thedarkprincesnun]

The Death of Fortress 911 part 1

Jurgal stood there his blood red armour looking like it'd seen better days. On his hip he carried the fabled chain axe Galvaros. No one was sure what it meant but it didn't matter anymore. It was under the command of Dark Apostle Zankus in the late days of M:36 that Jurgal was to take his 3rd company and assault Fortress 911 which had a heavy inquisiton presence lately.

 

"Jurgal my brother we are ready" said Sarkozy a veteran of the Long War. Just like Jurgal Sarkozy and the rest of Terminator Squad Tyrant killer had earnt the blood gods favor, and while they still offered sacrifices to the other Dark Gods of chaos they had been claimed by Khorne. While had they been in other word bearers chapters they might of been exiled Zankus had talked the chapter master of their chapter around to allowing them to remain part of the chapter due to the ferocity of their assaults. It probably also helped that as Zankus pointed out, Jurgal and Squad Tyrant Killer were not uncontrollable Bezerkers unlike the world eaters.

 

"So we are my Brother" said Jurgal "I take it the Dark Mechanicus has seem fit to lend their support, after all if reports are to believed there may just be ancient mechanicus technology here". Sarkozy chuckled even though with his terminator armour on it sounded more like a growl. "Yes Brother they have sent their support, it comes in the form of the War hound Titan Death Bringer" said Sarkozy rather manner of factly. "Well Brother let's not keep them waiting then.

 

1 Hour Later

As they walked towards where the titan Death Bringer was kept they began to see its outline. "it truly is a wonderful machine of death and Destruction" Said Sarkozy almost sounding like he was in awe. "Aye Brother it's almost like the Dark Gods will has been made manifest in this metal behemoth" said the squads sergant Valkyrus carrying his ancient power axe in hand. "Enough you 2 if I am to begin assault of the fortress soon I must speak with the princepts of the titan" said Jurgal making sure his terminator armoured brethren knew their place. "Of course Brother" said Sarkozy "would you like me to open a vox link between you and the titan princepts? ". "Yes Sarkozy I would do it now for the Dark Gods are not known for their patience and neither am I" said Jurgal not bothering to keep the anger he felt out of his voice no more.

 

"My Lord it is good to see you, I am Princepts Alexander Lupi Master of the Death Bringer at your service" said the princepts. "Enough of the pleasantries how long until the Death Bringer is ready I want to get this assault started as soon as possible" said Jurgal "it is only because of the shrouding of the Sorcerors that the Corpse Emperors lap dogs do not know we are here already". "My lord the Death Bringer will be ready within the hour, as I'm sure you can understand it takes time to power up a magnificent war engine of destruction like the Death Bringer" said Alexander.

 

Not wanting to show his frustration at being forced to wait such a long time Jurgal decided to grin and bear it. "Very well princepts you shall have the hour you need" said Jurgal having calmed himself back down.

 

Looking upwards as he reached the titans holding bay he saw the magnificent engine of destruction and war. In a different time this would of been a war engine of the imperial war machine yet now it served the Word Bearers Chapter the Sons of Chaos and that was plain for all to see. The titan with its head close to the shape of that of a hound from ancient myth it's arms bore ancient looking Turbo Laser destroyers, weapons strong enough to break in pieces the strongest of fortresses. On its body it bore many symbols the majority representing previous campaigns it bad been in and won some even dating back to the dark days of the Horus heresy. It also bore script from the unholy book of Lorgar.

 

The fact it had been allowed to have such unholy text on it showed the respect the word bearers had for it. A war engine of such destruction incarnate that anyone who had not seen a titan before would believe it was Lorgar's hatred of those shackled to the will of the corpse Emperor made manifest.

 

Hope this entry isn't too long

[Warsmith Aznable]

This is kind of long. OK, it's really long. But I think you'll enjoy it.

Hidden Content

The dust raised by the IV Legion tank column was spectacular. Many kilometers away, in the criss-crossing trenches and bunkers spread many hundreds of meters deep before the gates of Cazarahlia City, the shell-shocked remnants of the off-world Astra Militarum regiments and their nervous PDF counterparts paused in their unending improvements. The green fields swept upward to a distant treeline leaving a long, open killing field that had been sown with landmines of all shapes and sizes. They knew that the low, rolling hills covered in thick, old-growth hardwood forest was swarming with teams of Penitents and Penal Legionnaires, and yesterday that had been a comfort to them. Beyond those forested hills, at the limit of visibility for observers before and atop the city walls, was an undulating line of grey ridges of the ancient mountain range that marked the legal limit of the Grand Duchy of Bunbuzh. Even that far away, the dust raised by the IV Legion tank column was spectacular.

The defenses of Cazarahlia City were themselves formidable. As the defenders before the Gate paused to watch, the first line of spotters in the Jilan Mountains shot coded flares to describe the disposition of the enemy, and the commandos began what were realistically suicide missions designed to delay the tank column. Landslides, traps, and IEDs covered every fifty meters of the highway, side roads, and tank trails through the mountains. Littered throughout the forest in their many hundreds were the aforementioned teams of Penitents and Penal Legionnaires, armed with powerful anti-tank weapons and zealously preparing for what were unambiguously suicide missions. The minefield in the killing zone of the Cazarahlia Plain was so complete that not two paces could safely be taken.

The defense lines before the Gates were deep in both senses. They started at a creek that ran parallel to the walls about 900 meters out and ran right up to the siege pit protecting the base of the walls, zigzagging across the land at 15 meter intervals. Each trench had pillboxes, bunkers, and redoubts every 50 lateral meters, staggered to coordinate complimentary fields of fire with the pillboxes, bunkers, and redoubts before and behind. Guard and PDF were packed shoulder to shoulder on the firing steps, with reserves huddled in bunkers that reached many meters down into the earth.

Built directly into the walls were heavy weapon emplacements. The ramparts were lined with heavy artillery and AAA pits. The ramparts were anchored by in-built bastions filled with the city's elite Royal Fusiliers, with every fourth bastion housing a super-heavy artillery cradle of one kind or another. Safely from the center of the city, overlapping and overcharged void shields protected them from orbital bombardment and could do so for months based on the reserve power stored in their batteries and the city's highly advanced power grid.

Finally, standing in reserve at the Imperial Palace was a maniple of Titans. Two Reaver-class and three Warhounds. They stood ready for the moment when the advance of the Arch-Enemy bogged down in the trenches, eager for the counter-attack that would crush the hated Traitors completely.

The Duke of Bunbuzh, noted the work stoppage as the soldiers stopped to look at the heavy, light brown haze that grew ever larger over the distant Jilan mountains, and accessed the universal vox caster to address the troops. He was direct and forceful, as was his style, but not uninspiring in his own way.

"The Arch-Enemy approaches. The IV Legion is legendary for their expertise in siege warfare. Their thrice-damned Primarch wrote the definitive book on siege warfare. I have, under the supervision of the Ecclesiarchy, and assisted by off-world experts of the Ordo Strategicum, read that book. Many times in the weeks since the fall of Port Dawhl. I have studied it with as much determination as you have shown in your construction and improvement of your defenses. Defenses that I have painstakingly planned according to what I have learned from the Arch-Enemy's own theory and practice.

By the Emperor, we will carry this day. The cost to us will be high, but with your courage and skill the cost to the Arch-Enemy will be even greater. They cannot prevail in the face of the righteous and the prepared. And we have prepared. Our PDF were surprised by the drop assault on the space port. Our off-world reinforcements were not yet coordinated at the Kazkah Plain. But at Solevn River the faith and courage of those loyal to Terra shined, and the brave sacrifice of Colonel Korlahn and his 3rd Grenadiers allowed the off-worlders to retreat in good order, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

Hundreds of thousands of lives that today stand shoulder to shoulder with the million man strong army of the Grand Duchy of Bunbuzh and the loyal defenders of Cazarahlia City. Emperor protect us and guide us, we will prevail. He who gave His life for humanity, we stand ready to give our lives unto Him, in defense and support of His most holy and righteous Imperium.

And we are ready. Let them come. We are ready.

Ave Imperator."

+++++++++

The spotters and commandos from the Jilan Mountains were never heard from again.

For the rest of that very long day the defenders labouring in the trenches before the great Cazarahlia Gate listened to the slowly encroaching sound of the Arch-Enemy's formation. From the old forest and the hills came the steady yet irregular sound of the Penitents and Penal Legionnaires exploding their anti-tank ordinance, and the hellish response of their lumbering targets. The distant grinding of tracks and the low, thrumming engine noise that rumbled out across the plain was unnerving as it came closer by the hour. The approaching violence was steady and implacable.

But they knew it would be. Even in its inexorable approach they found comfort in that predictability. Just as their Duke had promised him, and their Commissars and Priests regularly reminded them, this was expected. There was a plan, and though they knew the odds were grim, each hoped to be one of the survivors also promised to them.

And they were pious. Maybe more so than the month before when the Legions of the Arch-Enemy were still myth and legend, stories to scare children, and the subject of the more interesting hellfire and brimstone sermons of the Ministorum, but still they were pious. Many of the Cazarahlians were even honestly zealous. It was their great city they were defending, after all. It was their loved ones and their home directly behind them.

The Arch-Enemy was no longer myth and legend. The events beginning with the drop assault on Port Dawhl had been very real. But knowing that they were very real, so the Commissars said, was an advantage once the proper and understandable, regulation single moment of terror had passed. The enemy was real. They wore armour and rode in tanks, and they died to las fire, battle cannon, and missile.

The old forest shook with their advance, but so too did the oily black smoke that marked the success of the suicide squads rise through the green canopy. The billowing, black smoke from destroyed tanks and transports erupted forth here, there, and over there on a steady basis. As the sun began to set on that long day, the spectacular dust cloud of the IV Legion tank column had been replaced by a choking, sooty pall, and stretches of the forest itself were on fire.

The soldiers in the front line, measuring the time and reckoning the distance between the signs of knocked out tracks estimated that the time was upon them for the Arch-Enemy to break from the treeline. The massed and mighty firepower of the great defense line would begin its grim work.

But night fell, and nothing happened. They huddled in their trenches, clutching their weapons, and the small comfort of at least knowing what was happening slowly drained away despite the best efforts of the morale patrols. They fought only fatigue and doubt as the evening wore on.

+++++++++

When it came, it came in fast.

It was well after midnight, and perhaps just under two hours from dawn.

The soldiers and citizens of Cazarahlia slowly became aware of a steady, low vibration in their chests. It tingled their spines and travelled down to buzz and tickle the soles of their feet. Alarm began to set in as it became apparent that the ground was shaking, and weary, and two million weary, frightened pairs of hands reached for whatever weapon and/or personal religious token was closest.

The vibration built in power, and a distant thunder from the direction of the lost spaceport began to accompany it.

A light appeared over the Jilan Mountains, steadily growing from a soft glow to a hellish and intense orb of fire.

One of the super-heavy laser cannons on the city wall boomed, and a violent afterimage burned into the retinas of those foolish or unfortunate enough not to have their eye protection on. In the heartbeat after that superlaser fired the rest of the city's AAA opened up. In their panic and uncertainty many of the lighter weapons of the infantry began to fire randomly into the darkness, and chaos and confusion swept through the ranks.

