The Berserkers of Uran - a thread from the past

[bluntblade]

Haha

 

Someone remarked in the MDRC that Khornate don't really do much burning with their killling and maiming. At least the Berserkers will redress that imbalance.

[Raktra]

8th ed flamer previews have me excited for the future of my fire fetish.

[Nomus Sardauk]

They can do that, I'll stick buzz-saws over mine. I just found a 3.5ed Chaos Codex and saw the one with killa kan arms on it. I need them.

Ah yeah! I remember that Rhino, man, gotta love Destroyer Blades... :)

[bluntblade]

Chem-flamers on Land Raiders, anyone?

[bluntblade]

Raktra, what are we calling Chapters and... the things the Seven are?

[Raktra]

Cells. Both for the anatomy thing and the prison thing.

 

EDIT: Cells for chapters, not sure on the bigger ones.

Edited May 28, 2017 by Raktra

[bluntblade]

Cells for the Chapters? That works.

 

For the Seven, I'm feeling something grander. Don't suppose there's some ominous word/ominously named army in the lore from Dark Souls or Bloodborne that'd suit?

[Raktra]

Lemme do a check. Only one springing to mind is The Unkindled, given the Ashen King etc, but I'll find some other choices.

[bluntblade]

Yeah, we need something in place of Great/Grand Company

[MikhalLeNoir]

Thr black hand maybe? Those are the kings assassins and only 4 were ever granted the title.

[bluntblade]

Nah, I mean a term for the units rather than a name name. So the Blackening Scourge, most notorious ___ of the VII Legion

[Demus Ragnok]

Blocks.

 

Cells - Blocks- Prison

 

Maybe

 

(Shrugs)

[bluntblade]

Raktra's called Cells for Chapters, but I'm feeling something more evocative for the biggest units. Might go research the most infamous criminal gangs and see if that gives me anything

[MikhalLeNoir]

Gangs maybe? Nut i like demus suggestion. Prison has something

[bluntblade]

Not sure it really conveys the terrible grandeur of what's coming at you, mind. Might steal a word from Bloodborne language.

 

Edit: there ain't one. Host? Horde?

Edited May 29, 2017 by bluntblade

[Raktra]

Only Bloodborne one I can see working is Vilebloods.

[bluntblade]

How about Clade?

[MikhalLeNoir]

Covenant maybe?

[bluntblade]

Maybe

[Raktra]

Clade's decent. Host I'd avoid, angelic connotations and all that.

[bluntblade]

Neat. I might as well add these, suggestions welcome:

 

Raveners

Angel Rippers (led by Torkut, and I suggest we add Dorhak)

Blackening Scourge (under Riktus, we can make the Blood Boilers his Cell)

Havocmongers (originally Chaosmongers)

Arisen

Burned Eyes

The Crossed

 

Will peruse Bloodborne,p and Dark Souls runes to see what we could adapt for each Clade.

[Grifftofer]

One thing that came to mind when you mentioned that there are seven of these greater 'hosts' was the Seven deadly sins. Not sure if it's a theme worth pursuing, but you could then have built in suggestions for each of the hosts.

[Raktra]

I did originally say that with Blunt, but then you have Lust and Sloth not really fitting in with Marines/Khornate things at the end.

[Grifftofer]

Fair enough.

[bluntblade]

And gluttony.

Anyway, exemplary battle. Working title Flaming Exclamation Mark, now:

The Targhurun War

+++++

The Berserkers have cemented their monstrous aspect so deeply in the Imperial memory that we must consider the foes they faced in the Crusade. Just as Raktra was cast as a dread liberator by the savage ordeals besetting Uran, the necessary evil that was his Legion routinely took arms against the worst foes of Mankind.

The Targhurun of the Zirig Depths were a nomadic society, sustaining themselves by piracy until, quite by chance, they found an Explorator Fleet, severely damaged by an asteroid barrage. The resulting plunder they combined with gene-tampering, and became a singularly vicious force. As the Warp storms of Old Night dissipated, they embarked on a expansion which, while it never rivalled the Qarith, was characterised by rapacity rarely seen outside the conquests of greenskins.