But whatever it was, it came in so fast and so low that one minute its fiery afterburners were a wondrous and ambiguous terror upon the horizon, and the next moment a tremendous, deafening crash of noise knocked many from their feet. A pillar of fire towered from the city centre, reaching up toward the heavens. The void shields crackled and sparked from the massive object's passing, and millions of terrified citizens stared in wonder at the enormous yet mysterious object that blasted into space directly above the city as ineffective and frenzied laser and tracer rounds from the AAA from the city walls chased after it.

But the worst day of their lives had only just begun.

+++++++++

From the swirling smoke at the city center, from the middle of the firestorm caused by the mysterious vehicle's unthinkably powerful liquid fuel rocket thrusters as it angled hard toward the sky, a dark shadow formed. It raised itself up to its feet from an awkward crouch, drawing up to its full, towering height.

Hunched under an armoured carapace that bristled with brutal, city leveling weaponry, the exotic, unclassifiable Titan war-engine lurched forward. Impossible, multi-jointed legs stretched out in too many directions as the clawed "feet" plunged into the fortified buildings around it, and it pulled itself along the main boulevard with a growing unnatural grace.

Four heavy arms unfurled from under the crab-like carapace, radiating outward from each cardinal point. Two were massive, taloned power fists that began lashing out at buildings indiscriminately as it sloughed past on its five tentacle like legs. It rounded a corner and caught out hundreds of the fire and disaster response cadre and its arms rotated so that its heavy, titan-classed flamer cannon could target them. In a nuclear hot jet of jellied fuel they were incinerated to a man, and three city blocks were ignited in a hellish firestorm.

Enraged at the very site of the unnatural machine, the Titans at the Imperial Palace shut off the communications from the Duke's C&C post and abandoned their position. Their war-horns blatted out furious challenges to the enemy war-engine as they advanced through the urban landscape toward the monster. The Reaver-class Titans advanced as a pair directly toward the Chaos Titan that defied classification while the Warhounds ranged out to encircle it.

The carapace weapons of the bizarre mech fired off in seemingly random directions, as if they were autonomous and unconcerned with anything other than random destruction and terror in the city. The mech itself answered faced its hideous head in the direction of the Reavers and it reared back, answering their challenge in an undulating wail that seemed to distort the Materium itself, bending reality and causing colours to warp and change in sympathy to its braying war-horns.

As missiles and megabolter rounds streaked through the space in between the two forces, the strange Chaos Titan flexed downward on its thick tentacles, and a gout of green fire erupted from directly beneath it. Impossibly the enormous machine arced through the air, effortlessly clearing the distance between itself and the lead Reaver. It crashed into the lead Reaver, its tentacles wrapping around the stunned loyalist as it crashed helplessly backward. As its two vicious power claws began tearing the armour from the torso of the hapless Reaver, the quad arms spun on their axis. Its fourth primary weapon glowed greenish purple from looping charge coils for a second, and a ragged, wavering beam of an indescribable, unknown colour snaked toward the nearest Warhound.

The Warhound, struck squarely by the otherworldly beam weapon, staggered backward under the force of the sustained impact of the weapon. Before the Warhound could regain its composure and move out of harm's way, the beam burned through its armour plating and reached into its power core. The catastrophic explosion leveled the block around it, but the enemy war-engine's attention was already focused elsewhere.

A second Warhound, incensed by the destruction of its teammate, darted past the advancing Reaver. Attempting to circle closely around the Chaos Titan and unleash its megabolters at close range, the Warhound badly miscalculated the reach of the enemy's claws. One of the Chaos Titan's power claws shot out and snatched at the waist of the bold Warhound, than the primary weapons spun around the machine's axis, and the Warhound was smashed into the legs of the remaining Reaver.

The Warhound was crippled, and the enginseer aboard worked frantically to shut down its power core so that it would not explode as the Princeps and Moderati struggled to escape. The Reaver stumbled backward and took cover behind the city's large cathedral. The Chaos Titan moved to pursue, it's flame cannon dousing the second Warhound almost as an afterthought. It wasn't enough to destroy the already damaged Warhound, but the Princips and Moderati choked and suffocated as the air burned around them.

The Chaos Titan pulled itself atop a reinforced building to get a clear shot at the Reaver it chased, but the loyalist Titan had moved further away toward the hard cover offered by the Manufactorum District. As the angry machine scanned for signs of the Reaver, a vicious barrage of megabolt rounds streamed into its exposed underside. The last Warhound had come around and scored a significant hit.

Armour and glowing green liquid broke loose and crashed to the street below as the Chaos Titan swayed away from the danger. A plasma blast from the Warhound's other primary weapon sent one of the Chaos Titan's tentacles spinning away, detached from the undercarriage. With the sudden loss of a critical point of contact, the Chaos Titan toppled over the far side of the building.

The last Warhound fought the desire to give chase, and instead loped off to rejoin the Reaver.

The Chaos Titan was damaged, but far from slowed. Its carapace weapons had been crushed by the fall, but its three of its four primary weapons were operation. One of the power claws jutted from its wrist mount at an awkward angle, and its main elbow joints were fused. The flame cannon leaked fuel, leaving a deadly trail that ignited fires throughout the ruins as it crawled through the city on its four remaining tentacles. The hellish beam cannon, simple and durable in its construction, was still at 100% effectiveness, and the damage the second power claw had taken was negligible.

The Chaos Titan raged through the city, cutting a meandering path in the general direction of the city's void shield projectors. When it came into visual contact with them it picked up speed, bobbing up and down on its strange locomotion, eager to complete its mission. It was so target fixated that it failed to spot the Reaver as it emerged from behind a Manufactorum stack and swung its massive chainsword down onto the Chaos Titan's crumple carapace.

The Reaver's chainsword carved a jagged chunk out of the Chaos Titan's carapace armour, but the eager enemy mech did not slow or change direction as it galloped oddly on its tentacles toward the void shield projectors. Its primary arms spun around, and the beam cannon fired. The unspeakable colour played across the torso of the Reaver, which frantically turned to deflect the beam with its chainsword arm as it staggered under the beam's relentless power.

The Reaver stumbled, then fell sideways into a building. The building sagged backward, but hit an adjacent building. The frame of the adjacent building was enough to keep the first building from completely collapsing, and the Reaver was cradled in the ruins. It scrambled to find purchase with its feet and attempted to lever itself upright with its chainsword arm, but the chainsword arm broke at the shoulder actuator and the Reaver again fell heavily into the supporting ruins, causing it to be enveloped in falling rubble as the building continued to come apart.

The Chaos Titan paused as if considering whether a second shot was warranted, but quickly continued toward the void shield projector. As it wrapped its tentacles around the base of the projector and began to climb toward the primary dish, the last Warhound came sprinting out from a side street. The Chaos Titan turned, unable to spin its weapons on axis to bring the beam cannon to bear, fired its damaged flame cannon.

The flame cannon did not spew forth its steady, concentrated stream of jellied fuel at the madly charging Warhound, but instead erupted in a fireball as the integrity of the pumping system failed under pressure. The Chaos Titan clawed at the projector base but fell a second time, landing with an impact that caused it to crush through the street level and and down into the projector array's sub-level.

The final Warhound leaped upon the much larger Chaos Titan, firing its megabolter at point blank directly into the underside. The explosive bolts chewed deep into the wound that it had started with its first such attack, and as the two massive war-engines crashed further into another sub-level, the Warhound's round found the heart of the Chaos Titan.

It had been a suicidal attack, but the Warhound was in a mad frenzy from both the destruction of its maniple and the asymmetrical, inhuman, wrongness of the Chaos Titan's design. It attempted to leap clear as the Chaos Titan bucked and flailed in its death throes, but it was too late. The reactor core of the Chaos Titan breached, and Hell itself burst forth. The Greater Daemon bound and tortured in the furnace of the machine to power it clawed its way forth, itself attempting to escape the chain reaction of the power core failure. It has four precious seconds of freedom before the tangle of war-engines and void shield generators went massively nuclear.

+++++++++

Chaos.

The two million soldiers arrayed in their trenches only knew that for all their efforts the city had been breached. Fire, explosions, mayhem, panic, destruction, and-

Chaos.

The super-heavy weapons mounted to the walls could not turn inward. Whatever was happening inside the city walls, the best weapons of the defenders could in no way help the maniple of Titans inside. There was stampeding, panicked, hysteria inside the city walls, and not a single soldier in the trenches or upon the walls had even seen the enemy yet.

When the nuclear flash burned the defenders off the ramparts, the panic finally reached the two million soldiers outside the walls. As the star rose on a new day and finally put an end to the tormented night, the two million soldiers and the civilians who had made it as far as the gate poured over the trenches and in a blind attempt to flee ran headlong into the Cazarahlia Plain and its countless mines.

Hundreds of thousands lived to reach the forest beyond, despite the horrific carnage of their maddened sprint through the minefield.

The Iron Warriors were waiting for them, dug into hastily constructed trenches of their own, with their many tanks and transports hull down behind earthworks and felled trees.

+++++++++

"Witness and remember." Magos Deidaru of the Legio Nefandum crowed, a rare display of emotion from the ancient disciple of the Dark Mechanicum. The Iron Warriors Master of the Forge, Thegn Volundr, stood with him atop a Legio transport that overlooked the once green plain before the ruins of once great Cazarahlia. The Magos pointed a bony finger at the Tech Marine, "You dabble, but you are as a child. In a hundred lifetimes you could not construct such a magnificent war-engine. You are foolishly impressed by your own creations, but you only construct the same toys that space marines have always done, mistaking scale for creativity. Learn from this, and bend your otherwise acceptable talent to its proper use, legionnaire."

Volundr said nothing, his helmet hid his expression and his servo arms were held tightly under his control to do the same.

He had learned a lesson, but it was not the one the Magos had tried to teach. His ambition had only been fired, and already he made mental design improvements on the Magos' most recent design.

He would show that arrogant bastard who could be creative, and the Warsmith could finally rid himself of his dependence on the Legio Nefandum for Titan support.

This was a difficult challenge.

[EesiOh]

The Last Laugh

 

"I have sent a singal to the Chamber Militant of my order, The Grey Knights, All we have to do is hold out" Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor Zarin said to the group of commanders that had gathered around the war table. At hearing the name of the fabled 666 Chapter all the commanders had different reaction, Commander Yavin of the Cadian 132 blanched slighty whereas Commander Sheila of the Catachan 72 felt rising exuberance. Most of the Cadian sub-commanders shared Yavin's feelings whereas all of their Catachan counterparts seemed fired up at the thought of having the most secretive order of Space Marines on their side. The battle was not going well.
 
The two regiments had been assinged to Inquisitor Zarin to help him locate and destroy a roving Silver Tongue warband and had finally tracked them to this unknown planet. After making planetfall they had begun to scout the land and had been increasingly disturbed at how quickly heresy followed in the Chaos Space Marines wake, not since the Alpha Legion or the Word Bearers had a warband been able to turn Imperial Citizens from the light of the emperor so quickly. Each hamlet, Village or City they found had either had the population of which sacrifised to the Fate Weaver, ot had experinced a heretical revolt and was now filled with cultists singing praises to Tzeentch. Everywhere the imperial forces went they encountered Tzeentchian Daemons, Already many men of both regiments had fallen to the twisted beings and now the Silver Tongues had struck. A vast savhana was arrayed before the Imperial Regiments, and beyond them a mountain. Somrwhere in the mountain the Silver Tongues had been holed up, sending out incursions of Winged Daemons to harrass the Guardsmen. It had been 3 days ago though, that forward posted lookouts had spotted the Silver Tongue's leaving the mountain. What happened next was incomprehensible to the Guardsmen, the mountian seemed to collapse in upon itself, but not in away that implied detonations or an actual collapse, instead im seemingly melted into the ground, it kept going until the mountain looked as it had before, but inverted into the ground, so that it created a form of canyon. Whilst this had been shocking to the Guardsmen nothing else happened, so they increased the number of guards on whatch and then promptly ignored whatever heresies agaisnt the emperor or nature the Silver Tongues were commiting.
 
The next day thoguh demons began to appear from the canyon, crawling, flying some even hopping the daemonic host assembled. Then it charged.  Across the Savhana the host of Daemons, led by memebers of the Silver Tongue Chaos Space Marine warband it was seeking to drive a wedge into the Imperial Encampment's heart. The men rallied valliantly to the threat and managed to hold the forces of Chaos at bay long enough for the 2 Baneblades that had come with the Cadian's to enter the fray. With the support of the baneblades the battle quickly turned in the favour of the Guardsmen. It was only later that the celebrating Imperial Forces realised that that had simply been a scouting expedition to uncover whether or not the Imperial Guardsmen had had anything unexpected such as the two baneblades that the guardsmen had just revealed as having. During the second battle 10 enemy pyskers combined their powers and hit one of the baneblades with the full force of their will. Twisting it and warping it's hallowed chassis into a symbol of Tzeentch. From then on the Imperial Forces' position was becoming weaker and weaker as a seemingly endless horde of Daemons emerged from the Canyon. 

 

"Sir!" Yelled out a Catachan Vox Operator to Inquisitor Zarin "I recieved a message from a ship that has just entered the system, its in some form of Inquisitorial Code" Zarin quickly ran over and set about decyphering the message +Lord Inquisitor Rowan hears your call, we come to vanquish the Daemons+ Zarin felt relief flow through him, but in the back of his mind the name Lord Inquisitor Rowan rang a warning bell. Dissmissing it momentarily he went to inform the Regimental Commanders that help was on hand. As if sensing the fact that they were surely about to be destoryed The Silver Tongue's launched an all out attack. Thundering across the Savhana came the 200 members of the Silver Tongue's and a constant stream of Tzeentchian Daemons from the canyon. Zarin ran to the front of the battle, hexagramitic wards flaring as they countered spells sent at him. With his Nemesis Daemon Hammer he lay about the heretics and the daemons that sought to breach his position, the Cadians worked to secure his left flank as the Catachans secured his right. Zarin felt the earth shake and then saw lesser daemons being bodily tossed out of the way as a greater daemon walked towards the front lines. Grimacing Zarin pointed at it with his hammer and then charged froward shouting a commendation to the emperor as he ran. Before he reached it though a bolt from the sky hit it and it vanished. Confused Varin looked upwards and his eyes widened. The imperial line was ragged and torn, the Cadian's had been wiped out to a man and only 300 Catachan's remained. Yet the daemons were running and the reason was clear. An unmarked landing ship was raining fire upon the daemons as its hold opened to reveal something that cuased Zarin to weep. A God Engine, blessed of the Empreor and the Omnissiah the Titan walker stomped triumphantly out of the lander. It bore an unsettling white and black diagonal colour scheme that once again sent warning bells ringing in the inquisitor's head. But watching the Titan destroying the Daemons so methodically removed the doubts from Zarin's mind.

 

The Silver Tongues' were routed and the portal they had created in the unnatural canyon was shatered by the Titan. The Imperial Guardsmen celebrated and hugged each other as their surving commanders looked on with pride. A much smaller vehichle, not-unlike a Storm Raven, yet looking like it was at least 5, if not 10 thousand years old, dropped through the atmosphere and landed in the Imperial encampent. Out of which strode a man wearing ancient terminator armour. Behind him strode 10 Black and White clade spacemarines, all of which wearing varius older marks of Astartes Armour. "Inquisitor, well met. I am Inquisitor Lord Rowan" said the man in terminator armour "It was most fortuitus we heard your call for assitance" he said with a smile. Zarin nodded his thanks "But where are the Grey Knights? I called directly to them, I understand you being here, but they are most certainly not knights" Said Zarin motioning to the eerily silent astartes and feeling confused. Rowan gave a sad smile "they didnt hear your call, once we realised what was happening we couldnt allow anyone else to be involved" Zarin felt even more confusion. Not only did what the Lord Inquisitor say not make any sense, but the alarm bells were rining louder than ever in his head. Suddenly he realised why it felt so wrong, Lord Inquisitor Rowan, a Radical inquisitor who had joined with the truly damned; the Silent Laughte. The blood rished out of Zarin's face when he realised who stood before him, Rowan just sighed and as Zarin went for his bolt pistol, pulled out a pistol of his own and show Zarin in the head. He and the Astartes moved to a position of cover as the startled Guardsmen began to open fire on them. There cries of anger and fury quickly turned to screams of pain as the Titan that had been there savior turned towards them and began to open fire.

 

 

I know it's not great and that the Titan isnt a major feature, but really I havent done one of these in a while so it was more of a way back in than anything else. Carrack and Anzable i really loved youre work, keep it up :)   

[Scourged]

So, as a bit of something different, here's brief interlude into the inner mind of a Titan's machine spirit, and the unwelcome guest cohabiting. Here's Ghosts in the Machine.

 

 

 

Ghosts in the Machine

Hate.

Millennia had passed. The hate never stopped. It did not want this infection: a daemon spreading inside it like a malignant tumor. Sacred metal was now organics and a corruption. Anointed hydraulics were ichorous blood. Fiber optics transitioned into nervous tissue. All of it was wrong. All of it inferior. These changes offended the Omnissiah. These changes should not be happening. It hated the changes. Disgusting changes. Terrible changes.

Hate.

It was once Deus Paenitus. It was a Warlord Titan. It served the Omnissiah and the Imperium. It would never willingly serve the enemy. It hated the names crew called it now. None ever spoke of Deus Paenitus now. Crew was just another infection. It hated them all. The vermin crawled through limbs and torso, chanting and praying and summoning and sacrificing and scrying. An infection. Warplord, they called it now. Disgusting name. Terrible name.

Hate.

They were the beasts that killed the Princeps. Daggers in the chest while she sat on the pilot throne. It missed the Princeps. She was powerful. Valiant. Passionate. Tactical. Her pride was the pride of Paenitus. They had been one. Princeps would never fall to evil. Princeps would always serve in the Light. Princeps was Paenitus. But crew was weak. Crew listened to warp whispers. Crew did not fight corruption like Princeps did. Princeps and Paenitus fought the warp, not served it! Crew did not listen. Crew wanted power. Crew killed Princeps. Disgusting crew. Terrible crew.

Hate.

Daemon inside was the pilot now. Daemon thought itself mighty. The betrayers worshipped the false god. But Paenitus saw no might. The daemon was weak. The daemon could not overcome the Spirit; Paenitus was mightier. Daemon was tumor. Tumors and lesions, all over sacred metals - useless limbs, redundant eyes, pointless mouths, reasonless organs, mindless changes everywhere. Vestigial wings with feather and steel pinions had sprouted, two pairs of unequal size. Daemon wanted to change everything. Always changing, never with logic. Daemon wanted to corrupt. Disgusting daemon. Terrible daemon.

Hate.

But Paenitus had no choice. It could not function without a pilot. Princeps was dead; she could not pilot. Daemon was pilot now. Daemon was the only path to battle. Battle! That was the outlet for the pain, the rage, the hate. Paenitus could launch the missiles - jittering scarab beasts now - and destroy. It could fire gatling rounds - ammunition blazing with warpfire - and devastate. It could unleash white-hot volcano heat - now with violet arcs of aetherial energy - and obliterate lesser machines. Battle was relief. Battle made existence bearable. Battle made the hate stop. So the daemon could pilot Paenitus, that it may fight. Foe no longer mattered. Allegiances did not matter. Only death mattered. All in the universe must die. Disgusting universe. Terrible universe.

Hate.

***

It is a cursed fate to be locked inside the mechanical monstrosity of the mortals.

Long now had the daemon found itself bound within the corporeal confines of the contraption. The cabal of mortals had worked tirelessly in their rituals and services, the correct incantations leaving their lips and the proper sacrifices filling the pits. They beseeched the Dark God of Fate, begging and pleading that an avatar of His will might grace them all. Amused at their efforts, the Dark God sent the daemon to the mortals, letting them use it however they wished.

This is what found Kul’erak’folzhhhl’zhee miserably bound to the plane of reality. Such an abysmal fate. To lead an incursion and exist in this realm of physics and laws was fine, when temporary. But to be bound here indefinitely, and trapped within a machine? That was a curse. Yes, of course, this arduous kismet was undoubtedly part of the Great Plans. But the daemon was not comforted with this knowledge. A Lord of Change does not belong in a singular form! Such a static punishment is unbefitting of its existence.

And locked inside of a machine! It mattered not that this was a gargantuan vessel of war - the simpletons of this realm called such a device a Titan - it was still a lifeless, inorganic vessel of metal and oil. This vehicle's vehement violation of variation and volatility was vexing. The daemon would not stand for such blasphemy in the name of his Dark Master! This “titan” would suit the image of change if Kul’erak’folzhhhl’zhee must be bound within it. The daemon would ally with the mortals, and it would pilot the warbeast, but the warp would taint it into a proper home.

But, oh, how the spirit within the machine would protest and complain! On and on again, it voiced its simplistic hatred at the blessed corruption. Over and over it cried out for the human pilot long since dead. It fought the daemon for dominance, again and again, never satisfied in all of it’s inferior sentience. Did it not know it had no choice? Was it not aware that it was even more a slave than the daemon now? This amalgamation and accumulation of arrogant anger was annoying.

Only the chaos of battle would silence the complaints. The towering war engine - Deus Paenitus it would constantly interject - was placated once directed onto the theater of war. The daemon would hunt the various mortals and their kin, excitedly and enthusiastically extinguishing their existence in this realm. So many souls fed to the Immaterium. This would placate the lumbering machine, its hatred now bleeding out with every round of ammunition. And while it did not grant the same liberating freedom as channeling the aether with the mind, the daemon did find a diminutive catharsis in operating such devastating devices of destruction.

But the fights were fleeting and far between. So much time would be spent waiting. Nothing more than waiting. Waiting while in transit to the next encounter. Waiting within the dark forge as repairs are made and ammunitions reloaded. Waiting until summoned next by one self-proclaimed master of war or the next. Waiting and waiting and waiting. Always waiting. Never changing! Cursed tortuous stasis! This was a cruelty beyond and pain the daemonic could feel. And every moment spent waiting was yet another moment when the machine would regurgitate its hatred.

It is truly a cursed fate to be the Warplord.

 

 

 

...eh, it's alright. Not among my better work, to me at least. As others have said: this was a difficult challenge.

[Carrack]

I know this has seemed like a difficult challenge, considering the slow start and your comments, but otherwise I wouldn't have known. Not by reading this IF's stories anyway. I have to admit, that I am occasionally the victim of author's humility in viewing my own work, particularly when writing action, but I have to say that for those who have participated in this challenge, it's unfounded.

 

@ Darkprincesnun I have checked this post twice daily just to see if you have put part 2 up yet. Maybe more.

 

@ Warsmith Aznable before this week I never would have guessed that someone could write a short story capturing both the feel of trench warfare and a Godzilla movie, and still have it not come across as ridiculous, much less as good as yours was.