Xenos and humans they enslaved; the latter for slave labour and breeding stock, the former for psycho-conditioning that would turn them into berserk line-breakers and cannon-fodder. Their chattels were bound to them not only through violence, but by a combination of fervent religion and a perversion of gene-science. The Targhurun used pheromones to engineer obedience in their slaves, breeding fanatical armies. By 980 M30 they controlled a dozen systems beneath the galactic plane.

The first Imperial element to encounter them was a Rogue Trader fleet, following the path of another Explorator flotilla. Finding the Forge World Throrum, initial messages were only just being exchanged when an armada of Targhurun burst into the system. The Rogue Trader was driven to flight with heavy losses, leaving many of its mercenary bands to hold the world alongside the Skitarii and Titans of Throrum. All told, three expeditionary fleets, including elements of the Halcyon Wardens and Iron Bears, locked horns with the xenos across four systems. This proved enough to halt the Targhurun, but not to seize and hold the systems in question.

This inertia was unacceptable, even when the cost was considered. Worse, reconnaissance missions revealed the Targhurun were rapidly assembling a still larger army. This would not only be enough to tip the balance in the current theatre, but threaten the flanks of the Imperial advance in other regions. When word reached the Emperor, His advisors suggested deploying Legion detachments from half a dozen other fleets. The Master of Mankind overruled them and ordered “No half measures. Deploy the Seventh.”

When the Berserkers arrived, they bypassed the current battlefront. A third of the Legion broke realspace in the system where the second Targhurun armada was massing - dubbed Khorst - bulk transports still waiting for most of the horde to embark. Preceding them was a small fleet of Dune Serpents, the already notorious “Viper Fangs”. Dahzrak Zahr, their commander, ordered his battleships to approach on minimal power, sending escorts and system-runners ahead. These briefly engaged the enemy vessels before fleeing to a point on the edge of the system, above the solar plane. Here a force of strike cruisers awaited, but the Targhurun saw a decoy in their presence. More ships had translated at the Mandeville point, with every appearance of mining it to prevent reinforcements joining the attack on the Imperials.

The Taeghurun responded quickly, little realising the ruse concealed by these manoeuvres as they came within range of the Serpents. Abruptly realspace was torn open, and the Berserkers of Uran thundered into the system. The Targhurun fleet, despite falling into a well-coordinated fighting retreat, was cast into disorder within the hour. Raktra pressed on without a backward glance once boarders were away, and the staging-world became the grave of its army. Debased as the foe were, they remained human, possessing technology from Mankind’s half-remembered zenith. Massed bombardment would not suffice.

Raktra, of course, had anticipated this. At five closely located points across the planet’s northern hemisphere, they bombarded from orbit before drop-pods and gunships carried the first waves to the surface, along with Legio Yharma Warhound and Reaver Titans and Knights of House Lorthryk. The Berserkers of the first wave were two entire Hordes: the Blackening Scourge and Angel Rippers, each capable of subjugating whole systems. At each landing site they swiftly met Taghurun forces and beat them back, more than matching their disciplined savagery.

Reinforcements joined the Berserkers as they advanced, and the invasion took on the form of a rippling tide. Land Raiders and Rhino transports formed great columns of metal, joined by Predators, Sicaran battle tanks and Whirlwinds. As one wave halted to regroup and repair, another surged past in bulk landers and gunships. Drop-pod attacks and bomber raids demolished silos, water supplies and communications networks. Only one channel was left to the enemy - Astropaths, or whatever mutants served the same purpose for the Targhurun. With his fleet in place, Raktra cared little that reinforcements might find them here. He wanted the forces assaulting the region around Throrium to know what was happening behind their lines, and to sow fear throughout their domain.

Army tank columns raced to keep up, and the Berserkers’ mortal auxiliaries ensured nothing survived in their wake. More and larger Titans strode the surface of Khorst, breaking fortifications and armour formations with little effort. Terminators and Dreadnoughts ploughed into the ranks of their enemies and led the storming of strongholds. The Berserkers’ prolific use of small thruster-pods came into its own; while not as potent as true jump packs, their wide availability gave the bulk of the Legion terrifying mobility. Raktra was ever at the front, a figure of terror even among such deranged foes, and though alien beasts were sent to kill him on dozens of occasions, none came close to succeeding. At his side fought the Milewalkers, and companies of assault marines came behind.