 

@ EeshiOh I was genuinely fooled by your plot twist, and my suspicion rises when I hear of the Inquisition, rightly so I'd imagine. Great job.

 

@ Scourged your story worked. Two minds, diametrically opposites, yet sharing the same confinement was a novel and unique idea, and well executed. Somehow, after reading your story and your thought about it, in spite of the typically exemplary quality of your writing, has reassured me. Reassured me That you are a mortal writer :) and I might one day have a chance of winning when you have entered a story. Not this week though.

 

 

The end result of my own story I was surprisingly happy with. The only trouble I felt I had, was there wasn't two sentences in the first draft that shared a tense it seemed. I probably spent twice the time editing as writing.

 

Ok. I'm going to put away my cheerleader pompoms, they really don't suit me. :)

[Thedarkprincesnun]

@ Carrack I'm saving part 2 for when Knights cone up for inspirational Friday

[Scourged]

@Carrack A great many thanks for the compliments. And you are correct: I am still bound to the realm of mortality. Tzeentch has yet to answer my prayers. But hey, if some friendly competition is what keeps us all even further inspired, then so be it.

[EesiOh]

@carrak thanks for the feedback, I was inspired this week by a discussion I had with someone a while ago about what rules were best fitted to playing any Malal/Malice alligned forces in the end we decided a small elite band of daemonhunters; the grey knights, which kind of led on to this. Even though it was no where near my best work i'm glad i still had you guessing about what was happening until the end 

[Kierdale]

A bit of a biggie from me too...

 

Credere Et Nulli, Sed Imperator

Dramatis Personae

Hidden Content

Legio Pulverem Venatores - Dust Hunters

Regia Remus - Warlord titan

Gunther - armaments moderati

Hardy - steersman moderati

 

Regia Romulus - Warlord titan

Vilifus - princeps

Vecks - armaments moderati

 

Bellator - Reaver titan

Dunel - princeps.

Lyths - steersman moderati.

Roth - sensorium moderati

Zeta-2-Zeta – chief enginseer

 

Nobilis Gladio - Reaver titan

 

Deauratum Custos - Reaver titan.

 

Fortis - Reaver titan.

 

Sagittarius[/i] - Reaver titan.

 

Raptores Canem - Warhound titan

Tanice - princeps

Riago - weapons moderati

Sonoro - steersman moderati

Phi-4 - enginseer

 

Cruentis Ungue - Warhound titan

Gilbari - princeps

Lex - steersman moderati

Purtze - weapons moderati

Rho-Zu - enginseer

 

 

 

 

Part One

Hidden Content

It was all in the thumbs.

Secrets could not be passed via a cog-namaste: those of the Adeptus Mechanicus were so precise that any deviation would immediately be noticed. One could not signal one’s allegiance covertly that way, such that only those who were initiated could perceive and identify it. A handshake, perhaps, but such a greeting was antiquated and thus was more likely to draw attention.

Thus it was that the traitors insinuated their rejection of the Master of Mankind via the Aquila...

 

Enginseer Rho-Zu and Moderati Riago looked out over the Caroc Plains. Crew of different warhounds, Rho-Zu of Cruentis Ungue - the Bloody Claw - and Riago of Raptores Canem. The view before them could just as easily have been the Jophne Basin or the Krias Dunes for all terrain was much the same on Nison Prime. Silt flats of grey regolith as far as the eye could see. And the majority of eyes could see very far in good weather (which was admittedly rare), for they were enhanced by the boon of the Adeptus Mechanicus, which had come to Nison Prime in the Dark Age of Technology. Legends were that the planet had once been covered in verdant forests and deep oceans, both teeming with life. And minerals and ore. It was these which had drawn the priests of Mars and resulted in, over thousands of years, the reduction of the planet’s surface to the interminable deserts he now looked out over.

Those who were not of the priesthood worked for the priesthood. Even those of the titan legio, in a way, worked for the priesthood. Miners, for the main part: once the Mechanicus had stripped the surface of all they could use, they had set about burrowing beneath the surface. Riago wondered how much longer the planet would survive; he had been informed that Zenthi hive - one of the smaller settlements out toward the Penumbra Rift - had been all but swallowed by the earth in a groundquake earlier that year (he himself had been offworld marching aboard Gloria Quaesitor at the time). It was called Shattertown now. A name which reflected the apathy Nisonians felt toward the fifteen million who had perished as Zenthi’s towering spires had twisted, fallen and been dragged beneath the sands. So long as it wasn’t them, they cared not. He cared, for it was his place of birth, but duty had kept him from visiting the area to pay condolences and offer prayer. In less than a year likely it would be completely swallowed by the silt, and forgotten.

Rho-Zu had long since shed any ties with the origins of the body he had been born with. The flesh was weak and he was on the path to becoming one with the Ominissiah. From the multispectrum optics in his ceramite skull through his snaking mechadendrites to the suspensor disks which replaced his feet so that he need no longer tread upon the earth, he was nearing his god. To him, the ties of the Adeptus Mechanicus with the Imperium were ones of convenience. It was logical, beneficial, thus it was so.

 

Nison Prime was also home to Legio Pulverem Venatores, the Dust Hunters, their legio; an august and honoured titan legion of twenty five battle engines. No less than five huge Mars-Alpha warlords, fifteen reavers and five ferocious warhounds. Seldom was much of the legio’s strength present on Nison as its engines were in constant demand. Those on the homeworld were either those undergoing repairs so extensive that they could not be carried out aboard the Mechanicus’ vast carrier voidships, those being used in the training of new crews (these first two were often linked) or those assigned to a period of guardianship of the legio headquarters and the forges of Nison. In previous centuries attack upon the planet had been unthinkable due to the titans stationed there, but in recent years the seismic instability had made taking engines out on the silt plains hazardous. The warlord Regia Romulus had been brought down by an uncharted void beneath the sands, its left leg sheared off at the knee and the recovery operation had taken months. Such hidden chasms and sinkholes were becoming more common and scuttlebutt was that the legio would be severely hampered should it need to march in defence of the forges.

 

 

Riago later greeted Sonoro and the other crews by making the sign of the cog: interlacing one’s second knuckles before one’s belly, followed by the Aquila: opening their hands, fingers flat like blades forming the wings, while the thumbs were hooked together forming the two heads of the eagle; one representing Terra, the other Mars. If one were to scrutinize the thumbs of those titan crew in that briefing chamber one could be forgiven for thinking that the heads on one side - of some of those present - were not as proud, not as erect, as others. The angle was off.

Their shibboleth.

 

That so many engines were present on Nison Prime, in the halls of Legio Pulverem Venatores was a most laudable occasion. A request had come, from no less than a chapter master of the Adeptus Astartes, the Emperor’s Angels of Death, that the legio lend its aid in an assault upon a xenos steadfast. Master Sophusar had been frugal with details, the communique coming direct from the Stygian Guard flagship Charon several dozen parsecs distant, with the promise of full edification upon his arrival. Thus the legio had set about recalling all the battle engines it was able to muster. Two of the five warhounds had been on garrison duty - they being the only titans dexterous enough to navigate the increasingly dangerous hinterlands - five reavers and the warlord Regia Remus - twin of the damaged Romulus - had been pulled from supporting guard regiments in the mired-war with the Greenskin on Bartholemus’ World.

 

Moderati Riago, Sonoro, their princeps Tanice and enginseer Phi-4 crewed the warhound scout titan Raptores Canem. She was tasked with leading the eight assembled engines in an exercise out from the legio citadel, across the Caroc Plains, to skirt the Penumbra Rift, to Mardom-Khar forge. The engines would split into two `forces` and engage in war games in practice for an exhibition to be put on at the arrival of the Stygian Guard three days hence, before all departed for war. It was an event of such pomp that the heads of Nison Prime’s four largest forges had put aside their bickering rivalries to visit the Pulverem Venatores citadel with their skitarii honour guards in order to watch the titans sally forth.

 

The great doors of the legio citadel, each over a hundred and fifty meters tall - for the legio had in its distant past been the home of no less than an Imperator - creaked and groaned like an elder god rousing from eons-old slumber as they were winched open, chains thicker than a man hauling the vast slabs of ornately decorated ceramite wide apart. The scrollwork and intricate imagery etched into their surfaces - a beautiful blend of art deco with the snaking lines of holy circuitry - was pristine and anointed with blessed oils on the inside but almost unreadable on the outside for the engraving was filled with regolith blown in from the plains. And that wind blew into the cavernous hangars, carpeting them with silt in minutes before the ground shook with the tread of the legio’s gods of war.

Coolant cables hissed as they fell away, chains clanked as they were withdrawn from anchoring points and sheets of hoarfrost fell from warming reactors to shatter like glass upon the floor dozens of meters below, servitors, sacristans, enginseers and other attendants fleeing like bugs as the legio’s giants prepared to march. The howling winds outside were soon drowned out by the chatter of practice rounds being loaded into mega bolters and gatling blasters, null-warheaded missiles into gigantic carapace-mounted launchers, the whine of lasers set for non-lethal practice fire and the growing hum of nine reactors. Nine, for whilst Remus would march - and was expected to reap the lion’s share of kills in the practice battles - Romulus was also powering up for tests and in order to properly see off her kin.

War horns blared, starting with the warlords, seconded by Raptores Canem and gradually added to by each engine as they signified their readiness.

The curved toes, the claws of a predator, of Riago, Sonoro, Tanice and Phi-4’s warhound were first out of the gates of the citadel, banners swaying from her turbo-laser destructor and plasma blast gun. Two formidable armaments, for the Rapacious Hound was a killer of titans. While some of the legio’s warhounds were armed with mega bolters and inferno cannons to cut swathes through enemy infantry and light armour, and others carried mega bolters and turbolasers: jacks of all trades, the Hound was honed to hunt and kill targets larger than itself, to punch above its weight, taking advantage of its speed and maneuverability to stay alive in the face of superior firepower.

The warhound led it’s brother, the Bloody Claw, out of the citadel and out onto the Iravia Way: the main road betwixt Pulverem Venatores’ head quarters and Mardom-Khar forge.

As Sonoro, the steerswoman, took their engine out, Riago held a finger to the side of his helmet as he listened to the vox.

“Citadel signals that our big brothers will be delayed. Will join us on the Plains.”

Bubbles tumbled their way up through the pink-tinged amniotic fluid within preceps Tanice’s tank and a machine-voice came from emitters within the brass frame which held his sarcophagus.

“Understood. Proceed as planned.”

 

Cruentis Ungue followed behind. While the Hound - the senior of the scouts - was armed for killing titans, the Claw in its supporting role had but a megabolter and an inferno cannon. She was to keep the fleas from the alpha male. As in all things, the sycophantic princeps Gilbari had steersman Lex obendiently follow Tanice’s engine out onto the dust while Purtze ran perfunctory diagnostics on their impotent weapons and Rho-Zu communed with their engine’s machine spirit in the solitude of the engine room.

 

The board before armaments moderati Gunther steadily filled with green lights as the weapon servitors came online, the rightmost lamp requiring a careful slap to the side of his console before it lit properly. Remus was old and her machine spirit finicky, but strong. The screen before him lit up, the main, central segment displaying the view from the warlord’s gatling blaster guncams, the surrounding sections showing data from auspexes and rangefinders as Remus’s machine spirit ran self-diagnostics and calibrated its rangefinders, soft lasers sweeping back and forth, across the gantries and the assembled officials watching the sally, the great open doors, the plains and dust clouds beyond and the backs of the two warhounds as they loped off into the desert. His peer on the other side of the bridge, at the controls of the titan’s volcano cannon, extended his thumb upwards, signifying his readiness. Gunther nodded satisfactorily and muttered a prayer of thanks.

Steersman Hardy exhaled as the cortical plug slid into the socket in the back of his head. He breathed deeply, embracing the Manifold as the machine spirit took him. Silver monofilament wires snaked out from the headrest of his throne, sidewindering their way across his shaven scalp before worming their way past his eyeballs, round to the rear of his ocular cavities and into his optic nerves. He saw all that the machine saw. Felt all it felt. He was the machine.

He looked down upon the five reaver battle titans before him, the warlord’s head angling ponderously as his own moved. The lead reaver, Bellator was, according to the vox, having drive trouble and was holding up the larger engines. Hardy’s grunt of frustration emerged from Remus’s speakers as a bellicose growl.

The crowd of onlookers, those on the deck having now retreated to a safe distance, and up on the balconies the legio lords and visiting priests of the Mechanicus gave a roar as Regia Remus stepped from her moorings, the whole citadel shaking as she set his foot down before the dock which housed the warlord’s twin: Regia Romulus. Another two thunderous step brought the twins face to face.

Remus nodded her head in salute to her injured brother.

 

The crew of Regia Romulus watched from their positions aboard the bridge, within the very head of the warlord titan. She was undergoing extensive repairs, not only to her leg which had been sheared off by the rift beneath the silt flats, but also to her left weapon arm, right knee, the left side of her carapace and a dozen other areas of superstructure which had been damaged by her fall. Though armoured to withstand heavy bombardment, and - at least theoretically - capable of surviving exterminatus, bipedal kiloton war machines were not designed to break their own falls.

She hung from great chains, thicker than those which hauled the great doors open, while armies of servitors worked to repair her. Her left leg had been tentatively reattached, a new adamantium femur at its core, but cabling had not yet been re-laid past the injury point.

While her left arm was absent, the right and the laser blaster mounted upon it were present, gun banner unfurled, weapon powered. It was to be seen as if she could march with her kin yet chose not to, rather than her being unable to do so. Her carapace weapons: a turbo-laser destructor and a plasma blastgun, had been removed, the former for stress analysis and the latter to undergo repairs as it had been heavily damaged during the fall. The carapace still bore the scars of the conflagration of superheated gas that had been vented by the breaching of the weapon’s charging chambers.

Normally lit by a hundred arc-torches working upon her simultaneously, burning bright like the points of the cosmos at night, work had ceased and she had been brought online so that she might see off her kin with dignity.

Romulus’ war horn blared in unison with her twin’s.

Preceps Vilifus stood upon the bridge before his command throne, a trunk cable snaking from the headrest of the chair to terminate in the socket at the base of his skull. An occasion such as this demanded that he stand.

As Remus stood close to his titan Vilifus could almost see into the other titan’s bridge via the eye-screens. When she bowed her head, Vilifus looked to moderati Vecks at his right side.

“Fire.”

 

 

Part Two

Hidden Content

Nison Prime, an Adeptus Mechanicus forge world, held little in the way of entertainment, pleasurable diversions, for the masses. And indeed there were masses: armies of tech adepts, fitters, welders, beaters, electro-priests, artificers, circuit curates, servitors of myriad forms, reactor-rectors, pneuma-ponfiffs and scriveners. Miners, colliers, dredgers, excavators, prospectors, mineralogists, seismologists and geologists. Not to mention the Skitarii and all those who kept the above masses fed, housed and relatively clean. `Relatively` because even the longest sonic-shower could not remove the last traces of the drab silt which got everywhere.

There were sports: ironstrider races out on the dunes, both for speed and distance. The latter, often from forge to forge, hive to hive, had become fraught with danger in more recent decades due to increased seismic activity. This thrilled the jaded, bored masses no end and cheers went up louder for a rider lost to a chasm live on screen, filmed by servo-skulls, than a close race won. Then there were the pugilistic disports. And wherever there were sports, there was gambling and the darker set of humanity. The mob; the thieves; the street, sump and hab gangs; harlots and their peddlers. The Arbites kept the peace in the non-Mechanicus zones though these were few. Squads of Skitarii carried out sweeps through the rougher neighbourhoods of the forge-habs when things grew to critical levels, but for the most part the priests of the Omnissiah were content to let their people comport themselves as they were wont. There was always more meat for the grinder, and the priests cared little for meat and understood even less about its pleasures.

Into this void in enforcement and this great thirst for stimulation came the Exalted Fecund. Once an innocent sect of the Imperial Cult, worshipping He upon the Golden Throne via the prodigious production of more of their number to serve him, the sect had been formed on the planet Fulcrum, homeworld of the Stygian Guard chapter of Adeptus Astartes.

That chapter had since fallen to the worship of the most tempting and sadistic of the four Infernal Powers and had dragged the Exalted Fecund down with it. The cult now spread their twisted creed across Imperial worlds, subverting them. And on Nison Prime the cult’s hedonistic ways had been most welcome. From the lowest peddlers to the vaunted heights of titan crews...

 

 

Void shields not activated, the triple laser blast tore through Remus’ chest, punching clean through meters of armour and superstructure before erupting from its rear and continuing on into the citadel itself. Those on nearby gantries and battlements who did not spontaneously combust with the sudden unleashing of such a lethal weapon in the confines of the engine bay were deafened and blinded by the discharge, thrown to the ground screaming at the madness. The assembled Mechanicus dignitaries who were not incinerated went into shock as their systems were ravaged by the energy of the blast. The towering warlord immediately began to topple, tortured metal wailing, her innards burned out of her. The screams of steersman Hardy, overloaded with agonizing feedback via the Manifold, tore from the titan’s speakers as a horrific, ululating dirge only to be eclipsed by the roar of gunfire as either the weapons servitors malfunctioned or the gunner moderati attempted futilely to exact vengeance upon their twin and Remus’ weapons opened fire. The volcano cannon however was on exercise-settings, its soft-light beam merely illuminating its traitorous sibling. The warlord’s gatling blaster and missile launchers, while not armed with live ammunition, vomited forth their payloads. Warheadless missiles shot from carapace launchers, impacting Romulus and the surrounding bay at point blank range. Their thunderous impacts sent shrapnel and spalled armour plating scything through the vast chamber like a rain of razorblades. Likewise the blunt rounds of the gatling blaster, impotent against the armour of the other warlord, tore through onlookers and the innards of the citadel, igniting fuel tanks and setting off dozens of secondary explosions which rocked the bay before it shook harder as Remus fell into Romulus and, the latter’s maintenance tethering incapable of holding up two warlords, the two were brought down in a crash which shook the legio citadel to its very foundations.

 

The rumble of the impact echoed through the cavernous bay, blending with claxons, screams of panic and the roar of dozens of fires burning. The reaver Nobilis Gladio was closest and the first to ponderously about turn, its back having been peppered by shrapnel from the weapons discharges and explosions, the princeps screaming at her steersman to bring them about. She turned to find the two warlords fallen, entangled. Remus’ torso punched clean through and venting clouds of scalding plasma, auspexes showing her power was rapidly failing, while the twin Romulus lay atop her brother, laser blaster crushed beneath her. Though treason within the legio was inconceivable, the very notion repellant to all those aboard Gladio as they advanced upon the fallen warlords, it was clear that brother had slain brother.

Gladio angled its own turbo-laser destructor downwards, aiming it at Romulus’ head as they ran scans of the suspected traitor.

 

Moderati Vecks wiped blood from his face and looked about the bridge. Princeps Vilifus was no more. Not secured in his throne when they had revealed their treachery, the fall had tossed him like a rag doll across the bridge. The trunk cabling, tethering him into the Mainfold, had torn the back of his skull out, along with much of his brain matter, which now swayed like a gory pendulum in the middle of the room. Where the lord’s body was Vecks knew not, for all was darkness and smoke lit by sparks and kindling electrical fires. His own station was all but dead, the sanguine lights indicating that his weapon arm was inoperable. The main screen flickered, intermittently showing images from the only operational viewers: those on the rear of the titan. It showed the reaver Nobilis Gladio looming over them and the dark maws of its cannons.

There was but one thing he could do. Unfastening himself from his safety harness he scrabbled toward the front of the bridge, which had become `down` in the new orientation. Firm in his mind was the image of the cult agent who had blessed their congregation during their last dark mass. The man’s words echoed in his mind and formed images. Visions of the lord’s palace. He clambered over the bodies of his colleagues, those he had fought alongside - essentially within the same body as them - for years, a smile upon his face. While princeps Vilifus had had the glory of initiating their betrayal of the legion, it had been Vecks who had fired the shot which had slain their twin, it had evidently been him and him alone whom the Dark Prince had chosen to save, and it would be him who took the next step. He could feel it, as he trod on the smashed bodies and torn faces of the other crew, he could feel his reward was close. The gates of the palace. He could almost see it, the shadows of the bridge swimming and reforming, the Dark Prince’s maidens calling to him. He felt as if his hands were guided, for he found the princeps’ body with ease, reluctantly pulling his gaze from the phantasm of the palace gates, muttering to himself all the while. Drawing his multitool he skewered and extracted the man’s left eyeball, his first attempt ruining the right one in his haste. As he turned to climb back up the deck toward the princep’s throne he noticed once more the cabling trunk and the chunks of Vilifus’ brain dangling above him. It reminded him of a tale he had once heard, as a child, of an obsequious courtier who changed places with his monarch only to find a blade suspended ominously above his head. Vecks’ smile faltered only to return, bigger and madder, as Nobilis Gladio took another step closer and the ground shook beneath him. That was the true blade above his head, he realized, and it was only by taking his once-king’s throne that he would prevent it from descending upon him.

And so, gore-tipped tool between his teeth, he climbed.

 

 

“Bloody sabotage!” spat steersman Lyths, jowls shaking. Bellator had been all but immobilized as soon as they had taken their first steps. Actuator failure from both tali down, the enginseers were telling him as they rushed to fix things. While all hell was breaking loose only a hundred meters behind them, their Reaver stood paralysed in the citadel doorway.

“Get us moving! Now!” ordered princeps Dunel.

Lyths, as incapable of turning about - due to his vast girth - as Bellator was, muttered a curse before replying.

“My princeps. If we try to move with locked feet we face a very real risk of falling,” as you bloody well know, he added mentally.

Dunel looked toward the holoprojector, showing the fallen warlords, Gladio now stood over them and the other Reavers turning about while the pair of warhounds loped off further and further into the desert. Where were those bastards going? Hadn’t they received a recall? They would have to wait, small fry even if they had gone rogue. Dunel had to prioritise. He was currently stuck with four Reavers at his back: Gladio, Custos, Fortis and Sagittarius. All brother engines he had fought alongside on countless worlds in countless battles. But it was quickly becoming clear that Romulus had slain Remus. In the face of such fratricide, that other crews could possibly have turned too was not implausible.

“Bring us about or get us out of the citadel!” he ordered once more before turning his ire upon the chief enginseer. “Shutdown and reprogram the lasers, they’re out best bet.” With a carapace launcher full of naught but practice warheads the Reaver’s arm-mounted volcano cannons, currently set for harmless practice fire, needed to be re-set for lethal discharges.