The sheer numbers of the enemy became a weapon for Raktra to use, as food supplies ran low and swiftly led to disorder and cannibalism. The Serpents fed this, adding vile poisons to water and food supplies. Within three weeks, an army whose strength was estimated at a hundred and thirty million had been whittled down to just two million. The Targhurun warlords unveiled a Titan maniple of their own, bastardised variants of Warhounds and Reavers, gathering their remaining soldiers and arming their thralls as they went to meet the Berserkers.

Now the Blackening Scourge, the Blood Boilers at their head, came to the fore, and the results of the experiments done at Raktra’s bidding were unveiled. The pheromones engineered by the Targhurun scientists had yielded a grisly discovery; with the application of certain poisons, the victim’s body chemistry would react so violently as to burn them out from the inside. By the time the Berserkers reached the last line of resistance, the reactants had been distilled into a variety of forms, deployed by chem-flamer, missile, grenade and bolt-round. The Blackening Scourge modified their tanks and allied Titans to make use of Destroyer weapons, but even so it was an uncommon number of Land Raiders and Predators that rumbled through the night, lit by the noisome glow of their weapons and wreathed in smog.

With the Ashen King leading his sons, it was the work of a single night. Raktra saw that the enemy Titans were equipped primarily to destroy vehicles and buildings. Therefore he ordered his own war machines to avoid engaging them, despite the objections of the Legio Yharma. Titans were always valuable war spoil, and he spied an opportunity break the enemy's resolve entirely. As the enemy Titans closed, Raktra led a force of Berserkers and Serpents ten thousand strong directly for them. Spreading themselves thinly, they pushed their thruster pods to their limits, leaping tanks, crashing through infantry and leaving gas and phosphex grenades in their wake. Several hundred fell to tank fire and the Titan's dread weapons, but they moved too fast for the enemy to do any more, and the tactical and devastator squads who followed made ruin of surviving tanks and troops.

Reaching the Titans, Raktra's warriors set about the legs of the great machines, dragging them down to breach their cabins or leaping up to batter open access hatches. Raktra, with fiendish audacity, leapt straight for the head of the commanding Reaver. With his Grinder chainblade, he cut his way into the cockpit, followed by his bodyguard, and reaved through his trapped prey. The last Titans fell silent, and the Astartes marched pitilessly beneath them, massacring the Targhurun and their conscripts.

When dawn rose, it revealed a necropolis, peopled by twisted statues, eye sockets and mouths still glowing. Few mortals, even days later, managed to look at them without their stomachs violently rebelling, and no artist had the stomach to so much as sketch the charnel scene. Raktra regarded the battle as a test of the new weapon, now approved for use in this theatre as a matter of course. The Targhurun advance had collapsed, and with the bulk of their armies destroyed, the best they would be able to achieve was to die slowly.

With this singular atrocity, the old nomadic instinct for survival prevailed, and the Targhurun evacuated all they could and made to flee, only to be cornered by the Berserkers and Serpents. The Targhurun sued for peace at any price. Raktra slew the emissary, before boarding the flagship and gutting the commander. He was a man who exacted submission, he explained, and would not take it when it was merely offered.

Their slaves had cowered in terror rather than rejoice on every world, and this Raktra deemed only proper. Too weak to rise up against their oppressors even when the Berserkers were dismantling the Targhurun military, the only mercy they could expect was to keep slaving away as before. Chattel xenos were purged as a matter of course, and the Targhurun who surrendered were given an ultimatum that, according to the savage creed of Uran, was a rare honour. Raktra, where other Primarchs would have reviled them, saw a culture he could respect and use. Too wily and strong to be trusted as vassal rulers, they would either die or be absorbed into the Ashen King’s mortal armies, buying his clemency with the promise of dying in his name. The strongest of their children would be accorded an even higher honour; they would be given a measure of Raktra’s own might, and carve bloody swathes across the Galaxy to prove themselves worthy of that gift.

Before departing, the Ashen King gave but one command to those who came behind him. The nightmarish tableau left by the final battles must remain undisturbed: “Here,” the Ashen King declared, “men will see the truth of the universe writ in stone.”

Edited May 16, 2019 by bluntblade