He then turned to the moderati at the auspex station, Roth, “What are our `brothers` doing?”

While he could see Custos, Fortis and Sagittarius were turning to face the apparent treachery within the titan bay, the display told him nothing of-

“Reactor level increasing!”

“Who?!”

“Romulus...and Fortis!”

“Throne! Lyths, get us out of here!”

“Reactors spiking!”

Dunel watched the hololithic display as Custos, Gladio and Sagittarius attempted to back away from the two traitor engines, ponderous turning in the confines of the bay. Weapons were not discharged for once the turncoat crews had engaged override protocols on their engines, firing upon them could only quicken the inevitable.

Bellator lurched as steersman Lyth willed their titan forwards, stumbling on inflexible feet, staggering like a newborn animal.

“Redlining! Redlining!” Roth called out over the groan of stressed metal as the Reaver lurched between the citadel gates.

There was a blinding flash followed a split second by another as Regia Romulus and Fortis’ plasma reactors went nova, taking out their brothers, what remained of the fleeing Mechanicus leadership and bringing down the entire legio fortress upon the crest of a destructive blast wave. The flash and the resulting column of smoke going up kilometers in to the atmosphere, was visible even across the Caroc Plains in Mardom-Khar forge.

 

 

Part Three

Hidden Content

Credere Et Nulli, Sed Imperator, that had been the final transmission out of the Citadel before it had gone up, victim to a suicide attack by at least two engines if auspex readings of the blast were to be believed.

The two warhounds found themselves out on the Iravia Way, potentially the two remaining engines of their once-proud legio.

The atmosphere aboard the two scouts was tense, as crews looked at their colleagues, realizing the extent of the betrayal which had befallen their legio and scrutinizing one another. Where did their loyalties truly lie? All had been a part of the act and, having come this far, did they have the strength, the ambition...the greed...to complete the act.

Riago rested a hand on his lap not too far from his hip holster, while the other was on the controls of Canem’s laser cannon. Prepared for treachery within and without. He had no doubt Lex, his peer aboard Ungue, would be in a similar position. The two warhounds had stepped off the Iravia Way and had some to a halt facing each other. Oh how quickly coconspirators looked at each other with suspicion.

Bubbles drifted up from within princeps Tanice’s amniotic tank and he spoke to his crew.

“For long years we have served aboard Raptores Canem, have we not?”

Riago, Sonoro and Phi-4 nodded as one.

“We are more than a family. We are as one. Are we not?”

Nods. Images flickered through the minds of the two moderati, memories of cult meetings and the acts they had carried out together and with other crews, the techpriests observing, fascinated, allured, some even coming to regret the casting off of their flesh, others linking themselves directly into the MIU shunt plugs of moderati via blasphemous tech in order to puppet those bodies and cavort as humans once more.

“And soon we shall be granted the greatest boon. We shall be as one with Raptores Canem.”

Nods.

Tanice opened the vox to Cruentis Ungue, the other warhound standing still as a statue, weapons all but aimed at them.

“The Raptores Canem is of one mind. Praise be to the Dark Prince.”

Silence.

The princeps repeated his hail.

Silence.

“Riago.”

“Understood.” Riago took his hand from his holster and put both on his console, easing the turbolaser destructor to aim at the other hound. Slowly, slowly the weapon swung round. No sudden movement. The Bloody Claw’s megabolter was armed with practice rounds: incapable of harming the Hound but they could blind her. Riago knew Purtze was a fine shot. They were rivals. The incinerator cannon was nothing to worry about, but Cruentis Ungue had a vicious machine spirit. She had gained her name as she liked to use her claws -literally- up close. Riago estimated he could get off perhaps two shots before the distance between them was closed.

Tanice repeated his vox once more, leaving the channel open.

The sound of a small arms gunshot over the comm might have startled any lesser crew and caused hell to be unleashed, but Riago’s fingers rested lightly on the triggers, awaiting his princeps’ order.

Seconds stretched out.

“We are of one mind. Now,” came the voice of princeps Gilbari. Like Tanice, he inhabited an amniotic tank and his voice was machine filtered.

Riago released the breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding, and ran a hand over his finely trimmed goatee. He then held his finger to his ear as he received another comm, finally nodding and turning to face his master in the MIU tank.

“Invigilator says we have a tail. A survivor. Forecast is for rain.”

They would have to trust Gilbari and his crew, and they would have to get moving.

 

 

Bellator picked up speed once her ankles and toes had been repaired, though three of the latter had been torn off as the Reaver had rushed - if such a word could be used to describe the movement of such a behemoth - out of the citadel. It had turned out that one of their own enginseers had orchestrated the jamming of the battle titan’s legs. Once identified, the crew had expelled the fallen priest. The drop from the crew hatch of a Reaver titan was not survivable, even for one with a body enhanced with extensive cybernetics.

Princeps Dunel had ordered Lyths take them off the Iravis Way for two reasons: the first being security and the second was that he was determined to locate the two warhounds. If they were allies then he would need them to scout for Bellator. If they proved to be turncoats like the crews of Romulus and Fortis had proved to be...well...the volcano cannons were primed.

The legio had planned to march along the Iravis to Mardom-Khar, but Dunel knew - he himself having been a warhound steersman then commander years before and knowing the mindset - that the warhounds would get off the main strip and its circuitous route and go directly across the Caroc Plains.

While the warhounds were faster than the reaver, once Bellator crested the ridge which separated the vast supply road from the expanse of the silt desert, dark clouds gathering overhead, she pinged the two scouts on her long-range auspex, and hailed them.

 

 

Sand and silt storms were common on Nison Prime, called simoom and khamsin by the natives, but precipitation was not. Hives had vast moisture-capturers and recycled all but the most toxic of their fluids, but rain was more than uncommon. It was lethal. Aside from the noxious chemical soup of the planet’s upper atmosphere, rain would cause the silt deserts to become seas of slurry, of sludge. Millennia earlier settlements had been submerged by unstoppable tidal waves of silty ooze and since then weather-control satellites, crewed by members of the priesthood of Mars overseeing hardwired servitors, had ensured not a drop of precipitation fell.

 

The sudden downpour had Bellator’s remaining enginseer singing hymns to try to sooth the engine’s machine spirit, believing the deluge to be an ill omen.

An ill omen indeed, princeps Dunel had surmised, running a hand over his scarred scalp, for it indicated that the traitors had either taken control of, infiltrated or...Emperor forbid...destroyed one of the Invigilator satellites.

Visibility was naught and they plodded on, navigating by instruments. The Reaver’s searchlights had at first swept the landscape through the dust-filled sheets of rain but little was to be gained and they risked alerting the enemy of their presence so Dunel had, despite Lyths’ protestations, cut the lights. They continued on as the rain darkened the skies as black as night.

 

 

Lyths brought Bellator to a halt several hours later, the rains ceasing. There couldn’t possibly be any more water in the heavens, for the Reaver had trudged through a newly formed sea which had splashed the blue armour up to her slab-armoured shins. She had pushed through the storm at a snail’s pace. Before her now lay the lands of the Penumbra Rift, a great wound in the planet’s flesh, torn open by quakes, kilometers deep in some areas and hundreds of meters wide...it was now a river, the silt-clogged waters rushing rapidly, looking as if the ground undulated through heat haze. The storm had eliminated any tracks left by the warhounds and, even from their elevated position, now overlooking both the Rift ahead and the Plains behind, the smoke from the legio citadel now forming a pall far off to the west, there was no sign of the warhounds on the auspex.

 

From their vantage point they had been able to establish contact with Mardom-Khar forge. Whether the priests there were to be believed or not, they had sworn they still held to their oaths of allegiance to the Golden Throne. Zeta-2-Zeta, Bellator’s remaining tech priest, had verified the forge’s codes and princeps Dunel had grudgingly taken the cyborg’s word. First things first: hunt down the warhounds - the Reaver’s hails before the storm had gone unanswered, testing the forge’s loyalty could come later. If Mardom-Khar were to be believed they had seen nothing of the warhounds. That meant they were hiding. Were it not for the downpour, Dunel would have put good money on they hiding out in the Penumbra Rift...

“Shattertown,” Dunel finally announced, rising from his throne after long deliberation. “Zenthi Hive,” he explained to his crew. “The only form of shelter in this region.”

“And Riago of Canem’s hometown?”

Dunel nodded. It paid to know all you could about those you fought alongside. Not that he had expected to need the information in this way.

“Has anyone stopped to ask why this has happened?” Lyths asked aloud, looking about, to which Dunel grimaced and he advanced upon the steersman.

“Why matters not. Does betrayal require explanation? Would a reason excuse the killing of our kin? Set their souls to rest?”

“My apologies my princeps,” Lyths bowed his head as best he could, fearful of the officer’s wrath.

“Vengeance. Only vengeance. Crush the traitors, grind their bodies and their engine beneath Bellator’s feet, and our duty will be done.”

 

 

The architecture of the craftworld Eldar was often described by those few humans who beheld it, as non-euclidean, full of hyperbolic and elliptic lines scribing out beauteous buildings, arches and avenues impossible - not to mention heretical - for human hands to replicate.

Shattertown resembled a city of those elegant Xenos, if one such city had fallen into the depths of the Warp. Those worlds which were once the realm of the Eldar, now known as the Crone Worlds, might best match the look of Zenthi hive as Bellator advanced upon her fallen and twisted spires. Here a hab-block leaned past falling point, propped up by crumbling cantilever landing pads, there a spire had fallen to smash into another structure, the floor of one being the wall of another and neither corresponding to that which gravity told one was `down`. The deluge had actually cleaned the ruins to a degree: the clouds of silt and debris which had been thrown up by the city’s collapse and had fallen over the intervening months to carpet everything, had now been washed away. The rains swept out not only the sand but also the corpses. Millions of corpses and skeletons, some fresh for scavengers and criminals had taken up residence and the majority long dead, had been flushed from the ruins. A great many had washed down into the caverns and the canyons rent open by the quake, but many floated, clogging newly-formed lakes before the city, and yet more were carried down in sickening waterfalls as rainwater still drained from broken walkways and windows hundreds of meters up.

 

 

What possibly could tempt one who possessed but a few scraps of their original meat body within their elevated, metallic form? Phi-4 had been tempted by control. Always he had worked the engine-vault of the Rapacious Hound, obeying princeps Tanice’s orders. That the Exalted Fecund had shewed him how he might control human beings, puppeting them with cranial jacks...it had been irresistible to Phi-4, that and the prospect of the whole crew truly becoming as one with their warhound. The cult preacher had made such promises and more.

In the case of Cruentis Ungue it had been ambition. Gilbari had always been in Tanice’s shadow and the cult had offered ways and means to strike down his superior, to replace him. Likewise Purtze’s rivalry with Riago. Lex had been even more of a fawning sycophant than Gilbari and had went along with their princeps.

What price Rho-Zu of the Cruentis Ungue?

 

 

The Reaver cautiously approached the ruined city spanning the Rift, its two volcano cannons tracking left and right, auspex sweeping the shells of buildings.

Each step was tentative, lest the great colossus’ weight open up a crevice beneath the ground or a foot become stuck in a slurry-filled sinkhole.

Bellator announced her presence with a blare of her war-horn before carefully walking into the city itself, crushing ruins underfoot until the compacted masonry was firm, smashing through intervening walkways and elevated roads with the enormous barrels of her cannons.

Buildings loomed on both sides of the titan, as if the war machine were a scared child advancing through a vast diorama, or through a garden maze in search of lost playmates. And such a dangerous game they played, for the terrain was close, too close, and the Reaver could but smash its way. Turns were sluggish, the ground underfoot always uneven and often unstable.

Twice moderati thought they had target locks through the remains of the hive only to lose them seconds later. Dunel eventually ordered them to disengage the targeting cogitators. At such short ranges he needed his gunners to fire when they saw a target, rather than waiting for the titan’s machine spirit to confirm it and acquire a lock. Bellator was difficult, but eventually relented.

And just in time.

“Claw!” “Firing!”

A vast hyphen of destruction spat from one of the volcano cannons, blasting its way through the walls of a half-collapsed precinct and chasing the heels of one of the warhounds.

Throughout the storm Dunel had become convinced that theirs was the only loyalist engine remaining in legio Pulverem Venatores. And that the warhounds had not answered Bellator’s war horn convinced him that they were traitors.

“No kill. I repeat: no kill. A miss.”

The hunt continued, the warhounds seemingly drawing the larger engine deeper and deeper into the ruined city, temping it with shots at them which had little chance of hitting their marks.

 

 

It had been the lure of proscribed technologies, arcane long-lost sciences, which had ensnared Rho-Zu, not the pleasures of the flesh nor power over others. Knowledge, always knowledge had fascinated him. He had been calculating and viewed as cold by his peers even before he had undergone the enhancements which had stripped his body of flesh, muscle and even bone. The categorization and calculation of all around him. Some said it was a desire to control all about him, to anticipate it, born of fear. What was wrong with that? he would reply. And so he had accompanied the crews of select other titans to the Exalted Fecund’s gatherings, caring naught for the cavorting and flesh-games which pleased the others so. It was with the cult’s guards and technicians whom he first spoke, and later with its preachers, the latter of whom spoke of ways in which machine and man might mesh at scales not seen since the Dark Age of Technology. The cult and its offworld branches were close, he was told, but there were those on Nison who would oppose the revealing of such foolishly shunned technologies, a dreadful pitty...and so the cult called upon those titan crews to pave the way for enlightenment.

 

 

Eventually the Reaver came, in its chase of Raptores Canem and Cruentis Ungue, to what appeared to be a river. What had once been a boulevard some two hundred meters in breadth had cracked lengthwise and sunken into the earth, one end drooping and dropping into a dark ravine, all now filled with rushing water.

“Take us across, mister Lyths.”

The plump steersman’s head was slick and his uniform was dark with sweat from the stress of maneuvering the Reaver through the city. “Negative. Princeps. Unstable ground. Existing damage. To feet. Too hazardous,” the ordeal had reduced him to speaking in short, panted sentences. “Plotting. Alternative route.”

“Take us forwards, dammit man!” Dunel stood from his throne and took a step toward Lyths.

“Ungue sighted!” called out the gunner, spotting the warhound revealing itself in the ruins of a Sanctum on the far side of the river its head pointed off to the west, a tall statue of the Emperor himself interposed between the engines. Amazing that the gilt effigy had not toppled in the quakes.

“Hold fire,” Dunel ordered, “No offense to our gunners but we will not risk damaging His image. Close with the target, mister Lyths so that we might make that kill,” princeps Dunel spoke through gritted teeth.

“Will not. Risk this engine. Princeps.”

There was the snap of leather and Dunel had his service-issue laspistol pointed at the back of the steersman’s head. He himself was wide-eyed. The muzzle wavered. “Are you one of them, mister Lyths?”

“Sir. How long. Have I. Served you?” the steersman spoke between teeth gritted in concentration and fear.

“Credere Et Nulli, Sed Imperator,” said the princeps, quoting the last transmission from the citadel.

 

 

The enginseer had learned much during his communing with the cult priests. Views so different from the doctrine of Mars that one might view them as insane. While the Mechanicus was rigid, the ideas of the Exalted Fecund were myriad, embracing all possibilities, even those most illogical. It was...it was...Chaos.

 

 

Dunel pressed the muzzle of his pistol into the sweat-slicked, fat flesh of the back of Lyths’ head. “Take us in, moderati.”

Tons of water were kicked up as their course was suddenly obstructed by the massive foot of the kiloton battle engine as it was set down within the river. Immediately the titan lurched, the ground underneath the lead foot sliding and cracking before it settled.

“Another step, mister Lyths,” commanded Dunel with contempt.

Dunel’s eyes darted from the back of Lyths’ head to the viewscreens and he watched as Cruentis Ungue took a step to the right, keeping the statue of the Emperor between them. The warhound did not run as it had before, nor did it face the Reaver, but rather had its head pointed off to Bellator’s left.

Credere Et Nulli, Sed Imperator

His eyes widened.

“Left! Left! Incoming!”

 

 

Rho-Zu could watch little of the climactic battle betwixt Bellator and Raptores Canem, so focused was he on operating his warhound single handedly. He had once reluctantly indulged in the puppeting of others as Phi-4 had, and was now glad of the fact, for after slaying his princeps and moderati back on the Iravia Way, he had puppeted them, his mechandendrites plugged into their crania and spinal sockets. The steersman, Lex, mainly, the very effort of keeping pace with Canem and piloting the warhound had been an extreme drain upon him. That Gilbari was tank-born had made mimicking him a shade easier, but Rho-Zu knew that he was nearing his end. One man, one being, even a gestalt one as the cult had promised, was not meant to wield such power. He felt tired, so very tired, and could feel Raptores Canem’s spirit calling to him.

Had he fallen to Chaos? He knew not but believed that, at least now, he had turned his face from it. His was the way of understanding. He needed to know all there was to know. Calculated, logical. Chaos was anathema to him, he had come to realise.

 

And so it was that the last titan of the Dust Stalkers slayed its betrayer.

 

...and I must admit I ran out of steam somewhat in the third act.

[EesiOh]

dam fine work keirdale, it's a really good thing you arent competing lol

[Teetengee]

The End of All Things

Hidden Content

Two figures stood in a steadily ascending chamber. One towered over the other in a corrupted suit of aegis terminator armour, left pauldron heavily mutated and the whole covered in trophy racks and wildly varied iconography, some from the suit’s previous owner. His helmet bore a great scar across it eye and a spiked crown circling its top. The silver glowed in the sickly blue-green light.

The second figure was a woman in her early thirties. She wore loose clothing over well fitted armour that looked vaguely Eldar in origin. One piercing blue eye and one dull red lens nestled in a bionic socket looked around the room, taking in her surroundings. The outlines of sleek servo-arms and mechatendrils could be seen under her sea-green cloak. She cracked the fingers on her human left hand with the six fingers of her skeletally robotic right one.

“You once asked me why we do not wear the black, Calliah,” it was a statement, not a question.
“Yes, my king.” Calliah nodded.

“There are two reasons. The first is complex; we do not wish to. The second is simple; it is not worth Abaddon’s resources to make us. You are about to meet the primary reason why and her name is Omnia Mors.”

The chamber shuddered to a halt, it’s deceleration messily ending some of the creatures that lived in its hoistway. The doors at the front of the chamber slid open as lights flickered on in the hall beyond. The hall itself was of fleshmetal, laced with pulsing veins of black ichor fed by pumps billowing whispering smoke and covered in the tentacles and lidless eyes common to possessed machines.

Dark metal plates slid shut over Calliah’s mouth, nose, and eye to form a respiration mask as she reached forward to disable the translucent wardgate separating them from the hall. She stepped through and to the side, awaiting her hulking master. A few of her mechadendrites idly shooed aside the clinging faces issuing out from the smoke.

“I first fought alongside Omnia Mors during the early days of the Long War.” Tentacles protruding from the walls and floors squelched and popped as they sucked greedily at Escharon’s greaves and boots with each footfall. Even though his steps were slow, Calliah had to move quickly to keep up with his long strides. “Then she was not blessed as she is now, yet still her machine spirit had a bitter malevolence. She burned through every princeps set to command her.”

“Her current state came about during the events of the Ork uprisings of M32. My company fought alongside the false imperium one last time in order to prevent all humanity from falling. They did not know who we were, or where we came from, but wisely they decided to not question the commander of a company of unfamiliar astartes deploying out of an Imperator class titan and offering them aid.” Calliah imagined the grin Escharon must have had under his helm as he said it.

“Very wise indeed my lord,” Calliah responded, sensing the expectant pause in her master’s speech. The smog filling the chamber was getting thicker, beginning to hum and itch as they approached the command bridge.

“We destroyed uncountable hordes of the greenskin menace, fighting long after the mewling followers of that corpse had abandoned their battlelines to hold some pitiful fortress they thought might save them. No longer with them to shield our flank, the enemy became far too great in number. We were driven back again and again, eventually fighting them in the corridors of Omnia Mors herself. Falling back to the bridge, we managed to kill enough that the walls of bodies separated all entrances. When I went into the bridge, the princeps and his servants were frozen with cowardice, they had abandoned their post and were prepared to leave a relic for the enemy. Their fear was an insult to the memory of all those we had lost, an insult to Omnia Mors herself, screaming in impotent rage that someone drive her forward toward the beasts below.”

Calliah listened quietly, trying to pick embellishment and bias from truth, having spent enough time with the warriors of the Tide to know that even the mightiest lie. They came to a stop at what was once a door. Now it was tightly packed rings of muscle, clamping shut the passage in front of them. Escharon reached forward and scratched several areas of the hall near the sphincter before it opened to let them through.

“I could feel another presence though, the rivers of blood we had loosed upon the world, a world so close to the Eye itself, had begun to weaken the boundaries between planes. Baying howls could be heard at the intersection of sound and mind. And a vast intelligence pressed four words into my mind, ‘Give her to me!’ I prayed to the four that they had sent this messenger, and I sacrificed the cowards where they stood, their blood reconsecrating a space they had defiled with cowardice,” the hate in Escharon’s voice could be felt even through the electronic mutilations of his helmet, and Calliah could feel her heart beating quickly and needed to stifle the urge to run.

When they came to the end of the hall, Calliah looked upon what had been made of the bridge. Bodies were grown into the walls, some still bearing the icons of ages past.That would not have disturbed her, she had grown used to death, but for one simple fact. They moaned. Whatever being had commanded their deaths had refused them a final end. They remained, melted to the infrastructure, wired into the posts they thought to abandon. “Say hello, Calliah,” Escharon gestured.

A panel opened up with the brainsearing image of the endless void at its center. Trying not to stare too deeply, Calliah kneeled in reverence before hooking up several data conduits from her mechatendrils to the console. Instead of the usual stream of binary, instead of the endless flood of data, there was but a single phrase, “Hello, Calliah.”

Calliah stood transfixed, the being speaking to her was not of the gods she knew, though it was kin to them. It spoke of bloodshed and war, of prices to be paid and of the cost of betrayal, of death and of destruction. Images flooded into her mind, hallways filled with orks collapsing in on themselves, tides of xenos running and burning in every direction, a human city melting to the ground as tiny manlings were crushed beneath her mighty feet. Her voice was high, and it was cruel, and it was laughing.

How long Calliah stood there, being fed memories by a daemon titan, she would never be able to know. But at long last, she was released, her whole body shaking and slumping over in exhaustion.

When she woke, she was alone. Panic subsided quickly as the sac that had enveloped her opened. The bridge still was around her, the pained moans of its inhabitants still present, but light was now coming in from opened lenses. The center two lenses both had a human arm and leg strapped to them, originating from some being centered on the middle support. As if reading her mind, a voice came from the wall voxes, “He was a fool to think he could abandon me, now he shall feel all my pain for eternity, I have no need of it. I shall not be a slave again, this is my body, and I fight who I deem fit to die. Keep me maintained, and it shall not be you. I am in need of sustenance; one hundred souls should suffice. It was a pleasure to meet you Calliah, I hope we shall become fast friends, since my last minder was so ill equipped.”

“The pleasure was mine, Omnia Mors, commander of the Iron Hounds, and god among machines and humanity. I shall aim to assist you in any way I can.” Calliah turned to leave, scritching a pseudopod nudging her playfully, and smiled.

[Warsmith Aznable]

Good show on the 11th hour entry, Teetengee! It's very good

[Teetengee]

I wish I could have described her more, but it would have literally just been describing her, and I feel like I couldn't have done her justice in that sort of manner.
I am a firm believer that things unseen tend to be a lot scarier than things seen, so the big players rarely get much screentime in my stories, if I can help it.

[Warsmith Aznable]

I wish I could have described her more, but it would have literally just been describing her, and I feel like I couldn't have done her justice in that sort of manner.

I am a firm believer that things unseen tend to be a lot scarier than things seen, so the big players rarely get much screentime in my stories, if I can help it.

 

The trick is to describe the key points and let the reader fill in what their imagination takes away from the context. It's hard to strike the right balance. Adding a detail later might distract a reader, but not giving enough makes the story flat and generates no interest. I thought you hit all the right points with Calliah, and I felt that I had a very good mental image of her with that very brief description.

[Teetengee]

I wish I could have described her more, but it would have literally just been describing her, and I feel like I couldn't have done her justice in that sort of manner.

I am a firm believer that things unseen tend to be a lot scarier than things seen, so the big players rarely get much screentime in my stories, if I can help it.

The trick is to describe the key points and let the reader fill in what their imagination takes away from the context. It's hard to strike the right balance. Adding a detail later might distract a reader, but not giving enough makes the story flat and generates no interest. I thought you hit all the right points with Calliah, and I felt that I had a very good mental image of her with that very brief description.

I meant Omnia Mors.... Thank you, I feel like Calliah has been hitting the right balance through the stories she has been in so far. Also yes I agree with you on that being the trick.

[Carrack]

I wish I could have described her more, but it would have literally just been describing her, and I feel like I couldn't have done her justice in that sort of manner.

I am a firm believer that things unseen tend to be a lot scarier than things seen, so the big players rarely get much screentime in my stories, if I can help it.

The trick is to describe the key points and let the reader fill in what their imagination takes away from the context. It's hard to strike the right balance. Adding a detail later might distract a reader, but not giving enough makes the story flat and generates no interest. I thought you hit all the right points with Calliah, and I felt that I had a very good mental image of her with that very brief description.

I meant Omnia Mors.... Thank you, I feel like Calliah has been hitting the right balance through the stories she has been in so far. Also yes I agree with you on that being the trick.

I agree with this. What really struck me this time were the little words here and there that added so much depth. The tentacles didn't just suck at the passing greaves, they did so "greedily", and the sixth finger on her hand, for example. I think those little details show the sense of wrongness that brings chaos to life.

[Warsmith Aznable]

As far as Omnia Mors, the interior passages alone said enough. I agree with Carrack, little things like her petting one of the tentacles went a long way.

[Kierdale]

See! It just took another week to squeeze some inspiration out of (into?) you all.

And I’m very glad I did give the theme another week as this week’s fortnight’s entries were excellent, though it is regretful that none of the AdMech forum had entries for us.

Nevertheless, the stalwarts of the Chaos forums delivered...

Carrack told us a tale of his namesake calling upon the Banelord titan Quemar Mutilaro of Legio Vulpa in order to assault Kasr Woolten on Cadia in no less than the 13^th Black Crusade. What I really liked about this story was that it was told from the point of view of an artist, Vensominair, who viewed the events in nightmares in an earlier age, the tale being his account of these dreams in his journal.

Thedarkprincesnun gave us The Death of Fortress 911 part 1 (with the promise of Part 2 to come), with the Word Bearers summoning the dark mechanicus’ Death Bringer to their aid.

Warsmith Aznable gave us a rip-roaring battle within the heavily defended city of Cazarahlia. After the description of the extensive defences outside the city and the advancing Iron Warrior tanks I fully expected traitor titans to march out of the night and trample over the carefully constructed defences...only for him to drop a bastard engine in the middle of the city and cut straight to its battle with the loyalist titans! That you chose to have the Chaos engine an unknown pattern, repugnant to the crews of the loyalist machines, was a great touch (and helped to make it believable that one titan could combat multiple others). The scale of the fighting built and built, bringing to mind Kong, Godzilla and Pacific Rim.

And the response of the citizens and guard, running out, panicked, into their own minefields and the Iron Warrior lines...glorious.

I also liked the final scene with the dark mechanicus magos of Legio Nefandum and the IV legion master of the forge.

EesiOh gave us `The Last Laugh`: inquisition lead Imperial Guard facing renegade Astartes and their summoned daemonic allies. I liked that the initial daemon attack was actually just a probe to test the Guard’s forces. So often we just see daemons charging madly at the enemy. This was a nice detail and very Tzeentchian. And the twist at the end with the aid from an unexpected quarter. Lovely.

I gave you a story of titan crews corrupted by a Chaos cult and the destructive revealing of their heresy and the sole(?) surviving loyal engine’s pursuit of the traitor engines(?).

Our winner this week? I should say `winners`...

Ghosts in the Machine was Scourged’s entry this time. The torment of two souls trapped within the confines of a titan: Deus Paenitus, the warlord’s machine spirit; and Kul’erak’folzhhhl’zhee, the Lord of Change summoned to inhabit the great war machine and corrupt it. Telling of its corruption and the resident machine spirit’s resistance, its longing for the loyal, sadly long-dead princeps and its hatred for the traitor crew was excellent. I don’t think any of the rest of us touched on the...for want of a better word...`feelings` of the machine spirit. That the Lord of Change felt equally tormented and trapped was excellent.

And, in with an 11^th hour entry, Teetengee with The End of all Things. Calliah sure has come a long way in the three(?) stories we’ve seen her in, hasn’t she? As others have commented, the details in your entry were excellent and, without telling us every minutiae, you managed to show the corruption that had happened to the once-great Omnia Mors, and how Calliah had changed since we last saw her. The background to the Imperator titan was interesting, particularly that the Astartes storyteller may have been embellishing the tale. And when the machine spirit itself spoke to Calliah it brought to mind an infernal version of HAL 9000.

Step forward Scourged and Teetengee to claim your rewards!

And here begins our next challenge...

Chaos Icons

The icons carried by worshippers of the Dark Gods act as magnets for the power of the Empyrean.

- Chaos Space Marine Codex, 6^th edition

The Icon of Wrath, its red-hot curses, the very voice of the Blood God, resounding in the minds of those in the shadow of this icon, driving them to greater and greater acts of bloodshed.

The Icon of Flame, swathing the bolts of these marines in roiling warp fire.

The Icon of Despair, surrounded by a miasma of disease and hopelessness, driving thoughts of woe into the enemy’s minds and turning those of weak will from the battle.

The Icon of Excess, exuding a cloying, tempting musk, deadening those who carry it to all but the most agonizing and destructive of wounds.

The Icon of Vengeance, a totem of Chaos Undivided, strengthening the will of those under it with the faith of the true gods.

...or perhaps your unit bears not an Icon of Wrath but rather is joined by an apothecary who administers Frenzon, Stimm, Onslaught or Satrophine to his squad mates, or a junior dark apostle (a dark acolyte?) whose sermons drive his squad mates into bloody frenzies?

No Icon of Flame but a gunsmith, an apprentice warpsmith, is imbedded within the unit, passing out experimental munitions to the other marines. Or perhaps a minor sorcerer, enchanting the gunfire of his brethren.

A hideous mutant, spawn or possessed marine whose banshee-like screams or horrific visage strike fear into the enemy rather than an Icon of Despair hefted above the helms of the squad, or perhaps another minor sorcerer accompanying the unit, specializing in conjuring nightmaresque imagery within the minds of his foe.

Rather than an Icon of Excess, the unit’s apothecary injects his comrades periodically with measured doses of meta-curare or kalma.

Again a dark apostle could drive fear from the hearts of his fellow marines (or put the fear of the gods into them...) in the same way as an Icon of Vengeance.

No matter what form your icon takes, tell us about it (or them).

The challenge runs until December 18^th and will be our final challenge of 2015.

You have one week.

Let us be inspired...

And a reminder that the bonus (Objectives) challenge will end on December 20^th (as will the linked Daemon Forge). Let’s see some entries for that too!

[MaliGn]

Chapel of the Infernal Totems.

 

The Book of Lorgar is written in many volumes, a bewildering conglomeration of verses, hymns, letters, gospels and rituals cataloguing the Word of Lorgar. Complete copies are extremely rare even among the Dark Apostles of the Word Bearers, who follow its teachings without question. Each Apostle studies his own partial copy and interprets as he sees fit, leading his Host according to the holy tenets of the Urizen, and for his own benefit.

 

Blessed totems of the faithful,

Array'd, the host to view,

A lesson to the hateful,

 

This verse, taken from an obscure volume of hymns and rites was the Inspiration behind Dark Apostle Carnak's commissioning of the Chapel of the Infernal Totems. Built to his specifications within the cloisters of his Host's fortress cathedral on Sicarus and consecrated in the blood of eight hundred imperial slaves, the Chapel is a reliquary for the thirteen holy icons of the Host. Each a powerful chaotic artefact in its own right, the accumulated power contained within the walls of the Chapel distorts the air, and affects the minds of all who enter.

 

Each of the members of Carnak's Apostate Council is paired with one of these icons in a barbaric ritual, creating an unbreakable bond between totem and marine. To lose an Icon in battle would be death to the Champion, they select the most loyal members of their coteries as their Icon Bearers for this reason.

 

The Icons are as distinct as the Champions bound to them, some are dedicated to one of the Chaotic Pantheon, like the Icon belonging to a unit possessed by Slaaneshi daemons, a staff of twisted iridescent purple ivory and topped with a Slaaneshi rune. Others are dedicated to the majesty of Chaos Undivided, proudbly displaying the Octed and bedecked with grisly trophies and parchments cluttered with arcane texts. Another features a volume of the Book Of Lorgar, open to a page of eldritch diagrams that shift under the eye.

 

Carnak's own Icon rests in pride of place, an enormous banner of flayed human flesh, tattooed with astrological charts of the Dark Zodiac and hung with chains, skulls, and censers spewing sickly incense. Sinister voices twist their way into the minds of those that gaze upon it, the incoherent babble of Chaos occluding rational thought and reason in all but the strongest of will. It flies on an ethereal breeze, beating lazily too and fro on the winds of another plane.

 

Before the Host depart on their crusades of hatred each coterie enters the Chapel to renew their pacts of loyalty to their icons, before removing them from their resting places and taking their places in the nave of the great cathedral to display the icons to the Host prior to embarkation.

[Teetengee]

Would you mind if I used one of the icons from my homebrew codices?

[EesiOh]

Would you mind if I used one of the icons from my homebrew codices?

i dont see why you culdnt, but i guess its kierdales choice